Page 153 - HandbookMarch1

Critics also accused him of destroying the city’s medieval treasures, citing the enduring
charm of the narrow winding streets of the Marais: the city’s oldest district and one
which escaped Haussmann’s razing.

There was additional outrage at the staggering 2.5bn franc bill for the work – around
€75bn today. By 1869 the attacks had become deafening, and Haussmann was forced to
vigorously defend himself before MPs and city officials. In the hope of salvaging his own
flagging popularity, Napoléon III asked Hassmann to resign. He refused.

“Haussmann had a great belief in public service and had spent his whole career in the
service of the king and then the emperor,” De Moncan says. “He believed if he resigned
it would be assumed he had done wrong, when in fact he was very proud of what he had
done. Napoléon III offered him all manner of inducements but he still refused, so the
emperor sacked him.

“The Second Empire and Napoléon III were despised by republicans, and Haussmann
was the victim of this political backlash. Victor Hugo hated him, and because everyone
in France regarded what Hugo wrote as the word of God, they hated Haussmann too.
Hugo, the man who wrote Les Miserables about how desperate conditions were in Paris,
accused Haussmann of destroying the city’s medieval charm!”

An overview of Paris, centring on the Étoile area that Haussmann redesigned.
Photograph: DigitalGlobe/Rex

De Moncan observes this was the same “charm” that had brought epidemics to Paris;
the charm that “had 20 people living in one room with no light and no toilets, just a
common courtyard into which they did their business. People like Hugo forgot how truly
miserable Paris had been for ordinary Parisians.”

Out of a job and persona non grata in Paris, Haussmann spent six months in Italy to lift
his spirits. He returned and was given a management post with the military – which
lasted less than a week before Napoléon III was defeated.

Haussmann lived out his final days in rented accommodation on a paltry 6,000-franc
pension, the equivalent of €20,000 a year today, paying regular visits to his three
beloved daughters. In his memoirs, he seems stoic rather than bitter about his fall from
grace: