A history of France from the earliest times to the treaty of Versailles

Front matter

DC

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Preface

This book was originally intended for members of the American army who naturally would desire to know something of the past of the great French nation on whose soil they expected to do battle for Liberty. The happy but abrupt close of the war vitiated this purpose, but the volmne was continued and was extended on a somewhat more ambitious scale to assist in making intelligent Americans in general acquainted with the history of a country with which we have established an ever-deepening friendship.

During the war period, when this task was begun, it seemed possible at first to take some elementary history of France in the French language, translate the same, and present it to new readers in a suitable American dress. This soon appeared impracticable, but certain PVench manuals were extremely helpful in preparing this work. This is true of the well-known Histoire de la civilisation frangaise by M. Alfred Rambaud, and even more particularly of the three admirable volumes of M. Albert Malet's Histoire de France, which, taken consecutively, form a national history for use in secondary schools superior possibly to any similar books wherein English or American students learn the story of their own respective countries. Very specific acknowledgment must be made of M. Malet's work for material used in Chapters ix, xm, and xviii, which utilization in some cases almost amoimts to a free translation. The same is true also of the supplemental matter on the acquisition of the French Colonies (Chapter xxv). Of course every competent scholar of French history will recognize the well-known books in the English language which have been frequently laid under contribution. They are listed with other important volumes in viii PREFACE

the bibKography of works on French history in English, given in the appendix. Certain sections relating to the Fiankish kings, and to hfe in the Middle Ages, have also been adapted from the present author's own short History of Medioeeal and Modem Europe (Boston, 1914).

i To readers interested in the present-day problems of Em-ope (and what Americans are not?) the reforms of Napoleon are likely to seem more important than those of Charlemagne, and the policy of Thiers and Gambetta than that of Philip Augustus. The story of France is an extremely long one, and inevitably the narrative is obliged to begin with only a jejune outline, but this has been gradually allowed to broaden and deepen, so that the major fraction of the entire book is devoted to the period since 1789; and the story of the "New Regime," of its sorrows, reverses, and final vindication and victory in 1918, is told with considerable detail, and one may hope with corresponding clarity and helpfulness.

One Hmitation must be stated very frankly. No other one nation of Europe has touched so many outside factors as France. A complete history of France would make an almost equally complete history of nearly aJl the great wars and major diplomatic intrigues that have agitated Europe. To write a short history, therefore, that was not simply to degenerate into a dry epitome, military and diplomatic annals have perforce been cut to the bone. The story has been the story of the French people, its progress, setbacks, trials, and victories, and only so far as foreign or military events have contributed to that story have they been mentioned.

Very hearty recognition and thanks are due to my assistant. Miss Gertrude A. Jacobsen, A.M., Fellow in History in the University of Minnesota, who redacted the entire text of this volume, prepared the maps, compiled the chronological and bibliographical tables as well as the appendix on the "States General," and also did a large amount of the necessary translating. Without her faithful and highly scholarly and efficient

PREFACE ix

aid, the successful completion of the book would have been wellnigh impossible. Warm thanks also are due to my colleagues Dean Guy S. Ford and Professors M. W. Tyler and A. C. Krey, of the History Department of this university, for careful reading of the manuscript, and for many valuable suggestions and corrections.

W. S. D.

Contents

I. The Land of the Gauls and the French 1

II. The Roman Province and the Frankish Kingdom 9

III. From Franks to Frenchmen 29

Appendix

A. Outline Chronology of French History 605

B. The States General (1302-1789): compiled by

Gertrude A. Jacobsen, A.M. 611

Index 633 nXUSTRATIONS

Napoleon I Frontispiece

Merovingian Manor House 24

From Gamier and Ammann's Histoire de VEcMtation humaine

The Louvre of Philip Augustus 58

After Hoffbauer's restoration

Castle of Coucy (restored) : Erected a.d. 1225-1230 64

This castle, one of the great historic monuments of France, was completely destroyed by the Germans in their retreat to the "Hindenburg Line" in March, 1917

A Battle in the Fifteenth Century 92

After a drawing in a fifteenth-century manuscript of the Chroniques ie Froissart. The battle portrayed is that of Auray (1364) but the armament is that of the fifteenth century and the landscape entirely conventional

Attack and Defense of a City in the Fifteenth Century 92

After a drawing in a fifteenth-century manuscript of the Chroniques de Froissart. It figures the siege of Aubenton by the Comte de Hainault in 1340, with the equipment and architecture of the fifteenth centiury

The Tournament at which Henry H was Mortally

Wounded, June 19, 1559 114

After an engraving in the collection of Perdrissin and Tortorel, published in 1570

Louis XI 118

Catherine de' Medici 118

Henry IV 118

Maximilien, Duke of Sully 118 xiv ILLUSTEATIONS

Consecration of Louis XIV at Reims 146 After an engraving on copper by Lepautre

Louis XIV 152

Cardinal Richelieu 152

Jean-Baptiste Colbert 152

Mme. de Pompadour 152

The Chateau of Versailles before the End of the Seventeenth Century 184 After an engraving on copper by G. Perelle

Voltaire 228

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Mirabeau

Louis XVI 228

The Constituent Assembly at Versailles on the Night of

From an engraving on copper by Helman after a design by Monnet

Marie Antoinette 288

Robespierre 288

Marat 288

Danton 288

Napoleon in Bivouac in the Valley of the Grand-Saint- '

Bernard 334

After a design by Thevenin in the Museum of Versailles

Louis-Philippe 424

Napoleon III 424

Adolphe Thiers 424

ILLUSTRATIONS xv

Leon Gambetta 424

Marshal Foch saluting the Statue of General Kleber after the Entry of the French into Strasbourg in 1918 600

From a photograph copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood, New York

With the exception of the portraits and the view of Marshal Foch at Strasbourg, the illustrations are reproduced from cuts in A. Parmentier's Album Hisiorique, published in four volumes in Paris, 1896-1907.

MAPS

France, showing Provinces as existing in 1789 (colored)

France, showing Places and Geographical Features mentioned in Chapter I 2

The Monarchy of the Franks 18

Charlemagne's Empire 34

France at the Accession of Philip Augustus, 1180 54

France about 1453 98

France, 1461-1492, under Louis XI and Charles of Burgundy 104

Europe in 1810, showing Napoleon's Power at its Height 346

The French Empire in Africa, 1914 568

Indo-China and the French Possessions, 1914 574

France in Departments, 1871-1914 (colored) 602

FRANCE showing Provinces as existing in 1789

Lon(;itudc \\'oKt 0

Longitude East 4 from Greenwich

Chapter I The Land Of The Gauls And The French

In 1869 a distinguished Frenchman, an ex-prime minister, began a long history of his nation with these words, "France inhabits a country, long ago civilized and Christianized, where despite much imperfection and much social misery, thirty-eight millions of men Uve in security and peace, under laws equal for all and efficiently upheld. " ' This statement was all the more true on the eve of the Great War in 1914. To understand the history of any coimtry, however, it is absolutely necessary to understand something of its geography, and geographical factors have influenced the history of France certainly as much as that of any great nation of the Old World save possibly in the case of England.

Of the larger or more famous countries of Europe, Russia, the Scandinavian lands, Germany, Holland, and Belgium assuredly belong to the North, with its severe winters and the changes in civiUzation inevitable in a severe climate. Great Britain and Ireland are also Northern lands, but with their national life profoundly modified through encirclement by the sea. Greece, Italy, and Spain look out upon the blue Mediterranean. They are Southern lands — of the ohve, the vine, and the luxurious forests. They receive the hot winds of Africa, and they have enjoyed direct contact with the older civilizations of the East, There is one land, however, that is both Southern and Northern, both of Southern wine and Northern corn; and whose southern shores have been trodden by the old Greeks and Phoenicians, while from her northern headlands can be seen the cliffs of

1 Guizot.

southern England. That country is France, " the mediating land " (as has been well said) between ancient and modern civilization, and between southern and northern Europe.

Prance thus lies most decidedly in the cross-roads of world events. It is better to study her annals than those of any other (me country in Europe, if the reader would get a general view of universal history. France has been a participant in, or interested spectator of, nearly every great war or diplomatic contest for over a thousand years; and a very great proportion of all the religious, intellectual, social, and economic movements which have affected the world either began in France or were speedily caught up and acted upon by Frenchmen soon after they had commenced their worldng elsewhere.

Nevertheless, geographically France is a highly separate and an economically independent nation. In 1914 she was probably less dependent on imported commodities and foreign commerce for her prosperous life than any other coimtry in western Eiu-ope. She came far nearer to feeding herself than either England or Germany. Better than any other great power, saving the United States, she could have endured complete isolation and blockade provided she could have held intact her boundaries.' France is decidedly separated from her neighbors by great natural barriers. Her coast-line is longer than her land frontiers : there being 395 miles of water along the Mediterranean shores, 572 on the North Sea and the British Channel, and 584 on the open Atlantic and the stormy Bay of Biscay. To the south, the lofty Pyrenees form a barrier against Spain, which permitted Prdnce to feel very secure even in the days when Spain was formidable. Towards Italy and Switzerland, the Alps and their cousins the Jura are a still more reliable bulwark. Before 1870 the Rhine was a protection against Germany and, after the loss of Alsace- Lorraine, the Vosges Mountains were still a difficult problem for

' Of course very early in the war of 1914 the Germans seized the district of coal and iron mines in the northeast 'of France, thus putting the latter under a heavy handicap until relieved by England and America.

FRANCE

showing places and geographical features mentioned in Chapter I.

Long. W.

"^'' / :::J^ Jlarseiltf

MEDITEnRANEAN

KIP.A

SEA [,

OUTLETS UPON THE SEA . 3

armies. Only towards the northwest, the Belgian boundary ran across fields arbitrarily marked off without natural limits, and here alone neither mountains nor rivers could come to the aid of French generals defending their homeland. It is not surprising, therefore, that it was across Belgium that in 1914 Prussian militarism attempted to "hack its way" to Paris, discarding neutral rights and plighted word.

As Old- World countries go, France has a large territory. Only Russia is essentially larger. As the crow flies it is 606 miles from north to south, 675 miles from northwest to southwest (the longest diagonal), and 556 miles from west to east. The total area in 1914 (before the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine) was about 200,700 square miles, now restored by the victory over Germany to about 206,300. Corsica, which is Italian in location though completely French in loyalty, added about 3375 more. France is thus somewhat smaller than Texas, the largest American federal state. She is much larger than California, the second in size. Her boundaries are ample to contain great diversities in customs, products, and scenery.

Although Prance does not possess the deeply indented coast of Britain, Greece, and Norway, she is provided with ample outlets for a great commerce and easy intercourse with distant nations. On the Mediterranean lie Marseilles, the most active harbor upon that "Great Sea," and Toulon, the chief French naval post. On Biscay are Bordeaux, La Rochelle, and Saint-Nazaire, the harbor-town for Nantes. On the Breton and Channel Coasts are Brest, Cherbourg, and especially Le Havre (which is peculiarly the port of Paris), and also Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk — the last three mainly important for their communications with England.

When one turns away from the seacoast, the whole bulk of French territory roughly distributes itself into three great sections — the Highlands, the Great Plateau, and the River Systems.

The Highlands are, of course, in the south and southeast only.

where the national boundaries run up to the summits of the Pyrenees and the Alps. These districts are picturesque and interesting, but not large enough to contribute much to the general life of the nation.

The Great Central Plateau covers nearly half of the southern section of France, but it is cut off from the Alps by the broad, deep valley of the Rhone. Many parts of this plateau are comparatively level and without striking scenery: but nearly one seventh of the entire area of France is embraced in the great "Massif Central" radiating around Auvergne, which rises sometimes to a height of 3300 to 4000 feet, throwing up sharp mountains to over 6000 feet high. The upper parts of this plateau are rather barren, and raise only scanty crops for a correspondingly sparse population. On the southern side of the Plateau, cutting off warm Languedoc and the plains of the lower Rhone from the more barren plains of Rouergue, the Cevennes rise, as very respectable mountains, to over 5000 feet. Other parts of the Great Plateau are Limousin and Marche, where heights of 3300 feet are reached. On the northeast towards Germany, the Ardennes (between the Meuse and the Moselle) form another plateau 1600 to 2400 feet high in places, covered with forests, and broken by many marshy depressions, ravines, and fertile valleys. Since the Ardennes lie very directly on the route of armies passing between France and Germany, their position has served to determine the lines of march and location of many famous campaigns and battles.

But more Frenchmen by far live in the long river valleys than on the Great Central Plateau. There are over 4300 miles of navigable rivers in the country, besides nearly 200 miles more that have been converted into canals. The coimtry also has adapted itself easily to the building of ordinary canals, of which there are more than 2000 miles. The rivers and the canals com» bined make inland navigation far more important in France than in almost any other European nation. Long before the days of railroads, the canal and river systems rendered it relatively easy

THE LOIRE SYSTEM 5

to move heavy freight from one end to the other of the country, giving a great impetus toward national unity not enjoyed by lands more dependent for communications on carts and pack-horses: and even now in the days of railroads the river barge has been a serious competitor to the freight train.

Making the circuit of the French coasts one finds a succession of important rivers, and along the banks of each thereof lie numerous famous cities and millions of prosperous people. Without the men of the river valleys there would be no France.

Beginning in the southwest there is the Garonne. It really begins in the Spanish Pyrenees, but it receives many affluents from the Massif Central. Its 346 miles of current drain an area of 22,080 square miles before it is joined by the shghtly weaker Dordogne (305 miles) which rises in the height of land in Auvergne. The Dordogne digs its course into the plateau and wanders through a beautiful vineyard country, which is continued when this river (blending with the Garonne) continues as the more famous Gironde. This last is really a maritime estuary: fifteen miles from its mouth lies Bordeaux, one of the great ports of France, and its banks are lined with some of the most famous wine-lands in the world, producing the renowned vintage of Medoc.

From the mouth of the Gironde northward for some distance no stream of importance enters the Bay of Biscay; then is discovered the capital river of the nation, the Loire, undoubtedly the chief artery of France: 670 miles long, it winds from the mountains well over to the eastern side of the country. It drains 46,750 square miles and in this large area Uve 7,000,000 Frenchmen. It starts in the uplands a little to the west of the lower course of its chief rival, the Rhone. It swings northward and comes within 70 miles of Paris, then takes a great bend westward near Orleans. Whereupon, rapid and strong, fed by dozens of rich affluents, it sets out unwearyingly for the Atlantic. Along its banks lie the regions which are the real heart of France : the Orleannais, Touraine, Anjou, and in confines of its wider valley

Berri, Maine, and Poitou — names graven upon French annals. In its wide valley lies a bright, thriving corn and wine countrydotted with famous chateaux — Blois, Amboise, Chinon, Loches, to name only a very few: and among the equally famous cities touched by its swift current it is enough to name Orleans, Tours, Saumur, Angers, and Nantes.

North of the Loire flows the second river peculiarly dear to Frenchmen. The Seine is undoubtedly the smaller stream. It is only 485 miles long, draining 30,030 square miles. But it has been favored hke the Tiber, the Thames, and the Hudson by the fame and historical greatness of the cities upon its banks. On its affluent, the Marne (its own name stamped upon history), lies Chalons where the hordes of Attila were turned away: and upon the Vesle lies Reims of immortal and melancholy memory. The Seine flows directly across Normandy and there on its banks stands Rouen, the stately Norman capital: while at its mouth is Le Havre, the thriving seaport: but of course the chief distinction of the Seine is that it is the river of Paris, where so often has seemed to throb the life of France.

In the extreme north of the country, the land tapers off towards Flanders and is very httle above the level of the sea. The rivers are unimportant, sluggish, and frequently are made over into canals. This land of Picardy, Artois, and French Flanders is fertile, if somewhat monotonous, and contains the most important coal-fields in the nation, while Lille and Amiens are important and enterprising cities; but there is little distinctive in this region which belongs neither to the Great Plateau nor the Great Valleys.

There is still another mighty river in France, although it has played a less part in the national history than the Seine, the Loire, or even the Garonne-Gironde. The Rhone is 507 miles long and drains 38,180 square miles, but one tenth of this area is in Switzerland. It rises really in the St. Gothard Alps and issues from Lake Geneva. At Lyons (the second city of France) it is joined by the long and powerful Saone coming down from the

FERTILITY OF THE COUNTRY 7

north; then the united current advances southward through another rich vineyard-hned valley until, after a long course, at Avignon its banks suddenly become far less fertile and attractive, and the end of a stream, that has rushed down from the clear Alpine glaciers, is a muddy, sandy delta beside the Mediterranean.

The cHmate of the large country served by these great rivers obviously is extremely varied. On the whole it is one of the best climates in the world, "not so continental as Central Europe, and not so maritime as that of England." The coldest region is natm-aUy the Great Central Plateau where the winters are frequently severe, although followed (American fashion) by decidedly hot summers. The northeast parts of the Plateau, Champagne, Lorraine, and the Vosges region, have a "continental" climate much like that of Germany and Austria. The frosts average 85 days per winter, although there is seldom much snow lingering upon the plains. The river valleys are milder. In Paris the frosts average only 56 days per year. The rains indeed average no less than 154 days per year, but the rainy spells are seldom extremely long, and the total rainfall is only 20 inches per annum. Brittany, a great buttress thrown out into the tumbling Atlantic, has a moist maritime climate very like that of the southwest of England. The Biscay-Garonne region is decidedly warm and' dry. As for the southeastern region south of the mountains, Languedoc-Provence, this would have a really torrid climate except for the terrible and frequent mistral, a powerful wind which, rushing down from the Cevennes, purifies the air and throws back the moistiu-e upon the sea, leaving these provinces so dry that Marseilles has only 55 rainy days per year.

Such a country is bound to have an abundant natural flora and fauna with corresponding cultivated products. Southern France is the land of the olive, the vine, and the mulberry. Northern France raises corn, and orchard and garden products like England and Germany. There are wide stretches of the open country which, except for the architecture of the farms and vUlages, look decidedly familiar to citizens of the Eastern States of America. There is still (considering the length of human habitation in the region) a sm'prising amount of forest land, carefully tended, but of unspoiled natural beauty. On the eve of the Great War, the state of the local communes owned over 10,000 square miles of forest land, and wide stretches beyond this were private property. These forests not merely added to the pubHc wealth, but served to keep France an unartificialized nation, with verdant nature not too severely thrust into the background by "civilization."

To conclude this glance at the physical home of the ancient Gaul and the modern Frenchman — France is a region which, by geographical location and size, by the majesty of her rivers, and by the diversity of her scenery and mountains, is admirably fitted to be the home of a mighty nation.

Chapter II The Roman Province And The Frankish Kingdom

In some year about 600 b.c. a small fleet of galleys from the Asiatic Greek city of Phocsea ploughed its way boldly into the western Mediterranean, effected a landing at the harbor now known as Marseilles, coerced or cajoled the native chiefs into allowing the shipmen to make a settlement, "to found a colony " as the Greeks said, and presently the newcomers established a town with the temples, market-place, walls, magistrates, and general customs of a genuine Hellenic city. These bold settlers were far indeed from their old home by the ^gean "under the blue Ionian weather," but those were the days of Greek maritime enterprise, when its mariners were exploring all the nooks of the Mediterranean just as later the Spaniards searched out the Golden Indies. The Phoenicians, already commercial monopolists in these seas, frowned on the intruders and did their best to fight them away. This opposition was vain. The settlement became rooted, prospered, and defied its foes, although it was the most distant of all the Greek colonies. With this foundation of "Massalia" begins the history of the coimtry later ages were to call "France." Hitherto it had been merely the home of savage tribes. Now it becomes linked to civiUzation.

The tribesmen with whom the Greeks of MassaUa chaffered and bartered are ordinarily named "Gauls." They had probably been in the region a considerable time, having ousted some older and still more primitive folk. These Gauls were mainly Celts, members of a great race that was spreading over most of western Europe save only southern and central Italy, Their kinsfolk were penetrating into Spain and Britain, and even to-day there are many pure-blooded Celts in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. '^

^ And of course the pronounced Celtic element in French Brittany is very noticeable.

When the Greeks first met them, they were decidedly imtamed savages, red-headed, heavy-fisted, and with many of the general customs, virtues, and vices of Iroquois Indians. Contact with the Greeks, however, taught them much. They improved their weapons, learned to live more or less in towns, and consolidated their petty clans into greater tribes imder kings or an oligarchy of chieftains. They also developed a peculiar type of worship. We know very httle about the precise religious beliefs taught by the famous "Druids," for they served their imcouth gods with strictly mysterious rites when they met under their "sacred oaks," probably to o£Per human sacrifices; but we do know that they constituted an arrogant priestly caste something like the Hindoo Brahmins and the Egyptian priesthoods, and that they exercised a formidable political power over their awestricken laity. As for the rest of the Gauls, they were gradually struggling upward from savagery to barbarism. Usually they dwelt in tribes each under its elected or hereditary chief, with his Druids for advisers or spiritual masters, and his body of warriors who chose or confirmed him and then fought his battles. Below the warriors was a less honorable company of the servile men and of the women who performed the inglorious works of peace, tilled the fields, pounded the grain, and reared the children, while their lords lolled on their bearskins, drank much home-brewed Uquor or choicer wines from Greek traders, gambled, quarreled, hunted, and waited a summons to battle. Each clan had ordinarily its own central "town" of circular wattled huts, and if the clan were powerful it probably occupied a hilltop enclosed by rude but often formidable timber and earthworks; or perhaps entrenched itself in a hold amid the dark recesses of wood and marsh.

Before the Romans entered the land there were already signs of a higher order of things. Clans were merging into confederacies covering considerable districts. Certain chiefs and tribes were striking coins with crude legends in the Greek alphabet. Traders from MassaHa or from Italy were bringing in various Southern

CESAR'S CONQUEST OF GAUL 11

hardwares and fabrics as well as liquors to exchange for furs, skins, and other crude natural products. Left to themselves, in other words, these "Gallic" sections of the Celts might have evolved a real civilization in a few himdred years longer — if they had been let alone.

They were not to be let alone. Already by about 122 b.c. the Romans in their resistless expansion had occupied the extreme southeast of the country along the Mediterranean, the later Provence (that is, the Roman "Province" as contrasted with the rest of Gaul) ; but this was not a very large district, and for two generations the great Italian conquerors contented themselves with what was httle more than a series of forts to command the important and strategic highroad from Italy into Spain. Still, Roman influence crept imperceptibly northward. In nearly every clan and tribal confederacy there would be a pro-Roman party among the chiefs, which held that Roman advance was inevitable and had better be welcomed and not resisted, and an anti- Roman "patriotic" party, crying out against southern encroachments, and almost always stoutly supported in its views by the Druids. Then, in 58 B.C., Gaul was entered by the greatest secular figure in ancient history: possibly by the greatest secular figure in aU history — Gains Julius Caesar himself.

Csesar wished to conquer Gaul, partly because he needed the glory and wealth flowing from such a victory to increase his chances of becoming monarch of Rome on the ruins of the tottering Roman Republic, partly because the security of the ancient world genuinely demanded that Gaul should be plucked from barbarian turbulence and set in an orderly place in civilization. He had plenty of excuses for intervention. Formidable German tribes (more barbarous and warhke than the Gauls themselves) were threatening to cross the Rhine and conquer the whole land. Many Gallic chieftains and factions, growing anxious, were ready to call in the Romans. Other chieftains were promptly won over by the master-politician's ready tact and persuasiveness. Csesar had seldom the use of more than 50,000

Italian troops at any time during his nine years of campaigning, but they were legionaries of the best Roman discipline and led by an incomparable commander. The invaders thus were able to overrun and to subjugate nearly the whole land before the Gauls, realizing slowly that the Romans had come to stay, could begin to drop their feuds and organize resistance. Then it was too late. Caesar had grasped the points of vantage and penetrated deep into the country. The Gauls found indeed an able and inspiring chief in Vercingetorix, who rose to the level of a true national hero. He fired nearly the whole land so that it blazed up against Csesar in desperate revolt, but his himdreds of thousands of ill-disciplined levies were no match for the legionaries' javeUns and short swords. Csesar presently drove him into the stronghold of Alesia (not far from Dijon), beat back all attempts to throw in succor and starved him into surrender. That act practically ended the story of pre-Roman Gaul. By 50 B.C. the country was completely submissive, so submissive in fact that a little later Csesar could call off nearly all his troops to follow him over the Rubicon for his march into Italy to found the Roman Empire.

X The conqueror had been ruthless in his slaughter of enemies and his confiscations of their wealth. But when the brutal work had once been done, it was followed by an era of benevolence and conciliation. First, the Gauls were taught that it was hopeless to resist Rome; then, secondly, that it was not at all disagreeable to be her subjects. Taxes were reasonable. Law and order took the place of outrageous tribal oppressions. The Druids with their human sacrifices were suppressed. Gallic nobles were flattered with Roman citizenship. If they were really prominent nobles they might presently hope to become Roman senators. The recruiting masters for the legions enrolled thousands of Gallic youth, promising them all the pay, booty, privileges, and hopes of promotion which were ordinarily offered in the imperial armies.