Consolidation of power !!!!!!!^^

The counts of Paris, whose powers had increased as the Carolingians feuded among themselves, elected one of their own, Hugh Capet, as king at Senlis in 987. He made Paris the royal seat and resided in the renovated palace of the Roman governor on the Île de la Cité (the site of the present Palais de Justice). Under Capetian rule, which would last for the next 800 years, Paris prospered as a centre of politics, commerce, trade, religion and culture. By the time Hugh Capet had assumed the throne, the Norsemen (or Normans, descendants of the Vikings) were in control of northern and western French territory. In 1066 they mounted a successful invasion of England from their base in Normandy.
Paris’ strategic riverside position ensured its importance throughout the Middle Ages, although settlement remained centred on the Île de la Cité, with the rive gauche (left bank) to the south given over to fields and vineyards; the Marais area on the rive droite (right bank) to the north was a waterlogged marsh. The first guilds were established in the 11th century, and rapidly grew in importance; in the mid-12th century the ship merchants’ guild bought the principal river port, by today’s Hôtel de Ville (city hall), from the crown.
The area south of the Seine – today’s Left Bank – was by contrast developing not as a trade centre but as the centre of European learning and erudition, particularly in the so-called Latin Quarter. The ill-fated lovers Pierre Abélard and Héloïse wrote the finest poetry of the age and their treatises on philosophy, and Thomas Aquinas taught at the new University of Paris. About 30 other colleges were established, including the Sorbonne.
In 1337 some three centuries of hostility between the Capetians and the Anglo-Normans degenerated into the Hundred Years’ War, which would be fought on and off until the middle of the 15th century. The Black Death (1348–49) killed more than a third (an estimated 80, 000 souls) of Paris’ population but only briefly interrupted the fighting. Paris would not see its population reach 200, 000 again until the beginning of the 16th century.
The Hundred Years’ War and the plague, along with the development of free, independent cities elsewhere in Europe, brought political tension and open insurrection to Paris. In 1358 the provost of the merchants, a wealthy draper named Étienne Marcel, allied himself with peasants revolting against the dauphin (the future Charles V) and seized Paris in a bid to limit the power of the throne and secure a city charter. But the dauphin’s supporters recaptured it within two years, and Marcel and his followers were executed at place de Grève. Charles then completed the right-bank city wall begun by Marcel and turned the Louvre into a sumptuous palace for himself.
After the French forces were defeated by the English at Agincourt in 1415, Paris was once again embroiled in revolt. The dukes of Burgundy, allied with the English, occupied the capital in 1420. Two years later John Plantagenet, duke of Bedford, was installed as regent of France for the English king, Henry VI, who was then an infant. Henry was crowned king of France at Notre Dame less than 10 years later, but Paris was almost continuously under siege from the French for much of that time.
Around that time a 17-year-old peasant girl known to history as Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) persuaded the French pretender Charles VII that she’d received a divine mission from God to expel the English from France and bring about Charles’ coronation. She rallied French troops and defeated the English at Patay, north of Orléans, and Charles was crowned at Reims. But Joan of Arc failed to take Paris. In 1430 she was captured, convicted of witchcraft and heresy by a tribunal of French ecclesiastics and burned at the stake.
Charles VII returned to Paris in 1436, ending more than 16 years of occupation, but the English were not entirely driven from French territory (with the exception of Calais) for another 17 years. The occupation had left Paris a disaster zone. Conditions improved while the restored monarchy moved to consolidate its power under Louis XI (r 1461–83), the first Renaissance king under whose reign the city’s first printing press was installed at the Sorbonne. Churches were rehabilitated or built in the Flamboyant Gothic style and a number of hôtels particuliers (private mansions) such as the Hôtel de Cluny (now the Musée National du Moyen Age) and the Hôtel de Sens (now the Bibliothèque Forney) were erected.