French History

Seven Ages of Paris

Name: Seven Ages of Paris
Author: Alistair Horne
ISBN: 9781400034468

by Alistair Horne

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Overview

In this luminous portrait of Paris, celebrated historian Alistair Horne gives us the history, culture, disasters, and triumphs of one of the world’s truly great cities. Horne makes plain that while Paris may be many things, it is never boring.

From the rise of Philippe Auguste through the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIV (who abandoned Paris for Versailles); Napoleon’s rise and fall; Baron Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris (at the cost of much of the medieval city); the Belle Epoque and the Great War that brought it to an end; the Nazi Occupation, the Liberation, and the postwar period dominated by de Gaulle—Horne brings the city’s highs and lows, savagery and sophistication, and heroes and villains splendidly to life. With a keen eye for the telling anecdote and pivotal moment, he portrays an array of vivid incidents to show us how Paris endures through each age, is altered but always emerges more brilliant and beautiful than ever. The Seven Ages of Paris is a great historian’s tribute to a city he loves and has spent a lifetime learning to know.

Synopsis

Publishers Weekly

London is male, New York sexually ambivalent, writes Horne. But "has any sensible person ever doubted that Paris is fundamentally a woman?" The renowned historian (The Fall of Paris, etc.) thus conceives of his history of the city of lights as "linked biographical essays, depicting seven ages... in the long, exciting life of a sexy and beautiful, but also turbulent, troublesome and sometimes excessively violent woman." Horne's admittedly idiosyncratic seven ages begin in the 13th century, when King Philippe Auguste made Paris the administrative and cultural center of France. The second age was that of the Protestant Henri of Navarre (later King Henri IV) who, after unsuccessfully besieging the city, converted to Catholicism because, he said, "Paris is worth a mass," and began "to clear away the cluttered medieval quartiers... and replace them with an orderly, classical elegance." The third era was that of King Louis XIV, a period of amazing cultural flowering, though the Sun King moved the seat of government away from Paris, to Versailles. Napoleon brought to Paris a postrevolutionary stability and grandeur, and began to construct a modern sewer system. Under Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann, during the city's fifth age, Paris was remade, but the era ended with the bloodletting of the Commune. Age six took the city from the belle epoque through the beginning of WWII, and the last from the occupation to 1969. Horne brings to this brilliant and entertaining account the same urban passion that Peter Ackroyd brought to his recent "biography" of London-and it is sure to delight Francophiles everywhere. 8 pages of color and 16 pages of b&w illus. not seen by PW. (Nov. 15) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

About the Author, Alistair Horne

Alistair Horne is a journalist, historian and author of seventeen previous books, including A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916, How Far from Austerlitz?: Napoleon 1805-1815, and the official biography of British prime minister Harold Macmillan. He is a fellow at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, and was educated at Millbrook School, New York. He lives in England.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Foreign Affairs

Horne has written extensively about France's history, especially its wars, but this book is a story of Paris. Keeping primarily within the confines of political history, he covers nine centuries, from the battle of Bouvines in 1284 to the barricades of 1968. He underscores the tenacity of the medieval French kings as they turned a small, vulnerable town into the capital of a growing, centralizing state. Cardinal Richelieu comes across favorably, whereas Horne's assessment of King Louis xiv (who spent most of his time at Versailles rather than in Paris) is mixed. His distaste for the Revolution is such that he skips it — even though the Paris of those turbulent, tragic years deserves to be discussed. He prefers to emphasize the city's development under the two Napoleons, contrasting its glitter with the misery of the underclass. But the most moving part of the book is devoted to the years spanning 1870-1940 and 1940-69. The critical French victory at the battle of the Marne in September 1914, the humiliation of Paris in World War II, and above all the great saga of Charles de Gaulle inspire excellent pages. Some of Horne's judgments on modern France are assailable, but his epilogue on the cemetery of Pere Lachaise is a fitting end to this labor of love.

Library Journal

This highly readable narrative by celebrated journalist and historian Horne (The Fall of Paris; A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962) uses an admittedly idiosyncratic organizational scheme to trace the history of Paris through seven periods, beginning in the 12th century and ending with the death of Charles de Gaulle in 1969. His "ages" focus on medieval and Renaissance Paris; the era of King Henry IV; the 18th century and Louis XIV; revolutionary and Napoleonic Paris; the 19th century, culminating in the Bloody Week of the Commune; the Belle poque; and the age of war and occupation. While politics informs and guides his presentation, this is by no means a political history. Each section includes fascinating insights into the social and cultural life of the age, fashions in clothing, architectural developments, leading personalities, and lifestyles of rich and poor alike. With the verve of a master storyteller, Horne captures Parisians' "zest for living." While often depicting Paris itself as a beautiful woman, he does not neglect the famous female personalities of each era. This readable survey complements yet stands in sharp contrast to Patrice Higonnet's recent Paris: Capital of the World, which takes a more academic focus and eschews a chronological approach. Highly recommended for large public libraries.-Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A fittingly illuminating history of la ville lumière and of the great men and women who have passed beneath the gates of the French capital. English historian and biographer Horne (A Bundle from Britain, 1994, etc.) obviously prefers Paris—which, in a well-worn turn, he conceives of as being "fundamentally a woman"—to his native "dear, sedate old London town," and this portrait bears all the marks of his affection for the cold, rainy, and notoriously snooty metropolis. Horne opens with a view of Paris as it was in its early days as the Roman colony of Lutetia, then confined to an island in the middle of the Seine, whose water, the emperor Julian wrote, "is pleasant to drink, for it is very pure and agreeable to the eye"; rough-and-tumble in Roman times, it was scarcely more civilized when the Merovingian king Clovis, having murdered most of his family—"they were not gentle or nice people," Horne writes understatedly, "these Frankish forebears of the modern-day Parisian"—founded his capital there fifteen hundred years ago. Few of the characters in Horne’s narrative qualify as gentle or nice, and his pages are full of bloody episodes that illustrate the city of light’s darker side: the slaughter of its Jews in the 14th century, and again in the 20th; the deaths of some 25,000 Parisians during the 1871 Commune, "larger by far . . . than the bloodletting of the Terror of 1793"; episodes of ethnic turmoil today. Still, Horne’s take on Paris past and present is as much celebratory as cautionary. Altogether, his approach is a tad on the old-fashioned side, preferring to highlight the mighty deeds of the noble and highborn to the daily life of the masses, fodder forgenerations of annalistes. That said, Horne does a commendable job of distilling an impressive amount of material in an eminently readable narrative that shows just how important Paris is to the history of the West, and indeed the world. A lively primer of Parisian history, just the right companion for travelers to the city seeking a deeper understanding of the view before them.