Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. William Walton

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СКАЧАТЬ still contained many cultivated fields and other unbuilt-upon tracts of land; the numerous religious edifices and university establishments erected since that reign had occupied these waste spaces, and the population had even over-flowed in several directions and congregated around the abbeys that had been constructed outside the walls. When Philippe IV, the Bel, succeeded his father in 1285, four principal streets were paved—those leading to Saint-Denis and to the Portes Baudet, Saint-Honoré, and Notre-Dame. The bourgeois successfully resisted the demands of the prévôt of Paris that they should pave more.

      Under Philippe IV, the conditions regulating the acquisition of the rights of bourgeoisie were definitely determined. Any free colon—i.e., stranger, sojourner—could go before the prévôt of the city with two witnesses, engage himself to contribute to the finances of the city, and to build or to purchase within the space of a year a house of the value of, at least, sixty sous parisis; on these conditions he was recognized as a bourgeois of Paris, and, in consequence, was obliged to reside within its limits from the day of Toussaint to that of Saint-Jean, in the summer, or at least to leave his wife there, or his valet, if he were a bachelor. The population of Paris was thus composed of the clergy, of the nobility—of which the king was the chief—of the bourgeois or proprietors roturiers, of the colons—free or still vilains—and of a few serfs of the soil whom their owners had obstinately refused to emancipate.

      One of the strongest grievances which this population had against the king was his repeated debasements of the royal coinage, and on one of these occasions their discontent was so menacing that, notwithstanding he had hastily caused some specie of legal weight and value to be struck, he left his own palace and sought refuge with the Templars. The establishment of this order had greatly increased since they had first found an asylum in Paris under Louis VI; the ancient gate of the tower of the Temple was demolished as late as 1810. Within their walls was asylum for all, as in the churches, and the king was none too prompt, for the angry multitude was soon at the gates. Before these frowning walls, they hesitated, but a few of the more hardy pushed past the guard at the portal and penetrated as far as the kitchens. "What do you want here?" inquired the mâitre-queux, the chief cook. "To know what is going on here," replied the boldest of the invaders. "Why, the dinner of our dear lord, the king." "Where is this dinner?" "Here it is." And he presented an appetizing dish to his interlocutor, who passed it on to his comrades, saying: "Here, all of you, it is the King of France who gives the feast." By this time the alarm had been given, and the intruders would have paid dearly for their enterprise had not Philippe ordered that they be allowed to depart unmolested. However, though they went away very proud of having eaten the king's dinner, a few days later the bodies of twenty-eight of their number were seen hanging in a row along the ramparts of the town. It was rumored that the Templars had not been altogether ignorant of the gathering of this popular tumult, and that if the entrance to their fortress had been so easily forced it was not altogether without their knowledge; their ruin is said by some historians to have been determined in the king's mind from this date. On Friday, the 13th (!) of October, 1307, the Parisian population were very much surprised to learn that the grand-master of the order and all the knights had been arrested, their entire property confiscated, and the Temple occupied by the king and his court. In this nefarious enterprise Philippe had taken care to secure the co-operation of the Pope, Clement V; the wildest charges, of idolatry, magic practices, cruelty and outrage, were brought against the order; fifty-six of the knights were burned alive at a slow fire at Vincennes, and, finally, in 1313, the grand-master and another dignitary, on the little Ile aux Vaches, to-day the platform of the Pont-Neuf, in the presence of the king and all his court. A popular legend asserts that as the figure of the grand-master, Jacques de Molay, disappeared finally in the smoke and flame of his pyre, he was heard, in a solemn voice, to summon his executioners to meet him before the bar of God, the Pope within forty days and the king within the year. Certain it is that both these potentates died within the appointed time.

      The provincial synod which had condemned the fifty-six Templars had been presided over by one of Philippe's confidants, the Archbishop of Sens, brother of the king's minister of finances, Enguerrand de Marigny. It was this latter who set the melancholy example of being hanged by his royal master's successor, which was followed by other finance ministers in two succeeding reigns. His innocence, however, was formally recognized by the king, Louis X, before the end of his short reign of eighteen months, a sum of ten thousand livres was granted to his children, "in consideration of the great misfortune which has befallen them," and his principal accuser, the Comte de Valois, stricken with paralysis ten years later, made amends by a general distribution of alms to the poor of Paris, with the request that they would "pray to God for Monseigneur Enguerrand and for Monseigneur Charles de Valois." Much the same fate awaited Gérard de la Guette, minister of Philippe V, le Long, who reigned for six years after Louis X—only, as he had expired under the torture, this minister was hanged after death, and his innocence duly acknowledged in course of time. Pierre Remy, successor of Gérard de la Guette and treasurer of Charles le Bel, who succeeded Philippe le Long, was arrested by Charles's successor, Philippe de Valois, even before he had been crowned, and hanged on the gibbet of Montfaucon, like his predecessors. He was at first intended for the little gibbet of Montigny, reserved for the vulgar, but on his way there—whether moved by sudden remorse, or by ambition for higher honors—he accused himself of a multitude of new crimes, among others, of high treason against the king and against the State. He was accordingly transferred to Montfaucon, where he had the distinction of being hanged above all others. This was in 1328.

      "The amount of his property which was confiscated," says the historian Félibien, "was estimated at twelve hundred thousand livres, which was the produce, as well as the proof, of his pillaging; but this example and that of several others of a similar kind did not serve to render any more moderate those who have since had charge of the finances—as witness Macé de Manches, treasurer-changer of the king's treasury, executed, like Pierre Remy, in 1331; Réné de Siran, director of the mint, treated in the same fashion in 1333, and some others."

      Louis X, Philippe V, and Charles IV, the three sons of Philippe le Bel who reigned in succession after him, and who ended the elder branch of the Capétiens, were even more unfortunate in their wives than in their treasurers. These three Burgundian princesses, Marguerite, Jeanne, and Blanche, were of an exceedingly dissolute character; the eldest and the youngest resided in the abbey of Maubuisson and had for lovers two Norman gentlemen, Philippe and Gaultier d'Aulnay. The king, Philippe le Bel, being informed, caused the two Normans to be arrested, in 1314; they confessed under torture, and were condemned to be flayed alive, mutilated, decapitated, and hung up by the arm-pits. The two princesses, after having had their heads shaved, were conducted to the Château-Guillard, where they were most ingeniously persecuted. When the husband of Marguerite ascended the throne, in 1315, as Louis le Hutin, or the Quarreller, he disposed of his unworthy spouse by smothering her between two mattresses, or, according to the local legend, strangling her with her own long hair.

      Neither Brantôme nor Villon gives the name of the sanguinary princess who is said to have inhabited the Tour de Nesle, attracted handsome young men passing by, and in the morning had them strangled and thrown into the Seine, but romance or popular report has ascribed these doings to Marguerite de Bourgogne, though it is certain that she never lived in the Tour de Nesle. Other romances have designated Jeanne, wife of Philippe le Long, as the princess celebrated for her amours with Buridan, rector of the University in 1347; but this story is equally unfounded, as she died in the Hôtel de Nesle in 1329, leaving behind her a great reputation for gallantry, royal widow though she was. The Hôtel de Nesle occupied nearly the site of the present Mint, adjoining the Institute.

      When the question of deciding upon a successor for Louis X arose, the famous Loi Salique, by which at least one modern historian, M. Duruy, thinks France has profited but little, was revived. Louis le Hutin left but one child, a daughter; a posthumous son, Jean, lived but a week. "Should his sister take the crown? A text of Scripture reads: 'The lilies spin not, and yet Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.' This evidently signifies that the kingdom of the lilies shall not fall under the sway of a distaff. In the fourteenth century this was a reason. There were others: СКАЧАТЬ