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.]