CHAPTER LII. LES PONTS (The Bridges)

Pont de l'Alma, that emphatically Second-Empire bridge with its four Napoleonic soldiers, a Zouave, an infantry man, an artillery man, and a chasseur, was built between the years 1854-57. It was still unfinished when on April 2nd, 1856, Napoleon III and a sumptuously accoutred cortege passed across it to present flags to the regiments returned from the Crimea. Pont-des-Invalides was built in 1855.

The first stone of the very ornate Pont Alexandre III, formed of a single arch 107 metres long, was laid with   great ceremony by the Czar Nicholas II in 1896. It was opened in 1900.

A truly historic bridge is the Pont de la Concorde, built between 1787 and 1790, finished with stones off the razed Bastille, and called at first Pont Louis XVI. Louis' head fell, and the bridge became Pont de la Revolution. Twelve immense statues of famous statesmen and warriors were set up on it in 1828. They wereconsidered too big, and in 1851 were taken away to the Cour d'Honneur de Versailles.

Pont de Solferino, built in 1858, records the victorious Italian campaigns of 1859.

Pont-Royal was designed by Mansart and built in 1689 by Dominican monks to replace a smaller, more primitive bridge which had been known successively as Pont-Barlier, Pont-des-Tuileries, Pont-Rouge, and Pont Ste-Anne; it underwent restoration in 1841. Pont des Saints-Pères, or Pont du Carrousel was one of the last of Paris bridges to pay toll; built in 1834, restored in recent years.

 

Pont-des-Arts, so called from its vicinity to the Louvre, leading in a straight line from the colonnaded archway of the Court Carree to the Institut, was opened in 1804, restored 1854.

Pont-Neuf, the most characteristic of Paris bridges, dates back to the reign of Henri III. The King himself laid its first stone in 1578, but it was not finished till 1603, when Henri IV was King. "Le bon Roi" determined to be the first to cross it on horseback, and while it was still unsafe spurred his thoroughbred along the unfinished bridge way. His lords, hastening to follow where their master led, were jolted out of their saddles, and falling upon the unparapeted structure, rolled into the river and were drowned. Louis XIII set up a statue of his father on horseback on the bridge; the statue of the horse was a gift from Cosimo de' Medici to Louis' mother. At the Revolution it was overturned, taken away, and melted down to make cannons for the insurgents. Louis XVIII replaced it by a statue made of the bronze of the first statue of Napoleon that had been set up on Place Vendome and that of his general, Desaix, on Place des Victoires. Though set up by the Bourbon King, the figure we see is believed to contain within it a statuette of Napoleon I and Voltaire's Henriade. Until 1848 there were shops within the semicircles we see on either side of the old bridge, and beneath the second archway near the right bank there was one of the first hydraulic pumps, known as "la Samaritaine." Its water was conveyed to the Louvre, the Tuileries, and to houses all around, and fed the famous old fountain built in 1608, destroyed a century later, rebuilt in 1715, again destroyed after another hundred years, with the figure of the Samaritan woman giving water to our Saviour. The bathing-house near the spot with its sign, and the big modern shop of hideous aspect, alone remain to record the name of the ancient pump and fountain. Two or three ancient houses still stand on the Place du Pont-Neuf in the middle of the bridge. At its picturesque western point we see the tree-shaded square Henri IV, known also as the Square du Vert-Galant. Place Dauphine, at its south-western side, dates from the days when Henri's son, later Louis XIII, was dauphin.

The Pont St-Michel we see to-day was built in 1857. The first bridge there, joining the mainland to the island on the Seine, was constructed towards the close of the fourteenth century. That bridge and two successive ones were destroyed by fire.

Pont-au-Change, the Money-changers' Bridge, was in olden days a wooden construction which went by the names Pont de la Marchandise and Pont-aux-Oiseaux. Jewellers as well as money-changers plied their trade along its planks, perhaps also bird merchants. It was a little higher up the river in its early twelfth century days and was often flooded. It was badly burnt, too, more than once; then in the seventeenth century was entirely rebuilt of stone, and bronze statues of the royal family, Louis XIII, Louis XIV as a child, and Anne d'Autriche, set up there. In the century following the houses upon it were all cleared away and in 1858 it was again rebuilt.

The Petit-Pont joins the lie to the left bank at the very same spot where the Romans made a bridge across the river, one of two which spanned the Seine in their day, and on beyond. Like all town bridges of the Middle Ages it was made of wood and each side thickly built upon by houses and shops; windmills, too, stood on this ancient bridge, grinding corn for the citizens around. And where we now see the Place du Petit-Pont there stood a wooden tower, la Tour de Bois, erected to protect the bridge against the invading Normans. At the Musée Carnavalet an ancient inscription may be seen, recording the names of twelve warriors who fought here to defend their city, led by Gozlin, bishop of Paris, in 886. In the twelfth century Maurice de Sully, the builder of Notre-Dame, rebuilt the bridge in stone, but flood and fire laid it in ruins time after time. The last destructive fire was in the spring of 1718. It was then rebuilt minus its wooden houses. The present structure dates from 1853. The place was built in 1782, when the Petit Châtelet; which had succeeded the Tour de Bois, was razed. In Rue du Petit-Pont we see some old houses on the odd number side. Many were demolished when the street was widened a few years ago.

The other bridge of Roman times, succeeding no doubt a rude primitive bridge, stretched where the Pont Notre-Dame now spans the river. The Roman bridge, built on staves, was overthrown by the Normans in 861. Rebuilt as Pont Notre-Dame in 1413, it crashed to pieces some eighty years later, carrying down with it the house of a famous printer of the day. It was alternatively destroyed and rebuilt several times till its last reconstruction in 1853. Its houses were the first in France to be numbered (1507). There were sixty-eight of them and the numbering was done in gold or gilded ciphers. All these old houses were pulled down in 1786. Pont Notre-Dame was the "bridge of honour." Sovereigns coming to Paris in state crossed it to enter the city. Close up to it stood for nearly two hundred years—1670 to 1856—the Pompe Notre-Dame, from which all the fountains of the district were supplied with water.

Pont d'Arcole, built as we now see it in 1854, succeeded a wooden bridge erected in 1828 with the name Pont de la Grève, commonly called Pont de la Balance. It gained its present name, recalling Napoleon's victory of 1796, in the Revolution of 1830, when a youth at the head of a band of insurgents rushed upon the bridge waving the tricolor and shouting: "If I die, remember my name is Arcole."

Pont-au-Double, so called because to cross it passengers paid a double toll for the benefit of the Hôtel-Dieu, is a nineteenth-century construction, replacing the original bridge of the name built in the sixteenth century, a little higher up the river.

Pont de l'Archevêché dates from 1828. Pont St-Louis, joining l'île de la Cité to l'île St-Louis, was built in 1614 as a wooden bridge painted red and called, there fore, Pont-Rouge. Like all wooden erections of the age, it was damaged by fire, and in the eighteenth century at the time of the Revolution, "icebergs" on the Seine knocked it over. An iron footbridge was put up in its place and remained till 1862, when the bridge we see was built,

Pont Louis-Philippe was built in the same year to replace a suspension bridge paying toll.

Pont de la Tournelle, built as we see it in 1851, began as a wooden bridge of fourteenth-century erection.

Pont Marie was not, as one might suppose, named in honour of the Virgin, nor after Marie de' Medici, who laid its first stone. It simply records the name of its constructor, who was "Entrepreneur-Général des Ponts de France" at the time. Fifty houses were built upon it. Some were destroyed, by floods a few years later, others razed in 1788. The two Ponts de Sully are, except Pont de Tolbiac, the most modern of Paris bridges, built some years after the Franco-Prussian war, replacing two older bridges of slight importance. Pont d'Austerlitz dates from 1806, the year of the great battle. When the Emperor fell the Allies demanded the suppression of the name, and the French Government of the day called the bridjje Pont du Jardin du Roi, referring to the Jardin des Plantes in its vicinity. The name did not catch on. The people would have none of it. It has remained a reminder of Napoleon's victory. It has been enlarged more than once, the last time in 1885. Pont de Bercy was built in 1835, rebuilt 1864. Pont de Tolbiac, in 1895. Pont National, a footbridge, in 1853.

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