The Story of Paris Part 7

CHAPTER VIII

_etienne Marcel--the English Invasions--The Maillotins--Murder of the Duke of Orleans--Armagnacs and Burgundians_

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 n.o.bles 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. etienne 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 Hotel de Ville, on the Place de Greve 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 a.s.sumed the t.i.tle 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 Cite, who, horrified, fled to Compiegne to rally the n.o.bles.

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 n.o.bles are known to have perished. Of the merciless vengeance taken by the seigneurs there is ample confirmation: the wretched peasants were easily out-manoeuvred and killed like rats by the mail-clad n.o.bles 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 Pres, whence the kings of France were wont to witness the judicial combats in the Pres aux Clercs, and addressed an a.s.sembly 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. Honore 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 a.s.sociate. 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, _a mort, a 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 Greve.

The provost's body was dragged to the court of the church of St.

Catherine du Val des ecoliers, 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.

[Footnote 82: The royal war-cry, "Montjoie St. Denis," was uttered when the king took the Oriflamme from the altar at St. Denis.]

[Footnote 83: During John the Good's reign, the province of Dauphiny had been added to the French crown, and the king's eldest son took the t.i.tle of Dauphin.]

[Footnote 84: So called from the familiar appellation "Jacques Bonhomme," applied half in contempt, half in jest, by the seigneurs to the peasants who served them in the wars.]

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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 paye 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 n.o.blest jewel that could be presented to him.

[Footnote 85: Howell mentions the locution in a letter dated 1654.]

The Dauphin, who on the death of good King John in London (1364) became Charles V., by careful statesmans.h.i.+p succeeded in restoring order to the kingdom and to its finances[86] and in winning some successes against the English.

[Footnote 86: Charles taxed and borrowed heavily. Even the members of his household were importuned for loans, however small. His cook lent him frs. 67.50.]

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'Orleans. 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. Honore on the north and the old wall of Philip Augustus on the east, in which were an "Hotel 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 gla.s.s 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 antic.i.p.ated modern legislation.

[Footnote 87: This priceless collection of books, which at length filled three rooms, was appropriated for a nominal sum by the Duke of Bedford during the English occupation in Paris and sent to England. A few, barely fifty, have survived, of which the greater number have been acquired by the Bibliotheque Nationale.]

Charles surrendered the royal palace in the Cite, a.s.sociated with bitter memories of Marcel's dictators.h.i.+p, 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 s.p.a.cious gardens--a _hostel solennel des grands esbattements_, "where," as the royal edict runs, "we have had many joys and with G.o.d'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 Hotel St. Paul, covered together with the monastery and church of the Celestins, a vast s.p.a.ce, now roughly bounded by the Rue St. Paul, the quai des Celestins and the Rue de Sully, the Rue de l'a.r.s.enal 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 etienne Marcel's wall. This third enclosure, began at the Tour de Billi, which stood at the angle formed by the Gare de l'a.r.s.enal 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 Hotel 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.

[Footnote 88: Each gate of the new wall was defended by a kind of fortress called a Bastide or Bastille.]

[Footnote 89: Aubriot is said to have been the first prisoner incarcerated in the dungeon of his own Bastille.]

"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 Hotel 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, the rector of the university and chief citizens all clothed in black. The b.l.o.o.d.y 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 provosts.h.i.+p 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 n.i.g.g.ardly 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 Chatelet to see the queen pa.s.s. 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 Hotel 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 ident.i.ty, set fire to the tow and in a second they were enveloped in so many s.h.i.+rts 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 Hotel St. Paul, untended, unkempt, verminous, his only companion his low-born mistress Odette.

[Footnote 90: The scene is quaintly ill.u.s.trated in an illuminated copy of Froissart in the British Museum.]

The bitterness of the avuncular factions was now intensified. The House of Burgundy by marriage and other means had grown to be one of the most powerful in Europe and was at fierce enmity with the House of Orleans. At the death of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, his son Jean sans Peur, sought to a.s.sume his father's supremacy as well as his t.i.tle: the Duke of Orleans, strong in the queen's support, determined to foil his purpose. Each fortified his hotel in Paris and a.s.sembled an army. Friends, however, intervened; they were reconciled, and in November 1407 the two dukes attended ma.s.s at the Church of the Grands Augustins, took the Holy Sacrament and dined together. As Jean rose from table the Duke of Orleans placed the Order of the Porcupine round his neck; swore _bonne amour et fraternite_, and they kissed each other with tears of joy. On 23rd November a forged missive was handed to the Duke of Orleans, requiring his attendance on the queen. He set forth on a mule, accompanied by two squires and five servants carrying torches. It was a sombre night, and as the unsuspecting prince rode up the Rue Vieille du Temple behind his little escort, humming a tune and playing with his glove, a band of a.s.sa.s.sins fell upon him from the shadow of the postern La Barbette, crying "_a mort, a mort_" and he was hacked to death. Then issued from a neighbouring house at the sign of Our Lady, Jean sans Peur, a tall figure concealed in a red cloak, lantern in hand, who gazed at the mutilated corpse. "_C'est bien_," said he, "let's away." They set fire to the house to divert attention and escaped. Four months before, the house had been hired on the pretext of storing provisions, and for two weeks a score of a.s.sa.s.sins had been concealed there, biding their time. On the morrow, Burgundy with the other princes went to asperse the dead body with holy water in the church of the Blancs Manteaux, and as he drew nigh, exclaiming against the foul murder, blood is said to have issued from the wounds. At the funeral he held a corner of the pall, but his guilt was an open secret, and though he braved it out for a time he was forced to flee to his lands in Flanders for safety. In a few months, however, Jean was back in force at Paris, and a doctor of the Sorbonne pleaded an elaborate justification of the deed before the a.s.sembled princes, n.o.bles, clergy and citizens at the Hotel St. Paul. The poor crazy king was made to declare publicly that he bore no ill-will to his dear cousin of Burgundy, and later, on the failure of a conspiracy of revenge by the queen and the Orleans party, to grant full pardon for a deed "committed for the welfare of the kingdom." The cutting of the Rue etienne Marcel has exposed the strong machicolated tower still bearing the arms of Burgundy (two planes and a plumb line), which Jean sans Peur built to fortify the Hotel de Bourgogne, as a defence and refuge against the Orleans faction and the people of Paris. The Orleans family had for arms a knotted stick, with the device "_Je l'ennuis_": the Burgundian arms with the motto, "_Je le tiens_,"

implied that the knotted stick was to be planed and levelled.

The arrival of Jean sans Peur, and the fortification of his hotel were the prelude to civil war, for the Orleanists and their allies had rallied to the Count of Armagnac, whose daughter Anne, the new Duke Louis of Orleans had married, and fortified themselves in their stronghold on the site now occupied by the Palais Royal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOWER OF JEAN SANS PEUR.]

The Armagnacs, for so the Orleanists were now called, thirsted for revenge, and for five years Paris was the scene of frightful atrocities as each faction gained the upper hand and took a b.l.o.o.d.y vengeance on its rivals. At length the infamous policy of an alliance with the English was resorted to. The temptation was too great for the English king, and in 1415 Henry V. met the French army, composed almost entirely of the Armagnacs, at Agincourt, and inflicted on it a defeat more disastrous than Crecy or Poitiers. The famous oriflamme of St. Denis pa.s.sed from history in that fatal year of 1415. The Count of Armagnac hurried to Paris, seized the mad king and the dauphin, and held the capital.

In 1417 the English returned under Henry V. The Burgundians had promised neutrality, and the defeated Armagnacs were forced in their need to "borrow[91] of the saints." But hateful memories clung to them in Paris and they were betrayed. On the night of 29th May 1418, the son of an ironmonger on the Pet.i.t Pont, who had charge of the wicket of the Porte St. Germain, crept into his father's room and stole the keys while he slept. The gate was then opened to the Burgundians, who seized the person of the helpless and imbecile king. Some Armagnacs escaped, bearing the dauphin with them, and the remainder were flung into prison. The Burgundian partisans in the city, among whom was the powerful corporation of the butchers and fleshers, now rose, and on Sunday, 14th June, ran to the prisons. A night of terror ensued.

Before dawn, fifteen hundred Armagnacs were indiscriminately butchered under the most revolting circ.u.mstances; the count himself perished, and a strip of his skin was carried about Paris in mockery of the white scarf of the Armagnacs. Jean sans Peur and Queen Isabella[92]

entered the city, amid the acclamation of the people, and soon after a second ma.s.sacre followed, in spite of Jean's efforts to prevent it.

Burgundy was now master of Paris, but the Armagnacs were swarming in the country around and the English marching without let on the city.

In these straits he sought a reconciliation with the dauphin and his Armagnac counsellors at Melun, on 11th July 1419. On 10th September a second conference was arranged, and duke and dauphin, each with ten attendants, met in a wicker enclosure on the bridge at Montereau. Jean doffed his cap and knelt to the dauphin, but before he could rise was felled by a blow from an axe and stabbed to death.

[Footnote 91: They melted down the reliquaries in the Paris churches.]

[Footnote 92: In 1417 Charles, returning from a visit to the queen at the castle of Vincennes, met the Chevalier Bois-Burdon going thither.

He ordered his arrest, and under torture a confession reflecting on the queen's honour was extorted. Bois-Burdon was delivered to the provost at the Chatelet, and one night, _sans declarer la cause au people_, sewn in a sack and dropped into the Seine. The queen was banished to Tours, and her jewels and treasures confiscated. Furious with the king and the Armagnac faction, she made common cause with the Duke of Burgundy.]

In 1521 a monk at Dijon showed the skull of Jean sans Peur to Francis I., and pointing to a hole made by the a.s.sa.s.sin's axe, said: "Sire, it was through this hole that the English entered France." On receipt of the news of his father's murder, the new Duke of Burgundy, Philip le Bon, flung himself into the arms of the English, and by the treaty of Troyes on May 20, 1420, Henry V. was given a French princess to wife and the reversion of the crown of France, which, after Charles' death, was to be united ever more to that of England. But the French crown never circled Henry's brow: on August 31, 1422, he lay dead at Vincennes. His body after being embalmed was exposed with great pomp in the royal abbey of St. Denis before its translation to Westminster Abbey and an infant son of nine months was left to inherit the dual monarchy. Within a few weeks of Henry's death the hapless king of France was entombed under the same roof; a royal herald cried "for G.o.d's pity on the soul of the most high and most excellent Charles, king of France, our natural sovereign lord," and in the next breath hailed "Henry of Lancaster, by the grace of G.o.d, king of France and of England, our sovereign lord." All the royal officers broke their wands, flung them in the tomb and reversed their maces as a token that their functions were at an end. The red rose of Lancaster was added to the arms of Paris and at the next festival the Duke of Bedford was seen in the Sainte Chapelle of St. Louis, exhibiting the crown of thorns to the people as Regent of France, and a statue[93] of Henry V.

of England was raised in the great hall of the Palais de Justice, following on the line of the kings of France from Pharamond to Charles.

[Footnote 93: The statue was mutilated at the expulsion of the English in 1446 and was destroyed in the fire of 1618.]

CHAPTER IX

_Jeanne d'Arc--Paris under the English--End of the English Occupation_

The occupation of Paris by the English was the darkest hour in her story, yet amid the universal misery and dejection the treaty of Troyes was hailed with joy. When the two kings, riding abreast _moult n.o.blement_, followed by the Dukes of Clarence and Bedford, entered Paris after its signature, the whole way from the Porte St. Denis to Notre Dame was filled with people crying, "_Noel, noel!_"

The university, the parlement, the queen-mother, the whole of North France, from Brittany and Normandy to Flanders, from the Channel to the line of the Loire, accepted the situation, and the Duke of Burgundy, most powerful of the royal princes, was a friend of the English. Yet a few French hearts beat true. While the regent Duke of Bedford was entering Paris, a handful of knights unfurled the royal banner at Melun, crying--"Long live King Charles, seventh of the name, by the grace of G.o.d king of France!" And what a pitiful incarnation of national independence was this to whom the devoted sons of France were now called to rally!--a feeble youth of nineteen, indolent, licentious, mocked at by the triumphant English as the "little king of Bourges."

The story of the resurrection of France at the call of an untutored village girl is one of the most enthralling dramas of history, which may not here be told. When all men had despaired; when the cruelty, ambition and greed of the princes of France had wrought her destruction; when the miserable dauphin at Chinon was prepared to seek safety by an ignominious flight to Spain or Scotland; when Orleans, the key to the southern provinces, was about to fall into English hands--the means of salvation were revealed in the ecstatic visions of a simple peasant maid. Jeanne deemed her mission over after the solemn coronation at Rheims, but to her ill-hap, was persuaded to follow the royal army after the retreat of the English from Senlis, and on 23rd August she occupied St. Denis. She declared at her trial that her voices told her to remain at St. Denis, but that the lords made her attack Paris. On the 8th September the a.s.sault was made, but it was foiled by the king's apathy, the incapacity and bitter jealousy of his counsellors, and the action of double-faced Burgundy. In the afternoon Jeanne, while sounding the depth of the fosse with her lance,[94] was wounded by an arrow in the thigh. She remained till late evening, when she was carried away to St. Denis at whose shrine she hung up her arms--her mysterious sword from St. Catherine de Fierbois and her banner of pure white, emblazoned with the fleur-de-lys and the figure of the Saviour, with the device "Jesu Maria."

[Footnote 94: An equestrian statue in bronze stands at the south end of the Rue des Pyramides, a few hundred yards from the spot where the Maid fell before the Porte St Honore.]