It was Rome that put Paris on the map, as it did the rest of western Europe. When Julius Caesar's armies arrived in 52 BC, they found a Celtic settlement confined to an island in the Seine – the Île de la Cité. It must already have been fairly populous, as it had sent a contingent of eight thousand men to stiffen the Gallic chieftain Vercingétorix's doomed resistance to the invaders.Under the name of Lutetia, it remained a Roman colony for the next three hundred years, prosperous commercially because of its commanding position on the Seine trade route, but insignificant politically. The Romans established their administrative centre on the Île de la Cité, and their town on the Left Bank on the slopes of the Montagne Ste-Geneviève. Though no monuments of their presence remain today, except the baths by the Hôtel de Cluny and the amphitheatre in rue Monge, their street plan, still visible in the north–south axis of rue St-Martin and rue St-Jacques, determined the future growth of the city. When Roman rule disintegrated under the impact of Germanic invasions around 275 AD, Paris held out until it fell to Clovis the Frank in 486. In 511 Clovis' son commissioned the cathedral of St-Étienne, whose foundations can be seen in the crypte archéologique under the square in front of Notre-Dame. Clovis' own conversion to Christianity hastened the Christianization of the whole country, and under his successors Paris saw the foundation of several rich and influential monasteries, especially on the Left Bank. With the election of Hugues Capet, Comte de Paris, as king in 987, the fate of the city was inextricably identified with that of the monarchy. The presence of the kings, however, prevented the development of the middle-class, republican institutions that the rich merchants of Flanders and Italy were able to obtain for their cities. The result was recurrent political tension, which led to open rebellion, for instance in 1356, when Étienne Marcel, a wealthy cloth merchant, demanded greater autonomy for the city. Further rebellions, fuelled by the hopeless poverty of the lower classes, led to the king and court abandoning the capital in 1418, not to return for more than a hundred years.
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