Produced by Al Haines
THE
EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE
A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF
FRANCE
BY
MARY PARMELE
_Author of "Evolution of Empire Series, Germany;"
"Who? When? What? Literature Chart."_
NEW YORK
WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON,
59 FIFTH AVENUE
1894
PUBLISHED AND COPYRIGHTED, 1894,
BY
WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON,
59 FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK CITY.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
THE PUBLISHERS' PRINTING COMPANY
182-186 WEST 14TH STREET
NEW YORK
PREFACE.
In an attempt to tell the story of a great nation in about 100 pages,
it is needless to say there must be a rigid exclusion of all save
essential facts. To those already familiar with the subject, this
sketch is offered merely as a reminder of the sequence of conditions
and events in the evolution of France; while to the student it is
presented as a framework upon which may be placed, in orderly and
comprehensible fashion, the results of future reading and research.
To the latter class I would suggest that a series of papers, written
upon the most prominent themes found in the Table of Contents, will
bear fruit in knowledge more real and vital than may be obtained from
the writings of others, however eloquent and vivid the presentation.
M. P.
NEW YORK, July 23d, 1894.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
The Aryan Family of Nations--Keltic Race--Ancient Gaul--Gauls in
Rome--Gauls in Greece and in Asia Minor
CHAPTER II.
Roman Conquest of Gaul--Julius Caesar
CHAPTER III.
Birth of Christianity--Its Dissemination--Persecution at Lyons by order
of Marcus Aurelius--The Roman Empire Espouses Christianity under
Constantine
CHAPTER IV.
Gaul Overrun and Subjugated by Franks--Clovis King--Decay of the
Merovingian Line--_Maire du Palais_ King _de facto_--Charles
Martel--Birth of Mohammedanism--Its Triumphs--Christendom
Threatened--Pepin King--Charlemagne--Alliance with Pope--France, Italy,
and Germany Emerge as Separate Nationalities
CHAPTER V.
The Northmen--Beginnings of Feudalism in France--Normandy Bestowed upon
the Northmen--Conquest of England by William, Duke of
Normandy--Albigenses--Inquisition at Toulouse--The Crusades
CHAPTER VI.
Decline of Feudalism--Creation of the Commune--Charles VII.--Henry V.
in France--Joan of Arc
CHAPTER VII.
Francis I.--Huguenots--Catharine de Medici--Francis II.
CHAPTER VIII.
Massacre of St. Bartholomew--Henry III.--Henry IV.
CHAPTER IX.
Edict of Nantes--Louis XIII.--Richelieu
CHAPTER X.
Louis XIV.--Revocation of the Edict of Nantes--Louis XV.--Age of
Voltaire and Rousseau--The Gathering Storm
CHAPTER XI.
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette--American Colonies Arrayed Against
England--French Aid to America--Smouldering Fires of Discontent--Louis
Convokes States-General--National Assembly Created by Commons--Bastille
Attacked--Revolution--Execution of King
CHAPTER XII.
Napoleon Bonaparte--Toulon--Campaign in Italy--Empire
Established--Europe Under the Feet of the Great Corsican--Marie
Louise--Waterloo--Louis XVIII.--Charles X.--Louis Philippe--Second
Republic--Louis Napoleon President--Second Empire--Napoleon
III.--Franco-Prussian War--Sedan--Third Republic--Review of Present
Conditions
EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.
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, English, French,
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
to-day. 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 of the southern provinces in future France.
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 thirty-five 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 ironclad 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 ago 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 (340 B.C.) 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 (278 B.C.), 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; it is said, even as late as
400 years after Christ, speaking the language of their tribal home
(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 and endurance became a by-word.
Her fibre was toughened by perpetual strain of conflict. Even while
she was struggling with Gaul and while the echoes of the Hunnish
invasion were still resounding through the Continent, Hannibal, with
his hosts, was pouring through Gaul and gathering accessions from that
people as he swept down into Italy. Then, with the memories of the
Carthagenian 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.