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.]