annotated translation of the Bible. He gave further support to the Jansenists, and when he died (May 1, 1727) his grave in the cemetery of St Medard became a place of fanatical pilgrimage and wonder-working. The king ordered the churchyard to be closed in 1732, but earth which had been taken from the grave proved equally efficacious and helped to encourage the disorder which marked the close of the Jansenist struggle (see Jansenism).
Lives by B. de la Bruyère and B. Doyen (1731). See also P. F. Matthieu, Histoire des miracles et des convulsionnaires de St Médard; M. Tollemache, French Jansenists (London, 1893).
PARIS, LOUIS PHILIPPE ALBERT D’ORLÉANS, Comte de
(1838–1894), son of the duc d’Orléans, the eldest son of King
Louis Philippe, was born on the 24th of August 1838. His
mother was the princess Helen of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, a
Protestant. By the death of his father through a carriage
accident in 1842, the count, who was then only four years of
age, became heir-apparent to the French throne. On the
deposition of Louis Philippe in 1848, the duchess of Orléans
struggled to secure the succession to her son, and bore him
through an excited populace to the chamber of deputies. The
chamber itself was soon invaded, however, and the Republic
proclaimed. The Orleanists were driven into exile, and the
duchess proceeded with her two sons, the comte de Paris and
the duc de Chartres, first to Eisenach in Saxony, and then to
Claremont in Surrey. After his mother’s death in 1858 the
count made a long foreign tour. In 1861 he and his brother
accompanied their uncle, the prince de Joinville, to the United
States. The brothers were attached to the staff of General
McClellan, commanding the “Army of the Potomac.” In April
1862 the count took part in the siege of Yorktown, and was
present at the action of Williamsburg on the 5th of May. He was
also with McClellan at the battle of Fair Oaks, and was personally
engaged in the sanguinary battle at Gaines Mill on the 27th of
June. When difficulties arose between France and the United
States with regard to the affairs of Mexico, the Orléans princes
withdrew from the American army and returned to Europe.
During the winter of 1862–1863 the count took a special interest
in the organization of the Lancashire Cotton Famine Fund, and
contributed an article to the Revue des deux mondes entitled
“Christmas Week in Lancashire.” On the 30th of May 1864 he
married his cousin, the princess Marie Isabelle, daughter of the
duc de Montpensier; and his son and heir, the duc d’Orléans,
was born at York House, Twickenham, in 1869. The count was
refused permission to serve in the Franco-Prussian War, but after
the fall of Napoleon III. he returned to France. Abstaining
from putting himself forward, he lived quietly on his estates,
which had been restored to him by a vote of the Assembly. In
August 1873 there was an important political conference at
Frohsdorf, the result of which was that a fusion was effected,
by which the comte de Paris agreed to waive his claims to the
throne in favour of those of the comte de Chambord. By the
death of the latter in 1883 the count became undisputed head
of the house of Bourbon; but he did not show any disposition to
push his claims. The popularity of the Orléans family, however,
was shown on the occasion of the marriage of the comte de Paris’s
eldest daughter with the duke of Braganza, son of the king of
Portugal, in May 1886. This so alarmed the French government
that it led to a new law of expulsion, by which direct claimants
to the French throne and their heirs were banished from France
(June 11, 1886). The comte de Paris again retired to England,
taking up his abode at Sheen House, near Richmond Park.
Here he devoted his leisure to his favourite studies. In addition
to his work Les Associations ouvrières en Angleterre, which was
published in 1869 and translated into English, the count edited
the letters of his father, and published at intervals in eight
volumes his Histoire de la guerre civile en Amérique. In his
later years the count seriously compromised the prospects of
the Royalist party by the relations into which he entered with
General Boulanger. He died on the 8th of September 1894.
PARIS, the capital of France and the department of Seine, situated on both banks of the Seine, 233 m. from its mouth and 285 m. S.S.E. of London by rail and steamer via Dover and
Calais, in 48° 50′ 14″ N., 2° 20′ 14″ E. (observatory). It occupies
the centre of the so-called Paris basin, which is traversed by the
Seine from south-east to north-west, open towards the west,
and surrounded by a line of Jurassic heights. The granitic
substratum is covered by Jurassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary
formations; and at several points building materials—freestone,
limestone or gypsum—have been laid bare by erosion. It is
partly, indeed, to the existence of such quarries in its neighbourhood,
and to the vicinity of the grain-bearing regions of the
Beauce and Brie that the city owes its development. Still
more important is its position at the meeting-place of the great
natural highways leading from the Mediterranean to the ocean
by way of the Rhone valley and from Spain northwards over the
lowlands of western France. The altitude of Paris varies
between 80 ft. (at the Point du Jour, the exit of the Seine from
the fortifications) and 420 ft. at the hill of Montmartre in the
north of the city; the other chief eminence is the hill of Ste
Geneviève, on the left bank. Since 1840 Paris has been completely
surrounded by a wall, which since 1860 has served also as
the limit for the collection of municipal customs dues (octroi).
Proposals are constantly being brought forward to demolish this
wall—which, with its talus, is encircled by a broad and deep
ditch—either entirely or at least from the Point du Jour, where
the Seine intersects the wall below the city, to Pantin, so as to
extend the limits of the city as far as the Seine, which runs
almost parallel with the wall for that distance. Within the wall
the area of the city is 19,279 acres; the river runs through it
from east to west in a broad curve for a distance of nearly 8 m.
Climate.—Paris has a fairly uniform climate. The mean temperature, calculated from observations extending over fifty years (1841–1890), is 49·8° F. The highest reading (observed in July 1874 and again in July 1881) is 101° F., the lowest (in December 1879) is −14°. The monthly means for the fifty years (1841–1890) were: January 35·9°, February 38·3°, March 42·3°, April 49·5°, May 55·6°, June 61·7°, July 64·6°, August 63·5°, September 58·2°, October 49·8°, November 40·2°, December 36·6°. The Seine freezes when the temperature falls below 18°. It was frozen in nearly its whole extent from Bercy to Auteuil in the winters of 1819–1820, 1829–1830, 1879–1880 and 1890–1891. Rain falls, on an average, on about 200 days, the average quantity in a year being between 22 and 23 in. The rainfall from December to April inclusive is less than the average, while the rainfall from May to November exceeds the average for the whole year. The driest month is February, the rainiest June—the rainfall for these months being respectively 1·3 in. and 2·3 in. The prevailing winds are those from the south, south-west and west. The general character of the climate, somewhat continental in winter and oceanic in summer, has been more closely observed since the three observatories at different heights on the Eiffel Tower were added in 1889 to the old-established ones of the parks of St Maur and Montsouris.[1] The observatory at the old church-tower St Jacques (16th century) in the centre of the city, and since 1896 a municipal establishment, is of special interest on account of the study made there of the transparency and purity of the air. There are barely 100 days in the year when the air is very clear. Generally the city is covered by floating mists, possibly 1500 ft. in thickness. During the prevalence of north-easterly winds the sky is most obscured, since on that side lies the greatest number of factories with smoking chimneys.
Defences.—Paris, described in a recent German account as the greatest fortress in the world, possesses three perfectly distinct rings of defences. The two inner, the enceinte and the circle of detached forts around it, are of the bastioned type which French engineers of the Noizet school favoured; they were built in the time of Louis Philippe, and with very few additions sustained the siege of 1870–71. The outer works, of more modern type, forming, an entrenched camp which in area is rivalled only by the Antwerp system of defences, were built after the Franco-German War.
The enceinte (“the fortifications” of the guide-books) is of plain bastion trace, without ravelins but with a deep dry ditch (escarp, but not counterscarp revetted). It is nearly 22 m. in perimeter and has 93 bastions, 67 gates and 9 railway passages. The greater part of the enceinte has, however, been given up, and a larger one projected—as at Antwerp—by connecting up the old detached forts.
- ↑ The observatories of the Tour St Jacques and of Montsouris belong to the municipality of Paris; that of St Maur depends on the Central Bureau of Meteorology, a national institution.
