With the three sons of Philip who successively became kings of France, the direct line of the Capetian dynasty ends: with the accession of Philip VI. in 1328, the house of Valois opens the sad century of the English wars—a period of humiliation and defeat, of rebellious and treacherous princes, civil strife, famine and plague, illumined only by the heroism of a peasant-girl, who, when king and nobles were sunk in shameless apathy or sullen despair, saved France from utter extinction. Pope after pope sought to make peace, but in vain: Hui sont en paix, demain en guerre ("to-day peace, to-morrow war") was the normal and inevitable situation until the English had wholly subjected France or the French driven the English to their natural boundary of the Channel.
Never since the days of Charlemagne had the French Monarchy been so powerful as when the Valois came to the throne: in less than a generation Crecy and Poitiers had made the English name a terror in France, and a French king, John the Good, was led captive to England. In 1346 Paris saw her faubourgs wasted, the palace of St. Germain and the fortress of Montjoie St. Denis[82] spoiled and burnt, and the English camp fires nightly glowing. Once again, as in the dark Norman times, she rose and determined to save herself. Étienne Marcel, the leader of the movement, whose statue now stands near the site of the Maison aux Piliers was a rich merchant prince of old family, a member of the great drapers' guild, and elected Provost of the Marchands d'Eau in 1355. He it was who bought for 2400 florins of gold the Maison des Dauphins, better known as the Maison aux Piliers or Hôtel de Ville, on the Place de Grève and transferred thither the seat of the civic administration from the old Parloir aux Bourgeois, enclosed in the south wall of Paris. The Dauphin,[83] who had assumed the title of Lieutenant-General, convoked the States-General at Paris, but he was forced by Marcel and his party to grant some urgent reforms, and a Committee of National Defence was organised by the trade guilds and the provost, who became virtually dictator of Paris. Marcel's rule was however stained by the butchery of the Marshal of Champagne and the Duke of Normandy before the very eyes of the Dauphin in the palace of the Cité, who, horrified, fled to Compiègne to rally the nobles. During the ensuing anarchy the poor, dumb, starving serfs of France, in their hopeless misery and despair, rose in insurrection and swept like a flame over the land. Froissart, who writes from the distorted stories told him by the seigneurs, has woefully exaggerated the atrocities of the Jacquerie."[84] There was much arson and pillage, but barely thirty of the nobles are known to have perished. Of the merciless vengeance taken by the seigneurs there is ample confirmation: the wretched peasants were easily out-manœuvred and killed like rats by the mail-clad nobles and their men-at-arms. Meanwhile the Dauphin was marching on Paris: Marcel seized the Louvre and set 3000 workmen to fortify the city. In less than a year the greater part of the northern walls, with gates, bastilles and fosses, was completed—the greatest feat, says Froissart, the provost ever achieved. A citizen army was raised, whose hoods of red and blue, the colours of Paris, distinguished them from the royal sympathisers. Marcel turned for support to the Jacques, and on their suppression essayed to win over Charles of Navarre. On 30th November 1357, Charles stood on the royal stage on the walls of the abbey of St. Germain des Prés, whence the kings of France were wont to witness the judicial combats in the Prés aux Clercs, and addressed an assembly of 10,000 citizens. Moult longuement he sermonised, says the Grandes Chroniques, so that dinner was over in Paris before he finished. After yet another harangue at the Maison aux Piliers on 15th June 1358, he was acclaimed by people with "Navarre! Navarre!" and elected the Captain of Paris. An obscure period of plot and counterplot followed which culminated in the ruin of Marcel and his followers. Froissart accuses the provost of a treacherous intent to open the gates of St. Honoré and of St. Antoine to Navarre's English mercenaries at midnight on 31st July, and gives a dramatic story of the discovery of the plot and slaying of the provost by Jean Maillart, his friend and associate. We supplement his version from the Chronicle of St. Denis: on the last day of July, Marcel and his suite repaired to the bastille of St. Denis and ordered the guards to surrender the keys to Charles of Navarre's treasurer. Maillart, who had been won over by the Dauphin, had preceded him. The guard refused to hand over the keys and an angry altercation ensued between the former friends. Maillart mounted horse, seized a royal banner, sped to the Halles and to the cry of "Montjoie St. Denis!" called the royal partizans to arms: a similar appeal was made by Pepin des Essards. Meanwhile Marcel had reached the bastille of St. Antoine, where he was met by Maillart and the royal partizans. "Stephen, Stephen!" cried the latter, "what dost thou here at this hour?" "I am here," answered the provost, "to guard the city whose governor I am." "Par Dieu," retorted Maillart, "thou art here for no good," and turning to his followers, said, "Behold the keys which he holds to the destruction of the city." Each gave the other the lie. "Good people," protested Marcel, "why would you do me ill? All I wrought was for your good as well as mine." Maillart for answer smote at him, crying, "Traitor, à mort, à mort!" There was a stubborn fight, and Maillart felled the provost by a blow with his axe; six of the provost's companions were slain, and the remainder haled to prison. Next day the Dauphin entered Paris in triumph, and the popular leaders were executed on the Place de Grève. The provost's body was dragged to the court of the church of St. Catherine du Val des Écoliers, naked, that it might be seen of all, on the very spot where the bodies of the Marshal of Champagne and the Duke of Normandy had been flung six months before: after a long exposure it was cast into the Seine. All the reforms were revoked by the king, but the remembrance of the time when the merchants and people of Paris had dared to speak to their royal lord face to face of justice and good government, was never obliterated.
Next year the English peril again threatened Paris. The invasion of 1359 resembled a huge picnic or hunting expedition. The king of England and his barons brought their hunters, falcons, dogs and fishing tackle. They marched leisurely to Bourg la Reine, less than two leagues from Paris, pillaged the surrounding country and turned to Chartres, where tempest and sickness forced Edward III. to come to terms. After the treaty of Bretigny, in 1360, the Parisians saw their good King John again, who was ransomed for a sum equal to about ten million pounds of present-day value. The memory of this and other enormous ransoms exacted by the English, endured for centuries, and when a Frenchman had paid his creditors he would say,—j'ai payé mes Anglais.[85] ("I have paid my English.") A magnificent reception was accorded to the four English barons who came to sign the Peace at Paris. They were taken to the Sainte Chapelle and shown the fairest relics and richest jewels in the world, and each was given a spine from the crown of thorns, which he deemed the noblest jewel that could be presented to him.
The Dauphin, who on the death of good King John in London (1364) became Charles V., by careful statesmanship succeeded in restoring order to the kingdom and to its finances[86] and in winning some successes against the English.
In 1370 their camp fires were again seen outside Paris: but Marcel's wall had now been completed. Charles refused battle and allowed them to ravage the suburbs with impunity. Before the army left, an English knight swore he would joust at the gates of the city, and spurred lance in hand against them. As he turned to ride back, a big butcher lifted his pole-axe, smote the knight on the neck and felled him; four others battered him to death, "their blows," says Froissart, "falling on his armour like strokes on an anvil."
By wise council rather than by war Charles won back much of his dismembered country. He was a great builder and patron of the arts. The Louvre, being now enclosed within the new wall and no longer part of the defences of Paris, was handed over to Raymond of the Temple, Charles' "beloved mason," to transform into a sumptuous palace with apartments for himself and his queen, the princes of the blood and the officers of the royal household. The rooms were decorated with sculpture by Jean de St. Romain, tailleur d'ymages and other carvers in stone, and with paintings, by Jean d'Orléans. Each suite was furnished with a private chapel, those of the king and queen being carved with much "art and patience." A gallery was built for the minstrels and players of instruments. A great garden was planted towards the Rue St. Honoré on the north and the old wall of Philip Augustus on the east, in which were an "Hôtel des Lions," or collection of wild beasts, and a tennis court, where the king and princes played. The palace accounts still exist, with details of payments for "wine for the stone-cutters which the king our lord gave them when he came to view the works." Jean Callow and Geoffrey le Febre were paid for planting squares of strawberries, hyssop, sage, lavender, balsam, violets, and for making paths, weeding and carrying away stones and filth; others were paid for planting bulbs of lilies, double red roses and other good herbs. Twenty francs were paid to Gobin d'Ays, "who guards our nightingales of our chastel of the Louvre." The first royal library was founded by Charles, and Peter the Cage-maker was employed to protect the library windows of stained glass from birds—it overlooked the falconry—and other beasts, by trellises of wire. In order that scholars might work there at all hours, thirty small chandeliers were provided and a silver lamp was suspended from the vaulting. Solemn masters at grants gages were employed to translate the most notable books[87] from Latin into French; scribes and bookbinders of the university were exempted from the watch. An interesting payment of six francs in gold, made to Jacqueline, widow of a mason "because she is poor and helpless and her husband met his death in working for the king at the Louvre," demonstrates that royal custom had anticipated modern legislation.
Charles surrendered the royal palace in the Cité, associated with bitter memories of Marcel's dictatorship, to the Parlement, and partly bought, partly erected an irregular group of exquisite Gothic mansions and chapels which he furnished with sumptuous magnificence and surrounded with tennis courts, falconries, menageries, delightful and spacious gardens—a hostel solennel des grands esbattements, "where," as the royal edict runs, "we have had many joys and with God's grace have recovered from several great sicknesses, wherefore we are moved to that hostel by love, pleasure and singular affection." This royal city within a city, known as the Hôtel St. Paul, covered together with the monastery and church of the Célestins, a vast space, now roughly bounded by the Rue St. Paul, the quai des Célestins and the Rue de Sully, the Rue de l'Arsenal and the Rue St. Antoine. Charles VII. was the last king who dwelt there; the buildings fell to ruin, and between 1519 and 1551 were gradually sold. No vestige of this palace of delight now remains, nothing but the memory of it in a few street names,—the streets of the Fair Trellis, of the Lions of St. Paul, of the Garden of St. Paul, and of the Cherry Orchard. To Charles V. is also due the beautiful chapel of Vincennes and the completion of Étienne Marcel's wall. This third enclosure, began at the Tour de Billi, which stood at the angle formed by the Gare de l'Arsenal and the Seine, extended north by the Boulevard Bourdon, the Place de la Bastille, and the line of the inner Boulevards to the Porte St. Denis; it then turned south-west by the old Porte Montmartre, the Place des Victoires and across the garden of the Palais Royal to the Tour du Bois, a little below the present Pont du Carrousel. It was fortified by a double moat and square towers. The south portion was never begun. In 1370, Charles' provost, Hugues Aubriot, warned his royal master that the Hôtel St. Paul would be difficult to defend, and advised him to replace the Bastille[88] of St. Antoine by a great stronghold which might serve as a state prison[89] and as a defence from within and without. In 1380 the dread Bastille of sinister fame, with its eight towers, was raised—ever a hateful memory to the citizens, for it was completed by the royal provost when the provost of the merchants had been suppressed by Charles VI. in 1383.
"Woe to thee O land, when thy king is a child!" During the minority and reign of Charles VI. France lay prostrate under a hail of evils that menaced her very existence, and Paris was reduced to the profoundest misery and humiliation. The breath had not left the old king's body before his elder brother, the Count of Anjou, who was hiding in an adjacent room, hastened to seize the royal treasure and the contents of the public exchequer. No regent had been appointed, and the four royal dukes, the young king's uncles of Anjou, Burgundy, Bourbon, and Berri, began to strive for power.
In 1382 Anjou, who had been suffered to hold the regency, sought to enforce an unpopular tax on the merchants of Paris. A collector having seized an old watercress seller at the Halles with much brutality, the people revolted, armed themselves with the loaded clubs (maillotins) stored in the Hôtel de Ville for use against the English, attacked and put to death with great cruelty some of the royal officers and opened the prisons. The court temporised, promised to remit the tax and to grant an amnesty; but with odious treachery caused the leaders of the movement to be seized, put them in sacks and flung them at dead of night into the Seine. The angry Parisians now barricaded their streets and closed their gates against the king. Negotiations followed and by payment of 100,000 francs to the Duke of Anjou the citizens were promised immunity and the king and his uncles entered the city. But the court nursed its vengeance, and after the victory over the Flemings at Rosebecque, Charles and his uncles with a powerful force marched on Paris. The Parisians, 20,000 strong, stood drawn up in arms at Montmartre to meet him. They were asked who were their chiefs and if the Constable de Clisson might enter Paris. "None other chiefs have we," they answered, "than the king and his lords: we are ready to obey their orders." "Good people of Paris," said the Constable on his arrival at their camp, "what meaneth this? meseems you would fight against your king." They replied that their purpose was but to show the king the puissance of his good city of Paris. "'Tis well," said the Constable, "if you would see the king return to your homes and put aside your arms."
On the morrow, 11th January 1383, the king and his court, with 12,000 men-at-arms, appeared at the Porte St. Denis, and there stood the provost of the merchants with the chief citizens in new robes, holding a canopy of cloth of gold. Charles, with a fierce glance, ordered them back; the gates were unhinged and flung down; the royal army entered as in a conquered city. A terrible vengeance ensued. The President of the Parlement and other civil officers, with three hundred prominent citizens, were arrested and cast into prison. In vain was the royal clemency entreated by the Duchess of Orleans, the rector of the university and chief citizens all clothed in black. The bloody diurnal work of the executioner began and continued until a general pardon was granted on March 1st on payment of an enormous fine. The liberties of the city met the same fate. The Maison aux Piliers reverted to the crown, the provostship of the merchants, and all the privileges of the Parisians, were suppressed, and the hateful taxes reimposed. Never had the heel of despotism ground them down so mercilessly; yet was no niggardly welcome given to Isabella of Bavaria, Charles' consort, on her entry into Paris in 1389. "I, the author of this book," says Froissart, after describing at length the usual incidents of a royal procession—the fountains running with wines, aromatic with Orient spices, the music, the ballets, the spectacles, the sumptuous decorations—"I marvelled when I beheld such great foison, for all the grant Rue St. Denis was as richly covered with cloth of camelot and of silk like as were all the cloth had for nothing or that we were in Alexandria or Damascus." A curious incident is related by the chronicler of St. Denis; Charles, desirous of being present incognito at the wondrous scene, bade Savoisy take horse and let him ride behind en croupe. Thus mounted the pair rode to the Châtelet to see the queen pass. There they found much people and a strong guard of sergeants, armed with stout staves with which the officers smote amain to keep back the press, and in the scuffle the king received many a thwack on the shoulders, whereat was great merriment when the thing was known at court in the evening. Three years later a royal progress of far different nature was witnessed in Paris. The king, a poor demented captive, was borne in by the Duke of Orleans to the Hôtel St. Paul. In 1393, when he had somewhat recovered from his madness, a grand masked ball was given to celebrate the wedding of one of the ladies of honour who was a widow. The marriage of a widow was always the occasion of riotous mirth, and Charles disguised himself and five of his courtiers as satyrs. They were sewed up in tight-fitting vestments of linen, which were coated with resin and pitch and covered with rough tow; on their heads they wore hideous masks. While the ladies of the court were celebrating the marriage the king and his companions rushed in howling like wolves and indulged in the most uncouth gestures and jokes. The Duke of Orleans, drawing too near with a torch to discover their identity, set fire to the tow and in a second they were enveloped in so many shirts of Nessus. Unable to fling off their blazing dresses they madly ran hither and thither, suffering the most excruciating agony and uttering piteous cries. The king happened to be near the young Duchess of Berri who, with admirable presence of mind, flung her robe over him and rescued him from the flames. One knight saved himself by plunging into a large tub of water in the kitchen, one died on the spot, two died on the second day, another lingered for three days in awful torment. The horror of the scene[90] so affected Charles that his madness returned more violently than ever. His queen abandoned him and he was left to wander like some wild animal about his rooms in the Hôtel St. Paul, untended, unkempt, verminous, his only companion his low-born mistress Odette.