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.mheu, Historical Museum of the Urban Environment

All roads lead to Rome

Sheltered by the ramparts

Belleforest's map of Paris

Pont Neuf

Paris, an open-plan city

Haussmann: Minister of Paris

Everything's connected!

Rue Passagère

In a roundabout fashion...

Lining the streets

Processions

From the League to the Fronde

Taking to the streets

Forward march!

The resilient Republic!

Let the party begin!

The Boulevard of Crime

The carnival

Industrious street life

Colporteurs

The central market

Paving the way...

It's a dirty job...

Standing firm

Let there be light!

Sleep soundly, good people!

The beat goes on...

From the League to the Fronde

For or against Henry of Navarre? With the wars of religion and the creation of the Holy League, processions began to change, growing more political and taking up arms. The street became a forum for people to promote their views and put on shows of strength, often lapsing into confrontations involving varying degrees of violence.

The steady shift towards absolutism with its string of taxes paved the way for the kind of angry political, social and economic movements embodied by the Fronde.

The Fronde

Fronde (sling) being the name given to the faction, I will give you the etymology of it, which I omitted in the first book (...).

Bachaumont once said, in jest, that the Parliament acted like the schoolboys in the Paris ditches, who fling stones, and run away when they see the constable, but meet again as soon as he turns his back. This was thought a very pretty comparison. It came to be a subject for ballads, and, upon the peace between the King and Parliament, it was revived and applied to those who were not agreed with the Court (...).

We therefore resolved that night to wear hatbands made in the form of a sling, and had a great number of them made ready to be distributed among a parcel of rough fellows, and we wore them ourselves last of all, for it would have looked much like affectation and have spoilt all had we been the first in the mode.

It is inexpressible what influence this trifle had upon the people; their bread, hats, gloves, handkerchiefs, fans, ornaments were all'à la mode de la Fronde', and we ourselves were more in the fashion by this trifle than in reality. And the truth is we had need of all our shifts to support us against the whole royal family (...).

Extract from the Memoirs of Jean François Paule de Condi, Cardinal de Retz (Volume 2)

Procession of the Holy League in the Streets of Paris

François Bunel II

François Bunel was born in Blois around 1552, the son of the painter known as Bunel "The Elder", whose first name was also François. In 1583, he took up a position as painter and manservant to the King of Navarre, who would later become Henri IV. Although Bunel produced portraits of the King before 1583, as seen in a picture of a childhood Henri IV shown in the Versailles Museum and the Procession of the Holy League, belonging to a private collection, not one of his paintings of the King as a man has survived, with the exception of two prints.

Procession of the Holy League in the Streets of Paris

.The street

From the League to the Fronde