The gardens on a quiet summer day. The Tuileries Palace would have been
in the background if it still existed.
The Tuileries Gardens - A Short Dark History
Paris Kiosque - September 1996 - Volume 3, Number 9
Copyright (c) September 1996 Jacqueline Donnelly - used with permission
I confess that of all of the monuments and spots I have discovered on
foot, I have had the least respect for the Tuileries Gardens. To me,they
were always the predictable ho-hum, formal 17th century garden , with 18
statues (albeit nude) and the predictable fountains.
The gardens served as a quick walk-through from the Louvre to the Place
de la Concorde allowing me to avoid the tourists on the rue de Rivoli.
Even the name seemed bizarre, like the tinkling of bells rather than the
reference to "tuiles" or roof tiles which the factories produced for
centuries near the present site of the gardens.
Oh how I have changed my mind! Having researched the dirt (forgive the
pun) I find the gardens to be a contradiction - today a place for
children to play , lovers to meet, and yesterday the site of great
slaughter, the extension of a royal palace and a royal prison.
In order to appreciate the gardens you must sit quietly and see the
invisible. Imagine a large, rather cumbersome palace that resembled the
Louvre and formed the eastern edge of the side of the garden. It was
built by Catherine de Medicis, an incredibly powerful and supersitious
queen whose actions were determined by her soothsayer long before Nancy
Reagan had the idea.
Her stay at the palace was abruptly interrupted when she learned that she
would die near Saint-Germain. Since the Tuileries Palace was in the
parish of the church Saint-Germain-Auxerrois, Catherine packed her bags,
took her furniture and left. As history tells us, years later, on her
deathbed at the royal chateau of Blois she received the last rites from
Father Julien de Saint-Germain!
The Tuileries Palace can be seen in this map of 1870. It encloses the
western side of the present day Louvre, connecting the Denon and Richelieu wings.
The great Louis XIV resided at the Tuileries Palace while his chateau,
Versailles, was under construction. When he left, the building was
abandoned, used only as a theater, until the return of the ill-fated royal
family - Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, their children plus a handful of
servants, who were expelled from Versailles and forced to enjoy the
hospitality of the mob of Paris in October of 1789, two months after the
storming of the Bastille.
What a fall from glory to leave the palatial spendor of Versailles, for
the musty, cavernous halls of the Tuileries Palace.
I can see the queen playing in the garden with her children, exposed to
the stares of the people, like animals in a zoo, or the well-worn paths
taken by the king, as he meditated on philosophy and history in denial of
the danger and inevitabily of the demise of the monarchy which would take
place two years later with his execution on 21 January, 1793.
The royal family attempted escape. They slipped out of the palace,
disguised as servants, praying for release from this capitivity, only to
be captured in Varennes, a town on the border of Germany, recognized by
a peasant from the resemblence of Louis to his coin!
They were dragged back to the Tuileries, now under strict guard. The
palace and the gardens were to be their universe until the most dramatic
day of the French revolution - August 10, 1792 when the bells of Paris
rang in every working class neighborhood and the people stormed the
palace in anger.
The royal family fled to the General Assembly hall near the Place de la
Concorde. The faithful Swiss guards, loyal to the end, defended the
palace, unaware that their royal charges had deserted the building.
The rabble stormed the doors, massacred the guards, looted the palace and
left.
The palace and once quiet garden were strewn with over 1000 corpses.
The King himself could not stop the slaughter as he cowered with his
family in a room of the assembly.
This revolt confirmed in the insurgents' mind the justification for
dismantling the monarchy and establishing the "Commune", the first
government of the people.
It is not in the fall of the Bastille but in the slaughter in the
Tuileries that the French Revolution made its mark!
The burned out hulk of the Tuileries Palace as it was after
the Commune. (Image used with permission, Northwestern University Library; Special
Collections,
The Siege and Commune of Paris, 1870-1871).
The Tuileries Palace had seemed hexed. Catherine de Medicis abandoned
it, Louis XIV tolerated it, Louis XVI was prisoner, ....and in 1848 during
a revolt, the people of Paris sacked it; it was restored under
Napoleon-III to a sumptuous palace only to be burned in the 1871 during
the confrontation with another Communard government.
The accursed palace loomed, charred and in disgrace for 12 years on the
site of the present expanded Tuileries gardens.
What a great concentration of French history has taken place in what today
appears only to be a classical, French garden.
But, let's not leave on a dismal note. Today, lovers meet, and children
play, hurried Parisians shortcut through the park, tourists wander, and
life goes on.
But because we now know the story, we will not see the former palace and
the present gardens in the same way.
Jackie Donnelly, earned her B.A. in French from Connecticut College and her
Master's Degree in French language and literature from Boston University.
Ms. Donnelly has taught French at the high school and university level for over 25 years.
and is an 18 time visitor to France, and describes herself as 100% American
but sentimentally 100% French.
She was recently awarded the Palmes Academiques by the
French Minister of Education.
Currently she is serving as chair of a committee on the National Task Force of the
American Association of Teachers of French.
She can be contacted via this link.
