When Laws were Posted on the Street (Saint-Gervais Church)
During the French Revolution, deputies passed more than 20,000 decrees in ten years! If this number makes your head spin, imagine what this must have done to a modest inhabitant at the end of the 18th century. Difficult to keep up… And yet, it was often vital to obey the law: this had become the principal tool for changing the world. So that the laws passed in the Assembly could be enacted, they needed to be posted where the people could see them: in 1792, the authorities installed large black marble plaques on which were posted the “Laws and Acts from the Public Authority.”
Commune of Paris, Excerpt from the Record of Proceedings from January 13, 1793
During the Revolution, the streets of Paris were covered in political posters of all kinds. In order to respect the new revolutionary order, the Commune of Paris regularly plastered posters informing Parisians of its decisions. On January 13, 1793, a week before the execution of Louis XVI, the General Council of Paris announced, for example, the banning of performance spaces: the people’s interests needed to remain under supervision.
