KING JOHN’S body was sent over to France from London. As the cortÈge escorting the coffin drew near to Paris Charles and his brothers went out on foot to meet it, going beyond Saint Denis and then convoying it to the abbey where it was duly buried. The metropolitan of Paris, the archbishop of Sens, sang mass, and after the service the princes with their following of lords and prelates returned to the city.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two months before the king’s death he lost his strong-armed Constable, Du Guesclin, at the siege of ChÂteauneuf-Randon. Strangely enough for a man who had spent his life in arms the great fighter did not die sword in hand, but of illness and in bed. The governor of the town, who had promised to yield to the Constable and to him alone, refused to give up his keys to the second in command and going out from the citadel laid them on the bier of the great captain. Du Guesclin’s body was carried to Paris where it lay in the monastery of the Cordeliers on the left bank before it was taken to Saint Denis where his tomb was arranged at the foot of the tomb which Charles had had prepared for himself. The ceremonies were as elaborate as those for a member of the royal family, in such esteem did the king hold the departed soldier.

It was only a few weeks later that Charles himself fell ill and realized that his end was not far off. He had known much sickness in his life—his was one of those triumphs of mind over unwilling matter. At one time before his accession his unamiable brother-in-law, Charles the Bad, had, it is asserted, caused him to be poisoned. So strong was the poison that his hair and nails fell from his body. His good friend the Emperor of Germany had sent him a skillful physician who had relieved his system by opening a small sore in his arm. If ever it proved impossible to keep this sore open, he told his royal patient, he must prepare for death, though he would have about a fortnight in which to set his house in order. Twenty-two years later, in September, 1380, the issue began to dry, and at the end of the month, on the eve of Michaelmas, the King died in his birthplace, the chÂteau of Vincennes. His body with face uncovered was borne through the mourning crowds of Paris to the abbey of Saint Denis where it was buried in the tomb already prepared.

When Charles as a young man had made a spirited speech to the Parisians telling them that he meant to live and die in Paris he made a statement that he lived up to. Economical even to penuriousness elsewhere, he built lavishly in Paris. His improvement of the Louvre has been mentioned. In the northeast corner of the quadrangle were a garden, tennis court and menagerie. A library of nearly a thousand volumes was housed in three stories of one of the towers. Charles was a great student, read the entire Bible through every year, and had a corps of translators, transcribers, illuminators and binders always at work. His collection was the nucleus of the present National Library although the Duke of Bedford carried off a goodly number of books to England in the later part of the Hundred Years’ War. The royal apartments in the Louvre, elaborately carved and decorated, were large and well arranged. The rooms of the queen, Jeanne de Bourbon, were on the south side overlooking the river, and the king’s were on the north. Each of the children had a separate suite and that of the dauphin rivaled in size and elegance those of his father and mother. Each set of rooms had its own chapel.

The palace on the CitÉ was full of unpleasant memories of the days of the regency—notably the murder of the marshals—and Charles no doubt was glad when the overcrowding caused by the business of the courts allowed him to break away from the tradition of royal residence under the ancient roof. With all its changes the Louvre still was a rather grim dwelling, and Charles chose a more open location at the extreme east of the city for his new HÔtel Saint Paul. He bought existing houses, some of which he demolished, and land and laid out a large establishment of which the present names of streets in the vicinity suggest varied uses, though none of the original buildings are left. The streets of the Garden, of the Cherry Orchard, of the Fair Trellis, of the Lions tell their own stories, while the rue Charles V, a tiny thoroughfare, is the only street memorial in all Paris which bears the name of this great monarch.

The HÔtel des Tournelles, so called from its many towers, was built by Charles just north of the palace of Saint Paul.

Certainly Paris thrived under Charles. The population increased to a hundred and fifty thousand, many people coming in to the town during the troublous times with Navarre and the English to secure the protection of its wall. Charles carried on Marcel’s plans of fortification. The chief point was the Bastille—at first merely two heavy towers protecting one of the city gates, but, by the time of Charles’s death, strengthened by the addition of six others so that it became a formidable fortress and dungeon. Its walls were fifteen feet thick and over sixty feet high. A deep ditch surrounded it. Its destruction by the mob on July 14, 1789, was one of the opening events of the Revolution, and so profoundly did its grim walls symbolize oppression that the anniversary of its destruction is the French national holiday. Where the huge building stood is now an open square adorned by a shaft called the “July Column” raised in honor of the heroes of the Revolution of July, 1830.

Of examples of domestic architecture of this time there is still in existence part of the HÔtel de Clisson. It is now the entrance of the Archives, and, like the HÔtel de Sens, shows the lingering style of the feudal chÂteau.

Charles was ably seconded in his civic improvements by Hugh Aubriot, the provost of Paris, who established a mallet-armed militia devoted to the king’s interests. The provost of Paris represented the king, and Charles added to his responsibilities many of those formerly attaching to the provostship of the Merchants before the king had experienced their extent in the hands of Marcel. Aubriot laid the corner stone of the enlarged Bastille. He never was on good terms with the clergy, unlike Charles, whose studiousness and piety endeared him to the ecclesiastics. On the very day of Charles’s funeral, even while the cortÈge was making its way to Saint Denis, the provost quarreled with the rector of the University, was ordered before the bishop of Paris to answer for his misdeed, and was condemned to life imprisonment. How he escaped is a later story.

As provost of Paris Aubriot lived in the Grand ChÂtelet on the right bank. This fortress, afterwards a prison, is now represented only by a square of the name. In the course of his improvements Charles strengthened its mate, the Petit ChÂtelet, on the left bank. He also installed the first large clock in Paris, that on the square tower of the Conciergerie.

As a symbol of the royal power the king ordered that there be added to the seal of the city of Paris, which bore the ship of the ancient guild of Nautae, a field sown with the fleur-de-lis.