Deadbeats in black pajamas torched the 143-year-old Limoges town hall last weekend. The famous spire crashed down in flames on October 17.
Past Passport is a no-mercy zone for moronic historic vandalism.
Throw the Code pénal at ’em... max jail time, plus expulsion for the students and deportation for anybody who isn’t a French citizen.
Now let’s zoom out, Marcus Aurelius style... and look down on it all from above.
I reckon Western Europe’s streets have looked this DOOMED at least three times since 1848 (never mind two world wars). And Europe wasn’t.
People throwing and burning stuff is bad news, no argument here... and it still doesn’t add up to DOOM, whatever your feed tells you.
The first time, one man saw it coming. On January 27, 1848, Alexis de Tocqueville stood up in the Chamber of Deputies in Paris and told his colleagues, “We are sleeping on a volcano.”
Most of them said, meh! Four weeks later the king was an ex-king.
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Paris and Milan blew up three weeks apart
King Louis-Philippe ruled France for 17 years. Then he was out on his rear in three days.
A banned political banquet set Paris off on February 22. By the next night, all hell broke loose... the streets were choked with barricades, paving stones, overturned carts, and furniture dragged down from apartments.
On February 24, the king signed his abdication and bailed for England as “Mr. Smith.” Bold disguise.
An 81-year-old field marshal got run out of Milan
Milan watched. Milan got ideas.
On March 18, the Milanese rose against their Austrian rulers and rang every church bell in town.
Their opponent? Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky, 81 years old and tough as old leather. For five days the Milanese hurled roof tiles and furniture from the windows and fought him street by street.
On March 22, Radetzky pulled his army out of the city.
Then the bill was delivered. In Paris, the June Days (June 23 to 26) left thousands dead when the army crushed a workers’ uprising.
Archbishop Denis Affre climbed onto a barricade on June 25 and begged both sides to stop shooting. A stray bullet caught him in the back, and he died two days later.
In August, Radetzky marched back into Milan as if nothing had happened. Riots, 19th-century edition.
So was Italy wiped? Nope. Thirteen years after the Five Days, Italy was a single kingdom.
In 1895, Milan unveiled Giuseppe Grandi’s monument to those five days, an obelisk ringed by five bronze women, one for each day. Grandi created this jaw-dropping beauty, and you can still walk right up to it in Piazza Cinque Giornate.
Beyond the paywall, Parisians starve and eat the zoo and torch their own city hall... and three years later a bunch of painters change art for good. Then the French president vanishes for a day without telling his prime minister.
Stick around for the comeback your negative feed never shows you, and head into your week knowing the end usually isn’t the end.
