lordly _évêchés_ which even now serve to remind us of their ancient beauty, though in some cases the civil arm has taken them over, and converted them into hôtels de ville. Then came the barbarian inroads, first of Vandals, Huns, Franks and the rest, next of Normans. These attacked, but could not destroy, or even permanently harm, the position of the city; and when the invaders had either gone their way or settled down in the land, new elements of strength and importance were added to the township: castles and strongholds were built up for the great men who had taken possession of the chief cities, and the great civil or feudal power of the dukes and counts began to exercise its jurisdiction side by side with the old-established influence of the Church. Then, as was notably the case at Le Mans and Troyes, the growing commercial importance of a town would force a communal charter from the seigneur; a burgher quarter would rise, quite as important as the quarter of the nobles and the clergy, and thus the city would become trebly strengthened, except, indeed, when, as was sometimes the case, one power resented the fancied encroachments of the other and made war upon its neighbours. [Illustration: THE QUAYSIDE, AMIENS] This power within itself was undoubtedly all to the advantage of the city; but it was fatal to the unity of the kingdom, since it cut France up into a mass of separate states, any one of which could, on the occasion of a quarrel with the sovereign--and these quarrels were rather the rule than the exception--fortify itself by means of its count, its castle and its city walls, and defy the royal forces at its pleasure. While cathedral cities in England were drawing closer and closer to the king as their head, and thereby sinking their own strength in the unity of the Crown, those in France were striving at a power apart from the Crown, or, rather, striving to maintain a power which the Crown had never yet been able to incorporate with itself. Thus a city of France has a much more varied, a much more individual history than has the sister city in England; a story less bound up as part of the great whole of the history of the French kingdom, more concentrated within its own walls, and therefore more tangible, if it be desired to study it irrespective of that whole history. This, then, is the story of its growth from almost pre-historic days. Whether, as an individual city, it flourished after the Middle Ages had fortified and strengthened it, or whether it fell into a state of quiet, picturesque and peaceful decay, depended of course upon particular circumstances, but enough remains to make of the general history of the French city a fascinating though almost inexhaustible study, only surpassed by the study of each town in its separate case. [Illustration: A STREET IN PÉRIGUEUX]