that moment a soldier of moderate height, but of extraordinary valour, named Gerbaut, followed only by five men as brave as himself, killed the first, hurled the others into the ditch, snatched up the ladders, and saved the city. Charles le Gros, who had made but little effort to succour his faithful subjects, treated with the Normans, and induced them to retire, upon promising to pay them seven hundred pounds’ weight of silver in the course of a few months. This cowardly composition, made by a king at the head of an army, excited the general disgust of the Franks. He allowed the Normans to pillage his finest provinces. He was deposed at the diet of Tibur, in 888, and died the same year in indigence, deserted by everybody. THIRD SIEGE, A.D. 1411. Paris became in after-ages the sanguinary theatre of civil wars, which, under the reign of weak princes, desolated the kingdom. These unhappy times commenced under the pusillanimous administration of Charles VI. The hatreds which divided the nobles broke out openly: France was divided into two factions, almost equally powerful,--that of the duke of Orleans, which was called the _Armagnacs_; and that of the duke of Burgundy, called the Burgundians. Almost all the Parisians were of the latter party. The first wore, as a distinctive mark, a white cross at right angles; the second, a red cross oblique, called the cross of St. Andrew. These two parties soon made cruel war upon each other. The Armagnacs marched towards Paris, the hopes of plundering that great city exciting the ardour and cupidity of the troops. Everything yielded to their first efforts: at their approach, most of the garrisons distributed in the neighbouring places sought safety in flight. St. Denis was the only city that defended itself for a few days. Jean de Châlons, prince of Orange, commanded in the place; the fear of its being carried by assault obliged him to capitulate; he marched out with his garrison, under a promise of not bearing arms for four years. The treachery of Colonel De Paysieux rendered the Orléanais masters of St. Cloud, and of the passage of the Seine above Paris. That city, entirely closed in on the north side, already experienced a scarcity of provisions; the troops spread about the environs daily perpetrated the most horrid cruelties. Houses of pleasure, villages, fields of corn, were all on fire; massacres and violences of every kind, the most horrible sacrileges, the most guilty excesses, were the sports of these pitiless destroyers. Among these brigands was Montagu, archbishop of Sens, who, instead of a mitre, wore a bassinet; for a dalmaique, a habergeon; for a chasuble, a steel gorget; and instead of a cross, carried an axe. Nevertheless, with the danger from without, the fury of the Parisians increased daily, excited above all by the fanaticism of the priests of the capital. All the pulpits resounded with declamations against the Armagnacs. The besiegers were excommunicated. The