In the middle of the sixteenth century, France was not the centralized, orderly, well-policed country which the traveler of the nineteenth century is so eager to visit, and which he leaves with so much regret. It was in name a monarchy; but unless the king were a man of resolute will, he became a mere pageant in the state. The nobility inherited much of the haughty turbulent spirit of their Frank ancestors, and despite—if not in consequence of—what Louis XI. had done, they still looked upon the sovereign as little more than the first among peers, primus inter pares, paying him the respect due to his position as their nominal superior; but resisting him when they pleased, and only kept in order by the power of rival barons. When Montluc summoned the mutinous nobles of the South to return to their allegiance, and obey the king, they exclaimed: “What king? We are the king. The one you speak of is a baby king: we will give him the rod, and show him how to earn his living like other people.” It was very much in this spirit that the house of Guise behaved toward Francis II. and his two successors.

France was divided into numerous provinces,[159] partially independent under their own governors and parliaments, and with hardly more sympathy between them than there is now between Belgium and Holland. In almost every province you heard a separate dialect: the Normans and the Gascons were mutually unintelligible, and the inhabitant of Brittany had as little in common with the dweller in Languedoc as the Sussex boor with his fellow-laborer in Picardy. The river Loire divided the kingdom into two parts—morally as well as geographically. Even to this day the traveler observes a difference between the people, their speech, their customs, and their dress, immediately he crosses that boundary line. Great part of the country north of the Loire had for centuries been governed by traditionary rules similar to our common law; to the south, the code of Justinian had never fallen into complete desuetude; and the forms—shadowy enough sometimes—of the Roman municipalities still existed. The former had a strong resemblance to England as it was at the close of the Wars of the Roses; the latter reminded the Italian traveler of his native land. On both sides of the river there was the same impatience of that central authority which the modern Frenchman worships. The provincial parliaments registered or rejected the king’s decrees at their pleasure, and the taxes were levied by order of their own estates; self-government in form more than in reality. The governor of many a petty castle would set at naught the king’s express orders.

Nothing has greater power to amalgamate the various parts of an empire, and smooth away differences, than good roads. Three (some reckon four) royal roads, passing through the whole length of France—the great highways constructed by the Roman conquerors of Gaul—were kept in tolerable condition, as the importance of such great arteries required; but the lateral communications were, with few exceptions, in a most unsatisfactory state. In winter, when the rivers overflowed their banks, or the snow lay deep, large towns within a few miles of each other were completely cut off from all intercourse. It often happened that one district was suffering from famine, while its neighbor had more than it could consume. The wines which in Anjou and the Orleannais sold for one sol the measure and even less, cost twenty and twenty-four sols in Normandy and Picardy. Sometimes this scarcity and variation in price may have been occasioned by foolish local restrictions upon the importation and exportation of provisions; but the more frequent cause was the want of branch roads—those which existed being often mere horse-tracks, and as impassable in bad weather as the famous road from Balaklava to Inkermann. Catherine de Medicis, “flying on the wings of desire and maternal affection,” went from Paris to Tours in three days.[160] Joan of Navarre, traveling with “extraordinary speed,” spent eighteen days on the road from Compiègne to Paris. It took eight days to carry the news of the St. Bartholomew Massacre to Toulouse along one of the best roads in France, and the same time to go from Mende to Paris. Thirty years later it took Coryat five hours to travel from Montreuil to Abbeville, a distance of twenty miles, his carriage being a two-wheeled cart covered with an awning stretched over thin hoops, not unlike that still used by our village carriers. In 1560 L’Hopital was twelve days going from Nice to St. Vallier (Drome), and he too was hurrying on as quickly as possible. Lippomano, the Venetian embassador, traveling on urgent business, could not exceed four leagues a day. These examples, taken from various parts of France, and from persons of different degrees of social rank, show decisively the difficulties of communication.

This had much to do with the isolation of various parts of France. In the sixteenth century nobody traveled who could help it. To journey from Paris to Toulouse, now a matter of a few hours by railway, was then a work of time and danger. Large forests were numerous—of twenty miles and more in circuit: there was one near Blois of not less than ninety miles. Here the brown bear, the wild boar, and the deer still roamed at liberty. In the forest of Landeac, the Viscount Rohan preserved a drove of six hundred wild horses. Wolves would occasionally issue from the forests, and ravage the country in packs, as they still do in Poland and Russia.[161] In 1548 one of these packs issued from the forest of Orleans, devouring men, women, and children, until the peasantry rose en masse to exterminate them.[162] But worse than these hungry animals were the brigands who found shelter “in the merry greenwood,” preying upon their neighbors, and especially upon travelers. One band of ruffians, five hundred in number, roamed the country, storming towns and castles, burning villages and farmsteads, pillaging, murdering, and committing fouler atrocities. Travelers rarely journeyed alone: they formed into a sort of caravan, sometimes escorted by soldiers, hardly less to be feared than the robbers themselves. If the adventurous merchant passed safely through forest and over heath, he arrived at an inn to find himself carefully classed. If he journeyed on foot, he could not dine and lodge like one who went on horseback. The dinner of the first was fixed by tariff at six sols, and the bed at eight; the latter paid respectively twelve and twenty. In many cases the traveler had to carry his bed and food with him, or he would have to go without.

The rivers, now so full of busy life, were rarely disturbed by oar or sail; and up to the reign of Charles IX. the merchants trading along the Loire were forced to combine into a hanse or league in order to protect their property from plunder and excessive toll. They entered into treaties with the riverain Rob Roys, paying an annual black-mail which saved them from still greater exactions.[163] It was rare to find a bridge without fort and bar which none could pass, by land or water, without payment of pontage.

The country was better cultivated than might have been expected from the rude implements employed; but then, far more than now, the fields were rarely divided by hedges. In Beauce, the traveler might journey for many a long mile through a fertile district, where the corn rippled in golden waves beneath the summer sun; but there was no plantation, scarcely a tree upon which to rest the weary eye. Few signs of life were visible from the highway: the peasants, for so many centuries the victims of foreign or domestic war, had wisely built their huts in the hollows and valleys, as far as possible removed from the routes of the brigands who composed the armies of those days.[164] Here and there a moated grange, or isolated farm-house, was visible, with its cluster of fruit-trees, a greener oasis in the surrounding plain; but it was enclosed with a high wall.

The lot of the agricultural population—of farmers as well as of laborers—was a hard one. Serfage still existed in many places, and the ploughman or the hedger could no more wander in search of employment, or higher wages, than the low-roofed church in which he was christened, where he was married, and beneath whose shadow his weary limbs would rest at last. Rent was usually paid in kind or in service. If in kind, it was a certain share of the produce, which in Brittany was a twelfth.[165] But the great influx of gold and silver consequent upon the discovery of America was gradually introducing money rents, which, however, were so variable and uncertain, that no average appears possible. In Auvergne, in 1514, we find it as high as seven sols an acre, and in 1568 as low as four deniers and a measure (setier) of seigle. Although the feudal superior was gradually passing into the modern landlord, serfage was so tenacious of life that it existed more than two centuries longer. Only two years before the outbreak of the Revolution the serfs of twenty-three communities belonging to the abbey of Luxeul refused to be emancipated, choosing to remain as they were rather than pay the moderate fine required for their enfranchisement. A few months later the serfs of Trépot had consented to pay the sum demanded by their lord, when the Revolution came and freed them gratuitously.[166]

The agricultural population had been almost untouched by that spirit of progress which had been felt in the great cities and towns, and had led the way to the revival of religion. Their condition was hardly better than in the days of Louis XII., when the farmer was at times compelled to plough his land by night, lest the tax-gatherers, who swarmed like locusts, should come and seize his cattle. The peasants in their remonstrance added piteously: “And when they are taken, we yoke ourselves to the plough.” Their houses were like the cabins still to be met with in the south and west of Ireland, and in the remoter parts of Scotland. In Brittany the traveler may still see many such dwellings—clay or mud-built, covered with turf or rushes from the neighboring pool. The beaten earth was the floor, a man could rarely stand upright beneath its low roof. In that single room, often windowless, the whole family huddled together. They were without the commonest comforts now rarely absent from the laborer’s cottage. The rate of labor was not high, and most of the payments were in kind. A laboring man received twelve deniers a day and a woman six: this was at a time when a dozen eggs cost eight deniers, a bushel of turnips four deniers, a fowl from two to six sols, a calf five livres, a sheep twenty-four sols, a fat pig three livres, and an ox, three or four years old, ten livres. The setier or twelve bushels of wheat sold for twenty sols, the same quantity of rye for ten, of barley for eight, and of oats for five. These are but uncertain data on which to calculate the purchasing power of a man’s wages, for at that time prices varied considerably more in different localities and from year to year than they do now.[167] Black unleavened bread—the “damper” of the gold diggings—formed the principal article of food among the poorer people, and was made of rye, barley, or buckwheat.[168] Maize appears to have been used more for cattle than for men. About thirteen years before the time of which we are treating, the poor of La Mans supported themselves during a famine upon acorn bread. The usual meat was pork or bacon—a diet which is supposed to have contributed to the virulence of the leprosy in earlier days, and hence a languayeur had been appointed, whose sole business it was to examine the pigs’ tongues for leprosy spots. The odious gabelle made salt so dear that the farmer had often to sell one-half of a pig to procure the means of pickling the other half.

The people of the sixteenth century were gross and unclean eaters, delighting in viands we should now relegate to the tables of the Esquimaux. Thus they would eat dog-fish, porpoise,[169] and whale, as well as herons, cormorants, bitterns, cranes, and storks. Champier saw on the table of Francis I. “a pudding made of the blood, fat, and entrails of the sea-calf.” Frogs[170] fricasseed, snails boiled, and tortoises stewed in their shells were among the “dainty dishes” of this period. To wash such coarse viands down the people drank so much beer that the tax on it produced two-thirds more than the tax upon wine. The beer was sweet, for hops (if introduced) were scarce; and it was “doctored” by the addition of aromatics, spice, butter, honey, apples, bread-crumbs, etc. A taste for unsophisticated liquors is one of the results of advancing civilization.

These were the times of sumptuary laws and other regulations to preserve the distinction of ranks, and fill the treasury at the expense of human vanity. Custom, quite as much as law, regulated the costumes of the different classes, from the silks and the scarlet robes of the nobles to the blue serge of the laborer. But on fête and gala days, which were more numerous than now, the variety of costumes was strikingly picturesque, especially where the inhabitants of different provinces met together. The tendency of modern civilization to bring every thing to one monotonous uniformity has robbed us of this variety. It still lingers here and there in France, where the women with honest pride cling to the costume peculiar to their calling, while the men have become lost in the common herd.[171] No bourgeois could build what sort of house he pleased; nor, when built, was he free to decorate it as he liked. Even the number of steps up to the door was regulated by law. The house might be painted with certain colors, but gilding was strictly prohibited.[172] In 1867 there is scarcely a mechanic so poor that his wife can not boast of a silk gown, but, three hundred years ago, no woman, below the rank of duchess, except “dames et demoiselles de maison” living “à la campagne et hors des villes,” could wear any silk except as trimming, and then only under certain restrictions, so that the “fashion” should not cost more than sixty sols for each dress.[173] Nay, worse than that, a fine of two hundred livres parisis awaited any woman who should venture to wear a vertugale or hooped petticoat more than an ell and a half round—a restriction which a modern house-maid would think very tyrannical. Although silk was not so scarce as these regulations would seem to imply, certain manufactures of it were so rare that historians record that Henry II. wore silk stockings at his coronation. Thirty years later such an article of dress was still regarded as an extravagant and wicked luxury.[174] The Ordonnance of Orleans (1560) forbade the use of perfumery among certain classes, who seem to have had no other resource but to shut up a particular kind of apple in their wardrobes in order to impregnate their dresses with its odor. Sumptuary laws regulated the meals. By the edict of January, 1563, Charles IX. forbade more than three courses, no course to consist of more than six dishes, each containing one kind of viand. The entertainer who infringed this impracticable law was fined 200 livres for the first offense, and 400 for the second; the guests who did not turn informers against their hosts were fined forty livres; while the unfortunate cook, who merely obeyed his master’s orders, was fined ten livres and imprisoned for a fortnight with only bread and water for his fare. For a second offense the penalty was doubled; and if he transgressed a third time, he was scourged and banished from the town. Experience has shown legislators the impossibility of restraining luxury by sumptuary laws; yet the statesmen of the fifteenth century may be excused for attempting thus clumsily to check the extravagant fashions of the day. Brantome describes, with all the minuteness of a modern reporter at a city dinner, the particulars of a banquet given by the Vidame of Chartres. The ceiling of the dining-hall, which was painted to represent the sky, suddenly opened, and clouds laden with dishes descended upon the tables. The same contrivance was used to remove the dishes. During the dessert an artificial storm poured down for half an hour a rain of perfumed water and a hail of sugar-plums.

One great social change took place about this period. “The women,” writes L’Hopital to De Thou, “are now seen boldly sitting down at table with the men.” Before that time, it was the custom for the husband only to sit with his guests, while the mistress of the house attended to the manner in which the table was served. Christopher de Thou, father of the historian, was the first person, not of royal or noble blood, who rode in a carriage in Paris. Until then there were only two in use at the court—the queen’s and that belonging to Diana, natural daughter of Henry II. Carriages were rarely employed for traveling purposes: the roads were, for the most part, too bad for vehicles much less rude than the country wains that bore the produce of the farm to market. Those who could not afford the pomp of litters rode on horseback: the ladies sometimes on a pillion behind a servant,[175] but frequently astride, like the men. Catherine de Medicis introduced the side-saddle. In 1571 a royal permission was granted for “coches à la mode d’Italie” to go from Paris to Orleans—a privilege soon extended to other cities of France “pour le soulagement de personnes.”[176] In 1562 forty-six post-horses were registered in Paris, the hire seems to have been twenty sols each a day.

The dispatches of Killigrew, embassador to the court of France about this time, present a striking picture of the misery and ignorance of the lower classes. On the 15th November, 1559, he writes: “It is very secretly reported that the French king is become a leper, and for fear of his coming to Chatelherault the people have (it is said) removed their children; and of late there be certain of them wanting about Tours, which can not be heard of, and there is commandment given that there shall not be any pursuit made for the same.” A horrible light is thrown on these last words by a letter of the 28th January, 1560: “The 20th of this present month there was a man executed here at Blois, who lately, with a companion, traveled abroad in the country to seek fair children, to use their blood for curing of a disease which, they said, the king had: alleging that they had a command so to do. The one of them used to go before to make search for them, and the other came after to ask if such a man had been there for such a purpose: whereupon the people made lamentation for their children.” It was of course only an impudent means of extorting money.

The population of France at the accession of Charles IX. has been variously estimated, but it probably did not much (if at all) exceed fifteen millions, of whom almost one-third lived in towns. Yet complaints of over-population were frequent; and La Noue, speaking of the multitude of inhabitants before the religious wars, says: “They swarm!” They paid in taxation a greater proportional amount than is contributed by their more numerous and fortunate posterity under the second empire. Finance was in its infancy, and taxes were levied so as to produce the greatest amount of vexation to the payer and the smallest result to the royal treasury. At the end of the century—forty years later than the period at which we have arrived—the duties and aids were farmed for 232 millions of livres, equivalent to £42,000,000 sterling.[177]

Taxes were imposed upon no regular plan, and whatever arrangement was made, it was liable to be broken through by the “good pleasure” of the king. This was especially the case in the reign of Francis I., whose subjects, when groaning under oppressive charges of tailles, taillons, aides, subsides, impôts, and gabelle, looked back and longed for the good old times of Louis XII. Francis squandered his income in the most reckless manner; every body plundered the national exchequer, especially his favorites and mistresses. So great were the expenses of the marriage (the nôces salées) of his niece Joan of Albret with the Duke of Cleves in 1541, that to make up the deficiency he not only extended the gabelle or salt tax to several of the southern provinces, but doubled it in those where it already existed, expecting that the returns would be doubled also. In this he was disappointed, and new sources of revenue had to be invented. The coinage was debased, raising the value of the silver mark from £165 to £185;[178] a multitude of offices was created, all to be had for money; judgeships were made venal, lotteries were established, additional décimes imposed on the clergy;[179] the churches were robbed of their ornaments of gold, silver, and precious gems;[180] loans were raised by means of rentes or stock offered for sale at the Hotel-de-Ville of Paris, and the citizens were expected to become purchasers. Eightscore thousand crowns were thus borrowed au denier douze; that is to say, at 8⅓ per cent. The superintendents of finance were bound to procure money, even if they had to borrow it on their own security; and, when all other means failed, and a large sum was wanted instantly for some royal caprice or some new mistress, a financier was hanged and his property confiscated. Such measures necessarily discontented every body and profited none but a few persons at court; yet by some means or other Francis I. contrived to leave four millions of livres in the treasury, which Henry II., aided by Diana of Poitiers, soon squandered. The new king took one important step toward financial accountability by dividing the kingdom into seventeen généralités, each of which was farmed at a very high rate.[181] Under his two successors, the government speculated in French vanity by making titles of nobility purchasable. Pasquier thought this an “inexhaustible source of supply,” but it does not appear to have made any large return to the treasury. The “deficit” became periodical, and to fill up the gulf the taxes (especially the gabelle) were augmented,[182] financiers were prosecuted and heavily mulcted, many useless offices were created on purpose to be sold, and new loans were contracted. Among other devices—all of them very startling to a modern chancellor of the exchequer—was a proposal to appoint 13,000 sergens, or baillies. Pasquier hopes this will not be done, for “it would eclipse the memory of the 11,000 devils spoken of in the time of our grandfathers.”

The taxation fell very heavily on the Tiers état, and particularly upon the agricultural classes. The towns-people, the bourgeoisie, were to some degree protected by charters and privileges, and had an organization of their own by which the taxes were levied. They were exempt from foreign garrisons, elected their own officers (with the exception of the provost of the merchants), enrolled a citizen guard, and had the right to barricade the streets and shut their gates, even against the king.[183] No charters or securities guaranteed the peasant from injustice. Michieli, writing in 1561, describes the oppression in some provinces (especially in Normandy and Picardy) as so excessive, that the peasantry were forced to abandon the country.[184] The burdens were the more severe and invidious, that while the seigneurs mercilessly exacted their rents, dues, corvées, customs, etc., they contributed nothing to the state beyond what they gave of their free-will as a gift. Clergy, nobility, soldiers, members of the king’s household, and of the high courts of parliament, school-masters, officers of finance, free cities (villes de franchise) like Paris, and noble cities (villes nobles) like Troyes, were all exempt; not that they did not contribute to the revenue, but only so much as they chose to assess themselves. In the reign of Francis I. the French clergy, with the consent of the pope, agreed to pay a décime, or one-tenth of their revenue, which in the next reign was doubled. At Poissy, in 1561, they entered into an arrangement to pay sixteen hundred thousand livres annually, on condition of their future exemption from all other taxes. Considering that they possessed about one-third of the landed and house-property in France, this was but a small contribution to the necessities of the crown. The yearly rental of the whole kingdom has been estimated, on what are indeed very vague data, to have amounted to fifteen millions of crowns, of which six belonged to the clergy[185] and one and a half to the king. The exports of corn, wine, salt, and wood were valued at twelve millions of francs, more than Spain received from her mines of Mexico and Peru.

The army and the navy are the great causes of expenditure in our days; but in the sixteenth century both were so insignificant that their burden was hardly appreciable. France has now about three-quarters of a million of men under arms, but in 1560 the army barely amounted to 20,000 men, and these were so scattered, and under so many local restrictions, that the crown could not collect 10,000 men without the aid of mercenaries. Although the main strength consisted in cavalry, the importance of infantry was beginning to be felt. They were long looked upon as a very inferior arm; indeed, the feeling is not yet extinct in some countries; but every improvement in fire-arms so increased the power of the foot-soldier, that far-sighted men began to see that the victory must ultimately remain with the general who could make the best use of his infantry. The artillery was rude and awkward; the guns were clumsily mounted, and the balls rarely fitted the barrel. With all these defects it must not excite surprise that on an average they could not be discharged more than once in five minutes. When fixed in battery, they might be trusted to breach the wall of a city or castle, where the object of the engineer seems to have been to expose as much as possible of his defenses to the fire of the enemy. The cannons were almost utterly useless in the field against a body of men in motion; but the noise they made proved at times as effectual in dispiriting the enemy as their accuracy of fire. The army was officered by the nobility: a commoner might rise to be a sergeant, but it was impossible for him to obtain a commission. It was partly on this ground of unpaid military service that the nobles claimed exemption from taxation.

The French navy existed but in name. When Francis I. was at war with England he brought twenty-five galleys from the Mediterranean into the Channel, the Genoese lent him ten vessels, and with others in his harbors he mustered a fleet of one hundred and fifty ships of large tonnage, and sixty small ones. One great ship of a hundred guns, called the Caracon, had been built, but it never put to sea, being burned in harbor. We are all familiar with the uncouth yet strangely picturesque forms of those ships, standing high out of the water, with their castles at each end, and looking as if a breath of wind would blow them over. They were slow and bad sailers, deficient in accommodation for their two crews—the soldiers to fight and the seamen to sail them. The navy was not quite so exclusive and aristocratic as the army; but if seamen worked the ship, landsmen as captains and admirals commanded it, as they did, until comparatively a late period, in our own service.

The clergy were the most wealthy body in the state. La Noue reckons one hundred episcopal and archiepiscopal sees in France, 650 abbeys belonging to the orders of St. Bernard and St. Benedict, all “beautified with good kitchens” and 2500 priories. Jean Bouchet has left a curious picture of the clergy at the early part of the century, and there are no grounds for believing that they had at all improved in the interval before his death in 1555. He complains that the candidates for holy orders possess all the qualities not wanted, and none that are. Of the cardinals and bishops he says, they ought to preach the Gospel, and be

Montluc, Bishop of Valence, declared in a sermon preached in 1559, that out of ten priests there were eight who could not read. We may charitably suppose that he exaggerates.

The clergy by no means dwelt together in unity, and their quarrels became such a nuisance that, in 1542, the bishops were commanded to put a stop to the practice of delivering abusive sermons from the pulpit. The order would seem to have been ineffectual, for, in 1556, the priests were forbidden to preach unless they had first submitted their sermons to the diocesan. This regulation may have been partly intended as a watch over heretical opinions; but in the same year the procurator-general issued an order of Parliament against all such as had indulged in “abusive language” in the pulpit. The fact is, that the sixteenth century was one of singular excitement in every respect. Society was in travail. The clergy shared in the general restlessness, and the press not being quick enough, they resorted to their pulpits to refute an antagonist, and preached sermons instead of writing leading articles. They spared nobody who attacked them, or did not support them. A friar of the order of Minims, Jean de Haas by name, preached in his Advent sermons (Dec., 1561) so violently against the edict of that year, and the king and queen-mother for sanctioning it, that the provost was ordered to arrest him “early in the morning,” and take him bound and gagged to St. Germains; but the citizens, immediately they heard of his capture, marched out in crowds to the royal residence, and, irritated with this “indignity,” as Pasquier terms it, demanded the preacher back. The king was forced to give him up, and Jean returned in triumph to Paris, “as if he were a great prince.” The next day he celebrated his deliverance by a solemn procession to the Church of St. Bartholomew.[186] At the beginning of 1572 Sorbin, the king’s preacher, declaimed violently against the king because he would not give immediate orders for murdering the Huguenots, and publicly exhorted the Duke of Anjou to undertake the task himself, holding out hopes to him of the primogeniture, as Jacob prevailed over Esau. But the heretics could be as violent as the orthodox. The Huguenot ministers poured the rankest abuse on what John Knox called “the monstrous regiment of women;” and some of them—unless they are greatly belied—even went so far as to preach regicide. The minister Sureau was arrested for saying that it was lawful to kill the king and his mother, if they did not accept the Gospel according to Calvin.[187]

The state of public opinion with regard to the clergy can be more easily detected in the amusements of the people than in the writings of scholars, or the acts of government. Before the Reformation there was a strong anti-papal feeling throughout Europe, which showed itself in the light literature of the day—the tales, the poetry, and the dramas with which all classes amused their leisure hours. For instance, in the tales ascribed to Margaret of Navarre, and in the grotesque romance of Gargantua, monks and the secular clergy are the chief victims. In the rude theatrical representations of this time, the abuses of the Church are dealt with most unsparingly. One of these was exhibited before the King of Navarre and his wife, the pious Joan of Albret, in the year 1558. In the first scene a poor woman is represented as at the point of death, and crying loudly for relief from her sufferings. The sympathizing gossips round her bed send off hastily for the parson, who goes through the usual religious ceremonial, but fails to alleviate her anguish. Then several monks appear—some bearing relics, others indulgences—none of which bring relief. She is next invested with the frock and scapulary of St. Francis, but this too fails to restore her to health. At length, after much good advice has been wasted, one of the bystanders says there is a stranger in the town who has a certain specific for the poor woman’s pains. He will guarantee a perfect cure; but the man is a homeless wanderer, who hides himself from the eyes of the world, flees the light of day, lives in obscure corners, and comes out at night only. The sufferer begs that he may be sent for, and after much trouble he is found. He appears in dress and gait like other men. Approaching the sick bed, he whispers something in the patient’s ear, places a little book in her hand, which he assures her is full of remedies for her disorder, and vanishes. And so the scene ends.

In the next, we find the woman restored to perfect health: her eyes sparkle with animation, and she can walk with ease. She announces her recovery, eulogizes the unknown physician, extols his remedy, and recommends it to the audience. She adds that she would willingly lend it, “but it is hot to the touch, and smells of fire and faggot.” However, if they desire to know the name of the remedy and of the disease of which she had been cured, they must find it out for themselves. She retired amid loud applause, and the spectators of that day found no more difficulty in solving the enigma than we do.[188]

The ritual and services of the Church were not free from superstitious usages. The more the substance of religion died out in their hearts, the more the clergy adhered to the forms. Thus not to fast on Friday was a heinous sin; and at Angers, in 1539, those who were found to have eaten meat on that day were burned alive if they remained impenitent, and hanged if they repented. The poet Clement Marot narrowly escaped burning for having eaten pork in Lent. “If any one eats meat,” says Erasmus, they all cry out: “Heavens! the Church is in danger; the world is overrun with heretics.” They punish every one who “eats pork instead of fish.” In 1534 the Bishop of Paris gave the Countess of Brie permission to eat meat on “meagre” days, but only on condition that she ate in private and fasted regularly every Friday. Brantome relates that, during a procession in a certain country town, one woman attracted peculiar attention by her fervor, even to walking barefoot. She then went home to prepare her husband’s dinner. The smell of roast meat attracting the notice of some priests, they entered the house and caught her in the act of cooking, for which she was sentenced forthwith to go in penance through the streets carrying the half-roasted meat round her neck. The morals of the clergy were very relaxed, and they would hardly have thanked Lippomano if they had read his doubtful compliment.[189] But this is a subject upon which it would be as superfluous as it would be disagreeable to enlarge.

The sixteenth century was an age of superstitions, the inevitable parasites of a debased religion, and often stronger than religion itself. Both Catherine and Charles IX. had their astronomers and alchemists; and an agreement is extant between the king and one Jean des Gallans, in which the latter promises to transmute “all imperfect metals into fine gold and silver.”[190] The early death of Charles is ascribed by Bodin to his having spared the life of the famous sorcerer Trois Échelles.[191] Catherine was so credulous as to believe that La Mole and Coconnas had compassed the king’s death by melting a waxen image of him before the fire, and they were particularly “questioned,” or tortured, as to whether they had not envouté Charles IX. A singular chain, or amulet, once worn by the queen-mother, has been often engraved.[192] Nostradamus was the great oracle of the age, and thousands visited the little town of Salon in Provence to purchase of him the secrets of the future. He is reported to have shown Catherine the throne of France occupied by Henry IV. This was shortly before the accident that befell Henry II., whose death the astrologer was supposed to have prophesied, in a barbarous quatrain.[193] Almanacs and prognostications of the future were forbidden to be published as “against the express command of God,” unless they had received the imprimatur of the bishop or archbishop, who thus enjoyed a monopoly of fortune-telling.[194] Strange visions appeared; the Wandering Jew was seen in many places, a tall man with long white hair floating over his shoulders and walking barefoot. Signs were visible in the heavens: fiery swords flashed across the midnight sky, and rivers flowed back toward their sources. Diabolical possession was common, men and women were turned into wolves, and prowled about the cemeteries. The witches held their sabbaths undisturbed by the thunders of a Church which took no steps to remove the general ignorance. It has always been the policy of Rome to keep men ignorant, that she may keep them slaves. The sorcerers whom the Senate of Toulouse held to trial in 1577 were alone more numerous than all other classes of criminals for two years before. More than 400 were condemned to perish by fire, and, most surprising! nearly all of them bore the mark of the devil on their person.[195] Gregory does not tell us whether they were all executed; but it is easy to conclude that people, accustomed to such sentences and such judicial massacres, could not have felt much sympathy toward a few wretched heretics burned or hanged for reviling the Bon Dieu.

A blundering sort of justice was meted out to criminals in those days, it being quite as probable that an innocent man would suffer as that the guilty would be convicted. But some one was punished, an example was made, and the law was satisfied. Occasionally special commissions were issued to try such powerful criminals as defied the ordinary courts of justice. The “grands jours,” or special assize of Poitou, was held under a guard of four hundred men, and lasted all the months of September and October. Twelve persons were beheaded for their crimes, one heretic was burned, and the houses of some gentlemen who had refused to appear were burned down.

Many of the punishments were grossly trivial and indecent, others were barbarously severe. All England rings with execrations if the agony of a convicted murderer is unnecessarily prolonged by the bungling of the hangman; but in the sixteenth century offenses were sometimes punished with a refined ferocity worthy of the kingdom of Dahomey. No code was mild three hundred years ago, but practices survived in France which the more merciful instincts of our law had banished from England. Traitors were scourged, their ears were cut off, and their tongues pierced with a red-hot iron, after which they were hanged or torn in pieces by horses. Highway robbers were condemned by a special edict (1534), to have their arms broken in two places, as well as their ribs, legs, and thighs;[196] they were then to be extended face uppermost on a wheel elevated on a tall pole, and “there they should remain to repent so long as our Lord should please to let them linger.” “If the criminals are favored,” says an English traveler, “their breast is first broken. That blow is called the blow of mercy, because it doth quickly bereave them of their life.”[197] Kindness to the weak, tenderness and commiseration even for the criminal are the slow growth of civilizing influences.[198] The pen almost refuses to describe how some women—Huguenot women—were on one occasion buried alive. They were placed, each in a box or coffin without a top but with bars across, after which they were lowered into a deep trench and the earth was thrown upon them. The executioner was a master (maître) in those days, and represented rather the sheriff than the Calcraft of 1867. He was a salaried officer of justice, not very far below the judge in rank. The office was frequently hereditary, and its emoluments great. At Carcassonne in 1538, his gloves for one execution cost at one time twelve deniers, and twenty at another. He was paid five sols for the tumbrel or hurdle on which the criminal was dragged to the place of execution; ten for hanging him, twenty for beheading him, and five for the pole on which the head was exhibited. For flogging a culprit round the town he received seven sols six deniers. For burning a heretic at Toulouse, the wood, straw, chain, turpentine, brimstone, etc., cost five livres six sols, with an additional couple of livres if the victim was burned alive.

The savage punishments of the age tended to brutalize the manners of the people, one evil thus fostering and reacting upon another. In the small town of Provins, now so famous for its roses, there lived one Crispin, who was accused of robbery and murder, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. As he passed for a Huguenot, the priests, up to the last moment, urged him to recant; but he remained firm—“si ne sçavoit pas bien lire ni écrire.” In due course he was executed, and the dead body left hanging on the gallows. A crowd of a hundred boys or more, and none over twelve years old, gathered round the spot; some of the more daring mounted the ladder, cut the rope and let the corpse fall. A cord was now fastened round the neck, another round the ankles, and the boys began to pull in different directions for the mastery. As the sides were pretty evenly matched, a truce was agreed upon, during which they got up a mock trial on the question, in what manner a Huguenot ought to be dragged to the voirie or dunghill. The juvenile court decided that “the said heretic should be dragged by the heels like a dead beast,” and were actually pulling the body to the Changy gate, when another gang of boys met them and insisted that the body should be burned. A fire was kindled into which the corpse was thrown, while a crowd of spectators looked on encouraging the boys by words and gestures. After the body had lain some time in the flames, it was again dragged out and thrown into the river, where a bargeman cut off an ear and wore it as a trophy in his hat.[199] Comment upon such an incident would be superfluous. It is a picture painted by a contemporary of a state of society that had not existed in Europe since the fall of Rome. The men of Provins who looked on approvingly while the boys were making a plaything of Crispin’s lifeless body, were the fathers of those who committed the atrocities of the Reign of Terror.

Under the Valois dynasty, the towns and cities of France were very much as they had been through the long period of the Middle Ages. During the last fifty years, the spirit of change and improvement has spread so rapidly, that, except in the remoter parts of the country, the traces of the old towns have almost disappeared. The towns were surrounded with high walls, such as may still be seen confining the Haute Ville of Boulogne-sur-Mer, or parts of York, Chester, and Norwich. The streets were narrow and winding, the houses tall, the successive stories sometimes projecting over each other, so as almost to exclude the sun. With the exception of the mansions of the nobles, and sometimes of the wealthier traders, the houses were built of wood—often straw-thatched, and with windows formed alike to exclude air and light. This was one cause of the frequent pestilences which ravaged Europe, and of the low average of human life. The mansions of the nobles and gentry still retained a semi-fortified aspect. They were entered by huge gate-ways, and few windows looked into the street. The shops of the traders resembled greatly the modern greengrocers’ or butchers’, in being without glazed windows, and open to the street as soon as the shutter was let down. Sometimes they were connected by a sort of arcade, still traceable in the Piliers des Halles, where the name remains while the thing has disappeared. These middle-class dwellings were often covered externally with slates, or the intervals between the timbers were filled up with bricks arranged in fantastic patterns. The external wood-work was often as exquisitely carved as the internal. A spacious staircase with massive balustrades occupied a disproportionate share of the house. The roof was so arranged as to show a gable to the street, and it often projected so far as to permit a small gallery to be built out of the top story, where the inmates might enjoy the fresh air under shelter.

There were no facilities for pedestrians: the roadways were unpaved (except in a few rare instances), and no smooth trottoir invited the curious or the idle to stroll and gaze at the shops. In wet weather the streets were impassable from mud, in hot and dry weather they were almost as troublesome from the dust and stench; for the road was the general receptacle of the rubbish of the houses, and the scavenger’s trade was in embryo. Drainage was unknown, and even in Paris there was only one sewer, namely that constructed by Aubriot in the reign of Charles V.

Churches and convents were numerous in every city and town, not unfrequently occupying one-half of their area. At Rouen there were forty convents and thirty-six parish churches, without reckoning the collegiate churches and the cathedral. Each city and town had its governor, who lived in the citadel or castle, which was generally so detached as to be secure when the town had fallen into the hands of the enemy. The well-known town of Boulogne-sur-Mer presents us with an easily accessible example of this arrangement.

In the middle of the sixteenth century the population of Paris was between four and five hundred thousand.[200] The walls were seven leagues in circuit, according to Corrozet; while Giustiniani (1535) says that a man could make the circuit in three hours’ easy walking, which is nearer Coryat’s calculation (1608) of ten miles.[201] It was surrounded by stone walls flanked by towers, and pierced by eleven gates, five on the south side and six on the north. The bulwark enclosing the northern part of the city started from the arsenal on the river, ran along the boulevards of the Bastille, St. Antoine, Temple, St. Martin, and St. Denis to the Place des Victoires, the Palais Royal, and the Louvre. On the south, it ran from the Pont de la Tournelle, behind the gardens of the college of Henry IV., across the streets of St. Jacques and Mazarin to the river at the Pont des Arts.[202] Houses even now were found in clusters beyond the Porte St. Honoré, on each side of the road as far as the present Barriers of Roule and of Chaillot. The Faubourg Montmartre was without the walls, along the line of the Chaussée d’Antin, and beyond the Temple the Faubourg St. Antoine was fast growing in size. Giovanni Capello writing in 1554 describes Paris as the largest city he had ever seen, and Coryat declares it to be well called “Lutetia (from lutum, mud), for many of the streets are the dirtiest and the stinkingest of all he ever saw.” It contained from three to four hundred houses of the yearly value of 6000 livres, two hundred of 10,000, one hundred of 30,000, and twenty at least of 50,000.[203] Every Wednesday and Saturday 2000 horses entered the city laden solely with poultry and game, all of which was sold in two hours.

The streets were dark, narrow, and winding, with a gutter running down the middle. In that part called the Cité the houses were tall and black, grim as prisons, and swarming with a squalid famishing population. Many of the streets were little wider than the curious rows or alleys in Yarmouth in which you can hardly turn a wheelbarrow. No lamps shed even a feeble light to guide the belated citizen. The tapers in the shrines at the street corners alone helped to direct his steps, if he chanced to be abroad without torch or lantern. It need hardly be said that the streets were very insecure, and acts of violence frequent. At intervals during the night, the watch, a company of armed men, went their round, but the noise they made and the torches they carried, were a warning to the evildoer to make his escape.

The clear waters of the Seine cut the city into two parts. The stately quays that now line its banks scarcely existed in the reign of Charles IX. The gardens of private citizens extended in many places down to the water’s edge. The river flowed beneath five bridges—one of which (the Millers’ or the Birds’ bridge) was for foot passengers only. It joined what is now the Quai de la Mégisserie to the Quai de l’Horloge, and was swept away, both houses and inhabitants, by the flood of 1596. Thirty-four houses stood on each side of the bridge of Notre Dame, and the street thus formed was the favorite promenade of the Parisians. The road was so wide that three carriages could pass abreast, and the rents were higher than in any other part of the city. Among the attractions of this street, Gilles Corrozet does not forget to mention the charming women who served in the shops.[204]

The modern traveler now seeks in vain for the ten islands which once interrupted the navigation of the Seine. That of Louviers, where Charles IX. used to bathe, and where he was once entertained with a naval fight, was united to the Quai Morland in 1847. The islands of Notre Dame and Vaches, composing the Isle of St. Louis, were once separated by a narrow ditch, which is now the Rue Poulletier. The Jews’ Island, where Jacques Molay was beheaded, was united to the Cité by Henry IV., and formed the Place Dauphine and the spur of the Pont Neuf, upon which the statue of the first Bourbon king still stands. The island of the Louvre, never little better than a mere sand bank, has been dredged away. The others have disappeared in the course of improving the navigation of the river, and, La Cité alone remains. This old quarter of Paris, the hot-bed of sedition, disease, and crime, has been so entirely metamorphosed by the hand of improvement, that travelers who knew it thirty years ago recognize it with difficulty.

Even at this time Paris was noted for its orfévrerie, its works in gold and silver being much sought after. The Rue St. Denis was the principal street; its shops and warehouses were famous all over Europe. Along that street kings and queens used to make their solemn entrance into the capital, when the merchants spent their money like water to decorate their houses in welcome of their sovereign. Between it and the Rue aux Fers was the Church of the Innocents, round which lay the famous cemetery, enclosed with dank and sombre arcades, filled with shops and stalls. They were the favorite resort of lawyers, and the rendezvous of fashion and intrigue, as the Cathedral of St. Paul’s was to the English court or city gallants in the reign of the Stuarts. The Rue Jacob (St. Jacques) was like Paternoster Row, full of shops plentifully furnished with books—diversos libros diversis artibus aptos.

The chief royal residence was the Louvre. The palace of the Tournelles—the Place Royale now occupies its site—was deserted after the accident to Henry II. The brick-fields which gave their name to the new palace of the Tuileries had disappeared in the previous century; and Catherine, having purchased the Marquis of Villeroy’s hotel with the adjoining property, gave Philibert Delorme instructions to commence that striking monument of her architectural taste.

A Venetian embassador reckons that there were at this time one hundred and thirty-two cities in France; but as he gives no definition of the term “city,” his calculation is of little service. He probably meant walled towns, to distinguish them from such as were unfortified. The approaches to the cities were not then marked by airy suburbs and scattered villas; but the cultivated country or forest ran close up to the walls. One ornamental erection alone serves to mark the great change that has taken place. Coryat has frequent occasion to describe the “fair gallows of stone,” which adorned the entrance to every town. Most of them remained until they were swept away by the Revolution.

The principal cities of France, after Paris, were Lyons, Orleans, Rouen, Bordeaux, and Dieppe. A paved causeway led from the capital to each of these places. Orleans was so large and beautiful that Charles V. called it the finest in France. It was populous and well-built, and its university contained 1600 students, “all men and not boys, as in the other seats of education.”

Rouen, sometimes called the second city in the kingdom, carried on a large trade, but it had not yet become the “Manchester” of France. It had four yearly fairs, and its quays were crowded with ships, sometimes as many as two hundred “small vessels” being there at the same time.[205] Then, as now, the poorer people drank no wine but “bira di pere e poma.” When Henry II. and Catherine visited Rouen in 1550, the citizens welcomed them with a remarkable ballet or masque. The banks of the Seine were transformed so as to present a picture of Brazilian life. There is an old wood-cut representing the curious scene. A meadow, sloping down to the river, is planted with trees, colored and trimmed so as to resemble those of South American forests. Parroquets and other gaily-colored birds are flying about them, and apes and monkeys clambering among the branches. The natives are represented by three hundred mariners of Rouen, Dieppe, and Havre, who, unencumbered with the slightest clothing, are hunting, dancing, and fighting with as much animation as the fifty “real savages just arrived from America.” Offensive as the exhibition would be to our tastes, it was otherwise in the sixteenth century. The queen was delighted “aux jolys esbatements et schyomachie des sauvages.”[206] A somewhat similar but less undraped scene was represented before Charles IX. when he visited Bordeaux in April, 1565. Representatives—most of them stage representatives—of twelve nations defiled before him, among them being some real “Canarians, savages, Americans, Brazilians, and Taprobanians,” each speaking in his native tongue. A picture was painted to perpetuate the memory of the scene.[207] Bordeaux was a wealthy city, its foreign trade extensive, its population so numerous that it could furnish 10,000 fighting men, and its parliament ranked next after Paris and Toulouse.

In 1560, Dieppe possessed a mercantile marine equal to that of all the rest of France. The population of the city amounted to 60,000, now it is about 20,000. The ship-owners of this “northern Rochelle” may compare with the Medicis. When John Ango entertained Francis I. at his chateau of Varengeville (now an undistinguishable heap of ruins), he received the king with a magnificence unusual even in those magnificent times. The rooms were decorated with costly hangings, curious furniture, Italian sculpture, and precious vases. Ango lent money and ships to the court, and often had as many as twenty armed vessels afloat, with which he ventured to measure strength with the King of Portugal. When the government of the Low Countries seized all the French ships in Flemish waters, Henry II. ordered Coligny to equip a fleet instantly and take summary vengeance. But the ports were empty, and there were no ships. “It is only the people of Dieppe,” said the admiral, “who can supply your majesty with a fleet.” The citizens, proud of the honor, offered to pay half the expense, and fitted out nineteen vessels of one hundred and twenty tons each. Ships of Caen went to Africa and the New World, bringing back so much more gold than could be exchanged, that the king permitted the merchants to have a mint of their own.

Lyons, owing to its fairs, possessed a stronger foreign element among its inhabitants than any other town in France. In 1575 Lippomano called it “one of the most celebrated cities;” and there was a proverb that “Lyons supported the crown by its taxes, and Paris by its presents.” The revenue contributed by the former city alone was so great, that when there was a talk of suspending the fairs, it was calculated that the change would involve a loss of ten millions of gold yearly. The immense business led to the appointment of special tribunals for the fairs, and a sort of clearing-house for bills of exchange. The principal merchants and bankers were Italians: Capponi, Gondi, Spini, Deodati. Lorenzo Capponi, one of the most munificent of his class, kept open house during each fair, and entertained more than 4000 persons. After the introduction of silk-growing, Lyons received a great development. The first mulberry-tree planted in the 16th century at Alais, about a league from Montelimart, was still alive in 1802. In this century all Europe was supplied with books from the presses of Lyons—no city, Venice perhaps excepted, circulating more. The names of Gryphæus and Dolet, Tournes and Roville, are familiar to all book-collectors. In the house of Henry Stephens (Etienne) every body spoke Latin from garret to cellar. The old city occupied the space between the Cours Napoleon and a line drawn from the Pont Morand to the Pont de la Feuillée, the Church of St. Nizier being about the middle. There were only two bridges—one over each river; and a small suburb on the right bank of the Saone, clustering round the cathedral and the Church of St. Lawrence. The superior comfort of the inhabitants may be estimated from the report of a traveler, who mentions as a circumstance worthy of note, that “most of their windows were made of white paper;” although in some of the better houses the upper part of the window was filled with glass.

The smaller towns of France have all undergone a change more or less great: even those in the agricultural districts have outgrown their walls. At Boulogne-sur-Mer the lower town consisted of two or three convents and a few fishermen’s huts clustered round the Church of St. Nicholas. A populous suburb now covers the site of the old harbor.

Dijon, now a mere provincial town, was once a great parliament centre: a little capital in Eastern France.[208] It had a vast ducal palace; churches and abbeys were crowded close together. Of the palace of Jean sans Peur, the fire has spared little beyond a tall tower and some precious fragments. Modern improvements and renovations have destroyed much of the old city; but that gem of the Renaissance La Maison Milsand, in the Rue des Forges, still remains as an unapproachable model of architectural decoration.

The charming little town of Moulins in the Bourbonnais filled the space now enclosed by the inner promenade—the Cours Doujar, d’Aquin, and Berulle—constructed on the ditches of the old wall. None of the “curious birds and beasts” remain in the park; and of the magnificent chateau where Charles IX. held his court little has survived beyond the huge unbattlemented tower; and of the steeples for which the town was once so famous, only one (the clock-tower) still soars above the houses.

The greatest change of all has taken place in the district that lies around the great manufacturing town of St. Étienne. In 1560 it was a pleasant wooded valley; no clanging engines disturbed its silence, no clouds of smoke defiled the air. Now it is one of the busiest centres of modern industry, and in noise and dirt may almost vie with Birmingham.

Toulon, now the great arsenal of the French navy, was a small port containing only 637 houses, and covering an area of 660 acres. Its whole artillery consisted of two bombardes and twenty-five pounds of powder. Its naval importance dates from the reign of Henry IV. In 1543, when Barbarossa’s fleet was received into the harbor, the inhabitants were ordered to abandon the town for six months under pain of death, leaving their houses and all they could not remove at the mercy of the Turks.[209]

From this imperfect sketch of the condition of France at the outbreak of the Religious Wars, the reader may in some degree be able to understand how such a crime as the St. Bartholomew massacre was possible. Although right and wrong are always the same, our appreciation of them depends in the main upon our education and the circumstances around us; and it would be unfair to judge the men of the sixteenth century by our nineteenth century standard.