The Growth of the French Nation

Front matter

FRANC E UNDER FRANCIS I. SCALE OF MILES 0 20 40 00 80 100 120 HO ._.._. Limits of Frontier Limit* of Military Govern- 1 Limitof Feudal Poes. / FRANCE 1715 / IN PROVINCES / SCALE OF MILES / 0 20 40 CO do 100 HO / ..__., limits of Frontier I — Limits of Military Gov't \ , ___imit« as Feudal Domains THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIEN- TIFIC CIRCLE. ifounJcS in 1878. This volume is apart of the course of home reading the essential features of which are : z. A Definite Course covering four years, and including History, Literature, Art, Science, etc. (A reader may enroll for only one year.) No examinations. 2. Specified Volumes approved by the counselors. Many of the books are specially prepared for the purpose. 3. Allotment of Time. The reading is apportioned by the week and month. 4. A Monthly Magazine, The Chautauqdan, with additional readings, notes, and general literature. 5.

A Membership Book, containing suggestions for reading, review outlines, and other aid. 6. Individual Readers, no matter how isolated, may have all the privileges. 7. Local Circles may be formed by three or more members for mutual aid and encouragement. 8. The Time Required is on an average forty minutes a day for nine months. 9. Certificates are granted at the end of four years to all who complete the course. 10. Advanced Courses, for continued reading in special lines — in story, Literature, etc. n. Pedagogical Course for secular teachers. 12. Young People's Reading Course, to stimulate the reading of good literature by the young. For all information concerning the C. L. >S. C address The Chautauqua Office, Drawer 194, Buffalo, N. Y. THE REQUIRED LITERATURE FOR 1896-7. The Growth op the French Nation (illustrated).

George B. Adams, Professor of History, Yale University gl.00 French Traits. W. C. Bro\vnell,of Scribners', New York 1.00 Greek Civilization (illustrated). J. P. Mahaffy, Professor of Ancient History, University of Dublin, Ireland 1.00 A History of Greek Art (illustrated). P. B. Tarbell, Professor of Archæology, University of Chicago 1.00 A Study of the Sky (illustrated). Herbert A. Howe, Professor of Astronomy, University of Denver 1.00 The Chatttatjquan (12 numbers, illustrated) . 2.00 LOUIS Cbautauqua TReaOfng Circle literature THE GROWTH OF THE FRENCH NATION BY- GEORGE BURTON ADAMS Professor of History in Yale University MEADVILLE PENNA FLOOD AND VINCENT Cbe (3tbautauqua.-(CEnturD ptegg NEW YORK : CINCINNATI : CHICAGO : 150 Fifth Avenue. 222 W. Fourth St. 57 Washington St Copyright, 1896 By Flood & Vincent The Chautauqua- Century Press, Meadville, Pa., U. S. A. Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by Flood & Vincent.

Preface

. The difficulty of attempting to compress the whole history of the French nation within the limits of a book of this size must be evident at a glance. It requires of necessity the exclusion of many matters of interest which belong to that history, and it is not likely that any two writers would agree in their selection of the facts to be omitted. In the present case, I have endeavored to follow, as closely as possible, the line marked out by the title of the book, and to include within it, to the best of my judgment, the important facts which show the growth of the nation from age to age. I have endeavored, also, to resist the temptation to use the space at my command for other facts, how ever interesting, if they do not seem to bear upon the national growth. I believe the question of insertion or exclusion has been carefully considered in every impor tant case, but I cannot hope that my judgment will always meet with approval.

The omission which I regard with the most regret is that which concerns the economic history of France. There are periods, at least, in the growth of the nation when that side of its history deserves a fuller treatment than it has received here, and yet it could not be given without the sacrifice of other matters which seemed of more importance when a choice between them had to be made. No attempt has been made in this book to furnish a bibliography of French history. Occasional reference Preface. IV has been made in the margin to books in the English language which are of particular interest on special periods. There is no thoroughly good book as yet, either in English or in French, which covers the whole history of France. Kitchin's " History of France," in three volumes, is the best in English, but is needlessly uninteresting, and leaves much to be desired at many points.

Guizot's is popular and fully illustrated, but it is uncritical and contains many versions of facts now known to be incorrect. Very good single volume histories are Duruy's and the volume on France in the "Student's Series of Histories." I wish to acknowledge my especial obligation to the "Histoire Generale " of Lavisse and Rambaud, and to Rambaud's "Histoire de la Civilisation Francaise. " New Haven, January, i8g6. V CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE Introduction n I. Gaul before the Franks .... 14 II. The German Conquest 23 III. The Dynasty of the Merovingians 32 IV. The Carolingians and Charlemagne 39 V. The Breaking up of Charlemagne's Empire and the Rise of the Feudal System 47 VI. The First Capetians — The Feudal Kings and the Feudal System 54 VII. The Foundation of France and of the Absolute Monarchy ... 73 VIII.

Steps toward Absolutism .... 89 IX. The Hundred Years' War .... 108 X. France Begins to be a European Power 136 XI. The Religious Civil Wars .... 160 XII. France again a European Power . 180 XIII. Louis XIV 202 XIV. The Eighteenth Century .... 234 XV. Causes of the French Revolution 258 XVI. Ten Years of Revolution .... 273 XVII. Napoleon 308 XVIII. France Since 1815 318 Summary for Review The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by a Council of six. It must, however, be understood that recommendation does not involve an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, of every principle or doctrine contained in the book recommended. MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. France under Francis I ( Full-page colored map) First front lining page France in Provinces, 1715. ( Full -page colored map) .

Second front lining page Louis XIV Frontispiece PAGE A Roman Aqueduct near Nimes, known as the Bridge of the Gard 19 Religious Music 20 A Chair said to have been Dagobert's 33 Mosaic in the Lateran, Rome 44 Silver Pennies of Charlemagne's Coinage 46 Ships of the Northmen 49 A Feudal Castle 51 A Romanesque House of the Eleventh Century at Saint- Gilles 57 Fleet of William the Conqueror Setting Sail 62 Wheelwright and Cooper 64 Masons, Stonecutters, and Sculptors 67 Farrier 68 Shop of a Money Changer 71 A Romanesque Church of the Twelfth Century. Toulouse. 74 Town Hall of Bruges 77 Seal of Arthur of Brittany (1202) 84 Seal of the University of Paris (1292) 88 Shrine at Troves 101 fohn the Good 113 Nobles under John the Good 116 Charles V 119 The Coronation of Charles V 122 The Louvre under Charles V 124 A Noble Lady 126 A Cannon of the Fifteenth Century 130 Charles VII Maps and f/lustrations.

VIII PAGE A Chatelaine 138 Medallions of Charles VIII. and Anne of Brittany .... 144 Francis I 15° Henry II 161 Costume of the Time of Henry II 166 Henry III '. 175 Court Costume, Time of Henry III 176 Henry IV 182 Sully 1S5 Mary de Medici 189 Louis XIII 191 Richelieu 194 Costume of the End of the Reign of Louis XIII 198 Cardinal Mazarin 203 Barricade of the Time of the Fronde 205 Colbert 213 Gobelin Tapestry 215 Louis de Bourbon, the Great Conde 218 Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne . . 222 La Fontaine 230 Racine 231 Moliere 232 Facsimile of a Bill of Law's Royal Bank 238 Louis XV 240 Dupleix 243 Costume of the Court of Louis XV 245 Decorated Sedan-Chair of the Eighteenth Century .... 248 Turgot 251 Coiffure a la Belle-Poule 253 Beauvais Tapestry 262 A Country Pharmacy 264 Voltaire 268 Jean Jacques Rousseau 269 Montesquieu 271 Louis XVI 276 Marie Antoinette 27S Facsimile of an Assignat 2S3 Mirabeau 285 Robespierre 291 Louis XVII., the Dauphin Maps and Illustrations.

IX PAGE Costume ofthe Time ofthe Revolution, in Imitation ofthe Greek 296 Lazare Carnot 298 Arch of Triumph, Paris 302 Medallion of the Three Consuls 306 Napoleon 308 Coin of the Year XII., 1S03-4 311 Wellington 313 Louis XVIII 315 Medal to Commemorate the Charter of 1814 319 An Officer of Guides of the Imperial Guard 322 Lazare Hippolyte Carnot 324 A Cuirassier Officer, French Cavalry, during the Second Empire 325 Napoleon III 327 Thiers 330 Marshal MacMahon 331 M. Grevy 333 Sadi Carnot 334 Jules Ferry 336 Casimir Perier 338 M. Fefix Faure 339 France in Departments. (Two-page colored map) End lining pages French history of peculiar interest to us. A succession of races. THE GROWTH OF THE FRENCH NATION.

Introduction

. In more than one age of the past, the French nation has been the leading nation of the world, whether one means by that the most powerful of the nations or the leader of the world in the arts of civilization. If it seems to us improbable that France should ever again occupy the commanding position which has sometimes been hers in the past, the fact does not diminish the interest with which we must regard her history. To the American people especially, occupying the continent which she so nearly made her own, and influenced, as we have been, in peculiar ways by her history, the story of the French people can hardly be of inferior interest to that of our own mother country. The story of the growth of the French nation is a very peculiar one. The country was occupied, when its real history opens, by a great race — the Celtic — which forms through all later changes the main stock of its population, but whose language and institutions have disappeared almost completely from the final product.

The country was then conquered by another great race — the Roman — which made almost no contribution to the blood of the French nation, but which did give it its language, and the larger share of its institutions and its laws. Finally a third race occupied the country by conquest — the German — which added a new element, but a minor one, to the population, and which profoundly influenced, for 1 r The Growth of the French Nation. 12 a time at least, institutions and laws, but whose language was unable to compete with the Roman and disappeared as completely as the Celtic. The result of this last conquest was a great decline of civilization, followed by a long and slow recovery, and, in the midst of it, a breaking up of the unity of the nation, so that within the country a great number of independent, or practically independent, fragments were formed — the age of the feudal system.

The process of political recovery from this condition consisted in the slow reunion of these fragments into a nation under the lead of the kings — a process which naturally resulted in centralizing the gov ernment as well as the nation, and in making the king absolute. Completed only at the end of the Middle Ages, this process explains much of the modern history of France, for it developed not merely an absolute monarchy, but also a strong national consciousness and great power, and as the national strength was all under the direction of a single will, the new nation entered upon a great career of conquest and of influence over other nations which seemed to promise, at intervals, a real headship of the world. But the promise was never fulfilled, and the growth of great powers outside Europe and the generally changed conditions of the present century make its fulfillment no longer possible.

The feudal age. The kings lead in forming the nation, and establish an absolutism. During the last one hundred years, the nation, formed and so long ruled by kings with unlimited powers, has been trying to get rid of absolutism and to learn the art of ruling itself. It has tried many, and mostly futile, experiments, and it has suffered many things both from tyrants and from revolutions, but it seems at last to have reached a measure of real self-government under a con stitution which gives great promise of permanence. The present century. The geographical situation of France has rendered it Introduction. 13 Geographical influence. easy for the nation to secure a commanding position in Europe, giving it, as it does, a coast-line upon the English Channel, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, and an interior boundary line which brings it into contact with the nations of both southern and northern Europe.

Its great river systems, however, seem to divide the country into two halves, a southern and a northern, and this fact has not been without influence upon the history of the nation. Celtic Gaul, Tribal government, favored the Ro man conquest. 14

Chapter I. Gaul Before The Franks

At the time of the Roman conquest, the country which was to form the later France was occupied by a great number of tribes of the Celtic race, and their blood probably forms by far the largest element in that of the present French people. But the Celts were not the first inhabitants of Gaul. The remains of primitive man which have been found in France, of the Stone Age, and of the cave-dwellers, show us that the country was inhabited long before the advent of the men of the Aryan race. But these earlier inhabitants could not hold their ground before the stronger and more civilized Celts, and they disappeared, or were perhaps absorbed, in part at least, by their conquerors. The Celts themselves were hardly more than savages when the Roman conquest began. They were divided into many independent tribes, owning no common allegiance, though some of the tribes had established a kind of supremacy over others, and some had joined together in confederations.

Within the tribes there was no firmly established government. Some few had kings, but in most the control of affairs was in the hands of a primitive aristocracy who ruled in a patriarchal way and were supported by large bodies of devoted clients. The tribes were often weakened by the rivalries of these chiefs with one another, or by the attempt of some one of them to make himself a supreme ruler over the tribe. It was a condition very favorable to the Roman conquest. It is with the conquest by the Romans that Gaul really enters upon the stage of the world's history. We shall always associate that conquest in a peculiar way with the name of Julius Cæsar, but in reality Cæsar's Gallic war was only a further stage in a process which had long been going on, and his conquest was, in some degree at least, forced upon him by the circumstances which confronted him in Gaul.

The beginning ofthe Roman conquest. The slowly expanding Roman state in Italy had begun to creep over the lands occupied by the Celts in northern Italy as early as 225 B. C. This conquest was inter rupted for a time by the great invasion of Hannibal, but was resumed again after his fall, and a few years later Rome had reached the frontier of the Alps. For a generation or more this remained the limit of the Roman advance, but in 154 B. C. the Greek colony of Massilia, now Marseilles, asked the Romans for help against some of the Gallic tribes. Massilia had been the ally of Rome against Carthage and her assistance had been of great value in the conquest of Spain. It was not the custom of Rome to desert her allies, especially not if they offered a starting point for a new conquest. A Roman army proceeded at once to Massilia, subdued her enemies, and established a Roman protectorate along the seacoast.

But Rome could not stop with that. The beginning of the Roman conquest is in a small way typical of the larger conquest of all Gaul. The neighboring tribes in their savage restlessness, or in their quarrels with one another, were constantly threatening the peace and security of the land already Roman, and further conquest seemed the only remedy. So Rome was led on from one advance to another, as England has been in many quarters of the globe, and still more recently Russia, though very possibly in the ancient case, and in the Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul, The appeal of Massilia. A Roman pro tectorate. modern ones too for that matter, the conquerors were not reluctant to be led in that direction. About 120 B. C. they organized west of the Alps ' ' the Province — Provincia, Provence — its boundary lines soon extend ing north to Geneva and Lyons, following down the Cevennes, striking west from near their southern end to take in Toulouse, and from that point dropping south to the Pyrenees.

This was not a large land as compared with the whole of Gaul, but it was a foothold and it was certain to involve, sooner or later, all that did follow. The " Prov ince." This was the province of which Cæsar took possession early in 58 B. C. , together with Cisalpine Gaul, as the territory assigned to him after his consulship. It was known at the time that serious danger was threatening the province, but no one could have known how serious the danger really was. The Germans had already dis covered the weakness of the Celts and had crossed the Rhine to begin, so long before they would be able to take it up again, that conquest of Gaul which was one day to transform the country both politically and institutionally. The contest of the Ædui with the Arverni and Sequani for supremacy in eastern Gaul had enabled Ariovistus with his Germans to get a firm footing just north and west of the Romans, in a position which seriously threatened their hold upon the land.

But before Cæsar could deal with this danger he had to beat back the attack of the Helvetians, who were trying to emigrate with all their belongings into better lands than their own mountain valleys. This Cæsar accomplished in a few weeks in a campaign which reveals the marvelous qualities of his generalship. Then he was free to turn against the more serious, because more permanent, danger presented by the Germans in Gaul. In another short campaign he destroyed their army and forced the king to take refuge See Fowler's "Julius Cæsar " in the " Heroes of the Nations" series. A German in vasion. The migration ofthe Helve tians. The Romans on the Rhine. The results of the Roman con quest. on the other side of the Rhine, checking the German invasion of Gaul for more than four hundred years. This campaign changed the situation in more ways than one.

It carried the Romans to the Rhine, far beyond their original boundary, almost as far north as Strasburg. What should be done with this territory virtually conquered ? At what time Cæsar formed the plan of taking all Gaul for the Romans we cannot say, but this campaign seems at least to have convinced many among the Gauls that this danger was imminent. The union which the tribes of the Belgæ formed in the following winter against the Romans gave Cæsar an opportunity to subdue northern Gaul, and this was speedily followed by the apparent subjection of the whole country. But it had been too sudden a conquest to be a real one, and in the following years Cæsar had to put down two great rebellions, a task almost as difficult as the original conquest. At last, after eight years the work was done, and Gaul became a Roman land, never again to make any serious attempt to recover its independence.

If the Celtic race forms the leading element in the later population of France, it had only the slightest in fluence on the institutional or philological history of the nation so far as can now be traced. The language and institutions of the Celts disappeared in the mixture of the subsequent races as completely as if they had never had any existence on the soil. This was due primarily to the Roman conquest and to the character of their occupation. It may be true, as has often been said, that the Romans made no especial attempt to dispossess the subject race, or to supplant their civilization with the more perfect civilization of their own. But the result was the same as if they had. Celtic religion, Celtic dress, Celtic arms, names, manners, and laws all went down Thorough Romanizatioi Mildness of th Roman rule. before the superior advantages of that which the new government supplied.

Effort was not necessary on the part of the Romans. The silent force of the greater convenience of the new way was the only force. In a century Gaul was as thoroughly Roman as Italy itself ; it was indeed said that it was more so. At any rate, the schools of Gaul were famous throughout the empire, and boys attended them from the other provinces to learn the art of composition and expression, that is, to learn the language of the conquerors from the conquered ! History has not many cases of this sort to record. Until toward the last days of the empire the Roman rule was liberal. It interfered but little in local affairs, and it made no direct attack upon any features of the native civilization except such as seemed to be danger ous to the state or inhuman, like the druidical organiza tion and human sacrifices.

From the very beginning the Romans introduced peace and order in the place of constant civil strife, and a common government in the place of dozens of independent tribes. The system of Roman roads, which mainly centered in Lyons, made intercommunication easy and opened the way for a rapidly developing commerce. The more primitive cultivation of the Gallic tribes gave place to the organized Roman agriculture with its great estates and its slave labor. Towns took on the form of the Roman municipal organization. The Roman public school system was introduced. Roman law gradually supplanted the cruder tribal customs and druidism also disappeared. And all this transformation was accomplished not as the result of a determined effort on the part of the Romans, but because the Gauls found it in every case for their own interests to make the change.

The Romans treated them as allies and friends rather than as subjects. They were employed in the army ; the full Roman citizenship was gradually opened to them ; their nobility was recognized and soon admitted to the senate, and they speedily began to call themselves Romans and to adopt Latin family names and the The Gauls were treated as Romans. A Roman Aqueduct near Nimes, known as the Bridge of the Gard. Roman dress and language. In the end Gaul became thoroughly Romanized, able to pass on to its later conquerors not the primitive Celtic, but the higher classic civilization. Under the Romans, Christianity was introduced into Gaul, possibly as early as the first century. At first its progress was very slow, and for a long time it seems to have been confined to the cities of the south and east, where it suffered severely in the persecution under the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Toward the middle of the third century missionaries were sent into Gaul from Christianity introduced. Rome, and as a result of their work Christianity spread rapidly over the whole country. In the country districts in Gaul, as in all the provinces, paganism lived on for many generations, but the cities and the intelligent classes became Christian. It was very likely the strength of Christianity in Gaul, with which he was well ac quainted, which suggested to Constantine, when he began his struggle for supreme power in the empire, at the beginning of the fourth century, to declare himself the protector of the Christians. With his success came Paganism lasted only in the country. the official recognition of Christianity, and a little later paganism was made unlawful. In Gaul, as throughout the whole empire, the church organized itself upon the model of the state.

Each of the cities had its bishop, and the capital city of each of the provinces into which the country was divided — there Religious Music From a window ofthe Cathedral of Bourges. were seventeen in Gaul — had its archbishop. So firmly was the Roman organization fixed in that of the church that Paris, which was not an important Roman city, had no archbishop until the seventeenth century, and the Roman boundary lines were perpetuated in those of the ecclesiastical provinces until the Revolution. The class distinctions which the Romans established, or continued, in Gaul had, also, a profound influence upon later times and formed the foundation of social dis tinctions which lasted into modern history. In the free Roman class distinctions. One ofthe sources of medi eval serfage. The Roman agricultural system. population, there were three well-marked grades.

At the top were the great landed proprietors, or nobles, most of whom were of senatorial rank, that is, recognized nobles of the empire ; below these were the smaller landowners, who, except those who owned the very smallest properties, made up the curial class, or the local small nobles ; and, finally, the town population, or the mercantile and artisan class. Of the unfree population, there were two distinct classes. Lowest of all was the slave, who was absolutely at his master's disposal ; above the slave was the class called coloni, bound to the soil and to labor, but like his successor, the serf, secured in the possession of a little homestead and not subject to the master's arbitrary will. These class dis tinctions the Germans, when they took possession of Gaul, found so nearly like their own and so easily under stood that they continued them with but little modifica tion, and they may be said to be characteristic of the whole Middle Ages and to have remained, in part at least, until swept away by the Revolution.

To this distinction of persons corresponded also the landowning and agricultural arrangements of the prov ince, another source of permanent institutions. The country was almost covered with the great estates of the nobles, each organized and cultivated as a unit — the villa — under the control of a steward, and divided into cultivated fields, meadows, and woods. The part of the estate which the owner kept in his own hand was culti vated by slaves, a part was divided out among the coloni, each of whom cultivated his own little holding, paying the owner from his produce. The small proprietors, without the resources of money or slaves which the great nobles had, suffered severely from the unfavorable economic and political conditions of the last days of the One source of the feudal system. The decline of Rome.

Called "the Bagaudæ." empire, and many of them were forced to give up their land to some powerful neighbor to secure his protection. Their land they received back as tenants of the lord, but the tendency was to increase the size of the great estates and the power of the nobles. This was not exactly the same as the later feudal system, but it was the foundation on which it was built. Gaul remained under Roman rule for something more than four centuries, but they were the centuries of Rome's decay. Already, as early as Cæsar's conquest, the seeds of disease were germinating in the state, but the results were not evident for nearly two hundred years. The empire was, however, continually growing weaker, weaker in men, in resources, and in power to keep order. The government passed gradually from good to bad ; the burdens of the state grew heavier as the power to bear them lessened ; economic measures adopted to check the evils of the time proved ineffective or positively harmful ; civil wars became frequent, and the strength of the state was exhausted in every direction, both by positive evils and by efforts at reform.

Gaul shared to the full in the sufferings of the empire. She had, perhaps, more than her share of civil war, whether from usurping emperors or from the laboring class who, unable to endure their burdens any longer, broke out into a great peasant insurrection and defied the state. Gaul was not merely too weak to defend her self against a strong attack, but she had no motive for doing so. She had no real patriotism, no fear of a worse government, and but little left to defend. The German had only to cross the Rhine and the country was his. The first in vasion. A. D. 413, The Visigoths in Gaul, A. D. 419, 23

Chapter II. The German Conquest

It was on the last day of December, 406, that the first fury of the storm broke upon Gaul. A great combination of German tribes — Vandals, Burgundians, Alans, and Suevi — crossed the Rhine on the ice and, overcoming the resistance of the Franks, who were settled along the river, found no other serious opposition. The whole country was open before them. The great cities that dared to close their gates were stormed and burned. The churches and other sacred places afforded no protection. Rome had no army to send against them, and they marched through the length of the land as they pleased. At last, the most of them passed through the Pyrenees to seek homes in Spain, but the Burgundians settled around the head waters of the Rhone, in lands which they afterward enlarged and to which they gave their name, the Duchy and the Free County (Franche-Comte) of Burgundy.