Mabell S. C. Smith

WITH Charles VII’s son, Louis XI (1461-1483), the modern history of France may be said to begin, since he substituted the use of brain for the use of muscle in the management of affairs. His earliest attempts at government seem not to have been successful, since at the end of four years he had alienated every class of society. The League of the Public Welfare was formed to oppose him, and it included nobles, clergy, burghers and populace, each of whom had its own serious grievance. Louis had a well-disciplined army but he could not be in all parts of his kingdom at once, and while his attention was given elsewhere his enemies approached Paris. The moral effect of the capture of Paris was to be dreaded almost as much as its actual loss, and the king made himself active in trying to prevent the misfortune. Unlike any ruler preceding him his first efforts were always diplomatic. Instead of rushing troops to Paris he sent messages of appeal to every class within the walls. They roused no response. There were in the University some twenty-five thousand students, no inconsiderable force, but the Rector refused to arm them for their monarch’s support. The burghers were similarly lacking in enthusiasm.

Marching in person to Paris Louis sacrificed a part of his army to engage the attention of the enemy whose forces he passed, and entered the city. His presence accomplished what his messages could not bring to pass. He and the queen reviewed a militia force of some 70,000 men, for the burghers became willing to fight for a king who had the good sense to ask their advice—even if he did not follow it—and he never failed to work for their esteem. For the first time in French history merit ranked position.

The story of Louis’ reign is a tale of fighting and intrigue, with a constantly increasing settlement of power in the monarch. Provinces fell into his hands; his enemies once in his grasp, never escaped. He was Louis the Spider, always weaving his webs, seldom doing it in vain. France had a greater feeling of unity now than before the English wars, and the power was still more solidly centralized in the crown.

Such activities left the king not much time for Paris. When he was there he lived in the HÔtel des Tournelles which Charles V had built, persisting in his affection for it although he was

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THE CHURCHES OF SAINT ÉTIENNE-DU MONT AND OF SAINTE GENEVIÈVE IN 17TH CENTURY.

See page 207.

nearly captured there at one time by some of his followers who were in a plot to seize his person. He curried favor with the people by calling himself simply a “burgher of Paris,” he himself lighted the Saint John’s Eve bonfire on the GrÈve, he walked about the city in a fashion unknown to royalty before, and he dined in shabby dress at the public table of any tavern that seemed convenient.

Something of the king’s implacability may be guessed from the punishments and tortures which were common in his reign. His Constable, Saint Pol, was executed on the GrÈve and a shaft twelve feet high, erected on the spot, warned others not to commit his fault. Another man of equal rank was imprisoned in an iron cage in the Bastille until he was executed. During his captivity Louis learned that his chains had been removed for a short time in order that he might go to church. He ordered that they should not be taken off again except when he was tortured. A man convicted of conspiracy was beheaded and his head was placed on a staff in front of the HÔtel de Ville.

The period of occupation by the English had left Paris with much dilapidation, for people who were not thinking of permanency were not thinking of building and but little of repairing. Even though a reign had intervened there was much to be done toward restoring the Gothic city, but Louis himself built little. His interests were, perhaps, more far-reaching. For instance his intelligence saw at once the value of the printing press, and he gave his consent to the establishment near the Sorbonne of several printers whose early work hastened to spread the renaissance of classical learning which took place when the fall of Constantinople (1453) dispersed the scholars of the East among the countries of the West. Over the ancient Roman roads that pierced Paris from north to south they made their way into the city which had been increasingly attractive to students ever since Alcuin established there a school for Charlemagne. The colleges clustered around the Mont Sainte GeneviÈve absorbed them rapidly, and the Rector who governed the University ruled over a notable accession to his people on the left bank. Louis welcomed these wanderers for what they gave to France, and they gave generously, for with them came the new spirit which touched not letters alone but every form of art.

Another of Louis’ organizations was the postal service which sent letters by messenger from Paris to all parts of France.

There is no description of the Paris of Louis’ time more vivid than Victor Hugo’s in “Notre Dame de Paris.” The narrow streets, the tall, high-pitched houses, the town spreading its business interests to the north and its collegiate interests to the south with the CitÉ and its many churches lying at the foot of the towers of the great cathedral—all these stand forth sharply in the second chapter of the Third Book. The Provost ruled the Ville, the Rector the University and the Bishop the CitÉ.

Ogival or Gothic architecture had been a growth, every part added with a meaning. Its development in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was chiefly in details, windows, for example, being better drawn though less harmonious, and rose windows increasing in elaboration until they seemed the flames which gave their name to the flamboyant style of architecture. Decoration grew over-elaborate. It became customary to build chapels along the side aisles of the nave, and a gallery separating the choir and the nave. There is but one such gallery or jubÉ in Paris to-day, that of the Church of Saint Étienne-du-Mont.

After the Hundred Years’ War was over and the country knew peace again it was natural that the building of churches should begin once more. It is to this time that the church of Saint Laurent belongs, built on the site of an old monastery; Saint Nicholas-of-the-Fields not far away; Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, to which a bit here and a bit there had been added from very early days; Saint SÉverin on the left bank. This church is one of the most interesting in modern Paris, crowded as it is into the old left bank quarter near Saint Julien-le-Pauvre, its faÇade taken bodily from Saint Pierre-aux-Boeufs, the ancient CitÉ church of the Butchers’ Corporation when it was demolished, its north doorway adorned with two lions between which the priests stood to decide causes, and its walls within decorated with tablets given to record many kinds of gratitude, from that for the passing of a successful school examination to that for a happy marriage.

Of examples of domestic architecture of this time there are still standing several examples. The little tower on the house from which Louis of Orleans went to his death is authentic, so is the tower of John the Fearless, once a part of the palace of the dukes of Burgundy, later the home of a troop of players, and now a curious spectator of a rushing twentieth century business street.

Louis restored the gardens of the palace on the CitÉ, and, although he did not live there, he established an oratory near the apartments of Saint Louis, and another from which he could look through a “squint” into the Sainte Chapelle.

So good a financier was he that there was never any demand on the people—after he had learned his early lessons—for money for city improvements. Not being asked to pay for them the burghers were enthusiastic in their coÖperation in such repairs as the king undertook. The HÔtel de Ville was one such undertaking for a century had passed since Étienne Marcel had bought it and it was some two hundred years old then. The bridges over the Seine were patched up to last a while longer, but it was not long after Louis’ death that the Pont Notre Dame collapsed, houses and all, causing the death of several people.

A rather curious instance of the persistency of habit in Paris—a persistency which marks the French of to-day—may be noticed by comparing the testimony of a chronicler of the end of the twelfth century, with that of Villon, the poet of the fifteenth. To be sure the elder author’s statement is serious and the later man’s jocose, but there is an undoubted truth behind it. “The Petit Pont,” says Guy de Bazoches, “belongs to the dialecticians, who pace up and down, disputing.” Villon’s mention of the usage, “with a difference,” is in the third stanza of his tribute to the fluency and wit which he describes in his

A BALLAD OF PARIS WOMEN[1]

Envoi

Louis’ son, Charles VIII (1483-1498), reigned with a personal enthusiasm which diminished the power of the nobles, yet permitted the rise of the Third Estate, the political combination of the peasantry and the citizens or bourgeois class. He repaired the palace and the Sainte Chapelle in which he introduced an organ. His interest in Italy being excited Charles began a war there of no great importance in itself, but interesting as bringing to France a knowledge of art and architecture, which, when increased at the time of Louis XII’s (1498-1515) southern expedition, imposed ready-made upon France the style called Renaissance.

This style was a renewal of the classic influence. It flattened roofs and doors and windows, and decorated with designs borrowed or copied from the Greeks and Romans. An intermediate style shows a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance as was natural in this period of architectural change. While roofs and windows were flattening there were frequent combinations of pointed roofs and flat windows, of pointed windows and flat roofs. Sculptors were loath entirely to give up Gothic decoration yet were eager to show their knowledge of Renaissance. The result is called Transition, and often is too conglomerate to be pleasing. The most charming example in Paris is the HÔtel de Cluny, built adjoining the Thermes by the Abbots of Cluny and rebuilt by Louis XII.[2] Exquisite in every detail, and filled with one of the best collections of medieval domestic art in Europe it is a joy to the architect and the antiquarian. No happier afternoon can be spent in Paris than in roaming through these treasure-laden rooms and then in sitting in the Garden of the Thermes, letting the eye wander from the Roman ruins sixteen centuries old, massive and severe, to the lighter elegances of the medieval abbey, and then through the bars of the enclosure to the rushing streets of modern Paris. The French babies rolling on the grass are growing up with such contrasts so usual to them that they never will know the thrill that fires the American at the sight of these links in the chain of a great city’s history.