LOUIS XIII. was nine years of age when he came to the throne in 1610. For a time the regent, Marie de’ Medici, was content to suffer the great Sully to hold office, but soon favouritism and the greed of princes, to the ill-hap of France, drove him in the prime of life from Paris into the retirement of his chÂteau of Villebon, and a feeble and venal Florentine, Concini, took his place. The Prince of CondÉ, now a Catholic, the Duke of Mayenne, and a pack of nobles who professed solicitude for the wrongs of the pauvre peuple, fell upon the royal treasury like hounds on their quarry. The court, to meet their demands, neglected to pay the poor annuitants of the HÔtel de Ville, and this was the only result to the pauvre peuple. In 1614, so critical was the financial situation, that the States-General were called to meet in the Salle Bourbon,[126] but to little purpose. Recriminations were bandied between the noblesse and the Tiers Etat. The insolence of the former was intolerable. One member of the Tiers was thrashed by a noble and could obtain no redress. The clergy refused to bear any of the public burdens. The orator of the Tiers, speaking on his knees according to usage, warned the court that despair might make the people conscious that a soldier was none other than a peasant bearing arms, and that when the vine-dresser took up the arquebus he might one day cease to be the anvil and become the hammer. But there was no thought for the common weal; each order wrangled for its own privileges, and their meeting-place was closed on the pretext that the hall was wanted for a royal ballet. No protest was raised, and the States-General never met again until the fateful meeting at Versailles, in 1789, when a similar pretext was tried, with very different consequences. Among the clergy, however, sat a young priest of twenty-nine years of age, chosen for their orator, Armand Duplessis de Richelieu, who made rapid strides to fame.

In 1616 the nobles were once more in arms, and CondÉ was again bought off. The helpless court was in pitiful straits and the country drifting to civil war, when Richelieu, who, meanwhile, had been made a royal councillor and minister for foreign affairs, took the CondÉ business in hand. He had the prince arrested in the Louvre itself and flung into the Bastille; the noble blackmailers were declared guilty of treason, and three armies marched against them. The triumph of the court seemed assured, when Louis XIII., now sixteen years of age, suddenly freed himself from tutelage, and with the help of the favourite companion of his pastimes, Albert de Luynes, son of a soldier of fortune, determined to rid himself of Concini. The all-powerful Florentine, on 24th April 1617, was crossing the bridge that spanned the fosse of the Louvre when the captain of the royal Guards, who was accompanied by a score of gentlemen, touched him on the shoulder and told him he was the king’s prisoner. “I, a prisoner!” exclaimed Concini, moving his hand towards his sword. Before he could utter another word he fell dead, riddled with pistol shots; Louis appeared at a window, and all the Louvre resounded with cries of “Vive le roi!” Concini’s wife, to whom he owed his ascendency over the queen-mother, was accused of sorcery, beheaded and burnt on the Place de GrÈve; Marie was packed off to Blois and Richelieu exiled to his bishopric of LuÇon. De Luynes, enriched by the confiscated wealth of the Concini, now became supreme, only to demonstrate a pitiful incapacity. The nobles had risen and were rallying round Marie; the Protestants were defying the state; but Luynes was impotent, and soon went to a dishonoured grave, leaving chaos behind him.

Pont Neuf.
Pont Neuf.

Richelieu’s star was now in the ascendant. The king drew near to his mother and both turned to the one man who seemed able to knit together the distracted state. A cardinal’s hat was obtained for him from Rome, and the illustrious churchman ruled France for eighteen years. Everything went down before his commanding genius, his iron will and his indefatigable industry. “I reflect long,” said he, “before making a decision, but once my mind is made up, I go straight to the goal. I mow down all before me, and cover all with my scarlet robe.” The Huguenots, backed by the English, aimed at founding an independent republic: Richelieu captured La Rochelle[127] and wiped them out as a political party. The great nobles sought to divide power with the crown: he demolished their fortresses, made them bow their necks to the royal yoke or chopped off their heads. They defied the king’s edict against duelling: the Count of Bouteville, the most notorious duellist of his time, and the Count of Les Chapelles were sent to the scaffold for having defiantly fought duels in the Place Royale in open noonday, at which the Marquis of Buffy was killed. The execution made a profound impression, for the count was a Montmorency, and the CondÉs, the Orleans, the Montmorencys and all the most powerful nobles brought pressure to bear on the king and swore that the sentence should never be carried out. But Richelieu was firm as a tower. “It is an infamous thing,” he told the king, “to punish the weak alone; they cast no baleful shade: we must keep discipline by striking down the mighty.” Richelieu crushed the Parlement and revolutionised the provincial administrations. He maintained seven armies in the field, and two navies on the seas at one and the same time. He added four provinces to France—Alsace, Lorraine, Artois and Rousillon, humiliated Austria and exalted his country to the proud position of dominant factor in European politics. He foiled plot after plot and crushed rebellion. The queen-mother, Gaston Duke of Orleans her second son and heir to the throne, the Marquis of Cinq-Mars the king’s own favourite—each tried a fall with the great minister, but was thrown and punished with pitiless severity. Marie herself was driven to exile—almost poverty—at Brussels, and died a miserable death at Cologne. The despicable Gaston, who twice betrayed his friends to save his own skin, was watched, and when the queen, Anne of Austria, gave birth to a son after twenty years of marriage, he was deprived of his dignities and possessions and interned at Blois. The Marquis of Cinq-Mars, and the last Duke of Montmorency, son and grandson of two High Constables of France, felt the stroke of the headsman’s axe.

In 1642, when the mighty cardinal had attained the highest pinnacle of success and fame, a mortal disease declared itself. His physicians talked the usual platitudes of hope, but he would have none of them, and sent for the curÉ of St. Eustache. “Do you pardon your enemies?” the priest asked. “I have none, save those of the state,” replied the dying cardinal, and, pointing to the Host, exclaimed, “There is my judge.” “At my entry to office,” he wrote to Louis XIII. in his political testament, “your Majesty divided the powers of the state with the Huguenots; the great nobles demeaned themselves as if they were not your subjects; the governors of provinces acted as independent sovereigns. In a word, the majesty of the crown was degraded to the lowest depths of debasement and was hardly recognisable at all.” We have seen how the cardinal changed all that; yet Louis heard of his death without emotion, and simply remarked—“Well, a great politician has gone.” In six months his royal master was gone too. Louis has one claim to distinction; he was the first king of France since St. Louis who lived a clean life.

THE MEDICI FOUNTAIN, LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.
THE MEDICI FOUNTAIN, LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.

Paris, under Marie de’ Medici and Richelieu, saw many and important changes. In 1612 a new Jacobin monastery was founded in the Rue St. HonorÉ for the reformed Dominicans, destined to be later the theatre of Robespierre’s triumphs and to house the great Jacobin revolutionary club.[128] In the same year the queen-regent bought a chÂteau and garden from the Duke of Piney-Luxembourg, and commissioned her architect, Solomon Debrosse, to build a new palace in the style of the Pitti at Florence. The work was begun in 1615, and resulted in the picturesque but somewhat Gallicised Italian palace which, after descending to Gaston of Orleans and his daughter the Grande Mademoiselle, ends a chequered career as palace, prison, house of peers, socialist-meeting place by becoming the respectable and dull Senate-house of the third Republic. The beautiful Renaissance gardens have suffered but few changes; adorned with Debrosse’s picturesque fountain, they form one of the most charming parks in Paris. The same architect was employed to restore the old Roman aqueduct of Arceuil and finished his work in 1624. In 1614 the equestrian statue in bronze of Henry IV., designed by Giovanni da Bologna, and presented to Marie by Cosimo II. of Tuscany, reached Paris after many vicissitudes and was set up on the Pont Neuf by Pierre de Fouqueville, who carved for it a beautiful pedestal of marble, whereon were inscribed the most signal events and victories of Henry’s reign. This priceless statue was melted down for cannon during the Revolution, and for years its site was occupied by a cafÉ. In 1818, during the Restoration, another statue of Henry IV., by Lemot, cast from the melted figure of Napoleon I. on the top of the VendÔme column, was erected where it now stands. The founder, who was an imperialist, is said to have avenged the emperor by placing pamphlets attacking the Restoration in the horse’s belly.

In the seventeenth century the Pont Neuf was one of the busiest centres of Parisian life. Streams of coaches and multitudes of foot-passengers passed by. Booths of all kinds displayed their wares; quacks, mountebanks, ballad-singers and puppet-shows, drew crowds of listeners. Evelyn describes the footway as being three to four feet higher than the road; and at the foot of the bridge, says the traveller, is a water-house, “whereon, at a great height, is the story of our Saviour and the Woman of Samaria pouring water out of a bucket. Above is a very rare dyall of several motions with a chime. The water is conveyed by huge wheels, pumps and other engines, from the river beneath.” This was the famous ChÂteau d’Eau, or La Samaritaine, erected in 1608 to pump water from the Seine and distribute it to the Louvre and the Tuileries palaces. The timepiece was an industrieuse horloge, which told the hours, days, and months.

In 1624 Henry the Fourth’s great scheme for enlarging and completing the Louvre was committed by Richelieu to his architect, Jacques Lemercier, and the first stone of the Pavilion de l’Horloge was laid on 28th June by the king. Lemercier was great enough and modest enough to adopt his predecessor’s design, and having erected the pavilion, continued Lescot’s west wing northwards, turned the north-west angle and carried the north wing to about a fourth of its designed extent. The Pavilion de l’Horloge thus became the central feature of the west wing, which was exactly doubled in extent. The south-east and north-east towers of the eastern wing of the old Gothic Louvre, however, remained intact, and even as late as 1650 Sylvestre’s drawing shows us the south-east tower still standing and the east wing only partly demolished. Lemercier also designed a grand new palace for the cardinal north of the Rue St. HonorÉ, which was completed in 1636. Richelieu’s passion for the drama led him to include two theatres as part of his scheme: a small one to hold about six hundred spectators, and a larger one, which subsequently became the opera-house, capacious enough to seat three thousand. Magnificent galleries, painted by Philippe de Champaigne and other artists, represented the chief events in the cardinal’s reign, and were hung with the portraits of the great men of France. The courts were adorned with carvings of ships’ prows and anchors, symbolising the cardinal’s function as Grand Master of Navigation; spacious gardens, with an avenue of chestnut trees, which cost 300,000 francs to train, added to its splendours.

In this palace the great minister—busy with a yet vaster scheme for building an immense Place Ducale, north of the palace—passed away leaving its stately magnificence to the king, whose widow, Anne of Austria, inhabited it during the regency with her sons, Louis XIV. and Philip Duke of Orleans, the founder of the Bourbon-Orleans family. The famous architect, FranÇois Mansard, was employed by her to extend the Palais Royal as it was then called, which subsequently became infamous as the scene of the orgies of Philip’s son during his regency. The buildings were further extended by Philip EgalitÉ, who destroyed the superb plantation of chestnut trees and erected shops along the sides of the gardens, which as cafÉs and gambling-saloons became a haunt of fashionable vice and dissipation in the late eighteenth century. The gardens of the royal palaces had always been open to well-dressed citizens, but notices forbade entrance to beggars, servants, and all ill-clad persons under pain of imprisonment, the carcan, and other graver penalties. EgalitÉ, however, to win popularity, opened his gardens without restriction, and they soon became the forum of the revolutionary agitation. Here Camille Desmoulins declaimed his impassioned orations and called Paris to arms. The gambling-hells, of which there were over three hundred, survived the Revolution, and Blucher and many an officer of the allied armies lost immense sums there. The Palais Royal became subsequently the residence of the Orleans family, and now serves as the meeting-place of the Conseil d’Etat.

In the early seventeenth century nine lovers of literature associated themselves for the purpose of holding a friendly symposium, where they discoursed of books, and read and criticised each other’s compositions; the meetings were followed by a modest repast and a peripatetic discussion. The masterful cardinal, who would rule the French language as well as the state, called the nine together, and in 1635 organised them into an AcadÉmie FranÇaise, whose function should be to perfect and watch over the purity of the French tongue. The Parlement granted letters-patent, limited the number of academicians to forty, and required them to take cognisance of French authors and the French language alone. The original nine, however, were far from gratified, and always regretted the “golden age” of early days. Richelieu established the Jardin des Plantes for the use of medical students, where demonstrations in botany were given; he rebuilt the college and church of the Sorbonne where his monument,[129] a masterpiece of sculpture by Girardon from Lebrun’s designs, may still be seen. He cheapened the postal service,[130] established the Royal Press at the Louvre which in twenty years published seventy Greek, Latin, Italian and French classics. He issued the first political weekly gazette in France, was a liberal patron of men of letters and of artists, and saw the birth and fostered the growth of the great period of French literary and artistic supremacy.

Another of Henry the Fourth’s plans for the aggrandisement of Paris was carried out by the indefatigable minister. As early as 867 the bishops of Paris had been confirmed by royal charter in their possession of the two islands east of the CitÉ, the Isle Notre Dame and Isle aux Vaches. From time immemorial these had been used as timber-yards, and in 1616 the chapter of the cathedral was induced to treat with Christophe Marie, contractor for the bridges of France and others, who agreed to fill in the channel,[131] which separated the islands; to cover them with broad streets of houses and quays, and to build certain bridges; but expressly contracted never to fill up the arm of the Seine between the Isle Notre Dame, and the CitÉ. The first stone of the new bridge which was to connect the islands with the north bank was laid by Louis XIII. in 1614 and named Pont Marie, after the contractor. In 1664 a church, dedicated to St. Louis, was begun on the site of an earlier chapel by Levau, but not completed until 1726 by Donat.

The new quarter soon attracted the attention of rich financiers, civic officers, merchants and lawyers, some of whose hÔtels were designed by Levau, and decorated by Lebrun and Leseur. Madame Pompadour’s brother lived there; the Duke of Lauzan, husband of the Grande Mademoiselle, lived in his hÔtel on the Quai d’Anjou (No. 17); Voltaire lived with Madame du ChÂtelet in the HÔtel Lambert (No. 1 Quai d’Anjou). To the prÉcieuses of MoliÈre’s time the Isle St. Louis (for so it was called) became the Isle de Delos, around whose quays the gallants and ladies of the period were wont to promenade at nightfall. The Isle, as it is now familiarly known, is one of the most peaceful quarters of Paris, and has a strangely provincial aspect to the traveller who paces its quiet streets.

In 1622 Paris was raised from its subjection to the Metropolitan of Sens, and became for the first time the seat of an archbishopric; the diocese was made to correspond to the old territories of the Parisii.

Among the many evils attendant on a monarchy, which Samuel recited to the children of Israel, that of the possibility of a regency might well have found place. Louis XIV. was less than five years of age when his father died, and once again the great nobles turned the difficulties of the situation to their own profit. The queen-regent, Anne of Austria, had retained in office Cardinal Mazarin, Richelieu’s faithful disciple, chosen by him to continue the traditions of his policy. The new cardinal-minister, scion of an old Sicilian family, was a typical Italian; he had none of his predecessor’s virile energy and directness of purpose, but ruled by his subtle wit and cool, calculating patience. “Time and I,” was his device. He was an excellent judge of men, and profoundly distrusted “the unlucky,” always satisfying himself that a man was “lucky,” before he employed him. Conscious of his foreign origin, Mazarin hesitated to take strong measures, and advised a policy of conciliation with the disaffected nobles. Anne filled their pockets, and for a time the whole language of the court is said to have consisted of the five little words “La reine est si bonne.” But the ambitious courtiers soon aimed at higher game, and a plot was discovered to assassinate the foreign cardinal. The Duke of Beaufort, chief conspirator, a son of the Duke of VendÔme, and grandson of Henry IV., by Gabrielle d’EstrÉes, was imprisoned in the keep at Vincennes, and his associates interned at their chÂteaux.

The finances which Richelieu had left in so flourishing a condition were soon exhausted by the lavish benevolence of the court, and were unhappily in the hands of Emery (a clever but cynical official, who had formerly been a fraudulent bankrupt), whose rigorous exactions and indifference to public feeling aroused the indignation of the whole nation. In 1646 23,800 defaulters lay rotting in the jails, and an attempt to enforce an odious tax on all merchandise entering Paris led to an explosion of popular wrath. The Parlement, by the re-assertion of its claims to refuse the registration of an obnoxious decree of the crown, made itself the champion of public justice. The four sovereign courts of the Parlement met in the hall of St. Louis, and refused to register the tax. “The Parlement growled,” said the Cardinal de Retz, “and the people awoke and groped about for laws and found none.” Anne was furious and made the boy-king hold a “bed[132] of justice” to enforce the registration of the decree. But the Parlement stood firm, declared itself the guardian of the public and private weal, claiming even to reform abuses and to discuss and vote on schemes of taxation. So critical was the situation that the court was forced to bend, and to postpone the humiliation of the Parlement to a more convenient season. The glorious issue of the campaigns of CondÉ against the Houses of Spain and Austria seemed to offer a fitting occasion. On 26th August 1648, while a Te Deum was being sung at Notre Dame for the victory of Lens, and a grand trophy of seventy-three captured flags was displayed to the people, three of the most stubborn members of the Parlement were arrested. One escaped, but while the venerable Councillor Broussel was being hustled into a carriage, a cry was raised, which stirred the whole of Paris to insurrection. In the excitement a street porter was shot by a captain of the Guards, the Marquis of Meilleraye, and the next morning the court, aroused by cries of “Liberty and Broussel,” found the streets of Paris barricaded and the citizens in arms, even children of five or six years carrying poignards. De Retz, the suffragan archbishop of Paris, came in his robes to entreat Anne to appease the people, but was snubbed for his pains. “It is a revolt,” the queen cried, “to imagine a revolt possible; these are silly tales of those who desire it: the king will enforce order.” De Retz, angry and insulted, left to join the insurrection and to become its leader. The venerable president of the Parlement, MolÉ, and the whole body of members next repaired to the Palais Royal with no better success: the queen’s only answer was a gibe. As they returned crestfallen from the Palais Royal they were driven back by the infuriated people, who threatened them with death, and clamoured for Broussel’s release or Mazarin as a hostage. Nearly all the councillors fled, but the president, with exalted courage, faced them and, answering gravely, as if in his judgment-seat, said, “If you kill me, all my needs will be six feet of earth”: he strode on with calm self-possession, amid a shower of missiles and threats, to the hall of St. Louis. The echo of Cromwell’s triumph in England, however, seemed to have reached the Palais Royal, and the queen-regent was at length induced to treat. The demands of the people were granted and Broussel was liberated, amid scenes of tumultuous joy.

In February of the next year the regency made an effort to reassert its authority. The queen and the royal princes left Paris for the palace of St. Germain and gathered an army under CondÉ: the Parlement taxed themselves heavily, tried their hands at organising a citizen militia, and allied themselves with the popular Duke of Beaufort, now at liberty, and leader of a troop of brilliant but giddy young nobles. The Bastille was captured by the Parlement, and the university promised its support and a subsidy. This was the origin of the civil war of the Fronde, one of the most extraordinary contests in history; its name is derived from the puerile street fights with slings of the printers’ devils and schoolboys of Paris. The incidents of the war read like scenes in a comic opera. A hundred thousand armed citizens were besieged by eight thousand soldiers. The evolution of a burlesque form of cavalry, called the corps of the Portes CochÈres, formed by a conscription of one horseman for every house with a carriage gate, became the derision of the royal army. They issued forth, beplumed and beribboned, and fled back to the city, amid the execrations of the people, at the sight of a handful of troops. Every defeat—and the Parisians were always defeated—formed a subject for songs and mockery. Councils of war were held in taverns, and De Retz was seen at a sitting of the Parlement in the hall of St. Louis with a poignard sticking out of his pocket: “There is the archbishop’s prayer-book,” said the people. The more public-spirited members of the Parlement soon, however, tired of the folly. Mazarin won over De Retz by the offer of a cardinal’s hat, and a compromise was effected with the court, which returned to Paris in April 1649. The people were still bitter against Mazarin, and invaded the Palais de Justice, demanding the cardinal’s signature to the treaty, that it might be burned by the common hangman.

Successful generals are bad masters, and the jackboot was now supreme at court. Soon CondÉ’s insolent bearing and extravagant demands, and the vanity of his entourage of young nobles, dubbed petits maÎtres, became intolerable: he was arrested at the Louvre and sent to the keep at Vincennes. But Mazarin, thinking himself secure, delayed the promised reward to De Retz, who joined the disaffected friends of CondÉ: and the court, again foiled, was forced to release CondÉ, surrender the two princes, and exile the hated Mazarin, who, none the less, ruled the storm by his subtle policy from Cologne. CondÉ, disgusted alike with queen and Parlement, now fled to the south, and raised the standard of rebellion.

Notre Dame.
Notre Dame.

The second phase of the wars of the Fronde became a more serious matter. Turenne, won over by the court, was given command of the royal forces and moved against CondÉ. The two armies, after indecisive battles, raced to Paris and fought for its possession outside the Porte St. Antoine. The Frondeurs occupied what is now the Faubourg St. Antoine: the royalists the heights of Charonne to the east. It was a stubborn and bloody contest. The armies were led by the two greatest captains of the age, and fought under the eyes of their king, who with the queen-mother watched the struggle from the eminence now crowned by the cemetery of PÈre la Chaise. “I have seen not one CondÉ to-day, but a dozen,” cried Turenne, as victory inclined to the Royalists. The last word was, however, with the Duke of Orleans: while he sat hesitating in the Luxembourg, the Grande Mademoiselle ordered the guns of the Bastille to be turned against Turenne, and the citizens opened the gates to CondÉ. Again his incorrigible insolence and brutality made Paris too hot for him, and with the disaffected princes he returned to Flanders to seek help from his country’s enemies. It was a fatal mistake, and Mazarin was not slow to turn it to advantage. He prudently retired while public feeling was won over to the young king, who was soon entreated by the Parlement and citizens to return to Paris. When the time was ripe, Mazarin had the Duke of Orleans interned at Blois, CondÉ was condemned to death in contumacio: De Retz was sent to Vincennes. Ten councillors of the Parlement were imprisoned or degraded, and in three months Mazarin returned to Paris with the pomp and equipage of a sovereign. It was the end of the Fronde, and of the attempt of the Parlement, a venal body[133] devoid of representative basis, to imitate the functions of the English House of Commons. The crown emerged from the contest more absolute than before, and Louis never forgot the days when he was a fugitive with his mother, and driven to lie on a hard mattress at the palace of St. Germain. In 1655 the Parlement of Paris met to prepare remonstrances against a royal edict: the young king heard of it while hunting at Vincennes, made his way to the hall of St. Louis booted[134] and spurred, rated the councillors and dissolved the sitting.

The years following on the internal peace were a period of triumphant foreign war and diplomacy. Mazarin achieved his purpose of marrying the Infanta of Spain to his royal master; he added to and confirmed Richelieu’s territorial gains and guided France at last to triumph over the Imperial House of Austria. On 9th March 1661, after handing Louis a code of instructions for future guidance and commending his ministers to the royal favour, the great Italian, “whose heart was French if his tongue were not,” confronted death at Vincennes with firmness and courage. Mazarin was, however, a costly servant, who bled his adopted country to satisfy his love for the arts and splendours of life, to furnish dowries to his nieces, and to exalt his family. His vast palace (now the BibliothÈque Nationale), with its library of 35,000 volumes, was furnished with princely splendour. He left 2,000,000 livres to found a college for the gratuitous education of sixty sons of gentlemen from the four provinces—Spanish, Italian, German and Flemish—recently added to the crown, in order that French culture and grace might be diffused among them; they were to be taught the use of arms, horsemanship, dancing, Christian piety and belles-lettres. A vast domed edifice was raised on the site of the Tour de Nesle, and became famous as the college of the Four Nations. It was subsequently expropriated and given by the Convention to the five learned academies of France, and is now known as the Institut de France.

THE INSTITUT DE FRANCE.
THE INSTITUT DE FRANCE.