WITH the ending of Saint Louis’ life (in 1270) such stability and beauty as he had achieved for his kingdom seemed to pass away. The fifteen years’ reign of his son, Philip III, was lacking in eventfulness. He was with his father on the Crusade that cost Louis his life, and he came back to Paris, the “king of the five coffins,” bringing with him for burial at Saint Denis not only his father’s body but that of his uncle, his brother-in-law, his wife, and his son. Louis’ body lay in state in Notre Dame.

Philip inherited his father’s gentleness of spirit, but none of his intelligence or administrative ability. His physical courage won for him the nickname of “the Bold,” but it was through a train of circumstances with which he seems to have had little to do and not through war that the throne became enriched by the acquisition of some valuable territories in the south.

Probably, also, he did not realize that when he raised to the nobility a certain silversmith whose work he admired he struck a blow at the hereditary pride of the lords, and showed a new power which threatened the integrity of their class. Naturally, too, it encouraged the democracy.

A comparatively trivial happening of this reign shows the increasing boldness of the democratic spirit. The king took as his favorite a man who had been his father’s barber, and who probably possessed the traditional conversational charm attaching to his occupation. When Philip made him wealthy with lands, houses and gold the nobles of the court could not restrain their jealousy, and accusations charging him with the medieval equivalent of graft and even with baser crimes were soon so persistent and apparently so well-proven that even his royal master either was convinced or thought it wise to seem to believe. At any rate the man was hanged in company with Paris thieves of the meaner sort. To the commonalty of Paris who were not in a position to hear the whispers and accusations of the court this seemed an unmerited punishment, and they did not hesitate to express vivid opinions concerning the victim of what they supposed to be aristocratic greed.

When an aristocrat engaged in petty graft his reproof was not so swiftly administered. Enguerrand de Marigny, under whose direction the palace was enlarged by Philip the Bold’s son, Philip the Fair, was accused of charging rental for the booths along the GalÉrie des Merciers which connected the Great Hall with the Sainte Chapelle and whose stalls were supposed to be given rent free to tradespeople whose goods might be of interest to the folk who had daily tasks at the palace. Nothing came of the accusation, however, unless it may be thought to have been punished in common with other financial misdeeds of which Marigny was accused by Philip the Fair’s successor, Quarrelsome Louis—le Hutin—, and for which he was hanged on the Montfaucon gallows which he had built when he was Philip’s “Coadjutor and Inspector.”

Guilty or not, de Marigny was set a poor example by his master, for Philip the Fair (1285-1314) was so consumed by avarice that he spared neither friends, vassals, burgesses nor ecclesiastics if by taxing them or dragging them into warfare he might add to his treasures. His greed led him into the pettiness of debasing the coinage, and inspired him to defy the pope himself, though he claimed sovereignty over all the monarchs of Europe. He was a masterful ruler—Philip—but one who worked for his own interests and not for those of his people.

Probably, however, his subjects were entirely in sympathy with Philip’s evident desire upon his accession to know where he stood with England. If he wanted to bring about an immediate quarrel his wish was balked, for when he summoned Edward I to appear before him to take the oath of allegiance “for the lands I hold of you” the English king came to Paris without a whimper and offered public acknowledgment to his suzerain. Philip made a trifling quarrel between some French and English sailors an excuse for war, and the Flemish, who were also Philip’s vassals, were soon involved. Flanders manufactured woolen cloths which went all over Europe. Raw wool was imported from England. For commercial reasons it behooved the Flemish to stay at peace with England and to regard England’s enemies as their enemies. Philip was willing enough to be considered in that light since it gave him a chance to invade a country whose industries with their resultant wealth fairly made his palms tingle.

Certainly “Hands off” was not his motto. By underhand means he contrived to get some of Edward’s French possessions away from him and he forced the Parliament of Paris to approve his action. Naturally such behavior drove Philip’s opponents together. Philip suspected some new coalition and ordered the Count of Flanders to come to Paris. Guy obeyed unwillingly, and he was confirmed in his belief that it was a mistaken step when Philip, upon hearing that Guy and Edward were arranging a marriage between Edward’s son Edward and Philippa, Guy’s daughter, flew into a rage and straightway cast the count and his two sons into the tower of the Louvre. There they stayed for several months, gaining their freedom only at the expense of poor Philippa, who, as hostage, replaced them within the grim walls on the river bank.

For the next few years there was constant trouble in the north. The imprisonment of an entirely innocent girl gave zest to the Flemish rage over Philip’s arrogant demands. Guy betrothed another of his daughters (he had eight daughters and nine sons) to the English crown prince and sent an embassy to announce the new arrangement to Philip and to tell him that he considered himself freed from his allegiance.

In the resulting war Philip was victorious. Guy and his immediate followers went to Paris and gave themselves up to the king before the steps of the palace while the queen looked on sneeringly from a window. It was not Philip’s nature to be magnanimous and he hurried his enemy off to prison. With the queen he soon after paid a visit to his new possessions where Jeanne was filled with jealousy of the rich apparel of the women of Bruges. “There are only queens in Bruges,” she cried. “I thought that only I had a right to royal state.”

The governors whom Philip put over Flanders suffered from their master’s disease, greed of gold, and so outrageous was their behavior that Flanders revolted. In the battle of Courtrai the French suffered a defeat that made terrible inroads on the ranks of the nobility. This loss was of benefit to the personal power and the pocketbook of the king, however, through his inheritance of estates and his privileges as guardian of children orphaned by the battle.

Philip was in a fury over the check to his arms at Courtrai. He took Guy of Flanders out of the Louvre and sent him to arrange a peace. The Flemish were elated by success and would not listen to him, and the now aged count, who had been promised his liberty if he succeeded, returned again to his prison and to the death that was soon to give him a long-delayed tranquillity.

The war went on with varying fortune. Philip’s chief advantage was at the battle of Mons-en-Puelle. When he returned to Paris crowds gathered before the cathedral to see their monarch ride in full equipment into Notre Dame, bringing his horse to a stand before the statue of Notre Dame de Paris to whom he had vowed his armor if he might be given the victory. During the Revolution the equestrian statue which had worn this same suit of mail for four centuries and a half was broken up in the destruction that was meted out to all representations of royalty.

The struggle with Flanders lasted even beyond Philip’s reign. On the whole the results—direct and indirect—of the contest were in Philip’s favor. In England he was able to exert a more or less open influence through his daughter, Isabelle, to whom the often-betrothed English prince (who came to the throne as Edward II) was at last united. Probably the bridegroom’s pride in having married the handsomest woman of her country was somewhat neutralized by developments of her character which won for her the nickname of “the she-wolf of France.”

Meanwhile Philip became involved in a quarrel with the pope that lasted for many years and set its mark for all time on the relations and possible relations between France and Rome. In the course of one of his attempts to replenish his treasury Philip insisted that imposts should be levied on the clergy. They had previously been free, and they turned to the pope to support their refusal. This action precipitated an immediate quarrel which was patched up but broke out again under pressure of the king’s behavior. What with his wars and what with his natural acquisitiveness Philip was always needing and always obtaining money in ways deserving of sternest censure. Beside debasing the coinage, he had used infamous methods with the Jews, he had sold patents of nobility to men considered unsuitable to enjoy the honor of belonging to the aristocracy, and he had given their freedom to all serfs who were able to pay for it.

The king rebuked Philip in a bull. Philip personally superintended its burning by the Paris hangman. When the pope sent another the king summarized it for the popular understanding into “Boniface the Pope to Philip the Fair, greeting. Know, O Supreme Prince, that thou art subject to us in all things.” This document Philip caused to be read aloud in many public places together with what purported to be his answer; “Philip to Boniface, little or no greeting. Be it known to thy Supreme Idiocy that we are subject to no man in political matters. Those who think otherwise we count to be fools and madmen.”

This was all very dashing but Philip was shrewd enough to see that it was necessary when contending with a power that proclaimed itself accountable only to God to have the support of his people. He summoned to meet in Notre Dame (April 10, 1302) the first National Assembly. It was called the States General because it was made up of representatives of the three upper classes or estates—the clergy, the nobility and the burgesses of the free cities. It may well have been a satisfied body that gathered under the Gothic arches of the great church. Its members did not realize that their powers were only advisory and that they would be expected to advise the king to do what he wanted to. All that they were yet to learn. For the moment they felt that this meeting was a concession from a king who had curbed the power of the nobles, who was trying to prevent the clergy from even entering the hall where was sitting the Parliament of Paris, increasingly made up of lawyers, and who made it clear that he tolerated the burgesses only because they were occasionally useful.

To the burgesses this was in truth a proud moment, for it was their first admission to any body of the kind on even terms with the other two estates. They were to find out that, because the voting always was done by classes, they were to be outnumbered two to one on almost every question with a unanimity that betrayed the fear that their presence excited in the lords and clergy.

It was not until the fifteenth century that deputies from the peasantry sat with the Third Estate. In the five centuries between the calling of the first States General and the Revolution the Assembly was summoned only thirteen times. When Louis XVI ordered an election in the futile hope that something might be suggested that would help France in her trouble it had been one hundred and seventy-five years since a sitting had been held.

The first States General found itself in something of a predicament. It was clear that it was expected to endorse Philip’s attitude toward the pope, yet such a course would place the clergy at variance with the head of the church. Of course they yielded. Boniface was a long way off; Philip was near at hand, and the dungeons of the Grand ChÂtelet and of the Louvre were always able to hold a few more prisoners. The pope was notified that the affairs of France were the concern of France and not of an outsider. The pope replied with excommunication. Philip retaliated with charges for which, he said, the pontiff should be tried. Boniface, justly enraged, threatened to depose Philip and make the German emperor king of France. Philip once more laid his case before his subjects, this time in the palace garden. Hot and heavy raged the quarrel after this. It resulted in the popes becoming for seventy years no more than dependents upon the will of the French crown, and practically its prisoners at Avignon on French soil.

Having negotiated the election of a pope of French birth, Philip used him as a tool for the accomplishment of his mercenary and cruel plans against the Order of Knights Templar. This order, at once religious and military, had been founded to protect pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher. Its duties over with the ending of the Crusades, idleness may, perhaps, have done its proverbial work. No one believes, however, that Philip’s charges of corruption in both religious practices and in manner of living were other than shamefully exaggerated excuses for seizing rich possessions which he had coveted ever since the time when, during a Paris riot caused by an unjust tax, he had taken refuge in the Temple to the north of the city. There he had seen the gathered treasures, and the fact that he owed his life to the Templars did not deter him from devising elaborate plans to rob them.

Early in the morning of October 13, 1307, all the Templars in France were seized in their beds and thrown into ecclesiastical prisons. There were one hundred and forty arrests in Paris. The knights listened, astounded, to what purported to be a confession by the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, of the truth of the abominable charges brought against the Order. They were promised liberty if they confirmed the confession. To the lasting credit of the Order only a few bought their freedom by perjury. The rest were “put to the question” with a wealth of hideous ingenuity which has seldom been approached in the grisly history of the torture chamber. In Paris alone thirty-six died as a result of their rending on the rack, and the others said anything that would put an end to suffering worse than death.

The methods employed by Philip became known to the pope, and although he had sworn to do the king’s behest in regard to some unknown deed, and this proved to be the deed, yet he had the courage to send a commission to Paris to search into the truth of the rumors that had reached him. It sat in the Abbey of Sainte GeneviÈve. Under shelter of the commission’s protection scores of witnesses from all over France told what they had endured, and denied their extorted confessions. Jacques de Molay himself was tortured physically and tormented mentally, but he persisted in a denial. His courage gave strength to over two hundred other knights who came before the commission to show the wounds by which they had been forced into saying what was not true.

But Philip was not to be balked of his prey. The archbishop of Sens, who was also metropolitan of Paris held a special court in the HÔtel de Sens. This palace was replaced almost two centuries later by the HÔtel de Sens now to be

seen on the rue du Figuier-Saint-Paul, a house well worth a visit from lovers of line and proportion as well as from antiquarians. To his court the archbishop summoned half a hundred of the knights who had denied their confessions, and the tribunal promptly convicted them of heresy and condemned them to be burned. The pope’s commissioners had no control over a local court and could not save the poor wretches. On a day in May, 1308, they were taken out of the city on the northeast and there suffered their cruel punishment, every one of them protesting to the assembled crowd the innocence of the Order. Six others were burned on the GrÈve.

Five years later the pope ordered the dispersal of the Order and Philip was at last able to take possession of their treasure—to repay himself for the heavy expenses of the trial!

While the Grand Master lived, however, even though he was in prison for life, the king did not feel secure in his ill-gotten gain. A year after the general dispersal the Parisians thronged one day into the Parvis de Notre Dame—the raised open space before the cathedral—where a representative of the pope, the archbishop of Sens and other church dignitaries sat enthroned. There Jacques de Molay and three other officers of the late Order were confronted with their false or extorted confessions. If it was done to harry them into some betrayal of feeling which could be taken advantage of for their destruction it was successful. De Molay protested against this untruth being again attributed to him. The crowd, eager for excitement, pressed closer to hear the ringing words of the old soldiers. Then, in the dusk of evening, noble and burgess and cleric pushed to the western end of the CitÉ where they could look across to some small islands, to-day walled and made a part of the land on which the Pont Neuf rests between the two arms of the Seine. On one of these islets the fagots were piled. A witness says; “The Grand Master, seeing the fire, stripped himself briskly; I tell just as I saw; he bared himself to his shirt, light-heartedly and with a good grace, without a whit of trembling, though he was dragged and shaken mightily. They took hold of him to tie him to the stake, and they were binding his hands with a cord, but he said to them, ‘Sirs, suffer me to fold my hands a while and make my prayer to God, for verily it is time. I am presently to die, but wrongfully, God wot. Wherefore woe will come ere long, to those who condemn us without a cause. God will avenge our death.’”

While the flames leaped scarlet against the river and the sky the Grand Master summoned pope and king to appear with him before the bar of the Almighty. They who heard must have shuddered, and shuddered yet again when in fact Pope Clement died within forty days and Philip the Fair within the year.

In Paris the huge establishment of the Temple with its many buildings, its considerable fields and gardens and its walls, had been independent of the city, and over its inhabitants the Grand Master had power of life and death. When Philip took possession of its treasure he turned over the enclosure to the Knights of Saint John who held it as his subjects. In the course of time the quiet precincts of the Temple became a haven for impoverished nobles, for unlicensed doctors and for small manufacturers “independent” of the guilds, for all these found sanctuary here. Later the growth of the city smothered the grounds with streets and houses and did away with most of the buildings. In 1792 when Louis XVI was imprisoned in the large tower and the other members of the royal family in the smaller tower the few buildings that were left were torn down so that they might not serve as hiding places for any rescue party. Napoleon had the donjon demolished in 1811, and everything that was left of the once superb commandery melted into the Square du Temple under the beautifying process instituted by Napoleon III. Until a very few years ago one of the sights of Paris for seers in search of the unusual was the Temple Market edging the square, where old clothes, old curtains, old upholstery—every sort of second hand “dry goods”—offered a chance for the securing of occasional wonderful bargains provided the purchaser was either fluent in his own behalf or indifferent to what was said to him.

Not far from the site of the Temple there stands to-day the church of Saint Leu, a part of which dates from the fourteenth century. It has small architectural value, but a quaint picture within tells a tale of legendary interest. A statue of the Virgin used to stand at the corner of the rue aux Ours, not far from the church. One day an impious Swiss soldier struck the figure with his sword and blood spurted from it. The man was hung upon the scene of his crime, and the statue was preserved in the Priory of Saint Martin-des-Champs. For more than three centuries afterward and until, indeed, the destructive spirit of the Revolution did away with customs as it did with buildings, it was usual to celebrate this happening by carrying through the streets a straw man in Swiss costume which was burned on the corner of the rue aux Ours.

Among the utilitarian institutions of the fourteenth century were the Étuves, public vapor baths, which were made desirable by the scantiness of the water supply at home. These establishments were as popular as necessary. When they were ready for action a crier went through the streets shouting:

Wars and persecutions show large in any period but every day living and the minor happenings of social and civic growth weave the fabric on which occasional events stand out like figures on a patterned cloth. The shuttle of time flashed back and forth through Philip’s reign carrying the brilliant woof of exploits that resulted in increasing concentration of power, of wealth and of prestige in the monarch, and threading it through the dull warp of the increasing poverty of the lower classes and the lessening vigor of the nobles.

The persecution of the Templars was not the only persecution of the time. The narrow-mindedness that was increasingly to begrudge freedom of thought was beginning its death-dealing work. Here and there throughout France heretics were put to trial every now and then. The king defiled the day of Pentecost in 1310 by causing to be burned on the GrÈve a Jew who had been converted but who had denied his new faith, a priest who had been convicted of heresy, and a woman who had distributed heretical tracts.

Perhaps Philip thought by such deeds to win pardon for the financial exactions with which he tormented his people. He was constantly devising new taxes. One of the chief duties of the uniformed militia which he founded—dependent upon and consequently faithful to the crown—was the collection of his unjust levies. As he lay dying at Fontainebleau he said to his children gathered at his bedside, “I have put on so many talliages and laid hands on so much riches that I shall never be absolved.”

Paris did not increase much in extent or in population during Philip’s reign. Its beauty lay in the harmony that was building every new construction like its fellows, ogival (Gothic), with pointed windows and doors and high-pitched roofs—a style superb in large edifices but giving a pinched appearance to domestic architecture.

The Louvre served its grim purpose untouched through this period. Its commander was raised to the rank of captain and was honored by being forced to stand in no one’s presence but the king’s and to receive orders only from his royal master.

The little church of Saint Julien still served as the chapel of the University, and Philip decreed that the Provost of Paris, the king’s representative in the city, should go there every two years and in the presence of faculty and students should solemnly swear that he would protect the rights of both professors and students and that he would respect them himself. This meant the confirmation of Philip Augustus’s regulations which made the dwellers in the University section answerable only to the rector of the University. The schools of the left bank were increased by the addition of the College of Navarre, founded by the queen, Jeanne of Navarre, in gratitude for Philip’s victory at Mons-en-Puelle.

A curious story is told of the origin of the monastery of the Carmes Billettes in the city’s northern section that had been redeemed from the marsh and hence was called the Marais, a name which it still retains. It appears that in the reign of Philip the Fair a Jew of the Marais lent a sum of money to a woman, and then offered to quit her of her debt if she would bring him a consecrated wafer. When he had possession of it he pierced it, and then plunged it in boiling water. At each attack upon it blood spurted forth, and at last the nerve-shaken Jew screamed for help. Forced to confess his deed he was put to the torture and his house was torn down. Upon its site the king permitted the erection of a religious establishment.

It was Philip who built the first quay to restrain the Seine from damaging its banks. The king bought the HÔtel de Nesle of which the Tour de Nesle, scowling across at the Louvre, was a part. Its grounds had stretched down to the water where they fringed the stream with willows under which the townspeople used to enjoy the shade on hot summer days. The king had the trees cut down and a wall constructed to check the swirl of the river whose two arms rejoin just above after their separation by the island.

In the palace the administrative work of the city and of France was conducted, and so extensive was it now with all Philip’s territorial additions and all his activities calling for court adjustment that the ancient building was found to be much too small. Enguerrand de Marigny superintended its enlargement, and so generously did he build that the old palace came to be called “Saint Louis’ little hall.” The grandest part of the new structure was the Great Hall, called to-day in its rebuilt form the Salle des Pas Perdus. It was lofty and adorned with much vivid blue and gold. Statues of all the kings of France from Pharamond were placed on the upper parts of the pillars, visualizing historical characters for the youth of the town who might read dates on tablets affixed. For long years the curious were delighted by the sight of the skeleton of what chroniclers have described as a sort of crocodile, which had been found under the palace when the new foundations were dug. Across one end of the room was the enormous marble slab known as the table of Saint Louis. What is supposed to be a fragment of it is now in the lower part of the palace. Around this table met the members of three different law courts. When dinners or suppers of ceremony were given by the monarch only royalties were allowed to sit at this post of honor. An idea of its size may be gained from the knowledge that the Clerks of the Basoche at a later time used to enact plays upon it as a stage.

This organization, the Clerks of the Basoche, came into being in Philip the Fair’s time. The clerks of the law courts used to hold trials to adjust differences among themselves. They played the parts of attorneys and court officers, and no doubt there was a fine display of imitative rhetoric. The word basoche probably is derived from basilica, and was adopted because it was high-flown and unusual. The president was called the King of the Basoche until Henry III, who felt a bit weak about his own royal strength, forbade the use of the title.

In the court in front of the palace the clerks used to plant a tree or pole on the last day of every May, and this entrance is called even now the Cour du Mai. Here stood the tumbrils that carried the Revolutionary victims to the guillotine. At the foot of the former staircase convicts were branded, and here Beaumarchais gained the best possible free advertisement when his books were burned as being hostile to the well-being of society.

Opening out of the Salle des Pas Perdus is the “First Chamber,” the room which replaces Saint Louis’ bedchamber. Many a stern tribunal has been held there since the time of the gentle king. It was here that Louis XIV commanded his abashed hearers to understand that “I am the State,” and here sat the court that gave Marie Antoinette a poor semblance of trial.

With its prisons on one side stirring with memories of the Revolution, and its wonderful Gothic jewel, the Sainte Chapelle, on the other, the Palace of Justice, with all its myriads of rooms for a myriad of purposes, is one of the most story-laden and varied in Europe.

When Enguerrand de Marigny had finished his work of enlargement Philip commanded a season of rejoicing in the city. For a whole week the townsfolk poured in to the palace to see and to admire, and all the shops were closed so that there might be no other distractions. These same people had to pay the bills for the new construction, and, since the privilege of free entrance was one of long standing it is to be hoped that they felt themselves sufficiently rewarded for their enforced outlay by the pleasure given to their esthetic sense.

To the ceremony of the knighting of the king’s three sons, which was a part of the celebration, they were not admitted in numbers, as that was in the more private Louvre.

Philip the Fair’s immediate successors, Louis X, le Hutin, the Quarreler (1314-1316), Philip V, the Long (1316-1322), and Charles IV, the Fair (1322-1328), were rulers of small account. They all did some fighting, all inherited their father’s capacity to raise financial trouble for their subjects, and all had serious domestic difficulties. Their wives were unfaithful to them, and the three women were imprisoned or forced to enter the Church. Two brothers, Pierre and Philip Gualtier d’Aulnay, the lovers of Louis’ wife, Marguerite of Burgundy and of Charles’s wife, Blanche, were executed on the GrÈve. Philip’s wife, Jeanne of Burgundy, was the playful lady who dropped Buridan into the Seine from the Tour de Nesle.

After Marguerite had been strangled in her prison Louis le Hutin married ClÉmence of Hungary. His posthumous son, John I, lived but a few days, and Philip the Long claimed the confirmation of the promise which the Parliament of Paris, sitting in the palace, had made to support him rather than let the throne go to a possible daughter of Louis. This decision established the Salic law as applying to the throne.

Philip the Long had no children and was succeeded by his brother, Charles the Fair. Charles was twice married after his repudiation of Blanche, but he left only a daughter, born at the Louvre after his death, and the crown therefore went to his first cousin, Philip of Valois.