day, the 11th of January, he re-entered Paris, he alone being mounted, in
the midst of his army." The burgesses went out of the city to meet him,
and offer him their wonted homage, but they were curtly ordered to
retrace their steps; the king and his uncles, they were informed, could
not forget offences so recent. The wooden barriers which had been placed
before the gates of the city to prevent anybody from entering without
permission, were cut down with battle-axes; the very gates were torn from
their hinges; they were thrown down upon the king's highway, and the
procession went over them, as if to trample under foot the fierce pride
of the Parisians. When he was once in the city, and was leaving Notre
Dame, the king sent abroad throughout all the streets an order forbidding
any one, under the most severe penalties, from insulting or causing the
least harm to the burgesses in any way whatsoever; and the constable had
two plunderers strung up to the windows of the houses in which they had
committed their thefts. But fundamental order having been thus upheld,
reprisals began to be taken for the outbreaks of the Parisians, municipal
magistrates or populace, burgesses or artisans, rich or poor, in the
course of the two preceding years;--arrests, imprisonments, fines,
confiscations, executions, severities of all kinds fell upon the most
conspicuous and the most formidable of those who had headed or favored
popular movements. The most solemn and most iniquitous of these
punishments was that which befell the advocate-general, John Desmarets.
"For nearly a whole year," says the monk of St. Denis, "he had served as
mediator between the king and the Parisians; he had often restrained the
fury and stopped the excesses of the populace, by preventing them from
giving rein to their cruelty. He was always warning the factious that to
provoke the wrath of the king and the princes was to expose themselves to
almost certain death. But, yielding to the prayers of this rebellious
and turbulent mob, he, instead of leaving Paris as the rest of his
profession had done, had remained there, and throwing himself boldly