Overall however the work is quite dispersed

Farewell I love, farewell sweet girls, / goodbye Grant bridge, hales, estuves, bains, / farewell doublet, chauces, net vestures, / goodbye harnois, both nail as plains, / goodbye mole reading, embroidery and beaus breasts, / goodbye dances, goodbye which hantez them /, farewell connins (1), perdriz that I reclaims, / farewell Paris, farewell petiz pastez (...) ... At the end of 14th century, the poet Eustache Deschamps is well unfortunate to leave Paris for the Languedoc. Like all writers of the time, he said a little blissful admiration to the great metropolis, using a foil verb as a parchment enluminé, grows walls and Golden spires.

A flourishing period

Paris in 1400... Dark memories of a dark city, drowned in the mists of a tormented Middle Ages. We are in a full hundred years war, King Charles VI is crazy and soon the two clans of the Armagnacs and the Burgundians will tear, France and Paris falling into the hands of the English... And yet Paris shines and dazzles Europe. It is the paradox that underlies the exhibition by the Museum of the Louvre from the end of the month. A staged scholarly 270 masterpieces, with the French city, a small modern-day century and the Renaissance, as the capital of the arts in the West.

"From the historical point of view, it is much more interesting than you think and extremely successful, says Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye, curator of the exhibition. It is in a moment of calm. No need for money to raise troops, and the State are rather full. Paris is the seat of Government. Charles VI, ill, is surrounded by his uncles, the princes, leading large train. Warlords and merchants. "A life of court, outbidding of luxury that promotes the production of objects of art and trade. Become a true hub, after the loss of influence of large Champagne fairs, the capital of the Kingdom is a magnet for travellers and businessmen.

Capital Paris economic and financial Europe Not quite. Bruges fills this role. But Paris is the largest city with close to 200,000 inhabitants. An extraordinarily active, alive and attractive city. Abroad who arrived in Paris feel a shock similar to the tourist who discovers today Cairo or São Paolo. The city is organized in three parts: the Bank right, by far the largest, which has more than doubled in size with the new ramparts of Charles V (connecting doors Saint-Antoine, Temple, Saint-Martin, Saint-Denis, and Montmartre); the île de la Cité; and the left bank, which forms a loop de la Tournelle to the Tower of Nesles (at the Louvre), encasing the montagne Sainte-Geneviève.

As the city has changed since Philippe Auguste is crazy... The meadows and marshes of the right bank and the vineyards of the left bank that extended to the new forums have urbanized beating drum. The Lordships (of the abbeys, essentially) subdivided their land by offering to "contracts of hostises" advantageous (removing some charges) to the future inhabitants, which are serfs cleared. Paris is a city of free... as Simone Roux noted in his subtle work on daily life in Paris in the middle ages...

Scattered work

It is also a city of social mixing and brewing trades. Some are grouped for convenience: des drapiers and dyers in edge of river Seine, the butchers at the edge of the Grand-Pont (it is in has others scattered throughout the city, as at Sainte-Geneviève). Overall, however, the work is quite dispersed. The names of the streets do not need to illusion; There is not that wood the Bûcherie Street merchants. The writer Guillebert de Metz is a precise description of the streets of Paris in 1407, referring to those who are specialized: rue Saint-Martin, the work of the bronze. Street of Lombards, textiles; Street Quinqempoit, silversmithing; Rue Saint-Denis, grocers and apothecaries, etc.

The houses are not numbers and the name of the streets is not materialized (it wasn't until the 18th century!). This is not with the pasted here and there signs that the newcomer will find its way. He is obliged to ask the inhabitants of the Guide. Security for Parisians, said Simone Roux, as with their empirical knowledge of the labyrinth of the city, they master and control the movement of foreigners.

The city is wide open on the street: craftsmen sell their products through the window with a stall and also sometimes have a "saddle to the camera" a Chair at the threshold of their shop. It is in passes, things, in the streets of the capital! And play the bystander is already a typically Parisian sport... Discussions, jokes, brawls, déboulés stray dogs or pigs in fury (the attack of a child is a sow to be burned as a witch vive)... Parisians are good household with their animals. The Burgesses were their gardens, their birds in a cage, their flocks and their barn (which houses in fact horses or mules, not cows). The princes also use wild animals: bears and lions...

The people of Paris is working to the rhythm of the Sun, takes rest on Sundays and many holidays (100 in total in the year). Then stroll along the ramparts, where it plays to the Palm or the ball. Is cruise on the Seine River. Games companies, such as the

failures, are very popular. Royal power and the Church regulate them to avoid the excess (paris, fights). Religion is omnipresent: holiday sacred sacrificial processions. Prophanes overflows are limited to a few appointments, such as the "feast of fools" after Christmas and Carnival before Lent. The Saint John fire, it lights a huge blaze place to strike, large enough to avoid that a fire spreads. On occasions, it decorates her house and covers the ground of fresh grass.

Rich and poor

The Royal entries are the must of the Parisian festivities. For the arrival of Isabeau of Bavaria, young wife of Charles VI, in August 1389, the city is disguised foot in Cape Town. The facades of the houses are painted paintings and tapestries, wine flowing fountains along the procession, the tableaux are cycled through in luxurious settings... When Isabeau arrives at the Châtelet, the King do not enjoy more out of the Palace of the city where it is supposed to wait for him, blends incognito in the crowd cheering... and receives the passage a few strokes overwhelmed sergeants.

But don't cry in the illumination... Social disparities are great in the city and will soon increase with the return of the war. The power and glory are the King, of the Court and the clerics. Along the city, the Hotel Saint-Paul (near the Bastille) where moved to Charles VI, the hotel of the Duke of Burgundy (near the porte Saint-Denis), the stays of Orléans (East of the right bank) and the host of the Duke of Bourbon (near the Louvre) rival of sumptuous, blue slate roofs topped with carvings of gilded shot. The Bourbon hotel, for example, is was built by absorbing some thirty ordinary houses. These Palace offer all the amenities, with ovens, game rooms, of course a chapel. The great bourgeois, advisors to the King or members of Parliament, seek to emulate the princes with small richly decorated Palace.

The bourgeois, average, cares little for architecture and built comfortable homes by aggregating two or three houses. Many Parisians have only one or two rooms, and not stack for firewood. As the poor, the weak, the elderly, orphans, vagrants homeless, of which it is suspicious, a single cure for them: charity, recommended by the Church and implementation in its specialized agencies, such as the hôtel Dieu, installed in the île de la Cité from the high middle ages.

If fortunes are built in the middle-class families, remain fragile. Money earned still has the smell of sulphur in a strongly religious society, and the wealth of bankers always inspires the suspicion; as soon as a crisis breaks out, the people of Paris takes to lenders Jews and Lombardy. The Councillors of the King easily fall in disgrace, the crises and the Royal intrigues. Merchants are respected, for little that they do not defy too the power of the King or princes retaliation will go good train after the riots of the maillotins (from the name of the mallets which they used as weapons) at the beginning of the reign of Charles VI and the butchers in open civil war between Armagnacs and Burgundians. Definitely, it is better to be rich... and noble, the medieval capital where modernity sometimes disrupts the tradition. So Simone Roux suggests progress in the status of women, more free no doubt that in future modern times: it is permitted to work, to be head of the family, to be respected "ladies".

As the city moves, regenerates. Mostly populated by French North and area, it hosts many young people who seek honour and fortune (half of the students of the Kingdom are at the University, in Paris), but also artists from throughout Europe, attracted by a prestigious and opulent clientele.

The charism of Charles VI

This ferment of every day is rhythmed by the major events of history. The medieval Paris has demonstrated his ability to ignite and seated reputation of city unsafe for power in place. The prosperity of 1400 will be much ephemeral, since in the years 1420, the exhausted city will lose half of its inhabitants, will see flee his princes and his artisans, before climbing back up the slope under Charles VII. But, what is the most fascinating in this troubled period, it is the tutelary shadow of King Charles VI.

Wrongly underestimated, this bright and elegant monarch showed, at the beginning of his reign, his sense of State Recalling advisors informed his father Charles V (nicknamed marmosets); sick, he has always sought, in his periods of remission, to restore peace in his Kingdom. Françoise Autrand historian provides a poignant portrait of this sovereign tightrope Walker, called Charles the beloved by his contemporaries. Until the end, while he as a ghost haunts the aisles of a power diluted in fratricidal hatred, it remains loved his people and especially the Parisians. Ambiguous, shared love probably between an any medieval fascination for the "passion" of the King (his sacrificial madness of a sinful France) and by aspiration broadcasts a strong power, drawing a line under the feudal and Royal feuds.

Life in Paris in 1400 is part of these black holes in history, once explored, revealing their treasures. The rediscovery of a laborious and vibrant, already ahead of its time, brazen and light, well before it ever be a city light.