Place de la Concorde

The Place de la Concorde, so named by Napoleon, is the largest Square in Paris and one of the finest in the world. It is historic ground. The past will tell its story, no matter how much the glamour of the present may seek to hide it. Louis XV. ordered this "waste land" to be converted into a public pleasure-ground. It lies between the Garden of the Tuileries, the palace of the later kings, and the Champs Elysee, the great pleasure avenue of Paris; also, east and west between the Seine and the Madeleine. If one spot in Paris can centralize the past and the present, it is the Place de la Concorde. When Louis XV. ordered this Pleasure Park, he little dreamed of the great tragedy which would here overtake his grandson and successor on the throne, Louis XVI. The Place de la Concorde has an interest for Americans because here perished by the guillotine, January 21st, 1793, Louis XVI., King of France, the first European monarch to recognize the independence of the United States of America. Between January 21st, 1793, and May, 1795, more than 2800 people perished here by the guillotine, among them Marie Antoniette, Queen of Louis XVI., daughter of Maria Theresa, of Austria; Charlotte Corday, the assassin of Marat; Madame Elizabeth, sister of Louis XVI.; General Beauharnais, first husband to the Empress Josephine; Robespierre and other leaders of the Revolution. Years after peace was restored, it was proposed to erect a fountain over the spot where Louis XVI. had been beheaded. This was stoutly opposed by Chateaubriand, who said: "Not all the water in the world could wash away the blood-stains of the murdered King and Queen of France." This Place was particularly unfortunate for Louis XVI. and Marie Antoniette; for during the festivities attending their nuptials a panic occurred here, caused by the accidental discharge of some fireworks. The horses of the carriages became unmanageable, and 1200 people were trampled to death. But there are no signs of murder or death in the Place now. No square in all the world is brighter or more beautiful. The great fountains--one dedicated to the Seas and the other to the Rivers--flow on unceasingly, more typical and suggestive here than the Fountains elsewhere. The great Obelisk of Luxor stands where the guillotine stood, bearing its human inscriptions 3000 years old, suggestive of the text "A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday;" suggestive, also, of the combative element of man in all ages, for its central line of hieroglyphics tells of the victories of Rameses II., the Greek Sesostris, about thirteen centuries before Christ.