Paris and Its Story

The mediæval scribe in the fulness of a divinely-revealed cosmogony is wont to begin his story at the creation of the world or at the confusion of tongues, to trace the building...

In the Prologue to _Faust_ the Lord of Heaven justifies the existence of the restless, goading spirit of evil by the fact that man's activity is all too prone to flag,--

At the head of the establishment of every Merovingian chief was his mayor, or major domus, who administered his domains and acted as deputy when his master was non-resident or a...

From 936 to the coronation of Hugh Capet at Noyon in 987, the Carlovingians exercised a slowly decaying power. The real rulers of France were Hugh the Tall and Hugh Capet,[38] g...

During the twenty-eight years of the reign of Louis VII. no heir to the crown was born. At length, on the 22nd of August, 1165, Adelaide of Champagne, his third wife, lay in chi...

Two epoch-making developments--the creation of Gothic architecture and the rise of the university--synchronise with the period covered by the reigns of Philip Augustus and St. L...

The court of Philip III., pitiful scion of a noble king, is associated with a dramatic judicial murder at Paris. Among the late-repentant souls temporarily exiled from purificat...

With the three sons of Philip who successively became kings of France, the direct line of the Capetian dynasty ends: with the accession of Philip VI. in 1328, the house of Valoi...

The occupation of Paris by the English was the darkest hour in French history, yet amid the universal misery and dejection the treaty of Troyes was hailed with joy. When the two...

Six centuries have failed to efface from the memory of the French people the misery and devastation wrought by the hundred years' wars, as travellers in rural France will know....

The advent of the printing-press and the opening of a Greek lectureship by Gregory Tyhernas and Hermonymus of Sparta at the Sorbonne warns us that we are at the end of an epoch....

"Beware of Montmorency and curb the power of the Guises," was the counsel of the dying Francis to his son. Henry II., dull and heavy-witted that he was, neglected the advice, an...

When the third of Catherine's sons, having resigned the sovereignty of Poland, was being consecrated at Rheims, the crown is said to have twice slipped from his head, the insent...

Louis XIII. was nine years of age when he came to the throne in 1610. For a time the regent, Marie de' Medici, was content to suffer the great Sully to hold office, but soon fav...

The century of Louis XIV., whose triumphs have been so extravagantly celebrated by Voltaire, saw the culmination and declension of French military glory, literary splendour, and...

Under the regency of the profligate Philip of Orleans, a profounder depth was sounded. The vices of Louis' court were at least veiled by a certain regal dignity, and the Grand M...

Crowned vice was now succeeded by crowned folly. The grandson of Louis XV., a well-meaning but weak and foolish youth, and his thoughtless, pleasure-loving queen, were confronte...

An inscription opposite No. 230 Rue de Rivoli indicates the site of the old Salle du Manége, or Riding School, of the Tuileries, where the destinies of modern France were debate...

There are few spots in Europe where so many associations are crowded together as on the little island of the Cité in Paris. In Gallo-Roman times it was, as we have seen, even sm...

As early as 1341 the Rue des Jongleurs was inhabited by minstrels, mimes and players. They were men of tender heart, for in 1331 two jongleurs, Giacomo of Pistoia and Hugues of...