The only church erected in Paris during the thirty years' reign of Henri

I was that of Sainte-Marine, founded about 1036, and whose patron,

according to the story, was a young virgin named Marine, who conceived a

strong desire to be a monk. So she disguised herself as a man, and

became Brother Marin in a convent. One of her duties was to go to the

city for provisions, with an ox-cart, and on her journeys she frequently

passed the night in the house of the Seigneur de Pandoche, whose

daughter was found to be with child. To screen her lover, a soldier, she

laid the blame on Brother Marin, and he was accordingly driven from his

monastery. However, he took the child, which was sent him, nourished it,

and the monks, touched by his meekness, finally received him back in

their fold. Not till his death was his secret discovered, when he was

interred with great religious pomp and canonized under his true name.

Consequently, in the church of Sainte-Marine were celebrated all the

forced marriages of couples found living together without the sanction

of law, the public authorities compelling them to appear before the curé

of Sainte-Marine, who wedded them with a ring of straw, slipped on the

bride's finger.

[Illustration: BATH-ROOM OF A LADY OF QUALITY, SOFA OF SILVER;

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

After an engraving by Saint-Jean.]

Henri's son, Philippe I, contrived, like his grandfather, to get himself

excommunicated because of his marriage, but for the space of ten years

he seems to have concerned himself but little about the wrath of the

Church. He had repudiated his wife, Berthe, and taken Bertrade, whom he

had carried off from her husband, Foulque, Comte d'Angers. Finally,

wearied of her, he presented himself as a penitent, barefooted, before

the council of 1104, Bertrade doing the same; they protested their

horror of their past conduct, their resolve to sin no more, and were

accordingly absolved. It was this monarch who, by his unseemly jest

concerning William the Conqueror, of whom he was both jealous and

afraid, nearly brought down upon the Parisians again another Norman.

"When is that fat man going to be delivered?" inquired Philippe, with

the delicate humor of the Middle Ages. To which the Conqueror replied

that he was coming to Paris for his "churching," with ten thousand

lances instead of tapers. And, as was his fashion, he started to keep

his word: his advance guard was burning villages up to the gates of

Paris, when, according to the story, his horse stepped on some hot

cinders at Mantes and in his sudden recoil so injured the monarch that

he died soon after at Rouen.

The great national assemblies which Charlemagne had so often consulted,

and even those convocations of the great lords and bishops which had

been so frequent in the tenth century, fell into disuse under the

Capétiens, in consequence of the rise of the feudal power and the

decline of the royal authority. The king, by his constant donations to

his _leudes_ or great vassals, had, in course of time, very nearly

stripped himself of domains, and these _bénéfices_ were retained by the

lords and made hereditary in their own families. It was the same with

the public charges and the titles of dukes, counts, etc., which carried

with them an authority delegated by the prince, and which ended by

passing entirely out of his hands. Charlemagne had been able to check

the greed and ambition of the feudal lords, but his feebler successors

were unable to do so. Even the right of coining money was claimed by the

great seigneurs, and in this century there were no less than a hundred

and fifty in France who exercised this privilege. Most of them refused

to receive any coinage but their own, and the confusion and difficulty

in conducting trade may be imagined. The nobles, solicitous to increase

their power, founded new towns and took them under their protection,

granting certain privileges to the inhabitants, even that of holding

land, and under the cover of these privileges, as under those of the

communes, the _tiers état_, or third estate, was gradually formed.

Similar grants were made to some of the ancient cities, including Paris

and Orléans, which seemed to have received all their franchises from the

Middle Ages and from the kings, excepting, in Paris, the corporation of

the Nantes, already referred to, whose privileges were confirmed by

Louis VII.

This monarch, father of Philippe-Auguste, fixed the number of peers of

France, the great seigneurs who held directly from the crown, at

twelve,--six laic and six ecclesiastical. The first were the dukes of

Burgundy, Normandy, and Guyenne, the counts of Champagne, Flanders, and

Toulouse, and, to counterbalance these puissant lords, six

ecclesiastics, all the more attached to the king that they were without

landed property and consequently without much temporal power, the

Archbishop of Reims and the bishops of Laon, Noyon, Châlons, Beauvais,

and Langres. The Court of Peers was, however, not regularly organized

before the beginning of the thirteenth century. Notwithstanding the

weakness of the royal authority, it still retained elements of strength

and superiority which time eventually developed. The king was nominal

head of the whole feudal society, he was the chief suzerain, and all the

great lords were his vassals and owed him homage. He was the supreme

justice of the nation, and the vassals all were bound to appear before

the "Court of the King." This court was not only a great council, but

also a court of justice; the great vassals had the right to demand a

trial by their equals, or peers, and in this case the court became the

Court of Peers. The fief, held from the suzerain, could not be

diminished or impaired in any way--just as the modern tenant has no

right to damage his landlord's property; at the death of the vassal, the

suzerain inherited, and in case he left infant children, the suzerain

was the guardian.

Two incidents recorded by the chroniclers of the reign of that very

capable monarch, Louis VI, called le Gros, or the Fat, will serve to

illustrate the manners and customs of the times from two points of view.

A short time before the marriage of the king with Adélaïde de Savoie, he

had, in the exercise of his royal authority, demolished part of a house,

the property of the Canon Duranci, in the Rue des Marmousets, because it

projected too far out into the street and obstructed the circulation.

But the chapter of Notre-Dame protested in the name of its privileges

and of its immunities; the king admitted his error, and agreed to pay an

indemnity of a denier of gold; the chapter insisted that this should be

done on the day of his marriage, before he could be permitted to receive

the nuptial benediction, and the crowned culprit was obliged to consent

that a formal record of the affair should be placed on the registers of

the chapter. It was recognized that he had no right to demolish any

house, except for the purpose of erecting a church on the site: this,

although the narrowness and crookedness of the streets, as well as

their foul and miasmatic condition owing to the lack of all paving and

sewerage, were the constant sources of epidemics.

On the 13th of October, 1131, the king was riding with his son on the

hillock of Saint-Gervais (to-day the site of the Mairie of the IVth

Arrondissement, on the Rue de Rivoli, a little beyond the Hôtel de

Ville), when a wandering pig ran between the legs of the young man's

horse, causing him to bolt and throw his rider, who was so badly injured

that he died in a few hours. This led to the promulgation of a royal

ordinance forbidding the proprietors of swine in the city to allow them

to run at large, under penalty of confiscation for the benefit of the

executioner of Paris. This regulation was several times renewed,--in

1261 under Saint Louis, in 1331 under Philippe VI, and in 1369 under

Charles V, and extended to the faubourgs of Paris and the surrounding

districts. The decree of 1331 gave the sergeants of the city authority

to kill all those which they found wandering at liberty, to keep the

head for themselves provided they transported the body to the

Hôtel-Dieu. The pigs of the abbey of Saint-Antoine alone were exempted

from this regulation, and, that they might be recognized, they bore a

bell marked with a cross.

Louis le Gros, already occupied with measures to repress the growing

power of the great nobles, commenced the fortifications of Paris, which

were not completed until during the reign of his son, with a view of

guarding his capital against any sudden attack. It is recorded that he

adopted the habit of the great Caliph of the _Arabian Nights_, of

traversing the streets at night in disguise and mingling familiarly with

the people,--but with the design of drawing from them their complaints

against their feudal lords and their knowledge of their machinations.

They were not without their grievances against the king himself, and it

was not till the reign of his son that was abolished the right of the

royal officers, when the king came to Paris, to enter the houses of the

bourgeoisie and carry off for their own use the bedding and the downy

pillows they found therein.

During the long reign of Philippe-Auguste, which even the modern

historians call "glorious," the power of the nobles was seriously

impaired. The _Cour du Roi_ retained the organization it had received,

but its importance increased with that of the royal authority, and the

most powerful vassal of the king of France saw himself dispossessed of

his fiefs by its decree. The feudal power was attacked in one of its

most cherished rights, that of private warfare, by a royal ordinance

compelling the observance of a truce of forty days after any injury, so

that no one might be assailed without warning. Any seigneur might be at

once vassal and suzerain, but when Philippe acquired the fief of the

Amiénois, for which he was to render homage to the Bishop of Amiens, he

refused, saying that the king of France should be the vassal of no man.

"To the feudal contract, between man and man, symbolized by the homage

and the investiture, the thirteenth century saw succeed the democratic

contract between a man and a group, between seigneurs and subjects,

carrying an engagement written and public. Then began the conquest of

liberty,--liberty of the person, of the family, and of the property;

liberty administrative and political; economic liberty.... Of the total

sum of partial contracts intervening between the king and the provinces,

cities and corporations, has been formed the great national contract

tacitly concluded between him and the people." (M. Imbart de la Tour.)

Notwithstanding war, famine, and pestilence, Paris had outgrown the

fortifications of Louis le Gros, and, before he departed for the

Crusade, Philippe-Auguste ordered the bourgeois of the city to construct

a new wall, solidly built of stone, with towers and gates. This was

commenced in 1190; the faubourgs were surrounded with a wall of more

than two mètres in thickness, faced with masonry, flanked by five

hundred towers and pierced with fifteen gates. Its course can be traced

on any good map of modern Paris, and the size of the mediæval city thus

compared with that of the present one. On the right bank of the river it

began with a tower that was called "the tower which makes the corner,"

and which stood near the northern end of the present Pont des

Saints-Pères. Thence it passed to the Porte-Saint-Honoré, near the

present Oratoire and the statue of Coligny on the Rue de Rivoli, which

was defended by two towers, struck northerly to the site of the present

square formed by the intersection of the Rues Jean-Jacques-Rousseau and

Coquillière, just north of the Bourse, where was a gate called Bahaigne.

Here it turned eastward, cut off the commencements of the Rues

Montmartre and Montorgueil, traversed also the Rue Française, and,

following the direction of the little Rue Mauconseil, arrived at the Rue

Saint-Denis, where was another gate called Porte-Saint-Denis, or Porte

aux Peintres. Continuing in this direction, it traversed the Boulevard

Sébastopol and the Rue Saint-Martin, enclosing the Rue aux Ours,

followed the Rues Grenier-Saint-Lazare and Michel-le-Comte, traversed

the Rue du Temple, and came to a tower erected nearly on the site of the

Mont-de-Piété of to-day, between the Rues des Francs-Bourgeois and des

Blancs-Manteaux, opposite to the Palais des Archives. Remains of this

tower were discovered in 1878, in demolishing some old houses to make

way for the enlargement of the Mont-de-Piété; it served to enclose a

circular staircase. The wall continued to follow the Rue

Francs-Bourgeois to another gate, the Porte Barbette, at the

intersection of the Rue Vieille-du-Temple with the Rue des Rosiers;

then, beginning to trend south, it followed nearly the Rue Malher to the

Place Birague, not far from where the Rue de Rivoli becomes the Rue

Saint-Antoine. Here was another gate, the Porte Baudet or Baudoyer.

Thence the line of fortification, crossing the locality of the present

church Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, descended to the river in the direction

of the Rue des Barres, and ended on the quai, at the Porte

Barbel-sur-l'Yeau. Vestiges of this tower were also found in 1878.

On the south side of the river the wall was not commenced till 1208,

when that on the northern side was completely terminated. Instead of

making a close junction with that on the other shore, it took its start

somewhat to the eastward of the "corner tower," at the famous Tour de

Nesle, on the locality now occupied by the right wing of the

Bibliothèque Mazarine and the Hôtel des Monnaies. It crossed the Rue

Dauphine and halted on the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts at the Porte Buci;

crossed the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where was another gate, the Porte

des Cordeliers, afterward Porte Saint-Germain; descended the Rue

Monsieur-le-Prince to the Boulevard Saint-Michel, where was the Porte de

Fert or d'Enfer, which became the Porte Saint-Michel under Charles VI.

From this gateway the wall continued southeasterly to that of

Notre-Dame-des-Champs, between the Rue Soufflot and the Rue des

Fossés-Saint-Jacques, just south of it, enclosed the Place du Panthéon,

crossed the Rue Descartes at the Porte Bordet or Bordel, crossed the Rue

Clovis, and traversed the locality at present occupied by the buildings

of the École Polytechnique. Continuing in a northerly direction, it

reached the Porte Saint-Victor near the present junction of the Rue

Saint-Victor and the Rue des Écoles, and finally arrived at the Quai de

la Tournelle by following a direction parallel to that of the Rue des

Fossés-Saint-Bernard.

It was to Philippe-Auguste also that the city of Paris was indebted for

its first paved streets. In 1185, five years before the wall of

fortification was begun, he was in one of the great halls of his palace

in the Cité, and approached a window whence he was in the habit of

watching the traffic on the Seine. Some heavy wagons or carts were being

drawn through the streets at the time, says the historian Rigord, and

such an insupportable odor was stirred up from the mud and filth that

the king was obliged to leave the window, and was even pursued by it

into his palace. From this occurrence came his resolve to carry out a

work from which all his predecessors had shrunk because of the great

expense involved, and which, indeed, discouraged the bourgeois and the

prevost of the city when the royal commands were laid upon them. Instead

of carrying it out for all the streets and by-ways of the capital, they

appear to have contented themselves with paving the environs of the

palace, and the two streets which traversed the Cité from north to south

and from east to west, and which were called the _croisée de Paris_.

This paving was effected by means of square stones fifteen centimètres

long and fifteen to eighteen thick. The bourgeoisie found the expense so

heavy that under Louis XIII half of the streets of Paris were still

unpaved.

In 1204, the king charged the _prévôté_ of Paris to pay to the prior and

the monks of Saint-Denis de la Chartre thirty sous parisis for the

privilege of building on their land, and he commenced the construction

of the Louvre. The site had long been occupied by a sort of suburban

house of entertainment, and the king resolved to erect a strong château,

commanding the Seine. This château was square, the thick walls pierced

with small windows and loopholes arranged without order, surrounded by

wide and deep ditches, and completed by a great tower rising in the

middle. Over the pointed roof floated the royal banner, and within were

confined the State prisoners, and the royal treasures, crown-jewels, and

_Trésor des Chartres_. In 1200, this indefatigable monarch conceived the

idea of uniting all the different schools established in Paris under one

head, but the corporation of the Université was not constituted until

twelve years later.

The life and reign of Louis VIII, son of Philippe-Auguste and father of

Saint-Louis, have recently been made the subject of special research by

M. Petit-Dutaillis, whose history may serve to give his short reign of

three years a greater importance in the eyes of subsequent students than

it has received. He surrounded himself with the same political advisers

that had served his father, and was inspired by the same political and

administrative principles: the death of King John and the birth of the

infant Henry III caused his expedition to England, while still Dauphin,

to fail, and in his attempt to unite the crowns of Hugues Capet and of

William the Conqueror he had against him the influence of the Pope. His

energetic and persevering obstinacy won for him the surname of "the

Lion;" and, moreover, he was haunted "by those visions of sanctity and

of power to which the clerical and classical education gave birth, the

sole general ideas which enlightened and enlarged the darkened and

narrow brains of the men of the Middle Ages." The French historians are

of the opinion that it was to his father's victory of Bouvines that

England was indebted for her Magna Charta.

His entry into Paris after his coronation at Reims is described

enthusiastically by the chroniclers of the times. "The whole city

turned out before him; the poets chanted odes in his praise, the

musicians filled the air with the sound of the vielle [hurdy-gurdy!], of

fifes, of tambours, of the psalterion and of the harp." Another admires

the richness of the garments: "It is a pleasure to see the embroideries

of gold and the coats of jewelled silk sparkle on all the public places,

in the streets, in the squares. Old age, the flower of life, petulant

youth, all stoop under the weight of the purple. The servitors and the

domestics abandon themselves to the joy of being covered with

adornments, and forget their condition of servitude on seeing the

splendid stuffs which they display on their persons. Those who had not

garments worthy of figuring in such a festival procured them by

borrowing."

On the occasion of another procession which took place during this

reign, and in which, as in so many other mediæval demonstrations, the

devout participants walked barefoot, the religious zeal of these latter

was so great that they appeared, most of them, in their shirts, and very

many quite naked. This did not prevent the three queens, Isemberge,

widow of Philippe-Auguste; Blanche, wife of Louis VIII, and Bérengère,

Queen of Jerusalem, from watching the procession with great interest.

This chronicler, Guillaume Guiart, records another instance of the

manners and customs of the period, in which Queen Blanche again appears.

It was the custom, at mass, when the officiating priest pronounced the

words: "The peace of the Lord be with you!" for each worshipper to turn

to his neighbor on the left and give him the kiss of peace. On one

occasion, the queen, having received this chaste salutation, bestowed it

in her turn upon a girl of the town who was kneeling next her, but whose

dress was that of a respectable married woman. Greatly offended, she

procured from her royal husband an edict that, in future, these

_coureuses d'aiguillettes_ should be forbidden to appear in robes

with trains, in falling collars and gilded girdles. Saint-Louis, Queen

Blanche's son, for all his sanctity, appears to have been the first king

of France to introduce a royal falconer into his court.

[Illustration: A LADY AT PLAY; EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

From a water-color by F. Bac.]

Concerning this monarch, "in whose grand figure," says M. Henri Martin,

"is summed up all that there is of pure and elevated in the Catholicism

of the Middle Ages," we have, fortunately, abundant information in the

chronicles of the Sire de Joinville, his secretary and intimate friend,

who, with Villehardouin, is one of the first in date and in merit of

these national historians. The piety of the king--like that of most

other truly sincere mortals--had about it something simple and ingenuous

which Joinville records with equal frankness. When they first embarked

on their voyage to the Crusade, the clerks and the seigneurs were

fearfully seasick and much repented themselves; when they had somewhat

recovered, the king would draw them into serious conversation. On one

day, says Joinville:

"'Sénéchal,' said the king, 'what is it that is God?' 'Sire, it is so

sovereign and so good a thing that nothing could be better.' 'Truly,

that is very well replied, for this response is written in this little

book which I hold in my hand. Another question I will put to you, that

is to say: 'Which would you prefer, to be leprous and ugly, or to have

committed a mortal sin?' And I," says Joinville, "who never wished to

lie to him, I replied to him that I would rather have committed thirty

mortal sins than to be a leper. When the brothers had all departed from

where we were, he called me back alone and made me sit at his feet, and

said to me: 'How have you dared to say that which you said to me?' And I

reply to him that I would say so again. And then he says to me: '_Ha,

fou musart, musart_, you are deceived there, for you know that there is

no leprosy so ugly as that of being in mortal sin. And I pray you, for

the love of God in the first place, and for the love of me, that you

retain this in your heart.'"

The king's piety did not prevent him from showing an unyielding front to

the turbulent nobles and duly strengthening the royal authority at their

expense. By enforcing the regulations of Philippe-Auguste, he well-nigh

put a stop to the private wars and the judicial duel; he decided that

the royal coinage alone should circulate in the kingdom; at his death,

"Royalty already appeared as the unique centre of jurisdiction and of

power, and the _tiers état_ amassed every day more science and more

riches--which always ends by giving also more influence." The French

language, disengaging itself from its Latin idioms, had become the

language of legislation; it was that of the _Assises_, or laws of the

kingdom of Jerusalem. The poetry of the troubadours had perished in the

atrocious crusade against the Albigeois, but, "north of the Loire, the

_trouvères_ were still composing the _chansons de geste_, veritable epic

poems which were translated or imitated by Italy, England, and Germany.

So that we are quite justified in saying that, from the twelfth century,

the intellectual domination of Europe appertained incontestably to

France."

The formation of the collection of manuscripts known as the _Trésor des

Chartes_ is due to Saint-Louis. These archives he gathered together and

placed in the Sainte-Chapelle,--founded to receive the true Crown of

Thorns which he had received from Baldwin II, Emperor of Constantinople.

He restored and protected the great hospital of the Hôtel-Dieu; and when

his chaplain, Robert de Sorbon, in 1253, being at that time canon of

Paris, conceived the design of erecting a building devoted to the

instruction, by a certain number of secular ecclesiastics, doctors in

theology, of poor students, who, at that period, were frequently obliged

to live in the utmost poverty in order to pursue their studies, the king

purchased for the purpose a building situated in the Rue Coupe-Gueule

before the Palais des Thermes. The canonization of the monarch was

celebrated with great pomp in the spring of 1297, under Philippe IV; all

the nobles of the kingdom, clerical and laic, were invited to the

capital, the body was placed in a silver casket and carried in a

procession from Saint-Denis to Paris, where it was transferred to the

church of Saint-Denis. Some time afterward, one of the ribs was placed

in Notre-Dame and a part of the head in the Sainte-Chapelle.

It was under very different circumstances that these earthly remains

were first carried from Paris to Saint-Denis. The king had died in his

second Crusade, under the walls of Tunis; his son and successor,

Philippe III, re-entered Paris in 1271, bringing with him five

coffins,--that of his father, of his brother, of his brother-in-law, of

his wife, and of his son. He insisted upon carrying, unaided, upon his

shoulders, the body of his father from Paris to Saint-Denis, and at the

localities upon the road where he was obliged to stop and rest, crosses

of stone were erected, and remained for several centuries. Fortunately,

this was the last of the Crusades.

This filial piety did not save the young king from much tribulation.

Soon after his second marriage, with the princess Marie de Brabant

(during the rejoicings attending which the Parisians consumed an

inordinate quantity of wine, it is said, because the _cabaretiers_, in

revenge for the renewal of an old tax the year before, had put more

water than ever in their casks), his eldest son, the child of his first

wife, died. The king's chamberlain, the surgeon Pierre de Labrosse,

accused the young queen of having poisoned the prince. The queen

protested her innocence; the nobles of her train asserted, on the

contrary, that Labrosse was probably the murderer, as he was jealous of

the confidence which the king bestowed upon her, and which the

chamberlain had previously enjoyed. The king was unable to believe

either of them guilty; the medical science of the day was quite unequal

to the task of determining whether there had been any poisoning; the

queen demanded that Labrosse be put to the torture, and, to decide this

doubtful question, appeal was had to the judicial duel. The duke, Jean

de Brabant, arrived to maintain his sister's innocence in the lists; if

he were vanquished, she would be burned at the stake. While the unhappy

king was sending messengers to a celebrated _béguine_, a species of nun,

in Brabant, who was reported to have the gift of revelation, and

receiving only obscure replies, a certain man suddenly fell ill in a

convent in Melun, after having confided to a monk a sealed letter to be

sent to the king. The king received it, read it, showed it to his

council, which declared that the seal and the writing were undoubtedly

those of Labrosse. Whereupon the chamberlain was arrested, accused of

high treason, correspondence with the enemies of France, peculation,

everything except the real offence, and finally hung upon the celebrated

gibbet of Montfaucon,--the first mention of it in history, though it had

been long in existence.

It was in the first year of the reign of this monarch that the first

Parisian was ennobled,--Raoul, "called the Goldsmith," the king's

silversmith. Philippe afterward extended this privilege to several other

worthy bourgeois who had distinguished themselves in the arts.

Restricted as the space enclosed within the wall of Philippe-Auguste

had been, it still contained many cultivated fields and other

unbuilt-upon tracts of land; the numerous religious edifices and

university establishments erected since that reign had occupied these

waste spaces, and the population had even over-flowed in several

directions and congregated around the abbeys that had been constructed

outside the walls. When Philippe IV, the Bel, succeeded his father in

1285, four principal streets were paved,--those leading to Saint-Denis

and to the Portes Baudet, Saint-Honoré, and Notre-Dame. The bourgeois

successfully resisted the demands of the _prévôt_ of Paris that they

should pave more.

Under Philippe IV, the conditions regulating the acquisition of the

rights of bourgeoisie were definitely determined. Any free

_colon_--_i.e._, stranger, sojourner--could go before the _prévôt_ of

the city with two witnesses, engage himself to contribute to the

finances of the city, and to build or to purchase within the space of a

year a house of the value of, at least, sixty sous parisis; on these

conditions he was recognized as a bourgeois of Paris, and, in

consequence, was obliged to reside within its limits from the day of

Toussaint to that of Saint-Jean, in the summer, or at least to leave his

wife there, or his valet, if he were a bachelor. The population of Paris

was thus composed of the clergy, of the nobility,--of which the king was

the chief,--of the bourgeois or proprietors _roturiers_, of the

colons,--free or still _vilains_,--and of a few serfs of the soil whom

their owners had obstinately refused to emancipate.

One of the strongest grievances which this population had against the

king was his repeated debasements of the royal coinage, and on one of

these occasions their discontent was so menacing that, notwithstanding

he had hastily caused some specie of legal weight and value to be

struck, he left his own palace and sought refuge with the Templars. The

establishment of this order had greatly increased since they had first

found an asylum in Paris under Louis VI; the ancient gate of the tower

of the Temple was demolished as late as 1810. Within their walls was

asylum for all, as in the churches, and the king was none too prompt,

for the angry multitude was soon at the gates. Before these frowning

walls, they hesitated, but a few of the more hardy pushed past the guard

at the portal and penetrated as far as the kitchens. "What do you want

here?" inquired the _mâitre-queux_, the chief cook. "To know what is

going on here," replied the boldest of the invaders. "Why, the dinner of

our dear lord, the king." "Where is this dinner?" "Here it is." And he

presented an appetizing dish to his interlocutor, who passed it on to

his comrades, saying: "Here, all of you, it is the King of France who

gives the feast." By this time the alarm had been given, and the

intruders would have paid dearly for their enterprise had not Philippe

ordered that they be allowed to depart unmolested. However, though they

went away very proud of having eaten the king's dinner, a few days later

the bodies of twenty-eight of their number were seen hanging in a row

along the ramparts of the town. It was rumored that the Templars had not

been altogether ignorant of the gathering of this popular tumult, and

that if the entrance to their fortress had been so easily forced it was

not altogether without their knowledge; their ruin is said by some

historians to have been determined in the king's mind from this date. On

Friday, the 13th (!) of October, 1307, the Parisian population were very

much surprised to learn that the grand-master of the order and all the

knights had been arrested, their entire property confiscated, and the

Temple occupied by the king and his court. In this nefarious enterprise

Philippe had taken care to secure the co-operation of the Pope, Clement

V; the wildest charges, of idolatry, magic practices, cruelty and

outrage, were brought against the order; fifty-six of the knights were

burned alive at a slow fire at Vincennes, and, finally, in 1313, the

grand-master and another dignitary, on the little Ile aux Vaches, to-day

the platform of the Pont-Neuf, in the presence of the king and all his

court. A popular legend asserts that as the figure of the grand-master,

Jacques de Molay, disappeared finally in the smoke and flame of his

pyre, he was heard, in a solemn voice, to summon his executioners to

meet him before the bar of God, the Pope within forty days and the king

within the year. Certain it is that both these potentates died within

the appointed time.

The provincial synod which had condemned the fifty-six Templars had been

presided over by one of Philippe's confidants, the Archbishop of Sens,

brother of the king's minister of finances, Enguerrand de Marigny. It

was this latter who set the melancholy example of being hanged by his

royal master's successor, which was followed by other finance ministers

in two succeeding reigns. His innocence, however, was formally

recognized by the king, Louis X, before the end of his short reign of

eighteen months, a sum of ten thousand livres was granted to his

children, "in consideration of the great misfortune which has befallen

them," and his principal accuser, the Comte de Valois, stricken with

paralysis ten years later, made amends by a general distribution of alms

to the poor of Paris, with the request that they would "pray to God for

Monseigneur Enguerrand and for Monseigneur Charles de Valois." Much the

same fate awaited Gérard de la Guette, minister of Philippe V, le Long,

who reigned for six years after Louis X,--only, as he had expired under

the torture, this minister was hanged after death, and his innocence

duly acknowledged in course of time. Pierre Remy, successor of Gérard

de la Guette and treasurer of Charles le Bel, who succeeded Philippe le

Long, was arrested by Charles's successor, Philippe de Valois, even

before he had been crowned, and hanged on the gibbet of Montfaucon, like

his predecessors. He was at first intended for the little gibbet of

Montigny, reserved for the vulgar, but on his way there--whether moved

by sudden remorse, or by ambition for higher honors--he accused himself

of a multitude of new crimes, among others, of high treason against the

king and against the State. He was accordingly transferred to

Montfaucon, where he had the distinction of being hanged above all

others. This was in 1328.

"The amount of his property which was confiscated," says the historian

Félibien, "was estimated at twelve hundred thousand livres, which was

the produce, as well as the proof, of his pillaging; but this example

and that of several others of a similar kind did not serve to render any

more moderate those who have since had charge of the finances,--as

witness Macé de Manches, treasurer-changer of the king's treasury,

executed, like Pierre Remy, in 1331; Réné de Siran, director of the

mint, treated in the same fashion in 1333, and some others."

Louis X, Philippe V, and Charles IV, the three sons of Philippe le Bel

who reigned in succession after him, and who ended the elder branch of

the Capétiens, were even more unfortunate in their wives than in their

treasurers. These three Burgundian princesses, Marguerite, Jeanne, and

Blanche, were of an exceedingly dissolute character; the eldest and the

youngest resided in the abbey of Maubuisson and had for lovers two

Norman gentlemen, Philippe and Gaultier d'Aulnay. The king, Philippe le

Bel, being informed, caused the two Normans to be arrested, in 1314;

they confessed under torture, and were condemned to be flayed alive,

mutilated, decapitated, and hung up by the arm-pits. The two

princesses, after having had their heads shaved, were conducted to the

Château-Guillard, where they were most ingeniously persecuted. When the

husband of Marguerite ascended the throne, in 1315, as Louis le Hutin,

or the Quarreller, he disposed of his unworthy spouse by smothering her

between two mattresses, or, according to the local legend, strangling

her with her own long hair.

Neither Brantôme nor Villon gives the name of the sanguinary princess

who is said to have inhabited the Tour de Nesle, attracted handsome

young men passing by, and in the morning had them strangled and thrown

into the Seine, but romance or popular report has ascribed these doings

to Marguerite de Bourgogne, though it is certain that she never lived in

the Tour de Nesle. Other romances have designated Jeanne, wife of

Philippe le Long, as the princess celebrated for her amours with

Buridan, rector of the University in 1347; but this story is equally

unfounded, as she died in the Hôtel de Nesle in 1329, leaving behind her

a great reputation for gallantry, royal widow though she was. The Hôtel

de Nesle occupied nearly the site of the present Mint, adjoining the

Institute.

When the question of deciding upon a successor for Louis X arose, the

famous _Loi Salique_, by which at least one modern historian, M. Duruy,

thinks France has profited but little, was revived. Louis le Hutin left

but one child, a daughter; a posthumous son, Jean, lived but a week.

"Should his sister take the crown? A text of Scripture reads: 'The

lilies spin not, and yet Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like

one of these.' This evidently signifies that the kingdom of the lilies

shall not fall under the sway of a distaff. In the fourteenth century

this was a reason. There were others: it was not to be desired that a

foreigner should acquire France by a marriage; and the States-General,

applying to the Crown the rule of succession formerly established for

the Salic domains, excluded the daughter of Louis X from the throne.

Thus the right of inheritance recognized for daughters for the fiefs was

denied for the Crown."

Philippe le Long, also, had only daughters, and their uncle, Charles IV,

accordingly succeeded, only to see the same fate befall his children. On

his death-bed he said to his barons: "If the queen give birth to a son,

he will be your king; if a daughter, the crown will belong to Philippe

de Valois, whom I declare your regent." Another branch of the Capétiens,

the Valois, thus assumed the sceptre. But this interpretation, thus

three times renewed in twelve years, was contested abroad. Philippe VI

of Valois was a cousin of Charles IV, nephew of Philippe le Bel and

grandson of Philippe III. Edward III, King of England, was a grandson of

Philippe IV by his mother Isabella, and he protested against this

decision and asserted his right to the throne of France, mildly in 1328,

on the accession of Philippe VI, and strongly eight years later. Thus

came about the Hundred Years' War, and, incidentally, the residence in

Paris, as if in his capital, of an English king.

Unfortunately, the French nobility were divided in these evil days

coming upon the capital and the nation. In 1329, the Comtesse de Mahaut,

who held the comté d'Artois, died in Paris, poisoned. Robert d'Artois, a

prince of the blood, one of the _royaux de France_, claimed the

succession, but the king awarded it to the queen Jeanne, widow of

Philippe le Long; a month later, as she was about to take possession of

the comté, she also died suddenly, poisoned by one of the officers of

her table, in the hippocras, or medicated wine, which he handed her.

Whereupon Robert produced documents, duly signed and sealed by his

grandfather, Robert I, in which he was designated as the successor to

his title to the comté; these letters were recognized as forgeries, and

Robert was banished from the kingdom forever by the Court of Peers, and

his property confiscated. The false witnesses whom he had suborned were

arrested,--a demoiselle, Jeanne de Divion; his clerk, Perrot de Sanis;

his _fille de chambre_, Jeannette des Chaînes, and Pierre Tesson,

notary. All this made a tremendous sensation in Paris; a Jacobin, called

as one of the witnesses, refused to reveal the secrets of the

confessional; he was threatened with the rack by the Bishop of Paris;

the doctors in theology assembled and decided that he must testify, in

the interests of justice, which he did, and was accordingly confined in

prison for the rest of his days. The demoiselle La Divion was burned

alive on the Place of the Marché-aux-Pourceaux, in the presence of the

_prévôt_ of Paris and a great multitude of people; the same fate finally

befell Jeannette de Chaînes, after having concealed herself in various

localities, in 1334, on the same place; eight other false witnesses were

condemned to the pillory and other punishments, the notary to perpetual

imprisonment, and others to make _amende honorable_.

This ceremony, so usual in the Middle Ages, consisted in the culprit

walking in his shirt, bareheaded and barefoot, conducted by the public

executioner, a rope around his neck, a candle of yellow wax in his hand,

a placard explaining his crime on his chest, another on his back, to

some public place, usually the Parvis-Notre-Dame, and there, in an

audible voice, avowing his crime and professing repentance. No rank of

society, not even the monarch himself, was exempt from this punishment,

which frequently was only the prelude to execution. The chief criminal,

in this case, took refuge in Brabant, and there, to revenge himself,

_envoulta_ the king's son.

This was the familiar process in witchcraft by which an image of the

person attacked being made in wax, baptized, and the _voult_ duly

performed, with a mass said and religious consecration, it is then

melted before a fire, or in the sun, or pierced with a needle. This was

discovered. Robert, afraid of prosecution for sorcery, thought himself

too near France and escaped to England, where he urged Edward III to war

against his native country.

Notwithstanding the national troubles, the court and the Parisians

seemed disposed to give themselves up to pleasure. The marriage of the

king's second son, Philippe, with Blanche, daughter of Charles le Bel,

was celebrated with great pomp, and with a tournament at which assisted

the most illustrious knights of France and many from abroad. Among these

was the Duc de Normandie, against whom the king pitted the Seigneur de

Saint-Venant, and the duke was overthrown, horse and man. The Comte

d'Eu, Constable of France, received a lance-thrust in the chest, from

which he died that night. These casualties were only too common in these

celebrations, which were constantly discouraged by the popes, and even

forbidden by some of the kings of France. At the close of these

particular exercises, Olivier de Clisson, the Baron d'Avangour, Geoffroi

and Georges de Malestroit, and other Breton chevaliers were arrested and

conducted to the prisons of the Châtelet on charges of high treason and

of conspiring with the king of England.

The historian Mézeray declares that in the capital the sumptuousness of

apparel, the lascivious dances, the multiplication of entertainments,

were common both to the court and the citizens. Nothing was to be seen

but _jongleurs_, _farceurs_, and other actors and buffoons,

extravagance, debauchery, and constant change. "All the misfortunes of

the nation did not serve to correct them; the spectacles, the games, and

the tourneys constantly succeeded each other. The French danced, as it

were, on the bodies of their relatives. They seemed to rejoice at the

conflagration of their châteaux and their houses, and at the death of

their friends. Whilst some of them were having their throats cut in the

country, the others were feasting in the cities. The sound of the

violins was not interrupted by that of the trumpets, and there could be

heard at the same time the voices of those singing in the balls, and the

pitiful cries of those who perished in the flames or under the edge of

the sword."

Another chronicler, Robert Gaguin, writing in the fifteenth century,

dilates on the constant changes in the Parisian fashions in 1346. "In

those times, the garments differed very much from each other. When you

saw the manner in which the French clothed themselves, you would have

taken them for mountebanks. Sometimes the vestments which they adopted

were too large, sometimes they were too narrow; at one period they were

too long, at another, too short. Always eager for novelties, they could

not retain for ten years the same style of apparel."

[Illustration: LOUIS XVI ON THE LEADS OF THE TEMPLE.

After an engraving of the period.]

Jean II succeeded his father Philippe in 1350, and has preserved his

surname of le Bon, or the Good, though his reign was one of the most

disastrous in history. One of his very first acts was to cause the

arrest, in the Hôtel de Nesle, of Raoul, Comte d'Eu, Constable of

France, whom he accused of high treason, and, without any form of law,

had him beheaded at night in the presence of the Duc de Bourbon, the

Comte d'Armagnac, the Comte de Montfort, and several other high

personages of the court. All his property was confiscated, his comté was

given to the king's cousin, Jean d'Artois, and the king kept the rest.

In the following year he founded an order of knighthood, in imitation of

that of the Garter, established by Edward III in England, and which, in

its turn, served as a model for that of the _Toison d'Or_, the Golden

Fleece, instituted in 1439 by the Duke of Burgundy. King Jean gave to

his order the name of _Notre-Dame de la Noble maison_, but it was more

generally known as that of _l'Étoile_, the Star. According to

Froissart, it was "a company after the manner of the Round Table, which

should be constituted of three hundred of the most worthy chevaliers."

They took an oath never to flee in battle more than four arpents,--about

four hundred perches,--and there to die or to yield themselves

prisoners; the king gave them for a residence the royal lodging of

Saint-Ouen, near Paris. "True chivalry was departing, since the kings

endeavored to create an official chivalry."

Ten days after the battle of Poitiers, in which the king and his

youngest son, Philippe le Hardi, were taken prisoners, the Dauphin

Charles, Duc de Normandie, returned to Paris, took the title of

lieutenant of the King of France, and convoked the estates, which

assembled in October. The bourgeoisie, irritated at the ineptitude of

the royal power, assumed the authority under the _prévôt_ of the

merchants, Etienne Marcel, and the civil war followed. On the side of

the dauphin were the nobility and all those attached to the court; on

that of the _prévôt_, the bourgeoisie, the shop-keepers, artisans, and

common people. The latter extended the fortifications, especially those

on the northern side of the city, so as to include all the buildings

erected outside the walls of Philippe-Auguste. The dauphin, with a force

of seven thousand lances, occupied alternately Meaux, Melun, Saint-Maur,

the bridge of Charenton, and shut off all the supplies coming from the

upper Seine and the Marne. The attempt of Marcel to deliver the city to

Charles le Mauvais, King of Navarre, was discovered, the _prévôt_ was

killed at the city gate, and the dauphin entered Paris triumphantly two

days later.

In 1364, he succeeded to the throne, under the title of Charles V, and

by his wise administration, his prudent conduct of the war, and the

judicious management of the finances, secured for himself the surname

of "the Sage." He rendered the parliament permanent, instead of

occasional, and he gave it for its sittings in the Cité the ancient

palace of Saint-Louis, which became the Palais de Justice. A royal

ordinance, which remained in force till the Revolution, fixed the

majority of the kings of France at thirteen years of age, and provided

that the regent should _not_ be the guardian of the young prince;

another, dated in 1370, authorized the bourgeois of Paris to wear the

spurs of gold and other ornaments of the order of knighthood, and a

third, of 1377, awarded titles of nobility to the _prévôts_ and

_échevins_, or aldermen, of the city. In 1369, the authority of the

_prévôt_ of Paris was officially confirmed in regard to all offences and

misdemeanors committed within the city by any person whatsoever.

Among the many important buildings which this king erected or commenced

was the Bastile, founded in 1370, to replace the old Porte

Saint-Antoine, and consisting at first of two towers, united by a

fortified gate; the Louvre, repaired and enlarged; the fortifications of

the city; the Hôtel Saint-Pol, the gardens of which descended to the

Seine; the chapelle of Vincennes, and several châteaux in the environs

of the city. Nevertheless, and in spite of the encouragement given by

Charles V to letters, the capital and the nation shared in the general

decadence of the century, in morals, in intellect, and even in physical

force. It has been estimated that while the average duration of human

life was thirty years during the Roman Empire, it had now diminished to

seventeen. The readers of Voltaire will remember that in _The Man with

the Forty Écus_ his "geometer" gives it as twenty-two or twenty-three

years for Paris, and contrives to reduce this brief span to practically

two or three years of active, enjoyable life,--ten years off the

twenty-three for the period of youthful immaturity, ten more for the

decline of old age, sleep, sickness, work, worry, etc.!

Duruy cites two instances of feminine peers of France. In 1378, the

Duchesse d'Orléans writes to excuse herself from coming to take her seat

as a peer in the Parliament of Paris; the Duchesse d'Artois, Mahaut, had

been present at the coronation of Philippe V, and had supported, with

the other peers, the crown on the head of the king.

The need of funds was so pressing at the very outset of the following

reign that the young king, Charles VI, under the tutelage of his uncles,

the dukes of Anjou, Burgundy, and Berry, entered into serious

negotiations with the bourgeoisie of the city of Paris with a view of

persuading them to accept a new tax on commodities. The people were

obstinate in their refusal; a statute forbade the imposition of any new

duties without previous public proclamation, and, in the actual

condition of affairs, this proclamation was likely to lead to a popular

outbreak. On the last day of April, 1382, however, a public crier

presented himself on horseback at the Halles, where these proclamations

were usually made, sounded his trumpet, and when he saw the people

assembled around him, lifted his voice and announced that the king's

silverware had been stolen and that a liberal reward would be paid for

the discovery of the thieves. Then, profiting by the general surprise

and commotion, he proceeded: "I have still another proclamation to make

to you; to-morrow the new tax on produce will begin to be levied." After

which he put spurs to his horse, and disappeared at full speed!

Early the next morning the tax-collectors accordingly presented

themselves at the Halles; one of them claimed the percentage on a little

_cresson_ which an old woman had just sold, the old woman raised an

outcry, the unhappy collector was beaten and thrown in the gutter,

another was dragged from the very altar of the church of

Saint-Jacques-l'Hôpital and killed, and the mob rushed to the Hôtel de

Ville, where it was known that Charles V had caused to be deposited the

_maillets_ or mallets of lead which he had had made in anticipation of

an attack by the English, and armed themselves with these

weapons,--whence their name of Maillotins. But the new tax was

withdrawn, and the popular fury speedily subsided.

When the young king attained his majority, in 1388, the former

councillors of his father, the petty nobles, or _marmousets_, as the

great seigneurs contemptuously called them, resumed the direction of

affairs, but, with all their prudence and ability, were quite unable to

restrain the prodigal wastefulness of the prince. The entry of the

queen, Isabeau de Bavière, whom he had married three years before, was

made the occasion of extravagant processions, pomps, diversions, and

mystery-plays in Paris, as was the marriage of his brother, the Duc

d'Orléans, with the beautiful Valentine Visconti, and the conferring of

the order of knighthood on the children of the Duc d'Anjou. When,

finally, worn out with dissipation, with the license of unlimited power

from the age of twelve, the king went mad, his uncles resumed the

regency and the marmouset ministry prudently sought safety in flight.

The Duc de Bourgogne, Philippe le Hardi, died in 1404; his son, Jean

sans Peur, wished to succeed to his father's authority in the State, but

found himself opposed at every turn by the Duc d'Orléans; the old Duc de

Berry interposed and effected a formal reconciliation; three days later

the Duc d'Orléans was assassinated in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple by the

bravos of Jean sans Peur, who did not fear to do murder on a prince of

the blood.

[Illustration: LOUIS XVI, WITH HIS FAMILY, IN THE LOGOGRAPHIC BOX AT THE

ASSEMBLY, WITNESSING HIS DEPOSITION; AUGUST 11, 1792. From a drawing by

Georges Cain.]

In the civil war which followed, the Parisians profited at first by the

concessions which were made to them in order to secure their

support,--open opposition to all new taxes, restoration of their old

free constitution, the right to elect their _prévôt_ and other officers,

to organize their bourgeois militia under officers elected by

themselves, even that of holding fiefs like the nobles, with the

accompanying privileges, provided they were well born, and of Paris. The

nobility, on the contrary, were even less disposed to pardon him for

thus seeking the aid of the populace than for having compromised the

seignorial inviolability by laying violent hands on a brother of the

king. The Comte d'Armagnac, father-in-law of one of the sons of the Duc

d'Orléans, placed himself at the head of the opposing party; both

parties made advances to the English to secure their aid on different

occasions, but it was the Armagnacs who fought Henry V at Azincourt and

sustained that disastrous defeat; the Duc de Bourgogne secured

possession of the queen and proclaimed her regent; negotiating first

with one and then with another, he finally ended by being assassinated

in his turn by Tanneguy Duchâtel, _prévôt_ of Paris, and other servants

of the dauphin, on the bridge of Montereau, at the confluence of the

Yonne and the Seine.

"That which neither Crécy nor Poitiers nor Azincourt had accomplished,

the assassination on the bridge of Montereau did,--it gave the crown of

France to a king of England." In the following year, 1420, the treaty of

Troyes, concluded between Henry V, the Queen Isabeau, and the new Duc de

Bourgogne, Philippe le Bon, recognized the King of England as regent and

heir to the throne of France, he having married Isabeau's daughter,

Catherine of France. "All the provisions of this treaty were read

publicly, in a general assembly held by the Parliament on the 29th of

April. The governor of Paris, the chancellor, the _prévôt_, the

presidents, counsellors, _échevins_, merchants, and bourgeois, all were

unanimous in accepting this treaty." On the 30th of May it was formally

ratified in another general assembly, and on the 1st of December the

bourgeois turned out in great state and with much pomp to receive the

two kings, who entered, walking side by side, Charles VI on the right.

"The streets were richly decorated and tapestried from the Porte

Saint-Denis to Notre-Dame, 'and all the people cried _Noël!_ to show

their joy.'" The English king, with his two brothers, the dukes of

Clarence and of Bedford, were lodged at the Louvre; the poor French

king, at the Hôtel Saint-Pol, and the Duc de Bourgogne, in his Hôtel

d'Artois.

The madness of Charles VI was intermittent, but apparently hopeless; it

had been greatly aggravated by all the tragic circumstances of his

reign, including the terrible _bal des ardents_, in which he had been

saved from being burned to death, with several other maskers disguised

as satyrs, by the coolness and courage of the Duchesse de Berry. The

queen, Isabeau, was openly dissolute; on one occasion, the king,

returning from visiting her at Vincennes, encountered her lover, the

chevalier Louis de Bois-Bourdon, had him arrested on the spot, put to

the question, sewed up in a sack, and thrown in the river. Probably with

a view to her own security, she had placed in the king's bed-chamber "a

fair young Burgundian," Odette de Champdivers, and it was this

demoiselle who, in his periods of frenzy, was alone able to soothe and

persuade him. It is related that they played cards together in his saner

moments, this amusement having recently been brought into fashion again.

Even the powers of magic were tried in vain to effect his cure.

[Illustration: FEMME-DE-LA-COUR AND FOUNDLING; EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. From

a water-color by Maurice Leloir.]

Nevertheless, few monarchs seem to have been so sincerely mourned.

"All the people who were in the streets and at the windows wept and

cried as if each one had seen the death of the one he loved the best.

'_Ah! très cher prince_, never shall we have another so good! Never

shall we see thee again! Cursed be Death! We shall have no longer

anything but war, since thou hast left us. Thou goest to repose, we

remain in tribulations and sorrow.'"

Queen Isabeau, in addition to disinheriting her son in favor of her

daughter, was held responsible by her contemporaries for setting the

fashion in wasteful and absurd extravagance in dress. The ladies wore

the _houppelande_, the _cotte hardie_, tight around the girdle, and

looped up their sleeves _excessivement_ to show this _cotte hardie_;

they also had openings in the surcoat to show the girdle. These openings

the preachers called "windows of hell." "They made their stomachs

prominent, and seemed, all of them, _enceinte_: this mode they clung to

for forty years." "The more the misery increased, the more the luxury

augmented; at the Hôtel de Bohême, inhabited by Louis d'Orléans, there

were chambers hung with cloth of gold _à roses_, embroidered with

_velours vermeil_, of _satin vermeil_ embroidered with arbalists, of

cloth of gold embroidered with mills.... And, during this time, the

grass grew in the streets, say the historians of the period, the wolves

entered the city at night by the river; the imagination of the people,

exalted, saw already in Paris a new Babylon, the ruins of which would

presently become the repair of the beasts of prey."

When the remains of what might well seem to be the last of the kings of

France were interred at Saint-Denis, a herald-at-arms recommended the

soul of the defunct to the prayers of the assembled multitude; then he

cried: "_Vive Henri de Lancastre, Roi de France et d'Angleterre!_" At

this cry, all the officers present reversed their maces, rods, and

swords, to signify that they considered themselves as no longer

exercising their offices. The English king was not crowned in Paris till

nine years later (1431), but his representative, the Duke of Bedford,

left his residence in the Hôtel de la Rivière, Rue de Paradis, and Rue

du Chaume (to-day the Rues des Francs-Bourgeois and des Archives), to

establish himself in the Palais de la Cité. On the 8th of September,

1429, Jeanne d'Arc, having brought about the crowning of the sluggish

Charles VII at Reims in the preceding July, presented herself at the

head of a French corps under the orders of the Duc d'Alençon before the

northern walls of Paris, and herself directed the assault on the Porte

Saint-Honoré. She surmounted the first entrenchment, constructed in

front of the pig market there established on the Butte des

Moulins,--afterward suppressed to make way for the opening of the Avenue

de l'Opéra,--drove in the English, sounded the depth of the moat with

the staff of her banner, and fell wounded with an arbalist shaft through

her thigh, in front of what is now the entrance to the Théâtre-Français.

The chronicles of the time differ as to whether the French chiefs failed

to support her through jealousy, or fought with _acharnement_ to save

her from falling into the hands of the besieged. The attempt was

abandoned, and the Maid was carried to Saint-Denis to have her wound

dressed.

In Paris, opinions were very much divided, and even those who favored

the French king felt that they were too much compromised to open their

gates to him without some stipulations. Two years later, Jeanne having

been duly burned at Rouen, and the consecration of Charles VII, at

Reims, "to which he had been conducted by an agent of the demon, being

in itself and of its own nature null and void," the English monarch

entered his city of Paris to receive an orthodox and irreprehensible

coronation. As he rode by the Hôtel Saint-Pol, he perceived the Queen

Isabeau on the balcony; he doffed his hat to her and she returned his

salute, then burst into tears. On the 17th of December, he was anointed

and crowned in Notre-Dame by Cardinal Winchester--which gave great

offence to the Bishop of Paris--and surrounded entirely by English

lords; there was no liberation of prisoners, no largess to the people,

no removal of taxes. "A bourgeois who marries off his daughter would

have done the thing better," said the Parisians. However, he manifested

some desire to secure their good-will by confirming a number of their

minor privileges, their right to acquire titles of nobility, etc.

The discontent grew among the citizens; no coronation of a king of

France could be as sacred as that celebrated according to the ancient

ceremonial at Reims; the English garrison felt constrained to take such

strong measures of precaution as to forbid any one to leave the city

without passports, or to mount upon the ramparts under penalty of being

hanged. It was not till the 29th of May, 1436, that six citizens, whose

names history has preserved, contrived to open the Porte Saint-Jacques,

in the quarter of the Halles, to their countrymen outside; the Constable

of France, Arthur de Bretagne, Comte de Richemont, with the Comte de

Dunois and some two thousand horsemen, were waiting for them; the first

twenty men introduced through a little postern gate opened the great

doors and let down the drawbridge, all the cavalry trooped in without

meeting the least resistance. "Then the Maréchal de l'Isle-Adam mounted

upon the wall, unfurled the banner of France, and cried '_Ville

gagnée!_' [City taken!]."

Captain Willoughby, who commanded the English, finding the whole

populace rising against him, was compelled to take refuge in the

Bastile with some thousand or twelve hundred men, and soon after

capitulated and left the city by the Porte Saint-Antoine, pursued by the

hootings of the people. Charles VII made his triumphal entry in the

following November, and was received with abundant demonstrations of

welcome. It was, however, a city devastated by pestilence and famine and

with troops of wolves in all the suburbs. Bands of brigands, largely

made up of unpaid soldiers, and called, from their outrages,

_escorcheurs_, traversed the country and the environs and were more

feared even than the wolves. The universal demoralization caused by the

war had removed all bounds to the cruelty of the nobles, and the

chronicles of the time are replete with murder, open and secret. "The

Duc de Bretagne caused the death of his brother; the Duc de Gueldre,

that of his father; the Sire de Giac, that of his wife; the Comtesse de

Foix, that of her sister; the King of Aragon, that of his son."

"Above this feudal aristocracy was placed another aristocracy, that of

the princes, which royalty had elevated with its own hands, in

constituting vast appanages for the _royaux de France_, the title given

to the sons, the brothers, the relatives of the king. Hence those

powerful houses of Bourgogne, of Orléans, of Anjou, of Bourbon, which

joined to the spirit of independence of the ancient feudality the pride

and the pretensions of a royal origin, and which said by one of its

members: 'I esteem so much the kingdom of France, that, in the place of

one king, I should like to see six.'"

[Illustration: NAPOLEON AND MARIE LOUISE ENTERING THE GARDEN OF THE

TUILERIES ON THE DAY OF THEIR MARRIAGE, APRIL 2, 1810.]

Valuing only that which was acquired by the sword, or professing to do

so, this feudal aristocracy affected to look down with disdain upon the

great merchants and bankers,--whose large fortunes, indeed, were not

always acquired with the strictest probity,--and they viewed with

indifference the king's infamous robbery of his minister, Jacques

Coeur, which, with his abandonment of Jeanne d'Arc, constitute the

blackest stains upon his character. The _gens de petit estat_, the

councillors of humble origin, with which the king surrounded himself,

and who served him so well, were also a source of offence to these proud

nobles. M. G. du Fresne de Beaucourt, in his exhaustive history of this

monarch, in six octavo volumes, dwells at length on the constantly

increasing influence in the grand council, during the period of national

reorganization in the latter part of the reign, of these humble

councillors. "And it was, above all, the people of France themselves,"

says M. Funck-Brentano, "who, in the midst of all the secular struggles,

acquired, little by little, the sentiment of its unity, of the common

solidarity of the public welfare. The day on which they were found

grouped, admirable in their energy and devotion, around the royal throne

which, for them, was the concentrating point of these sentiments, the

cause of the foreign enemy was lost."

Son though he was "of an imbecile father and a debauched mother,"

Charles VII did not lack for intelligence, and in his diplomacy,

directed during the first part of his reign against a foreign enemy and,

in the latter part, against a domestic one, the Burgundians, he gave

proof of the highest qualities. He had a taste for letters, and

was--"unique, doubtless, in this among the kings of France"--a good

Latin scholar. His mistresses, of whom Agnès Sorel was only the first,

were imposed upon his wife, Marie d'Anjou, and upon his court with

unusual effrontery. The queen was even obliged to distribute gifts to

the "_filles joyeuses_ who followed the court in its peregrinations."

This moral depravation, naturally, extended downward to the whole court.

M. Brentano, who is one of the few French historians who venture to lay

disrespectful hands on the grand _Roi-soleil_, says: "Charles VII was

the original source of the crapulous debauchery of the last Valois; he

traced the way for the crimes of Louis XIV, and the turpitudes of Louis

XV." This, although the higher clergy of the reigns both of Charles and

of Louis Quatorze did not fail in their duty, and did denounce openly

from the pulpit the sins of these all-powerful monarchs.

On his re-entry into Paris, Charles did not take up his residence in the

Hôtel Saint-Pol, the sorrowful lodging of his father, but in the

Tournelles, which he made a "delightful sojourn," and where his

successors installed themselves until François II, who established his

dwelling in the Louvre. In the time of Louis XI, however, the Tournelles

partook of the sordid and melancholy character of its master. "The king

lived there alone and stingily," says the historian Michelet. "He had

had the odd taste to retain some servitors whom he had brought from

Brabant; he lived there as if in exile.... As soon as he was king, he

assumed the pilgrim's habit, the cape of coarse gray cloth, with the

gaiters of a travelling costume, and he took them off only at his

death.... If he came out of the Tournelles, it was in the evening, like

an owl, in his melancholy gray cape. His gossip, companion, and friend

(he had a friend) was a certain Bische, whom he had formerly set as a

spy on his father, Charles VII, and whom afterward he kept near the

Comte de Charolais, to induce him to betray his father, the Duc de

Bourgogne."

The king had, indeed been one of the worst of sons,--at the period of

his accession to the throne he was almost in open rebellion against his

father, and had sought refuge at the court of Burgundy. The great nobles

consequently looked with complacency upon his coming into power, and

were very far from foreseeing that through him their privileges and

authority throughout the kingdom were to be finally ruined. During his

reign, the capital prospered,--"the king made of it his refuge, his

citadel and his arsenal for all his enterprises against the feudality."

In one respect, he followed his father's example and even bettered

it,--his counsellors were chosen by preference among the _tiers état_,

and frequently even among men of base extraction. When occasion

required, he did not disdain any of the arts of the demagogue: on

entering Paris after the indecisive battle of Montlhéry, with the

Burgundians, almost under the walls of the capital, he took supper with

the principal ladies of the city in the house of Charles de Melun, and

so moved them with the recital of the dangers he had undergone that all

the dames bourgeoises wept. He was in the habit of visiting familiarly

the principal bourgeois, seating himself at their table or inviting them

to his own, and interesting himself in their private affairs. By this

means, he endeavored to ascertain their opinions concerning his

political measures, and the amount of obedience which they were likely

to render to them. In 1471, "he honored the city by starting the fire

with his own hand in the Place de Grève, the evening of Saint John the

Baptist." On a mast, twenty-five mètres in height and surrounded by

combustibles of all kinds, was hung a great basket containing a dozen

black cats and a fox, symbols of the devil. "The more the grilled cats

cried, the more the people laughed."

For all his craftiness, "he had not reigned four years when all the

world was against him," says Duruy. "The people forced to provide, by

paying a great many imposts, for the necessities of the government which

they did not as yet comprehend, the bourgeoisie wounded in its

particular interests, which it did not know how to sacrifice to the

general interests, the clergy menaced in its property, the lesser

nobility in its rights and in its dearest habits, the higher aristocracy

in its pretensions to sovereignty,--all these classes, so widely

diverse, so often hostile one to another, found themselves for the

moment quite in accord upon one point,--the necessity of limiting the

royal authority." The _Ligue du Bien public_ was formed by the great

nobles through compassion for the miseries of the kingdom "under the

discord and piteous government of Louis XI." Thus threatened by the

aristocracy, it was a question of the utmost importance for the king to

retain his capital; he wrote to the Parisians in the most cajoling

phrases before Montlhéry, and after, hastened to arm the bourgeois and

accepted, as an aid and support, a council of six bourgeois, six members

of the Parliament, and six clerks of the University.

The festivals and processions in the streets of Paris were not so

numerous in this reign as in many of the preceding ones, but some of

them have remained memorable. On his entry into the city on the occasion

of his accession to the throne, August 30, 1461, he was richly dressed

in white satin, and rode between the old Duc de Bourgogne and the Comte

de Charolais. Over the Porte Saint-Denis was the representation of a

ship, "emblem of the arms of Paris (which are, gules, a ship _équipé_,

argent, on a sea of the same; _au chef cousu d'argent_, sown with

_fleurs-de-lis d'or_). From this ship descended two little angels, who

placed a crown upon the head of the king. The fountain of Ponceau ran

wine; and at this fountain three beautiful maids, quite nude,

represented sirens; 'and this was a very pleasant thing,' adds the

chronicler, Jean de Troyes; 'they discoursed little _motets_ and

_bergerettes_.'" Other demonstrations, in the fashion of the time, were

given at other points of the route; all the streets through which the

king passed were hung with rich tapestries, and when he arrived at the

Pont-au-Change, the bird merchants of Paris launched in the air "more

than two hundred dozen birds of all kinds."

[Illustration: GRAND SALON OF THE TUILERIES, 1810. After Percier and

Fontaine.]

A very good painter, M. Tattegrain, in one of his recent _envois_ to the

annual Salon, has represented with great detail and much historical

accuracy the incident of the three pretty sirens, quite nude. According

to his story, they were only bared to the waist, and the king, very

gallantly, checked the procession and rode out from under his canopy to

hear their _motets_ and _bergerettes_.

On the 15th of May, 1468, there was a fine tilting at the Hôtel des

Tournelles between the gentlemen of Paris and those of Normandy; "they

were valiant champions, superbly apparelled in hacquetons embossed with

gold." Of the four Norman chevaliers who came expressly for this

occasion, three were wounded, so that "all the honor of the jousts

remained with those of Paris." On the 19th of November, the conclusion

of the treaty of Péronne, between the king and the Duc de Bourgogne, was

announced by trumpets in all the public squares of the city, and popular

rejoicings ordered; as also for the birth of the dauphin, afterward

Charles VIII, June 30, 1470, and the victory of Henry of Lancaster, King

of England, over his competitor, Edward. These two events, the king

directed, should be celebrated by a cessation of work of all kind for

three days, and public prayers. Not long afterward, the queen of Henri

VI arrived in Paris with her son, the Prince of Wales, and was received,

by order of the king, with all the honors due her rank.

Amidst all these splendors it was Louis XI himself who frequently

presented the reverse side of the medal. The registers of the Chambre

des Comptes mention, about the time of the English queen's visit, a

disbursement of twenty sols for the insertion of a pair of new sleeves

in an old pourpoint of the king's wearing. He was considered to have

gotten much the worse of the treaty of Péronne with Charles the Bold,

and he had a mistress named Perrette, so that the Parisians trained

their parrots, magpies, and other speaking birds to ask Perrette to give

them a drink, among other ribald phrases. Consequently, the king issued

a royal commission "to a young man of Paris named Henry Perdriel, in the

said city of Paris" to take and seize "all magpies, jays, and chevrettes

being in cages or otherwise, and being private property, in order to

bring them all before the king, and have written down and registered the

place where he had taken the aforesaid birds and also all that they knew

how to say, as: _larron_; _paillard_; _fils de p---- _; _va hors, va_;

_Perrette, donne-moi à boire_, and several other words which the said

birds know very well how to say and which have been taught them." In

this same year, 1468, he caused to be confiscated in Paris and brought

to him at Amboise all the deer, does, and cranes which the rich

bourgeois were in the habit of keeping in their gardens. "This dispensed

with the necessity of his buying them," adds the historian.

A Bohemian periodical, the _Nation Czech_, has recently published a

condensation of the very curious journal kept by a certain Seigneur Léon

de Rozmital, brother of the queen Joan, wife of Georges Podiébrad, King

of Bohemia, during his travels in France in the year 1465. At

Meung-sur-Loire he met Louis XI, who received him with much honor,

though he appears to have quite declined to listen to the seigneur's

proposals of a treaty of alliance between the two nations; he

accompanied the king to _Kand_ (perhaps the château of Candes,

Indre-et-Loire), where he was presented to the queen and all her train.

Her Majesty received him cordially, "and every one kissed him on the

mouth. It was the king who had ordered it, and who wished it so.

Afterward, the queen gave her hand to every chevalier and was very

gracious with all." Louis invited his guest to come to visit him in

Paris, but the latter fails to record his doing so.

In the year 1470, it may be mentioned, Ulric Gering, Michel Friburger,

and Martin Krantz set up the first printing-press, in the college of the

Sorbonne, and printed a book: _Epistolæ Gasparini Pargamensis_ (Letters

of Gasparin de Bergamo). Other works appeared, the first of which was a

Bible, offered to Louis XI in this same year.

The universal demoralization of manners resulting from the long wars

against the English and between the Burgundians and Armagnacs, the

English occupation of the city, the presence in the capital of a

multitude of drunken and debauched soldiers, did not serve to check the

extravagance and license among the wealthier bourgeois against which the

clergy thundered in vain. One of the boldest of these preachers was a

Cordelier named Olivier Maillard, who appealed to the multitude by the

freedom of his language and his images too frequently borrowed from the

vernacular, and who--although he bore the title of _prédicateur du

roi_--did not hesitate to denounce the monarch himself. He accordingly

received an intimation that if these attacks did not cease very

promptly, he would be tied up in a sack and thrown in the river. "The

king is master," replied Maillard, "but go and say to him that I would

go quicker to paradise by water than he with his post-horses." A species

of crusade was organized by the mendicant friars against the

extravagance of the costumes and the indecency of the manners; the evil

had assumed such proportions that to be modestly and decently dressed

was to be, in the language of the people as well as in that of the

preachers, "clothed without sin." "To the ferocity, to the barbarity of

feudal times had succeeded the vices of a semi-civilization, whilst

waiting till manners and customs should refine themselves under the

action of the Renaissance."

[Illustration: BONAPARTE AND THE GRENADIER.]

One of the first acts of the new king, Charles VIII, was to hang Olivier

le Dain, _valet de chambre_, barber, counsellor, and, finally,

ambassador of his father. His property was confiscated and given to the

Duc d'Orléans. This act afforded a lively satisfaction to the Parisians

and to the nation at large. Another favorite of the late monarch, Jean

de Doyat, was somewhat more fortunate, though he was arrested, publicly

whipped in the streets, pilloried at the Halles, where his tongue was

pierced with a hot iron and one ear cut off, then sent down to Auvergne,

his native province, flogged again, robbed of the other ear, and all his

goods confiscated. Later, however, the king quashed the judgment and

restored him his property, if not his severed members.

By his marriage with Anne de Bretagne, December 13, 1491, this monarch

united the last of the great fiefs of France to the crown, and

disappointed several powerful foreign suitors, English, German, and

Spanish. On the 9th of the following February the royal couple entered

the capital in state, and the stately and haughty carriage of the Breton

princess was greatly admired by the populace. The bourgeois and

merchants of various conditions who rode, two by two, to meet her had

all "magnificent costumes, robes of satin _cramoisi_, of damask _gris

cendre_, or of scarlet cloth on a violet ground. They had had made a

dais the canopy of which was of cloth of gold, embossed, sown with

lilies and roses. They carried it alternately from the Porte Saint-Denis

as far as Notre-Dame."

When the king set off on his ill-advised expedition to conquer the

kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, he was very short of funds and wished to

borrow a hundred thousand écus from the Parisians, but met with a flat

refusal. Consequently, when a deputation of the notables of the city

took the liberty of remonstrating with him concerning this Italian war,

he received them very badly and requested them to keep their advice for

themselves, as he had no need of it. But, after having conquered the

Milanais and lost it very soon afterward, he applied again to his city

of Paris for a vessel of war; Jean de Ganay, president of the

Parliament, presented to the _prévôt_ of the merchants and to the

_échevins_ at the Hôtel de Ville the letter which the king had written

on this subject. In order to deliberate on it weightily, they assembled

all the councillors, and a resolution was adopted that the Messieurs of

the Parliament and of the Chambre des Comptes and the Bishop of Paris

meet in a general assembly at the Hôtel de Ville. But the progress of

political events having rendered this vessel unnecessary, nothing came

of all these deliberations.

Louis XII, on his accession to the throne in 1498, resolved to cross

the Alps in his turn, and on his solemn entry into Paris after his

coronation an elaborate machine was contrived to delicately flatter his

pretensions to Genoa and Milan, and appear in the royal procession. This

consisted of an apparatus mounted on wheels, in the form of a terrace,

on which was seen a porcupine, moving all his quills at once, and a

young virgin, habited in Genoese fashion and throned on a seat of

cloth-of-gold _cramoisi_. But unluckily the machine would not function,

and after remaining immovable in one place, finally disappeared "in

great mortification." The Parisians seem never to have lost their

fondness for processions and displays, and were always ready to welcome

a new king with the firm belief that all their griefs would speedily be

remedied under the new régime. As there was a possibility of the widowed

queen, Anne de Bretagne, carrying her rich dower, now returned to her,

out of the kingdom, Louis XII secured a divorce from his wife Jeanne,

third child of Louis XI, and so very plain in countenance that her royal

father could not endure the sight of her. Thus it happened that _la

Bretonne_ made her second solemn entrance into Paris as a newly-wed

queen of France, in 1504; and at her death, ten years later, the king

"during a whole week did nothing but weep."

Her obsequies, at Saint-Denis and Notre-Dame, gave rise to a scandalous

discussion over the possession of all the objects which had figured in

them. The abbot and the monks of Saint-Denis demanded the restitution of

the dais, of the effigy and of the garments of the queen, of the cloth

of gold, of the velvet which had served to decorate the chapel, and of

all the offerings made by the assistants. The nuns of La

Saussaye-lez-Villejuif wished that there should be given them all the

linen of the late queen, body linen and table linen, the ornaments of

gold and of silver, and all the mules, palfreys, horses of state and

others which had drawn the chariots, with all the harness and the

collars. The grand equerry of the queen, Louis de Hangest, pretended,

for his part, that the horses, the canopy, and the cloth of gold all

pertained to him in virtue of his office, and, whilst awaiting the

decision, he insisted that the horses, chariots, and harness should at

least be turned over to him provisionally in order that he might conduct

the ladies and the pages of the late queen. But it was feared that he

would keep them under any conditions. The king-at-arms and the heralds

wanted all the mouldings and all the stuffs of velvet and of silk which

were on the walls of the chapelle ardente; and the chaplains of the

cardinal, the sum of all the offerings made both at Notre-Dame and at

Saint-Denis. The Parliament devoted a week to endeavoring to bring the

disputants into accord, and in the meanwhile ordered an appraisement of

all the horses, carriages, etc., which were confided to the grand

equerry, and all the linen, ornaments, dais, etc., were sequestered and

placed in the hands of Jean du Val, receiver of pledges, and of Ragerin

Le Lieur, merchant bourgeois.

In addition to his grief over his wife's death, the king found himself

very much embarrassed in his finances till his good city of Paris came

to his relief with a donation of twenty thousand livres. He had even

sold his vessels of gold and silver, for the sum of two hundred thousand

livres. Being thus relieved, with the inconstancy of men, he began to

think of another wife, and in September, 1514, the magistrates of the

city went out in state to meet the ambassadors of England who had

arrived to negotiate a match with the Princess Mary, daughter of their

sovereign. For this fickleness (which, however, was partially dictated

by political considerations) Louis XII was destined to pay dearly; he

was fifty-three years of age and his bride was eighteen; to please her,

he changed all his habits of life, and even the hours of his repasts. He

had been in the habit of "dining" at eight o'clock, and he now dined at

noon; he had been accustomed to go to bed at six o'clock in the evening,

and now it was often midnight when he retired. So that he died at the

Palais des Tournelles on the first of the following January, 1515, and

the death-criers, sounding their bells, paraded the streets, calling

aloud: "The good king Louis, father of the people, is dead!"

It was the States-General of the nation, speaking through the

representative of Paris, which had given him this fine name, _Père du

peuple_, and which, by his care for their interests, his economy in the

general administration, his suppression of abuses, he had well deserved.

"The third part of the kingdom," says a contemporary, "was opened to

cultivation in twelve years, and for one important merchant that had

been known in Paris, in Lyons, or in Rouen, there could be found fifty

under Louis XII, who made it more easy to go to Rome, to Naples, or to

London than formerly to Lyons or Geneva." In this intelligent

administration, he was greatly aided by the cardinal, Georges

d'Amboises, who "for twenty-seven years remained less his minister than

his friend," and who shared with him the well-earned approval of the

people. "_Laissez faire à Georges_" (Let George alone and he'll do it)

marked the general appreciation.

[Illustration: THE POMPEIIAN HOUSE, AVE. MONTAIGNE. BUILT IN 1866, FOR

PRINCE NAPOLEON.

DEMOLISHED IN 1892.]

That curious custom of the Middle Ages, which testifies so strongly to

the impotence and unjustness of the laws and the universal prevalence of

sudden outbreaks of passion and crime, the right of asylum, was greatly

modified in Paris by Louis XII. In the porches of the churches, or, if

they had none, within the space of thirty feet of their walls on all

sides, and in the cemeteries adjoining them, the hunted criminal was

safe. The king suppressed this privilege for the churches and convents

of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, Saint-Merri, Notre-Dame, l'Hôtel-Dieu,

the Abbaye Saint-Antoine, the Carmelites of the Place Maubert, and the

Grands-Augustins. François I extended this reform still further; his

ordinance of 1539 abolished all places of immunity for debts or other

civil matters, and decreed that any person could be apprehended

anywhere, provided that, if his place of refuge should be justified, he

should be returned to it. This, however, never was done. In 1789, there

were in Paris a few privileged localities remaining,--the royal

residences, the hôtels of the ambassadors, and the hôtel of the grand

prior of Malta, the Temple. By an article of the _Code de procédure

civile_, it was forbidden to arrest debtors in the buildings

consecrated to worship and during the religious exercises; and under the

Second Empire a debtor could not be arrested in the garden of the

Tuileries. With the abolishment of imprisonment for debt, these

regulations repealed themselves.

In an almost equally important matter, that of the hours of the three

meals of the day, a great change also took place during this reign. The

courtiers did not generally follow the king in his transferral of _le

dîner_ from eight o'clock in the morning (according to the custom

established at the beginning of the reign) to noon, but the people seem

to have adopted the new hour. The wars in Italy brought to the French

table for the first time the pâtes of that country, vermicelli,

macaroni, semoule, the lassagnes and others. For women in childbed and

for consumptives were reserved the _bouillons_ or "restaurants,"--these

were composed of meat, of animals or of chickens, cut up very fine and

distilled in an alembic with peeled barley, dried roses, cinnamon,

coriander, and Damascus raisins. One of the most succulent of these

bouillons was called _restaurant divin_.

Under François I, the dinner-hour was established at nine o'clock in the

morning, and the supper-hour at five in the evening. It is true that the

hour of rising was also most unreasonably early according to modern

ideas. There was a popular rhyme:

"_Lever à cinq, dîner à neuf,

Souper à cinq, coucher à neuf.

Fait vivre d'ans nonante-neuf._"

(To rise at five, to dine at nine, to sup at five, to go to bed at nine,

will make you live to ninety-nine.)

The national menu was further increased by contributions from Italy and

from domestic producers, pâtes, cheeses, and some new fruits, apricots

and plums; the latter, still a great favorite with the French, was

called _la reine Claude_ after the daughter of Louis XII. With the good

living came an increase in drunkenness among all, lower classes,

bourgeois, courtiers, and soldiers,--the latter, indeed, to such an

extent that the king felt constrained to issue edicts threatening this

growing vice with the severest penalties: for the first offence,

imprisonment; for the second, flogging in private; for the third,

flogging in public; and the hardened offender ran a great risk of losing

his ears and being banished from the kingdom.

With the reign of François I began the _ancien régime_,--"that is to

say, a government in which the subjects have no guarantee against

oppression, even the most iniquitous, and the prince, no obstacle to his

will, even the most capricious." In 1527, the president of the

Parliament of Paris declared openly that the king was above the law,

though he added that his sovereign will should be regulated by equity

and reason. The nobility, reduced to a state merely of revenues and

titles, were no longer the great feudal powers of the Dark Ages, "and at

the sumptuous court which François opened to them they learned to ruin

themselves and to obey." In the middle of this century, there was only

one great feudal house remaining, that of Bourbon-Navarre, the head of

which, Antoine, was quite without influence. Below were the grand

seigneurs, the Montmorencys, the Guises, the La Trémouilles, the

Châtillons, and others, but deprived of all the rights of the powerful

feudal vassals of the king of former times; the clergy had been reduced

to a condition of dependence upon the king by the concordat of 1516,

which made him the unique dispenser of benefices; the _tiers

état_--which included "the men of letters, who are called men of the

long robe; the merchants, the artisans, the people, and the

peasants"--had long been accustomed to obedience. "There had formerly

been only manants (rustics, clowns), seigneurs, and fiefs; there is now

a people, a king, and a France."

"If the accession of François I was a great occasion for the men," says

M. de Lescure, "it was still more so for the ladies. In fact, it might

be said that they ascended the throne with the new king. Admitted for

the first time to the banquets, to the tourneys of the Hôtel des

Tournelles, this hardy innovation gave the measure of their new

destinies and of the credit reserved by the most gallant of monarchs for

the fairest half of the human species." Unfortunately, the king was not

inclined to make any distinctions among these new ornaments to his

court, and while his predecessors had made strenuous efforts to reduce

the license of manners, we find him issuing such edicts as this:

"François, by the grace of God, King of France, to our friend and loyal

treasurer of our exchequer, Maître Jehan Duval, salutation and

dilection. We desire, and we command you, that from the deniers of our

aforesaid exchequer you pay, give, and deliver ready-money to Cécile de

Viefville, dame des filles de joie, attending our court, the sum of

forty-five livres tournois, making the value of twenty écus of gold sol

at forty-five sols apiece, of which we have made and do make by these

presents donation, as much for her as for the other women and girls of

her vocation, to divide among themselves as they may advise, and this

for their right for the month of May passed...."

The court of the French kings itself is dated by their historians from

this reign. Before François I, it did not exist. "Grave councillors only

surrounded Louis XII, and the chaste Anne de Bretagne authorized around

her only rare and tranquil pleasures. François I wished to be followed

always by a troop so numerous that there were counted around the royal

residence rarely less than six thousand and sometimes as many as

eighteen thousand horses." By the brilliancy of its fêtes, this court

attracted to itself the châtelaines, up to this time forgotten in the

depths of their feudal castles. "At the beginning," says Mézeray, "this

had an excellent effect, this amiable sex having introduced into the

court politeness and courtesy, and imparting lively impulses of

generosity to those whose souls were more nobly constituted. But the

manners and customs became speedily corrupted; the offices, the

benefices, were distributed according to the whims of the women, and

they were the cause of the adoption of very pernicious maxims by the

government."

The revival of the arts brought about by the Renaissance, and which

François I had the intelligence to appreciate and encourage, and the

somewhat greater sense of security in the body politic, combined to give

to this court, and to the wealthy citizens of the capital, such

extravagant luxury of dress and ornament that even this pleasure-loving

monarch felt constrained to promulgate sumptuary laws on various

occasions, an example which was followed by his son and successor, Henry

II. The edict of 1538 proscribed chains of gold of too great weight for

financiers and men of affairs, and it was intimated to them that it

would be better not "to make their daughters too handsome and too rich

when they married them." In 1543, the tissues of gold and silver were

forbidden for men, with the exception of the relatives of the monarch,

and this edict was renewed, four years later, by Henri II, greatly

amended and amplified and extended to all, high and low, excepting the

ladies in the queen's suite and the king's sister. In 1549, it was

renewed, with still greater detail concerning the costumes of the two

sexes.

The abuse of masks was of long standing, Charles VI having been addicted

to their use, and in 1514, under Louis XII, the Parlement directed that

all these false visages in the city, wherever found, should be collected

and burned, and that, by order of the king, no more should be worn.

During the captivity of François I in Madrid, the members of the

Parlement set the example of reducing their style of living, limiting

the number of their horses, etc.; and so great was the suspicion and

distrust at this time, that a special edict was directed against the

mysterious strangers who were seen in the streets of the city, all with

long beards and carrying heavy sticks. The use of the latter was

strictly forbidden, and the wearing of the former, "which seemed to

conceal some pernicious designs against the peace of the State." Among

the minor social revolutions which this monarch effected, in consequence

of a wound received on his head, was that in the manner of wearing the

hair and beard, which had prevailed since the time of Louis VII;

François I reversed the ancient custom, and cut his hair short, but not

his beard.

Paris, which had celebrated his accession with even more than the usual

ceremonial, jousts, and tourneys, was greatly alarmed at the threat of

the Connétable de Bourbon to march upon it with the allied forces of the

King of England and of Charles V. The king, to reassure them, sent them

the Sire de Brion, who declared to them that their monarch "had so much

consideration for the city of Paris that he would sacrifice himself

rather than allow it to be taken, that he was willing to expose his life

in order to defend it, to live and to die with the Parisians, and that,

if he could not come to it in person, he would send to it his wife, his

children, and his mother, and all that he had and possessed, persuaded

as he was that when he had lost the rest of the kingdom, he would

readily recover all his losses if he could preserve Paris; that he had

the intention to bring to it ten thousand Swiss, that he was aware of

the attachment which the Parlement and the city bore to his person, that

he thanked them for it, and exhorted them to continue a fidelity which

was so useful to him."

All these fine words gave great pleasure to the citizens, and they were

thrown into corresponding consternation when the news was received, on

the 7th of March, 1525, that he had been taken prisoner at Pavia. His

mother, Louise de Savoie, subordinated the evil traits of her character

to constitute herself an intelligent regent; and on the 14th of April,

1527, the king made a triumphal re-entry into his capital after his

release. Some doubts seem to have been entertained as to the genuineness

of the welcome, for, it is recorded, the _prévôt_ of the merchants, the

_échevins_, and the school-masters were ordered to station, at a dozen

points on the route of the procession, groups of eighty or a hundred

children, who were to cry enthusiastically: "_Vive le roi!_" The

quibbling by which François endeavored to justify his refusal to carry

out the provisions of the treaty of Madrid, for which he had left his

two sons as hostages, deceived no one; Charles V very justly proclaimed

him a traitor and perjured, to which the king had no better answer than

that the emperor "lied in his throat," and that he would meet him in the

lists in single combat whenever he liked.

The ransom of the two young princes cost one million two hundred

thousand écus, a sum which both the king and his capital found it very

difficult to raise. After the treaty of Cambrai, in 1529, François

endeavored to strengthen his position by foreign alliances, without any

regard for his standing as eldest son of the Church and persecutor of

Protestants. He made terms with Henry VIII of England, who had just

broken with the Holy See; and he acquired the friendship of the Pope by

demanding for his son, afterward Henri II, the hand of Catherine de

Médicis, niece of the pontiff. He renewed the ancient friendship with

the Scotch by giving his eldest daughter, afterward Marie de Lorraine,

to their king for wife. He even concluded a commercial treaty, and one

of alliance, offensive and defensive, with the Sultan Soliman, who

promised to aid, with all his power, his good friend, "the Padishah of

France."

The first of the followers of Luther to be executed in Paris was burned

alive on the Place de Grève in March, 1525, and from this beginning the

persecution went on, by direction of the king, and even during his

absence, with a cruelty only tempered by the occasional necessity of

conciliating the Protestant allies of the nation. The Sorbonne ordered

that all the writings of Luther should be publicly burned on the Place

du Parvis Notre-Dame; and the king decreed that all persons having in

their possession any of the aforesaid heretical books should deliver

them up, under penalty of banishment and confiscation of all their

property. For the dreary spectacle of a nation and a city divided into

hostile factions, struggling through barbarism and crime to a political

unity and a more beneficent civilization, we have now, just when these

goals seemed to be on the point of being attained, the spectacle of the

same city and nation rent by religious faction, and relapsing into an

even crueller barbarism under all the specious glitter of the

civilization of the Renaissance.

It seemed at first, however, as though the doctrines of the Reform might

find as stable a footing in France as they did in Germany. Among the

lettered and cultivated classes their conquests were rapid; even in the

court, the king's mother, Louise de Savoie, was not apparently disposed

to oppose them; his sister, Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, and his dear

friend the Duchesse d'Étampes, were more or less openly inclined in

their favor; Clément Marot, the court poet, translated the Psalms of

David into French, which the Reformers sang at the Pré-aux-Clercs. Two

scholars greatly esteemed by François I, Lefebvre d'Étaples, who had

begun six years before Luther, and Louis de Berquin, considered by his

contemporaries as "the wisest of the nobility," publicly supported the

Reform doctrines. But the king, fearing in them an organized movement

against all authority, sacred or secular, soon withdrew his support;

Berquin was burned at the stake in the Place de Grève, and the Sorbonne

even ventured to pursue, with open prosecution and denunciation, and

with hidden satire in a comedy represented at the Collége de Navarre,

the king's sister for having caused her brother to adopt a book of

prayers translated into French and for having caused to be printed a

work of her own in verse: _Le Miroir de l'Ame pécheresse_. The Parlement

formally forbade the scholars of the Université to translate any of the

sacred books in Hebrew or Greek into French, as being a work of heresy.

In 1546, Etienne Dolet, the printer, was hanged and then burned, for

impiety and atheism, on the Place Maubert where his statue now stands.

There was even invented, for the benefit of the heretics, a refinement

of cruelty on the ordinary horrors of the stake,--a pulley over the

victim's head to which he was suspended by chains, so that he could

alternately be raised out of the flames and lowered into them again.

This was called _l'estrapade_.

[Illustration: COSTUME FOR YOUNG GIRL. PERIOD, 1821.

From a sketch by F. Courboin.]

This reign witnessed one of those unjust condemnations of the royal

treasurer which had become so common in French history. Jacques de

Beaune, Seigneur de Semblançay, had succeeded his father in this

important post; Louis XII and François I alike had found every reason to

repose the utmost confidence in their financial officer, but the latter

monarch, and his mother, set no bounds to their lavish expenditure. In

1521, Lautrec, François's general in Italy, drew on the royal treasury

for four hundred thousand écus to pay his Swiss mercenaries. Semblançay

was about to send him the money, when he was summoned, according to the

generally received story, by Louise de Savoie, to hand it over to her,

which he did. Owing to the defection of his unpaid Swiss, Lautrec was

defeated at the Bicoque and lost the Milanaise; when bitterly reproached

by the king for his ill-success, the facts in the case came out. The

queen-mother admitted having received the money and applied it to her

own use, but she declared that it was a portion of her private funds

which she had previously deposited with the treasurer-general.

Semblançay was accordingly brought to trial, but, though he demonstrated

that the king was in his debt to the amount of three hundred thousand

livres, he was condemned for peculation and hung on the gibbet at

Montfaucon, notwithstanding his blameless life and his seventy-two

years. "I have, indeed, deserved death," he said, "for having served men

more faithfully than God." Clément Marot, the court poet, wrote an

epigram on the _juge d'enfer_ who had condemned this worthy servant of

the king, and a popular tumult was averted with difficulty; two years

later, the clerks whom the queen-mother had employed to steal her

receipts from the treasurer's coffers confessed, he was declared

innocent, and his confiscated property restored to his grandson.

Charles V, who more than once threatened Paris with his victorious

arms,--in 1544 he was at Château-Thierry, twenty-four leagues from the

capital, and the affrighted citizens had begun to transport themselves

and their worldly goods to Orléans,--visited the city in peace, on the

1st of January, 1540, on his way to Flanders to subdue the revolted

burghers of Ghent. François was strongly tempted to break his royal

promises, as he had done once before, and retain so valuable a prisoner,

but confined himself to hints as to what he might do, and displayed on

the part of his court and his capital an ostentation of luxury almost

equal to that of the Field of the Cloth of Gold twenty years before,

when he had met Henry VIII of England--"that spot of blood and grease on

the pages of history." The capital, indeed, was much embellished and

made more healthful under François I; the municipality were enjoined to

pave and to clean the streets, and the king caused to be drawn up minute

regulations concerning the administration of the city, the fountains,

markets, slaughter-houses, gutters, etc. Nevertheless, the pest

prevailed throughout the whole of his reign.

This gay monarch, who aspired to excel in all the accomplishments of a

chevalier, wrote verses in his lighter moments, but the celebrated

"_Souvent femme varie; bien fol est qui s'y fie_," said to have been

written with the diamond of his finger-ring on a window in the Château

d'Amboise, has been resolved into the very commonplace phrase: "_Toute

femme varie_," which Brantôme saw written by the royal hand on the

window-casing. In like manner, the pretty verses ascribed to Mary Queen

of Scots, on leaving France,--

"_Adieu, plaisant pays de France,

O ma patrie,

La plus chèrie,_" etc.,

were really written by a journalist named Meunier de Querlon. What the

young queen did say, as she saw the French coast sink below the horizon,

was: "_Adieu, chère France! je ne vous verrai jamais plus!_"

The son of François I, who succeeded him, had all his father's defects

and none of his good qualities; his short reign is made memorable

chiefly by his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and the unusual manner of

his death. The former, whom he made Duchesse de Valentinois, and who

exercised in the court an authority quite denied to the queen,

maintained over her royal lover,--she had been the mistress of his

father,--notwithstanding her forty-eight years of age, an ascendency, by

her beauty and her intelligence, which her contemporaries ascribed to an

enchanted ring. She was nearly sixty years of age, and the king was in

his forty-first year when he wore her colors, the black and white of

widows, in the fatal tourney which he had commanded to celebrate the

wedding of his eldest daughter, Elisabeth de France, to Philippe II,

King of Spain, already twice widowed. The lists were set up across the

Rue Saint-Antoine, from the Palais des Tournelles almost to the Bastile,

with great amphitheatres of seats on each side for the spectators. The

king, who excelled in bodily exercises, had distinguished himself during

the first two days; on the third, the jousting was completed, when he

happened to see two lances still unbroken, and commanded the captain of

his guards, Gabriel, Comte de Montgomery, to take one of them and tilt

with him "for the love of the ladies." Montgomery protested, but the

king insisted, and as they came together the former did not lower his

arm quickly enough, and the broken shaft of his lance, glancing up from

the king's breast-plate, lifted his visor and inflicted a mortal wound

over the right eye. Eleven days afterward, he died, and Montgomery paid

with his life for his inadvertence.

[Illustration: LADY IN HOUSE-ROBE. PERIOD, 1816.

From a sketch by F. Courboin.]

Henry "was not yet dead when Catherine de Médicis sent to Diane de

Poitiers an order to restore the crown-jewels, and to retire to one of

her châteaux. 'What!' she exclaimed, 'is the king dead?' 'No, madame,

but he soon will be.' 'So long as he has a finger living,' she replied,

'I wish that my enemies should know that I do not fear them, and that I

will not obey them whilst he is alive. My courage is still invincible.

But when he is dead, I no longer wish to live after him.'

"She did live, however, but she made haste to leave Paris, and withdrew

to her Château d'Anet."

The king's death occurred in the midst of his plans to resume the

persecution of the heretics, plans which he had so much at heart that he

had not hesitated to conclude the unfortunate treaty of

Cateau-Cambrésis, in the same year, in order to be at liberty to engage

in this crusade against his own subjects. "Sire," said his generals,

Guise and Brissac, as the treaty was signed, "you are giving away in one

day what could not be taken from you in thirty years of reverses." But

Henri "was more religious than the Pope," for, the sovereign pontiff

having sent the Parisians a bull by which he granted them permission to

eat butter, cheese, and eggs during the approaching Lent, the king was

scandalized at this license; the Garde des Sceaux directed the

Lieutenant Criminel to publish, by the public criers, a decree

forbidding the printing and circulating of this bull, and the document

was even publicly burned by order of the king and the Parlement.

Among the ceremonials of public rejoicing attending the wedding of Henri

with Catherine de Médicis was the illuminating, by the royal hand, of

the fire on the eve of Sainte-Jean, on the Place de Grève, in which the

lamentable cries of the cats confined in a basket, and thus consumed,

filled the populace with the wildest delight. Their appetite for cruelty

was soon to be much more fully gratified, for arrangements were made,

after high mass at Notre-Dame and the State banquet in the episcopal

palace, to burn as many Protestants at the stake at once, at several

places, as was possible. Among these unfortunates was a journeyman

tailor, who had been summoned before the king, and reproached by him for

listening to heretical doctrines; when Diane de Poitiers, who had been

instrumental in causing his arrest, also began to harangue him, the

tailor suddenly broke silence: "Madame," said he, "content yourself with

having infested France, and do not bring your ordure to mingle with

things as sacred as the truth of God." He was consequently given one of

the posts of honor among the victims, his stake being erected in the Rue

Saint-Antoine, nearest the window of the Hôtel de la Roche-Pot, from

which the king watched the executions, and it is related that,

notwithstanding his atrocious sufferings, he fixed upon the monarch,

from amidst the flames, so steadfast and terrible a look that Henri

withdrew from the window, declaring that he would never be present at

another _auto-da-fé_. This did not signify, however, that he would order

no more.

Both François and Henri had formed, and partially carried out, various

enlightened measures for the embellishment of the capital and its

environs, the rebuilding of the Louvre, the completion of Fontainebleau,

the improvement of the navigation of the Seine, etc. Henri ordered the

demolition of the old royal residence, the Palais des Tournelles, and

its pestiferous moats were filled up. He is represented as being

inordinately fond of processions, and every event, of good or bad omen,

was made a pretence for one of these public displays. Catherine de

Médicis had brought with her from Tuscany a taste for luxury, letters,

and the arts; Philibert Delorme, whom the French consider the second of

their great architects, and who, under her orders, began, in 1564, the

construction of the Tuileries, testifies to "the exceeding pleasure

which she took in architecture, designing and sketching out the plans

and profiles of the edifices she intended to erect."

Under the reign of Henri II began the rise in importance, and the

frequent appearance in the national councils, of the great families

afterward so prominent in the wars of the League. The Connétable de

Montmorency, the Maréchal de Saint-André, and the Guises, younger branch

of the ducal house of Lorraine, who at this period claimed to be only

the heirs of the house of Anjou, but who, later, asserted themselves to

be descendants of Charlemagne, monopolized the royal favors and the

royal authority. The eldest of Henri's sons, François II, during his

brief reign of seventeen months, confided the military administration of

his kingdom to François, Duc de Guise, who had retaken Calais from the

English, and defended Metz against Charles V, and the "civil affairs" to

his brother Charles, cardinal, and possessor of no less than a dozen

benefices in the Church. The house of Bourbon, which might have disputed

this ascendency with them, was temporarily in disgrace because of the

treason of the Connétable, under François I, and the Duc de Montmorency

had lost the important battle of Saint-Quentin against the Imperialists,

in 1557, and was advanced in years. To these malcontents was added the

Prince de Condé, and the higher nobility were all indignant at seeing

the domination of France in the hands of foreigners,--the queen-mother,

Italian; the young wife of François II, Scotch, and the Guises,

Lorrainers. To add to their ill-humor, these foreigners, as foreigners,

claimed the precedence in matters of etiquette, and the right to walk in

procession immediately after the princes of the blood, before the chiefs

of the most illustrious houses of France.

[Illustration: COSTUME OF 1830. From a water-color by Maurice Leloir.]

Catherine de Médicis had preserved, amidst the intrigues and debauchery

of the court, but one wholesome moral sentiment,--a passionate love for

her children. The long course of mortifications which she had had to

endure at the hands of Diane de Poitiers "had effaced in her all

distinctions between good and evil." To preserve the royal power in the

hands of her sons, three of whom succeeded to the throne in somewhat

rapid succession, she considered all means legitimate. For a brief space

of time she saw herself excluded from her ascendency over the king by

the young queen, Marie Stuart, daughter of James V of Scotland and Marie

de Lorraine, whom Henri II had married to his son to assure the alliance

of Scotland against England. The discontent against the Guises led to

the "conspiracy of Amboise," in 1560, easily suppressed and punished

with the utmost severity; the young king wept at the incessant

executions, but the pretty young queen, as seems to be proven by her

"Letters," secretly approved. The queen-mother, more intelligent, gave

the keeping of the seals to the Chancellor Michel de l'Hôpital, who

opposed the proposition of the Guises to set up the Inquisition in

France, and convoked the nobles at Fontainebleau to organize the

opposition. The civil wars were inaugurated.