Twenty Centuries of Paris

by Mabell S. C. Smith

On Trinity Sunday, not long after, these same lords and prelates were witnesses of the coronation at Rheims of Charles and his wife. The ceremonies and festivities lasted five days, after which Charles returned to Paris to take up the burden of government of a disordered and disheartened country.

John’s lavishness could not make the people blind to their losses by the plague and three years after Charles’s accession a new attack swept across France striking chiefly the large cities where ignorance of sanitation produced conditions in which truly only the “fittest”—the toughest—could survive. A writer of the time says, “None could count the number of the dead in Paris, young or old, rich or poor; when death entered a house the little children died first, then the menials, then the parents.” It is only wonderful that such epidemics did not make their visitations oftener, when, for instance, the bodies of Marcel and his companions in treachery were cast into the river at the Port Saint Paul, which is above the city, and the city continued to use the river water for drinking purposes.

The laxities of the last reign had permitted roving companies of what were little other than bandits to fight and burn and slay all over France, while in the northern provinces a lively war was going on with the Navarrese, helped by the Gascons and by bands of English. The territorial loss due to the Peace of Brétigny was a sore memory to king and people, and this participation in the internal strife of the country by the chief enemies of France aggravated hatred of the English. Nor was England the only land troublesome to Charles. There were dissensions in Italy and Spain and the French of the south were drawn into affairs that touched them practically although they were over the border. Avignon, which had been the enforced home of the popes since Philip the Fair’s refusal to acknowledge the temporal power of the pontiff over sixty years before, was deserted by Pope Urban V, who went to Rome in spite of Charles’s protestations. The emperor of Germany, Charles IV, was the only monarch of Europe who seemed to have any kindly feeling toward the young king. His friendship continued throughout Charles’s reign, and in 1378, two years before its end he and his son paid a visit to Paris.

Charles showed his appreciation of the imperial good will by the cordiality and elaborateness of his reception. The king’s representative, the Provost of Paris, and the people’s representative, the Provost of the Merchants, went as far as Saint Denis to meet the German train. The king himself, dressed in scarlet and mounted on a handsome white horse, awaited them at the suburb of La Chapelle. The combined retinues made a dazzling procession across the city to the palace on the island, where, in the evening, a supper was served to over eight hundred princes and nobles. The effect was disastrous on the emperor for he was so laid up with gout on the following day that he had to be borne by servants even the short distance between his apartments and the Sainte Chapelle where he heard mass and saw the Most Holy Relics. On that same day the burghers expressed their satisfaction with the visit by presenting their imperial guest, by the hand of the Provost of the Merchants, with a superb piece of silver and two huge silver-gilt flagons. Every day of the succeeding week was filled with festivities. In the city the emperor visited the Louvre and the Hôtel Saint Paul—the new palace at the east end—where he was received by the queen who showed him the royal menagerie. He made various excursions in the suburbs—to Saint Denis to see the tombs of the French monarchs, to the abbey of Saint Maur, east of the city, to the château of Vincennes, where Charles was born and where he was destined to die two years later, and where now the imperial gout prevented the elder guest joining the younger in a stag hunt, and finally, on the day of departure, to the king’s favorite château—de Beauté. Here the monarchs parted after exchanging rings and expressions of esteem.

Since Charles had so many troubles, both domestic and foreign, to contend with, it was fortunate that he was intelligent in his choice of advisers and sagacious and prudent in his legislation. Often he was hard-pressed financially, and more than once he had to summon the States General to secure approval of tax levies and of political moves. His fighting was not glorious, though Du Guesclin, whom he appointed Constable, was both bold and determined, but he knew how to make use of stratagem and even of defeat and to turn the quarrels of others to his own account.

Having brought about a state of peace and understanding in the immediate provinces and having strengthened himself by securing the fortification of many towns and the increase of his army, Charles found himself in a position to take the offensive against the English. A beginning at changing the state of affairs brought about by the Peace of Brétigny was made when the lords of Aquitaine, which the royal house of England held subject to Charles’s suzerainty, went to Paris, and, to the delight of the Parisians, entered a formal complaint against the harsh rule of the Prince of Wales. Edward was summoned to appear before the court at Paris. His reply to the messengers was: “We will willingly appear at Paris, since so the king of France commands us, but it will be with basnet on head and with sixty thousand men at our back.”

The States General supported Charles, and the court maintained that king Edward had forfeited his French holdings by failing to appear in Paris.

The English retaliated promptly, and for the remaining eleven years of Charles’s reign there was constant fighting though no great battle. Charles was not a knight of noteworthy personal prowess like his father. He never went to war himself, but he directed every move and carried diplomacy into every plan of operations. His army tolled the English along, always seeming to promise a meeting but never coming to grips, while at the same time it used up the food supply of the country and made the maintenance of the foreign force a matter of extreme difficulty. Small affairs were not prohibited, however, and the French took an English town here and another one there and won still others by stratagem.

At last from sheer fatigue a truce was entered into which lasted some two years. During it the Black Prince died. “The King of France, on account of his lineage,” says Froissart, “had funeral service in honor of him performed with great magnificence in the Sainte Chapelle of the palace in Paris, which was attended by many prelates and barons of the realm.”

A little later Edward III died and Charles, after holding a memorial service for him, also, in the Sainte Chapelle, at once put five armies into the field and instituted so vigorous an offensive policy that at the time of his death in 1380 the English were driven out of all but five coast cities.