CHAPTER XIIPARIS OF THE RENAISSANCE

THE CHURCHES OF SAINT ÉTIENNE-DU MONT AND OF SAINTE GENEVIÈVE IN 17TH CENTURY.Seepage 207.

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

Seepage 207.

JUBÉ IN THE CHURCH OF SAINT ÉTIENNE-DU-MONT.Seepage 193.

JUBÉ IN THE CHURCH OF SAINT ÉTIENNE-DU-MONT.

Seepage 193.

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 wasmuch 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 theflamboyantstyle 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 orjubéin 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 bithere 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.

CHURCH OF SAINT SÉVERIN.

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]

Bright talkers do the walls of Florence hold;Venetian damsels’ repartee is gay;The ancient ladies in their courts of oldWith merry gibe enlivened the long day.But whether she be Lombardese or Roman,Or, if you please, in great Genóa born,A Piedmont or a brilliant Savoy woman—The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.The belles of lovely Naples, so they say,In clever conversation take great pride;German and Prussian maids with chatter gayEntrance the swains that in those lands abide.Whether she live in Greece or Egypt, then,Or Hungary or other land adorn,A Spaniard be or dark-browed Castellan—The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.Heavy of speech are Swiss girls and Breton,The Gascon also and the Toulouse maid,Two chatterboxes from the Petit PontWould without effort put them in the shade.Whether in Calais or in fair LorraineThe maiden lives or greets an English morn,Whether she’s Picard or Valencienne—The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.

The belles of lovely Naples, so they say,In clever conversation take great pride;German and Prussian maids with chatter gayEntrance the swains that in those lands abide.Whether she live in Greece or Egypt, then,Or Hungary or other land adorn,A Spaniard be or dark-browed Castellan—The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.

Heavy of speech are Swiss girls and Breton,The Gascon also and the Toulouse maid,Two chatterboxes from the Petit PontWould without effort put them in the shade.Whether in Calais or in fair LorraineThe maiden lives or greets an English morn,Whether she’s Picard or Valencienne—The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.

Envoi

For sparkling wit, then, give the foremost prize,O Prince, to damsels who are Paris born.Though we may jest with bright Italian eyes,The Paris maiden puts them all to scorn.

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 orbourgeoisclass. 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.

CHURCH OF SAINT GERMAIN-L’AUXERROIS IN 1835.Seepage 193.TOUR DE SAINT JACQUES DE LA BOUCHERIE.Seepage 207.

CHURCH OF SAINT GERMAIN-L’AUXERROIS IN 1835.Seepage 193.

TOUR DE SAINT JACQUES DE LA BOUCHERIE.Seepage 207.

CHARLES VIII died without direct heirs and the crown fell to Louis XII, a grandson of that duke of Orleans who had played so sorry a part in the reign of Charles VI, the mad king, and who had been assassinated by the ruffians of John the Fearless. This change threw the reigning line into the hands of what is known as the Valois-Orleans family. Of that branch of the Capets the most brilliant monarch was Francis I, Louis XII’s successor, a son of his cousin, the count of Angoulême.

Three score years had passed after the fall of Constantinople when Francis I came to the throne, young, alert, intelligent, progressive. He was fond of literature and the arts, and the revival of ancient letters and the importation of Italian paintings and architecture roused him to vivid interest; he was ambitious and the discovery of America spurred him to claim a share for France; the aspirations of Emperor Charles V, urged him to dispute a rivalry which threatened his own career and the integrity of his kingdom.

Louis XII had been called the “Father of his People” because of the care with which he had nursed back to economic health the depleted forces of France which Louis XI had begun to restore. It is even told of him that he returned part of a tax after it had paid the demand for which it had been levied. Such a proceeding was unknown before, and it is small wonder that his subjects adored him. Francis reaped the benefit of his predecessor’s social and financial intelligence.

Of united national feeling there was more at the beginning of Francis’s reign than there ever had been, and power was more concentrated in the king than it ever had been. Feudalism with its picturesque and brutal individualism had been outgrown. With the disappearance of the need for fortified dwellings the rural strongholds of the nobility were modified into pleasantchâteaux, while their masters, not obliged to stay at home to be ready to fight quarrelsome neighbors, were free to join the king in Paris or at Fontainebleau. Thus there was formed for the first time a court consisting of more than the retinue necessary for the conduct of the royal household. For the first time, too, the nobles brought the women of their families to court, with the result that dress and festivities became more brilliant than ever before, and language developed a precision which marks this period as the beginning of the use of Modern French.

Francis himself wrote not badly and his encouragement of writers won him the title of “Father of French Letters.” Here is his tribute to the intelligent favorite of Charles VII.

EPITAPH ON AGNES SOREL[3]

Here lies entombed the fairest of the fair:To her rare beauty greater praise be given,Than holy maids in cloistered cells may share,Or hermits that in deserts live for heaven!For by her charms recovered France arose,Shook off her chains and triumphed o’er her foes.

Francis’s sister, Marguerite of Navarre, was equally enthusiastic and talented and gathered about her a notable group of writers. Her affection for her brother was extraordinarily tender. After his death she wrote the following poem, translated in Longfellow’s “Poetry of Europe.”

’Tis done, a father, mother gone,A sister, brother torn away,My hope is now in God alone,Whom heaven and earth alike obey.Above, beneath, to Him is known—The world’s wide compass is his own.I love—but in the world no more,Nor in gay hall or festal bower;Not the fair forms I prized before—But Him, all beauty, wisdom, power,My Savior, who has cast a chainOn sin and ill and woe and pain!I from my memory have effacedAll former joys, all kindred, friends;All honors that my station gracedI hold but snares that fortune sends;Hence! joys by Christ at distance cast,That we may be his own at last!

’Tis done, a father, mother gone,A sister, brother torn away,My hope is now in God alone,Whom heaven and earth alike obey.Above, beneath, to Him is known—The world’s wide compass is his own.

I love—but in the world no more,Nor in gay hall or festal bower;Not the fair forms I prized before—But Him, all beauty, wisdom, power,My Savior, who has cast a chainOn sin and ill and woe and pain!

I from my memory have effacedAll former joys, all kindred, friends;All honors that my station gracedI hold but snares that fortune sends;Hence! joys by Christ at distance cast,That we may be his own at last!

Francis founded the College of France in Paris for the study of classical languages, testimony to the influence that had seized the country after the southern expeditions of Charles VIII and Louis XII. Francis’s establishment provided merely for the maintenance of a faculty, and it was not until the next reign that the question of housing separate from any of the existing schools came up. It was not until the time of Marie de Medicis that the building really was provided. Since that time the college has been rebuilt twice, restored and enlarged until it is now an imposing pile rising on the Mont Sainte Geneviève near the Sorbonne. Its lectures which are intended for adults are free, and the institution is not a part of the University but is under the Minister of Education.

Francis established a government printing office and permitted the use of private presses though the books that issued from them were censored. There was a time, indeed, when it became evident that men were thinking for themselves and that untoward happenings were the result, when all printing of books was forbidden. Étienne Dolet, scholar, writer and printer, was one of those who suffered from the king’s inconstant mind. He was charged with heresy, tortured, hung and finally burned with his writings on the spot where his statue now stands in the Place Maubert.

This square is on the left bank, but the usual place for executions was the Grève in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Near the Halles was a pillory which Francis rebuilt a quarter of a century after the people had destroyed it. It was an open octagonal tower and the victims inside were placed on a revolving platform so that they might be exposed to the crowd below.

The gorgeous scene that was enacted when Francis made his formal entry into Paris after the death of Louis XII was indicative of the brilliance and extravagance of his whole reign. It was his superior magnificence that lost him the partisanship of Henry VIII of England whose eyes he over-dazzled at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. It was indeed well that he fell heir toLouis XII’s savings! The procession, according to the Austrian “special envoy,” was both “beautiful and gorgeous,” and Francis, arrayed in glistening armor, played to the gallery by making his handsome horse, white-and-silver decked, rear and prance so that his royal rider might display his horsemanship.

In the course of Francis’s prolonged contest with Charles V—a struggle in which he was even imprisoned at Madrid—he had many opportunities to see in Italy and Spain the art of a former time and the work of contemporary painters and sculptors as well. Not only did he send home many examples which were given him or which he captured or bought, but he invited to France Leonardo da Vinci, then an old man, Andrea del Sarto and Benvenuto Cellini. To the latter he gave a lodging in the Hôtel de Nesle, that left bank palace of which the Tour de Nesle was a part, on condition that he secured possession of it himself, as the king had previously made a present of it to the provost. Cellini armed his helpers and servants and defended his gift with such ferocity that the provost left him alone.

The king’s influence weighed heavily on the side of the humanist reaction against the austerities of art and life which had developed under the influence of an all-dominant church. The pendulum swung back and painters and sculptors chose less ascetic themes for brush and chisel. From Francis’s time on there was also a keen interest in portraiture.

A man of this king’s nature was not content to stay long in one place. When war was not making its demands upon him he was visiting all parts of his kingdom and spending no little time in the districts where hunting was good and where he built splendidchâteauxso that he and his retinue might be comfortably housed. Fontainebleau and St. Germain-en-Laye are the two best known, while thechâteau de Madridin the Bois de Boulogne, adjoining the town was a charming retreat from the noise of the city. Except for a small bit included in a restaurant this building is no longer in existence, but in the Cours la Reine on the right bank facing the Seine is the small “House of Francis I” which the king built at Moret in 1572, and which an admirer bought and removed to Paris in 1826. It is an exquisite example of Renaissance architecture.

During the peaceful moments of the reign, there was a craze for building and Italian architects were offered handsome inducements to exercise their talents on French soil. It was a French architect, however, Pierre Lescot, who pulled down the Great Tower, the oldest part of the Louvre, and designed that portion whichFrancis and his son, Henry II, built, the southwestern corner of the eastern quadrangle. Henry’s initial, combined with the “D” and crescent of Diane de Poitiers, are visible in many places. Francis’s signature was the salamander, whose lizard-like length fitted comfortably into many decorative schemes.

Below the Great Tower there must have been a bed of soft earth of some sort, for it was found to be almost impossible to fill the huge hole left when the Tower was demolished. The populace saw in the strange sinking of the material dumped into the cavity the fulfillment of a legendary threat that, the fortress being meant to stand forever, its fall would be marked by untoward happenings. In fact it was nearly three hundred years before modern engineering knowledge was able to stop the seepage that caused the trouble.

During one of the intervals of peace with Charles V the emperor visited Paris. Indeed it was the necessity for making elaborate preparations for his visit that brought about the rebuilding of the Louvre whose dilapidation had not been appreciated before. The emperor was met outside the eastern wall and presented with the keys of the city. At the Saint Antoine gate there was a triumphal arch and the cannon of the Bastille roared a greeting as the monarch passed

THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE, FOUNDED BY FRANCIS I IN 1530.Seepage 202.

THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE, FOUNDED BY FRANCIS I IN 1530.

Seepage 202.

HOUSE OF FRANCIS I ON THE COURS-LA-REINE.

beneath it. Farther on the procession stopped for the imperial guest to witness an allegorical play depicting the friendship of France and Germany. Over the Notre Dame Bridge, covered with ivy, Charles went to the cathedral and then to the palace of the Cité, where he supped. During his visit of a week he stayed at the Louvre, and was so brilliantly entertained that upon his departure he exclaimed, “Other cities are merely cities; Paris is a world in itself.”

The chief churches built in Francis’s reign were Saint Étienne-du-Mont (on the site of an earlier edifice) in which Sainte Geneviève’s ashes now rest, Saint Eustache, the church of the market people at the Halles, and the flamboyant tower of Saint Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. This tower is the last expression of the Gothic, while Saint Étienne and Saint Eustache show the Transition combination of Gothic and Renaissance.

Étienne Marcel’s Maison aux Piliers had been but a second-hand affair. By 1530 a new City Hall was imperative. Its corner stone was laid amid feasting on the open square with bread and wine for all comers and cries of “Long live the king and the city fathers!” This enthusiastic beginning did not foretell quick work, however, for eighty years elapsed before the building wasdone. Its style was the same that it is to-day except in the development of details.

Cellier’s Drawing of the Hôtel de Ville in 1583.

It was the old Maison aux Piliers that had seen the dinner given to Queen Claude by the city fathers on the occasion of her entrance into Paris after Francis’s accession. Louis XII’s third queen, Mary, an English princess, was the first royal lady whom the city fathers had ventured to invite to partake of their hospitality. The occasion had not been entirely successful, for so great a throng pressed in to the city hall to observe the unusual guests that the waiters “hardly had room to bring the food upon the tables.” The arrangements for Queen Claude’s entertainmentincluded precautions against such an invasion. When the great day came the provost of the Merchants and the lesser officials, clothed flamingly in red velvet and scarlet satin and followed by representatives of the guilds of drapers, grocers, goldsmiths, dyers, and so on, went to a suburb to meet their lady and act as her escort, and her majesty was graciously appreciative of all their attentions.

While the Renaissance, humanism and the discovery of the New World were exciting men to new interests they also did their part in promoting independence of thought. With ability to read the Bible in the original came questioning of previous interpretations. There grew up both within and without the Church a desire to reform it, and with Calvin and Luther there came into expression not only a protest against the present state of affairs but a formulation of a new belief. Rabelais and Montaigne in their vastly different ways worked toward the same end. The movement proved to be one of those appeals which spread like a flame when the air touches it. Rich and poor, noble and simple responded to the plea, and Francis found himself the ruler of people ready to fly at each other’s throats and clamoring for him to let loose the dogs of persecution.

Francis was a Catholic and condemned Protestantism in Francis, but in Germany he allied himself to the Protestant party against the emperor. Henry II (1547-1559), Francis’s son, did the same—and won some territory by the manoeuver—although he had strengthened his Catholic interests by marrying Catherine de Medicis, a niece of the Pope, and showed himself by no means friendly to the democratic ideas which the new religion fostered. His strength constantly was spent against the movement even to the end of his reign when he made an alliance for purposes of persecution with Philip II of Spain, husband of “Bloody Mary” of England. One of the first fruits of this union with the land of the Inquisition was the trial of a distinguished member of the Parliament, Anne du Bourg. Henry’s death merely interrupted the examination and du Bourg was burned on the Grève before the City Hall.

The Paris Protestants or Huguenots lived chiefly in the Faubourg Saint Germain on the left bank.

Henry’s chief exploit was the capture of Calais which had been in the hands of the English ever since the Hundred Years’ War, and whose loss meant so much to Queen Mary of England that she is said to have declared that when she died “Calais” would be found written on her heart.

The celebration in Paris of the capture of thelong-lost city was one of the greatest possible failures. The main festivity was to be in the evening at the Maison aux Piliers. It poured in torrents sufficient to put a literal as well as a figurative damper on any pleasure-making. When Henry arrived at the Place de Grève the salutes of artillery frightened his horses and he was almost thrown down as he alighted from his carriage. At supper the crowd was so great that it was almost impossible to get anything to eat. The main part of the program within the hall was a play by the poet Jodelle who has left an amusing account of the evening of “My Disaster.” There were twelve actors in his musical sketch, he says. Of these six were so hoarse that they could not be heard, and the remaining six did not know their parts. One of the characters, Orpheus, was to sing a song in the king’s praise so literally moving that the very stones followed the singer about the stage. But, alas, the property man had misunderstood his orders and instead of preparing two rocks (rochers) he had arranged two steeples (clochers). When the unfortunate author, who had a part himself, saw these unexpected constructions coming across the stage he forgot his own lines, so utter was his amazement and misery.

Henry’s restless reign left him little time to spend in Paris or to devote to its beautifying.Whenever he came to the city festivities of all sorts ran high and the citizens paid for it all, though their temper grew sullen as the demands and the power of the crown increased. Henry expected the city fathers to meet expenses which they, quite reasonably, classed as personal matters; for instance, a charge for the food and shelter and care of a lion, a dromedary and a jaguar, which had been sent to the king from Africa.

Beyond the strengthening of the right bank fortifications, some addition to the palace of the Cité, and the continuation of the new Hôtel de Ville and of Francis I’s Louvre Henry did practically no building. His “H,” sometimes interlaced with his wife’s “C” and sometimes with Diane de Poitiers’ initial topped by her crescent, is by no means so frequent in Paris as, for example, in Fontainebleau, and other suburbs. In the courtyard of the Palais des Beaux-Arts is the façade of the château d’Anet which shows the monogram, and is a beautiful example of renaissance architecture.

A needed charity was instituted by the establishment of a Foundling Hospital. So usual was it to dispose of unwelcome infants that cradles for their reception were placed in the porch of Notre Dame itself. The hospital proved not an entire success, for about a century later Saint Vincent de Paul found that sorcerers, beggarsand gymnasts were buying babies from the hospital at a franc apiece. His own foundation of a children’s home came from a chance meeting with a beggar who was breaking his purchase’s legs so that its wails might excite pity from passers-by.

Henry’s death was brought about by one of those tragic happenings that mar times of attempted gayety. Henry was marrying off his daughter and his sister for political reasons and he arranged a double wedding. The festivities included an elaborate supper in the Great Hall of the palace of the City and a tournament in the rue Saint Antoine. The king himself took part in the joust, by accident was mortally wounded by Montgomery, the captain of the Scottish guards, and died in the near-by Hôtel des Tournelles a few days after.

WHILE Henry II lived Catherine de Medicis was not conspicuous, Henry yielding rather to Diane de Poitiers than to his wife, but the queen-mother wielded a ruthless power over her three young sons who succeeded their father in turn. Through her, also, Italian pictures and books were brought in by their painters and authors, Italian architects transformed French buildings, Italian favorites filled the court, where they introduced the ruffs and padded trunks and soft crowned toques of Italian fashions. Paris streets, narrow as in the days when their Gothic houses were first built, widened into occasional squares meant to remind the queen of her southern home.

Francis II (1559-1560) was Henry’s oldest son, known to-day only as the husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, whom he married in Notre Dame when he was fourteen and she was sixteen. He came to the throne a twelvemonth later and during the one short year of his reign he was a tool in the hands of the ex-Italian family of theGuises of which Mary’s mother was a member. Throughout France quarrels and conspiracies were rife, all having for their basic reason differences in religion and the lack of tolerance which could not allow freedom of belief.

Of Francis’s reign as it concerns Paris there is nothing of interest except the fact that his wedding supper, like that of his sister a year later, was given in the Great Hall of the palace of the Cité.

Francis’s death gave the crown to his next younger brother, Charles IX (1560-1574), who was but eleven years old. During the fourteen years of his reign Catherine de Medicis ruled, first as regent and later in fact though not in name. Her methods were tell-tale of her nature. She favored Protestants or Catholics as the moment demanded, she promised and did not fulfil, she deceived, she ordered assassination, she depraved the morals of her own children. All the time civil war went on, pausing now and again but never entirely ceasing.

The most horrible event of the whole hideous contest was the massacre of the Protestants which took place on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1572. Catherine had arranged that her daughter, Marguerite of Valois, should marry Henry, King of Navarre, the leader of the Protestants. Whether this was done in thehope of bringing the opposing parties together, or whether the queen-mother’s intention was to decoy as many prominent Huguenots as possible to Paris it is impossible to say. The fact that Henry’s mother, Jeanne d’Albret, died in Paris a few weeks before the wedding, probably from poison-saturated gloves, would seem to lend color to the latter theory. So suspicious of evil were the Huguenots that it is said that one-half of Henry of Navarre’s moustache turned white from fear when he saw two prominent Catholics talking together a little while before the wedding.

Events proved that such suspicions were not groundless. The wedding was set for the seventeenth of August. On account of the difference between the religious belief of Henry and his bride, it took place in front of the cathedral in the Parvis or Paradise of Notre Dame. This was an open place raised above the level of the adjoining streets and railed from it. Marguerite was so unwilling to marry Henry that she refused her consent even up to the moment when the archbishop demanded it. Her brother, the king, met the emergency by seizing her head and bobbing it and the service went on as if she had answered a legitimate “I will.” After the marriage the bride heard mass in the cathedral while the bridegroom admired the bishop’s garden. Dinner followed at the bishop’s palace,and supper at the Louvre. On succeeding days there were balls, jousts, and masquerades.

Four days later Admiral Coligny, the head of the Protestants, was attacked by a paid assassin but not killed. This piece of news was brought to Charles IX while he was playing tennis on one of the courts at the eastern end of the Louvre.

On the night before St. Bartholomew’s Day the Provost of the Merchants was summoned to the Louvre and received instructions to close the city gates, to fasten the chains across the streets, and to arm the militia. At the appointed hour, or rather, owing to Catherine’s eagerness, at two in the morning, an hour before the appointed time, the signal was given on the right bank by the bell of the church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, facing the eastern end of the Louvre, and on the Cité by that in the clock tower on the palace. Admiral Coligny, who lived just north of the Louvre, was killed in his bed and his body thrown from the window to the pavement where the Duke of Guise kicked it.

“They told us nothing of all this,” says the bride, Marguerite of Navarre, who has left an account of her experiences. “I saw everybody in action, the Huguenots desperate over this attack; M. de Guise fearful lest they take vengeance on him, whispering to everybody. TheHuguenots suspected me because I was a Catholic, and the Catholics because I had married the king of Navarre who was a Huguenot. On this account no one said anything to me about it until evening, when being in the bedroom of the queen, my mother, seated on a chest beside my sister of Lorraine whom I saw to be very sad, as the queen my mother was speaking to some of them she noticed me and told me to go to bed. As I was courtesying to her my sister, weeping bitterly, seized my arm and stopped me, saying ‘Sister, don’t go.’ I was greatly frightened. The queen my mother saw it and called my sister and scolded her severely, forbidding her to say anything to me. My sister told her that there was no reason to sacrifice me like that, and that if they discovered anything they undoubtedly would avenge themselves on me. The queen my mother replied that if God so willed I should come to no harm, but, whatever happened, I must go, for fear of their suspecting something which would impede the outcome.

“I saw quite well that they were disputing though I did not hear their words. Again she roughly ordered me to go to bed. My sister burst into tears as she bade me good-night, daring to say nothing more to me, and I went away thoroughly stunned and overcome, without understanding at all what I had to fear. Suddenlywhen I was in my dressing room I began to pray God to take me under his protection and preserve me, without knowing from what or whom. Upon that, the King my husband, who had retired, summoned me to his room, and I found his bed surrounded by thirty or forty Huguenots whom I did not then know, for I had only been married a few days. They talked all night about the accident that had befallen the Admiral, resolving that as soon as morning came they would ask the king for revenge on M. de Guise and that if he would not give it to them they would take it for themselves. I still had my sister’s tears upon my mind and I could not sleep because of the fear she had inspired in me, though I knew not of what. Thus the night passed without my closing my eyes. At daybreak, the King my husband, suddenly making up his mind to ask justice from King Charles, said that he was going to play tennis until the King should awake. He left my room and all the gentlemen also. I, seeing that it was daylight, thinking that the danger of which my sister had spoken to me was passed by, overcome with sleep, told my nurse to shut the door that I might sleep comfortably.

“An hour after as I was still sleeping there came a man who beat on the door with hands and feet crying, ‘Navarre, Navarre!’ My nurse, thinking that it was the King my husband, ranat once to the door and opened it. It was a gentleman named Léran who had received a sword thrust in the elbow and a blow on the arm from a halberd, and who was still pursued by four archers who all rushed after him into my room. He, wishing to save himself, flung himself on to my bed. When I felt the man grasp me I flung myself out of bed, and he rolled after me still clinging to me. I did not recognize the man and I did not know whether he was there to attack me, or whether the archers were after him or me. We both screamed and we were equally frightened. At last, by God’s will, M. de Nançay, captain of the guards came. When he saw in what a state I was, though he was sorry he could not help laughing. He reprimanded the guards severely for their indiscretion, sent them away and granted to my request the life of the man who was still holding on to me. I made him lie down and have his wounds dressed in my dressing room until he was quite recovered. I had to change my clothes for the wounded man had covered me with blood. M. de Nançay told me what had happened and assured me that the King my husband was in the King’s room and that there would be no more disturbance. I threw a mantle over me and he escorted me to my sister, Madame de Lorraine’s, room, where I arrived more dead than alive. Just as I entered the antechamber, where the doors were all open, a gentleman named Bourse, escaping from the pursuit of the archers was pierced by a halberd-thrust only three paces away. I fell in the opposite direction into M. de Nançay’s arms thinking that the thrust had stabbed us both. When I had recovered somewhat I went into the small room where my sister was sleeping. While I was there M. de Mixossans, the King my husband’s first gentleman-in-waiting, and Armagnac, his first valet-de-chambre, sought me out to beg me to save their lives. I knelt before the King and the queen my mother to beg the favor from them and and at last they granted it to me.”

There is a story, probably untrue, that Charles, almost crazy with excitement took his stand at a window of the Louvre and shot down all the Huguenots he saw, shrieking “Kill! Kill!” For twenty-four hours the slaughter continued in Paris, ruffians and unprincipled men seizing the opportunity to kill for plunder and to rid themselves of their enemies. Paris streets literally ran blood and Paris buildings so echoed the cries of the dying that the king heard them in his own delirium of death.

When Queen Wilhelmina visited Paris in June, 1912, she placed a wreath at the foot of the statue of her ancestor, Admiral Coligny, which stands at the outside end of the churchcalled the Oratory, now Protestant, not far from the spot of his assassination.

Charles IX’s name is not connected with buildings or improvements in Paris, so overshadowed was he by his mother. He rebuilt the Arsenal at the eastern end of the city, and he furthered the sale and demolition of the great establishment of the Hôtel Saint Paul, whose breaking up had been begun by Francis I.

Catherine had left the Hôtel des Tournelles after the death there of her husband, Henry II. At the Louvre she found herself sadly crowded, for she had been obliged to give up her royal apartments to the young queen when Charles married, and, counting her daughters and daughter-in-law there were four queens with their retinues to be housed in the old palace. Near the church of Saint Eustache the dowager-queen selected a location to her fancy for the building of a new palace, but the ground was occupied by a refuge of Filles Pénitentes. With the entire lack of consideration for others peculiar to the powerful, Catherine had this establishment razed and its inmates removed to an abbey on the rue Saint Denis. The religious of the abbey, in their turn, were sent to the top of the Mont Sainte Geneviève, where they took possession of the old hospital of Saint Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, whose name still clings to the parish and the church.The construction for which all this moving gave place was a charming palace known as the Hôtel de Soissons of which nothing is left but a graceful pillar from whose top it is said that Catherine indulged in the harmless amusement of star-gazing. The palace was pulled down in 1749 to give place to the Corn Exchange, and that, in 1887, to allow the erection of the Bourse de Commerce.

Back to Index Next