‘Aux armes,citoyens!’: Mapping Regime Change in Charles Motte’s Plan figuratif des barricades (1830)

Abstract

The July 1830 ‘Trois Glorieuses’ abruptly ended Charles X’s absolutist regime, and Charles Motte’s Le Plan figuratif des barricades (1830), published shortly afterwards, documents the violent struggle between the forces loyal to the last Bourbon monarch and the victorious ‘citoyen armés’. Much more than a simple map documenting yet another Paris revolution, Motte’s Plan provides the reader with a social and historical overview of a society in turmoil. Le Plan figuratif contrasts with traditional historical narrative, and this article will examine Motte’s map discourse (use of text, colour, shapes and symbols) and its presentation of a divided city — one where easy-to-see, hand-drawn red gunfire and bright yellow barricades illustrate to what extent the working-class population from the central and eastern arrondissements of Paris were willing to take to the streets, participate in combat, and challenge French royal authority. This contrasts with the bourgeois western districts which remain largely free of both violence and colour. In sum, Motte’s map affords hope to the underprivileged, showing them the efficacy of their numbers. Yet he also alerts future administrations as to which neighbourhoods to survey in order to maintain control over their capital city, many of which would be targeted by Haussmann’s renovations of Paris under the Second Empire.