Owing to its geographical situation, the second arrondissement historically always drew the most destitute segments of society, particularly between the 15th and 17th centuries.
The Hundred Years' War and the Black Plague left one-sixth of the population of France homeless and starving. Deserting the desolate countryside, they made their way into the capital and huddled next to Charles V's city walls that girdled the area to the north. (Today the Grands Boulevards run along their site, marking the northern boundary of the 2nd arrondissement).
This tangle of narrow streets and blind alleys reeked with the stench of the open-air sewer and was a perilous no man's land a long way from the city, as some street names testify: rue du Temps Perdu ('vanished times'; now rue Saint-Joseph) and rue du Bout du Monde ('world's end'; now Léopold Bellan).
The Court of Miracles
The newcomers became the terror of the town, organized into fearsome bands with their own language and laws. By day they spilled out into the streets of Paris, metamorphosed into 'blind' or 'maimed' beggars who preyed upon passers-by. But by night they vanished into the neighbourhood's dead-end alleys, where they laid aside their crutches and 'miraculously' recovered their eyesight and missing limbs.
Thus these alleys came to be known as 'Cour de Miracles', running conveniently along the city walls, the gaps in which provided emergency exits, the most notorious situated on rue Neuve-Saint-Sauveur.
Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame brought worldwide notoriety to the most famous of those 'Cours de Miracles', the one on rue Neuve-Saint-sauveur, (roughly on the site of today's rues du Nil, des Forges and de Damiette):
“...a gutter of vice and beggary, of vagrancy that spills over into the streets of the capital […] an immense changing-room of all the actors of this comedy that robbery, prostitution and murder play on the cobbled streets of Paris.”
Its rabble made the streets of Paris so unsafe that in 1667 Louis XIV ordered the police lieutenant Nicolas de La Reynie to clean up this hotbed of banditry. This was no easy task, for its occupants put up a heroic resistance. Once defeated, many ended up in the galleys of the king's growing fleet; this was one way of tackling the problem of homelessness, which afflicted one-tenth of the population of Paris; that is, 40,000 souls.
Red-lights burning bright
As Victor Hugo observed, the proximity of the city walls had brought an influx of prostitutes to the neighbourhood. They took up residence in the southeast section of the arrondissement, close to the abundant reservoir of clientele provided by the central market of Les Halles, and left the mark of their trade by way of such street names as rue Tire-Boudin ('sausage-jack'; now Marie-Stuart), rue Gratte-Cul ('bum-scraper'; now Gaston Dussoubs).
Les Halles
It was in Madame Gourdan's glamorous establishment on rue de la Comtesse d'Artois (now the delightful market street, rue Montorgueil) that the notorious pimp Jean du Barry discovered the enticing Jeanne Bécu, Mademoiselle Lange by her trade name.
Having set her up in the bordello Dupressoir on rue de Damiette, he threw her into the arms of the Duc de Richelieu, the famous Cardinal's great-nephew, who, hoping to promote his own interests, threw her into those of the King. A true professional, Jeanne introduced the licentious monarch to a realm of unsuspected pleasures, all the more appreciated since her predecessor, the Pompadour, had long lost her sexual appetite.
In order to make her socially acceptable, Jean du Barry married her off to his brother, Comte Guillaume du Barry, who was compensated substantially for the deal and left for Toulouse. The new Comtesse du Barry became the last of France's royal favourites, to the outrage of the Court in Versailles.
In his Lent sermon the abbot of Beauvais bluntly censored the depraved Louis XV, using the transparent disguise of King Solomon who, having had ''his fill of voluptuous pleasures […] ended by seeking new ones in the base remains of public licence.''
Outside the court, the people of France were infuriated by the Comtesse's prodigal spending, squandering the country's revenue on finery and on her sumptuous new mansion at Louveciennes. When the time came for revenge, a vindictive nation sent for her in her retreat at Louveciennes and dispatched her to the guillotine.
Home to the free press of Paris
By the time Emile Zola was born in 1840, at 10 rue Saint-Joseph, this had become a working-class neighbourhood in the heart of the capital, dominated by the teeming bustle and din of the press industry, which had first settled here during the Revolution, when Père Duchesse published a lewd, anarchical paper on rue de Damiette. It was in the tiny area where the political destiny of France was largely determined.
It was Adolphe Thiers and the journalists of his newly-founded newspaper Le National, together with colleagues from eleven other papers, who brought about the fall of the Bourbon dynasty in 1830, following the abolition of the freedom of the press on July 26th.
At no. 140-144 rue de Montmartre still stands the building where several major newspapers were published up until World War I.
La Chope du Croissant, on the corner of rue du Croissant, was one of the papermen's hang-outs. On 31 July 1914, at 9:30pm, Jean Jaurès was having an animated dinner there with fellow journalists from his paper l'Humanité, when Raoul Villain shot at him twice through the window for having opposed the breakout of World War I.
Ironically Jaurès became the war's first victim, whilst his assassin benefited from the 'confusion of the time', in other words, from the prevailing nationalist hysteria, and was acquitted.
The café's name has since been shortened to le Croissant, but Jaurès' table is still there, with the victim's blood stain that never came off. There is also a copy of the next morning front page of l'Humanité announcing the death of Jaurès along with cuttings from other papers.
Faithful disciples of Jean Jaurès gather here for dinner roughly once a month to this very day. If you are looking for a traditional French meal for EUR 25 in a basic neighbourhood café-restaurant, you might consider dropping in at this historic landmark which, paradoxically, is one of the city's best kept secrets.
Thirza Vallois / Around and About Paris / Expatica
Thirza Vallois is the author of Around and About Paris, Romantic Paris and Aveyron, A Bridge to French Arcadia. Around and About Paris, Volume 1 is now available on amazon as an ebook. Visit her sites aroundandaboutparis.com and thirzavallois.com.
Text size
Here are some fascinating historical anecdotes to ponder as you follow the path of the powerful and the downtrodden in the second arrondissement, a neighbourhood that now hosts the Bourse but was historically a slice of Paris 'populaire'. By Paris history Thirza Vallois.
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Google+
0
