History of France : from the earliest period to the present time, with questions for examination at the end of each chapter, and a map of the country, showing in colour the English possessions in 1165-1453 : for the use of schools and private students

Front matter

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Preface

This book makes an attempt to fomisli a readable accomitof the cotmtry mjkJi.jrbicb yjre.arpii^ neigbbourliood, andyetoJ^/^EosJy'KstoryfW'gener^^ of us know less than of that df^a&M^ aAy! other kin^- donL It aims at something higtpp, tliaA. tf Incre epitome, for it fonnds itself on a greai-dearrdf' v'fl^ons reading, and gives resnlte more than abstracts. At the same time, it devotes sufficient space to any occurrences which seem to have a general bearing on the progress or character of the nation. But it does not profess to be very minute in it3 record of trifling or uninfluential occurrences, nor philosophic in searching out the causes of obscure events.

If it gives new information to any youthful student, ol "*^duces him to search in other quarters for more, or it it recalls to maturer readers scenes and incidents they have nearly forgotten, one of the objecte of the writer will be gained. He believes, however, there is a large class of persons, at the present day, neither ambitious schoolboys nor forgetful middle-aged men but members of Mechanics' Institutes and other socie-

4 PREFACB.

ties for voluntary education, who are anxious for historical as well as other kinds of knowledge, but who are repelled from the attempt to acquire it by the dryness of the narrative and the uninteresting style of the smaller volumes devoted to this subject, and by the time and labour required for the perusal of the larger and more valuable works. If this short and easilymastered BGstory of France is found to supply the want hitherto experienced among those associations, as well as by the classes named above, the Author's highest ambiticHi; vill be. gratified.

Contents

I. THB OAULS. — THB BOliAlTB. — 0L0TI8 AND THX FBAHKB, A. D. 482.

— PIFDr, A. D. 752.— HUGH OAFBT, A. D. 087, 9

n. FBOX HUGH OAPET, A. D. 987, TO PHILIP AUGUSTUS, A. D. 1180, 88

Chapter I. ^

THE GAX7LB.~THE R01LANS.-€L0yiS AND THE FRANKS^ ▲.». 482.- PEPIN, A. D. 762.— HUGH CAPET, a. d. 987.

This little book is not presumptuously intended for the perusal of the wise and learned, but for those who wish to recall the historic knowledge which time has nearly obliterated, and also for that larger and increasing class who desire to be informed shortly and intelligibly of what is most important to be known in the annals of various states. We have, therefore, undertaken to be their conductor through the devious windings and varied scenery of the History of France. But, like a cautious guide who is not very sure of his ground, especially at the beginning of his journey, we will avoid, as much as possible, all obscure and dangerous places, and merely ask them to take their station every now and then on some commanding eminence, and contemplate at their ease the prospect at their feet. They will see unrolled before them, like a scries of dissolving views, the strongly-marked periods of a great nation's career ; wild populations reclaimed by contact with their Boman conquerors, and sinking into barbarism again under the trampling heels of another race of invaders from the forests of Germany. A little time longer, and they will see the civilising element, which was never entirely oblit-

10 INTROBITCTORY.

eratedy assertmg its power over the mixed mass of the Franks and Gaels ; and, gradually combining, gradually re-fonning, gradually softening, and giving way to the bent of their inborn genius, they will see the descendants of those ferocious tribes claiming to be the most polished, the most warlike, the most accomplished nation in Europe. If we do not go quite so far as to grant them the position they arrogate, and agree with their own historians, that they are at the head of modem ciYilisation in' all its branches, we shall not be blind or disingenuous enough to deny that, in all the departments of intellectual exertion, they hold a foremost place ; that if they have no Newton, no Locke, nor Shakespeare, they have many philosophers and many poets ; that the fleur-de-lis and the tricolor have waved in many a glorious field ; and that the elegancies of life and the charms of manner were never carried to such a pitch before.

Some years ago it would have been an unexampled stretch of liberality to have confessed that France had any good qualities at all. We were in the habit of wrapping ourselves up very comfortably in the folds of our own conceit, and looking down on the rest of mankind as a very inferior race of mortals. We took the additional precaution of maintaining our own superiority by calling our neighbours by the most insulting names. We pictured them as the most ludicrous imitations of himianity, as if one of Nature's journeymen had made the Frenchman, and not made him well. He was a lean, half-starved, lanky-legged creature, looking in hopeless despair, with wateiy mouth and bleared eyes, at a round of English bee£ His attitudes were grotesque, his language even became immensely amusing, because he did not speak our tongue with the slang of a hackney-coachman and the pronunciation of a Cockney. We called him Jack Frog, because we believed he fed on those unsubstantial animals, which we also fcpcied the exact image of himself in hoppiness ' of motion and yellowness of skin. His cowardice was unvarying. One Englishman was always equal to half-a-dozen of the " mounseers ; " and, in short, we were a most unjust.

2NGLISH PESJUDICE. 11

nanrow-imnded, padding-lieaded set of self-gloriiiers^ adding to tho isolation that belongs to the whole nation in right of its four seas the still more separating insularity of our own individual opinions. We were islands altogether, nowhere connected with the rest of mankind. Our country was an island, we despised the rest of Europe ; our county was an island, we despised the other shires ; our parish was an island, with peculiar habits, modes and institutions; our households were islands ; and, to complete the whole, each stubborn, broad-shouldered, strong-backed Englishman was an island himself, surrounded by a misty and tumultuous sea of prejudices and hatreds, generally unapproachable, and at all times utterly repudiative of a permanent bridge. We are better now. The sea, where it is not drained off, is very calm and very shallow. We look with clearer eyes "upon distant and unaccustomed objects. We can believe that the marshals of the Emperor and generals of the Bestoration can be chivalrous soldiers and kind-hearted men ; that a Dutchman does not wear seven pairs of trousers ; that an Italian sometimes succeeds in not murdering his mother ; and that, granted the same conditions, the conduct of a Swede, of an Austrian, of a Prussian, and even of a Muscovite, would be veiy much the same. It is lucky that this change of opinion and widening of our sympathies has taken place ; for if all our inquiries in these historic sketches were to end in the production of the cringing, grinning, trembling mountebank and impostor it was anciently the fiishion to consider the Frenchman, the labour would be greatly misapplied. But our investigation will not be so poorly rewarded as this. It will end with the presentment of a nation filled with many grand recollections, and, in spite of present appearances, buoyant with grander future hopes — a people so ingenious, so intellectual, and so active, that its influence thrills through the thoughts of Europe with the rapidity and clearness of the electric wires ; and so powerful, by the size and situation of its domain, and the bravery of its armies, that the authority of its sword in the political government of the world is as

12 B0UKDABIE8.

great as of its geniiis and philoeopliy hx the regions of litenk' ture and science.

Both as friend and foe that great country has proved itself worthy of our respect. None ever fought more bravely against ns, as many a bright and some melancholy names in onr annals can witness, and none ever stood shoulder to shoulder, or advanced foot to foot more gallantly or more truly/ as Alma, the trenches of Sebastopol, and the great day of Inkermann have written in the heart of England. Therefore, with the feelings of brotherhood and kindness cemented by such ties, or at all events with the manly respect due to a brave and chivalrous race with whom our relations may no longer be those of political union or mutual aid^ let us see what stieps were necessary before the present France attaihed her proud position.

The first element in the greatness of a nation is its possession of strong and well-defined boundaries. We will say nothing of our own, for no barrier has yet been found equal to the sea. France wants but little to put her within limits which would make her almost as impregnable as if she were ringed aU round by

" The beached rerge of the salt flood, Which twice a-day with its embossed froth The turbulent surge doth cover.**

K you look at any map of Europe you will see how comfortably France would repose with her south guarded by the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees ; her west by the Atlantic ; her north by the British Channel ; and her east by the Alps, the Swiss mountains, and the strong current of the Bhine. If this were her position^ her people would possess their land in peace ; for no enemy could reach them behind those unassailable ramparts. This was the circumference of Gallia or Gaul, and if Nature had her way, would be also the circumference of France. But geography books tell us that in this instance Nature has not been allowed to have her way. A line is arbitrarily drawn across from a certain part of the

ELEMENTS OF STEENGTH. 18

Bhine^ and cos&ieB France within boundaries on the east and north, which it is evident to every Frenchman are not the proper limits of his country. He looks on the Bhenish Prussians, the Belgians, and the Dutch, as Irish landowners used to look on the squatters on their estates ; and has the same kindly feelings towards the public law of Europe, which guarantees those portions of territory to their present occupiers, as the same Irish landowner entertained towards the common law of England which gave the said squatters a right to their lands by the length of their possession. But even with this drawback to the perfect defencibility of the French territory, and this slice off the original domain, its situation is the best in continental Europe. It is a rich, compact, thickly-peopled land, nearly square, with every variety of soil and climate, from the cold of the northern channel at CalaiB, where the winters are as severe as ours, to the sunny south at Avignon and Marseilles, where tropical plants are reared. It has great alluvial plains where agriculture may yet be carried to its fullest development. It has hnis where the grape flourishes in rich luxuriance, and fills the vats of Burgundy and Champagne. It has mountains where a hardy population rears innumerable herds of oxen and sheep. Its harbours are numerous and commodious. It has easy access to the three chief seas of Europe. I#contains upwards of two hundred thousand square miles, being more than twice the size of Great Britain, and is occupied by a strong, healthy, and energetic population, amounting to thirty-four millions of souls. It has many more elements of strength. Its populations have all got amalgamated in the course of time in one mixed and congenial people — ^not divided into races hating each other like the Czetches and Magyars of Hungary, or the Wallachians and Turks. Then they speak one language — not a number of distinct and unconnected dialects, where the tongue of the conquered still survives and stands up hostilely against the conqueror's, as the Polish against the Bussian, and, till lately, the Welsh and Gaelic against the English. Language is the greatest

14 THE GAELS.

dement of combination in the formation of states. It seems as if the necessity of articulating the same words produced the same class of ideas, and the same turn of thought. Patriotism goes from end to en^ of England, because the man of ComT¥all and the man of Cumberland equally, with mere varieties of accent, speak the English tongue. They read the same books ; they pray in the same words ; and .when they meet together in the business of the world, the bond of Englishman is equally upon them both. The French, in spite of a greater diversity of provincial speech, have the same advantage. Their authors, statesmen, warriors, belong to them all ; and on the Seine and on the Bhone the feelings and expressions, the hopes and recollections, bear the same national impress. It is possible that, in this sense, the possession of Belgium and Holland, and the rich dependencies of Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne, might not be an increase to the power of France. The law would have difficulty in joining together what language, tradition, and, as regards the Dutch, religion had put asunder. And where law is not effectual, the application of force is a source of weakness to aU parties concerned.

But though we have thus begun with a geographical view of what France is or might be, we are not to forget that a nation does not consist of the Land, but of the People. The square piece of territory which we now call France, was at one time not France at all. Its earliest ' recognition by E[istory is as GaUia, the land of the Celts or GaeL These were a tribe or race originally springing from the farthest East. Wild, brave, and impetuous, loving war for the sake of gloiy and conquest, almost irresistible in attack, but greatly dispirited if their first dash was unsuccessful ; boastful in speech and variable in disposition, they bear an unmistakable resemblance to their lively and gallant successors on the soil of Prance. What became of them in the long series of years after their first settlement was effected, nobody con say. We can only discover in the darkness of savage life, that the original possessors of the land, whoever they may have been.

CiBSAB. 15

were driven before the new-comers, and found refuge in the extreme West ; that, after interrals more or less prolonged, the cobnisers were joined in their first acquisition by tribes of cognate descent from the North ; and that, on one or two occasions, they burst across the boundaries of their still unconsolidated dominion, and carried terror and devastation to the walls of Borne and the fertile lands of Greece. Bome, fighting with her neighbours, and crushed by the barbarian numbers, was not able to expel them entirely firom the lands of Italy. At the foot of the Alps, therefore, in the rich level plains beyond the Po, the retreating squadrons took up their abode. Wives and children, and all the cattle they had seized on their southern march, constituted the contented wairiors into a nation, and their territory was recognised by the Boman authors as Cisalpine Gaul, or Gaul on this side the Alps. The dwellers, in the mean time, on the other side, pursued their course. The growth of the population required some exertion in clearing the ground. The rivers were traversed in coracles in search of fish. They hunted for wild game on the hills, and led their cattle where the pastures were greenest. There were vast assemblages for the decision of public questions, and for the ceremonies of religion. Long-bearded Druids guided the simple peasantry by the hopes and terrors of a dreadful faith — denounced curses on any one who might be disobedient to their commands, and sacrificed human victims to appease the angry gods. Meanwhile Bome was waxing great, and stretched her boundaries on every side. Gallia Cisalpina, or Cisalpine Chtul, became a subject state. All the level tract along the Mediterranean Sea jand up to the Garonne was reduced to a Boman province ; and finally, when the fulness of time was come, Julius CaBsar — greatest of soldiers and wisest of politicians— crossed the boundary^ and carried his conquering ea^es throughout the land. We need not follow minutely the course of his battles and campaigns, much less shall we waste any virtuous indignation on the destruction of Gallic freedom and the ambition of the Boman chie£ The freedom

16 ROHAN CONQUEST.

of a barbarian is only an independence of general law, and an ignorant impatience of the restraints of subordination. When a wandering population, combined only for the purposes of plunder and destruction^ foroes its way into the peaceful domains of a people in a more advanced sti^ of civilisation, the historian is justified in being as eloquent as he can, in denunciation of the invasion. But when, as in the case of CsBsar, the conquest achieved by the sword was accompanied by the arts of life and all the advantages of settled government and intelligible laws, we have too much sense to lament the &te of a crowd of miserable tribes, whose defeats bring them such benefits, and whose submission to the mightier power removes their contests from the slaughter of their battle-fields and the treacherous murders of their feasts, to the impartial decision of a Soman Emperor — ^bad and cruel, it is possible, in his individual capacity, but following certain laws in his formal judgments, and guided by the precedents and principles of four himdred years of liberty and power. iBduans, Nervians, AUobroges, and Yeromandians, were compelled to accept the securities of citizenship — ^not the loss of liberty — at the point of the sword ; and before many years elapsed, the inhabitants of the whole of Gaul looked back without regret to the stormy period of their savage independence, and almost forgot the sound of their original Gaelic in their devotion to the language of Cicero and YiigiL Many Galilean towns had colleges of their own, which rivalled the schools of Athens and Alexandria. Patricians sent their sons to finish their education in Marseilles ; and gradually the tide of eloquence and learning went on, till the grandsons of harsh-named warriors, who had worn the plaid and trunk-hose, the long hair and wooden shoes of their country, were dressed in the Roman toga, and wore the robes of senator or prastor. It became a point of honour to follow Boman customs, and even to take Boman names. One gentleman, of the uneuphonious name of Yercundaridub, whose &thers had evidently been drummers to the tribe, changed it into the easier sounded Cains Julius, and became a priest in the

DRUIDISM. 17

Templo of Augustus. It was, indeed, impossible for a people who had mastered the Bomau tongue, and tasted the pleasures of literature and science, to continue their belief in the religious tenets which had satisfied them in their original state. That religion had been adapted for the deep woods and shady hill-sides of its native seats, and had not become softened by its migration to the West. It still breathed its ancient harshness in its mysterious rites and bloody practices. But when Boman agricidture irrigated the fields, and cut down the forests, and deepened the rivers, it was found that the time of Thoth and Tanaris had long gone by. A faith that derived its sanctity from the darkness of the primeval woods, died out when the woods were thinned, and the sunshine admitted to their depths. It did not require an order from the Emperor, or missionaries from the heathen temples, or any attempts at proselytism by the governing power, to overthrow the old belief The Bomans, for the first hundred years of their dominion, made no effort to silence the teaching of the Druids, but merely interdicted the cruelties which those sacred fanatics — those earlier Brahmins — consecrated with the name of devotion. Human sacrifices, and pretensions to supernatural prescience, were prohibited by the law; but the conquering people achieved their object without offending the feelings of the conquered. They neither blindly oppressed the religion of the natives, nor meanly concealed their own. On every altar burned a flame to Jupiter or Minerva ; their, daily duties commenced with prayer and sacrifice for the safety of the Emperor and the State ; their language was usM as the means of communication of all their benefits, and the decisions of their courts. The trembling native saw something sacred in a tongue which could extend its orders over half the world ; which uttered the praises of the immortal gods and the sentences upon Asiatic kings ; and all the varying clans and kindreds were converted to the Boman £aith, by respect for the Boman name; and gratitude for the blessings of Boman rule.

Those blessings, however, were soon mingled with many

18 LUXURY AND DISTRESS.

• disadvantages. The towns increased in size and number beyond tbe requirements of the land. Whole tracts of territory were deserted, while thousands crowded into the seats of wealth and luxury. Autun, under the courtly name of Augustodunum, contained a hundred thousand inhabitants Science and the arts attracted immense numbers to Aries, and Lyons, and Vienne. • Within the walls, rich Eomanised nobles occupied their palaces, and left their rents to be collected from the diminished and overburdened peasantry. The arena at Nismes disputed the palm for size and grandeur with the Coliseum itself. The nation had, in fact, fallen into the greatest misfortune which can befall a state ; the ranks were separate and hostile. The old patriarchal system had lost its charm. The man who had been chief of the family, became master of the land ; and the man who had been tenant or clansman, became a slave. There was no class between. The graceful gods of Parnassus had expelled the grim divinities of the original mythology, and for a time had satisfied the longings of the Gael, for they were the embodiments of irresistible power in heaven, as the Emperors were upon earth. While the supreme State was prosperous, and the inhabitant of Gtavl was safe from foreign aggression under the shelter of the Boman name, and from intestine trouble by the presence of fifty thousand soldiers, all went well. Jupiter and the rest were worshipped in their stately fanes, and the citizens of Amiens and Troyes were proud of the magnificence of the building, and the number of victims slain. But when sorrow and commotion were in the land, when the oppressions of their native lords were multiplied a hundred-fold by the tyrannous exactions of the central government ; when the treasury at Rome was empty and had to be filled from the half-stored granaries of the serfs of Gaul, something more was needed than games in honour of Apollo, and hymns in the purest Latinity to Venus and the Graces. The ground was now prepared ; the noblest of languages was universal in the land ; the human heart was bowed down with distress ; the groans of the prisoners arose from the dungeon ;

CHRISTIANITY. 19

and there was no hand to save. It was at this time that the people that sat in darkness saw a great light. The tidings of the gospel reached them in the midst of their despair, and from henceforth they had a refuge against the woes of life. Delightful stories are told of the earliest preachers of the Word ; and we forgive the fond credulity which invests them with miraculous power, and traces them at two removes to the very foot of the Cross. It was in the year 160, we are told, that a certain Pothinus and St. Irenaeus landed from Asia Minor at Marseilles, and established the first congregation, and built the first church, in Lyons, the capital of GauL Irenaeus had been the disciple of Polycarp, who himself had imbibed wisdom from the lips of St. John. Seed so planted was sure to flourish in the end ; and, passing over some centuries of the alternate persecution and triumph of the new faith, we come at the same moment to the universal Christianity, and the total ruin and personal misery of the people. More helpless than the Romans themselves, more overwhelmed with luxury among the nobles, -and starvation among the mass, the two extremes of life were brought face to face in the light of day. Bursting from the plains and forests of Germany in the year 481, the Franks, repulsed in former trials by the legions of Rome, dashc(i^ across the Rhine without opposition, and took possession of the land. There was no fighting or parleying, or flights or treaties. The used-up population, the effeminate noble, the enfeebled serf, the trembling townsman and scattered labourer, could neither fight nor fly. Hope had died out among them ; for Rome, to which they used to turn in all their distresses, was now the author of all their woes. Tyrannical Emperors had squeezed the last farthing of their coin, the last bushel of their meal, in the name of tax. What worse could the wild soldier of Chlodoveg, with his sharp sword and hungry followers, be than the Curial, or tax-gatherer, who sold them into slavery if they were deficient in the payment, and the noble who flogged them if they failed in their servile work ? So, welcome a fresh invader I A change of sorrows will be

20 SOCIETY.

almost a relie£ But Chlodoveg had other claims to their submission. In the year 453, at the great battle of Chalons, where the devastating Huns under Attila were defeated, and scattered by a combination of all the tribes and languages which were still in the service of Rome, the Franks under their leader Meroveg, and the Goths under their own chief, had been of essential service. Often repulsed by the authorities of Gaul when they had tried to seize the country, and driven over the Rhine, they were now received as deliverers ; and Franks and G^ths contended for the gratitude and fiivour of the rescued population. But the Goths, who had learned some lessons of government by their intercourse with the polished rulers of Constantinople, had imbibed also some of the false doctrine at that time prevalent in the Eastern Church. They were Arians in faith, and the clergy of Gaul were uneasy at their obligation to such heretical intruders. To Chlodoveg, therefore, the grandson of the warrior Merov^, they turned, because, as he was still an unconverted heathen, he would be less hostile than their rival sect. Welcomed accordingly by all — by bishop, and lord, and citizen, and slave — the savage king came on. The Goths fled before this new defender of the faith, and set up their power in Spain and Italy ; the Buigundians paid him tribute — ^nobody could offer any resistance to his exactions, and he found himself at the head of a successful band, located in far better quarters than their late settlements had supplied, and supported by all the influence of the now rich and powerful church.

It is a strange mixing up of almost opposite conditions which now meets our view. The old Roman intelligence, its elegance of manner and purity of taste, had never died out. The educated gentleman of Gaul wrote as good Latin verses almost as the authors of the age of Augustus. Noblemen of old descertt, who traced up to the Consuls of the ancient time, and were near relations of the reigning Emperors of the East, accepted bishoprics and other church dignities, without altogether ceasing to look with benignant eyes on the inhab-

FRANKS. 21

itants of the mythological Olympus ; the Bomanised cities were still entire^ and even to us it gives a strange feeling of the nnintermpted flow of history when we come^ in the incidents of the sixth centuiy^ upon names which are stiU in everyday times — Toulouse, Bordeaux, Paris, or Cologne. Their waUs, and theatres, and temples, were yet erect ; but, better than those inanimate records of their former greatness, their municipal privileges remained ; their self-government and elective magistracy were not interfered with ; their ecclesiastical rulers were also appointed by the votes of priests and people ; and along their streets passed busy crowds hurrying to hear their favourite preacher, or, perhaps — ^for Paganism lived in the amusements of the people long after their religion was changed — to some flower-crowned celebration which had descended &om the worship of Venus or Pom<&a. Luxury in dress and festival kept up its ancient reign ; and a Boman of the last days of the' Bepublic, if suddenly transplanted into the drawing-room of Avitue, the prelate of Vienne, or Sidonius A^ppollinaris of Clermont, would have heard as learned conversation, in as grammatical phrases, as in his own villa five hundred years before.