A European walk through Bordeaux 13
The "Hôtel de l'Empereur".
47, Grandes allées
(13 Cours Georges Clemenceau)
Towards the end of the
afternoon on 20 June 1777, Emperor of Austria Joseph II, brother of Queen
Marie-Antoinette, arrived at Bordeaux “under a sky full of stormy clouds.” He
travelled under the name of Count of Falkenstein,
borrowing the name of one of his Lorraine possessions, already used during his
visit to Frederick II in 1769. He travelled to the innkeeper Lacroix, where Consul Bethmann
had reserved rooms for him.
Wanting to avoid any fuss
over his visit, the emperor decided to land half a mile from Bordeaux and to
enter the city by coach, taking the backstreets. But at the sight of the crowd
that had gathered on the port, he preferred to jump to the ground and, without
giving it any thought, slipped into the side streets. Alas, his incognito did
not last long. Recognised by a German merchant, who cried in
German: “Hey! That’s my Prince!”, he asked the
man the quickest way to get to his hotel on Cours Tourny, “the rain having accompanied him from the
quayside.”
The inhabitants of Bordeaux
were bent on following their illustrious visitor, to the point of
inconveniencing him. That night, crowds gathered at the Place de la Comédie believing he would go there. Mrs Duplessy reported in a letter the jaunt of two Bordeaux
ladies who left, in the middle of the night, for the inn where the emperor was
staying in the hope to see him pass by. It proved a waste of time, however, as
the emperor had chosen to stay in his room. Legend has it that many people
crossed him in the city without knowing it was him, but his letters belie this
legend: “The weather is terrible, I’m spending the entire time at home talking
with gentlemen traders without going to the theatre, or partaking of any other
form of entertainment.”
The rain is not the only
thing the emperor came across in Bordeaux. On 21 June, he visited Château Trompette, the stock exchange, the docks and the Nouvelle
Comédie. It was the architect Victor Louis
himself who took the emperor to this last building, the entrance to which had
been barred. That day, the emperor hung on each of the architect’s words, all
his explanations about “how the column was built on the corner of the peristyle.” When his critics had cried out that the columns
at the corner of the facade were bound to collapse, Louis had replied … …
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Continue
to the next building.
© Bertrand Favreau
and Tyché Editions 2014
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