Suchergebnisse

Among the revolutions in France since 1789 one, the Revolution of 1830, has been singularly neglected by historians in this century, and neither in this century nor the preceding one has it attracted much attention from any but the political historians. No monograph on the whole story of the Revolution has ever been published, and the standard account, in Lavisse's Histoire de France contemporaine, appeared nearly forty years ago. The economic and sociological dimensions of the event have been generally ignored. Consequently, the Revolution of 1830 is ordinarily seen as a political movement arising out of the unpopularity of Charles X and his ministers and out of their attempt to arrogate the sovereign power to the crown.

During the winter of 1867–1868 readers of Le Temps were entertained by a series of articles on the municipal finances of Paris by one of the paper's sharp-tongued contributors, the republican deputy Jules Ferry. The substance of the articles was not original, nor were they the most revealing of the many publications on the subject that appeared during the 'sixties, but they were cutting and witty, and in 1868 Ferry republished diem as a booklet with an arresting title, The Fantastic Accounts of Haussmann. (Comptes fantastiques d'Haussmann was a pun on Contes fantastiques d'Hoffmann, a play presented at the Odéon in 1851 and later set to Offenbach's music.) When more analytical studies were forgotten, Ferry's work was remembered. The title found its way into popular histories, and for most people, Baron Haussmann's financing of the rebuilding of Paris is still something seen darkly through the glass of Ferry's political pamphlet.