Chapter 1154 The Story of Paris (7)

If there was a war one day, where would you flee to?

For the residents of Neuilly who lived during the Franco-Prussian War, Paris was their last choice.

After taking over Paris from the Paris Commune, bread and flour were strictly controlled. Everyone was distributed with bread rolls, and refugees were allocated refugee rolls to solve the problem of accommodation and meals in Paris.

These refugees were trying to escape the Prussian shells, but after hiding in Paris, they had to be shelled by "our own people".

After the Paris Commune, many old photos were left behind, and many once beautiful buildings became ruins. However, this was not all caused by looting and arson.

The vast majority of the destroyed buildings were caused by shells from the "Versailles elements" outside the city.

Now many tourists, even French people, will confuse the difference between Paris and Greater Paris.

There used to be an ancient city wall in Paris. The earliest builder of this city wall was Philip II. After him, almost every new French king ordered the heightening of the city wall of Paris when he ascended the throne. The reason for this In this case, it was not because the walls built by Philip II were not high enough.

In the middle ages with poor sanitation, many residents would dump their excrement directly on the street.

Later, after the city wall was repaired, the residents had "citizen consciousness", because the smell of the excrement would affect the cleanliness of the city, and the citizens began to run to the city wall in groups, standing on the city wall and dumping the excrement on the city wall. outside.

Due to the accumulation of Paris residents, the feces outside the city have piled up into mountains, and the moat outside the city wall is also full of feces. The fish and shrimp in the river have long since died, and the river water has also become viscous. The city walls that originally protected the residents of Paris from foreign enemies lost their original function due to the accumulation of feces. Later, during a war against the invasion of foreign enemies, the residents of the city discovered that those enemies could stand directly on the "dung mountain" Climb the wall.

If one wanted to thoroughly clean up the excrement outside the city, it might take all the strong labor in the city. The king's soldiers alone could not completely clean up the excrement outside the city wall.

It was not until the early nineteenth century that the dung hill outside the city wall was cleared. It is said that more than 10,000 strong laborers were used at that time.

For this reason, each king continued to raise the city walls, but these walls were not all stone. During the reign of Charles IX of the Valois Dynasty and his mother Catherine de Medici, Cardinal Richelieu A section of mud city wall was repaired, and the city gate was reinforced.

In the period of Louis XIV, Louis XIV, who liked to conquer the north and south, expanded the territory of France, and Paris was no longer a border city. Successive victories in foreign wars made Louis XIV's confidence inflated, and the fortifications on the border were also improved. Enough to defend Paris, so he ordered the demolition of the mud walls of Charles V and Louis XIII. The stone walls built by Philip were too difficult to tear down. It took ten years to dismantle them intermittently. Paris became a city without walls, The city is wide open.

Louis XIV built a lot of roads, and expanded a circle on the basis of the old medieval city walls, built new trails to replace the original patrol passages for soldiers, and linked the ring road with these roads.

This circle of trails is the predecessor of the Paris ring road, and this ring road has also become the boundary between the urban area and the suburbs of Paris.

In order to demonstrate the power of the "Sun King" rule, Louis XIV ordered architects to design several city gates for New Paris.

Only four of these city gates have been preserved to this day. Unlike the main fortification gates in the Middle Ages, the new city gates are designed to express grandeur and grandeur. The triumphal arch of ancient Rome is the most able to meet the needs of Louis XIV.

Since then, the Royal Academy of Architecture has produced an additional class of students. Architects at the time believed that in an era when there were not many wars and the need for city gates to be used as fortifications, the city gates were more used as a boundary between urban and rural areas.

The architects believe that although ordinary city gates are also made of stone, they should be different from the Arc de Triomphe, and need to reduce the gorgeous decoration and increase the solemn atmosphere.

The city gate left by Louis XIV has no function of city defense at all, it is more like a monument.

The new city gate should have the functions of tax card and residence, and at the same time, as the new gate of Paris, it should have the momentum of the Acropolis Hill.

In 1784, during the reign of Louis XVI, in order to solve the financial losses caused by serious smuggling inside and outside Paris, the tax-contractor group decided to rebuild a city wall around Paris and set up several tax cards on it to control taxation.

This city wall is outside the promenade around the city of Louis XIV and is 2.5 times the city wall of Louis XIII. For this reason, 62 new "city gates" will be built. These city gates all adopt the gables, colonnades and rectangular planes of Greek temples, but they are all simplified to distinguish them from the Arc de Triomphe.

Taxes have to be paid when passing through the city gate. The appearance of the tax customs has led to an increase in the price of goods in the city.

These gates are neither simple log cabins like the previous tax cards, nor have anything to do with the familiar Arc de Triomphe. What's the point of spending so much money building a tax collection agency that can solve the problem with log cabins?

In addition, the construction cost of Chengguan has greatly exceeded the previously given budget, which also exacerbated the outbreak of the French Revolution.

The burning of the city gates of Paris became the first fire ignited by the Great Revolution. After the citizens of Paris dismantled those "ordinary city gates", the 22-meter-long and 3.5-meter-high city wall built by the tax-contractor group at that time and the patrol passage outside the city wall Both the forest belt and the forest belt have been preserved, and they still continue to distinguish the city from the suburbs in the early 19th century.

When the Prussians besieged the city, they surrounded the city wall built by Louis XVI to collect taxes.

In the last years of Louis XVI's reign, the state of the urban environment in Paris was already quite poor, with the city and the suburbs mixed together.

The famous Champs-Elysées is the central axis linking the Louvre Museum and the new Arc de Triomphe, also known as the Triumph Avenue. In the 17th century, this world-famous and beautiful avenue was once a swamp and wilderness.

In 1805, Napoleon defeated the Russian and Austrian allied forces and built this gate to commemorate this event.

It was built in the form of a separate monument, not only the life story of Napoleon, but also the tomb of the unknown soldier below.

Work was briefly suspended during the Restoration of the Bourbons, and construction resumed after the overthrow of the Bourbons, but with the restoration of the magnificent gate, the already bad traffic in Paris just got worse.

However, no one in Paris imagined tearing down the Arc de Triomphe like tearing down those "tax cards". Every major festival in Paris, there would be a soldier in a Napoleon-era military uniform holding a saber to boost morale in front of the Arc de Triomphe.

Every year on National Day, the French Prime Minister walks under the Arc de Triomphe and presents a bouquet of flowers to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the day of leaving office.

It is said that on Napoleon's birthday on May 5, the sunset will always be right in the middle of the circular arch.

In the Franco-Prussian War, the Prussian army paraded under the Arc de Triomphe, and Hitler also passed through the Arc de Triomphe and paraded under the Arc de Triomphe.

The theory of the monarch once said that a king must never forget the military system and training. Indulging in comfort and forgetting this profession will lead to the resignation of the monarch, which is also the main reason for the loss of power.

The army will not only protect the monarch who inherits the throne, but also serve as a shortcut for the common people to climb the throne.

In The Prince, the Grand Duke of Milan, Francesco Forza, is used as an example. In France more than two hundred years later, a small Corsican borrowed the "shortcut" that the French nobleman had abandoned and became the emperor of France.

Commoners feel that they can find the qualities and abilities that other commoners have in him, but Napoleon is not a real commoner, he is a minor nobleman, and has declined in Napoleon's generation. Fortunately, his father worked hard so that Napoleon has Opportunity to read.

But what he learned has nothing to do with the peaceful Paris of singing and dancing. It is a "peaceful" world, and only musicians, writers, and tall, handsome men and women can make their debut.

Reasonable people know the consequences of not rectifying the military. Ludovico Sforza, a descendant of Francesco who was born as a mercenary, was actually not as obsessed with art as Machiavelli wrote, and he did not rectify the army.

Mercenaries have no loyalty at all. If a monarch wins a battle with mercenaries, he will inevitably be threatened by mercenaries, and even lose his territory in the end like the Duke of Milan.

It is not so easy to control this group of hyenas. In contrast, native soldiers are much more loyal.

During the French Revolution, when the citizens of Paris rioted, the military's performance was always bewildering. The Royal Forest Army has turned against them, but the other regular troops stationed in Paris are not necessarily. They just basically do not move, as if they have evaporated, and have no sense of existence, allowing the angry civilians to cut the nobles alive.

During the riots in Nika, the army faced several times its own civilians and suppressed them at the racing track, which also quelled the riots. There were no cannons at that time.

"What are you looking at!" Severus said suddenly.

"Oh, you surprised me!" She thumped his arm limply.

"You're still reading the Paris Commune?" Severus looked at the newspaper she had left on the table in the library's reading room.

"I think they are very interesting." Pomona said, touching the yellowed newspapers. "They are very real. They are still taking refugees and providing housing for women and children when their resources are tight."

"Where's the man?" Severus asked. "Where did the man go?"

Pomona couldn't answer.

"Do you know why the Prussians only besieged the city and never entered it?" He handed her a cup of iced coffee.

"What's your opinion?" Pomona pulled the banana bread out of her pocket.

It was her breakfast, she had no appetite from the hangover, and now she feels better and is ravenous from hunger.

"Stalingrad was almost in ruins after the battle, and street fighting was inevitable in urban warfare. Letting the French fight their own people can not only divide them, but also avoid damage to their own troops."

Pomona had never been to the suburbs of Paris, she just knew it was messy from historical sources.

In the context of English-speaking countries, a suburb refers to a detached or semi-detached dwelling with a lawn, similar to Little Whinging, where Harry used to live.

But the French "suburbs (banlieue)" should not be the same as the British "suburbs".

The word comes from "prohibition". In the Middle Ages, newcomers to a city would see a notice at the gate of the city, informing newcomers how to live civilizedly in the city.

The ban represents the boundaries of urban civilization, not the same single-family houses surrounded by green spaces and gardens in the suburbs of the city.

"I'm sorry," Pomona said. "Yesterday's dinner..."

"It's nothing." Severus interrupted her. "I can understand, you were in combat readiness, not to mention dancing was pretty good afterwards."

"Prometheus stole the fire from Olympus, but I stole the food of the gods," she said with a smirk.

"Do you think saying that will salvage your poor banquet arrangement last night?" Severus said grimly.

"We're at Hugo's house."

Severus ignored her and continued to read the borrowed book.

"How about we go to Notre Dame in the afternoon?"

"Too many tourists, not interested." He flatly refused.

"So, to the hideout in France?" said Pomona. "I haven't been to the wizarding world in France yet."

"Up to you." He said without much interest.

Pomona shrugged and went back to the old newspaper clippings.