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
When the young king attained his majority, in 1388, the former
councillors of his father, the petty nobles, or _marmousets_, as the
great seigneurs contemptuously called them, resumed the direction of
affairs, but, with all their prudence and ability, were quite unable to
restrain the prodigal wastefulness of the prince. The entry of the
queen, Isabeau de Bavière, whom he had married three years before, was
made the occasion of extravagant processions, pomps, diversions, and
mystery-plays in Paris, as was the marriage of his brother, the Duc
d'Orléans, with the beautiful Valentine Visconti, and the conferring of
the order of knighthood on the children of the Duc d'Anjou. When,
finally, worn out with dissipation, with the license of unlimited power
from the age of twelve, the king went mad, his uncles resumed the
regency and the marmouset ministry prudently sought safety in flight.
The Duc de Bourgogne, Philippe le Hardi, died in 1404; his son, Jean
sans Peur, wished to succeed to his father's authority in the State, but
found himself opposed at every turn by the Duc d'Orléans; the old Duc de
Berry interposed and effected a formal reconciliation; three days later
the Duc d'Orléans was assassinated in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple by the
bravos of Jean sans Peur, who did not fear to do murder on a prince of
the blood.
[Illustration: LOUIS XVI, WITH HIS FAMILY, IN THE LOGOGRAPHIC BOX AT THE
ASSEMBLY, WITNESSING HIS DEPOSITION; AUGUST 11, 1792. From a drawing by
Georges Cain.]
In the civil war which followed, the Parisians profited at first by the
concessions which were made to them in order to secure their
support,--open opposition to all new taxes, restoration of their old
free constitution, the right to elect their _prévôt_ and other officers,
to organize their bourgeois militia under officers elected by
themselves, even that of holding fiefs like the nobles, with the
accompanying privileges, provided they were well born, and of Paris. The
nobility, on the contrary, were even less disposed to pardon him for
thus seeking the aid of the populace than for having compromised the
seignorial inviolability by laying violent hands on a brother of the
king. The Comte d'Armagnac, father-in-law of one of the sons of the Duc
d'Orléans, placed himself at the head of the opposing party; both
parties made advances to the English to secure their aid on different
occasions, but it was the Armagnacs who fought Henry V at Azincourt and
sustained that disastrous defeat; the Duc de Bourgogne secured
possession of the queen and proclaimed her regent; negotiating first
with one and then with another, he finally ended by being assassinated
in his turn by Tanneguy Duchâtel, _prévôt_ of Paris, and other servants
of the dauphin, on the bridge of Montereau, at the confluence of the
Yonne and the Seine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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