Another prisoner in the Temple of whom mention must be made is Sir Sidney Smith, whose friends were making every effort for his liberation, when a Royalist officer in the French army, named Boisgerard (who under the Revolution had quitted military life to become ballet-master at the Opera), effected his escape. With this view he had obtained an impression of the seal of the Directorial Government, which he affixed to an order, forged by his own hand, for the delivery of Sir Sidney Smith into his care. Accompanied by a friend, disguised, like himself, in the uniform of an officer of the revolutionary army, he did not scruple personally to present the fictitious document to the keeper of the Temple, who, opening a small closet, took thence some original document, with the writing and seal of which he carefully compared the forged order. Desiring the adventurers to wait a few minutes, he then withdrew and locked the door after him. Giving themselves up for lost, the confederates determined to resist, sword in hand, any attempt made to secure them. Highly interesting is Boisgerard’s own description of the period of horrible suspense he now passed through. Under the dread that each successive moment might be attended by a discovery involving the safety of his life, the acuteness of his organs of sense was heightened to painfulness; the least noise thrilled through his brain, and the gloomy apartment in which he sat seemed filled with strange images. Both he and his companion, however, retained self-possession, and after the lapse of a few minutes their anxiety was terminated by the re-appearance of the gaoler, with his captive, who was delivered to Boisgerard. But here a new and unexpected difficulty occurred. Sir Sidney Smith, not knowing Boisgerard, refused for some time to quit the prison; and considerable address was required on the part of his deliverers to overcome his scruples. At last the precincts of the Temple were cleared. The fugitives rode a short distance in a fiacre, then walked, then entered another carriage, and in this way so successfully baffled pursuit that they ultimately got to Havre, where Sir Sidney was put on board an English vessel. Boisgerard, on his return to Paris, was a thousand times in dread of detection and had a succession of narrow escapes until his visit to England, which took place after the peace of Amiens. A pension had been granted to Sir Sidney Smith by the English Government for his meritorious services; and on Boisgerard’s arrival here a reward of a similar nature was bestowed on him through the influence of Sir Sidney, who took every opportunity of testifying his gratitude.

If the prison of the unfortunate king and queen who were to suffer for the sins of their predecessors was at the eastern end of the line of boulevards, as marked by the Boulevard du Temple, their place of execution on the Place Louis XV., now known as Place de la Concorde, was at the western extremity, which in due time we shall explore.

Meanwhile from one end of the boulevards to the other, from the tiny Théâtre Beaumarchais to the magnificent Opéra, there is a long series of playhouses. Close to the Beaumarchais Theatre stands the Cirque d’Hiver, opened in 1852 under the title of Cirque Napoléon, which seats 3,800 persons. It occupies the site of the first circus that was ever established in Paris. In 1785 the Astleys, father and son, came to Paris and there opened a circus exactly like the one they had just founded in London. Under their direction this theatre, situated at number twenty-four Rue du Faubourg du Temple, and measuring twenty metres in diameter, was lighted by 2,000 lamps and furnished with two rows of boxes. The price of the seats varied from twelve sous to three francs. Astley junior is said to have possessed a remarkably fine figure; and, in the words of a contemporary writer, “his beauty was sculptural.” Bachaumont, in his memoirs of the time, speaks of the numerous passions inspired by the young equestrian in too susceptible feminine hearts. The tricks of the circus, now so familiar, that in England, at least, no one cares to see them, were at that time new, and the sight of a man attitudinising on the back of a horse at full gallop excited the greatest wonder.

Astley’s Circus in Paris possessed, as so many operatic theatres have done, a sort of international character. Engagements were made for it by diplomatists abroad. It can be shown, indeed, that diplomatists have long and almost from time immemorial been in the habit of doing agency work for artists and managers of good position. Operatic celebrities have been particularly favoured in this respect. A great Minister of State, Cardinal Mazarin, introduced, or aided powerfully in introducing, opera into France. The engagement of Cambert as director of music at the Court of Charles II. was effected by diplomatic means. Gluck, more than a century later, was induced to visit Paris through the representations of a secretary of the French Embassy at Vienna – that M. du Rollet who arranged for Gluck, on the basis of Racine’s Iphigénie, the libretto of Iphigénie en Aulide; and Piccini, at the instigation of Madame du Barry, was secured at Paris as opposition composer through the instrumentality of Baron de Breteuil, French Ambassador at Rome, working in co-operation with the Marquis Carraccioli, Neapolitan Ambassador at Paris.

The great Montesquieu, moreover, when he was in England, had not thought it unbecoming to interest himself in the welfare of the French artists who occasionally arrived in England with recommendations addressed to him. Nor did the illustrious Locke occupy himself so exclusively with the “human understanding” as to have no time to bestow on the material interests of foreign danseuses. Locke was not indeed one of those practically Epicurean philosophers of whom M. Arsène Houssaye discourses so agreeably in his “Philosophes et Comédiennes.” He had no general taste either for the public performances or for the private society of ballerines; but a certain Mlle. Subligny having come to him with a letter of introduction from the Abbé Dubois, he is known to have made himself useful, and therefore, no doubt, agreeable, to her during her stay in England.

Locke, it is true, was a metaphysician, and had nothing whatever to do with diplomacy. But his friend Montesquieu was a personage of political importance, and in his anxiety to assist French artists in London he even went so far as to bring to their performances as many of the English nobility as were willing to attend. About the same time, at the suggestion of the Regent of Orleans, a Minister of State, M. de Maurepas, made overtures to Handel concerning a series of representations which it was proposed that his celebrated company should give at the Académie Royale of Paris. M. de Maurepas wished, like Mr. Washburne at a later day, to secure for Paris the best available talent; and he looked to Handel’s opera-house for singers, as Mr. Washburne looked to the circuses of the United States for “bare-back riders.”

On this subject Ebers’s “Seven Years of the King’s Theatre” shows that immediately after the peace of 1815 all the offers of engagements to artists of the Paris opera were made through the medium of the English Embassy to the Court of France, or by special missions with which diplomatists of distinction were glad to be entrusted. The committee of noblemen who aided Ebers in his management treated, through the English Ambassador at Paris, with the Director of the Academy, or with the Minister of Fine Arts; though, as a matter of fact, they failed to secure by these elaborate means the services of artists who, in the present day, would be engaged through an exchange of telegrams.

The outbreak of the Revolution was the signal for the Astleys and their company to recross the Channel, and the Astley Circus remained unoccupied until 1791. Then a company calling themselves “The Comedians without a Title” (Les Comédiens sans titre) opened it as a theatre on Thursday, March 20th, and closed it on the 23rd. Finally Franconi took it over, and achieved a triumphal success, his management being destined to last many years. In 1801 he moved his enterprise to the Garden of the Capucines, which had become a public promenade in the heart of Paris, subsequently transferring it to the theatre in the Rue du Mont-Thabor. In 1819 he returned with his company to the circus of the Faubourg du Temple, reconstructed by the architect Dubois, but doomed, on the night of March 15th, 1826, to be burnt to the ground. The destruction of the circus by fire excited much sympathy. Public subscriptions were opened, and public representations given for the benefit of the sufferers, the result being so satisfactory that the theatre was at once reconstructed, this time on the Boulevard du Temple, with a magnificent façade, and Franconi once more threw open his doors, about a year after the fire, on the 31st of March, 1827. The stage, which in the old building was an accessory, became in the new one of the first importance. It was now possible to perform military manœuvres on a large scale. At the restored circus was represented during the last years of the reign of Charles X. the Siege of Saragossa; and under Louis Philippe a number of military pieces founded on incidents in the history of the Republic and the Empire.

Every Government in France since the first Napoleon has had victories of its own, important or unimportant, to celebrate. The martial triumphs of Louis XIV. seem, by common consent, to have been forgotten, either because French history dates for the immense majority of the population from the time of the Revolution, or because the battles won under the old Monarchy are now too remote to stir the national pride. The reign of Napoleon I., however, was a series of brilliant victories. Under the Restoration a campaign was undertaken in Spain, the incidents of which so lent themselves to dramatic treatment that playwrights reproduced them on the stage and in the arena of the circus. The reign of Louis Philippe, too, had its military glories; first in Belgium, in connection with the War of Independence undertaken in 1830 by the Belgians, with the assistance of France and England, against the Dutch. It was in Africa, however, and in the neighbourhood of Algiers, that Louis Philippe’s army played for many years so active a part. The war against the Dey of Algiers was begun by Charles X., whose consul had been insulted by that potentate; Louis Philippe continued it, chiefly, it was thought, in order to keep open for discontented spirits a field of activity at a safe distance from France. Many restless adventurers sought distinction and found it in the Algerian campaigns; and Algeria was the principal training-ground for those generals who were afterwards to aid Prince Louis Napoleon in executing his coup d’État. It was under Louis Philippe that those picturesque troops, the Chasseurs d’Orléans and Chasseurs d’Afrique, were created, not to mention the Zouaves and the Spahis.

According to the criticisms of German officers, the laxity of discipline in the Algerian campaigns had a considerable effect in producing, or at least hastening, the long series of military defeats to which France was subjected in the war of 1870. The news of victories gained in Africa was, all the same, constantly reaching France; and each successive triumph was made the subject of a new dramatic spectacle at the circus or hippodrome. Abd-el-Kader became a familiar theatrical figure, and his famous interview with General Bugeaud was represented in more than one equestrian piece.

Abd-el-Kader had by the most violent means been prevailed upon to make peace; and an interview was arranged at which the Arab chief and Bugeaud, the French commander, were to ratify it by a personal interchange of promises. Abd-el-Kader did not, however, keep his appointment, and seems, indeed, to have studiously missed it. The French general, in a fit of impatience, left his room, and went forward with a small escort, military and civil, towards the quarters of the unpunctual Arab chief, in order to stir him up. On reaching the advanced posts, the French general called a chieftain of one of the tribes, who pointed out to him the hill-side where the emir lay encamped. “It is unbecoming of your chief,” said Bugeaud to this Arab, “to bring me so far, and then make me wait so long;” whereupon he continued resolutely to advance. The emir’s escort now appeared. The Arab chieftains, most of them young and handsome, were magnificently mounted, and made a gallant display of their finery. Presently from their ranks a horseman advanced dressed in a coarse burnoose, with a camel-hair cord, and without any outward sign of distinction, except that his black horse, which he sat most elegantly, was surrounded by Arabs holding the bridle and the stirrups. This was Abd-el-Kader. The French general held out his hand; the other grasped it twice, then threw himself quickly from his horse, and sat down. General Bugeaud took his place beside him, and the conversation began. The emir was of small stature; his face serious and pale, with delicate features slightly marked by time, and a keen sparkling eye. His hands, which were beautifully formed, played with a chaplet that hung round his neck. He spoke gently, but there was on his lips and in the expression of countenance a certain affectation of disdain. The conversation turned, of course, upon the peace which had just been concluded, and Abd-el-Kader spoke of the cessation of hostilities with elaborate and feigned indifference. When the French general, after pointing out to him that the treaty could not be put into force until it was ratified, observed that the truce, meanwhile, was favourable to the Arabs, since it would save their crops from destruction so long as it lasted, the chief replied: “You may destroy the crops this moment, and I will give you a written authority to do so, if you like. The Arabs are not in want of corn.”

The conversation at an end, General Bugeaud stood up, and the emir remained seated; whereupon the former, stung to the quick, seized the emir’s hand and jerked it, saying “Come, get up.” The French were delighted at this characteristic act of an imperious and intrepid nature, and the Arabs could not conceal their astonishment. As for the emir, seized with an involuntary confusion, he turned round without uttering a word, sprang on his horse and rode back to his own people; his return being a signal for enthusiastic cries of “God preserve the Sultan!” which echoed from hill to hill. A violent thunder-burst added to the effect of this strange scene, and the Arabs vanished among the mountain gorges.

Until 1860 the Boulevard du Temple was noted for a number of little theatres, where marionettes might be seen dancing on the tight-rope, or where pantomimes in the Italian style were performed. Then there was the cabinet of wax figures, together with other little shows, difficult to class: all destined in that year to disappear. The reconstruction of this portion of Paris caused the removal of many theatres, which were built again at other points. The site of the former circus was now occupied by the Imperial Theatre of the Châtelet. The circus reappeared, for winter performances, in the Boulevard des Filles de Calvaire, for the summer season in the Champs Élysées. In connection with the winter circus the Popular Concerts started by the late Pasdeloup must not be forgotten. Here the finest symphonic music of the French and other composers, chiefly modern, was performed in admirable style. Here the French public were familiarised with the works of Berlioz, and, in spite of a certain opposition at the outset, with selections from some of the operas of Wagner. Pasdeloup, who after thirty years’ unremitting work died in poverty, used to find worthy imitators and successors in M. Colonne and M. Lamoureux, both renowned among the musical conductors of the period.

Number forty-two of the Boulevard du Temple marks the house, formerly number fifty, whence the notorious Fieschi, on the 28th of July, 1835, exploded his infernal machine which was intended to kill Louis Philippe and his sons, and which, in fact, struck down by their side one of the veterans of the Empire, Marshal Mortier, Duc de Trévise, and several other superior officers.