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.