Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Gambetta proclaiming the Republic of France. From the
painting by Howard Pyle.]
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE
BY
MARY PLATT PARMELE
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1907
Copyright, 1894, By
WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON
Copyright, 1898, 1905, 1906, By
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Early Conditions in Gaul
CHAPTER II.
Julius Caesar's Conquest of Gaul
Lutetia
CHAPTER III.
Birth of Christianity
Its Dissemination
Its Espousal by the Roman Empire
Hunnish Invasion
CHAPTER IV.
The Frank in Gaul
Clovis
Rois-Fainéants
Charles Martel
Mahometanism
Pepin Seizes the Crown
CHAPTER V.
Charlemagne
Holy Roman Empire
Treaty of Verdun
CHAPTER VI.
Invasions by Northmen
Normandy Given to Invaders
Feudalism
Decline of Kingship
Ascendancy of the Church
Hugh Capet
"Truce of God"
William the Conqueror
CHAPTER VII.
Social Structure of France
Free Cities
Their Creation and Enfranchisement
The Crusades
Philip Augustus
War with King John of England
Toulouse and the Albigensian War
CHAPTER VIII.
Abelard
Louis IX.
End of Crusades
Philip III.
Philip IV. and Papacy
Creation of States-General
Popes at Avignon
Knights Templar Exterminated
Change in Succession
CHAPTER IX.
Edward III. Claims French Throne
Crécy
Poitiers
Treaty of Bretigny
Charles V. and Bertrand du Guesclin
Death of Black Prince
Charles VI.
A Mad King
Feud Between Houses of Orleans and Burgundy
Siege of Orleans
Joan of Arc
Charles VII.
CHAPTER X.
Standing Army Created
Louis XI.
The Passing of Mediaevalism
Charles VIII.
Invasion of Italy
Louis XII.
Francis I.
Struggle for Throne of the German Empire
The Reformation
CHAPTER XI.
The House of Guise
Marie Stuart
Francis II.
His Death
Regency of Catharine de' Medici
Her Designs
Coligny
Henry of Navarre
His Marriage
Charles IX.
St. Bartholomew's Eve
Henry III.
His Death
Henry of Navarre King
CHAPTER XII.
Edict of Nantes
Ravaillac
Louis XIII.
Regency of Maria de' Medici
Richelieu
The Fronde
CHAPTER XIII.
Louis XIV.
Four Great Wars
Revocation of Edict of Nantes
A Victorious Coalition
Death of Louis XIV.
Louis XV.
CHAPTER XIV.
John Law
Life at Versailles
Marriage of Dauphin
Unseen Currents
Approaching Crisis
Death of Louis XV.
CHAPTER XV.
Louis XVI.
American Revolution
Turgot
Necker
States-General Summoned
National Assembly
Destruction of Bastille
Revolution
Lafayette
Varennes
The Temple
Triumphant Jacobins
Execution of the King
Charlotte Corday
Execution of Queen
Fate of the Dauphin
Girondists
Philippe Égalité
Revolution Ended
CHAPTER XVI.
France a Republic
Napoleon Bonaparte
Breaking Chains in Italy
Campo Formio
Campaign in Egypt
An Empire
Rapid Steps from Toulon to Versailles
A New Map of Europe
Maria Louisa
Moscow
Leipsic
Elba
CHAPTER XVII.
Louis XVIII.
Return of Napoleon
Waterloo
St. Helena
Bourbon Restoration
Charles X.
Louis Philippe
Revolution
Second Republic
Louis Napoleon
CHAPTER XVIII.
Second French Republic
The _Coup d'État_
Napoleon III.
A "Liberator" in Italy
Peace of Villafranca
Suez Canal
An Empire in Mexico
Franco-Prussian War
Sedan
CHAPTER XIX.
Third French Republic
The Commune
The Germans in Paris
Reconstruction from Thiers to Loubet
Affaire Dreyfus
Law of Associations
Separation of Church and State
Conference at Algeciras
Election of M. Fallières
Conclusion
Sovereigns and Rulers of France
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Gambetta, proclaiming the Republic of France . . . _Frontispiece_
Coronation of Charlemagne
Burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, May 30, 1431
Napoleon at the Battle of Rivoli, January 14, 1797
Josephine crowned Empress, December 2, 1804,
in Notre Dame Cathedral
The Revolution of July 28, 1830
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
CHAPTER I.
One of the greatest achievements of modern research is the discovery of
a key by which we may determine the kinship of nations. What we used
to conjecture, we now know. An identity in the structural form of
language establishes with scientific certitude that however diverse
their character and civilizations, Russian, German, Englishman,
Frenchman, Spaniard, are all but branches from the same parent stem,
are all alike children of the Asiatic Aryan.
So skilful are modern methods of questioning the past, and so
determined the effort to find out its secrets, we may yet know the
origin and history of this wonderful Asiatic people, and when and why
they left their native continent and colonized upon the northern shores
of the Mediterranean. Certain it is, however, that, more centuries
before the Christian era than there have been since, they had peopled
Western Europe.
This branch of the Aryan family is known as the Keltic, and was older
brother to the Teuton and Slav, which at a much later period followed
them from the ancestral home, and appropriated the middle and eastern
portions of the European Continent.
The name of Gaul was given to the territory lying between the Ocean and
the Mediterranean, and the Pyrenees and the Alps. And at a later
period a portion of Northern Gaul, and the islands lying north of it,
received from an invading chieftain and his tribe the name _Brit_ or
_Britain_ (or Pryd or Prydain).
If the mind could be carried back on the track of time, and we could
see what we now call France as it existed twenty centuries before the
Christian era, we should behold the same natural features: the same
mountains rearing their heads; the same rivers flowing to the sea; the
same plains stretching out in the sunlight. But instead of vines and
flowers and cultivated fields we should behold great herds of wild ox
and elk, and of swine as fierce as wolves, ranging in a climate as cold
as Norway; and vast, inaccessible forests, the home of beasts of prey,
which contended with man for food and shelter.
Let us read Guizot's description of life in Gaul five centuries before
Christ:
"Here lived six or seven millions of men a bestial life, in dwellings
dark and low, built of wood and clay and covered with branches or
straw, open to daylight by the door alone and confusedly heaped
together behind a rampart of timber, earth, and stone, which enclosed
and protected what they were pleased to call--a _town_."
Such was the Paris and such the Frenchmen of the age of Pericles! And
the same tides that washed the sands of Southern Gaul, a few hours
later ebbed and flowed upon the shores of Greece--rich in culture, with
refinements and subtleties in art which are the despair of the world
to-day--with an intellectual endowment never since attained by any
people.
The same sun which rose upon temples and palaces and life serene and
beautiful in Greece, an hour later lighted sacrificial altars and
hideous orgies in the forests of Gaul. While the Gaul was nailing the
heads of human victims to his door, or hanging them from the bridle of
his horse, or burning or flogging his prisoners to death, the Greek,
with a literature, an art, and a civilization in ripest perfection,
discussed with his friends the deepest problems of life and destiny,
which were then baffling human intelligence, even as they are with us
today. Truly we of Keltic and Teuton descent are late-comers upon the
stage of national life.
There was no promise of greatness in ancient Gaul. It was a great,
unregulated force, rushing hither and thither. Impelled by insatiate
greed for the possessions of their neighbors, there was no permanence
in their loves or their hatreds. The enemies of to-day were the allies
of to-morrow. Guided entirely by the fleeting desires and passions of
the moment, with no far-reaching plans to restrain, the sixty or more
tribes composing the Gallic people were in perpetual state of feud and
anarchy, apparently insensible to the ties of brotherhood, which give
concert of action, and stability in form of national life. If they
overran a neighboring country, it seemed not so much for permanent
acquisition, as to make it a camping-ground until its resources were
exhausted.
We read of one Massillia who came with a colony of Greeks long ages
ago, and after founding the city of Marseilles, created a narrow,
bright border of Greek civilization along the southern edge of the
benighted land. It was a brief illumination, lasting only a century or
more, and leaving few traces; but it may account for the superior
intellectual quality which later distinguished Provence, the home of
minstrelsy.
It requires a vast extent of territory to sustain a people living by
the chase, and upon herds and flocks; hence the area which now amply
maintains forty millions of Frenchmen was all too small for six or
seven million Gauls; and they were in perpetual struggle with their
neighbors for land--more land.
"Give us land," they said to the Romans, and when land was denied them
and the gates of cities disdainfully closed upon their messengers, not
land, but vengeance, was their cry; and hordes of half-naked barbarians
trampled down the vineyards, and rushed, a tumultuous torrent, upon
Rome.
The Romans could not stand before this new and strange kind of warfare.
The Gauls streamed over the vanquished legions into the Eternal City,
silent and deserted save only by the Senate and a few who remained
intrenched in the Citadel; and there the barbarians kept them besieged
for seven months, while they made themselves at home amid
uncomprehended luxuries.
Of course Roman skill and courage at last dislodged and drove them
back. But the fact remained that the Gaul had been there--master of
Rome; that the iron-clad legions had been no match for his naked force,
and a new sensation thrilled through the length and breadth of Gaul.
It was the first throb of national life. The sixty or more fragments
drew closer together into something like Gallic unity--with a common
danger to meet, a common foe to drive back.
Hereafter there was another hunger to be appeased besides that for food
and land; a hunger for conquest, for vengeance, and for glory for the
Gallic name. National pride was born.
For years they hovered like wolves about Rome. But skill and superior
intelligence tell in the centuries. It took long--and cost no end of
blood and treasure; but two hundred years from the capture of Rome, the
Gauls were driven out of Italy, and the Alps pronounced a barrier set
by nature herself against barbarian encroachments.
Italy was not the only country suffering from the destroying footsteps
of the Western Kelts. There had been long before an overflow of a
tribe in Northern Gaul (the Kymrians), which had hewed and plundered
its way south and eastward; until at the time of Alexander (B.C. 340)
it was knocking at the gates of Macedonia.
Stimulated by the success at Rome fifty years earlier, they were, with
fresh insolence, demanding "land," and during the centuries which
followed, the Gallic name acquired no fresh lustre in Greece.
Half-naked, gross, ferocious, and ignorant, sometimes allies, but
always a scourge, they finally crossed the Hellespont (B.C. 278), and
turned their attention to Asia Minor. And there, at last, we find them
settled in a province called Gallicia, where they lived without
amalgamating with the people about them, and four hundred years after
Christ were speaking the language of their tribal home in what is now
Belgium. And these were the Galatians--the "foolish Galatians," to
whom Paul addressed his epistle; and we have followed up this Gallic
thread simply because it mingles with the larger strand of ancient and
sacred history with which we are all so familiar.
It is not strange that Roman courage became a byword. The fibre of
Rome was toughened by perpetual strain of conflict. Even while she was
struggling with Gaul and with the memories of the Carthaginian wars
still fresh at Rome, the Goths were at her gates--their blows directed
with a solidity superior to that of the barbarians who had preceded
them. Where the Gauls had knocked, the Goths thundered.
Again the city was invaded by barbarian feet, and again did superior
training and intelligence drive back the invading torrent and triumph
over native brute force.
Such, in brief outline, was the condition of the centuries just before
the Christian era.
It is easy now to read the meaning of these agitated centuries, and to
recognize the preparation for the passing of the old and the coming of
the new.