1 00:00:04,680 --> 00:00:07,480 Paris is heralded as the most glamorous, 2 00:00:07,480 --> 00:00:11,600 beautiful and sophisticated cultural centre of Europe - 3 00:00:11,600 --> 00:00:15,520 adorned by magnificent palaces, gardens and boulevards. 4 00:00:17,480 --> 00:00:19,760 But it wasn't always like this. 5 00:00:29,720 --> 00:00:34,400 It's hard to believe now, but this beautiful city used to stink. 6 00:00:34,400 --> 00:00:38,640 The streets of 18th-century Paris were narrow, crowded 7 00:00:38,640 --> 00:00:42,920 and fetid - they were those of medieval city, not a modern capital. 8 00:00:42,920 --> 00:00:46,200 This was the most disgusting city imaginable. 9 00:00:48,800 --> 00:00:54,160 Just 200 years ago, Paris was famously one of the foulest and smelliest cities in Europe. 10 00:00:54,160 --> 00:00:58,720 Wading through human and animal filth to slave in toxic industries, 11 00:00:58,720 --> 00:01:04,160 ordinary Parisians suffered grotesque poverty, sickness and starvation. 12 00:01:04,160 --> 00:01:10,400 But after generations of injustice, it wasn't just the conditions that were revolting. 13 00:01:10,400 --> 00:01:12,240 The people of Paris had had enough. 14 00:01:12,240 --> 00:01:17,200 Filth, the result of poverty and injustice, was becoming political. 15 00:01:17,200 --> 00:01:21,080 Paris was a pressure cooker, and it was about to explode. 16 00:01:21,080 --> 00:01:24,680 Paris was on the brink of an epic transformation. 17 00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:31,320 I'm going to sniff out the rotten story of how filth and squalor drove Parisians into revolt, 18 00:01:32,200 --> 00:01:36,160 experience the most toxic and stinking of Paris's gruelling 19 00:01:36,160 --> 00:01:40,000 industries, recreate the foul smell that choked the streets, 20 00:01:41,680 --> 00:01:44,960 come face to face with the ultimate killing machine... 21 00:01:44,960 --> 00:01:46,200 Yikes! 22 00:01:46,200 --> 00:01:48,760 All to understand how ordinary Parisians 23 00:01:48,760 --> 00:01:54,400 fought to clean up their ancient cesspit from the bottom up. 24 00:01:54,400 --> 00:02:01,800 In less than 100 years, Paris would be transformed from a filthy, fetid place into a model city, 25 00:02:01,800 --> 00:02:05,040 the blueprint for every modern metropolis. 26 00:02:05,040 --> 00:02:10,960 But it wouldn't be an easy path - it would be bloody, violent and dirty. 27 00:02:19,080 --> 00:02:25,000 A trip down the River Seine in the 18th century would have looked and smelt very different. 28 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:29,280 Paris's main source of drinking water was little more than an open sewer, 29 00:02:29,280 --> 00:02:34,160 with up to 300 tonnes of human excrement dumped in it daily. 30 00:02:34,160 --> 00:02:37,240 With no notion of public hygiene or proper sanitation, 31 00:02:37,240 --> 00:02:40,320 there was just too much waste for the city to cope with. 32 00:02:40,320 --> 00:02:44,920 As King Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774, the city 33 00:02:44,920 --> 00:02:49,920 had been growing for centuries, and now it was fit to burst. 34 00:02:49,920 --> 00:02:55,080 Over half a million people were crammed into an area just seven by four kilometres. 35 00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:58,480 And the thriving industries continued 36 00:02:58,480 --> 00:03:04,200 to lure tens of thousands more to the capital to work as dyers, launderers, hatters and gunsmiths, 37 00:03:05,720 --> 00:03:11,840 all spewing their toxic waste into the Seine, and foul odours into the air. 38 00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:15,640 For Parisians, the filth, misery and stench was intolerable. 39 00:03:18,200 --> 00:03:21,480 This was the smelliest part of 18th-century Paris - 40 00:03:21,480 --> 00:03:24,080 there's a road still there called the Rue Mouffetard, 41 00:03:24,080 --> 00:03:26,320 which at the time meant putrid stench. 42 00:03:26,320 --> 00:03:28,920 The reason for that smell was the River Bievre, 43 00:03:28,920 --> 00:03:32,720 which came out through here and was noxious - notoriously so. 44 00:03:32,720 --> 00:03:36,560 And it's now two metres below my feet, covered up by the street. 45 00:03:38,840 --> 00:03:43,560 Back then it was the centre for the most toxic, stinking and downright 46 00:03:43,560 --> 00:03:50,920 disgusting industry in Paris, the gruesome process of turning animal hides into leather - tanning. 47 00:03:52,560 --> 00:03:55,680 This area was home to dozens of tanneries up and down here, 48 00:03:55,680 --> 00:03:58,960 who used to pour their filthy waste straight out into the river. 49 00:03:58,960 --> 00:04:04,520 I mean, the air was so toxic that it used to give people ulcerated throats. 50 00:04:06,800 --> 00:04:11,720 To give a sense of the foul, polluted stink that was aggravating the people of Paris, 51 00:04:11,720 --> 00:04:16,200 I've joined Andrew Parr, and we're using the traditional filthy ingredients to make leather. 52 00:04:17,840 --> 00:04:24,200 The most caustic stage is soaking the fatty hides in alkaline lime for three weeks. 53 00:04:24,200 --> 00:04:27,080 There's a rotting, dead animal smell! 54 00:04:27,080 --> 00:04:30,360 The smell, this is hydrated lime, water and lime mixed together. 55 00:04:30,360 --> 00:04:34,840 They've worked on the hide, they've been working on the hair and the flesh, and you're getting 56 00:04:34,840 --> 00:04:38,880 ammonia coming off, so that's what you can smell. 57 00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:43,760 It wasn't just the lime that was dangerously contaminating the air and the water. 58 00:04:43,760 --> 00:04:47,520 In the late 18th century, with over 30 tanneries crammed along 59 00:04:47,520 --> 00:04:52,280 the River Bievre, each stage was adding layers of fetid pollution. 60 00:04:52,280 --> 00:04:56,960 Drag it up over the beam, so it's then ready for the de-hairing process. 61 00:04:56,960 --> 00:05:01,320 Ho-ho, look at that! So it's got three blades, and you work it so the blade is pointing 62 00:05:01,320 --> 00:05:06,560 back towards you, so you're pulling the hair out, rather than pushing it out, just work it away like that. 63 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:10,120 With so many tanneries, the heaps of loose hair piling up would have been foul. 64 00:05:10,120 --> 00:05:12,880 It's a funny process though, isn't it? This used to be a 65 00:05:12,880 --> 00:05:17,680 living animal and now you're preparing it to be a pair of shoes. 66 00:05:17,680 --> 00:05:22,960 To add to the matted hair floating in the river, the grisly flesh is cut from the other side. 67 00:05:22,960 --> 00:05:27,520 A tanner's lot was certainly back-breaking, messy and vile. 68 00:05:27,520 --> 00:05:33,760 Just cut away all that nice fleshy part there, all that fat and sinew. 69 00:05:33,760 --> 00:05:37,800 I like the way it all splashes up in your face, really pleasant! 70 00:05:39,680 --> 00:05:43,840 You're getting dissolved fat, really, because the lime has started to dissolve it, 71 00:05:43,840 --> 00:05:45,960 so it's really squidgy. Quite unpleasant. 72 00:05:45,960 --> 00:05:50,560 So basically, you spend all day creating piles of fat, like that. 73 00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:55,360 Stinking fat dumped into the water supply is hazardous, but there was an even more 74 00:05:55,360 --> 00:06:02,520 disgusting, evil ingredient, as the Parisian tanners relied on a foul pollutant to do their dirty work. 75 00:06:02,520 --> 00:06:04,920 Right, so you get the dog poo and put it in there. 76 00:06:04,920 --> 00:06:07,600 Baiting is a key part of the tanning process. 77 00:06:07,600 --> 00:06:13,080 The tanners used a mixture of dog and bird dung in hot water to release bacteria. 78 00:06:13,080 --> 00:06:16,000 What is it about dog poo that is so disgusting? 79 00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:19,400 The hide was immersed in this revolting concoction to soften it. 80 00:06:19,400 --> 00:06:24,640 There was no shortage of dog poo in Paris, as there were thousands 81 00:06:24,640 --> 00:06:27,080 of stray dogs leaving their muck all over the place. 82 00:06:27,080 --> 00:06:29,120 Nothing like a bit of fresh bait. 83 00:06:29,120 --> 00:06:31,600 Oh, every time you do that, there's this wave...! 84 00:06:31,600 --> 00:06:37,080 This was then mixed with human urine, collected from piss pots left on street corners. 85 00:06:37,080 --> 00:06:42,480 Because it's full of bacteria, of course the bacteria multiplies, so it gets worse as the day goes on. 86 00:06:42,480 --> 00:06:47,640 If you keep it for several days, especially if it's warm in the summer, the smell gets worse. 87 00:06:47,640 --> 00:06:49,520 Do it by hand, it's going to... No way. 88 00:06:49,520 --> 00:06:52,800 The dog poo, hair, fat and acid all got chucked into the Bievre, 89 00:06:52,800 --> 00:06:56,880 that flowed directly into the River Seine. 90 00:06:56,880 --> 00:07:01,000 So it's a pretty filthy industry. I mean, if you're living downstream 91 00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:03,880 of a tannery, your life expectancy wouldn't be that good... 92 00:07:03,880 --> 00:07:09,640 If you were drinking this water, it wouldn't be good at all - I think that's why they drank wine. 93 00:07:09,640 --> 00:07:13,440 The miserable working conditions of industrial Paris were breeding 94 00:07:13,440 --> 00:07:18,640 not just foul pollutants, but the stench of injustice and discontent. 95 00:07:19,800 --> 00:07:21,960 Paris was an awful place to live, where 96 00:07:21,960 --> 00:07:27,000 many people worked in disgusting conditions, doing back-breaking work in tanneries like this one. 97 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:31,200 But out of this, exquisite luxury goods were produced, like these gloves. 98 00:07:31,200 --> 00:07:32,920 It was also a very unequal society. 99 00:07:32,920 --> 00:07:38,480 These gloves would have cost ten times what a family of four would have been able to spend in a week - 100 00:07:38,480 --> 00:07:41,880 only the super rich could afford them. 101 00:07:41,880 --> 00:07:44,640 This blatant injustice riled the people of Paris. 102 00:07:44,640 --> 00:07:50,880 In the late 18th century, French society was clearly divided into the haves and the have-nots. 103 00:07:50,880 --> 00:07:54,800 The privileged nobility and clergy accounted for just 2% of the population. 104 00:07:54,800 --> 00:08:01,000 The other 98% were marginalised, and the majority were desperately poor. 105 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:03,680 These Parisians were deeply unhappy with their lot. 106 00:08:03,680 --> 00:08:07,320 They slaved to make Paris tick, but saw few of the benefits. 107 00:08:08,920 --> 00:08:14,360 Around this city of 600,000 people was a three-metre-high wall, designed to regulate the flow of 108 00:08:14,360 --> 00:08:16,200 people and goods in and out of the city. 109 00:08:16,200 --> 00:08:20,360 But for the people of Paris, it was both a jailer and a tax man, 110 00:08:20,360 --> 00:08:26,160 because there were 60 of these toll houses here, and all goods coming into the city were heavily taxed. 111 00:08:26,160 --> 00:08:31,920 The people of Paris felt they were being squeezed, physically and economically. 112 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:36,520 A very beautiful building - typical 18th-century government, 113 00:08:36,520 --> 00:08:41,040 if they're going to take money off you, they do it in pleasant, neo-classical surroundings. 114 00:08:41,040 --> 00:08:46,040 So in here were the crowded streets of Paris, and out there was the sweet-smelling countryside. 115 00:08:46,040 --> 00:08:49,240 And the people in here particularly resented paying taxes toa king 116 00:08:49,240 --> 00:08:52,040 they found increasingly irrelevant and inefficient. 117 00:08:52,040 --> 00:08:56,600 Of course they had no say in how those taxes were spent, because it was an absolute system. 118 00:08:56,600 --> 00:09:01,080 And one project that particularly angered them was when the king, in the 18th century, 119 00:09:01,080 --> 00:09:03,800 built what was effectively a ring road, just out there, 120 00:09:03,800 --> 00:09:07,840 which meant he didn't even have to travel through his own capital city. 121 00:09:10,600 --> 00:09:13,680 Built by his father, this solution to the stench and crush 122 00:09:13,680 --> 00:09:20,720 of insalubrious Paris was readily embraced by the young Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette. 123 00:09:20,720 --> 00:09:26,480 Trouble was, abandoning their subjects to rot in their own filth just made matters worse. 124 00:09:26,480 --> 00:09:33,160 And unlike England's king, who was based in London itself, Louis XVI chose to exercise his absolute rule 125 00:09:33,160 --> 00:09:40,120 from an isolated and privileged retreat, the Palace of Versailles. 126 00:09:52,440 --> 00:09:56,360 This really was the home of the filthy rich, 127 00:09:56,360 --> 00:10:01,240 a palace of perfume and powder, of pleasure and power. 128 00:10:01,240 --> 00:10:08,640 It covers an area of 67,000 square metres - there are 700 rooms, with 2,000 windows. 129 00:10:08,640 --> 00:10:16,320 Even though it was close to Paris, it was a world away from those crowded, stinking streets. 130 00:10:16,320 --> 00:10:20,920 It was quite literally the most extravagant palace on the planet. 131 00:10:23,600 --> 00:10:27,360 The spectacular hall of mirrors, where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette held court, 132 00:10:27,360 --> 00:10:31,240 is almost as long as a football pitch and required 8,000 candles 133 00:10:31,240 --> 00:10:38,040 a night to light it - impolitic, at a time when the king's subjects could barely afford bread. 134 00:10:39,840 --> 00:10:42,480 The palace was open, light, full of mirrors and glass, 135 00:10:42,480 --> 00:10:48,280 at every level giving the appearance of all that Paris was not. 136 00:10:48,280 --> 00:10:51,160 Surprisingly, given that their lives in many ways couldn't have 137 00:10:51,160 --> 00:10:55,680 been more different from the filthy poor people out there, 138 00:10:55,680 --> 00:11:00,560 the super rich had one thing in common - they were filthy and smelly themselves. 139 00:11:00,560 --> 00:11:03,400 Over 2,000 people lived and worked in the palace, 140 00:11:03,400 --> 00:11:06,680 and with few toilets and hundreds of visitors every day, 141 00:11:06,680 --> 00:11:10,200 it's claimed that people had to relieve themselves almost anywhere. 142 00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:13,320 TRICKLING WATER Horace Walpole wrote that the approach 143 00:11:13,320 --> 00:11:17,280 to Versailles was magnificent, but the squalor inside was unspeakable. 144 00:11:17,280 --> 00:11:24,160 Nowadays we think of Versailles as a byword for exquisite luxury, but back in the 18th century this was 145 00:11:24,160 --> 00:11:29,120 a public building, it was thronged with petitioners hoping to get a favour out of the king or the 146 00:11:29,120 --> 00:11:33,600 queen, which meant that in between these exquisite rooms, the corridors 147 00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:36,280 acted like public lavatories, they were cesspits. 148 00:11:36,280 --> 00:11:39,920 There was filth everywhere and the stink would have been unbelievable. 149 00:11:39,920 --> 00:11:42,840 Another prominent writer of the time documented, "There was the 150 00:11:42,840 --> 00:11:47,400 "smell of butchers roasting pigs, the courtyard and corridors were 151 00:11:47,400 --> 00:11:52,440 "full of urine and stagnant water, and livestock even defecated in the great gallery". 152 00:11:55,160 --> 00:11:57,400 It was so dirty people used to wear dresses 153 00:11:57,400 --> 00:12:00,280 with hems that were brown, so it wouldn't show up the muck. 154 00:12:00,280 --> 00:12:05,240 But of course, the king and queen needed some private space in which they could be clean, and that's why 155 00:12:05,240 --> 00:12:07,960 there's a secret door right over there. 156 00:12:11,600 --> 00:12:16,320 Right, so this is the private side of Versailles, the bit the public don't see, the bit that 157 00:12:16,320 --> 00:12:20,360 all the courtiers and all the people clamouring for the queen's attention wouldn't see. 158 00:12:20,360 --> 00:12:23,920 I suspect Marie Antoinette would have been far more comfortable in here. 159 00:12:23,920 --> 00:12:28,160 You go from the grandeur out there to the far more simple, far smaller 160 00:12:28,160 --> 00:12:30,640 rooms in here, it's a real human scale. 161 00:12:30,640 --> 00:12:34,640 And the only people allowed back here would have been personal servants, 162 00:12:34,640 --> 00:12:38,160 people helping her with her hair and her skin, her make-up. 163 00:12:38,160 --> 00:12:42,840 She would have been comfortable here and shielded to the mass of people out there. 164 00:12:42,840 --> 00:12:44,800 Wonderful. 165 00:12:44,800 --> 00:12:47,640 Now through here, I think, 166 00:12:47,640 --> 00:12:52,960 yep, this I think is the bathroom, this is where the bathtub used to be. 167 00:12:52,960 --> 00:12:57,840 She was infamous for spending hours at a time in the bath, in fact, she used to have her lunch in the bath. 168 00:12:57,840 --> 00:13:01,520 In such a filthy, dirty age, this was considered strange behaviour. 169 00:13:04,960 --> 00:13:08,120 Marie Antoinette favoured ostentatious powdered wigs, 170 00:13:08,120 --> 00:13:13,760 expensive make-up, and extravagant perfumes to maintain an air of cleanliness. 171 00:13:13,760 --> 00:13:16,520 But these obscene levels of luxury, paid for by taxing the 172 00:13:16,520 --> 00:13:22,920 poor, were provocative, especially as the aristocracy didn't pay tax. 173 00:13:22,920 --> 00:13:25,160 The more the royals tried to escape the filth, 174 00:13:25,160 --> 00:13:28,960 the more they seemed to be rubbing ordinary people's noses in it. 175 00:13:28,960 --> 00:13:34,200 Masking bad smells is one thing, getting rid of their causes quite another, 176 00:13:34,200 --> 00:13:39,160 unless you're one of the privileged few that could get their hands on a cutting-edge piece of technology. 177 00:13:39,160 --> 00:13:44,760 A woman obsessed with cleanliness had to have a "lieu anglais", place of the English. 178 00:13:44,760 --> 00:13:47,520 Possibly having a bit of a dig at the English, or because 179 00:13:47,520 --> 00:13:50,720 this was the latest in conveniences from across the Channel. 180 00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:58,000 It's where we get the word loo from, one of the first toilets in France, where Marie Antoinette would sit 181 00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:01,640 and get rid of the waste in what we now consider a civilised fashion. 182 00:14:01,640 --> 00:14:05,240 And of course, apart from her, no-one in Versailles had these mod cons, 183 00:14:05,240 --> 00:14:09,360 for everyone else at Versailles, they had simple chamber pots. 184 00:14:09,360 --> 00:14:13,520 That meant once they'd finished their business, they throw them out of the windows, 185 00:14:13,520 --> 00:14:16,640 which was tough for the people walking around on the ground floor. 186 00:14:16,640 --> 00:14:20,960 Apparently they used leather umbrellas to keep this rain of filth off their heads. 187 00:14:26,720 --> 00:14:32,640 Just as this crazy invention deflected the stinking mess, Louis and his court shielded themselves 188 00:14:32,640 --> 00:14:35,520 from the realities of the political situation. 189 00:14:35,520 --> 00:14:38,480 Not only were the filthy poor funding the lavish lifestyle 190 00:14:38,480 --> 00:14:44,000 at Versailles, France had also been embroiled in costly wars abroad. 191 00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:45,880 The coffers were empty. 192 00:14:45,880 --> 00:14:49,520 The people were overtaxed and on the verge of destitution. 193 00:14:49,520 --> 00:14:53,480 15 miles away in Paris, it would take more than expensive perfume 194 00:14:53,480 --> 00:14:58,960 to cover up that stench, or the real desire for political change. 195 00:15:00,480 --> 00:15:04,240 Neglected and suffering from grotesque filth and poverty, living 196 00:15:04,240 --> 00:15:08,760 in Paris was described as being sucked into a fetid sewer. 197 00:15:08,760 --> 00:15:14,920 And what put everyone's noses out of joint was the malodorous, relentless stink. 198 00:15:14,920 --> 00:15:19,480 I want to get a sense of what it felt like to be condemned to live like this. 199 00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:24,600 Paris is home to some of the most famous fragrances in the world, like 200 00:15:24,600 --> 00:15:28,920 Chanel and Dior, but I haven't come here to find a sophisticated scent. 201 00:15:28,920 --> 00:15:32,160 Instead I'm going to enlist the help of a man with one of the most 202 00:15:32,160 --> 00:15:38,080 discerning noses in the city, and together we're going to recreate the stench of 18th-century Paris. 203 00:15:41,320 --> 00:15:46,040 I want to brew up the definitive heady blend of Pong de Paris. 204 00:15:46,040 --> 00:15:49,520 I've brought a few of the terrible smells that would have assaulted 205 00:15:49,520 --> 00:15:51,320 the senses to the Givaudan Perfumery, 206 00:15:51,320 --> 00:15:53,600 to inspire Olivier Pescheux. 207 00:15:53,600 --> 00:15:57,120 OK, let's smell. Here's a disgusting picture of an open grave 208 00:15:57,120 --> 00:16:00,920 and bodies decaying without lids on the coffins. Cadavers, yeah. 209 00:16:00,920 --> 00:16:05,440 Not very nice. Bit of an old onion. Wow. Yep, pretty strong. Yeah. 210 00:16:05,440 --> 00:16:08,960 Then of course, some of these, very French - garlic. 211 00:16:08,960 --> 00:16:10,760 Very strong smell. 212 00:16:10,760 --> 00:16:13,840 Merchants from all over the country flocked 213 00:16:13,840 --> 00:16:17,400 to the biggest market in Paris, Les Halles, to sell their goods. 214 00:16:17,400 --> 00:16:20,280 Emile Zola later called it the stomach of Paris. 215 00:16:20,280 --> 00:16:22,720 That's not so fresh. 216 00:16:22,720 --> 00:16:27,120 Without refrigeration, age-old meat, rotting vegetables and rancid cheese 217 00:16:27,120 --> 00:16:33,560 would vie for the nose's attention, with the manure and garbage that festered in the streets. 218 00:16:33,560 --> 00:16:35,280 Fresh this morning. 219 00:16:35,280 --> 00:16:37,160 Where did you find that in Paris? 220 00:16:37,160 --> 00:16:38,840 Some horse manure. 221 00:16:38,840 --> 00:16:42,720 With only nine bath houses and a general suspicion of water, 222 00:16:42,720 --> 00:16:48,840 washing was rare. The worst smell was from the people themselves, escaping from every pore. 223 00:16:48,840 --> 00:16:52,600 Smelly T-shirt that I've been wearing for a few days. Wow. It's yours? Yep, afraid so. 224 00:16:52,600 --> 00:16:58,680 Breath smelling of rotting teeth and sour milk, stale sweat, dirty hair, 225 00:16:58,680 --> 00:17:00,840 bodily secretions. Human urine. 226 00:17:00,840 --> 00:17:04,920 OK, I'm not going to smell it, OK, I trust you, thank you. 227 00:17:04,920 --> 00:17:07,960 In the perfume lab, 228 00:17:07,960 --> 00:17:12,640 we concoct a powerful blend of some pretty evil ingredients, 229 00:17:12,640 --> 00:17:17,040 with a base note of stale urine and a top note of old fish. 230 00:17:17,040 --> 00:17:23,440 An hour later, our bespoke 18th-century stench is ready for a snifter. 231 00:17:23,440 --> 00:17:27,280 So you want to smell the result of Paris? Yes, please. 232 00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:29,560 Will you be marketing this one heavily? 233 00:17:29,560 --> 00:17:32,040 That's going to be difficult, yeah. 234 00:17:32,040 --> 00:17:34,920 Oh, that's so bad! Yeah. It brings tears to the eyes. 235 00:17:34,920 --> 00:17:37,120 You have everything actually. Everything? 236 00:17:37,120 --> 00:17:38,960 Especially this one. From the horse. 237 00:17:38,960 --> 00:17:40,800 It's a little bit like garlic also. 238 00:17:40,800 --> 00:17:43,040 A little bit like garlic, yeah, it's quite... 239 00:17:43,040 --> 00:17:46,840 Fatty, heavy. Quite musky. 240 00:17:46,840 --> 00:17:48,840 It comes in different waves. Sometimes 241 00:17:48,840 --> 00:17:53,880 overwhelming vegetable smell and then suddenly some fish, or some rotting flesh comes at you. 242 00:17:53,880 --> 00:17:55,600 Eurgh. 243 00:17:55,600 --> 00:17:57,560 I would not like to live in that world. 244 00:17:57,560 --> 00:18:01,160 This stuff really stinks, but don't just take my word for it. 245 00:18:01,160 --> 00:18:04,800 I'm going to unleash it onto Parisians today, to see if they can 246 00:18:04,800 --> 00:18:09,040 stomach what their city would have smelt like 200 years ago. 247 00:18:09,040 --> 00:18:10,080 Madame... 248 00:18:10,080 --> 00:18:12,240 Would you like to try some perfume? 249 00:18:13,280 --> 00:18:15,200 Argh! 250 00:18:15,200 --> 00:18:17,240 How about you? 251 00:18:18,560 --> 00:18:23,960 They like it, that's great. It's, er, meant to smell like a disgusting street in 18th-century Paris. 252 00:18:23,960 --> 00:18:25,760 It's weird. 253 00:18:25,760 --> 00:18:30,160 What do you think it smells like? I don't know, but I hate it. 254 00:18:30,160 --> 00:18:32,800 Pas bon. Really? Not good. 255 00:18:32,800 --> 00:18:35,080 OK. Can you try this perfume? 256 00:18:37,600 --> 00:18:39,120 Not good? SHE SPITS 257 00:18:39,120 --> 00:18:40,720 Oh-ho! Excuse me. 258 00:18:41,960 --> 00:18:46,360 Well, the people of Paris have spoken, and they do not like the Pong de Paris. 259 00:18:46,360 --> 00:18:48,680 I can't say I'm entirely surprised, it is 260 00:18:48,680 --> 00:18:53,360 absolutely stinking, but that is as close as most of these people are ever going to come to time travel. 261 00:18:53,360 --> 00:18:56,640 But back in the 18th century, people knew their city stank - 262 00:18:56,640 --> 00:19:01,360 what they were worried about was, was that smell bad for them? 263 00:19:02,120 --> 00:19:05,600 Paris was killing its own. 264 00:19:05,600 --> 00:19:09,680 Around 20,000 people died each year in the capital, one in four newborns 265 00:19:09,680 --> 00:19:16,920 perished and the average life expectancy at birth for a poor labourer was just 23 years. 266 00:19:16,920 --> 00:19:20,880 The shocking death toll was so bad that it created a macabre problem. 267 00:19:20,880 --> 00:19:25,640 It wasnust the waste from the living that made Paris stink so much. 268 00:19:25,640 --> 00:19:30,000 The city was terribly overcrowded and so too, inevitably, were its burial grounds. 269 00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:34,480 And this square is on the site of what in the 18th century was the largest of them all. 270 00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:39,120 It was known as the Cemetery of the Innocents and for eight centuries, Parisians buried their 271 00:19:39,120 --> 00:19:44,520 dead in the ground here, in a completely haphazard fashion, few of them in proper coffins. 272 00:19:44,520 --> 00:19:46,160 Rotting corpses, ravaged by smallpox, 273 00:19:46,160 --> 00:19:52,080 tuberculosis and syphilis started piling up in church graveyards. 274 00:19:52,080 --> 00:19:54,960 Parishioners stayed away from their daily worship as the smell of bodies 275 00:19:54,960 --> 00:19:59,080 was so strong, it make their eyes water and their throats retch. 276 00:19:59,080 --> 00:20:01,440 But that wasnll. 277 00:20:01,440 --> 00:20:09,280 By the late 18th century, this place was filled literally to overflowing - As one local restaurateur, a Mr 278 00:20:09,280 --> 00:20:15,280 Gravelot, found to his cost, when he made a particularly shocking trip to his basement. 279 00:20:15,280 --> 00:20:21,080 In June 1780, the smell emanating from Mr Gravelotellar was revolting. 280 00:20:21,080 --> 00:20:24,960 As he went to investigate, he saw that his wall had collapsed, 281 00:20:24,960 --> 00:20:30,280 and through the wet earth, corpses were spilling out from the adjacent cemetery. 282 00:20:30,280 --> 00:20:35,760 Rotting, putrefying smells like this terrified Parisians. 283 00:20:35,760 --> 00:20:37,600 For centuries, theyelieved that evil 284 00:20:37,600 --> 00:20:42,800 odours themselves, miasmas, were the cause of sickness and death. 285 00:20:42,800 --> 00:20:49,040 But now, some forward-thinking Parisians were questioning this medieval idea. 286 00:20:49,040 --> 00:20:53,920 They wanted to see if there was a scientific link between dirt and disease. 287 00:20:53,920 --> 00:20:57,400 With historian Andrew Hussey, Ietracing the steps of one 288 00:20:57,400 --> 00:21:03,280 pioneering hygienist who wanted to drag Paris out of the dark ages. 289 00:21:03,280 --> 00:21:05,920 Itll a bit gentrified around here now, isnt? 290 00:21:05,920 --> 00:21:08,120 But this used to be a real cesspit, did it? 291 00:21:08,120 --> 00:21:11,840 This was, you know, I think as a 21st century person, 292 00:21:11,840 --> 00:21:15,680 you would have been on your knees with the sheer noxiousness of what went on round here. 293 00:21:15,680 --> 00:21:19,960 I mean this, effectively, was an open latrine, the river was full of sewage 294 00:21:19,960 --> 00:21:24,480 and dead bodies, so this place was absolutely amazingly rank. 295 00:21:24,480 --> 00:21:27,040 So it sounds pretty noxious. 296 00:21:27,040 --> 00:21:29,520 Was it actually bad for peopleealth living round here? 297 00:21:29,520 --> 00:21:34,440 People believed that smells could kill you, but there was no scientific basis for this. 298 00:21:34,440 --> 00:21:37,720 But we havenot yet to the age of hygiene, because thereo 299 00:21:37,720 --> 00:21:41,040 connection between germ theory and disease and mortality. 300 00:21:41,040 --> 00:21:44,480 But in the age of reason, you know, it was a logical question to ask why. 301 00:21:44,480 --> 00:21:47,440 And who starts to ask those questions and what do they start to find out? 302 00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:53,640 The leading figure is a man of science and reason called Jean Noel Halle, and his assistant, who decided 303 00:21:53,640 --> 00:22:00,480 that the best way to understand the connection between smells and disease was to set off in Paris, using the 304 00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:05,200 only scientific equipment they had, which was their noses, and to discover what was really going on. 305 00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:09,760 Armed with nothing but a map and their sense of smell, Halle and his assistant embarked 306 00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:15,680 on a route that penetrated the most notoriously filthy and contaminated areas of Paris. 307 00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:21,440 Their aim was to improve public hygiene by recording which areas smelt worse and why. 308 00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:24,400 First, they descended to the banks of the Seine. 309 00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:29,520 Ittill not the cleanest city in the world, some nasty-looking sludge. 310 00:22:29,520 --> 00:22:32,040 Yeah. But there was a belief that if you touched that, youet gangrene within days. 311 00:22:32,040 --> 00:22:34,320 But I donant to put it to the test. Now wejust come 312 00:22:34,320 --> 00:22:36,840 out of the Pont Neuf and we got the Pont au Change over there. 313 00:22:36,840 --> 00:22:44,640 Now this is described by Halle as a kind of a mud bank thato black, the stench is poisonous. 314 00:22:44,640 --> 00:22:48,800 And thatecause iteing fed by the open sewer of Chatelet, which is just over there. 315 00:22:48,800 --> 00:22:52,520 The mud bank of sewage then meets the detritus 316 00:22:52,520 --> 00:22:56,640 of the abattoirs and the butchers, so yougot a mound of rotting meat. 317 00:22:56,640 --> 00:22:59,720 You can imagine the flies, the maggots, the larva, 318 00:22:59,720 --> 00:23:06,200 and iturrounded, encrusted by a kind of coulis of sewage. 319 00:23:06,200 --> 00:23:10,720 It must have just been relentless, because other cities throughout the world have got rivers 320 00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:14,880 where itidal and they kind of get swept out, whereas the Seine is quite slow-moving, isnt? 321 00:23:14,880 --> 00:23:21,840 Yougot to think of the Seine as a kind of open, weeping sore in the centre of the city. 322 00:23:21,840 --> 00:23:25,120 On their horrible ten kilometre journey around the Seine, 323 00:23:25,120 --> 00:23:30,440 they recorded the levels of human sewage, rotting matter and fetid air, to establish the difference 324 00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:34,840 between merely unpleasant pongs and smells that were actually dangerous. 325 00:23:34,840 --> 00:23:37,200 The area that was most distressing to the 326 00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:41,720 Parisians was the east of Paris, the centre for the polluting industries. 327 00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:44,720 There, the noxious fumes from the rancid tanneries was so acute 328 00:23:44,720 --> 00:23:49,160 that Halle heroically sent his assistant to go on alone. 329 00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:52,920 What happened was that he went down there, right down to the tanneries, 330 00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:57,840 and within half an hour, his tongue had swollen up, his mouth had swollen up, with lesions on his throat, 331 00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:02,120 he was retching, his mouth was ulcerated, he thought he was going to die. 332 00:24:02,120 --> 00:24:04,760 And he came back to Halle and he said, dono down there under any circumstances. 333 00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:10,600 Well, when he recovered, what they worked out was there was the distinction between the stench of 334 00:24:10,600 --> 00:24:15,520 excrement over there in the west and the poisons that could kill you over in the east. 335 00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:21,760 Now this wasnerm theory, this wasnhe beginnings of germ theory, but it was the distinction between 336 00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:25,400 smell, which can be pretty harmless, and poison, which is going to kill you. Thatreat. 337 00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:29,000 So although it was very primitive, this was the first time that anyone 338 00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:31,440 had actually experimented with it, in a kind of scientific way. 339 00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:34,680 I donhink itny exaggeration to say that what happens here is one 340 00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:39,680 of those moments in history where yougot a gear change between the medieval mind and the modern mind, 341 00:24:39,680 --> 00:24:41,960 the medieval city and the modern city. 342 00:24:41,960 --> 00:24:47,120 And Paris is the first modern city in the world, everything we see around us was invented in the 19th century, 343 00:24:47,120 --> 00:24:50,480 as a product of modernity, laying order over disorder. 344 00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:54,400 And Halleourney through the excrement, the smells, 345 00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:58,080 the nasty pongs of Paris, was the beginning of that historical journey. 346 00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:04,920 It wasnust the men of science who had a vision for a modern, cleaner and healthier future, 347 00:25:04,920 --> 00:25:10,880 but also a group of intellectuals, who were offering the emerging educated and literate middle class, 348 00:25:10,880 --> 00:25:16,200 the bourgeoisie, a very persuasive alternative to life in stinking Paris. 349 00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:22,480 I always loved coming to this place, it consciously imitates the Pantheon 350 00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:26,480 in Rome, where the ancient Romans went to celebrate their gods. 351 00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:29,640 But this is a temple not of gods but of men, of people like Voltaire 352 00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:33,120 and Rousseau, the Olympians of the Enlightenment. 353 00:25:33,120 --> 00:25:36,600 The Enlightenment was a movement of change, where thinkers used science 354 00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:40,560 and reason to challenge authority, tradition and superstition. 355 00:25:40,560 --> 00:25:44,000 And Voltaire believed that a sanitary, clean, civilised 356 00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:47,480 city was very much part of a new, enlightened society, and he was so 357 00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:53,760 disgusted by the filth of Paris that he began to imagine what a new city would smell and look like. 358 00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:59,880 We rightly blush to see public markets in narrow streets displaying 359 00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:04,200 dirtiness, spreading infection and causing public disorders. 360 00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:08,080 We need to open public markets, water fountains which work, 361 00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:12,040 we must widen the narrow and unhealthy streets. 362 00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:17,800 Filth was now becoming a catalyst for political change. 363 00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:22,080 Generations of oppression, squalor and desperation had reached tipping point. 364 00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:29,120 The Parisians were now clamouring to radically improve their overcrowded, stinking and poisoned city. 365 00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:33,960 In a bid to quell the mounting unrest, 366 00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:39,280 the king commissioned a nationwide survey of his subjectsncerns. 367 00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:46,200 Gathered from all over the country, the national archives keeps all the written complaints. 368 00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:58,520 These are the cahiers de doleances, the books of grievances, and there are 25,000 of them. 369 00:26:58,520 --> 00:27:00,240 We have just a fraction of them here. 370 00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:03,200 This was a remarkable, totally unexpected response 371 00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:08,640 to Louistempt to placate his people by asking them what was concerning them in their lives. 372 00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:10,560 And actually, it was a huge reservoir of 373 00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:14,600 bitterness that had been building up, because theyeen denied that kind of outlet before. 374 00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:16,880 So this was an unprecedented national survey, it gives us a 375 00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:21,320 wonderful snapshot of what life was like in late 18th century France. 376 00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:23,680 This one here talks about the people that live near a slaughter house, 377 00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:28,560 and they say the smell is absolutely terrible, stinking, particularly in the summer. 378 00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:33,840 And theyterribly worried about the effect of fire during the process of making candles. 379 00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:37,680 Fire of course was an omnipresent fear for people that lived in these 380 00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:40,360 tightly-packed conditions, wooden houses. 381 00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:44,560 Itonderful how rough these are, you can still see people signatures and crossings-out as 382 00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:50,480 people change their mind. These ones were collated just a few years later into slightly smarter volumes. 383 00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:53,960 This one refers to the River Bievre, which is the tributary to the Seine, 384 00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:55,680 where all the tanneries were of course. 385 00:27:55,680 --> 00:27:59,040 And it says that the water was so polluted it was impossible to drink, 386 00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:02,440 impossible to make soup out of, particularly with all the dye from 387 00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:07,280 the colourists that was flooding in there, and people were worried theye poisoned. 388 00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:10,640 Really what lies behind all this is the idea of rights. 389 00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:12,680 The people of France had come to believe that they 390 00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:18,360 had rights that were being infringed by their denial of access to clean water and decent living conditions. 391 00:28:18,360 --> 00:28:22,280 They wanted to be heard and they wanted to protect those rights and advance them. 392 00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:24,200 This man here is an architect, and he says heeen forwarding all 393 00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:25,880 sorts of ideas for cleaning up Paris. 394 00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:30,040 For example, dredging the Seine, which at the moment is nothing but a sewer. 395 00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:34,840 But heot being listened to. And people were struggling to improve their quality of life, and 396 00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:39,880 for them it was absolutely linked in their minds to the achievement of political rights as well. 397 00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:44,800 Thathy these documents are not just a list of grievances, they are revolutionary. 398 00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:48,960 Expectations had been raised. 399 00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:52,600 From all over France, tens of thousands contributed. 400 00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:57,800 And those whoigned wanted to see significant results. 401 00:28:57,800 --> 00:29:00,480 They believed the king would act in their interests and alleviate the 402 00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:05,080 filth and degradation piled upon them, but after all this effort, 403 00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:10,800 when the complaints were read at the Palace of Versailles in May 1789, it was a total sham. 404 00:29:10,800 --> 00:29:15,360 The scale of the problems were so vast that the king, with 405 00:29:15,360 --> 00:29:20,840 little money or inclination to take on this challenge, changed nothing. 406 00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:26,200 Whato ironic about the kingit gesture is that it totally backfired. 407 00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:30,920 People were politicised, they were radicalised by this process of consultation. 408 00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:35,680 It gave them the taste for political involvement, it also showed just how impotent the king was. 409 00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:39,920 He was penniless so he was unable to do anything about all these grievances that had been raised. 410 00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:46,480 Rather than dispelling revolutionary feeling in the country, the king had fanned its flames. 411 00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:58,400 Parisians were incensed that their suggestions for a modern, cleaner and more just city had been ignored. 412 00:29:58,400 --> 00:30:02,280 On the streets, the anger was palpable. 413 00:30:02,280 --> 00:30:04,520 The masses were ready for action. 414 00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:10,520 Incendiary pamphlets flew off the printing presses, 415 00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:14,000 revolutionary speakers fired up the people in the streets. 416 00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:17,720 And in this cafe, radicals gathered to plan their strategy. 417 00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:22,720 One of them was a 26 year-old called Camille Desmoulins, and on the 12th of July 1789, 418 00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:27,040 he made one particularly fervent speech, brandishing a pistol. 419 00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:32,160 From one end of the country to the other, he said, "The same universal cry is heard. 420 00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:35,440 "Everyone wants to be free." 421 00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:37,640 Paris was slipping from the king's grasp. 422 00:30:37,640 --> 00:30:40,960 Middle class revolutionaries started to adopt the filth covered clothes 423 00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:44,240 of tradesmen to stress their solidarity with the workers. 424 00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:46,360 Revolution was in the air. 425 00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:52,720 What finally tipped the city into open revolt was a natural disaster. 426 00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:57,280 A volcano erupted in Iceland, causing havoc across Europe. 427 00:30:57,280 --> 00:30:59,920 The harvest in 1788 was decimated. 428 00:30:59,920 --> 00:31:04,240 Making bread, the most basic staple, impossible to buy. 429 00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:07,480 Such was the desperation that fights broke out. 430 00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:10,840 Bakers were even lynched for stockpiling flour 431 00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:15,600 or using the contaminated river water to make foul bread. 432 00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:19,560 Events now accelerated with terrifying momentum. 433 00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:22,960 Paris was seething, people were living surrounded by filth, 434 00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:25,400 unable to afford bread and being ruled over 435 00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:28,080 by a king who was useless and his administration, 436 00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:30,600 who despite all of their taxes, was bankrupt. 437 00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:33,520 And when people are threatened with starvation, 438 00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:36,280 when people are desperate, they turn violent. 439 00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:45,840 On July 14th 1789, the people of Paris charged through the filthy streets. 440 00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:49,560 It was revolution. 441 00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:54,920 They wanted their basic human rights. 442 00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:58,920 A cleaner, modern city for all and an end to royal tyranny. 443 00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:02,360 As they marched up this road toward the site of the Bastille, 444 00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:06,880 which is just there, they were starting a long French tradition 445 00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:09,600 of resistance and revolution. 446 00:32:09,600 --> 00:32:13,520 Today, people are marching about pensions, but ever since then, 447 00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:19,520 the French people have marched, physically and metaphorically, towards the Bastille. 448 00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:23,200 The Bastille was the main prison in Paris 449 00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,560 and was thought to contain supplies of muskets and gunpowder 450 00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:30,840 The starving, dirty, marauding mob wanted to storm the fortress 451 00:32:30,840 --> 00:32:33,880 and arm themselves against the king's troops. 452 00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:36,960 The choice of the Bastille was obvious. 453 00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:40,400 For the people of Paris it symbolised arbitrary, tyrannical government. 454 00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:45,560 The king was allowed to throw men in there as political prisoners without due process of law. 455 00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:47,600 Filth even played it's part. 456 00:32:47,600 --> 00:32:51,120 One key revolutionary, Santerre, dragged carts filled with 457 00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:53,960 horse manure up to the Bastille and set them alight. 458 00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:58,920 The acrid smoke was crucial in shielding the mob's advance. 459 00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:03,280 Like these protesters today, 460 00:33:03,280 --> 00:33:07,560 the rioters arrived here at the Bastille and stormed the fortress. 461 00:33:07,560 --> 00:33:10,760 They carried out the governor and executed him in the street. 462 00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:14,800 It was the start of the bloodiest revolution in French history. 463 00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:24,200 The storming of the Bastille is still celebrated every year all over France. 464 00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:28,360 It symbolises the start of the French Revolution 465 00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:31,320 and the first steps towards a modern democracy 466 00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:34,640 based on the principles of liberte, egalite and fraternite. 467 00:33:37,320 --> 00:33:40,280 Just a month after the Bastille was stormed, 468 00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:42,920 a document was drawn up outlining the people's vision 469 00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:46,240 to state their basic human rights. 470 00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:51,560 It's kept under lock and key here at the national archives. 471 00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:57,120 This really is a unique opportunity to have a look at a momentous 472 00:33:57,120 --> 00:34:01,840 landmark on the road to modern, democratic thought. 473 00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:04,680 I have to be very, very careful here. 474 00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:08,520 Because it is the Declarations of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 475 00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:11,560 made in 1789, and it's still a beautiful document, 476 00:34:11,560 --> 00:34:16,280 just incredible to be handling the original like this. 477 00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:20,240 It's also one of the most inflammatory documents ever created 478 00:34:20,240 --> 00:34:23,160 because this lists a series of rights that men have, 479 00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:27,200 not as a product of their class or their race or educational background 480 00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:29,640 or their wealth, but because they are men. 481 00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:32,760 And any government that disrespects those rights 482 00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:35,480 is illegitimate and should be overthrown. 483 00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:38,840 It a very short document, it's only 800 words, 484 00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:41,040 it could be easily printed on one page, 485 00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:44,440 easily understood, and it spread like wildfire through Europe. 486 00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:46,600 It was translated into countless languages. 487 00:34:46,600 --> 00:34:50,520 And the preamble starts by making a strong link between rights 488 00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:53,160 and the actual living conditions of normal people. 489 00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:55,200 Rights matter, and this is the reason. 490 00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:58,720 It says, "The representatives of the French people believe that ignorance, 491 00:34:58,720 --> 00:35:04,280 "neglect or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities 492 00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:06,400 "and of the corruption of governments." 493 00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:10,440 Once you've defined the rights of man, you can build a government that protects them, 494 00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:13,560 and that will be a better government than what has gone before. 495 00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:20,520 Incredible to think that out of the seething, filthy chaos of Paris, 496 00:35:20,520 --> 00:35:23,320 a cornerstone of western democracy was laid. 497 00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:29,240 It is such an influential document that it's seared into the fabric of our modern world. 498 00:35:29,240 --> 00:35:35,080 When the United Nations set down their Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, 499 00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:36,920 it was modelled on this. 500 00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,480 And today, here in Paris, proud Parisians have displayed 501 00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:44,720 every word on the walls of the Metro station Concorde. 502 00:35:44,720 --> 00:35:49,560 But back in the 18th century, it was just too radical for the king to accept. 503 00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:54,080 He refused to relinquish his sovereign power into the hands of the great unwashed. 504 00:35:54,080 --> 00:35:56,800 But soon the people gave him no choice. 505 00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:02,080 In the autumn of 1789, a group of rowdy women gathered in Paris. 506 00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:07,040 Fishmongers, prostitutes and market stall holders, determined to march to Versailles. 507 00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:10,800 They confronted the king and demanded food and demanded his presence in Paris. 508 00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:15,920 Reluctantly, he signed this, and his signature is still here. 509 00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:19,440 But as the months wore on, feeling became increasingly radicalised. 510 00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:21,880 Louis himself was seen now to be incompatible 511 00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:24,520 with the sentiments expressed in this document, 512 00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:27,400 and for that, he would pay the ultimate price. 513 00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:34,840 The people's desire for a more ordered, 514 00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:37,400 just and sanitary city was clear. 515 00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:42,200 But the path to modernity would be gruelling and bloody. 516 00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:45,200 Paris was about to get filthier and more chaotic than ever. 517 00:36:48,080 --> 00:36:53,280 A typical, rather quaint street in a touristy part of Paris, lined with pleasant shops. 518 00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:56,440 But behind this door is a machine that's become synonymous 519 00:36:56,440 --> 00:36:59,040 with all that is ghoulish and macabre. 520 00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:03,560 Wow. 521 00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:07,960 Guillotine, one of only four remaining from the revolutionary period 522 00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:10,800 and the only one here in Paris. 523 00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:15,600 It's a lot bigger than I was expecting, it must have towered over the crowd. 524 00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:17,920 It's amazing being this close to what is definitely 525 00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:22,120 the most infamous instrument of death in history. 526 00:37:22,120 --> 00:37:24,200 I wonder if it's still sharp? 527 00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:26,960 This killing machine was first used in 1792. 528 00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:30,480 It was revolutionary execution technology. 529 00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:33,920 But despite it's terrifying reputation for bloodshed, 530 00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:38,160 it's also an example of equality and human rights. 531 00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:41,200 This is a surprisingly humane form of capital punishment. 532 00:37:41,200 --> 00:37:45,040 For centuries, execution had a class divide. 533 00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:51,000 Ordinary prisoners were slowly hanged, broken on the wheel, or burnt at the stake. 534 00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:53,720 The aristocracy were more simply decapitated by sword. 535 00:37:53,720 --> 00:37:58,160 Armourer Damian Mitchell is showing why this method was just 536 00:37:58,160 --> 00:38:02,800 too inefficient for mass slaughter. It's pretty heavy, isn't it? 537 00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:04,000 It's weighted at the end, 538 00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:06,400 so when you get the swing, it cuts through the air. 539 00:38:06,400 --> 00:38:09,400 The drawbacks of killing with a sword is it's not very efficient. 540 00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:14,600 You would have to sharpen it afterwards, and if the cut was not exact, it could be a painful death. 541 00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:18,160 You can't guarantee a clean kill every time. 542 00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:21,000 So even skilled swordsmen would occasionally mess up? 543 00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:24,880 One small twist either way and you can take a nose or an ear off. 544 00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:28,440 They would have to be finished off as they were lying there screaming. 545 00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:30,920 Would you like to see how it works? Yeah. OK. 546 00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:35,120 It's not a human head, this is a piece of lamb that we got from the butchers today, 547 00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:37,680 to give you the indication of how difficult it is 548 00:38:37,680 --> 00:38:40,560 and why they moved from the sword onto the guillotine. 549 00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:42,920 So I want to go for about there, I think. 550 00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:44,800 So remind me, it's up...? 551 00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:48,520 Up, it's the twist, build momentum, very similar to a golf swing, 552 00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:50,360 if you start thinking like that. 553 00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:54,480 Golf is a good walk ruined, I've never played in my life. But I'll try it. 554 00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:01,400 Ooh, you can really feel that in your shoulders. Absolutely. 555 00:39:01,400 --> 00:39:03,400 Let me take that off you. Wow. 556 00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:06,280 Now you can see, we've got quite a clean cut there, 557 00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:08,240 cut all the way through the bone. 558 00:39:08,240 --> 00:39:10,160 You can feel that as you pass through it, 559 00:39:10,160 --> 00:39:12,720 it sends a jolt right through your body. Yeah. 560 00:39:12,720 --> 00:39:18,040 It's amazing, the concentration... I was trying to get that sweep spot and it takes incredible focus. 561 00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:21,200 But imagine 1,000 people trying to watch you as you do this, 562 00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:24,880 you're normally masked, there'sa lot of pomp and ceremony attached, 563 00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:26,800 so the pressure would have been on. 564 00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:29,040 It's a windy day... Absolutely. 565 00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:33,640 There was just too much potential for making gory mistakes. 566 00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:37,040 You can see why the guillotine is a far more efficient way of doing it. 567 00:39:37,040 --> 00:39:40,240 This is the mechanisation of that process, isn't it? 568 00:39:40,240 --> 00:39:43,600 Absolutely, you would have a master executioner with six assistants, 569 00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:45,120 and it is like a production line. 570 00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:48,480 So you'd be strapped to the bascule, which is like a wheelbarrow, 571 00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:51,080 they would be wheeled in, your neck would be placed. 572 00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:55,240 And then you'd drop this, the lunette, which means half moon, onto the neck. 573 00:39:55,240 --> 00:39:57,240 I can see why. And locked in place. 574 00:39:57,240 --> 00:40:00,400 And the blade, like when you cut bread at home, nice and angled 575 00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:04,880 so it would cut all the way through, so that all the pressure is at one point instead of flat. 576 00:40:04,880 --> 00:40:07,720 So you're talking about 35 kilos falling seven feet, 577 00:40:07,720 --> 00:40:11,880 and that's a serious amount of force, so it would cut straight through the neck. 578 00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:14,680 We can put something inside it and see how efficient it can be. 579 00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:16,600 Nicely, so all the way in. 580 00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:19,600 OK, ready? Yeah. 581 00:40:19,600 --> 00:40:21,320 Whoa. 582 00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:23,480 That is unbelievable. You get a sense of the force 583 00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:27,520 because the meat just fires into the basket, it's hocking. 584 00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:31,560 Cut clean through and this hasn't been used for the best part of 150 years. 585 00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:34,280 You can see here how it just cut straight through. 586 00:40:34,280 --> 00:40:37,040 That is just astonishing, isn't it? 587 00:40:37,040 --> 00:40:39,360 Wow. So this is an enlightened bit of kit, 588 00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:42,800 it's science finding more efficient ways of killing people. 589 00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:44,360 It was an instrument of equality. 590 00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:47,040 And it didn't matter who you were, king, pauper, peasant, 591 00:40:47,040 --> 00:40:49,520 soldier, this is how your life was ended. 592 00:40:51,520 --> 00:40:56,000 Super-efficient the guillotine may have been, but this created another problem. 593 00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:57,520 The scale of the bloodshed. 594 00:40:57,520 --> 00:41:00,000 As the revolution grew ever more radical, 595 00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:04,800 eventually it was decided that only the blood of King Louis XVI himself 596 00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:09,360 could wash away the remnants of the absolutist state. 597 00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:13,520 Only with the king dead could France be democratic and free. 598 00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:18,160 And so, on the 21st of January 1793, Louis was brought here, 599 00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:21,240 to what is now the Place de la Concorde. 600 00:41:21,240 --> 00:41:25,880 In front of his cart marched drummers to drown out the sound of any loyal shouts in the crowd. 601 00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:30,280 Thousands of people gathered here, a guillotine towering above them. 602 00:41:30,280 --> 00:41:33,400 Once on it, Louis made a brave speech pardoning 603 00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:38,720 his executioners and seconds later, his head was severed from his body. 604 00:41:38,720 --> 00:41:42,200 There was silence, then people surged forward with their handkerchiefs, 605 00:41:42,200 --> 00:41:44,720 trying to dip it in the blood of the king. 606 00:41:44,720 --> 00:41:47,680 A grisly souvenir of what was an historic day. 607 00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:50,680 But the king's death wasn't enough. 608 00:41:50,680 --> 00:41:54,800 Following his execution, the terror began. 609 00:41:54,800 --> 00:41:59,720 Thousands were executed as rival political factions fought for supremacy. 610 00:41:59,720 --> 00:42:03,720 And with that came unprecedented amounts of gruesome filth. 611 00:42:03,720 --> 00:42:08,480 The most famous executioner was Charles Henri Sanson. 612 00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:12,320 On a good day, he could execute up to one person a minute. 613 00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:15,240 He said, "I can chop off your head in the twinkling of an eye 614 00:42:15,240 --> 00:42:18,360 "and you'll only feel a slight freshness around the neck." 615 00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:23,120 As the head was severed, the body jerked back, muscles twitching, 616 00:42:23,120 --> 00:42:25,160 and supposedly the blood in the head 617 00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:28,600 would keep the victim's brain alive for three to five seconds. 618 00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:30,960 This was a gruesome, but compelling spectacle. 619 00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:36,000 The crowd packed into this square, baying for blood. 620 00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:38,240 The victims were led onto the guillotine 621 00:42:38,240 --> 00:42:41,440 and then everyone listened out for the terrifying sound, 622 00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:43,560 the rasp and the thud, as the blade cut 623 00:42:43,560 --> 00:42:47,760 into the victim's neck and the crash as their head fell into the basket. 624 00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:50,640 But all these killings, 300 in one weekend, for example, 625 00:42:50,640 --> 00:42:53,400 were giving Paris a new problem. 626 00:42:53,400 --> 00:42:55,760 That was a lot of bodies. 627 00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:04,080 It wasn't just the loathed aristocracy that were being massacred, 628 00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:06,960 but anyone seen as unrevolutionary, 629 00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:12,520 calling each other madame or monsieur, instead of brother or citizen. 630 00:43:12,520 --> 00:43:16,840 Here in Paris, 2,794 people were killed. 631 00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:21,080 The youngest was 13, the oldest was 93. 632 00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:30,880 Piles of decapitated bodies and severed heads made for an unbearably grisly city. 633 00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:34,160 The streets were filled with the stench of rotting bodies 634 00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:38,920 and pools of fermented blood that became rancid in the heat. 635 00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:42,720 You can always tell an executioner in revolutionary Paris. 636 00:43:42,720 --> 00:43:46,160 He had blood to his elbows, there was so much of it about. 637 00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:49,360 They tried digging trenches and pits, but soon those overflowed. 638 00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:51,480 Each human, when decapitated, 639 00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:54,160 produces about three litres of blood, 640 00:43:54,160 --> 00:43:56,480 so this whole area would have been 641 00:43:56,480 --> 00:44:00,000 covered in pools of stagnant blood with human tissue in 642 00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:01,760 and flies buzzing around. 643 00:44:05,240 --> 00:44:08,120 With Paris at its most pestilent and grim, 644 00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:12,400 some way had to be found to deal with the piles of bloody bodies. 645 00:44:15,720 --> 00:44:21,560 The Chapelle Expiatoire is built on the site of one of the largest mass burial pits. 646 00:44:21,560 --> 00:44:27,920 During the terror, thousands of bodies were brought here, stripped of their clothing and rotting. 647 00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:32,520 One man who has experience of mass graves full of putrefying corpses 648 00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:35,120 is forensic pathologist Dr Dick Sheperd. 649 00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:43,240 There were two huge pits at this site that were dug, about three metres deep. 650 00:44:43,240 --> 00:44:45,120 Into them the bodies were tipped. 651 00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:47,960 Is this also where the king and queen were brought? 652 00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:50,600 Yep, they were buried in exactly the same place, 653 00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:56,600 so Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, one in January, one in October, were dumped here in exactly the same way. 654 00:44:56,600 --> 00:45:01,880 So different to the way their ancestors were buried, thrown into a grave with all the commoners and... 655 00:45:01,880 --> 00:45:06,640 Absolutely, it's complete degradation aimed at these people. 656 00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:09,080 I can't imagine a more disgusting sight, 657 00:45:09,080 --> 00:45:12,200 and of course the smell would have been mind-blowing. 658 00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:15,040 To look into this pit, 200 or so years ago, 659 00:45:15,040 --> 00:45:18,160 would have been just utterly, utterly awful. 660 00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:21,040 In it would have been bodies in all stages of decomposition, 661 00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:26,320 there would probably have been fluid at the bottom, so they have been floating around a bit in the fluids. 662 00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:30,920 In your career you've seen burial pits with people that have been in mass killings. 663 00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:33,520 Can you give me any sense of what that looks and smells like? 664 00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:37,080 The smell is just horrendous. 665 00:45:37,080 --> 00:45:40,720 We all know what a piece of off meat smells like in the fridge. 666 00:45:40,720 --> 00:45:45,000 Just imagine that with thousands and thousands of rotting bodies. 667 00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:47,440 It is just a disgusting stench. 668 00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:50,760 How long does it take for someone to decompose? What are the stages? 669 00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:54,600 It is a totally temperature-dependent process. 670 00:45:54,600 --> 00:45:58,040 The warmer the temperature, the faster decomposition will take place. 671 00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:03,320 The process begins usually with green discolouration of the abdomen, 672 00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:08,360 then you get this change in the skin as the bacteria from the body spreads throughout the blood vessels 673 00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:13,320 and produces quite a pretty discolouration on the skin called marbling, 674 00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:17,880 because it's like the veins of colour you get through a good marble. 675 00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:24,360 And then the body will begin to bloat, then you'll get the distension of the abdomen, the genitalia, 676 00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:29,840 there'll be leakage of the fluids from all of the orifices, any areas of damage. 677 00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:36,880 And then, after that rather wet decomposition phase, the process then will be hastened by maggots. 678 00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:41,320 This pit was more unpleasant than most because they had their heads chopped off as well. 679 00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:44,160 Exactly. Their heads would have been separate and it may have had 680 00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:47,320 a peculiar effect that the heads would have been better preserved, 681 00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:50,440 so would perhaps have remained more recognisable for longer. 682 00:46:54,280 --> 00:47:00,800 More than a decade after the revolution ended, the skeletal remains were finally laid to rest. 683 00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:04,760 With the cemeteries already overflowing, 684 00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:09,280 the authorities had found a burial place for centuries of Paris' dead. 685 00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:13,560 These labyrinthine catacombs were fashioned as a grisly mausoleum. 686 00:47:13,560 --> 00:47:18,600 As you enter, the sign reads, "Stop, this is the empire of death." 687 00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:25,000 I'm 20 or 30 metres below the streets of Paris 688 00:47:25,000 --> 00:47:28,520 and I've come to see the solution to that overcrowding in the cemeteries. 689 00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:35,920 And that is finding an old limestone quarry here and sticking the remains of countless bodies in here. 690 00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:39,920 It's absolutely extraordinary, I've never seen anything like it. 691 00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:44,360 It's macabre, look how they're all ghoulishly laid out. 692 00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:47,800 A mixture of decoration and... and uniformity. 693 00:47:47,800 --> 00:47:49,960 It's extraordinary. 694 00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:55,760 And look down there, it stretches for half a mile underground. 695 00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:59,480 They have tried to estimate how many bodies are in here 696 00:47:59,480 --> 00:48:02,800 and they think it's something like six million. 697 00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:07,960 And you can see why. This is two metres high, this bank here, 698 00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:10,040 and it stretches back. 699 00:48:10,040 --> 00:48:12,560 I can't even see the back wall. 700 00:48:12,560 --> 00:48:15,360 30 or 40 metres, I'd say, at least. 701 00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:18,320 It's just extraordinary. 702 00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:22,560 Somewhere in this section here are also the remains 703 00:48:22,560 --> 00:48:27,320 of the thousands of people who were killed on the guillotine. 704 00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:32,080 They were dug up out of that burial pit. It's amazing to think they're in here as well. 705 00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:37,800 And while some order was being imposed on this necropolis underground, one man up there 706 00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:41,680 was trying to do the same on the streets of Paris. 707 00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:52,280 He was a courageous, handsome, successful general who had been winning battles right across Europe. 708 00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:55,800 After a revolutionary decade, Napoleon turned his attention 709 00:48:55,800 --> 00:49:00,240 to the still turbulent city, with another adversary in mind. 710 00:49:00,240 --> 00:49:04,080 He was determined to wage war on filth. 711 00:49:05,200 --> 00:49:08,480 Famous for spending hours luxuriating in lovely hot baths, 712 00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:12,200 Napoleon had himself crowned emperor of the French in 1804. 713 00:49:12,200 --> 00:49:16,120 He had an obsession with clean, fresh water, so his accession 714 00:49:16,120 --> 00:49:20,000 marked a new era for Paris in terms of health and hygiene. 715 00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:24,160 Fresh water fountains and canals sprang up all over the city. 716 00:49:29,280 --> 00:49:33,680 He commissioned 56 of these ornamental fountains, 717 00:49:33,680 --> 00:49:36,160 had five new bridges built, 718 00:49:36,160 --> 00:49:38,840 eight covered markets to sell food and flowers 719 00:49:38,840 --> 00:49:42,680 and five new slaughterhouses to feed the city. 720 00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:46,680 His dream was to turn Paris into the most beautiful city in the world, 721 00:49:46,680 --> 00:49:49,120 a contemporary version of Imperial Rome. 722 00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:53,840 To do that, he drove this magnificent boulevard through the city, the Champs Elysees. 723 00:49:53,840 --> 00:50:00,160 And at the end he erected that arch to his military victories, the Arc de Triomphe. 724 00:50:01,200 --> 00:50:04,720 For me, Napoleon shouldn't just be heralded as a military genius 725 00:50:04,720 --> 00:50:07,880 and architectural visionary, he should also be remembered 726 00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:11,600 for declaring war on Paris' invisible enemy. 727 00:50:14,720 --> 00:50:18,440 One of the worst killers in France was smallpox. 728 00:50:21,160 --> 00:50:25,960 'Frederic Tangy at the Institut Pasteur specialises in vaccination, 729 00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:29,880 'the weapon Napoleon used to fight this virulent disease.' 730 00:50:32,480 --> 00:50:36,080 So, in honour of Napoleon's breakthrough with smallpox, 731 00:50:36,080 --> 00:50:38,880 I decided to get some makeup put on, some prosthetics. 732 00:50:38,880 --> 00:50:41,720 How good do you think that is? Looks like smallpox? 733 00:50:41,720 --> 00:50:45,160 Yeah, it looks like smallpox but the pustules are too scarce. 734 00:50:45,160 --> 00:50:48,400 You don't have enough. There would have been more than this? 735 00:50:48,400 --> 00:50:50,920 Yes, this is a true image of smallpox, 736 00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:53,200 your whole body should be covered. 737 00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:55,680 Wow, ugh! This is...this is awful. 738 00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:58,960 This is awful, this is probably one of the most... 739 00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:03,600 the worst disease that humanity ever experienced. 740 00:51:03,600 --> 00:51:06,960 That's incredible. And is that terribly painful as well? 741 00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:11,880 Yes, very painful, because each one, you will have a scar. 742 00:51:11,880 --> 00:51:16,160 And it's very... You scratch the scar, you bleed, you rescratch, etc. 743 00:51:16,160 --> 00:51:20,880 Once you are infected like that, the virus goes into your blood 744 00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:26,880 then invades your lung, your spleen, your stomach, your everywhere, OK? 745 00:51:26,880 --> 00:51:31,240 And when you have that inside the body, you die in a matter of days. 746 00:51:33,160 --> 00:51:38,920 'With tens of thousands dying of smallpox in France each year, Napoleon took a radical approach. 747 00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:40,960 'In 1809 he pioneered 748 00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:44,040 'the first ever state-funded immunisation programme.' 749 00:51:44,040 --> 00:51:47,080 He thought of himself as a very modern man, I suppose? 750 00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:50,560 Yes, he decided to protect his troops and to protect the country 751 00:51:50,560 --> 00:51:55,520 and he decided to have a country where everybody has the same right. 752 00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:58,600 Because it was just after the French Revolution, 753 00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:03,320 so he wanted people making... what he thought was good for them. 754 00:52:03,320 --> 00:52:07,520 So everybody must be vaccinated, must be clean, must go to school. 755 00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:11,720 He invented the mass vaccination campaigns, in fact. Incredible. 756 00:52:11,720 --> 00:52:15,200 Vaccination is a way of protecting the whole society 757 00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:18,240 rather than yourself, so you protect yourself but you protect the others. 758 00:52:18,240 --> 00:52:20,800 So where does the idea of vaccinating come from? 759 00:52:20,800 --> 00:52:25,840 The observation that already infected people are protected from the next epidemic. 760 00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:31,920 So the first idea was to take something from those pustules and to give that to other people. 761 00:52:31,920 --> 00:52:35,640 You'd be a brave person if you... Yeah, which is disgusting, I agree. 762 00:52:35,640 --> 00:52:37,760 So you'd get one of these. 763 00:52:37,760 --> 00:52:40,400 Yeah, you take that. Then you take a little bit. 764 00:52:40,400 --> 00:52:42,480 Scoop some pus out of there. Yes. 765 00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:44,840 And you scratch it on another guy. 766 00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:48,160 Disgusting, isn't it? So you infect him with your disease. 767 00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:54,280 Although this arm-to-arm inoculation looks rudimentary and risky, 768 00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:57,880 it forms the basis of how vaccinations work today. 769 00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:00,760 In fact, the word vaccination came from this period, 770 00:53:00,760 --> 00:53:03,520 when cowpox was used instead of human pustules, 771 00:53:03,520 --> 00:53:06,000 and vacca is the Latin for cow. 772 00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:12,360 Napoleon had started to put Paris on the road to modernity, 773 00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:16,040 with improvements to public health creating some order from the chaos. 774 00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:18,520 But there was still a long way to go. 775 00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:26,000 It wasn't until 1848, when Napoleon's nephew, Louis Napoleon III, came to power, 776 00:53:26,000 --> 00:53:29,760 that the Parisians got a leader determined to finish the job. 777 00:53:33,440 --> 00:53:36,680 After more decades of conflict, revolutions and turmoil, 778 00:53:36,680 --> 00:53:41,600 Paris was still desperate for the ultimate clean-up, to finally wrench it away 779 00:53:41,600 --> 00:53:44,960 from centuries of filth, pestilence and squalor 780 00:53:44,960 --> 00:53:48,120 and drag it into the modern, civilised world. 781 00:53:48,120 --> 00:53:53,320 This was to be an absolutely no-nonsense approach, there would be no more pissing around. 782 00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:59,760 In 1850 they passed a law which forbade urinating on the street and they established 500 of these, 783 00:53:59,760 --> 00:54:05,160 ironically nicknamed Vespasiennes, after the Roman Emperor Vespasian, 784 00:54:05,160 --> 00:54:08,120 who put jugs of drinking water on the street for citizens 785 00:54:08,120 --> 00:54:12,080 and fined heavily anyone found jovially pissing in them. 786 00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:18,600 Not only were Parisians' toilet habits freshening up the city above ground, 787 00:54:18,600 --> 00:54:23,560 down below the removal of the waste was being tidied up considerably. 788 00:54:24,160 --> 00:54:26,360 Next on the agenda was sewage. 789 00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:31,080 In 1850, Louis Napoleon ordered the small vaulted sewers that his uncle built 790 00:54:31,080 --> 00:54:35,920 to be made 20 times larger, cleaner and more efficient. 791 00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:41,400 Over 600 kilometres of tunnels were built, funnelling all the waste water away from the city centre 792 00:54:41,400 --> 00:54:45,640 and bringing in clean running water into people's homes. 793 00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:48,800 It was an incredible feat of engineering and is still lauded 794 00:54:48,800 --> 00:54:53,200 as one of the more extensive urban sewer systems in the world. 795 00:54:53,200 --> 00:54:56,680 Not only were these sewers radically cleaning up 19th-century Paris, 796 00:54:56,680 --> 00:54:59,840 but they also instilled civic pride. 797 00:54:59,840 --> 00:55:04,040 Visitors flocked to see this sewage spectacular, 798 00:55:04,040 --> 00:55:06,400 even the Tsar of Russia. 799 00:55:06,400 --> 00:55:10,240 Paris was well on its way to becoming a model modern city. 800 00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:17,360 It wasn't just underground that Paris was being cleaned up. 801 00:55:17,360 --> 00:55:20,160 Above, the streets were getting a radical, fresh new look. 802 00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:23,240 This is now a pretty typical modern road junction, 803 00:55:23,240 --> 00:55:25,800 but back then this was highly innovative. 804 00:55:25,800 --> 00:55:30,320 Wide open streets, nice and airy, and on the ground this, Tarmac. 805 00:55:30,320 --> 00:55:33,560 A Scottish invention but used here in Paris for the first time. 806 00:55:33,560 --> 00:55:38,440 This meant the roads were a lot cleaner because the manure couldn't get stuck between the cobbles. 807 00:55:38,440 --> 00:55:44,040 It also meant people couldn't prise the cobbles up and throw them during bouts of revolutionary fervour. 808 00:55:44,040 --> 00:55:49,880 Queen Victoria visited Paris in 1855 and she commented on the beautiful roads. 809 00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:55,200 Paris continued to forge ahead as a pioneering city. 810 00:55:55,200 --> 00:56:01,200 Its piece de resistance was taking urban planning to inspiring new heights. 811 00:56:02,320 --> 00:56:07,040 In 1850, Napoleon III and his famous chief architect, Baron Haussmann, 812 00:56:07,040 --> 00:56:10,560 embarked on the strategic beautification of Paris. 813 00:56:10,560 --> 00:56:14,920 Haussmann dreamt of a city with grand boulevards and parks and buildings, 814 00:56:14,920 --> 00:56:17,760 so that the whole thing would look like a palace. 815 00:56:20,200 --> 00:56:23,760 Haussmann acted with remarkable audacity and ambition. 816 00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:27,040 He bulldozed three-quarters of Paris, 817 00:56:27,040 --> 00:56:30,760 ripping out its guts, flattening the city and calling himself 818 00:56:30,760 --> 00:56:34,520 the world's first demolition artist. 819 00:56:34,520 --> 00:56:38,840 He destroyed 20,000 houses and built 40,000 more. 820 00:56:38,840 --> 00:56:41,000 He planted 100,000 trees 821 00:56:41,000 --> 00:56:45,560 and lined long pavements with brand-new gas lamps. 822 00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:51,240 And this is the effect of that Haussmannisation, 823 00:56:51,240 --> 00:56:55,240 the most dramatic reordering of any city in Europe. 824 00:56:55,240 --> 00:56:59,160 Look at these boulevards stretching off in all different directions. 825 00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:04,360 This one here runs five kilometres without a single kink. 826 00:57:04,360 --> 00:57:07,520 Parisians had the ordered, clean city that they'd wanted. 827 00:57:07,520 --> 00:57:09,040 But there was an irony here. 828 00:57:09,040 --> 00:57:12,000 This was about strategy as much as beautification. 829 00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:14,200 Poor people in the way of these streets 830 00:57:14,200 --> 00:57:17,000 were moved out to the suburbs, 831 00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:21,800 they're wide enough to make sure that any revolutionary barricade wouldn't really be effective. 832 00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:28,280 Troops can be moved quickly from one area of town to the next and the field of fire here is perfect. 833 00:57:28,280 --> 00:57:32,880 Soldiers could shoot down revolutionary mobs in no time at all. 834 00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:37,200 Haussmann had sanitised Paris, he had drained the swamp 835 00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:41,360 from which revolutionary fervour had been emanating for generations. 836 00:57:45,560 --> 00:57:51,240 Paris had finally been dragged out of the dark ages of its filthy past. 837 00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:54,520 Centuries of chaotic, squalid living, 838 00:57:54,520 --> 00:57:59,440 filled with disease, pollution, blood and death, had been cleansed. 839 00:57:59,440 --> 00:58:06,000 Now in its place, a pioneering, modern city had emerged, resplendent. 840 00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:22,680 Transformation of Paris was a triumphant achievement. 841 00:58:22,680 --> 00:58:28,120 These slum-like medieval streets, with their squalor and filth, their chaos and revolution, 842 00:58:28,120 --> 00:58:31,240 had given birth to the world's first truly modern city. 843 00:58:31,240 --> 00:58:35,000 One which many still think is the most beautiful on the planet. 844 00:58:35,000 --> 00:58:38,320 It was an inspiration for 19th-century London and New York 845 00:58:38,320 --> 00:58:42,400 and it became the blueprint for the modern metropolis. 846 00:59:06,800 --> 00:59:09,280 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd