THIRD SIEGE, A.D. 1411.
Paris became in after-ages the sanguinary theatre of civil wars, which, under the reign of weak princes, desolated the kingdom. These unhappy times commenced under the pusillanimous administration of Charles VI. The hatreds which divided the nobles broke out openly: France was divided into two factions, almost equally powerful,—that of the duke of Orleans, which was called the Armagnacs; and that of the duke of Burgundy, called the Burgundians. Almost all the Parisians were of the latter party. The first wore, as a distinctive mark, a white cross at right angles; the second, a red cross oblique, called the cross of St. Andrew. These two parties soon made cruel war upon each other. The Armagnacs marched towards Paris, the hopes of plundering that great city exciting the ardour and cupidity of the troops. Everything yielded to their first efforts: at their approach, most of the garrisons distributed in the neighbouring places sought safety in flight. St. Denis was the only city that defended itself for a few days. Jean de Châlons, prince of Orange, commanded in the place; the fear of its being carried by assault obliged him to capitulate; he marched out with his garrison, under a promise of not bearing arms for four years. The treachery of Colonel De Paysieux rendered the Orléanais masters of St. Cloud, and of the passage of the Seine above Paris. That city, entirely closed in on the north side, already experienced a scarcity of provisions; the troops spread about the environs daily perpetrated the most horrid cruelties. Houses of pleasure, villages, fields of corn, were all on fire; massacres and violences of every kind, the most horrible sacrileges, the most guilty excesses, were the sports of these pitiless destroyers. Among these brigands was Montagu, archbishop of Sens, who, instead of a mitre, wore a bassinet; for a dalmaique, a habergeon; for a chasuble, a steel gorget; and instead of a cross, carried an axe. Nevertheless, with the danger from without, the fury of the Parisians increased daily, excited above all by the fanaticism of the priests of the capital. All the pulpits resounded with declamations against the Armagnacs. The besiegers were excommunicated. The Orléanais, in reply to this anathema, struck the duke of Burgundy and his adherents with excommunication. The archbishop of Sens, the bishops of Paris, Orléans, and Chartres, with several doctors of this age of ignorance, had dictated this dreaded decree. It was thus they sported with religion to justify the horrors committed on both sides. Every festival, the curés of Paris interrupted the sacrifice of the mass, to renew the thunders launched against the Armagnacs; they even made a difficulty of administering baptism to the children of those they believed favourable to that party. People did not dare to appear in the streets without the red scarf and the cross of St. Andrew. Priests wore them at the altar; the church pictures were decked with them; not even children newly born were exempt from displaying this distinctive mark of the dominant faction. They carried the madness so far as to make the sign of the cross according to the form of the crucifixion of St. Andrew. The people murmured at being shut up within the walls, whilst the enemy triumphed at their gates; seditious cries announced that they wanted to fight; and it became necessary to obey this blinded populace. The count de St. Paul and the prevôt Des Essarts, at the head of a detachment of Parisians, badly armed and without order, made a sortie by the gate of St. Denis; they were beaten, although six times more numerous than their adversaries, and precipitately re-entered the city by the gate St. Honoré, after having lost four hundred of their men. This humiliating disgrace completed the despair of the vanquished: in a transport of rage, they made a second sortie from the other side of the city. Goi, one of the officers of militia, led them to the castle of Wicestre (now Bicêtre), a pleasure-house, which the duke de Berry prided himself with having ornamented with all the embellishments the art of that age could furnish. As no troops appeared to stop these contemptible warriors, they gave free way to the madness which governed them: the gates of this palace were broken open; they plundered the valuable furniture; they even took away the glass windows, which were then an object of luxury reserved for the houses of the great. This brutal expedition was crowned by the firing of the building. Among the inestimable loss caused by the conflagration, persons of taste particularly regretted a chronological series of the portraits of the kings of France of the third race, most of them original.
Whilst both parties were giving themselves up to these horrible excesses, the duke of Burgundy formed the idea of delivering the capital. This prince, at the head of his own troops, and a few companies of English headed by the earl of Arundel, crossed the Seine at the bridge of Melun, where three thousand Parisians awaited him, and made his entrée into Paris, surrounded by fifteen thousand horsemen. The streets, filled with an innumerable multitude, resounded with acclamations; all were eager to load him with honours and to evince their gratitude. Amidst their transports of joy, however, the Parisians beheld with much pain squadrons of English mixed with the French troops. Secretly indignant at seeing the conservation of the capital, the security of the king, and the safety of the state, committed to the suspicious protection of a rival nation, not one of them would give lodging to these foreigners, who were obliged to pass the night upon their horses. The next day they were distributed with much trouble among the bourgeois, and principally among those whose attachment was doubtful. The appearance of everything was changed by the arrival of the Burgundian prince. The numbers of the Orléanais diminished daily; in the frequent sorties that were made, they hardly sufficed to guard their posts, till at length St. Cloud, the most important of them, was carried by assault. In this affair they lost nine hundred of their best soldiers, whilst only twenty of the Burgundians were killed. The duke of Orléans lost all hopes of entering Paris: his army was melting away; winter was coming on; and he had nothing left but a disgraceful retreat. He called a council of war, in which the necessity for raising the blockade was acknowledged by all. On the very evening of the day of the taking of St. Cloud, the Orléanais army loaded themselves with all the booty they could carry away, they pillaged the treasures of the queen, deposited for safety in the abbey of St. Denis, which they had till that time respected, crossed the Seine, and marched without halting to Etampes. Information of this nocturnal retreat was not conveyed to Paris till it was too late to pursue them.