Heritage Days: when Victor Hugo declared "war on the demolishers"

On the eve of European Heritage Days disrupted by Covid-19, Emmanuel Macron went to Condom (Gers) on Friday to visit the Hôtel de Polignac.

This 18th century mansion is one of 18 endangered monuments to have benefited from the first Heritage Loto, launched in 2018 by host Stéphane Bern, after being appointed by the president to head a mission to save heritage in danger.

The 100 billion euro post-pandemic recovery plan provides for 614 million for heritage and museums.

A large envelope which is undoubtedly the legacy of a struggle of two centuries, initiated by a certain… Victor Hugo.

“We must stop the hammer that mutilates the face of the country.

In a few striking words, the poet nails the heritage “vandals” to the pillory.

The writer is only 30 years old and has a bright future ahead of him, but it's the past that obsesses him.

A past that disappears in general indifference with blows of mallets and pickaxes.

Him, it is the ax that he unearths with the pamphlet which appeared on March 13, 1832 in "the Revue des deux mondes".

The long firebrand, written with an angry pen, is not in the shade.

His title ?

"War on the wreckers".

A "I accuse" before the hour against all those who "throw down" the monuments, these "vile speculators" who resell the stones with the often tacit complicity of the administration.

“And we have good reasons for that.

A church is fanaticism;

a keep is feudalism, ”denounces Hugo, who was, in his younger years, a conservative monarchist… far from the progressive Republican he would later become.

"Every day, some old memory of France goes away"

The sacking of ancient monuments afflicts him.

"This demolition of old France, which we denounced under the Restoration

), continues with more relentlessness and barbarism than ever", castigates Victor Hugo, who refers to his "note on the destruction of monuments in France ”, published in 1825. He was then 23 years old, and no one knew him.

Seven years later, that's another story.

The young man has been a celebrity since the release in March 1831 of “Notre-Dame de Paris, 1482”, his first novel.

This popular triumph consecrated him as a prodigy of letters, a year after his name burned the boards: his play, "Hernani", started a fierce battle in 1830.

On the one hand, the supporters of classical theater;

on the other, the young romantics led by Hugo, who intend to revolutionize this genre frozen in time.

“Pantheon charivarique”, caricature of Victor Hugo signed Benjamin Roubaud (1841).

/ Photo Josse / Leemage  

For heritage, it is the opposite: with his friends, he sets himself up as guardian of the temple, holding the barricade in front of the Attila of the national heritage.

"Every day, some old memory of France goes away with the stone on which it was written", he regrets with a lyricism already ... "Hugo".

He leads his crusade in the name of French culture, of "the admirable old Paris" that is being demolished before his eyes, but also of the universal spirit: "there are two things in a building, its use and her beauty ;

its use belongs to the owner, its beauty to everyone;

destroying it is therefore going beyond one's right, ”argues the writer, demanding a“ law ”to defend“ what a nation has most sacred after its future: a law for the past.

"

The beginning of the 19th century has, it is true, only contempt for the vestiges of a Middle Ages.

Old Gothic towers and churches are falling like dominoes, driven out by the neoclassical style, which brings ancient fashion up to date.

" Oh !

Who will deliver me from the colonnades?

»Moans Hugo, who has a holy horror of the Church of the Madeleine wanted by Napoleon.

It must be said that the poet lives a stone's throw away, rue Jean-Goujon.

The rescuer of Notre-Dame

In this apartment, he put the finishing touches to the adventures of Quasimodo and Esmeralda.

But the main character of this novel-river is the cathedral, which then falls into ruins.

During his coronation in 1804, Napoleon even had to cover the interior with hangings to hide the ravages of time.

The Gothic jewel, once celebrated as one of the wonders of Europe, is no more than a dying ghost ship in the heart of Paris.

We are even considering its destruction.

An unbearable prospect for Hugo, who obviously got attached to it when writing his book.

In his eyes, it is the navel of the capital, a place where the people meet physically and symbolically.

By reviving his old stones, Hugo challenged the conscience ... and no doubt saved Notre-Dame.

Notre Dame de Paris seen from the quays of the Seine in Paris, in 1830. / Selva / Leemage  

In 1835, François Guizot, Minister of Public Instruction, created the Committee of Unpublished Monuments, where Victor Hugo sits with the writer Prosper Mérimée.

Nine years later, the architect Viollet-le-Duc - who will be inspired by the novel for his gargoyles - is in charge of the restoration of Notre-Dame.

It will take twenty years.

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In September 1870, Hugo returned to Paris, after an exile which also lasted two long decades.

The cathedral sticks to him so closely that it is said that its towers draw an H… like Hugo!

He put his “lion's claw” there, writes historian Michelet.

From a prophet too, judging by the visionary lines of his “War on the Demolishers” in 1832. “These monuments,” he writes, “are capital.

Many of them, whose fame attracts wealthy foreigners to France, earn the country more than the interest on the money they cost.

To destroy them is to deprive the country of an income.

" Well seen !