copy The Author 2009 Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of French History All rights reserved For permissions please e-mail journalspermissionsoxfordjournalsorg doi101093fhcrp071 available online at wwwfhoxfordjournalsorgAdvance Access published on 2 November 2009

Michel De Waele is Professeur et Directeur du Deacutepartement drsquohistoire de lrsquoUniversiteacute Laval Queacutebec He may be contacted at micheldewaelehstulavalca An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual conference of the Society for French Historical Studies held at Rutgers University in April 2008 The author would like to thank Carl Bouchard Andreacutee Courtemanche Bernard Lachaise and Martin Pacircquet as well as the journalrsquos anonymous referees for their comments on previous iterations of the text The necessary research for the production of this article was fi nanced with the aid of a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada The translation was undertaken by Roger McLure who sadly died shortly after completing it

1 A Kaspi La Libeacuteration de la France juin 1944-janvier 1946 (Paris 2004) 24

lsquo P A R I S E S T L I B R E rsquo E N T R I E S A S R E C O N C I L I A T I O N S F R O M C H A R L E S V I I

T O C H A R L E S D E G A U L L E

M I C H E L D E W A E L E

Abstract mdash The numerous confl icts that have punctuated the history of France have repeatedly confronted political leaders with the challenge of bringing about national reconciliation This article will dwell on four periods that have been the theatre of lsquo Franco-French rsquo rivalry in order to show how they may be seen as acts of reconciliation the end of the Hundred Years War the Wars of Religion the Revolutionary and the Napoleonic period and the Second World War It will examine the entries made into Paris by Charles VII on 20 November 1437 by Henri IV on 22 March 1594 by Louis XVIII on 3 May 1814 and by Charles de Gaulle on 26 August 1944 The article will also explain the differences between a reconciliatory entry and a normal entry while at the same time throwing light on the perennial character of the rituals of reconciliation

In August 1944 a month or so after they had landed in France the Allied armies were pushing back the German forces and heading towards the north-east Longing for peace the French people were living in an oppressive atmosphere The militia intensified their atrocities while the occupying forces attempted to break popular resistance by resorting to blind reprisals the Anglo-Americans bombed the country and the maquisards inflicted increasing violence on their enemies According to a report sent to the Comiteacute franccedilais de libeacuteration nationale (CFNL) the country was in a state of lsquo pre-civil war rsquo 1 The complexity of the crisis explains the dejected state of the French people after four years of occupation When General de Gaulle travelled through Normandy ten days after the landings reports suggested that the population appeared indifferent to his presence The diplomat Jean Chauvel wrote about it as follows lsquo I also learned that the Generalrsquos collaborators had been surprised by the coolness of the Norman reception which had been one of curiosity about those people from

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426 lsquo P A R I S E S T L I B R E rsquo

England rather than enthusiasm for a free France rsquo Crane Brinton who worked at the time for the Office of Strategic Services confirmed this impression lsquo there seemed to be little spontaneous enthusiasm for the General rsquo he wrote on 23 August 2 In the light of this it is unsurprising that so few towns should have taken action to free themselves 3 Among the few exceptions was Paris which took up arms against the occupier on 20 August On the evening of 24 August General Leclercrsquos first units entered the city while the main body of the forces arrived the following day As for General de Gaulle he prepared his entry into the capital in characteristic fashion lsquo I myself settled in advance what I had to do in the liberated capital rsquo he wrote in his memoirs lsquo It consisted of uniting souls into a single national thrust but also in immediately rendering visible the figure of the authority of the state rsquo 4

The challenge facing the General was complex He had to reunite the French people after four years of schisms and ensure they would start working together in the near future with a view to reconstructing France under the leadership of a government whose legitimacy could be contested by no one The laying aside of arms would not by itself guarantee the future of the nation The reestablishment of peace could only be a stage on the road to the future development of the country If pacification was not going to be accompanied by reconciliation then the reconstruction of the country was doomed For its success such a process required the concrete commitment of as many people as possible It was not just that the state had to draw closer to the inhabitants members of the population had to accept working together again for the common good despite a factious past Reconciliation is a mutual and consensual process carrying strong religious connotations as such it demands that people live together again rub shoulders and collaborate afresh in the aftermath of a crisis This presupposes that everyone involved in the process is capable of transforming certain emotions and beliefs concerning the enemy People have to shift from an attitude of anger to one of fellowship and the old enemy who could not be trusted to the point that elimination was required has to become a partner in a common project of development 5 General de Gaulle was obviously not the only head of state to have to confront such a challenge in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War or later Barbara F Walter has estimated that between 1942 and 1992 some seventy-two civil wars erupted throughout the world confronting national and international leaders with the problem of reconciliation on each occasion 6

2 J Chauvel Commentaires vol 2 DrsquoAlger agrave Rome (Paris 1971) 38 C Brinton lsquo Letters from liberated France rsquo Fr Hist Stud 2 (1961) 2 ndash 27

3 Buton lsquo La France atomiseacutee rsquo in La France des anneacutees noires ed J-Azeacutema and F Beacutedarida (Paris 2000) 450

4 C de Gaulle Meacutemoires de guerre (Paris 1994) 576 5 W J Long and P Brecke War and Reconciliation Reason and Emotion in Confl ict Resolu-

tion (Cambridge 2003) 4 Y Bar-Siman-Tov lsquo Introduction why reconciliation rsquo in From Confl ict Resolution to Reconciliation ed Y Bar-Siman Tov (Oxford 2004)

6 B F Walter Committing to Peace The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton 2002) 169 ndash 70

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M I C H E L D E W A E L E 427

The explosion of political violence during the second half of the twentieth century has engendered a new field of study namely that of conflict resolution which impinges on political theory ethics human rights law criminology moral philosophy and history 7 Peace gradually became a field of study for the discipline of history during the twentieth-century interwar period in response to both the horrors produced by the First World War and the hopes generated by the setting up of international organizations entrusted with the task of promoting peaceful coexistence between nations The chaos of the 1960s marked by the wars punctuating the end of the European colonial period and by the opposition (especially in the United States) to the Vietnam War led ever more historians to look into the problematics of peace 8 Such work however has dwelt primarily on contemporary events and situations With only a few exceptions the results achieved by research into conflict resolution or the lines of enquiry thrown up by that research are seldom if ever exploited to analyse events that are remote in time Almost an exception that proves the rule is the work of Howard Brown who has taken an interest in transitional justice mdash one of the important concepts to have emerged from the new interest in conflict resolution mdash during the French Revolution 9 The study of reconciliatory processes is nevertheless gaining in popularity among historians The studies of these processes made in the work of Jacqueline de Romilly Nicole Loraux and T C Loening on Greek antiquity have suggested lines of enquiry that beg to be exploited in connection with other periods 10 Likewise ever more researchers are looking into the matter with regard to the medieval period and the end of the sixteenth century 11 The reign of Louis-Philippe has been studied from the perspective of reconciliation by Jean-Claude Caron while for his part Steacutephane Gacon has investigated the Third French Republic from the standpoint of amnesty 12

7 This list of disciplines is based on two texts J Zalaquet lsquo Truth justice and reconciliation lessons for the international community rsquo in Comparative Peace Processes in South America ed C J Arson (Washington and Stanford 1999) 341 R A Wilson The Politics of Truth and Recon-ciliation in South Africa Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State (Cambridge 2001) xviii

8 Van Den Dungen and L S Wittner lsquo Peace history an introduction rsquo J Peace Research 40 (2003) 363 ndash 75

9 H Brown lsquo The French Revolution and transitional justice rsquo in Democratic Institutions Per-formance Research and Policy Perspectives ed E R McMahon and T A Sinclair (Oxford 2002) 77 ndash 95

10 J de Romilly La douceur dans la penseacutee grecque (Paris 1995) N Loraux La Citeacute diviseacutee lrsquooubli dans la meacutemoire drsquoAthegravenes (Paris 1997) T C Loening The Reconciliation Agreement of 403402 BC in Athens Its Content and Application (Stuttgart 1987)

11 G Koziol Begging Pardon and Favor Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca NY 1992) K Petrov The Kiss of Peace Ritual Self and Society in the High and Late Medieval West (Leiden 2003) R Hyams Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca NY 2003) M De Waele lsquo Entre concorde et intoleacuterance Alexandre Farnegravese et la pacifi cation des Pays-Bas rsquo in De Michel de lrsquoHospital agrave lrsquoEacutedit de Nantes Politique et religion face aux Eacuteglises ed T Wanegffelen (Clermont-Ferrand 2002) 51 ndash 70 J Foa lsquo Making peace the commissions for en-forcing the pacifi cation edicts in the reign of Charles IX (1560 ndash 1574) rsquo Fr Hist 18 (2004) 256 ndash 74

12 J-C Caron lsquo Louis-Philippe face agrave lrsquoopinion publique ou lrsquoimpossible reacuteconciliation des Franccedilais 1830 ndash 1835 rsquo Fr Hist Stud 30 (2007) 597 ndash 621 S Gacon LrsquoAmnistie de la Commune agrave la guerre drsquoAlgeacuterie (Paris 2002)

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428 lsquo P A R I S E S T L I B R E rsquo

This article attempts to exploit the recent studies in conflict resolution by applying them in a transhistorical approach to the wider history of France This will mean analysing the perennial character of a reconciliatory event recurring from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries the entry into Paris Occurring as it does at the end of periods of unrest this event offers its principal protagonist a unique opportunity to mobilize the living forces of the state and to unite them in a national communion which facilitates reconciliation While it is true that by itself entry into Paris cannot guarantee the reestablishment of fraternal links between enemies of yesteryear the sensation caused by this lsquo great national liturgy rsquo seems to be an essential prerequisite of any hope of global reconciliation 13 I shall be especially concerned here with four troubled ends-of-period and with five entries the entry of Charles VII on 12 November 1437 at the close of the conflict between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians that of Henri IV on 22 March 1594 at the end of the Wars of Religion those of the duc drsquoArtois on 12 April 1814 and Louis XVIII on the following 3 May at the Restoration and finally the procession of Charles de Gaulle down the Champs-Elyseacutees on 26 August 1944 Our task will be to demonstrate in the first place the importance of the entry as a political event while second we shall proceed to show the differences between more usual entries and reconciliatory entries and third it will be shown how the latter have enabled the parties present to rediscover their identity their legitimacy and authority thereby opening up the prospect of a resumption of the political process suspended during the period of civil conflict By the end we should be in a position to see to what extent the processes of national reconciliation have relied over centuries on rituals that appear to be immutable subject to certain changes which have made the achievement of reconciliation more difficult

I

In medieval France and in the France of the ancien regime mdash but also in other European countries mdash the royal entry marked a moment of privileged dialogue between a king and his subjects a manifestation of the union which they would enjoy throughout the reign that was about to begin 14 Between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries its importance as a cultural and political event increased continuously representing as it did one of the important devices used

13 These are the words employed by Georges Bidault who became preacutesident du Conseil national de la Reacutesistance following the assassination of Jean Moulin to describe General de Gaullersquos entry into Paris G Bidault Drsquoune reacutesistance agrave lrsquoautre (Paris 1965) 65

14 B Gueneacutee and F Lehoux Les Entreacutees royales franccedilaises de 1328 agrave 1515 (Paris 1968) C Sherman lsquo The queen in Charles Vrsquos ldquo Coronation Book rdquo Jeanne de Bourbon and the ldquo Ordo ad Regi-nam Benedicendam rdquo rsquo Viator 8 (1977) 255 ndash 98 L M Bryant The French Royal Entry Ceremony (Geneva 1986) M Wintroub lsquo Lrsquoordre du rituel et lrsquoordre des choses lrsquoentreacutee royale drsquoHenri II agrave Rouen (1550) rsquo Annales histoire sciences sociales 56 (2001) 479 ndash 505 B Paradis and L Roy lsquo Cueur craintif est de tout danger seur puisque Titan en ce pays arrive Le don dans les entreacutees so-lennelles en France aux XV e et XVI e siegravecles rsquo in Les Jeux de l rsquo eacutechange entreacutees solennelles et diver-tissements du XV e au XVII e siegravecle ed M-F Wagner (Paris 2007) 105 ndash 40

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M I C H E L D E W A E L E 429

by the monarchy to communicate its political message Taking place as a rule at the beginning of a reign it represented the first mdash and often the last mdash opportunity for direct contact and exchange between the sovereign and his subjects It is true that the symbolic presence of the king before his subjects had been increasing since the turn of the fourteenth century thanks to the propaganda organized by European sovereigns in their battles against external enemies 15 Even so the real presence of the king constituted an important factor in the establishment of stable and lasting relations between the monarch and the people in his charge 16 A good example of this is supplied by the end of the Wars of Religion

In May 1594 Henri IV asked Pomponne de Belliegravevre Henry IIIrsquos former superintendent of finances to betake himself to Lyon in order to consolidate the submission of that city to his (Henrirsquos) authority and to negotiate the surrender of its former governor the duc de Nemours This was not an easy mission The economic capital of the realm Lyon had been fiercely pro-League during the final phase of the Wars of Religion Moreover internal dissensions within the Catholic party manifested themselves at the end of 1593 and this prompted the bourgeois of the city to rise up against the lsquo tyranny rsquo of their governor the duc de Nemours and to imprison him all the while maintaining their loyalty to the League The citizens of Lyon unlike some inhabitants of the realm did not submit willingly to royal authority and after negotiations on the conditions of their recognizing Henri IV as their king the municipality was rather surprised by the royalist inhabitants who opened the city gates to royal forces on 8 February 1594 17 In the end Belliegravevre had to come to terms with the troops of the duc de Savoie who were roaming the surrounding countryside and also with troops of the king of Spain who maintained a strong presence in Provence

Having arrived on the banks of the Rhocircne on 24 June the royal envoy quickly took stock of the poisonous climate in the city his main worry was that the people of Lyon might assassinate Nemours an outcome that would lead the latterrsquos brother to hand over all the fortresses in his command to the king of Spain and the duc de Savoie at a time when royalist forces in the region were too weak to confront a powerful enemy army 18 Struggling to restore order

15 J Strayer lsquo France the Holy Land the Chosen People and the Most Christian King rsquo in Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe ed T K Rabb (Princeton 1969) 3 ndash 16 D S Bachrach lsquo The Ecclesia Anglicana goes to war prayers propaganda and conquest during the reign of Edward I of England 1272 ndash 1307 rsquo Albion 36 (2004) 393 ndash 406

16 Philippe IV of Spain made this presence an essential part of his politics while his contempo-rary Charles I of England lsquo between 1625 and 1640 [ ] systematically distanced himself from his subjects rsquo J H Elliott lsquo The king and the Catalans 1621 ndash 1640 rsquo Cambr Hist J 11 (1955) 253 ndash 71 J Richards lsquo ldquo His Nowe Majestie rdquo and the English monarchy the kingship of Charles I before 1640 rsquo Past and Present 113 (1986) 70 ndash 96

17 On the process of reconciliation during this period M De Waele lsquo Autoriteacute leacutegitimiteacute fi deacuteliteacute le Languedoc ligueur et Henri IV rsquo Revue drsquohistoire moderne et contemporaine 53 (2006) 5 ndash 34

18 B[ibliothegraveque] N[ationale] Ms fr 15912 fo 10 lsquo Lettre de monsieur de Bellievre au roy rsquo 22 July 1594 On the sojourn of Belliegravevre at Lyon O Poncet Pomponne de Belliegravevre (1529 ndash 1607) Un homme drsquoEacutetat au temps des guerres de Religion (Paris 1998) 189 ndash 92

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430 lsquo P A R I S E S T L I B R E rsquo

within the population Belliegravevre asked Henri IV to come to the city himself lsquo Sire rsquo he wrote on 6 September lsquo since your servants think that without your presence it will be impossible to remedy the ills which are appearing and germinating in these provinces we are hoping that the mere sight of your Majesty will console his servants and dumfound his enemies rsquo 19 Earlier on 4 May Henri IV had sent a letter to the magistrates of Lyon in which he showed himself to be perfectly aware of the difficult situation in which they found themselves 20 In the same letter he provided evidence of his intention to go to them as quickly as possible but he specified the siege laid to the fortress of La Capelle in Picardy compelled him to go first into the north of his realm in order to deal with that threat He undertook to take the road south as soon as the matter was settled but his stay in Picardy dragged on In fact he spent most of the months of June July and August waging war in that region and in particular busying himself laying siege to the town of Laon 21 He apologized for this to the people of Lyon in letters dated 24 June and 4 August 22 On 24 August his Picardy adventure having been successfully concluded he finally announced his imminent arrival on the banks of the Rhocircne a project which came to nothing 23 Despite urgent appeals from Belliegravevre who between 11 September 1594 and 15 February 1595 wrote no fewer than sixteen letters to the king begging him to make the move south mdash the people of Lyon lsquo considering your arrival to be the only possible remedy for the ills from which they suffer and by which they are threatened rsquo mdash Henri IV did not pass through the gates of Lyon until 23 August 1595 24

This episode from the Wars of Religion shows that the loyalty of the French people to their king was best secured by his physical presence among them Belliegravevre and the people of Lyon were not asking for some royal army to be sent to forearm them against their enemies what they wanted was that the monarch show himself in their presence In a letter dated 18 October Belliegravevre notified his master that the kingrsquos newly faithful subjects were oppressed by many evils and suffering great hardship [so much so that] lsquo I no longer see any chance of being able to retain them on our side unless by the consolation that they would get from the sight and assistance of their good king They say Sire that it seems your good fortune is linked to your presence rsquo 25 So at the end of a civil war the kingly entry became an reconciliatory event of great importance as General de Gaulle clearly realized when he referred to the lsquo the huge crowd massed all the way down the Champs-Elyseacutees rsquo lsquo [S]ince each person present has in his heart chosen Charles de Gaulle as the last recourse of his suffering and as the symbol

19 BN Ms fr 15912 fo 36 20 lsquo A nos tres chers et bien amez les les consuls eschevins manans et habitans de nostre ville de

Lyon rsquo in Recueil des lettres-missives drsquoHenri IV ed J Berger de Xivrey (Paris 1843 ndash 76) vol 4 148 ndash 50

21 J-C Cuignet LrsquoItineacuteraire drsquoHenri IV (Bizanos1997) 98 ndash 9 22 Recueil de lettres missives 181 ndash 3 and 202 ndash 5 23 Ibid 209 ndash 11 24 BN Msfr 15912 fol 129 25 BN Ms fr 15912 fo 100

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M I C H E L D E W A E L E 431

of his hope everything hangs on his seeing him a familiar and fraternal figure so that in this appearance the unity of the nation can shine forth rsquo 26

According to William Long and Peter Brecke an event must contain the following factors if it is to be considered as having reconciliatory significance

a direct physical contact or a certain proximity between former enemies generally effected by important representatives of each of the factions a public ceremony accompanied by substantial publicity or by a signifi cant media coverage which broadcasts the event to the whole of the national community and ritual or symbolic behaviour indicating that the parties consider the dispute to be resolved and that relations in future will be friendly 27

The entry of a governor into a city that had previously refused to open its gates answers to all these requirements In the first place it puts him in contact with the different powers which are based in the city Thus upon his entry into Paris in November 1437 Charles VII was presented with

the provost of Paris and the provost of merchants the magistrates and a great show of bourgeois notables in grand and rich attire then came the bishop of Paris accompanied by leading fi gures from the churches of the said city then the great president of the Parlement and with him all the lords of the said Parlement They were followed by the rectors and doctors in theology and law from the University of the said city and other notable persons learned in several branches of knowledge Then came the lords of the Chambre des comptes

Henri IV was received in the month of August 1594 by the comte de Brissac governor of the city under the League and by the provost of merchants lrsquoHuillier For his part the duc drsquoArtois was awaited in April 1814 at the barriegravere de Pantin by the provisional government of the realm by the municipal council and some general officers He was harangued by Talleyrand in the name of the provisional government and by M de Chabrol speaking for the city As for Charles de Gaulle he was received in August 1944 at the Arc de Triomphe by members of the provisional government the Conseil National de la Reacutesistance and the Comiteacute Parisien de la Libeacuteration as well as by general officers and numerous combatants from the Forces Franccedilaises de lrsquoInteacuterieur 28

By its very nature the reconciliatory entry represents a public manifestation in the course of which crowds throng to see the personage in question traverse

26 De Gaulle Meacutemoires de guerre 583 27 Long and Brecke War and Reconciliation 6 See also L Schirch Ritual and Symbol in

Peacebuilding (Bloomfi eld CT 2005) 28 Gilles le Bouvier dit le heacuteraut Berry Les chroniques du roi Charles VII (Paris 1979) 190 ndash 1

ed L-R Lefegravevre Journal de lrsquoEstoile pour le regravegne drsquoHenri IV (Paris 1948) 387 duc drsquoAudiffret-Pasquier (ed) Meacutemoires du chancelier Pasquier (Paris 1894) vol 2 344 de Gaulle Meacutemoires de guerre 582

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432 lsquo P A R I S E S T L I B R E rsquo

the distance which will invariably lead him to Notre-Dame and seal the reconciliation between public authority and the city According to Enguerran de Monstrelatet the spectators of Charles VIIrsquos entry were so numerous lsquo that people had great difficulty walking in the streets rsquo The comte de Beugnot relates that during the entry of the duc drsquoArtois lsquo there was not a single window which did not frame faces beaming with joy The people spread out along the streets pursued the prince with their applause and shouts rsquo Geoffroy de Courcel referring to General de Gaullersquos entry into Paris adopted words close to those which we find in the generalrsquos own Meacutemoires he recalled that lsquo a huge crown thronged over the pavements around the windows and on the rooftops of buildings lining the Champs-Elyseacutees people were perched on trees and high up on the street-lights like so many bunches of human grapes rsquo The General himself evoked the image of a sea of people in his recollection of some two million people assembled for the occasion 29 This participation of the masses in a reconciliatory entry had a further virtue in that it enabled Parisians who may have been divided among themselves during the conflict now ending to testify to their unity before the presence of power Thus the entry of a leader into the city and the accompanying ceremony bear witness to the twofold reconciliation necessary to a state and the end of civil conflict the first is vertical and binds together authority and the inhabitants of the city the second is horizontal and binds Parisians to each other 30

The reconciliatory entry was widely publicized all the more so because Paris the biggest city in France was surrendering to legitimate authority The latter had at its disposal numerous tools for spreading the good news letters written to its various partners in far-flung corners of the realm official proclamations organized festivities pictorial representations and finally newspaper articles and radio broadcasts No stone was to be left unturned in spreading this good news On the very day of his entry into Paris Henri IV sent a circular letter to the municipal authorities in the towns that supported him informing them of the event and asking them to give thanks to God lsquo by processions and other solemnities rsquo When the inhabitants of Meaux heard the news lsquo a Te Deum was sung forthwith in the cathedral by Monseigneur St-Etienne The great bells were rung and a great number of joyful people were to be found there Later after the Te Deum had ended several artillery salvoes were fired and illumination was brought to the streets and crossroads of Meaux On the outskirts of the city people shouted ldquo Vive le Roi ldquo at the tops of their voices a cry repeated several times rsquo For their part the inhabitants of Castres a Protestant town celebrated the news with a big

29 Chronique drsquoEnguerran de Monstrelet 306 Meacutemoires du comte Beugnot 111 Geoffroy de Courcel lsquo Le 26 aoucirct 1944 aux Champs-Eacutelyseacutees rsquo Espoir 47 (1984) 50 de Gaulle Meacutemoires de guerre 583

30 M De Waele lsquo Cleacutemence royale et fi deacuteliteacutes franccedilaises agrave la fi n des guerres de Religion rsquo Histori-cal Refl ectionsReacutefl exions historiques 24 (1998) 231 ndash 52 B Frederking lsquo ldquo Il ne faut pas ecirctre le roi de deux peuples rdquo strategies of national reconciliation in Restoration France rsquo Fr Hist 22 (2008) 446 ndash 68

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M I C H E L D E W A E L E 433

bonfire 31 Later on engravings depicting the entry of the king into his capital or showing him watching the departure of Spanish soldiers from a window broadcast the event to a wider public thus enabling it to be lodged in the collective memory In the contemporary era the modernization of the means of communication has enabled news to be spread almost instantaneously De Gaulle noted in his memoirs the (premature) announcement of the liberation of Paris by the BBC and later on by the lsquo Voice of America rsquo In fact on 27 August a religious thanksgiving service was held in New York to celebrate the event and less than two weeks later the New York Times announced that the first films about the Liberation of Paris would be shown that day 32 In Paris itself newspapers which had started to roll off the presses again at the time of the uprising in the capital devoted their front pages to the procession down the Champs-Elyseacutees 33 In a word reconciliatory entries have been characterized by gestures of unity among parties which have vouched for a better future This is especially manifest in the pardon granted to former enemies by the royal power in 1437 1594 and 1814 Ever since Greek antiquity societies have used pardons mdash indeed the complete oblivion of misdeeds mdash as the pillar on which reconciliatory undertakings were to rest 34 Very early on the kings of France adopted a similar attitude through which they showed their religious legitimacy by accomplishing a divine act par excellence that for which Christ died on the Cross

The importance they attached to this gesture is also evident in their desire to reserve for themselves the right of pardon over which they had possessed a monopoly since the beginning of the sixteenth century 35 Charles VII no less than Henri IV and Louis XVIII marked the return of Paris to the heart of the political community by the sign of pardon In the preamble to the constitutional Charter of 1814 Louis XVIII affirmed that

in thus attempting to rejoin the links of time which had been broken by fateful divisions we have erased from our memory as we would wish that they might also be erased from history all the ills that have affl icted our homeland during our absence The wish closest to

31 Recueil de lettres missives 120 ndash 1 Bibliothegraveque Municipale de Meaux Ms 84 fo 261 N Lenffant lsquo Recueil sur lrsquohistoire de France et particuliegraverement sur lrsquohistoire de Meaux rsquo J Gaches Meacutemoires sur les guerres de Religion agrave Castres et dans le Languedoc (1555 ndash 1610) (Geneva 1970) 451

32 De Gaulle Meacutemoires de guerre 574 ndash 5 New York Times 26 Aug 1944 and 7 Sept 1944 33 For an idea of these publications foreign as well as Parisian see the illustration next to page

265 of Paris 1944 Les enjeux de la libeacuteration ed C Levisse-Touzeacute (Paris 1994) 34 M De Waele et J Biron lsquo LrsquoHercule Gaulois et le glaive spirituel rsquo in Le Recours agrave lrsquoEacutecriture

Poleacutemique et conciliation du XV e au XVII e siegravecle ed M-J Louison-Lassabliegravere (Saint-Etienne 2000) 211 ndash 29

35 J Foviaux La Reacutemission des peines et des condamnations Droit monarchique et droit moderne (Paris 1970) C Gauvard lsquo De Gracircce Especial rsquo Crime Etat et socieacuteteacute en France agrave la fi n du Moyen Acircge (Paris 1991) vol 2 895 ndash 934 G Koziol Begging Pardon and Favour Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca NY 1992) G Althoff lsquo Ira regis Prolegomena to a history of royal anger rsquo in Angerrsquos Past The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages ed B H Rosenwein (Ithaca NY 1998) 59 ndash 74 J Krynen Ideacuteal du prince et pouvoir royal en France agrave la fi n du Moyen Acircge (1380 ndash 1440) (Paris 1981) 118 ndash 23 Le Regraveglement des confl its au Moyen Age Actes du XXXI e congregraves de la SHMESP (Angers 2000) (Paris 2001)

by guest on February 18 2016httpfhoxfordjournalsorg

Dow

nloaded from

434 lsquo P A R I S E S T L I B R E rsquo

our heart is that all French people live together as brothers and bitter memory will not disturb the security which must follow the solemn act we grant them today 36

Restoring peace within the political community by means of pardon and total forgetting of misdeeds rather than hunting down and punishing those responsible for the unrest represented behaviour we generally find recurring in societies where the collective factor is crucial to the maintenance and development of their members Indeed aggression towards deviant members of the group appears potentially more damaging to the community if the latter relies for its daily survival on the efforts of all members 37 This does not however rule out punishment for certain people which at the end of a civil conflict generally takes the form of voluntary or enforced exile 38

The dynamic of civil conflict within a republican regime is rather different When a party rises up against the king it rises up against the person of the monarch who alone enjoys the authority that decides the fate to be meted out to his enemies In a republic or a democracy crimes are committed against the totality of the citizens who form the nation Violence is no longer directed against the king or his ministers but against the social whole which will want to react to it As early as the eighteenth century at the instigation of the thinkers of the Enlightenment the general conception of justice was beginning to change in that punishment of the criminal in the name of retributive justice was gradually winning approval The fate reserved for the criminal was to be regarded as a measure in pursuit of lsquo higher rsquo aims than simple vengeance atonement control and rehabilitation In response to these objectives new institutions emerged such as prisons in England 39 This new philosophy has gradually made headway and today dominates the political scene whenever investigating crimes committed during civil wars or revolutions are concerned It was the idea behind the creation of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials in the aftermath of the Second World War and it has enabled the development of new notions such as that of crimes committed against humanity crimes which according to some people can never go unpunished The need to protect the rights of man they claim calls for retributive justice as absolutely imperative lsquo if

36 lsquo Lettres drsquoabolition en faveur des habitans de Paris rsquo in Recueil geacuteneacuteral des anciennes lois franccedilaises depuis lrsquoan 420 jusqu rsquo agrave la Reacutevolution de 1789 ed F A Isambert et al (Paris 1825) vol 8 832 lsquo Edict et declaration du Roy sur la reduction de la ville de Paris soubs son obeissance rsquo in Recueil des edicts et articles accordez par le Roy Henry IIII pour la reuumlnion de ses subiets (np 1606) fos 20vdeg ndash 26 text of the constitutional charter consulted at http mjp univ - perp fr france co1814 htm 35 (accessed 23 June 2008)

37 M H Ross The Culture of Confl ict Interpretations and Interests in Comparative Perspec-tive (New Haven 1993) C M Turnbull lsquo The politics of non-agression rsquo in Learning Non-Agression The Experiences of Non-Literate Societies ed A Montagu (New York 1978) 161 ndash 221

38 R Descimon and J J Ruiz Ibaacutentildeez Les Ligueurs de lrsquoexil le refuge catholique franccedilais apregraves 1594 (Seyssel 2005)

39 M A Pauley lsquo The jurisprudence of crime and punishment from Plato to Hegel rsquo Am J Jurispr 39 (1994) 97 ndash 152 J M Beattie Crime and the Court in England 1660 ndash 1800 (Princeton 1986) 520 ndash 618

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M I C H E L D E W A E L E 435

the law is incapable of punishing the generalized brutality of the recent past what lessons can be offered for the future rsquo wonders Diane Orentlicher who echoes what Validimir Jankeacuteleacutevitch among others has written on this subject 40 Although Charles de Gaulle did not completely close the door on pardons mdash we see this in the things he said about Cardinal de Suhard who had been asked to absent himself from the Te Deum celebrated in Notre-Dame mdash he was not able to proclaim them nor to prevent Parisians from punishing certain individuals they accused of having collaborated with the enemy among them women suspected of having had relationships with German soldiers

So the entry into Paris at the end of a civil conflict really does represent a reconciliatory event Public and widely publicized it brings the leader into contact for the first time with the population and the local authorities Charles VII Henri IV Louis XVIII and Charles de Gaulle all had this much in common namely that the Parisians had scant knowledge of them indeed their image of them was distorted by the propaganda of their enemies 41 The act of communion represented by the entry makes it possible to unite quickly and easily two entities that have hitherto remained unknown to one another In the surrounding festival oblivion falls over the torments which have preceded it at least for the moment The ritual on which the reconciliatory entry draws is very similar to that implemented during the first official visit of a king of the medieval and early modern periods to his capital This being so it differs from normal entries in three principal respects it is generally spontaneous it unites the whole of the population into a whole instead of reflecting the social hierarchies in place and it celebrates national continuity rather than the beginning of a new regime

I I

Because of their importance normal entries are carefully orchestrated and the municipal authorities appear on stage as part of the setting The procession that comes to meet the king is planned down to the last detail and the speeches convey messages dear to the heart of the municipal officials The canopy under which the monarch walks to and fro is richly embroidered with his colours or with those of the city while the streets have been cleaned and decorated with the royal coat of arms and colours Arcs de triomphe are set up local artists elaborate complex iconographic programmes and little theatrical plays are put on before the procession ends with the celebration of a Te Deum All these ingredients become ever more complex over time all the more so since their

40 D Orentlicher lsquo Settling accounts the duty to prosecute human rights violations of a prior re-gime rsquo Yale Law J 100 (1991) 2542 lsquo Oublier ce crime gigantesque contre lrsquohumaniteacute [lrsquoHolocauste] serait un nouveau crime contre le genre humain rsquo in V Jankeacutelevitch Lrsquoimprescriptible (Paris 1986) 25

41 M De Waele Les relations entre le Parlement de Paris et Henri IV (Paris 2000) 93 ndash 135 F Audigier lsquo De Gaulle descendant les Champs-Elyseacutees le 26 aoucirct 1944 De lrsquoimage au lieu de meacutemoire rsquo in Les meacutedias et la libeacuteration en Europe 1945 ndash 2005 ed C Delporte and D Mareacutechal (Paris 2006) 387 ndash 403

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436 lsquo P A R I S E S T L I B R E rsquo

designers must in troubled times answer to the requirements and aspirations of the crown Thus the entry of Charles IX in 1571 expressed the Neoplatonic dream of an order that brought his realm into harmony with universal concord Drawing their inspiration from neoclassical principles the designers of Renaissance entries gradually developed esoteric themes which few people could understand 42

The reconciliatory entry by contrast could not be planned down to the last detail even though municipalities experienced in mounting such events were able to organize them quite quickly if necessary Thus on 3 December 1589 the inhabitants of Beaune learned of the imminent arrival within their walls of a papal legate Two days later the protocol to be observed on the arrival of Cardinal Caetani was decided Among other things agreement was reached on the decoration of the main street with tapestries and the erection of two portals one at the Porte Saint Nicolas through which the legate would make his entry and the other in the main street Upon these portals was to be displayed together with other items the coat of arms of the pope the legate and the duc de Mayenne On 9 December the entry took place 43 Parisians would not enjoy similar leisure to prepare the reconciliatory entry of Henri IV On 21 March 1594 towards 9pm some supporters of the king were informed that around 3 or 4am the gates of the city which until then had supported the League would be opened to the king 44 The kingrsquos men passed through the walls without striking a blow and at 8am the king heard mass in Notre-Dame This event was the outcome of a number of weeks of negotiations between the monarch the League governor of the city Charles Brissac and influential figures within the municipal government None of this had leaked out and the people of Paris faced with a fait accompli were obviously unable to prepare the sovereignrsquos entry into their city

The confusion surrounding the last days of the Napoleonic regime again made it impossible to organize a grandiose entry for the duc drsquoArtois all the more so because the entry was to take place as much within the framework of the resolution of a civil conflict as within the context of an essential pacification between France and troops of the allied coalition ranged against Napoleon In fact the first prince to make an entry into Paris in 1814 was the tsar Alexander Despite the fall of Napoleon declared during the night of 23 April the restoration of the Bourbons was not yet in the bag A provisional government of five men presided over by Talleyrand was formed a move that did not prevent Napoleon from continuing to negotiate with Alexander through the intermediary of General Caulaincourt 45 Prevailed upon by his superior officers to abdicate in favour of his son the Emperor finally gave way on 6 April While

42 J Blanchard lsquo Le spectacle du rite les entreacutees royales rsquo Revue historique 305 (2003) 494 43 Archives Municipales de Beaune Registre de deacutelibeacuterations consulaires 16 fos 110 ndash 13 44 De lrsquoEstoile Journal pour le regravegne drsquoHenri IV ed L-R Lefegravevre (Paris 1948) 386 45 Meacutemoires du geacuteneacuteral de Caulaincourt ed J Hanoteau (Paris 1933) vol 3 255 ndash 337

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M I C H E L D E W A E L E 437

the provisional government continued to be strengthened by the flow of support from the generals the rank and file deserted in droves very often making no attempt to hide their Bonapartist sentiments A constitution was drawn up on the model of that of 1791 but it fell far short of attracting general enthusiasm When the duc drsquoArtois learned of its existence he announced that he was not going to observe it and when he made his entry into Paris he had still not ratified it So it was difficult to organize the event down to the very last detail

Only Charles VII was able to benefit from a lavish entry since the municipal officials were allowed a period of nearly nineteen months to prepare for it In the event royal troops seized the city in April 1436 whereas the king did not pass through its gates until 12 November 1437 thereby signalling his displeasure at not having seen the municipality return to the fold any earlier Coming to meet Charles were lsquo the provost of the merchants the magistrates and the bourgeois in great numbers accompanied by the crossbowmen and archers of the city all of them dressed in blue-green and bright-red robes rsquo After the provost of the merchants had given the sovereign the keys to the city the municipal notables placed lsquo over the king a blue baldachin covered in very rich fleur de lys rsquo Charles rsquo route to Notre-Dame was littered with pictures celebrating the magnificence of his realm and the monarchy as well as the reconciliation between the city and its king 46

Being occasions when cities put themselves on show normal entries offered an opportunity for displaying the hierarchies that structured municipal life The cortegravege that accompanied the sovereign to the cathedral gave spectators a lsquo microcosmic view of the society they knew as it paraded past before their eyes rsquo 47 The participants filed past observing the medieval structure of the procession and in so doing highlighted the rank and duties each person enjoyed in relation to others The way the procession was managed did not prevent outbursts of joy but it did open the door to disputes over precedence and propriety which needed to be settled As a major political event the entry required that foreign princes no less than members of local society position themselves properly in relation to the monarch In England some of these ceremonies gave rise to serious problems among ambassadors of the various European countries represented in London regarding their proper place within the cortegravege In Paris in 1486 members of the Parlement called to account the provost of the city and officers of the Chacirctelet who had presented themselves to Charles VII before rather than after the magistrates In Florence in 1515 Lorenzo de Piero di Lorenzo de rsquo Medici refused to be accompanied by inhabitants

46 La Chronique drsquoEnguerrand de Monstrelet ed L Doueumlt-DrsquoArcq (New York 1966) vol 5 301 ndash 7 Journal drsquoun bourgeois de Paris (1405 ndash 1449) ed A Tuetey (Geneva 1975) 314 and 335 G le Bouvier dit le Heacuteraut Berry Les Chroniques du roi Charles VII (Paris 1979) 190 ndash 4

47 R Strong Les Fecirctes de la Renaissance 1450 ndash 1650 art et pouvoir (Arles 1991) 15 For an example of these processions see the entry of Charles IX in Paris in 1571 in Les entreacutees solennelles pendant le regravegne de Charles IX ed P-L Vaillancourt and M Desrosiers (Ottawa 2007) 341 ndash 8

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438 lsquo P A R I S E S T L I B R E rsquo

of the city who had driven out members of his family some twenty years earlier 48

Reconciliatory entries afforded less scope for these priorities and for the quarrels that accompanied them mdash even though these were not completely absent The unity that had been regained expressed itself in popular rejoicing so the solemnity associated with normal entries with their obligatory stops to admire the decorations prepared by inhabitants of the city gave way to festivities and gay abandon The celebration of freedom regained somehow militated against the event stiffening into a demonstration of the political and social order Granted the head of state appeared in pride of place thereby clearly demonstrating a certain hierarchy and he was surrounded by individuals closely associated with the new regime but it was impossible to detect the social contours of the city that was being returned to legitimate authority In fact one entity present in its totality mdash the municipality mdash was encountering another namely the central power

This fact led to another difference one of fundamental significance the attention of people participating in these reconciliatory entries was not directed towards symbols or representations but at a concrete reality offered to them without accessories as the traditional authority regained possession of the capital of the state through the person of the head of government Despite the personalization inherent in this sort of ceremony Georges Bidault pointed out that in August 1944 lsquo you would be hard put to hear a few cries of ldquo Vive la France rdquo whereas cries of ldquo Vive de Gaulle rdquo were ringing out everywhere rsquo 49 It was not so much the beginning of a new reign that was being celebrated as the continuity of political life a continuity that had been momentarily interrupted by a few years of civil conflict This state of mind was symbolized by de Gaulle who was asked upon his arrival in the capital to solemnly proclaim the Republic The generalrsquos reply was clear lsquo The Republic has never ceased to be Its existence has been incorporated by in turn Free France France as a nation in combat and the Comiteacute franccedilais de la libeacuteration nationale Vichy always was and will always remain null and void I myself am the president of the government of the Republic Why should I now proclaim it rsquo 50 When it was announced to the Bourbon pretender that Paris had been liberated in March 1814 the marquis de Maisonfort quipped to him lsquo Sire you are now king of France rsquo whereupon the pretender replied lsquo Have I ever ceased to be so rsquo 51 The total amnesty granted to the enemies of yesteryear like the oblivion to which misdeeds committed against lsquo legitimate rsquo authority were consigned also constituted measures that aimed at obliterating from the collective memory breaches perpetrated against

48 D M Bergeron lsquo Venetian state papers and English civic pageantry 1558 ndash 1642 rsquo Renaissance Quaterly 23 (1970) 37 ndash 47 Bryant lsquo Parlementaire political theory rsquo R C Trexler The Libro ceri-moniale of the Florentine Republic (Geneva 1979) 66

49 Bidault Drsquoune reacutesistance agrave lrsquoautre 66 Henri IV was also greeted with cries of lsquo Vive le Roi rsquo de lrsquoEstoile Journal 388

50 Cited in Kaspi La Libeacuteration de la France 130 51 E Lever Louis XVIII (Paris 1988) 333

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M I C H E L D E W A E L E 439

national and municipal continuity which might be legitimately regretted by their authors The aim in view was union the reconciliation of the French people without which the destiny of the nation was compromised

Every reconciliation requires a prior division no matter what form the latter might take though specialists are not agreed as to the nature of the conflicts that have divided French people over the centuries Dimitri Nicolaidis for example maintains that there cannot have been civil wars before the completion of the process of state construction that is to say before the second half of the nineteenth century whereas Jean-Pierre Deriennic believes that they began to appear with the Renaissance and the development of the early modern state 52 Moreover specialists disagree over the nature of the civil conflict that divided France between 1940 and 1944 some find a civil war here others the early beginnings of such a conflict others again a simple confrontation that it is not possible to describe in this way 53 Despite these differences of opinion we can at the very least affirm that the divisions between Armagnacs and Bourguignons royalists and supporters of the League and the free French and active or passive collaborators had to be healed in the period immediately following the conflicts that had set them at odds What was involved were exercises rendered all the more difficult because they involved mobilizing in each case thousands indeed millions of people 54 The reconciliatory entry participated in their success by reaffirming a momentarily lost identity and making it possible to reappropriate possession of symbolic spaces that had been desecrated during the preceding confrontations

I I I

One thing is self-evident it is impossible to reconcile two individuals or two entities which are not at the very least prepared to collaborate in future Now in the four cases that concern us here the will to work together manifested itself in the gesture made by Parisians a few days indeed a few hours before their legitimate leader entered the city The municipality or some of its main leaders took up arms to help drive out the occupier In 1436 numerous bourgeois mobilized the inhabitants lsquo had the people armed and went straight

52 D Nicolaiumldis lsquo Guerre civile et Etat-nation rsquo in La Guerre civile entre Histoire et Meacutemoire ed J-C Martin (Nantes 1995) 27 ndash 32 J-Deriennic Les Guerres civiles (Paris 2001)

53 For an idea of the debates surrounding this question Burrin lsquo La guerre franco-franccedilaise vers Sigmaringen rsquo in La France des anneacutees noires ed J-Azeacutema and F Beacutedarida (Paris 1993) vol 2 31 ndash 45 L Capdevilla lsquo Violence et socieacuteteacute en Bretagne dans lrsquoapregraves-Libeacuteration (automne 1944 ndash automne 1945) rsquo Modern and Contemporary France 7 (1999) 443 ndash 56 J Jackson La France sous lrsquoOccupation 1940 ndash 1944 (Paris 2004) 596 ndash 613 C Pavone Une guerre civile Essai historique sur l rsquo eacutethique de la Reacutesistance italienne (Paris 2005) 269 ndash 74 R Paxton La France de Vichy 1940 ndash 1944 (Paris 1997) 366 ndash 9 G Ranzato lsquo Evidence et invisibiliteacute des guerres civiles rsquo in La Guerre civile entre Histoire et Meacutemoire ed Martin 17 ndash 25 H Rousso Le syndrome de Vichy de 1944 agrave nos jours (Paris 1990) 9 ndash 26

54 J W Elder lsquo Expanding our options the challenge of forgiveness rsquo in Exploring Forgiveness ed R Enright and J North (Madison 1998) 161

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440 lsquo P A R I S E S T L I B R E rsquo

to the Porte Saint-Denis and were soon some 3 ndash 4000 men strong as many from Paris as from the neighbouring villages whose hatred against the English and the governors was so great that they desired nothing else than to destroy them rsquo 55 Forced to withdraw into the Bastille a few days later the English defenders received permission to return home taking their weapons and baggage In 1594 Henri IV began to negotiate the surrender of the city with its governor and the principal members of the municipal government more than a month before lsquo the fruit was ripe rsquo so that numerous inhabitants were ready in the early hours of 22 March 1594 to contribute to the success of the operation 56 In 1944 the Parisian uprising began on 20 August a few days before the arrival of the first units of the Leclerc division The situation was more confused in1814 in that the foreign forces liberated Paris before the Senate declared Napoleon dethroned and before the French people and the army were released from the oath of loyalty that bound them to the Emperor Since the beginning of the year when the Empire seemed to be falling apart once and for all some men mdash Talleyrand in particular mdash were preparing the political structure of the post-Bonapartist period without any question of resorting to arms Yet if we are to believe the comte de Semalleacute an insurrection had been brewing in the capital for at least two weeks and from the day after the entry of the tsar into the capital local papers were demanding the abdication of the Emperor and the return of the Bourbons 57

This active involvement of Parisians in their own process of liberation is of fundamental importance for it allowed them to renew contact with their past identity and to lay full claim to it without sharing the glory of the moment with anyone else In so doing it enabled a veil of silence to be drawn temporarily over the implicit or explicit aid given by the cityrsquos inhabitants to their illegitimate rulers while also making it possible to point the finger at scapegoats who would later bear the burden of collaboration The death of Charles VI on 21 October 1422 had made Henry VI of England the king of France according to the terms of the treaty of Troyes (21 May 1420) Despite the fact that there were no more than a hundred or so soldiers billeted in the English garrison at Paris the inhabitants of the city did nothing to throw off the yoke of the foreigner They even seemed to have come to terms with the situation After the regent Bedford had gained a victory over the lsquo roi de Bourges rsquo at Verneuil in August 1424 Parisians organized a triumphal entry for him in September which struck the imagination of those who witnessed it lsquo Paris was festooned everywhere that lay on his route while the roads were decorated and cleaned the citizens of Paris came to meet him dressed in bright red rsquo Having watched a mystery play performed in front of the Chacirctelet lsquo [Bedford] went straight off to Notre-Dame

55 Journal drsquoun bourgeois de Paris 315 56 M Wolfe lsquo Amnesty and oubliance at the end of the French Wars of Religion rsquo Cahiers

drsquoHistoire 16 (1997) 44 ndash 68 57 E de Waresquiel Talleyrand le prince immobile (Paris 2006) 431 ndash 8 Souvenirs du comte

de Semalleacute page de Louis XVI (Paris 1898) 165 ndash 7

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M I C H E L D E W A E L E 441

where he was received as if he were God In short never was greater honour done even when the Romans made their triumphal march than to him on that day and to his wife who followed him everywhere wherever he went rsquo 58 In spite of the economic difficulties of the time and the disillusionment generated by the realization that the Anglo-Burgundian regime was in fact completely dominated by the English the Parisians would not begin to get worked up until the death of the Duke of Bedford in 1435 and the first tangible signs of the re-appropriation of the realm by Charles VII

At the time of the Wars of Religion the city not only drove back King Henri III in May 1588 but also attempted to coordinate national urban opposition to the reign of Henri IV Two hundred years later the various popular movements that brought about the fall of the Bourbons took Paris as their point of departure despite the fact that a great many of the rioters were provincials While the Parisians showed no great love for Napoleon they did nothing to remove him from power either before 1814 In the wake of the defeat of 1940 the city of Paris did not despite its latent hostility towards the occupiers become the spearhead of resistance which developed more rapidly in the territories under the control of Vichy Collaborators enabled the German administration to function without striking a blow 59

Parisian uprisings which took place while wartime regimes were approaching their end made it possible to mask the relative apathy of inhabitants of the city during those periods like their participation in the struggle against legitimate authorities The awakening assumed various shapes and sizes while some royalists participated in the surprise attack of March 1594 by gaining possession of the gates of the city thousands of men took part in the struggles that shook the capital from 20 to 26 August 1944 Their action made it possible to resolve in a few days even a few hours a situation that might have sunk into stalemate had the struggle continued Such action did not always play a decisive role in the general strategy designed to lead to a cessation of fighting while the return of Paris to the bosom of royal authority prompted a great many cities that still raised a standard for the League to follow its example the military repercussions of the liberation of Paris in 1944 were insignificant However the importance of the insurrection is not to be measured by that yardstick

Politically the city regained its identity and its pride by actively participating in its own liberation LrsquoHumaniteacute of 26 August 1944 featured on its front page lsquo Soldiers of Leclerc American Friends Paris which has liberated itself weapons in hand welcomes and salutes you rsquo The text of the ensuing article insisted on the fact that during the fighting the city had lsquo displayed the heroic virtues which over the centuries have earned its reputation and its glory rsquo No mention was

58 Journal drsquoun bourgeois de Paris sous Charles VI et Charles VII ed A Mary (Paris 1929) 185 ndash 6

59 G Llewelyn Thompson Paris and its People under English Rule The Anglo-Burgundian Regime 1420 ndash 1436 (Oxford 1991) R Descimon and Eacute Barnavi La Sainte Ligue le juge et la potence (Paris 1985) Paris et la Reacutevolution actes du colloque de Paris I 14 ndash 16 avril 1989 ed M Vovelle (Paris 1989) H Michel Paris allemand (Paris 1981)

by guest on February 18 2016httpfhoxfordjournalsorg

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442 lsquo P A R I S E S T L I B R E rsquo

made in this story of the military pressure exerted by the Allied armies on Axis forces the whole narrative was centred on the city and its inhabitants

It would nevertheless be naive to suppose that taking-up arms sufficed on its own to erase years of division from the collective memory After all Paris had set its face against legitimate governments on many occasions in the past Insurrection thus made it possible to break the chains that prevented the city from following the straight and narrow In the lettres drsquoabolition which he granted to Parisians Charles VII insisted on the fact that the latter were constrained to lsquo abide with and make obeisance to the English our ancient enemies rsquo 60 Henri IV for his part accused the leaders of the League mdash who were not part of the Parisian reconciliation mdash of manipulating the French people while at the same time allowing themselves to be lsquo won over to the passions of Ministers of the King of Spain rsquo 61 The Parisians rsquo opposition to their monarch Godrsquos chosen one was thus presented as a phenomenon that went against nature and which could not possibly last Once they had become good French people and true Parisians again thanks to their participation in their own liberation the inhabitants of the city were able to negotiate proudly with the political institutions to which they had always remained faithful

In 1944 the people responsible for the difficult situation which the city (like France as a whole) had experienced were to be found substantially among the political leaders of the pre-war years and the early years of the war They were accused of having failed to contain Hitlerrsquos Germany politically and militarily and of having thrown in the sponge too soon after the setbacks of May 1940 While the taking-up of arms enabled Parisians to renew contact with their ancestral identity and with the continuing loyalty they had shown to the legitimate powers of the land the reconciliatory entry gave them the opportunity mdash that it also gave to the national authority mdash to regain possession of intensely symbolic spaces which had been soiled by the enemy in the course of the conflict For example the entry of Charles VII took the route that had been followed on 1 December 1420 by the kings of France and England the duc de Bourgogne Louis III of Bavaria and numerous lords when they entered the city following the signing of the treaty of Troyes The same route was also followed in September 1424 by the regent on the occasion of his own triumphal entry 62 And 500 years later General de Gaulle elected to march down the Champs-Elyseacutees which had been the theatre of German parades during the Occupation

The symbolic place on which all these processions converged was Notre- Dame it was here that Henry VI was crowned on 16 December 1431 as Napoleon had been on 2 December 1804 it was here that the supporters of the League gathered to give praise to God for the failure of attacks by the lsquo king of Navarre rsquo against their city and it was also here that under the auspices of

60 lsquo Lettre drsquoabolition rsquo 832 61 lsquo Edict et declaration du Roy rsquo 62 Journal drsquoun bourgeois de Paris sous Charles VI et Charles VII 142 ndash 3 185 ndash 6

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M I C H E L D E W A E L E 443

Cardinal Suhard funeral rites were celebrated for Philippe Henriot assassinated by the Resistance on 28 June 1944 Under the Capetians and the Valois the cathedral occupied a less important place in the system of monarchical symbolism than Reims or Saint-Denis 63 Even so from Henri IV onwards the Bourbons had made it integral to their mechanisms of government For example on 21 June 1598 the peace with Spain was sworn there by the king lsquo accompanied by many persons of noble rank and by the principal princes and lords of his court rsquo 64 In 1814 witnessing the entry of the duc drsquoArtois comte Beugnot recorded that lsquo the procession set off for Notre-Dame following the ancient custom of going to render to God in the leading church of Paris the solemn homage of the French people for every happy event rsquo 65

When the Church fell under the control of the enemies of legitimate authority it disturbed the immemorial order associating French power with the divine purpose The fact that the reconciliatory authorities presented themselves at Notre-Dame first testifies to their will to regain possession of that place and of the privileged relation that united France with the Creator Yet the country evolved over the centuries and Notre-Dame could not remain for ever the sole memorial site visited by heads of government in the process of repossessing their liberated capital Charles de Gaulle the day before his procession down the Champs-Elyseacutees went instead to the Hocirctel de Ville mdash that pre-eminently republican symbol mdash in order to reassert the reappropriation of the public administration by legitimate authority 66 Even so what we are witnessing here is the continuing desire to reconnect with the immemorial web of the history and greatness of France

Moulded by tradition and steeped in the history of France in particular de Gaulle felt that history came to life when he walked down the Champs-Elyseacutees lsquo With every step that I made on this the most illustrious axis in the world the glories of the past sprang up to take their place alongside the glory of today rsquo He referred later to the monuments to the glory of the national past that he passed on his route the Arc de Triomphe the statue of Clemenceau the Tuileries Concorde the Carroussel the Invalides the Institut the Louvre the palace of Saint-Louis and Notre-Dame This catalogue enabled him to evoke the Aiglon the Roi-Soleil Turenne Napoleacuteon Foch Jeanne drsquoArc and Henri IV This review of the glories of France led him to exclaim lsquo The history trapped in these stones and in these places seems to smile at us rsquo But history was also invoked to warn of the dangers that threatened France particularly when she was divided There then followed a new enumeration of more tragic deeds of the capturing of Paris by Caesar of the march-pasts of the invaders down the Champs-Elyseacutees and

63 A Erlande-Brandeburg lsquo Notre-Dame de Paris rsquo in Les Lieux de Meacutemoire Les France de

lrsquoarchive agrave lrsquoemblegraveme ed P Nora (Paris 1992) vol 3 359 ndash 401 64 De lrsquoEstoile Journal 524 65 Meacutemoires du comte Beugnot 111 66 De Gaulle Meacutemoires de guerre 579 M Aghulon lsquo La mairie Liberteacute eacutegaliteacute fraterniteacute rsquo in Les

Lieux de meacutemoires La Reacutepublique ed Nora (Paris 1984) vol 5 167 ndash 93

by guest on February 18 2016httpfhoxfordjournalsorg

Dow

nloaded from

444 lsquo P A R I S E S T L I B R E rsquo

this enumeration included Saint-Bartheacutelemy the Fronde the 10 August 1792 the exiles of Charles X and of Louis-Philippe and the fall of Napoleacuteon III De Gaulle concluded his review with the following words lsquo This evening Paris while resplendent with the greatness of France draws upon all the lessons that the dark days have to teach us rsquo 67

I V

Thus we see that the entry into Paris represents an important element in the process of national reconciliation in the wake of significant civil conflict It differs from normal entries in that it allows the city to reconnect with its past identity and with the symbolic sites that have played an essential role in its destiny And it can represent an important lever for obtaining the lsquo liberation rsquo of the rest of the territory as is shown by the large number of towns that recognized Henri IV following the surrender of Paris As a source of hope it casts a veil of oblivion over the ordeals suffered by the population during the troubled years that preceded it Even if such a ceremony was not actually part of the republican political arsenal this did not prevent General de Gaulle from adopting quite spontaneously a mode of behaviour mdash his procession down the Champs-Elyseacutees on 26 August 1944 mdash that precisely brought to mind the action conducted by the kings of France of the medieval and early modern periods It thus testified to the tenacity over the centuries of ancient rituals of reconciliation and to the importance retained by the personification of authority even when republicanism held sway This being the case the new conceptions of justice that began to develop in the eighteenth century no longer allowed the public authorities to grant block pardons for acts committed in the course of conflict This was all the more so because it was now very often the victims of these conflicts people to whom no consideration was given in the past who appeared in the limelight mdash and specifically in the limelight of the media mdash while the actual fighting faded into the background 68

It is becoming ever more difficult to completely forget past crimes as is shown by the example of the Commission for Reconciliation and Truth set up to enable South Africa to confront the legacy of apartheid The leaders of the former regime had to publicly admit their atrocities in return for a pardon Yet as we clearly see the reconciliatory act remained an act of pardon in the course

67 De Gaulle Meacutemoires de guerre 585 ndash 6 For the generalrsquos relationship with history F Beacutedar-ida lsquo LrsquoHistoire dans la penseacutee et dans lrsquoaction du geacuteneacuteral de Gaulle rsquo in De Gaulle en son siegravecle vol 1 Dans la meacutemoire des hommes et des peuples (Paris 1991) 141 ndash 9 A Larcan De Gaulle in-ventaire La culture lrsquoesprit la foi (Paris 2003) 825 ndash 45

68 Victims have only very recently become a preoccupation of politicians and university research-ers Benjamin Mendehlson used the expression lsquo victimology rsquo for the fi rst time in 1947 but the lec-ture he delivered that year to the Roumanian psychiatric society was not published until 1956 lsquo Une nouvelle branche de la science bio-psycho-sociale la victimologie rsquo Revue internationale de criminologie et de police technique 10 (1956) Equally important was the publication of a book by the German criminologist Hans von Henting The Criminal and his Victim Studies in the Socio-Biology of Crime (New Haven 1948)

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M I C H E L D E W A E L E 445

of which the winning side consented to forget some of the grievances in order to carve out a place within the nation for its former enemies It sometimes happened however that the effects of reconciliation were not felt immediately Jean Juvenal des Ursins confronted Charles VII in 1440 pointing out to him that lsquo Paris Troyes Sens and mdash to be brief mdash all the regions that have shown their loyalty towards you are in dire straits their devotion responsible for their devastation rsquo 69 According to de Gaulle there were many French people who unaware that terrible sufferings still awaited them mistook the liberation for the end of the war 70

Civil war is synonymous with deep ruptures in the fabric of human affairs bringing significant destruction at the physical level The restoration and general acceptance of a legitimate authority is meaningless if the totality of persons comprising the nation does not accept new sacrifices necessary to the reconstruction of the devastated nation in all respects Reconstruction can never be complete Some people will always harbour an obdurate ill-will towards their former enemies who were sometimes their torturers The memory of a conflict will be expressed in different forms sometimes incompatible with each other Yet despite these divergences reconciliation really does happen whenever the national effort to extricate itself from the crisis becomes perceptible and yields concrete results

In our own time some scholars have claimed that reconciliation is reached whenever a certain number of years elapse without any significant resumption of hostilities A mathematical criterion such as this can appear arbitrary ignoring on the one hand the state of mind that must exist between the inhabitants of a given country and on the other the manifestations of collaboration and mobilization necessary to reconstruction The rituals of reconciliation like those manifesting themselves on the occasion of entries contribute significantly to the creation of this sort of state of mind without by themselves being able to guarantee that the road to reconciliation will be followed all the way Such rituals must be accompanied as much at the outset as in the final stages by gestures that contribute to the re-establishment of unity A prior insurrection does indeed greatly facilitate the restoration of constructive relations between parties Yet harmony once regained can rapidly disappear again or its bonds weaken if conflict persists on other fronts or if reconciliation is not accompanied by reconstruction While historians investigate further the circumstances and causes behind civil conflicts they should bear in mind that the reconciliation and reconstruction of a country constitute an integral part of the problematic to be analysed

69 lsquo Loquar in tribulacione rsquo in Ecrits politiques de Jean Juveacutenal des Ursins ed S Lewis (Paris 1978 ndash 92) vol 1 314

70 De Gaulle Meacutemoires de guerre 599

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