Editing Georges-Eugène Haussmann (section)

==Controversies==

===Financing the reconstruction of Paris===
The reconstruction of the centre of Paris was the largest such public works project ever undertaken in Europe. Never before had a major city been completely rebuilt when it was still intact. London, Rome, Copenhagen and Lisbon had been rebuilt after major fires or earthquakes. Napoleon III began his grand projects when he was prince-president, when the government had a full treasury.  In his 1851 plan, he proposed to extend the Rue de Rivoli to connect the Louvre with the Hôtel de Ville, to build a wide new avenue, the [[Boulevard de Strasbourg]] on a north-south axis, and to complete the central produce market, [[Les Halles]], long unfinished.<ref>Maneglier, Hervé, ''Paris Impérial'', p. 254.</ref>  

He approached the Parliament and received authorisation to borrow fifty million francs.  The Emperor's ambitions were much greater. He wanted to finish the building of the Louvre and to create an enormous new park, the [[Bois de Boulogne]], to the west of Paris. His prefect of the Seine, Berger, protested that Paris did not have the money.  At this point, Napoleon dismissed Berger and hired Haussmann, and Haussmann looked for a better way to finance his projects.<ref>Maneglier, Hervé, ''Paris Impérial'', p. 254.</ref>

Napoleon III was especially anxious to finish the extension of rue de Rivoli from the Louvre to the Hotel de Ville, before the opening of the [[Exposition Universelle (1855)|Paris Universal Exposition of 1855]].  Napoleon III demanded the construction of a new luxury hotel, to house his imperial guests during the Exposition. Napoleon III and Haussmann turned for funding to two Parisian bankers, the [[Pereire brothers]], who had created a bank called [[Crédit Mobilier]].<ref name="Moncan, Patrice pp. 48-53">de Moncan, Patrice, ''Le Paris d'Haussmann'', pp. 48–53</ref>

In December 1854, with no time to lose before the opening of the exposition, the Pereire brothers created a new company to construct the street and the hotel.  They sold 240,000 shares for one hundred francs each, with 106,665 shares purchased by Credit Mobilier, 42,220 by the Pereire brothers, and the rest to private investors. In 1850 and 1851, at Napoleon's request, new laws were passed making it easier for Paris to expropriate private land for public purposes. They allowed the city to expropriate, in the public interest, land for new streets, and all of the building sites on both sides of the new streets, an asset of enormous value.<ref name="Moncan, Patrice pp. 48-53"/>

The government expropriated the land, with buildings, that it needed to build the new street and hotel. The owners were paid a price set by an arbitration board. The government then sold the land and buildings to the company established by the Pereire brothers, which tore down the old buildings, constructed a new street, sidewalks and a new square, the Place du Palais Royale. They built new buildings along the new street, and sold them or rented them to new owners.<ref name="Moncan, Patrice pp. 48-53"/>

They constructed the Hotel du Louvre, one of the largest buildings in the city and one of the first modern luxury hotels in Paris.  The company also built rows of luxury shops under a covered arcade along the [[Rue de Rivoli]] and around the hotel, which they rented to shopkeepers. Construction began immediately. Three thousand workers laboured both day and night for two years to complete the street and hotel, which were finished in time for the Exposition.<ref name="Moncan, Patrice pp. 48-53"/>
 
This was the basic method adopted by Haussmann to finance the reconstruction of Paris. The government expropriated the old buildings, compensated the owners, and private companies built the new streets and buildings, following the standards set by Haussmann.  The private companies were often paid for the construction work they did, with city land, which they could then develop and sell.<ref name="Moncan, Patrice pp. 48-53"/>
     
In 1854, the Parliament approved another loan of sixty million francs, but Haussmann needed far more for his future projects.  On 14 November 1858, Napoleon and Haussmann created the ''Caisse des travaux de la Ville'', specifically to finance the reconstruction projects.  It borrowed money at a higher rate of interest than regular city bonds, and used the money to pay private companies, such as that of Pereire brothers, to rebuild the city. "It was a great relief for the city's finances,"  Haussmann wrote later in his ''Memoirs'' "which allowed the city to carry out several grand operations at the same time, with rapid execution, in short more economically."<ref>Memoirs of Haussmann, cited in Maneglier, ''Paris Impérial'', p. 257.</ref> It functioned entirely independently of the parliament, which greatly irritated the members of parliament.<ref>Maneglier, Hervé, ''Paris Impérial'', p. 256–257</ref>

===Criticism of the renovation===
Haussmann spent 2.5 billion francs on rebuilding Paris, a sum that staggered his critics.<ref name=jaconde/> [[Jules Ferry]] and other political rivals of Napoleon alleged that Haussmann had recklessly squandered money, and planned poorly. They alleged he had falsified accounts. While Napoleon had hired Haussmann, the political attacks were so intense that he forced Haussmann to become a scapegoat, hoping his resignation would satisfy the [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] parties which had become increasingly angered during the economic depression of the late 1860s.<ref>Pinckney (1957)</ref>

Haussmann's plans, with their radical redevelopment, coincided with a time of intense political activity in Paris. Many Parisians were troubled by the destruction of "old roots". Historian Robert Herbert says that "the [[Impressionism|impressionist movement]] depicted this loss of connection in such paintings as [[Édouard Manet|Manet]]'s ''[[A Bar at the Folies-Bergère]]''." The subject of the painting is talking to a man, seen in the mirror behind her, but seems disengaged. According to Herbert, this is a symptom of living in Paris at this time: the citizens became detached from one another. "The continuous destruction of physical Paris led to a destruction of social Paris as well." The poet [[Charles Baudelaire]] witnessed these changes and wrote the poem "[[Les Fleurs du mal|The Swan]]" in response. The poem is a lament for, and critique of the destruction of the medieval city in the name of "progress":

<blockquote> ''Old'' Paris is gone (no human heart<br>
changes half so fast as a city's face)&nbsp;...<br>
There used to be a poultry market here,<br>
and one cold morning&nbsp;... I saw<br>
<br>a swan that had broken out of its cage,<br>
webbed feet clumsy on the cobblestones,<br>
white feathers dragging through uneven ruts,<br>
and obstinately pecking at the drains&nbsp;...<br><br>
Paris changes&nbsp;... but in sadness like mine<br>
nothing stirs—new buildings, old<br>
neighbourhoods turn to allegory,<br>
and memories weigh more than stone.<ref>Charles Baudelaire, ''Les Fleurs du Mal: The Complete Text of The Flowers of Evil'', Richard Howard, trans., © 1985, D.R. Godine.</ref></blockquote>

Haussmann was also criticized for the great cost of his project. Napoleon III deposed Haussmann on 5 January 1870 in order to improve his own flagging popularity. Haussmann was a favourite target of the [[Situationist International|Situationist's]] critique. Besides pointing out the repressive aims that were achieved by Haussmann's urbanism, [[Guy Debord]] and his friends, who considered [[urbanism]] to be a "state science" or inherently "capitalist" science, also underlined that he nicely separated [[leisure]] areas from work places, thus announcing modern [[Functionalism (architecture)|functionalism]], as illustrated by [[Le Corbusier]]'s precise zone tripartition, with one zone for circulation, one for housing, and one for labour.

Some of the contemporary critics of Haussmann softened their views over time.  [[Jules Simon]] was an ardent republican who had refused to take an oath to Napoleon III, and had been a fierce critic of Haussmann in parliament but in 1882, he wrote of Haussmann in the ''Gaulois'':<ref>cited in De Moncan, Patrice, ''Les jardins d'Haussmann'', p. 142–143</ref>

"He tried to make Paris a magnificent city, and he succeeded completely.  When he took Paris in hand and managed our affairs, rue Saint-Honore and rue Saint-Antoine were still the largest streets in the city.   We had no other promenades than the Grands Boulevards and the Tuileries; the Champs-Élysées was most of the time a sewer; the Bois-de-Boulogne was at the end of the world.  We were lacking water, markets, light, in those far-off times, which are only thirty years past.   He demolished neighbourhoods- one could say, entire cities.  They cried that he would create a plague; he let us cry and, on the contrary, through his intelligent piercing of streets, he gave us air, health and life.  Here he created a street; there he created an avenue or a boulevard; here a Place, a Square; a Promenade. Out of emptiness he made the Champs-Élysées, the Bois de Boulogne, the Bois de Vincennes. He introduced, into his beautiful capital, trees and flowers, and populated it with statues."<ref>cited in De Moncan, Patrice, ''Les jardins d'Haussmann'', p. 142–143</ref>

===The debate about the military function of Haussmann's boulevards===
Some critics and historians in the 20th century, notably [[Lewis Mumford]], argued that the real purpose of Haussmann's boulevards was to make it easier for the army to crush popular uprisings. According to these critics, the wide boulevards gave the army greater mobility, a wider range of fire for their cannon, and made it harder to block streets with barricades. They argued that the boulevards built by Haussmann allowed the French army to easily suppress the [[Paris Commune]] in 1871.<ref name="arthistoryarchive.com">[http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/architecture/Haussmanns-Architectural-Paris.html Haussmann's Architectural Paris – The Art History Archive], checked 21 October 2007.</ref><ref>Mumford, Lewis, ''The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, Its Prospects'' (1961)</ref>

Other historians disputed this argument. They noted that while Haussmann sometimes mentioned the military advantages of the boulevards when seeking funding for his projects, it was never the main purpose. Their main purpose, according to Napoleon III and Haussmann, was to improve traffic circulation, provide space and light and views of the city landmarks, and to beautify Paris.<ref>Milza, Pierre, ''Napoleon III'' (2007)</ref>

Haussmann did not deny the military value of the wider streets. In his ''Memoires'', he wrote that his new [[Boulevard de Sébastopol|boulevard Sebastopol]] resulted in the "gutting of old Paris, of the quarter of riots and barricades."<ref name="Moncan, p. 34">de Moncan, ''Le Paris d'Haussmann'', p. 34.</ref> He admitted he sometimes used this argument with the parliament to justify the high cost of his projects, arguing that they were for national defense and should be paid for, at least partially, by the state. He wrote: "But, as for me, I who was the promoter of these additions made to original project, I declare that I never thought in the least, in adding them, of their greater or lesser strategic value."<ref name="Moncan, p. 34"/> 

The Paris urban historian Patrice de Moncan wrote: "To see the works created by Haussmann and Napoleon III only from the perspective of their strategic value is very reductive. The Emperor was a convinced follower of [[Henri de Saint-Simon|Saint-Simon]]. His desire to make Paris, the economic capital of France, a more open, more healthy city, not only for the upper classes but also for the workers, cannot be denied, and should be recognised as the primary motivation."<ref name="Moncan, p. 34"/>

During the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871, the newly built-boulevards were not a major factor in the Commune's defeat.  The Communards were defeated in one week, not because of Haussmann's boulevards, but because they were outnumbered by five to one. They had fewer weapons and fewer men trained to use them, they had no plan for the defense of the city. They had very few experienced officers and there was no single commander, with each neighborhood left to defend itself, and they had no hope of military support from outside of Paris.<ref>Rougerie, Jacques, ''La Commune de 1871'', (2014), p. 115–117</ref>