Twenty Centuries of Paris
9781465650559
330 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
FRANCE has been inhabited since the days when prehistoric man unconsciously told the story of his life through the medium of the household utensils and the implements of war which he left behind him in the caves in which he dwelt, or which his considerate relatives buried with him to make his sojourn easy in the land beyond the grave. From bits of bone, of flint, and of polished stone archæologists have reconstructed the man himself and his activities through the early ages. Of contemporary information, however, there is none until the adventurous peoples of the Mediterranean pushed their way as traders and explorers into the heart of Gaul, and then wrote about their discoveries. The Gauls, they said, were largely Celtic in origin and had displaced an earlier race, the Iberians, whom they had crowded to the southwest. They were brave, loyal, superstitious, and subject to their priests, the Druids. Their dress showed that they had made great advance in knowledge over the cave men, for they wore colored tunics—which meant that they knew how to spin and weave and dye—and brazen helmets and shields and gold and silver girdles—which meant that they could work in metal. Such industries prove that the nomadic life was over, and, in truth, there were many towns throughout Gaul, some of them of no mean size, furnished with public utilities such as wells and bridges, and surrounded by fields made fertile by irrigation. An independent spirit had developed, too, for in about the year 500 B.C. the chiefs and nobles rebelled against the lay authority of the Druids. Then these chiefs and nobles seem to have ruled “without the consent of the governed,” for Cæsar relates that before he went to Gaul in 58 B.C. the lower classes had rebelled against the upper, and, with the aid of the Druids, had beaten them. It is from Cæsar, too, that we first learn something about Paris. “Lutetia,” he calls it, “a stronghold of the Parisii,” who were one of the three or four hundred tribes who dwelt in Gaul. Lutetia—“Mudtown” Carlyle translates the name—was not much of a stronghold, for its fortifications could have been nothing more than a stockade encircling the round huts which made up the village occupying an island in the Seine,> the present “Cité” (from the Latin civitas), and connected with both banks by bridges. It was only about half a mile long and an eighth of a mile wide. It was large enough and strong enough, however, to serve as a refuge for the tribesmen in time of war. Probably such a haven was not an unusual arrangement. Not far from Paris is another instance in Melun which has grown around the village which the Romans called Melodunum, built in the same way on an island in the river. In the spring of 53 B.C. Cæsar summoned delegates from all the tribes of Gaul to meet at Lutetia, but the rebellion of the year 52 in which the Parisii joined determined the Roman general to destroy the town and crush the tribe. He sent Labienus with four legions to carry out his plans. The Gauls chose as their leader Camulogenus of the tribe of the Aulerci, an old man, but skilled in warfare. He took advantage of the marsh on the right bank of the river and so stationed his troops as to prevent the approach of the Romans to the little town. Labienus first tried to make a road across the bog by laying down hurdles plastered with clay. This proved too much of an undertaking, so he slipped away “at the third watch” and retraced his steps to Melodunum. There he seized fifty ships which he filled with Roman soldiers and with them threatened the town so effectually that it yielded to him. Then he repaired the bridge, crossed to the left bank, and once more began his march toward Lutetia. When the Lutetians heard of this move from refugees, they burned their town and destroyed its bridges.
