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Rating: 
Summary: Paris between Revolutions
Review: Good costume drama history of the period from Napoleon first 'as tragedy' to Napoleon finally 'as farce', a better division being the colorful innings of the royalist hasbeens in flashback hallucinations between the French Revolution and the fiasco of 1848. Undoubtedly a period of creative ferment, many artists, and the beginnings of France's industrial revolution, one nonetheless begins to get the feeling, all this trouble just to get a republic on its feet, and then another Napoleon. Cap this read by checking out Marx's two books of journalism for this period, or at least its ending. Unexpectedly, no doubt far beyond the author's intent, the structure of Marxism comes alive as a response to this era. Industrialization and take-off, workers starving in the streets, class struggle with pistols, and the classic snapshots of the bourgeoisie beginning their glorious career, stock market statism. After so much trouble trying to float a real republic it is small wonder radicals started to see 'red'.
Rating: 
Summary: When the world came to Paris
Review: Secretary Rumsfeld relegates it to the "old Europe," and a recent article in the influential American publication, The Weekly Standard, questions why it should have a seat on the UN Security Council. To many Americans, the influence of France on European and international affairs is disproportionate to its size -- whether one is talking about its economy, population or geographic scope. However much one may lament it, France retains its reach. In Peter Mansel's Paris Between Empires, we see why. The book opens in 1814 with Napoleon in Elba and closes at the Franco-Prussian war and the end of Paris hegemony. What Mansel provides in this densely-packed volume is a vivid description of Paris as its vacillates "between nationalism and Europeanism, Bonapartism and royalism, soldiers and civilians..." When Paris is not expanding militarily but is drawing inward, she seduces culturally -- in the salons, the culinary arts, in language and, yes, so Mansel tells us, in manners. I certainly derived a much better appreciation of the Salon during these years, and the multiplicity of functions it served: as "power base, employment agency, education, substitute home" and, of course, as a platform for sexual encounters. Did Europe have a more unifying force than France between empires? Even now, with the chunnel running daily, Mansel is probably on target with his claim that "more than any time before or since, Britain and the British were part of Paris life, as Paris was part of British life." It was in France, fostered by anxiety over her, that Louis XVIII, Orleans, Talleyrand, Pozzo di Borgo and others found themselves united on behalf of the common interests of a greater Europe. Paris Between Empires is not "Paris-for-dummies." Mansel does little on the surface to cater to the ordinary reader. But the rewards of keeping pace with him are significant, and important. He has a remarkable wealth of detail in these pages. (He seems to know the occupant of every seat in the Opera the night the Duc de Berri was stabbed to death "by a lone fanatic seeking to revenge Waterloo and exterminate the Bourbons.") The impact of Paris during these years remains. Long after France was no longer the capital of Belgium, Rhineland`, Northwest Germany, Northern Italy and the Netherlands, her presence could be felt. The influence of France, as Mansel shows, is tighly woven into the fabric of Europe -- old and new.
Rating:
Summary: When the world came to Paris
Review: Secretary Rumsfeld relegates it to the "old Europe," and a recent article in the influential American publication, The Weekly Standard, questions why it should have a seat on the UN Security Council. To many Americans, the influence of France on European and international affairs is disproportionate to its size -- whether one is talking about its economy, population or geographic scope. However much one may lament it, France retains its reach. In Peter Mansel's Paris Between Empires, we see why. The book opens in 1814 with Napoleon in Elba and closes at the Franco-Prussian war and the end of Paris hegemony. What Mansel provides in this densely-packed volume is a vivid description of Paris as its vacillates "between nationalism and Europeanism, Bonapartism and royalism, soldiers and civilians..." When Paris is not expanding militarily but is drawing inward, she seduces culturally -- in the salons, the culinary arts, in language and, yes, so Mansel tells us, in manners. I certainly derived a much better appreciation of the Salon during these years, and the multiplicity of functions it served: as "power base, employment agency, education, substitute home" and, of course, as a platform for sexual encounters. Did Europe have a more unifying force than France between empires? Even now, with the chunnel running daily, Mansel is probably on target with his claim that "more than any time before or since, Britain and the British were part of Paris life, as Paris was part of British life." It was in France, fostered by anxiety over her, that Louis XVIII, Orleans, Talleyrand, Pozzo di Borgo and others found themselves united on behalf of the common interests of a greater Europe. Paris Between Empires is not "Paris-for-dummies." Mansel does little on the surface to cater to the ordinary reader. But the rewards of keeping pace with him are significant, and important. He has a remarkable wealth of detail in these pages. (He seems to know the occupant of every seat in the Opera the night the Duc de Berri was stabbed to death "by a lone fanatic seeking to revenge Waterloo and exterminate the Bourbons.") The impact of Paris during these years remains. Long after France was no longer the capital of Belgium, Rhineland`, Northwest Germany, Northern Italy and the Netherlands, her presence could be felt. The influence of France, as Mansel shows, is tighly woven into the fabric of Europe -- old and new.
Rating:
Summary: Cossacks camped out on the Champs Elysees
Review: This book is a history of Paris between the two Napoleonic Empires (1814-1852). It starts with Napoleon's initial defeat, the first occupation of Paris, the Hundred Days and the second occupation. It is indeed extraordinary that Paris was not treated by the Russians in 1815 like Berlin was in 1945. Of course, Napoleon was no Hitler and Alexander I was no Stalin (although the French occupation of Russia was also quite violent, if less protracted than the German one), but then again Paris was no Berlin, and one doesn't treat the most beautiful city in the world like any other place (the point was accepted by the illustrious General and Field Marshall Von Choltitz, who chose to betray his führer rather than raze lovely Paris). The story picks up its pace during the restoration. Building on his successful biography of Louis XVIII, Mansel shows that the familiar dismissal of the Bourbons (who supposedly had neither learnt nor forgotten anything) was unfair, at least during the reign of Louis XVIII, the former Count of Provence and younger brother of the slain Louis XVI. Louis XVIII went out of his way to reconcile the people with the monarchy, and he was genuinely popular during his short reign. It is interesting to see how biographers are attracted to their subjets. Antonia Fraser in her biography of Marie-Antoinette regards the Comte de Provence as a traitor who waited abroad for his brother's family to be slaughter in order to inherit the throne, whereas Mansel's Louis XVIII is a peaceful, clever, if slightly cynical, man. The author brings to life the verve with which the Parisians enjoyed their lives after nearly thirty years of revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (according to Mansel, the Restoration's most reliable supporters were women, who did not want their children, husbands or lovers to be sent out to war). He recalls the literary, philosophical and political salons, which were not just gathering points for like-minded flaneurs, but essential nerve endings in the city's political life. In many cases, political decisions were made not in government offices, but in the salons themselves. The murder at the opera of the Duc de Berry, Louis XVIII's nephew is brilliantly described. Mansel conveys the shortsightedness of Charles X (Louis XVIII's brother) and his advisors (including the brilliant poet and diarist, but terrible politician and rather unpleasant person, Chateaubriand) which managed to alienate the Parisians in six short years and led to the mercenary and unloved bourgeois monarchy of Louis-Philippe, who was always suffering attempts on his life (it seems to me that he is unnecessarily beastly to Poiron, as Louis-Philippe was known due to his pear shaped face- Louis-Philippe was a pleasant, apparently decent man, who did much to bring bourgeois propriety to France, and preferred to let people enrich themselves rather than get them involved in international wars- I would much rather be governed by a man like Louis-Philippe, than by an arrogant trouble-maker like his successor, Napoleon the Small). The end, when it came, was swift and epical, as 1848 unfolded, the dress rehearsal for the Commune of 1870. The book is full of loving detail that only someone with several books about the main people of the era could achieve. I was fascinated to read about the most influential man in Paris during the restoration, Count Pozzo di Borgo, a brilliant and cynical Corsican general who hated Napoleon and threw in his lot with the Russians. It's not the Belle Epoque, but it's not far off. By the way, Pozzo di Borgo ended his days as one of the richest men in France, and his descendants are still around, and still doing very well indeed.
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