Paris in the 18th century was the second-largest city in Europe after London, with a population of about 600,000 people. The century saw the construction of Place Vendôme, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Élysées, the church of Les Invalides, and the Panthéon, and the founding of the Louvre Museum. Paris witnessed the end of the reign of Louis XIV, was the centre stage of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, saw the first manned flight, and was the birthplace of high fashion and the modern restaurant and bistro.
Paris at the end of the reign of Louis XIV
"The new Rome" Louis XIV distrusted the Parisians; when he was young he had been forced to flee the city twice, and he did not forget it. He moved his residence from the Tuileries Palace to the Palace of Versailles in 1671, and moved his entire court to Versailles in 1682. But while he disliked the Parisians, he wanted Paris to be a monument to his glory; he declared in 1666 that he wished to "do for Paris what Augustus had done for Rome." He decorated the city with new squares and public buildings; the Collège des Quatre-Nations (1662–1672); the Pont Royal in 1685, and in the same year began construction of two new monumental squares: Place des Victoires and Place Louis le Grand (now Place Vendôme). He also began the Hôtel des Invalides (1671–1678), a residence and hospital for wounded soldiers. In 1699, a monumental equestrian statue of the King was dedicated in the center of the place Vendôme. During his reign, Louis XIV spent more than 200 million livres for new buildings, of which ten percent was spent in Paris; ten million for rebuilding the Louvre and the Tuileries; 3.5 million for the new factories of Gobelins and the Savonnerie; and a little more than 2 million for Les Invalides.
Several new churches were also begun during the reign of Louis XIV, but not finished until well into the 18th century; these included the Church of Saint-Sulpice, whose cornerstone was laid by the Queen, Anne of Austria, in 1646, but not finished until 1745; the Church of Saint-Roch, begun in 1653 and finished in 1740; the church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet (1656–1765); and the church of Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin (1683–1770).
Louis XIV also made a dramatic change to the borders of the city; he decided that Paris was now secure from any enemy attack, and had the old ring of walls and fortifications demolished. The old city gates were replaced by ceremonial arches, celebrating his victories; the Porte Saint-Denis (1672) and Porte Saint-Martin (1674). The walls were pulled down and replaced by wide boulevards, which in the 18th century became the most popular promenades for Parisians.
The administration of the city was complicated and deliberately divided, designed to keep the city tightly under royal authority. The position of Governor of Paris, held by a duke, was purely ceremonial, as was the position of the Provost of Paris, earlier held by a leading merchant, but in the early 18th century by a nobleman. Their powers were shared with the Intendant of Paris, a high noble with rather vague duties, the Bureau of the City, the Procureur-General of the Parliament, the Civil Lieutenant of the Châtelet, and the Secretary of State of the King's Household, who had the title "Minister of Paris", but reported to the Controller General of Finances. The position of Lieutenant-General of Police of Paris was created in 1667, and given to Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie, the first police chief of the city, and he became a sort of Vice-Minister. All of these officials were responsible for some part of the city's business, but all important decisions had to be made by the King and his council.
Despite the grandeur of the new monuments, the center of the city at the beginning of the 18th century was overcrowded, dark, unhealthy, and had little light, air, or drinking water. It was also dangerous, despite the addition of the first metal lanterns on the main streets and the enlargement of the police night watch to four hundred men.
The last years of the King's long reign were marked by natural catastrophes which caused great suffering for the Parisians; they began with a bad harvest followed by a famine in the winter of 1692-1693. Dozens of large ovens were built in the courtyard of the Louvre to bake bread for the poor, but the distribution of the loaves at central points around the city resulted in fighting and riots. That winter, fourteen or fifteen people a day died of hunger at the Hôtel Dieu hospital next to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Another bad harvest and severe winter hit Paris in 1708–1709, with temperatures reaching below 20 degrees Celsius. The Seine froze from January 26 until April 5, making it impossible to deliver grain to the city by boat. During the summer of 1709, the government announced the creation of workshops for the poor and unemployed, who would receive 1.5 pounds of bread and two sous for each day of work. Six thousand persons lined up before dawn near the Porte Saint-Martin for two thousand available jobs. Riots followed, the crowds attacked Les Halles, and musketeers had to occupy the main streets and squares to restore order. Placards criticizing the King and his government began to appear on the city gates, the churches and the main squares.
On 28 August 1706 Louis XIV made his last visit to Paris to see the construction of the new chapel, with a great gilded dome, he was building for the Hôtel des Invalides. He died on 1 September 1715. Louis de Rouvroy, the Duke of Saint-Simon wrote in his memoirs that, at the news of the King's death, "the people, ruined, crippled, desperate, gave thanks to God."
Paris under Louis XV
Immediately following the death of Louis XIV, his nephew, Philippe d'Orléans, manoeuvered the Parlement into breaking the King's will and naming him the Regent for the five-year-old king Louis XV. On 12 September, the Regent had the child King brought to the Palais de Justice to ratify his Regency, and then to the Château de Vincennes. On 30 December, the young King was installed in the Tuileries Palace, while the Regent took up residence in his family's palace, the Palais Royal, the former Palais-Cardinal of Cardinal Richelieu.
Under the Regent, the pleasures and amusements forbidden in Paris during the last years of Louis XIV were resumed. The Comédie-Italienne theatre company had been banned from Paris in 1697 for presenting a thinly disguised satire about the King's wife, Madame de Maintenon, called La Fausse Prude. The Regent invited the company back and that they perform at the Palais-Royal on 18 May 1716. The company moved to their own stage, the Théâtre-Italien in the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where they performed in his presence on 1 June 1716. In November 1716, the pleasure-loving Regent brought back another Paris amusement, the masked balls; these were held three times a week at the opera hall of the Palais-Royal. Masks were obligatory; a high admission charge of four livres kept out undesirable guests.
The young King was educated in Paris under the guidance of the Regent. He played on the terrace of the Tuileries Garden, had his own private zoo, and a room filled with scientific instruments telescopes, microscopes, compasses, mirrors, and models of the planets, where he was instructed by members of the Academy of Sciences. A printing press was installed in the palace for him to learn typography. He was taken hunting in the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes. In 1720, and 1721, when he was just ten, the young King himself danced before for the court and public in ballet performances in the Salle des Machines of the Tuileries Palace.
The Regent also made an important contribution to the intellectual life of Paris. In 1719, he moved the Royal library to the Hôtel de Nevers near the Palais-Royal, where it eventually became the Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library of France). The king and government remained in Paris for seven years.
Monuments
In 1722, Louis XV returned the court to Versailles, and visited the city only on special occasions. While he rarely came into Paris, he did make important additions to the city's landmarks. His first major building was the École Militaire, a new military school, on the Left Bank. Work began in 1753 and was completed in 1760, when the King first visited it. A chapel for the school was begun in 1768, and finished in 1773.
Louis XIV had promised to build a new church dedicated to Saint Genevieve, but it had never gotten underway. Louis XV laid the first stone for the new church on 6 September 1764. For the opening, a temporary portico of light materials was erected, to show what the church would look like. It was not completed until 1790, at the time of the French Revolution of 1789, when it became the Panthéon.
In 1748, the Academy of Arts commissioned a monumental statue of the king on horseback by the sculptor Bouchardon, and the Academy of Architecture was assigned to create a square, to be called Place Louis XV, where it could be erected. The site selected was the marshy open space between the Seine, the moat and bridge to the Tuileries garden, and the Champs-Élysées, which led to the Étoile, convergence of hunting trails on the western edge of the city (now Place Charles de Gaulle-Étoile). The winning plans for the square and buildings next to it were drawn by the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel. Gabriel designed two large mansions with a street between them, Rue Royale, designed to give a clear view of the statue in the centre of the square. Construction began in 1754, and the statue was put in place and dedicated on 23 February 1763. The two large mansions were still unfinished, but the façades were finished in 1765-66.
The other monumental major building projects of Louis XV were all on the Left Bank: a new mint, the Hôtel des Monnaies, with a 117-metre façade along the Seine (1767–1775); a new medical school, the École de Chirurgie, designed by Jacques Gondouin (1771–1775), and a new theater for the Comédie Française, called the Théâtre de l'Odéon, designed by the architects Charles de Wailly and Marie-Joseph Peyre, which was begun in 1770, but not finished until 1774.
In addition to classical buildings, Louis XV constructed a monumental fountain, the Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons, richly decorated with classical sculpture by the Bouchardon glorifying the King, at 57-59 rue de la Grenelle. While the fountain was huge, and dominated the narrow street, it originally had only two small spouts, from which residents of the neighborhood could fill their water containers. It was criticized by Voltaire in a letter to the Count de Caylus in 1739, as the fountain was still under construction:
The Parisians There was no official census of the Parisians before 1801, but based on parish records and other sources, most historians estimate that the population of Paris was about 500,000 persons at the beginning of the 18th century and grew to between 600,000 and 650,000 shortly before the Revolution of 1789. Following the Reign of Terror, economic hardship and the emigration of the nobility, the 1801 census reported that the population had dropped to 546,856, but it quickly recovered to reach 622,636 in 1811. It was no longer the largest city in Europe; London passed it in population in about 1700, but it was by far the largest city in France, and throughout the 18th century grew at a rapid rate, largely by an immigration from the Paris basin and from the north and east of France. The centre of the city became more and more crowded; building lots became smaller and buildings taller, to four, five and even six stories. In 1784, the height of buildings was finally limited to nine toises, or about eighteen metres.
The nobles