Twenty Centuries of Paris

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Title: Twenty Centuries of Paris
Author: Smith, Mabell S. C. (Mabell Shippie Clarke)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Twenty Centuries of Paris" ***

[Illustration: PANORAMA OF PARIS.]

TWENTY CENTURIES
OF PARIS

MABELL S. C. SMITH

_ILLUSTRATED_

NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

[Illustration: Arms of the City of Paris.]

_Published October, 1913._

TO
M. P. G.

_Un rayon de soleil a ses entrées partout._
SARDOU

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. EARLIEST PARIS 1

II. MEROVINGIAN PARIS 16

III. CARLOVINGIAN PARIS 32

IV. PARIS OF THE EARLY CAPETIANS 44

V. PARIS OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS 69

VI. PARIS OF SAINT LOUIS 90

VII. PARIS OF PHILIP THE FAIR 105

VIII. PARIS OF THE EARLY VALOIS 129

IX. PARIS OF CHARLES V 153

X. PARIS OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR 165

XI. PARIS OF THE LATER FIFTEENTH CENTURY 189

XII. PARIS OF THE RENAISSANCE 199

XIII. PARIS OF THE REFORMATION 214

XIV. PARIS OF HENRY IV 230

XV. PARIS OF RICHELIEU 248

XVI. PARIS OF THE “GRAND MONARQUE” 260

XVII. PARIS OF LOUIS THE “WELL-BELOVED” 274

XVIII. PARIS OF THE REVOLUTION 287

XIX. PARIS OF NAPOLEON 310

XX. PARIS OF THE LESSER REVOLUTIONS 338

XXI. PARIS OF LOUIS NAPOLEON 355

XXII. PARIS OF TO-DAY 369

APPENDIX 385

INDEX 395

MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Panorama of Paris _Frontispiece_

Arms of the City of Paris To-day _Copyright page_

OPPOSITE PAGE

Map of Paris 1

Lutetia under the Romans (Map) _page_ 7

Interior of the Roman Palais des Thermes 10

Amphitheater of Lutetia at Present Time 10

Saint Germain des Prés 30

France at Time of Hugh Capet (Map) _page_ 45

The Louvre in Time of Philip Augustus 78

Fragment of Wall of Philip Augustus 78

Tour de Nesle in 1661 82

Choir and Nave of Notre Dame, looking West 86

Nave of Saint Germain des Prés 86

Cathedral of Notre Dame 88

The Sainte Chapelle, erected by Louis IX 100

Interior of the Sainte Chapelle 100

Hôtel de Cluny 116

Hôtel de Sens 116

The Old Louvre _page_ 161

Arms of City of Paris under Charles V “ 164

Oldest Known Map of Paris _between_ 182 _and_ 183

Churches of Saint Etienne-du-Mont and Sainte
Geneviève in 17th Century 190

Jubé in Church of Saint Etienne-du-Mont 190

Church of Saint Séverin 194

Church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois in 1835 198

Tour de Saint Jacques de la Boucherie 198

The College of France 206

House of Francis I on the Cours-la-Reine 206

Cellier’s Drawing of Hôtel de Ville _page_ 208

Column at the Hôtel de Soissons “ 223

Hôtel Carnavalet 224

The Samaritaine 240

Statue of Henry IV on the Pont Neuf 240

The Archbishop’s Palace 252

Richelieu’s Palais Cardinal, later called Palais
Royal 252

Palace of the Luxembourg 256

Court of Honor of National Library 256

Hôtel des Invalides 272

Saint Sulpice 272

Elysée Palace, Residence of President of France 280

Chamber of Deputies (Palais Bourbon) 280

Church of Sainte Geneviève, now the Pantheon 284

The Odéon 290

The Comédie Française about 1785 290

“The Convention,” by Sicard 308

Rue de Rivoli 326

Triumphal Arch of the Carrousel 330

Triumphal Arch of the Star 330

Napoleon’s Tomb 336

The Bourse 346

Church of the Madeleine 346

The Successive Walls of Paris _between_ 366 _and_ 367

The Strasbourg Statue 360

The Eiffel Tower 360

The New Louvre 370

Hôtel de Ville 374

Mairie of the Arrondissement of the Temple 376

Salle des Fêtes, Hôtel de Ville 376

Portions of the Louvre built by Francis I,
Henry II, and Louis XIII 378

Colonnade, East End of Louvre, built by Louis
XIV 378

Section of Louvre begun by Henry IV 380

Northwest Wing of Louvre, built by Napoleon I,
Louis XVIII, and Napoleon III 380

Plan of the Louvre _page_ 382

[Illustration: Map of Paris]

_Twenty Centuries of Paris_

CHAPTER I

EARLIEST PARIS

France has been inhabited since the days when prehistoric man
unconsciously told the story of his life through the medium of the
household utensils and the implements of war which he left behind him in
the caves in which he dwelt, or which his considerate relatives buried
with him to make his sojourn easy in the land beyond the grave. From
bits of bone, of flint, and of polished stone archæologists have
reconstructed the man himself and his activities through the early ages.
Of contemporary information, however, there is none until the
adventurous peoples of the Mediterranean pushed their way as traders and
explorers into the heart of Gaul, and then wrote about their
discoveries. The Gauls, they said, were largely Celtic in origin and had
displaced an earlier race, the Iberians, whom they had crowded to the
southwest. They were brave, loyal, superstitious, and subject to their
priests, the Druids. Their dress showed that they had made great
advance in knowledge over the cave men, for they wore colored
tunics--which meant that they knew how to spin and weave and dye--and
brazen helmets and shields and gold and silver girdles--which meant that
they could work in metal.

Such industries prove that the nomadic life was over, and, in truth,
there were many towns throughout Gaul, some of them of no mean size,
furnished with public utilities such as wells and bridges, and
surrounded by fields made fertile by irrigation. An independent spirit
had developed, too, for in about the year 500 B.C. the chiefs and nobles
rebelled against the lay authority of the Druids. Then these chiefs and
nobles seem to have ruled “without the consent of the governed,” for
Cæsar relates that before he went to Gaul in 58 B.C. the lower classes
had rebelled against the upper, and, with the aid of the Druids, had
beaten them.

It is from Cæsar, too, that we first learn something about Paris.
“Lutetia,” he calls it, “a stronghold of the Parisii,” who were one of
the three or four hundred tribes who dwelt in Gaul. Lutetia--“Mudtown”
Carlyle translates the name--was not much of a stronghold, for its
fortifications could have been nothing more than a stockade encircling
the round huts which made up the village occupying an island in the
Seine, the present “Cité” (from the Latin _civitas_), and connected
with both banks by bridges. It was only about half a mile long and an
eighth of a mile wide. It was large enough and strong enough, however,
to serve as a refuge for the tribesmen in time of war. Probably such a
haven was not an unusual arrangement. Not far from Paris is another
instance in Melun which has grown around the village which the Romans
called Melodunum, built in the same way on an island in the river.

In the spring of 53 B.C. Cæsar summoned delegates from all the tribes of
Gaul to meet at Lutetia, but the rebellion of the year 52 in which the
Parisii joined determined the Roman general to destroy the town and
crush the tribe. He sent Labienus with four legions to carry out his
plans. The Gauls chose as their leader Camulogenus of the tribe of the
Aulerci, an old man, but skilled in warfare. He took advantage of the
marsh on the right bank of the river and so stationed his troops as to
prevent the approach of the Romans to the little town. Labienus first
tried to make a road across the bog by laying down hurdles plastered
with clay. This proved too much of an undertaking, so he slipped away
“at the third watch” and retraced his steps to Melodunum. There he
seized fifty ships which he filled with Roman soldiers and with them
threatened the town so effectually that it yielded to him. Then he
repaired the bridge, crossed to the left bank, and once more began his
march toward Lutetia. When the Lutetians heard of this move from
refugees, they burned their town and destroyed its bridges. Labienus put
a Roman knight in command of each of the fifty ships which he had
captured and ordered them to slip silently down the river for about four
miles under cover of darkness. Five steady cohorts he left to guard the
camp, and another five he despatched up the river after midnight with
instructions to carry their baggage with no attempt at quiet. In the
same direction he sent certain small boats whose oars were to meet the
water right noisily. He himself led a body of soldiers in the direction
which the ships had taken. When the Gauls were informed by their scouts
of the seeming division into three bands of the Roman army they,
naturally but unwisely, made a like division of their own men. In the
battle that ensued--probably near the Ivry of to-day--the Gauls resisted
with such courage that very few took refuge in flight, preferring to
fall with the valiant Camulogenus. The Gauls left to watch Labienus’s
camp tried to aid their fellows when they heard of the battle in
progress, but they could not withstand the attack of the victorious
Romans, whose cavalry cut down all but the few who managed to escape to
the wooded hills.

So it happens, rather humorously, that the earliest written account of
Paris is that telling of the destruction which left its site a clean
slate upon which the Romans might begin to write its story. For five
hundred years they wrote, until the Frankish invasion swept its
destructive might across Romanized Gaul.

In five hundred years much may be brought to pass, and the Paris that
Sainte Geneviève saved from Attila the Hun (451 A.D.) and in which
Clovis established himself (481) was a town vastly different from the
stockade-defended hamlet which Labienus set out to destroy. While its
position was selected by the Gauls because it could be easily defended,
it was evident in later and more peaceful times that the city could be
developed into a valuable commercial station. The Seine and its
tributaries, the Marne and the Oise, proved highways on which the
products of a large district could be carried to the distributing
center, Lutetia, whence they could be packed north or south or to the
coast provinces over the masterly roads which always made an important
feature of the Roman colonizing policy. There are Paris streets to-day
which follow these same roads into the country.

Roman civilization made its last stand in Gaul, and Paris became one of
the flourishing places which the Romans knew how to encourage. As soon
as the strength of the builders permitted, the town ceased to be
confined to the island and spread on both sides of the river. A bridge,
fortified at the mainland end, connected the island with the right bank
and with the road threading its way northward to avoid the marsh whose
name (Marais) is still given to a district of the city. Where now on the
north shore is the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville there has
always been an open place, originally kept free for the landing of
merchandise from the river boats. This open place was called the Grève
or Strand, and the busy scenes enacted upon it sometimes included
quarrels between the masters and the longshoremen. Such a dispute came
to be called a _grève_, the French word to-day for a strike.

Where now the Palais Royal rises on the right bank, a reservoir held
water to supply the public baths. Tombs clustered along the roads
leading north and east, for cemeteries were not allowed within Roman
cities. Otherwise the north side of the river with its unwholesome marsh
was but scantily populated.

Far different was the southern or left bank, sloping pleasantly to the
Seine from Mons

[Illustration: LUTETIA UNDER THE ROMANS.]

Lucotetius. This hill is now known as Mont Sainte Geneviève and is
crowned by the church, Saint Étienne-du-Mont, that holds her tomb, and
by the Pantheon, long dedicated to her, but now a secular building. This
southern district was drained by the little stream, Bièvre, whose waters
in later times were believed to hold some chemical properties which
accounted for the brilliancy of the tapestries made in the Gobelins
factory situated on its banks. Fields, fruitful in vines and olive
trees, clustered around villas which the Romans knew well how to build
for comfort and beauty, and which the conquered Gauls were not slow to
adopt, modifying the form to their needs as they modified the Roman
dress, covering with the graceful toga the business-like garments of
older Gaul.

The later emperors came often to Lutetia. They, too, saw the beauty of
the river’s left bank connected with the Cité by a fortified bridge.
Some one of them, probably Constantius Chlorus, built a palace of
majestic size with gardens sweeping to the river bank, and here in
Lucotecia, Lutetia’s suburb, Constantine the Great and his two sons
lived when they visited this part of Gaul. Constantine’s nephew, Julian,
called the Apostate because of his adherence to the old philosophies,
spent parts of three years here.

“I was in winter quarters,” he wrote, “in my dear Lutetia, which is
situated in the middle of a river on an island of moderate size joined
to the mainland by two bridges. The winter is less severe here than
elsewhere, perhaps because of the gentle sea breezes which reach
Lutetia, the distance of this city from the sea being only nine hundred
stadia. This part of the country has excellent vineyards, and the people
cultivate fig-trees which they protect against the winter’s cold by
coverings of straw.”

In the huge palace where Julian found himself so happy his physician,
Oribasius, prepared an edition of the works of Galen, the first book
published in Paris; and here it was--or perhaps in the palace on the
Cité--that in 361 the rebellious Roman soldiers proclaimed Julian as
their emperor. Of the palace there is left to-day what was probably but
a small part of the original building, but which is, in reality, a
section of no small size. It was that portion of the structure which
contained the baths, and it gave its name to the building--Palais des
Thermes (Palace of the Baths). One room, preserved in fair condition and
showing the enduring Roman brick and stone-work, is sixty-five feet long
and thirty-seven feet wide and springs to a vaulted height of fifty-nine
feet. It is used as a museum of Gallo-Roman remains. The baths were
supplied with water by an aqueduct some eleven miles in length,
fragments of which have been found at various parts of its course. At
Arcueil, a town three miles from Paris, named from the Latin word
_arculus_, a little arch, there still remain parts of two arches whose
small stones are held by the extraordinarily tenacious Roman cement and
are varied by occasional thin, horizontal layers of red tiles. At
present they are built into the walls of a _château_ which has recently
been bequeathed to the town for an old men’s home.

Somewhere south of the palace and not far from it was a garrison to
protect the suburb and the Cité from southern invasion. That it was not
greatly needed during this peaceful and prosperous period seems proved
by the fact that Lutetia’s amusement ground was not within its easy
reach, but on the eastern slope of Mons Lucotetius. Here at some time
during the Roman occupation, perhaps during the second or third century,
an amphitheater was built, and here emperors and generals and merchants,
Romans and Gauls, gazed upon the pageants and contests of the arena.
Christianity wrought a milder mood in her believers and even before the
invasion of the Franks the stone seats of the ellipse had been converted
to other uses. Enough was discovered, however, some thirty

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE ROMAN PALAIS DES THERMES.]

[Illustration: AMPHITHEATER OF LUTETIA AT PRESENT TIME.]

years ago to permit an adequate idea of the original appearance.

To Julian has been attributed the rebuilding of the Cité, and
excavations at different points have unearthed remains unmistakably of
Roman workmanship, which show that the island was completely surrounded
by a wall. Probably some of the stones of the amphitheater went into it.
This fortification has been related to the fourth century, and it is
known that on the spot in the Cité where the Palais de Justice now
houses the law courts, an administrative building of some kind has stood
since this same early date. One of Julian’s successors, Maximus, erected
a triumphal arch near the cathedral in 383, and it is probable that
other pretentious structures justified the erection of the protecting
wall.

The cathedral was a church dedicated to Saint Étienne, modest as
compared with its medieval successor, Notre Dame, whose sacristy is
placed on the same spot, yet showing that concentration of the arts in
their expression of religious spirit which has made the churches of
Europe at once the treasure-house of the student and the devotee, the
inspiration of the poet, and the joy of the lover of color and of line.
Both of these Christian churches have stood on ground already dedicated
to religion, for under the choir of Notre Dame there was discovered in
1711 a pagan altar, now the chief relic of the museum in the Thermes.
The inscription on the stone places it in the reign of the emperor
Tiberius (14-37 A.D.), the successor of the great Augustus. Its
inscription reads: “When Tiberius was emperor the Parisian Watermen
publicly raised this altar to Jupiter, best and greatest.”

[Illustration: THE NAUTÆ STONE.]

These Watermen (Nautae) seem from early days to have been an important
guild, first as carriers of merchandise and later as an administrative
body. In the twelfth century the band was called the Brotherhood of
Water Merchants, and its head the Provost of the Water Merchants, a name
given in shortened form--Provost of the Merchants--to the first
magistrate of the city up to the time of the Revolution at the end of
the eighteenth century. Even to-day such of the duties of the Prefect of
the Seine as apply not to the Department of the Seine but to the city
of Paris alone are comparable to those of the Provost of the Merchants.
From the seal of the Nautae, a boat, has developed the present coat of
arms of the City of Paris.

It was about the middle of the third century that the altar to greatest
Jupiter began to be deserted by its worshipers, for it was then that
Saint Denis came to Paris to preach the new religion, and with his
coming and the Emperor Constantine’s conversion Christian churches began
to be built. Even the martyrdom of Saint Denis, who, according to
Gregory of Tours, “ended his earthly life by the sword,” was no check to
believers. Legend has it that his head was stricken off on Montmartre,
the hill towering above Paris on the north, and to-day crowned by the
pearl-white dome of the basilica of the Sacré Coeur gleaming,
mysterious, through the city’s eternal haze. The hill’s name has been
said to mean “Mount of Mars,” because of a pagan altar raised upon its
summit, or “Mount of the Martyr,” referring to the death of Saint Denis.
Either derivation may be defended, and neither contradicts the story
that the holy Bishop of Paris, decapitated, picked up his head and
carried it for several miles before a kindly-disposed woman offered him
burial. Over his remains a chapel was raised, restored about two
centuries later by Sainte Geneviève, and replaced in 630 by the basilica
which Dagobert I (602-638) erected to house fittingly that most holy
relic, the head of the saint. The existing church was begun about five
hundred years later by Suger, the minister of Louis VI who adopted the
_oriflamme_ of Saint Denis as the royal standard of France. The flag
hung above the altar and was used only when the king went into battle
himself. Since the English victory on the field of Agincourt (1415) it
has not left the church. The banner (in replica) stands to-day in the
choir behind and to the left of the high altar. Throughout the church
are the tombs of the Kings of France from Dagobert to Louis
XVIII--twelve centuries of royal bones.

The canonization of Martin, bishop of Tours, the soldier saint who did
not hesitate to divide his cloak with the shivering poor, received early
recognition in Paris, where, indeed, he has always been popular. In what
was in Roman days the country but is now well within the city limits a
chapel was reared in his honor on the spot where he stopped to cure a
leper when he was on his way to Paris. In the eleventh century it was
replaced by the Priory of Saint Martin-des-Champs, which developed into
one of the huge monastic establishments which were each a little world
in itself during the middle ages. Another chapel to Saint Martin rose at
the mainland end of the bridge leading from the island to the right
bank.

It was a fair and prosperous city that the world conquerors had nursed
beside the Seine; it remained for time to prove whether its five
centuries of growth had made it strong and sound or whether its heart
was rotten and its roots uncertain of their hold.

CHAPTER II

MEROVINGIAN PARIS

The reading of Cæsar’s “Commentaries” makes us know that the Gauls with
whom he contended were worthy opponents, ingenious in planning warfare
and enthusiastic in fighting. Even the trained Roman legions had to work
for their victories. Granting possible exaggeration, which is a sore
temptation to a conqueror, eager to magnify the difficulties of his
conquest, it is nevertheless clear that a radical change had transformed
these fierce Gauls and irresistible Romans of a half century before
Christ when, five hundred years later, a band of less than 10,000
“barbarians”, led by Clovis, swept across a comparatively unresisting
Gaul.

What had happened in Gaul was what had happened in other parts of the
Roman Empire. Money had concentrated in the hands of an insatiable few.
To supply them and the government every stratum of society was squeezed
of its smallest coin, until good men of middle-class position were
willing to sell themselves into slavery to avoid the insistent demands
of self-seeking tax collectors, and the government was meanly willing
to accept the sacrifice because the supply of slaves was not being kept
up since the victorious eagles had ceased to perch upon Rome’s banner.

In Paris conditions were not different from those in other parts of the
province. The town was good to look upon with handsome Roman buildings,
and it was ordered with due respect to the laws for whose making Rome
had undoubted genius; but beneath this fair outside there shivered the
soul of the dependent grown cowardly from abuse, lacking loyalty for
what was unworthy of loyalty. The Gauls, who had adopted the language
and manners of their conquerors, had become weak from overmuch reliance
on the stronger power; the Romans had softened during years of peace. So
it happened that when the barbarians from the north and east threatened
Gaul they were bought off with gifts of land, and when, in 451, Attila,
the Scourge of God, led into the north his fierce and hideous Huns whose
only joy was bloodshed, the people of Paris prepared themselves for
flight when he was still a long way off.

For every vital crisis in the life of the individual there is given a
counterbalancing power of endurance; to groups this power is taught by
the man or woman whom the circumstances develop as a leader. In this
emergency, when the dreaded shadow of the hawklike Hun fluttered the
citizens, and they were making preparations for deserting the town and
taking into hiding such of their goods and chattels as they could, the
leader developed in the unexpected form of a woman--Sainte Geneviève.
Some say that Geneviève was, like Jeanne Darc a thousand years later, a
peasant girl. Saint Germain of Auxerre, the story goes, on his way to
“quenche an heresye” across the Channel, chanced to visit Nanterre where
his prophetic eye espied the divine spirit in the little maid and his
holy hand sealed her unto God. Another version insists that Geneviève
belonged to a prominent family in Paris and that her family’s influence
accounted for her sway over the people.

For sway them she did. At her bidding the women of the city fasted and
fell on their knees and assailed God with prayer. Nearer and nearer came
the foe, and the unbelieving reviled the maiden; but Saint Germain
reproached them for their lack of faith and the miracle came to
pass--the “tyrantes approachyd not parys.”

All quarrels were lost in the apprehension of this attack of a common
enemy, and by the united effort of Gauls and Romans, of Burgundians,
Visigoths and Franks, the dreaded Attila was defeated near Châlons in a
battle so determined that the very ghosts of the slain, it was declared,
continued the fight.

Freed of this menace to the whole country the victorious tribes again
fell to quarreling among themselves. The Franks proved sturdiest and
most persistent. Descended from Pharamond, who, perhaps, was legendary,
their king, Mérovée, had led them against Attila. Now his son,
Childéric, attacked Paris. Again Geneviève rescued her townsmen from
famine, herself embarking upon the Seine, which probably was beset by
the enemy along the banks, and returning with a boatload of provisions
which, by miraculous multiplication, revictualed the whole hungry and
despairing garrison.

Childéric’s son, Clovis, leading about 8000 men, in 481 made himself
king of northern France with Paris as his capital, thus establishing the
line of monarchs who called themselves Merovingians. “Paris,” he wrote
in 500 A.D., “is a brilliant queen over other cities; a royal city, the
seat and head of the empire of the Gauls. With Paris safe the realm has
nothing to fear.”

Clovis had married an orthodox Catholic wife, Clotilde, who was eager
for his conversion. Her arguments are said to have been far from gentle,
but they seem to have been suited to her husband’s nature, for he was
almost persuaded to make the great change at the time of the birth of
his eldest child. The baby died within the week, however, and the king
looked upon his loss as an act of vengeance on the part of his deserted
gods. When the second child recovered from a serious illness he was
convinced that Clotilde’s intercessions had saved its life, and again he
inclined toward Christianity. An incident determined his acceptance of
his wife’s faith. In the battle of Tolbiac against the Germans Clovis
begged the aid of “the God of the Christians” to determine in his favor
a wavering victory. He won the fight, and it is easy to believe the joy
of Sainte Geneviève, when the monarch was baptized in the cathedral at
Rheims. He seems to have been of simple mind. The fittings and the
ceremonies of the vast church touched his spirit to submission. “Is not
this the kingdom of heaven you promised me?” he asked of the bishop.
Again, when he listened to the story of the crucifixion, he is said to
have cried with an elemental desire for vengeance, “Oh, had I been there
with my Franks I would have avenged the Christ!”

Sainte Geneviève died in 509 and the citizens of grateful Paris over
which she had watched in wise tenderness for fourscore years, made her
their patron saint. The hill that had been known as Mons Lucotetius
they called Mont Sainte Geneviève, and on it they built a chapel to
honor and protect her grave. Clovis replaced the little oratory by a
church as long as the mighty swing of his battle-axe, dedicated to Saint
Peter and Saint Paul and serving as the abbey church of a religious
establishment which bore Sainte Geneviève’s name. Except for a dormitory
and refectory this monastery was torn down in the middle of the
eighteenth century to give place to a new church of Sainte Geneviève,
secularized to-day and known as the Pantheon. The abbey church, built
and rebuilt, was destroyed during the Revolution, the tower (called the
Tower of Clovis, but really belonging to a later period) being all that
is left of these historic structures. The reaction against religion in
those turbulent revolutionary years made it no sacrilege to burn the
good saint’s bones on the Grève, but some of the devoted preserved the
ashes which rest now in a stone sarcophagus, elaborately canopied, in
the neighboring church of Saint Étienne-du-Mont built in the twelfth
century as a church for the dependents of the Abbey.

The comparatively peaceful and prosperous Roman period of five hundred
years was followed by five centuries of strife and disaster at the hands
of the northern tribes. The Roman Empire had found in Gaul the last
stronghold of its civilization. There were large cities, fine
buildings, public utilities, institutions of learning. To the
barbarians, a youthful race at the destructive stage, these represented
but so many things to be destroyed. Terrible and repeated onslaughts
ousted the Romans, and then the victors became embroiled with new tribes
who sought to drive them out. Palaces and houses were destroyed, fields
and vineyards were laid waste. Paris, the stronghold of the early
Merovingians, suffered less than the other important towns of Gaul, but
the Franks had no standards of fair living, and they did not build up
where time or their own ferocity had cast down. Tottering walls were
bolstered with rough buttresses, new dwellings were square hovels of the
same heavy stonework, farming languished, commerce died.

The successors of Clovis for one hundred and fifty years tricked their
wives, murdered their rivals, and assassinated their nearest of kin if
they stood in their way. Clovis divided his kingdom among his four sons.
One of them was killed in battle soon after and left his three children
to the care of their grandmother, Clotilde, with whom they lived in the
great palace on the left bank. Just like the wicked uncles in many a
fairy tale two of Clovis’s surviving sons obtained possession of the
little boys by stratagem and took them away to the palace on the Cité.
Then they sent to Clotilde a messenger who bade her choose between the
shears and the sword--the shears which should clip the children’s locks
and thereby sever their claims to the throne and send them into the
Church, and the sword of death. In a passion of indignation Clotilde
exclaimed that she would rather see them dead than shorn. Claiming this
cry as their authorization the two men set about the murder of their
nephews. Childebert, king of Paris, proved somewhat less brutal than his
brother (he loved flowers enough to plant a garden at the Roman palace)
and would have saved the children--they were hardly more than
babies--but Clotaire stabbed two of them with his own hand. Then he
married their mother. The third boy escaped, came under the tutelage of
Saint Séverin and entered a Benedictine monastery. When he was a man
grown he established a religious house at a spot a few miles from Paris
called Saint Cloud from his name, Clodoald. Here, on a height above the
river, stood the _château_ where Napoleon effected the _coup d’ état_
that made him First Consul, and whence Charles X issued the decrees that
brought about the Revolution of 1830. The building was burned during the
troubles of 1870, but the park with its fine _allées_ of trees and its
fountains is one of the playgrounds of modern Paris.

Clotaire had done away with the possible rivalry of his nephews but he
had a bitter enemy in his brother Thierry. This amiable relative plotted
his assassination. He invited him to a feast and stationed his
desperadoes behind a curtain whence they should spring out upon their
victim. Some friend of Clotaire’s, chancing to pass by, noticed below
this apparently innocent screen a row of feet unaccounted for, and
guessed the project of their owners. Warned of his danger Clotaire came
amply guarded and caused his brother extreme annoyance by his evident
knowledge of his plan and its consequent frustration. Thierry gave him a
silver dish by way of souvenir of this pleasant occasion, but he
repented him of this generosity as soon as Clotaire was out of sight and
sent his son to replevin the gift.

One of Clotaire’s sons, Chilpéric I (who died in 584) gave his daughter
in marriage to the son of the king of the Visigoths in Spain. A great
train came to Paris to fetch the bride, and the appearance of these
rough Goths and the thought of her approaching separation from her
parents and friends so afflicted the young girl that her father
determined to secure companionship for her. He commanded some chosen
young people--girls and youths of her own age--and also some entire
families to go with her into Spain. So great was the opposition to this
high-handed proceeding that it became necessary forcibly to seize the
unwilling recipients of the honor in order to be sure of their presence
when the expedition started. Some of those who were to be separated from
their kindred committed suicide in despair over their banishment. “In
Paris there reigned a desolation like Egypt,” says sympathetic Gregory
of Tours. Robbed of their children the rich Parisians found the country
also robbed of gold and silver vessels and of handsome raiment, for the
queen heaped into her daughter’s bridal coffers the treasures that she
had obtained from the nobles in the course of years under the guise of
revenue. So loath were the princess’s attendants to follow her fortunes
and so lacking were they in loyalty that her retinue on arriving in
Spain was lessened not only by the daily desertions of all who could
manage to escape, but by the defection in a body of no less than fifty
men.

Frédégonde, the bride’s mother, was a woman of forceful will and of
unbridled passions. The list of deaths for which she was responsible
reads like a roster of the royal family. Although of low birth she
attracted the attention of the king, Chilpéric, and induced him to put
aside his wife, Audovère. Chilpéric then married Galsuinthe, sister of
Brunehaut, wife of his brother Sigebert. Frédégonde soon compassed
Galsuinthe’s death and then achieved her ambition and became queen
herself. Brunehaut naturally was indignant as well as sorrowful at her
sister’s death, clearly the work of an assassin. She urged her husband
to vengeance and he declared war against Chilpéric. His activity was not
of long duration, however, for he, too, fell a victim to Frédégonde’s
ferocity. Brunehaut saved her life only by claiming the asylum of the
cathedral of Paris. Not long after she married Mérovée, a son of
Chilpéric and Audovère. Then Frédégonde disposed of her by inducing
Sigebert’s subjects to claim their queen and by insisting that Chilpéric
should deliver her over to them. Mérovée, at her command, was shorn and
imprisoned and hounded until he sought death at the hands of a servant.
His brother was stabbed. Their mother, Audovère, was not safe even in
the cloister, for she was murdered in her retreat. Chilpéric himself was
the next victim, killed by a knife-thrust as he returned from the chase.
He was succeeded by an infant son, Clotaire II (613-628), and Frédégonde
spent the rest of her life in alternations of affectionately fierce
devotion to his interests and in scheming against the authority of his
guardians.

Brunehaut outlived her enemy, Frédégonde, by many years and finally met
her death at the order of Frédégonde’s son. After a stormy career
during which she compassed much good for the subjects of her son and
grandsons and earned her share of hatred from the nobles whom she
opposed, she was captured by Clotaire. Her extreme age--she was
eighty--did not save her from a brutal end. She was stripped and
displayed to his army, then bound by a foot, an arm and her hair to a
wild horse which kicked her to death. This hideous deed was done in
Paris where now the rue Saint Honoré crosses the rue de l’Arbre Sec, and
not far from the site of the house wherein Admiral Coligny was slain,
the first victim of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew.

Of all the Merovingian kings only Dagobert I (628-638), son of Clotaire
II, proved himself a man of strength, incongruously fighting and
praying, massacring captives and building churches, living a vicious
life in private and governing with justice and intelligence. “Great king
Dagobert” he was called, and he was regarded impartially as a “jolly
good fellow” and as a saint. He lived in the palace on the Cité, and he
rebuilt the abbey of Saint Denis, invited distant merchants to visit
Gaul, dealt out justice to poor and rich alike in unconventional and
hearty fashion, and hammered his enemies with the same vigor and
enthusiasm.

In the century following his the Merovingian line degenerated into a
race of “Rois Fainéants” (“Do-nothing Kings”), dissolute, lazy, leaving
the task of government to their Mayors of the Palace while they rolled
slothfully in ox-carts from the debaucheries of one country house to the
coarse pleasures of another.

The only upbuilding accomplished during the Merovingian two centuries
and a half was the establishment of churches and religious houses. The
Frank was not aggressive in the less active relations of his duties as a
victor. He was content to learn the language of the conquered race and
the mysticism of religion spoke to him winningly. Throughout the years
when nothing that fell was restored and the hand was busy striking, at
least one kind of constructive impulse was manifest when Clovis built
the church in which he was buried on Mons Lucotetius, when his son,
Childebert, reared an abbey on the south bank to protect the tunic of
Saint Vincent, when on the north bank a church was dedicated to the same
saint and another to Saint Laurent, while the south side was further
enriched by edifices sacred to Saint Julien and to Saint Séverin, the
tutor of Clodoald. It is not the original buildings that we see on these
sites to-day, but it is a not uninteresting phase of the French spirit
that has reared one structure after another upon ground once
consecrated, so that a church stands to-day where a church stood fifteen
hundred years ago.

The story of the foundation of the church of Saint Vincent is
interesting from several points of view. Clovis divided his possessions
among his four sons, giving Paris to Childebert. Childebert had no
notion of staying cooped up in this northern town, and he went as far
afield as Saragossa in search of war. During the course of his siege of
that city he beheld its citizens marching about bearing what seemed to
be a relic of especial sanctity. It proved to be the cloak of Saint
Vincent in which they were trusting to save them from their assailants.
It did not betray their trust, for Childebert became filled with
eagerness to possess a relic which could inspire such confidence, and
offered to raise the siege if they would give him the tunic. When he
returned to Paris Saint Germain of Autun persuaded him to build a church
for its protection and to establish an abbey whose members should make
it their first duty to pay honor to the relic. This abbey was called
later Saint Germain-des-Prés, the name which the abbey church bears
to-day. It stands no longer in the meadows, but raises its square
Merovingian tower above one of the busiest parts of Paris. Except for
this tower the church was burned in the ninth century, but it was
rebuilt in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the nave with its
semi-circular arches is one of the few remaining examples in the city of
the Romanesque architecture of which this was a characteristic. The
choir shows in its arches and windows the hand of a later builder who
was inclining toward the pointed Gothic.

The Merovingian kings were buried here. After the founding of Saint
Denis the royal remains were removed to that abbey church.

The north bank church of Saint Vincent also received the name of Saint
Germain, but this was to honor Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, the friend of
Sainte Geneviève. This early edifice also was destroyed, but was rebuilt
by Robert the Pious, and the later building held the bell which rang for
the massacre of Saint Bartholomew a thousand years later.

These churches and monasteries were the means of preserving whatever of
learning persisted through this period of return to primitive living.
Every one of them was a center of information, and every one of them
taught freely what it knew of agriculture and of the homely arts.
Further the Church was thoroughly democratic. A bishop’s miter lay in
every student’s portfolio, as a marshal’s baton hid in the knapsack of
each one of Napoleon’s soldiers.

[Illustration: SAINT GERMAIN DES PRÉS.]

Of larger government, however, the bishops had small knowledge, and
Paris, left to their guidance while the kings roamed abroad, lost her
high prestige. She did not regain it under the next dynasty.

CHAPTER III

CARLOVINGIAN PARIS

While the nominal kings were losing their powers through inaction,
activity was developing a race of strong rulers in the Mayors of the
Palace--originally the royal stewards. Pépin d’Héristal (who died in
714) is accounted the founder of the family which was to oust the
Sluggard Kings from the throne that they disgraced. Pépin’s son, Charles
Martel--the Hammer--(715-741) stayed the advance of the Saracens in the
fiercely fought battle at Tours where he earned not only his nickname
but the gratitude of the Christian world, threatened by the Mohammedan
invasion. Charles’s son, Pépin le Bref (752-768), thought that the time
had come when the achievements of the Mayors of the Palace should
receive recognition--when the king in fact should be the king in name.
He appealed to Pope Zachary to sanction his taking the title. The pope
was glad of the support of the Franks, and approved. Childéric III
became the last of the Merovingian line when he was shorn of the long
locks which symbolized his regal strength, and Pépin, anointed king in
his stead, became the first of those monarchs who have been called
Carolingians or Carlovingians from the name of his son, Charlemagne
(Carolus Magnus, Charles the Great.)

Pépin was anointed first at Soissons by the Bishop of Mayence who used
in the ceremony the flask from which Saint Rémi had anointed Clovis.
Later the new king was anointed again, this time at Saint Denis, by
Zachary’s successor, Stephen III, who was the first pope to visit Paris.
The Frankish nobles paid for the honor to their city by being forced by
the Holy Father to swear allegiance to Pépin and his sons.

There was much in Paris to interest the pope. The Cité was rich in
churches and religious establishments. The cathedral now was a church
dedicated to Notre Dame, built by Childebert in gratitude for a recovery
from illness. It stood beside the one-time cathedral dedicated to Saint
Étienne; smaller churches honored Saint Gervais, Saint Nicholas and
Saint Michel. Eloy, the jovial goldsmith saint, was the protector of a
convent raised to his name. Saint Landry, a bishop of Paris in the
seventh century, had founded a hospital on the very spot where Saint
Louis and his mother, Blanche of Castile, were to build the Hôtel Dieu
in the thirteenth century, and but the width of the present square from
the new Hôtel Dieu, built since the Third Republic came into being.
Together with religion and good works justice held sway on the island.
In the Roman palace judges interpreted the laws gathered and summarized
by Dagobert. In a building near by whose site is covered by the enlarged
palace was housed the first organ known in Europe, a gift to Pépin. So
mysterious seemed its working that a woman is said to have fallen dead
when she heard it.

On the Cité dwelt the merchants, too, for the right bank of the river
had not yet become the business section of Paris, although the Grève
always was busy with the loading and unloading of boats. The shops in
the Cité held stocks of rich stuffs and of gold and silver vessels and
ornaments, chiefly of home manufacture, for the trade that had grown up
in Gallo-Roman days was rapidly dying out in the unsympathetic
atmosphere of constant strife.

Back from the river on the right bank were monasteries in whose great
size the papal visitor must have delighted as he did in the
establishment dedicated to the patron saint of Paris on the hill now
called by her name, the Mont Sainte Geneviève, and in the abbey of Saint
Germain-des-Prés, rich in lands and serfs and so gorgeous with Spanish
booty that its church was called Saint Germain-le-Doré--The Gilded.

Charlemagne (768-814), son of Pépin le Bref, saw a splendid vision of a
united Gaul, but his plan was not suited to a period when the German
belief in the might of the strong-armed individual was laying the
foundations of the feudal system. He himself was German and established
his capital not at Paris, but nearer the German boundary, where he felt
more at home. He visited Paris, however, lending the splendor of his
presence to the services of dedication which marked the completion of
the church of Saint Denis. Under the emperor’s direction his adviser,
Alcuin of York, established in Paris the first of those schools which
have made the city through the centuries one of the chief educational
centers of the world. Charlemagne himself never learned to write, it is
said, but his intelligence appreciated the value of learning and he
first offered to the students of Europe the hospitality which Paris has
given them with the utmost generosity ever since. To-day foreign
students are admitted to the University of France on exactly the same
terms as native students.

An equestrian statue of the Emperor, his horse led by Roland and Oliver,
stands before the cathedral of Notre Dame.

Not only was Charlemagne’s kingdom divided after his death, but his
strength as well seemed to have shared the shattering. His descendants
were men of small force. Louis le Débonnaire, (814-840) succeeded the
great king. Louis’ three sons, Lothair, Louis, and Charles the Bald
divided the vast possessions into three parts.

The oath by which Louis pledged himself to support Charles against
Lothair has an especial interest for scholars because it is the oldest
known example of the Romance tongue which succeeded the Low Latin of the
Gallo-Romans. The oath was given at Strasburg, the armies of Louis and
Charles witnessing, in March, 842.

The weakness of Charlemagne’s successors helped the growth in power of
the individual nobles. The feudal system developed without check.
Families made themselves great by their fighting strength. Dukes and
counts held sway without hindrance in their own dominions. Much as this
added to their importance it was a disadvantage to them when there was
need for concerted action against an enemy. Once Charlemagne saw the
piratical crafts of the Northmen enter one of his harbors and he
prophesied that they would bring misfortune to his people when he was no
longer living to guard them. His prophecy came true, and when the sea
robbers penetrated into the country by way of the big northern rivers
and attacked the cities on the Seine and the Loire, sacking the churches
and carrying away the riches of the monasteries, there was no concerted
action among the nobles, and destruction and loss went on little
hindered by the inadequate efforts of this or that feudal lord. Paris
itself was pillaged more than once, and the abbeys of Saint Denis and
Saint Germain-des-Prés paid unwilling tribute to the boldness of the
invaders.

Charlemagne’s grandsons were not of the mettle to deal sharply with the
Northmen. Charles the Bald preferred diplomacy to fighting. His nephew,
Charles the Fat, once more united the great king’s possessions, but he
was no warrior and when the terrible foes appeared in the Seine he was
not ashamed to buy them off. Again and again they came, each time
ravaging more fiercely, each time approaching nearer and nearer to Paris
which they now threatened to destroy. It was in 885 that Rollo or Rolf,
called the Ganger or Walker, because he was so huge that no horse could
carry him, led a persistent band before whom the Parisians abandoned
their suburbs and withdrew behind the walls of the Cité. They fortified
the bridges leading to the northern and southern banks, and under their
protection sustained a siege of a year and a half. Abbo, one of the
monks of the monastery of Saint Germain-des-Prés, has told us about it
in a narrative poem of some 1,200 lines. It all sounds as if the days
of Cæsar had come again. The Northmen used machines for hurling weapons
and fireballs into the city, and floated fireboats down the river to
destroy the bridges. The Parisians retaliated from the wall and the
towers. The leaders were Eudes, count of Paris and of the district
around the city, and Gozlin, bishop of Paris, both of whom fought
manfully, and also took intelligent care to foster the courage of their
people. Not a day passed without fighting, and although success usually
rested with the practised Northmen the Parisians did not become
discouraged or demoralized. The most dramatic episode of the siege came
at a time when the swollen Seine swept away the Petit Pont leading to
the southern bank, and cut off from their friends the defenders of the
Petit Châtelet on the mainland. The garrison numbered but a dozen men
and they fought with superb courage until every one of them was killed.

Abbo’s story tells of sorties to secure food, of negotiations that fell
through, of a journey made by Eudes to seek help from the Emperor and of
the suspicion of treachery that his long absence cast upon him until he
banished it by cutting his way through his foes into the town again. His
return heartened the besieged, but the besiegers were not disheartened.
Hot weather lowered the Seine and an attacking party found footing
outside the walls of the island and built a fire against one of the
gates. Then in truth the very saints were called on to give aid. Holy
Sainte Geneviève’s body had been in some way brought into the Cité from
its resting place on the southern hill, and now it was carried about the
town that she had succored three centuries before. The trusting declared
that they saw Saint Germain in spirit-guise upon the wall encouraging
the defenders.

At last Charles appeared upon the hill of Montmartre, but while the
plucky fighters in the beleaguered city were preparing to go forth to
meet him they learned that once again he had bought off the invading
army.

The fat king was deposed and died soon after and again the regal
possessions were divided. Paris and its surroundings, the Île de France,
fell (887) to Eudes, the candidate of a party of independent nobles who
admired his fine work in the defense of the city.

The end of the siege did not mean the end of the new king’s troubles
with Rollo. That sturdy opponent never ceased his fighting though his
invasions became in time not ravages but reasonably ordered campaigns,
since he did not destroy what he gained, and sometimes even repaired the
damage he had done. Fortune was impartial. Now Rollo defeated Eudes, now
Eudes defeated Rollo. The king’s most famous success was at Montfaucon,
then northeast of Paris, but now within the fortifications. For five
hundred years before the Revolution there stood on this spot a gibbet
three stories high on which one hundred and twenty criminals could be
hung at once. The man who built it was one of its victims.

Loyalty to the royal family led to the restoration of the Carlovingian
line after the death of Eudes. Charles, called the Simple, a youth of
nineteen, was set upon the throne and found himself faced at once by the
problem of crushing or checking the perpetual invasion. When no solution
had been found after thirteen years the king attempted conciliation. He
offered Rollo his daughter in marriage and a considerable piece of
territory provided that the rover should acknowledge himself Charles’s
vassal and should become a Christian. Rollo considered this proposition
for a period of three months and then consented to parley with the king
over details. They went with their followers to a town not far from
Paris where they ranged themselves on opposite sides of a stream and
communicated by messenger. Rollo seems to have made no difficulty on the
subject of his bride or of his religion, but he was fastidious as to the
land he should receive. No one knew better than he the character and
condition of northern France, and he rejected one proposed section
after another on the plea of its being too swampy or too close to the
sea or--brazenly enough--too seriously hurt by the harrying of the
Northmen! When at last he deigned to accept what came to be called
Normandy a further difficulty arose because he refused to acknowledge
his vassalship by kneeling before the king and kissing his foot. He had
never bent the knee to any one, he said, and he never would. He was
willing to do it vicariously, however, and he directed one of his
followers to offer the feudal salute. But his proxy had been trained in
the same school. Stooping suddenly he seized Charles’s foot and raised
it to his lips, oversetting the king and provoking bursts of laughter
from the Northmen and of indignation from the Franks.

Charles found it prudent to swallow his rage and he was rewarded by
gaining an admirable colony. The Northmen or Normans became excellent
settlers and their coming invigorated a people whose feeble monarchs had
represented only too well their own characteristics. It was largely
through this vigorous northern influence that, when a break occurred in
the Carlovingian line, Hugh Capet, duke of France and count of Paris, a
descendant of Eudes’ brother Robert, was elevated (987) by the barons to
the throne which his descendants in the direct line occupied for some
three hundred years. The family never has died out. Louis XVI in prison
was called “Citizen Capet;” the duke of Orleans, pretender to the
non-existent French throne, is a twentieth century representative.

The tenth century found Paris reduced to practically its size when Cæsar
sent Labienus to attack it. The Northmen had destroyed the _faubourgs_
on the once flourishing left bank, and it was only by degrees that the
abbeys of Sainte Geneviève and of Saint Germain-des-Prés replaced their
buildings to meet the needs of the population slowly growing around them
once more.

The northern bank was even more forlorn, with but a chapel or two to
lighten its waste places, and an insignificant blockhouse, perhaps built
by the Northmen, where to-day the Louvre stands magnificent.

Packed into the Cité were the houses and the public buildings of such
population as the wars had left. A street led across the island from
north to south, connecting the two bridges; another from east to west
between the cathedral and the palace. Around the open square made by
their crossing clustered the shops and markets. Wooden dwellings filled
every alley and even crouched against the huge encircling wall. Nobles
in armor, their servitors in leather, ecclesiastics with mail beneath
their robes, merchants in more peaceful guise, peasants in walking
trim--all these carried on the every-day life of this city which is
seemingly immortal since fire and sword and flood have laid it low
repeatedly but only for such brief time as it takes for it to grow
again.

CHAPTER IV

PARIS OF THE EARLY CAPETIANS

Never in all its many troubled days has France been more in need of a
wise head and a steady hand than it was when in 987 the lords gave to
Hugh Capet the name of King of France. He was already Count of Paris and
Duke of France, that is, of the Île de France, the district around
Paris. When he was chosen king the title meant only that a few powerful
nobles promised him their fidelity. Back of this insignificant fact,
however, loomed the _idea_ of kingship remembered from the Roman days of
centralized power. Combined with this idea was the governing principle
of the new feudalism which emphasized the duty of every man to be loyal
to his superior with obedience and support, to his inferior with
protection. Thus the title of king meant much or little in proportion as
the holders of great possessions lived up to their oaths of allegiance.
The weakness of the royal person was the foundation weakness of the
feudal system which

[Illustration: FRANCE AT TIME OF HUGH CAPET.

(At the dates indicated the provinces came under the French crown)]
nominally linked the whole of society in an inter-dependent chain, but
really fostered the strength of the individual.

Under such conditions it was only the man of unusual force who could
maintain himself at a pitch of power greater than that of subordinates
who were his equals in all but name. Hugh Capet proved himself such a
man, fighting, cajoling, buying his way through a reign of constant
disturbance, but strong enough at its end to leave his crown to his son
without opposition from the nobles.

A medieval tradition had it that Hugh was the son of a butcher of Paris.
A fourteenth century _chanson_ called “Hugh the Butcher” encouraged the
_bourgeois_ to believe in the possibility of a like elevation. Dante
refers to the story in the “Divine Comedy.” He hears a shade on the
Fifth Ledge of Purgatory say: “I was the root of the evil plant which so
overshadows all the Christian land that good fruit is rarely plucked
therefrom.... Yonder I was called Hugh Capet: of me are born the Philips
and the Lewises by whom of late times France is ruled. I was the son of
a butcher of Paris. When the ancient kings had all died out, save one
who had assumed the gray garb, I found me with the bridle of the
government of the realm fast in my hands.”

Here follows a recital of wicked deeds done by Hugh’s descendants by
reason of avarice, in the midst of which is the apostrophe, “O Avarice,
what more canst thou do with us since thou hast so drawn thy race unto
thyself that it cares not for its own flesh?”

There is no reason to suppose that the tradition concerning Hugh’s birth
rested on fact. His descent from Robert the Strong was direct and he
himself was the worthy head of a family that had given to the throne of
France one titled and two untitled kings.

The son who followed Hugh was Robert the Pious (996-1031) and he and his
successors for a hundred and fifty years labored perseveringly toward
that centralization of power in the monarch which came to definite
realization in the reign of Philip Augustus (1180-1223), and to
establishment under the single-hearted rule of Louis IX, the Saint
(1226-1270).

Within three centuries after the accession of the new dynasty Paris
attained to the position which she has held ever since--as the head of
the nation, leading by virtue of her thought and will, and as the heart
of the people, beating with impulses of generosity and love and passion.
With Hugh Capet himself her stability began, for he was the first king
to make the city his permanent home. The palace at the western end of
the Cité had been strengthened by Eudes who made of it a square fortress
with towers. Here Hugh lived when he was not in the field suppressing
the uprisings of the nobles who had elected him. That they were of a
spirit so independent as to need a constant curb is to be guessed from a
conversation reported to have occurred between Hugh and Adelbert, one of
the great lords. “Have a care,” warned Hugh. “Who made you count?” “Who
made you king?” instantly retorted the lord. Perhaps it was a wish not
to seem to glory over his subjects that impelled Hugh never to wear his
crown after the occasion of his coronation. By having his son Robert
crowned at the same time he helped secure the stability of his line.

To the west of the palace Hugh planted a garden, and he also
added stables, whose care was entrusted to a _comte de
l’étable_, or constable, the title given later and until 1627 to the
commander-in-chief of the French army. On the river side of the palace
the king rebuilt the Gallo-Roman prison on the spot where now stands the
Conciergerie. The keeper of this prison was a noble to whom was given
the title of count of the candles, _comte des cierges_ or _concierge_,
the name bestowed to-day on a janitor. His pay in the olden days
consisted of two fowls a day and the ashes from the king’s fireplace.

To the east of the palace on the spot where the Tribunal of Commerce now
rises, there stood in Hugh’s day a Merovingian chapel dedicated to Saint
Bartholomew. Legend has it that it was of ancient origin and had been
sacred to pagan gods. To secure their overthrow, Saint Denis, it is
said, went there to preach, and there it was that he was seized by his
enemies. King Hugh enlarged the church and dedicated it not only to
Saint Bartholomew but to Saint Magloire as well.

It was during the time of Robert the Pious that society, grown
degenerate under the generally base or incompetent kings of the
Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties, reached its lowest ebb of
hopelessness and inaction. Modern historians deny that fear of the end
of the world when the year 1000 should open had anything to do with the
lethargy of this period. Whether they are right or wrong, it cannot be
disputed that after the year had begun there was a stirring such as had
not been known for two or three generations. Only the church seems to
have emerged triumphant in material things, for it now held rich
possessions whose deeds of gift, beginning “Because of the approaching
end of the world,” seem to hint at an attempt of former owners to be on
the safe side in the event of the possible coming of the Day of
Judgment. Whatever the cause, the givers, stripped stark, had to busy
themselves to restore their affairs, and some new constructive impulse
built noble buildings and inspired a brutalized society with ideals
which devoted force to uplifting ends--the protection of the weak and
the defense of the church.

Robert did not inherit his father’s energy or administrative ability. He
was a handsome man, fond of appearing in public wearing his crown and
flowing robes. He was something of a scholar, and so good a musician
that he led the choir at Saint Denis and composed hymns which were
accepted by the Church. The poor were his especial care and so traded on
his good nature that they even snipped the gold tassels and fringe from
his garments when he went abroad. At an open table many hundred dined
daily at his expense. He was truly pious as his name declared, and, in
the manner of the age, he sought to express his religious interest by
the building of churches and monasteries. Paris in especial profited by
his desire to win eternal favor, for he built or restored churches to
the mystic number of seven and twice that number of religious
establishments.

King Robert’s domestic life verged on tragedy. He married a distant
cousin whom he loved devotedly, but the marriage was not approved by
the pope, and when the king and queen refused to separate he
excommunicated them. To be excommunicated meant not only that the
offender was cut off from the sacraments of the Church, but that he was
forbidden all intercourse with his fellow men. Every one fled at sight
of the accursed and the few servants left to the royal pair cleansed
with fire every plate and cup that they used.

Robert and Bertha finally bowed to the papal decree. Robert then married
Constance, daughter of the Count of Toulouse, who proved a sufficient
punishment for any and all his sins of omission and commission. In her
train came troubadours and southern knights who brought to Robert’s
rebuilt and enlarged Paris palace fashions of dress that were regarded
as unseemly, manners that were all too frivolous, and characters
unworthy of dependence. The novelty caught the fancy of the Parisians,
who, according to an old chronicler, “before long reflected only too
faithfully the depravity and infamy of their models.”

Constance kept a sharp eye on her husband’s charitable disbursements,
and she brought up her sons so badly that Robert’s last years were
embittered by their brawlings and rebellions. The king died bitterly
lamented by his subjects, who knew enough of the character of his
successor to feel strong apprehension concerning their fate at his
hands.

The eleventh century, filled by the reigns of Robert, his son, Henry I
(1031-1060) and his grandson Philip I (1060-1108), was made terrible by
famines and wonderful by the opening of the great adventure of the
Crusades. The famine brought to thousands a lingering death beside which
the sudden departure attending the end of the world would have been
peaceful translation. The Crusades, begun (1096) in exaltation but in a
pitiful ignorance of ways and means, ended a hundred and seventy-five
years later in selfishness and an accession of knowledge. The ignorance
cost a waste of human life horrible to think of; the knowledge moved
western Europe to expression in all forms of art, and brought about a
feeling of unity which, in France, produced a nation bound by common
interests. Beyond any calculation was the impetus given to commerce and
to the intellectual life. The ordering of society, the institution of
chivalry, the awakening to the vividness of mental activity and of
beauty--these three influences touched life under the early Capetians
until it grew and ripened into the simple, beauty-loving, God-fearing
temper of the thirteenth century, the soul of the Middle Ages.

Henry I (1031-1060), no weakling but not a man of administrative
ability, followed his father’s example as a builder. One of his
benefactions was the Priory of Saint Martin-des-Champs which was begun
in the last year of his reign on the site of a former establishment
which had been destroyed by the Normans. It lay well out of the city on
the old Roman road leading to the north and was a huge place, a
fortified village in itself and quite independent of Paris. A wall of
considerable size furnished with round towers surrounded an enclosure in
which were a church, a refectory, a cloister, a chapter-house, an
archive tower, a field for the pasturing of cattle, gardens for the
raising of vegetables, and a cemetery for the burial of the dead. The
wall has gone to-day except for one of the round towers which was
preserved and rebuilt through the intercession of Victor Hugo when the
straightening of a street called for its destruction. The field and
gardens and the cemetery are now hidden beneath houses and pavements,
but the church, whose erection lasted from the eleventh to the
thirteenth century, and the refectory, finished in the thirteenth
century, have been preserved as parts of the Conservatoire des Arts et
Métiers, established by the Convention in 1794 as a technical school and
museum of machines and scientific instruments. The church, secularized,
serves as an exhibition hall for machinery, an incongruous and somewhat
shocking combination. The refectory is put to the more suitable use of
housing the technical library. Both are exquisite examples, and the
church is the oldest existing instance in the city, of that Gothic
architecture which sprang into being in the twelfth century as if to
symbolize with its stretching height and its soaring spires, its
delicate workmanship and its brilliancy of light and coloring, the
aspiration toward the high and the beautiful which filled men’s desires
after they came in contact with the appealing mysticism and the dazzling
loveliness of the East.

Like his father Henry had trouble with his wives--there were three of
them--and the marital affairs of his son, Philip I (1060-1108), were
even more involved. Becoming violently infatuated with Bertrade, the
fourth wife of the Count of Anjou, Philip sent away his wife, Bertha,
and arranged with Bertrade during a church service that she should
submit to being kidnapped. No bishop would marry them and it was only
after long search that a priest was found sufficiently timid or
sufficiently avaricious to yield his conscience to the royal demand.
Excommunication followed promptly, and for twelve years the coming of
Philip and Bertrade to a city silenced the church bells, which rang out
joyfully again as they left. So bad was the effect upon his people of
their king’s obstinate wrong-doing that the pope at last consented to an
examination of the royal offender. All the bishops of France met in
Paris on the first day of December, 1104. The Bishop of Orleans and the
Bishop of Paris waited upon Philip and asked whether he were prepared to
change his manner of life. He said that he was and accordingly appeared
before the ecclesiastical body barefooted and seemingly penitent.
Kneeling he promised atonement and swore to put aside Bertrade. Bertrade
took a similar oath. Neither of them kept it, but so willing was
everybody to feign blindness after this form of expiation that two years
later the monks of Saint Nicholas at Angers received them both
cordially, and Bertrade’s discarded husband dined at the same table with
his successor and slept in the same room with him.

Philip never was a friend of the church though he did not in later life
carry into effect depredations such as he planned when young, a real
theft, in fact, which, through a miraculous intervention, never came to
pass. Feeling a twinge of royal poverty--which does not mean that he was
really very poor--he went with one of his officers to Saint
Germain-des-Prés to take possession of some part of its riches. As they
approached the treasury the king’s companion was stricken blind, a
circumstance that put the thieving monarch to flight in terror. Yet the
check was not lasting for he and his courtiers so corrupted some of the
nunneries and monasteries of Paris that the Bishop of Paris was obliged
to disperse the establishments. One of the largest, a convent, was on
the Cité on the site of the present Prefecture of Police.

Having all this trouble with the pope and the church on his hands it is
not to be wondered at that Philip was not stirred by Peter the Hermit’s
preaching of the First Crusade. Indeed, no great ruler went on this
first expedition, though the enlistment of many strong lords and their
feudal following, and the unwise rush of whole families--women and
children as well as men and youths--lost many lives to France in this
most French of all the crusades.

Though not of a temper to sympathize personally with a love of learning
Philip had intelligence enough and kingly pride enough to see the
advantage to Paris of a concentration of schools in his capital. He
never interfered with the teaching of the religious houses, and during
his reign and immediately after at least four schools had obtained a
more than local reputation. As the church of Saint Denis sheltered the
tombs of the kings it was fitting that the abbey should instruct the
sons of the nobles; the cathedral of Notre Dame stood in the heart of
the Cité, and there the sons of the merchants were trained, one of their
teachers being William of Champeaux whose eloquence knew no equal until
it was matched and surpassed by one of his pupils, a young man from
Brittany, Abélard. Abélard learned what many others have learned before
and since, that it is both tactless and unprofitable to outshine your
so-called “betters.” He was sent away from Paris. It was not long before
he was summoned back by general acclaim, and joined the lecturers of the
third great school of the time, the favorite of the foreign students,
that of the abbey of Sainte Geneviève. His popularity there so
displeased William of Champeaux that he severed his connection with the
school of Notre Dame and founded the school and abbey of Saint Victor,
on the south bank, east of the island. This abbey was suppressed during
the Revolution and Napoleon built on its site the Halle aux Vins where
the city’s supply of wine is stored in bond.

Of these four schools the one to which Abélard attached himself acquired
a drawing reputation throughout all Europe, and scholars from England
and Germany and Italy sought him eagerly, often enjoying the privilege
of sitting under him at the expense of a long journey on foot and of a
life of privation when Paris was reached. Abélard’s thesis was “Do not
believe what you cannot understand”--the time-honored cry of the
independent thinker. The conservatives bided their time; there was no
use contending with a man in whom youth, beauty, learning and eloquence
flowered in a magical persuasiveness.

Unfortunately for Abélard’s career he was invited by Fulbert, a canon of
the cathedral, to enter his household as tutor of his niece, Héloise. It
was a rash experiment. In a narrow street of the Cité, twisting about in
the space north of the cathedral, the section where the canons and
canonesses used to live, there is still shown the site of the garden
where tutor and pupil, soon grown lovers, met in secret and plighted a
troth that was to bring upon them both suffering and shame--for Abélard
the end of his rise in the church, for Héloise, the cloister. They were
married and lived for a time where now stands number nine on the Quai
aux Fleurs, looking across the Seine to the right bank. Fulbert
separated them, but even the conservatives were shocked at the hideous
revenge which sent Abélard away from Paris only to be reunited with
Héloise after her death in a convent twenty years after the death of her
lover. To-day their tomb in Père Lachaise is the most visited of all
the resting places of the illustrious in this famous cemetery.

Louis VI (1108-1137), called “the Wideawake” and “the Fat,” was a
monarch who did much and planned more. Tall, handsome, energetic,
serious, he was the author of policies which in later days developed
important results. His accession found his kingdom surrounded by nobles
who were nominally his subjects but really enemies of uncommon vigor
awaiting the first chance to take their liege lord by surprise. He
needed something more than his present resources to cope with the
situation, and he met it by making for his son an advantageous marriage
which won him the adherence of Poitou and Guienne, and by permitting in
his adversaries’ domains, _but not in his own_, the establishment of
communes--self-governing towns which paid for their privileges by
supporting him against the nobles who ordinarily would have received
their feudal obedience. Both these steps proved of substantial value to
the crown, the first adding a large piece of territory to the royal
possessions in the next reign, and the other developing a new social
class, the _bourgeoisie_ or town dwelling class, whose democratic spirit
grew so rapidly that Louis IX in the next century had to check its
advance if he would have his own unchecked. It has never been long
subdued, however; it smoldered until it burst into the flame of the
Revolution; it persists to-day as the genius of the Third Republic.

Paris never was a commune, but, in compensation for remaining under the
rulership of the king and his provost (who lived in the Grand Châtelet
built to defend the northern end of the bridge from the Cité as the
Petit Châtelet held the southern bank) it received certain unusual
privileges. Among them was the monopoly of water transportation between
Paris and Mantes granted by Louis VI to the Corporation of Water
Merchants. This corporation was the most powerful of the merchants’
guilds in whose hands rested the municipal administration.

Louis’ methods, and those of his schoolmate and adviser, Suger, abbot of
Saint Denis, encouraged the growth of the city, for in this reign it
began once more to increase briskly on both banks of the river. As in
the earlier centuries, the pleasant country on the left bank proved more
attractive than did the rough land on the right. The south side
permitted streets to wander as widely as they willed, but on the north
the newcomers were pushed into a crowded section along the river. Marsh
and forest behind separated this compact district from Saint
Martin-des-Champs. Even at this early stage the northern settlement,
grouped around the Grève where the shipping was concentrated, was
becoming the business part of Paris. At a discreet distance outside were
the markets on exactly the spot where the Halles Centrales stand to-day,
and just within the settlement Louis built for the benefit of the market
men and women the church of Saint Jacques-la-Boucherie, now entirely
destroyed except for a sixteenth century tower which stands in ornate
dignity in a leafy square around which nineteenth century steam trams
and twentieth century automobiles hoot and whirl.

To Louis VI is attributed the building of the second city wall, piecing
out its predecessor so as to protect the suburbs on the right bank. He
was interested, too, in religious establishments. He added to the number
of the clergy of the chapel of Saint Nicholas near the palace, making
part of their emolument six hogsheads of wine apiece from his own
vineyards. He repaired Notre Dame, already five centuries old. He was a
patron of Saint Denis, where he had been educated and where he adopted
as the royal banner the _oriflamme_ of the saint. He dedicated a church
of the Cité to Sainte Geneviève in gratitude for her staying an epidemic
of fever. He had the heads of cattle carved over the door of the church
with which he honored Saint Peter--Saint Pierre-aux-Boeufs--for the
especial benefit of the butchers of the city.

On top of Montmartre, standing demurely to-day beside the glittering
basilica of the Sacred Heart, is the little church of Saint
Pierre-de-Montmartre built by Louis as the chapel of a Benedictine
abbey. Its restoration has been completed within the last decade, and
its cold, undecorated severity compels a realization of monastic
cheerlessness and of how acceptable must have been the reaction to the
colorful warmth and grace of the Gothic. Though their church was not
beautiful the Benedictines had no reason to be uncomfortable, for Louis
granted to them a whole village and sundry estates, and in addition such
eminently secular property as a monopoly of the baking privileges of
certain ovens, a slaughter-house, the confiscated house of an Italian
money-changer, and the exclusive right to fish in certain parts of the
Seine.

Up to this point the buildings mentioned have but little to show to
modern eyes beyond their ancient character and perhaps their form. A
Roman bath, a Merovingian tower on the Church of Saint Germain-des-Prés,
a rebuilt tower of Saint Martin’s Priory, two aged columns in Saint
Pierre-de-Montmartre--these are but fragments of the old constructions.
From this period on, however, it will become more and more usual to
find large portions of early buildings. One such is the church of Saint
Julien-le-Pauvre. Its date is a little later than that of the abbey
church of Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre. It is Gothic at its simplest, yet
its pointed windows and arches are prophetic of the beauty to come.

The story of Saint Julien, to whom the church is dedicated, is one of
tragic interest. A youth of noble family, he gave himself earnestly to
all the pursuits of his time and of his class, his one fault being his
love of the cruelties of the chase. One day a dying stag whose doe and
fawn he had killed prophesied that he would slay his own father and
mother. The prophecy came to pass and Julien, in horror at the
misfortune that had befallen him, left home and wife and wealth and
wandered in poverty through the world seeking whom he might help. At
last he established himself on a river bank in a hut where he sheltered
travelers through the night, and in the morning ferried them across the
stream. There he lived a life of expiation till death took him.

It was in the sixth century that a pilgrim’s hostel was built in Saint
Julien’s honor on the south side of the Seine. There Saint Gregory of
Tours lodged in 580, and there the Normans came in 886 and destroyed it.
In the twelfth century it was rebuilt as a part of the Abbey of
Longpont. Since then the unpretentious building has had a varied
history. At one time it served as the general assembly hall of the
University; again it became the chapel of the hospital, the Hôtel Dieu.
During the Revolution it served as a storehouse for fodder. At some time
the nave was destroyed, leaving in the present courtyard a well which
once was beneath the roof of the church. The existing edifice, which is
merely the choir of the twelfth century building, is used for the Greek
service.

Thanks to his father’s prudent arrangements Louis VII, called “the
Young” and “the Pious” (1137-1180), inherited a far larger and stronger
territory than had Louis VI. He was by no means his father’s equal in
intelligence or energy and his reign was unmarked by events notable
either for Paris or for France. His happiest days were those that he
spent in the cloisters of Notre Dame, he said. His father was happiest
in the field.

A few years after Louis’ accession he became involved in a quarrel with
the pope over a candidate for a bishopric. When the Count of Champagne
sided with the Holy Father Louis invaded his domains. During the siege
of the town of Vitry no fewer than thirteen hundred people who had taken
refuge in a church were burned to death with the destruction of the
building. Remorse for this disaster for which he was responsible made
him lend a willing ear to the exhortations of Saint Bernard, an opponent
of Abélard’s heresies who was now preaching the Second Crusade, and when
Pope Eugenius came in person to France he gave the French king the
pilgrim’s equipment and the _oriflamme_ of Saint Denis in the Saint’s
own church. The crusade ended in bitter disaster, and Louis died before
the Third Crusade was under way, but his interest in the Holy Wars led
to his patronage of the order of Knights Templar, which had been founded
to protect pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher. At the time when Pope
Eugenius went to Paris there was a mighty gathering there of Templars,
and probably it was then that King Louis granted them the land not far
from the Priory of Saint Martin on which they built a huge
establishment, part fortification, part religious house, whose
surroundings they made fair by draining the marshes and converting waste
land into fruitful fields.

The king does not seem to have been the cause of much civic improvement
of Paris in spite of his long reign. He built an oratory to Notre
Dame-de-l’Étoile near the palace. If we may judge by his usual oath--“By
the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem”--it must have been he who gave the
name to the cemetery of the Holy Innocents and its chapel, though
probably they were established before his day. The burying ground was
near the Halles, and it was laid out when that section was far beyond
the crowded part of the town. By the time of the accession of Philip
Augustus (1180), however, the population had pushed northwards from the
busy river bank, the marsh had been made habitable, and the quickly
increasing cemetery stood on the outskirts of the town, not in the
country, and needed the wall which Philip gave it.

The Pont au Change, the bridge leading from the right bank to the island
near the palace--perhaps the very line which the Grand Pont drew across
the river at the time of the siege by the Normans--received its name at
this time. There were houses built upon it from end to end, and Louis
allowed the money-changers to do business upon it along one side and
permitted the goldsmiths to establish themselves on the other. For four
centuries this was the fashionable promenade of Paris until Henry IV
finished the Pont Neuf whose open expanse across the western tip of the
Cité gave more space for display. When a new king made his formal entry
into Paris it was customary for a huge flock of birds to be let loose
from the Pont au Change that they might carry the glad news abroad.

Eleanor of Aquitaine who had brought Louis and France so handsome a
dowry proved a wife whose conduct her husband could not countenance,
though he loved her with a stern fondness. Their marriage was annulled.
Within a few months Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet who became Henry
II of England and she gave her new husband possessions in France which,
added to those which he already had as lord of Normandy, Brittany, Anjou
and Maine, made him richer in French lands than the king to whom he owed
allegiance. Then began the friction between the two countries which it
has required centuries to still. Louis was twice married after his
separation from Eleanor. His last wife was Alix or Adelaide of
Champagne, whose marriage, consecration and coronation on a November day
in 1160 were the ceremonies of the last brilliant scene enacted within
the walls of the ancient Merovingian church of Notre Dame, soon to be
replaced by the building which ennobles the Cité to-day.

After Louis’ death there came to the throne a king for whom the
bird-sellers of the Pont au Change might properly have sent forth double
the usual number of feathered messengers of gladness, for Philip the
Great was to make France understand for the first time the spirit of
nationality, and under him Paris was to develop into the brain that
ordered the members.

CHAPTER V

PARIS OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS

In Philip Augustus (1180-1223) was reincarnated Charlemagne’s
wide-seeing spirit, and now it appeared at a time when it was possible
to turn vision into fact. Charlemagne saw the value of a united nation
under a centralized power but conditions were not ripe for the
fulfillment of his vision. Philip Augustus was alert in taking advantage
of the beginning made by Louis VI toward establishing the supremacy of
the king and in availing himself of certain feudal rights which previous
monarchs had not been strong enough to enforce. He insisted that his
vassals, great lords all of them, should submit themselves to his court;
that they should take him as arbiter of their disputes; that they should
ask his confirmation, as suzerain, of any privileges that they granted
to their vassals; and that they should make no changes in their fiefs
which should lessen their value to him. As suzerain the king was heir to
fiefs which fell vacant for any reason, and he acted as guardian for the
many minor children orphaned in the constant quarrels in which the
nobles engaged.

A strong grasp of all these hitherto unurged rights gave Philip a power
that enabled him to repress the disorders of the country, and sounded
the note for the downfall of feudal home rule which could not live
harmoniously with power centralized in the monarch.

Philip’s procedure divided his kingdom into bailiwicks, each containing
several provostships. Four times a year each _bailli_ appeared before
the assizes in Paris and reported on the condition of the land under his
care. Thrice a year he came to town bringing the revenues of his
bailiwick, and the king saw to it that the money was not turned over to
any body of lords, always hungry for more without Oliver’s excuse, and
accustomed to pocket any sums that strayed in their way. By the king’s
decree the financial report was made to a board consisting of a clerk
and of six burgesses. The burgesses were always Philip’s good friends.
He made it for their interest to be faithful to him, and with their aid
he played the barons against the church, the church against the barons,
and both against the bands of robbers that infested the kingdom. He
banished the Jews and confiscated their property, this for the same
spiritual benefit which he thought would profit the country by his
burning of heretics. Incidentally, the contents of the Hebrews’ coffers
hidden in the ghetto on the Cité did not come amiss for the filling of
the king’s own strong boxes in the palace not far away.

In the palace Philip’s father and grandfather had died, there he himself
was born, and there he married his second wife, Ingeborg of Denmark, to
whom he took so violent a dislike that he separated from her the next
day. The unlucky young woman appealed to the pope and the consequent
embroilment of Philip with the church on account of his subsequent
marriage with Agnes of Meran laid the whole kingdom under interdict. No
services were held in the churches even for marriages or burials and the
unhappiness caused the people was so great that at last Philip put away
Agnes and recalled Ingeborg. Because he loved Agnes tenderly he hated
Ingeborg all the more and her life of seeming favor was in reality one
of wretchedness.

When Philip came to the throne all the western part of what is now
France belonged to the king of England, Henry II. The Île de France was
cut off from the sea, and the frequent hostile actions of a vassal whose
possessions were greater than his own kept the young monarch constantly
involved in petty wars with a man so much older than he and so much more
skillful a tactician that he gained nothing and even came near losing a
part of what he had. Into the mind of the lad of fifteen these troubles
instilled a hatred of England and a determination to be free of this
perpetual annoyance and to obtain a hold upon land that seemed
unnaturally owned by a lord who was his vassal and yet lived over seas.

The years intervening between the growth of Philip’s determination and
his chance to put it into effect were filled with work which developed
the young king’s naturally strong character and intelligence. After
Henry’s death one of his troublesome sons succeeded him--Richard, who
has come down in history as “the Lion-hearted.” Richard was handsome and
brave, a man to stir the imagination and admiration of a fighting age,
but he was too impetuous and too active to apply himself to the study of
government. When the call came for the Third Crusade Richard found in it
an outlet for his energy for which he would not have to make excuse to
his deserted kingdom. He and Philip and Frederick of Germany all went to
the East, and there the French and English kings came to know each
other, Philip envying Richard’s dash and audacity and envied in turn for
the statesmanlike qualities which he was developing.

When it became evident that his presence would be of no help to a
crusade doomed to failure Philip insisted on withdrawing to France where
he knew that his coming would be of advantage; Richard stayed on with no
thought for his kingdom, hoping for further adventure. Philip put
himself in touch with conditions in and around the Île de France, took
advantage of all disturbances in his vassal’s provinces which would give
him even a slender foothold, and was ready to meet any act of Richard’s
successor, John, whatever it might be.

The opportunity came soon after John’s accession, for he could be
depended upon to open some loophole through his disposition toward
devious ways rather than straightforward. As lord of the western
provinces of France he was Philip’s vassal; as Duke of Brittany his boy
nephew, Arthur, was his vassal. When war broke out between France and
England and John went across the Channel to pursue it, he found that his
nephew, incited by Philip, without doubt, was laying claim to other
provinces than Brittany. The easiest way out of the difficulty was to
murder Arthur, which John is said to have done either with his own hand
or by the dirks of ruffians in his presence. After Philip had stormed a
fortress that had been looked upon as the chief defender of Rouen the
frightened Englishman fled home, and then Philip devised a plan of
making Arthur’s death work to his advantage. As John’s suzerain he
summoned him to Paris to answer for his nephew’s death before the king’s
court. John refused to appear unless he were promised a safe-conduct
not only to the city but home again. Philip refused to promise
protection for the return trip unless the court should declare John not
guilty of the charge against him. Philip hardly could have expected that
John would thrust his head into the noose, but it suited his purpose
quite as well that he should not. What he wanted was his land and that
he could take now with perfect justice when the court declared John
guilty of murder and of treason in disobeying the orders of his
overlord. The estates in France which John had inherited from his
father, those in the north, were confiscated to the French crown. It was
all much easier than fighting.

While diplomacy gained for Philip these northern possessions and the
power that went with them, he gained a like addition in the south by a
system of letting alone. Simon de Montfort, a noble of Normandy, entered
upon a crusade against the people of Albi, in Toulouse, a town and
district heretical enough to attract the attention of the persecutor and
rich enough to draw the gaze of the avaricious soldier of fortune. The
destruction that ensued laid waste a fair country and wiped out the
greater part of its population. A few years later the province fell in
to the crown in default of direct heirs to the ruling family of
Toulouse, and thus the south of France was added to the northern and
western possessions which were accumulating under Philip’s control.

Poor-spirited as was John, now called “Lackland,” he could not see
himself deprived of his own land and his rival growing rich in other
provinces without making some opposition. He entered into a coalition
with the German emperor and with the Count of Flanders, who was one of
Philip’s important vassals. Philip defeated the combined armies in the
battle of Bouvines (1214) and thereby made himself the most powerful
monarch in Europe. The success of the citizen soldiery established the
reputation of the burgesses as strong and intelligent fighters and
thereby struck terror to the hearts of nobles who were nursing plans of
rebellion like those of the captured Count of Flanders. Yet nobles were
one with burgesses in rejoicing over John’s final dismissal from any
governing part in northern France and over the defeat of the intruding
Germans. Never before in all her history had there been so universal a
feeling of what it meant to be a Frenchman and to serve a country whose
unity was symbolized by a king personally strong, strongly supported, in
very truth the head controlling the members.

It is an interesting fact that the same period that established the
supremacy of the king of France was marked in England by the check to
the royal domination administered to John Lackland when the barons
wrested from him the Magna Charta. Historians of other countries are apt
to speak of the French as volatile, capricious, delighting in
revolutions, of which the troubled fourscore years from 1789 to 1871 are
examples. It might be well to remember that the English, who pride
themselves on being neither volatile nor capricious, were less patient
than the men across the Channel. They, too, made their stand against
aristocratic privilege, and they did it five hundred years before the
long-suffering French; they, too, cut off their monarch’s head, and
Charles went to the block a hundred and fifty years before Louis mounted
the guillotine. Action and reaction are equal, prolonged repression must
result in corresponding expression. The evils of five centuries are
quickly cured if less than one century is devoted to the healing.

After the battle of Bouvines the victorious army marched to Paris in a
triumph which was participated in by every village along the way. Every
parish church held a service of thanksgiving, every crossroads was
packed with shouting peasants doing homage to the king, admiring the
nobles, and, above all, wonderstruck at the new military force whose
possible value they could see, even if it was not yet entirely clear
how great would be the weight of the “mailed fist” of the _bourgeois_.

At the very time when the power of the king was becoming dominant,
however, democracy showed itself even with impudence in the _fabliaux_,
the popular tales which betrayed the jealous spirit of the populace
toward the nobles and the clergy. These verses, marked by the _esprit
gaulois_ were characteristic of the period of the early middle ages as
were also the _chansons de geste_ which stirred the crusaders by their
recital of the valorous deeds of accredited heroes. “Renard the Fox,” a
long epic of three centuries’ growth, burlesques every aspect of the
social life of the middle ages, and its delicious fooling paints a more
vivid and more intimate picture than does the pen of any chronicler.
These lighter forms were not representative of all the thought of the
period, for Abélard’s thesis, ancient and ever new, that we should not
believe what we do not understand, and Saint Bernard’s refutation of
such a lack of faith were the most prominent instances of a mental
activity that found lodgment in schools and expression in pulpit
controversy and rostrum argument. Now, too, the professions and the arts
no longer were confined to the monasteries, but laymen became teachers
and writers and artists and craftsmen.

The opportunities of meeting in Paris like-minded people from all over
Europe for a long time had drawn students to Paris, and schools were
endowed for men of different nationalities. Philip united them under the
jurisdiction of the University. From very early days the region on the
south bank, just across from the eastern end of the Cité and extending
up Mont Sainte Geneviève has been given over to students. In the church
of Saint Julien-le-Pauvre they met with their instructors. Across the
alley on which the church faces still stands the house of the governor
of the Petit Châtelet before whom the young men appeared to adjust their
differences. Behind the church runs the rue du Fouarre on which many
colleges were situated, among them the Schools of France, Normandy,
Germany and Picardy. In 1202 this thoroughfare was called rue des
Escoliers, but when, by way of responding to Pope Urban V’s appeal for
self-denial, the students in the classes sat on bundles of straw bought
in the near-by hay market, the street changed its name to “Straw
Street,” to commemorate their good intentions. Near by, to-day, is a
modern street called “Dante,” after the Italian poet, who was not behind
his contemporaries in studying in Paris. Émile Loubet, the former
president of the French Republic, lives at number 5 on this street.

[Illustration: _Le Louvre au Tems de Philippe Auguste_

THE LOUVRE IN THE TIME OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS.

From an old print owned by the City of Paris.]

[Illustration: FRAGMENT OF THE WALL OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS AS IT LOOKS
TO-DAY.]

Not far away is the rue des Anglais, which was laid out before Philip
Augustus’s reign and took its name from the English students who
frequented it. A little farther west, creeping in the dark between
tilted houses, is the street, called since the fourteenth century, “of
the Parchment Workers,” and in the thirteenth century rue des
Escrivains. Two of the tiny dwellings, numbers 6 and 7, belonged in the
thirteenth century to the English cathedral of Norwich, which used them
as dormitories for the scholars which it supported at the French seat of
learning.

These houses are built around a microscopic courtyard, a plan persistent
in France through many hundred years. It is a plan seen to-day in many
modern dwellings, in the Banque de France, a seventeenth century
building, in the eastern end of the Louvre and in its pavement record of
the earliest quadrangular Louvre. It is a plan making for light and air
and it often permits the planting of a small garden within. The idea
sprang from the necessity of a fortification’s preserving a stolid and
impenetrable exterior while the life of its tenants, carried on within
the shelter of its walls, had something of pleasant environment.

So closely does Paris cling to her ancient traditions that even in the
twentieth century the schools and their students are removed but a few
yards from their medieval location. The students of to-day, too, have
their own traditions of dress and behavior which mark them as
inhabitants of the “Latin Quarter” even if they are kodaked at
Versailles on a holiday afternoon. They assume for themselves now
privileges which Philip Augustus encouraged them to take by making them
free from the regulations which the other citizens obeyed and subject
only to the ecclesiastical tribunal. This difference of attitude caused
many riots in the thirteenth century and they break out afresh in the
twentieth with a frequency which helps to occupy any idle moments of the
city police.

So great were the attractions of Paris offered not only to students but
to merchants that the population of the city grew to one hundred and
twenty thousand under Philip’s rule. The populous section on the south
or left bank of the river was matched by another on the north, chiefly
inhabited by merchants and artisans, and both of them were larger than
the original Cité on the island. The Cité was the administrative and
ecclesiastical center, for the king’s palace was not his only residence
but also a palace of justice, and crowded into the limits set by the
Seine were so many churches that one of them served a parish of only
twenty houses.

The northward growth of the city encroached upon the Halles as it had
upon the cemetery of the Innocents, and Philip recognized the necessity
of enclosing and roofing the markets. Such utilities as public ovens,
too, which had been a monopoly of some of the religious houses, he
opened to the citizens at large. He also instituted a water supply,
which, though far from ample, since it allowed only two quarts a day for
each inhabitant, was an earnest of good intentions.

The original tower of the Louvre seemed to Philip a good nucleus for an
enlarged fortification which should be at the same time a palace to
which he might withdraw from the palace in the crowded Cité. Around the
old donjon he built a rectangular fortress, its short end lying along
the river, its entrance defended by another huge tower whose work of
protection was reinforced by smaller towers, by a surrounding wall, and
by a moat. Down beneath the treasures of to-day’s Louvre and out under
the courtyard still run passages of this old building. They twist and
turn within walls of rough masonry and inflame the imagination with
thoughts of adventurous possibilities, of plots and prisoners and
escapes, until they land the wanderer of a sudden in the coal bin of the
hopelessly up-to-date furnace that heats the Hall of the Caryatides.

Across the river on the south bank stood another huge tower, best known
by its later name, the Tour de Nesle. It was from this tower, that, in
the fourteenth century, Jeanne of Burgundy, widow of Philip the Long, is
reputed to have had the people who displeased her dropped into the
river. Villon’s “Ballad of Old-Time Ladies” says:

“And where, I pray you, is the Queen,
Who willed that Buridan should steer
Sewed in a sack’s mouth, down the Seine?”

Buridan was a professor in the University, and the author of the famous
assertion that if an ass were placed between two equally attractive
bundles of hay he would starve to death before he could determine which
one to eat first. The tale goes that Buridan’s friends, fearing the
outcome of his visit to the tower, were waiting in a boat and rescued
him. Dumas’ play, “La Tour de Nesle” is based on the legends surrounding
this old fortification, now existent only in a tablet placed on the
eastern wing of the Institute to mark its site.

A chain across the stream from the Louvre to the Tour de Nesle regulated
navigation, for it could only be taken down for the passage of boats by
permission of the provost.

Starting south from the Tour de Nesle ran

[Illustration: TOUR DE NESLE IN 1661.]

the wall whose erection Philip commanded when he first went off to the
wars, that his fair city might be well protected in his absence. It was
higher and heavier than its predecessors, with a battlemented top to
hide soldiers in action and frequent towers which served the triple
purpose of sheltering extra men, of storing weapons and of affording
points of observation somewhat above the wall itself. A dozen gates
opened each upon a drawbridge whose lifting compelled the invader to
cross a ditch in some way before he attempted to storm an entrance.

Leaving the Tour de Nesle the wall swept around Mont Sainte Geneviève
and back to the river at a point about opposite the center of the
present Île Saint Louis, east of the Cité. On the right bank it ran
north and west, keeping below the Priory of Saint Martin which lay
outside of it. Its course is traced on the pavement of the eastern
courtyard of the present Louvre, part of one of the towers is extant in
a government pawnshop in the Marais, a considerable section is to be
seen in the enclosure beside Saint Julien-le-Pauvre, and its course is
marked elsewhere by an occasional fragment, by some street named
_Fossé_, or by a tablet placed by the Commission of Old Paris, which is
doing excellent antiquarian work in the preservation and marking of
historic buildings and localities.

The Paris of Philip Augustus was but a thirtieth part as large as the
Paris of to-day, but it had three hundred streets. Narrow, dark and
dirty alleys they were, the best of them, and even in this early century
the devastating epidemics of a later day were not unknown. A
contemporary historian says: “One day the king was in his castle of the
Louvre and was walking back and forth, pondering the affairs of the
kingdom, when there passed a heavy wagon whose wheels stirred up the
street and caused an insupportable odor to rise from it. When he smelled
this stench Philip experienced a profound nausea. At once he summoned
the provost and the burgesses of the city and he gave them orders to
pave the streets with large stones and strong, which was done.”

“Which was done in part” would have been nearer the truth, for, although
one public-spirited citizen gave a large sum, most of the contributions
were of the nature of samples from the shopkeepers’ stocks, and the
actual amount of paving accomplished was very little for many centuries
to come. As late as the sixteenth century Montaigne was deploring the
evil odors of the city he loved so well, and Arthur Young, at the end of
the eighteenth, compared the cleanliness of Paris most unfavorably with
that of London. In Philip’s reign ladies seldom went afoot, so thick
was the mud, composed of indescribable filth, and knights had good need
of armor in times of peace to protect them from buckets of water, poured
casually into the streets from abutting houses with only a cry of “_Gare
l’eau_” as a warning.

Nevertheless, in days of festival these same narrow streets might be
gorgeous to behold. When Philip Augustus returned from the battle of
Bouvines the whole city came out to meet him. Chanting priests, singing
girls, shouting urchins ushered him into a town decorated to do him
honor. From windows and balconies hung rich tapestries and carpets;
banners waved, and the sunlight flashed on glittering spearpoints by day
as bonfires made breastplates glitter at night.

It would be hard to find in all history so complete an instance of a
nation’s spiritual and mental growth expressing itself in outer form
rapidly and in transcendent beauty as is exhibited in the evolution of
Gothic architecture in France in the twelfth century. It originated in
the Île de France and within the span of this hundred years Paris was
rebuilt, bursting into the elegance and grace of the new style from the
heaviness of the old as a butterfly casts aside its constraining cocoon.

The nave of Saint Germain-des-Prés, is an example of the heavy-pillared,
round-arched building of the Romanesque era. The desire to give visible
form to the universal feeling of uplift brought to birth the ogive or
pointed arch which gave its name to “ogival” or Gothic architecture best
shown, of course, in churches. Higher and higher the arches pointed
skyward; lancet windows above helped to light the deep “vessel” or nave
(from the Latin _navis_, ship) and the roof crowned all at a dizzying
height.

Satisfying as this was from the point of view of beauty and of
symbolism, it gave rise to serious practical questions. How were such
lofty walls to be made strong enough to support the outward push of the
roof? The thirteenth century had come about before the problem was
solved entirely. By that time outer buttresses had been evolved strong
enough for their work yet so delicate that they were called “flying,”
spread as they were like the wings of a bird.

Decoration became more beautiful, also. Romanesque pillar capitals had
been adorned with conventional vegetation and strange beasts whose
originals never were on land or sea. The sculptors of the ogival period
took Nature as their teacher and France as their schoolroom and carved
the leaves and flowers and fruits that grew about them, the oak and
willow and rose-bush and clover and grape. Pinnacles gave an effect of
lightness to exteriors and their edges were

[Illustration: CHOIR AND NAVE OF NOTRE DAME, LOOKING WEST.]

[Illustration: NAVE OF SAINT GERMAIN DES PRÉS.]

decorated with _crochets_ (furled leaves) and tipped with _fleurons_ or
bunches of budding leaves.

High heavenward sprang spires from the western end of the churches, this
western façade forming an imposing entrance to the nave through whose
length the choir and altar at the eastern end, beyond the transepts,
looked mysteriously far away. From the roof at the junction of the nave
and the transepts a slender spire called a _flèche_ (arrow) shot upward
with exquisite grace.

The introduction of ogival architecture had a sudden and revolutionary
effect upon the art of painting. Before the twelfth century mural
decorations and the illumination of manuscripts had been the only
instances in France. When the broad expanses of wall above the
semicircular Romanesque arches vanished with the coming of the pointed
arch there was no place left except the windows for the depiction of the
lives of the saints, of scenes from Old Testament history and from the
life of Christ. Glass then became the artist’s medium.

The most illustrious examples of the new style to be found in modern
Paris are the cathedral of Notre Dame, the refectory of Saint
Martin-des-Champs, and the Sainte Chapelle built by Saint Louis in the
thirteenth century.

The cornerstone of Notre Dame was laid by Pope Alexander III in the
reign of Louis VII (1163.) The new cathedral covered the spot where the
Nautae had erected their altar to Jupiter, replaced the many times
repaired Merovingian cathedral of Notre Dame, and attached itself to the
ancient church of Saint Étienne, the original cathedral of Paris which
stood where Notre Dame’s sacristy now rises. This old edifice was not
taken down until the new was sufficiently advanced for the altar to be
consecrated, so that service beneath the cathedral roof never was
interrupted even for a day. The relics were removed to a new Saint
Étienne’s, built on Mont Sainte Geneviève.

Construction went on briskly through Louis’ reign and the four decades
of Philip Augustus’s and the three years of his successor’s, Louis VIII,
and work ended on the superb edifice in the twentieth year of the rule
of Saint Louis. It was a “quick job”--eighty-four years--as building
went in those days. The great mass never has been completed, for the
spires of the original plan have not been added. It has had its days of
decay and of restoration, the last attempt having returned its elaborate
west façade as closely as possible to its appearance in Philip
Augustus’s day when it was finished.

Inside and out it is magnificently harmonious,

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME.]

a worthy setting for the scenes it has witnessed--scenes splendid,
startling, tragic. Here Saint Louis brought the Crown of Thorns and here
his funeral took place. Here Philip the Fair rode in on horseback after
the battle of Mons-en-Puelle and here he convened the first States
General--the first Assembly wherein the burgesses were represented.
Henry VI of England was crowned here, so was Marie Stuart, and here it
was that Napoleon set the imperial crown upon his own head and then
crowned Josephine. Here Henry IV, turned Catholic for the purpose of
gaining possession of Paris, heard his first mass, and here, during the
Revolution, a ballet dancer posed in the choir as the Goddess of Reason,
“in place of the former Holy Sacrament.”

Officially, the cathedral is the hub of France, for measurements along
the national highways are all made from the foot of its towers. Deep in
the hearts of the French people, too, is love for this splendid fane.
They love it as a summary of Gothic beauty, as a storehouse of history,
and, above all, as the moral fortress of the city, sheltering as it does
“Notre Dame de Paris,” the guardian of the city for five hundred years.

CHAPTER VI

PARIS OF SAINT LOUIS

The son of Philip Augustus, Louis VIII, whose accession was celebrated
in Paris with high festivity, reigned for three dismal, unprofitable
years. His wife, Blanche of Castile, reared to a manhood of
conscientious rectitude their son, Louis IX, whose virtues were
recognized by canonization less than thirty years after his death.

It has happened, oddly enough, that although women are forbidden by the
fourteenth century construction of the Salic Law to sit on the throne of
France as sovereigns, no country has been more frequently ruled by
women. Sometimes the queen-mother has acted as regent during the
minority of her son, sometimes the queen has steered the ship of state
while her husband was out of the country on war intent. Isabella of
Hainault, Philip Augustus’s first wife, was regent when her lord went to
the third crusade in 1189; Blanche of Castile governed her son’s kingdom
for ten years (1226-1236); Anne de Beaujeu, daughter of Louis XI, guided
the realm of her brother, Charles VIII, from 1483-1490; Louise de
Savoie ruled (1515) until her son, Francis I came of age, and was again
entrusted with the power when he went upon one of his many military
expeditions; Catherine de Medicis, the mother of three kings--Francis
II, Charles IX and Henry III--began her career as a ruler when her
husband, Henry II, was warring with Germany (1552), continued it
unofficially during the short reign of Francis II, was legal regent
(1560) during the minority of Charles IX, and enjoyed a long continuance
of influence because of his and his brother Henry III’s weakness of
character which she herself had fostered; Marie de Medicis (1610) played
havoc with Henry IV’s reorganized France during the long minority of her
son, Louis XIII; Maria Theresa controlled the kingdom of Louis XIV while
the “Sun King” was carrying war into Holland; Marie Louise was declared
regent when Napoleon left France (1812-1814) to meet the allied forces
of Austria, England, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden; and Eugénie took her
husband’s place when Napoleon III fought against Austria (1859) and
again (1870) when he left his country, never to return to it, during the
ill-advised contest with Prussia.

Blanche of Castile was a person of extraordinary political intelligence,
tact and administrative ability. The years of her son’s minority were
made turbulent by unruly vassals who thought to take advantage of the
inexperience of a woman, yet the queen-regent proved herself able to
cope with every situation that arose. She endeared herself and the young
king to the burgesses by appealing to them for support against the
lords, and the lords realized the worth of the citizens’ friendship. On
one occasion, when the _bourgeois_ of Paris set forth to meet and
protect their young master who was surrounded by foes at some distance
from the city, the nobles, hearing the news, gave up their iniquitous
intentions and went to their homes. Indeed, it was their lack of
coöperation among themselves that enabled Louis all through his reign to
strengthen the royal power at the expense of that of his subjects.

In her treatment of these troublesome lords Blanche was not always
obliged to use such stern measures as force of arms. Her armory was full
of woman’s weapons, for she was handsome and gracious, and her manner
and charm often brought about conclusions which she might not have
reached by argument. In spite of the constant uprisings and conspiracies
with which she had to contend the kingdom as a whole did not degenerate,
and Philip Augustus’s strong foundation was not undermined. More and
more power became centralized in the throne, Louis pursuing from a
single-hearted belief that such a concentration was best for his people,
the policy which his grandfather undertook for ambition’s sake.

Had Louis followed his personal inclinations he would have entered the
religious life. It has been suggested that Blanche encouraged this
spirit in him, not because it would have been possible for him to have
given up his throne, but because, if his interests were involved
elsewhere he would not interfere with his mother’s rule of his kingdom.
Blanche’s failing was jealousy. Jealous even of her own child, she
continued to force her influence upon Louis after he was of age.
Jealousy moved her to interfere between him and his wife, Margaret of
Provence, so that they had to meet by stealth. She even took him from
his wife’s bedside when she was thought to be dying. Naturally such an
attitude did not endear her to her daughter-in-law, and Margaret,
envious perhaps, in her turn became ambitious for power which she was
not competent to wield. Who shall say that Louis had an easy life
between an ambitious mother to whom his dignity did not permit him to
give way, and a wife, finely courageous, but without talents of the
larger sort! Only the fact that he loved both women tenderly could have
given him the wisdom to steer his course straight.

The English king, Henry III, became involved in a quarrel between Louis
and one of his vassals, and invaded France. Louis took the _oriflamme_
from Saint Denis and went against his foes, gaining victory after
victory but using his gain with a moderation and kindness very different
from the custom of the time. After the first hurt to his pride had worn
away Henry was of a mind to be glad to accept Louis’ offer to give back
to him such of his holdings in France as had been captured in the recent
war, provided that Henry renounced others for all time, and admitted
himself the vassal of France for those he still retained.

The ceremony of swearing the oath to Louis took place in the square (now
the Place Dauphine) at the western end of the palace. Amid a great
gathering of nobles and priests both French and English, Henry, dressed
with no sign of his royal state, not even wearing sword, spurs, cape or
head covering, knelt before Louis, laid his hands in his, and made oath,
“Sir, I become your liegeman with mouth and hands, and I swear and
promise you faith and loyalty, and to guard your right according to my
power, and to do fair justice at your summons or the summons of your
bailiff, to the best of my wit.”

Wise as he was in the rearing of his children, just to his people so
that even the quarrelsome lords brought their troubles to his Paris
court, generous to the poor and merciful to the afflicted, Louis was
cruelly harsh to those whom he considered at fault on the score of
religion. Heretics, so-called, he punished with severity; blasphemers he
caused to be branded on the mouth, saying that he himself would consent
to be branded with a hot iron if by that means all profane oaths might
be removed from his realm. “I was full twenty-two years in his company,”
says de Joinville, “and never heard him swear by God nor His Mother nor
His Saints. When he wished to affirm anything he would say ‘Truly that
was so,’ or ‘Truly, that is so.’”

On one occasion when he had commanded the branding of a Paris burgher
the decree was harshly criticised by the people. When these same folk a
little later were praising the king for some good works that he had done
for the city he said that he expected more favor from God for the curses
that his branding order had brought down upon his head than for the
honor that he received for these good works.

Queen Blanche was given to benevolence and during her regency set her
son an example which he willingly followed throughout his life. It was
she who excited his interest in continuing the rebuilding of the Hôtel
Dieu, the hospital which had stood in one guise or another for some
half dozen centuries on the south side of the Cité between the cathedral
and the river. A later annex was built on the left bank of the Seine
adjoining Saint Julien-le-Pauvre, and this section was not demolished
until 1908, although the buildings on the Cité were torn down and the
present Hôtel Dieu on the north of the cathedral was built some forty
years ago.

Louis’ philanthropic leanings included an establishment for the blind,
three hundred (“Quinze-Vingts,” “Fifteen-Twenties”) being sheltered in a
hospice which stood near the present Palais Royal, but is now
established in the eastern part of the town. His interest in learning
moved him to encourage his chaplain, Robert de Sorbon, in the
enlargement of the school named after him, the Sorbonne, which Robert
had undertaken at first for poor students, but which, under royal
patronage, became a renowned theological school. It has always been
independent in attitude, now opposed to the Reformation, now to the
Jesuits, now to the Jansenists. To-day it is the University of Paris,
the building on the Mont Sainte Geneviève being given over to the
faculties of arts and sciences. Here come students from all over the
world to listen to the foremost lecturers of France in a huge edifice
which about a quarter of a century ago replaced one built by Richelieu.
With the generosity which France has always shown in educational
matters all the lectures are free.

The palace on the Cité remained under Louis the heart of the bustling
city of 130,000 people. Here he came after his wedding, and the room
that he occupied was used by many succeeding monarchs on the night after
their first entry into Paris. The king’s library, built as a part of the
palace, was filled with the work of several thousand copyists. Louis
threw the building open to young students as well as to old scholars,
and loved nothing better than to walk about among the young men and
explain their tasks to them. In the palace garden the king used to sit
and administer justice. De Joinville says:

“Sometimes have I seen him, in summer, go to do justice among his
people in the garden of Paris, clothed in a tunic of camlet, a
surcoat of tartan without sleeves, and a mantle of black taffeta
about his neck, his hair well combed, no cap, and a hat of white
peacock’s feathers upon his head. And he would cause a carpet to be
laid down, so that we might sit round him, and all the people who
had any cause to bring before him stood around. And then would he
have their causes settled, as I have told you afore he was wont to
do in the wood of Vincennes.”

Other parts of the palace were built by Saint Louis, notably the vaulted
guard hall in the lower part of the north side. The ancient round towers
belong to the Conciergerie where, during the Revolution, Marie
Antoinette and many others as brave and as innocent went from
imprisonment to death by the guillotine. Queen Blanche gave her name to
an existing room in one of the towers.

In early days the towers must have been an impressive feature of the
building. Their foundations are sunk below the surface of the river, and
where the king’s hall opened on the street at the water level these
massive constructions, now half buried by the quay, rose, tall and
menacing on the island’s shore.

The Tour de l’Horloge, the square tower at the corner, replaces an early
Merovingian tower on the same spot. The oldest public clock in France
still tells the hour from its sculptured canopy, and its bell gave the
left bank signal for the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.

Unable to leave his royal duties for the monastery, as he would have
liked, Louis showed his leaning by the fostering of many religious
houses. Paris was filled with brethren of the various orders, later to
become a doubtful blessing, but now sincere, useful, typical of the
trusting nature of the thirteenth century. Louis sat at their feet in
spirit as he did literally before the great, lecturers of the
University. To the Louvre he added a chapel.

It was to be expected that the Crusades would find an ardent response
in the king. He went twice to the East, the first time to suffer a long
captivity, and the last time to lose his life.

It was through the crusades that Louis became the owner of the Crown of
Thorns whose possession gave him the highest pleasure that his life
knew. Because of it Paris was enriched by one of its most beautiful
buildings. The Emperor Baldwin, it appears, had borrowed a large sum of
money from some merchants of Venice, giving as security the sacred
relic. When he failed to redeem his pledge the merchants sought to
recoup themselves. Louis regarded as a direct gift from Heaven this
opportunity to secure for himself and his kingdom a relic so holy. The
price asked was about $270,000, an enormous sum for that time. The money
was raised, however, a part of it by forced contributions from the Jews,
who had begun to drift back to France because their usefulness made it
expedient to disregard Philip Augustus’s edict of banishment. Messengers
carefully selected for their probity and piety, brought the Crown from
Italy into France. It was encased in a coffer of gold which was set into
another of silver and that in turn into a box of wood.

The king, dressed as a penitent and barefooted, met the messengers at
the town of Sens, about sixty miles from Paris. There he took the
casket into his own hands and walked with it all the way to the city.
So eager were the crowds to see the procession that it could move but at
the slowest pace. The multitude thickened as the city folk came out from
the walls to join in reverencing the treasure. In order that every one
might rest his eyes upon it Louis caused a lofty stand to be erected in
an open spot and there the foremost of the clergy of France took turns
in elevating the Crown for the crowds to see.

At Vincennes, east of Paris, the monks from the Abbey of Saint Denis
joined the escort. When the advance was renewed Louis again bore the
sacred casket which he carried to a spot of safety in the cathedral of
Notre Dame which was at that time just about approaching completion.

From the cathedral Louis removed the relic to the chapel of Saint
Nicholas, attached to the palace, so that it might be under his close
supervision, and then, in an ecstasy of reverence he planned for its
shelter a building which should be “in no wise like the houses of men,”
the Sainte Chapelle. Only royal chapels received the title “Sainte.”
This exquisitely beautiful structure is indeed royal, as it is truly a
chapel, small and without transepts. The lower part contains the crypt
with ogival vaulting which the builder, Pierre de Montereau, the
architect of

[Illustration: THE SAINTE CHAPELLE, ERECTED BY LOUIS IX.]

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE SAINTE CHAPELLE.]

the refectory of Saint Martin-des-Champs, learned, perhaps, from the
Saracens. This part of the church was used for the religious services of
the servants of the palace. It has been restored recently with the vivid
red and blue and gold of its original decoration. Above is the main body
of the chapel, with no entrance except that into the palace whence it
was Louis’s habit to come twice or thrice during each night to prostrate
himself before the altar. The chapel’s solid walls reach not far above a
man’s head, and above them is a glittering mass of gorgeous glass, some
of it the original. At the eastern end a gilded framework supports the
platform to which the king ascended by a tiny staircase on the left side
to show the sacred relic to the devout. Behind him the lower part of the
western window was of plain glass that the people gathered in the
courtyard might have the same privilege as those inside. The gold and
jeweled covering of the relic was seized during the Revolution. The
Crown, cased in glass, is now in the sacristy of Notre Dame.

The chapel’s glass tells the story of the coming of the relic to France
and has portraits of the king and of Queen Blanche. In the outside
carving as well as in the inside decoration Louis’s fleur-de-lis and his
mother’s towers of Castile are repeated. The R of the _rex_ stands
supported by angels. A wealth of loving ornament enriches the western
façade.

At one side a tiny window cut slanting in the thickness of the wall is
the only opening from the chapel into a private room built on to the
outside by Louis XI who feared assassination if he should attend mass
openly.

The _flèche_ now rising from the roof dates from 1853 and is the fourth
of its kind. The second was burned, and the third destroyed in the
Revolution. It is wonderful that the whole building did not meet a
similar fate, for it was used as a storehouse for flour and received no
gentle treatment. To-day, although still a consecrated edifice, but one
service is held in it during the year. That is called the “Red Mass” and
to it go the judiciaries, clad in their scarlet robes, when the courts
open in the autumn, to celebrate the “Mass of the Holy Ghost.”

Louis’ conscientiousness as a sovereign extended even to the business
details of the city of Paris, now so grown that its traffic required
four bridges to knit the island with the right and left banks. The king
established the Parliament of Paris, not a parliament in the English
sense of the word, but a court of justice. A body of watchmen policed
the streets. The guilds and corporations had a carefully developed
organization. Municipal administration was placed under the care of the
Provost of the Merchants and a body of councillors. The king was
represented by the Provost of Paris. This office had so fallen into
disrepute that it was with difficulty that Louis could secure any one to
undertake the responsibility. How he reformed the office so that the
holder became so eager to serve his fellow-citizens that he slept, all
dressed, in the Châtelet, that he might be ready to do his duty at any
hour, DeJoinville describes.

“The provostship of Paris was at that time sold to the citizens of
Paris, or indeed to any one; and those who bought the office upheld
their children and nephews in wrongdoing; and the young folk relied
in their misdoings on those who occupied the provostship. For which
reason the mean people were greatly downtrodden.

“And because of the great injustice that was done, and the great
robberies perpetuated in the provostship, the mean people did not
dare to sojourn in the king’s land, but went and sojourned in other
provostships and other lordships. And the king’s land was so
deserted that when the provost held his court, no more than ten or
twelve people came thereto.

“With all this there were so many malefactors and thieves in Paris
and the country adjoining that all the land was full of them. The
king, who was very diligent to enquire how the mean people were
governed and protected, soon knew the truth of this matter. So he
forbade that the office of provost in Paris should be sold; and he
gave great and good wages to those who henceforth should hold the
said office. And he abolished all the evil customs harmful to the
people; and he caused enquiry to be made throughout the kingdom to
find men who would execute good and strict justice, and not spare
the rich any more than the poor.

“Then was brought to his notice Stephen Boileau, who so maintained
and upheld the office of provost that no malefactor, nor thief, nor
murderer dared to remain in Paris, seeing that if he did, he was
soon hung or exterminated; neither parentage, nor lineage, nor
gold, nor silver could save him. So the king’s land began to amend,
and people resorted thither for the good justice that prevailed.”

CHAPTER VII

PARIS OF PHILIP THE FAIR

With the ending of Saint Louis’ life (in 1270) such stability and beauty
as he had achieved for his kingdom seemed to pass away. The fifteen
years’ reign of his son, Philip III, was lacking in eventfulness. He was
with his father on the Crusade that cost Louis his life, and he came
back to Paris, the “king of the five coffins,” bringing with him for
burial at Saint Denis not only his father’s body but that of his uncle,
his brother-in-law, his wife, and his son. Louis’ body lay in state in
Notre Dame.

Philip inherited his father’s gentleness of spirit, but none of his
intelligence or administrative ability. His physical courage won for him
the nickname of “the Bold,” but it was through a train of circumstances
with which he seems to have had little to do and not through war that
the throne became enriched by the acquisition of some valuable
territories in the south.

Probably, also, he did not realize that when he raised to the nobility a
certain silversmith whose work he admired he struck a blow at the
hereditary pride of the lords, and showed a new power which threatened
the integrity of their class. Naturally, too, it encouraged the
democracy.

A comparatively trivial happening of this reign shows the increasing
boldness of the democratic spirit. The king took as his favorite a man
who had been his father’s barber, and who probably possessed the
traditional conversational charm attaching to his occupation. When
Philip made him wealthy with lands, houses and gold the nobles of the
court could not restrain their jealousy, and accusations charging him
with the medieval equivalent of graft and even with baser crimes were
soon so persistent and apparently so well-proven that even his royal
master either was convinced or thought it wise to seem to believe. At
any rate the man was hanged in company with Paris thieves of the meaner
sort. To the commonalty of Paris who were not in a position to hear the
whispers and accusations of the court this seemed an unmerited
punishment, and they did not hesitate to express vivid opinions
concerning the victim of what they supposed to be aristocratic greed.

When an aristocrat engaged in petty graft his reproof was not so swiftly
administered. Enguerrand de Marigny, under whose direction the palace
was enlarged by Philip the Bold’s son, Philip the Fair, was accused of
charging rental for the booths along the Galérie des Merciers which
connected the Great Hall with the Sainte Chapelle and whose stalls were
supposed to be given rent free to tradespeople whose goods might be of
interest to the folk who had daily tasks at the palace. Nothing came of
the accusation, however, unless it may be thought to have been punished
in common with other financial misdeeds of which Marigny was accused by
Philip the Fair’s successor, Quarrelsome Louis--le Hutin--, and for
which he was hanged on the Montfaucon gallows which he had built when he
was Philip’s “Coadjutor and Inspector.”

Guilty or not, de Marigny was set a poor example by his master, for
Philip the Fair (1285-1314) was so consumed by avarice that he spared
neither friends, vassals, burgesses nor ecclesiastics if by taxing them
or dragging them into warfare he might add to his treasures. His greed
led him into the pettiness of debasing the coinage, and inspired him to
defy the pope himself, though he claimed sovereignty over all the
monarchs of Europe. He was a masterful ruler--Philip--but one who worked
for his own interests and not for those of his people.

Probably, however, his subjects were entirely in sympathy with Philip’s
evident desire upon his accession to know where he stood with England.
If he wanted to bring about an immediate quarrel his wish was balked,
for when he summoned Edward I to appear before him to take the oath of
allegiance “for the lands I hold of you” the English king came to Paris
without a whimper and offered public acknowledgment to his suzerain.
Philip made a trifling quarrel between some French and English sailors
an excuse for war, and the Flemish, who were also Philip’s vassals, were
soon involved. Flanders manufactured woolen cloths which went all over
Europe. Raw wool was imported from England. For commercial reasons it
behooved the Flemish to stay at peace with England and to regard
England’s enemies as their enemies. Philip was willing enough to be
considered in that light since it gave him a chance to invade a country
whose industries with their resultant wealth fairly made his palms
tingle.

Certainly “Hands off” was not his motto. By underhand means he contrived
to get some of Edward’s French possessions away from him and he forced
the Parliament of Paris to approve his action. Naturally such behavior
drove Philip’s opponents together. Philip suspected some new coalition
and ordered the Count of Flanders to come to Paris. Guy obeyed
unwillingly, and he was confirmed in his belief that it was a mistaken
step when Philip, upon hearing that Guy and Edward were arranging a
marriage between Edward’s son Edward and Philippa, Guy’s daughter, flew
into a rage and straightway cast the count and his two sons into the
tower of the Louvre. There they stayed for several months, gaining their
freedom only at the expense of poor Philippa, who, as hostage, replaced
them within the grim walls on the river bank.

For the next few years there was constant trouble in the north. The
imprisonment of an entirely innocent girl gave zest to the Flemish rage
over Philip’s arrogant demands. Guy betrothed another of his daughters
(he had eight daughters and nine sons) to the English crown prince and
sent an embassy to announce the new arrangement to Philip and to tell
him that he considered himself freed from his allegiance.

In the resulting war Philip was victorious. Guy and his immediate
followers went to Paris and gave themselves up to the king before the
steps of the palace while the queen looked on sneeringly from a window.
It was not Philip’s nature to be magnanimous and he hurried his enemy
off to prison. With the queen he soon after paid a visit to his new
possessions where Jeanne was filled with jealousy of the rich apparel of
the women of Bruges. “There are only queens in Bruges,” she cried. “I
thought that only I had a right to royal state.”

The governors whom Philip put over Flanders suffered from their master’s
disease, greed of gold, and so outrageous was their behavior that
Flanders revolted. In the battle of Courtrai the French suffered a
defeat that made terrible inroads on the ranks of the nobility. This
loss was of benefit to the personal power and the pocketbook of the
king, however, through his inheritance of estates and his privileges as
guardian of children orphaned by the battle.

Philip was in a fury over the check to his arms at Courtrai. He took Guy
of Flanders out of the Louvre and sent him to arrange a peace. The
Flemish were elated by success and would not listen to him, and the now
aged count, who had been promised his liberty if he succeeded, returned
again to his prison and to the death that was soon to give him a
long-delayed tranquillity.

The war went on with varying fortune. Philip’s chief advantage was at
the battle of Mons-en-Puelle. When he returned to Paris crowds gathered
before the cathedral to see their monarch ride in full equipment into
Notre Dame, bringing his horse to a stand before the statue of Notre
Dame de Paris to whom he had vowed his armor if he might be given the
victory. During the Revolution the equestrian statue which had worn
this same suit of mail for four centuries and a half was broken up in
the destruction that was meted out to all representations of royalty.

The struggle with Flanders lasted even beyond Philip’s reign. On the
whole the results--direct and indirect--of the contest were in Philip’s
favor. In England he was able to exert a more or less open influence
through his daughter, Isabelle, to whom the often-betrothed English
prince (who came to the throne as Edward II) was at last united.
Probably the bridegroom’s pride in having married the handsomest woman
of her country was somewhat neutralized by developments of her character
which won for her the nickname of “the she-wolf of France.”

Meanwhile Philip became involved in a quarrel with the pope that lasted
for many years and set its mark for all time on the relations and
possible relations between France and Rome. In the course of one of his
attempts to replenish his treasury Philip insisted that imposts should
be levied on the clergy. They had previously been free, and they turned
to the pope to support their refusal. This action precipitated an
immediate quarrel which was patched up but broke out again under
pressure of the king’s behavior. What with his wars and what with his
natural acquisitiveness Philip was always needing and always obtaining
money in ways deserving of sternest censure. Beside debasing the
coinage, he had used infamous methods with the Jews, he had sold patents
of nobility to men considered unsuitable to enjoy the honor of belonging
to the aristocracy, and he had given their freedom to all serfs who were
able to pay for it.

The king rebuked Philip in a bull. Philip personally superintended its
burning by the Paris hangman. When the pope sent another the king
summarized it for the popular understanding into “Boniface the Pope to
Philip the Fair, greeting. Know, O Supreme Prince, that thou art subject
to us in all things.” This document Philip caused to be read aloud in
many public places together with what purported to be his answer;
“Philip to Boniface, little or no greeting. Be it known to thy Supreme
Idiocy that we are subject to no man in political matters. Those who
think otherwise we count to be fools and madmen.”

This was all very dashing but Philip was shrewd enough to see that it
was necessary when contending with a power that proclaimed itself
accountable only to God to have the support of his people. He summoned
to meet in Notre Dame (April 10, 1302) the first National Assembly. It
was called the States General because it was made up of representatives
of the three upper classes or estates--the clergy, the nobility and the
burgesses of the free cities. It may well have been a satisfied body
that gathered under the Gothic arches of the great church. Its members
did not realize that their powers were only advisory and that they would
be expected to advise the king to do what he wanted to. All that they
were yet to learn. For the moment they felt that this meeting was a
concession from a king who had curbed the power of the nobles, who was
trying to prevent the clergy from even entering the hall where was
sitting the Parliament of Paris, increasingly made up of lawyers, and
who made it clear that he tolerated the burgesses only because they were
occasionally useful.

To the burgesses this was in truth a proud moment, for it was their
first admission to any body of the kind on even terms with the other two
estates. They were to find out that, because the voting always was done
by classes, they were to be outnumbered two to one on almost every
question with a unanimity that betrayed the fear that their presence
excited in the lords and clergy.

It was not until the fifteenth century that deputies from the peasantry
sat with the Third Estate. In the five centuries between the calling of
the first States General and the Revolution the Assembly was summoned
only thirteen times. When Louis XVI ordered an election in the futile
hope that something might be suggested that would help France in her
trouble it had been one hundred and seventy-five years since a sitting
had been held.

The first States General found itself in something of a predicament. It
was clear that it was expected to endorse Philip’s attitude toward the
pope, yet such a course would place the clergy at variance with the head
of the church. Of course they yielded. Boniface was a long way off;
Philip was near at hand, and the dungeons of the Grand Châtelet and of
the Louvre were always able to hold a few more prisoners. The pope was
notified that the affairs of France were the concern of France and not
of an outsider. The pope replied with excommunication. Philip retaliated
with charges for which, he said, the pontiff should be tried. Boniface,
justly enraged, threatened to depose Philip and make the German emperor
king of France. Philip once more laid his case before his subjects, this
time in the palace garden. Hot and heavy raged the quarrel after this.
It resulted in the popes becoming for seventy years no more than
dependents upon the will of the French crown, and practically its
prisoners at Avignon on French soil.

Having negotiated the election of a pope of French birth, Philip used
him as a tool for the accomplishment of his mercenary and cruel plans
against the Order of Knights Templar. This order, at once religious and
military, had been founded to protect pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher.
Its duties over with the ending of the Crusades, idleness may, perhaps,
have done its proverbial work. No one believes, however, that Philip’s
charges of corruption in both religious practices and in manner of
living were other than shamefully exaggerated excuses for seizing rich
possessions which he had coveted ever since the time when, during a
Paris riot caused by an unjust tax, he had taken refuge in the Temple to
the north of the city. There he had seen the gathered treasures, and the
fact that he owed his life to the Templars did not deter him from
devising elaborate plans to rob them.

Early in the morning of October 13, 1307, all the Templars in France
were seized in their beds and thrown into ecclesiastical prisons. There
were one hundred and forty arrests in Paris. The knights listened,
astounded, to what purported to be a confession by the Grand Master,
Jacques de Molay, of the truth of the abominable charges brought against
the Order. They were promised liberty if they confirmed the confession.
To the lasting credit of the Order only a few bought their freedom by
perjury. The rest were “put to the question” with a wealth of hideous
ingenuity which has seldom been approached in the grisly history of the
torture chamber. In Paris alone thirty-six died as a result of their
rending on the rack, and the others said anything that would put an end
to suffering worse than death.

The methods employed by Philip became known to the pope, and although he
had sworn to do the king’s behest in regard to some unknown deed, and
this proved to be the deed, yet he had the courage to send a commission
to Paris to search into the truth of the rumors that had reached him. It
sat in the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève. Under shelter of the commission’s
protection scores of witnesses from all over France told what they had
endured, and denied their extorted confessions. Jacques de Molay himself
was tortured physically and tormented mentally, but he persisted in a
denial. His courage gave strength to over two hundred other knights who
came before the commission to show the wounds by which they had been
forced into saying what was not true.

But Philip was not to be balked of his prey. The archbishop of Sens, who
was also metropolitan of Paris held a special court in the Hôtel de
Sens. This palace was replaced almost two centuries later by the Hôtel
de Sens now to be

[Illustration: HÔTEL DE CLUNY.

See pages 197-198.]

[Illustration: HÔTEL DE SENS.]

seen on the rue du Figuier-Saint-Paul, a house well worth a visit from
lovers of line and proportion as well as from antiquarians. To his court
the archbishop summoned half a hundred of the knights who had denied
their confessions, and the tribunal promptly convicted them of heresy
and condemned them to be burned. The pope’s commissioners had no control
over a local court and could not save the poor wretches. On a day in
May, 1308, they were taken out of the city on the northeast and there
suffered their cruel punishment, every one of them protesting to the
assembled crowd the innocence of the Order. Six others were burned on
the Grève.

Five years later the pope ordered the dispersal of the Order and Philip
was at last able to take possession of their treasure--to repay himself
for the heavy expenses of the trial!

While the Grand Master lived, however, even though he was in prison for
life, the king did not feel secure in his ill-gotten gain. A year after
the general dispersal the Parisians thronged one day into the Parvis de
Notre Dame--the raised open space before the cathedral--where a
representative of the pope, the archbishop of Sens and other church
dignitaries sat enthroned. There Jacques de Molay and three other
officers of the late Order were confronted with their false or extorted
confessions. If it was done to harry them into some betrayal of feeling
which could be taken advantage of for their destruction it was
successful. De Molay protested against this untruth being again
attributed to him. The crowd, eager for excitement, pressed closer to
hear the ringing words of the old soldiers. Then, in the dusk of
evening, noble and burgess and cleric pushed to the western end of the
Cité where they could look across to some small islands, to-day walled
and made a part of the land on which the Pont Neuf rests between the two
arms of the Seine. On one of these islets the fagots were piled. A
witness says; “The Grand Master, seeing the fire, stripped himself
briskly; I tell just as I saw; he bared himself to his shirt,
light-heartedly and with a good grace, without a whit of trembling,
though he was dragged and shaken mightily. They took hold of him to tie
him to the stake, and they were binding his hands with a cord, but he
said to them, ‘Sirs, suffer me to fold my hands a while and make my
prayer to God, for verily it is time. I am presently to die, but
wrongfully, God wot. Wherefore woe will come ere long, to those who
condemn us without a cause. God will avenge our death.’”

While the flames leaped scarlet against the river and the sky the Grand
Master summoned pope and king to appear with him before the bar of the
Almighty. They who heard must have shuddered, and shuddered yet again
when in fact Pope Clement died within forty days and Philip the Fair
within the year.

In Paris the huge establishment of the Temple with its many buildings,
its considerable fields and gardens and its walls, had been independent
of the city, and over its inhabitants the Grand Master had power of life
and death. When Philip took possession of its treasure he turned over
the enclosure to the Knights of Saint John who held it as his subjects.
In the course of time the quiet precincts of the Temple became a haven
for impoverished nobles, for unlicensed doctors and for small
manufacturers “independent” of the guilds, for all these found sanctuary
here. Later the growth of the city smothered the grounds with streets
and houses and did away with most of the buildings. In 1792 when Louis
XVI was imprisoned in the large tower and the other members of the royal
family in the smaller tower the few buildings that were left were torn
down so that they might not serve as hiding places for any rescue party.
Napoleon had the donjon demolished in 1811, and everything that was left
of the once superb commandery melted into the Square du Temple under the
beautifying process instituted by Napoleon III. Until a very few years
ago one of the sights of Paris for seers in search of the unusual was
the Temple Market edging the square, where old clothes, old curtains,
old upholstery--every sort of second hand “dry goods”--offered a chance
for the securing of occasional wonderful bargains provided the purchaser
was either fluent in his own behalf or indifferent to what was said to
him.

Not far from the site of the Temple there stands to-day the church of
Saint Leu, a part of which dates from the fourteenth century. It has
small architectural value, but a quaint picture within tells a tale of
legendary interest. A statue of the Virgin used to stand at the corner
of the rue aux Ours, not far from the church. One day an impious Swiss
soldier struck the figure with his sword and blood spurted from it. The
man was hung upon the scene of his crime, and the statue was preserved
in the Priory of Saint Martin-des-Champs. For more than three centuries
afterward and until, indeed, the destructive spirit of the Revolution
did away with customs as it did with buildings, it was usual to
celebrate this happening by carrying through the streets a straw man in
Swiss costume which was burned on the corner of the rue aux Ours.

Among the utilitarian institutions of the fourteenth century were the
_étuves_, public vapor baths, which were made desirable by the
scantiness of the water supply at home. These establishments were as
popular as necessary. When they were ready for action a crier went
through the streets shouting:

“My lords, you are going to bathe
And steam yourselves without delay;
The baths are hot and that’s the truth.”

Wars and persecutions show large in any period but every day living and
the minor happenings of social and civic growth weave the fabric on
which occasional events stand out like figures on a patterned cloth. The
shuttle of time flashed back and forth through Philip’s reign carrying
the brilliant woof of exploits that resulted in increasing concentration
of power, of wealth and of prestige in the monarch, and threading it
through the dull warp of the increasing poverty of the lower classes and
the lessening vigor of the nobles.

The persecution of the Templars was not the only persecution of the
time. The narrow-mindedness that was increasingly to begrudge freedom of
thought was beginning its death-dealing work. Here and there throughout
France heretics were put to trial every now and then. The king defiled
the day of Pentecost in 1310 by causing to be burned on the Grève a Jew
who had been converted but who had denied his new faith, a priest who
had been convicted of heresy, and a woman who had distributed heretical
tracts.

Perhaps Philip thought by such deeds to win pardon for the financial
exactions with which he tormented his people. He was constantly devising
new taxes. One of the chief duties of the uniformed militia which he
founded--dependent upon and consequently faithful to the crown--was the
collection of his unjust levies. As he lay dying at Fontainebleau he
said to his children gathered at his bedside, “I have put on so many
talliages and laid hands on so much riches that I shall never be
absolved.”

Paris did not increase much in extent or in population during Philip’s
reign. Its beauty lay in the harmony that was building every new
construction like its fellows, ogival (Gothic), with pointed windows and
doors and high-pitched roofs--a style superb in large edifices but
giving a pinched appearance to domestic architecture.

The Louvre served its grim purpose untouched through this period. Its
commander was raised to the rank of captain and was honored by being
forced to stand in no one’s presence but the king’s and to receive
orders only from his royal master.

The little church of Saint Julien still served as the chapel of the
University, and Philip decreed that the Provost of Paris, the king’s
representative in the city, should go there every two years and in the
presence of faculty and students should solemnly swear that he would
protect the rights of both professors and students and that he would
respect them himself. This meant the confirmation of Philip Augustus’s
regulations which made the dwellers in the University section answerable
only to the rector of the University. The schools of the left bank were
increased by the addition of the College of Navarre, founded by the
queen, Jeanne of Navarre, in gratitude for Philip’s victory at
Mons-en-Puelle.

A curious story is told of the origin of the monastery of the Carmes
Billettes in the city’s northern section that had been redeemed from the
marsh and hence was called the Marais, a name which it still retains. It
appears that in the reign of Philip the Fair a Jew of the Marais lent a
sum of money to a woman, and then offered to quit her of her debt if she
would bring him a consecrated wafer. When he had possession of it he
pierced it, and then plunged it in boiling water. At each attack upon it
blood spurted forth, and at last the nerve-shaken Jew screamed for help.
Forced to confess his deed he was put to the torture and his house was
torn down. Upon its site the king permitted the erection of a religious
establishment.

It was Philip who built the first quay to restrain the Seine from
damaging its banks. The king bought the Hôtel de Nesle of which the Tour
de Nesle, scowling across at the Louvre, was a part. Its grounds had
stretched down to the water where they fringed the stream with willows
under which the townspeople used to enjoy the shade on hot summer days.
The king had the trees cut down and a wall constructed to check the
swirl of the river whose two arms rejoin just above after their
separation by the island.

In the palace the administrative work of the city and of France was
conducted, and so extensive was it now with all Philip’s territorial
additions and all his activities calling for court adjustment that the
ancient building was found to be much too small. Enguerrand de Marigny
superintended its enlargement, and so generously did he build that the
old palace came to be called “Saint Louis’ little hall.” The grandest
part of the new structure was the Great Hall, called to-day in its
rebuilt form the Salle des Pas Perdus. It was lofty and adorned with
much vivid blue and gold. Statues of all the kings of France from
Pharamond were placed on the upper parts of the pillars, visualizing
historical characters for the youth of the town who might read dates on
tablets affixed. For long years the curious were delighted by the sight
of the skeleton of what chroniclers have described as a sort of
crocodile, which had been found under the palace when the new
foundations were dug. Across one end of the room was the enormous marble
slab known as the table of Saint Louis. What is supposed to be a
fragment of it is now in the lower part of the palace. Around this table
met the members of three different law courts. When dinners or suppers
of ceremony were given by the monarch only royalties were allowed to sit
at this post of honor. An idea of its size may be gained from the
knowledge that the Clerks of the Basoche at a later time used to enact
plays upon it as a stage.

This organization, the Clerks of the Basoche, came into being in Philip
the Fair’s time. The clerks of the law courts used to hold trials to
adjust differences among themselves. They played the parts of attorneys
and court officers, and no doubt there was a fine display of imitative
rhetoric. The word _basoche_ probably is derived from _basilica_, and
was adopted because it was high-flown and unusual. The president was
called the King of the Basoche until Henry III, who felt a bit weak
about his own royal strength, forbade the use of the title.

In the court in front of the palace the clerks used to plant a tree or
pole on the last day of every May, and this entrance is called even now
the Cour du Mai. Here stood the tumbrils that carried the Revolutionary
victims to the guillotine. At the foot of the former staircase convicts
were branded, and here Beaumarchais gained the best possible free
advertisement when his books were burned as being hostile to the
well-being of society.

Opening out of the Salle des Pas Perdus is the “First Chamber,” the room
which replaces Saint Louis’ bedchamber. Many a stern tribunal has been
held there since the time of the gentle king. It was here that Louis XIV
commanded his abashed hearers to understand that “_I_ am the State,” and
here sat the court that gave Marie Antoinette a poor semblance of trial.

With its prisons on one side stirring with memories of the Revolution,
and its wonderful Gothic jewel, the Sainte Chapelle, on the other, the
Palace of Justice, with all its myriads of rooms for a myriad of
purposes, is one of the most story-laden and varied in Europe.

When Enguerrand de Marigny had finished his work of enlargement Philip
commanded a season of rejoicing in the city. For a whole week the
townsfolk poured in to the palace to see and to admire, and all the
shops were closed so that there might be no other distractions. These
same people had to pay the bills for the new construction, and, since
the privilege of free entrance was one of long standing it is to be
hoped that they felt themselves sufficiently rewarded for their enforced
outlay by the pleasure given to their esthetic sense.

To the ceremony of the knighting of the king’s three sons, which was a
part of the celebration, they were not admitted in numbers, as that was
in the more private Louvre.

Philip the Fair’s immediate successors, Louis X, le Hutin, the Quarreler
(1314-1316), Philip V, the Long (1316-1322), and Charles IV, the Fair
(1322-1328), were rulers of small account. They all did some fighting,
all inherited their father’s capacity to raise financial trouble for
their subjects, and all had serious domestic difficulties. Their wives
were unfaithful to them, and the three women were imprisoned or forced
to enter the Church. Two brothers, Pierre and Philip Gualtier d’Aulnay,
the lovers of Louis’ wife, Marguerite of Burgundy and of Charles’s wife,
Blanche, were executed on the Grève. Philip’s wife, Jeanne of Burgundy,
was the playful lady who dropped Buridan into the Seine from the Tour de
Nesle.

After Marguerite had been strangled in her prison Louis le Hutin married
Clémence of Hungary. His posthumous son, John I, lived but a few days,
and Philip the Long claimed the confirmation of the promise which the
Parliament of Paris, sitting in the palace, had made to support him
rather than let the throne go to a possible daughter of Louis. This
decision established the Salic law as applying to the throne.

Philip the Long had no children and was succeeded by his brother,
Charles the Fair. Charles was twice married after his repudiation of
Blanche, but he left only a daughter, born at the Louvre after his
death, and the crown therefore went to his first cousin, Philip of
Valois.

CHAPTER VIII

PARIS OF THE EARLY VALOIS

Philip of Valois ruled as Philip VI (1328-1350), thus founding the royal
house of Valois. Philip was not allowed to take his throne peacefully,
however. There were other claimants, the most formidable being Edward
III of England, who demanded the succession through his mother,
Isabelle, daughter of Philip the Fair and sister of the late king.
Edward’s aspirations brought to pass the Hundred Years’ War whose weary
length saw France overrun by foreign enemies and by French brigands,
tortured by famine and plague, and her king (John the Good) a prisoner
in England. With everything topsy-turvy it becomes hardly a matter of
surprise to learn that a French queen mother sold her son’s birthright,
that an English prince was crowned king of France in Notre Dame, that
the citizens of Paris welcomed the English to help defend them against
their own countrymen, and that a maid led men to battle.

As often happens with men of extraordinary force Philip the Fair did not
bequeath any legacy of energy to his sons. Philip of Valois, son of
Philip the Fair’s brother, had no notable inheritance of character, but
he was made of livelier stuff than his cousins. Although three reigns
had passed since his uncle’s death it was only a period of fourteen
years, and the royal power was then at the greatest point of
concentration it had yet reached. A man of but ordinary vigor and
judgment, one would suppose, would have been able to entrench himself
strongly. Yet the promise of Philip’s early years of victory over the
Flemish was unfulfilled by his serious defeats at the hands of the
English.

He jumped into the arena promptly enough. At his coronation at Rheims on
Trinity Sunday, 1328, the Count of Flanders, whose duty it was to bear
the great sword, did not answer the herald’s summons, although he was
there in plain view. When Philip asked for an explanation his vassal
answered that he had been called by his title, and, because of the
disobedience of his people, his title was now but empty sound. Philip
was fired with instant sympathy. “Fair Cousin,” he said, “we will swear
to you by the holy oil which hath this day trickled over our brow that
we will not enter Paris again before seeing you reinstated in peaceable
possession of the countship of Flanders.”

He found that he had entered upon no easy task, for the Flemish
burghers were both brave and obstinate. However, he won a brilliant
victory at Cassel, where, according to Froissart, of sixteen thousand
Flemish “all were left there dead and slain in three heaps one upon
another.” So annoyed was Philip by the trouble he had been put to to
save his word unbroken that he gave the Count of Flanders some rather
threatening advice when he left to make his deferred entrance into
Paris.

“Count,” he said, “I have worked for you at my own and my barons’
expense; I give you back your land, recovered and in peace; so take care
that justice be kept up in it, and that I have not, through your fault,
to return; for, if I do, it will be to my own profit, and to your hurt.”

The count, however, could not keep out of embroilment with his people.
Because England supplied the wool which the Flemish looms wove it was
important to the manufacturers of Flanders that peace should be
preserved between the two countries. Heedless of this necessity, the
Count of Flanders, in 1336, eight years after the battle of Cassel,
ordered the imprisonment of all the English in Flanders. King Edward
retaliated in kind and clapped into jail all the Flemish merchants in
England. The people of both countries were well aware that Philip of
France was the instigator of all this turmoil.

A year after Philip’s accession, Edward, as lord of Aquitaine, had gone
to France and paid his feudal duty to him. The two monarchs were
supposed to be friends. Friendship is hard to preserve, however, when
ambitions clash and when interested people are alert to foment trouble.
In 1337 war was declared, and its dragging course for the next decade
was prophetic of the whole miserable century.

After nine years of desultory fighting the French suffered at Crécy the
worst defeat the country ever had known. For the first time in history
gunpowder was used in war and the innovation made apparent at once the
futility of the nobles’ fortresses against the new ammunition.

A part of the English army drew dangerously close to Paris--so near that
the watchmen on the towers caught the gleam of their camp-fires, and
refugees brought news of burning and slaughter no farther away than
Saint Denis. The city was saved from attack only because Edward was
besieging Calais. It cost England a year’s fighting to capture this
Channel key to France, but she held it for two hundred years, a threat
to French power and a grief to French hearts.

Destructive as was the new ammunition its work could not approach the
loss occasioned by the “Black Death,” the plague which swept across
Europe with such might that it even put an end to war.

In 1350 Philip VI died. His body was carried to Notre Dame where it lay
in state before being taken to Saint Denis. There it was buried “on the
left side of the great altar, his bowels were interred at the Jacobins
at Paris, and his heart at the convent of the Carthusians at
Bourgfontaines in Valois.”

A month later Philip’s son, John (1350-1364) was crowned at Rheims. By
way of signalizing his accession he conferred knighthood on many young
men, and for a week Paris was gay with continual feasting. Perhaps it
was because so many people thronged the palace at this time, perhaps it
was because of the encroachments of the courts, that John did not always
occupy the royal apartments on the Cité but lived for some time at the
Hôtel de Nesle which Philip the Fair had bought for the crown.

During the next five years John showed himself entirely lacking in the
discretion and calmness which the uncertainties of the time demanded. He
was influenced by favorites and he was constantly quarreling with his
son-in-law, Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, who had caused the murder
of a man whom John esteemed and who was incessantly playing fast and
loose now with England, now with France. It was to consider certain
charges against this undesirable connection that John held the first
known _lit de justice_. The “bed of justice” received its name from the
king’s seat, a couch raised on a dais, both covered with handsome stuffs
sown with the fleur-de-lis. The king’s appearance was in harmony with
his desire to accent his regal state for he wore his robes of ceremony
and his crown.

With an exhausted treasury threatening the people with taxes, with the
plague devastating the country, and with war imminent, it is small
wonder that France was in a discouraged state. John tried to hearten his
subjects by establishing subsidies and by giving festivals. By these
means he won his nickname of “the Good,” but they were the cause of such
impoverishment that when the English war broke out again he found
himself in embarrassment for lack of money. Twice he summoned the States
General, but his preparations were seriously hindered. His judgment as a
general was no better than as a ruler. Inflated by some trifling
successes he scorned the Black Prince’s proposals of peace and then
allowed himself to be beaten ignominiously by a force much smaller than
his own in one of the world’s great battles, that of Poitiers.

John’s personal courage was magnificent. Although several divisions of
his army were withdrawn, including those headed by his three older
sons, he fought valiantly in a hand-to-hand fight that waxed ever
brisker as his opponents saw that they were dealing with some man of
prominence. His fourteen-year-old son, Philip, stayed at his father’s
side helping him by constant cries of warning. As a reward for his
fidelity John afterwards gave him the province of Burgundy, a gift which
proved to be a sore mistake for the happiness of France.

After the battle of Poitiers a burgher of Paris vowed a candle as long
as the city to Notre Dame de Paris. It was to burn always. When the city
grew so large as to make such a mass of wax impracticable the offering
was changed (1605) to a silver lamp, and it may be seen now before the
graceful figure which stands at the south side of the entrance to the
choir of the cathedral.

John was gently treated in England and his presence was something of a
social event. When he was held at a ransom and was returned to France
while two of his sons, the dukes of Anjou and of Berri, were sent across
the Channel to serve as hostages for the payment of the ransom, the
king’s departure was a matter of regret. His welcome in France was
equally warm.

“Wherever he passed the reception he experienced was most honorable
and magnificent,” says Froissart. “At Amiens, he stayed until
Christmas was over, and then set out for Paris, where he was
solemnly and reverently met by the clergy and others, and conducted
by them to his palace; a most sumptuous banquet was prepared, and
great rejoicings were made; but, whatever I may say upon the
subject, I never can tell how warmly the King of France was
received on return to his kingdom, by all sorts of people. They
made him rich gifts and presents, and the prelates and barons of
the realm feasted and entertained him as became his condition.”

The hostage sons proved themselves not more reliable as hostages than
they had been as fighters. One of them, at least, yielded to the call of
Paris, broke his parole and fled home. John’s paternal pride was
profoundly outraged. “If honor is banished from every other spot,” he
said, “it ought to remain sacred in the breast of kings.” He returned at
once to London and gave himself up to king Edward.

Again he found himself popular at the English court, and he passed a gay
winter, entertaining Edward at Savoy House and being entertained in turn
at the palace of Westminster. Before many months, however, he was
stricken with a mortal illness and died without seeing France again.

While king John was held prisoner by the English (1356-1360), his son
the dauphin, afterwards Charles V, ruled or tried to rule in France.
During his regency there appears one of the foremost characters known to
the history of Paris, Étienne Marcel. This man belonged to an old
family of drapers, and had achieved the position of the Provost of the
Merchants, the chief administrative office in the city’s gift.

The burghers of Paris were restless. The establishment of the States
General had given them recognition of a kind and a consequent feeling of
importance. Repeated tax levies had kept them in a constant state of
irritation. John had crowded them out of the army, war, according to his
theory, being a matter for nobles to handle. The ignominious defeat at
Poitiers made them dissent cordially from this opinion.

These were but a few of the causes stirring in the minds of the
burghers. Now, with their jovial and improvident king a prisoner in
England, France entrusted to an untried youth of nineteen, and England’s
plans unknown but always threatening, the _bourgeois_ felt themselves to
be facing both opportunity and responsibility.

To test the prince seemed to be the first summons. Returning from
Poitiers Charles took the title of Lieutenant-General, installed himself
in the Louvre, summoned the States General, and entered into
negotiations with Marcel. The provost either was really distrustful of
the dauphin or he saw some advantage for his own ambition in setting the
people against their lord. When he went to a conference with Charles he
was supported by a body of men heavily armed, and a little later he
expressed himself as so fearful of the prince’s integrity that he
refused to go nearer to the Louvre than the church of Saint Germain
l’Auxerrois, to the east of the fortress.

Egged on by Marcel the States General did their utmost to torment the
young regent. Undoubtedly they had grievances, but Charles was not at
all responsible for the state of the country and the Assembly’s methods
of improving conditions savored more of bullying than of coöperation.

The body met less than three weeks after Charles’s arrival in Paris.
More than eight hundred members from all northern France gathered in the
Great Hall of the palace. Half of this throng was representative of the
_bourgeoisie_, and their superiority in numbers over the
nobility--depleted by its losses at Poitiers--and the clergy--naturally
a lesser body, though almost every prelate of high rank was
present--gave the middle class a courage they never before had assumed.

Activity against the regent was manifested promptly. The size of the
Assembly being unwieldy a body of eighty was chosen from the full
membership to confer and report to the whole meeting. Charles sent
officers to represent his interests and to furnish information. On the
second day the representatives refused to take counsel unless the
officers were withdrawn. Why they wanted to be unchecked was quite
evident when, a few days later, the States-General requested the dauphin
to meet with them in the monastery of the Cordeliers on the left bank
and hear the recommendations which had been approved by the full house.
They demanded that twenty-two men of king John’s closest friends and
councillors should be arrested, lose their offices and have their
property confiscated, and, if trial proved them guilty of “grafting” and
of giving bad advice to the king, they were to be further punished. A
traveling commission was to be appointed to keep a check on all the
officials of France, and a body of twenty-eight men--four prelates,
twelve nobles and twelve burghers--was to have “power to do and to order
everything in the kingdom just like the king himself.”

This proposition practically relegated the regent to private life. A
proposal to release from prison Charles’s brother-in-law, Charles the
Bad, was not only an attack on John’s management, but a threat against
the dauphin’s peace, for the king of Navarre had come honestly by his
nickname and was capable of fomenting endless trouble.

In return for conceding their demands the States promised the regent a
force of thirty thousand men, their support to be provided by taxes of
doubtful collectibility.

Charles found himself in a position of extreme difficulty. The people of
Paris were clamorously in favor of the Assembly’s proposals. Everybody
was ready to hit the man who seemed to have no friends. Charles sparred
for time, announcing at a meeting held in the Louvre that all the
matters under discussion must hold over until he had attended to some
business with the German emperor and the pope which called him to Metz.

Although Paris was hostile to him Charles had friends elsewhere. He
received information that the south of France was heartily royalist, and
also that some of the deputies from northern towns to the Paris Assembly
had been rebuked by their constituents when they returned home, for
their attitude to the regent.

Unfortunately, to obtain money for his journey, Charles followed his
father’s example and debased the coinage. When this became known a few
days after his departure Marcel and the mob went to the Louvre and
frightened Charles’s younger brother into rescinding the order. Six
weeks later Charles returned and reëstablished his original order, with
the result that all Paris rushed to arms and he was compelled to grant
practically every demand of the Assembly.

When the Assembly met three months later its early enthusiasm had waned
or else the representatives repented of their harsh demands or saw their
injustice. The clergy and the nobility were fewer and there was a lack
of harmony among the _bourgeois_, many of them objecting to the
concentration of power which Marcel and a few of his friends were
effecting.

Charles was clever enough to seize this time of uneasiness to announce
that he “intended from now on to govern” by himself. His first efforts
were not very successful, for Marcel by specious promises wheedled him
into summoning the Assembly again, and then arranged for the liberation
of Charles the Bad. He was welcomed by the Paris populace and had the
audacity to make an address to them from the platform on the Abbey of
Saint Germain-des-Prés from which the kings were used to watch the
sports of the students on the adjoining Pré au Clercs.

The deputies foresaw a clash between the brothers-in-law, and it was but
a small Assembly which met, some of the members having returned home
after reaching Paris and recognizing the trouble that was bound to come
from forcing the dauphin to accept Charles the Bad’s liberation and to
receive him with a show of friendliness.

Outside of the city there was no show of friendliness between the
royalists and the friends of Navarre. A lively little war was going on
that sent the people from round about to seek protection within Marcel’s
new wall. That Marcel was a man prompt both to see a need and to meet it
is shown in his action when the news of the French defeat at Poitiers
was brought to Paris. The very next day he gave orders for the
rebuilding and enlargement of the wall that the English might encounter
that obstacle if they advanced upon the city. The existing wall had not
been changed since Philip Augustus’s time, five centuries before, and
the new rampart showed one change in fashion--its towers were square
instead of round. Its size indicated a distinct increase in the size of
the city on the north side, for when the wall was completed by Charles V
the ends on the right bank were not opposite the ends on the south bank.
The south wall was made stronger, however, by a deepening of the
ditches.

Charles lived much at the Louvre. Because he gathered a body of soldiers
about him it was rumored that he was going to use them against the
Parisians. The regent was not lacking in courage. Accompanied only by a
half dozen followers he rode into one of the city squares and told the
astonished crowd of his affection for Paris and its people, and of his
intention of defending it against its enemies.

The people were so touched by their prince’s pluck and candor that
Marcel found it prudent to stop laying charges against the dauphin and
to transfer them to his councillors. After working up feeling against
them for over a month he led a mob to the palace, where Charles was then
staying. Together with some of his friends he pressed into the dauphin’s
own room and there they killed Charles’s councillors, the marshals of
Champagne and Normandy, not only in his sight but so close to him that
he was splashed with their blood. Having impressed the boy with his
strength he patronizingly offered to protect him and put on his head his
own citizen’s cap of red and blue, the colors of Paris. Then he had the
bodies flung on to Saint Louis’ huge marble table in the Great Hall,
later to be exposed publicly, and made his way back to the Maison aux
Piliers on the Grève and there addressed the people, taking great credit
for the murderous deed that he had just brought to pass. The crowd
approved him with vigorous shouting.

Marcel’s action with regard to the Maison aux Piliers is significant of
his entire disregard of the wishes or the property of the crown prince.
The house took its name from the fact that its second story, projecting
over the street, was supported by columns. At this time it was over two
hundred years old for it had been built in 1141. Philip Augustus bought
it in 1212, but evidently he resold it, for there is a record that
Philip the Fair bought it for a present for his brother. In some way
Philip the Long got possession of it and gave it to one of his
favorites. It seems to have returned to royal hands almost immediately,
for Louis the Quarreler’s widow, Clémence, died there and willed it to
her nephew, the dauphin of Vienne. His heir bequeathed the dauphiny and
other property to Philip of Valois in trust for his grandson, the
Charles of this chapter, who was the first heir apparent to wear the
title of dauphin.

Marcel wanted the Maison aux Piliers for a city hall. The dauphin
refused to give it up and tried various ways--even that of giving title
to a private citizen--to save it from being taken from him. About six
months before the murder of the marshals, however, Marcel bought it with
public money, and called it La Meson de la Ville.

On the northern slope of the Mont Sainte Geneviève, on the site of a
building of Roman construction, rose in Carolingian days the first city
hall. It was clumsily made of stone and was called the Parloir aux
Bourgeois. This was succeeded at some later day by a “parloir” near the
Grand Châtelet. Marcel’s purchase decided the situation of the Hôtel de
Ville for all time. It was in its logical place near the Grève where the
very heart of the city’s business throbbed. There, rebuilt in 1540 by
Francis I and in 1876 after its destruction by the communists, it has
housed the city’s offices and has seen many strange and furious scenes
in days of disturbance, and received many sovereigns and potentates in
times of peace.

After the death of the marshals Marcel’s exactions upon the prince were
grosser than ever. Charles was even forced to give Charles the Bad an
annuity and to be frequently in his company. Just about a month after
the assassination the dauphin managed to escape from Paris and go to
Champagne where he was given cordial sympathy by the friends of the
slain marshal. They urged him to besiege Paris and to kill the provost
as punishment for the murder he had instigated. When the Parisians
learned that the prince to whom they paid so little consideration was
receiving a dangerous support in other places they begged the University
of Paris to send messengers to ask him to spare the lives of the provost
and his immediate following. Charles returned word that he would forgive
the citizens provided a half dozen or so of their chief men were sent
him as hostages. No one was willing to take the chance of surviving the
“hostage” condition, and the city prepared to withstand a siege.

Immediately after Charles’s flight Marcel had removed the artillery from
the Louvre to the Hôtel de Ville, and had begun to swing the new wall
outside of the fortress in order to cut it off from the country. The
work of wall-building went on briskly on the right bank, and the moat
was deepened around the fortifications of the left bank.

Being still under the spell of Charles the Bad’s vivacity and enterprise
the Parisians invited him to be their captain. Down in their hearts,
though, they did not trust him, and it was not long before they made his
going out of the city with his men and engaging in a shouted
conversation with the regent’s men an excuse for charging him with
treachery and driving him out of the city.

Once beyond the walls he promptly joined the dauphin in putting down the
peasant insurrection called the _Jacquerie_, from the peasant’s
nickname, _Jacques Bonhomme_. Whether or not Marcel instigated the
uprising is not known with certainty, but at any rate it served the
purpose of leading the prince’s army away from Paris. The insurrection
was not of long duration, for it was crushed with a heavy hand and no
quarter.

Again Marcel dickered with Charles the Bad who was always ready to
dicker with anybody on the chance of something turning out for his own
profit. He was encamped at Saint Denis. The regent’s army almost
surrounded the city and was in communication with a friendly party
inside of which Jean Maillard was the most prominent.

Confident that he would be put to death if he were captured by the
prince, Marcel arranged to open the city to Navarre on the night of July
31, 1358. Maillard was in charge of the Porte Saint Denis and when
Marcel demanded the keys he refused to give them up. Then he leaped on
his horse, took the banner of the city from the Hôtel de Ville and rode
through street after street shouting “Montjoie Saint Denis,” the
rallying cry of the monarch from early days. There was lively fighting
among the citizens throughout the evening.

Marcel had sent word to Charles the Bad that entrance might be made by
the east gate, the Porte Saint Antoine. As he neared it, key in hand,
about eleven o’clock that night, he was met by Maillard.

“Étienne, Étienne,” cried Maillard, “what are you doing here at this
hour?”

“What business is it of yours, Jehan! I am here to act for the city
whose government has been entrusted to me.”

“That is not so,” cried Jehan with an oath. “You are not here at this
hour for any good end; and I call your attention,” he said to the men
with him, “to the keys of the gate that he is carrying for the purpose
of betraying the city.”

“Jehan, you lie!”

“Traitor, ’tis you who lie!”

A sharp fight arose between the two bands and Maillard himself killed
Marcel. He explained his course the next day to the people, “and the
greater part thanked God with folded hands for the grace He had done
them.”

When Charles the regent rode into Paris on the second day of August he
passed a churchyard where the naked bodies of Marcel and two of his
companions were exposed on the same spot where the provost had exposed
the bodies of the two marshals.

It is not possible to tell now--perhaps it was not possible to tell in
his own day--how much of Marcel’s activity was due to a sincere desire
to improve the economic and political condition of the burghers of
Paris, and how much was the result of his own ambition. Perhaps he was
ahead of his time; certainly he was mistaken in his methods. Whatever
the judgment upon him it is undeniable that he was a man of
extraordinary force and a “spellbinder” whose personality has won him
admiration through the centuries. Beside the Hôtel de Ville his statue
stands to-day, a stern figure looking south across the river, and
mounted on a horse which has been proclaimed as the finest bronze steed
in the world.

Upon his return to Paris Charles showed a forbearance unusual in those
times of swift reprisals. There were confiscations of the property of
some of Marcel’s friends and even the beheading of two of them on the
Grève, but that was before the regent’s entrance into the city, and he
tactfully steadied popular feeling and gave no rein to the spirit of
revenge which he might have been expected to feel. He even entered into
an agreement of peace with that weathercock, Charles of Navarre, and
Paris and its neighborhood drew a sigh of relief.

The dauphin seized the opportunity offered by this time of quiet to make
the Louvre more habitable. The ancient tower was left undisturbed except
that a gallery sprang from it to the northern wall which Charles built
to complete the rectangle which Philip Augustus had begun.

Marcel had met his reward in the summer of 1358. The next spring Charles
received from London the terms of a treaty which his father had made
with king Edward III. A large stretch of western territory was to be
yielded to England and an enormous ransom to be paid for the king’s
release. It is a testimony to the increased strength of the subject in
France that Charles submitted this document to a gathering of deputies
who surrounded the regent on the great outer staircase of the palace and
filled the courtyard below. They rejected with promptness and scorn the
proposal to make their enemies a gift of nearly half of France and to
ruin themselves by the raising of the exorbitant sum of four million
crowns of gold. If any money was to be raised they preferred to spend it
in fighting the English, and they offered their services as soldiers.

When Edward learned of France’s refusal to accept the treaty he promptly
crossed the Channel. He met with such small success, however, that he
was glad to make a compact with Burgundy by which he promised--for a
consideration--to let that province alone for two years.

Edward then pressed on to Paris which he approached on the south.
Charles, learning of his coming, burned all the villages adjoining the
city on that side so that the English army would have to seek far for
food. He discouraged any response to Edward’s attempts to draw the
French soldiers outside the walls, and at the end of a week, the
English, bored and hungry, withdrew.

Not long after, Charles was able to negotiate the Peace of Brétigny,
which was all too hard upon France in its demands for the cession of
territory and of a large ransom for John, but which the people, weary of
war, received with joy. The bells of Notre Dame pealed their
satisfaction, and the light-hearted Parisians danced and feasted in the
squares, and entertained heartily the four Englishmen who represented
King Edward. Each was given a thorn from the Crown of Thorns, the
choicest possession of Paris.

Charles had obtained the money to pay part of his father’s ransom from
his new brother-in-law, the duke of Milan who had just married his
sister Isabelle. It was to secure the payment of the remainder that
John’s younger sons, the dukes of Anjou and of Berri, were sent to
England as hostages.

John reëntered Paris in December, 1360, four years after the disastrous
battle that had cost him his liberty but had had the result of giving
his son training which went far to make him one of the greatest kings
that France ever has known. Paris was glad to welcome her monarch whose
charm they loved and whose weakness they forgot.

The remaining four years of John’s rule was hardly wiser than the early
part. He jaunted about the country, everywhere instituting festivals and
tournaments. It was now that he gave the duchy of Burgundy to prince
Philip as a reward for his pluck at Poitiers.

Then came the breaking of his parole by the duke of Anjou and John’s
return to England and death. The stage was clear for the reëntrance of a
man who was to treat his task of rulership as one worthy of serious
approach.

CHAPTER IX

PARIS OF CHARLES V

King John’s body was sent over to France from London. As the cortège
escorting the coffin drew near to Paris Charles and his brothers went
out on foot to meet it, going beyond Saint Denis and then convoying it
to the abbey where it was duly buried. The metropolitan of Paris, the
archbishop of Sens, sang mass, and after the service the princes with
their following of lords and prelates returned to the city.

On Trinity Sunday, not long after, these same lords and prelates were
witnesses of the coronation at Rheims of Charles and his wife. The
ceremonies and festivities lasted five days, after which Charles
returned to Paris to take up the burden of government of a disordered
and disheartened country.

John’s lavishness could not make the people blind to their losses by the
plague and three years after Charles’s accession a new attack swept
across France striking chiefly the large cities where ignorance of
sanitation produced conditions in which truly only the “fittest”--the
toughest--could survive. A writer of the time says, “None could count
the number of the dead in Paris, young or old, rich or poor; when death
entered a house the little children died first, then the menials, then
the parents.” It is only wonderful that such epidemics did not make
their visitations oftener, when, for instance, the bodies of Marcel and
his companions in treachery were cast into the river at the Port Saint
Paul, which is above the city, and the city continued to use the river
water for drinking purposes.

The laxities of the last reign had permitted roving companies of what
were little other than bandits to fight and burn and slay all over
France, while in the northern provinces a lively war was going on with
the Navarrese, helped by the Gascons and by bands of English. The
territorial loss due to the Peace of Brétigny was a sore memory to king
and people, and this participation in the internal strife of the country
by the chief enemies of France aggravated hatred of the English. Nor was
England the only land troublesome to Charles. There were dissensions in
Italy and Spain and the French of the south were drawn into affairs that
touched them practically although they were over the border. Avignon,
which had been the enforced home of the popes since Philip the Fair’s
refusal to acknowledge the temporal power of the pontiff over sixty
years before, was deserted by Pope Urban V, who went to Rome in spite of
Charles’s protestations. The emperor of Germany, Charles IV, was the
only monarch of Europe who seemed to have any kindly feeling toward the
young king. His friendship continued throughout Charles’s reign, and in
1378, two years before its end he and his son paid a visit to Paris.

Charles showed his appreciation of the imperial good will by the
cordiality and elaborateness of his reception. The king’s
representative, the Provost of Paris, and the people’s representative,
the Provost of the Merchants, went as far as Saint Denis to meet the
German train. The king himself, dressed in scarlet and mounted on a
handsome white horse, awaited them at the suburb of La Chapelle. The
combined retinues made a dazzling procession across the city to the
palace on the island, where, in the evening, a supper was served to over
eight hundred princes and nobles. The effect was disastrous on the
emperor for he was so laid up with gout on the following day that he had
to be borne by servants even the short distance between his apartments
and the Sainte Chapelle where he heard mass and saw the Most Holy
Relics. On that same day the burghers expressed their satisfaction with
the visit by presenting their imperial guest, by the hand of the
Provost of the Merchants, with a superb piece of silver and two huge
silver-gilt flagons. Every day of the succeeding week was filled with
festivities. In the city the emperor visited the Louvre and the Hôtel
Saint Paul--the new palace at the east end--where he was received by the
queen who showed him the royal menagerie. He made various excursions in
the suburbs--to Saint Denis to see the tombs of the French monarchs, to
the abbey of Saint Maur, east of the city, to the _château_ of
Vincennes, where Charles was born and where he was destined to die two
years later, and where now the imperial gout prevented the elder guest
joining the younger in a stag hunt, and finally, on the day of
departure, to the king’s favorite _château_--de Beauté. Here the
monarchs parted after exchanging rings and expressions of esteem.

Since Charles had so many troubles, both domestic and foreign, to
contend with, it was fortunate that he was intelligent in his choice of
advisers and sagacious and prudent in his legislation. Often he was
hard-pressed financially, and more than once he had to summon the States
General to secure approval of tax levies and of political moves. His
fighting was not glorious, though Du Guesclin, whom he appointed
Constable, was both bold and determined, but he knew how to make use of
stratagem and even of defeat and to turn the quarrels of others to his
own account.

Having brought about a state of peace and understanding in the immediate
provinces and having strengthened himself by securing the fortification
of many towns and the increase of his army, Charles found himself in a
position to take the offensive against the English. A beginning at
changing the state of affairs brought about by the Peace of Brétigny was
made when the lords of Aquitaine, which the royal house of England held
subject to Charles’s suzerainty, went to Paris, and, to the delight of
the Parisians, entered a formal complaint against the harsh rule of the
Prince of Wales. Edward was summoned to appear before the court at
Paris. His reply to the messengers was: “We will willingly appear at
Paris, since so the king of France commands us, but it will be with
basnet on head and with sixty thousand men at our back.”

The States General supported Charles, and the court maintained that king
Edward had forfeited his French holdings by failing to appear in Paris.

The English retaliated promptly, and for the remaining eleven years of
Charles’s reign there was constant fighting though no great battle.
Charles was not a knight of noteworthy personal prowess like his father.
He never went to war himself, but he directed every move and carried
diplomacy into every plan of operations. His army tolled the English
along, always seeming to promise a meeting but never coming to grips,
while at the same time it used up the food supply of the country and
made the maintenance of the foreign force a matter of extreme
difficulty. Small affairs were not prohibited, however, and the French
took an English town here and another one there and won still others by
stratagem.

At last from sheer fatigue a truce was entered into which lasted some
two years. During it the Black Prince died. “The King of France, on
account of his lineage,” says Froissart, “had funeral service in honor
of him performed with great magnificence in the Sainte Chapelle of the
palace in Paris, which was attended by many prelates and barons of the
realm.”

A little later Edward III died and Charles, after holding a memorial
service for him, also, in the Sainte Chapelle, at once put five armies
into the field and instituted so vigorous an offensive policy that at
the time of his death in 1380 the English were driven out of all but
five coast cities.

Two months before the king’s death he lost his strong-armed Constable,
Du Guesclin, at the siege of Châteauneuf-Randon. Strangely enough for a
man who had spent his life in arms the great fighter did not die sword
in hand, but of illness and in bed. The governor of the town, who had
promised to yield to the Constable and to him alone, refused to give up
his keys to the second in command and going out from the citadel laid
them on the bier of the great captain. Du Guesclin’s body was carried to
Paris where it lay in the monastery of the Cordeliers on the left bank
before it was taken to Saint Denis where his tomb was arranged at the
foot of the tomb which Charles had had prepared for himself. The
ceremonies were as elaborate as those for a member of the royal family,
in such esteem did the king hold the departed soldier.

It was only a few weeks later that Charles himself fell ill and realized
that his end was not far off. He had known much sickness in his
life--his was one of those triumphs of mind over unwilling matter. At
one time before his accession his unamiable brother-in-law, Charles the
Bad, had, it is asserted, caused him to be poisoned. So strong was the
poison that his hair and nails fell from his body. His good friend the
Emperor of Germany had sent him a skillful physician who had relieved
his system by opening a small sore in his arm. If ever it proved
impossible to keep this sore open, he told his royal patient, he must
prepare for death, though he would have about a fortnight in which to
set his house in order. Twenty-two years later, in September, 1380, the
issue began to dry, and at the end of the month, on the eve of
Michaelmas, the King died in his birthplace, the _château_ of Vincennes.
His body with face uncovered was borne through the mourning crowds of
Paris to the abbey of Saint Denis where it was buried in the tomb
already prepared.

When Charles as a young man had made a spirited speech to the Parisians
telling them that he meant to live and die in Paris he made a statement
that he lived up to. Economical even to penuriousness elsewhere, he
built lavishly in Paris. His improvement of the Louvre has been
mentioned. In the northeast corner of the quadrangle were a garden,
tennis court and menagerie. A library of nearly a thousand volumes was
housed in three stories of one of the towers. Charles was a great
student, read the entire Bible through every year, and had a corps of
translators, transcribers, illuminators and binders always at work. His
collection was the nucleus of the present National Library although the
Duke of Bedford carried off a goodly number of books to England in the
later part of the Hundred Years’ War. The royal apartments in the
Louvre, elaborately carved and decorated, were large and well arranged.
The rooms of the queen, Jeanne de Bourbon, were on the south side
overlooking the river, and the king’s were on the north. Each of the
children had a separate suite and that of the dauphin rivaled in size
and elegance those of his father and mother. Each set of rooms had its
own chapel.

[Illustration: THE OLD LOUVRE.]

The palace on the Cité was full of unpleasant memories of the days of
the regency--notably the murder of the marshals--and Charles no doubt
was glad when the overcrowding caused by the business of the courts
allowed him to break away from the tradition of royal residence under
the ancient roof. With all its changes the Louvre still was a rather
grim dwelling, and Charles chose a more open location at the extreme
east of the city for his new Hôtel Saint Paul. He bought existing
houses, some of which he demolished, and land and laid out a large
establishment of which the present names of streets in the vicinity
suggest varied uses, though none of the original buildings are left. The
streets of the Garden, of the Cherry Orchard, of the Fair Trellis, of
the Lions tell their own stories, while the rue Charles V, a tiny
thoroughfare, is the only street memorial in all Paris which bears the
name of this great monarch.

The Hôtel des Tournelles, so called from its many towers, was built by
Charles just north of the palace of Saint Paul.

Certainly Paris thrived under Charles. The population increased to a
hundred and fifty thousand, many people coming in to the town during the
troublous times with Navarre and the English to secure the protection of
its wall. Charles carried on Marcel’s plans of fortification. The chief
point was the Bastille--at first merely two heavy towers protecting one
of the city gates, but, by the time of Charles’s death, strengthened by
the addition of six others so that it became a formidable fortress and
dungeon. Its walls were fifteen feet thick and over sixty feet high. A
deep ditch surrounded it. Its destruction by the mob on July 14, 1789,
was one of the opening events of the Revolution, and so profoundly did
its grim walls symbolize oppression that the anniversary of its
destruction is the French national holiday. Where the huge building
stood is now an open square adorned by a shaft called the “July Column”
raised in honor of the heroes of the Revolution of July, 1830.

Of examples of domestic architecture of this time there is still in
existence part of the Hôtel de Clisson. It is now the entrance of the
Archives, and, like the Hôtel de Sens, shows the lingering style of the
feudal _château_.

Charles was ably seconded in his civic improvements by Hugh Aubriot, the
provost of Paris, who established a mallet-armed militia devoted to the
king’s interests. The provost of Paris represented the king, and Charles
added to his responsibilities many of those formerly attaching to the
provostship of the Merchants before the king had experienced their
extent in the hands of Marcel. Aubriot laid the corner stone of the
enlarged Bastille. He never was on good terms with the clergy, unlike
Charles, whose studiousness and piety endeared him to the ecclesiastics.
On the very day of Charles’s funeral, even while the _cortège_ was
making its way to Saint Denis, the provost quarreled with the rector of
the University, was ordered before the bishop of Paris to answer for his
misdeed, and was condemned to life imprisonment. How he escaped is a
later story.

As provost of Paris Aubriot lived in the Grand Châtelet on the right
bank. This fortress, afterwards a prison, is now represented only by a
square of the name. In the course of his improvements Charles
strengthened its mate, the Petit Châtelet, on the left bank. He also
installed the first large clock in Paris, that on the square tower of
the Conciergerie.

As a symbol of the royal power the king ordered that there be added to
the seal of the city of Paris, which bore the ship of the ancient guild
of Nautae, a field sown with the fleur-de-lis.

[Illustration: ARMS OF CITY OF PARIS UNDER CHARLES V.]

CHAPTER X

PARIS OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR

When Charles V lay on his death-bed he summoned his brothers, the dukes
of Berri and Burgundy and his brother-in-law, the duke of Bourbon, and
gave them detailed instructions concerning the guardianship of his son,
the dauphin Charles, then twelve years old. He explained frankly that
his brother, the duke of Anjou, was not asked to this conference,
although next to himself in age, because of his grasping character.
Undoubtedly there were other qualities upon which he did not need to
dwell, for the duke of Anjou was that son of John the Good who had
broken his word of honor, thereby compelling his father to return to his
confinement in England.

The four brothers had no idea that Anjou was present other than in
spirit, perhaps, at the council around the death-bed of the eldest. Yet
he was concealed so near that he heard every word including the “no good
to himself” which is the proverbial reward of the listener. He
straightway went forth and turned to his own account the information so
infamously acquired. Rushing from Vincennes to Paris he seized the
king’s personal valuables, and, as soon as Charles was buried, he
declared himself regent, because of his being the new king’s oldest
uncle.

Charles VI (1380-1422) was only twelve years old, and, of course, was
entirely in the hands of his guardians. The Parisians were disposed to
be gentle toward the child, and received him with rejoicing when he
entered the city after his coronation at Rheims. Their attitude was soon
to change. Charles VI’s reign was one of such dissension and turbulence
among his subjects, of such intrigue, hypocrisy and treachery among his
friends and relatives, and of such advance by his external enemies who
naturally took advantage of these internal troubles, that France has
never been in worse case except during the horrors of the Revolution.
Paris, where centered the initiative of the country, was torn by riot
and insurrection, the burghers were manipulated by the lords, and the
populace was at last declared subject to its chief enemy, the English.

The earliest trouble came when there was need of money for the meditated
war with Flanders, and for the duke of Anjou’s secret preparations for
an expedition to Naples where it was his life’s ambition to rule. As
usual, the coffers of the Jews offered an irresistible temptation. The
ghetto was in the heart of the Cité. Its houses were plundered and
burned and many Hebrews lost their lives in trying to protect their
property. To Anjou the citizens were more generous than to the king. A
certain sum which they had promised to the royal treasury went into the
avuncular pocketbook.

There had been fair words at first about the reduction of taxes, but
when the words came to nothing the Parisians rose in hot rebellion. The
immediate cause was the announcement of a new tax on all merchandise
sold. When the tax-gatherers attempted to do their duty the people went
to the Hôtel de Ville and the Arsenal and armed themselves with the
mallets which Hugh Aubriot had prepared for the use of the militia when
they should be called out against the English. For several days the
people were masters of the city. Aubriot was released from the bishop’s
prison and was put at the head of the rebellion, but he evidently
regarded this as a doubtful honor, for he disappeared in the course of
the night, seeming to think that an escape confirmed was better than a
hazardous leadership. Prisoners for debt were released by the
insurrectionists and the _maillotins_--mallet-bearers--committed many
murders for which they were to suffer swift punishment.

Young Charles had had his first taste of war in Flanders and had gained
the battle of Rosebecque. Returning to Paris the citizens came forth to
meet him fully armed and with such martial demeanor that it looked as if
they came to greet their lord in battle array. Charles sent an officer
to them as they stood massed under Montmartre, to the north of the city,
with a message to the effect that he had no desire to see them in any
such guise, and ordering them back within the walls. When the young king
had restored the oriflamme to its place beside the altar at Saint Denis
he entered the city with every evidence of displeasure at the recent
revolutionary behavior of the citizens. The barriers before the gates
and the gates themselves were destroyed as if the monarch were making an
entrance into the town of an enemy, and he rode haughtily through the
streets, the only mounted soldier in the army, acknowledging neither by
look or word the acclamations of his subjects. No sooner had he given
thanks for his victories and had left Notre Dame than he issued stern
orders of reprisal. He punished individuals by fine or imprisonment or
death and the city by a loss of privileges which it had taken long to
win. Among them, the Provost of Merchants became merely a minor officer
of the king, the corporations lost the right of electing their heads,
the chains which had been stretched across the streets at night and
which could be serviceable as barricades were removed, and the burghers
were disarmed.

Among the executions was that of Jean Desmarets, an old man who had
served well and faithfully both king and people. His had been a soothing
influence on many occasions when the citizens would have broken out in
rebellion, but now he was caught in a position where his conviction was
inevitable in the midst of a turmoil where discriminations were not
made. On his way to execution some one shouted to him to ask King
Charles for mercy. “God alone will I ask for mercy,” he said. “I served
well and faithfully King Charles’s great-grandfather, and his
grandfather, and his father, and they had nothing with which to reproach
me. If the king had the age and knowledge of a man he would never have
been guilty of such a judgment against me.”

When the Parisians piled up before the Louvre enough arms to furnish
forth eight hundred thousand soldiers Charles knew that they were
thoroughly penitent.

The king’s uncles soon wearied of guardianship which each must share
with his brother, and they went off on their separate interests with the
exception of the strongest of them all, the duke of Burgundy. He was
that same Philip the Bold who had fought beside his father at Poitiers
and who had received the duchy of Burgundy as his reward. He had made an
advantageous marriage, and so firmly established was he and so conscious
of his power that at the coronation of Charles VI he had sat down beside
the king in the place which his brother Anjou should have occupied, and
no one tried to dispossess him. Now he practically ruled the kingdom
alone, though the other uncles returned now and then. Charles was but a
lad still, and it was not unnatural that he should be lively, and his
uncles were well content that he should be diverted from any attempt to
learn anything of his business of government. Balls and jousts were
frequent. There was a revival of the fashions of the days of chivalry,
and old chronicles and tales were sought out to teach the ancient
customs. The ladies wore extravagant head-dresses with veils and horns
and the men decked themselves in tight nether garments and flowing
sleeves.

Froissart tells in detail the events of the “First Entry” of Charles’s
queen, Isabeau of Bavaria, into Paris. He is not right in saying that
she never had been in the city. She had been married five years at the
time: her wedding banquet had been given in the palace of the Cité, and
she had been crowned in the Sainte Chapelle. This “Entry” was merely an
excuse for especially gorgeous festivities.

“It was on Sunday, the 20th day of June, in the year of our Lord
1389,” says the chronicler, “that the queen entered Paris. In the
afternoon of that day the noble ladies of France who were to
accompany the queen assembled at Saint Denis, with such of the
nobility as were appointed to lead the litters of the queen and her
attendants. The citizens of Paris, to the number of 1,200, were
mounted on horseback, dressed in uniforms of green and crimson, and
lined each side of the road. Queen Joan and her daughter the
Duchess of Orleans entered the city first, about an hour after
noon, in a covered litter, and passing through the great street of
Saint Denis, went to the palace, where the king was waiting for
them.

“The Queen of France, attended by the Duchess of Berry and many
other noble ladies, began the procession in an open litter most
richly ornamented. A crowd of nobles attended, and sergeants and
others of the king’s officers had full employment in making way for
the procession, for there were such numbers assembled that it
seemed as if all the world had come thither. At the gate of Saint
Denis was the representation of a starry firmament, and within it
were children dressed as angels, whose singing and chanting was
melodiously sweet. There was also an image of the Virgin holding in
her arms a child, who at times amused himself with a windmill made
of a large walnut. The upper part of this firmament was richly
adorned with the arms of France and Bavaria, with a brilliant sun
dispersing his rays through the heavens; and this sun was the
king’s device at the ensuing tournaments. The queen, after passing
them, advanced slowly to the fountain in the street of Saint Denis,
which was decorated with fine blue cloth besprinkled over with
golden flowers-de-luce; and instead of water, the fountain ran in
great streams of Clairé, and excellent Piement. Around the fountain
were young girls handsomely dressed, who sang most sweetly, and
held in their hands cups of gold, offering drink to all who chose
it. Below the monastery of the Trinity a scaffold had been erected
in the streets, and on it a castle, with a representation of the
battle with King Saladin performed by living actors, the Christians
on one side and the Saracens on the other. The procession then
passed on to the second gate of Saint Denis, which was adorned as
the first; and as the queen was going through the gate two angels
descended and gently placed on her head a rich golden crown,
ornamented with precious stones, at the same time singing sweetly
the following verse:--

“Dame enclose entre fleurs de Lys,
Reine êtes vous de Paris.
De France, et de tout le païs,
Nous en r’ allons en paradis.

“Opposite the chapel of Saint James a scaffold had been erected,
richly decorated with tapestry, and surrounded with curtains,
within which were men who played finely on organs. The whole street
of Saint Denis was covered with a canopy or rich camlet and silk
cloths. The queen and her ladies, conducted by the great lords,
arrived at length at the gate of the Châtelet, where they stopped
to see other splendid pageants that had been prepared. The queen
and her attendants thence passed on to the bridge of Notre Dame,
which was covered with a starry canopy of green and crimson, and
the streets were all hung with tapestry as far as the church. It
was now late in the evening, for the procession, ever since it had
set out from Saint Denis, had advanced but at a foot’s pace. As
the queen was passing down the street of Notre Dame, a man
descended by means of a rope from the highest tower of Notre Dame
church, having two lighted torches in his hands, and playing many
tricks as he came down. The Bishop of Paris and his numerous clergy
met the queen at the entrance of the church, and conducted her
through the nave and choir to the great altar, where, on her knees,
she made her prayers, and presented as her offering four cloths of
gold, and the handsome crown which the angels had put on her head
at the gate of Paris. The Lord John de la Rivière and Sir John le
Mercier instantly brought one more rich with which they crowned
her. When this was done she and her ladies left the church, and as
it was late upwards of 500 lighted tapers attended the procession.
In such array were they conducted to the palace, where the king,
Queen Joan, and the Duchess of Orleans were waiting for them.

“On the morrow, which was Monday, the king gave a grand dinner to a
numerous company of ladies, and at the hour of high mass the Queen
of France was conducted to the holy chapel, where she was anointed
and sanctified in the usual manner. Sir William de Viare,
Archbishop of Rouen, said mass. Shortly after mass the king, queen,
and all the ladies entered the hall: and you must know that the
great marble table which is in the hall was covered with oaken
planks four inches thick, and the royal dinner placed thereon. Near
the table, and against one of the pillars, was the king’s buffet,
magnificently decked out with gold and silver plate; and in the
hall were plenty of attendants, sergeants-at-arms, ushers, archers,
and minstrels, who played away to the best of their ability. The
kings, prelates, and ladies, having washed, seated themselves at
the tables, which were three in number: at the first, sat the King
and Queen of France, and some few of the higher nobility; and at
the other two, there were upwards of 500 ladies and damsels; but
the crowd was so great that it was with difficulty they could be
served with dinner, which indeed was plentiful and sumptuous. There
were in the hall many curiously arranged devices: a castle to
represent the city of Troy, with the palace of Ilion, from which
were displayed the banners of the Trojans; also a pavilion on which
were placed the banners of the Grecian kings, and which was moved
as it were by invisible beings to the attack of Troy, assisted by a
large ship capable of containing 100 men-at-arms; but the crowd was
so great that this amusement could not last long. There were so
many people on all sides that several were stifled by the heat, and
the queen herself almost fainted. The queen left the palace about
five o’clock, and, followed by her ladies, in litters or on
horseback, proceeded to the residence of the king at the hotel de
Saint Pol. The king took boat at the palace, and was rowed to his
hotel, where, in a large hall, he entertained the ladies at a
banquet; the queen, however, remained in her chamber where she
supped, and did not again appear that night. On Tuesday, many
superb presents were made by the Parisians to the King and Queen of
France, and the Duchess of Touraine. This day the king and queen
dined in private, at their different hotels, for at three o’clock
the tournament was to take place in the square of Saint Catherine,
where scaffolds had been erected for the accommodation of the queen
and the ladies. The knights who took part in this tournament were
thirty in number, including the king; and when the jousts began
they were carried on with great vigor, every one performing his
part in honor of the ladies. The Duke of Ireland, who was then a
resident at Paris, and invited by the king to the tournament,
tilted well; also a German knight from beyond the Rhine, by name
Sir Gervais di Mirande, gained great commendation. The number of
knights made it difficult to give a full stroke, and the dust was
so troublesome that it increased the difficulty. The Lord de Coucy
shone with brilliancy. The tilts were continued without relaxation
until night, when the ladies were conducted to their hotels. At the
hotel de Saint Pol was the most magnificent banquet ever heard of.
Feasting and dancing lasted till sunrise, and the prize of the
tournament was given, with the assent of the ladies and heralds, to
the king as being the best tilter on the opponent side; while the
prize for the holders of the lists was given to the Halze de
Flandres, bastard brother to the Duchess of Burgundy. On Wednesday
the tilting was continued, and the banquet this evening was as
grand as the preceding one. The prize was adjudged by the ladies
and heralds to a squire from Hainault, as the most deserving of the
opponents, and to a squire belonging to the Duke of Burgundy, as
the best tenant of the field. On Thursday also the tournament was
continued; and, this day, knights and squires tilted promiscuously,
and many gallant justs were done, for every one took pains to
excel. When night put an end to the combat there was a grand
entertainment again for the ladies at the hotel de Saint Pol. On
Friday the king feasted the ladies and damsels at dinner, and
afterwards very many returned to their homes, the king and queen
thanking them very graciously for having come to the feast.”

Three years later Charles became insane, and it seemed as if no man was
his friend thereafter. Undoubtedly a life of youthful dissipation and a
naturally violent temper were the bases of his malady. The provoking
causes seem to have been two. Urged by the bishop of Laon Charles had
plucked up courage enough definitely to send away his uncles and to
undertake to rule with the help of some of his father’s advisers, whom
he recalled. One of these men, his Constable, Oliver de Clisson, was
foully murdered at a little distance from the Hôtel Saint Paul, a few
minutes after he had left a banquet given by the king. When Charles was
told of the murder he rushed into the street in his night clothes and
heard the name of the assassin, de Craon, from de Clisson’s own lips.
The king burned with desire for vengeance. He set out as soon as he
could in pursuit of de Craon who was supposed to have fled to Brittany.
On an extremely hot day for which the king was unsuitably dressed in a
thick black velvet jacket and heavy scarlet velvet cap, there dashed out
at him from the roadside an old man, probably half-witted, who kept
crying “Go no farther; thou art betrayed.” Charles was much startled by
this gruesome warning, and when close upon it a page’s lance fell
clattering against some piece of steel equipment he was seized with
frenzy, wounded several of his followers, and when he was at last
overpowered and taken from his horse, recognized no one.

Never again was he wholly sane. There were times of betterment, but
never any real mental health. His people loved him--his nickname is
Bien-Aimé--as they would a helpless child, but after a while no one
except a hired woman took any care of him. His clothes and his person
were neglected and he had no medical care. Isabeau deserted him and he
had a repugnance for her even when he did not recognize her. At other
times he had lucid intervals when he took part in festivities prepared
to divert him. It was at the wedding entertainment of a lady of the
court, held at the Hôtel Saint Paul where he lived, that he came near
being burned to death. He and five of his courtiers were sewed up in
tarred skins and were supposed to represent satyrs. Some one, perhaps by
accident, perhaps with the desire to get the king out of the way, set
fire to these dresses. It was impossible to pull them off. One of the
young men threw himself into a tub of water and was saved. The king
escaped by being wrapped in the voluminous skirt of his very young
aunt-in-law, the duchess of Berri.

With the head of the kingdom insane for thirty years and with court and
political factions working against each other with all virulence it is
not strange that the country became merely a ground for the display of
individual passion. The duke of Burgundy of the moment was John the
Fearless, son of Philip the Bold. Between John and Charles’s brother,
Louis, duke of Orleans, raged a hot rivalry. Isabeau, whose relations
with Louis were a public scandal, fed the fire of disturbance. At last,
in November, 1407, only three days after a public reconciliation, Louis
was assassinated at the hands of John’s bravos as he was decoyed by a
false message purporting to be from Charles, from the Hôtel Barbette
where he had been supping with the queen. The house with its charming
little tower is still standing in a crowded street of the Marais. It is
not hard to picture the rush of the assassins, the screams of onlookers
aroused from sleep, the hiss of arrows shot at windows where eyes were
seeing what was meant to be hid, and the final ordering away of the
ruffians by a tall man in command.

The next day what member of the royal family more grief-stricken than
the duke of Burgundy! Yet he admitted the deed to his uncle, the duke of
Berri. In spite of that he had the audacity the day after to try to join
the council of princes who met in the Hôtel de Nesle on the left bank to
discuss the matter. To their credit be it said that they did not admit
him. John rode away into Flanders, but so great was his confidence in
the affection for him of the people of Paris that he ventured to return,
to have his case defended by a monk--who argued for five hours
justifying the murder of Louis as the murder of a tyrant--and to force
the weak-minded king to forgive him the vile deed. He even practically
ruled the city for a time in the absence of the queen. Indeed it was not
long before he and Isabeau came to a secret understanding. A little
later a marriage was arranged between the murderer’s daughter and one of
the sons of his victim.

Louis of Orleans’ son Charles, better known as a poet than as a
statesman or warrior, married for his second wife the daughter of the
count of Armagnac of the south of France. The father-in-law was more
energetic than Charles, and he headed the struggle with the Burgundians.
The populace of Paris sided with the Burgundians, the court with the
Armagnacs. For five years France, and especially Paris was rent with
broils and battles. In Charles V’s day the corporations had grown strong
enough to cause some concern to the king and the nobles. Now the
powerful brotherhood of butchers entered with enthusiasm into the
dissensions that were making Paris almost uninhabitable for the
peacefully inclined. Accustomed to the sight of blood and its shedding
they entered with enthusiasm into the reformation of the government and
especially of such members of the Armagnac party as were prominent. Led
by a slaughterer named Caboche they supported the Burgundians in every
attack, always in the name of changes which the wisest men of the
burghers saw to be beneficial, but which no one had the ability to bring
to pass except by violence. The cry of “Armagnac” was enough to cause an
attack on any passer in the street and many a private vengeance was
accomplished by means of the party shout.

So bad did conditions become that the steadiest of the _bourgeois_ at
last summoned the Armagnacs to check the excesses of the Cabochiens.
John the Fearless, who had been the real ruler, since he issued orders
and proclamations purporting to come from the mad king, was driven out
of the city.

His going was a relief to Paris but to the country as a whole it brought
disaster, for the duke was not slow in joining forces with the English
who had seen their opportunity in the disturbed condition of their
enemy’s land. Henry V had recently succeeded his father and had all a
newcomer’s and a young man’s enthusiasm for renewing the English claim
upon the French crown. He himself headed the army and in October, 1415,
inflicted upon the French the crushing defeat of Agincourt wherein
10,000 Frenchmen lay dead upon the field. Never since Agincourt has the
_oriflamme_ left the altar of Saint Denis.

The whole country was in a state of uproar, ready to change every
existing arrangement in the hope that what succeeded it would be better.
The populace of Paris rose against the Armagnacs and the treachery of a
Burgundian sympathizer admitted the friends of John the Fearless. The
guardian of the Porte de Buci (in the left bank wall just south of the
Tour de Nesle) was an iron merchant whose place of business was on the
Petit Pont, the western bridge connecting the Cité with the left bank.
This man’s son stole his father’s keys and opened the gate to the
Burgundians. They swarmed into the city and at once began a massacre so
horrible that the streets were strewn with dead bodies which the
children pulled about in play. The Provost of Paris seized the dauphin,
afterwards Charles VII, then a lad of fifteen, and carried him in his
arms to the Bastille where he might be in safety. The insurgents broke
in to the Hôtel Saint Paul, took out the mad king and led him about the
city on a horse on the pretense that he was giving his approval to the
change of rule. As a matter of fact he was a mere puppet in their hands.

As if these disturbances were not enough, Paris, toward the end of this
same year (1418), underwent a severe attack of the plague during which
the mortality was so great that the dead were buried in ditches, six
hundred in each trench. Between September 8 and December 8, according to
the city grave-diggers, a hundred thousand people were buried and of
these all but about a dozen in every four or five hundred were children.
It is small wonder that the Danse Macabre, picturing all men as followed
through life by skeletons giving warning of death, was painted in the
cemetery of the Holy Innocents, even though the number stated by the
grave-diggers would seem to have been increased by the proverbial
libation-pouring habits of the profession. Probably fifty thousand is
nearer the truth.

Queen Isabeau was ever on the side which she thought most profitable to
herself. Just now she was in league with John the Fearless who had
caused her to be named regent. With him she had reëntered Paris; she
concurred in his getting rid of the Cabochiens by sending them out of
the city to attack the Armagnacs outside, and shutting the gates behind
them; but it is suspected that she was not ignorant of the plot to
murder the duke which was carried out the next year.

John the Fearless was succeeded by his son, Philip the Good, and he
became the queen’s adviser. The battle of Agincourt had given Henry

[Illustration: THE OLDEST KNOWN MAP OF PARIS, PROBABLY 15TH CENTURY.

The top of the page is east.]

V of England the right to dictate the terms of the Treaty of Troyes. By
it Queen Isabeau practically gave away the crown which belonged to her
son Charles, bestowed her daughter, Catherine, in marriage on Henry, and
yielded the regency of France to Henry during the lifetime of the mad
king. Burgundians and English escorted Henry V into Paris at the end of
December, 1420. He made the Louvre his residence and put English
officers in charge of the Bastille and the other fortifications. The
Parisians at first received the newcomers with delight, for so worn was
the city with quarreling and fighting that the advent of a new element
was looked upon with hope. It was not long, however, before Henry’s
sternness and the arrogance of his followers made them disliked, and the
new element was found to be an element of discord. Between the regent
and the Church there were continual dissensions, for the bishops refused
to confirm Henry’s appointments of prelates sympathetic with England.

In addition to the constant disturbances that agitated the streets the
city was in a pitiable state in other ways. Famine and plague had done
their work thoroughly, and the population was much reduced; the always
exorbitant taxes drove property owners out of the city into the country,
which they found in such bad case that even the wolves went from the
country into the city, and made nightly raids upon the cemeteries.
Children died in the streets from hunger, dogs were eaten as a delicacy,
and the demands of beggars upon the seemingly well-to-do were more in
the nature of threats than appeals.

Henry V died in August, 1422, and Charles the Well-Beloved followed him
to the grave in October of the same year. Henry’s body lay in state at
Saint Denis before it was taken to England. Charles’s subjects came to
view the remains of their poor tortured king during the three weeks that
it rested at the Hôtel Saint Paul before being taken to Notre Dame and
then to Saint Denis. Over his grave at Saint Denis the little English
prince, Henry VI, only a few months old, was acknowledged king of
France. The duke of Bedford became regent, and the English rose was
quartered on the arms of Paris.

The rightful king, Charles VII, crowded out of Paris, fought with small
success through the middle of France, until Jeanne Darc, the inspired
peasant of Domremy, led his forces to such success that she dared
besiege Paris. She established her army on the northwest of the city
before the St. Honoré Gate, and there she fell, wounded by a shaft, but
a short distance from the spot where her equestrian statue stands now on
the Place des Pyramides. It would have been easier for her if death had
come to her then than later in the flames of the Rouen market place.

It was about a month before her trial--some seven years after the death
of Charles VI--that Henry VI was crowned king of France in the cathedral
of Notre Dame (1431). The English lords made a brave showing at the
ceremony, but there were few of the French nobles present, though many
sent representatives who wore their escutcheons. So niggardly were the
English after the service at the church that the people, who were
accustomed to liberal largesse on such occasions, declared that there
would have been more generosity shown at the wedding of a _bourgeois_
jeweler.

Charles, who had been consecrated at Rheims in 1429 as the fulfillment
of the dearest wish of the Pucelle, tried once more, in 1436, to win his
city from the English. This time his general, the Constable de
Richemont, entered by the Porte Saint Jacques on the south and advanced
through the city unresisted. The English, to the number of about fifteen
hundred, took refuge in the Bastille, whence they were starved out in
short order and escaped by the Porte Saint Antoine into the fields. A
year later Charles made his official entry into the town which he had
left nineteen years before when the provost rescued him from the
onslaught of the Burgundians. It was a solemn scene when the restored
king knelt before the altar of Notre Dame to give thanks for his return.

When he went to the palace on the Cité he must have stood in need of all
the composure that religion could give him for there he saw among the
statues of the kings of France the statue of Henry V of England! Charles
did not have it taken down. It stood with mutilated face to make public
show of his scorn.

The English captured at Pontoise were drowned at the Grève soon after.
Paris no longer welcomed the stranger.

The city itself was forlorn enough. So poorly was it protected that
again wolves made their way through the gates which their keepers were
too languid or too indifferent to guard properly. It is said that in one
week of the month of September, 1438, no fewer than forty persons were
killed by the hungry beasts in Paris and its immediate neighborhood.
Twenty-four thousand dwellings stood vacant.

Charles reorganized the administration of Paris, restoring the elections
of city officials which his father had suppressed, and establishing a
fairly satisfactory arrangement of taxes. A marked addition to the royal
power lay in the organization of a standing army devoted to the royal
interests. It was thus that he utilized the energy of the adventurers
who had grown irresponsible through the disturbed state of the country.
By the aid of these soldiers he was enabled to put down the nobility who
tried to revolt from his new ordinances and place the dauphin,
afterwards Louis XI, on the throne. Louis did not object, but Charles
enlisted the good-will of the _bourgeoisie_, and, chiefly because he did
not ask them for money or soldiers, they gave both to him with such
willingness that the lords took heed that a new power was confirming the
royal attitude. It was not the end of his troubles with the dauphin who
remained ever rebelliously opposed to his father, but when one lord was
obliged to let the Parliament of Paris arbitrate his quarrels, and when
another was thrust into a sack and thrown into the Seine their
turbulence was at least discouraged.

With his domestic troubles thus quieted Charles could devote his
attention to the war with England, and he did so in painstaking contrast
to the almost lethargic indifference of his earlier years. The contest
dragged its weary length along until October, 1453 when Charles marched
victorious into Bordeaux. Calais was all that was left to England.

Eight years later (1461) Charles “the Victorious,” who had spent little
time in Paris, died elsewhere. Stormy as had been his reign and
unworthy as had been his character, he nevertheless left his kingdom not
only at peace but with the royal power strengthened by the friendliness
of the burgher class and possessed of an efficient weapon in the
standing army. France was ready for the new order which was to begin
under Charles’s son, Louis XI.

CHAPTER XI

PARIS OF THE LATER FIFTEENTH CENTURY

With Charles VII’s son, Louis XI (1461-1483), the modern history of
France may be said to begin, since he substituted the use of brain for
the use of muscle in the management of affairs. His earliest attempts at
government seem not to have been successful, since at the end of four
years he had alienated every class of society. The League of the Public
Welfare was formed to oppose him, and it included nobles, clergy,
burghers and populace, each of whom had its own serious grievance. Louis
had a well-disciplined army but he could not be in all parts of his
kingdom at once, and while his attention was given elsewhere his enemies
approached Paris. The moral effect of the capture of Paris was to be
dreaded almost as much as its actual loss, and the king made himself
active in trying to prevent the misfortune. Unlike any ruler preceding
him his first efforts were always diplomatic. Instead of rushing troops
to Paris he sent messages of appeal to every class within the walls.
They roused no response. There were in the University some twenty-five
thousand students, no inconsiderable force, but the Rector refused to
arm them for their monarch’s support. The burghers were similarly
lacking in enthusiasm.

Marching in person to Paris Louis sacrificed a part of his army to
engage the attention of the enemy whose forces he passed, and entered
the city. His presence accomplished what his messages could not bring to
pass. He and the queen reviewed a militia force of some 70,000 men, for
the burghers became willing to fight for a king who had the good sense
to ask their advice--even if he did not follow it--and he never failed
to work for their esteem. For the first time in French history merit
ranked position.

The story of Louis’ reign is a tale of fighting and intrigue, with a
constantly increasing settlement of power in the monarch. Provinces fell
into his hands; his enemies once in his grasp, never escaped. He was
Louis the Spider, always weaving his webs, seldom doing it in vain.
France had a greater feeling of unity now than before the English wars,
and the power was still more solidly centralized in the crown.

Such activities left the king not much time for Paris. When he was there
he lived in the Hôtel des Tournelles which Charles V had built,
persisting in his affection for it although he was

[Illustration: THE CHURCHES OF SAINT ÉTIENNE-DU MONT AND OF SAINTE
GENEVIÈVE IN 17TH CENTURY.

See page 207.]

[Illustration: JUBÉ IN THE CHURCH OF SAINT ÉTIENNE-DU-MONT.

See page 193.]

nearly captured there at one time by some of his followers who were in a
plot to seize his person. He curried favor with the people by calling
himself simply a “burgher of Paris,” he himself lighted the Saint John’s
Eve bonfire on the Grève, he walked about the city in a fashion unknown
to royalty before, and he dined in shabby dress at the public table of
any tavern that seemed convenient.

Something of the king’s implacability may be guessed from the
punishments and tortures which were common in his reign. His Constable,
Saint Pol, was executed on the Grève and a shaft twelve feet high,
erected on the spot, warned others not to commit his fault. Another man
of equal rank was imprisoned in an iron cage in the Bastille until he
was executed. During his captivity Louis learned that his chains had
been removed for a short time in order that he might go to church. He
ordered that they should not be taken off again except when he was
tortured. A man convicted of conspiracy was beheaded and his head was
placed on a staff in front of the Hôtel de Ville.

The period of occupation by the English had left Paris with much
dilapidation, for people who were not thinking of permanency were not
thinking of building and but little of repairing. Even though a reign
had intervened there was much to be done toward restoring the Gothic
city, but Louis himself built little. His interests were, perhaps, more
far-reaching. For instance his intelligence saw at once the value of the
printing press, and he gave his consent to the establishment near the
Sorbonne of several printers whose early work hastened to spread the
renaissance of classical learning which took place when the fall of
Constantinople (1453) dispersed the scholars of the East among the
countries of the West. Over the ancient Roman roads that pierced Paris
from north to south they made their way into the city which had been
increasingly attractive to students ever since Alcuin established there
a school for Charlemagne. The colleges clustered around the Mont Sainte
Geneviève absorbed them rapidly, and the Rector who governed the
University ruled over a notable accession to his people on the left
bank. Louis welcomed these wanderers for what they gave to France, and
they gave generously, for with them came the new spirit which touched
not letters alone but every form of art.

Another of Louis’ organizations was the postal service which sent
letters by messenger from Paris to all parts of France.

There is no description of the Paris of Louis’ time more vivid than
Victor Hugo’s in “Notre Dame de Paris.” The narrow streets, the tall,
high-pitched houses, the town spreading its business interests to the
north and its collegiate interests to the south with the Cité and its
many churches lying at the foot of the towers of the great
cathedral--all these stand forth sharply in the second chapter of the
Third Book. The Provost ruled the Ville, the Rector the University and
the Bishop the Cité.

Ogival or Gothic architecture had been a growth, every part added with a
meaning. Its development in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was
chiefly in details, windows, for example, being better drawn though less
harmonious, and rose windows increasing in elaboration until they seemed
the flames which gave their name to the _flamboyant_ style of
architecture. Decoration grew over-elaborate. It became customary to
build chapels along the side aisles of the nave, and a gallery
separating the choir and the nave. There is but one such gallery or
_jubé_ in Paris to-day, that of the Church of Saint Étienne-du-Mont.

After the Hundred Years’ War was over and the country knew peace again
it was natural that the building of churches should begin once more. It
is to this time that the church of Saint Laurent belongs, built on the
site of an old monastery; Saint Nicholas-of-the-Fields not far away;
Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, to which a bit here and a bit there had been
added from very early days; Saint Séverin on the left bank. This church
is one of the most interesting in modern Paris, crowded as it is into
the old left bank quarter near Saint Julien-le-Pauvre, its façade taken
bodily from Saint Pierre-aux-Boeufs, the ancient Cité church of the
Butchers’ Corporation when it was demolished, its north doorway adorned
with two lions between which the priests stood to decide causes, and its
walls within decorated with tablets given to record many kinds of
gratitude, from that for the passing of a successful school examination
to that for a happy marriage.

Of examples of domestic architecture of this time there are still
standing several examples. The little tower on the house from which
Louis of Orleans went to his death is authentic, so is the tower of John
the Fearless, once a part of the palace of the dukes of Burgundy, later
the home of a troop of players, and now a curious spectator of a rushing
twentieth century business street.

Louis restored the gardens of the palace on the Cité, and, although he
did not live there, he established an oratory near the apartments of
Saint Louis, and another from which he could look through a “squint”
into the Sainte Chapelle.

[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINT SÉVERIN.]

So good a financier was he that there was never any demand on the
people--after he had learned his early lessons--for money for city
improvements. Not being asked to pay for them the burghers were
enthusiastic in their coöperation in such repairs as the king undertook.
The Hôtel de Ville was one such undertaking for a century had passed
since Étienne Marcel had bought it and it was some two hundred years old
then. The bridges over the Seine were patched up to last a while longer,
but it was not long after Louis’ death that the Pont Notre Dame
collapsed, houses and all, causing the death of several people.

A rather curious instance of the persistency of habit in Paris--a
persistency which marks the French of to-day--may be noticed by
comparing the testimony of a chronicler of the end of the twelfth
century, with that of Villon, the poet of the fifteenth. To be sure the
elder author’s statement is serious and the later man’s jocose, but
there is an undoubted truth behind it. “The Petit Pont,” says Guy de
Bazoches, “belongs to the dialecticians, who pace up and down,
disputing.” Villon’s mention of the usage, “with a difference,” is in
the third stanza of his tribute to the fluency and wit which he
describes in his

A BALLAD OF PARIS WOMEN[1]

Bright talkers do the walls of Florence hold;
Venetian damsels’ repartee is gay;
The ancient ladies in their courts of old
With merry gibe enlivened the long day.
But whether she be Lombardese or Roman,
Or, if you please, in great Genóa born,
A Piedmont or a brilliant Savoy woman--
The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.

The belles of lovely Naples, so they say,
In clever conversation take great pride;
German and Prussian maids with chatter gay
Entrance the swains that in those lands abide.
Whether she live in Greece or Egypt, then,
Or Hungary or other land adorn,
A Spaniard be or dark-browed Castellan--
The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.

Heavy of speech are Swiss girls and Breton,
The Gascon also and the Toulouse maid,
Two chatterboxes from the Petit Pont
Would without effort put them in the shade.
Whether in Calais or in fair Lorraine
The maiden lives or greets an English morn,
Whether she’s Picard or Valencienne--
The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.

ENVOI

For sparkling wit, then, give the foremost prize,
O Prince, to damsels who are Paris born.
Though we may jest with bright Italian eyes,
The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.

Louis’ son, Charles VIII (1483-1498), reigned with a personal enthusiasm
which diminished the power of the nobles, yet permitted the rise of the
Third Estate, the political combination of the peasantry and the
citizens or _bourgeois_ class. He repaired the palace and the Sainte
Chapelle in which he introduced an organ. His interest in Italy being
excited Charles began a war there of no great importance in itself, but
interesting as bringing to France a knowledge of art and architecture,
which, when increased at the time of Louis XII’s (1498-1515) southern
expedition, imposed ready-made upon France the style called Renaissance.

This style was a renewal of the classic influence. It flattened roofs
and doors and windows, and decorated with designs borrowed or copied
from the Greeks and Romans. An intermediate style shows a mixture of
Gothic and Renaissance as was natural in this period of architectural
change. While roofs and windows were flattening there were frequent
combinations of pointed roofs and flat windows, of pointed windows and
flat roofs. Sculptors were loath entirely to give up Gothic decoration
yet were eager to show their knowledge of Renaissance. The result is
called Transition, and often is too conglomerate to be pleasing. The
most charming example in Paris is the Hôtel de Cluny, built adjoining
the Thermes by the Abbots of Cluny and rebuilt by Louis XII.[2]
Exquisite in every detail, and filled with one of the best collections
of medieval domestic art in Europe it is a joy to the architect and the
antiquarian. No happier afternoon can be spent in Paris than in roaming
through these treasure-laden rooms and then in sitting in the Garden of
the Thermes, letting the eye wander from the Roman ruins sixteen
centuries old, massive and severe, to the lighter elegances of the
medieval abbey, and then through the bars of the enclosure to the
rushing streets of modern Paris. The French babies rolling on the grass
are growing up with such contrasts so usual to them that they never will
know the thrill that fires the American at the sight of these links in
the chain of a great city’s history.

[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINT GERMAIN-L’AUXERROIS IN 1835.

See page 193.]

[Illustration: TOUR DE SAINT JACQUES DE LA BOUCHERIE.

See page 207.]

CHAPTER XII

PARIS OF THE RENAISSANCE

Charles VIII died without direct heirs and the crown fell to Louis XII,
a grandson of that duke of Orleans who had played so sorry a part in the
reign of Charles VI, the mad king, and who had been assassinated by the
ruffians of John the Fearless. This change threw the reigning line into
the hands of what is known as the Valois-Orleans family. Of that branch
of the Capets the most brilliant monarch was Francis I, Louis XII’s
successor, a son of his cousin, the count of Angoulême.

Three score years had passed after the fall of Constantinople when
Francis I came to the throne, young, alert, intelligent, progressive. He
was fond of literature and the arts, and the revival of ancient letters
and the importation of Italian paintings and architecture roused him to
vivid interest; he was ambitious and the discovery of America spurred
him to claim a share for France; the aspirations of Emperor Charles V,
urged him to dispute a rivalry which threatened his own career and the
integrity of his kingdom.

Louis XII had been called the “Father of his People” because of the care
with which he had nursed back to economic health the depleted forces of
France which Louis XI had begun to restore. It is even told of him that
he returned part of a tax after it had paid the demand for which it had
been levied. Such a proceeding was unknown before, and it is small
wonder that his subjects adored him. Francis reaped the benefit of his
predecessor’s social and financial intelligence.

Of united national feeling there was more at the beginning of Francis’s
reign than there ever had been, and power was more concentrated in the
king than it ever had been. Feudalism with its picturesque and brutal
individualism had been outgrown. With the disappearance of the need for
fortified dwellings the rural strongholds of the nobility were modified
into pleasant _châteaux_, while their masters, not obliged to stay at
home to be ready to fight quarrelsome neighbors, were free to join the
king in Paris or at Fontainebleau. Thus there was formed for the first
time a court consisting of more than the retinue necessary for the
conduct of the royal household. For the first time, too, the nobles
brought the women of their families to court, with the result that dress
and festivities became more brilliant than ever before, and language
developed a precision which marks this period as the beginning of the
use of Modern French.

Francis himself wrote not badly and his encouragement of writers won him
the title of “Father of French Letters.” Here is his tribute to the
intelligent favorite of Charles VII.

EPITAPH ON AGNES SOREL[3]

Here lies entombed the fairest of the fair:
To her rare beauty greater praise be given,
Than holy maids in cloistered cells may share,
Or hermits that in deserts live for heaven!
For by her charms recovered France arose,
Shook off her chains and triumphed o’er her foes.

Francis’s sister, Marguerite of Navarre, was equally enthusiastic and
talented and gathered about her a notable group of writers. Her
affection for her brother was extraordinarily tender. After his death
she wrote the following poem, translated in Longfellow’s “Poetry of
Europe.”

’Tis done, a father, mother gone,
A sister, brother torn away,
My hope is now in God alone,
Whom heaven and earth alike obey.
Above, beneath, to Him is known--
The world’s wide compass is his own.

I love--but in the world no more,
Nor in gay hall or festal bower;
Not the fair forms I prized before--
But Him, all beauty, wisdom, power,
My Savior, who has cast a chain
On sin and ill and woe and pain!

I from my memory have effaced
All former joys, all kindred, friends;
All honors that my station graced
I hold but snares that fortune sends;
Hence! joys by Christ at distance cast,
That we may be his own at last!

Francis founded the College of France in Paris for the study of
classical languages, testimony to the influence that had seized the
country after the southern expeditions of Charles VIII and Louis XII.
Francis’s establishment provided merely for the maintenance of a
faculty, and it was not until the next reign that the question of
housing separate from any of the existing schools came up. It was not
until the time of Marie de Medicis that the building really was
provided. Since that time the college has been rebuilt twice, restored
and enlarged until it is now an imposing pile rising on the Mont Sainte
Geneviève near the Sorbonne. Its lectures which are intended for adults
are free, and the institution is not a part of the University but is
under the Minister of Education.

Francis established a government printing office and permitted the use
of private presses though the books that issued from them were censored.
There was a time, indeed, when it became evident that men were thinking
for themselves and that untoward happenings were the result, when all
printing of books was forbidden. Étienne Dolet, scholar, writer and
printer, was one of those who suffered from the king’s inconstant mind.
He was charged with heresy, tortured, hung and finally burned with his
writings on the spot where his statue now stands in the Place Maubert.

This square is on the left bank, but the usual place for executions was
the Grève in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Near the Halles was a pillory
which Francis rebuilt a quarter of a century after the people had
destroyed it. It was an open octagonal tower and the victims inside were
placed on a revolving platform so that they might be exposed to the
crowd below.

The gorgeous scene that was enacted when Francis made his formal entry
into Paris after the death of Louis XII was indicative of the brilliance
and extravagance of his whole reign. It was his superior magnificence
that lost him the partisanship of Henry VIII of England whose eyes he
over-dazzled at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. It was indeed well that
he fell heir to Louis XII’s savings! The procession, according to the
Austrian “special envoy,” was both “beautiful and gorgeous,” and
Francis, arrayed in glistening armor, played to the gallery by making
his handsome horse, white-and-silver decked, rear and prance so that his
royal rider might display his horsemanship.

In the course of Francis’s prolonged contest with Charles V--a struggle
in which he was even imprisoned at Madrid--he had many opportunities to
see in Italy and Spain the art of a former time and the work of
contemporary painters and sculptors as well. Not only did he send home
many examples which were given him or which he captured or bought, but
he invited to France Leonardo da Vinci, then an old man, Andrea del
Sarto and Benvenuto Cellini. To the latter he gave a lodging in the
Hôtel de Nesle, that left bank palace of which the Tour de Nesle was a
part, on condition that he secured possession of it himself, as the king
had previously made a present of it to the provost. Cellini armed his
helpers and servants and defended his gift with such ferocity that the
provost left him alone.

The king’s influence weighed heavily on the side of the humanist
reaction against the austerities of art and life which had developed
under the influence of an all-dominant church. The pendulum swung back
and painters and sculptors chose less ascetic themes for brush and
chisel. From Francis’s time on there was also a keen interest in
portraiture.

A man of this king’s nature was not content to stay long in one place.
When war was not making its demands upon him he was visiting all parts
of his kingdom and spending no little time in the districts where
hunting was good and where he built splendid _châteaux_ so that he and
his retinue might be comfortably housed. Fontainebleau and St.
Germain-en-Laye are the two best known, while the _château de Madrid_ in
the Bois de Boulogne, adjoining the town was a charming retreat from the
noise of the city. Except for a small bit included in a restaurant this
building is no longer in existence, but in the Cours la Reine on the
right bank facing the Seine is the small “House of Francis I” which the
king built at Moret in 1572, and which an admirer bought and removed to
Paris in 1826. It is an exquisite example of Renaissance architecture.

During the peaceful moments of the reign, there was a craze for building
and Italian architects were offered handsome inducements to exercise
their talents on French soil. It was a French architect, however, Pierre
Lescot, who pulled down the Great Tower, the oldest part of the Louvre,
and designed that portion which Francis and his son, Henry II, built,
the southwestern corner of the eastern quadrangle. Henry’s initial,
combined with the “D” and crescent of Diane de Poitiers, are visible in
many places. Francis’s signature was the salamander, whose lizard-like
length fitted comfortably into many decorative schemes.

Below the Great Tower there must have been a bed of soft earth of some
sort, for it was found to be almost impossible to fill the huge hole
left when the Tower was demolished. The populace saw in the strange
sinking of the material dumped into the cavity the fulfillment of a
legendary threat that, the fortress being meant to stand forever, its
fall would be marked by untoward happenings. In fact it was nearly three
hundred years before modern engineering knowledge was able to stop the
seepage that caused the trouble.

During one of the intervals of peace with Charles V the emperor visited
Paris. Indeed it was the necessity for making elaborate preparations for
his visit that brought about the rebuilding of the Louvre whose
dilapidation had not been appreciated before. The emperor was met
outside the eastern wall and presented with the keys of the city. At the
Saint Antoine gate there was a triumphal arch and the cannon of the
Bastille roared a greeting as the monarch passed

[Illustration: THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE, FOUNDED BY FRANCIS I IN 1530.

See page 202.]

[Illustration: HOUSE OF FRANCIS I ON THE COURS-LA-REINE.]

beneath it. Farther on the procession stopped for the imperial guest to
witness an allegorical play depicting the friendship of France and
Germany. Over the Notre Dame Bridge, covered with ivy, Charles went to
the cathedral and then to the palace of the Cité, where he supped.
During his visit of a week he stayed at the Louvre, and was so
brilliantly entertained that upon his departure he exclaimed, “Other
cities are merely cities; Paris is a world in itself.”

The chief churches built in Francis’s reign were Saint Étienne-du-Mont
(on the site of an earlier edifice) in which Sainte Geneviève’s ashes
now rest, Saint Eustache, the church of the market people at the Halles,
and the flamboyant tower of Saint Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. This tower is
the last expression of the Gothic, while Saint Étienne and Saint
Eustache show the Transition combination of Gothic and Renaissance.

Étienne Marcel’s Maison aux Piliers had been but a second-hand affair.
By 1530 a new City Hall was imperative. Its corner stone was laid amid
feasting on the open square with bread and wine for all comers and cries
of “Long live the king and the city fathers!” This enthusiastic
beginning did not foretell quick work, however, for eighty years elapsed
before the building was done. Its style was the same that it is to-day
except in the development of details.

[Illustration: CELLIER’S DRAWING OF THE HÔTEL DE VILLE IN 1583.]

It was the old Maison aux Piliers that had seen the dinner given to
Queen Claude by the city fathers on the occasion of her entrance into
Paris after Francis’s accession. Louis XII’s third queen, Mary, an
English princess, was the first royal lady whom the city fathers had
ventured to invite to partake of their hospitality. The occasion had not
been entirely successful, for so great a throng pressed in to the city
hall to observe the unusual guests that the waiters “hardly had room to
bring the food upon the tables.” The arrangements for Queen Claude’s
entertainment included precautions against such an invasion. When the
great day came the provost of the Merchants and the lesser officials,
clothed flamingly in red velvet and scarlet satin and followed by
representatives of the guilds of drapers, grocers, goldsmiths, dyers,
and so on, went to a suburb to meet their lady and act as her escort,
and her majesty was graciously appreciative of all their attentions.

While the Renaissance, humanism and the discovery of the New World were
exciting men to new interests they also did their part in promoting
independence of thought. With ability to read the Bible in the original
came questioning of previous interpretations. There grew up both within
and without the Church a desire to reform it, and with Calvin and Luther
there came into expression not only a protest against the present state
of affairs but a formulation of a new belief. Rabelais and Montaigne in
their vastly different ways worked toward the same end. The movement
proved to be one of those appeals which spread like a flame when the air
touches it. Rich and poor, noble and simple responded to the plea, and
Francis found himself the ruler of people ready to fly at each other’s
throats and clamoring for him to let loose the dogs of persecution.

Francis was a Catholic and condemned Protestantism in Francis, but in
Germany he allied himself to the Protestant party against the emperor.
Henry II (1547-1559), Francis’s son, did the same--and won some
territory by the manoeuver--although he had strengthened his Catholic
interests by marrying Catherine de Medicis, a niece of the Pope, and
showed himself by no means friendly to the democratic ideas which the
new religion fostered. His strength constantly was spent against the
movement even to the end of his reign when he made an alliance for
purposes of persecution with Philip II of Spain, husband of “Bloody
Mary” of England. One of the first fruits of this union with the land of
the Inquisition was the trial of a distinguished member of the
Parliament, Anne du Bourg. Henry’s death merely interrupted the
examination and du Bourg was burned on the Grève before the City Hall.

The Paris Protestants or Huguenots lived chiefly in the Faubourg Saint
Germain on the left bank.

Henry’s chief exploit was the capture of Calais which had been in the
hands of the English ever since the Hundred Years’ War, and whose loss
meant so much to Queen Mary of England that she is said to have declared
that when she died “Calais” would be found written on her heart.

The celebration in Paris of the capture of the long-lost city was one
of the greatest possible failures. The main festivity was to be in the
evening at the Maison aux Piliers. It poured in torrents sufficient to
put a literal as well as a figurative damper on any pleasure-making.
When Henry arrived at the Place de Grève the salutes of artillery
frightened his horses and he was almost thrown down as he alighted from
his carriage. At supper the crowd was so great that it was almost
impossible to get anything to eat. The main part of the program within
the hall was a play by the poet Jodelle who has left an amusing account
of the evening of “My Disaster.” There were twelve actors in his musical
sketch, he says. Of these six were so hoarse that they could not be
heard, and the remaining six did not know their parts. One of the
characters, Orpheus, was to sing a song in the king’s praise so
literally moving that the very stones followed the singer about the
stage. But, alas, the property man had misunderstood his orders and
instead of preparing two rocks (_rochers_) he had arranged two steeples
(_clochers_). When the unfortunate author, who had a part himself, saw
these unexpected constructions coming across the stage he forgot his own
lines, so utter was his amazement and misery.

Henry’s restless reign left him little time to spend in Paris or to
devote to its beautifying. Whenever he came to the city festivities of
all sorts ran high and the citizens paid for it all, though their temper
grew sullen as the demands and the power of the crown increased. Henry
expected the city fathers to meet expenses which they, quite reasonably,
classed as personal matters; for instance, a charge for the food and
shelter and care of a lion, a dromedary and a jaguar, which had been
sent to the king from Africa.

Beyond the strengthening of the right bank fortifications, some addition
to the palace of the Cité, and the continuation of the new Hôtel de
Ville and of Francis I’s Louvre Henry did practically no building. His
“H,” sometimes interlaced with his wife’s “C” and sometimes with Diane
de Poitiers’ initial topped by her crescent, is by no means so frequent
in Paris as, for example, in Fontainebleau, and other suburbs. In the
courtyard of the Palais des Beaux-Arts is the façade of the château
d’Anet which shows the monogram, and is a beautiful example of
renaissance architecture.

A needed charity was instituted by the establishment of a Foundling
Hospital. So usual was it to dispose of unwelcome infants that cradles
for their reception were placed in the porch of Notre Dame itself. The
hospital proved not an entire success, for about a century later Saint
Vincent de Paul found that sorcerers, beggars and gymnasts were buying
babies from the hospital at a franc apiece. His own foundation of a
children’s home came from a chance meeting with a beggar who was
breaking his purchase’s legs so that its wails might excite pity from
passers-by.

Henry’s death was brought about by one of those tragic happenings that
mar times of attempted gayety. Henry was marrying off his daughter and
his sister for political reasons and he arranged a double wedding. The
festivities included an elaborate supper in the Great Hall of the palace
of the City and a tournament in the rue Saint Antoine. The king himself
took part in the joust, by accident was mortally wounded by Montgomery,
the captain of the Scottish guards, and died in the near-by Hôtel des
Tournelles a few days after.

CHAPTER XIII

PARIS OF THE REFORMATION

While Henry II lived Catherine de Medicis was not conspicuous, Henry
yielding rather to Diane de Poitiers than to his wife, but the
queen-mother wielded a ruthless power over her three young sons who
succeeded their father in turn. Through her, also, Italian pictures and
books were brought in by their painters and authors, Italian architects
transformed French buildings, Italian favorites filled the court, where
they introduced the ruffs and padded trunks and soft crowned toques of
Italian fashions. Paris streets, narrow as in the days when their Gothic
houses were first built, widened into occasional squares meant to remind
the queen of her southern home.

Francis II (1559-1560) was Henry’s oldest son, known to-day only as the
husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, whom he married in Notre Dame when he
was fourteen and she was sixteen. He came to the throne a twelvemonth
later and during the one short year of his reign he was a tool in the
hands of the ex-Italian family of the Guises of which Mary’s mother was
a member. Throughout France quarrels and conspiracies were rife, all
having for their basic reason differences in religion and the lack of
tolerance which could not allow freedom of belief.

Of Francis’s reign as it concerns Paris there is nothing of interest
except the fact that his wedding supper, like that of his sister a year
later, was given in the Great Hall of the palace of the Cité.

Francis’s death gave the crown to his next younger brother, Charles IX
(1560-1574), who was but eleven years old. During the fourteen years of
his reign Catherine de Medicis ruled, first as regent and later in fact
though not in name. Her methods were tell-tale of her nature. She
favored Protestants or Catholics as the moment demanded, she promised
and did not fulfil, she deceived, she ordered assassination, she
depraved the morals of her own children. All the time civil war went on,
pausing now and again but never entirely ceasing.

The most horrible event of the whole hideous contest was the massacre of
the Protestants which took place on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, August 24,
1572. Catherine had arranged that her daughter, Marguerite of Valois,
should marry Henry, King of Navarre, the leader of the Protestants.
Whether this was done in the hope of bringing the opposing parties
together, or whether the queen-mother’s intention was to decoy as many
prominent Huguenots as possible to Paris it is impossible to say. The
fact that Henry’s mother, Jeanne d’Albret, died in Paris a few weeks
before the wedding, probably from poison-saturated gloves, would seem to
lend color to the latter theory. So suspicious of evil were the
Huguenots that it is said that one-half of Henry of Navarre’s moustache
turned white from fear when he saw two prominent Catholics talking
together a little while before the wedding.

Events proved that such suspicions were not groundless. The wedding was
set for the seventeenth of August. On account of the difference between
the religious belief of Henry and his bride, it took place in front of
the cathedral in the Parvis or Paradise of Notre Dame. This was an open
place raised above the level of the adjoining streets and railed from
it. Marguerite was so unwilling to marry Henry that she refused her
consent even up to the moment when the archbishop demanded it. Her
brother, the king, met the emergency by seizing her head and bobbing it
and the service went on as if she had answered a legitimate “I will.”
After the marriage the bride heard mass in the cathedral while the
bridegroom admired the bishop’s garden. Dinner followed at the bishop’s
palace, and supper at the Louvre. On succeeding days there were balls,
jousts, and masquerades.

Four days later Admiral Coligny, the head of the Protestants, was
attacked by a paid assassin but not killed. This piece of news was
brought to Charles IX while he was playing tennis on one of the courts
at the eastern end of the Louvre.

On the night before St. Bartholomew’s Day the Provost of the Merchants
was summoned to the Louvre and received instructions to close the city
gates, to fasten the chains across the streets, and to arm the militia.
At the appointed hour, or rather, owing to Catherine’s eagerness, at two
in the morning, an hour before the appointed time, the signal was given
on the right bank by the bell of the church of Saint Germain
l’Auxerrois, facing the eastern end of the Louvre, and on the Cité by
that in the clock tower on the palace. Admiral Coligny, who lived just
north of the Louvre, was killed in his bed and his body thrown from the
window to the pavement where the Duke of Guise kicked it.

“They told us nothing of all this,” says the bride, Marguerite of
Navarre, who has left an account of her experiences. “I saw everybody in
action, the Huguenots desperate over this attack; M. de Guise fearful
lest they take vengeance on him, whispering to everybody. The Huguenots
suspected me because I was a Catholic, and the Catholics because I had
married the king of Navarre who was a Huguenot. On this account no one
said anything to me about it until evening, when being in the bedroom of
the queen, my mother, seated on a chest beside my sister of Lorraine
whom I saw to be very sad, as the queen my mother was speaking to some
of them she noticed me and told me to go to bed. As I was courtesying to
her my sister, weeping bitterly, seized my arm and stopped me, saying
‘Sister, don’t go.’ I was greatly frightened. The queen my mother saw it
and called my sister and scolded her severely, forbidding her to say
anything to me. My sister told her that there was no reason to sacrifice
me like that, and that if they discovered anything they undoubtedly
would avenge themselves on me. The queen my mother replied that if God
so willed I should come to no harm, but, whatever happened, I must go,
for fear of their suspecting something which would impede the outcome.

“I saw quite well that they were disputing though I did not hear their
words. Again she roughly ordered me to go to bed. My sister burst into
tears as she bade me good-night, daring to say nothing more to me, and I
went away thoroughly stunned and overcome, without understanding at all
what I had to fear. Suddenly when I was in my dressing room I began to
pray God to take me under his protection and preserve me, without
knowing from what or whom. Upon that, the King my husband, who had
retired, summoned me to his room, and I found his bed surrounded by
thirty or forty Huguenots whom I did not then know, for I had only been
married a few days. They talked all night about the accident that had
befallen the Admiral, resolving that as soon as morning came they would
ask the king for revenge on M. de Guise and that if he would not give it
to them they would take it for themselves. I still had my sister’s tears
upon my mind and I could not sleep because of the fear she had inspired
in me, though I knew not of what. Thus the night passed without my
closing my eyes. At daybreak, the King my husband, suddenly making up
his mind to ask justice from King Charles, said that he was going to
play tennis until the King should awake. He left my room and all the
gentlemen also. I, seeing that it was daylight, thinking that the danger
of which my sister had spoken to me was passed by, overcome with sleep,
told my nurse to shut the door that I might sleep comfortably.

“An hour after as I was still sleeping there came a man who beat on the
door with hands and feet crying, ‘Navarre, Navarre!’ My nurse, thinking
that it was the King my husband, ran at once to the door and opened it.
It was a gentleman named Léran who had received a sword thrust in the
elbow and a blow on the arm from a halberd, and who was still pursued by
four archers who all rushed after him into my room. He, wishing to save
himself, flung himself on to my bed. When I felt the man grasp me I
flung myself out of bed, and he rolled after me still clinging to me. I
did not recognize the man and I did not know whether he was there to
attack me, or whether the archers were after him or me. We both screamed
and we were equally frightened. At last, by God’s will, M. de Nançay,
captain of the guards came. When he saw in what a state I was, though he
was sorry he could not help laughing. He reprimanded the guards severely
for their indiscretion, sent them away and granted to my request the
life of the man who was still holding on to me. I made him lie down and
have his wounds dressed in my dressing room until he was quite
recovered. I had to change my clothes for the wounded man had covered me
with blood. M. de Nançay told me what had happened and assured me that
the King my husband was in the King’s room and that there would be no
more disturbance. I threw a mantle over me and he escorted me to my
sister, Madame de Lorraine’s, room, where I arrived more dead than
alive. Just as I entered the antechamber, where the doors were all
open, a gentleman named Bourse, escaping from the pursuit of the archers
was pierced by a halberd-thrust only three paces away. I fell in the
opposite direction into M. de Nançay’s arms thinking that the thrust had
stabbed us both. When I had recovered somewhat I went into the small
room where my sister was sleeping. While I was there M. de Mixossans,
the King my husband’s first gentleman-in-waiting, and Armagnac, his
first valet-de-chambre, sought me out to beg me to save their lives. I
knelt before the King and the queen my mother to beg the favor from them
and and at last they granted it to me.”

There is a story, probably untrue, that Charles, almost crazy with
excitement took his stand at a window of the Louvre and shot down all
the Huguenots he saw, shrieking “Kill! Kill!” For twenty-four hours the
slaughter continued in Paris, ruffians and unprincipled men seizing the
opportunity to kill for plunder and to rid themselves of their enemies.
Paris streets literally ran blood and Paris buildings so echoed the
cries of the dying that the king heard them in his own delirium of
death.

When Queen Wilhelmina visited Paris in June, 1912, she placed a wreath
at the foot of the statue of her ancestor, Admiral Coligny, which stands
at the outside end of the church called the Oratory, now Protestant,
not far from the spot of his assassination.

Charles IX’s name is not connected with buildings or improvements in
Paris, so overshadowed was he by his mother. He rebuilt the Arsenal at
the eastern end of the city, and he furthered the sale and demolition of
the great establishment of the Hôtel Saint Paul, whose breaking up had
been begun by Francis I.

Catherine had left the Hôtel des Tournelles after the death there of her
husband, Henry II. At the Louvre she found herself sadly crowded, for
she had been obliged to give up her royal apartments to the young queen
when Charles married, and, counting her daughters and daughter-in-law
there were four queens with their retinues to be housed in the old
palace. Near the church of Saint Eustache the dowager-queen selected a
location to her fancy for the building of a new palace, but the ground
was occupied by a refuge of Filles Pénitentes. With the entire lack of
consideration for others peculiar to the powerful, Catherine had this
establishment razed and its inmates removed to an abbey on the rue Saint
Denis. The religious of the abbey, in their turn, were sent to the top
of the Mont Sainte Geneviève, where they took possession of the old
hospital of Saint Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, whose name still clings to the
parish and the church. The construction for which all this moving gave
place was a charming palace known as the Hôtel de Soissons of which
nothing is left but a graceful pillar from whose top it is said that
Catherine indulged in the harmless amusement of star-gazing. The palace
was pulled down in 1749 to give place to the Corn Exchange, and that, in
1887, to allow the erection of the Bourse de Commerce.

[Illustration: COLUMN AT THE HÔTEL DE SOISSONS.]

More ambitious was a southwestern addition to the Louvre, a wing going
to meet the river, and another at right angles following the stream
westward. This extension parallel with the Seine was begun with the idea
of continuing it to meet the palace of the Tuileries (see plan of
Louvre, Chapter XXII) which the queen had begun on the site of some
ancient tile-yards to the west of the Louvre. Only the central façade
was finished in Catherine’s day, a pavilion containing a superb
staircase and crowned by a dome, connected by two open galleries with
what was planned to be the buildings surrounding the quadrangle. The
workmanship was exquisitely delicate. Its beauty was enhanced by a
lovely formal garden laid out by that Jack-of-all-Trades, Bernard
Palissy, best known as “the Potter.”

Of private buildings two of the most beautiful still remain. Both are in
the Marais, which had become fashionable at this time on account of its
proximity both to the Tournelles and the Louvre. One of them is the
Hôtel Carnavalet which now houses the Historical Museum of Paris, the
most interesting special collection in the city to students of olden
times. This building was begun in 1544 in Francis I’s reign, by the then
president of the Parliament of Paris, who employed the best architects
of the day, Lescot and Bullant, aided by Goujon, the sculptor, whose
symbolic figures give its name to the “Court of the

[Illustration: HÔTEL CARNAVALET.]

Seasons.” After changing hands more than once and being restored in the
seventeenth century by another famous architect, Mansart, the house was
occupied for eighteen years by Madame de Sévigné, the author of the
famous “Letters.” When it was taken over by the city it was again
thoroughly restored, and it now stands not only as a fine example of
sixteenth and seventeenth century architecture but as a repository for
bits and sections of old buildings from other parts of the city.

Not far away is the Hôtel Lamoignon, built toward the end of the
sixteenth century for one of Henry II’s daughters. It is used for
business purposes to-day, but its façade is still imposing with lofty
Corinthian pilasters which rise from the ground to the roof. In the
course of its vicissitudes it was the first home of the city’s
historical library, and in the nineteenth century it was made into
apartments, in one of which Alphonse Daudet, the novelist once lived.

Montaigne speaks with frankness of the evil smells of the streets of
this time, and it is small wonder, since animals were slaughtered not
far from the city hall, and the offscourings of the abattoirs drained
into the Seine emitting foul odors as they went. Charles was moved to
improve the condition of the Grève, which was a mud-hole and a
dump-heap, not, apparently, because its state made it a disgraceful
entrance to the city hall, but because it inconvenienced the crowds who
assembled to witness tortures and executions on the square.

With Charles IX on the throne of France, Catherine de Medicis sought to
provide for her youngest son by placing him on the vacant throne of
Poland. A splendid _fête_ at the Tuileries celebrated his election, and
he set forth joyfully for his new kingdom. He had lived in his adopted
country only a few months when the news of his brother’s death reached
him. The French crown, was, naturally, more attractive than the Polish,
and Henry planned immediate departure for his fatherland. He had been
long enough in Poland to know something of the temper of his subjects
and he fled like a criminal before the pursuit of enraged peasants armed
with scythes and flails. If they had known him better they might not
have been so eager to keep him.

The Parisians were not fond of Henry. He made his formal entry into the
city adorned with frills and ear-rings, and accompanied by sundry small
pet animals. It was his habit to carry fastened about his neck a basket
of little dogs and occasionally he dug down under them to find important
papers. Silly as it sounds this habit at least had the merit of being
more humane than Charles IX’s custom of having fights between dogs and
wild beasts.

Henry began at once to change for the worse his mother’s already vile
court. Occasionally he was stricken with remorse and made such public
exhibition of repentance as caused excessive mirth to all beholders of
the processions wherein he and the dissolute young men, his “minions,”
walked barefooted through the city. It is related that the court pages
were once sharply switched in the Hall of the Cariatides in the Louvre
for having indulged in a take-off of one of these penitential exercises
of their king’s.

Except for the continuing of the work on the Louvre, decorating the old
clock on the palace on the Cité (see Chapter VI) beginning the Pont Neuf
across the western tip of the Cité, and establishing a few religious
houses, Henry III was too busy contending with the Parisians to have
time or inclination to beautify the city.

The Parisians not only objected to the continual financial drain made
upon them by the king’s constant appeals for money for his minions, but
they openly showed themselves favorable to the Duke of Guise, the leader
of the Catholic party.

For his own defense Henry brought into the city a band of Swiss
soldiers. To the citizens it was the final outrage. Every section of the
town hummed with preparations for revolt. A rumor of an attack upon the
Temple made Henry send a body of troops there. For the first time in the
history of Paris the people made use of a defense habitual with them two
centuries later. They erected across the streets barricades made of
_barriques_ (hogsheads) filled with earth, took shelter behind them and
attacked the mercenaries so vigorously that the Duke of Guise was forced
to come to their rescue. The day after the Day of Barricades the troops
sent to the defense of the Temple helped the populace seize it. When the
governor of the Bastille went to the palace, and, entering the Great
Hall, summoned the sixty members of the Parliament of Paris then in
session, to follow him, and led them in their red and black robes
through the streets to the prison where they were held for ransom, the
citizens felt themselves to be in real possession of the town.

Henry had been warned of trouble on the Day of Barricades by a man who
made his way to the royal apartments by the staircase existing even now
in a corner of the Hall of the Cariatides. Reversing the direction taken
by the Empress Eugénie when the news of the battle of Sedan reached
Paris on the fourth of September some three hundred years later, the
king fled through the Louvre westward, gained the stables of the
Tuileries, mounted a horse, and fled once more, though not pursued as he
had been in Poland. The Parisians did not want to keep him.

In an effort to bring about better conditions Henry had made concessions
to the Huguenots. Indignant at what they considered as treachery to his
own religion the Catholics organized a League, of which the popular duke
of Guise was the head. The duke’s power over the people, as he had shown
it when he stopped the attack upon the king’s Swiss guard, and his
connection with the League brought about Guise’s assassination by
Henry’s order. The Parisians were enraged by the loss of their favorite,
shut the gates against Henry, and prepared themselves to withstand a
siege. Henry was forced to join the Protestant army of his cousin, Henry
of Navarre, at Saint Cloud, on the Seine a few miles below Paris. There
the king was assassinated by a young Jacobin novice sent out from the
city.

Thus Paris was responsible for the crown’s passing at this juncture to
the House of Bourbon whose representative, Henry of Navarre, who now
became Henry IV, was one of the Protestants to whom the city was
fiercely opposed.

CHAPTER XIV

PARIS OF HENRY IV

Henry IV (1589-1598), came to the throne after a career of strife which
by no means ended at his accession. His family were ardent Protestants.
Henry was born in the country and received an outdoor training which
made him hardy and vigorous in wide contrast to the debauched youths who
sat upon the throne in Paris. The religious wars were seething all
through his boyhood. When he was but fifteen his mother, Jeanne
d’Albret, a woman of exceptional courage and address, presented him to
the Protestant army and he was made general-in-chief, with Admiral
Coligny as his adviser. When he was nineteen he agreed to the marriage
with Marguerite of Valois which was to reunite the contending
parties--or to serve as a bait to entice the chief Protestants of the
country to Paris, according as one interprets Catherine de Medicis.

Breaking harshly in upon the wedding festivities the bell of Saint
Germain l’Auxerrois clanged its awful knell, and when the horror was
over Protestant Henry was lucky still to be alive. It behooved him to be
prudent, and he accepted Charles IX’s commanding invitation to stay in
Paris. Here he was under surveillance, and here he learned the ways of
the most corrupt court that France had known up to that time, immoral,
deceitful, treacherous, the women in every way as bad as the men.

During these years Henry diplomatically declared himself a convert to
Catholicism, but it was a change for the moment; he had reverted long
before the monk’s dagger made him King by slaying Henry III.

This murder meant an accession of hard work for Henry of Navarre for the
League under the Duke of Mayenne and supported by Spain and Savoy was
determined to accept no Protestant as ruler. Henry won a brilliant
victory at Arques and another at Ivry.

Oh, how our hearts were beating, when at the dawn of day,
We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array,
With all its priest-led citizens and all its rebel peers
And Appenzell’s stout infantry, and Egmont’s Flemish spears.
There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land;
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand;
And as we looked on them, we thought of Seine’s empurpled flood,
And good Coligny’s hoary hair all dabbled with his blood;
And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of War,
To fight for his own holy name and Henry of Navarre.

Then the “burghers of Saint Genevieve” were indeed forced to “Keep watch
and ward” for Henry marched upon Paris without which he could not call
his crown his own. At his approach the people from the suburbs crowded
into the city till it held some 200,000. Henry had no trouble in taking
the chief of the outer settlements and in controlling the town’s food
supply. The resulting famine drove the Parisians to straits such as they
had not known since the days of Sainte Geneviève and were not to know
again until the Franco-Prussian War. The usual meat soon gave out and
when all the horses and all the mules were eaten, any stray dog or cat
was pursued by the populace and when caught, cooked and devoured in the
open street. From dead men’s bones was made a sort of pasty bread, and
mothers knew the taste of the flesh of their own children whose strength
had not availed against the greater force of hunger.

Touched by the suffering of the city which he regarded as his own, Henry
offered to let the besieged leave the town, but so earnest was the
League, so inspiring the preaching of the priests that not more than
3000 took advantage of the opportunity.

The League was not at peace with itself, however. Mayenne disposed by
death of the Leaguers whose importance threatened his power and there
was stirring that feeling in favor of Henry which found voice a little
later in the “Satire Ménippée,” the essays which rallied Catholics to
the support of their monarch. The papers were written by a canon of the
Sainte Chapelle and half a dozen friends in the form of a burlesque
report of a meeting of the States General. The following selection gives
an idea of the spirit of unrest that was troubling Paris and of the lack
of approval of Henry III’s assassination felt by the moderate party.

“O Paris who are no longer Paris but a den of ferocious beasts, a
citadel of Spaniards, Walloons and Neapolitans, an asylum and safe
retreat for robbers, murderers and assassins, will you never be
cognizant of your dignity and remember who you have been and what you
are; will you never heal yourself of this frenzy which has engendered
for you in place of one lawful and gracious King fifty saucy kinglets
and fifty tyrants? You are in chains, under a Spanish Inquisition a
thousand times more intolerable and harder to endure by spirits born
free and unconstrained as the French are than the cruelest deaths which
the Spaniards could devise. You did not tolerate a slight increase of
taxes and of offices and a few new edicts which did not concern you at
all, yet you endure that they pillage houses, that they ransom you with
blood, that they imprison your senators, that they drive out and banish
your good citizens and counselors: that they hang and massacre your
principal magistrates; you see it and endure it but you approve it and
praise it and you would not dare or know how to do otherwise. You have
given little support to your King, good-tempered, easy, friendly, who
behaved like a fellow-citizen of your town which he had enriched and
embellished with handsome buildings, fortified with strong and haughty
ramparts, honored with privileges and favorable exemptions. What say I?
Given little support? Far worse: you have driven him from his city, his
house, his very bed! Driven him? you have pursued him. Pursued him? You
assassinated him, canonized the assassin and made joyful over his death.
And now you see how much this death profited you.”

Henry of Navarre became king of Paris as well as of the rest of France
though it required a considerable concession to achieve that position.
Still it was not the first time that he had made a mental somersault, so
when he found that Paris was stubborn in spite of more than three years
and a half of hunger, sickness and death, and that his enemies outside
of the city were strong enough to inflict upon him a defeat of some
moment, he yielded to the urging of his counselors, admitted with a
shrug “So fair a city is well worth a mass” and declared his willingness
to turn Catholic. After suitably prolonged disputations with theologians
he declared himself convinced of the error of his belief, and on a
Sunday in July, 1593, he appeared at Saint Denis where an imposing body
of prelates was arrayed before the great door, and professed his new
faith. Then he was allowed to enter the building and to repeat his
profession before the altar.

Paris was not sorry to have an excuse for submitting and in the
following March when Henry’s troops entered the city in the grayness of
dawn one day toward the end of the month there was no opposition. On his
way to Notre Dame to hear mass, Henry, resplendent in velvet,
gold-embroidered, mounted on a handsome gray charger and constantly
doffing his white-plumed helmet, was greeted with cries of “Long live
the king” and “Hail to peace.” When the Provost of the Merchants and
some of the principal citizens the day after his entry brought him a
gift of sweetmeats, the king, though not fully dressed, for his
subjects’ ardor had brought them at an unduly early hour, accepted the
offering graciously, saying, “Yesterday I received your hearts; to-day I
receive your comfits no less willingly.”

A Spanish troop had been called in by the League to assist them in
holding the city against Henry. He allowed them to leave unmolested,
contenting himself with watching them from a window as they passed
through the Porte Saint Denis, and calling to them with cheerful
insolence, “Gentlemen, my regards to your master--and never come back
here!”

In the calm that succeeded the nation began a career of prosperity which
it had not known for two generations. With cheerful severity Henry
caused a gallows to be erected near the Porte Saint Antoine “Whereon to
hang any person of either religion who should be found so bold as to
attempt anything against the public peace.” He was determined that every
peasant in the kingdom should have a chicken in the pot for his Sunday
dinner, and he used intelligent methods of bringing about that result.
Not only was he a man of practical good sense himself, but he was able
to recognize that quality in others, and he chose men of prudence and
intelligence as his advisers, chief of them the Duke of Sully. He
encouraged agriculture, introduced new industries, permitted religious
toleration through the Edict of Nantes, made himself the friend alike
of peasant and of noble. France throve as she had not had a chance to do
for many a decade--and the power of the crown became stronger than ever.

Henry’s early life had taught him to be active, and he lost no time in
winning Paris to his friendship in various ways. He did not treat it
like an enemy but as a returned prodigal, and the citizens lost none of
their old privileges while they gained the civic improvements about
which their new monarch busied himself promptly. He began the rebuilding
of the city with the high roofed structures of brick and stone combined
which showed that the classic outlines of the Renaissance were on the
wane and which prefaced the Italian forms of the next reign.

In the place des Vosges of to-day may be seen the best extant examples
of this style. Catherine de Medicis had made Henry II’s death at the
Hôtel des Tournelles an excuse to leave a building damp and malodorous
from the ill-drained marsh on which it was built. For a long time it
housed only some of Charles IX’s pet animals, and then it was torn down
except for a wing where Henry IV installed some of the silk workers whom
he introduced into France that his people might learn a new industry.
The palace park was used as a horse market, and finally all memory of
the past was cleared away and Henry IV caused to be laid out the Place
Royale now called the Place des Vosges. “The spear-thrust of
Montgomery,” said Victor Hugo, “was the origin of the Place Royale.”

The king built at his own expense several of the houses along the south
side and gave the remainder of the land to people who would finish the
remainder of the quadrangle in harmonious style. An arcade runs about
the whole square whose north and south entrances are under pavilions
which break the monotony of the architecture. The effect is wonderfully
pleasing even to-day when most of the houses show signs of dilapidation
and the park which they enclose is noisy with the overflow of children
from the old and crowded streets round about. In the days of its prime
it must have been extremely dignified and handsome.

Many great names are connected with this square. Richelieu lived here,
Madame de Sévigné was born here, and here in the house where Victor Hugo
had an apartment is the museum where Paris has collected mementoes of
the man the people loved. Backing against the southern houses of the
square still stands the house which Sully built for himself, its once
imposing façade whose windows show signs of occupation by many small
businesses, looking down upon a disheveled courtyard.

Another step that tended to beautify Paris was the opening of the Place
Dauphine from the western end of the palace of the Cité through the
palace garden westward. It was surrounded by houses like those on the
Place Royale. Madame Roland lived in one of them, situated where the
_place_ opens on the Pont Neuf which Henry finished. On it he planned to
place his own equestrian statue, but that ornament underwent so many
misfortunes, even to being shipwrecked on its way from Italy where it
had been cast, that Henry was dead before it was set in place. It seems
to have been fated to ill-luck, for during the Revolution it was melted
down and made into cannon, although up to that time the people had laid
their petitions at its foot. The existing statue replaced the old one in
1818.

On the northern part of the Pont Neuf Henry built the famous
“Samaritaine,” a pump which forced water to the Louvre and the
Tuileries, was crowned by a clock tower and a chime of bells, and was
decorated with statues and carving. The name is perpetuated to-day in a
department store on the right bank and in a public bath floating in the
stream. On other bridges there were several of these pumps. One on the
Pont Notre Dame was destroyed within the remembrance of people now
living.

Berthod, a seventeenth-century writer of doggerel, who describes “La
Ville de Paris” in “burlesque verses,” draws a lively picture of the
activities of Henry’s great esplanade in

THE RASCALITIES OF THE PONT-NEUF

May I be hung a hundred times--without a rope----
If ever more I go to see you,
Champion gathering of scamps,
And if ever I take the trouble
To go and see the Samaritaine,
The Pont-Neuf and that great horse
Of bronze which never misbehaves,
And is always clean though never curried
(I’ll be blamed if he isn’t a merry companion)----
Touch him as much as you like,
For he’ll never bite you;
Never has this parade horse
Either bitten or kicked.

O, you Pont-Neuf, _rendezvous_ of charlatans,
Of rascals, of confederates,
Pont-Neuf, customary field
For sellers of paints, both face and wall,
Resort of tooth-pullers,
Of old clo’ men, booksellers, pedants,
Of singers of new songs,
Of lovers’ go-betweens,
Of cut-purses, of slang users,
Of masters of dirty trades,
Of quacks and of nostrum makers,

[Illustration: THE SAMARITAINE.

From an old print.]

[Illustration: STATUE OF HENRY IV ON THE PONT NEUF.

Madame Roland lived in the house on the right.]

And of spagiric physicians,
Of clever jugglers
And of chicken venders.
“I’ve a splendid remedy, monsieur,”
One of them says to you (Heaven never helps me!)
“For what ails you.
Believe me, sir, you can
Use it without being housed.
Look, it smells of sweetest scents,
Is compounded of lively drugs,
And never did Ambroise Paré
Make up a like remedy.”
“Here’s a pretty song,”
Says another, “for a sou.”
“Hi, there, my cloak, you rascal!
Stop thief! Pickpocket!”
“Ah, by George, there is the Samaritaine.
See how it pours forth water,
And how handsome the clock is!
Hark, hark! How it strikes!
Doesn’t it sound like chimes?
Just cast your eye on that figure of a man striking the hour----
Zounds, how he’s playing the hard worker!
See, look, upon my word, won’t you remark
That he’s as fresh as a Jew’s harp!
Bless me! it’s astonishing!
He’s striking the hour with his nose!”
Let’s watch these shooters-at-a-mark,
Who, to ornament their booth
Have four or five great grotesque figures
Standing on turn-tables,
Holding in their hands an ink-horn
Made of wood or bone or ivory,
A leaden comb, a mirror
Decorated with yellow and black paper,
Shoe-horns, lacing tags,
Flexible knives, spectacles,
A comb-case, a sun-dial,
All decked out with saffron yellow;
Old books of Hours, for use of man or woman,
Half French, half Latin;
Old satin roses;
A gun adorned with matches,
Two or three old cakes of soap,
A wooden tobacco-box,
A nut-cracker,
A little group of alabaster,
Its figures whitened with plaster,
A bad castor hat
Adorned with an imitation gold cord,
A flute, a Basque drum,
An old sleeve, an ugly mask.
“Here you are, gentlemen! Take a chance!
Two shots for a farthing,”
Says this rascal in his booth
Dressed in antique costume,
And tormenting passers-by
About his unmarketable wares.
“Six balls for a sou,”
Says this merchant of boxes of balls;
“Here you are, sir! Who’ll take a shot
Before I shut up shop?
Come on, customers, take a chance;
Nobody fails in three shots!”

Two hospitals were built in Henry’s reign, one on the left bank,
l’Hôpital de Charité, and the other outside of the city on the
northeast, for contagious diseases.

Improvement of the quays was a manifold benefit to the city.

A satirical prescription warranted to cure the plague, was quoted then
as it had been for the previous hundred years:

RECIPE FOR THE CURE OF THE EPIDEMIC

If you wish to be cured
Take--if you can find them----
Two conscientious Burgundians,
Two clean Germans,
Two meek inhabitants of Champagne,
Two Englishmen who are not treacherous,
Two men of Picardy who are not rash
With two bold Lombards,
And, to end, two worthies from Limousin.
Bray them in an oakum mortar
And then put in your soup.
If you have made a good hash
You’ll find you never had a better
Remedy to ward off the epidemic.
But no one will ever believe it.

Queen Marguerite of Valois, the wife whose wedding festivities had
precipitated the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, proved herself Catherine
de Medicis’ own daughter in point of morals. Henry’s were none of the
best and they were divorced, he to contemplate marriage with Gabrielle
d’Estrées and after her death to clinch his Italian alliance by wedding
Marie de Medicis, while Marguerite entertained herself with numerous
lovers at the Hôtel de Sens and at a new house which she built on the
left bank, finding it “piquant” to look across to the Louvre where her
successor lived. In moments of emotion, conventionality or fright she
founded several religious houses. Of the Monastery of the
Petits-Augustins there is a remnant left, the chapel, which has been
secularized and now houses the Renaissance museum of the School of Fine
Arts. Its façade is, incongruously enough, the façade of Diane de
Poitiers’ château d’Anet, mentioned above.

Henry’s devotion to Gabrielle d’Estrées, a rarely beautiful woman, made
him have her initial carved in parts of the Louvre which he built. The
letters are gone now except in one overlooked instance, and they were
erased, it is said, by the order of Marie de Medicis. If this is true
she seems to have had more feeling about this past love affair of the
king’s than about his former wife, for she is said to have been friendly
with Marguerite across the river even to the point of paying her debts.

In spite of Henry’s warlike career and his rough-and-ready manners he
was not without the ability, which many early kings cultivated, to
express his lighter emotions in verse. To-day this royal skill seems to
have left the monarchs of Europe with the exception of Carmen Sylva and
of Nicholas of Montenegro who writes and fights with equal enthusiasm.
Here is a poem addressed to

CHARMING GABRIELLE[4]

My charming Gabrielle!
My heart is pierced with woe,
When glory sounds her knell,
And forth to war I go;

Parting, perchance our last!
Day, marked unblest to prove!
O, that my life were past,
Or else my hapless love!

Bright star whose light I lose,----
O, fatal memory!
My grief each thought renews!----
We meet again or die!

Parting, perchance our last!
Day, marked unblest to prove!
O, that my life were past,
Or else my hapless love!

O, share and bless the crown
By valor given to me!
War made the prize my own,
My love awards it thee!

Parting, perchance our last!
Day, marked unblest to prove!
O, that my life were past,
Or else my hapless love!

Let all my trumpets swell,
And every echo round
The words of my farewell
Repeat with mournful sound!

Parting, perchance our last!
Day, marked unblest to prove!
O, that my life were past,
Or else my hapless love!

The most ambitious architectural work of Henry’s reign was the addition
which he made to the Louvre. Catherine de Medicis had begun a wing
extending from the right angle of Francis I and Henry II toward the
Seine, and then continued it in a gallery parallel with the river, and
intended to meet the palace of the Tuileries. Henry IV finished both and
added the story which was rebuilt in Louis XIV’s reign after a fire. It
is now called the Gallery of Apollo and contains to-day a few of the
crown jewels kept when the rest were sold twenty-five years ago. Out of
this splendid hall opens the small square room in which hung Leonardo’s
“Mona Lisa” until its unexplained disappearance two years ago.

Popular as Henry was personally the political situation was so
embroiled that he had many enemies. Soon after his triumphal entry into
Paris he was unsuccessfully attacked by a youth named Chastel, and it is
a testimony to the king’s openness of mind and tact that after a few
year’s he caused the demolition of the monument which enthusiasts raised
to commemorate his escape. As a further expression of the people’s
horror at Chastel’s act his house, opposite the Cour du Mai, was razed
and on its site the public executioner branded his victims.

A half dozen other attempts upon Henry’s life followed, and at last one
was successful. Driving in an open carriage through a narrow street (rue
de la Ferronerie) near the markets, he was stabbed by one Ravaillac who
leaped upon the wheel of the carriage as it halted in a press of
traffic. A fortnight later the assassin was tortured to death on the
Grève. The body of the most popular sovereign that France has ever known
lay in state in the Hall of the Cariatides, that huge gallery of the
Louvre which had served as a guardroom in the days of Henry II and
Catherine de Medicis. There could be no better testimony to the regard
in which the “_roi galant_” was held not only in his own time but later
than the fact that during the Revolution his body and tomb at Saint
Denis were not disturbed.

CHAPTER XV

PARIS OF RICHELIEU

Henry IV’S death left France with a nine-year-old king, Louis XIII,
(1610-1643), whose Italian mother, acting as regent, had small sympathy
with her adopted land. Sully she soon dismissed and the court witnessed
a greedy scramble for money and preferment between imported favorites
and French nobles. In the brief period of four years the financial state
of the country was such that it became necessary to summon the States
General to see if any way out of the trouble might be found. France’s
regeneration under Henry of Navarre had been a growth too rapid to have
roots firm enough to withstand rough handling.

The Assembly was to accomplish nothing for it. It was in the autumn of
1614 that the Estates met in a hall in the Hôtel de Bourbon just east of
the Louvre. The body was a unit in demanding reform, but unity ceased
with that demand. The nobles were indignant at certain encroachments on
their aristocratic rights, the queen having given privileges to some
middle-class professional people for a financial consideration. The
clergy were shocked at the suggestion that they pay taxes--an idea not
to be considered, they said, for it would be giving to man what was due
to God. The Third Estate had a just grievance in the fact that upon them
fell all the expenses of the government, and their representatives,
speaking kneeling as was the dispiriting custom, succeeded nevertheless
in giving some caustic warnings.

The only result of all this quarreling was that a petition was sent to
the king asking him to give his attention to the questions under
discussion. The only reply from the Louvre was the information that
greeted the deputies when they gathered the next day that the queen
wanted their hall of meeting for a ball and that the Assembly was
therefore disbanded. It was a hundred and seventy-five years after this
brusque treatment before it met again just before the outbreak of the
Revolution.

Richelieu, Paris born, Sorbonne educated, and at that time a bishop, was
a member of this Assembly of 1614. When he became Marie de Medicis’
adviser, and, diplomatic and inflexible, imposed his will upon the
country, the situation cleared. There was need of high-handed action at
first. The minister had the greedy Prince of Condé arrested within the
palace of the Louvre and sent to the Bastille; a force was sent against
other hungry and violent nobles; the king himself, though then but a lad
of sixteen, felt the bracing atmosphere of this change and ordered the
arrest--possibly the death--of the Italian Concini, who, with his wife,
Leonora Galigaï had ruled the nation through the queen. Concini was shot
as he was crossing the bridge across the eastern moat of the Louvre, and
the king looked on from a window. Leonora was beheaded and burned as a
witch on the Grève.

Richelieu, become a cardinal, ruled with wisdom and vigor. He treated
high and low with equal impartiality, even causing the execution of some
of the greatest nobles in the land for the breaking of the law which
forbade dueling. The Place de Grève witnessed the punishment for the
sport of the Place Royale. Legalized struggles by the Parliament in the
palace on the Cité, underhand plots by men very near the throne--all
were met and overthrown by the sagacious premier, and his every act
tended to confirm the strength of the crown. He fought sturdily against
the Huguenots and conquered them with the fall of La Rochelle, a
conquest which the church of Notre Dame-des-Victoires was established to
commemorate, the original building serving as the sacristy of the
present edifice. He confirmed Henry of Navarre’s Edict of Nantes,
however, giving to the Protestants religious liberty and civil rights.
Abroad the cardinal’s policies brought territory and prestige to the
crown.

Louis lived but a scant half year longer than Richelieu. The king’s
whole life was passed under the domination of a determined mother, Marie
de Medicis, and a masterful prime minister. It would have required a
stronger personality than his to make itself felt, though Rubens has
recorded in a series of pictures now in the Louvre the quarrels and
reconciliations of the royal family. His only interests were hawking,
drilling soldiers, and craftsmanship in leather. He was terribly bored
most of the time, apparently without any initiative toward remedying the
situation. His court reflected his own disposition and was incredibly
dull, though ordered in etiquette and brilliant in garb.

It is to the regent and the cardinal and not to the king that Paris was
indebted for the many embellishments of this reign and for any impetus
that it gained toward the standards of art and literature which rose to
their climax in the next reign.

Henry IV had made Paris so pleasant a place to live in that the city was
constantly growing. Rivaling the Marais in popularity a new section
became fashionable, the Quarter Saint Honoré on the northwest of the
town. By way of protecting this rapidly enlarging district Louis swung
the city wall so far west as to include the Tuileries gardens. It was in
this newly popular quarter that Richelieu built for himself the Palais
Cardinal which he bequeathed to the king and which then took its present
name, the Palais Royal. He encountered difficulties in the construction
of his new home for his ideas of what he wanted did not harmonize with
what he could have. The _hôtels_ of other men were in the way and
sometimes even the cardinal’s expressed desire was not enough to make
them turn over their property to him. When they were citizens of small
account he brought pressure, not always honest, to bear upon them; when
they were people of importance he sometimes had to keep his wishes in
abeyance. The result was an irregularity of outline that was not
beautiful. To secure a symmetrical garden Richelieu did from within what
few of the city’s enemies ever have succeeded in doing--he pierced the
king’s new wall. After the cardinal’s death the queen-regent, Anne of
Austria, moved into the palace, and in its garden Louis XIV grew up, a
rather forlorn little figure so uncared for that once he was found after
dark asleep under a bush.

Outside of the city wall running along the river bank was the Cours la
Reine laid out by

[Illustration: THE ARCHBISHOP’S PALACE.

Beyond the bridge, the old Hôtel Dieu.]

[Illustration: RICHELIEU’S PALAIS CARDINAL, LATER CALLED PALAIS
ROYAL.]

Marie de Medicis as a parade ground for the satins and velvets, the
flowing cloaks and plumed hats of her courtiers. A similar sight was to
be seen in the gardens of the left bank palace which Marie, disgusted
with the gloom of the Louvre which she could not believe was really the
palace when she first came to Paris, had rebuilt on the site of an old
residence of the dukes of Luxembourg. To-day, with that combination of
thrift and love of beauty which characterizes the Frenchman, the Senate
occupies one part and the President of the Senate lives in another
section. The national museum of contemporary art is housed in a modern
building adjoining. The garden is still carefully ordered, the only
renaissance garden in Paris, and is a fitting adjunct to the beautiful
and varied Italian edifice which looks down upon it. The grounds are
dotted with statues of eminent men and women, most of them portraits. To
the east of the palace is an elaborate Florentine fountain and basin
called the Fountain of the Medicis.

It was in Louis’ reign that Paris became the seat of an archbishop who
used as his episcopal residence the bishop’s palace on the south side of
Notre Dame. Of a half-dozen religious houses founded or enlarged at this
time the best known is the Val-de-Grâce, made prominent by its gift from
Louis’ wife, Anne of Austria, of a handsome church, a thank-offering
for the birth of a son after a childless wedded life of twenty-three
years. This son ruled as Louis XIV, the “Grand Monarque.” The church of
the Val-de-Grâce was dome-crowned in the fashion set by the left bank
monastery of the Carmelites and followed in the construction of the
near-by palace of the Luxembourg, of the chapel of the Sorbonne in which
is Richelieu’s tomb, of the Church of Saint Paul-Saint Louis, in whose
graveyard Rabelais was buried, and, in the next reign, of the College
Mazarin (the Institute) and of the Dome of the Invalides beneath which
Napoleon sleeps. The popularity of the dome continued far into the next
century, for Sainte Geneviève’s church, now called the Pantheon, is
topped in the same majestic style.

Now was the beginning, too, of the so-called “Jesuit” style, seen to-day
in not undignified form in the façades of Saint Paul-Saint Louis near
the Place de la Bastille, Saint Thomas Aquinas, the left bank church of
fashionable weddings, Saint Roch on the rue Saint Honoré, from which the
crowds watched the daily passing of the tumbrils during the Revolution,
Saint Gervais, east of the Hôtel de Ville, which cherishes a crucifix
from the ancient abbey of Sainte Geneviève, and the Oratory also on the
rue Saint Honoré, now a Protestant church and serving as a background
for a fine group of statuary representing Admiral Coligny between
Fatherland and Religion.

The main feature of these façades is the superposition of columns. All
three orders are used in Saint Gervais, the simplest, Doric, at the
bottom, the Ionic above, and the most florid, the Corinthian at the top.
The others employ but two orders, always with the more elaborate above.

Decoration was of the heavy style called _baroque_ which developed later
into the slightly more acceptable _rococo_, so called from its use of
rocks, shells, and foliage combined with conventional scrolls. Louis’
addition to the Louvre, however, of a part of the eastern courtyard,
reproduced the _renaissance_ decorations of the constructions of Francis
I and Henry II to which they were attached.

Far to the east of the city Louis’ physician started a botanical garden
which developed into the present huge Jardin des Plantes with its
connecting collections of animals. One of the sights of the garden is a
spreading cedar tree which the famous eighteenth century botanist,
Jussieu, is said to have brought from the Andes, a tiny plant, slipped
under the band of his hat.

An important addition to the Paris of Louis XIII’s time was the
construction of what is now called the Île Saint Louis to the east of
the Cité. This island was made by uniting two small islands, one of
which had belonged to the bishop and the other to the canons of the
cathedral. With bustling Paris only the cast of a stone away on each
bank these two islets were devoted to such rural uses as the pasturage
of cows and the whitening of linen. One of them, however, in Charles V’s
time, had been the scene of a strange combat between a man and a dog,
the property of his enemy whom he was accused of murdering from the fact
that the dog attacked him whenever they met. Lists were enclosed on the
then barren island and the king and a great crowd of men from court and
town stood about to see the outcome of the “ordeal.” The man was allowed
a stick; the dog had a barrel open at both ends into which he might
retreat and from which he could plunge forth. When he was loosed he
rushed about his enemy, evading his blows, threatening him now on one
side and now on another until he was worn out, and then flew at his
throat and threw him down so that he was forced to make confession of
his crime thus proven by the “wager of battle.”

Henry IV built a chapel which became in the eighteenth century the
present church of Saint Louis-in-the-Island, whose delicately pierced
spire shows glints of sky through its openings. The first union with the
main land was by a

[Illustration: PALACE OF THE LUXEMBOURG.]

[Illustration: COURT OF HONOR OF NATIONAL LIBRARY.

See page 272.]

bridge to the right bank. An engineer named Marie conceived the idea of
joining the two islets, and now the island is a unit and only the name
of a street indicates where the Seine once flowed between.

Once begun, this new residence section rapidly became popular among
people who wanted to live somewhat remote from the turmoil of many
streets. To-day the island is covered from tip to tip with dwellings and
such few shops as are needed to supply the daily needs of the people,
but there is still the atmosphere of remoteness that made its charm for
Gautier and Baudelaire and Voltaire, and which induced Lambert de
Thorigny, president of the Parliament, to build the superb mansion,
still standing and restored to its original beauty, on whose decorations
all the best French artists of the day lavished their skill. To cross
one of the bridges on to the island is to find one’s self transported to
one of the provinces. It is as true to-day as when it was written a
hundred and thirty years ago that “the dweller in the Marais is a
stranger in the Isle.”

Louis XIII cared little for letters. Richelieu, on the other hand, made
some pretensions to being a literary man himself, recognized ability in
others, and was able to understand the usefulness and the power of the
pen. It was, in part, his encouragement that made the success of the
literary meetings at the Hôtel de Rambouillet near the Louvre where the
“precious” ladies and gentlemen conversed and wrote in a language whose
high-flown eloquence was a reaction against the rough language of the
military court of Henry IV. Corneille came to the fore in Louis’ reign,
and, for his own political purposes, Richelieu organized a group of
writers who had met for their own pleasure into the French Academy whose
members, the forty “Immortals,” assume to-day to be the court of last
resort on the literature and language of France.

The two succeeding sovereigns, Louis XIV and XV added other
academies--of Inscriptions, Sciences and so on--which, after the
Revolution, were combined as the Institute and established in the
Collège Mazarin near whose dome a tablet now marks the former site of
the Tour de Nesle.

It is quite probable that when the great cardinal died, Paris not being
gifted with prophetic vision, drew a sigh of relief. His was indeed a
master spirit. Beneath the rush of the city’s life there was no one of
whatever class who did not know that he was neither too high nor too low
to receive the premier’s attention if he drew it upon himself.
Richelieu’s word meant his making or his breaking. If Richelieu
stretched forth his hand he might be raised to prominence: if Richelieu
frowned he might be sent to a prison from which only Death would release
him.

Cardinal de Retz, who analyzed Richelieu’s qualities with impartiality
and intelligence said of him “all his vices were those which can only be
brought into use by means of great virtues.” Claude le Petit
(1638-1662), author of “_La Chronique Scandaleuse ou Paris Ridicule_,”
in describing the Palais Royal, wrote:

Here dwelt old Claws and nothing lacked,
John Richelieu by name,
A demi-God in local fame,
Half-Prince, half-Pope in fact.

CHAPTER XVI

PARIS OF THE “GRAND MONARQUE”

History repeated itself when Louis XIII died, leaving as his heir a
child of five, Louis XIV (1643-1715), whose kingdom was ruled by a
regent, the queen mother, Anne of Austria, who took as her adviser
another cardinal, the Italian, Mazarin. This newcomer to power was a
different sort of man from his predecessor, Richelieu. “He possessed
wit, insinuation, gayety and good manners,” says de Retz, but “he
carried the tricks of the sharper into the ministry.”

War with Spain brought success at the beginning, but the Parisians were
all too soon quarreling over the finances, and in the thick of a civil
war. The people resented the arrest of a member of Parliament, Broussel,
which had been accomplished while the general attention was engaged by
the celebration at Notre Dame and in the streets over the victory at
Lens. De Retz, who was at that time archbishop suffragan of Paris, went
to Anne to ask for Broussel’s release. The queen laughed at him and so
roused his wrath that he joined the insurgents. He did it
whole-heartedly, for for some time to come he fought in the
streets--alternately with trying to calm the people--and once was seen
at a sitting of the Parliament of Paris with a dagger carelessly
protruding from his pocket--“the archbishop’s breviary,” some wit called
it.

After de Retz’s failure the Parliament sent a delegation to the regent
at the Palais Royal to demand the release of Broussel. Anne refused and
the burghers tucked up their gowns and clambered over the street
barricades to report their failure to the people. Half way across town
they were met by a mob who declined to accept any such decision as
final, and once more the envoys turned about and made their laborious
way back to the regent.

Anne finally yielded her prisoner, but her action did not end the
struggle, which was carried on for some years and was called the Fronde
(sling) because the members of Parliament behaved like the
stone-slinging youngsters of the faubourg Saint Honoré who gave way
before the king’s archers, but renewed their sport as soon as their
backs were turned. The contest seems to have been rather absurd, for
while the personal courage of the Parisians was unquestioned there was
no organization, and the troop that rode gaily out to meet the royal
regulars was pretty sure to ride back sad and bedraggled.

The little king was taken to Saint Germain for protection during this
year-long commotion, and it was not until peace between the warring
parties had been formally proclaimed that he returned to Paris.

This peace did not last long, for the _bourgeoisie_, some members of the
nobility and even a few princes of the blood royal were among the
disaffected Parisians. Anne and Mazarin adopted high-handed measures,
but they soon found that imprisoning men like the Prince de Condé of the
Bourbon family did not ingratiate the court with the people or advance
its cause. Two years later on a summer’s day Mazarin took the child king
to the top of the hill on which is now the cemetery of Père Lachaise
that he might watch a battle between his own troops under Turenne and
those under Condé just outside the city walls on the east. Condé’s force
was out-numbered and it looked as if he were going to be crushed between
Turenne’s army and the wall when the Porte Saint Antoine was suddenly
opened and the guns of the Bastille were used against Turenne while
Condé’s army gained this unexpected refuge.

It turned out that the king’s cousin, the Duchesse de Montpensier, known
as “La Grande Mademoiselle,” had taken upon herself to give the orders
which defeated the royal troops. This strong-minded young woman was the
bachelor girl of her time, and a “character.” What she would do next was
the constant guess and the constant diversion of the court. Although she
was eleven years older than Louis he was so captivated by her vivacity
that the cardinal thought it judicious to keep the cousins apart, and
gave her apartments at the Louvre. At one time during the siege of
Orléans she made her way across the moat in a small boat and squeezed
her way into the town through a postern gate. At love she scoffed and
she refused every offer of marriage that was made to her until she was
of an age ostensibly of discretion when she fell madly in love with an
adventurer. Her marital experiences undoubtedly made her return to her
earlier beliefs in the foolishness of love and marriage.

The court retreated to Saint Denis. The city was given over to internal
dissension for some of the city officials were accused of sympathizing
with the hated foreign cardinal and his party, and the Hôtel de Ville
became the center of violent scenes, its besiegers men who wore in their
hats a tuft of straw, the badge of the Frondeurs. It was only when Anne
consented to send Mazarin away that the Fronde came to an end and once
again Louis could return to Paris.

With such youthful experiences of his chief city it is small wonder that
Louis XIV had no great love for it as a place of residence and that he
spent most of his life at Versailles. The hunting lodge which Louis XIII
had built was the nucleus of the huge palace which his son made large
enough not only for his family and retinue but for a large number of the
nobles whom it was his policy to gather about him so that he could keep
his eye on them. By this means the power of the nobles was decreased on
their own estates while their respect for the king, on whose words and
smiles they hung, was enormously increased. A lord was grateful for a
room at Versailles even though it were so far from private as to be used
as a passage-way. Many of the nobility paid handsomely for positions in
the royal kitchens. Later in the reign these offices were held by
_bourgeois_, for the finances of this class improved as those of the
upper class lessened on account of decreased revenues from their
neglected estates. The burghers aped the nobles in manners and in dress,
and by favoring them, from whom he had nothing to fear, Louis gained the
friendship of an important body. He raised no objection when the
citizens took nobles into business partnership, for that served him both
by lowering ancient pride and by providing money upon which he could
make some demand.

In manners, dress and literature this reign was increasingly formal
following upon the example of Louis who was formal because he honestly
believed himself godlike and insisted on formality as appropriate. His
was a grand manner and his an incomparable selfishness. His belief in
the divine right of kings stretched until “right” meant the right to do
whatever he chose however unkind or immoral. Beneath the gorgeousness of
the court was a life of hypocrisy, self-seeking, and crime almost beyond
belief.

The godlike sovereign certainly had a more than human appetite. It is
related that at one dinner he ate:

Four plates of different kinds of soup
A whole pheasant
A partridge
A large plate of salad
Two large slices of ham
A bowl of mutton with gravy and garlic
A plate of pastry
Fruit
Several hard-boiled eggs.

In theatrical parlance, he was “playing to capacity.”

Upon Mazarin’s death the king, then twenty-three years old and ignorant
of independent action, had made known his intention of conducting
affairs himself. For the rest of his life he worked hard every day at
the affairs of the state, comforted when things went wrong with the
refreshing thought that the fault was not his because he had acted with
God-given intelligence. The early part of his career was marked by such
advance in the condition of the finances, the laws, education, the army,
and industrial achievement that, provided he blinded himself to the fact
that in Colbert, Vauban and Louvois he had exceptionally efficient
administrators, he might well think himself a paragon of intelligence.
Great generals won his battles; great writers praised his power; great
artists and architects built grandly in his honor. It is not strange
that he thought himself what others called him, the “Grand Monarque” and
the “Roi Soleil.”

Centralization was the basic policy of Louis’s career. In Paris it took
the form of substituting a law court under royal control for the local
courts in different parts of the city, and in making the municipal
offices purchasable from the king. Municipal improvements made the city
pleasanter to live in. An effort was made--not very successfully from
the modern point of view--to keep the streets clean, and at night a
lantern was hung midway between cross streets and burned until midnight.
As the number of lights installed was but 6,500 and Paris at that time
covered some four square miles of territory it may be seen that the
illumination was not dazzling. It was enough, however, to be of
assistance to Louis’ new police force, and to make visible in the
evening as well as the morning the two gates--of Saint Denis and Saint
Martin--erected by the admiring Parisians to do honor to his early
victories. The fire department became a lay institution at this time
for, rather curiously, fire fighting had previously been the work of a
religious house. The population is estimated at between eight and nine
hundred thousand.

Two new squares of this century were the Place des Victoires, in front
of Notre Dame des Victoires, and the Place Vendôme, north of the rue
Saint Honoré. By a city regulation no change is permitted to-day of the
façades of the buildings on these two open places.

At the extreme eastern end of modern Paris the Place de la Nation is the
former Place du Trône, which received its name when in 1660 Louis sat
upon a temporary throne beyond the city wall to receive congratulations
upon having secured the Peace of the Pyrenees.

The poet Scarron, husband of Françoise d’Aubigné who, after his death,
became the governess of the king’s children by Madame de Montespan, and
who later was married secretly to Louis, has left a description of Paris
in the “Great Century.” The translation is by Walter Besant.

Houses in labyrinthine maze;
The streets with mud bespattered all;
Palace and prison, churches, quays,
Here stately shop, there shabby stall.
Passengers black, red, gray and white,
The pursed-up prude, the light coquette;
Murder and Treason dark as night;
With clerks, their hands with ink-stains wet;
A gold-laced coat without a sou,
And trembling at a bailiff’s sight;
A braggart shivering with fear;
Pages and lackeys, thieves of night!
And ’mid the tumult, noise and stink of it,
There’s Paris--pray, what do you think of it?

An epitome of society this. Paris was indeed full of adventurers, of
criminals even among the high-born, of gamblers so mad over games of
chance that special laws had to be passed driving them out of the city.
There is still standing near the Hôtel de Ville the Hôtel d’Aubray where
lived the famous poisoner, the Marquise de Brinvilliers.

A glance at the career of this woman shows a social condition amazing in
its calm iniquity. The marquise herself, of seemingly guileless charm,
acquired from a lover the destructive skill which she utilized in
removing from her path her relatives and any other people who interfered
with her in any way. Her trial is a “celebrated case” not only because
of her own rank but because other people of note were suspected of being
in collusion with her. Torture was abolished under Louis XIV but not
until after Madame de Brinvilliers had been made to drink many buckets
of water and to be sadly bent across wooden horses.

She was beheaded on the Grève, her body burned and the ashes thrown to
the winds. At about the same time accident disclosed an astounding
number of cases of poisoning or attempted poisoning. Mme. de Montespan
undoubtedly tried to make way with the father of her children, the king,
and rumors were constant of many other instances. “So far,” said Mme. de
Sevígné’s son, “I have not been accused of attempting to poison little
mamma, and that is a distinction in these days.”

Paris was lively enough during this reign, for Versailles was not so far
away but that its people could go to town for city diversions, and as
Louis grew more serious with age and court etiquette more rigorous and
burdensome, the town made its call more and more insistently. Louis
himself, hugely bewigged and elaborately elegant, however, does not
often appear in the picture. Once he took part in a gorgeous
_carrousel_--a carnival chiefly of equestrian sports--which took place
in the large square--now called the Place du Carrousel--lying between
the Louvre and the Tuileries. Once, twenty-five years later, he was
entertained at the Hôtel de Ville at a dinner at which the city
officials waited upon him in person. Yet neither of these pictures
lingers in the memory like that of the bewigged monarch usually most
punctilious in his dress for occasions, appearing in the palace of the
Cité before the Parliament, booted for the chase, arrogantly careless of
any courtesy toward the body he addressed and haughtily insisting with
the full force of his sincere belief that he and the State were
one,--“_L’État c’est moi_.”

Power was dear to the king’s heart and he so impressed his magnificence
on his people that they thought it only fitting that he should have a
rising sun carved on the buildings which he erected, such as that part
of the Louvre which he built to complete the eastern quadrangle. (See
plan, Chapter XXII). The eastern exterior of this section, facing the
church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, shows the superb colonnade designed
by Perrault, a sort of universal genius, who was both a physician and an
architect. Another piece of his work was the Observatory, still in
active use on the left bank near the University. The king’s appreciation
of splendor demanded completeness, and so his handsome buildings were
placed in the setting of stately gardens, his chief designer being Le
Nôtre whose work is still to be seen encircling the palaces in the
environs of Paris. In the city he laid out the gardens of the Tuileries,
and that superb avenue, the Champs Elysées, which leads from the broad
Place de la Concorde to Napoleon’s Arch of Triumph. The four hundredth
anniversary of Le Nôtre’s birth was celebrated on March 12, 1913, when
Parisians recalled his work with almost unanimous approval because of
its harmony with the impressive buildings which it supplemented.

Other important buildings of Louis’ reign were the Invalides or
Soldiers’ Home with its church and its later addition, the work of
Mansard who gave his name to the curb-roof which we know. Beneath
Mansard’s beautiful dome the body of Napoleon now lies “among the people
whom I loved.”

Louis’ contest with the pope over the king’s position as head of the
French church tended to lessen his interest in the establishment of
religious institutions, but the famous church of Saint Sulpice, whose
twin towers are landmarks on the left bank, was begun by him, together
with the seminary whose square ugliness is soon to house the overflow
from the near-by Luxembourg museum. Since the quarrel between church and
state in 1902-03, the building has stood bleakly empty except when it
was used to shelter some of the refugees made homeless by the Seine
floods a few years ago.

The Abbey-in-the-Woods, removed by Louis from Picardy to Paris and made
famous by the residence there in the middle of the last century of the
witty Madame Récamier, has been until very recently one of the chief
historic “sights” near the celebrated left bank department store, the
_Bon Marché_.

The Church of Saint Nicholas-du-Chardonnet is interesting chiefly
because of the tomb which LeBrun, the painter, designed in honor of his
mother, a sepulcher opening at the summons of a hovering angel.

Among Louis’ good works must be counted the union of several hospitals
into one known as the Salpêtrière from its occupying the site of a
saltpeter manufactory, and devoted to-day to the care of nervous
diseases and insanity.

The tapestry manufactory of the Gobelins family was received into royal
favor by Louis and then as now did its work only for the government. Its
products to-day, painstakingly made by skillful workmen who have given
their lives to this task as did their fathers before them, are never
sold, but are used for the decoration of public buildings and as gifts
for people whom the state wishes to honor.

Of comparatively small houses belonging to this century the best
remaining instances are the Pavilion of Hanover, in which is the Paris
office of the New York _Times_; the Hôtel Mazarin which now contains the
fine collection of books known as the National Library; the Hôtel de la
Vrillière, now the Bank of France, with an _échauguette_ (observation
turret) by Mansard; the Hôtel de Soubise, used with the Hôtel de

[Illustration: HÔTEL DES INVALIDES.]

[Illustration: SAINT SULPICE.

From a print of about 1820.]

Clisson to house the national archives; the near-by Hôtel de Hollande,
once the Dutch embassy; and the Hôtel Beauvais from whose balcony the
queen-mother, the Queen of England, Cardinal Mazarin and Turenne watched
the entrance of Louis XIV and his bride, Maria Theresa of Spain.

The latter part of Louis’ reign showed a constant decline in power
resulting from a decline in common sense no less than from the loss of
able advisers. Taxes brought the peasants to poverty, famine killed them
when disease did not. Territory was lost. As a last burst of stupidity
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove out of the country the best
class of artisans who took their intelligence and skill to the
enrichment of other countries. The beginning of the eighteenth century
found France with a selfish nobility, and a disordered _bourgeoisie_ and
a peasantry in whose hearts was smoldering the fire of bitter hatred
that was to burst forth into flame at the Revolution. During the winter
of 1709, six years before Louis’ death, the cold was so severe that five
thousand people died of their sufferings in Paris alone, and the
scarcity of food was so pronounced that the purveyors of the court had
difficulty in securing enough for the king himself to eat.

So ended in suffering and sullenness the reign of the _Grand Monarque_.

CHAPTER XVII

PARIS OF LOUIS THE “WELL-BELOVED”

It was a pitiful country to which Louis XV fell heir (in 1715) when his
great-grandfather died. The peasants had been taxed to the last sou, the
nobles, untaxed and selfish, scrambled greedily for court preferment and
left their estates uncared for, many of the _bourgeois_ tried to emulate
the nobles in extravagance, and all of them seemed to view with apathy a
government in which the most intelligent part of the community had an
extremely small share.

The _nouveau riche_ has his place in the picture. It is related of a
rich salt manufacturer, for instance, that he was asked by a friend to
whom he was showing a fine villa that he had just built, why a certain
niche was left vacant. Proud of his occupation the owner replied that he
intended to fill the space with a statue symbolic of his business. To
which the friend retorted with a prompt suggestion, “Lot’s wife.”

At the time of his accession Louis was but five years old, and the
regency was given into the hands of the unscrupulous Duke of Orleans.
Both courtiers and Parisians were delighted at the removal of the court
from Versailles to the city, but the good people of the town soon
realized that the added liveliness was a doubtful advantage, for the
gayeties of the Palais Royal in which the regent lived were gross
debaucheries. Even holy days were not held sacred, and Orleans is said
to have expressed extravagant admiration for a certain church dignitary
who was reputed not to have gone to bed sober for forty years. To such a
pass did the extravagances fostered by the regent grow that even Louis
the Well-Beloved, himself the Prince of Extravagance, was compelled
later to pass sumptuary laws regulating dress and the expense of
entertainments.

There is in the French character to-day a certain credulity as concerns
“get-rich-quick” schemes which renders the people astonishingly
responsive to the efforts of swindlers like Madame Humbert, notorious a
few years ago. It is a quality in curious contrast to the shrewdness
which makes them the readiest financiers of modern Europe, yet in a way
it supplements the thrift which some students look upon as a result of
the bitter days of the “Old Régîme,” the pinching period that resulted
in the Revolution. It would seem that this characteristic is not a
modern phenomenon, for at the beginning of Louis XV’s reign a Scotsman
named Law proposed a paper money scheme that was seized upon with
eagerness by all classes of an impoverished society. Nor was it a
phenomenon peculiar to France, for at about the same time the South Sea
Bubble was exciting England to a frenzy of acquisitiveness. Whatever the
psychology, all France and especially all Paris went wild over Law’s
propositions. He issued small notes which he redeemed in specie until he
won the confidence of the public and the government endorsed his bank
and permitted the use of his paper in payment of taxes. The Mississippi
valley was supposed at that time to abound in gold and silver and Law’s
office in the rue Quincampoix, near the Halles and the church of Saint
Leu, was fairly besieged by courtiers and clergy, by tradesmen and
ladies of the nobility eager to buy stock in a mining company which Law
organized. West of the Halles, near the Hôtel de Soissons, was a Bourse
des Valeurs established entirely for the conduct of business connected
with Law’s schemes.

It is probable that Law was self-deceived. At any rate, when the bubble
burst he was as hard hit financially as any of his victims, and, in
addition, barely escaped with his life from their wrath, when they
besieged his bank in the Place Vendôme and rushed, howling with rage, to
the Palais Royal where they thought he had taken refuge. The government
repudiated its debts, but private individuals could not do that and the
ruin was general. A rhyme of the day says:

On Monday I bought share on share;
On Tuesday I was a millionaire;
On Wednesday I took a grand abode;
On Thursday in my carriage rode;
On Friday drove to the Opera-ball;
On Saturday came to the paupers’ hall.

Louis ruled--or misruled--for sixty years. In the space of six decades
much may happen for good or ill, but this long reign was marked by no
rises and by few falls, merely by a gradual, consistent decadence. The
country engaged in the War of the Polish Succession, the War of the
Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years’ War, and in all lost
territory, men and prestige, while the effects of the hated tax
collector added to the ever-growing misery. The people were too crushed
to do more than look on dully while their sovereign secured in infamous
ways the wherewithal for his infamous pleasures. He sold the liberty of
his subjects, for any one who could pay for a warrant (_lettre de
cachet_) could put a private enemy into prison where he might lie
forgotten for years. He sold the lives of his people, for he starved
them to death by scores through the negotiation of a successful corner
in food stuffs. Even when he disbanded the parliaments (courts) the
only bodies that were trying to do anything, there was small stir made
about it.

Louis encouraged a persecution of the Huguenots, yet, Catholic though he
was, he favored the expulsion of the Jesuits against whom the
Jansenists, also Catholics, were contending. Friend was pitted against
friend, neighbor against neighbor in these fierce quarrels based on
religious differences, always the fiercest quarrels that man can know.

The persecution was often petty, always bitter, yet it had its serious
side when Pascal and the writers who gathered at Port Royal entered into
philosophic discussion. This serious addiction of the people was a
curious aspect of the mental and moral state of the period. While some
people were entering heart and soul into these arguments there was at
the same time an ample number of readers who devoured with gusto poems,
plays and novels so coarse that to-day they never would reach print.
That the same people might be interested in both sorts of literature is
attested by the temper of some of the highest ecclesiastics who not only
connived at the king’s immoral life, but furthered it. In some
temperaments the extremes of the age produced an unbalanced state. This
showed itself at one time throughout Paris in the behavior of the
“Convulsionaries of Saint Médard,” who hysterically proclaimed the
miracles performed at the tombs of two priests buried in the ancient
churchyard of Saint Médard, near the Gobelins factory. So wide-spread
and so distracting was this belief that the graveyard was closed to the
public. This step caused a wit to fasten upon the wall an inscription.

“By order of the king, God is forbidden to perform miracles in this
place.”

Contemporary accounts of the execution of a man who had made an attempt
upon the life of the king shows a callousness to suffering that would
seem impossible if one had not read recently of the brutalities of the
Balkan war, nearly three hundred years later. The execution took place
as usual in the Place de Grève, and every window and balcony was filled
with eager spectators, many of them elegantly dressed ladies of the
court who played cards to while away the moments of waiting. The poor
wretch who was to furnish amusement for this gay throng was placed on an
elevated table where all might see him, and he was gashed and torn and
twisted and burned and broken for an hour before the breath mercifully
left his mangled body.

Like his great-grandfather, Louis preferred Versailles to Paris, but not
for the Sun King’s reason. He had no especial desire to keep his eye on
his courtiers, but kindred spirits he gathered about him and the
favorites of Madame de Pompadour ruled and of Madame du Barry vulgarized
the once decorous though far from impeccable salons of Versailles.

With lowered taste architecture became _rococo_ and decoration a mass of
wreaths and shells and leaves and scrolls.

In Paris, meanwhile, the Louvre fell into such disrepair that it was
habitable only by people willing to live in haphazard fashion for the
sake of a free lodging, while private stables occupied much of the
ground floor and the government post horses stamped and kicked beneath
Perrault’s unfinished colonnade. Disgusted at this eyesore in their once
beautiful city the Parisians authorized the Provost of the Merchants to
offer to repair the building at the expense of the town. Louis, however,
seems to have thought that if the citizens had so much money to spend it
had better be on him, and he refused the offer and set about devising
new ways of capturing the hidden coin.

Of building there could not be much at a time when the monarch took no
pride in his own chief city and suffered no expenditures except those
that he saw no way of diverting to his own yawning purse. One of the few
constructions of Louis’ date is the Mint, built on one of the left bank
quays on a part of the site once occupied

[Illustration: ELYSÉE PALACE, RESIDENCE OF PRESIDENT OF FRANCE.]

[Illustration: CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES (PALAIS BOURBON).]

by the ancient Hôtel de Nesle. It contains a museum of coins and medals
as well as the workshops for the making of coins.

Another of the king’s languid interests was the Military School which
looms imposingly across the southeastern end of the Champ de Mars as the
modern tourist sits at luncheon on the first ‘stage’ of the Eiffel
Tower. The Field of Mars itself, now green with lawns and bright with
flowers, was laid out as a drill ground on the very spot where a battle
with the Normans took place during the siege of 885 A.D. Its great size
has frequently made it useful for large gatherings of people, and no
fewer than four World Exhibitions have erected their plaster cities upon
its ample space.

Another open place of impressive size was the present Place de la
Concorde, first called the Place Louis XV. This vast square, now the
center of Paris, was framed on the side of the Tuileries gardens by
balustrades designed by Gabriel, the architect of the Military School,
and was planned as a setting for that colossal statue of the King on
which a wag pinned a placard saying:

“He is here as at Versailles,
Without heart and without entrails.”

The square stood on the western edge of the settled part of the city,
but not too far away for the appropriate erection of the handsome
buildings still standing on the north side restored to their early
dignity. One of these, built as a storehouse for state effects, is now
used by the Ministry of Marine. The other was a private _hôtel_. Between
the two the rue Royale runs a little way northward to the classic church
of the Madeleine, whose cornerstone Louis laid on the site of a former
chapel, but whose construction was long delayed. Standing on its broad
steps to-day the eye follows the vista of the rue Royale across the
square and over the river to the Palace of Deputies, begun as the Palais
Bourbon in the early part of Louis XV’s reign.

It was in the rue Royale that most of the deaths occurred during Louis
XVI’s wedding festivities, and it was through this street that the
tumbrils laden with victims for the guillotine came from the rue Saint
Honoré.

A little way from the _place_ on the west is the Palace of the Élysée,
which the government furnishes as a mansion for the President of the
Republic. It has been rebuilt and restored since its first condition as
a private house which Louis XV bought and gave to Madame de Pompadour.

Not being of a markedly religious turn except when he was ill, it is not
surprising that Louis promoted the construction of very few churches.
One of them, Saint Philippe-du-Roule, replaced a leper hospital. A few
years before the Madeleine was begun, a new church of Sainte Geneviève
was planned as a crown for the Mont Sainte Geneviève. Great difficulties
had to be overcome in providing a firm foundation, for the elevation was
found to be honeycombed with the quarries of Gallo-Roman days. It was
fifty years after its beginning before the adjoining abbey chapel of
Sainte Geneviève, which the new building was to replace, was torn down,
leaving the fine dome-crowned church--now the Pantheon--to stand
uncrowded.

Opposite the Pantheon to the west is the Law School, designed by the
same architect, Soufflot.

In public utilities Paris found herself somewhat richer than before
Louis’ reign. The postal service attained such effective organization
that it made three deliveries a day and was housed in a large and
adequately equipped building. It became usual to number all the houses
as had been done for some two hundred years on the house-laden bridges.
The names of streets were cut on stone blocks and affixed to a corner
building.

In spite of the discomfort of getting about the large city through dirty
streets carriages had been introduced but slowly into the city. As late
as the sixteenth century only the king and ladies of the court used the
heavy coaches which were called “chariots.” In the next century chairs
carried by porters became fashionable among the extravagantly dressed
and bewigged. A cab service, established midway through the hundred
years won instant favor, and was greatly improved in Louis XV’s time,
though Parisians were condemned for many decades longer to traverse the
town through streets unprovided with sidewalks and defiantly dirty.

It is hard for the admirers of twentieth century Paris cleanliness to
realize that an English traveler, writing just before the French
Revolution, complains bitterly of the dirt and disorder and danger of
the streets and compares them most unfavorably with London
thoroughfares.

Another undertaking, this time of scientific interest, was the tracing
of the meridian of Paris from the Observatory of the left bank across
the river to Montmartre on the right of the Seine. In the left transept
of the church of Saint Sulpice is a section of the line, and a small
obelisk on which a ray of sunlight falls from the south at exactly noon.
At the same moment the sun’s rays set off a cannon, placed where the
meridian crosses the garden of the Palais Royal.

That the fire service was not astonishingly competent seems to be
indicated by the disasters

[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINTE GENEVIÈVE, NOW THE PANTHEON.]

of this century. Twice serious fires destroyed large parts of the Hotel
Dieu, the old general hospital. It had become so crowded in the Sun
King’s time that six and eight patients were put into one bed. Nothing
was done to relieve the situation, however, until it reached such a pass
that even the careless Regent was aroused and provided money for the
building of a new wing by taxing public amusements. The second
conflagration (in 1772) was not extinguished for eleven days. Many
sufferers were burned in their beds, and hundreds of others, turned out
into the December cold, took refuge in near-by Notre Dame.

In the same year with the earlier fire at the hospital (1737) a two-day
conflagration started by prisoners worked havoc with the palace of the
Cité. In 1777 another destroyed the front of the palace. Another fire
earlier in the century had its origin in the efforts of a poor woman to
recover the body of her drowned son through the mediation of Saint
Nicholas. To that end she set afloat in the Seine a wooden bowl
containing a loaf of bread and a lighted candle. The candle set fire to
a barge of hay. Some one cut the boat loose and it was swept by the
current under the Petit Pont which was consumed with all its burden of
houses. The bridge was quickly replaced, but without any buildings on
it, a fashion followed toward the end of Louis XVI’s reign when the
Pont Neuf and the Pont Notre Dame were cleared.

The Pont Neuf’s broad expanse became at once the field for hucksters and
mountebanks of all sorts; here strikers assembled near the statue of
Henry IV; here, according to an old verse-maker, there was much
love-making near the “Bronze Horse;” and here the enlisting officers
plied their activities even up to a quarter of a century ago when army
service became compulsory.

CHAPTER XVIII

PARIS OF THE REVOLUTION

Louis XV was succeeded in 1774 by his twenty year old grandson, Louis
XVI, at whose birth the Paris that later was to kill him expressed
extravagant delight in countless feasts, balls and displays of
fireworks. Young as he was at his accession, Louis had been married for
several years. His wife, Marie Antoinette, was but fourteen when she
came to Paris as a bride, and an accident which occurred during the
wedding festivities seemed a mournful prophecy of the troubled days to
come. At the close of a _fête_ in the Place Louis XV a panic seized the
crowd. It rushed headlong into the rue Royale in such a passion of
terror that the narrow street was swiftly filled with a mass of people
fighting their way over the bleeding, dying bodies of those who had
reached the exit first and by chance had fallen.

Again the royal family preferred Versailles to Paris. In the country the
well-meaning young king tinkered with locks and was generally dull and
uninteresting, while the queen made a charmingly elaborate pretence at
living the simple life, _à la_ Watteau. Louis did his ineffective best
to straighten out the affairs of his kingdom but the deluge which Louis
XV had predicted was coming and rapidly.

The court often came to town both to give and receive entertainment, and
public festivities were not infrequent, for the people had a sort of
tolerant affection for the king and queen whose gentleness and
helplessness were not without their appeal. When the dauphin was born,
eight years after the accession, the City of Paris gave a dinner at the
Hôtel de Ville in honor of the event. The royal table was laid with
seventy-eight covers and at it the king and his two brothers were the
only men, the remaining seventy-five being the queen, the princesses and
the ladies of the court. As seems frequently to have happened at these
large dinners at the City Hall not everything went smoothly. This time
the trouble arose from the commands of etiquette. The hosts bent their
whole energies upon serving the king promptly. When he had finished his
dinner the guests at the other tables had had nothing but butter and
radishes, yet in spite of their hunger they were forced to rise and
leave when the king rose. As the preparations for the feast are reported
to have been lavishly extravagant it is to be hoped that “the
left-overs” were given to the poor who were pitiably hungry most of the
time in those days.

The public works of Louis’ reign were not many. The unrest of the people
was too evident, the supply of money too small for much to be
accomplished. To the clearing of the bridges which has been mentioned
above was added an effort to bring light and air into at least one
crowded spot on the left bank by tearing down the ancient Petit
Châtelet. A new wall protected several of the outlying suburbs, and was
not pulled down until 1860. At each of its gates was a pavilion, several
of which are still standing, which served as an office for the
collectors of the _octroi_, a tax levied even now upon all food brought
into the city. As anything to do with taxes was obnoxious to the people
this construction has been described as

“_Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant._”

which may be inadequately translated, “The wall walling Paris makes
Paris wail.”

The over-florid architecture of Louis XV’s reign showed signs of
betterment under the younger Louis through the influence of the Greek.
The best and, indeed almost the only remaining examples are the church
of Saint Louis d’Antin which Louis built as a chapel for a Capuchin
convent, and the Odéon, a theater. This building has a dignified
façade, but around the remaining three sides runs an arcade filled with
open-air book shops whose widely varied stock is more picturesque than
appropriately placed. Its actors are the students graduated in the
second rank from the government school of acting. Those of the first
grade make up the company of the Comédie Française whose playhouse
stands in columned ugliness to-day attached to the corner of the Palais
Royal.

The drama always has been fostered in Paris, but up to Molière’s time no
especial provision was made for the presentation of the play from which
the people derived so much pleasure. In early times the performance took
place in the street. In the fifteenth century the clerks attached to the
court held in the palace of the Cité performed farces in the great hall
of the palace, using Louis IX’s huge marble table as a stage. In the
sixteenth century a troupe remodeled for its use a part of the Hôtel of
Burgundy of which a fragment is left in the Tower of John the Fearless.
In the seventeenth century a disused tennis court in the Marais housed a
company of players. Molière and his actors occupied the hall of a
half-ruined residence opposite the eastern end of the Louvre until it
was torn down, when they moved to the Palais Royal.

Street fairs were enormously popular. They

[Illustration: THE ODÉON.]

[Illustration: THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE ABOUT 1785.]

were often conducted by hospitals or religious houses. The best known
are the Fair of Saint Germain and the Fair of Saint Laurent, both the
left and the right banks being served by these two entertainments. There
were side shows and mountebanks of all kinds, and some old verses say
that “as one approaches his ears are as full as bottles with noise.”

In summing up the causes of the Revolution soon to let loose the pent-up
fury of generations of repression, the economic and social reasons are
easily seen. To English minds the only wonder is that the people endured
so long the steady curtailment of opportunity and that they were so long
deluded by the magnificence of royalty. The lower classes were taxed
inordinately, even on necessities. The nobility (of whom there were some
two hundred thousand as against England’s five hundred) and the clergy
were not taxed at all, and when the Minister of Finance suggested to the
assembled Notables, whom Louis was forced to summon, that they should
bear their share of the government support, they resented the idea as
insulting. Not only were the taxes heavy, their collection was farmed
out to tax-gatherers who were permitted to take in lieu of salary as
much more than the original tax as they could squeeze out of their
victims. And, as if this drain, long continued and ever increasing,
were not enough, Louis XV had collected advance taxes.

Politically, the power of the French monarch was practically absolute.
The nobility and clergy almost invariably supported him, voting two to
one against the Third Estate in the States General, and, as this body
had not convened for nearly two hundred years before Louis XVI summoned
it, it hardly could be regarded as a check to absolutism. Trial by jury
had fallen into complete disuse and no man was sure of his personal
liberty or of undisturbed ownership of his property, and, at the same
time, he was denied freedom of belief and of speech.

But independence of belief and of speech was fast increasing, and its
growth is an evidence of the intellectual change which is one of the
causes of the Revolution, less evident but not less powerful than those
which affected the economic, social and political status of Frenchmen.
Paris was the center of this intellectual and literary activity. In
Paris lived or sojourned the men whose advanced thinking was percolating
through all classes of society--Voltaire and Montesquieu, who pleaded
for liberty and a constitutional government, and Rousseau whose appeals
for individual freedom of politics, religion and speech subordinated to
the good of the whole, crystallized in the war cry “Liberty, Equality
and Fraternity” which has become the watchword of modern France. In
Paris, too, were published the famous philosophical and economic
articles of the Encyclopedia, often with difficulty in evading the
police, and often interrupted by the prison visits of its contributors,
Diderot being sent to the Bastille immediately upon the appearance of
the first volume.

Skepticism permeated the upper classes, irreligion the lower.

Paris, indeed, was the very crater of the Revolution. In the scholars’
attics on the left bank argument was growing loud where only whispers
had been heard before; in the crowded tenements of the eastern quarter
around the Saint Antoine Gate, and especially amid the fallen grandeurs
of the once fashionable Marais people were talking now where once they
had hardly dared to think. The mob that was soon to take unspeakable
license in the name of Liberty was watching for an opportunity to test
its strength.

It made its first trial amid the excitements of the election to the
States General which Louis was forced to summon when the Notables failed
to suggest any solution of the country’s problems. It met in the spring
of 1789, the first time in one hundred and seven-five years. Riots were
frequent, prophetic of the struggle with the king which began as soon
as the sitting opened at Versailles. Louis closed the hall to the
assemblage and they met in the tennis court and took the famous oath by
which they bound themselves not to disband until they had prepared a
written constitution. They called themselves the National Constituent
Assembly, the nobility and clergy joined them at the king’s request, and
they voted thereafter not by classes but as individuals.

Some of the Third Estate knew definitely what they wanted. A peasant
declared that he was going to work for the abolition of three
things--pigeons, because they ate the grain; rabbits, because they ate
the sprouting corn; and monks, because they ate the sheaves.

Three weeks after the Oath of the Tennis Court, Desmoulins, a young
journalist, made an inflammatory speech in the garden of the Palais
Royal, declaring that the fact of the king’s surrounding his family with
Swiss soldiers was an introduction of force that made the wise regard
the Bastille as a menace to the city.

The facts seem to be that most of the prisoners were well cared for, so
well fed that Bastille diet was a town joke, and, as a picture by
Fragonard shows, might even entertain their friends.

On July 14, 1789, two days after Desmoulins’ speech, the Parisians
poured against the fortress a horde of citizens armed with weapons
taken from the Hôtel des Invalides. They forced the first drawbridge,
burned the governor’s house and easily compelled his surrender, since
the garrison of which the people declared themselves in terror consisted
only of about eighty men who were but scantily provided with ammunition.
The crowd set free the prisoners, who numbered but a half dozen or so
under Louis’ mild rule, seized the captain and hurried him to the Grève
where they struck off his head and carried it about the city on a
pike--the first of such hideous sights of which the Revolution was to
know an appalling number. The destruction of the huge mass of masonry
was begun the next day and lasted through five years. Lafayette sent one
of the keys to General Washington.

So thoroughly did the Bastille symbolize oppression in the public mind
of France that the anniversary of the day of its fall has been made the
national holiday.

One of the schemes proposed for the decoration of the vacant square was
the erection of an enormous elephant to be made from guns taken in
battle by Napoleon. A plaster model stood in the _place_ for several
years, the same animal which served as a refuge for the street urchin,
Gavroche, in Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables.” After 1830 the present
“July Column” was erected to the memory of the victims of the “Three
Glorious Days” of the Revolution of that year.

Upon hearing of the Fall of the Bastille the king made concessions to
the Assembly and then went to Paris accompanied by a huge and motley
crowd armed with guns and scythes. The mayor went through the ceremony
of presenting him with the keys of the city in token of its loyalty,
while at almost the same time Lafayette was organizing the citizens into
the National Guard, who wore a cockade made up not only of red and blue,
the colors of Paris, but of white, the royal hue.

The nobles, awakened to the danger of a general insurrection, tried to
put a stop to the rioting and incendiarism that was spreading over the
country by offering to yield their privileges. This concession proved
but a sop, for the people’s hunger was now unappeasable. Louis continued
to spend most of his time at Versailles to the dissatisfaction of the
Parisians. When they heard of the expressions of loyalty uttered by the
king’s body-guard at a banquet they voted that the court had no right to
feast while Paris was suffering for bread, marched to Versailles and
forced the king, the queen, and the little dauphin--the baker and his
wife and the baker’s boy, they called them--to go back with them to
town. Marie Antoinette had succeeded in making herself extremely
unpopular, both with the nobility who objected to her independence of
the laws of etiquette to which they were accustomed, and with the
people, who called her the “Austrian Wolf,” and who really believed her
to be sinister and wicked instead of a gay and affectionate young woman,
whose worst fault was thoughtlessness. If she had had before but small
knowledge of the opinion in which she was held by her subjects she
discovered it during this ten-mile drive when her carriage was
surrounded by east-end roughs and disheveled women from the Halles who
had only been deterred from killing her as she stood beside her husband
at Versailles by her display of dauntless courage, and who crowded upon
her now, yelling indecencies and shaking their fists at the king and the
uncomprehending little prince and his sister. This return to Paris was
called the “Joyous Entry.”

Arrived at Paris they went to the Tuileries and passed a sleepless night
in the long-deserted palace which seems to have been despoiled even of
its beds. There they lived for many months, willingly served only by a
few faithful guards and daily insulted by people who came to see the
tyrants and to watch the “Wolf’s Cub” dig in the little fenced enclosure
which he called his garden. The king’s brother and his closest friends
fled from the country, leaving him to face his troubles alone.

The first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille was celebrated upon
the Field of Mars by a great festival. Undeterred by a violent rainstorm
a hundred thousand people passed before an Altar of the Fatherland
erected in the middle, and after taking part in a religious service,
listened to Lafayette, who was the first to swear to uphold the
Constitution, and to Louis, who declared: “_I, King of the French, swear
to use the power which the constitutional act of the State has delegated
to me, for the maintenance of the Constitution decreed by the National
Assembly and accepted by me._”

The Assembly confiscated church property and gave to the state the
control of the clergy. Then it ordered the clergy to take an oath to
support the Constitution. Because this implied an acknowledgment that
the action of the Assembly was justifiable the pope forbade the clergy
to take the oath. At first the king vetoed this bill, called the “Civil
Constitution of the Clergy,” and then he sanctioned it. It was this
vacillation that caused the distribution in Paris of the cartoon of
“King Janus.”

The Assembly worked hard in the old riding school near the Tuileries,
and formulated many political changes which did not live and many civil
improvements which were more enduring. Mirabeau used his strength for
order; but popular clubs, the Jacobins and Cordeliers, which took their
names from the old religious buildings in which they met, were
constantly stirring the fiercest passions of the people, and principles
closely akin to anarchy were taught in the press of Danton and
Desmoulins, sincere believers in revolution.

Despairing of achieving peace from within the king entered into a secret
arrangement with several other European rulers, by which they were to
invade France and subdue his subjects for him, and in June, 1791, he
tried to escape from the country with his family and to join his allies.
They stole forth at night from the Tuileries and managed to leave the
city, but they were recognized and sent back, making their way once more
to the palace through a huge and sullen crowd. The clubs clamored for
the king’s deposition and the people rioted in the Field of Mars against
Lafayette and the mayor of Paris, who dispersed them at the command of
the Assembly.

In the autumn the Assembly finished the preparation of the constitution
and disbanded, to be succeeded at once by the Legislative Assembly,
whose leaders, the Girondins, were antiroyalists, but not active
republicans. War was declared against Austria, but distrust and
discontent led the French army to reverses of which the revolutionary
press made the most.

It happened to be on the anniversary of the flight of the royal family
that the Marais and the Faubourg Saint Antoine again gave up their
hordes, who lashed themselves into fury as they pushed their way through
the chamber where the Assembly was sitting, and then surged on to the
Tuileries. Without doubt their intention was murder, but once more, as
when Marie Antoinette fronted them at Versailles, they stopped abashed
before a calm which they could not understand. Louis donned the scarlet
liberty cap which they handed him, the queen allowed a similar “Phrygian
bonnet” to be put upon the dauphin, and the mob stood appeased and even
admiring. Yet only a few days later Lafayette, the defender of the
Assembly, was forced to flee from the country. The Reign of Terror had
begun.

The threatened approach of the foreign enemy was the signal for a final
attack upon the royal family. Early on one August morning the National
Guard and the Swiss Guards massed themselves about the palace to
withstand the assault of the crowd whose ominous roar was heard growing
momentarily louder as it poured westward under the leadership of a
brewer of the Faubourg St. Antoine. The guards gave their life
valiantly, but they were hacked to pieces in the struggle which
Thorwaldsen’s famous Lion commemorates at Lucerne. The victorious rabble
set fire to the palace, which was partly destroyed, and then rushed
before the Assembly, demanding that it dissolve in favor of a National
Convention. In the old riding school the king and queen, their children
and the king’s sister, Madame Elizabeth, took refuge, staying crowded
into a small room while the Assembly discussed the question of what
should be done with them. After three days and nights of extreme
discomfort they were removed to the tower of the ancient Temple.[5]

Paris was the very heart of the Terror. The rabble had learned its power
and unscrupulous leaders permitted brutality and urged violence. A
casual word was enough to cause anybody, man, woman or child, to be
arrested as a suspect and thrown into prison. If he did not die there,
forgotten, he came out only to be taken before a so-called tribunal
which listened to false charges, practically allowed no denial or
protest, declared its victims, in detachments, guilty of “conspiring
against the Republic” and sent them straightway to the guillotine.

This instrument was invented by a physician, Dr. Guillotin, to provide a
humane method of capital punishment. Its victims would feel no pain he
said; only a refreshing coolness! It was set up in various parts of the
city. In the Place Louis XV, then called the Place de la Révolution, the
scaffold was erected near the statue of Liberty to which Mme. Roland
addressed her famous exclamation: “O Liberty, what crimes are committed
in thy name!” Around it gathered a daily crowd, some, the industriously
knitting women described in “A Tale of Two Cities,” who came as to a
vaudeville performance; some, fanatics, equally joyous over the downfall
of hated aristocrats or of plebeian “enemies of the Republic,” others,
monsters who rejoiced in blood, no matter whose. Pitiful, indeed, were
those who came day after day to watch the tumbrils approaching from the
east through the rue Royale from the rue Saint Honoré for some friend
whose appearance here might solve the mystery of an unexplained
disappearance. In a little over two years two thousand and eight hundred
people lost their heads in this place; one thousand three hundred were
slain in six weeks in the Square of the Throne; scores more suffered in
the small square where the Sun King had held his Carrousel, and yet
others in the Grève before the City Hall.

Even such slight semblance of the forms of justice as preceded the ride
to the guillotine was denied to hundreds of people, many of them
innocent of any fault. Almost a thousand of such victims were massacred
in the early days of September following the incarceration of the royal
family. Bands of authorized assassins held pretended court in the
prisons and butchered the helpless prisoners. At the Abbaye, the old
prison of the monastery of Saint Germain-des-Près, the unfortunates were
killed in the square before the church. It was in this prison that Mme.
Roland wrote the “Memoirs” that give us one of the most vivid
contemporary pictures that we have of these awful days. Here, too,
Charlotte Corday spent the days between her murder of Marat and her
passage to the guillotine.

If there is one more moving spot than another in the Paris of to-day it
is the Carmelite Convent near the Palace of the Luxembourg. Behind the
old monastic buildings, almost deserted now, lies one of those
unexpected gardens which make Paris wonderful in surprises. Surrounding
houses shut out the roar from the stone-paved street. In a central pool
a lone duckling, surviving from Easter Day, swims briskly as playful
goldfish nip the webs of his busy feet. It is all as peaceful and as
remote from scenes of either pain or joy as a _château_ garden in the
provinces. Yet here at the garden entrance of the building one hundred
and twenty parish priests were hacked down in cold blood at the command
of a coward who urged on his ruffians through a grated window. The
stains are still red in a tiny room above where the swords of some of
the assassins dripped blood against the plastered wall, and down in the
crypt are piled the skulls of the slaughtered, here crushed by a heavy
blow, there pierced by a bayonet thrust or a pistol bullet.

During this time when the mutual suspicion of the moderate Girondists on
the one hand and of the radical group, Robespierre, Marat and Danton and
their friends, on the other, brought about the arrest of no fewer than
three hundred thousand suspects, all sorts of places were pressed into
service as prisons, even buildings so unsuitable as the College of the
Four Nations (the Institute) and the Palace of the Luxembourg. In the
latter was detained Josephine, who was afterwards to marry Napoleon.

Five months after his capture the king was tried by the Convention,
which had succeeded the Legislature and had formally declared the
Republic, and twenty-four hours after his conviction “Citizen Capet” was
beheaded on the same charge that had brought thousands of his subjects
to the scaffold, that of having “conspired against the Republic.” He
died bravely, his last words silenced by an intentional ruffle of drums.

The queen was removed from the Temple to the Conciergerie where she was
kept in close confinement, never without guards in her room, until she
went through a form of trial which sent her to execution in the October
after Louis’ death. Her courage, so often tested, was superb, and her
composure failed her only when a woman standing on the steps of Saint
Roch to watch the tumbrils pass, spat upon her. Mme. Elizabeth was
guillotined a few days later. The dauphin probably died in the Temple of
ill-treatment, though tales persisted of an escape to the provinces and
even to America. The little princess was the only member of the pathetic
group to live through this time of horror. She married the duke of
Angoulême.

Internal dissensions grew sharper. The extremists made use of the
lawless Paris rabble against the more moderate element and a number of
prominent Girondists were seized and plunged into the Conciergerie only
to leave it to march singing to the guillotine. Marat’s death by the
knife of Charlotte Corday could not stay the turmoil.

There were grades of radicalism even among the extremists. The most
advanced struck at the very basis of social agreement. Religion they
declared out of date and substituted the worship of Reason. The Goddess
of Reason, a dancer, they installed with her satellites in the most
sacred part of Notre Dame, Saint Eustache became the Temple of
Agriculture, Saint Gervais the Temple of Youth, Saint Étienne-du-Mont
the Temple of Filial Piety, Saint Sulpice the Temple of Victory. Other
sacred buildings were put to more practical uses--the Convent of the
Cordeliers became a medical school, the Val-de-Grâce a military
hospital, Saint Séverin a storehouse for powder and saltpeter, Saint
Julien, a storehouse for forage, the Sainte Chapelle a storehouse for
flour.

The observation of Sunday as a day of rest was abolished, and men and
animals died of fatigue. Many churches were closed, for “We want no
other worship than Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” cried the
radicals.

Robespierre of a sudden took a stand against such a display of
irreligion, probably that he might have yet another accusation to bring
against his enemies. To replace the Cult of Reason he established with
grotesque rites a Worship of the Divine Being, acting himself as the
high priest. The ceremony took place in the Tuileries Garden where there
is still standing the stone semicircle built for the occasion.
Robespierre was adorned with a blue velvet coat, a white waistcoat,
yellow breeches and top boots and he carried a symbolic bouquet of
flowers and ears of wheat. After he had made a speech there were games
and the burning of effigies of Atheism, Selfishness and Vice.

Destruction and change reigned. Churches were mutilated if the statue of
some ancient saint wore a crown; the relics of Sainte Geneviève were
burned on the Grève; the Academies were suppressed; no street might be
named after a saint; no aristocrat might keep the _de_ of his name.

The very calendar was altered, the new year beginning on September 22,
1792, which was the first day of the Year I of the Republic.

The division of the year into twelve months was unaltered, but instead
of weeks each month was divided into three decades of ten days each.
This necessitated the addition at the end of the twelfth month of five
extra days so that the new calendar might agree with that used by other
peoples. These days were called by the absurd name, _Sansculottides_.
The months were given names made appropriate by the season or the
customary weather. They were:

October, _Vendémiaire_, “Vintage month”
November, _Brumaire_, “Fog month”
December, _Frimaire_, “Hoar-frost month”
January, _Nivose_, “Snow month”
February, _Pluviose_, “Rain month”
March, _Ventose_, “Wind month”
April, _Germinal_, “Sprout month”
May, _Floréal_, “Flower month”
June, _Prairial_, “Meadow month”
July, _Messidor_, “Harvest month”
August, _Thermidor_, “Heat month”
September, _Fructidor_, “Fruit month.”

On the other hand some excellent constructive work was accomplished by
the foundation of several schools and libraries, of several museums,
among them the Louvre, and of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers,
established in the ancient priory of Saint Martin-des-Champs. Thanks to
the good sense of a private individual many architectural relics of
priceless value were saved from destruction and converted into a museum
in what is now the Palais des Beaux Arts. After the Revolution most of
them were restored whence they had come.

It has been computed that the Revolution cost France 1,002,351 lives. To
make up these figures Robespierre was now killing two hundred people a
week. At last, when he tried to establish his own position with some
show of legality the end of the Terror was in sight. For the moment,
however, it seemed as if there were only increased horror, for the
Parisians took possession of

[Illustration: “THE CONVENTION.” MODEL OF GROUP BY SICARD, TEMPORARILY
PLACED IN THE PANTHEON.]

Robespierre and fought fiercely in his defence against the supporters of
the Convention. It was the Grève, the theater of many wild scenes, which
furnished the battleground. Robespierre and the mob were defeated and
when Robespierre went to the guillotine, with his face, which has been
described as looking like a “cat that had lapped vinegar,” bound up
because of a wound, then the Terror died with him. Thousands of suspects
were released at once from prison, and the city, except for the vicious
element whose worst spirit he incarnated, breathed freely once again.

So strong was the reaction that the royalists hoped for a return of
power, and even marched against the Tuileries where the Convention was
sitting. They were hotly received, however, by the troops of the
Convention, one of whose officers, Bonaparte, killed royalist pretenses
now only to revive imperial aspirations later on.

CHAPTER XIX

PARIS OF NAPOLEON

Napoleon was a very young and unsophisticated Corsican when, in October,
1795, he commanded the troops that protected the Convention, in session
in the Tuileries, against the Paris “sections” and the National Guard
which had deserted to the royalists. He was still young, but a man
rotten with ambition when, after Waterloo, he fled to Paris, and, in the
Palace of the Élysée, signed his abdication of the throne of his adopted
country. In the twenty years intervening he had raised himself to the
highest position in the army, and he had won the confidence of an
unsettled people so that they turned to him for governmental guidance,
and made him consul for ten years, then consul for life and then
emperor.

In the two decades he had done great harm, for, abroad, he had embroiled
in war every country of Europe, and at home he had exhausted France of
her young men and had left the country poorer in territory than when he
was first made consul. Nevertheless, by the inevitable though sometimes
inscrutable law of balance, the evil he had wrought was not without its
compensating good. The countries of Europe learned as never before the
meaning of the feeling of nationality and of the value of coöperation,
while France--which, with her dependencies, Napoleon, at the height of
his career, had spread over three-fifths of the map of western
Europe--had gained self-confidence and stability and had crystallized
the passionate chaos of the Revolutionary belief in the rights of man.

Aside from his military and political genius Napoleon’s character
underwent a striking development as his horizon enlarged. He belonged to
a good but unimportant family which dwelt in a small town. His early
manner of living was of the simplest, yet he grew to a love of splendor
and to a knowledge of its usefulness in impressing the populace and in
buying their approbation.

Paris is connected with Napoleon throughout his whole career. He first
appears when but a lad, brought to the Military School with several
other boys by a priest. He lived in modest lodgings, at one time near
the markets, and at another near the Place des Victoires.

In 1795 the Convention drew up a new constitution by which the
government was vested in a Directory of five members. Even in its early
days Napoleon wrote from Paris to his brother of the change following
upon the turbulent, sordid period of the Revolution. “Luxury, pleasure
and art are reviving here surprisingly,” he said. “Carriages and men of
fashion are all active once more, and the prolonged eclipse of their gay
career seems now like a bad dream.”

In the midst of this agreeable change to which even his natural
taciturnity adapted itself he met and married Josephine, widow of the
Marquis de Beauharnais who had been guillotined under the Terror. They
both registered their ages incorrectly, Napoleon adding and Josephine
subtracting so that the discrepancy between them, she being older, might
appear less. This marriage introduced Napoleon to a class of people into
whose circle he would not otherwise have penetrated on equal terms, and
he learned from them many social lessons which he put to good use later.
Yet Talma, the actor, when accused of having taught Napoleon how to walk
and how to dress the part of emperor, denied that he could have given
instruction to one whose imagination was all-sufficient to make him
imperial in speech and bearing. No descendant of a royal line ever wore
more superb robes than Napoleon the emperor on state occasions, and the
elegance of the throne on which he sat was not less than that of his
predecessors.

Bonaparte had risen slowly in the army because of his open criticism of
his superiors, but by the time of his marriage he had become a general,
and three days after his wedding he was despatched to Italy to meet the
allied Italians and Austrians. Less than two years later the war was
ended by the Peace of Campo Formio. In the two months preceding its
negotiation Bonaparte had won eighteen battles, and had collected enough
indemnity to pay the expenses of his own army, to send a considerable
sum to the French army on the Rhine and a still greater amount to the
government at home.

When it came to making gifts to Paris he had the splendid beneficence of
the successful robber. Indemnities were paid in pictures as well as in
money, bronzes and marbles filled his treasure trains, and the Louvre
was enriched at Italy’s expense. Of the wealth of rare books, of ancient
illuminated manuscripts, of priceless paintings and statuary pillaged
from Italy’s libraries, monasteries, churches and galleries, even from
the Vatican itself, no count has ever been made. With such treasures as
Domenichino’s “Communion of Saint Jerome” and Raphael’s
“Transfiguration” under its roof and with booty arriving from the
northern armies as well as the southern, it is small wonder that the
Louvre became the richest storehouse in the world. After Napoleon’s fall
many of the works of art were returned whence they had come, but enough
were left to permit the great palace to hold its reputation.

In the turmoil of the Revolution it had been impossible for any one
person to please everybody. Napoleon was distrusted by a large body of
the Parisians for the part that he had played in the support of the
Convention in October, 1795, and these people Bonaparte set himself to
conciliate. The Directory, also, was jealous of him. It meant that the
victorious general must tread gently and not seem to have his head
turned by the honors paid to his successes. There were festivals at the
Louvre where his trophies looked down upon the brilliant scene, and at
the Luxembourg, superbly decorated, upon the occasion of his formal
presentation to the Directory of the treaty of Campo Formio. There were
gala performances at the theaters at which the audience rose delightedly
at Napoleon if he happened to be present, and the Institute elected him
a life member. This honor gave him the excuse of wearing a civilian’s
coat, and, although when in Italy he had dined in public like an ancient
king, here he lived quietly on the street whose name was changed to
“Victory Street,” by way of compliment, and showed himself but little in
public, the more to pique the curiosity of the crowd which acclaimed
Josephine as “Our Lady of Victories.”

If he had had any hope of being made a member of the government at this
time, he soon saw that he was not yet popular enough to carry a sudden
change, and that, indeed, it behooved him, as he himself said, to “keep
his glory warm.” To that end he set about arousing public sentiment
against England. He concluded, however, that an invasion was not
expedient at that time, and set sail for Egypt, taking with him the
flower of the French army not only for their usefulness to himself, but
that their lack might embarrass the government if need for them should
arise in his absence.

A curious bit of testimony to the non-religious temper of the time is
the bit of information that though Bonaparte included in his traveling
library the Bible, the Koran and the Vedas, they were catalogued under
the head of “Politics.”

In the next year and a half Napoleon met with both successes and
reverses. He learned that, as he had foreseen, the Directory was
involved in a war with Italy which threatened its financial credit and
its stability, while at home its tyrannical rule was adding daily to its
enemies. Bonaparte saw his chance and determined to leave Egypt, to put
himself at the head of the Italian armies and then to go to Paris, fresh
from the victories which he was sure to win, and to present himself to
the people as their liberator. Leaving his army and setting sail with a
few friends he touched at Corsica where he learned that France was even
riper for his coming than he had supposed, and accordingly abandoned
the Italian plan and went directly home. So hopefully did the people
look to him for relief from their troubles that his whole journey from
Lyons to Paris was one long ovation, while his reception by the
Parisians was of an enthusiasm which betrayed much of their feeling
toward the government and promised much to the man who would bring about
a change.

Napoleon was only too glad to accommodate them. He tested the opinion of
the chiefs of the Directory and skillfully put each man into a position
where he felt forced to support the general. Josephine played her part
in the political intrigue; Lucien Bonaparte, who had been elected
President of the Five Hundred by way of compliment to his brother,
played his. According to pre-arrangement the Council of the Ancients
sitting in the Tuileries decreed that both houses should adjourn at once
to Saint Cloud that they might be undisturbed by the unrest of Paris,
and that Bonaparte be appointed to the command of the Guard of the
Directory, of the National Guard, and of the garrison of Paris, that he
might secure the safety of the Legislature.

Napoleon, who was waiting for the order at his house (not far north of
the present Opéra) rode to the Tuileries and accepted his commission.
The next day, at Saint Cloud, he utilized his popularity with the
soldiers to force the dissolution of the Directory. The result was
gained by trickery but it was nevertheless satisfactory to the people
who went quietly about their affairs in Paris while the excitement was
on at Saint Cloud and expressed themselves afterwards as amply pleased
with the _coup d’état_. A new constitution was adopted. The government
was vested in three consuls, Napoleon, on December 15, 1799, being made
First Consul for ten years. All three consuls were given apartments in
the Tuileries but one of the others had the foresight never to occupy a
building from which he might be ejected by the one who said to his
secretary when he entered it, “Well, Bourienne, here we are at the
Tuileries. Now we must stay here.”

Stay there he did, and the palace saw a more brilliant court than ever
it had sheltered under royalty. Josephine was a woman of taste and tact,
and the building which Marie Antoinette found bare even of necessary
furnishings at the end of her enforced journey from Versailles, the wife
of the First Consul arrayed in elegance and used as a social-political
battle field in which she was as competent as was her husband in the
open. “I win battles,” Napoleon said, “but Josephine wins hearts.” Dress
became elegant once more and not only women but men were as richly
attired as if the Revolution with its plain democratic apparel had not
intervened. Once more men wore knee breeches and silk stockings, and it
was only the aristocrats whose property had been confiscated who
advertised their poverty by wearing trousers, “citizen fashion.”

“Citizen,” as a title, fell into disuse, and once again “Monsieur” and
“Madame” were used as terms of address. At first the consuls were
addressed as “Citoyen premier consul,” “Citoyen second consul,” and
“Citoyen troisième consul.” The clumsiness of these titles induced M. de
Talleyrand to propose as abbreviations “_Hic, Haec, Hoc_.” “These would
perfectly fit the three consuls,” he added; “_Hic_ for the masculine,
Bonaparte; _haec_ for the feminine, Cambacérès, who was a lady’s man,
and _hoc_, the neutral Lebrun, who was a figurehead.”

Napoleon’s acquaintance with other capitals spurred him to emulate their
beauties and his knowledge of engineering helped him to bring them into
being in his own. He opened no fewer than sixty new streets, often
combining in the result civic elegance with the better sanitation whose
desirability he had learned from his care of the health of his armies.
He swept away masses of old houses on the Cité, he tore down the noisome
prisons of the Châtelet and the tower of the Temple and laid out squares
on their sites, he built sidewalks, condemned sewage to sewers instead
of allowing it to flow in streams down the center of the streets,
introduced gas for lighting, and completed the numbering of houses, an
undertaking which had been hanging on for seventy-five years.

He added to the convenience of the Parisians by building new bridges,
two commemorating the battles of Austerlitz and Jena, and one, the only
foot-bridge across the river, called the “Arts” because it leads to the
School of Fine Arts and the Institute which houses the Academy of Fine
Arts. He made living easier by opening abattoirs and increasing the
number of markets. He helped business enterprises by constructing quays
along the Seine and by establishing the Halle aux Vins where wine may be
stored in bond until required by the merchants. This market also
relieved such congestion as had turned the old Roman Thermes into a
storehouse for wine casks. New cemeteries on the outskirts, one of them
the famous Père Lachaise, the names upon whose tombs read like a roster
of the nineteenth century’s great, lessened the crowding of the
graveyards and the resulting danger in the thickly settled parts of the
city.

The First Consul’s methods of reducing to order the disorder of France
grew more and more stifling, his basic principle more and more that of
centralization. Independence of thought as it found expression in
politics, he silenced as he silenced the newspapers and censored all
literary output. He set in action the modern machinery of the University
of France, and he supervised the planning of the entire elementary
school system, so centralized, that it is possible to know in Paris
to-day, as he did, “What every child of France is doing at this moment.”

Unhampered trade and commerce, improved methods of transportation, a
definite financial system headed by the Bank of France, a uniform code
of laws--all these contributions to stability were entered into in
detail by the marvelous visualizing mind whose vision could pierce the
walls of the Tuileries and foresee that battle would be waged at the
spot called Marengo on the map lying on the table.

Early in 1800 war was renewed in Italy and Napoleon in person
superintended the perilous crossing of the Alps. Yet although the news
of the victory at Marengo was celebrated in Paris with cheers and
bonfires, the successes of the French armies in Italy and in Germany did
not secure full popularity to the First Consul in Paris, for on
Christmas Eve, 1800, an attempt was made upon his life as he was driving
through a narrow street near the Tuileries. The bomb which was meant to
kill him fell too far behind his carriage, however, and the only result
of the plot was that he was provided with an excuse for ridding himself
by exile and execution of some two hundred men whom he looked upon as
his enemies.

In 1802 the Peace of Amiens put a temporary stop to the war, and
Napoleon looked to France to reward him for winning glory and territory
for the French flag. Already he was impatient of the ten-year limitation
of his power, and it was his own suggestion that the people should be
asked, “Shall Napoleon Bonaparte be made Consul for life?” This
referendum resulted overwhelmingly in his favor. He was appointed Consul
for life with the right not only to choose his successor but to nominate
his colleagues. Then he encouraged French manufactures, he regulated
taxes, he established art galleries in Paris and the departments,
incidentally banishing the artists’ studios whose establishment had been
allowed in the Louvre and in the side chapels of the church of the
Sorbonne. He offered exemption from military service to students and
other people to whom it would be a hardship, such as the only sons of
widows, he assisted scientific men, among them our own Robert Fulton
who, in 1803, built a steamboat which sank in the Seine. The nobility,
whom Napoleon encouraged to return from exile, were allowed to use their
titles, thereby establishing a precedent for the time when he himself
would be creating dukes. For the moment he declared an aristocracy of
merit by founding the Legion of Honor to which men are eligible by
distinguished service to France in any field. The nation felt a
soundness and a comfort that it had not known for many a long year.

Even the outside nations that had been at war with France thought it
safe to visit it again and Paris was full of travelers who admired the
new rue de Rivoli whose arcades run parallel with the Tuileries gardens.
They found, too, that the old names of before the Revolution were being
adopted once more--the Place de la Revolution became again the Place
Louis XV--and the old etiquettes and elegances of royalty resumed.
Josephine’s aristocratic connections helped to relate the old nobility
with the new court and its “new” members whose fortunes had risen with
their leader’s. Much of the glitter of the Tuileries came from the great
number of soldiers always in evidence, for Napoleon’s suspicious nature
caused him to have a large military escort wherever he went. His
professional zeal prompted the careful review of the troops which he
made every Sunday, and which was one of the “sights” for the tourists of
the day who looked with an approach to awe upon the exact lines of
grenadiers drilled to an astonishing accuracy.

As in the days of Francis I and Louis XIV the classical in art and
language touched the pinnacle of popularity. With the government in the
hands of “Consuls” it was appropriate that the legislative body should
be called the “Tribunate.” The Tribunate held its sessions in the Palais
Royal which had been called Equality Palace during the Revolution and
was now christened Palace of the Tribunate.

It was through the Tribunate that Napoleon manipulated the offer of the
title of Emperor which was made to him in 1804. It came as the crown of
his ambition because it was the recognition of both his military skill
and his political and administrative ability. He expressed his feeling
when he refused the suggestion for an imperial seal of “a lion resting”
and proposed instead “an eagle soaring.”

Success is a heady draught. At the beginning of his career Bonaparte
used to compliment his generals by saying, “_You_ have fought
splendidly.” After a time he said, “_We_ have fought splendidly.” Still
later his comment was, “You must allow that _I_ have won a splendid
battle.”

With the pope Napoleon had made an arrangement, the Concordat, by which
he restored the Roman Catholic as the national church of France. The
papal power was not accepted as in other countries, but the treaty gave
him a hold over the pope so that when the new emperor, to conciliate the
royalists who were all Romanists, summoned him to assist at his
coronation, Pius VII felt himself constrained to obey. He was lodged in
the Pavilion of Flora, the western tip of Henry IV’s south wing of the
Louvre, overlooking the Seine.

Napoleon and Josephine had been married only with the civil ceremony, as
was the custom during the Revolution. On the day before the coronation
Cardinal Fesch, Napoleon’s uncle, married them with the religious
ceremony in the chapel of the Tuileries. The celebration of the
Concordat had been conducted magnificently in Notre Dame, but the
coronation on December 2, 1804, was the most splendid of the many
splendid scenes upon which the Gothic dignity of the cathedral had
looked down. In preparation, many small buildings round about were
pulled down and many streets suppressed or widened. Decorated with
superb tapestries, resounding with the solemn voices of the choir, the
ancient church held a scene brilliant with the uniforms of generals and
the rich costumes of officers of state and of representatives from all
France, aflutter with plumes and glittering with the beauty and the
jewels of the fairest women of the court. It was a scene unique in
history, for never before had a man of the people commanded so superb a
train every one of whom was alert with a personal interest in a ceremony
which meant his own elevation as well as that of the aspirant to the
power of that Charlemagne whose sword and insignia he had caused to be
brought for the occasion.

The pope and his attendants advanced in dignified procession, acclaimed
by the solemn hail of the intoning clergy. Before the high altar the
Holy Father performed the service of consecration, anointing for his
office the man who had been chosen to it by the will of the people.
Then, as he was about to replace the gold laurel wreath of the victor
with a replica of Charlemagne’s crown, Napoleon characteristically
seized it and placed it on his own head.

With his own hands, too, he crowned Josephine. She was dressed like her
husband in flowing robes of purple velvet heavily sown with the golden
bee which Napoleon had copied from those found in the tomb of Childéric,
father of Clovis, and which he had adopted as the imperial emblem
because he wanted one older than the royalist _fleur-de-lis_. Followed
by ladies of the court, her mantle borne by her sisters-in-law, who had
been made princesses, Josephine knelt, weeping, before Napoleon, who
placed her crown lightly on his own head and then laid it upon that of
his empress. David’s famous picture hanging in the Louvre has saved this
moment for posterity.

On the night before the coronation the city was plastered by royalist
wits with placards which read: “Final performance of the French
Revolution. For the benefit of a poor Corsican family.”

A fortnight later the emperor and empress were entertained by the city
fathers at a banquet. The Hôtel de Ville had been gorgeously done over
for the coronation, the throne room being hung with red velvet sown with
the imperial bee. On the return of the distinguished guests to the
Tuileries the streets were illuminated, and on the Cité a display of
fireworks lighted up the ancient buildings.

The “poor Corsican family” did indeed profit by the successes of its
prosperous member. After the coronation the imperial court far exceeded
in elegance the court of the Consulate. Many of the ancient
offices--Grand Almoner, Grand Marshal, Grand Chamberlain--were revived
from the days of the Bourbons; many of them, indeed, were held by
members of the old nobility; and it was one of Louis XVI’s former
ambassadors to Russia who held the post of Master of Ceremonies,
instructing, rehearsing

[Illustration: RUE DE RIVOLI, LAID OUT BY NAPOLEON IN 1802.]

and laying down the laws of etiquette for public functions according to
the customs of the old _régîme_.

Soon after the coronation Paris was again deserted of its foreign
tourists for once again war was imminent. Napoleon was so sure of the
success of his proposed invasion of England that he supplied himself
with gold medals inscribed “Struck at London in 1804.” Nelson’s victory
at Trafalgar put an end to the usefulness of these medals, and the great
fighter turned his attention to other foes than the English. Six weeks
later he defeated the combined forces of Russia and Austria at
Austerlitz and sent to Paris one thousand two hundred captured cannon
which were melted down to make the column which stands to-day in the
Place Vendôme.

Events of the campaign are pictured in relief on the bronze plates which
wind in a spiral around the Vendôme column. On the top stood a statue of
Napoleon dressed in a toga according to the classic fashion of the
moment. At the Restoration in 1814 this statue was taken down and its
metal used for the making of a new statue of Henry IV on the Pont Neuf,
the former statue having been destroyed during the Revolution. For
seventeen years the white flag of the Bourbons floated from the Vendôme
column, and then Louis Philippe substituted a statue of Napoleon in
campaign uniform. For thirty-two years this figure looked down the rue
Castiglione to the Tuileries gardens, and then Napoleon III replaced it
by a Napoleon once more in classic dress. He did not stand long,
however, for in the troubles of 1871 the Communards pulled down the
whole column. Four years later it was reërected and is now topped by
Napoleon in his imperial robes.

The Place Vendôme in which the column stands, and the arcaded rue
Castiglione which leads into it from the similarly arcaded rue de
Rivoli, are, like the Place des Victoires, guarded against change by a
municipal law. In the case of the squares, each laid out as a unit, it
is easily seen that any change in the façades would do serious injury to
the harmony of the whole. The arcades of the rue Castiglione have their
ornamental value in furnishing an approach to the Place Vendôme. To a
dispassionate eye, however, the chimney-pots and skylights of the rue de
Rivoli so overbalance by their ugliness the symmetry of the arcades
below that the impertinent traveler feels moved to ask for an amendment
to the law as far as this street is concerned. The same ugly roofs mar
the otherwise beautiful addition which Napoleon made to the Louvre.

In 1806 Napoleon reconstructed the German Empire and secured the
dependence of Naples and the Netherlands upon himself by placing his
brothers on their thrones, and of other sections of Italy by granting
their government to nineteen dukes of his own creation. Then followed
the battles of Jena, Eylau, and Friedland which humbled Prussia, and the
festivals which welcomed the conqueror to Paris surpassed in brilliancy
any that had gone before. Two of the triumphal arches which beautify
Paris were raised to commemorate these victories. The Triumphal Arch of
the Carrousel, a reduced copy of the arch of Septimius Severus in Rome,
was built as an entrance to the Tuileries from the small square of the
Carrousel. It must be remembered that in the early nineteenth century
the whole of the north wing of the Louvre was non-existent, its site
being occupied by a tangle of small streets and mean houses, whose
destruction was merely entered upon when Napoleon I began to build the
section of the palace running east from the rue de Rivoli end of the
Tuileries toward the ancient quadrangle of the Louvre. Upon the top of
the arch was placed the bronze Quadriga from Saint Mark’s in Venice
which Bonaparte sent home after his first Italian campaign. After
Napoleon’s fall the horses were sent back to Italy and replaced on the
arch by a modern quadriga.

The Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, a mammoth construction begun by
Napoleon on the crest of a slope approached by twelve broad avenues, is
adorned with historical groups and bas-reliefs which repay a close
examination, but the impressiveness of the monument rests in its
dominating position which makes it one of the focal points in a
panoramic view of the city. It is a majestic finish to the vista of the
Champs Élysées seen from the Place de la Concorde. Although many
different forms of decoration have been suggested for the top of the
arch, and some have even been tried by models, none has been found
satisfactory, and the great mass remains incomplete.

Though France had returned from its Revolutionary wanderings and once
again had an established religion, and though the Emperor went to mass
as regularly as his army duties permitted, there was practically no
building of new churches by Napoleon. It was a sufficient task to repair
the mutilations of the Revolution. The church of Sainte Geneviève--the
Pantheon--was consecrated in the early years of the Consulate. In 1806
the construction of the Madeleine, which had been begun some sixty years
before, was renewed, not, however, as a church, but as a Temple of
Glory. Before it was finished the Restoration had come and had turned it
into a church again.

[Illustration: TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF THE CARROUSEL.]

[Illustration: TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF THE STAR.]

The Madeleine shows the classic influence, as does the Bourse, whose
heavy columns, while decorative, do not seem to be especially
appropriate for an Exchange. Victor Hugo scornfully says that so far as
any apparent adaptation to its purpose is to be seen the Bourse might be
a king’s palace, a House of Commons, a city hall, a college, a riding
school, an academy, a storehouse, a court house, a museum, barracks, a
tomb, a temple or a theater.

And it might!

The Bourse makes itself known at some distance by the noise which rises
from its _coulisses_ or “wings”--our “curb”--where a constant fury of
chatter is going on.

The pillared façade on the Seine side of the present Palace of Deputies
was designed to harmonize with the façade of the Madeleine at the
northern end of the rue Royale. This front, conspicuous from the Place
de la Concorde, is not the real front of the Palais Bourbon whose main
entrance is on the rue de l’Université.

While anything in Europe remained apart from his control Napoleon was
not happy, so after the Peace of Tilsit he turned his attention to the
south once more. Portugal yielded to him through sheer terror. He
compelled the abdication of the king of Spain, but here England
interfered, and the Peninsular War brought him its reverses. Renewed
war with Austria, however, added the battle of Wagram to the list of the
great fighter’s victories. He was at the summit of his power and his
very successes made him increasingly conscious that he had no son to
inherit the fruits of his life work. He realized fully that Josephine’s
tact and diplomacy had won him many a bloodless victory, and he had an
almost superstitious belief that she brought him luck. However, ambition
conquered affection. Eugène Beauharnais, Josephine’s son, was compelled
to approve before the Senate the divorce which the pope would not
confirm but which the clergy of Paris were forced to grant. Josephine,
though stricken with grief, bore herself bravely before the court during
her last evening at the Tuileries where the divorce was pronounced. She
withdrew to Malmaison, some six miles out of the city, where she died in
1814, Napoleon’s name the last word on her lips.

Failing to arrange a Russian match Napoleon married Marie Louise of
Austria, first by proxy in Vienna, then by a civil ceremony after the
bride reached France, and lastly by the religious ceremony in the great
hall of the Louvre. Cardinal Fesch gave the benediction, for the new
marriage was not approved at Rome. Indeed, thirteen of the cardinals
refused to be present at the ceremony and were thereafter called the
“black cardinals” because they were forbidden by the emperor to wear
their red robes.

Marie Louise came to Paris a frightened girl, for Napoleon had no
reputation for gentleness, but she seems to have found him endurable. It
is even related that at one time when he caught her experimenting with
the making of an omelette he gave yet one more instance of his
omniscience by playfully teaching her how to prepare it. That he dropped
it on the floor would seem to prove that Jove occasionally nods.

In the following March enthusiastic crowds about the Tuileries listened
anxiously for the cannon which should announce by twenty-one reports the
birth of a daughter to the empress, by one hundred and one the coming of
a son. Their joy rose to frenzy when the twenty-second boom announced an
heir who received the title of the King of Rome, and for days the city
was given over to rejoicing. Napoleon himself told the news to Josephine
in a letter dated

Paris, March 22, 1811

My dear,

I have your letter. I thank you for it. My son is fat, and in
excellent health. I trust he may continue to improve. He has my
chest, my mouth and my eyes. I hope he will fulfill his destiny.

Josephine, who was staying at Evreux, commanded a festival to be held
in the town, and when she returned to Malmaison Napoleon secretly had
the baby sent to the country for her to see.

Yet it soon seemed as if the loss of Josephine had, indeed, deprived
Napoleon of his good fortune. He quarreled with the pope and even kept
him a prisoner in the palace of Fontainebleau. This quarrel alienated
Catholic Frenchmen, and they included practically all those with Bourbon
leanings. To punish Russia for not agreeing to his plan for humiliating
England by cutting off its trade with the continent he entered the
country in the invasion which destroyed his army by a death more bitter
than that encountered in battle.

During his fearful retreat from Moscow two adventurers almost succeeded
in bringing about a _coup d’état_ in Paris by reading to a body of the
soldiers a proclamation purporting to be from the Senate, and by
capturing the Prefect of Police and the City Hall. The news reached
Napoleon and when he realized that so much had been accomplished without
any outcry being made for a continuance of the Napoleonic line, he left
the army and went post haste to the city, where he found hostile
placards constantly being posted. His presence quieted the ominous
disturbance, and he drove impressively with the empress to the Senate
in a glassed carriage drawn by cream-colored horses, and there and
elsewhere spread falsely reassuring reports minimizing the losses in
Russia. Very soon, however, the truth carried mourning to almost every
home in France, and with it hatred of the man who had brought it to
pass.

In January, 1813, the Emperor left once more for the front after
appointing Marie Louise as regent and confiding her and the King of Rome
to the care of the National Guard assembled before the Tuileries.

There is no doubt that the genius that had sent Napoleon to victory
after victory with almost clairvoyant intelligence was now failing. He
lacked decision and his generals were not trained to help him. He made
blunder after blunder coldly disheartening to sorrowful France. “Have
the people of Paris gone crazy?” he cried angrily when he heard that
public prayers were being offered for the success of the campaign.

Prayers were needed. The “army of boys,” all that Napoleon could raise
after the disastrous retreat from Moscow, was defeated at Leipsic late
in 1813, and the allies--England, Russia, Prussia, Sweden and
Austria--pressed upon Paris both from the north and the south. The city
was no longer guarded by defensible walls and her reliance could be only
in her garrison of about twenty-five thousand men. Marie Louise, the
regent, fled from the city on March 29, 1814, and on the next day
Napoleon left Fontainebleau at the head of a few cavalry to lend his
aid, but found that the city already had yielded. On the thirty-first
the King of Prussia and the Czar entered Paris on the north by the
faubourg Saint Martin, finding a welcome from the white-cockaded
royalists. Within three weeks Napoleon had abdicated and had started for
his modest throne on the island of Elba, and a fortnight later Louis
XVIII, brother of Louis XVI, made his formal entry. The people, trained
to Napoleon’s magnificence, looked coldly on the fat, plainly dressed
elderly man who drove to the Tuileries in a carriage belonging to his
predecessor, whose arms had been badly erased and imperfectly covered by
those of the Bourbons.

Paris was glad to be rid of the man it had come to look upon as a
vampire draining the strength of France to feed his personal ambition,
yet the city by no means enjoyed the presence of the allies. They
insisted on the return to Italy of many of the art treasures on which
the Parisians had come to look with the pride of possession. There were
constant quarrels of citizens with the invading officers and the
townsfolk were nettled at the frank curiosity with which they and their

[Illustration: NAPOLEON’S TOMB.]

city were scrutinized by the many travelers of all nations who poured in
immediately. It was then that a rope was laid about the neck of Napoleon
on the Vendôme column and he was lowered to the ground to be replaced by
the Bourbon flag.

Less than a year afterwards Paris was aquiver over the report that the
chained lion had broken loose and was advancing to the city in the march
which he declared at Saint Helena was the happiest period of his life.
The fickle peasants who had pursued him out of the country so that he
had had to disguise himself as a white-cockaded postboy to escape them,
now received him joyfully. At his approach Louis fled from the
Tuileries, but Napoleon did not occupy the palace. It was at the palace
of the Élysée that he worked out his plans against the allies, and it
was there that he signed his abdication when the defeat at Waterloo put
an end to the Hundred Days. Three days later he went to Malmaison, and
he never saw Paris again. He died in 1821 at Saint Helena. In December,
1840, Louis Philippe caused his remains to be brought to Paris where
they were borne beneath the completed Arch of the Star and down the
Champs Élysées, and were laid under the Dome of the Invalides that the
request of his will might be granted: “I desire that my ashes repose on
the banks of the Seine among the French people whom I have so greatly
loved.”

CHAPTER XX

PARIS OF THE LESSER REVOLUTIONS

It was the 25th of June, 1815, when Napoleon left Paris for the last
time. On July 7 the allies entered the city after some unimportant
skirmishing on the outskirts, and on the next day Louis XVIII again took
up his residence in the Tuileries. The Second Restoration of the
Bourbons had come to pass.

Louis found himself received with even less enthusiasm than on his first
appearance, and his people loved him less and less during the nine years
of his reign. He confirmed his earlier charter establishing personal and
religious freedom and equality before the law and the freedom of the
press. He fell more and more, however, under the influence of the
conservative element, with the result that he permitted a savage
persecution of the Bonapartists, let education come under sectarian
control, and imposed on the laboring classes a narrow ecclesiasticism
which aroused their ire. When he was forced by Russia, Austria and
Prussia to fight in support of the tyrannical king of Spain, Ferdinand
VII, against a democratic movement, he placed the Bourbons of the
Restoration on record as sympathetic with autocracy.

Paris was in no peaceful state. There were many of Napoleon’s old
soldiers in town who were constantly quarreling with the monarchists in
restaurants and theaters. An assassin killed the Duke of Berry, the son
of Louis’ brother who succeeded him as Charles X. The execution for
political conspiracy of four young men known as the “four sergeants of
La Rochelle” made a great stir among the lower classes of the city,
always an inflammable element.

The town was forced, also, to pay her share of the war indemnity and of
the support of the garrisons with which the allies saddled the frontier
and the chief cities. One hundred twenty-five thousand dollars a day was
the sum which Paris expended in hospitality toward her very unwelcome
guests. Needless to say there was not much ready money for improving the
city.

One reverent monument, the Chapelle Expiatoire, the king did begin to
the memory of his brother. The bodies of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
had been buried in the graveyard behind the Madeleine. Their remains
were removed to Saint Denis in 1815, but the small domed chapel, hemmed
in to-day by busy Paris streets, rises in remembrance of them and
sanctifies the one great grave before it in which lie the bodies of two
thousand unrecorded victims of the Revolution, while the barrier on
right and left is formed by the tombs of the seven hundred Swiss guards
slain in defense of their sovereigns when the mob stormed the Tuileries
on the tenth of August, 1792.

The renewed religious feeling introduced by the royalists expressed
itself in the erection of two churches, Saint Vincent-de-Paul and Our
Lady of Loretto, both in the style of Latin basilicas, though Saint
Vincent’s is made majestic by two square towers not unlike those on
Saint Sulpice. The approach to Saint Vincent’s is by two semicircular
inclined planes, divided by a flight of steps--a handsome entrance.
There are but few at all like it in all Paris. More interesting than the
architecture of these churches is their position, on the north and just
within the “exterior boulevards” which mark Louis XVI’s wall. Population
must have increased heavily in this district to call for two churches of
large size and so near together. Many of the fifty-five new streets laid
out in this reign must have been in this section.

An engraving of 1822 shows that the Champs Élysées had become a field
for the performances of mountebanks, jugglers, rope-walkers,
stilt-walkers, and wandering musicians.

Louis died unlamented. He had been fat when first he entered the
Tuileries; his manner of life was not one calculated to reduce adipose
tissue. His subjects joked about his habits by punning upon his name,
calling Louis _Dixhuit_ (Louis XVIII) _Louis des Huitres_ (Oyster
Louis). He was the last king to die in Paris or even in France, and the
last to be buried with his kind in Saint Denis.

That Charles X, Louis’ brother, was prepared to follow that royal custom
when the time came seems proven by his immediate return to the
traditions of his ancestors. He was consecrated and crowned in the
cathedral at Rheims which had witnessed the coronation of Clovis and
that of every French king since Philip Augustus in the twelfth century.
Like the Grand Monarque he “touched for the king’s evil,” believed in
the divine right of kings, and thought himself allwise in the conduct of
government and his people all-foolish. He recalled the Jesuits whom
Louis XV had banished and mulcted the masses to make restitution to the
royalists whose property had been confiscated when they fled from
Revolutionary France.

Paris forgot that she had loved him in his gay and spendthrift youth,
forgot the passing amusement of his coronation festivities in the Place
du Carrousel, forgot that his armies were winning some successes along
the Mediterranean, forgot everything but hatred when he outraged her
confidence by disbanding the National Guard, on whose loyalty and
prudence the whole city relied.

When he tried to force through the legislature a bill to muzzle the
press, to censor all other publications and to forbid freedom of speech
in the universities, that body flatly refused to follow his
instructions. So determined was Charles to have his own way that this
rebuff and the victories of the liberals in the election of 1830 taught
him no lesson, and on July 26 of that year he issued a proclamation
which brought about a second Revolution. He declared the new liberal
legislature dissolved and summoned another to be chosen by the votes of
property-holders only. He appointed a Council of State from his own
sympathizers, and he abolished the freedom of the press. Thiers’ paper,
the _National_, and the _Courrier_ issued a prompt protest against these
tyrannical Ordinances, and were as promptly suppressed. Crowds gathered
before the newspaper offices where Thiers showed the understanding and
the grasp of the situation which later made him prime minister under
Louis Philippe and first president of the Third Republic.

It was not only the excitable classes--the right bank artisans and the
left bank students--always ready for a fight, who engaged in this
attempt to overthrow the king; the whole city took part, either by
fighting or by taking into their houses fugitives hard pressed by the
royal troops. The city was heavily garrisoned and the citizens naturally
were at a disadvantage against well-trained, well-equipped regulars.
They fought, however, with the ingenuity and the joyousness which always
has marked the Parisian when he seized such opportunities. The narrowest
streets in the old sections--just north of the City Hall around the
church of Saint Merri, near the markets, and on the Cité--were
barricaded and served for three days as a bloody battleground. On the
twenty-eighth the bell on the City Hall rang out its summons and the
republican tricolor side by side with the black flag of death told the
crowd better than words for what they were to contend. Until the
afternoon there was no fiercer struggle than here and on the near-by
bridge to the Cité, where a youth, planting the tricolor on the top of
the middle arch, was shot, crying as he fell, “My name is Arcole! Avenge
my death!” At least his death is remembered, for the bridge still bears
his name, Arcole.

Encouraged by their successes of the day, the people on the next morning
marched to the Louvre where they fought and fell and were buried by
hundreds beneath Perrault’s colonnade. They poured through the Tuileries
as in the days of the Revolution, and they carried the throne from the
Throne Room to the Place de la Bastille where they burned it as a symbol
of tyranny. By way of expressing their feeling for the dignitaries of
the church they sacked the archbishop’s palace beside Notre Dame on
whose towers the tricolor floated. When night fell twenty-four hours
later at least five thousand Parisians had fallen in what they called,
nevertheless, the Three ‘Glorious’ Days of July. Paris and Paris alone
had achieved a revolution for all France.

To commemorate the dead the July Column, Liberty crowned, was raised on
the site of the Bastille, and beneath it in two huge vaults lie scores
upon scores of the victims of the overthrow.

The success of the revolution was a hint which even Charles could
understand. He had been at Saint Cloud during the outbreak. He never
went back to Paris. After his abdication he went to England and died in
Austria six years later.

The political revolution was not the only sudden change of the year
1830. On the 25th of February occurred the “Battle of Hernani” when
Victor Hugo’s famous play in which he embodied the principles of the new
“romantic” school of writing, had its first performance. The classicists
rose with howls and hisses at the very first line, in which was an
infringement of classical rules, and the evening passed tempestuously,
even with an interchange of blows. The piece was allowed other hearings,
however, and at last the novelty became no longer a novelty but the
fashion.

For all her desire for a republican form of government, France, during
the great Revolution, had not been so fortunate in her leaders that she
was prepared now to elevate an ordinary citizen to the headship, the
more as there was no man of especial distinction with the exception of
the too-aged Lafayette. It was he who, in an interview with Louis
Philippe, a member of the Orleans branch of the royal house, expressed
the popular wish for “a throne surrounded by republican institutions.”

Louis Philippe, who was descended from a younger brother of Louis
XIV,[6] had served in the Revolutionary army, but had become entangled
in a conspiracy which made it prudent for him to join his royalist
friends in England. The Restoration (1814) permitted his return and he
had long lived the life of a quiet _bourgeois_ dwelling in a Paris
suburb, and educating his children in the public schools. He was
generally liked and it needed but small artificial stimulation to start
a boom for his candidacy. On the night of the 30th of July he walked in
from Neuilly and went to the Palais Royal. Three days later Lafayette
presented him to the still armed and still murmuring crowds before the
City Hall, and on the ninth of August the Chamber of Deputies declared
him king not “of France” but “of the French” to emphasize in his title
his summons from the people.

In England during this part of the nineteenth century there was much
popular upheaval over the suffrage and the revolution of industry by the
introduction of machinery. France was equally disturbed, but over
political problems. Louis Philippe apparently had been the choice of the
people, he wore the tricolor and sang the “Marseillaise” beating
time for the crowd to follow, and the provisions of his government
were liberal. Yet he received cordial support only from the
Constitutionalists. He was opposed by the Bonapartists, by the
Legitimists, who wanted a representative of the Bourbons, and by the
Republicans who urged a government like America’s. To the latter
belonged the Paris rabble and they never let pass an opportunity to stir
up trouble for the king. Only a year after his accession when the
Legitimists were holding a service in memory of the Duke of Berry in the
church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois the mob entered the building and
seized the communion plate, the

[Illustration: THE BOURSE.

See page 331.]

[Illustration: CHURCH OF THE MADELEINE.

See page 331.]

crucifix and the priests’ vestments which they threw into the river as
they crossed the bridge to the Cité where they first sacked and then
destroyed the archbishop’s palace.[7] Against this demonstration
good-hearted Louis turned the firemen’s hose instead of the soldier’s
bayonets.

This riot was but one of many which marked the first ten years of Louis
Philippe’s reign. That of the fifth and sixth of June, 1832, is well
known because Victor Hugo described it in “Les Misérables.” The king’s
life was attempted more than once, and it could have been small comfort
to him to feel that his assassination was not undertaken for personal
reasons but because he represented a hated party. It is not to be
wondered at that the “Citizen King” ceased to beat time while the crowd
sang the “Marseillaise,” and that he told an English friend who urged
him to save his voice in the open air, “Don’t be concerned. It’s a long
time since I did more than move my lips.”

Hated by the Republican rabble the king was no less shunned by his own
class, the nobility of the left bank _faubourg_ Saint Germain. They were
so unwilling to frequent a court made up of worthy but uninteresting
_bourgeois_ that Louis is said to have remarked that it was easier for
him to get his English friends from across the Channel to dine with him
at the Tuileries than his French friends from across the Seine.

Added to the other troubles of this time was the cholera which swept
Europe in 1832. Paris looked on it as something of a joke when it first
broke out, several maskers at a ball impersonating Cholera in grisly
ugliness. When some fifty dancers were attacked by the disease during
the evening the seriousness of the situation began to be understood.
Before it left the city twenty thousand people had died.

Such fearful mortality was enough to give matter for thought to any
ruler, and enough was known then about sanitation to cause Louis to set
to work clearing out some of the countless narrow streets with their
unwholesome houses with which the older parts of the city still
abounded, though fifty-five new streets, many of them erasing former
ones, had been opened during the Restoration. The Place du Trône, now
the Place de la Nation was completed. The handsome columns, erected just
before the Revolution, mark the city’s eastern boundary. They are
surmounted by statues of Philip Augustus and Saint Louis.

Before Louis Philippe’s reign ended there were some eleven hundred
streets within the city limits, and the extension and improvement of the
lighting system increased their safety, while they were made beautiful
by many fountains. Of these the best known is that in memory of Molière.
It is erected opposite the house in which the great dramatist died, and
was made possible by one of those public subscriptions by which the
French more than any other people express the gratitude of the masses
for a genius which has given them pleasure.

The water service for domestic use was poor, water-carriers bringing
water in barrels to subscribers and selling it in the street.

The present fountains of the Place de la Concorde are also of this
period, and the obelisk of Luxor which the pacha of Egypt presented to
the king of France, was brought from its place before the great temple
of ancient Thebes where it had stood for three thousand years to make
the central ornament of the same huge square.

The present fortifications of Paris date from this reign. Thiers built
them during his ministry and some thirty-odd years later he had the
satisfaction of knowing that it was through his efforts that the city
was able to hold out for nearly five months against the Prussians.

Of new works for the embellishment of the city Louis Philippe began but
few. The one church of interest was twin-spired Sainte Clotilde, an
accurate reproduction of thirteenth and fourteenth century Gothic.
Though initiating little the king finished several important
undertakings of his predecessors. One of these was the Palais des Beaux
Arts where many American students now study art; another was the church
of the Madeleine, and still another the Arc de Triumphe de l’Étoile.
Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle were carefully restored to their
original beauty by the skillful architect and antiquarian,
Viollet-le-Duc, and the Palais de Justice was enlarged. A further
example of the preservation of old buildings for the benefit of the
people was the conversion of the Hôtel Cluny into a museum of medieval
domestic life, and of the adjoining Thermes of the Roman palace into a
repository of Gallo-Roman relics.

With bridges and railroads increasing the public comfort, a vigorous
body of writers adding to the literary reputation of Paris, and the
discovery of Daguerre introducing to the world photography whose
developments have revolutionized many occupations and made possible many
others, the eighteen years of Louis’ reign was a rich period. It was
increasingly turbulent, however, as each riot provoked severe rulings in
an effort to prevent further trouble, and each access of severity
enraged the mob more than ever. The proletariat had no vote, and the
suffrage advances across the Channel served only to irritate and make
the French poor feel poorer than ever both in property and in political
rights.

The crisis came (in 1848) as often happens, over a comparatively small
matter. The king forbade a banquet of his opponents, and the mob seized
upon the refusal as an excuse to fight. The National Guards should have
served as a buffer between the royal garrison and the rabble, but the
rabble stole their guns and the worthy _bourgeois_ of the Guards were of
small service to anybody. There was fighting here and there all over the
city, but chiefly in the neighborhood of the boulevard of the Temple.
There seems to have been no especial reason in these skirmishes; the
coatless fought the wearers of coats without stopping to inquire their
political belief. Huge crowds collected along the rue de Rivoli and
along the quay, hemming into the Place du Carrousel another throng
packed almost to inmovability. His wife and daughters watching him
anxiously from the windows, the king, now a man of seventy-five, came
from the Tuileries, mounted a horse and moved slowly through the press.
Only an occasional voice cried “Long live the king,” and he soon
returned to the palace. In a few minutes word flew from mouth to mouth
that Louis Philippe had abdicated. It was true. An hour and a half later
he left the Tuileries never to return.

With him went his family, leaving behind them all their personal
belongings. At once a horde of roughs took possession of the palace,
slashing pictures, breaking furniture, breakfasting in the royal dining
room, and sending out to buy a better quality than the king’s coffee
which they drank in exquisite Sèvres cups taken out through the broken
glass of a locked cabinet. The royal cellars were emptied promptly. The
princesses’ dresses adorned the sweethearts of the most persistent
fighters. Again, as in 1830, the throne went up in smoke after every
rascal in town had had a chance to test the softness of its cushions.

At the Hôtel de Ville the second Republic was proclaimed, the poet
Lamartine at its head for the money there was in it, it is said. A minor
actor who was in a general’s costume at a dress rehearsal and who put
his head out of a theater window to see the cause of the uproar in the
street, was haled forth, set upon a horse, escorted to the City Hall and
introduced to the nondescript and self-appointed members of the
provisional government there gathered as “governor of the Hôtel de
Ville.” They accepted him without question and Lamartine confirmed him
in his office the next day!

A republican government pure and simple, however, did not satisfy a
large part of the citizens of Paris who were extreme socialists and
demanded that the state provide work for everybody. So insistent were
they that Lamartine established National Workshops and the actual
development of the theory proved more convincing than any possible
argument. Thousands of people were soon enrolled. Many proved idlers,
many were ignorant, much of the output was poor; yet, such as it was, it
seriously disorganized trade and so flooded the market that prices went
down and wages were forced to follow. The men who received $1.00 a day
at first were reduced in a few months to $1.20 a week, while the
government was saddled with a debt of $3,000,000 and with hundreds of
citizens less than ever able to take care of themselves after this
period of what was practically living on charity. The solid citizens
demanded an immediate change, the government insisted that a larger
number of the beneficiaries should either seek other work or go into the
army. Again Paris was a battlefield during three days when many of the
streets were literally ankle-deep in blood. The Parisians could build a
barricade right dexterously by this time and _bourgeois_ and rabble
killed each other heartily in the most pitiable sort of civil war.
Archbishop Affre, who went in person to the faubourg Saint Antoine to
use his influence with the fighters, was mortally wounded. His torn and
blood-stained garments are preserved in the sacristy of Notre Dame.

Early in July an open-air mass in memory of the victims was solemnized
at the foot of the obelisk, but it did not mean that peace was
established, and for a few months more the country quarreled on under
the provisional government until Louis Napoleon was elected president of
the Republic in December, 1848.

CHAPTER XXI

PARIS OF LOUIS NAPOLEON

Louis Napoleon[8] was the son of Hortense, Josephine’s daughter, who had
been forced to marry Napoleon I’s brother, Louis, who disliked her as
much as she did him. By the time of Napoleon’s downfall they were
divorced and young Louis’ life from his sixth to his twenty-first year
was one of constant change as he traveled from one place to another with
his mother who was not welcomed as a resident of their towns by many
small officials afraid of their political heads. This long period spent
out of the country of his birth gave Louis the accent which provoked the
passage at arms with Bismarck. Wishing to be polite to the great German
he remarked blandly, “I never have heard a stranger speak French as you
do;” to which Bismarck promptly responded, “I never have heard a
Frenchman speak French as you do.”

When a man grown Louis Napoleon became a soldier of fortune. He fought
against the pope; he tried to get up a revolution for his own benefit in
the garrison at Strasburg; he entered France from the sea near
Boulogne, again with no success; he was captured and imprisoned for six
years, escaping in the clothes of a workman. It was only after the
abdication of Louis Philippe that he dared to appear in Paris. While he
was made a member of the Constituent Assembly, and was wire-pulling to
secure his election to the presidency he was so poor that a street
vender, a woman well-known because of her skill in getting about on two
wooden legs, offered him money from her savings. When his star was in
the ascendant he offered her an annuity. She refused it, saying that he
wouldn’t take her money and so she wouldn’t take his. Béranger, the
“people’s poet,” and Victor Hugo believed in Bonaparte and used their
influence in his behalf.

The election in 1848 put an end to Louis’ poverty but his appetite for
power grew by what it fed on. The new constitution decreed that a
president could not be a candidate for reëlection until four years had
elapsed after his first term of office. This arrangement did not suit
Louis’s ambition and in 1851 he followed the great Napoleon’s example in
executing a _coup d’état_. It meant more barricades and more slaughter
in the Paris streets, but it disposed of his enemies and left him free
to secure yet another constitution which lengthened the president’s term
to ten years. As with the great Napoleon, the people elected him
emperor for life only a year later. He took the title of Napoleon III.

The cholera ravaged France for many months during the early part of
Louis Napoleon’s presidency. On one day there were six hundred and
eighty deaths in Paris alone. Yet neither the epidemic nor republican
simplicity prevented many elaborate public functions. In the autumn of
1848 the Palais Bourbon was the scene of many balls with a somewhat
motley array of guests. It was currently reported in the city that
before every ball there was such a washing and starching as never had
been known before in the northern and eastern parts of the city, and
that the tradesmen of those sections were accustomed to say with an air
of pride, “No, we have nothing in ladies’ white kid gloves to-day except
in small sizes--seven and under.”

In 1849 on the anniversary of the great Napoleon’s death, a memorial
mass was solemnized at the Invalides, the old uniforms of the veterans
adding their pathos to the impressive scene as the officers knelt while
Louis visited the tomb of his illustrious predecessor. On the first
anniversary of Louis’ election a splendid banquet at the Hôtel de Ville
expressed the people’s satisfaction. Three years later, on New Year’s
Day, the guns of the Invalides fired ten shots for every million of
votes that assured Louis’ position for ten years more. A Te Deum of
gratitude was sung at Notre Dame, the choir chanting “_Domine, salvum
fac praesidentem nostrum Napoleonem_.” The religious celebration was
followed by a ball given by the Prefect of the Seine at the Hôtel de
Ville.

Realizing that the chances of success in Paris upheavals usually were
with the side which the army favored Louis did his best to make himself
popular with the soldiers. In the spring of this same year a series of
brilliant festivals gave them recognition--a distribution of flags on
the Field of Mars, a ball in honor of the army, a banquet at the
Tuileries to the officers, and a banquet of twenty-four hundred covers
to the students of the Military School.

The proclamation of the empire was hailed in Paris with enthusiastic
demonstrations. The citizens gave Bonaparte an almost solid support
(208,615 votes out of 270,710), decorated the city with such
inscriptions as “Ave Cæsar Imperator,” and with elaborate illuminations.
Napoleon’s entry into the city was a spectacle such as the Parisians
always have loved. Heading a splendid array of soldiers he rode into
town from Saint Cloud, ten miles out, and, hailed by the guns of all
Paris, he entered the city under the Arc de Triumphe de l’Étoile, and
then went down the Champs Élysées to the Tuileries. The new emperor’s
decision to have no formal coronation but to give its cost, $50,000, to
hospitals and orphanages throughout France, warmly endeared him to his
subjects.

The Exposition of 1855 was a drawing card for Paris. By the side of the
monumental affairs into which these exhibits have grown the arrangements
seem simplicity itself. Yet Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the royal
children spent a happy week visiting the Palais de l’Industrie and being
entertained by plays at Saint Cloud, fireworks and a ball at Versailles,
a ball at the City Hall, a review of troops on the Field of Mars. When
the queen drove to visit Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle the
decorated streets were lined with enthusiastic crowds.

Like his great predecessor Napoleon III’s vision saw a noble Paris, and
at once he set about improvements which would beautify the city, give
work to the poor, make the _bourgeois_ forget his limitation of their
power in the municipality, and compensate the suburbs now included
within the city limits for the increase of their taxes.

Paris no longer had a mayor, but as to-day, two prefects, one “of the
Seine” and the other “of police.” Haussmann, the prefect of the Seine,
was a man amply fitted to carry out the emperor’s plans, and it is to
him that the city owes much of the openness which is one of her
greatest beauties and benefits. His was the idea of laying out streets
radiating from a central point as do those around the Arch of the Star.
This diagonal arrangement permits not only quick passage from one part
of the city to another, but allows a small body of men and a few cannon
to hold a commanding position. Napoleon probably had the habits of the
Paris mob in mind when he ordered this plan and the asphalt surface
which is far less useful for missiles than are paving stones. The rue de
Rivoli was carried on eastward partly doing away with an unsavory
neighborhood which crowded closely upon the Louvre; a long boulevard
called “de Strasbourg” and “de Sebastopol” swept northward from the
Seine and southward across the Cité to join the boulevard Saint Michel
on the right bank. In all twenty-two new thoroughfares were opened and
three bridges. Between the Place du Châtelet and the Hôtel de Ville was
the old tower of Saint Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. It was restored to its
former perfection and surrounded by one of the small parks which are the
city’s best gifts to the poor and for which she utilizes every available
spot. A new Hôtel Dieu on the north side of the Parvis de Notre Dame
replaced the ancient building on the south side of the same square, and
did a further good work in wiping out many wretched old streets.

[Illustration: THE STRASBOURG STATUE.

See page 372.]

[Illustration: THE EIFFEL TOWER.

See page 374.]

Remembering Napoleon I’s intention with regard to the Louvre the emperor
completed the long delayed project of joining the Tuileries and the
older palace. On the side of the Seine he built the entrance to the
Place du Carrousel, the connecting link between Henry IV’s unfinished
gallery and Catherine de Medicis’; on the north side he swept away the
remaining tangle of small streets adjoining the rue de Rivoli, thereby
enlarging the Place du Carrousel to its present size and permitting the
building of three quadrangles to match the three on the south,[9] which
are partly of his construction. The architecture is massive, elaborate,
over-decorated, yet, taken all in all, superb. Its heavy magnificence
lessens our regret at the loss of the Tuileries which completed the
rectangle at the west, for those who remember it say that the smaller
palace was overpowered by the imposing “New Louvre.”

Several new churches added to the adornment of the city under the
empire. One of these, Trinity, renaissance in style, is approached by a
“_rampe_” somewhat recalling that of Saint Vincent-de-Paul. Another
church, dedicated to Saint Augustin, is in the Byzantine style, and is
ingeniously though not always acceptably adapted to the limitations of a
small triangular space.

Among the improvements were the buildings of the present Halles
Centrales on the age-old spot where markets have served Paris. An early
morning visit to the Halles is an object lesson on the distribution of
food for a large city. The crowd is terrific, the volubility
ear-splitting. Certain characteristic stalls interest the traveler, as,
for example, that where broken food from hotels and restaurants is sold
for two sous a plate.

To this time belongs the new building--on the Cité now--for the Tribunal
of Commerce; enlargements of the National Library and of the Bank of
France; the construction of two theaters on the Place du Châtelet, one
leased now by Sarah Bernhardt, and of the Opéra. This is huge and
elaborate in renaissance style, a building much criticized but also much
admired, especially for its staircase and for its decorative frescos and
bronzes. It is the home of the National Academy of Music.

The fountain showing the valiant figure of Saint Michel facing the
bridge at the corner of the boulevard Saint Michel, has a position like
that of the Molière fountain, making a graceful and harmonious
decoration for the end of a house lying in the acute angle between two
meeting streets.

The extension of the city’s water supply was the more appreciated
because it was belated. Twelve thousand gas lamps made a much-needed
illumination. Two railway stations added a convenient public service.

Just outside the fortifications is the Bois de Boulogne, originally a
forest, but now developed as a park, retaining its naturalness and charm
with the addition of good roads, and attractive tea-houses.

Finally, the lovely Parc Monceau was laid out to please the prosperous
inhabitants of the recently developed quarter near the Arc de l’Étoile,
and an old quarry was ingeniously converted into a thing of seemingly
natural beauty for the benefit of the poorer people of Belleville in the
north-eastern part of the city. In 1861 the population of Paris was
1,667,841.

Yet even all these public works and the brilliancy of the not at all
exclusive court which Napoleon and his wife, Eugénie (whom he had
married with magnificent ceremony at Notre Dame in 1853), held at the
Tuileries, could not entirely calm the restless and not yet satisfied
Parisians. To the poorer classes “empire” did not ring as true as
“republic.” Napoleon boldly laid the question of the empire before the
people of France once more, and once more they returned a handsome vote
in his support, but Paris was unconvinced. She cast 184,000 _Nos_
against 139,000 _Yeses_.

As must always happen in connection with foreign affairs the emperor’s
attitude provoked hostility as well as approval. There were opponents of
the Crimean War as well as advocates; there were adverse critics of the
treaty with Austria which closed the war which France undertook in
behalf of Italy. Long-continued friction with Germany had brought about
a general wish for war. Napoleon planned to secure his own popularity by
entering upon a struggle which he knew would be approved by the majority
of his subjects. Paris was wildly enthusiastic, crying “On to Berlin!”
regardless of the fact that the army was almost entirely unprepared.

A trivial incident furnished the excuse and the emperor in person
invaded Germany, but the list of encounters was almost entirely a list
of defeats and the Prussian army pressed the French forces back into
their own country. Paris was so furious at the realization of what this
invasion might mean that it is said that Napoleon never would have
passed through the city alive if he had returned then.

The battle of Sédan, fought on the first of September, 1870, not only
was an overwhelming defeat, but there the emperor was taken prisoner.
Never again did he see the city he had worked so hard to beautify. After
he was released (in 1871) he went to England where he died in 1873.

News of the battle reached Paris on the fourth of September and produced
such utter consternation that the mob was frightened into comparative
quiet. A great crowd, however, eager and determined, entered the
Legislature where the deputies were in session and demanded the
abolition of the empire. Jules Favre, Gambetta, Jules Simon and several
other deputies of the “opposition” party, led the crowd to the City
Hall, formed a provisional government, and declared the Third Republic.

The empress, meanwhile, who had only too good reason to fear the
possible temper of the Paris mob, had heard the news in the Tuileries
and took instant flight. Accompanied only by one lady and by the
Austrian and Italian ambassadors, she traversed the whole length of the
Louvre to its eastern end. As she came out on the street facing the
church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois she was recognized by a small boy
who called her name. This recognition so terrified the ambassadors that
they did not stop to find the carriage that was waiting for them, but
pushed the empress and her companion into an ordinary cab, and called to
the cabman no more definite direction than “To Boulevard Haussmann.” The
two frightened women had not even a handbag with them and not so much
as their cab fare. Fortunately the empress happened to think of her
dentist, an American named Evans. They drove to his house and through
his help managed to leave the city and to escape to England. There
Eugénie still lives.

The new government represented to the Prussians that the war had been
the emperor’s affair, and that Prussia had declared that she was
fighting the imperial idea. The enemy refused to grant peace, however,
and Paris was besieged from September 19, 1870 to January 30, 1871.
Several battles around the city resulted in defeat for the French and
the loss of some towns. Marshal Bazaine surrendered the “army of Metz”
without a struggle. The king of Prussia made the palace at Versailles
his headquarters and from it directed the bombardment.

Within Paris suffering increased sadly during the four months and a half
of the siege. Outside supplies of fuel and food were cut off and the
city’s stores ran very low, though reports of peace were apt to bring
out collections which were being kept in hiding to secure high prices
when the great pinch should come. The trees in the parks were cut down
for fuel and warmth. Bombproof cellars were at premium.

Just as during the siege of Henry IV, animals not usually eaten were now
slaughtered for food.

[Illustration: THE SUCCESSIVE WALLS OF PARIS.]

Horace Vernet, the famous artist, mournfully complained to a friend,
“They have taken away my saddle horse to eat him--and I’ve had him
twenty years!” From which it is a fair assumption that the steaks which
he provided were not all tenderloin. Indeed, it is said that while
dishes made from the smaller animals were rather fancied so that when
the siege was over dogs and cats were scarce, there were left thirty
thousand horses, which would seem to prove that even the starving do not
like tough meat. Etiquette forbade inquiry of one’s hostess as to the
nature of any dish served at a dinner, but it was entirely _de rigueur_
to compliment it after partaking. Rat pies came to be considered a real
delicacy. Toward the end the animals in the Zoölogical Gardens fell
victims to the town’s necessities. A camel was sold for $800 and netted
a good deal more than that for the restaurant proprietor who bought him.

A final brave sortie met with such complete defeat that it was clear
that the city must surrender. The provisional government yielded,
promising to give up all Alsace and half of Lorraine, to pay an
indemnity of a billion dollars and, crown of bitterness for Paris, to
permit the hostile army to take possession of the city.

On the first of March the Prussians entered from the west. They found
massed before the Triumphal Arch of the Star two thousand school boys.
Their spokesman, a lad of twelve, approached the commander.

“Sir,” he said, bringing his hand to his cap in salute, “we ask that you
will not lead your men under our arch. If you do,” he added firmly, “it
will be over our bodies.”

The troops made a circuit.

It was only three days that the Prussians remained in Paris, but during
that time the city mourned openly. All the shops were closed, all
business was discontinued. When the enemy left everything they had
touched was treated as if defiled. It is said that because a Prussian
soldier had been seen to leap over one of the chains which swing from
post to post to keep a space clear around the Arch of the Star a new
chain was substituted.

The pride of Paris was humbled grievously.

CHAPTER XXII

PARIS OF TO-DAY

When the siege of Paris came to an end and the German troops were
withdrawn the provisional government which had been making its
headquarters at Bordeaux removed to Versailles. The violent element in
Paris which had given Louis Philippe so much trouble had increased both
in numbers and in strength of feeling during the third quarter of the
century. Now these radicals asserted that Thiers, the head of the
provisional government, had betrayed France to the enemy, and they won
to their way of thinking the Central Committee of the usually
conservative National Guard. From the City Hall they directed the
election of a new city government, the Commune of Paris, which held
itself independent of the Assembly at Versailles and defied it.

Just a month after the hated Prussians had left Paris the communists
made a sortie toward Versailles. As a natural reaction the Versailles
government invested the city, and Frenchmen were pitted against
Frenchmen as in the days when Henry IV was besieging his own capital
town. Nor was the conflict merely between the people inside and the
people outside--within Paris there was a constant struggle between the
conservatives and the communists and even among the communists
themselves. The conservatives disapproved of the drastic social changes
made by the new government in closing the churches, and dispersing some
of the religious orders, as well as of their confiscations of property
on slight warrant and their onslaught upon monuments of sentimental and
artistic value, such as the Vendôme Column. The communists, on the other
hand, were torn by internal dissensions and their constant quarrels
brought about the usual weakness resulting from poor team work.

Ferocity never failed them, however. Constructive measures were
postponed; revenge, never. No sufficient excuse ever has been offered
for their massacres of hostages, good Archbishop Darboy among them; none
for the senseless orgy of destruction with which, after a two months’
struggle, they recognized their defeat by the government troops under
Marshal MacMahon. When the soldiers entered Paris their first work was
the extinguishing of the fires which the communists had set in a hundred
places. Men and women, urged by hatred and fanaticism, piled kegs of
gunpowder into

[Illustration: THE NEW LOUVRE.

See plan, page 382.]

churches, even into Notre Dame, relic and record of centuries, and
poured petroleum upon the flames devouring the Palace of Justice, the
Sainte Chapelle, the library of the Louvre, the Luxembourg palace, the
Palais Royal. The houses on the rue Royale were a mass of broken brick.
The Ministry of Finance on the rue de Rivoli was so injured that it was
torn down, to be replaced by a hotel. Three hundred years of historical
association did not avail to save the palace of the Tuileries whose
ruins were considered not sufficient to be restored. The Hôtel de Ville
was a mere shell and required practically entire rebuilding. Property
amounting to a hundred millions of dollars was destroyed, while the
historical and sentimental value of many of the buildings cannot be
computed.

The communists were as reckless with their own lives as with the
buildings. Some two thousand persons--women and children as well as
men--fell in the contest with the government. The last struggle was in
the cemetery of Père Lachaise whose tombs could serve only as temporary
protection against shell and shot from the rash fighters who were soon
to need a final resting-place. It was only after the execution of many
of the insurgent leaders that Marshal MacMahon brought about a semblance
of peace.

With returning quiet all France turned its attention to securing the
payment of the war indemnity of a billion dollars due to Prussia. Until
that indebtedness was cleared off the hated uniform of the army of
occupation was omnipresent. So eager were the French to rid themselves
of this sight that every peasant went into his “stocking” or tapped his
mattress bank until the necessary amount was subscribed many times over.
Two years and a half after the capitulation of Paris not a German
soldier was left in the country. There could be no stronger testimony to
the national thrift fostered by the pinch of the pre-Revolutionary days
and so alive to-day that the French are looked upon as the readiest
financiers in Europe, prepared to invest in anything from a Panama Canal
to a New York _gratte-ciel_ (skyscraper).

The terms of the peace with Germany required the surrender of one-half
of the border province of Lorraine and the whole of Alsace. It was a
bitter day not only for these districts but for the whole country when
the Germans took possession of the ceded territory. Fifty thousand
people left their property behind and went over into France rather than
lose the name of Frenchmen. Many came to America. Now, forty years
later, the memory of the loss is not dulled, and the statue of
Strasbourg in the Place de la Concorde wears perpetual mourning.

Many have been the problems faced by France since the Franco-Prussian
war. Political adjustment has been of first importance, of course, but
Paris has had her own questions to answer, and, because of her
cosmopolitanism, her solutions have been of interest to the whole world.
Much time and thought have been spent on the repairs required by the
excesses of the communists. The rebuilding of the City Hall on the same
spot on which it had stood for five hundred years and in the style which
Francis I initiated three centuries before, was a task on which Paris
lavished thought and money. The exterior is a finely harmonious example
of renaissance. The mural paintings of the interior are a record of the
work of the best French artists of the last quarter of the nineteenth
century. They are enhanced by heavily handsome gildings and by
chandeliers of glittering crystal.

As a whole, however, the city has put more expenditure into the
perfecting of public utilities, the beautifying of streets and the
construction of parks--works of use to the many--than into the erection
of buildings of less general service. The panorama which make the
frontispiece of this volume shows the care with which pavements and
curbs and tree-guards are ordered. A small tricycle sweeper is 1912’s
latest device for removing any last reproach of Lutetia’s mud--a
reproach formulated to-day only by Parisians made fastidious by a
century of cleanliness.

The panorama shows also the arrangement of the quays and the orderliness
which makes them possible in the very center of the city, even when
there is discharged upon them huge loads of freight brought from the sea
by the strings of barges (seen in the picture of the Eiffel Tower
opposite page 360) which are moved by a tug and a chain-towing device.

In some parts of this city of three million inhabitants the quays
disclose scenes that are almost rural. Under the fluttering leaves of a
slender tree a rotund housewife is making over a mattress, exchanging
witticisms with a near-by vender of little cakes. Not far off the owner
of a poodle is engaging his attention while a professional dog clipper
is decorating him with an outfit of collar and cuffs calculated to rouse
envy in the breasts of less favored _caniches_.

When the hero of an old English novel orders his servant to call a “fly”
we wonder whether the misnamed vehicle which responds has been
christened from the verb or the noun. There is no doubt in Paris as to
the origin of the “fly boats” on the Seine. These busy little travelers
are of insect origin--they are _bateaux mouches_.

What these boats are on the river the _fiacres_ have been on land. These
small open carriages

[Illustration: HÔTEL DE VILLE.]

are now being replaced by motor taxis. The use of the meters on the
horse-propelled vehicles as well as on the machines has deprived the
tourist of one of the daily excitements of his visit--the heated
argument with the driver concerning his charge. Another change which has
been consummated since 1913 began is the passing of the horse-drawn
omnibus with its “imperial” or roof seats, from whose inexpensive
vantage many travelers have considered that they secured their best view
of the city streets. The two subway systems have many excellent points,
not least of which is a method of ventilation which makes a summer’s day
trip below ground a relief rather than a seeming excursion on the crust
of the infernal regions.

The Champs Élysées is thought to offer the finest metropolitan vista in
the world, when the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile is seen across the Place
de la Concorde from the Tuileries gardens, over two miles away.

Such vistas are frequent in Paris, offering a “point of view” in which a
handsome building or monument finds its beauty enhanced. The regularity
of the skyline adds to this effect. By a municipal regulation no façade
may be higher than the width of the street and the consequent uniformity
provides a not unpleasing monotony.

Paris parks are world famous, not only for the beauty of such great
expanses as the Bois de Boulogne, just outside the fortifications, with
its forest and lake and stream, its good roads and its alluring
restaurants, but for the intelligent utilization of small open spaces in
crowded parts of the city. Wherever any readjustment of lines or
purposes gives opportunity, there a bit of grass rests the eye and a
tree casts its share of shade. If there is space enough a piece of
statuary educates the taste or the bust of some hero of history or of
art makes familiar the features of great men. The demolition of the old
clo’ booths of the Temple gave such a chance, and amid tall tenements
and commonplace shops mothers sew and babies doze and one-legged
veterans read the newspapers beneath the statue of the people’s poet,
Béranger.

At one end of this square rises the _Mairie_ of the Third
_Arrondissement_ (ward). These _Mairies_, of which there are twenty, are
decorated with paintings, often by artists of repute, and always
symbolic of the Family, of Labor or of the Fatherland. The Hall of
Marriages in which the Mayor of the _arrondissement_ performs the civil
ceremony required by law, receives especial attention and usually is a
room handsomely appointed and adorned.

The French imagination likes to express itself

[Illustration: MAIRIE OF THE ARRONDISSEMENT OF THE TEMPLE.]

[Illustration: SALLE DES FÊTES OF THE HÔTEL DE VILLE.]

in symbols. Throughout the city there are many large groups, such as the
Triumph of the Republic, unveiled in 1899, which dominates the Place de
la Nation--a figure representative of the Republic attended by Liberty,
Labor, Abundance and Justice. Even statues or busts or reliefs of
authors, musicians or statesmen frequently are supported by allegorical
figures. Such is the monument to Chopin which includes a figure of Night
and one of Harmony, and such is the monument of Coligny whose portrait
statue stands between Fatherland and Religion. In the Fountain of the
Observatory seahorses, dolphins and tortoises surround allegorical
figures of the four quarters of the globe. The young women lawyers who,
in cap and gown, pace seriously through the great hall of the ancient
Palace of Justice, are living symbols of twentieth century progress.

Haussmann’s plan of laying out broad streets radiating from a center
served the further purpose of adding to the city’s beauty by providing
wide open spaces and of wiping out narrow streets and insanitary houses.
The Third Republic has continued to act on this scheme and has succeeded
wonderfully well in achieving the desired improvement with but a small
sacrifice of buildings of eminent historic value. On the Cité a web of
memories clung to the tangle of streets swept away to secure a site for
the new Hôtel Dieu on the north of Notre Dame which replaced the ancient
hospital which has stood since Saint Louis’ day on the south side of the
island.

The completion in 1912 of the new home of the National Printing Press
near the Eiffel Tower brings to mind a Parisian habit indicative of
thrift and of a respect for historical associations. The Press has been
housed for many years in the eighteenth century _hôtel_ of the Dukes of
Rohan built when the Marais was still fashionable. Anything more
unsuitable for a printing establishment it would be hard to find. The
rooms of a private house become a crowded fire trap when converted to
industrial purposes. This use of the house has tided over a crisis,
however, and once the last vestige of printer’s ink has been removed the
old building probably will be restored to the beauty which the still
existing decorations of some of the rooms show, and will be used for
some more suitable purpose. One proposal is that it be used as an
addition to the National Archives, since its grounds adjoin those of the
Hôtels Clisson and Soubise, their present home. The Hôtel Carnavalet
houses the Historical Museum of Paris, and part of the Louvre is used
for government offices--two other instances of Paris wisdom.

[Illustration: PORTIONS OF THE LOUVRE BUILT BY FRANCIS I, HENRY II, AND
LOUIS XIII.]

[Illustration: COLONNADE, EAST END OF LOUVRE. BUILT BY LOUIS XIV.]

There have been three Expositions in Paris under the Third Republic.
Each has left behind a permanent memorial. The Palace of the Trocadéro,
dating from 1878, is a huge concert hall where government-trained actors
and singers often give for a strangely modest sum the same performances
which cost more in the regular theaters with more elaborate accessories.
The architecture of the Trocadéro is not beautiful but the situation is
imposing and the general effect impressive when seen across the river
from the south bank where the Eiffel Tower has raised its huge iron
spider web since the World’s Fair of 1889.

The tower is a little world in itself with a restaurant and a theater, a
government weather observatory and a wireless station. Since aviation
has become fashionable the frequent purr of an engine tells the tourist
sipping his tea “in English fashion” on the first stage that yet another
aviator is taking his afternoon spin “around the Tour Eiffel.”

The latest exposition, that of 1900, gave to Paris the handsome bridge
named after Czar Alexander III, the Grand Palais, where the world’s best
pictures and sculptures are exhibited every spring, and the Petit Palais
which holds several general collections and also the paintings and
sculpture bought by the city from the Salons of the last thirty-five
years. Such public art galleries are found throughout France, a
development of Napoleon’s idea of bringing art to the people. Like Paris
the provinces take advantage of the Salons to add to the treasures of
their galleries.

Near the two palaces is the exquisite chapel of Our Lady of Consolation.
It is built on the site of a building destroyed during the progress of a
fashionable bazaar by a fire which wiped out one hundred thirty-two
lives. The architectural details are of the classic style popular in the
reign of Louis XVI.

Already rich in beautiful churches Paris has been further graced in
recent years by the majestic basilica of the Sacred Heart gleaming
mysteriously through the delicate haze that always enwraps Montmartre.
The style is Romanesque-Byzantine, and the structure is topped by a
large dome flanked by smaller ones. The interior lacks the colorful
warmth of most of the city churches, but time will remedy that in part.
Construction has been extremely slow for the same reason that the
building of the Pantheon was a long process--the discovery that the
summit of the hill was honeycombed by ancient quarries. It became
necessary to sink shafts which were filled with masonry or concrete.
Upon this strong sub-structure rises the splendid

[Illustration: SECTION OF LOUVRE BEGUN BY HENRY IV, TO CONNECT THE
EASTERN END OF THE LOUVRE WITH THE TUILERIES.]

[Illustration: NORTHWEST WING OF THE LOUVRE, BUILT BY NAPOLEON I, LOUIS
XVIII, AND NAPOLEON III.]

work of expiation for the murder of Archbishop Darboy. The city owns the
church.

To the tourist whose attention is not confined to the stock “sights” of
Paris the city streets offer a wide field of interest. They show the
stranger within the walls the neatness of the people and the orderliness
which manifests itself in the automatic formation of a _queue_ of
would-be passengers on an omnibus or a _bateau mouche_. They disclose
little that looks like slums to the eye of a Londoner or a New Yorker,
for dirt and sadness rather than congestion make slums, and the poor
Parisian looks clean and cheerful even when a hole in his “stocking” has
let all his savings escape.

History lurks at every corner of these streets. It commands attention to
the imposing pile of Notre Dame, it piques curiosity by the palpably
ancient turrets of the rue Hautefeuille. The non-existent is recalled by
the tablet on the site of the house where Coligny was assassinated, by
the outline of Philip Augustus’s Louvre traced on the eastern courtyard
of the palace, by the name of the street that passes over the mad king’s
menagerie at the Hôtel Saint Paul. Étienne Marcel sits his horse beside
the City Hall he bought for Paris; Desmoulins mounts his chair in the
garden of the Palais Royal to make the passionate speech that wrought
the destruction

[Illustration: ARCHITECTS WHO DIRECTED THE BUILDING OF THE LOUVRE.

1. Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon
2. Chambiges
3. Philibert Delorme and Bullant
4 and 5. Ducerceau
6. Jacques Lemercier
7 and 8. Louis Levau
9. Perrault
10, 11 and 12. Percier and Fontaine
13 and 14. Visconti and Lefuel
]

of the Bastille. Even the _boucheries chevalines_, the markets that sell
horse steaks and “ass and mule meat of the first quality,” bring back
the days when Henry IV cut off supplies coming from the suburbs of Paris
and when, three hundred years later, the Prussians used the same means
to gain the same end. That the Parisians of to-day are willing to take
chances on universal peace in the future seems attested by the recent
vote (1913) of the Municipal Council to convert the fortifications and
the land adjacent into parks. The people of the markets, at any rate,
are not worrying about any possibilities of hunger for they continue as
hard-working and as fluent as when they acted as Marie Antoinette’s
escort on the occasion of the “Joyous Entry” from Versailles, though
kinder now in heart and action.

Paris charms the stranger as the birdman of the Tuileries Gardens charms
his feathered friends--making hostile gestures with one hand and popping
bread crumbs into open beaks with the other. The great city of three
million people, like all great cities, threatens to overcome the lonely
traveler; then, at the seeming moment of destruction, she gives him the
food he needs most--perhaps a glimpse of patriotic gayety in the street
revels of the fourteenth of July, perhaps the cordial welcome that she
has bestowed on students since Charlemagne’s day, perhaps the less
personal appeal of the beauty of a wild dash of rain seen down the river
against the western sky, perhaps the impulse to sympathy aroused by the
passing of a first communion procession of little girls, wide-eyed from
their new, soul-stirring experience.

In a quiet corner behind a convent chapel where nuns vowed to Perpetual
Adoration unceasingly tend the altar, rests the body of America’s
friend, Lafayette. If for no other reason than because of his
friendship, Americans must always feel an interest in the city in which
he did his part toward crystallizing the _bourgeois_ rule which makes
the French government one of the most interesting political experiments
of Europe to-day. Yet Paris needs no intermediary. In her are centered
taste, thought, the gayety and exaggeration of the past,
light-heartedness in the stern present. The city is a record of the
development of a people who have expressed themselves in words and in
deeds, and by the more subtle methods of Art. The story is not ended,
and as long as the writing goes on, vivid and alluring as the “Gallic
spirit” can make it, so long there will be no lack of readers of all
nations, our own among the most eager.

APPENDIX

GENEALOGICAL TABLES OF THE SOVEREIGNS OF FRANCE

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF RULERS, 1792-1913

THE MEROVINGIAN DYNASTY

Merovée
|
Childéric I
|
_Clovis_[10] (481-511)
|
+-----------------------+---------+-----------+---------------------+
| | | |
Thierry I Chlodomir Childébert I _Clotaire I_
(King of Metz) (King of Orleans) (King of Paris) (King of Soissons, then
Sole king, 558-561)
|
+-------------------+-----------------------+-------------------------+--+
| | | |
Caribert Gontran Sigebert I Chilpéric I
(King of Paris) (King of Burgundy) (King of Austrasia, (King of Soissons,
M. Brunehaut, M. Frédégonde, D. 584)
D. 575) |
| |
Childébert II _Clotaire II_
| 613-628
| |
Thierry II _Dagobert I_
628-638
|
_Clovis II_
638-656
|
+---------+---------------+
| |
_Childéric II_ _Thierry III_
D. 673 D. 691
|
Chilpéric II
|
Childéric III
(Deposed by Pepin le Bref in 752)

Pépin d’Héristal
(Duke of the Franks, D. 714)
|
Charles Martel
(Mayor of the Palace in Austrasia,
715-741)

THE CAPETIAN DYNASTY

_Hugh Capet_
(Duke of France, Count of Paris,
Elected King of France, 987)
987-996
|
_Robert, the Pious_
996-1031
|
_Henry I_
1031-1060
|
_Philip I_
1060-1108
|
_Louis VI, the Fat_
1108-1137
|
_Louis VII, the Young_
1137-1180
|
_Philip Augustus_
1180-1223
|
_Louis VIII, the Lion_
1223-1226
|
+-----------------------+---------------+
| |
_Louis IX--Saint Louis_ Charles
1226-1270 (Count of Anjou and Provence;
founder of the royal house of
Naples)
|
+---------------------------------------+
| |
_Philip III, the Bold_ Robert
1270-1285 (Court of Clermont; founder
| of the house of Bourbon)
|
+----------------------------------------+
| |
_Philip IV, the Fair_ Charles
1285-1314 (Count of Valois; founder
of the house of Valois)
|
_Philip VI_
1328-1350
|
+------------------------+----------------------+------------------------+
| | | |
_Louis X, the Quarreler_ Philip V, the Long_ _Charles IV, the Fair_ Isabelle
1314-1316 1316-1322 1322-1328
(M. Edward II, of England)
|
Edward III, of England

HOUSE OF VALOIS

_Philip VI, of Valois_
(Son of Charles, Count of Valois, a
younger brother of Philip the Fair)
1328-1350
|
_John, the Good_
1350-1364
|
+-----------------------+------------------+----------------------+
| | | |
_Charles V, the Wise_ Louis John Philip
1364-1380 (Duke of Anjou) (Duke of Berri) (Duke of Burgundy)
|
John, the Fearless
| |
+-----------------------------+ |
| | |
_Charles VI, the Well-Beloved_ Louis |
| 1380-1422 (Duke of Orleans; |
| founder of the house |
| of Valois-Orleans) |
| | |
_Charles VII, the Victorious_ Philip the Good
1422-1461 |
| |
| | | |
| +-----------+------+---+ |
| | | |
| Charles John |
| (Duke of Orleans) (Count of Angoulême) |
| | |
_Louis XI_ | Charles Charles the Bold
1461-1483 _Louis XII_ (Count of Angoulême) |
| 1498-1515 | |
+-----------------------+ | |
| | | |
_Charles VIII_ Jeanne _Francis I_ Mary
1483-1498 (M. Duke of Orleans 1515-1547 (M. Maximilian, Archduke
afterwards Louis XII) | of Austria)
| |
_Henry II_ Philip
(M. Marie de Medicis) |
1547-1559 Charles V
| (Emperor)
+--------------------------------------------------+-------------------------+
| |
_Francis II_ _Charles IX_ _Henry III_ Elizabeth Marguerite
(M. Mary, Queen 1560-1574 1574-1589 (M. Philip II (M. Henry of Navarre,
of Scots) of Spain) afterwards Henry IV)
1559-1560

HOUSE OF BOURBON

Robert, son of St. Louis, married Beatrice of Bourbon and had a son
Louis, Duke of Bourbon, from whom was descended Antoine, Duke of
Vendôme, who married Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre. Their son
was

_Henry IV_
1589-1610
|
_Louis XIII_
1610-1643
+-------------------------------------------------+
| |
_Louis XIV_ Philip, Duke of Orleans
1643-1715 (Founder of the house of Bourbon-Orleans)
| |
Louis the Dauphin Philippe (Regent)
| |
Louis of Burgundy Louis
| |
_Louis XV_ Louis Philippe
1715-1774 |
| |
Louis the Dauphin Louis Philippe (“Egalité”)
| | | |
+---------------------+-----------------------+--------+------------+----------------+
| | | | |
_Louis XVI_[12] Louis of Provence Charles of Artois _Louis Philippe_ (“Citizen King”)
1774-1793 (afterward (afterward (succeeded by
| _Louis XVIII_, _Charles X_ _Napoleon III_)
1814-1824) 1824-1830)
|
Louis XVII
1814-1824
| |
Duke of Berry Ferdinand, Duke of Orleans
| |
| +--------+-------+
| | |
| Louis Robert
Count of Chambord (Count of Paris) (Duke of Chartres)
|
Robert

THE BONAPARTE FAMILY

Carlo Bonaparte
|
+-----------+-----------------+--+-----------+----------------+
| | | | |
Jos. Bonaparte _Napoleon I_ Lucien Bonaparte Louis Bonaparte Jer. Bonaparte
| |
Napoleon II _Napoleon III_
(King of Rome)

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF RULERS, 1792-1913

THE FIRST REPUBLIC

1792. The Convention.
1795. The Directory
1799. The Consulate

THE FIRST EMPIRE

1804 Napoleon I

RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS

1814 Louis XVIII

“THE HUNDRED DAYS”

1815. Napoleon I

THE SECOND RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS

1815. Louis XVIII
1824. Charles X
1830. Louis Philippe

THE SECOND REPUBLIC

1848. Louis Napoleon, President

THE SECOND EMPIRE

1852. Napoleon III

THE THIRD REPUBLIC

1870. Provisional Government
1871. M. Thiers, President
1873. Marshal MacMahon
1879. M. Grévy
1885. M. Grévy
1887. M. Carnot
1894. Casimir Périer
1895. Félix Faure
1899. Emile Loubet
1906. Armand Fallières
1913. Raymond Poincaré

INDEX

Abbaye Prison; see Saint Germain-des-Prés.

Abbey; see Church.

Abélard, 57-59, 65, 77.

Academy, 258.

Amphitheater, 10.

Anne of Austria, 252, 253, 260, 262, 263.

Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, 270, 330, 337, 350, 358, 360, 363, 368, 375.

Arc du Carrousel, 329.

Archbishop’s Palace, 253, 344, 347.

Archévêché; see Archbishop’s Palace.

Archives Nationales, 378.

Arènes; see Amphitheater.

Arsenal, 222.

Banque de France, 79, 272, 362.

Bastille, 162, 163, 183, 185, 191, 206, 228, 249, 293, 294, 295, 298, 383.

Bibliothèque Nationale; see National Library.

Blanche of Castile, 33, 90-98, 101.

Bois de Boulogne, 205, 363, 376.

Bonaparte; see Napoleon.

Bourse, 331.

Bourse de Commerce, 223.

Bridge; see Pont.

Carlovingian Kings, 32-41.

Catherine de Medicis, 209, 214-230, 237, 243, 246, 247, 361.

Champ de Mars, 281, 298, 358, 359.

Champs Elysées, 270, 330, 337, 340, 358, 375.

Chapelle Expiatoire, 339.

Chapelle, Sainte, 87, 100, 126, 155, 170, 173, 194, 197,
233, 306, 350, 359, 371.

Charlemagne, 33, 35, 36, 37, 69, 192, 383.

Charles IV, 127, 128.

Charles V, 136-165, 179, 190, 256.

Charles VI, 166-185, 199.

Charles VII, 181, 183-189, 201.

Charles VIII, 197, 199, 202.

Charles IX, 215-227, 231, 237.

Charles X, 23, 339, 341-344.

Châtelet, Grand, 60, 114, 145, 164, 172, 318.

Châtelet, Petit, 38, 60, 78, 164, 289.

Church or religious house:
Abbey-in-the-Woods, 271.
Saint Augustin, 361.
Saint Bartholomew and
Saint Magloire, 49.
Carmelites, 254, 303.
Carmes Billettes, 123.
Sainte Clotilde, 349.
Cordeliers, 139, 159, 299, 306.
Saint Denis, 27, 30, 33, 35, 37, 56, 60, 61, 65, 94,
100, 105, 133, 153, 156, 159, 160, 164, 168, 181, 184, 235, 247, 339, 341.
Saint Eloy, 33.
Saint Etienne, 11, 33, 88.
Saint Etienne-du-Mont, 8, 21, 88, 193, 207, 306.
Saint Eustache, 207, 222, 306.
Sainte Geneviève, 21, 42, 57, 116, 254, 283.
Sainte Geneviève des Ardente, 61.
Saint Germain-des-Prés, 29, 34, 37, 42, 55, 62, 85, 141, 303.
Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, 30, 138, 193, 217, 230, 270, 346, 365.
Saint Gervais (on the Cité), 33.
Saint Gervais and Saint Protais (in the Ville), 254, 306.
Holy Innocents, 66, 81, 182.
Jacobins, 133, 299.
Saint Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, 61, 207, 360.
Saint Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, 223.
Saint Julien-le-Pauvre, 28, 63, 64, 78, 83, 96, 122, 194, 306.
Saint Laurent, 28, 193.
Saint Leu, 120, 276.
Saint Louis d’Antin, 289.
Saint Louis en l’Ile, 256.
Madeleine, 282, 283, 331, 339, 350.
Saint Martin-des-Champs, 14, 53, 60, 62, 65, 83, 87, 101, 120, 308.
Saint Médard, 279.
Saint Merri, 343.
Saint Michel, 33.
Saint Nicholas, 33, 61, 100.
Saint Nicholas-du-Chardonnet, 272.
Saint Nicholas-des-Champs, 193.
Notre Dame, 11, 33, 38, 57, 61, 64, 67, 87, 88, 89, 100, 110,
112, 129, 133, 151, 168, 173, 184, 185, 186, 212, 214, 235,
253, 260, 285, 306, 324, 344, 350, 354, 358, 359, 363, 371,
378, 381.
Notre Dame de Consolation, 380.
Notre Dame de l’Etoile, 65.
Notre Dame de Lorette, 340.
Notre Dame-des-Victoires, 250, 267.
Oratory, The, 254.
Saint Paul-Saint Louis, 254.
Saint Peter and Saint Paul, 2.
Petits-Augustins, 244.
Saint Philippe-du-Roule, 283.
Saint Pierre-aux-Boeufs, 62, 194.
Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre, 62, 63.
Saint Roch, 254, 305.
Sacré Coeur, 13, 62, 380.
Saint Séverin, 28, 194, 306.
Sorbonne, 254, 321.
Saint Sulpice, 271, 284, 306.
Saint Thos. Aquinas, 254.
Trinity, 361.
Val-de-Grâce, 253, 306.
Saint Victor, 57.
Saint Vincent, 28, 29.
Saint Vincent-de-Paul, 340, 361.

Capetians, Early, 44-67.

Cité, 3, 8, 10, 11, 33, 34, 37, 39, 42,
48, 56, 57, 60, 61, 66, 67, 70, 78,
80, 81, 83, 96, 133, 167, 181, 193,
194, 217, 227, 250, 255, 318, 326,
343, 360, 362, 377.

City Hall; see Hôtel de Ville.

Clovis, 5, 16, 19, 20, 22, 28, 29, 33, 341

Coligny, 27, 217, 221, 230, 232, 254, 381.

College of France, 202.

College of the Four Nations; see Institute.

Collège Mazarin; see Institute.

Comédie Française, 290.

Conciergerie, 48, 97, 98, 164, 305.

Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, 53, 308.

Convent; see Church.

Corn Exchange, 223.

Cours la Reine, 205, 252.

Dagobert I, 14, 27, 34.

Dolet, Etienne, 203.

Eiffel Tower, 281, 374, 379.

Eudes, 38, 39-41, 48.

Eugénie, 91, 228, 363.

Fair of Saint Germain, 291.

Fair of Saint Laurent, 291.

Field of Mars; see Champ de Mars.

Foundling Hospital, 212.

Francis I, 145, 199-209, 211, 222, 224, 246, 255, 323, 373.

Francis II, 214, 215.

Gate; see Porte.

Gobelins, 8, 272.

Gothic Architecture, 85.

Gozlin, 38.

Grève, 6, 34, 61, 117, 121, 143, 145,
186, 191, 203, 210, 225, 247, 250, 269, 295, 303, 307, 309.

Halle aux Vins, 57, 319.

Halles Centrales, 61, 66, 81, 203, 207, 276, 297, 362, 383.

Henry I, 52-54.

Henry II, 206, 209-214, 222, 224, 237, 246, 247, 255.

Henry III, 226-229, 231, 233.

Henry IV, 66, 89, 215-221, 229-248, 250,
251, 256, 257, 286, 324, 327, 361, 366, 369, 383.

Hôpital de Charité, 242.

Hôtel:
d’Aubray, 268.
Barbette, 178, 194.
Beauvais, 273.
de Bourgogne, 290.
of Burgundy; see Hôtel de Bourgogne.
Carnavalet, 224, 378.
de Clisson, 163, 273, 378.
de Cluny, 197, 350.
Dieu, 33, 34, 64, 95, 96, 285, 360, 378.
de Hollande, 273.
Lamoignon, 225.
Mazarin, 272.
de Nesle, 124, 133, 178, 204, 281.
Saint Paul, 156, 162, 174, 175, 176, 177, 181, 184, 222, 381.
de Rambouillet, 257.
de Rohan, 378.
de Sens, 116, 163, 244.
de Soissons, 223, 276.
de Soubise, 273, 378.
des Tournelles, 162, 190, 213, 222, 224, 237.
de Ville, 6, 143-147, 167, 191, 195, 203, 207,
208, 210, 211, 254, 263, 268, 269,
288, 303, 326, 334, 343, 346, 352,
357-360, 365, 369, 371, 373.
de la Vrillière, 272.

Hugh Capet, 41, 44-47, 49.

Ile Saint Louis, 83, 255, 257.

Institute, 254, 258, 304, 307, 314, 319.

Isabeau of Bavaria, 170-183.

Jardin des Plantes, 255.

Jeanne Darc, 18, 184, 185.

John the Fearless, 180, 181, 182, 199.

John I, 127.

John II, 129, 133-136, 151, 152, 165.

Josephine de Beauharnais, 304, 312-332.

July Column, 163, 296, 344.

Latin Quarter, 78, 79.

Law School, 283.

Library, National, 160, 272, 362.

Louis Bonaparte, 355.

Louis Napoleon; see Napoleon III.

Louis of Orleans, 178, 179, 199.

Louis Philippe, 327, 345-351, 356, 369.

Louis VI, 14, 59-64, 69.

Louis VII, 64-67, 88.

Louis VIII, 88, 90.

Louis IX (Saint), 33, 47, 59, 88-105, 125, 126, 143, 290, 348, 378.

Louis X, 107, 127, 144.

Louis XI, 102, 187-197, 200.

Louis XII, 197-200, 202, 203, 208.

Louis XIII, 248, 251, 255, 257, 260, 264.

Louis XIV, 126, 246, 252, 253, 258, 260-273, 323, 345.

Louis XV, 258, 274-287, 289, 292, 341.

Louis XVI, 42, 76, 114, 119, 282, 285, 287-305, 326, 336, 340, 380.

Louis XVIII, 14, 336-341.

Louvre, 42, 79, 81, 83, 84, 98, 109,
110, 114, 122, 128, 138, 140, 142,
146, 149, 156, 160, 161, 162, 169,
183, 205, 206, 211, 217, 222, 224,
227, 239, 246-249, 251, 253, 257,
263, 269, 270, 280, 308, 313, 314,
321, 324, 326, 328, 329, 332, 360,
365, 371, 378, 381.

Lucotecia, 8.

Lutetia, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 373.

Luxembourg, Museum of the, 253, 271.

Mairies, 376.

Maison aux Piliers; see Hôtel de Ville.

Marais, 6, 83, 123, 178, 224, 251, 257, 290, 293, 300, 378.

Marcel, Etienne, 137-149, 162, 195, 207, 381.

Marie Antoinette, 98, 126, 287, 297, 300, 301, 305, 310, 317, 339, 383.

Marie de Medicis, 202, 243, 244, 248, 251-253.

Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, 27, 30, 98, 215, 217-222, 243.

Mazarin, 260, 262, 263, 265.

Merovingian Kings, 19, 22-30, 32.

Military School, 281, 311, 358.

Ministry of Finance, 371.

Mint, 280.

Monastery; see Church.

Mons Lucotetius, 8, 10, 21, 28.

Montfaucon, 40, 107.

Montmartre, 13, 62, 284, 380.

Mont Sainte Geneviève, 8, 21, 34, 78, 83, 88, 96, 144, 192, 202, 222, 283.

Napoleon, 57, 89, 119, 254, 270, 295, 304, 309-338, 355, 356, 380.

Napoleon III, 119, 328, 354-365.

National Printing Press, 378.

Nautae Stone, 12, 13, 88.

New Louvre, 361.

Notre Dame, Parvis de, 117, 216, 360.

Observatory, 270, 284.

Odéon, 289.

Opéra, 316, 362.

Palace:
on the Cité; see Palais de Justice.
of Deputies: see Palais Bourbon.
of the Elysée, 282, 310, 337.
Equality; see Palais Royal.
of the Tribunate; see Palais Royal.

Palais:
des Beaux-Arts, 212, 244, 308, 319, 350.
Bourbon, 282, 331, 357.
Grand, 379.
de l’Industrie, 359.

des Invalides, 254, 271, 295, 337, 347, 357.
de Justice, 9, 11, 34, 61, 71, 80, 94, 97, 100,
107, 124, 126, 128, 133, 138,
143, 150, 161, 170, 171, 173,
186, 194, 197, 211, 213, 215,
227, 228, 239, 270, 285, 290,
350, 371, 377.
du Luxembourg, 253, 254, 303, 314, 371.
Petit, 379.
Royal, 6, 96, 252, 259, 261, 275, 276, 284, 290, 294, 346, 371, 381.
des Thermes, 9, 12, 62, 198, 319, 350.
du Trocadéro, 379.
des Tuileries, 224, 229, 239, 246, 251, 269,
270, 281, 297, 299, 300,
306, 310, 316, 320, 322,
324, 326, 329, 332, 333,
335, 336, 337, 338, 340,
343, 348, 351, 358, 361,
363, 371, 375, 383.

Pantheon, 8, 21, 254, 283, 330.

Parc Monceau, 363.

Parisii, 2, 3.

Parloir aux Bourgeois, 144.

Pavilion of Hanover, 272.

Père Lachaise, Cemetery of, 58, 262, 319, 371.

Pharamond, 19, 124.

Philip I, 52, 54-56.

Philip Augustus, 47, 66, 68-89, 92, 99, 123, 142, 144, 149, 341, 348, 381.

Philip III, 105.

Philip IV, 89, 107-127, 129, 133, 144, 154.

Philip V, 127, 128, 144.

Philip VI, 128-133, 144.

Place:
de la Bastille, 295, 344.
du Carrousel, 269, 329, 341, 351, 361.
du Châtelet, 360, 362.
de la Concorde, 270, 281, 287, 302, 322, 330, 331, 349, 371, 375.
Louis XV; see Place de la Concorde.
de la Nation, 267, 348, 377.
de la Révolution; see Place de la Concorde.
du Trône, 267, 302, 348.
Vendôme, 267, 276, 327, 328.
des Victoires, 267, 311, 328.

Pont:
Alexander III, 379.
d’Arcole, 343.
des Arts, 319.
d’Austerlitz, 319.
au Change, 66, 67.
Grand, 66.
d’Iena, 319.
Neuf, 66, 118, 227, 239, 240, 286, 327.
Notre Dame, 172, 195, 207, 240, 286.
Petit, 38, 181, 195, 196, 285, 289.

Porte:
de Buci, 181.
Saint Antoine, 147, 185, 236, 262.
Saint Denis, 236, 266.
Saint Honoré, 184.
Saint Jacques, 185.
Saint Martin, 266.

Pré aux Clercs, 141.

Prefecture of Police, 56.

Quarter Saint Honoré, 251.

Quinze-Vingts, 96.

Regent, duke of Orleans, 274, 285.

Regents, Women, 90, 91.

Richelieu, 96, 238, 249-252, 254, 257, 258-260.

Robert the Pious, 30, 47, 49-52.

Robert the Strong, 41, 47.

Rollo, 37, 39, 40.

Saint Denis, 13, 49.

Sainte Geneviève, 5, 14, 18, 19, 20, 30, 39, 207, 232, 307.

Salpêtrière, 272.

School of Fine Arts; see Palais des Beaux Arts.

Sorbonne, 96, 202.

Strasburg Oath, 36.

Temple, 65, 119, 228, 301, 305, 318, 351, 376.

Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, 362.

Tour de Nesle, 82, 83, 124, 127, 181, 204, 258.

Tower of Clovis, 21.

Tower of John the Fearless, 194, 290.

Tribunal of Commerce, 49, 362.

University of France, 35,
64, 78, 82, 98, 122,
145, 190, 192, 193,
202, 270, 320.

University of Paris; see Sorbonne.

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=CHOSEN DAYS IN SCOTLAND.= By JOSEPHINE HELENA SHORT. Map and 32
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=FROM GRETNA GREEN TO LAND’S END.= By KATHARINE LEE BATES. 32
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=TWENTY CENTURIES OF PARIS.= By MABELL S. C. SMITH. Map and 32
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=GEORGE ELIOT.= Scenes and People in her Novels. By CHARLES S.
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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Paraphrased by James Ravenel Smith.

[2] See illustration opposite page 116.

[3] From Longfellow’s “Poetry of Europe.”

[4] Translated by Louisa Stuart Costello.

[5] See Chapter VII.

[6] See Appendix.

[7] Since then the Archbishop of Paris has lived near the Invalides.

[8] See Appendix.

[9] See plan, Chapter XXII.

[10] Sole rulers in italics.

[11] Louis V left no children. The crown should have gone to his uncle,
Charles, Duke of Lorraine, but the nobles elected Hugh Capet to be king
(987).

[12] See Chronological Table of Rulers, page 394.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Twenty Centuries of Paris" ***

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