he
king, shocked at what was as unhealthy as it was disgusting, sent for the
burghers and provost of the city, and ordered that all the thoroughfares
and streets of Paris should be paved with hard and solid stone, for this
right Christian prince aspired to rid Paris of her ancient name, Lutetia
(Mud-town)." It is added that, on hearing of so good a resolution, a
moneyed man of the day, named Gerard de Poissy, volunteered to contribute
towards the construction of the pavement eleven thousand silver marks.
Nor was Philip Augustus less concerned for the external security than for
the internal salubrity of Paris. In 1190, on the eve of his departure
for the crusade, "he ordered the burghers of Paris to surround with a
good wall, flanked by towers, the city he loved so well, and to make
gates thereto;" and in twenty years this great work was finished on both
sides of the Seine. "The king gave the same orders," adds the historian
Rigord, "about the towns and castles of all his kingdom; "and indeed it
appears from the catalogue of M. Leopold Delisle, at the date of 1193,
"that, at the request of Philip Augustus, Peter de Courtenai, Count of
Nevers, with the aid of the church-men, had the walls of the town of
Auxerre built." And Philip's foresight went beyond such important
achievements. "He had a good wall built to enclose the wood of
Vincennes, heretofore open to any sort of folk. The King of England, on
hearing thereof, gathered a great mass of fawns, hinds, does, and bucks,
taken in his forests in Normandy and Aquitaine; and having had them
shipped aboard a large covered vessel, with suitable fodder, he sent them
by way of the Seine to King Philip Augustus, his liege-lord at Paris.
King Philip received the gift gladly, had his parks stocked with the
animals, and put keepers over them." A feeling, totally unconnected with
the pleasures of the chase, caused him to order an enclosure very
different from that of Vincennes. "The common cemetery of Paris, hard by
the Church of the Holy Innocents, opposite the street of St. Denis, had
remained up to that time open to all passers, man and beast, without
anything to prevent it from being confounded with the most profane spot;
and the king, hurt at such indecency, had it enclosed by high stone
walls, with as many gates as were judged necessary, which were closed
every night." At the same time he had built, in this same quarter, the
first great municipal market-places, enclosed