eudal edifice, continued by Richelieu and
Louis XIV. for the profit of royalty, and finished by Mirabeau for the
benefit of the people,--Louis XI. had certainly made an effort to break
this network of seignories which covered Paris, by throwing violently
across them all two or three troops of general police. Thus, in 1465, an
order to the inhabitants to light candles in their windows at nightfall,
and to shut up their dogs under penalty of death; in the same year,
an order to close the streets in the evening with iron chains, and a
prohibition to wear daggers or weapons of offence in the streets
at night. But in a very short time, all these efforts at communal
legislation fell into abeyance. The bourgeois permitted the wind to
blow out their candles in the windows, and their dogs to stray; the iron
chains were stretched only in a state of siege; the prohibition to
wear daggers wrought no other changes than from the name of the Rue
Coupe-Gueule to the name of the Rue-Coupe-Gorge* which is an evident
progress. The old scaffolding of feudal jurisdictions remained standing;
an immense aggregation of bailiwicks and seignories crossing each
other all over the city, interfering with each other, entangled in one
another, enmeshing each other, trespassing on each other; a useless
thicket of watches, sub-watches and counter-watches, over which, with
armed force, passed brigandage, rapine, and sedition. Hence, in this
disorder, deeds of violence on the part of the populace directed against
a palace, a hotel, or house in the most thickly populated quarters, were
not unheard-of occurrences. In the majority of such cases, the neighbors
did not meddle with the matter unless the pillaging extended to
themselves. They stopped up their ears to the musket shots, closed their
shutters, barricaded their doors, allowed the matter to be concluded
with or without the watch, and the next day it was said in Paris,
"Etienne Barbette was broken open last night. The Marshal de Clermont
was seized last night, etc." Hence, not only the royal habitations, the
Louvre, the Palace, the Bastille, the Tournelles, but simply seignorial
residences, the Petit-Bourbon, the Hotel de Sens, the Hotel d'
Angouleme, etc., had battlements on their walls, and machicolations over
their doors. Churches were guarded by their sanctity. Some, among the
number Notre-Dame, were fortified. The Abbey of Saint-German-des-Pres
was castellated like a baronial mansion, and more bra