Twenty Centuries of Paris

by Mabell S. C. Smith

In return for conceding their demands the States promised the regent a force of thirty thousand men, their support to be provided by taxes of doubtful collectibility.

Charles found himself in a position of extreme difficulty. The people of Paris were clamorously in favor of the Assembly’s proposals. Everybody was ready to hit the man who seemed to have no friends. Charles sparred for time, announcing at a meeting held in the Louvre that all the matters under discussion must hold over until he had attended to some business with the German emperor and the pope which called him to Metz.

Although Paris was hostile to him Charles had friends elsewhere. He received information that the south of France was heartily royalist, and also that some of the deputies from northern towns to the Paris Assembly had been rebuked by their constituents when they returned home, for their attitude to the regent.

Unfortunately, to obtain money for his journey, Charles followed his father’s example and debased the coinage. When this became known a few days after his departure Marcel and the mob went to the Louvre and frightened Charles’s younger brother into rescinding the order. Six weeks later Charles returned and reëstablished his original order, with the result that all Paris rushed to arms and he was compelled to grant practically every demand of the Assembly.

When the Assembly met three months later its early enthusiasm had waned or else the representatives repented of their harsh demands or saw their injustice. The clergy and the nobility were fewer and there was a lack of harmony among the bourgeois, many of them objecting to the concentration of power which Marcel and a few of his friends were effecting.

Charles was clever enough to seize this time of uneasiness to announce that he “intended from now on to govern” by himself. His first efforts were not very successful, for Marcel by specious promises wheedled him into summoning the Assembly again, and then arranged for the liberation of Charles the Bad. He was welcomed by the Paris populace and had the audacity to make an address to them from the platform on the Abbey of Saint Germain-des-Prés from which the kings were used to watch the sports of the students on the adjoining Pré au Clercs.

The deputies foresaw a clash between the brothers-in-law, and it was but a small Assembly which met, some of the members having returned home after reaching Paris and recognizing the trouble that was bound to come from forcing the dauphin to accept Charles the Bad’s liberation and to receive him with a show of friendliness.

Outside of the city there was no show of friendliness between the royalists and the friends of Navarre. A lively little war was going on that sent the people from round about to seek protection within Marcel’s new wall. That Marcel was a man prompt both to see a need and to meet it is shown in his action when the news of the French defeat at Poitiers was brought to Paris. The very next day he gave orders for the rebuilding and enlargement of the wall that the English might encounter that obstacle if they advanced upon the city. The existing wall had not been changed since Philip Augustus’s time, five centuries before, and the new rampart showed one change in fashion—its towers were square instead of round. Its size indicated a distinct increase in the size of the city on the north side, for when the wall was completed by Charles V the ends on the right bank were not opposite the ends on the south bank. The south wall was made stronger, however, by a deepening of the ditches.

Charles lived much at the Louvre. Because he gathered a body of soldiers about him it was rumored that he was going to use them against the Parisians. The regent was not lacking in courage. Accompanied only by a half dozen followers he rode into one of the city squares and told the astonished crowd of his affection for Paris and its people, and of his intention of defending it against its enemies.

The people were so touched by their prince’s pluck and candor that Marcel found it prudent to stop laying charges against the dauphin and to transfer them to his councillors. After working up feeling against them for over a month he led a mob to the palace, where Charles was then staying. Together with some of his friends he pressed into the dauphin’s own room and there they killed Charles’s councillors, the marshals of Champagne and Normandy, not only in his sight but so close to him that he was splashed with their blood. Having impressed the boy with his strength he patronizingly offered to protect him and put on his head his own citizen’s cap of red and blue, the colors of Paris. Then he had the bodies flung on to Saint Louis’ huge marble table in the Great Hall, later to be exposed publicly, and made his way back to the Maison aux Piliers on the Grève and there addressed the people, taking great credit for the murderous deed that he had just brought to pass. The crowd approved him with vigorous shouting.