Young folks' history of France

Preface

THESE Stories on the History of France are meant for children peril aps a year older than those on the History of England. They try to pnt such facts as need most to be remembered in a comprehensible form, and to attach some real characteristic to each reign; though, in later political history, it is difficult to translate the leading ideas into anything that can enter ail intellect of seven or eight j^ears old. The gentleman who, some time ago, recommended teaching history backwards from onr own time, could never have practically tried how much harder it is to make la Charte or the Reform. Bill interesting to the childish mind, than how King Kobert fed the beggars or William Rufus was killed by an arrow. Early history is generally personal, and thus can be far more easily recollected than that which concerns the multitude, who are indeed everything to the philanthropist, but are nothing to the child. Even the popular fairy tale has its princes and princesses, and the wonder tale of history can only be carried on in the infant imagination by the like dramatis personod-

CHARLOTTE M. YOIS^GE.

Contents

The Old Kelts. B.C. 150 .

The Koinau Conquest. B.C. 67. a.d. 79

The Conversion of Gaul. 100 --400

Chapter I. The Old Kelts

B.C. 150.

I BEGAN the " History of England " with Julius Caesar's landing in Britain, and did not try to tell you who the people were whom he found there, for I thought it would puzzle you ; but you are a little older now, and can understand rather

more.

You must learn that in the old times, before people wrote down histories, Europe was overspread by a great people, whom it is convenient to call altogether the Kelts — fierce, bold, warrior people, who kept together in large families or clans, all nearly related, and each clan with a chief. The clans joined together and formed tribes, and the cleverest chief of the clans would lead the rest. They spoke a language nearly alike — the language which has named a great many rivers and hills. I will tell 3^ou a few. Ben or Pen means a hill. So we see that the Ap-pen-nine mountains were named by the Kelts. Again, Avon is a river. You know we have several Avons. Ren Avon meant the running river, and Rhine and Rhone are both the same word, differently pronounced. Sen Avon was the slow river — the Seine and Saone ; and Garr Avon was the swift river — the Garonne. There were two great varieties of Kelts — the Gael and the Kymry (you should call this word Ke wmri) . The Gael were the tallest, largest, wildest, and fiercest, but they were not so clever as the blackeyed little K3aury. The Kymry seem to have been the people who had the Druid priests, who lived in groves of oak, and cut down mistletoe with golden knives ; and most likely they set up

The Old Kelts. 13

the wonderful circles of huge stones which seem to have been meant to worship in ; at least, wherever those stones are the Kymry have been. But we know little about them, as all their knowledge was in verse, which the Druids and bards taug^ht one another by word of mouth, and which was never written down. All we do know is from their neighbors the Greeks and Romans, who thought them very savage, and were very much afraid of them, when every now and then a tribe set out on a robbing expedition into the lands to the south.

When the Kelts did thus come, it was generally because they were driven from their own homes. There were a still fiercer, stronger set of people behind them, coming from the east to the west; and when the Kelts found that they could not hold their own against these people, they put their wives and children into wagons, made of wood or wicker work, collected their oxen, sheep, and goats, called their great shaggy hounds, and set forth to find new homes. The men had long streaming hair and beards, and wore loose trousers of woollen, woven and dyed in checks by the women — tartan plaids, in fact. The chiefs always had gold collars round their necks, and they used round wicker shields, long spears, and heavy swords, and they were yery terrible enemies. When tlie country was free to the west, they went on thither, and generally settled down in a wood near a river, closing in their town with a wall of trunks of trees and banks of earth, and setting up their hovels within of stone or wood.

But if other clans whom they could not beat were to the west of them, they would turn to the south into Greece or Italy, and do great damage there. One set of them, in very old times, even managed to make a home in the middle of Asia Minor, and it was to their descendants that St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians. Another great troop, under a very mighty Bran, or chief, who, in Latin, is called Brennus, even broke into the great city of Rome itself. All the women and children of Rome had been sent away, and only a few brave men remained in the strong place called the Capitol, on the top of the steepest hill. There they stayed for seven months, while the Bran and his Gauls kept the city, drank up the wine in the long narrow jars, and drove in the pale-colored, long:-horned oxen from the meadow land round. The Bran never did get into the Capitol, but the Romans were obliged to pay him a great sum of money before he would go away. However, this

THE GAULS IK HOME.

The Old Kelts. 17

belongs to the history of Rome, and I only mean further to sa}^, that the tribe who came \A'ith him staj^ed seventeen years in the middle parts of Italy before they were entirely beaten. When the Kelts were beaten and saw there was no hope, they generally came within the enclosure they had made with their wagons, and slew their wives and children, set fire to everything, and then killed themselves, that they might not be slaves. All the north part of Ital}" beyond the River Po was filled with Kelts, and there were many more of them beyond the Alps. So it came about that from the word Gael the Romans called the north of Italy Gallia Cis-Alpina — Gauls on this side the Alps; and the country westward Gallia Trans-Alpina, or Gaul be3^ond the Alps, and all the people there were known as Gauls, whether they were Gael or Kymry.

Now, far up in Gaul, in tlie high ground that divides the rivers Loire, kSaone, and Rhine, there were rocks full of metal, tin, copper, and sometimes a little silver. The clever sailors and merchants called Phoenicians found these out, and taught the Gauls to work the mines, and send the metals in boats down the Rhone to the Mediterranean sea. There is a beautiful bay where Gaul

18 Youny Folks'^ History of France.

touches the Mediterranean, and not only the Phoenicians found it out, l^ut the Greeks. They came to live there, and built the cities of Marseilles, Nice, Antibes, and several more. Lovely cities the Greeks always built, with marble temples to their gods, pillars standing on steps, and gardens with statues in them, and theatres for seeing plays acted in the open air. Inside these towns and close round them everything was beautiful; but the Gauls who lived near learnt some Greek ways, and were getting tamed. They coined money, wrote in Greek letters, and bought and sold with the Greeks ; but their wilder brethren beyond did not a2:)prove of this, and whenever they could catch a Greek on his journey would kill him, rob him, or make him prisoner. Sometimes, indeed, they threatened to rob the cities, and the Greeks begged the Romans to protect them. So the Romans sent an officer and an army, who built two new towns, Aix and Narbonne, and made war on the Gauls, who tried to hinder him. Then a messenger was sent to the Roman camp. He was an immensely tall man, with a collar and bracelets of gold, and beside him came a bard singing the praises of his clan, the Arverni. There were man}^ other attendants ; but his chief guards were a pack of immense

MOUNTKD (^.AIM.S.

The Old Kelts, 21

hounds, wliicli came pacing after liim in ranks like soldiers. He bade the Romans, in the name of his chief Bituitus, to leave the country, and cease to harm the Gauls. The Roman General turned his back and would not listen ; so the messenger went back in anger, and the Arverni prepared for battle. When Bituitus saw the Roman army he thought it so small that he said, '' This handfid of men will hardly furnish food for my dogs." He was not beaten in the battle, but jnst after it he was made prisoner, and sent to Italy, where he was kept a captive all the rest of his life, while his son was brought up in Roman learning and habits, and then sent home to rule his clan, and teach them to be friends with Rome. This was about one hundred and fifty years before the coming of our Blessed Lord.

CHAPTER ir.

THE KOMAN CONQUEST.

THE Romans called the country tliey had taken for themselves in Gaul the Province, and Provence has alw^ays continued to be its name. They filled it with colonies. A colony was a city built by Romans, generally old soldiers, who received a grant of land if they would defend it. 22

The Roman Conquest. 23

The first thing they did was to set up an altar. Then they dug trenches the shape of their intended city, marked out streets, and made little flat bricks, everywhere after one pattern, with which the\' built a temple, houses (each standing round a paved court), a theatre, and public baths, with causeways as straight as an arrow joining tlie cities together. Each town had two magistrates elected every year, and a governor lived at the chief town with a legion of the army to keep the country round in order.

When the Romans once began in this way, they always ended by gaining the whole country in time. They took nearly a hundred j^ears to gain Gaul. First there came a terrible inroad of some wilder Kymry, whom the Romans called Cimbri, from the west, with some Teutons, of that fiercer German race I told you of. They broke into Gaul, and defeated a great Roman army; and there was ten years' fighting v/ith them before the stout old Roman, Caius Marius, beat them in a great battle near Aix. All the men were killed in battle, and the women killed their children and themselves rather than fall into Roman hands. That was B.C. 103; and Julius Csesar, the same who first came to Britain, was nephew to JMarius.

He did not conquer Britain, but he did really conquer Gaul. It would only confuse and puzzle you now to tell you how it was done ; but by this time many of the Gaulish tribes had come to be friendly with the Romans and ask their help. Some wanted help because they were quarrelling with other tribes, and others because the Germans behind them had squeezed a great tribe of Kymry out of the Alps, and they wanted to come down and make a settlement in Gaul. Julius Caesar made short work of beating these new-comers, and he beat the Germans who were also trying to get into Gaul. Then he expected all the Gauls to submit to him — not only those who lived round the Province, and had always been friendly to Rome, but all the free ones in the north. He was one of the most w^onderful soldiers who ever lived. He gained first, all the east side. He subdued the Belgse, who lived between the Alps and the sea, all the Armoricans along the north, and then the still wilder people on the coast towards the Atlantic ocean.

But while he was away in the north, the Gaulish chiefs in the south agreed that they would make one great attempt to set their country free from the enemy. They resolved all to rise at once, and

The Roman Conquest, 25

put themselves under the command of the brave young mountain chief of the Arverni, from whom' Auvergne was named. The Romans called his name Vercingetorix ; and as it reall}^ was even longer and harder to speak than this word, we will call him so. He was not a wild shaggy savage like Bituitus, but a graceful, spirited chief, who had been trained to Roman manners, and knew their ways of fighting. All in one night the Gauls rose. Men stood on the hill-tops, and shouted from clan to clan to rise up in arms. It was the depth of winter, and Caesar was away resting in Italy ; but back he came on the first tidings, and led his men over six feet of snow, taking every Gallic town by the way.

Vercingetorix saw that the wisest thing for the Gauls to do would be to burn and lay waste the land themselves, so that the Romans might find nothing to eat. "It was sad," he said, " to see burning houses, but worse to have Avife and children led into captivity." One city, that now called Bourges, was left ; the inhabitants beseeched him on their knees to spare it ; and it seemed to be safe, for there was a river on one side and a bog on all the rest, with only one narrow road across. But in twenty-five days Caisar made his way in.

and slew all he found there ; and then he followed Vercmgetorix to his own hills of Auvergne, and fought a battle, the only defeat the great Roman captain ever met with : indeed, he was obliged to retreat from the face of the brave Arverni. They followed him again, and fought another battle, in which he was in great danger, and was forced even to leave his sword in the hands of the Gauls, who hung it up in a temple in thanksgiving to their gods. But the Gauls were not so steady as they were brave ; they fled, and all Vercingetorix could do was to lead them to a great camp under the hill of Alesia. He sent horsemen to rouse the rest of Gaul, and shut himself up in a great enclosure with his men. Csesar and the Romans came and made another enclosure outside, eleven miles round, so that no help, no food could come to them, and they had only provisions for thirty days. Their friends outside did try to break through to them, but in vain ; they were beaten off; and then brave Vercingetorix offered to give himself up to the Romans, provided the lives of the rest of the Gauls were spared. Csesar gave his word that this should be done. Accordingly, at the appointed hour the gates of the Gallic camp opened. Out came Vercingetorix in his richest armor, mounted on his

The Roman Conquest. 29

finest steed. He galloped about, wheeled round once, then drawing np suddenly before Caesar's seat, sprang to the ground, and laid his sword at the victor's feet. C'sesar was not touched. He l^ept a cold, stern face ; ordered the gallant chief into captivity, and kept him for six years, while finishing other conquests, and then took him to Rome, to walk in chains behind the car in which the victorious general entered in triumph, with all the standards taken from the Gauls displayed ; and then, with the other captives, this noble warrior was put to death in the dark vaults under the hill of the Capitol.

With Vercingetorix ended the freedom of Gaul. The Romans took possession of all the country, and made the cities like their own. The old clans were broken up. The fighting men were enlisted in the Roman army, and sent to fight as far away as possible from home, and the chiefs thought it an honor to be enrolled as Roman citizens ; they wore the Roman tunic and toga, spoke and wrote Latin, and, except among the Kymry of the far northwest, the old Gaulish tongue was forgotten. Very grand temples and amphitheatres still remain in the Province of Roman building, especially at Nismes, Aries, and Autun ; and a huge acqueduct, called the Pont clu Gard, still stands across a valley near Nismes, with 600 feet of three tier of arcades, altogether 160 feet high. Roads made as only Romans made them crossed hither and thither throughout the country, and, except in the wilder and more distant parts, to live in Gaul was very like living in Home.

After Julius Caesar, the Romans had Emperors at the head of their state, and some of these were verv fond of Gaul. But when the first twelve who had some connection with Julius were all dead, a Gaul named Julius Sabinus rose up and called himself Emperor. The real Emperor, chosen at Rome, named Vespasian, soon came and overthrew his cause, and hunted him to his country house. Flames burst out of it, and it was declared that Sabinus had burnt himself there. But no ; he was safely hidden in a cave in the woods. No one knew of it but his wife Eponina and one trusty slave, and there they lived together for nine years, and had two little sons. Eponina twice left him to go to Rome to consult her friends Avhether they could obtain a pardon for her husband; but Vespasian was a stern man, and they saw no hope, so she went back disappointed ; and the second time she was watclied and followed, and Sabinus was

The Roman ConquesL 31

found. He was taken and chained, and carried to Rome, and she and her two boys came with him. She knelt before the Emperor, and besought his pardon, saying that here were two more to plead for their father. Tears came into Vespasian's eyes, but he would not forgive, and the husband and wife were both sentenced to die. The last thing Eponina said before his judgment-seat was, that it was better to die together than to be alive as such an Emperor. Her two boys were taken care of, and one of them lived long after in Greece, as far away from his home as possible.

Chapter III. The Conversion Of Gaul

GAUL could not be free in her own way, but the truth that maketh free was come to her. The Druids, though their worship was cruel, had better notions of the true God than the Romans with their multitude of idols, and when they heard more of the truth, many of them gladly embraced 32

The Conversion of Gaul. ■ 33

it. The Province was so near Rome that very soon after the Apostles had reached the great city, they sent on to GaiiL The people in Provence believe tliat Lazarus and his two sisters came thither, but this is not likely. However, the fitst Bishop of Aries was Trophimus, and we may quite believe him to have been the Ephesian who was with St. Paul in liis third journey, and was at Jernsalem with him when he was made prisoner. Trophimus brought a service-book with him very like the one that St. John the Evano^elist had drawn up for the Churches of Asia.

It was to Vienne, one of these Roman cities, that Pontins Pilate had been banished for his cruelt3^ In this town and in the larger one at Lyons there were many Christians, and their bishop was Pothinus, who had been instructed by St. John. It was many years before the Gallic Christians suffered au}^ danger for their faith, not till the year 177, when Pothinus was full ninety years old.

Then, under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a governor was sent to the Province who was resolved to put an end to Christianity. The difficulty was that there were no crimes of wliich to accuse tlie Christians. So he caused several slaves to be seized and put to torture, while they were asked questions. There were two young girls among them, Blandina and Biblis. Blandina was a weak, delicate maiden, but whatever pain they gave her, she still said, "I am a Christian, and no evil is done among us." Biblis, however, in her fright ^and agony, said " Yes " to all her tormentors asked, and accused the Christians of killing babies, eating human flesh, and all sorts of horrible things. Afterwards she was shocked at herself, declared there was not a word of truth in what she had said, and bore fresh and worse torture bravely. The Christians were seized. The old bishop was dragged through the streets, and so pelted and illtreated that after a few days he died in prison. The others were for fifteen days brought out before all the people in the amphitheatre, while every torture that could be thought of was tried upon them. All were brave, but Blandina was the bravest of all. She did not seem to feel when she was put to sit on a red hot iron chair, but encouraged her young brother through all. At last she was put into a net and tossed by a bull, and then, being found to be still alive, her throat was pierced, everyone declaring that never had woman endured so much. The persecution did not last much

The Conversion of Craul. 35

longer after this, and the bones of the martyrs were collected and buried, and a church built over them, the same, though of course much altered, which is now the Cathedral of Lyons.

Instead of the martyred Pothinus, the new bishop was Irenseus, a holy man who left so many writings that he is counted as. one of the Fathers of the Church. A] most all the townsmen of Lyons became Christians under his wise persuasion and good example, but the rough people in the country were much less easily reached. Lideed, the word pagan, which now means a heathen, was only the old Latin word for a peasant or villager. In the year 202, the Emperor Severus, who had himself been born at Lyons, put out an edict against the Christians. The fierce Gauls in the adjoiniug country hearing of it, broke furiously into the city, and slaughtered every Christian they laid hands upon, St. Irengeus among them. There is an old mosaic ]3avement in a church at Lyons where the inscription declares that nineteen thousand died in this massacre, but it can hardly be believed that the numbers were so large.

The northerly parts of Gaul were not yet converted, and a bishop named Dionysius was sent to teach a tribe called the Parisii, whose chief city was Lutetia, on the banks of the Seine. He was taken in the year 272, and was beheaded just outside the walls on a hill which is still known as Mont Martre, the martyr's mount, and his name, cut short into St. Denys, became one of the most famous in all France.

The three Keltic provinces, Gaul, Spain, and Britain, used to be put together under one governor, and the brave, kindly Constantius ruled over them, and hindered persecution as much as he could. His son Constantine was also much loved, and it was while marching to Italy with an army, in which were many Gauls, to obtain the empire, that Constantine saw the vision of a bright cross in the sky, surrounded by the words, "In this sign thou shalt conquer." He did conquer, and did confess himself a Christian two years later, and under him the Church of Gaul flourished. Gallic bishops were at the great council of Nicea, in Asia Minor, when the Nicene creed was drawn up, and many beautiful hymns for Christian Avorship were written in Gaul.

After Constantine's death, his son Constantius fostered tlie false doctrine that the Nicene creed contradicted. He lived at Constantinople, and dressed and lived like an Eastern prince, and the

The Conversion of Graul. 37

Gauls were growing discontented ; more especially as tlie Franks — a terrible tribe of tlieir Teuton enemies to the east — were trj'ing to break into their lands. A young cousin of Constantius, named Julian, was sent to fight with them. He fixed his chief abode in a little island in the middle of the River Seine, at Lutetia, among his dear Parisii, as he called the tribe around, and thence he came out to drive back the Franks whenever they tried to attack the Gauls. He was a very brave, able man, but he had seen so much selfishness among the Christians in Rome and Constantinople, that he fancied their faults arose from their faith; and tried to be an old heathen again as soon as Constantius was dead, and he became emperor. He only reigned three years, and then, in the year 863, was killed in a war with the Persians. Very sad times followed his death. He was the last of his family, and several emperors rose and fell at Rome. The governor of Gaul, Maximus, called himself emperor, and, raising an army in Britain, defeated the young man who had reigned at Rome in the jeen 881, and ruled the Keltic j)rovinces for seven years. He was a brave soldier, and not wholly a bad man, for he much loved and valued the great Bishop Martin, of Tours. Martin had been brought up as a soldier, but he was so kind that once when he saw a shivering beggar he cut his cloak into two with his sword, and gave the poor man half. He was then not baptized, but at eighteen he became altogether a Christian, and was the pupil of the great Bishop Hilary of PoitierSo It was in these days that men were first beginniog to band together to live in toil, poverty, and devotion in monasteries or abbeys, and Martin was the first person in Gaul to form one, near Poitiers; but he was called from it to be Bishop of Tours, and near that city he began another abbey, which still bears his name, Marmoutiers, or Martin's Monastery. He and the monks used to go out from thence to teach the Pagans, who still remained in the far west, and whom Roman punishment had never cured of the old Druid ways. These people could not learn the Latin that all the rest of the country spoke, but lived on their granite moors as their forefathers had lived four hundred years before. However, Martin did what no one else had ever done : he taught them to become staunch Christians, though they still remained a people apart, speaking their own tongue and following their own customs.

This was the good St. Martin's work while his

DKUin SAOKIFICK.

Tlie Conversion of Graul. 41

friend, the false Emperor Maximiis, was beiiiooverthrown by the true Emperor Theodosius ; and much more struggling and fighting was goiiio- on among the Romans and Gauls, while in the meantime the dreadful Eranks were every now and then bursting into the country from across the Rhine to plunder and burn and kill and make slaves.

St. Martin had finished the conversion of Gaul, just before he died in his monastery at Marmoutiers, in the year 400. He died in time to escape the terrible times that were coming upon all the Gauls, or rather Romans. F(jr all the southern and eastern Gauls called themselves Romans, spoke nothing but Latin, and had entirely forgotten all thoughts, ways, and manners but those they had learnt from the Greeks and Romans.

Chapter IV. The Frank Kingdom

A.D. 450-533.

THAT race of people which had been driving the Kelts westward for six or seven hundred years was making a way into Gaul at last ; indeed, they had been only held back by Roman skill. These were the race which, as a general name, is called Teutonic, but which divided into manv different nations. All were large-limbed, blueeyed, and light-haired. They all spoke a language like rough German, and all had the same religion, believing in the great warlike gods, Odin, Thor, and Frey ; worshipping them at stone altars, and expecting to live with them in the hall of heroes after death. That is, all so called who were, brave and who were chosen by the valkyr, or slaughterchoosing goddesses, to die nobly in battle. Cowards were sent to dwell with Hela, the pale, gloomy goddess of death. 42

The Frank Kingdom. 43

Of course the different tribes were not exactlv alike, but tliey all had these features in common. They had lived for at least five hundred }-ears in the centre of Europe, now and then attacking their neighbors, when, being harassed by another fierce race who came behind them, they made more great efforts. The chief tribes whose names must be remembered were the Goths, who conquered Rome and settled in Spain ; the Longbeards, or Lombards, who spread over the north of Italy ; the Burgundians (burg or town livers), who held all the country round the Alps ; the Swabians and Germans, who stayed in the middle of Europe ; the Saxons, who dwelt about the south of the Baltic, and finally conquered South Britain ; the Northmen, who found a home in Scandinavia ; and the Franks, who had been long settled on the rivers Sale, Meuse, and Rhine. Their name meant Freemen, and the}^ were noted for usino; an axe called after them. There were two tribes — tlie Salian, from the River Sale, and the Ripuarian. They were great horsemen, and dreadful pillagers, and tlie Salians had a family of kings, which, like the kings of all the other tribes, was supposed to descend from Odin. Tlie king was always of this family, called Meerwings, after