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CHAP. caused a new provost to be chosen, and sent to the scaffold those citizens who had been the most zealous for Marcel and the Navarrese. "They will do the same by you one of these days," exclaimed a fellow to the regent as he rode past the dead bodies through the streets of Paris. The Count of Tankerville drew his sword to slay the ruffian for his impertinence. "Let him be, handsome sir," said the regent, holding his hand; "people would not believe your reason for killing him, and the insurrection might recommence."

This caution sufficiently marks the character of Charles the Prudent or the Wise, who had learned how to deal with popular turbulence, dissemble indignation, and defer vengeance. Marcel was the first representative in France of those civic leaders, who, strong in popular support, boldly seized the government, defied the prince, and directed the energies of the State to compass what he considered its salvation. This is enough to procure his execration by the royalist, and his deification by the revolutionary historian. If ever the ambition or the usurped authority of such a man were to be pardoned, if not admired, it certainly was in the case of Marcel, who, when the king had been taken captive, numbers of the nobility brought off with him, and the rest defeated and dishonoured,-when not only the English, but the partisans of the King of Navarre, ravaged the country and compelled the townspeople to repair and to man the walls for defence,—and when the peasants were so exasperated, by the prohibition to defend themselves, and the helplessness of government or nobles to protect them, that they rose in madness to slay, burn, and destroy all around them,—it was the duty of a civic leader to stand up in such an epoch, endeavour to support the interest of his class, and give it due influence in the fiscal and political administration. Many had felt and undertaken this task in the cities of Italy and of Flanders; but none perceived the inexpediency,

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if not the impossibility, of one class of the body politic CHAP. permanently excluding or dominating over another. Had the three orders of the estates which met at Paris in the years of 1356 and 1357 worked together, recognised each other's rights, conciliated each other's prejudices, there might have resulted in France, as in England, the great compromise of a constitution, in which each class respecting its brethren and its rivals, all might have performed the duties and contributed the efforts that patriotism demands. But it unfortunately has ever been the characteristic of the Latin races for plebeian and patrician to proscribe each other; and this, unfortunately, seems as true in the nineteenth as it was in the fourteenth century. Marcel can therefore scarcely be blamed for not seeing what Petion in after days failed to perceive; and even seeing the necessity of an accord with the noblesse, he might have found these as impracticable as they proved 400 years later.

It was a peculiar characteristic of the Capets,-from Hugh their founder down to Philip the Fair, and even to his sons, that, far from favouring the pretensions of the nobles to crush the townsfolk, they, on the contrary, sided very generally with the towns. They became thus the founders, patrons, and protectors of the industrious classes; and thus their constant policy had considerable effect in inducing French towns to rely on the crown for the maintenance of their rights rather than upon their own autocracy or commune. The Valois, however, reversed all this. Philip scorned the middle class. He consulted his legists, wrung what money he could from his burgess subjects, but made no use of them in war or in council. Even John would not stoop to consult them, and left that source of power and influence to Charles of Navarre. With the accession of the Valois, therefore, came a severance between the crown and the civic classes, which awakened amongst them a spirit previously unknown in North France, however prevalent in

CHAP.

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Italy and the cities of the south. There arose a republican spirit, and a tendency to resist authority, not in defence of any principle or in pursuit of any fixed or legitimate aim, but with apparently a love of mere turbulence and anarchy.

It is startling, indeed, to find how closely one epoch of French history resembles another, and how, with an interval of centuries between, similar situations reoccur with similar causes, events, characters, catastrophes, and results. It is impossible to contemplate or narrate the period on which we are now entering without at once looking forward to 1789; the embarrassments of the crown and the administration bringing to an abrupt close a government which had been so long absolute and uncontrolled; the deputies of the several orders assembled undertaking at once to supersede the absolute government by taking power into their own hands; good and moderate men hoping to predominate, and conduct the reform so as to save at once the crown and the country; demagogues, at the same time, contriving to organise and to wield the power of the lower classes, manifested in insurrection first, in murder afterwards; princes of the blood flattering and favouring the popular passions, and trying to turn the ascendancy of the people and the demagogues to their own account; the nation, disgusted at these scenes of political turpitude and folly, diverted from them by the stern necessity of providing for the defence of the country against the foreign foe, this necessity producing a resuscitated respect for the authority of a sovereign, and leading the country and its opinions back to the very same point from which they started at the commencement of the revolution — the maintenance of absolute power.

* Philip of Navarre always protested against his brother the king's alliance with the citizens. He would never come to Paris, nor fraternise

Such is a sketch which

with the townspeople. These communes, said he, ont nul arret certain, no fixed object.-See Froissart and Secousse.

unfortunately applies to every attempt made by the French to establish their national liberties, and which is as true of the events of the fourteenth as of those of the eighteenth century.

The King of Navarre was greatly disappointed and incensed at the death of Marcel and his betrayal by the Parisians, and he resolved to punish them. He removed his own quarters from St. Denys, pillaging and burning the abbey ere he left, and posted himself at Melun, his sister Blanche surrendering to him the castle; the rest of his forces he despatched, under his brother Philip, to Mantes. They were thus masters of the Seine, which was important during a season of scarcity and famine. With the sums that the Navarrese had extorted from the regent and obtained from Marcel, he was able to retain the mercenary bands of soldiers, chiefly Hainaulters, Brabançons, and Walloons, who seemed to grow, not diminish, in number and importance. Strongly posted on either side of Paris, the King of Navarre then extended his sway over the north to the sea. He took Creil and other towns, as so many stages, or as a chain of connected fortresses, terminating in St. Valery, which he had occupied as a seaport. He also endeavoured to get possession of Amiens, and had won over to his interest some of the chief citizens; but the commonalty partook of the sentiments of the Parisians in distrusting the King of Navarre, so that his troops which had already occupied the suburbs, were driven from them, and those citizens proved to have favoured the king were decapitated.

He

Notwithstanding the overtures of the King of Navarre to Edward the Third, this prince entertained a profound mistrust of that unscrupulous chief. therefore declined breaking the truce, or leading a warlike expedition to the support of the Navarrese or the subjugation of France. He relied upon the efforts of the captive king, John, to bring about an

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CHAP. accommodation, which would release him, and to effect which the papal legates were making daily efforts. In addition to that section of the land of France which St. Louis had promised to cede to Henry the Third, Edward demanded Normandy, as well as Calais, in direct sovereignty; for he had adopted the same principle as the kings of France, that the kings of England could acknowledge no superior, and do no homage to any potentate. Before these conditions of peace, consented to by John, were brought to France, the King of Navarre and the regent had been reconciled. The former had lost the support of the townsfolk, and could only preserve that of the mercenary bands by large payments. The nobles and the regent had, moreover, had the advantage in several encounters. They had taken St. Valery, slew De Picquigny, and would have inflicted a signal defeat upon the Navarrese, had not the town of St. Quentin refused passage to the royal troops. The King of Navarre therefore agreed to another reconciliation, which, however, proved of no relief to the country, the bands which he dismissed from his service overrunning the land and pillaging the towns. The eastern provinces of Champagne and Burgundy, hitherto little visited by war, were tempting fields of pillage to the mercenaries. They burned Auxerre and Epernay; took the strong castle of Roucy, with the count in it; but, fortunately, the bands were always willing to ransom the nobles, or cede the castles which they captured, for money.

Early in 1359, a little before the truce was formally to expire, some of the French nobles, who were captive in England, were sent to France with the draft of the treaty. It was not in the regent's power to accept or refuse such conditions without the acquiescence of the two powers of the state the nobles and the town population. The King of Navarre joined in thinking that nothing could be done without the consent of the states.