Tours boasts many excellent museums and monuments. I have visited several, since my arrival.
A group of contemporary artists have created a free local exposition in a historic hotel near the very center of Tours. Inside is the most hideous art I've ever seen, including insipid nude paintings, a projection-reflection room, and clay bowls just as rudimentary as those we all made in elementary school art class, only a meter in diameter. Fortunately, the admission was free.
Another free, but far more interesting museum, is the Musee du Compagnonnage, best translated as the "Museum of the Guild." The museum is dedicated to the working man of France, and what one first notices upon entering is the soundtrack of upbeat political worker-songs. At least, I assume that they are worker songs: one that I could understand ridiculed lazy rich politicians and diplomats, and those that I didn't understand sounded just like the Revolutionary songs from Prof. Verhoeven's excellent class on the Soviet Union.
The museum was holding a temporary exhibit at the time, on the workers' rebellions of 19th-century France, in particular, those of 1830 (rise of Louis-Napoleon), 1848 (rise of Napoleon III), and 1871 (Paris Commune). The former two events are case-studies in dictatorship: with popular support, charismatic figures rose to power, and immediately became reactionary, repressing the very supporters who had brought them to power, in the name of law and order. The Paris Commune is a little-known story here in the U.S., and I owe my advisor, Professor Hull, for all of my prior knowledge of the event. During the Franco-Prussian War (in France, the "Guerre de mille-huit-cent-soixante-dix"), the Germans, who were winning, refused to parley with any but a well-established government, and France, at the time, was in the throes of urban revolt, the 2nd Empire having fallen apart. Under Thiers, a provisional government formed; although leftists, and even radicals, were among the representatives, the government was controlled by its conservative faction. Paris refused to recognize the new government, erecting instead a Commune, which defied Thiers's attempts to seize cannon in Paris, and burnt his house, adding insult to injury.
What exactly were the values of the Commune? Separation of church and state; obligatory secular education; vocational instruction open to both boys and girls; recognition of extramarital children; the right to divorce, and guarantee of alimony; a women's union; a war on prostitution, as exploitation; a shorter workday; prohibition of bakers' employees to work during the night; liberty of the press; conversion of abandoned businesses into workers' cooperatives; cessation of political oaths for magistrates and bureaucrats. When the conservative government finally broke into Paris, they killed 20,000 Parisians in the first week alone, more than died in the entire Reign of Terror; over the next months, thousands more were arrested and executed, charged with participation in the Paris Commune. These were just some of the birth pains of France's Third Republic, the others including the terrible losses and humiliations suffered in the Franco-Prussian War. In high school, American students study the Franco-Prussian War in the context of the unification of Germany, but judging from the monuments I have seen, the French remember it as a martyrdom, similar to World War I.
Tours has its very own chateau, the Chateau de Tours, of which two towers remain of the original facade. Although Gallo-Roman and medieval wooden structures predated the stone chateau, in the 11th century, the Compte d'Anjou, having just conquered La Touraine, built a stone stone structure, to serve as both his residence, and his administrative center; the building was political, but not military. Back in the hands of the French monarchy, the new owners constructed the existing towers and fortified wall in 1270-1280. In the 14th century, the chateau had sufficient military clout to control access to the Loire; in the 15th, it hosted two royal weddings; in the 16th, it occupied a key position in the wars of religion; and in the 17th, it was abandoned, scarcely used, until 1968. It was in this year that the building became the property of the city of Tours, which launched an impressive campaign of restoration and archaeology. Today, the chateau is an art museum (free admission for students of the Institute of Touraine).
One particularly famous anecdote exists about the history of the Chateau de Tours. In 1591, the Duc de Guise, imprisoned and closely guarded in one of the towers, had long planned his escape. On April 15th, while returning from morning mass to his prison, he challenged his guards to a footrace to the top of the stairs: sprinting ahead of them, he slammed and barred the door shut behind him. He quickly quickly retrieved the rope that the laundryman had been bribed to smuggle in, and began to descend from the high window. He was spotted on his way out, wounded in the leg, but managed to momentarily evade capture. As he fled from the castle towards the village from the castle, he encountered an armed guard, whom he presumed to be an enemy, on horseback. Instead, the man dismounted, bowed, and offered his horse to the Duc. Horsemen in hard pursuit, the Duc yet again evaded capture, only because an elderly man grabbed the bridle of the horse of one of his pursuers, and demanded to know why they were chasing him. The Duc arrived safely at the River Cher (about 10 minutes' walk from the Avertins'), where 200 loyal troops greeted him. Exciting, non?
The exhibit currently on display at the Chateau is "La Republique des amateurs," which describes the late-19th and early-20th-century work of the Societe francaise de photographie. Aesthetically, most of the pictures are fairly low in quality, but historically, choices of subjects are intriguing: camels, fireworks, women reading in the sunlight, other photographers, waves, bicyclists, etc. One enthusiast even bought a then-rare movie camera, and what do you suppose he decided to film? Fireworks, which in black-and-white and silent are as interesting as a stove-top; waves; and farm hands slaughtering a cow. The technology was such a novelty, that the ability to record, rather than the topic, was preeminent. In the film of the "abattage," for instance (cognate with English "abattoir"), passing children turn and stare at the camera, and the film lasts for several minutes after the climax.
Thank you, Mother, for pointing out the presence of typos in some of my older posts. I will spend some time proofreading them, and try to eliminate any slips of the keyboard. Leticia, thank you for reading my blog: you're the only person in Costa Rica who could possibly have visited this page!
~JD
"En fait, ni les Jacobins ni les sans-culottes n'entendaient proscrire la propriete individuelle. Ils la consideraient au contraire comme un facteur d'emancipation, de cohesion nationale et une garantie de l'impot" [In fact, neither the Jacobins nor the sans-culottes intended to revoke the right to private property. On the contrary, they considered it as a bearer of emancipation and national cohesion, and a guarantee of tax revenues] (Marc Bouloiseau, La Republique jacobine, p. 42).
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