the barbarous custom was introduced of trial by combat; the idea might probably have been suggested by Louis having challenged Henry the First of England to decide their differences in a single encounter.  Although Lewis the Fat was so bulky as to have obtained the cognomen by which he was always designated, he was one of the most active kings of France; constantly harrassed by perpetual wars with his neighbours and nobles, which he carried on personally and generally successfully, he first undertook the fortifying of Paris and is supposed to have constructed the greater and the lesser Chatelet, two towers on the opposite sides of the Seine, although many authors pretend that they were of a much more ancient date; he also built walls round a certain portion of the suburbs, which by that time had become part of Paris.  It was said of Lewis VI, “He might have been a better king, a better man he could not.”  He died in 1137.

In the succeeding reign of Louis VII, surnamed the Younger, many privileges were granted to the Parisians which greatly increased the prosperity of the city; several public buildings were erected, amongst the rest an hospital which was the first ever built in Paris.  But according to the descriptions of all authors who wrote at that period upon the subject, the streets were in a filthy condition in many parts of the city, and the names which have long since been changed were as dirty and indecent; some were absolutely ridiculous; as Did you find me Hard, Bertrand Sleeps, Cut Bread, John Bread Calf (alluding to the leg); the last still exists, as also Bad Advice, Bad Boys, etc.  It was in this reign that the first crusade from France took place, and Louis VII was followed by 200,000 persons, and after various encounters with the Saracens, he owed his preservation to his own personal prowess; he was divorced from his Queen Eleanor, who afterwards married Henry II of England, and proved herself a detestable character in both kingdoms.  Louis VII abolished one law which had long disgraced France, allowing the officers of the King on his arrival in Paris or other towns in his dominions, to enter any private house and take for the monarch’s use such bedding or other articles of furniture as his Majesty might require.  Louis also by force of arms compelled his nobles to desist from robbing the merchants, dealers, and the poor of their property.  At this period the Fete des Fous, or feast of madmen was celebrated to its full extent, and anything more absurd, more farcical, or more irreverential cannot well be imagined.  Dulaure, in his voluminous History of Paris, gives a most detailed account of this extraordinary mockery, of which I will give my readers a very brief abridgment.