Twenty Centuries of Paris

by Mabell S. C. Smith

Marcel’s action with regard to the Maison aux Piliers is significant of his entire disregard of the wishes or the property of the crown prince. The house took its name from the fact that its second story, projecting over the street, was supported by columns. At this time it was over two hundred years old for it had been built in 1141. Philip Augustus bought it in 1212, but evidently he resold it, for there is a record that Philip the Fair bought it for a present for his brother. In some way Philip the Long got possession of it and gave it to one of his favorites. It seems to have returned to royal hands almost immediately, for Louis the Quarreler’s widow, Clémence, died there and willed it to her nephew, the dauphin of Vienne. His heir bequeathed the dauphiny and other property to Philip of Valois in trust for his grandson, the Charles of this chapter, who was the first heir apparent to wear the title of dauphin.

Marcel wanted the Maison aux Piliers for a city hall. The dauphin refused to give it up and tried various ways—even that of giving title to a private citizen—to save it from being taken from him. About six months before the murder of the marshals, however, Marcel bought it with public money, and called it La Meson de la Ville.

On the northern slope of the Mont Sainte Geneviève, on the site of a building of Roman construction, rose in Carolingian days the first city hall. It was clumsily made of stone and was called the Parloir aux Bourgeois. This was succeeded at some later day by a “parloir” near the Grand Châtelet. Marcel’s purchase decided the situation of the Hôtel de Ville for all time. It was in its logical place near the Grève where the very heart of the city’s business throbbed. There, rebuilt in 1540 by Francis I and in 1876 after its destruction by the communists, it has housed the city’s offices and has seen many strange and furious scenes in days of disturbance, and received many sovereigns and potentates in times of peace.

After the death of the marshals Marcel’s exactions upon the prince were grosser than ever. Charles was even forced to give Charles the Bad an annuity and to be frequently in his company. Just about a month after the assassination the dauphin managed to escape from Paris and go to Champagne where he was given cordial sympathy by the friends of the slain marshal. They urged him to besiege Paris and to kill the provost as punishment for the murder he had instigated. When the Parisians learned that the prince to whom they paid so little consideration was receiving a dangerous support in other places they begged the University of Paris to send messengers to ask him to spare the lives of the provost and his immediate following. Charles returned word that he would forgive the citizens provided a half dozen or so of their chief men were sent him as hostages. No one was willing to take the chance of surviving the “hostage” condition, and the city prepared to withstand a siege.

Immediately after Charles’s flight Marcel had removed the artillery from the Louvre to the Hôtel de Ville, and had begun to swing the new wall outside of the fortress in order to cut it off from the country. The work of wall-building went on briskly on the right bank, and the moat was deepened around the fortifications of the left bank.

Being still under the spell of Charles the Bad’s vivacity and enterprise the Parisians invited him to be their captain. Down in their hearts, though, they did not trust him, and it was not long before they made his going out of the city with his men and engaging in a shouted conversation with the regent’s men an excuse for charging him with treachery and driving him out of the city.

Once beyond the walls he promptly joined the dauphin in putting down the peasant insurrection called the Jacquerie, from the peasant’s nickname, Jacques Bonhomme. Whether or not Marcel instigated the uprising is not known with certainty, but at any rate it served the purpose of leading the prince’s army away from Paris. The insurrection was not of long duration, for it was crushed with a heavy hand and no quarter.

Again Marcel dickered with Charles the Bad who was always ready to dicker with anybody on the chance of something turning out for his own profit. He was encamped at Saint Denis. The regent’s army almost surrounded the city and was in communication with a friendly party inside of which Jean Maillard was the most prominent.

Confident that he would be put to death if he were captured by the prince, Marcel arranged to open the city to Navarre on the night of July 31, 1358. Maillard was in charge of the Porte Saint Denis and when Marcel demanded the keys he refused to give them up. Then he leaped on his horse, took the banner of the city from the Hôtel de Ville and rode through street after street shouting “Montjoie Saint Denis,” the rallying cry of the monarch from early days. There was lively fighting among the citizens throughout the evening.

Marcel had sent word to Charles the Bad that entrance might be made by the east gate, the Porte Saint Antoine. As he neared it, key in hand, about eleven o’clock that night, he was met by Maillard.