Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1Walton, William
History
Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1
Walton, William
Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
"The amount of his property which was confiscated," says the historian
Félibien, "was estimated at twelve hundred thousand livres, which was
the produce, as well as the proof, of his pillaging; but this example
and that of several others of a similar kind did not serve to render any
more moderate those who have since had charge of the finances,--as
witness Macé de Manches, treasurer-changer of the king's treasury,
executed, like Pierre Remy, in 1331; Réné de Siran, director of the
mint, treated in the same fashion in 1333, and some others."
Louis X, Philippe V, and Charles IV, the three sons of Philippe le Bel
who reigned in succession after him, and who ended the elder branch of
the Capétiens, were even more unfortunate in their wives than in their
treasurers. These three Burgundian princesses, Marguerite, Jeanne, and
Blanche, were of an exceedingly dissolute character; the eldest and the
youngest resided in the abbey of Maubuisson and had for lovers two
Norman gentlemen, Philippe and Gaultier d'Aulnay. The king, Philippe le
Bel, being informed, caused the two Normans to be arrested, in 1314;
they confessed under torture, and were condemned to be flayed alive,
mutilated, decapitated, and hung up by the arm-pits. The two
princesses, after having had their heads shaved, were conducted to the
Château-Guillard, where they were most ingeniously persecuted. When the
husband of Marguerite ascended the throne, in 1315, as Louis le Hutin,
or the Quarreller, he disposed of his unworthy spouse by smothering her
between two mattresses, or, according to the local legend, strangling
her with her own long hair.
Neither Brantôme nor Villon gives the name of the sanguinary princess
who is said to have inhabited the Tour de Nesle, attracted handsome
young men passing by, and in the morning had them strangled and thrown
into the Seine, but romance or popular report has ascribed these doings
to Marguerite de Bourgogne, though it is certain that she never lived in
the Tour de Nesle. Other romances have designated Jeanne, wife of
Philippe le Long, as the princess celebrated for her amours with
Buridan, rector of the University in 1347; but this story is equally
unfounded, as she died in the Hôtel de Nesle in 1329, leaving behind her
a great reputation for gallantry, royal widow though she was. The Hôtel
de Nesle occupied nearly the site of the present Mint, adjoining the
Institute.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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