From Paris: Its Sites, Monuments and History, compiled from the principal secondary authorities by Maria Hornor Lansdale, With an Introduction by Hilaire Belloc, Illustrated; Philadelphia: The International Press, The John C. Winston Co., 1898; pp. 43-73.
PARIS : ITS SITES, MONUMENTS AND HISTORY
43TO understand the development of the city of Paris it is necessary to carry the reader back to the historical origins of the Celtic tribe whose rendezvous it was, and from whom the name of the modern town has been derived.
As will be seen later in this chapter, the prehistoric remains which some other portions of France furnish in such abundance have been but rarely discovered in the territory of the city or of its suburbs, and even the rough memorials of Celtic barbarism, such as are studded over Wales and Brittany, are scarcely to be found in the neighborhood.
Our knowledge of the place and of its people can only be said to begin with the Roman invasion of Gaul under Cæsar, though he furnishes us with some clue as to the events immediately preceding his conquest.
What was the nature of the territory which this tribe of the “Parisii” occupied?
A modern traveller who looks over the town from the heights of Montmartre, or from the dome of the 44 Pantheon, on a clear day, sees before him a great plain, encircled on almost every side by distant and low hills, those on the south and west being nearer than those upon the north and east.
The extent of this great “basin,” as the geologists have called it, is larger than that occupied by any modern city, hardly ever less than twenty miles in diameter, in places far more. London itself, with its suburbs, would not fill the vast circumference. Paris occupies but the southern portion.
The river Seine enters this plain from the south-east, coming from the high land which separates Burgundy and Champagne, and which forms the main watershed of northern France.
The river turns through this plain in a great arc or bow (of which the cord is the southern range of hills), strikes the western heights where the suburb of Sèvres now stands, turns northward, skirts these hills for several miles, and finally escapes from the great plain by a wide gap, on the south of which stands the modern fort of Mount Valerian, and on the north the pointed hillocks of Enghien and Montmorency. It is by this gap that the Western Railway enters the plain of Paris, and a traveller who comes from Havre, Dieppe or Cherbourg, passes through it some twenty minutes before reaching the city. But it is so wide, and the hills on either side are comparatively so low, that it is difficult to distinguish the moment of entry into the plain.
45From the above description it will be apparent that the river Seine confines its great bend to the southern and western extremities of the plain. It is never very far distant from the hills on the south, and runs, as we have said, quite close under those on the west, so that any city growing (as a city must grow) round the waterway would be certain to lie on the southern side of the plain we have described, and this is, of course, the position which Paris occupies to-day.
While we have spoken of this great circle, or oval, as a “plain,” it must be noted that the surface of it is diversified by isolated ridges and hills, rising, in the extreme instance of Montmartre, to the height of three hundred feet or more. This is especially the case in the southern portion, where the city of Paris has arisen, and we will describe the appearance and situation of these lesser heights after having given some account of the original site or nucleus of the town.
A boatman rowing one of those light-draught vessels which, even before the Roman conquest, were plying a trade upon the Seine, if he were coming down stream, as did Labienus in his famous attack on the place, would have found his course following the great bend of the river, carrying him in a northwesterly direction, and leaving the southern hills at an increasing distance upon his left. After some miles of such a progress, just before he reached the northernmost portion of the great bend, and before the river turned southward to meet the hills again, he 46 would have noted three large islands lying in the stream, which here flowed between banks of from ten to twenty feet in height.
The first two islands he would have left on his right and passed, for they contained nothing but brushwood and marsh. They lay close up against the right bank of the river, and were uninhabited.
But the third island would have formed an excellent place to halt with his merchandise, for it was evidently a tribal centre of some kind.
It lay right in midstream, was probably surrounded by a stockade of wood and pointed beams, and within this could be discerned a number of Gaulish huts, round, with flat dome-roofs, made of wattled boughs and daubed with clay, dispersed in no very regular order, containing a population of a few hundred souls. On looking for a mooring-place at which to land, he would have found none upon the island,* for such an arrangement would have spoiled its powers of defense; but on the right bank, just opposite the island, he would have noticed that the bank had been shelved, either naturally or artificially, and that there ran, for a hundred yards or more, a sloping shore upon which boats could be beached.
Here he would land, finding probably a few of the local boatmen assembled, for the place seems to have had, even before the Roman conquest a guild of such 47 fellows. Crossing a wooden bridge lying immediately to the west of the landing-place, he would find himself in the Island of Lutetia.
This island is to Paris what the “Urbs quadrata” is to Rome, and what the City is to London. It is the sacred spot of the whole city, the nucleus round which was to gather, ring by ring, the Paris of History, till at last the little separate place appears, to those who do not know its story, like an insignificant accident upon the great map of the town, save that, even to the most casual observer, it would seem striking that in this little space should be crowded the ecclesiastical, administrative and judiciary centres of the capital, almost to the exclusion of any private houses.
But to return to our Gaulish boatman. Had he that curiosity which Cæsar attributes to his countrymen, he would have learned that the island was the stronghold and rendezvous in time of war of the Parisii. The old men (if the stranger is supposed to arrive just before the Roman invasion) would tell him that they could remember how this tribe had been chased from the north-east of Gaul by the Belgic confederation, whose frontiers lay close to their town; how they sought protection of the great tribe of Senones lying to the west, their kinsmen, and were granted this land which they now occupied, stretching all over the distant hills, and especially into the woods on the west of the islands.
The stranger, as he walked in the place, would 48 have noted such features as the following: The length of the island upon which he found himself was just more than half a mile; it was not much over a furlong in breadth, and even this space of less than fifty acres was not well filled. Towards the western extremity the houses failed altogether; part of the open space was devoted, presumably, to gardens; and beyond a narrow ditch lay two quite small islands — not one hundred yards in length — lying side by side, and bringing the total number of the group to five; two that is beyond the three which he had already noticed. Returning to the centre of the island, another wooden bridge would have been perceived, uniting the village to the left or southern bank of the river. This (he would have learned) connected the great road from the south with that which went north to Senlis, over the bridge by which he had entered. The two structures were probably in a line with each other, and the only regular street in the little place was that which connected them. Thus Lutetia formed a halting-place for many a traveller or messenger coming from the Loire and going to certain parts of the sea-coast, or to some of the northern cities, though it lay too far to the west to be on the main line of communication between the Rhone valley and the channel, which formed the principal road in Gaul. It must be remembered that the great bulk of communication with the sea, especially in earlier Roman times, centred upon the Straits of 49 Calais, and but few travellers in Gaul had occasion to pass through Paris in order to reach the narrow sea.
Now let us suppose our traveller to observe his surroundings, what would he have noticed?
From the level of the island little could be seen. On the south, within a very short distance of the river bank, rose a low but steep eminence, whose later Latin name was Mons Lucotetius. Down the side of this hill came the southern road to cross the bridge into the town.
On the north, at a distance of some miles, he might have caught the sharp outline of a steep hill — higher by far than anything surrounding it, and isolated in the plain.
If, however, he had climbed some fairly high building on the island, such as one of those wooden watch-towers which were raised in time of danger, he would have had on every side but that which was screened by the “Mons Lucotetius,” a very extensive view.
On the south-east side he would have looked up the river from which he had just landed. Perhaps he would have just barely caught a gleam of the Marne where it falls in to the Seine, three miles away. Then, as his gaze swept round to the south, he would have noted the rise of the heights that bound the plain in this direction, and would have marked a little river (the Bièvre) coming through them and falling into the Seine almost immediately beneath him. The 50 view due south would be masked, as we have said, by the hill on which the Pantheon now stands; but a little west of this he would again see the hills beyond all that wide level space which is now the Faubourg St. Germain, the Invalides and the Champ de Mars.
Here, as he looked to the south-west, he would see the Seine completing its great bend, and, very far away, turning suddenly to the right and to the north, to skirt the western hills. Between himself and those hills, however, from two or three miles away, he would notice a long, low ridge covered with a dense wood. It is now known as the Heights of Passy. It rose from the river-bank and ran northward, sinking into the plain at some little distance from that sharp hill of Montmartre, which would stand so clearly defined to the north of his position. If the day were clear he might see beyond this, very faintly, the heights of Enghien, where the river leaves the plain of Paris; but in hardly any conditions could he catch, on the extreme verge of the horizon, the low hills that bound it on the north. To the right of Montmartre more or less disconnected ridges and plateaus would be seen, growing lower and lower, until finally a perfect level completed the circle, and led the eye to the river again in the south-easterly direction, where it had begun its circuit.
From this description it will be seen that a kind of great half-oval, level district lay on the right bank of the river, dotted round with ridges and low, 51 isolated hills — a district some five miles from east to west — while from the islands to Montmartre, at its extreme northern point, would be about two and a half to three miles. It is upon this plain that the greater part of Paris has since been built, but at the time of which we speak it was a stretch of waste, swampy, unprofitable land, contrasting with the good, arable land on the other side of the river.
This northern flat was on the eastern side a mere marsh, becoming in winter a kind of large, shallow lake, while its western side (below the heights of Passy, spoken of above) was drained by a rivulet, to which a later age gave the name of Menil-Montant. It fell into the Seine just a mile and a half below the islands.
Through this northern flat the road to Senlis picked its way across the driest portion, namely, from the wooden bridge almost due north, till it passed just by the hill of Montmartre, to the east. It was the only sign of humanity in the malarious place, while the wooded hills to the south and west, though more beautiful, were equally lonely.
In the centre of a sparse hunting tribe there lay this little fortified island, a group of barbarian huts, a community of fishermen and hunters. It was destined to become the great and typical city of the west.
Where the boats are moored on the northern bank, the muddy shore, the Place de Grève (keeping the name of its origin) is to be the scene of the justice of mediæval kings, of the rise of the city government; 52 there the Hotel de Ville is to stand; and on the spot which a few Gaulish fishermen made their meeting-place a great horde of their descendants were to stand, waiting in the night of the 9th Thermidor for the call to arms which Robespierre refused to sign.
That distant wooded ridge in the west is to be crowned with the triumphal arch of Cæsar’s Parallel.
The marsh will breed an insurrectionary mass of men. It will be the quarters in later days of the crowds that achieved all the glories and that perpetrated all the crimes of 1793.
On that little island the great Cathedral of the middle ages will stand. A stone’s throw from it the Courts of Justice and the Parliaments, and finally the terrible Tribunal of the Revolution will sit where the ragged gardens are.
The hill to the south will be crowned by the most famous of universities; on its summit will be buried the two men who, more than any other pair, have made our modern era. That little lonely village will shake the world.
Let us now treat in some detail the story of the city, and especially of its outward aspect from the first known origins.
At the head of these lie, of course, the scanty geological evidences of prehistoric conditions. Although the region occupied by the City of Paris and 53 its surroundings is not rich in prehistoric remains, various burial-places and implements have been discovered in recent years in the Bois de Vincennes and at Varenne-Saint Hilaire; on the banks of the Marne and the Seine; at Paris, Meŭdon and Marly; at Saint-Germain en Laye, at Argenteuil, and near the mouth of the Oise at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine — all these yield incontestable proof that this district has been inhabited by man from the earliest ages.
To cite but one example — the Dolmen found at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine is a remarkably perfect specimen of these prehistoric buildings. When it was discovered, the stone at the sides and one belonging to the roof were still in their place; a vestibule six and a half feet square was separated from the tomb itself by a huge slab of rock, and this slab was pierced with a round hole, near which was found the circular stone which had served to close the opening. Beyond this were two tombs, their combined length measuring about twenty-nine feet and their width about seven. An upright stone placed across the centre divided them into nearly equal parts, while room was left for a narrow passage-way. This interesting monument was taken carefully apart and transported to the Chateau of Saint-Germain en Laye, where the great museum is housed, and it was set up in the moat.
In some of the burial-places discovered various implements and tools have been found. They are 54 made of flint and stag-horn, and comprise hatchets, harpoons, arrows, stilettos and swords.
With the Celtic conquest a new order of things was introduced. The conquerors brought with them a distinct advance in civilization. There are indications that they could irrigate the fields and that they could dig wells. Wooden bridges† were thrown across the Seine, connecting the island with the mainland, where they pastured their domestic animals on the left bank in the plain of Grenelle, in the Green Valley (Vanvert), and in the Pré aux Clercs. On the right bank the large swamp mentioned above stretched from about where the Military Hospital now stands as far south as the present Place de la Bastille, and from the boulevard de Belleville on the east to about the line of the Rue Saint-Martin on the west. The Canal Saint-Martin of our day would act as a drain down the very centre of the marsh, did it still exist. The fields bordering the left bank, on the other hand, were arable. They were probably planted in wheat, barley and hay, as Cæsar describes those which he saw along the shores of the Loire; while roads must have been opened, in order that the countrymen and farmers might convey their produce to the settlement confined within the narrow limits of the island. 55 The industries of this period were presumably confined to the manufacture of rough pottery and the spinning of wool for clothing, both of them purely domestic. It was left for Rome to introduce the centralized capital and the gangs of slaves which, after three centuries, proved her economic ruin.
The real history of Paris beings with the “Commentaries” of Cæsar, wherein, as he speaks of the collection of fishermen’s huts on the island in the Seine, he calls it Lutetia, clearly employing‡ a latinized form of the name by which it was already known. Strabo writes it Lucotocia, and Ptolemy Lucotecia, while the Emperor Julian, writing from the city to which he was so deeply attached, calls it Louchetia. Of these various spellings that employed by Cæsar is, however, the one commonly adopted, though it is worth noting that the hill of the University was known for centuries as “Mons Lucotetius.” The derivation of the name has been the subject of much research. Scholars have attempted to trace it to Celtic sources, and especially to the dialect surviving in lower Brittany, but no conclusive proof has been found to support any one theory.
The settlement on the Island of the Seine was at this time hardly a town, but rather the central district of a tribe — an arrangement found in many other Celtic 56 groups. When Cæsar attended the assemblage of the tribes of Gaul, convoked by him at Lutetia, its inhabitants formed a division of a clan or tribe called, by the author of the “Commentaries,” the Parisii, a name used to indicate the district which they occupied. He says of this tribe, “The Parisii are inhabitants of a tract bordering upon that of the Senones, with whom tradition says they were once allied.” This tract must have covered about the same extent of ground as that included in the ancient diocese of Paris before the year 1622, that is the entire department of the Seine, and a part of that of Seine-et-Oise.
The etymology of the name Parisii has been no less a subject of dispute than that of Lutetia, but in this instance the occupation of the inhabitants may serve us somewhat as a guide. According to Bullet’s Celtic dictionary, the word Bar§ or Par, in that tongue, signifies a boat. In lower Brittany the cargo of a ship is called the far or fard. The Celtic word par, then, signifying a boat, may well have produced that of Parisii, meaning boatmen; and it must be especially noted that the most ancient emblem of Lutetia is a boat, as may be seen by the very interesting carving which ornaments the base of one of the vaults of a roof in the ancient Palais des Thermes, on the left bank of the Seine; that same boat 57 also to-day indicates the city on her public monuments.¶ Thus the powerful association of the Nautæ Parisiaci — Parisian Boatmen — which, later on, we find playing so prominent a part in the affairs of the city, may be traced to a Celtic or Gallic origin. Cæsar must have found it completely organized, since his contemporary, Strabo, refers to the various products transported from the south by the Gauls, as much by water-ways as overland. Those fifty boats employed by Labienus to convey his army from Melodunum (Melun) to Lutetia, in order to make himself master of that town, probably belonged to the Nautæ.
This guild or association was the ancestry, no doubt, of that other which, in the reigns of Louis le Gros and Louis VII., was called Mercatores Aquæ Parisiaci, who, in turn, were the forerunners of the municipal body charged with the oversight of the navigation of the Seine and the water-carriage.
There is nothing more valuable as an object-lesson of the historical truth that the Roman Empire was transformed, and did not die, than the story of this association. It is one of a thousand continuities, but a striking one. At the same time it is worth noting that Paris, which (as we shall see) only becomes important at the close of the empire, is the typical transitional city just before the barbarian invasions.
58They had, just after the Roman conquest, a port of embarkation and disembarkation on that side of the island bordering on the wider arm of the Seine, which was always navigable. There their boats could be unloaded right in Lutetia. In the middle ages this port went by the name of Saint-Landry, that bishop having had an oratory, or possibly his dwelling there.**
In addition to these known facts we may fairly presume that the Nautæ must have had a central administration for the traffic on the river.
As we have said earlier in the chapter, the principal place for unloading was on the other bank of the Seine at the Grève, where later we find the Prévôté de l’eau established, out of which grew the municipal body of Paris.
These river tradesmen formed a powerful corporation, from whose number were chosen for a long period the magistrates charged with the conduct of the Government. It developed later into the Hanse Parisienne, that company of merchants which achieved such celebrity in the middle ages, the kernel of the College of Magistrates or Corps of the City of Paris.
In the time of the Lower Empire, in the reign of Posthumus, the northern faubourg developed to such an extent that it became necessary to establish a 59 market there. And in connection with this is a very interesting example of that continuity which is so marked a feature in the story of the town. This market has occupied for centuries exactly the same spot, and to-day the vast city uses it for its central Halles, and the Quai de la Grève must assuredly have been then, as it has been ever since, a port where merchandise, transported thither from the upper Seine, could be unloaded for the use of this place of exchange. When the southern suburb, situated near the line of the great road leading from Lutetia to Genabum,†† spread and increased in importance, still another quay was created, situated apparently on the southern bank of the river, on the spot which, ever since the middle ages, has gone by the name of Quai de la Tournelle, from the great tower erected there in place of one which had formed a part of the southern walls of defense constructed under Philip Augustus.
The chief settlement of the Parisii was situated, as has been already stated, on the largest island in the Seine, now forming l’Isle de la Cité. At the time of the Roman conquest it had made but little advance towards civilization. Though they had apparently submitted to the conqueror, the Parisii were loyal at heart to the national cause; for when, in the year 54, Vercingetorix summoned all 60 the people of Gaul to take part in the final struggle against the Romans, they, together with the neighboring tribes, undertook to intercept Labienus, one of Cæsar’s lieutenants, who, with four legions, was marching south, endeavoring to rejoin his commander. Deeming their town insufficiently provided with the means of defense, they burned it, and destroyed the bridges which connected it with the mainland. Then they proceeded to entrench themselves behind those marshes that extended along the Seine near Juvisy and the mouth of the Orge. After sundry strategic movements, the encounter finally took place probably at some spot lying between the modern villages of Ivry and Vitry, on the left bank of the Seine. After a fierce struggle the legions, moulded in a superior discipline, triumphed over the allied forces, and the latter were completely subdued.
The obstinate resistance of the Parisii drew down upon them the wrath of their conquerors, and Lutetia was ranked among the “Vectigal” or tributory cities; that is, in the lowest grade of conquered towns.
The assertions sometimes made that Cæsar took pleasure in strengthening and beautifying Lutetia, and that it was he who built the defenses on the mainland, to protect the northern and southern bridges (defenses afterward called Grand and Petit Châtelets), are without contemporary proofs. At the same time, in spite of the disadvantages under which she labored, in less than a century after Cæsar’s time, 61 the settlement of the Parisii, risen from her ruins, had become one of the great centres of water-carriage in the interior of Gaul. In the reign of Tiberius — that is, some time between the years 14 and 37 of our era, the Society of Nautæ, or Navigators, already spoken of, erected an altar to Jupiter on the eastern extremity of the island. The ruins of this altar were discovered in 1711, in the course of some excavations made beneath the choir of the Cathedral Church of Notre Dame. And here, even more than in the instances already mentioned, the characteristic of continuity appears; for within a few yards of the spot on which that altar stood, rose the high altar of the first Christian church, again, the present high altar of Notre Dame, is but a few feet to the west. This pagan relic appears, after more than 1700 years, to confound us with our Roman origin. On a stone set in the principal façade of this monument may be read the following inscription: “Under Tiberius Cæsar Augustus the Parisii sailors have publicly raised this altar to Jupiter, most good, most mighty.” We thus have most satisfying proof, by the way, of the existence of this Society in the time of Tiberius.
The next event of importance in the history of the city, of which we have any record, is the arrival, towards the middle of the third century, of Saint Denis with his two companions, a priest named Rusticus and a deacon called Eleutherius, charged with a 62 mission to preach the Gospel to the people of Lutetia. In Cæsar’s time the national — that is, the Druidical — religion was still in force. Augustus forbade its practice by Roman citizens, and in the reign of Claudius it had entirely disappeared. These missionaries of still another form of religion do not seem to have been well received by the people of Gaul, for Gregoire de Tours tells us that “under the Emperor Decius (249-251) Saint-Denis, sent to Gaul and made Bishop of Paris, having suffered many torments for the name of Christ, ended his earthly life by the sword.” (Hist. Francor., i., xxx.) It is worthy of note that the above reference constitutes the sole historical account of the death which gave Bayard his battle-cry and St. Just his repartee, and which produced so vast a mass of mediæval legend. During the ensuing century a number of emperors came to Lutetia, sometimes residing there, and it was now that the city began to issue from its obscurity and to take a prominent position in the world. It is with the end of Rome that the city destined to perpetuate the Latin idea in modern times becomes great.
Constantius Chlorus, Constantine the Great, and his two sons, Constantine the younger and Constantius, in turn lived in the capital of the Parisii. To the first-named is usually credited the erection of the Palais des Thermes, the ordinary residence of the Emperors.
63Julian, Constantine’s nephew, commonly called Julian the Apostate, spent the winters of the years 358 and 359 there, as well as a part of the year 360, and occupied the Palais des Thermes.
This prince was deeply attached to the place. He calls it his “Darling Lutetia.” Here he lived in great contentment, far removed from the troubling and dangerous life of the imperial court, surrounded by a little household of philosophers and scholars, steeped in the pleasant but misleading dream that the progress of the mystics and the tide of the Faith would be turned. One of this circle, the physician, Oribasius, edited a curtailed edition of the writings of Galen — “the first work,” says Chateaubriand, in his Etudes Historiques, “that was published in this city destined to enrich literature with so many masterpieces.” It is interesting to note that thus early in her history Paris is the chosen abiding-place of Julian and of his little coterie of pagan philosophers, and that her first book issues from such a place as her greatest men of the Revolutionary time would have delighted to honor. In his writings Julian speaks with enthusiasm of the climate of Lutetia, of her vineyards and fig trees; and — an opinion that should please the foreign ear to-day — he speaks, above all else, of the austere morals of her inhabitants, who, for the most part, were still pagans.
It was here that the Roman soldiers, refusing to obey the order issued by Constantius in 360, calling 64 them to the East, arrayed Julian in the imperial purple and invested him with the title of Augustus. Valentinian and Gratian also loved Lutetia, in the neighborhood of which the latter gave battle to Maximus in 383; and Maximus, when he gained the victory, celebrated his conquest by erecting a triumphal arch in Lutetia. Remains of this work have been discovered near the Church of St. Landry, in l’Isle de la Cité.
To turn again to the Palais des Thermes let us examine briefly that part of it which has been preserved to the present day. These vast ruins, among the most important in France, will serve to give us some idea of the extent and importance (relative to Lutetia) of the great building which dominated not only the city itself, but the approach to it from the south by the Roman road, which led through Genabum (Orléans) to the south of Gaul, and to Italy. Most of what is still standing is to be seen on the left as you go up the Boulevard St. Michel, that is, as you go out by the line of the old southern road just after crossing the Boulevard St. Germain. It is incorporated with the Musée de Cluny. Other portions have been found at various times beneath the level of the adjacent houses and streets. The palace probably extended west almost as far as St. Germain des Prés, that is, the large gardens of which we have spoken above stretched so far, a matter of nine hundred yards, and it was surrounded by a fairly dense 65 population. Remains of a great wall have been discovered south of the palace, and traced as far as the Rue Soufflot. The aqueduct, a description of which is given below, supplied the imperial baths with an abundance of pure water, and likewise fed the fountains in the palace and the adjoining neighborhood. It is this part that is still standing that has given the name, Palais des Thermes, to the whole building. Vetruvius states that in all Roman establishments the baths were found on the western side of the edifice, which is the relative position occupied by these ruins.
More than this, we can readily recognize the great apartments used for the warm and cold baths, the piscina or swimming-pool, the furnace and the reservoir, and trace the route of the aqueduct, which brought the water from Rungis, Paray, and Mont Jean, situated in the hill-country on the south.
This aqueduct was nineteen thousand metres, or about eleven miles, long; the water ran through a channel of about one yard square; along the slopes of the hills which skirt the valley of the Bièvre on the east; portions of it have been found near the chateau of Mont Jean, and at Fresnes, Bourg-la-Reine and Hay. At Arcueil it was necessary to cross both the valley and the river, and this was done by a great row of arches one hundred and fifty yards long by fifty feet high.
Ruins of this huge construction still exist, and portions 66 of the reservoir connected with it were discovered in the Rue Sainte Cathérine d’Enfers when the Rue Gay-Lussac was opened.
It is probable that this part of the imperial palace has survived almost intact, as during the early ages of Christianity, when the habits and customs of Romans still prevailed, this great bathing establishment was still kept up, and only abandoned at the time of the Norman siege of Paris in the ninth century, when the palaces, churches, and dwelling-houses situated around the city were destroyed by fire.
Indeed, we have here one principal instance of what we shall see in the next chapter to have been the case all over Europe, namely, that Rome and the life of Rome lingered on, though in decay, till after Charlemagne; that the nadir was not reached after the first invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries. It was the violent incursions of the ninth century, the “Darkness of the death of Charlemagne,” that brought our civilization to its lowest ebb.
History does not tell us the precise epoch to which Lutetia owes the palace on the left bank of the river, and the aqueduct connected with it. Julian’s name has been associated with it, but probably only because of his residence there, it being hardly likely that, in the course of his brief sojourns, he could have carried on building operations of such magnitude.
In the great apartment still standing we find the carving, before alluded to, which represents the prow 67 of a ship laden with merchandise, and may point to the Society of the Nautæ as having co-operated in the erection of the building.
Then behind the palace, south of it, that is, and right upon the southern wall, stood the citadel of Lutetia. It probably occurs to every student that this was a strange site for the stronghold of a city. Far from the centre, dominated by the high ground of the Mons Lucotetius, it would seem a bad place for any stubborn defense.
But this situation, like that of so many citadels in Roman Gaul, is a striking proof of what the Roman Empire had become. A huge and orderly body, having established its domination and its unity, the army (at least that part of it well within the borders) was the “occupation” of the cities. They feared no sieges. They took the most convenient, not the strongest, place for their residence, rather than their refuge. As a fact, when defense is actually needed again (as in the Norman siege), the old unity of Gaulish resistance becomes once more the true “arx Parisiorum.”
The route of the aqueduct described above lay between the two Roman roads of Montrouge and Arcueil, the former identical with the modern Boulevard St. Michel, and the latter the road from the south, with the Rue St. Jacques. After entering the city by means of the Petit-Pont, it crossed the Grand-Pont to the right bank and led off northeastwards to Senlis, following the line of the modern Rue de Faubourg St. 68 Martin and the Rue d’Allemagne. There are a few other points of correspondence between the ancient Roman city and Paris of to-day — as, for example, the great unfinished Church of Sacré-Cœur, standing to-day midway between the sites of the two heathen temples on Montmartre; the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, which follows the Roman road to the north; and the old roads leading off to the south-west, now known, the one as the Rue Lecourbe, and the other by its ancient name of Vaugirard; while, on the other hand, the Roman Grenelle and Issy road has disappeared, except for a short distance, where its name as well as its track have been preserved by the modern Rue de Grenelle — that is, it exists only between the Champ de Mars and the University.
The drain which runs in a westerly direction from the Place de la Republique, and, describing a half circle, enters the Seine near l’Avenue de Trocadero, follows the exact course of a stream of Roman and mediæval times, namely, that of Menil-Montant. Finally, the district lying south and west of the Luxembourg Gardens was the Roman Terra ad Fiscum Isciacensem — that is, its produce went to feed the public treasury.
The altar to Jupiter, already spoken of, in all probability formed a part of a heathen temple which was replaced by a Christian basilica when, under Constantine, Christianity was proclaimed the religion of the Empire. The other end of the island, the site 69 on which the Palais de Justice now stands, has been, since the fourth century (the period when Paris received the full municipal status), constantly occupied by a building of some sort devoted to the use of the governing body.
The date of the construction of the first boundary-walls has never been established, but it is known that by the middle of the fifth century the island was completely surrounded by them. Remains of a low Gallo-Roman rampart were found in 1847 in the course of the excavations conducted in front of Notre Dame.
On the right bank of the Seine, a region much more sparsely settled, traces of important buildings have likewise been discovered. Two burial-grounds lay in what would now be the neighborhood of the Rue Vivienne and the Palais Saint Jean. The great reservoir which supplied the public baths stood on the site of the Palais Royal, and was fed by an aqueduct which brought the water from the heights of Chaillot, while a Roman fleet charged with the sinecure of the defense of the Seine was stationed near Paris.
To the beginning of the fifth century is attributed the Episcopate of Saint-Marcel. He died about the year 436, and was buried on a height outside the city, Mons Citardus.‡‡ In the following century a 70 church was erected over his tomb, around which a settlement rapidly grew up called the Bourg St. Marcel, incorporated later into Paris under the name of Faubourg St. Marceau. And here, thirteen hundred years later, the turbulence that formed Danton’s army came to hear him and march with him from the Cordeliers.
Upon these few facts the meagre history of Roman Lutetia hangs. But while contemporary writing tells us so little, the inferences we can draw from archæology leave us free to form a fairly accurate picture of what the Roman city was like.
To view it, let us imagine ourselves in the fifth century, just before the Frankish conquest. Let us go to the heights on the south and look northward, reconstructing point by point that which we actually know was there. The impression is full and vivid.
We will suppose ourselves to be stationed at a point overlooking the valley of the Bièvre, some sixty feet above the Roman aqueduct of Arcueil, and a hundred yards or so behind it. Were we to follow the valley we would come to the Roman road of Mons Citardus (corresponding to the modern Rue Mouffetard), lined on either side with tombs. A little further away, on the eastern slope of Mons Lucotetius (Mont Ste. Geneviève), we see the Amphitheatre.
As a fact, the Amphitheatre in the fifth century had disappeared. Its stones had been largely used to build a new wall round the island, and the great building 71 whose remains lie beneath the Rue Monge, right in the University quarters of to-day, was a ruin before the Franks came to the city.
To the left of the Amphitheatre, and a little beyond it, may be seen the port of the Nautæ, just where the present Rue de Pontoise ends, in the Quai de la Tournelle. Mons Lucotetius cuts off a little of the view of the most important part of the city, as there stood the first Christian church, a basilica dedicated to Saint Stephen, built just after the reign of Julian the Apostate, and replacing a temple to Jupiter. It covered the site of the present Sacristy of Notre Dame, reaching nearly to the Presbytery. Factories and furnaces stand on the summit of the hill, while on the southern slope, facing us, is a burial-ground; on the west it is built up with dwelling-houses and some of the out-buildings of Julian’s palace, and nearby stands the reservoir supplied by the aqueduct of Arcueil, and the barracks of the garrison.
The palace gardens stretching off to the left, along the Seine, are bounded on the south and west by a wall, and on the north by the river. It is worthy of note that until the thirteenth century this enclosure remained unbuilt upon, and was called by a name indicating its origin, viz., Jardin or “Clos de Laas,” i. e., of the Palace.
Beyond the palace and Mons Lucotetius we see the white buildings of the city, standing out clearly against the green background of the fields which lie 72 between the Seine and the stream of Ménil-Montant. On the right, near the extremity of the island, rise the imperial statue on the quay of the Nautæ and the altars raised to Jupiter and the gods. Further to the left, facing the road that traverses the city, is the southern gate, and beyond it, on the far side of the island, the northern one. The forum, or marketplace, occupies the space lying between the two gates, while the administrative Palace — the Palais de la Cité — and, close by the northern boundary wall the prison, can be clearly traced against the fields of the northern bank.
Just where the street now runs to the Pont au Change, by the palace, the walls are pierced with a gateway, ornamented with columns, opening directly upon the river front. On this side the city overlooks a small arm of the Seine, filled in somewhere about the thirteenth century. The little island that separated it from the larger branch went, later on, by the name of Ile de Galilée.
Continuing still further to the left, we come first to the palace, then to the palace-gardens, and finally to the tower which guarded this western extremity of the city. Above it, and still more to the left, we can see the reservoir of the Passy aqueduct, behind which the green plain extends to right and left, bounded by the heights of Chaillot, Montmartre and Ménil-Montant, composed for the most part of meadow-lands and marshes, and crossed by roads 73 leading to the eastern, northern and maritime province. The little stream of Ménil-Montant gleams like a silver thread in the distance, reaching from the marsh on our right to the forest of Couvre on the left, that forest of which the Bois de Boulogne is the last relic. Mons Martis (Montmartre), on the horizon, is crowned by the temples of Mars and Mercury, by this time either deserted or used as Christian churches, and at its base is the northern burial-ground.
At this period the Roman Empire was falling into its transformation and decline, while from all parts the barbarian, who had long been passing into the happier plains of the south, came with increasing pressure. Still Paris continued to be a purely Roman city until very nearly the end of the fifth century.
The Franks are pushing forward in the north, the Saxons have landed in Britain; even Attila sweeps in that great cavalry charge over the west, but Paris is spared. Before this century, the fifth, came to a close however, the barbarian is within her walls, and in the next chapter we shall deal with the long twilight which fell upon her civilization, and which only broke in the dawn of the middle ages.
Footnotes
* There is some doubt on this. Some authorities believe the Port St. Landry to have been originally a Gaulish wharf.
† The Pont Notre Dame is thought to be identical with the northern one of these, though there is some uncertainty on this point. The southern one is known to be exactly where the Petit-Pont to-day unites the island with the left bank of the Seine.
‡ Carlyle’s guess in this matter, when he speaks of the “Mud-Town of the Borderers (Lutetia Parisiorum, or Barsiorum),” is of course based on nothing.
§ Let those who are Celtic scholars decide. Lavalleé assures us that the same root signifies “Border.”
¶ The triple prows which you may see on the lamp-posts of modern Paris is an emblem 1500 years old, and without a break of continuity.
** The Gallo-Roman ruins discovered in 1844, when the Rue de Constantine was opened, may have belonged to a forum or food market.
†† Orleans.
‡‡ “Mouffetard.”