or
those into which he was led by superstition and religious fanaticism: he
was succeeded by his son Philippe the Bold in 1270, who suffered himself
to be governed by his favourite, La Brosse, formerly a barber, in which
it must be admitted that Philippe displayed rather a _barbarous_ taste,
which ended in his pet being hanged; his reign, however, was signalised
by the establishment of a College of Surgeons, who were designated by
the appellation of Surgeons of the Long Robe, whilst the barbers were
styled Surgeons of the Short Robe; he also recalled the Jews, whom his
father, after having persecuted in divers manners, banished and
confiscated their property; amongst other indignities which were put
upon them by Saint Louis, was that of forcing them to wear a patch of
red cloth on their garment both before and behind, in the shape of a
wheel, that they might be distinguished from Christians, and marked as
it were for insult. In Philippe's reign, however, merit found its
reward, no matter how low the origin from whence it sprang, and several
authors, particularly poets, wrote boldly against the extreme hypocrisy
which existed in the preceding reign, and literature made great
progress.

In 1285 Philippe the Fair, so named on account of his handsome person,
succeeded to the throne of his father; in his ardent thirst for money he
changed the value of the coinage three times, and caused a riot which
ended by his hanging twenty-eight of the conspirators at the different
entrances of Paris, and had numbers of persons accused of crimes in
order to have them executed that he might obtain possession of their
property; thus hundreds were burned alive and tortured in various
manners. One act, however, threw a degree of lustre on his reign, and
that was the organisation of the Parliament at Paris, establishing it as
a sovereign court, their sittings being held in the Palais de Justice,
the residence at that period of the kings of France. For several
succeeding reigns Paris appeared to make but little progress; some
churches were built as also other establishments, but none which are now
standing, except some portions of them which may have escaped
destruction and are now in the occupation of different tradespeople. The
government became exceedingly poor, and several measures were adopted in
order to repair the finances of the state; amongst others, that of
suffering serfs to purchase their emancipation, of which many availed
themse