The History of France: including a faithful and comprehensive account of the War with Germany. By T. Wright ... and Lieut.-Colonel Williams. Illustrated, etc

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■AAAAAAA ■ - to take up tie weapon, when the Ki:* ..Ms That is the way you struck the VOL.0. ' ii ;* i. i ' l > , '- ; ~M- ' ■' ' -' r - v -< ma g |jl '.M^Lm . v/.if ,, , - " frum* ; * ■ " . ' W^ c^y y/k y a<?J? BY THOMAS WEIGHT, ESQ. B£A.,ES.A.&c. THE HISTORY OF FRANCE: INCLUDING A FAITHFUL AND COMPREHENSIVE ACCOUNT OF THE WAR WITH GERMANY BY THOMAS WRIGHT, ESQ., M.A., F.S.A., MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE; AND LIEUT. -COLONEL WILLIAMS, MILITARY CORRESPONDENT AT THE SEAT OF WAR. ILLUSTRATED WITH SUPERB STEEL ENGRAVINGS AND ORIGINAL DESIGNS OF MILITARY OPERATIONS. THE LONDON PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, LONDON AXD NEW YORK. THE HISTORY OF FRANCE: FROM THB EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME. BY THOMAS WRIGHT, ESQ., M.A., F.S.A., MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE ; Author of the "History of Ireland," the " History of Scotland," the " Dietionary-Cyolopædia," &c, &c. ILLUSTRATED WITH BEAUTIFUL ENGRAVINGS ON STEEL.

VOL. I. THE LONDON PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, LONDON AND NEW YORK, [The Putliihers of thit Work notify that they reserve the right of translating it,] INDEX. VOL, r. I. Albtgeois, or Albigenses, war of, 236 ; murder of the pope's legate, 237 ; capture of Bezieres, and massacre of the inhabitants, 238 ; conquest of Carcassonne, 240 ; cruelties practised at Lavaur, 241 ; submission of the leaders of the Albigeois, 243 ; renewal of the war, 250 ; siege of Beaucaire, ib. ; gallant defence of Toulouse, 251 ; Louis VIII. joins the crusade against the Albigeois, 255 ; siege of Avignon, 256 ; its surrender, 257 ; conclusion of the war, 261. Brittany, war of independence in, 426 ; war during the reign of Charles V1H., 590 ; virtual union of the duchy to France, 593. Brunehild's marriage with Sigebert, 59 ; after his death she marries Meroveus, 66 ; their separation by his father Chilperic, ib. ; murder of Meroveus, 68 ; Brunehild's remarkable escape, 74 ; her influence over Theodoric II., ib. ; her attempts to unite the three kingdoms of the Franks in one, 75 ; her cruel death, 77.

Burgundians, the, 30, 32, 34, 37, 38; their war with Clovis, 43 ; their king Gondebald, 44; his death, 51 ; war with the Franks, 52, 54. Burgundy, state of, on the accession of Louis XL, 555 ; Charles the Rash, duke of, 561 ; his projects, 571 ; his war with Switzerland, 574 ; his death, 577. Alcuin, his introduction to Charlemagne, 107. Alliance between French nobles and Henry IV. of England, 463. Anne of Austria, her marriage with Louis XIIL, 841; the duke of Buckingham's passion for her, 861. Anne of Beaujeu, her regency, 584. Aquitaine, insurrection in, 678. Armagnacs, faction of, 459 ; their tyranny, 475 ; massacre of their adherents, 480 ; end of the faction, 493. Arras, conference at, 524 ; treaty signed there, 526. Austrasia (one of the Frank kingdoms) converted into an aristocratic confederacy, 85 ; war with Neustria, ib. ; the Australians, under Charles Martel, defeat the Keustrians, 88.

Chapter I. The Gauls

It is the task of the ethnologist to trace the migrations of races and the process of the formation of nations, which preceded what is more strictly termed history, and which may rather be considered as the in troduction to history than as a part of history itself. It is thus from the ethnologist that we learn that, at the most remote period to which we can carry back our knowledge of the population of Western Europe, the country which is now known by the name of France was occupied by an extensive branch of the great Celtic race known to the Romans by the name of Galli, and usually termed by modern writers Gauls. They were a people who appear to have issued from Central Asia, the great cradle of mankind, at the earliest period of the dispersion of the human race, and the oldest of historical traditions represent them as already established in the regions between the Rhine, the Alps, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, and the Western Ocean.

These western Gauls were separated into a number of different tribes, of which the chief were the people more especially called Celti, who inhabited the districts bounded by the Rhone, the Cevennes, the Garonne, and the Mediter ranean sea, a country then covered with im mense forests ; the Arverni, who have left their name to the modern Auvergne ; the Armorici, who occupied the modern Britany and Normandy ; the Allobroges, in the Dauphins and part of Savoy ; the Helvetii, in Switzerland ; the Ædui, a pastoral people, in Burgundy and the Nivernais ; the Bitu riges, in Berri ; and the Sequani, who at first inhabited the higher part of the river to which they gave their name (Sequana, the Seine), but established themselves at a later period in the district called in still more recent times the Franche-Comte (in cluding the modern departments of the Jura, the Doubs, and the Haute-Saone.)

The only people apparently whom the Gauls encountered in the far west, were the Iberi of Spain, a race supposed to have come over from Africa, and a branch of which, under the name of Aquitani, had established themselves to the north of the Pyrenees in the barren district now known as the Basque Provinces. The earliest event in the history of Gaul of which we have any tradition was a struggle between these two races, the result of an invasion of Spain by the Gauls, which is believed to have taken place about the six teenth century before the Christian era. The Iberi appear to have offered a successful resis tance to the advance of the Celtic race towards the south, but in the north and north-west the two peoples seem to have united in a mixed race, which was named in one of its localities (the modern Aragon) the Celtiberi, and the memory of which fusion of races is also preserved in the modern name of Galicia.

Other Iberian tribes, meanwhile, under the VOL. I. B [b.c. 600. rOUNDATlON OF MARSEILLES.] HISTORY OF FRANCE. but for a new movement of races which was taking place in another part of Gaul. _ M. Amedee Thierry, and the French historians who follow him, divide the great Celtic race into two main branches, the Gauls, or those who first established themselves in the west of Europe, and the Kimris, or the extensive people or peoples who were known so early to the Greeks by the name of Cimmerii (Kifxjjtpioi), and to the Romans by that of Cimbri. In the seventh century before Christ, the Teutonic race, entering Europe for the first time, drove before them the mass of the Kimris, who, following first the course of the Danube, finally reached Gaul, and wrested from the previous Celtic population nearly the whole of the north and west, that is, about one-half of their ancient territory.

The Gauls, now pressed together in a country which was too narrow for them, and pushed from the westward, sought relief in expeditions to the north, east, and south east, and while one body crossed the Rhine and proceeded through the Hercynian forest, another, under a chief named Bellovesus, directed their course towards Italy. These latter approached the Alps at the moment when the Phocœan colony of Marseilles was besieged and on the point of being overpowered by the Ligurians. The citizens, aware of the movement of the Gauls, sent deputies to them, and obtained their assis tance, and Bellovesus attacked and defeated the Ligurians, and followed them into Italy. In the course of the fourth century b.c, another people, known to the Romans by the name of Belgæ, whose race has been the subject of much dispute, though it appears to be the prevailing belief that at least those who first entered Gaul under that name were a Celtic people, crossed the Rhine and made themselves masters of all the country to the north of the Marne and the Seine.

The migration of the Belgæ was but the precursor of new invasions from the same quarter, and in the second century before Christ, various tribes of the great Teutonic race began to threaten the countries border ing on the Rhine. The republic of Massalia (Marseilles) had gone on advancing in prosperity since the defeat of the Ligures by Bellovesus, and its population had been increased by the arrival of nearly the whole of the people of Phocœa, who had emigrated from Æolia, rather than submit to the yoke of Persia. Mas salia, which had now become a vast city, name of Siculi or Sicani and of Ligures, had crossed the eastern Pyrenees from Spain, spread themselves over the districts of Gaul that bordered on the Mediterranean, and finally established themselves in the north west of Italy, where they gave to a part of the country they occupied the name of Liguria.

The Gauls, frustrated in their at tempt upon the Iberian peninsula, followed the Iberians into Italy, and, driving them forward, succeeded in the fifteenth century before Christ, in establishing themselves in the country between the Alps and the rivers Tiber and Trento, where they took the name of Umbri. The Gauls at this time were a wild people, little better than savages, living by the chase or by war, and possessing neither towns nor any marks of civilisation, which were first brought to their shores by a foreign people about ten centuries before our era. The Phœnicians landed at the mouth of the Rhone, defeated the Gauls, and seized a portion of their ter ritory, upon which they founded two towns, named Nemausus and Alexia. The first of these was the town now called Nimes, which may thus be considered as the most ancient town in France.

Alexia, which has long ceased to exist, was situated between Semur and Saint-Seine, on a hill, to which it has left the modern name of Mont-Auxois. This Phœnician establishment was followed, at a later period, by a colony of Rhodians, who built a town to the west of the mouth of the Rhone, to which they gave the name of Rhodanusia, and the river itself is said by some to have derived from this colony its name of Rhodanus, or the Rhodian river, of which the modern name is a mere cor ruption, or rather a contraction. Neither Phœnicians nor Rhodians preserved their power in this locality long, and their colonies were already declining, when, about the year 600 B.C., a ship from the Greek city of Phocœa in Æolia, arrived on the coast to the east of the mouths of the Rhone, and landed a new colony which laid the foundation of the important city known to the Greeks by the name of Massalia, to the Romans by that of Massilia, and repre sented by the modern Marseilles.

These Phocœan colonists are said to have brought first to Gaul the vine and the olive. The rapid increase of their power excited the jealousy of the more ancient inhabitants of the district, and the Ligurians and Gaids entered into a confederacy, under which they would probably have been overpowered, HISTORY OF FRANCE. B.c. 154— 101. j [THE ROMANS IN GATJL. was also the metropolis of twenty other maritime towns scattered over the coast from Spain to Italy. The Massaliotes had been amongst the earliest rivals of the Car thaginians, had not feared to make war upon them, and had wrested from them an advantageous peace : their city had become celebrated for its civilisation, and even for its learning ; their sailors were among the best in the world, and their fleets frequented even the distant coasts of the Atlantic Ocean.

Their force, in fact, lay upon the water rather than upon the land ; and the people who had defied the power of Carthage, were, when involved in hostilities with some of the barbarian tribes of Gaul, obliged to invoke the assistance of their allies the Romans. In the year 154 B.C. a Roman army attacked and overcame several small tribes who were at war with the Massaliotes, to whom the Romans gave up the portion of the con quered territory bordering on the coast, while they retained the remainder for them selves, and on a part of it, in the year 124 B.C., the proconsul, C. Sextius, founded the colony of Aquæ Sextiæ (Aix, in Provence), the first Roman town built on this side of the Alps. The chief of the territory in which it was situated had taken refuge with the war like tribe of the Allobroges, and the protection afforded to him led to a new war, in which the Allobroges allied themselves with the Arverni, then the most powerful of all the Gallic tribes.

In a great battle fought near the confluence of the Rhone and the Isere, the army of the Gauls was defeated with enormous slaughter, and Bituitus, the chief of the Arverni, was captured and car ried in triumph to Rome. The result of this victory was the reduction of the terri tory of the Allobroges, which extended to Geneva in Switzerland, with the whole country forming the modern Provence and the Dauphine, into a Roman province, which, to distinguish it from the province of cisalpine Gaul, called Gallia togata (the inhabitants having adopted the Roman dress), was named Gallia braccata (literally Gaul in breeches), as the Gauls there re tained their own costume. The Romans, now less just or friendly to the Massaliotes than before, took possession of the coast as well as of the interior, and in the year 118 B.C., they built on the banks of the Aude, about five miles from the sea, the city of Narbo (Narbonne), which was made the capital of the transalpine province, called after wards from it the provincia Narbonensis.

The Romans, however, were destined soon to meet with great disasters on the scene of their recent conquests. A vast assemblage of warriors chiefly of the Teutonic race, after plundering some of the richest districts of Northern Italy and Illyria, joined with the Helvetii of Switzerland, in the year 110 B.C., and entered the territory of the Belgæ. With these, however, they eventually formed pacific relations, and having obtained from them a strong fortress wherein to deposit their plunder, they determined to direct their course to the south. The Gauls, discouraged by the defeat they had experienced from the Romans, offered little resistance, and the Teutons ravaged the country with impunity until they reached the Roman province, and, in 109 B.C., defeated a Roman army under the proconsul Sdanus.

The invaders followed up their success, and two other victories in 108 and 107 B.C., gained by the Helvetic tribe of the Tigurini (the people of Zurich) over the consul L. Cassius, and by the Teutons over his lieutenant Scaurus, laid Italy open to invasion. A defeat still more disastrous in 105 B.C., completed the dismay of the Romans, who recalled the celebrated Marius from Africa, and sent him as consul into what remained of the transalpine province to arrest the progress of these fierce enemies. The immense multitude of the Teutons and their allies had now separated into two armies, one of which was destined to enter Italy through Liguria by the pas sage of the Maritime Alps, while the other proceeded through Switzerland, and de scended into Italy by way of the Tridentine Alps. As their grand object was plunder, their progress was slow, and it was not till 101 b.c. that the first of these armies arrived on the banks of the Po, where they awaited the arrival of their comrades.

The latter had, however, in the previous year perished in a great battle with the Romans, in the neighbourhood of Aries, a disaster the first intelligence of which was brought by Marius in person, who completed the destruction of these dangerous enemies in a sanguinary battle near Vercellæ. The Massaliotes, who had given effectual assistance to the Romans in this terrible struggle, were rewarded with many favours, but for some years not only the Roman province but the greater part of Gaul remained in a state of dis order. While the Romans in Italy were absorbed in their domestic contentions, the transalpine province was the scene of con tinual insurrections against the tyranny and [B.C. 58. JULIUS CÆSAR.] HISTORY OF FRANCE. exactions of the Roman governors, and it was not till the year 62 b.c. that the last attempt of the tributary Gauls to recover their independence was crushed by the Roman arms under the prætor Pomptinus.

In those parts of the country which had not yet been reduced by the Roman arms, the different tribes were engaged in bitter hos tilities with each other. The Ædui, proud of their title of " brothers and allies of the Roman people," had provoked the Gauls who had not accepted this title by their in solence, and the Sequani and Arverni not only entered into alliance against them, but they called in the assistance of the Teutons from the other side of the Rhine, and Ario vistus, one of the most renowned chiefs of the Suevi, then the most powerful of the tribes of the Teutonic race, led a considerable body of his fierce warriors to take part in the war which the Sequani and the Arverni were entering upon. After experiencing several disasters, the unfortunate Ædui were compelled to submit, and to swear that they would never again seek assistance from Rome.

But the Teutons, having once entered Gaul, were unwilling to quit it, and Ariovistus, joined by new hordes of his countrymen, demanded of the Sequani a portion of their territory. The Sequani now formed a league with the Ædui against the Teutons, but their united forces were defeated by the German chief, who exacted from them, along with hostages for their submission, a third part of the lands of the Sequani for himself and his followers. His success excited the avidity of the Helvetii, who also prepared to leave their own country in a body and establish themselves upon the ruins of Gaul. It was in the midst of these events that Gaul became connected with one of the great names of the ancient world. The Roman people, who remembered the terrible visita tions of the Gauls in former times, were pro foundly alarmed at the movement among the Helvetii, and, while on one hand they sought to secure a counterpoise to their hostility in the alliance of Ariovistus, they adopted at the same time effectual measures for the defence of the two provinces of Gaul, cisalpine and transalpine, and a man who had then risen to high popularity, and who saw in the prospect of a Gallic war the favourable opening for his ambition, obtained the pro consulship of these provinces for five years.

This man was Caius Julius Cæsar. In the year 58 b.c, Cæsar hastened, with only one legion, to Geneva, on the northern extremity of the Roman province, where the Rhone entered it from the country of the Helvetii, and destroyed the bridge which formed the communication between the Helvetii and the province. When the Helvetii were in formed of this, they sent messengers to Cæsar to demand a peaceable passage through the province ; but the Roman general, aware of the insufficiency of the forces then with him, temporised until he had fortified his position between Lake Leman and Mount Jura so strongly that it was not possible for the enemy to force a way into Gaul in that direction, and then refused their demand. The Helvetii next applied to the Allobroges for permission to pass through their territory, but met again with a refusal, and as the passes into the country of the Allobroges were easily defended, they were obliged as a last resource to proceed more to the north, to the denies leading into the country of the Sequani.

By the intrigues of Dunmorix, a chief man of the Ædui who had married into the tribe of the Helvetii, the Sequani were induced to offer no opposition to the passage of the latter, who marched to the Saone, which separated the countries of the Sequani and the Ædui, and began to cross the river on rafts, in which, through the further intrigues of Dumnorix in his own tribe, they met with but a weak resistance. But the progress of the Helvetii had been so slow, that it had given Cæsar time to bring five fresh legions from Italy, and before the Tigurini, who formed the rear of this great migratory host, could pass the river, they were attacked and cut to pieces by the Romans. Cæsar now threw a bridge across the river Saone, and continued the pursuit of the main body of the invaders. A great battle took place near Bibracte, the capital of the Ædui (supposed to be the modern Bauvray), where the Helvetii were defeated with immense slaughter, and only a small remnant remained together to direct their flight towards the country whence they had departed.

Cæsar overtook the fugitives on the frontiers of the Lingones (in the neighbourhood of Dijon), and, after compelling them to deliver up their arms and hostages for their future good behaviour towards Rome, allowed them to return to their own country without further molestation. Cæsar was no sooner relieved from the Helvetii, than he found a new and still more formidable opponent. Ariovistus and b.c. 58.] HISTORY OF FRANCE. [DEFEAT OF ARIOVISTUS. his Teutons had remained perfectly neutral during the hostilities just mentioned ; the advances made to him by the Romans had probably led him to underrate the power of that people, and an increase in the numbers of his own troops, which now amounted to a hundred and twenty thou sand men, made him more exacting and more tyrannical in his behaviour towards the Gauls.

They applied to Cæsar for pro tection, and the Roman general invited Ariovistus to an interview to consult on matters of great importance. The proud German condescended only to reply, " When I have need of Cæsar, I will go to him ; if he wants anything of mine, let him come to me!" Cæsar sent deputies again, and announced to Ariovistus that he must bring no more Germans from beyond the Rhine, that he must set at liberty the hostages he had taken from the Ædui and the Sequani, and that he must give over plundering the lands of the former. The German chief, in reply, claimed the same right of the sword in Gaul as the Romans, and set their general at de fiance. On receiving this answer, Cæsar, who had received intelligence that an im mense horde of the Suevi was on the point of crossing the Rhine into Gaul, made a rapid march into the country of the Sequani, and anticipated his opponent in taking possession of the strong town of Vesontio, the modern Besancon, which was the capital of that people.

The camp of Ariovistus was eight days' march farther north, towards Alsace, whither Cæsar now led his legions, and the two chiefs held a personal con ference in the open air, which was without result ; but in the fierce engagement which followed, the Germans were completely routed, and, as their confidence in their own numbers and bravery had hindered them from making any provision for their flight, only a small number escaped the fury of Cæsar's soldiers and of his Gallic auxiliaries. Ariovistus himself was one of those who reached the other bank of the Rhine, but his two wives perished in the flight, and, of his two daughters, one was killed and the other was captured by the Romans. These two great victories established the influence of Rome over the whole of Gaul, and for a while the various tribes, or nations, delivered from such great sufferings and dangers, looked upon the Romans as friends and protectors.

But they soon found that they had only made a change of masters, and that the yoke under which they were now falling was likely to be at least more durable than that from which they had escaped. The discontented chiefs conspired together, and had recourse to the Belgæ, who occupied the north-west corner of Gaul, and who were held to be the bravest of all the people who then went under the name of Gauls. Cæsar, who had passed the winter in the cisalpine province, received information of a vast confederacy of the Belgæ and their allies to resist the Romans, and at the approach of spring he carried with him two fresh legions into the country of the Sequani, the winter quarters of the legions he had left in Gaul. He had already his agents intriguing to raise a Roman party among the Belgæ themselves, and he had secured in the alliance of Rome their nearest neighbours the Treviri and the Remi.

The whole male population of the Belgic districts must have risen together to resist the influence of Rome, to judge by the number of men who appeared in arms on this occasion ; for we are told by Cæsar himself that the Bellovaces contributed sixty thousand men, the Suessones fifty thousand, the Nervii fifty thousand, the Atrebates fifteen thousand, the Ambiani ten thousand, the Morini twenty-five thou sand, the Menapii nine thousand, the Caleti ten thousand, the Velocasses and Veromandui ten thousand between them, the Aduatici nineteen thousand, and the German tribes of the Condrusi, Eburones, Cæræsi, and Pæmani, together about forty thousand, making when united a force of at least three hundred thousand men. Cæsar, whose army amounted to not quite eighty thousand men, marched with his whole force to the banks of the Axona (the Aisne), and the Remi at once gave up to him their principal towns.

The Belgæ, irritated especially against the Remi for their attachment to the Romans, began hos tilities by invading their territory with their whole forces, and laying siege to their town of Bibrax (supposed to be Bievre or Bar rieux, in the district of Laon), which was on the eve of surrendering when it was relieved by the approach of Cæsar. For some days the two hostile armies remained in presence of each other, Cæsar, awed by the number of his enemies, not venturing to abandon his intrenched camp ; but at length he was relieved from this situation by one of those accidents to which an army composed like that of the Belgæ was always exposed. The Ædui, led by Divitiacus, had [b.c. 56. HISTORY OF FRANCE. THE ARMORICAN WAR.] rapidly and too rudely to be lasting, and the winter which followed saw the forma tion of a new confederacy against the Bomans in Armorica, the people of which had submitted to Cæsar without resistance in the preceding year.

The first intimation of the hostile temper of these warlike tribes was the seizure of the Boman officers sent to procure provisions for the army, the winter quarters of which were the modern districts of Beauce, the Orleanais, Anjou, and Touraine, in exchange for whom the Armoricans demanded the return of their hostages. Cæsar, informed of what had taken place, sent orders to his lieutenants to cause numerous galleys to be constructed in the Loire, and on the reappearance of spring returned from cisalpine Gaul to take the command of the army. He found all the maritime peoples, from the mouth of the Loire to that of the Bhine, in arms, and it was only by prompt measures that he could hope to prevent the rising from ex tending inwards. The head of this coalition was the warlike tribe of the Veneti (who inhabited the country about Vannes), who were joined by the Osismii (the people of the Leonnais and Tr^gorrois in Finis terre, and the C6tes-du-Nord), the Lexovii (about Lisieux), the Nannetes (of the district of Nantes), the Ambiliati (Av ranches), and the Diablintes (Le Ferche ?), who were joined by the Belgian tribes of the Morini and Menapii, and received as sistance from the island of Britain.

Cæsar divided his army, and sent the legate or lieutenant, Titurius Sabinus, with three le gions, to reduce the northern Armoricans, or people of Normandy, while he marched in person against the more formidable Ve neti. made a circuitous march into the country of the Bellovaces, for the purpose of effecting a diversion in favour of the Romans, and when intelligence of this invasion reached the Belgic camp, the Bellovaces immediately declared their intention to hasten hack to the defence of their homes. Their example had an immediate effect upon the rest of the confederates, and in the course of one night the vast host was broken up, and its various component parts departed precipitately from the lands of the Bemi, each tribe directing its course towards its own territory, and all in the utmost disorder.

Next morning Cæsar sent his cavalry in pursuit, and the day after he followed with the main body of his army. The loss of the fugitives was considerable, but the Boman general soon abandoned the pursuit to turn his whole force against the Suessones, whose territory was nearest to that of the Bemi, and who were not only the most powerful of the Belgic tribes but the head of the confederacy, the supreme command of which had been given to their chief. Their capital, called Noviodunum, the modern Soissons, was captured immediately ; and that of the Bellovaces, named Bratuspantium, and sup posed to represent the modern Beauvais, underwent the same fate. Through the intercession of the Bemi and the Ædui, these two tribes received favourable terms, and were admitted into the Boman alliance. Their next neighbours, the Ambiani (in the territory of the modern Amiens) submitted without resistance ; but the Nervii, who were celebrated for their ferocity, and whose country was wild and difficult to pass with a regular army, opposed with the most resolute bravery the advance of the Bomans into their territory, and it was not till their number of fighting men was reduced by continual combats from sixty thousand to not more than five hundred, that they submitted.