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.