Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [9]
Around that time a 17-year-old peasant girl known to history as Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) persuaded the French pretender Charles VII that she’d received a divine mission from God to expel the English from France and bring about Charles’ coronation. She rallied French troops and defeated the English at Patay, north of Orléans, and Charles was crowned at Reims. But Joan of Arc failed to take Paris. In 1430 she was captured, convicted of witchcraft and heresy by a tribunal of French ecclesiastics and burned at the stake.
Charles VII returned to Paris in 1436, ending more than 16 years of occupation, but the English were not entirely driven from French territory (with the exception of Calais) for another 17 years. The occupation had left Paris a disaster zone. Conditions improved while the restored monarchy moved to consolidate its power under Louis XI (r 1461–83), the first Renaissance king under whose reign the city’s first printing press was installed at the Sorbonne. Churches were rehabilitated or built in the Flamboyant Gothic style (Click here) and a number of hôtels particuliers (private mansions) such as the Hôtel de Cluny (now the Musée National du Moyen Age, Click here) and the Hôtel de Sens (now the Bibliothèque Forney, Click here) were erected.
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A CULTURAL ‘REBIRTH’
The culture of the Italian Renaissance (French for ‘rebirth’) arrived in full swing in France during the reign of François I in the early 16th century partly because of a series of indecisive French military operations in Italy. For the first time, the French aristocracy was exposed to Renaissance ideas of scientific and geographical scholarship and discovery as well as the value of secular over religious life. The population of Paris at the start of François’ reign in 1515 was 170,000 – still almost 20% less than it had been some three centuries before, when the Black Death had decimated the population.
Writers such as François Rabelais, Clément Marot and Pierre de Ronsard of La Pléiade were influential at this time, as were the architectural disciples of Michelangelo and Raphael. Evidence of this architectural influence can be seen in François I’s chateau at Fontainebleau and the Petit Château at Chantilly. In the city itself, a prime example of the period is the Pont Neuf, the ‘New Bridge’ that is, in fact, the oldest span in Paris. This new architecture was meant to reflect the splendour of the monarchy, which was fast moving towards absolutism, and of Paris as the capital of a powerful centralised state. But all this grandeur and show of strength was not enough to stem the tide of Protestantism that was flowing into France.
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REFORM & REACTION
The position of the Protestant Reformation sweeping across Europe in the 1530s had been strengthened in France by the ideas of John Calvin, a Frenchman exiled to Geneva. The edict of January 1562, which afforded the Protestants certain rights, was met by violent opposition from ultra-Catholic nobles whose fidelity to their faith was mixed with a desire to strengthen their power bases in the provinces. Paris remained very much a Catholic stronghold, and executions continued apace up to the outbreak of religious civil war.
The Wars of Religion (1562–98) involved three groups: the Huguenots (French Protestants supported by the English), the Catholic League and the Catholic king. The fighting severely weakened the position of the monarchy and brought the kingdom of France close to disintegration. On 7 May 1588, on the ‘Day of the Barricades’, Henri III, who had granted many concessions to the Huguenots, was forced to flee from the Louvre when the Catholic League rose up against him. He was assassinated the following year.
Henri III was succeeded by Henri IV, who inaugurated the Bourbon dynasty and was a Huguenot when he ascended the throne. Catholic Paris refused to allow its new Protestant king entry into the city, and