Dinner is served.

Welcome back to The Land of Desire, a French history podcast dedicated to exploring all the weird adventures, mysteries and surprising backstories behind French cultural icons. For the next two episodes, we’re going to focus on war, food, and how much a country’s food culture is the result of military conflict. If that sounds boring, how about this: today we’re going to talk about that time Paris ate its own zoo animals.

“I ask you, then, what would be the charm of being besieged by 500,000 helmetted Prussians if foods did not change their nature, their taste and their value!” – Henri Chatillon, La Chasse illustrée, February 1871

Episode 2: We Ate A Zoo

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Transcript

Bienvenue, and welcome back to The Land of Desire, a podcast about the weird, wacky and wonderful stories from French history. I’m gonna be honest: 99% of the reason I started this podcast is to talk about the interesting things that French people have figured out how to eat, and why they eat what they do. Last week, I kicked off this podcast by discussing the bread riots of 1789, and how the French Revolution was originally a reaction to a food crisis that drove up the price of everyone’s baguettes. I launched with that episode on purpose, because it introduced two really critical themes in French history, which will surface again and again. First, the history of French cuisine is the history of a people constantly at war, running out of food, trying to figure out a way to stomach whatever weird protein source was still left. When times got really rough, the poor went without protein altogether and the rich figured out a way to tell themselves that what they’re eating is deluxe. Remember that the higher you get in haute cuisine, the lower the beasts you’re eating: your average corner bistro may serve roasted chicken and steak with fries, but you have to fork over real money before they’ll serve you a pigeon. Second theme: war is a transformative power, and people are more willing to try a crazy notion when they’re staring death in the face. This is all a means of preparing you for what may be the most notorious event in the history of French cuisine. Please enjoy today’s episode, “We Ate A Zoo”

In July of 1870, France had a stupid idea. By the middle of the 19th century, France had begun recovering from the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and things finally seemed to be getting exciting. Under the reign of Napoleon III, the nephew of the famous emperor, the harvests were finally back, the economy was booming, and Paris itself was getting the biggest facelift of its life: the entire city center was being demolished and rebuilt by an audacious man named Baron Hausmann, with old medieval piles being torn down and replaced with gleaming white uniform buildings decorated with black railings and marble – sound familiar? In the first fifty years of the 19th century, the population of Paris had doubled, and these new Parisians were loving their new home: crowds of people could take tours of the exciting new state-of-the-art sewer system which was getting installed, go shopping in the dazzling department stores lining the newly constructed streets, and dine out in those glamorous new institutions of city life, restaurants. France was on the mend, and Paris was quickly becoming a glamorous, modern, fashionable city. Until July 1870, when France had a stupid idea.

Just over the border, the various German-speaking kingdoms of the world were about to do something they’d been threatening to do for centuries and unify into one big nation, a “Germany” if you will. A few major kingdoms in the north had already gotten married, but the southern states weren’t sure whether they were ready for commitment. Then, the kingdom of Prussia, aka modern day Berlin, got a new chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, aka the world’s greatest troll. Bismarck knew that there was one thing in this world which could make this marriage work, one thing which would unite all those tiny states together into a single country, one thing which would cement Germany’s status as a nation and tip the balance of power in Europe: telling France to go BLEEP itself. So Bismarck decides to get up to a little mischief, and he leaks a very important, very sassy diplomatic telegram to the press – a telegram which Bismarck had edited in secret. What should have been a standard boilerplate diplomatic telegram had been transformed into basically a big fart sound aimed at France. Well, it worked. “Let’s go to war!” France said, just a few years after recovering from decades of disastrous postwar reconstruction. “Hurrah! Vive le France!” 15,000 Parisians went out into the streets of Paris waving flags, Parliament sent a declaration of war, and France turned to the rest of Europe and said, “Raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimized by Prussia.” Well, I don’t know exactly who France thought was going to raise their hand, because we’re, like, thirty years out from Napoleon III’s uncle stomping all over Europe soooo not a huge turnout of support after all. Mistake number one.

It didn’t take long for the French army to realize mistake number two: turns out the Prussian army is good. No, like, really good. Right around the time France is realizing maybe they should have let that whole telegraph thing slide, Napoleon III’s armies suffer a series of crushing defeats, one right after the other. Napoleon III tries to retreat, so that the relief army can come back him up and defend Paris from the Prussian army. “Booo,” says the country. “Yeah, it’ll work, but you’re a coward!” Well, turns out everybody was wrong. The relief army DID show up…and lost the battle anyway. Only a few weeks after declaring war on Prussia, here’s Napoleon III surrendering to Prussia. What we’re learning here is French people should really be careful about decision-making in July. Now the Prussians are marching to the gates of Paris, with no one to block their way. Back home, Paris goes nuts. Anyone who can afford to do so is fleeing for the countryside. Everybody in the government is booted out of office, starting with Napoleon III. A new government is hastily assembled in order to tell the Prussians that while France may have some, ah, internal affairs to work out, they are very much not surrendered, thank you very much. As Parisians prepare for the enemy to arrive, the Governor of Paris starts looking around at the troops he has and realizes there’s absolutely no way in a million years that they could hold off the Prussians in hand-to-hand combat. But that’s okay, because he’ll just rely on the city’s defenses: the great big wall surrounding Paris, and all the military forts which ring the city, these will all prevent the Prussians from invading Paris! The Prussians will throw themselves onto the barricades, dying slowly while they claw at the gates. Except this is mistake number three. Prussia doesn’t care about invading Paris. Prussia never planned to invade at all. Prussia is going to sit outside the gates of Paris and wait for Paris to surrender. And wait. And wait. And wait. So on September 19, 1870, just a few weeks after Napoleon III blew it on the battlefield, the Prussians set up camp outside the city wall of Paris, and begin the countdown until the Parisians surrender….or starve.

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For 133 days, Paris was alone. It had all happened so fast: what had been a glamorous cosmopolitan world city only a few weeks ago, suddenly became a prison. There was no way in, and there was no way out. The only way to get a message to the outside world was to wrap it around the leg of a trained pigeon and hope it made it over enemy lines safely and didn’t get lost. The new department stores turned out the lights. The new street lamps were put out to save fuel. There was no more currency left. Paris was a tomb. Inside the city, Parisians were bored: the Louvre had shipped its art out of town before the siege, and the galleries were filled with military stockpiles. With no art, no theaters, no shopping, there was nothing for Parisians to do except contribute to the war effort or sit at home and try to stay alive. Or keep journals. Everybody kept a LOT of journals. The primary mood was claustrophobia, and one journalist at the time wrote that the worst punishment of all was to “live cut off from the universe in the capital of the civilized world, like Robinson on his island.” During the weeks leading up to the arrival of the Prussians, Paris had managed to stockpile roughly two months of rations. Unfortunately, the siege would last far longer than that.

In October, the Prussians welcomed more troops to their front line. Some soldiers began questioning whether or not they should just go ahead and attack the city, but as one military leader wrote, “I count definitely on starving out the city.” Almost as if on cue, hunger arrived to Paris. First, supplies of milk ran out. This was perhaps the only happy consequence of the siege, as mothers took the unusual step of breastfeeding their babies – while everyone else’s mortality rates went up, infant mortality actually went down by 40%. On October 15th, however, butchers announced they would no longer sell more than one day’s supply of meat at a time. Rations grew smaller and smaller, until by the end of October, pork had disappeared entirely. Next on the plate were the horses, thoroughbreds, mules, boiled, roasted, made into soup. Over 65,000 horses end up on the menu. But what came after horses?

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, 2 million people lived in Paris. About one million Parisians were laborers, and another 100,000 were servants. In the weeks leading up to the siege of Paris, nearly a quarter of a million members of the upper and middle classes fled to the countryside, leaving the working class behind to face the Prussian troops. Remember that whatever foods might have been available on the black market, most Parisians couldn’t afford them. One director of a mental hospital wrote of his struggles to keep his patients fed, with each patient receiving a meat ration of only 30 grams per day. That’s two Chicken McNuggets. The director wrote, “consequences of a very grave nature would certainly have ensued from this insufficient supply of nourishment, had not my constant care for my patients impelled me to search for food in places where I thought it may be concealed. I was thus furnished with horses and mules during the continuance of the siege, killing some of my own.” Eventually, even the rations themselves disappeared. The director continued, “In spite of all assurances to the contrary from official persons, the rationing of bread took place in January. At first it was made from thirty parts of flour mixed with vegetables…among other ingredients…were portions of straw…Several of the patients refused to eat the bread; some of them died just as a lamp burns out for want of oil.”

By early December, according to the French writer Edmond de Goncourt, “You talk only about what is eaten, can be eaten, or can be found to eat. Conversation does not go beyond that.” Cats grew conspicuously absent. The Academy of Science started issuing safety instructions for the consumption of rats. One American stuck in Paris even remembers seeing porcupine on the menu. For the well-to-do, however, meat was still available for those who could pay. The only question was, what kind of meat? One restaurant offered the following menu:
Horse soup with grain
Skewers of dog liver
Minced cat with mayonnaise
Braised dog shoulder with tomato sauce
Rat salami
Begonias served in juice
Plum pudding with rum and horse bone marrow

Yummy. With menus like these, those exciting restaurants of the 1850s became laboratories of forced culinary innovation. Parisian scientists began researching alternate protein sources from other parts of the world, learning about cultures who consumed whale meat, insects, and even a Chinese “cheese made of peas” which you may know as tofu.Now that Parisian chefs had begun thinking outside the box, creative dining under siege was about to reach its peak.

In the Jardin des Plantes, the great zoo of Paris, animals began disappearing. First, Parisians made off with the zebras and the antelopes, which doesn’t seem too far off from horses and deer if you think about it. Cage by cage, the zoo’s collection began disappearing into kitchens. Some of the animals survived, since nobody was brave enough to make a try for a tiger, and the idea of eating monkeys was a bit too close to cannibalism. I can’t decide whether the hippo was spared because it would have been too expensive, or whether everybody drew the line at a big fat animal which spent all day swimming in filthy water. Finally, Christmas Day arrived. The greatest chef in Paris, Alexandre Choron, decided to give Paris the wildest dinner it had ever seen: roasted camels, kangaroo stew, bear legs, wolves, cats, rats, and then, finally, the main course, the zoo’s greatest celebrities: Castor and Pollux, the elephants of Paris. The elephants were beloved, and before the siege, Parisians used to bring honey cakes in their pockets to feed to the elephants, and teach the elephants to sing. No matter, the rich people of Paris wanted their Christmas dinner. Castor and Pollux were killed, and the zookeeper fell sobbing into the snow, wrapping himself in the trunks of his beloved animals. For the next three weeks, while the poor people of Paris ate bread milled with ground up bones scavenged from the catacombs, the rich ate the city’s most beloved animals with sauce. They didn’t even like it. One journalist described the elephants as “tough, coarse, and oily.” On January 12, Victor Hugo had an elephant steak for lunch. The next day, Choron finally ran out of elephant meat, three weeks after the executions. Two weeks later, the siege was over.

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By the end of January, Parisians were dying, killed by conditions outside in the streets or inside their own bodies. The Prussians were tired of waiting around, and they finally began the bombardments everyone had been dreading since September. They hardly noticed this new misery on top of the rest. It was already a terribly cold winter, so cold that tea froze in everyone’s teacups, but the people were so malnourished their bodies couldn’t produce enough heat anymore. The diseases of malnutrition were soon to follow: scurvy, smallpox, bronchitis, pneumonia, typhoid, dysentery. While Victor Hugo dined on elephant steak, the director of the mental hospital wrote of his patients’ “great emaciation, profound debility, disordered respiration and sleeplessness” with only the miraculous arrival of a package of food from London saving the doctor’s live and those of his patients. In addition, no one could sleep anymore because the sound of the Prussian artillery kept everyone awake. After three days of bombardments, an exhausted Paris gave up and surrendered, at which point the Prussians immediately ushered in train-loads of food to the starving people. 24,000 French were dead. By May, the provisional government of Paris which had mushroomed into existence after the fall of Napoleon III signed a treaty with the Prussian forces. Did I say Prussian? The crafty Otto Von Bismarck had been exactly right, a war against the French had been just the ticket to German unification. While he waited at Versailles for the Parisians to surrender, Wilhelm I was crowned Emperor of Germany. So the provisional government of Paris signed a peace treaty with the German forces. At this point, Germany already had what it wanted: its own existence. But why stop while you’re ahead? Germany demanded 5 billion francs, and a little territory called Alsace-Lorraine, which we’ll discuss in our next episode. For now, it’s important to think about the legacy left behind after the Prussian – excuse me, German – troops withdrew. Think back to the characteristics of Paris before France decided to march into a stupid war: fully recovered and bursting with economic activity, full of restaurants and shops and new immigrants and busy factories, all of it tossed aside because some sassy Prussian chancellor decided to subtweet the President of France. Now, Paris was full of emaciated shell-shocked ghosts, tripping over the rubble in the streets. According to the hospital director, “Generations yet to come will be the sufferers from so terrible a calamity. The whole of society appears to be disorganized. Men of fortune have been ruined, and desolation and despair are everywhere to be met with…I pointed out years ago the sad effects of political revolutions on the mental health, but the cases then detailed will in amount be insignificant as compared with what this frightful social and political convulsion must eventually produce.” The good doctor was right, and two months after the siege ended, a hungry Paris ate itself. A great civil war called the Commune erupted in the streets and lasted for a month, killing 10,000 Parisians and burning entire sections of Paris to the ground. But that’s a story for another time. For now, it’s worth remembering three things: Number one, with the possible exception of elephants, French chefs can find a way to make literally anything taste good. Number two, wartime can bring a nation together and also deepen the divisions within it. Number three, the destructive power of war can sometimes resemble a lava flow, wiping out everything in its path but leaving a lot of fertile ground for something new to grow. By the end of 1871, Parisians were exhausted, starving, and furious, their beautiful city in ruins and their future looking bleak. What they didn’t know is that they were right on the edge of something wonderful, something legendary: the Belle Epoque, the golden age of Paris.

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Next week, we’ll learn about the new Paris which emerged after the Franco-Prussian War, a dazzling world capital full of peace, optimism, prosperity, and awe-inspiring innovation in the world of art and literature. We’ll do so by following the rebirth of another lowly, downtrodden leftover into one of the most iconic hallmarks of French cuisine: the escargot. Join us in two weeks for another episode of The Land of Desire and follow us on iTunes, on Facebook, or by visiting our website at www.thelandofdesire.com Until then, au revoir!

Thanks for listening to The Land of Desire. The Land of Desire is a one woman show – I’m Diana Stegall, and I research, write and produce every episode. So if you’d like to support this podcast, help me spread the word! Rate and review this show on iTunes, add the show on Twitter at “thelandofdesire” and like our Facebook page. Above all else, keep listening! You can subscribe to this show on iTunes, Stitcher, and the Google Play store, and new episodes are added every other week. Until next time, au revoir!

Further Reading:

“Food & The Siege of Paris”  (Rachel Hope Cleves)

The Judgment of Paris – The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism (Ross King)

If you’d like a peek into 19th century France, check out the incredible photographs of Auguste Bruno Braquehais (1823-75), a French photojournalist who took over 100 photographs of the Siege and the Commune.

Sources:

Short and long-term impacts of famines. The case of the siege of Paris, 1870-1871 (Denis Cogneau, Lionel Kesztenbaum. Paris School of Economics)

A Lunatic Asylum During The Siege of Paris (Brierre De Boismont and Forbes Winslow, The British Medical Journal, March 1871)

Remarks On The Prussian Siege Of Paris In Some Of Its Relations To Hygiene And Surgery (C. A. Gordon, The British Medical Journal, September 1871)

Colonial Food in Interwar Paris – The Taste of Empire (Lauren James)