The book of France for young people

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE FRENCH AND THE ROMANS . . 15

II THE DARK AGES ....... 28

Chapter I

I F you look in a history of England you will probably see that the first thing it tells you is, that Julius Csesar, the great Roman Emperor, invaded Britain in the year 55 b.c. The landing of Csesar and his Roman soldiers on the English coast is the real beginning of England’s story. Similarly, the real beginning of the story of France is the invasion of the country, which was then called Gaul, by the Romans some years before Julius Csesar came to Great Britain. Before the Romans invaded Gaul, the Gauls had invaded Italy and at one time the Romans were very much afraid that they would march south and threaten Rome itself.

At the time of the Roman conquest of the two countries, the peoples who lived in France and Great Britain belonged to the same race and must have spoken very much the same language. For the most part they belonged to that race of men whom we call Celts and whose direct descendants live to-day in Wales and Cornwall, in the north of Scotland, in parts of Ireland and in Brittany in France. But while most of the people in old France were Celts, other races had settled there before the Romans came. The great seaport of Marseilles, on the Mediterranean coast, was founded by sailors and merchants from Greece. Other French towns on the Mediterranean, including Nice, were also originally Greek colonies.

Every modern nation is a mixture of several old races. The United States of America, the young¬ est of the great nations of the world, is a mixture of all the European peoples. The English are a mix¬ ture of Celts, Anglo-Saxons (which is almost the same as Germans), and Danes. The French are a mixture, too, and I shall have to tell you how many races have joined together to make modern France. Just now all I want you to remember is, that at the time of Julius Caesar, the people of France and the people of England were practically the same. You will remember that the priests of the ancient Britons were called Druids—I dare say that you know that there are still the ruins of a Druidical temple at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain—and that they regarded the mistletoe as a sacred plant. The Druids were also the priests of the French, or [ 16 ]

as one ought to say, of the Gauls, and they had the same veneration for the mistletoe.

Julius Csesar invaded France in 58 b.c. It took him nearly ten years to conquer the country, but by the end of the year 50 b.c., practically all of what we now know as France was under the sway of Rome. It is not necessary for me to bother you with the story of Caesar’s conquest, of the brave way in which the Gauls resisted the Roman legions, of the many battles that were fought, and how little by little Csesar wore down the opposition of the Gauls and defeated their armies. Sometimes it is a very dreadful thing when a country is conquered by a foreign enemy. Sometimes (though, perhaps, very rarely) it is a good thing. It was a very dreadful thing for France, when, in 1870, she was defeated by the Germans. But it was really a very good thing for the Gauls, when, almost two thou¬ sand years before, they were defeated by Csesar and his Romans. For, wherever the Roman armies marched, they carried law and civilization with them. I hardly suppose you understand how important law is to you and me, but I assure you that we should find it very uncomfortable to live in a country where there were no policemen to protect us, nobody to punish thieves, and no judges to decide quarrels. The Romans took all these things

THE BOOK OF FRANCE with them, and, in consequence, wherever they went, life became more settled and the common man was safer. In all the countries that they conquered, they built roads—splendid roads—every bit as good as the roads we can make nowadays. Men were able to travel from town to town and from village to village on these fine Roman roads and to learn about each other, and to sell things to each other.

When there are no roads, when it is difficult if not impossible for men to make even short journeys from one town to another town, or from one village to another village, men’s lives are very empty, and it is very difficult for them to know about anything except just their own little village and their own neighbours. Their ignorance makes them very selfish and narrow. So you will see that when the Romans went into France and into Britain and made roads, they also made the lives of the people in France and in Britain much broader and more interesting. The people began to know about other people who lived quite a long way away from them, and they began to understand that the world, which they had thought before was a very little place, was really a very big place, full of unexpected interests and of many wonderful things, of which they had never dreamed.

When Csesar had conquered the Gauls, he treated them very kindly and leniently, although, while the fighting was still going on and the coun¬ try was still only half conquered, he was sometimes extremely cruel in order that he might terrify his opponents and frighten them into submission to his will. After one big battle, in which many of the Gauls had been taken prisoners, Caesar ordered his soldiers to cut off the right hand of each one of the prisoners. This was, of course, a very cruel and very cowardly thing, because the prisoners were not able to defend themselves. But though Cassar could sometimes act in this way, he is remembered in history for his generous conduct to his enemies when once the fighting was over. I dare say you have heard that, twenty years ago, the English fought against the Boers, the descendants of Dutchmen settled in South Africa, and made their country part of the British Empire. When, how¬ ever, the fighting had come to an end and the Boers had been compelled against their will to become part of the British Empire, the English said that they should make their own laws and rule themselves, and have exactly the same liberties and privileges as the English themselves. In this the English were following the example of Caesar and the old Romans.

When Gaul (you will remember this was the old name for France) had been forced to become part of the Roman Empire, the Gauls did not become slaves. They were not made to give up their liberty and to do just as the Romans told them, but they themselves became Roman citizens with the same rights and privileges as the men who lived in the city of Rome.

When England had to fight Germany in the Great War, she was helped by regiments of Boer soldiers who came to fight by the side of the English soldiers in France, although a few years before they had fought against English soldiers in South Africa. In the same way, Csesar enlisted Gallic soldiers in the Roman army. He gave them special pay, and he formed them into special regi¬ ments that always bore the figure of a lark on their helmets. This lark was the emblem of watchfulness and gaiety, and these Gallic soldiers of Csesar’s used to sing during their long marches, and they were a great help to the Romans in winning some of their most important victories. The English let the Boers have a Parliament of their own. Csesar let the Gauls send their spokesmen to the Parlia¬ ment at Rome, where they took their part in the government of the Empire and were able to look after the particular interests of their own country.

In this way, the Gauls who, before the Romans came, were almost barbarians, learned the benefits of law and became a civilized nation. The Romans taught them how necessary schools were to a coun¬ try, and they taught them, too, that the poor people, who had no land, must be looked after, and, when it was impossible for them to get work and wages, that they must be supported at the public expense.

You will see from all this how right I was when I said that it was a good thing for France when the Roman armies marched over the Alps and began to conquer their country. Wars are always a bad thing, since in every war many men are killed, many more are wounded, and many towns and villages are always destroyed. But it sometimes happens in the world that good comes out of evil, and a great good certainly came to France as a result of the Roman conquest. Almost all I have told you about the benefits that the Romans brought to France is also true of Great Britain. But Great Britain is farther away from Italy than France is, and the people who lived in Great Britain were not quite so much affected by the Romans as the French were, mainly because France and Italy are quite close to each other.

In one thing, and one thing only, the Gauls tried hard to resist the influence of the Romans. Despite persuasion and persecution, they clung to their own Druidical religion. All the nations of the earth have been like the Gauls in this respect. Men have often been willing to submit to a change of king and a change of government, but they have never been willing to be forced to change their religion, and they have over and over again been ready to face death and cruel torture rather than to worship God in any but their own way. The Russian Czars tried hard for many generations to compel the Poles to cease to be Roman Catholics, but they did not succeed. The French kings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tried hard to force the Protestants who lived in France to become Roman Catholics, and they also failed.

The Druidical religion in which the Gauls be¬ lieved was barbarous and savage, and the Druids used to sacrifice human beings on their altars. This, of course, the Romans would not allow, and, you will agree, they were quite right, just as the English in India were quite right to prevent widows being burnt alive on the graves of their dead husbands. Nevertheless, when the Romans began to interfere with the religion of the Gauls, the people, who before had been quite content to obey Roman laws, rose in revolt against their conquerors and the war [ 22 ]

began over again. The revolt was a failure, and it only led to a large number of men being killed and to more suffering and destruction.

This revolt happened after Julius Caesar had died, and when the Roman Empire was governed by other Emperors who were less wise and less sympathetic than he had been. They took away from the Gauls their privileges as Roman citizens and made them just serfs who had to do exactly as they were told by their conquerors. Later on, Rome was ruled by Emperors, who went back to Caesar’s policy and restored to the Gauls and the Britons all that Caesar had given to them. One of these Emperors vastly preferred France to Rome itself, and for some years the French city of Lyons, which the Romans had built, almost became the capital of the Roman Empire, instead of Rome.

I want you particularly to remember all this because I am going to try and show you in the chapters that follow that France is the child of the Roman Empire just as you are the children of your fathers, and that therefore France inherits the qualities of the Roman Empire just as you inherit the qualities of your fathers.

Even those Roman Emperors who were most sympathetic to the Gauls and the Britons were very much opposed to the Druidical religion, and in the time of Nero (who was one of these Roman Emperors) the Druids were driven out of France into Britain and then away to the little island of Anglesey, off the north-west coast of Wales, and in the year a.d. 61 the Roman soldiers killed all the Druid priests and priestesses. It was after this massacre that the Britons revolted against the Romans, under their Queen Boadicea, whose statue you can see on the Thames Embankment in Lon¬ don. Although in many respects he was a very wicked man, Nero was extremely fond of the Gauls. He realized how useful the Roman roads had been to them, and he thought that even more good would come if he were to make canals in the country so that the people could travel by water from one place to another. He therefore planned to construct a great canal which should join the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean. If you will look at the map, you will see what a splendid idea this was, but, unfortunately, Nero was never able to carry it out.

Gaul continued to receive many benefits from Rome, even during the reigns of the worst Emper¬ ors, and all the time the laws were being improved so that the common men were able to live in peace and to know that they would be treated fairly and justly. Some of the Gauls continued to have high [24]

places in the Roman Empire, and to take their part in the government as well as in the worlds of liter¬ ature and art. The great idea of equality which we, people who live in the modern world, owe to France, France learned long ago from the Romans.

During the time that Gaul was ruled by the Roman Emperors, Christianity first entered the country. It was in the year a.d. 177 that the first Gauls were baptized. In those days the Roman Emperors persecuted the Christians and soon after this year (a.d. 177) forty-seven Gauls became the first Christian martyrs in their country. By the year a.d. 250 there were seven Christian bishops in Gaul, one of them being the Bishop of Paris. Christianity, of course, came into Gaul after it had made many converts in Rome and in Italy. I ought to tell you (particularly as I have already said that every nation is the descendant of a large number of other nations, just as we are the descen¬ dants of many grandfathers and great-great-grand¬ fathers), that it was the Greeks who really taught Christianity to the Gauls, and that the Church at Lyons was founded by Greek missionaries. It is interesting to remember that it was from France that missionaries were sent to convert the Irish to Christianity. From this you will see how much one nation owes to another, and how in every important happening in history, we can discover, behind all the quarrels of kings and the ambitions of emper¬ ors, the real brotherhood of man. Bear in mind this incident that I have just told you. The Greeks came from their own country to the city of Lyons in France, a city which the Romans built, to teach the people Christianity, and then some of these people, who had learned Christianity from the Greeks, journeyed all the way from Lyons to Ire¬ land to tell the story of Jesus Christ to the people there.

About three hundred years after the death of Christ, during the reign of Constantine, the Roman Empire became definitely Christian, and after that Christianity was the recognized religion in all parts of the Roman Empire. This Empire included the whole of Italy, and France, and Spain, most of England, the whole of Greece and Asia Minor and Northern Africa. It was inhabited by many differ¬ ent races, who all spoke their own languages, but naturally, in every part of the Roman Empire, many people also spoke Latin. Therefore, in all those countries which used to belong to the Romans, the languages nowadays contain very many Latin words. We who speak English use many words that came originally from the Romans, and the French language is much more Latin than ours.

If you will again look at a map of Europe, and draw a line round the countries that used to belong to the Roman Empire, you will see that outside the Empire there were the great countries that we call Germany and Austria, the northern countries, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Holland, and the great country of Russia. In the time of the Roman Empire these countries were inhabited by peoples whom the Romans called “barbarians,” with whom they were constantly at war, but whom they never really conquered, although many of the barbarians were enlisted in the Roman army and fought on the side of the Romans in their wars. For reasons which it would take me too long to explain, the Roman Empire grew weaker and weaker until it split into two parts, and it was no longer compact and joined together as it had been in its earlier days. As Rome grew weaker, the barbarians grew stronger. They marched over the Roman boun¬ daries, defeated the Roman armies, conquered Roman provinces and settled in them. In the next chapter, I shall tell you how some of these barba¬ rians came to Gaul, and how they affected the history of France,

Chapter II

I WANT you to remember, before you begin to read this chapter, that about four hundred years after the death of Jesus Christ, the country that we now call France was part of the Roman Empire, just as nowadays California and Virginia and Connecticut are part of the United States. There were, however, two great differences. Nearly all the people in California and Virginia and Connecticut to-day speak the English language and many of them belong to the English race. But the people in France, at the time about which I am writing, belonged to quite a different race to the Romans, although many Romans had settled in their country, and they still spoke their own lan¬ guage, though many of them had also learned to speak Latin. There was another difference. Cali¬ fornia and Virginia and Connecticut belong to the United States just because they want to belong to it. But the Roman Empire was held together by the power of the Roman armies, although, as I told [ 28 ]

you in the last chapter, it was really a very good thing for France and Britain to be in the Roman Empire, and although men from almost every coun¬ try in the world were to be found in the ranks of the Roman army. Now, I am sure you will understand that, if an Empire is held together by the power of an army, it must fall to pieces when that army grows weak and is no longer able to defeat the Empire’s enemies. And that is exactly what hap¬ pened to the Roman Empire about four hundred years after the death of Jesus Christ.

At the end of my first chapter I told you that in the middle and the northern parts of Europe there were a number of powerful tribes whom the Romans called barbarians and whom they never succeeded in conquering. These tribes belonged to the German or Teutonic race. They were very warlike, and, as the Roman Empire grew weaker, they began to march across the frontiers and invade Roman territory. The first of these German tribes to defeat the Roman armies were the Goths, and these Goths were so successful that they penetrated right into Spain and Italy, and some of their chiefs actually became Emperors of Rome. One tribe of Goths settled in the south part of France between the river Garonne and the Pyrenees. If you look at the map you will see exactly where this district is. In the Roman days it was called Aquitania, and afterwards in the Middle Ages it was called Aquitaine. I have already told you that the peo¬ ples, whom the Romans conquered, soon learned what a splendid thing Roman law was, and it is a very interesting fact that these Goths, who con¬ quered the Romans, also learned to appreciate Roman law. They found it was a good thing to pay for the things they wanted and to behave justly to the people who lived in the country before they settled there. One man who lived in Aquitania left his estates and ran away to the city of Marseilles when the Goths invaded the country, and he was very surprised soon afterwards to receive payment for his estates from the Goth who had taken them over.

Soon after these German Goths had settled in Aquitania, another German tribe, called the Bur¬ gundians, settled in the east part of France, west of the Jura mountains (you will of course look at your map again), in the province that is still called Burgundy, and of which Dijon is nowadays the principal town. These Burgundians were very good-natured people, and they also behaved kindly and fairly to the Gauls. So by about the year a.d. 416 there were Goths in the south and Burgundians in the east, and Gauls with some Roman settlers [30]

CORONATION OF CHARLEMAGNE

H. Levis ( Pantheon )

and governors in the middle of France and the west. Meanwhile another German tribe, called the Franks, had settled in the northern part of France and in the country which we now call Belgium, in, that is, the district of Flanders in which so much terrible fighting took place during the Great War.

Now, let us go back a little. In the first chapter I tried to show you that the early story of England and the early story of France are very much alike. At the beginning both countries were conquered by the Romans and became parts of the Roman Empire. When the Roman Empire broke up, again exactly the same thing happened to the two countries. The Roman Emperors were obliged to recall their soldiers from Britain in order that they might fight against the invading barbarians in Italy. When the Roman soldiers had gone, the Britons had no one to defend them against the Piets and the Scots who lived in Scotland, and they asked the Angles and the Saxons, two of the barbarian German tribes, to come to their help. The Angles and the Saxons landed in Britain and never went home again. The Britons were soon driven into Wales and Cornwall, and the Anglo-Saxons be¬ came masters of the country. In France the Gauls also found themselves helpless against their ene¬ mies, and they asked the Franks, who were of the same race as the Angles and the Saxons, to march southwards through Flanders for their protection.

Now while the Roman Empire lasted, the Roman Emperor had been the link between the various peoples that made up the Empire, prevent¬ ing war between them and making them realize that peoples who spoke different languages were really first cousins. As the power of the Roman Emperors grew less, the power of the Christian Church grew stronger. From the very beginning of their invasion of the centre part of France, the Franks became faithful members of the Christian Church and allied themselves with its bishops and its priests. You will understand that when the Roman soldiers went away and tribes began once more to fight against tribes, the power of the law began to disappear and the poor man had nowhere to look for justice or protection. But Clovis, the leader of the Frankish invaders, gave the Church the right of asylum and protection. Poor and weak men, who were persecuted by the rich and the strong, were able to take refuge in the churches, and no one could touch them there. This was a very important thing, and you will see how important it was as I go on with my story. King Clovis, who is sometimes called the first King of France, conquered practically the whole of the [ 32 ]

country from Flanders to the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees, and from what we now call Alsace- Lorraine to the Mediterranean.

One rather important thing happened before France fell under the sway of the Franks, from whom, of course, it gets its modern name. I dare say you remember that during the Great War the Germans were sometimes called Huns. The real Huns were wild, savage men from the eastern bor¬ ders of Europe who overran the continent under their great leader Attila, during the days when the Roman Empire was growing weaker and weaker. Attila with his Huns and many German allies marched into France, but he was opposed by an army that consisted of Gauls, Burgundians and Goths, all the peoples, that is, who lived in France at the time, and he was defeated near the town of Chaalons, which was for a long time the headquar¬ ters of the French army during the Great War. I am telling you this fact because I want you to see that even before the Franks came into France, the different races who lived there, joined together like one nation when they were faced with very great danger.

Now we will go back to Clovis, the first Frank King. He made Paris his capital and died in the year 511. For many years after his death the condition of the country was very dreadful. The Frank kings took Romans and Gauls for their ministers, and sometimes tried hard to restore Roman law and to give the people justice, but gen¬ erally there was nothing but fighting and quarrels between different chieftains, and the order, which had existed during the Roman period, gave place to perpetual disorder. However, during all these troubles, the power of the Church was ever grow¬ ing stronger, and the half-savage kings and chiefs were compelled to submit to the bishops and priests, and at least to behave much better than they would have done if they had been left quite alone. Very poor men often rose to be bishops, and they naturally were particularly anxious to do all they could for other poor men who were very likely their own brothers and cousins. At this time, the most important bishop in France was the Archbishop of Rheims, and this is an interesting fact to remember because, as my story goes on, you will discover what a large part the town of Rheims has played in the history of France and the French.

The next great man with whom we are concerned was called Charles Martel. Martel means the hammer, and it was Charles Martel’s work to try to hammer the various parts of France and the various races who lived there into one nation. He [34]

did not quite succeed, but his hammering did no end of good. Until the time of Charles Martel, the German tribes, who lived on the east side of the river Rhine and were constantly invading France, were still pagans, and it was thought that there would be a much greater chance for peace if these tribes could be persuaded to become Christians. It was difficult to find the right missionary to preach to the barbarians, and it is interesting to know that the missionary, whom the Pope finally sent, and who succeeded in persuading the German barba¬ rians to embrace Christianity, was an Englishman born in Devonshire, and called St. Boniface. Charles Martel, like Clovis two hundred years be¬ fore him, was the ally of the bishops and was always backed by the power of the Church. Charles Mar¬ tel did one very great thing for France, for Europe, and for the Christian religion. The warlike tribes of Asia and Northern Africa, who followed the religion of the Prophet Mahomet, conquered coun¬ try after country after the fall of the Roman Empire. They crossed from Africa to Spain and overran the whole of that country, and it must have seemed at one time that they would conquer the whole of Europe, and that they would compel the peoples of Europe to adopt the religion of Mahomet and give up the religion of Jesus Christ.

At the beginning of the eighth century, they crossed the Pyrenees and invaded France, but Charles Martel gathered a large army together, utterly routed them near the town of Tours, and drove them back again across the Pyrenees. Since then, there has been no danger of the Mohamme¬ dans conquering western Europe, although they remained in Spain for another seven hundred years.

Charles Martel’s grandson, the great Charle¬ magne, not only established his power all through France, but conquered the northern part of Italy, parts of Spain, and a large part of Germany. He made his capital at Aix-la-Chapelle, where the ex-Kaiser Wilhelm had his headquarters during the Great War. His power was so great that the Pope thought that Charlemagne would revive the old Roman Empire and that the power of this Empire might once more give Europe peace. So he crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the West. Although Charlemagne was King of France, and although the Franks had in his time been in France for nearly four hundred years, he always spoke the German language and always wore German dress. While he lived, he was certainly the greatest king in the world. The Saxon Kings of England came to live at his Court, and ambassadors from far¬ away countries continually visited him. One of [36]

these ambassadors came from the famous Haroun al Raschid, the Caliph of Bagdad, about whom I dare say you have read in the Arabian Nights . This ambassador brought Charlemagne as presents from his master a clock that struck the hours, an ape and an elephant, and you can still see one of the teeth of this elephant if you go to Aix-la-Chapelle. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about Charle¬ magne was that he could write, which hardly any one could do in his time, except the bishops and the priests.