A Load of Hot Air

On summer Sunday evenings on the terrace I could look up from my book to see a brightly coloured hot air balloon carrying its passengers on a voyage of discovery of rural France from above.
A local firm offered these trips, including one to view the chateaux of the Loire, which were very popular as birthday surprises - or shocks.

There were stories of recipients turning on their nearest and dearest and refusing in no uncertain terms to ascend to the heavens before their time...
Luckily there was always surplus demand and the firm prospered.

Today, the twenty sixth of June, is the anniversary of the first time a hot air balloon was used in warfare, in 1794 at the battle of Fleurus near Charleroi, where the armies of the young French Republic faced the coalition of monarchist powers determined to overthrow the rule of the regicides who had ordained the death of Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, on the scaffold.

Use of the balloon enabled the observers aboard to report movements of both armies to the French commander, General Jourdan, who was thus enabled to take rapid action - no longer reliant on the usual method of sending gallopers through the smoke of battle to receive the reports of commanders only aware of their own sector of hell.

Hot air balloons figure later in French military history, when the Prussians were beseiging Paris in the war of 1870....the famous event being the escape by balloon of the minister of the provisional government, Gambetta, aiming to raise resistance in the further provinces of France.
His example was loyally followed - though by terrestrial transport - by French ministers in the later German incursions on the soil of France.
They all appear to think that national resistance can only be made if they are there to lead it...a manifestly false assumption.

The relatively unknown aspect of the seige of Paris was the use of hot air balloons to carry messages to and from the city....which is an idea which La Poste might do well to consider in its relentless drive for economies that ruin what was once a superb service..

In France, these hot air balloons which drift across the skies are known as Montgolfieres, after the two Montgolfier brothers from the Vivarais who made the first successful attempt to launch a lighter than air device in the Place des Cordeliers at Annonay on the fifth of June 1783....a taffeta envelope lined with paper, one hundred and ten feet in circumference, with a platform below bearing the combustibles to fill the balloon -  a mixture of rope, wool and damp straw.
Before the eyes of the crowd, and the notables assembled for the meeting of the Estates of the Vivarais, the device was inflated, released - and soared above.
Man had invaded the heavens.

And one man was extremely annoyed about it.
Alexandre Charles, who had also been working on balloons - but balloons powered by hydrogen.
A big ask.
While scientific advance had permitted the manufacture of hydrogen, only small quantities had been produced -  and Monsieur Charles required one hundred cubc feet of the stuff!
He had the answer.....a barrel containing iron filings, acid and water. The gas entered the balloon and the barrel was refilled with more water and acid to keep the process running.
It took a thousand pounds of iron and some five hindred pints of sulphuric acid to fill his balloon...but it worked.
Industrial scale hydrogen.

He had also been working on the envelope of the balloon.
The Montgolfier version leaked smoke at a great rate through its paper and cloth.
Charles was lucky.
He was in Paris, not in the wastes of the Vivarais where the Montgolfier family had their paper making business.
He was not working in isolation.

He had neighbours, the brothers Robert, who had just invented a process using rubber - a wonder from the colonies - dissolving it to make fabric impermeable.
He had his balloon.

So entranced are we by the advances of our own day that we forget - if our schools ever told us - of the advances in science, both theoretical and practical, of the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. I loathed science lessons at school, but if I had then known of the wonderful tale of the search for knowledge, with all its cul de sacs and winding lanes, I might have taken a lot more interest.

I would certainly have liked to be present when the semi-inflated balloon was taken from its workshops near the Palais Royale and walked - like a large flying dog - over to the testing ground on the Champ de Mars on the left bank....then almost in the countryside, among the market gardens which fed Paris.

An enclosure had been set up and no one lacking a ticket was allowed entry. Not even  Etienne Montgolfier who had come to see what his rival could do.
Nothing to do with scientific secrecy....just money.

The crowds were immense. Over one hundred thousand.
Charles and the Robert brothers were making their final preparations and at five o'clock on the twenty seventh of August 1783, their balloon rose into the air, travelling so fast that it was lost in the clouds in two minutes.
In the days when communication was at the speed of a horse and the whim of a correspondent, as far as Paris was concerned, this was the first balloon flight - even if Monsieur Charles knew better.

The crowds went home...but what of the balloon?
It had a rip in its hide, but aided by currents of air it passed over Le Bourget, giving that village a foretaste of the airport which would later come to be built there and finally came to rest in Gonesse - another glimpse of the future, when negligence gave rise to the crash of the Concorde in 2000.

It landed in the trees near the church and the population, knowing nothing of events in Paris, so close and yet of a different world, believed it to be a supernatural phenomenon and thus, in the context of the time, a spawn of the devil.

The priest was sent for, but, as the thing was still rolling and lunging at the whim of the gas inside, he could not or would not get close enough to sprinkle it with holy water.
Bolder spirits took over.
Men with guns.
At the first shot the spawn of the devil hissed so  malevolently that the entire crowd fell to the ground reciting an act of contrition, but gradually it deflated, became limp and, encouraged as always by the lack of any sign of fight, the crowd surged forward, tearing it to shreds with their pitchforks.
It took the inventors days to find the remnants.

So why are Montgolfieres Montgolfieres and not Carlines?

Because the Montgolfier brothers were the first to put passengers in the basket under their balloons..first sheep and poultry and finally men and although Monsieur Charles also managed a manned ascent - going up himself - he was gracious enough to acknowledge the priority of the Montgolfiers while they were humble enough to accept that his was the better method.


So when the round shadow crosses your patch of sunlight, say a little hello to Monsieur Charles...and put down your pitchfork.

Eating five a day on the fourth

Image via Wikipedia

The producers of fruit and veg are not having a good start to their holidays. Neither am I.
Apparently, France has been dishing out grants to this sector over about ten years from 1992 onwards which the European Union thinks were unjustified. Money was available for extraordinary problems...drought, etc....but France treated it as an annual dole to producers and the EU now wants it repaid.
The sum involved is some 330 million Euros, but with interest it comes to about 500 million and France is contesting the amount in the European Court of Justice. However, whatever the amount, Brussels wants it back.

The producers' organisations have already announced that their members won't be coughing up....they have
a) spent it
b) gone out of business
c) died
or a combination of any of the above, but, more importantly, the money isn't coming from them.

The Regional elections will soon be upon us, the next Presidential election is heaving in sight over the horizon, and, despite the proposed gerrymandering of constituencies, the governing party still needs to nurse the votes of its' traditional supporters......the farmers and growers. Not a good moment to disturb them in the pocket. Not that there ever is a good moment to do same...if it's not elections, then it's fear of them blocking the petrol pumps and attacking lorries carrying foreign produce....or just fear.

So guess who will be paying? Me......and the other three or four taxpayers in France. You know, the ones who don't have three kids and wallow in allowances.

It's about time for another 4th of August in France.
Everyone remembers Bastille Day, 14th of July, when the Paris mob over ran an undermanned fortress containing a few lunatics and debtors, but 4th August of the same year is considerably more significant....though, like Magna Carta, it has acquired a false glamour over the years.
In French thinking, the session of the Constituent Assembly on the 4th of August 1789 was the moment when everyone in the nation achieved equality.......of taxation.

When I was a child, I had one of those picture books of history....for the most part, photographs of Victorian historical paintings. The Bruce rallying his troops at Bannockburn....Piers Gaveston reclining languidly under the disgusted gaze of assorted barons....Sir John Moore dying at Corunna....but among them, several subjects from the Revolutionary period including the trial of Marie Antoinette, which differs little, I assure you, from a modern trial in France....trumped up charges, shifty looking judges who have already made up their minds, gloomy prisoners who know it and rabid prosecutors waving their arms about and foaming. The evening of the 4th August was included - a candlelit scene with aristocratic men in wigs and churchmen in long robes renouncing their privilege of being exempt from taxation.

Things are never so simple as a Victorian historical painting would indicate. The Constituent Assembly, men of property all, met when the starving country people were ransacking abbeys and feudal manors, intent on loot and freedom from the old shackles. How to control them? The army was mostly still loyal to Louis XVI, and to call them in was to risk the balance of power returning to the King.
What was the answer? Throw the ravenous dogs the bone of freedom from the onerous services demanded by their feudal overlords, the forced labour, including, notoriously, in Brittany, the duty to patrol the lake at night to ensure that the croaking of frogs did not disturb the repose of the local squire. This, the practical bit...then, being France, the idealistic bit......the abolition of freedom from taxation of the nobility and clergy. These are the elements of the French myth of the 4th of August.
Something passes under the radar, however. The feudal dues renounced by their holders were not to be abolished, they were to be bought out. How French. Under the smokescreen of philosophy and high ideals lurks the hand ever open for money.


In France today, the inequality of taxation arguments concentrate on the earnings - or, more accurately, income - of the business leaders, rewarded whether they succeed or fail, whether their firm outsources to the third world or not. The 'fiscal shield' promoted by Sarkozy to keep the rich rich also comes under fire.
What doesn't raise its' head is the unfairness of the fiscal arrangements for farmers and growers which allows them to keep their income relatively tax free and gives their children access to grants that are intended for the children of the poor. Why not? Because the leaders of French opinion live, work and breathe in Paris, where you only see a farmer at the annual agricultural fair. The country is where these types spend August. Country people are the 'ploucs'....the great unwashed.....they don't count in the great scheme of things that is France, which takes place in Paris.
So, on the 4th of August, while you are eating your five different items of fruit and vegetables to conserve your health, consider how they get to your table and who, in the end, pays to keep the farmers rich. And eating cake is no solution.


Apologies that the image is that of the Tennis Court Oath....still, it gives you the idea.