Compared with the Fields of May of olden days, where the conquering Franks and their bishops disposed of the people of Gaul like cattle, the national assemblies, held under the ordinance that Etienne Marcel had wrung from the crown--assemblies dominated by the industrious class which by its labor, commerce, trades and arts enriched the country while the royalty, nobility and clergy devoured it--the progress was gigantic. No less distinguished were the services of Etienne Marcel at this juncture against the foreign invader, who was advancing with rapid marches upon the capital of the land. Paris, originally circumscribed to the island that is washed by the two arms of the Seine, extended itself from century to century beyond its original cradle to the right and to the left, until under the reign of John II it had grown to a town of large proportions. The old part of the city, that which is bounded by the two arms of the river, continued at this time to be called the Cité and served as the headquarters of the clergy, whose houses seemed to cuddle under the shadow of the high towers of the tall church of Notre Dame. The Bishop of Paris had almost the entire Cité for his jurisdiction. On the right bank of the Seine and at the place where rose the thick tower of the gate of the Louvre, began the fortified premises of what was generally called the town. It was peopled with merchants, artisans and bourgeois, and it contained the square at one end of which stood the pillory, where malefactors were exposed or executed before taking their corpses to the gibbets of Montfaucon. The girdle of fortresses that surround Paris to the north extends from the thick tower of the Louvre to the gate of S. Honoré. From there, the wall winding towards the Coquiller gate, reaches the gate of Mont Martre, makes a curve near St. Denis street, continues in the direction of the gate of St. Antoine, and arrives at the Barbette gate, which is flanked by the large tower of Billy, built on the borders of the Seine opposite Notre Dame and the isle of Cows. The girdle of the ramparts, interrupted at this spot by the river, is resumed on the left bank. It skirts the quarter of the University, which is inhabited by the students and which has for its issues the gates of St. Vincent, St. Marcel, St. Genevieve, St. James and St. Germain. Thence it flanks the palace of Nesle and runs out into the tower of Philip-Hamelin, built on the left bank opposite the tower of the Louvre, which rises on the right bank. This vast enclosure which insured the defense of Paris was completed by arduous labors of fortification due to the genius and the prodigious activity of Etienne Marcel. He caused the ramparts to be equipped with numerous engines of war of the new kind that then began to come in vogue named _cannons_--tubes made of bars of iron held fast by rings of the same metal. By means of a powder recently invented by a German monk, these