History for ready reference, Volume 2, El Dorado to Greaves (part 8 of 10)

History for ready reference, Volume 2, El Dorado to Greaves (part 8 of 10)

"April 20, everything being ready for Napoleon's journey, and the commissioners of the four great powers who were to accompany him having arrived, the former drew up the imperial guard in the grand courtyard at Fontainebleau to take leave of them. 'Soldiers,' said he, 'I have one mission left to fulfil in life,--to recount to posterity the glorious deeds we have done together.' Would to Heaven he had kept his word and done nothing else! He kissed the flag, and his brave soldiers, who only saw the man who so often led them on to victory, burst into tears. Seven or eight hundred of them were to form the army left to him who had had a million soldiers at his command, and they were sent in advance, Napoleon going by another road, unescorted save by General Drouot, Bertrand, and the four foreign commissioners with their people. In the first departments through which they passed ... the people who had been eye-witnesses of the invasion forgot the evil wrought by Napoleon, and only saw the defender of his country. They shouted 'Long live the Emperor! Down with foreigners!' But beyond Lyons, where the foe never penetrated, the population became hostile: old royalist and Catholic passions were revived in proportion as they went farther south; the mob cried 'Long live the King! down with the tyrant!' and others howled 'Long live the allies!' At Avignon and Organ a furious rabble attacked the carriages, demanding that the tyrant should be handed over to them to be hung or thrown into the Rhone. The man who braved the storm of shot and shell with utter indifference gave way before these ignoble perils, and disguised himself; otherwise the commissioners could scarcely have saved his life at Orgon. The sad journey closed at the Gulf of St. Raphael, on the coast of Provence. ... An English frigate awaited him and bore him to Elba, where he landed at Porto-Ferraio, May 4. While the Empire was crumbling to dust ... and the fallen Emperor went into exile, the new government was working hard to hold its own at Paris. The royalists were at sword's points with the national sovereignty party in the commission chosen by the senate to draw up a constitution. The pretender's agent, Abbé de Montesquiou, failed to win acceptance of the principle that royal right is superior to the nation's will; and the formula adopted was as follows: 'The French people freely call to the throne of France, Louis Stanislas Xavier de France, brother of the late king, and, after him, the other members of the house of Bourbon.' Thus they did not recognize in the king whom they elected the title of Louis XVIII., and did not admit that between him and his brother, Louis XVI., there had been a rightful king, the poor child who died in the Temple and whom royalists called Louis XVII. The reign of Louis Stanislas Xavier was to date from the day when he swore allegiance to the Constitution: the executive power was vested in the king, who shared the legislative power with the Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. The Constitution sanctioned individual liberty, freedom of worship and the press, the sale of national goods, the public debt, and proclaimed oblivion of all acts committed since the beginning of the Revolution. The principles of 1789 were maintained, and in the sad state of France there was nothing better to be done than to rally round this Constitution, which was voted by the Senate, April 6, and accepted by the Legislature. ... The Senate's lack of popularity gave the royalist party hope that the act of April 6 might be retracted, and at this time that party won a faint success in a matter on which they laid great stress. Count d' Artois was on his way to Paris, and declared that he would not lay aside the white cockade on entering. The temporary government ordered the national guard to assume the white cockade, and let Count d'Artois in without conditions (April 12), He was received in solemn state, the marshals marching before him, still wearing their tri-colored cockades and plumes, which the government dared not attack. {1359} The rabble was cold, but the middle classes received the prince favorably and he proved gracious to every one. ... D'Artois ... insisted on being recognized, unconditionally, as lieutenant-general of the kingdom, as he had entered Paris without making terms; but this time the Senate and temporary government did not yield. They intended that the prince should make a solemn promise, in his brother's name, in regard to the Constitution. The czar interfered and explained to D' Artois that the allies were pledged to the Senate and the nation, and he was forced to submit and receive the lieutenant-generalcy of the kingdom from the Senate, 'until Louis Stanislas Xavier of France should accept the Constitutional Charter.' ... The day after his proclamation as lieutenant-general, the white cockade was finally adopted, and ... imposed upon the army and various public buildings, though the national cockade was still worn by many French soldiers from the Garonne to the Elbe, and many warlike deeds still signalized the final efforts of their arms, even after Napoleon had laid aside his sword. ... By degrees the truce became universal, and the next question was to fix the terms of peace. ... The enemy held nothing but Paris and the unfortified towns, French garrisons still occupying all the strongholds of France, old and new, and several important places far beyond the Rhine. ... This was a powerful means of gaining, not the preservation of the natural frontiers, which could no longer be hoped for, but at least an important advance on the limits of the ancient monarchy. Unluckily a movement, natural but hasty, broke out all over France, to claim the immediate evacuation of her soil by foreign armies;"--an impatience which allowed no time for bargaining in the matter, and which precipitated an agreement (April 23) with the allied powers "to leave the French dominion as it had been on the 1st of January, 1792, in proportion as the places still occupied beyond those limits by French troops should be evacuated and restored to the allies. ... This compact surrendered to the allies, without any compensation, 58 strongholds, 12,600 pieces of ordnance, arsenals and magazines filled with vast supplies." The new king, calling himself Louis XVIII., arrived in Paris on the 3d of May, from England, where he had latterly resided. He had offended the czar, ruffled public feeling in France, even before he arrived, by saying publicly to the English people that he owed his restoration, under Providence, to them. Negotiations for a definite treaty of peace were opened at once. "At Metternich's suggestion, the allies decided to conclude their arrangements with France in Paris, and to reserve general arrangements with Europe for a congress at Vienna.

See VIENNA: THE CONGRESS OF.

Talleyrand did not object, although this plan was evidently unfavorable to France. ... The royal council directed Talleyrand to try to win for the northern frontier those million people promised beyond the old limits; but Louis X VIII., by angering the czar, completed the sad work of April 23. Alexander thought of renewing with the Bourbons the alliance that he had planned with Napoleon, and marrying to the Duke de Berri, Louis's nephew, that one of his sisters to whom Napoleon preferred Marie Louise. Louis ... responded churlishly to the czar's advances. Accordingly, when France demanded a solid frontier, including the South of Belgium, ... Lord Castlereagh absolutely refused, and was supported by Prussia, hostile to France, and by Austria, indifferent on that score, but disposed to follow England in everything. Russia did not side with France. ... The allies were willing to grant, in place of the old dominion of the monarchy, on the Rhine side, the line of the Queich, which opened communication with Landau, and to the southeast the department of Vaucluse (once County Venaissin) given up by the Pope, besides Chambéry and a part of Savoy; finally, in the Jura region, Montbéliard. This made nearly 600,000 people. As for the colonies, England reluctantly returned Martinique, Guadeloupe, and the Isle of Bourbon, but refused to restore the Isle de France [or Mauritius, captured in 1810], that great military post which is to the Indian Ocean what Malta is to the Mediterranean. This island was bravely defended for some years by its governor. ... The English declared that they would also keep Malta, taken from France, and the Cape of Good Hope, wrested from Holland, saying that all these belonged to them, being on the road to India. ... Secret articles provided that Holland, under the rule of the House of Orange, should be increased by the countries ceded by France, between the sea, the French frontier of 1790, and the Meuse (Austrian Netherlands and Liége). The countries ceded by France on the left bank of the Rhine were to be divided as 'compensation' among the German states. Austria was to have the country bounded by the Po, Ticino, and Lake Maggiore, that is, the old Venetian states, Milan, and Mantua. The territory of the former Republic of Genoa was to be given to the King of Sardinia. Such was the end of the wars of the Empire. Republican France reached the goal of the old monarchy, the natural limits of ancient Gaul; the Empire lost them."

H. Martin, Popular History of France, volume 2, chapter 17.

"The Peace of Paris [signed May 30] was followed by some subsidiary treaties. ... By a Convention of June 3rd between Austria and Bavaria, Maximilian Joseph restored to Austria the Tyrol with the Vorarlberg, the principality of Salzburg, the district of the Inn and the Hausrück. During the visit of the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia to London in June, it was agreed that the Article of the Peace of Paris stipulating the aggrandisement of Holland, should, be carried out by the annexation of Belgium to that country, an arrangement which was accepted by the Sovereign of the Netherlands, July 21st 1814."

T. H. Dyer, History of Modern Europe, book 7, chapter 16.

ALSO IN: A. de Lamartine, History of the Restoration, books 13-14 and 16 (volumes 1-2).

E. E. Crowe, History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X., volume 1, chapter 3.

{1360}

FRANCE: A. D. 1814-1815. Ten months of Bourbon rule and its follies. Return of Napoleon from Elba. Flight of the King. The Hundred Days. Preparations for war.

"The peace of Paris did not endure a year. Ten months of Bourbon rule, vengeful, implacable, stupid; alike violent in act and in language; sufficed to bring France once more to the brink of revolution. Two acts alone are sufficient to demonstrate the folly of the royalists--the resumption of the white flag, and the changing of the numbers of the regiments. A prudent king would have adopted the tricolour when he agreed to a constitutional charter, and would have refrained from wounding military sensibility by destroying the numbers of the regiments. But more stupid than these acts was the political policy pursued, a policy which aroused on all sides suspicions of what was worse than the grinding but gilded despotism of Napoleon--namely, that the Government favoured a forcible resumption of the confiscated lands, the restoration of tithes, and of the abolished exactions and imposts of feudalism. It has been surmised, and with much reason, that had Napoleon not reappeared a popular movement would have extorted from the king a really constitutional government. In that case France might have taken some real steps towards a free government, and the bases of liberty rather than of equality might have been laid. But while the Powers were wrangling at Vienna, and the Bourbons were irritating France, Napoleon was watching from Elba for the opportunity of resuming empire. It was not in the nature of the man to yield passively to anything, even to the inevitable. So long as a chance remained he looked out keenly for the propitious hour. He selected Elba as a residence because thence 'he could keep an eye upon France and upon the Bourbons.' It was his duty, he said, to guard the throne of France for his family and for his son. Thus, in making peace at Fontainebleau, he only bowed to a storm he could not then resist, and cherished in his mind the project of an imperial restoration. The hour for which he waited came at length. February, 1815, he had arrived at the conclusion that with the aid of the army he could overthrow the Bourbons, whose government, he said, was good for priests, nobles, and countesses of the old time, but worth nothing to the living generation. The army, he knew, was still, and would be always, devoted to him. ... He had weighed all the chances for and against the success of his enterprise, and he had arrived at the conclusion that he should succeed; for, 'Fortune had never deserted him on great occasions.' It has been said that his departure was precipitated by a report of the dissolution of the Congress of Vienna. ... It is possible, indeed, that the rumour of an intention to confine him upon an island in the Atlantic may have exercised some influence over him; but the real reasons for the selection of the 26th of February were that he was tired of inactivity, and convinced that the favourable moment had arrived. Therefore, instructing Murat to second him by assuming a strong position in front of Ancona, he embarked his faithful Thousand, and set sail for France. On the 1st of March he landed on the shores of the Gulf of Juan, and on the 20th he entered the Tuileries. As he had predicted, the army rallied to the tricolour; the generals could neither restrain nor guide their soldiers; the Bourbon dukes and princes, and the brave Duchess of Angoulême--'the only man of the family'--were utterly powerless before the universal military disaffection; and one after the other they were chased out of France. The army had restored Napoleon. Louis XVIII. drove out of Paris by the road to St. Denis on the 19th, a few hours before Napoleon, on the 20th, drove in by the Barrier of Italy; and on the 23rd, after a short stay at Lille, the King was safe in Ghent. 'The great question is,' wrote Lord Castlereagh to the Duke of Wellington three days afterwards, while yet in ignorance of the event, 'can the Bourbons get Frenchmen to fight for them against Frenchmen?' The result showed that they could not. In the then state of France the army was master of France. Louis and his ministers had done nothing to conciliate, and almost everything to irritate, the people; and even so early as November, 1814, Wellington did not see what means the King had of resisting the attack of a few hundred officers determined to risk everything. During the period occupied by Napoleon in passing from Elba to Paris, the conduct of' the sovereigns and diplomatists assembled at Vienna offered a striking contrast to the weakness and inaptitude of the Bourbons. ... That there was fear in Vienna is manifest, but the acts of the Allied Powers show that fear speedily gave place to resolution. For, as early as the 12th of' March, before the Allies knew where Napoleon was, or anything about him, except that he was somewhere at large in France, they drew up that famous declaration, and signed it the next day, in which they declared that he had broken the sole legal tie to which his existence was attached, and that it was possible to keep with him 'neither peace nor truce.' 'The Powers, in consequence,' so runs this document, 'declare that Napoleon Buonaparte is placed beyond the pale of civil and social relations, and that, as a common enemy and disturber of the peace of the world, he has delivered himself over to public justice.' This declaration, which has been the subject of vehement criticism, was the natural consequence of the prevailing and correct appreciation of Napoleon's character. There was not a nation in Europe which felt the slightest particle of confidence or trust in him. Hence this declaration, made so promptly, was drawn up in ignorance of any professions he might make, because, beforehand, Europe felt that no professions of his could be relied on. The news of his success was followed by a treaty, adopted on the 25th of March, renewing the alliance of Chaumont, whereby Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia bound themselves to provide each 150,000 men; to employ, in addition, all their resources, and to work together for the common end--the maintenance of the Treaty of Paris, and of the stipulations determined on and signed at the Congress of Vienna. Further, they engaged not to lay down their arms but by common consent; nor before the object of the war should have been attained; nor, continues the document, 'until Buonaparte shall have been rendered absolutely unable to create disturbance, and to renew attempts for possessing himself of supreme power in France.' All the Powers of Europe generally, and Louis XVIII. specially, were invited to accede to the treaty; but, at the instance of Lord Castlereagh, the Four Great Powers declared in the most solemn manner that, although they desired to see his Most Christian Majesty restored to the throne, and also to contribute to that 'auspicious result,' yet that their 'principles' would not permit them to prosecute the war 'with a view of imposing any particular Government on France.' With Napoleon they refused to hold any communication whatever; and when he sent couriers to announce that he intended to observe existing treaties, they were stopped on the frontiers. ... {1361} Wellington, on his own responsibility, acted for England, signed treaties, undertook heavy engagements in her name, and agreed to command an army to be assembled in Belgium; and having satisfied, as well as he could, the clamour of 'all' for subsidies from England, he took his departure from Vienna on the 29th of March, and arrived in Brussels on the 4th of April. The British Parliament and nation confirmed readily the proceedings of the Government and of the Duke of Wellington at Vienna. ... Napoleon had formed a Ministry on the very evening of his return to the Tuileries. ... He felt certain that war would ensue. Knowing that at the moment when he returned from Elba a large part of the best troops of England were in America, that the German force on the Rhine was weak, and that the Russian armies were in Poland, he calculated that the Allied Powers would not be in a position to open the campaign, at the earliest, until the middle of July; and, for a moment, he hoped that, by working on the feelings of his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, and by rousing the anger of the Emperor Alexander against his allies, he would be able, if not to reduce his enemies to two, England and Prussia, at least to defer the period of hostilities until the autumn. ... Before his great schemes of military preparation were half complete he found himself compelled by events to begin the war. What he actually did accomplish between March and June has been the subject of fierce controversy. His friends exaggerate, his enemies undervalue, his exertions and their results. But no candid inquirer can fail to see, that if his energetic activity during this period is far below that of the Convention when threatened by Europe, it is far above the standard fixed by his passionate crimes. The real reason why he failed to raise a larger military force during the hundred days was that his genius worked upon exhausted materials. The nation, to use an expressive vulgarism, was 'used up.' ... The proper conscription for 1815 had been levied in the autumn of 1813. The drafts on the rising generation had been anticipated, and hence there remained little available except the old soldiers. ... The result of Napoleon's prodigious exertions to augment the military force of France appears to be this: Napoleon found ready to his hand a force of 228,972 men of all arms, officers included, giving a disposable effective of 155,000 men ready to take the field. By the 18th of June he had raised this force to 276,982 men, officers included: that is 247,609 of the line, and 29,373 of the Imperial Guard. The number disposable for war was 198,180; and it therefore follows that Napoleon had increased the general effective by 53,010 men, and that part of it disposable for war by 48, 180."

G. Hooper, Waterloo, book 1, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: Imbert de Saint-Amand, The Duchess of Angouléme and the two Restorations, part 1.

F. P. Guizot, Memoirs of My Time, volume 1, chapter 3.

J. C. Ropes, The First Napoleon, lecture 6.

E. E. Crowe, History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X., volume 1, chapters 4-6.

_R. H. Horne, Life of Napoleon, chapters 41-42._

_General Sir N. Campbell, Napoleon at Fontainebleau and Elba._

FRANCE: A. D. 1814-1815. The Congress of Vienna and the fruits of its labors.

See VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (June). Napoleon's last campaign. His final defeat and overthrow at Waterloo.

"The nearest troops of the allies were the Prussian army in the Rhenish provinces, and the army of British, Dutch, Belgians, Bunswickers, and Hanoverians, occupying Belgium. Napoleon's scheme, the best in his desperate circumstances, was to expel the British and Prussians, who were moving west, from Belgium, win the Rhine frontier--to arouse the enthusiasm of all France--before the Austrians were ready, and carry the war out of France. The Duke of Wellington proceeded to Belgium, for the first and last time to measure his skill with Napoleon's, and Marshal Blücher took over from Kleist the command of the Prussians. The two armies, the Prussian and the British, took up a line extending from Liege to the sea. The country on this line was open along the west, affording by nature little means of resisting an invasion, but most of the fortresses commanding the roads had been put in a state of moderate repair. The Prussians held the line of the Meuse and Sambre to beyond Charleroi, the head-quarters being at Namur. They numbered about 117,000 men ... with 312 guns. ... The motley mass of the British and their allies numbered 106,000 men ... with 196 guns. ... So entirely ignorant were the allies of Napoleon's movements, that on the very day on which he burst across the frontier, Wellington wrote to the Czar, who was at Vienna, respecting the general invasion of France. At that time the frontier of France approached within six miles of Charleroi (which is itself but 34 miles by the main road from Brussels). The Charleroi road was not only the most direct to Brussels, but was unprotected by fortresses; and the line of the allied armies was weakest here at the point of junction between them. ... It was against the central weak point that Napoleon resolved to move, down the basins of the Sambre and the Meuse. ... The mass of the troops was being assembled within a league of the frontier, but behind some small hills which completely screened them from the enemy's outposts. To conceal his designs to the last moment, the line of sentries along the frontier was tripled, and any attempt to pass the line was forbidden under pain of death. The arrangements were being carried out by Soult, who on the 2nd June had been appointed chief of the staff. ... The army concentrated on the frontier consisted (according to Colonel Chesney) of 90,000 infantry and 22,000 cavalry--in all 112,000 men--344 guns. ... Napoleon, accompanied by his brother Jerome, arrived in the camp, and in the evening of the 14th his soldiers, already elated by his presence, were excited to the highest pitch of enthusiasm by an address from Napoleon. ... A general order fixed the attack upon the allies' position for three o'clock in the following morning (15th)." At the appointed time "the French left was in motion, Reille proceeding from Solre down the right bank of the Sambre. He was soon brought into collision with the Prussian outposts near Thuin: he drove them back and secured at ten o'clock the bridge of Marchiennes." The movements of other corps were delayed by various causes. Nevertheless, "of the Prussians only Ziethen's corps, and of Wellington's army only Perponcher's Dutch-Belgians, were as yet near the menaced position; while 40,000 French had passed the Sambre at Marchiennes and 70,000 more were entering Charleroi. When Reille deployed in front of Gosselies, the Prussians called in their detachments and retired from it, upon Fleurus, ... leaving open the road through Quatre Bras to Brussels. {1362} Ney, who had just come up, then took command of the left, ... which was now directed upon Quatre Bras; and Napoleon galloped off to the road between Charleroi and Fleurus, where the retiring Prussians were concentrating. ... At dark Ziethen [with the First Prussian corps] still held Fleurus with his advanced guard, and the wood on its south, the bulk of his troops lay for the night upon the hill of Ligny, above the village of Bry. His loss during the day's manœuvring has been estimated at 2,000. On the French left, Ney... had come in contact with the advance guard of Wellington's army, a battalion of Nassauers and a light battery, in front of the village of Frasnes, two miles from Quatre Bras, the name applied to the farm-buildings at the intersection of the four main roads,--Brussels, Nivelles, Charleroi, Namur. ... After a few cannon-shots the outpost fell back from Frasnes to Quatre Bras." Ney, after a reconnoissance, postponed attack until morning. "It had been intended by Napoleon that the whole army should have crossed the Sambre before noon; but from the several delays ... when night fell on the 15th, half of the cavalry of the guard, two of Grouchy's reserve divisions, Lobau's corps, and one-half of Gérard's corps were still on the south of the river. Apparently relying on secret information from Paris--which contradicted the rumours that Napoleon was about to join the army--Wellington had been lulled into a false security, and the reports as to the concentration had been neglected. News of the enemy's advance across the Sambre did not reach him till three o'clock in the afternoon of the 15th, when the Prince of Orange in person reported the skirmish at Thuin. As he did not yet know the point of concentration, the British general, 'never precipitate or nervous' (Hooper), merely issued orders for all the troops to be in readiness. ... At night intelligence was received from Mons that the French concentration was at Charleroi, and orders were issued for the immediate movement of the troops. ... Wellington and the Prince of Orange, with several of the staff' officers, went--it is said, to prevent a panic in Brussels--to the Duchess of Richmond's ball, where 'Belgium's capital had gathered then her beauty and her chivalry,' and, 'while all went merry as a marriage bell,' the staff officers stole away one by one. The Duke himself, 'throwing away golden minutes' (Hamley), as if to show his confidence in his fortunes, remained to a late hour to return thanks after supper for the health of the Prince Regent of Great Britain, which the Prince of Orange proposed. ... Blücher had received, at his head-quarters at Namur, news on the morning of the 14th of the French concentration, and he had ordered forward the corps of Pirch and Thielemann. ... Napoleon did not foresee Blücher's promptitude, and nothing was done in the early morning of the 16th to proceed with the execution of the intended surprise. . . .... No orders were issued by the Emperor till eight, when Napoleon's resolution was taken,--to strike at the Prussians, who would, he believed, if defeated, retire upon their natural base of communications, through Namur and Liege, and he would thus be left to deal separately with the British, who could not move from their base, the sea. The French army was to advance in two wings, the left under Ney, the right under Grouchy, with the reserve under the Emperor himself. Ney was to capture Quatre Bras, reconnoitre the Brussels road, and hold himself in readiness to march to Brussels, which Napoleon hoped to be able to enter the following morning. ... Napoleon had 64,000 men to attack the position at Ligny; Ney on the left wing had 45,000 for Quatre Bras; Lobau had 10,000 to support either wing of the Grand Army; 5,000 troops were in the rear; and the victorious wing, whether Ney's or Grouchy's, was to wheel round and manœuvre in the direction of the other. Thielemann having come up before the French delivered their attack, Blücher had 85,000 men on the field. Wellington arrived at Quatre Bras (which is 20 miles from Brussels) at 11 o'clock in the forenoon. As Marshal Ney gave no sign of an imminent attack, Wellington galloped over, about seven miles, to confer with Blücher. ... Wellington, after some discussion, in which he expressed his disapproval of Blücher's position, agreed to move to the rear of the Prussians, to act as a reserve, if his own position at Quatre Bras were not attacked. ... He reached Quatre Bras when his own position was being assailed, and no help could be sent to Blücher. ... At about three o'clock, when the heavy cannonade a few miles to the west intimated that a desperate battle was in progress at Quatre Bras, the signal for attack [on the Prussians, at Ligny] was given. The French left sped forward with impetuosity; the resistance was vigorous but futile, and the enemy streamed through the village. Blücher immediately moved forward fresh troops and re-took the village, but was unable to retain it. ... Thrice the Grenadiers forced their way into and through the village, but only to be driven back again." But "Blücher gradually exhausted his reserves, and when, in the dusk, Napoleon saw the last battalion moved forward and the ground behind Ligny vacant, he exclaimed, 'they are lost!' The Guards and the Cuirassiers were immediately ordered to attack," and the wearied Prussian infantry were broken by their onset. "The fugitives led precipitately over the fields and along the roads to the east, and the order for the whole to retire was immediately given. ... Blücher himself gathered a few of his squadrons to check the hot pursuit near Sombreffe, and thrice led them to the charge. His squadrons were broken, and after the last charge his horse fell dead, and the veteran marshal lay under it. His aid-de-camp, Nostitz, stood by him, and covered him with a cloak; the Cuirassiers galloped past without noticing him. ... Gneisenau, who took temporary command from the accident to Blücher, ordered a retreat upon Wavre, with the view of joining Bülow's corps and keeping open the communications with Wellington. ... The loss on each side has been very variously estimated. Napoleon put his own loss at 7,000 men, Charras puts it at 11,000, and the loss of the Prussians at 18,000. The retreat upon Wavre abandoned the communications with Namur and Liege, through which the Prussian supplies came from the lower Rhine, for a new line by Louvain, but it kept the Prussians on a line parallel to the road on which Wellington must retreat, and thus still enabled the two armies to aid each other. 'This noble daring at once snatched from Napoleon the hoped-for fruits of his victory, and the danger Ligny had for a few hours averted was left impending over him' (Chesney)."

H. R. Clinton, The War in the Peninsula and Wellington's Campaigns in France and Belgium, chapter 12.

{1363}

On Wellington's return to Quatre Bras from his interview with Blücher, he found, as stated above, that the Prince of Orange had already became desperately engaged with the superior forces of Ney. "The Duke's presence gave new life to the battle, and when Picton's division, followed by the Brunswickers and Van Merle's Belgian horse, arrived, he took the offensive, pushing forward right up to the edge of the farm of Gemioncourt. Ney, reinforced by the rest of Reille's corps and part of Kellerman's cavalry, violently retorted, and in the charge, which partially broke into spray before the squares, Wellington ran the risk of death or capture. But he leaped his horse over the 92d Highlanders lining the ditch on the Namur road, while his gallant pursuers, cut up by the infantry fire, were killed or driven off. Ney was further reinforced by more guns and cavalry, and Wellington's brigades continued to arrive in parcels. The Marshal was always superior in horsemen and cannon, but after 5 o'clock his opponent had larger numbers of foot. Holding firmly to the cross-roads and, the highway to Namur, Wellington became the stronger as the day waned; and when the Guards emerged from the Nivelles road and the Allies pressed forward, Ney, who had no fresh troops, was driven back, and his antagonist remained at sundown master of the whole field of battle. The position was maintained, but the cost was great, for there were no fewer than 4,600 killed and wounded, more than half being British soldiers. The thunder of cannon to the eastward had also died away, but none knew as yet at Quatre Bras how Blücher had fared at the hands of his redoubtable foe. Wellington, who slept at his head-quarters in Genappe, was on the field and scrutinising his outposts at daybreak an the 17th. Soon after came a report, confirmed a little later, that the Prussians had retreated on Wavre. ... Napoleon had a belief that Blücher would retreat upon Liège, which caused him at a late hour in the day to despatch Grouchy to that side, and thus touch was lost. While the French were cooking and Napoleon was pondering, definite intelligence was brought to Wellington, who, learning for certain that Blücher was at Wavre, promised to stand fast himself at Mont St. Jean and fight, if Blücher would support him with two corps. The intrepid Marshal replied that he would came with his whole army, and Wellington got the famous answer before night. Thus was made, between generals who thoroughly trusted each other, that combination which led to the Battle of Waterloo. It was no chance combat, but the result of a deliberate design, rendered capable of execution, even when Blücher was wounded, by his resolve to retreat upon Wavre, and by Napoleon, who acted on conjecture that the Prussians would hurry towards their base at Liege. The morning at Quatre Bras was peaceful; the Allies cooked their food before starting rearward. Wellington, it is said, lay down for a moment, and snatched perhaps a little sleep. There was no stir in front or on the exposed left flank; and, covered by a strong display of horsemen, the Allied divisions tramped steadily towards Mont St. Jean. ... The retreat continued all day. A thunderstorm, so often a precursor of Wellington's battles, deluged the fields with rain, and pursuer and pursued struggling through the mire, were drenched to the skin by nightfall. ... The results of two days' warfare may be thus summed up. Napoleon had inflicted a defeat, yet not a decisive defeat, upon the Prussians, who escaped from his ken to Wavre. He had then, at a late hour on the 17th, detached Grouchy with 33,000 men to follow them, and Grouchy at night from Gembloux reported that they had retired in three directions. Moving himself in the afternoon, Napoleon, uniting with Ney, had pursued Wellington to Mont St. Jean, and slept in the comfortable belief that he had separated the Allies. At that very time Wellington, who had assembled his whole force except 17,000 men, ... was in close communication with Blücher, and intended on the 18th to stop Napoleon by delivering battle, and to hold him fast until Blücher could cut in on his right flank and rear. Thus it was the Allies who were united practically, and the French army which was separated into two groups unable to support each other. ... The tempest which burst over the retreating columns on the 17th followed them to their bivouacs and raged all night, and did not cease until late on the fateful Sunday. Wellington, mounting his faithful Copenhagen at break of day, rode from the village of Waterloo to the field, where the armies on both sides, protected by watchful sentries, were still contending with the mischiefs inflicted by the storm. The position was the crest of a gentle slope stretching from Smohain to the Nivelles road, having upon and in advance of its right the château, garden, and wood of Hougoumont, and in the centre, where the Charleroi road cut through the little ridge, the farm of La Haye Sainte. Both these posts were occupied, but the latter, unfortunately, not so solidly as Hougoumont. ... The position was well filled by the 69,000 men of all arms and 156 guns which were present that day. Napoleon, who slept at the farm of Caillou, and who had been out on foot to the front during the night, was also early in the field, and glad of the gift which he thought fortune had placed in his hands. When Reille had joined him from Genappe, he had 72,000 men, all admirable soldiers, and 240 guns, with which to engage in combat, and he reckoned that the chances were ninety to ten in his favour. He mounted his charger, reconnoitred his opponent's position, and then gave the orders which, promptly and finely obeyed, disclosed the French array. ... It was now nearly eleven o'clock, and, although his opponent knew it not, Wellington had got news of the march from Wavre of Bulow, whose leading troops were actually, at that time, close to the wood of St. Lambert on the French right; while Grouchy was at Sart les Walhain, between Gembloux and Wavre. It is not practicable here to give a full account of the battle of Waterloo; we can only describe its broad outlines. The first gun was fired about twenty or thirty minutes past eleven, and preluded a dashing and sustained attack an Hougoumont, which failed to carry the house, garden, or orchard, but did gain the wood. It was probably intended to divert attention from the attack on the left and centre, which Ney, massing his guns opposite the British left, was preparing to execute. Wellington watched and in some measure controlled the fight for Hougoumont, and then rode off to the centre, taking post at a solitary tree which grew near the Charleroi road above La Haye Sainte. {1364} Ney at half past one sent forward the whole of D'Erlon's corps, and although some of them pushed close up to and over the Wavre road, stormed the orchard of La Haye Sainte and took the Pappelotte farm, yet at the critical moment Sir William Ponsonby's Union Brigade of horse charged into the French infantry, already shattered by the fire of Picton's troops, and the net result of the combined operation was that two eagles and 3,000 prisoners were captured, while nearly that number of killed and wounded remained on the ground. On the other side of La Haye Sainte the Household Brigade, led by Lord Anglesea in person, charged in upon and routed a large body of French cuirassiers. The grand attack thus completely failed, and the centre, like the right, remained intact. It was just before this combat began that Napoleon saw something like troops towards St. Lambert and despatched two brigades of light cavalry to reconnoitre. A Prussian staff officer was caught beyond Planchenoit, and from him came the unexpected and unwelcome information that the whole Prussian army was approaching. ... The signs of danger on his right flank, the punishment of D'Erlon's corps, the ineffectual attempt upon the British Guards in and about Hougoumont, were followed by a kind of pause and the combat reverted to cannonading and skirmishing. But towards four o'clock Napoleon, increasing the fire of his artillery, threw forward a mass of cavalry, forty squadrons, and then began that series of reiterated onsets of horse which lasted for two hours. ... Twice they were driven down the slope, and the third time, when they came on, they were strengthened by Kellerman and Guyot until they reached a force of 77 squadrons, or 12,000 men; but these also were repulsed, the British horse, what remained of them, charging when the French were entangled among the squares and disordered by the musketry and guns. Four times these fine troopers charged, yet utterly failed to penetrate or move a single foot battalion. But some time before the final effort, Ney by a fierce attack got possession of La Haye Sainte, and thus, just as the cavalry were exhausted, the French infantry were established within sixty yards of the Allied centre. And although the Emperor was obliged to detach one-half of his Guard to the right, because Blucher had brought into play beyond Planchenoit against Lobau nearly 80,000 men, still the capture of La Haye Sainte was justly regarded as a grave event. Wellington during the cavalry fight had moved three brigades on his right nearer to Hougoumont, and had called up Chassé and his Belgians to support them; and it was a little before this time that he cried out to Brigadier-General Adam, 'By G--, Adam, I think we shall beat them yet! ... The crisis of the battle had come for Napoleon. Unable after eight hours' conflict to do more than capture La Haye Sainte; hardly pressed by the Prussians, now strong and aggressive; owing such success as he had obtained to the valour and discipline of his soldiers--the Emperor delivered his last stroke, not for victory--he could no longer hope to win--but for safety. He sent forward the last ten battalions of his Guard to assail the British right, and directed the whole remaining infantry force available to attack all along the line. The Guard marched onward in two columns, which came successively in contact with their opponents. Napier's guns and the British Guards, who rising from the ground showed across the head of the first column, fired heavily and charging drove them in confusion back towards La Belle Alliance; and the second column, struck in flank by the musketry of the 52nd and 95th was next broken by a bayonet charge and pursued by Colonel Colborne to and beyond the Charleroi road. As Ziethen's Prussians were falling upon the French near Pappelotte, and Pirch and Bulow wrestling with the Imperial Guard in Planchenoit, Wellington ordered the whole of the British line to advance. The cheers arising on the right where he was, extended along the front and gave new strength to the wearied soldiers. He led the way. As he neared the Charleroi road, the riflemen, full of Peninsular memories, began to cheer him as he galloped up, but he called out, 'No cheering, my lads; forward and complete your victory.' He found that good soldier, Colborne, halted for a moment before three squares of the rallied Imperial Guard. 'Go on, Colborne,' he said; 'better attack them, they won't stand.' Nor did they. Wellington then turned to the right, where Vivian's Light Cavalry were active in the gloom, and we next find him once more with the 52nd near Rossomme, the farthest point of the advance, where that regiment halted after its grand march over the battlefield. Somewhere on the highway he met Blucher, who had so nobly kept his word, and it was then that Gneisenau undertook to chase the fugitives over the frontier. The French, or perhaps we should say the Napoleonic army, was destroyed, and the power which its mighty leader had built up on the basis of its astonishing successes was gone for ever."

G. Hooper, Wellington, chapter 9.

ALSO IN: _D. Gardner, Quatre Bras, Ligny, and Waterloo._

_Lieutenant Colonel C. C. Chesney, Waterloo Lectures._

_W. Siborne, History of the War in France and Belgium in 1819._

_General Sir J. S. Kennedy, Notes on the Battle of Waterloo._

W. H. Maxwell, Life of Wellington, volume 8, chapters 28-32.

_G. R. Gleig, Story of the Battle of Waterloo._

W. O'C. Morris, Great Commanders of Modern Times, and the Campaign of 1815.

FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (June-August). Napoleon's return to Paris. His final abdication. His surrender of himself to the English. His captivity at St. Helena.

"The vanquished army had lost 200 pieces of ordnance, and 80,000 men hors de combat or prisoners; as many more remained, independently of Grouchy's 85,000 men; but the difficulty was to rally them in presence of an enemy, that had taken lessons in audacity and activity from Napoleon himself. The loss of the allies was not less considerable, but there remained to them 150,000 men, the confidence of victory, and the certainty of being seconded by 300,000 allies, who were crossing the Rhine from Mentz to Bäle. Such was the issue of this struggle, commenced under such happy auspices, and which resulted more fatal to France than the battles of Poitiers and Azincourt. It must be admitted, that this disaster was the work of a multitude of unheard-of circumstances: if Napoleon can be reproached for certain faults, it must be allowed that fortune dealt cruelly with him in the lesser details, and that his enemies, in return, were as fortunate as they showed themselves skillful. {1365} However unjust be the spirit of party, we are forced to render homage to the merits of two generals, who, unexpectedly attacked in their cantonments extending from Dinant and Liège to Renaix, near Tournay, had taken such wise measures as to be in condition next morning for giving battle to equal forces, and for afterwards conquering by an able concentration of the two armies. ... In the very battle of Waterloo, the French might be censured for having attempted the first attack in masses too deep. This system was never successful against the murderous fire of English infantry and artillery. ... There were likewise extraordinary charges of cavalry, which, being devoid of support, became heroic but useless struggles. Notwithstanding all this, it is almost certain that Napoleon would have remained master of the field of battle, but for the arrival of 65,000 Prussians on his rear; a decisive and disastrous circumstance, that to prevent was not entirely in his power. As soon as the enemy led 130,000 men on the battle-field, with scarcely 50,000 to oppose them, all was lost. ... Napoleon had but one course left him, which was to direct Grouchy through the Ardennes on Laon; to collect at this point all that could be drawn from the interior, from Metz and from Rapp's corps, leaving but garrisons in Lorraine and Alsace. The imperial cause was very much shaken, put not entirely lost; should all Frenchmen determine on opposing Europe with the courage of the Spartans of Leonidas, the energy of the Russians in 1812, or of the Spaniards of Palafox. Unfortunately for them, as·for Napoleon, opinion was very much divided on this subject, and the majority still believing that the struggle interested only the power of the emperor and his family, the fate of the country seemed of little consequence. Prince Jerome had collected 25,000 men in rear of Avesnes: he was ordered to lead them to Laon; there remained 200 pieces of artillery, beside those of Grouchy. ... Reaching Loon on the 19th, where he had at first resolved to await the junction of Grouchy and Jerome, the emperor discussed, with the small number of the trustworthy who had followed him, the course he should adopt after this frightful disaster. Should he repair to Paris, and concert with the chambers and his ministers, or else remain with the army, demanding of the chambers to invest him with dictatorial power and an unlimited confidence, under the conviction that he would obtain from them the most energetic measures, for saving France and conquering her independence, on heaps of ruins? As it always happens, his generals were divided in opinion; some wished him to proceed to Paris, and deposit the crown into the hands of the nation's delegates, or receive it from them a second time, with the means of defending it. Others, with a better appreciation of the views of the deputies, affirmed, that far from sympathizing with Napoleon, and seconding him, they would accuse him of having lost France, and would endeavor to save the country by losing the emperor. ... Lastly, the most prudent thought that Napoleon should not go to Paris, but remain at the head of the army, in order to treat with the sovereigns himself, by offering to abdicate in favor of his son. It is said, that Napoleon inclined to the idea of remaining at Laon with the army; but the advice of the greatest number determined him, and he departed for Paris."

Baron de Jomini, History of the Campaign of Waterloo, pages 184-189.

"It was a moment of unrelieved despair for the public men who gathered round him on his return to Paris, and among these were several whose fame was of earlier date than his own. La Fayette, the man of 1789; Carnot, organizer of victory to the Convention; Lucien, who had decided the revolution of Brumaire,--all these met in that comfortless deliberation. Carnot was for a dictatorship of public safety, that is, for renewing his great days of 1793; Lucien too liked the Roman sound of the word dictator. 'Dare!' he said to his brother, but the spring of that terrible will was broken at last. 'I have dared too much already;' said Napoleon. Meanwhile, in the Chamber of Representatives the, word was not dictatorship but liberty. Here La Fayette caused the assembly to vote itself permanent, and to declare guilty of high treason whoever should attempt to dissolve it. He hinted that, if the word abdication were not soon pronounced on the other side, he would himself pronounce the word 'dechéance.' The second abdication took place on June 22d. 'I offer myself a sacrifice to the hatred of the enemies of France. My public life is finished, and I proclaim my son, under the title of Napoleon II., Emperor of the French.' On the 25th he retired to Malmaison, where Josephine had died the year before. He had by no means yet ceased to hope. When his son was passed over by the Chamber of Representatives, who named an executive commission of five, he protested that he had not intended to make way for a new Directory. ... On the 27th he went so far as to offer his services once more as general, 'regarding myself still as the first soldier of the nation;' He was met by a refusal, and left Malmaison on the 29th for Rochefort, well furnished with books on the United States. France was by this time entering upon another Reign of Terror. Massacre had begun at Marseilles as early as the 25th. What should Napoleon do? He had been formerly the enemy of every other nation, and now he was the worst enemy, if not of France, yet of the triumphant faction in France. He lingered some days at Rochefort, where he had arrived on July 3d, and then, finding it impossible to escape the vigilance of the English cruisers, went on the 15th on board the 'Bellerophon' and surrendered himself to Captain Maitland. It was explained to him that no conditions could be accepted, but that he would be 'conveyed to England to be received in such manner as the Prince Regent should deem expedient:' He had written at the Île d'Aix the following characteristic letter to the Prince Regent:--'Royal Highness,--A prey to the factions which divide my country and to the enmity of the powers of Europe, I have terminated my public career, and I come, like Themistocles, to seat myself at the hearth of the British people. I place myself under the protection of its laws, which I claim from your Royal Highness as the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous of my enemies.' It was perhaps the only course open to him. In France his life could scarcely have been spared, and Blücher talked of executing him on the spot where the Duc d'Enghien had fallen. He therefore could do nothing but what he did. His reference to Themistocles shows that he was conscious of being the worst enemy that England had ever had. {1366} Perhaps he remembered that at the rupture of the treaty of Amiens he had studied to envenom the contest by detaining the English residents in France. Still he might reflect, on the other hand, that England was the only great country which had not been trampled down and covered with massacre by his soldiers. It would have been inexcusable if the English Government had given way to vindictive feelings, especially as they could well afford to be magnanimous, having just won the greatest of all victories. But it was necessary to deprive him of the power of exciting new wars, and the experiment of Elba had shown that this involved depriving him of his liberty. The frenzy which had cost·the lives of millions must be checked. This was the principle laid down in the declaration of March 15th, by which he had been excommunicated as a public enemy. It was therefore necessary to impose some restraint upon him. He must be separated from his party and from all the revolutionary party in Europe. So long as he remained in Europe this would involve positive imprisonment. The only arrangement therefore which would allow him tolerable personal comfort and enjoyment of life, was to send him out of Europe. From these considerations grew the decision of the Government to send him to St. Helena. An Act of Parliament was passed 'for the better detaining in custody Napoleon Bonaparte,' and another Act for subjecting St. Helena to a special system of government. He was kept on board the 'Bellerophon' till August 4th, when he was transferred to the 'Northumberland.' On October 15th he arrived at St. Helena, accompanied by Counts Montholon, Las Cases, and Bertrand, with their families, General Gourgaud, and a number of servants. In April, 1816, arrived Sir Hudson Lowe, an officer who had been knighted for bringing the news of the capture of Paris in 1814, as governor. The rest of his life, which continued till May 5, 1821, was occupied partly in quarrels with this governor, which have now lost their interest, partly in the task he had undertaken at the time of his first abdication, that of relating his past life. He did not himself write this narrative, nor does it appear that he even dictated it word for word. It is a report made partly by General Gourgaud, partly by Count Montholon, of Napoleon's impassioned recitals; but they assure us that this report, as published, has been read and corrected throughout by him. It gives a tolerably complete account of the period between the siege of Toulon and the battle of Marengo. On the later period there is little, except a memoir on the campaign of 1815, to which the editors of the Correspondence have been able to add another on Elba and the Hundred Days."

J. R. Seeley, Short History of Napoleon I., chapter 6, section 5.

ALSO IN: _Count de Las Cases, Life, Exile and Conversations of Napoleon._

_General Count Montholon, History of the Captivity of Napoleon._

_W. Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon._

_B. E. O'Meara, Napoleon in Exile._

Sir W. Scott, Life of Napoleon, volume 2, chapters 49-56.

A. Thiers, History of the Consulate and the Empire, chapters 61-62 (volume 5).

FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (July-November). English and Prussian armies in Paris. Return of Louis XVIII. Restoration of the art-spoils or Napoleon. Indemnities demanded. Russian, Austrian and Spanish armies on French soil. The second Treaty or Paris.

"The 7th of July was the proudest day in the annals of England. On that day her victorious army, beaded by Wellington, made their public entry, along with the Prussians, into Paris, where an English drum had not been heard for nearly four hundred years. ... The French regarded them with melancholy hearts and anxious looks. Few persons were to be seen in the streets. ... The English established themselves in the Bois de Boulogne in a regular camp; the Prussians bivouacked in the churches, on the quays, and in the principal streets. On the following day Louis, who had followed in the rear of the English army from Ghent, made his public entrance, escorted by the national guard. But his entry was attended by still more melancholy circumstances, and of sinister augury to the future stability of his dynasty. Even the royalists were downcast; their patriotic feelings were deeply wounded by the defeat of France. ... There was something in the restoration of the monarch by the arms of the old rivals and enemies of France which added inexpressibly to its bitterness. ... The reality of subjugation was before their eyes. Blucher kept aloof from all intercourse with the court, and haughtily demanded a contribution of 100,000,000 francs ... for the pay of his troops, as Napoleon had done from the Prussians at Berlin. Already the Prussian soldiers insisted with loud cries that the pillar of Austerlitz should be pulled down, as Napoleon had destroyed the pillar of Rosbach; and Blucher was so resolute to destroy the bridge of Jena, that he had actually begun operations by running mines under the arches for blowing it up. ... Wellington as steadily resisted the ruthless act, but he had great difficulty in maintaining his point; and it was only by his placing a sentinel on the bridge, and repeated and earnest remonstrances, that the destruction of that beautiful monument was prevented. ... A still more melancholy humiliation than they had yet experienced ere long befell the French nation. The Allied sovereigns now arrived in Paris, and insisted upon the restoration of the objects of art in the museum of the Louvre, which had been pillaged from their respective states by the orders of Napoleon. The justice of this demand could not be contested: it was only wresting the prey from the robber. ... Nothing wounded the French so profoundly as this breaking up of the trophies of the war. It told them, in language not to be misunderstood, that conquest had now reached their doors: the iron went into the soul of the nation. A memorial from all the artists of Europe at Rome claimed for the Eternal City the entire restoration of the immortal works of art which had once adorned it. The Allied sovereigns acceded to the just demand; and Canova, impassioned for the arts and the city of his choice, hastened to Paris to superintend the removal. It was most effectually done. The bronze horses ... [from Venice] were restored to their old station in front of the Church of St. Mark. The Transfiguration and the Last Communion of St. Jerome resumed their place in the halls of the Vatican; the Apollo and the Laocoon again adorned the precincts of St. Peter's; the Venus was enshrined anew amidst beauty in the Tribune of Florence; and the Descent from the Cross by Rubens was restored to the devout worship of the Flemings in the cathedral of Antwerp. ... {1367} The claims preferred by the different Allied powers for restitution not merely of celebrated objects of art, but of curiosities and valuable articles of all kinds, which had been carried off by the French during their occupation of the different countries of Europe, especially under Napoleon, were immense, and demonstrated at once the almost incredible length to which the system of spoliation and robbery had been carried by the republican and imperial authorities. Their amount may be estimated by one instance from an official list, prepared by the Prussian authorities in 1815, It appears that, during the years 1806 and 1807, there had been violently taken from the Prussian states, on the requisition of M. Donore, and brought to Paris,--statues, paintings, antiquities, cameos, manuscripts, maps, gems, antiques, rarities, and other valuable articles, the catalogue of which occupies 53 closely printed pages of M. Schoell's valuable Recueil. Among them are 127 paintings, many of them of the very highest value, taken from the palaces of Berlin and Potsdam alone; 187 statues, chiefly antique, taken from the same palaces during the same period; and 86 valuable manuscripts and documents seized in the city of Aix-la-Chapelle, on the occupation of that city, then a neutral power, in 1803, by the armies of the First Consul on the invasion of Hanover. The total articles reclaimed by the Prussians exceeded two thousand. ... The claims of states and cities for indemnity on account of' the enormous exactions made from them by the French generals, under the authority of the Convention and the Emperor, were still more extraordinary. ... The vast amount of these claims for indemnities in money or territories, and the angry feelings with which they were urged, were of sinister augury to the French nation, and augmented, in a most serious degree, the difficulties experienced by those who were intrusted with the conduct of the negotiations. But, be they what they may, the French had no means of resisting them; all they could trust to was the moderation or jealousies of their conquerors. The force which, during the months of July and August, advanced from all quarters into their devoted territory, was immense, and such as demonstrated that, if Napoleon had not succeeded in dissolving the alliance by an early victory in the Netherlands, the contest, even without the battle of Waterloo, would have been hopeless. The united armies of Russians and Austrians, 350,000 strong, under Schwartzenberg and Barclay de Tolly, crossed the Rhine in various places from Bâle to Coblentz, and, pressing rapidly forward, soon occupied the whole eastern provinces of France. The Austrians and Piedmontese, a hundred thousand more; passed Mont Cenis, or descended the Rhone, from Geneva to Lyons. The Spaniards made their appearance in Bearn or Roussillon. The armies of Blucher and Wellington, now reinforced to 200,000 effective men, occupied Paris, its environs, Normandy, and Picardy. Eighty thousand Prussians and Germans, in addition, were advancing through the Rhenish provinces and Belgium. Before the Allied sovereigns returned to Paris, in the middle of July, the French territory was occupied by 800,000 men, to oppose which no considerable force remained but the army beyond the Loire, which mustered 65,000 combatants. ... Austria insisted upon getting back Lorraine and Alsace; Spain put in a claim to the Basque provinces; Prussia alleged that her security would be incomplete unless Mayence, Luxembourg, and all the frontier provinces of France adjoining her territory, were ceded to her; and the King of the Netherlands claimed the whole of the French fortresses of the Flemish barrier. The monarchy of Louis seemed on the eve of dissolution; and so complete was the prostration of the vanquished, that there appeared no power capable of preventing it. It was with no small difficulty, and more from the mutual jealousies of the different powers than any other cause, that these natural reprisals for French rapacity were prevented from taking place. The negotiation was protracted at Paris till late in autumn; Russia, which had nothing to gain by the proposed partition, took part with France throughout its whole continuance; and the different powers, to support their pretensions in this debate, maintained their armies, who had entered on all sides, on the French soil; so that above 800,000 foreign troops were quartered on its inhabitants for several months. At length, however, by the persevering efforts of Lord Castlereagh, M. Nesselrode, and M. Talleyrand, all difficulties were adjusted, and the second treaty of Paris was concluded in November 1815, between France and the whole Allied powers. By this treaty, and the relative conventions which were signed the same day, conditions of a very onerous kind were imposed upon the restored government. The French frontier was restored to the state in which it stood in 1790, by which means the whole of the territory, far from inconsiderable, gained by the treaty of 1814, was resumed by the Allies. In consequence of this, France lost the fortresses of Landau, Sarre-Louis, Philipville, and Marienburg, with the adjacent territory of each. Versoix, with a small district round it, was ceded to the canton of Geneva; the fortress of Huningen was to be demolished; but the little country of the Venaisin, the first conquest of the Revolution, was preserved to France. Seven hundred millions of francs (£28,000,000 sterling) were to be paid to the Allied powers for the expenses of the war; in addition to which it was stipulated that an army of 150,000 men, composed of 80,000 from each of the great powers of England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, and the lesser powers of Germany, was to occupy, for a period not less than three, or more than five years, the whole frontier fortresses of France; ... and this large force was to be maintained entirely at the expense of the French government. In addition to this, the different powers obtained indemnities for the spoliations inflicted on them by France during the Revolution, which amounted to the enormous sum of 735,000,000 of francs more (£29,400,000 sterling). A hundred millions of francs were also provided to the smaller powers as an indemnity for the expenses of the war; so that the total sums which France had to pay, besides maintaining the army of occupation, amounted to no less than fifteen hundred and thirty-five millions of francs, or £61,400,000 sterling. ... Great Britain, in a worthy spirit, surrendered the whole sum falling to her out of the indemnity for the war, amounting to nearly £5,000,000 sterling, to the King of the Netherlands, to restore the famous barrier against France which Joseph II. had so insanely demolished."

Sir A. Alison, History of Europe, 1789-1815, chapter 95 (volume 20).

ALSO IN: Prince de Talleyrand, Memoirs, part 9 (volume 8).

_E. Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty, Number 40 (volume 1)._

{1368}

FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (September). The Holy Alliance.

See HOLY ALLIANCE.

FRANCE: A. D. 1815-1830. The restored monarchy. Louis XVIII. and Charles X. Career of the Reactionaries. Conquest of Algiers. Ordinances of July. Revolution. Abdication and exile of the king.

"France was defeated but not crushed. Indeed she had gained Avignon and some districts of Alsace since 1792, and she had gained social and political stability by having millions of peasants as small proprietors in the soil; moreover, as Napoleon always waged his wars at the expense of his conquered foes, the French national debt was after all the wars only one-sixth of the debt of Great Britain. So France soon rose to a position of strength and prosperity hardly equalled in all Europe, in spite of bad harvests, political unrest, and the foreign occupation which ended in 1818. The royalists, after a quarter of a century of repression, now revenged themselves with truly French vehemence. In France a victorious party generally crushes its opponents; and the elections, held during the full swing of the royalist reaction, sent up to Paris a Legislative Assembly 'more royalist than the king himself.' Before it assembled, Louis XVIII., in spite of his promise only to punish those who were declared by the Assembly to be traitors, proscribed fifty-seven persons who had deserted to Napoleon in the 'Hundred Days.' ... Of the proscribed men thirty-eight were banished and a few were shot. Among the latter the most illustrious was Marshal Ney, whose past bravery did not shield him from the extreme penalty for the betrayal of the military oath. ... This impolitic execution rankled deep in the breasts of all Napoleon's old soldiers, but for the present all opposition was swept away in the furious tide of reaction. Brune, one of Napoleon's marshals, was killed by the royalist populace of Avignon; and the Protestants of the south, who were suspected of favouring Napoleon's home policy, suffered terrible outrages at Nimes and Uzès in this 'white terror.' The restored monarchy had far stronger executive powers than the old system wielded before 1789, for it now drew into its hands the centralised powers which, under the Directory and the Empire, had replaced the old cumbrous provincial system; but even this gain of power did not satisfy the hot-headed royalists of the Chamber. They instituted judicial courts under a provost (prévôt), which passed severe sentences without right of appeal. Dismissing the comparatively Liberal ministers Talleyrand and Fouché, Louis in September 1816 summoned a more royalist ministry under the Duc de Richelieu, which was itself hurried on by the reactionaries. Chateaubriand fanned the flames of royalist passion by his writings, until the king even found it necessary to dissolve this mischievous Chamber, and the new deputies who assembled (February 1817) showed a more moderate spirit. France was soon delivered from the foreign armies of occupation, for the sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, meeting at Aix-la-Chapelle (September 1818), in order to combat revolutionary attempts, decided that an early evacuation of French territory would strengthen the Bourbon rule in France; and they renewed the Quadruple Alliance, which aimed at upholding existing treaties. The discontent in Germany and Italy awakened a sympathetic echo in France, which showed itself in the retirement of the Duc de Richelieu and the accession of a more progressive minister, Decazes (November 1819). This check to the royalist reaction was soon swept away by an event of sinister import. The Duc de Berry, second son of the Comte d'Artois, was assassinated (February 1820), as he was leaving the opera-house, by a fanatic who aimed at cutting off the direct Bourbon line (February 1820). His design utterly failed, for a posthumous son, the celebrated Comte de Chambord, was born in September 1820; and the only result was a new outburst of royalist fury. Liberty of the press was suspended, and a new complicated electoral system restricted the franchise to those who paid at least 1,000 francs a year in direct taxation: the, Chamber of Deputies, a fifth part of which was renewed every year by an electorate now representing only the wealthy, became every year more reactionary, while the Left saw its numbers decline. The Ultra-royalist ministry of Villèle soon in its turn aroused secret conspiracies, for the death of Napoleon (May 5, 1821) was now awakening a feeling of regret for the comparative liberty enjoyed in France during the Empire. Military conspiracies were formed, only to be discovered and crushed, and the veteran republican Lafayette was thought to be concerned in a great attempt projected in the eastern departments with its headquarters at Belfort; and the terrible society of the Carbonari secretly spread its arms through the south of France, where it found soil as favourable as in Italy itself. ... A revolution in Spain held Ferdinand a prisoner in his palace at Madrid. Louis determined to uphold the throne of his Bourbon relative, and sent an army which quickly effected its object (1823). 'The Pyrenees no longer exist,' exclaimed Louis XVIII. In fact, everywhere in Europe absolutism seemed to be triumphant, and the elections of December 1823 sent up a further reinforcement to the royalist party; also the approaching end of the sensible old king foreshadowed a period of still more violent reaction under his hot-headed brother Charles. Louis XVIII. died on September 16, 1824, At his death the restoration seemed firmly established. ... France had quickly recovered from twenty years of warfare, and was thought to have the strongest government in Europe. Always the chief of the reactionary nobles, Charles had said, 'It is only Lafayette and I who have not changed since 1789.' Honest, sincere, and affable as the new king was, yet his popularity soon vanished when it was seen how entirely he was under the control of his confessor; and the ceremonies of his coronation at Rheims showed that he intended to revive the almost forgotten past. In Guizot's words, 'Louis XVIII was a moderate of the old system and a liberal-minded inheritor of the 18th century: Charles X. was a true Émigré, and a submissive bigot' Among the first bills which Charles proposed to the Chambers was one to indemnify those who had lost their lands in the Revolution. To give these lands back would have caused general unsettlement among thousands of small cultivators; but the former landowners received an indemnity of a milliard of francs, which they exclaimed against for its insufficiency just as loudly as the radicals did for its extravagance: by this tardy act of justice the State endeavoured to repair some of the unjust confiscations of the revolutionary era. ... {1369} The attempts made by the Jesuits to regain their legal status in France, in spite of the prohibition dating from before the fall of the old regime, aroused further hostility to the king, who was well known to favour their cause. Nothing, however, so strengthened the growing opposition in the Chambers and in the country at large as a rigorous measure aimed at the newspapers, pamphlets, and books which combated the clerical reaction. These publications were to pay a stamp duty per page, while crushing fines were devised to ruin the offending critics. One of the leaders of the opposition, Casimir Périer, exclaimed against this measure as ruinous to trade: 'Printing would be suppressed in France and transferred to Belgium.' The king persevered in his mad enterprise: he refused to receive a petition from the most august literary society in Europe, the Académie Française, and cashiered its promoters as if they were clerks under his orders. Strange to say, the Chamber of Deputies passed the measure, while that of the Peers rejected it--an event greeted by illuminations all over Paris (April 1827). A few days afterwards, at a review of the National Guards in Paris, the troops raised cries for the liberty of the press and for the charter granted in 1815. The next day they were disbanded by royal command, but were foolishly allowed to retain their arms, which were soon to be used against the government. Charles next created seventy-six new peers to outvote his opponents in the Upper House. He also dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, but found the new members less pliable. Finally, Charles had to give way for the time, and accept a more moderate ministry under Martignac in place of the reactionary Villèle Cabinet. ... Charles was soon able to dismiss this ministry, the last hope of conciliation, and formed (August 1829) a ministry under Count Polignac, one of whose colleagues was the General Bourmont who had deserted to the allies the day before Waterloo. The king's speech at the opening of the next session (March 1830) was curt and threatening, and the Chamber was soon prorogued. Reform banquets, a custom which the French borrowed from English reformers, increased the agitation, which the Polignac ministry vainly sought to divert by ambitious projects of invasion and partition of some neighbouring States. The only practical outcome of these projects was the conquest of the pirate stronghold of Algiers. This powerful fortress had been bombarded and reduced by Lord Exmouth with the British fleet in 1816, and the captives, mostly Italians, were released from that den of slave-dealers; but the Dey of Algiers had resumed his old habits, complaints from the French were met by defiance, and at last the French envoy quitted the harbor amid a shower of bullets. A powerful expedition effected a landing near the strongly-fortified harbour, and easily beat back the native attack; and then from the land side soon battered down the defences of the city.

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1830.

Thus the city which had long been the terror of Mediterranean sailors became the nucleus of the important French colony of Algeria (July 4,1830). The design of Charles X. and of his reactionary Polignac ministry to divert the French people from domestic grievances to foreign conquest needed the genius and strength of a Napoleon to ensure success. The mere fact of the expedition being Under the command of the hated General Bourmont had made it unpopular. ... So, although the victory was triumphantly announced throughout France, yet the elections sent up a majority hostile to the king. Nevertheless, with his usual blind obstinacy, Charles on the 25th July 1830 issued the famous ordinances which brought matters to a crisis. The first suspended the liberty of the press, and placed books under a strict censorship; the second dissolved the newly-elected Chamber of Deputies; the third excluded licensed dealers (patentés) from the franchise; the fourth summoned a new Chamber under the new conditions, every one of which violated the charter granted by the late king. The Parisians at once flew to arms, and raised barricades in the many narrow streets which then favoured street-defence. Marmont, hated by the people as being the first of Napoleon's marshals who had treated with the allies, was to quell the disturbances with some 20,000 troops of the line; but on the second day's fighting (July 28) the insurgents, aided by the disbanded National Guards, and veterans of the empire, beat back the troops; and on the third day the royal troops, cut off from food and supplies, and exhausted by the heat, gave way before the tri-colour flag; the defection of two line regiments left the Louvre unguarded; a panic spread among other regiments, and soon the tri-colour floated above the Tuileries. Charles thereupon set the undignified example, soon to be followed by so many kings and, princes, of giving way when it was too late. He offered to withdraw the hated ordinances, but was forced to flee from St. Cloud. He then tried the last expedient, also doomed to failure, of abdicating in favour of his little grandson the Duc de Bordeaux, since better known as the Comte de Chambord. Retiring slowly with his family to Cherbourg, the baffled monarch set out for a second and last exile, spent first at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, and ended at Göritz in Bohemia. More than 5,000 civilians and 700 soldiers were killed or wounded in these terrible 'three days' of July 1830, which ended all attempts to re-establish the tyranny of the old régime. The victims were appropriately buried in the Place de la Bastille. They freed not France alone, but dealt a fierce blow at the system of Metternich."

J. H. Rose, Century of Continental History, chapter 23.

ALSO IN: _D. Turnbull, The French Revolution of 1830._

A. de Lamartine, The Restoration of Monarchy in France, books 32-50 (volumes 3-4).

E. E. Crowe, History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X.

Prince de Talleyrand, Memoirs, part 10 (volumes 3-4).

G. L. Dickinson, Revolution and Reaction in Modern France, chapter 3.

FRANCE: A. D. 1822: The Congress of Verona. French intervention in Spain approved.

See VERONA: THE CONGRESS OF.

FRANCE: A. D. 1823-1827. Interference in Spain to suppress the revolution and reinstate King Ferdinand.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1814-1827.

FRANCE: A. D. 1827-1829. Intervention on behalf of Greece. Battle of Navarino.

See GREECE: A. D. 1821-1829.

{1370}

FRANCE: A. D. 1830-1840. The monarchy renewed under Louis Philippe. Its steady drift from the constitutional course.

"The Constitutional party set their hopes on Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans. This prince, born in 1773, was the son of that notorious 'Egalité' who during the revolution had ended his checkered career under the guillotine. His grandmother was the noble Elizabeth Charlotte, a native of the Palatinate, who had the misfortune to be the wife of the effeminate Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV. Louis Philippe was a Bourbon, like King Charles; but the opposition of several members of this Orleans branch of the royal house had caused it to be regarded as a separate family. From his youth up he had displayed a great deal of popular spirit and common-sense. ... Seemingly created by his nature and career to be a citizen king, he had long since, as early as 1814, determined to accept the throne in case it were offered him." The offer came in 1830 with the revolution of July. On the 31st of that month he accepted the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom, conferred by the vote of a meeting of fifty delegates. "The 'Society of the Friends of the People' [an organization of the pronounced republicans], not very well pleased with this result of the 'great week' [as the week of the revolution was called], laid before Lafayette, on the following day," their programme, "and commissioned him to make the duke guarantee the popular rights therein set forth by his signature. With this document in his pocket, Lafayette made his ... visit to Louis Philippe in the Palais Royal. In the course of conversation he said to him, 'You know that I am a republican, and consider the American constitution the most perfect.' 'I am of the same opinion,' replied the duke; 'no one could have been two years in America and not share that view. But do you think that that constitution could be adopted in France in its present condition--with the present state of popular opinion?' 'No,' said Lafayette; 'what France needs is a popular monarchy surrounded by republican--thoroughly republican--institutions.' 'There I quite agree with you,' rejoined Louis Philippe. Enchanted with this political harmony, the old general considered it unnecessary to present the programme, and went security to the republicans for the duke, the patriot, of 1789. ... On the 3d of August the Chamber was opened by the Duke of Orleans, and the abdication of the king and dauphin announced. ... The question whether the constitution was to be changed, and how, gave rise to an animated contest between radicals and liberals. The confidence in Louis Philippe was so great, that they were content with a few improvements. The throne was declared vacant, and Louis Philippe proclaimed king of the French. ... August 8th, Louis Philippe appeared in the Palais Bourbon, took the oath to the constitution, and was thereupon proclaimed king. ... None of the great monarchs had so difficult a task as Louis Philippe. If he attached himself to the majority of his people and showed himself in earnest with 'the republican institutions which ought to surround the throne,' he had all the continental powers against him; if he inclined toward the absolute system of the latter, then not alone the extreme parties, but also the men of the constitutional monarchy, ... rose against him. ... His system, which he himself named a happy medium (juste milieu), would have been a happy medium if he had struck the middle and kept it; but he gradually swerved so much toward the right that the middle was far to his left. From the outset he had three parties against him--Legitimists, Bonapartists, and Republicans." At intervals, there were demonstrations and insurrections undertaken in the interest of each of these. In July, 1835, the assassination of the king was attempted, by the explosion of an infernal machine, which killed and wounded sixty people. "The whole Republican party was unjustly made responsible for this attempt, and new blows were struck at the juries and the Press. Every Press offence involving a libel of the king or the administration was to be tried from this time on before the Court of Peers, and the composition of that body rendered conviction certain. With these September laws' the reaction was complete, the power of the Republicans was broken. Their activity did not cease, however. Their numerous societies continued to exist in secret, and to the political affiliated themselves the social societies, which ... demanded, among other impossibilities, the abolition of private property. It was these baleful excrescences which deprived republicanism of all credit, and outbreaks like that of May 12th, 1839, where a few hundred members of the 'Society of the Seasons,' with Barbès and Blanqui at their head, disarmed military posts and proclaimed the republic, found not the slightest response. The repeated attempts which were made on the king's life were also unsuccessful." The relations of Louis Philippe "to foreign powers became better the more he approximated to their system, putting restraints upon societies, the Press, and juries, and energetically crushing popular revolts. Naturally he was by this very means constantly further estranging the mass of the people. ... What the Legitimists and Republicans had not effected--a change of government--the Napoleonids now took in hand." Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of ex-king Louis of Holland and Hortense Beauharnais, made his appearance among the soldiers of the garrison at Strasburg, October 30, 1836, with the expectation that they would proclaim him emperor and set the example of a rising in his favor. But the attempt was a wretched failure; Louis Napoleon was arrested and contemptuously sent out of the country, to America, without punishment. In 1840 he repeated his undertaking, at Boulogne, more abortively than in the first instance; was again made prisoner, and was consigned, this time, to the castle of Ham, from which he escaped six years later. "All the world laughed at his folly; but without the scenes of Strasburg and Boulogne, and the martyrdom of a six years' imprisonment, his name certainly would not have produced such an effect in the year 1848."

W. Miller, Political History of Recent Times, sections 7 and 14.

ALSO IN: _L. Blanc, History of Ten Years, 1830-1840._

F. P. Guizot, Memoirs to Illustrate the History of My Own Time, volumes 3-4.

FRANCE: A. D. 1831-1832. Intervention in the Netherlands. Siege of Antwerp.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1830-1832.

FRANCE: A. D. 1833-1840. The Turko-Egyptian question and its settlement.

See TURKS: A. D. 1831-1840.

FRANCE: A. D. 1833-1846. The subjugation of Algeria. War with Abd-el-Kader.

See BARBARY STATES: A. D.1830-1846.

{1371}

FRANCE: A. D. 1841-1848. The limited electoral body and its corruption. Agitation for reform. The suppressed banquet at Paris and the revolution which followed. Abdication and flight of the king.

"The monarchy of Louis Philippe lasted for 18 years. But the experiment was practicable only so long as the throne rested on a small body of obedient electors. The qualification for the franchise was so high that it was held only by 200,000 people. So small a constituency could, be 'managed' by the skill of M. Guizot and M. Thiers [who were the chief rivals of the time in political leadership]. It could be 'managed' through gifts of places, bribes, the influence of local magnates, and the pressure of public officials. There was never perhaps so corrupt an electoral body. ... M. Guizot, who was an austere puritan at home, and who has entered into a competition with Saint Augustin as a writer of religious meditations, raised many sneers to the lips of worldlings, not only by lending his hand to the infamous intrigue of the Spanish Marriages, but by allowing his subordinates to traffic in places for the sake of getting votes. His own hands, of course, were clean; no one spoke a whisper against his personal purity. But he seemed to have much practical sympathy with the advice which Pitt, in one of Landor's 'Imaginary Conversations,' gives to his young disciple Canning. Pecuniary corruption was the very breath of life to the constitutional monarchy. The voters were bought as freely as if they had stood in the market-place. The system admirably suited the purpose of the little family party of princes and parliamentary chiefs who ruled the country. But it was as artificial and fleeting as the sand castles which a child builds on the edge of the advancing tide."

J. Macdonell, France since the First Empire, pages 172-174.

"The population of France was then 34,000,000, and the privilege of the political franchise was vested exclusively in those who paid in direct taxes a sum not less than £8. This class numbered little more than 200,000. ... The government had 130,000 places at its disposal, and the use which was made of these during the 18 years of Louis Philippe's reign was productive of corruption more widespread and shameless than France had known since the first revolution. In the scarcely exaggerated language used by M. de Lamartine, the government had 'succeeded in making of a nation of citizens a vile band of beggars.' It was obvious to all who desired the regeneration of France that reform must begin with the representation of the people. To this end the liberals directed much effort. They did not as yet propose universal suffrage, and their leaders were divided between an extension of the franchise to all who paid £2 of direct taxes and an extension, which went no lower than £4. The demand for reform was resisted by the government. ... Among the leaders of the liberal party were men of high character and commanding influence. Arago, Odillon Barrot, Louis Blanc, Thiers, Lamartine, were formidable assailants for the strongest government to encounter. Under their guidance the agitation for reform assumed dimensions exceedingly embarrassing and even alarming. For once France borrowed from England her method of political agitation. Reform banquets, attended by thousands of persons, were held in all the chief towns, and the pressure of a peaceful public opinion was employed to obtain the remedy of a great wrong. The police made feeble attempts to prevent such gatherings, but were ordinarily unsuccessful. But the king and M. Guizot, strong in the support of the army and a purchased majority of the deputies, and apparently little aware of the vehemence of the popular desire, made no effort to satisfy or propitiate. Louis Philippe had wisely set a high value on the maintenance of cordial relations with England. ... The Queen of England gratified him by a visit [1843], which he returned a few months after. ... During these visits there was much conversation regarding a Spanish matter which was then of some interest. The Spanish government was looking around to find suitable husbands for their young queen and her sister. The hands of the princesses were offered to two sons of Louis Philippe. But ... England looked with disfavour upon a close alliance between the crowns of France and Spain. The king would not offend England. He declined the hand of the Spanish queen, but accepted that of her sister for his fourth son, the Duc de Montpensier. Queen Victoria and her ministers approved of that marriage on the condition voluntarily offered by King Louis, that it should not take place till the Spanish queen was married and had children. But in a few years the king violated his pledge, and pressed upon Spain an arrangement under which the two marriages were celebrated together [1846]. ... To Louis Philippe himself the transaction was calamitous. He had broken his kingly word, and he stood before Europe and before his own people a dishonoured man. ... Circumstances made it easy for the opposition to enhance the general discontent. Many evidences of shameless corruption were at this time brought to light. ... The crops failed in 1845 and 1846, and prices rose to a famine point. ... The demand for parliamentary reform became constantly more urgent; but M. Guizot heeded it not. The reformers took up again their work of agitation. They announced a great procession and reform banquet. The police, somewhat hesitatingly, interdicted the demonstration, and its promoters resolved to submit; but the people, insufficiently informed of these movements, gathered for the procession in the early morning. All that day [February 22, 1848] the streets were thronged, and the excitement of the people increased from hour to hour; but few soldiers were seen, and consequently no conflict occurred. Next morning the strategic points of the city were garrisoned by a strong force of soldiers and national guards, and the people saw that the government feared them. Business was suspended, and the constantly rising agitation foretold irrepressible tumults. The men of the faubourgs appeared once more. Towards evening a few barricades were thrown up, and a few gunsmiths' shops were plundered. Worst of all, the national guard appeared to sympathize with the people. ... To appease the angry mob, no measure seemed so hopeful as the sacrifice of the ministry. Guizot resigned. Thiers and Odillon Barrot, chiefs of the liberal party, were received into the cabinet. Marshal Bugeaud was appointed to command the troops. But before the day closed a disaster had occurred which made all concession vain. Before one of the public offices there was stationed a battalion of infantry, around which there surged an excited crowd. A shot came from the crowd, and was promptly responded to by a volley which killed or wounded 50 persons. {1372} The bodies of the victims were placed on waggons and drawn along the streets, that the fury of the people might be excited to the highest pitch. During that sleepless night, Marshal Bugeaud, skilfully directing the forces which he commanded, had taken the barricades and effectively checked the rioters. But in early morning the new ministers ordered him to desist and withdraw his troops. They deemed it useless to resist. Concession was, in their view, the only avenue to tranquillity. The soldiers retired; the crowds pressed on to the Tuileries." The king, terrified by their approach, was persuaded to sign an abdication in favor of his grandson, the Comte de Paris, and to fly in haste, with his family, from the palace and from Paris. A week later the royal family "reached the coast and embarked for England, ... their majesties travelling under the lowly but well-chosen incognito of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. ... Immediately on the departure of the king, a provisional government was organized, with M. Lamartine at its head."

R. Mackenzie, The Nineteenth Century, book 3, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: _F. P. Guizot, France under Louis Philippe._

M. Caussidière, Memoirs, volume 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 1848 (February-May). The three months of Provisional Government. Its extraordinary measures. Its absolutism. Creation or the Ateliers Nationaux. The consequences.

On the morning of February 24th--the morning of the king's flight--M. de Lamartine, entering the Palais Bourbon, where the Chamber of Deputies held its meetings, found in the vestibule seven or eight persons waiting for him. "Who they were we are not told--or what they were, except that they belonged to the newspaper press. Even the names of the papers with which they were connected are not expressly stated--though the 'National' and 'Réforme' are indicated. They demanded a secret conference. Lamartine took them into a distant apartment." There they "proposed to him to substitute for Louis-Philippe the Comte de Paris as king, and the Duchess of Orleans as regent, and to place him [Lamartine] over them minister." "Lamartine does not appear to have been surprised at the proposal. He does not appear to have doubted the power of seven or eight journalists to dethrone a king, create a regent, and appoint a minister! And he was right. The 'National' and the 'Réforme,' whose representatives stood before him, did more than all this, a couple of hours after. ... He objected to their scheme that such an arrangement would not last, and declared himself in favour of a republic, based on universal suffrage; ... they expressed their conviction, and separated, agreed, apparently, on the course of action to be pursued.' A few hours later, the Chamber was invaded by a body of rioters, fresh from the sack of the Tuileries. The Duchess of Orleans, who had presented herself at the Chamber with her two children, fled before them. "M. Sauzet, the President, disappeared. Lamartine [who was speaking] remained in the tribune, and desired Dupont de l'Eure to take the vacant chair." Thereupon a Provisional Government was appointed, in some fashion not clearly detailed. It underwent certain changes, by unexplained additions, within the following day or two, but "in the 'Moniteur' of February 27 (the third day of the existence of the Provisional Government), its members are arranged thus:--MM. Arago, Dupont de l'Eure, Albert (ouvrier), F. Marrast, F. Flocon, Lamartine, Marie, L. Blanc, Crémieux, Ledru Rollin, Garnier Pagès. ... Within two days after its formation it was on the brink of ruin under an attack from the Terrorists [or Red Republicans, who assumed the red flag as their standard]. ... The contest had left the members of the government in a state of mind which M. de Lamartine thinks peculiarly favourable to wise legislation. ... 'Every member of the Council sought [he says], in the depths of his heart and of his intellect, for some great reform, some great legislative, political, or moral improvement. Some proposed the instantaneous abolition of negro slavery. Others, the abolition of the restrictions imposed by the laws of September upon the press. Some, the proclamation of fraternity among nations, in order to abolish war by abolishing conquest. Some, the abolition of the qualification of electors. And all, the principles of mutual charity among all classes of citizens. As quickly as these great democratic truths, rather felt than discussed, were converted into decrees, they were printed in a press set up at the door of the council-room, thrown from the windows to the crowd, and despatched by couriers through the departments.' ... The important decrees, which actually bear date February 25 or 26, and which may therefore be referred to this evening of instinct, inspiration, and enthusiasm, are these:--The 18th, which sets at liberty all persons detained on political grounds. The 19th, by which the government--

1, Engages to secure the existence of the operative (ouvrier) by employment:

2, Engages to secure employment (garantir du travail) to all citizens:

3, Admits that operatives ought to combine in order to enjoy the fruits of their labour:

4, And promises to return to the operatives, whose property it is, the million which will fall in from the civil list.

The 22nd, which dissolves the Municipal Guards. The 26th, which declares that the actual government of France is republican, and that the nation will immediately be called on to ratify by its votes this resolution of the government and of the people of Paris. The 29th, which declares that Royalty, under any name whatever, ... is abolished. ... And the 30th, which directs the immediate establishment of national workshops (ateliers natlonaux). We confess that, we agree with Lamartine in thinking that they bear the stamp of instinct much more than that of reason. ... The declaration that the actual government of France was republican ... was palpably untrue. The actual government of France at that time was as far removed from republicanism as it was possible for a government to be. It was a many-headed Dictatorship--a despotic oligarchy. Eleven men--some appointed in the offices of a newspaper, and the others by a mob which had broken into the Chamber of Deputies--ruled France, during three months, with an absoluteness of which there is no other example in history. ... They dissolved the Chamber of Deputies; they forbade the peers to meet; they added 200,000 men to the regular army, and raised a new metropolitan army of 20,000 more at double the ordinary pay; to meet this expense they added 45 centimes to the direct taxes; they restricted the Bank from cash payments; they made its paper a legal tender, and then required it to lend them fifty millions; ... they altered the hours of labour throughout France, and, subjected to heavy fines any master who should allow his operatives to remain at work for the accustomed period. ... {1373} The necessary consequence of the 19th decree, promising employment to all applicants, was the creation of the ateliers nationaux by the 30th. These workshops were immediately opened in the outskirts Of Paris. A person who wished to take advantage of the offers of the Government took from the person with whom he lodged a certificate that he was an inhabitant of the Department de la Seine. This certificate he carried to the mairie of his arrondissement, and obtained an order of admission to an atelier. If he was received and employed there, he obtained an order on his mairie for forty sous. If he was not received, after having applied at all of them, and found them all full, he received an order for thirty sous. Thirty sous is not high pay; but it was to be had for doing nothing; and hopes of advancement were held out. Every body of eleven persons formed an escouade; and their head, the escouadier, elected by his companions, got half a franc a day extra. Five escouades formed a brigade; and the brigadier, also elected by his subordinates, received three francs a day. Above these again were the lieutenants, the chefs de compagnie, the chefs de service, and the chefs d'arrondissement, appointed by the Government, and receiving progressively higher salaries. Besides this, bread was distributed to their families in proportion to the number of children. The hours supposed to be employed in labour were nine and a half. ... This semi-military organisation, regular payment, and nominal work produced results which we cannot suppose to have been unexpected by the Government. M. Emile Thomas tells us that in one mairie, that containing the Faubourg St.-Antoine, a mere supplemental bureau enrolled, from March 12 to 20, more than 1,000 new applicants every day. We have before us a list of those who had been enrolled on May 19, and it amounts to 87,942. A month later it amounted to 125,000--representing, at 4 to a family, 600,000 persons--more than one half of the population of Paris. To suppose that such an army as this could be regularly organised, fed, and paid, for months in idleness, and then quietly disbanded, was a folly of which the Provisional Government was not long guilty. They soon saw that the monster which they had created could not be subdued, if it could be subdued at all, by any means short of civil war. ... 'A thunder-cloud (says M. de Lamartine) was always before our eyes. It was formed by the ateliers nationaux; This army of 120,000 work-people, the great part of whom were idlers and agitators, was the deposit of the misery, the laziness, the vagrancy, the vice, and the sedition which the flood of the revolution had cast up and left on its shores.' ... As they were managed, the ateliers nationaux, it is now admitted, produced or aggravated the very evils which they professed to cure or to palliate. They produced or continued the stagnation of business which they were to remedy; and, when they became absolutely intolerable, the attempt to put an end to them occasioned the civil war which they were to prevent."

N. W. Senior, Journals kept in France and Italy, 1848-1852, volume 1, pages 14-59.

ALSO IN: Marquis of Normandy, A Year of Revolution, chapters 8-11 (volume l).

_L. Blanc, Historical Revelations, 1848._

_A. de Lamartine, History of the Revolution of 1848._

_J. P. Simpson, Pictures from Revolutionary Paris._

FRANCE: A. D. 1848 (April-December). The Constituent National Assembly, and the Constitution of the Second Republic. Savage and terrible insurrection of the workmen of the Ateliers Nationaux. Vigorous dictatorship of Cavaignac. Appearance of Louis Napoleon. His election to the Presidency of the Republic.

The election by universal suffrage of a Constituent National Assembly, twice deferred on account of fears of popular turbulence, took place on the 23d of April, and resulted in the return of a very Conservative majority, largely composed of Napoleonists, Legitimists and Orleanists. The meeting of the Assembly was opened on the 7th of May. "The moderates were anxious to invest M. de Lamartine with a dictatorial authority," which he declined. "Eventually an executive commission of five was appointed. ... The commission consisted of Arago, Garnier Pagès, Marie, Lamartine, and Ledru Rollin. ... This conciliatory executive commission was elected by the Assembly on the 10th of May. On the 15th, the 'concilliated' mob broke into the chamber, insulted the deputies, turned them out, proclaimed a provisional government, and then marched to the Hôtel de Ville, where they were installed with due revolutionary solemnity;" but the National Guard rallied to the support of the government, and the insurrection was promptly suppressed. "Eleven vacancies in the Assembly had to be filled in the department of the Seine, on account of double returns. These elections produced fresh uneasiness in Paris. Eighth on the list stood Louis Napoleon Bonaparte; and among the names mentioned as candidates was that of Prince de Joinville, the most popular of the Orleans princes. The executive commission appears to have been more afraid of the latter than of the former; and to prevent the disagreeable circumstance of France returning him to the Assembly as one of her representatives, they thought themselves justified in declaring the whole Orleans family incapable of serving France in any capacity. ... Louis Napoleon, on the first proclamation of the Republic, had at once offered his services; but was by the Provisional Government requested to withdraw, as his great name might trouble the republic. ... Two Bonapartes had been elected members for Corsica, and three sat in the Assembly; but, as the next heir of the Emperor, Louis Napoleon caused them much uneasiness. ... Already mobs had gone about the Boulevard crying 'Vive l'Empereur.' The name of Bonaparte was not unpopular with the bourgeoisie; it was a guarantee of united and strong government to all. On his election, Louis Napoleon wrote to the President of the Assembly: a phrase in his letter gave considerable offence. Some days before, Lamartine had proposed his exclusion from the Assembly and the country; but, as it appeared he was in no way implicated in the seditious cries, they voted his admission by a large majority. The phrase which gave umbrage was: 'If the country imposes duties upon me, I shall know how to fulfill them.' ... However, by a subsequent letter, dated the 15th, he restored confidence by saying he would resign rather than be a cause of tumult. But the real difficulties of the government arose from a different cause. {1374} The National Assembly bore with impatience the expense of the Ateliers Nationaux: It was enough to submit to the factious spirit of those bodies; but it was too much to pay them for keeping on foot an organized insurrection, ever ready to break out and deluge the capital in blood. The executive commission had been desirous of finding means gradually to lessen the numbers receiving wages; and on the 12th of May, it was resolved to close the lists. The commission foresaw that if the Ateliers were at once abolished, it would produce a rebellion in Paris; and they hoped, first, by preventing any more being inscribed, and then by setting them to task-work, that they should gradually get the numbers reduced. ... But the Assembly would not wait; they ordered all the workmen between 18 and 25 years old, and unmarried, to be drafted into the army, or to be discharged; and they were breaking them up so rapidly, that if the workmen wanted to fight it was evident that it must be done at once or not at all. ... General Cavaignac, who had been sent for from Africa, was on his arrival in Paris named Minister at War, and had command of the troops. ... Preparations for the conflict commenced on Thursday the 22nd of June; but it was noon of the following day ere the first shot was fired. It is said, that had the executive commission known what they were about, the heads of the insurrection might have been all arrested in the meantime, for they were walking about all day, and at one time met in the Jardin des Plantes. The fighting on the 23d continued all day, with much slaughter, and little practical result. ... The extent of the insurgent lines swallowed up the troops, so that, though great numbers were in Paris, there appeared to be a deficiency of them, and loud complaints were made against the inefficiency of the executive commission. During the night the fighting ceased, and both parties were occupied in strengthening their positions. The Assembly was sitting in permanence; they were highly incensed against the executive commission, and wished them to send in their resignations; but the latter refused, saying it was cowardly to do so in the face of insurrection. The Assembly then formally deposed the commission, and appointed Cavaignac dictator; to which arrangement the executive commission at once assented. The General instantly ordered the National Guards to prevent assemblages in the streets, and that no one should go out without a pass: anyone going about, out of uniform, without permission, was walked home. In this manner many persons carrying ammunition to the insurgents were arrested. At noon, he sent a flag of truce with a proclamation, offering an amnesty to the rebels, at the suggestion of the ex-prefect Caussidière; but it was unhesitatingly rejected. This latter personage, though he was not among the barricades, was by many thought to be the head of the insurrection. The troops of the insurgents were managed with great military skill, showing that persons of military knowledge must have had the command; though no one knew who were their leaders. ... During the early part of the day, the fighting was mainly on the southern side of the river. The church of St. Gervais and the bridges were carried with great slaughter, as well as the church of St. Severin, and their great head-quarters the Pantheon; and by four o'clock, the troops had conquered the whole of the south bank of the Seine. On the other side, a hot engagement was going on in the Faubourgs Poissonnière and St. Denis: these were carried with great loss at a late hour, whence the insurrection was forced back to its great stronghold, the Clos St. Lazare; which defied every effort of General Lamoricière to take it on Saturday. An unfinished hospital served as a citadel, and several churches and public buildings as out-posts; while the old city wall, which they had loop-holed, enabled them to fire on the troops in comparative security; but the buildings were breached with cannon, and the insurgents by four o'clock on Sunday were dispersed. ... A desperate struggle was going on at a late hour in the Faubourg du Temple; and on the Monday morning the insurgents made a stand behind the Canal St. Martin, where they sent to treat on condition of retaining their arms. But Cavaignac would hear of no terms. It was thought, at one time, that they had surrendered; when some soldiers, going within the lines, were surprised and murdered. Hostilities at once began again, and the insurgents were finally subdued by one o'clock on Monday the 26th. The victory was dearly bought: 8,000 were ascertained to have been killed or wounded; and, as many bodies were thrown into the Seine unrecognised, this is much under the number. Nearly 14,000 prisoners were taken, and 3,000 of these died of gaol fever. ... The excellent Archbishop of Paris, Denis Auguste Affre, fell a sacrifice to his Christian benevolence. Horrified at the slaughter, he, attended by two of his vicars carrying the olive-branch of peace, passed between the combatants. The firing ceased at his appearance; but, from the discharge of a single musket, it began again: he, nevertheless, mounted the barricade and descended into the midst of the insurgents, and was, in the act of addressing them, when some patriot, fearing the effect of his exhortations, shot him from a window. ... General Cavaignac, immediately after the pacification of Paris, laid down the temporary dictatorship with which he had been invested by the Assembly; but their gratitude for the salvation of society led them to appoint him President of the Council, with the power to name his own Ministry. He at once sent adrift all the red republican party, and chose a Ministry from among the moderate class of republicans; to which he afterwards added some members of the old opposition. ... Prince Louis Napoleon was again thrust upon the Assembly, by being elected for Corsica; but he wrote a letter on the 8th of July, saying, that though he did not renounce the honour of one day sitting as a representative of the people, he would wait till the time when his return to France could not in any way serve as a pretext to the enemies of the republic. ... On Tuesday, the 26th of September, shortly after the president had taken his seat, Louis Napoleon appeared quietly in the chamber, and placed himself on one of the back benches. ... The discussion of the constitution, which had been referred to a committee, was the only subject of interest, except the important question of how the president should be elected. It was proposed by some that the assembly itself should elect a president, a proposition which was eventually negatived by a large majority. {1375} The real object was to exclude Louis Napoleon, whose great name gave him every chance of success, if an appeal were made to the universal suffrage of the nation, which the republicans distrusted. Another amendment was moved to exclude all pretenders to the throne; on which, allusion being made to Louis Napoleon, he mounted the rostrum, and denied that he was a pretender. ... The red republicans were desirous of having no president, and that the constituent assembly itself should name the ministers. It was not the only constitutional point in dispute: for weeks and months, the debate on the constitution dragged its weary length along; amendments were discussed, and the work when turned out was, as might have been expected, a botch after all. ... It was eventually agreed, that to give validity to the election of a president it should be necessary that he should have more than a half of all the votes given; that is to say, more votes than all the other candidates put together; if not, the assembly was to choose between the highest candidate on the list and his competitors, by which means they hoped to be able to get rid of Bonaparte. ... The constitution was proclaimed on the 10th of November. ... The legitimist and Orleanist parties refused to start a candidate for fear of weakening Bonaparte, and thus throwing the choice into the hands of the assembly, who would choose General Cavaignac. Both these parties gave the former at least a negative support; and as M. Thiers declared that nine-tenths of the country were opposed to the General as too revolutionary, it was clear that in the country itself reaction was going on faster than in the assembly. ... Louis Napoleon's chief support was from the inhabitants of the country districts, the peasantry. ... On the 10th of December, 5,534,520 votes were recorded for Louis Napoleon. General Cavaignac had 1,448,302. Then came Ledru Rollin; then Raspail. Lamartine got 17,914; 23,219 were disallowed, as being given for some of the banished royal family. The total number of voters was 7,449,471."

E. S. Cayley, The European Revolution of 1848, volume 1, chapters 4-5.

ALSO IN: _J. F. Corkran, History of the Constituent National Assembly from May, 1848._

Marquis of Normanby, A Year of Revolution, chapters 13-15(volume 2).

H. C. Lockwood, Constitutional History of France, chapter 5, and appendix 8.

FRANCE: A. D. 1849. Intervention at Rome, to crush the revolutionary republic and restore the Pope. French capture and occupation of the city.

See ITALY: A. D. 1848-1849.

FRANCE: A. D. 1849-1850. Disagreement with England in Greece. The Don Pacifico affair.

See GREECE: A. D.1846-1850.

FRANCE: A. D.1851. The plot of the Coup d'État.

"In the beginning of the winter of 1851 France was still a republic; but the Constitution of 1848 had struck no root. There was a feeling that the country had been surprised and coerced into the act of declaring itself a republic, and that a monarchical system of government was the only one adapted for France. The sense of instability which sprang from this belief was connected with an agonising dread of insurrections. ... Moreover, to those who watched and feared, it seemed that the shadow on the dial was moving on with a terrible steadiness to the hour when a return to anarchy was, as it were, pre-ordained by law; for the constitution requited that a new president should be chosen in the spring of the following year. ... In general, France thought it best that, notwithstanding the Rule of the Constitution, which stood in the way, the then President should be quietly re-elected; and a large majority of the Assembly, faithfully representing this opinion, had come to a vote which sought to give it effect; but their desire was baffled by an unwise provision of the Republican Charter which had laid it down that no constitutional change should take place without the sanction of three-fourths of the Assembly. By this clumsy bar the action of the State system was hampered, and many whose minds generally inclined them to respect legality were forced to acknowledge that the Constitution wanted a wrench." The President of the republic, Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, "had always wished to bring about a change in the constitution, but, originally, he had hoped to be able to do this with the aid and approval of some at least of the statesmen and eminent generals of the country." But, "although there were numbers in France who would have been heartily glad to see the Republic crushed by some able dictator, there were hardly any public men who believed that in the President of the Republic they would find the man they wanted. Therefore his overtures to the gentlemen of France were always rejected. Every statesman to whom he applied refused to entertain his proposals. Every general whom he urged always said that for whatever he did he must have 'an order from the Minister of War.' The President being thus rebuffed, his plan of changing the form of government with the assent of some of the leading statesmen and generals of the country degenerated into schemes of a very different kind; and at length he fell into the hands of persons of the quality of Persigny, Morny, and Fleury. ... The President had been a promoter of the law of the 31st of May, restricting the franchise, but he now became the champion of universal suffrage. To minds versed in politics this change might have sufficed to disclose the nature of the schemes upon which the Chief of the State was brooding; but, from first to last, words tending to allay suspicion had been used with great industry and skill. From the moment of his coming before the public in February 1848, the Prince laid hold of almost every occasion he could find for vowing, again and again, that he harbored no schemes against the Constitution. ... It was natural that in looking at the operation which changed the Republic into an Empire, the attention of the observer should be concentrated upon the person who, already the Chief of the State, was about to attain to the throne; and there seems to be no doubt, that what may be called the literary part of the transaction was performed by the President in person. He was the lawyer of the confederacy. He no doubt wrote the Proclamations, the Plebiscites, and the Constitutions, and all such like things; but it seems that the propelling power which brought the plot to bear was mainly supplied by Count de Morny, and by a resolute Major, named Fleury. M. Morny was a man of great daring, and gifted with more than common powers of fascination. He had been a member of the Chamber of Deputies in the time of the monarchy; but he was rather known to the world as a speculator than as a politician. He was a buyer and seller of those fractional and volatile interests in trading adventures, which go by the name of 'Shares.' ... {1376} He knew how to found a 'company,' and he now undertook to establish institutions which were destined to be more lucrative to him than any of his former adventures; ... It seems, however, that the man who was the most able to make the President act, to drive him deep into his own plot, and fiercely carry him through it, was Major Fleury. ... He was daring and resolute, and his daring was of the kind which holds good in the moment of danger. If Prince Louis Bonaparte was bold and ingenious in designing, Fleury was the man to execute. ... The language held by the generals who declared that they would act under the authority of the Minister of War and not without it, suggested the contrivance which was resorted to. Fleury determined to find a military man capable of command, capable of secrecy, and capable of a great venture. The person chosen was to be properly sounded, and if he seemed willing, was to be admitted into the plot. He was then to be made Minister of War, in order that through him the whole of the land forces should be at the disposal of the plotters. Fleury went to Algeria to find the instrument required, and he so well performed his task that he hit upon a general officer who was christened, it seems, Jacques Arnaud Le Roy, but was known at this time as Achille St. Arnaud. ... He readily entered into the plot. From the moment that Prince Louis Bonaparte and his associates had entrusted their secret to the man of Fleury's selection, it was perhaps hardly possible for them to flinch, for the exigencies of St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy, were not likely to be on so modest a scale as to consist with the financial arrangements of a Republic governed by law, and the discontent of a person of his quality with a secret like that in his charge would plainly bring the rest of the brethren into danger. He was made Minister of War. This was on the 27th of October. At the same time M. Maupas or de Maupas was brought into the Ministry. ... Persigny, properly Fialin, was in the plot. He was descended on one side of an ancient family, and disliking his father's name he seems to have called himself for many years after the name of his maternal grandfather. ... It was necessary to take measures for paralyzing the National Guard, but the force was under the command of General Perrot, a man whose honesty could not be tampered with. To dismiss him suddenly would be to excite suspicion. The following expedient was adopted: the President appointed as Chief of the Staff of the National Guard, a person named Vieyra. The past life and the then repute of this person were of such a kind, that General Perrot, it seems, conceived himself insulted by the nomination, and instantly resigned. That was what the brethren of the Elysée wanted. On Sunday, the 30th, General Lawæstine was appointed to the command. ... His function was--not to lead the force of which he took the command but--to prevent it from acting. ... Care had been taken to bring into Paris and its neighborhood the regiments most likely to serve the purpose of the Elysée, and to give the command to generals who might be expected to act without scruples. The forces in Paris and its neighborhood were under the orders of General Magnan. ... From time to time the, common soldiery were gratified with presents of food and wine, as well, as with an abundance of flattering words, and their exasperation against civilians was so well kept alive that men used to African warfare were brought into the humor for calling the Parisians 'Bedouins.' There was massacre in the very sound. The army of Paris was in the temper required. It was necessary for the plotters to have the concurrence of M. St. Georges, the director Of the state printing-office. M. St. Georges was suborned. Then all was ready. On the Monday night between the 1st and 2d of December, the President had his usual assembly at the Elysée. Ministers who were loyally ignorant of what was going on were mingled with those who were in the plot. ... At the usual hour the assembly began to disperse, and by eleven o'clock there were only three guests who remained. These were Morny (who had previously taken care to show himself at one of the theatres), Maupas, and St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy. There was, besides, an orderly officer of the President, called Colonel Beville, who was initiated in the secret. ... They were to strike the blow that night. ... By and by they were apprised that an order which had been given for the movement of a battalion of gendarmerie, had duly taken effect without exciting remark. ... The President entrusted a packet of manuscripts to Colonel Beville, and despatched him to the state printing office. It was in the streets which surround this building that the battalion of gendarmerie had been collected. When Paris was hushed in sleep, the battalion came quietly out, and folded round the state printing-office. From that moment until their work was done the printers were all close captives, for no one of them was suffered to go out. ... It is said that there was something like resistance, but in the end, if not at first, the printers obeyed. Each compositor stood whilst he worked between two policemen, and, the manuscript being cut into many pieces, no one could make out the sense of what he was printing. By these proclamations the President asserted that the Assembly was a hot-bed of plots; declared it dissolved; pronounced for universal suffrage; proposed a new constitution; vowed anew that his duty was to maintain the Republic; and placed Paris and the twelve surrounding departments under martial law. In one of the proclamations, he appealed to the army, and strove to whet its enmity against civilians, by reminding it of the defeats inflicted upon the troops in 1830 and 1848. The President wrote letters dismissing the members of the government who were not in the plot; but he did not cause these letters to be delivered until the following morning. He also signed a paper appointing Morny to the Home Office. ... The order from the Minister of War was probably signed by half-past two in the morning, for at three it was in the hands of Magnan. At the same hour Maupas (assigning for pretext the expected arrival of foreign refugees), caused a number of Commissaries to be summoned in all haste to the Prefecture of Police. At half-past three in the morning these men were in attendance. ... It was then that, for the first time, the main secret of the confederates passed into the hands of a number of subordinate agents. During some hours of that night every one of those humble Commissaries had the destinies of France in his hands; for he might either obey the Minister, and so place his country in the power of the Elysée, or he might obey the law, denounce the plot, and bring its contrivers to trial. Maupas gave orders for the seizure at the same minute of the foremost Generals of France, and several of her leading Statesmen. {1377} Parties of the police, each under the orders of a Commissary, were to be at the doors of the persons to be arrested some time beforehand, but the seizures were not to take place until a quarter past six. ... At the appointed minute, and whilst it was still dark, the designated houses were entered. The most famous generals of France were seized. General Changarnier, General Bedeau, General Lamoricière, General Cavaignac, and General Leflô were taken from their beds, and carried away through the sleeping city and thrown into prison. In the same minute the like was done with some of the chief members and officers of the Assembly, and amongst others with Thiers, Miot, Baze, Colonel Charras, Roger du Nord, and several of the democratic leaders. Some men believed to be the chiefs of secret societies were also seized. The general object of these night arrests was that, when morning broke, the army should be without generals inclined to observe the law, that the Assembly should be without the machinery for convoking it, and that all the political parties in the State should be paralyzed by the disappearance of their chiefs. The number of men thus seized in the dark was seventy-eight. Eighteen of these were members of the Assembly. Whilst it was still dark, Morny, escorted by a body of infantry, took possession of the Home Office, and prepared to touch the springs of that wondrous machinery by which a clerk can dictate to a nation. Already he began to tell 40,000 communes of the enthusiasm with which the sleeping city had received the announcement of measures not hitherto disclosed. When the light of the morning dawned, people saw the Proclamations on the walls, and slowly came to hear that numbers of the foremost men of France had been seized in the night-time, and that every General to whom the friends of law and order could look for help was lying in one or other of the prisons. The newspapers, to which a man might run in order to know truly what others thought and intended, were all seized and stopped. The gates of the Assembly were closed and guarded, but the Deputies, who began to flock thither, found means to enter by passing through one of the official residences which formed Part of the building. They had assembled in the Chamber in large numbers, and some of them having caught Dupin, their reluctant President, were forcing him to come and take the chair, when a body of infantry burst in and drove them out, striking some of them with the butt-ends of their muskets. ... Driven from their Chamber, the Deputies assembled at the Mayoralty of the 10th arrondissement. There, upon the motion of the illustrious, Berryer, they resolved that the act of Louis Bonaparte was a forfeiture of the Presidency, and they directed the judges of the Supreme Court to meet and proceed to the judgment of the President and his accomplices. These resolutions had just been voted, when a battalion of the Chasseurs de Vincennes entered the courtyard. ... An aide-de-camp of General Magnan came with a written order directing the officer in command of the battalion to clear the hall, to do this if necessary by force, and to carry off to the prison of Mazas any Deputies offering resistance. ... The number of Deputies present at this moment was 220. The whole Assembly declared that they resisted, and would yield to nothing short of force. ... They were carried off, some to the Fort of Mount Valerian, some to the fortress of Vincennes, and some to the prison of Mazas. ... By the laws of the Republic, the duty of taking cognizance of offences against the Constitution was cast upon the Supreme Court. The Court was sitting, when an armed force entered the hall, and the judges were driven from the bench, but not until they had made a judicial order for the impeachment of the President."

A. W. Kinglake, The Invasion of the Crimea, volume 1, chapter 14.

ALSO IN: E. Tênot, Paris in December, 1851, chapters 1-4.

_V. Hugo, Napoleon the Little._

_M. de Maupas, The Story of the Coup d'État._

B. Jerrold, Life of Napoleon III., book 8 (volume 3).

FRANCE: A. D. 1851. The bloody Triumph of the Coup d'État. Destruction of the Second Republic.

"The second part of the Coup d'État, which drenched the boulevards with innocent blood, has cast a shade of horror over the whole transaction that time has been unable to efface. Paris is never so reduced in a crisis, whether the cause be just or unjust, that she is bereft of hands to erect and defend barricades in her streets. In the Faubourg St. Antoine an incipient rising on the 2d was suppressed immediately by the troops. The volcanic district from the Hôtel de Ville northward to the boulevards also showed signs of uneasiness, and throughout the morning of the 3d the military were busy pulling down partially completed barricades and dispersing small bodies of insurgents. There seems to be little question that the army was embittered against the populace. If this were so, the proclamation circulated by the president through the ranks on the 2d was not calculated to appease it. He styled the soldiers as the 'flower of the nation.' He pointed out to them that his interests and theirs were the same, and that they had suffered together in the past from the course of the Assembly. He reminded them of the years 1830 and 1848, when the army had fought the people in the streets of Paris, and concluded by an allusion to the military grandeur of the Bonapartes. During the afternoon of the 3d and morning of the 4th the troops remained inactive; pending orders from the minister of war, and in this interval several strong barricades were erected in the restless quarters. On the afternoon of the 4th the boulevards, from the Madeleine to the Rue du Sentier, were occupied by a great body of troops awaiting orders to move east through the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle upon the barricaded district. The soldiers stood at ease, and the officers lounged about, smoking their cigars. The sidewalks, windows, and balconies were crowded with men, women, and children, thoughtless onlookers of the great military display. Suddenly a single shot was heard. It was fired from a window near the Rue du Sentier. The troops at the head of the column faced sharply to the south, and commenced a deliberate fusillade upon the crowded walks and balconies. The battalions farther west caught the murderous contagion, until the line of fire extended into the Boulevard des Italiens. In a few moments the beautiful boulevards were converted into a bloody pandemonium. The sidewalks were strewn with corpses and stained with blood. The air was rent with shrieks and groans and the breaking of glass, while the steady, incessant rattling of the musketry was intensified by an occasional cannon-shot, that brought down with a crash the masonry from some fine façade. {1378} This continued for nearly twenty minutes, when a lack of people to kill seems to have restrained the mad volleys of the troops. If any attempt was made by officers to check their men, it was wholly unavailing, and in some cases miserable fugitives were followed into buildings and massacred. Later in the day the barricades were attacked, and their defenders easily overcome. By night-fall insurgent Paris was thoroughly cowed. These allegations, though conflicting with sworn statements of Republicans and Imperialists, can hardly be refuted. The efforts of the Napoleonic faction to portray the thoughtless crowd of the boulevards as desperate and bloody-minded rebels have never been successful, while the opposition so brilliantly represented by the author of 'Histoire d'un Crime' have been too fierce and immoderate in their accusations to win public credence. The questions as to who fired the first shot, and whether it was fired as a signal for, or a menace against the military, are points on which Frenchmen of different political parties still debate. It is charitable to accept M. Hugo's insinuation that the soldiery were drunk with the president's wine, even though the fact implies a low state of discipline in the service. To what extent was the president responsible for the boulevard horror? M. Victor Hugo and M. de Maupas do not agree upon this point, and it seems useless to discuss it. Certain facts are indisputable. We know the army bore small love toward the Parisians, and we know it was in the streets by order of the president. We know that the latter was in bad company, and playing a dangerous game. We may discard M. Victor Hugo's statement as to the orders issued by the president from the Elysée on the fatal day, but we cannot disguise the fact that the boulevard horror subdued Paris, and crowned his cause with success. In other words, Louis Napoleon was the gainer by the slaughter of unoffending men, women, and children, and in after-years, when referring to the 4th of December, he found it for his interest to distort facts, and make figures lie. ... Louis Napoleon had expressly stated in the proclamation that astonished Paris on the 2d that he made the people judge between him and the Assembly. The citizens of France were called upon to vote on the 20th and 21st of December 'Yes' or 'No' to the question as to whether the president should be sustained in the measures he had taken, should be empowered to draw up a new constitution, and should retain the presidential chair for a period of ten years."

H. Murdock, The Reconstruction of Europe, chapter 2.

ALSO IN: _V. Hugo, History of a Crime._

E. Tênot, Paris in December, 1851, chapters 5-6.

M. de Maupas, Story of the Coup d'État, chapters 18-24 (volume 2).

Count H. de Viel Castel, Memoirs, volume 1, chapter 4.

FRANCE: A. D. 1851-1852. Transportation and exile of republicans. The dictator's constitution for France. Rapid progress of despotism. The Second Empire ordained. Elevation of Napoleon III. to the throne.

"The struggle was over: terror of the victors followed. Thirty-two departments were in a state of siege. More than 100,000 citizens were languishing in prison. Trial followed trial in rapid succession, the cases being classed under three heads: 1st, persons found armed, or against whom serious charges existed; 2d, persons charged with minor offences; 3d, dangerous persons. The first class was judged at once by a council of war, the second sent to various tribunals, the third transported without trial. Many prisoners were not even questioned. Numbers were set free; but multitudes were still held. Under these conditions the date of the plebiscite, December 20 and 21, approached. Notices were posted to the effect that 'any person seeking to disturb the polls or to question the result of the ballot would be tried by a council of war.' All liberty of choice was taken from the electors, many of whom were arrested on suspicion of exciting others to vote against the president of the republic. When the lists were published it was found that the 'ayes' had carried the day, although many did not vote at all. Indubitably the figures were notably swelled by violence and fraud. ... December 31, ex-Minister Baroche presented the result of the ballots to the prince-president,--a strange title now given to Louis Napoleon, for the time being, in lieu of another. ... Next day, January 1, 1852, Archbishop Sibour celebrated a Te Deum in Notre Dame, the prince-president sitting under a canopy. ... While the man of December 2 lodged in the palace of kings, the chief representatives of the republic were cast into exile. The executors of the plot treated the captive representatives very differently according as they were conservative or republican. When the prisoners were told that a distinction was to be made among them, they honorably refused to give their names, but they were betrayed by an usher of the Assembly. The republicans were then sent to Mazas, and treated like common thieves, M. Thiers alone being allowed a bed instead of the ordinary hammock. The other party were soon set free, with but few exceptions, and on the 8th of January the generals imprisoned at Ham, with their companion, Questor Baze, were sent to Belgium. Next day a series of proscriptions came out. All persons 'convicted of taking part in the recent insurrections' were to be transported, some to Guiana, some to Algiers. A second decree expelled from France, Algiers, and the French colonies, 'as a measure of public safety,' sixty representatives of the Left, including Victor Hugo and certain others, for whom it was reserved to aid in the foundation of a third republic. A third decree commanded the temporary absence from France and Algiers of eighteen other representatives, including the generals, with Thiers, De Rémusat, and several members of the Left, among them Edgar Quinet and Emile de Girardin. ... The next step was to establish the famous 'mixed commissions' in every province. These commissions were to try the numerous prisoners still held captive. ... The mixed commissions of 1852, as the historian of the coup d'état (M. Eugène Ténot) declares, 'decided, without legal proceedings, without hearing of witnesses, without public trial, the fate of thousands and thousands of republicans.' They have left the indelible memory of one of the most monstrous events known in history. An act equally extraordinary in another way was the promulgation of the new constitution framed by the dictator alone (January 14, 1852). ... The constitution of 1852 began by a 'recognition, confirmation, and guarantee of the great principles proclaimed in 1789, which are the foundation of the public rights and laws of France.' {1379} But it did not say one word about the freedom of the press, nor about freedom of clubs and association. ... 'The government of the French republic is intrusted to Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte for the term of ten years.' In the preface Louis Napoleon threw aside the fiction of irresponsibility 'which deceives public sentiment'; the constitution therefore declares the leader of the state responsible to the French people, but omits to say how this responsibility may be realized; the French people have no resource save revolution. ... The legislative body was to consist of 262 members (one for each 3,500 electors), chosen for five years by universal suffrage. This body would vote upon the laws and taxes. Louis Napoleon, having profited so largely by the repeal of the law of May 31, could scarcely refuse to retain direct universal suffrage, but he essentially altered its character by various modifications. He also so reduced the importance of the only great body still elective, that he had little or nothing to fear from it. Another assembly, the Senate, was to be composed of eighty members, which number might be increased to 150. The senators were irremovable, and were to be chosen by the president of the republic, with the exception of cardinals, marshals, and admirals, who were senators by right. The president might give each senator an income of 80,000 francs. The Senate was the guardian of the constitution and of 'the public liberty.' ... The executive power chose all mayors, and was at liberty to select them outside the town council. In fact, the constitution of 1852 surpassed the constitution of the year VIII. as a piece of monarchic reaction. It entailed no consulate, but an empire,--dictatorship and total confiscation of public liberty. ... Despotism spread daily in every direction. On the 17th of February the liberty of the press was notably reduced, and severe penalties were affixed to any infraction. In fact, the press was made dependent on the good-will of the president. Education was next attacked, a decree of March 9, 1852, stripping the professors of the University of all the pledges and principles granted by the First Empire. ... The new power, in 1852, labored to turn all the forces of the country to material interests, while it stifled all moral interests. It suppressed education and the press, and constantly stimulated the financial and industrial movement. ... Numberless railroad companies now sprang to life, and roads were rapidly built upon a grand scale. The government adopted the system of grants on a long term of years,--say ninety-nine,--plus the guarantee of a small rate of interest. In everything the cry was for instant success, at any cost. Great financial operations followed on the heels of the first grants to railroad companies. ... This year's budget, like the constitution, was the work of a single man. The dictator settled it by a decree; then, having ordered the elections for his Chamber of Deputies, just before his constitution went into operation, he raised the universal state of siege (March 28). This was only a feint, for his government was a permanent state of siege. ... The official candidates presented, or rather imposed, were generally elected; the republicans failed to vote throughout a great part of the country. ... March 29, the prince-president proceeded to install the great state bodies at the Tuileries. It was thought that he would hint in his speech that he expected the title of Emperor, but he left that point vague, and still talked of preserving the republic. ... During the session a rumor was current that Louis Napoleon was to be proclaimed emperor on the 10th of May, after the distribution of eagles to the army; but this was not carried out. The dictator had no desire to be made emperor in this fashion. He meant to do it more artfully, and to make it seem that the nation forced the accomplishment of his wishes upon him. He therefore undertook a fresh journey through the provinces. ... The watchword was everywhere given by the authorities and influential persons, whose example was imitated by the crowd, irreconcilable opponents keeping silent. ... He returned to Paris, October 16, and was received in state at the Orleans station. The official bodies greeted him with shouts of 'Long live the Emperor!' ... Next day, the following paragraph appeared in the 'Moniteur': 'The tremendous desire for the restoration of the empire manifested throughout France, makes it incumbent upon the president to consult the Senate upon the subject.' The Senate and Legislature were convened November 4; the latter was to verify the votes, should the Senate decide that the people must be consulted in regard to a change in the form of government, which no one doubted would be the case. ... The Senate ... passed a decree for the submission of the restoration of the hereditary empire for popular acceptance (November 7); the senators then went in a body to St. Cloud to inform the prince-president of this decision. ... The people were then called upon to vote for the plebiscite decreed by the Senate (November 20 and 21). Republican and legitimist protests were circulated in despite of the police, the government publishing them in the official organ, the 'Moniteur,' as if in defiance, thinking that the excessive violence of the republican proscripts of London and Guernsey would alarm the peace-loving public. The result of the vote was even greater than that of December 20, 1851; the authenticity of the figures may indeed be doubted, but there is not a doubt that there was really a large majority in favor of the plebiscite. France abandoned the struggle! On the evening of December 1, the three great state bodies, the two Chambers and the State Council, went to St. Cloud, and the president of the Legislature presented the result of the ballot to the new emperor, who sat enthroned, between his uncle Jerome and his cousin Napoleon."

_H. Martin, Popular History of France, 1789-1878, volume 3, chapter 15._

ALSO IN: H. C. Lockwood, Constitutional History of France, chapter 6, and appendix 9.

FRANCE: A. D. 1853-1856. The Crimean war.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1853-1854, to 1854-1856.

FRANCE: A. D. 1857-1860. Allied operations with England in China.

See CHINA: A. D. 1856-1860.

FRANCE: A. D. 1858. The Orsini attempt to assassinate Napoleon III. Complaints against England.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1858-1859.

FRANCE: A. D. 1859. Alliance with Sardinia and war with Austria. Victories of Magenta and Solferino. Liberation of Lombardy. Peace of Villafranca. Acquisition of Savoy and Nice.

See ITALY: A. D. 1856-1859, and 1859-1861.

{1380}

FRANCE: A. D. 1860. The Chevalier-Cobden commercial treaty with England.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (FRANCE): A. D. 1858-1860.

FRANCE: A. D.1860-1870. Modifications of the imperial constitution.

"Originally ... the power of the Legislative Body was limited to voting and rejecting as a whole the laws submitted to it by the Executive; there was no such thing as criticism or control of the general policy of the reign: but the year 1860 opened a period of development in the direction of liberty; by a decree of the November of that year the Emperor permitted the Deputies to draw up an address in answer to his speech, giving them thereby the opportunity to criticise his policy; by that of December 1861 he allowed them to vote the budget by sections, that is to say, to discuss and, if desirable, reject its items; by that of January 1867 he substituted for the Address the right of questioning the Ministers, who might be delegated to the Chamber by the Emperor to take part in certain definite discussions; lastly, by that of September 1869 he gave to the Legislative Body the right of initiating laws, removed the restrictions hitherto retained on the right of amendment and of questions, and made the Ministers responsible to the Chamber. Thus the Constitution was deliberately modified, by the initiative of the Emperor himself, from the form of imperial despotism to that of parliamentary monarchy: this modified Constitution was submitted to a plebiscite in May 1870, and once more the people ratified the Empire by over seven million votes against a million and a half."

G. L. Dickinson, Revolution and Reaction in Modern France, chapter 7, section 8.

FRANCE: A. D.1861-1867. Intervention in Mexico and its humiliating failure.

See MEXICO: A. D. 1861-1867.

FRANCE: A. D. 1862. Commercial treaty with Germany.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (GERMANY): A. D. 1853-1892.

FRANCE: A. D. 1866. Withdrawal of troops from Rome.

See ITALY: A. D. 1862-1866.

FRANCE: A. D. 1866-1870. Territorial concessions demanded from Germany. The Luxemburg question. War temporarily averted.

See GERMANY. A.D. 1866-1870.

FRANCE: A. D. 1867. Last defense of Papal sovereignty at Rome. Defeat of Garibaldi at Mentana.

See ITALY: A.D. 1867-1870.

FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (June-July). "The Hohenzollern incident." Unjustifiable declaration of war against Prussia.

"Towards the last of June, 1870, there arose what is known as the 'Hohenzollern incident,' which assumed so much importance, as it led up to the Franco-German War. In June, 1868, Queen Isabella had been chased from Spain, and had sought refuge in France. The Spanish Cortes, maintaining the monarchical form, offered the Crown of Spain to Prince Hohenzollern, a relation of the King of Prussia.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1866-1878.

The French Minister at Madrid telegraphed that Prince Leopold Hohenzollern had been nominated to the throne of Spain, and had accepted. This produced the utmost excitement and indignation among the French people. The Paris press teemed with articles more or less violent, calling on the government to prevent this outrage, even at the cost of war. The journals of all shades were unanimous in the matter, contending that it was an insult and a peril to France, and could not be tolerated. The Opposition in the Chamber made the incident an occasion for attacking the government, alleging that it was owing to its weak and vacillating policy that France was indebted to her fresh humiliation. The government journals, however, laid the whole blame upon the ambition of Count Bismarck, who had become to them a bête noire. ... Both parties vied with each other in showing the extent of their dislike to the great Prussian Chancellor. Much pressure was soon brought to bear in the proper quarters; the result of this was the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidacy. Explanations were made, better counsels seemed to prevail, and all immediate trouble appeared averted. It seemed quite certain that all danger of a war between France and Germany was at an end, and all being quiet on the banks of the Seine, on the 3d of July I left Paris in pursuit of health and recreation at the healing waters of Carlsbad, of far-off Bohemia. I was in excellent relations with the Duke de Gramont, and everything appeared to be serene. I had hardly reached Carlsbad, when scanty news was received of a somewhat threatening character. I could hardly believe that anything very serious was likely to result; yet I was somewhat uneasy. Going to drink the water at one of the health-giving springs, early in the morning of July 15th, my Alsatian valet brought me the startling news, that a private telegram, received at midnight, gave the intelligence that France had declared war against Germany. The news fell upon the thousands of visitors and the people of Carlsbad, like a clap of thunder in a cloudless sky, and the most intense excitement prevailed. The nearest railroad station to Carlsbad, at that time, was Eger. ... I rode all night from Carlsbad to Eger. Taking the railroad from Eger to Paris, and passing through Bavaria, Baden, Darmstadt and the valley of the Rhine, the excitement was something prodigious, recalling to me the days at home of the firing upon Sumter, in 1861. The troops were rushing to the depots; the trains were all blocked, and confusion everywhere reigned supreme. After great delays, and much discomfort, and a journey of fifty-two hours, I reached Paris at ten o'clock at night, July 18th. The great masses of people, naturally so excitable and turbulent, had been maddened by the false news so skilfully disseminated, that King William, at Ems, had insulted the French nation through its Ambassador. ... It soon turned out that all the reports which had been spread over Paris, that King William had insulted the French Ambassador were utterly false, and had not the slightest foundation. The French Ambassador, M. Benedetti, denied that he had received the least indignity from the Emperor. The plain truth seemed to be that the French Ambassador courteously approached the Emperor, while walking in the garden of the Kursaal, and spoke to him in relation to the pending difficulties then existing between the two countries. The good old king was kind and polite, as he always is to every one with whom he comes in contact, and when M. Benedetti commenced talking in relation to matters of such a grave character, he politely stated that he would have to talk upon such questions with the German Foreign Office. All that was very proper, and nobody thought of it, or supposed that there was any indignity, as there was not the slightest intended. ... {1381} The exaggerations in Paris and France of this simple incident surpassed all bounds, and they were apparently made to inflame the people still more. It really appeared that the Government of France had determined to have war with Germany, coûte que coûte [at all costs]. The alleged causes growing out of the talk that Germany was to put a German prince on the throne of Spain were but a mere pretext. The Hohenzollern candidature had been withdrawn, and there was no necessity or sense in any further trouble. But the truth was that, after eighteen years of peace, the courtiers and adventurers who surrounded the Emperor seemed to think that it was about time to have a war, to awaken the martial spirit of the French people, to plant the French eagles in triumph in the capital of some foreign country, and, as a consequence, to fix firmly on the throne the son of Napoleon the Third, and restore to the Imperial crown the lustre it had lost."

E. B. Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, volume 1, chapter 2.

ALSO IN: W. Müller, Political History of Recent Times, section 25.

G. B. Malleson, The Refounding of the German Empire, chapter 11;

W. Rüstow, The War for the Rhine Frontier, 1870, chapter 6 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (July-August). Disastrous opening of the war. Defeats at Wörth, Spichern and Gravelotte. Bazaine's army shut up in Metz.

"July 23d Napoleon intrusted the regency to the empress for the period of his absence from Paris. ... On the 28th, ... accompanied by his son, [he] left for Metz, to assume command of the army. ... The army consisted of eight corps. Of these, the 1st, under Marshal MacMahon, was stationed at Strasburg; the 2d, under General Frossard, at St. Avold; the 3d, under Marshal Bazaine, at Metz; the 4th, under General Ladmirault, at Diedenhofen (Thionville); the 5th, under General Failly, at Bitsch; the 6th, under Marshal Canrobert, in the camp at Châlons; the 7th, under General Felix Douay, at Belfort; the 8th,--the Imperial Guard--under General Bourbaki, at Nancy. Accordingly, the French forces were divided into two groups, the larger stationed on the Moselle, and the smaller in Alsace. To the latter belonged the 1st and 7th corps, both of which were placed under the command of Marshal MacMahon, with orders to prevent the crown prince's army from entering Alsace. The larger group comprised the 2d, 3d, and 4th corps. ... The 6th and 8th were to have formed the reserve; but the greatly superior numbers of Prince Frederic Charles and Steinmetz, who were advancing against this larger group, necessitated the immediate bringing of those corps to the front. The connection between the two groups was to be maintained by the 5th corps, stationed at Bitsch. Skirmishing of the advanced posts and collisions between reconnoitering parties began on the 19th of July. The most important of these minor engagements was that at Saarbrücken, on the 2d of August [the French claiming a victory]. ... August 4th the crown prince crossed the French frontier and attacked the town of Weissenburg, on the little river Lauter. ... Weissenburg was successfully carried by Prussian and Bavarian battalions combined, and the Geisberg by sixteen battalions of Prussians alone. ... August 5th MacMahon with his corps took up his position at Wörth, fortifying the heights westward from Sauerbach, together with the villages of Froschweiler and Elsasshausen, in the intention of meeting at that place the advancing columns of the crown prince, whose attack he expected on the 7th. To strengthen his army sufficiently for the task required of it he endeavored to bring up General Felix Douay's corps from Belfort and Mühlhausen, and that of General Failly from Bitsch; but only one division of the former arrived in time, and a division of the latter which was sent to his support did not reach the neighborhood of the battle-field until the evening of the 6th, in time to afford a partial protection on the retreat. Consequently, MacMahon was left with not more than 45,000 men to face the crown prince's whole army. ... On the morning of the 6th the advance guard of the 5th corps became involved in a sharp action with the enemy," and "from a mere skirmish of the advance guard resulted the decisive battle of Wörth. ... After Wörth itself had been carried, the fighting was most severe around the fortified village of Froschweiler. This was finally taken, and a desperate charge of the French cuirassiers repulsed. Thereupon MacMahon's army broke and fled in wild confusion, some toward the passes of the Vosges, others to Strasburg or Bitsch. ... The trophies of victory were numerous and valuable: 200 officers and 9,000 men prisoners. ... The French lost 6,000 dead and wounded; the German loss was 489 officers and 10,153 men--a loss greater than that of Sadowa. ... MacMahon, with about 15,000 of his defeated troops, reached Zabern on the morning of the 7th, and set out thence for Châlons, whither Generals Douay and Failly were also directed to lead their forces. A new army was to be formed at that point, and northern Alsace was abandoned to the crown prince's victorious troops. The Badish division received orders to march against Strasburg, and by the 9th the whole corps was assembled before that city, Hagenau having been taken by the cavalry on the way. ... Preparations for a siege were made, a regular siege corps being formed ... and placed under the command of General Werder. With the remainder of the third army the crown prince left Wörth on the 8th of August, marched through the unguarded passes of the Vosges, and entered Nancy on the 16th. ... Detachments were left behind to blockade Bitsch and Pfalzburg. At Nancy the prince rested for a few days and waited for decisive news from the Saar and Moselle. A second victory was won on the 6th of August at Spichern [or Forbach]. Like the battle of Wörth, this action was not the result of a strategical combination, but rather of a misunderstanding. ... Frossard [whose corps was encountered at Spichern] fell back on Metz by way of Saargemünd. Bazaine, who, although not more than seven or eight miles from the field of battle, had made no attempt to come to Frossard's assistance, led his corps to the same place. In this battle, owing to the unfavorable nature of the ground, the losses of the conquerors were heavier than those of the conquered. The Germans had 223 officers and 4,648 men dead, wounded, and missing; while the French, according to their own reports, lost 249 officers and 3,829 men, 2,000 of whom were taken prisoners. August 7th the victors continued their forward march, capturing great stores of provisions in Forbach. On the 9th St. Avold was taken, and foraging parties advanced almost to Metz. {1382} Marching through the Rhenish Palatinate, part of Prince Frederic Charles's army directed its course toward Metz by way of Saarbrücken, and part through Saargemünd. ... In the imperial head-quarters at Metz the greatest consternation prevailed. ... It was [finally] decided to concentrate five army corps on the right bank of the Moselle, at Metz, and to form a second army, consisting of four corps, under MacMahon's command, in the camp at Châlons. The first line of defence on the Rhine and Saar had been abandoned, and France was to be defended on the Moselle. By this decision Alsace and Lorraine were surrendered to the foe at the very outset." On the 9th of August the French emperor transferred the chief command from himself to Marshal Bazaine, while Lebœuf at the same time withdrew from the direction of the staff. Simultaneously, at Paris, the Grammont-Ollivier ministry resigned, and was succeeded by a cabinet formed under the presidency of Count Palikao (General Montauban). "New levies were called into the field, comprising all unmarried men between the ages of 25 and 30 not already enrolled in the 'garde mobile.' ... In the German head-quarters ... it was resolved in some way to make Bazaine's army harmless, either by shutting him up in Metz or by pushing him northward to the Belgian frontier. ... The task was a difficult one. ... All depended upon what course Bazaine might conclude to pursue, and the energy with which he executed his plans. It was his purpose to leave Metz with the field army and join MacMahon at Châlons. There would then be 300,000 French at that place to block the German march to Paris. In that event the Germans would have to leave 60,000 men before Metz ... and Diedenhofen, and would not have enough left to venture an attack on the united and well-intrenched armies at Châlons. Accordingly, the union of those two armies must be prevented at any price, and Bazaine be attacked before Metz. The execution of this plan led to the severe fighting near that city--the battle of Colombey-Nouilly (Borny), on the 14th, Vionville on the 16th, and Gravelotte on the 18th." The battle of Gravelotte was "the first battle in the war in which a pre-arranged plan [Moltke's] was actually carried out. ... It was a brilliant victory, and followed by important results. Bazaine's army was shut up in the fortress and among the outlying forts, and rendered unavailable for further service in the field. The losses of the French amounted to about 13,000 men, including 600 officers; the German loss was 899 officers and 19,260 men, of whom 328 officers and 4,909 men were killed outright. The number of combatants on the side of the French was about 140,000, on the side of the Germans 178,818, the former having 550, and the latter 822 cannon. It must be remembered, however, that the French occupied a position very much of the nature of a fortress, which had to be carried by storm."

W. Müller, Political History of Recent Times, section 25.

ALSO IN: Count H. von Moltke, The Franro-German War of 1870-71, section 1.

Colonel A. Borbstaedt and Major F. Dwyer, The Franco-German War, chapters 10-29.

FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (August-September). Investment of Metz by the Germans. Disastrous attempt of MacMahon to rescue Bazaine. The catastrophe at Sedan.

"The huge, stubborn, vehement and bloody conflict waged in the rural tract between the northern edges of the Bois de Vaux and the Forest of Jaumont, which the French Marshal called the 'Defence of the Lines of Amanvillers,' the French Army, 'the Battle of St. Privat,' and the Germans the battle of 'Gravelotte--St. Privat,' established the mastery of the latter over 'the Army of the Rhine.' Marshal Bazaine had not proved strong enough to extricate the Army he was suddenly appointed to command from the false position in which it had been placed by the errors and hesitations of the Emperor and Marshal Lebœuf. ... The German leaders forthwith resolved, and acted on the resolve, to take the largest advantage of success. When the broadening day showed that the French were encamped under the guns of the fort, and that they did not betray the faintest symptom of fighting for egress on any side, the place was deliberately invested. ... Soon the blockade was so far completed that only adventurous scouts were able at rare intervals to work their way through the German lines. As early as the forenoon of the 19th, the King had decided to form what came to be called the 'Army of the Meuse' out of the Corps which were not needed to uphold the investment of Metz, and thus place himself in a condition to assail the French Army collecting at Chalons. ... This formidable force was put under the command of the Crown Prince of Saxony, who had shown himself to be an able soldier. Consequently, there remained behind to invest Bazaine, seven Corps d'Armée and a Division of Reserve under General von Kummer. ... One Army had been literally imprisoned, another remained at large, and behind it were the vast resources of France. Three Marshals were cooped up in the cage on the Moselle; one, MacMahon, and the Emperor were still in the field; and upon the forces with them it was resolved to advance at once, because prudence required that they should be shattered before they could be completely organized, and while the moral effect of the resounding blows struck in Alsace and Lorraine had lost none of its terrible power. Therefore the King and General von Moltke started on the morrow of victory to march on Paris through the plains of Champagne."

G. Hooper, The Campaign of Sedan, chapter 10.

"While the German invasion had thus been rolling from Lorraine into the flats of Champagne, the shattered right wing of the army of the Rhine, with reinforcements sent off from Paris, had been drawn together in the well-known plains made memorable by the defeat of Attila. By 20 August the first and fifth French corps marched rapidly from the Upper Moselle to the Marne, had been joined by the seventh corps from Belfort and by the twelfth formed in and despatched from Paris; and this force, numbering perhaps 130,000 men, with from 400 to 500 guns, had been concentrated round the great camp of Châlons. Macmahon was given the supreme command, and the first operations of the experienced chief showed that he understood the present state of affairs, and were in accord with the rules of strategy. Bazaine, he knew, was in peril near Metz, and certainly had not attained the Meuse; and he was at the head of the last army which France could assemble for the defence of her capital. {1383} In these circumstances, impressed perhaps by the grand memories of the campaign of 1814, he most properly resolved to fall back towards Paris; but as Bazaine was possibly not far distant, and a position on the flank of the German advance might afford a favourable opportunity to strike, he withdrew northwards on the 21st to Rheims, in the double hope that he would approach his colleague and threaten the communications of the advancing enemy. This, we repeat, was following the art of war, and had Macmahon firmly adhered to his purpose, there would have been no Sedan and no treaty of Frankfort. Unhappily the marshal, a hero in the field, was deficient in real strength of character, and at this critical moment evil counsels and false information shook, and at last changed, a resolve that ought to have never faltered. A new administration had been formed in Paris, and Palikao, the minister of war, devoted to the Empire, and especially bent on satisfying the demands of the excited capital, which passionately insisted on the relief of Bazaine, had conceived a project by which he hoped that this great object would be effected and the 'dynasty' be restored in popular opinion. The army of the Meuse, he argued, was near that stream, round Verdun; the third army was far away to the south; there was a considerable interval between the two masses; and the army of Châlons, then at Rheims, was not far from the Upper Meuse. In those circumstances it was quite practicable, should Macmahon rapidly advance to the Meuse, to overpower with his largely superior force the army of the Meuse before support could be sent from the distant third army; and the enemy in his path being swept aside, the marshal could then descend on Metz, fall with the collected strength of the army of Châlons on the divided fragments of the investing force, and triumphantly effect his junction with Bazaine, having routed, perhaps, the first and second armies before the third could appear on the scene. The defiles and woods of the Argonne and the Ardennes, stretching between the French and the German armies, Palikao insisted, would form a screen to conceal the advance of the army of Chãlons, and would greatly facilitate the proposed movement. This project reached Macmahon on 21 August, and may be pronounced one of the most reckless ever designed by a desperate gambler in war. ... Macmahon at first refused to listen to what he condemned as a hopeless project; but bad advisers found their way to him, and his resolution was already yielding when a calamitous event fixed his shifting purpose. A despatch from Bazaine, obscure and untrue, announced that he was on his way northward. Macmahon inferred that his beleaguered colleague had left Metz and eluded his foes, and, thinking that he would reach Bazaine before long, in an evil hour for France and for himself, he consented to attempt the march to the Meuse."

_W. O'C. Morris, The Campaign of Sedan (English Historical Review., April, 1888)._

"It was not until the afternoon of August 23 that MacMahon's army passed through Rheims. Anxious, and knowing that everything depended on speed, he addressed some columns as they toiled onwards, reminding them that French soldiers had marched thirty miles a day under the sun of Africa. The difference, however, was great between raids made by a few light regiments and the advance of a raw unwieldy mass; and though the marshal endeavoured to hurry them forward, he was confronted with almost insurmountable obstacles. Scarcely had the army made a march towards establishing itself at Bethniville, on the Suippe, when commissariat difficulties obliged him to re-approach the line of the railway. He made a movement on his left, and reached Rethel on the 24th, in order to obtain for his troops several days' subsistence. This distribution occupied the whole of the 25th. ... As the direction of the French movement could not now be concealed, at this point MacMahon made arrangements for marching with all possible rapidity. It may be doubted, however, whether Napoleon himself, at the head of the grand army could have made the haste which the marshal designed with his raw and partly demoralized troops. ... His army was altogether unequal to forced marches, and moved at this critical moment with the sluggishness inherent in its defective organization. Encumbered with stragglers, badly pioneered, and checked by hindrances of every kind, it made hardly ten miles a day; and it was the 27th of August before its right column, still far from the Meuse, passed through Vouziers, and the left reached Le Chêne. ... On the 27th it was openly boasted of in Paris that MacMahon had gained at least forty-eight hours' start of the Crown Prince, and his coming success was firmly counted on by the imperialist cabinet, whereas, in reality, the whole scheme was foiled beforehand by Von Moltke's and General Blumenthal's prompt combination. ... If in fighting, in the boldness of their cavalry, the activity of their staff, the cool firing of their infantry, and the skilful tactical use of their guns, the superiority of the Germans to their antagonists had been already proved; it only required the contrast now presented between the movements of the two armies to show, that in no point had the difference of training and moral feeling told more in favour of the invaders than in that of the marching, on which the elder Napoleon so often relied for his advantage over these very Germans. ... Between the 27th and the morning of the 29th, the right column of the French army had only its outposts at Buzancy, while the left, though its outposts touched Stenay, was only at Stonne and Beaumont, both columns spreading a long way backward; in other words, they were still a march from the Meuse, which they ought to have passed three days before, and their rearward divisions were yet distant. The German armies, from the 26th to the 29th, made astonishing exertions to close on MacMahon as he crossed towards the Meuse, and success was already within their grasp. The force of the Crown Prince of Saxony, in two columns, had reached the Meuse at Dun on the 27th, and was thus in a position to arrest and retard the vanguard of the French whenever it attempted to cross the river. Meanwhile the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia, hastening forward by Varennes and Grand Prè, and to the left by Senuc and Suippe, had arrived close to the line of march of MacMahon's right column, and by the evening of the 28th had occupied it about Vouziers. A step farther, and this immense army would be upon the positions of the luckless French, who, assailed in flank and rear by superior numbers, could not fail to be involved in terrible disaster. ... MacMahon [on the 27th], observing that the enemy so completely surrounded him, felt more than ever satisfied that it would be impossible to carry out the plan which had been prescribed to him at Paris; and to save, if possible, the sole army which France had at her disposal, he accordingly resolved to turn back in a westerly direction. ... {1384} The same evening he sent ... [a] telegram to the Count Palikao, at Paris. ... In reply to this, the government sent a telegram to the emperor at eleven o'clock the same night, telling him that if they abandoned Bazaine there would certainly be a revolution in Paris, and they would themselves be attacked by all the enemy's forces. ... The emperor admits that he could unquestionably have set this order aside, but 'he was resolved not to oppose the decision of the regency, and had resigned himself to submit to the consequences of the fatality which attached itself to all the resolutions of the government.' 'As for MacMahon, he again bowed to the decision intimated to him from Paris, and once more turned towards Metz. These orders and counter-orders naturally occasioned further delay, and the French headquarters had reached no farther than Stonne on the 28th. ... On Monday, August 29, De Failly occupied the country between Beaumont and Stonne, on the left bank of the Meuse; while the main body of the French army, under MacMahon in person, had crossed the river, and were encamped on the right bank at Vaux, between Mouzon and Carignan, and on the morning of the 30th the emperor telegraphed to Paris that a brilliant victory might be expected. MacMahon's position was in a sharp wedge of country formed by the confluence of the rivers Meuse and Chiers, and it was his intention to advance towards Montmèdy. The other part of his army was close to the river on its left bank. ... The battle--or rather series of battles, for the fighting extended over three days--which was to decide whether or not he would reach Metz and liberate Bazaine, began in earnest a little before noon on Tuesday, August 30."

H. M. Hozier, The Franco-Prussian War, volume 1, chapter 13.

"The retreating French were concentrated, or rather massed, under the walls of Sedan, in a valley commonly called the Sink of Givonne. The army consisted of twenty-nine brigades, fifteen divisions, and four corps d'armée, numbering ninety thousand men. 'It was there,' says Victor Hugo, 'no one could guess what for, without order, without discipline, a mere crowd of men, waiting, as it seemed, to be seized by an immensely powerful hand. It seemed to be under no particular anxiety. The men who composed it knew, or thought they knew, that the enemy was far away. Calculating four leagues as a day's march, they believed the Germans to be at three days' distance. The commanders, however, towards nightfall, made some preparations for safety. The whole army formed a sort of horse-shoe, its point turning towards Sedan. This disposition proved that its chiefs believed themselves in safety. The valley was one of those which the Emperor Napoleon used to call a "bowl," and which Admiral Van Tromp designated by a less polite name. No place could have been better calculated to shut in an army. Its very numbers were against it. Once in, if the way out were blocked, it could never leave it again. Some of the generals,--General Wimpfen among them--saw this, and were uneasy; but the little court around the emperor was confident of safety. "At worst," they said, "we can always reach the Belgian frontier." The commonest military precautions were neglected. The army slept soundly on the night of August 31. At the worst they believed themselves to have a line of retreat open to Mézières, a town on the frontier of Belgium. No cavalry reconnoissance was made that night; the guards were not doubled. The French believed themselves more than forty miles from the German army. They behaved as if they thought that army unconcentrated and ill-informed, attempting vaguely several things at once, and incapable of converging on one point, namely, Sedan. They thought they knew that the column under the Prince of Saxony was marching upon Châlons, and that the Crown Prince of Prussia was marching upon Metz. But that night, while the French army, in fancied security, was sleeping at Sedan, this is what was passing among the enemy. By a quarter to two A. M. the army of the Prince of Saxony was on its march eastward with orders not to fire a shot till five o'clock, and to make as little noise as possible. They marched without baggage of any kind. At the same hour another division of the Prussian army marched, with equal noiselessness, from another direction on Sedan, while the Würtemburgers secured the road to Mézières, thereby cutting off the possibility of a retreat into Belgium. At the same moment, namely, five o'clock,--on all the hills around Sedan, at all points of the compass, appeared a dense dark mass of German troops, with their commanders and artillery. Not one sound had been heard by the French army, not even an order. Two hundred and fifty thousand men were in a Circle on the heights round the Sink of Givonne. They had come as stealthily and as silently as serpents. They were there when the sun rose, and the French army were prisoners.'

_Victor Hugo, Choses Vues._

The battle was one of artillery. The German guns commanded every part of the crowded valley. Indeed the fight was simply a massacre. There was no hope for the French, though they fought bravely. Their best troops, the Garde Impériale, were with Bazaine at Metz. Marshal MacMahon was wounded very early in the day. The command passed first to General Ducrot, who was also disabled, and afterwards to Wimpfen, a brave African general who had hurried from Algeria just in time to take part in this disastrous day. He told the emperor that the only hope was for the troops to cut their way out of the valley; but the army was too closely crowded, too disorganized, to make this practicable. One Zouave regiment accomplished this feat, and reached Belgium. That night--the night of September 1--an aide-de-camp of the Emperor Napoleon carried this note to the camp of the king of Prussia:--Monsieur Mon Frère,--Not having been able to die in midst of my troops, it only remains for me to place my sword in the hands of your Majesty. I am your Majesty's good brother, Napoleon. ... With Napoleon III. fell not only his own reputation as a ruler, but the glory of his uncle and the prestige of his name. The fallen emperor and Bismarck met in a little house upon the banks of the Meuse. Chairs were brought out, and they talked in the open air. It was a glorious autumn morning. The emperor looked care-worn, as well he might. He wished to see the king of Prussia before the articles of capitulation were drawn up: but King William declined the interview. When the capitulation was signed, however, he drove over to visit the captive emperor at a château where the latter had taken refuge. {1385} Their interview was private; only the two sovereigns were present. The French emperor afterwards expressed to the Crown Prince of Prussia his deep sense of the courtesy shown him. He was desirous of passing as unnoticed as possible through French territory, where, indeed, exasperation against him, as the first cause of the misfortunes of France, was so great that his life would have been in peril. The next day he proceeded to the beautiful palace at Cassel called Wilhelmshöhe, or William's Rest. It had been built at ruinous expense by Jerome Bonaparte while king of Westphalia, and was then called Napoleon's Rest. ... Thus eighty thousand men capitulated at Sedan, and were marched as prisoners into Germany; one hundred and seventy-five thousand French soldiers remained shut up in Metz, besides a few thousand more in Strasburg, Phalsbourg, Toul, and Belfort. But the road was open to Paris, and thither the various German armies marched, leaving the Landwehr, which could not be ordered to serve beyond the limits of Germany, to hold Alsace and Lorraine, already considered a part of the Fatherland."

E. W. Latimer, France in the Nineteenth Century, chapter 12.

"The German army had lost in the battle of Sedan about 460 officers and 8,500 men killed and wounded. On the French side the loss sustained in the battle and at the capitulation amounted according to their returns to the following: Killed 3,000 men; wounded 14,000; prisoners (in the battle) 21,000; prisoners (at the capitulation) 83,000; disarmed in Belgium 3,000; total 124,000."

The Franco-German War: German Official Account, part 1, volume 2, page 408.

ALSO IN: _Capt. G. Fitz-George, Plan of the battle of Sedan, with Memoir._

A. Forbes, My Experiences of the War between France and Germany, part 1, chapter 4 (volume l).

Colonel. A. Borbstaedt and Major F. Dwyer, The Franco-German War, chapters 30-40.

G. B. Malleson, The Refounding of the German Empire, chapter 14.

FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (September). Revolution at Paris. Collapse of the empire. Self-constitution of the Government of National Defense.

At Paris, the whole truth of the tremendous disaster at Sedan was but slowly learned. On the afternoon of Saturday, September 3, Count de Palikao intimated a little part of it, only, "in a statement to the Corps Législatif, announcing that Marshal Bazaine, after a vigorous sally, had been obliged to retire again under the walls of Metz, and that Macmahon, after a series of combats, attended by reverses and successes-- having at the outset driven a part of the enemy's army into the Meuse--had been compelled to retreat to Sedan and Mézières, a portion of his army having taken refuge in Belgium. The junction of the two armies had therefore not been made. The situation was serious, calmly observed the Minister of War, but not hopeless. Not hopeless! when the truth was that one army was blockaded and the other prisoner, and that there were no reserves. ... At a midnight sitting Count de Palikao, still determined to conceal a portion of the truth, intimated that part of Marshal Macmahon's army had been driven back into Sedan, that the remainder had capitulated, and that the Emperor had been made prisoner. M. Jules Favre met this announcement of fresh disasters by a motion, declaring the Emperor and his dynasty to have forfeited all rights conferred by the Constitution, demanding the appointment of a Parliamentary Committee invested with the governing power, and having for its special mission the expulsion of the enemy from French territory, and further maintaining General Trochu in his post as Governor of Paris. The Chamber then adjourned till the morrow. But Paris had touched one of those crises when, as Pascal says, a grain of sand will give a turn to history and change the life of nations, and the morrow brought with it the downfall of the Ministry, of the dynasty, of the Empire, and of that bizarre constitutional edifice which had been kept waiting so long for its complemental crown. ... It had been intimated that the Corps Législatif would reassemble at noon, before which time numerous groups collected on the Place de la Concorde, and eventually swelled to a considerable crowd. The bridge leading to the Palais Bourbon was guarded by a detachment of mounted gendarmes, and numerous sergents-de-ville. ... Battalions of National Guards having, however, arrived, the gendarmes, after flourishing their swords, opened their ranks and allowed them to pass, followed by a considerable portion of the crowd, shouting 'Vive la République!' and singing the 'Chant du Départ.' The iron gates of the Palais Bourbon having been opened to admit a deputation of National Guards, the crowd precipitated itself forward, and in a few minutes the steps and courtyard were alike invaded. Cries of 'Vive la Garde Nationale!' 'Vive la Ligne!' 'Vive la République!' resounded on all sides, and the soldiers who occupied the court of the Palais Bourbon, after making a show of resistance, ended by hoisting the butt ends of their rifles in the air in sign of sympathy, joining at the same time in the shouts of the crowd, while the latter, encountering no further opposition, proceeded to invade the passages of the Chamber, at the moment Count de Kératry was attacking the Ministry for surrounding the Corps Législatif with troops and sergents-de-ville, contrary to the orders of General Trochu. Count de Palikao, having explained the relative positions of the Governor of Paris and the Minister of War, introduced a bill instituting a Council of Government and National Defence, composed of five members elected by the Legislative Body, the ministers to be appointed with the approval of the members of this Council, and he, Count de Palikao, to occupy the post of Lieutenant-General. M. Jules Favre having claimed priority for the motion which he had introduced the day before, M. Thiers, pleading the necessity for union, next moved that:--'In view of existing circumstances, the Chamber appoints a Commission of Government and National Defence. A Constituent Assembly will be convoked as soon as circumstances permit.' The Chamber having declared in favour of their urgency, these several propositions were eventually referred to the Bureau, and the sitting was suspended. It was during this period that the crowd penetrated into the Salles des Quatre Colonnes and de la Paix. ... At half-past two, when the sitting was resumed, the galleries were crowded and very noisy. The members of the Left only were in their places. It was in vain the President attempted to obtain silence, in vain the solemn huissiers commanded it. MM. Gambetta and Crémieux appeared together at the tribune, and the former begged of the people to remain quiet. ... {1386} A partial silence having been secured, Count de Palikao, followed by a few members of the majority, entered the Chamber, but did not essay to speak. ... A minute or two afterwards, the clamour arose again, and a noisy multitude commenced invading the floor of the hall. ... Nothing was left to the President but to put on his hat and retire, which he did, together with Count de Palikao and the members by whom the latter had been accompanied. By this time the Chamber was completely invaded by National and Mobile Guards, in company with an excited crowd, whose advance it was in vain now to attempt to repel. M. Jules Favre, having mounted the tribune, obtained a moment's silence. 'No scenes of violence,' cried he; 'let us reserve our arms for our enemies.' Finding it utterly impossible to obtain any further hearing inside the Chamber, M. Gambetta, accompanied by the members of the Left, proceeded to the steps of the peristyle, and there announced the dethronement of the Emperor to the people assembled outside. Accompanied by one section of the crowd, they now hurried to the Hôtel de Ville, and there installed themselves as a Provisional Government, whilst another section took possession of the Tuileries--whence the Empress had that morning taken flight--as national property. A select band of Republicans, mindful of what Count--now Citoyen--Henri Rochefort had done to bring Imperialism into disrepute, proceeded to the prison of Sainte Pélagie and conducted the author of the Lanterne, and other political prisoners, in triumph to the Hôtel de Ville. The deputies who quitted the Chamber when it was invaded by the mob, met that same afternoon at the President's residence, and sent a deputation to the Hôtel de Ville, with a proposal to act in common with the new Government. This proposition was, however, declined, on the score of the Republic having been already proclaimed and accepted by the population of Paris. At an evening meeting of nearly two hundred deputies, held under the presidency of M. Thiers, MM. Jules Favre and Simon attended on the part of the Provisional Government to explain that they were anxious to secure the support of the deputies, whom they hinted, however, could best serve their country in the departments. After this unequivocal rebuff, the deputies, who had in the meantime been apprised that seals had been placed on the doors of the Corps Législatif, saw that nothing remained to them but to protest, and protest they accordingly did against the events of the afternoon. ... Not one of the two hundred deputies present so much as dared suggest the breaking of the seals and the assembling in the Legislative Chamber. ... The Government which grasped the reins of power on the utter collapse of Imperial institutions was a mob-named one in the fullest sense of the term, the names having been chalked by the populace on the pillars of the portico of the Palais Bourbon during that invasion of the Chamber on the Sunday afternoon which resulted in the overthrow of the Imperial regime. The list appears to have been accepted by the principal members of the Left, who, although they would have preferred disassociating themselves from M. Rochefort, nevertheless felt that it was impossible to leave him out of the combination, and therefore adroitly--and not inappropriately, as the safety of Paris was especially in their keeping--made it embrace all the deputies for Paris, save, as M. Jules Simon observed, the most illustrious --meaning M. Thiers, who refused to join it. ... The Government of National Defence, as it elected to style itself, on M. Rochefort's suggestion, was composed of the following members:--General Trochu, president; Jules Favre, Vice President and Minister for Foreign Affairs; Emanuel Arago; Crémieux, Minister of Justice; Jules Ferry, Secretary; Leon Gambetta, Minister of the Interior; Garnier-Pagès; Glais-Bizoin; Eugene Pelletan; Ernest Picard, Minister of Finance; Henri Rochefort; and Jules Simon, Minister of Public Instruction. Subsequently it associated with it General Le Flô, Minister of War; Admiral Fourichon, Minister of Marine; M. Dorian, Minister of Public Works; and M. Magnin, Minister of Agriculture and Commerce. These, with Count de Kératry, charged with the Prefecture of Police, M. Etienne Arago, appointed Mayor of Paris, composed altogether no less than eighteen members, upwards of two-thirds of whom were Bretons, advocates, or journalists. ... For some days the new Government was prodigal of proclamations and decrees. Its first acts were to close the doors of the Palais Bourbon and the Palais du Luxembourg, and dissolve the Corps Législatif and abolish the Senate as bouches inutiles politiques, to issue proclamations to the army, or rather the debris of one, justifying the Revolution and appealing to the troops to continue their heroic efforts for the defence of the country, and to the National Guard, thanking them for their past, and asking for their future patriotism. It released all functionaries from their oaths, dismissed the ambassadors at foreign courts, appointed prefects in all the departments, and new mayors in the twenty arrondissements of the capital, proclaimed the complete liberty of the press, ordered all Germans not provided with special permission to remain, to quit the departments of the Seine and Seine-et-Oise within four-and-twenty hours. ... It pressed forward the provisioning of the city and its works of defence, increased the herds of sheep and oxen and the stores of corn and flour, provisionally abolished all local customs and octroi dues, and fixed the price of butcher's meat, armed the outer forts and the enceinte, blew up or mined all the bridges and fired all the woods in the environs, razed thousands of houses to the ground, felled roadside trees, and constructed huge barricades with them; laid in fact all the beautiful suburbs in waste; listened to the thousand and one wild schemes put forth by patriotic madmen for exterminating the invaders, and launched a huge captive balloon, which hovered daily over Paris to give timely notice of their dreaded arrival."

H. Vizetelly, editor, Paris in Peril, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: _J. Favre, The Government of the National Defence, June-October._

W. Rüstow, The War for the Rhine Frontier, chapter 22 (volume 2).

{1387}

FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (September-October). Futile striving for allies and for peace without territorial sacrifices. Investment of Paris. Gambetta's organization of defense in the provinces. Bazaine's surrender at Metz.

"The Government of National Defence ... imagined that the fall of the Empire would simplify the cruel position of France towards the enemy. The Dynasty which had declared war being reversed, and the men now in power having been throughout opposed to war and in favour of German unity, and now demanding nothing but peace, what motive could the King of Prussia have to continue the invasion of France? It was further to be considered that free France would defend her integrity to the last drop of her blood; that she would voluntarily give up neither an inch of her territory nor a stone of her fortresses. Such were the ideas which the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Jules Favre, expressed on the 6th of September, in a circular addressed to the French agents in foreign countries. The Cabinet of Berlin was not slow in disabusing him of these convictions. Far from accepting the view that the Emperor Napoleon was the sole promoter of war, Count Bismarck, in two despatches of the 13th and of the 16th of September, threw the responsibility of the conflict on the French nation. He stated that the vast majority of the Chambers had voted for war, and that the Emperor was justified in assuring the King that he had been forced into a war to which he was personally averse. ... In order to be secure against future aggression, Germany would ask for guarantees from the French nation itself, and not from a transitory Government. ... In any case, Germany would require Strasburg and Metz. Thus the accession to power of the Republican Government did not modify the reciprocal positions of the two belligerents. Nevertheless, hope was entertained in Paris that the friendly intervention of the great powers might induce the victor to soften his rigour;" but intervention was declined by the Berlin Cabinet and not undertaken. "On the 19th of September the investment of Paris was completed. At the desire of the French Government, the English Cabinet applied to the German head-quarters, with the object of obtaining for M. Jules Favre an interview with Count Bismarck. This request having been granted, the two statesmen held conferences, on the 19th and 20th of September, at Ferrières, a castle of Baron Rothschild near Meaux. During these interviews the French Minister was sentimental and the German Minister coldly logical. They could not come to an agreement on any single point. ... The Government of Paris ... again proclaimed that France would not cede an inch of her territory. Meanwhile, in consequence of the investment of Paris, the Government of National Defence was divided into two parts; some of its Delegates withdrew to Tours, forming a delegation of the central Government which remained in Paris. The German armies had continued their onward march, as well as their operations against the fortresses. Toul capitulated on the 23rd and Strasburg on the 28th of September. On the 5th of October, King William had established his headquarters at Versailles." Meantime "the Government of National Defence made a last attempt to secure allies, or at least the help of powerful mediators. With this object M. Thiers, who had placed himself at the disposal of the Administration of the 4th of September, was sent on a mission to the European Courts. From the 12th of September till the 20th of October, the old statesman visited in succession London, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Florence. In none of these cities were his measures attended with happy results." At St. Petersburg and at London he was told--and he was himself convinced--"that the King of Prussia was compelled to consider the public opinion of Germany, and that France would have to resign herself to territorial sacrifices." He returned to France to advise, and to procure authority for, a conference with the German Chancellor. But events had already occurred which aggravated the forlorn condition of France. "The youngest and most enterprising member of the Government of Paris, M. Gambetta, had left the Capital on the 8th of October in a balloon for Tours. It was his intention to organise national defence in the Provinces. The day after his arrival at Tours, he issued a fiery Proclamation to the French people. ... With an energy that called forth universal admiration, the Government of Tours, over which Gambetta presided as Dictator, organised resistance, formed a new army, and gathered together every possible resource for defence both in men and in materials. All these efforts could not arrest the progress of the invasion. From the 11th to the 31st of October, the Germans took successively Orleans, Soissons, Schlestadt and Dijon. Round Paris they repulsed the sallies of Malmaison, Champigny, and le Bourget. But all these defeats of heroic soldiers waned when compared to the appalling and decisive catastrophe of Metz. After the battle of Gravelotte, Marshal Bazaine had unsuccessfully attempted several sallies. ... On the 7th of October, after an unfortunate battle at Woippy, lasting nine hours, Bazaine considered the situation desperate. His only thought was to obtain the most favourable conditions he could, and with this object he sent General Boyer to the headquarters at Versailles." After two weeks of negotiation, "on the 21st of October, the army encamped within the walls of Metz found itself without provisions. ... Negotiations with Prince Frederick Charles, nephew of the King and Commander-in-chief of the besieging Army, were opened on the 25th, and terminated on the 27th of October. The conditions were identical with those of Sedan: capitulation of the town and its forts with all the material of war, all the army of the Rhine to be prisoners and the officers to be liberated on parole."

E. Simon, The Emperor William and his Reign, chapter 13 (volume 2).

"The French Army of the Rhine at the time of the surrender still numbered 173,000 men, inclusive of 6,000 officers and 20,000 men remaining temporarily in Metz as sick or convalescent."

The Franco-German War: German Official Account, part 2, volume 1, page 201.

ALSO IN: A. Forbes, My Experiences of the War between France and Germany, part 2 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 1870-1871. The war in the provinces. Unsuccessful attempts to relieve the capital. Distress in Paris. Capitulation and armistice.

"The surrender of Metz and the release of the great army of Prince Frederick Charles by which it was besieged fatally changed the conditions of the French war of national defence. Two hundred thousand of the victorious troops of Germany under some of their ablest generals were set free to attack the still untrained levies on the Loire and in the north of France, which, with more time for organisation, might well have forced the Germans to raise the siege of Paris. The army once commanded by Steinmetz was now reconstituted, and despatched under General Manteuffel towards Amiens; Prince Frederick Charles moved with the remainder of his troops towards the Loire. Aware that his approach could not long be delayed, Gambetta insisted that Aurelle de Paladines should begin the march on Paris. {1388} The general attacked Tann at Coulmiers on the 9th of November, defeated him, and re-occupied Orleans, the first real success that the French had gained in the war. There was great alarm at the German headquarters at Versailles; the possibility of a failure of the siege was discussed; and 40,000 troops were sent southwards in haste to the support of the Bavarian general. Aurelle, however, did not move upon the capital: his troops were still unfit for the enterprise; and he remained stationary on the north of Orleans, in order to improve his organisation, to await reinforcements, and to meet the attack of Frederick Charles in a strong position. In the third week of November the leading divisions of the army of Metz approached, and took post between Orleans and Paris. Gambetta now insisted that the effort should be made to relieve the capital. Aurelle resisted, but was forced to obey. The garrison of Paris had already made several unsuccessful attacks upon the lines of their besiegers, the most vigorous being that of Le Bourget on the 30th of October, in which bayonets were crossed. It was arranged that in the last days of November General Trochu should endeavour to break out on the southern side, and that simultaneously the army of the Loire should fall upon the enemy in front of it and endeavour to force its way to the capital. On the 28th the attack upon the Germans on the north of Orleans began. For several days the struggle was renewed by one division after another of the armies of Aurelle and Prince Frederick Charles. Victory remained at last with the Germans; the centre of the French position was carried; the right and left wings of the army were severed from one another and forced to retreat, the one up the Loire, the other towards the west. Orleans on the 5th of December passed back into the hands of the Germans. The sortie from Paris, which began with a successful attack by General Ducrot upon Champigny beyond the Marne, ended after some days of combat in the recovery by the Germans of the positions which they had lost, and in the retreat of Ducrot into Paris. In the same week Manteuffel, moving against the relieving army of the north, encountered it near Amiens, defeated it after a hard struggle, and gained possession of Amiens itself. After the fall of Amiens, Manteuffel moved upon Rouen. This city fell into his hands without resistance. ... But the Republican armies, unlike those which the Germans had first encountered, were not to be crushed at a single blow. Under the energetic command of Faidherbe the army of the north advanced again upon Amiens. Goeben, who was left to defend the line of the Somme, went out to meet him, defeated him on the 23rd of December, and drove him back to Arras. But again, after a week's interval, Faidherbe pushed forward. On the 3rd of January he fell upon Goeben's weak division at Bapaume, and handled it so severely that the Germans would on the following day have abandoned their position, if the French had not themselves been the first to retire. Faidherbe, however, had only fallen back to receive reinforcements. After some days' rest he once more sought to gain the road to Paris, advancing this time by the eastward line through St. Quentin. In front of this town Goeben attacked him. The last battle of the army of the North was fought on the 19th of January. The French general endeavoured to disguise his defeat, but the German commander had won all that he desired. Faidherbe's army was compelled to retreat northwards in disorder; its part in the war was at an end. During the last three weeks of December there was a pause in the operations of the Germans on the Loire. ... Gambetta ... had ... determined to throw the army of Bourbaki, strengthened by reinforcements from the south, upon Germany itself. The design was a daring one, and had the ... French armies been capable of performing the work which Gambetta required of them, an inroad into Baden, or even the reconquest of Alsace, would most seriously have affected the position of the Germans before Paris. But Gambetta miscalculated the power of young, untrained troops, imperfectly armed, badly fed, against a veteran army. In a series of hard-fought struggles the army of the Loire under General Chanzy was driven back at the beginning of January from Vendôme to Le Mans. On the 12th, Chanzy took post before this city and fought his last battle. While he was making a vigorous resistance in the centre of the line, the Breton regiments stationed on his right gave way; the Germans pressed round him, and gained possession of the town. Chanzy retreated towards Laval, leaving thousands of prisoners in the hands of the enemy, and saving only the debris of an army. Bourbaki in the meantime, with a numerous but miserably equipped force, had almost reached Belfort. ... Werder had evacuated Dijon and fallen back upon Vesoul; part of his army was still occupied in the siege of Belfort. As Bourbaki approached he fell back with the greater part of his troops in order to cover the besieging force, leaving one of his lieutenants to make a flank attack upon Bourbaki at Villersexel. This attack, one of the fiercest in the war, delayed the French for two days, and gave Werder time to occupy the strong positions that he had chosen about Montbéliard. Here, on the 15th of January, began a struggle which lasted for three days. The French, starving and perishing with cold, though far superior in number to their enemy, were led with little effect against the German entrenchments. On the 18th Bourbaki began his retreat. Werder was unable to follow him; Manteuffel with a weak force was still at some distance, and for a moment it seemed possible that Bourbaki, by a rapid movement westwards, might crush this isolated foe. Gambetta ordered Bourbaki to make the attempt: the commander refused to court further disaster with troops who were not fit to face an enemy, and retreated towards Pontarlier in the hope of making his way to Lyons. But Manteuffel now descended in front of him; divisions of Werder's army pressed down from the north; the retreat was cut off; and the unfortunate French general, whom a telegram from Gambetta removed from his command, attempted to take his own life. On the 1st of February, the wreck of his army, still numbering 85,000 men, but reduced to the extremity of weakness and misery, sought refuge beyond the Swiss frontier. The war was now over. Two days after Bourbaki's repulse at Montbéliard the last unsuccessful sortie was made from Paris. There now remained provisions only for another fortnight; above 40,000 of the inhabitants had succumbed to the privations of the siege; all hope of assistance from the relieving armies before actual famine should begin disappeared. {1389} On the 23rd of January Favre sought the German Chancellor at Versailles in order to discuss the conditions of a general armistice and of the capitulation of Paris. The negotiations lasted for several days; on the 28th an armistice was signed with the declared object that elections might at once be freely held for a National Assembly, which should decide whether the war should be continued, or on what conditions peace should be made. The conditions of the armistice were that the forts of Paris and all their material of war should be handed over to the German army; that the artillery of the enceinte should be dismounted; and that the regular troops in Paris should, as prisoners of war, surrender their arms. The National Guard were permitted to retain their weapons and their artillery. Immediately upon the fulfilment of the first two conditions all facilities were to be given for the entry of supplies of food into Paris. The articles of the armistice were duly executed, and on the 30th of January the Prussian flag waved over the forts of the French capital."

C. A. Fyffe, History of Modern Europe, volume 3, chapter 6.

ALSO IN: H. Murdock, The Reconstruction of Europe, chapters 29-30.

Daily News Correspondence of the War chapters 13-21.

Cassell's History of the War, volume 1, chapter 36, volume 2; chapters 1-18.

_Comte d'Herrison, Journal of a Staff Officer in Paris._

E. B. Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, volume 1, chapters 5-10.

_J. A. O'Shea, An Iron-bound City._

F. T. Marzials, Life of Gambetta, chapter 5.

H. von Moltke, The Franco-German War of 1870-71, sections 3-7.

_T. G. Bowles, The Defence of Paris._

W. Rüstow, The War for the Rhine Frontier, 1870, volume 3.

FRANCE: A. D. 1871 (January-May). Preliminaries of Peace signed at Versailles. The Treaty of Frankfort. Cession of Alsace and one-fifth of Lorraine. Five milliards of indemnity.

"On the afternoon of January 28 [1871] the capitulation of Paris was signed, and an armistice agreed upon to expire on February 19 at noon. The provinces occupied by the armies of Bourbaki and Munteuffel were alone excluded from this agreement. On January 29 the German troops quietly took possession of the Paris forts. The regulars and mobiles became prisoners of war, with the exception of 12,000 men who were left under arms to preserve order. At the earnest request of Favre the National Guard were allowed to retain their arms. If Favre urged this as a measure to counteract the imperialistic ideas supposed to be still cherished by the prisoners returning from Germany, it was a political crime as well as a military folly. The National Guard became the armed Commune. ... While the armies withdrew to the lines stipulated in the armistice, the elections went quietly forward. The assembly convened at Bordeaux, and manifested a spirit that won for it universal respect. On February 17 M. Thiers was appointed chief of the executive power, and having named his ministry, he repaired to Versailles to arrange the preliminaries of peace. The conferences that followed with the German chancellor were perhaps the most trying ordeals to which the Frenchman had ever been subjected. No peace was possible save on the basis of the cession of miles of territory and the strongest of fortresses. France must also pay a war indemnity of no less than five milliards of francs. Bismarck, it is true, thought Thiers 'too sentimental for business, ... hardly fit indeed to buy or sell a horse,' but no diplomatist, however astute, could have made better terms for stricken France. So thought the assembly at Bordeaux; and when Thiers announced the result of his mission with a quivering lip, he had its sympathy and support. On the 2d of March the assembly formally ratified the peace preliminaries by a vote of 546 to 107. It had been stipulated in the armistice that the German troops should not occupy Paris. The extension of time granted by the Germans entitled them to some compensation, and the entry of Paris was the compensation claimed. The troops detailed for this purpose were not chosen at random. To the Frenchman who on the 1st day of March beheld them pass along the Avenue de Malakoff or the Champs Elysées it was an ominous pageant. It was a German and not a Prussian army that he beheld. ... That night the Hessians smoked their pipes on the Trocadéro, and the Bavarians stacked their arms in the Place de la Concorde, while the lights blazing from the palace of the Elysée announced the German military headquarters. On the third day of the month, the Bordeaux Assembly having ratified the peace preliminaries, the German troops marched out, and Paris was left to herself again. The war was over. Beyond the Rhineland, in Bavaria and Würtemberg as well as in the north, all was joy and enthusiasm over the return of the army that had answered before the world the question, 'What is the German Fatherland?' On the 10th of May the definite treaty of peace was signed at Frankfort by which France ceded Alsace and a portion of Lorraine, including the fortresses of Metz and Strasburg, to her conqueror."

H. Murdock, The Reconstruction of Europe, chapter 30.

The following are the heads of the Preliminary Treaty concluded at Versailles, to which the final Treaty of Frankfort conformed:

"1. France renounces in favour of the German Empire the following rights: the fifth part of Lorraine including Metz and Thionville, and Alsace less Belfort.

2. France will pay the sum of five milliards of francs, of which one milliard is to be paid in 1871 and the remaining four milliards by instalments extending over three years.

3. The German troops will begin to evacuate the French territory as soon as the Treaty is ratified. They will then evacuate the interior of Paris and some departments lying in the western region. The evacuation of the other departments will take place gradually after payment of the first milliard, and proportionately to the payment of the other four milliards. Interest at the rate of five per cent. per annum will be paid on the amount remaining due from the date of the ratification of the Treaty.

4. The German troops will not levy any requisitions in the departments occupied by them, but will be maintained at the cost of France. A delay will be granted to the inhabitants of the territories annexed to choose between the two nationalities.

6. Prisoners of war will be immediately set at liberty.

7. Negotiations for a definitive Treaty of Peace will be opened at Brussels after the ratification of this Treaty.

8. The administration of the departments occupied by the German troops will be entrusted to French officials, but under the control of the chiefs of the German Corps of occupation.

9. The present Treaty confers upon the Germans no rights whatever in the portions of territories not occupied.

10. This Treaty will have to be ratified by the

National Assembly of France."

C. Lowe, Prince Bismarck, volume 1, chapter 9.

ALSO IN: E. Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty, volume 3, numbers 438 and 446.

{1390}

FRANCE: A. D. 1871 (March-May). Insurrection of the Communists of Paris. Second siege and reduction of the capital.

"On the 3d of March the German army of occupation--which had been in the assigned part of the city since the 1st--marched off through the Arc de Triomphe, and on the 7th the German headquarters were moved from Versailles. The great Franco-Prussian War was over. ... But before ... peace could be attained, the country had yet to suffer from the so-called patriots of the Red Republicans worse outrage than it had endured at the hands of the German invaders. When the negotiations for the capitulation of Paris were in progress, Count Bismarck had warned M. Favre of the danger of allowing, as he proposed, the National Guard to retain their arms; and the members of the Government of National Defence might themselves have seen the risk they were incurring, had they calmly considered the various émeutes that had taken place during the siege, and in which the National Guard had always played such a conspicuous part on the side of disaffection. Now, in the full consciousness of their strength--somewhere about 100,000--and in their possession of a powerful artillery,--for during the German occupation they had, on the pretext of keeping them safe, got a large number of cannon into their hands,--they seemed determined to attempt the revival of the Reign of Terror. ... The appointment of General d'Aurelle de Paladines as their commander gave great offence, and on the 9th March an attempt to place the tricolor on the column in the Place de la Bastille instead of the red flag of revolution led to an outbreak. A promise in the event of the cannon being given up, of the continuance of pay till 'ordinary work was resumed,' was disregarded, and the dismissal of D'Aurelle and the full recognition of the right of the National Guard to elect its own officers demanded. An effort of the government to seize the cannon in the Place des Vosges failed, and it was now clear enough that more energetic action than negotiations must take place. On the morning of the 18th March a large force of regular troops under Generals Vinoy and Lecomte proceeded to Montmarte and took possession of the guns; but the want of horses for their immediate removal gave time for the Reds to assemble and frustrate the effort, while, worst of all, a large number of the regular troops fraternized with the insurgents. General Lecomte and General Clement Thomas were taken prisoners and almost immediately shot. The outbreak, thus begun, spread rapidly; for, through some unaccountable timidity of the government, the government forces were withdrawn from the city, and the insurgents left free to act as they pleased. They seized General Chanzy at the Orleans railway station, took possession of the Ministry of Justice and the Hôtel de Ville, and threw up barricades round all the revolutionary quarters. The Central Committee of the National Guard, the leading man of which was Assi, ... summoned the people of Paris to meet 'in their comitia for the communal elections,' and declared their intention of resigning their power into the hands of the Commune thus chosen. The National Assembly removed from Bordeaux and held its sittings at Versailles: but bitter as was the feeling of the majority of the Deputies against the new turbulence, the position of affairs prevented any action from being taken against the insurgents. The removal of General d'Aurelle and the appointment of Admiral Saisset in his place was of no avail. A number of the inhabitants of Paris, styling themselves 'Men of Order,' attempted to influence affairs by a display of moral force, but they were fired on and dispersed. The Assembly was timid, and apparently quite unable to bring its troops into play. ... Through Admiral Saisset concessions were offered, but the demands of the Communists increased with the prospect of obtaining anything. They now modestly demanded that they should supersede the Assembly wherever there was any prospect of collision of power, and be allowed to control the finances; and as a very natural consequence the negotiations were abandoned. This was on the 25th of March, and on the 26th the Commune was elected, the victory of the Reds being very easily gained, as hardly any of those opposed to them voted. Two days afterwards the Commune was proclaimed at the Hôtel de Ville, the members who had been elected being seated on a platform in red arm-chairs. The leading man of the new system was the honest but hot-headed and utopian Deleseluze; Cluseret, a man of considerable military genius, who had led a life of a very wild nature in America, and who was the soul of the resistance when the actual fighting began, was Delegate of War; Grousset, of Foreign Affairs; and Rigault, of Public Safety. The new government applied itself vigorously to changes; conscription was abolished, and the authority of the Versailles government declared 'null and void.' Seeing that a desperate struggle must inevitably ensue, a very large number of the inhabitants of Paris quitted the city, and the German authorities allowed the prisoners from Metz and Sedan to return so as to swell the forces at the disposal of M. Thiers. They also intimated that, in view of the altered circumstances, it might again become necessary for them to occupy the forts they had already evacuated. The first shot in the second siege of Paris, in which Frenchmen were arrayed against Frenchmen, was fired on the 2d April, when a strong division of the Versailles army advanced against the National Guards posted at Courbevoie, and drove them into Paris across the Pont de Neuilly. During the ensuing night a large force of insurgents gathered, and were on the morning of the 3d led in three columns against Versailles. Great hopes had been placed on the sympathy of the regular troops, but they were doomed to disappointment. ... The expedition ... not only failed, but it ... cost the Commune two of its leading men,--Duval, and that Flourens who had already made himself so conspicuous in connection with revolutionary outbreaks under the Empire and the Government of National Defence,--both of whom were taken and promptly shot by the Versailles authorities. The failure and the executions proved so exasperating that the 'Commune of Paris' issued a proclamation denouncing the Versailles soldiers as banditti. ... They had ample means of gratifying their passion for revenge, for they had in their hands a number of leading men, including Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, and M. Bonjean, President of the Court of Cassation, and these--two hundred in all--they proclaimed their intention of holding as hostages. {1391} M. Thiers was still hesitating, and waiting for a force sufficiently powerful to crush all opposition; and in this he was no doubt right, for any success of the Communists, even of the most temporary character, would have proved highly dangerous. The Germans had granted permission to the government to increase their original 30,000 troops to 150,000, and prisoners of Metz and Sedan had been pouring steadily back from Germany for this purpose. On the 8th April Marshal MacMahon took command of the forces at Versailles. A premature attack on the forts of Issy, Vanves, and Montrouge on the 11th failed, but on the 17th and 19th several of the insurgent positions were carried; on the 25th the bombardment of Issy and Vanves was begun, and from that time onwards operations against the city were carried on with the greatest activity, the insurgents being on all occasions put to the sword in a most merciless manner. Issy was taken on the 8th May, and Vanves on the 4th, and the enceinte laid bare. Inside Paris all this time there was nothing but jealousy. ... First one leader, and then another, was tried, found wanting, and disgraced. ... On the 21st May the defenders of the wall at the gate of St. Cloud were driven from their positions by the heavy artillery fire, and the besieging army, having become aware of the fact, pushed forward and secured this entrance to the city; and by the evening of the 22d there were 80,000 Versaillists within the walls. Next day they gained fresh ground, and were ready to re-occupy the Tuileries and the Hôtel de Ville; but before this was possible the Communists, mad with despair, had resolved on that series of outrages against humanity that will make their names detested and their cause distrusted as long as the story of their crimes stands recorded in the annals of history. They had already perpetrated more than one act of vandalism. ... On the 12th May, in accordance with a public decree, they had destroyed the private residence of M. Thiers with all its pictures and books; on the 16th the magnificent column erected in the Place Vendome in memory of Napoleon I., and crowned by his statue, was undermined at one side and then pulled to the ground by means of ropes and utterly destroyed; and now on the 24th, in the last efforts of despairing rage, bands of men and women, still more frantic and eager for blood than were those of the Reign of Terror, rushed through the doomed city. Early in the morning the Tuileries, the Hôtel de Ville, the Ministry of Finance, the Palais d'Orsay, and other public and private buildings were seen to be on fire. The Louvre, too, with all its inestimable treasures, was in flames, and was saved with the greatest difficulty. If the Commune was to perish, it had clearly resolved that the city was to perish with it. Men and women marched about in bands with petroleum, and aided the spread of the conflagration by firing the city in different places. Heedless of the flames, the Versailles troops pressed on, eager, if possible, to save the lives of the 200 hostages, but, alas, in vain. A passion for blood had seized on the Commune, and its last expiring effort was to murder in cold blood, not only a large number of the hostages, but also batches of fresh victims, seized indiscriminately about the streets by bands of men and women, and dragged off to instant death. On the 26th Belleville was captured, and on the 27th and 28th the Cemetery of Père la Chaise was the scene of the final struggle,--a struggle of such a desperate nature--for there was no quarter--that, for days after, the air of the district was literally fraught with pestilence. Many of the leaders of the Commune had fallen in the final contest, and all the others who were captured by the Versailles troops during the fighting were at once shot. Of the 30,000 prisoners who had fallen into the hands of the government, a large number, both men and women, were executed without mercy, and the rest distributed in various prisons to await trial, as also were Rossel, Assi, Grousset, and others, who were captured after the resistance was at an end. Cluseret succeeded in making good his escape. ... Of the prisoners, about 10,000 were set free without trial, and the others were sentenced by various courts-martial during the following months and on through the coming year, either to death, transportation or imprisonment."

H. Martin, Popular History of France from the First Revolution, volume 3, chapter 24.

ALSO IN: E. B. Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, volume 2, chapters 5-7.

_P. Vésinier, History of the Commune of Paris._

_P. O. Lissagaray, History of the Commune of 1871._

_W. P. Fetridge, Rise and Fall of the Paris Commune._

_J. Leighton, Paris under the Commune._

FRANCE: A. D. 1871 (April-May). The government of the Commune in Paris.

"For the conduct of affairs the Communal Council divided itself into ten 'commissions,' of finance, war, public safety, external relations, education, justice, labour and exchange, provisions, the public service, and the general executive. Of these the most efficient appears to have been that of finance; by advances from the bank and by the revenues of the post, the telegraph, the octrois, &c., means were found to provide for the current expenditure. The other commissions were admittedly inefficient, and especially the one which was most important for the moment, that of war:--'as to a general plan,' says Lissagaray, 'there never was one: the men were abandoned to themselves, being neither cared for nor controlled;' 'at the Ministry,' says Gastyne, 'no one is at his place. They pass their time in running after one another. The most insignificant Lieutenant will take orders from nobody, and wants to give them to everybody. They smoke, chat and chaff. They dispute with the contractors. They buy irresponsibly right and left because the dealers give commissions or have private relations with the officials;' 'in the army of Versailles,' said a member of the Commune, 'they don't get drunk: in ours they are never sober;' 'the administration of war,' said another, 'is the organisation of disorganisation;' 'I feel myself,' said Rossel, on resigning his command, 'incapable of any longer bearing the responsibility of a command where everyone deliberates and no one obeys. The central committee of artillery has deliberated and prescribed nothing. The Commune has deliberated and resolved upon nothing. The Central Committee deliberates and has not yet known how to act. ... My predecessor committed the fault of struggling against this absurd situation. I retire, and have the honour to ask you for a cell at Mazas.' The same incompetence, leading to the same result of anarchy, was displayed by the Executive Commission:--'in less than a fortnight,' said Grosset, 'conflicts of every kind had arisen; the Executive Commission gave orders which were not executed; each particular commission, thinking itself sovereign in its turn, gave orders too, so that the Executive Commission could have no real responsibility.' {1392} On April 20 the Executive Commission was replaced by a committee, composed of a delegate from each of the nine other commissions; still efficiency could not be secured, and at the end of the month it was proposed to establish a Committee of Public Safety. This proposition was prompted by the traditions of 1793, and brought into overt antagonism the two conflicting tendencies of the Commune: there were some of its members who were ready to save the movement by a despotism, to secure at every cost a strong administration, and impose the Commune, if need be by terror, upon Paris and the provinces. ... On the other hand there was a strong minority which opposed the proposal, on the ground that it was tantamount to an abdication on the part of the Communal Council. ... The appointment of the Committee was carried by forty-five votes to twenty-three; many of those who voted for it regarded it as merely another 'Executive Commission,' subordinate to, and at any moment subject to dismissal by, the Commune; and so, in effect, it proved; it was neither more terrible nor more efficient than the body to which it succeeded; it came into existence on the 1st of May, and on the 9th the complaint was already advanced that 'your Committee of Public Safety has not answered our expectations; it has been an obstacle, instead of a stimulus;' on the 10th a new committee was appointed, with similar results; all that the innovation achieved was to bring into clear relief the fact that there existed in the Commune a Jacobin element ready to recur to the traditions of 1793, and to make Paris the mistress of France by the guillotine or its modern equivalent."

G. L. Dickinson, Revolution and Reaction in Modern France, pages 267-270.

FRANCE: A. D. 1871-1876. The Assembly at Bordeaux. Thiers elected Chief of the Executive Power. The founding of the Republic. The recovery of order and prosperity. Resignation of Thiers. Election of Marshal MacMahon. Plans of the Monarchists defeated. Adoption of the Constitution of 1875.

"The elections passed off more quietly than was to be expected, and the Assembly which came together at Bordeaux on the 13th of February exactly represented the sentiment of the nation at that particular moment. France being eager for peace, the Assembly was pacific. It was also somewhat unrepublican, for the Republic had been represented in the provinces only by Gambetta, the promoter of war to the knife, who had sacrificed the interests of the Republic to what he conceived to be the interests of the national honor. Politics had, in truth, been little thought of, and Thiers was elected in 27 departments upon very diverse tickets, rather on account of his opposition to the war and his efforts in favor of peace than on account of his fame as a liberal orator and historian. Moved by the same impulse, the Assembly almost unanimously appointed him Chief of the Executive Power of the French Republic, and intrusted to him the double task of governing the country and of treating with the German Emperor. ... It was apparently in the name of the Republic that peace was negotiated and the Government gradually reconstructed. ... The Assembly, however, which was all-powerful, held that to change the form of government was one of its rights. It might have been urged that the electors had scarcely contemplated this, and that the Monarchists were in the majority simply because they represented peace, while in the provinces the Republic had meant nothing but war to the hilt. But these distinctions were not thought of in the press of more urgent business, namely, the treaty which was to check the shedding of blood, and the rudiments of administrative reconstruction. No monarchy would have been willing to assume the responsibility of this Treaty. ... The Right accordingly consented to accept the name of Republic as a makeshift, provided it should be talked about as little as possible. Thiers had come to think, especially since the beginning of the war, that the Republic was the natural heir of Napoleon III. ... He had, however, been struck with the circumstance that so many Legitimists had been elected to the Assembly, and he was no more eager than they to stop to discuss constitutions. ... He was the more disposed to wait, inasmuch as he saw in the Chamber the very rapid formation and growth of a group in which he had great confidence. Of these deputies M. Jules Simon has given a better definition than they could themselves formulate,--for this political philosopher has written a masterly history of these years. ... Here is what Simon says of this party in the Assembly: 'There were in this body some five-score firm spirits who were alike incapable either of forsaking the principles whereon all society rests, or of giving up freedom. Of all forms of government they would have preferred constitutional monarchy, had they found it established, or could they have restored it by a vote without resort to force. But they quickly perceived that neither the Legitimists nor the Bonapartists would consent to the constitutional form; that such a monarchy could obtain a majority neither in the Parliament nor among the people. ... Some of these men entertained for the Republic a distrust which, at first, amounted to aversion. Being persuaded, however, that they must choose between the Republic and the Empire ... they did not despair of forming a Republic at once liberal and conservative. In a word, they thrust aside the Legitimate Monarchy as chimerical, Republican and Cæsarian dictatorship as alike hateful. ... Of this party M. Thiers was not merely the head, but the body also.' ... But there was another party, which, although the least numerous in the Assembly and split into factions at that, was the most numerous in the country,--the Republican party."

P. de Rémusat, Thiers, chapters 6-7.

{1393}

"In the wake of Thiers followed such men as Rémusat, Casimir Périer, Leon Say, and Lafayette. This added strength made the Republicans the almost equal rivals of the other parties combined. So great was Thiers' influence that, despite his conversion to Republicanism, he was still able to control the Monarchical Assembly. A threat of resignation, so great was the dread of what might follow it, and so jealous were the Monarchists of two shades and the Imperialists of each other, was enough to bring the majority to the President's terms. It was under such political conditions that the infant Republic, during its first year, undertook the tasks of preserving peace, of maintaining internal order, of retrieving disaster, of tempting back prosperity and thrift to the desolated land, of relieving it of the burdens imposed by war, and, at the same time, of acquiring for itself greater security and permanency. The recovery of France was wonderfully rapid; her people began once more to taste sweet draughts of liberty; the indemnity was almost half diminished; and her industries, at the end of the year, were once more in full career. But the Republic was a long way from complete and unquestioned recognition. The second year of the Republic (1872-73) was passed amid constant conflicts between the rival parties. Thiers still maintained his ascendency, and stoutly adhered to his defence of Republican institutions; but the Assembly was restive under him, and energetic attempts were made to bring about a fusion between the Legitimists and the Orleanists. These attempts were rendered futile by the obstinacy of the Count of Chambord, who would yield nothing, either of principle or even of symbol, to his cousin of Orleans. The want of harmony among the Monarchists postponed the consideration of what should be the permanent political constitution of France until November of the year 1872, when a committee of thirty was chosen to recommend constitutional articles. Against this the Republicans protested. They declared that the Assembly had only been elected to make peace with Germany; ... that dissolution was the only further act that the Assembly was competent to perform. This indicated the confidence of the Republicans in their increased strength in the country; and the fact that the Monarchists refused to dissolve shows that they were not far from holding this opinion of their opponents. Despite the rivalries and bitterness of the factions, the Republic met with no serious blow from the time of its provisional establishment in February, 1871, until May, 1873. Up to the latter period two thirds of the enormous indemnity had been paid, and the German force of occupation had almost entirely retired from French territory. ... But in Italy, 1873, a grave misfortune, alike to France and to the Republican institutions, occurred. At last the Monarchical reactionists of the Assembly had gathered courage to make open war upon President Thiers. Perceiving that his policy was having the effect of nourishing and adding ever new strength to the Republican cause, and that every month drifted them further from the opportunity and hope of restoring Monarchy or Empire ... they now forgot their own differences, and resolved, at all hazards, to get rid of the Republic's most powerful protector. ... The Duc de Broglie, the leader of the reactionary Monarchists, offered a resolution in the Assembly which was tantamount to a proposition of want of confidence in President Thiers. After an acrimonious debate, in which Thiers himself took part, De Broglie's motion was passed by a majority of fourteen. The President had no alternative but to resign; and thus the executive power, at a critical moment, passed out of Republican into Monarchical hands. Marshal MacMahon was at once chosen President. ... MacMahon was strongly Catholic in religion; and so far as he was known to have any political opinions, they wavered between Legitimism and Imperialism--they were certainly as far as possible from Republicanism. Now was formed and matured a deliberate project to overthrow the young Republic, and to set up Monarchy in its place. All circumstances combined to favor its success. The new President was found to be at least willing that the thing should, if it could, be done. His principal minister, De Broglie, entered warmly into the plot. The Orleanist princes agreed to waive their claims, and the Count of Paris was persuaded to pay a visit to the Count of Chambord at his retreat at Frohsdorf, to acknowledge the elder Bourbon's right to the throne, and to abandon his own pretensions. The Assembly was carefully canvassed, and it was found that a majority could be relied upon to proclaim, at the ripe moment, Chambord as king, with the title of Henry V. The Republic was now, in the early autumn of 1873, in the most serious and real peril. It needed but a word from the Bourbon pretender to overthrow it, and to replace it by the throne of the Capets and the Valois. Happily, the old leaven of Bourbon bigotry existed in 'Henry V.' He conceded the point of reigning with parliamentary institutions, but he would not accept the tricolor as the flag of the restored monarchy. He insisted upon returning to France under the white banner of his ancestors. To him the throne was not worth a piece of cloth. To his obstinacy in clinging to this trifle of symbolism the Republic owed its salvation. The scheme to restore the monarchy thus fell through. The result was that the two wings of Monarchists flew apart again, and the Republicans, being now united and patient under the splendid leadership of Gambetta, once more began to wax in strength. It only remained to the Conservatives to make the best of the situation--to proceed to the forming of a Constitution, and to at least postpone to as late a period as possible the permanent establishment of the Republic. The first step was to confirm MacMahon in the Presidency for a definite period; and 'the Septennate,' giving him a lease of power for seven years--that is, until the autumn of 1880--was voted. ... It was not until late in the year 1875 that the Constitution which is now the organic law of France was finally adopted.

See CONSTITUTION OF FRANCE.

The chief circumstance which impelled a majority of the Assembly to take this decisive step was the alarming revival of Imperialism in the country. This was shown in the success of Bonapartists in isolated elections to fill vacancies. Much as the Royalists distrusted a Republic, they dreaded yet more the restoration of the Empire; and the rapid progress made by the partisans of the Empire forced them to adopt what was really a moderate Republican Constitution. This Constitution provided that the President of the Republic should be elected by a joint convention of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies; that the Senate should consist of 300 members, of whom 75 were to be elected for life by the Assembly, and the remaining 225 by electoral colleges, composed of the deputies, the councillors-general, the members of the councils d'arrondissement, and delegates chosen from municipal councils; that the vacancies in the life senatorships should be filled by the Senate itself, while the term of the Senators elected by the colleges should be nine years, one third retiring every three years; that the Chamber of Deputies should consist of 533 members, and that the deputies should be chosen by single districts, instead of, as formerly, in groups by departments: that the President could only dissolve the Chamber of Deputies with the consent of the Senate; that money bills should originate in the Lower Chamber, and that the President should have the right of veto. {1394} The 'Septennate' organized and the Constitution adopted, the Assembly, which had clung to power for about five years, had no reason for continued existence, and at last dissolved early in 1876, having provided that the first general election under the new order of things should take place in February. ... The result of the elections proved three things--the remarkable growth of Republican sentiment; the great progress made, in spite of the memory of Sedan, by the Bonapartist propaganda; and the utter hopelessness of any attempt at a Royalist restoration."

G. M. Towle, Modern France, chapter 4.

ALSO IN: _J. Simon, The Government of M. Thiers._

F. Le Goff, Life of Thiers, chapters 8-9.

FRANCE: A. D. 1872-1889. Reform of Public Instruction.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. FRANCE: A. D. 1833-1889.

FRANCE: A. D. 1875-1889. Stable settlements of the Republic. Presidencies of MacMahon and Grevy. Military operations in Tunis, Madagascar and Tonquin. Revision of the constitution. Expulsion of the princes. Boulangerism. Election of M. Sadi Carnot to the presidency.

"The last day of the year 1875 saw a final prorogation of this monarchist assembly which had established the Republic. It had been in existence nearly five years. The elections to the Senate gave a small majority to the Republicans. Those to the Chamber of Deputies (February, 1876) gave about two-thirds of its 532 seats to Republicans, mostly moderate Republicans. The ministry to which the leadership of this assembly was soon confided, was therefore naturally a ministry of moderate Republicans. M. Dufaure was prime minister, and M. Léon Say minister of finance. ... The Dufaure ministry was not long-lived, being succeeded before the year 1876 closed, by a ministry led by M. Jules Simon, a distinguished orator and writer. The tenure of French cabinets in general has been so little permanent under the Third Republic, that in the nineteen years which have elapsed since the fall of the Empire, twenty-five cabinets have had charge of the executive government. ... Few events had marked the history of the Simon ministry when, suddenly, in May, 1877, the President of the Republic demanded its resignation. Much influenced of late by Monarchist advisers, he had concluded that the moderate Republican cabinets did not possess the confidence of the chambers, and, feeling that the responsibility of maintaining the repose and security of France rested upon him, had resolved, rather than allow the management of the affairs of the country to fall into the hands of M. Gambetta and the Radicals, to appoint a ministry of conservatives, trusting that the country would ratify the step. A ministry was organized under the Duke of Broglie, and the Chamber of Deputies was first prorogued, and then, with the consent of the Senate, dissolved. The death of M. Thiers in September caused a great national demonstration in honor of that patriotic statesman, 'the liberator of the territory.' The result of the ensuing elections was a complete victory for the Republicans, who secured nearly three-fourths of the seats in the new Chamber. The Marshal, appointing a ministry composed of adherents of his policy who were not members of the Assembly, attempted to make head against the majority, but was forced in December to yield to the will of the people and of their representatives, and to recall M. Dufaure and the moderate Republicans to office. The year 1878 therefore passed off quietly, being especially distinguished by the great success of the universal exhibition held at Paris. ... At the beginning of 1879 elections were held in pursuance of the provisions of the constitution, for the renewal of a portion of the Senate. ... Elections were held for the filling of 82 seats. Of these the Republicans won 66, the Monarchist groups 16. This was a loss of 42 seats on the part of the latter, and assured to the Republicans a full control of the Senate. It had also the effect of definitively establishing the Republic as the permanent government of France. The Republican leaders therefore resolved to insist upon extensive changes in the personnel of the Council of State and the judiciary body. ... When they also proposed to make extensive changes in other departments, Marshal MacMahon, who foresaw the impossibility of maintaining harmonious relations with the cabinets which the Republican majority would now demand, took these new measures as a pretext, and, on January 30, 1879, resigned the office of President of the Republic. On the same day the Senate and Chamber, united in National Assembly, elected as his successor, for the constitutional term of seven years, M. Jules Grevy, president of the Chamber of Deputies a moderate Republican who enjoyed general respect. M. Grévy was 71 years old. M. Gambetta was chosen to succeed him as president of the Chamber. The cabinet was remodelled, M. Dufaure resigning his office and being succeeded by M. Waddington. In the reorganized ministry one of the most prominent of the new members was M. Jules Ferry, its minister of education. He soon brought forward two measures which excited violent discussion: the one dealing with the regulation of superior education, the other with the constitution of the Supreme Council of Public Instruction. ... In March, 1880, the Senate rejected the bill respecting universities. The ministry, now composed of members of the 'pure Left' (instead of a mixture of these and the Left Centre) under M. de Freycinet, resolved to enforce the existing laws against non-authorized congregations. The Jesuits were warned to close their establishments; the others, to apply for authorization. Failing to carry out these decrees, M. de Freycinet was forced to resign, and was succeeded as prime minister by M. Ferry, under whose orders the decrees were executed in October and November, establishments of the Jesuits and others, to the number of nearly 300, being forcibly closed and their inmates dispersed. Laws were also passed in the same year and in 1881 for the extension of public education, and a general amnesty proclaimed for persons engaged in the insurrection of the commune. In April and May, 1881, on pretext of chastising tribes on the Tunisian frontier of Algeria, who had committed depredations on the French territories in Northern Africa, a military force from Algeria entered Tunis, occupied the capital, and forced the Bey to sign a treaty by which he put himself and his country under the protectorate of France. ... {1395} The elections, in August, resulted in a Chamber composed of 467 Republicans, 47 Bonapartists, and 43 Royalists, whereas its predecessor had consisted of 387 Republicans, 81 Bonapartists, and 61 Royalists. In response to a general demand, M. Gambetta became prime minister on the meeting of the new Assembly in the autumn. ... But his measures failed to receive the support of the Chamber, and he was forced to resign after having held the office of prime minister but two months and a half (January, 1882). On the last day of that year M. Gambetta, still the most eminent French statesman of the time, died at Paris, aged forty-four. ... The death of Gambetta aroused the Monarchists to renewed activity. Prince Napoleon issued a violent manifesto, and was arrested. Bills were brought in which were designed to exclude from the soil of France and of French possessions all members of families formerly reigning in France. Finally, however, after a prolonged contest, a decree suspending the dukes of Aumale, Chartres, and Alençon from their functions in the army was signed by the President. Some months later, August, 1883, the Count of Chambord ('Henry V.') died at Frohsdorf; by this event the elder branch of the house of Bourbon became extinct and the claims urged by both Legitimists and Orleanists were united in the person of the Count of Paris. During the year 1882 alleged encroachments upon French privileges and interests in the northwestern portion of Madagascar had embroiled France in conflict with the Hovas, the leading tribe of that island. The French admiral commanding the squadron in the Indian Ocean demanded in 1883 the placing of the northwestern part of the island under a French protectorate, and the payment of a large indemnity. These terms being refused by the queen of the Hovas, Tamatave was bombarded and occupied, and desultory operations continued until the summer of 1883, when an expedition of the Hovas resulted in a signal defeat of the French. A treaty was then negotiated, in accordance with which the foreign relations of the island were put under the control of France, while the queen of Madagascar retained the control of internal affairs and paid certain claims. A treaty executed in 1874 between the emperor of Annam and the French had conceded to the latter a protectorate over that country. His failure completely to carry out his agreement, and the presence of Chinese troops in Tonquin, were regarded as threatening the security of the French colony of Cochin China. A small expedition sent out [1882] under Commander Rivière to enforce the provision of the treaty was destroyed at Hanoi. Reinforcements were sent out. But the situation was complicated by the presence of bands of 'Black Flags,' brigands said to be unauthorized by the Annam government, and by claims on the part of China to a suzerainty over Tonquin. A treaty was made with Annam in August, 1883, providing for the cession of a province to France, and the establishment of a French protectorate over Annam and Tonquin. This, however, did not by any means wholly conclude hostilities in that province. Sontay was taken from the Black Flags in December, and Bacninh occupied in March, 1884. The advance of the French into regions over which China claimed suzerainty, and which were occupied by Chinese troops, brought on hostilities with that empire. In August, 1884, Admiral Courbet destroyed the Chinese fleet and arsenal at Foo-chow; in October he seized points on the northern end of the island of Formosa, and proclaimed a blockade of that portion of the island. On the frontier between Tonquin and China the French gained some successes, particularly in the capture of Lang-Sön; yet the climate, and the numbers and determination of the Chinese troops, rendered it impossible for them to secure substantial results from victories. Finally, after a desultory and destructive war, a treaty was signed in June, 1885, which arranged that Formosa should be evacuated, that Annam should in future have no diplomatic relations except through France, and that France should have virtually complete control over both it and Tonquin, though the question of Chinese suzerainty was left unsettled. ... It was not felt that the expeditions against Madagascar, Annam, and China had achieved brilliant success. They had, moreover, been a source of much expense to France; at first popular, they finally caused the downfall of the ministry which ordered them. That ministry, the ministry of M. Jules Ferry, ... remained in power an unusual length of time,--a little more than two years. Its principal achievement in domestic affairs consisted in bringing about the revision of the constitution, which, framed by the Versailles Assembly in 1875, was felt by many to contain an excessive number of Monarchical elements. ... In 1885, after the fall of the Ferry cabinet, a law was passed providing for scrutin de liste; each department being entitled to a number of deputies proportioned to the number of its citizens, the deputies for each were to be chosen on a general or departmental ticket. In the same year a law was passed declaring ineligible to the office of President of the Republic, senator or deputy, any prince of families formerly reigning in France. ... In December the National Assembly re-elected M. Grévy President of the Republic. In the ministry led by M. de Freycinet, which held office during the year 1886, great prominence was attained by the minister of war, General Boulanger, whose management of his department and political conduct won him great popularity. ... The increasing activity of the agents of the Monarchist party, the strength which that party had shown in the elections of the preceding year, and the demonstrations which attended the marriage of the daughter of the Count of Paris to the crown prince of Portugal, incited the Republican leaders to more stringent measures against the princes of houses formerly reigning in France. The government was intrusted by law with discretionary power to expel them all from France, and definitely charged to expel actual Claimants of the throne and their direct heirs. The Count of Paris and his son the Duke of Orleans, Prince Napoleon and his son Prince Victor, were accordingly banished by presidential decree in June, 1886. General Boulanger struck off from the army-roll the names of all princes of the Bonaparte and Bourbon families. The Duke of Aumale, indignantly protesting, was also banished; in the spring of 1889 he was permitted to return. Meanwhile, within the Republican ranks, dissensions increased. The popularity of General Boulanger became more and more threatening to the cabinets of which he was a member. An agitation in his favor, conducted with much skill, caused fear lest he were aspiring to a military dictatorship of France. ... {1396} In the autumn of 1887, an inquiry into the conduct of General Caffarel, deputy to the commander-in-chief, accused of selling decorations, implicated by Daniel Wilson, son-in-law of M. Grévy, who was alleged to have undertaken to obtain appointments to office and lucrative contracts in return for money. M. Grévy's unwise attempts to shield his son-in-law brought about his own fall. The chambers, determined to force his resignation, refused to accept any ministry proposed by him. After much resistance and irritating delays he submitted, and resigned the presidency of the Republic on December 2, 1887. On the next day the houses met in National Assembly at Versailles to chose the successor of M. Grévy. ... The most prominent candidates for the Republicans were M. Ferry and M. de Freycinet; the former, however, was unpopular with the country. The followers of both, finding their election impossible, resolved to cast their votes for M. Sadi Carnot, a Republican of the highest integrity and universally respected. M. Carnot, a distinguished engineer, grandson of the Carnot who had, as minister of war, organized the victories of the armies of the Revolution, was accordingly elected President of the French Republic. ... The chief difficulties encountered by the cabinet arose out of the active propagandism exercised in behalf of General Boulanger. ... His name ... became the rallying-point of those who were hostile to the parliamentary system, or to the Republican government in its present form. Alarmed both by his singular popularity and by his political intrigues, the government instituted a prosecution of him before the High Court of Justice; upon this he fled from the country, and the dangers of the agitation in his favor were, for the time at least, quieted. On May 5, 1889, the one-hundredth anniversary of the assembly of the States-General was held at Versailles. On the next day, President Carnot formally opened the Universal Exhibition at Paris, the greatest of the world's fairs which have been held in that city."

V. Duruy, History of France, pages 666-677.

ALSO IN: H. C. Lockwood, Constitutional History of France, chapter 7, and appendix 10.

_J. G. Scott, France and Tonkin._

_F. T. Marzials, Life of Gambetta._

E. W. Latimer, France in the 19th Century, chapters 18-20.

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March, 1893, supplement.

FRANCE: A. D. 1877-1882. Anglo-French control of Egyptian finances.

See EGYPT: A. D. 1875-1882 and 1882-1883.

FRANCE: A. D. 1884-1885. Territorial claims in Africa. The Berlin Conference.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1889.

FRANCE: A. D. 1892-1893. The Panama Canal scandal.

See PANAMA CANAL.

FRANCE: A. D. 1893. Election of Deputies.

Elections for a new Chamber of Deputies were held in France, ending on Sunday, September 3, 1893. The resulting division of parties in the Chamber is stated as follows: "Opportunists [those, that is, who would shape political action by circumstances--by opportunities--and not by hard and fast principles], 292; Converted Monarchists [who accept the Republic as a fixed fact], 35; Unconverted Monarchists, 58; and Radicals, including Socialists, 187. As the Converted Monarchists will vote with the Government, there will be a heavy Government majority to begin with; but ... it is not perfectly reliable, and is singularly deficient in marked men."

Spectator, Sept. 9, 1893.

----------FRANCE: End----------

FRANCESCO MARIA, Duke of Milan, A. D. 1521-1535.

FRANCESCO SFORZA, Duke of Milan, A. D. 1450-1466.

FRANCHE COMTÉ.

In the dissolution of the last kingdom of Burgundy (see BURGUNDY, THE LAST KINGDOM: A. D. 1032), its northern part maintained a connection with the Empire, which had then become Germanic, much longer than the southern. It became divided into two chief states--the County Palatine of Burgundy, known afterwards as Franche Comté, or the "free county," and Lesser Burgundy, which embraced western Switzerland and northern Savoy. "The County Palatine of Burgundy often passed from one dynasty to another, and it is remarkable for the number of times that it was held as a separate state by several of the great princes of Europe. It was held by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in right of his wife; the marriage of one of his female descendants carried it to Philip the Fifth of France. Then it became united with the French duchy of Burgundy under the dukes of the House of Valois. Saving a momentary French occupation after the death of Charles the Bold, it remained with them and their Austrian and Spanish representatives. ... But, through all these changes of dynasty, it remained an acknowledged fief of the Empire, till its annexation to France under Lewis the Fourteenth. The capital of this county, it must be remembered, was Dole. The ecclesiastical metropolis of Besançon, though surrounded by the county, remained a free city of the Empire from the days of Frederick Barbarossa [A. D. 1152-1190] to those of Ferdinand the Third [A. D. 1637-1657]. It was then merged in the county, and along with the county it passed to France."

E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 8, section 5.

FRANCHE COMTÉ: A. D. 1512. Included in the Circle of Burgundy.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1493-1519.

FRANCHE COMTÉ: A. D. 1648. Still held to form a part of the Empire.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1648.

FRANCHE COMTÉ: A. D. 1659. Secured to Spain.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1659-1661.

FRANCHE COMTÉ: A. D. 1674. Final conquest by Louis XIV. and incorporation with France.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1674-1678; also, NIMEGUEN, PEACE OF.

----------FRANCHE COMTÉ: End----------

FRANCHISE, Elective, in England.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1884-1885.

FRANCIA, Doctor, The dictatorship of.

See PARAGUAY: A. D. 1608-1873.

FRANCIA.

See FRANCE: 9TH CENTURY. also, GERMANY: A. D. 843-962.

FRANCIS (called Phœbus), King of Navarre, A. D. 1479-1503.

Francis I. (of Lorraine), Germanic Emperor, 1745-1765.

Francis I., King of France, 1515-1547.

Francis I., King of Naples or the Two Sicilies, 1825-1830.

Francis II., Germanic Emperor, 1792-1806; Emperor of Austria, 1806-1835; King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1792-1835.

Francis II., King of France, 1559-1560.

Francis II., King of Naples or the Two Sicilies, A. D. 1859-18.61.

Francis Joseph I., Emperor of Austria, 1848;

King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1848-.

{1397}

FRANCISCANS.

See MENDICANT ORDERS, also, BEGUINES, ETC.

FRANCO-GERMAN, OR FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR, The.

See FRANCE: A.. D. 1870 (JUNE-JULY), to 1870-1871.

FRANCONIA: The Duchy and the Circle.

"Among the great duchies [of the old Germanic kingdom or empire of the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries], that of Eastern Francia, Franken, or Franconia, is of much less importance in European history than that of Saxony. It gave the ducal title to the bishops of Würzburg; but it cannot be said to be in any sense continued in any modern state. Its name gradually retreated, and the circle of Franken or Franconia took in only the most eastern part of the ancient duchy.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1493--1519.

The western and northern part of the duchy, together with a good deal of territory which was strictly Lotharingian, became part of the two Rhenish circles. Thus Fulda, the greatest of German abbeys, passed away from the Frankish name. In north-eastern Francia, the Hessian principalities grew up to the north-west. Within the Franconian circle lay Würzburg, the see of the bishops who bore the ducal title, the other great bishopric of Bamberg, together with the free city of Nürnberg, and various smaller principalities. In the Rhenish lands, both within and without the old Francia, one chief characteristic is the predominance of the ecclesiastical principalities, Mainz, Köln, Worms, Speyer, and Strassburg. The chief temporal power which arose in this region was the Palatinate of the Rhine, a power which, like others, went through many unions and divisions, and spread into four circles, those of Upper and Lower Rhine, Westfalia and Bavaria. This last district, though united with the Palatine Electorate, was, from the early part of the fourteenth century, distinguished from the Palatinate of the Rhine as the Oberpfalz or Upper Palatinate."

E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 8, section 1.

See, also, ALEMANNI: A. D. 496-504.

FRANCONIA, The Electorate of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152.

FRANCONIAN OR SALIC IMPERIAL HOUSE.

The emperors, Conrad II., Henry III., Henry IV., and Henry V., who reigned from 1024 until 1125, over the Germanic-Roman or Holy Roman Empire, were of the Salic or Franconian house.

See GERMANY: A. D. 973--1122.

FRANKALMOIGN.

See FEUDAL TENURES.

FRANKFORT, Treaty of. See FRANCE: A. D. 1871 (JANUARY-MAY).

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN, Origin of.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 496-504.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1287. Declared an imperial city.

See CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE, OF GERMANY.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1525. Formal establishment of the Reformed Religion.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1522-1525.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1744. The "Union" formed by Frederick the Great.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1743-1744.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1759. Surprised by the French.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1759 (APRIL-AUGUST).

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1801-1803. One of six free cities which survived the Peace of Luneville.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1806. Loss of municipal freedom. Transfer, as a grand duchy, to the ancient Elector of Mayence.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1805-1806.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1810. Erected into a grand duchy by Napoleon.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1810 (FEBRUARY-DECEMBER).

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1810-1815. Loss and recovery of autonomy as a "free city."

See CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE, OF GERMANY; and VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1848-1849. Meeting of the German National Assembly. Its work, its failure, and its end. Riotous outbreak in the city.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1848 (MARCH-SEPTEMBER) and 1848-1850.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: A. D. 1866. Absorption by Prussia.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1866.

----------FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN: End----------

FRANKLIN, Benjamin, and the early American Press.

See PRINTING: A. D. 1704-1729.

FRANKLIN, Benjamin: His plan of Union in 1754.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1754.

FRANKLIN, Benjamin: Colonial representative in England. Return to America.

See PENNSYLVANIA: A.D. 1757-1762; and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1765-1768, 1766, 1775 (JANUARY-MARCH), and (APRIL-JUNE).

FRANKLIN, Benjamin: Signing of the Declaration of Independence.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (JULY).

FRANKLIN, Benjamin: Mission to France:

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776-1778, 1778 (FEBRUARY), 1782 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER).

FRANKLIN, Benjamin: Framing of the Federal Constitution.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1787.

FRANKLIN, The ephemeral state of.

See TENNESSEE: A. D. 1785; and 1785-1796.

FRANKLIN, Tennessee, Battles at and near.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1863 (FEBRUARY-APRIL: TENNESSEE), and 1864 (NOVEMBER: TENNESSEE).

FRANKLIN, OR FRANKLEYN, The.

"'There is scarce a small village,' says Sir John Fortescue [15th century] 'in which you may not find a knight, an esquire, or some substantial householder (paterfamilias) commonly called a frankleyn, possessed of considerable estate; besides others who are called freeholders, and many yeomen of estate sufficient to make a substantial jury.' ... By a frankleyn in this place we are to understand what we call a country squire, like the frankleyn of Chaucer; for the word esquire in Fortescue's time was only used in its limited sense, for the sons of peers and knights, or such as had obtained the title by creation or some other legal means."

H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 8, part 3, with note (volume 3).

FRANKPLEDGE.

An old English law required all men to combine in associations of ten, and to become standing sureties for one another, --which was called "frankpledge."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 5, section 41.

{1398}

FRANKS: Origin and earliest history.

"It is well known that the name of 'Frank' is not to be found in the long list of German tribes preserved to us in the 'Germania' of Tacitus. Little or nothing is heard of them before the reign of Gordian III. In A. D. 240 Aurelian, then a tribune of the sixth legion stationed on the Rhine, encountered a body of marauding Franks near Mayence and drove them back into their marshes. The word 'Francia' is also found at a still earlier date, in the old Roman chart called the 'Charta Peutingeria,' and occupies on the map the right bank of the Rhine from opposite Coblentz to the sea. The origin of the Franks has been the subject of frequent debate, to which French patriotism has occasionally lent some asperity. ... At the present day, however, historians of every nation, including the French, are unanimous in considering the Franks as a powerful confederacy of German tribes, who in the time of Tacitus inhabited the north-western parts of Germany bordering on the Rhine. And this theory is so well supported by many scattered notices, slight in themselves, but powerful when combined, that we can only wonder that it should ever have been called in question. Nor was this aggregation of tribes under the new name of Franks a singular instance; the same took place in the case of the Alemanni and Saxons. ... The etymology of the name adopted by the new confederacy is also uncertain. The conjecture which has most probability in its favour is that adopted long ago by Gibbon, and confirmed in recent times by the authority of Grimm, which connects it with the German word Frank (free). ... Tacitus speaks of nearly all the tribes, whose various appellations were afterwards merged in that of Frank, as living in the neighbourhood of the Rhine. Of these the principal were the Sicambri (the chief people of the old Iscævonian tribe), who, as there is reason to believe, were identical with the Salian Franks. The confederation further comprised the Bructeri, the Chamavi, Ansibarii, Tubantes, Marsi, and Chasuarii, of whom the five last had formerly belonged to the celebrated Cheruscan league, which, under the hero Arminius, destroyed three Roman legions in the Teutoburgian Forest. The strongest evidence of the identity of these tribes with the Franks, is the fact that, long after their settlement in Gaul, the distinctive names of the original people were still occasionally used as synonymous with that of the confederation. ... The Franks advanced upon Gaul from two different directions, and under the different names of Salians, and Ripuarians, the former of whom we have reason to connect more particularly with the Sicambrian tribe. The origin of the words Salian and Ripuarian, which are first used respectively by Ammianus Marcellinus and Jornandes, is very obscure, and has served to exercise the ingenuity of ethnographers. There are, however, no sufficient grounds for a decided opinion. At the same time it is by no means improbable that the river Yssel, Isala or Sal (for it has borne all these appellations), may have given its name to that portion of the Franks who lived along its course. With still greater probability may the name Ripuarii, or Riparii, be derived from 'Ripa,' a term used by the Romans to signify the Rhine. These dwellers on 'the Bank' were those that remained in their ancient settlements while their Salian kinsmen were advancing into the heart of Gaul."

W. C. Perry, The Franks, chapter 2.

ALSO IN: P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 3, chapters 9 and 11.

T. Smith, Arminius, part 2, chapter 3.

FRANKS: A. D. 253. First appearance in the Roman world.

"When in the year 253 the different generals of Rome were once more fighting each other for the imperial dignity, and the Rhine-legions marched to Italy to fight out the cause of their emperor Valerianus against ... Aemilianus of the Danube-army, this seems to have been the signal for the Germans pushing forward, especially towards the lower Rhine. These Germans were the Franks, who appear here for the first time, perhaps new opponents only in name; for, although the identification of them, already to be met with in later antiquity, with tribes formerly named on the lower Rhine--partly, the Chamavi settled beside the Bructeri, partly the Sugambri formerly mentioned subject to the Romans--is uncertain and at least inadequate, there is here greater probability than in the case of the Alamanni that the Germans hitherto dependent on Rome, on the right bank of the Rhine, and the Germanic tribes previously dislodged from the Rhine, took at that time--under the collective name of the 'Free'--the offensive in concert against the Romans."

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 8, chapter 4.

FRANKS: A. D. 277. Repulse from Gaul, by Probus.

See GAUL: A. D. 277.

FRANKS: A. D. 279. Escape from Pontus.

See SYRACUSE: A. D. 279.

FRANKS: A. D. 295-297. In Britain.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 288-297.

FRANKS: A. D. 306. Defeat by Constantine.

Constantine the Great, A. D. 306, fought and defeated the Salian Franks in a great battle and "carried off a large number of captives to Treves, the chief residence of the emperor, and a rival of Rome itself in the splendour of its public buildings. It was in the circus of this city, and in the presence of Constantine, that the notorious 'Ludi Francici' were celebrated; at which several thousand Franks, including their kings Regaisus and Ascaricus, were compelled to fight with wild beasts, to the inexpressible delight of the Christian spectators."

W. C. Perry, The Franks, chapter 2.

FRANKS: A. D. 355. Settlement in Toxandria.

See GAUL: A. D. 355-361; also, TOXANDRIA.

FRANKS: 5th-10th Centuries. Barbarities of the conquest of Gaul. State of society under the rule of the conquerors. Evolution of Feudalism.

See GAUL: 5TH-8TH, and 5TH-10TH CENTURIES.

FRANKS: A. D. 406-409. Defense of Roman Gaul.

See GAUL: A. D. 406-409.

FRANKS: A. D. 410-420. The Franks join in the attack on Gaul.

After vainly opposing the entrance of Vandals, Burgundians and Sueves into Gaul, A. D. 406, "the Franks, the valiant and faithful allies of the Roman republic, were soon [about A. D. 410-420] tempted to imitate the invaders whom they had so bravely resisted. Treves, the capital of Gaul, was pillaged by their lawless bands; and the humble colony which they so long maintained in the district of Toxandria, in Brabant, insensibly multiplied along the banks of the Meuse and Scheldt, till their independent power filled the whole extent of the Second, or Lower, Germany. ... The ruin of the opulent provinces of Gaul may be dated from the establishment of these barbarians, whose alliance was dangerous and oppressive, and who were capriciously impelled, by interest or passion, to violate the public peace."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 31.

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"They [the Franks] resisted the great invasion of the Vandals in the time of Stilicho, but did not scruple to take part in the subsequent ravages. Among the confusions of that disastrous period, indeed, it is not improbable that they seized the cities of Spires, Strasburg, Amiens, Arras, Therouane and Tournai, and by their assaults on Trèves compelled the removal of the præfectural government to Arles. Chroniclers who flourished two centuries later refer to the year 418 large and permanent conquests in Gaul by a visionary king called Pharamund, from whom the French monarchy is usually dated. But history seeks in vain for any authentic marks of his performances."

P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 3, chapter 11, section 5.

FRANKS: A. D. 448-456. Origin of the Merovingian dynasty.

The royal dynasty of the kingdom of the Franks as founded by Clovis is called the Merovingian. "It is thought that the kings of the different Frankish people were all of the same family, of which the primitive ancestor was Meroveus (Meer-wig, warrior of the sea). After him those princes were called Merovingians (Meer-wings); they were distinguished by their long hair, which they never cut. A Meroveus, grandfather of Clovis, reigned, it is said, over the Franks between 448 and 456; but only his name remains, in some antient historians, and we know absolutely nothing more either of his family, his power, or of the tribe which obeyed him: so that we see no reason why his descendants had taken his name. ... The Franks appear in history for the first time in the year 241. Some great captain only could, at this period, unite twenty different people in a new confederation; this chief was, apparently, the Meroveus, whose name appeared for such a long time as a title of glory for his descendants, although tradition has not preserved any trace of his victories."

J. C. L. S. de Sismondi, The French under the Merovingians, chapter 3.

FRANKS: A. D. 451. At the battle of Châlons.

See HUNS: A. D. 451.

FRANKS: A. D. 481-511. The kingdom of Clovis.

"The Salian Franks had ... associated a Roman or a Romanized Gaul, Aegidius, with their native chief in the leadership of the tribe. But, in the year 481, the native leadership passed into the hands of a chief who would not endure a Roman colleague, or the narrow limits within which, in the general turmoil of the world, his tribe was cramped. He is known to history by the name of Clovis, or Chlodvig, which through many transformations, became the later Ludwig and Louis. Clovis soon made himself feared as the most ambitious, the most unscrupulous, and the most energetic of the new Teutonic founders of states. Ten years after the fall of the Western empire [which was in 476], seven years before the rise of the Gothic kingdom of Theoderic, Clovis challenged the Roman patrician, Syagrius of Soissons, who had succeeded to Aegidius, defeated him in a pitched field, at Nogent, near Soissons (486), and finally crushed Latin rivalry in northern Gaul. Ten years later (496), in another famous battle, Tolbiac (Zülpich), near Cologne, he also crushed Teutonic rivalry, and established his supremacy over the kindred Alamanni of the Upper Rhine. Then he turned himself with bitter hostility against the Gothic power in Gaul. The Franks hated the Goths, as the ruder and fiercer of the same stock hate those who are a degree above them in the arts of peace, and are supposed to be below them in courage and the pursuits of war. There was another cause of antipathy. The Goths were zealous Arians; and Clovis, under the influence of his wife Clotildis, the niece of the Burgundian Gundobad, and in consequence, it is said, of a vow made in battle at Tolbiac, had received Catholic baptism from St. Remigius of Rheims.

See CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 496-800.

The Frank king threw his sword into the scale against the Arian cause, and became the champion and hope of the Catholic population all over Gaul. Clovis was victorious. He crippled the Burgundian kingdom (500), which was finally destroyed by his sons (534). In a battle near Poitiers, he broke the power of the West Goths in Gaul; he drove them out of Aquitaine, leaving them but a narrow slip of coast, to seek their last settlement and resting-place in Spain; and, when he died, he was recognized by all the world, by Theoderic, by the Eastern emperor, who honoured him with the title of the consulship, as the master of Gaul. Nor was his a temporary conquest. The kingdom of the West Goths and the Burgundians had become the kingdom of the Franks. The invaders had at length arrived who were to remain. It was decided that the Franks, and not the Goths, were to direct the future destinies of Gaul and Germany, and that the Catholic faith, and not Arianism, was to be the religion of these great realms."

R. W. Church, Beginning of the Middle Ages, chapter 2.

ALSO IN: W. C. Perry, The Franks, chapter 2.

J. C. L. S. de Sismondi, The French under the Merovingians, translated by Bellingham, chapters 4-5.

See, also, GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 507-509.

FRANKS: A. D. 481-768. Supremacy in Germany, before Charlemagne.

See GERMANY: A. D. 481-768.

FRANKS: A. D. 496. Conversion to Christianity.

See above: A. D. 481-511; also, ALEMANNI: A. D. 496-504.

FRANKS: A. D. 496-504. Overthrow of the Alemanni.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 496-504; also, SUEVI: A. D. 460-500.

FRANKS: A. D. 511-752. The house of Clovis. Ascendancy of the Austrasian Mayors of the Palace.

On the death of Clovis, his dominion, or, speaking more strictly, the kingly office in his dominion, was divided among his four sons, who were lads, then, ranging in age from twelve to eighteen. The eldest reigned in Metz, the second at Orleans, the third in Paris, and the youngest at Soissons. These princes extended the conquests of their father, subduing the Thuringians (A. D. 515-528), overthrowing the kingdom of the Burgundians (A. D. 523-534), diminishing the possessions of the Visigoths in Gaul (A. D. 531-532), acquiring Provence from the Ostrogoths of Italy and securing from the Emperor Justinian a clear Roman-imperial title to the whole of Gaul. The last survivor of the four brother-kings, Clotaire I., reunited the whole Frank empire under his own sceptre, and on his death, A. D. 561, it was again divided among his four sons. Six years later, on the death of the elder, it was redivided among the three survivors. Neustria fell to Chilperic, whose capital was at Soissons, Austrasia to Sigebert, who reigned at Metz, and Burgundia to Guntram, who had his seat of government at Orleans. Each of the kings took additionally a third of Aquitaine, and Provence was shared between Sigebert and Guntram. "It was agreed on this occasion that Paris, which was rising into great importance, should be held in common by all, but visited by none of the three kings without the consent of the others." The reign of these three brothers and their sons, from 561 to 613, was one long revolting tragedy of civil war, murder, lust, and treachery, made horribly interesting by the rival careers of the evil Fredegunda and the great unfortunate Brunhilda, queens of Neustria and Austrasia, respectively. {1400} In 613 a second Clotaire surviving his royal kin, united the Frank monarchy once more under a single crown. But power was fast slipping from the hands of the feeble creature who wore the crown, and passing to that one of his ministers who succeeded in making himself the representative of royalty--namely, the Mayor of the Palace. There was a little stir of energy in his son, Dagobert, but from generation to generation, after him, the Merovingian kings sank lower into that character which gave them the name of the fainéant kings ("rois fainéans")--the slothful or lazy kings--while the mayors of the palace ruled vigorously in their name and tumbled them, at last, from the throne. "While the Merovingian race in its decline is notorious in history as having produced an unexampled number of imbecile monarchs, the family which was destined to supplant them was no less wonderfully prolific in warriors and statesmen of the highest class. It is not often that great endowments are transmitted even from father to sou, but the line from which Charlemagne sprang presents to our admiring gaze an almost uninterrupted succession of five remarkable men, within little more than a single century. Of these the first three held the mayoralty of Austrasia [Pepin of Landen, Pepin of Heristal, and Carl, or Charles Martel, the Hammer]; and it was they who prevented the permanent establishment of absolute power on the Roman model, and secured to the German population of Austrasia an abiding victory over that amalgam of degraded Romans and corrupted Gauls which threatened to leaven the European world. To them, under Providence, we owe it that the centre of Europe is at this day German, and not Gallo-Latin." Pepin of Heristal, Mayor in Austrasia, broke the power of a rival Neustrian family in a decisive battle fought near the village of Testri, A. D. 687, and gathered the reins of the three kingdoms (Burgundy included) into his own hands. His still more vigorous son, Charles Martel, won the same ascendancy for himself afresh, after a struggle which was signalized by three sanguinary battles, at Amblève (A. D. 716), at Vinci, near Cambrai (717) and at Soissons (718). When firm in power at home, he turned his arms against the Frisians and the Bavarians, whom he subdued, and against the obstinate Saxons, whose country he harried six times without bringing them to submission. His great exploit in war, however, was the repulse of the invading Arabs and Moors, on the memorable battle-field of Tours (A. D.732), where the wave of Mahommedan invasion was rolled back in western Europe, never to advance beyond the Pyrenees again. Karl died in 741, leaving three sons, among whom his power was, in the Frank fashion, divided. But one of them resigned, in a few years, his sovereignty, to become a monk; another was deposed, and the third, Pepin, surnamed "The Little," or "The Short," became supreme. He contented himself, as his father, his grandfather, and his great grandfather had done, with the title of Mayor of the Palace, until 752, when, with the approval of the Pope and by the act of a great assembly of leudes and bishops at Soissons, he was lifted on the shield and crowned and anointed king of the Franks, while the last of the Merovingians was shorn of his long royal locks and placed in a monastery. The friendliness of the Pope in this matter was the result and the cementation of an alliance which bore important fruits. As the champion of the church, Pepin made war on the Lombards and conquered for the Papacy the first of its temporal dominions in Italy. In his own realm, he completed the expulsion of the Moors from Septimania, crushed an obstinate revolt in Aquitaine, and gave a firm footing to the two thrones which, when he died in 768, he left to his sons, Carl and Carloman, and which became in a few years the single throne of one vast empire, under Carl--Carl the Great-- Charlemagne.

W. C. Perry, The Franks, chapters 3-6.

ALSO IN: P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, chapters 12-15.

J. C. L. S. de Sismondi, The French under the Merovingians, chapters 6-13.

See, also, AUSTRASIA AND NEUSTRIA, and MAYOR OF THE PALACE.

FRANKS: A. D. 528. Conquest of Thuringia.

See THURINGIANS, THE.

FRANKS: A. D. 539-553. Invasion of Italy. Formal relinquishment of Gaul to them.

During the Gothic war in Italy,--when Belisarius was reconquering the cradle of the Roman Empire for the Eastern Empire which still called itself Roman, although its seat was at Constantinople,--both sides solicited the help of the Franks. Theudebert, who reigned at Metz, promised his aid to both, and kept his word. "He advanced [A. D. 539, with 100,000 men] toward Pavia, where the Greeks and Goths were met, about to encounter, and, with an unexpected impartiality, attacked the astonished Goths, whom he drove to Ravenna, and then, while the Greeks were yet rejoicing over his performance, fell upon them with merciless fury, and dispersed them through Tuscany." Theudebert now became fired with an ambition to conquer all Italy; but his savage army destroyed everything in its path so recklessly, and pursued so unbridled a course, that famine and pestilence soon compelled a retreat and only one-third of its original number recrossed the Alps. Notwithstanding, this treachery, the emperor Justinian renewed his offers of alliance with the Franks (A.D. 540), and "pledged to them, as the price of their fidelity to his cause, besides the usual subsidies, the relinquishment of every lingering claim, real or pretended, which the empire might assert to the sovereignty of the Gauls. The Franks accepted the terms, and 'from that time,' say the Byzantine authorities, 'the German chiefs presided at the games of the circus, and struck money no longer, as usual, with the effigy of the emperors, but with their own image and superscription. Theudebert, who was the principal agent of these transactions, if he ratified the provisions of the treaty, did not fulfill them in person, but satisfied himself with sending a few tributaries to the aid of his ally. But his first example proved to be more powerful than his later, and large swarms of Germans took advantage of the troubles in Italy to overrun the country and plunder and slay at will. For twelve years, under various leaders, but chiefly under two brothers of the Alemans, Lutherr and Bukhelin, they continued to harass the unhappy object of all barbaric resentments, till the sword of Narses finally exterminated them [A. D. 553]."

P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 3, chapter 12.

ALSO IN: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 41.

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FRANKS: A. D. 547. Subjugation of Bavarians and Alemanni.

See BAVARIA: A. D. 547.

FRANKS: A. D. 768-814. Charlemagne, Emperor of the Romans.

As a crowned dynasty, the Carlovingians or Carolingians or Carlings begin their history with Pepin the Short. As an established sovereign house, they find their founder in 'King Pepin's father, the great palace mayor, Carl, or Charles Martel, if not in his grandfather, Pepin Heristal. But the imperial splendor of the house came to it from the second of its kings, whom the French call 'Charlemagne,' but whom English readers ought to know as Charles the Great. The French form of the name has been always tending to represent 'Charlemagne' as a king of France, and modern historians object to it for that reason. "France, as it was to be and as we know it, had not come into existence in his [Charlemagne's] days. What was to be the France of history was then but one province of the Frank kingdom, and one with which Charles was personally least connected. ... Charles, king of the Franks, was, above all things, a German. ... It is entirely to mistake his place and his work to consider him in the light of a specially 'French' king, a predecessor of the kings who reigned at Paris and brought glory upon France. ... Charles did nothing to make modern France. The Frank power on which he rose to the empire was in those days still mainly German; and his characteristic work was to lay the foundations of modern and civilized Germany, and, indirectly, of the new commonwealth of nations, which was to arise in the West of Europe."

R. W. Church, The Beginnings of the Middle Ages, chapter 7.

"At the death of King Pippin the kingdom of the Franks was divided into two parts, or rather ... the government over the kingdom was divided, for some large parts of the territory seem to have been in the hands of the two brothers together. The fact is, that we know next to nothing about this division, and hardly more about the joint reign of the brothers. The only thing really clear is, that they did not get along very well together, that Karl was distinctly the more active and capable of the two, and that after four years the younger brother, Karlmann, died, leaving two sons. Here was a chance for the old miseries of division to begin again; but fortunately the Franks seem by this time to have had enough of that, and to have seen that their greatest hope for the future lay in a united government. The widow and children of Karlmann went to the court of the Lombard king Desiderius and were cared for by him. The whole Frankish people acknowledged Charlemagne as their king. Of course he was not yet called Charlemagne, but simply Karl, and he was yet to show himself worthy of the addition 'Magnus.' ... The settlement of Saxony went on, with occasional military episodes, by the slower, but more certain, processes of education and religious conversion. It appears to us to be anything but wise to force a religion upon a people at the point of the sword; but the singular fact is, that in two generations there was no more truly devout Christian people, according to the standards of the time, than just these same Saxons. A little more than a hundred years from the time when Charlemagne had thrashed the nation into unwilling acceptance of Frankish control, the crown of the Empire he founded was set upon the head of a Saxon prince. The progress in friendly relations between the two peoples is seen in the second of the great ordinances by which Saxon affairs were regulated. This edict, called the 'Capitulum Saxonicum,' was published after a great diet at Aachen, in 797, at which, we are told, there came together not only Franks, but also Saxon leaders from all parts of their country, who gave their approval to the new legislation. The general drift of these new laws is in the direction of moderation. ... The object of this legislation was, now that the armed resistance seemed to be broken, to give the Saxons a government which should be as nearly as possible like that of the Franks. The absolute respect and subjection to the Christian Church is here, as it was formerly, kept always in sight. The churches and monasteries are still to be the centres from which every effort at civilization is to go out. There can be no doubt that the real agency in this whole process was the organized Church. The fruit of the great alliance between Frankish kingdom and Roman papacy was beginning to be seen. The papacy was ready to sanction any act of her ally for the fair promise of winning the great territory of North Germany to its spiritual allegiance. The most solid result of the campaigns of Charlemagne was the founding of the great bishoprics of Minden, Paderborn, Verden, Bremen, Osnabrück, and Halberstadt. ... About these bishoprics, as, on the whole, the safest places, men came to settle. Roads were built to connect them; markets sprang up in their neighborhood; and thus gradually, during a development of centuries, great cities grew up, which came to be the homes of powerful and wealthy traders, and gave shape to the whole politics of the North. Saxony was become a part of the Frankish Empire, and all the more thoroughly so, because there was no royal or ducal line there which had to be kept in place."

E. Emerton, Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages, chapter 13.

Between 768 and 800 Charlemagne extinguished the Lombard kingdom and made himself master of Italy, as the ally and patron of the Pope, bearing the old Roman title of Patrician; he crossed the Pyrenees, drove the Saracens southward to the Ebro, and added a "Spanish March" to his empire (see SPAIN: A. D. 778); he broke the obstinate turbulence of the Saxons, in a series of bloody campaigns which (see SAXONS: A. D. 772-804) consumed a generation; he extirpated the troublesome Avars, still entrenched along the Danube, and he held with an always firm hand the whole dominion that came to him by inheritance from his father. "He had won his victories with Frankish arms, and he had taken possession of the conquered countries in the name of the Frankish people. Every step which he had taken had been with the advice and consent of the nation assembled in the great meetings of the springtime, and his public documents carefully express the share of the nation in his great achievements. Saxony, Bavaria, Lombardy, Aquitaine, the Spanish Mark, all these great countries, lying outside the territory of Frankland proper, had been made a part of its possession by the might of his arm and the wisdom of his counsel. But when this had all been done, the question arose, by what right he should hold all this power, and secure it so that it should not fall apart as soon as he should be gone. {1402} As king of the Franks it was impossible that he should not seem to the conquered peoples, however mild and beneficent his rule might be, a foreign prince; and though he might be able to force them to follow his banner in war, and submit to his judgment in peace, there was still wanting the one common interest which should bind all these peoples, strangers to the Franks and to each other, into one united nation. About the year 800 this problem seems to have been very much before the mind of Charlemagne. If we look at the boundaries of his kingdom, reaching from the Eider in the north to the Ebro and the Garigliano in the south, and from the ocean in the west to the Elbe and the Enns in the east, we shall say as the people of his own time did, 'this power is Imperial.' That word may mean little to us, but in fact it has often in history been used to describe just the kind of power which Charlemagne in the year 800 really had. ... The idea of empire includes under this one term, kingdoms, duchies, or whatever powers might be in existence; all, however, subject to some one higher force, which they feel to be necessary for their support. ... But where was the model upon which Charlemagne might build his new empire? Surely nowhere but in that great Roman Empire whose western representative had been finally allowed to disappear by Odoacer the Herulian in the year 476. ... After Odoacer the Eastern Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, still lived on, and claimed for itself all the rights which had belonged to both parts. That Eastern Empire was still alive at the time of Charlemagne. We have met with it once or twice in our study of the Franks. Even Clovis had been tickled with the present of the title of Consul, sent him by the Eastern Emperor; and from time to time, as the Franks had meddled with the affairs of Italy, they had been reminded that Italy was in name still a part of the Imperial lands. ... But now, when Charlemagne himself was thinking of taking the title of Emperor, he found himself forced to meet squarely the question, whether there could be two independent Christian Emperors at the same time. ... On Christmas Day, in the year 800, Charlemagne was at Rome. He had gone thither at the request of the Pope Leo, who had been accused of dreadful crimes by his enemies in the city, and had been for a time deprived of his office. Charlemagne had acted as judge in the case, and had decided in favor of Leo. According to good Teutonic custom, the pope had purified himself of his charges by a tremendous oath on the Holy Trinity, and had again assumed the duties of the papacy. The Christmas service was held in great state at St. Peter's. While Charlemagne was kneeling in prayer at the grave of the Apostle, the pope suddenly approached him, and, in the presence of all the people, placed upon his head a golden crown. As he did so, the people cried out with one voice, 'Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, the mighty Emperor, the Peace-bringer, crowned by God!' Einhard, who ought to have known, assures us that Charles was totally surprised by the coronation, and often said afterward that if he had known of the plan he would not have gone into the church, even upon so high a festival. It is altogether probable that the king had not meant to be crowned at just that moment and in just that way; but that he had never thought of such a possibility seems utterly incredible. By this act Charlemagne was presented to the world as the successor of the ancient Roman Emperors of the West, and so far as power was concerned, he was that. But he was more. His power rested, not upon any inherited ideas, but upon two great facts: first, he was the head of the Germanic Race; and second, he was the temporal head of the Christian Church. The new empire which he founded rested on these two foundations."

E. Emerton, Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages, chapter 14.

The great empire which Charles labored, during all the remainder of his life, to organize in this Roman imperial character, was vast in its extent. "As an organized mass of provinces, regularly governed by imperial officers, it seems to have been nearly bounded, in Germany, by the Elbe, the Saale, the Bohemian mountains, and a line drawn from thence crossing the Danube above Vienna, and prolonged to the Gulf of Istria. Part of Dalmatia was comprised in the duchy of Friuli. In Italy the empire extended not much beyond the modern frontier of Naples, if we exclude, as was the fact, the duchy of Benevento from anything more than a titular subjection. The Spanish boundary ... was the Ebro."

H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 1, part 1.

"The centre of his realm was the Rhine; his capitals Aachen [or Aix-la-Chapelle] and Engilenheim [or Ingelheim]; his army Frankish; his sympathies as they are shewn in the gathering of the old hero-lays, the composition of a German grammar, ... were all for the race from which he sprang. ... There were in his Empire, as in his own mind, two elements; those two from the union and mutual action and reaction of which modern civilization has arisen. These vast domains, reaching from the Ebro to the Carpathian mountains, from the Eyder to the Liris, were all the conquests of the Frankish sword, and were still governed almost exclusively by viceroys and officers of Frankish blood. But the conception of the Empire, that which made it a State and not a mere mass of subject tribes, ... was inherited from an older and a grander system, was not Teutonic but Roman--Roman in its ordered rule, in its uniformity and precision, in its endeavour to subject the individual to the system--Roman in its effort to realize a certain limited and human perfection, whose very completeness shall exclude the hope of further progress." With the death of Charles in 814 the territorial disruption of his great empire began. "The returning wave of anarchy and barbarism swept up violent as ever, yet it could not wholly obliterate the past: the Empire, maimed and shattered though it was, had struck its roots too deep to be overthrown by force." The Teutonic part and the Romanized or Latinized part of the empire were broken in two, never to unite again; but, in another century, it was on the German and not the Gallo-Latin side of the line of its disruption that the imperial ideas and the imperial titles of Charlemagne came to life again, and his Teutonic Roman Empire--the "Holy Roman Empire," as it came to be called--was resurrected by Otto the Great, and established for eight centuries and a half of enduring influence in the politics of the world.

J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 5.

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"Gibbon has remarked, that of all the heroes to whom the title of 'The Great' has been given, Charlemagne alone has retained it as a permanent addition to his name. The reason may perhaps be, that in no other man were ever united, in so large a measure, and in such perfect harmony, the qualities which, in their combination, constitute the heroic character, such as energy, or the love of action; ambition, or the love of power; curiosity, or the love of knowledge; and sensibility, or the love of pleasure--not, indeed, the love of forbidden, of unhallowed, or of enervating pleasure, but the keen relish for those blameless delights by which the burdened mind and jaded spirits recruit and renovate their powers. ... For the charms of social intercourse, the play of a buoyant fancy, the exhilaration of honest mirth, and even the refreshment of athletic exercises, require for their perfect enjoyment that robust and absolute health of body and of mind which none but the noblest natures possess, and in the possession of which Charlemagne exceeded all other men. His lofty stature, his open countenance, his large and brilliant eyes, and the dome-like structure of his head, imparted, as we learn from Eginhard, to all his attitudes the dignity which becomes a king, relieved by the graceful activity of a practiced warrior. ... Whether he was engaged in a frolic or a chase-- composed verses or listened to homilies--fought or negotiated--cast down thrones or built them up--studied, conversed, or legislated, it seemed as if he, and he alone, were the one wakeful and really living agent in the midst of an inert, visionary, and somnolent generation. The rank held by Charlemagne among great commanders was achieved far more by this strange and almost superhuman activity than by any pre-eminent proficiency in the art or science of war. He was seldom engaged in any general action, and never undertook any considerable siege, excepting that of Pavia, which, in fact, was little more than a protracted blockade. But, during forty-six years of almost unintermitted warfare, he swept over the whole surface of Europe, from the Ebro to the Oder, from Bretagne to Hungary, from Denmark to Capua, with such a velocity of movement, and such a decision of purpose, that no power, civilized or barbarous, ever provoked his resentment without rapidly sinking beneath his prompt and irresistible blows. And though it be true, as Gibbon has observed, that he seldom, if ever, encountered in the field a really formidable antagonist, it is not less true that, but for his military skill, animated by his sleepless energy, the countless assailants by whom he was encompassed must rapidly have become too formidable for resistance. For to Charlemagne is due the introduction into modern warfare of the art by which a general compensates for the numerical inferiority of his own forces to that of his antagonists--the art of moving detached bodies of men along remote but converging lines with such mutual concert as to throw their united forces at the same moment on any meditated point of attack. Neither the Alpine marches of Hannibal nor those of Napoleon were combined with greater foresight, or executed with greater precision, than the simultaneous passages of Charlemagne and Count Bernard across the same mountain ranges, and their ultimate union in the vicinity of their Lombard enemies."

Sir J. Stephen, Lectures on the History of France, lecture 3.

ALSO IN: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 49.

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 800.

FRANKS: A. D. 814-962. Dissolution of the Carolingian Empire.

Charlemagne, at his death, was succeeded by his son Ludwig, or Louis the Pious--the single survivor of three sons among whom he had intended that his great empire should be shared. Mild in temper, conscientious in character, Louis reigned with success for sixteen years, and then lost all power of control, through the turbulence of his family and the disorders of his times. He "tried in vain to satisfy his sons (Lothar, Lewis, and Charles) by dividing and redividing: they rebelled; he was deposed, and forced by the bishops to do penance, again restored, but without power, a tool in the hands of contending factions. On his death the sons flew to arms, and the first of the dynastic quarrels of modern Europe was fought out on the field of Fontenay. In the partition treaty of Verdun [A. D. 843] which followed, the Teutonic principle of equal division among heirs triumphed over the Roman one of the transmission of an indivisible Empire: the practical sovereignty of all three brothers was admitted in their respective territories, a barren precedence only reserved to Lothar, with the imperial title which he, as the eldest, already enjoyed. A more important result was the separation of the Gaulish and German nationalities. ... Modern Germany proclaims the era of A. D. 843 the beginning of her national existence and celebrated its thousandth anniversary [in 1843]. To Charles the Bald was given Francia Occidentalis; that is to say, Neustria and Aquitaine; to Lothar, who as Emperor must possess the two capitals, Rome and Aachen, a long and narrow kingdom stretching from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and including the northern half of Italy; Lewis (surnamed, from his kingdom, the German) received all east of the Rhine, Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Austria, Carinthia, with possible supremacies over Czechs and Moravians beyond. Throughout these regions German was spoken; through Charles's kingdom a corrupt tongue, equally removed from Latin and from modern French. Lothar's, being mixed and having no national basis, was the weakest of the three, and soon dissolved into the separate sovereignties of Italy, Burgundy and Lotharingia, or, as we call it, Lorraine. On the tangled history of the period that follows it is not possible to do more than touch. After passing from one branch of the Carolingian line to another, the imperial sceptre was at last possessed and disgraced by Charles the Fat, who united all the dominions of his great-grandfather. This unworthy heir could not avail himself of recovered territory to strengthen or defend the expiring monarchy. He was driven out of Italy in A. D. 887 and his death in 888 has been usually taken as the date of the extinction of the Carolingian Empire of the West. ... From all sides the torrent of barbarism which Charles the Great had stemmed was rushing down upon his empire. ... Under such strokes the already loosened fabric swiftly dissolved. No one thought of common defence or wide organization: the strong built castles, the weak became their bondsmen, or took shelter under the cowl: the governor--count, abbot, or bishop--tightened his grasp, turned a delegated into an independent, a personal into a territorial authority, and hardly owned a distant and feeble suzerain. ... In Germany, the greatness of the evil worked at last its cure.

[1404 moved to end of FRANKS.] {1405}

When the male line of the eastern branch of the Carolingians had ended in Lewis (surnamed the Child), son of Arnulf [A. D. 911], the chieftains chose and the people accepted Conrad the Franconian, and after him Henry the Saxon duke, both representing the female line of Charles. Henry laid the foundations of a firm monarchy, driving back the Magyars and Wends, recovering Lotharingia, founding towns to be centres of orderly life and strongholds against Hungarian irruptions. He had meant to claim at Rome his kingdom's rights, rights which Conrad's weakness had at least asserted by the demand of tribute; but death overtook him, and the plan was left to be fulfilled by Otto his son."

J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 6.

"The division of 888 was really the beginning of the modern states and the modern divisions of Europe. The Carolingian Empire was broken up into four separate kingdoms: the Western Kingdom, answering roughly to France, the Eastern Kingdom or Germany, Italy, and Burgundy. Of these, the three first remain as the greatest nations of the Continent: Burgundy, by that name, has vanished; but its place as a European power is occupied, far more worthily than by any King or Cæsar, by the noble confederation of Switzerland."

_E. A. Freeman, The Franks and the Gauls. (Historical Essays, 1st series, number 7.)_

ALSO IN: E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, book 2, numbers 3.

P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, chapter 18.

R. W. Church, The Beginning of the Middle Ages, chapter 8.

F. Guizot, History of Civilization, lecture 24.

Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and France, volumes 1-2.

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 843-962; and FRANCE: A. D. 843, and after.

FRANKS: A. D. 843-962. Kingdom of the East Franks.

See GERMANY: A. D. 843-962.

----------End: FRANKS ----------

[Image: Central Europe (page 1404)]

CENTRAL EUROPE AT THE PEACE OF VERDUN 843 A. D.

CENTRAL EUROPE 888 A. D.

----------------------------------

FRATRES MINORES.

See MENDICANT ORDERS.

FRATRICELLI, The.

See BEGUINES, ETC.

FRAZIER'S FARM, OR GLENDALE, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (JUNE-JULY: VIRGINIA).

FREDERICIA, Battle of (1849).

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (DENMARK): A. D. 1848-1862.

FREDERICIA, Siege of (1864).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1861-1866.

FREDERICK I. (called Barbarossa), Emperor, A. D. 1155-1190; King of Germany, 1152-1190; King of Italy, 1155-1190.

Frederick I., King of Denmark and Norway, 1523-1533.

Frederick I., King of Prussia, 1701-1713;

Frederick III., Elector of Brandenburg, 1688-1713.

Frederick I., Elector of Brandenburg, 1417-1440.

Frederick II., Emperor, 1220-1250; King of Germany, 1212-1250.

See ITALY: A. D. 1183-1250; and GERMANY: A. D. 1138-1268.

Frederick II., King of Denmark and Norway, 1558-1588.

Frederick II., King of Naples, 1496-1503.

Frederick II. (called The Great), King of Prussia, 1740-1786.

Frederick II., King of Sicily, 1295-1337.

Frederick II., Elector of Brandenburg, 1440-1470.

Frederick III., Emperor, and King of Germany, 1440-1493.

Frederick III., German Emperor and King of Prussia, 1888, March-June.

Frederick III., King of Denmark and Norway, 1648-1670.

Frederick III., King of Sicily, 1355-1377.

Frederick IV., King of Denmark and Norway, 1609-1730.

Frederick V., King of Denmark and Norway, 1746-1766.

Frederick V., Elector of the Palatinate (and King-elect of Bohemia), and the Thirty Years' War.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1620, 1620, 1621-1623, 1631-1632, and 1648.

Frederick VI., King of Denmark and Norway, 1808-1814; King of Denmark, 1814-1839.

Frederick VII., King of Denmark, 1848-1863.

Frederick Augustus I., Elector of Saxony, 1694-1733; King of Poland,1697-1704 (deposed), and 1709-1733.

Frederick Augustus II., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, 1733-1763.

Frederick Henry, Stadtholder of the United Provinces, 1625-1647.

Frederick William (called The Great Elector), Elector of Brandenburg, 1640-1688.

Frederick William I., King of Prussia, 1713-1740.

Frederick William II., King of Prussia, 1786-1797.

Frederick William III., King of Prussia, 1797-1840.

Frederick William IV., King of Prussia, 1840-1861.

----------FREDERICK: End----------

FREDERICKSBURG, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D.1862 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER: VIRGINIA).

FREDERICKSBURG: Sedgwick's demonstration against.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1863 (APRIL-MAY: VIRGINIA).

----------FREDERICKSBURG: End----------

FREDERICKSHALL. Siege by the Swedes. Death of Charles XII. (1718).

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1707-1718.

FREDERICKSHAMM, Peace of (1809).

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1807-1810.

FREDLINGEN, Battle of (1703).

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1702-1704.

FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1843.

FREE CITIES.

See CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE, OF GERMANY; also, ITALY: A. D. 1056-1152, and after.

FREE COMPANIES, The.

See ITALY: A. D. 1343-1393; and FRANCE: A. D. 1360-1380.

FREE LANCES.

See LANCES, FREE.

FREE MASONS.

"The fall of the Knights Templars has been connected with the origin of the Freemasons, and the idea has prevailed that the only secret purpose of the latter was the reestablishment of the suppressed order. Jacques de Molai, while a prisoner in Paris, is said to have created four new lodges, and the day after his execution, eight knights, disguised as masons, are said to have gone to gather up the ashes of their late Grand Master. To conceal their designs, the new Templars assumed the symbols of the trade, but took, it is said, the name of Francs 'Maçons' to distinguish themselves from ordinary craftsmen, and also in memory of the general appellation given to them in Palestine. Even the allegories of Freemasonry, and the ceremonies of its initiations, have been explained by a reference to the history of the persecutions of the Templars. The Abbé Barruel says, that 'every thing--the signs, the language, the names of grand master, of knight, of temple--all, in a word, betray the Freemasons as descendants of the proscribed knights.' Lessing, in Germany, gave some authority to this opinion, by asserting positively that 'the lodges of the Templars were in the very highest repute in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and that out of such a lodge, which had been constantly kept up in London, was established the society of Freemasons, in the seventeenth century, by Sir Christopher Wren.' {1406} Lessing is of opinion that the name Mason has nothing to do with the English meaning of the word, but comes from Massonney, a 'lodge' of the Knights Templars. This idea may have caused the Freemasons to amalgamate the external ritual of the Templars with their own, and to found the higher French degrees which have given colour to the very hypothesis which gave rise to their introduction. But the whole story appears to be most improbable, and only rests upon the slight foundation of fancied or accidental analogies. Attempts have also been made to show that the Freemasons are only a continuation of the fraternities of architects which are supposed to have originated at the time of the building of Solomon's Temple. The Egyptian priests are supposed to have taught those who were initiated a secret and sacred system of architecture; this is said to have been transmitted to the Dionysiac architects, of whom the first historical traces are to be found in Asia Minor, where they were organized into a secret fraternity. ... It is, however; a mere matter of speculation whether the Jewish and Dionysiac architects were closely connected, but there is some analogy between the latter and the Roman guilds, which Numa is said to have first introduced, and which were probably the prototypes of the later associations of masons which flourished until the end of the Roman Empire. The hordes of barbarians which then ruthlessly swept away whatever bore the semblance of luxury and elegance, did not spare the noblest specimens of art, and it was only when they became converted to Christianity, that the guilds were re-established. During the Lombard rule they became numerous in Italy. ... As their numbers increased, Lombardy no longer sufficed for the exercise of their art, and they travelled into all the countries where Christianity, only recently established, required religious buildings. ... These associations, however, became nearly crushed by the power of the monastic institutions, so that in the early part of the Middle Ages the words artist and priest became nearly synonymous; but in the twelfth century they emancipated themselves, and sprang into new life. The names of the authors of the great architectural creations of this period are almost all unknown; for these were not the work of individuals, but of fraternities. ... In England guilds of masons are said to have existed in the year 926, but this tradition is not supported by history; in Scotland similar associations were established towards the end of the fifteenth century. The Abbé Grandidier regards Freemasonry as nothing more than a servile imitation of the ancient and useful fraternity of true masons established during the building of the Cathedral of Strasburg, one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture, and which caused the fame of its builders to spread throughout Europe. In many towns similar fraternities were established. ... The origin of the Freemasons of the present day is not to be attributed to these fraternities, but to the Rosicrucians [see ROSICRUCIANS] who first appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century."

A. P. Marras, Secret Fraternities of the Middle Ages, chapters 7-8.

ALSO IN: _J. G. Findel, History of Freemasonry._

C. W. Heckethorn, Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries, book 8 (volume 1).

FREE-SOIL PARTY, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1848.

FREE SPIRIT, Brethren and Sisters of the.

See BEGUINES.

FREE TRADE IN ENGLAND.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1836-1839; 1842; 1845-1846; and 1846-1879.

FREEDMEN OF THE SOUTH.

The emancipated slaves of the United States of America.

FREEDMEN'S BUREAU, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865-1866.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1695. Expiration of the Censorship law in England.

See PRINTING: A. D. 1695.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1734. Zenger's trial at New York. Vindication of the rights of the colonial Press.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1720-1734.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1755. Liberty attained in Massachusetts.

See PRINTING: A. D. 1535-1709.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1762-1764. Prosecution of John Wilkes.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1762-1764.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1771. Last contest of the British Parliament with the Press.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1771.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1817. The trials of William Hone.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1816-1820.

----------FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: End----------

FREEHOLD.

See FEUDAL TENURES.

FREEMAN'S FARM, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1777 (JULY-OCTOBER).

FREGELLÆ.

Fregellæ, a Latin colony, founded by the Romans, B. C. 329, in the Volscian territory, on the Liris, revolted in B. C. 125. and was totally destroyed. A Roman colony, named Fabrateria, was founded near the site.

G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 1, chapter 17.

FREIBURG (in the Breisgau).

Freiburg became a free city in 1120, but lost its freedom a century later, and passed, in 1368, under the domination of the Hapsburgs.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1638. Capture by Duke Bernhard.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1634-1639.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1644. Siege and capture by the Imperialists. Attempted recovery by Condé and Turenne. The three days battle.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1643-1644.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1677. Taken by the French.

See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1674-1678.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1679. Retained by France.

See NIMEGUEN, THE PEACE OF.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1697. Restored to Germany.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1697.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1713-1714. Taken and given up by the French.

See UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714.

FREIBURG: A. D. 1744-1748. Taken by the French and restored to Germany.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1744-1745; and AIX-LA-CHAPELLE: THE CONGRESS.

----------FREIBURG: End----------

FREJUS, Origin of.

See FORUM JULII.

FREMONT, General John C., The conquest of California.

See CALIFORNIA: A. D. 1846-1847.

Defeat in Presidential election.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1856.

Command in the west. Proclamation of Freedom. Removal.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (JULY-SEPTEMBER: MISSOURI), and (AUGUST-OCTOBER: MISSOURI).

Command in West Virginia.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862. (MAY-JUNE: VIRGINIA).

{1407}

FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.

The four intercolonial wars of the 17th and 18th centuries, in America, commonly known, respectively, as "King William's War," "Queen Anne's War," "King George's War," and the French and Indian War, were all of them conflicts with the French and Indians of Canada, or New France; but the last of the series (coincident with the "Seven Years War" in Europe) became especially characterized in the colonies by that designation. Its causes and chief events are to be found related under the following headings:

CANADA: A.D. 1750-1753,1755, 1756, 1756-1757, 1758, 1759,1760; NOVA SCOTIA: A. D.1749-1755, 1755; OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1748-1754, 1754, 1755; CAPE BRETON ISLAND: A. D. 1758-1760; also, for an account of the accompanying Cherokee War, SOUTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1759-1761.

FRENCH FURY, The.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1581-1584.

FRENCH SPOLIATION CLAIMS.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1800.

FRENCHTOWN (now Monroe, Mich.), Battle at.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812-1813.

HARRISON'S NORTHWESTERN CAMPAIGN.

FRENTANIANS, The.

See SABINES.

FRIARS. "Carmelite Friars," "White Friars."

See CARMELITE FRIARS.

Austin Friars;

See AUSTIN CANONS.

"Preaching Friars," "Begging Friars," "Minor Friars," "Black Friars," "Grey Friars."

See MENDICANT ORDERS.

FRIEDLAND, Battle of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1807 (FEBRUARY-JUNE).

FRIEDLINGEN, Battle of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1702.

FRIENDS, The Society of.

See QUAKERS.

FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE; The Society of the.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1830-1840.

FRIESLAND. Absorbed in the dominions of the House of Burgundy (1430).

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1417-1430.

FRIGIDUS, Battle of the (A. D. 394).

See ROME: A. D. 379-395.

FRILING, The.

See LÆTI.

FRIMAIRE, The month.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (OCTOBER).

FRISIANS, The.

"Beyond the Batavians, upon the north, dwelt the great Frisian family, occupying the regions between the Rhine and Ems. The Zuyder Zee and the Dollart, both caused by the terrific inundations of the 13th century, and not existing at this period [the early Roman Empire], did not then interpose boundaries between kindred tribes."

J. L. Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, introduction, section. 2.

"The Frisians, adjoining [the Batavi] ... in the coast district that is still named after them, as far as the lower Ems, submitted to Drusus and obtained a position similar to that of the Batavi. There was imposed on them instead of tribute simply the delivery of a number of bullocks' hides for the wants of the army; on the other hand they had to furnish comparatively large numbers of men for the Roman service. They were the most faithful allies of Drusus as afterwards of Germanicus."

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 8, chapter 4.

FRISIANS: A. D. 528-729. Struggles against the Frank dominion, before Charlemagne.

See GERMANY: A. D. 481-768.

FRITH-GUILDS.

See GUILDS, MEDIÆVAL.

FROEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: REFORMS &c.: 1816-1892.

FROG'S POINT, Battle At.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER).

FRONDE, FRONDEURS, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1647-1648, 1649, 1650-1651, 1651-1653; and BORDEAUX: A. D. 1652-1653.

FRONT ROYAL, Stonewall Jackson's capture of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MAY-JUNE: VIRGINIA).

FRONTENAC, Count, in New France.

See CANADA: A. D. 1669-1687, to 1696.

FRONTENAC, Fort.

See KINGSTON, CANADA.

FRUCTIDOR, The Month.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (OCTOBER).

FRUCTIDOR: The Coup d'Etat of the Eighteenth of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (SEPTEMBER).

FRUELA I., King of Leon and the Asturias, or Oviedo, A. D. 757-768.

Fruela II., King of Leon and the Asturias, or Oviedo, A. D. 923-925.

FRUMENTARIAN LAW, The First.

See ROME: B. C. 133-121.

FUEGIANS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: PATAGONIANS.

FUENTES D'ONORO, Battle of (1811).

See SPAIN: A. D. 1810-1812.

FUFIAN LAW, The.

See ÆLIAN AND FUFIAN LAWS.

FUGGERS, The.

"Hans Fugger was the founder of the Fugger family, whose members still possess extensive estates and authority as princes and counts in Bavaria and Wurtemburg. He came to Augsburg in 1365 as a poor but energetic weaver's apprentice, acquired citizenship by marrying a burgher's daughter, and, after completing an excellent masterpiece, was admitted into the guild of weavers. ... Hans Fugger died in 1409, leaving behind him a fortune of 3,000 florins, which he had made by his skill and diligence. This was a considerable sum in those days, for the gold mines of the New World had not yet been opened up, and the necessaries of life sold for very low prices. The sons carried on their father's business, and with so much skill and success that they were always called the rich Fuggers. The importance and wealth of the family increased every day. By the year 1500 it was not easy to find a frequented route by sea or land where Fugger's wares were not to be seen. On one occasion the powerful Hanseatic league seized twenty of their ships, which were sailing with a cargo of Hungarian copper, down the Vistula to Cracow and Dantzic. Below ground the miner worked for Fugger, above it the artisan. In 1448 they lent 150,000 florins to the then Archdukes of Austria, the Emperor Frederick the Third (father of Maximilian) and his brother Albert. In 1509 a century had passed since the weaver Hans Fugger had died leaving his fortune of 3,000 florins, acquired by his laborious industry. His grand-children were now the richest merchants in Europe; without the aid of their money the mightiest princes of the continent could not complete any important enterprise, and their family was connected with the noblest houses by the ties of relationship. They were raised to the rank of noblemen and endowed with honourable privileges by the Emperor Maximilian the First."

A. W. Grube, Heroes of History and Legend, chapter 13.

{1408}

FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, AND ITS REPEAL.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1850, and 1864 (JUNE).

FULAHS, The.

See AFRICA: THE INHABITING RACES.

FULFORD, Battle of.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (SEPTEMBER).

FULTON'S FIRST STEAMBOAT.

See STEAM NAVIGATION: THE BEGINNINGS.

FUNDAMENTAL AGREEMENT OF NEW HAVEN.

See CONNECTICUT: A. D. 1639.

FUNDAMENTAL ORDERS OF CONNECTICUT.

See CONNECTICUT: A. D. 1636-1639.

FUORUSCITI.

In Italy, during the Guelf and Ghibelline contests of the 13th and 14th centuries (see ITALY: A. D. 1215-1293), "almost every city had its body of 'fuorusciti';--literally, 'those who had gone out';--proscripts and exiles, in fact, who represented the minorities ... in the different communities;--Ghibelline fuorusciti from Guelph cities, and Guelph fuorusciti from Ghibelline cities."

T. A. Trollope, History of the Commonwealth of Florence, volume 1, page 380.

FÜRST. Prince; the equivalent German title.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152.

FURY, The French.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1581-1584.

FURY, The Spanish.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1575-1577.

FUSILLADES.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793-1794 (OCTOBER-APRIL).

FUTTEH ALI SHAH,

Shah of Persia, A. D. 1798-1834.

FUTTEHPORE, Battle of (1857).

See INDIA: A. D. 1857-1858 (JULY-JUNE).

FYLFOT-CROSS, The.

See TRI-SKELION.

FYRD, The.

"The one national army [in Saxon England, before the Norman Conquest] was the fyrd, a force which had already received in the Karolingian legislation the name of landwehr by which the German knows it still. The fyrd was in fact composed of the whole mass of free landowners who formed the folk: and to the last it could only be summoned by the voice of the folk-moot. In theory therefore such a host represented the whole available force of the country. But in actual warfare its attendance at the king's war-call was limited by practical difficulties. Arms were costly; and the greater part of the fyrd came equipped with bludgeons and hedge-stakes, which could do little to meet the spear and battleaxe of the invader."

J. R. Green, The Conquest of England, p. 133.

G.

GA, The.

See GAU.

GABELLE The.

"In the spring of the year 1343, the king [Philip de Valois, king of France] published an ordinance by which no one was allowed to sell salt in France unless he bought it from the store-houses of the crown, which gave him the power of committing any degree of extortion in an article that was of the utmost necessity to his subjects. This obnoxious tax, which at a subsequent period became one of the chief sources of the revenue of the crown of France, was termed a gabelle, a word of Frankish or Teutonic origin, which had been in use from the earliest period to signify a tax in general, but which was from this time almost restricted to the extraordinary duty on salt. ... This word gabelle is the same as the Anglo-Saxon word 'gafol,' a tax."

T. Wright, History of France, volume 1, page 364, and foot-note.

See, also, TAILEE AND GABELLE.

GABINIAN LAW, The.

See ROME: B.C. 69-63.

GACHUPINES AND GUADALUPES.

In the last days of Spanish rule in Mexico, the Spanish official party bore the name of Gachupines, while the native party, which prepared for revolution, were called Guadalupes.

E. J. Payne, History of European Colonies, p. 303.

The name of the Guadalupes was adopted by the Mexicans "in honour of 'Our Lady of Guadalupe,' the tutelar protectress of Mexico;" while that of the Gachupines "was a sobriquet gratuitously bestowed upon the Spanish faction."

W. H. Chynoweth, The Fall of Maximilian, page 3.

GADEBUSCH, Battle of (1712).

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1707-1718.

GADENI, The.

See BRITAIN, CELTIC TRIBES.

GADES (Modern Cadiz); Ancient commerce of.

"At this period [early in the last century before Christ] Gades was undoubtedly one of the most important emporiums of trade in the world: her citizens having absorbed a large part of the commerce that had previously belonged to Carthage. In the time of Strabo they still retained almost the whole trade with the Outer Sea, or Atlantic coasts."

E. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, chapter 18, section 6 (volume 2).

See, also, UTICA.

GADSDEN PURCHASE, The.

See ARIZONA: A. D. 1853.

GAEL.

See CELTS.

GAETA: A. D. 1805-1806. Siege and Capture by the French.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1805-1806 (DECEMBER-SEPTEMBER).

GAETA: A. D. 1848. The refuge of Pope Pius IX.

See ITALY: A.. D. 1848-1849.

GAFOL.

A payment in money, or kind, or work, rendered in the way of rent by a villein-tenant to his lord, among the Saxons and early English. The word signified tribute.

F. Seebohm, English Village Community, chapters 2 and 5.

GAG, The Atherton.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1836.

GAGE, General Thomas, in the command and government at Boston.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1774 (MARCH-APRIL); 1775 (APRIL), (APRIL-MAY), and (JUNE).

GAI SABER, El.

See PROVENCE: A. D. 1179-1207.

GAINAS, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 547-633.

GAINES' MILL, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (JUNE-JULY: VIRGINIA).

GALATA, The Genoese colony.

See GENOA: A. D. 1261-1299; also CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1261-1453, and 1348-1355.

{1409}

GALATÆ, The.

See GAULS.

GALATIA.-GALATIANS.

In 280 B. C. a body of Gauls, or Celts, invaded Greece, under Brennus, and in the following year three tribes of them crossed into Asia Minor. There, as in Greece, they committed terrible ravages, and were a desolating scourge to the land, sometimes employed as mercenaries by one and another of the princes who fought over the fragments of Alexander's Empire, and sometimes roaming for plunder on their own account. Antiochus, son of Seleueus, of Syria, is said to have won a great victory over them; but it was not until 239 B. C. that they were seriously checked by Attalus, King of Pergamus, who defeated them in a great battle and forced them to settle in the part of ancient Phrygia which afterwards took its name from them, being called Galatia, or Gallo-Græcia, or Eastern Gaul. When the Romans subjugated Asia Minor they found the Galatæ among their most formidable enemies. The latter were permitted for a time to retain a certain degree of independence, under tetrarchs, and afterwards under kings of their own. But finally Galatia became a Roman province. "When St. Paul preached among them, they seemed fused into the Hellenistic world, speaking Greek like the rest of Asia; yet the Celtic language long lingered among them and St. Jerome says he found the country people still using it in his day (fourth century A. D.)."

J. P. Mahaffy, Story of Alexander's Empire, chapter 8.

See, also, GAULS: B. C. 280-279. INVASION OF GREECE.

GALBA, Roman Emperor, A. D. 68-69.

GALEAZZO MARIO, Duke of Milan, A.D. 1466-1476.

GALERIUS, Roman Emperor, A. D. 305-311.

GALICIA (Spain), Settlement of Sueves and Vandals in.

See SPAIN: A. D. 409-414.

GALILEE.

The Hebrew name Galil, applied originally to a little section of country, became in the Roman age, as Galilæa, the name of the whole region in Palestine north of Samaria and west of the river Jordan and the Sea of Galilee. Ewald interprets the name as meaning the "march" or frontier land; but in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible" it is said to signify a "circle" or "circuit." It had many heathen inhabitants and was called Galilee of the Gentiles.

H. Ewald, History of Israel, book 5, section 1.

GALLAS, The.

See AFRICA: THE INHABITING RACES; and ABYSSINIA: 15th-19th CENTURIES.

GALLATIN, Albert, Negotiation of the Treaty of Ghent.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814 (DECEMBER).

GALLDACHT.

See PALE, THE ENGLISH.

GALLEON OR GALEON.--GALERA.--GALEAZA.--GALEASSES.

See CARAVELS; also, ENGLAND: A. D. 1588; also, PERU: A. D. 1550-1816.

GALLI, The.

See GAULS.

GALLIA.

See GAUL.

GALLIA BRACCATA, COMATA AND TOGATA.

"The antient historians make some allusion to another division of Gaul, perhaps introduced by the soldiers, for it was founded solely upon the costume of the inhabitants. Gallia Togata, near the Rhone, comprehended the Gauls who had adopted the toga and the Roman manners. In Gallia Comata, to the north of the Loire, the inhabitants wore long plaited hair, which we find to this day among the Bas Britons. Gallia Bracata, to the south of the Loire, wore, for the national costume, trousers reaching from the hips to the ancles, called 'braccæ.'"

J. C. L. S. de Sismondi, The French under the Merovingians, translated by Bellingham, chapter 2, note.

GALLIA CISALPINA.

See ROME: B. C. 390-347.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1268. The Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1268.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1438. The Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., affirming some of the decrees of the reforming Council of Basel.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1438.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1515-1518. Abrogation of the Pragmatic Sanction. The Concordat of Bologna.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1515-1518.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1653-1713. The conflict of Jesuits and Jansenists. Persecution of the latter. The Bull Unigenitus and its tyrannical enforcement.

See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1791-1792. The civil constitution of the clergy. The oath prescribed by the National Assembly.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1791; 1790-1791; and 1791-1792.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1793. Suppression of Christian worship in Paris and other parts of France. The worship of Reason.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (NOVEMBER).

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1802. The Concordat of Napoleon. Its Ultramontane influence.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1804.

GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1833-1880. The Church and the Schools.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: FRANCE: A. D. 1833-1889.

----------GALLICAN CHURCH: End----------

GALLICIA, The kingdom of.

See SPAIN: A. D. 713-737.

GALLIENUS, Roman Emperor, A. D. 253-268.

GALLOGLASSES.

The heavy-armed foot-soldiers of the Irish in their battles with the English during the 14th century.

See, also, RAPPAREE.

GALLS.

See IRELAND: 9TH-10TH CENTURIES.

GALLUS, Trebonianus, Roman Emperor, A. D. 251-253.

GAMA, Voyage of Vasco da.

See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1463-1498.

GAMBETTA AND THE DEFENSE OF FRANCE.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER), and 1870-1871.

GAMMADION, The.

See TRI-SKELION.

GAMORI.

See GEOMORI.

GANAWESE OR KANAWHAS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY.

GANDARIANS, The.

See GEDROSIANS.

GANDASTOGUES, OR CONESTOGAS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: SUSQUEHANNAS.

GANGANI, The.

See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS.

{1410}

GANGWAY, The.

On the floor of the English House of Commons, "the long lines of seats rise gradually on each side of the chair--those to the Speaker's right being occupied by the upholders of the Government, and those to the left accommodating the Opposition. One length of seating runs in an unbroken line beneath each of the side galleries, and these are known as the 'back benches.' The other lengths are divided into two nearly equal parts by an unseated gap of about a yard wide. This is 'the gangway.' Though nothing more than a convenient means of access for members, this space has come to be regarded as the barrier that separates the thick and thin supporters of the rival leaders from their less fettered colleagues--that is to say, the steady men from the Radicals, Nationalists, and free-lances generally."

Popular Account of Parliamentary Procedure, page 6.

GAON.-THE GAONATE.

See JEWS: 7th CENTURY.

GARAMANTES, The.

The ancient inhabitants of the north African region now called Fezzan, were known as the Garamantes.

E. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, chapter 8, section 1.

GARCIA, King of Leon and the Asturias, or Oviedo, A. D. 910-914.

Garcia I., King of Navarre, 885-891.

Garcia II., King of Spain, 925-970.

Garcia III., King of Navarre, 1035-1054.

Garcia IV., King of Navarre, 1134-1150.

GARFIELD, General James A. Campaign in Kentucky.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY; KENTUCKY-TENNESSEE).

Presidential election. Administration. Assassination.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1880, and 1881.

GARIBALD, King of the Lombards, A. D. 672-673.

GARIBALDI'S ITALIAN CAMPAIGNS.

See ITALY; A. D. 1848-:1849; 1856-1859; 1859-1861; 1862-1866; and 1867-1870.

GARIGLIANO, Battle of the (1503).

See ITALY: A. D. 1501-1504.

GARITIES, The.

See AQUITAINE: THE ANCIENT TRIBES.

GARRISON, William Lloyd, and the American Abolitionists.

See SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1828-1832.

GARTER, Knights of the Order of the.

"About this time [A. D. 1343] the king of England [Edward III.] resolved to rebuild and embellish the great castle of Windsor, which king Arthur had first founded in time past, and where he had erected and established that noble round table from whence so many gallant knights had issued forth, and displayed the valiant prowess of their deeds at arms over the world. King Edward, therefore, determined to establish an order of knighthood, consisting of himself, his children, and the most gallant knights in Christendom, to the number of forty. He ordered it to be denominated 'knights of the blue garter,' and that the feast should be celebrated every year at Windsor, upon St. George's day. He summoned, therefore, all the earls, barons, and knights of his realm, to inform them of his intentions; they heard it with great pleasure; for it appeared to them highly honourable, and capable of increasing love and friendship. Forty knights were then elected, according to report and estimation the bravest in Christendom, who sealed, and swore to maintain and keep the feast and the statutes which had been made. The king founded a chapel at Windsor, in honour of St. George, and established canons, there to serve God, with a handsome endowment. He then issued his proclamation for this feast by his heralds, whom he sent to France, Scotland, Burgundy, Hainault, Flanders, Brabant, and the empire of Germany, and offered to all knights and squires, that might come to this ceremony, passports to last for fifteen days after it was over. The celebration of this order was fixed for St. George's day next ensuing, to be held at Windsor, 1344."

Froissart (Johnes), Chronicles, book 1, chapter 100.

"The popular tradition, derived from Polydore Vergil, is that, having a festival at Court, a lady chanced to drop her garter, when it was picked up by the King. Observing that the incident made the bye-standers smile significantly, Edward exclaimed in a tone of rebuke, 'Honi soit qui mal y pense'--'Dishonoured be he who thinks evil of it': and to prevent any further innuendos, he tied the garter round his own knee. This anecdote, it is true, has been characterized by some as an improbable fable; why, we know not. ... Be the origin of the institution, however, what it may, no Order in Europe is so ancient, none so illustrious, for 'it exceeds in majesty, honour and fame all chivalrous fraternities in the world.' ... By a Statute passed on the 17th January, 1805, the Order is to consist of the Sovereign and twenty-five Knights Companions, together with such lineal descendants of George III. as may be elected, always excepting the Prince of Wales, who is a constituent part of the original institution. Special Statutes have since, at different times, been proclaimed for the admission of Sovereigns and extra Knights."

Sir B. Burke, Book of Orders of Knighthood, page 98.

ALSO IN: _J. Buswell, Historical Account of the Knights of the Garter._

_C. M. Yonge, Cameos from English History, 2d series, chapter 3._

GARUMNI, The Tribe of the.

See AQUITAINE: THE ANCIENT TRIBES.

GASCONY.--GASCONS: Origin.

See AQUITAINE: A. D. 681-768.

GASCONY: A. D. 778. The ambuscade at Roncesvalles.

See SPAIN: A. D. 778.

GASCONY: A. D. 781. Embraced in Aquitaine.

See AQUITAINE: A. D. 781.

GASCONY: 11th Century. The Founding of the Dukedom.

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1032.

----------GASCONY: End----------

GASIND, The.

See COMITATUS.

GASPE, The burning of the.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1772.

GASTEIN, Convention of (1865).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1861-1866.

GATES, General Horatio, and the American Revolution.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (MAY-AUGUST); 1777 (JULY-OCTOBER); 1777-1778; 1780 (FEBRUARY-AUGUST); 1780-1781.

GATH.

See PHILISTINES.

GATHAS, The.

See ZOROASTRIANS.

{1411}

GAU, OR GA, The.

"Next [after the Mark, in the settlements of the Germanic peoples] in order of constitution, if not of time, is the union of two, three, or more Marks in a federal bond for purposes of a religious, judicial, or even political character. The technical name for such a union is in Germany a Gau or Bant; in England the ancient name Ga has been almost universally superseded by that of Scir or Shire. For the most part the natural divisions of the country are the divisions also of the Ga; and the size of this depends upon such accidental limits as well as upon the character and dispositions of the several collective bodies which we have called Marks. The Ga is the second and final form of unsevered possession; for every larger aggregate is but the result of a gradual reduction of such districts, under a higher political or administrative unity, different only in degree and not in kind from what prevailed individually in each. The kingdom is only a larger Ga than ordinary; indeed the Ga itself was the original kingdom. ... Some of the modern shire-divisions of England in all probability have remained unchanged from the earliest times; so that here and there a now existent Shire may be identical in territory with an ancient Ga. But it may be doubted whether this observation can be very extensively applied."

J. M. Kemble, The Saxons in England. book 1, chapter 8.

GAUGAMELA, OR ARBELA, Battle of (B. C. 331).

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 384-380.

GAUL: described by Cæsar.

"Gallia, in the widest sense of the term, is divided into three parts, one part occupied by the Belgae, a second by the Aquitani, and a third by a people whom the Romans name Galli, but in their own tongue they are named Celtae. These three people differ in language and social institutions. The Garumna (Garonne) is the boundary between the Aquitani and the Celtae: the rivers Matrona (Marne, a branch of the Seine) and the Sequana (Seine) separate the Celtae from the Belgae. ... That part of Gallia which is occupied by the Celtae begins at the river Rhone: it is bounded by the Garonne, the Ocean and the territory of the Belgae; on the side of the Sequani and the Helvetii it also extends to the Rhine. It looks to the north. The territory of the Belgae begins where that of the Celtae ends: it extends to the lower part of the Rhine; it looks towards the north and the rising sun. Aquitania extends from the Garonne to the Pyrenean mountains and that part of the Ocean which borders on Spain. It looks in a direction between the setting sun and the north."

Julius Cæsar, Gallic Wars, book 1, chapter 1; translated by G. Long (Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 8, chapter 22).

GAUL: B. C. 125-121. First Roman conquests.

See SALYES; ALLOBROGES; and ÆDUI.

GAUL: B. C. 58-51. Cæsar's conquest.

Cæsar was consul for the year 695 A. U. (B. C. 59). At the expiration of his consulship he secured, by vote of the people, the government of the two Gauls (see ROME: B. C. 68-58), not for one year, which was the customary term, but for five years--afterwards extended to ten. Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy) had been fully subjugated and was tranquil; Transalpine Gaul (Gaul west and north of the Alps, or modern France, Switzerland and Belgium) was troubled and threatening. In Transalpine Gaul the Romans had made no conquests beyond the Rhone, as yet, except along the coast at the south. The country between the Alps and the Rhone, excepting certain territories of Massilia (Marseilles) which still continued to be a free city, in alliance with Rome, had been fully appropriated and organized as a province--the Provence of later times. The territory between the Rhone and the Cevennes mountains was less fully occupied and controlled. Cæsar's first proceeding as proconsul in Gaul was to arrest the migration of the Helvetii, who had determined to abandon their Swiss valleys and to seize some new territory in Gaul. He blocked their passage through Roman Gaul, then followed them in their movement eastward of the Rhone, attacked and defeated them with great slaughter, and forced the small remnant to return to their deserted mountain homes. The same year (B. C. 58) he drove out of Gaul a formidable body of Suevic Germans who had crossed the Rhine some years before under their king, Ariovistus. They were almost annihilated. The next year (B. C. 57) he reduced to submission the powerful tribes of the Belgian region, who had provoked attack by leaguing themselves against the Roman intrusion in Gaul. The most obstinate of those tribes--the Nervii--were destroyed. In the following year (B. C. 56) Cæsar attacked and nearly exterminated the Veneti, a remarkable maritime people, who occupied part of Armorica (modern Brittany); he also reduced the coast tribes northwards to submission, while one of his lieutenants, Crassus, made a conquest of Aquitania. The conquest of Gaul was now apparently complete, and next year (B. C. 55), after routing and cutting to pieces another horde of Germanic invaders--the Usipetes and Tenctheri--who had ventured across the lower Rhine, Cæsar traversed the channel and invaded Britain. This first invasion, which had been little more than a reconnoissance, was repeated the year following (B. C. 54), with a larger force. It was an expedition having small results, and Cæsar returned from it in the early autumn to find his power in Gaul undermined everywhere by rebellious conspiracies. The first outbreak occurred among the Belgæ, and found its vigorous leader in a young chief of the Eburones, Ambiorix by name. Two legions, stationed in the midst of the Eburones, were cut to pieces while attempting to retreat. But the effect of this great disaster was broken by the bold energy of Cæsar, who led two legions, numbering barely 7,000 men, to the rescue of his lieutenant Cicero (brother of the orator) whose single legion, camped in the Nervian territory, was surrounded and besieged by 60,000 of the enemy. Cæsar and his 7,000 veterans sufficed to rout the 60,000 Belgians. Proceeding with similar vigor to further operations, and raising new legions to increase his force, the proconsul had stamped the rebellion out before the close of the year 58 B. C., and the Eburones, who led in it, had ceased to exist. But the next year (B. C. 52) brought upon him a still more serious rising, of the Gallic tribes in central Gaul, leagued with the Belgians. Its leader was Vercingetorix, a gallant and able young chief of the Arverni. It was begun by the Carnutes, who massacred the Roman settlers in their town of Genabum (probably modern Orleans, but some say Gien, farther up the Loire). Cæsar was on the Italian side of the Alps when the news reached him, and the Gauls expected to be able to prevent his joining the scattered Roman forces in their country. But his energy baffled them, as it had baffled them many times before. He was across the Alps, across the Rhone, over the Cevennes--through six feet of snow in the passes--and in their midst, with such troops as he could gather in the Province, before they dreamed of lying in wait for him. Then, leaving most of these forces with Decimus Brutus, in a strong position, he stole away secretly, recrossed the Cevennes, put himself at the head of a small body of cavalry at Vienne on the Rhone, and rode straight through the country of the insurgents to join his veteran legions, first at Langres and afterwards at Sens. {1412} In a few weeks he was at the head of a strong army, had taken the guilty town of Genabum and had given it up to fire and the sword. A little later the capital of the Bituriges, Avaricum (modern Bourges), suffered the same fate. Next, attempting to reduce the Arvernian town of Gergovia, he met with a check and was placed in a serious strait. But with the able help of his lieutenant Labienus, who defeated a powerful combination of the Gauls near Lutetia (modern Paris), he broke the toils, reunited his army, which he had divided, routed Vercingetorix in a great battle fought in the valley of the Vingeanne, and shut him up, with 80,000 men, in the city of Alesia. The siege of Alesia (modern Alise-Sainte-Reine, west of Dijon) which followed, was the most extraordinary of Cæsar's military exploits in Gaul. Holding his circumvallation of the town, against 80,000 within its walls and thrice as many swarming outside of it, he scattered the latter and forced the surrender of the former. His triumph was his greatest shame. Like a very savage, he dragged the knightly Vercingetorix in his captive train, exhibited him at a subsequent "triumph" in Rome, and then sent him to be put to death in the ghastly Tullianum. The fall of Alesia practically ended the revolt; although even the next year found some fighting to be done, and one stronghold of the Cadurci, Uxellodunum (modern Puy-d'Issolu, near Vayrac), held out with great obstinacy. It was taken by tapping with a tunnel the spring which supplied the besieged with water, and Cæsar punished the obstinacy of the garrison by cutting off their hands. Gaul was then deemed to be conquered and pacified, and Cæsar was prepared for the final contest with his rivals and enemies at Rome.

_Cæsar, Gallic War._

ALSO IN: G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 4.

_Napoleon III., History of Cæsar._

C. Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, chapters 6-7, 10, and 12 (volumes 1-2).

T. A. Dodge, Cæsar, chapters 4-25.

GAUL: 2d-3d Century. Introduction of Christianity.

See CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 100-312 (GAUL).

GAUL: A. D. 277. The invaders driven back by Probus.

"The most important service which Probus [Roman Emperor, A. D. 276-282] rendered to the republic was the deliverance of Gaul, and the recovery of seventy flourishing cities oppressed by the barbarians of Germany, who, since the death of Aurelian, had ravaged that great province with impunity. Among the various multitude of those fierce invaders, we may distinguish, with some degree of clearness, three great armies, or rather nations, successively vanquished by the valour of Probus. He drove back the Franks into their morasses; a descriptive circumstance from whence we may infer that the confederacy known by the manly appellation of 'Free' already occupied the flat maritime country, intersected and almost overflown by the stagnating waters of the Rhine, and that several tribes of the Frisians and Batavians had acceded to their alliance. He vanquished the Burgundians [and the Lygians]. ... The deliverance of Gaul is reported to have cost the lives of 400,000 of the invaders--a work of labour to the Romans, and of expense to the emperor, who gave a piece of gold for the head of every barbarian."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 12.

See, also, LYGIANS.

GAUL: A. D. 287. Insurrection of the Bagauds.

See BAGAUDS; also, DEDITITIUS.

GAUL: A. D. 355-361. Julian's recovery of the province from the barbarians.

During the civil wars and religious quarrels which followed the death of Constantine the Great--more especially in the three years of the usurpation of Magnentius, in the west (A. D. 350-353), Gaul was not only abandoned, for the most part, to the barbarians of Germany, but Franks and Alemanni were invited by Constantius to enter it. "In a little while a large part of the north and east of Gaul were in their almost undisputed possession. The Alamans seized upon the countries which are now called Alsace and Lorraine; the Franks secured for themselves Batavia and Toxandria: forty-five flourishing cities, among them Cologne, Treves, Spires, Worms, and Strasburg, were ravaged; and, in short, from the sources of the Rhine to its mouth, forty miles inland, there remained no safety for the population but in the strongly fortified towns." In this condition of the Gallic provinces, Julian, the young nephew of the emperor, was raised to the rank of Cæsar and sent thither with a trifling force of men to take the command. "During an administration of six years [A. D. 355-361] this latest Cæsar revived in Gaul the memory of the indefatigable exploits and the vigorous rule of the first Cæsar. Insufficient and ill-disciplined as his forces were, and baffled and betrayed as he was by those who should have been his aids, he drove the fierce and powerful tribes of the Alamans, who were now the hydra of the western provinces, beyond the Upper Rhine; the Chamaves, another warlike tribe, he pursued into the heart of their native forests; while the still fiercer and more warlike Franks were dislodged from their habitations on the Meuse, to accept of conditions from his hands. ... A part of these, called the Salians, and destined to figure hereafter, were allowed to settle in permanence in Toxandria, between the Meuse and the Scheld, near the modern Tongres. ... By three successful expeditions beyond the Rhine [he] restored to their friends a multitude of Roman captives, recovered the broken and down-trodden lines of the empire, humiliated many of the proud chiefs of the Germans, and impressed a salutary awe and respect upon their truculent followers. ... He spent the intervals of peace which his valor procured in recuperating the wasted energies of the inhabitants. Their dilapidated cities were repaired, the excesses of taxation retrenched, the deficient harvests compensated by large importations of corn from Britain, and the resources of suspended industry stimulated into new action. Once more, says Libanius, the Gauls ascended from the tombs to marry, to travel, to enjoy the festivals, and to celebrate the public games."

P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 2, chapter 7.

ALSO IN: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 19.

GAUL: A. D. 365-367. Expulsion of the Alemanni by Valentinian.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 365-367.

GAUL: A. D. 378. Invasion of the Alemanni. Their destruction by Gratian.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 378.

{1413}

GAUL: A. D. 406-409. The breaking of the Rhine barrier.

The same year (A. D. 406) in which Radagaisus, with his motley barbaric horde, invaded Italy and was destroyed by Stilicho, a more fatal assault was made upon Gaul. Two armies, in which were gathered up a vast multitude of Suevi, Vandals, Alans and Burgundians, passed the Rhine. The Franks opposed them as faithful allies of the Roman power, and defeated a Vandal army in one great battle, where 20,000 of the invaders were slain; but the Alans came opportunely to the rescue of their friends and forced the Frank defenders of Gaul to give way. "The victorious confederates pursued their march, and on the last day of the year, in a season when the waters of the Rhine were most probably frozen, they entered without opposition the defenceless provinces of Gaul. This memorable passage of the Suevi, the Vandals, the Alani, and the Burgundians, who never afterwards retreated, may be considered as the fall of the Roman empire in the countries beyond the Alps; and the barriers which had so long separated the savage and the civilized nations of the earth were, from that fatal moment, levelled with the ground. ... The flourishing city of Mentz was surprised and destroyed, and many thousand Christians were inhumanly massacred in the church. Worms perished after a long and obstinate siege; Strasburg, Spires, Rheims, Tournay, Arras, Amiens, experienced the cruel oppression of the German yoke; and the consuming flames of war spread from the banks of the Rhine over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of Gaul. That rich and extensive country, as far as the ocean, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, was delivered to the barbarians, who drove before them in a promiscuous crowd the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 30.

GAUL: A. D. 407-411. Reign of the usurper Constantine.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 407.

GAUL: A. D. 410-419. Establishment of the Visigoths in the kingdom of Toulouse.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 410-419.

GAUL: A. D. 410-420. The Franks join in the attack on Gaul.

See FRANKS: A. D. 410-420.

GAUL: 5th-8th Centuries. Barbarities of the Frank conquest.

The conquests of the Franks in Gaul, under Clovis, began in 486 and ended with his death in 511 (see FRANKS: A. D. 481-511). "In the year 532, Theoderik, one of the sons and successors of Chlodowig, said to those Frankish warriors whom he commanded: 'Follow me as far as Auvergne, and I will make you enter a country where you will take as much gold and silver as you possibly can desire; where you can carry away in abundance flocks, slaves, and garments.' The Franks took up arms and once more crossing the Loire, they advanced on the territory of the Bituriges and Arvernes. These paid with interest for the resistance they had dared to the first invasion. Everything amongst them was devastated; the churches and monasteries were razed to their foundations. The young men and women were dragged, their hands bound, after the luggage to be sold as slaves. The inhabitants of this unfortunate country perished in large numbers or were ruined by the pillage. Nothing was left them of what they had possessed, says an ancient chronicle, except the land, which the barbarians could not carry away. Such were the neighbourly relations kept up by the Franks with the Gallic populations which had remained beyond their limits. Their conduct with respect to the natives of the northern provinces was hardly less hostile. When Hilperik, the son of Chlother, wished, in the year 584, to send his daughter in marriage to the king of the West Goths, or Visigoths, settled in Spain, he came to Paris and carried away from the houses belonging to the 'fisc' a great number of men and women, who were heaped up in chariots to accompany and serve the bride elect. Those who refused to depart, and wept, were put in prison: several strangled themselves in despair. Many people of the best families enlisted by force into this procession, made their will, and gave their property to the churches. 'The son,' says a contemporary, 'was separated from his father, the mother from her daughter; they departed sobbing, and pronouncing deep curses; so many persons in Paris were in tears that it might be compared to the desolation of Egypt.' In their domestic misfortunes the kings of the Franks sometimes felt remorse, and trembled at the evil they had done. ... But this momentary repentance soon yielded to the love of riches, the most violent passion of the Franks. Their incursions into the south of Gaul recommenced as soon as that country, recovered from its terrors and defeats, no longer admitted their garrisons nor tax collectors. Karle, to whom the fear of his arms gave the surname of Marteau, made an inroad as far as Marseilles; he took possession of Lyons, Arles, and Vienne, and carried off an immense booty to the territory of the Franks. When this same Karle, to insure his frontiers, went to fight the Saracens in Aquitania, he put the whole country to fire and sword; he burnt Bérgiers, Agde, and Nûnes; the arenas of the latter city still bear traces of the fire. At death of Karle, his two sons, Karlemann and Peppin, continued the great enterprise of replacing the inhabitants of the south, to whom the name of Romans was still given, under the yoke of the Franks. ... Southern Gaul was to the sons of the Franks what entire Gaul had been to their fathers; a country, the riches and climate of which attracted them incessantly, and saw them return as enemies, as soon as it did not purchase peace of them."

A. Thierry, Narratives of the Merovingian Era, Historical Essays, etc., essay 24.

GAUL: 5th-10th Centuries. The conquerors and the conquered. State of society under the barbarian rule. The evolution of Feudalism.

"After the conclusion of the great struggles which took place in the fourth and fifth centuries, whether between the German conquerors and the last forces of the empire, or between the nations which had occupied different portions of Gaul, until the Franks remained sole masters of the country, two races, two populations, which had nothing in common but religion, appear forcibly brought together, and, as it were, face to face with each other, in one political community. The Gallo-Roman population presents under the same law very different and very unequal conditions; the barbarian population comprises, together with its own peculiar classifications of ranks and conditions, distinct laws and nationalities. In the first we find citizens absolutely free, coloni, or husbandmen belonging to the lands of a proprietor, and domestic slaves deprived of all civil rights; in the second, we see the Frankish race divided into two tribes, each having its own peculiar law [the law of the Salic Franks or Salic law, and the law of the Ripuarian Franks or Ripuarian law]; the Burgundians, the Goths, and the rest of the Teutonic races, who became subjected, either of their own accord or by force, to, the Frankish empire, governed by other and entirely different laws; but among them all, as well as among the Franks, we find at least three social conditions--two degrees of liberty, and slavery. {1414} Among these incongruous states of existence, the criminal law of the dominant race established, by means of the scale of damages for crime or personal injury, a kind of hierarchy-- the starting-point of that movement towards an assimilation and gradual transformation, which, after the lapse of four centuries, from the fifth to the tenth, gave rise to the society of the feudal times. The first rank in the civil order belonged to the man of Frankish origin, and to the Barbarian who lived under the law of the Franks; in the second rank was placed the Barbarian, who lived under the law of his own country; next came the native freeman and proprietor, the Roman possessor, and, in the same degree, the Lidus or German colonus; after them, the Roman tributary--i. e., the native colonus; and, last of all, the slave, without distinction of origin. These various classes, separated on the one hand by distance of rank, on the other by difference of laws, manners, and language, were far from being equally distributed between the cities and the rural districts. All that was elevated in the Gallo-Roman population, of whatever character it might be, was found in the cities, where its noble, rich, and industrious families dwelt, surrounded by their domestic slaves; and, among the people of that race, the only constant residents in the country were the half-servile coloni and the agricultural slaves. On the contrary, the superior class of the German population established itself in the country, where each family, independent and proprietary, was maintained on its own domain by the labour of the Lidi whom it had brought thither, or of the old race of coloni who belonged to the soil. The only Germans who resided in the cities were a small number of officers in the service of the Crown, and of individuals without family and patrimony, who, in spite of their original habits, sought a livelihood by following some employment. The social superiority of the dominant race rooted itself firmly in the localities inhabited by them, and passed, as has been already remarked, from the cities to the rural districts. By degrees, also, it came to pass that the latter drew off from the former the upper portion of their population, who, in order to raise themselves still higher, and to mix with the conquerors, imitated, as far as they were able, their mode of life. ... While Barbarism was thus occupying or usurping all the vantage points of the social state, and civil life in the intermediate classes was arrested in its progress, and sinking gradually to the lowest condition, even to that of personal servitude, an ameliorating movement already commenced before the fall of the empire, still continued, and declared itself more and more loudly. The dogma of a common brotherhood in the eyes of God, and of one sole redemption for all mankind, preached by the Church to the faithful of every race, touched the heart and awakened the mind in favour of the slave, and, in consequence, enfranchisements became more frequent, or a treatment more humane was adopted on the part of the masters, whether Gauls or Germans by origin. The latter, moreover, had imported from their country, where the mode of life was simple and without luxury, usages favourable to a modified slavery. The rich barbarian was waited upon by free persons--by the children of his relatives, his clients and his friends; the tendency of his national manners, different from that of the Roman, induced him to send the slave out of his house, and to establish him as a labourer or artisan on some portion of land to which he then became permanently attached, and the destination of which he followed, whether it were inherited or sold. ... Domestic slavery made the man a chattel, a mere piece of moveable property. The slave, settled on a spot of land, from that time entered into the category of real property. At the same time that this last class, which properly bore the name of serfs, was increased at the expense of the first, the classes of the coloni and Lidi would naturally multiply simultaneously, by the very casualties of ruin and adverse circumstances which, at a period of incessant commotions, injured the condition of the freemen. ... In the very heart of the Barbarian society, the class of small proprietors, which had originally formed its strength and glory, decreased, and finally became extinct by sinking into vassalage, or a state of still more ignoble dependence, which partook more or less of the character of actual servitude. ... The freemen depressed towards servitude met the slave who had reached a sort of half liberty. Thus, through the whole extent of Gaul, was formed a vast body of agricultural labourers and rural artisans, whose lot, though never uniform, was brought more and more to a level of equality; and the creative wants of society produced a new sphere of industry in the country, while the cities remained stationary, or sank more and more into decay. ... On every large estate where improvement flourished, the cabins of those employed, Lidi, coloni or slaves, grouped as necessity or convenience suggested, were multiplied and peopled more numerously, till they assumed the form of a hamlet. When these hamlets were situated in a favourable position ... they continued to increase till they became villages. ... The building of a church soon raised the village to the rank of a parish; and, as a consequence, the new parish took its place among the rural circonscriptions. ... Thence sprung, altogether spontaneously, under the sanction of the intendant, joined to that of the priest, rude outlines of a municipal organization, in which the church became the depository of the acts which, in accordance with the Roman law, were inscribed on the registers of the city. It is in this way that beyond the towns, the cities, and the boroughs, where the remains of the old social condition lingered in an increasing state of degradation, elements of future improvement were formed. ... This modification, already considerably advanced in the ninth century, was completed in the course of the tenth. At that period, the last class of the Gallo-Frankish society disappeared--viz., that of persons held as chattels, bought, exchanged, transferred from one place to another, like any other kind of moveable goods. The slave now belonged to the soil rather than to the person; his service, hitherto arbitrary, was changed into customary dues and regulated employment; he had a settled abode, and, in consequence, a right of possession in the soil on which he was dependent. This is the earliest form in which we distinctly trace the first impress of the modern world upon the civil state. {1415} The word serf henceforward took its definite meaning; it became the generic name of a mixed condition of servitude and freedom, in which we find blended together the states of the colonus and Lidus--two names which occur less and less frequently in the tenth century, till they entirely disappear. This century, the point to which all the social efforts of the four preceding ones which had elapsed since the Frankish conquest had been tending, saw the intestine struggle between the Roman and German manners brought to a conclusion by an important revolution. The latter definitively prevailed, and from their triumph arose the feudal system; that is to say, a new form of the state, a new constitution of property and domestic life, a parcelling out of the sovereignty and jurisdiction, all the public powers transformed into demesnial privileges, the idea of nobility devoted to the profession of arms, and that of ignobility to industry and labour. By a remarkable coincidence, the complete establishment of this system is the epoch when the distinction of races terminates in Frankish Gaul--when all the legal consequences of diversity of origin between Barbarians and Romans, conquerors and subjects, disappear. The law ceases to be personal, and becomes local; the German codes and the Roman code itself are replaced by custom; it is the territory and not the descent which distinguishes the inhabitant of the Gallic soil; finally, instead of national distinctions, one mixed population appears, to which the historian is able henceforward to give the name of French."

A. Thierry, Formation and Progress of the Tiers État in France, volume 1, chapter 1.

GAUL: A. D. 412-453. The mixed administration, Roman and barbarian.

"A prætorian prefect still resided at Trèves; a vicar of the seventeen Gallic provinces at Aries: each of these provinces had its Roman duke; each of the hundred and fifteen cities of Gaul had its count; each city its curia, or municipality. But, collaterally with this Roman organisation, the barbarians, assembled in their 'mallum,' of which their kings were presidents, decided on peace and war, made laws, or administered justice. Each division of the army had its Graf Jarl, or Count; each subdivision its centenary, or hundred-man; and all these fractions of the free population had the same right of deciding by suffrage in their own mallums, or peculiar courts, all their common affairs. In cases of opposition between the barbarian and the Roman jurisdiction, the overbearing arrogance of the one, and the abject baseness of the other, soon decided the question of supremacy. In some provinces the two powers were not concurrent: there were no barbarians between the Loire and the Meuse, nor between the Alps and the Rhone; but the feebleness of the Roman government was only the more conspicuous. A few great proprietors cultivated a part of the province with the aid of slaves; the rest was desert, or only inhabited by Bagaudæ, runaway slaves, who lived by robbery. Some towns still maintained a show of opulence, but not one gave the slightest sign of strength; not one enrolled its militia, nor repaired its fortifications. ... Honorius wished to confer on the cities of southern Gaul a diet, at which they might have deliberated on public affairs: he did not even find public spirit enough to accept the offered privilege."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 7 (volume 1).

GAUL: A. D. 451. Attila's invasion.

See HUNS: A. D. 451.

GAUL: A. D. 453-484. Extension of the Visigothic kingdom.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 453-484.

GAUL: A. D. 457-486. The last Roman sovereignty.

The last definite survival of Roman sovereignty in Gaul lingered until 486 in a district north of the Seine, between the Marne and the Oise, which had Soissons for its capital. It was maintained there, in the first instance, by Ægidius, a Gallic noble whom Marjorian, one of the last of the emperors at Rome, made Master-General of Gaul. The respect commanded by Ægidius among the surrounding barbarians was so great that the Salian Franks invited him to rule over them, in place of a licentious young king, Childeric, whom they had driven into exile. He was king of these Franks, according to Gregory of Tours, for eight years (457-464), until he died. Childeric then returned, was reinstated in his kingdom and became the father of Clovis (or Chlodwig), the founder of the great Frank monarchy. But a son of Ægidius, named Syagrius, was still the inheritor of a kingdom, known as, the "Kingdom of Syagrius," embracing, as has been said, the country around Soissons, between the Seine, the Marne and the Oise, and also including, in the opinion of some writers, Troyes and Auxerre. The first exploit of Clovis--the beginning of his career of conquest--was the overthrow of this "king of the Romans," as Syagrius was called, in a decisive battle fought at Soissons, A. D. 486, and the incorporation of his kingdom into the Frank dominions. Syagrius escaped to Toulouse, but was surrendered to Clovis and put to death.

P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 3, chapter 11.

ALSO IN: W. C. Perry, The Franks, chapter 2.

GAUL: A. D. 474. Invasion of Ostrogoths.

See GOTHS (OSTROGOTHS): A. D. 473-474.

GAUL: A. D. 507-509. Expulsion of the Visigoths.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 507-509.

GAUL: A. D. 540. Formal relinquishment of the country to the Franks by Justinian.

See FRANKS: A. D. 539-553.

GAULS.

"The Gauls, properly so called, the Galatæ of the Greeks, the Galli of the Romans, and the Gael of modern history, formed the van of the great Celtic migration which had poured westward at various intervals during many hundred years. ... Having overrun the south of Gaul and penetrated into Spain, they lost a part of the territory thus acquired, and the restoration of the Iberian fugitives to Aquitania placed a barrier between the Celts in Spain and their brethren whom they had left behind them in the north. In the time of the Romans the Galli were found established in the centre and east of the country denominated Gaul, forming for the most part a great confederation, at the head of which stood the Arverni. It was the policy of the Romans to raise the Ædui into competition with this dominant tribe. ... The Arverni, whose name is retained in the modern appellation of Auvergne, occupied a large district in the middle and south of Gaul, and were surrounded by tributary or dependent clans. The Ædui lay more to the north and east, and the centre of their possessions is marked by the position of their capital Bibracte, the modern Autun, situated in the highlands which separate the waters of the Loire, the Seine and the Saone. ... {1416} Other Gallic tribes stretched beyond the Saone: the Sequani, who afterwards made an attempt to usurp this coveted preeminence (the valley of the Doubs formed the centre of the Sequanese territory, which reached to the Jura and the Rhine); the Helvetii and other mountain races, whose scanty pastures extended to the sources of the Rhine; the Allobroges, who dwelt upon the Isere and Rhone, and who were the first of their race to meet and the first to succumb before the prowess of the Roman legions. According to the classification both of Cæsar and Strabo, the Turones, Pictones and Santones must be comprised under the same general denomination."

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 5 (volume 1).

See, also, CELTS.

GAUL: B. C. 390-347. Invasions of Italy. Destruction of Rome.

See ROME: B. C. 390-347.

GAUL: B. C. 295-191. Roman conquest of the Cisalpine tribes.

See ROME: B. C. 295-191.

GAUL: B. C. 280-279. Invasion of Greece.

In the year 280 B. C. the Gauls, who had long before passed from northern Italy around the Adriatic to its eastern coast, made their first appearance in Macedonia and northern Greece. The Macedonian throne was occupied at the time by the infamous usurper, Ptolemy Ceraunus (see MACEDONIA: B. C. 297-280), and the Celtic savages did one good service to Greece by slaying him, in the single battle that was fought. The whole open country was abandoned to them, for a time, and they swept it, as far southward as the valley of the Peneus, in Thessaly; but the walled cities were safe. After ravaging the country for some months the Gauls appear to have retired; but it was only to return again the next year in more formidable numbers and under a chief, Brennus, of more vigor and capability. On this occasion the country suffered fearfully from the barbaric swarm, but defended itself with something like the spirit of the Greece of two centuries before. The Ætolians were conspicuous in the struggle; the Peloponnesian states gave little assistance. The policy of defense was much the same as at the time of the Persian invasion, and the enemy was confronted in force at the pass of Thermopylæ. Brennus made a more desperate attempt to force the pass than Xerxes had done and was beaten back with a tremendous slaughter of his Gauls. But he found traitors, as Xerxes had done, to guide him over the mountains, and the Greeks at Thermopylæ, surrounded by the enemy, could only escape by sea. The Gauls marched on Delphi, eager for the plunder of the great temple, and there they met with some fatal disaster. Precisely what occurred is not known. According to the Greeks, the god protected his sanctuary, and the accounts they have left are full of miracles and prodigies--of earthquakes, lightnings, tempests, and disease. The only clear facts seem to be that Delphi was successfully defended; that the Gauls retreated in disorder and were destroyed in vast numbers before the remnant of them got away from the country. Brennus is said to have killed himself to escape the wrath of his people for the failure of the expedition. One large body of the great army had separated from the rest and gone eastward into Thrace, before the catastrophe occurred. These subsequently passed over to Asia and pursued there an adventurous career, leaving a historic name in the country.

See GALATIA.

C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 60.

----------GAUL: End----------

GAULS, Præfect of the.

See PRÆTORIAN PRÆFECTS.

GAUSARAPOS, OR GUUCHIES, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: PAMPAS TRIBES.

GAVELKIND, Irish.

"The Irish law of succession in landed property, known as that of Irish gavelkind, was a logical consequence of the theory of tribal ownership. If a member of the tribe died, his piece of land did not descend by right to his eldest son, or even to all his children equally. Originally, it reverted to its sole absolute owner, the tribe, every member of which had a right to use proportionate to his tribal status. This was undoubtedly the essential principle of inheritance by gavelkind."

S. Bryant, Celtic Ireland, chapter 6.

ALSO IN: Sir H. Maine, Early History of Institutions, lecture 7.

GAVELKIND, Kentish.

See FEUDAL TENURES.

GAVEREN, Battle of (1453).

See GHENT: A. D. 1451-1453.

GAZA: Early history.

See PHILISTINES.

GAZA: B. C. 332. Siege by Alexander.

In his march from Phœnicia to Egypt (see MACEDONIA, &c.: B. C. 334-330), Alexander the Great was compelled to pause for several months and lay siege to the ancient Philistine city of Gaza. It was defended for the Persian king by a brave eunuch named Batis. In the course of the siege, Alexander received a severe wound in the shoulder, which irritated his savage temper. When the town was at length taken by storm, he gave no quarter. Its male inhabitants were put to the sword and the women and children sold to slavery. The eunuch Batis, being captured alive, but wounded, was dragged by the feet at the tail of a chariot, driven at full speed by Alexander himself. The "greatest of conquerors" proved himself often enough, in this way, to be the greatest of barbarians--in his age.

G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 93.

GAZA: B. C. 312. Battle between Ptolemy and Demetrius.

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 315-310.

GAZA: B. C. 100. Destruction by Alexander Jannæus.

Gaza having sided with the Egyptian king, in a war between Alexander Jannæus, one of the Asmonean kings of the Jews, and Ptolemy Lathyrus of Egypt and Cyprus, the former laid siege to the city, about 100 B. C., and acquired possession of it after several months, through treachery. He took his revenge by massacring the inhabitants and reducing the city to ruins. It was rebuilt not long afterwards by the Romans.

G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 3, chapter 9.

GAZA: A. D. 1516. Defeat of the Mamelukes by the Turks.

See TURKS: A. D. 1481-1520.

----------GAZA: End----------

GAZACA.

See ECBATANA.

GAZARI, The.

See CATHARISTS.

GAZNEVIDES, OR GHAZNEVIDES.

See TURKS: A. D. 999-1183.

GEARY ACT, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1892.

GEDDES, Jenny, and her stool.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1637.

{1417}

GEDROSIANS, The.

"Close to the Indus, and beyond the bare, hot, treeless shores of the ocean, the southern part of the plain [of eastern Iran] consists of sandy flats, in which nothing grows but prickly herbs and a few palms. The springs are a day's journey from each other, and often more. This region was possessed by a people whom Herodotus calls Sattagydæ and the companions of Alexander of Macedonia, Gedrosians. ... Neighbours of the Gandarians, who, as we know, dwelt on the right bank of the Indus down to the Cabul, the Gedrosians led a wandering, predatory life; under the Persian kings, they were united into one satrapy with the Gandarians."

M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 7, chapter 1 (volume 5).

GEIZA II., King of Hungary, A. D. 1141-1160.

GELA, Founding of.

See SYRACUSE, FOUNDING OF.

GELASIUS II., Pope, A. D. 1118-1119.

GELEONTES.

See PHYLÆ.

GELHEIM, Battle of (1298).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1273-1308.

GELONI, The.

An ancient colony of Greeks intermixed with natives which shared the country of the Budini, on the steppes between the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea.

G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, volume 3, chapter 17.

GELVES, Battle of (1510).

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1505-1510.

GEMARA, The.

See TALMUD.

GEMBLOURS, Battle of (1578).

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1577-1581.

GEMEINDE.--GEMEINDERATH.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1848-1890.

GEMOT.

A meeting, assembly, council, moot.

See WITENAGEMOT.

GENABUM, OR CENABUM.

The principal town of the Gallic tribe called the Carnutes; identified by most archæologists with the modern city of Orleans, France, though some think its site was at Gien.

See GAUL, CÆSAR'S CONQUEST OF.

GENAUNI, The.

See RHÆTIANS.

GENERAL PRIVILEGE OF ARAGON.

See CORTES, THE EARLY SPANISH.

GENERALS, Execution of the Athenian.

See GREECE: B. C. 406.

GENET, "Citizen," the mission of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1793.

GENEVA: Beginnings of the city.

See HELVETII, THE ARRESTED MIGRATION OF THE.

GENEVA: A. D. 500. Under the Burgundians.

See BURGUNDIANS: A. D. 500.

GENEVA: 10th Century. In the kingdom of Arles.

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 843-933.

GENEVA: A. D. 1401. Acquisition of the Genevois, or County, by the House of Savoy. The city surrounded.

See SAVOY: 11TH-15TH CENTURIES.

GENEVA: A. D. 1504-1535. The emancipation of the city from the Vidomme and the Prince-Bishop. Triumph of the Reformation.

"Geneva was nominally a free city of the Empire, but had in reality been governed for some centuries by its own bishop, associated with a committee of lay-assessors, and controlled by the general body of the citizens, in whose hands the ultimate power of taxation, and of election of the magistrates and regulation of the police, rested. The prince-bishop did not exercise his temporal jurisdiction directly, but through an officer called the Vidomme (vice-dominus), whose rights had in the 15th century become hereditary in the dukes of Savoy. These rights appear to have been exercised without any considerable attempt at encroachment till the beginning of the following century, when Charles III. succeeded to the ducal crown (1504). To his ambition the bishop, John, a weak and willing tool of the Savoy family, to which he was nearly allied, ceded everything; and the result was a tyrannical attempt to destroy the liberties of the Genevese. The Assembly of the citizens rose in arms; a bitter and sanguinary contest ensued between the Eidgenossen [Confederates] or Patriot party on the one side, and the Mamelukes or monarchical party on the other side. By the help of the free Helvetian states, particularly Berne and Friburg, the Patriots triumphed, the friends of Savoy were banished, the Vidommate abolished, and its powers transferred to a board of magistrates. The conduct of the bishops in this conflict ... helped greatly, as may be imagined, to shake the old hierarchical authority in Geneva; and when, in 1532, Farel first made his appearance in the city, he found a party not indisposed to join him in his eager and zealous projects of reform. He had a hard fight for it, however, and was at first obliged to yield, and leave the city for a time; and it was not till August 1535 that he and Viret and Froment succeeded in abolishing the mass, and establishing the Protestant faith."

J. Tulloch, Leaders of the Reformation, pages 161-162.

ALSO IN: J. Planta, History of the Helvetic Confederacy, book 2, chapter 6 (volume 2).

I. Spon, History of the City and State of Geneva, book 2.

See, also, SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1531-1648.

GENEVA: A. D. 1536. The coming of Calvin.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1521-1535.

GENEVA: A. D. 1536-1564. Calvin's Ecclesiastical State.

"Humanly speaking, it was a mere accident which caused Calvin to yield to the entreaties of his friends to remain in the city where he was to begin his renowned efforts in the cause of reform. Geneva had been from ancient times one of the most flourishing imperial cities of the Burgundian territory; it was situated on the frontiers of several countries where the cross roads of various nationalities met. The city, which in itself was remarkable, belonged originally to the German empire; the language of its inhabitants was Romanic; it was bounded on one side by Burgundy, on the other by German Switzerland. ... Geneva was apparently in a state of political, ecclesiastical, and moral decay. With the puritanical strictness of Geneva, as it afterwards became, before the mind's eye, it is difficult to picture the Geneva of that day. An unbridled love of pleasure, a reckless wantonness, a licentious frivolity had taken possession of Genevan life, while the State was the plaything of intestine and foreign feuds. ... Reformers had already appeared in the city: Vinet, Farel, Theodore Beza; they were Frenchmen, Farel a near neighbour of Geneva. These French Reformers are of quite a different stamp from our Germans, who, according as Luther or Melancthon is taken as their type, have either a plebeian popular, or learned theological character. They are either popular orators of great power and little polish, or they belong to the learned circles, and keep strictly to this character. In France they were mostly men belonging not to the lower, but to the middle and higher ranks of society, refined and cultivated; and in this fact lay the weakness of Calvinism, which knew well how to rule the masses, but never to gain their affection. ... {1418} His [Calvin's] greatness ... was shown in the fanatical zeal with which he entered the city, ready to stake his life for his cause. He began to teach, to found a school, to labour on the structure which was the idea of his life, to introduce reforms in doctrine, worship, the constitution and discipline of the Church, and he preached with that powerful eloquence only possessed by those in whom character and teaching are in unison. The purified worship was to take place within bare, unadorned walls; no picture of Christ, nor pomp of any kind, was to disturb the aspirations of the soul. Life outside the temple was also to be a service of God; games, swearing, dancing, singing, worldly amusements, and pleasure were regarded by him as sins, as much as real vice and crime. He began to form little congregations, like those in the early ages of the Church, and it need scarcely be said that even in this worldly and pleasure-loving city the apparition of this man, in the full vigour of life, all conviction and determination, half prophet and half tribune, produced a powerful impression. The number of his outward followers increased, but they were outward followers only. Most of them thought it would be well to make use of the bold Reformer to oppose the bishop, and that he would find means of establishing a new and independent Church, but they seemed to regard freedom as libertinism. Calvin therefore regarded the course things were taking with profound dissatisfaction. ... So he delivered some extremely severe sermons, which half frightened and half estranged his hearers; and at Easter, 1538, when the congregation came to partake of the Lord's Supper, he took the unheard-of step of sending them all back from the altar, saying, 'You are not worthy to partake of the Lord's body; you are just what you were before; your sentiments, your morals, and your conduct are unchanged.' This was more than could be hazarded without peril to his life. The effect was indescribable; his own friends disapproved of the step. But that did not dismay him. He had barely time to flee for his life, and he had to leave Geneva in a state of transition--a chaos which justified a saying of his own, that defection from one Church is not renovation by another. He was now once more an exile. He wandered about on the frontiers of his country, in the German cities of Strasburg, Basle, &c., and we several times meet with him in the religious discussions between 1540 and 1550. ... But a time came when they wished him back at Geneva. ... In September, 1541, he returned and began his celebrated labours. Endowed with supreme power, like Lycurgus at Sparta, he set to work to make Geneva a city of the Lord--to found an ecclesiastical state in which religion, public life, government, and the worship of God were to be all of a piece, and an extraordinary task it was. Calvinistic Geneva became the school of reform for western Europe, and scattered far and wide the germs of similar institutions. In times when Protestantism elsewhere had become cool, this school carried on the conflict with the mediæval Church. Calvin was implacable in his determination to purify the worship of God of all needless adjuncts. All that was calculated to charm and affect the senses was abolished; spiritual worship should be independent of all earthly things, and should consist of edification by the word, and simple spiritual songs. All the traditional externals that Luther had retained--altars, pictures, ceremonials, and decorations of every kind--were dispensed with. ... Calvin next established a system of Church discipline which controlled the individual in every relation of life, and ruled him from the cradle to the grave. He retained all the means by which ecclesiastical authority enforced obedience on the faithful in the Middle Ages--baptism, education up to confirmation, penance, penal discipline, and excommunication. ... Calvin began his labours late in the autumn of 1541, and he acquired and maintained more power than was ever exercised by the most powerful popes. He was indeed only the 'preacher of the word,' but through his great influence he was the lawgiver, the administrator, the dictator of the State of Geneva. There was nothing in the commonwealth that had not been ordained by him, and this indicates a remarkable aspect of his character. The organization of the State of Geneva began with the ordinances of the 2nd of January, 1542. There were four orders of officials--pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons. The Consistory was formed of the pastors and elders. ... It was the special duty of the Consistory, which was composed of the clergy and twelve laymen, to see that the ordinances were duly observed, and it was the supreme tribunal of morals. The twelve laymen were elected for a year, by the council of two hundred, on the nomination by the clergy. The Consistory met every Thursday to see that everything in the church was in order. They had the power of excommunication, but this only consisted in exclusion from the community of the faithful, and the loss of the privilege of partaking of the Lord's Supper. It also decided questions relating to marriage. The deacons had the care of the poor and of almsgiving. Calvin himself was the soul of the whole organization. But he was a cold, stiff, almost gloomy being, and his character produces a very different impression from the genial warmth of Luther, who could be cheerful and merry with his family. Half Old Testament prophet, half Republican demagogue, Calvin could do anything in his State, but it was by means of his personal influence, the authority of his words, 'the majesty of his character,' as was said by a magistrate of Geneva after his death. He was to the last the simple minister, whose frugal mode of life appeared to his enemies like niggardliness. After a reign of twenty-three years, he left behind him the possessions of a mendicant monk. ... No other reformer established so rigid a church discipline. ... All noisy games, games of chance, dancing, singing of profane songs, cursing and swearing, were forbidden, and ... church-going and Sabbath-keeping were strictly enjoined. The moral police took account of everything. Every citizen had to be at home by nine o'clock, under heavy penalties. Adultery, which had previously been punished by a few days' imprisonment and a small fine, was now punished by death. ... At a time when Europe had no solid results of reform to show, this little State of Geneva stood up as a great power; year by year it sent forth apostles into the world, who preached its doctrines everywhere, and it became the most dreaded counterpoise to Rome, when Rome no longer had any bulwark to defend her. ... It formed a weighty counterpoise to the desperate efforts which the ancient Church and monarchical power were making to crush the spirit of the Reformation. {1419} It was impossible to oppose Caraffa, Philip II., and the Stuarts, with Luther's passive resistance; men were wanted who were ready to wage war to the knife, and such was the Calvinistic school. It everywhere accepted the challenge; throughout all the conflicts for political and religious liberty, up to the time of the first emigration to America, in France, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland, we recognise the Genevan school. A little bit of the world's history was enacted in Geneva, which forms the proudest portion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

L. Häusser, The Period of the Reformation, chapter 18.

ALSO IN: P. Henry, Life and Times of Calvin, parts 2-3.

J. H. Merle D'Aubigne, History of the Reformation in the time of Calvin, books 9 and 11.

F. P. Guizot, Calvin, chapters 12-22.

L. von Ranke, Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, 16th-17th Centuries, chapter 8.

GENEVA: A. D. 1570. Treaty with the Duke of Savoy. Agreement of non-molestation.

See SAVOY: A. D. 1559-1580.

GENEVA: A. D. 1602-1603. The escalade of the Savoyards and its repulse. Treaty of St. Julien.

Finding a pretext in some hostile manifestations which had appeared among the Genevese during a conflict between the French king and himself, Charles Emanuel I., duke of Savoy, chose to consider himself at war with Geneva, and "determined to fight out his quarrel without further notice. The night of the 11th to the 12th of December, 1602.. is forever memorable in the annals of Geneva. 4,000 Savoyards, aided by darkness, attempted the escalade of its walls; an unforeseen accident disconcerted them; the citizens exhibited the most heroic presence of mind; the ladders by which the aggressors ascended were shot down by a random cannon-ball; the troops outside fell into confusion; those who had already entered the town were either mowed down in fight or hung on the scaffold on the morrow; thus the whole enterprise miscarried. It was in vain that the Duke came forward with his whole host, and tried to prevail by open force where stratagem had failed. He was thwarted by the intervention of the French and Swiss, and compelled by their threats to sign the Treaty of St. Julien (July 21st, 1603), which secured the independence of the Genevese. Charles nevertheless did not, to his last day, give up his designs upon that city."

A. Gallenga, History of Piedmont, volume 3, chapter 2.

GENEVA: A. D. 1798. Forcibly united to the French Republic.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1792-1798.

GENEVA: A. D. 1814. United with the Swiss Confederation.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1803-1848.

GENEVA: A. D. 1815. United as a canton to the Swiss Confederation, by the Congress of Vienna.

See VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

----------GENEVA: End----------

GENEVA CONVENTION, The.

See RED CROSS.

GENEVA TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION.

See ALABAMA CLAIMS: A. D. 1871, and 1871-1872.

GENEVOIS, The.

See SAVOY AND PIEDMONT: 11TH-15TH CENTURIES.

GENGHIS KHAN, The conquests of.

See MONGOLS: A. D. 1153-1227.

GENOA: Origin and rise of the city.

"Genoa, anciently Genua, was the chief maritime city of Liguria, and afterwards a Roman municipium. Under the Lombards the constant invasions of the Saracens united the professions of trade and war, and its greatest merchants became also its greatest generals, while its naval captains were also merchants. The Crusades were of great advantage to Genoa [see CRUSADES: A. D. 1104-1111] in enabling it to establish trading settlements as far as the Black Sea; but the power of Pisa in the East, as well as its possession of Corsica and Sardinia, led to wars between it and Genoa, in which the Genoese took Corsica [see CORSICA: EARLY HISTORY] and drove the Pisans out of Sardinia. By land the Genoese territory was extended to Nice on one side and to Spezia on the other."

A. J. C. Hare, Cities of Northern and Central Italy, volume 1, page 30.

GENOA: A. D. 1256-1257. Battles with the Venetians at Acre.

See VENICE: A. D. 1256-1257.

GENOA: A. D. 1261-1299. The supplanting of Venice at Constantinople and in the Black Sea trade. Colonies in the Crimea. Wars with Venice. Victory at Curzola and favorable treaty of peace.

During the Latin dynasty in Constantinople the Genoese never gained the first place in the commerce of the Black Sea. ... It was Venice who held the key of all this commerce, at Constantinople; when, after diverting the whole course of the fourth Crusade, she induced Christendom to waste its energies on subduing the Greek empire for her benefit [see BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A.D. 1203-1204]. With the exiled Greek dynasty, however, the Genoese were always on the best of terms, at Trebizond, Nicea, and in Roumania; and recognizing that as long as the Latins were all-powerful in Constantinople she would have to relinquish the cream of the Black Sea commerce to the Queen of the Adriatic, she at length determined to strike a bold stroke and replace a Greek again on the throne." This was accomplished in 1261, when Baldwin II. fled from the Byzantine capital and Michael Paleologus took possession of his throne and crown (see GREEK EMPIRE OF NICÆA: A. D. 1204-1261). For the assistance given in that revolution, the Genoese obtained the treaty of Ninfeo, "which firmly established their influence in the Black Sea. ... Thus did the brave mariner-town of Genoa turn the scale of the vast, but rotten, Eastern Empire; and her reward was manifold. The grateful emperor gave her streets and quays in Constantinople, immunity from tribute, and a free passage for her commerce. ... In addition to these excellent terms in the treaty of Ninfeo, the emperor conceded to various Genoese private families numerous islands in the Archipelago. ... But the great nucleus of this power was the streets, churches, and quays in Constantinople which were allotted to the Genoese, and formed a vast emporium of strength and commerce, which must have eventually led to entire possession of Constantinople, had not the 'podesta,' or ruler of the Genoese colony there, thought fit, from personal motives, or from large offers made him by the Venetians, to attempt a restoration of the Latin line. ... His conspiracy was discovered, and the Genoese were sent away in a body to Eraclea. However, on representation from home that it was none of their doing, and that Guercio had been acting entirely on his own account, the emperor yielded in perpetuity to the Genoese the town of Pera, on the sole condition that the governors should do him homage [see, also, CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1261-1453]. ... {1420} Thus were the Genoese established in this commanding position; here they had a separate government of their own, from here they ruled the road of commerce from China to Europe; and, taking advantage of the weakness of the emperors, they were able to do much as they wished about building fortresses and palaces, with gardens to the water's edge; and thus from Pera, with its citadel of Galata behind it, they were enabled to dictate what terms they pleased to ships passing to and from the Bosphorus." In the Black Sea, "from time immemorial, the small tongue of land now known as the Crimea, then as the Tauric Chersonese, was the mart towards which all the caravan trade of Asia was directed by this northern road, and upon this tongue of land sprang up a group of noble cities which, until finally seized by the Turks, were without exception Genoese property. Of these, Caffa was the chief. When this city was built on the ruins of Theodosia, and by whom, is somewhat shrouded in mystery. Certain it is that Genoa had a colony here soon after the first Crusade. ... Second only to Caffa in importance, and better known to us by name, was the town of Crim, which gave its name eventually to the whole peninsula, which originally it had got from the Crim Tatars. ... Prior to its cession to the Genoese, it had been the residence of a Tatar emperor. ... Here, then, in this narrow tongue of land, which we now call the Crimea, was the kernel of Genoese prosperity. As long as she flourished here she flourished at home. And when at length the Turkish scourge swept over this peninsula and swallowed up her colonies, the Ligurian Republic, by a process of slow decay, withered like a sapless tree." The supplanting of the Venetians at Constantinople by the Genoese, and the great advantages gained by the latter in the commerce of the Black Sea, led necessarily to war between the rival republics. "To maintain her newly acquired influence in the East, Genoa sent forth a fleet under the joint command of Pierino Grimaldi, a noble, and Perchelto Mallone, the people's representative. They encountered the Venetian squadron at Malvasia [1263] which was greatly inferior to their own. But as the combatants were just warming to their work, Mallone, actuated by party spirit, withdrew his ships and sailed away. The Venetians could scarcely believe what they saw; they anticipated some deep laid stratagem, and withdrew for a while from the contest. When however they beheld Mallone's galleys fairly under sail, they wonderingly attacked Grimaldi and his 13 ships and obtained an easy victory. Grimaldi fell at his post. ... This fatal day of Malvasia [sometimes called the battle of Sette Pozzi] might easily have secured Venice her lost place in the Black Sea had she been able to follow up her victory, but with inexplicable want of vigour she remained inactive." Genoa, meantime, recovered from the disaster and sent out another fleet which captured a rich squadron of Venetian merchant ships in the Adriatic, taking large booty. "It surprises us immensely to find how for the next thirty years Genoa was able to keep up a desultory warfare with Venice, when she was at the height of her struggle with Pisa; and it surprises us still more that Venice raised not a hand to assist Pisa, though she was on most friendly terms with her, and when by so doing she could have ruined Genoa. ... After the fall of Pisa at Meloria, in 1296 [1284], Genoa could transfer her attention with all the greater vigour to her contest against Venice. Four years after this victory men's minds were again bent on war. Venice cared not to pay a tax to her rival on all ships which went to Caffa, Genoa resented the treatment she had received in Cyprus, and thus the rivals prepared for another and more determined contest for supremacy." The Venetians sent a fleet to operate in the Black Sea. "Fire was set to the houses of Galata, irreparable damage was done to Caffa, and in the Archipelago everything Genoese was burnt, and then off they sailed for Cyprus, whilst the Genoese were squabbling amongst themselves. With much trouble the many rulers of Genoa succeeded at length in adjusting their difference, and a goodly array of 76 galleys was entrusted to the care of Lamba D'Oria to punish the Venetians for their depredations. ... Much larger was the force Venice produced for the contest, and when the combatants met off Curzola, amongst the Dalmatian islands, the Genoese were anxious to come to terms, and sought them, but the Venetians haughtily refused. ... This battle of Curzola [September 8, 1298] was a sharp and vehement struggle, and resulted in terrible loss to the Venetians, four of whose galleys alone escaped to tell the tale. ... Had Lamba D'Oria but driven the contest home, Venice was ill-prepared to meet him; as it was, he determined to sail off to Genoa, taking with him the Venetian admiral ... Dandolo. Chained to the mast of his own vessel, and unable to sustain the effects of his humiliation, there, as he stood, Dandolo dashed his head against the mast and died. ... The natural result of such a victory was a most favourable peace for Genoa, signed under the direction of Matteo Visconti, lord of Milan, in 1299; and thus the century closed on Genoa as without doubt the most powerful state in Italy, and unquestionably the mistress of the Mediterranean. ... The next outbreak of war between the two Republics had its origin in the occupation of the island of Chios, in 1349," and Genoa in that struggle encountered not the Venetians alone, but the Greeks and Catalans in alliance with them.

See CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1348-1355.

J. T. Bent, Genoa: How the Republic rose and fell, chapters 6 and 8.

ALSO IN: W. C. Hazlitt, History of the Venetian Republic, chapter 11 (volume 2).

GENOA: A. D. 1282-1290. War with Pisa. The great victory of Meloria. Capture of the chain of the Pisan harbor.

See PISA: A. D. 1063-1293.

GENOA: A. D. 1313. Alliance with the Emperor Henry VII. against Naples.

See ITALY: A. D. 1310-1313.

GENOA: A. D. 1318-1319. Feuds of the four great families. Siege of the city by the exiles and the Lombard princes, and its defense by the King of Naples.

See ITALY: A. D. 1313-1330.

GENOA: A. D. 1348-1355. War with the Greeks, Venetians and Aragonese.

See CONSTANTINOPLE: AD. 1348-1355.

GENOA: A. D. 1353. Annexed by the Visconti to their Milanese principality.

See MILAN: A. D. 1277-1447.

GENOA: A. D. 1378-1379. Renewed war with Venice. The victory at Pola.

See VENICE: A. D. 1378-1379.

{1421}

GENOA: A. D. 1379-1381. The disastrous war of Chioggia. Venice triumphant.

See VENICE: A. D. 1379-1381.

GENOA: A. D. 1381-1422. A succession of foreign masters. The King of France, the Marquis of Monferrat and the Duke of Milan.

The history of Genoa for more than a century after the disastrous War of Chioggia "is one long and melancholy tissue of internal and external troubles, coming faster and faster upon one another as the inherent vitality of the Republic grew weaker. ... During this period we have a constant and unhealthy craving for foreign masters, be they Marquises of Monferrato, Dukes of Milan, or the more formidable subverters of freedom, the kings of France. ... In 1396 ... Adorno [then doge of Genoa], finding himself unable to tyrannize as he wished, decided on handing over the government to Charles VI. of France. In this he was ably backed up by many members of the old nobility, as the signatures to the treaty testify. The king was to be entitled 'Defender of the Commune and People,' and was to respect in every way the existing order of things. So on the 27th of November, in that year, the great bell in the tower of the ducal palace was rung, the French standard was raised by the side of the red cross of Genoa, and in the great council hall, where her rulers had sat for centuries, now sat enthroned the French ambassadors, whilst Antoniotto Adorno handed over to them the sceptre and keys of the city. These symbols of government were graciously restored to him, with the admonition that he should no longer be styled 'doge,' but 'governor' in the name of France. Thus did Adorno sell his country for the love of power, preferring to be the head of many slaves, rather than to live as a subordinate in a free community. The first two governors sent by France after Adorno's death were unable to cope with the seething mass of corruption they found within the city walls, until the Marshal Boucicault was sent, whose name was far famed for cruelty in Spain against the Moors, in Bulgaria against the Turks, and in France against the rebels." The government of Boucicault was hard and cruel, and "his name is handed down by the Genoese as the most hateful of her many tyrants." In 1409 they took advantage of his absence from the city to bring in the Marquis of Monferrato, who established himself in his place. "It was but for a brief period that the Genoese submitted to the Marquis of Monferrato; they preferred to return to their doges and internal quarrels. ... Throughout the city nothing was heard but the din of arms. Brother fought against brother, father against son, and for the whole of an unusually chill December, in 1414, there was not a by-path in Genoa which was not paved with lances, battle-axes and dead bodies. ... Out of this fiery trial Genoa at length emerged with Tommaso Campofregoso as her doge, one of the few bright lights which illumined Liguria during the early part of this century. ... The Genoese arms during this time of quiescence again shone forth with something of their ancient brilliancy. Corsica was subdued, and a substantial league was formed with Henry V. of England, ... 1421, by which perpetual friendship and peace by land and sea was sworn. Short, however, was the period during which Genoa could rest contented at home. Campofregoso was driven from the dogeship, and Filippo Maria, Visconti of Milan, was appointed protector of the Republic [1422], and through this allegiance the Genoese were drawn into an unprofitable war for the succession in Naples, in which the Duke of Milan and the Pope supported the claims of Queen Joanna and her adopted son, Louis of Anjou, against Alphonso of Aragon."

J. T. Bent, Genoa, chapter 9.

The Universal History, chapter 73, sections 3-4 (volume 25).

GENOA: A. D. 1385-1386. Residence of Pope Urban VI.

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1343-1389.

GENOA: A. D. 1407-1448. The Bank of St. George.

"The Bank of St. George was founded in Genoa in the year 1407. It was an immense success and a great support to the government. It gradually became a republic within the republic, more peaceful and better regulated than its mistress." In 1448 the administration of Corsica and of the Genoese colonies in the Levant was transferred to the Bank, which thenceforward appointed governors and conducted colonial affairs.

G. B. Malleson, Studies from Genoese History, page 75.

ALSO IN: J. T. Bent, Genoa, chapter 11.

See, also, CORSICA: EARLY HISTORY.

GENOA: A. D. 1421-1435. Submission to the Duke of Milan, and recovery of the freedom of the city.

See ITALY: A. D. 1412-1447.

GENOA: A. D. 1458-1464. Renewed struggles of domestic faction and changes of foreign masters. Submission to the Dukes of Milan.

"Genoa, wearied with internal convulsions, which followed each other incessantly, had lost all influence over the rest of Italy; continually oppressed by faction, it no longer preserved even the recollection of liberty. In 1458, it had submitted to the king of France, then Charles VII.; and John of Anjou, duke of Calabria, had come to exercise the functions of governor in the king's name. He made it, at the same time, his fortress, from whence to attack the kingdom of Naples.

See ITALY: A. D. 1447-1480.

But this war had worn out the patience of the Genoese; they rose against the French; and, on the 17th of July, 1461, destroyed the army sent to subdue them by René of Anjou. The Genoese had no sooner thrown off a foreign yoke than they became divided into two factions,--the Adorni and the Fregosi, [severally partisans of two families of that name which contended for the control of the republic]: both had at different times, and more than once, given them a doge. The more violent and tyrannical of these factious magistrates was Paolo Fregoso, also archbishop of Genoa, who had returned to his country, in 1462, as chief of banditti; and left it again, two years afterwards, as chief of a band of pirates. The Genoese, disgusted with their independence, which was disgraced by so many crimes and disturbances, had, on the 13th of April, 1464, yielded to Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan; and afterwards remained subject to his son Galeazzo."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics, chapter 11.

ALSO IN: B. Duffy, The Tuscan Republics, chapter 23.

GENOA: A. D. 1475. Loss of possessions in the Crimea.

See TURKS: A. D. 1451-1481.

{1422}

GENOA: A. D. 1500-1507. Capitulation to Louis XII. of France, conqueror of Milan. Revolt and subjugation.

By the conquest of Milan (see ITALY: A. D. 1499-1500), Louis XII. of France acquired the signoria of Genoa, which had been held by the deposed duke, Ludovico Sforza. "According to the capitulation, one half of the magistrates of Genoa should be noble, the other half plebeian. They were to be chosen by the suffrages of their fellow-citizens; they were to retain the government of the whole of Liguria, and the administration of their own finances, with the reservation of a fixed sum payable yearly to the king of France. But the French could never comprehend that nobles were on an equality with villains; that a king was bound by conditions imposed by his subjects; or that money could be refused to him who had force. All the capitulations of Genoa were successively violated; while the Genoese nobles ranged themselves on the side of a king against their country: they were known to carry insolently about them a dagger, on which was inscribed, 'Chastise villains'; so impatient were they to separate themselves from the people, even by meanness and assassination. That people could not support the double yoke of a foreign master and of nobles who betrayed their country. On the 7th of February, 1507, they revolted, drove out the French, proclaimed the republic, and named a new doge; but time failed them to organize their defence. On the 3d of April, Louis advanced from Grenoble with a powerful army. He soon arrived before Genoa: the newly-raised militia, unable to withstand veteran troops, were defeated. Louis entered Genoa on the 29th of April; and immediately sent the doge and the greater number of the generous citizens, who had signalized themselves in the defence of their country, to the scaffold."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics, chapter 14.

ALSO IN: L. von Ranke, History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514, page 260.

GENOA: A. D. 1527-1528. French dominion momentarily restored and then overthrown by Andrew Doria. The republic revived.

See ITALY: A. D. 1527-1529.

GENOA: A. D. 1528-1559. The conspiracy of Fiesco and its failure. Revolt and recovery of Corsica.

"Sustained by the ability of Doria, and protected by the arms of Charles V., the Republic, during near nineteen years subsequent to this auspicious revolution, continued in the enjoyment of dignified independence and repose. But, the memorable conspiracy of Louis Fiesco, Count of Lavagna, the Catiline of Liguria, had nearly subverted Genoa, and reduced it anew to the obedience of France, or exposed it once more to all the misfortunes of anarchy. The massacre of Doria and his family constituted one of the primary objects of the plot; while the dissimulation, intrepidity, and capacity, which marked its leader ... have rendered the attempt one of the most extraordinary related in modern history. It was accompanied with complete success till the moment of its termination. Jeannetin Doria, the heir of that house, having perished by the dagger, and Andrew, his uncle, being with difficulty saved by his servants, who transported him out of the city, the Genoese Senate was about to submit unconditionally to Fiesco, when that nobleman, by a sudden and accidental death, at once rendered abortive his own hopes and those of his followers. The government, resuming courage, expelled the surviving conspirators; and Doria, on his return to the city, sullied the lustre of his high character, by proceeding to acts of cruelty against the brothers and adherents of the Count of Lavagna. Notwithstanding this culpable and vindictive excess, he continued invariably firm to the political principles which he had inculcated, for maintaining the freedom of the Commonwealth. Philip, Prince of Spain, son of Charles V., having visited Genoa in the succeeding year, attempted to induce the senate, under specious pretences of securing their safety, to consent to the construction of a citadel, garrisoned by Spaniards. But he found in that assembly, as well as in Doria, an insurmountable opposition to the measure, which was rejected with unanimous indignation. The island of Corsica, which had been subjected for ages to Genoa, and which was oppressed by a tyrannical administration, took up arms at this period [1558-1559]; and the French having aided the insurgents, they maintained a long and successful struggle against their oppressors. But the peace concluded at Cateau between Philip, King of Spain, and Henry II., in which the Spanish court dictated terms to France, obliged that nation to evacuate their Corsican acquisitions, and to restore the island to the Genoese.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1547-1559.

Soon afterwards [1559], at the very advanced age of ninety, Andrew Doria expired in his own palace, surrounded by the people on whom he had conferred freedom and tranquillity; leaving the Commonwealth in domestic repose and undisturbed by foreign war."

Sir N. W. Wraxall, History of France, 1574-1610, volume 2, pages 43-44.

ALSO IN: G. B. Malleson, Studies from Genoese History, chapter 1-3.

GENOA: A. D. 1625-1626. Unsuccessful attack by France and Savoy.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1624-1626.

GENOA: A. D. 1745. The republic sides with Spain and France in the War of the Austrian Succession.

See ITALY: A. D. 1745.

GENOA: A. D. 1746-1747. Surrendered to the Austrians. Popular rising. Expulsion of the Austrian garrison. Long siege and deliverance of the city.

See ITALY: A. D. 1746-1747.

GENOA: A. D. 1748. Territory secured by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

See AIX-LA-CHAPELLE: A. D. 1748.

GENOA: A. D. 1768. Cession of Corsica to France.

See CORSICA: A. D. 1729-1769.

GENOA: A. D. 1796. Treaty of peace with France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (OCTOBER).

GENOA: A. D. 1797. Revolution forced by Bonaparte. Creation of the Ligurian Republic.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (MAY-OCTOBER).

GENOA: A. D. 1800. Siege by the Austrians. Masséna's defense. Surrender of the city.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (MAY-FEBRUARY).

GENOA: A. D. 1805. Surrender of independence. Annexation to France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1804-1805.

GENOA: A. D. 1814. Reduction of the forts by English troops. Surrender of the French garrison.

See ITALY: A. D. 1814.

GENOA: A. D. 1814-1815. Annexation to the kingdom of Sardinia.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (APRIL-JUNE); and VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

----------GENOA: End----------

GENOLA, Battle of (1799).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).

{1423}

GENS, GENTES, GENTILES.

"When Roman history begins, there were within the city, and subordinate to the common city government, a large number of smaller bodies, each of which preserved its individuality and some semblance of governmental machinery. These were clans [gens], and in prehistoric times each of them is taken to have had an independent political existence, living apart, worshiping its own gods, and ruled over by its own chieftain. This clan organization is not supposed to have been peculiar at all to Rome, but ancient society in general was composed of an indefinite number of such bodies, which, at the outset, treated with each other in a small way as nations might treat with each other to-day. It needs to be noted, however, that, at any rate, so far as Rome is concerned, this is a matter of inference, not of historical proof. The earliest political divisions in Latium of which we have any trace consisted of such clans united into communities. If they ever existed, separately, therefore their union must have been deliberate and artificial, and the body thus formed was the canton ('civitas' or 'populus'). Each canton had a fixed common stronghold ('capitolium,' 'height,' or 'arx'--cf. 'arceo' --'citadel') situated on some central elevation. The clans dwelt around in hamlets ('vici' or 'pagi') scattered through the canton. Originally, the central stronghold was not a place of residence like the 'pagi,' but a place of refuge ... and a place of meeting. ... In all of this, therefore, the clan seems to lie at the very foundation. ... Any clan in the beginning, of course, must have been simply a family. When it grew so large as to be divided into sections, the sections were known as families ('familiæ') and their union was the clan. In this view the family, as we find it existing in the Roman state, was a subdivision of the clan. In other words, historically, families did not unite to form clans, but the clan was the primitive thing, and the families were its branches. Men thus recognized kinship of a double character. They were related to all the members of their clan as 'gentiles,' and again more closely to all the members of their branch of the clan at once as 'gentiles' and also as 'agnati.' As already stated, men belonged to the same family ('agnati') when they could trace their descent through males from a common ancestor who gave its name to the family, or, what is the same thing, was its eponym. Between the members of a clan the chief evidence of relationship in historical times was tradition. ... We have thus outlined what is known as the patriarchal theory of society, and hinted at its application to certain facts in Roman history. It should be remembered, however, that it is only a theory, and that it is open to some apparent and to some real criticism."

A. Tighe, Development of the Roman Constitution, chapter 2.

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 1, chapter 5.

"The patricians were divided into certain private associations, called Gentes, which we may translate Houses or Clans. All the members of each Gens were called gentiles; and they bore the same name, which always ended in -ius; as for instance, every member of the Julian Gens was a Julius; every member of the Cornelian Gens was a Cornelius, and so on. Now in every Gens there were a number of Families which were distinguished by a name added to the name of the Gens. Thus the Scipios, Sullas, Cinnas, Cethegi, Lentuli, were all families of the Cornelian Gens. Lastly, every person of every Family was denoted by a name prefixed to the name of the Gens. The name of the person was, in Latin, prænomen; that of the Gens or House, nomen, that of the Family, cognomen. Thus Caius Julius Cæsar was a person of the Cæsar Family in the Julian Gens; Lucius Cornelius Scipio was a person of the Scipio Family in the Cornelian Gens; and so forth."

H. G. Liddell, History of Rome, book 1, chapter 3.

"There is no word in the English language which satisfactorily renders the Latin word 'gens.' The term 'clan' is apt to mislead; for the Scotch Highland clans were very different from the Roman 'gentes.' The word 'House' is not quite correct, for it always implies relationship, which was not essential in the 'gens'; but for want of a better word we shall use 'House' to express 'gens,' except where the spirit of the language rejects the term and requires 'family' instead. The German language has in the word 'Geschlecht' an almost equivalent term for the Latin 'gens'."

W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 1, chapter 13, foot-note.

ALSO IN: Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City, book 2, chapter 10.

On the Greek gens, see PHYLÆ.

GENSERIC AND THE VANDALS.

See VANDALS: A. D. 429-439.

GENTILES.

See GENS.

GENUCIAN LAW, The.

A law which prohibited the taking of interest for loans is said to have been adopted at Rome, B. C. 342, on the proposal of the tribune Genucius; but modern historians are skeptical as to the actual enactment of the law.

W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 3, chapter 5.

GEOK TEPE, Siege and capture of (1881).

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1869-1881.

GEOMORI, OR GAMORI, The.

"As far as our imperfect information enables us to trace, these early oligarchies of the Grecian states, against which the first usurping despots contended, contained in themselves more repulsive elements of inequality, and more mischievous barriers between the component parts of the population, than the oligarchies of later days. ... The oligarchy was not (like the government so denominated in subsequent times) the government of a rich few over the less rich and the poor, but that of a peculiar order, sometimes a Patrician order, over all the remaining society. ... The country-population, or villagers who tilled the land, seem in these early times to have been held to a painful dependence on the great proprietors who lived in the fortified town, and to have been distinguished by a dress and habits of their own, which often drew upon them an unfriendly nickname. ... The governing proprietors went by the name of the Gamori, or Geomori, according as the Doric or Ionic dialect might be used in describing them, since they were found in states belonging to one race as well as to the other. They appear to have constituted a close order, transmitting their privileges to their children, but admitting no new members to a participation. The principle called by Greek thinkers a Timocracy (the apportionment of political rights and privileges according to comparative property) seems to have been little, if at all, applied in the earlier times. We know no example of it earlier than Solon."

G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 9.

GEONIM, The.

See JEWS: 7TH CENTURY.

GEORGE I., King of England (first of the Hanoverian or Brunswick line), A. D. 1714-1727.

George II., King of England," 1727-1760.

George III., King of England, 1760-1820.

George IV., King of England, 1820-1830.

George Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, 1458-1471.

George William, Elector of Brandenburg, 1619-1640.

----------GEORGE: End----------

{1424}

GEORGIA: The Aboriginal Inhabitants.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: APALACHES, MUSKHOGEAN FAMILY, CHEROKEES.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1539-1542. Traversed by Hernando de Soto.

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1528-1542.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1629. Embraced in the Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1629.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1663. Embraced in the Carolina grant to Monk, Clarendon, and others.

See NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1663-1670.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1732-1739. Oglethorpe's colony.

"Among the members of Parliament during the rule of Sir Robert Walpole was one almost unknown to us now, but deserving of honour beyond most men of his time. His name was James Oglethorpe. He was a soldier, and had fought against the Turks and in the great Marlborough wars against Louis XIV. In advanced life he became the friend of Samuel Johnson. Dr. Johnson urged him to write some account of his adventures. 'I know no one,' he said, 'whose life would be more interesting: if I were furnished with materials I should be very glad to write it.' Edmund Burke considered him 'a more extraordinary person than any he had ever read of.' John Wesley 'blessed God that ever he was born.' Oglethorpe attained the great age of ninety-six, and died in the year 1785. ... In Oglethorpe's time it was in the power of a creditor to imprison, according to his pleasure, the man who owed him money and was not able to pay it. It was a common circumstance that a man should be imprisoned during a long series of years for a trifling debt. Oglethorpe had a friend upon whom this hard fate had fallen. His attention was thus painfully called to the cruelties which were inflicted upon the unfortunate and helpless. He appealed to Parliament, and after inquiry a partial remedy was obtained. The benevolent exertions of Oglethorpe procured liberty for multitudes who but for him might have ended their lives in captivity. This, however, did not content him. Liberty was an incomplete gift to men who had lost, or perhaps had scarcely ever possessed, the faculty of earning their own maintenance. Oglethorpe devised how lie might carry these unfortunates to a new world, where, under happier auspices, they might open a fresh career. He obtained [A. D. 1732] from King George II. a charter by which the country between the Savannah and the Alatamaha, and stretching westward to the Pacific, was erected into the province of Georgia. It was to be a refuge for the deserving poor, and next to them for Protestants suffering persecution. Parliament voted £10,000 in aid of the humane enterprise, and many benevolent persons were liberal with their gifts. In November the first exodus of the insolvent took place. Oglethorpe sailed with 120 emigrants, mainly selected from the prisons--penniless, but of good repute. He surveyed the coasts of Georgia, and chose a site for the capital of his new State. He pitched his tent where Savannah now stands, and at once proceeded to mark out the line of streets and squares. Next year the colony was joined by about a hundred German Protestants, who were then under persecution for their beliefs. ... The fame of Oglethorpe's enterprise spread over Europe. All struggling men, against whom the battle of life went hard, looked to Georgia as a land of promise. They were the men who most urgently required to emigrate; but they were not always the men best fitted to conquer the difficulties of the immigrant's life. The progress of the colony was slow. The poor persons of whom it was originally composed were honest but ineffective, and could not in Georgia more than in England find out the way to become self-supporting. Encouragements were given which drew from Germany, from Switzerland, and from the Highlands of Scotland men of firmer texture of mind--better fitted to subdue the wilderness and bring forth its treasures. With Oglethorpe there went out, on his second expedition to Georgia [1736], the two brothers John and Charles Wesley. Charles went as secretary to the Governor. John was even then, although a very young man, a preacher of unusual promise. ... He spent two years in Georgia, and these were unsuccessful years. His character was unformed; his zeal out of proportion to his discretion. The people felt that he preached 'personal satires' at them. He involved himself in quarrels, and at last had to leave the colony secretly, fearing arrest at the instance of some whom he had offended. He returned to begin his great career in England, with the feeling that his residence in Georgia had been of much value to himself, but of very little to the people whom he sought to benefit. Just as Wesley reached England, his fellow-labourer George Whitefield sailed for Georgia. ... He founded an Orphan-House at Savannah, and supported it by contributions--obtained easily from men under the power of his unequalled eloquence. He visited Georgia very frequently, and his love for that colony remained with him to the last. Slavery was, at the outset, forbidden in Georgia. It was opposed to the gospel, Oglethorpe said, and therefore not to be allowed. He foresaw, besides, what has been so bitterly experienced since, that slavery must degrade the poor white labourer. But soon a desire sprung up among the less scrupulous of the settlers to have the use of slaves. Within seven years from the first landing, slave-ships were discharging their cargo at Savannah."

R. Mackenzie, America: A History, book 1, chapter 10.

ALSO IN: T. M. Harris, Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe, chapters 1-10.

R. Wright, Memoir of General James Oglethorpe, chapters 1-9.

For text of charter, etc., see in

G. White, Historical Collections of Georgia, pages. 1-20.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1734. The settlement of the Salzburgers.

"As early as October the 12th, 1732, the 'Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge' expressed to the Trustees a desire 'that the persecuted Salzburgers should have an asylum provided for them in Georgia.' ... These Germans belonged to the Archbishopric of Salzburg, then the most eastern district of Bavaria; but now forming a detached district in upper Austria, and called Salzburg from the broad valley of the Salzer, which is made by the approximating of the Norric and Rhetian Alps. Their ancestors, the Vallenges of Piedmont, had been compelled by the barbarities of the Dukes of Savoy, to find a shelter from the storms of persecution in the Alpine passes and vales of Salzburg and the Tyrol, before the Reformation; and frequently since had they been hunted out by the hirelings and soldiery of the Church of Rome. ... {1425} The quietness which they had enjoyed for nearly half a century was now rudely broken in upon by Leopold, Count of Firmian and Archbishop of Salzburg, who determined to reduce them to the Papal faith and power. He began in the year 1729, and, ere he ended in 1732, not far from 30,000 had been driven from their homes, to seek among the Protestant States of Europe that charity and peace which were denied them in the glens and fastnesses of their native Alps. More than two-thirds settled in the Prussian States; the rest spread themselves over England, Holland, and other Protestant countries. Thrilling is the story of their exile. The march of these Salzburgers constitutes an epoch in the history of Germany. ... The sympathies of Reformed Christendom were awakened on their behalf, and the most hospitable entertainment and assistance were everywhere given them." Forty-two families, numbering 78 persons, accepted an invitation to settle in Georgia, receiving allotments of land and provisions until they could gather a harvest. They arrived at Savannah in March, 1734, and were settled at a spot which they selected for themselves, about thirty miles in the interior. "Oglethorpe marked out for them a town; ordered workmen to assist in building houses; and soon the whole body of Germans went up to their new home at Ebenezer."

W. B. Stevens, History of Georgia, book 2, chapter 2 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: F. Shoberl, Persecutions of Popery, chapter 9 (volume 2).

_E. B. Speirs, The Salzburgers (English History Review, October, 1890)._

GEORGIA: A. D. 1735-1749. The Slavery question. Original exclusion and subsequent admission of negro slaves.

Among the fundamental regulations of the Trustees was one prohibiting negro slavery in the colony. "It was policy and not philanthropy which prohibited slavery; for, though one of the Trustees, in a sermon to recommend charity, declared, 'Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of our own species as our wealth and possessions'; and though Oglethorpe himself, speaking of slavery as against 'the gospel as well as the fundamental law of England', asserted, 'we refused, as Trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid crime'; yet in the official publications of that body its inhibition is based only on political and prudential, and not on humane and liberal grounds; and even Oglethorpe owned a plantation and negroes near Parachucla in South Carolina, about forty miles above Savannah. ... Their [the Trustees'] design was to provide for poor but honest persons, to erect a barrier between South Carolina and the Spanish settlements, and to establish a wine and silk-growing colony. It was thought by the Trustees that neither of these designs could be secured if slavery was introduced. ... But while the Trustees disallowed negroes, they instituted a system of white slavery which was fraught with evil to the servants and to the colony. These were white servants, consisting of Welch, English, or German, males and females--families and individuals--who were indented to individuals or the Trustees, for a period of from four to fourteen years. ... On arriving in Georgia, their service was sold for the term of indenture, or apportioned to the inhabitants by the magistrates, as their necessities required. ... Two years had not elapsed since the landing of Oglethorpe before many complaints originated from this cause; and in the summer of 1735 a petition, signed by seventeen freeholders, setting forth the unprofitableness of white servants, and the necessity for negroes, was carried by Mr. Hugh Sterling to the Trustees, who, however, resented the appeal as an insult to their honour. ... The plan for substituting white for black labour failed through the sparseness of the supply and the refractoriness of the servants. As a consequence of the inability of the settlers to procure adequate help, the lands granted them remained uncleared, and even those which the temporary industry of the first occupants prepared remained uncultivated. ... There accumulated on the Trustees' hands a body of idle, clamourous, mischief-making men, who employed their time in declaiming against the very government whose charity both fed and clothed them. ... For nearly fifteen years from 1735, the date of the first petition for negroes, and the date of their express law against their importation, the Trustees refused to listen to any similar representations, except to condemn them," and they were supported by the Salzburgers and the Highlanders, both of whom opposed the introduction of negro slaves. But finally, in 1749, the firmness of the Trustees gave way and they yielded to the clamor of the discontented colony. The importation of black slaves was permitted, under certain regulations intended to diminish the evils of the institution. "The change in the tenure of grants, and the permission to hold slaves, had an immediate effect on the prosperity of the colony."

W. B. Stevens, History of Georgia, book 2, chapter 9 (volume 1).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1738-1743. War with the Spaniards of Florida. Discontents in the colony.

"The assiento enjoyed under the treaty of Utrecht by the English South Sea Company, the privilege, that is, of transporting to the Spanish colonies a certain number of slaves annually, ... was made a cover for an extensive smuggling trade on the part of the English, into which private merchants also entered. ... To guard against these systematic infractions of their laws, the Spaniards maintained a numerous fleet of vessels in the preventive service, known as 'guarda costas,' by which some severities were occasionally exercised on suspected or detected smugglers. These severities, grossly exaggerated, and resounded throughout the British dominions, served to revive in England and the colonies a hatred of the Spaniards, which, since the time of Philip II., had never wholly died out. Such was the temper and position of the two nations when the colonization of Georgia was begun, of which one avowed object was to erect a barrier against the Spaniards, among whom the runaway slaves of South Carolina were accustomed to find shelter, receiving in Florida an assignment of lands, and being armed and organized into companies, as a means of strengthening that feeble colony. A message sent to St. Augustine to demand the surrender of the South Carolina runaways met with a point blank refusal, and the feeling against the Spaniards ran very high in consequence. ... Oglethorpe ... returned from his second visit to England [Sept. 1738], with a newly-enlisted regiment of soldiers, and the appointment, also, of military commander for Georgia and the Carolinas, with orders 'to give no offense, but to repel force by force.' Both in Spain and England the administrators of the government were anxious for peace. ... The ferocious clamors of the merchants and the mob ... absolutely forced Walpole into a war.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1739-1741.--THE WAR OF JENKINS' EAR.

{1426}

Travelling 300 miles through the forests, Oglethorpe held at Coweta, on the Chattahoochee, just below the present site of Columbus, a new treaty with the Creeks, by which they confirmed their former cessions, acknowledged themselves subject to the King of Great Britain, and promised to exclude from their territories all but English settlers. After finishing the treaty, Oglethorpe returned through the woods by way of Augusta to Savannah, where he found orders from England to make an attack on Florida. He called at once on South Carolina and the Creeks for aid, and in the mean time made an expedition, in which he captured the Fort of Picolata, over against St. Augustine, thus securing the navigation of the St. John's, and cutting off the Spaniards from their forts at St. Mark's and Pensacola. South Carolina entered very eagerly into the enterprise. Money was voted; a regiment, 500 strong, was enlisted, partly in North Carolina and Virginia. This addition raised Oglethorpe's force to 1,200 men. The Indians that joined him were as many more. Having marched into Florida, he took a small fort or two, and, assisted by several ships of war, laid siege to St. Augustine. But the garrison was 1,000 strong, besides militia. The fortifications proved more formidable than had been expected. A considerable loss was experienced by a sortie from the town, falling heavily on the Highland Rangers. Presently the Indians deserted, followed by part of the Carolina regiment, and Oglethorpe was obliged to give over the enterprise. ... From the time of this repulse, the good feeling of the Carolinians toward Oglethorpe came to an end. Many of the disappointed Georgia emigrants had removed to Charleston, and many calumnies against Oglethorpe were propagated, and embodied in a pamphlet published there. The Moravians also left Georgia, unwilling to violate their consciences by bearing arms. Most unfortunately for the new colony, the Spanish war withdrew the Highlanders and others of the best settlers from their farms to convert them into soldiers."

R. Hildreth, History of the United States, chapter 25 (volume 2).

"After the late incursion into Florida, the General kept possession of a southern region which the Spaniards had claimed as their own; and, as they had taken encouragement from the successful defence of St. Augustine, and the well-known dissensions on the English side, it was to be expected that they would embrace the earliest opportunity of taking their revenge. ... The storm, which had been so long anticipated, burst upon the colony in the year 1742. The Spaniards had ... fitted out, at Havana, a fleet said to consist of 56 sail and 7,000 or 8,000 men. The force was probably not quite so great; if it was, it did not all reach its destination," being dispersed by a storm, "so that only a part of the whole number succeeded in reaching St. Augustine. The force was there placed under the command of Don Manuel de Monteano, the Governor of that place. ... The fleet made its appearance on the coast of Georgia on the 21st of June"; but all its attempts, first to take possession of the Island of Amelia, and afterwards to reduce the forts at Frederica, were defeated by the vigor and skill of General Oglethorpe. After losing heavily in a fight called the Battle of the Bloody Marsh, the Spaniards retreated about the middle of July. The following year they prepared another attempt; but Oglethorpe anticipated it by a second demonstration on his own part against St. Augustine, which had no other result than to disconcert the plans of the enemy.

W. B. O. Peabody, Life of Oglethorpe (Library of American Biographies, 2d series, volume 2), chapters 11-12.

"While Oglethorpe was engaged in repelling the Spaniards, the trustees of Georgia had been fiercely assailed by their discontented colonists. They sent Thomas Stevens to England with a petition containing many charges of mismanagement, extravagance, and peculation, to which the trustees put in an answer. After a thorough examination of documents and witnesses in committee of the whole, and hearing counsel, the House of Commons resolved that 'the petition of Thomas Stevens contains false, scandalous, and malicious charges'; in consequence of which Stevens, the next day, was brought to the bar, and reprimanded on his knees. ... Oglethorpe himself had been a special mark of the malice and obloquy of the discontented settlers. ... Presently his lieutenant colonel, a man who owed everything to Oglethorpe's favor, re-echoing the slanders of the colonists, lodged formal charges against him. Oglethorpe proceeded to England to vindicate his character, and the accuser, convicted by a court of inquiry of falsehood, was disgraced and deprived of his commission. Appointed a major general, ordered to join the army assembled to oppose the landing of the Pretender, marrying also about this time, Oglethorpe did not again return to Georgia. The former scheme of administration having given rise to innumerable complaints, the government of that colony was intrusted to a president and four counselors."

R. Hildreth, History of the United States, chapter. 25 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: C. C. Jones, History of Georgia, chapters 17-22 (volume 1).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1743-1764. Surrender to the Crown. Government as a royal province.

"On Oglethorpe's departure [1743], William Stephens, the secretary, was made President, and continued in office until 1751, when he was succeeded by Henry Parker. The colony, when Stephens came into office, comprised about 1,500 persons. It was almost at a stand-still. The brilliant prospects of the early days were dissipated, and immigration had ceased, thanks to the narrow policy and feeble government of the Trustees. An Indian rising, in 1749, headed by Mary Musgrove, Oglethorpe's Indian interpreter, and her husband, one Bosomworth, who laid claim to the whole country, came near causing the destruction of the colony, and was only repressed by much negotiation and lavish bribes. The colony, thus feeble and threatened, struggled on, until it was relieved from danger from the Indians and from the restrictive laws, and encouraged by the appointment of Parker, and the establishment of a representative government. This produced a turn in the affairs of Georgia. Trade revived, immigration was renewed, and everything began to wear again a more hopeful look. Just at this time, however, the original trust was on the point of expiring by limitation. {1427} There was a party in the colony who desired a renewal of the charter; but the Trustees felt that their scheme had failed in every way, except perhaps as a defence to South Carolina, and when the limit of the charter was reached, they turned the colony over to the Crown. ... A form of government was established similar to those of the other royal provinces, and Captain John Reynolds was sent out as the first Governor." The administration of Reynolds produced wide discontent, and in 1757 he was recalled, being "succeeded by Henry Ellis as Lieutenant-governor. The change proved fortunate, and brought rest to the colony. Ellis ruled peaceably and with general respect for more than two years, and was then promoted to the governorship of Nova Scotia. In the same year his successor arrived at Savannah, in the person of James Wright, who continued to govern the province until it was severed from England by the Revolution. The feebleness of Georgia had prevented her taking part in the union of the colonies, and she was not represented in the Congress at Albany. Georgia also escaped the ravages of the French war, partly by her distant situation, and partly by the prudence of Governor Ellis; and the conclusion of that war gave Florida to England, and relieved the colony from the continual menace of Spanish aggression. A great Congress of southern Governors and Indian chiefs followed, in which Wright, more active than his predecessor, took a prominent part. Under his energetic and firm rule, the colony began to prosper greatly, and trade increased rapidly; but the Governor gained at the same time so much influence, and was a man of so much address, that he not only held the colony down at the time of the Stamp Act, but seriously hampered its action in the years which led to revolution."

H. C. Lodge, Short History of the English Colonies in America, chapter 9.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1760-1775. Opening events of the Revolution.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1760-1775, to 1775.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1775-1777. The end of royal government. Constitutional organization of the state."

The news of the battle of Lexington reached Savannah on the night of the 10th of May, 1775, and produced intense excitement among all classes. On the night of the 11th, Noble Wimberly Jones, Joseph Habersham, Edward Telfair, and a few others, impressed with the necessity of securing all military stores, and preserving them for colonial use, took from the King's magazine, in Savannah, about 500 pounds of powder. ... Tradition asserts that part of this powder was sent to Boston, and used by the militia at the battle of Bunker Hill. ... The activity of the Liberty party, and its rapid increase, ... gave Governor Wright just cause for alarm; and he wrote to General Gage, expressing his amazement that these southern provinces should be left in the situation they are, and the Governors and King's officers, and friends of Government, naked and exposed to the resentment of an enraged people.' ... The assistance so earnestly solicited in these letters would have been promptly rendered, but that they never reached their destination. The Committee of Safety at Charleston withdrew them from their envelopes, as they passed through the port, and substituted others, stating that Georgia was quiet, and there existed no need either of troops or vessels." The position of Governor Wright soon became one of complete powerlessness and he begged to be recalled. In January, 1776, however, he was placed under arrest, by order of the Council of Safety, and gave his parole not to leave town, nor communicate with the men-of-war which had just arrived at Tybee; notwithstanding which he made his escape to one of the King's ships on the 11th of February. "The first effective organization of the friends of liberty in the province took place among the deputies from several parishes, who met in Savannah, on the 18th January, 1775, and formed what has been called 'A Provincial Congress.' Guided by the action of the other colonies, a 'Council of Safety' was created, on the 22d June, 1775, to whom was confided the general direction of the measures proper to be pursued in carrying out resistance to the tyrannical designs of the King and Parliament. William Ewen was the first President of this Council of Safety, and Seth John Cuthbert was the Secretary. On the 4th July, the Provincial Congress (now properly called such, as every parish and district was represented) met in Savannah, and elected as its presiding officer Archibald Bulloch. This Congress conferred upon the 'Council of Safety,' 'full power upon every emergency during the recess of Congress.'" Soon finding the need of a more definite order of government, the Provincial Congress, on the 15th of April, 1776, adopted provisionally, for six months, a series of "Rules and Regulations," under which Archibald Bulloch was elected President and Commander-in-chief of Georgia, and John Glen, Chief Justice. After the Declaration of Independence, steps were taken toward the settling of the government of the state on a permanent basis. On the proclamation of President Bulloch a convention was elected which met in Savannah in October, and which framed a constitution that was ratified on the 5th of February, 1777.

W. B. Stevens, History of Georgia, book 4, chapter 2, and book 5, chapter 1 (volume 2).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1776-1778. The war in the North. The Articles of Confederation. The alliance with France.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A.D. 1776, to 1778.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1778-1779. Savannah taken and the state subjugated by the British.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778-1779.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1779. Unsuccessful attack on Savannah by the French and Americans.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1779 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1780. Successes of the British arms in South Carolina.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1780 (FEBRUARY-AUGUST).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1780-1783. Greene's campaign in the South. Lafayette and Washington in Virginia. Siege of Yorktown and surrender of Cornwallis. Peace.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A. D. 1780, to 1783.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1787-1788. The formation and adoption of the Federal Constitution.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1787, and 1787-1789.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1802. Cession of Western land claims to the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1781-1786 and MISSISSIPPI: A. D. 1798-1804.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1813-1814. The Creek War.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1813-1814 (AUGUST-APRIL).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1816-1818. The First Seminole War.

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1816-1818.

{1428}

GEORGIA: A. D. 1861 (January). Secession from the Union.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1861 (October-December). Savannah threatened. The Union forces in possession of the mouth of the river.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER: SOUTH CAROLINA-GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1862 (February-April). Reduction of Fort Pulaski and sealing up of the port of Savannah by the National Forces.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (FEBRUARY-APRIL: GEORGIA-FLORIDA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (May-September). Sherman's campaign against Atlanta. The capture of the city.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (MAY: GEORGIA), and (MAY-SEPTEMBER: GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (September-October). Military occupation of Atlanta. Removal of the inhabitants. Hood's Raid to Sherman's rear.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (November-December). Destruction of Atlanta. Sherman's March to the Sea.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER: GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1865 (March-May). Wilson's Raid. Capture of Jefferson Davis. End of the Rebellion.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (APRIL-MAY).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1865-1868. Reconstruction.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (MAY-JULY), and after, to 1868-1870.

----------GEORGIA: End----------

GEOUGEN, The.

See TURKS: SIXTH CENTURY.

GEPIDÆ, The.

See GOTHS: ORIGIN OF; HUNS; LOMBARDS: EARLY HISTORY; and AVARS.

GERALDINES, The.

The Geraldines of Irish history were descendants of Maurice and William Fitzgerald, two of the first among the Anglo-Norman adventurers to engage in the conquest of Ireland, A. D. 1169-1170. Their mother was a Welsh princess, named Nest, or Nesta, who is said to have been the mistress of Henry I. of England, and afterwards to have married the Norman baron, Gerald Fitz Walter, who became the father of the Fitzgeralds. "Maurice Fitzgerald, the eldest of the brothers, became the ancestor both of the Earls of Kildare and Desmond; William, the younger, obtained an immense grant of land in Kerry from the McCarthys, indeed as time went on the lordship of the Desmond Fitzgeralds grew larger and larger, until it covered nearly as much ground as many a small European kingdom. Nor was this all. The White Knight, the Knight of Glyn, and the Knight of Kerry were all three Fitzgeralds, all descended from the same root, and all owned large tracts of country. The position of the Geraldines of Kildare was even more important, on account of their close proximity to Dublin. In later times their great keep at Maynooth dominated the whole Pale, while their followers swarmed everywhere, each man with a 'G' embroidered upon his breast in token of his allegiance. By the beginning of the 16th century their power had reached to, perhaps, the highest point ever attained in these islands by any subject. Whoever might be called the Viceroy in Ireland it was the Earl of Kildare who practically governed the country."

Hon. E. Lawless, The Story of Ireland, chapter 14.

See, also, IRELAND: A. D. 1515; and for some account of the subsequent rebellion and fall of the Geraldines, see IRELAND: A. D. 1535-1553.

GERALDINES, League of the.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1559-1603.

GERBA, OR JERBA, The disaster at. (1560).

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1543-1560.

GEREFA.

"The most general name for the fiscal, administrative and executive officer among the Anglosaxons was Gerefa, or as it is written, in very early documents geroefa: but the peculiar functions of the individuals comprehended under it were further defined by a prefix compounded with it, as scirgerefa, the reeve of the shire or sheriff: tungerefa, the reeve of the farm or bailiff. The exact meaning and etymology of this name have hitherto eluded the researches of our best scholars."

J. M. Kemble, The Saxons in England, book 2, chapter 5 (volume 2).

See, also, SHIRE; and EALDORMAN.

GERGESENES, The.

One of the tribes of the Canaanites, whose territory is believed by Lenormant to have "included all Decapolis and even Galilee," and whose capital he places at Gerasa, now Djerash, in Perea.

F. Lenormant and E. Chevallier, Manual of Ancient History, book 6, chapter 1 (volume 2).

GERGITHIAN SIBYL.

See CUMÆ.

GERGITHIANS, The.

See TROJA; and, ASIA MINOR: THE GREEK COLONIES.

GERGOVIA OF THE ARVERNI.

"The site of Gergovia of the Arverni is supposed to be a hill on the bank of the Allier, two miles from the modern Clermont in Auvergne. The Romans seem to have neglected Gergovia, and to have founded the neighbouring city, to which they gave the name Augustonemetum. The Roman city became known afterwards as Civitas Arvernorum, in the middle ages Arverna, and then, from the situation of its castle, clarus mons, Clermont."

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 12 (volume 2, page 20, foot-note).

For an account of Cæsar's reverse at Gergovia of the Arverni,

See GAUL: B. C. 58-51.

GERGOVIA OF THE BOIANS.

See BOIANS.

GERIZIM.

"The sacred centre of the Samaritans is Gerizim, the 'Mount of Blessings.' On. its summit a sacred rock marks the site where, according to their tradition, Joshua placed the Tabernacle and afterwards built a temple, restored later by Sanballat on the return of the Israelites from captivity. On the slope of the mountain the Feast of the Passover is still celebrated in accordance with the injunctions of the Law."

C. R. Conder, Syrian Stone Lore, chapter 4.

GERMAN, High and Low.

The distinction, made between High German and Low German is that resulting from differences of language, etc., between the Germanic peoples which dwelt anciently in the low, flat countries along the German Ocean and the Baltic, and those which occupied the higher regions of the upper Rhine, Elbe and Danube.

GERMAN EAST AFRICAN AND WEST AFRICAN ASSOCIATIONS.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1889.

GERMAN EMPIRE, The Constitution of the new.

See CONSTITUTION OF GERMANY.

---------------------------------- A Logical Outline of German History

Ethnological Social and political. Intellectual, moral and religious. Foreign.

IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.

3d-5th Centurles. The Wanderinag of the nations.

Germany was slow in finding the definite place in geography and history that belongs to it at the present day. It was no more at first than a name, applied with large vagueness to the country beyond the Rhine and the Danube, where many restless tribes, of kindred language and character, were unstably distributed. In time, the tribes crowded one another into wide wandering movements, were pushed and pressed together into confederacies and nations, and went swarming over the Danube and the Rhine into Roman provinces, to take possession of them and to be the new masters of the European world; but it was the Germans, not Germany, who began then to be historic.

5th-9th Centuries--Empire of the Franks.

As a fact in history, Germany emerged first with the Franks, out of the dust-clouds of the wandering time and the darker clouds of the Gallic conquest. Fast seated on the great dividing river, the Rhine, the Franks reached backward into the land which gave them birth, and forward into the land which took their name, and gathered a broad empire out of both. But always the two parts of it refused to be held together. Neither by Clovis, the first conqueror, nor by Charlemagne, after three hundred years, were the Kingdom of the East Franks and the Kingdom of the West Franks bound fast into one. Under Charlemagne's successors, the Kingdom of the East Franks began to be Germany, in the growing of the fact as well as the name.

A. D. 962.--The Holy Roman Empire.

But no sooner had a Kingdom of Germany been created than it was strangely deprived of the distinctness needful to the making of a nation. The adventurous Otho, its second Saxon king, who reclaimed Italy and revived the imperial sovereignty of Charlemagne, diminished the weight and dignity of his Germanic realm as much as he advanced himself and his successors in title and rank. By that elevation of its kings to a pseudo-Roman throne, Germany lost its own proper place in history, and was obscured by the shadow of an empire which soon existed as a shadow only. Its elective kings, forsaking the title of Kings of Germany, and calling themselves Kings of the Romans, even while they waited for an imperial coronation at the hands of the Pope, made the nationalizing of Germany, as France was being nationalized, by its monarchy, impossible.

10th-18th Centuries.--Contests In Italy.

For three centuries, the ambitions and the interests of the imperialized monarchy were ultramontane. Its Teutonic seat was a mere resting-place between Italian expeditions. Its quarrels with the Popes cast all questions of German politics into the background. It took no root in German feeling, rallied no national sentiment, gathered no increase of authority, sent out from itself no centralizing influences, judicial or administrative, to resist the dissolving forces of feudalism. And nowhere else in Europe was the action of those forces so destructive of political unity. That great Fatherland of the German peoples, where the slow solidification of a nation should have been going on as surely as in France, was crumbled by them into petty principalities, which time only hardened in their separateness.

A. D. 1273-1440--Rise of the House of Hapsburg.

When, at last, the crown came to be settled in one fast-rooted and enduring House, it was not fortunately placed. Territorially the Hapsburgs were planted on the verge of the Teutonic land, where they fronted the Hungarians and the Svavs and were threatened by the approaching Turks. Speaking figuratively, they stood with their backs to Germany, facing their greater dangers and their greater opportunities, east and south.

Their personal dominions were acquired for the most part outside of the Teutonic line. Their immediate subjects were of many alien races, with a few of Greman blood. Their kingship of Hungary was more substantial in its political weight than any Germanic sovereignty that they held. From the beginning of its remarkable dynastic career, the House of Austria was in all respects quite at one side of the great people whose crown had unhappily passed to its keeping. The emperor-kings, throned with less reality at Vienna than at Presburg and Prague, lost more and more their German character, receded more and more from the range of German influence. Thus Germany was robbed again of the centralizing constraints which a vigorous, rising monarchy of the true stamp, not falsified by a fictitious imperialization, would have brought to bear upon it, for the unifying of a great nation.

A. D. 1477-1496.--Burgundian and Spanish marriages.

The marriagcs which linked the Austrian House with the sovereign families of Burgundy and Spain only drew it still farther away, and made it more alien than before to the people of the German North. The imperial government was brought then under influences from Spain which opposed every tendency of their feeling and thought. While the strong Teutonic mind worked its slow way towards personal freedom,--towards fearless inquiry and independent belief,--a contrary movement went on in the Austrian court. Between Germany at large and the circle in which Vienna stood really a center and a capital, a widening inteliectual breach began when the Hapsburg brain was narrowed by the astringent blood of Castile. This appeared, not alone in the rupture of the religious Reformation, but in all the advances that were made, from the sixteenth century down, in science, philosophy, literature and art.

Some advance was always made; but the modern impulses which woke early in the German race were wastefully spent, during many generations, for want of any national concentration. No large channel opened to them; no worthy spirit directed them. The pettiness of petty politics and courts belittled in most ways, for a lamentable time, the workings of German energy and genius.

A. D. 1618.--Brandenburg—Prussia.

The Thirty Years War made chaos in Germany complete. No semblance of substance in the empire remained. The Kaiser had become a sovereign less honored than the King of France, and Vienna a capital less considered than Paris. But the first nucleus of nationality took form in that chaos, when Brandenburg drew Prussia to itself, in the union which produced a new kingdom at the North. The rise of Prussia was the rise of German nationality. It brought to bear on the German people the first centralizing influence that had acted upon them since their kings took the crown of Rome. For the first time in their history they felt the pull of a force which drew them towards common lines of action.

A. D. 1740-1786.--Frederick the Great. A. D. 1800-1813.--Struggle with Napoleon.

The aggrandizement of Prussia by Frederick the Great, though iniquitous when considered in itself, was splendid work for Germany. It prepared, for the perils of the next generation, a power which Napoleon could humble at the moment, but which he could not crush. It gave footing for the great heroic rally of the Germanic people, whereby they conquered their place in the world and secured their future.

A. D. 1866.--The Seven Weeks War A. D. 1870-1871.--The Franco-German War. A. D. 1871.--The Empire.

In all that has come to pass since Leipsic and Waterloo, the logical sequence is plainer than history is wont to show it. From men of the first decade in this century, who put the school and the camp side by side in Prussian training, there came more than from Bismarck or Moltke of the power which triumphed at Sadowa and Sedan, which has constructed a new and true Empire of Germany, with its capital at Berlin, and which has dismissed Austria from German reckonings as mistress or as rival, but to make of her an ally and a friend.

Within the last third of the nineteenth century, the Germans may be said to have opened a great national career, such as the English, their kinsmen, had entered upon nearly two hundred years before. The energies of their powerful race have been centered at last, and are acting with new potency, in commerce and colonization, abroad, and in all modes of human advancement, at home.

----------End: A Logical Outline of German History ------

{1429}

GERMAN FLATS: A. D.1765. Treaty with the Indians.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1765-1768.

GERMAN FLATS: A. D. 1778. Destruction by Brant.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778 (JUNE-NOVEMBER).

GERMAN NATIONS, The wandering of.

See GOTHS; FRANKS; ALEMANNI; MARCOMANNI; QUADI; GEPIDÆ; SAXONS; ANGLES; BURGUNDIANS; VANDALS; SUEVI; LOMBARDS.

GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.

See EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL: GERMANY.

GERMANIA.

"On the origin of the name Germania see Waitz D. V. G. i. 24; he rejects all German derivations and concludes that it is originally Gallic, the name given (as Tacitus indicates) by the Gauls first to the Tungri, and afterwards to all the kindred tribes. The meaning may be either 'good shouters' (Grimm), or, according to other writers, 'East-men,' or 'neighbours.'"

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, volume 1, page 17, note.

GERMANIANS, The.

See CARMANIANS.

GERMANIC CONFEDERATION, The First.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1814-1820.

The Second.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1870 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER).

GERMANIC DIET, The.

See DIET, GERMANIC.

GERMANIC PEOPLES OF THE ALEMANNIC LEAGUE.

See ALEMANNI: A.-D. 213.

GERMANICUS, Campaigns of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 14-16.

GERMANTOWN, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1777 (JANUARY-DECEMBER).

GERMANY: The national name.

"The nations of the Germania had no common name recognised by themselves, and were content, when, ages after, they had realised their unity of tongue and descent, to speak of their language simply as the Lingua Theotisca, the language of the people (theod). ... Whence the name 'Deutsch.' Zeuss derives it rather from the root of 'deuten,' to explain, so that 'theotisc' should mean 'significant.' But the root of 'theod' and 'deuten' is the same. ... The general name by which the Romans knew them [Germani] was one which they had received from their Gallic neighbours."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, volume 1, chapter 3, and foot-note.

"In Gothic we have 'thiuda,' people; 'thiudisks,' belonging to the people. ... The High-German, which looks upon Sanskrit 't' and Gothic 'th' as 'd,' possesses the same word, as 'diot,' people; 'diutisc,' popularis; hence Deutsch, German, and 'deuten,' to explain, literally to Germanize."

_F. Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, 2d series, lecture. 5._

The account which Tacitus gives of the origin of the name Germany is this: "The name Germany ... they [the Germans] say, is modern and newly introduced, from the fact that the tribes which first crossed the Rhine and drove out the Gauls, and are now called Tungrians, were then called Germans. Thus what was the name of a tribe, and not of a race, gradually prevailed, till all called themselves by this self-invented name of Germans, which the conquerors had first employed to inspire terror."

Tacitus, Germany; translated by Church and Brodribb, chapter 2.

"It is only at the mouth of the Elbe that the Germany of the really historical period begins: and this is a Germany only in the eyes of scholars, antiquarians, and generalizing ethnologists. Not one of the populations to whom the name is here extended would have attached any meaning to the word, except so far as they had been instructed by men who had studied certain Latin writers. There was no name which was, at one and the same time, native and general. There were native names, but they were limited to special populations. There was a general name, but it was one which was applied by strangers and enemies. What this name was for the northern districts, we know beforehand. It was that of Saxones and Saxonia in Latin; of Sachsen and Sachsenland in the ordinary German. Evidence, however, that any German population ever so named itself is wholly wanting, though it is not impossible that some unimportant tribe may have done so: the only one so called being the Saxons of Ptolemy, who places them, along with several others, in the small district between the Elbe and the Eyder, and on three of the islands off the coast. ... The Franks gave it its currency and generality; for, in the eyes of a Frank, Saxony and Friesland contained all those parts of Germany which, partly from their difference of dialect, partly from their rudeness, partly from their paganism, and partly from the obstinacy of their resistance, stood in contrast to the Empire of Charlemagne and his successors. A Saxon was an enemy whom the Franks had to coerce, a heathen whom they had to convert. What more the term meant is uncertain."

_R. G. Latham, Introduction to Kemble's "Horæ Ferales."_

See, also, TEUTONES.

GERMANY: As known to Tacitus.

"Germany is separated from the Galli, the Rhæti, and Pannonii, by the rivers Rhine and Danube; mountain ranges, or the fear which each feels for the other, divide it from the Sarmatæ and Daci. Elsewhere ocean girds it, embracing broad peninsulas and islands of unexplored extent, where certain tribes and kingdoms are newly known to us, revealed by war. The Rhine springs from a precipitous and inaccessible height of the Rhætian Alps, bends slightly westward, and mingles with the Northern Ocean. The Danube pours down from the gradual and gently rising slope of Mount Abnoba, and visits many nations, to force its way at last through six channels into the Pontus; a seventh mouth is lost in marshes. The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse. For, in former times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean beyond us, is seldom entered by a sail from our world. And, besides the perils of rough and unknown seas, who would leave Asia, or Africa, or Italy for Germany, with its wild country, its inclement skies, its sullen manners and aspect, unless indeed it were his home? {1430} In their ancient songs, their only way of remembering or recording the past, they celebrate an earth-born god, Tuisco, and his son Mannus, as the origin of their race, as their founders. To Mannus they assign three sons, from whose names, they say, the coast tribes are called Ingævones; those of the interior, Herminones; all the rest, Istævones. Some, with the freedom of conjecture permitted by antiquity, assert that the god had several descendants, and the nation several appellations, as Marsi, Gambrivii, Suevi, Vandilii, and that these are genuine old names. The name Germany, on the other hand, they say, is modern and newly introduced."

Tacitus, Germany: translated by A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb, chapters 1-2.

GERMANY: B. C. 12-9. Campaigns of Drusus.

The first serious advance of the Roman arms beyond the Rhine was made in the reign of Augustus, by the emperor's step-son, Drusus. Cæsar had crossed the river, only to chastise and terrify the tribes on the right bank which threatened Gaul. Agrippa, some years later, repeated the operation, and withdrew, as Cæsar had done. But Drusus invaded Germany with intentions of conquest and occupation. His first campaign was undertaken in the spring of the year 12 B. C. He crossed the Rhine and drove the Usipetes into their strongholds; after which he embarked his legions on transport ships and moved them down the river to the ocean, thence to coast northwards to the mouth of the Ems, and so penetrate to the heart of the enemy's country. To facilitate this bold movement, he had caused a channel to be cut from the Rhine, at modern Arnheim, to the Zuyder Zee, utilizing the river Yssel. The expedition was not successful and retreated overland from the Frisian coast after considerable disaster and loss. The next year, Drusus returned to the attack, marching directly into the German country and advancing to the banks of the Weser, but retreating, again, with little to show of substantial results. He established a fortified outpost, however, on the Lippe, and named it Aliso. During the same summer, he is said to have fixed another post in the country of the Chatti. Two years then passed before Drusus was again permitted by the emperor to cross the Rhine. On his third campaign he passed the Weser and penetrated the Hercynian forest as far as the Elbe,--the Germans declining everywhere to give him battle. Erecting a trophy on the bank of the Elbe, he retraced his steps, but suffered a fall from his horse, on the homeward march, which caused his death. "If the Germans were neither reduced to subjection, nor even overthrown in any decisive engagement, as the Romans vainly pretended, yet their spirit of aggression was finally checked and from thenceforth, for many generations, they were fully occupied with the task of defending themselves."

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 36.

GERMANY: B. C. 8-A. D. 11. Campaigns of Tiberius.

The work of Roman conquest in Germany, left unfinished by Drusus, was taken up by his brother Tiberius (afterwards emperor) under the direction of Augustus. Tiberius crossed the Rhine, for the first time, B. C. 8. The frontier tribes made no resistance, but offered submission at once. Tiberius sent their chiefs to Augustus, then holding his court at Lugdunum (Lyons), to make terms with the emperor in person, and Augustus basely treated them as captives and threw them into prison. The following year found the German tribes again under arms, and Tiberius again crossed the Rhine; but it was only to ravage the country, and not to remain. Then followed a period of ten years, during which the emperor's step-son, dissatisfied with his position and on ill terms with Augustus, retired to Rhodes. In the summer of A. D. 4, he returned to the command of the legions on the Rhine. Meantime, under other generals,--Domitius and Vinicius,--they had made several campaigns beyond the river; had momentarily crossed the Elbe; had constructed a road to the outposts on the Weser; had fought the Cherusci, with doubtful results, but had not settled the Roman power in Germany. Tiberius invaded the country once more, with a powerful force, and seems to have crushed all resistance in the region between the lower Rhine and the Weser. The following spring, he repeated, with more success, the movement of Drusus by land and sea, sending a flotilla around to the Elbe and up that stream, to a point where it met and co-operated with a column moved overland, through the wilderness. A single battle was fought and the Germans defeated; but, once more, when winter approached, the Romans retired and no permanent conquest was made. Two years later (A. D. 6), Tiberius turned his arms against the powerful nation of the Marcomanni, which had removed itself from the German mark, or border, into the country formerly occupied, by the Boii--modern Bohemia. Here, under their able chief Marbod, or Maroboduus, they developed a formidable military organization and became threatening to the Roman frontiers on the Upper Danube. Two converging expeditions, from the Danube and from the Rhine, were at the point of crushing the Marcomanni between them, when news of the alarming revolt, in Pannonia and Dalmatia, called the "Batonian War," caused the making of a hasty peace with Maroboduus. The Batonian or Pannonian war occupied Tiberius for nearly three years. He had just brought it to a close, when intelligence reached Rome of a disaster in Germany which filled the empire with horror and dismay. The tribes in northwestern Germany, between the lower Rhine and the Elbe, supposed to be cowed and submissive, had now found a leader who could unite them and excite them to disdain the Roman yoke. This leader was Arminius, or Hermann, a young chief of the Cherusci, who had been trained in the Roman military service and admitted to Roman citizenship, but who hated the oppressors of his country with implacable bitterness. The scheme of insurrection organized by Arminius was made easy of execution by the insolent carelessness and the incapacity of the Roman commander in Germany, L. Quintilius Varus. It succeeded so well that Varus and his army,--three entire legions, horse, foot and auxiliaries,--probably 20,000 men in all,--were overwhelmed in the Teutoburger Wald, north of the Lippe, and destroyed. Only a few skulking fugitives reached the Rhine and escaped to tell the fate of the rest. This was late in the summer of A. D. 9. In the following spring Tiberius was sent again to the Rhine frontier, with as powerful a levy of men and equipments as the empire could collect. He was accompanied by his nephew, Germanicus, son of Drusus, destined to be his successor in the field of German conquest. {1431} But dread and fear were in the Roman heart, and the campaign of Tiberius, delayed another twelve months, until A. D. 11, was conducted too cautiously to accomplish any important result. He traversed and ravaged a considerable region of the German country, but withdrew again across the Rhine and left it, apparently, unoccupied. This was his last campaign. Returning to Rome, he waited only two years longer for the imperial sovereignty to which he succeeded on the death of Augustus, who had made him, by adoption, his son and his heir.

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapters 36-38.

ALSO IN: T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 8, chapter 1.

Sir E. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, chapter 5.

T. Smith, Arminius, part 1, chapters 4-6.

GERMANY: A. D. 14-16. Campaigns of Germanicus.

Germanicus--the son of Drusus--was given the command on the Rhine at the beginning of the year 13 A. D. The following year, Augustus died and Tiberius became emperor; whereupon Germanicus found himself no longer restrained from crossing the river and assuming the offensive against Arminius and his tribes. His first movement, that autumn, was up the valley of the Lippe, which he laid waste, far and wide. The next spring, he led one column, from Mentz, against the Chatti, as far as the upper branches of the Weser, while he sent another farther north to chastise the Cherusci and the Marsi, surprising and massacring the latter at their feast of Tanfana. Later in the same year, he penetrated, by a double expedition,--moving by sea and by land, as his father had done before,--to the country between the Ems and the Lippe, and laid waste the territory of the Bructeri, and their neighbors. He also visited the spot where the army of Varus had perished, and erected a monument to the dead. On the return from this expedition, four legions, under Cæcina, were beset in the same manner that Varus had been, and under like difficulties; but their commander was of different stuff and brought them safely through, after punishing his pursuers severely. But the army had been given up as lost, and only the resolute opposition of Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, had prevented the Roman commander at Vetera, on the Rhine, from destroying the bridge there, and abandoning the legions to their supposed fate. In the spring of A. D. 16, Germanicus again embarked his army, 80,000 strong, at the mouth of the Rhine, on board transports, and moved it to the mouth of the Ems, where the fleet remained. Thence he marched up the Ems and across to the Weser, and was encountered, in the country of the Cherusci, by a general levy of the German tribes, led by Arminius and Inguiomerus. Two great battles were fought, in which the Romans were victorious. But, when returning from this campaign, the fleet encountered a storm in which so much of it perished, with the troops on board, that the disaster threw a heavy cloud of gloom over the triumph of Germanicus. The young general was soon afterwards recalled, and three years later he died,--of poison, as is supposed,--at Antioch. "The central government ceased from this time to take any warm interest in the subjugation of the Germans; and the dissensions of their states and princes, which peace was not slow in developing, attracted no Roman emissaries to the barbarian camps, and rarely led the legions beyond the frontier, which was now allowed to recede finally to the Rhine."

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 42.

ALSO IN: T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 8, chapter 1.

T. Smith, Arminius, part 1, chapter 7.

GERMANY: 3d Century. Beginning of the "Wandering of the Nations."

"Towards the middle of the third century, ... a change becomes perceptible in the relations and attitude of the German peoples. Many of the nations, which have been celebrated in the annals of the classical writers, disappear silently from history; new races, new combinations and confederacies start into life, and the names which have achieved an imperishable notoriety from their connection with the long decay and the overthrow of the Roman Empire, come forward, and still survive. On the soil whereon the Sigambri, Marsi, Chauci, and Cherusci had struggled to preserve a rude independence, Franks and Saxons lived free and formidable; Alemanni were gathered along the foot of the Roman wall which connected the Danube with the Rhine, and had, hitherto, preserved inviolate the Agri decumates; while eastern Germany, allured by the hope of spoil, or impelled by external pressure, precipitated itself under the collective term of Goths upon the shrinking settlements of the Dacia and the Danube. The new appellations which appear in western Germany in the third century have not unnaturally given rise to the presumption that unknown peoples had penetrated through the land, and overpowered the ancient tribes, and national vanity has contributed to the delusion. As the Burgundians ... were flattered by being told they were descendants of Roman colonists, so the barbarian writers of a later period busied their imaginations in the solitude of monastic life to enhance the glory of their countrymen, by the invention of what their inkling of classical knowledge led them to imagine a more illustrious origin. ... Fictions like these may be referred to as an index of the time when the young barbarian spirit, eager after fame, and incapable of balancing probabilities, first gloated over the marvels of classical literature, though its refined and delicate beauties eluded their grosser taste; but they require no critical examination; there are no grounds for believing that Franks, Saxons, or Alemanni, were other than the original inhabitants of the country, though there is a natural difficulty arising from the want of written contemporary evidence in tracing the transition, and determining the tribes of which the new confederacies were formed. At the same time, though no immigration of strangers was possible, a movement of a particular tribe was not unfrequent. The constant internal dissensions of the Germans, combined with their spirit of warlike enterprise, led to frequent domestic wars; and the vanquished sometimes chose rather to seek an asylum far from their native soil, where they might live in freedom, than continue as bondmen or tributaries to the conqueror. Of such a nature were the wanderings of the Usipites and Teuchteri [Tenchteri] in Cæsar's time, the removal of the Ubii from Nassau to the neighbourhood of Cöln and Xanthen; and to this must be ascribed the appearance of the Burgundians, who had dwelt beyond the Oder, in the vicinity of the Main and the Necker. Another class of national emigrations, were those which implied a final abandonment of the native Germany with the object of seeking a new settlement among the possessions of the sinking empire. {1432} Those of the Goths, Vandals, Alans, Sueves, the second movement of the Burgundians, may be included in this category; the invasions of the Franks, Alemanni, and Saxons, on the contrary, cannot be called national emigrations, for they never abandoned, with their families, their original birthplace; their outwanderings, like the emigrations of the present day, were partial; their occupation of the enemy's territory was, in character, military and progressive; and, with the exception of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain, their connection with the original stock was never interrupted. In all the migrations of German peoples spoken of from Cæsar downwards, the numbers of the emigrants appear to be enormously exaggerated. The Usipites and Teuchteri are estimated by Cæsar at 430,000 souls. How could such a multitude find nourishment during a three years' wandering? If 80,000 Burgundian Wehrmen came to the Rhine to the assistance of Valentinian, as Cassiodorius, Jerome, and other chroniclers state, the numbers of the whole nation must have approached 400,000, and it is impossible to believe that such a mass could obtain support in the narrow district lying between the Alemanni, the Hermunduri, and the Chatti. In other cases, vague expressions, and still more the wonderful achievements of the Germans in the course of their emigrations, have led to the supposition of enormous numbers; but Germany could not find nourishment for the multitudes which have been ascribed to it. Corn at that period was little cultivated; it was not the food of the people, whose chief support was flesh. ... The conquests of the barbarians may be ascribed as much to the weakness of their adversaries, to their want of energy and union, as to their own strength. There was, in fact, no enemy to meet them in the field; and their domination was, at least, as acceptable to the provincial inhabitants as that of the imbecile, but rapacious ministers of the Roman government. ... It was not the lust of wandering, but the influence of external circumstances which brought them to the vicinity of the Danube: at first the aggressions of the Romans, then the pressure of the Huns and the Sclavonic tribes. The whole intercourse of Germany with Rome must be considered as one long war, which began with the invasion of Cæsar; which, long restrained by the superior power of the enemy, warmed with his growing weakness, and only ended with the extinction of the Roman name. The wars of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, were only a continuance of the ancient hostility. There might be partial truce, or occasional intermission; some tribes might be almost extirpated by the sword; some, for a time, bought off by money; but Rome was the universal enemy, and much of the internal restlessness of the Germans was no more than the natural movement towards the hostile borders. As the invasion of northern Germany gave rise to the first great northern union, so the conquest of Dacia brought Goths from the Vistula to the south, while the erection of the giant wall naturally gathered the Suevic tribes along its limits, only waiting for the opportunity to break through. Step by step this battle of centuries was fought; from the time of Caracalla the flood turned, wave followed wave like the encroaching tide, and the ancient landmarks receded bit by bit, till Rome itself was buried beneath the waters. ... Three great confederacies of German tribes, more or less united by birth, position, interest, or language, may be discerned, during this period, in immediate contact with the Romans---the Alemanni, the Goths, and the Franks. A fourth, the Saxons, was chiefly known from its maritime voyages off the coast of Gaul and Britain. There were also many independent peoples which cannot be enumerated among any of the political confederacies, but which acted for themselves, and pursued their individual ends: such were the Burgundians, the Alans, the Vandals, and the Lombards."

T. Smith, Arminius, part 2, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: R. G. Latham, Nationalities of Europe, volume 2, chapter 21.

See, also, ALEMANNI; MARCOMANNI; QUADI; GOTHS; GEPIDÆ; SAXONS; ANGLES, FRANKS; BURGUNDIANS; VANDALS; SUEVI; LOMBARDS; and, also, Appendix A, volume 1.

GERMANY: A. D. 277. Invasion by Probus.

The vigorous emperor Probus, who, in the year 277, drove from Gaul the swarms of invaders that had ravaged the unhappy province with impunity for two years past, then crossed the Rhine and harried the country of the marauders, as far as the Elbe and the Neckar. "Germany, exhausted by the ill success of the last emigration, was astonished by his presence. Nine of the most considerable princes repaired to his camp and fell prostrate at his feet. Such a treaty was humbly received by the Germans as it pleased the conqueror to dictate." Probus then caused a stone wall, strengthened at intervals with towers, to be built from the Danube, near Neustadt and Ratisbon, to Wimpfen on the Neckar, and thence to the Rhine, for the protection of the settlers of the "Agri Decumates." But the wall was thrown down, a few years afterwards, by the Alemanni.

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 12.

GERMANY: 5th Century. Conversion of the Franks.

See CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 496-800.

GERMANY: A. D. 481-768. Acquisition of supremacy by the Franks.

The original dominions of Clovis, or Chlodwig--with whose reign the career of the Franks as a consolidated people began--corresponded nearly to the modern kingdom of Belgium. His first conquests were from the Romans, in the neighboring parts of Gaul, and when those were finished, "the king of the Franks began to look round upon the other German nations settled upon its soil, with a view to the further extension of his power. A quarrel with the Alemanni supplied the first opportunity for the gratification of his ambition. For more than a century the Alemanni had been in undisturbed possession of Alsace, and the adjoining districts; Mainz, Worms, Speyer, Strasburg, Basel, Constanz, Bregenz, lay within their territory. ... The Vosegen range was a bulwark on the side of Gaul, waste lands separated them from the Burgundians, who were settled about the Jura and in the south-west part of Helvetia, and the Moselle divided them from the Ripuarian Franks. It is unknown whether they formed a state distinct from their brethren on the right of the Rhine; probably such was the case, for the Alemanni, at all times, were divided into separate tribes, between which, however, was generally a common union; nor is it certain whether the Alsatian Alemanni were under one or several Adelings; a single king is mentioned as having fallen in the battle with Chlodwig, who may have been merely an elected military leader.

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{1435} Equally obscure is the cause of their war with Chlodwig, though it has been assumed, perhaps too hastily, by all recent historians, that the Frank king became involved in it as an ally of the Ripuarians. The Ripuarian Franks were settled, as the name imports, upon the banks of the Rhine, from the Moselle downwards; their chief seat was the city of Cologne. It is probable that they consisted of the remains of the ancient Ubii, strengthened by the adventurers who crossed over on the first invasion, and the name implies that they were regarded by the Romans as a kind of limitanean soldiery. For, in the common parlance of the Romans of that period, the tract of land lying along the Rhine was called Ripa, in an absolute sense, and even the river itself was not unfrequently denominated by the same title. Ripuarii are Ripa-wehren, Hreop, or Hrepa-wehren, defenders of the shore. About the close of the fifth century these Ripuarii were under the government of a king, named Sigebert, usually called 'the lance.' The story told by modern writers is, that this Sigebert, having fallen into dispute with the Alemanni, called upon Chlodwig for assistance, a call which the young king willingly listened to. The Alemanni had invaded the Ripuarian territory, and advanced within a short distance of Cologne, when Chlodwig and his Franks joined the Ripuarii; a battle took place at Zülpich, about twenty-two English miles from Cologne, which, after a fierce struggle, ended in the defeat of the Alemanni. ... Chlodwig was following up his victory over the Alemanni, perhaps with unnecessary ferocity, when he was stopped in his course by a flattering embassy from the great Theodorich. Many of the Alemanni had submitted, after the death of their chief, on the field of battle. 'Spare us,' they cried, 'for we are now thy people!' but there were many who, abhorring the Frank yoke, fled towards the south, and threw themselves under the protection of the Ostrogothic king, who had possessed himself of the ancient Rhætia and Vindelicia."

T. Smith, Arminius, part 2, chapter 4.

The sons of Clovis pushed their conquests on the Germanic as well as on the Gallic side of the Rhine. Theodoric, or Theuderik, who reigned at Metz, with the aid of his brother Clotaire, or Chlother, of Soissons, subjugated the Thuringians, between A. D. 515 and 528. "How he [Theuderik] acquired authority over the Alemans and the Bavarians is not known. Perhaps in the subjugation of Thuringia he had taken occasion to extend his sway over other nations; but from this time forth we find not only these, but the Saxons more to the north, regarded as the associates or tributaries of the Eastern or Ripuarian Franks. From the Elbe to the Meuse, and from the Northern Ocean to the sources of the Rhine, a region comprising a great part of ancient Germany, the ascendency of the Franks was practically acknowledged, and a kingdom was formed [Austrasia--Oster-rike--the Eastern Kingdom] which was destined to overshadow all the other Mérovingian states; The various tribes which composed its Germanic accretions, remote and exempt from the influences of the Roman civilization, retained their fierce customs and their rude superstitions, and continued to be governed by their hereditary dukes; but their wild masses marched under the standards of the Franks, and conceded to those formidable conquerors a certain degree of political supremacy." When, in 558, Clotaire, by the death of his brothers, became the sole king of the Franks, his empire embraced all Roman Gaul, except Septimania, still held by the Visigoths, and Brittany, but slightly subjected; "while in ancient Germany, from the Rhine to the Weser, the powerful duchies of the Alemans, the Thuringians, the Bavarians, the Frisons, and the Saxons, were regarded not entirely as subject, and yet as tributary provinces." During the next century and a half, the feebleness of the Merovingians lost their hold upon these German tributaries. "As early as the time of Chlother II. the Langobards had recovered their freedom; under Dagobert [622-638], the Saxons; under Sighebert II. [638-656], the Thuringians; and now, during the late broils [670-687], the Alemans, the Bavarians and the Frisons." But the vigorous Mayors of the Palace, Pepin Heristal and Karl Martel, applied themselves resolutely to the restoration of the Frank supremacy, in Germany as well as in Aquitaine. Pepin "found the task nearly impossible. Time and again he assailed the Frisons, the Saxons, the Bavarians, and the Alemans, but could bind them to no truce nor peace for any length of time. No less than ten times the Frisons resumed their arms, while the revolts of the others were so incessant that he was compelled to abandon all hope of recovering the southern or Roman part of Gaul, in order to direct his attention exclusively to the Germans. The aid which he received from the Christian missionaries rendered him more successful among them. Those intrepid propagandists pierced where his armies could not. ... The Franks and the Popes of Rome had a common interest in this work of the conversion of the Germans, the Franks to restrain irruptions, and the Popes to carry their spiritual sway over Europe." Pepin left these unfinished German wars to his son Karl, the Hammer, and Karl prosecuted them with characteristic energy during his first years of power. "Almost every month he was forced into some expedition beyond the Rhine. ... The Alemans, the Bavarians, and the Frisons, he succeeded in subjecting to a formal confession at least of the Frankish supremacy; but the turbulent and implacable Saxons baffled his most strenuous efforts. Their wild tribes had become, within a few years, a powerful and numerous nation; they had appropriated the lands of the Thuringians and Hassi, or Catti, and joined to themselves other confederations and tribes; and, stretching from the Rhine to the Elbe, offered their marshes and forests a free asylum to all the persecuted sectaries of Odhinn, to all the lovers of native and savage independence. Six times in succession the armies of Karl penetrated the wilderness they called their home, ravaging their fields and burning their cabins, but the Saxon war was still renewed. He left it to the energetic labors of other conquerors, to Christian missionaries, ... to break the way of civilization into those rude and darkened realms." Karl's sons Pepin and Karloman crushed revolts of the Alemans, or Suabians, and the Bavarians in 742, and Karloman humbled the Saxons in a great campaign (744), compelling them in large numbers to submit to Christian baptism. After that, Germany waited for its first entire master--Charlemagne.

P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, chapters 12-15.

ALSO IN: W. C. Perry, The Franks, chapters 2-6.

See, also, FRANKS, and AUSTRASIA.

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FIFTH CENTURY.

CONTEMPORANEOUS EVENTS.

* Uncertain date.

A. D. 402. Defeat of Alaric by Stilicho.

Birth of Phocion* (d. 317).

404. Removal of the capital of the Western Empire from Rome to Ravenna.*

Banishment of the Patriarch, John Chrysostom, from Constantinople; burning of the Church of Saint Sophia.

406. Barbarian inroad of Radagaisus into Italy.

Breaking of the Rhine barrier by German tribes; overwhelming invasion of Gaul by Vandals, Alans, Suevi, and Burgundians.

407. Usurpation of Constantine in Britain and Gaul.

408. Death of the Eastern Emperor, Arcadius, and accession of Theodosius II.

Execution of Stilicho at Ravenna; massacre of barbarian hostages in Italy; blockade of Rome by Alaric.

409. Invasion of Spain by the Vandals, Suevi, and Alans.

410. Siege, capture and pillage of Rome by Alaric; his death.

Abandonment of Britain by the Empire.

The barbarian attack upon Gaul joined by the Franks.

412. Gaul entered by the Visigoths

Cyril made Patriarch of Alexandria.

414. Title of Augusta taken by Pulcheria at Constantinople.

415. Visigothic conquest of Spain begun.

Persecution of Jews at Alexandria; death of Hypatia.

418. Founding of the Gothic kingdom of Toulouse in Aquitaine.

422. War between Persia and the Eastern Empire partition of Armenia.

423. Death of Honorius, Emperor in the West; usurpation of John the Notary.

425. Accession of the Western Emperor, Valentinian III., under the regency of Placidia; formal and legal separation of the Eastern and Western Empires.

428. Conquests of the Vandals in Spain.

Nestorius made Patriarch of Constantinople.

429. Vandal conquests in Africa begun.

430. Siege of Hippo Regius in Africa; death of Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo.

431. Third General Council of the Church, held at Ephesus.

433. Beginning of the reign of Attila, king of the Huns. *

435. Nestorius exiled to the Libyan desert.

439. Carthage taken by the Vandals.

440. Leo the Great elected Pope.

441. Invasion of the Eastern Empire by Attila and the Huns.

443. Conquest and settlement of Savoy by the Burgundians.

446. Thermopylæ passed by the Huns; humiliating purchase of peace with them by the Eastern Emperor.

449. Landing in Britain of the Jutes under Hengist and Horsa.* Meeting of the so-called Robber Synod at Ephesus.

450. Death of the Eastern Emperor, Theodosius II., and accession of Pulcheria.

451. Great defeat of the Huns at Chalons; retreat of Attila from Gaul.

Fourth General Council of the Church, held at Chalcedon.

452. Invasion of Italy by Attila; origin of Venice.

453. Death of Attila; dissolution of his empire.

Death of Pulcheria, Empress in the East.

455. Murder of Valentinian III., Emperor in the West; usurpation of Maximus.

Rome pillaged by the Vandals.

Birth of Theodoric the Great (d. 526).

456. Supremacy of Ricimer, commander of the barbarian mercenaries, in the Western Empire; Avitus deposed.

457. Marjorian, first of the imperial puppets of Ricimer, raised to the throne of the Western Empire.

Accession of Leo I., Emperor in the East.

461. Marjorian deposed; Severus made Emperor in the West.

Death of Pope Leo the Great and election of Pope Hilarius.

467. Anthemius made Emperor in the West.

472. Siege and storming of Rome by Ricimer; death of Anthemius, and of Ricimer; Olybrius and Glycerius successive emperors.

473. Ostrogothic invasion of Italy diverted to Gaul.

474. Julius Nepos Emperor in the West; accession of Zeno in the Eastern Empire.

475. Romulus Augustulus made Emperor in the West.

476. Romulus Augustulus dethroned by Odoacer: extinction for more than three centuries of the Western line of emperors.

477. Beginning of Saxon conquests in Britain.

480. Birth of Saint Benedict (d. 543).

481. Founding of the Frank kingdom by Clovis.

486. Overthrow of the kingdom of Syagrius, the last Roman sovereignty in Gaul.

488. Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, commissioned by the Eastern Emperor to invade Italy.

489. Defeat of Odoacer by Theodoric at Verona.

491. Accession of Anastasius, Emperor in the East.

Capture of Anderida by the South Saxons.

492. Election of Pope Gelasius I.

493. Surrender of Odoacer at Ravenna; his murder; Theodoric king of Italy.

494. Landing of Cerdic and his band of Saxons in Britain. *

496. Defeat of the Alemanni at Tolbiac by Clovis, king of the Franks; baptism of Clovis.

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SIXTH CENTURY.

CONTEMPORANEOUS EVENTS.

* Uncertain date.

A. D. 504. Expulsion of the Alemanni from the Middle Rhine by the Franks.

505. Peace between Persia and the Eastern Empire.

507. Overthrow of the Gothic kingdom of Toulouse by Clovis.

511. Death of Clovis; partition of the Frank kingdom among his sons.

Monophysite riot at Constantinople.

512. Second Monophysite riot at Constantinople.

515. Publication of the monastic rule of Saint Benedict.

518. Death of the Eastern Emperor, Anastasius, and accession of Justin I.

519. Cerdic and Cynric become kings of the West Saxons.

525. Execution of Boethius and Symmachus by Theodoric, king of Italy.

526. Death of Theodoric and accession of Athalaric.

Great earthquake at Antioch.

War between Persia and the Eastern Empire.

527. Accession of Justinian in the Eastern Empire.

528. Conquest of Thuringia by the Franks.

529. Defeat of the Persians, at Dara, by the Roman general Belisarius.

Closing of the schools at Athens.

Publication of the Code of Justinian.

531. Accession of Chosroes, or Nushirvan, to the throne of Persia.

532. End of War between Persia and the Eastern Empire.

Nika sedition at Constantinople.

533. Overthrow of the Vandal kingdom in Africa by Belisarius.

Publication of the Pandects of Justinian.

534. Conquest of the Burgundians by the Franks.

535. Recovery of Sicily from the Goths by Belisarius.

536. Rome taken from the Goths by Belisarius for Justinian.

537. Unsuccessful siege of Rome by the Goths.

539. Destruction of Milan by the Goths.

Invasion of Italy by the Franks.

540. Surrender of Ravenna to Belisarius; his removal from command.

Invasion of Syria by Chosroes, king of Persia; storming and sacking of Antioch.

Formal relinquishment of Gaul to the Franks by Justinian.

Vigilius made Pope.

541. Gothic successes under Totila, in Italy.

End of the succession of. Roman Consuls.

Defense of the East by Belisarius.

542. Great Plague in the Roman Empire.

543. Surrender of Naples to Totila.

Death of Saint Benedict.

Invasion of Spain by the Franks.

544. Belisarius again in command in Italy.

546. Totila's siege, capture and pillage of Rome.

547. The city of Rome totally deserted for six weeks.

Founding of the kingdom of Bernicia (afterward included in Northumberland) in England.

Subjection of the Bavarians to the Franks.

548. Death of the Eastern Empress, Theodora.

549. Second siege and capture of Rome by Totila.

Beginning of the Lazic War.

552. Totila defeated and killed by the imperial army under Narses.

553. End of the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy; restoration of the imperial sovereignty.

Fifth General Council of the Church, at Constantinople.

Establishment of the Exarch at Ravenna, representing the Emperor at Constantinople.

555. Pelagius I. made Pope.

558. Reunion of the Frank empire under Clothaire I.

560. John III. made Pope.

563. Founding of the monastery of Iona, in Scotland, by Saint Columba.

565. Death of Belisarius and of the Eastern Emperor Justinian; accession of Justin II.

566. Conquest of the Gepidæ in Dacia by the Lombards and Avars.

567. Division of the Frank dominion into the three kingdoms of Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy.

568. Invasion of Italy by the Lombards; siege of Pavia.

570. Birth of Mahomet. *

572. Renewed war of the Eastern Empire with Persia.

573. Murder of Alboin, king of the Lombards.

Subjugation of the Suevi by the Visigoths in Spain.

574. Benedict I. made Pope.

578. Accession of the Eastern Emperor Tiberius Constantinus.

Pelagius II. made Pope.

582. Accession of Maurice, Emperor in the East.

588. Kingdom of Northumberland, in England, founded by the union of Bernicia and Deira under Æthelric.

589. Abandonment of Arianism by the Goths in Spain.

590. Gregory the Great elected Pope.

591. Peace between Persia and the Eastern Empire.

597. Mission of Saint Augustine to England.

Death of Saint Columba.

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GERMANY: A. D. 687-800. Rise of the Carolingians and the Empire of Charlemagne.

"Towards the close of the Merovingian period, ... the kingdom of the Franks ... was divided into four great districts, or kingdoms as they were called: Austrasia, or the eastern kingdom, from the river Rhine to the Meuse, with Metz as its principal city; Neustria, or the western kingdom, extending from Austrasia to the ocean on the west, and to the Loire on the south; Aquitaine, south of that river to the foot of the Pyrenees; and Burgundy, from the Rhone to the Alps, including Switzerland. These four kingdoms became, before the extinction of the Merovingian race, consolidated into two,--viz., Austrasia and Neustria, Eastern and Western Francia,--modern Germany and modern France, roughly speaking,--of which the first was to gain the pre-eminence, as it was the seat of the power of that race of Charlemagne which seized upon the kingdoms of the Merovingians. But in these kingdoms, while the family of Clovis occupied them, the royal power became more and more feeble as time went on, a condition which is illustrated by the title given in history to these kings,--that of 'rois fainéants.'... The most powerful officer of a Frankish king was his steward, or, as he was called, the mayor of his palace. ... In Austrasia the office had become hereditary in the family of Pepin of Landen (a small village near Liège), and under its guidance the degenerate children of Clovis in that kingdom fought for the supremacy with those equally degenerate in Neustria, at that time also under the real control of another mayor of the palace, called Ebroin. The result of this struggle, after much bloodshed and misery, was reached in the year 687 at the battle of Testry, in which the Austrasians completely defeated the Neustrians. ... The Merovingian princes were still nominally kings, while all the real power was in the hands of the descendants of Pepin of Landen, mayors of the palace, and the policy of government was as fully settled by them as if they had been kings de jure as well as de facto. This family produced in its earlier days some persons who have become among the most conspicuous figures in history:--Pepin, the founder; Pepin le Gros, of Héristal; Charles, his son, commonly called Martel, or the Hammerer; Pepin le Bref, under whom the Carlovingian dynasty was, by aid of the Pope, recognized as the lawful successor of the Merovingians, even before the extinction of that race; and, lastly, Charles, surnamed the Great, or Charlemagne, one of the few men of the human race who, by common consent, have occupied the foremost rank in history. ... The object of Pepin of Héristal was two-fold,--to repress the disposition of the turbulent nobles to encroach upon the royal authority, and to bring again under the yoke of the Franks those tribes in Germany who had revolted against the Frankish rule owing to the weakness of the Merovingian government. He measurably accomplished both objects. ... He seems to have had what perhaps is the best test at all times of the claims of a man to be a real statesman: some consciousness of the true nature of his mission,--the establishment of order. ... His son and successor, Charles Martel, was even more conspicuous for the possession of this genius of statesmanship, but he exhibited it in a somewhat different direction. He, too, strove to hold the nobles in check, and to break the power of the Frisian and the Saxon tribes; and he fought besides, fortunately for his fame, one of the fifteen decisive battles in the history of the world, that of Poitiers, in 732, by which the Saracens, who had conquered Spain, and who had strong hopes of gaining possession of the whole of Western Europe, were driven back from Northern France, never to return. ... His son, Pepin le Bref, is equally conspicuous with the rest in history, but in a somewhat different way. He continued the never-ending wars in Germany and in Gaul with the object of securing peace by the sword, and with more or less success. But his career is noteworthy principally because he completed the actual deposition of the last of the Merovingian race, whose nominal servants but real masters he and his predecessors, mayors of the palace, had been, and because he sought and obtained the sanction of the Church for this usurpation. ... The Pope's position at this time was one of very great embarrassment. Harassed by the Lombards, who were not only robbers, but who were also Arians, and who admitted none of the Catholic clergy to their councils,--with no succor from the Emperors at Constantinople (whose subject he nominally was) against the Lombards, and, indeed, in open revolt against them because as bishop and patriarch of the West he had forbidden the execution of the decree against the placing of images in the churches,--for these and many such reasons he sorely needed succor, and naturally in his necessity he turned to the powerful King of the Franks. The coronation of Pepin le Bref, first by St. Boniface, and then by the Pope himself, was the first step in the fulfilment of the alliance on his part. Pepin was soon called upon to do his share of the work. Twice at the bidding of the Pope he descended from the Alps, and, defeating the Lombards, was rewarded by him and the people of Rome with the title of Patrician. ... On the death of Pepin, the Lombards again took up arms and harassed the Church's territory. Charlemagne, his successor, was called upon to come to the rescue, and he swept the Lombard power in Italy out of existence, annexing its territory to the Frankish kingdom, and confirming the grant of the Exarchate and of the Pentapolis which his father had made to the Popes. This was in the year 774. ... For twenty-five years Charlemagne ruled Rome nominally as Patrician, under the supremacy, equally nominal, of the Emperor at Constantinople. The true sovereign, recognized as such, was the Pope or Bishop of Rome, but the actual power was in the hands of the mob, who at one time towards the close of the century, in the absence of both Emperor and Patrician, assaulted the Pope while conducting a procession, and forced him to abandon the city. This Pope, Leo, with a fine instinct as to the quarter from which succor could alone come, hurried to seek Charlemagne, who was then in Germany engaged in one of his never-ending wars against the Saxons. The appeal for aid was not made in vain, and Charles descended once more from the Alps in the summer of 799, with his Frankish hosts. On Christmas day, A. D. 800, in the Church of St. Peter ... Pope Leo, during the mass, and after the reading of the gospel, placed upon the brow of Charlemagne, who had abandoned his northern furs for the dress of a Roman patrician, the diadem of the Cæsars, and hailed him Imperator Semper Augustus, while the multitude shouted, 'Carolo, Augusto a Deo coronato magno et pacifico Imperatori Vita et Victoria.' In that shout and from that moment one of the most fruitful epochs of history begins."

C. J. Stillé, Studies in Mediæval History, chapter 3.

See, also, FRANKS: A. D. 768-814.

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GERMANY: A. D. 800. Charlemagne's restoration of the Roman Empire.

"Three hundred and twenty-four years had passed since the last Cæsar of the West resigned his power into the hands of the senate, and left to his Eastern brother the sole headship of the Roman world. To the latter Italy had from that time been nominally subject; but it was only during one brief interval, between the death of Totila the last Ostrogothic king and the descent of Alboin the first Lombard, that his power had been really effective. In the further provinces, Gaul, Spain, Britain, it was only a memory. But the idea of a Roman Empire as a necessary part of the world's order had not vanished: it had been admitted by those who seemed to be destroying it; it had been cherished by the Church; was still recalled by laws and customs; was dear to the subject populations, who fondly looked back to the days when slavery was at least mitigated by peace and order. ... Both the extinction of the Western Empire in [A.D. 476] ... and its revival in A. D. 800 have been very generally misunderstood in modern times. ... When Odoacer compelled the abdication of Romulus Augustulus, he did not abolish the Western Empire as a separate power, but caused it to be reunited with or sink into the Eastern, so that from that time there was, as there had been before Diocletian, a single undivided Roman Empire. In A. D. 800 the very memory of the separate Western Empire, as it had stood from the death of Theodosius till Odoacer, had, so far as appears, been long since lost, and neither Leo nor Charles nor anyone among their advisers dreamt of reviving it. They, too, like their predecessors, held the Roman Empire to be one and indivisible, and proposed by the coronation of the Frankish king, not to proclaim a severance of the East and West, but to reverse the act of Constantine, and make Old Rome again the civil as well as the ecclesiastical capital of the Empire that bore her name. ... Although therefore we must in practice speak during the next seven centuries (down till A. D. 1453, when Constantinople fell before the Mohammedan) of an Eastern and a Western Empire, the phrase is in strictness incorrect, and was one which either court ought to have repudiated. The Byzantines always did repudiate it; the Latins usually; although, yielding to facts, they sometimes condescended to employ it themselves. But their theory was always the same. Charles was held to be the legitimate successor, not of Romulus Augustulus, but of Basil, Heraclius, Justinian, Arcadius, and all the Eastern line. ... North Italy and Rome ceased for ever to own the supremacy of Byzantium; and while the Eastern princes paid a shameful tribute to the Mussulman, the Frankish Emperor--as the recognised head of Christendom--received from the patriarch of Jerusalem the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner of Calvary; the gift of the Sepulchre itself, says Eginhard, from Aaron king of the Persians [the Caliph Haroun el Rashid]. ... Four centuries later, when Papacy and Empire had been forced into the mortal struggle by which the fate of both was decided, three distinct theories regarding the coronation of Charles will be found advocated by three different parties, all of them plausible, all of them to some extent misleading. The Swabian Emperors held the crown to have been won by their great predecessor as the prize of conquest, and drew the conclusion that the citizens and bishop of Rome had no rights as against themselves. The patriotic party among the Romans, appealing to the early history of the Empire, declared that by nothing but the voice of their senate and people could an Emperor be lawfully created, he being only their chief magistrate, the temporary depositary of their authority. The Popes pointed to the indisputable fact that Leo imposed the crown, and argued that as God's earthly vicar it was then his, and must always continue to be their right to give to whomsoever they would an office which was created to be the handmaid of their own. Of these three it was the last view that eventually prevailed."

J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 4-5.

ALSO IN: J. I. Mombert, History of Charles the Great, chapter 14.

See, also, FRANKS: A. D. 768-814.

GERMANY: A. D. 805. Conquest of the Avars. Creation of the Austrian March.

See AVARS, and AUSTRIA: A. D. 805-1246.

GERMANY: A. D. 814-843. Division of the Empire of Charlemagne.

"There was a manifest conflict, during his later years, in the court, in the councils, in the mind of Charlemagne [who died in 814], between the King of the Franks and the Emperor of the West; between the dissociating, independent Teutonic principle, and the Roman principle of one code, one dominion, one sovereign. The Church, though Teutonic in descent, was Roman in the sentiment of unity. ... That unity had been threatened by the proclaimed division of the realm between the sons of Charlemagne. The old Teutonic usage of equal distribution seemed doomed to prevail over the august unity of the Roman Empire. What may appear more extraordinary, the kingdom of Italy was the inferior appanage: it carried not with it the Empire, which was still to retain a certain supremacy; that was reserved for the Teutonic sovereign. It might seem as if this were but the continuation of the Lombard kingdom, which Charlemagne still held by the right of conquest. It was bestowed on Pepin; after his death entrusted to Bernhard, Pepin's illegitimate but only son. Wiser counsels prevailed. The two elder sons of Charlemagne died without issue; Louis the third son was summoned from his kingdom of Aquitaine, and solemnly crowned [813] at Aix-la-Chapelle, as successor to the whole Empire."

H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, book 5, chapter 2 (volume 2).

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"Instead of being preoccupied with the care of keeping the empire united, Louis divided it in the year 817 by giving kingdoms to his three sons. The eldest, Lothaire, had Italy; Louis, Bavaria; Pepin, Aquitaine. A nephew of the emperor, Bernard, imagined himself wronged by this partition, and took up arms to hold Italy. Vanquished without striking a blow, he delivered himself up to his uncle, who caused his eyes to be put out. He expired under that torture. Louis reproached himself later for that cruel death, and to expiate it, subjected himself to a public penance. In 823, there was born to him a fourth son. To make him a sharer of his inheritance, the emperor, annulling in 829 the partition of 817, gave him Germany, thus depriving his elder sons of part of the inheritance previously assigned them. This provoked the resentment of those princes; they rose in rebellion against their father, and the rest of the reign of Louis was only a succession of impious contests with his turbulent sons. In 833, he deposed Pepin, and gave his kingdom of Aquitaine to his youngest born, Charles. Twice deposed himself, and twice restored, Louis only emerged from the cloister, for which he was so well fitted, to repeat the same faults. When Louis the Good-natured died in 840, it was not his cause only which he had lost through his weakness, but that of the empire. Those intestine quarrels presaged its dismemberment, which ere long happened. The sons of Louis, to serve their own ambition, had revived the national antipathies of the different races. Lothaire placed himself at the head of the Italians; Louis rallied the Germans round him, and Charles the Bald the Franks of Gaul, who were henceforward called Frenchmen. Those three peoples aspired to break up the union whose bond Charlemagne had imposed upon them, as the three brothers aspired to form each for himself a kingdom. The question was decided at the great battle of Fontanet, near Auxerre, in 841. Lothaire, who fought therein for the preservation of the empire and of his authority, was conquered. By the treaty of Verdun [843--see VERDUN, TREATY OF] it was decided that Louis should have Germany to the east of the Rhine; Charles, France to the west of the Scheld, the Meuse, the Saone, and the Rhone; finally, Lothaire, Italy, with the long range of country comprised between the Alps and the Cevennes, the Jura, the Saone, the Rhine, and the Meuse, which from his name was called Lotharingia. This designation is still to be traced in one of the recently French provinces, Lorraine."

S. Menzies, History of Europe from the Decadence of the Western Empire to the Reformation, chapter. 13.

GERMANY: A. D. 843. Accession of Louis II.

GERMANY: A. D. 843-962. Treaty of Verdun. Definite separation from France. The kingdom of the East Franks.

The partition of the empire of Charlemagne among his three grandsons, by the Treaty of Verdun, A. D. 843, gave to Charles the Bald a kingdom which nearly coincided with France, as afterwards existing under that name, "before its Burgundian and German annexations.

See VERDUN, TREATY OF; also, FRANKS: A. D. 814-962.

It also founded a kingdom which roughly answered to the later Germany before its great extension to the East at the expense of the Slavonic nations. And as the Western kingdom was formed by the addition of Aquitaine to the Western Francia, so the Eastern kingdom was formed by the addition of the Eastern Francia to Bavaria. Lewis of Bavaria [surnamed 'the German'] became king of a kingdom which we are tempted to call the kingdom of Germany. Still it would as yet be premature to speak of France at all, or even to speak of Germany, except in the geographical sense. The two kingdoms are severally the kingdoms of the Eastern and of the Western Franks. ... The Kings had no special titles, and their dominions had no special names recognized in formal use. Every king who ruled over any part of the ancient Francia was a king of the Franks. ... The Eastern part of the Frankish dominions, the lot of Lewis the German and his successors, is thus called the Eastern Kingdom, the Teutonic Kingdom. Its king is the King of the East-Franks, sometimes simply the King of the Eastern men, sometimes the King of Germany. ... The title of King of Germany is often found in the ninth century as a description, but it was not a formal title. The Eastern king, like other kings, for the most part simply calls himself' Rex,' till the time came when his rank as King of Germany, or of the East-Franks, became simply a step towards the higher title of Emperor of the Romans. ... This Eastern or German kingdom, as it came out of the division of 887 [after the deposition of Charles III., called Charles the Fat,. who came to the throne in 881, and who had, momentarily reunited all the Frankish crowns, except that of Burgundy], had, from north to south,. nearly the same extent as the Germany of later times. It stretched from the Alps to the Eider. Its southern boundaries were somewhat fluctuating. Verona and Aquileia are sometimes counted as a German march, and the boundary between, Germany and Burgundy, crossing the modern Switzerland, often changed. To the north-east the kingdom hardly stretched beyond the Elbe, except in the small Saxon land between the Elbe and the Eider [called 'Saxony beyond the Elbe'--modern Holstein]. The great extension of the German power over the Slavonic lands beyond the Elbe had hardly yet begun. To the southeast lay the two border-lands or marks; the Eastern Mark, which grew into the later duchy of, Oesterreich or the modern Austria, and to the south of it the mark of Kärnthen or Carinthia. But the main part of the kingdom consisted of the great duchies of Saxony, Eastern Francia, Alemannia, and Bavaria. Of these the two names of Saxony and Bavaria must be carefully marked as having widely different meanings from those which they bear on the modern map. Ancient Saxony lies, speaking roughly, between the Eider, the Elbe, and the Rhine, though it never actually touches the last-named river. To the south of Saxony lies the Eastern Francia, the centre and kernel of the German kingdom. The Main and the Neckar both join the Rhine within its borders. To the south of Francia lie Alemannia and Bavaria. This last, it must be remembered, borders on Italy, with Bötzen for its frontier town. Alemannia is the land in which both the Rhine and the Danube take their source; it stretches on both sides of the Bodensee or Lake of Constanz, with the Rætian Alps as its southern boundary. For several ages to come, there is no distinction, national or even provincial, between the lands north and south of the Bodensee."

E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 6, section 1.

ALSO IN: Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, volumes 1-2.

On the indefiniteness of the name of the Germanic kingdom in this period,

See FRANCE: 9TH CENTURY.

GERMANY: A. D. 881. Accession of Charles III. (called The Fat), afterwards King of all the Franks and Emperor.

GERMANY: A. D. 888. Accession of Arnulf, afterwards Emperor.

GERMANY: A. D. 899. Accession of Louis III. (called The Child).

GERMANY: A. D. 911. Election of Conrad I.

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GERMANY: A. D. 911-936. Conrad the Franconian and Henry the Fowler. Beginning of the Saxon line. Hungarian invasion. The building of towns.

In 911, on the death of Louis, surnamed the Child, the German or East-Frank branch of the dynasty of Charlemagne had become extinct. "There remained indeed Charles the Simple, acknowledged as king in some parts of France, but rejected in others, and possessing no personal claims to respect. The Germans therefore wisely determined to chose a sovereign from among themselves. They were at this time divided into five nations, each under its own duke, and distinguished by difference of laws, as well as of origin; the Franks, whose territory, comprising Franconia and the modern Palatinate, was considered as the cradle of the empire, and who seem to have arrogated some superiority over the rest, the Suabians, the Bavarians, the Saxons ... and the Lorrainers, who occupied the left bank of the Rhine as far as its termination. The choice of these nations in their general assembly fell upon Conrad, duke of Franconia, according to some writers, or at least a man of high rank, and descended through females from Charlemagne. Conrad dying without male issue, the crown of Germany was bestowed [A. D. 919] upon Henry the Fowler, duke of Saxony, ancestor of the three Othos, who followed him in direct succession. To Henry, and to the first Otho [A. D. 936-973], Germany was more indebted than to any sovereign since Charlemagne."

H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 5.

"In 924, the Hungarians, who were as much dreaded as the angel of destruction, re-appeared. They came from the grassy plains of Hungary, mounted on small and ugly, but strong horses, and swept along the Danube like a hailstorm. Wherever they came they set fire to farms, hamlets, and towns, and killed all living creatures or carried them off. And often they bound their prisoners to the tails of their horses, and dragged them along till they died from the dreadful torture. Their very figures inspired disgust and terror, for their faces were brown, and disfigured by scars to absolute hideousness; their heads were shaven, and brutal ferocity and rapacity shone out of their deep-set eyes. And though the Germans fought bravely, these enemies always overmatched them, because they appeared now here, now there, on their fleet horses, and fell upon isolated districts before they were expected or could be stopped. ... When on a sudden the terrible cry, 'The Hungarians are coming, the Hungarians are coming,' resounded through the land, all fled who could, as if the wild legions of hell were marching through Saxony and Thuringia. King Henry, however, would not fly, but encountered them in combat, like a true knight. Yet he lost the battle, either because he was ill, or because his soldiers were too few, and unaccustomed to the enemy's mode of fighting, which enabled them to conquer while they were fleeing. Henry was obliged to shut himself up in the royal palace of Werla, near Goslar, which he bravely defended. The Hungarians stormed it again and again, but they could not scale the walls; while Henry's men by a daring sally took a Hungarian chieftain prisoner, which so terrified the besiegers that they concluded a truce for nine years on condition that their chief should be released, and that Henry should engage to pay a yearly tribute. Henry submitted to the dishonourable sacrifice that he might husband his strength for better times. ... How important it was to have fortified places which could not be stormed by cavalry, and therefore afforded a safe refuge to the neighbouring peasantry, Henry recognised in 929, when the Hungarians marched through Bavaria and Suabia to Lorraine, plundered the time-honoured monastery of St. Gall, and burnt the suburbs of Constance, but could not take the fortified town itself. Henry, accordingly, published an order throughout the land, that at suitable places large fortresses should be built, in which every ninth man from the neighbouring district must take garrison duty. Certainly living in towns was contrary to the customs of the North Germans, and here and there there was much resistance; but they soon recognised the wisdom of the royal order, and worked night and day with such diligence that there soon arose throughout the land towns with stately towers and strong walls, behind whose battlements the armed burghers defiantly awaited the Hungarians. Hamburg was then fortified, Itzehoe built, the walls of Magdeburg, Halle, and Erfurt extended, for these towns had stood since the time of Charlemagne. Quedlinburg, Merseburg, Meissen, Wittenberg, Goslar, Soest, Nordhausen, Duderstadt, Gronau, Pölde, were rebuilt, and many others of which the old chroniclers say nothing. Those who dwelt in the cities were called burghers, and in order that they might not be idle they began to practise many kinds of industry, and to barter their goods with the peasants. The emperor encouraged the building of towns, and granted emancipation to every slave who repaired to a town, allowed the towns to hold fairs and markets, granted to them the right of coining money and levying taxes, and gave them many landed estates and forests. Under such encouragement town life rapidly developed, and the emperor, in his disputes with the lawless nobility, always received loyal support from his disciplined burghers. After a few centuries the towns, which had now generally become republics, under the name of 'free imperial towns,' became the seats of the perfection of European trade, science, and culture. ... These incalculable benefits are due to Henry's order to build towns."

A. W. Grübe, Heroes of History and Legend, chapter 8.

At the expiration of the nine years truce, the Hungarians resumed their attacks, and were defeated by Henry in two bloody battles.

GERMANY: A. D. 936-973. Restoration of the Roman Empire by Otho I. called the Great.

"Otho the Great, son and successor of Henry I., added the kingdom of Italy to the conquests of his father, and procured also the Imperial dignity for himself, and his successors in Germany. Italy had become a distinct kingdom since the revolution, which happened (888) at the death of the Emperor Charles the Fat. Ten princes in succession occupied the throne during the space of seventy-three years. Several of these princes, such as Guy, Lambert, Arnulf, Louis of Burgundy, and Berenger I., were invested with the Imperial dignity. Berenger I., having been assassinated (924), this latter dignity ceased entirely, and the city of Rome was even dismembered from the kingdom of Italy. The sovereignty of that city was seized by the famous Marozia, widow of a nobleman named Alberic. She raised her son to the pontificate by the title of John XI.; and the better to establish her dominion, she espoused Hugo King of Italy (932), who became, in consequence of this marriage, master of Rome. But Alberic, another son of Marozia, soon stirred up the people against this aspiring princess and her husband Hugo. {1440} Having driven Hugo from the throne, and shut up his mother in prison, he assumed to himself the sovereign authority, under the title of Patrician of the Romans. At his death (954) he transmitted the sovereignty to his son Octavian, who, though only nineteen years of age, caused himself to be elected pope, by the title of John XII. This epoch was one most disastrous for Italy. The weakness of the government excited factions among the nobility, gave birth to anarchy, and fresh opportunity for the depredations of the Hungarians and Arabs, who, at this period, were the scourge of Italy, which they ravaged with impunity. Pavia, the capital of the kingdom, was taken, and burnt by the Hungarians. These troubles increased on the accession of Berenger II. (950), grandson of Berenger I. That prince associated his son Adelbert with him in the royal dignity; and the public voice accused them of having caused the death of King Lothaire, son and successor of Hugo. Lothaire left a young widow, named Adelaide, daughter of Rodolph II., King of Burgundy and Italy. To avoid the importunities of Berenger II., who wished to compel her to marry his son Adelbert, this princess called in the King of Germany to her aid. Otho complied with the solicitations of the distressed queen; and, on this occasion, undertook his first expedition into Italy (951). The city of Pavia, and several other places, having fallen into his hands, he made himself be proclaimed King of Italy, and married the young queen, his protégée. Berenger and his son, being driven for shelter to their strongholds, had recourse to negociation. They succeeded in obtaining for themselves a confirmation of the royal title of Italy, on condition of doing homage for it to the King of Germany. ... It appears that it was not without the regret, and even contrary to the wish of Adelaide, that Otho agreed to enter into terms of accommodation with Berenger. ... Afterwards; however, he lent a favourable ear to the complaints which Pope John XII. and some Italian noblemen had addressed to him against Berenger and his son; and took occasion, on their account, to conduct a new army into Italy (961). Berenger, too feeble to oppose him, retired a second time within his fortifications. Otho marched from Pavia to Milan, and there made himself be crowned King of Italy; from thence he passed to Rome, about the commencement of the following year. Pope John XII., who had himself invited him, and again implored his protection against Berenger, gave him, at first, a very brilliant reception; and revived the Imperial dignity in his favour, which had been dormant for thirty-eight years. It was on the 2d of February, 962, that the Pope consecrated and crowned him Emperor; but he had soon cause to repent of this proceeding. Otho, immediately after his coronation at Rome, undertook the siege of St. Leon, a fortress in Umbria, where Berenger and his queen had taken refuge. While engaged in the siege, he received frequent intimations from Rome, of the misconduct and immoralities of the Pope. The remonstrances which he thought it his duty to make on this subject, offended the young pontiff, who resolved, in consequence, to break off union with the Emperor. Hurried on by the impetuosity of his character, he entered into a negociation with Adelbert; and even persuaded him to come to Rome, in order to concert with him measures of defence. On the first news of this event, Otho put himself at the head of a large detachment, with which he marched directly to Rome. The Pope, however, did not think it advisable to wait his approach, but fled with the King, his new ally. Otho, on arriving at the capital, exacted a solemn oath from the clergy and the people, that henceforth they would elect no pope without his counsel, and that of the Emperor and his successors. Having then assembled a council, he caused Pope John XII. to be deposed; and Leo VIII. was elected in his place. This latter Pontiff was maintained in the papacy, in spite of all the efforts which his adversary made to regain it. Berenger II., after having sustained a long siege at St. Leon, fell at length (964) into the hands of the conqueror, who sent him into exile at Bamberg, and compelled his son, Adelbert, to take refuge in the court of Constantinople. All Italy, to the extent of the ancient kingdom of the Lombards, fell under the dominion of the Germans; only a few maritime towns in Lower Italy, with the greater part of Apulia and Calabria, still remained in the power of the Greeks. This kingdom, together with the Imperial dignity, Otho transmitted to his successors on the throne of Germany. From this time the Germans held it to be an inviolable principle, that as the Imperial dignity was strictly united with the royalty of Italy, kings elected by the German nation should, at the same time, in virtue of that election, become Kings of Italy and Emperors. The practice of this triple coronation, viz., of Germany, Italy, and Rome, continued for many centuries; and from Otho the Great, till Maximilian I. (1508), no king of Germany took the title of Emperor, until after he had been formally crowned by the Pope."

C. W. Koch, The Revolutions of Europe, period 3.

"At the first glance it would seem as if the relation in which Otho now stood to the pope was the same as that occupied by Charlemagne; on a closer inspection, however; we find a wide difference. Charlemagne's connexion with the see of Rome was produced by mutual need; it was the result of long epochs of political combination embracing the development of various nations; their mutual understanding rested on an internal necessity, before which all opposing views and interests gave way. The sovereignty of Otho the Great, on the contrary, rested on a principle fundamentally opposed to the encroachment of spiritual influences. The alliance was momentary; the disruption of it inevitable. But when, soon after, the same pope who had invoked his aid, John XII., placed himself at the head of a rebellious faction, Otho was compelled to cause him to be formally deposed, and to crush the faction that supported him by repeated, exertions of force, before he could obtain perfect obedience; he was obliged to raise to the papal chair a pope on whose co-operation he could rely. The popes have often asserted that they transferred the empire to the Germans; and if they confined this assertion to the Carolingian race, they are not entirely wrong. The coronation of Charlemagne was the result of their free determination. But if they allude to the German emperors, properly so called, the contrary of their statement is just as true; not only Carlmann and Otho the Great, but their successors, constantly had to conquer the imperial throne, and to defend it, when conquered, sword in hand. {1441} It has been said that the Germans would have done more wisely if they had not meddled with the empire; or, at least, if they had first worked out their own internal political institutions, and then, with matured minds, taken part in the general affairs of Europe. But the things of this world are not wont to develop themselves so methodically. A nation is often compelled by circumstances to increase its territorial extent, before its internal growth is completed. For was it of slight importance to its inward progress that Germany thus remained in unbroken connexion with Italy?--the depository of all that remained of ancient civilisation, the source whence all the forms of Christianity had been derived. The mind of Germany has always unfolded itself by contact with the spirit of antiquity, and of the nations of Roman origin. ... The German imperial government revived the civilising and Christianising tendencies which had distinguished the reigns of Charles Martell and Charlemagne. Otho the Great, in following the course marked out by his illustrious predecessors, gave it a fresh national importance by planting German colonies in Slavonian countries simultaneously with the diffusion of Christianity. He Germanised as well as converted the population he had subdued. He confirmed his father's conquests on the Saale and the Elbe, by the establishment of the bishoprics of Meissen and Osterland. After having conquered the tribes on the other side the Elbe in those long and perilous campaigns where he commanded in person, he established there, too, three bishoprics, which for a time gave an extraordinary impulse to the progress of conversion. ... And even where the project of Germanising the population was out of the question, the supremacy of the German name was firmly and actively maintained. In Bohemia and Poland bishoprics were erected under German metropolitans; from Hamburg Christianity found its way into the north; missionaries from Passau traversed Hungary, nor is it improbable that the influence of these vast and sublime efforts extended even to Russia. The German empire was the centre of the conquering religion; as itself advanced, it extended the ecclesiastico-military State of which the Church was an integral part; it was the chief representative of the unity of western Christendom, and hence arose the necessity under which it lay of acquiring a decided ascendancy over the papacy. This secular and Germanic principle long retained the predominancy it had triumphantly acquired. ... How magnificent was the position now occupied by the German nation, represented in the persons of the mightiest princes of Europe and united under their sceptre; at the head of an advancing civilisation, and of the whole of western Christendom; in the fullness of youthful aspiring strength! We must here however remark and confess, that Germany did not wholly understand her position, nor fulfil her mission. Above all, she did not succeed in giving complete reality to the idea of a western empire, such as appeared about to be established under Otho I. Independent and often hostile, though Christian powers arose through all the borders of Germany; in Hungary and in Poland, in the northern as well as in the southern possessions of the Normans; England and France were snatched again from German influence. Spain laughed at the German claims to a universal supremacy; her kings thought themselves emperors; even the enterprises nearest home--those across the Elbe--were for a time stationary or retrograde. If we seek for the causes of these unfavourable results, we need only turn our eyes on the internal condition of the empire, where we find an incessant and tempestuous struggle of all the forces of the nation. Unfortunately the establishment of a fixed rule of succession to the imperial crown was continually prevented by events."

L. Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, introduction.

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 961-1039; and ROMAN EMPIRE, THE HOLY.

GERMANY: A. D. 955. Great defeat and repulse of the Hungarians by Otho I.

See HUNGARIANS: A. D. 934-955.

GERMANY: A. D. 973-1122. End of the Saxon line. Election of the Franconians. Reformation of the Papacy. Contest of Henry IV. with the Head of the Church. The question of Investitures.

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