The Story of Paris

CHAPTER I. _gallo-Roman Paris_

Gallo-Roman Paris

The mediaeval scribe in the fulness of a divinely-revealed cosmogony is wont to begin his story at the creation of the world or at the confusion of tongues, to trace the building of Troy by the descendants of Japheth, and the foundation of his own native city by one of the Trojan princes made a fugitive in Europe by proud Ilion's fall. Such, he was very sure, was the origin of Padua, founded by Antenor and by Priam, son of King Priam, whose grandson, yet another Priam, by his great valour and wisdom became the monarch of a mighty people, called from their fair hair, Galli or Gallici. And of the strong city built on the little island in the Seine who could have been its founder but the ravisher of fair Helen--Sir Paris himself? The naive etymology of the time was evidence enough.

But the modern writer, as he compares the geographical position of the capitals of Europe, is tempted to exclaim, Cherchez le marchand! for he perceives that their unknown founders were dominated by two considerations--facilities for commerce and protection from enemies: and before the era of the Roman road-makers, commerce meant facilities for water carriage. As the early settlers in Britain sailed up the Thames, they must have observed, where the river's bed begins somewhat to narrow, a hill rising from the continuous expanse of marshes from its mouth, easily defended on the east and west by those fortified posts which, in subsequent times, became the Tower of London and Barnard's Castle, and if we scan a map of France, we shall see that the group of islands on and around which Paris now stands, lies in the fruitful basin of the Seine, known as the Isle de France, near the convergence of three rivers; for on the east the Marne, on the west the Oise, and on the south the Yonne, discharge their waters into the main stream on its way to the sea. In ancient times the great line of Phoenician, Greek and Roman commerce followed northwards the valleys of the Rhone and of the Saone, whose upper waters are divided from those of the Yonne only by the plateau of Dijon and the calcareous slopes of Burgundy. The Parisii were thus admirably placed for tapping the profitable commerce of north-west Europe, and by the waters of the Eure, lower down the Seine, were able to touch the fertile valley of the Loire. The northern rivers of Gaul were all navigable by the small boats of the early traders, and, in contrast with the impetuous sweep of the Rhone and the Loire in the south and west, flowed with slow and measured stream: they were rarely flooded, and owing to the normally mild winters, still more rarely blocked by ice. Moreover, the Parisian settlement stood near the rich cornland of La Beauce, and to the north-east, over the open plain of La Valois, lay the way to Flanders. It was one of the river stations on the line of the Phoenician traders in tin, that most precious and rare of ancient metals, between Marseilles and Britain, and in the early Middle Ages became, with Lyons and Beaucaire, one of the chief fairs of that historic trade route which the main lines of railway traffic still follow to-day. The island now known as the Cite, which the founders of Paris chose for their stronghold, was the largest of the group which lay involved in the many windings of the Seine, and was embraced by a natural moat of deep waters. To north and south lay hills, marshes and forests, and all combined to give it a position equally adapted for defence and for commerce.

The Parisii were a small tribe of Gauls whose island city was the home of a prosperous community of shipmen and merchants, but it is not until the Conquest of Gaul by the Romans that Lutetia, for such was its Romanised name, joins the great pageant of history. It was--

"Armed Caesar falcon-eyed,"

who saw its great military importance, built a permanent camp there and made it a central entrepot for food and munitions of war. And when in 52 B.C. the general rising of the tribes under Vercingetorix threatened to scour the Romans out of Gaul and to destroy the whole fabric of Caesar's ambition, he sent his favourite lieutenant, Labienus, to seize Lutetia where the Northern army of the Gauls was centred. Labienus crossed the Seine at Melun, fixed his camp on a spot near the position of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and began the first of the historic sieges for which Paris is so famous. But the Gaulish commander burnt the bridges, fired the city, and took up his position on the slopes of the hill of Lutetius (St. Genevieve) in the south, and aimed at crushing his enemy between his own forces and an army advancing from the north. Labienus having learnt that Caesar was in a tight place, owing to a check at Clermont and the defection of the Eduans, by a masterly piece of engineering recrossed the Seine by night at the Point du Jour, where the double viaduct of the girdle railway crosses to-day, and when the Gauls awoke in the morning they beheld the bannered host of the Roman legions in battle array on the plain of Grenelle beneath. They made a desperate attempt to drive them against the river, but they lost their leader and were almost annihilated by the superior arms and strategy of the Romans. Labienus was able to join his master at Sens, and the irrevocable subjugation of the Gauls soon followed. With the tolerant and enlightened conquerors came the Roman peace, Roman law, Roman roads, the Roman schoolmaster; and a more humane religion abolished the Druidical sacrifices. Lutetia was rebuilt and became a prosperous and, next to Lyons, the most important of Gallo-Roman cities. It lay equidistant from Germany and Britain and at the issue of valleys which led to the upper and lower Rhine. The quarries of Mount Lutetius produced an admirable building stone, kind to work and hardening well under exposure to the air, whose white colour may have won for Paris the name of Leucotia, or the White City, by which it is sometimes known to ancient writers. Caesar had done his work well, for so completely were the Gauls Romanised, that by the fifth or sixth century their very language had disappeared.

But towards the end of the third century three lowly wayfarers were journeying from Rome along the great southern road to Paris, charged by the Pope with a mission fraught with greater issues to Gaul than were the Caesars and all their legions. Let us recall somewhat of the appearance of the city which Dionysius, Rusticus and Eleutherius saw as they neared its suburbs and came down what is now known as the Rue St. Jacques. After passing the arches of the aqueduct, two of which exist to this day, that crossed the valley of Arcueil and brought the waters of Rungis, Paray and Montjean to the baths of the imperial palace and the public fountains, they would discern on the hill of Lutetius to their right, the Roman camp, garrison and cemetery. Lower down to the east they would catch a glimpse of a great amphitheatre, capable of accommodating 10,000 spectators.

On their left, where now stands the Lycee St. Louis, would be the theatre of Lutetia, and further on, the imposing and magnificent palace of the Caesars, with its gardens sloping down to the Seine. The turbulent little stream of the Bievre flowed by the foot of Mons Lutetius on the east, entering the main river opposite the eastern limit of the civitas of Lutetia, gleaming white before them and girdled by the waters of the Seine. A narrow eel-shaped island, subsequently known as the Isle de Galilee, lay between the Isle of the Cite and the southern bank; two islands, the Isles de Notre Dame and des Vaches, divided by a narrow channel to the east, and two eyots, the Isles des Juifs and de Bussy, to the west. Another islet, the Isle de Javiaux or de Louviers, lay near the northern bank beyond the two eastern islands. Crossing a wooden bridge, where now stands the Petit Pont, they would enter the forum under a triumphal arch. Here would be the very foyer of the city; a little way to the left the prefect's palace and the basilica, or hall of justice; to the right the temple of Jupiter. As they crossed the island they would find it linked to the northern bank by another wooden bridge (the Grand Pont) replaced by the present Pont Notre Dame. In the distance to the north stood Mons Martis (Montmartre), villas nestling on its slopes and crowned with the temples of Mars and Mercury, four of whose columns are preserved in the church of St. Pierre: to the west the aqueduct from Passy bringing its waters to the mineral baths located on the site of the present Palais Royal. A road, now the Rue St. Martin, led to the north; to the east, fed by the streams of Menilmontant and Belleville, lay the marshy land which is still known as the quarter of the Marais.

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