A.C. 52.

We now come to treat of one of the most conspicuous cities the world has ever seen. Upon opening such a subject, we feel strongly tempted to dilate upon all that belongs to this great city; but our business is with sieges, and we shall find enough of them to fill more than the space allotted to us.

Julius CÆsar had made the conquest of a part of Gaul, and Labienus, his lieutenant, keeping along the banks of the Seine, determined to take possession of Lutetia, the capital of the Parisians. It was not then the vast city which astonishes by its extent, its population, its wealth, its luxury, and its pleasures. Confined to that which is now called L’Ile du Palais, or Le CitÉ, it then presented nothing to the eye but a collection of rustic cabins; but its situation, in the middle of a river; its natural fortifications, which made the approach to it difficult and dangerous, with the well-known valour of its inhabitants, who preferred death to slavery, rendered it quite worthy of the efforts of the Romans. At the report of their approach, all the neighbouring peoples assembled in arms, under the orders of a distinguished personage, named Camulogenes. Notwithstanding his extreme old age, he knew and practised all the duties of a great captain. He at first avoided a pitched battle, in order to give his troops, who were much more courageous than disciplined, time to be formed. He took every advantage of his knowledge of the ground to make himself master of favourable opportunities. There was at that time upon the left bank of the Seine, above Lutetia, a large marsh, whose waters flowed into the river, of which he made a rampart. Labienus endeavoured to force him, but was repulsed; he might, indeed, have lost all his legions there, had he not made a speedy retreat. Irritated at this check, the Roman general fell upon Melun, whose inhabitants were in the army of Camulogenes, sacked that hamlet, crossed the Seine there, and following the right bank of the river, presented himself again before Lutetia. The Gaulish general, in order to prevent his taking the city and fortifying himself in it, set fire to it, and destroyed the bridges. Protected by the marsh, he remained in his camp opposite to the Romans, from whom he was separated by the river. In the mean time the nations who peopled the frontiers of the Parisii took up arms, for the purpose of overwhelming the Romans at once. Labienus had brought fifty large boats with him from Melun. At nightfall he despatched them, with orders to descend the river as silently as possible till they came below Lutetia, nearly at the spot where now stands the village of Anteuil, and to wait there without making the least movement. His design was to cross the Seine at that place. In order to deceive the Gauls, he sent towards the confluence of the Seine and the Maine five cohorts, who had charge of all the baggage, and were attended by some barks, filled with sailors. These soldiers marched with as much noise as possible, and the rowers struck the water with all their strength, in order to attract the attention of the Gauls. This stratagem was successful, and the Parisians had no idea of the movement of Labienus, until at daybreak they perceived that general advancing towards them on their side of the river. They were immediately in motion, and rushed forward to meet the Romans. The battle was fought in the plain where now stand the villages of Issi and Vangirard. It was warm and obstinate. The Gauls fought with a courage worthy of greater success. Camulogenes set them the example; though bent beneath the weight of years, this hero appeared, in the midst of his warriors, to regain all the vigour of youth; he was ever found at the post of danger, and threw himself fearlessly into the thickest of the mÊlÉe. This first defender of Parisian liberty met with the death great men desire; he expired fighting for his country, amidst a heap of dead which his arm had immolated. The victory of the Romans was complete, and Labienus derived much glory from his achievement.

SECOND SIEGE, A.D. 885.

From that time Lutetia, or Paris, became a famous city. Rome brought thither its intelligence and its errors, its wisdom and its vices, its wealth and its luxury, its laws and its abuses. But the Parisians, formerly so simple and so brave, changed all at once into sages, lost with their rustic virtue that intense love of liberty which had animated them. During nearly nine centuries they were no longer known than by the different masters they submitted to, and by the consideration they enjoyed among the peoples of Gaul. They were the head of them. Paris was the centre of the Roman dominions in that part of the empire; the Roman governors resided there. Emperors even preferred Lutetia to the most brilliant cities; Julian the Apostate, who embellished it with monuments, never called it anything but his “dear Lutetia.” When Clovis had laid the foundation of the French monarchy, Paris became the capital of his states. Under the reign of this prince and his successors, its extent was so enlarged as to comprise all the space contained between the two arms of the Seine. The irruptions of the barbarians rendered the fortification of it necessary. No entrance could be had to it but by two bridges: each of these was defended by a strong tower, situated nearly where the great and little ChÂtelet have since been built. In 885 the importance of these precautions was recognised; a swarm of Normans, eager for booty and thirsting for blood, besieged Paris, which they had often before uselessly attacked. Their army consisted of forty thousand men, and more than seven hundred boats covered the Seine for two leagues; fire-ships, towers, cavaliers, all the machines invented for the destruction of cities, were employed by these barbarians. They gave six assaults. The Parisians received them with the greatest courage, were animated by the example of the Count Eudes, whose great qualities afterwards raised him to the throne of the Franks, and by the exhortations of Bishop Gauzlin. This prelate, with helm on head, a quiver at his back, and an axe at his girdle, fought in the breach, within sight of a cross he had planted upon the rampart. He met with death whilst immolating a host of enemies. Anscheric, who succeeded him upon the episcopal seat, inherited his courage and his love of his country. He continued to lead the besieged, ably seconded by Ebole, the nephew of Gauzlin. This intrepid abbot spread astonishment and terror wherever he directed his arms, nature having endowed him with prodigious strength. In the second assault he rushed to the breach, armed with a javelin which looked like a great spit, with which he pierced the Normans, crying out to his compatriots, “Take these to the kitchen, they are all ready spitted.” At length, after eighteen months of successless efforts, the barbarians made a last attempt; they came in crowds to the foot of the walls; they were not expected, and many had already gained the parapets, and were crying victory. At that moment a soldier of moderate height, but of extraordinary valour, named Gerbaut, followed only by five men as brave as himself, killed the first, hurled the others into the ditch, snatched up the ladders, and saved the city. Charles le Gros, who had made but little effort to succour his faithful subjects, treated with the Normans, and induced them to retire, upon promising to pay them seven hundred pounds’ weight of silver in the course of a few months. This cowardly composition, made by a king at the head of an army, excited the general disgust of the Franks. He allowed the Normans to pillage his finest provinces. He was deposed at the diet of Tibur, in 888, and died the same year in indigence, deserted by everybody.

THIRD SIEGE, A.D. 1411.

Paris became in after-ages the sanguinary theatre of civil wars, which, under the reign of weak princes, desolated the kingdom. These unhappy times commenced under the pusillanimous administration of Charles VI. The hatreds which divided the nobles broke out openly: France was divided into two factions, almost equally powerful,—that of the duke of Orleans, which was called the Armagnacs; and that of the duke of Burgundy, called the Burgundians. Almost all the Parisians were of the latter party. The first wore, as a distinctive mark, a white cross at right angles; the second, a red cross oblique, called the cross of St. Andrew. These two parties soon made cruel war upon each other. The Armagnacs marched towards Paris, the hopes of plundering that great city exciting the ardour and cupidity of the troops. Everything yielded to their first efforts: at their approach, most of the garrisons distributed in the neighbouring places sought safety in flight. St. Denis was the only city that defended itself for a few days. Jean de ChÂlons, prince of Orange, commanded in the place; the fear of its being carried by assault obliged him to capitulate; he marched out with his garrison, under a promise of not bearing arms for four years. The treachery of Colonel De Paysieux rendered the OrlÉanais masters of St. Cloud, and of the passage of the Seine above Paris. That city, entirely closed in on the north side, already experienced a scarcity of provisions; the troops spread about the environs daily perpetrated the most horrid cruelties. Houses of pleasure, villages, fields of corn, were all on fire; massacres and violences of every kind, the most horrible sacrileges, the most guilty excesses, were the sports of these pitiless destroyers. Among these brigands was Montagu, archbishop of Sens, who, instead of a mitre, wore a bassinet; for a dalmaique, a habergeon; for a chasuble, a steel gorget; and instead of a cross, carried an axe. Nevertheless, with the danger from without, the fury of the Parisians increased daily, excited above all by the fanaticism of the priests of the capital. All the pulpits resounded with declamations against the Armagnacs. The besiegers were excommunicated. The OrlÉanais, in reply to this anathema, struck the duke of Burgundy and his adherents with excommunication. The archbishop of Sens, the bishops of Paris, OrlÉans, and Chartres, with several doctors of this age of ignorance, had dictated this dreaded decree. It was thus they sported with religion to justify the horrors committed on both sides. Every festival, the curÉs of Paris interrupted the sacrifice of the mass, to renew the thunders launched against the Armagnacs; they even made a difficulty of administering baptism to the children of those they believed favourable to that party. People did not dare to appear in the streets without the red scarf and the cross of St. Andrew. Priests wore them at the altar; the church pictures were decked with them; not even children newly born were exempt from displaying this distinctive mark of the dominant faction. They carried the madness so far as to make the sign of the cross according to the form of the crucifixion of St. Andrew. The people murmured at being shut up within the walls, whilst the enemy triumphed at their gates; seditious cries announced that they wanted to fight; and it became necessary to obey this blinded populace. The count de St. Paul and the prevÔt Des Essarts, at the head of a detachment of Parisians, badly armed and without order, made a sortie by the gate of St. Denis; they were beaten, although six times more numerous than their adversaries, and precipitately re-entered the city by the gate St. HonorÉ, after having lost four hundred of their men. This humiliating disgrace completed the despair of the vanquished: in a transport of rage, they made a second sortie from the other side of the city. Goi, one of the officers of militia, led them to the castle of Wicestre (now BicÊtre), a pleasure-house, which the duke de Berry prided himself with having ornamented with all the embellishments the art of that age could furnish. As no troops appeared to stop these contemptible warriors, they gave free way to the madness which governed them: the gates of this palace were broken open; they plundered the valuable furniture; they even took away the glass windows, which were then an object of luxury reserved for the houses of the great. This brutal expedition was crowned by the firing of the building. Among the inestimable loss caused by the conflagration, persons of taste particularly regretted a chronological series of the portraits of the kings of France of the third race, most of them original.

Whilst both parties were giving themselves up to these horrible excesses, the duke of Burgundy formed the idea of delivering the capital. This prince, at the head of his own troops, and a few companies of English headed by the earl of Arundel, crossed the Seine at the bridge of Melun, where three thousand Parisians awaited him, and made his entrÉe into Paris, surrounded by fifteen thousand horsemen. The streets, filled with an innumerable multitude, resounded with acclamations; all were eager to load him with honours and to evince their gratitude. Amidst their transports of joy, however, the Parisians beheld with much pain squadrons of English mixed with the French troops. Secretly indignant at seeing the conservation of the capital, the security of the king, and the safety of the state, committed to the suspicious protection of a rival nation, not one of them would give lodging to these foreigners, who were obliged to pass the night upon their horses. The next day they were distributed with much trouble among the bourgeois, and principally among those whose attachment was doubtful. The appearance of everything was changed by the arrival of the Burgundian prince. The numbers of the OrlÉanais diminished daily; in the frequent sorties that were made, they hardly sufficed to guard their posts, till at length St. Cloud, the most important of them, was carried by assault. In this affair they lost nine hundred of their best soldiers, whilst only twenty of the Burgundians were killed. The duke of OrlÉans lost all hopes of entering Paris: his army was melting away; winter was coming on; and he had nothing left but a disgraceful retreat. He called a council of war, in which the necessity for raising the blockade was acknowledged by all. On the very evening of the day of the taking of St. Cloud, the OrlÉanais army loaded themselves with all the booty they could carry away, they pillaged the treasures of the queen, deposited for safety in the abbey of St. Denis, which they had till that time respected, crossed the Seine, and marched without halting to Etampes. Information of this nocturnal retreat was not conveyed to Paris till it was too late to pursue them.

FOURTH SIEGE, A.D. 1429.

Paris, which since the invasion of the English had been a prey to their tyranny, did not dare to declare in favour of Charles VII., who had just been crowned at Rheims. The king attempted to enter the capital, followed by his whole army. All the small neighbouring places vied with each other in their eagerness to receive him. He took possession of St. Denis, and occupied the posts of La Chapelle, Aubervilliers, and Montmartre. His generals, confiding in the intelligence they maintained with some in the city, resolved to attempt an assault on Sunday, 8th of September, 1429. They approached the gate of St. Denis with the design of persuading the English that they meant to attack the capital at that point; at the same time, a considerable detachment presented itself before an intrenchment which the enemy had raised before the rampart of the hog-market, upon which is built the quarter now called La Butte-Saint-Roch. The boulevard was carried at once. Whilst the English, led by the bishop of ThÉrouanne, L’Ile-Adam, Crequi, and Bonneval, were hastening thither, numerous voices shouted out in various quarters of Paris, for the purpose of terrifying the people,—“All is lost! all is lost! The royalists are masters of the city! Let every one look to himself!” This ruse produced the effect the English had expected: the people, in a state of consternation, precipitately sought refuge in their houses, and delivered the English from the suspicions they had conceived. In the mean time the royalists, finding the people made no movement in their favour, judged it prudent to retreat. Joan of Arc, who had joined the party in order to animate the French by her presence, accustomed by her successes never to recede, would not consent to give up the affair; she persisted in wishing to fill up the ditch filled with water, of which she did not at all know the depth. She was crying aloud for fascines to be brought to her, when she was wounded by an arrow from a cross-bow, in the thigh. Obliged by the pain of the wound and the quantity of blood she lost to recline behind the shelter of a little eminence, she remained there till evening, when the duke of AlenÇon was compelled to force her to return to St. Denis. Charles, conceiving the capture of Paris impossible, thought it best to retreat: his army decamped, and took the road to Lagni-sur-Marne, which had declared for him.

FIFTH SIEGE, A.D. 1465.

The duke de Berry, brother of Louis XI., at the age of sixteen escaped from the court, and joined the duke of Brittany, for the purpose of exciting a revolution which might prove favourable to him. The princes of the blood and the nobles, who waited for some outbreak to make war against the king, immediately issued manifestoes, in which they invited the noblesse, and all good citizens, “to take up arms, to obtain relief for the poor distressed people.” This specious pretext procured for this union of rebels the name of “The League for the Public Good.” The princes soon found themselves at the head of a pretty considerable army; and in order to commence by something brilliant, capable of giving credit to the revolt, after having gained several small places, they resolved to make a general assault upon the capital. But Paris was too well fortified to make the success of such an enterprise at all probable. The count de Charolais, the head of the leagued troops, drew up his soldiers in order of battle within sight of the ramparts. He believed this display would disconcert the zeal and fidelity of the inhabitants; but nothing could shake them. The marshal De Rohan made a sortie, and did not return until he had skirmished long and successfully. Some days after, the enemy attacked the faubourg Saint Lazare, the barriers of which were upon the point of being forced, when the citizen-militia coming up, courageously repulsed the rebels, who, harassed at the same time by the artillery from the ramparts, retired in disorder.

The battle of MontlhÉry suspended for a time the project of the princes. But scarcely was that celebrated contest decided, than the count de Charolais made fresh attempts upon the capital. Our readers will the better understand the hardihood and persistency of the count’s attacks, when reminded that he was the son of the duke of Burgundy, and was afterwards known as “Charles the Bold.” As the royalists were masters of St. Cloud and Charenton, the leader of the enemy’s troops caused bridges of boats and casks tied together to be hastily constructed, upon which his army crossed the Seine at various times. He thus inclosed within a half-circle all the northern part of the environs of Paris, extending from St. Cloud to Charenton, of which he took possession without much trouble. Louis XI. and his troops were encamped on the southern side. The loss of Charenton might have intercepted the supply of provisions to the capital, but such prudent measures had been taken, that during the whole of the siege no deficiency in food was felt. The princes at first had recourse to negotiations, but they proved useless; and both sides renewed hostilities, which were warm and frequent. Sorties were made every day, and these combats generally terminated in favour of the king’s troops. The honour of this was principally due to the fair sex of the capital: “For the warriors,” says Philip de Commines, “beheld the ladies at all times; giving them a desire to show their prowess in their sight.” The enemy had placed their advanced posts at Bercy, which was then called “La Grange-aux-Merciers.” They were obliged to abandon them, and retire to Conflans, the head-quarters of the count de Charolais. The royal army occupied the opposite bank of the Seine. Several batteries, which defended the access to it, were erected there. The leagued princes undertook to throw a bridge of boats across the river, opposite the Port-À-l’Anglais. The king immediately constructed a bulwark, from which artillery, incessantly hurling its mortal thunders, prevented them from advancing. At the same time, a Norman archer, whose name history ought to have preserved, threw himself into the Seine, and contrived to reach the head of the bridge, of which he cut the cables that fastened it to the shore, and abandoned it to the current. This series of ill-fortune induced the League general to resume the interrupted negotiations, and at length, after numerous contentions and delays, a treaty of peace was concluded at Conflans, which delivered Paris from its besiegers. The capital signified its joy by brilliant festivals. The king, to reward its fidelity, confirmed all its privileges: he honoured with his presence a banquet at the HÔtel de Ville, at which many citizens and their wives were admitted to the table of the monarch, with the princes and nobles.

SIXTH SIEGE, A.D. 1589—1594.

The flame of civil wars, of which Francis II. had beheld the first sparks, had set all France in a blaze during the minority of Charles IX. Religion was the motive of these wars among the people, and the pretext among the great. The queen-mother, Catherine de Medici, who joined to the most boundless ambition the artful policy of her country, had more than once hazarded the safety of the kingdom to preserve her authority; arming the Catholics against the Protestants, and the Guises against the Bourbons, that they might destroy each other. In this age of troubles, the great, who had become too powerful, were factious and formidable; and the French, animated by that party fury which a false zeal inspires, were, for the most part, fanatics and barbarians. Passions or interests armed every hand: one-half of the nation made war against the other half. The greatest cities were taken, retaken, and sacked, in turn. Prisoners of war were put to death in a manner till that time unheard of. The churches were reduced to ashes by the Reformers, the temples by the Catholics. Poisonings and assassinations were looked upon as only the legitimate vengeance of clever enemies. The crowning horror of all these excesses was the massacre of St. Bartholomew. On that ever-execrable day, a young king of twenty-three commanded, in cool blood, the death of more than a million of his subjects, and himself set the example of murder. Charles IX. did not long survive this abuse of sovereign power. Henry III. quitted furtively the throne of Poland, to return to his country and plunge it once more into troubles. Of the two brothers, notwithstanding what we have said of Charles IX., Henry III. was the worse: there is no more detestable character in history than this prince, who rather resembles a Heliogabalus or a Commodus, than a king of chivalric France: in the great massacre he had been, if possible, more active than his brother.

He found in his states two dominant parties; that of the Reformers, reviving from its ashes, more violent than ever, and having at its head Henry the Great, then king of Navarre; and that of the League, a powerful faction, formed by the princes of the house of Guise, encouraged by the popes, fomented by Philip II. of Spain, whose dangerous policy procured him the name of the Demon of the South, increasing every day by the artifices of the monks, under the veil of zeal for the Catholic religion, but whose principal aim was rebellion. Its leader was the duke of Guise, surnamed le BalafrÉ, from a scar on his cheek, a prince of a brilliant reputation, and who, having more shining qualities than good ones, seemed, in this season of confusion, born to change the destinies of France. Henry III., who perhaps might have crushed both these parties by a judicious exercise of the regal power, absolutely strengthened them by his own weakness. He thought to exhibit a great feat of policy by declaring himself the head of the League; whereas he only proved himself the slave of it. He was forced to make war for the interests of the duke de Guise, whose object was to dethrone him, against the king of Navarre, his brother-in-law and presumptive heir, who only wished to re-establish him in all the rights of his rank. Some successes against the Reformers carried the credit of the too-powerful BalafrÉ to its height. This prince, inflated with his own glory, and strong in the weakness of the king, came to Paris in opposition to the royal command. Then arrived the celebrated day of the barricades, in which the people defeated the guards of Henry, and obliged him himself to fly from his capital. Guise did still more; he forced the king to hold the States-General of the kingdom at Blois, and took his measures so well, that he was near sharing the royal authority, with the consent of the representatives of the nation, and with an appearance of the most respectable formalities. Roused by a danger so pressing, Henry III. caused this redoutable enemy, and the cardinal de Lorraine, his brother, still more violent and ambitious than the duke, to be assassinated at the castle of Blois. That which happened to the Protestant party after the St. Bartholomew, now happened to the League; the death of the leaders reanimated the faction. On all parts the Leaguers threw off the mask. Paris closed its gates: nothing was thought or talked of but vengeance. Henry III. was considered as the assassin of the defenders of religion, as an odious, insupportable tyrant, and not as a king who had punished too audacious subjects. The king, pressed on all sides, was at length obliged to seek a reconciliation with Henry of Navarre; in the course of 1589 these two princes encamped in conjunction before Paris.

We cannot describe without a groan the excesses to which the capital gave itself up on learning the death of the duke de Guise: the shops closed, the people in crowds in the streets, arms in hand, seeking everywhere the duke d’Aumale, to place him at the head of the League, knocking down the king’s arms wherever met with, and imprisoning every one suspected of fidelity to him. A kind of vertigo or spirit of fury took possession of all the citizens without exception; they willingly allowed themselves to be dragged into the most detestable rebellion. The churches were hung with mourning, and the depositaries of the Word of God proclaimed aloud the martyrdom of the BalafrÉ and his brother. “Those unworthy ministers,” says an historian of the time, “only mounted the pulpit to put forth, instead of the Scriptures, a series of bitter insults against the sovereign, and by the vomitings of an iliad of maledictions, they increased the fury of revolt. The people never came out from their infamous sermons without their brain being on fire, their feet prepared for running, and their hands for fighting, like so many wild beasts, against all who did not wear the badge of the League. The colporteurs of the palace cried nothing but an execration of the life of Henry III., the self-called king. They said that France was sick, and that she could never be cured without giving her a draught of French blood.”

The leaders of the sedition sought, however, to colour the public excesses with some specious pretexts. They caused a request to be presented to the faculty of Theology at Paris, in which it was said “that the princes of the house of Lorraine had always deserved well of the Catholic church during their lives, and that, being protectors of the faith, the king had put them to death; that the monarch must be declared to have forfeited his crown, and his subjects be released from their fidelity; that that prince was a hypocrite, a favourer of heresy, a persecutor of the Church, having bathed his hands in the blood of a cardinal, without respect to his person or his sacred character.” The Sorbonne, on the 7th of January, issued a decree, which allowed and even ordered all that this request stated. Lefebvre the dean, and several other doctors, refused to sign this abominable sentence; but the majority prevailed, and gave it all the authority that was desired. The principal Leaguers, armed with this fatal document, tried to lay the foundations of an authority, which the same caprice which gave it to them might deprive them of an instant after. The heads of the sixteen quarters of Paris, all scoundrels, and for the most part the issue of low families, were revered like so many sovereigns. These monsters governed Paris; they were its oracles, and put in motion the arms of all the rebels. They also determined to have the Parliament. Bussy le Clere, governor of the Bastille, who had been a master-at-arms, took upon himself the task of ordering that august company to enregister the decree of the Sorbonne. On the 16th of January he entered the assembly of French senators with fifty of his satellites, and, pistol in hand, presented to them a request, or rather an order, no longer to recognise the royal house. The refusal being unanimous, he selected the most conspicuous and led them away at once to the Bastille, where the barbarous manner in which he treated them procured him the sobriquet of “Grand Penitentiary of the Parliament.”

Very shortly, the duke de Mayenne, brother and heir to the power of the duke de Guise, arrived in Paris with a reinforcement of troops. This prince, intrepid and intelligent, but indolent, was still employed in placing the capital in a state of defence, when the two kings of France and Navarre appeared at its gates with an army of forty thousand men. Henry III. took possession of the bridge of St. Cloud, and formed the blockade of the faubourg St. HonorÉ and the whole quarter of the Louvre as far as the river; the king of Navarre, on the other side, besieged the faubourg St. Marceau to that of St. Germain. The consternation and the fury of the Parisians were extreme when they found themselves surrounded in this manner by the royal troops. The priests recommenced their seditious declamations; to strike the vulgar, they caused little figures of wax to be made, representing the two monarchs, which they placed upon the altar during mass, and pricked them with knives. All priests carried arms, and mounted guard with the other citizens. But this aimless and blind fury could not have protected the capital from the just anger of the king, had it not been prevented by the most infamous of crimes. Jacques Clement, a priest and Dominican, devoted himself, as he said, to the task of killing the tyrant. He communicated his project to the doctors, the Jesuits, the leaders of the League, and the principals of the Sixteen; all encouraged him, all promised him the greatest dignities, if he survived this generous action; and if he became a martyr to it, a place in Heaven, above the apostles. On the 31st of July he went to St. Cloud, where the king’s quarters were. He was arrested by the sieur de Coublan, and conducted to the procureur-gÉnÉral De la Guesle. This magistrate introduced him the next day into the king’s apartment. With a simple and respectful air he presented the king an intercepted letter to the president De Harley. The monarch having read it, and being separated from the Dominican by La Guesle, asked him if he had nothing else to say to him. “I have many important things to reveal to the king,” replied Clement, “but I can only do it in a whisper to his own ear.” “Speak out!” cried the procureur-gÉnÉral two or three times, as he began to mistrust the good father. “Speak aloud, and before me; there is no one here in whom the king has not confidence.” Henry then told him to approach. The villain obeyed, and instead of communicating secrets, plunged a knife, expressly forged for the purpose, into his bowels, and left it sticking in the wound. The astonished king immediately drew out the knife, and springing upon the assassin, stabbed him in the forehead. La Guesle put the finishing stroke with his sword. His body was thrown out at the window, torn in pieces, burnt, and his ashes cast into the Seine.

In proportion as this parricide spread consternation in the army, so did it give cause of triumph to the Parisians. A relation of the martyrdom of Brother Jacques Clement was printed; he was canonized, and lauded at Rome from the very pulpit in which the funeral oration of Henry III. ought to have been pronounced. The object was by such means to incite fresh assassinations. The king died of his wound on the 2nd of August, at two o’clock in the morning; and Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, whom he had proclaimed his successor as he was dying, was acknowledged by a part of the army, and by all who deserved the name of Frenchmen. The new monarch was obliged to interrupt the attacks upon Paris to disperse the different armies of the League; and it was not till after he had rendered himself master of the places which served as magazines to the capital, that he formed the blockade of it with less than twenty thousand men. He commenced by attacking the faubourgs: his army, divided into ten bodies, attacked ten different quarters of Paris. In order to witness the operations, he placed himself in the abbey of Montmartre, and at midnight gave the signal. The artillery was immediately heard to roar on both sides. “There is nobody,” says Sully, “who would not have supposed that that immense city was about to perish by fire, or by an infinite number of mines ignited in its entrails; there perhaps never was a spectacle more capable of inspiring horror. Dense masses of smoke, through which pierced at intervals sparks or long trains of flame, shrouded all the surface of that sort of world which, by the vicissitudes of light and darkness, appeared either plunged in black night or covered with a sea of fire. The roar of the artillery, the clash of arms, the cries of combatants, added everything to this scene that can be imagined that is terrifying; and the natural horror of night redoubled it still more. This lasted two whole hours, and ended by the reduction of all the faubourgs, even of that of St. Antoine, though, from its extent, it was obliged to be attacked from a great distance.”

The king’s success did not relax the mad courage and the blind fury of the Parisians; the leaders set the same springs to work that had been employed the preceding year: sacrilegious sermons, the confirmation of the Sorbonne, and the excommunication of the king.

As soon as Henry IV. had closed all the issues from the city, provisions began to fail, and more than two hundred thousand persons of all conditions were reduced to the most awful extremity, but without losing any of that factious ardour which had seized all minds. To animate the people still further, a kind of regiment of ecclesiastics was formed, to the number of thirteen hundred; they appeared on the bridge of Notre Dame in battle-array, and made a general review, which was called the Procession of the League. The leaders carried in one hand a crucifix, and in the other a halbert, the rest having all sorts of arms.

The Pope’s legate, by his presence, approved of a proceeding at once so extraordinary and so laughable; but one of these new soldiers, who was no doubt ignorant that his arquebuss was loaded with ball, wishing to salute the legate in his carriage, fired into it, and killed his almoner. The legate, in consequence of this accident, made as speedy a retreat as possible; but the people exclaimed that it was a great blessing for the almoner to be killed in such a holy cause. Such was the frightful persuasion of this populace, whom impunity had rendered formidable. They believed themselves invincible under the orders of the duke de Nemours, a skilful, courageous, and prudent general, whom the duke de Mayenne, his brother, had left in Paris during his absence; they were backed by three or four thousand good troops, and by several nobles of high courage. They every day skirmished against the royal army, or fought small battles; the Chevalier d’Aumale, of the blood of Lorraine, being always at the head of their sorties, and imparting his impetuous valour to his followers. Henry IV. satisfied himself with repulsing these attacks, convinced that famine would soon open the gates of the capital to him.

In fact, this terrible scourge began to make rapid progress; there was neither wheat, barley, nor oats left; more than fifty thousand persons had already died of want; the sad remains of this numerous population, nobles, plebeians, rich or poor, languidly crawled through the streets to seek for and devour the grass and weeds that grew in them. Mules, horses, cats, dogs, all the domestic animals,—even beasts that are reckoned unclean,—served for food. The leather of shoes was sold for its weight in gold; it was boiled and devoured in secret, for fear some wretch, stronger and more hungry, should tear it from the mouth of the purchaser. Mothers were seen feeding upon the flesh of their children, and miserable beings flew like vultures upon a newly-dead body that had fallen in the streets. The Spanish ambassador to the League advised that bread should be made of the ground bones of the dead, and his plan was eagerly adopted; but this shocking aliment cost the lives of most of those who partook of it. In this general desolation, the priests and monks enjoyed the comforts of abundance; on visiting their abodes, there was generally enough for the present discovered, and, in many instances, a good provision for the future. At length the leaders of the League, to appease the people, who now never ceased crying, “Bread or peace!” charged the bishop of Paris and the archbishop of Lyons with proposals to the king. “I am no dissembler,” said the monarch, “I speak plainly and without deceit what I think. I should be wrong if I told you I did not wish for a general peace; I do wish for it, I ardently desire it, that I may have the power of enlarging and settling the limits of my kingdom. For a battle I would give a finger, for a general peace I would give two. I love my city of Paris; it is my eldest daughter; I am jealous of her. I am anxious to confer upon her more good, more kindness, more pity than she could ask of me; but I desire that she should owe them to me and to my clemency, and not to the duke de Mayenne or the king of Spain. When you ask me to defer the capitulation and surrender of Paris till a universal peace, which cannot take place till after many journeys, backwards and forwards, you ask for a thing highly prejudicial to my city of Paris, which cannot wait so long. So many persons have already died of hunger, that if a further delay of ten or twelve days took place, vast numbers must die, which would be a great pity (une Éstrange pitiÉ). I am the father of my people, and I am like the mother of old before Solomon, I would almost prefer having no Paris at all to having it ruined and dissipated by the death of so many Parisians. You, Monsieur le Cardinal, ought to have pity on them; they are your flock. I am not a remarkably good theologian; but I know enough of divinity to be able to tell you that God is not pleased that you should treat thus the poor people he has consigned to you. How can you hope to convert me to your religion, if you set so little store by the safety and lives of your flock? It is giving me but a poor proof of your holiness; I am but little edified by it.”

Of all the monarchs that ever lived, we like to hear Henry IV. of France speak. His words come forth with that unstudied frankness which proves that they flow from a manly heart and a right mind. He had his faults—what human creature has not? but neither the annals of France nor England describe a king with whom we would rather have sat in council; have followed his white panache in the battle-field; have crossed the hand of friendship, or chatted in a lady’s bower, than with the good, valiant, and witty BÉarnais. We verily think that delightful word of the French language, bonhomie, was coined to express the character of Henry IV.

“Such,” says the historian, “were the words and sentiments of this generous prince; the evils which oppressed his people penetrated his compassionate and tender heart. He could not endure the idea,” says Sully, “of seeing that city, of which Providence had destined him the empire, become one vast cemetery; he held out his hands to all he could secretly assist, and shut his eyes upon the supplies of provisions which his officers and soldiers frequently stole in, whether out of compassion for relations or friends, or for the sake of the heavy prices they made the citizens pay for them.”

He could have carried Paris by the sword; and his soldiers, the Huguenots in particular, demanded that favour of him with loud cries; but he resisted all their entreaties. The duke de Nemours having turned out a vast number of useless mouths, the council advised the king to refuse them a passage. Henry, deeply affected by their melancholy fate, gave orders to let them go where they liked.

“I am not astonished,” said he, “that the chiefs of the League, or the Spaniards, should have so little compassion on these poor people, they are but their tyrants; but as for me, I am their father and their king, and I cannot behold them without being moved to my inward heart.” But he was deceived, if he thought these kindnesses would make any impression upon the Parisians. They availed themselves of his benevolence, without ceasing to regard him as the author of all the public calamities; and when, a short time after, the prince of Parma and the duke de Mayenne, at the head of an army, obliged him to pause in his enterprise, they insulted him who had only raised the siege because he was too sensible to the misfortunes of the besieged.

Paris persisted in its revolt to the month of March, 1594; when the duke de Brissac, who had joined the League because Henry III. had told him that he was good for nothing, either by land or sea, negotiated with Henry IV. and opened the gates of Paris to him, for the reward of the baton of a marshal of France. Henry IV. made his entrÉe, which only cost the lives of a small body of lansquenets, and of two or three citizens, who endeavoured to induce the people to take up arms against a king who was willing to treat them as a father.

Of the policy or propriety of Henry’s changing his religion, to insure the peaceful possession of his throne, it is not our province to speak.

When Brissac had thrown open the gates, Henry’s troops marched in in silence, keeping close and careful order, and took possession of the squares, public places, and great thoroughfares. After the prÉvÔt des marchands and De Brissac had presented the keys to him, he advanced at the head of a large troop of the nobility, with lances lowered: his march was a triumph, and, from that day, he considered himself among the Parisians, as in the midst of his children. “Let them alone!” cried he, to those who wished to drive back the crowd; “let them alone! they want to see a king.” His clemency extended to all classes, even to his worst enemies, the fanatical preachers. The Spanish garrison quitted Paris the day of his entrÉe, with the honours of war; Philip’s ministers departing with them. The king placed himself at a window to see them pass, and when they were at a distance, he laughingly cried to them: “Make my compliments to your master, gentlemen, but don’t come back any more.” He received the Bastille by capitulation, welcomed the repentant and submissive Sorbonne, and joined to the parliament of Paris the magistrates of the parliament he had established at ChÂlons and Tours.

The ridiculous yet bloody war of the Fronde, though it maddened and for a time half-starved the Parisians, and although its two parties were headed by a CondÉ and a Turenne, does not furnish us with a regular siege.

SEVENTH SIEGE, A.D. 1814.

When the inordinate ambition of Buonaparte, and, still more, his misfortunes in Russia, had banded all Europe against him, Paris may be said to have again experienced a short siege.

When Napoleon opened the campaign on the 25th of January, he confided the command of the capital to his brother Joseph. His enemies were numerous and powerful. The English advanced on the south; a hundred and fifty thousand men, under Schwartzenberg, poured into France by way of Switzerland; a large army of Prussians, commanded by Blucher, arrived from Frankfort; and a hundred thousand Swedes and Germans penetrated into Belgium, under Bernadotte. Here was work cut out for even the genius of a Hannibal; and Buonaparte seemed to be duly roused by the perils which surrounded him. He redoubled his activity and energy, and never had his strategic calculations been more skilful. He was near destroying the two most formidable armies of his enemies by isolating them, and attacking them by turns. But Buonaparte’s successes became fatal to him, by inspiring him with too much confidence: he would not listen to the proposals of the allies for France to return within her ancient limits, and revoked the powers he had given to the duke of Vicenza to conclude a peace at ChÂtillon. Wherever he did not command in person, the allies triumphed: the English entered Bordeaux, which declared for the Bourbons; the Austrians occupied Lyons; and the united armies marched towards Paris. Napoleon then subscribed to the demands of the Congress; but it was too late: the conferences were broken up. Joseph received orders to defend Paris to the last extremity; the emperor depended upon him, and conceived the almost wildly brave project of cutting off the retreat of the allies, by marching rapidly behind them to St. Dizier. By this march he lost precious time; but by it, if he had been seconded, Napoleon might have saved his crown. The two grand armies of the allies had effected their junction, and drew near to the capital. To secure the success of the emperor’s manoeuvres, it ought to have been defended till his arrival; but timid councillors surrounded the regent, Maria Louisa, and persuaded her to retire to the Loire. In vain Talleyrand and Montalivet expressed a courageous opinion, and represented to the empress that the safety of France was in Paris: fear alone was listened to; Maria Louisa quitted the capital, and transported the regency to Blois. In the mean time Napoleon approached Paris by forced marches; but it was no longer time: Marshals Marmont and Mortier, on the 30th of March, fought a desperate battle under the walls of the city with forces very inferior to the allies. Ignorant of the emperor’s proximity, Joseph gave orders for a capitulation; he abandoned his post, and set out for OrlÉans. On the 31st of March, the allies entered Paris. Napoleon was hastening to the defence of his capital, when, on the 1st of April, he received this terrible news; he immediately fell back upon Fontainebleau, where his army took up a position. There he learnt that the senate, till that time guilty of so much servility and adulation towards him, had proclaimed him a tyrant, and that, guided by Talleyrand, it had declared Napoleon deposed from the throne, the hereditary right of his family abolished, and the French people and the army liberated from their oath of fidelity to him.

The capitulation of 1814, and the celebrated day of the Barricades, July, 1830, do not come under the head of sieges.