pleasing in a structure such as the present, where the eye looks rather for the variety and florid ornament of a work of fancy than for the grand and imposing in architecture. This barrier, like the others, was built after the designs of Ledoux, whose patron, the minister Calonne, somewhat strangely chose the period of severe financial embarrassment immediately preceding the Revolution, in which to commence the erection of these gorgeous and expensive structures. "The luxury," says a late writer," which the architect has lavished upon these productions, offends every notion of propriety; people beheld with dis

pleasure and murmuring such sumptuous edifices. consecrated to the purposes of an exaction oppressive to all classes in the community, and harassing in the extreme to commerce. It was to whiten sepulchres, to hold up to admiration the instruments of tyranny *"

The same honest historian is not less severe in his strictures on the celebrated triumphal arch of l'Etoile. * Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, ix. 397.

"The events of 1814," he says, "which Bonaparte ought to have foreseen, and which his successive invasions on the rights of the French nation and on foreign states had brought about, arrested the progress of this monument of pride which he was erecting to his own glory. The scaffolds were taken down, and the wood was employed in constructing the roof of a warehouse for corn. A Belvédere (or terrace for viewing the surrounding scenery) has been established on the top of the masses of masonry. Everything announces that the work will never be proceeded with, and that the portions of it already built will be reduced in a few years to the resemblance of ancient ruins t." The arch of l'Etoile was begun by Napoleon in 1806, to commemorate the victories which had crowned the arms of France under his sovereignty; and was intended to form the most colossal monument of the kind which had ever been erected. Its height was to rise to 133 feet, the breadth or span being 138, and the thickness 68 feet. Workmen were employed upon the structure for eight years, and immense sums of money were expended upon it. On the 1st of April 1810, when the Empress Maria Louis made her entry into Paris, a representation of the finished arch was erected of wood, which, being covered over with painted cloth, gave a sufficiently accurate notion of the whole design, and had a magnificent appearance. Notwithstanding Dulaure's anticipations, Charles X. had some years ago given orders for prosecuting the construction of this vast monument; and the work was proceeding, we believe, with considerable activity when the events of last July occurred,—the intention, however, being to dedicate the memorial to the exploits of the Duc d'Angouleme in Spain, a miserable † Ib. p. 381.

substitution, it must be acknowledged, for the original design. We subjoin a cut of it as it appeared with the scaffolding around it immediately after the recent revolution.

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CHAPTER XIII.

SIEGES OF PARIS.

THE walls by which Paris is at present surrounded are only intended to serve certain purposes of police and fiscal regulation; but its ancient fortifications were erected for sterner uses. This capital has been repeatedly exposed to the storm both of foreign invasion and of civil war; and the massive gates and turretted battlements of other times, with the broad moat, crossed only by drawbridges, that swept their base, were but the necessary fences with which the inhabitants were obliged to shelter themselves from the tempestuous barbarism in the midst of which they lived. The sieges of Paris form some of the most interesting passages of French history. We propose in the present chapter to take such a rapid view as our limits permit of some of the principal of them; aiming, as we go along, rather to collect a few of the more remarkable incidents of each, than to present any minute chronological detail of military

movements.

The earliest hostile attacks to which this capital was exposed were directed against it before any portion of the town, except that in the midst of the river, could boast of a fortified inclosure at all. The Norman pirates, by whom, as already mentioned, it was repeatedly assaulted during the latter part of the ninth century, used to come against it by sailing up the Seine in fleets of boats. In this manner they ravaged the place three times in the course of fifteen or

sixteen years, without encountering even the shew of resistance either from the inhabitants themselves, whose houses they plundered and burned, or from the feeble princes who at this period filled the throne of Charlemagne. On the last of these occasions, namely in the year 861, they broke down the only bridge which then connected the Ile de la Cité with the northern side of the river, because its piers formed an obstacle to the farther passage of their large boats; and this done, they were enabled for the first time to extend their predatory incursion beyond Paris, and to attack and despoil the hitherto unvisited towns of Meaux and Melun. Such an aggravation of their customary outrages at last roused the King, Charles the Bald, to the necessity of providing some means of resisting them; and with this view he rebuilt the demolished bridge, and fortified both it and the Petit Pont with towers at each extremity. Deterred probably by these preparations for defence on the part of their former victims, the pirates did not again venture to approach Paris for nearly a quarter of a century; but at last in 885 the part of the river immediately below the town once more appeared crowded with their boats. The vessels are said to have covered a space of two leagues, and to have carried a force of no fewer than 30,000 men. The invaders, respecting the improved resources of their enemies, now only demanded that they should be allowed to proceed up the river, on which condition they promised to leave Paris untouched. This proposal not having been listened to, they resolved to besiege the city; and on the twentyfifth of November they made their first attack upon it. Besides the towers already spoken of at the extremities of the two bridges, Paris appears by this time to have been strengthened by a variety of other defences; among which is particularly mentioned a