PARIS AND ITS STORY

The majority of the photographs of sculpture have been taken by Messrs.Haweis & Coles, while most of the other photographs are reproduced by permission of Messrs.Giraudon.

LINE ILLUSTRATIONS BY KATHARINE KIMBALL

The Cité

Remains of Roman Amphitheatre

Tower of Clovis

St. Germain des Prés

St. Julien le Pauvre

St. Germain l’Auxerrois

Wall of Philippe Auguste, Cour de Rouen

La Sainte Chapelle

Refectory of the Cordeliers

Cathedral of St. Denis

Notre Dame: Portal of St. Anne

Notre Dame—Southern Side

Notre Dame and Petit Pont

Tower in Rue Navarre in which Calvin is said to have Lived

Hôtel of the Provost of Paris

Palais de Justice, Clock Tower and Conciergerie

105

Palace of the Archbishop of Sens

113

Chapel of Fort Vincennes

122

Tower at the Corner of the Rue Vieille du Temple and the Rue Barbette

126

Tower of Jean Sans Peur

128

Cloister of the Billetes, Fifteenth Century, Rue de l’Homme Armé

135

Tower of St. Jacques

147

Pont Notre Dame

149

Chapel, Hôtel de Cluny

151

West Door of St. Merri

152

Tower of St. Etienne du Mont

153

La Fontaine des Innocents

161

West Wing of Louvre by Pierre Lescot

163

Petite Galerie of the Louvre

174

Hôtel de Sully

183

Place des Vosges

188

Old Houses near Pont St. Michel, showing Spire of the Ste. Chapelle

190

The Medici Fountain, Luxembourg Gardens

196

Pont Neuf

198

The Institut de France

208

River and Pont Royal

225

South Door of Notre Dame

237

Interior of St. Etienne du Mont

239

Hôtel de Ville from River

279

Notre Dame, South Side

282

St. Séverin

285

Tower and Courtyard of Hotel Cluny

287

Old Academy of Medicine

289

Cour du Dragon

292

St. Gervais

294

Place des Vosges, Maison de Victor Hugo

296

Archives Nationales in Hôtel Soubise, showing Towers of Hôtel de Clisson

298

Near the Pont Neuf

303

Arches in the Courtyard of the Hôtel Cluny

322

The majority of the three-colour, half-tone and line blocks used in this book have been made by the Graphic Photo-Engraving Co., London.

LIST OF MAPS

PLAN OF THE HISTORIC LOUVRE FROM BLONDEL’S DRAWING THE SITE OF THE OLD LOUVRE BEING ADDED.

MAP OF THE SUCCESSIVE WALLS OF PARIS

THEmediæval scribe in the fulness of a divinely-revealed cosmogony is wont to begin his story at the creation of the world or at the confusion of tongues, to trace the building of Troy by the descendants of Japheth, and the foundation of his own native city by one of the Trojan princes made a fugitive in Europe by proud Ilion’s fall. Such, he was very sure, was the origin of Padua, founded by Antenor and by Priam, son of King Priam, whose grandson, yet another Priam, by his great valour and wisdom became the monarch of a mighty people, called from their fair hair, Galli or Gallici. And of the strong city built on the little island in the Seine who could have been its founder but the ravisher of fair Helen—Sir Paris himself? The naïve etymology of the time was evidence enough.

But the modern writer, as he compares the geographical position of the capitals of Europe, is tempted to exclaim,Cherchez le marchand!for he perceives that their unknown founders were dominated by two considerations—facilities for commerce and protection from enemies: and before the era of the Roman roadmakers, commerce meant facilities for water carriage. As the early settlers in Britain sailed up the Thames, they must have observed, where the river’s bed begins somewhat to narrow, a hill rising from the continuousexpanse of marshes from its mouth, easily defended on the east and west by those fortified posts which, in subsequent times, became the Tower of London and Barnard’s Castle. If we scan a map of France, we shall see that the group of islands on and around which Paris now stands, lies in the fruitful basin of the Seine, known as the Isle de France, near the convergence of three rivers; for on the east the Marne and the Oise, and on the south the Yonne, discharge their waters into the main stream on its way to the sea. In ancient times the great line of Phœnician, Greek and Roman commerce followed northwards the valleys of the Rhone and of the Saone, whose upper waters are divided from those of the Yonne only by the plateau of Dijon and the calcareous slopes of Burgundy. The Parisii were thus admirably placed for tapping the profitable commerce of north-west Europe, and by the waters of the Eure, lower down the Seine, were able to touch the fertile valley of the Loire. The northern rivers of Gaul were all navigable by the small boats of the early traders, and, in contrast with the impetuous sweep of the Rhone and the Loire in the south and west, flowed with slow and measured stream:[5]they were rarely flooded, and owing to the normally mild winters, still more rarely blocked by ice. Moreover, the Parisian settlement stood near the rich corn-land of La Beauce, and to the north-east, over the open plain of La Valois, lay the way to Flanders. It was one of the river stations on the line of the Phœnician traders in tin, that most precious and rare of ancient metals, between Marseilles and Britain, and in the early Middle Ages became, with Lyons and Beaucaire, one of the chief fairs of that historic trade route which the main lines of railway traffic still follow to-day. The island now known as the Cité, which the founders of Paris chose for their stronghold, was the largest of the group which lay involved in the manywindings of the Seine, and was embraced by a natural moat of deep waters. To north and south lay hills, marshes and forests, and all combined to give it a position equally adapted for defence and for commerce.

THE CITÉ.THE CITÉ.

Point Du Jour.Point Du Jour.

The Parisii were a small tribe of Gauls who were content to place themselves under the protection of the more powerful Senones. Their island city was the home of a prosperous community of shipmen and merchants, but it is not until the Conquest of Gaul by the Romans that Lutetia, for such was its Gallic name, enters the great pageant of written history. It was—

“Armèd Cæsar falcon-eyed,”[6]

who saw its great military importance, built a permanent camp there and made it a centralentrepôtfor food andmunitions of war. And when in 52B.C.the general rising of the tribes under Vercingetorix threatened to scour the Romans out of Gaul and to destroy the whole fabric of Cæsar’s ambition, he sent his favourite lieutenant, Labienus, to seize Lutetia where the Northern army of the Gauls was centred. Labienus crossed the Seine at Melun, fixed his camp on a spot near the position of the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and began the first of the historic sieges for which Paris is so famous. But the Gaulish commander burnt the bridges, fired the city and took up his position on the slopes of the hill of Lutetius (St. Genevieve) in the south, and aimed at crushing his enemy between his own forces and an army advancing from the north. Labienus having learnt that Cæsar was in a tight place, owing to a check at Clermont and the defection of the Eduans, by a masterly piece of engineering recrossed the Seine by night at the Point du Jour, and when the Gauls awoke in the morning they beheld the Roman legions in battle array on the plain of Grenelle beneath. They made a desperate attempt to drive them against the river, but they lost their leader and were almost annihilated by the superior arms and strategy of the Romans. Labienus was able to join his master at Sens, and the irrevocable subjugation of the Gauls soon followed. With the tolerant and enlightened conquerors came the Roman peace, Roman law, Roman roads, the Roman schoolmaster; and a more humane religion abolished the Druidical sacrifices. Lutetia was rebuilt and became a prosperous and, next to Lyons, the most important of Gallo-Roman cities. It lay equidistant from Germany and Britain and at the issue of valleys which led to the upper and lower Rhine. The quarries of Mount Lutetius produced an admirable building stone, kind to work and hardening well under exposure to the air. Its white colour may have won for Paris the name of Leucotia, or the White City, by which it is sometimes called by ancient writers. Cæsar had done his work well, for so completely were the Gauls Romanised, thatby the fifth or sixth century their very language had disappeared.[7]

But towards the end of the third century three lowly wayfarers were journeying from Rome along the great southern road to Paris, charged by the Pope with a mission fraught with greater issues to Gaul than the Cæsars and all their legions. Let us recall somewhat of the appearance of the city which Dionysius, Rusticus and Eleutherius saw as they neared its suburbs and came down what is now known as the Rue St. Jacques. After passing the arches of the aqueduct, two of which exist to this day, that crossed the valley of Arcueil and brought the waters of Rungis,[8]Paray and Montjean to the baths of the imperial palace, they would discern on the hill of Lutetius to their right the Roman camp, garrison and cemetery. Lower down on its eastern slopes they would catch a glimpse of a great amphitheatre, capable of accommodating 10,000 spectators, part of which was laid bare in 1869 by some excavations made for the Campagnie des Omnibus between the Rues Monge and Linné. Unhappily, the public subscription initiated by the Académie des Inscriptions to purchase the property proved inadequate, and the Company retained possession of the land. In 1883, however, other excavations were undertaken in the Rue de Navarre, which resulted in the discovery of the old aqueduct that drained the amphitheatre, and some other remains, which have been preserved and made into a public park.

REMAINS OF ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE.REMAINS OF ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE.

On their left, where now stands the Lycée St. Louis, would be the theatre of Lutetia, and further on the imposing and magnificent palace of the Cæsars, with its gardens sloping down to the Seine. The turbulent little stream of the Bièvre flowed by the foot of Mons Lutetius on the east, entering the main river opposite the eastern limit of thecivitasof Lutetia, gleaming white before them and girdled by Aurelian’s wall[9]and the waters of the Seine. A narrow eel-shaped island, subsequently known as the Isle de Galilée,[10]lay between the Isle of the Cité and the southern bank; two islands, the Isles de Notre Dame and des Vaches, divided by a narrow channel to the east, and two small islets, the Isles des Juifs and de Bussy, to the west. Another islet, the Isle de Louviers, lay near the northern bank beyond the two eastern islands. Crossing a wooden bridge, where now stands the Petit Pont, they would enter the forum (Place du Parvis Notre Dame) under a triumphal arch. Here would be the very foyer of the city; a little way to the leftthe governor’s palace and the basilica, or hall of justice;[11]to the right the temple of Jupiter. As they crossed the island they would find it linked to the northern bank by another wooden bridge, replaced by the present Pont Notre Dame.[12]In the distance to the north stood Mons Martis (Montmartre) crowned with the temples of Mars and Mercury, four of whose columns are preserved in the church of St. Pierre; and to the west the aqueduct from Passy bringing its waters to the mineral baths located on the site of the present Palais Royal. A road, now the Rue St. Martin, led to the north; to the east lay the marshy land which is still known as the quarter of the Marais.

Denis and his companions preached and taught the new faith unceasingly and met martyrs’ deaths. By the mediæval hagiographers St. Denis is invariably confused with Dionysius, the Areopagite, said to have been converted by St. Paul and sent on his mission to France by Pope Clement. In theGolden Legendhe is famed to have converted much people to the faith, and “did do make many churches,” and at length was brought before the judge who “did do smite off the heads of the three fellows by the temple of Mercury. And anon the body of St. Denis raised himself up and bare his head between his arms, as the angels led him two leagues from the place which is said the hill of the martyrs unto the place where he now resteth by his election and the purveyance of God, when was heard so great and sweet a melody of angels that many that heard it believed in our Lord.” In an interesting picture, No. 995 in Room X. of the Louvre, said to have been painted for Jean sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, by Malouel, and finished at his death in 1415 by Bellechose, St. Denis in bishop’s robesis seen kneeling before the block; the headsman raises his axe; one of the saint’s companions has already met his fate, the other awaits it resignedly. To the left, St. Denis in prison is receiving the Sacred Host from the hands of Christ.

Roman Baths in Musée De Cluny.Roman Baths in Musée De Cluny.

The work that Denis and his companions began was more fully achieved in the fourth century by the rude Pannonion soldier, St. Martin, who also evangelised at Paris. He is the best-known of Gallic saints, and the story of his conversion one of the most popular in Christendom. When stationed at Amiens he was on duty one bitter cold day at the city gate, and espied a poor naked beggar asking alms. Soldiers in garrison are notoriously impecunious, and Martin had nothing to give; but drawing his sword he cleaved his mantle in twain, and bestowed half upon the shivering wretch at his feet. That very night the Lord Jesus appeared to him in a dream surrounded by angels, having on His shoulders the half of the cloak which Martin had given to the beggar. Turning to the angels, Jesus said: “Know ye who hath thus arrayed Me? My servant Martin, though yet unbaptised, hath done this.” After this vision Martin received baptism and remained steadfast in the faith. At length, desiring to devote himself wholly to Christ, he begged permission to leave the army. The Emperor Julian, who deemed the Christian faith fit only to form souls of slaves, reproached him for his cowardice, for he was yet in the prime of life, being forty years of age. “Put me,” exclaimed Martin, “naked and without defence in the forefront of the battle, and armed with the Cross alone I will not fear to face the enemy.” Early on the following morning the barbarians submitted to the emperor without striking a blow, and thus was victory vouchsafed to Martin’s faith and courage, and he was permitted to leave the army. The illiterate and dauntless soldier became the fiery apostle of the faith, a vigorous iconoclast, throwing down the images of the false gods, breaking their altars in pieces and burning their temples. Of the Roman gods, Mercury, he said, wasmost difficult to ban, but Jove was merely stupid[13]and brutish, and gave him least trouble. Martin was a democratic saint, of ardent charity and austere devotion. Later in life he founded the monastery of Marmoutier, which grew to be one of the richest in France. His rule was severe; when his monks murmured at the hard fare he bade them remember that cooked herbs and barley bread was the food of the hermits of Africa. “That may be,” answered they, “but we cannot live like the angels.”

On the 16th of March 1711, some workmen, digging a tomb for the archbishop of Paris in the choir of Notre Dame, came upon the walls, six feet below the pavement, of the original Christian basilica over which the modern cathedral is built. In the fabric of these walls the early builders had incorporated the remains of the still earlier temple of Jupiter, which had been destroyed to give place to the Christian church, and among thedébriswere found the fragments of an altar raised to Jove in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar by theNautæ, a guild of Parisian merchant-shippers, an altar on whose foyer still remained some of the very burnt wood and incense used in the last pagan sacrifice. The mutilated stones, with their rude Gallo-Roman reliefs and inscriptions, may be seen in the Frigidarium of the Thermæ, the old Roman baths by the Hôtel de Cluny, and are among the most interesting of historical documents in Paris. The Corporation ofNautæwho dedicated this altar to Jove, were the origin of the Commune or Civil Council of Paris, and in later time gave way to the provost[14]of the merchants and the sheriffs of that city. Their device was theNef, or ship, which is and has been throughout the ages the arms of Paris, and which to this day may be seen carved on the vaultings of the Roman baths.

In the great palace of which these baths formed but a part was enacted that scene so vividly described in thepages of Gibbon, when Julian, after his victories over the Alemanni and the Franks, was acclaimed Augustus by the rebellious troops of Constantius. On a plain outside Paris Julian had admonished the sullen legions, angry at being detached from their victorious and darling commander for service on the Persian frontier, and had urged them to obedience. But at midnight the young Cæsar was awakened by a clamorous and armed multitude besieging the palace, and at early dawn its doors were forced; the reluctant Julian was seized and carried in triumph through the streets to be enthroned and saluted as emperor. He was lifted on a shield, and for diadem, crowned with a military collar. In after life the emperor-philosopher looked back with tender regret to the three winters he spent in Paris before his elevation to the imperial responsibilities and anxieties. He writes of the busy days and meditative nights he passed in his dear Lutetia, with its two wooden bridges, its pure and pleasant waters, its excellent wine. He dwells on the mildness of its climate, where the fig-tree, protected by straw in the winter, grew and fruited. One rigorous season, however, the emperor well remembered[15]when the Seine was blocked by huge masses of ice. Julian, who prided himself on his endurance, at first declined the use of those charcoal fires which to this day are a common and deadly method of supplying heat in Paris. But his rooms were damp and his servants were allowed to introduce them into his sleeping apartment. The Cæsar was almost asphyxiated by the fumes, and his physicians to restore him administered an emetic. Julian in his time was beloved of the Lutetians, for he was a just and tolerant prince whose yoke was easy. He had purged the soil of Gaul from the barbarian invaders, given Lutetia peace and security, and made of it an important, imperial city. His statue, found near Paris, still recalls his memory in the hall of the great baths of the Lutetia he loved so well.

The so-called apostasy of this lover of Plato and worshipper of the Sun, who never went to the wars or travelled without dragging a library of Greek authors after him, was a philosophic reaction against the harsh measures,[16]the bloody and treacherous natures of the Christian emperors, and the fierceness of the Arian controversy. The movement was but a back-wash in the stream of history, and is of small importance. Julian’s successors, Valentinian and Gratian, reversed his policy but shared his love for the fair city on the Seine, and spent some winters there. Lutetia had now become a rich and cultured Gallo-Roman city.

INthe Prologue toFaustthe Lord of Heaven justifies the existence of the restless, goading spirit of evil by the fact that man’s activity is all too prone to flag,—

“Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh.”[17]

As with men so with empires: riches and inaction are hard to bear. It was not so much a corruption of public morals as a growing slackness and apathy in public life and an intellectual sloth that hastened the fall of the Roman Empire. Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was content to administer rather than to govern and unwilling or incompetent to grapple with the new order of things.[18]For centuries the Gauls had been untrained in arms and habituated to look to the imperial legions for defence against the half-savage races of men, giants in stature and strength, surging like an angry sea against their boundaries. Towards the end of the fourth century Vandals and Burgundians, Suevi and Alemanni, Goth and Hun, treading on each other’s heels, burst through the Rhine frontier, destroyed the Roman garrisons and forts, and inundated Gaul. Two of these races stayed to form kingdoms: the Burgundians in the fertile plains of the Rhine; the Visigoths in Aquitaine and North Spain, whose aid the Romans werefain to seek to roll back the hordes of Attila’s Huns at Chalons-sur-Marne. This was the last achievement of Roman arms in Gaul, and even that victory was largely due to the courage of the Goths. In the fifth century the confederation of Frankish tribes who had conquered and settled in Belgium saw successive waves of invasion pass by, and determined to have their part in the spoils of Gaul. They soon overran Flanders and the north, and at length under Clovis captured Paris and conquered nearly the whole of Gaul.

The end of the fifth century is the beginning of the evil times of Gallic story. That fair land of France, “one of Nature’s choicest masterpieces, one of Ceres’ chiefest barns for corn, one of Bacchus’ prime wine cellars and of Neptune’s best salt-pits,” became the prey of the barbarian. The whole fabric of civilisation seem doomed to destruction. Gaul had become the richest and most populous of Roman provinces; its learning and literature were noised in Rome; its schools drew students from the mother city herself. But at the end of the sixth century Gregory of Tours deplores the fact that in his time there were neither books, nor readers, nor scholar who could compose in verse or prose, and that only the speech of the rustic was understood. He playfully scolds himself for muddling prepositions and confusing genders and cases, but his duty as a Christian priest is to instruct, not to charm, and so he tells the story of his times in such rustic Latin as he knows. He draws for us a vivid picture of Clovis, the founder of the French monarchy, his savage valour, his astuteness, his regal passion.

After the victory over Syagrius, the shadowy king of the Romans, at Soissons, Clovis was met by St. Rémi, who prayed that a vase of great price and wondrous beauty among the spoil might be returned to him. “Follow us,” said the king, “to Soissons, where the booty will be shared.” Before the division took place Clovis begged that the vase might beaccorded to him. His warriors answered: “All, glorious king, is thine.” But before the king could grasp the vase, one, jealous and angry, threw hisfrancisque[19]at it, exclaiming: “Thou shalt have no more than falls to thy lot.” The broken vase was however apportioned to the king, who restored it to the bishop. But Clovis hid the wound in his heart. At the annual review in the Champ de Mars near Paris, the king strode along the line inspecting the weapons of his warriors. He stopped in front of the uncourtly soldier, took his axe from him, complained of its foul state, and flung it angrily on the ground. As the man stooped to pick it up Clovis, with his own axe, cleft his skull in twain, exclaiming: “Thus didst thou to the vase at Soissons.” “Even so,” says Gregory quaintly, “did he inspire all with great fear.”

At this point of our story we meet the first of those noble women, heroic and wise, for whom French history is pre-eminent. In the first half of the fifth century St. Germain of Auxerre and St. Lew of Troyes, chosen by the prelates of France “for to go and quench an heresy that was in Great Britain, now called England, came to Nanterre for to be lodged and harboured and the people came against them for to have their benison. Among the people, St. Germain, by the enseignements of the Holy Ghost, espied out the little maid St. Genevieve, and made her come to him, and kissed her head and demanded her name, and whose daughter she was, and the people about her said that her name was Genevieve, and her father Severe, and her mother Geronce, which came unto him, and the holy man said: Is this child yours? They answered: Yea. Blessed be ye, said the holy man, when God hath given to you so noble lineage, know ye for certain that the day of her nativity the angels sang and hallowed great mystery in heaven with great joy and gladness.”

When on the morn she was brought to him again, he saw in her a sign celestial, commended her to God, and prayed that she would remember him in her orisons, and on his return to Paris, finding her in the city, he commended her to its people. Tidings came that “Attila, the felon knight of Hungary, had enterprised to destroy and waste the parts of France,” and the burgesses of Paris for great dread they had, sent their goods into cities more sure. Genevieve caused the good women of the town “to wake in fastings and orisons, and bade the merchants not to remove their goods for the city should have none harm.” At first the people hardened their hearts and reviled her, but at St. Germain’s prayers they believed in her, and our Lord “for her love did so much that the tyrants approached not Paris, thanks and glory to God and honour to the virgin.” At the siege of Paris by Childeric and his Franks, when the people were wasted by sickness and famine, “the holy virgin, that pity constrained, went by the Seine to Arcy and Troyes for to go fetch by ship some victuals. She stilled by her prayers a furious tempest and brought the ships back laden with wheat.” When the city was at length captured, King Childeric, although a paynim, saved at her intercession the lives of his prisoners, and one day, to escape her importunate pleadings for the lives of some criminals, fled out of the gates of Paris and shut them behind him.

The saint lived to build a church over the tomb of St. Denis and to see Clovis become a Christian. She died in 509, and was buried on the hill of Lutetius, which ever since has borne her name.

TOWER OF CLOVIS.TOWER OF CLOVIS.

“Her hope,” says theGolden Legend, from which we have chiefly drawn her story, “was nothing in worldly things, but in heavenly, for she believed in the holy scriptures that saith: Whoso giveth to the poor liveth for availe. The reward which they receive that give to poor people, the Holy Ghost had showed to her long tofore, and therefore she ceased not to weep, to adore and to doworks of pity, for she knew well that she was none other in this world but a pilgrim passing.”

The faithful built a little wooden oratory over her tomb, which Clovis and his wife Clotilde replaced by a great basilica and monastery which became their burial-place. All that now recalls the church, whose length the king measured by the distance he could hurl his axe, is the so-called Tower of Clovis, a thirteenth-century structure in the Rue Clovis. The golden shrine of the saint,[20]which reached thirty feet above the high altar, was confiscated by the Revolutionists to pay their armies, and what remains of her relics is now treasured in the neighbouring church of St. Etienne du Mont.

The conversion of Clovis is the capital fact of early French history. His queen Clotilde, niece of the Burgundian king, had long[21]importuned him to declare himself a Christian. He had consented to the baptism of their firstborn, but the infant’s death within a week seemed an admonition from his own jealous gods. A second son, however, recovered from grievous sickness at his wife’s prayers and this, aided perhaps by a shrewd insight into the trend of events, induced him to lend a more willing ear to the teachers of the new Faith. In 496 the Franks were at death grapple with their German foes at Tolbiac. Clovis, when the fight went against him, invoked the God of the Christians and prayed to be delivered from his enemies. His cry was heard and the advent of the new Lord of Battles was winged with victory.

There was a stirring scene that Christmas at Rheims, when Clovis with his two sisters and three thousand ofhis warriors marched through the streets, all hung with cloth of many colours, into the cathedral which was glittering with innumerable candles and perfumed with incense of divine odour. Clovis was the first to be baptised. “Bend thy neck, gentle Sicamber,” cried St. Rémi. “Adore what thou didst burn: burn what thou didst adore.” When the bishop was reading the Gospel story of the Passion, the king, thrilled with indignation, cried out: “Ah! had I been there with my Franks I would have avenged the Christ.”

The conversion of Clovis was a triumph for the Church: in her struggle with the Arian heresy in Gaul, she was now able to enforce the arguments of the pen by the edge of the sword. The enemies of Clovis were the enemies of the Church, and as the representative of the Eastern emperor, she arrayed him, after the defeat of the Arian Goths in the South, in purple and hailed him Consul and Augustus at Tours. Her scribes are tender to his memory, for his Christianity was marked by few signs of grace. He remained the same savage monarch as before, and did not scruple to affirm his dynasty and extend his empire by treachery and by the assassination of his kinsmen. To the Franks, Jesus was but a new and more puissant tribal deity. “Long live the Christ who loves the Franks,” writes the author of the prologue to the Salic law; and Clothaire I., when the pangs of death seized him in his villa at Compiègne, cried out, “Who is this God of Heaven that thus allows the greatest kings of the earth to perish?” Nor was their ideal of kingship any loftier. Their kingdom was not a trust, but a possession to be divided among their heirs, and the jealousy and strife excited by the repeated partition among sons, make the history of the Merovingian[22]dynasty a tale of cruelty and treachery whose every page is stained with blood.

Bois de Boulogne—Lac SupérieurBois de Boulogne—Lac Supérieur

In the ninth century a story was current among thepeople of France which admirably symbolises the fate of the dynasty. One night as Childeric, father of Clovis, lay by the side of Basine, his wife, she awoke him and said, “Arise, O king, look in the courtyard of thy dwelling and tell thy servant what thou shalt see.” Childeric arose and saw beasts pass by that seemed like unto lions, unicorns and leopards. He returned to his wife and told her what he had seen. And Basine said to him: “Master, go once again and tell thy servant what thou shalt see.” Childeric went forth anew and saw beasts passing by like unto bears and wolves. Having related this to his wife she bade him go forth yet a third time. He now saw dogs and other baser animals rending each other to pieces. Then said Basine to Childeric: “What thou hast seen with thine eyes shall verily come to pass. A son shall be born to us who will be a lion for courage: the sons of our sons shall be like unto leopards and unicorns: they in their turn shall bring forth children like unto bears and wolves for their voracity. The last of those whom thou sawest shall come for the end and destruction of the kingdom.”

Clovis, in 508, made Paris the official capital of his realm, and at his death in 511 divided his possessions between his four sons—Thierry, Clodomir, Childebert, and Clothaire. Clodomir after a short reign met his death in battle, leaving his children to the guardianship of their grandmother, Clotilde. One day messengers came to her in the palace of the Thermæ from Childebert and Clothaire praying that their nephews might be entrusted to them. Believing they were to be trained in kingly offices that they might succeed their father in due time, Clotilde granted their prayer and two of the children were sent to them in the palace of the Cité. Soon came another messenger, bearing a pair of shears and a naked sword, and Clotilde was bidden to determine the fate of her wards and to choose for them between the cloister and the edge of the sword. An angry exclamation escaped her: “If they are not to beraised to the throne, I would rather see them dead than shorn.” The messenger waited to hear no more and hastened back to the two kings. Clothaire then seized the elder of the children and stabbed him under the armpit. The younger, at the sight of his brother’s blood, flung himself at Childebert’s feet, burst into tears, and cried: “Help me, dear father, let me not die even as my brother.” Childebert’s heart was softened and he begged for the child’s life. Clothaire’s only answer was a volley of insults and a threat of death if he protected the victim. Childebert then disintwined the child’s tender arms clasping his knees—he was but six years of age—and pushed him to his brother, who drove a dagger into his breast. The tutors and servants of the children were then butchered, and Clothaire rode calmly to his palace, to become at his brother’s death, in 558, sole king of the Franks. The third child, Clodoald, owing to the devotion of faithful servants escaped, and was hidden for some time in Provence. Later in life he returned to Paris and built a monastery at a place still known by his name (St. Cloud) about two leagues from the city.

Clothaire himself had narrowly escaped assassination when allied with Thierry during the wars with the Thuringians. Thierry invited his brother one day to a conference, having previously hidden some armed men behind the hangings in his tent. But the drapery was too short, and Clothaire as he entered caught sight of the assassins’ feet peeping through. He retained his arms and his escort. Thierry invented some fable to explain the interview, embraced his brother and bestowed on him a heavy silver plate.

The fruits of kingship were bitter to Clothaire. Ere two years were past his rebellious and adulterous son, Chramm, escaped to Brittany and raised an army against him. Chramm and his allies were defeated, himself, his wife and children captured. Clothaire spared none. Chramm was strangled with a handkerchief, and his wife and childrenwere cast into a peasant’s hut which was set on fire and all perished in the flames. Next year the king took cold while hunting near Compiègne, fell sick of a fever and died.

Four out of seven sons had survived him, and again the kingdom was divided. Charibert, king of Paris, soon died, and yet again a partition was made among the three survivors. To Siegbert fell Austrasia or Eastern France as far as the Rhine: to Chilperic, Neustria or Western France to the borders of Brittany and the Loire: Gontram’s lot was Burgundy. Once more the consuming flames of passion and greed burst forth, this time fanned by the fierce breath of feminine rivalry. Siegbert had married Brunehaut, daughter of the Visigoth king of Spain: Chilperic had espoused her sister, Galowinthe, after repudiating his first wife, Adowere. When the new queen of Neustria came to her throne she found herself the rival of Fredegonde, a common servant, with whom Chilperic had been living. He soon tired of his new wife, a gentle and pliant creature; Fredegonde regained her supremacy and one morning Galowinthe was found strangled in bed. The news came to the court of Austrasia and Brunehaut goaded King Siegbert to avenge her sister’s death. Meanwhile Chilperic had married Fredegonde, who quickly compassed the murder of her only rival, the repudiated queen, Adowere. At the intervention of Gontram war was, for a time, averted, and Chilperic, by the judgment of the whole people, made to compensate Brunehaut by the restoration of her sister’s dowry. But Chilperic soon drew the sword and civil war again devastated the land. By foreign aid Siegbert captured and spoiled Paris and compelled a peace. Scarcely, however, had the victor dismissed his German allies, when Chilperic fell upon him again. Siegbert now determined to make an end. He entered Paris, and the Neustrians having accepted him as king, he prepared to crush his enemy at Tournay. As he set forth, St. Germain, bishop of Paris, seized his horse’s bridle and warned him that the grave he wasdigging for his brother would swallow him too. It was of no avail. He marched to Vitry and was proclaimed king of Neustria. After the proclamation two messengers desired to see him. As he stood between them listening to their suit he was stabbed on either side by two long poisoned knives: the assassins had been sent by Fredegonde. Chilperic now hastened to Paris and seized the royal treasure. Brunehaut’s son, Childebert II., a child of five, was, however, stolen away from the palace in a basket by one of Siegbert’s faithful servants and proclaimed king by the warriors.

But Fredegonde’s tale of blood was not yet complete. She soon learned that Merovée, one of Chilperic’s two sons by Adowere, had married Brunehaut. Merovée followed the rest of her victims, and Clovis, the second son, together with a sister of Adowere, next glutted her vengeance. “One day, after leaving the Synod of Paris,” writes St. Gregory, “I had bidden King Chilperic adieu and had withdrawn conversing with the bishop of Albi. As we crossed the courtyard of the palace[23]he said: ‘Seest thou not what I perceive above this roof?’ I answered, ‘I see only a second building which the king has had built.’ He asked again, ‘Seest thou naught else?’ I weened he spoke in jest and did but answer—‘If thou seest aught else, prithee show it unto me.’ Then uttering a deep sigh, he said: ‘I see the sword of God’s wrath suspended over this house.’” Shortly after this conversation Chilperic having returned from the chase to his royal villa of Chelles, was leaning on the shoulder of one of his companions to descend from his horse, when Landeric, servant of Fredegonde, stabbed him to death.

Thirty years were yet to pass before the curtain falls on the acts of the rival queens, their sons and grandsons, but the heart revolts at the details of the wars and lusts of these savage potentates. Gregory begins the fifth book of hisAnnalsby expressing the weariness that falls upon him when he recalls the manifold civil wars of the Franks.

Rue St. Jacques.Rue St. Jacques.

Let us make an end of this part of our story. By her son, Clothaire II., Fredegonde continued to dominate Neustria: Brunehaut ruled over Austrasia and Burgundy through her sons Theodobert II. and Thierry II. Battle and murder had destroyed Brunehaut’s children and her children’s children until none were left to rule over the realms but herself and the four sons of Thierry II. The nobles, furious at the further tyranny of a cruel and imperious woman, plotted her ruin, and in 613, when Brunehaut, sure of victory, marched with two armies against Clothaire II., she was betrayed to him, her implacable enemy. He reproached her with the death of ten kings, and set her on a camel for three days to be mocked and insulted by the army. The old and fallen queen was then tied to the tail of a horse: the creature was lashed into fury and soon all that remained of the proud queen was a shapeless mass of carrion. The traditional place where Brunehaut met her death is still shown at the corner of the Rue St. Honoré and the Rue de l’Arbre Sec. Thierry’s four sons had already been put to death.

In 597 her rival Fredegonde, at the height of her prosperity, had died peacefully in bed, full of years, and was buried in the church of St. Vincent (St. Germain des Prés) by the side of Chilperic, her husband, and Clothaire II. became sole monarch of the three kingdoms.

Amid all this ruin and desolation, when the four angels of the Euphrates seem to have been loosed on Gaul, one force was silently at work knitting up the ravelled ends of the rent fabric of civilisation and tending a lamp which burned with the promise of ideals nobler far than those which fed the ancient faith and polity. The Christian bishops were everywhere filling the empty curule chairs in the cities and provinces of Gaul. At the end of the sixth century society lived in the Church and by the Church, and the sees of the archbishops and bishops corresponded to the Roman administrative divisions. All that was best in the old Gallo-Roman aristocracy was drawn into her bosom, forshe was the one power making for unity and good government. From one end of the land to the other the bishops visited and corresponded with each other. They alone had communion of ideas, common sentiments and common interests. St. Gregory, bishop of Tours, was the son of a senator; St. Germain of Auxerre was a man of noble lineage, who had already exercised high public functions before he was made a bishop. St. Germain of Autun was ever on the move, now in Brittany, now at Paris, now at Arles, to crush heresy, to threaten a barbarian potentate, or to sear the conscience and, if need were, ban the person of a guilty Christian king. The bishop of Trèves, seeing the horses of some royal Frankish envoys grazing in the wheat-fields of the peasants, threatened to excommunicate them if they spoiled the substance of the poor, and himself drove the horses away.

By the end of the sixth century two hundred and thirty-eight monastic institutions had been founded in Gaul, and from the sixth to the eighth century, eighty-three churches were built. The monasteries were so many nurseries of the industry, knowledge and learning which had not perished in the barbarian invasions; so many cities of refuge from violence and rapine, where the few who thirsted after righteousness and burned with charity might find shelter and protection. “Every letter traced on paper,” said an old abbot, “is a blow to the devil.” The ecclesiastical and monastic schools took the place of the destroyed Roman day-schools, and whatever modicum of learning the Frankish courts could boast of, was due to the monks and nuns of their time; for some at least of these potentates when not absorbed in the gratification of their lusts, their vengeance, greed, or ambition, were possessed by nobler instincts.

Brunehaut, nurtured in the more cultured atmosphere of the Visigoth court of Spain, protected commerce and kept the Roman roads[24]in repair, founded monasteries and corresponded with Gregory the Great, who commended toher care the safety of his missionaries passing through her dominions to convert the Angles across the straits.

Chilperic, whom Gregory of Tours brands as the Herod and Nero of his time, plumed himself on his piety, was concerned at the blasphemies of the Jews, and forced on them conversion or exile at the sword’s point. He composed Latin hymns, and discussed the nature of the Trinity with Gregory and the bishop of Albi. He sought to reform the alphabet by the addition of new letters which corresponded to the guttural sounds in the Frankish tongue, and ordered that the old alphabet should be erased from the children’s books with pumice stone in all the cities of his kingdom, and the reformed alphabet substituted for it.

Among the wives of Clothaire I. was the gentle Radegonde, who turned with horror from the bloody scenes of the palace to live in works of charity with the poor and suffering, and in holy communion with priests and bishops. She was at length consecrated a deaconess by St. Medard, donned the habit of a nun, and founded a convent at Poitiers, where the poet Fortunatus had himself ordained a priest that he might be near her. Radegonde’s memory is dear to us in England, for it was a small company of her nuns who settled on the Green Croft by the river bank below Cambridge, and founded a priory whose noble church and monastic buildings were subsequently incorporated in Jesus College when the nunnery was suppressed by Bishop Alcock in 1496.

ST. GERMAIN DES PRÉS.ST. GERMAIN DES PRÉS.

St. Julien Le Pauvre.St. Julien Le Pauvre.

To St. Germain of Autun, made bishop in 555, Paris owes one of her earliest ecclesiastical foundations. His influence over Childebert, king of Paris, was great. He obtained an order that those who refused to destroy pagan idols in their possession were to answer to the king, and when Childebert and his warriors, seized by an irresistible fighting impulse, marched into Spain, and were bought off the siege and sack of Saragossa by the present of the tunic of St. Vincent, he induced the king to found the abbey and church of St. Vincent (St. Germain des Prés), to receivethe relic. In Childebert’s reign was begun on the site of the present Cathedral of Notre Dame a splendid basilica, so magnificently decorated that it was compared to Solomon’s Temple for the beauty and the delicacy of its art. During this great outburst of zeal and devotion another monastery was established and dedicated to St. Vincent, which subsequentlybecame associated with the name of the earlier St. Germain of Auxerre (l’Auxerrois).

A curious episode is found in Gregory’sChronicle, which is characteristic of the times, and proves that a monastery and church of St. Julien le Pauvre were already in existence. An impostor, claiming to have the relics of St. Vincent and St. Felix, came to Paris, but refused to deposit them with the bishop for verification. He was arrested and searched, and the so-called relics were found to consist of mole’s teeth, the bones of mice, some bear’s claws and other rubbish. They were flung into the Seine and the impostor was put in prison. Gregory, who was lodging in the monastery of St. Julien le Pauvre, went into the church shortly after midnight to say matins, and found the creature, who had escaped from the bishop’s prison, dead drunk on the pavement. He had him dragged away into a corner, but so intolerable was the stench that the pavement was purified with water and sweet smelling herbs. When the bishops, who were at Paris for a synod, met at dinner the next day, the impostor was identified as a fugitive slave of the bishop of Tarbes.

At the end of the sixth century we bid adieu to St. Gregory of Tours, gentlest of annalists. Courageous and independent before kings, he had a pitying heart for the poor and suffering, and bewails the loss of many sweet little babes of Christ, during the plague of 580, whom he had warmed at his breast, carried in his arms, and fed tenderly with his hands.

Clothaire II. was a pious king in his way, interested in letters, a munificent patron of the Church, but overfond of the chase and inheriting the savage instincts of his race in dealing with enemies. After quelling a Saxon revolt he is said to have killed all the warriors whose stature exceeded the length of his sword. Dagobert the Great, his son, who succeeded him in 628, was the most enlightened and mightiest of the Merovingian kings. He and his favourite minister, St. Eloy, goldsmith and bishop (founder of theconvent which long bore his name), are enshrined in the hearts of the people in many a song and ballad:—St. Eloy, with his good humour, his happy countenance, his eloquence, gentleness, modesty, wit, and wide charity; Dagobert, the Solomon of the Franks, the terror of the oppressor, the darling of the poor. The great king was fond of Paris and established himself there when not scouring his kingdom to administer justice or to crush his enemies. He was the second founder of the monastery of St. Denis, which he rebuilt and endowed, and to which he gave much importance by the establishment there of a great fair, which soon drew merchants from all parts of Europe. He was a patron of the arts and employed St. Eloy to make reliquaries[25]for the churches in Paris of such richness and beauty that they were admired of the whole of France.

Chaos and misery followed the brilliant reign of Dagobert. In half a century his race had faded into the feeblerois fainéants, degenerate by precocious debauchery, some of whom were fathers at fourteen or fifteen years of age and in their graves before they were thirty.[26]

In an age when human passions are untamed, the one unpardonable vice in a king is weakness, and soon the incapable, impotent and irresolute Merovingians were thrust aside by a more puissant race.

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