Path of the Patriots

Set - Vols. I and II
ISBN:9789076542300
Price: € 44.95

Volume I
Paperback 5 x 8 in.
Pages: 668
ISBN:9789076542508
Price: € 24.95

Volume II
Paperback 5 x 8 in.
Pages: 705
ISBN:9789076542515
Price: € 24.95

The first four walks are in Volume One which also gives you an introduction to the revolution through a brief history of what happened, biographies of the people who made it happen, and a description of what the city of Paris looked like during the revolutionary era.
The Walks, Volume I
	1. Versailles – an Ending – and a Beginning The Town of Versailles Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs Salles du Jeu-de-Paume The Château The Museum The Gardens The Trianons This walk takes you out of Paris into the magical world of Versailles, dazzling symbol of the ancien régime, Marie-Antoinette's sumptuous playground, where Louis XIV reigned in glory, where Louis XV thoroughly enjoyed himself, and where Louis XVI got embroiled in a revolution. You will witness the horrifying events that brought the golden age of Versailles to a brutal end when the hungry and enraged people of Paris invaded the once inviolable palace. This walk also takes you on a tour of the town of Versailles, whose inhabitants saw their king in splendour at the head of the opening procession of the Estates-General, only to witness, just a few months later, his sad departure forced on him by an angry multitude of Parisians. In this now peaceful town you'll find the indoor tennis court where rebel deputies swore to create a constitution, and a little park where French democracy was born.
	2. The Cradle of the Revolution - In and around the Palais-Royal and its garden. ‘We went after dinner to admire the beautiful arcades that the new Duke of Orleans has just built around the Palais-Royal. Looking at them, it seems that we have achieved exactly the kind of place that Plato thought we should put prisoners, so as to retain them without violence and without a gaoler, but with gentle, voluntary chains. It is the Temple of Voluptuousness.' This walk takes you on a tour of these wonderful arcades built by Philippe d’Orléans, the renegade royal who went from duke to property speculator to patriot, eventually becoming a victim of the Revolution he adopted. His garden inside the arcades was a hotbed of political agitation, where pamphleteers and orators whipped up public opinion. One of these orators was Camille Desmoulins, whose fiery speech here in July 1789 was the first call to arms of the Revolution, and triggered the storming of the Bastille.
	3. Saints and Scholars in the Latin Quarter Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève Panthéon Lycée Louis-le-Grand Place Maubert Saint-Séverin Over the centuries a mass of schools, colleges, abbeys and convents clustered around the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the little hill in the centre of Paris that was to become the heart of the Latin Quarter. On the top sits the Panthéon, created by the National Assembly and destined to receive the remains of the nation's heroes - its scholars of revolutionary thought and its saints of revolutionary action. On this walk you'll see the historic school that turned numerous provincial boys into republican patriots. You'll also visit the neighbourhood of the night owl, Restif de la Bretonne, and the home of an ex-royal page whose denunciation sent his former mistress to the guillotine. And if you want to see a real revolutionary guillotine, this is the walk to take.
	4. Chez Les Cordeliers Odéon Saint-Germain Luxembourg Les Cordeliers was one of 60 municipal districts created early in 1789 for the elections to the Estates-General. It corresponded to the central part of today's 6th arrondissement now known as Odéon, and its centre was the Cordeliers Convent, where Danton and his friends installed their revolutionary club. Many of the more prominent club members lived in this neighbourhood, which thus became associated with the Dantonist faction. A few steps from the club stood Marat's house, where Charlotte Corday visited one day with a kitchen knife. On the southern edge of the Cordeliers district was the Luxembourg palace, with its romantic gardens where one future revolutionary had an idyllic encounter that would change his life. To the west were the peaceful havens of the Carmes Convent and the Saint-Germain Abbey, both destined to be transformed by the Revolution into places of horror and death.
In Volume Two there are six more walks that will complete this unique experience of Paris during one of its most dramatic periods of history. Whichever of these two volumes you read, get ready to step into the Revolution that changed the world!
The Walks, Volume II
	5. From the Temple of Reason to the Temple Prison Notre Dame Hôtel-de-Ville Danton's first walk in Paris Temple Here you will discover the fascinating Enclos du Temple, the 'town within a town' that was a refuge from the law and a tax haven for thousands of people. It is better known, though, as the prison where Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette lived their last few months of family life. Between the site of this infamous royal prison and the great cathedral of Notre Dame, you will follow the young Danton as he tries to find his way around Paris for the first time. During this walk, which takes you through the Marais, you meet that singular 18th-century character, Caron de Beaumarchais, and see the house where he wrote 'The Marriage of Figaro' and organized aid to the American rebels. You will also re-live the last violent moments of Robespierre's power, and be a witness to one of the darkest events of the Revolution, the murder of Marie-Antoinette's devoted friend, the Princesse de Lamballe.
	6. Ghosts in the Place du Carrousel The Louvre Place du Carrousel The Tuileries This walk takes you back to the golden days of the Tuileries Palace, home to royalty before becoming a royal prison, and then the seat of the all-powerful Committee of Public Safety. During the revolutionary period the area between the Tuileries Palace and the Louvre was a maze of dark, narrow passages, where the houses of common folk stood side by side with bourgeois mansions. It was through this labyrinth of streets that Robespierre's 'fiancée' hurried to her art classes, where great masters were sold at bargain prices, where Napoléon was nearly assassinated, and where Marie-Antoinette wandered, completely lost, right under the nose of her unsuspecting subjects. When the monarchy was finally toppled, these same subjects, now enraged, poured out of their homes to join the crowd that was heading menacingly across the Place du Carrousel towards the Tuileries Palace.
	7. The Route of the Condemned I *-Their last look at the City* Palais de Justice Sainte-Chapelle Conciergerie Pont Neuf Rue Saint-Honoré Place du Palais-Royal From the Conciergerie prison sad processions of tumbrils set off each afternoon, transporting the daily batches of victims destined for the guillotine in Place de la Concorde, known then as Place de la Révolution. In walks number seven and eight you will follow in their footsteps, from prison cell to scaffold to grave, at the same time getting to know some of the residents of the area and the events that took place there. During walk seven you visit their prison, see where they were judged by the famous Revolutionary Tribunal, and then follow them as they are jolted around in a tumbril during their long and uncomfortable journey to the scaffold. On the way you'll see where Danton met his first wife, visit the pharmacy where a romantic Swedish count bought ink to write letters to the Queen, and witness the funeral cortege of a slightly less romantic but more famous count.
	8. The Route of the Condemned II -*The Guillotine -and after* Rue Saint-Honoré Place Vendôme Place de la Concorde Chapelle Expiatoire Parc Monceau Walk eight re-joins the tumbrils as they roll through the Place du Palais-Royal on their long journey to the scaffold, and along the way you'll see a church where General Bonaparte emerged from the unknown to become a glorious hero. You'll visit the magnificent house where Lafayette spent the first years of his marriage, and in Place Vendôme you can see where Danton ran the Justice Ministry, as well as a house that contained a lot of mesmerised Parisians. This walk takes you through Robespierre's neighbourhood to the site of the famous Jacobin Club, where he reigned supreme during the Terror, and if you want to get better acquainted with this redoubtable revolutionary, you can have lunch or dinner in the same place where he ate every evening with his adopted family. After witnessing the last moments of the most famous patriots in the Place de la Révolution, and then following them to their burial place, you will end your walk at a highly subversive dinner party.
	9. Sans-Culottes, the Terror, and a Path of False Hope Rue Saint-Antoine Place de Vosges Bastille Faubourg Saint-Antoine Dr Belhomme's Clinic Place de la Nation Picpus Cemetery For four centuries the inhabitants of the faubourg Saint-Antoine lived in the shadow of the grim mediaeval fortress known as the Bastille. For them it was an ever-present symbol of royal despotism, so it isn't surprising they chose it as a target on July 14th 1789, a day in French history that has never been forgotten. As you visit the faubourg Saint-Antoine - which unfortunately has been forgotten by many of today's visitors to Paris - you will be walking with the ghosts of hundreds of unsung popular heroes, for this was the cradle of the sans-culotte Revolution. The sans-culottes of Paris played a vital part in pushing the Revolution towards many of its most radical social reforms. But it was a violent process, culminating in a Reign of Terror that saw hundreds of hard-working citizens denounced, often by neighbours or even their own family. People lived in fear of the guillotine, and would do anything - and pay anything - to avoid being sent before the Tribunal, which meant almost certain death. Some did this by becoming 'patients' at Doctor Belhomme's clinic, where money bought safety. But for how long?
	10. Power and Glory Faubourg Saint-Germain Invalides Ecole-Militaire Champ-de-Mars This walk begins in the faubourg Saint-Germain, seat of the rich and powerful for nearly three centuries, and home to the Empress Joséphine when she was still known as Rose. By 1792 most of its residents had emigrated, and the Revolution moved in, taking over great houses like the Hôtel de Salm, occupied by a political club, and the Palais Bourbon, which became the seat of the Directory government. Here were the roots of today's 7th arrondissement, still a bastion of the republican establishment and home to numerous government ministries. The walk ends on the Champ-de-Mars, where you'll re-live the best and worst of the revolutionary era. It was the scene of the euphoric Festival of Federation - the Revolution's greatest moment of optimism - and the execution of Paris's first mayor, astronomer Sylvain Bailly, which must rank among the Revolution's more regrettable acts.

KEMPER CONSEIL Publishing

Step into the Revolution that changed the world!

Path of the Patriots is a two volume goldmine of tales and anecdotes about this turbulent period in Paris's history, and it tells you where to eat and drink while reading them.

You don't need to know anything about the French Revolution to enjoy Path of the Patriots, because this historical time-trip tells you everything!

You'll see squatters in the Louvre and places of savage massacres and beheadings where Parisians now sit eating their sandwiches.

The books are so full of fascinating stories, you'll enjoy them just as much sitting at home with a glass of wine as you will when you're wandering around the beautiful French capital. You'll never look at Paris in the same way again!