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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition,
+Volume 10, Slice 7, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 7
+       "Fox, George" to "France"
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2011 [EBook #36104]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYC. BRITANNICA, VOL 10 SL 7 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes:
+
+(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally
+      printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an
+      underscore, like C_n.
+
+(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.
+
+(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective
+      paragraphs.
+
+(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not
+      inserted.
+
+(5) The following typographical errors have been corrected:
+
+    ARTICLE FOX, RICHARD: "He also appears to have studied at
+      Cambridge, but nothing definite is known of the first thirty-five
+      years of his career." 'thirty-five' amended from 'thiry-five'.
+
+    ARTICLE France: "After desperate strife, an agreement between the
+      two rivals, Arnulf's support, and the death of Odo, secured it for
+      Charles III., surnamed the Simple." 'agreement' amended from
+      'agreeement'.
+
+    ARTICLE France: "He in his turn tried to stem the tumultuous
+      current which had borne him along, and to prevent discord; but the
+      check to his policy of an understanding with Prussia and with
+      Sardinia ..." 'in' amended from 'is'.
+
+    ARTICLE France: "The pope banished, it was now desirable to send
+      away those to whom Italy had been more or less promised. Eugène de
+      Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, was transferred to Frankfort, and
+      Murat carefully watched until the time should come to take him to
+      Russia and install him as king of Poland." 'install' amended from
+      'instal'.
+
+
+
+
+          ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
+
+  A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE
+           AND GENERAL INFORMATION
+
+              ELEVENTH EDITION
+
+
+            VOLUME X, SLICE VII
+
+           Fox, George to France
+
+
+
+
+ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:
+
+
+  FOX, GEORGE                   FRAGONARD, JEAN-HONORÉ
+  FOX, RICHARD                  FRAHN, CHRISTIAN MARTIN
+  FOX, RORERT WERE              FRAME
+  FOX, SIR STEPHEN              FRAMINGHAM
+  FOX, SIR WILLIAM              FRAMLINGHAM
+  FOX                           FRANC
+  FOXE, JOHN                    FRANÇAIS, ANTOINE
+  FOXGLOVE                      FRANÇAIS, FRANÇOIS LOUIS
+  FOX INDIANS                   FRANCATELLI, CHARLES ELMÉ
+  FOX MORCILLO, SEBASTIAN       FRANCAVILLA FONTANA
+  FOY, MAXIMILIEN SÉBASTIEN     FRANCE, ANATOLE
+  FRAAS, KARL NIKOLAS           FRANCE (part)
+  FRACASTORO, GIROLAMO
+
+
+
+
+FOX, GEORGE (1624-1691), the founder of the "Society of Friends" or
+"Quakers," was born at Drayton, Leicestershire, in July 1624. His
+father, Christopher Fox, called by the neighbours "Righteous Christer,"
+was a weaver by occupation; and his mother, Mary Lago, "an upright woman
+and accomplished above most of her degree," was "of the stock of the
+martyrs." George from his childhood "appeared of another frame than the
+rest of his brethren, being more religious, inward, still, solid and
+observing beyond his years"; and he himself declares: "When I came to
+eleven years of age I knew pureness and righteousness; for while a child
+I was taught how to walk to be kept pure." Some of his relations wished
+that he should be educated for the ministry; but his father apprenticed
+him to a shoemaker, who also dealt in wool and cattle. In this service
+he remained till his nineteenth year. According to Penn, "he took most
+delight in sheep," but he himself simply says: "A good deal went through
+my hands.... People had generally a love to me for my innocency and
+honesty." In 1643, being upon business at a fair, and having accompanied
+some friends to the village public-house, he was troubled by a proposal
+to "drink healths," and withdrew in grief of spirit. "When I had done
+what business I had to do I returned home, but did not go to bed that
+night, nor could I sleep, but sometimes walked up and down, and
+sometimes prayed and cried to the Lord, who said unto me, 'Thou seest
+how young people go together into vanity and old people into the earth;
+thou must forsake all, both young and old, and keep out of all, and be a
+stranger unto all.' Then, at the command of God, on the ninth day of the
+seventh month, 1643, I left my relations and broke off all familiarity
+or fellowship with old or young."
+
+Thus briefly he describes what appears to have been the greatest moral
+crisis in his life. The four years which followed were a time of great
+perplexity and distress, though sometimes "I had intermissions, and was
+sometimes brought into such a heavenly joy that I thought I had been in
+Abraham's bosom." He would go from town to town, "travelling up and down
+as a stranger in the earth, which way the Lord inclined my heart; taking
+a chamber to myself in the town where I came, and tarrying sometimes a
+month, more or less, in a place"; and the reason he gives for this
+migratory habit is that he was "afraid both of professor and profane,
+lest, being a tender young man, he should be hurt by conversing much
+with either." The same fear often led him to shun all society for days
+at a time; but frequently he would apply to "professors" for spiritual
+direction and consolation. These applications, however, never proved
+successful; he invariably found that his advisers "possessed not what
+they professed." Some recommended marriage, others enlistment as a
+soldier in the civil wars; one "ancient priest" bade him take tobacco
+and sing psalms; another of the same fraternity, "in high account,"
+advised physic and blood-letting.
+
+About the beginning of 1646 his thoughts began to take more definite
+shape. One day, approaching Coventry, "the Lord opened to him" that none
+were true believers but such as were born of God and had passed from
+death unto life; and this was soon followed by other "openings" to the
+effect that "being bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough to fit and
+qualify men to be ministers of Christ," and that "God who made the world
+did not dwell in temples made with hands." He also experienced deeper
+manifestations of Christ within his own soul. "When I myself was in the
+deep, shut up under all [the burden of corruptions], I could not believe
+that I should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows and my temptations
+were so great that I thought many times I should have despaired, I was
+so tempted. But when Christ opened to me how He was tempted by the same
+devil, and overcame him and bruised his head, and that through Him, and
+His power, light, grace and spirit, I should overcome also, I had
+confidence in Him; so He it was that opened to me, when I was shut up
+and had no hope nor faith. Christ, who had enlightened me, gave me His
+light to believe in; He gave me hope which He himself revealed in me;
+and He gave me His spirit and grace, which I found sufficient in the
+deeps and in weakness." In 1647 he records that at a time when all
+outward help had failed "I heard a voice which said, 'There is one, even
+Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.' And when I heard it my
+heart did leap for joy." In the same year he first openly declared his
+message in the neighbourhood of Dukinfield and Manchester (see FRIENDS,
+SOCIETY OF).
+
+In 1649, as he was walking towards Nottingham, he heard the bell of the
+"steeple house" of the city, and was admonished by an inward voice to go
+forward and cry against the great idol and the worshippers in it.
+Entering the church he found the preacher engaged in expounding the
+words, "We have also a more sure word of prophecy," from which the
+ordinary Protestant doctrine of the supreme authority of Scripture was
+being enforced in a manner which appeared to Fox so defective or
+erroneous as to call for his immediate and most energetic protest.
+Lifting up his voice against the preacher's doctrine, he declared that
+it is not by the Scripture alone, but by the divine light by which the
+Scriptures were given, that doctrines ought to be judged. He was carried
+off to prison, where he was detained for some time, and from which he
+was released only by the favour of the sheriff, whose sympathies he had
+succeeded in enlisting. In 1650 he was imprisoned for about a year at
+Derby on a charge of blasphemy. On his release, overwrought and weakened
+by six months spent "in the common gaol and dungeon," he performed what
+was almost the only and certainly the most pronounced act of his life
+which had the appearance of wild fanaticism. Through the streets of
+Lichfield, on market day, he walked barefoot, crying, "Woe to the bloody
+city of Lichfield." His own explanation of the act, connecting it with
+the martyrdom of a thousand Christians in the time of Diocletian, is not
+convincing. His proceeding was probably due to a horror of the city
+arising from a subconscious memory of what he must have heard in
+childhood from his mother ("of the stock of the martyrs") concerning a
+martyr, a woman, burnt in the reign of Mary at Lichfield, who had been
+taken thither from Mancetter, a village two miles from his home in which
+he had worked as a journeyman shoemaker (see _The Martyrs Glover and
+Lewis of Mancetter_, by the Rev. B. Richings). He must also have heard
+of the burning of Edward Wightman in the same city in 1612, the last
+person burned for heresy in England.
+
+It would be here out of place to follow with any minuteness the details
+of his subsequent imprisonments, such as that at Carlisle in 1653;
+London 1654; Launceston 1656; Lancaster 1660, and again in 1663, whence
+he was taken to Scarborough in 1665; and Worcester 1673. During these
+terms of imprisonment his pen was not idle, as is amply shown by the
+very numerous letters, pastorals and exhortations which have been
+preserved; while during his intervals of liberty he was unwearied in the
+work of "declaring truth" in all parts of the country. In 1669 he
+married Margaret, widow of Judge Fell, of Swarthmoor, near Ulverston,
+who, with her family, had been among his earliest converts. In 1671 he
+visited Barbados, Jamaica, and the American continent, and shortly after
+his return in 1673 he was, as has been already noted, apprehended in
+Worcestershire for attending meetings that were forbidden by the law. At
+Worcester he suffered a captivity of nearly fourteen months. In 1677 he
+visited Holland along with Barclay, Penn and seven others; and this
+visit he repeated (with five others) in 1684. The later years of his
+life were spent mostly in London, where he continued to speak in public,
+comparatively unmolested, until within a few days of his death, which
+took place on the 13th of January 1691 (1690 O.S.).
+
+William Penn has left on record an account of Fox from personal
+knowledge--a _Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People
+called Quakers_, written as a preface to Fox's _Journal_. Although a man
+of large size and great bodily strength, he was "very temperate, eating
+little and sleeping less." He was a man of strong personality, of
+measured utterance, "civil" (says Penn) "beyond all forms of breeding."
+From his _Journal_ we gather that he had piercing eyes and a very loud
+voice, and wore good clothes. Unlike the Roundheads, he wore his hair
+long. Even before his marriage with Margaret Fell he seems to have been
+fairly well off; he does not appear to have worked for a living after he
+was nineteen, and yet he had a horse, and speaks of having money to give
+to those who were in need. He had much practical common-sense, and keen
+sympathy for all who were in distress and for animals. The mere fact
+that he was able to attract to himself so considerable a body of
+respectable followers, including such men as Ellwood, Barclay, Penington
+and Penn, is sufficient to prove that he possessed in a very eminent
+degree the power of conviction, persuasion, and moral ascendancy; while
+of his personal uprightness, single-mindedness and sincerity there can
+be no question.
+
+  The writings of Fox are enumerated in Joseph Smith's _Catalogue of
+  Friends' Books_. The _Journal_ is especially interesting; of it Sir
+  James Mackintosh has said that "it is one of the most extraordinary
+  and instructive narratives in the world, which no reader of competent
+  judgment can peruse without revering the virtue of the writer." The
+  _Journal_ was originally published in London in 1694; the edition
+  known as the Bicentenary Edition, with notes biographical and
+  historical (reprint of 1901 or later), will be found the most useful
+  in practice. An exact transcript of the _Journal_ has been issued by
+  the Cambridge University Press. A _Life of George Fox_, by Dr Thomas
+  Hodgkin; _The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall_, by Maria Webb; and _The Life
+  and Character of George Fox_, by John Stephenson Rowntree, are
+  valuable. For a mention of other works, and for details of the
+  principles and history of the Society of Friends, together with some
+  further information about Fox, see the article FRIENDS, SOCIETY OF.
+       (A. N. B.)
+
+
+
+
+FOX, RICHARD (c. 1448-1528), successively bishop of Exeter, Bath and
+Wells, Durham, and Winchester, lord privy seal, and founder of Corpus
+Christi College, Oxford, was born about 1448 at Ropesley near Grantham,
+Lincolnshire. His parents belonged to the yeoman class, and there is
+some obscurity about Fox's early career. It is not known at what school
+he was educated, nor at what college, though the presumption is in
+favour of Magdalen, Oxford, whence he drew so many members of his
+subsequent foundation, Corpus Christi. He also appears to have studied
+at Cambridge, but nothing definite is known of the first thirty-five
+years of his career. In 1484 he was in Paris, whether merely for the
+sake of learning or because he had rendered himself obnoxious to Richard
+III. is a matter of speculation. At any rate he was brought into contact
+with the earl of Richmond, who was then beginning his quest for the
+English throne, and was taken into his service. In January 1485 Richard
+intervened to prevent Fox's appointment to the vicarage of Stepney on
+the ground that he was keeping company with the "great rebel, Henry ap
+Tuddor."
+
+The important offices conferred on Fox immediately after the battle of
+Bosworth imply that he had already seen more extensive political service
+than can be traced in records. Doubtless Henry VII. had every reason to
+reward his companions in exile, and to rule like Ferdinand of Aragon by
+means of lawyers and churchmen rather than trust nobles like those who
+had made the Wars of the Roses. But without an intimate knowledge of
+Fox's political experience and capacity he would hardly have made him
+his principal secretary, and soon afterwards lord privy seal and bishop
+of Exeter (1487). The ecclesiastical preferment was merely intended to
+provide a salary not at Henry's expense; for Fox never saw either Exeter
+or the diocese of Bath and Wells to which he was translated in 1492. His
+activity was confined to political and especially diplomatic channels;
+so long as Morton lived, Fox was his subordinate, but after the
+archbishop's death he was second to none in Henry's confidence, and he
+had an important share in all the diplomatic work of the reign. In 1487
+he negotiated a treaty with James III. of Scotland, in 1491 he baptized
+the future Henry VIII., in 1492 he helped to conclude the treaty of
+Etaples, and in 1497 he was chief commissioner in the negotiations for
+the famous commercial agreement with the Netherlands which Bacon seems
+to have been the first to call the _Magnus Intercursus_.
+
+Meanwhile in 1494 Fox had been translated to Durham, not merely because
+it was a richer see than Bath and Wells but because of its political
+importance as a palatine earldom and its position with regard to the
+Borders and relations with Scotland. For these reasons rather than from
+any ecclesiastical scruples Fox visited and resided in his new diocese;
+and he occupied Norham Castle, which he fortified and defended against a
+Scottish raid in Perkin Warbeck's interests (1497). But his energies
+were principally devoted to pacific purposes. In that same year he
+negotiated Perkin's retirement from the court of James IV., and in
+1498-1499 he completed the negotiations for that treaty of marriage
+between the Scottish king and Henry's daughter Margaret which led
+ultimately to the union of the two crowns in 1603 and of the two
+kingdoms in 1707. The marriage itself did not take place until 1503,
+just a century before the accession of James I.
+
+This consummated Fox's work in the north, and in 1501 he was once more
+translated to Winchester, then reputed the richest bishopric in England.
+In that year he brought to a conclusion marriage negotiations not less
+momentous in their ultimate results, when Prince Arthur was betrothed to
+Catherine of Aragon. His last diplomatic achievement in the reign of
+Henry VII. was the betrothal of the king's younger daughter Mary to the
+future emperor Charles V. In 1500 he was elected chancellor of Cambridge
+University, an office not confined to noble lords until a much more
+democratic age, and in 1507 master of Pembroke Hall in the same
+university. The Lady Margaret Beaufort made him one of her executors,
+and in this capacity as well as in that of chancellor, he had the chief
+share with Fisher in regulating the foundation of St John's College and
+the Lady Margaret professorships and readerships. His financial work
+brought him a less enviable notoriety, though a curious freak of history
+has deprived him of the credit which is his due for "Morton's fork." The
+invention of that ingenious dilemma for extorting contributions from
+poor and rich alike is ascribed as a tradition to Morton by Bacon; but
+the story is told in greater detail of Fox by Erasmus, who says he had
+it from Sir Thomas More, a well-informed contemporary authority. It is
+in keeping with the somewhat malicious saying about Fox reported by
+Tyndale that he would sacrifice his father to save his king, which after
+all is not so damning as Wolsey's dying words.
+
+The accession of Henry VIII. made no immediate difference to Fox's
+position. If anything, the substitution of the careless pleasure-loving
+youth for Henry VII. increased the power of his ministry, the personnel
+of which remained unaltered. The Venetian ambassador calls Fox "alter
+rex" and the Spanish ambassador Carroz says that Henry VIII. trusted him
+more than any other adviser, although he also reports Henry's warning
+that the bishop of Winchester was, as his name implied, "a fox indeed."
+He was the chief of the ecclesiastical statesmen who belonged to the
+school of Morton, believed in frequent parliaments, and opposed the
+spirited foreign policy which laymen like Surrey are supposed to have
+advocated. His colleagues were Warham and Ruthal, but Warham and Fox
+differed on the question of Henry's marriage. Fox advising the
+completion of the match with Catherine while Warham expressed doubts as
+to its canonical validity. They also differed over the prerogatives of
+Canterbury with regard to probate and other questions of ecclesiastical
+jurisdiction.
+
+Wolsey's rapid rise in 1511 put an end to Fox's influence. The pacific
+policy of the first two years of Henry VIII.'s reign was succeeded by an
+adventurous foreign policy directed mainly against France; and Fox
+complained that no one durst do anything in opposition to Wolsey's
+wishes. Gradually Warham and Fox retired from the government; the
+occasion of Fox's resignation of the privy seal was Wolsey's
+ill-advised attempt to drive Francis I. out of Milan by financing an
+expedition led by the emperor Maximilian in 1516. Tunstall protested,
+Wolsey took Warham's place as chancellor, and Fox was succeeded by
+Ruthal, who, said the Venetian ambassador, "sang treble to Wolsey's
+bass." He bore Wolsey no ill-will, and warmly congratulated him two
+years later when warlike adventures were abandoned at the peace of
+London. But in 1522 when war was again declared he emphatically refused
+to bear any part of the responsibility, and in 1523 he opposed in
+convocation the financial demands which met with a more strenuous
+resistance in the House of Commons.
+
+He now devoted himself assiduously to his long-neglected episcopal
+duties. He expressed himself as being as anxious for the reformation of
+the clergy as Simeon for the coming of the Messiah; but while he
+welcomed Wolsey's never-realized promises, he was too old to accomplish
+much himself in the way of remedying the clerical and especially the
+monastic depravity, licence and corruption he deplored. His sight failed
+during the last ten years of his life, and there is no reason to doubt
+Matthew Parker's story that Wolsey suggested his retirement from his
+bishopric on a pension. Fox replied with some warmth, and Wolsey had to
+wait until Fox's death before he could add Winchester to his
+archbishopric of York and his abbey of St Albans, and thus leave Durham
+vacant as he hoped for the illegitimate son on whom (aged 18) he had
+already conferred a deanery, four archdeaconries, five prebends and a
+chancellorship.
+
+The crown of Fox's career was his foundation of Corpus Christi College,
+which he established in 1515-1516. Originally he intended it as an
+Oxford house for the monks of St Swithin's, Winchester; but he is said
+to have been dissuaded by Bishop Oldham, who denounced the monks and
+foretold their fall. The scheme adopted breathed the spirit of the
+Renaissance; provision was made for the teaching of Greek, Erasmus
+lauded the institution and Pole was one of its earliest fellows. The
+humanist Vives was brought from Italy to teach Latin, and the reader in
+theology was instructed to follow the Greek and Latin Fathers rather
+than the scholastic commentaries. Fox also built and endowed schools at
+Taunton and Grantham, and was a benefactor to numerous other
+institutions. He died at Wolvesey on the 5th of October 1528; Corpus
+possesses several portraits and other relics of its founder.
+
+  See _Letters and Papers of Henry VII. and Henry VIII._, vols. i.-iv.;
+  _Spanish and Venetian Calendars of State Papers_; Gairdner's _Lollardy
+  and the Reformation and Church History 1485-1558_; Pollard's _Henry
+  VIII._; Longman's Political History, vol. v.; other authorities cited
+  in the article by Dr T. Fowler (formerly president of Corpus) in the
+  _Dict. Nat. Biog._     (A. F. P.)
+
+
+
+
+FOX, RORERT WERE (1789-1877), English geologist and natural philosopher,
+was born at Falmouth on the 26th of April 1789. He was a member of the
+Society of Friends, and was descended from members who had long settled
+in Cornwall, although he was not related to George Fox who had
+introduced the community into the county. He was distinguished for his
+researches on the internal temperature of the earth, being the first to
+prove that the heat increased definitely with the depth; his
+observations being conducted in Cornish mines from 1815 for a period of
+forty years. In 1829 he commenced a series of experiments on the
+artificial production of miniature metalliferous veins by means of the
+long-continued influence of electric currents, and his main results were
+published in _Observations on Mineral Veins_ (_Rep. Royal Cornwall
+Polytech. Soc._, 1836). He was one of the founders in 1833 of the Royal
+Cornwall Polytechnic Society. He constructed in 1834 an improved form of
+deflector dipping needle. In 1848 he was elected F.R.S. His garden at
+Penjerrick near Falmouth became noted for the number of exotic plants
+which he had naturalized. He died on the 25th of July 1877. (See _A
+Catalogue of the Works of Robert Were Fox, F.R.S., with a Sketch of his
+Life_, by J.H. Collins, 1878.)
+
+His daughter, CAROLINE FOX (1819-1871), born at Falmouth on the 24th of
+May 1819, is well known as the authoress of a diary, recording memories
+of many distinguished people, such as John Stuart Mill, John Sterling
+and Carlyle. Selections from her diary and correspondence (1835-1871)
+were published under the title of _Memories of Old Friends_ (ed. by H.N.
+Pym, 1881; 2nd ed., 1882). She died on the 12th of January 1871.
+
+
+
+
+FOX, SIR STEPHEN (1627-1716), English statesman, born on the 27th of
+March 1627, was the son of William Fox, of Farley, in Wiltshire, a
+yeoman farmer. At the age of fifteen he first obtained a situation in
+the household of the earl of Northumberland; then he entered the service
+of Lord Percy, the earl's brother, and was present with the royalist
+army at the battle of Worcester as Lord Percy's deputy at the ordnance
+board. Accompanying Charles II. in his flight to the continent, he was
+appointed manager of the royal household, on Clarendon's recommendation
+as "a young man bred under the severe discipline of Lord Percy ... very
+well qualified with languages, and all other parts of clerkship, honesty
+and discretion." The skill with which he managed the exiguous finances
+of the exiled court earned him further confidence and promotion. He was
+employed on several important missions, and acted eventually as
+intermediary between the king and General Monk. Honours and emolument
+were his reward after the Restoration; he was appointed to the lucrative
+offices of first clerk of the board of green cloth and paymaster-general
+of the forces. In November 1661 he became member of parliament for
+Salisbury. In 1665 he was knighted, was returned as M. P. for
+Westminster on the 27th of February 1679, and succeeded the earl of
+Rochester as a commissioner of the treasury, filling that office for
+twenty-three years and during three reigns. In 1680 he resigned the
+paymastership and was made first commissioner of horse. In 1684 he
+became sole commissioner of horse. He was offered a peerage by James
+II., on condition of turning Roman Catholic, but refused, in spite of
+which he was allowed to retain his commissionerships. In 1685 he was
+again M. P. for Salisbury, and opposed the bill for a standing army
+supported by the king. During the Revolution he maintained an attitude
+of decent reserve, but on James's flight, submitted to William III., who
+confirmed him in his offices. He was again elected for Westminster in
+1691 and 1695, for Cricklade in 1698, and finally in 1713 once more for
+Salisbury. He died on the 28th of October 1716. It is his distinction to
+have founded Chelsea hospital, and to have contributed £13,000 in aid of
+this laudable public work. Though his place as a statesman is in the
+second or even the third rank, yet he was a useful man in his
+generation, and a public servant who creditably discharged all the
+duties with which he was entrusted. Unlike other statesmen of his day,
+he grew rich in the service of the nation without being suspected of
+corruption, and without forfeiting the esteem of his contemporaries.
+
+He was twice married (1651 and 1703); by his first wife, Elizabeth
+Whittle, he had seven sons, who predeceased him, and three daughters; by
+his second, Christian Hopes, he had two sons and two daughters. The
+elder son by the second marriage, Stephen (1704-1776), was created Lord
+Ilchester and Stavordale in 1747 and earl of Ilchester in 1756; in 1758
+he took the additional name of Strangways, and his descendants, the
+family of Fox-Strangways, still hold the earldom of Ilchester. The
+younger son, Henry, became the 1st Lord Holland (q.v.).
+
+
+
+
+FOX, SIR WILLIAM (1812-1893), New Zealand statesman, third son of George
+Townshend Fox, deputy-lieutenant for Durham county, was born in England
+on the 9th of June 1812, and educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where
+he took his degree in 1832. Called to the bar in 1842, he emigrated
+immediately thereafter to New Zealand, where, on the death of Captain
+Arthur Wakefield, killed in 1843 in the Wairau massacre, he became the
+New Zealand Company's agent for the South Island. While holding this
+position he made a memorable exploring march on foot from Nelson to
+Canterbury, through Cannibal Gorge, in the course of which he discovered
+the fertile pastoral country of Amuri. In 1848 Governor Grey made Fox
+attorney-general, but he gave up the post almost at once in order to
+join the agitation, then at its height, for a free constitution. As the
+political agent of the Wellington settlers he sailed to London in 1850
+to urge their demands in Downing Street. The colonial office, however,
+refused to recognize him, and, after publishing a sketch of the New
+Zealand settlements, _The Six Colonies of New Zealand_, and travelling
+in the United States, he returned to New Zealand and again threw himself
+with energy into public affairs. When government by responsible
+ministers was at last initiated, in 1856, Fox ousted the first ministry
+and formed a cabinet, only to be himself beaten in turn after holding
+office but thirteen days. In 1861 he regained office, and was somewhat
+more fortunate, for he remained premier for nearly thirteen months.
+Again, in the latter part of 1863 he took office: this time with Sir
+Frederick Whitaker as premier, an arrangement which endured for another
+thirteen months. Fox's third premiership began in 1869 and lasted until
+1872. His fourth, which was a matter of temporary convenience to his
+party, lasted only five weeks in March and April 1873. Soon afterwards
+he left politics, and, though he reappeared after some years and led the
+attack which overthrew Sir George Grey's ministry in 1879, he lost his
+seat in the dissolution which followed in that year and did not again
+enter parliament. He was made K.C.M.G. in 1880.
+
+For the thirty years between 1850 and 1880 Sir William Fox was one of
+the half-dozen most notable public men in the colony. Impulsive and
+controversial, a fluent and rousing speaker, and a ready writer, his
+warm and sympathetic nature made him a good friend and a troublesome
+foe. He was considered for many years to be the most dangerous leader of
+the Opposition in the colony's parliament, though as premier he was at a
+disadvantage when measured against more patient and more astute party
+managers. His activities were first devoted to secure self-government
+for the New Zealand colonists. Afterwards his sympathies made him
+prominent among the champions of the Maori race, and he laboured
+indefatigably for their rights and to secure permanent peace with the
+tribes and a just settlement of their claims. It was during his third
+premiership that this peace, so long deferred, was at last gained,
+mainly through the influence and skill of Sir Donald M'Lean, native
+minister in the Fox cabinet. Finally, after Fox had left parliament he
+devoted himself, as joint-commissioner with Sir Francis Dillon Bell, to
+the adjustment of the native land-claims on the west coast of the North
+Island. The able reports of the commissioners were his last public
+service, and the carrying out of their recommendations gradually removed
+the last serious native trouble in New Zealand. When, however, in the
+course of the native wars from 1860 to 1870 the colonists of New Zealand
+were exposed to cruel and unjust imputations in England, Fox zealously
+defended them in a book, _The War in New Zealand_ (1866), which was not
+only a spirited vindication of his fellow-settlers, but a scathing
+criticism of the generalship of the officers commanding the imperial
+troops in New Zealand. Throughout his life Fox was a consistent advocate
+of total abstinence. It was he who founded the New Zealand Alliance, and
+he undoubtedly aided the growth of the prohibition movement afterwards
+so strong in the colony. He died on the 23rd of June 1893, exactly
+twelve months after his wife, Sarah, daughter of William Halcombe.
+     (W. P. R.)
+
+
+
+
+FOX, a name (female, "vixen"[1]) properly applicable to the single wild
+British representative of the family _Canidae_ (see CARNIVORA), but in a
+wider sense used to denote fox-like species from all parts of the world,
+inclusive of many from South America which do not really belong to the
+same group. The fox was included by Linnaeus in the same genus with the
+dog and the wolf, under the name of _Canis vulpes_, but at the present
+day is regarded by most naturalists as the type of a separate genus, and
+should then be known as _Vulpes alopex_ or _Vulpes vulpes_. From dogs,
+wolves, jackals, &c., which constitute the genus _Canis_ in its more
+restricted sense, foxes are best distinguished by the circumstance that
+in the skull the (postorbital) projection immediately behind the socket
+for the eye has its upper surface concave, with a raised ridge in front,
+in place of regularly convex. Another character is the absence of a
+hollow chamber, or sinus, within the frontal bone of the forehead. Foxes
+are likewise distinguished by their slighter build, longer and bushy
+tail, which always exceeds half the length of the head and body, sharper
+muzzle, and relatively longer body and shorter limbs. Then again, the
+ears are large in proportion to the head, the pupil of the eye is
+elliptical and vertical when in a strong light, and the female has six
+pairs of teats, in place of the three to five pairs found in dogs,
+wolves and jackals. From the North American grey foxes, constituting the
+genus or subgenus _Urocyon_, the true foxes are distinguished by the
+absence of a crest of erectile long hairs along the middle line of the
+upper surface of the tail, and also of a projection (subangular process)
+to the postero-inferior angle of the lower jaw. With the exception of
+certain South African species, foxes differ from wolves and jackals in
+that they do not associate in packs, but go about in pairs or are
+solitary.
+
+From the Scandinavian peninsula and the British Islands the range of the
+fox extends eastwards across Europe and central and northern Asia to
+Japan, while to the south it embraces northern Africa and Arabia,
+Persia, Baluchistan, and the north-western districts of India and the
+Himalaya. On the North American side of the Atlantic the fox reappears.
+With such an enormous geographical range the species must of necessity
+present itself under a considerable number of local phases, differing
+from one another to a greater or less degree in the matters of size and
+colouring. By some naturalists many of these local forms are regarded as
+specifically distinct, but it seems better and simpler to class them all
+as local phases or races of a single species primarily characterized by
+the white tip to the tail and the black or dark-brown hind surface of
+the ear. The "foxy red" colouring of the typical race of north-western
+Europe is too well known to require description. From this there is a
+more or less nearly complete gradation on the one hand to pale-coloured
+forms like the white-footed fox (_V. alopex leucopus_) of Persia, N.W.
+India and Arabia, and on the other to the silver or black fox (_V. a.
+argentatus_) of North America which yields the valuable silver-tipped
+black fur. Silver foxes apparently also occur in northern Asia.
+
+To mention all the other local races would be superfluous, and it will
+suffice to note that the North African fox is known as _V. a.
+niloticus_, the Himalayan as _V. a. montanus_, the Tibetan as _V. a.
+wadelli_, the North American red or cross fox as _V. a. pennsylvanicus_,
+and the Alaskan as _V. a. harrimani_; the last named, like several other
+animals from Alaska, being the largest of its kind.
+
+The cunning and stratagem of the fox have been proverbial for many ages,
+and he has figured as a central character in fables from the earliest
+times, as in Aesop, down to "Uncle Remus," most notably as Reynard
+(_Raginohardus_, strong in counsel) in the great medieval beast-epic
+"Reynard the Fox" (q.v.). It is not unlikely that, owing to the
+conditions under which it now lives, these traits are even more
+developed in England than elsewhere. In habits the fox is to a great
+extent solitary, and its home is usually a burrow, which may be
+excavated by its own labour, but is more often the usurped or deserted
+tenement of a badger or a rabbit. Foxes will, however, often take up
+their residence in woods, or even in water-meadows with large tussocks
+of grass, remaining concealed during the day and issuing forth on
+marauding expeditions at night. Rabbits, hares, domesticated poultry,
+game-birds, and, when these run short, rats, mice and even insects, form
+the chief diet of the fox. When living near the coast foxes will,
+however, visit the shore at low water in search of crabs and whelks; and
+the old story of the fox and the grapes seems to be founded upon a
+partiality on the part of the creature for that fruit. Flesh that has
+become tainted appears to be specially acceptable; but it is a curious
+fact that on no account will a fox eat any kind of bird of prey.
+
+After a gestation of from 60 to 65 days, the vixen during the month of
+April gives birth to cubs, of which from five to eight usually go to
+form a litter. When first born these are clothed with a uniform
+slaty-grey fur, which in due course gives place to a coat of more tawny
+hue than the adult livery. In a year and a half the cubs attain their
+full development; and from observations on captive specimens it appears
+that the duration of life ought to extend to some thirteen or fourteen
+years. In the care and defence of her young the vixen displays
+extraordinary solicitude and boldness, altogether losing on such
+occasions her accustomed timidity and caution. Like most other young
+animals, fox-cubs are exceedingly playful, and may be seen chasing one
+another in front of the mouth of the burrow, or even running after their
+own tails.
+
+Young foxes can be tamed to a certain extent, and do not then emit the
+well-known odour to any great degree unless excited. The species cannot,
+however, be completely domesticated, and never displays the affectionate
+traits of the dog. It was long believed that foxes and dogs would never
+interbreed; but several instances of such unions have been recorded,
+although they are undoubtedly rare. When suddenly confronted in a
+situation where immediate escape is impossible, the fox, like the wolf,
+will not hesitate to resort to the death-feigning instinct. Smartness in
+avoiding traps is one of the most distinctive traits in the character of
+the species; but when a trap has once claimed its victim, and is
+consequently no longer dangerous, the fox is always ready to take
+advantage of the gratuitous meal.
+
+Red fox-skins are largely imported into Europe for various purposes, the
+American imports alone formerly reaching as many as 60,000 skins
+annually. Silver fox is one of the most valuable of all furs, as much as
+£480 having been given for an unusually fine pair of skins in 1902.
+
+Of foxes certainly distinct specifically from the typical representative
+of the group, one of the best known is the Indian _Vulpes bengalensis_,
+a species much inferior in point of size to its European relative, and
+lacking the strong odour of the latter, from which it is also
+distinguished by the black tip to the tail and the pale-coloured backs
+of the ears. The corsac fox (_V. corsac_), ranging from southern Russia
+and the Caspian provinces across Asia to Amurland, may be regarded as a
+northern representative of the Indian species; while the pale fox (_V.
+pallidus_), of the Suakin and Dongola deserts, may be regarded as the
+African representative of the group. Possibly the kit-fox (_V. velox_),
+which has likewise a black tail-tip and pale ears, may be the North
+American form of the same group. The northern fennec (_V. famelicus_),
+whose range extends apparently from Egypt and Somaliland through
+Palestine and Persia into Afghanistan, seems to form a connecting link
+between the more typical foxes and the small African species properly
+known as fennecs. The long and bushy tail in the northern species has a
+white tip and a dark gland-patch near the root, but the backs of the
+ears are fawn-coloured. The enormous length of the ears and the small
+bodily size (inferior to that of any other member of the family) suffice
+to distinguish the true fennec (_V. zerda_) of Algeria and Egypt, in
+which the general colour is pale and the tip of the relatively short
+tail black. South of the Zambezi the group reappears in the shape of the
+asse-fox or fennec, (_V. cama_), a dark-coloured species, with a black
+tip to the long, bushy tail and reddish-brown ears.
+
+Passing from South Africa to the north polar regions of both the Old and
+the New World, inclusive of Iceland, we enter the domain of the Arctic
+fox (_V. lagopus_), a very distinct species characterized by the hairy
+soles of its feet, the short, blunt ears, the long, bushy tail, and the
+great length of the fur in winter. The upper parts in summer are usually
+brownish and the under parts white; but in winter the whole coat, in
+this phase of the species, turns white. In a second phase of the
+species, the colour, which often displays a slaty hue (whence the name
+of blue fox), remains more or less the same throughout the year, the
+winter coat being, however, recognizable by the great length of the fur.
+Many at least of the "blue fox" skins of the fur-trade are white skins
+dyed. About 2000 blue fox-skins were annually imported into London from
+Alaska some five-and-twenty years ago. Arctic foxes feed largely on
+sea-birds and lemmings, laying up hidden stores of the last-named
+rodents for winter use.
+
+The American grey fox, or Virginian fox, is now generally ranged as a
+distinct genus (or a subgenus of _Canis_) under the name of _Urocyon
+cinereo-argentatus_, on account of being distinguished, as already
+mentioned, by the presence of a ridge of long erectile hairs along the
+upper surface of the tail and of a projection to the postero-inferior
+angle of the lower jaw. The prevailing colour of the fur of the upper
+parts is iron-grey.
+
+The so-called foxes of South America, such as the crab-eating fox (_C.
+thous_), Azara's fox (_C. azarae_), and the colpeo (_C. magellanicus_),
+are aberrant members of the typical genus _Canis_. On the other hand,
+the long-eared fox or Delalande's fox (_Otocyon megalotis_) of south and
+east Africa represents a totally distinct genus.
+
+  See St George Mivart, _Dogs, Jackals, Wolves and Foxes_ (London,
+  1890); R.I. Pocock, "Ancestors and Relatives of the Dog," in _The
+  Kennel Encyclopaedia_ (London, 1907). For fox-hunting, see HUNTING.
+       (R. L.*)
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+  [1] The word is common to the Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch _vos_,
+    Ger. _Fuchs_; the ultimate origin is unknown, but a connexion has
+    been suggested with Sanskrit _puccha_, tail. The feminine "vixen"
+    represents the O. Eng. _fyxen_, due to the change from _o_ to _y_,
+    and addition of the feminine termination _-en_, cf. O. Eng. _gyden_,
+    goddess, and Ger. _Füchsin_, vixen. The _v_, for _f_, is common in
+    southern English pronunciation; vox, for fox, is found in the _Ancren
+    Riwle_, c. 1230.
+
+
+
+
+FOXE, JOHN (1516-1587), the author of the famous _Book of Martyrs_, was
+born at Boston, in Lincolnshire, in 1516. At the age of sixteen he is
+said to have entered Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was the pupil
+of John Harding or Hawarden, and had for room-mate Alexander Nowell,
+afterwards dean of St. Paul's. His authenticated connexion at the
+university is, however, with Magdalen College. He took his B.A. degree
+in 1537 and his M.A. in 1543. He was lecturer on logic in 1540-1541. He
+wrote several Latin plays on Scriptural subjects, of which the best, _De
+Christo triumphante_, was repeatedly printed, (London, 1551; Basel,
+1556, &c.), and was translated into English by Richard Day, son of the
+printer. He became a fellow of Magdalen College in 1539, resigning in
+1545. It is said that he refused to conform to the rules for regular
+attendance at chapel, and that he protested both against the enforced
+celibacy of fellows and the obligation to take holy orders within seven
+years of their election. The customary statement that he was expelled
+from his fellowship is based on the untrustworthy biography attributed
+to his son Samuel Foxe, but the college records state that he resigned
+of his own accord and _ex honesta causa_. The letter in which he
+protests to President Oglethorpe against the charges of irreverence,
+&c., brought against him is printed in Pratt's edition (vol. i.
+Appendix, pp. 58-61).
+
+On leaving Oxford he acted as tutor for a short time in the house of the
+Lucys of Charlecote, near Stratford-on-Avon, where he married Agnes
+Randall. Late in 1547 or early in the next year he went to London. He
+found a patron in Mary Fitzroy, duchess of Richmond, and having been
+ordained deacon by Ridley in 1550, he settled at Reigate Castle, where
+he acted as tutor to the duchess's nephews, the orphan children of Henry
+Howard, earl of Surrey. On the accession of Queen Mary, Foxe was
+deprived of his tutorship by the boys' grandfather, the duke of Norfolk,
+who was now released from prison. He retired to Strassburg, and occupied
+himself with a Latin history of the Christian persecutions which he had
+begun at the suggestion of Lady Jane Grey. He had assistance from two
+clerics of widely differing opinions--from Edmund Grindal, who was
+later, as archbishop of Canterbury, to maintain his Puritan convictions
+in opposition to Elizabeth; and from John Aylmer, afterwards one of the
+bitterest opponents of the Puritan party. This book, dealing chiefly
+with Wycliffe and Huss, and coming down to 1500, formed the first
+outline of the _Actes and Monuments_. It was printed by Wendelin
+Richelius with the title of _Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum_
+(Strasburg, 1554). In the year of its publication Foxe removed to
+Frankfort, where he found the English colony of Protestant refugees
+divided into two camps. He made a vain attempt to frame a compromise
+which should be accepted by the extreme Calvinists and by the partisans
+of the Anglican doctrine. He removed (1555) to Basel, where he worked as
+printer's reader to Johann Herbst or Oporinus. He made steady progress
+with his great book as he received reports from England of the
+religious persecutions there, and he issued from the press of Oporinus
+his pamphlet _Ad inclytos ac praepotentes Angliae proceres ...
+supplicatio_ (1557), a plea for toleration addressed to the English
+nobility. In 1559 he completed the Latin edition[1] of his martyrology
+and returned to England. He lived for some time at Aldgate, London, in
+the house of his former pupil, Thomas Howard, now duke of Norfolk, who
+retained a sincere regard for his tutor and left him a small pension in
+his will. He became associated with John Day the printer, himself once a
+Protestant exile. Foxe was ordained priest by Edmund Grindal, bishop of
+London, in 1560, and besides much literary work he occasionally preached
+at Paul's Cross and other places. His work had rendered great service to
+the government, and he might have had high preferment in the Church but
+for the Puritan views which he consistently maintained. He held,
+however, the prebend of Shipton in Salisbury cathedral, and is said to
+have been for a short time rector of Cripplegate.
+
+In 1563 was issued from the press of John Day the first English edition
+of the _Actes and Monuments of these latter and perillous Dayes,
+touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described
+the great Persecution and horrible Troubles that have been wrought and
+practised by the Romishe Prelates, speciallye in this Realme of England
+and Scotland, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande to the time now
+present. Gathered and collected according to the true Copies and
+Wrytinges certificatorie as well of the Parties themselves that
+Suffered, as also out of the Bishop's Registers, which were the Doers
+thereof, by John Foxe_, commonly known as the _Book of Martyrs_. Several
+gross errors which had appeared in the Latin version, and had been since
+exposed, were corrected in this edition. Its popularity was immense and
+signal. The Marian persecution was still fresh in men's minds, and the
+graphic narrative intensified in its numerous readers the fierce hatred
+of Spain and of the Inquisition which was one of the master passions of
+the reign. Nor was its influence transient. For generations the popular
+conception of Roman Catholicism was derived from its bitter pages. Its
+accuracy was immediately attacked by Catholic writers, notably in the
+_Dialogi sex_ (1566), nominally from the pen of Alan Cope, but in
+reality by Nicholas Harpsfield and by Robert Parsons in _Three
+Conversions of England_ (1570). These criticisms induced Foxe to produce
+a second corrected edition, _Ecclesiastical History, contayning the
+Actes and Monuments of things passed in every kynges tyme_... in 1570, a
+copy of which was ordered by Convocation to be placed in every
+collegiate church. Foxe based his accounts of the martyrs partly on
+authentic documents and reports of the trials, and on statements
+received direct from the friends of the sufferers, but he was too hasty
+a worker and too violent a partisan to produce anything like a correct
+or impartial account of the mass of facts with which he had to deal.
+Anthony à Wood says that Foxe "believed and reported all that was told
+him, and there is every reason to suppose that he was purposely misled,
+and continually deceived by those whose interest it was to bring
+discredit on his work," but he admits that the book is a monument of his
+industry, his laborious research and his sincere piety. The gross
+blunders due to carelessness have often been exposed, and there is no
+doubt that Foxe was only too ready to believe evil of the Catholics, and
+he cannot always be exonerated from the charge of wilful falsification
+of evidence. It should, however, be remembered in his honour that his
+advocacy of religious toleration was far in advance of his day. He
+pleaded for the despised Dutch Anabaptists, and remonstrated with John
+Knox on the rancour of his _First Blast of the Trumpet_. Foxe was one of
+the earliest students of Anglo-Saxon, and he and Day published an
+edition of the Saxon gospels under the patronage of Archbishop Parker.
+He died on the 18th of April 1587 and was buried at St Giles's,
+Cripplegate.
+
+  A list of his Latin tracts and sermons is given by Wood, and others,
+  some of which were never printed, appear in Bale. Four editions of the
+  _Actes and Monuments_ appeared in Foxe's lifetime. The eighth edition
+  (1641) contains a memoir of Foxe purporting to be by his son Samuel,
+  the MS. of which is in the British Museum (Lansdowne MS. 388). Samuel
+  Foxe's authorship is disputed, with much show of reason, by Dr S.R.
+  Maitland in _On the Memoirs of Foxe ascribed to his Son_ (1841). The
+  best-known modern edition of the Martyrology is that (1837-1841) by
+  the Rev. Stephen R. Cattley, with an introductory life by Canon George
+  Townsend. The numerous inaccuracies of this life and the frequent
+  errors of Foxe's narrative were exposed by Dr Maitland in a series of
+  tracts (1837-1842), collected (1841-1842) as _Notes on the
+  Contributions of the Rev. George Townsend, M.A. ... to the New Edition
+  of Fox's Martyrology_. The criticism lavished on Cattley and
+  Townsend's edition led to a new one (1846-1849) under the same
+  editorship. A new text prepared by the Rev. Josiah Pratt was issued
+  (1870) in the "Reformation Series" of the _Church Historians of
+  England_, with a revised version of Townsend's _Life_ and appendices
+  giving copies of original documents. Later edition by W. Grinton Berry
+  (1907).
+
+  Foxe's papers are preserved in the Harleian and Lansdowne collections
+  in the British Museum. Extracts from these were edited by J.G. Nichols
+  for the Camden Society (1859). See also W. Winters, _Biographical
+  Notes on John Foxe_ (1876); James Gairdner, _History of the English
+  Church in the Sixteenth Century_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+  [1] Printed by Oporinus and Nicolaus Brylinger. The title is _Rerum
+    in ecclesia gestarum ... pars prima, in qua primum de rebus per
+    Angliam et Scotiam gestis atque in primis de horrenda sub Maria nuper
+    regina persecutione narratio continetur_.
+
+
+
+
+FOXGLOVE, a genus of biennial and perennial plants of the natural order
+Scrophulariaceae. The common or purple foxglove, _D. purpurea_, is
+common in dry hilly pastures and rocky places and by road-sides in
+various parts of Europe; it ranges in Great Britain from Cornwall and
+Kent to Orkney, but it does not occur in Shetland or in some of the
+eastern counties of England. It flourishes best in siliceous soils, and
+is not found in the Jura and Swiss Alps. The characters of the plant are
+as follows: stem erect, roundish, downy, leafy below, and from 18 in. to
+5 ft. or more in height; leaves alternate, crenate, rugose, ovate or
+elliptic oblong, and of a dull green, with the under surface downy and
+paler than the upper; radical leaves together with their stalks often a
+foot in length; root of numerous, slender, whitish fibres; flowers 1¾-2½
+in. long, pendulous, on one side of the stem, purplish crimson, and
+hairy and marked with eye-like spots within; segments of calyx ovate,
+acute, cleft to the base; corolla bell-shaped with a broadly two-lipped
+obtuse mouth, the upper lip entire or obscurely divided; stamens four,
+two longer than the other two (_didynamous_); anthers yellow and
+bilobed; capsule bivalved, ovate and pointed; and seeds numerous, small,
+oblong, pitted and of a pale brown. As Parkinson remarks of the plant,
+"It flowreth seldome before July, and the seed is ripe in August"; but
+it may occasionally be found in blossom as late as September. Many
+varieties of the common foxglove have been raised by cultivation, with
+flowers varying in colour from white to deep rose and purple; in the
+variety _gloxinioides_ the flowers are almost regular, suggesting those
+of the cultivated gloxinia. Other species of foxglove with variously
+coloured flowers have been introduced into Britain from the continent of
+Europe. The plants may be propagated by unflowered off-sets from the
+roots, but being biennials are best raised from seed.
+
+[Illustration: Foxglove (_Digitalis purpurea_), one-third nat. size.
+
+  1. Corolla cut open showing the four stamens; rather more than half
+  nat. size.
+
+  2. Unripe fruit cut lengthwise, showing the thick axial placenta
+  bearing numerous small seeds.
+
+  3. Ripe capsule split open.]
+
+The foxglove, probably from folks'-glove, that is fairies' glove, is
+known by a great variety of popular names in Britain. In the south of
+Scotland it is called bloody fingers; farther north, dead-men's-bells;
+and on the eastern borders, ladies' thimbles, wild mercury and Scotch
+mercury. In Ireland it is generally known under the name of fairy
+thimble. Among its Welsh synonyms are _menyg-ellyllon_ (elves' gloves),
+_menyg y llwynog_ (fox's gloves), _bysedd cochion_ (redfingers) and
+_bysedd y cwn_ (dog's fingers). In France its designations are _gants de
+notre dame_ and _doigts de la Vierge_. The German name _Fingerhut_
+(thimble) suggested to Fuchs, in 1542, the employment of the Latin
+adjective _digitalis_ as a designation for the plant. Other species of
+foxglove or _Digitalis_ although found in botanical collections are not
+generally grown. For medicinal uses see DIGITALIS.
+
+
+
+
+FOX INDIANS, the name, from one of their clans, of an Algonquian tribe,
+whose former range was central Wisconsin. They call themselves
+Muskwakiuk, "red earth people." Owing to heavy losses in their wars with
+the Ojibways and the French, they allied themselves with the Sauk tribe
+about 1780, the two tribes being now practically one.
+
+
+
+
+FOX MORCILLO, SEBASTIAN (1526?-1559?), Spanish scholar and philosopher,
+was born at Seville between 1526 and 1528. About 1548 he studied at
+Louvain, and, following the example of the Spanish Jew, Judas Abarbanel,
+published commentaries on Plato and Aristotle in which he endeavoured to
+reconcile their teaching. In 1559 he was appointed tutor to Don Carlos,
+son of Philip II., but did not live to take up the duties of the post,
+as he was lost at sea on his way to Spain. His most original work is the
+_De imitatione, seu de informandi styli ratione libri II_. (1554), a
+dialogue in which the author and his brother take part under the
+pseudonyms of Gaspar and Francisco Enuesia. Among Fox Morcillo's other
+publications are: (1) _In Topica Ciceronis paraphrasis et scholia_
+(1550); (2) _In Platonis Timaeum commentarii_ (1554); (3) _Compendium
+ethices philosophiae ex Platone, Aristotele, aliisque philosophis
+collectum_; (4) _De historiae institutione dialogus_ (1557), and (5) _De
+naturae philosophia_.
+
+  He is the subject of an excellent monograph by Urbano Gonzalez de
+  Calle, _Sebastián Fox Morcillo: estudio histórico-crítico de sus
+  doctrinas_ (Madrid, 1903).
+
+
+
+
+FOY, MAXIMILIEN SÉBASTIEN (1775-1825), French general and statesman, was
+born at Ham in Picardy on the 3rd of February 1775. He was the son of an
+old soldier who had fought at Fontenoy and had become post-master of the
+town in which he lived. His father died in 1780, and his early
+instruction was given by his mother, a woman of English origin and of
+superior ability. He continued his education at the college of
+Soissons, and thence passed at the age of fifteen to the artillery
+school of La Fère. After eighteen months' successful study he entered
+the army, served his first campaign in Flanders (1791-92), and was
+present at the battle of Jemmapes. He soon attained the rank of captain,
+and served successively under Dampierre, Jourdan, Pichegru and Houchard.
+In 1794, in consequence of having spoken freely against the violence of
+the extreme party at Paris, he was imprisoned by order of the
+commissioner of the Convention, Joseph Lebon, at Cambray, but regained
+his liberty soon after the fall of Robespierre. He served under Moreau
+in the campaigns of 1796 and 1797, distinguishing himself in many
+engagements. The leisure which the treaty of Campo Formio gave him he
+devoted to the study of public law and modern history, attending the
+lectures of Christoph Wilhelm von Koch (1737-1813), the famous professor
+of public law at Strassburg. He was recommended by Desaix to the notice
+of General Bonaparte, but declined to serve on the staff of the Egyptian
+expedition. In the campaign of Switzerland (1798) he distinguished
+himself afresh, though he served only with the greatest reluctance
+against a people which possessed republican institutions. In Masséna's
+brilliant campaign of 1799 Foy won the rank of _chef de brigade_. In the
+following year he served under Moncey in the Marengo campaign and
+afterwards in Tirol.
+
+Foy's republican principles caused him to oppose the gradual rise of
+Napoleon to the supreme power and at the time of Moreau's trial he
+escaped arrest only by joining the army in Holland. Foy voted against
+the establishment of the empire, but the only penalty for his
+independence was a long delay before attaining the rank of general. In
+1806 he married a daughter of General Baraguay d'Hilliers. In the
+following year he was sent to Constantinople, and there took part in the
+defence of the Dardanelles against the English fleet. He was next sent
+to Portugal, and thenceforward he served in the Peninsular War from
+first to last. Under Junot he won at last his rank of general of
+brigade, under Soult he held a command in the pursuit of Sir John
+Moore's army, and under Masséna he fought in the third invasion of
+Portugal (1810). Masséna reposed the greatest confidence in Foy, and
+employed him after Busaco in a mission to the emperor. Napoleon now made
+Foy's acquaintance for the first time, and was so far impressed with his
+merits as to make him a general of division at once. The part played by
+General Foy at the battle of Salamanca won him new laurels, but above
+all he distinguished himself when the disaster of Vittoria had broken
+the spirit of the army. Foy rose to the occasion; his resistance in the
+Pyrenees was steady and successful, and only a wound (at first thought
+mortal) which he received at Orthez prevented him from keeping the field
+to the last. At the first restoration of the Bourbons he received the
+grand cross of the Legion of Honour and a command, and on the return of
+Napoleon from Elba he declined to join him until the king had fled from
+the country. He held a divisional command in the Waterloo campaign, and
+at Waterloo was again severely wounded at the head of his division (see
+WATERLOO CAMPAIGN). After the second restoration he returned to civil
+life, devoting his energies for a time to his projected history of the
+Peninsular War, and in 1819 was elected to the chamber of deputies. For
+this position his experience and his studies had especially fitted him,
+and by his first speech he gained a commanding place in the chamber,
+which he never lost, his clear, manly eloquence being always employed on
+the side of the liberal principles of 1789. In 1823 he made a powerful
+protest against French intervention in Spain, and after the dissolution
+of 1824 he was re-elected for three constituencies. He died at Paris on
+the 28th of November 1825, and his funeral was attended, it is said, by
+100,000 persons. His early death was regarded by all as a national
+calamity. His family was provided for by a general subscription.
+
+  The _Histoire de la guerre de la Péninsula sous Napoléon_ was
+  published from his notes in 1827, and a collection of his speeches
+  (with memoir by Tissot) appeared in 1826 soon after his death. See
+  Cuisin, _Vie militaire, politique, &c., du général Foy_; Vidal, _Vie
+  militaire et politique du général Foy_.
+
+
+
+
+
+FRAAS, KARL NIKOLAS (1810-1875), German botanist and agriculturist, was
+born at Rattelsdorf, near Bamberg, on the 8th of September 1810. After
+receiving his preliminary education at the gymnasium of Bamberg, he in
+1830 entered the university of Munich, where he took his doctor's degree
+in 1834. Having devoted great attention to the study of botany, he went
+to Athens in 1835 as inspector of the court garden; and in April 1836 he
+became professor of botany at the university. In 1842 he returned to
+Germany and became teacher at the central agricultural school at
+Schleissheim. In 1847 he was appointed professor of agriculture at
+Munich, and in 1851 director of the central veterinary college. For many
+years he was secretary of the Agricultural Society of Bavaria, but
+resigned in 1861. He died at his estate of Neufreimann, near Munich, on
+the 9th of November 1875.
+
+  His principal works are: [Greek: Stoicheia tês Botanikês] (Athens,
+  1835); _Synopsis florae classicae_ (Munich, 1845); _Klima und
+  Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit_ (Landsh., 1847); _Histor.-encyklopäd.
+  Grundriss der Landwirthschaftslehre_ (Stuttgart, 1848); _Geschichte
+  der Landwirthschaft_ (Prague, 1851); _Die Schule des Landbaues_
+  (Munich, 1852); _Baierns Rinderrassen_ (Munich, 1853); _Die künstliche
+  Fischerzeugung_ (Munich, 1854); _Die Natur der Landwirthschaft_
+  (Munich, 1857); _Buch der Natur für Landwirthe_ (Munich, 1860); _Die
+  Ackerbaukrisen und ihre Heilmittel_ (Munich, 1866); _Das Wurzelleben
+  der Culturpflanzen_ (Berlin, 1872); and _Geschichte der Landbau und
+  Forstwissenschaft seit dem 16^ten Jahrh._ (Munich, 1865). He also
+  founded and edited a weekly agricultural paper, the _Schranne_.
+
+
+
+
+FRACASTORO [FRACASTORIUS], GIROLAMO [HIERONYMUS] (1483-1553), Italian
+physician and poet, was born at Verona in 1483. It is related of him
+that at his birth his lips adhered so closely that a surgeon was obliged
+to divide them with his incision knife, and that during his infancy his
+mother was killed by lightning, while he, though in her arms at the
+moment, escaped unhurt. Fracastoro became eminently skilled, not only in
+medicine and belles-lettres, but in most arts and sciences. He studied
+at Padua, and became professor of philosophy there in 1502, afterwards
+practising as a physician in Verona. It was by his advice that Pope Paul
+III., on account of the prevalence of a contagious distemper, removed
+the council of Trent to Bologna. He was the author of many works, both
+poetical and medical, and was intimately acquainted with Cardinal Bembo,
+Julius Scaliger, Gianbattista Ramusio (q.v.), and most of the great men
+of his time. In 1517, when the builders of the citadel of San Felice
+(Verona) found fossil mussels in the rocks, Fracastoro was consulted
+about the marvel, and he took the same view--following Leonardo da
+Vinci, but very advanced for those days--that they were the remains of
+animals once capable of living in the locality. He died of apoplexy at
+Casi, near Verona, on the 8th of August 1553; and in 1559 the town of
+Verona erected a statue in his honour.
+
+  The principal work of Fracastoro is a kind of medical poem entitled
+  _Syphilidis, sive Morbi Gallici, libri tres_ (Verona, 1530), which has
+  been often reprinted and also translated into French and Italian.
+  Among his other works (all published at Venice) are _De vini
+  temperatura_ (1534); _Homocentricorum_ (1535); _De sympatha et
+  antipathia rerum_ (1546); and _De contagionibus_ (1546). His complete
+  works were published at Venice in 1555, and his poetical productions
+  were collected and printed at Padua in 1728.
+
+
+
+
+FRAGONARD, JEAN-HONORÉ (1732-1806), French painter, was born at Grasse,
+the son of a glover. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's
+circumstances became straitened through unsuccessful speculations, but
+he showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the
+age of eighteen to Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but
+disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to
+Chardin's _atelier_. Fragonard studied for six months under the great
+luminist, and then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style
+he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the
+execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not a pupil of the
+Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of
+"Jeroboam sacrificing to the Idols," but before proceeding to Rome he
+continued to study for three years under Van Loo. In the year preceding
+his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles"
+now at Grasse cathedral. In 1755 he took up his abode at the French
+Academy in Rome, then presided over by Natoire. There he benefited from
+the study of the old masters whom he was set to copy--always remembering
+Boucher's parting advice not to take Raphael and Michelangelo too
+seriously. He successively passed through the studios of masters as
+widely different in their aims and technique as Chardin, Boucher, Van
+Loo and Natoire, and a summer sojourn at the Villa d'Este in the company
+of the abbé de Saint-Non, who engraved many of Fragonard's studies of
+these entrancing gardens, did more towards forming his personal style
+than all the training at the various schools. It was in these romantic
+gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that he
+conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to embody in his art.
+Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by
+the florid sumptuousness of Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity
+of studying in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761. In 1765 his
+"Corésus et Callirhoé" secured his admission to the Academy. It was made
+the subject of a pompous eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king,
+who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had
+hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the
+demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV.'s pleasure-loving and
+licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and
+voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which
+are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his colour and the
+virtuosity of his facile brushwork--such works as the "Serment d'amour"
+(Love Vow), "Le Verrou" (The Bolt), "La Culbute" (The Tumble), "La
+Chemise enlevée" (The Shift Withdrawn), and "The Swing" (Wallace
+collection), and his decorations for the apartments of Mme du Barry and
+the dancer Marie Guimard.
+
+The Revolution made an end to the _ancien régime_, and Fragonard, who
+was so closely allied to its representatives, left Paris in 1793 and
+found shelter in the house of his friend Maubert at Grasse, which he
+decorated with the series of decorative panels known as the "Roman
+d'amour de la jeunesse," originally painted for Mme du Barry's pavilion
+at Louvreciennes. The panels in recent years came into the possession of
+Mr Pierpont Morgan. Fragonard returned to Paris early in the 19th
+century, where he died in 1806, neglected and almost forgotten. For half
+a century or more he was so completely ignored that Lübke, in his
+history of art (1873), omits the very mention of his name. But within
+the last thirty years he has regained the position among the masters of
+painting to which he is entitled by his genius. If the appreciation of
+his art by the modern collector can be expressed in figures, it is
+significant that the small and sketchy "Billet Doux," which appeared at
+the Cronier sale in Paris in 1905 and was subsequently exhibited by
+Messrs Duveen in London (1906), realized close on £19,000 at the Hôtel
+Drouot.
+
+Besides the works already mentioned, there are four important pictures
+by Fragonard in the Wallace collection: "The Fountain of Love," "The
+Schoolmistress," "A Lady carving her Name on a Tree" (usually known as
+"Le Chiffre d'amour") and "The Fair-haired Child." The Louvre contains
+thirteen examples of his art, among them the "Corésus," "The Sleeping
+Bacchante," "The Shift Withdrawn," "The Bathers," "The Shepherd's Hour"
+("L'Heure du berger"), and "Inspiration." Other works are in the museums
+of Lille, Besançon, Rouen, Tours, Nantes, Avignon, Amiens, Grenoble,
+Nancy, Orleans, Marseilles, &c., as well as at Chantilly. Some of
+Fragonard's finest work is in the private collections of the Rothschild
+family in London and Paris.
+
+  See R. Portalis, _Fragonard_ (Paris, 1899), fully illustrated; Felix
+  Naquet, _Fragonard_ (Paris, 1890); Virgile Josz, _Fragonard--moeurs du
+  XVIII^e siècle_ (Paris, 1901); E. and J. de Goncourt, _L'Art du
+  dix-huitième siècle--Fragonard_ (Paris, 1883).     (P. G. K.)
+
+
+
+
+FRAHN, CHRISTIAN MARTIN (1782-1851), German numismatist and historian,
+was born at Rostock. He began his Oriental studies under Tychsen at the
+university of Rostock, and afterwards prosecuted them at Göttingen and
+Tübingen. He became a Latin master in Pestalozzi's famous institute in
+1804, returned home in 1806, and in the following year was chosen to
+fill the chair of Oriental languages in the Russian university of Kazan.
+Though in 1815 he was invited to succeed Tychsen at Rostock, he
+preferred to go to St Petersburg, where he became director of the
+Asiatic museum and councillor of state. He died at St Petersburg.
+
+  Frahn wrote over 150 works. Among the more important are:
+  _Numophylacium orientale Pototianum_ (1813); _De numorum Bulgharicorum
+  fonte antiquissimo_ (1816); _Das muhammedanische Münzkabinet des
+  asiatischen Museum der kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu St
+  Petersburg_ (1821); _Numi cufici ex variis museis selecti_ (1823);
+  _Notice d'une centaine d'ouvrages arabes, &c., qui manquent en grande
+  partie aux bibliothèques de l'Europe_ (1834); and _Nova supplementa ad
+  recensionem Num. Muham. Acad. Imp. Sci. Petropolitanae_ (1855). His
+  description of some medals struck by the Samanid and Bouid princes
+  (1804) was composed in Arabic because he had no Latin types.
+
+
+
+
+FRAME, a word employed in many different senses, signifying something
+joined together or shaped. It is derived ultimately from O.E. _fram_,
+from, in its primary meaning "forward." In constructional work it
+connotes the union of pieces of wood, metal or other material for
+purposes of enclosure as in the case of a picture or mirror frame.
+Frames intended for these uses are of great artistic interest but
+comparatively modern origin. There is no record of their existence
+earlier than the 16th century, but the decorative opportunities which
+they afforded caused speedy popularity in an artistic age, and the
+Renaissance found in the picture frame a rich and attractive means of
+expression. The impulses which made frames beautiful have long been
+extinct or dormant, but fine work was produced in such profusion that
+great numbers of examples are still extant. Frames for pictures or
+mirrors are usually square, oblong, round or oval, and, although they
+have usually been made of wood or composition overlaid upon wood, the
+richest and most costly materials have often been used. Ebony, ivory and
+tortoiseshell; crystal, amber and mother-of-pearl; lacquer, gold and
+silver, and almost every other metal have been employed for this
+purpose. The domestic frame has in fact varied from the simplest and
+cheapest form of a plain wooden moulding to the most richly carved
+examples. The introduction in the 17th century of larger sheets of glass
+gave the art of frame-making a great _essor_, and in the 18th century
+the increased demand for frames, caused chiefly by the introduction of
+cheaper forms of mirrors, led to the invention of a composition which
+could be readily moulded into stereotyped patterns and gilded. This was
+eventually the deathblow of the artistic frame, and since the use of
+composition moulding became normal, no important school of wood-carving
+has turned its attention to frames. The carvers of the Renaissance, and
+down to the middle of the 18th century, produced work which was often of
+the greatest beauty and elegance. In England nothing comparable to that
+of Grinling Gibbons and his school has since been produced. Chippendale
+was a great frame maker, but he not only had recourse to composition,
+but his designs were often extravagantly rococo. Even in France there
+has been no return of the great days when Oeben enclosed the
+looking-glasses which mirrored the Pompadour in frames that were among
+the choicest work of a gorgeous and artificial age. In the decoration of
+frames as in so many other respects France largely followed the fashions
+of Italy, which throughout the 16th and 17th centuries produced the most
+elaborate and grandiose, the richest and most palatial, of the mirror
+frames that have come down to us. English art in this respect was less
+exotic and more restrained, and many of the mirrors of the 18th century
+received frames the grace and simplicity of which have ensured their
+constant reproduction even to our own day.
+
+
+
+
+FRAMINGHAM, a township of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A.,
+having an area of 27 sq. m. of hilly surface, dotted with lakes and
+ponds. Pop. (1890) 9239; (1900) 11,302, of whom 2391 were foreign-born;
+(1910 census) 12,948. It is served by the Boston & Albany, and the New
+York, New Haven & Hartford railways. Included within the township are
+three villages, Framingham Center, Saxonville and South Framingham, the
+last being much the most important. Framingham Academy was established
+in 1792, and in 1851 became a part of the public school system. A state
+normal school (the first normal school in the United States, established
+at Lexington in 1839, removed to Newton in 1844 and to Framingham in
+1853) is situated here; and near South Framingham, in the township of
+Sherborn, is the state reformatory prison for women. South Framingham
+has large manufactories of paper tags, shoes, boilers, carriage wheels
+and leather board; formerly straw braid and bonnets were the principal
+manufactures. Saxonville manufactures worsted cloth. The value of the
+township's factory products increased from $3,007,301 in 1900 to
+$4,173,579 in 1905, or 38.8%. Framingham was first settled about 1640,
+and was named in honour of the English home (Framlingham) of Governor
+Thomas Danforth (1622-1699), to whom the land once belonged. In 1700 it
+was incorporated as a township. The "old Connecticut path," the
+Boston-to-Worcester turnpike, was important to the early fortunes of
+Framingham Center, while the Boston & Worcester railway (1834) made the
+greater fortune of South Framingham.
+
+  See J.H. Temple, _History of Framingham ... 1640-1880_ (Framingham,
+  1887).
+
+
+
+
+FRAMLINGHAM, a market town in the Eye parliamentary division of Suffolk,
+91 m. N.E. from London by a branch of the Great Eastern railway. Pop.
+(1901) 2526. The church of St Michael is a fine Perpendicular and
+Decorated building of black flint, surmounted by a tower 96 ft. high. In
+the interior there are a number of interesting monuments, among which
+the most noticeable are those of Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of Norfolk, and
+of Henry Howard, the famous earl of Surrey, who was beheaded by Henry
+VIII. The castle forms a picturesque ruin, consisting of the outer walls
+44 ft. high and 8 ft. thick, 13 towers about 58 ft. high, a gateway and
+some outworks. About half a mile from the town is the Albert Memorial
+Middle Class College, opened in 1865, and capable of accommodating 300
+boys. A bronze statue of the Prince Consort by Joseph Durham adorns the
+front terrace.
+
+Framlingham (Frendlingham, Framalingaham) in early Saxon times was
+probably the site of a fortified earthwork to which St Edmund the Martyr
+is said to have fled from the Danes in 870. The Danes captured the
+stronghold after the escape of the king, but it was won back in 921, and
+remained in the hands of the crown, passing to William I. at the
+Conquest. Henry I. in 1100 granted it to Roger Bigod, who in all
+probability raised the first masonry castle. Hugh, son of Roger, created
+earl of Norfolk in 1141, succeeded his father, and the manor and castle
+remained in the Bigod family until 1306, when in default of heirs it
+reverted to the crown, and was granted by Edward II. to his half-brother
+Thomas de Brotherton, created earl of Norfolk in 1312. On an account
+roll of Framlingham Castle of 1324 there is an entry of "rent received
+from the borough," also of "rent from those living outside the borough,"
+and in all probability burghal rights had existed at a much earlier
+date, when the town had grown into some importance under the shelter of
+the castle. Town and castle followed the vicissitudes of the dukedom of
+Norfolk, passing to the crown in 1405, and being alternately restored
+and forfeited by Henry V., Richard III., Henry VII., Edward VI., Mary,
+Elizabeth and James I., and finally sold in 1635 to Sir Robert Hitcham,
+who left it in 1636 to the master and fellows of Pembroke Hall,
+Cambridge.
+
+In the account roll above mentioned reference is made to a fair and a
+market, but no early grant of either is to be found. In 1792 two annual
+fairs were held, one on Whit Monday, the other on the 10th of October;
+and a market was held every Saturday. The market day is still Saturday,
+but the fairs are discontinued.
+
+  See Robert Hawes, _History of Framlingham in the County of Suffolk_,
+  edited by R. Loder (Woodbridge, 1798).
+
+
+
+
+FRANC, a French coin current at different periods and of varying values.
+The first coin so called was one struck in gold by John II. of France in
+1360. On it was the legend _Johannes Dei gracia Francorum rex_; hence,
+it is said, the name. It also bore an effigy of King John on horseback,
+from which it was called a _franc à cheval_, to distinguish it from
+another coin of the same value, issued by Charles V., on which the king
+was represented standing upright under a Gothic dais; this coin was
+termed a _franc à pied_. As a coin it disappeared after the reign of
+Charles VI., but the name continued to be used as an equivalent for the
+_livre tournois_, which was worth twenty sols. French writers would
+speak without distinction of so many livres or so many francs, so long
+as the sum mentioned was an even sum; otherwise livre was the correct
+term, thus "_trois livres_" or "_trois francs_," but "_trois livres cinq
+sols_." In 1795 the livre was legally converted into the franc, at the
+rate of 81 livres to 80 francs, the silver franc being made to weigh
+exactly five grammes. The franc is now the unit of the monetary system
+and also the money of account in France, as well as in Belgium and
+Switzerland. In Italy the equivalent is the lira, and in Greece the
+drachma. The franc is divided into 100 centimes, the lira into 100
+centesimi and the drachma into 100 lepta. Gold is now the standard, the
+coins in common use being ten and twenty franc pieces. The twenty franc
+gold piece weighs 6.4516 grammes, .900 fine. The silver coins are five,
+two, one, and half franc pieces. The five franc silver piece weighs 25
+grammes, .900 fine, while the franc piece weighs 5 grammes, .835 fine.
+See also MONEY.
+
+
+
+
+FRANÇAIS, ANTOINE, COUNT (1756-1836), better known as FRANÇAIS OF
+NANTES, French politician and author, was born at Beaurepaire, in the
+department of Isère. In 1791 he was elected to the legislative assembly
+by the department of Loire Inférieure, and was noted for his violent
+attacks upon the farmers general, the pope and the priests; but he was
+not re-elected to the Convention. During the Terror, as he had belonged
+to the Girondin party, he was obliged to seek safety in the mountains.
+In 1798 he was elected to the council of Five Hundred by the department
+of Isère, and became one of its secretaries; and in the following year
+he voted against the Directory. He took office under the consulate as
+prefect of Charente Inférieure, rose to be a member of the council of
+state, and in 1804 obtained the important post of director-general of
+the indirect taxes (_droits réunis_). The value of his services was
+recognized by the titles of count of the empire and grand officer of the
+Legion of Honour. On the second restoration he retired into private
+life; but from 1819 to 1822 he was representative of the department of
+Isère, and after the July revolution he was made a peer of France. He
+died at Paris on the 7th of March 1836.
+
+  Français wrote a number of works, but his name is more likely to be
+  preserved by the eulogies of the literary men to whom he afforded
+  protection and assistance. It is sufficient to mention _Le Manuscrit
+  de feu M. Jérôme_ (1825); _Recueil de fadaises composé sur la montagne
+  à l'usage des habitants de la plaine_ (1826); _Voyage dans la vallée
+  des originaux_ (1828); _Tableau de la vie rurale, ou l'agriculture
+  enseignée d'une manière dramatique_ (1829).
+
+
+
+
+FRANÇAIS, FRANÇOIS LOUIS (1814-1897), French painter, was born at
+Plombières (Vosges), and, on attaining the age of fifteen, was placed as
+office-boy with a bookseller. After a few years of hard struggle, during
+which he made a precarious living by drawing on stone and designing
+woodcut vignettes for book illustration, he studied painting under
+Gigoux, and subsequently under Corot, whose influence remained decisive
+upon Français's style of landscape painting. He generally found his
+subjects in the neighbourhood of Paris, and though he never rivalled his
+master in lightness of touch and in the lyric poetry which is the
+principal charm of Corot's work, he is still counted among the leading
+landscape painters of his country and period. He exhibited first at the
+Salon in 1837 and was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1890.
+Comparatively few of his pictures are to be found in public galleries,
+but his painting of "An Italian Sunset" is at the Luxembourg Museum in
+Paris. Other works of importance are "Daphnis et Chloé" (1872), "Bas
+Meudon" (1861), "Orpheus" (1863), "Le Bois sacré" (1864), "Le Lac de
+Némi" (1868).
+
+
+
+
+FRANCATELLI, CHARLES ELMÉ (1805-1876), Anglo-Italian cook, was born in
+London, of Italian extraction, in 1805, and was educated in France,
+where he studied the art of cookery. Coming to England, he was employed
+successively by various noblemen, subsequently becoming manager of
+Crockford's club. He left Crockford's to become chief cook to Queen
+Victoria, and afterwards he was chef at the Reform Club. He was the
+author of _The Modern Cook_ (1845), which has since been frequently
+republished; of a _Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes_ (1861),
+and of _The Royal English and Foreign Confectionery Book_ (1862).
+Francatelli died at Eastbourne on the 10th of August 1876.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCAVILLA FONTANA, a town and episcopal see of Apulia, Italy, in the
+province of Lecce, 22 m. by rail E. by N. of Taranto, 460 ft. above
+sea-level. Pop. (1901) 17,759 (town); 20,510 (commune). It is in a fine
+situation, and has a massive square castle of the Umperiali family, to
+whom, with Oria, it was sold by S. Carlo Borromeo in the 16th century
+for 40,000 ounces of gold, which he distributed in one day to the poor.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCE, ANATOLE (1844- ), French critic, essayist and novelist (whose
+real name was Jacques Anatole Thibault), was born in Paris on the 16th
+of April 1844. His father was a bookseller, one of the last of the
+booksellers, if we are to believe the Goncourts, into whose
+establishment men came, not merely to order and buy, but to dip, and
+turn over pages and discuss. As a child he used to listen to the nightly
+talks on literary subjects which took place in his father's shop.
+Nurtured in an atmosphere so essentially bookish, he turned naturally to
+literature. In 1868 his first work appeared, a study of Alfred de Vigny,
+followed in 1873 by a volume of verse, _Les Poëmes dorés_, dedicated to
+Leconte de Lisle, and, as such a dedication suggests, an outcome of the
+"Parnassian" movement; and yet another volume of verse appeared in 1876,
+_Les Noces corinthiennes_. But the poems in these volumes, though
+unmistakably the work of a man of great literary skill and cultured
+taste, are scarcely the poems of a man with whom verse is the highest
+form of expression.
+
+He was to find his richest vein in prose. He himself, avowing his
+preference for a simple, or seemingly simple, style as compared with the
+_artistic_ style, vaunted by the Goncourts--a style compounded of
+neologisms and "rare" epithets, and startling forms of
+expression--observes: "A simple style is like white light. It is
+complex, but not to outward seeming. In language, a beautiful and
+desirable simplicity is but an appearance, and results only from the
+good order and sovereign economy of the various parts of speech." And
+thus one may say of his own style that its beautiful translucency is the
+result of many qualities--felicity, grace, the harmonious grouping of
+words, a perfect measure. Anatole France is a sceptic. The essence of
+his philosophy, if a spirit so light; evanescent, elusive, can be said
+to have a philosophy, is doubt. He is a doubter in religion,
+metaphysics, morals, politics, aesthetics, science--a most genial and
+kindly doubter, and not at all without doubts even as to his own
+negative conclusions. Sometimes his doubts are expressed in his own
+person--as in the _Jardin d'épicure_ (1894) from which the above
+extracts are taken, or _Le Livre de mon ami_ (1885), which may be
+accepted, perhaps, as partly autobiographical; sometimes, as in _La
+Rôtisserie de la reine Pédauque_ (1893) and _Les Opinions de M. Jérôme
+Coignard_ (1893), or _L'Orme du mail_ (1897), Le Mannequin d'osier
+(1897), _L'Anneau d'améthyste_ (1899), and _M. Bergeret à Paris_ (1901),
+he entrusts the expression of his opinions, dramatically, to some
+fictitious character--the abbé Coignard, for instance, projecting, as it
+were, from the 18th century some very effective criticisms on the
+popular political theories of contemporary France--or the M. Bergeret of
+the four last-named novels, which were published with the collective
+title of _Histoire contemporaine_. This series deals with some modern
+problems, and particularly, in _L'Anneau d'améthyste_ and _M. Bergeret à
+Paris_, with the humours and follies of the anti-Dreyfusards. All this
+makes a piquant combination. Neither should reference be omitted to his
+_Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard_ (1881), crowned by the Institute, nor to
+works more distinctly of fancy, such as _Balthasar_ (1889), the story of
+one of the Magi or _Thaïs_ (1890), the story of an actress and courtesan
+of Alexandria, whom a hermit converts, but with the loss of his own
+soul. His ironic comedy, _Crainquebille_ (Renaissance theatre, 1903),
+was founded on his novel (1902) of the same year. His more recent work
+includes his anti-clerical _Vie de Jeanne d'Arc_ (1908); his pungent
+satire the _Île des penguins_ (1908); and a volume of stories, _Les Sept
+Femmes de la Barbe-Bleue_ (1909). Lightly as he bears his erudition, it
+is very real and extensive, and is notably shown in his utilization of
+modern archaeological and historical research in his fiction (as in the
+stories in _Sur une pierre blanche_). As a critic--see the _Vie
+littéraire_ (1888-1892), reprinted mainly from _Le Temps_--he is
+graceful and appreciative. Academic in the best sense, he found a place
+in the French Academy, taking the seat vacated by Lesseps, and was
+received into that body on the 24th of December 1896. In the _affaire
+Dreyfus_ he sided with M. Zola.
+
+  For studies of M. Anatole France's talent see Maurice Bàrrès, _Anatole
+  France_ (1885); Jules Lemaître, _Les Contemporains_ (2nd series,
+  1886); and G. Brandes, _Anatole France_ (1908). In 1908 Frederic
+  Chapman began an edition of _The works of Anatole France in an English
+  translation_ (John Lane).
+
+
+
+
+FRANCE, a country of western Europe, situated between 51° 5' and 42° 20'
+N., and 4° 42' W. and 7° 39' E. It is hexagonal in form, being bounded
+N.W. by the North Sea, the Strait of Dover (_Pas de Calais_) and the
+English Channel (_La Manche_), W. by the Atlantic Ocean, S.W. by Spain,
+S.E. by the Mediterranean Sea, E. by Italy, Switzerland and Germany,
+N.E. by Germany, Luxemburg and Belgium. From north to south its length
+is about 600 m., measured from Dunkirk to the Col de Falguères; its
+breadth from east to west is 528 m., from the Vosges to Cape Saint
+Mathieu at the extremity of Brittany. The total area is estimated[1] at
+207,170 sq. m., including the island of Corsica, which comprises 3367
+sq. m. The coast-line of France extends for 384 m. on the Mediterranean,
+700 on the North Sea, the Strait of Dover and the Channel, and 865 on
+the Atlantic. The country has the advantage of being separated from its
+neighbours over the greater part of its frontier by natural barriers of
+great strength, the Pyrenees forming a powerful bulwark on the
+south-west, the Alps on the south-east, and the Jura and the greater
+portion of the Vosges Mountains on the east. The frontier generally
+follows the crest line of these ranges. Germany possesses both slopes of
+the Vosges north of Mont Donon, from which point the north-east boundary
+is conventional and unprotected by nature.
+
+France is geographically remarkable for its possession of great natural
+and historical highways between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic
+Ocean. The one, following the depression between the central plateau and
+the eastern mountains by way of the valleys of the Rhône and Saône,
+traverses the Côte d'Or hills and so gains the valley of the Seine; the
+other, skirting the southern base of the Cévennes, reaches the ocean by
+way of the Garonne valley. Another natural highway, traversing the
+lowlands to the west of the central plateau, unites the Seine basin with
+that of the Garonne.
+
+  _Physiography._--A line drawn from Bayonne through Agen, Poitiers,
+  Troyes, Reims and Valenciennes divides the country roughly into two
+  dissimilar physical regions--to the west and north-west a country of
+  plains and low plateaus; in the centre, east and south-east a country
+  of mountains and high plateaus with a minimum elevation of 650 ft. To
+  the west of this line the only highlands of importance are the
+  granitic plateaus of Brittany and the hills of Normandy and Perche,
+  which, uniting with the plateau of Beauce, separate the basins of the
+  Seine and Loire. The highest elevations of these ranges do not exceed
+  1400 ft. The configuration of the region east of the dividing line is
+  widely different. Its most striking feature is the mountainous and
+  eruptive area known as the Massif Central, which covers south-central
+  France. The central point of this huge tract is formed by the
+  mountains of Auvergne comprising the group of Cantal, where the Plomb
+  du Cantal attains 6096 ft., and that of Mont Dore, containing the Puy
+  de Sancy (6188 ft.), the culminating point of the Massif, and to the
+  north the lesser elevations of the Monts Dôme. On the west the
+  downward slope is gradual by way of lofty plateaus to the heights of
+  Limousin and Marche and the table-land of Quercy, thence to the plains
+  of Poitou, Angoumois and Guienne. On the east only river valleys
+  divide the Auvergne mountains from those of Forez and Margeride,
+  western spurs of the Cévennes. On the south the Aubrac mountains and
+  the barren plateaus known as the Causses intervene between them and
+  the Cévennes. The main range of the Cévennes (highest point Mont
+  Lozère, 5584 ft.) sweeps in a wide curve from the granitic table-land
+  of Morvan in the north along the right banks of the Saône and Rhône to
+  the Montagne Noire in the south, where it is separated from the
+  Pyrenean system by the river Aude. On the south-western border of
+  France the Pyrenees include several peaks over 10,000 ft. within
+  French territory; the highest elevation therein, the Vignemale, in the
+  centre of the range, reaches 10,820 ft. On the north their most
+  noteworthy offshoots are, in the centre, the plateau of Lannemezan
+  from which rivers radiate fanwise to join the Adour and Garonne; and
+  in the east the Corbière. On the south-eastern frontier the French
+  Alps, which include Mont Blanc (15,800 ft.), and, more to the south,
+  other summits over 11,000 ft. in height, cover Savoy and most of
+  Dauphiné and Provence, that is to say, nearly the whole of France to
+  the south and east of the Rhône. North of that river the parallel
+  chains of the Jura form an arc of a circle with its convexity towards
+  the north-west. In the southern and most elevated portion of the range
+  there are several summits exceeding 5500 ft. Separated from the Jura
+  by the defile of Belfort (Trouée de Belfort) the Vosges extend
+  northward parallel to the course of the Rhine. Their culminating
+  points in French territory, the Ballon d'Alsace and the Höhneck in the
+  southern portion of the chain, reach 4100 ft. and 4480 ft. The Vosges
+  are buttressed on the west by the Faucilles, which curve southwards to
+  meet the plateau of Langres, and by the plateaus of Haute-Marne,
+  united to the Ardennes on the north-eastern frontier by the wooded
+  highlands of Argonne.
+
+  [Illustration: Map of France (Physical Devisions).]
+
+  _Seaboard._--The shore of the Mediterranean encircling the Gulf of the
+  Lion (Golfe du Lion)[2] from Cape Cerbera to Martigues is low-lying
+  and unbroken, and characterized chiefly by lagoons separated from the
+  sea by sand-dunes. The coast, constantly encroaching on the sea by
+  reason of the alluvium washed down by the rivers of the Pyrenees and
+  Cévennes, is without important harbours saving that of Cette, itself
+  continually invaded by the sand. East of Martigues the coast is rocky
+  and of greater altitude, and is broken by projecting capes (Couronne,
+  Croisette, Sicié, the peninsula of Giens and Cape Antibes), and by
+  deep gulfs forming secure roadsteads such as those of Marseilles,
+  which has the chief port in France, Toulon, with its great naval
+  harbour, and Hyères, to which may be added the Gulf of St Tropez.
+
+  Along the Atlantic coast from the mouth of the Adour to the estuary
+  of the Gironde there stretches a monotonous line of sand-dunes
+  bordered by lagoons on the land side, but towards the sea harbourless
+  and unbroken save for the Bay of Arcachon. To the north as far as the
+  rocky point of St Gildas, sheltering the mouth of the Loire, the
+  shore, often occupied by salt marshes (marshes of Poitou and
+  Brittany), is low-lying and hollowed by deep bays sheltered by large
+  islands, those of Oléron and Ré lying opposite the ports of Rochefort
+  and La Rochelle, while Noirmoutier closes the Bay of Bourgneuf.
+
+  Beyond the Loire estuary, on the north shore of which is the port of
+  St Nazaire, the peninsula of Brittany projects into the ocean and here
+  begins the most rugged, wild and broken portion of the French
+  seaboard; the chief of innumerable indentations are, on the south the
+  Gulf of Morbihan, which opens into a bay protected to the west by the
+  narrow peninsula of Quiberon, the Bay of Lorient with the port of
+  Lorient, and the Bay of Concarneau; on the west the dangerous Bay of
+  Audierne and the Bay of Douarnenez separated from the spacious
+  roadstead of Brest, with its important naval port, by the peninsula of
+  Crozon, and forming with it a great indentation sheltered by Cape St
+  Mathieu on the north and by Cape Raz on the south; on the north,
+  opening into the English Channel, the Morlaix roads, the Bay of St
+  Brieuc, the estuary of the Rance, with the port of St Malo and the Bay
+  of St Michel. Numerous small archipelagoes and islands, of which the
+  chief are Belle Île, Groix and Ushant, fringe the Breton coast. North
+  of the Bay of St Michel the peninsula of Cotentin, terminating in the
+  promontories of Hague and Barfleur, juts north into the English
+  Channel and closes the bay of the Seine on the west. Cherbourg, its
+  chief harbour, lies on the northern shore between the two
+  promontories. The great port of Le Havre stands at the mouth of the
+  Seine estuary, which opens into the bay of the Seine on the east.
+  North of that point a line of high cliffs, in which occur the ports of
+  Fécamp and Dieppe, stretches nearly to the sandy estuary of the Somme.
+  North of that river the coast is low-lying and bordered by sand-dunes,
+  to which succeed on the Strait of Dover the cliffs in the
+  neighbourhood of the port of Boulogne and the marshes and sand-dunes
+  of Flanders, with the ports of Calais and Dunkirk, the latter the
+  principal French port on the North Sea.
+
+  To the maritime ports mentioned above must be added the river ports of
+  Bayonne (on the Adour), Bordeaux (on the Garonne), Nantes (on the
+  Loire), Rouen (on the Seine). On the whole, however, France is
+  inadequately provided with natural harbours; her long tract of coast
+  washed by the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay has scarcely three or
+  four good seaports, and those on the southern shore of the Channel
+  form a striking contrast to the spacious maritime inlets on the
+  English side.
+
+  _Rivers._--The greater part of the surface of France is divided
+  between four principal and several secondary basins.
+
+  The basin of the Rhône, with an area (in France) of about 35,000 sq.
+  m., covers eastern France from the Mediterranean to the Vosges, from
+  the Cévennes and the Plateau de Langres to the crests of the Jura and
+  the Alps. Alone among French rivers, the Rhône, itself Alpine in
+  character in its upper course, is partly fed by Alpine rivers (the
+  Arve, the Isère and the Durance) which have their floods in spring at
+  the melting of the snow, and are maintained by glacier-water in
+  summer. The Rhône, the source of which is in Mont St Gothard, in
+  Switzerland, enters France by the narrow defile of L'Écluse, and has a
+  somewhat meandering course, first flowing south, then north-west, and
+  then west as far as Lyons, whence it runs straight south till it
+  reaches the Mediterranean, into which it discharges itself by two
+  principal branches, which form the delta or island of the Camargue.
+  The Ain, the Saône (which rises in the Faucilles and in the lower part
+  of its course skirting the regions of Bresse and Dombes, receives the
+  Doubs and joins the Rhône at Lyons), the Ardèche and the Gard are the
+  affluents on the right; on the left it is joined by the Arve, the
+  Isère, the Drôme and the Durance. The small independent river, the
+  Var, drains that portion of the Alps which fringes the Mediterranean.
+
+  The basin of the Garonne occupies south-western France with the
+  exception of the tracts covered by the secondary basins of the Adour,
+  the Aude, the Hérault, the Orb and other smaller rivers, and the
+  low-lying plain of the Landes, which is watered by numerous coast
+  rivers, notably by the Leyre. Its area is nearly 33,000 sq. m., and
+  extends from the Pyrenees to the uplands of Saintonge, Périgord and
+  Limousin. The Garonne rises in the valley of Aran (Spanish Pyrenees),
+  enters France near Bagnères-de-Luchon, has first a north-west course,
+  then bends to the north-east, and soon resumes its first direction.
+  Joining the Atlantic between Royan and the Pointe de Grave, opposite
+  the tower of Cordouan. In the lower part of its course, from the
+  Bec-d'Ambez, where it receives the Dordogne, it becomes considerably
+  wider, and takes the name of Gironde. The principal affluents are the
+  Ariège, the Tarn with the Aveyron and the Agout, the Lot and the
+  Dordogne, which descends from Mont Dore-les-Bains, and joins the
+  Garonne at Bec-d'Ambez, to form the Gironde. All these affluents are
+  on the right, and with the exception of the Ariège, which descends
+  from the eastern Pyrenees, rise in the mountains of Auvergne and the
+  southern Cévennes, their sources often lying close to those of the
+  rivers of the Loire and Rhône basins. The Neste, a Pyrenean torrent,
+  and the Save, the Gers and the Baïse, rising on the plateau of
+  Lannemezan, are the principal left-hand tributaries of the Garonne.
+  North of the basin of the Garonne an area of over 3800 sq. m. is
+  watered by the secondary system of the Charente, which descends from
+  Chéronnac (Haute-Vienne), traverses Angoulême and falls into the
+  Atlantic near Rochefort. Farther to the north a number of small
+  rivers, the chief of which is the Sèvre Niortaise, drain the coast
+  region to the south of the plateau of Gâtine.
+
+  The basin of the Loire, with an area of about 47,000 sq. m., includes
+  a great part of central and western France or nearly a quarter of the
+  whole country. The Loire rises in Mont Gerbier de Jonc, in the range
+  of the Vivarais mountains, flows due north to Nevers, then turns to
+  the north-west as far as Orléans, in the neighbourhood of which it
+  separates the marshy region of the Sologne (q.v.) on the south from
+  the wheat-growing region of Beauce and the Gâtinais on the north.
+  Below Orléans it takes its course towards the south-west, and lastly
+  from Saumur runs west, till it reaches the Atlantic between Paimboeuf
+  and St Nazaire. On the right the Loire receives the waters of the
+  Furens, the Arroux, the Nièvre, the Maine (formed by the Mayenne and
+  the Sarthe with its affluent the Loir), and the Erdre, which joins the
+  Loire at Nantes; on the left, the Allier (which receives the Dore and
+  the Sioule), the Loiret, the Cher, the Indre, the Vienne with its
+  affluent the Creuse, the Thouet, and the Sèvre-Nantaise. The peninsula
+  of Brittany and the coasts of Normandy on both sides of the Seine
+  estuary are watered by numerous independent streams. Amongst these the
+  Vilaine, which passes Rennes and Redon, waters, with its tributaries,
+  an area of 4200 sq. m. The Orne, which rises in the hills of Normandy
+  and falls into the Channel below Caen, is of considerably less
+  importance.
+
+  The basin of the Seine, though its area of a little over 30,000 sq. m.
+  is smaller than that of any of the other main systems, comprises the
+  finest network of navigable rivers in the country. It is by far the
+  most important basin of northern France, those of the Somme and
+  Scheldt in the north-west together covering less than 5000 sq. m.,
+  those of the Meuse and the Rhine in the north-east less than 7000 sq.
+  m. The Seine descends from the Langres plateau, flows north-west down
+  to Méry, turns to the west, resumes its north-westerly direction at
+  Montereau, passes through Paris and Rouen and discharges itself into
+  the Channel between Le Havre and Honfleur. Its affluents are, on the
+  right, the Aube; the Marne, which joins the Seine at Charenton near
+  Paris; the Oise, which has its source in Belgium and is enlarged by
+  the Aisne; and the Epte; on the left the Yonne, the Loing, the
+  Essonne, the Eure and the Rille.
+
+  _Lakes._--France has very few lakes. The Lake of Geneva, which forms
+  32 m. of the frontier, belongs to Switzerland. The most important
+  French lake is that of Grand-Lieu, between Nantes and Paimboeuf
+  (Loire-Inférieure), which presents a surface of 17,300 acres. There
+  may also be mentioned the lakes of Bourget and Annecy (both in Savoy),
+  St Point (Jura), Paladru (Isère) and Nantua (Ain). The marshy
+  districts of Sologne, Brenne, Landes and Dombes still contain large
+  undrained tracts. The coasts present a number of maritime inlets,
+  forming inland bays, which communicate with the sea by channels of
+  greater or less width. Some of these are on the south-west coast, in
+  the Landes, as Carcans, Lacanau, Biscarosse, Cazau, Sanguinet; but
+  more are to be found in the south and south-east, in Languedoc and
+  Provence, as Leucate, Sigean, Thau, Vaccarès, Berre, &c. Their want of
+  depth prevents them from serving as roadsteads for shipping, and they
+  are useful chiefly for fishing or for the manufacture of bay-salt.
+
+  _Climate._--The north and north-west of France bear a great
+  resemblance, both in temperature and produce, to the south of England,
+  rain occurring frequently, and the country being consequently suited
+  for pasture. In the interior the rains are less frequent, but when
+  they occur are far more heavy, so that there is much less difference
+  in the annual rainfall there as compared with the rest of the country
+  than in the number of rainy days. The annual rainfall for the whole of
+  France averages about 32 in. The precipitation is greatest on the
+  Atlantic seaboard and in the elevated regions of the interior. It
+  attains over 60 in. in the basin of the Adour (71 in. at the western
+  extremity of the Pyrenees), and nearly as much in the Vosges, Morvan,
+  Cévennes and parts of the central plateau. The zone of level country
+  extending from Reims and Troyes to Angers and Poitiers, with the
+  exception of the Loire valley and the Brie, receives less than 24 in.
+  of rain annually (Paris about 23 in.), as also does the Mediterranean
+  coast west of Marseilles. The prevailing winds, mild and humid, are
+  west winds from the Atlantic; continental climatic influence makes
+  itself felt in the east wind, which is frequent in winter and in the
+  east of France, while the _mistral_, a violent wind from the
+  north-west, is characteristic of the Mediterranean region. The local
+  climates of France may be grouped under the following seven
+  designations: (1) Sequan climate, characterizing the Seine basin and
+  northern France, with a mean temperature of 50° F., the winters being
+  cold, the summers mild; (2) Breton climate, with a mean temperature of
+  51.8° F., the winters being mild, the summers temperate, it is
+  characterized by west and south-west winds and frequent fine rains;
+  (3) Girondin climate (characterizing Bordeaux, Agen, Pau, &c.), having
+  a mean of 53.6° F., with mild winters and hot summers, the prevailing
+  wind is from the north-west, the average rainfall about 28 in.; (4)
+  Auvergne climate, comprising the Cévennes, central plateau, Clermont,
+  Limoges and Rodez, mean temperature 51.8° F., with cold winters and
+  hot summers; (5) Vosges climate (comprehending Epinal, Mézières and
+  Nancy), having a mean of 48.2° F., with long and severe winters and
+  hot and rainy summers; (6) Rhône climate (experienced by Lyons,
+  Chalon, Mâcon, Grenoble) mean temperature 51.8° F., with cold and wet
+  winters and hot summers, the prevailing winds are north and south; (7)
+  Mediterranean climate, ruling at Valence, Nîmes, Nice and Marseilles,
+  mean temperature, 57.5° F., with mild winters and hot and almost
+  rainless summers.
+
+  _Flora and Fauna._--The flora of southern France and the Mediterranean
+  is distinct from that of the rest of the country, which does not
+  differ in vegetation from western Europe generally. Evergreens
+  predominate in the south, where grow subtropical plants such as the
+  myrtle, arbutus, laurel, holm-oak, olive and fig; varieties of the
+  same kind are also found on the Atlantic coast (as far north as the
+  Cotentin), where the humidity and mildness of the climate favour their
+  growth. The orange, date-palm and eucalyptus have been acclimatized on
+  the coast of Provence and the Riviera. Other trees of southern France
+  are the cork-oak and the Aleppo and maritime pines. In north and
+  central France the chief trees are the oak, the beech, rare south of
+  the Loire, and the hornbeam; less important varieties are the birch,
+  poplar, ash, elm and walnut. The chestnut covers considerable areas in
+  Périgord, Limousin and Béarn; resinous trees (firs, pines, larches,
+  &c.) form fine forests in the Vosges and Jura.
+
+  The indigenous fauna include the bear, now very rare but still found
+  in the Alps and Pyrenees, the wolf, harbouring chiefly in the Cévennes
+  and Vosges, but in continually decreasing areas; the fox, marten,
+  badger, weasel, otter, the beaver in the extreme south of the Rhône
+  valley, and in the Alps the marmot; the red deer and roe deer are
+  preserved in many of the forests, and the wild boar is found in
+  several districts; the chamois and wild goat survive in the Pyrenees
+  and Alps. Hares, rabbits and squirrels are common. Among birds of prey
+  may be mentioned the eagle and various species of hawk, and among
+  game-birds the partridge and pheasant. The reptiles include the
+  ringed-snake, slow-worm, viper and lizard.     (R. Tr.)
+
+  _Geology._--Many years ago it was pointed out by Élíe de Beaumont and
+  Dufrénoy that the Jurassic rocks of France form upon the map an
+  incomplete figure of 8. Within the northern circle of the 8 lie the
+  Mesozoic and Tertiary beds of the Paris basin, dipping inwards; within
+  the southern circle lie the ancient rocks of the Central Plateau, from
+  which the later beds dip outwards. Outside the northern circle lie on
+  the west the folded Palaeozoic rocks of Brittany, and on the north the
+  Palaeozoic _massif_ of the Ardennes. Outside the southern circle lie
+  on the west the Mesozoic and Tertiary beds of the basin of the
+  Garonne, with the Pyrenees beyond, and on the east the Mesozoic and
+  Tertiary beds of the valley of the Rhône, with the Alps beyond.
+
+  In the geological history of France there have been two great periods
+  of folding since Archean times. The first of these occurred towards
+  the close of the Palaeozoic era, when a great mountain system was
+  raised in the north running approximately from E. to W., and another
+  chain arose in the south, running from S.W. to N.E. Of the former the
+  remnants are now seen in Brittany and the Ardennes; of the latter the
+  Cévennes and the Montagne Noire are the last traces visible on the
+  surface. The second great folding took place in Tertiary times, and to
+  it was due the final elevation of the Jura and the Western Alps and of
+  the Pyrenees. No great mountain chain was ever raised by a single
+  effort, and folding went on to some extent in other periods besides
+  those mentioned. There were, moreover, other and broader oscillations
+  which raised or lowered extensive areas without much crumpling of the
+  strata, and to these are due some of the most important breaks in the
+  geological series.
+
+  The oldest rocks, the gneisses and schists of the Archean period, form
+  nearly the whole of the Central Plateau, and are also exposed in the
+  axes of the folds in Brittany. The Central Plateau has probably been a
+  land mass ever since this period, but the rest of the country was
+  flooded by the Palaeozoic sea. The earlier deposits of that sea now
+  rise to the surface in Brittany, the Ardennes, the Montagne Noire and
+  the Cévennes, and in all these regions they are intensely folded.
+  Towards the close of the Palaeozoic era France had become a part of a
+  great continent; in the north the Coal Measures of the Boulonnais and
+  the Nord were laid down in direct connexion with those of Belgium and
+  England, while in the Central Plateau the Coal Measures were deposited
+  in isolated and scattered basins. The Permian and Triassic deposits
+  were also, for the most part, of continental origin; but with the
+  formation of the Rhaetic beds the sea again began to spread, and
+  throughout the greater part of the Jurassic period it covered nearly
+  the whole of the country except the Central Plateau, Brittany and the
+  Ardennes. Towards the end of the period, however, during the
+  deposition of the Portlandian beds, the sea again retreated, and in
+  the early part of the Cretaceous period was limited (in France) to the
+  catchment basins of the Saône and Rhône--in the Paris basin the
+  contemporaneous deposits were chiefly estuarine and were confined to
+  the northern and eastern rim. Beginning with the Aptian and Albian the
+  sea again gradually spread over the country and attained its maximum
+  in the early part of the Senonian epoch, when once more the ancient
+  massifs of the Central Plateau, Brittany and the Ardennes, alone rose
+  above the waves. There was still, however, a well-marked difference
+  between the deposits of the northern and the southern parts of France,
+  the former consisting of chalk, as in England, and the latter of
+  sandstones and limestones with Hippurites. During the later part of
+  the Cretaceous period the sea gradually retreated and left the whole
+  country dry.
+
+  During the Tertiary period arms of the sea spread into France--in the
+  Paris basin from the north, in the basins of the Loire and the Garonne
+  from the west, and in the Rhône area from the south. The changes,
+  however, were too numerous and complex to be dealt with here.
+
+  [Illustration: Geologic Map.]
+
+  In France, as in Great Britain, volcanic eruptions occurred during
+  several of the Palaeozoic periods, but during the Mesozoic era the
+  country was free from outbursts, except in the regions of the Alps and
+  Pyrenees. In Tertiary times the Central Plateau was the theatre of
+  great volcanic activity from the Miocene to the Pleistocene periods,
+  and many of the volcanoes remain as nearly perfect cones to the
+  present day. The rocks are mainly basalts and andesites, together with
+  trachytes and phonolites, and some of the basaltic flows are of
+  enormous extent.
+
+  On the geology of France see the classic _Explication de la carte
+  géologique de la France_ (Paris, vol. i. 1841, vol. ii. 1848), by
+  Dufrénoy and Élie de Beaumont; a more modern account, with full
+  references, is given by A. de Lapparent, _Traité de géologie_ (Paris,
+  1906).     (J. A. H.)
+
+
+_Population._
+
+The French nation is formed of many different elements. Iberian
+influence in the south-west, Ligurian on the shores of the
+Mediterranean, Germanic immigrations from east of the Rhine and
+Scandinavian immigrations in the north-west have tended to produce
+ethnographical diversities which ease of intercommunication and other
+modern conditions have failed to obliterate. The so-called Celtic type,
+exemplified by individuals of rather less than average height,
+brown-haired and brachycephalic, is the fundamental element in the
+nation and peoples the region between the Seine and the Garonne; in
+southern France a different type, dolichocephalic, short and with black
+hair and eyes, predominates. The tall, fair and blue-eyed individuals
+who are found to the north-east of the Seine and in Normandy appear to
+be nearer in race to the Scandinavian and Germanic invaders; a tall and
+darker type with long faces and aquiline noses occurs in some parts of
+Franche-Comté and Champagne, the Vosges and the Perche. From the Celts
+has been derived the gay, brilliant and adventurous temperament easily
+moved to extremes of enthusiasm and depression, which combined with
+logical and organizing faculties of a high order, the heritage from the
+Latin domination, and with the industry, frugality and love of the soil
+natural in an agricultural people go to make up the national character.
+The Bretons, who most nearly represent the Celts, and the Basques, who
+inhabit parts of the western versant of the Pyrenees, have preserved
+their distinctive languages and customs, and are ethnically the most
+interesting sections of the nation; the Flemings of French Flanders
+where Flemish is still spoken are also racially distinct. The
+immigration of Belgians into the northern departments and of Italians
+into those of the south-east exercise a constant modifying influence on
+the local populations.
+
+[Illustration: Map of France.]
+
+During the 19th century the population of France increased to a less
+extent than that of any other country (except Ireland) for which
+definite data exist, and during the last twenty years of that period it
+was little more than stationary. The following table exhibits the rate
+of increase as indicated by the censuses from 1876 to 1906.
+
+            Population.
+
+  1876      36,905,788
+  1881      37,672,048
+  1886      38,218,903
+  1891      38,342,948
+  1896      38,517,975
+  1901      38,961,945
+  1906      39,252,245
+
+Thus the rate of increase during the decade 1891-1901 was .16%, whereas
+during the same period the population of England increased 1.08%. The
+birth-rate markedly decreased during the 19th century; despite an
+increase of population between 1801 and 1901 amounting to 40%, the
+number of births in the former was 904,000, as against 857,000 in the
+latter year, the diminution being accompanied by a decrease in the
+annual number of deaths.[3] In the following table the decrease in
+births and deaths for the decennial periods during the thirty years
+ending 1900 are compared.
+
+                       _Births._
+
+  1871-1880     935,000 or 25.4 per 1000
+  1881-1890     909,000 "  23.9     "
+  1891-1900     853,000 "  22.2     "
+
+                       _Deaths._
+
+  1871-1880     870,900 or 23.7 per 1000
+  1881-1890     841,700 "  22.1     "
+  1891-1900     829,000 "  21.5     "
+
+About two-thirds of the French departments, comprising a large
+proportion of those situated in mountainous districts and in the basin
+of the Garonne, where the birth-rate is especially feeble, show a
+decrease in population. Those which show an increase usually possess
+large centres of industry and are already thickly populated, e.g. Seine
+and Pas-de-Calais. In most departments the principal cause of decrease
+of population is the attraction of great centres. The average density of
+population in France is about 190 to the square mile, the tendency being
+for the large towns to increase at the expense of the small towns as
+well as the rural communities. In 1901 37% of the population lived in
+centres containing more than 2000 inhabitants, whereas in 1861 the
+proportion was 28%. Besides the industrial districts the most thickly
+populated regions include the coast of the department of
+Seine-Inférieure and Brittany, the wine-growing region of the Bordelais
+and the Riviera.[4]
+
+In the quinquennial period 1901-1905, out of the total number of births
+the number of illegitimate births to every 1000 inhabitants was 2.0, as
+compared with 2.1 in the four preceding periods of like duration.
+
+In 1906 the number of foreigners in France was 1,009,415 as compared
+with 1,027,491 in 1896 and 1,115,214 in 1886. The departments with the
+largest population of foreigners were Nord (191,678), in which there is
+a large proportion of Belgians; Bouches-du-Rhône (123,497),
+Alpes-Maritimes (93,554), Var (47,475), Italians being numerous in these
+three departments; Seine (153,647), Meurthe-et-Moselle (44,595),
+Pas-de-Calais (21,436) and Ardennes (21,401).
+
+The following table gives the area in square miles of each of the
+eighty-seven departments with its population according to the census
+returns of 1886, 1896 and 1906:
+
+  +-----------------------+--------+-----------+-----------------------+
+  |                       |  Area  |           |      Population.      |
+  |     Departments.      | sq. m. +-----------+-----------+-----------+
+  |                       |        |   1886.   |   1896.   |   1906.   |
+  +-----------------------+--------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+  | Ain                   |  2,249 |   364,408 |   351,569 |   345,856 |
+  | Aisne                 |  2,867 |   555,925 |   541,613 |   534,495 |
+  | Allier                |  2,849 |   424,582 |   424,378 |   417,961 |
+  | Alpes-Maritimes       |  1,442 |   238,057 |   265,155 |   334,007 |
+  | Ardèche               |  2,145 |   375,472 |   363,501 |   347,140 |
+  | Ardennes              |  2,028 |   332,759 |   318,865 |   317,505 |
+  | Ariège                |  1,893 |   237,619 |   219,641 |   205,684 |
+  | Aube                  |  2,326 |   257,374 |   251,435 |   243,670 |
+  | Aude                  |  2,448 |   332,080 |   310,513 |   308,327 |
+  | Aveyron               |  3,386 |   415,826 |   389,464 |   377,299 |
+  | Basses-Alpes          |  2,698 |   129,494 |   118,142 |   113,126 |
+  | Basses-Pyrénées       |  2,977 |   432,999 |   423,572 |   426,817 |
+  | Belfort, Territoire de|    235 |    79,758 |    88,047 |    95,421 |
+  | Bouches-du-Rhône      |  2,026 |   604,857 |   673,820 |   765,918 |
+  | Calvados              |  2,197 |   437,267 |   417,176 |   403,431 |
+  | Cantal                |  2,231 |   241,742 |   234,382 |   228,690 |
+  | Charente              |  2,305 |   366,408 |   356,236 |   351,733 |
+  | Charente-Inférieure   |  2,791 |   462,803 |   453,455 |   453,793 |
+  | Cher                  |  2,819 |   355,349 |   347,725 |   343,484 |
+  | Corrèze               |  2,273 |   326,494 |   322,393 |   317,430 |
+  | Corse (Corsica)       |  3,367 |   278,501 |   290,168 |   291,160 |
+  | Côte-d'Or             |  3,392 |   381,574 |   368,168 |   357,959 |
+  | Côtes-du-Nord         |  2,786 |   628,256 |   616,074 |   611,506 |
+  | Creuse                |  2,164 |   284,942 |   279,366 |   274,094 |
+  | Deux-Sèvres           |  2,337 |   353,766 |   346,694 |   339,466 |
+  | Dordogne              |  3,561 |   492,205 |   464,822 |   447,052 |
+  | Doubs                 |  2,030 |   310,963 |   302,046 |   298,438 |
+  | Drôme                 |  2,533 |   314,615 |   303,491 |   297,270 |
+  | Eure                  |  2,330 |   358,829 |   340,652 |   330,140 |
+  | Eure-et-Loir          |  2,293 |   283,719 |   280,469 |   273,823 |
+  | Finistère             |  2,713 |   707,820 |   739,648 |   795,103 |
+  | Gard                  |  2,270 |   417,099 |   416,036 |   421,166 |
+  | Gers                  |  2,428 |   274,391 |   250,472 |   231,088 |
+  | Gironde               |  4,140 |   775,845 |   809,902 |   823,925 |
+  | Haute-Garonne         |  2,458 |   481,169 |   459,377 |   442,065 |
+  | Haute-Loire           |  1,931 |   320,063 |   316,699 |   314,770 |
+  | Haute-Marne           |  2,415 |   247,781 |   232,057 |   221,724 |
+  | Hautes-Alpes          |  2,178 |   122,924 |   113,229 |   107,498 |
+  | Haute-Saône           |  2,075 |   290,954 |   272,891 |   263,890 |
+  | Haute-Savoie          |  1,775 |   275,018 |   265,872 |   260,617 |
+  | Hautes-Pyrénées       |  1,750 |   234,825 |   218,973 |   209,397 |
+  | Haute-Vienne          |  2,144 |   363,182 |   375,724 |   385,732 |
+  | Hérault               |  2,403 |   439,044 |   469,684 |   482,799 |
+  | Ille-et-Vilaine       |  2,699 |   621,384 |   622,039 |   611,805 |
+  | Indre                 |  2,666 |   296,147 |   289,206 |   290,216 |
+  | Indre-et-Loire        |  2,377 |   340,921 |   337,064 |   337,916 |
+  | Isère                 |  3,179 |   581,680 |   568,933 |   562,315 |
+  | Jura                  |  1,951 |   281,292 |   266,143 |   257,725 |
+  | Landes                |  3,615 |   302,266 |   292,884 |   293,397 |
+  | Loir-et-Cher          |  2,479 |   279,214 |   278,153 |   276,019 |
+  | Loire                 |  1,853 |   603,384 |   625,336 |   643,943 |
+  | Loire-Inférieure      |  2,694 |   643,884 |   646,172 |   666,748 |
+  | Loiret                |  2,629 |   374,875 |   371,019 |   364,999 |
+  | Lot                   |  2,017 |   271,514 |   240,403 |   216,611 |
+  | Lot-et-Garonne        |  2,079 |   307,437 |   286,377 |   274,610 |
+  | Lozère                |  1,999 |   141,264 |   132,151 |   128,016 |
+  | Maine-et-Loire        |  2,706 |   527,680 |   514,870 |   513,490 |
+  | Manche                |  2,475 |   520,865 |   500,052 |   487,443 |
+  | Marne                 |  3,167 |   429,494 |   439,577 |   434,157 |
+  | Mayenne               |  2,012 |   340,063 |   321,187 |   305,457 |
+  | Meurthe-et-Moselle    |  2,038 |   431,693 |   466,417 |   517,508 |
+  | Meuse                 |  2,409 |   291,971 |   290,384 |   280,220 |
+  | Morbihan              |  2,738 |   535,256 |   552,028 |   573,152 |
+  | Nièvre                |  2,659 |   347,645 |   333,899 |   313,972 |
+  | Nord                  |  2,229 | 1,670,184 | 1,811,868 | 1,895,861 |
+  | Oise                  |  2,272 |   403,146 |   404,511 |   410,049 |
+  | Orne                  |  2,372 |   367,248 |   339,162 |   315,993 |
+  | Pas-de-Calais         |  2,606 |   853,526 |   906,249 | 1,012,466 |
+  | Puy-de-Dôme           |  3,094 |   570,964 |   555,078 |   535,419 |
+  | Pyrénées-Orientales   |  1,599 |   211,187 |   208,387 |   213,171 |
+  | Rhône                 |  1,104 |  772,912  |   839,329 |   858,907 |
+  | Saône-et-Loire        |  3,330 |  625,885  |   621,237 |   613,377 |
+  | Sarthe                |  2,410 |  436,111  |   425,077 |   421,470 |
+  | Savoie                |  2,389 |  267,428  |   259,790 |   253,297 |
+  | Seine                 |    185 | 2,961,089 | 3,340,514 | 3,848,618 |
+  | Seine-Inférieure      |  2,448 |   833,386 |   837,824 |   863,879 |
+  | Seine-et-Marne        |  2,289 |   355,136 |   359,044 |   361,939 |
+  | Seine-et-Oise         |  2,184 |   618,089 |   669,098 |   749,753 |
+  | Somme                 |  2,423 |   548,982 |   543,279 |   532,567 |
+  | Tarn                  |  2,231 |   358,757 |   339,827 |   330,533 |
+  | Tarn-et-Garonne       |  1,440 |   214,046 |   200,390 |   188,553 |
+  | Var                   |  2,325 |   283,689 |   309,191 |   324,638 |
+  | Vaucluse              |  1,381 |   241,787 |   236,313 |   239,178 |
+  | Vendée                |  2,708 |   434,808 |   441,735 |   442,777 |
+  | Vienne                |  2,719 |   342,785 |   338,114 |   333,621 |
+  | Vosges                |  2,279 |   413,707 |   421,412 |   429,812 |
+  | Yonne                 |  2,880 |   355,364 |   332,656 |   315,199 |
+  +-----------------------+--------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+  |           Total       |207,076 |38,218,903 |38,517,975 |39,252,245 |
+  +-----------------------+--------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+
+The French census uses the commune as the basis of its returns, and
+employs the following classifications in respect to communal population:
+(1) Total communal population. (2) _Population comptée à part_, which
+includes soldiers and sailors, inmates of prisons, asylums, schools,
+members of religious communities, and workmen temporarily engaged in
+public works. (3) Total _municipal_ population, i.e. communal population
+minus the _population comptée à part_. (4) _Population municipale
+agglomérée au chef-lieu de la commune_, which embraces the urban
+population as opposed to the rural population. The following tables,
+showing the growth of the largest towns in France, are drawn up on the
+basis of the fourth classification, which is used throughout this work
+in the articles on French towns, except where otherwise stated.
+
+  In 1906 there were in France twelve towns with a population of over
+  100,000 inhabitants. Their growth or decrease from 1886 to 1906 is
+  shown in the following table:
+
+    +------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    |            |   1886.  |   1896.  |   1906.  |
+    +------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    | Paris      |2,294,108 |2,481,223 |2,711,931 |
+    | Lyons      |  344,124 |  398,867 |  430,186 |
+    | Marseilles |  249,938 |  332,515 |  421,116 |
+    | Bordeaux   |  225,281 |  239,806 |  237,707 |
+    | Lille      |  143,135 |  160,723 |  196,624 |
+    | St Etienne |  103,229 |  120,300 |  130,940 |
+    | Le Havre   |  109,199 |  117,009 |  129,403 |
+    | Toulouse   |  123,040 |  124,187 |  125,856 |
+    | Roubaix    |   89,781 |  113,899 |  119,955 |
+    | Nantes     |  110,638 |  107,137 |  118,244 |
+    | Rouen      |  100,043 |  106,825 |  111,402 |
+    | Reims      |   91,130 |   99,001 |  102,800 |
+    +------------+----------+----------+----------+
+
+  In the same years the following eighteen towns, now numbering from
+  50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, each had:
+
+    +------------+--------+--------+--------+
+    |            |  1886. |  1896. |  1906. |
+    +------------+--------+--------+--------+
+    | Nice       | 61,464 | 69,140 | 99,556 |
+    | Nancy      | 69,463 | 83,668 | 98,302 |
+    | Toulon     | 53,941 | 70,843 | 87,997 |
+    | Amiens     | 68,177 | 74,808 | 78,407 |
+    | Limoges    | 56,699 | 64,718 | 75,906 |
+    | Angers     | 65,152 | 69,484 | 73,585 |
+    | Brest      | 59,352 | 64,144 | 71,163 |
+    | Nîmes      | 62,198 | 66,905 | 70,708 |
+    | Montpellier| 45,930 | 62,717 | 65,983 |
+    | Dijon      | 50,684 | 58,355 | 65,516 |
+    | Tourcoing  | 41,183 | 55,705 | 62,694 |
+    | Rennes     | 52,614 | 57,249 | 62,024 |
+    | Tours      | 51,467 | 56,706 | 61,507 |
+    | Calais     | 52,839 | 50,818 | 59,623 |
+    | Grenoble   | 43,260 | 50,084 | 58,641 |
+    | Orléans    | 51,208 | 56,915 | 57,544 |
+    | Le Mans    | 46,991 | 49,665 | 54,907 |
+    | Troyes     | 44,864 | 50,676 | 51,228 |
+    +------------+--------+--------+--------+
+
+  Of the population in 1901, 18,916,889 were males and 19,533,899
+  females, an excess of females over males of 617,010, i.e. 1.6% or
+  about 508 females to every 492 males. In 1881 the proportion was 501
+  females to every 499 males, since when the disparity has been slightly
+  more marked at every census. Below is a list of the departments in
+  which the number of women to every thousand men was (1) greatest and
+  (2) least.
+
+              (1)          |           (2)
+                           |
+    Creuse           1131  |  Belfort            886
+    Côtes-du-Nord    1117  |  Basses-Alpes       893
+    Seine            1103  |  Var                894
+    Calvados         1100  |  Meuse              905
+    Cantal           1098  |  Hautes-Alpes       908
+    Seine-Inférieure 1084  |  Meurthe-et-Moselle 918
+    Basses-Pyrénées  1080  |  Haute-Savoie       947
+
+  Departments from which the adult males emigrate regularly either to
+  sea or to seek employment in towns tend to fall under the first head,
+  those in which large bodies of troops are stationed under the second.
+
+  The annual number of emigrants from France is small. The Basques of
+  Basses-Pyrénées go in considerable numbers to the Argentine Republic,
+  the inhabitants of Basses Alpes to Mexico and the United States, and
+  there are important French colonies in Algeria and Tunisia.
+
+  The following table shows the distribution of the active population of
+  France according to their occupations in 1901.
+
+    +--------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+    |        Occupation        |   Males.  |  Females. |   Total.  |
+    +--------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+    | Forestry and agriculture | 5,517,617 | 2,658,952 | 8,176,569 |
+    | Manufacturing industries | 3,695,213 | 2,124,642 | 5,819,855 |
+    | Trade                    | 1,132,621 |   689,999 | 1,822,620 |
+    | Domestic service         |   223,861 |   791,176 | 1,015,037 |
+    | Transport                |   617,849 |   212,794 |   830,643 |
+    | Public service           | 1,157,835 |   139,734 | 1,297,569 |
+    | Liberal professions      |   226,561 |   173,278 |   399,839 |
+    | Mining, quarries         |   261,320 |     5,031 |   266,351 |
+    | Fishing                  |    63,372 |     4,400 |    67,772 |
+    | Unclassed                |    14,316 |     4,504 |    18,820 |
+    +--------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+    |       Grand Total        |12,910,565 | 6,804,510 |19,715,075 |
+    +--------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+
+
+_Religion._
+
+Great alterations were made with regard to religious matters in France
+by a law of December 1905, supplemented by a law of January 1907 (see
+below, _Law and Institutions_). Before that time three religions
+(_cultes_) were recognized and supported by the state--the Roman
+Catholic, the Protestant (subdivided into the Reformed and Lutheran) and
+the Hebrew. In Algeria the Mahommedan religion received similar
+recognition. By the law of 1905 all the churches ceased to be recognized
+or supported by the state and became entirely separated therefrom, while
+the adherents of all creeds were permitted to form associations for
+public worship (_associations cultuelles_), upon which the expenses of
+maintenance were from that time to devolve. The state, the departments,
+and the communes were thus relieved from the payment of salaries and
+grants to religious bodies, an item of expenditure which amounted in the
+last year of the old system to £1,101,000 paid by the state and £302,200
+contributed by the departments and communes. Before these alterations
+the relations between the state and the Roman Catholic communion, by far
+the largest and most important in France, were chiefly regulated by the
+provisions of the Concordat of 1801, concluded between the first consul,
+Bonaparte, and Pope Pius VII. and by other measures passed in 1802.
+
+  France is divided into provinces and dioceses as follows:
+
+   Archbishoprics.              Bishoprics.
+
+    PARIS       Chartres, Meaux, Orléans, Blois, Versailles.
+    AIX         Marseilles, Fréjus, Digne, Gap, Nice, Ajaccio.
+    ALBI        Rodez, Cahors, Mende, Perpignan.
+    AUCH        Aire, Tarbes, Bayonne.
+    AVIGNON     Nîmes, Valence, Viviers, Montpellier.
+    BESANÇON    Verdun, Bellay, St Dié, Nancy.
+    BORDEAUX    Agen, Angoulême, Poitiers, Périgueux, La Rochelle, Luçon.
+    BOURGES     Clermont, Limoges, Le Puy, Tulle, St Flour.
+    CAMBRAI     Arras.
+    CHAMBÉRY    Annecy, Tarentaise, St Jean-de-Maurienne.
+    LYONS       Autun, Langres, Dijon, St Claude, Grenoble.
+    REIMS       Soissons, Châlons-sur-Marne, Beauvais, Amiens.
+    RENNES      Quimper, Vannes, St Brieuc.
+    ROUEN       Bayeux, Evreux, Sées, Coutances.
+    SENS        Troyes, Nevers, Moulins.
+    TOULOUSE    Montauban, Pamiers, Carcassonne.
+    TOURS       Le Mans, Angers, Nantes, Laval.
+
+  The dioceses are divided into parishes each under a parish priest
+  known as a _curé_ or _desservant_ (incumbent). The bishops and
+  archbishops, formerly nominated by the government and canonically
+  confirmed by the pope, are now chosen by the latter. The appointment
+  of curés rested with the bishops and had to be confirmed by the
+  government, but this confirmation is now dispensed with. The
+  archbishops used to receive an annual salary of £600 each and the
+  bishops £400.
+
+  The archbishops and bishops are assisted by vicars-general (at
+  salaries previously ranging from £100 to £180), and to each cathedral
+  is attached a chapter of canons. A cure, in addition to his regular
+  salary, received fees for baptisms, marriages, funerals and special
+  masses, and had the benefit of a free house called a _presbytère_. The
+  total personnel of state-paid Roman Catholic clergy amounted in 1903
+  to 36,169. The Roman priests are drawn from the seminaries,
+  established by the church for the education of young men intending to
+  join its ranks, and divided into lower and higher seminaries (_grands
+  et petits séminaires_), the latter giving the same class of
+  instruction as the _lycées_.
+
+  The number of Protestants may be estimated at about 600,000 and the
+  Jews at about 70,000. The greatest number of Jews is to be found at
+  Paris, Lyons and Bordeaux, while the departments of the centre and of
+  the south along the range of the Cévennes, where Calvinism flourishes,
+  are the principal Protestant localities, Nîmes being the most
+  important centre. Considerable sprinklings of Protestants are also to
+  be found in the two Charentes, in Dauphiné, in Paris and in
+  Franche-Comté. The two Protestant bodies used to cost the state about
+  £60,000 a year and the Jewish Church about £6000.
+
+  Both Protestant churches have a parochial organization and a
+  presbyterian form of church government. In the Reformed Church (far
+  the more numerous of the two bodies) each parish has a council of
+  presbyters, consisting of the pastor and lay-members elected by the
+  congregation. Several parishes form a consistorial circumscription,
+  which has a consistorial council consisting of the council of
+  presbyters of the chief town of the circumscription, the pastor and
+  one delegate of the council of presbyters from each parish and other
+  elected members. There are 103 circumscriptions (including Algeria),
+  which are grouped into 21 provincial synods composed of a pastor and
+  lay delegate from each consistory. All the more important questions of
+  church discipline and all decisions regulating the doctrine and
+  practice of the church are dealt with by the synods. At the head of
+  the whole organization is a General Synod, sitting at Paris. The
+  organization of the Lutheran Church (_Église de la confession
+  d'Augsburg_) is broadly similar. Its consistories are grouped into two
+  special synods, one at Paris and one at Montbéliard (for the
+  department of Doubs and Haute-Saône and the territory of Belfort,
+  where the churches of this denomination are principally situated). It
+  also has a general synod--composed of 2 inspectors,[5] 5 pastors
+  elected by the synod of Paris, and 6 by that of Montbéliard, 22 laymen
+  and a delegate of the theological faculty at Paris--which holds
+  periodical meetings and is represented in its relations with the
+  government by a permanent executive commission.
+
+  The Jewish parishes, called synagogues, are grouped into departmental
+  consistories (Paris, Bordeaux, Nancy, Marseilles, Bayonne, Lille,
+  Vesoul, Besançon and three in Algeria). Each synagogue is served by a
+  rabbi assisted by an officiating minister, and in each consistory is a
+  grand rabbi. At Paris is the central consistory, controlled by the
+  government and presided over by the supreme grand rabbi.
+
+
+_Agriculture._
+
+Of the population of France some 17,000,000 depend upon agriculture for
+their livelihood, though only about 6,500,000 are engaged in work on the
+land. The cultivable land of the country occupies some 195,000 sq. m. or
+about 94% of the total area; of this 171,000 sq. m. are cultivated.
+There are besides 12,300 sq. m. of uncultivable area covered by lakes,
+rivers, towns, &c. Only the roughest estimate is possible as to the
+sizes of holdings, but in general terms it may be said that about 3
+million persons are proprietors of holdings under 25 acres in extent
+amounting to between 15 and 20% of the cultivated area, the rest being
+owned by some 750,000 proprietors, of whom 150,000 possess half the area
+in holdings averaging 400 acres in extent. About 80% of holdings
+(amounting to about 60% of the cultivated area) are cultivated by the
+proprietor; of the rest approximately 13% are let on lease and 7% are
+worked on the system known as _métayage_ (q.v.).
+
+The capital value of land, which greatly decreased during the last
+twenty years of the 19th century, is estimated at £3,120,000,000, and
+that of stock, buildings, implements, &c., at £340,000,000. The value
+per acre of land, which exceeds £48 in the departments of Seine, Rhône
+and those fringing the north-west coast from Nord to Manche inclusive,
+is on the average about £29, though it drops to £16 and less in
+Morbihan, Landes, Basses-Pyrénées, and parts of the Alps and the central
+plateau.
+
+  While wheat and wine constitute the staples of French agriculture, its
+  distinguishing characteristic is the variety of its products.
+  _Cereals_ occupy about one-third of the cultivated area. For the
+  production of _wheat_, in respect of which France is self-supporting,
+  French Flanders, the Seine basin, notably the Beauce and the Brie, and
+  the regions bordering on the lower course of the Loire and the upper
+  course of the Garonne, are the chief areas. Rye, on the other hand,
+  one of the least valuable of the cereals, is grown chiefly in the poor
+  agricultural territories of the central plateau and western Brittany.
+  Buckwheat is cultivated mainly in Brittany. Oats and barley are
+  generally cultivated, the former more especially in the Parisian
+  region, the latter in Mayenne and one or two of the neighbouring
+  departments. Meslin, a mixture of wheat and rye, is produced in the
+  great majority of French departments, but to a marked extent in the
+  basin of the Sarthe. Maize covers considerable areas in Landes,
+  Basses-Pyrénées and other south-western departments.
+
+    +----------+---------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
+    |          |   Average Acreage   |  Average Production   |    Average Yield    |
+    |          |(Thousands of Acres).|(Thousands of Bushels).| per Acre (Bushels). |
+    |          +----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------+
+    |          |1886-1895.|1896-1905.| 1886-1895.| 1896-1905.|1886-1895.|1896-1905.|
+    +----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------+
+    | Wheat    |  17,004  |  16,580  |  294,564  |  317,707  |   17.3   |   19.1   |
+    | Meslin   |     720  |     491  |   12,193  |    8,826  |   16.9   |   17.0   |
+    | Rye      |   3,888  |   3,439  |   64,651  |   56,612  |   16.6   |   16.4   |
+    | Barley   |   2,303  |   1,887  |   47,197  |   41,066  |   20.4   |   21.0   |
+    | Oats     |   9,507  |   9,601  |  240,082  |  253,799  |   25.2   |   26.4   |
+    | Buckwheat|   1,484  |   1,392  |   26,345  |   23,136  |   17.7   |   16.6   |
+    | Maize    |   1,391  |   1,330  |   25,723  |   24,459  |   18.4   |   18.4   |
+    +----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------+
+
+  _Forage Crops._--The mangold-wurzel, occupying four times the acreage
+  of swedes and turnips, is by far the chief root-crop in France. It is
+  grown largely in the departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais and in
+  those of the Seine basin, the southern limit of its cultivation being
+  roughly a line drawn from Bordeaux to Lyons. The average area occupied
+  by it in the years from 1896 to 1905 was 1,043,000 acres, the total
+  average production being 262,364,000 cwt. and the average production
+  per acre 10½ tons. Clover, lucerne and sainfoin make up the bulk of
+  artificial pasturage, while vetches, crimson clover and cabbage are
+  the other chief forage crops.
+
+  _Vegetables.--Potatoes_ are not a special product of any region,
+  though grown in great quantities in the Bresse and the Vosges. Early
+  potatoes and other vegetables (_primeurs_) are largely cultivated in
+  the districts bordering the English Channel. Market-gardening is an
+  important industry in the regions round Paris, Amiens and Angers, as
+  it is round Toulouse, Montauban, Avignon and in southern France
+  generally. The market-gardeners of Paris and its vicinity have a high
+  reputation for skill in the forcing of early vegetables under glass.
+
+    _Potatoes: Decennial Averages._
+
+    +-----------+-----------+------------+-------------+
+    |           |           |            |Average Yield|
+    |           |  Acreage. | Total Yield|  per Acre   |
+    |           |           |  (Tons).   |   (Tons).   |
+    +-----------+-----------+------------+-------------+
+    | 1886-1895 | 3,690,000 | 11,150,000 |    3.02     |
+    | 1896-1905 | 3,735,000 | 11,594,000 |    3.1      |
+    +-----------+-----------+------------+-------------+
+
+  _Industrial Plants._[6]--The manufacture of sugar from beetroot, owing
+  to the increased use of sugar, became highly important during the
+  latter half of the 19th century, the industry both of cultivation and
+  manufacture being concentrated in the northern departments of Aisne,
+  Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Somme and Oise, the first named supplying nearly
+  a quarter of the whole amount produced in France.
+
+  _Flax and hemp_ showed a decreasing acreage from 1881 onwards. Flax is
+  cultivated chiefly in the northern departments of Nord,
+  Seine-Inférieure, Pas-de-Calais, Côtes-du-Nord, hemp in Sarthe,
+  Morbihan and Maine-et-Loire.
+
+  _Colza_, grown chiefly in the lower basin of the Seine
+  (Seine-Inférieure and Eure), is the most important of the
+  oil-producing plants, all of which show a diminishing acreage. The
+  three principal regions for the production of tobacco are the basin of
+  the Garonne (Lot-et-Garonne, Dordogne, Lot and Gironde), the basin of
+  the Isère (Isère and Savoie) and the department of Pas-de-Calais. The
+  state controls its cultivation, which is allowed only in a limited
+  number of departments. Hops cover only about 7000 acres, being almost
+  confined to the departments of Nord, Côte d'Or and Meurthe-et-Moselle.
+
+    _Decennial Averages 1896-1905._
+
+    +------------+----------+--------------+---------------+
+    |            |          |              | Average Yield |
+    |            | Acreage. |  Production  |   per Acre    |
+    |            |          |    (Tons).   |    (Tons).    |
+    +------------+----------+--------------+---------------+
+    | Sugar beet | 672,000  | 6,868,000    |     10.2      |
+    | Hemp       |  64,856  |    18,451[7] |       .28[7]  |
+    | Flax       |  57,893  |    17,857[7] |       .30[7]  |
+    | Colza      | 102,454  |    47,697    |       .46     |
+    | Tobacco    |  41,564  |    22,453    |       .54     |
+    +------------+----------+--------------+---------------+
+
+  _Vineyards_ (see WINE).--The vine grows generally in France, except in
+  the extreme north and in Normandy and Brittany. The great
+  wine-producing regions are:
+
+  1. The country fringing the Mediterranean coast and including Hérault
+  (240,822,000 gals. in 1905), and Aude (117,483,000 gals. in 1905), the
+  most productive departments in France in this respect.
+
+  2. The department of Gironde (95,559,000 gals. in 1905), whence come
+  Médoc and the other wines for which Bordeaux is the market.
+
+  3. The lower valley of the Loire, including Touraine and Anjou, and
+  the district of Saumur.
+
+  4. The valley of the Rhône.
+
+  5. The Burgundian region, including Côte d'Or and the valley of the
+  Saône (Beaujolais, Mâconnais).
+
+  6. The Champagne.
+
+  7. The Charente region, the grapes of which furnish brandy, as do
+  those of Armagnac (department of Gers).
+
+  The decennial averages for the years 1896-1905 were as follows:
+
+    Acreage of productive vines                 4,056,725
+    Total production in gallons             1,072,622,000
+    Average production in gallons per acre            260
+
+  _Fruit._--Fruit-growing is general all over France, which, apart from
+  bananas and pine-apples, produces in the open air all the ordinary
+  species of fruit which its inhabitants consume. Some of these may be
+  specially mentioned. The cider apple, which ranks first in importance,
+  is produced in those districts where cider is the habitual drink, that
+  is to say, chiefly in the region north-west of a line drawn from Paris
+  to the mouth of the Loire. The average annual production of cider
+  during the years 1896 to 1905 was 304,884,000 gallons. Dessert apples
+  and pears are grown there and in the country on both banks of the
+  lower Loire, the valley of which abounds in orchards wherein many
+  varieties of fruit flourish and in nursery-gardens. The hilly regions
+  of Limousin, Périgord and the Cévennes are the home of the chestnut,
+  which in some places is still a staple food; walnuts grow on the lower
+  levels of the central plateau and in lower Dauphiné and Provence, figs
+  and almonds in Provence, oranges and citrons on the Mediterranean
+  coast, apricots in central France, the olive in Provence and the lower
+  valleys of the Rhône and Durance. Truffles are found under the oaks of
+  Périgord, Comtat-Venaissin and lower Dauphiné. The mulberry grows in
+  the valleys of the Rhône and its tributaries, the Isère, the Drôme,
+  the Ardèche, the Gard and the Durance, and also along the coast of
+  the Mediterranean. Silk-worm rearing, which is encouraged by state
+  grants, is carried on in the valleys mentioned and on the
+  Mediterranean coast east of Marseilles. The numbers of growers
+  decreased from 139,000 in 1891 to 124,000 in 1905. The decrease in the
+  annual average production of cocoons is shown in the preceding table.
+
+    +-----------------------------+------------+------------+------------+
+    |        Silk Cocoons.        | 1891-1895. | 1896-1900. | 1901-1905. |
+    +-----------------------------+------------+------------+------- ----+
+    | Annual average production   |            |            |            |
+    |   over quinquennial periods | 19,587,000 | 17,696,000 | 16,566,000 |
+    |   in lb.                    |            |            |            |
+    +-----------------------------+------------+------------+------------+
+
+  Snails are reared in some parts of the country as an article of food,
+  those of Burgundy being specially esteemed.
+
+  _Stock-raising._--From this point of view the soil of France may be
+  divided into four categories:
+
+  1. The rich pastoral regions where dairy-farming and the fattening of
+  cattle are carried on with most success, viz. (a) Normandy, Perche,
+  Cotentin and maritime Flanders, where horses are bred in great
+  numbers; (b) the strip of coast between the Gironde and the mouth of
+  the Loire; (c) the Morvan including the Nivernais and the Charolais,
+  from which the famous Charolais breed of oxen takes its name; (d) the
+  central region of the central plateau including the districts of
+  Cantal and Aubrac, the home of the famous beef-breeds of Salers and
+  Aubrac.[8] The famous _pré-salé_ sheep are also reared in the Vendée
+  and Cotentin.
+
+  2. The poorer grazing lands on the upper levels of the Alps, Pyrenees,
+  Jura and Vosges, the Landes, the more outlying regions of the central
+  plateau, southern Brittany, Sologne, Berry, Champagne-Pouilleuse, the
+  Crau and the Camargue, these districts being given over for the most
+  part to sheep-raising.
+
+  3. The plain of Toulouse, which with the rest of south-western France
+  produces good draught oxen, the Parisian basin, the plains of the
+  north to the east of the maritime region, the lower valley of the
+  Rhône and the Bresse, where there is little or no natural pasturage,
+  and forage is grown from seed.
+
+  4. West, west-central and eastern France outside these areas, where
+  meadows are predominant and both dairying and fattening are general.
+  Included therein are the dairying and horse-raising district of
+  northern Brittany and the dairying regions of Jura and Savoy.
+
+  In the industrial regions of northern France cattle are stall-fed with
+  the waste products of the beet-sugar factories, oil-works and
+  distilleries. _Swine_, bred all over France, are more numerous in
+  Brittany, Anjou (whence comes the well-known breed of Craon), Poitou,
+  Burgundy, the west and north of the central plateau and Béarn. Upper
+  Poitou and the zone of south-western France to the north of the
+  Pyrenees are the chief regions for the breeding of mules. Asses are
+  reared in Béarn, Corsica, Upper Poitou, the Limousin, Berry and other
+  central regions. Goats are kept in the mountainous regions (Auvergne,
+  Provence, Corsica). The best poultry come from the Bresse, the
+  district of Houdan (Seine-et-Oise), the district of Le Mans and
+  Crèvecoeur (Calvados).
+
+  The _prés naturels_ (meadows) and _herbages_ (unmown pastures) of
+  France, i.e. the grass-land of superior quality as distinguished from
+  _paturages et pacages_, which signifies pasture of poorer quality,
+  increased in area between 1895 and 1905 as is shown below:
+
+                   1895 (Acres).  1905 (Acres).
+    Prés naturels   10,852,000     11,715,000
+    Herbages         2,822,000      3,022,000
+
+  The following table shows the number of live stock in the country at
+  intervals of ten years since 1885.
+
+    +-------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+-----------+---------+---------+
+    |                   Cattle.                 |            |           |           |         |         |
+    +------+-----------+-----------+------------+ Sheep and  |   Pigs.   |  Horses.  |  Mules. |  Asses. |
+    |      |   Cows.   |   Other   |   Total.   |   Lambs.   |           |           |         |         |
+    |      |           |   Kinds.  |            |            |           |           |         |         |
+    +------+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-----------+---------+---------+
+    | 1885 | 6,414,487 | 6,690,483 | 13,104,970 | 22,616,547 | 5,881,088 | 2,911,392 | 238,620 | 387,227 |
+    | 1895 | 6,359,795 | 6,874,033 | 13,233,828 | 21,163,767 | 6,306,019 | 2,812,447 | 211,479 | 357,778 |
+    | 1905 | 7,515,564 | 6,799,988 | 14,315,552 | 17,783,209 | 7,558,779 | 3,169,224 | 198,865 | 365,181 |
+    +------+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-----------+---------+---------+
+
+  _Agricultural Organization._--In France the interests of agriculture
+  are entrusted to a special ministry, comprising the following
+  divisions: (1) forests, (2) breeding-studs (_haras_); (3) agriculture,
+  a department which supervises agricultural instruction and the
+  distribution of grants and premiums; (4) agricultural improvements,
+  draining, irrigation, &c.; (5) an intelligence department which
+  prepares statistics, issues information as to prices and markets, &c.
+  The minister is assisted by a superior council of agriculture, the
+  members of which, numbering a hundred, include senators, deputies and
+  prominent agriculturists. The ministry employs inspectors, whose duty
+  it is to visit the different parts of the country and to report on
+  their respective position and wants. The reports which they furnish
+  help to determine the distribution of the moneys dispensed by the
+  state in the form of subventions to agricultural societies and in
+  many other ways. The chief type of agricultural society is the _comice
+  agricole_, an association for the discussion of agricultural problems
+  and the organization of provincial shows. There are besides several
+  thousands of local syndicates, engaged in the purchase of materials
+  and sale of produce on the most advantageous terms for their members,
+  credit banks and mutual insurance societies (see CO-OPERATION). Three
+  societies demand special mention: the _Union centrale des agriculteurs
+  de France_, to which the above syndicates are affiliated; the _Société
+  nationale d'agriculture_, whose mission is to further agricultural
+  progress and to supply the government with information on everything
+  appertaining thereto and the _Société des agriculteurs de France_.
+
+  Among a variety of premiums awarded by the state are those for the
+  best cultivated estates and for irrigation works, and to the owners of
+  the best stallions and brood-mares. _Haras_ or stallion stables
+  containing in all over 3000 horses are established in twenty-two
+  central towns, and annually send stallions, which are at the disposal
+  of private individuals in return for a small fee, to various stations
+  throughout the country. Other institutions belonging to the state are
+  the national sheep-fold of Rambouillet (Seine-et-Oise) and the
+  cow-house of Vieux-Pin (Orne) for the breeding of Durham cows. Four
+  different grades of institution for agricultural instruction are under
+  state direction: (1) farm-schools and schools of apprenticeship in
+  dairying, &c., to which the age of admission is from 14 to 16 years;
+  (2) practical schools, to which boys of from 13 to 18 years of age are
+  admitted. These number forty-eight, and are intended for sons of
+  farmers of good position; (3) national schools, which are established
+  at Grignon (Seine-et-Oise), Rennes and Montpellier, candidates for
+  which must be 17 years of age; (4) the National Agronomic Institute at
+  Paris, which is intended for the training of estate agents,
+  professors, &c. There are also departmental chairs of agriculture, the
+  holders of which give instruction in training-colleges and elsewhere
+  and advise farmers.
+
+  _Forests._--In relation to its total extent, France presents but a
+  very limited area of forest land, amounting to only 36,700 sq. m. or
+  about 18% of the entire surface of the country. Included under the
+  denomination of "forest" are lands--_surfaces boisées_--which are
+  _bush_ rather than _forest_. The most wooded parts of France are the
+  mountains and plateaus of the east and of the north-east, comprising
+  the pine-forests of the Vosges and Jura (including the beautiful
+  Forest of Chaux), the Forest of Haye, the Forest of Ardennes, the
+  Forest of Argonne, &c.; the Landes, where replanting with maritime
+  pines has transformed large areas of marsh into forest; and the
+  departments of Var and Ariège. The Central Mountains and the Morvan
+  also have considerable belts of wood. In the Parisian region there are
+  the Forests of Fontainebleau (66 sq. m.), of Compiègne (56 sq. m.), of
+  Rambouillet, of Villers-Cotterets, &c. The Forest of Orléans, the
+  largest in France, covers about 145 sq. m. The Alps and Pyrenees are
+  in large part deforested, but reafforestation with a view to
+  minimizing the effects of avalanches and sudden floods is continually
+  in progress.
+
+  Of the forests of the country approximately one-third belongs to the
+  state, communes and public institutions. The rest belongs to private
+  owners who are, however, subject to certain restrictions. The
+  Department of Waters[9] and Forests (Administration des Eaux et
+  Forêts) forms a branch of the ministry of agriculture. It is
+  administered by a director-general, who has his headquarters at Paris,
+  assisted by three administrators who are charged with the working of
+  the forests, questions of rights and law, finance and plantation
+  works. The establishment consists of 32 conservators, each at the head
+  of a district comprising one or more departments, 200 inspectors, 215
+  sub-inspectors and about 300 _gardes généraux_. These officials form
+  the higher grade of the service (_agents_). There are besides several
+  thousand forest-rangers and other employés (_préposés_). The
+  department is supplied with officials of the higher class from the
+  National School of Waters and Forests at Nancy, founded in 1824.
+
+
+_Industries._
+
+In France, as in other countries, the development of machinery, whether
+run by steam, water-power or other motive forces, has played a great
+part in the promotion of industry; the increase in the amount of steam
+horse-power employed in industrial establishments is, to a certain
+degree, an index to the activity of the country as regards manufactures.
+
+The appended table shows the progress made since 1850 with regard to
+steam power. Railway and marine locomotives are not included.
+
+  +------+----------------+---------------+--------------+
+  |Years.|    No. of      |     No. of    |     Total    |
+  |      | Establishments.| Steam-Engines.| Horse-Power. |
+  +------+----------------+---------------+--------------+
+  | 1852 |      6,543     |      6,080    |     76,000   |
+  | 1861 |     14,153     |     15,805    |    191,000   |
+  | 1871 |     22,192     |     26,146    |    316,000   |
+  | 1881 |     35,712     |     44,010    |    576,000   |
+  | 1891 |     46,828     |     58,967    |    916,000   |
+  | 1901 |     58,151     |     75,866    |  1,907,730   |
+  | 1905 |     61,112     |     79,203    |  2,232,263   |
+  +------+----------------+---------------+--------------+
+
+With the exception of Loire, Bouches-du-Rhône and Rhône, the chief
+industrial departments of France are to be found in the north and
+north-east of the country. In 1901 and 1896 those in which the working
+inhabitants of both sexes were engaged in industry as opposed to
+agriculture to the extent of 50% (approximately) or over, numbered
+eleven, viz.:--
+
+  +-----------------------+--------------+------------+--------------------+
+  |                       |              |            | Percentage engaged |
+  |                       | Total Working| Industrial |    in Industry.    |
+  |     Departments.      |  Population  | Population +---------+----------+
+  |                       |    (1901).   |   (1901).  |  1901.  |   1896.  |
+  +-----------------------+--------------+------------+---------+----------+
+  | Nord                  |    848,306   |   544,177  |  64.15  |   63.45  |
+  | Territoire de Belfort |     40,703   |    24,470  |  60.10  |   58.77  |
+  | Loire                 |    292,808   |   167,693  |  57.27  |   54.73  |
+  | Seine                 |  2,071,344   | 1,143,809  |  55.22  |   53.54  |
+  | Bouches-du-Rhône      |    341,823   |   187,801  |  54.94  |   51.00  |
+  | Rhône                 |    449,121   |   243,571  |  54.23  |   54.78  |
+  | Meurthe-et-Moselle    |    215,501   |   115,214  |  53.46  |   50.19  |
+  | Ardennes              |    139,270   |    73,250  |  52.60  |   52.42  |
+  | Vosges                |    208,142   |   107,547  |  51.67  |   51.05  |
+  | Pas-de-Calais         |    404,153   |   200,402  |  49.58  |   46.55  |
+  | Seine-Inférieure      |    428,591   |   206,612  |  48.21  |   49.85  |
+  +-----------------------+--------------+------------+---------+----------+
+
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |                 |                            |                     | Average Production|
+  |     Groups.     |          Basins.           |     Departments.    |   (Thousands of   |
+  |                 |                            |                     |    Metric Tons)   |
+  |                 |                            |                     |     1901-1905.    |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  | Nord and      / | Valenciennes               | Nord, Pas-de-Calais | \     20,965      |
+  | Pas-de-Calais \ | Le Boulonnais              | Pas-de-Calais       | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |               / | St Étienne and Rive-de-Gier| Loire               | \                 |
+  | Loire        <  | Communay                   | Isère               |  >     3,601      |
+  |               | | Ste Foy l'Argentière       | Rhône               | |                 |
+  |               \ | Roannais                   | Loire               | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |               / | Alais                      | Gard, Ardèche       | \                 |
+  | Gard         <  | Aubenas                    | Ardèche             |  >     1,954      |
+  |               \ | Le Vigan                   | Gard                | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |               / | Decize                     | Nièvre              | \                 |
+  | Bourgogne    <  | La Chapelle-sous-Dun       | Saône-et-Loire      |  >     1,881      |
+  | and Nivernais | | Bert                       | Allier              | |                 |
+  |               \ | Sincey                     | Côte-d'Or           | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |               / | Aubin                      | Aveyron             | \                 |
+  | Tarn and     <  | Carmaux and Albi           | Tarn                |  >     1,770      |
+  | Aveyron       | | Rodez                      | Aveyron             | |                 |
+  |               \ | St Perdoux                 | Lot                 | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |               / | Commentry and Doyet        | Allier              | \                 |
+  | Bourbonnais  <  | St Eloi                    | Puy-de-Dôme         |  >       994      |
+  |               | | L'Aumance                  | Allier              | |                 |
+  |               \ | La Queune                  | Allier              | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+
+The department of Seine, comprising Paris and its suburbs, which has the
+largest manufacturing population, is largely occupied with the
+manufacture of dress, millinery and articles of luxury (perfumery, &c.),
+but it plays the leading part in almost every great branch of industry
+with the exception of spinning and weaving. The typically industrial
+region of France is the department of Nord, the seat of the woollen
+industry, but also prominently concerned in other textile industries, in
+metal working, and in a variety of other manufactures, fuel for which is
+supplied by its coal-fields. The following sketch of the manufacturing
+industry of France takes account chiefly of those of its branches which
+are capable in some degree of localization. Many of the great industries
+of the country, e.g. tanning, brick-making, the manufacture of garments,
+&c., are evenly distributed throughout it, and are to be found in or
+near all larger centres of population.
+
+  _Coal._--The principal mines of France are coal and iron mines. The
+  production of coal and lignite averaging 33,465,000 metric tons[10] in
+  the years 1901-1905 represents about 73% of the total consumption of
+  the country; the surplus is supplied from Great Britain, Belgium and
+  Germany. The preceding table shows the average output of the chief
+  coal-groups for the years 1901-1905 inclusive. The Flemish coal-basin,
+  employing over 100,000 hands, produces 60% of the coal mined in
+  France.
+
+  French lignite comes for the most part from the department of
+  Bouches-du-Rhône (near Fuveau).
+
+  The development of French coal and lignite mining in the 19th century,
+  together with records of prices, which rose considerably at the end of
+  the period, is set forth in the table below:
+
+    +-----------+----------------+---------------+
+    |           | Average Yearly | Average Price |
+    |   Years.  |   Production   |  per Ton at   |
+    |           | (Thousands of  |  Pit Mouth    |
+    |           | Metric Tons).  |  (Francs).    |
+    +-----------+----------------+---------------+
+    | 1821-1830 |      1,495     |     10.23     |
+    | 1831-1840 |      2,571     |      9.83     |
+    | 1841-1850 |      4,078.5   |      9.69     |
+    | 1851-1860 |      6,857     |     11.45     |
+    | 1861-1870 |     11,831     |     11.61     |
+    | 1871-1880 |     16,774     |     14.34     |
+    | 1881-1890 |     21,542     |     11.55     |
+    | 1891-1900 |     29,190     |     11.96     |
+    | 1901-1905 |     33,465     |     14.18     |
+    +-----------+----------------+---------------+
+
+  _Iron._--The iron-mines of France are more numerous than its
+  coal-mines, but they do not yield a sufficient quantity of ore for the
+  needs of the metallurgical industries of the country; as will be seen
+  in the table below the production of iron in France gradually
+  increased during the 19th century; on the other hand, a decline in
+  prices operated against a correspondingly marked increase in its
+  annual value.
+
+    +-----------+----------------+--------------+
+    |           | Average Annual |              |
+    |   Years.  |   Production   |  Price per   |
+    |           | (Thousands of  |  Metric Ton  |
+    |           |  Metric Tons). |   (Francs).  |
+    +-----------+----------------+--------------+
+    | 1841-1850 |      1247      |     6.76     |
+    | 1851-1860 |      2414.5    |     5.51     |
+    | 1861-1870 |      3035      |     4.87     |
+    | 1871-1880 |      2514      |     5.39     |
+    | 1881-1890 |      2934      |     3.99     |
+    | 1891-1900 |      4206      |     3.37     |
+    | 1901-1905 |      6072      |     3.72     |
+    +-----------+----------------+--------------+
+
+  The department of Meurthe-et-Moselle (basins of Nancy and
+  Longwy-Briey) furnished 84% of the total output during the
+  quinquennial period 1901-1905, may be reckoned as one of the principal
+  iron-producing regions of the world. The other chief producers were
+  Pyrénées-Orientales, Calvados, Haute-Marne (Vassy) and Saône-et-Loire
+  (Mazenay and Change).
+
+  _Other Ores._--The mining of zinc, the chief deposits of which are at
+  Malines (Gard), Les Bormettes (Var) and Planioles (Lot), and of lead,
+  produced especially at Chaliac (Ardèche), ranks next in importance to
+  that of iron. Iron-pyrites come almost entirely from Sain-Bel
+  (Rhône), manganese chiefly from Ariège and Saône-et-Loire, antimony
+  from the departments of Mayenne, Haute-Loire and Cantal. Copper and
+  mispickel are mined only in small quantities. The table below gives
+  the average production of zinc, argentiferous lead, iron-pyrites and
+  other ores during the quinquennial period 1901-1905.
+
+    +--------------+--------------+---------+
+    |              |  Production  |         |
+    |              |(Thousands of | Value £.|
+    |              | Metric Tons).|         |
+    +--------------+--------------+---------+
+    | Zinc         |     60.3     | 206,912 |
+    | Lead         |     18.5     | 100,424 |
+    | Iron-pyrites |    297.2     | 170,312 |
+    | Other ores   |     36.0     |  68,376 |
+    +--------------+--------------+---------+
+
+  _Salt, &c._--Rock-salt is worked chiefly in the department of
+  Meurthe-et-Moselle, which produces more than half the average annual
+  product of salt. For the years 1896-1905, this was 1,010,000 tons,
+  including both rock- and sea-salt. The salt-marshes of the
+  Mediterranean coast, especially the Étang de Berre and those of
+  Loire-Inférieure, are the principal sources of sea-salt. Sulphur is
+  obtained near Apt (Vaucluse) and in a few other localities of
+  south-eastern France; bituminous schist near Autun (Saône-et-Loire)
+  and Buxières (Allier). The most extensive peat-workings are in the
+  valleys of the Somme; asphalt comes from Seyssel (Ain) and
+  Puy-de-Dôme.
+
+  The mineral springs of France are numerous, of varied character and
+  much frequented. Leading resorts are: in the Pyrenean region,
+  Amélie-les-Bains, Bagnères-de-Luchon, Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Barèges,
+  Cauterets, Eaux-Bonnes, Eaux-Chaudes and Dax; in the Central Plateau,
+  Mont-Dore, La Bourboule, Bourbon l'Archambault, Vichy, Royat,
+  Chaudes-Aigues, Vais, Lamalon; in the Alps, Aix-les-Bains and Evian;
+  in the Vosges and Faucilles, Plombières, Luxeuil, Contrexéville,
+  Vittel, Martigny and Bourbonne-les-Bains. Outside these main groups St
+  Amand-les-Eaux and Foyes-les-Eaux may be mentioned.
+
+  _Quarry-Products._--Quarries of various descriptions are numerous all
+  over France. Slate is obtained in large quantities from the
+  departments of Maine-et-Loire (Angers), Ardennes (Fumay) and Mayenne
+  (Renazé). Stone-quarrying is specially active in the departments round
+  Paris, Seine-et-Oise employing more persons in this occupation than
+  any other department. The environs of Creil (Oise) and Château-Landon
+  (Seine-et-Marne) are noted for their freestone (_pierre de taille_),
+  which is also abundant at Euville and Lérouville in Meuse; the
+  production of plaster is particularly important in the environs of
+  Paris, of kaolin of fine quality at Yrieix (Haute-Vienne), of
+  hydraulic lime in Ardèche (Le Teil), of lime phosphates in the
+  department of Somme, of marble in the departments of Haute-Garonne (St
+  Béat), Hautes-Pyrénées (Campan, Sarrancolin), Isère and Pas-de-Calais,
+  and of cement in Pas-de-Calais (vicinity of Boulogne) and Isère
+  (Grenoble). Paving-stone is supplied in large quantities by
+  Seine-et-Oise, and brick-clay is worked chiefly in Nord, Seine and
+  Pas-de-Calais. The products of the quarries of France for the five
+  years 1901-1905 averaged £9,311,000 per annum in value, of which
+  building material brought in over two-thirds.
+
+  _Metallurgy._--The average production and value of iron and steel
+  manufactured in France in the last four decades of the 19th century is
+  shown below:
+
+    +----------+----------------------+------------------------+
+    |          |      Cast Iron.      | Wrought Iron and Steel.|
+    |          +-----------+----------+-----------+------------+
+    |          |  Product  |          |  Product  |            |
+    |  Years.  |(Thousands |  Value   |(Thousands |   Value    |
+    |          | of Metric |(Thousands| of Metric | (Thousands |
+    |          |   Tons).  |   of £). |   Tons).  |   of £).   |
+    +----------+-----------+----------+-----------+------------+
+    |1861-1870 |   1191.5  |   5012   |    844    |    8,654   |
+    |1871-1880 |   1391    |   5783   |   1058.5  |   11,776   |
+    |1881-1890 |   1796    |   5119   |   1376    |   11,488   |
+    |1891-1900 |   2267    |   5762   |   1686    |   14,540   |
+    |   1903   |   2841    |   7334   |   1896    |   15,389   |
+    +----------+-----------+----------+-----------+------------+
+
+  Taking the number of hands engaged in the industry as a basis of
+  comparison, the most important departments as regards iron and steel
+  working in 1901 were:
+
+    +------------------+-----------------------------------------------+-------------------+---------------+
+    |                  |                                               |                   | Hands engaged |
+    |                  |                                               |                   | in Production |
+    |                  |                                               | Hands engaged in  | of Engineering|
+    |   Department.    |               Chief Centres.                  |   Production of   |  Material and |
+    |                  |                                               |Pig-Iron and Steel.|  Manufactured |
+    |                  |                                               |                   |     Goods.    |
+    +------------------+-----------------------------------------------+-------------------+---------------+
+    |Seine             |  . .      . .       . .        . .      . .   |         600       |    102,500    |
+    |Nord              |Lille, Anzin, Denain, Douai, Hautmont, Maubeuge|      14,000       |     45,000    |
+    |Loire             |Rive-de-Gier, Firminy, St Étienne, St Chamond  |       9,500       |     17,500    |
+    |Meurthe-et-Moselle|Pont-à-Mousson, Frouard, Longwy, Nancy         |      16,500       |      6,500    |
+    |Ardennes          |Charleville, Nouzon                            |         800       |     23,000    |
+    +------------------+-----------------------------------------------+-------------------+---------------+
+
+  Rhône (Lyons), Saône-et-Loire (Le Creusot, Chalon-sur-Saône) and
+  Loire-Inférieure (Basse-Indre, Indret, Couëron, Trignac) also play a
+  considerable part in this industry.
+
+  The chief centres for the manufacture of cutlery are Châttelerault
+  (Vienne), Langres (Haute-Marne) and Thiers (Puy-de-Dôme); for that of
+  arms St Etienne, Tulle and Châttelerault; for that of watches and
+  clocks, Besançon (Doubs) and Montbéliard (Doubs); for that of optical
+  and mathematical instruments Paris, Morez (Jura) and St Claude (Jura);
+  for that of locksmiths' ware the region of Vimeu (Pas-de-Calais).
+
+  There are important zinc works at Auby and St Amand (Nord) and Viviez
+  (Aveyron) and Noyelles-Godault (Pas-de-Calais); there are lead works
+  at the latter place, and others of greater importance at Couëron
+  (Loire-Inférieure). Copper is smelted in Ardennes and Pas-de-Calais.
+  The production of these metals, which are by far the most important
+  after iron and steel, increased steadily during the period 1890-1905,
+  and reached its highest point in 1905, details for which year are
+  given below:
+
+    +----------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
+    |                            |    Zinc.   |   Lead.  |  Copper. |
+    +----------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
+    | Production (in metric tons)|     43,200 |   24,100 |    7,600 |
+    | Value                      | £1,083,000 | £386,000 | £526,000 |
+    +----------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
+
+  _Wool._--In 1901, 161,000 persons were engaged in the spinning and
+  other preparatory processes and in the weaving of wool. The woollen
+  industry is carried on most extensively in the department of Nord
+  (Roubaix, Tourcoing, Fourmies). Of second rank are Reims and Sedan in
+  the Champagne group; Elbeuf, Louviers and Rouen in Normandy; and
+  Mazamet (Tarn).
+
+  _Cotton._--In 1901, 166,000 persons were employed in the spinning and
+  weaving of cotton, French cotton goods being distinguished chiefly for
+  the originality of their design. The cotton industry is distributed in
+  three principal groups. The longest established is that of Normandy,
+  having its centres at Rouen, Havre, Evreux, Falaise and Flers. Another
+  group in the north of France has its centres at Lille, Tourcoing,
+  Roubaix, St Quentin and Amiens. That of the Vosges, which has
+  experienced a great extension since the loss of Alsace-Lorraine,
+  comprises Epinal, St Dié, Remiremont and Belfort. Other groups of less
+  importance are situated in the Lyonnais (Roanne and Tarare) and
+  Mayenne (Laval and Mayenne).
+
+  _Silk._--The silk industry occupied 134,000 hands in 1901. The silk
+  fabrics of France hold the first place, particularly the more
+  expensive kinds. The industry is concentrated in the departments
+  bordering the river Rhône, the chief centres being Lyons (Rhône),
+  Voiron (Isère), St Étienne and St Chamond (Loire) (the two latter
+  being especially noted for their ribbons and trimmings) and Annonay
+  (Ardèche) and other places in the departments of Ain, Gard and Drôme.
+
+  _Flax, Hemp, Jute, &c._--The preparation and spinning of these
+  materials and the manufacture of nets and rope, together with the
+  weaving of linen and other fabrics, give occupation to 112,000 persons
+  chiefly in the departments of Nord (Lille, Armentières, Dunkirk),
+  Somme (Amiens) and Maine-et-Loire (Angers, Cholet).
+
+  _Hosiery_, the manufacture of which employs 55,000 hands, has its
+  chief centre in Aube (Troyes). The production of lace and guipure,
+  occupying 112,000 persons, is carried on mainly in the towns and
+  villages of Haute-Loire and in Vosges (Mirecourt), Rhône (Lyons),
+  Pas-de-Calais (Calais) and Paris.
+
+  _Leather._--Tanning and leather-dressing are widely spread industries,
+  and the same may be said of the manufacture of boots and shoes, though
+  these trades employ more hands in the department of Seine than
+  elsewhere; in the manufacture of gloves Isère (Grenoble) and Aveyron
+  (Millau) hold the first place amongst French departments.
+
+  _Sugar._--The manufacture of sugar is carried on in the departments of
+  the north, in which the cultivation of beetroot is general--Aisne,
+  Nord, Somme, Pas-de-Calais, Oise and Seine-et-Marne, the three first
+  being by far the largest producers. The increase in production in the
+  last twenty years of the 19th century is indicated in the following
+  table:--
+
+    +-----------+-------------------+-----------------+
+    |           |                   |  Average Annual |
+    |   Years.  | Annual Average of |  Production in  |
+    |           |   Men employed    |   Metric Tons.  |
+    +-----------+-------------------+-----------------+
+    | 1881-1891 |      43,108       |     415,786     |
+    | 1891-1901 |      42,841       |     696,038     |
+    | 1901-1906 |      43,061       |     820,553     |
+    +-----------+-------------------+-----------------+
+
+  _Alcohol._--The distillation of alcohol is in the hands of three
+  classes of persons. (1) Professional distillers (_bouilleurs et
+  distillateurs de profession_); (2) private distillers (_bouilleurs de
+  cru_) under state control; (3) small private distillers, not under
+  state control, but giving notice to the state that they distil. The
+  two last classes number over 400,000 (1903), but the quantity of
+  alcohol distilled by them is small. Beetroot, molasses and grain are
+  the chief sources of spirit. The department of Nord produces by far
+  the greatest quantity, its average annual output in the decade
+  1895-1904 being 13,117,000 gallons, or about 26% of the average
+  annual production of France during the same period (49,945,000
+  gallons). Aisne, Pas-de-Calais and Somme rank next to Nord.
+
+  _Glass_ is manufactured in the departments of Nord (Aniche, &c.),
+  Seine, Loire (Rive-de-Gier) and Meurthe-et-Moselle, Baccarat in the
+  latter department being famous for its table-glass. Limoges is the
+  chief centre for the manufacture of porcelain, and the artistic
+  products of the national porcelain factory of Sèvres have a world-wide
+  reputation.
+
+  The manufacture of paper and cardboard is largely carried on in Isère
+  (Voiron), Seine-et-Oise (Essonnes), Vosges (Epinal) and of the finer
+  sorts of paper in Charente (Angoulême). That of oil, candles and soap
+  has its chief centre at Marseilles. Brewing and malting are localized
+  chiefly in Nord. There are well-known chemical works at Dombasle
+  (close to Nancy) and Chauny (Aisne) and in Rhône.
+
+  _Occupations._--The following table, which shows the approximate
+  numbers of persons engaged in the various manufacturing industries of
+  France, who number in all about 5,820,000, indicates their relative
+  importance from the point of view of employment:
+
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |              Occupation.             |   1901.  |   1866.  |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Baking                               |  163,500 |    ..    |
+    | Milling                              |   99,400 |    ..    |
+    | _Charcuterie_                        |   39,600 |    ..    |
+    | Other alimentary industries          |  161,500 |    ..    |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Alimentary industries: total       |  464,000 |  308,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Gas-works                            |   26,000 |    ..    |
+    | Tobacco factories                    |   16,000 |    ..    |
+    | Oil-works                            |   10,000 |    ..    |
+    | Other "chemical"[11] industries      |   58,000 |    ..    |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Chemical industries: total         |  110,000 |   49,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Rubber factories                     |    9,000 |\         |
+    | Paper factories                      |   61,000 |/  25,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Typographic and lithographic printing|   76,000 |    ..    |
+    | Other branches of book production    |   23,000 |    ..    |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Book production: total             |   99,000 |   38,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Spinning and weaving                 |  892,000 | 1,072,000|
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Clothing, millinery and making up of |1,484,000 |\         |
+    |   fabrics generally.                 |          | >761,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+ |        |
+    | Basket work, straw goods, feathers   |   39,000 |/         |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Leather and skin                     |  338,000 |  286,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Joinery                              |  153,000 |    ..    |
+    | Builder's carpentering               |   94,900 |    ..    |
+    | Wheelwright's work                   |   82,700 |    ..    |
+    | Cooperage                            |   46,600 |    ..    |
+    | Wooden shoes                         |   52,400 |    ..    |
+    | Other wood industries                |  280,400 |    ..    |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Wood industries: total             |  710,000 |  671,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Metallurgy and metal working         |  783,000 |  345,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Goldsmiths' and jewellers' work      |   35,000 |   55,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Stone-working                        |   56,000 |   12,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Construction, building, decorating   |  572,000 |  443,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Glass manufacture                    |   43,000 |    ..    |
+    | Tiles                                |   29,000 |    ..    |
+    | Porcelain and faïence                |   27,000 |    ..    |
+    | Bricks                               |   17,000 |    ..    |
+    | Other kiln industries                |   45,000 |    ..    |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Kiln industries: total             |  161,000 |  110,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Some 9000 individuals were engaged in unclassified       |
+    |     industries.                                            |
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+  _Fisheries._--The fishing population of France is most numerous in the
+  Breton departments of Finistère, Côtes-du-Nord and Morbihan and in
+  Pas-de-Calais. Dunkirk, Gravelines, Boulogne and Paimpol send
+  considerable fleets to the Icelandic cod-fisheries, and St Malo,
+  Fécamp, Granville and Cancale to those of Newfoundland. The Dogger
+  Bank is frequented by numbers of French fishing-boats. Besides the
+  above, Boulogne, the most important fishing port in the country,
+  Calais, Dieppe, Concarneau, Douarnenez, Les Sables d'Olonne, La
+  Rochelle, Marennes and Arcachon are leading ports for the herring,
+  sardine, mackerel and other coast-fisheries of the ocean, while Cette,
+  Agde and other Mediterranean ports are engaged in the tunny and
+  anchovy fisheries. Sardine preserving is an important industry at
+  Nantes and other places on the west coast. Oysters are reared chiefly
+  at Marennes, which is the chief French market for them, and at
+  Arcachon, Vannes, Oléron, Auray, Cancale and Courseulles. The total
+  value of the produce of fisheries increased from £4,537,000 in 1892 to
+  £5,259,000 in 1902. In 1902 the number of men employed in the home
+  fisheries was 144,000 and the number of vessels 25,481 (tonnage
+  127,000); in the deep-sea fisheries 10,500 men and 450 vessels
+  (tonnage 51,000) were employed.
+
+
+_Communications._
+
+_Roads._--Admirable highways known as _routes nationales_ and kept up at
+the expense of the state radiate from Paris to the great towns of
+France. Averaging 52½ ft. in breadth, they covered in 1905 a distance of
+nearly 24,000 m. The École des Ponts et Chaussées at Paris is maintained
+by the government for the training of the engineers for the construction
+and upkeep of roads and bridges. Each department controls and maintains
+the _routes départementales_, usually good macadamized roads connecting
+the chief places within its limits and extending in 1903 over 9700 m.
+The routes nationales and the routes départementales come under the
+category of _la grande voirie_ and are under the supervision of the
+Ministry of Public Works. The urban and rural district roads, covering a
+much greater mileage and classed as _la petite voirie_, are maintained
+chiefly by the communes under the supervision of the Minister of the
+Interior.
+
+_Waterways._[12]--The waterways of France, 7543 m. in length, of which
+canals cover 3031 m., are also classed under _la grande voirie_; they
+are the property of the state, and for the most part are free of tolls.
+They are divided into two classes. Those of the first class, which
+comprise rather less than half the entire system, have a minimum depth
+of 6½ ft., with locks 126 ft. long and 17 ft. wide; those of the second
+class are of smaller dimensions. Water traffic, which is chiefly in
+heavy merchandise, as coal, building materials, and agriculture and food
+produce, more than doubled in volume between 1881 and 1905. The canal
+and river system attains its greatest utility in the north, north-east
+and north-centre of the country; traffic is thickest along the Seine
+below Paris; along the rivers and small canals of the rich departments
+of Nord and Pas-de-Calais and along the Oise and the canal of St Quentin
+whereby they communicate with Paris; along the canal from the Marne to
+the Rhine and the succession of waterways which unite it with the Oise;
+along the Canal de l'Est (departments of Meuse and Ardennes); and along
+the waterways uniting Paris with the Saône at Chalon (Seine, Canal du
+Loing, Canal de Briare, Lateral canal of the Loire and Canal du Centre)
+and along the Saône between Chalon and Lyons.
+
+  In point of length the following are the principal canals:
+
+                                                      Miles.
+
+  Est (uniting Meuse with Moselle and Saône)          270
+  From Nates to Brest                                 225
+  Berry (uniting Montluçon with the canalized Cher
+    and the Loire canal)                              163
+  Midi (Toulouse to Mediterranean via Béziers); see
+    CANAL                                             175
+  Burgundy (uniting the Yonne and Saône)              151
+  Lateral canal of Loire                              137
+  From Marne to Rhine (on French territory)           131
+  Lateral canal of Garonne                            133
+  Rhône to Rhine (on French territory)                119
+  Nivernais (uniting Loire and Yonne)                 111
+  Canal de la Somme                                    97
+  Centre (uniting Saône and Loire)                     81
+  Canal de l'Ourcq                                     67
+  Ardennes (uniting Aisne and Canal de l'Est)          62
+  From Rhône to Cette                                  77
+  Canal de la Haute Marne                              60
+  St Quentin (uniting Scheldt with Somme and Oise)     58
+
+  The chief navigable rivers are:
+
+  +-------------------+-----------+-------------+
+  |                   |   Total   |             |
+  |                   | navigated | First Class |
+  |                   |  Length.  |Navigability.|
+  +-------------------+-----------+-------------+
+  |                   |   Miles.  |   Miles.    |
+  |                   |           |             |
+  | Seine             |   339     |    293      |
+  | Aisne             |    37     |     37      |
+  | Marne             |   114     |    114      |
+  | Oise              |    99     |     65      |
+  | Yonne             |    67     |     53      |
+  | Rhône             |   309     |     30      |
+  | Saône             |   234     |    234      |
+  | Adour             |    72     |     21      |
+  | Garonne           |   289     |     96      |
+  | Dordogne          |   167     |     26      |
+  | Loire             |   452     |     35      |
+  | Charente          |   106     |     16      |
+  | Vilaine           |    91     |     31      |
+  | Escaut (in France)|    39     |     39      |
+  | Scarpe            |    41     |     41      |
+  | Lys               |    45     |     45      |
+  | Aa                |    18     |     18      |
+  +-------------------+-----------+-------------+
+
+_Railways._--The first important line in France, from Paris to Rouen,
+was constructed through the instrumentality of Sir Edward Blount
+(1809-1905), an English banker in Paris, who was afterwards for thirty
+years chairman of the Ouest railway. After the rejection in 1838 of the
+government's proposals for the construction of seven trunk lines to be
+worked by the state, he obtained a concession for that piece of line on
+the terms that the French treasury would advance one-third of the
+capital at 3% if he would raise the remaining two-thirds, half in France
+and half in England. The contract for building the railway was put in
+the hands of Thomas Brassey; English navvies were largely employed on
+the work, and a number of English engine-drivers were employed when
+traffic was begun in 1843. A law passed in 1842 laid the foundation of
+the plan under which the railways have since been developed, and mapped
+out nine main lines, running from Paris to the frontiers and from the
+Mediterranean to the Rhine and to the Atlantic coast. Under it the cost
+of the necessary land was to be found as to one-third by the state and
+as to the residue locally, but this arrangement proved unworkable and
+was abandoned in 1845, when it was settled that the state should provide
+the land and construct the earthworks and stations, the various
+companies which obtained concessions being left to make the permanent
+way, provide rolling stock and work the lines for certain periods.
+Construction proceeded under this law, but not with very satisfactory
+results, and new arrangements had to be made between 1852 and 1857, when
+the railways were concentrated in the hands of six great companies, the
+Nord, the Est, the Ouest, the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée, the Orléans and
+the Midi. Each of these companies was allotted a definite sphere of
+influence, and was granted a concession for ninety-nine years from its
+date of formation, the concessions thus terminating at various dates
+between 1950 and 1960. In return for the privileges granted them the
+companies undertook the construction out of their own unaided resources
+of 1500 m. of subsidiary lines, but the railway expenditure of the
+country at this period was so large that in a few years they found it
+impossible to raise the capital they required. In these circumstances
+the state agreed to guarantee the interest on the capital, the sums it
+paid in this way being regarded as advances to be reimbursed in the
+future with interest at 4%. This measure proved successful and the
+projected lines were completed. But demands for more lines were
+constantly arising, and the existing companies, in view of their
+financial position, were disinclined to undertake their construction.
+The government therefore found itself obliged to inaugurate a system of
+direct subventions, not only to the old large companies, but also to new
+small ones, to encourage the development of branch and local lines, and
+local authorities were also empowered to contribute a portion of the
+required capital. The result came to be that many small lines were begun
+by companies that had not the means to complete them, and again the
+state had to come to the rescue. In 1878 it agreed to spend £20,000,000
+in purchasing and completing a number of these lines, some of which
+were handed over to the great companies, while others were retained in
+the hands of the government, forming the system known as the Chemins de
+Fer de l'État. Next year a large programme of railway expansion was
+adopted, at an estimated cost to the state of £140,000,000, and from
+1880 to 1882 nearly £40,000,000 was expended and some 1800 m. of line
+constructed. Then there was a change in the financial situation, and it
+became difficult to find the money required. In these circumstances the
+conventions of 1883 were concluded, and the great companies partially
+relieved the government of its obligations by agreeing to contribute a
+certain proportion of the cost of the new lines and to provide the
+rolling stock for working them. In former cases when the railways had
+had recourse to state aid, it was the state whose contributions were
+fixed, while the railways were left to find the residue; but on this
+occasion the position was reversed. The state further guaranteed a
+minimum rate of interest on the capital invested, and this guarantee,
+which by the convention of 1859 had applied to "new" lines only, was now
+extended to cover both "old" and "new" lines, the receipts and
+expenditure from both kinds being lumped together. As before, the sums
+paid out in respect of guaranteed dividend were to be regarded as
+advances which were to be paid back to the state out of the profits
+made, when these permitted, and when the advances were wiped out, the
+profits, after payment of a certain dividend, were to be divided between
+the state and the railway, two-thirds going to the former and one-third
+to the latter. All the companies, except the Nord, have at one time or
+another had to take advantage of the guarantee, and the fact that the
+Ouest had been one of the most persistent and heavy borrowers in this
+respect was one of the reasons that induced the government to take it
+over as from the 1st of January 1909. By the 1859 conventions the state
+railway system obtained an entry into Paris by means of running powers
+over the Ouest from Chartres, and its position was further improved by
+the exchange of certain lines with the Orléans company.
+
+  The great railway systems of France are as follows:
+
+  1. The Nord, which serves the rich mining, industrial and farming
+  districts of Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Aisne and Somme, connecting with the
+  Belgian railways at several points. Its main lines run from Paris to
+  Calais, via Creil, Amiens and Boulogne, from Paris to Lille, via Creil
+  and Arras, and from Paris to Maubeuge via Creil, Tergnier and St
+  Quentin.
+
+  2. The Ouest-État, a combination of the West and state systems. The
+  former traversed Normandy in every direction and connected Paris with
+  the towns of Brittany. Its chief lines ran from Paris to Le Havre via
+  Mantes and Rouen, to Dieppe via Rouen, to Cherbourg, to Granville and
+  to Brest. The state railways served a large portion of western France,
+  their chief lines being from Nantes via La Rochelle to Bordeaux, and
+  from Bordeaux via Saintes, Niort and Saumur to Chartres.
+
+  3. The Est, running from Paris via Châlons and Nancy to Avricourt (for
+  Strassburg), via Troyes and Langres to Belfort and on via Basel to the
+  Saint Gotthard, and via Reims and Mezières to Longwy.
+
+  4. The Orléans, running from Paris to Orléans, and thence serving
+  Bordeaux via Tours, Poitiers and Angoulême, Nantes via Tours and
+  Angers, and Montauban and Toulouse via Vierzon and Limoges.
+
+  5. The Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée, connecting Paris with Marseilles via
+  Moret, Laroche, Dijon, Mâcon and Lyons, and with Nîmes via Moret,
+  Nevers and Clermont-Ferrand. It establishes communication between
+  France and Switzerland and Italy via Mâcon and Culoz (for the Mt.
+  Cenis Tunnel) and via Dijon and Pontarlier (for the Simplon), and also
+  has a direct line along the Mediterranean coast from Marseilles to
+  Genoa via Toulon and Nice.
+
+  6. The Midi (Southern) has lines radiating from Toulouse to Bordeaux
+  via Agen, to Bayonne via Tarbes and Pau, and to Cette via Carcassonne,
+  Narbonne and Béziers. From Bordeaux there is also a direct line to
+  Bayonne and Irun (for Madrid), and at the other end of the Pyrenees a
+  line leads from Narbonne to Perpignan and Barcelona.
+
+  The following table, referring to lines "of general interest,"
+  indicates the development of railways after 1885:
+
+    +------+--------+------------+----------+-----------+--------------+
+    |      |        | Receipts in| Expenses | Passengers| Goods carried|
+    | Year.|Mileage.|  Thousands | Thousands|  carried  | (1000 Metric |
+    |      |        |    of £.   |   of £.  | (1000's). |    Tons).    |
+    +------+--------+------------+----------+-----------+--------------+
+    | 1885 | 18,650 |   42,324   |  23,508  |  214,451  |    75,192    |
+    | 1890 | 20,800 |   46,145   |  24,239  |   41,119  |    92,506    |
+    | 1895 | 22,650 |   50,542   |  27,363  |  348,852  |   100,834    |
+    | 1900 | 23,818 |   60,674   |  32,966  |  453,193  |   126,830    |
+    | 1904 | 24,755 |   60,589   |  31,477  |  433,913  |   130,144    |
+    +------+--------+------------+----------+-----------+--------------+
+
+  Narrow gauge and normal gauge railways "of local interest" covered
+  3905 m. in 1904.
+
+
+_Commerce._
+
+After entering on a régime of free trade in 1860 France gradually
+reverted towards protection; this system triumphed in the Customs Law of
+1892, which imposed more or less considerable duties on imports--a law
+associated with the name of M. Méline. While raising the taxes both on
+agricultural products and manufactured goods, this law introduced,
+between France and all the powers trading with her, relations different
+from those in the past. It left the government free either to apply to
+foreign countries the general tariff or to enter into negotiations with
+them for the application, under certain conditions, of a minimum tariff.
+The policy of protection was further accentuated by raising the impost
+on corn from 5 to 7 francs per hectolitre (2¾ bushels). This system,
+however, which is opposed by a powerful party, has at various times
+undergone modifications. On the one hand it became necessary, in face of
+an inadequate harvest, to suspend in 1898 the application of the law on
+the import of corn. On the other hand, in order to check the decline of
+exports and neutralize the harmful effects of a prolonged customs war, a
+commercial treaty was in 1896 concluded with Switzerland, carrying with
+it a reduction, in respect of certain articles, of the imposts which had
+been fixed by the law of 1892. An accord was likewise in 1898 effected
+with Italy, which since 1886 had been in a state of economic rupture
+with France, and in July 1899 an accord was concluded with the United
+States of America. Almost all other countries, moreover, share in the
+benefit of the minimum tariff, and profit by the modifications it may
+successively undergo.
+
+  _Commerce, in Millions of Pounds Sterling._
+
+  +-----------+--------------------------+--------------------------+
+  |           |         General          |         Special          |
+  |           +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
+  |           |Imports.|Exports.| Total. |Imports.|Exports.| Total. |
+  +-----------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
+  | 1876-1880 |  210.1 |  175.3 |  385.4 |  171.7 |  135.1 |  306.8 |
+  | 1881-1885 |  224.1 |  177.8 |  401.9 |  183.4 |  135.3 |  318.7 |
+  | 1886-1890 |  208.2 |  179.4 |  387.6 |  168.8 |  137.6 |  306.4 |
+  | 1891-1895 |  205.9 |  178.6 |  384.5 |  163.0 |  133.8 |  296.8 |
+  | 1896-1900 |  237.8 |  201.0 |  438.8 |  171.9 |  150.8 |  322.7 |
+  | 1901-1905 |  233.3 |  227.5 |  460.8 |  182.8 |  174.7 |  357.5 |
+  +-----------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
+
+  +------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
+  |                  |       Imports.       |       Exports.       |
+  |                  +-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
+  |                  |   Value   | Per cent |   Value   | Per cent |
+  |                  |(Thousands | of Total |(Thousands | of Total |
+  |                  |   of £).  |  Value.  |   of £).  |  Value.  |
+  +------------------+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
+  |Articles of Food--|           |          |           |          |
+  |   1886-1890      |   58,856  |   34.9   |  30,830   |   22.4   |
+  |   1891-1895      |   50,774  |   30.9   |  28,287   |   21.1   |
+  |   1896-1900      |   42,488  |   24.9   |  27,838   |   18.6   |
+  |   1901-1905      |   33,631  |   18.4   |  28,716   |   16.5   |
+  |                  +-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
+  |Raw Materials[13] |           |          |           |          |
+  |   1886-1890      |   85,778  |   50.8   |  33,848   |   24.6   |
+  |   1891-1895      |   88,211  |   54.3   |  32,557   |   24.4   |
+  |   1896-1900      |  101,727  |   59.2   |  40,060   |   26.6   |
+  |   1901-1905      |  116,580  |   63.8   |  47,385   |   27.1   |
+  |                  +-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
+  |Manufactured      |           |          |           |          |
+  |     Articles[14] |           |          |           |          |
+  |   1886-1890      |   24,125  |   14.3   |  72,917   |   53.0   |
+  |   1891-1895      |   24,054  |   14.8   |  72,906   |   54.5   |
+  |   1896-1900      |   27,330  |   15.9   |  82,270   |   54.8   |
+  |   1901-1905      |   32,554  |   17.8   |  98,582   |   56.4   |
+  +------------------+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
+
+Being in the main a self-supporting country France carries on most of
+her trade within her own borders, and ranks below Great Britain, Germany
+and the United States in volume of exterior trade. The latter is
+subdivided into _general_ commerce, which includes all goods entering or
+leaving the country, and _special_ commerce which includes imports for
+home use and exports of home produce. The above table shows the
+developments of French trade during the years from 1876 to 1905 by means
+of quinquennial averages. A permanent body (the _commission permanente
+des valeurs_) fixes the average prices of the articles in the customs
+list; this value is estimated at the end of the year in accordance with
+the variations that have taken place and is applied provisionally to the
+following year.
+
+  Amongst imports raw materials (wool, cotton and silk, coal, oil-seeds,
+  timber, &c.) hold the first place, articles of food (cereals, wine,
+  coffee, &c.) and manufactured goods (especially machinery) ranking
+  next. Amongst exports manufactured goods (silk, cotton and woollen
+  goods, fancy wares, apparel, &c.) come before raw materials and
+  articles of food (wine and dairy products bought chiefly by England).
+
+  Divided into these classes the imports and exports (special trade) for
+  quinquennial periods from 1886 to 1905 averaged as shown in the
+  preceding table.
+
+  The decline both in imports and in exports of articles of food, which
+  is the most noteworthy fact exhibited in the preceding table, was due
+  to the almost prohibitive tax in the Customs Law of 1892, upon
+  agricultural products.
+
+  The average value of the principal articles of import and export
+  (special trade) over quinquennial periods following 1890 is shown in
+  the two tables below.
+
+    _Principal Imports (Thousands of £)._
+
+    +-----------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    |                             |1891-1895.|1896-1900.|1901-1905.|
+    +-----------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    | Coal, coke, &c              |   7,018  |   9,883  |  10,539  |
+    | Coffee                      |   6,106  |   4,553  |   3,717  |
+    | Cotton, raw                 |   7,446  |   7,722  |  11,987  |
+    | Flax                        |   2,346  |   2,435  |   3,173  |
+    | Fruit and seeds (oleaginous)|   7,175  |   6,207  |   8,464  |
+    | Hides and skins, raw        |   6,141  |   5,261  |   6,369  |
+    | Machinery                   |   2,181  |   3,632  |   4,614  |
+    | Silk, raw                   |   9,488  |  10,391  |  11,765  |
+    | Timber                      |   6,054  |   6,284  |   6,760  |
+    | Wheat                       |  10,352  |   5,276  |   1,995  |
+    | Wine                        |   9,972  |  10,454  |   5,167  |
+    | Wool, raw                   |  13,372  |  16,750  |  16,395  |
+    +-----------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+
+    _Principal Exports (Thousands of £)._
+
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    |                                |1891-1895.|1896-1900.|1901-1905.|
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    | Apparel                        |   4,726  |   4,513  |   5,079  |
+    | Brandy and other spirits       |   2,402  |   1,931  |   1,678  |
+    | Butter                         |   2,789  |   2,783  |   2,618  |
+    | Cotton manufactures            |   4,233  |   5,874  |   7,965  |
+    | Haberdashery[15]               |   5,830  |   6,039  |   6,599  |
+    | Hides, raw                     |   2,839  |   3,494  |   4,813  |
+    | Hides, tanned or curried       |   4,037  |   4,321  |   4,753  |
+    | Iron and steel, manufactures of|     ..   |   2,849  |   4,201  |
+    | Millinery                      |   1,957  |   3,308  |   4,951  |
+    | Motor cars and vehicles        |     ..   |     160  |   2,147  |
+    | Paper and manufactures of      |   2,095  |   2,145  |   2,551  |
+    | Silk, raw, thrown, waste and   |          |          |          |
+    |   cocoons                      |   4,738  |   4,807  |   6,090  |
+    | Silk and waste silk,           |          |          |          |
+    |   manufactured of              |   9,769  |  10,443  |  11,463  |
+    | Wine                           |   8,824  |   9,050  |   9,139  |
+    | Wool, raw                      |   5,003  |   7,813  |   9,159  |
+    | Wool, manufactures of          |  11,998  |  10,190  |   8,459  |
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+
+  The following were the countries sending the largest quantities of
+  goods (special trade) to France (during the same periods as in
+  previous table).
+
+    Trade with Principal Countries. Imports (Thousands of £).
+
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    |                                |1891-1895.|1896-1900.|1901-1905.|
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    | Germany                        |  13,178  |  13,904  |  17,363  |
+    | Belgium                        |  15,438  |  13,113  |  13,057  |
+    | United Kingdom                 |  20,697  |  22,132  |  22,725  |
+    | Spain                          |  10,294  |  10,560  | 6,525[16]|
+    | United States                  |  15,577  |  18,491  |  19,334  |
+    | Argentine Republic             |   7,119  |  10,009  |  10,094  |
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+
+  Other countries importing largely into France are Russia, Algeria and
+  British India, whose imports in each case averaged over £9,000,000 in
+  value in the period 1901-1905; China (average value £7,000,000); and
+  Italy (average value £6,000,000).
+
+  The following are the principal countries receiving the exports of
+  France (special trade), with values for the same periods.
+
+    _Trade with Principal Countries. Exports (Thousands of £)._
+
+    +----------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    |                |1891-1895.|1896-1900.|1901-1905.|
+    +----------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    | Germany        |  13,712  |  16,285  |  21,021  |
+    | Belgium|       |  19,857  |  22,135  |  24,542  |
+    | United Kingdom |  39,310  |  45,203  |  49,156  |
+    | United States  |   9,337  |   9,497  |  10,411  |
+    | Algeria        |   7,872  |   9,434  |  11,652  |
+    +----------------+----------+----------+----------+
+
+  The other chief customers of France were Switzerland and Italy, whose
+  imports from France averaged in 1901-1905 nearly £10,000,000 and over
+  £7,200,000 respectively in value. In the same period Spain received
+  exports from France averaging £4,700,000.
+
+  The trade of France was divided between foreign countries and her
+  colonies in the following proportions (imports and exports combined).
+
+    +-----------+-----------------------+----------------------+
+    |           |     General Trade.    |  Special Trade.      |
+    |           +------------+----------+-----------+----------+
+    |           |  Foreign   | Colonies.|  Foreign  | Colonies.|
+    |           | Countries. |          | Countries.|          |
+    +-----------+------------+----------+-----------+----------+
+    | 1891-1895 |   92.00    |   8.00   |   90.89   |   9.11   |
+    | 1896-1900 |   91.18    |   8.82   |   89.86   |  10.14   |
+    | 1901-1905 |   90.41    |   9.59   |   88.78   |  11.22   |
+    +-----------+------------+----------+-----------+----------+
+
+  The respective shares of the leading customs in the trade of the
+  country is approximately shown in the following table, which gives the
+  value of their exports and imports (general trade) in 1905 in millions
+  sterling.
+
+                     £    |                       £
+    Marseilles      88.8  |  Boulogne.           17.5
+    Le Havre        79.5  |  Calais              14.1
+    Paris           42.8  |  Dieppe              13.5
+    Dunkirk         34.8  |  Rouen               11.3
+    Bordeaux        27.4  |  Belfort-Petit-Croix 10.7
+
+  In the same year the other chief customs in order of importance were
+  Tourcoing, Jeumont, Cette, St Nazaire and Avricourt.
+
+  The chief local bodies concerned with commerce and industry are the
+  _chambres de commerce_ and the _chambres consultatives d'arts et
+  manufactures_, the members of which are elected from their own number
+  by the traders and industrialists of a certain standing. They are
+  established in the chief towns, and their principal function is to
+  advise the government on measures for improving and facilitating
+  commerce and industry within their circumscription. See also BANKS AND
+  BANKING; SAVINGS BANKS; POST AND POSTAL SERVICE.
+
+  _Shipping._--The following table shows the increase in tonnage of
+  sailing and steam shipping engaged in foreign trade entered and
+  cleared at the ports of France over quinquennial periods from 1890.
+
+    +-----------+------------------------+------------------------+
+    |           |        Entered.        |        Cleared.        |
+    |           +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+
+    |           |  French.  |  Foreign.  |  French.  |  Foreign.  |
+    +-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+------------+
+    | 1891-1895 | 4,277,967 |  9,947,893 | 4,521,928 | 10,091,000 |
+    | 1896-1900 | 4,665,268 | 12,037,571 | 5,005,563 | 12,103,358 |
+    | 1901-1905 | 4,782,101 | 14,744,626 | 5,503,463 | 14,823,217 |
+    +-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+------------+
+
+  The increase of the French mercantile marine (which is fifth in
+  importance in the world) over the same period is traced in the
+  following table. Vessels of 2 net tons and upwards are enumerated.
+
+    +-----------+------------------+------------------+-------------------+
+    |           |     Sailing.     |      Steam.      |       Total.      |
+    |           +------------------+------------------+--------+----------+
+    |           | Number |         | Number |         | Number |          |
+    |           |   of   | Tonnage.|   of   | Tonnage.|   of   | Tonnage. |
+    |           |Vessels.|         |Vessels.|         |Vessels.|          |
+    +-----------+--------+---------+--------+---------+--------+----------+
+    | 1891-1895 | 14,183 | 402,982 |  1182  | 502,363 | 15,365 |  905,345 |
+    | 1896-1900 | 14,327 | 437,468 |  1231  | 504,674 | 15,558 |  942,142 |
+    | 1901-1905 | 14,867 | 642,562 |  1388  | 617,536 | 16,255 |1,260,098 |
+    +-----------+--------+---------+--------+---------+--------+----------+
+
+  At the beginning of 1908 the total was 17,193 (tonnage, 1,402,647); of
+  these 13,601 (tonnage, 81,833) were vessels of less than 20 tons,
+  while 502 (tonnage, 1,014,506) were over 800 tons.
+
+  The increase in the tonnage of sailing vessels, which in other
+  countries tends to decline, was due to the bounties voted by
+  parliament to its merchant sailing fleet with the view of increasing
+  the number of skilled seamen. The prosperity of the French shipping
+  trade is hampered by the costliness of shipbuilding and by the
+  scarcity of outward-bound cargo. Shipping has been fostered by paying
+  bounties for vessels constructed in France and sailing under the
+  French flag, and by reserving the coasting trade, traffic between
+  France and Algeria, &c., to French vessels. Despite these monopolies,
+  three-fourths of the shipping in French ports is foreign, and France
+  is without shipping companies comparable in importance to those of
+  other great maritime nations. The three chief companies are the
+  _Messageries Maritimes_ (Marseilles and Bordeaux), the _Compagnie
+  Générale Transatlantique_ (Le Havre, St Nazaire and Marseilles) and
+  the _Chargeurs Réunis_ (Le Havre).
+
+
+_Government and Administration._
+
+_Central Government._--The principles upon which the French constitution
+is based are representative government (by two chambers), manhood
+suffrage, responsibility of ministers and irresponsibility of the head
+of the state. Alterations or modifications of the constitution can only
+be effected by the National Assembly, consisting of both chambers
+sitting together _ad hoc_. The legislative power resides in these two
+chambers--the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies; the executive is
+vested in the president of the republic and the ministers. The members
+of both chambers owe their election to universal suffrage; but the
+Senate is not elected directly by the people and the Chamber of Deputies
+is.
+
+The Chamber of Deputies, consisting of 584 members, is elected by the
+_scrutin d'arrondissement_ (each elector voting for one deputy) for a
+term of four years, the conditions of election being as follows: Each
+arrondissement sends one deputy if its population does not exceed
+100,000, and an additional deputy for every additional 100,000
+inhabitants or fraction of that number. Every citizen of twenty-one
+years of age, unless subject to some legal disability, such as actual
+engagement in military service, bankruptcy or condemnation to certain
+punishments, has a vote, provided that he can prove a residence of six
+months' duration in any one town or commune. A deputy must be a French
+citizen, not under twenty-five years old. Each candidate must make, at
+least five days before the elections, a declaration setting forth in
+what constituency he intends to stand. He may only stand for one, and
+all votes given for him in any other than that specified in the
+declaration are void. To secure election a candidate must at the first
+voting poll an absolute majority and a number of votes equal to
+one-fourth of the number of electors. If a second poll is necessary a
+relative majority is sufficient.
+
+The Senate (see below, _Law and Institutions_) is composed of 300
+members who must be French citizens at least forty years of age. They
+are elected by the "_scrutin de liste_" for a period of nine years, and
+one-third of the body retires every three years. The department which is
+to elect a senator when a vacancy occurs is settled by lot.
+
+Both senators and deputies receive a salary of £600 per annum. No member
+of a family that has reigned in France is eligible for either chamber.
+
+Bills may be proposed either by ministers (in the name of the president
+of the republic), or by private members, and may be initiated in either
+chamber, but money-bills must be submitted in the first place to the
+Chamber of Deputies. Every bill is first examined by a committee, a
+member of which is chosen to "report" on it to the chamber, after which
+it must go through two readings (_délibérations_), before it is
+presented to the other chamber. Either house may pass a vote of no
+confidence in the government, and in practice the government resigns in
+face of the passing of such a vote by the deputies, but not if it is
+passed by the Senate only. The chambers usually assemble in January each
+year, and the ordinary session lasts not less than five months; usually
+it continues till July. There is an extraordinary session from October
+till Christmas.
+
+The president (see below, _Law and Institutions_) is elected for seven
+years, by a majority of votes, by the Senate and Chamber of Deputies
+sitting together as the National Assembly. Any French citizen may be
+chosen president, no fixed age being required. The only exception to
+this rule is that no member of a royal family which has once reigned in
+France can be elected. The president receives 1,200,000 francs (£48,000)
+a year, half as salary, half for travelling expenses and the charges
+incumbent upon the official representative of the country. Both the
+chambers are summoned by the president, who has the power of dissolving
+the Chamber of Deputies with the assent of the Senate. When a change of
+Government occurs the president chooses a prominent parliamentarian as
+premier and president of the council. This personage, who himself holds
+a portfolio, nominates the other ministers, his choice being subject to
+the ratification of the chief of the state. The ministerial council
+(_conseil des ministres_) is presided over by the president of the
+republic; less formal meetings (_conseils de cabinet_) under the
+presidency of the premier, or even of some other minister, are also
+held.
+
+The ministers, whether members of parliament or not, have the right to
+sit in both chambers and can address the house whenever they choose,
+though a minister may only vote in the chamber of which he happens to be
+a member. There are twelve ministries[17] comprising those of justice;
+finance; war; the interior; marine; colonies; public instruction and
+fine arts; foreign affairs; commerce and industry; agriculture; public
+works; and labour and public thrift. Individual ministers are
+responsible for all acts done in connexion with their own departments,
+and the body of ministers collectively is responsible for the general
+policy of the government.
+
+The council of state (_conseil d'état_) is the principal council of the
+head of the state and his ministers, who consult it on various
+legislative problems, more particularly on questions of administration.
+It is divided for despatch of business into four sections, each of which
+corresponds to a group of two or three ministerial departments, and is
+composed of (1) 32 councillors "_en service ordinaire_" (comprising a
+vice-president and sectional presidents), and 19 councillors "_en
+service extraordinaire_," i.e. government officials who are deputed to
+watch the interests of the ministerial departments to which they belong,
+and in matters not concerned with those departments have a merely
+consultative position; (2) 32 _maîtres des requêtes_; (3) 40 auditors.
+
+The presidency of the council of state belongs _ex officio_ to the
+minister of justice.
+
+The theory of "_droit administratif_" lays down the principle that an
+agent of the government cannot be prosecuted or sued for acts relating
+to his administrative functions before the ordinary tribunals.
+Consequently there is a special system of administrative jurisdiction
+for the trial of "_le contentieux administratif_" or disputes in which
+the administration is concerned. The council of state is the highest
+administrative tribunal, and includes a special "_Section du
+contentieux_" to deal with judicial work of this nature.
+
+_Local Government._--France is divided into 86 administrative
+departments (including Corsica) or 87 if the Territory of Belfort, a
+remnant of the Haut Rhin department, be included. These departments are
+subdivided into 362 arrondissements, 2911 cantons and 36,222 communes.
+
+  +------------------------+-------------------+---------------------------------------------------+
+  |      Departments.      |   Capital Towns.  |              Ancient Provinces.[18]               |
+  +------------------------+-------------------+---------------------------------------------------+
+  | AIN                    | Bourg             | Bourgogne (Bresse, Bugey, Valromey, Dombes).      |
+  | AISNE                  | Laon              | Île-de-France; Picardie.                          |
+  | ALLIER                 | Moulins           | Bourbonnais.                                      |
+  | ALPES-MARITIMES        | Nice              |                                                   |
+  | ARDÈCHE                | Privas            | Languedoc (Vivarais).                             |
+  | ARDENNES               | Mézières          | Champagne.                                        |
+  | ARIÈGE                 | Foix              | Foix; Gascogne (Cousérans).                       |
+  | AUBE                   | Troyes            | Champagne; Bourgogne.                             |
+  | AUDE                   | Carcassonne       | Languedoc.                                        |
+  | AVEYRON                | Rodez             | Guienne (Rouergue).                               |
+  | BASSES-ALPES           | Digne             | Provence.                                         |
+  | BASSES-PYRÉNÉES        | Pau               | Béarn; Gascogne (Basse-Navarre, Soule, Labourd).  |
+  | BELFORT, TERRITOIRE DE | Belfort           | Alsace.                                           |
+  | BOUCHES-DU-RHÔNE       | Marseilles        | Provence.                                         |
+  | CALVADOS               | Caen              | Normandie (Bessin, Bocage).                       |
+  | CANTAL                 | Aurillac          | Auvergne.                                         |
+  | CHARENTE               | Angoulême         | Angoumois; Saintonge.                             |
+  | CHARENTE-INFÉRIEURE    | La Rochelle       | Aunis; Saintonge.                                 |
+  | CHER                   | Bourges           | Berry; Bourbonnais.                               |
+  | CORRÈZE                | Tulle             | Limousin.                                         |
+  | CÔTE-D'OR              | Dijon             | Bourgogne (Dijonnais, Auxois).                    |
+  | CÔTES-DU-NORD          | St Brieuc         | Bretagne.                                         |
+  | CREUSE                 | Guéret            | Marche.                                           |
+  | DEUX-SÈVRES            | Niort             | Poitou.                                           |
+  | DORDOGNE               | Périgueux         | Guienne (Périgord).                               |
+  | DOUBS                  | Besançon          | Franche-Comté; Montbéliard.                       |
+  | DRÔME                  | Valence           | Dauphiné.                                         |
+  | EURE                   | Évreux            | Normandie; Perche.                                |
+  | EURE-ET-LOIR           | Chartres          | Orléanais; Normandie.                             |
+  | FINISTÈRE              | Quimper           | Bretagne.                                         |
+  | GARD                   | Nîmes             | Languedoc.                                        |
+  | GERS                   | Auch              | Gascogne (Astarac, Armagnac).                     |
+  | GIRONDE                | Bordeaux          | Guienne (Bordelais, Bazadais).                    |
+  | HAUTE-GARONNE          | Toulouse          | Languedoc; Gascogne (Comminges).                  |
+  | HAUTE-LOIRE            | Le Puy            | Languedoc (Velay); Auvergne; Lyonnais.            |
+  | HAUTE-MARNE            | Chaumont          | Champagne (Bassigny, Vallage).                    |
+  | HAUTES-ALPES           | Gap               | Dauphiné.                                         |
+  | HAUTE-SAÔNE            | Vesoul            | Franche-Comté.                                    |
+  | HAUTE-SAVOIE           | Annecy            |                                                   |
+  | HAUTES-PYRÉNÉES        | Tarbes            | Gascogne.                                         |
+  | HAUTE-VIENNE           | Limoges           | Limousin; Marche.                                 |
+  | HÉRAULT                | Montpellier       | Languedoc.                                        |
+  | ILLE-ET-VILAINE        | Rennes            | Bretagne.                                         |
+  | INDRE                  | Châteauroux       | Berry.                                            |
+  | INDRE-ET-LOIRE         | Tours             | Touraine.                                         |
+  | ISÈRE                  | Grenoble          | Dauphiné.                                         |
+  | JURA                   | Lons-le-Saunier   | Franche-Comté.                                    |
+  | LANDES                 | Mont-de-Marsan    | Gascogne (Landes, Chalosse).                      |
+  | LOIRE                  | St-Étienne        | Lyonnais.                                         |
+  | LOIRE-INFÉRIEURE       | Nantes            | Bretagne.                                         |
+  | LOIRET                 | Orléans           | Orléanais (Orléanais proper, Gâtinais, Dunois).   |
+  | LOIR-ET-CHER           | Blois             | Orléanais.                                        |
+  | LOT                    | Cahors            | Guienne (Quercy).                                 |
+  | LOT-ET-GARONNE         | Agen              | Guienne; Gascogne.                                |
+  | LOZÈRE                 | Mende             | Languedoc (Gévaudan).                             |
+  | MAINE-ET-LOIRE         | Angers            | Anjou.                                            |
+  | MANCHE                 | St-Lô             | Normandie (Cotentin).                             |
+  | MARNE                  | Châlons-sur-Marne | Champagne.                                        |
+  | MAYENNE                | Laval             | Maine; Anjou.                                     |
+  | MEURTHE-ET-MOSELLE     | Nancy             | Lorraine; Trois-Évêchés.                          |
+  | MEUSE                  | Bar-le-Duc        | Lorraine (Barrois, Verdunois).                    |
+  | MORBIHAN               | Vannes            | Bretagne.                                         |
+  | NIÈVRE                 | Nevers            | Nivernais; Orléanais.                             |
+  | NORD                   | Lille             | Flandre; Hainaut.                                 |
+  | OISE                   | Beauvais          | Île-de-France.                                    |
+  | ORNE                   | Alençon           | Normandie; Perche.                                |
+  | PAS-DE-CALAIS          | Arras             | Artois; Picardie.                                 |
+  | PUY-DE-DÔME            | Clermont-Ferrand  | Auvergne.                                         |
+  | PYRÉNÉES-ORIENTALES    | Perpignan         | Roussillon; Languedoc.                            |
+  | RHÔNE                  | Lyon              | Lyonnais; Beaujolais.                             |
+  | SAÔNE-ET-LOIRE         | Mâcon             | Bourgogne.                                        |
+  | SARTHE                 | Le Mans           | Maine; Anjou.                                     |
+  | SAVOIE                 | Chambéry          |                                                   |
+  | SEINE                  | Paris             | Île-de-France.                                    |
+  | SEINE-ET-MARNE         | Melun             | Île-de-France; Champagne.                         |
+  | SEINE-ET-OISE          | Versailles        | Île-de-France.                                    |
+  | SEINE-INFÉRIEURE       | Rouen             | Normandie.                                        |
+  | SOMME                  | Amiens            | Picardie.                                         |
+  | TARN                   | Albi              | Languedoc (Albigeois).                            |
+  | TARN-ET-GARONNE        | Montauban         | Guienne; Gascogne; Languedoc.                     |                      |
+  | VAR                    | Draguignan        | Provence.                                         |
+  | VAUCLUSE               | Avignon           | Comtat; Venaissin; Provence; Principauté d'Orange.|
+  | VENDÉE                 | La Roche-sur-Yon  | Poitou.                                           |
+  | VIENNE                 | Poitiers          | Poitou; Touraine.                                 |
+  | VOSGES                 | Épinal            | Lorraine.                                         |
+  | YONNE                  | Auxerre           | Bourgogne; Champagne.                             |
+  | CORSE (CORSICA)        | Ajaccio           | Corse.                                            |
+  +------------------------+-------------------+---------------------------------------------------+
+
+  Before 1790 France was divided into thirty-three great and seven small
+  military governments, often called provinces, which are, however, to
+  be distinguished from the provinces formed under the feudal system.
+  The great governments were: Alsace, Saintonge and Angournois, Anjou,
+  Artois, Aunis, Auvergne, Béarn and Navarre, Berry, Bourbonnais;
+  Bourgogne (Burgundy), Bretagne (Brittany), Champagne, Dauphiné,
+  Flandre, Foix, Franche-Comté, Guienne and Gascogne (Gascony),
+  Île-de-France, Languedoc, Limousin, Lorraine, Lyonnais, Maine, Marche,
+  Nivernais, Normandie, Orléanais, Picardie, Poitou, Provence,
+  Roussillon, Touraine and Corse. The eight small governments were:
+  Paris, Boulogne and Boulonnais, Le Havre, Sedan, Toulois, Pays Messin
+  and Verdunois and Saumurois.
+
+At the head of each department is a prefect, a political official
+nominated by the minister of the interior and appointed by the
+president, who acts as general agent of the government and
+representative of the central authority. To aid him the prefect has a
+general secretary and an advisory body (_conseil de préfecture_), the
+members of which are appointed by the president, which has jurisdiction
+in certain classes of disputes arising out of administration and must,
+in certain cases, be consulted, though the prefect is not compelled to
+follow its advice. The prefect supervises the execution of the laws; has
+wide authority in regard to policing, public hygiene and relief of
+pauper children; has the nomination of various subordinate officials;
+and is in correspondence with the subordinate functionaries in his
+department, to whom he transmits the orders and instructions of the
+government. Although the management of local affairs is in the hands of
+the prefect his power with regard to these is checked by a deliberative
+body known as the general council (_conseil général_). This council,
+which consists for the most part of business and professional men, is
+elected by universal suffrage, each canton in the department
+contributing one member. The general council controls the departmental
+administration of the prefect, and its decisions on points of local
+government are usually final. It assigns its quota of taxes
+(_contingent_) to each arrondissement, authorizes the sale, purchase or
+exchange of departmental property, superintends the management thereof,
+authorizes the construction of new roads, railways or canals, and
+advises on matters of local interest. Political questions are rigorously
+excluded from its deliberations. The general council, when not sitting,
+is represented by a permanent delegation (_commission départementale_).
+
+As the prefect in the department, so the sub-prefect in the
+arrondissement, though with a more limited power, is the representative
+of the central authority. He is assisted, and in some degree controlled,
+in his work by the district council (_conseil d'arrondissement_), to
+which each canton sends a member, chosen by universal suffrage. As the
+arrondissement has neither property nor budget, the principal business
+of the council is to allot to each commune its share of the direct taxes
+imposed on the arrondissement by the general council.
+
+The canton is purely an administrative division, containing, on an
+average, about twelve communes, though some exceptional communes are big
+enough to contain more than one canton. It is the seat of a justice of
+the peace, and is the electoral unit for the general council and the
+district council.
+
+The communes, varying greatly in area and population, are the
+administrative units in France. The chief magistrate of the commune is
+the mayor (_maire_), who is (1) the agent of the central government and
+charged as such with the local promulgation and execution of the general
+laws and decrees of the country; (2) the executive head of the
+municipality, in which capacity he supervises the police, the revenue
+and public works of the commune, and acts as the representative of the
+corporation in general. He also acts as registrar of births, deaths and
+marriages, and officiates at civil marriages. Mayors are usually
+assisted by deputies (_adjoints_). In a commune of 2500 inhabitants or
+less there is one deputy; in more populous communes there may be more,
+but in no case must the number exceed twelve, except at Lyons, where as
+many as seventeen are allowed. Both mayors and deputy mayors are elected
+by and from among members of the municipal council for four years. This
+body consists, according to the population of the commune, of from 10 to
+36 members, elected for four years on the principle of the _scrutin de
+liste_ by Frenchmen who have reached the age of twenty-one years and
+have a six months' residence qualification.
+
+The local affairs of the commune are decided by the municipal council,
+and its decisions become operative after the expiration of a month, save
+in matters which involve interests transcending those of the commune. In
+such cases the prefect must approve them, and in some cases the sanction
+of the general council or even ratification by the president is
+necessary. The council also chooses communal delegates to elect
+senators; and draws up the list of _répartiteurs_, whose function is to
+settle how the commune's share of direct taxes shall be allotted among
+the taxpayers. The sub-prefect then selects from this list ten of whom
+he approves for the post. The meetings of the council are open to the
+public.
+
+
+_Justice._
+
+The ordinary judicial system of France comprises two classes of courts:
+(1) civil and criminal, (2) special, including courts dealing only with
+purely commercial cases; in addition there are the administrative
+courts, including bodies, the Conseil d'État and the Conseils de
+Préfecture, which deal, in their judicial capacity, with cases coming
+under the _droit administratif_. Mention may also be made of the
+Tribunal des Conflits, a special court whose function it is to decide
+which is the competent tribunal when an administration and a judicial
+court both claim or refuse to deal with a given case.
+
+Taking the first class of courts, which have both civil and criminal
+jurisdiction, the lowest tribunal in the system is that of the _juge de
+paix_.
+
+In each canton is a _juge de paix_, who in his capacity as a civil judge
+takes cognizance, without appeal, of disputes where the amount sought to
+be recovered does not exceed £12 in value. Where the amount exceeds £12
+but not £24 an appeal lies from his decision to the court of first
+instance. In some particular cases where special promptitude or local
+knowledge is necessary, as disputes between hotelkeepers and travellers,
+and the like, he has jurisdiction (subject to appeal to the court of
+first instance) up to £60. He has also a criminal jurisdiction in
+_contraventions_, i.e. breaches of law punishable by a fine not
+exceeding 12s. or by imprisonment not exceeding five days. If the
+sentence be one of imprisonment or the fine exceeds 4s., appeal lies to
+the court of first instance. It is an important function of the _juge de
+paix_ to endeavour to reconcile disputants who come before him, and no
+suit can be brought before the court of first instance until he has
+endeavoured without success to bring the parties to an agreement.
+
+_Tribunaux de première instance_, also called _tribunaux
+d'arrondissement_, of which there is one in every arrondissement (with
+few exceptions), besides serving as courts of appeal from the _juges de
+paix_ have an original jurisdiction in matters civil and criminal. The
+court consists of a president, one or more vice-presidents and a
+variable number of judges. A _procureur_, or public prosecutor, is also
+attached to each court. In civil matters the tribunal takes cognizance
+of actions relating to personal property to the value of £60, and
+actions relating to land to the value of 60 fr. (£2: 8s.) per annum.
+When it deals with matters involving larger sums an appeal lies to the
+courts of appeal. In penal cases its jurisdiction extends to all
+offences of the class known as _délits_--offences punishable by a more
+serious penalty than the "contraventions" dealt with by the _juge de
+paix_, but not entailing such heavy penalties as the code applies to
+_crimes_, with which the assize courts (see below) deal. When sitting in
+its capacity as a criminal court it is known as the _tribunal
+correctionnel_. Its judgments are invariably subject in these matters to
+appeal before the court of appeal.
+
+There are twenty-six courts of appeal (_cours d'appel_), to each of
+which are attached from one to five departments.
+
+  Cours d'Appel.        Departments depending on them.
+
+  PARIS        Seine, Aube, Eure-et-Loir, Marne, Seine-et-Marne,
+                          Seine-et-Oise, Yonne.
+  AGEN . . . . Gers, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne.
+  AIX  . . . . Basses-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var.
+  AMIENS . . . Aisne, Oise, Somme.
+  ANGERS . . . Maine-et-Loire, Mayenne, Sarthe.
+  BASTIA . . . Corse.
+  BESANÇON . . Doubs, Jura, Haute-Saône, Territoire de Belfort.
+  BORDEAUX . . Charente, Dordogne, Gironde.
+  BOURGES  . . Cher, Indre, Nièvre.
+  CAEN   . . . Calvados, Manche, Orne.
+  CHAMBÉRY . . Savoie, Haute-Savoie.
+  DIJON  . . . Côte-d'Or, Haute-Marne, Saône-et-Loire.
+  DOUAI  . . . Nord, Pas-de-Calais.
+  GRENOBLE . . Hautes-Alpes, Drôme, Isère.
+  LIMOGES  . . Corrèze, Creuse, Haute-Vienne.
+  LYONS  . . . Ain, Loire, Rhône.
+  MONTPELLIER  Aude, Aveyron, Hérault, Pyrénées-Orientales.
+  NANCY  . . . Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Vosges, Ardennes.
+  NÎMES  . . . Ardèche, Gard, Lozère, Vaucluse.
+  ORLÉANS  . . Indre-et-Loire, Loir-et-Cher, Loiret.
+  PAU  . . . . Landes, Basses-Pyrénées, Hautes-Pyrénées.
+  POITIERS . . Charente-Inférieure, Deux-Sèvres, Vendée, Vienne.
+  RENNES . . . Côtes-du-Nord, Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine,
+                 Loire-Inférieure, Morbihan.
+  RIOM . . . . Allier, Cantal, Haute-Loire, Puy-de-Dôme.
+  ROUEN  . . . Eure, Seine-Inférieure.
+  TOULOUSE . . Ariège, Haute-Garonne, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne.
+
+At the head of each court, which is divided into sections (_chambres_),
+is a _premier président_. Each section (_chambre_) consists of a
+_président de chambre_ and four judges (_conseillers_).
+_Procureurs-généraux_ and _avocats-généraux_ are also attached to the
+_parquet_, or permanent official staff, of the courts of appeal. The
+principal function of these courts is the hearing of appeals both civil
+and criminal from the courts of first instance; only in some few cases
+(e.g. discharge of bankrupts) do they exercise an original jurisdiction.
+One of the sections is termed the _chambre des mises en accusation_. Its
+function is to examine criminal cases and to decide whether they shall
+be referred for trial to the lower courts or the _cours d'assises_. It
+may also dismiss a case on grounds of insufficient evidence.
+
+The _cours d'assises_ are not separate and permanent tribunals. Every
+three months an assize is held in each department, usually at the chief
+town, by a _conseiller_, appointed _ad hoc_, of the court of appeal upon
+which the department depends. The _cour d'assises_ occupies itself
+entirely with offences of the most serious type, classified under the
+penal code as _crimes_, in accordance with the severity of the penalties
+attached. The president is assisted in his duties by two other
+magistrates, who may be chosen either from among the _conseillers_ of
+the court of appeal or the presidents or judges of the local court of
+first instance. In this court and in this court alone there is always a
+jury of twelve. They decide, as in England, on facts only, leaving the
+application of the law to the judges. The verdict is given by a simple
+majority.
+
+In all criminal prosecutions, other than those coming before the _juge
+de paix_, a secret preliminary investigation is made by an official
+called a _juge d'instruction_. He may either dismiss the case at once by
+an order of "non-lieu," or order it to be tried, when the prosecution is
+undertaken by the _procureur_ or _procureur-général_. This process in
+some degree corresponds to the manner in which English magistrates
+dismiss a case or commit the prisoner to quarter sessions or assizes,
+but the powers of the _juge d'instruction_ are more arbitrary and
+absolute.
+
+The highest tribunal in France is the _cour de cassation_, sitting at
+Paris, and consisting of a first president, three sectional presidents
+and forty-five _conseillers_, with a ministerial staff (_parquet_)
+consisting of a _procureur-général_ and six advocates-general. It is
+divided into three sections: the Chambre des Requêtes, or court of
+petitions, the civil court and the criminal court. The _cour de
+cassation_ can review the decision of any other tribunal, except
+administrative courts. Criminal appeals usually go straight to the
+criminal section, while civil appeals are generally taken before the
+Chambre des Requêtes, where they undergo a preliminary examination. If
+the demand for rehearing is refused such refusal is final; but if it is
+granted the case is then heard by the civil chamber, and after argument
+_cassation_ (annulment) is granted or refused. The Court of Cassation
+does not give the ultimate decision on a case; it pronounces, not on the
+question of fact, but on the legal principle at issue, or the competence
+of the court giving the original decision. Any decision, even one of a
+_cour d'assises_, may be brought before it in the last resort, and may
+be _cassé_--annulled. If it pronounces _cassation_ it remits the case to
+the hearing of a court of the same order.
+
+Commercial courts (_tribunaux de commerce_) are established in all the
+more important commercial towns to decide as expeditiously as possible
+disputed points arising out of business transactions. They consist of
+judges, chosen, from among the leading merchants, and elected by
+_commerçants patentés depuis cinq ans_, i.e. persons who have held the
+licence to trade (see FINANCE) for five years and upwards. In the
+absence of a _tribunal de commerce_ commercial cases come before the
+ordinary _tribunal d'arrondissement_.
+
+In important industrial towns tribunals called _conseils de prud'hommes_
+are instituted to deal with disputes between employers and employees,
+actions arising out of contracts of apprenticeship and the like. They
+are composed of employers and workmen in equal numbers and are
+established by decree of the council of state, advised by the minister
+of justice. The minister of justice is notified of the necessity for a
+_conseil de prud'hommes_ by the prefect, acting on the advice of the
+municipal council and the Chamber of Commerce or the Chamber of Arts and
+Manufactures. The judges are elected by employers and workmen of a
+certain standing. When the amount claimed exceeds £12 appeal lies to the
+_tribunaux d'arrondissement_.
+
+_Police._--Broadly, the police of France may be divided into two great
+branches--administrative police (_la police administrative_) and
+judicial police (_la police judiciaire_), the former having for its
+object the maintenance of order, and the latter charged with tracing out
+offenders, collecting the proofs, and delivering the presumed offenders
+to the tribunals charged by law with their trial and punishment.
+Subdivisions may be, and often are, named according to the particular
+duties to which they are assigned, as _la police politique_, _police des
+moeurs_, _police sanitaire_, &c. The officers of the judicial police
+comprise the _juge de paix_ (equivalent to the English police
+magistrate), the _maire_, the _commissaire de police_, the _gendarmerie_
+and, in rural districts, the _gardes champêtres_ and the _gardes
+forestiers_. _Gardiens de la paix_ (sometimes called _sergents de
+ville_, _gardes de ville_ or _agents de police_) are not to be
+confounded with the gendarmerie, being a branch of the administrative
+police and corresponding more or less nearly with the English equivalent
+"police constables," which the gendarmerie do not, although both perform
+police duty. The gendarmerie, however, differ from the agents or gardes
+both in uniform and in the fact that they are for the most part country
+patrols. The organization of the Paris police, which is typical of that
+in other large towns, may be outlined briefly. The central
+administration (_administration centrale_) comprises three classes of
+functions which together constitute _la police_. First there is the
+office or _cabinet_ of the prefect for the general police (_la police
+générale_), with bureaus for various objects, such as the safety of the
+president of the republic, the regulation and order of public
+ceremonies, theatres, amusements and entertainments, &c.; secondly, the
+judicial police (_la police judiciaire_), with numerous bureaus also, in
+constant communication with the courts of judicature; thirdly, the
+administrative police (_la police administrative_) including bureaus,
+which superintend navigation, public carriages, animals, public health,
+&c. Concurrently with these divisions there is the municipal police,
+which comprises all the agents in enforcing police regulations in the
+streets or public thoroughfares, acting under the orders of a chief
+(_chef de la police municipale_) with a central bureau. The municipal
+police is divided into two principal branches--the service in uniform of
+the _agents de police_ and the service out of uniform of _inspecteurs de
+police_. In Paris the municipal police are divided among the twenty
+arrondissements, which the uniform police patrol (see further PARIS and
+POLICE).
+
+_Prisons._--The prisons of France, some of them attached to the ministry
+of the interior, are complex in their classification. It is only from
+the middle of the 19th century that close attention has been given to
+the principle of individual separation. Cellular imprisonment was,
+however, partially adopted for persons awaiting trial. Central prisons,
+in which prisoners lived and worked in association, had been in
+existence from the commencement of the 19th century. These prisons
+received all sentenced to short terms of imprisonment, the long-term
+convicts going to the _bagnes_ (the great convict prisons at the
+arsenals of Rochefort, Brest and Toulon), while in 1851 transportation
+to penal colonies was adopted. In 1869 and 1871 commissions were
+appointed to inquire into prison discipline, and as a consequence of the
+report of the last commission, issued in 1874, the principle of cellular
+confinement was put in operation the following year. There were,
+however, but few prisons in France adapted for the cellular system, and
+the process of reconstruction has been slow. In 1898 the old Paris
+prisons of Grande-Roquette, Saint-Pélagie and Mazas were demolished, and
+to replace them a large prison with 1500 cells was erected at
+Fresnes-lès-Rungis. There are (1) the _maison d'arrêt_, temporary places
+of durance in every arrondissement for persons charged with offences,
+and those sentenced to more than a year's imprisonment who are awaiting
+transfer to a _maison centrale_; (2) the _maison de justice_, often part
+and parcel of the former, but only existing in the assize court towns
+for the safe custody of those tried or condemned at the assizes; (3)
+departmental prisons, or _maisons de correction_, for summary
+convictions, or those sentenced to less than a year, or, if provided
+with sufficient cells, those amenable to separate confinement; (4)
+_maisons centrales_ and _pénitenciers agricoles_, for all sentenced to
+imprisonment for more than a year, or to hard labour, or to those
+condemned to _travaux forcés_ for offences committed in prison. There
+are eleven _maisons centrales_, nine for men (Loos, Clairvaux, Beaulieu,
+Poissy, Melun, Fontevrault, Thouars, Riom and Nîmes); two for women
+(Rennes and Montpellier). The _pénitenciers agricoles_ only differ from
+the _maisons centrales_ in the matter of régime; there are two--at
+Castelluccio and at Chiavari (Corsica). There are also reformatory
+establishments for juvenile offenders, and _dépôts de sûreté_ for
+prisoners who are travelling, at places where there are no other
+prisons. For the penal settlements at a distance from France see
+DEPORTATION.
+
+
+_Finance._
+
+At the head of the financial organization of France, and exercising a
+general jurisdiction, is the minister of finance, who co-ordinates in
+one general budget the separate budgets prepared by his colleagues and
+assigns to each ministerial department the sums necessary for its
+expenses.
+
+
+  Budget.
+
+The financial year in France begins on the 1st of January, and the
+budget of each financial year must be laid on the table of the Chamber
+of Deputies in the course of the ordinary session of the preceding year
+in time for the discussion upon it to begin in October and be concluded
+before the 31st of December. It is then submitted to a special
+commission of the Chamber of Deputies, elected for one year, who appoint
+a general reporter and one or more special reporters for each of the
+ministries. When the Chamber of Deputies has voted the budget it is
+submitted to a similar course of procedure in the Senate. When the
+budget has passed both chambers it is promulgated by the president under
+the title of _Loi des finances_. In the event of its not being voted
+before the 31st of December, recourse is had to the system of
+"provisional twelfths" (_douzièmes provisoires_), whereby the government
+is authorized by parliament to incur expenses for one, two or three
+months on the scale of the previous year. The expenditure of the
+government has several times been regulated for as long as six months
+upon this system.
+
+
+    Taxation.
+
+  In each department an official collector (_Trésorier payeur général_)
+  receives the taxes and public revenue collected therein and accounts
+  for them to the central authority in Paris. In view of his
+  responsibilities he has, before appointment, to pay a large deposit to
+  the treasury. Besides receiving taxes, they pay the creditors of the
+  state in their departments, conduct all operations affecting
+  departmental loans, buy and sell government stock (_rentes_) on behalf
+  of individuals, and conduct certain banking operations. The
+  _trésorier_ nearly always lives at the chief town of the department,
+  and is assisted by a _receveur particulier des finances_ in each
+  arrondissement (except that in which the _trésorier_ himself resides).
+  From the _receveur_ is demanded a security equal to five times his
+  total income. The direct taxes are actually collected by
+  _percepteurs_. In the commune an official known as the _receveur
+  municipal_ receives all moneys due to it, and, subject to the
+  authorization of the mayor, makes all payments due from it. In
+  communes with a revenue of less than £2400 the _percepteur_ fulfils
+  the functions of _receveur municipal_, but a special official may be
+  appointed in communes with large incomes.
+
+  The direct taxes fall into two classes. (1) _Impôts de répartition_
+  (apportionment), the amount to be raised being fixed in advance
+  annually and then apportioned among the departments. They include the
+  land tax,[19] the personal and habitation tax (_contribution
+  personnelle-mobilière_), and door and window tax. (2) _Impôts de
+  quotité_, which are levied directly on the individual, who pays his
+  quota according to a fixed tariff. These comprise the tax on
+  buildings[19] and the trade-licence tax (_impôt des patentes_).
+  Besides these, certain other taxes (_taxes assimilées aux
+  contributions directes_) are included under the heading of direct
+  taxation, e.g. the tax on property in mortmain, dues for the
+  verification of weights and measures, the tax on royalties from mines,
+  on horses, mules and carriages, on cycles, &c.
+
+  _The land tax_ falls upon land not built upon in proportion to its net
+  yearly revenue. It is collected in accordance with a register of
+  property (_cadastre_) drawn up for the most part in the first half of
+  the 19th century, dealing with every piece of property in France, and
+  giving its extent and value and the name of the owner. The
+  responsibility of keeping this register accurate and up to date is
+  divided between the state, the departments and the communes, and
+  involves a special service and staff of experts. _The building tax_
+  consists of a levy of 3.20% of the rental value of the property, and
+  is charged upon the owner.
+
+  _The personal and habitation tax_ consists in fact of two different
+  taxes, one imposing a fixed capitation charge on all citizens alike of
+  every department, the charge, however, varying according to the
+  department from 1 fc. 50 c. (1s. 3d.) to 4 fcs. 50 c. (3s. 9d.), the
+  other levied on every occupier of a furnished house or of apartments
+  in proportion to its rental value.
+
+  _The tax on doors and windows_ is levied in each case according to the
+  number of apertures, and is fixed with reference to population, the
+  inhabitants of the more populous paying more than those of the less
+  populous communes.
+
+  _The trade-licence tax_ (_impôt des patentes_) is imposed on every
+  person carrying on any business whatever; it affects professional men,
+  bankers and manufacturers, as well as wholesale and retail traders,
+  and consists of (1) a fixed duty levied not on actual profits but with
+  reference to the extent of a business or calling as indicated by
+  number of employés, population of the locality and other
+  considerations. (2) An assessment on the letting value of the premises
+  in which a business or profession is carried on.
+
+  The administrative staff includes, for the purpose of computing the
+  individual quotas of the direct taxes, a director assisted by
+  _contrôleurs_ in each department and subordinate to a central
+  authority in Paris, the _direction générale des contributions
+  directes_.
+
+  The indirect taxes comprise the charges on registration; stamps;
+  customs; and a group of taxes specially described as "indirect taxes."
+
+  _Registration_ (_enregistrement_) _duties_ are charged on the transfer
+  of property in the way of business (_à titre onéreux_); on changes in
+  ownership effected in the way of donation or succession (_à titre
+  gratuit_), and on a variety of other transactions which must be
+  registered according to law. The revenue from _stamps_ includes as its
+  chief items the returns from stamped paper, stamps on goods traffic,
+  securities and share certificates and receipts and cheques.
+
+  The _Direction générale de l'enregistrement, des domaines et du
+  timbre_, comprising a central department and a director and staff of
+  agents in each department, combines the administration of state
+  property (not including forests) with the exaction of registration and
+  stamp duties.
+
+  The Customs (_douane_), at one time only a branch of the
+  administration of the _contributions indirectes_, were organized in
+  1869 as a special service. The central office at Paris consists of a
+  _directeur général_ and two _administrateurs_, nominated by the
+  president of the republic. These officials form a council of
+  administration presided over by the minister of finance. The service
+  in the departments comprises _brigades_, which are actually engaged in
+  guarding the frontiers, and a clerical staff (_service de bureau_)
+  entrusted with the collection of the duties. There are twenty-four
+  districts, each under the control of a _directeur_, assisted by
+  inspectors, sub-inspectors and other officials. The chief towns of
+  these districts are Algiers, Bayonne, Besançon, Bordeaux, Boulogne,
+  Brest, Chambéry, Charleville, Dunkirk, Épinal, La Rochelle, Le Havre,
+  Lille, Lyons, Marseilles, Montpellier, Nancy, Nantes, Nice, Paris,
+  Perpignan, Rouen, St-Malo, Valenciennes. There is also an official
+  performing the functions of a director at Bastia, in Corsica.
+
+  The group specially described as indirect taxes includes those on
+  alcohol, wine, beer, cider and other alcoholic drinks, on passenger
+  and goods traffic by railway, on licences to distillers,
+  spirit-sellers, &c., on salt and on sugar of home manufacture. The
+  collection of these excise duties as well as the sale of matches,
+  tobacco and gunpowder to retailers, is assigned to a special service
+  in each department subordinated to a central administration. To the
+  above taxes must be added the _tax on Stock Exchange transactions_ and
+  the _tax of 4% on dividends from stocks and shares_ (_other than state
+  loans_).
+
+  Other main sources of revenue are: the _domains and forests_ managed
+  by the state; _government monopolies_, comprising tobacco, matches,
+  gunpowder; _posts_, _telegraphs_, _telephones_; and _state_
+  _railways_. An administrative tribunal called the _cour des comptes_
+  subjects the accounts of the state's financial agents
+  (_trésoriers-payeurs_, _receveurs_ of registration fees, of customs,
+  of indirect taxes, &c.) and of the communes[20] to a close
+  investigation, and a vote of definitive settlement is finally passed
+  by parliament. The Cour des Comptes, an ancient tribunal, was
+  abolished in 1791, and reorganized by Napoleon I. in 1807. It consists
+  of a president and 110 other officials, assisted by 25 auditors. All
+  these are nominated for life by the president of the republic. Besides
+  the accounts of the state and of the communes, those of charitable
+  institutions[20] and training colleges[20] and a great variety of
+  other public establishments are scrutinized by the Cour des Comptes.
+
+  The following table shows the rapid growth of the state revenue of
+  France during the period 1875-1905, the figures for the specified
+  years representing millions of pounds.
+
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+    | 1875. | 1880. | 1885. | 1890. | 1895. |  Average  |  Average  |
+    |       |       |       |       |       | 1896-1900.| 1901-1905.|
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+    |  108  |  118  |  122  |  129  |  137  |    144    |    147    |
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+
+  Of the revenue in 1905 (150½ million pounds) the four direct taxes
+  produced approximately 20 millions. Other principal items of revenue
+  were: Registration 25 millions, stamps 7½ millions, customs 18
+  millions, inland revenue on liquors 16½ millions, receipts from the
+  tobacco monopoly 18 millions, receipts from post office 10½ millions.
+
+
+    Expenditure.
+
+  Since 1875 the expenditure of the state has passed through
+  considerable fluctuations. It reached its maximum in 1883, descended
+  in 1888 and 1889, and since then has continuously increased. It was
+  formerly the custom to divide the credits voted for the discharge of
+  the public services into two heads--the ordinary and extraordinary
+  budget. The ordinary budget of expenditure was that met entirely by
+  the produce of the taxes, while the extraordinary budget of
+  expenditure was that which had to be incurred either in the way of an
+  immediate loan or in aid of the funds of the floating debt. The policy
+  adopted after 1890 of incorporating in the ordinary budget the
+  expenditure on war, marine and public works, each under its own head,
+  rendered the "extraordinary budget" obsolete, but there are still,
+  besides the ordinary budget, _budgets annexes_, comprising the credits
+  voted to certain establishments under state supervision, e.g. the
+  National Savings Bank, state railways, &c. The growth of the
+  expenditure of France is shown in the following summary figures, which
+  represent millions of pounds.
+
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+    | 1875. | 1880. | 1885. | 1890. | 1895. |  Average  |  Average  |
+    |       |       |       |       |       | 1896-1900.| 1901-1905.|
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+    |  117  |  135  |  139  |  132  |  137  |    143    |    147    |
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+
+  The chief item of expenditure (which totalled 148 million pounds in
+  1905) is the service of the public debt, which in 1905 cost 48¼
+  million pounds sterling. Of the rest of the sum assigned to the
+  ministry of finance (59¾ millions in all) 8½ millions went in the
+  expense of collection of revenue. The other ministries with the
+  largest outgoings were the ministry of war (the expenditure of which
+  rose from 25½ millions in 1895 to over 30 millions in 1905), the
+  ministry of marine (10¾ millions in 1895, over 12½ millions in 1905),
+  the ministry of public works (with an expenditure in 1905 of over 20
+  millions, 10 millions of which was assigned to posts, telegraphs and
+  telephones) and the ministry of public instruction, fine arts and
+  public worship, the expenditure on education having risen from 7½
+  millions in 1895 to 9½ millions in 1905.
+
+  _Public Debt._--The national debt of France is the heaviest of any
+  country in the world. Its foundation was laid early in the 15th
+  century, and the continuous wars of succeeding centuries, combined
+  with the extravagance of the monarchs, as well as deliberate disregard
+  of financial and economic conditions, increased it at an alarming
+  rate. The duke of Sully carried out a revision in 1604, and other
+  attempts were made by Mazarin and Colbert, but the extravagances of
+  Louis XV. swelled it again heavily. In 1764 the national debt amounted
+  to 2,360,000,000 livres, and the annual change to 93,000,000 livres. A
+  consolidation was effected in 1793, but the lavish issue of assignats
+  (q.v.) destroyed whatever advantage might have accrued, and the debt
+  was again dealt with by a law of the 9th of Vendémiaire year VI. (27th
+  of September 1797), the annual interest paid yearly to creditors then
+  amounting to 40,216,000 francs (£1,600,000). During the Directory a
+  sum of £250,000 was added to the interest charge, and by 1814 this
+  annual charge had risen to £2,530,000. This large increase is to be
+  accounted for by the fact that during the Napoleonic régime the
+  government steadily refused to issue inconvertible paper currency or
+  to meet war expenditure by borrowing. The following table shows the
+  increase of the funded debt since 1814.[21]
+
+    +------------------+------------------+-----------------+
+    |       Date.      | Nominal Capital  |    Interest     |
+    |                  | (Millions of £). | (Millions of £).|
+    +------------------+------------------+-----------------+
+    | April 1,    1814 |        50¾       |        2½       |
+    | April 1,    1830 |       177        |        8        |
+    | March 1,    1848 |       238¼       |        9¾       |
+    | January 1,  1852 |       220¾       |        9½       |
+    |    "        1871 |       498¼       |       15½       |
+    |    "        1876 |       796¼       |       30        |
+    |    "        1887 |       986½       |       34¼       |
+    |    "        1895 |      1038¾[22]   |       32½       |
+    |    "        1905 |      1037¼       |       31        |
+    +------------------+------------------+-----------------+
+
+  The French debt as constituted in 1905 was made up of funded debt and
+  floating debt as follows:
+
+                        _Funded Debt._
+
+    Perpetual 3% _rentes_                       £888,870,400
+    Terminable 3% _rentes_                       148,490,400
+                                              --------------
+        Total of funded debt                  £1,037,360,800
+                                              ==============
+    Guarantees to railway companies, &c. (in
+      capital)                                   £89,724,080
+    Other debt in capital                         46,800,840
+                                                 -----------
+                        _Floating Debt._
+
+    Exchequer bills                               £9,923,480
+    Liabilities on behalf of communes and public
+      establishments, including departmental
+      services                                    17,366,520
+    Deposit and current accounts of Caisse des
+      dépôts, &c., including savings banks        15,328,840
+    Caution money of Trésoriers payeurs-généraux   1,431,680
+    Other liabilities                              6,456,200
+                                                 -----------
+        Total of floating debt                   £50,506,720
+
+  _Departmental Finances._--Every department has a budget of its own,
+  which is prepared and presented by the prefect, voted by the
+  departmental council and approved by decree of the president of the
+  republic. The ordinary receipts include the revenues from the property
+  of the department, the produce of _additional centimes_, which are
+  levied in conjunction with the direct taxes for the maintenance of
+  both departmental and communal finances, state subventions and
+  contributions of the communes towards certain branches of poor relief
+  and to maintenance of roads. The chief expenses of the departments are
+  the care of pauper children and lunatics, the maintenance of
+  high-roads and the service of the departmental debt.
+
+  _Communal Finances._--The budget of the commune is prepared by the
+  mayor, voted by the municipal council and approved by the prefect. But
+  in communes the revenues of which exceed £120,000, the budget is
+  always submitted to the president of the republic. The ordinary
+  revenues include the produce of "additional centimes" allocated to
+  communal purposes, the rents and profits of communal property, sums
+  produced by municipal taxes and dues, concessions to gas, water and
+  other companies, and by the _octroi_ (q.v.) or duty on a variety of
+  articles imported into the commune for local consumption. The
+  repairing of highways, the upkeep of public buildings, the support of
+  public education, the remuneration of numerous officials connected
+  with the collection of state taxes, the keeping of the _cadastre_,
+  &c., constitute the principal objects of communal expenditure.
+
+  Both the departments and the communes have considerable public debts.
+  The departmental debt in 1904 stood at 24 million pounds, and the
+  communal debt at 153 million pounds.     (R. Tr.)
+
+
+_Army._
+
+_Recruiting and Strength._--Universal compulsory service was adopted
+after the disasters of 1870-1871, though in principle it had been
+established by Marshal Niel's reforms a few years before that date. The
+most important of the recruiting laws passed since 1870 are those of
+1872, 1889 and 1905, the last the "loi de deux ans" which embodies the
+last efforts of the French war department to keep pace with the
+ever-growing numbers of the German empire. Compulsory service with the
+colours is in Germany no longer universal, as there are twice as many
+able-bodied men presented by the recruiting commissions as the active
+army can absorb. France, with a greatly inferior population, now trains
+every man who is physically capable. This law naturally made a deep
+impression on military Europe, not merely because the period of colour
+service was reduced--Germany had taken this step years before--but
+because of the almost entire absence of the usual exemptions. Even
+bread-winners are required to serve, the state pensioning their
+dependants (75 centimes per diem, up to 10% of the strength) during
+their period of service. Dispensations, and also the one-year
+voluntariat, which had become a short cut for the so-called
+"intellectual class" to employment in the civil service rather than a
+means of training reserve officers, were abolished. Every Frenchman
+therefore is a member of the army practically or potentially from the
+age of twenty to the age of forty-five. Each year there is drawn up in
+every commune a list of the young men who attained the age of twenty
+during the previous year. These young men are then examined by a
+revising body (_Conseil de révision cantonal_) composed of civil and
+military officials. Men physically unfit are wholly exempted, and men
+who have not, at the time of the examination, attained the required
+physical standard are put back for re-examination after an interval. Men
+who, otherwise suitable, have some slight infirmity are drafted into the
+non-combatant branches. The minimum height for the infantry soldier is
+1.54 m., or 5 ft. ½ in., but men of special physique are taken below
+this height. In 1904, under the old system of three-years' service with
+numerous total and partial exemptions, 324,253 men became liable to
+incorporation, of whom 25,432 were rejected as unfit, 55,265 were
+admitted as one-year volunteers, 62,160 were put back, 27,825 had
+already enlisted with a view to making the army a career, 5257 were
+taken for the navy, and thus, with a few extra details and casualties,
+the contingent for full service dwindled to 147,549 recruits. In 1906,
+326,793 men had to present themselves, 25,348 had already enlisted, 4923
+went to the navy, 68,526 were put back, 33,777 found unfit, which,
+deducting 3128 details, gives an actual incorporated contingent of
+191,091 young men of twenty-one to serve for two full years (in each
+case, for the sake of comparison, men put back from former years who
+were enrolled are omitted). In theory a two-years' contingent of course
+should be half as large again as a three-years' one, but in practice,
+France has not men enough for so great an increase. Still the law of
+1905 provides a system whereby there is room with the colours for every
+available man, and moreover ensures his services. The net gain in the
+1906 class is not far short of 50,000, and the proportion of the new
+contingent to the old is practically 5:4. The _loi des cadres_ of 1907
+introduced many important changes of detail supplementary to the _loi de
+deux ans_. Important changes were also made in the provisions and
+administration of military law. The active army, then, at a given
+moment, say November 1, 1908, is composed of all the young men, not
+legally exempted, who have reached the age of twenty in the years 1906
+and 1907. It is at the disposal of the minister of war, who can decree
+the recall of all men discharged to the reserve the previous year and
+all those whose time of service has for any reason been shortened. The
+reserves of the active army are composed of those who have served the
+legal period in the active army. These are recalled twice, in the eleven
+years during which they are members of the reserve, for refresher
+courses. The active army and its reserve are not localized, but drawn
+from and distributed over the whole of France. The advantages of a
+purely territorial system have tempted various War Ministers to apply
+it, but the results were not good, owing to the want of uniformity in
+the military qualities and the political subordination of the different
+districts. One result of this is that mobilization and concentration are
+much slower processes than they are in Germany.
+
+The Territorial Army and its reserve (members of which undergo two short
+periods of training) are, however, allocated to local service. The
+soldier spends six years in the Territorial Army, and six in the reserve
+of the Territorial Army. The reserves of the active army and the
+Territorial Army and its reserve can only be recalled to active service
+in case of emergency and by decree of the head of the state.
+
+The total service rendered by the individual soldier is thus twenty-five
+years. He is registered at the age of twenty, is called to the colours
+on the 1st of October of the next year, discharged to the active army
+reserve on the 30th of September of the second year thereafter, to the
+Territorial Army at the same date thirteen complete years after his
+incorporation, and finally discharged from the reserve of the
+Territorial Army on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his entry into the
+active army. On November 1, 1908, then the active army was composed of
+the classes registered 1906 and 1907, the reserve of the classes
+1895-1905, the Territorial Army of those of 1889-1894 and the
+Territorial Army reserve of those of 1883-1888.
+
+In 1906 the peace strength of the army in France was estimated at
+532,593 officers and men; in Algeria 54,580; in Tunis 20,320; total
+607,493. Deducting vacancies, sick and absent, the effective strength of
+the active army in 1906 was 540,563; of the gendarmerie and Garde
+Républicaine 24,512; of colonial troops in the colonies 58,568. The full
+number of persons liable to be called upon for military service and
+engaged in such service is calculated (1908) as 4,800,000, of whom
+1,350,000 of the active army and the younger classes of army reserve
+would constitute the field armies set on foot at the outbreak of war.
+150,000 horses and mules are maintained on a peace footing and 600,000
+on a war footing.
+
+_Organization._--The general organization of the French army at home is
+based on the system of permanent army corps, the headquarters of which
+are as follows: I. Lille, II. Amiens, III. Rouen, IV. Le Mans, V.
+Orléans, VI. Châlons-sur-Marne, VII. Besançon, VIII. Bourges, IX. Tours,
+X. Rennes, XI. Nantes, XII. Limoges, XIII. Clermont-Ferrand, XIV. Lyons,
+XV. Marseilles, XVI. Montpellier, XVII. Toulouse, XVIII. Bordeaux, XIX.
+Algiers and XX. Nancy. Each army corps consists in principle of two
+infantry divisions, one cavalry brigade, one brigade of horse and field
+artillery, one engineer battalion and one squadron of train. But certain
+army corps have a special organization. The VI. corps (Châlons) and the
+VII. (Besançon) consist of three divisions each, and the XIX. (Algiers)
+has three divisions of its own as well as the division occupying Tunis.
+In addition to these corps there are eight permanent cavalry divisions
+with headquarters at Paris, Lunéville, Meaux, Sedan, Reims, Lyons, Melun
+and Dôle. The military government of Paris is independent of the army
+corps system and comprises, besides a division of the colonial army
+corps (see below), 3½ others detached from the II., III., IV. and V.
+corps, as well as the 1st and 3rd cavalry divisions and many smaller
+bodies of troops. The military government of Lyons is another
+independent and special command; it comprises practically the XIV. army
+corps and the 6th cavalry division. The infantry division consists of 2
+brigades, each of 2 regiments of 3 or 4 battalions (the 4 battalion
+regiments have recently been reduced for the most part to 3), with 1
+squadron cavalry and 12 batteries, attached from the corps troops, in
+war a proportion of the artillery would, however, be taken back to form
+the corps artillery (see ARTILLERY and TACTICS). The cavalry division
+consists of 2 or 3 brigades, each of 2 regiments or 8 squadrons, with 2
+horse artillery batteries attached. The army corps consists of
+headquarters, 2 (or 3) infantry divisions, 1 cavalry brigade, 1
+artillery brigade (2 regiments, comprising 21 field and 2 horse
+batteries), 1 engineer battalion, &c. In war a group of "Rimailho" heavy
+howitzers (see ORDNANCE: _Heavy Field and Light Siege Units_) would be
+attached. It is proposed, and accepted in principle, to increase the
+number of guns in the army corps by converting the horse batteries in 18
+army corps to field batteries, which, with other measures, enables the
+number of the latter to be increased to 36 (144 guns).
+
+The organization of the "metropolitan troops" by regiments is (a) 163
+regiments of line infantry, some of which are affected to "regional"
+duties and do not enter into the composition of their army corps for
+war, 31 battalions of _chasseurs à pied_, mostly stationed in the Alps
+and the Vosges, 4 regiments of Zouaves, 4 regiments of Algerian
+tirailleurs (natives, often called Turcos[23]), 2 foreign legion
+regiments, 5 battalions of African light infantry (disciplinary
+regiments), &c; (b) 12 regiments of cuirassiers, 32 of dragoons, 21 of
+_chasseurs à cheval_, 14 of hussars, 6 of _chasseurs d'Afrique_ and 4 of
+Spahis (Algerian natives); (c) 40 regiments of artillery, comprising 445
+field batteries, 14 mountain batteries and 52 horse batteries (see,
+however, above), 18 battalions of garrison artillery, with in addition
+13 companies of artificers, &c.; (d) 6 regiments of engineers forming 22
+battalions, and 1 railway regiment; (e) 20 squadrons of train, 27
+legions of gendarmerie and the Paris Garde Républicaine, administrative
+and medical units.
+
+_Colonial Troops._--These form an expeditionary army corps in France to
+which are attached the actual corps of occupation to the various
+colonies, part white, part natives. The colonial army corps,
+headquarters at Paris, has three divisions, at Paris, Toulon and Brest.
+
+The French colonial (formerly marine) infantry, recruited by voluntary
+enlistment, comprises 18 regiments and 5 independent battalions (of
+which 12 regiments are at home), 74 batteries of field, fortress and
+mountain artillery (of which 32 are at home), with a few cavalry and
+engineers, &c., and other services in proportion. The native troops
+include 13 regiments and 8 independent battalions. The strength of this
+army corps is 28,700 in France and 61,300 in the colonies.
+
+_Command._--The commander-in-chief of all the armed forces is the
+president of the Republic, but the practical direction of affairs lies
+in the hand of the minister of war, who is assisted by the _Conseil
+supérieur de la guerre_, a body of senior generals who have been
+selected to be appointed to the higher commands in war. The
+vice-president is the destined commander-in-chief of the field armies
+and is styled the generalissimo. The chief of staff of the army is also
+a member of the council. In war the latter would probably remain at the
+ministry of war in Paris, and the generalissimo would have his own chief
+of staff. The ministry of war is divided into branches for infantry,
+cavalry, &c.--and services for special subjects such as military law,
+explosives, health, &c. The general staff (_état major de l'armée_) has
+its functions classed as follows: personnel; material and finance; 1st
+bureau (organization and mobilization), 2nd (intelligence), 3rd
+(military operations and training) and 4th (communications and
+transport); and the famous historical section. The president of the
+Republic has a military household, and the minister a cabinet, both of
+which are occupied chiefly with questions of promotion, patronage and
+decorations.
+
+The general staff and also the staff of the corps and divisions are
+composed of certificated (_brevetés_) officers who have passed all
+through the École de Guerre. In time of peace an officer is attached to
+the staff for not more than four years. He must then return to
+regimental duty for at least two years.
+
+The officers of the army are obtained partly from the old-established
+military schools, partly from the ranks of the non-commissioned
+officers, the proportion of the latter being about one-third of the
+total number of officers. Artillery and engineer officers come from the
+École Polytechnique, infantry and cavalry from the École spéciale
+militaire de St-Cyr. Other important training institutions are the staff
+college (École supérieure de Guerre) which trains annually 70 to 90
+selected captains and lieutenants; the musketry school of Châlons, the
+gymnastic school at Joinville-le-Pont and the schools of St Maixent,
+Saumur and Versailles for the preparation of non-commissioned officers
+for commissions in the infantry, cavalry, artillery and engineers
+respectively. The non-commissioned officers are, as usual in universal
+service armies, drawn partly from men who voluntarily enlist at a
+relatively early age, and partly from men who at the end of their
+compulsory period of service are re-engaged. Voluntary enlistments in
+the French army are permissible, within certain limits, at the age of
+eighteen, and the _engagés_ serve for at least three years. The law
+further provides for the re-engagement of men of all ranks, under
+conditions varying according to their rank. Such re-engagements are for
+one to three years' effective service but may be extended to fifteen.
+They date from the time of the legal expiry of each man's compulsory
+active service. _Rengagés_ receive a bounty, a higher rate of pay and a
+pension at the conclusion of their service. The total number of men who
+had re-enlisted stood in 1903 at 8594.
+
+_Armament._--The field artillery is armed with the 75 mm. gun, a
+shielded quick-firer (see ORDNANCE: _Field Equipments_, for illustration
+and details); this weapon was the forerunner of all modern models of
+field gun, and is handled on tactical principles specially adapted for
+it, which gives the French field artillery a unique position amongst the
+military nations. The infantry, which was the first in Europe to be
+armed with the magazine rifle, still carries this, the Lebel, rifle
+which dates from 1886. It is believed, however, that a satisfactory type
+of automatic rifle (see RIFLE) has been evolved and is now (1908) in
+process of manufacture. Details are kept strictly secret. The cavalry
+weapons are a straight sword (that of the heavy cavalry is illustrated
+in the article SWORD), a bamboo lance and the Lebel carbine.
+
+It is convenient to mention in this place certain institutions attached
+to the war department and completing the French military organization.
+The Hôtel des Invalides founded by Louis XIV. and Louvois is a house of
+refuge for old and infirm soldiers of all grades. The number of the
+inmates is decreasing; but the institution is an expensive one. In 1875
+the "Invalides" numbered 642, and the hôtel cost the state 1,123,053
+francs. The order of the Legion of Honour is treated under KNIGHTHOOD
+AND CHIVALRY. The _médaille militaire_ is awarded to private soldiers
+and non-commissioned officers who have distinguished themselves or
+rendered long and meritorious services. This was introduced in 1852,
+carries a yearly pension of 100 frs. and has been granted occasionally
+to officers.
+
+_Fortifications._--After 1870 France embarked upon a policy of elaborate
+frontier and inner defences, with the object of ensuring, as against an
+unexpected German invasion, the time necessary for the effective
+development of her military forces, which were then in process of
+reorganization. Some information as to the types of fortification
+adopted in 1870-1875 will be found in FORTIFICATION AND SIEGECRAFT. The
+general lines of the scheme adopted were as follows: On the Meuse, which
+forms the principal natural barrier on the side of Lorraine, Verdun
+(q.v.) was fortified as a large entrenched camp, and along the river
+above this were constructed a series of _forts d'arrêt_ (see MEUSE LINE)
+ending in another entrenched camp at Toul (q.v.). From this point a gap
+(the _trouée d'Épinal_) was left, so as "in some sort to canalize the
+flow of invasion" (General Bonnal), until the upper Moselle was reached
+at Épinal (q.v.). Here another entrenched camp was made and from it the
+"Moselle line" (q.v.) of _forts d'arrêt_ continues the barrier to
+Belfort (q.v.), another large entrenched camp, beyond which a series of
+fortifications at Montbéliard and the Lomont range carries the line of
+defence to the Swiss border, which in turn is protected by works at
+Pontarlier and elsewhere. In rear of these lines Verdun-Toul and
+Épinal-Belfort, respectively, lie two large defended areas in which
+under certain circumstances the main armies would assemble preparatory
+to offensive movements. One of these areas is defined by the three
+fortresses, La Fère, Laon and Reims, the other by the triangle,
+Langres--Dijon--Besançon. On the side of Belgium the danger of irruption
+through neutral territory, which has for many years been foreseen, is
+provided against by the fortresses of Lille, Valenciennes and Maubeuge,
+but (with a view to tempting the Germans to attack through Luxemburg, as
+is stated by German authorities) the frontier between Maubeuge and
+Verdun is left practically undefended. The real defence of this region
+lies in the field army which would, if the case arose, assemble in the
+area La Fère-Reims-Laon. On the Italian frontier the numerous _forts
+d'arrêt_ in the mountains are strongly supported by the entrenched camps
+of Besançon, Grenoble and Nice. Behind all this huge development of
+fixed defences lie the central fortresses of Paris and Lyons. The
+defences, of the Spanish frontier consist of the entrenched camps of
+Bayonne and Perpignan and the various small _forts d'arrêt_ of the
+Pyrenees. Of the coast defences the principal are Toulon, Antibes,
+Rochefort, Lorient, Brest, Oléron, La Rochelle, Belle-Isle, Cherbourg,
+St-Malo, Havre, Calais, Gravelines and Dunkirk. A number of the older
+fortresses, dating for the most part from Louis XIV.'s time, are still
+in existence, but are no longer of military importance. Such are Arras,
+Longwy, Mézières and Montmédy.
+
+
+_Navy._
+
+_Central Administration._--The head of the French navy is the Minister
+of Marine, who like the other ministers is appointed by decree of the
+head of the state, and is usually a civilian. He selects for himself a
+staff of civilians (the _cabinet du ministre_), which is divided into
+bureaux for the despatch of business. The head of the cabinet prepares
+for the consideration of the minister all the business of the navy,
+especially questions of general importance. His chief professional
+assistant is the _chef d'état-major général_ (chief of the general
+staff), a vice-admiral, who is responsible for the organization of the
+naval forces, the mobilization and movements of the fleet, &c.
+
+The central organization also comprises a number of departments
+(_services_) entrusted with the various branches of naval
+administration, such as administration of the active fleet, construction
+of ships, arsenals, recruiting, finance, &c. The minister has the
+assistance of the _Conseil supérieur de la Marine_, over which he
+presides, consisting of three vice-admirals, the chief of staff and some
+other members. The _Conseil supérieur_ devotes its attention to all
+questions touching the fighting efficiency of the fleet, naval bases and
+arsenals and coast defence. Besides the _Conseil supérieur_ the minister
+is advised on a very wide range of naval topics (including pay, quarters
+and recruiting) by the _Comité consultatif de la Marine_. Advisory
+committees are also appointed to deal with special subjects, e.g. the
+_commissions de classement_ which attend to questions of promotion in
+the various branches of the navy, the naval works council and others.
+
+The French coast is divided into five naval arrondissements, which have
+their headquarters at the five naval ports, of which Cherbourg, Brest,
+and Toulon are the most important, Lorient and Rochefort being of lesser
+degree. All are building and fitting-out yards. Each arrondissement is
+divided into sous-arrondissements, having their centres in the great
+commercial ports, but this arrangement is purely for the embodiment of
+the men of the Inscription Maritime, and has nothing to do with the
+dockyards as naval arsenals. In each arrondissement the vice-admiral,
+who is naval prefect, is the immediate representative of the minister of
+marine, and has full direction and command of the arsenal, which is his
+headquarters. He is thus commander-in-chief, as also governor-designate
+for time of war, but his authority does not extend to ships belonging to
+organized squadrons or divisions. The naval prefect is assisted by a
+rear-admiral as chief of the staff (except at Lorient and Rochefort,
+where the office is filled by a captain), and a certain number of other
+officers, the special functions of the chief of the staff having
+relation principally to the efficiency and _personnel_ of the fleet,
+while the "major-general," who is usually a rear-admiral, is concerned
+chiefly with the _matériel_. There are also directors of stores, of
+naval construction, of the medical service, and of the submarine
+defences (which are concerned with torpedoes, mines and torpedo-boats),
+as well as of naval ordnance and works, The prefect directs the
+operations of the arsenal, and is responsible for its efficiency and for
+that of the ships which are there in reserve. In regard to the
+constitution and maintenance of the naval forces, the administration of
+the arsenals is divided into three principal departments, the first
+concerned with naval construction, the second with ordnance, including
+gun-mountings and small-arms, and the third with the so-called submarine
+defences, dealing with all torpedo _matériel_.
+
+The French navy is manned partly by voluntary enlistment, partly by the
+transference to the navy of a certain proportion of each year's recruits
+for the army, but mainly by a system known as _inscription maritime_.
+This system, devised and introduced by Colbert in 1681, has continued,
+with various modifications, ever since. All French sailors between the
+ages of eighteen and fifty must be enrolled as members of the _armée de
+mer_. The term sailor is used in a very wide sense and includes all
+persons earning their living by navigation on the sea, or in the
+harbours or roadsteads, or on salt lakes or canals within the maritime
+domain of the state, or on rivers and canals as far as the tide goes up
+or sea-going ships can pass. The inscript usually begins his service at
+the age of twenty and passes through a period of obligatory service
+lasting seven years, and generally comprising five years of active
+service and two years furlough.
+
+Besides the important harbours already referred to, the French fleet has
+naval bases at Oran in Algeria, Bizerta in Tunisia, Saigon in Cochin
+China and Hongaj in Tongking, Diégo-Suarez in Madagascar, Dakar in
+Senegal, Fort de France in Martinique, Nouméa in New Caledonia.
+
+The ordnance department of the navy is carried on by a large detachment
+of artillery officers and artificers provided by the war office for this
+special duty.
+
+The fleet is divided into the Mediterranean squadron, the Northern
+squadron, the Atlantic division, the Far Eastern division, the Pacific
+division, the Indian Ocean division, the Cochin China division.
+
+The chief naval school is the _École navale_ at Brest, which is devoted
+to the training of officers; the age of admission is from fifteen to
+eighteen years, and pupils after completing their course pass a year on
+a frigate school. At Paris there is a more advanced school (_École
+supérieure de la Marine_) for the supplementary training of officers.
+Other schools are the school of naval medicine at Bordeaux with annexes
+at Toulon, Brest and Rochefort; schools of torpedoes and mines and of
+gunnery at Toulon, &c., &c. The _écoles d'hydrographie_ established at
+various ports are for theoretical training for the higher grades of the
+merchant service. (See also NAVY.)
+
+The total personnel of the _armée de mer_ in 1909 is given as 56,800
+officers and men. As to the number of vessels, which fluctuates from
+month to month, little can be said that is wholly accurate at any given
+moment, but, very roughly, the French navy in 1909 included 25
+battleships, 7 coast defence ironclads, 19 armoured cruisers, 36
+protected cruisers, 22 sloops, gunboats, &c., 45 destroyers, 319 torpedo
+boats, 71 submersibles and submarines and 8 auxiliary cruisers. It was
+stated that, according to proposed arrangements, the principal fighting
+elements of the fleet would be, in 1919, 34 battleships, 36 armoured
+cruisers, 6 smaller cruisers of modern type, 109 destroyers, 170 torpedo
+boats and 171 submersibles and submarines. The budgetary cost of the
+navy in 1908 was stated as 312,000,000 fr. (£12,480,000).     (C. F. A.)
+
+
+_Education._
+
+The burden of public instruction in France is shared by the communes,
+departments and state, while side by side with the public schools of all
+grades are private schools subjected to a state supervision and certain
+restrictions. At the head of the whole organization is the minister of
+public instruction. He is assisted and advised by the superior council
+of public instruction, over which he presides.
+
+France is divided into sixteen _académies_ or educational districts,
+having their centres at the seats of the universities. The capitals of
+these _académies_, together with the departments included in them, are
+tabulated below:
+
+     Académies.             Departments included in them.
+
+  PARIS  . . . . . Seine, Cher, Eure-et-Loir, Loir-et-Cher, Loiret,
+                     Marne, Oise, Seine-et-Marne, Seine-et-Oise.
+  AIX  . . . . . . Bouches-du-Rhône, Basses-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes,
+                     Corse, Var, Vaucluse.
+  BESANÇON . . . . Doubs, Jura, Haute-Saône, Territoire de
+                     Belfort.
+  BORDEAUX . . . . Gironde, Dordogne, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne,
+                     Basses-Pyrénées.
+  CAEN . . . . . . Calvados, Eure, Manche, Orne, Sarthe,
+                     Seine-Inférieure.
+  CHAMBÉRY  .  . . Savoie, Haute-Savoie.
+  CLERMONT-FERRAND Puy-de-Dôme, Allier, Cantal, Corrèze, Creuse,
+                     Haute-Loire.
+  DIJON  . . . . . Côte-d'Or, Aube, Haute-Marne, Nièvre, Yonne.
+  GRENOBLE . . . . Isère, Hautes-Alpes, Ardèche, Drôme.
+  LILLE  . . . . . Nord, Aisne, Ardennes, Pas-de-Calais, Somme.
+  LYONS  . . . . . Rhône, Ain, Loire, Saône-et-Loire.
+  MONTPELLIER  . . Hérault, Aude, Gard, Lozère, Pyrénées-Orientales.
+  NANCY  . . . . . Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Vosges.
+  POITIERS . . . . Vienne, Charente, Charente-Inférieure, Indre,
+                     Indre-et-Loire, Deux-Sèvres, Vendée, Haute-Vienne.
+  RENNES . . . . . Ille-et-Vilaine, Côtes-du-Nord, Finistère,
+                     Loire-Inférieure,
+                     Maine-et-Loire, Mayenne, Morbihan.
+  TOULOUSE . . . . Haute-Garonne, Ariège, Aveyron, Gers, Lot,
+                     Hautes-Pyrénées, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne.
+
+    There is also an _académie_ comprising Algeria.
+
+For the administrative organization of education in France see
+EDUCATION.
+
+Any person fulfilling certain legal requirements with regard to
+capacity, age and character may set up privately an educational
+establishment of any grade, but by the law of 1904 all religious
+congregations are prohibited from keeping schools of any kind whatever.
+
+  _Primary Instruction._--All primary public instruction is free and
+  compulsory for children of both sexes between the ages of six and
+  thirteen, but if a child can gain a certificate of primary studies at
+  the age of eleven or after, he may be excused the rest of the period
+  demanded by law. A child may receive instruction in a public or
+  private school or at home. But if the parents wish him to be taught in
+  a private school they must give notice to the mayor of the commune of
+  their intention and the school chosen. If educated at home, the child
+  (after two years of the compulsory period has expired) must undergo a
+  yearly examination, and if it is unsatisfactory the parents will be
+  compelled to send him to a public or private school.
+
+  Each commune is in theory obliged to maintain at least one public
+  primary school, but with the approval of the minister, the
+  departmental council may authorize a commune to combine with other
+  communes in the upkeep of a school. If the number of inhabitants
+  exceed 500, the commune must also provide a special school for girls,
+  unless the Departmental Council authorizes it to substitute a mixed
+  school. Each department is bound to maintain two primary training
+  colleges, one for masters, the other for mistresses of primary
+  schools. There are two higher training colleges of primary instruction
+  at Fontenay-aux-Roses and St Cloud for the training of mistresses and
+  masters of training colleges and higher primary schools.
+
+  The Laws of 1882 and 1886 "laicized" the schools of this class, the
+  former suppressing religious instruction, the latter providing that
+  only laymen should be eligible for masterships. There were also a
+  great many schools in the control of various religious congregations,
+  but a law of 1904 required that they should all be suppressed within
+  ten years from the date of its enactment.
+
+  Public primary schools include (1) _écoles maternelles_--infant
+  schools for children from two to six years old; (2) elementary primary
+  schools--these are the ordinary schools for children from six to
+  thirteen; (3) higher primary schools (_écoles primaires supérieures_)
+  and "supplementary courses"; these admit pupils who have gained the
+  certificate of primary elementary studies (_certificat d'études
+  primaires_), offer a more advanced course and prepare for technical
+  instruction; (4) primary technical schools (_écoles manuelles
+  d'apprentissage_, _écoles primaires supérieures professionnelles_)
+  kept by the communes or departments. Primary courses for adults are
+  instituted by the prefect on the recommendation of the municipal
+  council and academy inspector.
+
+  Persons keeping private primary schools are free with regard to their
+  methods, programmes and books employed, except that they may not use
+  books expressly prohibited by the superior council of public
+  instruction. Before opening a private school the person proposing to
+  do so must give notice to the mayor, prefect and academy inspector,
+  and forward his diplomas and other particulars to the latter official.
+
+  _Secondary Education._--Secondary education is given by the state in
+  _lycées_, by the communes in _collèges_ and by private individuals and
+  associations in private secondary schools. It is not compulsory, nor
+  is it entirely gratuitous, but the fees are small and the state offers
+  a great many scholarships, by means of which a clever child can pay
+  for its own instruction. Cost of tuition (simply) ranges from £2 to
+  £16 a year. The lycées also take boarders--the cost of boarding
+  ranging from £22 to £52 a year. A lycée is founded in a town by decree
+  of the president of the republic, with the advice of the superior
+  council of public instruction. The municipality has to pay the cost of
+  building, furnishing and upkeep. At the head of the lycée is the
+  principal (_proviseur_), an official nominated by the minister, and
+  assisted by a teaching staff of professors and _chargés de cours_ or
+  teachers of somewhat lower standing. To become professor in a lycée it
+  is necessary to pass an examination known as the "_agrégation_,"
+  candidates for which must be licentiates of a faculty (or have passed
+  through the _École normale supérieure_).
+
+  The system of studies--reorganized in 1902--embraces a full
+  curriculum of seven years, which is divided into two periods. The
+  first lasts four years, and at the end of this the pupil may obtain
+  (after examination) the "certificate of secondary studies." During the
+  second period the pupil has a choice of four courses: (1) Latin and
+  Greek; (2) Latin and sciences; (3) Latin and modern languages; (4)
+  sciences and modern languages. At the end of this period he presents
+  himself for a degree called the _Baccalauréat de l'enseignement
+  secondaire_. This is granted (after two examinations) by the faculties
+  of letters and sciences jointly (see below), and in most cases it is
+  necessary for a student to hold this general degree before he may be
+  enrolled in a particular faculty of a university and proceed to a
+  Baccalauréat in a particular subject, such as law, theology or
+  medicine.
+
+  The collèges, though of a lower grade, are in most respects similar to
+  the lycées, but they are financed by the communes: the professors may
+  have certain less important qualifications in lieu of the
+  "_agrégation_." Private secondary schools are subjected to state
+  inspection. The teachers must not belong to any congregation, and must
+  have a diploma of aptitude for teaching and the degree of
+  "_licencié_." The establishment of lycées for girls was first
+  attempted in 1880. They give an education similar to that offered in
+  the lycées for boys--with certain modifications--in a curriculum of
+  five or six years. There is a training-college for teachers in
+  secondary schools for girls at Sèvres.
+
+  _Higher education_ is given by the state in the universities, and in
+  special higher schools; and, since the law of 1875 established the
+  freedom of higher education, by private individuals and bodies in
+  private schools and "faculties" (_facultés libres_). The law of 1880
+  reserved to the state "faculties" the right to confer degrees, and the
+  law of 1896 established various universities each containing one or
+  more faculties. There are five kinds of faculties: medicine, letters,
+  science, law and Protestant theology. The faculties of letters and
+  sciences, besides granting the _Baccalauréat de l'enseignement
+  secondaire_, confer the degrees of licentiate and doctor (_la Licence,
+  le Doctorat_). The faculties of medicine confer the degree of doctor
+  of medicine. The faculties of theology confer the degrees of bachelor,
+  licentiate and doctor of theology. The faculties of law confer the
+  same degrees in law and also grant "certificates of capacity," which
+  enable the holder to practise as an _avoué_; a _licence_ is necessary
+  for the profession of barrister. Students of the private faculties
+  have to be examined by and take their degrees from the state
+  faculties. There are 2 faculties of Protestant theology (Paris and
+  Montauban); 12 faculties of law (Paris, Aix, Bordeaux, Caen, Grenoble,
+  Lille, Lyons, Montpellier, Nancy, Poitiers, Rennes, Toulouse); 3
+  faculties of medicine (Paris, Montpellier and Nancy), and 4 joint
+  faculties of medicine and pharmacy (Bordeaux, Lille, Lyons, Toulouse);
+  15 faculties of sciences (Paris, Besançon, Bordeaux, Caen, Clermont,
+  Dijon, Grenoble, Lille, Lyons, Marseilles, Montpellier, Nancy,
+  Poitiers, Rennes, Toulouse); 15 faculties of letters (at the same
+  towns, substituting Aix for Marseilles). The private faculties are at
+  Paris (the Catholic Institute with a faculty of law); Angers (law,
+  science and letters); Lille (law, medicine and pharmacy, science,
+  letters); Lyons (law, science, letters); Marseilles (law); Toulouse
+  (Catholic Institute with faculties of theology and letters). The work
+  of the faculties of medicine and pharmacy is in some measure shared by
+  the _écoles supérieures de pharmacie_ (Paris, Montpellier, Nancy),
+  which grant the highest degrees in pharmacy, and by the _écoles de
+  plein exercice de médecine et de pharmacie_ (Marseilles, Rennes and
+  Nantes) and the more numerous _écoles préparatoires de médecine et de
+  pharmacie_; there are also _écoles préparatoires à l'enseignement
+  supérieur des sciences et des lettres_ at Chambéry, Rouen and Nantes.
+
+  Besides the faculties there are a number of institutions, both
+  state-supported and private, giving higher instruction of various
+  special kinds. In the first class must be mentioned the Collège de
+  France, founded 1530, giving courses of highest study of all sorts,
+  the Museum of Natural History, the École des Chartes (palaeography and
+  archives), the School of Modern Oriental Languages, the École Pratique
+  des Hautes Études (scientific research), &c. All these institutions
+  are in Paris. The most important free institution in this class is the
+  École des Sciences Politiques, which prepares pupils for the civil
+  services and teaches a great number of political subjects, connected
+  with France and foreign countries, not included in the state
+  programmes.
+
+  Commercial and technical instruction is given in various institutions
+  comprising national establishments such as the _écoles nationales
+  professionnelles_ of Armentières, Vierzon, Voiron and Nantes for the
+  education of working men; the more advanced _écoles d'arts et métiers_
+  of Châlons, Angers, Aix, Lille and Cluny; and the Central School of
+  Arts and Manufactures at Paris; schools depending on the communes and
+  state in combination, e.g. the _écoles pratiques de commerce et
+  d'industrie_ for the training of clerks and workmen; private schools
+  controlled by the state, such as the _écoles supérieures de commerce_;
+  certain municipal schools, such as the Industrial Institute of Lille;
+  and private establishments, e.g. the school of watch-making at Paris.
+  At Paris the École Supérieure des Mines and the École des Ponts et
+  Chaussées are controlled by the minister of public works, the École
+  des Beaux-Arts, the École des Arts Décoratifs and the Conservatoire
+  National de Musique et de Déclamation by the under-secretary for fine
+  arts, and other schools mentioned elsewhere are attached to several
+  of the ministries. In the provinces there are national schools of fine
+  art and of music and other establishments and free subventioned
+  schools.
+
+  In addition to the educational work done by the state, communes and
+  private individuals, there exist in France a good many societies which
+  disseminate instruction by giving courses of lectures and holding
+  classes both for children and adults. Examples of such bodies are the
+  Society for Elementary Instruction, the Polytechnic Association, the
+  Philotechnic Association and the French Union of the Young at Paris;
+  the Philomathic Society of Bordeaux; the Popular Education Society at
+  Havre; the Rhône Society of Professional Instruction at Lyons; the
+  Industrial Society of Amiens and others.
+
+  The highest institution of learning is the _Institut de France_,
+  founded and kept up by the French government on behalf of science and
+  literature, and composed of five academies: the _Académie française_,
+  the _Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres_, the _Académie des
+  Sciences_, the _Académie des Beaux-Arts_ and the _Académie des
+  Sciences Morales et Politiques_ (see ACADEMIES). The _Académie de
+  Médecine_ is a separate body.
+
+_Poor Relief_ (_Assistance publique_).--In France the pauper, _as such_,
+has no legal claim to help from the community, which however, is bound
+to provide for destitute children (see FOUNDLING HOSPITALS) and pauper
+lunatics (both these being under the care of the department), aged and
+infirm people without resources and victims of incurable illness, and to
+furnish medical assistance gratuitously to those without resources who
+are afflicted with curable illness. The funds for these purposes are
+provided by the department, the commune and the central authority.
+
+  There are four main types of public benevolent institutions, all of
+  which are communal in character: (1) The _hôpital_, for maternity
+  cases and cases of curable illness; (2) the _hospice_, where the aged
+  poor, cases of incurable malady, orphans, foundlings and other
+  children without means of support, and in some cases lunatics, are
+  received; (3) the _bureau de bienfaisance_, charged with the provision
+  of out-door relief (_secours à domicile_) in money or in kind, to the
+  aged poor or those who, though capable of working, are prevented from
+  doing so by illness or strikes; (4) the _bureau d'assistance_, which
+  dispenses free medical treatment to the destitute.
+
+  These institutions are under the supervision of a branch of the
+  ministry of the interior. The hospices and hôpitaux and the bureaux de
+  bienfaisance, the foundation of which is optional for the commune, are
+  managed by committees consisting of the mayor of the municipality and
+  six members, two elected by the municipal council and four nominated
+  by the prefect. The members of these committees are unpaid, and have
+  no concern with ways and means which are in the hands of a paid
+  treasurer (_receveur_). The bureaux de bienfaisance in the larger
+  centres are aided by unpaid workers (_commissaires_ or _dames de
+  charité_), and in the big towns by paid inquiry officers. _Bureaux
+  d'assistance_ exist in every commune, and are managed by the combined
+  committees of the hospices and the bureaux de bienfaisance or by one
+  of these in municipalities, where only one of those institutions
+  exists.
+
+  No poor-rate is levied in France. Funds for hôpitals, hospices and
+  bureaux de bienfaisance comprise:
+
+  1. A 10% surtax on the fees of admission to places of public
+  amusement.
+
+  2. A proportion of the sums payable in return for concessions of
+  land in municipal cemeteries.
+
+  3. Profits of the communal Monts de Piété (pawn-shops).
+
+  4. Donations, bequests and the product of collections in
+  churches.
+
+  5. The product of certain fines.
+
+  6. Subventions from the departments and communes.
+
+  7. Income from endowments.     (R. Tr.)
+
+
+_Colonies._
+
+In the extent and importance of her colonial dominion France is second
+only to Great Britain. The following table gives the name, area and
+population of each colony and protectorate as well as the date of
+acquisition or establishment of a protectorate. It should be noted that
+the figures for area and population are, as a rule, only estimates, but
+in most instances they probably approximate closely to accuracy.
+Detailed notices of the separate countries will be found under their
+several heads:
+
+  +-----------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+
+  |              Colony.              |  Date of   |Area in sq. m.|Population.|
+  |                                   |Acquisition.|              |           |
+  +-----------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+
+  | In Asia--                         |            |              |           |
+  |  Establishments in India          | 1683-1750  |        200   |   273,000 |
+  |  In Indo-China--                  |            |              |           |
+  |   Annarn                          |    1883    |     60,000   | 6,000,000 |
+  |   Cambodia                        |    1863    |     65,000   | 1,500,000 |
+  |   Cochin-China                    |    1862    |     22,000   | 3,000,000 |
+  |   Tongking                        |    1883    |     46,000   | 6,000,000 |
+  |   Laos                            |    1893    |    100,000   |   600,000 |
+  |   Kwang-Chow-Wan                  |    1898    |        325   |   189,000 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  |       Total in Asia               |            |    293,525   |17,562,000 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  | In Africa and the Indian Ocean--  |            |              |           |
+  |  Algeria                          | 1830-1847  |    185,000   | 5,231,850 |
+  |  Algerian Sahara                  | 1872-1890  |    760,000   |           |
+  |  Tunisia                          |    1881    |     51,000   | 2,000,000 |
+  | West Africa--                     |            |              |           |
+  |  Senegal                          |    1626    |     74,000   | 1,800,000 |
+  |  Upper Senegal and Niger          |            |              |           |
+  |    (including part of Sahara)     |    1880    |  1,580,000   | 4,000,000 |
+  |  Guinea                           |    1848    |    107,000   | 2,500,000 |
+  |  Ivory Coast                      |    1842    |    129,000   | 2,000,000 |
+  |  Dahomey                          | 1863-1894 |     40,000   | 1,000,000 |
+  | Congo (French Equatorial Africa)--|            |              |           |
+  |  Gabun                            |   1839   \ |              |   376,000 |
+  |  Mid. Congo                       |   1882    >|    700,000   |   259,000 |
+  |  Ubangi-Chad                      | 1885-1899/ |              | 3,015,000 |
+  | Madagascar                        | 1885-1896\ |              |           |
+  |  Nossi-be Island                  |   1840    >|    228,000   | 2,664,000 |
+  |  Ste Marie Island                 |   1750   / |              |           |
+  |  Comoro Islands                   | 1843-1886  |        760   |    82,000 |
+  | Somali Coast                      | 1862-1884  |     12,000   |    50,000 |
+  | Réunion                           |    1643    |        965   |   173,315 |
+  | St Paul   \                       |    1892    |          3 \ |           |
+  | Amsterdam /                       |            |         19  >|uninhabited|
+  | Kerguelen[24]                     |    1893    |      1,400 / |           |
+  |                                   +------------+--------------+-----------+
+  |  Total in Africa and Indian Ocean.|            |  3,869,147   |25,151,165 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  | In America--                      |            |              |           |
+  |  Guiana                           |    1626    |     51,000   |    30,000 |
+  |  Guadeloupe                       |    1634    |        619   |   182,112 |
+  |  Martinique                       |    1635    |        380   |   182,024 |
+  |  St Pierre and Miquelon           |    1635    |         92   |     6,500 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  |          Total in America         |            |     52,092   |   400,636 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  | In Oceania--                      |            |              |           |
+  |   New Caledonia and Dependencies  | 1854-1887  |      7,500   |    72,000 |
+  |  Establishments in Oceania        | 1841-1881  |      1,641   |    34,300 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  |          Total in Oceania         |            |      9,141   |   106,300 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  |                     Grand Total   |            |  4,223,905   |43,220,101 |
+  +-----------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+
+
+  It will be seen that nearly all the colonies and protectorates lie
+  within the tropics. The only countries in which there is a
+  considerable white population are Algeria, Tunisia and New Caledonia.
+  The "year of acquisition" in the table, when one date only is given,
+  indicates the period when the country or some part of it first fell
+  under French influence, and does not imply continuous possession
+  since.
+
+_Government._--The principle underlying the administration of the French
+possessions overseas, from the earliest days until the close of the 19th
+century, was that of "domination" and "assimilation," notwithstanding
+that after the loss of Canada and the sale of Louisiana France ceased to
+hold any considerable colony in which Europeans could settle in large
+numbers. With the vast extension of the colonial empire in tropical
+countries in the last quarter of the 19th century the evils of the
+system of assimilation, involving also intense centralization, became
+obvious. This, coupled with the realization of the fact that the value
+to France of her colonies was mainly commercial, led at length to the
+abandonment of the attempt to impose on a great number of diverse
+peoples, some possessing (as in Indo-China and parts of West Africa)
+ancient and highly complex civilizations, French laws, habits of mind,
+tastes and manners. For the policy of assimilation there was substituted
+the policy of "association," which had for aim the development of the
+colonies and protectorates upon natural, i.e. national, lines. Existing
+civilizations were respected, a considerable degree of autonomy was
+granted, and every effort made to raise the moral and economic status of
+the natives. The first step taken in this direction was in 1900 when a
+law was passed which laid down that the colonies were to provide for
+their own civil expenditure. This law was followed by further measures
+tending to decentralization and the protection of the native races.
+
+The system of administration bears nevertheless many marks of the
+"assimilation" era. None of the French possessions is self-governing in
+the manner of the chief British colonies. Several colonies, however,
+elect members of the French legislature, in which body is the power of
+fixing the form of government and the laws of each colony or
+protectorate. In default of legislation the necessary measures are taken
+by decree of the head of the state; these decrees having the force of
+law. A partial exception to this rule is found in Algeria, where all
+laws in force in France before the conquest of the country are also (in
+theory, not in practice) in force in Algeria. In all colonies Europeans
+preserve the political rights they held in France, and these rights have
+been extended, in whole or in part, to various classes of natives. Where
+these rights have not been conferred, native races are _subjects_ and
+not _citizens_. To this rule Tunisia presents an exception, Tunisians
+retaining their nationality and laws.
+
+In addition to Algeria, which sends three senators and six deputies to
+Paris and is treated in many respects not as a colony but as part of
+France, the colonies represented in the legislature are: Martinique,
+Guadeloupe and Réunion (each electing one senator and two deputies),
+French India (one senator and one deputy), Guiana, Senegal and
+Cochin-China (one deputy each). The franchise in the three first-named
+colonies is enjoyed by all classes of inhabitants, white, negro and
+mulatto, who are all French citizens. In India the franchise is
+exercised without distinction of colour or nationality; in Senegal the
+electors are the inhabitants (black and white) of the communes which
+have been given full powers. In Guiana and Cochin-China the franchise is
+restricted to citizens, in which category the natives (in those
+colonies) are not included.[25] The inhabitants of Tahiti though
+accorded French citizenship have not been allotted a representative in
+parliament. The colonial representatives enjoy equal rights with those
+elected for constituencies in France.
+
+The oversight of all the colonies and protectorates save Algeria and
+Tunisia is confided to a minister of the colonies (law of March 20,
+1894)[26] whose powers correspond to those exercised in France by the
+minister of the interior. The colonial army is nevertheless attached (law
+of 1900) to the ministry of war. The colonial minister is assisted by a
+number of organizations of which the most important is the superior
+council of the colonies (created by decree in 1883), an advisory body
+which includes the senators and deputies elected by the colonies, and
+delegates elected by the universal suffrage of all citizens in the
+colonies and protectorates which do not return members to parliament. To
+the ministry appertains the duty of fixing the duties on foreign produce
+in those colonies which have not been, by law, subjected to the same
+tariff as in France. (Nearly all the colonies save those of West Africa
+and the Congo have been, with certain modifications, placed under the
+French tariff.) The budget of all colonies not possessing a council
+general (see below) must also be approved by the minister. Each colony and
+protectorate, including Algeria, has a separate budget. As provided by the
+law of 1900 all local charges are borne by the colonies--supplemented at
+need by grants in aid--but the military expenses are borne by the state.
+In all the colonies the judicature has been rendered independent of the
+executive.
+
+The colonies are divisible into two classes, (1) those possessing
+considerable powers of local self-government, (2) those in which the
+local government is autocratic. To this second class may be added the
+protectorates (and some colonies) where the native form of government is
+maintained under the supervision of French officials.
+
+Class (1) includes the American colonies, Réunion, French India,
+Senegal, Cochin-China and New Caledonia. In these colonies the system of
+assimilation was carried to great lengths. At the head of the
+administration is a governor under whom is a secretary-general, who
+replaces him at need. The governor is aided by a privy council, an
+advisory body to which the governor nominates a minority of unofficial
+members, and a council general, to which is confided the control of
+local affairs, including the voting of the budget. The councils general
+are elected by universal suffrage of all citizens and those who, though
+not citizens, have been granted the political franchise. In
+Cochin-China, in place of a council general, there is a colonial council
+which fulfils the functions of a council general.
+
+In the second class of colonies the governor, sometimes assisted by a
+privy council, on which non-official members find seats, sometimes
+simply by a council of administration, is responsible only to the
+minister of the colonies. In Indo-China, West Africa, French Congo and
+Madagascar, the colonies and protectorates are grouped under
+governors-general, and to these high officials extensive powers have
+been granted by presidential decree. The colonies under the
+governor-general of West Africa are ruled by lieutenant-governors with
+restricted powers, the budget of each colony being fixed by the
+governor-general, who is assisted by an advisory government council
+comprising representatives of all the colonies under his control. In
+Indo-China the governor-general has under his authority the
+lieutenant-governor of the colony of Cochin-China, and the residents
+superior at the courts of the kings of Cambodia and Annam and in
+Tongking (nominally a viceroyalty of Annam). There is a superior council
+for the whole of Indo-China on which the natives and the European
+commercial community are represented, while in Cochin-China a privy
+council, and in the protectorates a council of the protectorate, assists
+in the work of administration. In each of the governments general there
+is a financial controller with extensive powers who corresponds directly
+with the metropolitan authorities (decree of March 22, 1907). Details
+and local differences in form of government will be found under the
+headings of the various colonies and protectorates.
+
+  _Colonial Finance._--The cost of the extra-European possessions, other
+  than Algeria and Tunisia, to the state is shown in the expenses of the
+  colonial ministry. In the budget of 1885 these expenses were put at
+  £1,380,000; in 1895 they had increased to £3,200,000 and in 1900 to
+  £5,100,000. In 1905 they were placed at £4,431,000. Fully
+  three-fourths of the state contributions is expenditure on military
+  necessities; in addition there are subventions to various colonies and
+  to colonial railways and cables, and the expenditure on the
+  penitentiary establishments; an item not properly chargeable to the
+  colonies. In return the state receives the produce of convict labour
+  in Guiana and New Caledonia. Save for the small item of military
+  expenditure Tunisia is no charge to the French exchequer. The similar
+  expenses of Algeria borne by the state are not separately shown, but
+  are estimated at £2,000,000.
+
+  The colonial budgets totalled in 1907 some £16,760,000, being
+  divisible into six categories: Algeria £4,120,000; Tunisia £3,640,000;
+  Indo-China[27] about £5,000,000; West Africa £1,600,000; Madagascar
+  £960,000; all other colonies combined £1,440,000. The authorized
+  colonial loans, omitting Algeria and Tunisia, during the period
+  1884-1904 amounted to £19,200,000, the sums paid for interest and
+  sinking funds on loans varying from £600,000 to £800,000 a year. The
+  amount of French capital invested in French colonies and
+  protectorates, including Algeria and Tunisia, was estimated in 1905 at
+  £120,000,000, French capital invested in foreign countries at the same
+  date being estimated at ten times that amount (see _Ques. Dip. et
+  Col._, February 16, 1905).
+
+  _Commerce._--The value of the external trade of the French
+  possessions, exclusive of Algeria and Tunisia, increased in the ten
+  years 1896-1905 from £18,784,060 to £34,957,479. In the last-named
+  year the commerce of Algeria amounted to £24,506,020 and that of
+  Tunisia to £5,969,248, making a grand total for French colonial trade
+  in 1905 of £65,432,746. The figures were made up as follows:
+
+    +--------------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
+    |                    |   Imports.  |  Exports.  |    Total.   |
+    +--------------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
+    | Algeria            | £15,355,500 | £9,150,520 | £24,506,020 |
+    | Tunisia            |   3,638,185 |  2,331,063 |   5,969,248 |
+    | Indo-China         |  10,182,411 |  6,750,306 |  16,932,717 |
+    | West Africa        |   3,874,698 |  2,248,317 |   6,123,015 |
+    | Madagascar         |   1,247,936 |    914,024 |   2,161,960 |
+    | All other colonies.|   4,258,134 |  5,481,652 |   9,739,786 |
+    +--------------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
+    |           Total    | £38,556,864 |£26,875,882 | £65,432,746 |
+    +--------------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
+
+  Over three-fourths of the trade of Algeria and Tunisia is with France
+  and other French possessions. In the other colonies and protectorates
+  more than half the trade is with foreign countries. The foreign
+  countries trading most largely with the French colonies are, in the
+  order named, British colonies and Great Britain, China and Japan, the
+  United States and Germany. The value of the trade with British
+  colonies and Great Britain in 1905 was over £7,200,000.     (F. R. C.)
+
+  BIBLIOGRAPHY.--P. Joanne, _Dictionnaire géographique et administrative
+  de la France_ (8 vols., Paris, 1890-1905); C. Brossard, _La France et
+  ses colonies_ (6 vols., Paris, 1900-1906); O. Reclus, _Le Plus Beau
+  Royaume sous le ciel_ (Paris, 1899); Vidal de La Blache, _La France.
+  Tableau géographique_ (Paris, 1908); V.E. Ardouin-Dumazet, _Voyage en
+  France_ (Paris, 1894); H. Havard, _La France artistique et
+  monumentale_ (6 vols., Paris, 1892-1895); A. Lebon and P. Pelet,
+  _France as it is_, tr. Mrs W. Arnold (London, 1888); articles on
+  "Local Government in France" in the _Stock Exchange Official
+  Intelligence Annuals_ (London, 1908 and 1909); M. Block, _Dictionnaire
+  de l'administration française_, the articles in which contain full
+  bibliographies (2 vols., Paris, 1905); E. Levasseur, _La France et ses
+  colonies_ (3 vols., Paris, 1890); M. Fallex and A. Mairey, _La France
+  et sis colonies au début du XX^e siècle_, which has numerous
+  bibliographies (Paris, 1909); J. du Plessis de Grenédan, _Géographie
+  agricole de la France et du monde_ (Paris, 1903); F. de St Genis, _La
+  Propriété rurale en France_ (Paris, 1902); H. Baudrillart, _Les
+  Populations agricoles de la France_ (3 vols., Paris, 1885-1893);
+  J.E.C. Bodley, _France_ (London, 1899); A. Girault, _Principes de
+  colonisation et de législation coloniale_ (3 vols., Paris, 1907-1908);
+  _Les Colonies françaises_, an encyclopaedia edited by M. Petit (2
+  vols., Paris, 1902). Official statistical works: _Annuaire statistique
+  de la France_ (a summary of the statistical publications of the
+  government), _Statistique agricole annuelle, Statistique de
+  l'industrie minérale et des appareils de vapeur, Tableau général du
+  commerce et de la navigation_, Reports on the various colonies issued
+  annually by the British Foreign Office, &c. Guide Books: Karl
+  Baedeker, _Northern France, Southern France_; P. Joanne, _Nord,
+  Champagne et Ardenne; Normandie_; and other volumes dealing with every
+  region of the country.
+
+
+HISTORY
+
+  Pre-historic Gaul.
+
+The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Gaul is veiled in obscurity,
+though philologists, anthropologists and archaeologists are using the
+glimmer of traditions collected by ancient historians to shed a faint
+twilight upon that remote past. The subjugation of those primitive
+tribes did not mean their annihilation: their blood still flows in the
+veins of Frenchmen; and they survive also on those megalithic monuments
+(see STONE MONUMENTS) with which the soil cf France is dotted, in the
+drawings and sculptures of caves hollowed out along the sides of the
+valleys, and in the arms and ornaments yielded by sepulchral tumuli,
+while the names of the rivers and mountains of France probably
+perpetuate the first utterances of those nameless generations.
+
+
+  Iberians and Ligurians.
+
+The first peoples of whom we have actual knowledge are the Iberians and
+Ligurians. The Basques who now inhabit both sides of the Pyrenean range
+are probably the last representatives of the Iberians, who came from
+Spain to settle between the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay. The
+Ligurians, who exhibited the hard cunning characteristic of the Genoese
+Riviera, must have been descendants of that Indo-European vanguard who
+occupied all northern Italy and the centre and south-east of France, who
+in the 7th century B.C. received the Phocaean immigrants at Marseilles,
+and who at a much later period were encountered by Hannibal during his
+march to Rome, on the banks of the Rhône, the frontier of the Iberian
+and Ligurian territories. Upon these peoples it was that the conquering
+minority of Celts or Gauls imposed themselves, to be succeeded at a
+later date by the Roman aristocracy.
+
+
+  Empire of the Celts.
+
+  The Roman Conquest.
+
+When Gaul first enters the field of history, Rome has already laid the
+foundation of her freedom, Athens dazzles the eastern Mediterranean with
+her literature and her art, while in the west Carthage and Marseilles
+are lining opposite shores with their great houses of commerce. Coming
+from the valley of the Danube in the 6th century, the Celts or Gauls had
+little by little occupied central and southern Europe long before they
+penetrated into the plains of the Saône, the Seine, and the Loire as far
+as the Spanish border, driving out the former inhabitants of the
+country. A century later their political hegemony, extending from the
+Black Sea to the Strait of Gibraltar, began to disintegrate, and the
+Gauls then embarked on more distant migrations, from the Columns of
+Hercules to the plateaux of Asia Minor, taking Rome on their way. Their
+empire in Gaul, encroached upon in the north by the Belgae, a kindred
+race, and in the south by the Iberians, gradually contracted in area and
+eventually crumbled to pieces. This process served the turn of the
+Romans, who little by little had subjugated first the Cisalpine Gauls
+and afterwards those inhabiting the south-east of France, which was
+turned into a Roman province in the 2nd century. Up to this time
+Hellenism and the mercantile spirit of the Jews had almost exclusively
+dominated the Mediterranean littoral, and at first the Latin spirit only
+won foothold for itself in various spots on the western coast--as at Aix
+in Provence (123 B.C.) and at Narbonne (118 B.C.). A refuge of Italian
+pauperism in the time of the Gracchi, after the triumph of the oligarchy
+the Narbonnaise became a field for shameless exploitation, besides
+providing, under the proconsulate of Caesar, an excellent point of
+observation whence to watch the intestine quarrels between the different
+nations of Gaul.
+
+
+  Political divisions of Gaul.
+
+These are divided by Caesar in his _Commentaries_ into three groups: the
+Aquitanians to the south of the Garonne; the Celts, properly so called,
+from the Garonne to the Seine and the Marne; and the Belgae, from the
+Seine to the Rhine. But these ethnological names cover a very great
+variety of half-savage tribes, differing in speech and in institutions,
+each surrounded by frontiers of dense forests abounding in game. On the
+edges of these forests stood isolated dwellings like sentinel outposts;
+while the inhabitants of the scattered hamlets, caves hollowed in the
+ground, rude circular huts or lake-dwellings, were less occupied with
+domestic life than with war and the chase. On the heights, as at
+Bibracte, or on islands in the rivers, as at Lutetia, or protected by
+marshes, as at Avaricum, _oppida_--at once fortresses and places of
+refuge, like the Greek Acropolis--kept watch and ward over the beaten
+tracks and the rivers of Gaul.
+
+
+  Political institutions of Gaul.
+
+These primitive societies of tall, fair-skinned warriors, blue-eyed and
+red-haired, were gradually organized into political bodies of various
+kinds--kingdoms, republics and federations--and divided into districts
+or _pagi_ (_pays_) to which divisions the minds of the country folk have
+remained faithfully attached ever since. The victorious aristocracy of
+the kingdom dominated the other classes, strengthened by the prestige of
+birth, the ownership of the soil and the practice of arms. Side by side
+with this martial nobility the Druids constituted a priesthood unique in
+ancient times; neither hereditary as in India, nor composed of isolated
+priests as in Greece, nor of independent colleges as at Rome, it was a
+true corporation, which at first possessed great moral authority, though
+by Caesar's time it had lost both strength and prestige. Beneath these
+were the common people attached to the soil, who did not count for
+much, but who reacted against the insufficient protection of the regular
+institutions by a voluntary subordination to certain powerful chiefs.
+
+
+  Caesar in Gaul.
+
+This impotence of the state was a permanent cause of those discords and
+revolts, which in the 1st century B.C. were so singularly favourable to
+Caesar's ambition. Thus after eight years of incoherent struggles, of
+scattered revolts, and then of more and more energetic efforts, Gaul, at
+last aroused by Vercingetorix, for once concentrated her strength, only
+to perish at Alesia, vanquished by Roman discipline and struck at from
+the rear by the conquest of Britain (58-50 B.C.).
+
+
+  Roman Gaul.
+
+This defeat completely altered the destiny of Gaul, and she became one
+of the principal centres of Roman civilization. Of the vast Celtic
+empire which had dominated Europe nothing now remained but scattered
+remnants in the farthest corners of the land, refuges for all the
+vanquished Gaels, Picts or Gauls; and of its civilization there lingered
+only idioms and dialects--Gaelic, Pict and Gallic--which gradually
+dropped out of use. During five centuries Gaul was unfalteringly loyal
+to her conquerors; for to conquer is nothing if the conquered be not
+assimilated by the conqueror, and Rome was a past-mistress of this art.
+The personal charm of Caesar and the prestige of Rome are not of
+themselves sufficient to explain this double conquest. The generous and
+enlightened policy of the imperial administration asked nothing of the
+people of Gaul but military service and the payment of the tax; in
+return it freed individuals from patronal domination, the people from
+oligarchic greed or Druidic excommunication, and every one in general
+from material anxiety. Petty tyrannies gave place to the great _Pax
+Romana_. The Julio-Claudian dynasty did much to attach the Gauls to the
+empire; they always occupied the first place in the mind of Augustus,
+and the revolt of the Aeduan Julius Sacrovir, provoked by the census of
+A.D. 21, was easily repressed by Tiberius. Caligula visited Gaul and
+founded literary competitions at Lyons, which had become the political
+and intellectual capital of the country. Claudius, who was a native of
+Lyons, extended the right of Roman citizenship to many of his
+fellow-townsmen, gave them access to the magistracy and to the senate,
+and supplemented the annexation of Gaul by that of Britain. The speech
+which he pronounced on this occasion was engraved on tables of bronze at
+Lyons, and is the first authentic record of Gaul's admission to the
+citizenship of Rome. Though the crimes of Nero and the catastrophes
+which resulted from his downfall, provoked the troubles of the year A.D.
+70, the revolt of Sabinus was in the main an attempt by the Germans to
+pillage Gaul and the prelude to military insurrections. The government
+of the Flavians and the Antonines completed a definite reconciliation.
+After the extinction of the family of Augustus in the 1st century Gaul
+had made many emperors--Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian and Domitian;
+and in the 2nd century she provided Gauls to rule the empire--Antoninus
+(138-161) came from Nîmes and Claudius from Lyons, as did also Caracalla
+later on (211-217).
+
+
+  Material and political transformation of Roman Gaul.
+
+The romanization of the Gauls, like that of the other subject nations,
+was effected by slow stages and by very diverse means, furnishing an
+example of the constant adaptability of Roman policy. It was begun by
+establishing a network of roads with Lyons as the central point, and by
+the development of a prosperous urban life in the increasingly wealthy
+Roman colonies; and it was continued by the disintegration into
+independent cities of nearly all the Gaulish states of the Narbonnaise,
+together with the substitution of the Roman collegial magistracy for the
+isolated magistracy of the Gauls. This alteration came about more
+quickly in the north-east in the Rhine-land than in the west and the
+centre, owing to the near neighbourhood of the legions on the frontiers.
+Rome was too tolerant to impose her own institutions by force; it was
+the conquered peoples who collectively and individually solicited as a
+favour the right of adopting the municipal system, the magistracy, the
+sacerdotal and aristocratic social system of their conquerors. The
+edict of Caracalla, at the beginning of the 3rd century, by conferring
+the right of citizenship on all the inhabitants of the empire, completed
+an assimilation for which commercial relations, schools, a taste for
+officialism, and the adaptability and quick intelligence of the race had
+already made preparation. The Gauls now called themselves Romans and
+their language Romance. There was neither oppression on the one hand nor
+servility on the other to explain this abandonment of their traditions.
+Thanks to the political and religious unity which a common worship of
+the emperor and of Rome gave them, thanks to administrative
+centralization tempered by a certain amount of municipal autonomy, Gaul
+prospered throughout three centuries.
+
+
+  Decline of the imperial authority in Gaul.
+
+But this stability of the Roman peace had barely been realized when
+events began to threaten it both from within and without. The _Pax
+Romana_ having rendered any armed force unnecessary amid a formerly very
+bellicose people, only eight legions mounted guard over the Rhine to
+protect it from the barbarians who surrounded the empire. The raids made
+by the Germans on the eastern frontiers, the incessant competitions for
+the imperial power, and the repeated revolts of the Pretorian guard,
+gradually undermined the internal cohesion of Gaul; while the
+insurrections of the Bagaudae aggravated the destruction wrought by a
+grasping treasury and by barbarian incursions; so that the anarchy of
+the 3rd century soon aroused separatist ideas. Under Postumus Gaul had
+already attempted to restore an independent though short-lived empire
+(258-267); and twenty-eight years later the tetrarchy of Diocletian
+proved that the blood now circulated with difficulty from the heart to
+the extremities of an empire on the eve of disintegration. Rome was to
+see her universal dominion gradually menaced from all sides. It was in
+Gaul that the decisive revolutions of the time were first prepared;
+Constantine's crusades to overthrow the altars of paganism, and Julian's
+campaigns to set them up again. After Constantine the emperors of the
+East in the 4th century merely put in an occasional appearance at Rome;
+they resided at Milan or in the prefectorial capitals of Gaul--at Arles,
+at Treves (Trier), at Reims or in Paris. The ancient territorial
+divisions--Belgium, Gallia Lugdunensis (Lyonnaise), Gallia Narbonensis
+(Narbonnaise)--were split up into seventeen little provinces, which in
+their turn were divided into two dioceses. Thus the great historic
+division was made between southern and northern France. Roman
+nationality persisted, but the administrative system was tottering.
+
+
+  Social disorganization of Gaul.
+
+Upon ground that had been so well levelled by Roman legislation
+aristocratic institutions naturally flourished. From the 4th century
+onward the balance of classes was disturbed by the development of a
+landed aristocracy that grew more powerful day by day, and by the
+corresponding ruin of the small proprietors and industrial and
+commercial corporations. The members of the _curia_ who assisted the
+magistrates in the cities, crushed by the burden of taxes, now evaded as
+far as possible public office or senatorial honours. The vacancies left
+in this middle class by this continual desertion were not compensated
+for by the progressive advance of a lower class destitute of personal
+property and constantly unsettled in their work. The peasants, no less
+than the industrial labourers, suffered from the absence of any capital
+laid by, which alone could have enabled them to improve their land or to
+face a time of bad harvests. Having no credit they found themselves at
+the mercy of their neighbours, the great landholders, and by degrees
+fell into the position of tenants, or into servitude. The curia was thus
+emptied both from above and from below. It was in vain that the emperors
+tried to rivet the chains of the curia in this hereditary bondage, by
+attaching the small proprietor to his glebe, like the artisan to his
+gild and the soldier to his legion. To such a miserable pretence of
+freedom they all preferred servitude, which at least ensured them a
+livelihood; and the middle class of freemen thus became gradually
+extinct.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  FRANCE at the end of the 10th. Century.
+
+  FRANCE in the 13th. Century.
+
+  FRANCE in the 14th. Century.
+
+  FRANCE The Eastern Frontier, 1598-1789.]
+
+
+  Absorption of land and power by the aristocracy of Gaul.
+
+The aristocracy, on the contrary, went on increasing in power, and
+eventually became masters of the situation. It was through them that the
+emperor, theoretically absolute, practically carried on his
+administration; but he was no longer either strong or a divinity, and
+possessed nothing but the semblance of omnipotence. His official
+despotism was opposed by the passive but invincible competition of an
+aristocracy, more powerful than himself because it derived its support
+from the revived relation of patron and dependants. But though the
+aristocracy administered, yet they did not govern. They suffered, as did
+the Empire, from a general state of lassitude. Like their private life,
+their public life, no longer stimulated by struggles and difficulties,
+had become sluggish; their power of initiative was enfeebled. Feeling
+their incapacity they no longer embarked on great political schemes; and
+the army, the instrument by which such schemes were carried on, was only
+held together by the force of habit. In this society, where there was no
+traffic in anything but wealth and ideas, the soldier was nothing more
+than an agitator or a parasite. The egoism of the upper classes held
+military duty in contempt, while their avarice depopulated the
+countryside, whence the legions had drawn their recruits. And now come
+the barbarians! A prey to perpetual alarm, the people entrenched
+themselves behind those high walls of the _oppida_ which Roman security
+had razed to the ground, but imperial impotence had restored, and where
+life in the middle ages was destined to vegetate in unrestful isolation.
+
+
+  Intellectual decadence of Gaul.
+
+Amidst this general apathy, intellectual activity alone persisted. In
+the 4th century there was a veritable renaissance in Gaul, the last
+outburst of a dying flame, which yet bore witness also to the general
+decadence. The agreeable versification of an amateur like Ausonius, the
+refined panegyrics of a Eumenius, disguising nullity of thought beneath
+elegance of form, already foretold the perilous sterility of
+scholasticism. Art, so widespread in the wealthy villas of Gaul,
+contented itself with imitation, produced nothing original and remained
+mediocre. Human curiosity, no longer concerned with philosophy and
+science, seemed as though stifled, religious polemics alone continuing
+to hold public attention. Disinclination for the self-sacrifice of
+active life and weariness of the things of the earth lead naturally to
+absorption in the things of heaven. After bringing about the success of
+the Asiatic cults of Mithra and Cybele, these same factors now assured
+the triumph over exhausted paganism of yet another oriental
+religion--Christianity--after a duel which had lasted two centuries.
+
+
+  Christianity in Gaul.
+
+This new faith had appeared to Constantine likely to infuse young and
+healthy blood into the Empire. In reality Christianity, which had
+contributed not a little to stimulate the political unity of continental
+Gaul, now tended to dissolve it by destroying that religious unity which
+had heretofore been its complement. Before this there had been complete
+harmony between Church and State; but afterwards came indifference and
+then disagreement between political and religious institutions, between
+the City of God and that of Caesar. Christianity, introduced into Gaul
+during the 1st century of the Christian era by those foreign merchants
+who traded along the coasts of the Mediterranean, had by the middle of
+the 2nd century founded communities at Vienne, at Autun and at Lyons.
+Their propagandizing zeal soon exposed them to the wrath of an ignorant
+populace and the contempt of the educated; and thus it was that in A.D.
+177, under Marcus Aurelius, the Church of Lyons, founded by St Pothinus,
+suffered those persecutions which were the effective cause of her
+ultimate victory. These Christian communities, disguised under the
+legally authorized name of burial societies, gradually formed a vast
+secret cosmopolitan association, superimposed upon Roman society but
+incompatible with the Empire. Christianity had to be either destroyed or
+absorbed. The persecutions under Aurelian and Diocletian almost
+succeeded in accomplishing the former; the Christian churches were saved
+by the instability of the existing authorities, by military anarchy and
+by the incursions of the barbarians. Despite tortures and martyrdoms,
+and thanks to the seven apostles sent from Rome in 250, during the 3rd
+century their branches extended all over Gaul.
+
+
+  Triumph of Christianity in Gaul.
+
+The emperors had now to make terms with these churches, which served to
+group together all sorts of malcontents, and this was the object of the
+edict of Milan (313), by which the Church, at the outset simply a Jewish
+institution, was naturalized as Roman; while in 325 the Council of
+Nicaea endowed her with unity. But for the security and the power thus
+attained she had to pay with her independence. On the other hand, pagan
+and Christian elements in society existed side by side without
+intermingling, and even openly antagonistic to each other--one
+aristocratic and the other democratic. In order to induce the masses of
+the people once more to become loyal to the imperial form of government
+the emperor Julian tried by founding a new religion to give its
+functionaries a religious prestige which should impress the popular
+mind. His plan failed; and the emperor Theodosius, aided by Ambrose,
+bishop of Milan, preferred to make the Christian clergy into a body of
+imperial and conservative officials; while in return for their adhesion
+he abolished the Arian heresy and paganism itself, which could not
+survive without his support. Thenceforward it was in the name of Christ
+that persecutions took place in an Empire now entirely won over to
+Christianity.
+
+
+  Organisation of the Church.
+
+In Gaul the most famous leader of this first merciless, if still
+perilous crusade, was a soldier-monk, Saint Martin of Tours. Thanks to
+him and his disciples in the middle of the 4th century and the beginning
+of the 5th many of the towns possessed well-established churches; but
+the militant ardour of monks and centuries of labour were needed to
+conquer the country districts, and in the meantime both dogma and
+internal organization were subjected to important modifications. As
+regards the former the Church adopted a course midway between
+metaphysical explanations and historical traditions, and reconciled the
+more extreme theories; while with the admission of pagans a great deal
+of paganism itself was introduced. On the other hand, the need for
+political and social order involved the necessity for a disciplined and
+homogeneous religious body; the exercise of power, moreover, soon
+transformed the democratic Christianity of the earlier churches into a
+federation of little conservative monarchies. The increasing number of
+her adherents, and her inexperience of government on such a vast and
+complicated scale, obliged her to comply with political necessity and to
+adopt the system of the state and its social customs. The Church was no
+longer a fraternity, on a footing of equality, with freedom of belief
+and tentative as to dogma, but an authoritative aristocratic hierarchy.
+The episcopate was now recruited from the great families in the same way
+as the imperial and the municipal public services. The Church called on
+the emperor to convoke and preside over her councils and to combat
+heresy; and in order more effectually to crush the latter she replaced
+primitive independence and local diversity by uniformity of doctrine and
+worship, and by the hierarchy of dioceses and ecclesiastical provinces.
+The heads of the Church, her bishops, her metropolitans, took the titles
+of their pagan predecessors as well as their places, and their
+jurisdiction was enforced by the laws of the state. Rich and powerful
+chiefs, they were administrators as much as priests: Germanus (Germain),
+bishop of Auxerre (d. 448), St Eucherius of Lyons (d. 450), Apollinaris
+Sidonius of Clermont (d. c. 490) assumed the leadership of society, fed
+the poor, levied tithes, administered justice, and in the towns where
+they resided, surrounded by priests and deacons, ruled both in temporal
+and spiritual matters.
+
+
+  The Church's independence of the Empire.
+
+But the humiliation of Theodosius before St Ambrose proved that the
+emperor could never claim to be a pontiff, and that the dogma of the
+Church remained independent of the sovereign as well as of the people;
+if she sacrificed her liberty it was but to claim it again and maintain
+it more effectively amid the general languor. The Church thus escaped
+the unpopularity of this decadent empire, and during the 5th century she
+provided a refuge for all those who, wishing to preserve the Roman
+unity, were terrified by the blackness of the horizon. In fact, whilst
+in the Eastern Church the metaphysical ardour of the Greeks was spending
+itself in terrible combats in the oecumenical councils over the
+interpretation of the Nicene Creed, the clergy of Gaul, more simple and
+strict in their faith, abjured these theological logomachies; from the
+first they had preferred action to criticism and had taken no part in
+the great controversy on free-will raised by Pelagius. Another kind of
+warfare was about to absorb their whole attention; the barbarians were
+attacking the frontiers of the Empire on every side, and their advent
+once again modified Gallo-Roman civilization.
+
+
+  The barbarian invasion.
+
+For centuries they had been silently massing themselves around ancient
+Europe, whether Iberian, Celtic or Roman. Many times already during that
+evening of a decadent civilization, their threatening presence had
+seemed like a dark cloud veiling the radiant sky of the peoples
+established on the Mediterranean seaboard. The cruel lightning of the
+sword of Brennus had illumined the night, setting Rome or Delphi on
+fire. Sometimes the storm had burst over Gaul, and there had been need
+of a Marius to stem the torrent of Cimbri and Teutons, or of a Caesar to
+drive back the Helvetians into their mountains. On the morrow the
+western horizon would clear again, until some such disaster as that
+which befell Varus would come to mortify cruelly the pride of an
+Augustus. The Romans had soon abandoned hope of conquering Germany, with
+its fluctuating frontiers and nomadic inhabitants. For more than two
+centuries they had remained prudently entrenched behind the earthworks
+that extended from Cologne to Ratisbon (Regensburg); but the intestine
+feuds which prevailed among the barbarians and were fostered by Rome,
+the organization under bold and turbulent chiefs of the bands greedy for
+booty, the pressing forward on populations already settled of tribes in
+their rear; all this caused the Germanic invasion to filter by degrees
+across the frontier. It was the work of several generations and took
+various forms, by turns and simultaneously colonization and aggression;
+but from this time forward the _pax romana_ was at an end. The emperors
+Probus, Constantine, Julian and Valentinian, themselves foreigners, were
+worn out with repulsing these repeated assaults, and the general
+enervation of society did the rest. The barbarians gradually became part
+of the Roman population; they permeated the army, until after Theodosius
+they recruited it exclusively; they permeated civilian society as
+colonists and agriculturists, till the command of the army and of
+important public duties was given over to a Stilicho or a Crocus. Thus
+Rome allowed the wolves to mingle with the dogs in watching over the
+flock, just at a time when the civil wars of the 4th century had denuded
+the Rhenish frontier of troops, whose numbers had already been
+diminished by Constantine. Then at the beginning of the 5th century,
+during a furious irruption of Germans fleeing before Huns, the _limes_
+was carried away (406-407); and for more than a hundred years the
+torrent of fugitives swept through the Empire, which retreated behind
+the Alps, there to breathe its last.
+
+
+  The Germans in Gaul.
+
+  The Franks before Clovis.
+
+Whilst for ten years Alaric's Goths and Stilicho's Vandals were
+drenching Italy with blood, the Vandals and the Alani from the steppes
+of the Black Sea, dragging in their wake the reluctant German tribes who
+had been allies of Rome and who had already settled down to the
+cultivation of their lands, invaded the now abandoned Gaul, and having
+come as far as the Pyrenees, crossed over them. After the passing of
+this torrent the Visigoths, under their kings Ataulphus, Wallia and
+Theodoric, still dazzled by the splendours of this immense empire,
+established themselves like submissive vassals in Aquitaine, with
+Toulouse as their capital. About the same time the Burgundians settled
+even more peaceably in Rhenish Gaul, and, after 456, to the west of the
+Jura in the valleys of the Saône and the Rhône. The original Franks of
+Germany, already established in the Empire, and pressed upon by the same
+Huns who had already forced the Goths across the Danube, passed beyond
+the Rhine and occupied north-eastern Gaul; Ripuarians of the Rhine
+establishing themselves on the Sambre and the Meuse, and Salians in
+Belgium, as far as the great fortified highroad from Bavai to Cologne.
+Accepted as allies, and supported by Roman prestige and by the active
+authority of the general Aetius, all these barbarians rallied round him
+and the Romans of Gaul, and in 451 defeated the hordes of Attila, who
+had advanced as far as Orleans, at the great battle of the Catalaunian
+plains.
+
+
+  The clergy and the barbarians.
+
+Thus at the end of the 5th century the Roman empire was nothing but a
+heap of ruins, and fidelity to the empire was now only maintained by the
+Catholic Church; she alone survived, as rich, as much honoured as ever,
+and more powerful, owing to the disappearance of the imperial officials
+for whom she had found substitutes, and the decadence of the municipal
+bodies into whose inheritance she had entered. Owing to her the City of
+God gradually replaced the Roman imperial polity and preserved its
+civilization; while the Church allied herself more closely with the new
+kingdoms than she had ever done with the Empire. In the Gothic or
+Burgundian states of the period the bishops, after having for a time
+opposed the barbarian invaders, sought and obtained from their chief the
+support formerly received from the emperor. Apollinaris Sidonius paid
+court to Euric, since 476 the independent king of the Visigoths, against
+whom he had defended Auvergne; and Avitus, bishop of Vienne, was
+graciously received by Gundibald, king of the Burgundians. But these
+princes were Arians, i.e. foreigners among the Catholic population; the
+alliance sought for by the Church could not reach her from that source,
+and it was from the rude and pagan Franks that she gained the material
+support which she still lacked. The conversion of Clovis was a
+master-stroke; it was fortunate both for himself and for the Franks.
+Unity in faith brought about unity in law.
+
+
+  Clovis, the Frankish chief.
+
+  Clovis as a Roman officer.
+
+Clovis was king of the Sicambrians, one of the tribes of the Salian
+Franks. Having established themselves in the plains of Northern Gaul,
+but driven by the necessity of finding new land to cultivate, in the
+days of their king Childeric they had descended into the fertile valleys
+of the Somme and the Oise. Clovis's victory at Soissons over the last
+troops left in the service of Rome (486) extended their settlements as
+far as the Loire. By his conversion, which was due to his wife Clotilda
+and to Remigius, bishop of Reims, more than to the victory of Tolbiac
+over the Alamanni, Clovis made definitely sure of the Roman inhabitants
+and gave the Church an army (496). Thenceforward he devoted himself to
+the foundation of the Frankish monarchy by driving the exhausted and
+demoralized heretics out of Gaul, and by putting himself in the place of
+the now enfeebled emperor. In 500 he conquered Gundibald, king of the
+Burgundians, reduced him to a kind of vassalage, and forced him into
+reiterated promises of conversion to orthodoxy. In 507 he conquered and
+killed Alaric II., king of the Arian Visigoths, and drove the latter
+into Spain. Legend adorned his campaign in Aquitaine with miracles; the
+bishops were the declared allies of both him and his son Theuderich
+(Thierry) after his conquest of Auvergne. At Tours he received from the
+distant emperor at Constantinople the diploma and insignia of
+_patricius_ and Roman consul, which legalized his military conquests by
+putting him in possession of civil powers. From this time forward a
+great historic transformation was effected in the eyes of the bishops
+and of the Gallo-Romans; the Frankish chief took the place of the
+ancient emperors. Instead of blaming him for the murder of the lesser
+kings of the Franks, his relatives, by which he had accomplished the
+union of the Frankish tribes, they saw in this the hand of God rewarding
+a faithful soldier and a converted pagan. He became their king, their
+new David, as the Christian emperors had formerly been; he built
+churches, endowed monasteries, protected St Vaast (Vedastus, d. 540),
+first bishop of Arras and Cambrai, who restored Christianity in northern
+Gaul. Like the emperors before him Clovis, too, reigned over the Church.
+Of his own authority he called together a council at Orleans in 511, the
+year of his death. He was already the grand distributor of
+ecclesiastical benefices, pending the time when his successors were to
+confirm the episcopal elections, and his power began to take on a more
+and more absolute character. But though he felt the ascendant influence
+of Christian teaching, he was not really penetrated by its spirit; a
+professing Christian, and a friend to the episcopate, Clovis remained a
+barbarian, crafty and ruthless. The bloody tragedies which disfigured
+the end of his reign bear sad witness to this; they were a fit prelude
+to that period during the course of which, as Gregory of Tours said,
+"barbarism was let loose."
+
+
+  The sons of Clovis.
+
+The conquest of Gaul, begun by Clovis, was finished by his sons:
+Theuderich, Chlodomer, Childebert and Clotaire. In three successive
+campaigns, from 523 to 532, they annihilated the Burgundian kingdom,
+which had maintained its independence, and had endured for nearly a
+century. Favoured by the war between Justinian, the East Roman emperor,
+and Theodoric's Ostrogoths, the Frankish kings divided Provence among
+them as they had done in the case of Burgundy. Thus the whole of Gaul
+was subjected to the sons of Clovis, except Septimania in the
+south-east, where the Visigoths still maintained their power. The
+Frankish armies then overflowed into the neighbouring countries and
+began to pillage them. Their disorderly cohorts made an attack upon
+Italy, which was repulsed by the Lombards, and another on Spain with the
+same want of success; but beyond the Rhine they embarked upon the
+conquest of Germany, where Clovis had already reduced to submission the
+country on the banks of the Maine, later known as Franconia. In 531 the
+Thuringians in the centre of Germany were brought into subjection by his
+eldest son, King Theuderich, and about the same time the Bavarians were
+united to the Franks, though preserving a certain autonomy. The
+Merovingian monarchy thus attained the utmost limits of its territorial
+expansion, bounded as it was by the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Rhine; it
+exercised influence over the whole of Germany, which it threw open to
+the Christian missionaries, and its conquests formed the first
+beginnings of German history.
+
+
+  Civil wars.
+
+But to these wars of aggrandizement and pillage succeeded those
+fratricidal struggles which disgraced the whole of the sixth century and
+arrested the expansion of the Merovingian power. When Clotaire, the last
+surviving son of Clovis, died in 561, the kingdom was divided between
+his four sons like some piece of private property, as in 511, and
+according to the German method. The capitals of these four
+kings--Charibert, who died in 567, Guntram, Sigebert and Chilperic--were
+Paris, Orleans, Reims and Soissons--all near one another and north of
+the Loire, where the Germanic inhabitants predominated; but their
+respective boundaries were so confused that disputes were inevitable.
+There was no trace of a political idea in these disputes; the mutual
+hatred of two women aggravated jealousy to the point of causing terrible
+civil wars from 561 to 613, and these finally created a national
+conflict which resulted in the dismemberment of the Frankish empire.
+Recognized, in fact, already as separate provinces were Austrasia, or
+the eastern kingdom, Neustria, or north-west Gaul and Burgundy;
+Aquitaine alone was as yet undifferentiated.
+
+
+  Fredegond and Brunhilda.
+
+Sigebert had married Brunhilda, the daughter of a Visigoth king; she was
+beautiful and well educated, having been brought up in Spain, where
+Roman civilization still flourished. Chilperic had married Galswintha,
+one of Brunhilda's sisters, for the sake of her wealth; but despite this
+marriage he had continued his amours with a waiting-woman named
+Fredegond, who pushed ambition to the point of crime, and she induced
+him to get rid of Galswintha. In order to avenge her sister, Brunhilda
+incited Sigebert to begin a war which terminated in 575 with the
+assassination of Sigebert by Fredegond at the very moment when, thanks
+to the help of the Germans, he had gained the victory, and with the
+imprisonment of Brunhilda at Rouen. Fredegond subsequently caused the
+death of Merovech (Mérovée), the son of Chilperic, who had been secretly
+married to Brunhilda, and that of Bishop Praetextatus, who had
+solemnized their union. After this, Fredegond endeavoured to restore
+imperial finance to a state of solvency, and to set up a more regular
+form of government in her Neustria, which was less romanized and less
+wealthy than Burgundy, where Guntram was reigning, and less turbulent
+than the eastern kingdom, where most of the great warlike chiefs with
+their large landed estates were somewhat impatient of royal authority.
+But the accidental death of two of her children, the assassination of
+her husband in 584, and the advice of the Church, induced her to make
+overtures to her brother-in-law Guntram. A lover of peace through sheer
+cowardice and as depraved in his morals as Chilperic, Guntram had played
+a vacillating and purely self-interested part in the family tragedy. He
+declared himself the protector of Fredegond, but his death in 593
+delivered up Burgundy and Neustria to Brunhilda's son Childebert, king
+of Austrasia, in consequence of the treaty of Andelot, made in 587. An
+ephemeral triumph, however; for Childebert died in 596, followed a year
+later by Fredegond.
+
+
+  The fall of Brunhilda.
+
+The whole of Gaul was now handed over to three children: Childebert's
+two sons, Theudebert and Theuderich (Thierry), and the son of Fredegond,
+Clotaire II. The latter, having vanquished the two former at Latofao in
+596, was in turn beaten by them at Dormelles in 600, and a year later a
+fresh fratricidal struggle broke out between the two grandsons of the
+aged Brunhilda. Theuderich joined with Clotaire against Theodobert, and
+invaded his brother's kingdom, conquering first an army of Austrasians
+and then one composed of Saxons and Thuringians. Strife began again in
+613 in consequence of Theuderich's desire to join Austrasia to Neustria,
+but his death delivered the kingdoms into the hands of Clotaire II. This
+weak king leant for support upon the nobles of Burgundy and Austrasia,
+impatient as they were of obedience to a woman and the representative of
+Rome. The ecclesiastical party also abandoned Brunhilda because of her
+persecution of their saints, after which Clotaire, having now got the
+upper hand, thanks to the defection of the Austrasian nobles, of Arnulf,
+bishop of Metz, with his brother Pippin, and of Warnachaire, mayor of
+the palace, made a terrible end of Brunhilda in 613. Her long reign had
+not lacked intelligence and even greatness; she alone, amid all these
+princes, warped by self-indulgence or weakened by discord, had behaved
+like a statesman, and she alone understood the obligations of the
+government she had inherited. She wished to abolish the fatal tradition
+of dividing up the kingdom, which so constantly prevented any possible
+unity; in opposition to the nobles she used her royal authority to
+maintain the Roman principles of order and regular administration.
+Towards the Church she held a courteous but firm policy, renewing
+relations between the Frankish kingdom and the pope; and she so far
+maintained the greatness of the Empire that tradition associated her
+name with the Roman roads in the north of France, entitling them "les
+chaussées de Brunehaut."
+
+
+  Clotaire II.
+
+Like his grandfather, Clotaire II. reigned over a once more united Gaul
+of Franks and Gallo-Romans, and like Clovis he was not too well obeyed
+by the nobles; moreover, his had been a victory more for the aristocracy
+than for the crown, since it limited the power of the latter. Not that
+the permanent constitution of the 18th of October 614 was of the nature
+of an anti-monarchic revolution, for the royal power still remained very
+great, decking itself with the pompous titles of the Empire, and
+continuing to be the dominant institution; but the reservations which
+Clotaire II. had to make in conceding the demands of the bishops and
+great laymen show the extent and importance of the concessions these
+latter were already aiming at. The bishops, the real inheritors of the
+imperial idea of government, had become great landowners through
+enormous donations made to the Church, and allied as they were to the
+aristocracy, whence their ranks were continually recruited, they had
+gradually identified themselves with the interests of their class and
+had adopted its customs; while thanks to long minorities and civil wars
+the aristocracy of the high officials had taken an equally important
+social position. The treaty of Andelot in 587 had already decided that
+the benefices or lands granted to them by the kings should be held for
+life. In the 7th century the Merovingian kings adopted the custom of
+summoning them all, and not merely the officials of their _Palatium_, to
+discuss political affairs; they began, moreover, to choose their counts
+or administrators from among the great landholders. This necessity for
+approval and support points to yet another alteration in the nature of
+the royal power, absolute as it was in theory.
+
+
+  The mayors of the palace.
+
+The Mayoralty of the Palace aimed a third and more serious blow at the
+royal authority. By degrees, the high officials of the _Palatium_,
+whether secular or ecclesiastical, and also the provincial counts, had
+rallied round the mayors of the palace as their real leaders. As under
+the Empire, the Palatium was both royal court and centre of government,
+with the same bureaucratic hierarchy and the same forms of
+administration; and the mayor of the palace was premier official of this
+itinerant court and ambulatory government. Moreover, since the palace
+controlled the whole of each kingdom, the mayors gradually extended
+their official authority so as to include functionaries and agents of
+every kind, instead of merely those attached immediately to the king's
+person. They suggested candidates for office for the royal selection,
+often appointed office-holders, and, by royal warrant, supported or
+condemned them. Mere subordinates while the royal power was strong, they
+had become, owing to the frequent minorities, and to civil wars which
+broke the tradition of obedience, the all-powerful ministers of kings
+nominally absolute but without any real authority. Before long they
+ceased to claim an even greater degree of independence than that of
+Warnachaire, who forced Clotaire II. to swear that he should never be
+deprived of his mayoralty of Burgundy; they wished to take the first
+place in the kingdoms they governed, and to be able to attack
+neighbouring kingdoms on their own account. A struggle, motived by
+self-interest, no doubt; but a struggle, too, of opposing principles.
+Since the Frankish monarchy was now in their power some of them tried to
+re-establish the unity of that monarchy in all its integrity, together
+with the superiority of the State over the Church; others, faithless to
+the idea of unity, saw in the disintegration of the state and the
+supremacy of the nobles a warrant for their own independence. These two
+tendencies were destined to strive against one another during an entire
+century (613-714), and to occasion two periods of violent conflict,
+which, divided by a kind of renascence of royalty, were to end at last
+in the triumphant substitution of the Austrasian mayors for royalty and
+aristocracy alike.
+
+
+  First struggle between monarchy and mayoralty.
+
+The first struggle began on the accession of Clotaire II., when
+Austrasia, having had a king of her own ever since 561, demanded one
+now. In 623 Clotaire was obliged to send her his son Dagobert and even
+to extend his territory. But in Dagobert's name two men ruled,
+representing the union of the official aristocracy and the Church. One,
+Pippin of Landen, derived his power from his position as mayor of the
+palace, from great estates in Aquitaine and between the Meuse and the
+Rhine, and from the immense number of his supporters; the other, Arnulf,
+bishop of Metz, sprang from a great family, probably of Roman descent,
+and was besides immensely wealthy in worldly possessions. By the union
+of their forces Pippin and Arnulf were destined to shape the future.
+They had already, in 613, treated with Clotaire and betrayed the hopes
+of Brunhilda, being consequently rewarded with the guardianship of young
+Dagobert. Burgundy followed the example of Austrasia, demanded the
+abolition of the mayoralty, and in 627 succeeded in obtaining her
+independence of Neustria and Austrasia and direct relations with the
+king.
+
+
+  Renascence of monarchy under Dagobert, 629-639.
+
+The death of Clotaire (629) was the signal for a revival of the royal
+power. Dagobert deprived Pippin of Landen of his authority and forced
+him to fly to Aquitaine; but still he had to give the Austrasians his
+son Sigebert III. for their king (634). He made administrative
+progresses through Neustria and Burgundy to recall the nobles to their
+allegiance, but again he was forced to designate his second son Clovis
+as king of Neustria. He did subdue Aquitaine completely, thanks to his
+brother Charibert, with whom he had avoided dividing the kingdom, and he
+tried to restore his own demesne, which had been despoiled by the
+granting of benefices or by the pious frauds of the Church. In short,
+this reign was one of great conquests, impossible except under a strong
+government. Dagobert's victories over Samo, king of the Slavs along the
+Elbe, and his subjugation of the Bretons and the Basques, maintained the
+prestige of the Frankish empire; while the luxury of his court, his
+taste for the fine arts (ministered to by his treasurer Eloi[28]), his
+numerous achievements in architecture--especially the abbey of St Denis,
+burial-place of the kings of France--the brilliance and the power of the
+churchmen who surrounded him and his revision of the Salic law, ensured
+for his reign, in spite of the failure of his plans for unity, a fame
+celebrated in folksong and ballad.
+
+
+  The "Rois fainéants" (do-nothing kings).
+
+But for barbarous nations old-age comes early, and after Dagobert's
+death (639), the monarchy went swiftly to its doom. The mayors of the
+palace again became supreme, and the kings not only ceased to appoint
+them, but might not even remove them from office. Such mayors were Aega
+and Erchinoald, in Neustria, Pippin and Otto in Austrasia, and Flaochat
+in Burgundy. One of them, Grimoald, son of Pippin, actually dared to
+take the title of king in Austrasia (640). This was a premature attempt
+and barren of result, yet it was significant; and not less so is the
+fact that the palace in which these mayors bore rule was a huge
+association of great personages, laymen and ecclesiastics who seem to
+have had much more independence than in the 6th century. We find the
+dukes actually raising troops without the royal sanction, and even
+against the king. In 641 the mayor Flaochat was forced to swear that
+they should hold their offices for life; and though these offices were
+not yet hereditary, official dynasties, as it were, began to be
+established permanently within the palace. The crown lands, the
+governorships, the different offices, were looked upon as common
+property to be shared between themselves. Organized into a compact body
+they surrounded the king and were far more powerful than he. In the
+general assembly of its members this body of officials decided the
+selection of the mayor; it presented Flaochat to the choice of Queen
+Nanthilda, Dagobert's widow; after long discussion it appointed Ebroïn
+as mayor; it submitted requests that were in reality commands to the
+Assembly of Bonneuil in 616 and later to Childeric in 670. Moreover, the
+countries formerly subdued by the Franks availed themselves of this
+opportunity to loosen the yoke; Thuringia was lost by Sigebert in 641,
+and the revolt of Alamannia in 643 set back the frontier of the kingdom
+from the Elbe to Austrasia. Aquitaine, hitherto the common prey of all
+the Frankish kings, having in vain tried to profit by the struggles
+between Fredegond and Brunhilda, and set up an independent king,
+Gondibald, now finally burst her bonds in 670. Then came a time when the
+kings were mere children, honoured with but the semblance of respect,
+under the tutelage of a single mayor, Erbroïn of Neustria.
+
+
+  Struggle between Ebroïn and Léger.
+
+  Battle of Tertry.
+
+This representative of royalty, chief minister for four-and-twenty years
+(656-681), attempted the impossible, endeavouring to re-establish unity
+in the midst of general dissolution and to maintain intact a royal
+authority usurped everywhere, by the hereditary power of the great
+palatine families. He soon stirred up against himself all the
+dissatisfied nobles, led by Léger (Leodegarius), bishop of Autun and his
+brother Gerinus. Clotaire III.'s death gave the signal for war. Ebroïn's
+enemies set up Childeric II. in opposition to Theuderich, the king whom
+he had chosen without summoning the great provincial officials. Despite
+a temporary triumph, when Childeric was forced to recognize the
+principle of hereditary succession in public offices, and when the
+mayoralties of Neustria and Burgundy were alternated to the profit of
+both, Léger soon fell into disgrace and was exiled to that very
+monastery of Luxeuil to which Ebroïn had been relegated. Childeric
+having regained the mastery restored the mayor's office, which was
+immediately disputed by the two rivals; Ebroïn was successful and
+established himself as mayor of the palace in the room of Leudesius, a
+partisan of Léger (675), following this up by a distribution of offices
+and dignities right and left among his adherents. Léger was put to death
+in 678, and the Austrasians, commanded by the Carolingian Pippin II.,
+with whom many of the chief Neustrians had taken refuge, were dispersed
+near Laon (680). But Ebroïn was assassinated next year in the midst of
+his triumph, having like Fredegond been unable to do more than postpone
+for a quarter of a century the victory of the nobles and of Austrasia;
+for his successor, Berthar, was unfitted to carry on his work, having
+neither his gifts and energy nor the powerful personality of Pippin.
+Berthar met his death at the battle of Tertry (687), which gave the king
+into the hands of Pippin, as also the royal treasure and the mayoralty,
+and by thus enabling him to reward his followers made him supreme over
+the Merovingian dynasty. Thenceforward the degenerate descendants of
+Clovis offered no further resistance to his claims, though it was not
+until 752 that their line became extinct.
+
+In that year the Merovingian dynasty gave place to the rule of Pippin
+II. of Heristal, who founded a Carolingian empire fated to be as
+ephemeral as that of the Merovingians. This political victory of the
+aristocracy was merely the consummation of a slow subterranean
+revolution which by innumerable reiterated blows had sapped the
+structure of the body politic, and was about to transfer the people of
+Gaul from the Roman monarchical and administrative government to the
+sway of the feudal system.
+
+
+  Causes of the fall of the Merovingians.
+
+The Merovingian kings, mere war-chiefs before the advent of Clovis, had
+after the conquest of Gaul become absolute hereditary monarchs, thanks
+to the disappearance of the popular assemblies and to the perpetual
+state of warfare. They concentrated in their own hands all the powers of
+the empire, judicial, fiscal and military; and even the so-called "rois
+fainéants" enjoyed this unlimited power, in spite of the general
+disorder and the civil wars. To make their authority felt in the
+provinces they had an army of officials at their disposal--a legacy,
+this, from imperial Rome--who represented them in the eyes of their
+various peoples. They had therefore only to keep up this established
+government, but they could not manage even this much; they allowed the
+idea of the common interests of kings and their subjects gradually to
+die out, and forgetting that national taxes are a necessary impost, a
+charge for service rendered by the state, they had treated these as
+though they were illicit and unjustifiable spoils. The taxpayers, with
+the clergy at their head, adopted the same idea, and every day contrived
+fresh methods of evasion. Merovingian justice was on the same footing as
+Merovingian finance: it was arbitrary, violent and self-seeking. The
+Church, too, never failed to oppose it--at first not so much on account
+of her own ambitions as in a more Christian spirit--and proceeded to
+weaken the royal jurisdiction by repeated interventions on behalf of
+those under sentence, afterwards depriving it of authority over the
+clergy, and then setting up ecclesiastical tribunals in opposition to
+those held by the dukes and counts. At last, just as the kingdom had
+become the personal property of the king, so the officials--dukes,
+counts, royal vicars, tribunes, _centenarii_--who had for the most part
+bought their unpaid offices by means of presents to the monarch, came to
+look upon the public service rather as a mine of official wealth than as
+an administrative organization for furthering the interests, material or
+moral, of the whole nation. They became petty local tyrants, all the
+more despotic because they had nothing to fear save the distant
+authority of the king's _missi_, and the more rapacious because they had
+no salary save the fines they inflicted and the fees that they contrived
+to multiply. Gregory of Tours tells us that they were robbers, not
+protectors of the people, and that justice and the whole administrative
+apparatus were merely engines of insatiable greed. It was the abuses
+thus committed by the kings and their agents, who did not understand the
+art of gloving the iron hand, aided by the absolutely unfettered licence
+of conduct and the absence of any popular liberty, that occasioned the
+gradual increase of charters of immunity.
+
+
+  Immunity.
+
+Immunity was the direct and personal privilege which forbade any royal
+official or his agents to decide cases, to levy taxes, or to exercise
+any administrative control on the domains of a bishop, an abbot, or one
+of the great secular nobles. On thousands of estates the royal
+government gradually allowed the law of the land to be superseded by
+local law, and public taxation to change into special contributions; so
+that the duties of the lower classes towards the state were transferred
+to the great landlords, who thus became loyal adherents of the king but
+absolute masters on their own territory. The Merovingians had no idea
+that they were abdicating the least part of their authority,
+nevertheless the deprivations acquiesced in by the feebler kings led of
+necessity to the diminution of their authority and their judicial
+powers, and to the abandonment of public taxation. They thought that by
+granting immunity they would strengthen their direct control; in reality
+they established the local independence of the great landowners, by
+allowing royal rights to pass into their hands. Then came confusion
+between the rights of the sovereign and the rights of property. The
+administrative machinery of the state still existed, but it worked in
+empty air: its taxpayers disappeared, those who were amenable to its
+legal jurisdiction slipped from its grasp, and the number of those whose
+affairs it should have directed dwindled away. Thus the Merovingians had
+shown themselves incapable of rising above the barbarous notion that
+royalty is a personal asset to the idea that royalty is of the state, a
+power belonging to the nation and instituted for the benefit of all.
+They represented in society nothing more than a force which grew feebler
+and feebler as other forces grew strong; they never stood for a national
+magistracy.
+
+
+  Disruption of the social framework.
+
+Society no less than the state was falling asunder by a gradual process
+of decay. Under the Merovingians it was a hierarchy wherein grades were
+marked by the varied scale of the _wergild_, a man being worth anything
+from thirty to six hundred gold pieces. The different degrees were those
+of slave, freedman, tenant-farmer and great landowner. As in every
+social scheme where the government is without real power, the weakest
+sought protection of the strongest; and the system of patron, client and
+journeyman, which had existed among the Romans, the Gauls and the
+Germans, spread rapidly in the 6th and 7th centuries, owing to public
+disorder and the inadequate protection afforded by the government. The
+Church's patronage provided some with a refuge from violence; others
+ingratiated themselves with the rich for the sake of shelter and
+security; others again sought place and honour from men of power; while
+women, churchmen and warriors alike claimed the king's direct and
+personal protection.
+
+
+  The beneficium.
+
+This hierarchy of persons, these private relations of man to man, were
+recognized by custom in default of the law, and were soon strengthened
+by another and territorial hierarchy. The large estate, especially if it
+belonged to the Church, very soon absorbed the few fields of the
+freeman. In order to farm these, the Church and the rich landowners
+granted back the holdings on the temporary and conditional terms of
+tenancy-at-will or of the _beneficium_, thus multiplying endlessly the
+land subject to their overlordship and the men who were dependent upon
+them as tenants. The kings, like private individuals and ecclesiastical
+establishments, made use of the _beneficium_ to reward their servants;
+till finally their demesne was so reduced by these perpetual grants that
+they took to distributing among their champions land owning the
+overlordship of the Church, or granted their own lands for single lives
+only. These various "benefactions" were, as a rule, merely the indirect
+methods which the great landowners employed in order to absorb the small
+proprietor. And so well did they succeed, that in the 6th and 7th
+centuries the provincial hierarchy consisted of the cultivator, the
+holder of the _beneficium_ and the owner; while this dependence of one
+man upon another affected the personal liberty of a large section of the
+community, as well as the condition of the land. The great landowner
+tended to become not only lord over his tenants, but also himself a
+vassal of the king.
+
+
+  Pippin of Heristal.
+
+Thus by means of immunities, of the _beneficium_ and of patronage,
+society gradually organized itself independently of the state, since it
+required further security. Such extra security was first provided by the
+conqueror of Tertry; for Pippin II. represented the two great families
+of Pippin and of Arnulf, and consequently the two interests then
+paramount, i.e. land and religion, while he had at his back a great
+company of followers and vast landed estates. For forty years (615-655)
+the office of mayor of Austrasia had gone down in his family almost
+continuously in direct descent from father to son. The death of Grimoald
+had caused the loss of this post, yet Ansegisus (Ansegisel), Arnulf's
+son and Pippin's son-in-law, had continued to hold high office in the
+Austrasian palace; and about 680 his son, Pippin II., became master of
+Austrasia, although he had held no previous office in the palace. His
+dynasty was destined to supplant that of the Merovingian house.
+
+Pippin of Heristal was a pioneer; he it was who began all that his
+descendants were afterwards to carry through. Thus he gathered the
+nobles about him not by virtue of his position, but because of his own
+personal prowess, and because he could assure them of justice and
+protection; instead of being merely the head of the royal palace he was
+the absolute lord of his own followers. Moreover, he no longer bore the
+title of mayor, but that of duke or prince of the Franks; and the
+mayoralty, like the royal power now reduced to a shadow, became an
+hereditary possession which Pippin could bestow upon his sons. The
+reigns of Theuderich III., Clovis III. or Childebert III. are of no
+significance except as serving to date charters and diplomas. Pippin it
+was who administered justice in Austrasia, appointed officials and
+distributed dukedoms; and it was Pippin, the military leader, who
+defended the frontiers threatened by Frisians, Alamanni and Bavarians.
+Descended as he was from Arnulf, bishop of Metz, he was before all
+things a churchman, and behind his armies marched the missionaries to
+whom the Carolingian dynasty, of which he was the founder, were to
+subject all Christendom. Pippin it was, in short, who governed, who set
+in order the social confusions of Neustria, who, after long wars, put a
+stop to the malpractices of the dukes and counts, and summoned councils
+of bishops to make good regulations. But at his death in 714 the
+child-king Dagobert III. found himself subordinated to Pippin's two
+grandsons, who, being minors, were under the wardship of their
+grandmother Plectrude.
+
+
+  Charles Martel (715-741).
+
+Pippin's work was almost undone--a party among the Neustrians under
+Raginfrid, mayor of the palace, revolted against Pippin II.'s adherents,
+and Radbod, duke of the Frisians, joined them. But the Austrasians
+appealed to an illegitimate son of Pippin, Charles Martel, who had
+escaped from the prison to which Plectrude, alarmed at his prowess, had
+consigned him, and took him for their leader. With Charles Martel begins
+the great period of Austrasian history. Faithful to the traditions of
+the Austrasian mayors, he chose kings for himself--Clotaire IV., then
+Chilperic II. and lastly Theuderich IV. After Theuderich's death (737)
+he left the throne vacant until 742, but he himself was king in all but
+name; he presided over the royal tribunals, appointed the royal
+officers, issued edicts, disposed of the funds of the treasury and the
+churches, conferred immunities upon adherents, who were no longer the
+king's nobles but his own, and even appointed the bishops, though there
+was nothing of the ecclesiastic about himself. He decided questions of
+war and peace, and re-established unity in Gaul by defeating the
+Neustrians and the Aquitanian followers of Duke Odo (Eudes) at Vincy in
+717. When Odo, brought to bay, appealed for help to the Arab troops of
+Abd-ar-Rahman, who after conquering Spain had crossed the Pyrenees,
+Charles, like a second Clovis, saved Catholic Christendom in its peril
+by crushing the Arabs at Tours (732). The retreat of the Arabs, who were
+further weakened by religious disputes, enabled him to restore Frankish
+rule in Aquitaine in spite of Hunald, son of Odo. But Charles's longest
+expeditions were made into Germany, and in these he sought the support
+of the Church, then the greatest of all powers since it was the
+depositary of the Roman imperial tradition.
+
+
+  Charles Martel and the Church.
+
+No less unconscious of his mission than Clovis had been, Charles Martel
+also was a soldier of Christ. He protected the missionaries who paved
+the way for his militant invasions. Without him the apostle of Germany,
+the English monk Boniface, would never have succeeded in preserving the
+purity of the faith and keeping the bishops submissive to the Holy See.
+The help given by Charles had two very far-reaching results. Boniface
+was the instrument of the union of Rome and Germany, of which union the
+Holy Roman Empire in Germany was in the 10th century to become the most
+perfect expression, continuing up to the time of Luther. And Boniface
+also helped on the alliance between the papacy and the Carolingian
+dynasty, which, more momentous even than that between Clovis and the
+bishops of Gaul, was to sanctify might by right.
+
+
+  Charles Martel and Gregory III.
+
+This union was imperative for the bishops of Rome if they wished to
+establish their supremacy, and their care for orthodoxy by no means
+excluded all desire of domination. Mere religious authority did not
+secure to them the obedience of either the faithful or the clergy;
+moreover, they had to consider the great secular powers, and in this
+respect their temporal position in Italy was growing unbearable. Their
+relations with the East Roman emperor (sole lord of the world after the
+Roman Senate had sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople in 476)
+were confined to receiving insults from him or suspecting him of heresy.
+Even in northern Italy there was no longer any opposition to the
+progress of the Lombards, the last great nation to be established
+towards the end of the 6th century within the ancient Roman
+empire--their king Liudprand clearly intended to seize Italy and even
+Rome itself. Meanwhile from the south attacks were being made by the
+rebel dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum. Pope Gregory III. cherished
+dreams of an alliance with the powerful duke of the Franks, as St
+Remigius before him had thought of uniting with Clovis against the
+Goths. Charles Martel had protected Boniface on his German missions: he
+would perhaps lend Gregory the support of his armies. But the warrior,
+like Clovis aforetime, hesitated to put himself at the disposal of the
+priest. When it was a question of winning followers or keeping them, he
+had not scrupled to lay hands on ecclesiastical property, nor to fill
+the Church with his friends and kinsfolk, and this alliance might
+embarrass him. So if he loaded the Roman ambassadors with gifts in 739,
+he none the less remembered that the Lombards had just helped him to
+drive the Saracens from Provence. However, he died soon after this, on
+the 22nd of October 741, and Gregory III. followed him almost
+immediately.
+
+
+  The Carolingian dynasty.
+
+  Pippin the Short, 752-768.
+
+Feeling his end near, Charles, before an assembly of nobles, had divided
+his power between his two sons, Carloman and Pippin III. The royal line
+seemed to have been forgotten for six years, but in 742 Pippin brought a
+son of Chilperic II. out of a monastery and made him king. This
+Childeric III. was but a shadow--and knew it. He made a phantom
+appearance once every spring at the opening of the great annual national
+convention known as the Campus Martius (Champ de Mars): a dumb idol, his
+chariot drawn in leisurely fashion by oxen, he disappeared again into
+his palace or monastery. An unexpected event re-established unity in the
+Carolingian family. Pippin's brother, the pious Carloman, became a monk
+in 747, and Pippin, now sole ruler of the kingdom, ordered Childeric
+also to cut off his royal locks; after which, being king in all but
+name, he adopted that title in 752. Thus ended the revolution which had
+been going on for two centuries. The disappearance of Grippo, Pippin's
+illegitimate brother, who, with the help of all the enemies of the
+Franks--Alamanni, Aquitanians and Bavarians--had disputed his power, now
+completed the work of centralization, and Pippin had only to maintain
+it. For this the support of the Church was indispensable, and Pippin
+understood the advantages of such an alliance better than Charles
+Martel. A son of the Church, a protector of bishops, a president of
+councils, a collector of relics, devoted to Boniface (whom he invited,
+as papal legate, to reform the clergy of Austrasia), he astutely
+accepted the new claims of the vicar of St Peter to the headship of the
+Church, perceiving the value of an alliance with this rising power.
+
+
+  Sacred character of the new monarchy.
+
+Prudent enough to fear resistance if he usurped the Merovingian crown,
+Pippin the Short made careful preparations for his accession, and
+discussed the question of the dynasty with Pope Zacharias. Receiving a
+favourable opinion, he had himself anointed and crowned by Boniface in
+the name of the bishops, and was then proclaimed king in an assembly of
+nobles, counts and bishops at Soissons in November 751. Still, certain
+disturbances made him see that aristocratic approval of his kingship
+might be strengthened if it could claim a divine sanction which no
+Merovingian had ever received. Two years later, therefore, he demanded a
+consecration of his usurpation from the pope, and in St Denis on the
+28th of July 754 Stephen II. crowned and anointed not only Pippin, but
+his wife and his two sons as well.
+
+
+  Pippin and the Papacy.
+
+The political results of this custom of coronation were all-important
+for the Carolingians, and later for the first of the Capets. Pippin was
+hereby invested with new dignity, and when Boniface's anointing had been
+confirmed by that of the pope, he became the head of the Frankish
+Church, the equal of the pope. Moreover, he astutely contrived to extend
+his priestly prestige to his whole family; his royalty was no longer
+merely a military command or a civil office, but became a Christian
+priesthood. This sacred character was not, however, conferred
+gratuitously. On the very day of his coronation Pippin allowed himself
+to be proclaimed patrician of the Romans by the pope, just as Clovis had
+been made consul. This title of the imperial court was purely honorary,
+but it attached him still more closely to Rome, though without lessening
+his independence. He had besides given a written promise to defend the
+Church of Rome, and that not against the Lombards only. Qualified by
+letters of the papal chancery as "liberator and defender of the Church,"
+his armies twice (754-756) crossed the Alps, despite the opposition of
+the Frankish aristocracy, and forced Aistulf, king of the Lombards, to
+cede to him the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis. Pippin gave
+them back to Pope Stephen II., and by this famous donation founded that
+temporal power of the popes which was to endure until 1870. He also
+dragged the Western clergy into the pope's quarrel with the emperor at
+Constantinople, by summoning the council of Gentilly, at which the
+iconoclastic heresy was condemned (767). Matters being thus settled with
+Rome, Pippin again took up his wars against the Saxons, against the
+Arabs (whom he drove from Narbonne in 758), and above all against
+Waïfer, duke of Aquitaine, and his ally, duke Tassilo of Bavaria. This
+last war was carried on systematically from 760 to 768, and ended in the
+death of Waïfer and the definite establishment of the Frankish hold on
+Aquitaine. When Pippin died, aged fifty-four, on the 24th of September
+768, the whole of Gaul had submitted to his authority.
+
+
+  Charlemagne.
+
+Pippin left two sons, and before he died he had, with the consent of the
+dignitaries of the realm, divided his kingdom between them, making the
+elder, Charles (Charlemagne), king of Austrasia, and giving the younger,
+Carloman, Burgundy, Provence, Septimania, Alsace and Alamannia, and half
+of Aquitaine to each. On the 9th of October 768 Charles was enthroned at
+Noyon in solemn assembly, and Carloman at Soissons. The Carolingian
+sovereignty was thus neither hereditary nor elective, but was handed
+down by the will of the reigning king, and by a solemn acceptance of the
+future king on the part of the nobles. In 771 Carloman, with whom
+Charles had had disputes, died, leaving sons; but bishops, abbots and
+counts all declared for Charles, save a few who took refuge in Italy
+with Desiderius, king of the Lombards. Desiderius, whose daughter Bertha
+or Desiderata Charles, despite the pope, had married at the instance of
+his mother Bertrade, supported the rights of Carloman's sons, and
+threatened Pope Adrian in Rome itself after he had despoiled him of
+Pippin's territorial gift. At the pope's appeal Charles crossed the
+Alps, took Verona and Pavia after a long siege, assumed the iron crown
+of the Lombard kings (June 774), and made a triumphal entry into Rome,
+which had not formed part of the pope's desires. Pippin's donation was
+restored, but the protectorate was no longer so distant, respectful and
+intermittent as the pope liked. After the departure of the imperious
+conqueror, a fresh revolt of the Lombards of Beneventum under Arichis,
+Desiderius's son-in-law, supported by a Greek fleet, obliged Pope Adrian
+to write fresh entreaties to Charlemagne; and in two campaigns (776-777)
+the latter conquered the whole Lombard kingdom. But another of
+Desiderius's daughters, married to the powerful duke Tassilo of Bavaria,
+urged her husband to avenge her father, now imprisoned in the monastery
+of Corbie. After endless intrigues, however, the duke, hemmed in by
+three different armies, had in his turn to submit (788), and all Italy
+was now subject to Charlemagne. These wars in Italy, even the fall of
+the Lombard kingdom and the recapture of the duchy of Bavaria, were
+merely episodes: Charlemagne's great war was against the Saxons and
+lasted thirty years (772-804).
+
+
+  Organization of the conquests.
+
+The work of organizing the three great Carolingian conquests--Aquitaine,
+Italy and Saxony--had yet to be done. Charlemagne approached it with a
+moderation equal to the vigour which he had shown in the war. But by
+multiplying its advance-posts, the Frankish kingdom came into contact
+with new peoples, and each new neighbour meant a new enemy. Aquitaine,
+bordered upon Mussulman Spain; the Avars of Hungary threatened Bavaria
+with their tireless horsemen; beyond the Elbe and the Saal the Slavs
+were perpetually at war with the Saxons, and to the north of the Eider
+were the Danes. All were pagans; all enemies of Charlemagne, defender of
+Christ's Church, and hence the appointed conqueror of the world.
+
+
+  Wars with the Arabs, Slavs and Danes.
+
+Various causes--the weakening of the Arabs by the struggle between the
+Omayyads and the Abbasids just after the battle of Tours; the alliance
+of the petty Christian kings of the Spanish peninsula; an appeal from
+the northern amirs who had revolted against the new caliphate of Cordova
+(755)--made Charlemagne resolve to cross the Pyrenees. He penetrated as
+far as the Ebro, but was defeated before Saragossa; and in their retreat
+the Franks were attacked by Vascons, losing many men as they came
+through the passes. This defeat of the rear-guard, famous for the death
+of the great Roland and the treachery of Ganelo, induced the Arabs to
+take the offensive once more and to conquer Septimania. Charlemagne had
+created the kingdom of Aquitaine especially to defend Septimania, and
+William, duke of Toulouse, from 790 to 806, succeeded in restoring
+Frankish authority down to the Ebro, thus founding the Spanish March
+with Barcelona as its capital. For two centuries and a half the Avars, a
+remnant of the Huns entrenched in the Hungarian Mesopotamia, had made
+descents alternately upon the Germans and upon the Greeks of the Eastern
+empire. They had overrun Bavaria in the very year of its subjugation by
+Charlemagne (788), and it took an eight-years' struggle to destroy the
+robber stronghold. The empire thus pushed its frontier-line on from the
+Elbe to the Oder, ever as it grew menaced by increasing dangers. The sea
+came to the help of the depopulated land, and Danish pirates, Widukind's
+old allies, came in their leathern boats to harry the coasts of the
+North Sea and the Channel. Permanent armies and walls across isthmuses
+were alike useless; Charlemagne had to build fleets to repulse his
+elusive foes (808-810), and even after forty years of war the danger was
+only postponed.
+
+
+  Charlemagne's empire.
+
+Meanwhile Pippin's Frankish kingdom, vast and powerful as it had been,
+was doubled. All nations from the Oder to the Elbe and from the Danube
+to the Atlantic were subject or tributary, and Charlemagne's power even
+crossed these frontiers. At his summons Christian princes and Mussulman
+amirs flocked to his palaces. The kings of Northumbria and Sussex, the
+kings of the Basques and of Galicia, Arab amirs of Spain and Fez, and
+even the caliph of Bagdad came to visit him in person or sent gifts by
+the hands of ambassadors. A great warrior and an upright ruler, his
+conquests recalled those of the great Christian emperors, and the
+Church completed the parallel by training him in her lore. This still
+barely civilized German literally went to school to the English Alcuin
+and to Peter of Pisa, who, between two campaigns, taught him history,
+writing, grammar and astronomy, satisfying also his interest in sacred
+music, literature (religious literature especially), and the traditions
+of Rome and Constantinople. Why should he not be the heir of their
+Caesars? And so, little by little, this man of insatiable energy was
+possessed by the ambition of restoring the Empire of the West in his own
+favour.
+
+
+  Charlemagne emperor (800).
+
+There were, however, two serious obstacles in the way: first, the
+supremacy of the emperor of the East, which though nominal rather than
+real was upheld by peoples, princes, and even by popes; secondly, the
+rivalry of the bishops of Rome, who since the early years of Adrian's
+pontificate had claimed the famous "Donation of Constantine" (q.v.).
+According to that apocryphal document, the emperor after his baptism had
+ceded to the sovereign pontiff his imperial power and honours, the
+purple chlamys, the golden crown, "the town of Rome, the districts and
+cities of Italy and of all the West." But in 797 the empress of
+Constantinople had just deposed her son Constantine VI. after putting
+out his eyes, and the throne might be considered vacant; while on the
+other hand, Pope Leo III., who had been driven from Rome by a revolt in
+799, and had only been restored by a Frankish army, counted for little
+beside the Frankish monarch, and could not but submit to the wishes of
+the Carolingian court. So when next year the king of the Franks went to
+Rome in person, on Christmas Eve of the year 800 and in the basilica of
+St Peter the pope placed on his head the imperial crown and did him
+reverence "after the established custom of the time of the ancient
+emperors." The Roman ideal, handed down in tradition through the
+centuries, was here first revived.
+
+This event, of capital importance for the middle ages, was fertile in
+results both beneficial and the reverse. It brought about the rupture
+between the West and Constantinople. Then Charlemagne raised the papacy
+on the ruins of Lombardy to the position of first political power in
+Italy; and the universal Church, headed by the pope, made common cause
+with the Empire, which all the thinkers of that day regarded as the
+ideal state. Confusion between these powers was inevitable, but at this
+time neither Charles, the pope, nor the people had a suspicion of the
+troubles latent in the ceremony that seemed so simple. Thirdly,
+Charlemagne's title of emperor strengthened his other title of king of
+the Franks, as is proved by the fact that at the great assembly of
+Aix-la-Chapelle in 802 he demanded from all, whether lay or spiritual, a
+new oath of allegiance to himself as Caesar. His increased power came
+rather from moral value, from the prestige attaching to one who had
+given proof of it, than from actual authority over men or
+centralization; this is shown by the division between the Empire and
+feudalism. Universal sovereignty claimed as a heritage from Rome had a
+profound influence upon popular imagination, but in no way modified that
+tendency to separation of the various nations which was already
+manifest. Charles himself in his government preferred to restore the
+ancient Empire by vigorous personal action, rather than to follow old
+imperial traditions; he introduced cohesion into his "palace," and
+perfect centralization into his official administration, inspiring his
+followers and servants, clerical and lay, with a common and determined
+zeal. The system was kept in full vigour by the _missi dominici_, who
+regularly reported or reformed any abuses of administration, and by the
+courts, military, judicial or political, which brought to Charlemagne
+the strength of the wealth of his subjects, carrying his commands and
+his ideas to the farthest limits of the Empire. Under him there was in
+fact a kind of early renaissance after centuries of barbarism and
+ignorance.
+
+
+  The Carolingian Renaissance.
+
+This emperor, who assumed so high a tone with his subjects, his bishops
+and his counts, who undertook to uphold public order in civil life, held
+himself no less responsible for the eternal salvation of men's souls in
+the other world. Thanks to Charlemagne, and through the restoration of
+order and of the schools, a common civilization was prepared for the
+varied elements of the Empire. By his means the Church was able to
+concentrate in the palatine academy all the intellectual culture of the
+middle ages, having preserved some of the ancient traditions of
+organization and administration and guarded the imperial ideal.
+Charlemagne apparently wished, like Theodoric, to use German blood and
+Christian unity to bring back life to the great body of the Empire. Not
+the equal of Caesar or Augustus in genius or in the lastingness of his
+work, he yet recalls them in his capitularies, his periodic courts, his
+official hierarchy, his royal emissaries, his ministers, his sole right
+of coinage, his great public works, his campaigns against barbarism and
+heathenry, his zeal for learning and literature, and his divinity as
+emperor. Once more there existed a great public entity such as had not
+been seen for many years; but its duration was not to be a long one.
+
+
+  Dissolution of the Frankish Empire.
+
+Charlemagne had for the moment succeeded in uniting western Europe under
+his sway, but he had not been able to arrest its evolution towards
+feudal dismemberment. He had, doubtless conscientiously, laboured for
+the reconstitution of the Empire; but it often happens that individual
+wills produce results other than those at which they aimed, sometimes
+results even contrary to their wishes, and this was what happened in
+Charlemagne's case. He had restored the superstructure of the imperial
+monarchy, but he had likewise strengthened and legalized methods and
+institutions till then private and insecure, and these, passing from
+custom into law, undermined the foundations of the structure he had
+thought himself to be repairing. A quarter of a century after his death
+his Empire was in ruins.
+
+The practice of giving land as a _beneficium_ to a grantee who swore
+personal allegiance to the grantor had persisted, and by his
+capitularies Charlemagne had made these personal engagements, these
+contracts of immunity--hitherto not transferable, nor even for life, but
+quite conditional--regular, legal, even obligatory and almost
+indissoluble. The _beneficium_ was to be as practically irrevocable as
+the oath of fidelity. He submitted to the yoke of the social system and
+feudal institutions at the very moment when he was attempting to revive
+royal authority; he was ruler of the state, but ruler of vassals also.
+The monarchical principle no longer sufficed to ensure social
+discipline; the fear of forfeiting the grant became the only powerful
+guarantee of obedience, and as this only applied to his personal
+vassals, Charlemagne gave up his claim to direct obedience from the rest
+of the people, accepting the mediation of the counts, lords and bishops,
+who levied taxes, adjudicated and administered in virtue of the
+privileges of patronage, not of the right of the state. The very
+multiplication of offices, so noticeable at this time, furthered this
+triumph of feudalism by multiplying the links of personal dependence,
+and neutralizing more and more the direct action of the central
+authority. The frequent convocations of military assemblies, far from
+testifying to political liberty, was simply a means of communicating the
+emperor's commands to the various feudal groups.
+
+Thus Charlemagne, far from opposing, systematized feudalism, in order
+that obedience and discipline might pass from one man to another down to
+the lowest grades of society, and he succeeded for his own lifetime. No
+authority was more weighty or more respected than that of this feudal
+lord of Gaul, Italy and Germany; none was more transient, because it was
+so purely personal.
+
+
+  Causes for the dissolution of the Empire.
+
+When the great emperor was buried at Aix-la-Chapelle in 814, his work
+was entombed with him. The fact was that his successors were incapable
+of maintaining it. Twenty-nine years after his death the Carolingian
+Empire had been divided into three kingdoms; forty years later one alone
+of these kingdoms had split into seven; while when a century had passed
+France was a litter of tiny states each practically independent. This
+disintegration was caused neither by racial hate nor by linguistic
+patriotism. It was the weakness of princes, the discouragement of
+freemen and landholders confronted by an inexorable system of financial
+and military tyranny, and the incompatibility of a vast empire with a
+too primitive governmental system, that wrecked the work of Charlemagne.
+
+
+  Louis the Pious (814-840).
+
+The Empire fell to Louis the Pious, sole survivor of his three sons. At
+the Aix assembly in 813 his father had crowned him with his own hand,
+thus avoiding the papal sanction that had been almost forced upon
+himself in 800. Louis was a gentle and well-trained prince, but weak and
+prone to excessive devotion to the Church. He had only reigned a few
+years when dissensions broke out on all sides, as under the
+Merovingians. Charlemagne had assigned their portions to his three sons
+in 781 and again in 806; like Charles Martel and Pippin the Short before
+him, however, what he had divided was not the imperial authority, nor
+yet countries, but the whole system of fiefs, offices and adherents
+which had been his own patrimony. The division that Louis the Pious made
+at Aix in 817 among his three sons, Lothair, Pippin and Louis, was of
+like character, since he reserved the supreme authority for himself,
+only associating Lothair, the eldest, with him in the government of the
+empire. Following the advice of his ministers Walla and Agobard,
+supporters of the policy of unity, Louis the Pious put Bernard of Italy,
+Charlemagne's grandson, to death for refusing to acknowledge Lothair as
+co-emperor; crushed a revolt in Brittany; and carried on among the Danes
+the work of evangelization begun among the Slavs. A fourth son, Charles,
+was born to him by his second wife, Judith of Bavaria. Jealousy arose
+between the children of the two marriages. Louis tried in vain to
+satisfy his sons and their followers by repeated divisions--at Worms
+(829) and at Aix (831)--in which there was no longer question of either
+unity or subordination. Yet his elder sons revolted against him in 831
+and 832, and were supported by Walla and Agobard and by their followers,
+weary of all the contradictory oaths demanded of them. Louis was deposed
+at the assembly of Compiègne (833), the bishops forcing him to assume
+the garb of a penitent; but he was re-established on his throne in St
+Etienne at Metz, the 28th of February 835, from which time until his
+death in 840 he fell more and more under the influence of his ambitious
+wife, and thought only of securing an inheritance for Charles, his
+favourite son.
+
+
+  The sons of Louis the Pious.
+
+  The Strassburg oath.
+
+Hardly was Louis buried in the basilica of Metz before his sons flew to
+arms. The first dynastic war broke out between Lothair, who by the
+settlement of 817 claimed the whole monarchy with the imperial title,
+and his brothers Louis and Charles. Lothair wanted, with the Empire, the
+sole right of patronage over the adherents of his house, but each of
+these latter chose his own lord according to individual interests,
+obeying his fears or his preferences. The three brothers finished their
+discussion by fighting for a whole day (June 25th, 841) on the plain of
+Fontanet by Auxerre; but the battle decided nothing, so Charles and
+Louis, in order to get the better of Lothair, allied themselves and
+their vassals by an oath taken in the plain of Strassburg (Feb. 14th,
+842). This, the first document in the vulgar tongue in the history of
+France and Germany, was merely a mutual contract of protection for the
+two armies, which nevertheless did not risk another battle. An amicable
+division of the imperial succession was arranged, and after an
+assessment of the empire which took almost a year, an agreement was
+signed at Verdun in August 843.
+
+
+  Partition of the Empire at Verdun (843).
+
+This was one of the important events in history. Each brother received
+an equal share of the dismembered empire. Louis had the territory on the
+right bank of the Rhine, with Spires, Worms and Mainz "because of the
+abundance of wine." Lothair took Italy, the valleys of the Rhône, the
+Saône and the Meuse, with the two capitals of the empire,
+Aix-la-Chapelle and Rome, and the title of emperor. Charles had all the
+country watered by the Scheldt, the Seine, the Loire and the Garonne, as
+far as the Atlantic and the Ebro. The partition of Verdun separated once
+more, and definitively, the lands of the eastern and western Franks. The
+former became modern Germany, the latter France, and each from this
+time forward had its own national existence. However, as the boundary
+between the possessions of Charles the Bald and those of Louis was not
+strictly defined, and as Lothair's kingdom, having no national basis,
+soon disintegrated into the kingdoms of Italy, Burgundy and Arles, in
+Lotharingia, this great undefined territory was to serve as a
+tilting-ground for France and Germany on the very morrow of the treaty
+of Verdun and for ten centuries after.
+
+
+  Charles the Bald (843-877).
+
+Charles the Bald was the first king of western France. Anxious as he was
+to preserve Charlemagne's traditions of government, he was not always
+strong enough to do so, and warfare within his own dominions was often
+forced on him. The Norse pirates who had troubled Charlemagne showed a
+preference for western France, justified by the easy access afforded by
+river estuaries with rich monasteries on their shores. They began in 841
+with the sack of Rouen; and from then until 912, when they made a
+settlement in one part of the country, though few in numbers they never
+ceased attacking Charles's kingdom, coming in their ships up the Loire
+as far as Auvergne, up the Garonne to Toulouse, and up the Seine and the
+Scheldt to Paris, where they made four descents in forty years, burning
+towns, pillaging treasure, destroying harvests and slaughtering the
+peasants or carrying them off into slavery. Charles the Bald thus spent
+his life sword in hand, fighting unsuccessfully against the Bretons,
+whose two kings, Nomenoé and Erispoé, he had to recognize in turn; and
+against the people of Aquitaine, who, in full revolt, appealed for help
+to his brother, Louis the German. He was beaten everywhere and always:
+by the Bretons at Ballon (845) and Juvardeil (851); by the people of
+Aquitaine near Angoulême (845); and by the Northmen, who several times
+extorted heavy ransoms from him. Before long, too, Louis the German
+actually allied himself with the people of Brittany and Aquitaine, and
+invaded France at the summons of Charles the Bald's own vassals. Though
+the treaty of Coblenz (860) seemed to reconcile the two kings for the
+moment, no peace was ever possible in Charles the Bald's kingdom. His
+own son Charles, king of Aquitaine, revolted, and Salomon proclaimed
+himself king of Brittany in succession to Erispoé, who had been
+assassinated. To check the Bretons and the Normans, who were attacking
+from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, Charles the Bald found himself
+obliged to entrust the defence of the country to Robert the Strong,
+ancestor of the house of Capet and duke of the lands between Loire and
+Seine. Robert the Strong, however, though many times victorious over the
+incorrigible pirates, was killed by them in a fight at Brissarthe (866).
+
+
+  Division of the kingdom into large fiefs.
+
+Despite all this, Charles spoke authoritatively in his capitularies, and
+though incapable of defending western France, coveted other crowns and
+looked obstinately eastwards. He managed to become king of Lorraine on
+the death of his nephew Lothair II., and emperor and king of Germany on
+that of his other nephew Louis II. (875); though only by breaking the
+compact of the year 800. In 876, the year before his death, he took a
+third crown, that of Italy, though not without a fresh defeat at
+Andernach by Louis the German's troops. His titles increased, indeed,
+but not his power; for while his kingdom was thus growing in area it was
+falling to pieces. The duchy with which he rewarded Robert the Strong
+was only a military command, but became a powerful fief. Baldwin I. (d.
+879), count of Flanders, turned the country between the Scheldt, the
+Somme and the sea into another feudal principality. Aquitaine and
+Brittany were almost independent, Burgundy was in full revolt, and
+within thirty years Rollo, a Norman leader, was to be master of the
+whole of the lower Seine from the Cotentin to the Somme. The fact was
+that between the king's inability to defend the kingdom, and the
+powerlessness of nobles and peasants to protect themselves from pillage,
+every man made it his business to seek new protectors, and the country,
+in spite of Charles the Bald's efforts, began to be covered with
+strongholds, the peasant learning to live beneath the shelter of the
+donjon keeps. Such vassals gave themselves utterly to the lord who
+guarded them, working for him sword or pickaxe in hand. The king was
+far away, the lord close at hand. Hence the sixty years of terror and
+confusion which came between Charlemagne and the death of Charles the
+Bald suppressed the direct authority of the king in favour of the
+nobles, and prepared the way for a second destruction of the monarchy at
+the hands of a stronger power (see FEUDALISM).
+
+
+  Establishment of feudalism.
+
+Before long Charles the Bald's followers were dictating to him; and in
+the disaffection caused by his feebleness and cowardice prelates and
+nobles allied themselves against him. If they acknowledged the king's
+authority at the assemblies of Yütz (near Thionville) in 844, they
+forced from him a promise that they should keep their fiefs and their
+dignities; and while establishing a right of control over all his
+actions they deprived him of his right of jurisdiction over them.
+Despite Charles's resistance his royal power dwindled steadily: an
+appeal to Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, entailed concessions to the
+Church. In 856 some of his vassals deserted him and went over to Louis
+the German. To win them back Charles had to sign a new charter, by the
+terms of which loyalty was no longer a one-sided engagement but a
+reciprocal contract between king and vassal. He gave up his personal
+right of distributing the fiefs and honours which were the price of
+adherence, and thus lost for the Carolingians the free disposal of the
+immense territories they had gradually usurped; they retained the
+over-lordship, it is true, but this over-lordship, without usufruct and
+without choice of tenant, was but a barren possession.
+
+
+  Decay of the Carolinglan power.
+
+Like their territories public authority little by little slipped from
+the grasp of the Carolingians, largely because of their abuse of their
+too great power. They had concentrated the entire administration in
+their own hands. Like Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald
+were omnipotent. There were no provincial assemblies, no municipal
+bodies, no merchant-gilds, no autonomous churches; the people had no
+means of making themselves heard; they had no place in an administration
+which was completely in the hands of a central hierarchy of officials of
+all ranks, from dukes to _scabini_, with counts, viscounts and
+_centenarii_ in between. However, these dukes and counts were not merely
+officials: they too had become lords of _fideles_, of their own
+_advocati_, _centenarii_ and _scabini_, whom they nominated, and of all
+the free men of the county, who since Charlemagne's time had been first
+allowed and then commanded to "commend" themselves to a lord, receiving
+feudal benefices in return. Any deprivation or supersession of the count
+might impoverish, dispossess or ruin the vassals of the entire county;
+so that all, vassals or officials, small and great, feeling their
+danger, united their efforts, and lent each other mutual assistance
+against the permanent menace of an overweening monarchy. Hence, at the
+end of the 9th century, the heredity of offices as well as of fiefs. In
+the disordered state of society official stability was a valuable
+warrant of peace, and the administrative hierarchy, lay or spiritual,
+thus formed a mould for the hierarchy of feudalism. There was no
+struggle with the king, simply a cessation of obedience; for without
+strength or support in the kingdom he was powerless to resist. In vain
+Charles the Bald affirmed his royal authority in the capitularies of
+Quierzy-sur-Oise (857), Reims (860), Pistes (864), Gondreville (872) and
+Quierzy-sur-Oise (877); each time in exchange for assent to the royal
+will and renewal of oaths he had to acquiesce in new safeguards against
+himself and by so much to diminish that power of protection against
+violence and injustice for which the weak had always looked to the
+throne. Far from forbidding the relation of lord and vassal, Charles the
+Bald imposed it upon every man in his kingdom, himself proclaiming the
+real incapacity and failure of that theoretic royal power to which he
+laid claim. Henceforward royalty had no servants, since it performed no
+service. There was no longer the least hesitation over the choice
+between liberty with danger and subjection with safety; men sought and
+found in vassalage the right to live, and willingly bartered away their
+liberty for it.
+
+
+  Louis the Stammerer (877-879).
+
+  Louis III. and Carloman (879-884).
+
+  Charles the Fat. (884-888.)
+
+The degeneration of the monarchy was clearly apparent on the death of
+Charles the Bald, when his son, Louis the Stammerer, was only assured of
+the throne, which had passed by right of birth under the Merovingians
+and been hereditary under the earlier Carolingians, through his election
+by nobles and bishops under the direction of Hugh the Abbot, successor
+of Robert the Strong, each voter having been won over by gift of abbeys,
+counties or manors. When Louis died two years later (879), the same
+nobles met, some at Creil, the rest at Meaux, and the first party chose
+Louis of Germany, who preferred Lorraine to the crown; while the rest
+anointed Louis III. and Carloman, sons of the late king, themselves
+deciding how the kingdom was to be divided between the two princes. Thus
+the king no longer chose his own vassals; but vassals and fief-holders
+actually elected their king according to the material advantages they
+expected from him. Louis III. and Carloman justified their election by
+their brilliant victories over the Normans at Saucourt (881) and near
+Epernay (883); but at their deaths (882-884), the nobles, instead of
+taking Louis's boy-son, Charles the Simple, as king, chose Charles the
+Fat, king of Germany, because he was emperor and seemed powerful. He
+united once more the dominions of Charlemagne; but he disgraced the
+imperial throne by his feebleness, and was incapable of using his
+immense army to defend Paris when it was besieged by the Normans.
+Expelled from Italy, he only came to France to buy a shameful peace.
+When he died in January 888 he had not a single faithful vassal, and the
+feudal lords resolved never again to place the sceptre in a hand that
+could not wield the sword.
+
+
+  Death-struggle of the Carolingians (888-987).
+
+The death-struggle of the Carolingians lasted for a century of
+uncertainty and anarchy, during which time the bishops, counts and lords
+might well have suppressed the monarchy had they been hostile to it.
+Such, however, was not their policy; on the contrary, they needed a king
+to act as agent for their private interests, since he alone could invest
+their rank and dignities with an official and legitimate character. They
+did not at once agree on Charles's successor; for some of them chose
+Eudes (Odo), son of Robert the Strong, for his brilliant defence of
+Paris against the Normans in 885; others Guy, duke of Spoleto in Italy,
+who had himself crowned at Langres; while many wished for Arnulf,
+illegitimate son of Carloman, king of Germany and emperor. Eudes was
+victor in the struggle, and was crowned and anointed at Compiègne on the
+29th of February 888; but five years later, meeting with defeat after
+defeat at the hands of the Normans, his followers deserted from him to
+Charles the Simple, grandson of Charles the Bald, who was also supported
+by Fulk, archbishop of Reims.
+
+
+  King Odo (888-893).
+
+  Charles the Simple (893-929).
+
+  Rudolph of Burgundy (923-936).
+
+This first Carolingian restoration took place on the 28th of January
+893, and thenceforward throughout this warlike period from 888 to 936
+the crown passed from one dynasty to the other according to the
+interests of the nobles. After desperate strife, an agreement between
+the two rivals, Arnulf's support, and the death of Odo, secured it for
+Charles III., surnamed the Simple. His subjects remained faithful to him
+for a good while, as he put an end to the Norman invasions which had
+desolated the kingdom for two centuries, and cowed those barbarians,
+much to the benefit of France. By the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte (911)
+their leader Rolf (Rollo) obtained one of Charles's daughters in
+marriage and the district of the Lower Seine which the Normans had long
+occupied, on condition that he and his men ceased their attacks and
+accepted Christianity. Having thus tranquillized the west, Charles took
+advantage of Louis the Child's death, and conquered Lorraine, in spite
+of opposition from Conrad, king of Germany (921). But his preference for
+his new conquest, and for a Lorrainer of low birth named Hagano, aroused
+the jealousy and discontent of his nobles. They first elected Robert,
+count of Paris (923), and then after his death in a successful battle
+near Soissons against Charles the Simple, Rudolph of Burgundy, his
+son-in-law. But Herbert of Vermandois, one of the successful combatants
+at Soissons, coveted the countship of Laon, which Rudolph refused him;
+and he thereupon proclaimed Charles the Simple, who had confided his
+cause to him, as king once more. Seeing his danger Rudolph ceded the
+countship to Herbert, and Charles was relegated to his prison until his
+death in 929. After unsuccessful wars against the nobles of the South,
+against the Normans, who asserted that they were bound to no one except
+Charles the Simple, and against the Hungarians (who, now the Normans
+were pacified, were acting their part in the East), Rudolph had a return
+of good fortune in the years between 930 and 936, despite the intrigues
+of Herbert of Vermandois. Upon his death the nobles assembled to elect a
+king; and Hugh the Great, Rudolph's brother-in-law, moved by
+irresolution as much as by prudence, instead of taking the crown,
+preferred to restore the Carolingians once more in the person of Charles
+the Simple's son, Louis d'Outremer, himself claiming numerous privileges
+and enjoying the exercise of power unencumbered by a title which carried
+with it the jealousy of the nobles.
+
+
+  Louis IV. the Foreigner (936-954.)
+
+This restoration was no more peaceful than its predecessor. The
+Carolingians had as it were a fresh access of energy, and the struggle
+against the Robertinians went on relentlessly. Both sides employed
+similar methods: one was supported by Normandy, the other by Germany;
+the archbishop of Reims was for the Carolingians, the Robertinians had
+to be content with the less influential bishop of Sens. Louis soon
+proved to Hugh the Great, who was trying to play the part of a mayor of
+the palace, that he was by no means a _roi fainéant_; and the powerful
+duke of the Franks, growing uneasy, allied himself with Herbert of
+Vermandois, William of Normandy and his brother-in-law Otto I. king of
+Germany, who resented the loss of Lorraine. Louis defended himself with
+energy, aided chiefly by the nobles of the South, by his relative
+Edmund, king of the English, and then by Otto himself, whose
+brother-in-law he also had become. A peace advantageous to him was made
+in 942, and on the deaths of his two opponents, Herbert of Vermandois
+and William of Normandy, all seemed to be going well for him; but his
+guardianship of Richard, son of the duke of Normandy, aroused fresh
+strife, and on the 13th of July 945 he fell into an ambush and suffered
+a captivity similar to his father's of twenty-two years before. No one
+had befriended Charles the Simple, but Louis had his wife Gerberga, who
+won over to his cause the kings of England and Germany and even Hugh.
+Hugh set him free, insisting, as payment for his aid, on the cession of
+Laon, the capital of the kingdom and the last fortified town remaining
+to the Carolingians (946). Louis was hardly free before he took
+vengeance, harried the lands of his rival, restored to the
+archiepiscopal throne of Reims Artald, his faithful adviser, in place of
+the son of Herbert of Vermandois, and managed to get Hugh excommunicated
+by the council of Ingelheim (948) and by the pope. A two years' struggle
+wearied the rivals, and they made peace in 950. Louis once more held
+Laon, and in the following year further strengthened his position by a
+successful expedition into Burgundy. Still his last years were not
+peaceful; for besides civil wars there were two Hungarian invasions of
+France (951 and 954).
+
+
+  Lothair (954-986).
+
+Louis's sudden death in 954 once more placed the Carolingian line in
+peril, since he had not had time to have his son Lothair crowned. For a
+third time Hugh had the disposal of the crown, and he was no more
+tempted to take it himself in 954 than in 923 or 936: it was too
+profitless a possession. Thanks to Hugh's support and to the good
+offices of Otto and his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne and duke of
+Lorraine, Lothair was chosen king and crowned at Reims. Hugh exacted, as
+payment for his disinterestedness and fidelity, a renewal of his
+sovereignty over Burgundy with that of Aquitaine as well; he was in fact
+the viceroy of the kingdom, and others imitated him by demanding
+indemnities, privileges and confirmation of rights, as was customary at
+the beginning of a reign. Hugh strengthened his position in Burgundy,
+Lorraine and Normandy by means of marriages; but just as his power was
+at its height he died (956). His death and the minority of his sons,
+Hugh Capet and Eudes, gave the Carolingian dynasty thirty years more of
+life.
+
+For nine years (956-965) Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, was regent of
+France, and thanks to him there was a kind of _entente cordiale_ between
+the Carolingians and the Robertinians and Otto. Bruno made Lothair
+recognize Hugh as duke of France and Eudes as duke of Burgundy; but the
+sons preserved the father's enmity towards king Louis, despite the
+archbishop's repeated efforts. His death deprived Lothair of a wise and
+devoted guardian, even if it did set him free from German influence; and
+the death of Odalric, archbishop of Reims, in 969, was another fatal
+loss for the Carolingians, succeeded as he was by Adalbero, who, though
+learned, pious and highly intelligent, was none the less ambitious. On
+the death of Otto I. (973) Lothair wished to regain Lorraine; but his
+success was small, owing to his limited resources and the uncertain
+support of his vassals. In 980, regretting his fruitless quarrel with
+Otto II., who had ravaged the whole country as far as Paris, and fearing
+that even with the support of the house of Vermandois he would be
+crushed like his father Louis IV. between the duke of France and the
+emperor, who could count on the archbishop of Reims, Lothair made peace
+with Otto--a great mistake, which cost him the prestige he had gained
+among his nobles by his fairly successful struggle with the emperor,
+drawing down upon him, moreover, the swift wrath of Hugh, who thought
+himself tricked. Otto, meanwhile, whom he was unwise enough to trust,
+made peace secretly with Hugh, as it was his interest to play off his
+two old enemies one against the other. However, Otto died first (983),
+leaving a three-year-old son, Otto III., and Lothair, hoping for
+Lorraine, upheld the claims of Henry of Bavaria, who wished to oust
+Otto. This was a war-signal for Archbishop Adalbero and his adviser
+Gerbert, devoted to the idea of the Roman empire, and determined that it
+should still be vested in the race of Otto, which had always been
+beneficent to the Church.
+
+
+  Louis V. (986-987).
+
+They decided to set the Robertinians against the Carolingians, and on
+their advice Hugh Capet dispersed the assembly of Compiègne which
+Lothair had commissioned to examine Adalbero's behaviour. On Lothair's
+death in 986, Hugh surrounded his son and successor, Louis V., with
+intrigues. Louis was a weak-minded and violent young man with neither
+authority nor prestige, and Hugh tried to have him placed under
+tutelage. After Louis V.'s sudden death, aged twenty, in 987, Adalbero
+and Gerbert, with the support of the reformed Cluniac clergy, at the
+Assembly of Senlis eliminated from the succession the rightful heir,
+Charles of Lorraine, who, without influence or wealth, had become a
+stranger in his own country, and elected Hugh Capet, who, though rich
+and powerful, was superior neither in intellect nor character. Thus the
+triple alliance of Adalbero's bold and adroit imperialism with the
+cautious and vacillating ambition of the duke of the Franks, and the
+impolitic hostility towards Germany of the ruined Carolingians, resulted
+in the unlooked-for advent of the new Capetian dynasty.
+
+
+  Dismemberment of the kingdom.
+
+This event completed the evolution of the forces that had produced
+feudalism, the basis of the medieval social system. The idea of public
+authority had been replaced by one that was simpler and therefore better
+fitted for a half-civilized society--that of dependence of the weak on
+the strong, voluntarily entered on by means of mutual contract.
+Feudalism had gained ground in the 8th century; feudalism it was which
+had raised the first Carolingian to the throne as being the richest and
+most powerful person in Austrasia; and Charlemagne with all his power
+had been as utterly unable as the Merovingians to revive the idea of an
+abstract and impersonal state. Charlemagne's vassals, however, had
+needed him; while from Charles the Bald onward it was the king who
+needed the vassals--a change more marked with each successive prince.
+The feudal system had in fact turned against the throne, the vassals
+using it to secure a permanent hold upon offices and fiefs, and to get
+possession of estates and of power. After Charles the Bald's death
+royalty had only, so to speak, a shell--administrative officialdom. No
+longer firmly rooted in the soil, the monarchy was helpless before local
+powers which confronted it, seized upon the land, and cut off connexion
+between throne and people. The king, the supreme lord, was the only lord
+without lands, a nomad in his own realms, merely lingering there until
+starved out. Feudalism claimed its new rights in the capitulary of
+Quierzy-sur-Oise in 857; the rights of the monarchy began to dwindle in
+877.
+
+But vassalage could only be a cause of disintegration, not of unity, and
+that this disintegration did not at once spread indefinitely was due to
+the dozen or so great military commands--Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine,
+&c.--which Charles the Bald had been obliged to establish on a strong
+territorial basis. One of these great vassals, the duke of France, was
+amply provided with estates and offices, in contrast to the landless
+Carolingian, and his power, like that of the future kings of Prussia and
+Austria, was based on military authority, for he had a frontier--that of
+Anjou. Then the inevitable crisis had come. For a hundred years the
+great feudal lords had disposed of the crown as they pleased, handing it
+back and forward from one dynasty to another. At the same time the
+contrast between the vast proportions of the Carolingian empire and its
+feeble administrative control over a still uncivilized community became
+more and more accentuated. The Empire crumbled away by degrees. Each
+country began to lead its own separate existence, stammering its own
+tongue; the different nations no longer understood one another, and no
+longer had any general ideas in common. The kingdoms of France and
+Germany, still too large, owed their existence to a series of
+dispossessions imposed on sovereigns too feeble to hold their own, and
+consisted of a great number of small states united by a very slight
+bond. At the end of the 10th century the duchy of France was the only
+central part of the kingdom which was still free and without
+organization. The end was bound to come, and the final struggle was
+between Laon, the royal capital, and Reims, the ecclesiastical capital,
+the former carrying with it the soil of France, and the latter the
+crown. The Capets captured the first in 985 and the other in 987.
+Thenceforth all was over for the Carolingians, who were left with no
+heritage save their great name.
+
+
+  The House of Capet.
+
+Was the day won for the House of Capet? In the 11th century the kings of
+that line possessed meagre domains scattered about in the Île de France
+among the seigniorial possessions of Brie, Beauce, Beauvaisis and
+Valois. They were hemmed in by the powerful duchy of Normandy, the
+counties of Blois, Flanders and Champagne, and the duchy of Burgundy.
+Beyond these again stretched provinces practically impenetrable to royal
+influence: Brittany, Gascony, Toulouse, Septimania and the Spanish
+March. The monarchy lay stifling in the midst of a luxuriant feudal
+forest which surrounded its only two towns of any importance: Paris, the
+city of the future, and Orleans, the city of learning. Its power,
+exercised with an energy tempered by prudence, ran to waste like its
+wealth in a suzerainty over turbulent vassals devoid of common
+government or administration, and was undermined by the same lack of
+social discipline among its vassals which had sapped the power of the
+Carolingians. The new dynasty was thus the poorest and weakest of the
+great civil and ecclesiastical lordships which occupied the country from
+the estuary of the Scheldt to that of the Llobregat, and bounded
+approximately by the Meuse, the Saône and the ridge of the Cévennes; yet
+it cherished a great ambition which it revealed at times during its
+first century (987-1108)--a determination not to repeat the Carolingian
+failure. It had to wait two centuries after the revolution of 987 before
+it was strong enough to take up the dormant tradition of an authority
+like that of Rome; and until then it cunningly avoided unequal strife in
+which, victory being impossible, reverses might have weakened those
+titles, higher than any due to feudal rights, conferred by the heritage
+of the Caesars and the coronation at Reims, and held in reserve for the
+future.
+
+
+  Hugh Capet (987-996).
+
+The new dynasty thus at first gave the impression rather of decrepitude
+than of youth, seeming more a continuation of the Carolingian monarchy
+than a new departure. Hugh Capet's reign was one of disturbance and
+danger; behind his dim personality may be perceived the struggle of
+greater forces--royalty and feudalism, the French clergy and the papacy,
+the kingdom of France and the Empire. Hugh Capet needed more than three
+years and the betrayal of his enemy into his hands before he could parry
+the attack of a quite second-rate adversary, Charles of Lorraine (990),
+the last descendant of Charlemagne. The insubordination of several great
+vassals--the count of Vermandois, the duke of Burgundy, the count of
+Flanders--who treated him as he had treated the Carolingian king; the
+treachery of Arnulf, archbishop of Reims, who let himself be won over by
+the empress Theophano; the papal hostility inflamed by the emperor
+against the claim of feudal France to independence,--all made it seem
+for a time as though the unity of the Roman empire of the West would be
+secured at Hugh's expense and in Otto's favour; but as a matter of fact
+this papal and imperial hostility ended by making the Capet dynasty a
+national one. When Hugh died in 996, he had succeeded in maintaining his
+liberty mainly, it is true, by diplomacy, not force, despite opposing
+powers and his own weakness. Above all, he had secured the future by
+associating his son Robert with him on the throne; and although the
+nobles and the archbishop of Reims were disturbed by this suspension of
+the feudal right of election, and tried to oppose it, they were
+unsuccessful.
+
+
+  Robert the Pious (996-1031).
+
+Robert the Pious, a crowned monk, resembled his father in eschewing
+great schemes, whether from timidity or prudence; yet from 996 to 1031
+he preserved intact the authority he had inherited from Hugh, despite
+many domestic disturbances. He maintained a defiant attitude towards
+Germany; increased his heritage; strengthened his royal title by the
+addition of that of duke of Burgundy after fourteen years of pillage;
+and augmented the royal domain by adding several countships on the
+south-east and north-west. Limited in capacity, he yet understood the
+art of acquisition.
+
+
+  Henry I. (1031-1060).
+
+Henry I., his son, had to struggle with a powerful vassal, Eudes, count
+of Chartres and Troyes, and was obliged for a time to abandon his
+father's anti-German policy. Eudes, who was rash and adventurous, in
+alliance with the queen-mother, supported the second son, Robert, and
+captured the royal town of Sens. In order to retake it Henry ceded the
+beautiful valley of the Saône and the Rhône to the German emperor
+Conrad, and henceforth the kingdom of Burgundy was, like Lorraine, to
+follow the fortunes of Germany. Henry had besides to invest his brother
+with the duchy of Burgundy--a grave error which hampered French politics
+during three centuries. Like his father, he subsequently managed to
+retrieve some of the crown lands from William the Bastard, the
+too-powerful duke of Normandy; and he made a praiseworthy though
+fruitless attempt to regain possession of Lorraine for the French crown.
+Finally, by the coronation of his son Philip (1059) he confirmed the
+hereditary right of the Capets, soon to be superior to the elective
+rights of the bishops and great barons of the kingdom. The chief merit
+of these early Capets, indeed, was that they had sons, so that their
+dynasty lasted on without disastrous minorities or quarrels over the
+division of inheritance.
+
+
+  Philip I. (1060-1108).
+
+Philip I. achieved nothing during his long reign of forty-eight years
+except the necessary son, Louis the Fat. Unsuccessful even in small
+undertakings he was utterly incapable of great ones; and the two
+important events of his reign took place, the one against his will, the
+other without his help. The first, which lessened Norman aggression in
+his kingdom, was William the Bastard's conquest of England (1066); the
+second was the First Crusade preached by the French pope Urban II.
+(1095). A few half-hearted campaigns against recalcitrant vassals and a
+long and obstinate quarrel with the papacy over his adulterous union
+with Bertrade de Montfort, countess of Anjou, represented the total
+activity of Philip's reign; he was greedy and venal, by no means
+disdaining the petty profits of brigandage, and he never left his own
+domains.
+
+
+  Louis VI. the Fat (1108-1137).
+
+After a century's lethargy the house of Capet awoke once more with Louis
+VI. and began the destruction of the feudal polity. For thirty-four
+years of increasing warfare this active and energetic king, this brave
+and persevering soldier, never spared himself, energetically policing
+the royal demesne against such pillagers as Hugh of Le Puiset or Thomas
+of Marle. There was, however, but little difference yet between a count
+of Flanders or of Chartres and Louis VI., the possessor of a but small
+and perpetually disturbed realm, who was praised by his minister, the
+monk Suger, for making his power felt as far as distant Berril. This was
+clearly shown when he attempted to force the great feudal lords to
+recognize his authority. His bold endeavour to establish William Clito
+in Flanders ended in failure; and his want of strength was particularly
+humiliating in his unfortunate struggle with Henry I., king of the
+English and duke of Normandy, who was powerful and well served, the real
+master of a comparatively weak baronage. Louis only escaped being
+crushed because he remembered, as did his successors for long after him,
+that his house owed its power to the Church.
+
+The Church has never loved weakness; she has always had a secret
+sympathy for power, whatever its source, when she could hope to capture
+it and make it serve her ends. Louis VI. defended her against feudal
+robbers; and she supported him in his struggles against the nobles,
+making him, moreover, by his son's marriage with the heiress of
+Aquitaine, the greatest and richest landholder of the kingdom. But Louis
+was not the obedient tool she wished for. With equal firmness and
+success he vindicated his rights, whether against the indirect attacks
+of the papacy on his independence, or the claims of the ecclesiastical
+courts which, in principle, he made subordinate to the jurisdiction of
+the crown; whether in episcopal elections, or in ecclesiastical reforms
+which might possibly imperil his power or his revenues. The prestige of
+this energetic king, protector of the Church, of the infant communes in
+the towns, and of the peasants as against the constant oppressions of
+feudalism, became still greater at the end of his reign, when an
+invasion of the German emperor Henry V. in alliance with Henry Beauclerk
+of Normandy (Henry I. of England), rallied his subjects round the
+oriflamme of St Denis, awakening throughout northern France the
+unanimous and novel sentiment of national danger.
+
+
+  Louis VII. the Young (1137-1180).
+
+  The second crusade.
+
+Unfortunately his successor, Louis VII., almost destroyed his work by a
+colossal blunder, although circumstances seemed much in his favour.
+Germany and England, the two powers especially to be dreaded, were busy
+with internal troubles and quarrels of succession. On the other hand,
+thanks to his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, Louis's own domains
+had been increased by the greater part of the country between the Loire
+and the Pyrenees; while his father's minister, the monk Suger, continued
+to assist him with his moderation and prudence. His first successes
+against Theobald of Champagne, who for thirty years had been the most
+dangerous of the great French barons and had refused a vassal's services
+to Louis VI., as well as the adroit diplomacy with which he wrested from
+Geoffrey the Fair, count of Anjou, a part of the Norman Vexin long
+claimed by the French kings, in exchange for permitting him to conquer
+Normandy, augured well for his boldness and activity, had he but
+confined them to serving his own interests. The second crusade,
+undertaken to expiate his burning of the church of Vitry, inaugurated a
+series of magnificent but fruitless exploits; while his wife was the
+cause of domestic quarrels still more disastrous. Piety and a thirst for
+glory impelled Louis to take the lead in this fresh expedition to the
+Holy Land, despite the opposition of Suger, and the hesitation of the
+pope, Bernard of Clairvaux and the barons. The alliance with the German
+king Conrad III. only enhanced the difficulties of an enterprise already
+made hazardous by the misunderstandings between Greeks and Latins. The
+Crusade ended in the double disaster of military defeat and martial
+dishonour (1147-1149); and Suger's death in 1151 deprived Louis of a
+counsellor who had exercised the regency skilfully and with success,
+just at the very moment when his divorce from Eleanor was to jeopardize
+the fortunes of the Capets.
+
+
+  Rivalry of the Capets and Angevins.
+
+For the proud and passionate Eleanor married, two months later (May
+1152), the young Henry, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy, who held,
+besides these great fiefs, the whole of the south-west of France, and in
+two years' time the crown of England as well. Henry and Louis at once
+engaged in the first Capet-Angevin duel, destined to last a hundred
+years (1152-1242). When France and England thus entered European
+history, their conditions were far from being equal. In England royal
+power was strong; the size of the Angevin empire was vast, and the
+succession assured. It was only abuse of their too-great powers that
+ruined the early Angevin kings. France in the 12th century was merely a
+federation of separate states, jealously independent, which the king had
+to negotiate with rather than rule; while his own possessions, shorn of
+the rich heritage of Aquitaine, were, so to speak, swamped by those of
+the English king. For some time it was feared that the French kingdom
+would be entirely absorbed in consequence of the marriage between
+Louis's daughter and Henry II.'s eldest son. The two rivals were typical
+of their states, Henry II. being markedly superior to Louis in political
+resource, military talent and energy. He failed, however, to realize his
+ambition of shutting in the Capet king and isolating him from the rest
+of Europe by crafty alliances, notably that with the emperor Frederick
+Barbarossa--while watching an opportunity to supplant him upon the
+French throne. It is extraordinary that Louis should have escaped final
+destruction, considering that Henry had subdued Scotland, retaken Anjou
+from his brother Geoffrey, won a hold over Brittany, and schemed
+successfully for Languedoc. But the Church once more came to the rescue
+of her devoted son. The retreat to France of Pope Alexander III., after
+he had been driven from Rome by the emperor Frederick in favour of the
+anti-pope Victor, revived Louis's moral prestige. Henry II.'s quarrel
+with Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, which ran its course in
+France (1164-1171) as a struggle for the independence and reform of the
+Church, both threatened by the Constitutions of Clarendon, and ended
+with the murder of Becket in 1172, gave Louis yet another advantage over
+his rival. Finally the birth of Philip Augustus (1165), after thirty
+years of childless wedlock, saved the kingdom from a war of succession
+just at the time when the powerful Angevin sway, based entirely upon
+force, was jeopardized by the rebellion of Henry II.'s sons against
+their father. Louis naturally joined the coalition of 1173, but showed
+no more vigour in this than in his other wars; and his fate would have
+been sealed had not the pope checked Henry by the threat of an
+interdict, and reconciled the combatants (1177). Louis had still time
+left to effect the coronation of his son Philip Augustus (1179), and to
+associate him with himself in the exercise of the royal power for which
+he had grown too old and infirm.
+
+
+  Philip Augustus (1180-1223).
+
+Philip Augustus, who was to be the bitterest enemy of Henry II. and the
+Angevins, was barely twenty before he revealed the full measure of his
+cold energy and unscrupulous ambition. In five years (1180-1186) he rid
+himself of the overshadowing power of Philip of Alsace, count of
+Flanders, and his own uncles, the counts of Champagne; while the treaty
+of May 20th, 1186, was his first rough lesson to the feudal leagues,
+which he had reduced to powerlessness, and to the subjugated duke of
+Burgundy and count of Flanders. Northern and eastern France recognized
+the suzerainty of the Capet, and Philip Augustus was now bold enough to
+attack Henry II., the master of the west, whose friendly neutrality
+(assured by the treaty of Gisors) had made possible the successive
+defeats of the great French barons. Like his father, Philip understood
+how to make capital out of the quarrels of the aged and ailing Henry II.
+with his sons, especially with Richard, who claimed his French heritage
+in his father's lifetime, and raised up enemies for the disunited
+Angevins even in Germany. After two years of constant defeat, Henry's
+capitulation at Azai proved once more that fortune is never with the
+old. The English king had to submit himself to "the advice and desire of
+the king of France," doing him homage for all continental fiefs
+(1187-1189).
+
+
+  Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur de Lion.
+
+The defection of his favourite son John gave Henry his deathblow, and
+Philip Augustus found himself confronted by a new king of England,
+Richard Coeur de Lion, as powerful, besides being younger and more
+energetic. Philip's ambition could not rest satisfied with the petty
+principalities of Amiens, Vermandois and Valois, which he had added to
+the royal demesne. The third crusade, undertaken, sorely against
+Philip's will, in alliance with Richard, only increased the latent
+hostility between the two kings; and in 1191 Philip abandoned the
+enterprise in order to return to France and try to plunder his absent
+rival. Despite his solemn oath no scruples troubled him: witness the
+large sums of money he offered to the emperor Henry VI. if he would
+detain Richard, who had been made prisoner by the duke of Austria on his
+return from the crusade; and his negotiations with his brother John
+Lackland, whom he acknowledged king of England in exchange for the
+cession of Normandy. But Henry VI. suddenly liberated Richard, and in
+five years that "devil set free" took from Philip all the profit of his
+trickery, and shut him off from Normandy by the strong fortress of
+Château-Gaillard (1194-1199).
+
+
+  Philip Augustus and John Lackland.
+
+Happily an accident which caused Richard's death at the siege of Chalus,
+and the evil imbecility of his brother and successor, John Lackland,
+brilliantly restored the fortunes of the Capets. The quarrel between
+John and his nephew Arthur of Brittany gave Philip Augustus one of those
+opportunities of profiting by family discord which, coinciding with
+discontent among the various peoples subject to the house of Anjou, had
+stood him in such good stead against Henry II. and Richard. He demanded
+renunciation on John's part, not of Anjou only, but of Poitou and
+Normandy--of all his French-speaking possessions, in fact--in favour of
+Arthur, who was supported by William des Roches, the most powerful lord
+of the region of the Loire. Philip's divorce from Ingeborg of Denmark,
+who appealed successfully to Pope Innocent III., merely delayed the
+inevitable conflict. John of England, moreover, was a past-master in the
+art of making enemies of his friends, and his conduct towards his
+vassals of Aquitaine furnished a judicial pretext for conquest. The
+royal judges at Paris condemned John, as a felon, to death and the
+forfeiture of his fiefs (1203), and the murder of Arthur completed his
+ruin. Philip Augustus made a vigorous onslaught on Normandy in right of
+justice and of superior force, took the formidable fortress of
+Château-Gaillard on the Seine after several months' siege, and invested
+Rouen, which John abandoned, fleeing to England. In Anjou, Touraine,
+Maine and Poitou, lords, towns and abbeys made their submission, won
+over by Philip's bribes despite Pope Innocent III.'s attempts at
+intervention. In 1208 John was obliged to own the Plantagenet
+continental power as lost. There were no longer two rival monarchies in
+France; the feudal equilibrium was destroyed, to the advantage of the
+duchy of France.
+
+But Philip in his turn nearly allowed himself to be led into an attempt
+at annexing England, and so reversing for his own benefit the work of
+the Angevins (1213); but, happily for the future of the dynasty, Pope
+Innocent III. prevented this. Thanks to the ecclesiastical sanction of
+his royalty, Philip had successfully braved the pope for twenty years,
+in the matter of Ingeborg and again in that of the German schism, when
+he had supported Philip of Swabia against Otto of Brunswick, the pope's
+candidate. In 1213, John Lackland, having been in conflict with Innocent
+regarding the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, had made submission and
+done homage for his kingdom, and Philip wished to take vengeance for
+this at the expense of the rebellious vassals of the north-west, and of
+Renaud and Ferrand, counts of Boulogne and Flanders, thus combating
+English influence in those quarters.
+
+
+  Coalition against Philip Augustus. (1214).
+
+This was a return to the old Capet policy; but it was also menacing to
+many interests, and sure to arouse energetic resistance. John seized the
+opportunity to consolidate against Philip a European coalition, which
+included most of the feudal lords in Flanders, Belgium and Lorraine, and
+the emperor Otto IV. So dangerous did the French monarchy already seem!
+John began operations with an attack from Anjou, supported by the
+notably capricious nobles of Aquitaine, and was routed by Philip's son
+at La Roche aux Moines, near Angers, on the 2nd of July 1214.
+Twenty-five days later the northern allies, intending to surprise the
+smaller French army on its passage over the bridge at Bouvines,
+themselves sustained a complete defeat. This first national victory had
+not only a profound effect on the whole kingdom, but produced
+consequences of far-reaching importance: in Germany it brought about
+Otto's fall before Frederick II.; in England it introduced the great
+drama of 1215, the first act of which closed with Magna Carta--John
+Lackland being forced to acknowledge the control of his barons, and to
+share with them the power he had abused and disgraced. In France, on the
+contrary, the throne was exalted beyond rivalry, raised far above a
+feudalism which never again ventured on acts of independence or
+rebellion. Bouvines gave France the supremacy of the West. The feudalism
+of Languedoc was all that now remained to conquer.
+
+The whole world, in fact, was unconsciously working for Philip Augustus.
+Anxious not to risk his gains, but to consolidate them by organization,
+Philip henceforth until his death in 1223 operated through diplomacy
+alone, leaving to others the toil and trouble of conquests, the
+advantages of which were not for them. When his son Louis wished to
+wrest the English crown from John, now crushed by his barons, Philip
+intervened without seeming to do so, first with the barons, then with
+Innocent III., supporting and disowning his son by turns; until the
+latter, held in check by Rome, was forced to sign the treaty of Lambeth
+(1217). When the Church and the needy and fanatical nobles of northern
+and central France destroyed the feudal dynasty of Toulouse and the rich
+civilization of the south in the Albigensian crusade, it was for Philip
+Augustus that their leader, Simon de Montfort, all unknowing, conquered
+Languedoc. At last, instead of the two Frances of the _langue d'oc_ and
+the _langue d'oïl_, there was but one royal France comprising the whole
+kingdom.
+
+
+  Administration of Philip Augustus.
+
+Philip Augustus was not satisfied with the destruction of a turbulent
+feudalism; he wished to substitute for it such unity and peace as had
+obtained in the Roman Empire; and just as he had established his
+supremacy over the feudal lords, so now he managed to extend it over the
+clergy, and to bend them to his will. He took advantage of their
+weakness in the midst of an age of violence. By contracts of "pariage"
+the clergy claimed and obtained the king's protection even in places
+beyond the king's jurisdiction, to their common advantage. Philip thus
+set the feudal lords one against the other; and against them all, first
+the Church, then the communes. He exploited also the townspeople's need
+for security and the instinct of independence which made them claim a
+definite place in the feudal hierarchy. He was the actual creator of the
+communes, although an interested creator, since they made a breach in
+the fortress of feudalism and extended the royal authority far beyond
+the king's demesne. He did even more: he gave monarchy the instruments
+of which it still stood in need, gathering round him in Paris a council
+of men humble in origin, but wise and loyal; while in 1190 he instituted
+_baillis_ and seneschals throughout his enlarged dominions, all-powerful
+over the nobles and subservient to himself. He filled his treasury with
+spoils harshly wrung from all classes; thus inaugurating the monarchy's
+long and patient labours at enlarging the crown lands bit by bit through
+taxes on private property. Finally he created an army, no longer the
+temporary feudal _ost_, but a more or less permanent royal force. By
+virtue of all these organs of government the throne guaranteed peace,
+justice and a secure future, having routed feudalism with sword and
+diplomacy. Philip's son was the first of the Capets who was not crowned
+during his father's lifetime; a fact clearly showing that the principle
+of heredity had now been established beyond discussion.
+
+
+  Louis VIII. (1223-1226).
+
+Louis VIII.'s short reign was but a prolongation of Philip's in its
+realization of his two great designs: the recovery from Henry III. of
+England of Poitou as far as the Garonne; and the crusade against the
+Albigenses, which with small pains procured him the succession of Amaury
+de Montfort, and the Languedoc of the counts of Toulouse, if not the
+whole of Gascony. Louis VIII. died on his return from this short
+campaign without having proved his full worth.
+
+
+  Universal French activity.
+
+But the history of France during the 11th and 12th centuries does not
+entirely consist of these painful struggles of the Capet dynasty to
+shake off the fetters of feudalism. France, no longer split up into
+separate fragments, now began to exercise both intellectual and military
+influence over Europe. Everywhere her sons gave proof of rejuvenated
+activity. The Christian missions which others were reviving in Prussia
+and beginning in Hungary were undertaken on a vaster scale by the
+Capets. These "elder sons of the Church" made themselves responsible for
+carrying out the "work of God," and French pilgrims in the Holy Land
+prepared the great movement of the Crusades against the infidels.
+Religious faith, love of adventure, the hope of making advantageous
+conquests, anticipations of a promised paradise--all combined to force
+this advance upon the Orient, which though failing to rescue the
+sepulchre of Christ, the ephemeral kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, the
+dukedom of Athens, or the Latin empire of Constantinople, yet gained for
+France that prestige for military glory and religious piety which for
+centuries constituted her strength in the Levant (see CRUSADES). At the
+call of the pope other members of the French chivalry also made
+victorious expeditions against the Mussulmans, and founded the Christian
+kingdom of Portugal. Obeying that enterprising spirit which was to take
+them to England half a century later, Normans descended upon southern
+Italy and wrested rich lands from Greeks and Saracens.
+
+
+  Intellectual development.
+
+In the domain of intellect the advance of the French showed a no less
+dazzling and a no less universal activity; they sang as well as they
+fought, and their epics were worthy of their swordsmanship, while their
+cathedrals were hymns in stone as ardent as their soaring flights of
+devotion. In this period of intense religious life France was always in
+the vanguard. It was the ideas of Cluniac monks that freed the Church
+from feudal supremacy, and in the 11th century produced a Pope Gregory
+VII.; the spirit of free investigation shown by the heretics of Orleans
+inspired the rude Breton, Abelard, in the 12th century; and with Gerbert
+and Fulbert of Chartres the schools first kindled that brilliant light
+which the university of Paris, organized by Philip Augustus, was to shed
+over the world from the heights of Sainte-Geneviève. In the quarrels of
+the priesthood under the Empire it was St Bernard, the great abbot of
+Clairvaux, who tried to arrest the papacy on the slippery downward path
+of theocracy; finally, it was in Suger's church of St Denis that French
+art began that struggle between light against darkness which,
+culminating in Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, was to teach the
+architects of the world the delight of building with airiness of effect.
+The old basilica which contains the history of the monarchy sums up the
+whole of Gothic art to this day, and it was Suger who in the domain of
+art and politics brought forward once more the conception of unity. The
+courteous ideal of French chivalry, with its "delectable" language, was
+adopted by all seigniorial Europe, which thus became animated, as it
+were, by the life-blood of France. Similarly, in the universal movement
+of those forces which made for freedom, France began the age-long
+struggle to maintain the rights of civil society and continually to
+enlarge the social categories. The townsman enriched by commerce and the
+emancipated peasant tried more or less valiantly to shake off the yoke
+of the feudal system, which had been greatly weakened, if not entirely
+broken down, by the crusades. Grouped around their belfry-towers and
+organized within their gilds, they made merry in their free jocular
+language over their own hardships, and still more over the vices of
+their lords. They insinuated themselves into the counsels of their
+ignorant masters, and though still sitting humbly at the feet of the
+barons, these upright and well-educated servitors were already dreaming
+of the great deeds they would do when their tyrants should have vacated
+their high position, and when royalty should have summoned them to
+power.
+
+
+  Louis IX. (1226-1270).
+
+  Blanche of Castile.
+
+By the beginning of the 13th century the Capet monarchy was so strong
+that the crisis occasioned by the sudden death of Louis VIII. was easily
+surmounted by the foreign woman and the child whom he left behind him.
+It is true that that woman was Blanche of Castile, and that child the
+future Louis IX. A virtuous and very devout Spanish princess, Blanche
+assumed the regency of the kingdom and the tutelage of her child, and
+carried them on for nine years with so much force of character and
+capacity for rule that she soon impressed the clamorous and disorderly
+leaders of the opposition (1226-1235). By the treaty of Meaux (1229),
+her diplomacy combined with the influence of the Church to prepare
+effectually for the annexation of Languedoc to the kingdom,
+supplementing this again by a portion of Champagne; and the marriage of
+her son to Margaret of Provence definitely broke the ties which held the
+country within the orbit of the German empire. She managed also to keep
+out of the great quarrel between Frederick II. and the papacy which was
+convulsing Germany. But her finest achievement was the education of her
+son; she taught him that lofty religious morality which in his case was
+not merely a rule for private conduct, but also a political programme to
+which he remained faithful even to the detriment of his apparent
+interests. With Louis IX. morality for the first time permeated and
+dominated politics; he had but one end: to do justice to every one and
+to reconcile all Christendom in view of a general crusade.
+
+
+  Louis IX.'s policy of arbitration.
+
+The oak of Vincennes, under which the king would sit to mete out
+justice, cast its shade over the whole political action of Louis IX. He
+was the arbiter of townspeople, of feudal lords and of kings. The
+interdiction of the judicial duel, the "quarantaine le roi," i.e. "the
+king's truce of forty days" during which no vengeance might be taken for
+private wrongs, and the assurement,[29] went far to diminish the abuses
+of warfare by allowing his mediation to make for a spirit of
+reconciliation throughout his kingdom. When Thibaud (Theobald), count of
+Champagne, attempted to marry the daughter of Pierre Mauclerc, duke of
+Brittany, without the king's consent, Louis IX., who held the county of
+Champagne at his mercy, contented himself with exacting guarantees of
+peace. Beyond the borders of France, at the time of the emperor
+Frederick II.'s conflict with a papacy threatened in its temporal
+powers, though he made no response to Frederick's appeal to the civil
+authorities urging them to present a solid front against the pretensions
+of the Church, and though he energetically supported the latter, yet he
+would not admit her right to place kingdoms under interdict, and refused
+the imperial crown which Gregory IX. offered him for one of his
+brothers. He always hoped to bring about an honourable agreement between
+the two adversaries, and in his estimation the advantages of peace
+outweighed personal interest. In matters concerning the succession in
+Flanders, Hainaut and Navarre; in the quarrels of the princes regarding
+the Empire, and in those of Henry III. of England with his barons; it
+was because of his justice and his disinterestedness that he was
+appealed to as a trusted mediator. His conduct towards Henry III. was
+certainly a most characteristic example of his behaviour.
+
+
+  Louis IX. and Henry III.
+
+The king of England had entered into the coalition formed by the
+nobility of Poitou and the count of Toulouse to prevent the execution of
+the treaty of 1229 and the enfeoffment of Poitou to the king's brother
+Alphonse. Louis IX. defeated Henry III. twice within two days, at
+Taillebourg and at Saintes, and obliged him to demand a truce (1242). It
+was forbidden that any lord should be a vassal both of the king of
+France and of the king of England. After this Louis IX. had set off upon
+his first crusade in Egypt (1248-54), and on his return he wanted to
+make this truce into a definite treaty and to "set love" between his
+children and those of the English king. By a treaty signed at Paris
+(1259), Henry III. renounced all the conquests of Philip Augustus, and
+Louis IX. those of his father Louis VIII.--an example unique in history
+of a victorious king spontaneously giving up his spoil solely for the
+sake of peace and justice, yet proving by his act that honesty is the
+best policy; for monarchy gained much by that moral authority which made
+Louis IX. the universal arbitrator.
+
+
+  The crusade of Tunis.
+
+But his love of peace and concord was not always "sans grands despens"
+to the kingdom. In 1258, by renouncing his rights over Roussillon and
+the countship of Barcelona, conquered by Charlemagne, he made an
+advantageous bargain because he kept Montpellier; but he committed a
+grave fault in consenting to accept the offers regarding Sicily made by
+Pope Urban IV. to his brother the count of Anjou and Provence. That was
+the origin of the expeditions into Italy on which the house of Valois
+was two centuries later to squander the resources of France
+unavailingly, compromising beyond the Alps its interests in the Low
+Countries and upon the Rhine. But Louis IX.'s worst error was his
+obsession with regard to the crusades, to which he sacrificed
+everything. Despite the signal failure of the first crusade, when he had
+been taken prisoner; despite the protests of his mother, of his
+counsellors, and of the pope himself, he flung himself into the mad
+adventure of Tunis. Nowhere was his blind faith more plainly shown,
+combined as it was with total ignorance of the formidable migrations
+that were convulsing Asia, and of the complicated game of politics just
+then proceeding between the Christian nations and the Moslems of the
+Mediterranean. At Tunis he found his death, on the 25th of August 1270.
+
+
+  Philip III., the Bold (1270-1285).
+
+The death of Louis IX. and that of his brother Alphonse of Poitiers,
+heir of the count of Toulouse, made Philip III., the Bold, legitimate
+master of northern France and undisputed sovereign of southern France.
+From the latter he detached the _comtat_ Venaissin in 1274 and gave it
+to the papacy, which held it until 1791. But he had not his father's
+great soul nor disinterested spirit. Urged by Pope Martin IV. he began
+the fatal era of great international wars by his unlucky crusade against
+the king of Aragon, who, thanks to the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers,
+substituted his own predominance in Sicily for that of Charles of Anjou.
+Philip returned from Spain only to die at Perpignan, ending his
+insignificant reign as he had begun it, amid the sorrows of a disastrous
+retreat (1270-1285). His reign was but a halting-place of history
+between those of Louis IX. and Philip the Fair, just when the transition
+was taking place from the last days of the middle ages to the modern
+epoch.
+
+
+  Philip IV. the Fair (1285-1314).
+
+The middle ages had been dominated by four great problems. The first of
+these had been to determine whether there should be a universal empire
+exercising tutelage over the nations; and if so, to whom this empire
+should belong, to pope or emperor. The second had been the extension to
+the East of that Catholic unity which reigned in the West. Again, for
+more than a century, the question had also been debated whether the
+English kings were to preserve and increase their power over the soil
+of France. And, finally, two principles had been confronting one another
+in the internal life of all the European states: the feudal and the
+monarchical principles. France had not escaped any of these conflicts;
+but Philip the Fair was the initiator or the instrument (it is difficult
+to say which) who was to put an end to both imperial and theocratic
+dreams, and to the international crusades; who was to remove the
+political axis from the centre of Europe, much to the benefit of the
+western monarchies, now definitely emancipated from the feudal yoke and
+firmly organized against both the Church and the barons. The hour had
+come for Dante, the great Florentine poet, to curse the man who was to
+dismember the empire, precipitate the fall of the papacy and discipline
+feudalism.
+
+
+  Litigious character of Philip the Fair's reign.
+
+Modern in his practical schemes and in his calculated purpose, Philip
+the Fair was still more so in his method, that of legal procedure, and
+in his agents, the lawyers. With him the French monarchy defined its
+ambitions, and little by little forsook its feudal and ecclesiastical
+character in order to clothe itself in juridical forms. His aggressive
+and litigious policy and his ruthless financial method were due to those
+lawyers of the south and of Normandy who had been nurtured on Roman law
+in the universities of Bologna or Montpellier, had practised chicanery
+in the provincial courts, had gradually thrust themselves into the great
+arena of politics, and were now leading the king and filling his
+parlement. It was no longer upon religion or morality, it was upon
+imperial and Roman rights that these _chevaliers ès lois_ based the
+prince's omnipotence; and nothing more clearly marks the new tradition
+which was being elaborated than the fact that all the great events of
+Philip the Fair's reign were lawsuits.
+
+
+  Philip the Fair and the Papacy.
+
+The first of these was with the papacy. The famous quarrel between the
+priesthood and the Empire, which had culminated at Canossa under Gregory
+VII., in the apotheosis of the Lateran council under Innocent III., and
+again in the fall of the house of Hohenstaufen under Innocent IV., was
+reopened with the king of France by Boniface VIII. The quarrel began in
+1294 about a question of money. In his bull _Clericis laicos_ the pope
+protested against the taxes levied upon the French clergy by the king,
+whose expenses were increasing with his conquests. But he had not
+insisted; because Philip, between feudal vassals ruined by the crusades
+and lower classes fleeced by everybody, had threatened to forbid the
+exportation from France of any ecclesiastical gold and silver. In 1301
+and 1302 the arrest of Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, by the
+officers of the king, and the citation of this cleric before the king's
+tribunal for the crime of _lèse-majesté_, revived the conflict and led
+Boniface to send an order to free Saisset, and to put forward a claim to
+reform the kingdom under the threat of excommunication. In view of the
+gravity of the occasion Philip made an unusually extended appeal to
+public opinion by convoking the states-general at Notre-Dame in Paris
+(1302). Whatever were their views as to the relations between
+ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction, the French clergy, ruined by
+the dues levied by the papal court, ranged themselves on the national
+side with the nobility and the _bourgeoisie_; whereupon the king, with a
+bold stroke far ahead of his time, gave tit for tat. His chancellor,
+Nogaret, went to Anagni to seize the pope and drag him before a council;
+but Boniface died without confessing himself vanquished. As a matter of
+fact the king and his lawyers triumphed, where the house of Swabia had
+failed. After the death of Boniface the splendid fabric of the medieval
+theocracy gave place to the rights of civil society, the humiliation of
+Avignon, the disruption of the great schism, the vain efforts of the
+councils for reform, and the radical and heretical solutions of Wycliffe
+and Huss.
+
+
+  Philip the Fair and the Templars.
+
+The affair of the Templars was another legal process carried out by the
+same Nogaret. Of course this military religious order had lost utility
+and justification when the Holy Land had been evacuated and the crusades
+were over. Their great mistake had lain in becoming rich, and rich to
+excess, through serving as bankers to princes, kings and popes; for
+great financial powers soon became unpopular. Philip took advantage of
+this hatred of the lower classes and the cowardice of his creature, Pope
+Clement V., to satisfy his desire for money. The trial of the order
+(1307-1313) was a remarkable example of the use of the religious
+tribunal of the Inquisition as a political instrument. There was a
+dramatic completeness about this unexpected result of the crusades. A
+general arbitrary arrest of the Templars, the sequestration of their
+property, examination under torture, the falsifying of procedure,
+extortion of money from the pope, the _auto-da-fé_ of innocent victims,
+the dishonest pillaging of their goods by the joint action of the king
+and the pope: such was the outcome of this vast process of
+secularization, which foreshadowed the events of the 16th and 18th
+centuries.
+
+
+  Philip the Fair and Edward I.
+
+External policy had the same litigious character. Philip the Fair
+instituted suits against his natural enemies, the king of England and
+the count of Flanders, foreign princes holding possessions within his
+kingdom; and against the emperor, whose ancient province of Lorraine and
+kingdom of Arles constantly changed hands between Germany and France.
+Philip began by interfering in the affairs of Sicily and Aragon, his
+father's inheritance; after which, on the pretext of a quarrel between
+French and English sailors, he set up his customary procedure: a
+citation of the king of England before the parlement of Paris, and in
+case of default a decree of forfeiture; the whole followed by
+execution--that is to say by the unimportant war of 1295. A truce
+arranged by Boniface VIII. restored Guienne to Edward I., gave him the
+hand of Philip's sister for himself and that of the king's daughter for
+his son (1298).
+
+
+  Philip the Fair and Flanders.
+
+A still more lengthy and unfortunate suit was the attempt of Philip the
+Fair and his successors to incorporate the Flemish fief like the English
+one (1300-1326), thus coming into conflict with proud and turbulent
+republics composed of wool and cloth merchants, weavers, fullers and
+powerful counts. Guy de Dampierre, count of Namur, who had become count
+of Flanders on the death of his mother Margaret II. in 1279--an
+ambitious, greedy and avaricious man--was arrested at the Louvre on
+account of his attempt to marry his daughter to Edward I.'s eldest son
+without the consent of his suzerain Philip. Released after two years, he
+sided definitely with the king of England when the latter was in arms
+against Philip; and being only weakly supported by Edward, he was
+betrayed by the nobles who favoured France, and forced to yield up not
+only his personal liberty but the whole of Flanders (1300). The
+Flemings, however, soon wearying of the oppressive administration of the
+French governor, Jacques de Châtillon, and the recrudescence of
+patrician domination, rose and overwhelmed the French chivalry at
+Courtrai (1302)--a prelude to the coming disasters of the Hundred Years'
+War. Philip's double revenge, on sea at Zierikzee and on land at
+Mons-en-Pévèle (1304), led to the signing of a treaty at Athis-sur-Orge
+(1305).
+
+
+  Eastern policy of Philip the Fair.
+
+The efforts of Philip the Fair to expand the limits of his kingdom on
+the eastern border were more fortunate. His marriage had gained him
+Champagne; and he afterwards extended his influence over Franche Comté,
+Bar and the bishoprics of Lorraine, acquiring also Viviers and the
+important town of Lyons--all this less by force of arms than by the
+expenditure of money. Disdaining the illusory dream of the imperial
+crown, still cherished by his legal advisers, he pushed forward towards
+that fluctuating eastern frontier, the line of least resistance, which
+would have yielded to him had it not been for the unfortunate
+interruption of the Hundred Years' War.
+
+
+  The sons of Philip the Fair (1314-1328).
+
+His three sons, Louis X., Philip V. the Tall, and Charles IV., continued
+his work. They increased the power of the monarchy politically by
+destroying the feudal reaction excited in 1314 by the tyrannical conduct
+of the jurists, like Enguerrand de Marigny, and by the increasing
+financial extortions of their father; and they also--notably Philip V.,
+one of the most hard-working of the Capets--increased it on the
+administrative side by specializing the services of justice and of
+finance, which were separated from the king's council. Under these mute
+self-effacing kings the progress of royal power was only the more
+striking. With them the senior male line of the house of Capet became
+extinct.
+
+
+  The royal house of Capet.
+
+During three centuries and a half they had effected great things: they
+had founded a kingdom, a royal family and civil institutions. The land
+subject to Hugh Capet in 987, barely representing two of the modern
+departments of France, in 1328 covered a space equal to fifty-nine of
+them. The political unity of the kingdom was only fettered by the
+existence of four large isolated fiefs: Flanders on the north, Brittany
+on the west, Burgundy on the east and Guienne on the south. The capital,
+which for long had been movable, was now established in the Louvre at
+Paris, fortified by Philip Augustus. Like the fiefs, feudal institutions
+at large had been shattered. The Roman tradition which made the will of
+the sovereign law, gradually propagated by the teaching of Roman
+law--the law of servitude, not of liberty--and already proclaimed by the
+jurist Philippe de Beaumanoir as superior to the customs, had been of
+immense support to the interest of the state and the views of the
+monarchs; and finally the Capets, so humble of origin, had created
+organs of general administration common to all in order to effect an
+administrative centralization. In their grand council and their domains
+they would have none but silent, servile and well-disciplined agents.
+The royal exchequer, which was being painfully elaborated in the
+_chambre des comptes_, and the treasury of the crown lands at the
+Louvre, together barely sufficed to meet the expenses of this more
+complicated and costly machinery. The uniform justice exercised by the
+parlement spread gradually over the whole kingdom by means of _cas
+royaux_ (royal suits), and at the same time the royal coinage became
+obligatory. Against this exaltation of their power two adversaries might
+have been formidable; but one, the Church, was a captive in Babylon, and
+the second, the people, was deprived of the communal liberties which it
+had abused, or humbly effaced itself in the states-general behind the
+declared will of the king. This well-established authority was also
+supported by the revered memory of "Monseigneur Saint Louis"; and it is
+this prestige, the strength of this ideal superior to all other, that
+explains how the royal prerogative came to survive the mistakes and
+misfortunes of the Hundred Years' War.
+
+
+  Advent of the Valois.
+
+On the extinction of the direct line of the Capets the crown passed to a
+younger branch, that of the Valois. Its seven representatives
+(1328-1498) were on the whole very inferior to the Capets, and, with the
+exception of Charles V. and Louis XI., possessed neither their political
+sense nor even their good common sense; they cost France the loss of her
+great advantage over all other countries. During this century and a half
+France passed through two very severe crises; under the first five
+Valois the Hundred Years' War imperilled the kingdom's independence; and
+under Louis XI. the struggle against the house of Burgundy endangered
+the territorial unity of the monarchy that had been established with
+such pains upon the ruins of feudalism.
+
+
+  Philip VI. (1328-1350).
+
+Charles the Fair having died and left only a daughter, the nation's
+rights, so long in abeyance, were once more regained. An assembly of
+peers and barons, relying on two precedents under Philip V. and Charles
+IV., declared that "no woman, nor therefore her son, could in accordance
+with custom succeed to the monarchy of France." This definite decision,
+to which the name of the Salic law was given much later, set aside
+Edward III., king of England, grandson of Philip the Fair, nephew of the
+late kings and son of their sister Isabel. Instead it gave the crown to
+the feudal chief, the hard and coarse Philip VI. of Valois, nephew of
+Philip the Fair. This at once provoked war between the two monarchies,
+English and French, which, including periods of truce, lasted for a
+hundred and sixteen years. Of active warfare there were two periods,
+both disastrous to begin with, but ending favourably: one lasted from
+1337 to 1378 and the other from 1413 to 1453, thirty-three years of
+distress and folly coming in between.
+
+
+  The Hundred Years' War.
+
+However, the Hundred Years' War was not mainly caused by the pretensions
+of Edward III. to the throne of the Capets; since after having long
+hesitated to do homage to Philip VI. for his possessions in Guienne,
+Edward at last brought himself to it--though certainly only after
+lengthy negotiations, and even threats of war in 1331. It is true that
+six years later he renounced his homage and again claimed the French
+inheritance; but this was on the ground of personal grievances, and for
+economic and political reasons. There was a natural rivalry between
+Edward III. and Philip VI., both of them young, fond of the life of
+chivalry, festal magnificence, and the "belles apertises d'armes." This
+rivalry was aggravated by the enmity between Philip VI. and Robert of
+Artois, his brother-in-law, who, after having warmly supported the
+disinheriting of Edward III., had been convicted of deceit in a question
+of succession, had revenged himself on Philip by burning his waxen
+effigy, and had been welcomed with open arms at Edward's court. Philip
+VI. had taken reprisals against him in 1336 by making his parlement
+declare the forfeiture of Edward's lands and castles in Guienne; but the
+Hundred Years' War, at first simply a feudal quarrel between vassal and
+suzerain, soon became a great national conflict, in consequence of what
+was occurring in Flanders.
+
+The communes of Flanders, rich, hard-working, jealous of their
+liberties, had always been restive under the authority of their counts
+and the influence of their suzerain, the king of France. The affair at
+Cassel, where Philip VI. had avenged the injuries done by the people of
+Bruges in 1325 to their count, Louis of Nevers, had also compromised
+English interests. To attack the English through their colonies, Guienne
+and Flanders, was to injure them in their most vital interests--cloth
+and claret; for England sold her wool to Bruges in order to pay Bordeaux
+for her wine. Edward III. had replied by forbidding the exportation of
+English wool, and by threatening the great industrial cities of Flanders
+with the transference to England of the cloth manufacture--an excellent
+means of stirring them up against the French, as without wool they could
+do nothing. Workless, and in desperation, they threw themselves on
+Edward's mercy, by the advice of a rich citizen of Ghent, Jacob van
+Artevelde (q.v.); and their last scruples of loyalty gave way when
+Edward decided to follow the counsels of Robert of Artois and of
+Artevelde, and to claim the crown of France.
+
+
+  The defeat at Sluys.
+
+  The defeat at Crécy and the taking of Calais.
+
+The war began, like every feudal war of that day, with a solemn
+defiance, and it was soon characterized by terrible disasters. The
+destruction of the finest French fleet that had yet been seen, surprised
+in the port of Sluys, closed the sea to the king of France; the struggle
+was continued on land, but with little result. Flanders tired of it, but
+fortunately for Edward III. Brittany now took fire, through a quarrel of
+succession, analogous to that in France, between Charles of Blois (who
+had married the daughter of the late duke and was a nephew of Philip
+VI., by whom he was supported) and John of Montfort, brother of the old
+duke, who naturally asked assistance from the king of England. But here,
+too, nothing important was accomplished; the capture of John of Montfort
+at Nantes deprived Edward of Brittany at the very moment when he finally
+lost Flanders by the death of Artevelde, who was killed by the people of
+Ghent in 1345. Under the influence of Godefroi d'Harcourt, whom Philip
+VI. had wished to destroy on account of his ambitions with regard to the
+duchy of Normandy, Edward III. now invaded central France, ravaged
+Normandy, getting as near to Paris as Saint-Germain; and profiting by
+Philip VI.'s hesitation and delay, he reached the north with his spoils
+by dint of forced marches. Having been pursued and encountered at Crécy,
+Edward gained a complete victory there on the 26th of April 1346. The
+seizure of Calais in 1347, despite heroic resistance, gave the English a
+port where they could always find entry into France, just when the queen
+of England had beaten David of Scotland, the ally of France, at
+Neville's Cross, and when Charles of Blois, made prisoner in his turn,
+was held captive in London. The Black Death put the finishing touch to
+the military disasters and financial upheavals of this unlucky reign;
+though before his death in 1350 Philip VI. was fortunate enough to
+augment his territorial acquisitions by the purchase of the rich port of
+Montpellier, as well as by that of Dauphiné, which extended to the
+Alpine frontier, and was to become the appanage of the eldest son of the
+king of France (see DAUPHINÉ and DAUPHIN).
+
+
+  John the Good (1350).
+
+  Defeat at Poitiers.
+
+Philip VI.'s successor was his son John the Good--or rather, the stupid
+and the spendthrift. This noble monarch was unspeakably brutal (as
+witness the murders, simply on suspicion, of the constable Raoul de
+Brienne, count of Eu, and of the count of Harcourt) and incredibly
+extravagant. His need of money led him to debase the currency eighty-one
+times between 1350 and 1355. And this money, so necessary for the
+prosecution of the war with England, which had been interrupted for a
+year, thanks to the pope's intervention, was lavished by him upon his
+favourite, Charles of La Cerda. The latter was murdered in 1354 by order
+of Charles of Navarre, the king's son-in-law, who also prevented the
+levying of the taxes voted by the states in 1355 with the object of
+replenishing the treasury. The Black Prince took this opportunity to
+ravage the southern provinces, and then marched to join the duke of
+Lancaster and Charles of Navarre in Normandy. John the Good managed to
+bring the English army to bay at Maupertuis, not far from Poitiers; but
+the battle was conducted with such a want of intelligence on his part
+that the French army was overwhelmed, though very superior in numbers,
+and King John was made prisoner, after a determined resistance, on the
+19th of September 1356.
+
+
+  The states of 1355-1356.
+
+  Robert le Coq and Étienne Marcel.
+
+The disaster at Poitiers almost led to the establishment in France of
+institutions analogous to those which England owed to Bouvines. The king
+a prisoner, the dauphin discredited and deserted, and the nobility
+decimated, the people--that is to say, the states-general--could raise
+their voice. Philip the Fair had never regarded the states-general as a
+financial institution, but merely as a moral support. Now, however, in
+order to obtain substantial help from taxes instead of mere driblets,
+the Valois needed a stronger lever than cunning or force. War against
+the English assured them the support of the nation. Exactions,
+debasement of the currency and extortionate taxation were ruinous
+palliatives, and insufficient to supply a treasury which the revenue
+from crown lands and various rights taken from the nobles could not fill
+even in times of peace. By the 14th century the motto "_N'impose qui ne
+veut_" (i.e. no taxation without consent) was as firmly established in
+France as in England. After Crécy Philip VI. called the states together
+regularly, that he might obtain subsidies from them, as an assistance,
+an "aid" which subjects could not refuse their suzerain. In return for
+this favour, which the king could not claim as a right, the states,
+feeling their power, began to bargain, and at the session of November
+1355 demanded the participation of all classes in the tax voted, and
+obtained guarantees both for its levy and the use to be made of it. A
+similar situation in England had given birth to political liberty; but
+in France the great crisis of the early 15th century stifled it. It was
+with this money that John the Good got himself beaten and taken prisoner
+at Poitiers. Once more the states-general had to be convoked. Confronted
+by a pale weakly boy like the dauphin Charles and the remnants of the
+discredited council, the situation of the states was stronger than ever.
+Predominant in influence were the deputies from the towns, and above all
+the citizens of the capital, led by Robert le Coq, bishop of Laon, and
+Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris. Having no cause for
+confidence in the royal administration, the states refused to treat with
+the dauphin's councillors, and proposed to take him under their own
+tutelage. He himself hesitated whether to sacrifice the royal authority,
+or else, without resources or support, to resist an assembly backed by
+public opinion. He decided for resistance. Under pretext of grave news
+received from his father, and of an interview at Metz with his uncle,
+the emperor Charles IV., he begged the states to adjourn till the 3rd of
+November 1356. This was a political _coup d'état_, and when the time had
+expired he attempted a financial _coup d'état_ by debasing the currency.
+An uprising obliged him to call the states-general together again in
+February 1357, when they transformed themselves into a deliberative,
+independent and permanent assembly by means of the _Grande Ordonnance_.
+
+
+  The Grande Ordonnance of 1357.
+
+In order to make this great French charter really effective resistance
+to the royal authority should have been collective, national and even
+popular, as in the case of the charters of 1215 and 1258 in England. But
+the lay and ecclesiastical feudal lords continued to show themselves in
+France, as everywhere else except across the Straits of Dover, a cause
+of division and oppression. Moreover, the states were never really
+general; those of the Langue d'oc and the Langue d'oil sometimes acted
+together; but there was never a common understanding between them and
+always two Frances within the kingdom. Besides, they only represented
+the three classes who alone had any social standing at that period: the
+nobles, the clergy, and the burgesses of important towns. Étienne Marcel
+himself protested against councillors "_de petit état_." Again, the
+states, intermittently convoked according to the king's good pleasure,
+exercised neither periodical rights nor effective control, but fulfilled
+a duty which was soon felt as onerous. Indifference and satiety spread
+speedily; the bourgeoisie forsook the reformers directly they had
+recourse to violence (February 1358), and the Parisians became hostile
+when Étienne Marcel complicated his revolutionary work by intrigues with
+Navarre, releasing from prison the grandson of Louis X., the Headstrong,
+an ambitious, fine-spoken courter of popularity, covetous of the royal
+crown. The dauphin's flight from Paris excited a wild outburst of
+monarchist loyalty and anger against the capital among the nobility and
+in the states-general of Compiègne. Marcel, like the dauphin, was not a
+man to turn back. But neither the support of the peasant insurgents--the
+"Jacques"--who were annihilated in the market of Meaux, nor a last but
+unheeded appeal to the large towns, nor yet the uncertain support of
+Charles the Bad, to whom Marcel in despair proposed to deliver up Paris,
+saved him from being put to death by the royalist party of Paris on the
+31st of July 1358.
+
+Isolated as he was, Étienne Marcel had been unable either to seize the
+government or to create a fresh one. In the reaction which followed his
+downfall royalty inherited the financial administration which the states
+had set up to check extravagance. The "élus" and the superintendents,
+instead of being delegates of the states, became royal functionaries
+like the _baillis_ and the provosts; imposts, hearth-money (_fouage_),
+salt-tax (_gabelle_), sale-dues (_droits de vente_), voted for the war,
+were levied during the whole of Charles V.'s reign and added to his
+personal revenue. The opportunity of founding political liberty upon the
+vote and the control of taxation, and of organizing the administration
+of the kingdom so as to ensure that the entire military and financial
+resources should be always available, was gone beyond recall.
+
+
+  The treaty of Brétigny.
+
+Re-establishing the royal authority in Paris was not enough; an end had
+to be put to the war with England and Navarre, and this was effected by
+the treaty of Brétigny (1360). King John ceded Poitou, Saintonge,
+Agenais, Périgord and Limousin to Edward III., and was offered his
+liberty for a ransom of three million gold crowns; but, unable to pay
+that enormous sum, he returned to his agreeable captivity in London,
+where he died in 1364.
+
+
+  Charles V. (1364-1380).
+
+Yet through the obstinacy and selfishness of John the Good, France, in
+stress of suffering, was gradually realizing herself. More strongly than
+her king she felt the shame of defeat. Local or municipal patriotism
+waxed among peasants and townsfolk, and combined with hatred of the
+English to develop national sentiment. Many of the conquered repeated
+that proud, sad answer of the men of Rochelle to the English: "We will
+acknowledge you with our lips; but with our hearts, never!"
+
+
+  The "Grandes Compagnies."
+
+The peace of Brétigny brought no repose to the kingdom. War having
+become a congenial and very lucrative industry, its cessation caused
+want of work, with all the evils that entails. For ten years the
+remnants of the armies of England, Navarre and Brittany--the "Grandes
+Compagnies," as they were called--ravaged the country; although Charles
+V., "_durement subtil et sage_," succeeded in getting rid of them,
+thanks to du Guesclin, one of their chiefs, who led them to any place
+where fighting was going on--to Brittany, Alsace, Spain. Charles also
+had all towns and large villages fortified; and being a man of affairs
+he set about undoing the effect of the treaty of Brétigny by alliances
+with Flanders, whose heiress he married to his brother Philip, duke of
+Burgundy; with Henry, king of Castile, and Ferdinand of Portugal, who
+possessed fine navies; and, finally, with the emperor Charles IV.
+Financial and military preparations were made no less seriously when the
+harsh administration of the Black Prince, to whom Edward III. had given
+Guienne in fief, provoked the nobles of Gascony to complain to Charles
+V. Cited before the court of Paris, the Black Prince refused to attend,
+and war broke out in Gascony, Poitou and Normandy, but with fresh
+tactics (1369). Whilst the English adhered to the system of wide
+circuits, under Chandos or Robert Knolles, Charles V. limited himself to
+defending the towns and exhausting the enemy without taking dangerous
+risks. Thanks to the prudent constable du Guesclin, sitting quietly at
+home he reconquered bit by bit what his predecessors had lost upon the
+battlefield, helm on head and sword in hand; and when he died in 1380,
+after the decease of both Edward III. and the Black Prince, the only
+possessions of England in a liberated but ruined France were Bayonne,
+Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg and Calais.
+
+
+  Charles VI. (1380-1422).
+
+  The king's uncles and the Marmousets.
+
+  The revolt of the Maillotins.
+
+The death of Charles V. and dynastic revolutions in England stopped the
+war for thirty-five years. Then began an era of internal disorder and
+misery. The men of that period, coarse, violent and simple-minded, with
+few political ideas, loved brutal and noisy pleasures--witness the
+incredible festivities at the marriage of Charles VI., and the
+assassinations of the constable de Clisson, the duke of Orleans and John
+the Fearless. It would have needed an energetic hand to hold these
+passions in check; and Charles VI. was a gentle-natured child, twelve
+years of age, who attained his majority only to fall into a second
+childhood. Thence arose a question which remained without reply during
+the whole of his reign. Who should have possession of the royal person,
+and, consequently, of the royal power? Should it be the uncles of the
+king, or his followers Clisson and Bureau de la Rivière, whom the nobles
+called in mockery the _Marmousets_? His uncles first seized the
+government, each with a view to his own particular interests, which were
+by no means those of the kingdom at large. The duke of Anjou emptied the
+treasury in conquering the kingdom of Naples, at the call of Queen
+Joanna of Sicily. The duke of Berry seized upon Languedoc and the
+wine-tax. The duke of Burgundy, heir through his wife to the countship
+of Flanders, wanted to crush the democratic risings among the Flemings.
+Each of them needed money, but Charles V., pricked by conscience on his
+death-bed, forbade the levying of the hearth-tax (1380). His brother's
+attempt to re-establish it set Paris in revolt. The _Maillotins_ of
+Paris found imitators in other great towns; and in Auvergne and Vivarais
+the _Tuchins_ renewed the Jacquerie. Revolutionary attempts between 1380
+and 1385 to abolish all taxes were echoed in England, Florence and
+Flanders. These isolated rebellions, however, were crushed by the
+ever-ready coalition of royal and feudal forces at Roosebeke (1382).
+Taxes and subsidies were maintained and the hearth-money re-established.
+
+
+  Madness of Charles VI.
+
+The death of the duke of Anjou at Bari (1384) gave preponderant
+influence to Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, who increased the large
+and fruitless expenses of his Burgundian policy to such a point that on
+the return of a last unfortunate expedition into Gelderland Charles VI.,
+who had been made by him to marry Isabel of Bavaria, took the government
+from his uncles on the 3rd of May 1389, and recalled the _Marmousets_.
+But this young king, aged only twenty, very much in love with his young
+wife and excessively fond of pleasure, soon wrecked the delicate poise
+of his mental faculties in the festivities of the Hôtel Saint-Paul; and
+a violent attack of Pierre de Craon on the constable de Clisson having
+led to an expedition against his accomplice, the duke of Brittany,
+Charles was seized by insanity on the road. The _Marmousets_ were
+deposed, the king's brother, the duke of Orleans, set aside, and the old
+condition of affairs began again (1392).
+
+
+  Struggle between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians.
+
+The struggle was now between the two branches of the royal family, the
+Orleanist and the Burgundian, between the aristocratic south and the
+democratic north; while the deposition of Richard II. of England in
+favour of Henry of Lancaster permitted them to vary civil war by war
+against the foreigner. Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, the king's
+uncle, had certain advantages over his rival Louis of Orleans, Charles
+VI.'s brother: superiority in age, relations with the Lancastrians and
+with Germany, and territorial wealth and power. The two adversaries had
+each the same scheme of government: each wanted to take charge of
+Charles VI., who was intermittently insane, and to exclude his rival
+from the pillage of the royal exchequer; but this rivalry of desires
+brought them into opposition on all the great questions of the day--the
+war with England, the Great Schism and the imperial election. The
+struggle became acute when John the Fearless of Burgundy succeeded his
+father in 1404. Up to this time the queen, Isabel of Bavaria, had been
+held in a kind of dependency upon Philip of Burgundy, who had brought
+about her marriage; but less eager for influence than for money, since
+political questions were unintelligible to her and her situation was a
+precarious one, she suddenly became favourable to the duke of Orleans.
+Whether due to passion or caprice this cost the duke his life, for John
+the Fearless had him assassinated in 1407, and thus let loose against
+one another the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, so-called because the son
+of the murdered duke was the son-in-law of the count of Armagnac (see
+ARMAGNAC). Despite all attempts at reconciliation the country was
+divided into two parties. Paris, with her tradesmen--the butchers in
+particular--and her university, played an important part in this
+quarrel; for to be master of Paris was to be master of the king. In 1413
+the duke of Burgundy gained the upper hand there, partly owing to the
+rising of the _Cabochiens_, i.e. the butchers led by the skinner Simon
+Caboche, partly to the hostility of the university to the Avignon pope
+and partly to the Parisian bourgeoisie.
+
+
+  The Ordonnance Cabochienne, 1413.
+
+Amid this reign of terror and of revolt the university, the only moral
+and intellectual force, taking the place of the impotent states-general
+and of a parlement carefully restricted to the judiciary sphere, vainly
+tried to re-establish a firm monarchical system by means of the
+_Ordonnance Cabochienne_; but this had no effect, the government being
+now at the mercy of the mob, themselves at the mercy of incapable
+hot-headed leaders. The struggle ended in becoming one between factions
+of the townsmen, led respectively by the _hûchier_ Cirasse and by Jean
+Caboche. The former overwhelmed John the Fearless, who fled from Paris;
+and the Armagnacs, re-entering on his exit, substituted white terror for
+red terror, from the 12th of December 1413 to the 28th of July 1414. The
+butchers' organization was suppressed and all hope of reform lost. Such
+disorders allowed Henry V. of England to take the offensive again.
+
+
+  Agincourt.
+
+The Armagnacs were in possession of Paris and the king when Henry V.
+crushed them at Agincourt on the 25th of October 1415. It was as at
+Crécy and Poitiers; the French chivalry, accustomed to mere playing at
+battle in the tourneys, no longer knew how to fight. Charles of Orleans
+being a captive and his father-in-law, the count of Armagnac, highly
+unpopular, John the Fearless, hitherto prudently neutral, re-entered
+Paris, amid scenes of carnage, on the invitation of the citizen Perrinet
+le Clerc.
+
+
+  The Treaty of Troyes, 1420.
+
+Secure from interference, Henry V. had occupied the whole of Normandy
+and destroyed in two years the work of Philip Augustus. The duke of
+Burgundy, feeling as incapable of coming to an understanding with the
+masterful Englishman as of resisting him unaided, tried to effect a
+reconciliation with the Armagnacs, who had with them the heir to the
+throne, the dauphin Charles; but his assassination at Montereau in 1419
+nearly caused the destruction of the kingdom, the whole Burgundian party
+going over to the side of the English. By the treaty of Troyes (1420)
+the son of John the Fearless, Philip the Good, in order to avenge his
+father recognized Henry V. (now married to Catherine, Charles VI.'s
+daughter) as heir to the crown of France, to the detriment of the
+dauphin Charles, who was disavowed by his mother and called in derision
+"the soi-disant dauphin of Viennois." When Henry V. and Charles VI. died
+in 1422, Henry VI.--son of Henry V. and Catherine--was proclaimed at
+Paris king of France and of England, with the concurrence of Philip the
+Good, duke of Burgundy. Thus in 1428 the English occupied all eastern
+and northern France, as far as the Loire; while the two most important
+civil powers of the time, the parlement and the university of Paris, had
+acknowledged the English king.
+
+
+  Charles VII. (1422-1461).
+
+But the cause of greatest weakness to the French party was still Charles
+VII. himself, the king of Bourges. This youth of nineteen, the
+ill-omened son of a madman and of a Bavarian of loose morals, was a
+symbol of France, timorous and mistrustful. The châteaux of the Loire,
+where he led a restless and enervating existence, held an atmosphere
+little favourable to enthusiasm and energy. After his victories at
+Cravant (1423) and Verneuil (1424), the duke of Bedford, appointed
+regent of the kingdom, had given Charles VII. four years' respite, and
+these had been occupied in violent intrigues between the constable de
+Richemont[30] and the sire de la Trémoille, the young king's favourites,
+and solely desirous of enriching themselves at his expense. The king,
+melancholy spectacle as he was, seemed indeed to suit that tragic hour
+when Orleans, the last bulwark of the south, was besieged by the earl of
+Salisbury, now roused from inactivity (1428). He had neither taste nor
+capacity like Philip VI. or John the Good for undertaking "belles
+apertises d'armes"; but then a lack of chivalry combined with a
+temporizing policy had not been particularly unsuccessful in the case of
+his grandfather Charles V.
+
+
+  Joan of Arc.
+
+Powerful aid now came from an unexpected quarter. The war had been long
+and cruel, and each successive year naturally increased feeling against
+the English. The damage done to Burgundian interests by the harsh yet
+impotent government of Bedford, disgust at the iniquitous treaty of
+Troyes, the monarchist loyalty of many of the warriors, the still deeper
+sentiment felt by men like Alain Chartier towards "Dame France," and the
+"great misery that there was in the kingdom of France"; all these
+suddenly became incarnate in the person of Joan of Arc, a young peasant
+of Domrémy in Lorraine. Determined in her faith and proud in her
+meekness, in opposition to the timid counsels of the military leaders,
+to the interested delays of the courtiers, to the scruples of the
+experts and the quarrelling of the doctors, she quoted her "voices," who
+had, she said, commissioned her to raise the siege of Orleans and to
+conduct the gentle dauphin to Reims, there to be crowned. Her sublime
+folly turned out to be wiser than their wisdom; in two months, from May
+to July 1429, she had freed Orleans, destroyed the prestige of the
+English army at Patay, and dragged the doubting and passive king against
+his will to be crowned at Reims. All this produced a marvellous
+revulsion of political feeling throughout France, Charles VII. now
+becoming incontestably "him to whom the kingdom of France ought to
+belong." After Reims Joan's first thought was for Paris, and to achieve
+the final overthrow of the English; while Charles VII. was already
+sighing for the easy life of Touraine, and recurring to that policy of
+truce which was so strongly urged by his counsellors, and so keenly
+irritating to the clear-sighted Joan of Arc. A check before Paris
+allowed the jealousy of La Trémoille to waste the heroine for eight
+months on operations of secondary importance, until the day when she was
+captured by the Burgundians under the walls of Compiègne, and sold by
+them to the English. The latter incontinently prosecuted her as a
+heretic; they had, indeed, a great interest in seeing her condemned by
+the Church, which would render her conquests sacrilegious. After a
+scandalous four months' duel between this simple innocent girl and a
+tribunal of crafty malevolent ecclesiastics and doctors of the
+university of Paris, Joan was burned alive in the old market-place of
+Rouen, on the 30th of May 1431 (see JOAN OF ARC).
+
+On Charles VII.'s part this meant oblivion and silence until the day
+when in 1450, more for his own sake than for hers, he caused her memory
+to be rehabilitated; but Joan had given the country new life and heart.
+From 1431 to 1454 the struggle against the English went on
+energetically; and the king, relieved in 1433 of his evil genius, La
+Trémoille, then became a man once more, playing a kingly part under the
+guidance of Dunois, Richemont, La Hire and Saintrailles, leaders of
+worth on the field of battle. Moreover, the English territory, a great
+triangle, with the Channel for base and Paris for apex, was not a really
+solid position. Yet the war seemed interminable; until at last Philip of
+Burgundy, for long embarrassed by his English alliance, decided in 1435
+to become reconciled with Charles VII. This was in consequence of the
+death of his sister, who had been married to Bedford, and the return of
+his brother-in-law Richemont into the French king's favour. The treaty
+of Arras, which made him a sovereign prince for life, though harsh, at
+all events gave a united France the opportunity of expelling the English
+from the east, and allowed the king to re-enter Paris in 1436. From 1436
+to 1439 there was a terrible repetition of what happened after the Peace
+of Brétigny; famine, pestilence, extortions and, later, the aristocratic
+revolt of the Praguerie, completed the ruin of the country. But thanks
+to the permanent tax of the _taille_ during this time of truce Charles
+VII. was able to effect the great military reform of the Compagnies
+d'Ordonnance, of the Francs-Archers, and of the artillery of the
+brothers Bureau. From this time forward the English, ruined, demoralized
+and weakened both by the death of the duke of Bedford and the beginnings
+of the Wars of the Roses, continued to lose territory on every
+recurrence of conflict. Normandy was lost to them at Formigny (1450),
+and Guienne, English since the 12th century, at Castillon (1453). They
+kept only Calais; and now it was their turn to have a madman, Henry VI.,
+for king.
+
+
+  Consequences of the Hundred Years' War.
+
+France issued from the Hundred Years' War victorious, but terribly
+ruined and depopulated. It is true she had definitely freed her
+territory from the stranger, and through the sorrows of defeat and the
+menace of disruption had fortified her national solidarity, and defined
+her patriotism, still involved in and not yet dissociated from loyalty
+to the monarchy. A happy awakening, although it went too far in
+establishing royal absolutism; and a victory too complete, in that it
+enervated all the forces of resistance. The nation, worn out by the long
+disorders consequent on the captivity of King John and the insanity of
+Charles VI., abandoned itself to the joys of peace. Preferring the solid
+advantage of orderly life to an unstable liberty, it acquiesced in the
+abdication of 1439, when the States consented to taxation for the
+support of a permanent army without any periodical renewal of their
+authorization. No doubt by the prohibition to levy the smallest _taille_
+the feudal lords escaped direct taxation; but from the day when the
+privileged classes selfishly allowed the taxing of the third estate,
+provided that they themselves were exempt, they opened the door to
+monarchic absolutism. The principle of autocracy triumphed everywhere
+over the remnants of local or provincial authority, in the sphere of
+industry as in that of administration; while the gild system became
+much more rigid. A loyal bureaucracy, far more powerful than the phantom
+administration of Bourges or of Poitiers, gradually took the place of
+the court nobility; and thanks to this the institutions of control which
+the war had called into power--the provincial states-general--were
+nipped in the bud, withered by the people's poverty of political idea
+and by the blind worship of royalty. Without the nation's concurrence
+the king's creatures were now to endow royalty with all the organs
+necessary for the exertion of authority; by which imprudent compliance,
+and above all thanks to Jacques Coeur (q.v.), the financial independence
+of the provinces disappeared little by little, and all the public
+revenues were left at the discretion of the king alone (1436-1440). By
+this means, too, and chiefly owing to the constable de Richemont and the
+brothers Bureau, the first permanent royal army was established (1445).
+
+
+  Monarchical centralization.
+
+Henceforward royalty, strengthened by victory and organized for the
+struggle, was able to reduce the centrifugal social forces to impotence.
+The parlement of Paris saw its monopoly encroached upon by the court of
+Toulouse in 1443, and by the parlement of Grenoble in 1453. The
+university of Paris, compromised with the English, like the parlement,
+witnessed the institution and growth of privileged provincial
+universities. The Church of France was isolated from the papacy by the
+Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) only to be exploited and enslaved
+by royalty. Monarchic centralization, interrupted for the moment by the
+war, took up with fresh vigour its attacks upon urban liberties,
+especially in the always more independent south. It caused a slackening
+of that spirit of communal initiative which had awakened in the midst of
+unprecedented disasters. The decimated and impoverished nobility proved
+their impotence in the coalitions they attempted between 1437 and 1442,
+of which the most important, the Praguerie, fell to pieces almost
+directly, despite the support of the dauphin himself.
+
+
+  Social life.
+
+The life of society, now alarmingly unstable and ruthlessly cruel, was
+symbolized by the _danse macabre_ painted on the walls of the
+cemeteries; the sombre and tragic art of the 15th century, having lost
+the fine balance shown by that of the 13th, gave expression in its
+mournful realism to the general state of exhaustion. The favourite
+subject of the mysteries and of other artistic manifestations was no
+longer the triumphant Christ of the middle ages, nor the smiling and
+teaching Christ of the 13th century, but the Man of sorrows and of
+death, the naked bleeding Jesus, lying on the knees of his mother or
+crowned with thorns. France, like the Christ, had known all the
+bitterness and weakness of a Passion.
+
+The war of independence over, after a century of fatigue, regrets and
+doubts, royalty and the nation, now more united and more certain of each
+other, resumed the methodic and utilitarian war of widening boundaries.
+Leaving dreams about crusades to the poets, and to a papacy delivered
+from schism, Charles VII. turned his attention to the ancient appanage
+of Lothair, Alsace and Lorraine, those lands of the north and the east
+whose frontiers were constantly changing, and which seemed to invite
+aggression. But the chance of annexing them without great trouble was
+lost; by the fatal custom of appanages the Valois had set up again those
+feudal institutions which the Capets had found such difficulty in
+destroying, and Louis XI. was to make sad experience of this.
+
+
+  The House of Burgundy.
+
+To the north and east of the kingdom extended a wide territory of
+uncertain limits; countries without a chief like Alsace; principalities
+like Lorraine, ecclesiastical lordships like the bishopric of Liége;
+and, most important of all, a royal appanage, that of the duchy of
+Burgundy, which dated back to the time of John the Good. Through
+marriages, conquests and inheritance, the dukes of Burgundy had
+enormously increased their influence; while during the Hundred Years'
+War they had benefited alternately by their criminal alliance with the
+English and by their self-interested reconciliation with their
+sovereign. They soon appeared the most formidable among the new feudal
+chiefs so imprudently called into being by Louis XI.'s predecessors.
+Fleeing from the paternal wrath which he had drawn down upon himself by
+his ambition and by his unauthorized marriage with Charlotte of Savoy,
+the future Louis XI. had passed five years of voluntary exile at the
+court of the chief of the House of Burgundy, Philip the Good; and he was
+able to appreciate the territorial power of a duchy which extended from
+the Zuyder Zee to the Somme, with all the country between the Saône and
+the Loire in addition, and its geographical position as a commercial
+intermediary between Germany, England and France. He had traversed the
+fertile country of Flanders; he had visited the rich commercial and
+industrial republics of Bruges and Ghent, which had escaped the
+disasters of the Hundred Years' War; and, finally, he had enjoyed a
+hospitality as princely as it was self-interested at Brussels and at
+Dijon, the two capitals, where he had seen the brilliancy of a court
+unique in Europe for the ideal of chivalric life it offered.
+
+
+  Louis XI. (1461-1483)
+
+But the dauphin Louis, although a bad son and impatient for the crown,
+was not dazzled by all this. With very simple tastes, an inquiring mind,
+and an imagination always at work, he combined a certain easy
+good-nature which inspired confidence, and though stingy in spending
+money on himself, he could be lavish in buying men either dangerous or
+likely to be useful. More inclined to the subtleties of diplomacy than
+to the risks of battle, he had recognized and speedily grasped the
+disadvantages of warfare. The duke of Burgundy, however rich and
+powerful, was still the king's vassal; his wide but insecure authority,
+of too rapid growth and unpopular, lacked sovereign rights. Hardly,
+therefore, had Louis XI. heard of his father's death than he made his
+host aware of his perfectly independent spirit, and his very definite
+intention to be master in his own house.
+
+
+  The Leagues of the Public Weal.
+
+But by a kind of poetic justice, Louis XI. had for seven years, from
+1465 to 1472, to struggle against fresh Pragueries, called Leagues of
+the Public Weal (presumably from their disregard of it), composed of the
+most powerful French nobles, to whom he had set the example of revolt.
+His first proceedings had indeed given no promise of the moderation and
+prudence afterwards to characterize him; he had succeeded in
+exasperating all parties; the officials of his father, "the
+well-served," whom he dismissed in favour of inferiors like Jean Balue,
+Oliver le Daim and Tristan Lermite; the clergy, by abrogating the
+Pragmatic Sanction; the university of Paris, by his ill-treatment of it;
+and the nobles, whom he deprived of their hunting rights, among them
+being those whom Charles VII. had been most careful to conciliate in
+view of the inevitable conflict with the duke of Burgundy--in
+particular, Francis II., duke of Brittany. The repurchase in 1463 of the
+towns of the Somme (to which Philip the Good, now grown old and engaged
+in a quarrel with his son, the count of Charolais, had felt obliged to
+consent on consideration of receiving four hundred thousand gold
+crowns), and the intrigues of Louis XI. during the periodical revolts of
+the Liégois against their prince-bishop, set the powder alight. On three
+different occasions (in 1465, 1467 and 1472), Louis XI.'s own brother,
+the duke of Berry, urged by the duke of Brittany, the count of
+Charolais, the duke of Bourbon, and the other feudal lords, attempted to
+set up six kingdoms in France instead of one, and to impose upon Louis
+XI. a regency which should give them enormous pensions. This was their
+idea of Public Weal.
+
+
+  Charles the Bold.
+
+  The interview at Péronne.
+
+Louis XI. won by his favourite method, diplomacy rather than arms. At
+the time of the first league, the battle of Montlhéry (16th of July
+1465) having remained undecided between the two equally badly organized
+armies, Louis XI. conceded everything in the treaties of Conflans and
+Saint-Maur--promises costing him little, since he had no intention of
+keeping them. But during the course of the second league, provoked by
+the recapture of Normandy, which he had promised to his brother in
+exchange for Berry, he was nearly caught in his own trap. On the 15th of
+June 1467 Philip the Good died, and the accession of the count of
+Charolais was received with popular risings. In order to embarrass him
+Louis XI., had secretly encouraged the people of Liége to revolt; but
+preoccupied with the marriage of Charles the Bold with Margaret of York,
+sister of Edward IV. of England, he wished to negotiate personally with
+him at Péronne, and hardly had he reached that place when news arrived
+there of the revolt of Liége amid cries of "Vive France." Charles the
+Bold, proud, violent, pugnacious, as treacherous as his rival, a hardier
+soldier, though without his political sagacity, imprisoned Louis in the
+tower where Charles the Simple had died as a prisoner of the count of
+Vermandois. He only let him depart when he had sworn in the treaty of
+Péronne to fulfil the engagements made at Conflans and Saint-Maur to
+assist in person at the subjugation of rebellious Liége, and to give
+Champagne as an appanage to his ally the duke of Berry.
+
+
+  Ruin of the feudal coalitions.
+
+Louis XI., supported by the assembly of notables at Tours (1470), had no
+intention of keeping this last promise, since the duchy of Champagne
+would have made a bridge between Burgundy and Flanders--the two isolated
+branches of the house of Burgundy. He gave the duke of Berry distant
+Guienne. But death eventually rid him of the duke in 1472, just when a
+third league was being organized, the object of which was to make the
+duke of Berry king with the help of Edward IV., king of England. The
+duke of Brittany, Francis II., was defeated; Charles the Bold, having
+failed at Beauvais in his attempt to recapture the towns of the Somme
+which had been promised him by the treaty of Conflans, was obliged to
+sign the peace of Senlis (1472). This was the end of the great feudal
+coalitions, for royal vengeance soon settled the account of the lesser
+vassals; the duke of Alençon was condemned to prison for life; the count
+of Armagnac was killed; and "the Germans" were soon to disembarrass
+Louis of Charles the Bold.
+
+
+  Charles the Bold's imperial dreams.
+
+Charles had indeed only signed the peace so promptly because he was
+looking eastward towards that royal crown and territorial cohesion of
+which his father had also dreamed. The king, he said of Louis XI., is
+always ready. He wanted to provide his future sovereignty with organs
+analogous to those of France; a permanent army, and a judiciary and
+financial administration modelled on the French parlement and exchequer.
+Since he could not dismember the kingdom of France, his only course was
+to reconstitute the ancient kingdom of Lotharingia; while the conquest
+of the principality of Liége and of the duchy of Gelderland, and the
+temporary occupation of Alsace, pledged to him by Sigismund of Austria,
+made him greedy for Germany. To get himself elected king of the Romans
+he offered his daughter Mary, his eternal candidate for marriage, to the
+emperor Frederick III. for his son. Thus either he or his son-in-law
+Maximilian would have been emperor.
+
+
+  Fall of Charles the Bold.
+
+But the Tarpeian rock was a near neighbour of the Capitol.
+Frederick--distrustful, and in the pay of Louis XI.--evaded a meeting
+arranged at Trier, and Burgundian influence in Alsace was suddenly
+brought to a violent end by the putting to death of its tyrannical
+agent, Peter von Hagenbach. Charles thought to repair the rebuff of
+Trier at Cologne, and wasted his resources in an attempt to win over its
+elector by besieging the insignificant town of Neuss. But the "universal
+spider"--as he called Louis XI.--was weaving his web in the darkness,
+and was eventually to entangle him in it. First came the reconciliation,
+in his despite, of those irreconcilables, the Swiss and Sigismund of
+Austria; and then the union of both with the duke of Lorraine, who was
+also disturbed at the duke of Burgundy's ambition. In vain Charles tried
+to kindle anew the embers of former feudal intrigues; the execution of
+the duke of Nemours and the count of Saint Pol cooled all enthusiasm. In
+vain did he get his dilatory friends, the English Yorkists, to cross the
+Channel; on the 29th of August 1475, at Picquigny, Louis XI. bribed them
+with a sum of seventy-five thousand crowns to forsake him, Edward
+further undertaking to guarantee the loyalty of the duke of Brittany.
+Exasperated, Charles attacked and took Nancy, wishing, as he said, "to
+skin the Bernese bear and wear its fur." To the hanging of the brave
+garrison of Granson the Swiss responded by terrible reprisals at Granson
+and at Morat (March to June 1476); while the people of Lorraine finally
+routed Charles at Nancy on the 5th of January 1477, the duke himself
+falling in the battle.
+
+
+  Ruin of the house of Burgundy.
+
+The central administration of Burgundy soon disappeared, swamped by the
+resurgence of ancient local liberties; the army fell to pieces; and all
+hope of joining the two limbs of the great eastern duchy was definitely
+lost. As for the remnants that were left, French provinces and imperial
+territory, Louis XI. claimed the whole. He seized everything, alleging
+different rights in each place; but he displayed such violent haste and
+such trickery that he threw the heiress of Burgundy, in despair, into
+the arms of Maximilian of Austria. At the treaty of Arras (December
+1482) Louis XI. received only Picardy, the Boulonnais and Burgundy; by
+the marriage of Charles the Bold's daughter the rest was annexed to the
+Empire, and later to Spain. Thus by Louis XI.'s short-sighted error the
+house of Austria established itself in the Low Countries. An age-long
+rivalry between the houses of France and Austria was the result of this
+disastrous marriage; and as the son who was its issue espoused the
+heiress of a now unified Spain, France, hemmed in by the Spaniards and
+by the Empire, was thenceforward to encounter them everywhere in her
+course. The historical progress of France was once more endangered.
+
+
+  The administration of Louis XI.
+
+The reasons of state which governed all Louis XI.'s external policy also
+inspired his internal administration. If they justified him in employing
+lies and deception in international affairs, in his relations with his
+subjects they led him to regard as lawful everything which favoured his
+authority; no question of right could weigh against it. The army and
+taxation, as the two chief means of domination within and without the
+kingdom, constituted the main bulwarks of his policy. As for the
+nobility, his only thought was to diminish their power by multiplying
+their number, as his predecessors had done; while he reduced the rebels
+to submission by his iron cages or the axe of his gossip Tristan
+Lermite. The Church was treated with the same unconcerned cynicism; he
+held her in strict tutelage, accentuating her moral decadence still
+further by the manner in which he set aside or re-established the
+Pragmatic Sanction, according to the fluctuations of his financial
+necessities or his Italian ambitions. It has been said that on the other
+hand he was a king of the common people, and certainly he was one of
+them in his simple habits, in his taste for rough pleasantries, and
+above all in his religion, which was limited to superstitious practices
+and small devoutnesses. But in the states of Tours in 1468 he evinced
+the same mistrust for fiscal control by the people as for the privileges
+of the nobility. He inaugurated that autocratic rule which was to
+continue gaining strength until Louis XV.'s time. Louis XI. was the king
+of the bourgeoisie; he exacted much from them, but paid them back with
+interest by allowing them to reduce the power of all who were above them
+and to lord it over all who were below. As a matter of fact Louis XI.'s
+most faithful ally was death. Saint-Pol, Nemours, Charles the Bold, his
+brother the duke of Berry, old René of Anjou and his nephew the count of
+Maine, heir to the riches of Provence and to rights over Naples--the
+skeleton hand mowed down all his adversaries as though it too were in
+his pay; until the day when at Plessis-les-Tours it struck a final blow,
+claimed its just dues from Louis XI., and carried him off despite all
+his relics on the 30th of August 1483.
+
+
+  Charles VIII. and Brittany (1483-1498)
+
+  The Mad War, 1483.
+
+There was nothing noble about Louis XI. but his aims, and nothing great
+but the results he attained; yet however different he might have been he
+could not have done better, for what he achieved was the making of
+France. This was soon seen after his death in the reaction which menaced
+his work and those who had served him; but thanks to himself and to his
+true successor, his eldest daughter Anne, married to the sire de
+Beaujeu, a younger member of the house of Bourbon, the set-back was
+only partial. Strife began immediately between the numerous malcontents
+and the Beaujeu party, who had charge of the little Charles VIII. These
+latter prudently made concessions: reducing the _taille_, sacrificing
+some of Louis XI.'s creatures to the rancour of the parlement, and
+restoring a certain number of offices or lands to the hostile princes
+(chief of whom was the duke of Orleans), and even consenting to a
+convocation of the states-general at Tours (1484). But the elections
+having been favourable to royalty, the Beaujeu family made the states
+reject the regency desired by the duke of Orleans, and organize the
+king's council after their own views. When they subsequently eluded the
+conditions imposed by the states, the deputies--nobles, clergy and
+burgesses--showed their incapacity to oppose the progress of despotism.
+In vain did the malcontent princes attempt to set up a new League of
+Public Weal, the _Guerre folle_ (Mad War), in which the duke of
+Brittany, Francis II., played the part of Charles the Bold, dragging in
+the people of Lorraine and the king of Navarre. In vain did Charles
+VIII., his majority attained, at once abandon in the treaty of Sablé the
+benefits gained by the victory of Saint-Aubin du Cormier (1488). In vain
+did Henry VII. of England, Ferdinand the Catholic, and Maximilian of
+Austria try to prevent the annexation of Brittany by France; its heiress
+Anne, deserted by every one, made peace and married Charles VIII. in
+1491. There was no longer a single great fief in France to which the
+malcontents could fly for refuge.
+
+
+  A policy of "magnificence."
+
+It now remained to consolidate the later successes attained by the
+policy of the Valois--the acquisition of the duchies of Burgundy and
+Brittany; but instead there was a sudden change and that policy seemed
+about to be lost in dreams of recapturing the rights of the Angevins
+over Naples, and conquering Constantinople. Charles VIII., a prince with
+neither intelligence nor resolution, his head stuffed with chivalric
+romance, was scarcely freed from his sister's control when he sought in
+Italy a fatal distraction from the struggle with the house of Austria.
+By this "war of magnificence" he caused an interruption of half a
+century in the growth of national sentiment, which was only revived by
+Henry II.; and he was not alone in thus leaving the bone for the shadow:
+his contemporaries, Ferdinand the Catholic when delivered from the
+Moors, and Henry VII. from the power of the English nobles, followed the
+same superficial policy, not taking the trouble to work for that real
+strength which comes from the adhesion of willing subjects to their
+sovereign. They only cared to aggrandize themselves, without thought of
+national feeling or geographical conditions. The great theorist of these
+"conquistadores" was Machiavelli. The regent, Anne of Beaujeu, worked in
+her daughter's interest to the detriment of the kingdom, by means of a
+special treaty destined to prevent the property of the Bourbons from
+reverting to the crown; while Anne of Brittany did the like for her
+daughter Claude. Louis XII., the next king of France, thought only of
+the Milanese; Ferdinand the Catholic all but destroyed the Spanish unity
+at the end of his life by his marriage with Germaine de Foix; while the
+house of Austria was for centuries to remain involved in this petty
+course of policy. Ministers followed the example of their self-seeking
+masters, thinking it no shame to accept pensions from foreign
+sovereigns. The preponderating consideration everywhere was direct
+material advantage; there was disproportion everywhere between the means
+employed and the poverty of the results, a contradiction between the
+interests of the sovereigns and those of their subjects, which were
+associated by force and not naturally blended. For the sake of a morsel
+of Italian territory every one forgot the permanent necessity of
+opposing the advance of the Turkish crescent, the two horns of which
+were impinging upon Europe on the Danube and on the Mediterranean.
+
+
+  The wars in Italy.
+
+Italy and Germany were two great tracts of land at the mercy of the
+highest bidder, rich and easy to dominate, where these coarse and alien
+kings, still reared on medieval traditions, were for fifty years to
+gratify their love of conquest. Italy was their first battlefield;
+Charles VIII. was summoned thither by Lodovico Il Moro, tyrant of Milan,
+involved in a quarrel with his rival, Ferdinand II. of Aragon. The
+Aragonese had snatched the kingdom of Naples from the French house of
+Anjou, whose claims Louis XI. had inherited in 1480. To safeguard
+himself in the rear Charles VIII. handed over Roussillon and Cerdagne
+(Cerdaña) to Ferdinand the Catholic (that is to say, all the profits of
+Louis XI.'s policy); gave enormous sums of money to Henry VII. of
+England; and finally, by the treaty of Senlis ceded Artois and
+Franche-Comté to Maximilian of Austria. After these fool's bargains the
+paladin set out for Naples in 1494. His journey was long and triumphant,
+and his return precipitate; indeed it very nearly ended in a disaster at
+Fornovo, owing to the first of those Italian holy leagues which at the
+least sign of friction were ready to turn against France. At the age of
+twenty-eight, however, Charles VIII. died without issue (1498).
+
+
+  Louis XII. (1498-1515).
+
+The accession of his cousin, Louis of Orleans, under the title of Louis
+XII., only involved the kingdom still further in this Italian imbroglio.
+Louis did indeed add the fief of Orleans to the royal domain and
+hastened to divorce Jeanne of France in order to marry Anne, the widow
+of his predecessor, so that he might keep Brittany. But he complicated
+the Naples affair by claiming Milan in consideration of the marriage of
+his grandfather, Louis of Orleans, to Valentina, daughter of Gian
+Galeazzo Visconti, duke of Milan. In 1499, appealed to by Venice, and
+encouraged by his favourite, Cardinal d'Amboise (who was hoping to
+succeed Pope Alexander VI.), and also by Cesare Borgia, who had lofty
+ambitions in Italy, Louis XII. conquered Milan in seven months and held
+it for fourteen years; while Lodovico Sforza, betrayed by his Swiss
+mercenaries, died a prisoner in France. The kingdom of Naples was still
+left to recapture; and fearing to be thwarted by Ferdinand of Aragon,
+Louis XII. proposed to this master of roguery that they should divide
+the kingdom according to the treaty of Granada (1500). But no sooner had
+Louis XII. assumed the title of king of Naples than Ferdinand set about
+despoiling him of it, and despite the bravery of a Bayard and a Louis
+d'Ars, Louis XII., being also betrayed by the pope, lost Naples for good
+in 1504. The treaties of Blois occasioned a vast amount of diplomacy,
+and projects of marriage between Claude of France and Charles of
+Austria, which came to nothing but served as a prelude to the later
+quarrels between Bourbons and Habsburgs.
+
+It was Pope Julius II. who opened the gates of Italy to the horrors of
+war. Profiting by Louis XII.'s weakness and the emperor Maximilian's
+strange capricious character, this martial pope sacrificed Italian and
+religious interests alike in order to re-establish the temporal power of
+the papacy. Jealous of Venice, at that time the Italian state best
+provided with powers of expansion, and unable to subjugate it
+single-handed, Julius succeeded in obtaining help from France, Spain and
+the Empire. The league of Cambrai (1508) was his finest diplomatic
+achievement. But he wanted to be sole master of Italy, so in order to
+expel the French "barbarians" whom he had brought in, he appealed to
+other barbarians who were far more dangerous--Spaniards, Germans and
+Swiss--to help him against Louis XII., and stabbed him from behind with
+the Holy League of 1511.
+
+
+  Louis XII. and Julius II.
+
+Weakened by the death of Cardinal d'Amboise, his best counsellor, Louis
+XII. tried vainly in the assembly of Tours and in the unsuccessful
+council of Pisa to alienate the French clergy from a papacy which was
+now so little worthy of respect. But even the splendid victories of
+Gaston de Foix could not shake that formidable coalition; and despite
+the efforts of Bayard, La Palice and La Trémoille, it was the Church
+that triumphed. Julius II. died in the hour of victory; but Louis XII.
+was obliged to evacuate Milan, to which he had sacrificed everything,
+even France itself, with that political stupidity characteristic of the
+first Valois. He died almost immediately after this, on the 1st of
+January 1515, and his subjects, recognizing his thrift, his justice and
+the secure prosperity of the kingdom, forgot the seventeen years of war
+in which they had not been consulted, and rewarded him with the fine
+title of Father of his People.
+
+
+  Francis I. (1515-1547).
+
+As Louis XII. left no son, the crown devolved upon his cousin and
+son-in-law the count of Angoulême, Francis I. No sooner king, Francis,
+in alliance with Venice, renewed the chimerical attempts to conquer
+Milan and Naples; also cherishing dreams of his own election as emperor
+and of a partition of Europe. The heroic episode of Marignano, when he
+defeated Cardinal Schinner's Swiss troops (13-15 of September 1515),
+made him master of the duchy of Milan and obliged his adversaries to
+make peace. Leo X., Julius II.'s successor, by an astute volte-face
+exchanged Parma and the Concordat for a guarantee of all the Church's
+possessions, which meant the defeat of French plans (1515). The Swiss
+signed the permanent peace which they were to maintain until the
+Revolution of 1789; while the emperor and the king of Spain recognized
+Francis II.'s very precarious hold upon Milan. Once more the French
+monarchy was pulled up short by the indignation of all Italy (1518).
+
+
+  Character of Francis I.
+
+The question now was how to occupy the military activity of a young,
+handsome, chivalric and gallant prince, "ondoyant et divers,"
+intoxicated by his first victory and his tardy accession to fortune.
+This had been hailed with joy by all who had been his comrades in his
+days of difficulty; by his mother, Louise of Savoy, and his sister
+Marguerite; by all the rough young soldiery; by the nobles, tired of the
+bourgeois ways of Louis XI. and the patriarchal simplicity of Louis
+XII.; and finally by all the aristocracy who expected now to have the
+government in their own hands. So instead of heading the crusade against
+the Turks, Francis threw himself into the electoral contest at
+Frankfort, which resulted in the election of Charles V., heir of
+Ferdinand the Catholic, Spain and Germany thus becoming united. Pope Leo
+X., moreover, handed over three-quarters of Italy to the new emperor in
+exchange for Luther's condemnation, thereby kindling that rivalry
+between Charles V. and the king of France which was to embroil the whole
+of Europe throughout half a century (1519-1559), from Pavia to St
+Quentin.
+
+
+  Rivalry of Francis I. and Charles V.
+
+  Defeat at Pavia and treaty of Madrid.
+
+The territorial power of Charles V., heir to the houses of Burgundy,
+Austria, Castile and Aragon, which not only arrested the traditional
+policy of France but hemmed her in on every side; his pretensions to be
+the head of Christendom; his ambition to restore the house of Burgundy
+and the Holy Roman Empire; his grave and forceful intellect all rendered
+rivalry both inevitable and formidable. But the scattered heterogeneity
+of his possessions, the frequent crippling of his authority by national
+privileges or by political discords and religious quarrels, his
+perpetual straits for money, and his cautious calculating character,
+almost outweighed the advantages which he possessed in the terrible
+Spanish infantry, the wealthy commerce of the Netherlands, and the
+inexhaustible mines of the New World. Moreover, Francis I. stirred up
+enmity everywhere against Charles V., and after each defeat he found
+fresh support in the patriotism of his subjects. Immediately after the
+treaty of Madrid (1526), which Francis I. was obliged to sign after the
+disaster at Pavia and a period of captivity, he did not hesitate between
+his honour as a gentleman and the interests of his kingdom. Having been
+unable to win over Henry VIII. of England at their interview on the
+Field of the Cloth of Gold, he joined hands with Suleiman the
+Magnificent, the conqueror of Mohács; and the Turkish cavalry, crossing
+the Hungarian _Puszta_, made their way as far as Vienna, while the
+mercenaries of Charles V., under the constable de Bourbon, were reviving
+the saturnalia of Alaric in the sack of Rome (1527). In Germany, Francis
+I. assisted the Catholic princes to maintain their political
+independence, though he did not make the capital he might have made of
+the reform movement. Italy remained faithful to the vanquished in spite
+of all, while even Henry VIII. of England, who only needed bribing, and
+Wolsey, accessible to flattery, took part in the temporary coalition.
+Thus did France, menaced with disruption, embark upon a course of action
+imposed upon her by the harsh conditions of the treaty of
+Madrid--otherwise little respected--and later by those of Cambrai
+(1529); but it was not till later, too late indeed, that it was defined
+and became a national policy.
+
+
+  Further prosecution of romantic expeditions.
+
+  The truce at Nice.
+
+After having, despite so many reverses and mistakes, saved Burgundy,
+though not Artois nor Flanders, and joined to the crown lands the
+domains of the constable de Bourbon who had gone over to Charles V.,
+Francis I. should have had enough of defending other people's
+independence as well as his own, and should have thought more of his
+interests in the north and east than of Milan. Yet between 1531 and 1547
+he manifested the same regrets and the same invincible ambition for that
+land of Italy which Charles V., on his side, regarded as the basis of
+his strength. Their antagonism, therefore, remained unabated, as also
+the contradiction of an official agreement with Charles V., combined
+with secret intrigues with his enemies. Anne de Montmorency, now head of
+the government in place of the headstrong chancellor Duprat, for four
+years upheld a policy of reconciliation and of almost friendly agreement
+between the two monarchs (1531-1535). The death of Francis I.'s mother,
+Louise of Savoy (who had been partly instrumental in arranging the peace
+of Cambrai), the replacement of Montmorency by the bellicose Chabot, and
+the advent to power of a Burgundian, Granvella, as Charles V.'s prime
+minister, put an end to this double-faced policy, which attacked the
+Calvinists of France while supporting the Lutherans of Germany; made
+advances to Clement VII. while pretending to maintain the alliance with
+Henry VIII. (just then consummating the Anglican schism); and sought an
+alliance with Charles V. without renouncing the possession of Italy. The
+death of the duke of Milan provoked a third general war (1536-1538); but
+after the conquest of Savoy and Piedmont and a fruitless invasion of
+Provence by Charles V., it resulted in another truce, concluded at Nice,
+in the interview at Aigues-mortes, and in the old contradictory policy
+of the treaty of Cambrai. This was confirmed by Charles V.'s triumphal
+journey through France (1539).
+
+
+  Fourth outbreak of war.
+
+Rivalry between Madame d'Etampes, the imperious mistress of the aged
+Francis I., and Diane de Poitiers, whose ascendancy over the dauphin was
+complete, now brought court intrigues and constant changes in those who
+held office, to complicate still further this wearisome policy of
+ephemeral "combinazioni" with English, Germans, Italians and Turks,
+which urgent need of money always brought to naught. The disillusionment
+of Francis I., who had hitherto hoped that Charles V. would be generous
+enough to give Milan back to him, and then the assassination of Rincon,
+his ambassador at Constantinople, led to a fourth war (1544-1546), in
+the course of which the king of England went over to the side of Charles
+V.
+
+
+  Royal absolutism under Francis I.
+
+Unable in the days of his youth to make Italy French, when age began to
+come upon him, Francis tried to make France Italian. In his château at
+Blois he drank greedily of the cup of Renaissance art; but he found the
+exciting draughts of diplomacy which he imbibed from Machiavelli's
+_Prince_ even more intoxicating, and he headed the ship of state
+straight for the rock of absolutism. He had been the first king "_du bon
+plaisir_" ("of his own good pleasure")--a "Caesar," as his mother Louise
+of Savoy proudly hailed him in 1515--and to a man of his gallant and
+hot-headed temperament love and war were schools little calculated to
+teach moderation in government. Italy not only gave him a taste for art
+and letters, but furnished him with an arsenal of despotic maxims. Yet
+his true masters were the jurists of the southern universities,
+passionately addicted to centralization and autocracy, men like Duprat
+and Poyet, who revived the persistent tradition of Philip the Fair's
+legists. Grouped together on the council of affairs, they managed to
+control the policy of the common council, with its too mixed and too
+independent membership. They successfully strove to separate "the
+grandeur and superexcellence of the king" from the rest of the nation;
+to isolate the nobility amid the seductions of a court lavish in
+promises of favour and high office; and to win over the bourgeoisie by
+the buying and selling and afterwards by the hereditary transmission of
+offices. Thanks to their action, feudalism was attacked in its landed
+interest in the person of the constable de Bourbon; feudalism in its
+financial aspect by the execution of superintendent Semblançay and the
+special privileges of towns and provinces by administrative
+centralization. The bureaucracy became a refuge for the nobles, and
+above all for the bourgeois, whose fixed incomes were lowered by the
+influx of precious metals from the New World, while the wages of
+artisans rose. All those time-worn medieval institutions which no longer
+allowed free scope to private or public life were demolished by the
+legists in favour of the monarchy.
+
+
+  The concordat of 1516.
+
+Their master-stroke was the Concordat of 1516, which meant an immense
+stride in the path towards absolutism. While Germany and England, where
+ultramontane doctrines had been allowed to creep in, were seeking a
+remedy against the economic exactions of the papacy in a reform of dogma
+or in schism, France had supposed herself to have found this in the
+Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. But to the royal jurists the right of the
+churches and abbeys to make appointments to all vacant benefices was a
+guarantee of liberties valuable to the clergy, but detestable to
+themselves because the clergy thus retained the great part of public
+wealth and authority. By giving the king the ecclesiastical patronage
+they not only made a docile instrument of him, but endowed him with a
+mine of wealth, even more productive than the sale of offices, and a
+power of favouring and rewarding that transformed a needy and ill-obeyed
+king into an absolute monarch. To the pope they offered a mess of
+pottage in the shape of _annates_ and the right of canonical
+institution, in order to induce him to sell the Church of France to the
+king. By this royal reform they completely isolated the monarchy, in the
+presumptuous pride of omnipotence, upon the ruins of the Church and the
+aristocracy, despite both the university and the parlement of Paris.
+
+Thus is explained Francis I.'s preoccupation with Italian adventures in
+the latter part of his reign, and also the inordinate squandering of
+money, the autos-da-fé in the provinces and in Paris, the harsh
+repression of reform and free thought, and the sale of justice; while
+the nation became impoverished and the state was at the mercy of the
+caprices of royal mistresses--all of which was to become more and more
+pronounced during the twelve years of Henry II.'s government.
+
+
+  Henry II. (1547-1559).
+
+Henry II. shone but with a reflected light--in his private life
+reflected from his old mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and in his political
+action reflected from the views of Montmorency or the Guises. He only
+showed his own personality in an egoism more narrow-minded, in hatred
+yet bitterer than his father's; or in a haughty and jealous insistence
+upon an absolute authority which he never had the wit to maintain.
+
+
+  Henry II. and Charles V.
+
+  Defence of Metz.
+
+  Truce of Vaucelles.
+
+The struggle with Charles V. was at first delayed by differences with
+England. The treaty of Ardres had left two bones of contention: the
+cession of Boulogne to England and the exclusion of the Scotch from the
+terms of peace. At last the regent, the duke of Somerset, endeavoured to
+arrange a marriage between Edward VI., then a minor, and Mary Stuart,
+who had been offered in marriage to the dauphin Francis by her mother,
+Marie of Lorraine, a Guise who had married the king of Scotland. The
+transference of Mary Stuart to France, and the treaty of 1550 which
+restored Boulogne to France for a sum of 400,000 crowns, suspended the
+state of war; and then Henry II.'s opposition to the imperial policy of
+Charles V. showed itself everywhere: in Savoy and Piedmont, occupied by
+the French and claimed by Philibert Emmanuel, Charles V.'s ally; in
+Navarre, unlawfully conquered by Ferdinand the Catholic and claimed by
+the family of Albret; in Italy, where, aided and abetted by Pope Paul
+III., Henry II. was trying to regain support; and, finally, in Germany,
+where after the victory of Charles V. at Mühlberg (1547) the Protestant
+princes called Henry II. to their aid, offering to subsidize him and
+cede to him the towns of Metz, Toul and Verdun. The Protestant alliance
+was substituted for the Turkish alliance, and Henry II. hastened to
+accept the offers made to him (1552); but this was rather late in the
+day, for the reform movement had produced civil war and evoked fresh
+forces. The Germans, in whom national feeling got the better of
+imperialistic ardour, as soon as they saw the French at Strassburg, made
+terms with the emperor at Passau and permitted Charles to use all his
+forces against Henry II. The defence of Metz by Francis of Guise was
+admirable and successful; but in Picardy operations continued their
+course without much result, owing to the incapacity of the constable de
+Montmorency. Fortunately, despite the marriage of Charles V.'s son
+Philip to Mary Tudor, which gave him the support of England (1554), and
+despite the religious pacification of Germany through the peace of
+Augsburg (1555), Charles V., exhausted by illness and by thirty years of
+intense activity, in the truce of Vaucelles abandoned Henry II.'s
+conquests--Piedmont and the Three Bishoprics. He then abdicated the
+government of his kingdoms, which he divided between his son Philip II.
+and his brother Ferdinand (1556). A double victory, this, for France.
+
+
+  Henry II. and Philip II.
+
+  Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis.
+
+Henry II.'s resumption of war, without provocation and without allies,
+was a grave error; but more characterless than ever, the king was urged
+to it by the Guises, whose influence since the defence of Metz had been
+supreme at court and who were perhaps hoping to obtain Naples for
+themselves. On the other hand, Pope Paul IV. and his nephew Carlo
+Caraffa embarked upon the struggle, because as Neapolitans they detested
+the Spaniards, whom they considered as "barbarous" as the Germans or the
+French. The constable de Montmorency's disaster at Saint Quentin (August
+1557), by which Philip II. had not the wit to profit, was successfully
+avenged by Guise, who was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
+He took Calais by assault in January 1558, after the English had held it
+for two centuries, and occupied Luxemburg. The treaty of
+Cateau-Cambrésis (August 1559) finally put an end to the Italian
+follies, Naples, Milan and Piedmont; but it also lost Savoy, making a
+gap in the frontier for a century. The question of Burgundy was
+definitely settled, too; but the Netherlands had still to be conquered.
+By the possession of the three bishoprics and the recapture of Calais an
+effort towards a natural line of frontier and towards a national policy
+seemed indicated; but while the old soldiers could not forget Marignano,
+Ceresole, nor Italy perishing with the name of France on her lips, the
+secret alliance between the cardinal of Lorraine and Granvella against
+the Protestant heresy foretold the approaching subordination of national
+questions to religious differences, and a decisive attempt to purge the
+kingdom of the new doctrines.
+
+
+  The Reformation.
+
+The origin and general history of the religious reformation in the 16th
+century are dealt with elsewhere (see CHURCH HISTORY and REFORMATION).
+In France it had originally no revolutionary character whatever; it
+proceeded from traditional Gallican theories and from the innovating
+principle of humanism, and it began as a protest against Roman decadence
+and medieval scholasticism. It found its first adherents and its first
+defenders among the clerics and learned men grouped around Faber
+(Lefèvre) of Étaples at Meaux; while Marguerite of Navarre, "des Roynes
+la non pareille," was the indefatigable Maecenas of these innovators,
+and the incarnation of the Protestant spirit at its purest. The
+reformers shook off the yoke of systems in order boldly to renovate both
+knowledge and faith; and, instead of resting on the abstract _a priori_
+principles within which man and nature had been imprisoned, they
+returned to the ancient methods of observation and analysis. In so
+doing, they separated intellectual from popular life; and acting in this
+spirit, through the need of a moral renaissance, they reverted to
+primitive Christianity, substituting the inner and individual authority
+of conscience for the general and external authority of the Church.
+Their efforts would not, however, have sufficed if they had not been
+seconded by events; pure doctrine would not have given birth to a
+church, nor that church to a party; in France, as in Germany, the
+religious revolution was conditioned by an economic and social
+revolution.
+
+The economic renaissance due to the great maritime discoveries had the
+consequence of concentrating wealth in the hands of the bourgeoisie.
+Owing to their mental qualities, their tendencies and their resources,
+the bourgeoisie had been, if not alone, at least most apt in profiting
+by the development of industry, by the extension of commerce, and by the
+formation of a new and mobile means of enriching themselves. But though
+the bourgeois had acquired through capitalism certain sources of
+influence, and gradually monopolized municipal and public functions, the
+king and the peasants had also benefited by this revolution. After a
+hundred and fifty years of foreign war and civil discord, at a period
+when order and unity were ardently desired, an absolute monarchy had
+appeared the only power capable of realizing such aspirations. The
+peasants, moreover, had profited by the reduction of the idle landed
+aristocracy; serfdom had decreased or had been modified; and the free
+peasants were more prosperous, had reconquered the soil, and were
+selling their produce at a higher rate while they everywhere paid less
+exorbitant rents. The victims of this process were the urban
+proletariat, whose treatment by their employers in trade became less and
+less protective and beneficent, and the nobility, straitened in their
+financial resources, uprooted from their ancient strongholds, and
+gradually despoiled of their power by a monarchy based on popular
+support. The unlimited sovereignty of the prince was established upon
+the ruins of the feudal system; and the capitalism of the merchants and
+bankers upon the closing of the trade-gilds to workmen, upon severe
+economic pressure and upon the exploitation of the artisans' labour.
+
+
+  Transformation of religious reform into party politics.
+
+Though reform originated among the educated classes it speedily found an
+echo among the industrial classes of the 16th century, further assisted
+by the influence of German and Flemish journeymen. The popular
+reform-movement was essentially an urban movement; although under
+Francis I. and Henry II. it had already begun to spread into the
+country. The artisans, labourers and small shop-keepers who formed the
+first nucleus of the reformed church were numerous enough to provide an
+army of martyrs, though too few to form a party. Revering the monarchy
+and established institutions, they endured forty years of persecution
+before they took up arms. It was only during the second half of Henry
+II.'s reign that Protestantism, having achieved its religious evolution,
+became a political party. Weary of being trodden under foot, it now
+demanded much more radical reform, quitting the ranks of peaceable
+citizens to pass into the only militant class of the time and adopt its
+customs. Men like Coligny, d'Andelot and Condé took the place of the
+timid Lefèvre of Étaples and the harsh and bitter Calvin; and the reform
+party, in contradiction to its doctrines and its doctors, became a
+political and religious party of opposition, with all the compromises
+that presupposes. The struggle against it was no longer maintained by
+the university and the parlement alone, but also by the king, whose
+authority it menaced.
+
+
+  Royal persecution under Francis I. and Henry II.
+
+With his intrepid spirit, his disdain for ecclesiastical authority and
+his strongly personal religious feeling, Francis I. had for a moment
+seemed ready to be a reformer himself; but deprived by the Concordat of
+all interest in the confiscation of church property, aspiring to
+political alliance with the pope, and as mistrustful of popular forces
+as desirous of absolute power and devoted to Italy, he paused and then
+drew back. Hence came the revocation in 1540 of the edict of tolerance
+of Coucy (1535), and the massacre of the Vaudois (1545). Henry II., a
+fanatic, went still further in his edict of Châteaubriant (1551), a code
+of veritable persecution, and in the _coup d'état_ carried out in the
+parlement against Antoine du Bourg and his colleagues (1559). At the
+same time the pastors of the reformed religion, met in synod at Paris,
+were setting down their confession of faith founded upon the Scriptures,
+and their ecclesiastical discipline founded upon the independence of the
+churches. Thenceforward Protestantism adopted a new attitude, and
+refused obedience to the orders of a persecuting monarchy when contrary
+to its faith and its interests. After the saints came men. Hence those
+wars of religion which were to hold the monarchy in check for forty
+years and even force it to come to terms.
+
+
+  Francis II. (1559-1560).
+
+In slaying Henry II. Montgomery's lance saved the Protestants for the
+time being. His son and successor, Francis II., was but a nervous sickly
+boy, bandied between two women: his mother, Catherine de' Medici,
+hitherto kept in the background, and his wife, Mary Stuart, queen of
+Scotland, who being a niece of the Guises brought her uncles, the
+constable Francis and the cardinal of Lorraine, into power. These
+ambitious and violent men took the government out of the hands of the
+constable de Montmorency and the princes of the blood: Antoine de
+Bourbon, king of Navarre, weak, credulous, always playing a double game
+on account of his preoccupation with Navarre; Condé, light-hearted and
+brave, but not fitted to direct a party; and the cardinal de Bourbon, a
+mere nonentity. The only plan which these princes could adopt in the
+struggle, once they had lost the king, was to make a following for
+themselves among the Calvinist malcontents and the gentlemen disbanded
+after the Italian wars. The Guises, strengthened by the failure of the
+conspiracy of Amboise, which had been aimed at them, abused the
+advantage due to their victory. Despite the edict of Romorantin, which
+by giving the bishops the right of cognizance of heresy prevented the
+introduction of the Inquisition on the Spanish model into France;
+despite the assembly of Fontainebleau, where an attempt was made at a
+compromise acceptable to both Catholics and moderate Calvinists; the
+reform party and its Bourbon leaders, arrested at the states-general of
+Orleans, were in danger of their lives. The death of Francis II. in
+December 1560 compromised the influence of the Guises and again saved
+Protestantism.
+
+
+  Charles IX. (1560-1574).
+
+Charles IX. also was a minor, and the regent should legally have been
+the first prince of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon; but cleverly
+flattered by the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, he let her take the
+reins of government. Hitherto Catherine had been merely the resigned and
+neglected wife of Henry II., and though eloquent, insinuating and
+ambitious, she had been inactive. She had attained the age of forty-one
+when she at last came into power amidst the hopes and anxieties aroused
+by the fall of the Guises and the return of the Bourbons to fortune.
+Indifferent in religious matters, she had a passion for authority, a
+characteristically Italian adroitness in intrigue, a fine political
+sense, and the feeling that the royal authority might be endangered both
+by Calvinistic passions and Catholic violence. She decided for a system
+of tolerance; and Michel de l'Hôpital, the new chancellor, was her
+spokesman at the states of Orleans (1560). He was a good and honest man,
+moderate, conciliatory and temporizing, anxious to lift the monarchy
+above the strife of parties and to reconcile them; but he was so little
+practical that he could believe in a reformation of the laws in the
+midst of all the violent passions which were now to be let loose. These
+two, Catherine and her chancellor, attempted, like Charles V. at
+Augsburg, to bring about religious pacification as a necessary condition
+for the maintenance of order; but they were soon overwhelmed by the
+different factions.
+
+
+  The parties.
+
+  Edict of tolerance.
+
+On one side was the Catholic triumvirate of the constable de
+Montmorency, the duke of Guise, and the marshal de St André; and on the
+other the Huguenot party of Condé and Coligny, who, having obtained
+liberty of conscience in January 1561, now demanded liberty of worship.
+The colloquy at Poissy between the cardinal of Lorraine and Theodore
+Beza (September 1561), did not end in the agreement hoped for, and the
+duke of Guise so far abused its spirit as to embroil the French
+Calvinists with the German Lutherans. The rupture seemed irremediable
+when the assembly of Poissy recognized the order of the Jesuits, which
+the French church had held in suspicion since its foundation. However,
+yielding to the current which was carrying the greater part of the
+nation towards reform, and despite the threats of Philip II. who dreaded
+Calvinistic propaganda in his Netherlands, Michel de l'Hôpital
+promulgated the edict of January 17, 1562--a true charter of
+enfranchisement for the Protestants. But the pressure of events and of
+parties was too strong; the policy of toleration which had miscarried at
+the council of Trent had no chance of success in France.
+
+
+  Character of the religious wars.
+
+The triumvirate's relations with Spain and Rome were very close; they
+had complete ascendancy over the king and over Catherine; and now the
+massacre of two hundred Protestants at Vassy on the 1st of March 1562
+made the cup overflow. The duke of Guise had either ordered this, or
+allowed it to take place, on his return from an interview with the duke
+of Württemberg at Zabern, where he had once more demanded the help of
+his Lutheran neighbours against the Calvinists; and the Catholics having
+celebrated this as a victory the signal was given for the commencement
+of religious wars. When these eight fratricidal wars first began,
+Protestants and Catholics rivalled one another in respect for royal
+authority; only they wished to become its masters so as to get the upper
+hand themselves. But in course of time, as the struggle became
+embittered, Catholicism itself grew revolutionary; and this twofold
+fanaticism, Catholic and Protestant, even more than the ambition of the
+leaders, made the war a ferocious one from the very first. Beginning
+with surprise attacks, if these failed, the struggle was continued by
+means of sieges and by terrible exploits like those of the Catholic
+Montluc and the Protestant des Adrets in the south of France. Neither of
+these two parties was strong enough to crush the other, owing to the
+apathy and continual desertions of the gentlemen-cavaliers who formed
+the élite of the Protestant army and the insufficient numbers of the
+Catholic forces. Allies from outside were therefore called in, and this
+it was that gave a European character to these wars of religion; the two
+parties were parties of foreigners, the Protestants being supported by
+German _Landsknechts_ and Elizabeth of England's cavalry, and the royal
+army by Italian, Swiss or Spanish auxiliaries. It was no longer
+patriotism but religion that distinguished the two camps. There were
+three principal theatres of war: in the north Normandy and the valley of
+the Loire, where Orleans, the general centre of reform, ensured
+communications between the south and Germany; in the south-west Gascony
+and Guienne; in the south-east Lyonnais and Vivarais.
+
+
+  First religious war.
+
+In the first war, which lasted for a year (1562-1563), the triumvirs
+wished to secure Orleans, previously isolated. The threat of an English
+landing decided them to lay siege to Rouen, and it was taken by assault;
+but this cost the life of the versatile Antoine de Bourbon. On the 19th
+of December 1562 the duke of Guise barred the way to Dreux against the
+German reinforcements of d'Andelot, who after having threatened Paris
+were marching to join forces with the English troops for whom Coligny
+and Condé had paid by the cession of Havre. The death of marshal de St
+André, and the capture of the constable de Montmorency and of Condé,
+which marked this indecisive battle, left Coligny and Guise face to
+face. The latter's success was of brief duration; for on the 18th of
+February 1563 Poltrot de Méré assassinated him before Orleans, which he
+was trying to take once and for all. Catherine, relieved by the loss of
+an inconvenient preceptor, and by the disappearance of the other
+leaders, became mistress of the Catholic party, of whose strength and
+popularity she had now had proof, and her idea was to make peace at once
+on the best terms possible. The egoism of Condé, who got himself made
+lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and bargained for freedom of worship
+for the Protestant nobility only, compromised the future of both his
+church and his party, though rendering possible the peace of Amboise,
+concluded the 19th of March 1563. All now set off together to recapture
+Havre from the English.
+
+
+  Peace of Amboise (1563).
+
+
+  Second civil war.
+
+  Peace of Longjumeau.
+
+The peace, however, satisfied no one; neither Catholics (because of the
+rupture of religious unity) nor the parlements; the pope, the emperor
+and king of Spain alike protested against it. Nor yet did it satisfy the
+Protestants, who considered its concessions insufficient, above all for
+the people. It was, however, the maximum of tolerance possible just
+then, and had to be reverted to; Catherine and Charles IX. soon saw that
+the times were not ripe for a third party, and that to enforce real
+toleration would require an absolute power which they did not possess.
+After three years the Guises reopened hostilities against Coligny, whom
+they accused of having plotted the murder of their chief; while the
+Catholics, egged on by the Spaniards, rose against the Protestants, who
+had been made uneasy by an interview between Catherine and her daughter
+Elizabeth, wife of Philip II. of Spain, at Bayonne, and by the duke of
+Alva's persecutions of the reformed church of the Netherlands--a
+daughter-church of Geneva, like their own. The second civil war began
+like the first with a frustrated attempt to kidnap the king, at the
+castle of Montceaux, near Meaux, in September 1567; and with a siege of
+Paris, the general centre of Catholicism, in the course of which the
+constable de Montmorency was killed at Saint-Denis. Condé, with the
+men-at-arms of John Casimir, son of the Count Palatine, tried to starve
+out the capital; but once more the defection of the nobles obliged him
+to sign a treaty of peace at Longjumeau on the 23rd of March 1568, by
+which the conditions of Amboise were re-established. After the attempt
+at Montceaux the Protestants had to be contented with Charles IX.'s
+word.
+
+
+  Third war.
+
+  Peace of St Germain (1570).
+
+This peace was not of long duration. The fall of Michel de l'Hôpital,
+who had so often guaranteed the loyalty of the Huguenots, ruined the
+moderate party (May 1568). Catholic propaganda, revived by the monks and
+the Jesuits, and backed by the armed confraternities and by Catherine's
+favourite son, the duke of Anjou, now entrusted with a prominent part by
+the cardinal of Lorraine; Catherine's complicity in the duke of Alva's
+terrible persecution in the Netherlands; and her attempt to capture
+Coligny and Condé at Noyers all combined to cause a fresh outbreak of
+hostilities in the west. Thanks to Tavannes, the duke of Anjou gained
+easy victories at Jarnac over the prince of Condé, who was killed, and
+at Moncontour over Coligny, who was wounded (March-October 1569); but
+these successes were rendered fruitless by the jealousy of Charles IX.
+Allowing the queen of Navarre to shut herself up in La Rochelle, the
+citadel of the reformers, and the king to loiter over the siege of Saint
+Jean d'Angély, Coligny pushed boldly forward towards Paris and, having
+reached Burgundy, defeated the royal army at Arnay-le-duc. Catherine had
+exhausted all her resources; and having failed in her project of
+remarrying Philip II. to one of her daughters, and of betrothing Charles
+IX. to the eldest of the Austrian archduchesses, exasperated also by the
+presumption of the Lorraine family, who aspired to the marriage of their
+nephew with Charles IX.'s sister, she signed the peace of St Germain on
+the 8th of August 1570. This was the culminating point of Protestant
+liberty; for Coligny exacted and obtained, first, liberty of conscience
+and of worship, and then, as a guarantee of the king's word, four
+fortified places: La Rochelle, a key to the sea; La Charité, in the
+centre; Cognac and Montauban in the south.
+
+
+  Coligny and the Netherlands.
+
+  St Bartholomew, August 24, 1572.
+
+The Guises set aside, Coligny, supported as he was by Jeanne d'Albret,
+queen of Navarre, now received all Charles IX.'s favour. Catherine de'
+Medici, an inveterate matchmaker, and also uneasy at Philip II.'s
+increasing power, made advances to Jeanne, proposing to marry her own
+daughter, Marguerite de Valois, to Jeanne's son, Henry of Navarre, now
+chief of the Huguenot party. Coligny was a Protestant, but he was a
+Frenchman before all; and wishing to reconcile all parties in a national
+struggle, he "trumpeted war" (_cornait la guerre_) against Spain in the
+Netherlands--despite the lukewarmness of Elizabeth of England and the
+Germans, and despite the counter-intrigues of the pope and of Venice. He
+succeeded in getting French troops sent to the Netherlands, but they
+suffered defeat. None the less Charles IX. still seemed to see only
+through the eyes of Coligny; till Catherine, fearing to be supplanted by
+the latter, dreading the results of the threatened war with Spain, and
+egged on by a crowd of Italian adventurers in the pay of Spain--men like
+Gondi and Birague, reared like herself in the political theories and
+customs of their native land--saw no hope but in the assassination of
+this rival in her son's esteem. A murderous attack upon Coligny, who had
+opposed the candidature of Catherine's favourite son, the duke of Anjou,
+for the throne of Poland, having only succeeded in wounding him and in
+exciting the Calvinist leaders, who were congregated in Paris for the
+occasion of Marguerite de Valois' marriage with the king of Navarre,
+Catherine and the Guises resolved together to put them all to death.
+There followed the wholesale massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, in Paris
+and in the provinces; a natural consequence of public and private
+hatreds which had poisoned the entire social organism. This massacre had
+the effect of preventing the expedition into Flanders, and destroying
+Francis I.'s policy of alliance with the Protestants against the house
+of Austria.
+
+
+  The party of the politiques.
+
+  Fourth War. Edict of Boulogne (1573).
+
+Catherine de' Medici soon perceived that the massacre of St Bartholomew
+had settled nothing. It had, it is true, dealt a blow to Calvinism just
+when, owing to the reforms of the council of Trent, the religious ground
+had been crumbling beneath it. Moreover, within the party itself a gulf
+had been widening between the pastors, supported by the Protestant
+democracy and the political nobles. The reformers had now no leaders,
+and their situation seemed as perilous as that of their co-religionists
+in the Netherlands; while the sieges of La Rochelle and Leiden, the
+enforced exile of the prince of Orange, and the conversion under pain of
+death of Henry of Navarre and the prince of Condé, made the common
+danger more obvious. Salvation came from the very excess of the
+repressive measures. A third party was once more formed, composed of
+moderates from the two camps, and it was recruited quite as much by
+jealousy of the Guises and by ambition as by horror at the massacres.
+There were the friends of the Montmorency party--Damville at their head;
+Coligny's relations; the king of Navarre; Condé; and a prince of the
+blood, Catherine de' Medici's third son, the duke of Alençon, tired of
+being kept in the background. This party took shape at the end of the
+fourth war, followed by the edict of Boulogne (1573), forced from
+Charles IX. when the Catholics were deprived of their leader by the
+election of his brother, the duke of Anjou, as king of Poland. A year
+later the latter succeeded his brother on the throne of France as Henry
+III. This meant a new lease of power for the queen-mother.
+
+
+  Fifth War.
+
+  Henry III. (1574-1589).
+
+  Peace of Monsieur (1576).
+
+The politiques, as the supporters of religious tolerance and an
+energetic repression of faction were called, offered their alliance to
+the Huguenots, but these, having formed themselves, by means of the
+Protestant Union, into a sort of republic within the kingdom, hesitated
+to accept. It is, however, easy to bring about an understanding between
+people in whom religious fury has been extinguished either by patriotism
+or by ambition, like that of the duke of Alençon, who had now escaped
+from the Louvre where he had been confined on account of his intrigues.
+The compact was concluded at Millau; Condé becoming a Protestant once
+more in order to treat with Damville, Montmorency's brother. Henry of
+Navarre escaped from Paris. The new king, Henry III., vacillating and
+vicious, and Catherine herself, eager for war as she was, had no means
+of separating the Protestants and the _politiques_. Despite the victory
+of Guise at Dormans, the agreement between the duke of Alençon and John
+Casimir's German army obliged the royal party to grant all that the
+allied forces demanded of them in the "peace of Monsieur," signed at
+Beaulieu on the 6th of May 1576, the duke of Alençon receiving the
+appanage of Anjou, Touraine and Berry, the king of Navarre Guienne, and
+Condé Picardy, while the Protestants were granted freedom of worship in
+all parts of the kingdom except Paris, the rehabilitation of Coligny and
+the other victims of St Bartholomew, their fortified towns, and an equal
+number of seats in the courts of the parlements.
+
+
+  The Catholic League.
+
+This was going too fast; and in consequence of a reaction against this
+too liberal edict a fourth party made its appearance, that of the
+Catholic League, under the Guises--Henry le Balafré, duke of Guise, and
+his two brothers, Charles, duke of Mayenne, and Louis, archbishop of
+Reims and cardinal. With the object of destroying Calvinism by effective
+opposition, they imitated the Protestant organization of provincial
+associations, drawing their chief supporters from the upper middle class
+and the lesser nobility. It was not at first a demagogy maddened by the
+preaching of the irreconcilable clergy of Paris, but a union of the more
+honest and prudent classes of the nation in order to combat heresy.
+Despite the immorality and impotence of Henry III. and the Protestantism
+of Henry of Navarre, this party talked of re-establishing the authority
+of the king; but in reality it inclined more to the Guises, martyrs in
+the good cause, who were supported by Philip II. of Spain and Pope
+Gregory XIII. A sort of popular government was thus established to
+counteract the incapacity of royalty, and it was in the name of the
+imperilled rights of the people that, from the States of Blois onward,
+this Holy League demanded the re-establishment of Catholic unity, and
+set the religious right of the nation in opposition to the divine right
+of incapable or evil-doing kings (1576).
+
+
+  The States of Blois (1576).
+
+[Sidenote: Sixth War and peace of Bergerac (1577). Seventh War and peace
+of Fleix (1580).]
+
+In order to oust his rival Henry of Guise, Henry III. made a desperate
+effort to outbid him in the eyes of the more extreme Catholics, and by
+declaring himself head of the League degraded himself into a party
+leader. The League, furious at this stroke of policy, tried to impose a
+council of thirty-six advisers upon the king. But the deputies of the
+third estate did not support the other two orders, and the latter in
+their turn refused the king money for making war on the heretics,
+desiring, they said, not war but the destruction of heresy. This would
+have reduced Henry III. to impotence; fortunately for him, however, the
+break of the Huguenots with the "Malcontents," and the divisions in the
+court of Navarre and in the various parties at La Rochelle, allowed
+Henry III., after two little wars in the south west, during which
+fighting gradually degenerated into brigandage, to sign terms of peace
+at Bergerac (1577), which much diminished the concessions made in the
+edict of Beaulieu. This peace was confirmed three years after by that of
+Fleix. The suppression of both the leagues was stipulated for (1580). It
+remained, however, a question whether the Holy League would submit to
+this.
+
+
+  Union between the Guises and Philip II.
+
+The death of the duke of Anjou after his mad endeavour to establish
+himself in the Netherlands (1584), and the accession of Henry of
+Navarre, heir to the effeminate Henry III., reversed the situations of
+the two parties: the Protestants again became supporters of the
+principle of heredity and divine right; the Catholics appealed to right
+of election and the sovereignty of the people. Could the crown of the
+eldest daughter of the Church be allowed to devolve upon a relapsed
+heretic? Such was the doctrine officially preached in pulpit and
+pamphlet. But between Philip II. on the one hand--now master of Portugal
+and delivered from William of Orange, involved in strife with the
+English Protestants, and desirous of avenging the injuries inflicted
+upon him by the Valois in the Netherlands--and the Guises on the other
+hand, whose cousin Mary Stuart was a prisoner of Queen Elizabeth, there
+was a common interest in supporting one another and pressing things
+forward. A definite agreement was made between them at Joinville
+(December 31, 1584), the religious and popular pretext being the danger
+of leaving the kingdom to the king of Navarre, and the ostensible end
+to secure the succession to a Catholic prince, the old Cardinal de
+Bourbon, an ambitious and violent man of mean intelligence; while the
+secret aim was to secure the crown for the Guises, who had already
+attempted to fabricate for themselves a genealogy tracing their descent
+from Charlemagne. In the meantime Philip II., being rid of Don John of
+Austria, whose ambition he dreaded, was to crush the Protestants of
+England and the Netherlands; and the double result of the compact at
+Joinville was to allow French politics to be controlled by Spain, and to
+transform the wars of religion into a purely political quarrel.
+
+
+  The committee of Sixteen at Paris.
+
+  Eighth war of the three Henries.
+
+The pretensions of the Guises were, in fact, soon manifested in the
+declaration of Péronne (March 30, 1585) against the foul court of the
+Valois; they were again manifested in a furious agitation, fomented by
+the secret council of the League at Paris, which favoured the Guises,
+and which now worked on the people through their terror of Protestant
+retaliations and the Church's peril. Incited by Philip II., who wished
+to see him earning his pension of 600,000 golden crowns, Henry of Guise
+began the war in the end of April, and in a few days the whole kingdom
+was on fire. The situation was awkward for Henry III., who had not the
+courage to ask Queen Elizabeth for the soldiers and money that he
+lacked. The crafty king of Navarre being unwilling to alienate the
+Protestants save by an apostasy profitable to himself, Henry III., by
+the treaty of Nemours (July 7, 1585), granted everything to the head of
+the League in order to save his crown. By a stroke of the pen he
+suppressed Protestantism, while Pope Sixtus V., who had at first been
+unfavourable to the treaty of Joinville as a purely political act,
+though he eventually yielded to the solicitations of the League,
+excommunicated the two Bourbons, Henry and Condé. But the duke of
+Guise's audacity did not make Henry III. forget his desire for
+vengeance. He hoped to ruin him by attaching him to his cause. His
+favourite Joyeuse was to defeat the king of Navarre, whose forces were
+very weak, while Guise was to deal with the strong reinforcement of
+Germans that Elizabeth was sending to Henry of Navarre. Exactly the
+contrary happened. By the defeat of Joyeuse at Coutras Henry III. found
+himself wounded on his strongest side; and by Henry of Guise's successes
+at Vimory and Auneau the Germans, who should have been his best
+auxiliaries against the League, were crushed (October-November 1587).
+
+
+  Day of the Barricades.
+
+  Assassination of the Guises at the second states-general of Blois.
+
+The League now thought they had no longer anything to fear. Despite the
+king's hostility the duke of Guise came to Paris, urged thereto by
+Philip II., who wanted to occupy Paris and be master of the Channel
+coasts whilst he launched his invincible Armada to avenge the death of
+Mary Stuart in 1587. On the Day of the Barricades (May 12, 1588) Henry
+III. was besieged in the Louvre by the populace in revolt; but his rival
+dared not go so far as to depose the king, and appeased the tumult. The
+king, having succeeded in taking refuge at Chartres, ended, however, by
+granting him in the Act of Union all that he had refused in face of the
+barricades--the post of lieutenant-general of the kingdom and the
+proscription of Protestantism. At the second assembly of the states of
+Blois, called together on account of the need for money (1588), all of
+Henry III.'s enemies who were elected showed themselves even bolder than
+in 1576 in claiming the control of the financial administration of the
+kingdom; but the destruction of the Armada gave Henry III., already
+exasperated by the insults he had received, new vigour. He had the old
+Cardinal de Bourbon imprisoned, and Henry of Guise and his brother the
+cardinal assassinated (December 23, 1588). On the 5th of January, 1589,
+died his mother, Catherine de'Medici, the astute Florentine.
+
+
+  Assassination of Henry III.
+
+"Now I am king!" cried Henry III. But Paris being dominated by the duke
+of Mayenne, who had escaped assassination, and by the council of
+"Sixteen," the chiefs of the League, most of the provinces replied by
+open revolt, and Henry III. had no alternative but an alliance with
+Henry of Navarre. Thanks to this he was on the point of seizing Paris,
+when in his turn he was assassinated on the 1st of August 1589 by a
+Jacobin monk, Jacques Clément; with his dying breath he designated the
+king of Navarre as his successor.
+
+
+  The Bourbons.
+
+Between the popular League and the menace of the Protestants it was a
+question whether the new monarch was to be powerless in his turn. Henry
+IV. had almost the whole of his kingdom to conquer. The Cardinal de
+Bourbon, king according to the League and proclaimed under the title of
+Charles X., could count upon the Holy League itself, upon the Spaniards
+of the Netherlands, and upon the pope. Henry IV. was only supported by a
+certain number of the Calvinists and by the Catholic minority of the
+_Politiques_, who, however, gradually induced the rest of the nation to
+rally round the only legitimate prince. The nation wished for the
+establishment of internal unity through religious tolerance and the
+extinction of private organizations; it looked for the extension of
+France's external power through the abasement of the house of Spain,
+protection of the Protestants in the Netherlands and Germany, and
+independence of Rome. Henry IV., moreover, was forced to take an oath at
+the camp of Saint Cloud to associate the nation in the affairs of the
+kingdom by means of the states-general. These three conditions were
+interdependent; and Henry IV., with his persuasive manners, his frank
+and charming character, and his personal valour, seemed capable of
+keeping them all three.
+
+
+  Henry IV. (1589-1610).
+
+  States-general of 1592.
+
+The first thing for this soldier-king to do was to conquer his kingdom
+and maintain its unity. He did not waste time by withdrawing towards the
+south; he kept in the neighbourhood of Paris, on the banks of the Seine,
+within reach of help from Elizabeth; and twice--at Arques and at Ivry
+(1589-1590)--he vanquished the duke of Mayenne, lieutenant-general of
+the League. But after having tried to seize Paris (as later Rouen) by a
+_coup-de-main_, he was obliged to raise the siege in view of
+reinforcements sent to Mayenne by the duke of Parma. Pope Gregory XIV.,
+an enthusiastic supporter of the League and a strong adherent of Spain,
+having succeeded Sixtus V., who had been very lukewarm towards the
+League, made Henry IV.'s position still more serious just at the moment
+when, the old Cardinal de Bourbon having died, Philip II. wanted to be
+declared the protector of the kingdom in order that he might dismember
+it, and when Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, a grandson of Francis I., and
+Charles III., duke of Lorraine, a son-in-law of Henry II., were both of
+them claiming the crown. Fortunately, however, the Sixteen had disgusted
+the upper bourgeoisie by their demagogic airs; while their open alliance
+with Philip II., and their acceptance of a Spanish garrison in Paris had
+offended the patriotism of the _Politiques_ or moderate members of the
+League. Mayenne, who oscillated between Philip II. and Henry IV., was
+himself obliged to break up and subdue this party of fanatics and
+theologians (December 1591). This game of see-saw between the
+_Politiques_ and the League furthered his secret ambition, but also the
+dissolution of the kingdom; and the pressure of public opinion, which
+desired an effective monarchy, put an end to this temporizing policy and
+caused the convocation of the states-general in Paris (December 1592).
+Philip II., through the duke of Feria's instrumentality, demanded the
+throne for his daughter Isabella, grand-daughter of Henry II. through
+her mother. But who was to be her husband? The archduke Ernest of
+Austria, Guise or Mayenne? The parlement cut short these bargainings by
+condemning all ultramontane pretensions and Spanish intrigues. The
+unpopularity of Spain, patriotism, the greater predominance of national
+questions in public opinion, and weariness of both religious disputation
+and indecisive warfare, all these sentiments were expressed in the wise
+and clever pamphlet entitled the _Satire Ménippée_. What had been a slow
+movement between 1585 and 1592 was quickened by Henry IV.'s abjuration
+of Protestantism at Saint-Denis on the 23rd of July 1593.
+
+
+  Abjuration of Henry IV., July 23, 1593.
+
+The coronation of the king at Chartres in February 1594 completed the
+rout of the League. The parlement of Paris declared against Mayenne, who
+was simply the mouthpiece of Spain, and Brissac, the governor,
+surrendered the capital to the king. The example of Paris and Henry
+IV.'s clemency rallied round him all prudent Catholics, like Villeroy
+and Jeannin, anxious for national unity; but he had to buy over the
+adherents of the League, who sold him his own kingdom for sixty million
+francs. The pontifical absolution of September 17, 1595, finally
+stultified the League, which had been again betrayed by the unsuccessful
+plot of Jean Chastel, the Jesuit's pupil.
+
+
+  Peace of Vervins.
+
+Nothing was now left but to expel the Spaniards, who under cover of
+religion had worked for their own interests alone. Despite the brilliant
+charge of Fontaine-Française in Burgundy (June 5, 1595), and the
+submission of the heads of the League, Guise, Mayenne, Joyeuse, and
+Mercoeur, the years 1595-1597 were not fortunate for Henry IV.'s armies.
+Indignant at his conversion, Elizabeth, the Germans, and the Swiss
+Protestants deserted him; while the taking of Amiens by the Spaniards
+compromised for the moment the future both of the king and the country.
+But exhaustion of each other, by which only England and Holland
+profited, brought about the Peace of Vervins. This confirmed the results
+of the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (May 2, 1598), that is to say, the
+decadence of Spanish power, and its inability either to conquer or to
+dismember France.
+
+
+  Edict of Nantes, 1598.
+
+The League, having now no reason for existence, was dissolved; but the
+Protestant party remained very strong, with its political organization
+and the fortified places which the assemblies of Millau, Nîmes and La
+Rochelle (1573-1574) had established in the south and the west. It was a
+republican state within the kingdom, and, being unwilling to break with
+it, Henry IV. came to terms by the edict of Nantes, on the 13th of April
+1598. This was a compromise between the royal government and the
+Huguenot government, the latter giving up the question of public
+worship, which was only authorized where it had existed before 1597 and
+in two towns of each _bailliage_, with the exception of Paris; but it
+secured liberty of conscience throughout the kingdom, state payment for
+its ministers, admission to all employments, and courts composed equally
+of Catholics and Protestants in the parlements. An authorization to hold
+synods and political assemblies, to open schools, and to occupy a
+hundred strong places for eight years at the expense of the king,
+assured to the Protestants not only rights but privileges. In no other
+country did they enjoy so many guarantees against a return of
+persecution. This explains why the edict of Nantes was not registered
+without some difficulty.
+
+
+  Results of the religious wars.
+
+Thus the blood-stained 16th century closed with a promise of religious
+toleration and a dream of international arbitration. This was the end of
+the long tragedy of civil strife and of wars of conquest, mingled with
+the sound of madrigals and psalms and pavanes. It had been the golden
+age of the arquebus and the viol, of sculptors and musicians, of poets
+and humanists, of fratricidal conflicts and of love-songs, of _mignons_
+and martyrs. At the close of this troubled century peace descends upon
+exhausted passions; and amidst the choir of young and ardent voices
+celebrating the national reconciliation, the tocsin no longer sounds its
+sinister and persistent bass. Despite the leagues of either faith,
+religious liberty was now confirmed by the more free and generous spirit
+of Henry IV.
+
+Why was this king at once so easygoing and so capricious? Why, again,
+had the effort and authority of feudal and popular resistance been
+squandered in the follies of the League and to further the ambitions of
+the rebellious Guises? Why had the monarchy been forced to purchase the
+obedience of the upper classes and the provinces with immunities which
+enfeebled it without limiting it? At all events, when the kingdom had
+been reconquered from the Spaniards and religious strife ended, in order
+to fulfil his engagements, Henry IV. need only have associated the
+nation with himself in the work of reconstructing the shattered
+monarchy. But during the atrocious holocausts formidable states had
+grown up around France, observing her and threatening her; and on the
+other hand, as on the morrow of the Hundred Years' War, the lassitude of
+the country, the lack of political feeling on the part of the upper
+classes and their selfishness, led to a fresh abdication of the nation's
+rights. The need of living caused the neglect of that necessity for
+control which had been maintained by the states-general from 1560 to
+1593. And this time, moderation on the part of the monarchy no longer
+made for success. Of the two contrary currents which have continually
+mingled and conflicted throughout the course of French history, that of
+monarchic absolutism and that of aristocratic and democratic liberty,
+the former was now to carry all before it.
+
+
+  The Bourbons. France in 1610.
+
+The kingdom was now issuing from thirty-eight years of civil war. Its
+inhabitants had grown unaccustomed to work; its finances were ruined by
+dishonesty, disorder, and a very heavy foreign debt. The most
+characteristic symptom of this distress was the brigandage carried on
+incessantly from 1598 to 1610. Side by side with this temporary disorder
+there was a more serious administrative disorganization, a habit of no
+longer obeying the king. The harassed population, the municipalities
+which under cover of civil war had resumed the right of self-government,
+and the parlements elated with their social importance and their
+security of position, were not alone in abandoning duty and obedience.
+Two powers faced each other threateningly: the organized and malcontent
+Protestants; and the provincial governors, all great personages
+possessing an armed following, theoretically agents of the king, but
+practically independent. The Montmorencys, the D'Epernons, the Birons,
+the Guises, were accustomed to consider their offices as hereditary
+property. Not that these two powers entered into open revolt against the
+king; but they had adopted the custom of recriminating, of threatening,
+of coming to understandings with the foreign powers, which with some of
+them, like Marshal Biron, the D'Entragues and the duc de Bouillon,
+amounted to conspiracy (1602-1606).
+
+
+  Character of Henry IV.
+
+As to the qualifications of the king: he had had the good fortune not to
+be educated for the throne. Without much learning and sceptical in
+religious matters, he had the lively intelligence of the Gascon, more
+subtle than profound, more brilliant than steady. Married to a woman of
+loose morals, and afterwards to a devout Italian, he was gross and
+vulgar in his appetites and pleasures. He had retained all the habits of
+a country gentleman of his native Béarn, careless, familiar, boastful,
+thrifty, cunning, combined since his sojourn at the court of the Valois
+with a taint of corruption. He worked little but rapidly, with none of
+the bureaucratic pedantry of a Philip II. cloistered in the dark towers
+of the Escurial. Essentially a man of action and a soldier, he preserved
+his tone of command after he had reached the throne, the inflexibility
+of the military chief, the conviction of his absolute right to be
+master. Power quickly intoxicated him, and his monarchy was therefore
+anything but parliamentary. His personality was everything, institutions
+nothing. If, at the gathering of the notables at Rouen in 1596, Henry
+IV. spoke of putting himself in tutelage, that was but preliminary to a
+demand for money. The states-general, called together ten times in the
+16th century, and at the death of Henry III. under promise of
+convocation, were never assembled. To put his absolute right beyond all
+control he based it upon religion, and to this sceptic disobedience
+became a heresy. He tried to make the clergy into an instrument of
+government by recalling the Jesuits, who had been driven away in 1594,
+partly from fear of their regicides, partly because they have always
+been the best teachers of servitude; and he gave the youth of the nation
+into the hands of this cosmopolitan and ultramontane clerical order. His
+government was personal, not through departments; he retained the old
+council though reducing its members; and his ministers, taken from every
+party, were never--not even Sully--anything more than mere clerks,
+without independent position, mere instruments of his good pleasure.
+Fortunately this was not always capricious.
+
+
+  The achievements of Henry IV.
+
+Henry IV. soon realized that his most urgent duty was to resuscitate the
+corpse of France. Pilfering was suppressed, and the revolts of the
+malcontents--the _Gauthiers_ of Normandy, the _Croquants_ and
+_Tard-avisés_ of Périgord and Limousin--were quelled, adroitly at first,
+and later with a sterner hand. He then provided for the security of the
+country districts, and reduced the taxes on the peasants, the most
+efficacious means of making them productive and able to pay. Inspired by
+Barthélemy de Laffémas (1545-1612), controller-general of commerce, and
+by Olivier de Serres (1539-1619),[31] Henry IV. encouraged the culture
+of silk, though without much result, had orchards planted and marshes
+drained; while though he permitted the free circulation of wine and
+corn, this depended on the harvests. But the twofold effect of civil
+war--the ruin of the farmers and the scarcity and high price of rural
+labour--was only reduced arbitrarily and by fits and starts.
+
+
+  Industrial policy of Henry IV.
+
+Despite the influence of Sully, a convinced agrarian because of his
+horror of luxury and love of economy, Henry IV. likewise attempted
+amelioration in the towns, where the state of affairs was even worse
+than in the country. But the edict of 1597, far from inaugurating
+individual liberty, was but a fresh edition of that of 1581, a second
+preface to the legislation of Colbert, and in other ways no better
+respected than the first. As for the new features, the syndical courts
+proposed by Laffémas, they were not even put into practice. Various
+industries, nevertheless, concurrent with those of England, Spain and
+Italy, were created or reorganized: silk-weaving, printing, tapestry,
+&c. Sully at least provided renascent manufacture with the roads
+necessary for communication and planted them with trees. In external
+commerce Laffémas and Henry IV. were equally the precursors of Colbert,
+freeing raw material and prohibiting the import of products similar to
+those manufactured within the kingdom. Without regaining that
+preponderance in the Levant which had been secured after the victory of
+Lepanto and before the civil wars, Marseilles still took an honourable
+place there, confirmed by the renewal in 1604 of the capitulations of
+Francis I. with the sultan. Finally, the system of commercial companies,
+antipathetic to the French bourgeoisie, was for the first time practised
+on a grand scale; but Sully never understood that movement of colonial
+expansion, begun by Henry II. in Brazil and continued in Canada by
+Champlain, which had so marvellously enlarged the European horizon. His
+point of view was altogether more limited than that of Henry IV.; and he
+did not foresee, like Elizabeth, that the future would belong to the
+peoples whose national energy took that line of action.
+
+
+  The work of Sully.
+
+His sphere was essentially the superintendence of finance, to which he
+brought the same enthusiasm that he had shown in fighting the League.
+Vain and imaginative, his reputation was enormously enhanced by his
+"Économies royales"; he was no innovator, and being a true
+representative of the nation at that period, like it he was but lukewarm
+towards reform, accepting it always against the grain. He was not a
+financier of genius; but he administered the public moneys with the same
+probity and exactitude which he used in managing his own, retrieving
+alienated property, straightening accounts, balancing expenditure and
+receipts, and amassing a reserve in the Bastille. He did not reform the
+system of _aides_ and _tailles_ established by Louis XI. in 1482; but by
+charging much upon indirect taxation, and slightly lessening the burden
+of direct taxation, he avoided an appeal to the states-general and gave
+an illusion of relief.
+
+
+  Criticism of Henry IV.'s achievement.
+
+Nevertheless, economic disasters, political circumstances and the
+personal government of Henry IV. (precursor in this also of Louis XIV.)
+rendered his task impossible or fatal. The nobility remained in debt and
+disaffected; and the clergy, more remarkable for wealth and breeding
+than for virtues, were won over to the ultramontane ideas of the
+triumphant Jesuits. The rich bourgeoisie began more and more to
+monopolize the magistracy; and though the country-people were somewhat
+relieved from the burden which had been crushing them, the
+working-classes remained impoverished, owing to the increase of prices
+which followed at a distance the rise of wages. Moreover, under
+insinuating and crafty pretexts, Henry IV. undermined as far as he could
+the right of control by the states-general, the right of remonstrance by
+the parlements, and the communal franchises, while ensuring the
+impoverishment of the municipalities by his fiscal methods. Arbitrary
+taxation, scandalous intervention in elections, forced candidatures,
+confusion in their financial administration, bankruptcy and revolt on
+the part of the tenants: all formed an anticipation of the personal rule
+of Richelieu and Louis XIV.
+
+
+  Edict of La Paulette.
+
+Thus Henry IV. evinced very great activity in restoring order and very
+great poverty of invention in his methods. His sole original creation,
+the edict of La Paulette in 1604, was disastrous. In consideration of an
+annual payment of one-sixtieth of the salary, it made hereditary offices
+which had hitherto been held only for life; and the millions which it
+daily poured into the royal exchequer removed the necessity for seeking
+more regular and better distributed resources. Political liberty and
+social justice were equally the losers by this extreme financial
+measure, which paved the way for a catastrophe.
+
+
+  Foreign policy of Henry IV.
+
+In foreign affairs the abasement of the house of Austria remained for
+Henry IV., as it had been for Francis I. and Henry II., a political
+necessity, while under his successors it was to become a mechanical
+obsession. The peace of Vervins had concluded nothing. The difference
+concerning the marquisate of Saluzzo, which the duke of Savoy had seized
+upon in 1588, profiting by Henry III.'s embarrassments, is only worth
+mentioning because the treaty of Lyons (1601) finally dissipated the
+Italian mirage, and because, in exchange for the last of France's
+possessions beyond the Alps, it added to the royal domain the really
+French territory of La Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and the district of Gex.
+The great external affair of the reign was the projected war upon which
+Henry IV. was about to embark when he was assassinated. The "grand
+design" of Sully, the organization of a "Christian Republic" of the
+European nations for the preservation of peace, was but the invention of
+an irresponsible minister, soured by defeat and wishing to impress
+posterity. Henry IV., the least visionary of kings, was between 1598 and
+1610 really hesitating between two great contradictory political
+schemes: the war clamoured for by the Protestants, politicians like
+Sully, and the nobility; and the Spanish alliance, to be cemented by
+marriages, and preached by the ultramontane Spanish camarilla formed by
+the queen, Père Coton, the king's confessor, the minister Villeroy, and
+Ubaldini, the papal nuncio. Selfish and suspicious, Henry IV.
+consistently played this double game of policy in conjunction with
+president Jeannin. By his alliance with the Grisons (1603) he guaranteed
+the integrity of the Valtellina, the natural approach to Lombardy for
+the imperial forces; and by his intimate union with Geneva he controlled
+the routes by which the Spaniards could reach their hereditary
+possessions in Franche-Comté and the Low Countries from Italy. But
+having defeated the duke of Savoy he had no hesitation in making sure of
+him by a marriage; though the Swiss might have misunderstood the treaty
+of Brusol (1610) by which he gave one of his daughters to the grandson
+of Philip II. On the other hand he astonished the Protestant world by
+the imprudence of his mediation between Spain and the rebellious United
+Provinces (1609). When the succession of Cleves and of Jülich, so long
+expected and already discounted by the treaty of Halle (1610), was
+opened up in Germany, the great war was largely due to an access of
+senile passion for the charms of the princesse de Condé. The stroke of
+Ravaillac's knife caused a timely descent of the curtain upon this new
+and tragi-comic Trojan War. Thus, here as elsewhere, we see a
+vacillating hand-to-mouth policy, at the mercy of a passion for power or
+for sensual gratification. The _Cornette blanche_ of Arques, the _Poule
+au pôt_ of the peasant, successes as a lover and a dashing spirit, have
+combined to surround Henry IV. with a halo of romance not justified by
+fact.
+
+
+  The regency of Marie de'Medici.
+
+The extreme instability of monarchical government showed itself afresh
+after Henry IV.'s death. The reign of Louis XIII., a perpetual regency
+by women, priests, and favourites, was indeed a curious prelude to the
+grand age of the French monarchy. The eldest son of Henry IV. being a
+minor, Marie de' Medici induced the parlement to invest her with the
+regency, thanks to Villeroy and contrary to the last will of Henry IV.
+This second Florentine, at once jealous of power and incapable of
+exercising it, bore little resemblance to her predecessor. Light-minded,
+haughty, apathetic and cold-hearted, she took a sort of passionate
+delight in changing Henry IV.'s whole system of government. Who would
+support her in this? On one side were the former ministers, Sillery and
+president Jeannin, ex-leaguers but loyalists, no lovers of Spain and
+still less of Germany; on the other the princes of the blood and the
+great nobles, Condé, Guise, Mayenne and Nevers, apparently still much
+more faithful to French ideas, but in reality convinced that the days of
+kings were over and that their own had arrived. Instead of weakening
+this aristocratic agitation by the see-saw policy of Catherine de'
+Medici, Marie could invent no other device than to despoil the royal
+treasure by distributing places and money to the chiefs of both parties.
+The savings all expended and Sully fallen into disgrace, she lost her
+influence and became the almost unconscious instrument of an ambitious
+man of low birth, the Florentine Concini, who was to drag her down with
+him in his fall; petty shifts became thenceforward the order of the day.
+
+
+  Louis XIII.(1610-1643).
+
+Thus Villeroy thought fit to add still further to the price already paid
+to triumphant Madrid and Vienna by disbanding the army, breaking the
+treaty of Brusol, and abandoning the Protestant princes beyond the Rhine
+and the trans-Pyrenean Moriscos. France joined hands with Spain in the
+marriages of Louis XIII. with Anne of Austria and Princess Elizabeth
+with the son of Philip III., and the Spanish ambassador was admitted to
+the secret council of the queen. To soothe the irritation of England the
+duc de Bouillon was sent to London to offer the hand of the king's
+sister to the prince of Wales. Meanwhile, however, still more was ceded
+to the princes than to the kings; and after a pretence of drawing the
+sword against the prince of Condé, rebellious through jealousy of the
+Italian surroundings of the queen-mother, recourse was had to the purse.
+The peace of Sainte Menehould, four years after the death of Henry IV.,
+was a virtual abdication of the monarchy (May 1614); it was time for a
+move in the other direction. Villeroy inspired the regent with the idea
+of an armed expedition, accompanied by the little king, into the West.
+The convocation of the states-general was about to take place, wrung, as
+in all minorities, from the royal weakness--this time by Condé; so the
+elections were influenced in the monarchist interest. The king's
+majority, solemnly proclaimed on the 28th of October 1614, further
+strengthened the throne; while owing to the bungling of the third
+estate, who did not contrive to gain the support of the clergy and the
+nobility by some sort of concessions, the states-general, the last until
+1789, proved like the others a mere historic episode, an impotent and
+inorganic expedient. In vain Condé tried to play with the parlement of
+Paris the same game as with the states-general, in a sort of
+anticipation of the Fronde. Villeroy demurred; and the parlement, having
+illegally assumed a political rôle, broke with Condé and effected a
+reconciliation with the court. After this double victory Marie de'
+Medici could at last undertake the famous journey to Bordeaux and
+consummate the Spanish marriages. In order not to countenance by his
+presence an act which had been the pretext for his opposition, Condé
+rebelled once more in August 1615; but he was again pacified by the
+governorships and pensions of the peace of Loudun (May 1616).
+
+
+  Concini, Marshal d'Ancre.
+
+But Villeroy and the other ministers knew not how to reap the full
+advantage of their victory. They had but one desire, to put themselves
+on a good footing again with Condé, instead of applying themselves
+honestly to the service of the king. The "marshals," Concini and his
+wife Leonora Galigai, more influential with the queen and more exacting
+than ever, by dint of clever intrigues forced the ministers to retire
+one after another; and with the last of Henry IV.'s "greybeards"
+vanished also all the pecuniary reserves left. Concini surrounded
+himself with new men, insignificant persons ready to do his bidding,
+such as Barbin or Mangot, while in the background was Richelieu, bishop
+of Luçon. Condé now began intrigues with the princes whom he had
+previously betrayed; but his pride dissolved in piteous entreaties when
+Thémines, captain of the guard, arrested him in September 1616. Six
+months later Concini had not even time to protest when another captain,
+Vitry, slew him at the Louvre, under orders from Louis XIII., on the
+24th of April 1617.
+
+Richelieu had appeared behind Marie de' Medici; Albert de Luynes rose
+behind Louis XIII., the neglected child whom he had contrived to amuse.
+"The tavern remained the same, having changed nothing but the bush." De
+Luynes was made a duke and marshal in Concini's place, with no better
+title; while the duc d'Epernon, supported by the queen-mother (now in
+disgrace at Blois), took Condé's place at the head of the opposition.
+The treaties of Angoulême and Angers (1619-1620), negotiated by
+Richelieu, recalled the "unwholesome" treaties of Sainte-Menehould and
+Loudun. The revolt of the Protestants was more serious. Goaded by the
+vigorous revival of militant Catholicism which marked the opening of the
+17th century, de Luynes tried to put a finishing touch to the triumph of
+Catholicism in France, which he had assisted, by abandoning in the
+treaty of Ulm the defence of the small German states against the
+ambition of the ruling house of Austria, and by sacrificing the
+Protestant Grisons to Spain. The re-establishment of Catholic worship in
+Béarn was the pretext for a rising among the Protestants, who had
+remained loyal during these troublous years; and although the military
+organization of French Protestantism, arranged by the assembly of La
+Rochelle, had been checked in 1621, by the defection of most of the
+reformed nobles, like Bouillon and Lesdiguières, de Luynes had to raise
+the disastrous siege of Montauban. Death alone saved him from the
+disgrace suffered by his predecessors (December 15, 1621).
+
+
+  Return of Marie de Medici
+
+From 1621 to 1624 Marie de' Medici, re-established in credit, prosecuted
+her intrigues; and in three years there were three different ministries:
+de Luynes was succeeded by the prince de Condé, whose Montauban was
+found at Montpellier; the Brûlarts succeeded Condé, and having, like de
+Luynes, neglected France's foreign interests, they had to give place to
+La Vieuville; while this latter was arrested in his turn for having
+sacrificed the interests of the English Catholics in the negotiations
+regarding the marriage of Henrietta of France with the prince of Wales.
+All these personages were undistinguished figures beyond whom might be
+discerned the cold clear-cut profile of Marie de' Medici's secretary,
+now a cardinal, who was to take the helm and act as viceroy during
+eighteen years.
+
+
+  Cardinal Richelieu 1624-1642.
+
+Richelieu came into power at a lucky moment. Every one was sick of
+government by deputy; they desired a strong hand and an energetic
+foreign policy, after the defeat of the Czechs at the White Mountain by
+the house of Austria, the Spanish intrigues in the Valtellina, and the
+resumption of war between Spain and Holland. Richelieu contrived to
+raise hope in the minds of all. As president of the clergy at the
+states-general of 1614 he had figured as an adherent of Spain and the
+ultramontane interest; he appeared to be a representative of that
+religious party which was identical with the Spanish party. But he had
+also been put into the ministry by the party of the _Politiques_, who
+had terminated the civil wars, acclaimed Henry IV., applauded the
+Protestant alliance, and by the mouth of Miron, president of the third
+estate, had in 1614 proclaimed its intention to take up the national
+tradition once more. Despite the concessions necessary at the outset to
+the partisans of a Catholic alliance, it was the programme of the
+_Politiques_ that Richelieu adopted and laid down with a master's hand
+in his Political Testament.
+
+
+  Louis XIII. and Richelieu.
+
+To realize it he had to maintain his position. This was very difficult
+with a king who "wished to be governed and yet was impatient at being
+governed." Incapable of applying himself to great affairs, but of sane
+and even acute judgment, Louis XIII. excelled only in a passion for
+detail and for manual pastimes. He realized the superior qualities of
+his minister, though with a lively sense of his own dignity he often
+wished him more discreet and less imperious; he had confidence in him
+but did not love him. Cold-hearted and formal by nature, he had not even
+self-love, detested his wife Anne of Austria--too good a Spaniard--and
+only attached himself fitfully to his favourites, male or female, who
+were naturally jealously suspected by the cardinal. He was accustomed to
+listen to his mother, who detested Richelieu as her ungrateful protégé.
+Neither did he love his brother, Gaston of Orleans, and the feeling was
+mutual; for the latter, remaining for twenty years heir-presumptive to a
+crown which he could neither defend nor seize, posed as the beloved
+prince in all the conspiracies against Richelieu, and issued from them
+each time as a Judas. Add to this that Louis XIII., like Richelieu
+himself, had wretched health, aggravated by the extravagant medicines of
+the day; and it is easy to understand how this pliable disposition which
+offered itself to the yoke caused Richelieu always to fear that his king
+might change his master, and to declare that "the four square feet of
+the king's cabinet had been more difficult for him to conquer than all
+the battlefields of Europe."
+
+Richelieu, therefore, passed his time in safeguarding himself from his
+rivals and in spying upon them; his suspicious nature, rendered still
+more irritable by his painful practice of a dissimulation repugnant to
+his headstrong character, making him fancy himself threatened more than
+was actually the case. He brutally suppressed six great plots, several
+of which were scandalous, and had more than fifty persons executed; and
+he identified himself with the king, sincerely believing that he was
+maintaining the royal authority and not merely his own. He had a
+preference for irregular measures rather than legal prosecutions, and a
+jealousy of all opinions save his own. He maintained his power through
+the fear of torture and of special commissions. It was Louis XIII. whose
+cold decree ordained most of the rigorous sentences, but the stain of
+blood rested on the cardinal's robe and made his reasons of state pass
+for private vengeance. Chalais was beheaded at Nantes in 1626 for having
+upheld Gaston of Orleans in his refusal to wed Mademoiselle de
+Montpensier, and Marshal d'Ornano died at Vincennes for having given him
+bad advice in this matter; while the duellist de Boutteville was put to
+the torture for having braved the edict against duels. The royal family
+itself was not free from his attacks; after the Day of Dupes (1630) he
+allowed the queen-mother to die in exile, and publicly dishonoured the
+king's brother Gaston of Orleans by the publication of his confessions;
+Marshal de Marillac was put to the torture for his ingratitude, and the
+constable de Montmorency for rebellion (1632). The birth of Louis XIV.
+in 1638 confirmed Richelieu in power. However, at the point of death he
+roused himself to order the execution of the king's favourite,
+Cinq-Mars, and his friend de Thou, guilty of treason with Spain (1642).
+
+
+  Financial policy of Richelieu.
+
+Absolute authority was not in itself sufficient; much money was also
+needed. In his state-papers Richelieu has shown that at the outset he
+desired that the Huguenots should share no longer in public affairs,
+that the nobles should cease to behave as rebellious subjects, and the
+powerful provincial governors as suzerains over the lands committed to
+their charge. With his passion for the uniform and the useful on a grand
+scale, he hoped by means of the Code Michaud to put an end to the sale
+of offices, to lighten imposts, to suppress brigandage, to reduce the
+monasteries, &c. To do this it would have been necessary to make peace,
+for it was soon evident that war was incompatible with these reforms. He
+chose war, as did his Spanish rival and contemporary Olivares. War is
+expensive sport; but Richelieu maintained a lofty attitude towards
+finance, disdained figures, and abandoned all petty details to
+subordinate officials like D'Effiat or Bullion. He therefore soon
+reverted to the old and worse measures, including the debasement of
+coinage, and put an extreme tension on all the springs of the financial
+system. The land-tax was doubled and trebled by war, by the pensions of
+the nobles, by an extortion the profits of which Richelieu disdained
+neither for himself nor for his family; and just when the richer and
+more powerful classes had been freed from taxes, causing the wholesale
+oppression of the poorer, these few remaining were jointly and severally
+answerable. Perquisites, offices, forced loans were multiplied to such a
+point that a critic of the times, Guy Patin, facetiously declared that
+duties were to be exacted from the beggars basking in the sun. Richelieu
+went so far as to make poverty systematic and use famine as a means of
+government. This was the price paid for the national victories.
+
+Thus he procured money at all costs, with an extremely crude fiscal
+judgment which ended by exasperating the people; hence numerous
+insurrections of the poverty-stricken; Dijon rose in revolt against the
+_aides_ in 1630, Provence against the tax-officers (_élus_) in 1631,
+Paris and Lyons in 1632, and Bordeaux against the increase of customs in
+1635. In 1636 the _Croquants_ ravaged Limousin, Poitou, Angoumois,
+Gascony and Périgord; in 1639 it needed an army to subdue the
+_Va-nu-pieds_ (bare-feet) in Normandy. Even the _rentiers_ of the
+Hôtel-de-Ville, big and little, usually very peaceable folk, were
+excited by the curtailment of their incomes, and in 1639 and 1642 were
+roused to fury.
+
+
+  Struggle with the Protestants.
+
+Every one had to bend before this harsh genius, who insisted on
+uniformity in obedience. After the feudal vassals, decimated by the wars
+of religion and the executioner's hand, and after the recalcitrant
+taxpayers, the Protestants, in their turn, and by their own fault,
+experienced this. While Richelieu was opposing the designs of the pope
+and of the Spaniards in the Valtellina, while he was arming the duke of
+Savoy and subsidizing Mansfeld in Germany, Henri, duc de Rohan, and his
+brother Benjamin de Rohan, duc de Soubise, the Protestant chiefs, took
+the initiative in a fresh revolt despite the majority of their party
+(1625). This Huguenot rising, in stirring up which Spanish diplomacy had
+its share, was a revolt of discontented and ambitious individuals who
+trusted for success to their compact organization and the ultimate
+assistance of England. Under pressure of this new danger and urged on by
+the Catholic _dévôts_, supported by the influence of Pope Urban VIII.,
+Richelieu concluded with Spain the treaty of Monzon (March 5, 1626), by
+which the interests of his allies Venice, Savoy and the Grisons were
+sacrificed without their being consulted. The Catholic Valtellina, freed
+from the claims of the Protestant Grisons, became an independent state
+under the joint protection of France and Spain; the question of the
+right of passage was left open, to trouble France during the campaigns
+that followed; but the immediate gain, so far as Richelieu was
+concerned, was that his hands were freed to deal with the Huguenots.
+
+Soubise had begun the revolt (January 1625) by seizing Port Blavet in
+Brittany, with the royal squadron that lay there, and in command of the
+ships thus acquired, combined with those of La Rochelle, he ranged the
+western coast, intercepting commerce. In September, however, Montmorency
+succeeded, with a fleet of English and Dutch ships manned by English
+seamen, in defeating Soubise, who took refuge in England. La Rochelle
+was now invested, the Huguenots were hard pressed also on land, and, but
+for the reluctance of the Dutch to allow their ships to be used for such
+a purpose, an end might have been made of the Protestant opposition in
+France; as it was, Richelieu was forced to accept the mediation of
+England and conclude a treaty with the Huguenots (February 1626).
+
+
+  Peace of Alais, 1629.
+
+He was far, however, from forgiving them for their attitude or being
+reconciled to their power. So long as they retained their compact
+organization in France he could undertake no successful action abroad,
+and the treaty was in effect no more than a truce that was badly
+observed. The oppression of the French Protestants was but one of the
+pretexts for the English expedition under James I.'s favourite, the duke
+of Buckingham, to La Rochelle in 1627; and, in the end, this
+intervention of a foreign power compromised their cause. When at last
+the citizens of the great Huguenot stronghold, caught between two
+dangers, chose what seemed to them the least and threw in their lot with
+the English, they definitely proclaimed their attitude as anti-national;
+and when, on the 29th of October 1628, after a heroic resistance, the
+city surrendered to the French king, this was hailed not as a victory
+for Catholicism only, but for France. The taking of La Rochelle was a
+crushing blow to the Huguenots, and the desperate alliance which Rohan,
+entrenched in the Cévennes, entered into with Philip IV. of Spain, could
+not prolong their resistance. The amnesty of Alais, prudent and moderate
+in religious matters, gave back to the Protestants their common rights
+within the body politic. Unfortunately what was an end for Richelieu was
+but a first step for the Catholic party.
+
+
+  Richelieu and the Catholics.
+
+The little Protestant group eliminated, Richelieu next wished to
+establish Catholic religious uniformity; for though in France the
+Catholic Church was the state church, unity did not exist in it. There
+were no fixed principles in the relations between king and church, hence
+incessant conflicts between Gallicans and Ultramontanes, in which
+Richelieu claimed to hold an even balance. Moreover, a Catholic movement
+for religious reform in the Church of France began during the 17th
+century, marked by the creation of seminaries, the foundation of new
+orthodox religious orders, and the organization of public relief by
+Saint Vincent de Paul. Jansenism was the most vigorous contemporary
+effort to renovate not only morals but Church doctrine (see JANSENISM).
+But Richelieu had no love for innovators, and showed this very plainly
+to du Vergier de Hauranne, abbot of Saint Cyran, who was imprisoned at
+Vincennes for the good of Church and State. In affairs of intellect
+dragooning was equally the policy; and, as Corneille learnt to his cost,
+the French Academy was created in 1635 simply to secure in the republic
+of letters the same unity and conformity to rules that was enforced in
+the state.
+
+
+  Destruction of public spirit.
+
+Before Richelieu, there had been no effective monarchy and no
+institutions for controlling affairs; merely advisory institutions which
+collaborated somewhat vaguely in the administration of the kingdom. Had
+the king been willing these might have developed further; but Richelieu
+ruthlessly suppressed all such growth, and they remained embryonic.
+According to him, the king must decide in secret, and the king's will
+must be law. No one might meddle in political affairs, neither
+parlements nor states-general; still less had the public any right to
+judge the actions of the government. Between 1631 and the edict of
+February 1641 Richelieu strove against the continually renewed
+opposition of the parlements to his system of special commissions and
+judgments; in 1641 he refused them any right of interference in state
+affairs; at most would he consent occasionally to take counsel with
+assemblies of notables. Provincial and municipal liberties were no
+better treated when through them the king's subjects attempted to break
+loose from the iron ring of the royal commissaries and intendants. In
+Burgundy, Dijon saw her municipal liberties restricted in 1631; the
+provincial assembly of Dauphiné was suppressed from 1628 onward, and
+that of Languedoc in 1629; that of Provence was in 1639 replaced by
+communal assemblies, and that of Normandy was prorogued from 1639 to
+1642. Not that Richelieu was hostile to them in principle; but he was
+obliged at all hazards to find money for the upkeep of the army, and the
+provincial states were a slow and heavy machine to put in motion.
+Through an excessive reaction against the disintegration that had
+menaced the kingdom after the dissolution of the League, he fell into
+the abuse of over-centralization; and depriving the people of the habit
+of criticizing governmental action, he taught them a fatal acquiescence
+in uncontrolled and undisputed authority. Like one of those physical
+forces which tend to reduce everything to a dead level, he battered down
+alike characters and fortresses; and in his endeavours to abolish
+faction, he killed that public spirit which, formed in the 16th century,
+had already produced the _République_ of Bodin, de Thou's _History of
+his Times_, La Boetie's _Contre un_, the _Satire Ménippée_, and Sully's
+_Économies royales_.
+
+
+  Methods employed by Richelieu.
+
+In order to establish this absolute despotism Richelieu created no new
+instruments, but made use of a revolutionary institution of the 16th
+century, namely "intendants" (q.v.), agents who were forerunners of the
+commissaries of the Convention, gentlemen of the long robe of inferior
+condition, hated by every one, and for that reason the more trustworthy.
+He also drew most of the members of his special commissions from the
+grand council, a supreme administrative tribunal which owed all its
+influence to him.
+
+
+  The results.
+
+However, having accomplished all these great things, the treasury was
+left empty and the reforms were but ill-established; for Richelieu's
+policy increased poverty, neglected the toiling and suffering peasants,
+deserted the cause of the workers in order to favour the privileged
+classes, and left idle and useless that bourgeoisie whose intellectual
+activity, spirit of discipline, and civil and political culture would
+have yielded solid support to a monarchy all the stronger for being
+limited. Richelieu completed the work of Francis I.; he endowed France
+with the fatal tradition of autocracy. This priest by education and by
+turn of mind was indifferent to material interests, which were secondary
+in his eyes; he could organize neither finance, nor justice, nor an
+army, nor the colonies, but at the most a system of police. His method
+was not to reform, but to crush. He was great chiefly in negotiation,
+the art _par excellence_ of ecclesiastics. His work was entirely abroad;
+there it had more continuity, more future, perhaps because only in his
+foreign policy was he unhampered in his designs. He sacrificed
+everything to it; but he ennobled it by the genius and audacity of his
+conceptions, by the energetic tension of all the muscles of the body
+politic.
+
+
+  External policy of Richelieu.
+
+The Thirty Years' War in fact dominated all Richelieu's foreign policy;
+by it he made France and unmade Germany. It was the support of Germany
+which Philip II. had lacked in order to realize his Catholic empire; and
+the election of the archduke Ferdinand II. of Styria as emperor gave
+that support to his Spanish cousins (1619). Thenceforward all the forces
+of the Habsburg monarchy would be united, provided that communication
+could be maintained in the north with the Netherlands and in the south
+with the duchy of Milan, so that there should be no flaw in the iron
+vice which locked France in on either side. It was therefore Of the
+highest importance to France that she should dominate the valleys of the
+Alps and Rhine. As soon as Richelieu became minister in 1624 there was
+an end to cordial relations with Spain. He resumed the policy of Henry
+IV., confining his military operations to the region of the Alps, and
+contenting himself at first with opposing the coalition of the Habsburgs
+with a coalition of Venice, the Turks, Bethlen Gabor, king of Hungary,
+and the Protestants of Germany and Denmark. But the revolts of the
+French Protestants, the resentment of the nobles at his dictatorial
+power, and the perpetual ferment of intrigues and treason in the court,
+obliged him almost immediately to draw back. During these eight years,
+however, Richelieu had pressed on matters as fast as possible.
+
+
+  Temporizing policy, except in Italy, 1624-1630.
+
+While James I. of England was trying to get a general on the cheap in
+Denmark to defend his son-in-law, the elector palatine, Richelieu was
+bargaining with the Spaniards in the treaty of Monzon (March 1626); but
+as the strained relations between France and England forced him to
+conciliate Spain still further by the treaty of April 1627, the
+Spaniards profited by this to carry on an intrigue with Rohan, and in
+concert with the duke of Savoy, to occupy Montferrat when the death of
+Vicenzo II. (December 26, 1627) left the succession of Mantua, under
+the will of the late duke, to Charles Gonzaga, duke of Nevers, a
+Frenchman by education and sympathy. But the taking of La Rochelle
+allowed Louis to force the pass of Susa, to induce the duke of Savoy to
+treat with him, and to isolate the Spaniards in Italy by a great Italian
+league between Genoa, Venice and the dukes of Savoy and Mantua (April
+1629). Unlike the Valois, Richelieu only desired to free Italy from
+Spain in order to restore her independence.
+
+The fact that the French Protestants in the Cévennes were again in arms
+enabled the Habsburgs and the Spaniards to make a fresh attack upon the
+Alpine passes; but after the peace of Alais Richelieu placed himself at
+the head of forty thousand men, and stirred up enemies everywhere
+against the emperor, victorious now over the king of Denmark as in 1621
+over the elector palatine. He united Sweden, now reconciled with Poland,
+and the Catholic and Protestant electors, disquieted by the edict of
+Restitution and the omnipotence of Wallenstein; and he aroused the
+United Provinces. But the disaffection of the court and the more extreme
+Catholics made it impossible for him as yet to enter upon a struggle
+against both Austria and Spain; he was only able to regulate the affairs
+of Italy with much prudence. The intervention of Mazarin, despatched by
+the pope, who saw no other means of detaching Italy from Spain than by
+introducing France into the affair, brought about the signature of the
+armistice of Rivalte on the 4th of September 1630, soon developed into
+the peace of Cherasco, which re-established the agreement with the still
+fugitive duke of Savoy (June 1631). Under the harsh tyranny of Spain,
+Italy was now nothing but a lifeless corpse; young vigorous Germany was
+better worth saving. So Richelieu's envoys, Brulart de Léon and Father
+Joseph, disarmed[32] the emperor at the diet of Regensburg, while at the
+same time Louis XIII. kept Casale and Pinerolo, the gates of the Alps.
+Lastly, by the treaty of Fontainebleau (May 30th, 1631), Maximilian of
+Bavaria, the head of the Catholic League, engaged to defend the king of
+France against all his enemies, even Spain, with the exception of the
+emperor. Thus by the hand of Richelieu a union against Austrian
+imperialism was effected between the Bavarian Catholics and the
+Protestants who dominated in central and northern Germany.
+
+
+  Richelieu and Gustavus Adolphus.
+
+Twice had Richelieu, by means of the purse and not by force of arms,
+succeeded in reopening the passes of the Alps and of the Rhine. The
+kingdom at peace and the Huguenot party ruined, he was now able to
+engage upon his policy of prudent acquisitions and apparently
+disinterested alliances. But Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, called
+in by Richelieu and Venice to take the place of the played-out king of
+Denmark, brought danger to all parties. He would not be content merely
+to serve French interests in Germany, according to the terms of the
+secret treaty of Bärwalde (June 1631); but, once master of Germany and
+the rich valley of the Rhine, considered chiefly the interests of
+Protestantism and Sweden. Neither the prayers nor the threats of
+Richelieu, who wished indeed to destroy Spain but not Catholicism, nor
+the death of Gustavus Adolphus at Lützen (1632), could repair the evils
+caused by this immoderate ambition. A violent Catholic reaction against
+the Protestants ensued; and the union of Spain and the Empire was
+consolidated just when that of the Protestants was dissolved at
+Nördlingen, despite the efforts of Oxenstierna (September 1634).
+Moreover, Wallenstein, who had been urged by Richelieu to set up an
+independent kingdom in Bohemia, had been killed on the 23rd of February
+1634. In the course of a year Württemberg and Franconia were reconquered
+from the Swedes; and the duke of Lorraine, who had taken the side of the
+Empire, called in the Spanish and the imperial forces to open the road
+to the Netherlands through Franche-Comté.
+
+
+  The French Thirty Years' War.
+
+His allies no longer able to stand alone, Richelieu was obliged to
+intervene directly (May 19th, 1635). By the treaty of
+Saint-Germain-en-Laye he purchased the army of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar;
+by that of Rivoli he united against Spain the dukes of Modena, Parma and
+Mantua; he signed an open alliance with the league of Heilbronn, the
+United Provinces and Sweden; and after these alliances military
+operations began, Marshal de la Force occupying the duchy of Lorraine.
+Richelieu attempted to operate simultaneously in the Netherlands by
+joining hands with the Dutch, and on the Rhine by uniting with the
+Swedes; but the bad organization of the French armies, the double
+invasion of the Spaniards as far as Corbie and the imperial forces as far
+as the gates of Saint-Jean-de-Losne (1636), and the death of his allies,
+the dukes of Hesse-Cassel, Savoy and Mantua at first frustrated his
+efforts. A decided success was, however, achieved between 1638 and 1640,
+thanks to Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and afterwards to Guébriant, and to the
+parallel action of the Swedish generals, Banér, Wrangel and Torstensson.
+Richelieu obtained Alsace, Breisach and the forest-towns on the Rhine;
+while in the north, thanks to the Dutch and owing to the conquest of
+Artois, marshals de la Meilleraye, de Châtillon and de Brézé forced the
+barrier of the Netherlands. Turin, the capital of Piedmont, was taken by
+Henri de Lorraine, comte d'Harcourt; the alliance with rebellious
+Portugal facilitated the occupation of Roussillon and almost the whole of
+Catalonia, and Spain was reduced to defending herself; while the
+embarrassments of the Habsburgs at Madrid made those of Vienna more
+tractable. The diet of Regensburg, under the mediation of Maximilian of
+Bavaria, decided in favour of peace with France, and on the 25th of
+December 1641 the preliminary settlement at Hamburg fixed the opening of
+negotiations to take place at Münster and Osnabrück. Richelieu's death
+(December 4, 1642) prevented him from seeing the triumph of his policy,
+but it can be judged by its results; in 1624 the kingdom had in the east
+only the frontier of the Meuse to defend it from invasion; in 1642 the
+whole of Alsace, except Strassburg, was occupied and the Rhine guarded by
+the army of Guébriant. Six months later, on the 14th of May 1643, Louis
+XIII. rejoined his minister in his true kingdom, the land of shades.
+
+
+  Mazarin, 1643-1661.
+
+But thanks to Mazarin, who completed his work, France gathered in the
+harvest sown by Richelieu. At the outset no one believed that the new
+cardinal would have any success. Every one expected from Anne of Austria
+a change in the government which appeared to be justified by the
+persecutions of Richelieu and the disdainful unscrupulousness of Louis
+XIII. On the 16th of May the queen took the little four-year-old Louis
+XIV. to the parlement of Paris which, proud of playing a part in
+politics, hastened, contrary to Louis XIII.'s last will, to acknowledge
+the command of the little king, and to give his mother "free, absolute
+and entire authority." The great nobles were already looking upon
+themselves as established in power, when they learnt with amazement that
+the regent had appointed as her chief adviser, not Gaston of Orleans,
+but Mazarin. The political revenge which in their eyes was owing to them
+as a body, the queen claimed for herself alone, and she made it a
+romantic one. This Spaniard of waning charms, who had been neglected by
+her husband and insulted by Richelieu, now gave her indolent and
+full-blown person, together with absolute power, into the hands of the
+Sicilian. Whilst others were triumphing openly, Mazarin, in the shadow
+and silence of the interregnum, had kept watch upon the heart of the
+queen; and when the old party of Marie de' Medici and Anne of Austria
+wished to come back into power, to impose a general peace, and to
+substitute for the Protestant alliances an understanding with Spain, the
+arrest of François de Vendôme, duke of Beaufort, and the exile of other
+important nobles proved to the great families that their hour had gone
+by (September 1643).
+
+
+  Treaties of Westphalia.
+
+Mazarin justified Richelieu's confidence and the favour of Anne of
+Austria. It was upon his foreign policy that he relied to maintain his
+authority within the kingdom. Thanks to him, the duke of Enghien (Louis
+de Bourbon, afterwards prince of Condé), appointed commander-in-chief at
+the age of twenty-two, caused the downfall of the renowned Spanish
+infantry at Rocroi; and he discovered Turenne, whose prudence tempered
+Condé's overbold ideas. It was he too who by renewing the traditional
+alliances and resuming against Bavaria, Ferdinand III.'s most powerful
+ally, the plan of common action with Sweden which Richelieu had sketched
+out, pursued it year after year: in 1644 at Freiburg im Breisgau,
+despite the death of Guébriant at Rottweil; in 1645 at Nördlingen,
+despite the defeat of Marienthal; and in 1646 in Bavaria, despite the
+rebellion of the Weimar cavalry; to see it finally triumph at
+Zusmarshausen in May 1648. With Turenne dominating the Eiser and the
+Inn, Condé victorious at Lens, and the Swedes before the gates of
+Prague, the emperor, left without a single ally, finally authorized his
+plenipotentiaries to sign on the 24th of October 1648 the peace about
+which negotiations had been going on for seven years. Mazarin had stood
+his ground notwithstanding the treachery of the duke of Bavaria, the
+defection of the United Provinces, the resistance of the Germans, and
+the general confusion which was already pervading the internal affairs
+of the kingdom.
+
+The dream of the Habsburgs was shattered. They had wished to set up a
+centralized empire, Catholic and German; but the treaties of Westphalia
+kept Germany in its passive and fragmentary condition; while the
+Catholic and Protestant princes obtained formal recognition of their
+territorial independence and their religious equality. Thus disappeared
+the two principles which justified the Empire's existence; the universal
+sovereignty to which it laid claim was limited simply to a German
+monarchy much crippled in its powers; and the enfranchisement of the
+Lutherans and Calvinists from papal jurisdiction cut the last tie which
+bound the Empire to Rome. The victors' material benefits were no less
+substantial: the congress of Münster ratified the final cession of the
+Three Bishoprics and the conquest of Alsace, and Breisach and
+Philippsburg completed these acquisitions. The Spaniards had no longer
+any hope of adding Luxemburg to their Franche-Comté; while the Holy
+Roman Empire in Germany, taken in the rear by Sweden (now mistress of
+the Baltic and the North Sea), cut off for good from the United
+Provinces and the Swiss cantons, and enfeebled by the recognized right
+of intervention in German affairs on the part of Sweden and France, was
+now nothing but a meaningless name.
+
+Mazarin had not been so fortunate in Italy, where in 1642 the Spanish
+remained masters. Venice, the duchy of Milan and the duke of Modena were
+on his side; the pope and the grand-duke of Tuscany were trembling, but
+the romantic expedition of the duke of Guise to Naples, and the outbreak
+of the Fronde, saved Spain, who had refused to take part in the treaties
+of Westphalia and whose ruin Mazarin wished to compass.
+
+
+  State of the kingdom.
+
+It was, however, easier for Mazarin to remodel the map of Europe than to
+govern France. There he found himself face to face with all the
+difficulties that Richelieu had neglected to solve, and that were now
+once more giving trouble. The _Lit de Justice_ of the 18th of May 1643
+had proved authority to remain still so personal an affair that the
+person of the king, insignificant though that was, continued to be
+regarded as its absolute depositary. Thus regular obedience to an
+abstract principle was under Mazarin as incomprehensible to the idle and
+selfish nobility as it had been under Richelieu. The parlement still
+kept up the same extra-judicial pretensions; but beyond its judicial
+functions it acted merely as a kind of town-crier to the monarchy,
+charged with making known the king's edicts. Yet through its right of
+remonstrance it was the only body that could legally and publicly
+intervene in politics; a large and independent body, moreover, which had
+its own demands to make upon the monarchy and its ministers. Richelieu,
+by setting his special agents above the legal but complicated machinery
+of financial administration, had so corrupted it as to necessitate
+radical reform; all the more so because financial charges had been
+increased to a point far beyond what the nation could bear. With four
+armies to keep up, the insurrection in Portugal to maintain, and
+pensions to serve the needs of the allies, the burden had become a
+crushing one.
+
+
+  Richelieu and Mazarin.
+
+Richelieu had been able to surmount these difficulties because he
+governed in the name of a king of full age, and against isolated
+adversaries; while Mazarin had the latter against him in a coalition
+which had lasted ten years, with the further disadvantages of his
+foreign origin and a royal minority at a time when every one was sick of
+government by ministers. He was the very opposite of Richelieu, as
+wheedling in his ways as the other had been haughty and scornful, as
+devoid of vanity and rancour as Richelieu had been full of jealous care
+for his authority; he was gentle where the other had been passionate and
+irritable, with an intelligence as great and more supple, and a far more
+grasping nature.
+
+
+  Financial difficulties.
+
+It was the fiscal question that arrayed against Mazarin a coalition of
+all petty interests and frustrated ambitions; this was always the
+Achilles' heel of the French monarchy, which in 1648 was at the last
+extremity for money. All imposts were forestalled, and every expedient
+for obtaining either direct or indirect taxes had been exhausted by the
+methods of the financiers. As the country districts could yield nothing
+more, it became necessary to demand money from the Parisians and from
+the citizens of the various towns, and to search out and furbish up old
+disused edicts--edicts as to measures and scales of prices--at the very
+moment when the luxury and corruption of the _parvenus_ was insulting
+the poverty and suffering of the people, and exasperating all those
+officials who took their functions seriously.
+
+
+  Rebellion of the parlement.
+
+A storm burst forth in the parlement against Mazarin as the patron of
+these expedients, the occasion for this being the edict of redemption by
+which the government renewed for nine years the "Paulette" which had now
+expired, by withholding four years' salary from all officers of the
+Great Council, of the _Chambres des comptes_, and of the _Cour des
+aides_. The parlement, although expressly exempted, associated itself
+with their protest by the decree of union of May 13, 1648, and
+deliberations in a body upon the reform of the state. Despite the
+queen's express prohibition, the insurrectionary assembly of the Chambre
+Saint Louis criticized the whole financial system, founded as it was
+upon usury, claimed the right of voting taxes, respect for individual
+liberty, and the suppression of the intendants, who were a menace to the
+new bureaucratic feudalism. The queen, haughty and exasperated though
+she was, yielded for the time being, because the invasion of the
+Spaniards in the north, the arrest of Charles I. of England, and the
+insurrection of Masaniello at Naples made the moment a critical one for
+monarchies; but immediately after the victory at Lens she attempted a
+_coup d'état_, arresting the leaders, and among them Broussel, a popular
+member of the parlement (August 26, 1648). Paris at once rose in
+revolt--a Paris of swarming and unpoliced streets, that had been making
+French history ever since the reign of Henry IV., and that had not
+forgotten the barricades of the League. Once more a pretence of yielding
+had to be made, until Condé's arrival enabled the court to take refuge
+at Saint-Germain (January 15, 1649).
+
+
+  The Fronde (1648-1652).
+
+Civil war now began against the rebellious coalition of great nobles,
+lawyers of the parlement, populace, and mercenaries just set free from
+the Thirty Years' War. It lasted four years, for motives often as futile
+as the Grande Mademoiselle's ambition to wed little Louis XIV., Cardinal
+de Retz's red hat, or Madame de Longueville's stool at the queen's side;
+it was, as its name of _Fronde_ indicates, a hateful farce, played by
+grown-up children, in several acts.
+
+
+  The Fronde of the Parlement.
+
+Its first and shortest phase was the Fronde of the Parlement. At a
+period when all the world was a little mad, the parlement had imagined a
+loyalist revolt, and, though it raised an armed protest, this was not
+against the king but against Mazarin and the persons to whom he had
+delegated power. But the parlement soon became disgusted with its
+allies--the princes and nobles, who had only drawn their swords in order
+to beg more effectively with arms in their hands; and the Parisian mob,
+whose fanaticism had been aroused by Paul de Gondi, a warlike
+ecclesiastic, a Catiline in a cassock, who preached the gospel at the
+dagger's point. When a suggestion was made to the parlement to receive
+an envoy from Spain, the members had no hesitation in making terms with
+the court by the peace of Rueil (March 11, 1649), which ended the first
+Fronde.
+
+
+  The Fronde of the Princes.
+
+As an _entr'acte_, from April 1649 to January 1650, came the affair of
+the _Petits Maîtres_: Condé, proud and violent; Gaston of Orleans,
+pliable and contemptible; Conti, the simpleton; and Longueville, the
+betrayed husband. The victor of Lens and Charenton imagined that every
+one was under an obligation to him, and laid claim to a dictatorship so
+insupportable that Anne of Austria and Mazarin--assured by Gondi of the
+concurrence of the parlement and people--had him arrested. To defend
+Condé the great conspiracy of women was formed: Madame de Chevreuse, the
+subtle and impassioned princess palatine, and the princess of Condé
+vainly attempted to arouse Normandy, Burgundy and the mob of Bordeaux;
+while Turenne, bewitched by Madame de Longueville, allowed himself to
+become involved with Spain and was defeated at Rethel (December 15,
+1650). Unfortunately, after his custom when victor, Mazarin forgot his
+promises--above all, Gondi's cardinal's hat. A union was effected
+between the two Frondes, that of the Petits Maîtres and that of the
+parlements, and Mazarin was obliged to flee for safety to the electorate
+of Cologne (February 1651), whence he continued to govern the queen and
+the kingdom by means of secret letters. But the heads of the two
+Frondes--Condé, now set free from prison at Havre, and Gondi who
+detested him--were not long in quarrelling fatally. Owing to Mazarin's
+exile and to the king's attainment of his majority (September 5, 1651)
+quiet was being restored, when the return of Mazarin, jealous of Anne of
+Austria, nearly brought about another reconciliation of all his
+opponents (January 1652). Condé resumed civil war with the support of
+Spain, because he was not given Mazarin's place; but though he defeated
+the royal army at Bléneau, he was surprised at Étampes, and nearly
+crushed by Turenne at the gate of Saint-Antoine. Saved, however, by the
+Grande Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston of Orleans, he lost Paris by the
+disaster of the Hôtel de Ville (July 4, 1652), where he had installed an
+insurrectionary government. A general weariness of civil war gave plenty
+of opportunity after this to the agents of Mazarin, who in order to
+facilitate peace made a pretence of exiling himself for a second time to
+Bouillon. Then came the final collapse: Condé having taken refuge in
+Spain for seven years, Gaston of Orleans being in exile, Retz in prison,
+and the parlement reduced to its judiciary functions only, the field was
+left open for Mazarin, who, four months after the king, re-entered in
+triumph that Paris which had driven him forth with jeers and mockery
+(February 1653).
+
+
+  The administration of Mazarin.
+
+The task was now to repair these four years of madness and folly. The
+nobles who had hoped to set up the League again, half counting upon the
+king of Spain, were held in check by Mazarin with the golden dowries of
+his numerous nieces, and were now employed by him in warfare and in
+decorative court functions; while others, De Retz and La Rochefoucauld,
+sought consolation in their Memoirs or their Maxims, one for his
+mortifications and the other for his rancour as a statesman out of
+employment. The parlement, which had confused political power with
+judiciary administration, was given to understand, in the session of
+April 13, 1655, at Vincennes, that the era of political manifestations
+was over; and the money expended by Gourville, Mazarin's agent, restored
+the members of the parlement to docility. The power of the state was
+confided to middle-class men, faithful servants during the evil days:
+Abel Servien, Michel le Tellier, Hugues de Lionne. Like Henry IV. after
+the League, Mazarin, after having conquered the Fronde, had to buy back
+bit by bit the kingdom he had lost, and, like Richelieu, he spread out a
+network of agents, thenceforward regular and permanent, who assured him
+of that security without which he could never have carried on his vast
+plunderings in peace and quiet. His imitator and superintendent,
+Fouquet, the Maecenas of the future Augustus, concealed this gambling
+policy beneath the lustre of the arts and the glamour of a literature
+remarkable for elevation of thought and vigour of style, and further
+characterized by the proud though somewhat restricted freedom conceded
+to men like Corneille, Descartes and Pascal, but soon to disappear.
+
+
+  War with Spain.
+
+
+  Peace of the Pyrenees.
+
+It was also necessary to win back from Spain the territory which the
+Frondeurs had delivered up to her. Both countries, exhausted by twenty
+years of war, were incapable of bringing it to a successful termination,
+yet neither would be first to give in; Mazarin, therefore, disquieted by
+Condé's victory at Valenciennes (1656), reknit the bond of Protestant
+alliances, and, having nothing to expect from Holland, he deprived Spain
+of her alliance with Oliver Cromwell (March 23, 1657). A victory in the
+Dunes by Turenne, now reinstalled in honour, and above all the conquest
+of the Flemish seaboard, were the results (June 1658); but when, in
+order to prevent the emperor's intervention in the Netherlands, Mazarin
+attempted, on the death of Ferdinand III., to wrest the Empire from the
+Habsburgs, he was foiled by the gold of the Spanish envoy Peñaranda
+(1657). When the abdication of Christina of Sweden caused a quarrel
+between Charles Gustavus of Sweden and John Casimir of Poland, by which
+the emperor and the elector of Brandenburg hoped to profit, Mazarin
+(August 15, 1658) leagued the Rhine princes against them; while at the
+same time the substitution of Pope Alexander VII. for Innocent X., and
+the marriage of Mazarin's two nieces with the duke of Modena and a
+prince of the house of Savoy, made Spain anxious about her Italian
+possessions. The suggestion of a marriage between Louis XIV. and a
+princess of Savoy decided Spain, now brought to bay, to accord him the
+hand of Maria Theresa as a chief condition of the peace of the Pyrenees
+(November 1659). Roussillon and Artois, with a line of strongholds
+constituting a formidable northern frontier, were ceded to France; and
+the acquisition of Alsace and Lorraine under certain conditions was
+ratified. Thus from this long duel between the two countries Spain
+issued much enfeebled, while France obtained the preponderance in Italy,
+Germany, and throughout northern Europe, as is proved by Mazarin's
+successful arbitration at Copenhagen and at Oliva (May-June 1660). That
+dream of Henry IV. and Richelieu, the ruin of Philip II.'s Catholic
+empire, was made a realized fact by Mazarin; but the clever engineer,
+dazzled by success, took the wrong road in national policy when he hoped
+to crown his work by the Spanish marriage.
+
+
+  Louis XIV. (1661-1715).
+
+The development of events had gradually enlarged the royal prerogative,
+and it now came to its full flower in the administrative monarchy of the
+17th century. Of this system Louis XIV. was to be the chief exponent.
+His reign may be divided into two very distinct periods. The death of
+Colbert and the revocation of the edict of Nantes brought the first to a
+close (1661-1683-1685); coinciding with the date when the Revolution in
+England definitely reversed the traditional system of alliances, and
+when the administration began to disorganize. In the second period
+(1685-1715) all the germs of decadence were developed until the moment
+of final dissolution.
+
+
+  Education of Louis XIV.
+
+In a monarchy so essentially personal the preparation of the heir to the
+throne for his position should have been the chief task. Anne of
+Austria, a devoted but unintelligent mother, knew no method of dealing
+with her son, save devotion combined with the rod. His first preceptors
+were nothing but courtiers; and the most intelligent, his valet Laporte,
+developed in the royal child's mind his natural instinct of command, a
+very lively sense of his rank, and that nobly majestic air of master of
+the world which he preserved even in the commonest actions of his life.
+The continual agitations of the Fronde prevented him from persevering in
+any consistent application during those years which are the most
+valuable for study, and only instilled in him a horror of revolution,
+parliamentary remonstrance, and disorder of all kinds; so that this
+recollection determined the direction of his government. Mazarin, in his
+later years, at last taught him his trade as king by admitting him to
+the council, and by instructing him in the details of politics and of
+administration. In 1661 Louis XIV. was a handsome youth of twenty-two,
+of splendid health and gentle serious mien; eager for pleasure, but
+discreet and even dissimulating; his rather mediocre intellectual
+qualities relieved by solid common sense; fully alive to his rights and
+his duties.
+
+
+  His political ideas.
+
+The duties he conscientiously fulfilled, but he considered he need
+render no account of them to any one but his Maker, the last humiliation
+for God's vicegerent being "to take the law from his people." In the
+solemn language of the "Memoirs for the Instruction of the Dauphin" he
+did but affirm the arbitrary and capricious character of his
+predecessors' action. As for his rights, Louis XIV. looked upon these as
+plenary and unlimited. Representative of God upon earth, heir to the
+sovereignty of the Roman emperors, a universal suzerain and master over
+the goods and the lives of his vassals, he could conceive no other
+bounds to his authority than his own interests or his obligations
+towards God, and in this he was a willing believer of Bossuet. He
+therefore had but two aims: to increase his power at home and to enlarge
+his kingdom abroad. The army and taxation were the chief instruments of
+his policy. Had not Bodin, Hobbes and Bossuet taught that the force
+which gives birth to kingdoms serves best also to feed and sustain them?
+His theory of the state, despite Grotius and Jurieu, rejected as odious
+and even impious the notion of any popular rights, anterior and superior
+to his own. A realist in principle, Louis XIV. was terribly utilitarian
+and egotistical in practice; and he exacted from his subjects an
+absolute, continual and obligatory self-abnegation before his public
+authority, even when improperly exercised.
+
+
+  The forms of Louis XIV.'s monarchy.
+
+This deified monarch needed a new temple, and Versailles, where
+everything was his creation, both men and things, adored its maker. The
+highest nobility of France, beginning with the princes of the blood,
+competed for posts in the royal household, where an army of ten thousand
+soldiers, four thousand servants, and five thousand horses played its
+costly and luxurious part in the ordered and almost religious pageant of
+the king's existence. The "_anciennes cohues de France_," gay, familiar
+and military, gave place to a stilted court life, a perpetual adoration,
+a very ceremonious and very complicated ritual, in which the demigod
+"pontificated" even "in his dressing-gown." To pay court to himself was
+the first and only duty in the eyes of a proud and haughty prince who
+saw and noted everything, especially any one's absence. Versailles,
+where the delicate refinements of Italy and the grave politeness of
+Spain were fused and mingled with French vivacity, became the centre of
+national life and a model for foreign royalties; hence if Versailles has
+played a considerable part in the history of civilization, it also
+seriously modified the life of France. Etiquette and self-seeking became
+the chief rules of a courtier's life, and this explains the division of
+the nobility into two sections: the provincial squires, embittered by
+neglect; and the courtiers, who were ruined materially and
+intellectually by their way of living. Versailles sterilized all the
+idle upper classes, exploited the industrious classes by its
+extravagance, and more and more broke relations between king and
+kingdom.
+
+
+  Louis XIV.'s ministers.
+
+  Royal despotism.
+
+But however divine, the king could not wield his power unaided. Louis
+XIV. called to his assistance a hierarchy of humbly submissive
+functionaries, and councils over which he regularly presided. Holding
+the very name of _roi fainéant_ in abhorrence, he abolished the office
+of mayor of the palace--that is to say, the prime minister--thus
+imposing upon himself work which he always regularly performed. In
+choosing his collaborators his principle was never to select nobles or
+ecclesiastics, but persons of inferior birth. Neither the immense
+fortunes amassed by these men, nor the venality and robust vitality
+which made their families veritable races of ministers, altered the fact
+that De Lionne, Le Tellier, Louvois and Colbert were in themselves of no
+account, even though the parts they played were much more important than
+Louis XIV. imagined. This was the age of plebeians, to the great
+indignation of the duke and peer Saint Simon. Mere reflected lights,
+these satellites professed to share their master's honor of all
+individual and collective rights of such a nature as to impose any check
+upon his public authority. Louis XIV. detested the states-general and
+never convoked them, and the parlements were definitely reduced to
+silence in 1673; he completed the destruction of municipal liberties,
+under pretext of bad financial administration; suffered no public, still
+less private criticism; was ruthless when his exasperated subjects had
+recourse to force; and made the police the chief bulwark of his
+government. Prayers and resignation were the only solace left for the
+hardships endured by his subjects. All the ties of caste, class,
+corporation and family were severed; the jealous despotism of Louis XIV.
+destroyed every opportunity of taking common action; he isolated every
+man in private life, in individual interests, just as he isolated
+himself more and more from the body social. Freedom he tolerated for
+himself alone.
+
+
+  Louis XIV. and the Church.
+
+  Declaration of the Four Articles.
+
+His passion for absolutism made him consider himself master of souls as
+well as bodies, and Bossuet did nothing to contravene an opinion which
+was, indeed, common to every sovereign of his day. Louis XIV., like
+Philip II., pretending to not only political but religious authority,
+would not allow the pope to share it, still less would he abide any
+religious dissent; and this gave rise to many conflicts, especially with
+the pope, at that time a temporal sovereign both at Rome and at Avignon,
+and as the head of Christendom bound to interfere in the affairs of
+France. Louis XIV.'s pride caused the first struggle, which turned
+exclusively upon questions of form, as in the affair of the Corsican
+Guard in 1662. The question of the right of _regale_ (right of the Crown
+to the revenues of vacant abbeys and bishoprics), which touched the
+essential rights of sovereignty, further inflamed the hostility between
+Innocent XI. and Louis XIV. Conformably with the traditions of the
+administrative monarchy in 1673, the king wanted to extend to the new
+additions to the kingdom his rights of receiving the revenues of vacant
+bishoprics and making appointments to their benefices, including taking
+oaths of fidelity from the new incumbents. A protest raised by the
+bishops of Pamiers and Aleth, followed by the seizure of their revenues,
+provoked the intervention of Innocent XI. in 1678; but the king was
+supported by the general assembly of the clergy, which declared that,
+with certain exceptions, the _regale_ extended over the whole kingdom
+(1681). The pope ignored the decisions of the assembly; so, dropping the
+_regale_, the king demanded that, to obviate further conflict, the
+assembly should define the limits of the authority due respectively to
+the king, the Church and the pope. This was the object of the
+Declaration of the Four Articles: the pope has no power in temporal
+matters; general councils are superior to the pope in spiritual affairs;
+the rules of the Church of France are inviolable; decisions of the pope
+in matters of faith are only irrevocable by consent of the Church. The
+French laity transferred to the king this quasi-divine authority, which
+became the political theory of the _ancien régime_; and since the pope
+refused to submit, or to institute the new bishops, the Sorbonne was
+obliged to interfere. The affair of the "diplomatic prerogatives," when
+Louis XIV. was decidedly in the wrong, made relations even more strained
+(1687), and the idea of a schism was mooted with greater insistence than
+in 1681. The death of Innocent XI. in 1689 allowed Louis XIV. to engage
+upon negotiations rendered imperative by his check in the affair of the
+Cologne bishopric, where his candidate was ousted by the pope's. In
+1693, under the pontificate of Innocent XII., he went, like so many
+others, to Canossa.
+
+Recipient now of immense ecclesiastical revenues, which, owing to the
+number of vacant benefices, constituted a powerful engine of government,
+Louis XIV. had immense power over the French Church. Religion began to
+be identified with the state; and the king combated heresy and dissent,
+not only as a religious duty, but as a matter of political expediency,
+unity of faith being obviously conducive to unity of law.
+
+
+  Louis XIV. and the Protestants.
+
+  Suppression of the edict of Nantes (1685).
+
+Richelieu having deprived the Protestants of all political guarantees
+for their liberty of conscience, an anti-Protestant party (directed by
+a cabal of religious devotees, the _Compagnie du Saint Sacrement_)
+determined to suppress it completely by conversions and by a jesuitical
+interpretation of the terms of the edict of Nantes. Louis XIV. made this
+impolitic policy his own. His passion for absolutism, a religious zeal
+that was the more active because it had to compensate for many affronts
+to public and private morals, the financial necessity of augmenting the
+free donations of the clergy, and the political necessity of relying
+upon that body in his conflicts with the pope, led the king between 1661
+and 1685 to embark upon a double campaign of arbitrary proceedings with
+the object of nullifying the edict, conversions being procured either by
+force or by bribery. The promulgation and application of systematic
+measures from above had a response from below, from the corporation, the
+urban workshop, and the village street, which supported ecclesiastical
+and royal authority in its suppression of heresy, and frequently even
+went further: individual and local fanaticism co-operating with the head
+of the state, the _intendants_, and the military and judiciary
+authorities. Protestants were successively removed from the
+states-general, the consulates, the town councils, and even from the
+humblest municipal offices; they were deprived of the charge of their
+hospitals, their academies, their colleges and their schools, and were
+left to ignorance and poverty; while the intolerance of the clergy
+united with chicanery of procedure to invade their places of worship,
+insult their adherents, and put a stop to the practice of their ritual.
+Pellisson's methods of conversion, considered too slow, were accelerated
+by the violent persecution of Louvois and by the king's galleys, until
+the day came when Louis XIV., deceived by the clergy, crowned his record
+of complaisant legal methods by revoking the edict of Nantes. This was
+the signal for a Huguenot renaissance, and the Camisards of the Cévennes
+held the royal armies in check from 1703 to 1711. Notwithstanding this,
+however, Louis XIV. succeeded only too well, since Protestantism was
+reduced both numerically and intellectually. He never perceived how its
+loss threw France back a full century, to the great profit of foreign
+nations; while neither did the Church perceive that she had been firing
+on her own troops.
+
+
+  Louis XIV. and the Jansenists.
+
+The same order of ideas produced the persecution of the Jansenists, as
+much a political as a religious sect. Founded by a bishop of Ypres on
+the doctrine of predestination, and growing by persecution, it had
+speedily recruited adherents among the disillusioned followers of the
+Fronde, the Gallican clergy, the higher nobility, even at court, and
+more important still, among learned men and thinkers, such as the great
+Arnauld, Pascal and Racine. Pure and austere, it enjoined the strictest
+morals in the midst of corruption, and the most dignified self-respect
+in face of idolatrous servility. Amid general silence it was a
+formidable and much dreaded body of opinion; and in order to stifle it
+Louis XIV., the tool of his confessor, the Jesuit Le Tellier, made use
+of his usual means. The nuns of Port Royal were in their turn subjected
+to persecution, which, after a truce between 1666 and 1679, became
+aggravated by the affair of the _regale_, the bishops of Aleth and
+Pamiers being Jansenists. Port Royal was destroyed, the nuns dispersed,
+and the ashes of the dead scattered to the four winds. The bull
+_Unigenitus_ launched by Pope Clement XI. in 1713 against a Jansenist
+book by Father Quesnel rekindled a quarrel, the end of which Louis XIV.
+did not live to see, and which raged throughout the 18th century.
+
+
+  Louis XIV. and the Libertins.
+
+Bossuet, Louis XIV.'s mouthpiece, triumphed in his turn over the
+quietism of Madame Guyon, a mystic who recognized neither definite
+dogmas nor formal prayers, but abandoned herself "to the torrent of the
+forces of God." Fénelon, who in his _Maximes des Saints_ had given his
+adherence to her doctrine, was obliged to submit in 1699; but Bossuet
+could not make the spirit of authority prevail against the religious
+criticism of a Richard Simon or the philosophical polemics of a Bayle.
+He might exile their persons; but their doctrines, supported by the
+scientific and philosophic work of Newton and Leibnitz, were to triumph
+over Church and religion in the 18th century.
+
+The chaos of the administrative system caused difficulties no less great
+than those produced by opinions and creeds. Traditional rights,
+differences of language, provincial autonomy, ecclesiastical assemblies,
+parlements, governors, intendants--vestiges of the past, or promises for
+the future--all jostled against and thwarted each other. The central
+authority had not yet acquired a vigorous constitution, nor destroyed
+all the intermediary authorities. Colbert now offered his aid in making
+Louis XIV. the sole pivot of public life, as he had already become the
+source of religious authority, thanks to the Jesuits and to Bossuet.
+
+
+  Colbert.
+
+Colbert, an agent of Le Tellier, the honest steward of Mazarin's
+dishonest fortunes, had a future opened to him by the fall of Fouquet
+(1661). Harsh and rough, he compelled admiration for his delight in
+work, his aptitude in disentangling affairs, his desire of continually
+augmenting the wealth of the state, and his regard for the public
+welfare without forgetting his own. Born in a draper's shop, this great
+administrator always preserved its narrow horizon, its short-sighted
+imagination, its taste for detail, and the conceit of the parvenu; while
+with his insinuating ways, and knowing better than Fouquet how to keep
+his distance, he made himself indispensable by his _savoir-faire_ and
+his readiness for every emergency. He gradually got everything into his
+control: finance, industry, commerce, the fine arts, the navy and
+colonies, the administration, even the fortifications, and--through his
+uncle Pussort--the law, with all the profits attaching to its offices.
+
+
+  Colbert and finance.
+
+His first care was to restore the exhausted resources of the country and
+to re-establish order in finance. He began by measures of liquidation:
+the _Chambre ardente_ of 1661 to 1665 to deal with the farmers of the
+revenue, the condemnation of Fouquet, and a revision of the funds. Next,
+like a good man of business, Colbert determined that the state accounts
+should be kept as accurately as those of a shop; but though in this
+respect a great minister, he was less so in his manner of levying
+contributions. He kept to the old system of revenues from the demesne
+and from imposts that were reactionary in their effect, such as the
+_taille_, aids, salt-tax (_gabelle_) and customs; only he managed them
+better. His forest laws have remained a model. He demanded less of the
+_taille_, a direct impost, and more from indirect aids, of which he
+created the code--not, however, out of sympathy for the common people,
+towards whom he was very harsh, but because these aids covered a greater
+area and brought in larger returns. He tried to import more method into
+the very unequal distribution of taxation, less brutality in collection,
+less confusion in the fiscal machine, and more uniformity in the matter
+of rights; while he diminished the debts of the much-involved towns by
+putting them through the bankruptcy court. With revolutionary intentions
+as to reform, this only ended, after several years of normal budgets, in
+ultimate frustration. He could never make the rights over the drink
+traffic uniform and equal, nor restrict privileges in the matter of the
+_taille_; while he was soon much embarrassed, not only by the coalition
+of particular interests and local immunities, which made despotism
+acceptable by tempering it, but also by Louis XIV.'s two master-passions
+for conquest and for building. To his great chagrin he was obliged to
+begin borrowing again in 1672, and to have recourse to "_affaires
+extraordinaires_"; and this brought him at last to his grave.
+
+
+  Colbert and industry.
+
+Order was for Colbert the prime condition of work. He desired all France
+to set to work as he did "with a contented air and rubbing his hands for
+joy"; but neither general theories nor individual happiness preoccupied
+his attention. He made economy truly political: that is to say, the
+prosperity of industry and commerce afforded him no other interest than
+that of making the country wealthy and the state powerful. Louis XIV.'s
+aspirations towards glory chimed in very well with the extremely
+positive views of his minister; but here too Colbert was an innovator
+and an unsuccessful one. He wanted to give 17th-century France the
+modern and industrial character which the New World had imprinted on the
+maritime states; and he created industry on a grand scale with an energy
+of labour, a prodigious genius for initiative and for organization;
+while, in order to attract a foreign clientèle, he imposed upon it the
+habits of meticulous probity common to a middle-class draper. But he
+maintained the legislation of the Valois, who placed industry in a state
+of strict dependency on finance, and he instituted a servitude of labour
+harder even than that of individuals; his great factories of soap,
+glass, lace, carpets and cloth had the same artificial life as that of
+contemporary Russian industry, created and nourished by the state. It
+was therefore necessary, in order to compensate for the fatal influence
+of servitude, that administrative protection should be lavished without
+end upon the royal manufactures; moreover, in the course of its
+development, industry on a grand scale encroached in many ways upon the
+resources of smaller industries. After Colbert's day, when the crutches
+lent by privilege were removed, his achievements lost vigour; industries
+that ministered to luxury alone escaped decay; the others became
+exhausted in struggling against the persistent and teasing opposition of
+the municipal bodies and the bourgeoisie--conceited, ignorant and
+terrified at any innovation--and against the blind and intolerant policy
+of Louis XIV.
+
+
+  Colbert and commerce.
+
+Colbert, in common with all his century, believed that the true secret
+of commerce and the indisputable proof of a country's prosperity was to
+sell as many of the products of national industry to the foreigner as
+possible, while purchasing as little as possible. In order to do this,
+he sometimes figured as a free-trader and sometimes as a protectionist,
+but always in a practical sense; if he imposed prohibitive tariffs, in
+1664 and 1667, he also opened the free ports of Marseilles and Dunkirk,
+and engineered the _Canal du midi_. But commerce, like industry, was
+made to rely only on the instigation of the state, by the intervention
+of officials; here, as throughout the national life, private initiative
+was kept in subjection and under suspicion. Once more Colbert failed;
+with regard to internal affairs, he was unable to unify weights and
+measures, or to suppress the many custom-houses which made France into a
+miniature Europe; nor could he in external affairs reform the consulates
+of the Levant. He did not understand that, in order to purge the body of
+the nation from its traditions of routine, it would be necessary to
+reawaken individual energy in France. He believed that the state, or
+rather the bureaucracy, might be the motive power of national activity.
+
+
+  Colbert and the colonies.
+
+His colonial and maritime policy was the newest and most fruitful part
+of his work. He wished to turn the eyes of contemporary adventurous
+France towards her distant interests, the wars of religion having
+diverted her attention from them to the great profit of English and
+Dutch merchants. Here too he had no preconceived ideas; the royal and
+monopolist companies were never for him an end but a means; and after
+much experimenting he at length attained success. In the course of
+twenty years he created many dependencies of France beyond sea. To her
+colonial empire in America he added the greater part of Santo Domingo,
+Tobago and Dominica; he restored Guiana; prepared for the acquisition of
+Louisiana by supporting Cavelier de la Salle; extended the suzerainty of
+the king on the coast of Africa from the Bay of Arguin to the shores of
+Sierra Leone, and instituted the first commercial relations with India.
+The population of the Antilles doubled; that of Canada quintupled; while
+if in 1672 at the time of the war with Holland Louis XIV. had listened
+to him, Colbert would have sacrificed his pride to the acquisition of
+the rich colonies of the Netherlands. In order to attach and defend
+these colonies Colbert created a navy which became his passion; he took
+convicts to man the galleys in the Mediterranean, and for the fleet in
+the Atlantic he established the system of naval reserve which still
+obtains. But, in the 18th century, the monarchy, hypnotized by the
+classical battlefields of Flanders and Italy, madly squandered the
+fruits of Colbert's work as so much material for barter and exchange.
+
+
+  Colbert and the administration.
+
+In the administration, the police and the law, Colbert preserved all the
+old machinery, including the inheritance of office. In the great
+codification of laws, made under the direction of his uncle Pussort, he
+set aside the parlement of Paris, and justice continued to be
+ill-administered and cruel. The police, instituted in 1667 by La Reynie,
+became a public force independent of magistrates and under the direct
+orders of the ministers, making the arbitrary royal and ministerial
+authority absolute by means of _lettres de cachet_ (q.v.), which were
+very convenient for the government and very terrible for the individuals
+concerned.
+
+Provincial administration was no longer modified; it was regularized.
+The intendant became the king's factotum, not purchasing his office but
+liable to dismissal, the government's confidential agent and the real
+repository of royal authority, the governor being only for show (see
+INTENDANT).
+
+
+  Ruin of Colbert's work.
+
+Colbert's system went on working regularly up to the year 1675; from
+that time forward he was cruelly embarrassed for money, and, seeking new
+sources of revenue, begged for subsidies from the assembly of the
+clergy. He did not succeed either in stemming the tide of expense, nor
+in his administration, being in no way in advance of his age, and not
+perceiving that decisive reform could not be achieved by a government
+dealing with the nation as though it were inert and passive material,
+made to obey and to pay. Like a good Cartesian he conceived of the state
+as an immense machine, every portion of which should receive its impulse
+from outside--that is from him, Colbert. Leibnitz had not yet taught
+that external movement is nothing, and inward spirit everything. As the
+minister of an ambitious and magnificent king, Colbert was under the
+hard necessity of sacrificing everything to the wars in Flanders and the
+pomp of Versailles--a gulf which swallowed up all the country's
+wealth;--and, amid a society which might be supposed submissively docile
+to the wishes of Louis XIV., he had to retain the most absurd financial
+laws, making the burden of taxation weigh heaviest on those who had no
+other resources than their labour, whilst landed property escaped free
+of charge. Habitual privation during one year in every three drove the
+peasants to revolt: in Boulonnais, the Pyrenees, Vivarais, in Guyenne
+from 1670 onwards and in Brittany in 1675. Cruel means of repression
+assisted natural hardships and the carelessness of the administration in
+depopulating and laying waste the countryside; while Louis XIV.'s
+martial and ostentatious policy was even more disastrous than pestilence
+and famine, when Louvois' advice prevailed in council over that of
+Colbert, now embittered and desperate. The revocation of the edict of
+Nantes vitiated through a fatal contradiction all the efforts of the
+latter to create new manufactures; the country was impoverished for the
+benefit of the foreigner to such a point that economic conditions began
+to alarm those private persons most noted for their talents, their
+character, or their regard for the public welfare; such as La Bruyère
+and Fénelon in 1692, Bois-Guillebert in 1697 and Vauban in 1707. The
+movement attracted even the ministers, Boulainvilliers at their head,
+who caused the intendants to make inquiry into the causes of this
+general ruin. There was a volume of attack upon Colbert; but as the
+fundamental system remained unchanged, because reform would have
+necessitated an attack upon privilege and even upon the constitution of
+the monarchy, the evil only went on increasing. The social condition of
+the time recalls that of present-day Morocco, in the high price of
+necessaries and the extortions of the financial authorities; every man
+was either soldier, beggar or smuggler.
+
+
+  Recourse to revolutionary measures.
+
+Under Pontchartrain, Chamillard and Desmarets, the expenses of the two
+wars of 1688 and 1701 attained to nearly five milliards. In order to
+cover this recourse was had as usual, not to remedies, but to
+palliatives worse than the evil: heavy usurious loans, debasement of the
+coinage, creation of stocks that were perpetually being converted, and
+ridiculous charges which the bourgeois, sickened with officialdom,
+would endure no longer. Richelieu himself had hesitated to tax labour;
+Louis XIV. trod the trade organizations under foot. It was necessary to
+have recourse to revolutionary measures, to direct taxation, ignoring
+all class distinction. In 1695 the graduated poll-tax was a veritable
+_coup d'état_ against privileged persons, who were equally brought under
+the tax; in 1710 was added the tithe (_dixième_), a tax upon income from
+all landed property. Money scarce, men too were lacking; the institution
+of the militia, the first germ of obligatory enlistment, was a no less
+important innovation. But these were only provisionary and desperate
+expedients, superposed upon the old routine, a further charge in
+addition to those already existing; and this entirely mechanical system,
+destructive of private initiative and the very sources of public life,
+worked with difficulty even in time of peace. As Louis XIV. made war
+continually the result was the same as in Spain under Philip II.:
+depopulation and bankruptcy within the kingdom and the coalitions of
+Europe without.
+
+
+  Foreign policy of Louis XIV.
+
+In 1660 France was predominant in Europe; but she aroused no jealousy
+except in the house of Habsburg, enfeebled and divided against itself.
+It was sufficient to remain faithful to the practical policy of Henry
+IV., of Richelieu and of Mazarin: that of moderation in strength. This
+Louis XIV. very soon altered, while yet claiming to continue it; he
+superseded it by one principle: that of replacing the proud tyranny of
+the Habsburgs of Spain by another. He claimed to lay down the law
+everywhere, in the preliminary negotiations between his ambassador and
+the Spanish ambassador in London, in the affair of the salute exacted
+from French vessels by the English, and in that of the Corsican guard in
+Rome; while he proposed to become the head of the crusade against the
+Turks in the Mediterranean as in Hungary.
+
+The eclipse of the great idea of the balance of power in Europe was no
+sudden affair; the most flourishing years of the reign were still
+enlightened by it: witness the repurchase of Dunkirk from Charles II. in
+1662, the cession of the duchies of Bar and of Lorraine and the war
+against Portugal. But soon the partial or total conquest of the Spanish
+inheritance proved "the grandeur of his beginnings and the meanness of
+his end." Like Philip the Fair and like Richelieu, Louis XIV. sought
+support for his external policy in that public opinion which in internal
+matters he held so cheap; and he found equally devoted auxiliaries in
+the jurists of his parlements.
+
+
+  War of Devolution, 1667.
+
+It was thus that the first of his wars for the extension of frontiers
+began, the War of Devolution. On the death of his father-in-law, Philip
+IV. of Spain, he transferred into the realm of politics a civil custom
+of inheritance prevailing in Brabant, and laid claim to Flanders in the
+name of his wife Maria Theresa. The Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667), in
+which he was by way of supporting the United Provinces without engaging
+his fleet, retarded this enterprise by a year. But after his mediation
+in the treaty of Breda (July 1667), when Hugues de Lionne, secretary of
+state for foreign affairs, had isolated Spain, he substituted soldiers
+for the jurists and cannon for diplomacy in the matter of the queen's
+rights.
+
+The secretary of state for war, Michel le Tellier, had organized his
+army; and thanks to his great activity in reform, especially after the
+Fronde, Louis XIV. found himself in possession of an army that was well
+equipped, well clothed, well provisioned, and very different from the
+rabble of the Thirty Years' War, fitted out by dishonest jobbing
+contractors. Severe discipline, suppression of fraudulent interference,
+furnishing of clothes and equipment by the king, regulation of rank
+among the officers, systematic revictualling of the army, settled means
+of manufacturing and furnishing arms and ammunition, placing of the army
+under the direct authority of the king, abolition of great military
+charges, subordination of the governors of strongholds, control by the
+civil authority over the soldiers effected by means of paymasters and
+commissaries of stores; all this organization of the royal army was the
+work of le Tellier.
+
+His son, François Michel le Tellier, marquis de Louvois, had one sole
+merit, that of being his father's pupil. A parvenu of the middle
+classes, he was brutal in his treatment of the lower orders and a
+sycophant in his behaviour towards the powerful; prodigiously active,
+ill-obeyed--as was the custom--but much dreaded. From 1677 onwards he
+did but finish perfecting Louis XIV.'s army in accordance with the
+suggestions left by his father, and made no fundamental changes: neither
+the definite abandonment of the feudal _arrière-ban_ and of
+recruiting--sources of disorder and insubordination--nor the creation of
+the militia, which allowed the nation to penetrate into all the ranks of
+the army, nor the adoption of the gun with the bayonet,--which was to
+become the _ultima ratio_ of peoples as the cannon was that of
+sovereigns--nor yet the uniform, intended to strengthen _esprit de
+corps_, were due to him. He maintained the institutions of the day,
+though seeking to diminish their abuse, and he perfected material
+details; but misfortune would have it that instead of remaining a great
+military administrator he flattered Louis XIV.'s megalomania, and thus
+caused his perdition.
+
+
+  The triple alliance of the Hague.
+
+Under his orders Turenne conquered Flanders (June-August 1667); and as
+the queen-mother of Spain would not give in, Condé occupied Franche
+Comté in fourteen days (February 1668). But Europe rose up in wrath; the
+United Provinces and England, jealous and disquieted by this near
+neighbourhood, formed with Sweden the triple alliance of the Hague
+(January 1668), ostensibly to offer their mediation, though in reality
+to prevent the occupation of the Netherlands. Following the advice of
+Colbert and de Lionne, Louis XIV. appeared to accede, and by the treaty
+of Aix-la-Chapelle he preserved his conquests in Flanders (May 1668).
+
+
+  Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.
+
+  War with Holland.
+
+  Peace of Nijmwegen, 1678.
+
+This peace was neither sufficient nor definite enough for Louis XIV.;
+and during four years he employed all his diplomacy to isolate the
+republic of the United Provinces in Europe, as he had done for Spain. He
+wanted to ruin this nation both in a military and an economic sense, in
+order to annex to French Flanders the rest of the Catholic Netherlands
+allotted to him by a secret treaty for partitioning the Spanish
+possessions, signed with his brother-in-law the emperor Leopold on the
+19th of January 1668. Colbert--very envious of Holland's
+wealth--prepared the finances, le Tellier the army and de Lionne the
+alliances. In vain did the grand-pensionary of the province of Holland,
+Jan de Witt, offer concessions of all kinds; both England, bound by the
+secret treaty of Dover (January 1670), and France had need of this war.
+Avoiding the Spanish Netherlands, Louis XIV. effected the passage of the
+Rhine in June 1672; and the disarmed United Provinces, which had on
+their side only Brandenburg and Spain, were occupied in a few days. The
+brothers de Witt, in consequence of their fresh offer to treat at any
+price, were assassinated; the broken dykes of Muiden arrested the
+victorious march of Condé and Turenne; while the popular and military
+party, directed by the stadtholder William of Orange, took the upper
+hand and preached resistance to the death. "The war is over," said the
+new secretary of state for foreign affairs, Arnauld de Pomponne; but
+Louvois and Louis XIV. said no. The latter wished not only to take
+possession of the Netherlands, which were to be given up to him with
+half of the United Provinces and their colonial empire; he wanted "to
+play the Charlemagne," to re-establish Catholicism in that country as
+Philip II. had formerly attempted to do, to occupy all the territory as
+far as the Lech, and to exact an annual oath of fealty. But the
+patriotism and the religious fanaticism of the Dutch revolted against
+this insupportable tyranny. Power had passed from the hands of the
+burghers of Amsterdam into those of William of Orange, who on the 30th
+of August 1673, profiting by the arrest of the army brought about by the
+inundation and by the fears of Europe, joined in a coalition with the
+emperor, the king of Spain, the duke of Lorraine, many of the princes of
+the Empire, and with England, now at last enlightened as to the projects
+of Catholic restoration which Louis XIV. was planning with Charles II.
+It was necessary to evacuate and then to settle with the United
+Provinces, and to turn against Spain. After fighting for five years
+against the whole of Europe by land and by sea, the efforts of Turenne,
+Condé and Duquesne culminated at Nijmwegen in fresh acquisitions (1678).
+Spain had to cede to Louis XIV., Franche Comté, Dunkirk and half of
+Flanders. This was another natural and glorious result of the treaty of
+the Pyrenees. The Spanish monarchy was disarmed.
+
+
+  Truce of Ratisbon.
+
+But Louis XIV. had already manifested that unmeasured and restless
+passion for glory, that claim to be the exclusive arbiter of western
+Europe, that blind and narrow insistence, which were to bear out his
+motto _"Seul contre tous."_ Whilst all Europe was disarming he kept his
+troops, and used peace as a means of conquest. Under orders from Colbert
+de Croissy the jurists came upon the scene once more, and their unjust
+decrees were sustained by force of arms. The _Chambres de Réunion_
+sought for and joined to the kingdom those lands which were not actually
+dependent upon his new conquests, but which had formerly been so: such
+as Saarbrücken, Deux Ponts (Zweibrücken) and Montbéliard in 1680,
+Strassburg and Casale in 1681. The power of the house of Habsburg was
+paralysed by an invasion of the Turks, and Louis XIV. sent 35,000 men
+into Belgium; while Luxemburg was occupied by Créqui and Vauban. The
+truce of Ratisbon (Regensburg) imposed upon Spain completed the work of
+the peace of Nijmwegen (1684); and thenceforward Louis XIV.'s terrified
+allies avoided his clutches while making ready to fight him.
+
+
+  William of Orange.
+
+  League of Augsburg.
+
+This was the moment chosen by Louis XIV.'s implacable enemy, William of
+Orange, to resume the war. His surprise of Marshal Luxembourg near Mons,
+after the signature of the peace of Nijmwegen, had proved that in his
+eyes war was the basis, of his authority in Holland and in Europe. His
+sole arm of support amidst all his allies was not the English monarchy,
+sold to Louis XIV., but Protestant England, jealous of France and uneasy
+about her independence. Being the husband of the duke of York's
+daughter, he had an understanding in this country with Sunderland,
+Godolphin and Temple--a party whose success was retarded for several
+years by the intrigues of Shaftesbury. But Louis XIV. added mistake to
+mistake; and the revocation of the edict of Nantes added religious
+hatreds to political jealousies. At the same time the Catholic powers
+responded by the league of Augsburg (July 1686) to his policy of
+unlimited aggrandisement. The unsuccessful attempts of Louis XIV. to
+force his partisan Cardinal Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg (see
+FÜRSTENBERG: _House_) into the electoral see of Cologne; the bombardment
+of Genoa; the humiliation of the pope in Rome itself by the marquis de
+Lavardin; the seizure of the Huguenot emigrants at Mannheim, and their
+imprisonment at Vincennes under pretext of a plot, precipitated the
+conflict. The question of the succession in the Palatinate, where Louis
+XIV. supported the claims of his sister-in-law the duchess of Orleans,
+gave the signal for a general war. The French armies devastated the
+Palatinate instead of attacking William of Orange in the Netherlands,
+leaving him free to disembark at Torbay, usurp the throne of England,
+and construct the Grand Alliance of 1689.
+
+
+  War of the Grand Alliance.
+
+  Peace of Ryswick.
+
+Far from reserving all his forces for an important struggle elsewhere,
+foreshadowed by the approaching death of Charles II. of Spain, Louis
+XIV., isolated in his turn, committed the error of wasting it for a
+space of ten years in a war of conquest, by which he alienated all that
+remained to him of European sympathy. The French armies, notwithstanding
+the disappearance of Condé and Turenne, had still glorious days before
+them with Luxembourg at Fleurus, at Steenkirk and at Neerwinden
+(1690-1693), and with Catinat in Piedmont, at Staffarda, and at
+Marsaglia; but these successes alternated with reverses. Tourville's
+fleet, victorious at Beachy Head, came to grief at La Hogue (1692); and
+though the expeditions to Ireland in favour of James II. were
+unsuccessful, thanks to the Huguenot Schomberg, Jean Bart and
+Duguay-Trouin ruined Anglo-Dutch maritime commerce. Louis XIV. assisted
+in person at the sieges of Mons and Namur, operations for which he had a
+liking, because, like Louvois, who died in 1691, he thought little of
+the French soldiery in the open field. After three years of strife,
+ruinous to both sides, he made the first overtures of peace, thus
+marking an epoch in his foreign policy; though William took no unfair
+advantage of this, remaining content with the restitution of places
+taken by the _Chambres de Réunion_, except Strassburg, with a
+frontier-line of fortified places for the Dutch, and with the official
+deposition of the Stuarts. But the treaty of Ryswick (1697) marked the
+condemnation of the policy pursued since that of Nijmwegen. While
+signing this peace Louis XIV. was only thinking of the succession in
+Spain. By partitioning her in advance with the other strong powers,
+England and Holland, by means of the treaties of the Hague and of London
+(1698-1699),--as he had formerly done with the emperor in 1668,--he
+seemed at first to wish for a pacific solution of the eternal conflict
+between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, and to restrict himself to the
+perfecting of his natural frontiers; but on the death of Charles II. of
+Spain (1700) he claimed everything in favour of his grandson, the duke
+of Anjou, now appointed universal heir, though risking the loss of all
+by once more letting himself fall into imprudent and provocative action
+in the dynastic interest.
+
+
+  War of the Spanish Succession.
+
+English public opinion, desirous of peace, had forced William III. to
+recognize Philip V. of Spain; but Louis XIV.'s maintenance of the
+eventual right of his grandson to the crown of France, and the expulsion
+of the Dutch, who had not recognized Philip V., from the Barrier towns,
+brought about the Grand Alliance of 1701 between the maritime Powers and
+the court of Vienna, desirous of partitioning the inheritance of Charles
+II. The recognition of the Old Pretender as James III., king of England,
+was only a response to the Grand Alliance, but it drew the English
+Tories into an inevitable war. Despite the death of William III. (March
+19, 1702) his policy triumphed, and in this war, the longest in the
+reign, it was the names of the enemy's generals, Prince Eugène of Savoy,
+Mazarin's grand-nephew, and the duke of Marlborough, which sounded in
+the ear, instead of Condé, Turenne and Luxembourg. Although during the
+first campaigns (1701-1703) in Italy, in Germany and in the Netherlands
+success was equally balanced, the successors of Villars--thanks to the
+treason of the duke of Savoy--were defeated at Höchstädt and Landau, and
+were reduced to the defensive (1704). In 1706 the defeats at Ramillies
+and Turin led to the evacuation of the Netherlands and Italy, and
+endangered the safety of Dauphiné. In 1708 Louis XIV. by a supreme
+effort was still able to maintain his armies; but the rout at Oudenarde,
+due to the misunderstanding between the duke of Burgundy and Vendôme,
+left the northern frontier exposed, and the cannons of the Dutch were
+heard at Marly. Louis XIV. had to humble himself to the extent of asking
+the Dutch for peace; but they forgot the lesson of 1673, and revolted by
+their demands at the Hague, he made a last appeal to arms and to the
+patriotism of his subjects at Malplaquet (September 1709). After this
+came invasion. Nature herself conspired with the enemy in the disastrous
+winter of 1709.
+
+
+  Peace of Utrecht, 1713.
+
+What saved Louis XIV. was not merely his noble constancy of resolve, the
+firmness of the marquis de Torcy, secretary of state for foreign
+affairs, the victory of Vendôme at Villaviciosa, nor the loyalty of his
+people. The interruption of the conferences at Gertruydenberg having
+obliged the Whigs and Marlborough to resign their power into the hands
+of the Tories, now sick of war, the death of the emperor Joseph I.
+(April 1711), which risked the reconstruction of Charles V.'s colossal
+and unwieldy monarchy upon the shoulders of the archduke Charles, and
+Marshal Villars' famous victory of Denain (July 1712) combined to render
+possible the treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden (1713-1714). These
+gave Italy and the Netherlands to the Habsburgs, Spain and her colonies
+to the Bourbons, the places on the coast and the colonial commerce to
+England (who had the lion's share), and a royal crown to the duke of
+Savoy and the elector of Brandenburg. The peace of Utrecht was to
+France what the peace of Westphalia had been to Austria, and curtailed
+the former acquisitions of Louis XIV.
+
+
+  End of Louis XIV.'s reign.
+
+The ageing of the great king was betrayed not only by the fortune of war
+in the hands of Villeroy, la Feuillade, or Marsin; disgrace and misery
+at home were worse than defeat. By the strange and successive deaths of
+the Grand Dauphin (1711), the duke and duchess of Burgundy (1712)--who
+had been the only joy of the old monarch--and of his two grandsons
+(1712-1714), it seemed as though his whole family were involved under
+the same curse. The court, whose sentimental history has been related by
+Madame de la Fayette, its official splendours by Loret, and its
+intrigues by the duc de Saint-Simon, now resembled an infirmary of
+morose invalids, presided over by Louis XIV.'s elderly wife, Madame de
+Maintenon, under the domination of the Jesuit le Tellier. Neither was it
+merely the clamours of the people that arose against the monarch. All
+the more remarkable spirits of the time, like prophets in Israel,
+denounced a tyranny which put Chamillart at the head of the finances
+because he played billiards well, and Villeroy in command of the armies
+although he was utterly untrustworthy; which sent the "patriot" Vauban
+into disgrace, banished from the court Catinat, the Père la Pensée,
+"exiled" to Cambrai the too clear sighted Fénelon, and suspected Racine
+of Jansenism and La Fontaine of independence.
+
+Disease and famine; crushing imposts and extortions; official debasement
+of the currency; bankruptcy; state prisons; religious and political
+inquisition; suppression of all institutions for the safe-guarding of
+rights; tyranny by the intendants; royal, feudal and clerical oppression
+burdening every faculty and every necessary of life; "monstrous and
+incurable luxury"; the horrible drama of poison; the twofold adultery of
+Madame de Montespan; and the narrow bigotry of Madame de Maintenon--all
+concurred to make the end of the reign a sad contrast with the splendour
+of its beginning. When reading Molière and Racine, Bossuet and Fénelon,
+the campaigns of Turenne, or Colbert's ordinances; when enumerating the
+countless literary and scientific institutions of the great century;
+when considering the port of Brest, the Canal du Midi, Perrault's
+colonnade of the Louvre, Mansart's Invalides and the palace of
+Versailles, and Vauban's fine fortifications--admiration is kindled for
+the radiant splendour of Louis XIV.'s period. But the art and literature
+expressed by the genius of the masters, reflected in the tastes of
+society, and to be taken by Europe as a model throughout a whole
+century, are no criterion of the social and political order of the day.
+They were but a magnificent drapery of pomp and glory thrown across a
+background of poverty, ignorance, superstition, hypocrisy and cruelty;
+remove it, and reality appears in all its brutal and sinister nudity.
+The corpse of Louis XIV., left to servants for disposal, and saluted all
+along the road to Saint Denis by the curses of a noisy crowd sitting in
+the _cabarets_, celebrating his death by drinking more than their fill
+as a compensation for having suffered too much from hunger during his
+lifetime--such was the coarse but sincere epitaph which popular opinion
+placed on the tomb of the "Grand Monarque." The nation, restive under
+his now broken yoke, received with a joyous anticipation, which the
+future was to discount, the royal infant whom they called Louis the
+Well-beloved, and whose funeral sixty years later was to be greeted with
+the same proofs of disillusionment.
+
+
+  Character of the eighteenth century.
+
+The death of Louis XIV. closed a great era of French history; the 18th
+century opens upon a crisis for the monarchy. From 1715 to 1723 came the
+reaction of the Regency, with its marvellous effrontery, innovating
+spirit and frivolous immorality. From 1723 to 1743 came the
+mealy-mouthed despotism of Cardinal Fleury, and his apathetic policy
+within and without the kingdom. From 1743 to 1774 came the personal rule
+of Louis XV., when all the different powers were in conflicts--the
+bishops and parlement quarrelling, the government fighting against the
+clergy and the magistracy, and public opinion in declared opposition to
+the state. Till at last, from 1774 to 1789, came Louis XVI. with his
+honest illusions. his moral pusillanimity and his intellectual
+impotence, to aggravate still further the accumulated errors of ages and
+to prepare for the inevitable Revolution.
+
+
+  The Regency (1715-1723).
+
+The 18th century, like the 17th, opened with a political _coup d'état_.
+Louis XV. was five years old, and the duke of Orleans held the regency.
+But Louis XIV. had in his will delegated all the power of the government
+to a council on which the duke of Maine, his legitimated son, had the
+first, but Madame de Maintenon and the Jesuits the predominant place.
+This collective administration, designed to cripple the action of the
+regent, encountered a twofold opposition from the nobles and the
+parlement; but on the 2nd of September 1715 the emancipated parlement
+set aside the will in favour of the duke of Orleans, who thus together
+with the title of regent had all the real power. He therefore
+reinstituted the parlement in its ancient right of remonstrance
+(suspended since the declarations of 1667 and 1673), and handed over
+ministerial power to the nobility, replacing the secretaries of state by
+six councils composed in part of great nobles, on the advice of the
+famous duc de Saint-Simon. The duc de Noailles, president of the council
+of finance, had the direction of this "Polysynodie."
+
+
+  Philip of Orleans.
+
+The duke of Orleans, son of the princess palatine and Louis XIV.'s
+brother, possessed many gifts--courage, intelligence and agility of
+mind--but he lacked the one gift of using these to good advantage. The
+political crisis that had placed him in power had not put an end to the
+financial crisis, and this, it was hoped, might be effected by
+substituting partial and petty bankruptcies for the general bankruptcy
+cynically advocated by Saint-Simon. The reduction of the royal revenues
+did not suffice to fill the treasury; while the establishment of a
+chamber of justice (March 1716) had no other result than that of
+demoralizing the great lords and ladies already mad for pleasure, by
+bringing them into contact with the farmers of the revenue who purchased
+impunity from them. A very clever Scotch adventurer named John Law
+(q.v.) now offered his assistance in dealing with the enormous debt of
+more than three milliards, and in providing the treasury. Being well
+acquainted with the mechanism of banking, he had adopted views as to
+cash, credit and the circulation of values which contained an admixture
+of truth and falsehood. Authorized after many difficulties to organize a
+private bank of deposit and account, which being well conceived
+prospered and revived commerce, Law proposed to lighten the treasury by
+the profits accruing to a great maritime and colonial company. Payment
+for the shares in this new Company of the West, with a capital of a
+hundred millions, was to be made in credit notes upon the government,
+converted into 4% stock. These aggregated funds, needed to supply the
+immense and fertile valley of the Mississippi, and the annuities of the
+treasury destined to pay for the shares, were non-transferable. Law's
+idea was to ask the bank for the floating capital necessary, so that the
+bank and the Company of the West were to be supplementary to each other;
+this is what was called Law's system. After the chancellor D'Aguesseau
+and the duc de Noailles had been replaced by D'Argenson alone, and after
+the _lit de justice_ of the 26th of August 1718 had deprived the
+parlement, hostile to Law, of the authority left to it, the bank became
+royal and the Company of the West universal. But the royal bank, as a
+state establishment, asked for compulsory privilege to increase the
+emission of its credit notes, and that they should receive a premium
+upon all metallic specie. The Company of the Indies became the grantee
+for the farming of tobacco, the coinage of metals, and farming in
+general; and in order to procure funds it multiplied the output of
+shares, which were adroitly launched and became more and more sought for
+on the exchange in the rue Quincampoix. This soon caused a frenzy of
+stock-jobbing, which disturbed the stability of private fortunes and
+social positions, and depraved customs and manners with the seductive
+notion of easily obtained riches. The nomination of Law to the
+controller-generalship, re-established for his benefit on the
+resignation of D'Argenson (January 5, 1720), let loose still wilder
+speculation; till the day came when he could no longer face the
+terrible difficulty of meeting both private irredeemable shares with a
+variable return, and the credit notes redeemable at sight and guaranteed
+by the state. Gold and silver were proscribed; the bank and the company
+were joined in one; the credit notes and the shares were assimilated.
+But credit cannot be commanded either by violence or by expedients;
+between July and September 1720 came the suspension of payments, the
+flight of Law, and the disastrous liquidation which proved once again
+that respect for the state's obligations had not yet entered into the
+law of public finance.
+
+
+  The Anglo-Dutch Alliance.
+
+Reaction on a no less extensive scale characterized foreign policy
+during the Regency. A close alliance between France and her ancient
+enemies, England and Holland, was concluded and maintained from 1717 to
+1739: France, after thirty years of fighting, between two periods of
+bankruptcy; Holland reinstalled in her commercial position; and England,
+seeing before her the beginning of her empire over the seas--all three
+had an interest in peace. On the other hand, peace was imperilled by
+Philip V. of Spain and by the emperor (who had accepted the portion
+assigned to them by the treaty of Utrecht, while claiming the whole), by
+Savoy and Brandenburg (who had profited too much by European conflicts
+not to desire their perpetuation), by the crisis from which the maritime
+powers of the Baltic were suffering, and by the Turks on the Danube. The
+dream of Cardinal Alberoni, Philip V.'s minister, was to set fire to all
+this inflammable material in order to snatch therefrom a crown of some
+sort to satisfy the maternal greed of Elizabeth Farnese; and this he
+might have attained by the occupation of Sardinia and the expedition to
+Sicily (1717-1718), if Dubois, a priest without a religion, a greedy
+parvenu and a diplomatist of second rank, though tenacious and full of
+resources as a minister, had not placed his common sense at the disposal
+of the regent's interests and those of European peace. He signed the
+triple alliance at the Hague, succeeding with the assistance of
+Stanhope, the English minister, in engaging the emperor therein, after
+attempting this for a year and a half. Whilst the Spanish fleet was
+destroyed before Syracuse by Admiral Byng, the intrigue of the Spanish
+ambassador Cellamare with the duke of Maine to exclude the family of
+Orleans from the succession on Louis XV.'s death was discovered and
+repressed; and Marshal Berwick burned the dockyards at Pasajes in Spain.
+Alberoni's dream was shattered by the treaty of London in 1720.
+
+Seized in his turn with a longing for the cardinal's hat, Dubois paid
+for it by the registering of the bull _Unigenitus_ and by the
+persecution of the Jansenists which the regent had stopped. After the
+majority of Louis XV. had been proclaimed on the 16th of February 1723,
+Dubois was the first to depart; and four months after his disappearance
+the duke of Orleans, exhausted by his excesses, carried with him into
+the grave that spirit of reform which he had compromised by his
+frivolous voluptuousness (December 2, 1723).
+
+
+  Ministry of the duc de Bourbon.
+
+The Regency had been the making of the house of Orleans; thenceforward
+the question was how to humble it, and the duc de Bourbon, now prime
+minister--a great-grandson of the great Condé, but a narrow-minded man
+of limited intelligence, led by a worthless woman--set himself to do so.
+The marquise de Prie was the first of a series of publicly recognized
+mistresses; from 1723 to 1726 she directed foreign policy and internal
+affairs despite the king's majority, moved always more by a spirit of
+vengeance than by ambition. This sad pair were dominated by the
+self-interested and continual fear of becoming subject to the son of the
+Regent, whom they detested; but danger came upon them from elsewhere.
+They found standing in their way the very man who had been the author of
+their fortunes, Louis XV.'s tutor, uneasy in the exercise of a veiled
+authority; for the churchman Fleury knew how to wait, on condition of
+ultimately attaining his end. Neither the festivities given at Chantilly
+in honour of the king, nor the dismissal (despite the most solemn
+promises) of the Spanish infanta, who had been betrothed to Louis XV.,
+nor yet the young king's marriage to Maria Leszczynska (1725)--a
+marriage negotiated by the marquise de Prie in order to bar the throne
+from the Orleans family--could alienate the sovereign from his old
+master. The irritation kept up by the agents of Philip V., incensed by
+this affront, and the discontent aroused by the institutions of the
+_cinquantième_ and the militia, by the re-establishment of the feudal
+tax on Louis XV.'s joyful accession, and by the resumption of a
+persecution of the Protestants and the Jansenists which had apparently
+died out, were cleverly exploited by Fleury; and a last ill-timed
+attempt by the queen to separate the king from him brought about the
+fall of the duc de Bourbon, very opportunely for France, in June 1726.
+
+
+  Cardinal Fleury, 1726-1743.
+
+From the hands of his unthinking pupil Fleury eventually received the
+supreme direction of affairs, which he retained for seventeen years. He
+was aged seventy-two when he thus obtained the power which had been his
+unmeasured though not ill-calculated ambition. Soft-spoken and polite,
+crafty and suspicious, he was pacific by temperament and therefore
+allowed politics to slumber. His turn for economics made Orry,[33] the
+controller-general of finance, for long his essential partner. The
+latter laboured at re-establishing order in fiscal affairs; and various
+measures like the impost of the _dixième_ upon all property save that of
+the clergy, together with the end of the corn famine, sufficed to
+restore a certain amount of well-being. Religious peace was more
+difficult to secure; in fact politico-religious quarrels dominated all
+the internal policy of the kingdom during forty years, and gradually
+compromised the royal authority. The Jesuits, returned to power in 1723
+with the duc de Bourbon and in 1726 with Fleury, rekindled the old
+strife regarding the bull _Unigenitus_ in opposition to the Gallicans
+and the Jansenists. The retractation imposed upon Cardinal de Noailles,
+and his replacement in the archbishopric of Paris by Vintimille, an
+unequivocal Molinist, excited among the populace a very violent
+agitation against the court of Rome and the Jesuits, the prelude to a
+united Fronde of the Sorbonne and the parlement. Fleury found no other
+remedy for this agitation--in which appeal was made even to
+miracles--than _lits de justice_ and _lettres de cachet_; Jansenism
+remained a potent source of trouble within the heart of Catholicism.
+
+
+  Fleury's foreign policy.
+
+This worn-out septuagenarian, who prized rest above everything, imported
+into foreign policy the same mania for economy and the same sloth in
+action. He naturally adopted the idea of reconciling Louis XIV.'s
+descendants, who had all been embroiled ever since the Polish marriage.
+He succeeded in this by playing very adroitly on the ambition of
+Elizabeth Farnese and her husband Philip V., who was to reign in France
+notwithstanding any renunciation that might have taken place. Despite
+the birth of a dauphin (September 1729), which cut short the Spanish
+intrigues, the reconciliation was a lasting one (treaty of Seville); it
+led to common action in Italy, and to the installation of Spanish
+royalties at Parma, Piacenza, and soon after at Naples. Fleury,
+supported by the English Hanoverian alliance, to which he sacrificed the
+French navy, obliged the emperor Charles VI. to sacrifice the trade of
+the Austrian Netherlands to the maritime powers and Central Italy to the
+Bourbons, in order to gain recognition for his Pragmatic Sanction. The
+question of the succession in France lay dormant until the end of the
+century, and Fleury thought he had definitely obtained peace in the
+treaty of Vienna (1731).
+
+
+  War of the Polish Succession (1733-1738).
+
+The war of the Polish succession proved him to have been deceived. On
+the death of Augustus II. of Saxony, king of Poland, Louis XV.'s
+father-in-law had been proclaimed king by the Polish diet. This was an
+ephemeral success, ill-prepared and obtained by taking a sudden
+advantage of national sentiment; it was soon followed by a check, owing
+to a Russian and German coalition and the baseness of Cardinal Fleury,
+who, in order to avoid intervening, pretended to tremble before an
+imaginary threat of reprisals on the part of England. But Chauvelin, the
+keeper of the seals, supported by public opinion, avenged on the Rhine
+and the Po the unlucky heroism of the comte de Plélo at Dànzig,[34] the
+vanished dream of the queen, the broken word of Louis XV., and the
+treacherous abandonment of Poland. Fleury never forgave him for this:
+Chauvelin had checkmated him with war; he checkmated Chauvelin with
+peace, and hastened to replace Marshals Berwick and Villars by
+diplomatists. The third treaty of Vienna (1738), the reward of so much
+effort, would only have claimed for France the little duchy of Bar, had
+not Chauvelin forced Louis XV. to obtain Lorraine for his
+father-in-law--still hoping for the reversion of the crown; but Fleury
+thus rendered impossible any influence of the queen, and held Stanislaus
+at his mercy. In order to avenge himself upon Chauvelin he sacrificed
+him to the cabinets of Vienna and London, alarmed at seeing him revive
+the national tradition in Italy.
+
+
+  The Eastern question.
+
+Fleury hardly had time to breathe before a new conflagration broke out
+in the east. The Russian empress Anne and the emperor Charles VI. had
+planned to begin dismembering the Turkish empire. More fortunate than
+Plélo, Villeneuve, the French ambassador at Constantinople, endeavoured
+to postpone this event, and was well supported; he revived the courage
+of the Turks and provided them with arms, thanks to the comte de
+Bonneval (q.v.), one of those adventurers of high renown whose influence
+in Europe during the first half of the eighteenth century is one of the
+most piquant features of that period. The peace of Belgrade (September
+1739) was, by its renewal of the capitulations, a great material success
+for France, and a great moral victory by the rebuff to Austria and
+Russia.
+
+
+  War of the Austrian Succession.
+
+France had become once more the arbiter of Europe, when the death of the
+emperor Charles VI. in 1740 opened up a new period of wars and
+misfortunes for Europe and for the pacific Fleury. Everyone had signed
+Charles VI.'s Pragmatic Sanction, proclaiming the succession-rights of
+his daughter, the archduchess Maria Theresa; but on his death there was
+a general renunciation of signatures and an attempt to divide the
+heritage. The safety of the house of Austria depended on the attitude of
+France; for Austria could no longer harm her. Fleury's inclination was
+not to misuse France's traditional policy by exaggerating it, but to
+respect his sworn word; he dared not press his opinion, however, and
+yielded to the fiery impatience of young hot-heads like the two
+Belle-Isles, and of all those who, infatuated by Frederick II., felt
+sick of doing nothing at Versailles and were backed up by Louis XV.'s
+bellicose mistresses. He had to experience the repeated defections of
+Frederick II. in his own interests, and the precipitate retreat from
+Bohemia. He had to humble himself before Austria and the whole of
+Europe; and it was high time for Fleury, now fallen into second
+childhood, to vanish from the scene (January 1743).
+
+
+  Personal rule of Louis XV.
+
+Louis XV. was at last to become his own prime minister and to reign
+alone; but in reality he was more embarrassed than pleased by the
+responsibility incumbent upon him. He therefore retained the persons who
+had composed Fleury's staff; though instead of being led by a single one
+of them, he fell into the hands of several, who disputed among
+themselves for the ascendancy: Maurepas, incomparable in little things,
+but neglectful of political affairs; D'Argenson, bold, and strongly
+attached to his work as minister of war; and the cardinal de Tencin, a
+frivolous and worldly priest. Old Marshal de Noailles tried to incite
+Louis XV. to take his kingship in earnest, thinking to cure him by war
+of his effeminate passions; and, in the spring of 1744, the king's grave
+illness at Metz gave a momentary hope of reconciliation between him and
+the deserted queen. But the duc de Richelieu, a roué who had joined
+hands with the sisters of the house of Nesle and was jealous of Marshal
+de Noailles, soon regained his lost ground; and, under the influence of
+this panderer to his pleasures, Louis XV. settled down into a life of
+vice. Holding aloof from active affairs, he tried to relieve the
+incurable boredom of satiety in the violent exercise of hunting, in
+supper-parties with his intimates, and in spicy indiscretions. Brought
+up religiously and to shun the society of women, his first experiences
+in adultery had been made with many scruples and intermittently. Little
+by little, however, jealous of power, yet incapable of exercising it to
+any purpose, he sank into a sensuality which became utterly shameless
+under the influence of his chief mistress the duchesse de Châteauroux.
+
+
+  Madame de Pompadour.
+
+Hardly had a catastrophe snatched her away in the zenith of her power
+when complete corruption and the flagrant triumph of egoism supervened
+with the accession to power of the marquise de Pompadour, and for nearly
+twenty years (1745-1764) the whims and caprices of this little
+_bourgeoise_ ruled the realm. A prime minister in petticoats, she had
+her political system: reversed the time-honoured alliances of France,
+appointed or disgraced ministers, directed fleets and armies, concluded
+treaties, and failed in all her enterprises! She was the queen of
+fashion in a society where corruption blossomed luxuriantly and
+exquisitely, and in a century of wit hers was second to none. Amidst
+this extraordinary instability, when everything was at the mercy of a
+secret thought of the master, the mistress alone held lasting sway; in a
+reign of all-pervading satiety and tedium, she managed to remain
+indispensable and bewitching to the day of her death.
+
+
+  Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.
+
+Meanwhile the War of the Austrian Succession broke out again, and never
+had secretary of state more intricate questions to solve than had
+D'Argenson. In the attempt to make a stage-emperor of Charles Albert of
+Bavaria, defeat was incurred at Dettingen, and the French were driven
+back on the Rhine (1743). The Bavarian dream dissipated, victories
+gained in Flanders by Marshal Saxe, another adventurer of genius, at
+Fontenoy, Raucoux and Lawfeld (1745-1747), were hailed with joy as
+continuing those of Louis XIV.; even though they resulted in the loss of
+Germany and the doubling of English armaments. The "disinterested" peace
+of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 1748) had no effectual result other than
+that of destroying in Germany, and for the benefit of Prussia, a balance
+of power that had yet to be secured in Italy, despite the establishment
+of the Spanish prince Philip at Parma. France, meanwhile, was beaten at
+sea by England, Maria Theresa's sole ally. While founding her colonial
+empire England had come into collision with France; and the rivalry of
+the Hundred Years' War had immediately sprung up again between the two
+countries. Engaged already in both Canada and in India (where Dupleix
+was founding an empire with a mere handful of men), it was to France's
+interest not to become involved in war upon the Rhine, thus falling into
+England's continental trap. She did fall into it, however: for the sake
+of conquering Silesia for the king of Prussia, Canada was left exposed
+by the capture of Cape Breton; while in order to restore this same
+Silesia to Maria Theresa, Canada was lost and with it India.
+
+
+  The Seven Years' War, 1756-1763.
+
+France had worked for the king of Prussia from 1740 to 1748; now it was
+Maria Theresa's game that was played in the Seven Years' War. In 1755,
+the English having made a sudden attack upon the French at sea, and
+Frederick II. having by a fresh _volte-face_ passed into alliance with
+Great Britain, Louis XV.'s government accepted an alliance with Maria
+Theresa in the treaty of the 1st of May 1756. Instead of remaining upon
+the defensive in this continental war--merely accessory as it was--he
+made it his chief affair, and placed himself under the petticoat
+government of three women, Maria Theresa, Elizabeth of Russia and the
+marquise de Pompadour. This error--the worst of all--laid the
+foundations of the Prussian and British empires. By three battles,
+victories for the enemies of France--Rossbach in Germany, 1757, Plassey
+in India, 1757, and Quebec in Canada, 1759 (owing to the recall of
+Dupleix, who was not bringing in large enough dividends to the Company
+of the Indies, and to the abandonment of Montcalm, who could not
+interest any one in "a few acres of snow"), the expansion of Prussia was
+assured, and the British relieved of French rivalry in the expansion of
+their empire in India and on the North American continent.
+
+
+  Treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg.
+
+Owing to the blindness of Louis XV. and the vanity of the favourite, the
+treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg (1763) once more proved the French
+splendid in their conceptions, but deficient in action. Moreover,
+Choiseul, secretary of state for foreign affairs since 1758, made out of
+this deceptive Austrian alliance a system which put the finishing touch
+to disaster, and after having thrown away everything to satisfy Maria
+Theresa's hatred of Frederick II., the reconciliation between these two
+irreconcilable Germans at Neisse and at Neustadt (1769-1770) was
+witnessed by France, to the prejudice of Poland, one of her most ancient
+adherents. The expedient of the Family Compact, concluded with Spain in
+1761--with a view to taking vengeance upon England, whose fleets were a
+continual thorn in the side to France--served only to involve Spain
+herself in misfortune. Choiseul, who at least had a policy that was
+sometimes in the right, and who was very anxious to carry it out, then
+realized that the real quarrel had to be settled with England. Amid the
+anguish of defeat and of approaching ruin, he had an acute sense of the
+actualities of the case, and from 1763 to 1766 devoted himself
+passionately to the reconstruction of the navy. To compensate for the
+loss of the colonies he annexed Lorraine (1766), and by the acquisition
+of Corsica in 1768 he gave France an intermediary position in the
+Mediterranean, between friendly Spain and Italy, looking forward to the
+time when it should become a stepping-stone to Africa.
+
+
+  First partition of Poland.
+
+But Louis XV. had two policies. The incoherent efforts which he made to
+repair by the secret diplomacy of the comte de Broglie the evils caused
+by his official policy only aggravated his shortcomings and betrayed his
+weakness. The contradictory intrigues of the king's secret proceedings
+in the candidature of Prince Xavier, the dauphine's brother, and the
+patriotic efforts of the confederation of Bar, contributed to bring
+about the Polish crisis which the partition of 1772 resolved in favour
+of Frederick II.; and the Turks were in their turn dragged into the same
+disastrous affair. Of the old allies of France, Choiseul preserved at
+least Sweden by the _coup d'état_ of Gustavus III.; but instead of being
+as formerly the centre of great affairs, the cabinet of Versailles lost
+all its credit, and only exhibited before the eyes of contemptuous
+Europe France's extreme state of decay.
+
+
+  Internal policy of Louis XV.
+
+The nation felt this humiliation, and showed all the greater irritation
+as the want of cohesion in the government and the anarchy in the central
+authority became more and more intolerable in home affairs. Though the
+administration still possessed a fund of tradition and a personnel
+which, including many men of note, protected it from the enfeebling
+influence of the court, it looked as though chance regulated everything
+so far as the government was concerned. These fluctuations were owing
+partly to the character of Louis XV., and partly also to the fact that
+society in the 18th century was too advanced in its ideas to submit
+without resistance to the caprice of such a man. His mistresses were not
+the only cause of this; for ever since Fleury's advent political parties
+had come to the fore. From 1749 to 1757 the party of religious devotees
+grouped round the queen and the king's daughters, with the dauphin as
+chief and the comte D'Argenson, and Machault d'Arnouville, keeper of the
+seals, as lieutenants, had worked against Madame de Pompadour (who leant
+for support upon the parlements, the Jansenists and the philosophers)
+and had gained the upper hand. Thenceforward poverty, disorders, and
+consequently murmurs increased. The financial reform attempted by
+Machault d'Arnouville between 1745 and 1749--a reduction of the debt
+through the impost of the twentieth and the edict of 1749 against the
+extensive property held in mortmain by the Church--after his disgrace
+only resulted in failure. The army, which D'Argenson (likewise dismissed
+by Madame de Pompadour) had been from 1743 to 1747 trying to restore by
+useful reforms, was riddled by cabals. Half the people in the kingdom
+were dying of hunger, while the court was insulting poverty by its
+luxury and waste; and from 1750 onwards political ferment was everywhere
+manifest. It found all the more favourable foothold in that the Church,
+the State's best ally, had made herself more and more unpopular. Her
+refusal of the sacraments to those who would not accept the bull
+_Unigenitus_ (1746) was exploited in the eyes of the masses, as in those
+of more enlightened people was her selfish and short-sighted resistance
+to the financial plans of Machault. The general discontent was expressed
+by the parlements in their attempt to establish a political supremacy
+amid universal confusion, and by the popular voice in pamphlets
+recalling by their violence those of the League. Every one expected and
+desired a speedy revolution that should put an end to a policy which
+alternated between overheated effervescence, abnormal activity and
+lethargy. Nothing can better show the point to which things had
+descended than the attempted assassination of Louis the Well-beloved by
+Damiens in 1757.
+
+
+  Choiseul.
+
+Choiseul was the means of accelerating this revolution, not only by his
+abandonment of diplomatic traditions, but still more by his improvidence
+and violence. He reversed the policy of his predecessors in regard to
+the parlement. Supported by public opinion, which clamoured for
+guarantees against abitrary power, the parlements had dared not only to
+insist on being consulted as to the budget of the state in 1763, but to
+enter upon a confederation throughout the whole of France, and on
+repeated occasions to ordain a general strike of the judicial
+authorities. Choiseul did not hesitate to attack through _lits de
+justice_ or by exile a judiciary oligarchy which doubtless rested its
+pretensions merely on wealth, high birth, or that encroaching spirit
+that was the only counteracting agency to the monarchy. Louis XV.,
+wearied with their clamour, called them to order. Choiseul's religious
+policy was no less venturesome; after the condemnation in 1759 of the
+Jesuits who were involved in the bankruptcy of Father de la Valette,
+their general, in the Antilles, he had the order dissolved for refusing
+to modify its constitution (1761-1764). Thus, not content with
+encouraging writers with innovating ideas to the prejudice of
+traditional institutions, he attacked, in the order of the Jesuits, the
+strongest defender of these latter, and delivered over the new
+generation to revolutionary doctrines.
+
+
+  The Triumvirate, 1770-1774.
+
+A woman had elevated him into power; a woman brought him to the ground.
+He succumbed to a coalition of the chancellor Maupeou, the duc
+d'Aiguillon and the Abbé Terray, which depended on the favour of the
+king's latest mistress, Madame du Barry (December 1770); and the Jesuits
+were avenged by a stroke of authority similar to that by which they
+themselves had suffered. Following on an edict registered by the _lit de
+justice_, which forbade any remonstrance in political matters, the
+parlement had resigned, and had been imitated by the provincial
+parlements; whereupon Maupeou, an energetic chancellor, suppressed the
+parlements and substituted superior councils of magistrates appointed by
+the king (1771). This reform was justified by the religious intolerance
+of the parlements; by their scandalous trials of Calas, Pierre Paul
+Sirven (1709-1777), the chevalier de la Barre and the comte de Lally; by
+the retrograde spirit that had made them suppress the Encyclopaedia in
+1759 and condemn _Émile_ in 1762; and by their selfishness in
+perpetuating abuses by which they profited. But this reform, being made
+by the minister of a hated sovereign, only aided in exasperating public
+opinion, which was grateful to the parlements in that their
+remonstrances had not always been fruitless.
+
+
+  Ancient influences and institutions.
+
+Thus all the buttresses of the monarchical institution began to fall to
+pieces: the Church, undermined by the heresy of Jansenism, weakened by
+the inroads of philosophy, discredited by evil-livers among the
+priesthood, and divided against itself, like all losing parties; the
+nobility of the court, still brave at heart, though incapable of
+exertion and reduced to beggary, having lost all respect for discipline
+and authority, not only in the camp, but in civilian society; and the
+upper-class officials, narrow-minded and egotistical, unsettling by
+their opposition the royal authority which they pretended to safeguard.
+Even the "liberties," among the few representative institutions which
+the _ancien régime_ had left intact in some provinces, turned against
+the people. The estates opposed most of the intelligent and humane
+measures proposed by such intendants as Tourny and Turgot to relieve the
+peasants, whose distress was very great; they did their utmost to render
+the selfishness of the privileged classes more oppressive and vexatious.
+
+
+  The new ideas.
+
+Thus the terrible prevalence of poverty and want; the successive
+famines; the mistakes of the government; the scandals of the Parc aux
+Cerfs; and the parlements playing the Roman senate: all these causes,
+added together and multiplied, assisted in setting a general
+fermentation to work. The philosophers only helped to precipitate a
+movement which they had not created; without pointing to absolute power
+as the cause of the trouble, and without pretending to upset the
+traditional system, they attempted to instil into princes the feeling of
+new and more precise obligations towards their subjects. Voltaire,
+Montesquieu, the Encyclopaedists and the Physiocrats (recurring to the
+tradition of Bayle and Fontenelle), by dissolving in their analytical
+crucible all consecrated beliefs and all fixed institutions, brought
+back into the human society of the 18th century that humanity which had
+been so rudely eliminated. They demanded freedom of thought and belief
+with passionate insistence; they ardently discussed institutions and
+conduct; and they imported into polemics the idea of natural rights
+superior to all political arrangements. Whilst some, like Voltaire and
+the Physiocrats, representatives of the privileged classes and careless
+of political rights, wished to make use of the omnipotence of the prince
+to accomplish desirable reforms, or, like Montesquieu, adversely
+criticized despotism and extolled moderate governments, other, plebeians
+like Rousseau, proclaimed the theory of the social contract and the
+sovereignty of the people. So that during this reign of frivolity and
+passion, so bold in conception and so poor in execution, the thinkers
+contributed still further to mark the contrast between grandeur of plan
+and mediocrity of result.
+
+The preaching of all this generous philosophy, not only in France, but
+throughout the whole of Europe, would have been in vain had there not
+existed at the time a social class interested in these great changes,
+and capable of compassing them. Neither the witty and lucid form in
+which the philosophers clothed their ideas in their satires, romances,
+stage-plays and treatises, nor the salons of Madame du Deffand, Madame
+Geoffrin and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, could possibly have been
+sufficiently far-reaching or active centres of political propaganda. The
+former touched only the more highly educated classes; while to the
+latter, where privileged individuals alone had entry, novelties were but
+an undiluted stimulant for the jaded appetites of persons whose ideas of
+good-breeding, moreover, would have drawn the line at martyrdom.
+
+
+  The bourgeoisie--the incarnation of new ideas.
+
+The class which gave the Revolution its chiefs, its outward and visible
+forms, and the irresistible energy of its hopes, was the _bourgeoisie_,
+intelligent, ambitious and rich; in the forefront the capitalists and
+financiers of the _haute bourgeoisie_, farmers-general and army
+contractors, who had supplanted or swamped the old landed and military
+aristocracy, had insensibly reconstructed the interior of the ancient
+social edifice with the gilded and incongruous materials of wealth, and
+in order to consolidate or increase their monopolies, needed to secure
+themselves against the arbitrary action of royalty and the bureaucracy.
+Next came the crowd of stockholders and creditors of the state, who, in
+face of the government's "extravagant anarchy," no longer felt safe from
+partial or total bankruptcy. More powerful still, and more masterful,
+was the commercial, industrial and colonial _bourgeoisie_; because under
+the Regency and under Louis XV. they had been more productive and more
+creative. Having gradually revolutionized the whole economic system, in
+Paris, in Lyons, in Nantes, in Bordeaux, in Marseilles, they could not
+tamely put up with being excluded from public affairs, which had so much
+bearing upon their private or collective enterprises. Finally, behind
+this _bourgeoisie_, and afar off, came the crowd of serfs, rustics whom
+the acquisition of land had gradually enfranchised, and who were the
+more eager to enjoy their definitive liberation because it was close at
+hand.
+
+
+  Transformation of manners and customs.
+
+The habits and sentiments of French society showed similar changes. From
+having been almost exclusively national during Louis XIV.'s reign, owing
+to the perpetual state of war and to a sort of proud isolation, it had
+gradually become cosmopolitan. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle,
+France had been flooded from all quarters of the civilized world, but
+especially from England, by a concourse of refined and cultured men well
+acquainted with her usages and her universal language, whom she had
+received sympathetically. Paris became the brain of Europe. This
+revolution in manners and customs, coinciding with the revolution in
+ideas, led in its turn to a transformation in feeling, and to new
+aesthetic needs. Gradually people became sick of openly avowed
+gallantry, of shameless libertinism, of moral obliquity and of the
+flattering artifices of vice; a long shudder ran through the selfish
+torpor of the social body. After reading the _Nouvelle-Héloïse_,
+_Clarissa_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_, fatigued and wearied society
+revived as though beneath the fresh breezes of dawn. The principle of
+examination, the reasoned analysis of human conditions and the
+discussion of causes, far from culminating in disillusioned nihilism,
+everywhere aroused the democratic spirit, the life of sentiment and of
+human feeling: in the drama, with Marivaux, Diderot and La Chaussée; in
+art, with Chardin and Greuze; and in the salons, in view of the
+suppression of privilege. So that to Louis XV.'s cynical and hopeless
+declaration: "Apres moi le déluge," the setting 18th century responded
+by a belief in progress and an appeal to the future. A long-drawn echo
+from all classes hailed a revolution that was possible because it was
+necessary.
+
+If this revolution did not burst forth sooner, in the actual lifetime of
+Louis XV., if in Louis XVI.'s reign there was a renewal of loyalty to
+the king, before the appeal to liberty was made, that is to be explained
+by this hope of recovery. But Louis XVI.'s reign (1774-1792) was only to
+be a temporary halting-place, an artifice of history for passing through
+the transition period whilst elaborating the transformation which was to
+revolutionize, together with France, the whole world.
+
+
+  Louis XVI.
+
+Louis XVI. was twenty years of age. Physically he was stout, and a slave
+to the Bourbon fondness for good living; intellectually a poor creature
+and but ill-educated, he loved nothing so much as hunting and
+locksmith's work. He had a taste for puerile amusements, a mania for
+useless little domestic economies in a court where millions vanished
+like smoke, and a natural idleness which achieved as its masterpiece the
+keeping a diary from 1766 to 1792 of a life so tragic, which was yet but
+a foolish chronicle of trifles. Add to this that he was a virtuous
+husband, a kind father, a fervent Christian and a good-natured man full
+of excellent intentions, yet a spectacle of moral pusillanimity and
+ineptitude.
+
+
+  Marie Antoinette.
+
+From 1770 onwards lived side by side with this king, rather than at his
+side, the archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria--one of the very
+graceful and very frivolous women who were to be found at Versailles,
+opening to life like the flowers she so much loved, enamoured of
+pleasure and luxury, delighting to free herself from the formalities of
+court life, and mingling in the amusements of society; lovable and
+loving, without ceasing to be virtuous. Flattered and adored at the
+outset, she very soon furnished a sinister illustration to Beaumarchais'
+_Basile_; for evil tongues began to calumniate the queen: those of her
+brothers-in-law, the duc d'Aiguillon (protector of Madame du Barry and
+dismissed from the ministry), and the Cardinal de Rohan, recalled from
+his embassy in Vienna. She was blamed for her friendship with the
+comtesse de Polignac, who loved her only as the dispenser of titles and
+positions; and when weary of this persistent begging for rewards, she
+was taxed with her preference for foreigners who asked nothing. People
+brought up against her the debts and expenditure due to her belief in
+the inexhaustible resources of France; and hatred became definite when
+she was suspected of trying to imitate her mother Maria Theresa and play
+the part of ruler, since her husband neglected his duty. They then
+became persuaded that it was she who caused the weight of taxation; in
+the most infamous libels comparison was made between her freedom of
+behaviour and that of Louis XV.'s former mistresses. Private envy and
+public misconceptions very soon summed up her excessive unpopularity in
+the menacing nickname, "L'Autrichienne." (See MARIE ANTOINETTE.)
+
+
+  Foreign policy of Louis XVI.
+
+All this shows that Louis XVI. was not a monarch capable of directing or
+suppressing the inevitable revolution. His reign was but a tissue of
+contradictions. External affairs seemed in even a more dangerous
+position than those at home. Louis XVI. confided to Vergennes the charge
+of reverting to the traditions of the crown and raising France from the
+humiliation suffered by the treaty of Paris and the partition of Poland.
+His first act was to release French policy from the Austrian alliance of
+1756; in this he was aided both by public opinion and by the confidence
+of the king--the latter managing to set aside the desires of the queen,
+whom the ambition of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. hoped to use as an
+auxiliary. Vergennes' object was a double one: to free the kingdom from
+English supremacy and to shake off the yoke of Austria. Opportunities
+offered themselves simultaneously. In 1775 the English colonies in
+America rebelled, and Louis XVI., after giving them secret aid and
+encouragement almost from the first, finally in February 1778, despite
+Marie Antoinette, formed an open alliance with them; while when Joseph
+II., after having partitioned Poland, wanted in addition to balance the
+loss of Silesia with that of Bavaria, Vergennes prevented him from doing
+so. In vain was he offered a share in the partition of the Netherlands
+by way of an inducement. France's disinterested action in the peace of
+Teschen (1779) restored to her the lost adherence of the secondary
+states. Europe began to respect her again when she signed a
+Franco-Dutch-Spanish alliance (1779-1780), and when, after the
+capitulation of the English at Yorktown, the peace of Versailles (1783)
+crowned her efforts with at least formal success. Thenceforward, partly
+from prudence and partly from penury, Vergennes cared only for the
+maintenance of peace--a not too easy task, in opposition to the greed of
+Catherine II. and Joseph II., who now wished to divide the Ottoman
+empire. Joseph II., recognizing that Louis XVI. would not sacrifice the
+"sick man" to him, raised the question of the opening of the Scheldt,
+against the Dutch. Vainly did Joseph II. accuse his sister of
+ingratitude and complain of her resistance; the treaty of Fontainebleau
+in 1785 maintained the rights of Holland. Later on, Joseph II., sticking
+to his point, wanted to settle the house of Bavaria in the Netherlands;
+but Louis XVI. supported the confederation of princes (Fürstenbund)
+which Frederick II. called together in order to keep his turbulent
+neighbour within bounds. Vergennes completed his work by signing a
+commercial treaty in 1786 with England, whose commerce and industry were
+favoured above others, and a second in 1787 with Russia. He died in
+1787, at an opportune moment for himself; though he had temporarily
+raised France's position in Europe, his work was soon ruined by the very
+means taken to secure its successes: warfare and armaments had hastened
+the "hideous bankruptcy."
+
+
+  Internal policy of Louis XVI.
+
+From the very beginning of his reign Louis XVI. fell into
+contradictions and hesitation in internal affairs, which could not but
+bring him to grief. He tried first of all to govern in accordance with
+public opinion, and was induced to flatter it beyond measure; in an
+extreme of inconsistency he re-established the parlements, the worst
+enemies of reform, at the very moment when he was calling in the
+reformers to his councils.
+
+
+  Turgot 1774-1776.
+
+Turgot, the most notable of these latter, was well fitted to play his
+great part as an enlightened minister, as much from the principle of
+hard work and domestic economy traditional in his family, as from a
+maturity of mind developed by extensive study at the Sorbonne and by
+frequenting the salons of the Encyclopaedists. He had proved this by his
+capable administration in the paymaster's office at Limoges, from 1761
+to 1774. A disciple of Quesnay and of Gournay, he tried to repeat in
+great affairs the experience of liberty which he had found successful in
+small, and to fortify the unity of the nation and the government by
+social, political and economic reforms. He ordained the free circulation
+of grain within the kingdom, and was supported by Louis XVI. in the
+course of the flour-war (_guerre des farines_) (April-May 1775); he
+substituted a territorial subsidy for the royal _corvée_--so burdensome
+upon the peasants--and thus tended to abolish privilege in the matter of
+imposts; and he established the freedom of industry by the dissolution
+of privileged trade corporations (1776). Finance was in a deplorable
+state, and as controller-general he formulated a new fiscal policy,
+consisting of neither fresh taxation nor loans, but of retrenchment. At
+one fell stroke the two auxiliaries on which he had a right to count
+failed him: public opinion, clamouring for reform on condition of not
+paying the cost; and the king, too timid to dominate public opinion, and
+not knowing how to refuse the demands of privilege. Economy in the
+matter of public finance implies a grain of severity in the collection
+of taxes as well as, in expenditure. By the former Turgot hampered the
+great interests; by the second he thwarted the desires of courtiers not
+only of the second rank but of the first. Therefore, after he had
+aroused the complaints of the commercial world and the bourgeoisie, the
+court, headed by Marie Antoinette, profited by the general excitement to
+overthrow him. The Choiseul party, which had gradually been
+reconstituted, under the influence of the queen, the princes, parlement,
+the prebendaries, and the trade corporations, worked adroitly to
+eliminate this reformer of lucrative abuses. The old courtier Maurepas,
+jealous of Turgot and desirous of remaining a minister himself,
+refrained from defending his colleague; and when Turgot, who never knew
+how to give in, spoke of establishing assemblies of freeholders in the
+communes and the provinces, in order to relax the tension of
+over-centralization, Louis XVI., who never dared to pass from sentiment
+to action, sacrificed his minister to the rancour of the queen, as he
+had already sacrificed Malesherbes (1776). Thus the first governmental
+act of the queen was an error, and dissipated the hope of replacing
+special privileges by a general guarantee given to the nation, which
+alone could have postponed a revolution. It was still too early for a
+Fourth of August; but the queen's victory was none the less vain, since
+Turgot's ideas were taken up by his successors.
+
+
+  Necker, 1776-1781.
+
+The first of these was Necker, a Genevese financier. More able than
+Turgot, though a man of smaller ideas, he abrogated the edicts
+registered by the _lits de justice_; and unable or not daring to attack
+the evil at its root, he thought he could suppress its symptoms by a
+curative process of borrowing and economy. Like Turgot he failed, and
+for the same reasons. The American war had finally exhausted the
+exchequer, and, in order to replenish it, he would have needed to
+inspire confidence in the minds of capitalists; but the resumption in
+1778 of the plan of provincial assemblies charged with remodelling the
+various imposts, and his _compte-rendu_ in which he exhibited the
+monarchy paying its pensioners for their inactivity as it had never paid
+its agents for their zeal, aroused a fresh outburst of anger. Necker was
+carried away in his turn by the reaction he had helped to bring about
+(1781).
+
+
+  The return of feudalism to the offensive.
+
+Having fought the oligarchy of privilege, the monarchy next tried to
+rally it to its side, and all the springs of the old régime were
+strained to the breaking-point. The military rule of the marquis de
+Ségur eliminated the plebeians from the army; while the great lords,
+drones in the hive, worked with a kind of fever at the enforcement of
+their seigniorial rights; the feudal system was making a last struggle
+before dying. The Church claimed her right of ordering the civil estate
+of all Frenchmen as an absolute mistress more strictly than ever. Joly
+de Fleury and D'Ormesson, Necker's successors, pushed their narrow
+spirit of reaction and the temerity of their inexperience to the
+furthest limit; but the reaction which reinforced the privileged classes
+was not sufficient to fill the coffers of the treasury, and Marie
+Antoinette, who seemed gifted with a fatal perversity of instinct,
+confided the finances of the kingdom to Calonne, an upper-class official
+and a veritable Cagliostro of finance.
+
+
+  Calonne, 1783-1787.
+
+From 1783 to 1787, this man organized his astounding system of
+falsification all along the line. His unbridled prodigality, by
+spreading a belief in unlimited resources, augmented the confidence
+necessary for the success of perpetual loans; until the day came when,
+having exhausted the system, he tried to suppress privilege and fall
+back upon the social reforms of Turgot, and the financial schemes of
+Necker, by suggesting once more to the assembly of notables a
+territorial subsidy from all landed property. He failed, owing to the
+same reaction that was causing the feudal system to make inroads upon
+the army, the magistracy and industry; but in his fall he put on the
+guise of a reformer, and by a last wild plunge he left the monarchy,
+already compromised by the affair of the Diamond Necklace (q.v.),
+hopelessly exposed (April 1787).
+
+
+  Loménie de Brienne.
+
+The volatile and brilliant archbishop Loménie de Brienne was charged
+with the task of laying the affairs of the _ancien régime_ before the
+assembly of notables, and with asking the nation for resources, since
+the monarchy could no longer provide for itself; but the notables
+refused, and referred the minister to the states-general, the
+representative of the nation. Before resorting to this extremity,
+Brienne preferred to lay before the parlement his two edicts regarding a
+stamp duty and the territorial subsidy; to be met by the same refusal,
+and the same reference to the states-general. The exile of the parlement
+to Troyes, the arrest of various members, and the curt declaration of
+the king's absolute authority (November 9, 1787) were unsuccessful in
+breaking down its resistance. The threat of Chrétien François de
+Lamoignon, keeper of the seals, to imitate Maupeou, aroused public
+opinion and caused a fresh confederation of the parlements of the
+kingdom. The royal government was too much exhausted to overthrow even a
+decaying power like that of the parlements, and being still more afraid
+of the future representatives of the French people than of the supreme
+courts, capitulated to the insurgent parlements. The recalled parlement
+seemed at the pinnacle of power.
+
+
+  Recall of Necker.
+
+Its next action ruined its ephemeral popularity, by claiming the
+convocation of the states-general "according to the formula observed in
+1614," as already demanded by the estates of Dauphiné at Vizille on the
+21st of July 1788. The exchequer was empty; it was necessary to comply.
+The royal declaration of the 23rd of September 1788 convoked the
+states-general for the 1st of May 1789, and the fall of Brienne and
+Lamoignon followed the recall of Necker. Thenceforward public opinion,
+which was looking for something quite different from the superannuated
+formula of 1614, abandoned the parlements, which in their turn
+disappeared from view; for the struggle beginning between the privileged
+classes and the government, now at bay, had given the public, through
+the states-general, that means of expression which they had always
+lacked.
+
+
+  Prelude to the states-general.
+
+
+  The electorate.
+
+The conflict immediately changed ground, and an engagement began between
+privilege and the people over the twofold question of the number of
+deputies and the mode of voting. Voting by head, and the double
+representation of the third estate (_tiers état_); this was the great
+revolution; voting by order meant the continued domination of
+privilege, and the lesser revolution. The monarchy, standing apart, held
+the balance, but needed a decisive policy. Necker, with little backing
+at court, could not act energetically, and Louis XVI., wavering between
+Necker and the queen, chose the attitude most convenient to his
+indolence and least to his interest: he remained neutral, and his
+timidity showed clearly in the council of the 27th of December 1788.
+Separating the two questions which were so closely connected, and
+despite the sensational brochure of the abbé Sieyès, "What is the Third
+Estate?" he pronounced for the doubling of the third estate without
+deciding as to the vote by head, yet leaving it to be divined that he
+preferred the vote by order. As to the programme there was no more
+decisive resolution; but the edict of convocation gave it to be
+understood that a reform was under consideration; "the establishment of
+lasting and permanent order in all branches of the administration." The
+point as to the place of convocation gave rise to a compromise between
+the too-distant centre of France and too-tumultuous Paris. Versailles
+was chosen "because of the hunting!" In the procedure of the elections
+the traditional system of the states-general of 1614 was preserved, and
+the suffrage was almost universal, but in two kinds: for the third
+estate nearly all citizens over twenty-five years of age, paying a
+direct contribution, voted--peasants as well as bourgeois; the country
+clergy were included among the ecclesiastics; the smaller nobility among
+the nobles; and finally, Protestants were electors and eligible.
+
+
+  The addresses.
+
+According to custom, documents (_cahiers_) were drawn up, containing a
+list of grievances and proposals for reform. All the orders were agreed
+in demanding prudently modified reform: the vote on the budget, order in
+finance, regular convocation of the states-general, and a written
+constitution in order to get rid of arbitrary rule. The address of the
+clergy, inspired by the great prelates, sought to make inaccurate
+lamentations over the progress of impiety a means of safeguarding their
+enormous spiritual and temporal powers, their privileges and exemptions,
+and their vast wealth. The nobility demanded voting by order, the
+maintenance of their privileges, and, above all, laws to protect them
+against the arbitrary proceedings of royalty. The third estate insisted
+on the vote by head, the graduated abolition of privilege in all
+governmental affairs, a written constitution and union. The programme
+went on broadening as it descended in the social scale.
+
+
+  The elections.
+
+The elections sufficed finally to show that the _ancien régime_,
+characterized from the social point of view by inequality, from the
+political point of view by arbitrariness, and from the religious point
+of view by intolerance, was completed from the administrative point of
+view by inextricable disorder. As even the extent of the jurisdiction of
+the _bailliages_ was unknown, convocations were made at haphazard,
+according to the good pleasure of influential persons, and in these
+assemblies decisions were arrived at by a process that confused every
+variety of rights and powers, and was governed by no logical principle;
+and in this extreme confusion terms and affairs were alike involved.
+
+
+  The counter-currents of the Revolution.
+
+Whilst the bureaucracy of the _ancien régime_ sought for desperate
+expedients to prolong its domination, the whole social body gave signs
+of a yet distant but ever nearing disintegration. The revolution was
+already complete before it was declared to the world. Two distinct
+currents of disaffection, one economic, the other philosophic, had for
+long been pervading the nation. There had been much suffering throughout
+the 17th and 18th centuries; but no one had hitherto thought of a
+politico-social rising. But the other, the philosophic current, had been
+set going in the 18th century; and the policy of despotism tempered by
+privilege had been criticized in the name of liberty as no longer
+justifying itself by its services to the state. The ultramontane and
+oppressively burdensome church had been taunted with its lack of
+Christian charity, apostolic poverty and primitive virtue. All vitality
+had been sapped from the old order of nobles, reduced in prestige by
+the _savonnette à vilains_ (office purchased to ennoble the holder),
+enervated by court life, and so robbed of its roots in the soil, from
+which it had once drawn its strength, that it could no longer live save
+as a ruinous parasite on the central monarchy. Lastly, to come to the
+bottom of the social scale, there were the common people, taxable at
+will, subject to the arbitrary and burdensome forced labour of the
+_corvée_, cut off by an impassable barrier from the privileged classes
+whom they hated. For them the right to work had been asserted, among
+others by Turgot, as a natural right opposed to the caprices of the
+arbitrary and selfish aristocracy of the corporations, and a breach had
+been made in the tyranny of the masters which had endeavoured to set a
+barrier to the astonishing outburst of industrial force which was
+destined to characterize the coming age.
+
+The outward and visible progress of the Revolution, due primarily to
+profound economic disturbance, was thus accelerated and rendered
+irresistible. Economic reformers found a moral justification for their
+dissatisfaction in philosophical theories; the chance conjunction of a
+philosopho-political idea with a national deficit led to the
+preponderance of the third estate at the elections, and to the
+predominance of the democratic spirit in the states-general. The third
+estate wanted civil liberty above all; political liberty came second
+only, as a means and guarantee for the former. They wanted the abolition
+of the feudal system, the establishment of equality and a share in
+power. Neither the family nor property was violently attacked; the
+church and the monarchy still appeared to most people two respectable
+and respected institutions. The king and the privileged classes had but
+so to desire it, and the revolution would be easy and peaceful.
+
+
+  Meeting of the states-general.
+
+Louis XVI. was reluctant to abandon a tittle of his absolute power, nor
+would the privileged classes sacrifice their time-honoured traditions;
+they were inexorable. The king, more ponderous and irresolute every day,
+vacillated between Necker the liberal on one side and Marie Antoinette,
+whose feminine pride was opposed to any concessions, with the comte
+d'Artois, a mischievous nobody who could neither choose a side nor stick
+to one, on the other. When the states-general opened on the 5th of May
+1789 Louis XVI. had decided nothing. The conflict between him and the
+Assembly immediately broke out, and became acute over the verification
+of the mandates; the third estate desiring this to be made in common by
+the deputies of the three orders, which would involve voting by head,
+the suppression of classes and the preponderance of the third estate. On
+the refusal of the privileged classes and after an interval of six
+weeks, the third estate, considering that they represented 96% of the
+nation, and in accordance with the proposal of Sieyès, declared that
+they represented the nation and therefore were authorized to take
+resolutions unaided, the first being that in future no arrangement for
+taxation could take place without their consent.
+
+
+  Oath of the tennis-court.
+
+The king, urged by the privileged classes, responded to this first
+revolutionary act, as in 1614, by closing the Salle des Menus Plaisirs
+where the third estate were sitting; whereupon, gathered in one of the
+tennis-courts under the presidency of Bailly, they swore on the 20th of
+June not to separate before having established the constitution of the
+kingdom.
+
+
+  The Lit de Justice of June 23, 1789.
+
+  Taking of the Bastille.
+
+Louis XVI. then decided, on the 23rd, to make known his policy in a
+royal _lit de justice_. He declared for the lesser reform, the fiscal,
+not the social; were this rejected, he declared that "he alone would
+arrange for the welfare of his people." Meanwhile he annulled the
+sitting of the 17th, and demanded the immediate dispersal of the
+Assembly. The third estate refused to obey, and by the mouth of Bailly
+and Mirabeau asserted the legitimacy of the Revolution. The refusal of
+the soldiers to coerce the Assembly showed that the monarchy could no
+longer rely on the army; and a few days later, when the lesser nobility
+and the lower ranks of the clergy had united with the third estate whose
+cause was their own, the king yielded, and on the 27th of June commanded
+both orders to join in the National Assembly, which was thereby
+recognized and the political revolution sanctioned. But at the same
+time, urged by the "infernal cabal" of the queen and the comte d'Artois,
+Louis XVI. called in the foreign regiments--the only ones of which he
+could be certain--and dismissed Necker. The Assembly, dreading a sudden
+attack, demanded the withdrawal of the troops. Meeting with a refusal,
+Paris opposed the king's army with her citizen-soldiers; and by the
+taking of the Bastille, that mysterious dark fortress which personified
+the _ancien régime_, secured the triumph of the Revolution (July 14).
+The king was obliged to recall Necker, to mount the tricolor cockade at
+the Hôtel de Ville, and to recognize Bailly as mayor of Paris and La
+Fayette as commander of the National Guard, which remained in arms after
+the victory. The National Assembly had right on its side after the 20th
+of June and might after the 14th of July. Thus was accomplished the
+Revolution which was to throw into the melting-pot all that had for
+centuries appeared fixed and stable.
+
+
+  Spontaneous anarchy.
+
+As Paris had taken her Bastille, it remained for the towns and country
+districts to take theirs--all the Bastilles of feudalism. Want, terror
+and the contagion of examples precipitated the disruption of
+governmental authority and of the old political status; and sudden
+anarchy dislocated all the organs of authority. Upon the ruins of the
+central administration temporary authorities were founded in various
+isolated localities, limited in area but none the less defiant of the
+government. The provincial assemblies of Dauphiné and elsewhere gave the
+signal; and numerous towns, following the example of Paris, instituted
+municipalities which substituted their authority for that of the
+intendants and their subordinates. Clubs were openly organized,
+pamphlets and journals appeared, regardless of administrative orders;
+workmen's unions multiplied in Paris, Bordeaux and Lyons, in face of
+drastic prohibition; and anarchy finally set in with the defection of
+the army in Paris on the 23rd of June, at Nancy, at Metz and at Brest.
+The crying abuses of the old régime, an insignificant factor at the
+outset, soon combined with the widespread agrarian distress, due to the
+unjust distribution of land, the disastrous exploitation of the soil,
+the actions of the government, and the severe winter of 1788. Discontent
+showed itself in pillage and incendiarism on country estates; between
+March and July 1789 more than three hundred agrarian riots took place,
+uprooting the feudal idea of property, already compromised by its own
+excesses. Not only did pillaging take place; the boundaries of property
+were also ignored, and people no longer held themselves bound to pay
+taxes. These _jacqueries_ hastened the movement of the regular
+revolution.
+
+
+  The night of August 4.
+
+The decrees of the 4th of August, proposed by those noble "patriots" the
+duc d'Aiguillon and the vicomte de Noailles, who had already on the 23rd
+of June made armed resistance to the evacuation of the Hall of Assembly,
+put the final touch to the revolution begun by the provincial
+assemblies, by liberating land and labour, and proclaiming equality
+among all Frenchmen. Instead of exasperating the demands of the peasants
+and workmen by repression and raising civil war between the bourgeoisie
+and the proletariat, they drew a distinction between personal servitude,
+which was suppressed, and the rights of contract, which were to be
+redeemed--a laudable but impossible distinction. The whole feudal system
+crumbled before the revolutionary insistence of the peasants; for their
+masters, bourgeois or nobles, terrified by prolonged riots, capitulated
+and gradually had to consent to make the resolutions of the 4th of
+August a reality.
+
+
+  Elaboration of the constitution.
+
+Overjoyed by this social liberation, the Assembly awarded Louis XVI. the
+title of "renewer of French liberty"; but remaining faithful to his
+hesitating policy of the 23rd of June, he ratified the decrees of the
+4th of August, only with a very ill grace. On the other hand, the
+privileged classes, and notably the clergy, who saw the whole
+traditional structure of their power threatened, now rallied to him, and
+when after the 28th of August the Assembly set to work on the new
+constitution, they combined in the effort to recover some of the
+position they had lost. But whatever their theoretical agreement on
+social questions, politically they were hopelessly at odds. The
+bourgeoisie, conscious of their opportunity, decided for a single
+chamber against the will of the noblesse; against that of the king they
+declared it permanent, and, if they accorded him a suspensory veto, this
+was only in order to guard them against the extreme assertion of popular
+rights. Thus the progress of the Revolution, so far, had left the mass
+of the people still excluded from any constitutional influence on the
+government, which was in the hands of the well-to-do classes, which also
+controlled the National Guard and the municipalities. The irritation of
+the disfranchised proletariat was moreover increased by the appalling
+dearness of bread and food generally, which the suspicious temper of the
+times--fomented by the tirades of Marat in the _Ami du peuple_--ascribed
+to English intrigues in revenge for the aid given by France to the
+American colonies, and to the treachery in high places that made these
+intrigues successful. The climax came with the rumour that the court was
+preparing a new military _coup d'état_, a rumour that seemed to be
+confirmed by indiscreet toasts proposed at a banquet by the officers of
+the guard at Versailles; and on the night of the 5th to the 6th of
+October a Parisian mob forced the king and royal family to return with
+them to Paris amid cries of "We are bringing the baker, the baker's wife
+and the little baker's boy!" The Assembly followed; and henceforth king
+and Assembly were more or less under the influence of the whims and
+passions of a populace maddened by want and suspicion, by the fanatical
+or unscrupulous incitements of an unfettered press, and by the
+unrestrained oratory of obscure demagogues in the streets, the cafés and
+the political clubs.
+
+Convened for the purpose of elaborating a system that should conciliate
+all interests, the Assembly thus found itself forced into a conflict
+between the views of the people, who feared betrayal, and the court,
+which dreaded being overwhelmed. This schism was reflected in the
+parties of the Assembly; the absolutists of the extreme Right; the
+moderate monarchists of the Right and Centre; the constitutionalists of
+the Left Centre and Left; and, finally, on the extreme Left the
+democratic revolutionists, among whom Robespierre sat as yet all but
+unnoticed. Of talent there was enough and to spare in the Assembly; what
+was conspicuously lacking was common sense and a practical knowledge of
+affairs. Of all the orators who declaimed from the tribune, Mirabeau
+alone realized the perils of the situation and possessed the power of
+mind and will to have mastered them. Unfortunately, however, he was
+discredited by a disreputable past, and yet more by the equivocal
+attitude he had to assume in order to maintain his authority in the
+Assembly while working in what he believed to be the true interests of
+the court. His political ideal for France was that of the monarchy,
+rescued from all association with the abuses of the old régime and
+"broad-based upon the people's will"; his practical counsel was that the
+king should frankly proclaim this ideal to the people as his own, should
+compete with the Assembly for popular favour, while at the same time
+using every means to win over those by whom his authority was flouted.
+For a time Mirabeau influenced the counsels of the court through the
+comte de Montmorin; but the king neither trusted him nor could be
+brought to see his point of view, and Marie Antoinette, though she
+resigned herself to negotiating with him, was very far from sympathizing
+with his ideals. Finally, all hope of the conduct of affairs being
+entrusted to him was shattered when the Assembly passed a law forbidding
+its members to become ministers.
+
+
+  Declaration of the rights of man.
+
+The attempted reconciliation with the king having failed, the Assembly
+ended by working alone, and made the control that it should have exerted
+an instrument, not of co-operation but of strife. It inaugurated its
+legislative labours by a metaphysical declaration of the Rights of Man
+and of the Citizen (October 2, 1789). This enunciation of universal
+verities, the bulk of which have, sooner or later, been accepted by all
+civilized nations as "the gospel of modern times," was inspired by all
+the philosophy of the 18th century in France and by the _Contrat
+Social_. It comprised various rational and humane ideas, no longer
+theological, but profoundly and deliberately thought out: ideas as to
+the sovereign-right of the nation, law by general consent, man superior
+to the pretensions of caste and the fetters of dogma, the vindication of
+the ideal and of human dignity. Unable to rest on historic precedent
+like England, the Constituent Assembly took as the basis for its labours
+the tradition of the thinkers.
+
+
+  The constitution.
+
+Upon the principles proclaimed in this Declaration the constitution of
+1791 was founded. Its provisions are discussed elsewhere (see the
+section below on _Law and Institutions_); here it will suffice to say
+that it established under the sovereign people, for the king was to
+survive merely as the supreme executive official, a wholly new model of
+government in France, both in Church and State. The historic divisions
+of the realm were wiped out; for the old provinces were substituted
+eighty-three departments; and with the provinces vanished the whole
+organization, territorial, administrative and ecclesiastical, of the
+_ancien régime_. In one respect, indeed, the system of the old monarchy
+remained intact; the tradition of centralization established by Louis
+XIV. was too strong to be overthrown, and the destruction of the
+historic privileges and immunities with which this had been ever in
+conflict only served to strengthen this tendency. In 1791 France was
+pulverized into innumerable administrative atoms incapable of cohesion;
+and the result was that Paris became more than ever the brain and
+nerve-centre of France. This fact was soon to be fatal to the new
+constitution, though the administrative system established by it still
+survives. Paris was in effect dominated by the armed and organized
+proletariat, and this proletariat could never be satisfied with a
+settlement which, while proclaiming the sovereignty of the people, had,
+by means of the property qualification for the franchise, established
+the political ascendancy of the middle classes. The settlement had, in
+fact, settled nothing; it had, indeed, merely intensified the profound
+cleavage between the opposing tendencies; for if the democrats were
+alienated by the narrow franchise, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy,
+which cut at the very roots of the Catholic system, drove into
+opposition to the Revolution not only the clergy themselves but a vast
+number of their flocks.
+
+The policy of the Assembly, moreover, hopelessly aggravated its
+misunderstanding with the king. Louis, indeed, accepted the constitution
+and attended the great Feast of Federation (July 14, 1790), when
+representatives from all the new departments assembled in the Champ de
+Mars to ratify the work of the Assembly; but the king either could not
+or would not say the expected word that would have dissipated mistrust.
+The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, too, seemed to him not only to
+violate his rights as a king, but his faith as a Christian also; and
+when the emigration of the nobility and the death of Mirabeau (April 2,
+1791) had deprived him of his natural supporters and his only adviser,
+resuming the old plan of withdrawing to the army of the marquis de
+Bouillé at Metz, he made his ill-fated attempt to escape from Paris
+(June 20, 1791). The flight to Varennes was an irreparable error; for
+during the king's absence and until his return the insignificance of the
+royal power became apparent. La Fayette's fusillade of the republicans,
+who demanded the deposition of the king (July 17, 1791), led to a
+definite split between the democratic party and the bourgeois party.
+Vainly did Louis, brought back a captive to Paris, swear on the 14th of
+September 1791 solemnly mere lip-service to the constitution; the
+mistrustful party of revolution abandoned the constitution they had only
+just obtained, and to guard against the sovereign's mental reservations
+and the selfish policy of the middle classes, appealed to the main force
+of the people. The conflict between the _ancien régime_ and the National
+Assembly ended in the defeat of the royalists.
+
+
+  The Legislative Assembly (Oct. 1, 1791-Sept 20, 1792).
+
+Through lassitude or disinterestedness the men of 1791, on
+Robespierre's suggestion, had committed one last mistake, by leaving
+the task of putting the constitution into practice to new men even more
+inexperienced than themselves. Thus the new Assembly's time was occupied
+in a conflict between the Legislative Assembly and the king, who plotted
+against it; and, as a result, the monarchy, insulted by the proceedings
+of the 20th of June, was eliminated altogether by those of the 10th of
+August 1792.
+
+
+  The parties.
+
+The new Assembly which had met on the 1st of October 1791 had a majority
+favourable to the constitutional monarchy and to the bourgeois
+franchise. But, among these bourgeois those who were called Feuillants,
+from the name of their club (see FEUILLANTS, CLUB OF THE), desired the
+strict and loyal application of the constitution without encroaching
+upon the authority of the king; the triumvirate, Duport, Barnave and
+Lameth, were at the head of this party. The Jacobins, on the contrary,
+considered that the king should merely be hereditary president of the
+Republic, to be deposed if he attempted to violate the constitution, and
+that universal suffrage should be established. The dominant group among
+these was that of the Girondins or Girondists, so called because its
+most brilliant members had been elected in the Gironde (see GIRONDISTS).
+But the republican party was more powerful without than within. Their
+chief was not so much Robespierre, president of the parliamentary and
+bourgeois club of the Jacobins (q.v.), which had acquired by means of
+its two thousand affiliated branches great power in the provinces, as
+the advocate Danton, president of the popular and Parisian club of the
+Cordeliers (q.v.). Between the Feuillants and the Jacobins, the
+independents, incapable of keeping to any fixed programme, vacillated
+sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left.
+
+
+  Royalist intrigues.
+
+  The émigrés.
+
+  Declaration of Pilnitz.
+
+  The decrees.
+
+  The war.
+
+But the best allies of the republicans against the Feuillants were the
+royalists pure and simple, who cared nothing about the constitution, and
+claimed to "extract good from the excess of evil." The election of a
+Jacobin, Pétion, instead of Bailly, the resigning mayor, and La Fayette,
+the candidate for office, was their first achievement. The court, on its
+side, showed little sign of a conciliatory spirit, though, realizing its
+danger, it attempted to restrain the foolish violence of the _émigrés_,
+i.e. the nobles who after the suppression of titles of nobility in 1790
+and the arrest of the king at Varennes, had fled in a body to Coblenz
+and joined Louis XVI.'s brothers, the counts of Provence and Artois.
+They it was who set in motion the national and European conflict. Under
+the prince of Condé they had collected a little army round Trier; and in
+concert with the "Austrian Committee" of Paris they solicited the armed
+intervention of monarchical Europe. The declaration of Pilnitz, which
+was but an excuse for non-interference on the part of the emperor and
+the king of Prussia, interested in the prolongation of these internal
+troubles, was put forward by them as an assurance of forthcoming support
+(August 27, 1791). At the same time the application of the Civil
+Constitution of the Clergy roused the whole of western La Vendée; and in
+face of the danger threatened by the refractory clergy and by the army
+of the _émigrés_, the Girondins set about confounding the court with the
+Feuillants in the minds of the public, and compromising Louis XVI. by a
+national agitation, denouncing him as an accomplice of the foreigner.
+Owing to the decrees against the comte de Provence, the emigrants, and
+the refractory priests, voted by the Legislative Assembly in November
+1791, they forced Louis XVI. to show his hand by using his veto, so that
+his complicity should be plainly declared, to replace his Feuillant
+ministry--disparate in birth, opinions and ambitions--by the Girondin
+ministry of Dumouriez-Roland (March 10), no more united than the other,
+but believers in a republican crusade for the overthrow of thrones, that
+of Louis XVI. first of all; and finally to declare war against the king
+of Bohemia and Hungary, a step also desired by the court in the hope of
+ridding itself of the Assembly at the first note of victory (April 20,
+1792).
+
+
+  Proceedings of June 20.
+
+But when, owing to the disorganization of the army through emigration
+and desertion, the ill-prepared Belgian war was followed by invasion and
+the trouble in La Vendée increased, all France suspected a betrayal. The
+Assembly, in order to reduce the number of hostile forces, voted for the
+exile of all priests who had refused to swear to the Civil Constitution
+and the substitution of a body of twenty thousand volunteer national
+guards, under the authority of Paris, for the king's constitutional
+guard (May 27-June 8, 1792). Louis XVI.'s veto and the dismissal of the
+Girondin ministry--thanks to an intrigue of Dumouriez, analogous to that
+of Mirabeau and as ineffectual--dismayed the Feuillants and maddened the
+Girondins; the latter, to avert popular fury, turned it upon the king.
+The _émeute_ of the 20th of June, a burlesque which, but for the
+persistent good-humour of Louis XVI., might have become a tragedy,
+alarmed but did not overthrow the monarchy.
+
+
+  Manifesto of Brunswick.
+
+The bourgeoisie, the Assembly, the country and La Fayette, one of the
+leaders of the army, now embarked upon a royalist reaction, which would
+perhaps have been efficacious, had it not been for the entry into the
+affair of the Prussians as allies of the Austrians, and for the insolent
+manifesto of the duke of Brunswick. The Assembly's cry of "the country
+in danger" (July 11) proved to the nation that the king was incapable of
+defending France against the foreigner; and the appeal of the federal
+volunteers in Paris gave to the opposition, together with the war-song
+of the Marseillaise, the army which had been refused by Louis XVI., now
+disarmed. The vain attempts of the Gironde to reconcile the king and the
+Revolution, the ill-advised decree of the Assembly on the 8th of August,
+freeing La Fayette from his guilt in forsaking his army; his refusal to
+vote for the deposition of the king, and the suspected treachery of the
+court, led to the success of the republican forces when, on the 10th of
+August, the mob of Paris organized by the revolutionary Commune rose
+against the monarchy.
+
+
+  The insurrectional commune of Paris.
+
+  The September massacres.
+
+The suspension and imprisonment of the king left the supreme authority
+nominally in the hands of the Assembly, but actually in those of the
+Commune, consisting of delegates from the administrative sections of
+Paris. Installed at the Hôtel de Ville this attempted to influence the
+discredited government, entered into conflict with the Legislative
+Assembly, which considered its mission at an end, and paralyzed the
+action of the executive council, particularly during the bloody days of
+September, provoked by the discovery of the court's intrigues with the
+foreigner, by the treachery of La Fayette, the capture of Longwy, the
+investiture of Verdun by the Prussians (August 19-30), and finally by
+the incendiary placards of Marat. Danton, a master of diplomatic and
+military operations, had to avoid any rupture with the Commune.
+Fortunately, on the very day of the dispersal of the Legislative
+Assembly, Dumouriez saved France from a Prussian invasion by the victory
+of Valmy, and by unauthorized negotiations which prefigured those of
+Bonaparte at Léoben (September 22, 1792).
+
+The popular insurrection against Louis XVI. determined the simultaneous
+fall of the bourgeois régime and the establishment of the democracy in
+power. The Legislative Assembly, without a mandate for modifying a
+constitution that had become inapplicable with the suspension of the
+monarch, had before disappearing convoked a National Convention, and as
+the reward of the struggle for liberty had replaced the limited
+franchise by universal suffrage. Public opinion became republican from
+an excess of patriotism, and owing to the propaganda of the Jacobin
+club; while the decree of the 25th of August 1792, which marked the
+destruction of feudalism, now abolished in principle, caused the
+peasants to rally definitely to the Republic.
+
+
+  The Convention, Sept. 21. 1792-Oct. 26, 1795.
+
+This had hardly been established before it became distracted by the
+fratricidal strife of its adherents, from September 22, 1792, to the
+18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797). The electoral assemblies, in very
+great majority, had desired this Republic to be democratic and
+equalizing in spirit, but on the face of it, liberal, uniform and
+propagandist; in consequence, the 782 deputies of the Convention were
+not divided on principles, but only by personal rivalries and ambition.
+They all wished for a unanimity and harmony impossible to obtain; and
+being unable to convince they destroyed one another.
+
+
+  The parties.
+
+The Girondins in the Convention played the part of the Feuillants in the
+Legislative Assembly. Their party was not well disciplined, they
+purposely refrained from making it so, and hence their ruin.
+Oratorically they represented the spirit of the South; politically, the
+ideas of the bourgeoisie in opposition to the democracy--which they
+despised although making use of it--and the federalist system, from an
+objection to the preponderance of Paris. Paris, on the other hand, had
+elected only deputies of the Mountain, as the more advanced of the
+Jacobins were called, that party being no more settled and united than
+the others. They drew support from the Parisian democracy, and
+considered the decentralization of the Girondins as endangering France's
+unity, circumstances demanding a strong and highly concentrated
+government; they opposed a republic on the model of that of Rome to the
+Polish republic of the Gironde. Between the two came the _Plaine_, the
+_Marais_, the troop of trembling bourgeois, sincerely attached to the
+Revolution, but very moderate in the defence of their ideas; some
+seeking a refuge from their timidity in hard-working committees, others
+partaking in the violence of the Jacobins out of weakness or for reasons
+of state.
+
+
+  The Girondins.
+
+The Girondins were the first to take the lead; in order to retain it
+they should have turned the Revolution into a government. They remained
+an exclusive party, relying on the mob but with no influence over it.
+Without a leader or popular power, they might have found both in Danton;
+for, occupied chiefly with the external danger, he made advances towards
+them, which they repulsed, partly in horror at the proceedings of
+September, but chiefly because they saw in him the most formidable rival
+in the path of the government. They waged war against him as
+relentlessly as did the Constitutionalists against Mirabeau, whom he
+resembled in his extreme ugliness and his volcanic eloquence. They drove
+him into the arms of Robespierre, Marat and the Commune of Paris. On the
+other hand, after the 23rd of September they declared Paris dangerous
+for the Convention, and wanted to reduce it to "eighty-three influential
+members." Danton and the Mountain responded by decreeing the unity and
+indivisibility of the Republic, in order to emphasize the suspicions of
+federalism which weighed upon the Girondins.
+
+
+  Trial and death of Louis XVI.
+
+The trial of Louis XVI. still further enhanced the contrasts of ideas
+and characters. The discovery of fresh proofs of treachery in the iron
+chest (November 20, 1792) gave the Mountain a pretext for forcing on the
+clash of parties and raising the question not of legality but of public
+safety. By the execution of the king (January 21, 1793) they "cast down
+a king's head as a challenge to the kings of Europe." In order to
+preserve popular favour and their direction of the Republic, the
+Girondins had not dared to pronounce against the sentence of death, but
+had demanded an appeal to the people which was rejected; morally
+weakened by this equivocal attitude they were still more so by foreign
+events.
+
+
+  First European coalition.
+
+  First committee of pubic safety.
+
+The king's death did not result in the unanimity so much desired by all
+parties; it only caused the reaction on themselves of the hatred which
+had been hitherto concentrated upon the king, and also an augmentation
+in the armies of the foreigner, which obliged the revolutionists to face
+all Europe. There was a coalition of monarchs, and the people of La
+Vendée rose in defence of their faith. Dumouriez, the conqueror of
+Jemappes (November 6, 1792), who invaded Holland, was beaten by the
+Austrians (March 1793). A levy of 300,000 men was ordered; a Committee
+of General Security was charged with the search for suspects; and
+thenceforward military occurrences called forth parliamentary crises
+and popular upheavals. Girondins and Jacobins unjustly accused one
+another of leaving the traitors, the conspirators, the "stipendiaries of
+Coblenz" unpunished. To avert the danger threatened by popular
+dissatisfaction, the Gironde was persuaded to vote for the creation of a
+revolutionary tribunal to judge suspects, while out of spite against
+Danton who demanded it, they refused the strong government which might
+have made a stand against the enemy (March 10, 1793). This was the first
+of the exceptional measures which were to call down ruin upon them.
+Whilst the insurrection in La Vendée was spreading, and Dumouriez
+falling back upon Neerwinden, sentence of death was laid upon _émigrés_
+and refractory priests; the treachery of Dumouriez, disappointed in his
+Belgian projects, gave grounds for all kinds of suspicion, as that of
+Mirabeau had formerly done, and led the Gironde to propose the new
+government which they had refused to Danton. The transformation of the
+provisional executive council into the Committee of Public
+Safety--omnipotent save in financial matters--was voted because the
+Girondins meant to control it; but Danton got the upper hand (April 6).
+
+
+  Struggle between the commune and the Gironde.
+
+The Girondins, discredited in Paris, multiplied their attacks upon
+Danton, now the master: they attributed the civil war and the disasters
+of the foreign campaign to the despotism of the Paris Commune and the
+clubs; they accused Marat of instigating the September massacres; and
+they began the supreme struggle by demanding the election of a committee
+of twelve deputies, charged with breaking up the anarchic authorities in
+Paris (May 18). The complete success of the Girondin proposals; the
+arrest of Hébert--the violent editor of the _Père Duchêne_; the
+insurrection of the Girondins of Lyons against the Montagnard Commune;
+the bad news from La Vendée--the military reverses; and the economic
+situation which had compelled the fixing of a maximum price of corn (May
+4) excited the "moral insurrections" of May 31 and June 2. Marat himself
+sounded the tocsin, and Hanriot, at the head of the Parisian army,
+surrounded the Convention. Despite the efforts of Danton and the
+Committee of Public Safety, the arrest of the Girondins sealed the
+victory of the Mountain.
+
+
+  Fall of the Gironde.
+
+The threat of the Girondin Isnard was fulfilled. The federalist
+insurrection, to avenge the violation of national representation,
+responded to the Parisian insurrection. Sixty-nine departmental
+governments protested against the violence done to the Convention; but
+the ultra-democratic constitution of 1793 deprived the Girondins, who
+were arming in the west, the south and the centre, of all legal force.
+To the departments that were hostile to the dictatorship of Paris, and
+the tyranny of Danton or Robespierre, it promised the referendum, an
+executive of twenty-four citizens, universal suffrage, and the free
+exercise of religion. The populace, who could not understand this
+parliamentary quarrel, and were in a hurry to set up a national defence,
+abandoned the Girondins, and the latter excited the enthusiasm of only
+one person, Charlotte Corday, who by the murder of Marat ruined them
+irretrievably. The battle of Brécourt was a defeat without a fight for
+their party without stamina and their general without troops (July 13);
+while on the 31st of October their leaders perished on the guillotine,
+where they had been preceded by the queen, Marie Antoinette. The
+Girondins and their adversaries were differentiated by neither religious
+dissensions nor political divergency, but merely by a question of time.
+The Girondins, when in power, had had scruples which had not troubled
+them while scaling the ladder; idols of Paris, they had flattered her in
+turn, and when Paris scorned them they sought support in the provinces.
+A great responsibility for this defeat of the liberal and republican
+bourgeoisie, whom they represented, is to be laid upon Madame Roland,
+the Egeria of the party. An ardent patriot and republican, her relations
+with Danton resembled those of Marie Antoinette with Mirabeau, in each
+case a woman spoilt by flattery, enraged at indifference. She was the
+ruin of the Gironde, but taught it how to die.
+
+The fall of the Gironde left the country disturbed by civil war, and
+the frontiers more seriously threatened than before Valmy. Bouchotte, a
+totally inefficient minister for war, the Commune's man of straw, left
+the army without food or ammunition, while the suspected officers
+remained inactive. In the Angevin Vendée the incapable leaders let
+themselves be beaten at Aubiers, Beaupréau and Thouars, at a time when
+Cathelineau was taking possession of Saumur and threatening Nantes, the
+capture of which would have permitted the insurgents in La Vendée to
+join those of Brittany and receive provisions from England. Meanwhile,
+the remnants of the Girondin federalists were overcome by the disguised
+royalists, who had aroused the whole of the Rhône valley from Lyons to
+Marseilles, had called in the Sardinians, and handed over the fleet and
+the arsenal at Toulon to the English, whilst Paoli left Corsica at their
+disposal. The scarcity of money due to the discrediting of the
+assignats, the cessation of commerce, abroad and on the sea, and the bad
+harvest of 1793, were added to all these dangers, and formed a serious
+menace to France and the Convention.
+
+
+  The dictatorship of the first committee of public safety.
+
+This meant a hard task for the first Committee of Public Safety and its
+chief Danton. He was the only one to understand the conditions necessary
+to a firm government; he caused the adjournment of the decentralizing
+constitution of 1793, and set up a revolutionary government. The
+Committee of Public Safety, now a permanency, annulled the Convention
+and was itself the central authority, its organization in Paris being
+the twelve committees substituted for the provisional executive
+committee and the six ministers, the Committee of General Security for
+the maintenance of the police, and the arbitrary Revolutionary Tribunal.
+The execution of its orders in the departments was carried out by
+omnipotent representatives "on mission" in the armies, by popular
+societies--veritable missionaries of the Revolution--and by the
+revolutionary committees which were its backbone.
+
+
+  Danton's failure.
+
+Despite this Reign of Terror Danton failed; he could neither dominate
+foes within nor divide those without. Representing the sane and vigorous
+democracy, and like Jefferson a friend to liberty and self-government,
+he had been obliged to set up the most despotic of governments in face
+of internal anarchy and foreign invasion. Being of a temperament that
+expressed itself only in action, and neither a theorist nor a
+cabinet-minister, he held the views of a statesman without having a
+following sufficient to realize them. Moreover, the proceedings of the
+2nd of June, when the Commune of Paris had triumphed, had dealt him a
+mortal blow. He in his turn tried to stem the tumultuous current which
+had borne him along, and to prevent discord; but the check to his policy
+of an understanding with Prussia and with Sardinia, to whom, like
+Richelieu and D'Argenson, he offered the realization of her transalpine
+ambition in exchange for Nice and Savoy, was added to the failure of his
+temporizing methods in regard to the federalist insurgents, and of his
+military operations against La Vendée. A man of action and not of
+cunning shifts, he succumbed on the 10th of July to the blows of his own
+government, which had passed from his hands into those of Robespierre,
+his ambitious and crafty rival.
+
+
+  Second committee of public safety.
+
+The second Committee of Public Safety lasted until the 27th of July
+1794. Composed of twelve members, re-eligible every month, and dominated
+by the triumvirate, Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon, it was stronger
+than ever, since it obtained the right of appointing leaders, disposed
+of money, and muzzled the press. Many of its members were sons of the
+bourgeoisie, men who having been educated at college, thanks to some
+charitable agency, in the pride of learning, and raised above their
+original station, were ready for anything but had achieved nothing. They
+had plenty of talent at command, were full of classical tirades against
+tyranny, and, though sensitive enough in their private life, were
+bloodthirsty butchers in their public relations. Such were Robespierre,
+Saint-Just, Couthon, Billaud-Varenne, Cambon, Thuriot, Collot d'Herbois,
+Barrère and Prieur de la Mârne. Working hand in hand with these
+politicians, not always in accordance with them, but preserving a solid
+front, were the specialists, Carnot, Robert Lindet, Jean Bon Saint-André
+and Prieur de la Côte d'Or, honourable men, anxious above all to
+safeguard their country. At the head of the former type Robespierre,
+without special knowledge or exceptional talent, devoured by jealous
+ambition and gifted with cold grave eloquence, enjoyed a great moral
+ascendancy, due to his incorruptible purity of life and the invariably
+correct behaviour that had been wanting in Mirabeau, and by the
+persevering will which Danton had lacked. His marching orders were: no
+more temporizing with the federalists or with generals who are afraid of
+conquering; war to the death with all Europe in the name of
+revolutionary propaganda and the monarchical tradition of natural
+frontiers; and fear, as a means of government. The specialists answered
+foreign foes by their organization of victory; as for foes at home, the
+triumvirate crushed them beneath the Terror.
+
+
+  Defeat of the coalition.
+
+France was saved by them and by that admirable outburst of patriotism
+which provided 750,000 patriots for the army through the general levy of
+the 16th of August 1793, aided, moreover, by the mistakes of her
+enemies. Instead of profiting by Dumouriez's treachery and the successes
+in La Vendée, the Coalition, divided over the resuscitated Polish
+question, lost time on the frontiers of this new Poland of the west
+which was sacrificing itself for the sake of a Universal Republic. Thus
+in January 1794 the territory of France was cleared of the Prussians and
+Austrians by the victories at Hondschoote, Wattignies and Wissembourg;
+the army of La Vendée was repulsed from Granville, overwhelmed by
+Hoche's army at Le Mans and Savenay, and its leaders shot; royalist
+sedition was suppressed at Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles and Toulon;
+federalist insurrections were wiped out by the terrible massacres of
+Carrier at Nantes, the atrocities of Lebon at Arras, and the wholesale
+executions of Fouché and Collot d'Herbois at Lyons; Louis XVI. and Marie
+Antoinette guillotined, the _émigrés_ dispersed, denied or forsaken by
+all Europe.
+
+
+  The new parties.
+
+  The party of tolerance.
+
+But the triumphant Mountain was not as united as it boasted. The second
+Committee of Public Safety had now to struggle against two oppositions:
+one of the left, represented by Hébert, the Commune of Paris and the
+Cordeliers; another of the right, Danton and his followers. The former
+would not admit that the Terror was only a temporary method of defence;
+for them it was a permanent system which was even to be strengthened in
+order to crush all who were hostile to the Revolution. Their sanguinary
+violence was combined with an anti-religious policy, not atheistical,
+but inspired by mistrust of the clergy, and by a civic and deistic creed
+that was a direct outcome of the federations. To these latter were due
+the substitution of the Republican for the Gregorian calendar, and the
+secular Feasts of Reason (November 19, 1793). The followers of Hébert
+wanted to push forward the movement of May 31, 1793, in order to become
+masters in their turn; while those of Danton were by way of arresting
+it. They considered it time to re-establish the reign of ordinary laws
+and justice; sick of bloodshed, with Camille Desmoulins they demanded a
+"Committee of Clemency." A deist and therefore hostile to
+"anti-religious masquerades," while uneasy at the absolute authority of
+the Paris Commune, which aimed at suppressing the State, and at its
+armed propaganda abroad, Robespierre resumed the struggle against its
+illegal power, so fatal to the Gironde. His boldness succeeded (March
+24, 1794), and then, jealous of Danton's activity and statesmanship, and
+exasperated by the jeers of his friends, he rid himself of the party of
+tolerance by a parody of justice (April 5).
+
+
+  Robespierre's dictatorship.
+
+  9th Thermidor.
+
+Robespierre now stood alone. During five months, while affecting to be
+the representative of "a reign of justice and virtue," he laboured at
+strengthening his politico-religious dictatorship--already so formidably
+armed--with new powers. "The incorruptible wanted to become the
+invulnerable" and the scaffold of the guillotine was crowded. By his
+dogma of the supreme state Robespierre founded a theocratic government
+with the police as an Inquisition. The festival of the new doctrine,
+which turned the head of the new pontiff (June 8), the _loi de
+Prairial_, or "code of legal murder" (June 10), which gave the deputies
+themselves into his hand; and the multiplication of executions at a time
+when the victory of Fleurus (June 25) showed the uselessness and
+barbarity of this aggravation of the Reign of Terror provoked against
+him the victorious coalition of revenge, lassitude and fear. Vanquished
+and imprisoned, he refused to take part in the illegal action proposed
+by the Commune against the Convention. Robespierre was no man of action.
+On the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794) he fell into the gulf that had
+opened on the 31st of May, and through which the 18th Brumaire was
+visible.
+
+
+  Third committee of public safety.
+
+Although brought about by the Terrorists, the tragic fall of Robespierre
+put an end to the Reign of Terror; for their chiefs having disappeared,
+the subordinates were too much divided to keep up the dictatorship of
+the third Committee of Public Safety, and reaction soon set in. After a
+change in _personnel_ in favour of the surviving Dantonists, came a
+limitation to the powers of the Committee of Public Safety, now placed
+in dependence upon the Convention; and next followed the destruction of
+the revolutionary system, the Girondin decentralization and the
+resuscitation of departmental governments; the reform of the
+Revolutionary Tribunal on the 10th of August; the suppression of the
+Commune of Paris on the 1st of September, and of the salary of forty
+_sous_ given to members of the sections; the abolition of the maximum,
+the suppression of the Guillotine, the opening of the prisons, the
+closing of the Jacobin club (November 11), and the henceforward
+insignificant existence of the popular societies.
+
+
+  Resuscitation of the royalist party.
+
+  Popular risings of Germinal and Prairial.
+
+Power reverted to the Girondins and Dantonists, who re-entered the
+Convention on the 18th of December; but with them re-entered likewise
+the royalists of Lyons, Marseilles and Toulon, and further, after the
+peace of Basel, many young men set free from the army, hostile to the
+Jacobins and defenders of the now moderate and peace-making Convention.
+These _muscadins_ and _incroyables_, led by Fréron, Tallien and
+Barras--former revolutionists who had become aristocrats--profited by
+the restored liberty of the press to prepare for days of battle in the
+salons of the _merveilleuses_ Madame Tallien, Madame de Staël and Madame
+Récamier, as the _sans-culottes_ had formerly done in the clubs. The
+remnants of Robespierre's faction became alarmed at this Thermidor
+reaction, in which they scented royalism. Aided by famine, by the
+suppression of the maximum, and by the imminent bankruptcy of the
+assignats, they endeavoured to arouse the working classes and the former
+Hanriot companies against a government which was trying to destroy the
+republic, and had broken the busts of Marat and guillotined Carrier and
+Fouquier-Tinville, the former public prosecutor. Thus the risings of the
+12th Germinal (April 1, 1795) and of the 1st Prairial (May 20) were
+economic revolts rather than insurrections excited by the deputies of
+the Mountain; in order to suppress them the reactionaries called in the
+army. Owing to this first intervention of the troops in politics, the
+Committee of Public Safety, which aimed not so much at a moderate policy
+as at steering a middle course between the Thermidorians of the Right
+and of the Left, was able to dispense with the latter.
+
+
+  The white terror.
+
+The royalists now supposed that their hour had come. In the south, the
+companions of Jehu and of the Sun inaugurated a "White Terror," which
+had not even the apparent excuse of the public safety or of exasperated
+patriotism. At the same time they prepared for a twofold insurrection
+against the republic--in the west with the help of England, and in the
+east with that of Austria--by an attempt to bribe General Pichegru. But
+though the heads of the government wanted to put an end to the
+Revolution they had no thought of restoring the monarchy in favour of
+the Comte de Provence, who had taken the title of Louis XVIII. on
+hearing of the death of the dauphin in the Temple, and still less of
+bringing back the _ancien régime_. Hoche crushed the insurrection of
+the Chouans and the Bretons at Quiberon on the 2nd of July 1795, and
+Pichegru, scared, refused to entangle himself any further.
+
+
+  The constitution of the year III.
+
+  The 13th Vendémiaire.
+
+To cut off all danger from royalists or terrorists the Convention now
+voted the Constitution of the year III.; suppressing that of 1793, in
+order to counteract the terrorists, and re-establishing the bourgeois
+limited franchise with election in two degrees--a less liberal
+arrangement than that granted from 1789 to 1792. The chambers of the
+Five Hundred and of the Ancients were elected by the moneyed and
+intellectual aristocracy, and were to be re-elected by thirds annually.
+The executive authority, entrusted to five Directors, was no more than a
+definite and very strong Committee of Public Safety; but Sieyès, the
+author of the new constitution, in opposition to the royalists, had
+secured places of refuge for his party by reserving posts as directors
+for the regicides, and two-thirds of the deputies' seats for members of
+the Convention. In self-defence against this continuance of the policy
+and the _personnel_ of the Convention--a modern "Long Parliament"--the
+royalists, persistent street-fighters and masters in the "sections"
+after the suppression of the daily indemnification of forty _sous_,
+attempted the insurrection of the 13th Vendémiaire (October 5, 1795),
+which was easily put down by General Bonaparte.
+
+
+  Military achievements of the convention.
+
+  Treaty of Basel.
+
+Thus the bourgeois republic reaped the fruits of its predecessor's
+external policy. After the freeing of the land in January 1794 an
+impulse had been given to the spirit of conquest which had gradually
+succeeded to the disinterested fever of propaganda and overheated
+patriotism. This it was which had sustained Robespierre's dictatorship;
+and, owing to the "amalgam" and the re-establishment of discipline,
+Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine had been conquered and Holland
+occupied, simultaneously with Kosciusko's rising in Poland, Prussia's
+necessity of keeping and extending her Polish acquisitions,
+Robespierre's death, the prevalent desires of the majority, and the
+continued victories of Pichegru, Jourdan and Moreau, enfeebled the
+coalition. At Basel (April-July 1795) republican France, having rejoined
+the concert of Europe, signed the long-awaited peace with Prussia,
+Spain, Holland and the grand-duke of Tuscany. But thanks to the past
+influence of the Girondin party, who had caused the war, and of the
+regicides of the Mountain, this peace not only ratified the conquest of
+Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine and Santo Domingo, but paved the way
+for fresh conquests; for the old spirit of domination and persistent
+hostility to Austria attracted the destinies of the Revolution
+definitely towards war.
+
+
+  Internal achievements.
+
+The work of internal construction amidst this continued battle against
+the whole world had been no less remarkable. The Constituent Assembly
+had been more destructive than constructive; but the Convention
+preserved intact those fundamental principles of civil liberty which had
+been the main results of the Revolution: the equality so dear to the
+French, and the sovereignty of the people--the foundation of democracy.
+It also managed to engage private interests in state reform by creating
+the Grand Livre de la Dette Publique (September 13-26, 1793), and
+enlisted peasant and bourgeois savings in social reforms by the
+distribution and sale of national property. But with views reaching
+beyond equality of rights to a certain equality of property, the
+committees, as regards legislation, poor relief and instruction, laid
+down principles which have never been realized, save in the matter of
+the metric system; so that the Convention which was dispersed on the
+16th of October 1795 made a greater impression on political history and
+social ideas than on institutions. Its disappearance left a great blank.
+
+
+  The Directory.
+
+During four years the Directory attempted to fill this blank. Being the
+outcome of the Constitution of the year III., it should have been the
+organizing and pacifying government of the Republic; in reality it
+sought not to create, but to preserve its own existence. Its internal
+weakness, between the danger of anarchy and the opposition of the
+monarchists, was extreme; and it soon became discredited by its own
+_coups d'état_ and by financial impotence in the eyes of a nation sick
+of revolution, aspiring towards peace and the resumption of economic
+undertakings. As to foreign affairs, its aggressive policy imperilled
+the conquests that had been the glory of the Convention, and caused the
+frontiers of France, the defence of which had been a point of honour
+with the Republic, to be called in question. Finally, there was no real
+government on the part of the five directors: La Révellière-Lépeaux, an
+honest man but weak; Reubell, the negotiator of the Hague; Letourneur,
+an officer of talent; Barras, a man of intrigue, corrupt and without
+real convictions; and Carnot, the only really worthy member. They never
+understood one another, and never consulted together in hours of danger,
+save to embroil matters in politics as in war. Leaning on the bourgeois,
+conservative, liberal and anti-clerical republicans, they were no more
+able than was the Thermidor party to re-establish the freedom that had
+been suspended by revolutionary despotism; they created a ministry of
+police, interdicted the clubs and popular societies, distracted the
+press, and with partiality undertook the separation of Church and State
+voted on the 18th of September 1794. Their real defence against counter
+revolution was the army; but, by a further contradiction, they
+reinforced the army attached to the Revolution while seeking an alliance
+with the peacemaking bourgeoisie. Their party had therefore no more
+homogeneity than had their policy.
+
+
+  The parties.
+
+Moreover the Directory could not govern alone; it had to rely upon two
+other parties, according to circumstances: the republican-democrats and
+the disguised royalists. The former, purely anti-royalist, thought only
+of remedying the sufferings of the people. Roused by the collapse of the
+assignats, following upon the ruin of industry and the arrest of
+commerce, they were still further exasperated by the speculations of the
+financiers, by the jobbery which prevailed throughout the
+administration, and by the sale of national property which had profited
+hardly any but the bourgeoisie. After the 13th Vendémiaire the royalists
+too, deceived in their hopes, were expecting to return gradually to the
+councils, thanks to the high property qualification for the franchise.
+Under the name of "moderates" they demanded an end to this war which
+England continued and Austria threatened to recommence, and that the
+Directory from self-interested motives refused to conclude; they desired
+the abandonment of revolutionary proceedings, order in finance and
+religious peace.
+
+
+  Struggle against the royalists.
+
+  Struggle against the republican democrats and the socialists.
+
+  Babeuf.
+
+The Directory, then, was in a minority in the country, and had to be
+ever on the alert against faction; all possible methods seemed
+legitimate, and during two years appeared successful. Order was
+maintained in France, even the royalist west being pacified, thanks to
+Hoche, who finished his victorious campaign of 1796 against Stofflet,
+Charette and Cadoudal, by using mild and just measures to complete the
+subjection of the country. The greatest danger lay in the
+republican-democrats and their socialist ally, François Noel
+("Gracchus") Babeuf (q.v.). The former had united the Jacobins and the
+more violent members of the Convention in their club, the Société du
+Panthéon; and their fusion, after the closing of the club, with the
+secret society of the Babouvists lent formidable strength to this party,
+with which Barras was secretly in league. The terrorist party, deprived
+of its head, had found a new leader, who, by developing the consequences
+of the Revolution's acts to their logical conclusion, gave first
+expression to the levelling principle of communism. He proclaimed the
+right of property as appertaining to the state, that is, to the whole
+community; the doctrine of equality as absolutely opposed to social
+inequality of any kind--that of property as well as that of rank; and
+finally the inadequacy of the solution of the agrarian question, which
+had profited scarcely any one, save a new class of privileged
+individuals. But these socialist demands were premature; the attack of
+the camp of Grenelle upon constitutional order ended merely in the
+arrest and guillotining of Babeuf (September 9, 1796-May 25, 1797).
+
+
+  Financial policy of the Directory.
+
+The liquidation of the financial inheritance of the Convention was no
+less difficult. The successive issues of assignats, and the
+multiplication of counterfeits made abroad, had so depreciated this
+paper money that an assignat of 100 francs was in February 1796 worth
+only 30 centimes; while the government, obliged to accept them at their
+nominal value, no longer collected any taxes and could not pay salaries.
+The destruction of the plate for printing assignats, on the 18th of
+February 1796, did not prevent the drop in the forty milliards still in
+circulation. Territorial mandates were now tried, which inspired no
+greater confidence, but served to liquidate two-thirds of the debt, the
+remaining third being consolidated by its dependence on the Grand Livre
+(September 30, 1797). This widespread bankruptcy, falling chiefly on the
+bourgeoisie, inaugurated a reaction which lasted until 1830 against the
+chief principle of the Constituent Assembly, which had favoured indirect
+taxation as producing a large sum without imposing any very obvious
+burden. The bureaucrats of the old system--having returned to their
+offices and being used to these indirect taxes--lent their assistance,
+and thus the Directory was enabled to maintain its struggle against the
+Coalition.
+
+
+  External policy.
+
+All system in finance having disappeared, war provided the Directory,
+now _in extremis_, with a treasury, and was its only source for
+supplying constitutional needs; while it opened a path to the military
+commanders who were to be the support and the glory of the state.
+England remaining invulnerable in her insular position despite Hoche's
+attempt to land in Ireland in 1796, the Directory resumed the
+traditional policy against Austria of conquering the natural frontiers,
+Carnot furnishing the plans; hence the war in southern Germany, in which
+Jourdan and Moreau were repulsed by an inferior force under the archduke
+Charles, and Bonaparte's triumphant Italian campaign. Chief of an army
+that he had made irresistible, not by honour but by glory, and master of
+wealth by rapine, Bonaparte imposed his will upon the Directory, which
+he provided with funds. After having separated the Piedmontese from the
+Austrians, whom he drove back into Tyrol, and repulsed offensive
+reprisals of Wurmser and Alvinzi on four occasions, he stopped short at
+the preliminary negotiations of Léoben just at the moment when the
+Directory, discouraged by the problem of Italian reconstitution, was
+preparing the army of the Rhine to re-enter the field under the command
+of Hoche. Bonaparte thus gained the good opinion of peace-loving
+Frenchmen; he partitioned Venetian territory with Austria, contrary to
+French interests but conformably with his own in Italy, and henceforward
+was the decisive factor in French and European policy, like Caesar or
+Pompey of old. England, in consternation, offered in her turn to
+negotiate at Lille.
+
+
+  Struggle against the royalists.
+
+  18th Fructidor.
+
+These military successes did not prevent the Directory, like the
+Thermidorians, from losing ground in the country. Every strategic truce
+since 1795 had been marked by a political crisis; peace reawakened
+opposition. The constitutional party, royalist in reality, had made
+alarming progress, chiefly owing to the Babouvist conspiracy; they now
+tried to corrupt the republican generals, and Condé procured the
+treachery of Pichegru, Kellermann and General Ferrand at Besançon.
+Moreover, their Clichy club, directed by the abbé Brottier, manipulated
+Parisian opinion; while many of the refractory priests, having returned
+after the liberal Public Worship Act of September 1795, made active
+propaganda against the principles of the Revolution, and plotted the
+fall of the Directory as maintaining the State's independence of the
+Church. Thus the partial elections of the year V. (May 20, 1797) had
+brought back into the two councils a counter-revolutionary majority of
+royalists, constitutionalists of 1791, Catholics and moderates. The
+Director Letourneur had been replaced by Barthélemy, who had negotiated
+the treaty of Basel and was a constitutional monarchist. So that the
+executive not only found it impossible to govern, owing to the
+opposition of the councils and a vehement press-campaign, but was
+distracted by ceaseless internal conflict. Carnot and Barthélemy wished
+to meet ecclesiastical opposition by legal measures only, and demanded
+peace; while Barras, La Révellière and Reubell saw no other remedy save
+military force. The attempt of the counter-revolutionaries to make an
+army for themselves out of the guard of the Legislative Assembly, and
+the success of the Catholics, who had managed at the end of August 1797
+to repeal the laws against refractory priests, determined the Directory
+to appeal from the rebellious parliament to the ready swords of Augereau
+and Bernadotte. On the 18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797) Bonaparte's
+lieutenants, backed up by the whole army, stopped the elections in
+forty-nine departments, and deported to Guiana many deputies of both
+councils, journalists and non-juring priests, as well as the director
+Barthélemy, though Carnot escaped into Switzerland. The royalist party
+was once more overthrown, but with it the republican constitution
+itself. Thus every act of violence still further confirmed the new
+empire of the army and the defeat of principles, preparing the way for
+military despotism.
+
+
+  Aggressive policy of the Directory.
+
+Political and financial _coups d'état_ were not enough for the
+directors. In order to win back public opinion, tired of internecine
+quarrels and sickened by the scandalous immorality of the generals and
+of those in power, and to remove from Paris an army which after having
+given them a fresh lease of life was now a menace to them, war appeared
+their only hopeful course. They attempted to renew the designs of Louis
+XIV. and anticipate those of Napoleon. But Bonaparte saw what they were
+planning; and to the rupture of the negotiations at Lille and an order
+for the resumption of hostilities he responded by a fresh act of
+disobedience and the infliction on the Directory of the peace of
+Campo-Formio, on October 17, 1797. The directors were consoled for this
+enforced peace by acquiring the left bank of the Rhine and Belgium, and
+for the forfeiture of republican principles by attaining what had for so
+long been the ambition of the monarchy. But the army continued a menace.
+To avoid disbanding it, which might, as after the peace of Basel, have
+given the counter-revolution further auxiliaries, the Directory
+appointed Bonaparte chief of the Army of England, and employed Jourdan
+to revise the conscription laws so as to make military service a
+permanent duty of the citizen, since war was now to be the permanent
+object of policy. The Directory finally conceived the gigantic project
+of bolstering up the French Republic--the triumph of which was
+celebrated by the peace of Campo-Formio--by forming the neighbouring
+weak states into tributary vassal republics. This system had already
+been applied to the Batavian republic in 1795, to the Ligurian and
+Cisalpine republics in June 1797; it was extended to that of Mülhausen
+on the 28th of January 1798, to the Roman republic in February, to the
+Helvetian in April, while the Parthenopaean republic (Naples) was to be
+established in 1799. This was an international _coup de force_, which
+presupposed that all these nations in whose eyes independence was
+flaunted would make no claim to enjoy it; that though they had been
+beaten and pillaged they would not learn to conquer in their turn; and
+that the king of Sardinia, dispossessed of Milan, the grand-duke of
+Tuscany who had given refuge to the pope when driven from Rome, and the
+king of Naples, who had opened his ports to Nelson's fleet, would not
+find allies to make a stand against this hypocritical system.
+
+
+  Coup d'état of the 22nd Floréal.
+
+  Bonaparte in Egypt.
+
+  The second coalition.
+
+What happened was exactly the contrary. Meanwhile, the armies were kept
+in perpetual motion, procuring money for the impecunious Directory,
+making a diversion for internal discontent, and also permitting of a
+"reversed Fructidor," against the anarchists, who had got the upper hand
+in the partial elections of May 1798. The social danger was averted in
+its turn after the clerical danger had been dissipated. The next task
+was to relieve Paris of Bonaparte, who had already refused to repeat
+Hoche's unhappy expedition to Ireland and to attack England at home
+without either money or a navy. The pecuniary resources of Berne and
+the wealth of Rome fortunately tided over the financial difficulty and
+provided for the expedition to Egypt, which permitted Bonaparte to wait
+"for the fruit to ripen"--i.e. till the Directory should be ruined in
+the eyes of France and of all Europe. The disaster of Aboukir (August 1,
+1798) speedily decided the coalition pending between England, Austria,
+the Empire, Portugal, Naples, Russia and Turkey. The Directory had to
+make a stand or perish, and with it the Republic. The directors had
+thought France might retain a monopoly in numbers and in initiative.
+They soon perceived that enthusiasm is not as great for a war of policy
+and conquest as for a war of national defence; and the army dwindled,
+since a country cannot bleed itself to death. The law of conscription
+was voted on the 5th of September 1798; and the tragedy of Rastadt,
+where the French commissioners were assassinated, was the opening of a
+war, desired but ill-prepared for, in which the Directory showed
+hesitation in strategy and incoherence in tactics, over a
+disproportionate area in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Military
+reverses were inevitable, and responsibility for them could not be
+shirked. As though shattered by a reverberant echo from the cannon of
+the Trebbia, the Directory crumbled to pieces, succumbing on the 18th of
+June 1799 beneath the reprobation showered on Treilhard, Merlin de
+Douai, and La Révellière-Lépeaux. A few more military disasters,
+royalist insurrections in the south, Chouan disturbances in Normandy,
+Orleanist intrigues and the end came. To soothe the populace and protect
+the frontier more was required than the resumption, as in all grave
+crises of the Revolution, of terrorist measures such as forced taxation
+or the law of hostages; the new Directory, Sieyès presiding, saw that
+for the indispensable revision of the constitution "a head and a sword"
+were needed. Moreau being unattainable, Joubert was to be the sword of
+Sieyès; but, when he was killed at the battle of Novi, the sword of the
+Revolution fell into the hands of Bonaparte.
+
+
+  Coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire.
+
+Although Brune and Masséna retrieved the fight at Bergen and Zürich, and
+although the Allies lingered on the frontier as they had done after
+Valmy, still the fortunes of the Directory were not restored. Success
+was reserved for Bonaparte, suddenly landing at Fréjus with the prestige
+of his victories in the East, and now, after Hoche's death, appearing as
+sole master of the armies. He manoeuvred among the parties as on the
+13th Vendémiaire. On the 18th Brumaire of the year VIII. France and the
+army fell together at his feet. By a twofold _coup d'état_,
+parliamentary and military, he culled the fruits of the Directory's
+systematic aggression and unpopularity, and realized the universal
+desires of the rich bourgeoisie, tired of warfare; of the wretched
+populace; of landholders, afraid of a return to the old order of things;
+of royalists, who looked upon Bonaparte as a future Monk; of priests and
+their people, who hoped for an indulgent treatment of Catholicism; and
+finally of the immense majority of the French, who love to be ruled and
+for long had had no efficient government. There was hardly any one to
+defend a liberty which they had never known. France had, indeed,
+remained monarchist at heart for all her revolutionary appearance; and
+Bonaparte added but a name, though an illustrious one, to the series of
+national or local dictatorships, which, after the departure of the weak
+Louis XVI., had maintained a sort of informal republican royalty.
+
+
+  The Consulate, Sept. 11, 1799-May 18, 1804.
+
+On the night of the 19th Brumaire a mere ghost of an Assembly abolished
+the constitution of the year III., ordained the provisionary Consulate,
+and legalized the coup d'état in favour of Bonaparte. A striking and
+singular event; for the history of France and a great part of Europe was
+now for fifteen years to be summed up in the person of a single man (see
+NAPOLEON).
+
+
+  The constitution of the year VIII.
+
+This night of Brumaire, however, seemed to be a victory for Sieyès
+rather than for Bonaparte. He it was who originated the project which
+the legislative commissions, charged with elaborating the new
+constitution, had to discuss. Bonaparte's cleverness lay in opposing
+Daunou's plan to that of Sieyès, and in retaining only those portions of
+both which could serve his ambition. Parliamentary institutions annulled
+by the complication of three assemblies--the Council of State which
+drafted bills, the Tribunate which discussed them without voting them,
+and the Legislative Assembly which voted them without discussing them;
+popular suffrage, mutilated by the lists of notables (on which the
+members of the Assemblies were to be chosen by the conservative senate);
+and the triple executive authority of the consuls, elected for ten
+years: all these semblances of constitutional authority were adopted by
+Bonaparte. But he abolished the post of Grand Elector, which Sieyès had
+reserved for himself, in order to reinforce the real authority of the
+First Consul himself--by leaving the two other consuls, Cambacérès and
+Lebrun, as well as the Assemblies, equally weak. Thus the aristocratic
+constitution of Sieyès was transformed into an unavowed dictatorship, a
+public ratification of which the First Consul obtained by a third _coup
+d'état_ from the intimidated and yet reassured electors-reassured by his
+dazzling but unconvincing offers of peace to the victorious Coalition
+(which repulsed them), by the rapid disarmament of La Vendée, and by the
+proclamations in which he filled the ears of the infatuated people with
+the new talk of stability of government, order, justice and moderation.
+He gave every one a feeling that France was governed once more by a real
+statesman, that a pilot was at the helm.
+
+
+  The Consulate.
+
+Bonaparte had now to rid himself of Sieyès and those republicans who had
+no desire to hand over the republic to one man, particularly of Moreau
+and Masséna, his military rivals. The victory of Marengo (June 14, 1800)
+momentarily in the balance, but secured by Desaix and Kellermann,
+offered a further opportunity to his jealous ambition by increasing his
+popularity. The royalist plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise (December 24,
+1800) allowed him to make a clean sweep of the democratic republicans,
+who despite their innocence were deported to Guiana, and to annul
+Assemblies that were a mere show by making the senate omnipotent in
+constitutional matters; but it was necessary for him to transform this
+deceptive truce into the general pacification so ardently desired for
+the last eight years. The treaty of Lunéville, signed in February 1801
+with Austria who had been disarmed by Moreau's victory at Hohenlinden,
+restored peace to the continent, gave nearly the whole of Italy to
+France, and permitted Bonaparte to eliminate from the Assemblies all the
+leaders of the opposition in the discussion of the Civil Code. The
+Concordat (July 1801), drawn up not in the Church's interest but in that
+of his own policy, by giving satisfaction to the religious feeling of
+the country, allowed him to put down the constitutional democratic
+Church, to rally round him the consciences of the peasants, and above
+all to deprive the royalists of their best weapon. The "Articles
+Organiques" hid from the eyes of his companions in arms and councillors
+a reaction which, in fact if not in law, restored to a submissive
+Church, despoiled of her revenues, her position as the religion of the
+state. The peace of Amiens with England (March 1802), of which France's
+allies, Spain and Holland, paid all the costs, finally gave the
+peacemaker a pretext for endowing himself with a Consulate, not for ten
+years but for life, as a recompense from the nation. The Rubicon was
+crossed on that day: Bonaparte's march to empire began with the
+constitution of the year X. (August 1802).
+
+
+  Internal reorganization.
+
+Before all things it was now necessary to reorganize France, ravaged as
+she was by the Revolution, and with her institutions in a state of utter
+corruption. The touch of the master was at once revealed to all the
+foreigners who rushed to gaze at the man about whom, after so many
+catastrophes and strange adventures, Paris, "la ville lumière," and all
+Europe were talking. First of all, Louis XV.'s system of roads was
+improved and that of Louis XVI.'s canals developed; then industry put
+its shoulder to the wheel; order and discipline were re-established
+everywhere, from the frontiers to the capital, and brigandage
+suppressed; and finally there was Paris, the city of cities! Everything
+was in process of transformation: a second Rome was arising, with its
+forum, its triumphal arches, its shows and parades; and in this new Rome
+of a new Caesar fancy, elegance and luxury, a radiance of art and
+learning from the age of Pericles, and masterpieces rifled from the
+Netherlands, Italy and Egypt illustrated the consular peace. The Man of
+Destiny renewed the course of time. He borrowed from the _ancien régime_
+its plenipotentiaries; its over-centralized, strictly utilitarian
+administrative and bureaucratic methods; and afterwards, in order to
+bring them into line, the subservient pedantic scholasticism of its
+university. On the basis laid down by the Constituent Assembly and the
+Convention he constructed or consolidated the funds necessary for
+national institutions, local governments, a judiciary system, organs of
+finance, banking, codes, traditions of conscientious well-disciplined
+labour, and in short all the organization which for three-quarters of a
+century was to maintain and regulate the concentrated activity of the
+French nation (see the section _Law and Institutions_). Peace and order
+helped to raise the standard of comfort. Provisions, in this Paris which
+had so often suffered from hunger and thirst, and lacked fire and light,
+had become cheap and abundant; while trade prospered and wages ran high.
+The pomp and luxury of the _nouveaux riches_ were displayed in the
+salons of the good Joséphine, the beautiful Madame Tallien, and the
+"divine" Juliette Récamier.
+
+
+  The republican opposition.
+
+But the republicans, and above all the military, saw in all this little
+but the fetters of system; the wily despotism, the bullying police, the
+prostration before authority, the sympathy lavished on royalists, the
+recall of the _émigrés_, the contempt for the Assemblies, the
+purification of the Tribunate, the platitudes of the servile Senate, the
+silence of the press. In the formidable machinery of state, above all in
+the creation of the Legion of Honour, the Concordat, and the restoration
+of indirect taxes, they saw the rout of the Revolution. But the
+expulsion of persons like Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël sufficed
+to quell this Fronde of the salons. The expedition to San Domingo
+reduced the republican army to a nullity; war demoralized or scattered
+the leaders, who were jealous of their "comrade" Bonaparte; and Moreau,
+the last of his rivals, cleverly compromised in a royalist plot, as
+Danton had formerly been by Robespierre, disappeared into exile. In
+contradistinction to this opposition of senators and republican
+generals, the immense mass of the people received the ineffaceable
+impression of Bonaparte's superiority. No suggestion of the possibility
+of his death was tolerated, of a crime which might cut short his career.
+The conspiracy of Cadoudal and Pichegru, after Bonaparte's refusal to
+give place to Louis XVIII., and the political execution of the duc
+d'Enghien, provoked an outburst of adulation, of which Bonaparte took
+advantage to put the crowning touch to his ambitious dream.
+
+
+  Napoleon emperor May 18, 1804-April 6, 1814.
+
+The decision of the senate on the 18th of May 1804, giving him the title
+of emperor, was the counterblast to the dread he had excited.
+Thenceforward "the brow of the emperor broke through the thin mask of
+the First Consul." Never did a harder master ordain more imperiously,
+nor understand better how to command obedience. "This was because," as
+Goethe said, "under his orders men were sure of accomplishing their
+ends. That is why they rallied round him, as one to inspire them with
+that kind of certainty." Indeed no man ever concentrated authority to
+such a point, nor showed mental abilities at all comparable to his: an
+extraordinary power of work, prodigious memory for details and fine
+judgment in their selection; together with a luminous decision and a
+simple and rapid conception, all placed at the disposal of a sovereign
+will. No head of the state gave expression more imperiously than this
+Italian to the popular passions of the French of that day: abhorrence
+for the emigrant nobility, fear of the _ancien régime_, dislike of
+foreigners, hatred of England, an appetite for conquest evoked by
+revolutionary propaganda, and the love of glory. In this Napoleon was a
+soldier of the people: because of this he judged and ruled his
+contemporaries. Having seen their actions in the stormy hours of the
+Revolution, he despised them and looked upon them as incapable of
+disinterested conduct, conceited, and obsessed by the notion of
+equality. Hence his colossal egoism, his habitual disregard of others,
+his jealous passion for power, his impatience of all contradiction, his
+vain untruthful boasting, his unbridled self-sufficiency and lack of
+moderation--passions which were gradually to cloud his clear faculty of
+reasoning. His genius, assisted by the impoverishment of two
+generations, was like the oak which admits beneath its shade none but
+the smallest of saplings. With the exception of Talleyrand, after 1808
+he would have about him only mediocre people, without initiative,
+prostrate at the feet of the giant: his tribe of paltry, rapacious and
+embarrassing Corsicans; his admirably subservient generals; his selfish
+ministers, docile agents, apprehensive of the future, who for fourteen
+long years felt a prognostication of defeat and discounted the
+inevitable catastrophe.
+
+So France had no internal history outside the plans and transformations
+to which Napoleon subjected the institutions of the Consulate, and the
+after-effects of his wars. Well knowing that his fortunes rested on the
+delighted acquiescence of France, Napoleon expected to continue
+indefinitely fashioning public opinion according to his pleasure. To his
+contempt for men he added that of all ideas which might put a bridle on
+his ambition; and to guard against them, he inaugurated the Golden Age
+of the police that he might tame every moral force to his hand. Being
+essentially a man of order, he loathed, as he said, all demagogic
+action, Jacobinism and visions of liberty, which he desired only for
+himself. To make his will predominant, he stifled or did violence to
+that of others, through his bishops, his gendarmes, his university, his
+press, his catechism. Nourished like Frederick II. and Catherine the
+Great in 18th-century maxims, neither he nor they would allow any of
+that ideology to filter through into their rough but regular ordering of
+mankind. Thus the whole political system, being summed up in the
+emperor, was bound to share his fall.
+
+
+  Napoleon's political idea.
+
+Although an enemy of idealogues, in his foreign policy Napoleon was
+haunted by grandiose visions. A condottiere of the Renaissance living in
+the 19th century, he used France, and all those nations annexed or
+attracted by the Revolution, to resuscitate the Roman conception of the
+Empire for his own benefit. On the other hand, he was enslaved by the
+history and aggressive idealism of the Convention, and of the republican
+propaganda under the Directory; he was guided by them quite as much as
+he guided them. Hence the immoderate extension given to French activity
+by his classical Latin spirit; hence also his conquests, leading on from
+one to another, and instead of being mutually helpful interfering with
+each other; hence, finally, his not entirely coherent policy,
+interrupted by hesitation and counter-attractions. This explains the
+retention of Italy, imposed on the Directory from 1796 onward, followed
+by his criminal treatment of Venice, the foundation of the Cisalpine
+republic--a foretaste of future annexations--the restoration of that
+republic after his return from Egypt, and in view of his as yet inchoate
+designs, the postponed solution of the Italian problem which the treaty
+of Lunéville had raised.
+
+Marengo inaugurated the political idea which was to continue its
+development until his Moscow campaign. Napoleon dreamed as yet only of
+keeping the duchy of Milan, setting aside Austria, and preparing some
+new enterprise in the East or in Egypt. The peace of Amiens, which cost
+him Egypt, could only seem to him a temporary truce; whilst he was
+gradually extending his authority in Italy, the cradle of his race, by
+the union of Piedmont, and by his tentative plans regarding Genoa,
+Parma, Tuscany and Naples. He wanted to make this his Cisalpine Gaul,
+laying siege to the Roman state on every hand, and preparing in the
+Concordat for the moral and material servitude of the pope. When he
+recognized his error in having raised the papacy from decadence by
+restoring its power over all the churches, he tried in vain to correct
+it by the _Articles Organiques_--wanting, like Charlemagne, to be the
+legal protector of the pope, and eventually master of the Church. To
+conceal his plan he aroused French colonial aspirations against England,
+and also the memory of the spoliations of 1763, exasperating English
+jealousy of France, whose borders now extended to the Rhine, and laying
+hands on Hanover, Hamburg and Cuxhaven. By the "Recess" of 1803, which
+brought to his side Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden, he followed up the
+overwhelming tide of revolutionary ideas in Germany, to stem which Pitt,
+back in power, appealed once more to an Anglo-Austro-Russian coalition
+against this new Charlemagne, who was trying to renew the old Empire,
+who was mastering France, Italy and Germany; who finally on the 2nd of
+December 1804 placed the imperial crown upon his head, after receiving
+the iron crown of the Lombard kings, and made Pius VII. consecrate him
+in Notre-Dame.
+
+After this, in four campaigns from 1805 to 1809, Napoleon transformed
+his Carolingian feudal and federal empire into one modelled on the Roman
+empire. The memories of imperial Rome were for a third time, after
+Caesar and Charlemagne, to modify the historical evolution of France.
+Though the vague plan for an invasion of England fell to the ground Ulm
+and Austerlitz obliterated Trafalgar, and the camp at Boulogne put the
+best military resources he had ever commanded at Napoleon's disposal.
+
+
+  Treaty of Presburg, 1805.
+
+In the first of these campaigns he swept away the remnants of the old
+Roman-Germanic empire, and out of its shattered fragments created in
+southern Germany the vassal states of Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg,
+Hesse-Darmstadt and Saxony, which he attached to France under the name
+of the Confederation of the Rhine; but the treaty of Presburg gave
+France nothing but the danger of a more centralized and less docile
+Germany. On the other hand, Napoleon's creation of the kingdom of Italy,
+his annexation of Venetia and her ancient Adriatic empire--wiping out
+the humiliation of 1797--and the occupation of Ancona, marked a new
+stage in his progress towards his Roman Empire. His good fortune soon
+led him from conquest to spoliation, and he complicated his master-idea
+of the grand empire by his Family Compact; the clan of the Bonapartes
+invaded European monarchies, wedding with princesses of blood-royal, and
+adding kingdom to kingdom. Joseph replaced the dispossessed Bourbons at
+Naples; Louis was installed on the throne of Holland; Murat became
+grand-duke of Berg, Jerome son-in-law to the king of Württemberg, and
+Eugène de Beauharnais to the king of Bavaria; while Stéphanie de
+Beauhamais married the son of the grand-duke of Baden.
+
+
+  Jena.
+
+  Eylau and Friedland.
+
+  Peace of Tilsit, July 8, 1807.
+
+  Continental blockade.
+
+Meeting with less and less resistance, Napoleon went still further and
+would tolerate no neutral power. On the 6th of August 1806 he forced the
+Habsburgs, left with only the crown of Austria, to abdicate their
+Roman-Germanic title of emperor. Prussia alone remained outside the
+Confederation of the Rhine, of which Napoleon was Protector, and to
+further her decision he offered her English Hanover. In a second
+campaign he destroyed at Jena both the army and the state of Frederick
+William III., who could not make up his mind between the Napoleonic
+treaty of Schönbrunn and Russia's counter-proposal at Potsdam (October
+14, 1806). The butchery at Eylau and the vengeance taken at Friedland
+finally ruined Frederick the Great's work, and obliged Russia, the ally
+of England and Prussia, to allow the latter to be despoiled, and to join
+Napoleon against the maritime tyranny of the former. After Tilsit,
+however (July 1807), instead of trying to reconcile Europe to his
+grandeur, Napoleon had but one thought: to make use of his success to
+destroy England and complete his Italian dominion. It was from Berlin,
+on the 21st of November 1806, that he had dated the first decree of a
+continental blockade, a monstrous conception intended to paralyze his
+inveterate rival, but which on the contrary caused his own fall by its
+immoderate extension of the empire. To the coalition of the northern
+powers he added the league of the Baltic and Mediterranean ports, and to
+the bombardment of Copenhagen by an English fleet he responded by a
+second decree of blockade, dated from Milan on the 17th of December
+1807.
+
+But the application of the Concordat and the taking of Naples led to
+the first of those struggles with the pope, in which were formulated two
+antagonistic doctrines: Napoleon declaring himself Roman emperor, and
+Pius VII. renewing the theocratic affirmations of Gregory VII. The
+former's Roman ambition was made more and more plainly visible by the
+occupation of the kingdom of Naples and of the Marches, and the entry of
+Miollis into Rome; while Junot invaded Portugal, Radet laid hands on the
+pope himself, and Murat took possession of formerly Roman Spain, whither
+Joseph was afterwards to be transferred. But Napoleon little knew the
+flame he was kindling. No more far-seeing than the Directory or the men
+of the year III., he thought that, with energy and execution, he might
+succeed in the Peninsula as he had succeeded in Italy in 1796 and 1797,
+in Egypt, and in Hesse, and that he might cut into Spanish granite as
+into Italian mosaic or "that big cake, Germany." He stumbled unawares
+upon the revolt of a proud national spirit, evolved through ten historic
+centuries; and the trap of Bayonne, together with the enthroning of
+Joseph Bonaparte, made the contemptible prince of the Asturias the elect
+of popular sentiment, the representative of religion and country.
+
+
+  Bailen.
+
+Napoleon thought he had Spain within his grasp, and now suddenly
+everything was slipping from him. The Peninsula became the grave of
+whole armies and a battlefield for England. Dupont capitulated at Bailen
+into the hands of Castaños, and Junot at Cintra to Wellesley; while
+Europe trembled at this first check to the hitherto invincible imperial
+armies. To reduce Spanish resistance Napoleon had in his turn to come to
+terms with the tsar Alexander at Erfurt; so that abandoning his designs
+in the East, he could make the Grand Army evacuate Prussia and return in
+force to Madrid.
+
+
+  Wagram.
+
+  Peace of Vienna.
+
+Thus Spain swallowed up the soldiers who were wanted for Napoleon's
+other fields of battle, and they had to be replaced by forced levies.
+Europe had only to wait, and he would eventually be found disarmed in
+face of a last coalition; but Spanish heroism infected Austria, and
+showed the force of national resistance. The provocations of Talleyrand
+and England strengthened the illusion: Why should not the Austrians
+emulate the Spaniards? The campaign of 1809, however, was but a pale
+copy of the Spanish insurrection. After a short and decisive action in
+Bavaria, Napoleon opened up the road to Vienna for a second time; and
+after the two days' battle at Essling, the stubborn fight at Wagram, the
+failure of a patriotic insurrection in northern Germany and of the
+English expedition against Antwerp, the treaty of Vienna (December 14,
+1809), with the annexation of the Illyrian provinces, completed the
+colossal empire. Napoleon profited, in fact, by this campaign which had
+been planned for his overthrow. The pope was deported to Savona beneath
+the eyes of indifferent Europe, and his domains were incorporated in the
+Empire; the senate's decision on the 17th of February 1810 created the
+title of king of Rome, and made Rome the capital of Italy. The pope
+banished, it was now desirable to send away those to whom Italy had been
+more or less promised. Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, was
+transferred to Frankfort, and Murat carefully watched until the time
+should come to take him to Russia and install him as king of Poland.
+Between 1810 and 1812 Napoleon's divorce of Joséphine, and his marriage
+with Marie Louise of Austria, followed by the birth of the king of Rome,
+shed a brilliant light upon his future policy. He renounced a federation
+in which his brothers were not sufficiently docile; he gradually
+withdrew power from them; he concentrated all his affection and ambition
+on the son who was the guarantee of the continuance of his dynasty. This
+was the apogee of his reign.
+
+
+  Beginning of the end. Uprising of nationalism.
+
+But undermining forces were already at work: the faults inherent in his
+unwieldy achievement. England, his chief enemy, was persistently active;
+and rebellion both of the governing and the governed broke out
+everywhere. Napoleon felt his impotence in coping with the Spanish
+insurrection, which he underrated, while yet unable to suppress it
+altogether. Men like Stein, Hardenberg and Scharnhorst were secretly
+preparing Prussia's retaliation. Napoleon's material omnipotence could
+not stand against the moral force of the pope, a prisoner at
+Fontainebleau; and this he did not realize. The alliance arranged at
+Tilsit was seriously shaken by the Austrian marriage, the threat of a
+Polish restoration, and the unfriendly policy of Napoleon at
+Constantinople. The very persons whom he had placed in power were
+counteracting his plans: after four years' experience Napoleon found
+himself obliged to treat his Corsican dynasties like those of the
+_ancien régime_, and all his relations were betraying him. Caroline
+conspired against her brother and against her husband; the
+hypochondriacal Louis, now Dutch in his sympathies, found the
+supervision of the blockade taken from him, and also the defence of the
+Scheldt, which he had refused to ensure; Jerome, idling in his harem,
+lost that of the North Sea shores; and Joseph, who was attempting the
+moral conquest of Spain, was continually insulted at Madrid. The very
+nature of things was against the new dynasties, as it had been against
+the old.
+
+
+  Treachery.
+
+After national insurrections and family recriminations came treachery
+from Napoleon's ministers. Talleyrand betrayed his designs to
+Metternich, and had to be dismissed; Fouché corresponded with Austria in
+1809 and 1810, entered into an understanding with Louis, and also with
+England; while Bourrienne was convicted of peculation. By a natural
+consequence of the spirit of conquest he had aroused, all these
+parvenus, having tasted victory, dreamed of sovereign power: Bernadotte,
+who had helped him to the Consulate, played Napoleon false to win the
+crown of Sweden; Soult, like Murat, coveted the Spanish throne after
+that of Portugal, thus anticipating the treason of 1813 and the
+defection of 1814; many persons hoped for "an accident" which might
+resemble the tragic end of Alexander and of Caesar. The country itself,
+besides, though flattered by conquests, was tired of self-sacrifice. It
+had become satiated; "the cry of the mothers rose threateningly" against
+"the Ogre" and his intolerable imposition of wholesale conscription. The
+soldiers themselves, discontented after Austerlitz, cried out for peace
+after Eylau. Finally, amidst profound silence from the press and the
+Assemblies, a protest was raised against imperial despotism by the
+literary world, against the excommunicated sovereign by Catholicism, and
+against the author of the continental blockade by the discontented
+bourgeoisie, ruined by the crisis of 1811.
+
+
+  Degeneration of Napoleon.
+
+Napoleon himself was no longer the General Bonaparte of his campaign in
+Italy. He was already showing signs of physical decay; the Roman
+medallion profile had coarsened, the obese body was often lymphatic.
+Mental degeneration, too, betrayed itself in an unwonted irresolution.
+At Eylau, at Wagram, and later at Waterloo, his method of acting by
+enormous masses of infantry and cavalry, in a mad passion for conquest,
+and his misuse of his military resources, were all signs of his moral
+and technical decadence; and this at the precise moment when, instead of
+the armies and governments of the old system, which had hitherto reigned
+supreme, the nations themselves were rising against France, and the
+events of 1792 were being avenged upon her. The three campaigns of two
+years brought the final catastrophe.
+
+
+  Russian campaign.
+
+  Campaigns of 1813-14.
+
+Napoleon had hardly succeeded in putting down the revolt in Germany when
+the tsar himself headed a European insurrection against the ruinous
+tyranny of the continental blockade. To put a stop to this, to ensure
+his own access to the Mediterranean and exclude his chief rival,
+Napoleon made a desperate effort in 1812 against a country as invincible
+as Spain. Despite his victorious advance, the taking of Smolensk, the
+victory on the Moskwa, and the entry into Moscow, he was vanquished by
+Russian patriotism and religious fervour, by the country and the
+climate, and by Alexander's refusal to make terms. After this came the
+lamentable retreat, while all Europe was concentrating against him.
+Pushed back, as he had been in Spain, from bastion to bastion, after the
+action on the Beresina, Napoleon had to fall back upon the frontiers of
+1809, and then--having refused the peace offered him by Austria at the
+congress of Prague, from a dread of losing Italy, where each of his
+victories had marked a stage in the accomplishment of his dream--on
+those of 1805, despite Lützen and Bautzen, and on those of 1802 after
+his defeat at Leipzig, where Bernadotte turned upon him, Moreau figured
+among the Allies, and the Saxons and Bavarians forsook him. Following
+his retreat from Russia came his retreat from Germany. After the loss of
+Spain, reconquered by Wellington, the rising in Holland preliminary to
+the invasion and the manifesto of Frankfort which proclaimed it, he had
+to fall back upon the frontiers of 1795; and then later was driven yet
+farther back upon those of 1792, despite the wonderful campaign of 1814
+against the invaders, in which the old Bonaparte of 1796 seemed to have
+returned. Paris capitulated on the 30th of March, and the "Delenda
+Carthago," pronounced against England, was spoken of Napoleon. The great
+empire of East and West fell in ruins with the emperor's abdication at
+Fontainebleau.
+
+
+  Downfall of the Empire.
+
+The military struggle ended, the political struggle began. How was
+France to be governed? The Allies had decided on the eviction of
+Napoleon at the Congress of Châtillon; and the precarious nature of the
+Bonapartist monarchy in France itself was made manifest by the exploit
+of General Malet, which had almost succeeded during the Russian
+campaign, and by Lainé's demand for free exercise of political rights,
+when Napoleon made a last appeal to the Legislative Assembly for
+support. The defection of the military and civil aristocracy, which
+brought about Napoleon's abdication, the refusal of a regency, and the
+failure of Bernadotte, who wished to resuscitate the Consulate, enabled
+Talleyrand, vice-president of the senate and desirous of power, to
+persuade the Allies to accept the Bourbon solution of the difficulty.
+The declaration of St Ouen (May 2, 1814) indicated that the new monarchy
+was only accepted upon conditions. After Napoleon's abdication, and
+exile to the island of Elba, came the Revolution's abdication of her
+conquests: the first treaty of Paris (May 30th) confirmed France's
+renunciation of Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, and her return
+within her pre-revolutionary frontiers, save for some slight
+rectifications.
+
+
+  Faults of the Bourbons.
+
+  The Hundred Days. March-June 1815.
+
+After the scourge of war, the horrors of conscription, and the despotism
+which had discounted glory, every one seemed to rejoice in the return of
+the Bourbons, which atoned for humiliations by restoring liberty. But
+questions of form, which aroused questions of sentiment, speedily led to
+grave dissensions. The hurried armistice of the 23rd of April, by which
+the comte d'Artois delivered over disarmed France to her conquerors;
+Louis XVIII.'s excessive gratitude to the prince regent of England; the
+return of the _émigrés_; the declaration of St Ouen, dated from the
+nineteenth year of the new reign; the charter of June 4th, "_concédée et
+octroyée_," maintaining the effete doctrine of legitimacy in a country
+permeated with the idea of national sovereignty; the slights put upon
+the army; the obligatory processions ordered by Comte Beugnot, prefect
+of police; all this provoked a conflict not only between two theories of
+government but between two groups of men and of interests. An avowedly
+imperialist party was soon again formed, a centre of heated opposition
+to the royalist party; and neither Baron Louis' excellent finance, nor
+the peace, nor the charter of June 4th--which despite the irritation of
+the _émigrés_ preserved the civil gains of the Revolution--prevented the
+man who was its incarnation from seizing an opportunity to bring about
+another military _coup d'état_. Having landed in the Bay of Jouan on the
+1st of March, on the 20th Napoleon re-entered the Tuileries in triumph,
+while Louis XVIII. fled to Ghent. By the _Acte additionnel_ of the 22nd
+of April he induced Carnot and Fouché--the last of the Jacobins--and the
+heads of the Liberal opposition, Benjamin Constant and La Fayette, to
+side with him against the hostile Powers of Europe, occupied in dividing
+the spoils at Vienna. He proclaimed his intention of founding a new
+democratic empire; and French policy was thus given another illusion,
+which was to be exploited with fatal success by Napoleon's namesake. But
+the cannon of Waterloo ended this adventure (June 18, 1815), and, thanks
+to Fouché's treachery, the triumphal progress of Milan, Rome, Naples,
+Vienna, Berlin, and even of Moscow, was to end at St Helena.
+
+
+  Louis XVIII.
+
+The consequences of the Hundred Days were very serious; France was
+embroiled with all Europe, though Talleyrand's clever diplomacy had
+succeeded in causing division over Saxony and Poland by the secret
+Austro-Anglo-French alliance of the 3rd of January 1815, and the
+Coalition destroyed both France's political independence and national
+integrity by the treaty of peace of November 20th: she found herself far
+weaker than before the Revolution, and in the power of the European
+Alliance. The Hundred Days divided the nation itself into two
+irreconcilable parties: one ultra-royalist, eager for vengeance and
+retaliation, refusing to accept the Charter; the other imperialist,
+composed of Bonapartists and Republicans, incensed by their defeat--of
+whom Béranger was the Tyrtaeus--both parties equally revolutionary and
+equally obstinate. Louis XVIII., urged by his more fervent supporters
+towards the _ancien régime_, gave his policy an exactly contrary
+direction; he had common-sense enough to maintain the Empire's legal and
+administrative tradition, accepting its institutions of the Legion of
+Honour, the Bank, the University, and the imperial nobility--modifying
+only formally certain rights and the conscription, since these had
+aroused the nation against Napoleon. He even went so far as to accept
+advice from the imperial ministers Talleyrand and Fouché. Finally, as
+the chief political organization had become thoroughly demoralized, he
+imported into France the entire constitutional system of England, with
+its three powers, king, upper hereditary chamber, and lower elected
+chamber; with its plutocratic electorate, and even with details like the
+speech from the throne, the debate on the address, &c. This meant
+importing also difficulties such as ministerial responsibility, as well
+as electoral and press legislation.
+
+Louis XVIII., taught by time and misfortune, wished not to reign over
+two parties exasperated by contrary passions and desires; but his
+dynasty was from the outset implicated in the struggle, which was to be
+fatal to it, between old France and revolutionary France.
+Anti-monarchical, liberal and anti-clerical France at once recommenced
+its revolutionary work; the whole 19th century was to be filled with
+great spasmodic upheavals, and Louis XVIII. was soon overwhelmed by the
+White Terrorists of 1815.
+
+Vindictive sentences against men like Ney and Labédoyère were followed
+by violent and unpunished action by the White Terror, which in the south
+renewed the horrors of St Bartholomew and the September massacres. The
+elections of August 14, 1815, made under the influence of these royalist
+and religious passions, sent the "_Chambre introuvable_" to Paris, an
+unforeseen revival of the _ancien régime_. Neither the substitution of
+the duc de Richelieu's ministry for that of Talleyrand and Fouché, nor a
+whole series of repressive laws in violation of the charter, were
+successful in satisfying its tyrannical loyalism, and Louis XVIII.
+needed something like a _coup d'état_, in September 1816, to rid himself
+of the "ultras."
+
+
+  The Constitutional party's rule.
+
+  The reaction of 1820.
+
+He succeeded fairly well in quieting the opposition between the dynasty
+and the constitution, until a reaction took place between 1820 and 1822.
+State departments worked regularly and well, under the direction of
+Decazes, Lainé, De Serre and Pasquier, power alternating between two
+great well-disciplined parties almost in the English fashion, and many
+useful measures were passed: the reconstruction of finance stipulated
+for as a condition of evacuation of territory occupied by foreign
+troops; the electoral law of February 5, 1817, which, by means of direct
+election and a qualification of three hundred francs, renewed the
+preponderance of the _bourgeoisie_; the Gouvion St-Cyr law of 1818,
+which for half a century based the recruiting of the French army on the
+national principle of conscription; and in 1819, after Richelieu's
+dismissal, liberal regulations for the press under control of a
+commission. But the advance of the Liberal movement, and the election of
+the generals--Foy, Lamarque, Lafayette and of Manuel, excited the
+"ultras" and caused the dismissal of Richelieu; while that of the
+constitutional bishop Grégoire led to the modification in a reactionary
+direction of the electoral law of 1817. The assassination of the duc de
+Berry, second son of the comte d'Artois (attributed to the influence of
+Liberal ideas), caused the downfall of Decazes, and caused the
+king--more weak and selfish than ever--to override the charter and
+embark upon a reactionary path. After 1820, Madame du Cayla, a trusted
+agent of the ultra-royalist party, gained great influence over the king;
+and M. de Villèle, its leader, supported by the king's brother, soon
+eliminated the Right Centre by the dismissal of the duc de Richelieu,
+who had been recalled to tide over the crisis--just as the fall of M.
+Decazes had signalized the defeat of the Left Centre (December 15,
+1821)--and moderate policy thus received an irreparable blow.
+
+Thenceforward the government of M. de Villèle--a clever statesman, but
+tied to his party--did nothing for six years but promulgate a long
+series of measures against Liberalism and the social work of the
+Revolution; to retain power it had to yield to the impatience of the
+comte d'Artois and the majority. The suspension of individual liberty,
+the re-establishment of the censorship; the electoral right of the
+"double vote," favouring taxation of the most oppressive kind; and the
+handing over of education to the clergy: these were the first
+achievements of this anti-revolutionary ministry. The Spanish
+expedition, in which M. de Villèle's hand was forced by Montmorency and
+Chateaubriand, was the united work of the association of Catholic
+zealots known as the Congregation and of the autocratic powers of the
+Grand Alliance; it was responded to--as at Naples and in Spain--by
+secret Carbonari societies, and by severely repressed military
+conspiracies. Politics now bore the double imprint of two rival powers:
+the Congregation and Carbonarism. By 1824, nevertheless, the dynasty
+seemed firm--the Spanish War had reconciled the army, by giving back
+military prestige; the Liberal opposition had been decimated;
+revolutionary conspiracies discouraged; and the increase of public
+credit and material prosperity pleased the whole nation, as was proved
+by the "_Chambre retrouvée_" of 1824. The law of septennial elections
+tranquillized public life by suspending any legal or regular
+manifestation by the nation for seven years.
+
+
+  Charles X.
+
+  Victory of the constitutional parties, 1827.
+
+  The Revolution of 1830.
+
+It was the monarchy which next became revolutionary, on the accession of
+Charles X. (September 16, 1824). This inconsistent prince soon exhausted
+his popularity, and remained the fanatical head of those _émigrés_ who
+had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. While the opposition became
+conservative as regards the Charter and French liberties, the king and
+the clerical party surrounding him challenged the spirit of modern
+France by a law against sacrilege, by a bill for re-establishing the
+right of primogeniture, by an indemnity of a milliard francs, which
+looked like compensation given to the _émigrés_, and finally by the
+"_loi de liberté et d'amour_" against the press. The challenge was so
+definite that in 1826 the Chamber of Peers and the Academy had to give
+the Villèle ministry a lesson in Liberalism, for having lent itself to
+this _ancien régime_ reaction by its weakness and its party-promises.
+The elections "_de colère et de vengeance_" of January 1827 gave the
+Left a majority, and the resultant short-lived Martignac ministry tried
+to revive the Right Centre which had supported Richelieu and Decazes
+(January 1828). Martignac's accession to power, however, had only meant
+personal concessions from Charles X., not any concession of principle:
+he supported his ministry but was no real stand-by. The Liberals, on the
+other hand, made bargains for supporting the moderate royalists, and
+Charles X. profited by this to form a fighting ministry in conjunction
+with the prince de Polignac, one of the _émigrés_, an ignorant and
+visionary person, and the comte de Bourmont, the traitor of Waterloo.
+Despite all kinds of warnings, the former tried by a _coup d'état_ to
+put into practice his theories of the supremacy of the royal
+prerogative; and the battle of Navarino, the French occupation of the
+Morea, and the Algerian expedition could not make the nation forget this
+conflict at home. The united opposition of monarchist Liberals and
+imperialist republicans responded by legal resistance, then by a popular
+_coup d'état_, to the ordinances of July 1830, which dissolved the
+intractable Chamber, eliminated licensed dealers from the electoral
+list, and muzzled the press. After fighting for three days against the
+troops feebly led by the Marmont of 1814, the workmen, driven to the
+barricades by the deliberate closing of Liberal workshops, gained the
+victory, and sent the white flag of the Bourbons on the road to exile.
+
+
+  Republican and Orleanist parties.
+
+  Louis Philippe.
+
+The rapid success of the "Three Glorious Days" ("_les Trois
+Glorieuses_"), as the July Days were called, put the leaders of the
+parliamentary opposition into an embarrassing position. While they had
+contented themselves with words, the small Republican-Imperialist party,
+aided by the almost entire absence of the army and police, and by the
+convenience which the narrow, winding, paved streets of those times
+offered for fighting, had determined upon the revolution and brought it
+to pass. But the Republican party, which desired to re-establish the
+Republic of 1793, recruited chiefly from among the students and workmen,
+and led by Godefroy Cavaignac, the son of a Conventionalist, and by the
+chemist Raspail, had no hold on the departments nor on the dominating
+opinion in Paris. Consequently this premature attempt was promptly
+seized upon by the Liberal _bourgeoisie_ and turned to the advantage of
+the Orleanist party, which had been secretly organized since 1829 under
+the leadership of Thiers, with the _National_ as its organ. Before the
+struggle was yet over, Benjamin Constant, Casimir Périer, Lafitte, and
+Odilon Barrot had gone to fetch the duke of Orleans from Neuilly, and on
+receiving his promise to defend the Charter and the tricolour flag,
+installed him at the Palais Bourbon as lieutenant-general of the realm,
+while La Fayette and the Republicans established themselves at the Hôtel
+de Ville. An armed conflict between the two governments was imminent,
+when Lafayette, by giving his support to Louis Philippe, decided matters
+in his favour. In order to avoid a recurrence of the difficulties which
+had arisen with the Bourbons, the following preliminary conditions were
+imposed upon the king: the recognition of the supremacy of the people by
+the title of "king of the French by the grace of God and the will of the
+people," the responsibility of ministers, the suppression of hereditary
+succession to the Chamber of Peers, now reduced to the rank of a council
+of officials, the suppression of article 14 of the charter which had
+enabled Charles X. to supersede the laws by means of the ordinances, and
+the liberty of the press. The qualification for electors was lowered
+from 300 to 200 francs, and that for eligibility from 1000 to 500
+francs, and the age to 25 and 30 instead of 30 and 40; finally,
+Catholicism lost its privileged position as the state religion. The
+_bourgeois_ National Guard was made the guardian of the charter. The
+liberal ideas of the son of Philippe Égalité, the part he had played at
+Valmy and Jemappes, his gracious manner and his domestic virtues, all
+united in winning Louis Philippe the good opinion of the public.
+
+
+  The bourgeois monarchy.
+
+He now believed, as did indeed the great majority of the electors, that
+the revolution of 1830 had changed nothing but the head of the state.
+But in reality the July monarchy was affected by a fundamental weakness.
+It sought to model itself upon the English monarchy, which rested upon
+one long tradition. But the tradition of France was both twofold and
+contradictory, i.e. the Catholic-legitimist and the revolutionary. Louis
+Philippe had them both against him. His monarchy had but one element in
+common with the English, namely, a parliament elected by a limited
+electorate. There was at this time a cause of violent outcry against the
+English monarchy, which, on the other hand, met with firm support among
+the aristocracy and the clergy. The July monarchy had no such support.
+The aristocracy of the _ancien régime_ and of the Empire were alike
+without social influence; the clergy, which had paid for its too close
+alliance with Charles X. by a dangerous unpopularity, and foresaw the
+rise of democracy, was turning more and more towards the people, the
+future source of all power. Even the monarchical principle itself had
+suffered from the shock, having proved by its easy defeat how far it
+could be brought to capitulate. Moreover, the victory of the people, who
+had shown themselves in the late struggle to be brave and disinterested,
+had won for the idea of national supremacy a power which was bound to
+increase. The difficulty of the situation lay in the doubt as to whether
+this expansion would take place gradually and by a progressive
+evolution, as in England, or not.
+
+
+  The parties.
+
+Now Louis Philippe, beneath the genial exterior of a bourgeois and
+peace-loving king, was entirely bent upon recovering an authority which
+was menaced from the very first on the one hand by the anger of the
+royalists at their failures, and on the other hand by the impatience of
+the republicans to follow up their victory. He wanted the insurrection
+to stop at a change in the reigning family, whereas it had in fact
+revived the revolutionary tradition, and restored to France the
+sympathies of the nationalities and democratic parties oppressed by
+Metternich's "system." The republican party, which had retired from
+power but not from activity, at once faced the new king with the serious
+problem of the acquisition of political power by the people, and
+continued to remind him of it. He put himself at the head of the party
+of progress ("parti du mouvement") as opposed to the ("parti de la
+cour") court party, and of the "resistance," which considered that it
+was now necessary "to check the revolution in order to make it fruitful,
+and in order to save it." But none of these parties were homogeneous; in
+the chamber they split up into a republican or radical Extreme Left, led
+by Garnier-Pagès and Arago; a dynastic Left, led by the honourable and
+sincere Odilon Barrot; a constitutional Right Centre and Left Centre,
+differing in certain slight respects, and presided over respectively by
+Thiers, a wonderful political orator, and Guizot, whose ideas were those
+of a strict doctrinaire; not to mention a small party which clung to the
+old legitimist creed, and was dominated by the famous _avocat_ Berryer,
+whose eloquence was the chief ornament of the cause of Charles X.'s
+grandson, the comte de Chambord. The result was a ministerial majority
+which was always uncertain; and the only occasion on which Guizot
+succeeded in consolidating it during seven years resulted in the
+overthrow of the monarchy.
+
+
+  The Republicans crushed.
+
+Louis Philippe first summoned to power the leaders of the party of
+"movement," Dupont de l'Eure, and afterwards Lafitte, in order to keep
+control of the progressive forces for his own ends. They wished to
+introduce democratic reforms and to uphold throughout Europe the
+revolution, which had spread from France into Belgium, Germany, Italy
+and Poland, while Paris was still in a state of unrest. But Louis
+Philippe took fright at the attack on the Chamber of Peers after the
+trial of the ministers of Charles X., at the sack of the church of Saint
+Germain l'Auxerrois and the archbishop's palace (February, 1831), and at
+the terrible strike of the silk weavers at Lyons. Casimir Périer, who
+was both a Liberal and a believer in a strong government, was then
+charged with the task of heading the resistance to advanced ideas, and
+applying the principle of non-intervention in foreign affairs (March 13,
+1831). After his death by cholera in May 1832, the agitation which he
+had succeeded by his energy in checking at Lyons, at Grenoble and in the
+Vendée, where it had been stirred up by the romantic duchess of Berry,
+began to gain ground. The struggle against the republicans was still
+longer; for having lost all their chance of attaining power by means of
+the Chamber, they proceeded to reorganize themselves into armed secret
+societies. The press, which was gaining that influence over public
+opinion which had been lost by the parliamentary debates, openly
+attacked the government and the king, especially by means of caricature.
+Between 1832 and 1836 the Soult ministry, of which Guizot, Thiers and
+the duc de Broglie were members, had to combat the terrible
+insurrections in Lyons and Paris (1834). The measures of repression were
+threefold: military repression, carried out by the National Guard and
+the regulars, both under the command of Bugeaud; judicial repression,
+effected by the great trial of April 1835; and legislative repression,
+consisting in the laws of September, which, when to mere ridicule had
+succeeded acts of violence, such as that of Fieschi (July 28th, 1835),
+aimed at facilitating the condemnation of political offenders and at
+intimidating the press. The party of "movement" was vanquished.
+
+
+  The bourgeois policy.
+
+But the July Government, born as it was of a popular movement, had to
+make concessions to popular demands. Casimir Périer had carried a law
+dealing with municipal organization, which made the municipal councils
+elective, as they had been before the year VIII.; and in 1833 Guizot had
+completed it by making the _conseils généraux_ also elective. In the
+same year the law dealing with primary instruction had also shown the
+mark of new ideas. But now that the bourgeoisie was raised to power it
+did not prove itself any more liberal than the aristocracy of birth and
+fortune in dealing with educational, fiscal and industrial questions. In
+spite of the increase of riches, the bourgeois régime maintained a
+fiscal and social legislation which, while it assured to the middle
+class certainty and permanence of benefits, left the labouring masses
+poor, ignorant, and in a state of incessant agitation.
+
+
+  The socialist party.
+
+The Orleanists, who had been unanimous in supporting the king,
+disagreed, after their victory, as to what powers he was to be given.
+The Left Centre, led by Thiers, held that he should reign but not
+govern; the Right Centre, led by Guizot, would admit him to an active
+part in the government; and the third party (tiers-parti) wavered
+between these two. And so between 1836 and 1840, as the struggle against
+the king's claim to govern passed from the sphere of outside discussion
+into parliament, we see the rise of a bourgeois socialist party, side by
+side with the now dwindling republican party. It no longer confined its
+demands to universal suffrage, on the principle of the legitimate
+representation of all interests, or in the name of justice. Led by
+Saint-Simon, Fourier, P. Leroux and Lamennais, it aimed at realizing a
+better social organization for and by means of the state. But the
+question was by what means this was to be accomplished. The secret
+societies, under the influence of Blanqui and Barbès, two
+revolutionaries who had revived the traditions of Babeuf, were not
+willing to wait for the complete education of the masses, necessarily a
+long process. On the 12th of May 1839 the _Société des Saisons_ made an
+attempt to overthrow the bourgeoisie by force, but was defeated.
+Democrats like Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin and Lamennais continued to
+repeat in support of the wisdom of universal suffrage the old profession
+of faith: _vox populi, vox Dei_. And finally this republican doctrine,
+already confused, was still further complicated by a kind of mysticism
+which aimed at reconciling the most extreme differences of belief, the
+Catholicism of Buchez, the Bonapartism of Cormenin, and the
+humanitarianism of the cosmopolitans. It was in vain that Auguste Comte,
+Michelet and Quinet denounced this vague humanitarian mysticism and the
+pseudo-liberalism of the Church. The movement had now begun.
+
+
+  The Bonapartist revival.
+
+At first these moderate republicans, radical or communist, formed only
+imperceptible groups. Among the peasant classes, and even in the
+industrial centres, warlike passions were still rife. Louis Philippe
+tried to find an outlet for them in the Algerian war, and later by the
+revival of the Napoleonic legend, which was held to be no longer
+dangerous, since the death of the duke of Reichstadt in 1832. It was
+imprudently recalled by Thiers' _History of the Consulate and Empire_,
+by artists and poets, in spite of the prophecies of Lamartine, and by
+the solemn translation of Napoleon I.'s ashes in 1840 to the Invalides
+at Paris.
+
+
+  Parliamentary opposition to the royal power.
+
+All theories require to be based on practice, especially those which
+involve force. Now Louis Philippe, though as active as his predecessors
+had been slothful, was the least warlike of men. His only wish was to
+govern personally, as George III. and George IV. of England had done,
+especially in foreign affairs, while at home was being waged the great
+duel between Thiers and Guizot, with Molé as intermediary. Thiers, head
+of the cabinet of the 22nd of February 1836, an astute man but not
+pliant enough to please the king, fell after a few months, in
+consequence of his attempt to stop the Carlist civil war in Spain, and
+to support the constitutional government of Queen Isabella. Louis
+Philippe hoped that, by calling upon Molé to form a ministry, he would
+be better able to make his personal authority felt. From 1837 to 1839
+Molé aroused opposition on all hands; this was emphasized by the refusal
+of the Chambers to vote one of those endowments which the king was
+continually asking them to grant for his children, by two dissolutions
+of the Chambers, and finally by the Strasburg affair and the stormy
+trial of Louis Napoleon, son of the former king of Holland (1836-1837).
+At the elections of 1839 Molé was defeated by Thiers, Guizot and Barrot,
+who had combined to oppose the tyranny of the "Château," and after a
+long ministerial crisis was replaced by Thiers (March 1, 1840). But the
+latter was too much in favour of war to please the king, who was
+strongly disposed towards peace and an alliance with Great Britain, and
+consequently fell at the time of the Egyptian question, when, in answer
+to the treaty of London concluded behind his back by Nicholas I. and
+Palmerston on the 15th of July 1840, he fortified Paris and proclaimed
+his intention to give armed support to Mehemet Ali, the ally of France
+(see MEHEMET ALI). But the violence of popular Chauvinism and the
+renewed attempt of Louis Napoleon at Boulogne proved to the holders of
+the doctrine of peace at any price that in the long-run their policy
+tends to turn a peaceful attitude into a warlike one, and to strengthen
+the absolutist idea.
+
+
+  Guizot's ministry.
+
+In spite of all, from 1840 to 1848 Louis Philippe still further extended
+his activity in foreign affairs, thus bringing himself into still
+greater prominence, though he was already frequently held responsible
+for failures in foreign politics and unpopular measures in home affairs.
+The catchword of Guizot, who was now his minister, was: Peace and no
+reforms. With the exception of the law of 1842 concerning the railways,
+not a single measure of importance was proposed by the ministry. France
+lived under a régime of general corruption: parliamentary corruption,
+due to the illegal conduct of the deputies, consisting of slavish or
+venal officials; electoral corruption, effected by the purchase of the
+200,000 electors constituting the "_pays légal_," who were bribed by the
+advantages of power; and moral corruption, due to the reign of the
+plutocracy, the bourgeoisie, a hard-working, educated and honourable
+class, it is true, but insolent, like all newly enriched parvenus in the
+presence of other aristocracies, and with unyielding selfishness
+maintaining an attitude of suspicion towards the people, whose
+aspirations they did not share and with whom they did not feel
+themselves to have anything in common. This led to a slackening in
+political life, a sort of exhaustion of interest throughout the country,
+an excessive devotion to material prosperity. Under a superficial
+appearance of calm a tempest was brewing, of which the industrial
+writings of Balzac, Eugène Sue, Lamartine, H. Heine, Vigny, Montalembert
+and Tocqueville were the premonitions. But it was in vain that they
+denounced this supremacy of the bourgeoisie, relying on its two main
+supports, the suffrage based on a property qualification and the
+National Guard, for its rallying-cry was the "Enrichissez-vous" of
+Guizot, and its excessive materialism gained a sinister distinction from
+scandals connected with the ministers Teste and Cubières, and such
+mysterious crimes as that of Choiseul-Praslin.[35] In vain also did they
+point out that mere riches are not so much a protection to the ministry
+who are in power as a temptation to the majority excluded from power by
+this barrier of wealth. It was in vain that beneath the inflated _haute
+bourgeoisie_ which speculated in railways and solidly supported the
+Church, behind the shopkeeper clique who still remained Voltairian, who
+enviously applauded the pamphlets of Cormenin on the luxury of the
+court, and who were bitterly satirized by the pencil of Daumier and
+Gavarni, did the thinkers give voice to the mutterings of an immense
+industrial proletariat, which were re-echoing throughout the whole of
+western Europe.
+
+
+  Guizot's Foreign Policy.
+
+  Campaign of the banquets.
+
+In face of this tragic contrast Guizot remained unmoved, blinded by the
+superficial brilliance of apparent success and prosperity. He adorned by
+flights of eloquence his invariable theme: no new laws, no reforms, no
+foreign complications, the policy of material interests. He preserved
+his yielding attitude towards Great Britain in the affair of the right
+of search in 1841, and in the affair of the missionary Pritchard at
+Tahiti (1843-1845). And when the marriage of the duc de Montpensier with
+a Spanish infanta in 1846 had broken this _entente cordiale_ to which he
+clung, it was only to yield in turn to Metternich, when he took
+possession of Cracow, the last remnant of Poland, to protect the
+_Sonderbund_ in Switzerland, to discourage the Liberal ardour of Pius
+IX., and to hand over the education of France to the Ultramontane
+clergy. Still further strengthened by the elections of 1846, he refused
+the demands of the Opposition formed by a coalition of the Left Centre
+and the Radical party for parliamentary and electoral reform, which
+would have excluded the officials from the Chambers, reduced the
+electoral qualification to 100 francs, and added to the number of the
+electors the _capacitaires_ whose competence was guaranteed by their
+education. For Guizot the whole country was represented by the "_pays
+légal_," consisting of the king, the ministers, the deputies and the
+electors. When the Opposition appealed to the country, he flung down a
+disdainful challenge to what "les brouillons et les badauds appellent le
+peuple." The challenge was taken up by all the parties of the Opposition
+in the campaign of the banquets got up somewhat artificially in 1847 in
+favour of the extension of the franchise. The monarchy had arrived at
+such a state of weakness and corruption that a determined minority was
+sufficient to overthrow it. The prohibition of a last banquet in Paris
+precipitated the catastrophe. The monarchy which for fifteen years had
+overcome its adversaries collapsed on the 24th of February 1848 to the
+astonishment of all.
+
+
+  The Revolution of Feb. 24, 1848.
+
+The industrial population of the faubourgs on its way towards the centre
+of the town was welcomed by the National Guard, among cries of "Vive la
+réforme." Barricades were raised after the unfortunate incident of the
+firing on the crowd in the Boulevard des Capucines. On the 23rd Guizot's
+cabinet resigned, abandoned by the _petite bourgeoisie_, on whose
+support they thought they could depend. The heads of the Left Centre and
+the dynastic Left, Molé and Thiers, declined the offered leadership.
+Odilon Barrot accepted it, and Bugeaud, commander-in-chief of the first
+military division, who had begun to attack the barricades, was recalled.
+But it was too late. In face of the insurrection which had now taken
+possession of the whole capital, Louis Philippe decided to abdicate in
+favour of his grandson, the comte de Paris. But it was too late also to
+be content with the regency of the duchess of Orleans. It was now the
+turn of the Republic, and it was proclaimed by Lamartine in the name of
+the provisional government elected by the Chamber under the pressure of
+the mob.
+
+
+  The Provisional Government.
+
+This provisional government with Dupont de l'Eure as its president,
+consisted of Lamartine for foreign affairs, Crémieux for justice,
+Ledru-Rollin for the interior, Carnot for public instruction, Gondchaux
+for finance, Arago for the navy, and Bedeau for war. Garnier-Pagès was
+mayor of Paris. But, as in 1830, the republican-socialist party had set
+up a rival government at the Hôtel de Ville, including L. Blanc, A.
+Marrast, Flocon, and the workman Albert, which bid fair to involve
+discord and civil war. But this time the Palais Bourbon was not
+victorious over the Hôtel de Ville. It had to consent to a fusion of the
+two bodies, in which, however, the predominating elements were the
+moderate republicans. It was doubtful what would eventually be the
+policy of the new government. One party, seeing that in spite of the
+changes in the last sixty years of all political institutions, the
+position of the people had not been improved, demanded a reform of
+society itself, the abolition of the privileged position of property,
+the only obstacle to equality, and as an emblem hoisted the red flag.
+The other party wished to maintain society on the basis of its ancient
+institutions, and rallied round the tricolour.
+
+
+  Universal suffrage.
+
+  The Executive Commission.
+
+The first collision took place as to the form which the revolution of
+1848 was to take. Were they to remain faithful to their original
+principles, as Lamartine wished, and accept the decision of the country
+as supreme, or were they, as the revolutionaries under Ledru-Rollin
+claimed, to declare the republic of Paris superior to the universal
+suffrage of an insufficiently educated people? On the 5th of March the
+government, under the pressure of the Parisian clubs, decided in favour
+of an immediate reference to the people, and direct universal suffrage,
+and adjourned it till the 26th of April. In this fateful and unexpected
+decision, which instead of adding to the electorate the educated
+classes, refused by Guizot, admitted to it the unqualified masses,
+originated the Constituent Assembly of the 4th of May 1848. The
+provisional government having resigned, the republican and
+anti-socialist majority on the 9th of May entrusted the supreme power to
+an executive commission consisting of five members: Arago, Marie,
+Garnier-Pagès, Lamartine and Ledru-Rollin. But the spell was already
+broken. This revolution which had been peacefully effected with the most
+generous aspirations, in the hope of abolishing poverty by organizing
+industry on other bases than those of competition and capitalism, and
+which had at once aroused the fraternal sympathy of the nations, was
+doomed to be abortive.
+
+The result of the general election, the return of a constituent assembly
+predominantly moderate if not monarchical, dashed the hopes of those who
+had looked for the establishment, by a peaceful revolution, of their
+ideal socialist state; but they were not prepared to yield without a
+struggle, and in Paris itself they commanded a formidable force. In
+spite of the preponderance of the "tricolour" party in the provisional
+government, so long as the voice of France had not spoken, the
+socialists, supported by the Parisian proletariat, had exercised an
+influence on policy out of all proportion to their relative numbers or
+personal weight. By the decree of the 24th of February the provisional
+government had solemnly accepted the principle of the "right to work,"
+and decided to establish "national workshops" for the unemployed; at the
+same time a sort of industrial parliament was established at the
+Luxembourg, under the presidency of Louis Blanc, with the object of
+preparing a scheme for the organization of labour; and, lastly, by the
+decree of the 8th of March the property qualification for enrolment in
+the National Guard had been abolished and the workmen were supplied with
+arms. The socialists thus formed, in some sort, a state within the
+state, with a government, an organization and an armed force.
+
+
+  The June Days.
+
+In the circumstances a conflict was inevitable; and on the 15th of May
+an armed mob, headed by Raspail, Blanqui and Barbès, and assisted by the
+proletariat Guard, attempted to overwhelm the Assembly. They were
+defeated by the bourgeois battalions of the National Guard; but the
+situation none the less remained highly critical. The national workshops
+were producing the results that might have been foreseen. It was
+impossible to provide remunerative work even for the genuine unemployed,
+and of the thousands who applied the greater number were employed in
+perfectly useless digging and refilling; soon even this expedient
+failed, and those for whom work could not be invented were given a half
+wage of 1 franc a day. Even this pitiful dole, with no obligation to
+work, proved attractive, and all over France workmen threw up their jobs
+and streamed to Paris, where they swelled the ranks of the army under
+the red flag. It was soon clear that the continuance of this experiment
+would mean financial ruin; it had been proved by the _émeute_ of the
+15th of May that it constituted a perpetual menace to the state; and
+the government decided to end it. The method chosen was scarcely a happy
+one. On the 21st of June M. de Falloux decided in the name of the
+parliamentary commission on labour that the workmen should be discharged
+within three days and such as were able-bodied should be forced to
+enlist. A furious insurrection at once broke out. Throughout the whole
+of the 24th, 25th and 26th of June, the eastern industrial quarter of
+Paris, led by Pujol, carried on a furious struggle against the western
+quarter, led by Cavaignac, who had been appointed dictator. Vanquished
+and decimated, first by fighting and afterwards by deportation, the
+socialist party was crushed. But they dragged down the Republic in their
+ruin. This had already become unpopular with the peasants, exasperated
+by the new land tax of 45 centimes imposed in order to fill the empty
+treasury, and with the _bourgeois_, in terror of the power of the
+revolutionary clubs and hard hit by the stagnation of business. By the
+"massacres" of the June Days the working classes were also alienated
+from it; and abiding fear of the "Reds" did the rest. "France," wrote
+the duke of Wellington at this time, "needs a Napoleon! I cannot yet see
+him ... Where is he?"[36]
+
+
+  The Constitution of 1848.
+
+France indeed needed, or thought she needed, a Napoleon; and the demand
+was soon to be supplied. The granting of universal suffrage to a society
+with Imperialist sympathies, and unfitted to reconcile the principles of
+order with the consequences of liberty, was indeed bound, now that the
+political balance in France was so radically changed, to prove a
+formidable instrument of reaction; and this was proved by the election
+of the president of the Republic. On the 4th of November 1848 was
+promulgated the new constitution, obviously the work of inexperienced
+hands, proclaiming a democratic republic, direct universal suffrage and
+the separation of powers; there was to be a single permanent assembly of
+750 members elected for a term of three years by the _scrutin de liste_,
+which was to vote on the laws prepared by a council of state elected by
+the Assembly for six years; the executive power was delegated to a
+president elected for four years by direct universal suffrage, i.e. on a
+broader basis than that of the chamber, and not eligible for
+re-election; he was to choose his ministers, who, like him, would be
+responsible. Finally, all revision was made impossible since it involved
+obtaining three times in succession a majority of three-quarters of the
+deputies in a special assembly. It was in vain that M. Grévy, in the
+name of those who perceived the obvious and inevitable risk of creating,
+under the name of a president, a monarch and more than a king, proposed
+that the head of the state should be no more than a removable president
+of the ministerial council. Lamartine, thinking that he was sure to be
+the choice of the electors under universal suffrage, won over the
+support of the Chamber, which did not even take the precaution of
+rendering ineligible the members of families which had reigned over
+France. It made the presidency an office dependent upon popular
+acclamation.
+
+
+  Louis Napoleon.
+
+The election was keenly contested; the socialists adopted as their
+candidate Ledru-Rollin, the republicans Cavaignac; and the recently
+reorganized Imperialist party Prince Bonaparte. Louis Napoleon, unknown
+in 1835, and forgotten or despised since 1840, had in the last eight
+years advanced sufficiently in the public estimation to be elected to
+the Constituent Assembly in 1848 by five departments. He owed this rapid
+increase of popularity partly to blunders of the government of July,
+which had unwisely aroused the memory of the country, filled as it was
+with recollections of the Empire, and partly to Louis Napoleon's
+campaign carried on from his prison at Ham by means of pamphlets of
+socialistic tendencies. Moreover, the monarchists, led by Thiers and the
+committee of the Rue de Poitiers, were no longer content even with the
+safe dictatorship of the upright Cavaignac, and joined forces with the
+Bonapartists. On the 10th of December the peasants gave over 5,000,000
+votes to a name: Napoleon, which stood for order at all costs, against
+1,400,000 for Cavaignac.
+
+
+  Expedition to Rome.
+
+For three years there went on an indecisive struggle between the
+heterogeneous Assembly and the prince who was silently awaiting his
+opportunity. He chose as his ministers men but little inclined towards
+republicanism, for preference Orleanists, the chief of whom was Odilon
+Barrot. In order to strengthen his position, he endeavoured to
+conciliate the reactionary parties, without committing himself to any of
+them. The chief instance of this was the expedition to Rome, voted by
+the Catholics with the object of restoring the papacy, which had been
+driven out by Garibaldi and Mazzini. The prince-president was also in
+favour of it, as beginning the work of European renovation and
+reconstruction which he already looked upon as his mission. General
+Oudinot's entry into Rome provoked in Paris a foolish insurrection in
+favour of the Roman republic, that of the Château d'Eau, which was
+crushed on the 13th of June 1849. On the other hand, when Pius IX.,
+though only just restored, began to yield to the general movement of
+reaction, the president demanded that he should set up a Liberal
+government. The pope's dilatory reply having been accepted by his
+ministry, the president replaced it on the 1st of November by the
+Fould-Rouher cabinet.
+
+
+  The Legislative Assembly.
+
+  "Loi Falloux."
+
+  Electoral law of May 31.
+
+This looked like a declaration of war against the Catholic and
+monarchist majority in the Legislative Assembly which had been elected
+on the 28th of May in a moment of panic. But the prince-president again
+pretended to be playing the game of the Orleanists, as he had done in
+the case of the Constituent-Assembly. The complementary elections of
+March and April 1850 having resulted in an unexpected victory for the
+advanced republicans, which struck terror into the reactionary leaders,
+Thiers, Berryer and Montalembert, the president gave his countenance to
+a clerical campaign against the republicans at home. The Church, which
+had failed in its attempts to gain control of the university under Louis
+XVIII. and Charles X., aimed at setting up a rival establishment of its
+own. The _Loi Falloux_ of the 15th of March 1850, under the pretext of
+establishing the liberty of instruction promised by the charter, again
+placed the teaching of the university under the direction of the
+Catholic Church, as a measure of social safety, and, by the facilities
+which it granted to the Church for propagating teaching in harmony with
+its own dogmas, succeeded in obstructing for half a century the work of
+intellectual enfranchisement effected by the men of the 18th century and
+of the Revolution. The electoral law of the 31st of May was another
+class law directed against subversive ideas. It required as a proof of
+three years' domicile the entries in the record of direct taxes, thus
+cutting down universal suffrage by taking away the vote from the
+industrial population, which was not as a rule stationary. The law of
+the 16th of July aggravated the severity of the press restrictions by
+re-establishing the "caution money" (_cautionnement_) deposited by
+proprietors and editors of papers with the government as a guarantee of
+good behaviour. Finally, a skilful interpretation of the law on clubs
+and political societies suppressed about this time all the Republican
+societies. It was now their turn to be crushed like the socialists.
+
+
+  Struggle between the President and the Assembly.
+
+But the president had only joined in Montalembert's cry of "Down with
+the Republicans!" in the hope of effecting a revision of the
+constitution without having recourse to a _coup d'état_. His concessions
+only increased the boldness of the monarchists; while they had only
+accepted Louis Napoleon as president in opposition to the Republic and
+as a step in the direction of the monarchy. A conflict was now
+inevitable between his personal policy and the majority of the Chamber,
+who were, moreover, divided into legitimists and Orleanists, in spite of
+the death of Louis Philippe in August 1850. Louis Napoleon skilfully
+exploited their projects for a restoration of the monarchy, which he
+knew to be unpopular in the country, and which gave him the opportunity
+of furthering his own personal ambitions. From the 8th of August to the
+12th of November 1850 he went about France stating the case for a
+revision of the constitution in speeches which he varied according to
+each place; he held reviews, at which cries of "_Vive Napoléon_" showed
+that the army was with him; he superseded General Changarnier, on whose
+arms the parliament relied for the projected monarchical _coup d'état_;
+he replaced his Orleanist ministry by obscure men devoted to his own
+cause, such as Morny, Fleury and Persigny, and gathered round him
+officers of the African army, broken men like General Saint-Arnaud; in
+fact he practically declared open war.
+
+
+  Coup d'État of Dec. 2, 1851.
+
+His reply to the votes of censure passed by the Assembly, and their
+refusal to increase his civil list, was to hint at a vast communistic
+plot in order to scare the bourgeoisie, and to denounce the electoral
+law of the 31st of May in order to gain the support of the mass of the
+people. The Assembly retaliated by throwing out the proposal for a
+partial reform of that article of the constitution which prohibited the
+re-election of the president and the re-establishment of universal
+suffrage (July). All hope of a peaceful issue was at an end. When the
+questors called upon the Chamber to have posted up in all barracks the
+decree of the 6th of May 1848 concerning the right of the Assembly to
+demand the support of the troops if attacked, the Mountain, dreading a
+restoration of the monarchy, voted with the Bonapartists against the
+measure, thus disarming the legislative power. Louis Napoleon saw his
+opportunity. On the night between the 1st and 2nd of December 1851, the
+anniversary of Austerlitz, he dissolved the Chamber, re-established
+universal suffrage, had all the party leaders arrested, and summoned a
+new assembly to prolong his term of office for ten years. The deputies
+who had met under Berryer at the _Mairie_ of the tenth arrondissement to
+defend the constitution and proclaim the deposition of Louis Napoleon
+were scattered by the troops at Mazas and Mont Valérian. The resistance
+organized by the republicans within Paris under Victor Hugo was soon
+subdued by the intoxicated soldiers. The more serious resistance in the
+departments was crushed by declaring a state of siege and by the "mixed
+commissions." The plebiscite of the 20th of December ratified by a huge
+majority the _coup d'état_ in favour of the prince-president, who alone
+reaped the benefit of the excesses of the Republicans and the
+reactionary passions of the monarchists.
+
+
+  The Second Empire.
+
+The second attempt to revive the principle of 1789 only served as a
+preface to the restoration of the Empire. The new anti-parliamentary
+constitution of the 14th of January 1852 was to a large extent merely a
+repetition of that of the year VIII. All executive power was entrusted
+to the head of the state, who was solely responsible to the people, now
+powerless to exercise any of their rights. He was to nominate the
+members of the council of state, whose duty it was to prepare the laws,
+and of the senate, a body permanently established as a constituent part
+of the empire. One innovation was made, namely, that the Legislative
+Body was elected by universal suffrage, but it had no right of
+initiative, all laws being proposed by the executive power. This new and
+violent political change was rapidly followed by the same consequence as
+had attended that of Brumaire. On the 2nd of December 1852, France,
+still under the effect of the Napoleonic _virus_, and the fear of
+anarchy, conferred almost unanimously by a plebiscite the supreme power,
+with the title of emperor, upon Napoleon III.
+
+But though the machinery of government was almost the same under the
+Second Empire as it had been under the First, the principles upon which
+its founder based it were different. The function of the Empire, as he
+loved to repeat, was to guide the people internally towards justice and
+externally towards perpetual peace. Holding his power by universal
+suffrage, and having frequently, from his prison or in exile, reproached
+former oligarchical governments with neglecting social questions, he set
+out to solve them by organizing a system of government based on the
+principles of the "Napoleonic Idea," i.e. of the emperor, the elect of
+the people as the representative of the democracy, and as such supreme;
+and of himself, the representative of the great Napoleon, "who had
+sprung armed from the Revolution like Minerva from the head of Jove," as
+the guardian of the social gains of the revolutionary epoch. But he
+soon proved that social justice did not mean liberty; for he acted in
+such a way that those of the principles of 1848 which he had preserved
+became a mere sham. He proceeded to paralyze all those active national
+forces which tend to create the public spirit of a people, such as
+parliament, universal suffrage, the press, education and associations.
+The Legislative Body was not allowed either to elect its own president
+or to regulate its own procedure, or to propose a law or an amendment,
+or to vote on the budget in detail, or to make its deliberations public.
+It was a dumb parliament. Similarly, universal suffrage was supervised
+and controlled by means of official candidature, by forbidding free
+speech and action in electoral matters to the Opposition, and by a
+skilful adjustment of the electoral districts in such a way as to
+overwhelm the Liberal vote in the mass of the rural population. The
+press was subjected to a system of _cautionnements_, i.e. "caution
+money," deposited as a guarantee of good behaviour, and
+_avertissements_, i.e. requests by the authorities to cease publication
+of certain articles, under pain of suspension or suppression; while
+books were subject to a censorship. France was like a sickroom, where
+nobody might speak aloud. In order to counteract the opposition of
+individuals, a _surveillance_ of suspects was instituted. Orsini's
+attack on the emperor in 1858, though purely Italian in its motive,
+served as a pretext for increasing the severity of this régime by the
+law of general security (_sûreté générale_) which authorized the
+internment, exile or deportation of any suspect without trial. In the
+same way public instruction was strictly supervised, the teaching of
+philosophy was suppressed in the _Lycées_, and the disciplinary powers
+of the administration were increased. In fact for seven years France had
+no political life. The Empire was carried on by a series of plebiscites.
+Up to 1857 the Opposition did not exist; from then till 1860 it was
+reduced to five members: Darimon, Émile Ollivier, Hénon, J. Favre and E.
+Picard. The royalists waited inactive after the new and unsuccessful
+attempt made at Frohsdorf in 1853, by a combination of the legitimists
+and Orleanists, to re-create a living monarchy out of the ruin of two
+royal families. Thus the events of that ominous night in December were
+closing the future to the new generations as well as to those who had
+grown up during forty years of liberty.
+
+
+  Material prosperity a condition of despotism.
+
+But it was not enough to abolish liberty by conjuring up the spectre of
+demagogy. It had to be forgotten, the great silence had to be covered by
+the noise of festivities and material enjoyment, the imagination of the
+French people had to be distracted from public affairs by the taste for
+work, the love of gain, the passion for good living. The success of the
+imperial despotism, as of any other, was bound up with that material
+prosperity which would make all interests dread the thought of
+revolution. Napoleon III., therefore, looked for support to the clergy,
+the great financiers, industrial magnates and landed proprietors. He
+revived on his own account the "Let us grow rich" of 1840. Under the
+influence of the Saint-Simonians and men of business great credit
+establishments were instituted and vast public works entered upon: the
+Crédit foncier de France, the Crédit mobilier, the conversion of the
+railways into six great companies between 1852 and 1857. The rage for
+speculation was increased by the inflow of Californian and Australian
+gold, and consumption was facilitated by a general fall in prices
+between 1856 and 1860, due to an economic revolution which was soon to
+overthrow the tariff wall, as it had done already in England. Thus
+French activity flourished exceedingly between 1852 and 1857, and was
+merely temporarily checked by the crisis of 1857. The universal
+Exhibition of 1855 was its culminating point. Art felt the effects of
+this increase of comfort and luxury. The great enthusiasms of the
+romantic period were over; philosophy became sceptical and literature
+merely amusing. The festivities of the court at Compiègne set the
+fashion for the bourgeoisie, satisfied with this energetic government
+which kept such good guard over their bank balances.
+
+
+  Napoleon III.'s ideas.
+
+If the Empire was strong, the emperor was weak. At once headstrong and a
+dreamer, he was full of rash plans, but irresolute in carrying them
+out. An absolute despot, he remained what his life had made him, a
+conspirator through the very mysticism of his mental habit, and a
+revolutionary by reason of his demagogic imperialism and his democratic
+chauvinism. In his opinion the artificial work of the congress of
+Vienna, involving the downfall of his own family and of France, ought to
+be destroyed, and Europe organized as a collection of great industrial
+states, united by community. of interests and bound together by
+commercial treaties, and expressing this unity by periodical congresses
+presided over by himself, and by universal exhibitions. In this way he
+would reconcile the revolutionary principle of the supremacy of the
+people with historical tradition, a thing which neither the Restoration
+nor the July monarchy nor the Republic of 1848 had been able to achieve.
+Universal suffrage, the organization of Rumanian, Italian and German
+nationality, and commercial liberty; this was to be the work of the
+Revolution. But the creation of great states side by side with France
+brought with it the necessity for looking for territorial compensation
+elsewhere, and consequently for violating the principle of nationality
+and abjuring his system of economic peace. Napoleon III.'s foreign
+policy was as contradictory as his policy in home affairs, "L'Empire,
+c'est la paix," was his cry; and he proceeded to make war.
+
+
+  The Crimean War.
+
+So long as his power was not yet established, Napoleon III. made
+especial efforts to reassure European opinion, which had been made
+uneasy by his previous protestations against the treaties of 1815. The
+Crimean War, in which, supported by England and the king of Sardinia, he
+upheld against Russia the policy of the integrity of the Turkish empire,
+a policy traditional in France since Francis I., won him the adherence
+both of the old parties and and the Liberals. And this war was the
+prototype of all the rest. It was entered upon with no clearly defined
+military purpose, and continued in a hesitating way. This was the cause,
+after the victory of the allies at the Alma (September 14, 1854), of the
+long and costly siege of Sevastopol (September 8, 1855). Napoleon III.,
+whose joy was at its height owing to the signature of a peace which
+excluded Russia from the Black Sea, and to the birth of the prince
+imperial, which ensured the continuation of his dynasty, thought that
+the time had arrived to make a beginning in applying his system. Count
+Walewski, his minister for foreign affairs, gave a sudden and unexpected
+extension of scope to the deliberations of the congress which met at
+Paris in 1856 by inviting the plenipotentiaries to consider the
+questions of Greece, Rome, Naples, &c. This motion contained the
+principle of all the upheavals which were to effect such changes in
+Europe between 1859 and 1871. It was Cavour and Piedmont who immediately
+benefited by it, for thanks to Napoleon III. they were able to lay the
+Italian question before an assembly of diplomatic Europe.
+
+
+  The War in Italy.
+
+It was not Orsini's attack on the 14th of January 1858 which brought
+this question before Napoleon. It had never ceased to occupy him since
+he had taken part in the patriotic conspiracies in Italy in his youth.
+The triumph of his armies in the East now gave him the power necessary
+to accomplish this mission upon which he had set his heart. The
+suppression of public opinion made it impossible for him to be
+enlightened as to the conflict between the interests of the country and
+his own generous visions. The sympathy of all Europe was with Italy,
+torn for centuries past between so many masters; under Alexander II.
+Russia, won over since the interview of Stuttgart by the emperor's
+generosity rather than conquered by armed force, offered no opposition
+to this act of justice; while England applauded it from the first. The
+emperor, divided between the empress Eugénie, who as a Spaniard and a
+devout Catholic was hostile to anything which might threaten the papacy,
+and Prince Napoleon, who as brother-in-law of Victor Emmanuel favoured
+the cause of Piedmont, hoped to conciliate both sides by setting up an
+Italian federation, intending to reserve the presidency of it to Pope
+Pius IX., as a mark of respect to the moral authority of the Church.
+Moreover, the very difficulty of the undertaking appealed to the
+emperor, elated by his recent success in the Crimea. At the secret
+meeting between Napoleon and Count Cavour (July 20, 1858) the eventual
+armed intervention of France, demanded by Orsini before he mounted the
+scaffold, was definitely promised.
+
+
+  The peace of Villafranca.
+
+The ill-advised Austrian ultimatum demanding the immediate cessation of
+Piedmont's preparations for war precipitated the Italian expedition. On
+the 3rd of May 1859 Napoleon declared his intention of making Italy
+"free from the Alps to the Adriatic." As he had done four years ago, he
+plunged into the war with no settled scheme and without preparation; he
+held out great hopes, but without reckoning what efforts would be
+necessary to realize them. Two months later, in spite of the victories
+of Montebello, Magenta and Solferino, he suddenly broke off, and signed
+the patched-up peace of Villafranca with Francis Joseph (July 9).
+Austria ceded Lombardy to Napoleon III., who in turn ceded it to Victor
+Emmanuel; Modena and Tuscany were restored to their respective dukes,
+the Romagna to the pope, now president of an Italian federation. The
+mountain had brought forth a mouse.
+
+
+  The Italian problem.
+
+The reasons for this breakdown on the part of the emperor in the midst
+of his apparent triumph were many. Neither Magenta nor Solferino had
+been decisive battles. Further, his idea of a federation was menaced by
+the revolutionary movement which seemed likely to drive out all the
+princes of central Italy, and to involve him in an unwelcome dispute
+with the French clerical party. Moreover, he had forgotten to reckon
+with the Germanic Confederation, which was bound to come to the
+assistance of Austria. The mobilization of Prussia on the Rhine,
+combined with military difficulties and the risk of a defeat in Venetian
+territory, rather damped his enthusiasm, and decided him to put an end
+to the war. The armistice fell upon the Italians as a bolt from the
+blue, convincing them that they had been betrayed; on all sides despair
+drove them to sacrifice their jealously guarded independence to national
+unity. On the one hand the Catholics were agitating throughout all
+Europe to obtain the independence of the papal territory; and the French
+republicans were protesting, on the other hand, against the abandonment
+of those revolutionary traditions, the revival of which they had hailed
+so enthusiastically. The emperor, unprepared for the turn which events
+had taken, attempted to disentangle this confusion by suggesting a fresh
+congress of the Powers, which should reconcile dynastic interests with
+those of the people. After a while he gave up the attempt and resigned
+himself to the position, his actions having had more wide-reaching
+results than he had wished. The treaty of Zürich proclaimed the
+fallacious principle of non-intervention (November 10, 1859); and then,
+by the treaty of Turin of the 24th of May 1860, Napoleon threw over his
+ill-timed confederation. He conciliated the mistrust of Great Britain by
+replacing Walewski, who was hostile to his policy, by Thouvenel, an
+anti-clerical and a supporter of the English alliance, and he
+counterbalanced the increase of the new Italian kingdom by the
+acquisition of Nice and Savoy. Napoleon, like all French governments,
+only succeeded in finding a provisional solution for the Italian
+problem.
+
+
+  Catholic and protectionist opposition.
+
+But this solution would only hold good so long as the emperor was in a
+powerful position. Now this Italian war, in which he had given his
+support to revolution beyond the Alps, and, though unintentionally,
+compromised the temporal power of the popes, had given great offence to
+the Catholics, to whose support the establishment of the Empire was
+largely due. A keen Catholic opposition sprang up, voiced in L.
+Veuillot's paper the _Univers_, and was not silenced even by the Syrian
+expedition (1860) in favour of the Catholic Maronites, who were being
+persecuted by the Druses. On the other hand, the commercial treaty with
+Great Britain which was signed in January 1860, and which ratified the
+free-trade policy of Richard Cobden and Michael Chevalier, had brought
+upon French industry the sudden shock of foreign competition. Thus both
+Catholics and protectionists made the discovery that absolutism may be
+an excellent thing when it serves their ambitions or interests, but a
+bad thing when it is exercised at their expense. But Napoleon, in order
+to restore the prestige of the Empire before the newly-awakened
+hostility of public opinion, tried to gain from the Left the support
+which he had lost from the Right. After the return from Italy the
+general amnesty of the 16th of August 1859 had marked the evolution of
+the absolutist empire towards the liberal, and later parliamentary
+empire, which was to last for ten years.
+
+
+  The Liberal Empire.
+
+Napoleon began by removing the gag which was keeping the country in
+silence. On the 24th of November 1860, "by a _coup d'état_ matured
+during his solitary meditations," like a conspirator in his love of
+hiding his mysterious thoughts even from his ministers, he granted to
+the Chambers the right to vote an address annually in answer to the
+speech from the throne, and to the press the right of reporting
+parliamentary debates. He counted on the latter concession to hold in
+check the growing Catholic opposition, which was becoming more and more
+alarmed by the policy of _laissez-faire_ practised by the emperor in
+Italy. But the government majority already showed some signs of
+independence. The right of voting on the budget by sections, granted by
+the emperor in 1861, was a new weapon given to his adversaries.
+Everything conspired in their favour: the anxiety of those candid
+friends who were calling attention to the defective budget; the
+commercial crisis, aggravated by the American Civil War; and above all,
+the restless spirit of the emperor, who had annoyed his opponents in
+1860 by insisting on an alliance with Great Britain in order forcibly to
+open the Chinese ports for trade, in 1863 by his ill-fated attempt to
+put down a republic and set up a Latin empire in Mexico in favour of the
+archduke Maximilian of Austria, and from 1861 to 1863 by embarking on
+colonizing experiments in Cochin China and Annam.
+
+
+  The policy of nationalism.
+
+The same inconsistencies occurred in the emperor's European politics.
+The support which he had given to the Italian cause had aroused the
+eager hopes of other nations. The proclamation of the kingdom of Italy
+on the 18th of February 1861 after the rapid annexation of Tuscany and
+the kingdom of Naples had proved the danger of half-measures. But when a
+concession, however narrow, had been made to the liberty of one nation,
+it could hardly be refused to the no less legitimate aspirations of the
+rest. In 1863 these "new rights" again clamoured loudly for recognition,
+in Poland, in Schleswig and Holstein, in Italy, now indeed united, but
+with neither frontiers nor capital, and in the Danubian principalities.
+In order to extricate himself from the Polish _impasse_, the emperor
+again had recourse to his expedient--always fruitless because always
+inopportune--of a congress. He was again unsuccessful: England refused
+even to admit the principle of a congress, while Austria, Prussia and
+Russia gave their adhesion only on conditions which rendered it futile,
+i.e. they reserved the vital questions of Venetia and Poland.
+
+Thus Napoleon had yet again to disappoint the hopes of Italy, let Poland
+be crushed, and Germany triumph over Denmark in the Schleswig-Holstein
+question. These inconsistencies resulted in a combination of the
+opposition parties, Catholic, Liberal and Republican, in the _Union
+libérale_. The elections of May-June 1863 gained the Opposition forty
+seats and a leader, Thiers, who at once urgently gave voice to its
+demand for "the necessary liberties."
+
+
+  The régime of concessions.
+
+It would have been difficult for the emperor to mistake the importance
+of this manifestation of French opinion, and in view of his
+international failures, impossible to repress it. The sacrifice of
+Persigny, minister of the interior, who was responsible for the
+elections, the substitution for the ministers without portfolio of a
+sort of presidency of the council filled by Rouher, the "Vice-Emperor,"
+and the nomination of V. Duruy, an anti-clerical, as minister of public
+instruction, in reply to those attacks of the Church which were to
+culminate in the Syllabus of 1864, all indicated a distinct
+rapprochement between the emperor and the Left. But though the
+opposition represented by Thiers was rather constitutional than
+dynastic, there was another and irreconcilable opposition, that of the
+amnestied or voluntarily exiled republicans, of whom Victor Hugo was the
+eloquent mouthpiece. Thus those who had formerly constituted the
+governing classes were again showing signs of their ambition to govern.
+There appeared to be some risk that this movement among the
+_bourgeoisie_ might spread to the people. As Antaeus recruited his
+strength by touching the earth Napoleon believed that he would
+consolidate his menaced power by again turning to the labouring masses,
+by whom that power had been established.
+
+
+  Industrial policy of the Empire.
+
+This industrial policy he embarked upon as much from motives of interest
+as from sympathy, out of opposition to the _bourgeoisie_, which was
+ambitious of governing or desirous of his overthrow. His course was all
+the easier, since he had only to exploit the prejudices of the working
+classes. They had never forgotten the _loi Chapelle_ of 1791, which by
+forbidding all combinations among the workmen had placed them at the
+mercy of their employers, nor had they forgotten how the limited
+suffrage had conferred upon capital a political monopoly which had put
+it out of reach of the law, nor how each time they had left their
+position of rigid isolation in order to save the Charter or universal
+suffrage, the triumphant _bourgeoisie_ had repaid them at the last with
+neglect. The silence of public opinion under the Empire and the
+prosperous state of business had completed the separation of the labour
+party from the political parties. The visit of an elected and paid
+labour delegation to the Universal Exhibition of 1862 in London gave the
+emperor an opportunity for re-establishing relations with that party,
+and these relations were to his mind all the more profitable, since the
+labour party, by refusing to associate their social and industrial
+claims with the political ambitions of the _bourgeoisie_, maintained a
+neutral attitude between the parties, and could, if necessary, divide
+them, while by its keen criticism of society it aroused the conservative
+instincts of the _bourgeoisie_ and consequently checked their enthusiasm
+for liberty. A law of the 23rd of May 1863 gave the workmen the right,
+as in England, to save money by creating co-operative societies. Another
+law, of the 25th of May 1864, gave them the right to enforce better
+conditions of labour by organizing strikes. Still further, the emperor
+permitted the workmen to imitate their employers by establishing unions
+for the permanent protection of their interests. And finally, when the
+_ouvriers_, with the characteristic French tendency to insist on the
+universal application of a theory, wished to substitute for the narrow
+utilitarianism of the English trade-unions the ideas common to the
+wage-earning classes of the whole world, he put no obstacles in the way
+of their leader M. Tolain's plan for founding an International
+Association of Workers (_Société Internationale des Travailleurs_). At
+the same time he encouraged the provision made by employers for thrift
+and relief and for improving the condition of the working-classes.
+
+
+  Sadowa (1866).
+
+Thus assured of support, the emperor, through the mouthpiece of M.
+Rouher, who was a supporter of the absolutist régime, was able to refuse
+all fresh claims on the part of the Liberals. He was aided by the
+cessation of the industrial crisis as the American civil war came to an
+end, by the apparent closing of the Roman question by the convention of
+the 15th of September, which guaranteed to the papal states the
+protection of Italy, and finally by the treaty of the 30th of October
+1864, which temporarily put an end to the crisis of the
+Schleswig-Holstein question. But after 1865 the momentary agreement
+which had united Austria and Prussia for the purpose of administering
+the conquered duchies gave place to a silent antipathy which foreboded a
+rupture. Yet, though the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 was not unexpected,
+its rapid termination and fateful outcome came as a severe and sudden
+shock to France. Napoleon had hoped to gain fresh prestige for his
+throne and new influence for France by an intervention at the proper
+moment between combatants equally matched and mutually exhausted. His
+calculations were upset and his hopes dashed by the battle of Sadowa
+(Königgrätz) on the 4th of July. The treaty of Prague put an end to the
+secular rivalry of Habsburg and Hohenzollern for the hegemony of
+Germany, which had been France's opportunity; and Prussia could afford
+to humour the just claims of Napoleon by establishing between her North
+German Confederation and the South German states the illusory frontier
+of the Main. The belated efforts of the French emperor to obtain
+"compensation" on the left bank of the Rhine, at the expense of the
+South German states, made matters worse. France realized with an angry
+surprise that on her eastern frontier had arisen a military power by
+which her influence, if not her existence, was threatened; that in the
+name of the principle of nationality unwilling populations had been
+brought under the sway of a dynasty by tradition militant and
+aggressive, by tradition the enemy of France; that this new and
+threatening power had destroyed French influence in Italy, which owed
+the acquisition of Venetia to a Prussian alliance and to Prussian arms;
+and that all this had been due to Napoleon, outwitted and outmanoeuvred
+at every turn, since his first interview with Bismarck at Biarritz in
+October 1865.
+
+
+  Further concessions of Napoleon III.
+
+  Struggle between Ollivier and Rouher.
+
+All confidence in the excellence of imperial régime vanished at once.
+Thiers and Jules Favre as representatives of the Opposition denounced in
+the Legislative Body the blunders of 1866. Émile Ollivier split up the
+official majority by the amendment of the 45, and gave it to be
+understood that a reconciliation with the Empire would be impossible
+until the emperor would grant entire liberty. The recall of the French
+troops from Rome, in accordance with the convention of 1864, also led to
+further attacks by the Ultramontane party, who were alarmed for the
+papacy. Napoleon III. felt the necessity for developing "the great act
+of 1860" by the decree of the 19th of January 1867. In spite of Rouher,
+by a secret agreement with Ollivier the right of interpellation was
+restored to the Chambers. Reforms in press supervision and the right of
+holding meetings were promised. It was in vain that M. Rouher tried to
+meet the Liberal opposition by organizing a party for the defence of the
+Empire, the "Union dynastique." But the rapid succession of
+international reverses prevented him from effecting anything.
+
+
+  The year 1867.
+
+The year 1867 was particularly disastrous for the Empire. In Mexico "the
+greatest idea of the reign" ended in a humiliating withdrawal before the
+ultimatum of the United States, while Italy, relying on her new alliance
+with Prussia and already forgetful of her promises, was mobilizing the
+revolutionary forces to complete her unity by conquering Rome. The
+chassepots of Mentana were needed to check the Garibaldians. And when
+the imperial diplomacy made a belated attempt to obtain from the
+victorious Bismarck those territorial compensations on the Rhine, in
+Belgium and in Luxemburg, which it ought to have been possible to exact
+from him earlier at Biarritz, Benedetti added to the mistake of asking
+at the wrong time the humiliation of obtaining nothing (see LUXEMBURG).
+Napoleon did not dare to take courage and confess his weakness. And
+finally was seen the strange contrast of France, though reduced to such
+a state of real weakness, courting the mockery of Europe by a display of
+the external magnificence which concealed her decline. In the Paris
+transformed by Baron Haussmann and now become almost exclusively a city
+of pleasure and frivolity, the opening of the Universal Exhibition was
+marked by Berezowski's attack on the tsar Alexander II., and its success
+was clouded by the tragic fate of the unhappy emperor Maximilian of
+Mexico. Well might Thiers exclaim, "There are no blunders left for us to
+make."
+
+
+  Peace or war.
+
+But the emperor managed to commit still more, of which the consequences
+both for his dynasty and for France were irreparable. Old, infirm and
+embittered, continually keeping his ministers in suspense by the
+uncertainty and secrecy of his plans, surrounded by a people now bent
+almost entirely on pleasure, and urged on by a growing opposition, there
+now remained but two courses open to Napoleon III.: either to arrange a
+peace which should last, or to prepare for a decisive war. He allowed
+himself to drift in the direction of war, but without bringing things to
+a necessary state of preparation. It was in vain that Count Beust
+revived on behalf of the Austrian government the project abandoned by
+Napoleon since 1866 of a settlement on the basis of the _status quo_
+with reciprocal disarmament. Napoleon refused, on hearing from Colonel
+Stoffel, his military attaché at Berlin, that Prussia would not agree to
+disarmament. But he was more anxious than he was willing to show. A
+reconstitution of the military organization seemed to him to be
+necessary. This Marshal Niel was unable to obtain either from the
+Bonapartist Opposition, who feared the electors, in whom the old
+patriotism had given place to the commercial or cosmopolitan spirit, or
+from the Republican opposition, who were unwilling to strengthen the
+despotism. Both of them were blinded by party interest to the danger
+from outside.
+
+
+  Action of the revolutionaries.
+
+The emperor's good fortune had departed; he was abandoned by men and
+disappointed by events. He had vainly hoped that, though by the laws of
+May-June 1868, granting the freedom of the press and authorizing
+meetings, he had conceded the right of speech, he would retain the right
+of action; but he had played into the hands of his enemies. Victor
+Hugo's _Châtiments_, the insults of Rochefort's _Lanterne_, the
+subscription for the monument to Baudin, the deputy killed at the
+barricades in 1851, followed by Gambetta's terrible speech against the
+Empire on the occasion of the trial of Delescluze, soon showed that the
+republican party was irreconcilable, and bent on the Republic. On the
+other hand, the Ultramontane party were becoming more and more
+discontented, while the industries formerly protected were equally
+dissatisfied with the free-trade reform. Worse still, the working
+classes had abandoned their political neutrality, which had brought them
+nothing but unpopularity, and gone over to the enemy. Despising
+Proudhon's impassioned attacks on the slavery of communism, they had
+gradually been won over by the collectivist theories of Karl Marx or the
+revolutionary theories of Bakounine, as set forth at the congresses of
+the International. At these Labour congresses, the fame of which was
+only increased by the fact that they were forbidden, it had been
+affirmed that the social emancipation of the worker was inseparable from
+his political emancipation. Henceforth the union between the
+internationalists and the republican bourgeois was an accomplished fact.
+The Empire, taken by surprise, sought to curb both the middle classes
+and the labouring classes, and forced them both into revolutionary
+actions. On every side took place strikes, forming as it were a review
+of the effective forces of the Revolution.
+
+
+  The parliamentary Empire.
+
+The elections of May 1869, made during these disturbances, inflicted
+upon the Empire a serious moral defeat. In spite of the revival by the
+government of the cry of the red terror, Ollivier, the advocate of
+conciliation, was rejected by Paris, while 40 irreconcilables and 116
+members of the Third Party were elected. Concessions had to be made to
+these, so by the _senatus-consulte_ of the 8th of September 1869 a
+parliamentary monarchy was substituted for personal government. On the
+2nd of January 1870 Ollivier was placed at the head of the first
+homogeneous, united and responsible ministry. But the republican party,
+unlike the country, which hailed this reconciliation of liberty and
+order, refused to be content with the liberties they had won; they
+refused all compromise, declaring themselves more than ever decided upon
+the overthrow of the Empire. The murder of the journalist Victor Noir by
+Pierre Bonaparte, a member of the imperial family, gave the
+revolutionaries their long desired opportunity (January 10). But the
+_émeute_ ended in a failure, and the emperor was able to answer the
+personal threats against him by the overwhelming victory of the
+plebiscite of the 8th of May 1870.
+
+
+  The Franco-German War.
+
+  The Hohenzollern candidature.
+
+But this success, which should have consolidated the Empire, determined
+its downfall. It was thought that a diplomatic success should complete
+it, and make the country forget liberty for glory. It was in vain that
+after the parliamentary revolution of the 2nd of January that prudent
+statesman Comte Daru revived, through Lord Clarendon, Count Beust's plan
+of disarmament after Sadowa. He met with a refusal from Prussia and from
+the imperial _entourage_. The Empress Eugénie was credited with the
+remark, "If there is no war, my son will never be emperor." The desired
+pretext was offered on the 3rd of July 1870 by the candidature of a
+Hohenzollern prince for the throne of Spain. To the French people it
+seemed that Prussia, barely mistress of Germany, was reviving against
+France the traditional policy of the Habsburgs. France, having rejected
+for dynastic reasons the candidature of a Frenchman, the duc de
+Montpensier, saw herself threatened with a German prince. Never had the
+emperor, now both physically and morally ill, greater need of the
+counsels of a clear-headed statesman and the support of an enlightened
+public opinion if he was to defeat the statecraft of Bismarck. But he
+could find neither.
+
+
+  The declaration of war.
+
+Ollivier's Liberal ministry, wishing to show itself as jealous for
+national interests as any absolutist ministry, bent upon doing something
+great, and swept away by the force of that opinion which it had itself
+set free, at once accepted the war as inevitable, and prepared for it
+with a light heart.[37] In face of the decided declaration of the duc de
+Gramont, the minister for foreign affairs, before the Legislative Body
+of the 6th of July, Europe, in alarm, supported the efforts of French
+diplomacy and obtained the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature.
+This did not suit the views either of the war party in Paris or of
+Bismarck, who wanted the other side to declare war. The ill-advised
+action of Gramont in demanding from King William one of those promises
+for the future which are humiliating but never binding, gave Bismarck
+his opportunity, and the king's refusal was transformed by him into an
+insult by the "editing" of the Ems telegram. The chamber, in spite of
+the desperate efforts of Thiers and Gambetta, now voted by 246 votes to
+10 in favour of the war.
+
+
+  France isolated.
+
+France found herself isolated, as much through the duplicity of Napoleon
+as through that of Bismarck. The disclosure to the diets of Munich and
+Stuttgart of the written text of the claims laid by Napoleon on the
+territories of Hesse and Bavaria had since the 22nd of August 1866
+estranged southern Germany from France, and disposed the southern states
+to sign the military convention with Prussia. Owing to a similar series
+of blunders, the rest of Europe had become hostile. Russia, which it had
+been Bismarck's study both during and after the Polish insurrection of
+1863 to draw closer to Prussia, learnt with annoyance, by the same
+indiscretion, how Napoleon was keeping his promises made at Stuttgart.
+The hope of gaining a revenge in the East for her defeat of 1856 while
+France was in difficulties made her decide on a benevolent neutrality.
+The disclosure of Benedetti's designs of 1867 on Belgium and Luxemburg
+equally ensured an unfriendly neutrality on the part of Great Britain.
+The emperor counted at least on the alliance of Austria and Italy, for
+which he had been negotiating since the Salzburg interview (August
+1867). But Austria, having suffered at his hands in 1859 and 1866, was
+not ready and asked for a delay before joining in the war; while the
+hesitating friendships of Italy could only be won by the evacuation of
+Rome. The chassepots of Mentana, Rouher's "Never," and the hostility of
+the Catholic empress to any secret article which should open to Italy
+the gates of the capital, deprived France of her last friend.
+
+
+  Sedan. Fall of the Empire.
+
+Marshal Leboeuf's armies were no more effective than Gramont's
+alliances. The incapacity of the higher officers of the French army, the
+lack of preparation for war at headquarters, the selfishness and
+shirking of responsibility on the part of the field officers, the
+absence of any fixed plan when failure to mobilize had destroyed all
+chance of the strong offensive which had been counted on, and the folly
+of depending on chance, as the emperor had so often done successfully,
+instead of scientific warfare, were all plainly to be seen as early as
+the insignificant engagement of Saarbrücken. Thus the French army
+proceeded by disastrous stages from Weissenburg, Forbach, Froeschweiler,
+Borny, Gravelotte, Noisseville and Saint-Privat to the siege of Metz and
+the slaughter at Illy. By the capitulation of Sedan the Empire lost its
+only support, the army, and fell. Paris was left unprotected and emptied
+of troops, with only a woman at the Tuileries, a terrified Assembly at
+the Palais-Bourbon, a ministry, that of Palikao, without authority, and
+leaders of the Opposition who fled as the catastrophe approached.
+     (P. W.)
+
+
+THE THIRD REPUBLIC 1870-1909
+
+  Government of National Defence, 1870.
+
+The Third Republic may be said to date from the revolution of the 4th of
+September 1870, when the republican deputies of Paris at the hôtel de
+ville constituted a provisional government under the presidency of
+General Trochu, military governor of the capital. The Empire had fallen,
+and the emperor was a prisoner in Germany. As, however, since the great
+Revolution régimes in France have been only passing expedients, not
+inextricably associated with the destinies of the people, but bound to
+disappear when accounted responsible for national disaster, the
+surrender of Louis Napoleon's sword to William of Prussia did not disarm
+the country. Hostilities were therefore continued. The provisional
+government had to assume the part of a Committee of National Defence,
+and while insurrection was threatening in Paris, it had, in the face of
+the invading Germans, to send a delegation to Tours to maintain the
+relations of France with the outside world. Paris was invested, and for
+five months endured siege, bombardment and famine. Before the end of
+October the capitulation of Metz, by the treason of Marshal Bazaine,
+deprived France of the last relic of its regular army. With indomitable
+courage the garrison of Paris made useless sorties, while an army of
+irregular troops vainly essayed to resist the invader, who had reached
+the valley of the Loire. The acting Government of National Defence, thus
+driven from Tours, took refuge at Bordeaux, where it awaited the
+capitulation of Paris, which took place on the 29th of January 1871. The
+same day the preliminaries of peace were signed at Versailles, which,
+confirmed by the treaty of Frankfort of the 10th of May, transferred
+from France to Germany the whole of Alsace, excepting Belfort, and a
+large portion of Lorraine, including Metz, with a money indemnity of two
+hundred millions sterling.
+
+
+  Foundation of the Third Republic, 1871.
+
+On the 13th of February 1871 the National Assembly, elected after the
+capitulation of Paris, met at Bordeaux and assumed the powers hitherto
+exercised by the Government of National Defence. Since the meeting of
+the states-general in 1789 no representative body in France had ever
+contained so many men of distinction. Elected to conclude a peace, the
+great majority of its members were monarchists, Gambetta, the rising
+hope of the republicans, having discredited his party in the eyes of the
+weary population by his efforts to carry on the war. The Assembly might
+thus have there and then restored the monarchy had not the monarchists
+been divided among themselves as royalist supporters of the comte de
+Chambord, grandson of Charles X., and as Orleanists favouring the claims
+of the comte de Paris, grandson of Louis Philippe. The majority being
+unable to unite on the essential point of the choice of a sovereign,
+decided to allow the Republic, declared on the morrow of Sedan, to
+liquidate the disastrous situation. Consequently, on the 17th of
+February the National Assembly elected Thiers as "Chief of the Executive
+Power of the French Republic," the abolition of the Empire being
+formally voted a fortnight later. The old minister of Louis Philippe,
+who had led the opposition to the Empire, and had been the chief
+opponent of the war, was further marked out for the position conferred
+on him by his election to the Assembly in twenty-six departments in
+recognition of his tour through Europe after the first defeats,
+undertaken in the patriotic hope of obtaining the intervention of the
+Powers on behalf of France. Thiers composed a ministry, and announced
+that the first duty of the government before examining constitutional
+questions, would be to reorganize the forces of the nation in order to
+provide for the enormous war indemnity which had to be paid to Germany
+before the territory could be liberated from the presence of the
+invader. The tacit acceptance of this arrangement by all parties was
+known as the "_pacte de Bordeaux_." Apart from the pressure of patriotic
+considerations, it pleased the republican minority to have the
+government of France officially proclaimed a Republic, while the
+monarchists thought that pending their choice Of a monarch it might
+popularize their cause not to have it associated with the imposition of
+the burden of war taxation. From this fortuitous and informal
+transaction, accepted by a monarchical Assembly, sprang the Third
+Republic, the most durable régime established in France since the
+ancient monarchy disappeared in 1792.
+
+
+  The Commune.
+
+The Germans marched down the Champs Elysées on the 1st of March 1871,
+and occupied Paris for forty-eight hours. The National Assembly then
+decided to remove its sittings to Versailles; but two days before its
+arrival at the palace, where the king of Prussia had just been
+proclaimed German emperor, an insurrection broke out in Paris. The
+revolutionary element, which had been foremost in proclaiming the
+Republic on the 4th of September, had shown signs of disaffection during
+the siege. On the conclusion of the peace the triumphal entry of the
+German troops, the threatened disbanding of the national guard by an
+Assembly known to be anti-republican, and the resumption of orderly
+civic existence after the agitated life of a suffering population
+isolated by siege, had excited the nerves of the Parisians, always prone
+to revolution. The Commune was proclaimed on the 18th of March, and
+Paris was declared to be a free town, which recognized no government but
+that chosen by the people within its walls, the communard theory being
+that the state should consist of a federation of self-governing communes
+subject to no central power. Administrative autonomy was not, however,
+the real aim of the insurgent leaders. The name of the Commune had
+always been a rallying sign for violent revolutionaries ever since the
+Terrorists had found their last support in the municipality of Paris in
+1794. In 1871 among the communard chiefs were revolutionaries of every
+sect, who, disagreeing on governmental and economic principles, were
+united in their vague but perpetual hostility to the existing order of
+things. The regular troops of the garrison of Paris followed the
+National Assembly to Versailles, where they were joined by the soldiers
+of the armies of Sedan and Metz, liberated from captivity in Germany.
+With this force the government of the Republic commenced the second
+siege of Paris, in order to capture the city from the Commune, which had
+established the parody of a government there, having taken possession of
+the administrative departments and set a minister at the head of each
+office. The second siege lasted six weeks under the eyes of the
+victorious Germans encamped on the heights overlooking the capital. The
+presence of the enemy, far from restraining the humiliating spectacle of
+Frenchmen waging war on Frenchmen in the hour of national disaster,
+seemed to encourage the fury of the combatants. The communards, who had
+begun their reign by the murder of two generals, concluded it, when the
+Versailles troops were taking the city, with the massacre of a number of
+eminent citizens, including the archbishop of Paris, and with the
+destruction by fire of many of the finest historical buildings,
+including the palace of the Tuileries and the hôtel de ville. History
+has rarely known a more unpatriotic crime than that of the insurrection
+of the Commune; but the punishment inflicted on the insurgents by the
+Versailles troops was so ruthless that it seemed to be a
+counter-manifestation of French hatred for Frenchmen in civil
+disturbance rather than a judicial penalty applied to a heinous offence.
+The number of Parisians killed by French soldiers in the last week of
+May 1871 was probably 20,000, though the partisans of the Commune
+declared that 36,000 men and women were shot in the streets or after
+summary court-martial.
+
+
+  Republicans and Monarchists after the war.
+
+It is from this point that the history of the Third Republic commences.
+In spite of the doubly tragic ending of the war the vitality of the
+country seemed unimpaired. With ease and without murmur it supported the
+new burden of taxation called for by the war indemnity and by the
+reorganization of the shattered forces of France. Thiers was thus aided
+in his task of liberating the territory from the presence of the enemy.
+His proposal at Bordeaux to make the "_essai loyal_" of the Republic, as
+the form of government which caused the least division among Frenchmen,
+was discouraged by the excesses of the Commune which associated
+republicanism with revolutionary disorder. Nevertheless, the monarchists
+of the National Assembly received a note of warning that the country
+might dispense with their services unless they displayed governmental
+capacity, when in July 1871 the republican minority was largely
+increased at the bye-elections. The next month, within a year of Sedan,
+a provisional constitution was voted, the title of president of the
+French Republic being then conferred on Thiers. The monarchists
+consented to this against their will; but they had their own way when
+they conferred constituent powers on the Assembly in opposition to the
+republicans, who argued that it was a usurpation of the sovereignty of
+the people for a body elected for another purpose to assume the power of
+giving a constitution to the land without a special mandate from the
+nation. The debate gave Gambetta his first opportunity of appearing as a
+serious politician. The "_fou furieux_" of Tours, whom Thiers had
+denounced for his efforts to prolong the hopeless war, was about to
+become the chief support of the aged Orleanist statesman whose supreme
+achievement was to be the foundation of the Republic.
+
+
+  1872: Thiers and Gambetta.
+
+It was in 1872 that Thiers practically ranged himself with Gambetta and
+the republicans. The divisions in the monarchical party made an
+immediate restoration impossible. This situation induced some of the
+moderate deputies, whose tendencies were Orleanist, to support the
+organization of a Republic which now no longer found its chief support
+in the revolutionary section of the nation, and it suited the ideas of
+Thiers, whose personal ambition was not less than his undoubted
+patriotism. Having become unexpectedly chief of the state at
+seventy-four he had no wish to descend again to the position of a
+minister of the Orleans dynasty which he had held at thirty-five. So,
+while the royalists refused to admit the claims of the comte de Paris,
+the old minister of Louis Philippe did his best to undermine the
+popularity of the Orleans tradition, which had been great among the
+Liberals under the Second Empire. He moved the Assembly to restore to
+the Orleans princes the value of their property confiscated under Louis
+Napoleon. This he did in the well-founded belief that the family would
+discredit itself in the eyes of the nation by accepting two millions
+sterling of public money at a moment when the country was burdened with
+the war indemnity. The incident was characteristic of his wary policy,
+as in the face of the anti-republican majority in the Assembly he could
+not openly break with the Right; and when it was suggested that he was
+too favourable to the maintenance of the Republic he offered his
+resignation, the refusal of which he took as indicating the
+indispensable nature of his services. Meanwhile Gambetta, by his popular
+eloquence, had won for himself in the autumn a triumphal progress, in
+the course of which he declared at Grenoble that political power had
+passed into the hands of "_une couche sociale nouvelle_," and he
+appealed to the new social strata to put an end to the comedy of a
+Republic without republicans. When the Assembly resumed its sittings,
+order having been restored in the land disturbed by war and revolution,
+the financial system being reconstituted and the reorganization of the
+army planned, Thiers read to the house a presidential message which
+marked such a distinct movement towards the Left that Gambetta led the
+applause. "The Republic exists," said the president, "it is the lawful
+government of the country, and to devise anything else is to devise the
+most terrible of revolutions."
+
+
+  Resignation of Thiers.
+
+  Marshal MacMahon president of the Republic.
+
+The year 1873 was full of events fateful for the history of France. It
+opened with the death of Napoleon III. at Chislehurst; but the disasters
+amid which the Second Empire had ended were too recent for the youthful
+promise of his heir to be regarded as having any connexion with the
+future fortunes of France, except by the small group of Bonapartists.
+Thiers remained the centre of interest. Much as the monarchists disliked
+him, they at first shrank from upsetting him before they were ready with
+a scheme of monarchical restoration, and while Gambetta's authority was
+growing in the land. But when the Left Centre took alarm at the return
+of radical deputies at numerous by-elections the reactionaries utilized
+the divisions in the republican party, and for the only time in the
+history of the Third Republic they gave proof of parliamentary
+adroitness. The date for the evacuation of France by the German troops
+had been advanced, largely owing to Thiers' successful efforts to raise
+the war indemnity. The monarchical majority, therefore, thought the
+moment had arrived when his services might safely be dispensed with, and
+the campaign against him was ably conducted by a coalition of
+Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists. The attack on Thiers was led
+by the duc de Broglie, the son of another minister of Louis Philippe and
+grandson of Madame de Staël. Operations began with the removal from the
+chair of the Assembly of Jules Grévy, a moderate republican, who was
+chosen president at Bordeaux, and the substitution of Buffet, an old
+minister of the Second Republic who had rallied to the Empire. A debate
+on the political tendency of the government brought Thiers himself to
+the tribune to defend his policy. He maintained that a conservative
+Republic was the only régime possible, seeing that the monarchists in
+the Assembly could not make a choice between their three pretenders to
+the throne. A resolution, however, was carried which provoked the old
+statesman into tendering his resignation. This time it was not declined,
+and the majority with unseemly haste elected as president of the
+Republic Marshal MacMahon, duc de Magenta, an honest soldier of royalist
+sympathies, who had won renown and a ducal title on the battlefields of
+the Second Empire. In the eyes of Europe the curt dismissal of the aged
+liberator of the territory was an act of ingratitude. Its justification
+would have been the success of the majority in forming a stable
+monarchical government; but the sole result of the 24th of May 1873 was
+to provide a definite date to mark the opening of the era of
+anti-republican incompetency in France which has lasted for more than a
+generation, and has been perhaps the most effective guardian of the
+Third Republic.
+
+
+  The comte de Chambord.
+
+  The Septennate.
+
+The political incompetency of the reactionaries was fated never to be
+corrected by the intelligence of its princes or of its chiefs, and the
+year which saw Thiers dismissed to make way for a restoration saw also
+that restoration indefinitely postponed by the fatal action of the
+legitimist pretender. The comte de Paris went to Frohsdorf to abandon to
+the comte de Chambord his claims to the crown as the heir of the July
+Monarchy, and to accept the position of dauphin, thus implying that his
+grandfather Louis Philippe was a usurper. With the "Government of Moral
+Order" in command the restoration of the monarchy seemed imminent, when
+the royalists had their hopes dashed by the announcement that "Henri V."
+would accept the throne only on the condition that the nation adopted as
+the standard of France the white flag--at the very sight of which
+Marshal MacMahon said the rifles in the army would go off by themselves.
+The comte de Chambord's refusal to accept the tricolour was probably
+only the pretext of a childless man who had no wish to disturb his
+secluded life for the ultimate benefit of the Orleans family which had
+usurped his crown, had sent him as a child into exile, and outraged his
+mother the duchesse de Berry. Whatever his motive, his decision could
+have no other effect than that of establishing the Republic, as he was
+likely to live for years, during which the comte de Paris' claims had to
+remain suspended. It was not possible to leave the land for ever under
+the government improvised at Bordeaux when the Germans were masters of
+France; so the majority in the Assembly decided to organize another
+provisional government on more regular lines, which might possibly last
+till the comte de Chambord had taken the white flag to the grave,
+leaving the way to the throne clear for the comte de Paris. On the 19th
+of November 1873 a Bill was passed which instituted the Septennate,
+whereby the executive power was confided to Marshal MacMahon for seven
+years. It also provided for the nomination of a commission of the
+National Assembly to take in hand the enactment of a constitutional law.
+Before this an important constitutional innovation had been adopted.
+Under Thiers there were no changes of ministry. The president of the
+Republic was perpetual prime minister, constantly dismissing individual
+holders of portfolios, but never changing at one moment the whole
+council of ministers. Marshal MacMahon, the day after his appointment,
+nominated a cabinet with a vice-president of the council as premier, and
+thus inaugurated the system of ministerial instability which has been
+the most conspicuous feature of the government of the Third Republic.
+Under the Septennate the ministers, monarchist or moderate republican,
+were socially and perhaps intellectually of a higher class than those
+who governed France during the last twenty years of the 19th century.
+But the duration of the cabinets was just as brief, thus displaying the
+fact, already similarly demonstrated under the Restoration and the July
+Monarchy, that in France parliamentary government is an importation not
+suited to the national temperament.
+
+
+  Constitution voted, 1875.
+
+The duc de Broglie was the prime minister in MacMahon's first two
+cabinets which carried on the government of the country up to the first
+anniversary of Thiers' resignation. The duc de Broglie's defeat by a
+coalition of Legitimists and Bonapartists with the Republicans displayed
+the mutual attitude of parties. The Royalists, chagrined that the fusion
+of the two branches of the Bourbons had not brought the comte de
+Chambord to the throne, vented their rage on the Orleanists, who had the
+chief share in the government without being able to utilize it for their
+dynasty. The Bonapartists, now that the memory of the war was receding,
+were winning elections in the provinces, and were further encouraged by
+the youthful promise of the Prince Imperial. The republicans had so
+improved their position that the duc d'Audiffret-Pasquier, great-nephew
+of the chancellor Pasquier, tried to form a coalition ministry with M.
+Waddington, afterwards ambassador of the Republic in London, and other
+members of the Left Centre. Out of this uncertain state of affairs was
+evolved the constitution which has lasted the longest of all those that
+France has tried since the abolition of the old monarchy in 1792. Its
+birth was due to chance. Not being able to restore a monarchy, the
+National Assembly was unwilling definitively to establish a republic,
+and as no limit was set by the law on the duration of its powers, it
+might have continued the provisional state of things had it not been for
+the Bonapartists. That party displayed so much activity in agitating for
+a plebiscite, that when the rural voters at by-elections began to rally
+to the Napoleonic idea, alarm seized the constitutionalists of the Right
+Centre who had never been persuaded by Thiers' exhortations to accept
+the Republic. Consequently in January 1875 the Assembly, having voted
+the general principle that the legislative power should be exercised by
+a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, without any mention of the executive
+régime, accepted by a majority of one a momentous resolution proposed by
+M. Wallon, a member of the Right Centre. It provided that the president
+of the Republic should be elected by the absolute majority of the Senate
+and the Chamber united as a National Assembly, that he should be elected
+for seven years, and be eligible for re-election. Thus by one vote the
+Republic was formally established, "the Father of the Constitution"
+being M. Wallon, who began his political experiences in the Legislative
+Assembly of 1849, and survived to take an active part in the Senate
+until the twentieth century.
+
+
+  Provisions of the Constitution of 1875.
+
+The Republic being thus established, General de Cissey, who had become
+prime minister, made way for M. Buffet, but retained his portfolio of
+war in the new coalition cabinet, which contained some distinguished
+members of the two central groups, including M. Léon Say. A fortnight
+previously, at the end of February 1875, were passed two statutes
+defining the legislative and executive powers in the Republic, and
+organizing the Senate. These joined to a third enactment, voted in July,
+form the body of laws known as the "Constitution of 1875," which though
+twice revised, lasted without essential alteration to the twentieth
+century. The legislative power was conferred on a Senate and a Chamber
+of Deputies, which might unite in congress to revise the constitution,
+if they both agreed that revision was necessary, and which were bound so
+to meet for the election of the president of the Republic when a vacancy
+occurred. It was enacted that the president so elected should retain
+office for seven years, and be eligible for re-election at the end of
+his term. He was also held to be irresponsible, except in the case of
+high treason. The other principal prerogatives bestowed on the
+presidential office by the constitution of 1875 were the right of
+initiating laws concurrently with the members of the two chambers; the
+promulgation of the laws; the right of dissolving the Chamber of
+Deputies before its legal term on the advice of the Senate, and that of
+adjourning the sittings of both houses for a month; the right of pardon;
+the disposal of the armed forces of the country; the reception of
+diplomatic envoys, and, under certain limitations, the power to ratify
+treaties. The constitution relieved the president of the responsibility
+of private patronage, by providing that every act of his should be
+countersigned by a minister. The constitutional law provided that the
+Senate should consist of 300 members, 75 being nominated for life by the
+National Assembly, and the remaining 225 elected for nine years by the
+departments and the colonies. Vacancies among the life members, after
+the dissolution of the National Assembly, were filled by the Senate
+until 1884, when the nominative system was abolished, though the
+survivors of it were not disturbed. The law of 1875 enacted that the
+elected senators, who were distributed among the departments on a rough
+basis of population, should be elected for nine years, a third of them
+retiring triennially. It was provided that the senatorial electors in
+each department should be the deputies, the members of the _conseil
+général_ and of the _conseils d'arrondissement_, and delegates nominated
+by the municipal councils of each commune. As the municipal delegates
+composed the majority in each electoral college, Gambetta called the
+Senate the Grand Council of the Communes; but in practice the senators
+elected have always been the nominees of the local deputies and of the
+departmental councillors (_conseillers généraux_).
+
+
+  Scrutin d'arrondissement and scrutin de liste.
+
+The Constitutional Law further provided that the deputies should be
+elected to the Chamber for four years by direct manhood suffrage, which
+had been enjoyed in France ever since 1848. The laws relating to
+registration, which is of admirable simplicity in France, were left
+practically the same as under the Second Empire. From 1875 to 1885 the
+elections were held on the basis of _scrutin d'arrondissement_, each
+department being divided into single-member districts. In 1885 _scrutin
+de liste_ was tried, the department being the electoral unit, and each
+elector having as many votes as there were seats ascribed to the
+department without the power to cumulate--like the voting in the city of
+London when it returned four members. In 1889 _scrutin d'arrondissement_
+was resumed. The payment of members continued as under the Second
+Empire, the salary now being fixed at 9000 francs a year in both houses,
+or about a pound sterling a day. The Senate and the Chamber were endowed
+with almost identical powers. The only important advantage given to the
+popular house in the paper constitution was its initiative in matters of
+finance, but the right of rejecting or of modifying the financial
+proposals of the Chamber was successfully upheld by the Senate. In
+reality the Chamber of Deputies has overshadowed the upper house. The
+constitution did not prescribe that ministers should be selected from
+either house of parliament, but in practice the deputies have been in
+cabinets in the proportion of five to one in excess of the senators.
+Similarly the very numerous ministerial crises which have taken place
+under the Third Republic have with the rarest exceptions been caused by
+votes in the lower chamber. Among minor differences between the two
+houses ordained by the constitution was the legal minimum age of their
+members, that of senators being forty and of deputies twenty-five. It
+was enacted, moreover, that the Senate, by presidential decree, could be
+constituted into a high court for the trial of certain offences against
+the security of the state.
+
+
+  1876: Political parties under the new Constitution.
+
+The constitution thus produced, the fourteenth since the Revolution of
+1789, was the issue of a monarchical Assembly forced by circumstances to
+establish a republic. It was therefore distinguished from others which
+preceded it in that it contained no declaration of principle and no
+doctrinal theory. The comparative excellence of the work must be
+recognized, seeing that it has lasted. But it owed its duration, as it
+owed its origin and its character, to the weakness of purpose and to the
+dissensions of the monarchical parties. The first legal act under the
+new constitution was the selection by the expiring National Assembly of
+seventy-five nominated senators, and here the reactionaries gave a
+crowning example of that folly which has ever marked their conduct each
+time they have had the chance of scoring an advantage against the
+Republic. The principle of nomination had been carried in the National
+Assembly by the Right and opposed by the Republicans. But the quarrels
+of the Legitimists with the duc de Broglie and his party were so bitter
+that the former made a present of the nominated element in the Senate to
+the Republicans in order to spite the Orleanists; so out of seventy-five
+senators nominated by the monarchical Assembly, fifty-seven Republicans
+were chosen. Without this suicidal act the Republicans would have been
+in a woeful minority in the Senate when parliament met in 1876 after the
+first elections under the new system of parliamentary government. The
+slight advantage which, in spite of their self-destruction, the
+reactionaries maintained in the upper house was outbalanced by the
+republican success at the elections to the Chamber. In a house of over
+500 members only about 150 monarchical deputies were returned, of whom
+half were Bonapartists. The first cabinet under the new constitution was
+formed by Dufaure, an old minister of Louis Philippe like Thiers, and
+like him born in the 18th century. The premier now took the title of
+president of the council, the chief of the state no longer presiding at
+the meetings of ministers, though he continued to be present at their
+deliberations. Although the republican victories at the elections were
+greatly due to the influence of Gambetta, none of his partisans was
+included in the ministry, which was composed of members of the two
+central groups. At the end of 1876 Dufaure retired, but nearly all his
+ministers retained their portfolios under the presidency of Jules Simon,
+a pupil of Victor Cousin, who first entered political life in the
+Constituent Assembly of 1848, and was later a leading member of the
+opposition in the last seven years of the Second Empire.
+
+
+  The Seize Mai 1877.
+
+The premiership of Jules Simon came to an end with the abortive _coup
+d'état_ of 1877, commonly called from its date the _Seize Mai_. After
+the election of Marshal MacMahon to the presidency, the clerical party,
+irritated at the failure to restore the comte de Chambord, commenced a
+campaign in favour of the restitution of the temporal power to the Pope.
+It provoked the Italian government to make common cause with Germany, as
+Prince Bismarck was likewise attacked by the French clericals for his
+ecclesiastical policy. At last Jules Simon, who was a liberal most
+friendly to Catholicism, had to accept a resolution of the Chamber,
+inviting the ministry to adopt the same disciplinary policy towards the
+Church which had been followed by the Second Empire and the Monarchy of
+July. It was on this occasion that Gambetta used his famous expression,
+"_Le cléricalisme, voilà l'ennemi_." Some days later a letter appeared
+in the _Journal officiel_, dated 16th May 1877, signed by President
+MacMahon, informing Jules Simon that he had no longer his confidence, as
+it was clear that he had lost that influence over the Chamber which a
+president of the Council ought to exercise. The dismissal of the prime
+minister and the presidential acts which followed did not infringe the
+letter of the new constitution; yet the proceeding was regarded as a
+_coup d'état_ in favour of the clerical reactionaries. The duc de
+Broglie formed an anti-republican ministry, and Marshal MacMahon, in
+virtue of the presidential prerogative conferred by the law of 1875,
+adjourned parliament for a month. When the Chamber reassembled the
+republican majority of 363 denounced the coalition of parties hostile to
+the Republic. The president, again using his constitutional prerogative,
+obtained the authorization of the Senate to dissolve the Chamber.
+Meanwhile the Broglie ministry had put in practice the policy, favoured
+by all parties in France, of replacing the functionaries hostile to it
+with its own partisans. But in spite of the administrative electoral
+machinery being thus in the hands of the reactionaries, a republican
+majority was sent back to the Chamber, the sudden death of Thiers on the
+eve of his expected return to power, and the demonstration at his
+funeral, which was described as a silent insurrection, aiding the rout
+of the monarchists. The duc de Broglie resigned, and Marshal MacMahon
+sent for General de Rochebouet, who formed a cabinet of unknown
+reactionaries, but it lasted only a few days, as the Chamber refused to
+vote supply. Dufaure was then called back to office, and his moderate
+republican ministry lasted for the remainder of the MacMahon presidency.
+
+
+  1879: Jules Grévy president of the Republic.
+
+Thus ended the episode of the _Seize Mai_, condemned by the whole of
+Europe from its inception. Its chief effects were to prove again to the
+country the incompetency of the monarchists, and by associating in the
+public mind the Church with this ill-conceived venture, to provoke
+reprisals from the anti-clericals when they came into power. After the
+storm, the year 1878 was one of political repose. The first
+international exhibition held at Paris after the war displayed to Europe
+how the secret of France's recuperative power lay in the industry and
+artistic instinct of the nation. Marshal MacMahon presided with dignity
+over the fêtes held in honour of the exhibition, and had he pleased he
+might have tranquilly fulfilled the term of his Septennate. But in
+January 1879 he made a difference of opinion on a military question an
+excuse for resignation, and Jules Grévy, the president of the Chamber,
+was elected to succeed him by the National Assembly, which thus met for
+the first time under the Constitutional Law of 1875.
+
+
+  Jules Ferry.
+
+Henceforth the executive as well as the legislative power was in the
+hands of the republicans. The new president was a leader of the bar, who
+had first become known in the Constituent Assembly of 1848 as the
+advocate of the principle that a republic would do better without a
+president. M. Waddington was his first prime minister, and Gambetta was
+elected president of the Chamber. The latter, encouraged by his rivals
+in the idea that the time was not ripe for him openly to direct the
+affairs of the country, thus put himself, in spite of his occult
+dictatorship, in a position of official self-effacement from which he
+did not emerge until the jealousies of his own party-colleagues had
+undermined the prestige he had gained as chief founder of the Republic.
+The most active among them was Jules Ferry, minister of Education, who
+having been a republican deputy for Paris at the end of the Empire, was
+one of the members of the provisional government proclaimed on 4th
+September 1870. Borrowing Gambetta's cry that clericalism was the enemy,
+he commenced the work of reprisal for the Seize Mai. His educational
+projects of 1879 were thus anti-clerical in tendency, the most famous
+being article 7 of his education bill, which prohibited members of any
+"unauthorized" religious orders exercising the profession of teaching in
+any school in France, the disability being applied to all ecclesiastical
+communities, excepting four or five which had been privileged by special
+legislation. This enactment, aimed chiefly at the Jesuits, was advocated
+with a sectarian bitterness which will be associated with the name of
+Jules Ferry long after his more statesmanlike qualities are forgotten.
+The law was rejected by the Senate, Jules Simon being the eloquent
+champion of the clericals, whose intrigues had ousted him from office.
+The unauthorized orders were then dissolved by decree; but though the
+forcible expulsion of aged priests and nuns gave rise to painful scenes,
+it cannot be said that popular feeling was excited in their favour, so
+grievously had the Church blundered in identifying itself with the
+conspiracy of the _Seize Mai_.
+
+Meanwhile the death of the Prince Imperial in Zululand had shattered the
+hopes of the Bonapartists, and M. de Freycinet, a former functionary of
+the Empire, had become prime minister at the end of 1879. He had
+retained Jules Ferry at the ministry of Education, but unwilling to
+adopt all his anti-clerical policy, he resigned the premiership in
+September 1880. The constitution of the first Ferry cabinet secured the
+further exclusion from office of Gambetta, to which, however, he
+preferred his "occult dictatorship." In August he had, as president of
+the Chamber, accompanied M. Grévy on an official visit to Cherbourg, and
+the acclamations called forth all over France by his speech, which was a
+hopeful defiance to Germany, encouraged the wily chief of the state to
+aid the republican conspiracy against the hero of the Republic. In 1881
+the only political question before the country was the destiny of
+Gambetta. His influence in the Chamber was such that in spite of the
+opposition of the prime minister he carried his electoral scheme of
+_scrutin de liste_, descending from the presidential chair to defend it.
+Its rejection by the Senate caused no conflict between the houses. The
+check was inflicted not on the Chamber, but on Gambetta, who counted on
+his popularity to carry the lists of his candidates in all the
+republican departments in France as a quasi-plebiscitary demonstration
+in his favour. His rivals dared not openly quarrel with him. There was
+the semblance of a reconciliation between him and Ferry, and his name
+was the rallying-cry of the Republic at the general election, which was
+conducted on the old system of _scrutin d'arrondissement_.
+
+
+  Gambetta prime minister.
+
+The triumph for the Republic was great, the combined force of
+reactionary members returned being less than one-fifth of the new
+Chamber. M. Grévy could no longer abstain from asking Gambetta to form a
+ministry, but he had bided his time till jealousy of the "occult power"
+of the president of the Chamber had undermined his position in
+parliament. Consequently, when on the 14th of November 1881 Gambetta
+announced the composition of his cabinet, ironically called the "_grand
+ministère_," which was to consolidate the Republic and to be the
+apotheosis of its chief, a great feeling of disillusion fell on the
+country, for his colleagues were untried politicians. The best known was
+Paul Bert, a man of science, who as the "reporter" in the Chamber of the
+Ferry Education Bill had distinguished himself as an aggressive
+freethinker, and he inappropriately was named minister of public
+worship. All the conspicuous republicans who had held office refused to
+serve under Gambetta. His cabinet was condemned in advance. His enemies
+having succeeded in ruining its composition, declared that the
+construction of a one-man machine was ominous of dictatorship, and the
+"_grand ministère_" lived for only ten weeks.
+
+
+  Death of Gambetta.
+
+Gambetta was succeeded in January 1882 by M. de Freycinet, who having
+first taken office in the Dufaure cabinet of 1877, and having continued
+to hold office at intervals until 1899, was the most successful specimen
+of a "_ministrable_"--as recurrent portfolio-holders have been called
+under the Third Republic. His second ministry lasted only six months.
+The failure of Gambetta, though pleasing to his rivals, discouraged the
+republican party and disorganized its majority in the Chamber. M.
+Duclerc, an old minister of the Second Republic, then became president
+of the council, and before his short term of office was run Gambetta
+died on the last day of 1882, without having had the opportunity of
+displaying his capacity as a minister or an administrator. He was only
+forty-four at his death, and his fame rests on the unfulfilled promise
+of a brief career. The men who had driven him out of public life and had
+shortened his existence were the most ostentatious of the mourners at
+the great pageant with which he was buried, and to have been of his
+party was in future the popular trade-mark of his republican enemies.
+
+
+  Opportunism.
+
+Gambetta's death was followed by a period of anarchy, during which
+Prince Napoleon, the son of Jerome, king of Westphalia, placarded the
+walls of Paris with a manifesto. The Chamber thereupon voted the exile
+of the members of the families which had reigned in France. The Senate
+rejected the measure, and a conflict arose between the two houses. M.
+Duclerc resigned the premiership in January 1883 to his minister of the
+Interior, M. Fallières, a Gascon lawyer, who became president of the
+Senate in 1899 and president of the Republic in 1906. He held office for
+three weeks, when Jules Ferry became president of the council for the
+second time. Several of the closest of Gambetta's friends accepted
+office under the old enemy of their chief, and the new combination
+adopted the epithet "opportunist," which had been invented by Gambetta
+in 1875 to justify the expediency of his alliance with Thiers. The
+Opportunists thenceforth formed an important group standing between the
+Left Centre, which was now excluded from office, and the Radicals. It
+claimed the tradition of Gambetta, but the guiding principle manifested
+by its members was that of securing the spoils of place. To this end it
+often allied itself with the Radicals, and the Ferry cabinet practised
+this policy in 1883 when it removed the Orleans princes from the active
+list in the army as the illogical result of the demonstration of a
+Bonaparte. How needless was this proceeding was shown a few months later
+when the comte de Chambord died, as his death, which finally fused the
+Royalists with the Orleanists, caused no commotion in France.
+
+
+  Revision of the Constitution, 1884.
+
+  Tongking.
+
+The year 1884 was unprecedented seeing that it passed without a change
+of ministry. Jules Ferry displayed real administrative ability, and as
+an era of steady government seemed to be commencing, the opportunity was
+taken to revise the Constitution. The two Chambers therefore met in
+congress, and enacted that the republican form of government could never
+be the subject of revision, and that all members of families which had
+reigned in France were ineligible for the presidency of the Republic--a
+repetition of the adventure of Louis Bonaparte in the middle of the
+century being thus made impossible. It also decided that the clauses of
+the law of 1875 relating to the organization of the Senate should no
+longer have a constitutional character. This permitted the reform of the
+Upper House by ordinary parliamentary procedure. So an organic law was
+passed to abolish the system of nominating senators, and to increase the
+number of municipal delegates in the electoral colleges in proportion to
+the population of the communes. The French nation, for the first time
+since it had enjoyed political life, had revised a constitution by
+pacific means without a revolution. Gambetta being out of the way, his
+favourite electoral system of _scrutin de liste_ had no longer any
+terror for his rivals, so it was voted by the Chamber early in 1885.
+Before the Senate had passed it into law the Ferry ministry had fallen
+at the end of March, after holding office for twenty-five months, a term
+rarely exceeded in the annals of the Third Republic. This long tenure of
+power had excited the dissatisfaction of jealous politicians, and the
+news of a slight disaster to the French troops in Tongking called forth
+all the pent-up rancour which Jules Ferry had inspired in various
+groups. By the exaggerated news of defeat Paris was excited to the brink
+of a revolution. The approaches of the Chamber were invaded by an angry
+mob, and Jules Ferry was the object of public hate more bitter than any
+man had called forth in France since Napoleon III. on the days after
+Sedan. Within the Chamber he was attacked in all quarters. The Radicals
+took the lead, supported by the Monarchists, who remembered the
+anti-clerical rigour of the Ferry laws, by the Left Centre, not sorry
+for the tribulation of the group which had supplanted it, and by
+place-hunting republicans of all shades. The attack was led by a
+politician who disdained office. M. Georges Clémenceau, who had
+originally come to Paris from the Vendée as a doctor, had as a radical
+leader in the Chamber used his remarkable talent as an overthrower of
+ministries, and nearly every one of the eight ministerial crises which
+had already occurred during the presidency of Grévy had been hastened by
+his mordant eloquence.
+
+
+  Elections of 1885.
+
+The next prime minister was M. Brisson, a radical lawyer and journalist,
+who in April 1885 formed a cabinet of "concentration"--that is to say,
+it was recruited from various groups with the idea of concentrating all
+republican forces in opposition to the reactionaries. MM. de Freycinet
+and Carnot, afterwards president of the Republic, represented the
+moderate element in this ministry, which superintended the general
+elections under _scrutin de liste_. That system was recommended by its
+advocates as a remedy for the rapid decadence in the composition of the
+Chamber. Manhood suffrage, which had returned to the National Assembly a
+distinguished body of men to conclude peace with Germany, had chosen a
+very different type of representative to sit in the Chamber created by
+the constitution of 1875. At each succeeding election the standard of
+deputies returned grew lower, till Gambetta described them
+contemptuously as "_sous-vétérinaires_," indicating that they were
+chiefly chosen from the petty professional class, which represented
+neither the real democracy nor the material interests of the country.
+His view was that the election of members by departmental lists would
+ensure the candidature of the best men in each region, who under the
+system of single-member districts were apt to be neglected in favour of
+local politicians representing narrow interests. When his death had
+removed the fear of his using _scrutin de liste_ as a plebiscitary
+organization, parliament sanctioned its trial. The result was not what
+its promoters anticipated. The composition of the Chamber was indeed
+transformed, but only by the substitution of reactionary deputies for
+republicans. Of the votes polled, 45% were given to the Monarchists, and
+if they had obtained one-half of the abstentions the Republic would have
+come to an end. At the same time the character of the republican
+deputies returned was not improved; so the sole effect of _scrutin de
+liste_ was to show that the electorate, weary of republican dissensions,
+was ready to make a trial of monarchical government, if only the
+reactionary party proved that it contained statesmen capable of leading
+the nation. So menacing was the situation that the republicans thought
+it wise not further to expose their divisions in the presidential
+election which was due to take place at the end of the year.
+Consequently, on the 28th of December 1885, M. Grévy, in spite of his
+growing unpopularity, was elected president of the Republic for a second
+term of seven years.
+
+
+  General Boulanger.
+
+The Brisson cabinet at once resigned, and on the 7th of January 1886 its
+most important member, M. de Freycinet, formed his third ministry, which
+had momentous influence on the history of the Republic. The new minister
+of war was General Boulanger, a smart soldier of no remarkable military
+record; but being the nominee of M. Clémenceau, he began his official
+career by taking radical measures against commanding officers of
+reactionary tendencies. He thus aided the government in its campaign
+against the families which had reigned in France, whose situation had
+been improved by the result of the elections. The fêtes given by the
+comte de Paris to celebrate his daughter's marriage with the
+heir-apparent of Portugal moved the republican majority in the Chambers
+to expel from France the heads of the houses of Orleans and of
+Bonaparte, with their eldest sons. The names of all the princes on the
+army list were erased from it, the decree being executed with unseemly
+ostentation by General Boulanger, who had owed early promotion to the
+protection of the duc d'Aumale, and on that prince protesting he was
+exiled too. Meanwhile General Boulanger took advantage of Grévy's
+unpopularity to make himself a popular hero, and at the review, held
+yearly on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille,
+his acclamation by the Parisian mob showed that he was taking an
+unexpected place in the imagination of the people. He continued to work
+with the Radicals, so when they turned out M. de Freycinet in December
+1886, one of their group, M. Goblet, a lawyer from Amiens, formed a
+ministry, and retained Boulanger as minister of war. M. Clémenceau,
+however, withdrew his support from the general, who was nevertheless
+loudly patronized by the violent radical press. His bold attitude
+towards Germany in connexion with the arrest on the German frontier of a
+French official named Schnaebele so roused the enthusiasm of the public,
+that M. Goblet was not sorry to resign in May 1887 in order to get rid
+of his too popular colleague.
+
+
+  The Wilson scandal.
+
+To form the twelfth of his ministries, Grévy called upon M. Rouvier, an
+Opportunist from Marseilles, who had first held office in Gambetta's
+short-lived cabinet. General Boulanger was sent to command a _corps
+d'armée_ at Clermont-Ferrand; but the popular press and the people
+clamoured for the hero who was said to have terrorized Prince Bismarck,
+and they encouraged him to play the part of a plebiscitary candidate.
+There were grave reasons for public discontent. Parliament in 1887 was
+more than usually sterile in legislation, and in the autumn session it
+had to attend to a scandal which had long been rumoured. The son-in-law
+of Grévy, Daniel Wilson, a prominent deputy who had been an under
+secretary of state, was accused of trafficking the decoration of the
+Legion of Honour, and of using the Elysée, the president's official
+residence, where he lived, as an agency for his corrupt practices. The
+evidence against him was so clear that his colleagues in the Chamber put
+the government into a minority in order to precipitate a presidential
+crisis, and on Grévy refusing to accept this hint, a long array of
+politicians, representing all the republican groups, declined his
+invitation to aid him in forming a new ministry, all being bent on
+forcing his resignation. Had General Boulanger been a man of resolute
+courage he might at this crisis have made a _coup d'état_, for his
+popularity in the street and in the army increased as the Republic sank
+deeper into scandal and anarchy. At last, when Paris was on the brink of
+revolution, Grévy was prevailed on to resign. The candidates for his
+succession to the presidency were two ex-prime ministers, MM. Ferry and
+de Freycinet, and Floquet, a barrister, who had been conspicuous in the
+National Assembly for his sympathy with the Commune. The Monarchists had
+no candidate ready, and resolved to vote for Ferry, because they
+believed that if he were elected his unpopularity with the democracy
+would cause an insurrection in Paris and the downfall of the Republic.
+MM. de Freycinet and Floquet each looked for the support of the
+Radicals, and each had made a secret compact, in the event of his
+election, to restore General Boulanger to the war office. But M.
+Clémenceau, fearing the election of Jules Ferry, advised his followers
+to vote for an "outsider," and after some manoeuvring the congress
+elected by a large majority Sadi Carnot.
+
+
+  M. Carnot president of the Republic, 1887.
+
+The new president, though the nominee of chance, was an excellent
+choice. The grandson of Lazare Carnot, the "organizer of victory" of the
+Convention, he was also a man of unsullied probity. The tradition of his
+family name, only less glorious than that of Bonaparte in the annals of
+the Revolution, was welcome to France, almost ready to throw herself
+into the arms of a soldier of fortune, while his blameless repute
+reconciled some of those whose opposition to the Republic had been
+quickened by the mean vices of Grévy. But the name and character of
+Carnot would have been powerless to check the Boulangist movement
+without the incompetency of its leader, who was getting the democracy at
+his back without knowing how to utilize it. The new president's first
+prime minister was M. Tirard, a senator who had held office in six of
+Grévy's ministries, and he formed a cabinet of politicians as colourless
+as himself. The early months of 1888 were occupied with the trial of
+Wilson, who was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for fraud, and with
+the conflicts of the government with General Boulanger, who was deprived
+of his command for coming to Paris without leave. Wilson appealed
+against his sentence, and General Boulanger was elected deputy for the
+department of the Aisne by an enormous majority. It so happened that the
+day after his election a presidential decree was signed on the advice of
+the minister of war removing General Boulanger from the army, and the
+court of appeal quashed Wilson's conviction. Public feeling was
+profoundly moved by the coincidence of the release of the relative of
+the ex-president by the judges of the Republic on the same day that its
+ministers expelled from the army the popular hero of universal suffrage.
+
+
+  Boulangism.
+
+  Boulanger's flight.
+
+As General Boulanger had been invented by the Radicals it was thought
+that a Radical cabinet might be a remedy to cope with him, so M. Floquet
+became president of the council in April 1888, M. de Freycinet taking
+the portfolio of war, which he retained through many ministries. M.
+Floquet's chief achievement was a duel with General Boulanger, in which,
+though an elderly civilian, he wounded him. Nothing, however, checked
+the popularity of the military politician, and though he was a failure
+as a speaker in the Chamber, several departments returned him as their
+deputy by great majorities. The Bonapartists had joined him, and while
+in his manifestos he described himself as the defender of the Republic,
+the mass of the Monarchists, with the consent of the comte de Paris,
+entered the Boulangist camp, to the dismay both of old-fashioned
+Royalists and of many Orleanists, who resented his recent treatment of
+the duc d'Aumale. The centenary of the taking of the Bastille was to be
+celebrated in Paris by an international exhibition, and it appeared
+likely that it would be inaugurated by General Boulanger, so
+irresistible seemed his popularity. In January 1889 he was elected
+member for the metropolitan department of the Seine with a quarter of a
+million votes, and by a majority of eighty thousand over the candidate
+of the government. Had he marched on the Elysée the night of his
+election, nothing could have saved the parliamentary Republic; but again
+he let his chance go by. The government in alarm proposed the
+restoration of _scrutin d'arrondissement_ as the electoral system for
+_scrutin de liste_. The change was rapidly enacted by the two Chambers,
+and was a significant commentary on the respective advantages of the two
+systems. M. Tirard was again called to form a ministry, and he selected
+as minister of the interior M. Constans, originally a professor at
+Toulouse, who had already proved himself a skilful manipulator of
+elections when he held the same office in 1881. He was therefore given
+the supervision of the machinery of centralization with which it was
+supposed that General Boulanger would have to be fought at the general
+election. That incomplete hero, however, saved all further trouble by
+flying the country when he heard that his arrest was imminent. The
+government, in order to prevent any plebiscitary manifestation in his
+favour, passed a law forbidding a candidate to present himself for a
+parliamentary election in more than one constituency; it also arraigned
+the general on the charge of treason before the Senate sitting as a high
+court, and he was sentenced in his absence to perpetual imprisonment.
+Such measures were needless. The flight of General Boulanger was the
+death of Boulangism. He alone had saved the Republic which had done
+nothing to save itself. Its government had, on the contrary, displayed
+throughout the crisis an anarchic feebleness and incoherency which would
+have speeded its end had the leader of the plebiscitary movement
+possessed sagacity or even common courage.
+
+The elections of 1889 showed how completely the reactionaries had
+compromised their cause in the Boulangist failure. Instead of 45% of the
+votes polled as in 1885, they obtained only 21%, and the comte de Paris,
+the pretender of constitutional monarchy, was irretrievably prejudiced
+by his alliance with the military adventurer who had outraged the
+princes of his house. A period of calm succeeded the storm of
+Boulangism, and for the first time under the Third Republic parliament
+set to work to produce legislation useful for the state, without rousing
+party passion, as in its other period of activity when the Ferry
+education laws were passed. Before the elections of 1889 the reform of
+the army was undertaken, the general term of active compulsory service
+was made three years, while certain classes hitherto dispensed from
+serving, including ecclesiastical seminarists and lay professors, had
+henceforth to undergo a year's military training. The new parliament
+turned its attention to social and labour questions, as the only clouds
+on the political horizon were the serious strikes in the manufacturing
+districts, which displayed the growing political organization of the
+socialist party. Otherwise nothing disturbed the calm of the country.
+The young duc d'Orléans vainly tried to ruffle it by breaking his exile
+in order to claim his citizen's right to perform his military service.
+The cabinet was rearranged in March 1890, M. de Freycinet becoming prime
+minister for the fourth time, and retaining the portfolio of war. All
+seemed to point to the consolidation of the Republic, and even the
+Church made signals of reconciliation. Cardinal Lavigerie, a patriotic
+missionary and statesman, entertained the officers of the fleet at
+Algiers, and proposed the toast of the Republic to the tune of the
+"Marseillaise" played by his _pères blancs_. The royalist Catholics
+protested, but it was soon intimated that the archbishop of Algiers'
+demonstration was approved at Rome. The year 1891 was one of the few in
+the annals of the Republic which passed without a change of ministry,
+but the agitations of 1892 were to counterbalance the repose of the two
+preceding years.
+
+
+  The papal encyclical, 1892.
+
+The first crisis arose out of the peacemaking policy of the Pope.
+Following up his intimation to the archbishop of Algiers, Leo XIII.
+published in February 1892 an encyclical, bidding French Catholics
+accept the Republic as the firmly established form of government. The
+papal injunction produced a new political group called the "Ralliés,"
+the majority of its members being Monarchists who rallied to the
+Republic in obedience to the Vatican. The most conspicuous among them
+was Comte Albert de Mun, an eloquent exponent in the Chamber of
+legitimism and Christian socialism. The extreme Left mistrusted the
+adhesion of the new converts to the Republic, and ecclesiastical
+questions were the constant subjects of acrimonious debates in
+parliament. In the course of one of them M. de Freycinet found himself
+in a minority. He ceased to be prime minister, being succeeded by M.
+Loubet, a lawyer from Montélimar, who had previously held office for
+three months in the first Tirard cabinet; but M. de Freycinet continued
+to hold his portfolio of war. The confusion of the republican groups
+kept pace with the disarray of the reactionaries, and outside parliament
+the frequency of anarchist outrages did not increase public confidence.
+The only figure in the Republic which grew in prestige was that of M.
+Carnot, who in his frequent presidential tours dignified his office,
+though his modesty made him unduly efface his own personality.
+
+
+  The Panama scandal.
+
+When the autumn session of 1892 began all other questions were
+overwhelmed by the bursting of the Panama scandal. The company
+associated for the piercing of the Isthmus of Panama, undertaken by M.
+de Lesseps, the maker of the Suez Canal, had become insolvent some years
+before. Fifty millions sterling subscribed by the thrift of France had
+disappeared, but the rumours involving political personages in the
+disaster were so confidently asserted to be reactionary libels, that a
+minister of the Republic, afterwards sent to penal servitude for
+corruption, obtained damages for the publication of one of them. It was
+known that M. de Lesseps was to be tried for misappropriating the money
+subscribed; but considering the vast sums lost by the public, little
+interest was taken in the matter till it was suddenly stirred by the
+dramatic suicide of a well-known Jewish financier closely connected with
+republican politicians, driven to death, it was said, by menaces of
+blackmail. Then succeeded a period of terror in political circles. Every
+one who had a grudge against an enemy found vent for it in the press,
+and the people of Paris lived in an atmosphere of delation. Unhappily it
+was true that ministers and members of parliament had been subsidized by
+the Panama company. Floquet, the president of the Chamber, avowed that
+when prime minister he had laid hands on £12,000 of the company's funds
+for party purposes, and his justification of the act threw a light on
+the code of public morality of the parliamentary Republic. Other
+politicians were more seriously implicated on the charge of having
+accepted subsidies for their private purposes, and emotion reached its
+height when the cabinet ordered the prosecution of two of its members
+for corrupt traffic of their offices. These two ministers were
+afterwards discharged, and they seem to have been accused with
+recklessness; but their prosecution by their own colleagues proved that
+the statesmen of the Republic believed that their high political circles
+were sapped with corruption. Finally, only twelve senators and deputies
+were committed for trial, and the only one convicted was a minister of
+M. de Freycinet's third cabinet, who pleaded guilty to receiving large
+bribes from the Panama company. The public regarded the convicted
+politician as a scapegoat, believing that there were numerous
+delinquents in parliament, more guilty than he, who had not even been
+prosecuted. This feeling was aggravated by the sentence passed, but
+afterwards remitted, on the aged M. de Lesseps, who had involved French
+people in misfortune only because he too sanguinely desired to repeat
+the triumph he had achieved for France by his great work in Egypt.
+
+Within the nation the moral result of the Panama affair was a general
+feeling that politics had become under the Republic a profession
+unworthy of honest citizens. The sentiment evoked by the scandal was one
+of sceptical lassitude rather than of indignation. The reactionaries had
+crowned their record of political incompetence. At a crisis which gave
+legitimate opportunity to a respectable and patriotic Opposition they
+showed that the country had nothing to expect from them but incoherent
+and exaggerated invective. If the scandal had come to light in the time
+of General Boulanger the parliamentary Republic would not have survived
+it. As it was, the sordid story did little more than produce several
+changes of ministry. M. Loubet resigned the premiership in December 1892
+to M. Ribot, a former functionary of the Empire, whose ministry lived
+for three stormy weeks. On the first day of 1893 M. Ribot formed his
+second cabinet, which survived till the end of March, when he was
+succeeded by his minister of education, M. Charles Dupuy, an
+ex-professor who had never held office till four months previously. M.
+Dupuy, having taken the portfolio of the interior, supervised the
+general election of 1893, which took place amid the profound
+indifference of the population, except in certain localities where
+personal antagonisms excited violence. An intelligent Opposition would
+have roused the country at the polls against the régime compromised by
+the Panama affair. Nothing of the sort occurred, and the electorate
+preferred the doubtful probity of their republican representatives to
+the certain incompetence of the reactionaries. The adversaries of the
+Republic polled only 16% of the votes recorded, and the chief feature of
+the election was the increased return of socialist and radical-socialist
+deputies. When parliament met it turned out the Dupuy ministry, and M.
+Casimir-Périer quitted the presidency of the Chamber to take his place.
+The new prime minister was the bearer of an eminent name, being the
+grandson of the statesman of 1831, and the great-grandson of the owner
+of Vizille, where the estates of Dauphiné met in 1788, as a prelude to
+the assembling of the states-general the next year. His acceptance of
+office aroused additional interest because he was a minister possessed
+of independent wealth, and therefore a rare example of a French
+politician free from the imputation of making a living out of politics.
+Neither his repute nor his qualities gave long life to his ministry,
+which fell in four months, and M. Dupuy was sent for again to form a
+cabinet in May 1894.
+
+
+  Assassination of president Carnot.
+
+  Casimir-Périer president, 1894.
+
+Before the second Dupuy ministry had been in office a month President
+Carnot died by the knife of an anarchist at Lyons. He was perhaps the
+most estimable politician of the Third Republic. Although the standard
+of political life was not elevated under his presidency, he at all
+events set a good personal example, and to have filled unscathed the
+most conspicuous position in the land during a period unprecedented for
+the scurrility of libels on public men was a testimony to his blameless
+character. As the term of his septennate was near, parliament was not
+unprepared for a presidential election, and M. Casimir-Périer, who had
+been spoken of as his possible successor, was elected by the Congress
+which met at Versailles on the 27th of June 1894, three days after
+Carnot's assassination. The election of one who bore respectably a name
+not less distinguished in history than that of Carnot seemed to ensure
+that the Republic would reach the end of the century under the headship
+of a president of exceptional prestige. But instead of remaining chief
+of the state for seven years, in less than seven months M.
+Casimir-Périer astonished France and Europe by his resignation.
+Scurrilously defamed by the socialist press, the new president found
+that the Republicans in the Chamber were not disposed to defend him in
+his high office; so, on the 15th of January 1895, he seized the
+occasion of the retirement of the Dupuy ministry to address a message to
+the two houses intimating his resignation of the presidency, which, he
+said, was endowed with too many responsibilities and not sufficient
+powers.
+
+
+  Félix Faure president, 1895.
+
+This time the Chambers were unprepared for a presidential vacancy, and
+to fill it in forty-eight hours was necessarily a matter of haphazard.
+The choice of the congress fell on Félix Faure, a merchant of Havre,
+who, though minister of marine in the retiring cabinet, was one of the
+least-known politicians who had held office. The selection was a good
+one, and introduced to the presidency a type of politician unfortunately
+rare under the Third Republic--a successful man of business. Félix Faure
+had a fine presence and polished manners, and having risen from a humble
+origin he displayed in his person the fact that civilization descends to
+a lower social level in France than elsewhere. Although he was in a
+sense a man of the people the Radicals and Socialists in the Chambers
+had voted against him. Their candidate, like almost all democratic
+leaders in France, had never worked with his hands--M. Brisson, the son
+of an attorney at Bourges, a member of the Parisian bar, and perpetual
+candidate for the presidency. Nevertheless the Left tried to take
+possession of President Faure. His first ministry, composed of moderate
+republicans, and presided over by M. Ribot, lasted until the autumn
+session of 1895, when it was turned out and a radical cabinet was formed
+by M. Léon Bourgeois, an ex-functionary, who when a prefect had been
+suspected of reactionary tendencies.
+
+The Bourgeois cabinet of 1895 was remarkable as the first ministry
+formed since 1877 which did not contain a single member of the outgoing
+cabinet. It was said to be exclusively radical in its composition, and
+thus to indicate that the days of "republican concentration" were over,
+and that the Republic, being firmly established, an era of party
+government on the English model had arrived. The new ministry, however,
+on analysis did not differ in character from any of its predecessors.
+Seven of its members were old office-holders of the ordinary
+"ministrable" type. The most conspicuous was M. Cavaignac, the son of
+the general who had opposed Louis Bonaparte in 1848, and the grandson of
+J.B. Cavaignac, the regicide member of the Convention. Like Carnot and
+Casimir-Périer, he was, therefore, one of those rare politicians of the
+Republic who possessed some hereditary tradition. An ambitious man, he
+was now classed as a Radical on the strength of his advocacy of the
+income-tax, the principle of which has never been popular in France, as
+being adverse to the secretive habits of thrift cultivated by the
+people, which are a great source of the national wealth. The radicalism
+of the rest of the ministry was not more alarming in character, and its
+tenure of office was without legislative result. Its fall, however,
+occasioned the only constitutionally interesting ministerial crisis of
+the twenty-four which had taken place since Grévy's election to the
+presidency sixteen years before. The Senate, disliking the fiscal policy
+of the government, refused to vote supply in spite of the support which
+the Chamber gave to the ministry. The collision between the two houses
+did not produce the revolutionary rising which the Radicals predicted,
+and the Senate actually forced the Bourgeois cabinet to resign amid
+profound popular indifference.
+
+
+  Franco-Russian alliance.
+
+The new prime minister was M. Méline, who began his long political
+career as a member of the Commune in 1871, but was so little compromised
+in the insurrection that Jules Simon gave him an under-secretaryship in
+his ministry of 1876. After that he was once a cabinet minister, and was
+for a year president of the Chamber. He was chiefly known as a
+protectionist; but it was as leader of the Progressists, as the
+Opportunists now called themselves, that he formed his cabinet in April
+1896, which was announced as a moderate ministry opposed to the policy
+of the Radicals. It is true that it made no attempt to tax incomes, but
+otherwise its achievements did not differ from those of other
+ministries, radical or concentration, except in its long survival. It
+lasted for over two years, and lived as long as the second Ferry
+cabinet. Its existence was prolonged by certain incidents of the
+Franco-Russian alliance. The visit of the Tsar to Paris in October
+1896, being the first official visit paid by a European sovereign to the
+Republic, helped the government over the critical period at which
+ministries usually succumbed, and it was further strengthened in
+parliament by the invitation to the president of the Republic to return
+the imperial visit at St Petersburg in 1897. The Chamber came to its
+normal term that autumn; but a law had been passed fixing May as the
+month for general elections, and the ministry was allowed to retain
+office till the dissolution at Easter 1898.
+
+
+  1899: death of President Faure.
+
+  M. Loubet president.
+
+The long duration of the Méline government was said to be a further sign
+of the arrival of an era of party government with its essential
+accompaniment, ministerial stability. But in the country there was no
+corresponding sign that the electorate was being organized into two
+parties of Progressists and Radicals; while in the Chamber it was
+ominously observed that persistent opposition to the moderate ministry
+came from nominal supporters of its views, who were dismayed at one
+small band of fellow-politicians monopolizing office for two years. The
+last election of the century was therefore fought on a confused issue,
+the most tangible results being the further reduction of the
+Monarchists, who secured only 12% of the total poll, and the advance of
+the Socialists, who obtained nearly 20% of the votes recorded. The
+Radicals returned were less numerous than the Moderates, but with the
+aid of the Socialists they nearly balanced them. A new group entitled
+Nationalist made its appearance, supported by a miscellaneous electorate
+representing the malcontent element in the nation of all political
+shades from monarchist to revolutionary socialist. The Chamber, so
+composed, was as incoherent as either of its predecessors. It refused to
+re-elect the radical leader M. Brisson as its president, and then
+refused its confidence to the moderate leader M. Méline. M. Brisson, the
+rejected of the Chamber, was sent for to form a ministry, on the 28th of
+June 1898, which survived till the adjournment, only to be turned out
+when the autumn session began. M. Charles Dupuy thus became prime
+minister for the third time with a cabinet of the old concentration
+pattern, and for the third time in less than five years under his
+premiership the Presidency of the Republic became vacant. Félix Faure
+had increased in pomposity rather than in popularity. His contact with
+European sovereigns seems to have made him over-conscious of his
+superior rank, and he cultivated habits which austere republicans make
+believe to be the monopoly of frivolous courts. The regular domesticity
+of middle-class life may not be disturbed with impunity when age is
+advancing, and Félix Faure died with tragic unexpectedness on the 16th
+of February 1899. The joys of his high office were so dear to him that
+nothing but death would have induced him to lay it down before the term
+of his septennate. There was therefore no candidate in waiting for the
+vacancy; and as Paris was in an agitated mood the majority in the
+Congress elected M. Loubet president of the Republic, because he
+happened to hold the second place of dignity in the state, the
+presidency of the Senate, and was, moreover, a politician who had the
+confidence of the republican groups as an adversary of plebiscitary
+pretensions. His only competitor was M. Méline, whose ambitions were not
+realized, in spite of the alliance of his Progressist supporters with
+the Monarchists and Nationalists. The Dupuy ministry lasted till June
+1899, when a new cabinet was formed by M. Waldeck-Rousseau, who, having
+held office under Gambetta and Jules Ferry, had relinquished politics
+for the bar, of which he had become a distinguished leader. Though a
+moderate republican, he was the first prime minister to give portfolios
+to socialist politicians. This was the distinguishing feature of the
+last cabinet of the century--the thirty-seventh which had taken office
+in the twenty-six years which had elapsed since the resignation of
+Thiers in 1873.
+
+
+  Anti-Semitic movement.
+
+It is now necessary to go back a few years in order to refer to a matter
+which, though not political in its origin, in its development filled the
+whole political atmosphere of France in the closing period of the 19th
+century. Soon after the failure of the Boulangist movement a journal was
+founded at Paris called the _Libre Parole_. Its editor, M. Drumont, was
+known as the author of _La France juive_, a violent anti-Semitic work,
+written to denounce the influence exercised by Jewish financiers in the
+politics of the Third Republic. It may be said to have started the
+anti-Semitic movement in France, where hostility to the Jews had not the
+pretext existing in those lands which contain a large Jewish population
+exercising local rivalry with the natives of the soil, or spoiling them
+with usury. That state of things existed in Algeria, where the
+indigenous Jews were made French citizens during the Franco-Prussian War
+to secure their support against the Arabs in rebellion. But political
+anti-Semitism was introduced into Algeria only as an offshoot of the
+movement in continental France, where the great majority of the Jewish
+community were of the same social class as the politicians of the
+Republic. Primarily directed against the Jewish financiers, the movement
+was originally looked upon as a branch of the anti-capitalist propaganda
+of the Socialists. Thus the _Libre Parole_ joined with the revolutionary
+press in attacking the repressive legislation provoked by the dynamite
+outrages of the anarchists, clerical reactionaries who supported it
+being as scurrilously abused by the anti-Semitic organ as its republican
+authors. The Panama affair, in the exposure of which the _Libre Parole_
+took a prominent part soon after its foundation, was also a bond between
+anti-Semites and Socialists, to whom, however, the Monarchists, always
+incapable of acting alone, united their forces. The implication of
+certain Jewish financiers with republican politicians in the Panama
+scandal aided the anti-Semites in their special propaganda, of which a
+main thesis was that the government of the Third Republic had been
+organized by its venal politicians for the benefit of Jewish immigrants
+from Germany, who had thus enriched themselves at the expense of the
+laborious and unsuspecting French population. The _Libre Parole_, which
+had become a popular organ with reactionaries and with malcontents of
+all classes, enlisted the support of the Catholics by attributing the
+anti-religious policy of the Republic to the influence of the Jews,
+skilfully reviving bitter memories of the enaction of the Ferry decrees,
+when sometimes the laicization of schools or the expulsion of monks and
+nuns had been carried out by a Jewish functionary. Thus religious
+sentiment and race prejudice were introduced into a movement which was
+at first directed against capital; and the campaign was conducted with
+the weapons of scurrility and defamation which had made an unlicensed
+press under the Third Republic a demoralizing national evil.
+
+
+  Condemnation of Captain Dreyfus.
+
+An adroit feature of the anti-Semitic campaign was an appeal to national
+patriotism to rid the army of Jewish influence. The Jews, it was said,
+not content with directing the financial, and thereby the general policy
+of the Republic, had designs on the French army, in which they wished to
+act as secret agents of their German kindred. In October 1894 the _Libre
+Parole_ announced that a Jewish officer of artillery attached to the
+general staff, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, had been arrested on the charge
+of supplying a government of the Triple Alliance with French military
+secrets. Tried by court-martial, he was sentenced to military
+degradation and to detention for life in a fortress. He was publicly
+degraded at Paris in January 1895, a few days before Casimir-Périer
+resigned the presidency of the Republic, and was transported to the Île
+du Diable on the coast of French Guiana. His conviction, on the charge
+of having betrayed to a foreign power documents relating to the national
+defence, was based on the alleged identity of his handwriting with that
+of an intercepted covering-letter, which contained a list of the papers
+treasonably communicated. The possibility of his innocence was not
+raised outside the circle of his friends; the Socialists, who
+subsequently defended him, even complained that common soldiers were
+shot for offences less than that for which this richly connected officer
+had been only transported. The secrecy of his trial did not shock public
+sentiment in France, where at that time all civilians charged with crime
+were interrogated by a judge in private, and where all accused persons
+are presumed guilty until proved innocent. In a land subject to invasion
+there was less disposition to criticize the decision of a military
+tribunal acting in the defence of the nation even than there would have
+been in the case of a doubtful judgment passed in a civil court. The
+country was practically unanimous that Captain Dreyfus had got his
+deserts. A few, indeed, suggested that had he not been a Jew he would
+never have been accused; but the greater number replied that an ordinary
+French traitor of Gentile birth would have been forgotten from the
+moment of his condemnation. The pertinacity with which some of his
+co-religionists set to work to show that he had been irregularly
+condemned seemed to justify the latter proposition. But it was not a Jew
+who brought about the revival of the affair. Colonel Picquart, an
+officer of great promise, became head of the intelligence department at
+the war office, and in 1896 informed the minister of his suspicion that
+the letter on which Dreyfus had been condemned was written by a certain
+Major Esterhazy. The military authorities, not wishing to have the case
+reopened, sent Colonel Picquart on foreign service, and put in his place
+Colonel Henry. The all-seeing press published various versions of the
+incident, and the anti-Semitic journals denounced them as proofs of a
+Jewish conspiracy against the French army.
+
+
+  Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards.
+
+At the end of 1897 M. Scheurer-Kestner, an Alsatian devoted to France
+and a republican senator, tried to persuade his political friends to
+reopen the case; but M. Méline, the prime minister, declared in the name
+of the Republic that the Dreyfus affair no longer existed. The fact that
+the senator who championed Dreyfus was a Protestant encouraged the
+clerical press in its already marked tendency to utilize anti-Semitism
+as a weapon of ecclesiastical warfare. But the religious side-issues of
+the question would have had little importance had not the army been
+involved in the controversy, which had become so keen that all the
+population, outside that large section of it indifferent to all public
+questions, was divided into "Dreyfusards" and "anti-Dreyfusards." The
+strong position of the latter was due to their assuming the position of
+defenders of the army, which, at an epoch when neither the legislature
+nor the government inspired respect, and the Church was the object of
+polemic, was the only institution in France to unite the nation by
+appealing to its martial and patriotic instincts. That is the
+explanation of the enthusiasm of the public for generals and other
+officers by whom the trial of Dreyfus and subsequent proceedings had
+been conducted in a manner repugnant to those who do not favour the
+arbitrary ways of military dictatorship, which, however, are not
+unpopular in France. The acquittal of Major Esterhazy by a
+court-martial, the conviction of Zola by a civil tribunal for a violent
+criticism of the military authorities, and the imprisonment without
+trial of Colonel Picquart for his efforts to exonerate Dreyfus, were
+practically approved by the nation. This was shown by the result of the
+general elections in May 1898. The clerical reactionaries were almost
+swept out of the Chamber, but the overwhelming republican majority was
+practically united in its hostility to the defenders of Dreyfus, whose
+only outspoken representatives were found in the socialist groups. The
+moderate Méline ministry was succeeded in June 1898 by the radical
+Brisson ministry. But while the new prime minister was said to be
+personally disposed to revise the sentence on Dreyfus, his civilian
+minister of war, M. Cavaignac, was as hostile to revision as any of his
+military predecessors--General Mercier, under whom the trial took place,
+General Zurlinden, and General Billot, a republican soldier devoted to
+the parliamentary régime.
+
+
+  Political results of Dreyfus agitation.
+
+The radical minister of war in July 1898 laid before the Chamber certain
+new proofs of the guilt of Dreyfus, in a speech so convincing that the
+house ordered it to be placarded in all the communes of France. The next
+month Colonel Henry, the chief of the intelligence department, confessed
+to having forged those new proofs, and then committed suicide. M.
+Cavaignac thereupon resigned office, but declared that the crime of
+Henry did not prove the innocence of Dreyfus. Many, however, who had
+hitherto accepted the judgment of 1894, reflected that the offence of a
+guilty man did not need new crime for its proof. It was further remarked
+that the forgery had been committed by the intimate colleague of the
+officers of the general staff, who had zealously protected Esterhazy,
+the suspected author of the document on which Dreyfus had been
+convicted. An uneasy misgiving became widespread; but partisan spirit
+was too excited for it to cause a general revulsion of feeling. Some
+journalists and politicians of the extreme Left had adopted the defence
+of Dreyfus as an anti-clerical movement in response to the intemperate
+partisanship of the Catholic press on the other side. Other members of
+the socialist groups, not content with criticizing the conduct of the
+military authorities in the Dreyfus affair, opened a general attack on
+the French army,--an unpopular policy which allowed the anti-Dreyfusards
+to utilize the old revolutionary device of making the word "patriotism"
+a party cry. The defamation and rancour with which the press on both
+sides flooded the land obscured the point at issue. However, the Brisson
+ministry just before its fall remitted the Dreyfus judgment to the
+criminal division of the cour de cassation--the supreme court of
+revision in France. M. Dupuy formed a new cabinet in November 1898, and
+made M. de Freycinet minister of war, but that adroit office-holder,
+though a civilian and a Protestant, did not favour the anti-military and
+anti-clerical defenders of Dreyfus. The refusal of the Senate, the
+stronghold of the Republic, to re-elect M. Scheurer-Kestner as its
+vice-president, showed that the opportunist minister of war understood
+the feeling of parliament, which was soon displayed by an extraordinary
+proceeding. The divisional judges, to whom the case was remitted, showed
+signs that their decision would be in favour of a new trial of Dreyfus.
+The republican legislature, therefore, disregarding the principle of the
+separation of the powers, which is the basis of constitutional
+government, took the arbitrary step of interfering with the judicial
+authority. It actually passed a law withdrawing the partly-heard cause
+from the criminal chamber of the cour de cassation, and transferring it
+to the full court of three divisions, in the hope that a majority of
+judges would thus be found to decide against the revision of the
+sentence on Dreyfus.
+
+
+  Second trial of Dreyfus.
+
+This flagrant confusion of the legislative with the judicial power
+displayed once more the incompetence of the French rightly to use
+parliamentary institutions; but it left the nation indifferent. It was
+during the passage of the bill that the president of the Republic
+suddenly died. Félix Faure was said to be hostile to the defenders of
+Dreyfus and disposed to utilise the popular enthusiasm for the army as a
+means of making the presidential office independent of parliament. The
+Chambers, therefore, in spite of their anti-Dreyfusard bias, were
+determined not to relinquish any of their constitutional prerogative.
+The military and plebiscitary parties were now fomenting the public
+discontent by noisy demonstrations. The president of the Senate, M.
+Loubet, as has been mentioned, was known to have no sympathy with this
+agitation, so he was elected president of the Republic by a large
+majority at the congress held at Versailles on 18th February 1899. The
+new president, who was unknown to the public, though he had once been
+prime minister for nine months, was respected in political circles; but
+his elevation to the first office of the State made him the object of
+that defamation which had become the chief characteristic of the
+partisan press under the Third Republic. He was recklessly accused of
+having been an accomplice of the Panama frauds, by screening certain
+guilty politicians when he was prime minister in 1892, and because he
+was not opposed to the revision of the Dreyfus sentence he was wantonly
+charged with being bought with Jewish money. Meanwhile the united
+divisions of the cour de cassation were, in spite of the intimidation of
+the legislature, reviewing the case with an independence worthy of
+praise in an ill-paid magistracy which owed its promotion to political
+influence. Instead of justifying the suggestive interference of
+parliament it revised the judgment of the court-martial, and ordered
+Dreyfus to be re-tried by a military tribunal at Rennes. The Dupuy
+ministry, which had wished to prevent this decision, resigned, and M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau formed a heterogeneous cabinet in which Socialists, who
+for the first time took office, had for their colleague as minister of
+war General de Galliffet, whose chief political fame had been won as
+the executioner of the Communards after the insurrection of 1871.
+Dreyfus was brought back from the Devil's Island, and in August 1899 was
+put upon his trial a second time. His old accusers, led by General
+Mercier, the minister of war of 1894, redoubled their efforts to prove
+his guilt, and were permitted by the officers composing the court a wide
+license according to English ideas of criminal jurisprudence. The
+published evidence did not, however, seem to connect Dreyfus with the
+charges brought against him. Nevertheless the court, by a majority of
+five to two, found him guilty, and with illogical inconsequence added
+that there were in his treason extenuating circumstances. He was
+sentenced to ten years' detention, and while it was being discussed
+whether the term he had already served would count as part of his
+penalty, the ministry completed the inconsequency of the situation by
+advising the president of the Republic to pardon the prisoner. The
+result of the second trial satisfied neither the partisans of the
+accused, who desired his rehabilitation, some of them reproaching him
+for accepting a pardon, nor his adversaries, whose vindictiveness was
+unsated by the penalty he had already suffered. But the great mass of
+the French people, who are always ready to treat a public question with
+indifference, were glad to be rid of a controversy which had for years
+infected the national life.
+
+
+  Real character of the Dreyfus agitation.
+
+The Dreyfus affair was severely judged by foreign critics as a
+miscarriage of justice resulting from race-prejudice. If that simple
+appreciation rightly describes its origin, it became in its development
+one of those scandals symptomatic of the unhealthy political condition
+of France, which on a smaller scale had often recurred under the Third
+Republic, and which were made the pretext by the malcontents of all
+parties for gratifying their animosities. That in its later stages it
+was not a question of race-persecution was seen in the curious
+phenomenon of journals owned or edited by Jews leading the outcry
+against the Jewish officer and his defenders. That it was not a mere
+episode of the rivalry between Republicans and Monarchists, or between
+the advocates of parliamentarism and of military autocracy, was evident
+from the fact that the most formidable opponents of Dreyfus, without
+whose hostility that of the clericals and reactionaries would have been
+ineffective, were republican politicians. That it was not a phase of the
+anti-capitalist movement was shown by the zealous adherence of the
+socialist leaders and journalists to the cause of Dreyfus; indeed, one
+remarkable result of the affair was its diversion of the socialist party
+and press for several years from their normal campaign against property.
+The Dreyfus affair was utilized by the reactionaries against the
+Republic, by the clericals against the non-Catholics, by the
+anti-clericals against the Church, by the military party against the
+parliamentarians, and by the revolutionary socialists against the army.
+It was also conspicuously utilized by rival republican politicians
+against one another, and the chaos of political groups was further
+confused by it.
+
+
+  The State trial of 1899.
+
+An epilogue to the Dreyfus affair was the trial for treason before the
+Senate, at the end of 1899, of a number of persons, mostly obscure
+followers either of M. Déroulède the poet, who advocated a plebiscitary
+republic, or of the duc d'Orléans, the pretender of the constitutional
+monarchy. On the day of President Faure's funeral M. Déroulède had
+vainly tried to entice General Roget, a zealous adversary of Dreyfus,
+who was on duty with his troops, to march on the Elysée in order to
+evict the newly-elected president of the Republic. Other demonstrations
+against M. Loubet ensued, the most offensive being a concerted assault
+upon him on the racecourse at Auteuil in June 1899. The subsequent
+resistance to the police of a band of anti-Semites threatened with
+arrest, who barricaded themselves in a house in the rue Chabrol, in the
+centre of Paris, and, with the marked approval of the populace,
+sustained a siege for several weeks, indicated that the capital was in a
+condition not far removed from anarchy. M. Déroulède, indicted at the
+assizes of the Seine for his misdemeanour on the day of President
+Faure's funeral, had been triumphantly acquitted. It was evident that
+no jury would convict citizens prosecuted for political offences and the
+government therefore decided to make use of the article of the Law of
+1875, which allowed the Senate to be constituted a high court for the
+trial of offences endangering the state. A respectable minority of the
+Senate, including M. Wallon, the venerable "Father of the Constitution"
+of 1875, vainly protested that the framers of the law intended to invest
+the upper legislative chamber with judicial power only for the trial of
+grave crimes of high treason, and not of petty political disorders which
+a well-organized government ought to be able to repress with the
+ordinary machinery of police and justice. The outvoted protest was
+justified by the proceedings before the High Court, which, undignified
+and disorderly, displayed both the fatuity of the so-called conspirators
+and the feebleness of the government which had to cope with them. The
+trial proved that the plebiscitary faction was destitute of its
+essential factor, a chief to put forward for the headship of the state,
+and that it was resolved, if it overturned the parliamentary system, not
+to accept under any conditions the duc d'Orléans, the only pretender
+before the public. It was shown that royalists and plebiscitary
+republicans alike had utilized as an organization of disorder the
+anti-Semitic propaganda which had won favour among the masses as a
+nationalist movement to protect the French from foreign competition. The
+evidence adduced before the high court revealed, moreover, the curious
+fact that certain Jewish royalists had given to the duc d'Orléans large
+sums of money to found anti-Semitic journals as the surest means of
+popularizing his cause.
+
+
+  French parties at the close of the 19th century.
+
+The last year of the 19th century, though uneventful for France, was one
+of political unrest. This, however, did not take the form of ministerial
+crises, as, for the fourth time since responsible cabinets were
+introduced in 1873, a whole year, from the 1st of January to the 31st of
+December, elapsed without a change of ministry. The prime minister, M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau, though his domestic policy exasperated a large section
+of the political world, including one half of the Progressive group
+which he had helped to found, displayed qualities of statesmanship
+always respected in France, but rarely exhibited under the Third
+Republic. He had proved himself to be what the French call _un homme de
+gouvernement_--that is to say, an authoritative administrator of
+unimpassioned temperament capable of governing with the arbitrary
+machinery of Napoleonic centralization. His alliance with the extreme
+Left and the admission into his cabinet of socialist deputies, showed
+that he understood which wing of the Chamber it was best to conciliate
+in order to keep the government in his hands for an abnormal term. The
+advent to office of Socialists disquieted the respectable and prosperous
+commercial classes, which in France take little part in politics, though
+they had small sympathy with the nationalists, who were the most violent
+opponents of the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry. The alarm caused by the
+handing over of important departments of the state to socialist
+politicians arose upon a danger which is not always understood beyond
+the borders of France. Socialism in France is a movement appealing to
+the revolutionary instincts of the French democracy, advocated in vague
+terms by the members of rival groups or sects. Thus the increasing
+number of socialist deputies in parliament had produced no legislative
+results, and their presence in the cabinet was not feared on that
+account. The fear which their office-holding inspired was due to the
+immense administrative patronage which the centralized system confides
+to each member of the government. French ministers are wont to bestow
+the places at their disposal on their political friends, so the prospect
+of administrative posts being filled all over the land by
+revolutionaries caused some uneasiness. Otherwise the presence of
+Socialists on the ministerial bench seemed to have no other effect than
+that of partially muzzling the socialist groups in the Chamber. The
+opposition to the government was heterogeneous. It included the few
+Monarchists left in the Chamber, the Nationalists, who resembled the
+Boulangists of twelve years before, and who had added anti-Semitism to
+the articles of the revisionist creed, and a number of republicans,
+chiefly of the old Opportunist group, which had renewed itself under the
+name of Progressist at the time when M. Waldeck-Rousseau was its most
+important member in the Senate.
+
+The ablest leaders of this Opposition were all malcontent Republicans;
+and this fact seemed to show that if ever any form of monarchy were
+restored in France, political office would probably remain in the hands
+of men who were former ministers of the Third Republic. Thus the most
+conspicuous opponents of the cabinet were three ex-prime ministers, MM.
+Méline, Charles Dupuy and Ribot. Less distinguished republican
+"ministrables" had their normal appetite for office whetted in 1900 by
+the international exhibition at Paris. It brought the ministers of the
+day into unusual prominence, and endowed them with large subsidies voted
+by parliament for official entertainments. The exhibition was planned on
+too ambitious a scale to be a financial success. It also called forth
+the just regrets of those who deplored the tendency of Parisians under
+the Third Republic to turn their once brilliant city into an
+international casino. Its most satisfactory feature was the proof it
+displayed of the industrial inventiveness and the artistic instinct of
+the French. The political importance of the exhibition lay in the fact
+that it determined the majority in the Chamber not to permit the
+foreigners attracted by it to the capital to witness a ministerial
+crisis. Few strangers of distinction, however, came to it, and not one
+sovereign of the great powers visited Paris; but the ministry remained
+in office, and M. Waldeck-Rousseau had uninterrupted opportunity of
+showing his governmental ability. The only change in his cabinet took
+place when General de Galliffet resigned the portfolio of war to General
+André. The army, as represented by its officers, had shown symptoms of
+hostility to the ministry in consequence of the pardon of Dreyfus. The
+new minister of war repressed such demonstrations with proceedings of
+the same arbitrary character as those which had called forth criticism
+in England when used in the Dreyfus affair. In both cases the
+high-handed policy was regarded either with approval or with
+indifference by the great majority of the French nation, which ever
+since the Revolution has shown that its instincts are in favour of
+authoritative government. The emphatic support given by the radical
+groups to the autocratic policy of M. Waldeck-Rousseau and his ministers
+was not surprising to those who have studied the history of the French
+democracy. It has always had a taste for despotism since it first became
+a political power in the days of the Jacobins, to whose early protection
+General Bonaparte owed his career. On the other hand liberalism has
+always been repugnant to the masses, and the only period in which the
+Liberals governed the country was under the régime of limited
+suffrage--during the Restoration and the Monarchy of July.
+
+
+  Paris and the provinces.
+
+The most important event in France during the last year of the century,
+not from its political result, but from the lessons it taught, was
+perhaps the Paris municipal election. The quadrennial renewal of all the
+municipal councils of France took place in May 1900. The municipality of
+the capital had been for many years in the hands of the extreme Radicals
+and the revolutionary Socialists. The Parisian electors now sent to the
+Hôtel de Ville a council in which the majority were Nationalists, in
+general sympathy with the anti-Semitic and plebiscitary movements. The
+nationalist councillors did not, however, form one solid party, but were
+divided into five or six groups, representing every shade of political
+discontent, from monarchism to revisionist-socialism. While the
+electorate of Paris thus pronounced for the revision of the
+Constitution, the provincial elections, as far as they had a political
+bearing, were favourable to the ministry and to the Republic. M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau accepted the challenge of the capital, and dealt with
+its representatives with the arbitrary weapons of centralization which
+the Republic had inherited from the Napoleonic settlement of the
+Revolution. Municipal autonomy is unknown in France, and the town
+council of Paris has to submit to special restrictions on its liberty of
+action. The prefect of the Seine is always present at its meetings as
+agent of the government and the minister of the interior can veto any
+of its resolutions. The Socialists, when their party ruled the
+municipality, clamoured in parliament for the removal of this
+administrative control. But now being in a minority they supported the
+government in its anti-autonomic rigours. The majority of the municipal
+council authorized its president to invite to a banquet, in honour of
+the international exhibition, the provincial mayors and a number of
+foreign municipal magnates, including the lord mayor of London. The
+ministers were not invited, and the prefect of the Seine thereupon
+informed the president of the municipality that he had no right, without
+consulting the agent of the government, to offer a banquet to the
+provincial mayors; and they, with the deference which French officials
+instinctively show to the central authority, almost all refused the
+invitation to the Hôtel de Ville. The municipal banquet was therefore
+abandoned, but the government gave one in the Tuileries gardens, at
+which no fewer than 22,000 mayors paid their respects to the chief of
+the state. These events showed that, as in the Terror, as at the _coup
+d'état_ of 1851, and as in the insurrection of the Commune, the French
+provinces were never disposed to follow the political lead of the
+capital, whether the opinions prevailing there were Jacobin or
+reactionary. These incidents displayed the tendency of the French
+democracy, in Paris and in the country alike, to submit to and even to
+encourage the arbitrary working of administrative centralization. The
+elected mayors of the provincial communes, urban and rural, quitted
+themselves like well-drilled functionaries of the state, respectful of
+their hierarchical superiors, just as in the days when they were the
+nominees of the government; while the population of Paris, in spite of
+its perennial proneness to revolution, accepted the rebuff inflicted on
+its chosen representatives without any hostile demonstration. The
+municipal elections in Paris afforded fresh proof of the unchanging
+political ineptitude of the reactionaries. The dissatisfaction of the
+great capital with the government of the Republic might, in spite of the
+reluctance of the provinces to follow the lead of Paris, have had grave
+results if skilfully organized. But the anti-republican groups, instead
+of putting forward men of high ability or reputation to take possession
+of the Hôtel de Ville, chose their candidates among the same inferior
+class of professional politicians as the Radicals and the Socialists
+whom they replaced on the municipal council.
+
+
+  France at the opening of the 20th century.
+
+The beginning of a century of the common era is a purely artificial
+division of time. Yet it has often marked a turning-point in the history
+of nations. This was notably the case in France in 1800. The violent and
+anarchical phases of the Revolution of 1789 came to an end with the 18th
+century; and the dawn of the 19th was coincident with the administrative
+reconstruction of France by Napoleon, on lines which endured with little
+modification till the end of that century, surviving seven revolutions
+of the executive power. The opening years of the 20th century saw no
+similar changes in the government of the country. The Third Republic,
+which was about to attain an age double that reached by any other regime
+since the Revolution, continued to live on the basis of the Constitution
+enacted in 1875, before it was five years old. Yet it seems not unlikely
+that historians of the future may take the date 1900 as a landmark
+between two distinct periods in the evolution of the French nation.
+
+
+  Results of the Dreyfus affair.
+
+With the close of the 19th century the Dreyfus affair came practically
+to an end. Whatever the political and moral causes of the agitation
+which attended it, its practical result was to strengthen the Radical
+and Socialist parties in the Republic, and to reduce to unprecedented
+impotence the forces of reaction. This was due more to the maladroitness
+of the Reactionaries than to the virtues or the prescience of the
+extreme Left, as the imprisonment of the Jewish captain, which agitated
+and divided the nation, could not have been inflicted without the ardent
+approval of Republicans of all shades of opinion. But when the majority
+at last realized that a mistake had been committed, the Reactionaries,
+in great measure through their own unwise policy, got the chief credit
+for it. Consequently, as the clericals formed the militant section of
+the anti-Republican parties, and as the Radical-Socialists were at that
+time keener in their hostility to the Church than in their zeal for
+social or economic reform, the issue of the Dreyfus affair brought about
+an anti-clerical movement, which, though initiated and organized by a
+small minority, met with nothing to resist it in the country, the
+reactionary forces being effete and the vast majority of the population
+indifferent. The main and absorbing feature therefore of political life
+in France in the first years of the 20th century was a campaign against
+the Roman Catholic Church, unparalleled in energy since the Revolution.
+Its most striking result was the rupture of the Concordat between France
+and the Vatican. This act was additionally important as being the first
+considerable breach made in the administrative structure reared by
+Napoleon, which had hitherto survived all the vicissitudes of the 19th
+century. Concurrently with this the influence of the Socialist party in
+French policy largely increased. A primary principle professed by the
+Socialists throughout Europe is pacificism, and its dissemination in
+France acted in two very different ways. It encouraged in the French
+people a growth of anti-military spirit, which showed some sign of
+infecting the national army, and it impelled the government of the
+Republic to be zealous in cultivating friendly relations with other
+powers. The result of the latter phase of pacificism was that France,
+under the Radical-Socialist administrations of the early years of the
+20th century, enjoyed a measure of international prestige of that
+superficial kind which is expressed by the state visits of crowned heads
+to the chief of the executive power, greater than at any period since
+the Second Empire.
+
+
+  Church policy.
+
+The voting of the law which separated the Church from the state will
+probably mark a capital date in French history; so, as the
+ecclesiastical policy of successive ministries filled almost entirely
+the interior chronicles of France for the first five years of the new
+century, it will be convenient to set forth in order the events which
+during that period led up to the passing of the Separation Act.
+
+The French legislature during the first session of the 20th century was
+chiefly occupied with the passing of the Associations Law. That measure,
+though it entirely changed the legal position of all associations in
+France, was primarily directed against the religious associations of the
+Roman Catholic Church. Their influence in the land, according to the
+anti-clericals, had been proved by the Dreyfus affair to be excessive.
+The Jesuits were alleged, on their own showing, to exercise considerable
+power over the officers of the army, and in this way to have been
+largely responsible for the blunders of the Dreyfus case. Another less
+celebrated order, which took an active part against Dreyfus, the
+Assumptionists, had achieved notoriety by its journalistic enterprise,
+its cheap newspapers of wide circulation being remarkable for the
+violence of their attacks on the institutions and men of the Republic.
+The mutual antagonism between the French government and religious
+congregations is a tradition which dates from the ancient monarchy and
+was continued by Napoleon I. long before the Third Republic adopted it
+in the legislation associated with the names of Jules Ferry and Paul
+Bert. The prime minister, under whose administration the 20th century
+succeeded the 19th, was M. Waldeck-Rousseau, who had been the colleague
+of Paul Bert in Gambetta's _grand ministère_, and in 1883 had served
+under Jules Ferry in his second ministry. He had retired from political
+life, though he remained a member of the Senate, and was making a large
+fortune at the bar, when in June 1899, at pecuniary sacrifice, he
+consented to form a ministry for the purpose of "liquidating" the
+Dreyfus affair. In 1900, the year after the second condemnation of
+Dreyfus and his immediate pardon by the government, M. Waldeck-Rousseau
+in a speech at Toulouse announced that legislation was about to be
+undertaken on the subject of associations.
+
+At that period the hostility of the Revolution to the principle of
+associations of all kinds, civil as well as religious, was still
+enforced by the law. With the exception of certain commercial societies
+subject to special legislation, no association composed of more than
+twenty persons could be formed without governmental authorization which
+was always revocable, the restriction applying equally to political and
+social clubs and to religious communities. The law was the same for all,
+but was differently applied. Authorization was rarely refused to
+political or social societies, though any club was liable to have its
+authorization withdrawn and to be shut up or dissolved. But to religious
+orders new authorization was practically never granted. Only four of
+them, the orders of Saint Lazare, of the Saint Esprit, of the Missions
+Étrangères and of Saint Sulpice, were authorized under the Third
+Republic--their authorization dating from the First Empire and the
+Restoration. The Frères de la Doctrine Chrétienne were also recognized,
+not, however, as a religious congregation under the jurisdiction of the
+minister of public worship, but as a teaching body under that of the
+minister of education. All the great historical orders, preaching,
+teaching or contemplative, were "unauthorized"; they led a precarious
+life on sufferance, having as corporations no civil existence, and being
+subject to dissolution at a moment's notice by the administrative
+authority. In spite of this disability and of the decrees of 1880
+directed against unauthorized monastic orders they had so increased
+under the anti-clerical Republic, that the religious of both sexes were
+more numerous in France at the beginning of the 20th century than at the
+end of the ancient monarchy. Moreover, in the twenty years during which
+unauthorized Orders had been supposed to be suppressed under the Ferry
+Decrees, their numbers had become six times more numerous than before,
+while it was the authorized Congregations which had diminished. The bare
+catalogue of the religious houses in the land, with the value of their
+properties (estimated by M. Waldeck-Rousseau at a milliard--£40,000,000)
+filled two White Books of two thousand pages, presented to parliament on
+the 4th of December 1900. The hostility to the Congregations was not
+confined to the anti-clericals. The secular clergy were suffering
+materially from the enterprising competition of their old rivals the
+regulars. Had the legislation for defining the legal situation of the
+religious orders been undertaken with the sole intention of limiting
+their excessive growth, such a measure would have been welcome to the
+parochial clergy. But they saw that the attack upon the congregations
+was only preliminary to a general attack upon the Church, in spite of
+the sincere assurances of the prime minister, a statesman of
+conservative temperament, that no harm would accrue to the secular
+clergy from the passing of the Associations Law.
+
+
+  Associations Bill.
+
+In January 1901, on the eve of the first debate in the Chamber of
+Deputies on the Associations bill, a discussion took place which showed
+that the rupture of the Concordat might be nearing the range of
+practical politics, though parliament was as yet unwilling to take it
+into consideration. The archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Richard, had
+published a letter addressed to him by Leo XIII. deploring the projected
+legislation as being a breach of the Concordat under which the free
+exercise of the Catholic religion in France was assured. The Socialists
+argued that this letter was an intolerable intervention on the part of
+the Vatican in the domestic politics of the Republic, and proposed that
+parliament should after voting the Associations Law proceed to separate
+Church and State. M. Waldeck-Rousseau, the prime minister, calm and
+moderate, declined to take this view of the pope's letter, and the
+resolution was defeated by a majority of more than two to one. But
+another motion, proposed by a Nationalist, that the Chamber should
+declare its resolve to maintain the Concordat, was rejected by a small
+majority. The discussion of the Associations bill was then commenced by
+the Chamber and went on until the Easter recess. Its main features when
+finally voted were that the right to associate for purposes not illicit
+should be henceforth free of all restrictions, though "juridical
+capacity" would be accorded only to such associations as were formally
+notified to the administrative authority. The law did not, however,
+accord liberty of association to religious "Congregations," none of
+which could be formed without a special statute, and any constituted
+without such authorization would be deemed illicit. The policy of the
+measure, as applying to religious orders, was attacked by the extreme
+Right and the extreme Left from their several standpoints. The clericals
+proposed that under the new law all associations, religious as well as
+civil, should be free. The Socialists proposed that all religious
+communities, authorized or unauthorized, should be suppressed. The prime
+minister took a middle course. But he went farther than the moderate
+Republicans, with whom he was generally classed. While he protected the
+authorized religious orders against the attacks of the extreme
+anti-clericals, he accepted from the latter a new clause which
+disqualified any member of an unauthorized order from teaching in any
+school. This was a blow at the principle of liberty of instruction,
+which had always been supported by Liberals of the old school, who had
+no sympathy with the pretensions of clericalism. Consequently this
+provision, though voted by a large majority, was opposed by the Liberals
+of the Republican party, notably by M. Ribot, who had been twice prime
+minister, and M. Aynard, almost the sole survivor of the Left Centre. It
+was remarked that in these, as in all subsequent debates on
+ecclesiastical questions, the ablest defenders of the Church were not
+found among the clericals, but among the Liberals, whose primary
+doctrine was that of tolerance, which they believed ought to be applied
+to the exercise of the religion nominally professed by a large majority
+of the nation. Few of the ardent professors of that religion gave
+effective aid to the Church during that period of crisis. M. de Mun
+still used his eloquence in its defence, but the brilliant Catholic
+orator had entered his sixtieth year with health impaired, and among the
+young reactionary members there was not one who displayed any talent. At
+the other end of the Chamber M. Viviani, a Socialist member for Paris,
+made an eloquent speech. As was anticipated the bill received no serious
+opposition in the Senate. Though not in sympathy with the attacks of the
+Socialists in the Chamber on property, the Upper House had as a whole no
+objection to their attacks on the Church, and had become a more
+persistently anti-clerical body than the Chamber of Deputies. The bill
+was therefore passed without any serious amendments, even those which
+were moved for the purpose of affirming the principle of liberty of
+education being supported by very few Republican senators. In the
+debates some of the utterances of the prime minister were important. On
+the proposal of M. Rambaud, a professor who was minister of education in
+the Méline cabinet of 1896, that religious associations should be
+authorized by decree and not by law, M. Waldeck-Rousseau said that
+inasmuch as vows of poverty and celibacy were illegal, nothing but a law
+would suffice to give legality to any association in which such vows
+were imposed on the members. It was thus laid down by the responsible
+author of the law that the third clause, providing that any association
+founded for an illicit cause was null, applied to religious communities.
+On the other hand the prime minister in another speech repudiated the
+suggestion that the proposed law was aimed against any form of religion.
+He argued that the religious orders, far from being essential to the
+existence of the Church, were a hindrance to the work of the parochial
+clergy, and that inasmuch as the religious orders were organizations
+independent of the State they were by their nature and influence a
+danger to the State. Consequently their regulation had become necessary
+in the interests both of Church and State. The general suppression of
+religious congregations, the prime minister said, was not contemplated;
+the case of each one would be decided on its merits, and he had no doubt
+that parliament would favourably consider the authorization of those
+whose aim was to alleviate misery at home or to extend French influence
+abroad. The tenor of M. Waldeck-Rousseau's speech was eminently
+Concordatory. One of his chief arguments against the religious orders
+was that they were not mentioned in the Concordat, and that their
+unregulated existence prejudiced the interests of the Concordatory
+clergy. The speech was therefore an official declaration in favour of
+the maintenance of the relations between Church and State. That being
+so, it is important to notice that by a majority of nearly two to one
+the Senate voted the placarding of the prime minister's speech in all
+the communes of France, and that the mover of the resolution was M.
+Combes, senator of the Charente-Inférieure, a politician of advanced
+views who up to that date had held office only once, when he was
+minister of education and public worship for about six months, in the
+Bourgeois administration in 1895-1896.
+
+
+  Socialism.
+
+The "Law relating to the contract of Association" was promulgated on the
+2nd of July 1901, and its enactment was the only political event of high
+importance that year. The Socialists, except in their anti-clerical
+capacity, were more active outside parliament than within. Early in the
+year some formidable strikes took place. At Montceau-les-Mines in
+Burgundy, where labour demonstrations had often been violent, a new
+feature of a strike was the formation of a trade-union by the
+non-strikers, who called their organization "the yellow trade-union"
+(_le syndicat jaune_) in opposition to the red trade-union of the
+strikers, who adopted the revolutionary flag and were supported by the
+Socialist press. At the same time the dock-labourers at Marseilles went
+out on strike, by the orders of an international trade-union in that
+port, as a protest against the dismissal of a certain number of
+foreigners. The number of strikes in France had increased considerably
+under the Waldeck-Rousseau government. Its opponents attributed this to
+the presence in the cabinet of M. Millerand, who had been ranked as a
+Socialist. On the other hand, the revolutionary Socialists
+excommunicated the minister of commerce for having joined a "bourgeois
+government" and retired from the general congress of the Socialist party
+at Lyons, where MM. Briand and Viviani, themselves future ministers,
+persuaded the majority not to go so far. The federal committee of miners
+projected a general strike in all the French coal-fields, and to that
+end organized a referendum. But of 125,000 miners inscribed on their
+lists nearly 70,000 abstained from voting, and although the general
+strike was voted in October by a majority of 34,000, it was not put into
+effect. Another movement favoured by the Socialists was that of
+anti-militarism. M. Hervé, a professor at the lycée of Sens, had
+written, in a local journal, the _Pioupiou de l'Yonne_, on the occasion
+of the departure of the conscripts for their regiments, some articles
+outraging the French flag. He was prosecuted and acquitted at the
+assizes at Auxerre in November, a number of his colleagues in the
+teaching profession coming forward to testify that they shared his
+views. The local educational authority, the academic council of Dijon,
+however, dismissed M. Hervé from his official functions, and its
+sentence was confirmed by the superior council of public education to
+which he had appealed. Thereupon the Socialists in the Chamber, under
+the lead of M. Viviani, violently attacked the Government--shortly
+before the prorogation at the end of the year. M. Leygues, the minister
+of education, defended the policy of his department with equal vigour,
+declaring that if a professor in the "university" claimed the right of
+publishing unpatriotic and anti-military opinions he could exercise it
+only on the condition of giving up his employment under government--a
+thesis which was supported by the entire Chamber with the exception of
+the Socialists. This manifestation of anti-military spirit, though not
+widespread, was the more striking as it followed close upon a second
+visit of the emperor and empress of Russia to France, which took place
+in September 1901 and was of a military rather than of a popular
+character. The Russian sovereigns did not come to Paris. After a naval
+display at Dunkirk, where they landed, they were the guests of President
+Loubet at Compiègne, and concluded their visit by attending a review
+near Reims of the troops which had taken part in the Eastern manoeuvres.
+Compared with the welcome given by the French population to the emperor
+and empress in 1896 their reception on this occasion was not
+enthusiastic. By not visiting Paris they seemed to wish to avoid contact
+with the people, who were persuaded by a section of the press that the
+motive of the imperial journey to France was financial. The Socialists
+openly repudiated the Russian alliance, and one of them, the mayor of
+Lille, who refused to decorate his municipal buildings when the
+sovereigns visited the department of the Nord, was neither revoked nor
+suspended, although he publicly based his refusal on grounds insulting
+to the tsar.
+
+It may be mentioned that the census returns of 1901 showed that the
+total increase of the population of France since the previous census in
+1896 amounted only to 412,364, of which 289,662 was accounted for by the
+capital, while on the other hand the population of sixty out of
+eighty-seven departments had diminished.
+
+As the quadrennial election of the Chamber of Deputies was due to take
+place in the spring of 1902, the first months of that year were chiefly
+occupied by politicians in preparing for it, though none of them gave
+any sign of being aware that the legislation to be effected by the new
+Chamber would be the most important which any parliament had undertaken
+under the constitution of 1875. At the end of the recess the prime
+minister in a speech at Saint Etienne, the capital of the Loire, of
+which department he was senator, passed in review the work of his
+ministry. With regard to the future, on the eve of the election which
+was to return the Chamber destined to disestablish the Church, he
+assured the secular clergy that they must not consider the legislation
+of the last session as menacing them: far from that, the recent law,
+directed primarily against those monastic orders which were
+anti-Republican associations, owning political journals and organizing
+electioneering funds (whose members he described as "moines ligueurs et
+moines d'affaires"), would be a guarantee of the Republic's protection
+of the parochial clergy. The presence of his colleague, M. Millerand, on
+this occasion showed that M. Waldeck-Rousseau did not intend to separate
+himself from the Radical-Socialist group which had supported his
+government; and the next day the Socialist minister of commerce, at
+Firminy, a mining centre in the same department, made a speech
+deprecating the pursuit of unpractical social ideals, which might have
+been a version of Gambetta's famous discourse on opportunism edited by
+an economist of the school of Léon Say. The Waldeck-Rousseau programme
+for the elections seemed therefore to be an implied promise of a
+moderate opportunist policy which would strengthen and unite the
+Republic by conciliating all sections of its supporters. When parliament
+met, M. Delcassé, minister for foreign affairs, on a proposal to
+suppress the Embassy to the Vatican, declared that even if the Concordat
+were ever revoked it would still be necessary for France to maintain
+diplomatic relations with the Holy See. On the other hand, the ministry
+voted, against the moderate Republicans, for an abstract resolution,
+proposed by M. Brisson, in favour of the abrogation of the Loi Falloux
+of 1850, which law, by abolishing the monopoly of the "university," had
+established the principle of liberty of education. Another abstract
+resolution, supported by the government, which subsequently become law,
+was voted in favour of the reduction of the terms of compulsory military
+service from three years to two.
+
+
+  Resignation of Waldeck-Rousseau.
+
+The general elections took place on the 27th of April 1902; with the
+second ballots on the 11th of May, and were favourable to the ministry,
+321 of its avowed supporters being returned and 268 members of the
+Opposition, including 140 "Progressist" Republicans, many of whom were
+deputies whose opinions differed little from those of M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau. In Paris the government lost a few seats which were
+won by the Nationalist group of reactionaries. The chief surprise of the
+elections was the announcement made by M. Waldeck-Rousseau on the 20th
+of May, while the president of the Republic was in Russia on a visit to
+the tsar, of his intention to resign office. No one but the prime
+minister's intimates knew that his shattered health was the true cause
+of his resignation, which was attributed to the unwillingness of an
+essentially moderate man to be the leader of an advanced party and the
+instrument of an immoderate policy. His retirement from public life at
+this crisis was the most important event of its kind since the death of
+his old master Gambetta. He had learned opportunist statesmanship in the
+short-lived _grand ministère_ and in the long-lived Ferry administration
+of 1883-1885, after which he had become an inactive politician in the
+Senate, while making a large fortune at the bar. In spite of having
+eschewed politics he had been ranked in the public mind with Gambetta
+and Jules Ferry as one of the small number of politicians of the
+Republic who had risen high above mediocrity. While he had none of the
+magnetic exuberance which furthered the popularity of Gambetta, his cold
+inexpansiveness had not made him unpopular as was his other chief, Jules
+Ferry. Indeed, his unemotional coldness was one of the elements of the
+power with which he dominated parliament; and being regarded by the
+nation as the strong man whom France is always looking for, he was the
+first prime minister of the Republic whose name was made a rallying cry
+at a general election. Yet the country gave him a majority only for it
+to be handed over to other politicians to use in a manner which he had
+not contemplated. On the 3rd of June 1902 he formally resigned office,
+his ministry having lasted for three years, all but a few days, a longer
+duration than that of any other under the Third Republic.
+
+
+  M. Combes prime minister.
+
+M. Loubet called upon M. Léon Bourgeois, who had already been prime
+minister under M. Félix Faure, to form a ministry, but he had been
+nominated president of the new Chamber. The president of the Republic
+then offered the post to M. Brisson, who had been twice prime minister
+in 1885 and 1898, but he also refused. A third member of the Radical
+party was then sent for, M. Emile Combes, and he accepted. The senator
+of the Charente Inférieure, in his one short term of office in the
+Bourgeois ministry, had made no mark. But he had attained a minor
+prominence in the debates of the Senate by his ardent anti-clericalism.
+He had been educated as a seminarist and had taken minor orders, without
+proceeding to the priesthood, and had subsequently practised as a
+country doctor before entering parliament. M. Combes retained two of the
+most important members of the Waldeck-Rousseau cabinet, M. Delcassé, who
+had been at the foreign office for four years, and General André, who
+had become war minister in 1900 on the resignation of General de
+Galliffet. General André was an ardent Dreyfusard, strongly opposed to
+clerical and reactionary influences in the army. Among the new ministers
+was M. Rouvier, a colleague of Gambetta in the _grand ministère_ and
+prime minister in 1887, whose participation in the Panama affair had
+caused his retirement from official life. Being a moderate opportunist
+and reputed the ablest financier among French politicians, his return to
+the ministry of finance reassured those who feared the fiscal
+experiments of an administration supported by the Socialists. The
+nomination as minister of marine of M. Camille Pelletan (the son of
+Eugène Pelletan, a notable adversary of the Second Empire), who had been
+a Radical-Socialist deputy since 1881, though new to office, was less
+reassuring. M. Combes reserved for himself the departments of the
+interior and public worship, meaning that the centralized administration
+of France should be in his own hands while he was keeping watch over the
+Church. But in spite of the prime minister's extreme anti-clericalism
+there was no hint made in his ministerial declaration, on the 10th of
+June 1902, on taking office that there would be any question of the new
+Chamber dealing with the Concordat or with the relations of Church and
+state. M. Combes, however, warned the secular clergy not to make common
+cause with the religious orders, against which he soon began vigorous
+action. Before the end of June he directed the Préfets of the
+departments to bring political pressure to bear on all branches of the
+public service, and he obtained a presidential decree closing a hundred
+and twenty-five schools, which had been recently opened in buildings
+belonging to private individuals, on the ground that they were conducted
+by members of religious associations and that this brought the schools
+under the law of 1901. Such action seemed to be opposed to M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau's interpretation of the law; but the Chamber having
+supported M. Combes he ordered in July the closing of 2500 schools,
+conducted by members of religious orders, for which authorization had
+not been requested. This again seemed contrary to the assurances of M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau, and it called forth vain protests in the name of
+liberty from Radicals of the old school, such as M. Goblet, prime
+minister in 1886, and from Liberal Protestants, such as M. Gabriel
+Monod. The execution of the decrees closing the schools of the religious
+orders caused some violent agitation in the provinces during the
+parliamentary recess. But the majority of the departmental councils, at
+their meetings in August, passed resolutions in favour of the
+governmental policy, and a movement led by certain Nationalists,
+including M. Drumont, editor of the anti-semitic _Libre Parole_, and M.
+François Coppée, the Academician, to found a league having similar aims
+to those of the "passive resisters" in our country, was a complete
+failure. On the reassembling of parliament, both houses passed votes of
+confidence in the ministry and also an act supplementary to the
+Associations Law penalizing the opening of schools by members of
+religious orders.
+
+
+  Humbert affair.
+
+In spite of the ardour of parliamentary discussions the French public
+was less moved in 1902 by the anti-clerical action of the government
+than by a vulgar case of swindling known as the "Humbert affair." The
+wife of a former deputy for Seine-et-Marne, who was the son of M.
+Gustave Humbert, minister of justice in 1882, had for many years
+maintained a luxurious establishment, which included a political salon,
+on the strength of her assertion that she and her family had inherited
+several millions sterling from one Crawford, an Englishman. Her story
+being believed by certain bankers she had been enabled to borrow
+colossal sums on the legend, and had almost married her daughter as a
+great heiress to a Moderate Republican deputy who held a conspicuous
+position in the Chamber. The flight of the Humberts, the exposure of the
+fraud and their arrest in Spain excited the French nation more deeply
+than the relative qualities of M. Waldeck-Rousseau and M. Combes or the
+woes of the religious orders. A by-election to the Senate in the spring
+of 1902 merits notice as it brought back to parliament M. Clémenceau,
+who had lived in comparative retirement since 1893 when he lost his seat
+as deputy for Draguignan, owing to a series of unusually bitter attacks
+made against him by his political enemies. He had devoted his years of
+retirement to journalism, taking a leading part in the Dreyfus affair on
+the side of the accused. His election as senator for the Var, where he
+had formerly been deputy, was an event of importance unanticipated at
+the time.
+
+
+  Anti-clerical movement.
+
+The year 1903 saw in progress a momentous development of the
+anti-clerical movement in France, though little trace of this is found
+in the statute-book. The chief act of parliament of that year was one
+which interested the population much more than any law affecting the
+Church. This was an act regulating the privileges of the _bouilleurs de
+cru_, the peasant proprietors who, permitted to distil from their
+produce an annual quantity of alcohol supposed to be sufficient for
+their domestic needs, in practice fabricated and sold so large an amount
+as to prejudice gravely the inland revenue. As there were a million of
+these illicit distillers in the land they formed a powerful element in
+the electorate. The crowded and excited debates affecting their
+interests, in which Radicals and Royalists of the rural districts made
+common cause against Socialists and Clericals of the towns, were in
+striking contrast with the less animated discussions concerning the
+Church. The prime minister, an anti-clerical zealot, bitterly hostile to
+the Church of which he had been a minister, took advantage of the
+relative indifference of parliament and of the nation in matters
+ecclesiastical. The success of M. Combes in his campaign against the
+Church was an example of what energy and pertinacity can do. There was
+no great wave of popular feeling on the question, no mandate given to
+the deputies at the general election or asked for by them. Neither was
+M. Combes a popular leader or a man of genius. He was rather a trained
+politician, with a fixed idea, who knew how to utilize to his ends the
+ability and organization of the extreme anti-clerical element in the
+Chamber, and the weakness of the extreme clerical party. The majority of
+the Chamber did not share the prime minister's animosity towards the
+Church, for which at the same time it had not the least enthusiasm, and
+under the concordatory lead of M. Waldeck-Rousseau it would have been
+content to curb clerical pretensions without having recourse to extreme
+measures of repression. It was, however, equally content to follow the
+less tolerant guidance of M. Combes. Thus, early in the session of 1903
+it approved of his circular forbidding the priests of Brittany to make
+use of the Breton language in their religious instruction under pain of
+losing their salaries. It likewise followed him on the 26th of January
+when he declined to accept, as being premature and unpractical, a
+Socialist resolution in favour of suppressing the budget of public
+worship, though the majority was indeed differently composed on those
+two occasions. In the Senate on the 29th of January M. Waldeck-Rousseau
+indicated what his policy would have been had he retained office, by
+severely criticizing his successor's method of applying the Associations
+Law. Instead of asking parliament to judge on its merits each several
+demand for authorization made by a congregation, the government had
+divided the religious orders into two chief categories, teaching orders
+and preaching orders, and had recommended that all should be suppressed
+by a general refusal of authorization. The Grande Chartreuse was put
+into a category by itself as a trading association and was dissolved;
+but Lourdes, which with its crowds of pilgrims enriched the Pyrenean
+region and the railway companies serving it, was spared for
+electioneering reasons. A dispute arose between the government and the
+Vatican on the nomination of bishops to vacant sees. The Vatican
+insisted on the words "_nobis nominavit_" in the papal bulls instituting
+the bishops nominated by the chief of the executive in France under the
+Concordat. M. Combes objected to the pronoun, and maintained that the
+complete nomination belonged to the French government, the Holy See
+having no choice in the matter, but only the power of canonical
+institution. This produced a deadlock, with the consequence that no more
+bishops were ever again appointed under the Concordat, which both before
+and after the Easter recess M. Combes now threatened to repudiate. These
+menaces derived an increased importance from the failing health of the
+pope. Leo XIII. had attained the great age of ninety-three, and on the
+choice of his successor grave issues depended. He died on the 20th of
+July 1903. The conclave indicated as his successor his secretary of
+state, Cardinal Rampolla, an able exponent of the late pope's diplomatic
+methods and also a warm friend of France. It was said to be the latter
+quality which induced Austria to exercise its ancient power of veto on
+the choice of a conclave, and finally Cardinal Sarto, patriarch of
+Venice, a pious prelate inexperienced in diplomacy, was elected and took
+the title of Pius X. In September the inauguration of a statue of Renan
+at Tréguier, his birthplace, was made the occasion of an anti-clerical
+demonstration in Catholic and reactionary Brittany, at which the prime
+minister made a militant speech in the name of the freethinkers of
+France, though Renan was a Voltairian aristocrat who disliked the aims
+and methods of modern Radical-Socialists. In the course of his speech M.
+Combes pointed out that the anti-clerical policy of the government had
+not caused the Republic to lose prestige in the eyes of the monarchies
+of Europe, which were then showing it unprecedented attentions. This
+assertion was true, and had reference to the visit of the king of
+England to the president of the Republic in May and the projected visit
+of the king of Italy. That of Edward VII., which was the first state
+visit of a British sovereign to France for nearly fifty years, was
+returned by President Loubet in July, and was welcomed by all parties,
+excepting some of the reactionaries. M. Millevoye, a Nationalist deputy
+for Paris, in the _Patrie_ counselled the Parisians to remember Fashoda,
+the Transvaal War, and the attitude of the English in the Dreyfus
+affair, and to greet the British monarch with cries of "_Vivent les
+Boers_." M. Déroulède, the most interesting member of the Nationalist
+party, wrote from his exile at Saint-Sébastien protesting against the
+folly of this proceeding, which merits to be put on record as an example
+of the incorrigible ineptitude of the reactionaries in France. The
+incident served only to prove their complete lack of influence on
+popular feeling, while it damaged the cause of the Church at a most
+critical moment by showing that the only persons in France willing to
+insult a friendly monarch who was the guest of the nation, belonged to
+the clerical party. Of the royal visits that of the king of Italy was
+the more important in its immediate effects on the history of France, as
+will be seen in the narration of the events of 1904.
+
+The session of 1904 began with the election of a new president of the
+Chamber, on the retirement of M. Bourgeois. The choice fell on M. Henri
+Brisson, an old Radical, but not a Socialist, who had held that post in
+1881 and had subsequently filled it on ten occasions, the election to
+the office being annual. The narrow majority he obtained over M. Paul
+Bertrand, a little-known moderate Republican, by secret ballot, followed
+by the defeat of M. Jaurès, the Socialist leader, for one of the
+vice-presidential chairs, showed that one half of the Chamber was of
+moderate tendency. But, as events proved, the Moderates lacked energy
+and leadership, so the influence of the Radical prime minister
+prevailed. In a debate on the 22nd of January on the expulsion of an
+Alsatian priest of French birth from a French frontier department by the
+French police, M. Ribot, who set an example of activity to younger men
+of the moderate groups, reproached M. Combes with reducing all questions
+in which the French nation was interested to the single one of
+anti-clericalism, and the prime minister retorted that it was solely for
+that purpose that he took office. In pursuance of this policy a bill was
+introduced, and was passed by the Chamber before Easter, interdicting
+from teaching all members of religious orders, authorized or not
+authorized. Among other results this law, which the Senate passed in the
+summer, swept out of existence the schools of the Frères de la Doctrine
+Chrétienne (Christian Brothers) and closed in all 2400 schools before
+the end of the year.
+
+
+  Diplomatic crisis with Rome.
+
+This drastic act of anti-clerical policy, which was a total repudiation
+by parliament of the principle of liberty of education, should have
+warned the authorities of the Church of the relentless attitude of the
+government. The most superficial observation ought to have shown them
+that the indifference of the nation would permit the prime minister to
+go to any length, and common prudence should have prevented them from
+affording him any pretext for more damaging measures. The President of
+the Republic accepted an invitation to return the visit of the king of
+Italy. When it was submitted to the Chamber on March 25th, 1904, a
+reactionary deputy moved the rejection of the vote for the expenses of
+the journey on the ground that the chief of the French executive ought
+not to visit the representative of the dynasty which had plundered the
+papacy. The amendment was rejected by a majority of 502 votes to 12,
+which showed that at a time of bitter controversy on ecclesiastical
+questions French opinion was unanimous in approving the visit of the
+president of the Republic to Rome as the guest of the king of Italy.
+Nothing could be more gratifying to the entire French nation, both on
+racial and on traditional grounds, than such a testimony of a complete
+revival of friendship with Italy, of late years obscured by the Triple
+Alliance. Yet the Holy See saw fit to advance pretensions inevitably
+certain to serve the ends of the extreme anti-clericals, whose most
+intolerant acts at that moment, such as the removal of the crucifixes
+from the law-courts, were followed by new electoral successes. Thus the
+reactionary majority on the Paris municipal council was displaced by the
+Radical-Socialists on the 1st of May, the day that M. Loubet returned
+from his visit to Rome. On the 16th of May M. Jaurès' Socialist organ,
+_L'Humanité_, published the text of a protest, addressed by the pope to
+the powers having diplomatic relations with the Vatican, against the
+visit of the president of the Republic to the King of Italy. This
+document, dated the 28th of April, was offensive in tone both to France
+and to Italy. It intimated that while Catholic sovereigns refrained from
+visiting the person who, contrary to right, exercised civil sovereignty
+in Rome, that "duty" was even more "imperious" for the ruler of France
+by reason of the "privileges" enjoyed by that country from the
+Concordat; that the journey of M. Loubet to "pay homage" within the
+pontifical see to that person was an insult to the sovereign pontiff;
+and that only for reasons of special gravity was the nuncio permitted to
+remain in Paris. The publication of this document caused some joy among
+the extreme clericals, but this was nothing to the exultation of the
+extreme anti-clericals, who saw that the prudent diplomacy of Leo XIII.,
+which had risen superior to many a provocation of the French government,
+was succeeded by a papal policy which would facilitate their designs in
+a manner unhoped for. Moderate men were dismayed, seeing that the
+Concordat was now in instant danger; but the majority of the French
+nation remained entirely indifferent to its fate. Within a week France
+took the initiative by recalling the ambassador to the Vatican, M.
+Nisard, leaving a third-secretary in charge. In the debate in the
+Chamber upon the incident, the foreign minister, M. Delcassé, said that
+the ambassador was recalled, not because the Vatican had protested
+against the visit of the president to the king of Italy, but because it
+had communicated this protest, in terms offensive to France, to foreign
+powers. The Chamber on the 27th of May approved the recall of the
+ambassador by the large majority of 420 to 90. By a much smaller
+majority it rejected a Socialist motion that the Nuncio should be given
+his passports. The action of the Holy See was not actually an
+infringement of the Concordat; so the government, satisfied with the
+effect produced on public opinion, which was now quite prepared for a
+rupture with the Vatican, was willing to wait for a new pretext, which
+was not long in coming. Two bishops, Mgr. Geay of Laval and Mgr. Le
+Nordez of Dijon, were on bad terms with the clerical reactionaries in
+their dioceses. The friends of the prelates, including some of their
+episcopal brethren, thought that their chief offence was their loyalty
+to the Republic, and it was an unfortunate coincidence that these
+bishops, subjected to proceedings which had been unknown under the long
+pontificate of Leo XIII., should have been two who had incurred the
+animosity of anti-republicans. Their enemies accused Mgr. Geay of
+immorality and Mgr. Le Nordez of being in league with the freemasons.
+The bishop of Laval was summoned by the Holy Office, without any
+communication with the French government, to resign his see, and he
+submitted the citation forthwith to the minister of public worship. The
+French chargé d'affaires at the Vatican was instructed to protest
+against this grave infringement of an article of the Concordat, and,
+soon after, against another violation of the Concordat committed by the
+Nuncio, who had written to the bishop of Dijon ordering him to suspend
+his ordinations, the Nuncio being limited, like all other ambassadors,
+to communicating the instructions of his government through the
+intermediary of the minister for foreign affairs. The Vatican declined
+to give any satisfaction to the French government and summoned the two
+bishops to Rome under pain of suspension. So the French chargé
+d'affaires was directed to leave Rome, after having informed the Holy
+See that the government of the Republic considered that the mission of
+the apostolic Nuncio in Paris was terminated. Thus came to an end on the
+30th of July 1904 the diplomatic relations which under the Concordat had
+subsisted between France and the Vatican for more than a hundred years.
+
+Twelve days later M. Waldeck-Rousseau died, having lived just long
+enough to see this unanticipated result of his policy. It was said that
+his resolve to regulate the religious associations arose from his
+feeling that whatever injustice had been committed in the Dreyfus case
+had been aggravated by the action of certain unauthorized orders.
+However that may be, his own utterances showed that he believed that his
+policy was one of finality. But he had not reckoned that his
+legislation, which needed hands as calm and impartial as his own to
+apply it, would be used in a manner he had not contemplated by sectarian
+politicians who would be further aided by the self-destructive policy of
+the highest authorities of the Church. When parliament assembled for the
+autumn session a general feeling was expressed, by moderate politicians
+as well as by supporters of the Combes ministry, that disestablishment
+was inevitable. The prime minister said that he had been long in favour
+of it, though the previous year he had intimated to M. Nisard,
+ambassador to the Vatican, that he had not a majority in parliament to
+vote it. But the papacy and the clergy had since done everything to
+change that situation. The Chamber did not move in the matter beyond
+appointing a committee to consider the general question, to which M.
+Combes submitted in his own name a bill for the separation of the
+churches from the State.
+
+
+  War Office difficulties.
+
+During the last three months of 1904 public opinion was diverted to the
+cognate question of the existence of masonic delation in the army. M.
+Guyot de Villeneuve, Nationalist deputy for Saint Denis, who had been
+dismissed from the army by General de Galliffet in connexion with the
+Dreyfus affair, brought before the Chamber a collection of documents
+which, it seemed, had been abstracted from the Grand Orient of France,
+the headquarters of French freemasonry, by an official of that order.
+These papers showed that an elaborate system of espionage and delation
+had been organized by the freemasons throughout France for the purpose
+of obtaining information as to the political opinions and religious
+practices of the officers of the army, and that this system was worked
+with the connivance of certain officials of the ministry of war. Its aim
+appeared to be to ascertain if officers went to mass or sent their
+children to convent schools or in any way were in sympathy with the
+Roman Catholic religion, the names of officers so secretly denounced
+being placed on a black-list at the War Office, whereby they were
+disqualified for promotion. There was no doubt about the authenticity of
+the documents or of the facts which they revealed. Radical ex-ministers
+joined with moderate Republicans and reactionaries in denouncing the
+system. Anti-clerical deputies declared that it was no use to cleanse
+the war office of the influence of the Jesuits, which was alleged to
+have prevailed there, if it were to be replaced by another occult power,
+more demoralizing because more widespread. Only the Socialists and a few
+of the Radical-Socialists in the Chamber supported the action of the
+freemasons. General André, minister of war, was so clearly implicated,
+with the evident approval of the prime minister, that a revulsion of
+feeling against the policy of the anti-clerical cabinet began to operate
+in the Chamber. Had the opposition been wisely guided there can be
+little doubt that a moderate ministry would have been called to office
+and the history of the Church in France might have been changed. But the
+reactionaries, with their accustomed folly, played into the hands of
+their adversaries. The minister of war had made a speech which produced
+a bad impression. As he stepped down from the tribune he was struck in
+the face by a Nationalist deputy for Paris, a much younger man than he.
+The cowardly assault did not save the minister, who was too deeply
+compromised in the delation scandal. But it saved the anti-clerical
+party, by rallying a number of waverers who, until this exhibition of
+reactionary policy, were prepared to go over to the Moderates, from the
+"bloc," as the ministerial majority was called. The Nationalist deputy
+was committed to the assizes on the technical charge of assaulting a
+functionary while performing his official duties. Towards the end of the
+year, on the eve of his trial, he met with a violent death, and the
+circumstances which led to it, when made public, showed that this
+champion of the Church was a man of low morality. General André had
+previously resigned and was succeeded as minister of war by M. Berteaux,
+a wealthy stock-broker and a Socialist.
+
+
+  Fall of the Combes ministry.
+
+The Combes cabinet could not survive the delation scandal, in spite of
+the resignation of the minister of war and the ineptitude of the
+opposition. On the 8th of January 1905, two days before parliament met,
+an election took place in Paris to fill the vacancy caused by the death
+of the Nationalist deputy who had assaulted General André. The
+circumstances of his death, at that time partially revealed, did not
+deter the electors from choosing by a large majority a representative of
+the same party, Admiral Bienaimé, who the previous year had been removed
+for political reasons from the post of maritime prefect at Toulon, by M.
+Camille Pelletan, minister of marine. A more serious check to the Combes
+ministry was given by the refusal of the Chamber to re-elect as
+president M. Brisson, who was defeated by a majority of twenty-five by
+M. Doumer, ex-Governor-General of Indo-China, who, though he had entered
+politics as a Radical, was now supported by the anti-republican
+reactionaries as well as by the moderate Republicans. A violent debate
+arose on the question of expelling from the Legion of Honour certain
+members of that order, including a general officer, who had been
+involved in the delation scandal. M. Jaurès, the eloquent Socialist
+deputy for Albi, who played the part of _Éminence grise_ to M. Combes in
+his anti-clerical campaign, observed that the party which was now
+demanding the purification of the order had been in no hurry to expel
+from it Esterhazy long after his crimes had been proved in connexion
+with the Dreyfus case. The debate was inconclusive, and the government
+on the 14th of January obtained a vote of confidence by a majority of
+six. But M. Combes, whose animosity towards the church was keener than
+his love of office, saw that his ministry would be constantly liable to
+be put in a minority, and that thus the consideration of separation
+might be postponed until after the general elections of 1906. So he
+announced his resignation in an unprecedented manifesto addressed to the
+president of the Republic on the 18th January.
+
+
+  Second Rouvier ministry.
+
+M. Rouvier, minister of finance in the outgoing government, was called
+upon for the second time in his career to form a ministry. A moderate
+opportunist himself, he intended to form a coalition cabinet in which
+all groups of Republicans, from the Centre to the extreme Left, would be
+represented. But he failed, and the ministry of the 24th of January 1905
+contained no members of the Republican opposition which had combated M.
+Combes. The prime minister retained the portfolio of finance; M.
+Delcassé remained at the foreign office, which he had directed since
+1898, and M. Berteaux at the war office; M. Etienne, member for Oran,
+went to the ministry of the interior; another Algerian deputy, M.
+Thomson, succeeded M. Camille Pelletan at the ministry of marine, which
+department was said to have fallen into inefficiency; public worship was
+separated from the department of the interior and joined with that of
+education under M. Bienvenu-Martin, Radical-Socialist deputy for
+Auxerre, who was new to official life. Although M. Rouvier, as befitted
+a politician of the school of Waldeck-Rousseau, disliked the separation
+of the churches from the state, he accepted that policy as inevitable.
+After the action of the Vatican in 1904, which had produced the rupture
+of diplomatic relations with France, many moderates who had been
+persistent in their opposition to the Combes ministry, and even certain
+Nationalists, accepted the principle of separation, but urged that it
+should be effected on liberal terms. So on the 27th of January, after
+the minister of education and public worship had announced that the
+government intended to introduce a separation bill, a vote of confidence
+was obtained by a majority of 373 to 99, half of the majority being
+opponents of the Combes ministry of various Republican and reactionary
+groups, while the minority was composed of 84 Radicals and Socialists
+and only 15 reactionaries.
+
+
+  The Separation Law.
+
+On the 21st of March the debates on the separation of the churches from
+the state began. A commission had been appointed in 1904 to examine the
+subject. Its reporter was M. Aristide Briand, Socialist member for Saint
+Etienne. According to French parliamentary procedure, the reporter of a
+commission, directed to draw up a great scheme of legislation, can make
+himself a more important person in conducting it through a house of
+legislature than the minister in charge of the bill. This is what M.
+Briand succeeded in doing. He produced with rapidity a "report" on the
+whole question, in which he traced with superficial haste the history of
+the Church in France from the baptism of Clovis, and upon this drafted a
+bill which was accepted by the government. He thus at one bound came
+from obscurity into the front rank of politicians, and in devising a
+revolutionary measure learned a lesson of moderate statesmanship. In
+conducting the debates he took the line of throwing the responsibility
+for the rupture of the Concordat on the pope. The leadership of the
+Opposition fell on M. Ribot, who had been twice prime minister of the
+Republic and was not a practising Catholic. He recognized that
+separation had become inevitable,; but argued that it could be
+accomplished as a permanent act only in concert with the Holy See. The
+clerical party in the Chamber did little in defence of the Church. The
+abbés Lemire and Gayraud, the only ecclesiastics in parliament, spoke
+with moderation, and M. Groussau, a Catholic jurist, attacked the
+measure with less temperate zeal; but the best serious defence of the
+interests of the Church came from the Republican centre. Few amendments
+from the extreme Left were accepted by M. Briand, whose general tone was
+moderate and not illiberal. One feature of the debates was the
+reluctance of the prime minister to take part in them, even when
+financial clauses were discussed in which his own office was
+particularly concerned. The bill finally passed the Chamber on the 3rd
+of July by 341 votes against 233, the majority containing a certain
+number of conservative Republicans and Nationalists. At the end the
+Radical-Socialists manifested considerable discontent at the liberal
+tendencies of M. Briand, and declared that the measure as it left the
+Chamber could be considered only provisional. In the Senate it underwent
+no amendment whatever, not a single word being altered. The prime
+minister, M. Rouvier, never once opened his lips during the lengthy
+debates, in the course of which M. Clémenceau, as a philosophical
+Radical who voted for the bill, criticized it as too concordatory, while
+M. Méline, as a moderate Republican, who voted against it, predicted
+that it would create such a state of things as would necessitate new
+negotiations with Rome a few years later. It was finally passed by a
+majority of 181 to 102, the complete number of senators being 300, and
+three days later, on the 9th of December 1905, it was promulgated as law
+by the president of the Republic.
+
+The main features of the act were as follows. The first clauses
+guaranteed liberty of conscience and the free practice of public
+worship, and declared that henceforth the Republic neither recognized
+nor remunerated any form of religion, except in the case of chaplains to
+public schools, hospitals and prisons. It provided that after
+inventories had been taken of the real and personal property in the
+hands of religious bodies, hitherto remunerated by the state, to
+ascertain whether such property belonged to the state, the department,
+or the commune, all such property should be transferred to associations
+of public worship (_associations cultuelles_) established in each
+commune in accordance with the rules of the religion which they
+represented, for the purpose of carrying on the practices of that
+religion. As the Vatican subsequently refused to permit Catholics to
+take part in these associations, the important clauses relating to their
+organization and powers became a dead letter, except in the case of the
+Protestant and Jewish associations, which affected only a minute
+proportion of the religious establishments under the act. Nothing,
+therefore, need be said about them except that the chief discussions in
+the Chamber took place with regard to their constitution, which was so
+amended, contrary to the wishes of the extreme anti-clericals, that many
+moderate critics of the original bill thought that thereby the regular
+practice of the Catholic religion, under episcopal control, had been
+safeguarded. A system of pensions for ministers of religion hitherto
+paid by the state was provided, according to the age and the length of
+service of the ecclesiastics interested, while in small communes of
+under a thousand inhabitants the clergy were to receive in any case
+their full pay for eight years. The bishops' palaces were to be left
+gratuitously at the disposal of the occupiers for two years, and the
+presbyteries and seminaries for five years. This provision too became a
+dead letter, owing to the orders given by the Holy See to the clergy.
+Other provisions enacted that the churches should not be used for
+political meetings, while the services held in them were protected by
+the law from the acts of disturbers. As the plenary operation of the law
+depended on the _associations cultuelles_, the subsequent failure to
+create those bodies makes it useless to give a complete exposition of a
+statute of which they were an essential feature.
+
+The passing of the Separation Law was the chief act of the last year of
+the presidency of M. Loubet. One other important measure has to be
+noted, the law reducing compulsory military service to two years. The
+law of 1889 had provided a general service of three years, with an
+extensive system of dispensations accorded to persons for domestic
+reasons, or because they belonged to certain categories of students,
+such citizens being let off with one year's service with the colours or
+being entirely exempted. The new law exacted two years' service from
+every Frenchman, no one being exempted save for physical incapacity.
+Under the act of 1905 even the cadets of the military college of Saint
+Cyr and of the Polytechnic had to serve in the ranks before entering
+those schools. Anti-military doctrines continued to be encouraged by the
+Socialist party, M. Hervé, the professor who had been revoked in 1901
+for his suggestion of a military strike in case of war and for other
+unpatriotic utterances, being elected a member of the administrative
+committee of the Unified Socialist party, of which M. Jaurès was one of
+the chiefs. At a congress of elementary schoolmasters at Lille in
+August, anti-military resolutions were passed and a general adherence
+was given to the doctrines of M. Hervé. At Longwy, in the Eastern
+coal-field, a strike took place in September, during which the military
+was called out to keep order and a workman was killed in a cavalry
+charge. The minister of war, M. Berteaux, visited the scene of the
+disturbance, and was reported to have saluted the red revolutionary flag
+which was borne by a procession of strikers singing the
+"Internationale."
+
+During the autumn session in November M. Berteaux suddenly resigned the
+portfolio of war during a sitting of the Chamber, and was succeeded by
+M. Etienne, minister of the interior, a moderate politician who inspired
+greater confidence. Earlier in the year other industrial strikes of
+great gravity had taken place, notably at Limoges, among the potters,
+where several deaths took place in a conflict with the troops and a
+factory was burnt. Even more serious were the strikes in the government
+arsenals in November. At Cherbourg and Brest only a small proportion of
+the workmen went out, but at Lorient, Rochefort and especially at Toulon
+the strikes were on a much larger scale. In 1905 solemn warnings were
+given in the Chamber of the coming crisis in the wine-growing regions of
+the South. Radical-Socialists such as M. Doumergue, the deputy for Nîmes
+and a member of the Combes ministry, joined with monarchists such as M.
+Lasies, deputy of the Gers, in calling attention to the distress of the
+populations dependent on the vine. They argued that the wines of the
+South found no market, not because of the alleged over-production, but
+because of the competition of artificial wines; that formerly only
+twenty departments of France were classed in the atlas as
+wine-producing, but that thanks to the progress of chemistry seventy
+departments were now so described. The deputies of the north of France
+and of Paris, irrespective of party, opposed these arguments, and the
+government, while promising to punish fraud, did not seem to take very
+seriously the legitimate warnings of the representatives of the South.
+
+The Republic continued to extend its friendly relations with foreign
+powers, and the end of M. Loubet's term of office was signalized by a
+procession of royal visits to Paris, some of which the president
+returned. At the end of May the king of Spain came and narrowly escaped
+assassination from a bomb which was thrown at him by a Spaniard as he
+was returning with the president from the opera. In October M. Loubet
+returned this visit at Madrid and went on to Lisbon to see the king of
+Portugal, being received by the queen, who was the daughter of the comte
+de Paris and the sister of the duc d'Orléans, both exiled by the
+Republic. In November the king of Portugal came to Paris, and the
+president of the Republic also received during the year less formal
+visits from the kings of England and of Greece.
+
+
+  Resignation of M. Delcassé.
+
+One untoward international event affecting the French ministry occurred
+in June 1905. M. Delcassé (see section on _Exterior Policy_), who had
+been foreign minister longer than any holder of that office under the
+Republic, resigned, and it was believed that he had been sacrificed by
+the prime minister to the exigencies of Germany, which power was said to
+be disquieted at his having, in connexion with the Morocco question,
+isolated Germany by promoting the friendly relations of France with
+England, Spain and Italy. Whether it be true or not that the French
+government was really in alarm at the possibility of a declaration of
+war by Germany, the impression given was unfavourable, nor was it
+removed when M. Rouvier himself took the portfolio of foreign affairs.
+
+
+  M. Fallières president of the Republic.
+
+The year 1906 is remarkable in the history of the Third Republic in that
+it witnessed the renewal of all the public powers in the state. A new
+president of the Republic was elected on the 17th of January ten days
+after the triennial election of one third of the senate, and the general
+election of the chamber of deputies followed in May--the ninth which had
+taken place under the constitution of 1875. The senatorial elections of
+the 7th of January showed that the delegates of the people who chose the
+members of the upper house and represented the average opinion of the
+country approved of the anti-clerical legislation of parliament. The
+election of M. Fallières, president of the senate, to the presidency of
+the Republic was therefore anticipated, he being the candidate of the
+parliamentary majorities which had disestablished the church. At the
+congress of the two chambers held at Versailles on the 17th of January
+he received the absolute majority of 449 votes out of 849 recorded. The
+candidate of the Opposition was M. Paul Doumer, whose anti-clericalism
+in the past was so extreme that when married he had dispensed with a
+religious ceremony and his children were unbaptized. So the curious
+spectacle was presented of the Moderate Opportunist M. Fallières being
+elected by Radicals and Socialists, while the Radical candidate was
+supported by Moderates and Reactionaries. For the second time a
+president of the senate, the second official personage in the Republic,
+was advanced to the chief magistracy, M. Loubet having been similarly
+promoted. As in his case, M. Fallières owed his election to M.
+Clémenceau. When M. Loubet was elected M. Clémenceau had not come to the
+end of his retirement from parliamentary life; but in political circles,
+with his powerful pen and otherwise, he was resuming his former
+influence as a "king-maker." He knew of the precariousness Of Félix
+Faure's health and of the indiscretions of the elderly president. So
+when the presidency suddenly became vacant in January 1899 he had
+already fixed his choice on M. Loubet, as a candidate whose unobtrusive
+name excited no jealousy among the republicans. At that moment, owing to
+the crisis caused by the Dreyfus affair, the Republic needed a safe man
+to protect it against the attacks of the plebiscitary party which had
+been latterly favoured by President Faure. M. Constans, it was said, had
+in 1899 desired the presidency of the senate, vacant by M. Loubet's
+promotion, in preference to the post of ambassador at Constantinople.
+But M. Clémenceau, deeming that his name had been too much associated
+with polemics in the past, contrived the election of M. Fallières to the
+second place of dignity in the Republic, so as to have another safe
+candidate in readiness for the Elysée in case President Loubet suddenly
+disappeared. M. Loubet, however, completed his septennate, and to the
+end of it M. Fallières was regarded as his probable successor. As he
+fulfilled his high duties in the senate inoffensively without making
+enemies among his political friends, he escaped the fate which had
+awaited other presidents-designate of the Republic. Previously to
+presiding over the senate this Gascon advocate, who had represented his
+native Lot-et-Garonne, in either chamber, since 1876, had once been
+prime minister for three weeks in 1883. He had also held office in six
+other ministries, so no politician in France had a larger experience in
+administration and in public affairs.
+
+
+  The Sarrien ministry.
+
+  M. Clèmenceau minister of the interior.
+
+On New Year's Day 1906, the absence of the Nuncio from the presidential
+reception of the diplomatic body marked conspicuously the rupture of the
+Concordat; for hitherto the representative of the Holy See had ranked as
+_doyen_ of the ambassadors to the Republic, whatever the relative
+seniority of his colleagues, and in the name of all the foreign powers
+had officially saluted the chief of the state. On the 20th of January
+the inventories of the churches were commenced, under the 3rd clause of
+the Separation Act, for the purpose of assessing the value of the
+furniture and other objects which they contained. In Paris they
+occasioned some disturbance; but as the protesting rioters were led by
+persons whose hostility to the Republic was more notorious than their
+love for religion, the demonstrations were regarded as political rather
+than religious. In certain rural districts, where the church had
+retained its influence and where its separation from the state was
+unpopular, the taking of the inventories was impeded by the inhabitants,
+and in some places, where the troops were called out to protect the
+civil authorities, further feeling was aroused by the refusal of
+officers to act. But, as a rule, this first manifest operation of the
+Separation Law was received with indifference by the population. One
+region where popular feeling was displayed in favour of the church was
+Flanders, where, in March, at Boeschepe on the Belgian frontier, a man
+was killed during the taking of an inventory. This accident caused the
+fall of the ministry. The moderate Republicans in the Chamber, who had
+helped to keep M. Rouvier in office, withheld their support in a debate
+arising out of the incident, and the government was defeated by
+thirty-three votes. M. Rouvier resigned, and the new president of the
+Republic sent for M. Sarrien, a Radical of the old school from Burgundy,
+who had been deputy for his native Saône-et-Loire from the foundation of
+the Chamber in 1876 and had previously held office in four cabinets. In
+M. Sarrien's ministry of the 14th of March 1906 the president of the
+council was only a minor personage, its real conductor being M.
+Clémenceau, who accepted the portfolio of the interior. Upon him,
+therefore devolved the function of "making the elections" of 1906, as it
+is the minister at the Place Beauvau, where all the wires of
+administrative government are centralized, who gives the orders to the
+prefectures at each general election. As in France ministers sit and
+speak in both houses of parliament, M. Clémenceau, though a senator, now
+returned, after an absence of thirteen years, to the Chamber of
+Deputies, in which he had played a mighty part in the first seventeen
+years of its existence. His political experience was unique. From an
+early period after entering the Chamber in 1876 he had exercised there
+an influence not exceeded by any deputy. Yet it was not until 1906,
+thirty years after his first election to parliament, that he held
+office--though in 1888 he just missed the presidency of the Chamber,
+receiving the same number of votes as M. Méline, to whom the post was
+allotted by right of seniority. He now returned to the tribune of the
+Palais Bourbon, on which he had been a most formidable orator. During
+his career as deputy his eloquence was chiefly destructive, and of the
+nineteen ministries which fell between the election of M. Grévy to the
+presidency of the Republic in 1879 and his own departure from
+parliamentary life in 1893 there were few of which the fall had not been
+expedited by his mordant criticism or denunciation. He now came back to
+the scene of his former achievements not to attack but to defend a
+ministry. Though his old occupation was gone, his re-entry excited the
+keenest interest, for at sixty-five he remained the biggest political
+figure in France. After M. Clémenceau the most interesting of the new
+ministers was M. Briand, who was not nine years old when M. Clémenceau
+had become conspicuous in political life as the mayor of Montmartre on
+the eve of the Commune. M. Briand had entered the Chamber, as Socialist
+deputy for Saint Etienne, only in 1902. The mark he had made as
+"reporter" of the Separation Bill has been noted, and on that account he
+became minister of education and public worship--the terms of the
+Separation Law necessitating the continuation of a department for
+ecclesiastical affairs. As he had been a militant Socialist of the
+"unified" group of which M. Jaurès was the chief, and also a member of
+the superior council of labour, his appointment indicated that the new
+ministry courted the support of the extreme Left. It, however, contained
+some moderate men, notably M. Poincaré, who had the repute of making the
+largest income at the French bar after M. Waldeck-Rousseau gave up his
+practice, and who became for the second time minister of finance. The
+portfolios of the colonies and of public works were also given to old
+ministers of moderate tendencies, M. Georges Leygues and M. Barthou. A
+former prime minister, M. Léon Bourgeois, went to the foreign office,
+over which he had already presided, besides having represented France at
+the peace conference at the Hague; while MM. Étienne and Thomson
+retained their portfolios of war and marine. The cabinet contained so
+many men of tried ability that it was called the ministry of all the
+talents. But the few who understood the origin of the name knew that it
+would be even more ephemeral than was the British ministry of 1806; for
+the fine show of names belonged to a transient combination which could
+not survive the approaching elections long enough to leave any mark in
+politics.
+
+
+  Progress of socialism.
+
+Before the elections took place grave labour troubles showed that social
+and economical questions were more likely to give anxiety to the
+government than any public movement resulting from the disestablishment
+of the church. Almost the first ministerial act of M. Clémenceau was to
+visit the coal basin of the Pas de Calais, where an accident causing
+great loss of life was followed by an uprising of the working population
+of the region, which spread into the adjacent department of the Nord and
+caused the minister of the interior to take unusual precautions to
+prevent violent demonstrations in Paris on Labour Day, the 1st of May.
+The activity of the Socialist leaders in encouraging anti-capitalist
+agitation did not seem to alarm the electorate. Nor did it show any
+sympathy with the appeal of the pope, who in his encyclical letter,
+_Vehementer nos_, addressed to the French cardinals on the 11th of
+February, denounced the Separation Law. So the result of the elections
+of May 1906 was a decisive victory for the anti-clericals and
+Socialists.
+
+A brief analysis of the composition of the Chamber of Deputies is always
+impossible, the limits of the numerous groups being ill-defined. But in
+general terms the majority supporting the radical policy of the _bloc_
+in the last parliament, which had usually mustered about 340 votes, now
+numbered more than 400, including 230 Radical-Socialists and Socialists.
+The gains of the extreme Left were chiefly at the expense of the
+moderate or progressist republicans, who, about 120 strong in the old
+Chamber, now came back little more than half that number. The
+anti-republican Right, comprising Royalists, Bonapartists and
+Nationalists, had maintained their former position and were about 130
+all told. The general result of the polls of the 6th and 20th of May was
+thus an electoral vindication of the advanced policy adopted by the old
+Chamber and a repudiation of moderate Republicanism; while the
+stationary condition of the reactionary groups showed that the
+tribulations inflicted by the last parliament on the church had not
+provoked the electorate to increase its support of clerical politicians.
+
+The Vatican, however, declined to recognize this unmistakable
+demonstration. The bishops, taking advantage of their release from the
+concordatory restrictions which had withheld from them the faculty of
+meeting in assembly, had met at a preliminary conference to consider
+their plan of action under the Separation Law. They had adjourned for
+further instructions from the Holy See, which were published on the 10th
+of August 1906, in a new encyclical _Gravissimo officii_, wherein, to
+the consternation of many members of the episcopate, the pope
+interdicted the _associations cultuelles_, the bodies which, under the
+Separation Law, were to be established in each parish, to hold and to
+organize the church property and finances, and were essential to the
+working of the act. On the 4th of September the bishops met again and
+passed a resolution of submission to the Holy See. In spite of their
+loyalty they could not but deplore an injunction which inevitably would
+cause distress to the large majority of the clergy after the act came
+into operation on the 12th of December 1906. They knew only too well how
+hopeless was the idea that the distress of the clergy would call forth
+any revulsion of popular feeling in France. The excitement of the public
+that summer over a painful clerical scandal in the diocese of Chartres
+showed that the interest taken by the mass of the population in church
+matters was not of a kind which would aid the clergy in their difficult
+situation.
+
+
+  The Clémenceau ministry.
+
+At the close of the parliamentary recess M. Sarrien resigned the
+premiership on the pretext of ill-health, and by a presidential decree
+of the 25th of October 1906 M. Clémenceau, who had been called to fill
+the vacancy, took office. MM. Bourgeois, Poincaré, Etienne and Leygues
+retired with M. Sarrien. The new prime minister placed at the foreign
+office M. Pichon, who had learned politics on the staff of the
+_Justice_, the organ of M. Clémenceau, by whose influence he had entered
+the diplomatic service in 1893, after eight years in the chamber of
+deputies. He had been minister at Pekin during the Boxer rebellion and
+resident at Tunis, and he was now radical senator for the Jura. M.
+Caillaux, a more adventurous financier than M. Rouvier or M. Poincaré,
+who had been Waldeck-Rousseau's minister of finance, resumed that
+office. The most significant appointment was that of General Picquart to
+the war office. The new minister when a colonel had been willing to
+sacrifice his career, although he was an anti-Semite, to redressing the
+injustice which he believed had been inflicted on a Jewish
+officer--whose second condemnation, it may be noted, had been quashed
+earlier in 1906. M. Viviani became the first minister of labour
+(_Travail et Prévoyance sociale_). The creation of the office and the
+appointment of a socialist lawyer and journalist to fill it showed that
+M. Clémenceau recognized the increasing prominence of social and
+industrial questions and the growing power of the trade-unions.
+
+The acts and policy of the Clémenceau ministry and the events which took
+place during the years that it held office are too near the present time
+to be appraised historically. It seems not unlikely that the first
+advent to power, after thirty-five years of strenuous political life, of
+one who must be ranked among the ablest of the twenty-seven prime
+ministers of the Third Republic will be seen to have been coincident
+with an important evolution in the history of the French nation. The
+separation of the Roman Catholic Church from the state, by the law of
+December 1905, had deprived the Socialists, the now most powerful party
+of the extreme Left, of the chief outlet for their activity, which
+hitherto had chiefly found its scope in anti-clericalism. Having no
+longer the church to attack they turned their attention to economical
+questions, the solution of which had always been their theoretical aim.
+At the same period the law relating to the Contract of Association of
+1901, by removing the restrictions (save in the case of religious
+communities) which previously had prevented French citizens from forming
+association without the authorization of the government, had formally
+abrogated the individualistic doctrine of the Revolution, which in all
+its phases was intolerant of associations. The law of June 1791 declared
+the destruction of all corporations of persons engaged in the same trade
+or profession to be a fundamental article of the French constitution,
+and it was only in the last six years of the Second Empire that some
+tolerance was granted to trade-unions, which was extended by the Third
+Republic only in 1884. In that year the prohibition of 1791 was
+repealed. Not quite 70 unions existed at the end of 1884. In 1890 they
+had increased to about 1000, in 1894 to 2000, and in 1901, when the law
+relating to the Contract of Association was passed, they numbered 3287
+with 588,832 members. The law of 1901 did not specially affect them; but
+this general act, completely emancipating all associations formed for
+secular purposes, was a definitive break with the individualism of the
+Revolution which had formed the basis of all legislation in France for
+nearly a century after the fall of the ancient monarchy. It was an
+encouragement and at the same time a symptom of the spread of
+anti-individualistic doctrine. This was seen in the accelerated increase
+of syndicated workmen during the years succeeding the passing of the
+Associations Law, who in 1909 were over a million strong. The power
+exercised by the trade-unions moved the functionaries of the government,
+a vast army under the centralized system of administration, numbering
+not less than 800,000 persons, to demand equal freedom of association
+for the purpose of regulating their salaries paid by the state and their
+conditions of labour. This movement brought into new relief the
+long-recognized incompatibility of parliamentary government with
+administrative centralization as organized by Napoleon.
+
+In another direction the increased activity in the rural districts of
+the Socialists, who hitherto had chiefly worked in the industrial
+centres, indicated that they looked for support from the peasant
+proprietors, whose ownership in the soil had hitherto opposed them to
+the practice of collectivist doctrine. In the summer of 1907 an economic
+crisis in the wine-growing districts of the South created a general
+discontent which spread to other rural regions. The Clémenceau ministry,
+while opposing the excesses of revolutionary socialism and while
+incurring the strenuous hostility of M. Jaurès, the Socialist leader,
+adopted a programme which was more socialistic than that of any previous
+government of the republic. Under its direction a bill for the
+imposition of a graduated income tax was passed by the lower house,
+involving a scheme of direct taxation which would transform the interior
+fiscal system of France. But the income tax was still only a project of
+law when M. Clémenceau unexpectedly fell in July 1909, being succeeded
+as prime minister by his colleague M. Briand. His ministry had, however,
+passed one important measure which individualists regarded as an act of
+state-socialism. It took a long step towards the nationalization of
+railways by purchasing the important Western line and adding it to the
+relatively small system of state railways. Previously a more generally
+criticized act of the representatives of the people was not of a nature
+to augment the popularity of parliamentary institutions at a period of
+economic crisis, when senators and deputies increased their own annual
+salary, or indemnity as it is officially called, to 15,000 francs.
+     (J. E. C. B.)
+
+(Continued in volume X slice VIII.)
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [1] By the _Service géographique de l'armée_.
+
+  [2] The etymology of this name (sometimes wrongly written Golfe de
+    Lyon) is unknown.
+
+  [3] In 1907 deaths were superior in number to births by nearly
+    20,000.
+
+  [4] The following list comprises the three most densely-populated and
+   the three most sparsely populated departments in France:
+
+       _Inhabitants to the Square Mile._
+
+     Seine    20,803  |  Basses-Alpes    42
+     Nord        850  |  Hautes-Alpes    49
+     Rhône       778  |  Lozère          64
+
+  [5] Inspectors are placed at the head of the synodal
+    circumscriptions; their functions are to consecrate candidates for
+    the ministry, install the pastors, &c.
+
+  [6] _Cultures industrielles._--Under this head the French group
+    beetroot, hemp, flax and other plants, the products of which pass
+    through some process of manufacture before they reach the consumer.
+
+  [7] Fibre only. In the years 1896-1905, 8130 tons of hemp-seed and
+    12,137 tons of flax-seed was the average annual production in
+    addition to fibre.
+
+  [8] The chief breeds of horses are the _Boulonnais_ (heavy draught),
+    the _Percheron_ (light and heavy draught), the _Anglo-Norman_ (light
+    draught and heavy cavalry) and the _Tarbais_ of the western Pyrenees
+    (saddle horses and light cavalry). Of cattle besides the breeds named
+    the _Norman_ (beef and milk), the _Limousin_ (beef), the
+    _Montbéliard_, the _Bazadais_, the _Flamand_, the _Breton_ and the
+    _Parthenais_ breeds may be mentioned.
+
+  [9] The department is also entrusted with surveillance over
+    river-fishing, pisciculture and the amelioration of pasture.
+
+  [10] The metric ton = 1000 kilogrammes or 2204 lb.
+
+  [11] Includes manufactories of glue, tallow, soap, perfumery,
+    fertilizers, soda, &c.
+
+  [12] See the _Guide officiel de la navigation intérieure_ issued by
+    the ministry of public works (Paris, 1903).
+
+  [13] Includes horses, mules and asses.
+
+  [14] Except certain manufactures which come under the category of
+    articles of food.
+
+  [15] Includes small fancy wares, toys, also wooden wares and
+    furniture, brushes, &c.
+
+  [16] Decrease largely due to Spanish-American War (1898).
+
+  [17] The administration of posts, telegraphs and telephones is
+    assigned to the ministry of commerce and industry or to that of
+    public works.
+
+  [18] The province or provinces named are those out of which the
+    department was chiefly formed.
+
+  [19] The tax on land (_propriétés non bâties_) and that on buildings
+    (_propriétés bâties_) are included under the head of _contribution
+    foncière_.
+
+  [20] With revenues of over £1200.
+
+  [21] For a history of the French debt, see C.F. Bastable, _Public
+    Finance_ (1903).
+
+  [22] In 1894 the rentes then standing at 4½% were reduced to 3½%, and
+    in 1902 to 3%.
+
+  [23] Algerian native troops are recruited by voluntary enlistment.
+    But in 1908, owing to the prevailing want of trained soldiers in
+    France, it was proposed to set free the white troops in Algeria by
+    applying the principles of universal service to the natives, as in
+    Tunis.
+
+  [24] Kerguelen lies in the Great Southern Ocean, but is included here
+    for the sake of convenience.
+
+  [25] In 1906 the number of registered electors in these colonies was
+    199,055, of whom 106,695 exercised their suffrage.
+
+  [26] In the case of Madagascar by decree of the 11th of December
+    1895.
+
+  [27] The Indo-China budget is reckoned in piastres, a silver coin of
+    fluctuating value (1s. 10d. to 2s.). The budget of 1907 balanced at
+    50,000,000 piastres.
+
+  [28] St Eligius, bishop of Noyon, apostle of the Belgians and
+    Frisians (d. 659?).
+
+  [29] The _assurement_ (_assecuratio_, _assecuramentum_) differed from
+    the truce, which was a suspension of hostilities by mutual consent,
+    in so far as it was a peace forced by judicial authority on one of
+    the parties at the request of the other. The party desiring
+    protection applied for the _assurement_, either before or during
+    hostilities, to any royal, seigniorial or communal judge, who
+    thereupon cited the other party to appear and take an oath that he
+    would assure the person, property and dependents of his adversary
+    (_qu'il l'assurera, elle et les siens_). This custom, which became
+    common in the 13th century, of course depended for its effectiveness
+    on the degree of respect inspired in the feudal nobles by the courts.
+    It was difficult, for instance, to refuse or to violate an
+    _assurement_ imposed by a royal _bailli_ or by the parlement itself.
+    See A. Luchaire, _Manuel des institutions françaises_ (Paris, 1892),
+    p. 233.--(W. A. P.)
+
+  [30] Earl of Richmond; afterwards Arthur, duke of Brittany (q.v.).
+
+  [31] Olivier de Serres, sieur de Pradel, spent most of his life on
+    his model farm at Pradel. In 1599 he dedicated a pamphlet on the
+    cultivation of silk to Henry IV., and in 1600 published his _Théâtre
+    d'agriculture et ménage des champs_, which passed through nineteen
+    editions up to 1675.
+
+  [32] Ferdinand is reported to have said: "Le capucin m'a désarmé avec
+    son scapulaire et a mis dans capuchon six bonnets électoraux."
+
+  [33] Jean Orry Louis Orry de Fulvy (1703-1751), counsel to the
+    parlement in 1723, intendant of finances in 1737, founded at
+    Vincennes the manufactory of porcelain which was bought in 1750 by
+    the farmers general and transferred to Sèvres.
+
+  [34] Louis Robert Hippolyte de Bréhan, comte de Plélo (1699-1734), a
+    Breton by birth, originally a soldier, was at the time of the siege
+    of Danzig French ambassador to Denmark. Enraged at the return to
+    Copenhagen, without having done anything, of the French force sent to
+    help Stanislaus, he himself led it back to Danzig and fell in an
+    attack on the Russians on the 27th of May 1734. Plélo was a poet of
+    considerable charm, and well-read both in science and literature.
+
+    See Marquis de Bréhan, _Le Comte de Plélo_ (Nantes, 1874); R.
+    Rathery, _Le Comte de Plélo_ (Paris, 1876); and P. Boyé, _Stanislaus
+    Leszczynski et le troisième traité de Vienne_ (Paris, 1898).
+
+  [35] Charles Laure Hugues Théobald, duc de Choiseul-Praslin
+    (1805-1847), was deputy in 1839, created a peer of France in 1840. He
+    had married a daughter of General Sebastiani, with whom he lived on
+    good terms till 1840, when he entered into open relations with his
+    children's governess. The duchess threatened a separation; and the
+    duke consented to send his mistress out of the house, but did not
+    cease to correspond with and visit her. On the 18th of August 1847
+    the duchess was found stabbed to death, with more than thirty wounds,
+    in her room. The duke was arrested on the 20th and imprisoned in the
+    Luxembourg, where he died of poison, self-administered on the 24th.
+    It was, however, popularly believed that the government had smuggled
+    him out of the country and that he was living under a feigned name in
+    England.
+
+  [36] T.T. de Martens, _Recueil des traités, &c._, xii. 248.
+
+  [37] In the 14th volume of his _L'Empire libéral_ (1909) M. Émile
+    Ollivier gives a detailed and illuminating account of the events that
+    led up to the war. He indignantly denies that he ever said that he
+    contemplated it "with a light heart," and says that he disapproved of
+    Gramont's demand for "guarantees," to which he was not privy. His
+    object is to prove that France was entrapped by Bismarck into a
+    position in which she was bound in honour to declare war. (ED.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th
+Edition, Volume 10, Slice 7, by Various
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition,
+Volume 10, Slice 7, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 7
+       "Fox, George" to "France"
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2011 [EBook #36104]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYC. BRITANNICA, VOL 10 SL 7 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="10" style="background-color: #dcdcdc; color: #696969; " summary="Transcriber's note">
+<tr>
+<td style="width:25%; vertical-align:top">
+Transcriber&rsquo;s note:
+</td>
+<td class="norm">
+A few typographical errors have been corrected. They
+appear in the text <span class="correction" title="explanation will pop up">like this</span>, and the
+explanation will appear when the mouse pointer is moved over the marked
+passage. Sections in Greek will yield a transliteration
+when the pointer is moved over them, and words using diacritic characters in the
+Latin Extended Additional block, which may not display in some fonts or browsers, will
+display an unaccented version. <br /><br />
+<a name="artlinks">Links to other EB articles:</a> Links to articles residing in other EB volumes will
+be made available when the respective volumes are introduced online.
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<h2>THE ENCYCLOP&AElig;DIA BRITANNICA</h2>
+
+<h2>A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION</h2>
+
+<h3>ELEVENTH EDITION</h3>
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h3>VOLUME X SLICE VII<br /><br />
+Fox, George to France</h3>
+<hr class="full" />
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p class="center1" style="font-size: 150%; font-family: 'verdana';">Articles in This Slice</p>
+<table class="reg" style="width: 90%; font-size: 90%; border: gray 2px solid;" cellspacing="8" summary="Contents">
+
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar1">FOX, GEORGE</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar14">FRAGONARD, JEAN-HONORÉ</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar2">FOX, RICHARD</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar15">FRAHN, CHRISTIAN MARTIN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar3">FOX, RORERT WERE</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar16">FRAME</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar4">FOX, SIR STEPHEN</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar17">FRAMINGHAM</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar5">FOX, SIR WILLIAM</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar18">FRAMLINGHAM</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar6">FOX</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar19">FRANC</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar7">FOXE, JOHN</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar20">FRANÇAIS, ANTOINE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar8">FOXGLOVE</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar21">FRANÇAIS, FRANÇOIS LOUIS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar9">FOX INDIANS</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar22">FRANCATELLI, CHARLES ELMÉ</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar10">FOX MORCILLO, SEBASTIAN</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar23">FRANCAVILLA FONTANA</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar11">FOY, MAXIMILIEN SÉBASTIEN</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar24">FRANCE, ANATOLE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar12">FRAAS, KARL NIKOLAS</a></td> <td class="tcl"><a href="#ar25">FRANCE</a> (part)</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl"><a href="#ar13">FRACASTORO, GIROLAMO</a></td> <td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page765" id="page765"></a>765</span></p>
+<p><span class="bold">FOX, GEORGE<a name="ar1" id="ar1"></a></span> (1624-1691), the founder of the &ldquo;Society of
+Friends&rdquo; or &ldquo;Quakers,&rdquo; was born at Drayton, Leicestershire,
+in July 1624. His father, Christopher Fox, called by the neighbours
+&ldquo;Righteous Christer,&rdquo; was a weaver by occupation;
+and his mother, Mary Lago, &ldquo;an upright woman and accomplished
+above most of her degree,&rdquo; was &ldquo;of the stock of the
+martyrs.&rdquo; George from his childhood &ldquo;appeared of another
+frame than the rest of his brethren, being more religious, inward,
+still, solid and observing beyond his years&rdquo;; and he himself
+declares: &ldquo;When I came to eleven years of age I knew pureness
+and righteousness; for while a child I was taught how to walk
+to be kept pure.&rdquo; Some of his relations wished that he should
+be educated for the ministry; but his father apprenticed him to
+a shoemaker, who also dealt in wool and cattle. In this service
+he remained till his nineteenth year. According to Penn, &ldquo;he
+took most delight in sheep,&rdquo; but he himself simply says: &ldquo;A
+good deal went through my hands.... People had generally
+a love to me for my innocency and honesty.&rdquo; In 1643, being
+upon business at a fair, and having accompanied some friends
+to the village public-house, he was troubled by a proposal to
+&ldquo;drink healths,&rdquo; and withdrew in grief of spirit. &ldquo;When I
+had done what business I had to do I returned home, but did
+not go to bed that night, nor could I sleep, but sometimes
+walked up and down, and sometimes prayed and cried to the
+Lord, who said unto me, &lsquo;Thou seest how young people go
+together into vanity and old people into the earth; thou must
+forsake all, both young and old, and keep out of all, and be a
+stranger unto all.&rsquo; Then, at the command of God, on the ninth
+day of the seventh month, 1643, I left my relations and broke
+off all familiarity or fellowship with old or young.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Thus briefly he describes what appears to have been the
+greatest moral crisis in his life. The four years which followed
+were a time of great perplexity and distress, though sometimes
+&ldquo;I had intermissions, and was sometimes brought into such a
+heavenly joy that I thought I had been in Abraham&rsquo;s bosom.&rdquo;
+He would go from town to town, &ldquo;travelling up and down as a
+stranger in the earth, which way the Lord inclined my heart;
+taking a chamber to myself in the town where I came, and
+tarrying sometimes a month, more or less, in a place&rdquo;; and the
+reason he gives for this migratory habit is that he was &ldquo;afraid
+both of professor and profane, lest, being a tender young man,
+he should be hurt by conversing much with either.&rdquo; The same
+fear often led him to shun all society for days at a time; but
+frequently he would apply to &ldquo;professors&rdquo; for spiritual direction
+and consolation. These applications, however, never proved
+successful; he invariably found that his advisers &ldquo;possessed
+not what they professed.&rdquo; Some recommended marriage,
+others enlistment as a soldier in the civil wars; one &ldquo;ancient
+priest&rdquo; bade him take tobacco and sing psalms; another of
+the same fraternity, &ldquo;in high account,&rdquo; advised physic and
+blood-letting.</p>
+
+<p>About the beginning of 1646 his thoughts began to take more
+definite shape. One day, approaching Coventry, &ldquo;the Lord
+opened to him&rdquo; that none were true believers but such as were
+born of God and had passed from death unto life; and this was
+soon followed by other &ldquo;openings&rdquo; to the effect that &ldquo;being
+bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough to fit and qualify
+men to be ministers of Christ,&rdquo; and that &ldquo;God who made the
+world did not dwell in temples made with hands.&rdquo; He also
+experienced deeper manifestations of Christ within his own
+soul. &ldquo;When I myself was in the deep, shut up under all [the
+burden of corruptions], I could not believe that I should ever
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page766" id="page766"></a>766</span>
+overcome; my troubles, my sorrows and my temptations
+were so great that I thought many times I should have despaired,
+I was so tempted. But when Christ opened to me how He was
+tempted by the same devil, and overcame him and bruised his
+head, and that through Him, and His power, light, grace and
+spirit, I should overcome also, I had confidence in Him; so He
+it was that opened to me, when I was shut up and had no hope
+nor faith. Christ, who had enlightened me, gave me His light
+to believe in; He gave me hope which He himself revealed in
+me; and He gave me His spirit and grace, which I found
+sufficient in the deeps and in weakness.&rdquo; In 1647 he records
+that at a time when all outward help had failed &ldquo;I heard a
+voice which said, &lsquo;There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can
+speak to thy condition.&rsquo; And when I heard it my heart did
+leap for joy.&rdquo; In the same year he first openly declared his
+message in the neighbourhood of Dukinfield and Manchester
+(see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Friends, Society of</a></span>).</p>
+
+<p>In 1649, as he was walking towards Nottingham, he heard the
+bell of the &ldquo;steeple house&rdquo; of the city, and was admonished
+by an inward voice to go forward and cry against the great idol
+and the worshippers in it. Entering the church he found the
+preacher engaged in expounding the words, &ldquo;We have also a
+more sure word of prophecy,&rdquo; from which the ordinary Protestant
+doctrine of the supreme authority of Scripture was being enforced
+in a manner which appeared to Fox so defective or erroneous
+as to call for his immediate and most energetic protest. Lifting
+up his voice against the preacher&rsquo;s doctrine, he declared that it
+is not by the Scripture alone, but by the divine light by which
+the Scriptures were given, that doctrines ought to be judged.
+He was carried off to prison, where he was detained for some
+time, and from which he was released only by the favour of the
+sheriff, whose sympathies he had succeeded in enlisting. In
+1650 he was imprisoned for about a year at Derby on a charge
+of blasphemy. On his release, overwrought and weakened
+by six months spent &ldquo;in the common gaol and dungeon,&rdquo; he
+performed what was almost the only and certainly the most
+pronounced act of his life which had the appearance of wild
+fanaticism. Through the streets of Lichfield, on market day,
+he walked barefoot, crying, &ldquo;Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield.&rdquo;
+His own explanation of the act, connecting it with the
+martyrdom of a thousand Christians in the time of Diocletian,
+is not convincing. His proceeding was probably due to a
+horror of the city arising from a subconscious memory of what
+he must have heard in childhood from his mother (&ldquo;of the
+stock of the martyrs&rdquo;) concerning a martyr, a woman, burnt
+in the reign of Mary at Lichfield, who had been taken thither
+from Mancetter, a village two miles from his home in which
+he had worked as a journeyman shoemaker (see <i>The Martyrs
+Glover and Lewis of Mancetter</i>, by the Rev. B. Richings). He
+must also have heard of the burning of Edward Wightman in
+the same city in 1612, the last person burned for heresy in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>It would be here out of place to follow with any minuteness
+the details of his subsequent imprisonments, such as that at
+Carlisle in 1653; London 1654; Launceston 1656; Lancaster
+1660, and again in 1663, whence he was taken to Scarborough
+in 1665; and Worcester 1673. During these terms of imprisonment
+his pen was not idle, as is amply shown by the very
+numerous letters, pastorals and exhortations which have been
+preserved; while during his intervals of liberty he was unwearied
+in the work of &ldquo;declaring truth&rdquo; in all parts of the country.
+In 1669 he married Margaret, widow of Judge Fell, of Swarthmoor,
+near Ulverston, who, with her family, had been among
+his earliest converts. In 1671 he visited Barbados, Jamaica,
+and the American continent, and shortly after his return in 1673
+he was, as has been already noted, apprehended in Worcestershire
+for attending meetings that were forbidden by the law.
+At Worcester he suffered a captivity of nearly fourteen months.
+In 1677 he visited Holland along with Barclay, Penn and seven
+others; and this visit he repeated (with five others) in 1684.
+The later years of his life were spent mostly in London, where
+he continued to speak in public, comparatively unmolested,
+until within a few days of his death, which took place on the
+13th of January 1691 (1690 O.S.).</p>
+
+<p>William Penn has left on record an account of Fox from
+personal knowledge&mdash;a <i>Brief Account of the Rise and Progress
+of the People called Quakers</i>, written as a preface to Fox&rsquo;s <i>Journal</i>.
+Although a man of large size and great bodily strength, he was
+&ldquo;very temperate, eating little and sleeping less.&rdquo; He was a
+man of strong personality, of measured utterance, &ldquo;civil&rdquo;
+(says Penn) &ldquo;beyond all forms of breeding.&rdquo; From his <i>Journal</i>
+we gather that he had piercing eyes and a very loud voice, and
+wore good clothes. Unlike the Roundheads, he wore his hair
+long. Even before his marriage with Margaret Fell he seems
+to have been fairly well off; he does not appear to have worked
+for a living after he was nineteen, and yet he had a horse, and
+speaks of having money to give to those who were in need. He
+had much practical common-sense, and keen sympathy for all
+who were in distress and for animals. The mere fact that he
+was able to attract to himself so considerable a body of respectable
+followers, including such men as Ellwood, Barclay,
+Penington and Penn, is sufficient to prove that he possessed
+in a very eminent degree the power of conviction, persuasion,
+and moral ascendancy; while of his personal uprightness,
+single-mindedness and sincerity there can be no question.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>The writings of Fox are enumerated in Joseph Smith&rsquo;s <i>Catalogue
+of Friends&rsquo; Books</i>. The <i>Journal</i> is especially interesting; of it Sir
+James Mackintosh has said that &ldquo;it is one of the most extraordinary
+and instructive narratives in the world, which no reader of competent
+judgment can peruse without revering the virtue of the writer.&rdquo;
+The <i>Journal</i> was originally published in London in 1694; the
+edition known as the Bicentenary Edition, with notes biographical
+and historical (reprint of 1901 or later), will be found the most
+useful in practice. An exact transcript of the <i>Journal</i> has been
+issued by the Cambridge University Press. A <i>Life of George Fox</i>,
+by Dr Thomas Hodgkin; <i>The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall</i>, by Maria
+Webb; and <i>The Life and Character of George Fox</i>, by John Stephenson
+Rowntree, are valuable. For a mention of other works, and for
+details of the principles and history of the Society of Friends, together
+with some further information about Fox, see the article
+<span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Friends, Society of</a></span>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="author">(A. N. B.)</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FOX, RICHARD<a name="ar2" id="ar2"></a></span> (<i>c</i>. 1448-1528), successively bishop of Exeter,
+Bath and Wells, Durham, and Winchester, lord privy seal, and
+founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was born about 1448
+at Ropesley near Grantham, Lincolnshire. His parents belonged
+to the yeoman class, and there is some obscurity about Fox&rsquo;s
+early career. It is not known at what school he was educated,
+nor at what college, though the presumption is in favour of
+Magdalen, Oxford, whence he drew so many members of his
+subsequent foundation, Corpus Christi. He also appears to
+have studied at Cambridge, but nothing definite is known of
+the first <span class="correction" title="amended from thiry-five">thirty-five</span> years of his career. In 1484 he was in Paris,
+whether merely for the sake of learning or because he had
+rendered himself obnoxious to Richard III. is a matter of speculation.
+At any rate he was brought into contact with the earl of
+Richmond, who was then beginning his quest for the English
+throne, and was taken into his service. In January 1485 Richard
+intervened to prevent Fox&rsquo;s appointment to the vicarage of
+Stepney on the ground that he was keeping company with the
+&ldquo;great rebel, Henry ap Tuddor.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The important offices conferred on Fox immediately after
+the battle of Bosworth imply that he had already seen more
+extensive political service than can be traced in records. Doubtless
+Henry VII. had every reason to reward his companions in
+exile, and to rule like Ferdinand of Aragon by means of lawyers
+and churchmen rather than trust nobles like those who had
+made the Wars of the Roses. But without an intimate knowledge
+of Fox&rsquo;s political experience and capacity he would hardly have
+made him his principal secretary, and soon afterwards lord
+privy seal and bishop of Exeter (1487). The ecclesiastical
+preferment was merely intended to provide a salary not at
+Henry&rsquo;s expense; for Fox never saw either Exeter or the diocese
+of Bath and Wells to which he was translated in 1492. His
+activity was confined to political and especially diplomatic
+channels; so long as Morton lived, Fox was his subordinate,
+but after the archbishop&rsquo;s death he was second to none in Henry&rsquo;s
+confidence, and he had an important share in all the diplomatic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page767" id="page767"></a>767</span>
+work of the reign. In 1487 he negotiated a treaty with James
+III. of Scotland, in 1491 he baptized the future Henry VIII.,
+in 1492 he helped to conclude the treaty of Etaples, and in 1497
+he was chief commissioner in the negotiations for the famous
+commercial agreement with the Netherlands which Bacon seems
+to have been the first to call the <i>Magnus Intercursus</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile in 1494 Fox had been translated to Durham,
+not merely because it was a richer see than Bath and Wells
+but because of its political importance as a palatine earldom
+and its position with regard to the Borders and relations with
+Scotland. For these reasons rather than from any ecclesiastical
+scruples Fox visited and resided in his new diocese; and he
+occupied Norham Castle, which he fortified and defended against
+a Scottish raid in Perkin Warbeck&rsquo;s interests (1497). But his
+energies were principally devoted to pacific purposes. In that
+same year he negotiated Perkin&rsquo;s retirement from the court of
+James IV., and in 1498-1499 he completed the negotiations
+for that treaty of marriage between the Scottish king and
+Henry&rsquo;s daughter Margaret which led ultimately to the union
+of the two crowns in 1603 and of the two kingdoms in 1707.
+The marriage itself did not take place until 1503, just a century
+before the accession of James I.</p>
+
+<p>This consummated Fox&rsquo;s work in the north, and in 1501 he
+was once more translated to Winchester, then reputed the
+richest bishopric in England. In that year he brought to a
+conclusion marriage negotiations not less momentous in their
+ultimate results, when Prince Arthur was betrothed to Catherine
+of Aragon. His last diplomatic achievement in the reign of
+Henry VII. was the betrothal of the king&rsquo;s younger daughter
+Mary to the future emperor Charles V. In 1500 he was elected
+chancellor of Cambridge University, an office not confined to
+noble lords until a much more democratic age, and in 1507
+master of Pembroke Hall in the same university. The Lady
+Margaret Beaufort made him one of her executors, and in this
+capacity as well as in that of chancellor, he had the chief share
+with Fisher in regulating the foundation of St John&rsquo;s College
+and the Lady Margaret professorships and readerships. His
+financial work brought him a less enviable notoriety, though a
+curious freak of history has deprived him of the credit which
+is his due for &ldquo;Morton&rsquo;s fork.&rdquo; The invention of that ingenious
+dilemma for extorting contributions from poor and rich alike
+is ascribed as a tradition to Morton by Bacon; but the story
+is told in greater detail of Fox by Erasmus, who says he had it
+from Sir Thomas More, a well-informed contemporary authority.
+It is in keeping with the somewhat malicious saying about Fox
+reported by Tyndale that he would sacrifice his father to save
+his king, which after all is not so damning as Wolsey&rsquo;s dying
+words.</p>
+
+<p>The accession of Henry VIII. made no immediate difference
+to Fox&rsquo;s position. If anything, the substitution of the careless
+pleasure-loving youth for Henry VII. increased the power of
+his ministry, the personnel of which remained unaltered. The
+Venetian ambassador calls Fox &ldquo;alter rex&rdquo; and the Spanish
+ambassador Carroz says that Henry VIII. trusted him more than
+any other adviser, although he also reports Henry&rsquo;s warning
+that the bishop of Winchester was, as his name implied, &ldquo;a fox
+indeed.&rdquo; He was the chief of the ecclesiastical statesmen who
+belonged to the school of Morton, believed in frequent parliaments,
+and opposed the spirited foreign policy which laymen
+like Surrey are supposed to have advocated. His colleagues
+were Warham and Ruthal, but Warham and Fox differed on
+the question of Henry&rsquo;s marriage. Fox advising the completion
+of the match with Catherine while Warham expressed doubts
+as to its canonical validity. They also differed over the prerogatives
+of Canterbury with regard to probate and other
+questions of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.</p>
+
+<p>Wolsey&rsquo;s rapid rise in 1511 put an end to Fox&rsquo;s influence.
+The pacific policy of the first two years of Henry VIII.&rsquo;s reign
+was succeeded by an adventurous foreign policy directed mainly
+against France; and Fox complained that no one durst do
+anything in opposition to Wolsey&rsquo;s wishes. Gradually Warham
+and Fox retired from the government; the occasion of Fox&rsquo;s
+resignation of the privy seal was Wolsey&rsquo;s ill-advised attempt
+to drive Francis I. out of Milan by financing an expedition led
+by the emperor Maximilian in 1516. Tunstall protested, Wolsey
+took Warham&rsquo;s place as chancellor, and Fox was succeeded by
+Ruthal, who, said the Venetian ambassador, &ldquo;sang treble to
+Wolsey&rsquo;s bass.&rdquo; He bore Wolsey no ill-will, and warmly congratulated
+him two years later when warlike adventures were
+abandoned at the peace of London. But in 1522 when war was
+again declared he emphatically refused to bear any part of the
+responsibility, and in 1523 he opposed in convocation the
+financial demands which met with a more strenuous resistance
+in the House of Commons.</p>
+
+<p>He now devoted himself assiduously to his long-neglected
+episcopal duties. He expressed himself as being as anxious
+for the reformation of the clergy as Simeon for the coming of
+the Messiah; but while he welcomed Wolsey&rsquo;s never-realized
+promises, he was too old to accomplish much himself in the way
+of remedying the clerical and especially the monastic depravity,
+licence and corruption he deplored. His sight failed during the
+last ten years of his life, and there is no reason to doubt Matthew
+Parker&rsquo;s story that Wolsey suggested his retirement from his
+bishopric on a pension. Fox replied with some warmth, and
+Wolsey had to wait until Fox&rsquo;s death before he could add
+Winchester to his archbishopric of York and his abbey of St
+Albans, and thus leave Durham vacant as he hoped for the
+illegitimate son on whom (aged 18) he had already conferred
+a deanery, four archdeaconries, five prebends and a chancellorship.</p>
+
+<p>The crown of Fox&rsquo;s career was his foundation of Corpus Christi
+College, which he established in 1515-1516. Originally he intended
+it as an Oxford house for the monks of St Swithin&rsquo;s,
+Winchester; but he is said to have been dissuaded by Bishop
+Oldham, who denounced the monks and foretold their fall. The
+scheme adopted breathed the spirit of the Renaissance; provision
+was made for the teaching of Greek, Erasmus lauded the institution
+and Pole was one of its earliest fellows. The humanist
+Vives was brought from Italy to teach Latin, and the reader
+in theology was instructed to follow the Greek and Latin Fathers
+rather than the scholastic commentaries. Fox also built and
+endowed schools at Taunton and Grantham, and was a benefactor
+to numerous other institutions. He died at Wolvesey on the
+5th of October 1528; Corpus possesses several portraits and
+other relics of its founder.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>See <i>Letters and Papers of Henry VII. and Henry VIII.</i>, vols. i.-iv.;
+<i>Spanish and Venetian Calendars of State Papers</i>; Gairdner&rsquo;s <i>Lollardy
+and the Reformation and Church History 1485-1558</i>; Pollard&rsquo;s
+<i>Henry VIII.</i>; Longman&rsquo;s Political History, vol. v.; other authorities
+cited in the article by Dr T. Fowler (formerly president of Corpus) in
+the <i>Dict. Nat. Biog.</i></p>
+</div>
+<div class="author">(A. F. P.)</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FOX, RORERT WERE<a name="ar3" id="ar3"></a></span> (1789-1877), English geologist and
+natural philosopher, was born at Falmouth on the 26th of April
+1789. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and was
+descended from members who had long settled in Cornwall,
+although he was not related to George Fox who had introduced
+the community into the county. He was distinguished for his
+researches on the internal temperature of the earth, being the
+first to prove that the heat increased definitely with the depth;
+his observations being conducted in Cornish mines from 1815
+for a period of forty years. In 1829 he commenced a series of
+experiments on the artificial production of miniature metalliferous
+veins by means of the long-continued influence of electric
+currents, and his main results were published in <i>Observations
+on Mineral Veins</i> (<i>Rep. Royal Cornwall Polytech. Soc.</i>, 1836).
+He was one of the founders in 1833 of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic
+Society. He constructed in 1834 an improved form of
+deflector dipping needle. In 1848 he was elected F.R.S. His
+garden at Penjerrick near Falmouth became noted for the
+number of exotic plants which he had naturalized. He died on
+the 25th of July 1877. (See <i>A Catalogue of the Works of Robert
+Were Fox, F.R.S., with a Sketch of his Life</i>, by J.H. Collins,
+1878.)</p>
+
+<p>His daughter, <span class="sc">Caroline Fox</span> (1819-1871), born at Falmouth
+on the 24th of May 1819, is well known as the authoress of a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page768" id="page768"></a>768</span>
+diary, recording memories of many distinguished people, such
+as John Stuart Mill, John Sterling and Carlyle. Selections from
+her diary and correspondence (1835-1871) were published under
+the title of <i>Memories of Old Friends</i> (ed. by H.N. Pym, 1881;
+2nd ed., 1882). She died on the 12th of January 1871.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FOX, SIR STEPHEN<a name="ar4" id="ar4"></a></span> (1627-1716), English statesman, born
+on the 27th of March 1627, was the son of William Fox, of
+Farley, in Wiltshire, a yeoman farmer. At the age of fifteen he
+first obtained a situation in the household of the earl of Northumberland;
+then he entered the service of Lord Percy, the earl&rsquo;s
+brother, and was present with the royalist army at the battle
+of Worcester as Lord Percy&rsquo;s deputy at the ordnance board.
+Accompanying Charles II. in his flight to the continent, he was
+appointed manager of the royal household, on Clarendon&rsquo;s
+recommendation as &ldquo;a young man bred under the severe
+discipline of Lord Percy ... very well qualified with languages,
+and all other parts of clerkship, honesty and discretion.&rdquo; The
+skill with which he managed the exiguous finances of the exiled
+court earned him further confidence and promotion. He was
+employed on several important missions, and acted eventually
+as intermediary between the king and General Monk. Honours
+and emolument were his reward after the Restoration; he was
+appointed to the lucrative offices of first clerk of the board of
+green cloth and paymaster-general of the forces. In November
+1661 he became member of parliament for Salisbury. In 1665
+he was knighted, was returned as M. P. for Westminster on the
+27th of February 1679, and succeeded the earl of Rochester as
+a commissioner of the treasury, filling that office for twenty-three
+years and during three reigns. In 1680 he resigned the paymastership
+and was made first commissioner of horse. In 1684
+he became sole commissioner of horse. He was offered a peerage
+by James II., on condition of turning Roman Catholic, but
+refused, in spite of which he was allowed to retain his commissionerships.
+In 1685 he was again M. P. for Salisbury, and
+opposed the bill for a standing army supported by the king.
+During the Revolution he maintained an attitude of decent
+reserve, but on James&rsquo;s flight, submitted to William III., who
+confirmed him in his offices. He was again elected for Westminster
+in 1691 and 1695, for Cricklade in 1698, and finally in
+1713 once more for Salisbury. He died on the 28th of October
+1716. It is his distinction to have founded Chelsea hospital,
+and to have contributed £13,000 in aid of this laudable public
+work. Though his place as a statesman is in the second or even
+the third rank, yet he was a useful man in his generation, and a
+public servant who creditably discharged all the duties with
+which he was entrusted. Unlike other statesmen of his day,
+he grew rich in the service of the nation without being suspected
+of corruption, and without forfeiting the esteem of his contemporaries.</p>
+
+<p>He was twice married (1651 and 1703); by his first wife,
+Elizabeth Whittle, he had seven sons, who predeceased him,
+and three daughters; by his second, Christian Hopes, he had
+two sons and two daughters. The elder son by the second
+marriage, Stephen (1704-1776), was created Lord Ilchester and
+Stavordale in 1747 and earl of Ilchester in 1756; in 1758 he
+took the additional name of Strangways, and his descendants,
+the family of Fox-Strangways, still hold the earldom of Ilchester.
+The younger son, Henry, became the 1st Lord Holland (<i>q.v.</i>).</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FOX, SIR WILLIAM<a name="ar5" id="ar5"></a></span> (1812-1893), New Zealand statesman,
+third son of George Townshend Fox, deputy-lieutenant for
+Durham county, was born in England on the 9th of June 1812,
+and educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he took his
+degree in 1832. Called to the bar in 1842, he emigrated immediately
+thereafter to New Zealand, where, on the death of
+Captain Arthur Wakefield, killed in 1843 in the Wairau massacre,
+he became the New Zealand Company&rsquo;s agent for the South
+Island. While holding this position he made a memorable
+exploring march on foot from Nelson to Canterbury, through
+Cannibal Gorge, in the course of which he discovered the fertile
+pastoral country of Amuri. In 1848 Governor Grey made Fox
+attorney-general, but he gave up the post almost at once in
+order to join the agitation, then at its height, for a free constitution.
+As the political agent of the Wellington settlers he sailed
+to London in 1850 to urge their demands in Downing Street.
+The colonial office, however, refused to recognize him, and,
+after publishing a sketch of the New Zealand settlements, <i>The
+Six Colonies of New Zealand</i>, and travelling in the United States,
+he returned to New Zealand and again threw himself with energy
+into public affairs. When government by responsible ministers
+was at last initiated, in 1856, Fox ousted the first ministry and
+formed a cabinet, only to be himself beaten in turn after holding
+office but thirteen days. In 1861 he regained office, and was
+somewhat more fortunate, for he remained premier for nearly
+thirteen months. Again, in the latter part of 1863 he took office:
+this time with Sir Frederick Whitaker as premier, an arrangement
+which endured for another thirteen months. Fox&rsquo;s third premiership
+began in 1869 and lasted until 1872. His fourth, which was
+a matter of temporary convenience to his party, lasted only
+five weeks in March and April 1873. Soon afterwards he left
+politics, and, though he reappeared after some years and led the
+attack which overthrew Sir George Grey&rsquo;s ministry in 1879, he
+lost his seat in the dissolution which followed in that year and
+did not again enter parliament. He was made K.C.M.G. in 1880.</p>
+
+<p>For the thirty years between 1850 and 1880 Sir William Fox
+was one of the half-dozen most notable public men in the colony.
+Impulsive and controversial, a fluent and rousing speaker, and
+a ready writer, his warm and sympathetic nature made him a
+good friend and a troublesome foe. He was considered for many
+years to be the most dangerous leader of the Opposition in the
+colony&rsquo;s parliament, though as premier he was at a disadvantage
+when measured against more patient and more astute party
+managers. His activities were first devoted to secure self-government
+for the New Zealand colonists. Afterwards his
+sympathies made him prominent among the champions of the
+Maori race, and he laboured indefatigably for their rights and to
+secure permanent peace with the tribes and a just settlement
+of their claims. It was during his third premiership that this
+peace, so long deferred, was at last gained, mainly through the
+influence and skill of Sir Donald M&rsquo;Lean, native minister in the
+Fox cabinet. Finally, after Fox had left parliament he devoted
+himself, as joint-commissioner with Sir Francis Dillon Bell,
+to the adjustment of the native land-claims on the west coast
+of the North Island. The able reports of the commissioners
+were his last public service, and the carrying out of their recommendations
+gradually removed the last serious native trouble
+in New Zealand. When, however, in the course of the native
+wars from 1860 to 1870 the colonists of New Zealand were
+exposed to cruel and unjust imputations in England, Fox
+zealously defended them in a book, <i>The War in New Zealand</i>
+(1866), which was not only a spirited vindication of his fellow-settlers,
+but a scathing criticism of the generalship of the officers
+commanding the imperial troops in New Zealand. Throughout
+his life Fox was a consistent advocate of total abstinence. It
+was he who founded the New Zealand Alliance, and he undoubtedly
+aided the growth of the prohibition movement afterwards
+so strong in the colony. He died on the 23rd of June
+1893, exactly twelve months after his wife, Sarah, daughter of
+William Halcombe.</p>
+<div class="author">(W. P. R.)</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FOX<a name="ar6" id="ar6"></a></span>, a name (female, &ldquo;vixen&rdquo;<a name="fa1a" id="fa1a" href="#ft1a"><span class="sp">1</span></a>) properly applicable to the
+single wild British representative of the family <i>Canidae</i> (see
+<span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Carnivora</a></span>), but in a wider sense used to denote fox-like species
+from all parts of the world, inclusive of many from South America
+which do not really belong to the same group. The fox was
+included by Linnaeus in the same genus with the dog and the
+wolf, under the name of <i>Canis vulpes</i>, but at the present day is
+regarded by most naturalists as the type of a separate genus, and
+should then be known as <i>Vulpes alopex</i> or <i>Vulpes vulpes</i>. From
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page769" id="page769"></a>769</span>
+dogs, wolves, jackals, &amp;c., which constitute the genus <i>Canis</i> in
+its more restricted sense, foxes are best distinguished by the
+circumstance that in the skull the (postorbital) projection
+immediately behind the socket for the eye has its upper surface
+concave, with a raised ridge in front, in place of regularly convex.
+Another character is the absence of a hollow chamber, or sinus,
+within the frontal bone of the forehead. Foxes are likewise
+distinguished by their slighter build, longer and bushy tail,
+which always exceeds half the length of the head and body,
+sharper muzzle, and relatively longer body and shorter limbs.
+Then again, the ears are large in proportion to the head, the pupil
+of the eye is elliptical and vertical when in a strong light, and
+the female has six pairs of teats, in place of the three to five pairs
+found in dogs, wolves and jackals. From the North American
+grey foxes, constituting the genus or subgenus <i>Urocyon</i>, the true
+foxes are distinguished by the absence of a crest of erectile long
+hairs along the middle line of the upper surface of the tail, and
+also of a projection (subangular process) to the postero-inferior
+angle of the lower jaw. With the exception of certain South
+African species, foxes differ from wolves and jackals in that they
+do not associate in packs, but go about in pairs or are solitary.</p>
+
+<p>From the Scandinavian peninsula and the British Islands
+the range of the fox extends eastwards across Europe and
+central and northern Asia to Japan, while to the south it embraces
+northern Africa and Arabia, Persia, Baluchistan, and the north-western
+districts of India and the Himalaya. On the North
+American side of the Atlantic the fox reappears. With such an
+enormous geographical range the species must of necessity
+present itself under a considerable number of local phases, differing
+from one another to a greater or less degree in the matters
+of size and colouring. By some naturalists many of these local
+forms are regarded as specifically distinct, but it seems better
+and simpler to class them all as local phases or races of a single
+species primarily characterized by the white tip to the tail and
+the black or dark-brown hind surface of the ear. The &ldquo;foxy
+red&rdquo; colouring of the typical race of north-western Europe is
+too well known to require description. From this there is a more
+or less nearly complete gradation on the one hand to pale-coloured
+forms like the white-footed fox (<i>V. alopex leucopus</i>) of
+Persia, N.W. India and Arabia, and on the other to the silver
+or black fox (<i>V. a. argentatus</i>) of North America which yields
+the valuable silver-tipped black fur. Silver foxes apparently
+also occur in northern Asia.</p>
+
+<p>To mention all the other local races would be superfluous, and
+it will suffice to note that the North African fox is known as
+<i>V. a. niloticus</i>, the Himalayan as <i>V. a. montanus</i>, the Tibetan as
+<i>V. a. wadelli</i>, the North American red or cross fox as <i>V. a.
+pennsylvanicus</i>, and the Alaskan as <i>V. a. harrimani</i>; the last
+named, like several other animals from Alaska, being the largest
+of its kind.</p>
+
+<p>The cunning and stratagem of the fox have been proverbial for
+many ages, and he has figured as a central character in fables
+from the earliest times, as in Aesop, down to &ldquo;Uncle Remus,&rdquo;
+most notably as Reynard (<i>Raginohardus</i>, strong in counsel) in
+the great medieval beast-epic &ldquo;Reynard the Fox&rdquo; (<i>q.v.</i>). It
+is not unlikely that, owing to the conditions under which
+it now lives, these traits are even more developed in England
+than elsewhere. In habits the fox is to a great extent solitary,
+and its home is usually a burrow, which may be excavated by
+its own labour, but is more often the usurped or deserted tenement
+of a badger or a rabbit. Foxes will, however, often take
+up their residence in woods, or even in water-meadows with
+large tussocks of grass, remaining concealed during the day and
+issuing forth on marauding expeditions at night. Rabbits,
+hares, domesticated poultry, game-birds, and, when these run
+short, rats, mice and even insects, form the chief diet of the fox.
+When living near the coast foxes will, however, visit the shore
+at low water in search of crabs and whelks; and the old story
+of the fox and the grapes seems to be founded upon a partiality
+on the part of the creature for that fruit. Flesh that has become
+tainted appears to be specially acceptable; but it is a curious
+fact that on no account will a fox eat any kind of bird of prey.</p>
+
+<p>After a gestation of from 60 to 65 days, the vixen during the
+month of April gives birth to cubs, of which from five to eight
+usually go to form a litter. When first born these are clothed
+with a uniform slaty-grey fur, which in due course gives place
+to a coat of more tawny hue than the adult livery. In a year and
+a half the cubs attain their full development; and from observations
+on captive specimens it appears that the duration of life
+ought to extend to some thirteen or fourteen years. In the care
+and defence of her young the vixen displays extraordinary
+solicitude and boldness, altogether losing on such occasions her
+accustomed timidity and caution. Like most other young
+animals, fox-cubs are exceedingly playful, and may be seen
+chasing one another in front of the mouth of the burrow, or even
+running after their own tails.</p>
+
+<p>Young foxes can be tamed to a certain extent, and do not then
+emit the well-known odour to any great degree unless excited.
+The species cannot, however, be completely domesticated, and
+never displays the affectionate traits of the dog. It was long
+believed that foxes and dogs would never interbreed; but
+several instances of such unions have been recorded, although
+they are undoubtedly rare. When suddenly confronted in a
+situation where immediate escape is impossible, the fox, like the
+wolf, will not hesitate to resort to the death-feigning instinct.
+Smartness in avoiding traps is one of the most distinctive traits
+in the character of the species; but when a trap has once claimed
+its victim, and is consequently no longer dangerous, the fox is
+always ready to take advantage of the gratuitous meal.</p>
+
+<p>Red fox-skins are largely imported into Europe for various
+purposes, the American imports alone formerly reaching as many
+as 60,000 skins annually. Silver fox is one of the most valuable
+of all furs, as much as £480 having been given for an unusually
+fine pair of skins in 1902.</p>
+
+<p>Of foxes certainly distinct specifically from the typical representative
+of the group, one of the best known is the Indian
+<i>Vulpes bengalensis</i>, a species much inferior in point of size to its
+European relative, and lacking the strong odour of the latter,
+from which it is also distinguished by the black tip to the tail
+and the pale-coloured backs of the ears. The corsac fox (<i>V.
+corsac</i>), ranging from southern Russia and the Caspian provinces
+across Asia to Amurland, may be regarded as a northern representative
+of the Indian species; while the pale fox (<i>V. pallidus</i>),
+of the Suakin and Dongola deserts, may be regarded as the
+African representative of the group. Possibly the kit-fox (<i>V.
+velox</i>), which has likewise a black tail-tip and pale ears, may
+be the North American form of the same group. The northern
+fennec (<i>V. famelicus</i>), whose range extends apparently from
+Egypt and Somaliland through Palestine and Persia into Afghanistan,
+seems to form a connecting link between the more typical
+foxes and the small African species properly known as fennecs.
+The long and bushy tail in the northern species has a white tip
+and a dark gland-patch near the root, but the backs of the ears
+are fawn-coloured. The enormous length of the ears and the
+small bodily size (inferior to that of any other member of the
+family) suffice to distinguish the true fennec (<i>V. zerda</i>) of Algeria
+and Egypt, in which the general colour is pale and the tip of
+the relatively short tail black. South of the Zambezi the group
+reappears in the shape of the asse-fox or fennec, (<i>V. cama</i>), a
+dark-coloured species, with a black tip to the long, bushy tail
+and reddish-brown ears.</p>
+
+<p>Passing from South Africa to the north polar regions of both
+the Old and the New World, inclusive of Iceland, we enter the
+domain of the Arctic fox (<i>V. lagopus</i>), a very distinct species
+characterized by the hairy soles of its feet, the short, blunt ears,
+the long, bushy tail, and the great length of the fur in winter.
+The upper parts in summer are usually brownish and the under
+parts white; but in winter the whole coat, in this phase of the
+species, turns white. In a second phase of the species, the
+colour, which often displays a slaty hue (whence the name of blue
+fox), remains more or less the same throughout the year, the
+winter coat being, however, recognizable by the great length
+of the fur. Many at least of the &ldquo;blue fox&rdquo; skins of the fur-trade
+are white skins dyed. About 2000 blue fox-skins were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page770" id="page770"></a>770</span>
+annually imported into London from Alaska some five-and-twenty
+years ago. Arctic foxes feed largely on sea-birds and
+lemmings, laying up hidden stores of the last-named rodents for
+winter use.</p>
+
+<p>The American grey fox, or Virginian fox, is now generally
+ranged as a distinct genus (or a subgenus of <i>Canis</i>) under the
+name of <i>Urocyon cinereo-argentatus</i>, on account of being distinguished,
+as already mentioned, by the presence of a ridge of
+long erectile hairs along the upper surface of the tail and of a
+projection to the postero-inferior angle of the lower jaw. The
+prevailing colour of the fur of the upper parts is iron-grey.</p>
+
+<p>The so-called foxes of South America, such as the crab-eating
+fox (<i>C. thous</i>), Azara&rsquo;s fox (<i>C. azarae</i>), and the colpeo (<i>C. magellanicus</i>),
+are aberrant members of the typical genus <i>Canis</i>. On
+the other hand, the long-eared fox or Delalande&rsquo;s fox (<i>Otocyon
+megalotis</i>) of south and east Africa represents a totally distinct
+genus.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>See St George Mivart, <i>Dogs, Jackals, Wolves and Foxes</i> (London,
+1890); R.I. Pocock, &ldquo;Ancestors and Relatives of the Dog,&rdquo; in
+<i>The Kennel Encyclopaedia</i> (London, 1907). For fox-hunting, see
+<span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Hunting</a></span>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="author">(R. L.*)</div>
+
+<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="ft1a" id="ft1a" href="#fa1a"><span class="fn">1</span></a> The word is common to the Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch <i>vos</i>,
+Ger. <i>Fuchs</i>; the ultimate origin is unknown, but a connexion
+has been suggested with Sanskrit <i>puccha</i>, tail. The feminine
+&ldquo;vixen&rdquo; represents the O. Eng. <i>fyxen</i>, due to the change from <i>o</i> to <i>y</i>,
+and addition of the feminine termination <i>-en</i>, cf. O. Eng. <i>gyden</i>, goddess,
+and Ger. <i>Füchsin</i>, vixen. The <i>v</i>, for <i>f</i>, is common in southern
+English pronunciation; vox, for fox, is found in the <i>Ancren Riwle</i>,
+<i>c.</i> 1230.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FOXE, JOHN<a name="ar7" id="ar7"></a></span> (1516-1587), the author of the famous <i>Book of
+Martyrs</i>, was born at Boston, in Lincolnshire, in 1516. At the
+age of sixteen he is said to have entered Brasenose College,
+Oxford, where he was the pupil of John Harding or Hawarden,
+and had for room-mate Alexander Nowell, afterwards dean of
+St. Paul&rsquo;s. His authenticated connexion at the university is,
+however, with Magdalen College. He took his B.A. degree in
+1537 and his M.A. in 1543. He was lecturer on logic in 1540-1541.
+He wrote several Latin plays on Scriptural subjects, of
+which the best, <i>De Christo triumphante</i>, was repeatedly printed,
+(London, 1551; Basel, 1556, &amp;c.), and was translated into English
+by Richard Day, son of the printer. He became a fellow of
+Magdalen College in 1539, resigning in 1545. It is said that he
+refused to conform to the rules for regular attendance at chapel,
+and that he protested both against the enforced celibacy of
+fellows and the obligation to take holy orders within seven
+years of their election. The customary statement that he was
+expelled from his fellowship is based on the untrustworthy
+biography attributed to his son Samuel Foxe, but the college
+records state that he resigned of his own accord and <i>ex honesta
+causa</i>. The letter in which he protests to President Oglethorpe
+against the charges of irreverence, &amp;c., brought against him is
+printed in Pratt&rsquo;s edition (vol. i. Appendix, pp. 58-61).</p>
+
+<p>On leaving Oxford he acted as tutor for a short time in the
+house of the Lucys of Charlecote, near Stratford-on-Avon, where
+he married Agnes Randall. Late in 1547 or early in the next
+year he went to London. He found a patron in Mary Fitzroy,
+duchess of Richmond, and having been ordained deacon by
+Ridley in 1550, he settled at Reigate Castle, where he acted
+as tutor to the duchess&rsquo;s nephews, the orphan children of Henry
+Howard, earl of Surrey. On the accession of Queen Mary, Foxe
+was deprived of his tutorship by the boys&rsquo; grandfather, the duke
+of Norfolk, who was now released from prison. He retired to
+Strassburg, and occupied himself with a Latin history of the
+Christian persecutions which he had begun at the suggestion of
+Lady Jane Grey. He had assistance from two clerics of widely
+differing opinions&mdash;from Edmund Grindal, who was later, as
+archbishop of Canterbury, to maintain his Puritan convictions
+in opposition to Elizabeth; and from John Aylmer, afterwards
+one of the bitterest opponents of the Puritan party. This book,
+dealing chiefly with Wycliffe and Huss, and coming down to
+1500, formed the first outline of the <i>Actes and Monuments</i>. It
+was printed by Wendelin Richelius with the title of <i>Commentarii
+rerum in ecclesia gestarum</i> (Strasburg, 1554). In the year of its
+publication Foxe removed to Frankfort, where he found the
+English colony of Protestant refugees divided into two camps.
+He made a vain attempt to frame a compromise which should
+be accepted by the extreme Calvinists and by the partisans of
+the Anglican doctrine. He removed (1555) to Basel, where
+he worked as printer&rsquo;s reader to Johann Herbst or Oporinus.
+He made steady progress with his great book as he received
+reports from England of the religious persecutions there, and he
+issued from the press of Oporinus his pamphlet <i>Ad inclytos ac
+praepotentes Angliae proceres ... supplicatio</i> (1557), a plea for
+toleration addressed to the English nobility. In 1559 he completed
+the Latin edition<a name="fa1b" id="fa1b" href="#ft1b"><span class="sp">1</span></a> of his martyrology and returned to
+England. He lived for some time at Aldgate, London, in the
+house of his former pupil, Thomas Howard, now duke of Norfolk,
+who retained a sincere regard for his tutor and left him a small
+pension in his will. He became associated with John Day the
+printer, himself once a Protestant exile. Foxe was ordained
+priest by Edmund Grindal, bishop of London, in 1560, and
+besides much literary work he occasionally preached at Paul&rsquo;s
+Cross and other places. His work had rendered great service
+to the government, and he might have had high preferment in
+the Church but for the Puritan views which he consistently
+maintained. He held, however, the prebend of Shipton in
+Salisbury cathedral, and is said to have been for a short time
+rector of Cripplegate.</p>
+
+<p>In 1563 was issued from the press of John Day the first English
+edition of the <i>Actes and Monuments of these latter and perillous
+Dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended
+and described the great Persecution and horrible Troubles that
+have been wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates, speciallye
+in this Realme of England and Scotland, from the yeare of our
+Lorde a thousande to the time now present. Gathered and collected
+according to the true Copies and Wrytinges certificatorie as well of
+the Parties themselves that Suffered, as also out of the Bishop&rsquo;s
+Registers, which were the Doers thereof, by John Foxe</i>, commonly
+known as the <i>Book of Martyrs</i>. Several gross errors which had
+appeared in the Latin version, and had been since exposed, were
+corrected in this edition. Its popularity was immense and signal.
+The Marian persecution was still fresh in men&rsquo;s minds, and the
+graphic narrative intensified in its numerous readers the fierce
+hatred of Spain and of the Inquisition which was one of the
+master passions of the reign. Nor was its influence transient.
+For generations the popular conception of Roman Catholicism
+was derived from its bitter pages. Its accuracy was immediately
+attacked by Catholic writers, notably in the <i>Dialogi sex</i> (1566),
+nominally from the pen of Alan Cope, but in reality by Nicholas
+Harpsfield and by Robert Parsons in <i>Three Conversions of
+England</i> (1570). These criticisms induced Foxe to produce a
+second corrected edition, <i>Ecclesiastical History, contayning the
+Actes and Monuments of things passed in every kynges tyme</i>...
+in 1570, a copy of which was ordered by Convocation to be
+placed in every collegiate church. Foxe based his accounts of
+the martyrs partly on authentic documents and reports of the
+trials, and on statements received direct from the friends of
+the sufferers, but he was too hasty a worker and too violent a
+partisan to produce anything like a correct or impartial account
+of the mass of facts with which he had to deal. Anthony à
+Wood says that Foxe &ldquo;believed and reported all that was told
+him, and there is every reason to suppose that he was purposely
+misled, and continually deceived by those whose interest it was
+to bring discredit on his work,&rdquo; but he admits that the book is
+a monument of his industry, his laborious research and his
+sincere piety. The gross blunders due to carelessness have
+often been exposed, and there is no doubt that Foxe was only
+too ready to believe evil of the Catholics, and he cannot always
+be exonerated from the charge of wilful falsification of evidence.
+It should, however, be remembered in his honour that his
+advocacy of religious toleration was far in advance of his day.
+He pleaded for the despised Dutch Anabaptists, and remonstrated
+with John Knox on the rancour of his <i>First Blast of the
+Trumpet</i>. Foxe was one of the earliest students of Anglo-Saxon,
+and he and Day published an edition of the Saxon
+gospels under the patronage of Archbishop Parker. He died
+on the 18th of April 1587 and was buried at St Giles&rsquo;s,
+Cripplegate.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page771" id="page771"></a>771</span></p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>A list of his Latin tracts and sermons is given by Wood, and others,
+some of which were never printed, appear in Bale. Four editions
+of the <i>Actes and Monuments</i> appeared in Foxe&rsquo;s lifetime. The
+eighth edition (1641) contains a memoir of Foxe purporting to be
+by his son Samuel, the MS. of which is in the British Museum (Lansdowne
+MS. 388). Samuel Foxe&rsquo;s authorship is disputed, with much
+show of reason, by Dr S.R. Maitland in <i>On the Memoirs of Foxe
+ascribed to his Son</i> (1841). The best-known modern edition of the
+Martyrology is that (1837-1841) by the Rev. Stephen R. Cattley,
+with an introductory life by Canon George Townsend. The numerous
+inaccuracies of this life and the frequent errors of Foxe&rsquo;s narrative
+were exposed by Dr Maitland in a series of tracts (1837-1842),
+collected (1841-1842) as <i>Notes on the Contributions of the Rev. George
+Townsend, M.A. ... to the New Edition of Fox&rsquo;s Martyrology</i>.
+The criticism lavished on Cattley and Townsend&rsquo;s edition led to a
+new one (1846-1849) under the same editorship. A new text
+prepared by the Rev. Josiah Pratt was issued (1870) in the &ldquo;Reformation
+Series&rdquo; of the <i>Church Historians of England</i>, with a revised
+version of Townsend&rsquo;s <i>Life</i> and appendices giving copies of original
+documents. Later edition by W. Grinton Berry (1907).</p>
+
+<p>Foxe&rsquo;s papers are preserved in the Harleian and Lansdowne
+collections in the British Museum. Extracts from these were
+edited by J.G. Nichols for the Camden Society (1859). See also
+W. Winters, <i>Biographical Notes on John Foxe</i> (1876); James
+Gairdner, <i>History of the English Church in the Sixteenth Century</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="ft1b" id="ft1b" href="#fa1b"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Printed by Oporinus and Nicolaus Brylinger. The title is
+<i>Rerum in ecclesia gestarum ... pars prima, in qua primum de
+rebus per Angliam et Scotiam gestis atque in primis de horrenda sub
+Maria nuper regina persecutione narratio continetur</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FOXGLOVE,<a name="ar8" id="ar8"></a></span> a genus of biennial and perennial plants of the
+natural order Scrophulariaceae. The common or purple foxglove,
+<i>D. purpurea</i>, is common in dry hilly pastures and rocky places
+and by road-sides in various parts of Europe; it ranges in Great
+Britain from Cornwall and Kent to Orkney, but it does not
+occur in Shetland or in some of the eastern counties of England.
+It flourishes best in siliceous soils, and is not found in the Jura
+and Swiss Alps. The characters of the plant are as follows:
+stem erect, roundish, downy, leafy below, and from 18 in. to
+5 ft. or more in height; leaves alternate, crenate, rugose, ovate
+or elliptic oblong, and of a dull green, with the under surface
+downy and paler than the upper; radical leaves together with
+their stalks often a foot in length; root of numerous, slender,
+whitish fibres; flowers 1¾-2½ in. long, pendulous, on one side of
+the stem, purplish crimson, and hairy and marked with eye-like
+spots within; segments of calyx ovate, acute, cleft to the base;
+corolla bell-shaped with a broadly two-lipped obtuse mouth, the
+upper lip entire or obscurely divided; stamens four, two longer
+than the other two (<i>didynamous</i>); anthers yellow and bilobed;
+capsule bivalved, ovate and pointed; and seeds numerous,
+small, oblong, pitted and of a pale brown. As Parkinson remarks
+of the plant, &ldquo;It flowreth seldome before July, and the
+seed is ripe in August&rdquo;; but it may occasionally be found in
+blossom as late as September. Many varieties of the common
+foxglove have been raised by cultivation, with flowers varying
+in colour from white to deep rose and purple; in the variety
+<i>gloxinioides</i> the flowers are almost regular, suggesting those of
+the cultivated gloxinia. Other species of foxglove with variously
+coloured flowers have been introduced into Britain from the
+continent of Europe. The plants may be propagated by unflowered
+off-sets from the roots, but being biennials are best
+raised from seed.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figcenter"><img style="width:457px; height:802px" src="images/img771.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">Foxglove (<i>Digitalis purpurea</i>), one-third nat. size.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl f90">
+<p>1. Corolla cut open showing the
+four stamens; rather more
+than half nat. size.</p>
+
+<p>2. Unripe fruit cut lengthwise,
+showing the thick axial placenta
+bearing numerous small
+seeds.</p>
+
+<p>3. Ripe capsule split open.</p></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="pt2">The foxglove, probably from folks&rsquo;-glove, that is fairies&rsquo; glove,
+is known by a great variety of popular names in Britain. In
+the south of Scotland it is called bloody fingers; farther north,
+dead-men&rsquo;s-bells; and on the eastern borders, ladies&rsquo; thimbles,
+wild mercury and Scotch mercury. In Ireland it is generally
+known under the name of fairy thimble. Among its Welsh
+synonyms are <i>menyg-ellyllon</i> (elves&rsquo; gloves), <i>menyg y llwynog</i>
+(fox&rsquo;s gloves), <i>bysedd cochion</i> (redfingers) and <i>bysedd y cwn</i>
+(dog&rsquo;s fingers). In France its designations are <i>gants de notre
+dame</i> and <i>doigts de la Vierge</i>. The German name <i>Fingerhut</i>
+(thimble) suggested to Fuchs, in 1542, the employment of the
+Latin adjective <i>digitalis</i> as a designation for the plant. Other
+species of foxglove or <i>Digitalis</i> although found in botanical
+collections are not generally grown. For medicinal uses see
+<span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Digitalis</a></span>.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FOX INDIANS,<a name="ar9" id="ar9"></a></span> the name, from one of their clans, of an Algonquian
+tribe, whose former range was central Wisconsin. They
+call themselves Muskwakiuk, &ldquo;red earth people.&rdquo; Owing to
+heavy losses in their wars with the Ojibways and the French,
+they allied themselves with the Sauk tribe about 1780, the two
+tribes being now practically one.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FOX MORCILLO, SEBASTIAN<a name="ar10" id="ar10"></a></span> (1526?-1559?), Spanish scholar
+and philosopher, was born at Seville between 1526 and 1528.
+About 1548 he studied at Louvain, and, following the example
+of the Spanish Jew, Judas Abarbanel, published commentaries
+on Plato and Aristotle in which he endeavoured to reconcile
+their teaching. In 1559 he was appointed tutor to Don Carlos,
+son of Philip II., but did not live to take up the duties of the post,
+as he was lost at sea on his way to Spain. His most original
+work is the <i>De imitatione, seu de informandi styli ratione libri II</i>.
+(1554), a dialogue in which the author and his brother take part
+under the pseudonyms of Gaspar and Francisco Enuesia. Among
+Fox Morcillo&rsquo;s other publications are: (1) <i>In Topica Ciceronis
+paraphrasis et scholia</i> (1550); (2) <i>In Platonis Timaeum commentarii</i>
+(1554); (3) <i>Compendium ethices philosophiae ex Platone,
+Aristotele, aliisque philosophis collectum</i>; (4) <i>De historiae institutione
+dialogus</i> (1557), and (5) <i>De naturae philosophia</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>He is the subject of an excellent monograph by Urbano Gonzalez
+de Calle, <i>Sebastián Fox Morcillo: estudio histórico-crítico de sus
+doctrinas</i> (Madrid, 1903).</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FOY, MAXIMILIEN SÉBASTIEN<a name="ar11" id="ar11"></a></span> (1775-1825), French general
+and statesman, was born at Ham in Picardy on the 3rd
+of February 1775. He was the son of an old soldier who had
+fought at Fontenoy and had become post-master of the town
+in which he lived. His father died in 1780, and his early instruction
+was given by his mother, a woman of English origin and of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page772" id="page772"></a>772</span>
+superior ability. He continued his education at the college of
+Soissons, and thence passed at the age of fifteen to the artillery
+school of La Fère. After eighteen months&rsquo; successful study he
+entered the army, served his first campaign in Flanders (1791-92),
+and was present at the battle of Jemmapes. He soon attained
+the rank of captain, and served successively under Dampierre,
+Jourdan, Pichegru and Houchard. In 1794, in consequence of
+having spoken freely against the violence of the extreme party
+at Paris, he was imprisoned by order of the commissioner of the
+Convention, Joseph Lebon, at Cambray, but regained his liberty
+soon after the fall of Robespierre. He served under Moreau
+in the campaigns of 1796 and 1797, distinguishing himself in
+many engagements. The leisure which the treaty of Campo
+Formio gave him he devoted to the study of public law and
+modern history, attending the lectures of Christoph Wilhelm von
+Koch (1737-1813), the famous professor of public law at Strassburg.
+He was recommended by Desaix to the notice of General
+Bonaparte, but declined to serve on the staff of the Egyptian
+expedition. In the campaign of Switzerland (1798) he distinguished
+himself afresh, though he served only with the greatest
+reluctance against a people which possessed republican institutions.
+In Masséna&rsquo;s brilliant campaign of 1799 Foy won the
+rank of <i>chef de brigade</i>. In the following year he served under
+Moncey in the Marengo campaign and afterwards in Tirol.</p>
+
+<p>Foy&rsquo;s republican principles caused him to oppose the gradual
+rise of Napoleon to the supreme power and at the time of Moreau&rsquo;s
+trial he escaped arrest only by joining the army in Holland.
+Foy voted against the establishment of the empire, but the only
+penalty for his independence was a long delay before attaining
+the rank of general. In 1806 he married a daughter of General
+Baraguay d&rsquo;Hilliers. In the following year he was sent to
+Constantinople, and there took part in the defence of the Dardanelles
+against the English fleet. He was next sent to Portugal,
+and thenceforward he served in the Peninsular War from first
+to last. Under Junot he won at last his rank of general of
+brigade, under Soult he held a command in the pursuit of Sir
+John Moore&rsquo;s army, and under Masséna he fought in the third
+invasion of Portugal (1810). Masséna reposed the greatest
+confidence in Foy, and employed him after Busaco in a mission
+to the emperor. Napoleon now made Foy&rsquo;s acquaintance for the
+first time, and was so far impressed with his merits as to make
+him a general of division at once. The part played by General
+Foy at the battle of Salamanca won him new laurels, but above
+all he distinguished himself when the disaster of Vittoria had
+broken the spirit of the army. Foy rose to the occasion; his
+resistance in the Pyrenees was steady and successful, and only
+a wound (at first thought mortal) which he received at Orthez
+prevented him from keeping the field to the last. At the first
+restoration of the Bourbons he received the grand cross of the
+Legion of Honour and a command, and on the return of Napoleon
+from Elba he declined to join him until the king had fled from the
+country. He held a divisional command in the Waterloo
+campaign, and at Waterloo was again severely wounded at the
+head of his division (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Waterloo Campaign</a></span>). After the second
+restoration he returned to civil life, devoting his energies for a
+time to his projected history of the Peninsular War, and in 1819
+was elected to the chamber of deputies. For this position his
+experience and his studies had especially fitted him, and by his
+first speech he gained a commanding place in the chamber,
+which he never lost, his clear, manly eloquence being always
+employed on the side of the liberal principles of 1789. In 1823
+he made a powerful protest against French intervention in Spain,
+and after the dissolution of 1824 he was re-elected for three
+constituencies. He died at Paris on the 28th of November 1825,
+and his funeral was attended, it is said, by 100,000 persons.
+His early death was regarded by all as a national calamity. His
+family was provided for by a general subscription.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>The <i>Histoire de la guerre de la Péninsula sous Napoléon</i> was published
+from his notes in 1827, and a collection of his speeches (with
+memoir by Tissot) appeared in 1826 soon after his death. See
+Cuisin, <i>Vie militaire, politique, &amp;c., du général Foy</i>; Vidal, <i>Vie
+militaire et politique du général Foy</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRAAS, KARL NIKOLAS<a name="ar12" id="ar12"></a></span> (1810-1875), German botanist and
+agriculturist, was born at Rattelsdorf, near Bamberg, on the 8th
+of September 1810. After receiving his preliminary education at
+the gymnasium of Bamberg, he in 1830 entered the university of
+Munich, where he took his doctor&rsquo;s degree in 1834. Having
+devoted great attention to the study of botany, he went to
+Athens in 1835 as inspector of the court garden; and in April
+1836 he became professor of botany at the university. In 1842
+he returned to Germany and became teacher at the central
+agricultural school at Schleissheim. In 1847 he was appointed
+professor of agriculture at Munich, and in 1851 director of the
+central veterinary college. For many years he was secretary
+of the Agricultural Society of Bavaria, but resigned in 1861. He
+died at his estate of Neufreimann, near Munich, on the 9th of
+November 1875.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>His principal works are: <span class="grk" title="Stoicheia tês Botanikês">&#931;&#964;&#959;&#953;&#967;&#949;&#8150;&#945; &#964;&#8134;&#962; &#914;&#959;&#964;&#945;&#957;&#953;&#954;&#8134;&#962;</span> (Athens, 1835);
+<i>Synopsis florae classicae</i> (Munich, 1845); <i>Klima und Pflanzenwelt in
+der Zeit</i> (Landsh., 1847); <i>Histor.-encyklopäd. Grundriss der Landwirthschaftslehre</i>
+(Stuttgart, 1848); <i>Geschichte der Landwirthschaft</i>
+(Prague, 1851); <i>Die Schule des Landbaues</i> (Munich, 1852); <i>Baierns
+Rinderrassen</i> (Munich, 1853); <i>Die künstliche Fischerzeugung</i>
+(Munich, 1854); <i>Die Natur der Landwirthschaft</i> (Munich, 1857);
+<i>Buch der Natur für Landwirthe</i> (Munich, 1860); <i>Die Ackerbaukrisen
+und ihre Heilmittel</i> (Munich, 1866); <i>Das Wurzelleben der Culturpflanzen</i>
+(Berlin, 1872); and <i>Geschichte der Landbau und Forstwissenschaft
+seit dem 16<span class="sp">ten</span> Jahrh.</i> (Munich, 1865). He also founded and
+edited a weekly agricultural paper, the <i>Schranne</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRACASTORO<a name="ar13" id="ar13"></a></span> [<span class="sc">Fracastorius</span>], <b>GIROLAMO</b> [<span class="sc">Hieronymus</span>]
+(1483-1553), Italian physician and poet, was born at Verona in
+1483. It is related of him that at his birth his lips adhered so
+closely that a surgeon was obliged to divide them with his incision
+knife, and that during his infancy his mother was killed by
+lightning, while he, though in her arms at the moment, escaped
+unhurt. Fracastoro became eminently skilled, not only in
+medicine and belles-lettres, but in most arts and sciences. He
+studied at Padua, and became professor of philosophy there in
+1502, afterwards practising as a physician in Verona. It was by
+his advice that Pope Paul III., on account of the prevalence of a
+contagious distemper, removed the council of Trent to Bologna.
+He was the author of many works, both poetical and medical,
+and was intimately acquainted with Cardinal Bembo, Julius
+Scaliger, Gianbattista Ramusio (<i>q.v.</i>), and most of the great men
+of his time. In 1517, when the builders of the citadel of San
+Felice (Verona) found fossil mussels in the rocks, Fracastoro was
+consulted about the marvel, and he took the same view&mdash;following
+Leonardo da Vinci, but very advanced for those days&mdash;that
+they were the remains of animals once capable of living in the
+locality. He died of apoplexy at Casi, near Verona, on the 8th
+of August 1553; and in 1559 the town of Verona erected a statue
+in his honour.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>The principal work of Fracastoro is a kind of medical poem
+entitled <i>Syphilidis, sive Morbi Gallici, libri tres</i> (Verona, 1530),
+which has been often reprinted and also translated into French
+and Italian. Among his other works (all published at Venice) are
+<i>De vini temperatura</i> (1534); <i>Homocentricorum</i> (1535); <i>De sympatha
+et antipathia rerum</i> (1546); and <i>De contagionibus</i> (1546).
+His complete works were published at Venice in 1555, and his
+poetical productions were collected and printed at Padua in 1728.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRAGONARD, JEAN-HONORÉ<a name="ar14" id="ar14"></a></span> (1732-1806), French painter,
+was born at Grasse, the son of a glover. He was articled to a
+Paris notary when his father&rsquo;s circumstances became straitened
+through unsuccessful speculations, but he showed such talent
+and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to
+Boucher, who, recognizing the youth&rsquo;s rare gifts but disinclined
+to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin&rsquo;s
+<i>atelier</i>. Fragonard studied for six months under the great
+luminist, and then returned more fully equipped to Boucher,
+whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master
+entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings.
+Though not a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix
+de Rome in 1752 with a painting of &ldquo;Jeroboam sacrificing to the
+Idols,&rdquo; but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for
+three years under Van Loo. In the year preceding his departure
+he painted the &ldquo;Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles&rdquo; now
+at Grasse cathedral. In 1755 he took up his abode at the French
+Academy in Rome, then presided over by Natoire. There he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page773" id="page773"></a>773</span>
+benefited from the study of the old masters whom he was set to
+copy&mdash;always remembering Boucher&rsquo;s parting advice not to
+take Raphael and Michelangelo too seriously. He successively
+passed through the studios of masters as widely different in their
+aims and technique as Chardin, Boucher, Van Loo and Natoire,
+and a summer sojourn at the Villa d&rsquo;Este in the company of the
+abbé de Saint-Non, who engraved many of Fragonard&rsquo;s studies of
+these entrancing gardens, did more towards forming his personal
+style than all the training at the various schools. It was in these
+romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and
+terraces, that he conceived the dreams which he was subsequently
+to embody in his art. Added to this influence was the deep
+impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of
+Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity of studying in
+Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761. In 1765 his &ldquo;Corésus
+et Callirhoé&rdquo; secured his admission to the Academy. It was made
+the subject of a pompous eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by
+the king, who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto
+Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other
+subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of
+Louis XV.&rsquo;s pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him
+definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with
+which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made
+acceptable by the tender beauty of his colour and the virtuosity
+of his facile brushwork&mdash;such works as the &ldquo;Serment d&rsquo;amour&rdquo;
+(Love Vow), &ldquo;Le Verrou&rdquo; (The Bolt), &ldquo;La Culbute&rdquo; (The
+Tumble), &ldquo;La Chemise enlevée&rdquo; (The Shift Withdrawn), and
+&ldquo;The Swing&rdquo; (Wallace collection), and his decorations for the
+apartments of Mme du Barry and the dancer Marie Guimard.</p>
+
+<p>The Revolution made an end to the <i>ancien régime</i>, and Fragonard,
+who was so closely allied to its representatives, left Paris
+in 1793 and found shelter in the house of his friend Maubert at
+Grasse, which he decorated with the series of decorative panels
+known as the &ldquo;Roman d&rsquo;amour de la jeunesse,&rdquo; originally
+painted for Mme du Barry&rsquo;s pavilion at Louvreciennes. The
+panels in recent years came into the possession of Mr Pierpont
+Morgan. Fragonard returned to Paris early in the 19th century,
+where he died in 1806, neglected and almost forgotten.
+For half a century or more he was so completely ignored that
+Lübke, in his history of art (1873), omits the very mention of his
+name. But within the last thirty years he has regained the position
+among the masters of painting to which he is entitled by his
+genius. If the appreciation of his art by the modern collector
+can be expressed in figures, it is significant that the small and
+sketchy &ldquo;Billet Doux,&rdquo; which appeared at the Cronier sale in
+Paris in 1905 and was subsequently exhibited by Messrs Duveen
+in London (1906), realized close on £19,000 at the Hôtel Drouot.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the works already mentioned, there are four important
+pictures by Fragonard in the Wallace collection: &ldquo;The Fountain
+of Love,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Schoolmistress,&rdquo; &ldquo;A Lady carving her
+Name on a Tree&rdquo; (usually known as &ldquo;Le Chiffre d&rsquo;amour&rdquo;)
+and &ldquo;The Fair-haired Child.&rdquo; The Louvre contains thirteen
+examples of his art, among them the &ldquo;Corésus,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Sleeping
+Bacchante,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Shift Withdrawn,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Bathers,&rdquo; &ldquo;The
+Shepherd&rsquo;s Hour&rdquo; (&ldquo;L&rsquo;Heure du berger&rdquo;), and &ldquo;Inspiration.&rdquo;
+Other works are in the museums of Lille, Besançon, Rouen,
+Tours, Nantes, Avignon, Amiens, Grenoble, Nancy, Orleans,
+Marseilles, &amp;c., as well as at Chantilly. Some of Fragonard&rsquo;s
+finest work is in the private collections of the Rothschild family
+in London and Paris.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>See R. Portalis, <i>Fragonard</i> (Paris, 1899), fully illustrated; Felix
+Naquet, <i>Fragonard</i> (Paris, 1890); Virgile Josz, <i>Fragonard&mdash;m&oelig;urs
+du XVIII<span class="sp">e</span> siècle</i> (Paris, 1901); E. and J. de Goncourt, <i>L&rsquo;Art du
+dix-huitième siècle&mdash;Fragonard</i> (Paris, 1883).</p>
+</div>
+<div class="author">(P. G. K.)</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRAHN, CHRISTIAN MARTIN<a name="ar15" id="ar15"></a></span> (1782-1851), German numismatist
+and historian, was born at Rostock. He began his
+Oriental studies under Tychsen at the university of Rostock, and
+afterwards prosecuted them at Göttingen and Tübingen. He
+became a Latin master in Pestalozzi&rsquo;s famous institute in 1804,
+returned home in 1806, and in the following year was chosen to
+fill the chair of Oriental languages in the Russian university of
+Kazan. Though in 1815 he was invited to succeed Tychsen at
+Rostock, he preferred to go to St Petersburg, where he became
+director of the Asiatic museum and councillor of state. He died
+at St Petersburg.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>Frahn wrote over 150 works. Among the more important are:
+<i>Numophylacium orientale Pototianum</i> (1813); <i>De numorum Bulgharicorum
+fonte antiquissimo</i> (1816); <i>Das muhammedanische Münzkabinet
+des asiatischen Museum der kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften
+zu St Petersburg</i> (1821); <i>Numi cufici ex variis museis selecti</i>
+(1823); <i>Notice d&rsquo;une centaine d&rsquo;ouvrages arabes, &amp;c., qui manquent
+en grande partie aux bibliothèques de l&rsquo;Europe</i> (1834); and <i>Nova
+supplementa ad recensionem Num. Muham. Acad. Imp. Sci. Petropolitanae</i>
+(1855). His description of some medals struck by the
+Samanid and Bouid princes (1804) was composed in Arabic because
+he had no Latin types.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRAME,<a name="ar16" id="ar16"></a></span> a word employed in many different senses, signifying
+something joined together or shaped. It is derived ultimately
+from O.E. <i>fram</i>, from, in its primary meaning &ldquo;forward.&rdquo;
+In constructional work it connotes the union of pieces of wood,
+metal or other material for purposes of enclosure as in the case
+of a picture or mirror frame. Frames intended for these uses
+are of great artistic interest but comparatively modern origin.
+There is no record of their existence earlier than the 16th century,
+but the decorative opportunities which they afforded caused
+speedy popularity in an artistic age, and the Renaissance found
+in the picture frame a rich and attractive means of expression.
+The impulses which made frames beautiful have long been extinct
+or dormant, but fine work was produced in such profusion
+that great numbers of examples are still extant. Frames for
+pictures or mirrors are usually square, oblong, round or oval,
+and, although they have usually been made of wood or composition
+overlaid upon wood, the richest and most costly
+materials have often been used. Ebony, ivory and tortoiseshell;
+crystal, amber and mother-of-pearl; lacquer, gold and silver,
+and almost every other metal have been employed for this
+purpose. The domestic frame has in fact varied from the
+simplest and cheapest form of a plain wooden moulding to the
+most richly carved examples. The introduction in the 17th
+century of larger sheets of glass gave the art of frame-making
+a great <i>essor</i>, and in the 18th century the increased demand
+for frames, caused chiefly by the introduction of cheaper forms
+of mirrors, led to the invention of a composition which could
+be readily moulded into stereotyped patterns and gilded. This
+was eventually the deathblow of the artistic frame, and since
+the use of composition moulding became normal, no important
+school of wood-carving has turned its attention to frames. The
+carvers of the Renaissance, and down to the middle of the
+18th century, produced work which was often of the greatest
+beauty and elegance. In England nothing comparable to that
+of Grinling Gibbons and his school has since been produced.
+Chippendale was a great frame maker, but he not only had
+recourse to composition, but his designs were often extravagantly
+rococo. Even in France there has been no return of the great
+days when Oeben enclosed the looking-glasses which mirrored
+the Pompadour in frames that were among the choicest work
+of a gorgeous and artificial age. In the decoration of frames
+as in so many other respects France largely followed the fashions
+of Italy, which throughout the 16th and 17th centuries produced
+the most elaborate and grandiose, the richest and most palatial,
+of the mirror frames that have come down to us. English art
+in this respect was less exotic and more restrained, and many
+of the mirrors of the 18th century received frames the grace
+and simplicity of which have ensured their constant reproduction
+even to our own day.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRAMINGHAM,<a name="ar17" id="ar17"></a></span> a township of Middlesex county, Massachusetts,
+U.S.A., having an area of 27 sq. m. of hilly surface,
+dotted with lakes and ponds. Pop. (1890) 9239; (1900) 11,302,
+of whom 2391 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 12,948.
+It is served by the Boston &amp; Albany, and the New York, New
+Haven &amp; Hartford railways. Included within the township
+are three villages, Framingham Center, Saxonville and South
+Framingham, the last being much the most important. Framingham
+Academy was established in 1792, and in 1851 became a part
+of the public school system. A state normal school (the first
+normal school in the United States, established at Lexington
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page774" id="page774"></a>774</span>
+in 1839, removed to Newton in 1844 and to Framingham in 1853)
+is situated here; and near South Framingham, in the township
+of Sherborn, is the state reformatory prison for women. South
+Framingham has large manufactories of paper tags, shoes,
+boilers, carriage wheels and leather board; formerly straw
+braid and bonnets were the principal manufactures. Saxonville
+manufactures worsted cloth. The value of the township&rsquo;s factory
+products increased from $3,007,301 in 1900 to $4,173,579 in
+1905, or 38.8%. Framingham was first settled about 1640, and
+was named in honour of the English home (Framlingham) of
+Governor Thomas Danforth (1622-1699), to whom the land once
+belonged. In 1700 it was incorporated as a township. The &ldquo;old
+Connecticut path,&rdquo; the Boston-to-Worcester turnpike, was important
+to the early fortunes of Framingham Center, while the
+Boston &amp; Worcester railway (1834) made the greater fortune of
+South Framingham.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>See J.H. Temple, <i>History of Framingham ... 1640-1880</i>
+(Framingham, 1887).</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRAMLINGHAM,<a name="ar18" id="ar18"></a></span> a market town in the Eye parliamentary
+division of Suffolk, 91 m. N.E. from London by a branch of
+the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 2526. The church of
+St Michael is a fine Perpendicular and Decorated building of
+black flint, surmounted by a tower 96 ft. high. In the interior
+there are a number of interesting monuments, among which the
+most noticeable are those of Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of
+Norfolk, and of Henry Howard, the famous earl of Surrey,
+who was beheaded by Henry VIII. The castle forms a picturesque
+ruin, consisting of the outer walls 44 ft. high and 8 ft. thick,
+13 towers about 58 ft. high, a gateway and some outworks.
+About half a mile from the town is the Albert Memorial Middle
+Class College, opened in 1865, and capable of accommodating
+300 boys. A bronze statue of the Prince Consort by Joseph
+Durham adorns the front terrace.</p>
+
+<p>Framlingham (Frendlingham, Framalingaham) in early Saxon
+times was probably the site of a fortified earthwork to which
+St Edmund the Martyr is said to have fled from the Danes in
+870. The Danes captured the stronghold after the escape of
+the king, but it was won back in 921, and remained in the hands
+of the crown, passing to William I. at the Conquest. Henry I.
+in 1100 granted it to Roger Bigod, who in all probability raised
+the first masonry castle. Hugh, son of Roger, created earl of
+Norfolk in 1141, succeeded his father, and the manor and castle
+remained in the Bigod family until 1306, when in default of
+heirs it reverted to the crown, and was granted by Edward II.
+to his half-brother Thomas de Brotherton, created earl of
+Norfolk in 1312. On an account roll of Framlingham Castle
+of 1324 there is an entry of &ldquo;rent received from the borough,&rdquo;
+also of &ldquo;rent from those living outside the borough,&rdquo; and in
+all probability burghal rights had existed at a much earlier
+date, when the town had grown into some importance under the
+shelter of the castle. Town and castle followed the vicissitudes
+of the dukedom of Norfolk, passing to the crown in 1405, and
+being alternately restored and forfeited by Henry V., Richard
+III., Henry VII., Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth and James I.,
+and finally sold in 1635 to Sir Robert Hitcham, who left it in
+1636 to the master and fellows of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge.</p>
+
+<p>In the account roll above mentioned reference is made to a fair
+and a market, but no early grant of either is to be found. In
+1792 two annual fairs were held, one on Whit Monday, the
+other on the 10th of October; and a market was held every
+Saturday. The market day is still Saturday, but the fairs
+are discontinued.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>See Robert Hawes, <i>History of Framlingham in the County of
+Suffolk</i>, edited by R. Loder (Woodbridge, 1798).</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRANC,<a name="ar19" id="ar19"></a></span> a French coin current at different periods and of
+varying values. The first coin so called was one struck in gold
+by John II. of France in 1360. On it was the legend <i>Johannes
+Dei gracia Francorum rex</i>; hence, it is said, the name. It
+also bore an effigy of King John on horseback, from which
+it was called a <i>franc à cheval</i>, to distinguish it from another
+coin of the same value, issued by Charles V., on which the king
+was represented standing upright under a Gothic dais; this
+coin was termed a <i>franc à pied</i>. As a coin it disappeared after the
+reign of Charles VI., but the name continued to be used as an
+equivalent for the <i>livre tournois</i>, which was worth twenty sols.
+French writers would speak without distinction of so many
+livres or so many francs, so long as the sum mentioned was an
+even sum; otherwise livre was the correct term, thus &ldquo;<i>trois
+livres</i>&rdquo; or &ldquo;<i>trois francs</i>,&rdquo; but &ldquo;<i>trois livres cinq sols</i>.&rdquo; In 1795
+the livre was legally converted into the franc, at the rate of 81
+livres to 80 francs, the silver franc being made to weigh exactly
+five grammes. The franc is now the unit of the monetary system
+and also the money of account in France, as well as in Belgium
+and Switzerland. In Italy the equivalent is the lira, and in
+Greece the drachma. The franc is divided into 100 centimes,
+the lira into 100 centesimi and the drachma into 100 lepta.
+Gold is now the standard, the coins in common use being ten
+and twenty franc pieces. The twenty franc gold piece weighs
+6.4516 grammes, .900 fine. The silver coins are five, two,
+one, and half franc pieces. The five franc silver piece weighs
+25 grammes, .900 fine, while the franc piece weighs 5 grammes,
+.835 fine. See also <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Money</a></span>.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRANÇAIS, ANTOINE,<a name="ar20" id="ar20"></a></span> <span class="sc">Count</span> (1756-1836), better known as
+<span class="sc">Français of Nantes</span>, French politician and author, was born
+at Beaurepaire, in the department of Isère. In 1791 he was
+elected to the legislative assembly by the department of Loire
+Inférieure, and was noted for his violent attacks upon the farmers
+general, the pope and the priests; but he was not re-elected to
+the Convention. During the Terror, as he had belonged to the
+Girondin party, he was obliged to seek safety in the mountains.
+In 1798 he was elected to the council of Five Hundred by the
+department of Isère, and became one of its secretaries; and in
+the following year he voted against the Directory. He took office
+under the consulate as prefect of Charente Inférieure, rose to
+be a member of the council of state, and in 1804 obtained the
+important post of director-general of the indirect taxes (<i>droits
+réunis</i>). The value of his services was recognized by the titles of
+count of the empire and grand officer of the Legion of Honour.
+On the second restoration he retired into private life; but from
+1819 to 1822 he was representative of the department of Isère,
+and after the July revolution he was made a peer of France. He
+died at Paris on the 7th of March 1836.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>Français wrote a number of works, but his name is more likely
+to be preserved by the eulogies of the literary men to whom he
+afforded protection and assistance. It is sufficient to mention
+<i>Le Manuscrit de feu M. Jérôme</i> (1825); <i>Recueil de fadaises composé
+sur la montagne à l&rsquo;usage des habitants de la plaine</i> (1826); <i>Voyage
+dans la vallée des originaux</i> (1828); <i>Tableau de la vie rurale, ou
+l&rsquo;agriculture enseignée d&rsquo;une manière dramatique</i> (1829).</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRANÇAIS, FRANÇOIS LOUIS<a name="ar21" id="ar21"></a></span> (1814-1897), French painter,
+was born at Plombières (Vosges), and, on attaining the age of
+fifteen, was placed as office-boy with a bookseller. After a few
+years of hard struggle, during which he made a precarious living
+by drawing on stone and designing woodcut vignettes for book
+illustration, he studied painting under Gigoux, and subsequently
+under Corot, whose influence remained decisive upon Français&rsquo;s
+style of landscape painting. He generally found his subjects in
+the neighbourhood of Paris, and though he never rivalled his
+master in lightness of touch and in the lyric poetry which is the
+principal charm of Corot&rsquo;s work, he is still counted among the
+leading landscape painters of his country and period. He exhibited
+first at the Salon in 1837 and was elected to the Académie
+des Beaux-Arts in 1890. Comparatively few of his pictures are
+to be found in public galleries, but his painting of &ldquo;An Italian
+Sunset&rdquo; is at the Luxembourg Museum in Paris. Other works
+of importance are &ldquo;Daphnis et Chloé&rdquo; (1872), &ldquo;Bas Meudon&rdquo;
+(1861), &ldquo;Orpheus&rdquo; (1863), &ldquo;Le Bois sacré&rdquo; (1864), &ldquo;Le Lac
+de Némi&rdquo; (1868).</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRANCATELLI, CHARLES ELMÉ<a name="ar22" id="ar22"></a></span> (1805-1876), Anglo-Italian
+cook, was born in London, of Italian extraction, in 1805,
+and was educated in France, where he studied the art of cookery.
+Coming to England, he was employed successively by various
+noblemen, subsequently becoming manager of Crockford&rsquo;s club.
+He left Crockford&rsquo;s to become chief cook to Queen Victoria,
+and afterwards he was chef at the Reform Club. He was the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page775" id="page775"></a>775</span>
+author of <i>The Modern Cook</i> (1845), which has since been frequently
+republished; of a <i>Plain Cookery Book for the Working
+Classes</i> (1861), and of <i>The Royal English and Foreign Confectionery
+Book</i> (1862). Francatelli died at Eastbourne on the
+10th of August 1876.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRANCAVILLA FONTANA,<a name="ar23" id="ar23"></a></span> a town and episcopal see of
+Apulia, Italy, in the province of Lecce, 22 m. by rail E. by N.
+of Taranto, 460 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 17,759 (town);
+20,510 (commune). It is in a fine situation, and has a massive
+square castle of the Umperiali family, to whom, with Oria, it
+was sold by S. Carlo Borromeo in the 16th century for 40,000
+ounces of gold, which he distributed in one day to the poor.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRANCE, ANATOLE<a name="ar24" id="ar24"></a></span> (1844-&emsp;&emsp;), French critic, essayist and
+novelist (whose real name was Jacques Anatole Thibault), was
+born in Paris on the 16th of April 1844. His father was a bookseller,
+one of the last of the booksellers, if we are to believe the
+Goncourts, into whose establishment men came, not merely to
+order and buy, but to dip, and turn over pages and discuss. As
+a child he used to listen to the nightly talks on literary subjects
+which took place in his father&rsquo;s shop. Nurtured in an atmosphere
+so essentially bookish, he turned naturally to literature. In 1868
+his first work appeared, a study of Alfred de Vigny, followed
+in 1873 by a volume of verse, <i>Les Poëmes dorés</i>, dedicated to
+Leconte de Lisle, and, as such a dedication suggests, an outcome
+of the &ldquo;Parnassian&rdquo; movement; and yet another volume of
+verse appeared in 1876, <i>Les Noces corinthiennes</i>. But the poems
+in these volumes, though unmistakably the work of a man of
+great literary skill and cultured taste, are scarcely the poems
+of a man with whom verse is the highest form of expression.</p>
+
+<p>He was to find his richest vein in prose. He himself, avowing
+his preference for a simple, or seemingly simple, style as compared
+with the <i>artistic</i> style, vaunted by the Goncourts&mdash;a style compounded
+of neologisms and &ldquo;rare&rdquo; epithets, and startling
+forms of expression&mdash;observes: &ldquo;A simple style is like white
+light. It is complex, but not to outward seeming. In language,
+a beautiful and desirable simplicity is but an appearance, and
+results only from the good order and sovereign economy of the
+various parts of speech.&rdquo; And thus one may say of his own style
+that its beautiful translucency is the result of many qualities&mdash;felicity,
+grace, the harmonious grouping of words, a perfect
+measure. Anatole France is a sceptic. The essence of his
+philosophy, if a spirit so light; evanescent, elusive, can be said
+to have a philosophy, is doubt. He is a doubter in religion,
+metaphysics, morals, politics, aesthetics, science&mdash;a most genial
+and kindly doubter, and not at all without doubts even as to his
+own negative conclusions. Sometimes his doubts are expressed
+in his own person&mdash;as in the <i>Jardin d&rsquo;épicure</i> (1894) from which
+the above extracts are taken, or <i>Le Livre de mon ami</i> (1885),
+which may be accepted, perhaps, as partly autobiographical;
+sometimes, as in <i>La Rôtisserie de la reine Pédauque</i> (1893) and
+<i>Les Opinions de M. Jérôme Coignard</i> (1893), or <i>L&rsquo;Orme du mail</i>
+(1897), Le Mannequin d&rsquo;osier (1897), <i>L&rsquo;Anneau d&rsquo;améthyste</i> (1899),
+and <i>M. Bergeret à Paris</i> (1901), he entrusts the expression of
+his opinions, dramatically, to some fictitious character&mdash;the
+abbé Coignard, for instance, projecting, as it were, from the
+18th century some very effective criticisms on the popular
+political theories of contemporary France&mdash;or the M. Bergeret
+of the four last-named novels, which were published with the
+collective title of <i>Histoire contemporaine</i>. This series deals
+with some modern problems, and particularly, in <i>L&rsquo;Anneau
+d&rsquo;améthyste</i> and <i>M. Bergeret à Paris</i>, with the humours and follies
+of the anti-Dreyfusards. All this makes a piquant combination.
+Neither should reference be omitted to his <i>Crime de Sylvestre
+Bonnard</i> (1881), crowned by the Institute, nor to works more
+distinctly of fancy, such as <i>Balthasar</i> (1889), the story of one of
+the Magi or <i>Thaïs</i> (1890), the story of an actress and courtesan
+of Alexandria, whom a hermit converts, but with the loss of
+his own soul. His ironic comedy, <i>Crainquebille</i> (Renaissance
+theatre, 1903), was founded on his novel (1902) of the same year.
+His more recent work includes his anti-clerical <i>Vie de Jeanne
+d&rsquo;Arc</i> (1908); his pungent satire the <i>Île des penguins</i> (1908);
+and a volume of stories, <i>Les Sept Femmes de la Barbe-Bleue</i> (1909).
+Lightly as he bears his erudition, it is very real and extensive,
+and is notably shown in his utilization of modern archaeological
+and historical research in his fiction (as in the stories in <i>Sur une
+pierre blanche</i>). As a critic&mdash;see the <i>Vie littéraire</i> (1888-1892),
+reprinted mainly from <i>Le Temps</i>&mdash;he is graceful and appreciative.
+Academic in the best sense, he found a place in the French
+Academy, taking the seat vacated by Lesseps, and was received
+into that body on the 24th of December 1896. In the <i>affaire
+Dreyfus</i> he sided with M. Zola.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>For studies of M. Anatole France&rsquo;s talent see Maurice Bàrrès,
+<i>Anatole France</i> (1885); Jules Lemaître, <i>Les Contemporains</i> (2nd
+series, 1886); and G. Brandes, <i>Anatole France</i> (1908). In 1908
+Frederic Chapman began an edition of <i>The works of Anatole France
+in an English translation</i> (John Lane).</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="bold">FRANCE,<a name="ar25" id="ar25"></a></span> a country of western Europe, situated between
+51° 5&prime; and 42° 20&prime; N., and 4° 42&prime; W. and 7° 39&prime; E. It is hexagonal
+in form, being bounded N.W. by the North Sea, the Strait of
+Dover (<i>Pas de Calais</i>) and the English Channel (<i>La Manche</i>),
+W. by the Atlantic Ocean, S.W. by Spain, S.E. by the Mediterranean
+Sea, E. by Italy, Switzerland and Germany, N.E. by
+Germany, Luxemburg and Belgium. From north to south its
+length is about 600 m., measured from Dunkirk to the Col de
+Falguères; its breadth from east to west is 528 m., from the
+Vosges to Cape Saint Mathieu at the extremity of Brittany.
+The total area is estimated<a name="fa1c" id="fa1c" href="#ft1c"><span class="sp">1</span></a> at 207,170 sq. m., including the
+island of Corsica, which comprises 3367 sq. m. The coast-line
+of France extends for 384 m. on the Mediterranean, 700 on the
+North Sea, the Strait of Dover and the Channel, and 865 on the
+Atlantic. The country has the advantage of being separated
+from its neighbours over the greater part of its frontier by
+natural barriers of great strength, the Pyrenees forming a
+powerful bulwark on the south-west, the Alps on the south-east,
+and the Jura and the greater portion of the Vosges Mountains
+on the east. The frontier generally follows the crest line of these
+ranges. Germany possesses both slopes of the Vosges north
+of Mont Donon, from which point the north-east boundary is
+conventional and unprotected by nature.</p>
+
+<p>France is geographically remarkable for its possession of great
+natural and historical highways between the Mediterranean
+and the Atlantic Ocean. The one, following the depression
+between the central plateau and the eastern mountains by way
+of the valleys of the Rhône and Saône, traverses the Côte d&rsquo;Or
+hills and so gains the valley of the Seine; the other, skirting
+the southern base of the Cévennes, reaches the ocean by way of
+the Garonne valley. Another natural highway, traversing the
+lowlands to the west of the central plateau, unites the Seine
+basin with that of the Garonne.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p><i>Physiography.</i>&mdash;A line drawn from Bayonne through Agen,
+Poitiers, Troyes, Reims and Valenciennes divides the country
+roughly into two dissimilar physical regions&mdash;to the west and
+north-west a country of plains and low plateaus; in the centre,
+east and south-east a country of mountains and high plateaus
+with a minimum elevation of 650 ft. To the west of this line the
+only highlands of importance are the granitic plateaus of Brittany
+and the hills of Normandy and Perche, which, uniting with the
+plateau of Beauce, separate the basins of the Seine and Loire. The
+highest elevations of these ranges do not exceed 1400 ft. The
+configuration of the region east of the dividing line is widely different.
+Its most striking feature is the mountainous and eruptive area
+known as the Massif Central, which covers south-central France.
+The central point of this huge tract is formed by the mountains
+of Auvergne comprising the group of Cantal, where the Plomb du
+Cantal attains 6096 ft., and that of Mont Dore, containing the
+Puy de Sancy (6188 ft.), the culminating point of the Massif, and to
+the north the lesser elevations of the Monts Dôme. On the west
+the downward slope is gradual by way of lofty plateaus to the heights
+of Limousin and Marche and the table-land of Quercy, thence to
+the plains of Poitou, Angoumois and Guienne. On the east only
+river valleys divide the Auvergne mountains from those of Forez
+and Margeride, western spurs of the Cévennes. On the south the
+Aubrac mountains and the barren plateaus known as the Causses
+intervene between them and the Cévennes. The main range of the
+Cévennes (highest point Mont Lozère, 5584 ft.) sweeps in a wide
+curve from the granitic table-land of Morvan in the north along the
+right banks of the Saône and Rhône to the Montagne Noire in the
+south, where it is separated from the Pyrenean system by the river
+Aude. On the south-western border of France the Pyrenees include
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page776" id="page776"></a>776</span>
+several peaks over 10,000 ft. within French territory; the highest
+elevation therein, the Vignemale, in the centre of the range, reaches
+10,820 ft. On the north their most noteworthy offshoots are, in the
+centre, the plateau of Lannemezan from which rivers radiate fanwise
+to join the Adour and Garonne; and in the east the Corbière.
+On the south-eastern frontier the French Alps, which include Mont
+Blanc (15,800 ft.), and, more to the south, other summits over
+11,000 ft. in height, cover Savoy and most of Dauphiné and Provence,
+that is to say, nearly the whole of France to the south and east of the
+Rhône. North of that river the parallel chains of the Jura form an
+arc of a circle with its convexity towards the north-west. In the
+southern and most elevated portion of the range there are several
+summits exceeding 5500 ft. Separated from the Jura by the defile
+of Belfort (Trouée de Belfort) the Vosges extend northward parallel
+to the course of the Rhine. Their culminating points in French
+territory, the Ballon d&rsquo;Alsace and the Höhneck in the southern
+portion of the chain, reach 4100 ft. and 4480 ft. The Vosges are
+buttressed on the west by the Faucilles, which curve southwards
+to meet the plateau of Langres, and by the plateaus of Haute-Marne,
+united to the Ardennes on the north-eastern frontier by the
+wooded highlands of Argonne.</p>
+
+<div class="center pt2"><img style="width:920px; height:964px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img776.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="pt2"><i>Seaboard.</i>&mdash;The shore of the Mediterranean encircling the Gulf of
+the Lion (Golfe du Lion)<a name="fa2c" id="fa2c" href="#ft2c"><span class="sp">2</span></a> from Cape Cerbera to Martigues is low-lying
+and unbroken, and characterized chiefly by lagoons separated
+from the sea by sand-dunes. The coast, constantly encroaching on
+the sea by reason of the alluvium washed down by the rivers of the
+Pyrenees and Cévennes, is without important harbours saving that
+of Cette, itself continually invaded by the sand. East of Martigues
+the coast is rocky and of greater altitude, and is broken by projecting
+capes (Couronne, Croisette, Sicié, the peninsula of Giens and Cape
+Antibes), and by deep gulfs forming secure roadsteads such as those
+of Marseilles, which has the chief port in France, Toulon, with its
+great naval harbour, and Hyères, to which may be added the Gulf of
+St Tropez.</p>
+
+<p>Along the Atlantic coast from the mouth of the Adour to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page777" id="page777"></a>777</span>
+estuary of the Gironde there stretches a monotonous line of sand-dunes
+bordered by lagoons on the land side, but towards the sea
+harbourless and unbroken save for the Bay of Arcachon. To the
+north as far as the rocky point of St Gildas, sheltering the mouth
+of the Loire, the shore, often occupied by salt marshes (marshes of
+Poitou and Brittany), is low-lying and hollowed by deep bays
+sheltered by large islands, those of Oléron and Ré lying opposite
+the ports of Rochefort and La Rochelle, while Noirmoutier closes the
+Bay of Bourgneuf.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the Loire estuary, on the north shore of which is the port
+of St Nazaire, the peninsula of Brittany projects into the ocean and
+here begins the most rugged, wild and broken portion of the French
+seaboard; the chief of innumerable indentations are, on the south
+the Gulf of Morbihan, which opens into a bay protected to the west
+by the narrow peninsula of Quiberon, the Bay of Lorient with the
+port of Lorient, and the Bay of Concarneau; on the west the
+dangerous Bay of Audierne and the Bay of Douarnenez separated
+from the spacious roadstead of Brest, with its important naval port,
+by the peninsula of Crozon, and forming with it a great indentation
+sheltered by Cape St Mathieu on the north and by Cape Raz on the
+south; on the north, opening into the English Channel, the Morlaix
+roads, the Bay of St Brieuc, the estuary of the Rance, with the port
+of St Malo and the Bay of St Michel. Numerous small archipelagoes
+and islands, of which the chief are Belle Île, Groix and Ushant,
+fringe the Breton coast. North of the Bay of St Michel the peninsula
+of Cotentin, terminating in the promontories of Hague and Barfleur,
+juts north into the English Channel and closes the bay of the Seine
+on the west. Cherbourg, its chief harbour, lies on the northern
+shore between the two promontories. The great port of Le Havre
+stands at the mouth of the Seine estuary, which opens into the bay
+of the Seine on the east. North of that point a line of high cliffs,
+in which occur the ports of Fécamp and Dieppe, stretches nearly to
+the sandy estuary of the Somme. North of that river the coast is
+low-lying and bordered by sand-dunes, to which succeed on the
+Strait of Dover the cliffs in the neighbourhood of the port of
+Boulogne and the marshes and sand-dunes of Flanders, with the
+ports of Calais and Dunkirk, the latter the principal French port on
+the North Sea.</p>
+
+<p>To the maritime ports mentioned above must be added the river
+ports of Bayonne (on the Adour), Bordeaux (on the Garonne), Nantes
+(on the Loire), Rouen (on the Seine). On the whole, however,
+France is inadequately provided with natural harbours; her long
+tract of coast washed by the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay has
+scarcely three or four good seaports, and those on the southern shore
+of the Channel form a striking contrast to the spacious maritime
+inlets on the English side.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rivers.</i>&mdash;The greater part of the surface of France is divided
+between four principal and several secondary basins.</p>
+
+<p>The basin of the Rhône, with an area (in France) of about 35,000
+sq. m., covers eastern France from the Mediterranean to the Vosges,
+from the Cévennes and the Plateau de Langres to the crests of the
+Jura and the Alps. Alone among French rivers, the Rhône, itself
+Alpine in character in its upper course, is partly fed by Alpine
+rivers (the Arve, the Isère and the Durance) which have their floods in
+spring at the melting of the snow, and are maintained by glacier-water
+in summer. The Rhône, the source of which is in Mont St
+Gothard, in Switzerland, enters France by the narrow defile of
+L&rsquo;Écluse, and has a somewhat meandering course, first flowing
+south, then north-west, and then west as far as Lyons, whence it
+runs straight south till it reaches the Mediterranean, into which it
+discharges itself by two principal branches, which form the delta
+or island of the Camargue. The Ain, the Saône (which rises in the
+Faucilles and in the lower part of its course skirting the regions of
+Bresse and Dombes, receives the Doubs and joins the Rhône at
+Lyons), the Ardèche and the Gard are the affluents on the right;
+on the left it is joined by the Arve, the Isère, the Drôme and the
+Durance. The small independent river, the Var, drains that portion
+of the Alps which fringes the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>The basin of the Garonne occupies south-western France with the
+exception of the tracts covered by the secondary basins of the Adour,
+the Aude, the Hérault, the Orb and other smaller rivers, and the low-lying
+plain of the Landes, which is watered by numerous coast rivers,
+notably by the Leyre. Its area is nearly 33,000 sq. m., and extends
+from the Pyrenees to the uplands of Saintonge, Périgord and Limousin.
+The Garonne rises in the valley of Aran (Spanish Pyrenees), enters
+France near Bagnères-de-Luchon, has first a north-west course,
+then bends to the north-east, and soon resumes its first direction.
+Joining the Atlantic between Royan and the Pointe de Grave,
+opposite the tower of Cordouan. In the lower part of its course,
+from the Bec-d&rsquo;Ambez, where it receives the Dordogne, it becomes
+considerably wider, and takes the name of Gironde. The principal
+affluents are the Ariège, the Tarn with the Aveyron and the Agout,
+the Lot and the Dordogne, which descends from Mont Dore-les-Bains,
+and joins the Garonne at Bec-d&rsquo;Ambez, to form the Gironde.
+All these affluents are on the right, and with the exception of the
+Ariège, which descends from the eastern Pyrenees, rise in the mountains
+of Auvergne and the southern Cévennes, their sources often
+lying close to those of the rivers of the Loire and Rhône basins.
+The Neste, a Pyrenean torrent, and the Save, the Gers and the Baïse,
+rising on the plateau of Lannemezan, are the principal left-hand
+tributaries of the Garonne. North of the basin of the Garonne an
+area of over 3800 sq. m. is watered by the secondary system of the
+Charente, which descends from Chéronnac (Haute-Vienne), traverses
+Angoulême and falls into the Atlantic near Rochefort. Farther to
+the north a number of small rivers, the chief of which is the Sèvre
+Niortaise, drain the coast region to the south of the plateau of
+Gâtine.</p>
+
+<p>The basin of the Loire, with an area of about 47,000 sq. m.,
+includes a great part of central and western France or nearly a
+quarter of the whole country. The Loire rises in Mont Gerbier de
+Jonc, in the range of the Vivarais mountains, flows due north to
+Nevers, then turns to the north-west as far as Orléans, in the neighbourhood
+of which it separates the marshy region of the Sologne
+(<i>q.v.</i>) on the south from the wheat-growing region of Beauce and the
+Gâtinais on the north. Below Orléans it takes its course towards
+the south-west, and lastly from Saumur runs west, till it reaches
+the Atlantic between Paimb&oelig;uf and St Nazaire. On the right the
+Loire receives the waters of the Furens, the Arroux, the Nièvre, the
+Maine (formed by the Mayenne and the Sarthe with its affluent the
+Loir), and the Erdre, which joins the Loire at Nantes; on the left,
+the Allier (which receives the Dore and the Sioule), the Loiret, the
+Cher, the Indre, the Vienne with its affluent the Creuse, the Thouet,
+and the Sèvre-Nantaise. The peninsula of Brittany and the coasts
+of Normandy on both sides of the Seine estuary are watered by
+numerous independent streams. Amongst these the Vilaine, which
+passes Rennes and Redon, waters, with its tributaries, an area of
+4200 sq. m. The Orne, which rises in the hills of Normandy and
+falls into the Channel below Caen, is of considerably less importance.</p>
+
+<p>The basin of the Seine, though its area of a little over 30,000 sq. m.
+is smaller than that of any of the other main systems, comprises the
+finest network of navigable rivers in the country. It is by far the
+most important basin of northern France, those of the Somme and
+Scheldt in the north-west together covering less than 5000 sq. m.,
+those of the Meuse and the Rhine in the north-east less than 7000
+sq. m. The Seine descends from the Langres plateau, flows north-west
+down to Méry, turns to the west, resumes its north-westerly
+direction at Montereau, passes through Paris and Rouen and discharges
+itself into the Channel between Le Havre and Honfleur.
+Its affluents are, on the right, the Aube; the Marne, which joins the
+Seine at Charenton near Paris; the Oise, which has its source in
+Belgium and is enlarged by the Aisne; and the Epte; on the left
+the Yonne, the Loing, the Essonne, the Eure and the Rille.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lakes.</i>&mdash;France has very few lakes. The Lake of Geneva, which
+forms 32 m. of the frontier, belongs to Switzerland. The most
+important French lake is that of Grand-Lieu, between Nantes and
+Paimb&oelig;uf (Loire-Inférieure), which presents a surface of 17,300
+acres. There may also be mentioned the lakes of Bourget and
+Annecy (both in Savoy), St Point (Jura), Paladru (Isère) and
+Nantua (Ain). The marshy districts of Sologne, Brenne, Landes
+and Dombes still contain large undrained tracts. The coasts present
+a number of maritime inlets, forming inland bays, which communicate
+with the sea by channels of greater or less width. Some of these
+are on the south-west coast, in the Landes, as Carcans, Lacanau,
+Biscarosse, Cazau, Sanguinet; but more are to be found in the south
+and south-east, in Languedoc and Provence, as Leucate, Sigean,
+Thau, Vaccarès, Berre, &amp;c. Their want of depth prevents them
+from serving as roadsteads for shipping, and they are useful chiefly
+for fishing or for the manufacture of bay-salt.</p>
+
+<p><i>Climate.</i>&mdash;The north and north-west of France bear a great resemblance,
+both in temperature and produce, to the south of England,
+rain occurring frequently, and the country being consequently
+suited for pasture. In the interior the rains are less frequent, but
+when they occur are far more heavy, so that there is much less
+difference in the annual rainfall there as compared with the rest of
+the country than in the number of rainy days. The annual rainfall
+for the whole of France averages about 32 in. The precipitation is
+greatest on the Atlantic seaboard and in the elevated regions of the
+interior. It attains over 60 in. in the basin of the Adour (71 in.
+at the western extremity of the Pyrenees), and nearly as much in
+the Vosges, Morvan, Cévennes and parts of the central plateau.
+The zone of level country extending from Reims and Troyes to
+Angers and Poitiers, with the exception of the Loire valley and the
+Brie, receives less than 24 in. of rain annually (Paris about 23 in.),
+as also does the Mediterranean coast west of Marseilles. The prevailing
+winds, mild and humid, are west winds from the Atlantic;
+continental climatic influence makes itself felt in the east wind,
+which is frequent in winter and in the east of France, while the
+<i>mistral</i>, a violent wind from the north-west, is characteristic of the
+Mediterranean region. The local climates of France may be grouped
+under the following seven designations: (1) Sequan climate, characterizing
+the Seine basin and northern France, with a mean
+temperature of 50° F., the winters being cold, the summers mild;
+(2) Breton climate, with a mean temperature of 51.8° F., the winters
+being mild, the summers temperate, it is characterized by west
+and south-west winds and frequent fine rains; (3) Girondin climate
+(characterizing Bordeaux, Agen, Pau, &amp;c.), having a mean of
+53.6° F., with mild winters and hot summers, the prevailing wind
+is from the north-west, the average rainfall about 28 in.; (4)
+Auvergne climate, comprising the Cévennes, central plateau, Clermont,
+Limoges and Rodez, mean temperature 51.8° F., with cold
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page778" id="page778"></a>778</span>
+winters and hot summers; (5) Vosges climate (comprehending
+Epinal, Mézières and Nancy), having a mean of 48.2° F., with long
+and severe winters and hot and rainy summers; (6) Rhône climate
+(experienced by Lyons, Chalon, Mâcon, Grenoble) mean temperature
+51.8° F., with cold and wet winters and hot summers, the
+prevailing winds are north and south; (7) Mediterranean climate,
+ruling at Valence, Nîmes, Nice and Marseilles, mean temperature,
+57.5° F., with mild winters and hot and almost rainless summers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Flora and Fauna.</i>&mdash;The flora of southern France and the Mediterranean
+is distinct from that of the rest of the country, which does
+not differ in vegetation from western Europe generally. Evergreens
+predominate in the south, where grow subtropical plants such as
+the myrtle, arbutus, laurel, holm-oak, olive and fig; varieties of
+the same kind are also found on the Atlantic coast (as far north as
+the Cotentin), where the humidity and mildness of the climate
+favour their growth. The orange, date-palm and eucalyptus have
+been acclimatized on the coast of Provence and the Riviera. Other
+trees of southern France are the cork-oak and the Aleppo and maritime
+pines. In north and central France the chief trees are the oak,
+the beech, rare south of the Loire, and the hornbeam; less important
+varieties are the birch, poplar, ash, elm and walnut. The chestnut
+covers considerable areas in Périgord, Limousin and Béarn; resinous
+trees (firs, pines, larches, &amp;c.) form fine forests in the Vosges and
+Jura.</p>
+
+<p>The indigenous fauna include the bear, now very rare but still
+found in the Alps and Pyrenees, the wolf, harbouring chiefly in the
+Cévennes and Vosges, but in continually decreasing areas; the fox,
+marten, badger, weasel, otter, the beaver in the extreme south of the
+Rhône valley, and in the Alps the marmot; the red deer and roe
+deer are preserved in many of the forests, and the wild boar is found
+in several districts; the chamois and wild goat survive in the Pyrenees
+and Alps. Hares, rabbits and squirrels are common. Among
+birds of prey may be mentioned the eagle and various species of hawk,
+and among game-birds the partridge and pheasant. The reptiles
+include the ringed-snake, slow-worm, viper and lizard.</p>
+<div class="author">(R. Tr.)</div>
+
+<p><i>Geology.</i>&mdash;Many years ago it was pointed out by Élíe de Beaumont
+and Dufrénoy that the Jurassic rocks of France form upon the map
+an incomplete figure of 8. Within the northern circle of the 8 lie
+the Mesozoic and Tertiary beds of the Paris basin, dipping inwards;
+within the southern circle lie the ancient rocks of the Central Plateau,
+from which the later beds dip outwards. Outside the northern circle
+lie on the west the folded Palaeozoic rocks of Brittany, and on the
+north the Palaeozoic <i>massif</i> of the Ardennes. Outside the southern
+circle lie on the west the Mesozoic and Tertiary beds of the basin
+of the Garonne, with the Pyrenees beyond, and on the east the
+Mesozoic and Tertiary beds of the valley of the Rhône, with the
+Alps beyond.</p>
+
+<p>In the geological history of France there have been two great
+periods of folding since Archean times. The first of these occurred
+towards the close of the Palaeozoic era, when a great mountain
+system was raised in the north running approximately from E. to W.,
+and another chain arose in the south, running from S.W. to N.E.
+Of the former the remnants are now seen in Brittany and the
+Ardennes; of the latter the Cévennes and the Montagne Noire are
+the last traces visible on the surface. The second great folding took
+place in Tertiary times, and to it was due the final elevation of the
+Jura and the Western Alps and of the Pyrenees. No great mountain
+chain was ever raised by a single effort, and folding went on to some
+extent in other periods besides those mentioned. There were,
+moreover, other and broader oscillations which raised or lowered
+extensive areas without much crumpling of the strata, and to these
+are due some of the most important breaks in the geological series.</p>
+
+<p>The oldest rocks, the gneisses and schists of the Archean period,
+form nearly the whole of the Central Plateau, and are also exposed
+in the axes of the folds in Brittany. The Central Plateau has
+probably been a land mass ever since this period, but the rest of the
+country was flooded by the Palaeozoic sea. The earlier deposits
+of that sea now rise to the surface in Brittany, the Ardennes, the
+Montagne Noire and the Cévennes, and in all these regions they are
+intensely folded. Towards the close of the Palaeozoic era France had
+become a part of a great continent; in the north the Coal Measures
+of the Boulonnais and the Nord were laid down in direct connexion
+with those of Belgium and England, while in the Central Plateau
+the Coal Measures were deposited in isolated and scattered basins.
+The Permian and Triassic deposits were also, for the most part, of
+continental origin; but with the formation of the Rhaetic beds the
+sea again began to spread, and throughout the greater part of the
+Jurassic period it covered nearly the whole of the country except
+the Central Plateau, Brittany and the Ardennes. Towards the end
+of the period, however, during the deposition of the Portlandian
+beds, the sea again retreated, and in the early part of the Cretaceous
+period was limited (in France) to the catchment basins of the Saône
+and Rhône&mdash;in the Paris basin the contemporaneous deposits were
+chiefly estuarine and were confined to the northern and eastern rim.
+Beginning with the Aptian and Albian the sea again gradually
+spread over the country and attained its maximum in the early part
+of the Senonian epoch, when once more the ancient massifs of the
+Central Plateau, Brittany and the Ardennes, alone rose above the
+waves. There was still, however, a well-marked difference between
+the deposits of the northern and the southern parts of France, the
+former consisting of chalk, as in England, and the latter of sandstones
+and limestones with Hippurites. During the later part of the
+Cretaceous period the sea gradually retreated and left the whole
+country dry.</p>
+
+<p>During the Tertiary period arms of the sea spread into France&mdash;in
+the Paris basin from the north, in the basins of the Loire and the
+Garonne from the west, and in the Rhône area from the south. The
+changes, however, were too numerous and complex to be dealt
+with here.</p>
+
+<div class="center pt2"><img style="width:525px; height:651px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img778.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="pt2">In France, as in Great Britain, volcanic eruptions occurred during
+several of the Palaeozoic periods, but during the Mesozoic era the
+country was free from outbursts, except in the regions of the Alps
+and Pyrenees. In Tertiary times the Central Plateau was the theatre
+of great volcanic activity from the Miocene to the Pleistocene
+periods, and many of the volcanoes remain as nearly perfect cones
+to the present day. The rocks are mainly basalts and andesites,
+together with trachytes and phonolites, and some of the basaltic
+flows are of enormous extent.</p>
+
+<p>On the geology of France see the classic <i>Explication de la carte
+géologique de la France</i> (Paris, vol. i. 1841, vol. ii. 1848), by Dufrénoy
+and Élie de Beaumont; a more modern account, with full references,
+is given by A. de Lapparent, <i>Traité de géologie</i> (Paris, 1906).</p>
+</div>
+<div class="author">(J. A. H.)</div>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Population.</i></p>
+
+<p>The French nation is formed of many different elements.
+Iberian influence in the south-west, Ligurian on the shores of
+the Mediterranean, Germanic immigrations from east of the
+Rhine and Scandinavian immigrations in the north-west have
+tended to produce ethnographical diversities which ease of
+intercommunication and other modern conditions have failed to
+obliterate. The so-called Celtic type, exemplified by individuals
+of rather less than average height, brown-haired and brachycephalic,
+is the fundamental element in the nation and peoples
+the region between the Seine and the Garonne; in southern
+France a different type, dolichocephalic, short and with black
+hair and eyes, predominates. The tall, fair and blue-eyed
+individuals who are found to the north-east of the Seine and in
+Normandy appear to be nearer in race to the Scandinavian and
+Germanic invaders; a tall and darker type with long faces
+and aquiline noses occurs in some parts of Franche-Comté and
+Champagne, the Vosges and the Perche. From the Celts has
+been derived the gay, brilliant and adventurous temperament
+easily moved to extremes of enthusiasm and depression, which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page779" id="page779"></a>779</span>
+combined with logical and organizing faculties of a high order,
+the heritage from the Latin domination, and with the industry,
+frugality and love of the soil natural in an agricultural people
+go to make up the national character. The Bretons, who most
+nearly represent the Celts, and the Basques, who inhabit
+parts of the western versant of the Pyrenees, have preserved
+their distinctive languages and customs, and are ethnically the
+most interesting sections of the nation; the Flemings of French
+Flanders where Flemish is still spoken are also racially distinct.
+The immigration of Belgians into the northern departments and
+of Italians into those of the south-east exercise a constant
+modifying influence on the local populations.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figcenter"><img style="width:550px; height:827px" src="images/img778a.jpg" alt="" /></td>
+<td class="figcenter"><img style="width:589px; height:827px" src="images/img778c.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="noind f80">(<a href="images/img778b.jpg">Click to enlarge left side.</a>)<br />
+(<a href="images/img778d.jpg">Click to enlarge right side.</a>)</p>
+
+<p class="pt2">During the 19th century the population of France
+increased to a less extent than that of any other
+country (except Ireland) for which definite data exist,
+and during the last twenty years of that period it
+was little more than stationary. The following table
+exhibits the rate of increase as indicated by the
+censuses from 1876 to 1906.</p>
+
+<table class="ws f90" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc">Population.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc">1876</td> <td class="tcc">36,905,788</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc">1881</td> <td class="tcc">37,672,048</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc">1886</td> <td class="tcc">38,218,903</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc">1891</td> <td class="tcc">38,342,948</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc">1896</td> <td class="tcc">38,517,975</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc">1901</td> <td class="tcc">38,961,945</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc">1906</td> <td class="tcc">39,252,245</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Thus the rate of increase during the decade 1891-1901
+was .16%, whereas during the same period the
+population of England increased 1.08%. The birth-rate
+markedly decreased during the 19th century;
+despite an increase of population between 1801 and
+1901 amounting to 40%, the number of births in
+the former was 904,000, as against 857,000 in the
+latter year, the diminution being accompanied by
+a decrease in the annual number of deaths.<a name="fa3c" id="fa3c" href="#ft3c"><span class="sp">3</span></a> In
+the following table the decrease in births and deaths
+for the decennial periods during the thirty years
+ending 1900 are compared.</p>
+
+<table class="ws f90" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc" colspan="5"><i>Births.</i></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc">1871-1880</td> <td class="tcc">935,000</td> <td class="tcc">or</td> <td class="tcc">25.4</td> <td class="tcc">per 1000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc">1881-1890</td> <td class="tcc">909,000</td> <td class="tcc">&rdquo;</td> <td class="tcc">23.9</td> <td class="tcc">&rdquo;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc">1891-1900</td> <td class="tcc">853,000</td> <td class="tcc">&rdquo;</td> <td class="tcc">22.2</td> <td class="tcc">&rdquo;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc pt1" colspan="5"><i>Deaths.</i></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc">1871-1880</td> <td class="tcc">870,900</td> <td class="tcc">or</td> <td class="tcc">23.7</td> <td class="tcc">per 1000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc">1881-1890</td> <td class="tcc">841,700</td> <td class="tcc">&rdquo;</td> <td class="tcc">22.1</td> <td class="tcc">&rdquo;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc">1891-1900</td> <td class="tcc">829,000</td> <td class="tcc">&rdquo;</td> <td class="tcc">21.5</td> <td class="tcc">&rdquo;</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>About two-thirds of the French departments, comprising
+a large proportion of those situated in
+mountainous districts and in the basin of the Garonne,
+where the birth-rate is especially feeble, show a
+decrease in population. Those which show an increase
+usually possess large centres of industry and are
+already thickly populated, <i>e.g.</i> Seine and Pas-de-Calais.
+In most departments the principal cause of decrease
+of population is the attraction of great centres. The
+average density of population in France is about 190
+to the square mile, the tendency being for the large
+towns to increase at the expense of the small towns
+as well as the rural communities. In 1901 37% of the
+population lived in centres containing more than 2000
+inhabitants, whereas in 1861 the proportion was 28%.
+Besides the industrial districts the most thickly
+populated regions include the coast of the department
+of Seine-Inférieure and Brittany, the wine-growing
+region of the Bordelais and the Riviera.<a name="fa4c" id="fa4c" href="#ft4c"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p>
+
+<p>In the quinquennial period 1901-1905, out of the total number of births
+the number of illegitimate births to every 1000 inhabitants was 2.0, as
+compared with 2.1 in the four preceding periods of like duration.</p>
+
+<p>In 1906 the number of foreigners in France was 1,009,415 as compared
+with 1,027,491 in 1896 and 1,115,214 in 1886. The departments with the
+largest population of foreigners were Nord (191,678), in which there is
+a large proportion of Belgians; Bouches-du-Rhône (123,497),
+Alpes-Maritimes (93,554), Var (47,475), Italians being numerous in these
+three departments; Seine (153,647), Meurthe-et-Moselle (44,595),
+Pas-de-Calais (21,436) and Ardennes (21,401).</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>The following table gives the area in square miles of each of the eighty-seven
+departments with its population according to the census returns of 1886, 1896
+and 1906:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">Departments.</td> <td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">Area<br />sq. m.</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="3">Population.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">1886.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1896.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1906.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Ain</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,249</td> <td class="tcr rb">364,408</td> <td class="tcr rb">351,569</td> <td class="tcr rb">345,856</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Aisne</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,867</td> <td class="tcr rb">555,925</td> <td class="tcr rb">541,613</td> <td class="tcr rb">534,495</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Allier</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,849</td> <td class="tcr rb">424,582</td> <td class="tcr rb">424,378</td> <td class="tcr rb">417,961</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Alpes-Maritimes</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,442</td> <td class="tcr rb">238,057</td> <td class="tcr rb">265,155</td> <td class="tcr rb">334,007</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Ardèche</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,145</td> <td class="tcr rb">375,472</td> <td class="tcr rb">363,501</td> <td class="tcr rb">347,140</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Ardennes</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,028</td> <td class="tcr rb">332,759</td> <td class="tcr rb">318,865</td> <td class="tcr rb">317,505</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Ariège</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,893</td> <td class="tcr rb">237,619</td> <td class="tcr rb">219,641</td> <td class="tcr rb">205,684</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Aube</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,326</td> <td class="tcr rb">257,374</td> <td class="tcr rb">251,435</td> <td class="tcr rb">243,670</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Aude</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,448</td> <td class="tcr rb">332,080</td> <td class="tcr rb">310,513</td> <td class="tcr rb">308,327</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Aveyron</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,386</td> <td class="tcr rb">415,826</td> <td class="tcr rb">389,464</td> <td class="tcr rb">377,299</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Basses-Alpes</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,698</td> <td class="tcr rb">129,494</td> <td class="tcr rb">118,142</td> <td class="tcr rb">113,126</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Basses-Pyrénées</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,977</td> <td class="tcr rb">432,999</td> <td class="tcr rb">423,572</td> <td class="tcr rb">426,817</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Belfort, Territoire de</td> <td class="tcr rb">235</td> <td class="tcr rb">79,758</td> <td class="tcr rb">88,047</td> <td class="tcr rb">95,421</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Bouches-du-Rhône</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,026</td> <td class="tcr rb">604,857</td> <td class="tcr rb">673,820</td> <td class="tcr rb">765,918</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Calvados</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,197</td> <td class="tcr rb">437,267</td> <td class="tcr rb">417,176</td> <td class="tcr rb">403,431</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Cantal</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,231</td> <td class="tcr rb">241,742</td> <td class="tcr rb">234,382</td> <td class="tcr rb">228,690</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Charente</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,305</td> <td class="tcr rb">366,408</td> <td class="tcr rb">356,236</td> <td class="tcr rb">351,733</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Charente-Inférieure</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,791</td> <td class="tcr rb">462,803</td> <td class="tcr rb">453,455</td> <td class="tcr rb">453,793</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Cher</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,819</td> <td class="tcr rb">355,349</td> <td class="tcr rb">347,725</td> <td class="tcr rb">343,484</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Corrèze</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,273</td> <td class="tcr rb">326,494</td> <td class="tcr rb">322,393</td> <td class="tcr rb">317,430</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Corse (Corsica)</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,367</td> <td class="tcr rb">278,501</td> <td class="tcr rb">290,168</td> <td class="tcr rb">291,160</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Côte-d&rsquo;Or</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,392</td> <td class="tcr rb">381,574</td> <td class="tcr rb">368,168</td> <td class="tcr rb">357,959</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Côtes-du-Nord</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,786</td> <td class="tcr rb">628,256</td> <td class="tcr rb">616,074</td> <td class="tcr rb">611,506</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Creuse</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,164</td> <td class="tcr rb">284,942</td> <td class="tcr rb">279,366</td> <td class="tcr rb">274,094</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Deux-Sèvres</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,337</td> <td class="tcr rb">353,766</td> <td class="tcr rb">346,694</td> <td class="tcr rb">339,466</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Dordogne</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,561</td> <td class="tcr rb">492,205</td> <td class="tcr rb">464,822</td> <td class="tcr rb">447,052</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Doubs</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,030</td> <td class="tcr rb">310,963</td> <td class="tcr rb">302,046</td> <td class="tcr rb">298,438</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Drôme</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,533</td> <td class="tcr rb">314,615</td> <td class="tcr rb">303,491</td> <td class="tcr rb">297,270</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Eure</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,330</td> <td class="tcr rb">358,829</td> <td class="tcr rb">340,652</td> <td class="tcr rb">330,140</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Eure-et-Loir</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,293</td> <td class="tcr rb">283,719</td> <td class="tcr rb">280,469</td> <td class="tcr rb">273,823</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Finistère</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,713</td> <td class="tcr rb">707,820</td> <td class="tcr rb">739,648</td> <td class="tcr rb">795,103</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Gard</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,270</td> <td class="tcr rb">417,099</td> <td class="tcr rb">416,036</td> <td class="tcr rb">421,166</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Gers</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,428</td> <td class="tcr rb">274,391</td> <td class="tcr rb">250,472</td> <td class="tcr rb">231,088</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Gironde</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,140</td> <td class="tcr rb">775,845</td> <td class="tcr rb">809,902</td> <td class="tcr rb">823,925</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Haute-Garonne</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,458</td> <td class="tcr rb">481,169</td> <td class="tcr rb">459,377</td> <td class="tcr rb">442,065</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Haute-Loire</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,931</td> <td class="tcr rb">320,063</td> <td class="tcr rb">316,699</td> <td class="tcr rb">314,770</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Haute-Marne</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,415</td> <td class="tcr rb">247,781</td> <td class="tcr rb">232,057</td> <td class="tcr rb">221,724</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Hautes-Alpes</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,178</td> <td class="tcr rb">122,924</td> <td class="tcr rb">113,229</td> <td class="tcr rb">107,498</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Haute-Saône</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,075</td> <td class="tcr rb">290,954</td> <td class="tcr rb">272,891</td> <td class="tcr rb">263,890</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Haute-Savoie</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,775</td> <td class="tcr rb">275,018</td> <td class="tcr rb">265,872</td> <td class="tcr rb">260,617</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Hautes-Pyrénées</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,750</td> <td class="tcr rb">234,825</td> <td class="tcr rb">218,973</td> <td class="tcr rb">209,397</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Haute-Vienne</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,144</td> <td class="tcr rb">363,182</td> <td class="tcr rb">375,724</td> <td class="tcr rb">385,732</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Hérault</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,403</td> <td class="tcr rb">439,044</td> <td class="tcr rb">469,684</td> <td class="tcr rb">482,799</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Ille-et-Vilaine</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,699</td> <td class="tcr rb">621,384</td> <td class="tcr rb">622,039</td> <td class="tcr rb">611,805</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Indre</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,666</td> <td class="tcr rb">296,147</td> <td class="tcr rb">289,206</td> <td class="tcr rb">290,216</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Indre-et-Loire</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,377</td> <td class="tcr rb">340,921</td> <td class="tcr rb">337,064</td> <td class="tcr rb">337,916</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Isère</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,179</td> <td class="tcr rb">581,680</td> <td class="tcr rb">568,933</td> <td class="tcr rb">562,315</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Jura</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,951</td> <td class="tcr rb">281,292</td> <td class="tcr rb">266,143</td> <td class="tcr rb">257,725</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Landes</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,615</td> <td class="tcr rb">302,266</td> <td class="tcr rb">292,884</td> <td class="tcr rb">293,397</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Loir-et-Cher</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,479</td> <td class="tcr rb">279,214</td> <td class="tcr rb">278,153</td> <td class="tcr rb">276,019</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Loire</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,853</td> <td class="tcr rb">603,384</td> <td class="tcr rb">625,336</td> <td class="tcr rb">643,943</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Loire-Inférieure</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,694</td> <td class="tcr rb">643,884</td> <td class="tcr rb">646,172</td> <td class="tcr rb">666,748</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Loiret</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,629</td> <td class="tcr rb">374,875</td> <td class="tcr rb">371,019</td> <td class="tcr rb">364,999</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Lot</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,017</td> <td class="tcr rb">271,514</td> <td class="tcr rb">240,403</td> <td class="tcr rb">216,611</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Lot-et-Garonne</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,079</td> <td class="tcr rb">307,437</td> <td class="tcr rb">286,377</td> <td class="tcr rb">274,610</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Lozère</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,999</td> <td class="tcr rb">141,264</td> <td class="tcr rb">132,151</td> <td class="tcr rb">128,016</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Maine-et-Loire</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,706</td> <td class="tcr rb">527,680</td> <td class="tcr rb">514,870</td> <td class="tcr rb">513,490</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Manche</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,475</td> <td class="tcr rb">520,865</td> <td class="tcr rb">500,052</td> <td class="tcr rb">487,443</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Marne</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,167</td> <td class="tcr rb">429,494</td> <td class="tcr rb">439,577</td> <td class="tcr rb">434,157</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Mayenne</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,012</td> <td class="tcr rb">340,063</td> <td class="tcr rb">321,187</td> <td class="tcr rb">305,457</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Meurthe-et-Moselle</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,038</td> <td class="tcr rb">431,693</td> <td class="tcr rb">466,417</td> <td class="tcr rb">517,508</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Meuse</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,409</td> <td class="tcr rb">291,971</td> <td class="tcr rb">290,384</td> <td class="tcr rb">280,220</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Morbihan</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,738</td> <td class="tcr rb">535,256</td> <td class="tcr rb">552,028</td> <td class="tcr rb">573,152</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Nièvre</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,659</td> <td class="tcr rb">347,645</td> <td class="tcr rb">333,899</td> <td class="tcr rb">313,972</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Nord</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,229</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,670,184</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,811,868</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,895,861
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="page780" id="page780"></a>780</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Oise</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,272</td> <td class="tcr rb">403,146</td> <td class="tcr rb">404,511</td> <td class="tcr rb">410,049</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Orne</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,372</td> <td class="tcr rb">367,248</td> <td class="tcr rb">339,162</td> <td class="tcr rb">315,993</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Pas-de-Calais</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,606</td> <td class="tcr rb">853,526</td> <td class="tcr rb">906,249</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,012,466</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Puy-de-Dôme</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,094</td> <td class="tcr rb">570,964</td> <td class="tcr rb">555,078</td> <td class="tcr rb">535,419</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Pyrénées-Orientales</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,599</td> <td class="tcr rb">211,187</td> <td class="tcr rb">208,387</td> <td class="tcr rb">213,171</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Rhône</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,104</td> <td class="tcr rb">772,912</td> <td class="tcr rb">839,329</td> <td class="tcr rb">858,907</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Saône-et-Loire</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,330</td> <td class="tcr rb">625,885</td> <td class="tcr rb">621,237</td> <td class="tcr rb">613,377</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Sarthe</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,410</td> <td class="tcr rb">436,111</td> <td class="tcr rb">425,077</td> <td class="tcr rb">421,470</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Savoie</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,389</td> <td class="tcr rb">267,428</td> <td class="tcr rb">259,790</td> <td class="tcr rb">253,297</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Seine</td> <td class="tcr rb">185</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,961,089</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,340,514</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,848,618</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Seine-Inférieure</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,448</td> <td class="tcr rb">833,386</td> <td class="tcr rb">837,824</td> <td class="tcr rb">863,879</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Seine-et-Marne</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,289</td> <td class="tcr rb">355,136</td> <td class="tcr rb">359,044</td> <td class="tcr rb">361,939</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Seine-et-Oise</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,184</td> <td class="tcr rb">618,089</td> <td class="tcr rb">669,098</td> <td class="tcr rb">749,753</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Somme</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,423</td> <td class="tcr rb">548,982</td> <td class="tcr rb">543,279</td> <td class="tcr rb">532,567</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Tarn</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,231</td> <td class="tcr rb">358,757</td> <td class="tcr rb">339,827</td> <td class="tcr rb">330,533</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Tarn-et-Garonne</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,440</td> <td class="tcr rb">214,046</td> <td class="tcr rb">200,390</td> <td class="tcr rb">188,553</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Var</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,325</td> <td class="tcr rb">283,689</td> <td class="tcr rb">309,191</td> <td class="tcr rb">324,638</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Vaucluse</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,381</td> <td class="tcr rb">241,787</td> <td class="tcr rb">236,313</td> <td class="tcr rb">239,178</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Vendée</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,708</td> <td class="tcr rb">434,808</td> <td class="tcr rb">441,735</td> <td class="tcr rb">442,777</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Vienne</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,719</td> <td class="tcr rb">342,785</td> <td class="tcr rb">338,114</td> <td class="tcr rb">333,621</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Vosges</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,279</td> <td class="tcr rb">413,707</td> <td class="tcr rb">421,412</td> <td class="tcr rb">429,812</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Yonne</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,880</td> <td class="tcr rb">355,364</td> <td class="tcr rb">332,656</td> <td class="tcr rb">315,199</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">Total</td> <td class="tcr allb">207,076</td> <td class="tcr allb">38,218,903</td> <td class="tcr allb">38,517,975</td> <td class="tcr allb">39,252,245</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p>The French census uses the commune as the basis of its returns,
+and employs the following classifications in respect to communal
+population: (1) Total communal population. (2) <i>Population
+comptée à part</i>, which includes soldiers and sailors, inmates of
+prisons, asylums, schools, members of religious communities,
+and workmen temporarily engaged in public works. (3) Total
+<i>municipal</i> population, <i>i.e.</i> communal population minus the
+<i>population comptée à part</i>. (4) <i>Population municipale agglomérée
+au chef-lieu de la commune</i>, which embraces the urban population
+as opposed to the rural population. The following tables,
+showing the growth of the largest towns in France, are drawn
+up on the basis of the fourth classification, which is used throughout
+this work in the articles on French towns, except where
+otherwise stated.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>In 1906 there were in France twelve towns with a population of
+over 100,000 inhabitants. Their growth or decrease from 1886 to
+1906 is shown in the following table:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc allb">1886.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1896.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1906.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Paris</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,294,108</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,481,223</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,711,931</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Lyons</td> <td class="tcr rb">344,124</td> <td class="tcr rb">398,867</td> <td class="tcr rb">430,186</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Marseilles</td> <td class="tcr rb">249,938</td> <td class="tcr rb">332,515</td> <td class="tcr rb">421,116</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Bordeaux</td> <td class="tcr rb">225,281</td> <td class="tcr rb">239,806</td> <td class="tcr rb">237,707</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Lille</td> <td class="tcr rb">143,135</td> <td class="tcr rb">160,723</td> <td class="tcr rb">196,624</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">St Etienne</td> <td class="tcr rb">103,229</td> <td class="tcr rb">120,300</td> <td class="tcr rb">130,940</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Le Havre</td> <td class="tcr rb">109,199</td> <td class="tcr rb">117,009</td> <td class="tcr rb">129,403</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Toulouse</td> <td class="tcr rb">123,040</td> <td class="tcr rb">124,187</td> <td class="tcr rb">125,856</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Roubaix</td> <td class="tcr rb">89,781</td> <td class="tcr rb">113,899</td> <td class="tcr rb">119,955</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Nantes</td> <td class="tcr rb">110,638</td> <td class="tcr rb">107,137</td> <td class="tcr rb">118,244</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Rouen</td> <td class="tcr rb">100,043</td> <td class="tcr rb">106,825</td> <td class="tcr rb">111,402</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Reims</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">91,130</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">99,001</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">102,800</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>In the same years the following eighteen towns, now numbering
+from 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, each had:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc allb">1886.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1896.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1906.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Nice</td> <td class="tcc rb">61,464</td> <td class="tcc rb">69,140</td> <td class="tcc rb">99,556</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Nancy</td> <td class="tcc rb">69,463</td> <td class="tcc rb">83,668</td> <td class="tcc rb">98,302</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Toulon</td> <td class="tcc rb">53,941</td> <td class="tcc rb">70,843</td> <td class="tcc rb">87,997</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Amiens</td> <td class="tcc rb">68,177</td> <td class="tcc rb">74,808</td> <td class="tcc rb">78,407</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Limoges</td> <td class="tcc rb">56,699</td> <td class="tcc rb">64,718</td> <td class="tcc rb">75,906</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Angers</td> <td class="tcc rb">65,152</td> <td class="tcc rb">69,484</td> <td class="tcc rb">73,585</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Brest</td> <td class="tcc rb">59,352</td> <td class="tcc rb">64,144</td> <td class="tcc rb">71,163</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Nîmes</td> <td class="tcc rb">62,198</td> <td class="tcc rb">66,905</td> <td class="tcc rb">70,708</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Montpellier</td> <td class="tcc rb">45,930</td> <td class="tcc rb">62,717</td> <td class="tcc rb">65,983</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Dijon</td> <td class="tcc rb">50,684</td> <td class="tcc rb">58,355</td> <td class="tcc rb">65,516</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Tourcoing</td> <td class="tcc rb">41,183</td> <td class="tcc rb">55,705</td> <td class="tcc rb">62,694</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Rennes</td> <td class="tcc rb">52,614</td> <td class="tcc rb">57,249</td> <td class="tcc rb">62,024</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Tours</td> <td class="tcc rb">51,467</td> <td class="tcc rb">56,706</td> <td class="tcc rb">61,507</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Calais</td> <td class="tcc rb">52,839</td> <td class="tcc rb">50,818</td> <td class="tcc rb">59,623</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Grenoble</td> <td class="tcc rb">43,260</td> <td class="tcc rb">50,084</td> <td class="tcc rb">58,641</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Orléans</td> <td class="tcc rb">51,208</td> <td class="tcc rb">56,915</td> <td class="tcc rb">57,544</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Le Mans</td> <td class="tcc rb">46,991</td> <td class="tcc rb">49,665</td> <td class="tcc rb">54,907</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Troyes</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">44,864</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">50,676</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">51,228</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Of the population in 1901, 18,916,889 were males and
+19,533,899 females, an excess of females over males of
+617,010, <i>i.e.</i> 1.6% or about 508 females to every 492
+males. In 1881 the proportion was 501 females to every
+499 males, since when the disparity has been slightly
+more marked at every census. Below is a list of the
+departments in which the number of women to every
+thousand men was (1) greatest and (2) least.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc rb" colspan="2">(1)</td> <td class="tcc" colspan="2">(2)</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl">Creuse</td> <td class="tcc rb">1131</td> <td class="tcl">Belfort</td> <td class="tcc">886</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Côtes-du-Nord</td> <td class="tcc rb">1117</td> <td class="tcl">Basses-Alpes</td> <td class="tcc">893</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Seine</td> <td class="tcc rb">1103</td> <td class="tcl">Var</td> <td class="tcc">894</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Calvados</td> <td class="tcc rb">1100</td> <td class="tcl">Meuse</td> <td class="tcc">905</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Cantal</td> <td class="tcc rb">1098</td> <td class="tcl">Hautes-Alpes</td> <td class="tcc">908</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Seine-Inférieure</td> <td class="tcc rb">1084</td> <td class="tcl">Meurthe-et-Moselle</td> <td class="tcc">918</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Basses-Pyrénées</td> <td class="tcc rb">1080</td> <td class="tcl">Haute-Savoie</td> <td class="tcc">947</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Departments from which the adult males emigrate
+regularly either to sea or to seek employment in towns
+tend to fall under the first head, those in which large
+bodies of troops are stationed under the second.</p>
+
+<p>The annual number of emigrants from France is small.
+The Basques of Basses-Pyrénées go in considerable
+numbers to the Argentine Republic, the inhabitants of
+Basses Alpes to Mexico and the United States, and
+there are important French colonies in Algeria and
+Tunisia.</p>
+
+<p>The following table shows the distribution of the active
+population of France according to their occupations in
+1901.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">Occupation.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Males.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Females.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Total.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Forestry and agriculture</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,517,617</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,658,952</td> <td class="tcr rb">8,176,569</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Manufacturing industries</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,695,213</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,124,642</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,819,855</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Trade</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,132,621</td> <td class="tcr rb">689,999</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,822,620</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Domestic service</td> <td class="tcr rb">223,861</td> <td class="tcr rb">791,176</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,015,037</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Transport</td> <td class="tcr rb">617,849</td> <td class="tcr rb">212,794</td> <td class="tcr rb">830,643</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Public service</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,157,835</td> <td class="tcr rb">139,734</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,297,569</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Liberal professions</td> <td class="tcr rb">226,561</td> <td class="tcr rb">173,278</td> <td class="tcr rb">399,839</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Mining, quarries</td> <td class="tcr rb">261,320</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,031</td> <td class="tcr rb">266,351</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Fishing</td> <td class="tcr rb">63,372</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,400</td> <td class="tcr rb">67,772</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Unclassed</td> <td class="tcr rb">14,316</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,504</td> <td class="tcr rb">18,820</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">Grand Total</td> <td class="tcr allb">12,910,565</td> <td class="tcr allb">6,804,510</td> <td class="tcr allb">19,715,075</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Religion.</i></p>
+
+<p>Great alterations were made with regard to religious matters
+in France by a law of December 1905, supplemented by a law
+of January 1907 (see below, <i>Law and Institutions</i>). Before that
+time three religions (<i>cultes</i>) were recognized and supported by
+the state&mdash;the Roman Catholic, the Protestant (subdivided into
+the Reformed and Lutheran) and the Hebrew. In Algeria
+the Mahommedan religion received similar recognition. By
+the law of 1905 all the churches ceased to be recognized or
+supported by the state and became entirely separated therefrom,
+while the adherents of all creeds were permitted to form associations
+for public worship (<i>associations cultuelles</i>), upon which the
+expenses of maintenance were from that time to devolve. The
+state, the departments, and the communes were thus relieved
+from the payment of salaries and grants to religious bodies,
+an item of expenditure which amounted in the last year of the
+old system to £1,101,000 paid by the state and £302,200 contributed
+by the departments and communes. Before these alterations
+the relations between the state and the Roman Catholic
+communion, by far the largest and most important in France,
+were chiefly regulated by the provisions of the Concordat of 1801,
+concluded between the first consul, Bonaparte, and Pope Pius
+VII. and by other measures passed in 1802.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>France is divided into provinces and dioceses as follows:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc">Archbishoprics.</td> <td class="tcc">Bishoprics.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Paris</td> <td class="tcl cl">Chartres, Meaux, Orléans, Blois, Versailles.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Aix</td> <td class="tcl">Marseilles, Fréjus, Digne, Gap, Nice, Ajaccio.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Albi</td> <td class="tcl cl">Rodez, Cahors, Mende, Perpignan.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Auch</td> <td class="tcl">Aire, Tarbes, Bayonne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Avignon</td> <td class="tcl cl">Nîmes, Valence, Viviers, Montpellier.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Besançon</td> <td class="tcl">Verdun, Bellay, St Dié, Nancy.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Bordeaux</td> <td class="tcl cl">Agen, Angoulême, Poitiers, Périgueux, La Rochelle, Luçon.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Bourges</td> <td class="tcl">Clermont, Limoges, Le Puy, Tulle, St Flour.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Cambrai</td> <td class="tcl cl">Arras.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Chambéry</td> <td class="tcl">Annecy, Tarentaise, St Jean-de-Maurienne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Lyons</td> <td class="tcl cl">Autun, Langres, Dijon, St Claude, Grenoble.
+ <span class="pagenum"><a name="page781" id="page781"></a>781</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Reims</td> <td class="tcl">Soissons, Châlons-sur-Marne, Beauvais, Amiens.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Rennes</td> <td class="tcl cl">Quimper, Vannes, St Brieuc.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Rouen</td> <td class="tcl">Bayeux, Evreux, Sées, Coutances.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Sens</td> <td class="tcl cl">Troyes, Nevers, Moulins.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Toulouse</td> <td class="tcl">Montauban, Pamiers, Carcassonne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Tours</td> <td class="tcl cl">Le Mans, Angers, Nantes, Laval.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noind">The dioceses are divided into parishes each under a parish priest
+known as a <i>curé</i> or <i>desservant</i> (incumbent). The bishops and archbishops,
+formerly nominated by the government and canonically
+confirmed by the pope, are now chosen by the latter. The appointment
+of curés rested with the bishops and had to be confirmed by
+the government, but this confirmation is now dispensed with.
+The archbishops used to receive an annual salary of £600 each and
+the bishops £400.</p>
+
+<p>The archbishops and bishops are assisted by vicars-general (at
+salaries previously ranging from £100 to £180), and to each cathedral
+is attached a chapter of canons. A cure, in addition to his regular
+salary, received fees for baptisms, marriages, funerals and special
+masses, and had the benefit of a free house called a <i>presbytère</i>. The
+total personnel of state-paid Roman Catholic clergy amounted in
+1903 to 36,169. The Roman priests are drawn from the seminaries,
+established by the church for the education of young men intending
+to join its ranks, and divided into lower and higher seminaries
+(<i>grands et petits séminaires</i>), the latter giving the same class of
+instruction as the <i>lycées</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The number of Protestants may be estimated at about 600,000
+and the Jews at about 70,000. The greatest number of Jews is to
+be found at Paris, Lyons and Bordeaux, while the departments of
+the centre and of the south along the range of the Cévennes, where
+Calvinism flourishes, are the principal Protestant localities, Nîmes
+being the most important centre. Considerable sprinklings of
+Protestants are also to be found in the two Charentes, in Dauphiné,
+in Paris and in Franche-Comté. The two Protestant bodies used
+to cost the state about £60,000 a year and the Jewish Church about
+£6000.</p>
+
+<p>Both Protestant churches have a parochial organization and a
+presbyterian form of church government. In the Reformed Church
+(far the more numerous of the two bodies) each parish has a
+council of presbyters, consisting of the pastor and lay-members
+elected by the congregation. Several
+parishes form a consistorial circumscription,
+which has a consistorial
+council consisting of the council of
+presbyters of the chief town of the
+circumscription, the pastor and one
+delegate of the council of presbyters
+from each parish and other elected
+members. There are 103 circumscriptions
+(including Algeria), which
+are grouped into 21 provincial synods
+composed of a pastor and lay delegate
+from each consistory. All the
+more important questions of church
+discipline and all decisions regulating the doctrine and practice of
+the church are dealt with by the synods. At the head of the whole
+organization is a General Synod, sitting at Paris. The organization
+of the Lutheran Church (<i>Église de la confession d&rsquo;Augsburg</i>) is
+broadly similar. Its consistories are grouped into two special
+synods, one at Paris and one at Montbéliard (for the department
+of Doubs and Haute-Saône and the territory of Belfort, where
+the churches of this denomination are principally situated). It
+also has a general synod&mdash;composed of 2 inspectors,<a name="fa5c" id="fa5c" href="#ft5c"><span class="sp">5</span></a> 5 pastors
+elected by the synod of Paris, and 6 by that of Montbéliard,
+22 laymen and a delegate of the theological faculty at Paris&mdash;which
+holds periodical meetings and is represented in its relations with the
+government by a permanent executive commission.</p>
+
+<p>The Jewish parishes, called synagogues, are grouped into departmental
+consistories (Paris, Bordeaux, Nancy, Marseilles, Bayonne,
+Lille, Vesoul, Besançon and three in Algeria). Each synagogue is
+served by a rabbi assisted by an officiating minister, and in each
+consistory is a grand rabbi. At Paris is the central consistory,
+controlled by the government and presided over by the supreme
+grand rabbi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Agriculture.</i></p>
+
+<p>Of the population of France some 17,000,000 depend upon
+agriculture for their livelihood, though only about 6,500,000
+are engaged in work on the land. The cultivable land of the
+country occupies some 195,000 sq. m. or about 94% of the total
+area; of this 171,000 sq. m. are cultivated. There are besides
+12,300 sq. m. of uncultivable area covered by lakes, rivers,
+towns, &amp;c. Only the roughest estimate is possible as to the
+sizes of holdings, but in general terms it may be said that about
+3 million persons are proprietors of holdings under 25 acres in
+extent amounting to between 15 and 20% of the cultivated
+area, the rest being owned by some 750,000 proprietors, of whom
+150,000 possess half the area in holdings averaging 400 acres in
+extent. About 80% of holdings (amounting to about 60%
+of the cultivated area) are cultivated by the proprietor; of the
+rest approximately 13% are let on lease and 7% are worked on
+the system known as <i>métayage</i> (<i>q.v.</i>).</p>
+
+<p>The capital value of land, which greatly decreased during
+the last twenty years of the 19th century, is estimated at
+£3,120,000,000, and that of stock, buildings, implements, &amp;c.,
+at £340,000,000. The value per acre of land, which exceeds
+£48 in the departments of Seine, Rhône and those fringing the
+north-west coast from Nord to Manche inclusive, is on the
+average about £29, though it drops to £16 and less in Morbihan,
+Landes, Basses-Pyrénées, and parts of the Alps and the central
+plateau.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>While wheat and wine constitute the staples of French agriculture,
+its distinguishing characteristic is the variety of its products.
+<i>Cereals</i> occupy about one-third of the cultivated area. For the
+production of <i>wheat</i>, in respect of which France is self-supporting,
+French Flanders, the Seine basin, notably the Beauce and the Brie,
+and the regions bordering on the lower course of the Loire and the
+upper course of the Garonne, are the chief areas. Rye, on the
+other hand, one of the least valuable of the cereals, is grown chiefly
+in the poor agricultural territories of the central plateau and western
+Brittany. Buckwheat is cultivated mainly in Brittany. Oats and
+barley are generally cultivated, the former more especially in the
+Parisian region, the latter in Mayenne and one or two of the neighbouring
+departments. Meslin, a mixture of wheat and rye, is
+produced in the great majority of French departments, but to a
+marked extent in the basin of the Sarthe. Maize covers considerable
+areas in Landes, Basses-Pyrénées and other south-western departments.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="2">Average Acreage<br />(Thousands of Acres).</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="2">Average Production<br />(Thousands of Bushels).</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="2">Average Yield<br />per Acre (Bushels).</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">1886-1895.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1896-1905.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1886-1895.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1896-1905.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1886-1895.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1896-1905.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Wheat</td> <td class="tcr rb">17,004</td> <td class="tcr rb">16,580</td> <td class="tcr rb">294,564</td> <td class="tcr rb">317,707</td> <td class="tcc rb">17.3</td> <td class="tcc rb">19.1</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Meslin</td> <td class="tcr rb">720</td> <td class="tcr rb">491</td> <td class="tcr rb">12,193</td> <td class="tcr rb">8,826</td> <td class="tcc rb">16.9</td> <td class="tcc rb">17.0</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Rye</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,888</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,439</td> <td class="tcr rb">64,651</td> <td class="tcr rb">56,612</td> <td class="tcc rb">16.6</td> <td class="tcc rb">16.4</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Barley</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,303</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,887</td> <td class="tcr rb">47,197</td> <td class="tcr rb">41,066</td> <td class="tcc rb">20.4</td> <td class="tcc rb">21.0</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Oats</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,507</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,601</td> <td class="tcr rb">240,082</td> <td class="tcr rb">253,799</td> <td class="tcc rb">25.2</td> <td class="tcc rb">26.4</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Buckwheat</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,484</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,392</td> <td class="tcr rb">26,345</td> <td class="tcr rb">23,136</td> <td class="tcc rb">17.7</td> <td class="tcc rb">16.6</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Maize</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">1,391</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">1,330</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">25,723</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">24,459</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">18.4</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">18.4</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Forage Crops.</i>&mdash;The mangold-wurzel, occupying four times the
+acreage of swedes and turnips, is by far the chief root-crop in France.
+It is grown largely in the departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais
+and in those of the Seine basin, the southern limit of its cultivation
+being roughly a line drawn from Bordeaux to Lyons. The average
+area occupied by it in the years from 1896 to 1905 was 1,043,000
+acres, the total average production being 262,364,000 cwt. and the
+average production per acre 10½ tons. Clover, lucerne and sainfoin
+make up the bulk of artificial pasturage, while vetches, crimson
+clover and cabbage are the other chief forage crops.</p>
+
+<p><i>Vegetables.&mdash;Potatoes</i> are not a special product of any region,
+though grown in great quantities in the Bresse and the Vosges.
+Early potatoes and other vegetables (<i>primeurs</i>) are largely cultivated
+in the districts bordering the English Channel. Market-gardening
+is an important industry in the regions round Paris, Amiens and
+Angers, as it is round Toulouse, Montauban, Avignon and in southern
+France generally. The market-gardeners of Paris and its vicinity
+have a high reputation for skill in the forcing of early vegetables
+under glass.</p>
+
+<p class="pt1 center"><i>Potatoes: Decennial Averages.</i></p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tccm allb">Acreage.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Total Yield<br />(Tons).</td> <td class="tccm allb">Average Yield<br />per Acre<br />(Tons).</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1886-1895</td> <td class="tcc rb">3,690,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">11,150,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">3.02</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1896-1905</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">3,735,000</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">11,594,000</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">3.1&ensp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Industrial Plants.</i><a name="fa6c" id="fa6c" href="#ft6c"><span class="sp">6</span></a>&mdash;The manufacture of sugar from beetroot,
+owing to the increased use of sugar, became highly important during
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page782" id="page782"></a>782</span>
+the latter half of the 19th century, the industry both of cultivation
+and manufacture being concentrated in the northern departments
+of Aisne, Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Somme and Oise, the first named
+supplying nearly a quarter of the whole amount produced in France.</p>
+
+<p><i>Flax and hemp</i> showed a decreasing acreage from 1881 onwards.
+Flax is cultivated chiefly in the northern departments of Nord,
+Seine-Inférieure, Pas-de-Calais, Côtes-du-Nord, hemp in Sarthe,
+Morbihan and Maine-et-Loire.</p>
+
+<p><i>Colza</i>, grown chiefly in the lower basin of the Seine (Seine-Inférieure
+and Eure), is the most important of the oil-producing
+plants, all of which show a diminishing acreage. The three principal
+regions for the production of tobacco are the basin of the Garonne
+(Lot-et-Garonne, Dordogne, Lot and Gironde), the basin of the Isère
+(Isère and Savoie) and the department of Pas-de-Calais. The state
+controls its cultivation, which is allowed only in a limited number of
+departments. Hops cover only about 7000 acres, being almost
+confined to the departments of Nord, Côte d&rsquo;Or and
+Meurthe-et-Moselle.</p>
+
+<p class="pt1 center"><i>Decennial Averages 1896-1905.</i></p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tccm allb">Acreage.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Production<br />(Tons).</td> <td class="tccm allb">Average Yield<br />per Acre<br />(Tons).</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Sugar beet</td> <td class="tcr rb">672,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,868,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">10.2&ensp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Hemp</td> <td class="tcr rb">64,856</td> <td class="tcr rb">18,451<a name="fa7c" id="fa7c" href="#ft7c"><span class="sp">7</span></a></td> <td class="tcc rb">.28<a href="#ft7c"><span class="sp">7</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Flax</td> <td class="tcr rb">57,893</td> <td class="tcr rb">17,857<a href="#ft7c"><span class="sp">7</span></a></td> <td class="tcc rb">.30<a href="#ft7c"><span class="sp">7</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Colza</td> <td class="tcr rb">102,454</td> <td class="tcr rb">47,697</td> <td class="tcc rb">.46</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Tobacco</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">41,564</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">22,453</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">.54</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Vineyards</i> (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Wine</a></span>).&mdash;The vine grows generally in France,
+except in the extreme north and in Normandy and Brittany. The
+great wine-producing regions are:</p>
+
+<p>1. The country fringing the Mediterranean coast and including
+Hérault (240,822,000 gals. in 1905), and Aude (117,483,000 gals. in
+1905), the most productive departments in France in this respect.</p>
+
+<p>2. The department of Gironde (95,559,000 gals. in 1905), whence
+come Médoc and the other wines for which Bordeaux is the market.</p>
+
+<p>3. The lower valley of the Loire, including Touraine and Anjou,
+and the district of Saumur.</p>
+
+<p>4. The valley of the Rhône.</p>
+
+<p>5. The Burgundian region, including Côte d&rsquo;Or and the valley of
+the Saône (Beaujolais, Mâconnais).</p>
+
+<p>6. The Champagne.</p>
+
+<p>7. The Charente region, the grapes of which furnish brandy, as do
+those of Armagnac (department of Gers).</p>
+
+<p>The decennial averages for the years 1896-1905 were as follows:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcl">Acreage of productive vines</td> <td class="tcr">4,056,725</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Total production in gallons</td> <td class="tcr">1,072,622,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Average production in gallons per acre</td> <td class="tcr">260</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Fruit.</i>&mdash;Fruit-growing is general all over France, which, apart
+from bananas and pine-apples, produces in the open air all the
+ordinary species of fruit which its inhabitants consume. Some of
+these may be specially mentioned. The cider apple, which ranks
+first in importance, is produced in those districts where cider is the
+habitual drink, that is to say,
+chiefly in the region north-west of
+a line drawn from Paris to the
+mouth of the Loire. The average
+annual production of cider during
+the years 1896 to 1905 was
+304,884,000 gallons. Dessert apples
+and pears are grown there and in
+the country on both banks of the
+lower Loire, the valley of which
+abounds in orchards wherein many
+varieties of fruit flourish and in nursery-gardens. The hilly regions
+of Limousin, Périgord and the Cévennes are the home of the chestnut,
+which in some places is still a staple food; walnuts grow on the lower
+levels of the central plateau and in lower Dauphiné and Provence,
+figs and almonds in Provence, oranges and citrons on the Mediterranean
+coast, apricots in central France, the olive in Provence and
+the lower valleys of the Rhône and Durance. Truffles are found under
+the oaks of Périgord, Comtat-Venaissin and lower Dauphiné. The
+mulberry grows in the valleys of the Rhône and its tributaries, the
+Isère, the Drôme, the Ardèche, the Gard and the Durance, and also
+along the coast of the Mediterranean. Silk-worm rearing, which is
+encouraged by state grants, is carried on in the valleys mentioned
+and on the Mediterranean coast east of Marseilles. The numbers of
+growers decreased from 139,000 in 1891 to 124,000 in 1905. The
+decrease in the annual average production of cocoons is shown in the
+preceding table.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Silk Cocoons.</td> <td class="tccm allb">1891-1895.</td> <td class="tccm allb">1896-1900.</td> <td class="tccm allb">1901-1905.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Annual average production over<br />&emsp;quinquennial periods in &#8468;.</td> <td class="tccm allb">19,587,000</td> <td class="tccm allb">17,696,000</td> <td class="tccm allb">16,566,000</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Snails are reared in some parts of the country as an article of
+food, those of Burgundy being specially esteemed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Stock-raising.</i>&mdash;From this point of view the soil of France may be
+divided into four categories:</p>
+
+<p>1. The rich pastoral regions where dairy-farming and the fattening
+of cattle are carried on with most success, viz. (<i>a</i>) Normandy, Perche,
+Cotentin and maritime Flanders, where horses are bred in great
+numbers; (<i>b</i>) the strip of coast between the Gironde and the mouth
+of the Loire; (<i>c</i>) the Morvan including the Nivernais and the
+Charolais, from which the famous Charolais breed of oxen takes its
+name; (<i>d</i>) the central region of the central plateau including the
+districts of Cantal and Aubrac, the home of the famous beef-breeds
+of Salers and Aubrac.<a name="fa8c" id="fa8c" href="#ft8c"><span class="sp">8</span></a> The famous <i>pré-salé</i> sheep are also reared
+in the Vendée and Cotentin.</p>
+
+<p>2. The poorer grazing lands on the upper levels of the Alps,
+Pyrenees, Jura and Vosges, the Landes, the more outlying regions
+of the central plateau, southern Brittany, Sologne, Berry, Champagne-Pouilleuse,
+the Crau and the Camargue, these districts being given
+over for the most part to sheep-raising.</p>
+
+<p>3. The plain of Toulouse, which with the rest of south-western
+France produces good draught oxen, the Parisian basin, the plains
+of the north to the east of the maritime region, the lower valley of
+the Rhône and the Bresse, where there is little or no natural pasturage,
+and forage is grown from seed.</p>
+
+<p>4. West, west-central and eastern France outside these areas,
+where meadows are predominant and both dairying and fattening
+are general. Included therein are the dairying and horse-raising
+district of northern Brittany and the dairying regions of Jura and
+Savoy.</p>
+
+<p>In the industrial regions of northern France cattle are stall-fed
+with the waste products of the beet-sugar factories, oil-works and
+distilleries. <i>Swine</i>, bred all over France, are more numerous in
+Brittany, Anjou (whence comes the well-known breed of Craon),
+Poitou, Burgundy, the west and north of the central plateau and
+Béarn. Upper Poitou and the zone of south-western France to the
+north of the Pyrenees are the chief regions for the breeding of mules.
+Asses are reared in Béarn, Corsica, Upper Poitou, the Limousin,
+Berry and other central regions. Goats are kept in the mountainous
+regions (Auvergne, Provence, Corsica). The best poultry come
+from the Bresse, the district of Houdan (Seine-et-Oise), the district
+of Le Mans and Crèvec&oelig;ur (Calvados).</p>
+
+<p>The <i>prés naturels</i> (meadows) and <i>herbages</i> (unmown pastures) of
+France, <i>i.e.</i> the grass-land of superior quality as distinguished from
+<i>paturages et pacages</i>, which signifies pasture of poorer quality, increased
+in area between 1895 and 1905 as is shown below:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcl">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc">1895 (Acres).</td> <td class="tcc">1905 (Acres).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Prés naturels</td> <td class="tcr">10,852,000</td> <td class="tcr">11,715,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Herbages</td> <td class="tcr">2,822,000</td> <td class="tcr">3,022,000</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The following table shows the number of live stock in the country
+at intervals of ten years since 1885.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb" colspan="4">Cattle.</td> <td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">Sheep and<br />Lambs.</td> <td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">Pigs.</td> <td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">Horses.</td> <td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">Mules.</td> <td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">Asses.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tccm allb">Cows.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Other<br />Kinds.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Total.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1885</td> <td class="tcc rb">6,414,487</td> <td class="tcc rb">6,690,483</td> <td class="tcc rb">13,104,970</td> <td class="tcc rb">22,616,547</td> <td class="tcc rb">5,881,088</td> <td class="tcc rb">2,911,392</td> <td class="tcc rb">238,620</td> <td class="tcc rb">387,227</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1895</td> <td class="tcc rb">6,359,795</td> <td class="tcc rb">6,874,033</td> <td class="tcc rb">13,233,828</td> <td class="tcc rb">21,163,767</td> <td class="tcc rb">6,306,019</td> <td class="tcc rb">2,812,447</td> <td class="tcc rb">211,479</td> <td class="tcc rb">357,778</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1905</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">7,515,564</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">6,799,988</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">14,315,552</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">17,783,209</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">7,558,779</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">3,169,224</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">198,865</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">365,181</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Agricultural Organization.</i>&mdash;In France the interests of agriculture
+are entrusted to a special ministry, comprising the following divisions:
+(1) forests, (2) breeding-studs (<i>haras</i>); (3) agriculture, a
+department which supervises agricultural instruction and the distribution
+of grants and premiums; (4) agricultural improvements,
+draining, irrigation, &amp;c.; (5) an intelligence department which
+prepares statistics, issues information as to prices and markets, &amp;c.
+The minister is assisted by a superior council of agriculture, the
+members of which, numbering a hundred, include senators, deputies
+and prominent agriculturists. The ministry employs inspectors,
+whose duty it is to visit the different parts of the country and to
+report on their respective position and wants. The reports which
+they furnish help to determine the distribution of the moneys
+dispensed by the state in the form of subventions to agricultural
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page783" id="page783"></a>783</span>
+societies and in many other ways. The chief type of agricultural
+society is the <i>comice agricole</i>, an association for the discussion of
+agricultural problems and the organization of provincial shows.
+There are besides several thousands of local syndicates, engaged in
+the purchase of materials and sale of produce on the most advantageous
+terms for their members, credit banks and mutual insurance
+societies (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Co-operation</a></span>). Three societies demand special
+mention: the <i>Union centrale des agriculteurs de France</i>, to which
+the above syndicates are affiliated; the <i>Société nationale d&rsquo;agriculture</i>,
+whose mission is to further agricultural progress and to supply
+the government with information on everything appertaining
+thereto and the <i>Société des agriculteurs de France</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Among a variety of premiums awarded by the state are those for
+the best cultivated estates and for irrigation works, and to the
+owners of the best stallions and brood-mares. <i>Haras</i> or stallion
+stables containing in all over 3000 horses are established in twenty-two
+central towns, and annually send stallions, which are at the
+disposal of private individuals in return for a small fee, to various
+stations throughout the country. Other institutions belonging to
+the state are the national sheep-fold of Rambouillet (Seine-et-Oise)
+and the cow-house of Vieux-Pin (Orne) for the breeding of Durham
+cows. Four different grades of institution for agricultural instruction
+are under state direction: (1) farm-schools and schools of apprenticeship
+in dairying, &amp;c., to which the age of admission is from 14 to
+16 years; (2) practical schools, to which boys of from 13 to 18
+years of age are admitted. These number forty-eight, and are
+intended for sons of farmers of good position; (3) national schools,
+which are established at Grignon (Seine-et-Oise), Rennes and
+Montpellier, candidates for which must be 17 years of age; (4) the
+National Agronomic Institute at Paris, which is intended for the training
+of estate agents, professors, &amp;c. There are also departmental
+chairs of agriculture, the holders of which give instruction
+in training-colleges and elsewhere and advise farmers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Forests.</i>&mdash;In relation to its total extent, France presents
+but a very limited area of forest land, amounting to only
+36,700 sq. m. or about 18% of the entire surface of the
+country. Included under the denomination of &ldquo;forest&rdquo;
+are lands&mdash;<i>surfaces boisées</i>&mdash;which are <i>bush</i> rather than
+<i>forest</i>. The most wooded parts of France are the mountains
+and plateaus of the east and of the north-east, comprising
+the pine-forests of the Vosges and Jura (including the beautiful
+Forest of Chaux), the Forest of Haye, the Forest of
+Ardennes, the Forest of Argonne, &amp;c.; the Landes, where
+replanting with maritime pines has transformed large areas
+of marsh into forest; and the departments of Var and
+Ariège. The Central Mountains and the Morvan also have
+considerable belts of wood. In the Parisian region there
+are the Forests of Fontainebleau (66 sq. m.), of Compiègne
+(56 sq. m.), of Rambouillet, of Villers-Cotterets, &amp;c. The
+Forest of Orléans, the largest in France, covers about 145 sq. m.
+The Alps and Pyrenees are in large part deforested, but reafforestation
+with a view to minimizing the effects of avalanches and sudden
+floods is continually in progress.</p>
+
+<p>Of the forests of the country approximately one-third belongs to
+the state, communes and public institutions. The rest belongs to
+private owners who are, however, subject to certain restrictions.
+The Department of Waters<a name="fa9c" id="fa9c" href="#ft9c"><span class="sp">9</span></a> and
+Forests (Administration des Eaux et
+Forêts) forms a branch of the ministry
+of agriculture. It is administered
+by a director-general, who has
+his headquarters at Paris, assisted by
+three administrators who are charged
+with the working of the forests,
+questions of rights and law, finance
+and plantation works. The establishment
+consists of 32 conservators,
+each at the head of a district comprising
+one or more departments, 200
+inspectors, 215 sub-inspectors and
+about 300 <i>gardes généraux</i>. These
+officials form the higher grade of the
+service (<i>agents</i>). There are besides
+several thousand forest-rangers and
+other employés (<i>préposés</i>). The department
+is supplied with officials of
+the higher class from the National
+School of Waters and Forests at
+Nancy, founded in 1824.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Industries.</i></p>
+
+<p>In France, as in other countries,
+the development of machinery,
+whether run by steam, water-power or other motive forces,
+has played a great part in the promotion of industry; the increase
+in the amount of steam horse-power employed in industrial
+establishments is, to a certain degree, an index to the activity
+of the country as regards manufactures.</p>
+
+<p>The appended table shows the progress made since 1850 with
+regard to steam power. Railway and marine locomotives are
+not included.</p>
+
+<table class="ws f90" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Years.</td> <td class="tccm allb">No. of<br />Establishments.</td> <td class="tccm allb">No. of<br />Steam-Engines.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Total<br />Horse-Power.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1852</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;6,543</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;6,080</td> <td class="tcr rb">76,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1861</td> <td class="tcc rb">14,153</td> <td class="tcc rb">15,805</td> <td class="tcr rb">191,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1871</td> <td class="tcc rb">22,192</td> <td class="tcc rb">26,146</td> <td class="tcr rb">316,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1881</td> <td class="tcc rb">35,712</td> <td class="tcc rb">44,010</td> <td class="tcr rb">576,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891</td> <td class="tcc rb">46,828</td> <td class="tcc rb">58,967</td> <td class="tcr rb">916,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1901</td> <td class="tcc rb">58,151</td> <td class="tcc rb">75,866</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,907,730</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1905</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">61,112</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">79,203</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">2,232,263</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>With the exception of Loire, Bouches-du-Rhône and Rhône,
+the chief industrial departments of France are to be found in the
+north and north-east of the country. In 1901 and 1896 those in
+which the working inhabitants of both sexes were engaged in
+industry as opposed to agriculture to the extent of 50% (approximately)
+or over, numbered eleven, viz.:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="ws f90" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">Departments.</td> <td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">Total Working<br />Population<br />(1901).</td> <td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">Industrial<br />Population<br />(1901).</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="2">Percentage engaged<br />in Industry.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">1901.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1896.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Nord</td> <td class="tcr rb">848,306</td> <td class="tcr rb">544,177</td> <td class="tcc rb">64.15</td> <td class="tcc rb">63.45</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Territoire de Belfort</td> <td class="tcr rb">40,703</td> <td class="tcr rb">24,470</td> <td class="tcc rb">60.10</td> <td class="tcc rb">58.77</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Loire</td> <td class="tcr rb">292,808</td> <td class="tcr rb">167,693</td> <td class="tcc rb">57.27</td> <td class="tcc rb">54.73</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Seine</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,071,344</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,143,809</td> <td class="tcc rb">55.22</td> <td class="tcc rb">53.54</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Bouches-du-Rhône</td> <td class="tcr rb">341,823</td> <td class="tcr rb">187,801</td> <td class="tcc rb">54.94</td> <td class="tcc rb">51.00</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Rhône</td> <td class="tcr rb">449,121</td> <td class="tcr rb">243,571</td> <td class="tcc rb">54.23</td> <td class="tcc rb">54.78</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Meurthe-et-Moselle</td> <td class="tcr rb">215,501</td> <td class="tcr rb">115,214</td> <td class="tcc rb">53.46</td> <td class="tcc rb">50.19</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Ardennes</td> <td class="tcr rb">139,270</td> <td class="tcr rb">73,250</td> <td class="tcc rb">52.60</td> <td class="tcc rb">52.42</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Vosges</td> <td class="tcr rb">208,142</td> <td class="tcr rb">107,547</td> <td class="tcc rb">51.67</td> <td class="tcc rb">51.05</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Pas-de-Calais</td> <td class="tcr rb">404,153</td> <td class="tcr rb">200,402</td> <td class="tcc rb">49.58</td> <td class="tcc rb">46.55</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Seine-Inférieure</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">428,591</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">206,612</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">48.21</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">49.85</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<table class="ws f90" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Groups.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Basins.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Departments.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Average Production<br />(Thousands of<br />Metric Tons)<br />1901-1905.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tclm allb">Nord and Pas-de-Calais</td> <td class="tcl allb">Valenciennes<br />Le Boulonnais</td> <td class="tcl allb">Nord, Pas-de-Calais<br />Pas-de-Calais</td> <td class="tcrm allb">20,965</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tclm allb">Loire</td> <td class="tcl allb">St Étienne and Rive-de-Gier<br />Communay<br />Ste Foy l&rsquo;Argentière<br />Roannais</td> <td class="tcl allb">Loire<br />Isère<br />Rhône<br />Loire</td> <td class="tcrm allb">3,601</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tclm allb">Gard</td> <td class="tcl allb">Alais<br />Aubenas<br />Le Vigan</td> <td class="tcl allb">Gard, Ardèche<br />Ardèche<br />Gard</td> <td class="tcrm allb">1,954</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tclm allb">Bourgogne and Nivernais</td> <td class="tcl allb">Decize<br />La Chapelle-sous-Dun<br />Bert<br />Sincey</td> <td class="tcl allb">Nièvre<br />Saône-et-Loire<br />Allier<br />Côte-d&rsquo;Or</td> <td class="tcrm allb">1,881</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tclm allb">Tarn and Aveyron</td> <td class="tcl allb">Aubin<br />Carmaux and Albi<br />Rodez<br />St Perdoux</td> <td class="tcl allb">Aveyron<br />Tarn<br />Aveyron<br />Lot</td> <td class="tcrm allb">1,770</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tclm allb">Bourbonnais</td> <td class="tcl allb">Commentry and Doyet<br />St Eloi<br />L&rsquo;Aumance<br />La Queune</td> <td class="tcl allb">Allier<br />Puy-de-Dôme <br />Allier<br />Allier</td> <td class="tcrm allb">994</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The department of Seine, comprising Paris and its suburbs,
+which has the largest manufacturing population, is largely
+occupied with the manufacture of dress, millinery and articles
+of luxury (perfumery, &amp;c.), but it plays the leading part in
+almost every great branch of industry with the exception of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page784" id="page784"></a>784</span>
+spinning and weaving. The typically industrial region of France
+is the department of Nord, the seat of the woollen industry,
+but also prominently concerned in other textile industries,
+in metal working, and in a variety of other manufactures, fuel
+for which is supplied by its coal-fields. The following sketch
+of the manufacturing industry of France takes account chiefly
+of those of its branches which are capable in some degree of
+localization. Many of the great industries of the country, <i>e.g.</i>
+tanning, brick-making, the manufacture of garments, &amp;c., are
+evenly distributed throughout it, and are to be found in or near
+all larger centres of population.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p><i>Coal.</i>&mdash;The principal mines of France are coal and iron mines.
+The production of coal and lignite averaging 33,465,000 metric tons<a name="fa10c" id="fa10c" href="#ft10c"><span class="sp">10</span></a>
+in the years 1901-1905 represents about 73% of the total consumption
+of the country; the surplus is supplied from Great Britain,
+Belgium and Germany. The preceding table shows the average output
+of the chief coal-groups for the years 1901-1905 inclusive. The
+Flemish coal-basin, employing over 100,000 hands, produces 60%
+of the coal mined in France.</p>
+
+<p>French lignite comes for the most part from the department of
+Bouches-du-Rhône (near Fuveau).</p>
+
+<p>The development of French coal and lignite mining in the 19th
+century, together with records of prices, which rose considerably at
+the end of the period, is set forth in the table below:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Years.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Average Yearly<br />Production<br />(Thousands of<br />Metric Tons).</td> <td class="tccm allb">Average Price<br />per Ton at<br />Pit Mouth<br />(Francs).</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1821-1830</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;1,495</td> <td class="tcc rb">10.23</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1831-1840</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;2,571</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;9.83</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1841-1850</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;4,078.5</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;9.69</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1851-1860</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;6,857</td> <td class="tcc rb">11.45</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1861-1870</td> <td class="tcc rb">11,831</td> <td class="tcc rb">11.61</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1871-1880</td> <td class="tcc rb">16,774</td> <td class="tcc rb">14.34</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1881-1890</td> <td class="tcc rb">21,542</td> <td class="tcc rb">11.55</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891-1900</td> <td class="tcc rb">29,190</td> <td class="tcc rb">11.96</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1901-1905</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">33,465</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">14.18</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Iron.</i>&mdash;The iron-mines of France are more numerous than its coal-mines,
+but they do not yield a sufficient quantity of ore for the
+needs of the metallurgical industries of the country; as will be seen
+in the table below the production of iron in France gradually increased
+during the 19th century; on the other hand, a decline in
+prices operated against a correspondingly marked increase in its
+annual value.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Years.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Average Annual<br />Production<br />(Thousands of<br />Metric Tons).</td> <td class="tccm allb">Price per<br />Metric Ton<br />(Francs).</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1841-1850</td> <td class="tcc rb">1247</td> <td class="tcc rb">6.76</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1851-1860</td> <td class="tcc rb">2414.5</td> <td class="tcc rb">5.51</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1861-1870</td> <td class="tcc rb">3035</td> <td class="tcc rb">4.87</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1871-1880</td> <td class="tcc rb">2514</td> <td class="tcc rb">5.39</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1881-1890</td> <td class="tcc rb">2934</td> <td class="tcc rb">3.99</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891-1900</td> <td class="tcc rb">4206</td> <td class="tcc rb">3.37</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1901-1905</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">6072</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">3.72</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The department of Meurthe-et-Moselle (basins of Nancy and
+Longwy-Briey) furnished 84% of the total output during the quinquennial
+period 1901-1905, may be reckoned as one of the principal
+iron-producing regions of the world. The other chief producers
+were Pyrénées-Orientales, Calvados, Haute-Marne (Vassy) and
+Saône-et-Loire
+(Mazenay and Change).</p>
+
+<p><i>Other Ores.</i>&mdash;The mining of zinc, the chief deposits of which are at
+Malines (Gard), Les Bormettes (Var) and Planioles (Lot), and of
+lead, produced especially at Chaliac (Ardèche), ranks next in importance
+to that of iron. Iron-pyrites come almost entirely from
+Sain-Bel (Rhône), manganese chiefly from Ariège and Saône-et-Loire,
+antimony from the departments of Mayenne, Haute-Loire
+and Cantal. Copper and mispickel are mined only in small quantities.
+The table below gives the average production of zinc, argentiferous
+lead, iron-pyrites and other ores during the quinquennial period
+1901-1905.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tccm allb">Production<br />(Thousands of<br />Metric Tons).</td> <td class="tccm allb">Value £.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Zinc</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;60.3</td> <td class="tcc rb">206,912</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Lead</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;18.5</td> <td class="tcc rb">100,424</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Iron-pyrites</td> <td class="tcc rb">297.2</td> <td class="tcc rb">170,312</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Other ores</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">&ensp;36.0</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">&ensp;68,376</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Salt, &amp;c.</i>&mdash;Rock-salt is worked chiefly in the department of
+Meurthe-et-Moselle, which produces more than half the average annual
+product of salt. For the years 1896-1905, this was 1,010,000 tons,
+including both rock- and sea-salt. The salt-marshes of the Mediterranean
+coast, especially the Étang de Berre and those of Loire-Inférieure,
+are the principal sources of sea-salt. Sulphur is obtained
+near Apt (Vaucluse) and in a few other localities of south-eastern
+France; bituminous schist near Autun (Saône-et-Loire) and
+Buxières (Allier). The most extensive peat-workings are in the
+valleys of the Somme; asphalt comes from Seyssel (Ain) and
+Puy-de-Dôme.</p>
+
+<p>The mineral springs of France are numerous, of varied character
+and much frequented. Leading resorts are: in the Pyrenean
+region, Amélie-les-Bains, Bagnères-de-Luchon, Bagnères-de-Bigorre,
+Barèges, Cauterets, Eaux-Bonnes, Eaux-Chaudes and Dax; in
+the Central Plateau, Mont-Dore, La Bourboule, Bourbon l&rsquo;Archambault,
+Vichy, Royat, Chaudes-Aigues, Vais, Lamalon; in the Alps,
+Aix-les-Bains and Evian; in the Vosges and Faucilles, Plombières,
+Luxeuil, Contrexéville, Vittel, Martigny and Bourbonne-les-Bains.
+Outside these main groups St Amand-les-Eaux and Foyes-les-Eaux
+may be mentioned.</p>
+
+<p><i>Quarry-Products.</i>&mdash;Quarries of various descriptions are numerous
+all over France. Slate is obtained in large quantities from the
+departments of Maine-et-Loire (Angers), Ardennes (Fumay) and
+Mayenne (Renazé). Stone-quarrying is specially active in the
+departments round Paris, Seine-et-Oise employing more persons in this
+occupation than any other department. The environs of Creil (Oise)
+and Château-Landon (Seine-et-Marne) are noted for their freestone
+(<i>pierre de taille</i>), which is also abundant at Euville and Lérouville
+in Meuse; the production of plaster is particularly important in the
+environs of Paris, of kaolin of fine quality at Yrieix (Haute-Vienne),
+of hydraulic lime in Ardèche (Le Teil), of lime phosphates in the
+department of Somme, of marble in the departments of Haute-Garonne
+(St Béat), Hautes-Pyrénées (Campan, Sarrancolin), Isère
+and Pas-de-Calais, and of cement in Pas-de-Calais (vicinity of
+Boulogne) and Isère (Grenoble). Paving-stone is supplied in large
+quantities by Seine-et-Oise, and brick-clay is worked chiefly in
+Nord, Seine and Pas-de-Calais. The products of the quarries of
+France for the five years 1901-1905 averaged £9,311,000 per annum
+in value, of which building material brought in over two-thirds.</p>
+
+<p><i>Metallurgy.</i>&mdash;The average production and value of iron and steel
+manufactured in France in the last four decades of the 19th century
+is shown below:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">Years.</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="2">Cast Iron.</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="2">Wrought Iron and Steel.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Product<br />(Thousands<br />of Metric<br />Tons).</td> <td class="tccm allb">Value<br />(Thousands<br />of £).</td> <td class="tccm allb">Product<br />(Thousands<br />of Metric<br />Tons).</td> <td class="tccm allb">Value<br />(Thousands<br />of £).</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1861-1870</td> <td class="tcc rb">1191.5</td> <td class="tcc rb">5012</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;844</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;8,654</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1871-1880</td> <td class="tcc rb">1391</td> <td class="tcc rb">5783</td> <td class="tcc rb">1058.5</td> <td class="tcc rb">11,776</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1881-1890</td> <td class="tcc rb">1796</td> <td class="tcc rb">5119</td> <td class="tcc rb">1376</td> <td class="tcc rb">11,488</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891-1900</td> <td class="tcc rb">2267</td> <td class="tcc rb">5762</td> <td class="tcc rb">1686</td> <td class="tcc rb">14,540</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1903</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">2841</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">7334</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">1896</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">15,389</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Taking the number of hands engaged in the industry as a basis of
+comparison, the most important departments as regards iron and
+steel working in 1901 were:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Department.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Chief Centres.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Hands engaged in<br />Production of<br />Pig-Iron and Steel.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Hands engaged<br />in Production<br />of Engineering<br />Material and<br />Manufactured<br />Goods.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Seine</td> <td class="tcc rb"><span style="letter-spacing: 2em;">......</span></td> <td class="tcr rb">600</td> <td class="tcr rb">102,500</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Nord</td> <td class="tcl rb">Lille, Anzin, Denain, Douai, Hautmont, Maubeuge</td> <td class="tcr rb">14,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">45,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Loire</td> <td class="tcl rb">Rive-de-Gier, Firminy, St Étienne, St Chamond</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,500</td> <td class="tcr rb">17,500</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Meurthe-et-Moselle</td> <td class="tcl rb">Pont-à-Mousson, Frouard, Longwy, Nancy</td> <td class="tcr rb">16,500</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,500</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Ardennes</td> <td class="tcl rb bb">Charleville, Nouzon</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">800</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">23,000</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page785" id="page785"></a>785</span></p>
+
+<p>Rhône (Lyons), Saône-et-Loire (Le Creusot, Chalon-sur-Saône)
+and Loire-Inférieure (Basse-Indre, Indret, Couëron, Trignac) also
+play a considerable part in this industry.</p>
+
+<p>The chief centres for the manufacture of cutlery are Châttelerault
+(Vienne), Langres (Haute-Marne) and Thiers (Puy-de-Dôme);
+for that of arms St Etienne, Tulle and Châttelerault; for that of
+watches and clocks, Besançon (Doubs) and Montbéliard (Doubs);
+for that of optical and mathematical instruments Paris, Morez
+(Jura) and St Claude (Jura); for that of locksmiths&rsquo; ware the region
+of Vimeu (Pas-de-Calais).</p>
+
+<p>There are important zinc works at Auby and St Amand (Nord)
+and Viviez (Aveyron) and Noyelles-Godault (Pas-de-Calais); there
+are lead works at the latter place, and others of greater importance
+at Couëron (Loire-Inférieure). Copper is smelted in Ardennes and
+Pas-de-Calais. The production of these metals, which are by far
+the most important after iron and steel, increased steadily during
+the period 1890-1905, and reached its highest point in 1905, details
+for which year are given below:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc allb">Zinc.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Lead.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Copper.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Production (in metric tons)</td> <td class="tcr rb">43,200</td> <td class="tcr rb">24,100</td> <td class="tcr rb">7,600</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Value</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">£1,083,000</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">£386,000</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">£526,000</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Wool.</i>&mdash;In 1901, 161,000 persons were engaged in the spinning
+and other preparatory processes and in the weaving of wool. The
+woollen industry is carried on most extensively in the department of
+Nord (Roubaix, Tourcoing, Fourmies). Of second rank are Reims
+and Sedan in the Champagne group; Elbeuf, Louviers and Rouen
+in Normandy; and Mazamet (Tarn).</p>
+
+<p><i>Cotton.</i>&mdash;In 1901, 166,000 persons were employed in the spinning
+and weaving of cotton, French cotton goods being distinguished
+chiefly for the originality of their design. The cotton industry is
+distributed in three principal groups. The longest established is that
+of Normandy, having its centres at Rouen, Havre, Evreux, Falaise
+and Flers. Another group in the north of France has its centres at
+Lille, Tourcoing, Roubaix, St Quentin and Amiens. That of the
+Vosges, which has experienced a great extension since the loss of
+Alsace-Lorraine, comprises Epinal, St Dié, Remiremont and Belfort.
+Other groups of less importance are situated in the Lyonnais (Roanne
+and Tarare) and Mayenne (Laval and Mayenne).</p>
+
+<p><i>Silk.</i>&mdash;The silk industry occupied 134,000 hands in 1901. The
+silk fabrics of France hold the first place, particularly the more
+expensive kinds. The industry is concentrated in the departments
+bordering the river Rhône, the chief centres being Lyons (Rhône),
+Voiron (Isère), St Étienne and St Chamond (Loire) (the two latter
+being especially noted for their ribbons and trimmings) and Annonay
+(Ardèche) and other places in the departments of Ain, Gard and
+Drôme.</p>
+
+<p><i>Flax, Hemp, Jute, &amp;c.</i>&mdash;The preparation and spinning of these
+materials and the manufacture of nets and rope, together with the
+weaving of linen and other fabrics, give occupation to 112,000
+persons chiefly in the departments of Nord (Lille, Armentières,
+Dunkirk), Somme (Amiens) and Maine-et-Loire (Angers, Cholet).</p>
+
+<p><i>Hosiery</i>, the manufacture of which employs 55,000 hands, has its
+chief centre in Aube (Troyes). The production of lace and guipure,
+occupying 112,000 persons, is carried on mainly in the towns and
+villages of Haute-Loire and in Vosges (Mirecourt), Rhône (Lyons),
+Pas-de-Calais (Calais) and Paris.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leather.</i>&mdash;Tanning and leather-dressing are widely spread industries,
+and the same may be said of the manufacture of boots and
+shoes, though these trades employ more hands in the department
+of Seine than elsewhere; in the manufacture of gloves Isère (Grenoble)
+and Aveyron (Millau) hold the first place amongst French
+departments.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sugar.</i>&mdash;The manufacture of sugar is carried on in the departments
+of the north, in which the cultivation of beetroot is general&mdash;Aisne,
+Nord, Somme, Pas-de-Calais, Oise and Seine-et-Marne, the
+three first being by far the largest producers. The increase in
+production in the last twenty years of the 19th century is indicated
+in the following table:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Years.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Annual Average of<br />Men employed</td> <td class="tccm allb">Average Annual<br />Production in<br />Metric Tons.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1881-1891</td> <td class="tcc rb">43,108</td> <td class="tcc rb">415,786</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891-1901</td> <td class="tcc rb">42,841</td> <td class="tcc rb">696,038</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1901-1906</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">43,061</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">820,553</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Alcohol.</i>&mdash;The distillation of alcohol is in the hands of three classes
+of persons. (1) Professional distillers (<i>bouilleurs et distillateurs de
+profession</i>); (2) private distillers (<i>bouilleurs de cru</i>) under state
+control; (3) small private distillers, not under state control, but
+giving notice to the state that they distil. The two last classes
+number over 400,000 (1903), but the quantity of alcohol distilled
+by them is small. Beetroot, molasses and grain are the chief
+sources of spirit. The department of Nord produces by far the
+greatest quantity, its average annual output in the decade 1895-1904
+being 13,117,000 gallons, or about 26% of the average annual
+production of France during the same period (49,945,000 gallons).
+Aisne, Pas-de-Calais and Somme rank next to Nord.</p>
+
+<p><i>Glass</i> is manufactured in the departments of Nord (Aniche, &amp;c.),
+Seine, Loire (Rive-de-Gier) and Meurthe-et-Moselle, Baccarat in
+the latter department being famous for its table-glass. Limoges is
+the chief centre for the manufacture of porcelain, and the artistic
+products of the national porcelain factory of Sèvres have a world-wide
+reputation.</p>
+
+<p>The manufacture of paper and cardboard is largely carried on
+in Isère (Voiron), Seine-et-Oise (Essonnes), Vosges (Epinal) and of
+the finer sorts of paper in Charente (Angoulême). That of oil,
+candles and soap has its chief centre at Marseilles. Brewing and
+malting are localized chiefly in Nord. There are well-known chemical
+works at Dombasle (close to Nancy) and Chauny (Aisne) and in
+Rhône.</p>
+
+<p><i>Occupations.</i>&mdash;The following table, which shows the approximate
+numbers of persons engaged in the various manufacturing industries
+of France, who number in all about 5,820,000, indicates their relative
+importance from the point of view of employment:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">Occupation.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1901.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1866.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Baking</td> <td class="tcr rb">163,500</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Milling</td> <td class="tcr rb">99,400</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb"><i>Charcuterie</i></td> <td class="tcr rb">39,600</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Other alimentary industries</td> <td class="tcr rb">161,500</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">&emsp;Alimentary industries: total</td> <td class="tcr allb">464,000</td> <td class="tcr allb">308,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Gas-works</td> <td class="tcr rb">26,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Tobacco factories</td> <td class="tcr rb">16,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Oil-works</td> <td class="tcr rb">10,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Other &ldquo;chemical&rdquo;<a name="fa11c" id="fa11c" href="#ft11c"><span class="sp">11</span></a> industries</td> <td class="tcr rb">58,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">&emsp;Chemical industries: total</td> <td class="tcr allb">110,000</td> <td class="tcr allb">49,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Rubber factories</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,000</td> <td class="tcrm rb bb" rowspan="2">25,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Paper factories</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">61,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Typographic and lithographic printing</td> <td class="tcr rb">76,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Other branches of book production</td> <td class="tcr rb">23,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">&emsp;Book production: total</td> <td class="tcr allb">99,000</td> <td class="tcr allb">38,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">Spinning and weaving</td> <td class="tcr allb">892,000</td> <td class="tcr allb">1,072,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Clothing, millinery and making up of</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,484,000</td> <td class="tcrm rb" rowspan="3">761,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&emsp;fabrics generally.</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">Basket work, straw goods, feathers</td> <td class="tcr allb">39,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">Leather and skin</td> <td class="tcr allb">338,000</td> <td class="tcr allb">286,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Joinery</td> <td class="tcr rb">153,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Builder&rsquo;s carpentering</td> <td class="tcr rb">94,900</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Wheelwright&rsquo;s work</td> <td class="tcr rb">82,700</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Cooperage</td> <td class="tcr rb">46,600</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Wooden shoes</td> <td class="tcr rb">52,400</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Other wood industries</td> <td class="tcr rb">280,400</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">&emsp;Wood industries: total</td> <td class="tcr allb">710,000</td> <td class="tcr allb">671,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">Metallurgy and metal working</td> <td class="tcr allb">783,000</td> <td class="tcr allb">345,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">Goldsmiths&rsquo; and jewellers&rsquo; work</td> <td class="tcr allb">35,000</td> <td class="tcr allb">55,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">Stone-working</td> <td class="tcr allb">56,000</td> <td class="tcr allb">12,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">Construction, building, decorating</td> <td class="tcr allb">572,000</td> <td class="tcr allb">443,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Glass manufacture</td> <td class="tcr rb">43,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Tiles</td> <td class="tcr rb">29,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Porcelain and faïence</td> <td class="tcr rb">27,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Bricks</td> <td class="tcr rb">17,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Other kiln industries</td> <td class="tcr rb">45,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb">&emsp;Kiln industries: total</td> <td class="tcr allb">161,000</td> <td class="tcr allb">110,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl allb" colspan="3">&emsp;Some 9000 individuals were engaged in unclassified industries.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Fisheries.</i>&mdash;The fishing population of France is most numerous in
+the Breton departments of Finistère, Côtes-du-Nord and Morbihan
+and in Pas-de-Calais. Dunkirk, Gravelines, Boulogne and Paimpol
+send considerable fleets to the Icelandic cod-fisheries, and St Malo,
+Fécamp, Granville and Cancale to those of Newfoundland. The
+Dogger Bank is frequented by numbers of French fishing-boats.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page786" id="page786"></a>786</span>
+Besides the above, Boulogne, the most important fishing port in
+the country, Calais, Dieppe, Concarneau, Douarnenez, Les Sables
+d&rsquo;Olonne, La Rochelle, Marennes and Arcachon are leading ports
+for the herring, sardine, mackerel and other coast-fisheries of the
+ocean, while Cette, Agde and other Mediterranean ports are engaged
+in the tunny and anchovy fisheries. Sardine preserving is an
+important industry at Nantes and other places on the west coast.
+Oysters are reared chiefly at Marennes, which is the chief French
+market for them, and at Arcachon, Vannes, Oléron, Auray, Cancale
+and Courseulles. The total value of the produce of fisheries increased
+from £4,537,000 in 1892 to £5,259,000 in 1902. In 1902 the number
+of men employed in the home fisheries was 144,000 and the number
+of vessels 25,481 (tonnage 127,000); in the deep-sea fisheries 10,500
+men and 450 vessels (tonnage 51,000) were employed.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Communications.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Roads.</i>&mdash;Admirable highways known as <i>routes nationales</i> and
+kept up at the expense of the state radiate from Paris to the
+great towns of France. Averaging 52½ ft. in breadth, they
+covered in 1905 a distance of nearly 24,000 m. The École des
+Ponts et Chaussées at Paris is maintained by the government
+for the training of the engineers for the construction and upkeep
+of roads and bridges. Each department controls and maintains
+the <i>routes départementales</i>, usually good macadamized roads
+connecting the chief places within its limits and extending in
+1903 over 9700 m. The routes nationales and the routes départementales
+come under the category of <i>la grande voirie</i> and are
+under the supervision of the Ministry of Public Works. The
+urban and rural district roads, covering a much greater mileage
+and classed as <i>la petite voirie</i>, are maintained chiefly by the
+communes under the supervision of the Minister of the Interior.</p>
+
+<p><i>Waterways.</i><a name="fa12c" id="fa12c" href="#ft12c"><span class="sp">12</span></a>&mdash;The waterways of France, 7543 m. in length,
+of which canals cover 3031 m., are also classed under <i>la grande
+voirie</i>; they are the property of the state, and for the most
+part are free of tolls. They are divided into two classes. Those
+of the first class, which comprise rather less than half the entire
+system, have a minimum depth of 6½ ft., with locks 126 ft. long
+and 17 ft. wide; those of the second class are of smaller dimensions.
+Water traffic, which is chiefly in heavy merchandise,
+as coal, building materials, and agriculture and food produce,
+more than doubled in volume between 1881 and 1905. The canal
+and river system attains its greatest utility in the north, north-east
+and north-centre of the country; traffic is thickest along
+the Seine below Paris; along the rivers and small canals of the
+rich departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais and along the Oise
+and the canal of St Quentin whereby they communicate with
+Paris; along the canal from the Marne to the Rhine and the
+succession of waterways which unite it with the Oise; along
+the Canal de l&rsquo;Est (departments of Meuse and Ardennes);
+and along the waterways uniting Paris with the Saône at Chalon
+(Seine, Canal du Loing, Canal de Briare, Lateral canal of the
+Loire and Canal du Centre) and along the Saône between Chalon
+and Lyons.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>In point of length the following are the principal canals:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcl">&emsp;</td> <td class="tcc">Miles.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl cl">Est (uniting Meuse with Moselle and Saône)</td> <td class="tcr cl">270</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">From Nates to Brest</td> <td class="tcr">225</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl cl">Berry (uniting Montluçon with the canalized Cher and the Loire canal)</td> <td class="tcr cl">163</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Midi (Toulouse to Mediterranean via Béziers); see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Canal</a></span></td> <td class="tcr">175</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl cl">Burgundy (uniting the Yonne and Saône)</td> <td class="tcr cl">151</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Lateral canal of Loire</td> <td class="tcr">137</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl cl">From Marne to Rhine (on French territory)</td> <td class="tcr cl">131</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Lateral canal of Garonne</td> <td class="tcr">133</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl cl">Rhône to Rhine (on French territory)</td> <td class="tcr cl">119</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Nivernais (uniting Loire and Yonne)</td> <td class="tcr">111</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl cl">Canal de la Somme</td> <td class="tcr cl">97</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Centre (uniting Saône and Loire)</td> <td class="tcr">81</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl cl">Canal de l&rsquo;Ourcq</td> <td class="tcr cl">67</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Ardennes (uniting Aisne and Canal de l&rsquo;Est)</td> <td class="tcr">62</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl cl">From Rhône to Cette</td> <td class="tcr cl">77</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Canal de la Haute Marne</td> <td class="tcr">60</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl cl">St Quentin (uniting Scheldt with Somme and Oise)</td> <td class="tcr cl">58</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The chief navigable rivers are:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tccm allb">Total<br />navigated<br />Length.</td> <td class="tccm allb">First Class<br />Navigability.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc rb">Miles.</td> <td class="tcc rb">Miles.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Seine</td> <td class="tcc rb">339</td> <td class="tcc rb">293</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Aisne</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;37</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;37</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Marne</td> <td class="tcc rb">114</td> <td class="tcc rb">114</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Oise</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;99</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;65</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Yonne</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;67</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;53</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Rhône</td> <td class="tcc rb">309</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;30</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Saône</td> <td class="tcc rb">234</td> <td class="tcc rb">234</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Adour</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;72</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;21</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Garonne</td> <td class="tcc rb">289</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;96</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Dordogne</td> <td class="tcc rb">167</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;26</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Loire</td> <td class="tcc rb">452</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;35</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Charente</td> <td class="tcc rb">106</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;16</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Vilaine</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;91</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;31</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Escaut (in France)</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;39</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;39</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Scarpe</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;41</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;41</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Lys</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;45</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;45</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Aa</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">&ensp;18</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">&ensp;18</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Railways.</i>&mdash;The first important line in France, from Paris to
+Rouen, was constructed through the instrumentality of Sir
+Edward Blount (1809-1905), an English banker in Paris, who
+was afterwards for thirty years chairman of the Ouest railway.
+After the rejection in 1838 of the government&rsquo;s proposals for the
+construction of seven trunk lines to be worked by the state, he
+obtained a concession for that piece of line on the terms that
+the French treasury would advance one-third of the capital at
+3% if he would raise the remaining two-thirds, half in France
+and half in England. The contract for building the railway was
+put in the hands of Thomas Brassey; English navvies were largely
+employed on the work, and a number of English engine-drivers
+were employed when traffic was begun in 1843. A law passed
+in 1842 laid the foundation of the plan under which the railways
+have since been developed, and mapped out nine main lines,
+running from Paris to the frontiers and from the Mediterranean
+to the Rhine and to the Atlantic coast. Under it the cost of the
+necessary land was to be found as to one-third by the state and
+as to the residue locally, but this arrangement proved unworkable
+and was abandoned in 1845, when it was settled that the state
+should provide the land and construct the earthworks and
+stations, the various companies which obtained concessions being
+left to make the permanent way, provide rolling stock and work
+the lines for certain periods. Construction proceeded under this
+law, but not with very satisfactory results, and new arrangements
+had to be made between 1852 and 1857, when the railways
+were concentrated in the hands of six great companies, the
+Nord, the Est, the Ouest, the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée, the
+Orléans and the Midi. Each of these companies was allotted a
+definite sphere of influence, and was granted a concession for
+ninety-nine years from its date of formation, the concessions
+thus terminating at various dates between 1950 and 1960. In
+return for the privileges granted them the companies undertook
+the construction out of their own unaided resources of 1500 m.
+of subsidiary lines, but the railway expenditure of the country at
+this period was so large that in a few years they found it impossible
+to raise the capital they required. In these circumstances the
+state agreed to guarantee the interest on the capital, the sums it
+paid in this way being regarded as advances to be reimbursed
+in the future with interest at 4%. This measure proved successful
+and the projected lines were completed. But demands for
+more lines were constantly arising, and the existing companies,
+in view of their financial position, were disinclined to undertake
+their construction. The government therefore found itself
+obliged to inaugurate a system of direct subventions, not only to
+the old large companies, but also to new small ones, to encourage
+the development of branch and local lines, and local authorities
+were also empowered to contribute a portion of the required
+capital. The result came to be that many small lines were begun
+by companies that had not the means to complete them, and
+again the state had to come to the rescue. In 1878 it agreed to
+spend £20,000,000 in purchasing and completing a number of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page787" id="page787"></a>787</span>
+these lines, some of which were handed over to the great
+companies, while others were retained in the hands of the government,
+forming the system known as the Chemins de Fer de l&rsquo;État.
+Next year a large programme of railway expansion was adopted,
+at an estimated cost to the state of £140,000,000, and from 1880
+to 1882 nearly £40,000,000 was expended and some 1800 m.
+of line constructed. Then there was a change in the financial
+situation, and it became difficult to find the money required.
+In these circumstances the conventions of 1883 were concluded,
+and the great companies partially relieved the government of
+its obligations by agreeing to contribute a certain proportion of
+the cost of the new lines and to provide the rolling stock for
+working them. In former cases when the railways had had
+recourse to state aid, it was the state whose contributions were
+fixed, while the railways were left to find the residue; but on
+this occasion the position was reversed. The state further
+guaranteed a minimum rate of interest on the capital invested,
+and this guarantee, which by the convention of 1859 had applied
+to &ldquo;new&rdquo; lines only, was now extended to cover both &ldquo;old&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;new&rdquo; lines, the receipts and expenditure from both kinds
+being lumped together. As before, the sums paid out in respect
+of guaranteed dividend were to be regarded as advances which
+were to be paid back to the state out of the profits made, when
+these permitted, and when the advances were wiped out, the
+profits, after payment of a certain dividend, were to be divided
+between the state and the railway, two-thirds going to the former
+and one-third to the latter. All the companies, except the Nord,
+have at one time or another had to take advantage of the
+guarantee, and the fact that the Ouest had been one of the most
+persistent and heavy borrowers in this respect was one of the
+reasons that induced the government to take it over as from the
+1st of January 1909. By the 1859 conventions the state railway
+system obtained an entry into Paris by means of running powers
+over the Ouest from Chartres, and its position was further improved
+by the exchange of certain lines with the Orléans company.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>The great railway systems of France are as follows:</p>
+
+<p>1. The Nord, which serves the rich mining, industrial and farming
+districts of Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Aisne and Somme, connecting with
+the Belgian railways at several points. Its main lines run from
+Paris to Calais, via Creil, Amiens and Boulogne, from Paris to Lille,
+via Creil and Arras, and from Paris to Maubeuge via Creil, Tergnier
+and St Quentin.</p>
+
+<p>2. The Ouest-État, a combination of the West and state systems.
+The former traversed Normandy in every direction and connected Paris
+with the towns of Brittany. Its chief lines ran from Paris to Le Havre
+via Mantes and Rouen, to Dieppe via Rouen, to Cherbourg, to Granville
+and to Brest. The state railways served a large portion of western
+France, their chief lines being from Nantes via La Rochelle to Bordeaux,
+and from Bordeaux via Saintes, Niort and Saumur to Chartres.</p>
+
+<p>3. The Est, running from Paris via Châlons and Nancy to Avricourt
+(for Strassburg), via Troyes and Langres to Belfort and on via
+Basel to the Saint Gotthard, and via Reims and Mezières to Longwy.</p>
+
+<p>4. The Orléans, running from Paris to Orléans, and thence serving
+Bordeaux via Tours, Poitiers and Angoulême, Nantes via Tours and
+Angers, and Montauban and Toulouse via Vierzon and Limoges.</p>
+
+<p>5. The Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée, connecting Paris with Marseilles
+via Moret, Laroche, Dijon, Mâcon and Lyons, and with Nîmes via
+Moret, Nevers and Clermont-Ferrand. It establishes communication
+between France and Switzerland and Italy via Mâcon and
+Culoz (for the Mt. Cenis Tunnel) and via Dijon and Pontarlier (for
+the Simplon), and also has a direct line along the Mediterranean coast
+from Marseilles to Genoa via Toulon and Nice.</p>
+
+<p>6. The Midi (Southern) has lines radiating from Toulouse to
+Bordeaux via Agen, to Bayonne via Tarbes and Pau, and to Cette via
+Carcassonne, Narbonne and Béziers. From Bordeaux there is also a
+direct line to Bayonne and Irun (for Madrid), and at the other end of
+the Pyrenees a line leads from Narbonne to Perpignan and Barcelona.</p>
+
+<p>The following table, referring to lines &ldquo;of general interest,&rdquo; indicates
+the development of railways after 1885:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Year.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Mileage.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Receipts in<br />Thousands<br />of £.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Expenses<br />Thousands<br />of £.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Passengers<br />carried<br />(1000&rsquo;s</td> <td class="tccm allb">Goods carried<br />(1000 Metric<br />Tons</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1885</td> <td class="tcc rb">18,650</td> <td class="tcc rb">42,324</td> <td class="tcc rb">23,508</td> <td class="tcc rb">214,451</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;75,192</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1890</td> <td class="tcc rb">20,800</td> <td class="tcc rb">46,145</td> <td class="tcc rb">24,239</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;41,119</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;92,506</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1895</td> <td class="tcc rb">22,650</td> <td class="tcc rb">50,542</td> <td class="tcc rb">27,363</td> <td class="tcc rb">348,852</td> <td class="tcc rb">100,834</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1900</td> <td class="tcc rb">23,818</td> <td class="tcc rb">60,674</td> <td class="tcc rb">32,966</td> <td class="tcc rb">453,193</td> <td class="tcc rb">126,830</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1904</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">24,755</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">60,589</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">31,477</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">433,913</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">130,144</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Narrow gauge and normal gauge railways &ldquo;of local interest&rdquo;
+covered 3905 m. in 1904.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Commerce.</i></p>
+
+<p>After entering on a régime of free trade in 1860 France gradually
+reverted towards protection; this system triumphed in the
+Customs Law of 1892, which imposed more or less considerable
+duties on imports&mdash;a law associated with the name of M. Méline.
+While raising the taxes both on agricultural products and manufactured
+goods, this law introduced, between France and all the
+powers trading with her, relations different from those in the past.
+It left the government free either to apply to foreign countries
+the general tariff or to enter into negotiations with them for the
+application, under certain conditions, of a minimum tariff.
+The policy of protection was further accentuated by raising the
+impost on corn from 5 to 7 francs per hectolitre (2¾ bushels).
+This system, however, which is opposed by a powerful party,
+has at various times undergone modifications. On the one hand
+it became necessary, in face of an inadequate harvest, to suspend
+in 1898 the application of the law on the import of corn. On
+the other hand, in order to check the decline of exports and
+neutralize the harmful effects of a prolonged customs war, a
+commercial treaty was in 1896 concluded with Switzerland,
+carrying with it a reduction, in respect of certain articles, of
+the imposts which had been fixed by the law of 1892. An accord
+was likewise in 1898 effected with Italy, which since 1886 had
+been in a state of economic rupture with France, and in July
+1899 an accord was concluded with the United States of America.
+Almost all other countries, moreover, share in the benefit of the
+minimum tariff, and profit by the modifications it may successively
+undergo.</p>
+
+<p class="pt1 center"><i>Commerce, in Millions of Pounds Sterling.</i></p>
+
+<table class="ws f90" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="3">General</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="3">Special</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">Imports.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Exports.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Total.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Imports.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Exports.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Total.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1876-1880</td> <td class="tcc rb">210.1</td> <td class="tcc rb">175.3</td> <td class="tcc rb">385.4</td> <td class="tcc rb">171.7</td> <td class="tcc rb">135.1</td> <td class="tcc rb">306.8</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1881-1885</td> <td class="tcc rb">224.1</td> <td class="tcc rb">177.8</td> <td class="tcc rb">401.9</td> <td class="tcc rb">183.4</td> <td class="tcc rb">135.3</td> <td class="tcc rb">318.7</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1886-1890</td> <td class="tcc rb">208.2</td> <td class="tcc rb">179.4</td> <td class="tcc rb">387.6</td> <td class="tcc rb">168.8</td> <td class="tcc rb">137.6</td> <td class="tcc rb">306.4</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891-1895</td> <td class="tcc rb">205.9</td> <td class="tcc rb">178.6</td> <td class="tcc rb">384.5</td> <td class="tcc rb">163.0</td> <td class="tcc rb">133.8</td> <td class="tcc rb">296.8</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1896-1900</td> <td class="tcc rb">237.8</td> <td class="tcc rb">201.0</td> <td class="tcc rb">438.8</td> <td class="tcc rb">171.9</td> <td class="tcc rb">150.8</td> <td class="tcc rb">322.7</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1901-1905</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">233.3</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">227.5</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">460.8</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">182.8</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">174.7</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">357.5</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<table class="ws f90" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="2">Imports.</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="2">Exports.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Value<br />(Thousands<br />of £).</td> <td class="tccm allb">Per cent<br />of Total<br />Value.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Value<br />(Thousands<br />of £).</td> <td class="tccm allb">Per cent<br />of Total<br />Value.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Articles of Food&mdash;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1886-1890</td> <td class="tcr rb">58,856</td> <td class="tcc rb">34.9</td> <td class="tcc rb">30,830</td> <td class="tcc rb">22.4</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891-1895</td> <td class="tcr rb">50,774</td> <td class="tcc rb">30.9</td> <td class="tcc rb">28,287</td> <td class="tcc rb">21.1</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1896-1900</td> <td class="tcr rb">42,488</td> <td class="tcc rb">24.9</td> <td class="tcc rb">27,838</td> <td class="tcc rb">18.6</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1901-1905</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">33,631</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">18.4</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">28,716</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">16.5</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Raw Materials<a name="fa13c" id="fa13c" href="#ft13c"><span class="sp">13</span></a></td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1886-1890</td> <td class="tcr rb">85,778</td> <td class="tcc rb">50.8</td> <td class="tcc rb">33,848</td> <td class="tcc rb">24.6</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891-1895</td> <td class="tcr rb">88,211</td> <td class="tcc rb">54.3</td> <td class="tcc rb">32,557</td> <td class="tcc rb">24.4</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1896-1900</td> <td class="tcr rb">101,727</td> <td class="tcc rb">59.2</td> <td class="tcc rb">40,060</td> <td class="tcc rb">26.6</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1901-1905</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">116,580</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">63.8</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">47,385</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">27.1</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Articles Manufactured<a name="fa14c" id="fa14c" href="#ft14c"><span class="sp">14</span></a></td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1886-1890</td> <td class="tcr rb">24,125</td> <td class="tcc rb">14.3</td> <td class="tcc rb">72,917</td> <td class="tcc rb">53.0</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891-1895</td> <td class="tcr rb">24,054</td> <td class="tcc rb">14.8</td> <td class="tcc rb">72,906</td> <td class="tcc rb">54.5</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1896-1900</td> <td class="tcr rb">27,330</td> <td class="tcc rb">15.9</td> <td class="tcc rb">82,270</td> <td class="tcc rb">54.8</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1901-1905</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">32,554</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">17.8</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">98,582</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">56.4</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Being in the main a self-supporting country France carries
+on most of her trade within her own borders, and ranks below
+Great Britain, Germany and the United States in volume of
+exterior trade. The latter is subdivided into <i>general</i> commerce,
+which includes all goods entering or leaving the country, and
+<i>special</i> commerce which includes imports for home use and
+exports of home produce. The above table shows the developments
+of French trade during the years from 1876 to 1905 by
+means of quinquennial averages. A permanent body (the <i>commission
+permanente des valeurs</i>) fixes the average prices of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page788" id="page788"></a>788</span>
+articles in the customs list; this value is estimated at the end of
+the year in accordance with the variations that have taken place
+and is applied provisionally to the following year.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>Amongst imports raw materials (wool, cotton and silk, coal, oil-seeds,
+timber, &amp;c.) hold the first place, articles of food (cereals, wine,
+coffee, &amp;c.) and manufactured goods (especially machinery) ranking
+next. Amongst exports manufactured goods (silk, cotton and
+woollen goods, fancy wares, apparel, &amp;c.) come before raw materials
+and articles of food (wine and dairy products bought chiefly by
+England).</p>
+
+<p>Divided into these classes the imports and exports (special trade)
+for quinquennial periods from 1886 to 1905 averaged as shown in the
+preceding table.</p>
+
+<p>The decline both in imports and in exports of articles of food,
+which is the most noteworthy fact exhibited in the preceding table,
+was due to the almost prohibitive tax in the Customs Law of 1892,
+upon agricultural products.</p>
+
+<p>The average value of the principal articles of import and export
+(special trade) over quinquennial periods following 1890 is shown
+in the two tables below.</p>
+
+<p class="pt1 center"><i>Principal Imports</i> (<i>Thousands of £</i>).</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc allb">1891-1895.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1896-1900.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1901-1905.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Coal, coke, &amp;c</td> <td class="tcr rb">7,018</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,883</td> <td class="tcr rb">10,539</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Coffee</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,106</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,553</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,717</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Cotton, raw</td> <td class="tcr rb">7,446</td> <td class="tcr rb">7,722</td> <td class="tcr rb">11,987</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Flax</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,346</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,435</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,173</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Fruit and seeds (oleaginous)</td> <td class="tcr rb">7,175</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,207</td> <td class="tcr rb">8,464</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Hides and skins, raw</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,141</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,261</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,369</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Machinery</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,181</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,632</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,614</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Silk, raw</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,488</td> <td class="tcr rb">10,391</td> <td class="tcr rb">11,765</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Timber</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,054</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,284</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,760</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Wheat</td> <td class="tcr rb">10,352</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,276</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,995</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Wine</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,972</td> <td class="tcr rb">10,454</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,167</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Wool, raw</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">13,372</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">16,750</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">16,395</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Principal Exports</i> (<i>Thousands of £</i>).</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc allb">1891-1895.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1896-1900.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1901-1905.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Apparel</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,726</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,513</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,079</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Brandy and other spirits</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,402</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,931</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,678</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Butter</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,789</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,783</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,618</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Cotton manufactures</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,233</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,874</td> <td class="tcr rb">7,965</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Haberdashery<a name="fa15c" id="fa15c" href="#ft15c"><span class="sp">15</span></a></td> <td class="tcr rb">5,830</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,039</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,599</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Hides, raw</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,839</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,494</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,813</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Hides, tanned or curried</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,037</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,321</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,753</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Iron and steel, manufactures of</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,849</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,201</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Millinery</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,957</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,308</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,951</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Motor cars and vehicles</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td> <td class="tcr rb">160</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,147</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Paper and manufactures of</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,095</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,145</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,551</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Silk, raw, thrown, waste and cocoons</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,738</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,807</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,090</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Silk and waste silk, manufactured of</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,769</td> <td class="tcr rb">10,443</td> <td class="tcr rb">11,463</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Wine</td> <td class="tcr rb">8,824</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,050</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,139</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Wool, raw</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,003</td> <td class="tcr rb">7,813</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,159</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Wool, manufactures of</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">11,998</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">10,190</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">8,459</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The following were the countries sending the largest quantities of
+goods (special trade) to France (during the same periods as in previous
+table).</p>
+
+<p class="pt1 center"><i>Trade with Principal Countries. Imports</i> (<i>Thousands of £</i>).</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc allb">1891-1895.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1896-1900.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1901-1905.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Germany</td> <td class="tcc rb">13,178</td> <td class="tcc rb">13,904</td> <td class="tcc rb">17,363</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Belgium</td> <td class="tcc rb">15,438</td> <td class="tcc rb">13,113</td> <td class="tcc rb">13,057</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">United Kingdom</td> <td class="tcc rb">20,697</td> <td class="tcc rb">22,132</td> <td class="tcc rb">22,725</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Spain</td> <td class="tcc rb">10,294</td> <td class="tcc rb">10,560</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;6,525<a name="fa16c" id="fa16c" href="#ft16c"><span class="sp">16</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">United States</td> <td class="tcc rb">15,577</td> <td class="tcc rb">18,491</td> <td class="tcc rb">19,334</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Argentine Republic</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">&ensp;7,119</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">10,009</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">10,094</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Other countries importing largely into France are Russia, Algeria
+and British India, whose imports in each case averaged over £9,000,000
+in value in the period 1901-1905; China (average value £7,000,000);
+and Italy (average value £6,000,000).</p>
+
+<p>The following are the principal countries receiving the exports of
+France (special trade), with values for the same periods.</p>
+
+<p class="pt1 center"><i>Trade with Principal Countries. Exports</i> (<i>Thousands of £</i>).</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc allb">1891-1895.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1896-1900.</td> <td class="tcc allb">1901-1905.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Germany</td> <td class="tcr rb">13,712</td> <td class="tcr rb">16,285</td> <td class="tcc rb">21,021</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Belgium</td> <td class="tcr rb">19,857</td> <td class="tcr rb">22,135</td> <td class="tcc rb">24,542</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">United Kingdom</td> <td class="tcr rb">39,310</td> <td class="tcr rb">45,203</td> <td class="tcc rb">49,156</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">United States</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,337</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,497</td> <td class="tcc rb">10,411</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb">Algeria</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">7,872</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">9,434</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">11,652</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The other chief customers of France were Switzerland and Italy,
+whose imports from France averaged in 1901-1905 nearly £10,000,000
+and over £7,200,000 respectively in value. In the same period Spain
+received exports from France averaging £4,700,000.</p>
+
+<p>The trade of France was divided between foreign countries and
+her colonies in the following proportions (imports and exports
+combined).</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="2">General Trade.</td> <td class="tccm allb" colspan="2">Special Trade.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Foreign<br />Countries.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Colonies.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Foreign<br />Countries.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Colonies.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891-1895</td> <td class="tcc rb">92.00</td> <td class="tcc rb">8.00</td> <td class="tcc rb">90.89</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;9.11</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1896-1900</td> <td class="tcc rb">91.18</td> <td class="tcc rb">8.82</td> <td class="tcc rb">89.86</td> <td class="tcc rb">10.14</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1901-1905</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">90.41</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">9.59</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">88.78</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">11.22</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The respective shares of the leading customs in the trade of the
+country is approximately shown in the following table, which gives
+the value of their exports and imports (general trade) in 1905 in
+millions sterling.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcl">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc rb">£</td> <td class="tcl">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc">£</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Marseilles</td> <td class="tcc rb">88.8</td> <td class="tcl">Boulogne.</td> <td class="tcc">17.5</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Le Havre</td> <td class="tcc rb">79.5</td> <td class="tcl">Calais</td> <td class="tcc">14.1</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Paris</td> <td class="tcc rb">42.8</td> <td class="tcl">Dieppe</td> <td class="tcc">13.5</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Dunkirk</td> <td class="tcc rb">34.8</td> <td class="tcl">Rouen</td> <td class="tcc">11.3</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Bordeaux</td> <td class="tcc rb">27.4</td> <td class="tcl">Belfort-Petit-Croix</td> <td class="tcc">10.7</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>In the same year the other chief customs in order of importance
+were Tourcoing, Jeumont, Cette, St Nazaire and Avricourt.</p>
+
+<p>The chief local bodies concerned with commerce and industry are
+the <i>chambres de commerce</i> and the <i>chambres consultatives d&rsquo;arts et
+manufactures</i>, the members of which are elected from their own
+number by the traders and industrialists of a certain standing.
+They are established in the chief towns, and their principal function
+is to advise the government on measures for improving and facilitating
+commerce and industry within their circumscription. See also
+<span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Banks and Banking</a></span>; <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Savings Banks</a></span>; <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Post and Postal Service</a></span>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipping.</i>&mdash;The following table shows the increase in tonnage of
+sailing and steam shipping engaged in foreign trade entered and
+cleared at the ports of France over quinquennial periods from 1890.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc allb" colspan="2">Entered.</td> <td class="tcc allb" colspan="2">Cleared.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">French.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Foreign.</td> <td class="tcc allb">French.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Foreign.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891-1895</td> <td class="tcc rb">4,277,967</td> <td class="tcc rb">&ensp;9,947,893</td> <td class="tcc rb">4,521,928</td> <td class="tcc rb">10,091,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1896-1900</td> <td class="tcc rb">4,665,268</td> <td class="tcc rb">12,037,571</td> <td class="tcc rb">5,005,563</td> <td class="tcc rb">12,103,358</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1901-1905</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">4,782,101</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">14,744,626</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">5,503,463</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">14,823,217</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The increase of the French mercantile marine (which is fifth in
+importance in the world) over the same period is traced in the
+following table. Vessels of 2 net tons and upwards are enumerated.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc allb" colspan="2">Sailing.</td> <td class="tcc allb" colspan="2">Steam.</td> <td class="tcc allb" colspan="2">Total.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Number<br />of<br />Vessels.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Tonnage.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Number<br />of<br />Vessels.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Tonnage.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Number<br />of<br />Vessels.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Tonnage.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1891-1895</td> <td class="tcc rb">14,183</td> <td class="tcc rb">402,982</td> <td class="tcc rb">1182</td> <td class="tcc rb">502,363</td> <td class="tcc rb">15,365</td> <td class="tcr rb">905,345</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb">1896-1900</td> <td class="tcc rb">14,327</td> <td class="tcc rb">437,468</td> <td class="tcc rb">1231</td> <td class="tcc rb">504,674</td> <td class="tcc rb">15,558</td> <td class="tcr rb">942,142</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb rb bb">1901-1905</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">14,867</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">642,562</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">1388</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">617,536</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">16,255</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">1,260,098</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>At the beginning of 1908 the total was 17,193 (tonnage, 1,402,647);
+of these 13,601 (tonnage, 81,833) were vessels of less than 20 tons,
+while 502 (tonnage, 1,014,506) were over 800 tons.</p>
+
+<p>The increase in the tonnage of sailing vessels, which in other
+countries tends to decline, was due to the bounties voted by parliament
+to its merchant sailing fleet with the view of increasing the
+number of skilled seamen. The prosperity of the French shipping
+trade is hampered by the costliness of shipbuilding and by the
+scarcity of outward-bound cargo. Shipping has been fostered by
+paying bounties for vessels constructed in France and sailing under
+the French flag, and by reserving the coasting trade, traffic between
+France and Algeria, &amp;c., to French vessels. Despite these monopolies,
+three-fourths of the shipping in French ports is foreign, and
+France is without shipping companies comparable in importance
+to those of other great maritime nations. The three chief companies
+are the <i>Messageries Maritimes</i> (Marseilles and Bordeaux), the
+<i>Compagnie Générale Transatlantique</i> (Le Havre, St Nazaire and
+Marseilles) and the <i>Chargeurs Réunis</i> (Le Havre).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page789" id="page789"></a>789</span></p>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Government and Administration.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Central Government.</i>&mdash;The principles upon which the French
+constitution is based are representative government (by two
+chambers), manhood suffrage, responsibility of ministers and
+irresponsibility of the head of the state. Alterations or modifications
+of the constitution can only be effected by the National
+Assembly, consisting of both chambers sitting together <i>ad hoc</i>.
+The legislative power resides in these two chambers&mdash;the Senate
+and the Chamber of Deputies; the executive is vested in the
+president of the republic and the ministers. The members of
+both chambers owe their election to universal suffrage; but the
+Senate is not elected directly by the people and the Chamber of
+Deputies is.</p>
+
+<p>The Chamber of Deputies, consisting of 584 members, is
+elected by the <i>scrutin d&rsquo;arrondissement</i> (each elector voting for
+one deputy) for a term of four years, the conditions of election
+being as follows: Each arrondissement sends one deputy if its
+population does not exceed 100,000, and an additional deputy
+for every additional 100,000 inhabitants or fraction of that
+number. Every citizen of twenty-one years of age, unless subject
+to some legal disability, such as actual engagement in military
+service, bankruptcy or condemnation to certain punishments,
+has a vote, provided that he can prove a residence of six months&rsquo;
+duration in any one town or commune. A deputy must be a
+French citizen, not under twenty-five years old. Each candidate
+must make, at least five days before the elections, a declaration
+setting forth in what constituency he intends to stand. He may
+only stand for one, and all votes given for him in any other than
+that specified in the declaration are void. To secure election a
+candidate must at the first voting poll an absolute majority
+and a number of votes equal to one-fourth of the number of
+electors. If a second poll is necessary a relative majority is
+sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>The Senate (see below, <i>Law and Institutions</i>) is composed of
+300 members who must be French citizens at least forty years
+of age. They are elected by the &ldquo;<i>scrutin de liste</i>&rdquo; for a period of
+nine years, and one-third of the body retires every three years.
+The department which is to elect a senator when a vacancy
+occurs is settled by lot.</p>
+
+<p>Both senators and deputies receive a salary of £600 per annum.
+No member of a family that has reigned in France is eligible for
+either chamber.</p>
+
+<p>Bills may be proposed either by ministers (in the name of the
+president of the republic), or by private members, and may be
+initiated in either chamber, but money-bills must be submitted
+in the first place to the Chamber of Deputies. Every bill is first
+examined by a committee, a member of which is chosen to
+&ldquo;report&rdquo; on it to the chamber, after which it must go through
+two readings (<i>délibérations</i>), before it is presented to the other
+chamber. Either house may pass a vote of no confidence in the
+government, and in practice the government resigns in face of
+the passing of such a vote by the deputies, but not if it is passed
+by the Senate only. The chambers usually assemble in January
+each year, and the ordinary session lasts not less than five
+months; usually it continues till July. There is an extraordinary
+session from October till Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>The president (see below, <i>Law and Institutions</i>) is elected for
+seven years, by a majority of votes, by the Senate and Chamber
+of Deputies sitting together as the National Assembly. Any
+French citizen may be chosen president, no fixed age being
+required. The only exception to this rule is that no member of
+a royal family which has once reigned in France can be elected.
+The president receives 1,200,000 francs (£48,000) a year, half as
+salary, half for travelling expenses and the charges incumbent
+upon the official representative of the country. Both the
+chambers are summoned by the president, who has the power of
+dissolving the Chamber of Deputies with the assent of the Senate.
+When a change of Government occurs the president chooses a
+prominent parliamentarian as premier and president of the
+council. This personage, who himself holds a portfolio, nominates
+the other ministers, his choice being subject to the ratification of
+the chief of the state. The ministerial council (<i>conseil des
+ministres</i>) is presided over by the president of the republic;
+less formal meetings (<i>conseils de cabinet</i>) under the presidency of
+the premier, or even of some other minister, are also held.</p>
+
+<p>The ministers, whether members of parliament or not, have
+the right to sit in both chambers and can address the house
+whenever they choose, though a minister may only vote in the
+chamber of which he happens to be a member. There are twelve
+ministries<a name="fa17c" id="fa17c" href="#ft17c"><span class="sp">17</span></a> comprising those of justice; finance; war; the
+interior; marine; colonies; public instruction and fine arts;
+foreign affairs; commerce and industry; agriculture; public
+works; and labour and public thrift. Individual ministers
+are responsible for all acts done in connexion with their own
+departments, and the body of ministers collectively is responsible
+for the general policy of the government.</p>
+
+<p>The council of state (<i>conseil d&rsquo;état</i>) is the principal council
+of the head of the state and his ministers, who consult it on
+various legislative problems, more particularly on questions
+of administration. It is divided for despatch of business into
+four sections, each of which corresponds to a group of two or three
+ministerial departments, and is composed of (1) 32 councillors
+&ldquo;<i>en service ordinaire</i>&rdquo; (comprising a vice-president and sectional
+presidents), and 19 councillors &ldquo;<i>en service extraordinaire</i>,&rdquo; <i>i.e.</i>
+government officials who are deputed to watch the interests of
+the ministerial departments to which they belong, and in matters
+not concerned with those departments have a merely consultative
+position; (2) 32 <i>maîtres des requêtes</i>; (3) 40 auditors.</p>
+
+<p>The presidency of the council of state belongs <i>ex officio</i> to the
+minister of justice.</p>
+
+<p>The theory of &ldquo;<i>droit administratif</i>&rdquo; lays down the principle that
+an agent of the government cannot be prosecuted or sued for
+acts relating to his administrative functions before the ordinary
+tribunals. Consequently there is a special system of administrative
+jurisdiction for the trial of &ldquo;<i>le contentieux administratif</i>&rdquo; or
+disputes in which the administration is concerned. The council
+of state is the highest administrative tribunal, and includes a
+special &ldquo;<i>Section du contentieux</i>&rdquo; to deal with judicial work of
+this nature.</p>
+
+<p><i>Local Government.</i>&mdash;France is divided into 86 administrative
+departments (including Corsica) or 87 if the Territory of Belfort,
+a remnant of the Haut Rhin department, be included. These
+departments are subdivided into 362 arrondissements, 2911
+cantons and 36,222 communes.</p>
+
+<table class="ws f90" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">Departments.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Capital Towns.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Ancient Provinces.<a name="fa18c" id="fa18c" href="#ft18c"><span class="sp">18</span></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Ain</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bourg</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bourgogne (Bresse, Bugey, Valromey, Dombes).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Aisne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Laon</td> <td class="tcl rb">Île-de-France; Picardie.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Allier</td> <td class="tcl rb">Moulins</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bourbonnais.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Alpes-Maritimes</td> <td class="tcl rb">Nice</td> <td class="tcl rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Ardèche</td> <td class="tcl rb">Privas</td> <td class="tcl rb">Languedoc (Vivarais).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Ardennes</td> <td class="tcl rb">Mézières</td> <td class="tcl rb">Champagne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Ariège</td> <td class="tcl rb">Foix</td> <td class="tcl rb">Foix; Gascogne (Cousérans).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Aube</td> <td class="tcl rb">Troyes</td> <td class="tcl rb">Champagne; Bourgogne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Aude</td> <td class="tcl rb">Carcassonne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Languedoc.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Aveyron</td> <td class="tcl rb">Rodez</td> <td class="tcl rb">Guienne (Rouergue).
+   <span class="pagenum"><a name="page790" id="page790"></a>790</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Basses-Alpes</td> <td class="tcl rb">Digne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Provence.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Basses-Pyrénées</td> <td class="tcl rb">Pau</td> <td class="tcl rb">Béarn; Gascogne (Basse-Navarre, Soule, Labourd).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Belfort, Territoire de</td> <td class="tcl rb">Belfort</td> <td class="tcl rb">Alsace.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Bouches-du-Rhône</td> <td class="tcl rb">Marseilles</td> <td class="tcl rb">Provence.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Calvados</td> <td class="tcl rb">Caen</td> <td class="tcl rb">Normandie (Bessin, Bocage).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Cantal</td> <td class="tcl rb">Aurillac</td> <td class="tcl rb">Auvergne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Charente</td> <td class="tcl rb">Angoulême</td> <td class="tcl rb">Angoumois; Saintonge.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Charente-Inférieure</td> <td class="tcl rb">La Rochelle</td> <td class="tcl rb">Aunis; Saintonge.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Cher</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bourges</td> <td class="tcl rb">Berry; Bourbonnais.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Corrèze</td> <td class="tcl rb">Tulle</td> <td class="tcl rb">Limousin.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Côte-d&rsquo;Or</td> <td class="tcl rb">Dijon</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bourgogne (Dijonnais, Auxois).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Côtes-du-Nord</td> <td class="tcl rb">St Brieuc</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bretagne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Creuse</td> <td class="tcl rb">Guéret</td> <td class="tcl rb">Marche.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Deux-Sèvres</td> <td class="tcl rb">Niort</td> <td class="tcl rb">Poitou.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Dordogne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Périgueux</td> <td class="tcl rb">Guienne (Périgord).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Doubs</td> <td class="tcl rb">Besançon</td> <td class="tcl rb">Franche-Comté; Montbéliard.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Drôme</td> <td class="tcl rb">Valence</td> <td class="tcl rb">Dauphiné.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Eure</td> <td class="tcl rb">Évreux</td> <td class="tcl rb">Normandie; Perche.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Eure-et-Loir</td> <td class="tcl rb">Chartres</td> <td class="tcl rb">Orléanais; Normandie.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Finistère</td> <td class="tcl rb">Quimper</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bretagne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Gard</td> <td class="tcl rb">Nîmes</td> <td class="tcl rb">Languedoc.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Gers</td> <td class="tcl rb">Auch</td> <td class="tcl rb">Gascogne (Astarac, Armagnac).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Gironde</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bordeaux</td> <td class="tcl rb">Guienne (Bordelais, Bazadais).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Haute-Garonne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Toulouse</td> <td class="tcl rb">Languedoc; Gascogne (Comminges).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Haute-Loire</td> <td class="tcl rb">Le Puy</td> <td class="tcl rb">Languedoc (Velay); Auvergne; Lyonnais.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Haute-Marne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Chaumont</td> <td class="tcl rb">Champagne (Bassigny, Vallage).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Hautes-Alpes</td> <td class="tcl rb">Gap</td> <td class="tcl rb">Dauphiné.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Haute-Saône</td> <td class="tcl rb">Vesoul</td> <td class="tcl rb">Franche-Comté.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Haute-Savoie</td> <td class="tcl rb">Annecy</td> <td class="tcl rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Hautes-Pyrénées</td> <td class="tcl rb">Tarbes</td> <td class="tcl rb">Gascogne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Haute-Vienne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Limoges</td> <td class="tcl rb">Limousin; Marche.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Hérault</td> <td class="tcl rb">Montpellier</td> <td class="tcl rb">Languedoc.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Ille-et-Vilaine</td> <td class="tcl rb">Rennes</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bretagne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Indre</td> <td class="tcl rb">Châteauroux</td> <td class="tcl rb">Berry.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Indre-et-Loire</td> <td class="tcl rb">Tours</td> <td class="tcl rb">Touraine.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Isère</td> <td class="tcl rb">Grenoble</td> <td class="tcl rb">Dauphiné.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Jura</td> <td class="tcl rb">Lons-le-Saunier</td> <td class="tcl rb">Franche-Comté.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Landes</td> <td class="tcl rb">Mont-de-Marsan</td> <td class="tcl rb">Gascogne (Landes, Chalosse).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Loire</td> <td class="tcl rb">St-Étienne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Lyonnais.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Loire-Inférieure</td> <td class="tcl rb">Nantes</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bretagne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Loiret</td> <td class="tcl rb">Orléans</td> <td class="tcl rb">Orléanais (Orléanais proper, Gâtinais, Dunois).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Loir-et-Cher</td> <td class="tcl rb">Blois</td> <td class="tcl rb">Orléanais.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Lot</td> <td class="tcl rb">Cahors</td> <td class="tcl rb">Guienne (Quercy).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Lot-et-Garonne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Agen</td> <td class="tcl rb">Guienne; Gascogne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Lozère</td> <td class="tcl rb">Mende</td> <td class="tcl rb">Languedoc (Gévaudan).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Maine-et-Loire</td> <td class="tcl rb">Angers</td> <td class="tcl rb">Anjou.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Manche</td> <td class="tcl rb">St-Lô</td> <td class="tcl rb">Normandie (Cotentin).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Marne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Châlons-sur-Marne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Champagne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Mayenne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Laval</td> <td class="tcl rb">Maine; Anjou.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Meurthe-et-Moselle</td> <td class="tcl rb">Nancy</td> <td class="tcl rb">Lorraine; Trois-Évêchés.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Meuse</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bar-le-Duc</td> <td class="tcl rb">Lorraine (Barrois, Verdunois).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Morbihan</td> <td class="tcl rb">Vannes</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bretagne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Nièvre</td> <td class="tcl rb">Nevers</td> <td class="tcl rb">Nivernais; Orléanais.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Nord</td> <td class="tcl rb">Lille</td> <td class="tcl rb">Flandre; Hainaut.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Oise</td> <td class="tcl rb">Beauvais</td> <td class="tcl rb">Île-de-France.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Orne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Alençon</td> <td class="tcl rb">Normandie; Perche.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Pas-de-Calais</td> <td class="tcl rb">Arras</td> <td class="tcl rb">Artois; Picardie.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Puy-de-Dôme</td> <td class="tcl rb">Clermont-Ferrand</td> <td class="tcl rb">Auvergne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Pyrénées-Orientales</td> <td class="tcl rb">Perpignan</td> <td class="tcl rb">Roussillon; Languedoc.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Rhône</td> <td class="tcl rb">Lyon</td> <td class="tcl rb">Lyonnais; Beaujolais.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Saône-et-Loire</td> <td class="tcl rb">Mâcon</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bourgogne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Sarthe</td> <td class="tcl rb">Le Mans</td> <td class="tcl rb">Maine; Anjou.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Savoie</td> <td class="tcl rb">Chambéry</td> <td class="tcl rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Seine</td> <td class="tcl rb">Paris</td> <td class="tcl rb">Île-de-France.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Seine-et-Marne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Melun</td> <td class="tcl rb">Île-de-France; Champagne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Seine-et-Oise</td> <td class="tcl rb">Versailles</td> <td class="tcl rb">Île-de-France.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Seine-Inférieure</td> <td class="tcl rb">Rouen</td> <td class="tcl rb">Normandie.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Somme</td> <td class="tcl rb">Amiens</td> <td class="tcl rb">Picardie.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Tarn</td> <td class="tcl rb">Albi</td> <td class="tcl rb">Languedoc (Albigeois).</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Tarn-et-Garonne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Montauban</td> <td class="tcl rb">Guienne; Gascogne; Languedoc.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Var</td> <td class="tcl rb">Draguignan</td> <td class="tcl rb">Provence.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Vaucluse</td> <td class="tcl rb">Avignon</td> <td class="tcl rb">Comtat; Venaissin; Provence; Principauté d&rsquo;Orange.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Vendée</td> <td class="tcl rb">La Roche-sur-Yon</td> <td class="tcl rb">Poitou.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Vienne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Poitiers</td> <td class="tcl rb">Poitou; Touraine.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Vosges</td> <td class="tcl rb">Épinal</td> <td class="tcl rb">Lorraine.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb sc">Yonne</td> <td class="tcl rb">Auxerre</td> <td class="tcl rb">Bourgogne; Champagne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb bb sc">Corse (Corsica)</td> <td class="tcl rb bb">Ajaccio</td> <td class="tcl rb bb">Corse.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>Before 1790 France was divided into thirty-three great and seven
+small military governments, often called provinces, which are,
+however, to be distinguished from the provinces formed under the
+feudal system. The great governments were: Alsace, Saintonge
+and Angournois, Anjou, Artois, Aunis, Auvergne, Béarn and Navarre,
+Berry, Bourbonnais; Bourgogne (Burgundy), Bretagne (Brittany),
+Champagne, Dauphiné, Flandre, Foix, Franche-Comté, Guienne and
+Gascogne (Gascony), Île-de-France, Languedoc, Limousin, Lorraine,
+Lyonnais, Maine, Marche, Nivernais, Normandie, Orléanais, Picardie,
+Poitou, Provence, Roussillon, Touraine and Corse. The eight small
+governments were: Paris, Boulogne and Boulonnais, Le Havre,
+Sedan, Toulois, Pays Messin and Verdunois and Saumurois.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>At the head of each department is a prefect, a political official
+nominated by the minister of the interior and appointed by the
+president, who acts as general agent of the government and
+representative of the central authority. To aid him the prefect
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page791" id="page791"></a>791</span>
+has a general secretary and an advisory body (<i>conseil de préfecture</i>),
+the members of which are appointed by the president,
+which has jurisdiction in certain classes of disputes arising out
+of administration and must, in certain cases, be consulted,
+though the prefect is not compelled to follow its advice. The
+prefect supervises the execution of the laws; has wide authority
+in regard to policing, public hygiene and relief of pauper children;
+has the nomination of various subordinate officials; and is in
+correspondence with the subordinate functionaries in his department,
+to whom he transmits the orders and instructions of the
+government. Although the management of local affairs is in the
+hands of the prefect his power with regard to these is checked
+by a deliberative body known as the general council (<i>conseil
+général</i>). This council, which consists for the most part of
+business and professional men, is elected by universal suffrage,
+each canton in the department contributing one member. The
+general council controls the departmental administration of
+the prefect, and its decisions on points of local government are
+usually final. It assigns its quota of taxes (<i>contingent</i>) to each
+arrondissement, authorizes the sale, purchase or exchange of
+departmental property, superintends the management thereof,
+authorizes the construction of new roads, railways or canals,
+and advises on matters of local interest. Political questions
+are rigorously excluded from its deliberations. The general
+council, when not sitting, is represented by a permanent delegation
+(<i>commission départementale</i>).</p>
+
+<p>As the prefect in the department, so the sub-prefect in the
+arrondissement, though with a more limited power, is the
+representative of the central authority. He is assisted, and in
+some degree controlled, in his work by the district council
+(<i>conseil d&rsquo;arrondissement</i>), to which each canton sends a member,
+chosen by universal suffrage. As the arrondissement has neither
+property nor budget, the principal business of the council is
+to allot to each commune its share of the direct taxes imposed
+on the arrondissement by the general council.</p>
+
+<p>The canton is purely an administrative division, containing,
+on an average, about twelve communes, though some exceptional
+communes are big enough to contain more than one canton.
+It is the seat of a justice of the peace, and is the electoral unit for
+the general council and the district council.</p>
+
+<p>The communes, varying greatly in area and population, are the
+administrative units in France. The chief magistrate of the
+commune is the mayor (<i>maire</i>), who is (1) the agent of the
+central government and charged as such with the local promulgation
+and execution of the general laws and decrees of the country;
+(2) the executive head of the municipality, in which capacity
+he supervises the police, the revenue and public works of the
+commune, and acts as the representative of the corporation in
+general. He also acts as registrar of births, deaths and marriages,
+and officiates at civil marriages. Mayors are usually assisted
+by deputies (<i>adjoints</i>). In a commune of 2500 inhabitants or
+less there is one deputy; in more populous communes there
+may be more, but in no case must the number exceed twelve,
+except at Lyons, where as many as seventeen are allowed. Both
+mayors and deputy mayors are elected by and from among
+members of the municipal council for four years. This body
+consists, according to the population of the commune, of from
+10 to 36 members, elected for four years on the principle of the
+<i>scrutin de liste</i> by Frenchmen who have reached the age of
+twenty-one years and have a six months&rsquo; residence qualification.</p>
+
+<p>The local affairs of the commune are decided by the municipal
+council, and its decisions become operative after the expiration
+of a month, save in matters which involve interests transcending
+those of the commune. In such cases the prefect must approve
+them, and in some cases the sanction of the general council
+or even ratification by the president is necessary. The council
+also chooses communal delegates to elect senators; and draws
+up the list of <i>répartiteurs</i>, whose function is to settle how the
+commune&rsquo;s share of direct taxes shall be allotted among the
+taxpayers. The sub-prefect then selects from this list ten of
+whom he approves for the post. The meetings of the council
+are open to the public.</p>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Justice.</i></p>
+
+<p>The ordinary judicial system of France comprises two classes
+of courts: (1) civil and criminal, (2) special, including courts
+dealing only with purely commercial cases; in addition there
+are the administrative courts, including bodies, the Conseil
+d&rsquo;État and the Conseils de Préfecture, which deal, in their
+judicial capacity, with cases coming under the <i>droit administratif</i>.
+Mention may also be made of the Tribunal des Conflits, a special
+court whose function it is to decide which is the competent
+tribunal when an administration and a judicial court both
+claim or refuse to deal with a given case.</p>
+
+<p>Taking the first class of courts, which have both civil and
+criminal jurisdiction, the lowest tribunal in the system is that of
+the <i>juge de paix</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In each canton is a <i>juge de paix</i>, who in his capacity as a civil
+judge takes cognizance, without appeal, of disputes where the
+amount sought to be recovered does not exceed £12 in value.
+Where the amount exceeds £12 but not £24 an appeal lies from
+his decision to the court of first instance. In some particular
+cases where special promptitude or local knowledge is necessary,
+as disputes between hotelkeepers and travellers, and the like,
+he has jurisdiction (subject to appeal to the court of first instance)
+up to £60. He has also a criminal jurisdiction in <i>contraventions</i>,
+<i>i.e.</i> breaches of law punishable by a fine not exceeding 12s.
+or by imprisonment not exceeding five days. If the sentence
+be one of imprisonment or the fine exceeds 4s., appeal lies to the
+court of first instance. It is an important function of the <i>juge
+de paix</i> to endeavour to reconcile disputants who come before
+him, and no suit can be brought before the court of first instance
+until he has endeavoured without success to bring the parties to
+an agreement.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tribunaux de première instance</i>, also called <i>tribunaux
+d&rsquo;arrondissement</i>, of which there is one in every arrondissement
+(with few exceptions), besides serving as courts of appeal from
+the <i>juges de paix</i> have an original jurisdiction in matters civil
+and criminal. The court consists of a president, one or more
+vice-presidents and a variable number of judges. A <i>procureur</i>,
+or public prosecutor, is also attached to each court. In civil
+matters the tribunal takes cognizance of actions relating to
+personal property to the value of £60, and actions relating to
+land to the value of 60 fr. (£2 : 8s.) per annum. When it deals
+with matters involving larger sums an appeal lies to the courts
+of appeal. In penal cases its jurisdiction extends to all offences
+of the class known as <i>délits</i>&mdash;offences punishable by a more
+serious penalty than the &ldquo;contraventions&rdquo; dealt with by the
+<i>juge de paix</i>, but not entailing such heavy penalties as the code
+applies to <i>crimes</i>, with which the assize courts (see below)
+deal. When sitting in its capacity as a criminal court it is
+known as the <i>tribunal correctionnel</i>. Its judgments are invariably
+subject in these matters to appeal before the court
+of appeal.</p>
+
+<p>There are twenty-six courts of appeal (<i>cours d&rsquo;appel</i>), to each
+of which are attached from one to five departments.</p>
+
+<table class="ws f90" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc">Cours d&rsquo;Appel.</td> <td class="tcc">Departments depending on them.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Paris</td> <td class="tcl cl">Seine, Aube, Eure-et-Loir, Marne, Seine-et-Marne, Seine-et-Oise, Yonne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Agen</td> <td class="tcl">Gers, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Aix</td> <td class="tcl cl">Basses-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Amiens</td> <td class="tcl">Aisne, Oise, Somme.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Angers</td> <td class="tcl cl">Maine-et-Loire, Mayenne, Sarthe.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Bastia</td> <td class="tcl">Corse.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Besançon</td> <td class="tcl cl">Doubs, Jura, Haute-Saône, Territoire de Belfort.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Bordeaux</td> <td class="tcl">Charente, Dordogne, Gironde.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Bourges</td> <td class="tcl cl">Cher, Indre, Nièvre.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Caen</td> <td class="tcl">Calvados, Manche, Orne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Chambéry</td> <td class="tcl cl">Savoie, Haute-Savoie.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Dijon</td> <td class="tcl">Côte-d&rsquo;Or, Haute-Marne, Saône-et-Loire.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Douai</td> <td class="tcl cl">Nord, Pas-de-Calais.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Grenoble</td> <td class="tcl">Hautes-Alpes, Drôme, Isère.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Limoges</td> <td class="tcl cl">Corrèze, Creuse, Haute-Vienne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Lyons</td> <td class="tcl">Ain, Loire, Rhône.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Montpellier</td> <td class="tcl cl">Aude, Aveyron, Hérault, Pyrénées-Orientales.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Nancy</td> <td class="tcl">Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Vosges, Ardennes.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Nîmes</td> <td class="tcl cl">Ardèche, Gard, Lozère, Vaucluse.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="page792" id="page792"></a>792</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Orléans</td> <td class="tcl">Indre-et-Loire, Loir-et-Cher, Loiret.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Pau</td> <td class="tcl cl">Landes, Basses-Pyrénées, Hautes-Pyrénées.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Poitiers</td> <td class="tcl">Charente-Inférieure, Deux-Sèvres, Vendée, Vienne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Rennes</td> <td class="tcl cl">Côtes-du-Nord, Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Inférieure, Morbihan.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Riom</td> <td class="tcl">Allier, Cantal, Haute-Loire, Puy-de-Dôme.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc cl">Rouen</td> <td class="tcl cl">Eure, Seine-Inférieure.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Toulouse</td> <td class="tcl">Ariège, Haute-Garonne, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>At the head of each court, which is divided into sections
+(<i>chambres</i>), is a <i>premier président</i>. Each section (<i>chambre</i>) consists
+of a <i>président de chambre</i> and four judges (<i>conseillers</i>).
+<i>Procureurs-généraux</i> and <i>avocats-généraux</i> are also attached to
+the <i>parquet</i>, or permanent official staff, of the courts of appeal.
+The principal function of these courts is the hearing of appeals
+both civil and criminal from the courts of first instance; only in
+some few cases (<i>e.g.</i> discharge of bankrupts) do they exercise an
+original jurisdiction. One of the sections is termed the <i>chambre
+des mises en accusation</i>. Its function is to examine criminal
+cases and to decide whether they shall be referred for trial to the
+lower courts or the <i>cours d&rsquo;assises</i>. It may also dismiss a case on
+grounds of insufficient evidence.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>cours d&rsquo;assises</i> are not separate and permanent tribunals.
+Every three months an assize is held in each department, usually
+at the chief town, by a <i>conseiller</i>, appointed <i>ad hoc</i>, of the court
+of appeal upon which the department depends. The <i>cour
+d&rsquo;assises</i> occupies itself entirely with offences of the most serious
+type, classified under the penal code as <i>crimes</i>, in accordance
+with the severity of the penalties attached. The president is
+assisted in his duties by two other magistrates, who may be
+chosen either from among the <i>conseillers</i> of the court of appeal
+or the presidents or judges of the local court of first instance.
+In this court and in this court alone there is always a jury of
+twelve. They decide, as in England, on facts only, leaving the
+application of the law to the judges. The verdict is given by a
+simple majority.</p>
+
+<p>In all criminal prosecutions, other than those coming before
+the <i>juge de paix</i>, a secret preliminary investigation is made by
+an official called a <i>juge d&rsquo;instruction</i>. He may either dismiss
+the case at once by an order of &ldquo;non-lieu,&rdquo; or order it to be
+tried, when the prosecution is undertaken by the <i>procureur</i>
+or <i>procureur-général</i>. This process in some degree corresponds
+to the manner in which English magistrates dismiss a
+case or commit the prisoner to quarter sessions or assizes, but
+the powers of the <i>juge d&rsquo;instruction</i> are more arbitrary and
+absolute.</p>
+
+<p>The highest tribunal in France is the <i>cour de cassation</i>, sitting
+at Paris, and consisting of a first president, three sectional
+presidents and forty-five <i>conseillers</i>, with a ministerial staff
+(<i>parquet</i>) consisting of a <i>procureur-général</i> and six advocates-general.
+It is divided into three sections: the Chambre des
+Requêtes, or court of petitions, the civil court and the criminal
+court. The <i>cour de cassation</i> can review the decision of any
+other tribunal, except administrative courts. Criminal appeals
+usually go straight to the criminal section, while civil appeals are
+generally taken before the Chambre des Requêtes, where they
+undergo a preliminary examination. If the demand for rehearing
+is refused such refusal is final; but if it is granted the
+case is then heard by the civil chamber, and after argument
+<i>cassation</i> (annulment) is granted or refused. The Court of
+Cassation does not give the ultimate decision on a case; it
+pronounces, not on the question of fact, but on the legal principle
+at issue, or the competence of the court giving the original
+decision. Any decision, even one of a <i>cour d&rsquo;assises</i>, may be
+brought before it in the last resort, and may be <i>cassé</i>&mdash;annulled.
+If it pronounces <i>cassation</i> it remits the case to the hearing of a
+court of the same order.</p>
+
+<p>Commercial courts (<i>tribunaux de commerce</i>) are established in
+all the more important commercial towns to decide as expeditiously
+as possible disputed points arising out of business transactions.
+They consist of judges, chosen, from among the leading
+merchants, and elected by <i>commerçants patentés depuis cinq ans</i>,
+<i>i.e.</i> persons who have held the licence to trade (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Finance</a></span>) for
+five years and upwards. In the absence of a <i>tribunal de commerce</i>
+commercial cases come before the ordinary <i>tribunal d&rsquo;arrondissement</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In important industrial towns tribunals called <i>conseils de
+prud&rsquo;hommes</i> are instituted to deal with disputes between
+employers and employees, actions arising out of contracts of
+apprenticeship and the like. They are composed of employers
+and workmen in equal numbers and are established by decree of
+the council of state, advised by the minister of justice. The
+minister of justice is notified of the necessity for a <i>conseil de
+prud&rsquo;hommes</i> by the prefect, acting on the advice of the
+municipal council and the Chamber of Commerce or the
+Chamber of Arts and Manufactures. The judges are elected
+by employers and workmen of a certain standing. When the
+amount claimed exceeds £12 appeal lies to the <i>tribunaux
+d&rsquo;arrondissement</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Police.</i>&mdash;Broadly, the police of France may be divided into
+two great branches&mdash;administrative police (<i>la police administrative</i>)
+and judicial police (<i>la police judiciaire</i>), the former having
+for its object the maintenance of order, and the latter charged
+with tracing out offenders, collecting the proofs, and delivering
+the presumed offenders to the tribunals charged by law with
+their trial and punishment. Subdivisions may be, and often are,
+named according to the particular duties to which they are
+assigned, as <i>la police politique</i>, <i>police des m&oelig;urs</i>, <i>police sanitaire</i>,
+&amp;c. The officers of the judicial police comprise the <i>juge de paix</i>
+(equivalent to the English police magistrate), the <i>maire</i>, the
+<i>commissaire de police</i>, the <i>gendarmerie</i> and, in rural districts, the
+<i>gardes champêtres</i> and the <i>gardes forestiers</i>. <i>Gardiens de la paix</i>
+(sometimes called <i>sergents de ville</i>, <i>gardes de ville</i> or <i>agents de
+police</i>) are not to be confounded with the gendarmerie, being a
+branch of the administrative police and corresponding more or
+less nearly with the English equivalent &ldquo;police constables,&rdquo;
+which the gendarmerie do not, although both perform police
+duty. The gendarmerie, however, differ from the agents or
+gardes both in uniform and in the fact that they are for the
+most part country patrols. The organization of the Paris police,
+which is typical of that in other large towns, may be outlined
+briefly. The central administration (<i>administration centrale</i>)
+comprises three classes of functions which together constitute
+<i>la police</i>. First there is the office or <i>cabinet</i> of the prefect for the
+general police (<i>la police générale</i>), with bureaus for various
+objects, such as the safety of the president of the republic, the
+regulation and order of public ceremonies, theatres, amusements
+and entertainments, &amp;c.; secondly, the judicial police (<i>la police
+judiciaire</i>), with numerous bureaus also, in constant communication
+with the courts of judicature; thirdly, the administrative
+police (<i>la police administrative</i>) including bureaus, which superintend
+navigation, public carriages, animals, public health, &amp;c.
+Concurrently with these divisions there is the municipal police,
+which comprises all the agents in enforcing police regulations in
+the streets or public thoroughfares, acting under the orders of a
+chief (<i>chef de la police municipale</i>) with a central bureau. The
+municipal police is divided into two principal branches&mdash;the
+service in uniform of the <i>agents de police</i> and the service out of
+uniform of <i>inspecteurs de police</i>. In Paris the municipal police
+are divided among the twenty arrondissements, which the
+uniform police patrol (see further <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Paris</a></span> and <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Police</a></span>).</p>
+
+<p><i>Prisons.</i>&mdash;The prisons of France, some of them attached to the
+ministry of the interior, are complex in their classification. It
+is only from the middle of the 19th century that close attention
+has been given to the principle of individual separation. Cellular
+imprisonment was, however, partially adopted for persons
+awaiting trial. Central prisons, in which prisoners lived and
+worked in association, had been in existence from the commencement
+of the 19th century. These prisons received all sentenced
+to short terms of imprisonment, the long-term convicts going to
+the <i>bagnes</i> (the great convict prisons at the arsenals of Rochefort,
+Brest and Toulon), while in 1851 transportation to penal colonies
+was adopted. In 1869 and 1871 commissions were appointed to
+inquire into prison discipline, and as a consequence of the report
+of the last commission, issued in 1874, the principle of cellular
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page793" id="page793"></a>793</span>
+confinement was put in operation the following year. There
+were, however, but few prisons in France adapted for the cellular
+system, and the process of reconstruction has been slow. In
+1898 the old Paris prisons of Grande-Roquette, Saint-Pélagie
+and Mazas were demolished, and to replace them a large prison
+with 1500 cells was erected at Fresnes-lès-Rungis. There are
+(1) the <i>maison d&rsquo;arrêt</i>, temporary places of durance in every
+arrondissement for persons charged with offences, and those
+sentenced to more than a year&rsquo;s imprisonment who are awaiting
+transfer to a <i>maison centrale</i>; (2) the <i>maison de justice</i>, often part
+and parcel of the former, but only existing in the assize court
+towns for the safe custody of those tried or condemned at the
+assizes; (3) departmental prisons, or <i>maisons de correction</i>, for
+summary convictions, or those sentenced to less than a year, or,
+if provided with sufficient cells, those amenable to separate confinement;
+(4) <i>maisons centrales</i> and <i>pénitenciers agricoles</i>, for all
+sentenced to imprisonment for more than a year, or to hard
+labour, or to those condemned to <i>travaux forcés</i> for offences committed
+in prison. There are eleven <i>maisons centrales</i>, nine for
+men (Loos, Clairvaux, Beaulieu, Poissy, Melun, Fontevrault,
+Thouars, Riom and Nîmes); two for women (Rennes and
+Montpellier). The <i>pénitenciers agricoles</i> only differ from the
+<i>maisons centrales</i> in the matter of régime; there are two&mdash;at
+Castelluccio and at Chiavari (Corsica). There are also reformatory
+establishments for juvenile offenders, and <i>dépôts de
+sûreté</i> for prisoners who are travelling, at places where there are
+no other prisons. For the penal settlements at a distance from
+France see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Deportation</a></span>.</p>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Finance.</i></p>
+
+<p>At the head of the financial organization of France, and
+exercising a general jurisdiction, is the minister of finance,
+who co-ordinates in one general budget the separate budgets
+prepared by his colleagues and assigns to each ministerial
+department the sums necessary for its expenses.</p>
+
+<p>The financial year in France begins on the 1st of January,
+and the budget of each financial year must be laid on the table
+of the Chamber of Deputies in the course of the ordinary
+session of the preceding year in time for the discussion
+<span class="sidenote">Budget.</span>
+upon it to begin in October and be concluded before the 31st of
+December. It is then submitted to a special commission of the
+Chamber of Deputies, elected for one year, who appoint a general
+reporter and one or more special reporters for each of the ministries.
+When the Chamber of Deputies has voted the budget it
+is submitted to a similar course of procedure in the Senate.
+When the budget has passed both chambers it is promulgated by
+the president under the title of <i>Loi des finances</i>. In the event of
+its not being voted before the 31st of December, recourse is had
+to the system of &ldquo;provisional twelfths&rdquo; (<i>douzièmes provisoires</i>),
+whereby the government is authorized by parliament to incur
+expenses for one, two or three months on the scale of the previous
+year. The expenditure of the government has several times
+been regulated for as long as six months upon this system.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>In each department an official collector (<i>Trésorier payeur général</i>)
+receives the taxes and public revenue collected therein and accounts
+for them to the central authority in Paris. In view of his
+responsibilities he has, before appointment, to pay a large
+<span class="sidenote">Taxation.</span>
+deposit to the treasury. Besides receiving taxes, they pay the
+creditors of the state in their departments, conduct all operations
+affecting departmental loans, buy and sell government stock (<i>rentes</i>)
+on behalf of individuals, and conduct certain banking operations.
+The <i>trésorier</i> nearly always lives at the chief town of the department,
+and is assisted by a <i>receveur particulier des finances</i> in each arrondissement
+(except that in which the <i>trésorier</i> himself resides). From the
+<i>receveur</i> is demanded a security equal to five times his total income.
+The direct taxes are actually collected by <i>percepteurs</i>. In the
+commune an official known as the <i>receveur municipal</i> receives all
+moneys due to it, and, subject to the authorization of the mayor,
+makes all payments due from it. In communes with a revenue
+of less than £2400 the <i>percepteur</i> fulfils the functions of <i>receveur
+municipal</i>, but a special official may be appointed in communes
+with large incomes.</p>
+
+<p>The direct taxes fall into two classes. (1) <i>Impôts de répartition</i>
+(apportionment), the amount to be raised being fixed in advance
+annually and then apportioned among the departments. They
+include the land tax,<a name="fa19c" id="fa19c" href="#ft19c"><span class="sp">19</span></a> the personal and habitation tax (<i>contribution
+personnelle-mobilière</i>), and door and window tax. (2) <i>Impôts de
+quotité</i>, which are levied directly on the individual, who pays his
+quota according to a fixed tariff. These comprise the tax on
+buildings<a href="#ft19c"><span class="sp">19</span></a> and the trade-licence tax (<i>impôt des patentes</i>). Besides
+these, certain other taxes (<i>taxes assimilées aux contributions directes</i>)
+are included under the heading of direct taxation, <i>e.g.</i> the tax on
+property in mortmain, dues for the verification of weights and
+measures, the tax on royalties from mines, on horses, mules and
+carriages, on cycles, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p><i>The land tax</i> falls upon land not built upon in proportion to its net
+yearly revenue. It is collected in accordance with a register of
+property (<i>cadastre</i>) drawn up for the most part in the first half of the
+19th century, dealing with every piece of property in France, and
+giving its extent and value and the name of the owner. The responsibility
+of keeping this register accurate and up to date is divided
+between the state, the departments and the communes, and involves
+a special service and staff of experts. <i>The building tax</i> consists of a
+levy of 3.20% of the rental value of the property, and is charged
+upon the owner.</p>
+
+<p><i>The personal and habitation tax</i> consists in fact of two different
+taxes, one imposing a fixed capitation charge on all citizens alike
+of every department, the charge, however, varying according to the
+department from 1 fc. 50 c. (1s. 3d.) to 4 fcs. 50 c. (3s. 9d.), the other
+levied on every occupier of a furnished house or of apartments in
+proportion to its rental value.</p>
+
+<p><i>The tax on doors and windows</i> is levied in each case according to the
+number of apertures, and is fixed with reference to population, the
+inhabitants of the more populous paying more than those of the less
+populous communes.</p>
+
+<p><i>The trade-licence tax</i> (<i>impôt des patentes</i>) is imposed on every person
+carrying on any business whatever; it affects professional men,
+bankers and manufacturers, as well as wholesale and retail traders,
+and consists of (1) a fixed duty levied not on actual profits but with
+reference to the extent of a business or calling as indicated by number
+of employés, population of the locality and other considerations.
+(2) An assessment on the letting value of the premises in which a
+business or profession is carried on.</p>
+
+<p>The administrative staff includes, for the purpose of computing the
+individual quotas of the direct taxes, a director assisted by <i>contrôleurs</i>
+in each department and subordinate to a central authority in Paris,
+the <i>direction générale des contributions directes</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The indirect taxes comprise the charges on registration; stamps;
+customs; and a group of taxes specially described as &ldquo;indirect
+taxes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><i>Registration</i> (<i>enregistrement</i>) <i>duties</i> are charged on the transfer of
+property in the way of business (<i>à titre onéreux</i>); on changes in
+ownership effected in the way of donation or succession (<i>à titre
+gratuit</i>), and on a variety of other transactions which must be
+registered according to law. The revenue from <i>stamps</i> includes
+as its chief items the returns from stamped paper, stamps on
+goods traffic, securities and share certificates and receipts and
+cheques.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Direction générale de l&rsquo;enregistrement, des domaines et du timbre</i>,
+comprising a central department and a director and staff of agents
+in each department, combines the administration of state property
+(not including forests) with the exaction of registration and stamp
+duties.</p>
+
+<p>The Customs (<i>douane</i>), at one time only a branch of the administration
+of the <i>contributions indirectes</i>, were organized in 1869 as a special
+service. The central office at Paris consists of a <i>directeur général</i>
+and two <i>administrateurs</i>, nominated by the president of the republic.
+These officials form a council of administration presided over by the
+minister of finance. The service in the departments comprises
+<i>brigades</i>, which are actually engaged in guarding the frontiers, and a
+clerical staff (<i>service de bureau</i>) entrusted with the collection of the
+duties. There are twenty-four districts, each under the control of a
+<i>directeur</i>, assisted by inspectors, sub-inspectors and other officials.
+The chief towns of these districts are Algiers, Bayonne, Besançon,
+Bordeaux, Boulogne, Brest, Chambéry, Charleville, Dunkirk,
+Épinal, La Rochelle, Le Havre, Lille, Lyons, Marseilles, Montpellier,
+Nancy, Nantes, Nice, Paris, Perpignan, Rouen, St-Malo, Valenciennes.
+There is also an official performing the functions of a director at
+Bastia, in Corsica.</p>
+
+<p>The group specially described as indirect taxes includes those on
+alcohol, wine, beer, cider and other alcoholic drinks, on passenger
+and goods traffic by railway, on licences to distillers, spirit-sellers,
+&amp;c., on salt and on sugar of home manufacture. The collection of
+these excise duties as well as the sale of matches, tobacco and gunpowder
+to retailers, is assigned to a special service in each department
+subordinated to a central administration. To the above taxes
+must be added the <i>tax on Stock Exchange transactions</i> and the <i>tax of
+4% on dividends from stocks and shares</i> (<i>other than state loans</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Other main sources of revenue are: the <i>domains and forests</i>
+managed by the state; <i>government monopolies</i>, comprising tobacco,
+matches, gunpowder; <i>posts</i>, <i>telegraphs</i>, <i>telephones</i>; and <i>state</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page794" id="page794"></a>794</span>
+<i>railways</i>. An administrative tribunal called the <i>cour des comptes</i>
+subjects the accounts of the state&rsquo;s financial agents (<i>trésoriers-payeurs</i>,
+<i>receveurs</i> of registration fees, of customs, of indirect taxes,
+&amp;c.) and of the communes<a name="fa20c" id="fa20c" href="#ft20c"><span class="sp">20</span></a> to a close investigation, and a vote of
+definitive settlement is finally passed by parliament. The Cour des
+Comptes, an ancient tribunal, was abolished in 1791, and reorganized
+by Napoleon I. in 1807. It consists of a president and 110 other
+officials, assisted by 25 auditors. All these are nominated for life
+by the president of the republic. Besides the accounts of the state
+and of the communes, those of charitable institutions<a href="#ft20c"><span class="sp">20</span></a> and training
+colleges<a href="#ft20c"><span class="sp">20</span></a> and a great variety of other public establishments are
+scrutinized by the Cour des Comptes.</p>
+
+<p>The following table shows the rapid growth of the state revenue of
+France during the period 1875-1905, the figures for the specified years
+representing millions of pounds.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">1875.</td> <td class="tccm allb">1880.</td> <td class="tccm allb">1885.</td> <td class="tccm allb">1890.</td> <td class="tccm allb">1895.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Average<br />1896-1900.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Average<br />1901-1905.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">108</td> <td class="tcc allb">118</td> <td class="tcc allb">122</td> <td class="tcc allb">129</td> <td class="tcc allb">137</td> <td class="tcc allb">144</td> <td class="tcc allb">147</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Of the revenue in 1905 (150½ million pounds) the four direct taxes
+produced approximately 20 millions. Other principal items of
+revenue were: Registration 25 millions, stamps 7½ millions, customs
+18 millions, inland revenue on liquors 16½ millions, receipts from the
+tobacco monopoly 18 millions, receipts from post office 10½ millions.</p>
+
+<p>Since 1875 the expenditure of the state has passed through considerable
+fluctuations. It reached its maximum in 1883, descended
+in 1888 and 1889, and since then has continuously increased.
+It was formerly the custom to divide the credits
+<span class="sidenote">Expenditure.</span>
+voted for the discharge of the public services into two
+heads&mdash;the ordinary and extraordinary budget. The ordinary
+budget of expenditure was that met entirely by the produce of the
+taxes, while the extraordinary budget of expenditure was that which
+had to be incurred either in the way of an immediate loan or in aid
+of the funds of the floating debt. The policy adopted after 1890
+of incorporating in the ordinary budget the expenditure on war,
+marine and public works, each under its own head, rendered the
+&ldquo;extraordinary budget&rdquo; obsolete, but there are still, besides the
+ordinary budget, <i>budgets annexes</i>, comprising the credits voted to
+certain establishments under state supervision, <i>e.g.</i> the National
+Savings Bank, state railways, &amp;c. The growth of the expenditure
+of France is shown in the following summary figures, which represent
+millions of pounds.</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">1875.</td> <td class="tccm allb">1880.</td> <td class="tccm allb">1885.</td> <td class="tccm allb">1890.</td> <td class="tccm allb">1895.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Average<br />1896-1900.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Average<br />1901-1905.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">117</td> <td class="tcc allb">135</td> <td class="tcc allb">139</td> <td class="tcc allb">132</td> <td class="tcc allb">137</td> <td class="tcc allb">143</td> <td class="tcc allb">147</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The chief item of expenditure (which totalled 148 million pounds
+in 1905) is the service of the public debt, which in 1905 cost 48¼
+million pounds sterling. Of the rest of the sum assigned to the
+ministry of finance (59¾ millions in all) 8½ millions went in the expense
+of collection of revenue. The other ministries with the largest
+outgoings were the ministry of war (the expenditure of which rose
+from 25½ millions in 1895 to over 30 millions in 1905), the ministry
+of marine (10¾ millions in 1895, over 12½ millions in 1905), the ministry
+of public works (with an expenditure in 1905 of over 20 millions,
+10 millions of which was assigned to posts, telegraphs and telephones)
+and the ministry of public instruction, fine arts and public worship,
+the expenditure on education having risen from 7½ millions in 1895
+to 9½ millions in 1905.</p>
+
+<p><i>Public Debt.</i>&mdash;The national debt of France is the heaviest of any
+country in the world. Its foundation was laid early in the 15th
+century, and the continuous wars of succeeding centuries, combined
+with the extravagance of the monarchs, as well as deliberate disregard
+of financial and economic conditions, increased it at an alarming
+rate. The duke of Sully carried out a revision in 1604, and other
+attempts were made by Mazarin and Colbert, but the extravagances
+of Louis XV. swelled it again heavily. In 1764 the national debt
+amounted to 2,360,000,000 livres, and the annual change to 93,000,000
+livres. A consolidation was effected in 1793, but the lavish issue of
+assignats (<i>q.v.</i>) destroyed whatever advantage might have accrued,
+and the debt was again dealt with by a law of the 9th of Vendémiaire
+year VI. (27th of September 1797), the annual interest paid yearly
+to creditors then amounting to 40,216,000 francs (£1,600,000).
+During the Directory a sum of £250,000 was added to the interest
+charge, and by 1814 this annual charge had risen to £2,530,000.
+This large increase is to be accounted for by the fact that during the
+Napoleonic régime the government steadily refused to issue inconvertible
+paper currency or to meet war expenditure by borrowing.
+The following table shows the increase of the funded debt since
+1814.<a name="fa21c" id="fa21c" href="#ft21c"><span class="sp">21</span></a></p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb" colspan="2">Date.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Nominal Capital<br />(Millions of £).</td> <td class="tccm allb">Interest<br />(Millions of £).</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc lb">April 1,</td> <td class="tcc rb">1814</td> <td class="tcr rb">50¾</td> <td class="tcr rb">2½</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb">April 1,</td> <td class="tcc rb">1830</td> <td class="tcr rb">177&ensp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">8&ensp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb">March 1,</td> <td class="tcc rb">1848</td> <td class="tcr rb">238¼</td> <td class="tcr rb">9¾</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb">January 1,</td> <td class="tcc rb">1852</td> <td class="tcr rb">220¾</td> <td class="tcr rb">9½</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb">&rdquo;</td> <td class="tcc rb">1871</td> <td class="tcr rb">498¼</td> <td class="tcr rb">15½</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb">&rdquo;</td> <td class="tcc rb">1876</td> <td class="tcr rb">796¼</td> <td class="tcr rb">30&ensp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb">&rdquo;</td> <td class="tcc rb">1887</td> <td class="tcr rb">986½</td> <td class="tcr rb">34¼</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb">&rdquo;</td> <td class="tcc rb">1895</td> <td class="tcr rb">1038¾<a name="fa22c" id="fa22c" href="#ft22c"><span class="sp">22</span></a></td> <td class="tcr rb">32½</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc lb bb">&rdquo;</td> <td class="tcc rb bb">1905</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">1037¼</td> <td class="tcr rb bb">31&ensp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The French debt as constituted in 1905 was made up of funded
+debt and floating debt as follows:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc pt1" colspan="2"><i>Funded Debt.</i></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl">Perpetual 3% <i>rentes</i></td> <td class="tcr">£888,870,400</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Terminable 3% <i>rentes</i></td> <td class="tcr">148,490,400</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">&emsp;&emsp;Total of funded debt</td> <td class="tcr">£1,037,360,800</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr">===========</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Guarantees to railway companies, &amp;c. (in capital)</td> <td class="tcr">£89,724,080</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Other debt in capital</td> <td class="tcr">46,800,840</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcc pt1" colspan="2"><i>Floating Debt.</i></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl">Exchequer bills</td> <td class="tcr">£9,923,480</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Liabilities on behalf of communes and public</td> <td class="tcr">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">&emsp;establishments, including departmental services</td> <td class="tcr">17,366,520</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Deposit and current accounts of Caisse des</td> <td class="tcr">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">&emsp;dépôts, &amp;c., including savings banks</td> <td class="tcr">15,328,840</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Caution money of Trésoriers payeurs-généraux</td> <td class="tcr">1,431,680</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Other liabilities</td> <td class="tcr">6,456,200</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;Total of floating debt</td> <td class="tcr">£50,506,720</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Departmental Finances.</i>&mdash;Every department has a budget of its
+own, which is prepared and presented by the prefect, voted by the
+departmental council and approved by decree of the president of the
+republic. The ordinary receipts include the revenues from the
+property of the department, the produce of <i>additional centimes</i>,
+which are levied in conjunction with the direct taxes for the maintenance
+of both departmental and communal finances, state subventions
+and contributions of the communes towards certain branches
+of poor relief and to maintenance of roads. The chief expenses of the
+departments are the care of pauper children and lunatics, the
+maintenance of high-roads and the service of the departmental debt.</p>
+
+<p><i>Communal Finances.</i>&mdash;The budget of the commune is prepared
+by the mayor, voted by the municipal council and approved by the
+prefect. But in communes the revenues of which exceed £120,000,
+the budget is always submitted to the president of the republic.
+The ordinary revenues include the produce of &ldquo;additional centimes&rdquo;
+allocated to communal purposes, the rents and profits of communal
+property, sums produced by municipal taxes and dues, concessions
+to gas, water and other companies, and by the <i>octroi</i> (<i>q.v.</i>) or duty
+on a variety of articles imported into the commune for local consumption.
+The repairing of highways, the upkeep of public buildings,
+the support of public education, the remuneration of numerous
+officials connected with the collection of state taxes, the keeping
+of the <i>cadastre</i>, &amp;c., constitute the principal objects of communal
+expenditure.</p>
+
+<p>Both the departments and the communes have considerable
+public debts. The departmental debt in 1904 stood at 24 million
+pounds, and the communal debt at 153 million pounds.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="author">(R. Tr.)</div>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Army.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Recruiting and Strength.</i>&mdash;Universal compulsory service was
+adopted after the disasters of 1870-1871, though in principle
+it had been established by Marshal Niel&rsquo;s reforms a few years
+before that date. The most important of the recruiting laws
+passed since 1870 are those of 1872, 1889 and 1905, the last
+the &ldquo;loi de deux ans&rdquo; which embodies the last efforts of the
+French war department to keep pace with the ever-growing
+numbers of the German empire. Compulsory service with the
+colours is in Germany no longer universal, as there are twice
+as many able-bodied men presented by the recruiting commissions
+as the active army can absorb. France, with a greatly
+inferior population, now trains every man who is physically
+capable. This law naturally made a deep impression on military
+Europe, not merely because the period of colour service was
+reduced&mdash;Germany had taken this step years before&mdash;but
+because of the almost entire absence of the usual exemptions.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page795" id="page795"></a>795</span>
+Even bread-winners are required to serve, the state pensioning
+their dependants (75 centimes per diem, up to 10% of the
+strength) during their period of service. Dispensations, and also
+the one-year voluntariat, which had become a short cut for the
+so-called &ldquo;intellectual class&rdquo; to employment in the civil service
+rather than a means of training reserve officers, were abolished.
+Every Frenchman therefore is a member of the army practically
+or potentially from the age of twenty to the age of forty-five.
+Each year there is drawn up in every commune a list of the
+young men who attained the age of twenty during the previous
+year. These young men are then examined by a revising body
+(<i>Conseil de révision cantonal</i>) composed of civil and military
+officials. Men physically unfit are wholly exempted, and men
+who have not, at the time of the examination, attained the
+required physical standard are put back for re-examination
+after an interval. Men who, otherwise suitable, have some
+slight infirmity are drafted into the non-combatant branches.
+The minimum height for the infantry soldier is 1.54 m., or
+5 ft. ½ in., but men of special physique are taken below this
+height. In 1904, under the old system of three-years&rsquo; service
+with numerous total and partial exemptions, 324,253 men
+became liable to incorporation, of whom 25,432 were rejected
+as unfit, 55,265 were admitted as one-year volunteers, 62,160
+were put back, 27,825 had already enlisted with a view to making
+the army a career, 5257 were taken for the navy, and thus, with
+a few extra details and casualties, the contingent for full service
+dwindled to 147,549 recruits. In 1906, 326,793 men had to
+present themselves, 25,348 had already enlisted, 4923 went to
+the navy, 68,526 were put back, 33,777 found unfit, which,
+deducting 3128 details, gives an actual incorporated contingent
+of 191,091 young men of twenty-one to serve for two full years (in
+each case, for the sake of comparison, men put back from former
+years who were enrolled are omitted). In theory a two-years&rsquo;
+contingent of course should be half as large again as a three-years&rsquo;
+one, but in practice, France has not men enough for so great
+an increase. Still the law of 1905 provides a system whereby
+there is room with the colours for every available man, and
+moreover ensures his services. The net gain in the 1906 class
+is not far short of 50,000, and the proportion of the new contingent
+to the old is practically 5 : 4. The <i>loi des cadres</i> of 1907 introduced
+many important changes of detail supplementary to the <i>loi de
+deux ans</i>. Important changes were also made in the provisions
+and administration of military law. The active army, then,
+at a given moment, say November 1, 1908, is composed of all
+the young men, not legally exempted, who have reached the age
+of twenty in the years 1906 and 1907. It is at the disposal
+of the minister of war, who can decree the recall of all men discharged
+to the reserve the previous year and all those whose
+time of service has for any reason been shortened. The reserves
+of the active army are composed of those who have served
+the legal period in the active army. These are recalled twice,
+in the eleven years during which they are members of the reserve,
+for refresher courses. The active army and its reserve are not
+localized, but drawn from and distributed over the whole of
+France. The advantages of a purely territorial system have
+tempted various War Ministers to apply it, but the results were
+not good, owing to the want of uniformity in the military
+qualities and the political subordination of the different districts.
+One result of this is that mobilization and concentration are
+much slower processes than they are in Germany.</p>
+
+<p>The Territorial Army and its reserve (members of which
+undergo two short periods of training) are, however, allocated
+to local service. The soldier spends six years in the Territorial
+Army, and six in the reserve of the Territorial Army. The
+reserves of the active army and the Territorial Army and its
+reserve can only be recalled to active service in case of emergency
+and by decree of the head of the state.</p>
+
+<p>The total service rendered by the individual soldier is thus
+twenty-five years. He is registered at the age of twenty, is
+called to the colours on the 1st of October of the next year,
+discharged to the active army reserve on the 30th of September
+of the second year thereafter, to the Territorial Army at the
+same date thirteen complete years after his incorporation, and
+finally discharged from the reserve of the Territorial Army
+on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his entry into the active army.
+On November 1, 1908, then the active army was composed of
+the classes registered 1906 and 1907, the reserve of the classes
+1895-1905, the Territorial Army of those of 1889-1894 and the
+Territorial Army reserve of those of 1883-1888.</p>
+
+<p>In 1906 the peace strength of the army in France was estimated
+at 532,593 officers and men; in Algeria 54,580; in Tunis 20,320;
+total 607,493. Deducting vacancies, sick and absent, the
+effective strength of the active army in 1906 was 540,563; of
+the gendarmerie and Garde Républicaine 24,512; of colonial
+troops in the colonies 58,568. The full number of persons liable
+to be called upon for military service and engaged in such service
+is calculated (1908) as 4,800,000, of whom 1,350,000 of the active
+army and the younger classes of army reserve would constitute
+the field armies set on foot at the outbreak of war. 150,000
+horses and mules are maintained on a peace footing and 600,000
+on a war footing.</p>
+
+<p><i>Organization.</i>&mdash;The general organization of the French army
+at home is based on the system of permanent army corps, the
+headquarters of which are as follows: I. Lille, II. Amiens,
+III. Rouen, IV. Le Mans, V. Orléans, VI. Châlons-sur-Marne,
+VII. Besançon, VIII. Bourges, IX. Tours, X. Rennes, XI.
+Nantes, XII. Limoges, XIII. Clermont-Ferrand, XIV. Lyons,
+XV. Marseilles, XVI. Montpellier, XVII. Toulouse, XVIII.
+Bordeaux, XIX. Algiers and XX. Nancy. Each army corps
+consists in principle of two infantry divisions, one cavalry
+brigade, one brigade of horse and field artillery, one engineer
+battalion and one squadron of train. But certain army corps
+have a special organization. The VI. corps (Châlons) and the
+VII. (Besançon) consist of three divisions each, and the XIX.
+(Algiers) has three divisions of its own as well as the division
+occupying Tunis. In addition to these corps there are eight
+permanent cavalry divisions with headquarters at Paris, Lunéville,
+Meaux, Sedan, Reims, Lyons, Melun and Dôle. The
+military government of Paris is independent of the army corps
+system and comprises, besides a division of the colonial army
+corps (see below), 3½ others detached from the II., III., IV. and
+V. corps, as well as the 1st and 3rd cavalry divisions and many
+smaller bodies of troops. The military government of Lyons
+is another independent and special command; it comprises
+practically the XIV. army corps and the 6th cavalry division.
+The infantry division consists of 2 brigades, each of 2 regiments
+of 3 or 4 battalions (the 4 battalion regiments have recently
+been reduced for the most part to 3), with 1 squadron cavalry
+and 12 batteries, attached from the corps troops, in war a proportion
+of the artillery would, however, be taken back to form
+the corps artillery (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Artillery</a></span> and <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Tactics</a></span>). The cavalry
+division consists of 2 or 3 brigades, each of 2 regiments or 8
+squadrons, with 2 horse artillery batteries attached. The army
+corps consists of headquarters, 2 (or 3) infantry divisions, 1
+cavalry brigade, 1 artillery brigade (2 regiments, comprising 21
+field and 2 horse batteries), 1 engineer battalion, &amp;c. In war
+a group of &ldquo;Rimailho&rdquo; heavy howitzers (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Ordnance</a></span>:
+<i>Heavy Field and Light Siege Units</i>) would be attached. It is
+proposed, and accepted in principle, to increase the number of
+guns in the army corps by converting the horse batteries in 18
+army corps to field batteries, which, with other measures, enables
+the number of the latter to be increased to 36 (144 guns).</p>
+
+<p>The organization of the &ldquo;metropolitan troops&rdquo; by regiments
+is (<i>a</i>) 163 regiments of line infantry, some of which are affected
+to &ldquo;regional&rdquo; duties and do not enter into the composition of
+their army corps for war, 31 battalions of <i>chasseurs à pied</i>,
+mostly stationed in the Alps and the Vosges, 4 regiments of
+Zouaves, 4 regiments of Algerian tirailleurs (natives, often
+called Turcos<a name="fa23c" id="fa23c" href="#ft23c"><span class="sp">23</span></a>), 2 foreign legion regiments, 5 battalions of
+African light infantry (disciplinary regiments), &amp;c; (<i>b</i>) 12
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page796" id="page796"></a>796</span>
+regiments of cuirassiers, 32 of dragoons, 21 of <i>chasseurs à cheval</i>,
+14 of hussars, 6 of <i>chasseurs d&rsquo;Afrique</i> and 4 of Spahis (Algerian
+natives); (<i>c</i>) 40 regiments of artillery, comprising 445 field
+batteries, 14 mountain batteries and 52 horse batteries (see,
+however, above), 18 battalions of garrison artillery, with in
+addition 13 companies of artificers, &amp;c.; (<i>d</i>) 6 regiments of
+engineers forming 22 battalions, and 1 railway regiment; (<i>e</i>)
+20 squadrons of train, 27 legions of gendarmerie and the Paris
+Garde Républicaine, administrative and medical units.</p>
+
+<p><i>Colonial Troops.</i>&mdash;These form an expeditionary army corps
+in France to which are attached the actual corps of occupation
+to the various colonies, part white, part natives. The colonial
+army corps, headquarters at Paris, has three divisions, at Paris,
+Toulon and Brest.</p>
+
+<p>The French colonial (formerly marine) infantry, recruited by
+voluntary enlistment, comprises 18 regiments and 5 independent
+battalions (of which 12 regiments are at home), 74 batteries of
+field, fortress and mountain artillery (of which 32 are at home),
+with a few cavalry and engineers, &amp;c., and other services in
+proportion. The native troops include 13 regiments and 8
+independent battalions. The strength of this army corps is
+28,700 in France and 61,300 in the colonies.</p>
+
+<p><i>Command.</i>&mdash;The commander-in-chief of all the armed forces
+is the president of the Republic, but the practical direction of
+affairs lies in the hand of the minister of war, who is assisted
+by the <i>Conseil supérieur de la guerre</i>, a body of senior generals
+who have been selected to be appointed to the higher commands
+in war. The vice-president is the destined commander-in-chief
+of the field armies and is styled the generalissimo. The chief of
+staff of the army is also a member of the council. In war
+the latter would probably remain at the ministry of war in Paris,
+and the generalissimo would have his own chief of staff. The
+ministry of war is divided into branches for infantry, cavalry,
+&amp;c.&mdash;and services for special subjects such as military law,
+explosives, health, &amp;c. The general staff (<i>état major de l&rsquo;armée</i>)
+has its functions classed as follows: personnel; material and
+finance; 1st bureau (organization and mobilization), 2nd
+(intelligence), 3rd (military operations and training) and 4th
+(communications and transport); and the famous historical
+section. The president of the Republic has a military household,
+and the minister a cabinet, both of which are occupied chiefly
+with questions of promotion, patronage and decorations.</p>
+
+<p>The general staff and also the staff of the corps and divisions
+are composed of certificated (<i>brevetés</i>) officers who have passed
+all through the École de Guerre. In time of peace an officer is
+attached to the staff for not more than four years. He must
+then return to regimental duty for at least two years.</p>
+
+<p>The officers of the army are obtained partly from the old-established
+military schools, partly from the ranks of the non-commissioned
+officers, the proportion of the latter being about
+one-third of the total number of officers. Artillery and engineer
+officers come from the École Polytechnique, infantry and cavalry
+from the École spéciale militaire de St-Cyr. Other important
+training institutions are the staff college (École supérieure de
+Guerre) which trains annually 70 to 90 selected captains and
+lieutenants; the musketry school of Châlons, the gymnastic
+school at Joinville-le-Pont and the schools of St Maixent, Saumur
+and Versailles for the preparation of non-commissioned officers
+for commissions in the infantry, cavalry, artillery and engineers
+respectively. The non-commissioned officers are, as
+usual in universal service armies, drawn partly from men who
+voluntarily enlist at a relatively early age, and partly from men
+who at the end of their compulsory period of service are re-engaged.
+Voluntary enlistments in the French army are permissible,
+within certain limits, at the age of eighteen, and the <i>engagés</i>
+serve for at least three years. The law further provides for the
+re-engagement of men of all ranks, under conditions varying
+according to their rank. Such re-engagements are for one to three
+years&rsquo; effective service but may be extended to fifteen. They
+date from the time of the legal expiry of each man&rsquo;s compulsory
+active service. <i>Rengagés</i> receive a bounty, a higher
+rate of pay and a pension at the conclusion of their service.
+The total number of men who had re-enlisted stood in 1903 at
+8594.</p>
+
+<p><i>Armament.</i>&mdash;The field artillery is armed with the 75 mm. gun,
+a shielded quick-firer (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Ordnance</a></span>: <i>Field Equipments</i>,
+for illustration and details); this weapon was the forerunner
+of all modern models of field gun, and is handled on tactical
+principles specially adapted for it, which gives the French field
+artillery a unique position amongst the military nations. The
+infantry, which was the first in Europe to be armed with the
+magazine rifle, still carries this, the Lebel, rifle which dates from
+1886. It is believed, however, that a satisfactory type of automatic
+rifle (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Rifle</a></span>) has been evolved and is now (1908) in
+process of manufacture. Details are kept strictly secret. The
+cavalry weapons are a straight sword (that of the heavy cavalry
+is illustrated in the article <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Sword</a></span>), a bamboo lance and the
+Lebel carbine.</p>
+
+<p>It is convenient to mention in this place certain institutions
+attached to the war department and completing the French
+military organization. The Hôtel des Invalides founded by
+Louis XIV. and Louvois is a house of refuge for old and infirm
+soldiers of all grades. The number of the inmates is decreasing;
+but the institution is an expensive one. In 1875 the &ldquo;Invalides&rdquo;
+numbered 642, and the hôtel cost the state 1,123,053 francs.
+The order of the Legion of Honour is treated under <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Knighthood
+and Chivalry</a></span>. The <i>médaille militaire</i> is awarded to private
+soldiers and non-commissioned officers who have distinguished
+themselves or rendered long and meritorious services. This
+was introduced in 1852, carries a yearly pension of 100 frs. and
+has been granted occasionally to officers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fortifications.</i>&mdash;After 1870 France embarked upon a policy
+of elaborate frontier and inner defences, with the object of
+ensuring, as against an unexpected German invasion, the time
+necessary for the effective development of her military forces,
+which were then in process of reorganization. Some information
+as to the types of fortification adopted in 1870-1875 will be
+found in <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Fortification and Siegecraft</a></span>. The general lines
+of the scheme adopted were as follows: On the Meuse, which
+forms the principal natural barrier on the side of Lorraine,
+Verdun (<i>q.v.</i>) was fortified as a large entrenched camp, and
+along the river above this were constructed a series of <i>forts
+d&rsquo;arrêt</i> (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Meuse Line</a></span>) ending in another entrenched camp
+at Toul (<i>q.v.</i>). From this point a gap (the <i>trouée d&rsquo;Épinal</i>) was
+left, so as &ldquo;in some sort to canalize the flow of invasion&rdquo; (General
+Bonnal), until the upper Moselle was reached at Épinal (<i>q.v.</i>).
+Here another entrenched camp was made and from it the &ldquo;Moselle
+line&rdquo; (<i>q.v.</i>) of <i>forts d&rsquo;arrêt</i> continues the barrier to Belfort (<i>q.v.</i>),
+another large entrenched camp, beyond which a series of fortifications
+at Montbéliard and the Lomont range carries the line of
+defence to the Swiss border, which in turn is protected by
+works at Pontarlier and elsewhere. In rear of these lines Verdun-Toul
+and Épinal-Belfort, respectively, lie two large defended
+areas in which under certain circumstances the main armies
+would assemble preparatory to offensive movements. One of
+these areas is defined by the three fortresses, La Fère, Laon
+and Reims, the other by the triangle, Langres&mdash;Dijon&mdash;Besançon.
+On the side of Belgium the danger of irruption through neutral
+territory, which has for many years been foreseen, is provided
+against by the fortresses of Lille, Valenciennes and Maubeuge,
+but (with a view to tempting the Germans to attack through
+Luxemburg, as is stated by German authorities) the frontier
+between Maubeuge and Verdun is left practically undefended.
+The real defence of this region lies in the field army which would,
+if the case arose, assemble in the area La Fère-Reims-Laon.
+On the Italian frontier the numerous <i>forts d&rsquo;arrêt</i> in the mountains
+are strongly supported by the entrenched camps of Besançon,
+Grenoble and Nice. Behind all this huge development of fixed
+defences lie the central fortresses of Paris and Lyons. The
+defences, of the Spanish frontier consist of the entrenched camps
+of Bayonne and Perpignan and the various small <i>forts d&rsquo;arrêt</i>
+of the Pyrenees. Of the coast defences the principal are Toulon,
+Antibes, Rochefort, Lorient, Brest, Oléron, La Rochelle, Belle-Isle,
+Cherbourg, St-Malo, Havre, Calais, Gravelines and Dunkirk.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page797" id="page797"></a>797</span>
+A number of the older fortresses, dating for the most part from
+Louis XIV.&rsquo;s time, are still in existence, but are no longer of
+military importance. Such are Arras, Longwy, Mézières and
+Montmédy.</p>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Navy.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Central Administration.</i>&mdash;The head of the French navy is
+the Minister of Marine, who like the other ministers is appointed
+by decree of the head of the state, and is usually a civilian.
+He selects for himself a staff of civilians (the <i>cabinet du ministre</i>),
+which is divided into bureaux for the despatch of business.
+The head of the cabinet prepares for the consideration of the
+minister all the business of the navy, especially questions of
+general importance. His chief professional assistant is the
+<i>chef d&rsquo;état-major général</i> (chief of the general staff), a vice-admiral,
+who is responsible for the organization of the naval forces, the
+mobilization and movements of the fleet, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>The central organization also comprises a number of departments
+(<i>services</i>) entrusted with the various branches of naval
+administration, such as administration of the active fleet, construction
+of ships, arsenals, recruiting, finance, &amp;c. The minister
+has the assistance of the <i>Conseil supérieur de la Marine</i>, over
+which he presides, consisting of three vice-admirals, the chief
+of staff and some other members. The <i>Conseil supérieur</i>
+devotes its attention to all questions touching the fighting
+efficiency of the fleet, naval bases and arsenals and coast defence.
+Besides the <i>Conseil supérieur</i> the minister is advised on a very
+wide range of naval topics (including pay, quarters and recruiting)
+by the <i>Comité consultatif de la Marine</i>. Advisory committees are
+also appointed to deal with special subjects, <i>e.g.</i> the <i>commissions
+de classement</i> which attend to questions of promotion in the
+various branches of the navy, the naval works council and others.</p>
+
+<p>The French coast is divided into five naval arrondissements,
+which have their headquarters at the five naval ports, of which
+Cherbourg, Brest, and Toulon are the most important, Lorient
+and Rochefort being of lesser degree. All are building and
+fitting-out yards. Each arrondissement is divided into
+sous-arrondissements,
+having their centres in the great commercial
+ports, but this arrangement is purely for the embodiment of the
+men of the Inscription Maritime, and has nothing to do with
+the dockyards as naval arsenals. In each arrondissement
+the vice-admiral, who is naval prefect, is the immediate representative
+of the minister of marine, and has full direction and
+command of the arsenal, which is his headquarters. He is thus
+commander-in-chief, as also governor-designate for time of war,
+but his authority does not extend to ships belonging to organized
+squadrons or divisions. The naval prefect is assisted by a rear-admiral
+as chief of the staff (except at Lorient and Rochefort,
+where the office is filled by a captain), and a certain number of
+other officers, the special functions of the chief of the staff
+having relation principally to the efficiency and <i>personnel</i> of the
+fleet, while the &ldquo;major-general,&rdquo; who is usually a rear-admiral,
+is concerned chiefly with the <i>matériel</i>. There are also directors
+of stores, of naval construction, of the medical service, and of the
+submarine defences (which are concerned with torpedoes, mines
+and torpedo-boats), as well as of naval ordnance and works,
+The prefect directs the operations of the arsenal, and is responsible
+for its efficiency and for that of the ships which are there in
+reserve. In regard to the constitution and maintenance of the
+naval forces, the administration of the arsenals is divided into
+three principal departments, the first concerned with naval
+construction, the second with ordnance, including gun-mountings
+and small-arms, and the third with the so-called submarine
+defences, dealing with all torpedo <i>matériel</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The French navy is manned partly by voluntary enlistment,
+partly by the transference to the navy of a certain proportion
+of each year&rsquo;s recruits for the army, but mainly by a system
+known as <i>inscription maritime</i>. This system, devised and
+introduced by Colbert in 1681, has continued, with various
+modifications, ever since. All French sailors between the ages
+of eighteen and fifty must be enrolled as members of the <i>armée
+de mer</i>. The term sailor is used in a very wide sense and includes
+all persons earning their living by navigation on the sea, or in
+the harbours or roadsteads, or on salt lakes or canals within
+the maritime domain of the state, or on rivers and canals as far
+as the tide goes up or sea-going ships can pass. The inscript
+usually begins his service at the age of twenty and passes through
+a period of obligatory service lasting seven years, and generally
+comprising five years of active service and two years furlough.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the important harbours already referred to, the
+French fleet has naval bases at Oran in Algeria, Bizerta in
+Tunisia, Saigon in Cochin China and Hongaj in Tongking, Diégo-Suarez
+in Madagascar, Dakar in Senegal, Fort de France in
+Martinique, Nouméa in New Caledonia.</p>
+
+<p>The ordnance department of the navy is carried on by a large
+detachment of artillery officers and artificers provided by the
+war office for this special duty.</p>
+
+<p>The fleet is divided into the Mediterranean squadron, the
+Northern squadron, the Atlantic division, the Far Eastern
+division, the Pacific division, the Indian Ocean division, the
+Cochin China division.</p>
+
+<p>The chief naval school is the <i>École navale</i> at Brest, which is
+devoted to the training of officers; the age of admission is from
+fifteen to eighteen years, and pupils after completing their course
+pass a year on a frigate school. At Paris there is a more advanced
+school (<i>École supérieure de la Marine</i>) for the supplementary
+training of officers. Other schools are the school of naval
+medicine at Bordeaux with annexes at Toulon, Brest and Rochefort;
+schools of torpedoes and mines and of gunnery at Toulon,
+&amp;c., &amp;c. The <i>écoles d&rsquo;hydrographie</i> established at various ports
+are for theoretical training for the higher grades of the merchant
+service. (See also <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Navy</a></span>.)</p>
+
+<p>The total personnel of the <i>armée de mer</i> in 1909 is given as
+56,800 officers and men. As to the number of vessels, which
+fluctuates from month to month, little can be said that is wholly
+accurate at any given moment, but, very roughly, the French
+navy in 1909 included 25 battleships, 7 coast defence ironclads,
+19 armoured cruisers, 36 protected cruisers, 22 sloops, gunboats,
+&amp;c., 45 destroyers, 319 torpedo boats, 71 submersibles and
+submarines and 8 auxiliary cruisers. It was stated that, according
+to proposed arrangements, the principal fighting elements of
+the fleet would be, in 1919, 34 battleships, 36 armoured cruisers,
+6 smaller cruisers of modern type, 109 destroyers, 170 torpedo
+boats and 171 submersibles and submarines. The budgetary
+cost of the navy in 1908 was stated as 312,000,000 fr.
+(£12,480,000).</p>
+<div class="author">(C. F. A.)</div>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Education.</i></p>
+
+<p>The burden of public instruction in France is shared by the
+communes, departments and state, while side by side with the
+public schools of all grades are private schools subjected to
+a state supervision and certain restrictions. At the head of the
+whole organization is the minister of public instruction. He
+is assisted and advised by the superior council of public instruction,
+over which he presides.</p>
+
+<p>France is divided into sixteen <i>académies</i> or educational districts,
+having their centres at the seats of the universities. The capitals
+of these <i>académies</i>, together with the departments included in
+them, are tabulated below:</p>
+
+<table class="reg f90" style="width: 90%;" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc">Académies.</td> <td class="tcc">Departments included in them.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Paris</td> <td class="tcl">Seine, Cher, Eure-et-Loir, Loir-et-Cher, Loiret,
+                    Marne, Oise, Seine-et-Marne, Seine-et-Oise.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Aix</td> <td class="tcl">Bouches-du-Rhône, Basses-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes,
+                    Corse, Var, Vaucluse.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Besançon</td> <td class="tcl">Doubs, Jura, Haute-Saône, Territoire de
+                    Belfort.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Bordeaux</td> <td class="tcl">Gironde, Dordogne, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne,
+                    Basses-Pyrénées.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Caen</td> <td class="tcl">Calvados, Eure, Manche, Orne, Sarthe, Seine-Inférieure.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Chambéry</td> <td class="tcl">Savoie, Haute-Savoie.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">Clermont-Ferrand</td> <td class="tcl">Puy-de-Dôme, Allier, Cantal, Corrèze, Creuse,
+                    Haute-Loire.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Dijon</td> <td class="tcl">Côte-d&rsquo;Or, Aube, Haute-Marne, Nièvre, Yonne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Grenoble</td> <td class="tcl">Isère, Hautes-Alpes, Ardèche, Drôme.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Lille</td> <td class="tcl">Nord, Aisne, Ardennes, Pas-de-Calais, Somme.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Lyons</td> <td class="tcl">Rhône, Ain, Loire, Saône-et-Loire.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="page798" id="page798"></a>798</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Montpellier</td> <td class="tcl">Hérault, Aude, Gard, Lozère, Pyrénées-Orientales.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Nancy</td> <td class="tcl">Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Vosges.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Poitiers</td> <td class="tcl">Vienne, Charente, Charente-Inférieure, Indre,
+                  Indre-et-Loire, Deux-Sèvres, Vendée, Haute-Vienne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Rennes</td> <td class="tcl">Ille-et-Vilaine, Côtes-du-Nord, Finistère,
+                  Loire-Inférieure,
+                  Maine-et-Loire, Mayenne, Morbihan.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl sc">Toulouse</td> <td class="tcl">Haute-Garonne, Ariège, Aveyron, Gers, Lot,
+                  Hautes-Pyrénées, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl" colspan="2">&emsp;There is also an <i>académie</i> comprising Algeria.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>For the administrative organization of education in France
+see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Education</a></span>.</p>
+
+<p>Any person fulfilling certain legal requirements with regard
+to capacity, age and character may set up privately an educational
+establishment of any grade, but by the law of 1904 all religious
+congregations are prohibited from keeping schools of any kind
+whatever.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p><i>Primary Instruction.</i>&mdash;All primary public instruction is free and
+compulsory for children of both sexes between the ages of six and
+thirteen, but if a child can gain a certificate of primary studies at the
+age of eleven or after, he may be excused the rest of the period
+demanded by law. A child may receive instruction in a public or
+private school or at home. But if the parents wish him to be
+taught in a private school they must give notice to the mayor of
+the commune of their intention and the school chosen. If educated
+at home, the child (after two years of the compulsory period has
+expired) must undergo a yearly examination, and if it is unsatisfactory
+the parents will be compelled to send him to a public or
+private school.</p>
+
+<p>Each commune is in theory obliged to maintain at least one
+public primary school, but with the approval of the minister, the
+departmental council may authorize a commune to combine with
+other communes in the upkeep of a school. If the number of inhabitants
+exceed 500, the commune must also provide a special
+school for girls, unless the Departmental Council authorizes it to
+substitute a mixed school. Each department is bound to maintain
+two primary training colleges, one for masters, the other for mistresses
+of primary schools. There are two higher training colleges of
+primary instruction at Fontenay-aux-Roses and St Cloud for the
+training of mistresses and masters of training colleges and higher
+primary schools.</p>
+
+<p>The Laws of 1882 and 1886 &ldquo;laicized&rdquo; the schools of this class,
+the former suppressing religious instruction, the latter providing
+that only laymen should be eligible for masterships. There were
+also a great many schools in the control of various religious congregations,
+but a law of 1904 required that they should all be suppressed
+within ten years from the date of its enactment.</p>
+
+<p>Public primary schools include (1) <i>écoles maternelles</i>&mdash;infant
+schools for children from two to six years old; (2) elementary
+primary schools&mdash;these are the ordinary schools for children from
+six to thirteen; (3) higher primary schools (<i>écoles primaires
+supérieures</i>) and &ldquo;supplementary courses&rdquo;; these admit pupils
+who have gained the certificate of primary elementary studies
+(<i>certificat d&rsquo;études primaires</i>), offer a more advanced course and
+prepare for technical instruction; (4) primary technical schools
+(<i>écoles manuelles d&rsquo;apprentissage</i>, <i>écoles primaires supérieures professionnelles</i>)
+kept by the communes or departments. Primary
+courses for adults are instituted by the prefect on the recommendation
+of the municipal council and academy inspector.</p>
+
+<p>Persons keeping private primary schools are free with regard to
+their methods, programmes and books employed, except that they
+may not use books expressly prohibited by the superior council of
+public instruction. Before opening a private school the person
+proposing to do so must give notice to the mayor, prefect and academy
+inspector, and forward his diplomas and other particulars to the
+latter official.</p>
+
+<p><i>Secondary Education.</i>&mdash;Secondary education is given by the state
+in <i>lycées</i>, by the communes in <i>collèges</i> and by private individuals
+and associations in private secondary schools. It is not compulsory,
+nor is it entirely gratuitous, but the fees are small and the state
+offers a great many scholarships, by means of which a clever child
+can pay for its own instruction. Cost of tuition (simply) ranges
+from £2 to £16 a year. The lycées also take boarders&mdash;the cost of
+boarding ranging from £22 to £52 a year. A lycée is founded in a
+town by decree of the president of the republic, with the advice of
+the superior council of public instruction. The municipality has to
+pay the cost of building, furnishing and upkeep. At the head of
+the lycée is the principal (<i>proviseur</i>), an official nominated by the
+minister, and assisted by a teaching staff of professors and <i>chargés
+de cours</i> or teachers of somewhat lower standing. To become professor
+in a lycée it is necessary to pass an examination known as the
+&ldquo;<i>agrégation</i>,&rdquo; candidates for which must be licentiates of a faculty
+(or have passed through the <i>École normale supérieure</i>).</p>
+
+<p>The system of studies&mdash;reorganized in 1902&mdash;embraces a full
+curriculum of seven years, which is divided into two periods. The
+first lasts four years, and at the end of this the pupil may obtain
+(after examination) the &ldquo;certificate of secondary studies.&rdquo; During
+the second period the pupil has a choice of four courses: (1) Latin
+and Greek; (2) Latin and sciences; (3) Latin and modern languages;
+(4) sciences and modern languages. At the end of this period he
+presents himself for a degree called the <i>Baccalauréat de l&rsquo;enseignement
+secondaire</i>. This is granted (after two examinations) by the faculties
+of letters and sciences jointly (see below), and in most cases it is
+necessary for a student to hold this general degree before he may be
+enrolled in a particular faculty of a university and proceed to a
+Baccalauréat in a particular subject, such as law, theology or
+medicine.</p>
+
+<p>The collèges, though of a lower grade, are in most respects similar
+to the lycées, but they are financed by the communes: the professors
+may have certain less important qualifications in lieu of the &ldquo;<i>agrégation</i>.&rdquo;
+Private secondary schools are subjected to state inspection.
+The teachers must not belong to any congregation, and must have a
+diploma of aptitude for teaching and the degree of &ldquo;<i>licencié</i>.&rdquo; The
+establishment of lycées for girls was first attempted in 1880. They
+give an education similar to that offered in the lycées for boys&mdash;with
+certain modifications&mdash;in a curriculum of five or six years.
+There is a training-college for teachers in secondary schools for girls
+at Sèvres.</p>
+
+<p><i>Higher education</i> is given by the state in the universities, and in
+special higher schools; and, since the law of 1875 established the
+freedom of higher education, by private individuals and bodies in
+private schools and &ldquo;faculties&rdquo; (<i>facultés libres</i>). The law of 1880
+reserved to the state &ldquo;faculties&rdquo; the right to confer degrees, and
+the law of 1896 established various universities each containing one
+or more faculties. There are five kinds of faculties: medicine,
+letters, science, law and Protestant theology. The faculties of
+letters and sciences, besides granting the <i>Baccalauréat de l&rsquo;enseignement
+secondaire</i>, confer the degrees of licentiate and doctor (<i>la
+Licence, le Doctorat</i>). The faculties of medicine confer the degree
+of doctor of medicine. The faculties of theology confer the degrees
+of bachelor, licentiate and doctor of theology. The faculties of law
+confer the same degrees in law and also grant &ldquo;certificates of
+capacity,&rdquo; which enable the holder to practise as an <i>avoué</i>; a
+<i>licence</i> is necessary for the profession of barrister. Students of the
+private faculties have to be examined by and take their degrees
+from the state faculties. There are 2 faculties of Protestant theology
+(Paris and Montauban); 12 faculties of law (Paris, Aix, Bordeaux,
+Caen, Grenoble, Lille, Lyons, Montpellier, Nancy, Poitiers, Rennes,
+Toulouse); 3 faculties of medicine (Paris, Montpellier and Nancy),
+and 4 joint faculties of medicine and pharmacy (Bordeaux, Lille,
+Lyons, Toulouse); 15 faculties of sciences (Paris, Besançon, Bordeaux,
+Caen, Clermont, Dijon, Grenoble, Lille, Lyons, Marseilles,
+Montpellier, Nancy, Poitiers, Rennes, Toulouse); 15 faculties of
+letters (at the same towns, substituting Aix for Marseilles). The
+private faculties are at Paris (the Catholic Institute with a faculty
+of law); Angers (law, science and letters); Lille (law, medicine
+and pharmacy, science, letters); Lyons (law, science, letters);
+Marseilles (law); Toulouse (Catholic Institute with faculties of
+theology and letters). The work of the faculties of medicine and
+pharmacy is in some measure shared by the <i>écoles supérieures de
+pharmacie</i> (Paris, Montpellier, Nancy), which grant the highest
+degrees in pharmacy, and by the <i>écoles de plein exercice de médecine
+et de pharmacie</i> (Marseilles, Rennes and Nantes) and the more
+numerous <i>écoles préparatoires de médecine et de pharmacie</i>; there
+are also <i>écoles préparatoires à l&rsquo;enseignement supérieur des sciences et
+des lettres</i> at Chambéry, Rouen and Nantes.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the faculties there are a number of institutions, both
+state-supported and private, giving higher instruction of various
+special kinds. In the first class must be mentioned the Collège de
+France, founded 1530, giving courses of highest study of all sorts,
+the Museum of Natural History, the École des Chartes (palaeography
+and archives), the School of Modern Oriental Languages, the École
+Pratique des Hautes Études (scientific research), &amp;c. All these
+institutions are in Paris. The most important free institution in
+this class is the École des Sciences Politiques, which prepares pupils
+for the civil services and teaches a great number of political subjects,
+connected with France and foreign countries, not included in the
+state programmes.</p>
+
+<p>Commercial and technical instruction is given in various institutions
+comprising national establishments such as the <i>écoles
+nationales professionnelles</i> of Armentières, Vierzon, Voiron and
+Nantes for the education of working men; the more advanced <i>écoles
+d&rsquo;arts et métiers</i> of Châlons, Angers, Aix, Lille and Cluny; and the
+Central School of Arts and Manufactures at Paris; schools depending
+on the communes and state in combination, <i>e.g.</i> the <i>écoles pratiques
+de commerce et d&rsquo;industrie</i> for the training of clerks and workmen;
+private schools controlled by the state, such as the <i>écoles supérieures
+de commerce</i>; certain municipal schools, such as the Industrial
+Institute of Lille; and private establishments, <i>e.g.</i> the school of
+watch-making at Paris. At Paris the École Supérieure des Mines
+and the École des Ponts et Chaussées are controlled by the minister
+of public works, the École des Beaux-Arts, the École des Arts
+Décoratifs and the Conservatoire National de Musique et de Déclamation
+by the under-secretary for fine arts, and other schools
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page799" id="page799"></a>799</span>
+mentioned elsewhere are attached to several of the ministries. In
+the provinces there are national schools of fine art and of music and
+other establishments and free subventioned schools.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to the educational work done by the state, communes
+and private individuals, there exist in France a good many societies
+which disseminate instruction by giving courses of lectures and
+holding classes both for children and adults. Examples of such
+bodies are the Society for Elementary Instruction, the Polytechnic
+Association, the Philotechnic Association and the French Union of
+the Young at Paris; the Philomathic Society of Bordeaux; the
+Popular Education Society at Havre; the Rhône Society of Professional
+Instruction at Lyons; the Industrial Society of Amiens
+and others.</p>
+
+<p>The highest institution of learning is the <i>Institut de France</i>,
+founded and kept up by the French government
+on behalf of science and literature,
+and composed of five academies: the
+<i>Académie française</i>, the <i>Académie des Inscriptions
+et Belles-Lettres</i>, the <i>Académie des
+Sciences</i>, the <i>Académie des Beaux-Arts</i>
+and the <i>Académie des Sciences Morales
+et Politiques</i> (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Academies</a></span>). The
+<i>Académie de Médecine</i> is a separate body.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Poor Relief</i> (<i>Assistance publique</i>).&mdash;In
+France the pauper, <i>as such</i>, has no legal
+claim to help from the community, which
+however, is bound to provide for destitute
+children (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Foundling Hospitals</a></span>)
+and pauper lunatics (both these being
+under the care of the department), aged
+and infirm people without resources and
+victims of incurable illness, and to furnish
+medical assistance gratuitously to those
+without resources who are afflicted with
+curable illness. The funds for these
+purposes are provided by the department,
+the commune and the central authority.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>There are four main types of public
+benevolent institutions, all of which are
+communal in character: (1) The <i>hôpital</i>,
+for maternity cases and cases of curable
+illness; (2) the <i>hospice</i>, where the aged
+poor, cases of incurable malady, orphans,
+foundlings and other children without
+means of support, and in some cases
+lunatics, are received; (3) the <i>bureau de
+bienfaisance</i>, charged with the provision of
+out-door relief (<i>secours à domicile</i>) in money
+or in kind, to the aged poor or those who,
+though capable of working, are prevented
+from doing so by illness or strikes; (4)
+the <i>bureau d&rsquo;assistance</i>, which dispenses
+free medical treatment to the destitute.</p>
+
+<p>These institutions are under the supervision
+of a branch of the ministry of the
+interior. The hospices and hôpitaux and
+the bureaux de bienfaisance, the foundation
+of which is optional for the commune,
+are managed by committees consisting of
+the mayor of the municipality and six
+members, two elected by the municipal
+council and four nominated by the prefect.
+The members of these committees are unpaid,
+and have no concern with ways and
+means which are in the hands of a paid
+treasurer (<i>receveur</i>). The bureaux de bienfaisance
+in the larger centres are aided by
+unpaid workers (<i>commissaires</i> or <i>dames
+de charité</i>), and in the big towns by paid
+inquiry officers. <i>Bureaux d&rsquo;assistance</i> exist in every commune, and
+are managed by the combined committees of the hospices and the
+bureaux de bienfaisance or by one of these in municipalities, where
+only one of those institutions exists.</p>
+
+<p>No poor-rate is levied in France. Funds for hôpitals, hospices
+and bureaux de bienfaisance comprise:</p>
+
+<div class="list">
+<p>1. A 10% surtax on the fees of admission to places of public
+amusement.</p>
+<p>2. A proportion of the sums payable in return for concessions of
+land in municipal cemeteries.</p>
+<p>3. Profits of the communal Monts de Piété (pawn-shops).</p>
+<p>4. Donations, bequests and the product of collections in
+churches.</p>
+<p>5. The product of certain fines.</p>
+<p>6. Subventions from the departments and communes.</p>
+<p>7. Income from endowments.</p></div></div>
+<div class="author">(R. Tr.)</div>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><i>Colonies.</i></p>
+
+<p>In the extent and importance of her colonial dominion France
+is second only to Great Britain. The following table gives
+the name, area and population of each colony and protectorate
+as well as the date of acquisition or establishment of a protectorate.
+It should be noted that the figures for area and
+population are, as a rule, only estimates, but in most instances
+they probably approximate closely to accuracy. Detailed
+notices of the separate countries will be found under their
+several heads:</p>
+
+<table class="ws f90" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tccm allb">Colony.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Date of<br />Acquisition.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Area in sq. m.</td> <td class="tccm allb">Population.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">In Asia&mdash;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Establishments in India</td> <td class="tcc rb">1683-1750</td> <td class="tcr rb">200</td> <td class="tcr rb">273,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;In Indo-China&mdash;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&emsp;Annarn</td> <td class="tcc rb">1883</td> <td class="tcr rb">60,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&emsp;Cambodia</td> <td class="tcc rb">1863</td> <td class="tcr rb">65,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,500,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&emsp;Cochin-China</td> <td class="tcc rb">1862</td> <td class="tcr rb">22,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&emsp;Tongking</td> <td class="tcc rb">1883</td> <td class="tcr rb">46,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&emsp;Laos</td> <td class="tcc rb">1893</td> <td class="tcr rb">100,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">600,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&emsp;Kwang-Chow-Wan</td> <td class="tcc rb">1898</td> <td class="tcr rb">325</td> <td class="tcr rb">189,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;Total in Asia</td> <td class="tcc">. .</td> <td class="tcr allb">293,525</td> <td class="tcr allb">17,562,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">In Africa and the Indian Ocean&mdash;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Algeria</td> <td class="tcc rb">1830-1847</td> <td class="tcr rb">185,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,231,850</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Algerian Sahara</td> <td class="tcc rb">1872-1890</td> <td class="tcr rb">760,000</td> <td class="tcc rb">. .</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Tunisia</td> <td class="tcc rb">1881</td> <td class="tcr rb">51,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">West Africa&mdash;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Senegal</td> <td class="tcc rb">1626</td> <td class="tcr rb">74,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,800,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Upper Senegal and Niger (including part of Sahara)</td> <td class="tcc rb">1880</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,580,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Guinea</td> <td class="tcc rb">1848</td> <td class="tcr rb">107,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,500,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Ivory Coast</td> <td class="tcc rb">1842</td> <td class="tcr rb">129,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Dahomey</td> <td class="tcc rb">1863-1894</td> <td class="tcr rb">40,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Congo (French Equatorial Africa)&mdash;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Gabun</td> <td class="tcc rb">1839</td> <td class="tcrm rb cl" rowspan="3" style="border-bottom: white 1px solid;">700,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">376,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Mid. Congo</td> <td class="tcc rb">1882</td> <td class="tcr rb">259,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Ubangi-Chad</td> <td class="tcc rb">1885-1899</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,015,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Madagascar</td> <td class="tcc rb">1885-1896</td> <td class="tcrm rb cl" rowspan="3">228,000</td> <td class="tcrm rb cl" rowspan="3">2,664,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Nossi-be Island</td> <td class="tcc rb">1840</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Ste Marie Island</td> <td class="tcc rb">1750</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Comoro Islands</td> <td class="tcc rb">1843-1886</td> <td class="tcr rb">760</td> <td class="tcr rb">82,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Somali Coast</td> <td class="tcc rb">1862-1884</td> <td class="tcr rb">12,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">50,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Réunion</td> <td class="tcc rb">1643</td> <td class="tcr rb">965</td> <td class="tcr rb">173,315</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">St Paul</td> <td class="tccm rb cl" rowspan="2">1892</td> <td class="tcr rb">3</td> <td class="tcrm rb cl" rowspan="3">uninhabited</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Amsterdam</td> <td class="tcr rb">19</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Kerguelen<a name="fa24c" id="fa24c" href="#ft24c"><span class="sp">24</span></a></td> <td class="tcc rb">1893</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,400</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;Total in Africa and Indian Ocean.</td> <td class="tcr">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr allb">3,869,147</td> <td class="tcr allb">25,151,165</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">In America&mdash;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Guiana</td> <td class="tcc rb">1626</td> <td class="tcr rb">51,000</td> <td class="tcr rb">30,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Guadeloupe</td> <td class="tcc rb">1634</td> <td class="tcr rb">619</td> <td class="tcr rb">182,112</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Martinique</td> <td class="tcc rb">1635</td> <td class="tcr rb">380</td> <td class="tcr rb">182,024</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;St Pierre and Miquelon</td> <td class="tcc rb">1635</td> <td class="tcr rb">92</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,500</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;Total in America</td> <td class="tcr">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr allb">52,092</td> <td class="tcr allb">400,636</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">In Oceania&mdash;</td> <td class="tcc rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr rb">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;New Caledonia and Dependencies</td> <td class="tcc rb">1854-1887</td> <td class="tcr rb">7,500</td> <td class="tcr rb">72,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&ensp;Establishments in Oceania</td> <td class="tcc rb">1841-1881</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,641</td> <td class="tcr rb">34,300</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;Total in Oceania</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr allb">9,141</td> <td class="tcr allb">106,300</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcr lb rb bb">Grand Total&emsp;&emsp;</td> <td class="bb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcr allb">4,223,905</td> <td class="tcr allb">43,220,101</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p>It will be seen that nearly all the colonies and protectorates lie
+within the tropics. The only countries in which there is a considerable
+white population are Algeria, Tunisia and New Caledonia.
+The &ldquo;year of acquisition&rdquo; in the table, when one date only is given,
+indicates the period when the country or some part of it first fell under
+French influence, and does not imply continuous possession since.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Government.</i>&mdash;The principle underlying the administration
+of the French possessions overseas, from the earliest days until
+the close of the 19th century, was that of &ldquo;domination&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;assimilation,&rdquo; notwithstanding that after the loss of Canada
+and the sale of Louisiana France ceased to hold any considerable
+colony in which Europeans could settle in large numbers. With
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page800" id="page800"></a>800</span>
+the vast extension of the colonial empire in tropical countries
+in the last quarter of the 19th century the evils of the system
+of assimilation, involving also intense centralization, became
+obvious. This, coupled with the realization of the fact that
+the value to France of her colonies was mainly commercial,
+led at length to the abandonment of the attempt to impose
+on a great number of diverse peoples, some possessing (as in
+Indo-China and parts of West Africa) ancient and highly complex
+civilizations, French laws, habits of mind, tastes and manners.
+For the policy of assimilation there was substituted the policy
+of &ldquo;association,&rdquo; which had for aim the development of the
+colonies and protectorates upon natural, <i>i.e.</i> national, lines.
+Existing civilizations were respected, a considerable degree of
+autonomy was granted, and every effort made to raise the moral
+and economic status of the natives. The first step taken in
+this direction was in 1900 when a law was passed which laid
+down that the colonies were to provide for their own civil expenditure.
+This law was followed by further measures tending
+to decentralization and the protection of the native races.</p>
+
+<p>The system of administration bears nevertheless many marks
+of the &ldquo;assimilation&rdquo; era. None of the French possessions
+is self-governing in the manner of the chief British colonies.
+Several colonies, however, elect members of the French legislature,
+in which body is the power of fixing the form of government
+and the laws of each colony or protectorate. In default
+of legislation the necessary measures are taken by decree of the
+head of the state; these decrees having the force of law. A
+partial exception to this rule is found in Algeria, where all laws
+in force in France before the conquest of the country are also
+(in theory, not in practice) in force in Algeria. In all colonies
+Europeans preserve the political rights they held in France,
+and these rights have been extended, in whole or in part, to
+various classes of natives. Where these rights have not been
+conferred, native races are <i>subjects</i> and not <i>citizens</i>. To this
+rule Tunisia presents an exception, Tunisians retaining their
+nationality and laws.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to Algeria, which sends three senators and six
+deputies to Paris and is treated in many respects not as a colony
+but as part of France, the colonies represented in the legislature
+are: Martinique, Guadeloupe and Réunion (each electing one
+senator and two deputies), French India (one senator and one
+deputy), Guiana, Senegal and Cochin-China (one deputy each).
+The franchise in the three first-named colonies is enjoyed by all
+classes of inhabitants, white, negro and mulatto, who are all
+French citizens. In India the franchise is exercised without
+distinction of colour or nationality; in Senegal the electors
+are the inhabitants (black and white) of the communes which
+have been given full powers. In Guiana and Cochin-China
+the franchise is restricted to citizens, in which category the
+natives (in those colonies) are not included.<a name="fa25c" id="fa25c" href="#ft25c"><span class="sp">25</span></a> The inhabitants
+of Tahiti though accorded French citizenship have not been
+allotted a representative in parliament. The colonial representatives
+enjoy equal rights with those elected for constituencies
+in France.</p>
+
+<p>The oversight of all the colonies and protectorates save
+Algeria and Tunisia is confided to a minister of the colonies
+(law of March 20, 1894)<a name="fa26c" id="fa26c" href="#ft26c"><span class="sp">26</span></a> whose powers correspond to those
+exercised in France by the minister of the interior. The colonial
+army is nevertheless attached (law of 1900) to the ministry of war.
+The colonial minister is assisted by a number of organizations
+of which the most important is the superior council of the colonies
+(created by decree in 1883), an advisory body which includes
+the senators and deputies elected by the colonies, and delegates
+elected by the universal suffrage of all citizens in the colonies
+and protectorates which do not return members to parliament.
+To the ministry appertains the duty of fixing the duties on foreign
+produce in those colonies which have not been, by law, subjected
+to the same tariff as in France. (Nearly all the colonies save those
+of West Africa and the Congo have been, with certain modifications,
+placed under the French tariff.) The budget of all colonies
+not possessing a council general (see below) must also be approved
+by the minister. Each colony and protectorate, including
+Algeria, has a separate budget. As provided by the law of 1900
+all local charges are borne by the colonies&mdash;supplemented at
+need by grants in aid&mdash;but the military expenses are borne by
+the state. In all the colonies the judicature has been rendered
+independent of the executive.</p>
+
+<p>The colonies are divisible into two classes, (1) those possessing
+considerable powers of local self-government, (2) those in which
+the local government is autocratic. To this second class may
+be added the protectorates (and some colonies) where the native
+form of government is maintained under the supervision of
+French officials.</p>
+
+<p>Class (1) includes the American colonies, Réunion, French
+India, Senegal, Cochin-China and New Caledonia. In these
+colonies the system of assimilation was carried to great lengths.
+At the head of the administration is a governor under whom is
+a secretary-general, who replaces him at need. The governor is
+aided by a privy council, an advisory body to which the governor
+nominates a minority of unofficial members, and a council general,
+to which is confided the control of local affairs, including the
+voting of the budget. The councils general are elected by
+universal suffrage of all citizens and those who, though not
+citizens, have been granted the political franchise. In Cochin-China,
+in place of a council general, there is a colonial council
+which fulfils the functions of a council general.</p>
+
+<p>In the second class of colonies the governor, sometimes
+assisted by a privy council, on which non-official members find
+seats, sometimes simply by a council of administration, is responsible
+only to the minister of the colonies. In Indo-China,
+West Africa, French Congo and Madagascar, the colonies and
+protectorates are grouped under governors-general, and to these
+high officials extensive powers have been granted by presidential
+decree. The colonies under the governor-general of West
+Africa are ruled by lieutenant-governors with restricted powers,
+the budget of each colony being fixed by the governor-general,
+who is assisted by an advisory government council comprising
+representatives of all the colonies under his control. In Indo-China
+the governor-general has under his authority the lieutenant-governor
+of the colony of Cochin-China, and the residents
+superior at the courts of the kings of Cambodia and Annam
+and in Tongking (nominally a viceroyalty of Annam). There
+is a superior council for the whole of Indo-China on which the
+natives and the European commercial community are represented,
+while in Cochin-China a privy council, and in the protectorates
+a council of the protectorate, assists in the work of
+administration. In each of the governments general there is
+a financial controller with extensive powers who corresponds
+directly with the metropolitan authorities (decree of March 22,
+1907). Details and local differences in form of government will
+be found under the headings of the various colonies and protectorates.</p>
+
+<div class="condensed">
+<p><i>Colonial Finance</i>.&mdash;The cost of the extra-European possessions,
+other than Algeria and Tunisia, to the state is shown in the expenses
+of the colonial ministry. In the budget of 1885 these expenses
+were put at £1,380,000; in 1895 they had increased to £3,200,000
+and in 1900 to £5,100,000. In 1905 they were placed at £4,431,000.
+Fully three-fourths of the state contributions is expenditure on
+military necessities; in addition there are subventions to various
+colonies and to colonial railways and cables, and the expenditure on
+the penitentiary establishments; an item not properly chargeable
+to the colonies. In return the state receives the produce of convict
+labour in Guiana and New Caledonia. Save for the small item of
+military expenditure Tunisia is no charge to the French exchequer.
+The similar expenses of Algeria borne by the state are not separately
+shown, but are estimated at £2,000,000.</p>
+
+<p>The colonial budgets totalled in 1907 some £16,760,000, being
+divisible into six categories: Algeria £4,120,000; Tunisia £3,640,000;
+Indo-China<a name="fa27c" id="fa27c" href="#ft27c"><span class="sp">27</span></a> about £5,000,000; West Africa £1,600,000; Madagascar
+£960,000; all other colonies combined £1,440,000.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page801" id="page801"></a>801</span>
+The authorized colonial loans, omitting Algeria and Tunisia,
+during the period 1884-1904 amounted to £19,200,000, the sums
+paid for interest and sinking funds on loans varying from £600,000
+to £800,000 a year. The amount of French capital invested in
+French colonies and protectorates, including Algeria and Tunisia,
+was estimated in 1905 at £120,000,000, French capital invested in
+foreign countries at the same date being estimated at ten times that
+amount (see <i>Ques. Dip. et Col.</i>, February 16, 1905).</p>
+
+<p><i>Commerce</i>.&mdash;The value of the external trade of the French possessions,
+exclusive of Algeria and Tunisia, increased in the ten years
+1896-1905 from £18,784,060 to £34,957,479. In the last-named
+year the commerce of Algeria amounted to £24,506,020 and that of
+Tunisia to £5,969,248, making a grand total for French colonial
+trade in 1905 of £65,432,746. The figures were made up as follows:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">&nbsp;</td> <td class="tcc allb">Imports.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Exports.</td> <td class="tcc allb">Total.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Algeria</td> <td class="tcr rb">£15,355,500</td> <td class="tcr rb">£9,150,520</td> <td class="tcr rb">£24,506,020</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Tunisia</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,638,185</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,331,063</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,969,248</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Indo-China</td> <td class="tcr rb">10,182,411</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,750,306</td> <td class="tcr rb">16,932,717</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">West Africa</td> <td class="tcr rb">3,874,698</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,248,317</td> <td class="tcr rb">6,123,015</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">Madagascar</td> <td class="tcr rb">1,247,936</td> <td class="tcr rb">914,024</td> <td class="tcr rb">2,161,960</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl lb rb">All other colonies</td> <td class="tcr rb">4,258,134</td> <td class="tcr rb">5,481,652</td> <td class="tcr rb">9,739,786</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcc allb">Total</td> <td class="tcr allb">£38,556,864</td> <td class="tcr allb">£26,875,882</td> <td class="tcr allb">£65,432,746</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Over three-fourths of the trade of Algeria and Tunisia is with
+France and other French possessions. In the other colonies and
+protectorates more than half the trade is with foreign countries.
+The foreign countries trading most largely with the French colonies
+are, in the order named, British colonies and Great Britain, China
+and Japan, the United States and Germany. The value of the
+trade with British colonies and Great Britain in 1905 was over
+£7,200,000.</p>
+<div class="author">(F. R. C.)</div>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Bibliography</span>.&mdash;P. Joanne, <i>Dictionnaire géographique et administrative
+de la France</i> (8 vols., Paris, 1890-1905); C. Brossard, <i>La
+France et ses colonies</i> (6 vols., Paris, 1900-1906); O. Reclus, <i>Le Plus
+Beau Royaume sous le ciel</i> (Paris, 1899); Vidal de La Blache, <i>La
+France. Tableau géographique</i> (Paris, 1908); V.E. Ardouin-Dumazet,
+<i>Voyage en France</i> (Paris, 1894); H. Havard, <i>La France
+artistique et monumentale</i> (6 vols., Paris, 1892-1895); A. Lebon and
+P. Pelet, <i>France as it is</i>, tr. Mrs W. Arnold (London, 1888); articles
+on &ldquo;Local Government in France&rdquo; in the <i>Stock Exchange Official
+Intelligence Annuals</i> (London, 1908 and 1909); M. Block, <i>Dictionnaire
+de l&rsquo;administration française</i>, the articles in which contain full
+bibliographies (2 vols., Paris, 1905); E. Levasseur, <i>La France et ses
+colonies</i> (3 vols., Paris, 1890); M. Fallex and A. Mairey, <i>La France
+et sis colonies au début du XX<span class="sp">e</span> siècle</i>, which has numerous bibliographies
+(Paris, 1909); J. du Plessis de Grenédan, <i>Géographie
+agricole de la France et du monde</i> (Paris, 1903); F. de St Genis, <i>La
+Propriété rurale en France</i> (Paris, 1902); H. Baudrillart, <i>Les Populations
+agricoles de la France</i> (3 vols., Paris, 1885-1893); J.E.C.
+Bodley, <i>France</i> (London, 1899); A. Girault, <i>Principes de colonisation
+et de législation coloniale</i> (3 vols., Paris, 1907-1908); <i>Les Colonies
+françaises</i>, an encyclopaedia edited by M. Petit (2 vols., Paris,
+1902). Official statistical works: <i>Annuaire statistique de la France</i>
+(a summary of the statistical publications of the government),
+<i>Statistique agricole annuelle, Statistique de l&rsquo;industrie minérale et des
+appareils de vapeur, Tableau général du commerce et de la navigation</i>,
+Reports on the various colonies issued annually by the British Foreign
+Office, &amp;c. Guide Books: Karl Baedeker, <i>Northern France,
+Southern France</i>; P. Joanne, <i>Nord, Champagne et Ardenne; Normandie</i>;
+and other volumes dealing with every region of the country.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="pt2 center"><span class="sc">History</span></p>
+
+<p>The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Gaul is veiled in
+obscurity, though philologists, anthropologists and archaeologists
+are using the glimmer of traditions collected by ancient
+historians to shed a faint twilight upon that remote
+<span class="sidenote">Pre-historic Gaul.</span>
+past. The subjugation of those primitive tribes did
+not mean their annihilation: their blood still flows in
+the veins of Frenchmen; and they survive also on those megalithic
+monuments (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Stone Monuments</a></span>) with which the soil cf
+France is dotted, in the drawings and sculptures of caves hollowed
+out along the sides of the valleys, and in the arms and ornaments
+yielded by sepulchral tumuli, while the names of the rivers and
+mountains of France probably perpetuate the first utterances of
+those nameless generations.</p>
+
+<p>The first peoples of whom we have actual knowledge are the
+Iberians and Ligurians. The Basques who now inhabit both
+sides of the Pyrenean range are probably the last representatives
+of the Iberians, who came from Spain to settle between the
+Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay. The Ligurians, who
+exhibited the hard cunning characteristic of the Genoese Riviera,
+must have been descendants of that Indo-European vanguard
+who occupied all northern Italy and the centre and south-east
+<span class="sidenote">Iberians and Ligurians.</span>
+of France, who in the 7th century <span class="scs">B.C.</span> received the
+Phocaean immigrants at Marseilles, and who at a much
+later period were encountered by Hannibal during his
+march to Rome, on the banks of the Rhône, the
+frontier of the Iberian and Ligurian territories. Upon these
+peoples it was that the conquering minority of Celts or Gauls
+imposed themselves, to be succeeded at a later date by the
+Roman aristocracy.</p>
+
+<p>When Gaul first enters the field of history, Rome has already
+laid the foundation of her freedom, Athens dazzles the eastern
+Mediterranean with her literature and her art, while
+in the west Carthage and Marseilles are lining opposite
+<span class="sidenote">Empire of the Celts.</span>
+shores with their great houses of commerce. Coming
+from the valley of the Danube in the 6th century, the Celts or
+Gauls had little by little occupied central and southern Europe
+long before they penetrated into the plains of the Saône, the
+Seine, and the Loire as far as the Spanish border, driving out
+the former inhabitants of the country. A century later their
+political hegemony, extending from the Black Sea to the Strait of
+Gibraltar, began to disintegrate, and the Gauls then embarked
+on more distant migrations, from the Columns of Hercules to
+the plateaux of Asia Minor, taking Rome on their way. Their
+empire in Gaul, encroached upon in the north by the Belgae,
+a kindred race, and in the south by the Iberians, gradually
+contracted in area and eventually crumbled to pieces. This
+process served the turn of the Romans, who little by little had
+subjugated first the Cisalpine Gauls and afterwards those inhabiting
+<span class="sidenote">The Roman Conquest.</span>
+the south-east of France, which was turned
+into a Roman province in the 2nd century. Up to
+this time Hellenism and the mercantile spirit of the
+Jews had almost exclusively dominated the Mediterranean
+littoral, and at first the Latin spirit only won foothold
+for itself in various spots on the western coast&mdash;as at Aix in
+Provence (123 <span class="scs">B.C.</span>) and at Narbonne (118 <span class="scs">B.C.</span>). A refuge of
+Italian pauperism in the time of the Gracchi, after the triumph
+of the oligarchy the Narbonnaise became a field for shameless
+exploitation, besides providing, under the proconsulate of
+Caesar, an excellent point of observation whence to watch the
+intestine quarrels between the different nations of Gaul.</p>
+
+<p>These are divided by Caesar in his <i>Commentaries</i> into three
+groups: the Aquitanians to the south of the Garonne; the Celts,
+properly so called, from the Garonne to the Seine
+and the Marne; and the Belgae, from the Seine to the
+<span class="sidenote">Political divisions of Gaul.</span>
+Rhine. But these ethnological names cover a very
+great variety of half-savage tribes, differing in speech
+and in institutions, each surrounded by frontiers of dense forests
+abounding in game. On the edges of these forests stood isolated
+dwellings like sentinel outposts; while the inhabitants of the
+scattered hamlets, caves hollowed in the ground, rude circular
+huts or lake-dwellings, were less occupied with domestic life
+than with war and the chase. On the heights, as at Bibracte,
+or on islands in the rivers, as at Lutetia, or protected by marshes,
+as at Avaricum, <i>oppida</i>&mdash;at once fortresses and places of refuge,
+like the Greek Acropolis&mdash;kept watch and ward over the beaten
+tracks and the rivers of Gaul.</p>
+
+<p>These primitive societies of tall, fair-skinned warriors, blue-eyed
+and red-haired, were gradually organized into political
+bodies of various kinds&mdash;kingdoms, republics and
+federations&mdash;and divided into districts or <i>pagi</i> (<i>pays</i>)
+<span class="sidenote">Political institutions of Gaul.</span>
+to which divisions the minds of the country folk have
+remained faithfully attached ever since. The victorious
+aristocracy of the kingdom dominated the other classes,
+strengthened by the prestige of birth, the ownership of the soil
+and the practice of arms. Side by side with this martial nobility
+the Druids constituted a priesthood unique in ancient times;
+neither hereditary as in India, nor composed of isolated priests
+as in Greece, nor of independent colleges as at Rome, it was a
+true corporation, which at first possessed great moral authority,
+though by Caesar&rsquo;s time it had lost both strength and prestige.
+Beneath these were the common people attached to the soil,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page802" id="page802"></a>802</span>
+who did not count for much, but who reacted against the insufficient
+protection of the regular institutions by a voluntary
+subordination to certain powerful chiefs.</p>
+
+<p>This impotence of the state was a permanent cause of those
+discords and revolts, which in the 1st century <span class="scs">B.C.</span> were so
+singularly favourable to Caesar&rsquo;s ambition. Thus
+<span class="sidenote">Caesar in Gaul.</span>
+after eight years of incoherent struggles, of scattered
+revolts, and then of more and more energetic efforts,
+Gaul, at last aroused by Vercingetorix, for once concentrated
+her strength, only to perish at Alesia, vanquished by Roman
+discipline and struck at from the rear by the conquest of Britain
+(58-50 <span class="scs">B.C.</span>).</p>
+
+<p>This defeat completely altered the destiny of Gaul, and she
+became one of the principal centres of Roman civilization.
+Of the vast Celtic empire which had dominated
+Europe nothing now remained but scattered remnants
+<span class="sidenote">Roman Gaul.</span>
+in the farthest corners of the land, refuges for all
+the vanquished Gaels, Picts or Gauls; and of its civilization
+there lingered only idioms and dialects&mdash;Gaelic, Pict and Gallic&mdash;which
+gradually dropped out of use. During five centuries
+Gaul was unfalteringly loyal to her conquerors; for to conquer
+is nothing if the conquered be not assimilated by the conqueror,
+and Rome was a past-mistress of this art. The personal charm
+of Caesar and the prestige of Rome are not of themselves sufficient
+to explain this double conquest. The generous and enlightened
+policy of the imperial administration asked nothing of the people
+of Gaul but military service and the payment of the tax; in
+return it freed individuals from patronal domination, the people
+from oligarchic greed or Druidic excommunication, and every one
+in general from material anxiety. Petty tyrannies gave place
+to the great <i>Pax Romana</i>. The Julio-Claudian dynasty did
+much to attach the Gauls to the empire; they always occupied
+the first place in the mind of Augustus, and the revolt of the
+Aeduan Julius Sacrovir, provoked by the census of <span class="scs">A.D.</span> 21, was
+easily repressed by Tiberius. Caligula visited Gaul and founded
+literary competitions at Lyons, which had become the political
+and intellectual capital of the country. Claudius, who was
+a native of Lyons, extended the right of Roman citizenship
+to many of his fellow-townsmen, gave them access to the magistracy
+and to the senate, and supplemented the annexation of
+Gaul by that of Britain. The speech which he pronounced
+on this occasion was engraved on tables of bronze at Lyons,
+and is the first authentic record of Gaul&rsquo;s admission to the
+citizenship of Rome. Though the crimes of Nero and the
+catastrophes which resulted from his downfall, provoked the
+troubles of the year <span class="scs">A.D.</span> 70, the revolt of Sabinus was in the
+main an attempt by the Germans to pillage Gaul and the prelude
+to military insurrections. The government of the Flavians
+and the Antonines completed a definite reconciliation. After
+the extinction of the family of Augustus in the 1st century
+Gaul had made many emperors&mdash;Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian
+and Domitian; and in the 2nd century she provided
+Gauls to rule the empire&mdash;Antoninus (138-161) came from
+Nîmes and Claudius from Lyons, as did also Caracalla later on
+(211-217).</p>
+
+<p>The romanization of the Gauls, like that of the other subject
+nations, was effected by slow stages and by very diverse means,
+furnishing an example of the constant adaptability
+of Roman policy. It was begun by establishing a
+<span class="sidenote">Material and political transformation of Roman Gaul.</span>
+network of roads with Lyons as the central point,
+and by the development of a prosperous urban life
+in the increasingly wealthy Roman colonies; and it
+was continued by the disintegration into independent
+cities of nearly all the Gaulish states of the Narbonnaise, together
+with the substitution of the Roman collegial magistracy for the
+isolated magistracy of the Gauls. This alteration came about
+more quickly in the north-east in the Rhine-land than in the
+west and the centre, owing to the near neighbourhood of the
+legions on the frontiers. Rome was too tolerant to impose
+her own institutions by force; it was the conquered peoples
+who collectively and individually solicited as a favour the right
+of adopting the municipal system, the magistracy, the sacerdotal
+and aristocratic social system of their conquerors. The edict
+of Caracalla, at the beginning of the 3rd century, by conferring
+the right of citizenship on all the inhabitants of the empire,
+completed an assimilation for which commercial relations,
+schools, a taste for officialism, and the adaptability and quick intelligence
+of the race had already made preparation. The Gauls
+now called themselves Romans and their language Romance.
+There was neither oppression on the one hand nor servility on
+the other to explain this abandonment of their traditions.
+Thanks to the political and religious unity which a common
+worship of the emperor and of Rome gave them, thanks to
+administrative centralization tempered by a certain amount
+of municipal autonomy, Gaul prospered throughout three
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>But this stability of the Roman peace had barely been realized
+when events began to threaten it both from within and without.
+The <i>Pax Romana</i> having rendered any armed force
+unnecessary amid a formerly very bellicose people, only
+<span class="sidenote">Decline of the imperial authority in Gaul.</span>
+eight legions mounted guard over the Rhine to protect
+it from the barbarians who surrounded the empire.
+The raids made by the Germans on the eastern frontiers,
+the incessant competitions for the imperial power, and the
+repeated revolts of the Pretorian guard, gradually undermined
+the internal cohesion of Gaul; while the insurrections of the
+Bagaudae aggravated the destruction wrought by a grasping
+treasury and by barbarian incursions; so that the anarchy of
+the 3rd century soon aroused separatist ideas. Under Postumus
+Gaul had already attempted to restore an independent though
+short-lived empire (258-267); and twenty-eight years later
+the tetrarchy of Diocletian proved that the blood now circulated
+with difficulty from the heart to the extremities of an empire
+on the eve of disintegration. Rome was to see her universal
+dominion gradually menaced from all sides. It was in Gaul
+that the decisive revolutions of the time were first prepared;
+Constantine&rsquo;s crusades to overthrow the altars of paganism,
+and Julian&rsquo;s campaigns to set them up again. After Constantine
+the emperors of the East in the 4th century merely put in an
+occasional appearance at Rome; they resided at Milan or in
+the prefectorial capitals of Gaul&mdash;at Arles, at Treves (Trier),
+at Reims or in Paris. The ancient territorial divisions&mdash;Belgium,
+Gallia Lugdunensis (Lyonnaise), Gallia Narbonensis
+(Narbonnaise)&mdash;were split up into seventeen little provinces,
+which in their turn were divided into two dioceses. Thus the
+great historic division was made between southern and northern
+France. Roman nationality persisted, but the administrative
+system was tottering.</p>
+
+<p>Upon ground that had been so well levelled by Roman legislation
+aristocratic institutions naturally flourished. From the
+4th century onward the balance of classes was disturbed
+by the development of a landed aristocracy
+<span class="sidenote">Social disorganization of Gaul.</span>
+that grew more powerful day by day, and by the
+corresponding ruin of the small proprietors and industrial
+and commercial corporations. The members of the
+<i>curia</i> who assisted the magistrates in the cities, crushed by the
+burden of taxes, now evaded as far as possible public office or
+senatorial honours. The vacancies left in this middle class by
+this continual desertion were not compensated for by the progressive
+advance of a lower class destitute of personal property
+and constantly unsettled in their work. The peasants, no less
+than the industrial labourers, suffered from the absence of any
+capital laid by, which alone could have enabled them to improve
+their land or to face a time of bad harvests. Having no credit
+they found themselves at the mercy of their neighbours, the
+great landholders, and by degrees fell into the position of tenants,
+or into servitude. The curia was thus emptied both from above
+and from below. It was in vain that the emperors tried to
+rivet the chains of the curia in this hereditary bondage, by
+attaching the small proprietor to his glebe, like the artisan
+to his gild and the soldier to his legion. To such a miserable
+pretence of freedom they all preferred servitude, which at least
+ensured them a livelihood; and the middle class of freemen
+thus became gradually extinct.</p>
+
+<div class="center pt2"><img style="width:1097px; height:1532px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img802.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page803" id="page803"></a>803</span></p>
+
+<p class="pt2">The aristocracy, on the contrary, went on increasing in power,
+and eventually became masters of the situation. It was through
+them that the emperor, theoretically absolute, practically
+carried on his administration; but he was no
+<span class="sidenote">Absorption of land and power by the aristocracy of Gaul.</span>
+longer either strong or a divinity, and possessed
+nothing but the semblance of omnipotence. His
+official despotism was opposed by the passive but
+invincible competition of an aristocracy, more powerful
+than himself because it derived its support from the
+revived relation of patron and dependants. But though the
+aristocracy administered, yet they did not govern. They
+suffered, as did the Empire, from a general state of lassitude.
+Like their private life, their public life, no longer stimulated
+by struggles and difficulties, had become sluggish; their power
+of initiative was enfeebled. Feeling their incapacity they no
+longer embarked on great political schemes; and the army, the
+instrument by which such schemes were carried on, was only
+held together by the force of habit. In this society, where there
+was no traffic in anything but wealth and ideas, the soldier was
+nothing more than an agitator or a parasite. The egoism of the
+upper classes held military duty in contempt, while their avarice
+depopulated the countryside, whence the legions had drawn their
+recruits. And now come the barbarians! A prey to perpetual
+alarm, the people entrenched themselves behind those high walls
+of the <i>oppida</i> which Roman security had razed to the ground,
+but imperial impotence had restored, and where life in the
+middle ages was destined to vegetate in unrestful isolation.</p>
+
+<p>Amidst this general apathy, intellectual activity alone persisted.
+In the 4th century there was a veritable renaissance in Gaul, the
+last outburst of a dying flame, which yet bore witness
+also to the general decadence. The agreeable versification
+<span class="sidenote">Intellectual decadence of Gaul.</span>
+of an amateur like Ausonius, the refined
+panegyrics of a Eumenius, disguising nullity of thought
+beneath elegance of form, already foretold the perilous sterility
+of scholasticism. Art, so widespread in the wealthy villas of
+Gaul, contented itself with imitation, produced nothing original
+and remained mediocre. Human curiosity, no longer concerned
+with philosophy and science, seemed as though stifled, religious
+polemics alone continuing to hold public attention. Disinclination
+for the self-sacrifice of active life and weariness of the things
+of the earth lead naturally to absorption in the things of heaven.
+After bringing about the success of the Asiatic cults of Mithra
+and Cybele, these same factors now assured the triumph over
+exhausted paganism of yet another oriental religion&mdash;Christianity&mdash;after
+a duel which had lasted two centuries.</p>
+
+<p>This new faith had appeared to Constantine likely to infuse
+young and healthy blood into the Empire. In reality Christianity,
+which had contributed not a little to stimulate the
+political unity of continental Gaul, now tended to
+<span class="sidenote">Christianity in Gaul.</span>
+dissolve it by destroying that religious unity which
+had heretofore been its complement. Before this
+there had been complete harmony between Church and State;
+but afterwards came indifference and then disagreement between
+political and religious institutions, between the City of God and
+that of Caesar. Christianity, introduced into Gaul during the
+1st century of the Christian era by those foreign merchants who
+traded along the coasts of the Mediterranean, had by the middle
+of the 2nd century founded communities at Vienne, at Autun
+and at Lyons. Their propagandizing zeal soon exposed them to
+the wrath of an ignorant populace and the contempt of the
+educated; and thus it was that in <span class="scs">A.D.</span> 177, under Marcus
+Aurelius, the Church of Lyons, founded by St Pothinus, suffered
+those persecutions which were the effective cause of her ultimate
+victory. These Christian communities, disguised under the
+legally authorized name of burial societies, gradually formed a
+vast secret cosmopolitan association, superimposed upon Roman
+society but incompatible with the Empire. Christianity had
+to be either destroyed or absorbed. The persecutions under
+Aurelian and Diocletian almost succeeded in accomplishing the
+former; the Christian churches were saved by the instability of
+the existing authorities, by military anarchy and by the incursions
+of the barbarians. Despite tortures and martyrdoms, and thanks
+to the seven apostles sent from Rome in 250, during the 3rd
+century their branches extended all over Gaul.</p>
+
+<p>The emperors had now to make terms with these churches,
+which served to group together all sorts of malcontents,
+and this was the object of the edict of Milan (313),
+by which the Church, at the outset simply a Jewish
+<span class="sidenote">Triumph of Christianity in Gaul.</span>
+institution, was naturalized as Roman; while in 325
+the Council of Nicaea endowed her with unity. But
+for the security and the power thus attained she had to pay with
+her independence. On the other hand, pagan and Christian
+elements in society existed side by side without intermingling,
+and even openly antagonistic to each other&mdash;one aristocratic
+and the other democratic. In order to induce the masses of the
+people once more to become loyal to the imperial form of government
+the emperor Julian tried by founding a new religion to
+give its functionaries a religious prestige which should impress
+the popular mind. His plan failed; and the emperor Theodosius,
+aided by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, preferred to make the
+Christian clergy into a body of imperial and conservative officials;
+while in return for their adhesion he abolished the Arian heresy
+and paganism itself, which could not survive without his support.
+Thenceforward it was in the name of Christ that persecutions
+took place in an Empire now entirely won over to Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>In Gaul the most famous leader of this first merciless, if still
+perilous crusade, was a soldier-monk, Saint Martin of Tours.
+Thanks to him and his disciples in the middle of the
+4th century and the beginning of the 5th many of the
+<span class="sidenote">Organisation of the Church.</span>
+towns possessed well-established churches; but the
+militant ardour of monks and centuries of labour
+were needed to conquer the country districts, and in the meantime
+both dogma and internal organization were subjected to
+important modifications. As regards the former the Church
+adopted a course midway between metaphysical explanations
+and historical traditions, and reconciled the more extreme
+theories; while with the admission of pagans a great deal of
+paganism itself was introduced. On the other hand, the need for
+political and social order involved the necessity for a disciplined
+and homogeneous religious body; the exercise of power, moreover,
+soon transformed the democratic Christianity of the earlier
+churches into a federation of little conservative monarchies.
+The increasing number of her adherents, and her inexperience of
+government on such a vast and complicated scale, obliged her to
+comply with political necessity and to adopt the system of the
+state and its social customs. The Church was no longer a
+fraternity, on a footing of equality, with freedom of belief and
+tentative as to dogma, but an authoritative aristocratic hierarchy.
+The episcopate was now recruited from the great families
+in the same way as the imperial and the municipal public services.
+The Church called on the emperor to convoke and preside over
+her councils and to combat heresy; and in order more effectually
+to crush the latter she replaced primitive independence and local
+diversity by uniformity of doctrine and worship, and by the
+hierarchy of dioceses and ecclesiastical provinces. The heads of
+the Church, her bishops, her metropolitans, took the titles
+of their pagan predecessors as well as their places, and their
+jurisdiction was enforced by the laws of the state. Rich and
+powerful chiefs, they were administrators as much as priests:
+Germanus (Germain), bishop of Auxerre (d. 448), St Eucherius
+of Lyons (d. 450), Apollinaris Sidonius of Clermont (d. <i>c.</i> 490)
+assumed the leadership of society, fed the poor, levied tithes,
+administered justice, and in the towns where they resided,
+surrounded by priests and deacons, ruled both in temporal and
+spiritual matters.</p>
+
+<p>But the humiliation of Theodosius before St Ambrose proved
+that the emperor could never claim to be a pontiff, and that the
+dogma of the Church remained independent of the
+sovereign as well as of the people; if she sacrificed
+<span class="sidenote">The Church&rsquo;s independence of the Empire.</span>
+her liberty it was but to claim it again and maintain
+it more effectively amid the general languor. The
+Church thus escaped the unpopularity of this decadent
+empire, and during the 5th century she provided a refuge for
+all those who, wishing to preserve the Roman unity, were terrified
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page804" id="page804"></a>804</span>
+by the blackness of the horizon. In fact, whilst in the Eastern
+Church the metaphysical ardour of the Greeks was spending
+itself in terrible combats in the oecumenical councils over the
+interpretation of the Nicene Creed, the clergy of Gaul, more
+simple and strict in their faith, abjured these theological logomachies;
+from the first they had preferred action to criticism
+and had taken no part in the great controversy on free-will
+raised by Pelagius. Another kind of warfare was about to absorb
+their whole attention; the barbarians were attacking the frontiers
+of the Empire on every side, and their advent once again modified
+Gallo-Roman civilization.</p>
+
+<p>For centuries they had been silently massing themselves
+around ancient Europe, whether Iberian, Celtic or Roman.
+Many times already during that evening of a decadent
+civilization, their threatening presence had seemed
+<span class="sidenote">The barbarian invasion.</span>
+like a dark cloud veiling the radiant sky of the peoples
+established on the Mediterranean seaboard. The cruel
+lightning of the sword of Brennus had illumined the night,
+setting Rome or Delphi on fire. Sometimes the storm had burst
+over Gaul, and there had been need of a Marius to stem the torrent
+of Cimbri and Teutons, or of a Caesar to drive back the Helvetians
+into their mountains. On the morrow the western horizon would
+clear again, until some such disaster as that which befell Varus
+would come to mortify cruelly the pride of an Augustus. The
+Romans had soon abandoned hope of conquering Germany,
+with its fluctuating frontiers and nomadic inhabitants. For
+more than two centuries they had remained prudently entrenched
+behind the earthworks that extended from Cologne to Ratisbon
+(Regensburg); but the intestine feuds which prevailed among
+the barbarians and were fostered by Rome, the organization
+under bold and turbulent chiefs of the bands greedy for booty,
+the pressing forward on populations already settled of tribes in
+their rear; all this caused the Germanic invasion to filter by
+degrees across the frontier. It was the work of several generations
+and took various forms, by turns and simultaneously
+colonization and aggression; but from this time forward the
+<i>pax romana</i> was at an end. The emperors Probus, Constantine,
+Julian and Valentinian, themselves foreigners, were worn out
+with repulsing these repeated assaults, and the general enervation
+of society did the rest. The barbarians gradually became part
+of the Roman population; they permeated the army, until after
+Theodosius they recruited it exclusively; they permeated
+civilian society as colonists and agriculturists, till the command
+of the army and of important public duties was given over to a
+Stilicho or a Crocus. Thus Rome allowed the wolves to mingle
+with the dogs in watching over the flock, just at a time when the
+civil wars of the 4th century had denuded the Rhenish frontier
+of troops, whose numbers had already been diminished by Constantine.
+Then at the beginning of the 5th century, during a
+furious irruption of Germans fleeing before Huns, the <i>limes</i> was
+carried away (406-407); and for more than a hundred years the
+torrent of fugitives swept through the Empire, which retreated
+behind the Alps, there to breathe its last.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst for ten years Alaric&rsquo;s Goths and Stilicho&rsquo;s Vandals
+were drenching Italy with blood, the Vandals and the Alani from
+the steppes of the Black Sea, dragging in their wake the
+<span class="sidenote">The Germans in Gaul.</span>
+reluctant German tribes who had been allies of Rome
+and who had already settled down to the cultivation of
+their lands, invaded the now abandoned Gaul, and
+having come as far as the Pyrenees, crossed over them. After the
+passing of this torrent the Visigoths, under their kings Ataulphus,
+Wallia and Theodoric, still dazzled by the splendours of this
+immense empire, established themselves like submissive vassals
+in Aquitaine, with Toulouse as their capital. About the same
+time the Burgundians settled even more peaceably in Rhenish
+Gaul, and, after 456, to the west of the Jura in the valleys of
+<span class="sidenote">The Franks before Clovis.</span>
+the Saône and the Rhône. The original Franks of
+Germany, already established in the Empire, and
+pressed upon by the same Huns who had already forced
+the Goths across the Danube, passed beyond the
+Rhine and occupied north-eastern Gaul; Ripuarians of the Rhine
+establishing themselves on the Sambre and the Meuse, and
+Salians in Belgium, as far as the great fortified highroad from
+Bavai to Cologne. Accepted as allies, and supported by Roman
+prestige and by the active authority of the general Aetius, all
+these barbarians rallied round him and the Romans of Gaul, and
+in 451 defeated the hordes of Attila, who had advanced as far
+as Orleans, at the great battle of the Catalaunian plains.</p>
+
+<p>Thus at the end of the 5th century the Roman empire was
+nothing but a heap of ruins, and fidelity to the empire was now
+only maintained by the Catholic Church; she alone
+survived, as rich, as much honoured as ever, and more
+<span class="sidenote">The clergy and the barbarians.</span>
+powerful, owing to the disappearance of the imperial
+officials for whom she had found substitutes, and the
+decadence of the municipal bodies into whose inheritance she
+had entered. Owing to her the City of God gradually replaced the
+Roman imperial polity and preserved its civilization; while the
+Church allied herself more closely with the new kingdoms than
+she had ever done with the Empire. In the Gothic or Burgundian
+states of the period the bishops, after having for a time opposed
+the barbarian invaders, sought and obtained from their chief
+the support formerly received from the emperor. Apollinaris
+Sidonius paid court to Euric, since 476 the independent king of
+the Visigoths, against whom he had defended Auvergne; and
+Avitus, bishop of Vienne, was graciously received by Gundibald,
+king of the Burgundians. But these princes were Arians, <i>i.e.</i>
+foreigners among the Catholic population; the alliance sought
+for by the Church could not reach her from that source, and it
+was from the rude and pagan Franks that she gained the material
+support which she still lacked. The conversion of Clovis was a
+master-stroke; it was fortunate both for himself and for the
+Franks. Unity in faith brought about unity in law.</p>
+
+<p>Clovis was king of the Sicambrians, one of the tribes of the
+Salian Franks. Having established themselves in the plains
+of Northern Gaul, but driven by the necessity of finding
+new land to cultivate, in the days of their king Childeric
+<span class="sidenote">Clovis, the Frankish chief.</span>
+they had descended into the fertile valleys of the
+Somme and the Oise. Clovis&rsquo;s victory at Soissons
+over the last troops left in the service of Rome (486) extended
+their settlements as far as the Loire. By his conversion, which
+was due to his wife Clotilda and to Remigius, bishop of Reims,
+more than to the victory of Tolbiac over the Alamanni,
+Clovis made definitely sure of the Roman inhabitants and gave
+the Church an army (496). Thenceforward he devoted himself
+to the foundation of the Frankish monarchy by driving the exhausted
+and demoralized heretics out of Gaul, and by putting
+himself in the place of the now enfeebled emperor. In 500 he
+conquered Gundibald, king of the Burgundians, reduced him
+to a kind of vassalage, and forced him into reiterated promises
+of conversion to orthodoxy. In 507 he conquered and killed
+Alaric II., king of the Arian Visigoths, and drove the latter into
+Spain. Legend adorned his campaign in Aquitaine with miracles;
+the bishops were the declared allies of both him and his son
+Theuderich (Thierry) after his conquest of Auvergne. At Tours
+he received from the distant emperor at Constantinople the
+diploma and insignia of <i>patricius</i> and Roman consul, which
+legalized his military conquests by putting him in possession
+of civil powers. From this time forward a great historic transformation
+<span class="sidenote">Clovis as a Roman officer.</span>
+was effected in the eyes of the bishops and
+of the Gallo-Romans; the Frankish chief took the
+place of the ancient emperors. Instead of blaming
+him for the murder of the lesser kings of the Franks,
+his relatives, by which he had accomplished the union of the
+Frankish tribes, they saw in this the hand of God rewarding a
+faithful soldier and a converted pagan. He became their king,
+their new David, as the Christian emperors had formerly been;
+he built churches, endowed monasteries, protected St Vaast
+(Vedastus, d. 540), first bishop of Arras and Cambrai, who
+restored Christianity in northern Gaul. Like the emperors
+before him Clovis, too, reigned over the Church. Of his own
+authority he called together a council at Orleans in 511, the year
+of his death. He was already the grand distributor of ecclesiastical
+benefices, pending the time when his successors were to
+confirm the episcopal elections, and his power began to take
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page805" id="page805"></a>805</span>
+on a more and more absolute character. But though he felt the
+ascendant influence of Christian teaching, he was not really
+penetrated by its spirit; a professing Christian, and a friend to
+the episcopate, Clovis remained a barbarian, crafty and ruthless.
+The bloody tragedies which disfigured the end of his reign bear
+sad witness to this; they were a fit prelude to that period during
+the course of which, as Gregory of Tours said, &ldquo;barbarism was
+let loose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The conquest of Gaul, begun by Clovis, was finished by his
+sons: Theuderich, Chlodomer, Childebert and Clotaire. In
+three successive campaigns, from 523 to 532, they
+annihilated the Burgundian kingdom, which had
+<span class="sidenote">The sons of Clovis.</span>
+maintained its independence, and had endured for
+nearly a century. Favoured by the war between Justinian,
+the East Roman emperor, and Theodoric&rsquo;s Ostrogoths, the
+Frankish kings divided Provence among them as they had done
+in the case of Burgundy. Thus the whole of Gaul was subjected
+to the sons of Clovis, except Septimania in the south-east, where
+the Visigoths still maintained their power. The Frankish armies
+then overflowed into the neighbouring countries and began to
+pillage them. Their disorderly cohorts made an attack upon
+Italy, which was repulsed by the Lombards, and another on
+Spain with the same want of success; but beyond the Rhine
+they embarked upon the conquest of Germany, where Clovis
+had already reduced to submission the country on the banks of
+the Maine, later known as Franconia. In 531 the Thuringians in
+the centre of Germany were brought into subjection by his eldest
+son, King Theuderich, and about the same time the Bavarians
+were united to the Franks, though preserving a certain autonomy.
+The Merovingian monarchy thus attained the utmost limits of
+its territorial expansion, bounded as it was by the Pyrenees,
+the Alps and the Rhine; it exercised influence over the whole of
+Germany, which it threw open to the Christian missionaries, and
+its conquests formed the first beginnings of German history.</p>
+
+<p>But to these wars of aggrandizement and pillage succeeded
+those fratricidal struggles which disgraced the whole of the sixth
+century and arrested the expansion of the Merovingian
+power. When Clotaire, the last surviving son of
+<span class="sidenote">Civil wars.</span>
+Clovis, died in 561, the kingdom was divided between
+his four sons like some piece of private property, as in 511, and
+according to the German method. The capitals of these four
+kings&mdash;Charibert, who died in 567, Guntram, Sigebert and
+Chilperic&mdash;were Paris, Orleans, Reims and Soissons&mdash;all near one
+another and north of the Loire, where the Germanic inhabitants
+predominated; but their respective boundaries were so confused
+that disputes were inevitable. There was no trace of a political
+idea in these disputes; the mutual hatred of two women aggravated
+jealousy to the point of causing terrible civil wars from
+561 to 613, and these finally created a national conflict which
+resulted in the dismemberment of the Frankish empire. Recognized,
+in fact, already as separate provinces were Austrasia, or
+the eastern kingdom, Neustria, or north-west Gaul and Burgundy;
+Aquitaine alone was as yet undifferentiated.</p>
+
+<p>Sigebert had married Brunhilda, the daughter of a Visigoth
+king; she was beautiful and well educated, having been brought
+up in Spain, where Roman civilization still flourished.
+Chilperic had married Galswintha, one of Brunhilda&rsquo;s
+<span class="sidenote">Fredegond and Brunhilda.</span>
+sisters, for the sake of her wealth; but despite this
+marriage he had continued his amours with a waiting-woman
+named Fredegond, who pushed ambition to the point of
+crime, and she induced him to get rid of Galswintha. In order to
+avenge her sister, Brunhilda incited Sigebert to begin a war
+which terminated in 575 with the assassination of Sigebert by
+Fredegond at the very moment when, thanks to the help of the
+Germans, he had gained the victory, and with the imprisonment
+of Brunhilda at Rouen. Fredegond subsequently caused the
+death of Merovech (Mérovée), the son of Chilperic, who had been
+secretly married to Brunhilda, and that of Bishop Praetextatus,
+who had solemnized their union. After this, Fredegond endeavoured
+to restore imperial finance to a state of solvency, and
+to set up a more regular form of government in her Neustria,
+which was less romanized and less wealthy than Burgundy,
+where Guntram was reigning, and less turbulent than the eastern
+kingdom, where most of the great warlike chiefs with their large
+landed estates were somewhat impatient of royal authority.
+But the accidental death of two of her children, the assassination
+of her husband in 584, and the advice of the Church, induced
+her to make overtures to her brother-in-law Guntram. A lover
+of peace through sheer cowardice and as depraved in his morals
+as Chilperic, Guntram had played a vacillating and purely
+self-interested part in the family tragedy. He declared himself
+the protector of Fredegond, but his death in 593 delivered up
+Burgundy and Neustria to Brunhilda&rsquo;s son Childebert, king of
+Austrasia, in consequence of the treaty of Andelot, made in 587.
+An ephemeral triumph, however; for Childebert died in 596,
+followed a year later by Fredegond.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of Gaul was now handed over to three children:
+Childebert&rsquo;s two sons, Theudebert and Theuderich (Thierry),
+and the son of Fredegond, Clotaire II. The latter,
+having vanquished the two former at Latofao in
+<span class="sidenote">The fall of Brunhilda.</span>
+596, was in turn beaten by them at Dormelles in
+600, and a year later a fresh fratricidal struggle broke out
+between the two grandsons of the aged Brunhilda. Theuderich
+joined with Clotaire against Theodobert, and invaded his brother&rsquo;s
+kingdom, conquering first an army of Austrasians and then one
+composed of Saxons and Thuringians. Strife began again in 613
+in consequence of Theuderich&rsquo;s desire to join Austrasia to
+Neustria, but his death delivered the kingdoms into the hands
+of Clotaire II. This weak king leant for support upon the nobles
+of Burgundy and Austrasia, impatient as they were of obedience
+to a woman and the representative of Rome. The ecclesiastical
+party also abandoned Brunhilda because of her persecution of
+their saints, after which Clotaire, having now got the upper hand,
+thanks to the defection of the Austrasian nobles, of Arnulf,
+bishop of Metz, with his brother Pippin, and of Warnachaire,
+mayor of the palace, made a terrible end of Brunhilda in 613.
+Her long reign had not lacked intelligence and even greatness;
+she alone, amid all these princes, warped by self-indulgence or
+weakened by discord, had behaved like a statesman, and she
+alone understood the obligations of the government she had
+inherited. She wished to abolish the fatal tradition of dividing
+up the kingdom, which so constantly prevented any possible
+unity; in opposition to the nobles she used her royal authority
+to maintain the Roman principles of order and regular administration.
+Towards the Church she held a courteous but firm policy,
+renewing relations between the Frankish kingdom and the
+pope; and she so far maintained the greatness of the Empire
+that tradition associated her name with the Roman roads in
+the north of France, entitling them &ldquo;les chaussées de Brunehaut.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Like his grandfather, Clotaire II. reigned over a once more
+united Gaul of Franks and Gallo-Romans, and like Clovis he
+was not too well obeyed by the nobles; moreover,
+his had been a victory more for the aristocracy than
+<span class="sidenote">Clotaire II.</span>
+for the crown, since it limited the power of the latter.
+Not that the permanent constitution of the 18th of October 614
+was of the nature of an anti-monarchic revolution, for the
+royal power still remained very great, decking itself with the
+pompous titles of the Empire, and continuing to be the dominant
+institution; but the reservations which Clotaire II. had to make
+in conceding the demands of the bishops and great laymen show
+the extent and importance of the concessions these latter were
+already aiming at. The bishops, the real inheritors of the
+imperial idea of government, had become great landowners
+through enormous donations made to the Church, and allied as
+they were to the aristocracy, whence their ranks were continually
+recruited, they had gradually identified themselves with the
+interests of their class and had adopted its customs; while thanks
+to long minorities and civil wars the aristocracy of the high
+officials had taken an equally important social position. The
+treaty of Andelot in 587 had already decided that the benefices
+or lands granted to them by the kings should be held for life.
+In the 7th century the Merovingian kings adopted the custom
+of summoning them all, and not merely the officials of their
+<i>Palatium</i>, to discuss political affairs; they began, moreover,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page806" id="page806"></a>806</span>
+to choose their counts or administrators from among the great
+landholders. This necessity for approval and support points
+to yet another alteration in the nature of the royal power,
+absolute as it was in theory.</p>
+
+<p>The Mayoralty of the Palace aimed a third and more serious
+blow at the royal authority. By degrees, the high officials
+of the <i>Palatium</i>, whether secular or ecclesiastical,
+and also the provincial counts, had rallied round
+<span class="sidenote">The mayors of the palace.</span>
+the mayors of the palace as their real leaders. As
+under the Empire, the Palatium was both royal court
+and centre of government, with the same bureaucratic hierarchy
+and the same forms of administration; and the mayor of the
+palace was premier official of this itinerant court and ambulatory
+government. Moreover, since the palace controlled the whole
+of each kingdom, the mayors gradually extended their official
+authority so as to include functionaries and agents of every
+kind, instead of merely those attached immediately to the
+king&rsquo;s person. They suggested candidates for office for the
+royal selection, often appointed office-holders, and, by royal
+warrant, supported or condemned them. Mere subordinates
+while the royal power was strong, they had become, owing
+to the frequent minorities, and to civil wars which broke the
+tradition of obedience, the all-powerful ministers of kings
+nominally absolute but without any real authority. Before long
+they ceased to claim an even greater degree of independence
+than that of Warnachaire, who forced Clotaire II. to swear
+that he should never be deprived of his mayoralty of Burgundy;
+they wished to take the first place in the kingdoms they governed,
+and to be able to attack neighbouring kingdoms on their own
+account. A struggle, motived by self-interest, no doubt; but
+a struggle, too, of opposing principles. Since the Frankish
+monarchy was now in their power some of them tried to re-establish
+the unity of that monarchy in all its integrity, together
+with the superiority of the State over the Church; others,
+faithless to the idea of unity, saw in the disintegration of the
+state and the supremacy of the nobles a warrant for their own
+independence. These two tendencies were destined to strive
+against one another during an entire century (613-714), and to
+occasion two periods of violent conflict, which, divided by a kind of
+renascence of royalty, were to end at last in the triumphant substitution
+of the Austrasian mayors for royalty and aristocracy alike.</p>
+
+<p>The first struggle began on the accession of Clotaire II.,
+when Austrasia, having had a king of her own ever since 561,
+demanded one now. In 623 Clotaire was obliged
+to send her his son Dagobert and even to extend his
+<span class="sidenote">First struggle between monarchy and mayoralty.</span>
+territory. But in Dagobert&rsquo;s name two men ruled,
+representing the union of the official aristocracy and
+the Church. One, Pippin of Landen, derived his
+power from his position as mayor of the palace, from
+great estates in Aquitaine and between the Meuse and the Rhine,
+and from the immense number of his supporters; the other,
+Arnulf, bishop of Metz, sprang from a great family, probably
+of Roman descent, and was besides immensely wealthy in
+worldly possessions. By the union of their forces Pippin and
+Arnulf were destined to shape the future. They had already,
+in 613, treated with Clotaire and betrayed the hopes of Brunhilda,
+being consequently rewarded with the guardianship of young
+Dagobert. Burgundy followed the example of Austrasia,
+demanded the abolition of the mayoralty, and in 627 succeeded
+in obtaining her independence of Neustria and Austrasia and
+direct relations with the king.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Clotaire (629) was the signal for a revival of
+the royal power. Dagobert deprived Pippin of Landen of
+his authority and forced him to fly to Aquitaine;
+but still he had to give the Austrasians his son Sigebert
+<span class="sidenote">Renascence of monarchy under Dagobert, 629-639.</span>
+III. for their king (634). He made administrative
+progresses through Neustria and Burgundy to recall
+the nobles to their allegiance, but again he was forced
+to designate his second son Clovis as king of Neustria.
+He did subdue Aquitaine completely, thanks to his brother
+Charibert, with whom he had avoided dividing the kingdom,
+and he tried to restore his own demesne, which had been despoiled
+by the granting of benefices or by the pious frauds of the Church.
+In short, this reign was one of great conquests, impossible
+except under a strong government. Dagobert&rsquo;s victories over
+Samo, king of the Slavs along the Elbe, and his subjugation
+of the Bretons and the Basques, maintained the prestige of the
+Frankish empire; while the luxury of his court, his taste for
+the fine arts (ministered to by his treasurer Eloi<a name="fa28c" id="fa28c" href="#ft28c"><span class="sp">28</span></a>), his numerous
+achievements in architecture&mdash;especially the abbey of St Denis,
+burial-place of the kings of France&mdash;the brilliance and the power
+of the churchmen who surrounded him and his revision of the
+Salic law, ensured for his reign, in spite of the failure of his plans
+for unity, a fame celebrated in folksong and ballad.</p>
+
+<p>But for barbarous nations old-age comes early, and after
+Dagobert&rsquo;s death (639), the monarchy went swiftly to its doom.
+The mayors of the palace again became supreme,
+and the kings not only ceased to appoint them, but
+<span class="sidenote">The &ldquo;Rois fainéants&rdquo; (do-nothing kings).</span>
+might not even remove them from office. Such mayors
+were Aega and Erchinoald, in Neustria, Pippin and
+Otto in Austrasia, and Flaochat in Burgundy. One
+of them, Grimoald, son of Pippin, actually dared to take
+the title of king in Austrasia (640). This was a premature
+attempt and barren of result, yet it was significant; and not
+less so is the fact that the palace in which these mayors
+bore rule was a huge association of great personages, laymen
+and ecclesiastics who seem to have had much more independence
+than in the 6th century. We find the dukes actually raising
+troops without the royal sanction, and even against the king.
+In 641 the mayor Flaochat was forced to swear that they should
+hold their offices for life; and though these offices were not yet
+hereditary, official dynasties, as it were, began to be established
+permanently within the palace. The crown lands, the governorships,
+the different offices, were looked upon as common property
+to be shared between themselves. Organized into a compact
+body they surrounded the king and were far more powerful than
+he. In the general assembly of its members this body of officials
+decided the selection of the mayor; it presented Flaochat
+to the choice of Queen Nanthilda, Dagobert&rsquo;s widow; after
+long discussion it appointed Ebroïn as mayor; it submitted
+requests that were in reality commands to the Assembly of Bonneuil
+in 616 and later to Childeric in 670. Moreover, the countries
+formerly subdued by the Franks availed themselves of this
+opportunity to loosen the yoke; Thuringia was lost by Sigebert
+in 641, and the revolt of Alamannia in 643 set back the frontier
+of the kingdom from the Elbe to Austrasia. Aquitaine, hitherto
+the common prey of all the Frankish kings, having in vain tried
+to profit by the struggles between Fredegond and Brunhilda,
+and set up an independent king, Gondibald, now finally burst
+her bonds in 670. Then came a time when the kings were mere
+children, honoured with but the semblance of respect, under the
+tutelage of a single mayor, Erbroïn of Neustria.</p>
+
+<p>This representative of royalty, chief minister for four-and-twenty
+years (656-681), attempted the impossible, endeavouring
+to re-establish unity in the midst of general dissolution
+and to maintain intact a royal authority usurped
+<span class="sidenote">Struggle between Ebroïn and Léger.</span>
+everywhere, by the hereditary power of the great
+palatine families. He soon stirred up against himself
+all the dissatisfied nobles, led by Léger (Leodegarius), bishop of
+Autun and his brother Gerinus. Clotaire III.&rsquo;s death gave
+the signal for war. Ebroïn&rsquo;s enemies set up Childeric II. in
+opposition to Theuderich, the king whom he had chosen without
+summoning the great provincial officials. Despite a temporary
+triumph, when Childeric was forced to recognize the principle
+of hereditary succession in public offices, and when the mayoralties
+of Neustria and Burgundy were alternated to the profit of
+both, Léger soon fell into disgrace and was exiled to that very
+monastery of Luxeuil to which Ebroïn had been relegated.
+Childeric having regained the mastery restored the mayor&rsquo;s
+office, which was immediately disputed by the two rivals;
+Ebroïn was successful and established himself as mayor of the
+palace in the room of Leudesius, a partisan of Léger (675),
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page807" id="page807"></a>807</span>
+following this up by a distribution of offices and dignities right
+and left among his adherents. Léger was put to death in 678,
+and the Austrasians, commanded by the Carolingian Pippin II.,
+with whom many of the chief Neustrians had taken refuge,
+were dispersed near Laon (680). But Ebroïn was assassinated
+next year in the midst of his triumph, having like Fredegond
+been unable to do more than postpone for a quarter of a century
+the victory of the nobles and of Austrasia; for his successor,
+Berthar, was unfitted to carry on his work, having neither
+his gifts and energy nor the powerful personality of Pippin.
+Berthar met his death at the battle of Tertry (687), which
+<span class="sidenote">Battle of Tertry.</span>
+gave the king into the hands of Pippin, as also the
+royal treasure and the mayoralty, and by thus enabling
+him to reward his followers made him supreme over
+the Merovingian dynasty. Thenceforward the degenerate
+descendants of Clovis offered no further resistance to his
+claims, though it was not until 752 that their line became
+extinct.</p>
+
+<p>In that year the Merovingian dynasty gave place to the rule
+of Pippin II. of Heristal, who founded a Carolingian empire
+fated to be as ephemeral as that of the Merovingians. This
+political victory of the aristocracy was merely the consummation
+of a slow subterranean revolution which by innumerable reiterated
+blows had sapped the structure of the body politic, and was about
+to transfer the people of Gaul from the Roman monarchical
+and administrative government to the sway of the feudal
+system.</p>
+
+<p>The Merovingian kings, mere war-chiefs before the advent of
+Clovis, had after the conquest of Gaul become absolute hereditary
+monarchs, thanks to the disappearance of the popular
+assemblies and to the perpetual state of warfare.
+<span class="sidenote">Causes of the fall of the Merovingians.</span>
+They concentrated in their own hands all the powers
+of the empire, judicial, fiscal and military; and even
+the so-called &ldquo;rois fainéants&rdquo; enjoyed this unlimited power,
+in spite of the general disorder and the civil wars. To
+make their authority felt in the provinces they had an army of
+officials at their disposal&mdash;a legacy, this, from imperial Rome&mdash;who
+represented them in the eyes of their various peoples. They
+had therefore only to keep up this established government, but
+they could not manage even this much; they allowed the idea
+of the common interests of kings and their subjects gradually to
+die out, and forgetting that national taxes are a necessary impost,
+a charge for service rendered by the state, they had treated these
+as though they were illicit and unjustifiable spoils. The taxpayers,
+with the clergy at their head, adopted the same idea, and
+every day contrived fresh methods of evasion. Merovingian
+justice was on the same footing as Merovingian finance: it
+was arbitrary, violent and self-seeking. The Church, too, never
+failed to oppose it&mdash;at first not so much on account of her own
+ambitions as in a more Christian spirit&mdash;and proceeded to weaken
+the royal jurisdiction by repeated interventions on behalf of those
+under sentence, afterwards depriving it of authority over the
+clergy, and then setting up ecclesiastical tribunals in opposition
+to those held by the dukes and counts. At last, just as the
+kingdom had become the personal property of the king, so the
+officials&mdash;dukes, counts, royal vicars, tribunes, <i>centenarii</i>&mdash;who
+had for the most part bought their unpaid offices by means of
+presents to the monarch, came to look upon the public service
+rather as a mine of official wealth than as an administrative
+organization for furthering the interests, material or moral, of
+the whole nation. They became petty local tyrants, all the more
+despotic because they had nothing to fear save the distant
+authority of the king&rsquo;s <i>missi</i>, and the more rapacious because
+they had no salary save the fines they inflicted and the fees that
+they contrived to multiply. Gregory of Tours tells us that they
+were robbers, not protectors of the people, and that justice and
+the whole administrative apparatus were merely engines of insatiable
+greed. It was the abuses thus committed by the kings
+and their agents, who did not understand the art of gloving the
+iron hand, aided by the absolutely unfettered licence of conduct
+and the absence of any popular liberty, that occasioned the
+gradual increase of charters of immunity.</p>
+
+<p>Immunity was the direct and personal privilege which forbade
+any royal official or his agents to decide cases, to levy taxes, or
+to exercise any administrative control on the domains
+of a bishop, an abbot, or one of the great secular
+<span class="sidenote">Immunity.</span>
+nobles. On thousands of estates the royal government
+gradually allowed the law of the land to be superseded by local
+law, and public taxation to change into special contributions;
+so that the duties of the lower classes towards the state were
+transferred to the great landlords, who thus became loyal
+adherents of the king but absolute masters on their own territory.
+The Merovingians had no idea that they were abdicating the
+least part of their authority, nevertheless the deprivations
+acquiesced in by the feebler kings led of necessity to the diminution
+of their authority and their judicial powers, and to the
+abandonment of public taxation. They thought that by granting
+immunity they would strengthen their direct control; in reality
+they established the local independence of the great landowners,
+by allowing royal rights to pass into their hands. Then came
+confusion between the rights of the sovereign and the rights of
+property. The administrative machinery of the state still existed,
+but it worked in empty air: its taxpayers disappeared, those
+who were amenable to its legal jurisdiction slipped from its grasp,
+and the number of those whose affairs it should have directed
+dwindled away. Thus the Merovingians had shown themselves
+incapable of rising above the barbarous notion that royalty is
+a personal asset to the idea that royalty is of the state, a power
+belonging to the nation and instituted for the benefit of all.
+They represented in society nothing more than a force which
+grew feebler and feebler as other forces grew strong; they never
+stood for a national magistracy.</p>
+
+<p>Society no less than the state was falling asunder by a gradual
+process of decay. Under the Merovingians it was a hierarchy
+wherein grades were marked by the varied scale of the
+<i>wergild</i>, a man being worth anything from thirty to six
+<span class="sidenote">Disruption of the social framework.</span>
+hundred gold pieces. The different degrees were those
+of slave, freedman, tenant-farmer and great landowner.
+As in every social scheme where the government is
+without real power, the weakest sought protection of the
+strongest; and the system of patron, client and journeyman,
+which had existed among the Romans, the Gauls and the
+Germans, spread rapidly in the 6th and 7th centuries, owing to
+public disorder and the inadequate protection afforded by the
+government. The Church&rsquo;s patronage provided some with a
+refuge from violence; others ingratiated themselves with the
+rich for the sake of shelter and security; others again sought
+place and honour from men of power; while women, churchmen
+and warriors alike claimed the king&rsquo;s direct and personal protection.</p>
+
+<p>This hierarchy of persons, these private relations of man to
+man, were recognized by custom in default of the law, and were
+soon strengthened by another and territorial hierarchy.
+The large estate, especially if it belonged to the Church,
+<span class="sidenote">The beneficium.</span>
+very soon absorbed the few fields of the freeman.
+In order to farm these, the Church and the rich landowners
+granted back the holdings on the temporary and conditional
+terms of tenancy-at-will or of the <i>beneficium</i>, thus multiplying
+endlessly the land subject to their overlordship and the men who
+were dependent upon them as tenants. The kings, like private
+individuals and ecclesiastical establishments, made use of the
+<i>beneficium</i> to reward their servants; till finally their demesne
+was so reduced by these perpetual grants that they took to distributing
+among their champions land owning the overlordship
+of the Church, or granted their own lands for single lives only.
+These various &ldquo;benefactions&rdquo; were, as a rule, merely the indirect
+methods which the great landowners employed in order to absorb
+the small proprietor. And so well did they succeed, that in the
+6th and 7th centuries the provincial hierarchy consisted of the
+cultivator, the holder of the <i>beneficium</i> and the owner; while
+this dependence of one man upon another affected the personal
+liberty of a large section of the community, as well as the condition
+of the land. The great landowner tended to become not
+only lord over his tenants, but also himself a vassal of the king.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page808" id="page808"></a>808</span></p>
+
+<p>Thus by means of immunities, of the <i>beneficium</i> and of
+patronage, society gradually organized itself independently
+of the state, since it required further security. Such
+extra security was first provided by the conqueror of
+<span class="sidenote">Pippin of Heristal.</span>
+Tertry; for Pippin II. represented the two great
+families of Pippin and of Arnulf, and consequently the two
+interests then paramount, <i>i.e.</i> land and religion, while he
+had at his back a great company of followers and vast landed
+estates. For forty years (615-655) the office of mayor of Austrasia
+had gone down in his family almost continuously in direct
+descent from father to son. The death of Grimoald had caused
+the loss of this post, yet Ansegisus (Ansegisel), Arnulf&rsquo;s son and
+Pippin&rsquo;s son-in-law, had continued to hold high office in the
+Austrasian palace; and about 680 his son, Pippin II., became
+master of Austrasia, although he had held no previous office in
+the palace. His dynasty was destined to supplant that of the
+Merovingian house.</p>
+
+<p>Pippin of Heristal was a pioneer; he it was who began all
+that his descendants were afterwards to carry through. Thus he
+gathered the nobles about him not by virtue of his position, but
+because of his own personal prowess, and because he could assure
+them of justice and protection; instead of being merely the head
+of the royal palace he was the absolute lord of his own followers.
+Moreover, he no longer bore the title of mayor, but that of duke
+or prince of the Franks; and the mayoralty, like the royal power
+now reduced to a shadow, became an hereditary possession which
+Pippin could bestow upon his sons. The reigns of Theuderich III.,
+Clovis III. or Childebert III. are of no significance except as
+serving to date charters and diplomas. Pippin it was who
+administered justice in Austrasia, appointed officials and distributed
+dukedoms; and it was Pippin, the military leader,
+who defended the frontiers threatened by Frisians, Alamanni
+and Bavarians. Descended as he was from Arnulf, bishop of
+Metz, he was before all things a churchman, and behind his
+armies marched the missionaries to whom the Carolingian dynasty,
+of which he was the founder, were to subject all Christendom.
+Pippin it was, in short, who governed, who set in order
+the social confusions of Neustria, who, after long wars, put
+a stop to the malpractices of the dukes and counts, and
+summoned councils of bishops to make good regulations.
+But at his death in 714 the child-king Dagobert III. found
+himself subordinated to Pippin&rsquo;s two grandsons, who, being
+minors, were under the wardship of their grandmother
+Plectrude.</p>
+
+<p>Pippin&rsquo;s work was almost undone&mdash;a party among the
+Neustrians under Raginfrid, mayor of the palace, revolted
+against Pippin II.&rsquo;s adherents, and Radbod, duke of
+the Frisians, joined them. But the Austrasians
+<span class="sidenote">Charles Martel (715-741).</span>
+appealed to an illegitimate son of Pippin, Charles
+Martel, who had escaped from the prison to which
+Plectrude, alarmed at his prowess, had consigned him, and took
+him for their leader. With Charles Martel begins the great period
+of Austrasian history. Faithful to the traditions of the Austrasian
+mayors, he chose kings for himself&mdash;Clotaire IV., then Chilperic II.
+and lastly Theuderich IV. After Theuderich&rsquo;s death (737) he
+left the throne vacant until 742, but he himself was king in all
+but name; he presided over the royal tribunals, appointed the
+royal officers, issued edicts, disposed of the funds of the treasury
+and the churches, conferred immunities upon adherents, who were
+no longer the king&rsquo;s nobles but his own, and even appointed the
+bishops, though there was nothing of the ecclesiastic about himself.
+He decided questions of war and peace, and re-established
+unity in Gaul by defeating the Neustrians and the Aquitanian
+followers of Duke Odo (Eudes) at Vincy in 717. When Odo,
+brought to bay, appealed for help to the Arab troops of Abd-ar-Rahman,
+who after conquering Spain had crossed the Pyrenees,
+Charles, like a second Clovis, saved Catholic Christendom in its
+peril by crushing the Arabs at Tours (732). The retreat of the
+Arabs, who were further weakened by religious disputes, enabled
+him to restore Frankish rule in Aquitaine in spite of Hunald,
+son of Odo. But Charles&rsquo;s longest expeditions were made into
+Germany, and in these he sought the support of the Church, then
+the greatest of all powers since it was the depositary of the
+Roman imperial tradition.</p>
+
+<p>No less unconscious of his mission than Clovis had been, Charles
+Martel also was a soldier of Christ. He protected the missionaries
+who paved the way for his militant invasions. Without
+him the apostle of Germany, the English monk Boniface,
+<span class="sidenote">Charles Martel and the Church.</span>
+would never have succeeded in preserving the purity
+of the faith and keeping the bishops submissive to
+the Holy See. The help given by Charles had two very far-reaching
+results. Boniface was the instrument of the union of
+Rome and Germany, of which union the Holy Roman Empire in
+Germany was in the 10th century to become the most perfect
+expression, continuing up to the time of Luther. And Boniface
+also helped on the alliance between the papacy and the Carolingian
+dynasty, which, more momentous even than that between Clovis
+and the bishops of Gaul, was to sanctify might by right.</p>
+
+<p>This union was imperative for the bishops of Rome if they
+wished to establish their supremacy, and their care for orthodoxy
+by no means excluded all desire of domination. Mere
+religious authority did not secure to them the obedience
+<span class="sidenote">Charles Martel and Gregory III.</span>
+of either the faithful or the clergy; moreover, they
+had to consider the great secular powers, and in this
+respect their temporal position in Italy was growing unbearable.
+Their relations with the East Roman emperor (sole
+lord of the world after the Roman Senate had sent the imperial
+insignia to Constantinople in 476) were confined to receiving
+insults from him or suspecting him of heresy. Even in northern
+Italy there was no longer any opposition to the progress of the
+Lombards, the last great nation to be established towards the
+end of the 6th century within the ancient Roman empire&mdash;their
+king Liudprand clearly intended to seize Italy and even Rome
+itself. Meanwhile from the south attacks were being made by
+the rebel dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum. Pope Gregory III.
+cherished dreams of an alliance with the powerful duke of the
+Franks, as St Remigius before him had thought of uniting
+with Clovis against the Goths. Charles Martel had protected
+Boniface on his German missions: he would perhaps lend
+Gregory the support of his armies. But the warrior, like Clovis
+aforetime, hesitated to put himself at the disposal of the priest.
+When it was a question of winning followers or keeping them,
+he had not scrupled to lay hands on ecclesiastical property,
+nor to fill the Church with his friends and kinsfolk, and this
+alliance might embarrass him. So if he loaded the Roman
+ambassadors with gifts in 739, he none the less remembered that
+the Lombards had just helped him to drive the Saracens from
+Provence. However, he died soon after this, on the 22nd of
+October 741, and Gregory III. followed him almost immediately.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling his end near, Charles, before an assembly of nobles,
+had divided his power between his two sons, Carloman and
+Pippin III. The royal line seemed to have been
+forgotten for six years, but in 742 Pippin brought a
+<span class="sidenote">The Carolingian dynasty.</span>
+son of Chilperic II. out of a monastery and made him
+king. This Childeric III. was but a shadow&mdash;and
+knew it. He made a phantom appearance once every spring
+at the opening of the great annual national convention known as
+the Campus Martius (Champ de Mars): a dumb idol, his chariot
+drawn in leisurely fashion by oxen, he disappeared again into
+his palace or monastery. An unexpected event re-established
+unity in the Carolingian family. Pippin&rsquo;s brother, the pious
+Carloman, became a monk in 747, and Pippin, now sole ruler
+of the kingdom, ordered Childeric also to cut off his royal locks;
+after which, being king in all but name, he adopted that title
+in 752. Thus ended the revolution which had been going on
+for two centuries. The disappearance of Grippo, Pippin&rsquo;s
+<span class="sidenote">Pippin the Short, 752-768.</span>
+illegitimate brother, who, with the help of all the
+enemies of the Franks&mdash;Alamanni, Aquitanians and
+Bavarians&mdash;had disputed his power, now completed the
+work of centralization, and Pippin had only to maintain
+it. For this the support of the Church was indispensable, and
+Pippin understood the advantages of such an alliance better
+than Charles Martel. A son of the Church, a protector of bishops,
+a president of councils, a collector of relics, devoted to Boniface
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page809" id="page809"></a>809</span>
+(whom he invited, as papal legate, to reform the clergy of
+Austrasia), he astutely accepted the new claims of the vicar
+of St Peter to the headship of the Church, perceiving the value
+of an alliance with this rising power.</p>
+
+<p>Prudent enough to fear resistance if he usurped the Merovingian
+crown, Pippin the Short made careful preparations for his
+accession, and discussed the question of the dynasty
+with Pope Zacharias. Receiving a favourable opinion,
+<span class="sidenote">Sacred character of the new monarchy.</span>
+he had himself anointed and crowned by Boniface
+in the name of the bishops, and was then proclaimed
+king in an assembly of nobles, counts and bishops at
+Soissons in November 751. Still, certain disturbances made
+him see that aristocratic approval of his kingship might be
+strengthened if it could claim a divine sanction which no Merovingian
+had ever received. Two years later, therefore, he demanded
+a consecration of his usurpation from the pope, and in
+St Denis on the 28th of July 754 Stephen II. crowned and
+anointed not only Pippin, but his wife and his two sons as well.</p>
+
+<p>The political results of this custom of coronation were all-important
+for the Carolingians, and later for the first of the
+Capets. Pippin was hereby invested with new dignity,
+and when Boniface&rsquo;s anointing had been confirmed
+<span class="sidenote">Pippin and the Papacy.</span>
+by that of the pope, he became the head of the Frankish
+Church, the equal of the pope. Moreover, he astutely
+contrived to extend his priestly prestige to his whole family;
+his royalty was no longer merely a military command or a civil
+office, but became a Christian priesthood. This sacred character
+was not, however, conferred gratuitously. On the very day
+of his coronation Pippin allowed himself to be proclaimed
+patrician of the Romans by the pope, just as Clovis had been
+made consul. This title of the imperial court was purely honorary,
+but it attached him still more closely to Rome, though without
+lessening his independence. He had besides given a written
+promise to defend the Church of Rome, and that not against the
+Lombards only. Qualified by letters of the papal chancery as
+&ldquo;liberator and defender of the Church,&rdquo; his armies twice (754-756)
+crossed the Alps, despite the opposition of the Frankish
+aristocracy, and forced Aistulf, king of the Lombards, to cede
+to him the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis. Pippin
+gave them back to Pope Stephen II., and by this famous donation
+founded that temporal power of the popes which was to endure
+until 1870. He also dragged the Western clergy into the pope&rsquo;s
+quarrel with the emperor at Constantinople, by summoning
+the council of Gentilly, at which the iconoclastic heresy was
+condemned (767). Matters being thus settled with Rome,
+Pippin again took up his wars against the Saxons, against the
+Arabs (whom he drove from Narbonne in 758), and above all
+against Waïfer, duke of Aquitaine, and his ally, duke Tassilo
+of Bavaria. This last war was carried on systematically from
+760 to 768, and ended in the death of Waïfer and the definite
+establishment of the Frankish hold on Aquitaine. When
+Pippin died, aged fifty-four, on the 24th of September 768, the
+whole of Gaul had submitted to his authority.</p>
+
+<p>Pippin left two sons, and before he died he had, with the
+consent of the dignitaries of the realm, divided his kingdom
+between them, making the elder, Charles (Charlemagne),
+king of Austrasia, and giving the younger, Carloman,
+<span class="sidenote">Charlemagne.</span>
+Burgundy, Provence, Septimania, Alsace and
+Alamannia, and half of Aquitaine to each. On the 9th of October
+768 Charles was enthroned at Noyon in solemn assembly, and
+Carloman at Soissons. The Carolingian sovereignty was thus
+neither hereditary nor elective, but was handed down by the will
+of the reigning king, and by a solemn acceptance of the future
+king on the part of the nobles. In 771 Carloman, with whom
+Charles had had disputes, died, leaving sons; but bishops, abbots
+and counts all declared for Charles, save a few who took refuge
+in Italy with Desiderius, king of the Lombards. Desiderius,
+whose daughter Bertha or Desiderata Charles, despite the pope,
+had married at the instance of his mother Bertrade, supported
+the rights of Carloman&rsquo;s sons, and threatened Pope Adrian in
+Rome itself after he had despoiled him of Pippin&rsquo;s territorial
+gift. At the pope&rsquo;s appeal Charles crossed the Alps, took
+Verona and Pavia after a long siege, assumed the iron crown of
+the Lombard kings (June 774), and made a triumphal entry
+into Rome, which had not formed part of the pope&rsquo;s desires.
+Pippin&rsquo;s donation was restored, but the protectorate was no
+longer so distant, respectful and intermittent as the pope liked.
+After the departure of the imperious conqueror, a fresh revolt
+of the Lombards of Beneventum under Arichis, Desiderius&rsquo;s
+son-in-law, supported by a Greek fleet, obliged Pope Adrian to
+write fresh entreaties to Charlemagne; and in two campaigns
+(776-777) the latter conquered the whole Lombard kingdom.
+But another of Desiderius&rsquo;s daughters, married to the powerful
+duke Tassilo of Bavaria, urged her husband to avenge her
+father, now imprisoned in the monastery of Corbie. After
+endless intrigues, however, the duke, hemmed in by three
+different armies, had in his turn to submit (788), and all Italy
+was now subject to Charlemagne. These wars in Italy, even the
+fall of the Lombard kingdom and the recapture of the duchy of
+Bavaria, were merely episodes: Charlemagne&rsquo;s great war was
+against the Saxons and lasted thirty years (772-804).</p>
+
+<p>The work of organizing the three great Carolingian conquests&mdash;Aquitaine,
+Italy and Saxony&mdash;had yet to be done. Charlemagne
+approached it with a moderation equal to the vigour
+which he had shown in the war. But by multiplying
+<span class="sidenote">Organization of the conquests.</span>
+its advance-posts, the Frankish kingdom came into
+contact with new peoples, and each new neighbour
+meant a new enemy. Aquitaine, bordered upon Mussulman
+Spain; the Avars of Hungary threatened Bavaria with their
+tireless horsemen; beyond the Elbe and the Saal the Slavs
+were perpetually at war with the Saxons, and to the north of
+the Eider were the Danes. All were pagans; all enemies of
+Charlemagne, defender of Christ&rsquo;s Church, and hence the
+appointed conqueror of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Various causes&mdash;the weakening of the Arabs by the struggle
+between the Omayyads and the Abbasids just after the battle
+of Tours; the alliance of the petty Christian kings of
+the Spanish peninsula; an appeal from the northern
+<span class="sidenote">Wars with the Arabs, Slavs and Danes.</span>
+amirs who had revolted against the new caliphate of
+Cordova (755)&mdash;made Charlemagne resolve to cross
+the Pyrenees. He penetrated as far as the Ebro, but was
+defeated before Saragossa; and in their retreat the Franks
+were attacked by Vascons, losing many men as they came
+through the passes. This defeat of the rear-guard, famous
+for the death of the great Roland and the treachery of Ganelo,
+induced the Arabs to take the offensive once more and to conquer
+Septimania. Charlemagne had created the kingdom of Aquitaine
+especially to defend Septimania, and William, duke of Toulouse,
+from 790 to 806, succeeded in restoring Frankish authority
+down to the Ebro, thus founding the Spanish March with Barcelona
+as its capital. For two centuries and a half the Avars,
+a remnant of the Huns entrenched in the Hungarian Mesopotamia,
+had made descents alternately upon the Germans and upon the
+Greeks of the Eastern empire. They had overrun Bavaria in
+the very year of its subjugation by Charlemagne (788), and it
+took an eight-years&rsquo; struggle to destroy the robber stronghold.
+The empire thus pushed its frontier-line on from the Elbe to
+the Oder, ever as it grew menaced by increasing dangers. The
+sea came to the help of the depopulated land, and Danish pirates,
+Widukind&rsquo;s old allies, came in their leathern boats to harry
+the coasts of the North Sea and the Channel. Permanent armies
+and walls across isthmuses were alike useless; Charlemagne had
+to build fleets to repulse his elusive foes (808-810), and even
+after forty years of war the danger was only postponed.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Pippin&rsquo;s Frankish kingdom, vast and powerful
+as it had been, was doubled. All nations from the Oder to the
+Elbe and from the Danube to the Atlantic were subject
+or tributary, and Charlemagne&rsquo;s power even crossed
+<span class="sidenote">Charlemagne&rsquo;s empire.</span>
+these frontiers. At his summons Christian princes
+and Mussulman amirs flocked to his palaces. The
+kings of Northumbria and Sussex, the kings of the Basques
+and of Galicia, Arab amirs of Spain and Fez, and even the caliph
+of Bagdad came to visit him in person or sent gifts by the hands
+of ambassadors. A great warrior and an upright ruler, his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page810" id="page810"></a>810</span>
+conquests recalled those of the great Christian emperors, and
+the Church completed the parallel by training him in her lore.
+This still barely civilized German literally went to school to the
+English Alcuin and to Peter of Pisa, who, between two campaigns,
+taught him history, writing, grammar and astronomy, satisfying
+also his interest in sacred music, literature (religious literature
+especially), and the traditions of Rome and Constantinople. Why
+should he not be the heir of their Caesars? And so, little by
+little, this man of insatiable energy was possessed by the ambition
+of restoring the Empire of the West in his own favour.</p>
+
+<p>There were, however, two serious obstacles in the way: first,
+the supremacy of the emperor of the East, which though nominal
+rather than real was upheld by peoples, princes, and
+even by popes; secondly, the rivalry of the bishops
+<span class="sidenote">Charlemagne emperor (800).</span>
+of Rome, who since the early years of Adrian&rsquo;s
+pontificate had claimed the famous &ldquo;Donation of
+Constantine&rdquo; (<i>q.v.</i>). According to that apocryphal document, the
+emperor after his baptism had ceded to the sovereign pontiff
+his imperial power and honours, the purple chlamys, the golden
+crown, &ldquo;the town of Rome, the districts and cities of Italy and
+of all the West.&rdquo; But in 797 the empress of Constantinople
+had just deposed her son Constantine VI. after putting out his
+eyes, and the throne might be considered vacant; while on the
+other hand, Pope Leo III., who had been driven from Rome
+by a revolt in 799, and had only been restored by a Frankish
+army, counted for little beside the Frankish monarch, and
+could not but submit to the wishes of the Carolingian court.
+So when next year the king of the Franks went to Rome in
+person, on Christmas Eve of the year 800 and in the basilica
+of St Peter the pope placed on his head the imperial crown and
+did him reverence &ldquo;after the established custom of the time
+of the ancient emperors.&rdquo; The Roman ideal, handed down
+in tradition through the centuries, was here first revived.</p>
+
+<p>This event, of capital importance for the middle ages, was
+fertile in results both beneficial and the reverse. It brought
+about the rupture between the West and Constantinople. Then
+Charlemagne raised the papacy on the ruins of Lombardy to
+the position of first political power in Italy; and the universal
+Church, headed by the pope, made common cause with the
+Empire, which all the thinkers of that day regarded as the ideal
+state. Confusion between these powers was inevitable, but at
+this time neither Charles, the pope, nor the people had a suspicion
+of the troubles latent in the ceremony that seemed so simple.
+Thirdly, Charlemagne&rsquo;s title of emperor strengthened his other
+title of king of the Franks, as is proved by the fact that at the
+great assembly of Aix-la-Chapelle in 802 he demanded from all,
+whether lay or spiritual, a new oath of allegiance to himself
+as Caesar. His increased power came rather from moral value,
+from the prestige attaching to one who had given proof of it,
+than from actual authority over men or centralization; this
+is shown by the division between the Empire and feudalism.
+Universal sovereignty claimed as a heritage from Rome had a
+profound influence upon popular imagination, but in no way
+modified that tendency to separation of the various nations
+which was already manifest. Charles himself in his government
+preferred to restore the ancient Empire by vigorous personal
+action, rather than to follow old imperial traditions; he introduced
+cohesion into his &ldquo;palace,&rdquo; and perfect centralization
+into his official administration, inspiring his followers and
+servants, clerical and lay, with a common and determined zeal.
+The system was kept in full vigour by the <i>missi dominici</i>, who
+regularly reported or reformed any abuses of administration,
+and by the courts, military, judicial or political, which brought
+to Charlemagne the strength of the wealth of his subjects, carrying
+his commands and his ideas to the farthest limits of the
+Empire. Under him there was in fact a kind of early renaissance
+after centuries of barbarism and ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>This emperor, who assumed so high a tone with his
+subjects, his bishops and his counts, who undertook
+to uphold public order in civil life, held himself no
+less responsible for the eternal salvation of men&rsquo;s souls
+<span class="sidenote">The Carolingian Renaissance.</span>
+in the other world. Thanks to Charlemagne, and through the
+restoration of order and of the schools, a common civilization
+was prepared for the varied elements of the Empire. By
+his means the Church was able to concentrate in the palatine
+academy all the intellectual culture of the middle ages, having
+preserved some of the ancient traditions of organization and
+administration and guarded the imperial ideal. Charlemagne
+apparently wished, like Theodoric, to use German blood and
+Christian unity to bring back life to the great body of the Empire.
+Not the equal of Caesar or Augustus in genius or in the lastingness
+of his work, he yet recalls them in his capitularies, his periodic
+courts, his official hierarchy, his royal emissaries, his ministers,
+his sole right of coinage, his great public works, his campaigns
+against barbarism and heathenry, his zeal for learning and
+literature, and his divinity as emperor. Once more there existed
+a great public entity such as had not been seen for many years;
+but its duration was not to be a long one.</p>
+
+<p>Charlemagne had for the moment succeeded in uniting western
+Europe under his sway, but he had not been able to arrest its
+evolution towards feudal dismemberment. He had,
+doubtless conscientiously, laboured for the reconstitution
+<span class="sidenote">Dissolution of the Frankish Empire.</span>
+of the Empire; but it often happens that
+individual wills produce results other than those at
+which they aimed, sometimes results even contrary to
+their wishes, and this was what happened in Charlemagne&rsquo;s
+case. He had restored the superstructure of the imperial
+monarchy, but he had likewise strengthened and legalized
+methods and institutions till then private and insecure, and these,
+passing from custom into law, undermined the foundations of
+the structure he had thought himself to be repairing. A quarter
+of a century after his death his Empire was in ruins.</p>
+
+<p>The practice of giving land as a <i>beneficium</i> to a grantee who
+swore personal allegiance to the grantor had persisted, and by
+his capitularies Charlemagne had made these personal engagements,
+these contracts of immunity&mdash;hitherto not transferable,
+nor even for life, but quite conditional&mdash;regular, legal, even
+obligatory and almost indissoluble. The <i>beneficium</i> was to be
+as practically irrevocable as the oath of fidelity. He submitted
+to the yoke of the social system and feudal institutions at the
+very moment when he was attempting to revive royal authority;
+he was ruler of the state, but ruler of vassals also. The monarchical
+principle no longer sufficed to ensure social discipline; the
+fear of forfeiting the grant became the only powerful guarantee
+of obedience, and as this only applied to his personal vassals,
+Charlemagne gave up his claim to direct obedience from the
+rest of the people, accepting the mediation of the counts, lords
+and bishops, who levied taxes, adjudicated and administered
+in virtue of the privileges of patronage, not of the right of the
+state. The very multiplication of offices, so noticeable at this
+time, furthered this triumph of feudalism by multiplying the
+links of personal dependence, and neutralizing more and more
+the direct action of the central authority. The frequent convocations
+of military assemblies, far from testifying to political
+liberty, was simply a means of communicating the emperor&rsquo;s
+commands to the various feudal groups.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Charlemagne, far from opposing, systematized feudalism,
+in order that obedience and discipline might pass from one man
+to another down to the lowest grades of society, and he succeeded
+for his own lifetime. No authority was more weighty or more
+respected than that of this feudal lord of Gaul, Italy and
+Germany; none was more transient, because it was so purely
+personal.</p>
+
+<p>When the great emperor was buried at Aix-la-Chapelle in
+814, his work was entombed with him. The fact was that his
+successors were incapable of maintaining it. Twenty-nine
+years after his death the Carolingian Empire had
+<span class="sidenote">Causes for the dissolution of the Empire.</span>
+been divided into three kingdoms; forty years later
+one alone of these kingdoms had split into seven;
+while when a century had passed France was a litter of
+tiny states each practically independent. This disintegration
+was caused neither by racial hate nor by linguistic patriotism.
+It was the weakness of princes, the discouragement of freemen
+and landholders confronted by an inexorable system of financial
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page811" id="page811"></a>811</span>
+and military tyranny, and the incompatibility of a vast empire
+with a too primitive governmental system, that wrecked the
+work of Charlemagne.</p>
+
+<p>The Empire fell to Louis the Pious, sole survivor of his three
+sons. At the Aix assembly in 813 his father had crowned him
+with his own hand, thus avoiding the papal sanction
+that had been almost forced upon himself in 800.
+<span class="sidenote">Louis the Pious (814-840).</span>
+Louis was a gentle and well-trained prince, but weak
+and prone to excessive devotion to the Church. He
+had only reigned a few years when dissensions broke out on all
+sides, as under the Merovingians. Charlemagne had assigned
+their portions to his three sons in 781 and again in 806; like
+Charles Martel and Pippin the Short before him, however,
+what he had divided was not the imperial authority, nor yet
+countries, but the whole system of fiefs, offices and adherents
+which had been his own patrimony. The division that Louis the
+Pious made at Aix in 817 among his three sons, Lothair, Pippin
+and Louis, was of like character, since he reserved the supreme
+authority for himself, only associating Lothair, the eldest, with
+him in the government of the empire. Following the advice
+of his ministers Walla and Agobard, supporters of the policy
+of unity, Louis the Pious put Bernard of Italy, Charlemagne&rsquo;s
+grandson, to death for refusing to acknowledge Lothair as co-emperor;
+crushed a revolt in Brittany; and carried on among
+the Danes the work of evangelization begun among the Slavs.
+A fourth son, Charles, was born to him by his second wife, Judith
+of Bavaria. Jealousy arose between the children of the two
+marriages. Louis tried in vain to satisfy his sons and their
+followers by repeated divisions&mdash;at Worms (829) and at Aix
+(831)&mdash;in which there was no longer question of either unity or
+subordination. Yet his elder sons revolted against him in 831
+and 832, and were supported by Walla and Agobard and by
+their followers, weary of all the contradictory oaths demanded
+of them. Louis was deposed at the assembly of Compiègne
+(833), the bishops forcing him to assume the garb of a penitent;
+but he was re-established on his throne in St Etienne at Metz,
+the 28th of February 835, from which time until his death in
+840 he fell more and more under the influence of his ambitious
+wife, and thought only of securing an inheritance for Charles,
+his favourite son.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly was Louis buried in the basilica of Metz before his sons
+flew to arms. The first dynastic war broke out between Lothair,
+who by the settlement of 817 claimed the whole
+monarchy with the imperial title, and his brothers
+<span class="sidenote">The sons of Louis the Pious.</span>
+Louis and Charles. Lothair wanted, with the Empire,
+the sole right of patronage over the adherents of his
+house, but each of these latter chose his own lord according to
+individual interests, obeying his fears or his preferences. The
+three brothers finished their discussion by fighting for a whole
+day (June 25th, 841) on the plain of Fontanet by Auxerre; but
+the battle decided nothing, so Charles and Louis, in order to get
+the better of Lothair, allied themselves and their vassals by an
+oath taken in the plain of Strassburg (Feb. 14th, 842).
+<span class="sidenote">The Strassburg oath.</span>
+This, the first document in the vulgar tongue in the
+history of France and Germany, was merely a mutual
+contract of protection for the two armies, which nevertheless
+did not risk another battle. An amicable division of the
+imperial succession was arranged, and after an assessment of
+the empire which took almost a year, an agreement was signed
+at Verdun in August 843.</p>
+
+<p>This was one of the important events in history. Each
+brother received an equal share of the dismembered empire.
+Louis had the territory on the right bank of the Rhine,
+with Spires, Worms and Mainz &ldquo;because of the abundance
+<span class="sidenote">Partition of the Empire at Verdun (843).</span>
+of wine.&rdquo; Lothair took Italy, the valleys of the
+Rhône, the Saône and the Meuse, with the two capitals
+of the empire, Aix-la-Chapelle and Rome, and the
+title of emperor. Charles had all the country watered by the
+Scheldt, the Seine, the Loire and the Garonne, as far as the
+Atlantic and the Ebro. The partition of Verdun separated once
+more, and definitively, the lands of the eastern and western
+Franks. The former became modern Germany, the latter
+France, and each from this time forward had its own national
+existence. However, as the boundary between the possessions
+of Charles the Bald and those of Louis was not strictly defined,
+and as Lothair&rsquo;s kingdom, having no national basis, soon disintegrated
+into the kingdoms of Italy, Burgundy and Arles, in
+Lotharingia, this great undefined territory was to serve as a
+tilting-ground for France and Germany on the very morrow of
+the treaty of Verdun and for ten centuries after.</p>
+
+<p>Charles the Bald was the first king of western France. Anxious
+as he was to preserve Charlemagne&rsquo;s traditions of government,
+he was not always strong enough to do so, and warfare
+within his own dominions was often forced on him.
+<span class="sidenote">Charles the Bald (843-877).</span>
+The Norse pirates who had troubled Charlemagne
+showed a preference for western France, justified by
+the easy access afforded by river estuaries with rich monasteries
+on their shores. They began in 841 with the sack of Rouen;
+and from then until 912, when they made a settlement in one
+part of the country, though few in numbers they never ceased
+attacking Charles&rsquo;s kingdom, coming in their ships up the Loire
+as far as Auvergne, up the Garonne to Toulouse, and up the
+Seine and the Scheldt to Paris, where they made four descents
+in forty years, burning towns, pillaging treasure, destroying
+harvests and slaughtering the peasants or carrying them off into
+slavery. Charles the Bald thus spent his life sword in hand,
+fighting unsuccessfully against the Bretons, whose two kings,
+Nomenoé and Erispoé, he had to recognize in turn; and against
+the people of Aquitaine, who, in full revolt, appealed for help to
+his brother, Louis the German. He was beaten everywhere
+and always: by the Bretons at Ballon (845) and Juvardeil
+(851); by the people of Aquitaine near Angoulême (845); and
+by the Northmen, who several times extorted heavy ransoms
+from him. Before long, too, Louis the German actually allied
+himself with the people of Brittany and Aquitaine, and invaded
+France at the summons of Charles the Bald&rsquo;s own vassals.
+Though the treaty of Coblenz (860) seemed to reconcile the two
+kings for the moment, no peace was ever possible in Charles
+the Bald&rsquo;s kingdom. His own son Charles, king of Aquitaine,
+revolted, and Salomon proclaimed himself king of Brittany in
+succession to Erispoé, who had been assassinated. To check
+the Bretons and the Normans, who were attacking from the
+Atlantic and the Mediterranean, Charles the Bald found himself
+obliged to entrust the defence of the country to Robert the Strong,
+ancestor of the house of Capet and duke of the lands between
+Loire and Seine. Robert the Strong, however, though many
+times victorious over the incorrigible pirates, was killed by them
+in a fight at Brissarthe (866).</p>
+
+<p>Despite all this, Charles spoke authoritatively in his capitularies,
+and though incapable of defending western France, coveted
+other crowns and looked obstinately eastwards.
+He managed to become king of Lorraine on the death
+<span class="sidenote">Division of the kingdom into large fiefs.</span>
+of his nephew Lothair II., and emperor and king of
+Germany on that of his other nephew Louis II. (875);
+though only by breaking the compact of the year 800.
+In 876, the year before his death, he took a third crown, that of
+Italy, though not without a fresh defeat at Andernach by Louis
+the German&rsquo;s troops. His titles increased, indeed, but not his
+power; for while his kingdom was thus growing in area it was
+falling to pieces. The duchy with which he rewarded Robert
+the Strong was only a military command, but became a powerful
+fief. Baldwin I. (d. 879), count of Flanders, turned the country
+between the Scheldt, the Somme and the sea into another feudal
+principality. Aquitaine and Brittany were almost independent,
+Burgundy was in full revolt, and within thirty years Rollo,
+a Norman leader, was to be master of the whole of the lower
+Seine from the Cotentin to the Somme. The fact was that
+between the king&rsquo;s inability to defend the kingdom, and the
+powerlessness of nobles and peasants to protect themselves from
+pillage, every man made it his business to seek new protectors,
+and the country, in spite of Charles the Bald&rsquo;s efforts, began to be
+covered with strongholds, the peasant learning to live beneath
+the shelter of the donjon keeps. Such vassals gave themselves
+utterly to the lord who guarded them, working for him sword
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page812" id="page812"></a>812</span>
+or pickaxe in hand. The king was far away, the lord close
+at hand. Hence the sixty years of terror and confusion
+which came between Charlemagne and the death of Charles
+the Bald suppressed the direct authority of the king in
+favour of the nobles, and prepared the way for a second destruction
+of the monarchy at the hands of a stronger power
+(see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Feudalism</a></span>).</p>
+
+<p>Before long Charles the Bald&rsquo;s followers were dictating to
+him; and in the disaffection caused by his feebleness and
+cowardice prelates and nobles allied themselves
+against him. If they acknowledged the king&rsquo;s authority
+<span class="sidenote">Establishment of feudalism.</span>
+at the assemblies of Yütz (near Thionville) in 844,
+they forced from him a promise that they should keep
+their fiefs and their dignities; and while establishing a right of
+control over all his actions they deprived him of his right of
+jurisdiction over them. Despite Charles&rsquo;s resistance his royal
+power dwindled steadily: an appeal to Hincmar, archbishop of
+Reims, entailed concessions to the Church. In 856 some of his
+vassals deserted him and went over to Louis the German. To
+win them back Charles had to sign a new charter, by the terms
+of which loyalty was no longer a one-sided engagement but
+a reciprocal contract between king and vassal. He gave up his
+personal right of distributing the fiefs and honours which were
+the price of adherence, and thus lost for the Carolingians the free
+disposal of the immense territories they had gradually usurped;
+they retained the over-lordship, it is true, but this over-lordship,
+without usufruct and without choice of tenant, was but a
+barren possession.</p>
+
+<p>Like their territories public authority little by little slipped
+from the grasp of the Carolingians, largely because of their
+abuse of their too great power. They had concentrated
+the entire administration in their own hands. Like
+<span class="sidenote">Decay of the Carolinglan power.</span>
+Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald
+were omnipotent. There were no provincial assemblies,
+no municipal bodies, no merchant-gilds, no autonomous churches;
+the people had no means of making themselves heard; they
+had no place in an administration which was completely in the
+hands of a central hierarchy of officials of all ranks, from dukes
+to <i>scabini</i>, with counts, viscounts and <i>centenarii</i> in between.
+However, these dukes and counts were not merely officials: they
+too had become lords of <i>fideles</i>, of their own <i>advocati</i>, <i>centenarii</i>
+and <i>scabini</i>, whom they nominated, and of all the free men of
+the county, who since Charlemagne&rsquo;s time had been first allowed
+and then commanded to &ldquo;commend&rdquo; themselves to a lord,
+receiving feudal benefices in return. Any deprivation or supersession
+of the count might impoverish, dispossess or ruin the
+vassals of the entire county; so that all, vassals or officials,
+small and great, feeling their danger, united their efforts, and
+lent each other mutual assistance against the permanent menace
+of an overweening monarchy. Hence, at the end of the 9th
+century, the heredity of offices as well as of fiefs. In the disordered
+state of society official stability was a valuable warrant
+of peace, and the administrative hierarchy, lay or spiritual,
+thus formed a mould for the hierarchy of feudalism. There
+was no struggle with the king, simply a cessation of obedience;
+for without strength or support in the kingdom he was powerless
+to resist. In vain Charles the Bald affirmed his royal authority
+in the capitularies of Quierzy-sur-Oise (857), Reims (860), Pistes
+(864), Gondreville (872) and Quierzy-sur-Oise (877); each time
+in exchange for assent to the royal will and renewal of oaths
+he had to acquiesce in new safeguards against himself and by
+so much to diminish that power of protection against violence
+and injustice for which the weak had always looked to the throne.
+Far from forbidding the relation of lord and vassal, Charles the
+Bald imposed it upon every man in his kingdom, himself proclaiming
+the real incapacity and failure of that theoretic royal power
+to which he laid claim. Henceforward royalty had no servants,
+since it performed no service. There was no longer the least
+hesitation over the choice between liberty with danger and
+subjection with safety; men sought and found in vassalage
+the right to live, and willingly bartered away their liberty
+for it.</p>
+
+<p>The degeneration of the monarchy was clearly apparent on
+the death of Charles the Bald, when his son, Louis the Stammerer,
+<span class="sidenote">Louis the Stammerer (877-879).</span>
+was only assured of the throne, which had passed by
+right of birth under the Merovingians and been
+hereditary under the earlier Carolingians, through his
+election by nobles and bishops under the direction
+of Hugh the Abbot, successor of Robert the Strong, each voter
+having been won over by gift of abbeys, counties or manors.
+When Louis died two years later (879), the same nobles met,
+some at Creil, the rest at Meaux, and the first party chose Louis
+of Germany, who preferred Lorraine to the crown; while the
+<span class="sidenote">Louis III. and Carloman (879-884).</span>
+rest anointed Louis III. and Carloman, sons of the
+late king, themselves deciding how the kingdom was
+to be divided between the two princes. Thus the
+king no longer chose his own vassals; but vassals
+and fief-holders actually elected their king according to the
+material advantages they expected from him. Louis III. and
+Carloman justified their election by their brilliant victories
+over the Normans at Saucourt (881) and near Epernay (883);
+but at their deaths (882-884), the nobles, instead of taking
+Louis&rsquo;s boy-son, Charles the Simple, as king, chose Charles the
+Fat, king of Germany, because he was emperor and seemed
+<span class="sidenote">Charles the Fat. (884-888.)</span>
+powerful. He united once more the dominions of
+Charlemagne; but he disgraced the imperial throne
+by his feebleness, and was incapable of using his
+immense army to defend Paris when it was besieged
+by the Normans. Expelled from Italy, he only came to France
+to buy a shameful peace. When he died in January 888 he had
+not a single faithful vassal, and the feudal lords resolved never
+again to place the sceptre in a hand that could not wield the
+sword.</p>
+
+<p>The death-struggle of the Carolingians lasted for a century
+of uncertainty and anarchy, during which time the bishops,
+counts and lords might well have suppressed the
+monarchy had they been hostile to it. Such, however,
+<span class="sidenote">Death-struggle of the Carolingians (888-987).</span>
+was not their policy; on the contrary, they needed a
+king to act as agent for their private interests, since
+he alone could invest their rank and dignities with
+an official and legitimate character. They did not at once
+agree on Charles&rsquo;s successor; for some of them chose Eudes
+(Odo), son of Robert the Strong, for his brilliant defence of Paris
+against the Normans in 885; others Guy, duke of Spoleto in
+Italy, who had himself crowned at Langres; while many wished
+for Arnulf, illegitimate son of Carloman, king of Germany and
+emperor. Eudes was victor in the struggle, and was crowned
+and anointed at Compiègne on the 29th of February 888; but
+five years later, meeting with defeat after defeat at the hands of
+the Normans, his followers deserted from him to Charles the
+Simple, grandson of Charles the Bald, who was also supported
+by Fulk, archbishop of Reims.</p>
+
+<p>This first Carolingian restoration took place on the 28th of
+January 893, and thenceforward throughout this warlike period
+from 888 to 936 the crown passed from one dynasty
+<span class="sidenote">King Odo (888-893).</span>
+to the other according to the interests of the nobles.
+After desperate strife, an <span class="correction" title="amended from agreeement">agreement</span> between the two
+rivals, Arnulf&rsquo;s support, and the death of Odo,
+secured it for Charles III., surnamed the Simple. His subjects
+remained faithful to him for a good while, as he put an end to the
+Norman invasions which had desolated the kingdom for two
+centuries, and cowed those barbarians, much to the benefit of
+France. By the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte (911) their leader
+Rolf (Rollo) obtained one of Charles&rsquo;s daughters in marriage
+and the district of the Lower Seine which the Normans had long
+occupied, on condition that he and his men ceased their attacks
+and accepted Christianity. Having thus tranquillized the west,
+<span class="sidenote">Charles the Simple (893-929).</span>
+Charles took advantage of Louis the Child&rsquo;s death, and
+conquered Lorraine, in spite of opposition from Conrad,
+king of Germany (921). But his preference for his new
+conquest, and for a Lorrainer of low birth named
+Hagano, aroused the jealousy and discontent of his nobles.
+They first elected Robert, count of Paris (923), and then after
+his death in a successful battle near Soissons against Charles the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page813" id="page813"></a>813</span>
+Simple, Rudolph of Burgundy, his son-in-law. But Herbert of
+Vermandois, one of the successful combatants at
+<span class="sidenote">Rudolph of Burgundy (923-936).</span>
+Soissons, coveted the countship of Laon, which
+Rudolph refused him; and he thereupon proclaimed
+Charles the Simple, who had confided his cause to him,
+as king once more. Seeing his danger Rudolph ceded the countship
+to Herbert, and Charles was relegated to his prison until
+his death in 929. After unsuccessful wars against the nobles
+of the South, against the Normans, who asserted that they were
+bound to no one except Charles the Simple, and against the
+Hungarians (who, now the Normans were pacified, were acting
+their part in the East), Rudolph had a return of good fortune
+in the years between 930 and 936, despite the intrigues of Herbert
+of Vermandois. Upon his death the nobles assembled to elect
+a king; and Hugh the Great, Rudolph&rsquo;s brother-in-law, moved
+by irresolution as much as by prudence, instead of taking the
+crown, preferred to restore the Carolingians once more in the
+person of Charles the Simple&rsquo;s son, Louis d&rsquo;Outremer, himself
+claiming numerous privileges and enjoying the exercise of power
+unencumbered by a title which carried with it the jealousy of
+the nobles.</p>
+
+<p>This restoration was no more peaceful than its predecessor.
+The Carolingians had as it were a fresh access of energy, and the
+struggle against the Robertinians went on relentlessly.
+Both sides employed similar methods: one was supported
+<span class="sidenote">Louis IV. the Foreigner (936-954.)</span>
+by Normandy, the other by Germany; the
+archbishop of Reims was for the Carolingians, the
+Robertinians had to be content with the less influential bishop
+of Sens. Louis soon proved to Hugh the Great, who was trying
+to play the part of a mayor of the palace, that he was by no
+means a <i>roi fainéant</i>; and the powerful duke of the Franks,
+growing uneasy, allied himself with Herbert of Vermandois,
+William of Normandy and his brother-in-law Otto I. king of
+Germany, who resented the loss of Lorraine. Louis defended
+himself with energy, aided chiefly by the nobles of the South,
+by his relative Edmund, king of the English, and then by Otto
+himself, whose brother-in-law he also had become. A peace
+advantageous to him was made in 942, and on the deaths of his
+two opponents, Herbert of Vermandois and William of Normandy,
+all seemed to be going well for him; but his guardianship
+of Richard, son of the duke of Normandy, aroused fresh
+strife, and on the 13th of July 945 he fell into an ambush and
+suffered a captivity similar to his father&rsquo;s of twenty-two years
+before. No one had befriended Charles the Simple, but Louis had
+his wife Gerberga, who won over to his cause the kings of England
+and Germany and even Hugh. Hugh set him free, insisting, as
+payment for his aid, on the cession of Laon, the capital of the
+kingdom and the last fortified town remaining to the Carolingians
+(946). Louis was hardly free before he took vengeance, harried
+the lands of his rival, restored to the archiepiscopal throne of
+Reims Artald, his faithful adviser, in place of the son of Herbert
+of Vermandois, and managed to get Hugh excommunicated
+by the council of Ingelheim (948) and by the pope. A two years&rsquo;
+struggle wearied the rivals, and they made peace in 950. Louis
+once more held Laon, and in the following year further
+strengthened his position by a successful expedition into Burgundy.
+Still his last years were not peaceful; for besides civil
+wars there were two Hungarian invasions of France (951
+and 954).</p>
+
+<p>Louis&rsquo;s sudden death in 954 once more placed the Carolingian
+line in peril, since he had not had time to have his son Lothair
+crowned. For a third time Hugh had the disposal of
+the crown, and he was no more tempted to take it himself
+<span class="sidenote">Lothair (954-986).</span>
+in 954 than in 923 or 936: it was too profitless a
+possession. Thanks to Hugh&rsquo;s support and to the good offices
+of Otto and his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne and duke
+of Lorraine, Lothair was chosen king and crowned at Reims.
+Hugh exacted, as payment for his disinterestedness and fidelity,
+a renewal of his sovereignty over Burgundy with that of Aquitaine
+as well; he was in fact the viceroy of the kingdom, and others
+imitated him by demanding indemnities, privileges and confirmation
+of rights, as was customary at the beginning of a reign.
+Hugh strengthened his position in Burgundy, Lorraine and
+Normandy by means of marriages; but just as his power was
+at its height he died (956). His death and the minority of his
+sons, Hugh Capet and Eudes, gave the Carolingian dynasty thirty
+years more of life.</p>
+
+<p>For nine years (956-965) Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, was
+regent of France, and thanks to him there was a kind of <i>entente
+cordiale</i> between the Carolingians and the Robertinians and Otto.
+Bruno made Lothair recognize Hugh as duke of France and
+Eudes as duke of Burgundy; but the sons preserved the father&rsquo;s
+enmity towards king Louis, despite the archbishop&rsquo;s repeated
+efforts. His death deprived Lothair of a wise and devoted
+guardian, even if it did set him free from German influence;
+and the death of Odalric, archbishop of Reims, in 969, was
+another fatal loss for the Carolingians, succeeded as he was by
+Adalbero, who, though learned, pious and highly intelligent,
+was none the less ambitious. On the death of Otto I. (973)
+Lothair wished to regain Lorraine; but his success was small,
+owing to his limited resources and the uncertain support of his
+vassals. In 980, regretting his fruitless quarrel with Otto II.,
+who had ravaged the whole country as far as Paris, and fearing
+that even with the support of the house of Vermandois he would
+be crushed like his father Louis IV. between the duke of France
+and the emperor, who could count on the archbishop of Reims,
+Lothair made peace with Otto&mdash;a great mistake, which cost him
+the prestige he had gained among his nobles by his fairly successful
+struggle with the emperor, drawing down upon him, moreover,
+the swift wrath of Hugh, who thought himself tricked. Otto,
+meanwhile, whom he was unwise enough to trust, made peace
+secretly with Hugh, as it was his interest to play off his two old
+enemies one against the other. However, Otto died first (983),
+leaving a three-year-old son, Otto III., and Lothair, hoping for
+Lorraine, upheld the claims of Henry of Bavaria, who wished to
+oust Otto. This was a war-signal for Archbishop Adalbero
+and his adviser Gerbert, devoted to the idea of the Roman
+empire, and determined that it should still be vested in the race
+of Otto, which had always been beneficent to the Church.</p>
+
+<p>They decided to set the Robertinians against the Carolingians,
+and on their advice Hugh Capet dispersed the assembly of
+Compiègne which Lothair had commissioned to examine
+Adalbero&rsquo;s behaviour. On Lothair&rsquo;s death in
+<span class="sidenote">Louis V. (986-987).</span>
+986, Hugh surrounded his son and successor, Louis V.,
+with intrigues. Louis was a weak-minded and violent young man
+with neither authority nor prestige, and Hugh tried to have him
+placed under tutelage. After Louis V.&rsquo;s sudden death, aged
+twenty, in 987, Adalbero and Gerbert, with the support of the
+reformed Cluniac clergy, at the Assembly of Senlis eliminated
+from the succession the rightful heir, Charles of Lorraine, who,
+without influence or wealth, had become a stranger in his own
+country, and elected Hugh Capet, who, though rich and powerful,
+was superior neither in intellect nor character. Thus the triple
+alliance of Adalbero&rsquo;s bold and adroit imperialism with the
+cautious and vacillating ambition of the duke of the Franks,
+and the impolitic hostility towards Germany of the ruined
+Carolingians, resulted in the unlooked-for advent of the new
+Capetian dynasty.</p>
+
+<p>This event completed the evolution of the forces that had
+produced feudalism, the basis of the medieval social system.
+The idea of public authority had been replaced by one
+that was simpler and therefore better fitted for a half-civilized
+<span class="sidenote">Dismemberment of the kingdom.</span>
+society&mdash;that of dependence of the weak on
+the strong, voluntarily entered on by means of mutual
+contract. Feudalism had gained ground in the 8th century;
+feudalism it was which had raised the first Carolingian to the
+throne as being the richest and most powerful person in Austrasia;
+and Charlemagne with all his power had been as utterly unable
+as the Merovingians to revive the idea of an abstract and impersonal
+state. Charlemagne&rsquo;s vassals, however, had needed
+him; while from Charles the Bald onward it was the king who
+needed the vassals&mdash;a change more marked with each successive
+prince. The feudal system had in fact turned against the throne,
+the vassals using it to secure a permanent hold upon offices and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page814" id="page814"></a>814</span>
+fiefs, and to get possession of estates and of power. After Charles
+the Bald&rsquo;s death royalty had only, so to speak, a shell&mdash;administrative
+officialdom. No longer firmly rooted in the soil, the monarchy
+was helpless before local powers which confronted it, seized upon
+the land, and cut off connexion between throne and people.
+The king, the supreme lord, was the only lord without lands, a
+nomad in his own realms, merely lingering there until starved out.
+Feudalism claimed its new rights in the capitulary of Quierzy-sur-Oise
+in 857; the rights of the monarchy began to dwindle in
+877.</p>
+
+<p>But vassalage could only be a cause of disintegration, not of
+unity, and that this disintegration did not at once spread indefinitely
+was due to the dozen or so great military commands&mdash;Flanders,
+Burgundy, Aquitaine, &amp;c.&mdash;which Charles the Bald
+had been obliged to establish on a strong territorial basis. One
+of these great vassals, the duke of France, was amply provided
+with estates and offices, in contrast to the landless Carolingian,
+and his power, like that of the future kings of Prussia and
+Austria, was based on military authority, for he had a frontier&mdash;that
+of Anjou. Then the inevitable crisis had come. For a
+hundred years the great feudal lords had disposed of the crown
+as they pleased, handing it back and forward from one dynasty
+to another. At the same time the contrast between the vast
+proportions of the Carolingian empire and its feeble administrative
+control over a still uncivilized community became more
+and more accentuated. The Empire crumbled away by degrees.
+Each country began to lead its own separate existence, stammering
+its own tongue; the different nations no longer understood
+one another, and no longer had any general ideas in common.
+The kingdoms of France and Germany, still too large, owed their
+existence to a series of dispossessions imposed on sovereigns
+too feeble to hold their own, and consisted of a great number
+of small states united by a very slight bond. At the end of the
+10th century the duchy of France was the only central part of
+the kingdom which was still free and without organization. The
+end was bound to come, and the final struggle was between Laon,
+the royal capital, and Reims, the ecclesiastical capital, the
+former carrying with it the soil of France, and the latter the
+crown. The Capets captured the first in 985 and the other in
+987. Thenceforth all was over for the Carolingians, who were
+left with no heritage save their great name.</p>
+
+<p>Was the day won for the House of Capet? In the 11th century
+the kings of that line possessed meagre domains scattered about
+in the Île de France among the seigniorial possessions
+of Brie, Beauce, Beauvaisis and Valois. They were
+<span class="sidenote">The House of Capet.</span>
+hemmed in by the powerful duchy of Normandy, the
+counties of Blois, Flanders and Champagne, and the duchy
+of Burgundy. Beyond these again stretched provinces practically
+impenetrable to royal influence: Brittany, Gascony,
+Toulouse, Septimania and the Spanish March. The monarchy
+lay stifling in the midst of a luxuriant feudal forest which surrounded
+its only two towns of any importance: Paris, the city
+of the future, and Orleans, the city of learning. Its power,
+exercised with an energy tempered by prudence, ran to waste
+like its wealth in a suzerainty over turbulent vassals devoid of
+common government or administration, and was undermined
+by the same lack of social discipline among its vassals which had
+sapped the power of the Carolingians. The new dynasty was
+thus the poorest and weakest of the great civil and ecclesiastical
+lordships which occupied the country from the estuary of the
+Scheldt to that of the Llobregat, and bounded approximately
+by the Meuse, the Saône and the ridge of the Cévennes; yet it
+cherished a great ambition which it revealed at times during its
+first century (987-1108)&mdash;a determination not to repeat the
+Carolingian failure. It had to wait two centuries after the revolution
+of 987 before it was strong enough to take up the dormant
+tradition of an authority like that of Rome; and until then it
+cunningly avoided unequal strife in which, victory being impossible,
+reverses might have weakened those titles, higher than
+any due to feudal rights, conferred by the heritage of the Caesars
+and the coronation at Reims, and held in reserve for the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>The new dynasty thus at first gave the impression rather of
+decrepitude than of youth, seeming more a continuation of the
+Carolingian monarchy than a new departure. Hugh
+Capet&rsquo;s reign was one of disturbance and danger;
+<span class="sidenote">Hugh Capet (987-996).</span>
+behind his dim personality may be perceived the
+struggle of greater forces&mdash;royalty and feudalism, the
+French clergy and the papacy, the kingdom of France and the
+Empire. Hugh Capet needed more than three years and the betrayal
+of his enemy into his hands before he could parry the attack
+of a quite second-rate adversary, Charles of Lorraine (990), the
+last descendant of Charlemagne. The insubordination of several
+great vassals&mdash;the count of Vermandois, the duke of Burgundy,
+the count of Flanders&mdash;who treated him as he had treated the
+Carolingian king; the treachery of Arnulf, archbishop of Reims,
+who let himself be won over by the empress Theophano; the
+papal hostility inflamed by the emperor against the claim of
+feudal France to independence,&mdash;all made it seem for a time
+as though the unity of the Roman empire of the West would
+be secured at Hugh&rsquo;s expense and in Otto&rsquo;s favour; but as
+a matter of fact this papal and imperial hostility ended by
+making the Capet dynasty a national one. When Hugh died
+in 996, he had succeeded in maintaining his liberty mainly, it
+is true, by diplomacy, not force, despite opposing powers and
+his own weakness. Above all, he had secured the future by
+associating his son Robert with him on the throne; and although
+the nobles and the archbishop of Reims were disturbed by this
+suspension of the feudal right of election, and tried to oppose it,
+they were unsuccessful.</p>
+
+<p>Robert the Pious, a crowned monk, resembled his father in
+eschewing great schemes, whether from timidity or prudence;
+yet from 996 to 1031 he preserved intact the authority
+<span class="sidenote">Robert the Pious (996-1031).</span>
+he had inherited from Hugh, despite many domestic disturbances.
+He maintained a defiant attitude towards
+Germany; increased his heritage; strengthened his
+royal title by the addition of that of duke of Burgundy after
+fourteen years of pillage; and augmented the royal domain by
+adding several countships on the south-east and north-west.
+Limited in capacity, he yet understood the art of acquisition.</p>
+
+<p>Henry I., his son, had to struggle with a powerful vassal,
+Eudes, count of Chartres and Troyes, and was obliged for a time
+to abandon his father&rsquo;s anti-German policy. Eudes,
+who was rash and adventurous, in alliance with the
+<span class="sidenote">Henry I. (1031-1060).</span>
+queen-mother, supported the second son, Robert,
+and captured the royal town of Sens. In order to
+retake it Henry ceded the beautiful valley of the Saône and the
+Rhône to the German emperor Conrad, and henceforth the
+kingdom of Burgundy was, like Lorraine, to follow the fortunes
+of Germany. Henry had besides to invest his brother with the
+duchy of Burgundy&mdash;a grave error which hampered French
+politics during three centuries. Like his father, he subsequently
+managed to retrieve some of the crown lands from William the
+Bastard, the too-powerful duke of Normandy; and he made
+a praiseworthy though fruitless attempt to regain possession
+of Lorraine for the French crown. Finally, by the coronation
+of his son Philip (1059) he confirmed the hereditary right of the
+Capets, soon to be superior to the elective rights of the bishops
+and great barons of the kingdom. The chief merit of these
+early Capets, indeed, was that they had sons, so that their
+dynasty lasted on without disastrous minorities or quarrels
+over the division of inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>Philip I. achieved nothing during his long reign of forty-eight
+years except the necessary son, Louis the Fat. Unsuccessful
+even in small undertakings he was utterly incapable
+of great ones; and the two important events of his
+<span class="sidenote">Philip I. (1060-1108).</span>
+reign took place, the one against his will, the other
+without his help. The first, which lessened Norman
+aggression in his kingdom, was William the Bastard&rsquo;s conquest
+of England (1066); the second was the First Crusade preached
+by the French pope Urban II. (1095). A few half-hearted
+campaigns against recalcitrant vassals and a long and obstinate
+quarrel with the papacy over his adulterous union with Bertrade
+de Montfort, countess of Anjou, represented the total activity
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page815" id="page815"></a>815</span>
+of Philip&rsquo;s reign; he was greedy and venal, by no means disdaining
+the petty profits of brigandage, and he never left his own
+domains.</p>
+
+<p>After a century&rsquo;s lethargy the house of Capet awoke once more
+with Louis VI. and began the destruction of the feudal polity.
+For thirty-four years of increasing warfare this active
+and energetic king, this brave and persevering soldier,
+<span class="sidenote">Louis VI. the Fat (1108-1137).</span>
+never spared himself, energetically policing the royal
+demesne against such pillagers as Hugh of Le Puiset
+or Thomas of Marle. There was, however, but little difference
+yet between a count of Flanders or of Chartres and Louis VI.,
+the possessor of a but small and perpetually disturbed realm,
+who was praised by his minister, the monk Suger, for making
+his power felt as far as distant Berril. This was clearly shown
+when he attempted to force the great feudal lords to recognize
+his authority. His bold endeavour to establish William Clito
+in Flanders ended in failure; and his want of strength was
+particularly humiliating in his unfortunate struggle with Henry
+I., king of the English and duke of Normandy, who was powerful
+and well served, the real master of a comparatively weak baronage.
+Louis only escaped being crushed because he remembered,
+as did his successors for long after him, that his house owed its
+power to the Church.</p>
+
+<p>The Church has never loved weakness; she has always had a
+secret sympathy for power, whatever its source, when she could
+hope to capture it and make it serve her ends. Louis VI. defended
+her against feudal robbers; and she supported him in his
+struggles against the nobles, making him, moreover, by his son&rsquo;s
+marriage with the heiress of Aquitaine, the greatest and richest
+landholder of the kingdom. But Louis was not the obedient
+tool she wished for. With equal firmness and success he vindicated
+his rights, whether against the indirect attacks of the
+papacy on his independence, or the claims of the ecclesiastical
+courts which, in principle, he made subordinate to the jurisdiction
+of the crown; whether in episcopal elections, or in ecclesiastical
+reforms which might possibly imperil his power or his
+revenues. The prestige of this energetic king, protector of the
+Church, of the infant communes in the towns, and of the peasants
+as against the constant oppressions of feudalism, became still
+greater at the end of his reign, when an invasion of the German
+emperor Henry V. in alliance with Henry Beauclerk of Normandy
+(Henry I. of England), rallied his subjects round the oriflamme of
+St Denis, awakening throughout northern France the unanimous
+and novel sentiment of national danger.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately his successor, Louis VII., almost destroyed
+his work by a colossal blunder, although circumstances
+seemed much in his favour. Germany and England, the two
+powers especially to be dreaded, were busy with
+<span class="sidenote">Louis VII. the Young (1137-1180).</span>
+internal troubles and quarrels of succession. On the
+other hand, thanks to his marriage with Eleanor
+of Aquitaine, Louis&rsquo;s own domains had been increased
+by the greater part of the country between the Loire and the
+Pyrenees; while his father&rsquo;s minister, the monk Suger, continued
+to assist him with his moderation and prudence. His first
+successes against Theobald of Champagne, who for thirty years
+had been the most dangerous of the great French barons and
+had refused a vassal&rsquo;s services to Louis VI., as well as the adroit
+diplomacy with which he wrested from Geoffrey the Fair, count
+of Anjou, a part of the Norman Vexin long claimed by the French
+kings, in exchange for permitting him to conquer Normandy,
+augured well for his boldness and activity, had he but confined
+them to serving his own interests. The second crusade, undertaken
+to expiate his burning of the church of Vitry, inaugurated
+a series of magnificent but fruitless exploits; while his wife
+was the cause of domestic quarrels still more disastrous. Piety
+and a thirst for glory impelled Louis to take the lead in this
+<span class="sidenote">The second crusade.</span>
+fresh expedition to the Holy Land, despite the
+opposition of Suger, and the hesitation of the pope,
+Bernard of Clairvaux and the barons. The alliance
+with the German king Conrad III. only enhanced the
+difficulties of an enterprise already made hazardous by the
+misunderstandings between Greeks and Latins. The Crusade
+ended in the double disaster of military defeat and martial
+dishonour (1147-1149); and Suger&rsquo;s death in 1151 deprived
+Louis of a counsellor who had exercised the regency skilfully
+and with success, just at the very moment when his divorce
+from Eleanor was to jeopardize the fortunes of the Capets.</p>
+
+<p>For the proud and passionate Eleanor married, two months
+later (May 1152), the young Henry, count of Anjou and duke
+of Normandy, who held, besides these great fiefs,
+the whole of the south-west of France, and in two
+<span class="sidenote">Rivalry of the Capets and Angevins.</span>
+years&rsquo; time the crown of England as well. Henry and
+Louis at once engaged in the first Capet-Angevin duel,
+destined to last a hundred years (1152-1242). When France
+and England thus entered European history, their conditions
+were far from being equal. In England royal power was strong;
+the size of the Angevin empire was vast, and the succession
+assured. It was only abuse of their too-great powers that ruined
+the early Angevin kings. France in the 12th century was merely
+a federation of separate states, jealously independent, which
+the king had to negotiate with rather than rule; while his own
+possessions, shorn of the rich heritage of Aquitaine, were, so to
+speak, swamped by those of the English king. For some time
+it was feared that the French kingdom would be entirely absorbed
+in consequence of the marriage between Louis&rsquo;s daughter
+and Henry II.&rsquo;s eldest son. The two rivals were typical of their
+states, Henry II. being markedly superior to Louis in political
+resource, military talent and energy. He failed, however, to
+realize his ambition of shutting in the Capet king and isolating
+him from the rest of Europe by crafty alliances, notably that
+with the emperor Frederick Barbarossa&mdash;while watching an
+opportunity to supplant him upon the French throne. It is
+extraordinary that Louis should have escaped final destruction,
+considering that Henry had subdued Scotland, retaken Anjou
+from his brother Geoffrey, won a hold over Brittany, and schemed
+successfully for Languedoc. But the Church once more came
+to the rescue of her devoted son. The retreat to France of Pope
+Alexander III., after he had been driven from Rome by the
+emperor Frederick in favour of the anti-pope Victor, revived
+Louis&rsquo;s moral prestige. Henry II.&rsquo;s quarrel with Thomas Becket,
+archbishop of Canterbury, which ran its course in France (1164-1171)
+as a struggle for the independence and reform of the Church,
+both threatened by the Constitutions of Clarendon, and ended
+with the murder of Becket in 1172, gave Louis yet another
+advantage over his rival. Finally the birth of Philip Augustus
+(1165), after thirty years of childless wedlock, saved the kingdom
+from a war of succession just at the time when the powerful
+Angevin sway, based entirely upon force, was jeopardized by
+the rebellion of Henry II.&rsquo;s sons against their father. Louis
+naturally joined the coalition of 1173, but showed no more
+vigour in this than in his other wars; and his fate would have been
+sealed had not the pope checked Henry by the threat of an
+interdict, and reconciled the combatants (1177). Louis had still
+time left to effect the coronation of his son Philip Augustus
+(1179), and to associate him with himself in the exercise of the
+royal power for which he had grown too old and infirm.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Augustus, who was to be the bitterest enemy of Henry
+II. and the Angevins, was barely twenty before he revealed the
+full measure of his cold energy and unscrupulous
+ambition. In five years (1180-1186) he rid himself
+<span class="sidenote">Philip Augustus (1180-1223).</span>
+of the overshadowing power of Philip of Alsace, count
+of Flanders, and his own uncles, the counts of
+Champagne; while the treaty of May 20th, 1186, was his first
+rough lesson to the feudal leagues, which he had reduced to
+powerlessness, and to the subjugated duke of Burgundy and
+count of Flanders. Northern and eastern France recognized the
+suzerainty of the Capet, and Philip Augustus was now bold
+enough to attack Henry II., the master of the west, whose
+friendly neutrality (assured by the treaty of Gisors) had made
+possible the successive defeats of the great French barons.
+Like his father, Philip understood how to make capital out of the
+quarrels of the aged and ailing Henry II. with his sons, especially
+with Richard, who claimed his French heritage in his father&rsquo;s
+lifetime, and raised up enemies for the disunited Angevins even
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page816" id="page816"></a>816</span>
+in Germany. After two years of constant defeat, Henry&rsquo;s
+capitulation at Azai proved once more that fortune is never
+with the old. The English king had to submit himself to &ldquo;the
+advice and desire of the king of France,&rdquo; doing him homage for
+all continental fiefs (1187-1189).</p>
+
+<p>The defection of his favourite son John gave Henry his deathblow,
+and Philip Augustus found himself confronted by a new
+king of England, Richard C&oelig;ur de Lion, as powerful,
+besides being younger and more energetic. Philip&rsquo;s
+<span class="sidenote">Philip Augustus and Richard C&oelig;ur de Lion.</span>
+ambition could not rest satisfied with the petty
+principalities of Amiens, Vermandois and Valois,
+which he had added to the royal demesne. The third
+crusade, undertaken, sorely against Philip&rsquo;s will, in
+alliance with Richard, only increased the latent hostility between
+the two kings; and in 1191 Philip abandoned the enterprise
+in order to return to France and try to plunder his absent rival.
+Despite his solemn oath no scruples troubled him: witness the
+large sums of money he offered to the emperor Henry VI. if he
+would detain Richard, who had been made prisoner by the duke
+of Austria on his return from the crusade; and his negotiations
+with his brother John Lackland, whom he acknowledged king of
+England in exchange for the cession of Normandy. But Henry
+VI. suddenly liberated Richard, and in five years that &ldquo;devil
+set free&rdquo; took from Philip all the profit of his trickery, and shut
+him off from Normandy by the strong fortress of Château-Gaillard
+(1194-1199).</p>
+
+<p>Happily an accident which caused Richard&rsquo;s death at the
+siege of Chalus, and the evil imbecility of his brother and successor,
+John Lackland, brilliantly restored the fortunes
+of the Capets. The quarrel between John and his
+<span class="sidenote">Philip Augustus and John Lackland.</span>
+nephew Arthur of Brittany gave Philip Augustus
+one of those opportunities of profiting by family
+discord which, coinciding with discontent among the various
+peoples subject to the house of Anjou, had stood him in such
+good stead against Henry II. and Richard. He demanded
+renunciation on John&rsquo;s part, not of Anjou only, but of Poitou
+and Normandy&mdash;of all his French-speaking possessions, in fact&mdash;in
+favour of Arthur, who was supported by William des Roches,
+the most powerful lord of the region of the Loire. Philip&rsquo;s
+divorce from Ingeborg of Denmark, who appealed successfully
+to Pope Innocent III., merely delayed the inevitable conflict.
+John of England, moreover, was a past-master in the art of
+making enemies of his friends, and his conduct towards his vassals
+of Aquitaine furnished a judicial pretext for conquest. The
+royal judges at Paris condemned John, as a felon, to death and
+the forfeiture of his fiefs (1203), and the murder of Arthur completed
+his ruin. Philip Augustus made a vigorous onslaught on
+Normandy in right of justice and of superior force, took the
+formidable fortress of Château-Gaillard on the Seine after several
+months&rsquo; siege, and invested Rouen, which John abandoned,
+fleeing to England. In Anjou, Touraine, Maine and Poitou,
+lords, towns and abbeys made their submission, won over by
+Philip&rsquo;s bribes despite Pope Innocent III.&rsquo;s attempts at intervention.
+In 1208 John was obliged to own the Plantagenet
+continental power as lost. There were no longer two rival
+monarchies in France; the feudal equilibrium was destroyed,
+to the advantage of the duchy of France.</p>
+
+<p>But Philip in his turn nearly allowed himself to be led into an
+attempt at annexing England, and so reversing for his own
+benefit the work of the Angevins (1213); but, happily for the
+future of the dynasty, Pope Innocent III. prevented this.
+Thanks to the ecclesiastical sanction of his royalty, Philip had
+successfully braved the pope for twenty years, in the matter of
+Ingeborg and again in that of the German schism, when he had
+supported Philip of Swabia against Otto of Brunswick, the
+pope&rsquo;s candidate. In 1213, John Lackland, having been in conflict
+with Innocent regarding the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury,
+had made submission and done homage for his kingdom, and
+Philip wished to take vengeance for this at the expense of the
+rebellious vassals of the north-west, and of Renaud and Ferrand,
+counts of Boulogne and Flanders, thus combating English
+influence in those quarters.</p>
+
+<p>This was a return to the old Capet policy; but it was also
+menacing to many interests, and sure to arouse energetic resistance.
+John seized the opportunity to consolidate
+against Philip a European coalition, which included
+<span class="sidenote">Coalition against Philip Augustus. (1214).</span>
+most of the feudal lords in Flanders, Belgium and
+Lorraine, and the emperor Otto IV. So dangerous did
+the French monarchy already seem! John began
+operations with an attack from Anjou, supported by the notably
+capricious nobles of Aquitaine, and was routed by Philip&rsquo;s son
+at La Roche aux Moines, near Angers, on the 2nd of July
+1214. Twenty-five days later the northern allies, intending to
+surprise the smaller French army on its passage over the bridge
+at Bouvines, themselves sustained a complete defeat. This first
+national victory had not only a profound effect on the whole
+kingdom, but produced consequences of far-reaching importance:
+in Germany it brought about Otto&rsquo;s fall before Frederick II.;
+in England it introduced the great drama of 1215, the first act
+of which closed with Magna Carta&mdash;John Lackland being forced
+to acknowledge the control of his barons, and to share with them
+the power he had abused and disgraced. In France, on the contrary,
+the throne was exalted beyond rivalry, raised far above a
+feudalism which never again ventured on acts of independence
+or rebellion. Bouvines gave France the supremacy of the West.
+The feudalism of Languedoc was all that now remained to
+conquer.</p>
+
+<p>The whole world, in fact, was unconsciously working for
+Philip Augustus. Anxious not to risk his gains, but to consolidate
+them by organization, Philip henceforth until his death in 1223
+operated through diplomacy alone, leaving to others the toil
+and trouble of conquests, the advantages of which were not for
+them. When his son Louis wished to wrest the English crown
+from John, now crushed by his barons, Philip intervened without
+seeming to do so, first with the barons, then with Innocent III.,
+supporting and disowning his son by turns; until the latter,
+held in check by Rome, was forced to sign the treaty of Lambeth
+(1217). When the Church and the needy and fanatical nobles
+of northern and central France destroyed the feudal dynasty
+of Toulouse and the rich civilization of the south in the
+Albigensian crusade, it was for Philip Augustus that their
+leader, Simon de Montfort, all unknowing, conquered Languedoc.
+At last, instead of the two Frances of the <i>langue d&rsquo;oc</i> and the
+<i>langue d&rsquo;oïl</i>, there was but one royal France comprising the whole
+kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Augustus was not satisfied with the destruction of a
+turbulent feudalism; he wished to substitute for it such unity
+and peace as had obtained in the Roman Empire;
+and just as he had established his supremacy over the
+<span class="sidenote">Administration of Philip Augustus.</span>
+feudal lords, so now he managed to extend it over the
+clergy, and to bend them to his will. He took advantage
+of their weakness in the midst of an age of violence.
+By contracts of &ldquo;pariage&rdquo; the clergy claimed and obtained
+the king&rsquo;s protection even in places beyond the king&rsquo;s jurisdiction,
+to their common advantage. Philip thus set the feudal lords
+one against the other; and against them all, first the Church,
+then the communes. He exploited also the townspeople&rsquo;s need
+for security and the instinct of independence which made them
+claim a definite place in the feudal hierarchy. He was the actual
+creator of the communes, although an interested creator, since
+they made a breach in the fortress of feudalism and extended
+the royal authority far beyond the king&rsquo;s demesne. He did
+even more: he gave monarchy the instruments of which it
+still stood in need, gathering round him in Paris a council
+of men humble in origin, but wise and loyal; while in 1190
+he instituted <i>baillis</i> and seneschals throughout his enlarged
+dominions, all-powerful over the nobles and subservient to
+himself. He filled his treasury with spoils harshly wrung from
+all classes; thus inaugurating the monarchy&rsquo;s long and patient
+labours at enlarging the crown lands bit by bit through taxes
+on private property. Finally he created an army, no longer
+the temporary feudal <i>ost</i>, but a more or less permanent royal
+force. By virtue of all these organs of government the throne
+guaranteed peace, justice and a secure future, having routed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page817" id="page817"></a>817</span>
+feudalism with sword and diplomacy. Philip&rsquo;s son was the first
+of the Capets who was not crowned during his father&rsquo;s lifetime;
+a fact clearly showing that the principle of heredity had now
+been established beyond discussion.</p>
+
+<p>Louis VIII.&rsquo;s short reign was but a prolongation of Philip&rsquo;s
+in its realization of his two great designs: the recovery from
+<span class="sidenote">Louis VIII. (1223-1226).</span>
+Henry III. of England of Poitou as far as the Garonne;
+and the crusade against the Albigenses, which with
+small pains procured him the succession of Amaury
+de Montfort, and the Languedoc of the counts of
+Toulouse, if not the whole of Gascony. Louis VIII. died on
+his return from this short campaign without having proved his
+full worth.</p>
+
+<p>But the history of France during the 11th and 12th centuries
+does not entirely consist of these painful struggles of the Capet
+dynasty to shake off the fetters of feudalism. France,
+no longer split up into separate fragments, now began
+<span class="sidenote">Universal French activity.</span>
+to exercise both intellectual and military influence
+over Europe. Everywhere her sons gave proof of
+rejuvenated activity. The Christian missions which others
+were reviving in Prussia and beginning in Hungary were undertaken
+on a vaster scale by the Capets. These &ldquo;elder sons of
+the Church&rdquo; made themselves responsible for carrying out the
+&ldquo;work of God,&rdquo; and French pilgrims in the Holy Land prepared
+the great movement of the Crusades against the infidels.
+Religious faith, love of adventure, the hope of making advantageous
+conquests, anticipations of a promised paradise&mdash;all
+combined to force this advance upon the Orient, which
+though failing to rescue the sepulchre of Christ, the ephemeral
+kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, the dukedom of Athens,
+or the Latin empire of Constantinople, yet gained for France
+that prestige for military glory and religious piety which for
+centuries constituted her strength in the Levant (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Crusades</a></span>).
+At the call of the pope other members of the French chivalry
+also made victorious expeditions against the Mussulmans, and
+founded the Christian kingdom of Portugal. Obeying that
+enterprising spirit which was to take them to England half a
+century later, Normans descended upon southern Italy and
+wrested rich lands from Greeks and Saracens.</p>
+
+<p>In the domain of intellect the advance of the French showed
+a no less dazzling and a no less universal activity; they sang
+as well as they fought, and their epics were worthy
+of their swordsmanship, while their cathedrals were
+<span class="sidenote">Intellectual development.</span>
+hymns in stone as ardent as their soaring flights of
+devotion. In this period of intense religious life
+France was always in the vanguard. It was the ideas of Cluniac
+monks that freed the Church from feudal supremacy, and in
+the 11th century produced a Pope Gregory VII.; the spirit
+of free investigation shown by the heretics of Orleans inspired
+the rude Breton, Abelard, in the 12th century; and with
+Gerbert and Fulbert of Chartres the schools first kindled that
+brilliant light which the university of Paris, organized by Philip
+Augustus, was to shed over the world from the heights of
+Sainte-Geneviève. In the quarrels of the priesthood under
+the Empire it was St Bernard, the great abbot of Clairvaux,
+who tried to arrest the papacy on the slippery downward path
+of theocracy; finally, it was in Suger&rsquo;s church of St Denis
+that French art began that struggle between light against
+darkness which, culminating in Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle,
+was to teach the architects of the world the delight
+of building with airiness of effect. The old basilica which
+contains the history of the monarchy sums up the whole of Gothic
+art to this day, and it was Suger who in the domain of art and
+politics brought forward once more the conception of unity.
+The courteous ideal of French chivalry, with its &ldquo;delectable&rdquo;
+language, was adopted by all seigniorial Europe, which thus
+became animated, as it were, by the life-blood of France. Similarly,
+in the universal movement of those forces which made for
+freedom, France began the age-long struggle to maintain the
+rights of civil society and continually to enlarge the social
+categories. The townsman enriched by commerce and the
+emancipated peasant tried more or less valiantly to shake off
+the yoke of the feudal system, which had been greatly weakened,
+if not entirely broken down, by the crusades. Grouped around
+their belfry-towers and organized within their gilds, they made
+merry in their free jocular language over their own hardships,
+and still more over the vices of their lords. They insinuated
+themselves into the counsels of their ignorant masters, and
+though still sitting humbly at the feet of the barons, these
+upright and well-educated servitors were already dreaming
+of the great deeds they would do when their tyrants should have
+vacated their high position, and when royalty should have
+summoned them to power.</p>
+
+<p>By the beginning of the 13th century the Capet monarchy
+was so strong that the crisis occasioned by the sudden death
+<span class="sidenote">Louis IX. (1226-1270).</span>
+of Louis VIII. was easily surmounted by the foreign
+woman and the child whom he left behind him. It
+is true that that woman was Blanche of Castile, and
+that child the future Louis IX. A virtuous and very
+devout Spanish princess, Blanche assumed the regency of the
+kingdom and the tutelage of her child, and carried them on for
+nine years with so much force of character and capacity
+<span class="sidenote">Blanche of Castile.</span>
+for rule that she soon impressed the clamorous and
+disorderly leaders of the opposition (1226-1235). By
+the treaty of Meaux (1229), her diplomacy combined with the
+influence of the Church to prepare effectually for the annexation
+of Languedoc to the kingdom, supplementing this again by a
+portion of Champagne; and the marriage of her son to Margaret
+of Provence definitely broke the ties which held the country
+within the orbit of the German empire. She managed also to keep
+out of the great quarrel between Frederick II. and the papacy
+which was convulsing Germany. But her finest achievement
+was the education of her son; she taught him that lofty religious
+morality which in his case was not merely a rule for private
+conduct, but also a political programme to which he remained
+faithful even to the detriment of his apparent interests. With
+Louis IX. morality for the first time permeated and dominated
+politics; he had but one end: to do justice to every one and to
+reconcile all Christendom in view of a general crusade.</p>
+
+<p>The oak of Vincennes, under which the king would sit to
+mete out justice, cast its shade over the whole political action
+of Louis IX. He was the arbiter of townspeople, of feudal
+lords and of kings. The interdiction of the judicial
+<span class="sidenote">Louis IX.&rsquo;s policy of arbitration.</span>
+duel, the &ldquo;quarantaine le roi,&rdquo; <i>i.e.</i> &ldquo;the king&rsquo;s truce
+of forty days&rdquo; during which no vengeance might
+be taken for private wrongs, and the assurement,<a name="fa29c" id="fa29c" href="#ft29c"><span class="sp">29</span></a>
+went far to diminish the abuses of warfare by allowing his
+mediation to make for a spirit of reconciliation throughout his
+kingdom. When Thibaud (Theobald), count of Champagne,
+attempted to marry the daughter of Pierre Mauclerc, duke of
+Brittany, without the king&rsquo;s consent, Louis IX., who held the
+county of Champagne at his mercy, contented himself with
+exacting guarantees of peace. Beyond the borders of France,
+at the time of the emperor Frederick II.&rsquo;s conflict with a papacy
+threatened in its temporal powers, though he made no response
+to Frederick&rsquo;s appeal to the civil authorities urging them to
+present a solid front against the pretensions of the Church, and
+though he energetically supported the latter, yet he would not
+admit her right to place kingdoms under interdict, and refused the
+imperial crown which Gregory IX. offered him for one of his
+brothers. He always hoped to bring about an honourable
+agreement between the two adversaries, and in his estimation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page818" id="page818"></a>818</span>
+the advantages of peace outweighed personal interest. In
+matters concerning the succession in Flanders, Hainaut and
+Navarre; in the quarrels of the princes regarding the Empire,
+and in those of Henry III. of England with his barons; it was
+because of his justice and his disinterestedness that he was
+appealed to as a trusted mediator. His conduct towards Henry
+III. was certainly a most characteristic example of his behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>The king of England had entered into the coalition formed
+by the nobility of Poitou and the count of Toulouse to prevent
+the execution of the treaty of 1229 and the enfeoffment
+of Poitou to the king&rsquo;s brother Alphonse. Louis IX.
+<span class="sidenote">Louis IX. and Henry III.</span>
+defeated Henry III. twice within two days, at Taillebourg
+and at Saintes, and obliged him to demand a truce
+(1242). It was forbidden that any lord should be a vassal both
+of the king of France and of the king of England. After this
+Louis IX. had set off upon his first crusade in Egypt (1248-54),
+and on his return he wanted to make this truce into a definite
+treaty and to &ldquo;set love&rdquo; between his children and those of the
+English king. By a treaty signed at Paris (1259), Henry III.
+renounced all the conquests of Philip Augustus, and Louis IX.
+those of his father Louis VIII.&mdash;an example unique in history of a
+victorious king spontaneously giving up his spoil solely for the
+sake of peace and justice, yet proving by his act that honesty is
+the best policy; for monarchy gained much by that moral
+authority which made Louis IX. the universal arbitrator.</p>
+
+<p>But his love of peace and concord was not always &ldquo;sans grands
+despens&rdquo; to the kingdom. In 1258, by renouncing his rights over
+Roussillon and the countship of Barcelona, conquered
+by Charlemagne, he made an advantageous bargain
+<span class="sidenote">The crusade of Tunis.</span>
+because he kept Montpellier; but he committed a
+grave fault in consenting to accept the offers regarding
+Sicily made by Pope Urban IV. to his brother the count of Anjou
+and Provence. That was the origin of the expeditions into Italy
+on which the house of Valois was two centuries later to squander
+the resources of France unavailingly, compromising beyond the
+Alps its interests in the Low Countries and upon the Rhine.
+But Louis IX.&rsquo;s worst error was his obsession with regard to the
+crusades, to which he sacrificed everything. Despite the signal
+failure of the first crusade, when he had been taken prisoner;
+despite the protests of his mother, of his counsellors, and of the
+pope himself, he flung himself into the mad adventure of Tunis.
+Nowhere was his blind faith more plainly shown, combined as
+it was with total ignorance of the formidable migrations that were
+convulsing Asia, and of the complicated game of politics just then
+proceeding between the Christian nations and the Moslems of the
+Mediterranean. At Tunis he found his death, on the 25th of
+August 1270.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Louis IX. and that of his brother Alphonse
+of Poitiers, heir of the count of Toulouse, made Philip III., the
+Bold, legitimate master of northern France and undisputed
+sovereign of southern France. From the latter
+<span class="sidenote">Philip III., the Bold (1270-1285).</span>
+he detached the <i>comtat</i> Venaissin in 1274 and gave it to
+the papacy, which held it until 1791. But he had not
+his father&rsquo;s great soul nor disinterested spirit. Urged by Pope
+Martin IV. he began the fatal era of great international wars by
+his unlucky crusade against the king of Aragon, who, thanks to the
+massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, substituted his own predominance
+in Sicily for that of Charles of Anjou. Philip returned from
+Spain only to die at Perpignan, ending his insignificant reign as he
+had begun it, amid the sorrows of a disastrous retreat (1270-1285).
+His reign was but a halting-place of history between those of
+Louis IX. and Philip the Fair, just when the transition was
+taking place from the last days of the middle ages to the modern
+epoch.</p>
+
+<p>The middle ages had been dominated by four great problems.
+The first of these had been to determine whether there should
+be a universal empire exercising tutelage over the
+nations; and if so, to whom this empire should
+<span class="sidenote">Philip IV. the Fair (1285-1314).</span>
+belong, to pope or emperor. The second had been
+the extension to the East of that Catholic unity which
+reigned in the West. Again, for more than a century, the
+question had also been debated whether the English kings were
+to preserve and increase their power over the soil of France.
+And, finally, two principles had been confronting one another
+in the internal life of all the European states: the feudal and the
+monarchical principles. France had not escaped any of these
+conflicts; but Philip the Fair was the initiator or the instrument
+(it is difficult to say which) who was to put an end to both imperial
+and theocratic dreams, and to the international crusades; who
+was to remove the political axis from the centre of Europe, much
+to the benefit of the western monarchies, now definitely emancipated
+from the feudal yoke and firmly organized against both the
+Church and the barons. The hour had come for Dante, the great
+Florentine poet, to curse the man who was to dismember the
+empire, precipitate the fall of the papacy and discipline feudalism.</p>
+
+<p>Modern in his practical schemes and in his calculated purpose,
+Philip the Fair was still more so in his method, that of legal
+procedure, and in his agents, the lawyers. With him
+the French monarchy defined its ambitions, and little
+<span class="sidenote">Litigious character of Philip the Fair&rsquo;s reign.</span>
+by little forsook its feudal and ecclesiastical character
+in order to clothe itself in juridical forms. His aggressive
+and litigious policy and his ruthless financial
+method were due to those lawyers of the south and of Normandy
+who had been nurtured on Roman law in the universities of
+Bologna or Montpellier, had practised chicanery in the provincial
+courts, had gradually thrust themselves into the great arena of
+politics, and were now leading the king and filling his parlement.
+It was no longer upon religion or morality, it was upon imperial
+and Roman rights that these <i>chevaliers ès lois</i> based the prince&rsquo;s
+omnipotence; and nothing more clearly marks the new tradition
+which was being elaborated than the fact that all the great events
+of Philip the Fair&rsquo;s reign were lawsuits.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these was with the papacy. The famous quarrel
+between the priesthood and the Empire, which had culminated
+at Canossa under Gregory VII., in the apotheosis of
+the Lateran council under Innocent III., and again
+<span class="sidenote">Philip the Fair and the Papacy.</span>
+in the fall of the house of Hohenstaufen under Innocent
+IV., was reopened with the king of France by Boniface
+VIII. The quarrel began in 1294 about a question of money.
+In his bull <i>Clericis laicos</i> the pope protested against the taxes
+levied upon the French clergy by the king, whose expenses were
+increasing with his conquests. But he had not insisted; because
+Philip, between feudal vassals ruined by the crusades and
+lower classes fleeced by everybody, had threatened to forbid
+the exportation from France of any ecclesiastical gold and
+silver. In 1301 and 1302 the arrest of Bernard Saisset, bishop
+of Pamiers, by the officers of the king, and the citation of this
+cleric before the king&rsquo;s tribunal for the crime of <i>lèse-majesté</i>,
+revived the conflict and led Boniface to send an order to free
+Saisset, and to put forward a claim to reform the kingdom
+under the threat of excommunication. In view of the gravity
+of the occasion Philip made an unusually extended appeal to
+public opinion by convoking the states-general at Notre-Dame
+in Paris (1302). Whatever were their views as to the relations
+between ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction, the French
+clergy, ruined by the dues levied by the papal court, ranged
+themselves on the national side with the nobility and the
+<i>bourgeoisie</i>; whereupon the king, with a bold stroke far ahead
+of his time, gave tit for tat. His chancellor, Nogaret, went to
+Anagni to seize the pope and drag him before a council; but
+Boniface died without confessing himself vanquished. As a
+matter of fact the king and his lawyers triumphed, where the
+house of Swabia had failed. After the death of Boniface the
+splendid fabric of the medieval theocracy gave place to the
+rights of civil society, the humiliation of Avignon, the disruption
+of the great schism, the vain efforts of the councils for reform,
+and the radical and heretical solutions of Wycliffe and Huss.</p>
+
+<p>The affair of the Templars was another legal process carried
+out by the same Nogaret. Of course this military religious
+order had lost utility and justification when the Holy
+Land had been evacuated and the crusades were over.
+<span class="sidenote">Philip the Fair and the Templars.</span>
+Their great mistake had lain in becoming rich, and
+rich to excess, through serving as bankers to princes,
+kings and popes; for great financial powers soon became
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page819" id="page819"></a>819</span>
+unpopular. Philip took advantage of this hatred of the lower
+classes and the cowardice of his creature, Pope Clement V.,
+to satisfy his desire for money. The trial of the order (1307-1313)
+was a remarkable example of the use of the religious
+tribunal of the Inquisition as a political instrument. There was
+a dramatic completeness about this unexpected result of the
+crusades. A general arbitrary arrest of the Templars, the
+sequestration of their property, examination under torture,
+the falsifying of procedure, extortion of money from the pope,
+the <i>auto-da-fé</i> of innocent victims, the dishonest pillaging of
+their goods by the joint action of the king and the pope: such
+was the outcome of this vast process of secularization, which
+foreshadowed the events of the 16th and 18th centuries.</p>
+
+<p>External policy had the same litigious character. Philip
+the Fair instituted suits against his natural enemies, the king
+of England and the count of Flanders, foreign princes
+holding possessions within his kingdom; and against
+<span class="sidenote">Philip the Fair and Edward I.</span>
+the emperor, whose ancient province of Lorraine and
+kingdom of Arles constantly changed hands between
+Germany and France. Philip began by interfering in the
+affairs of Sicily and Aragon, his father&rsquo;s inheritance; after
+which, on the pretext of a quarrel between French and English
+sailors, he set up his customary procedure: a citation of the king
+of England before the parlement of Paris, and in case of default
+a decree of forfeiture; the whole followed by execution&mdash;that
+is to say by the unimportant war of 1295. A truce arranged
+by Boniface VIII. restored Guienne to Edward I., gave him
+the hand of Philip&rsquo;s sister for himself and that of the king&rsquo;s
+daughter for his son (1298).</p>
+
+<p>A still more lengthy and unfortunate suit was the attempt
+of Philip the Fair and his successors to incorporate the Flemish
+fief like the English one (1300-1326), thus coming
+into conflict with proud and turbulent republics
+<span class="sidenote">Philip the Fair and Flanders.</span>
+composed of wool and cloth merchants, weavers,
+fullers and powerful counts. Guy de Dampierre,
+count of Namur, who had become count of Flanders on the
+death of his mother Margaret II. in 1279&mdash;an ambitious, greedy
+and avaricious man&mdash;was arrested at the Louvre on account
+of his attempt to marry his daughter to Edward I.&rsquo;s eldest son
+without the consent of his suzerain Philip. Released after two
+years, he sided definitely with the king of England when the latter
+was in arms against Philip; and being only weakly supported
+by Edward, he was betrayed by the nobles who favoured France,
+and forced to yield up not only his personal liberty but the whole
+of Flanders (1300). The Flemings, however, soon wearying of
+the oppressive administration of the French governor, Jacques
+de Châtillon, and the recrudescence of patrician domination,
+rose and overwhelmed the French chivalry at Courtrai (1302)&mdash;a
+prelude to the coming disasters of the Hundred Years&rsquo; War.
+Philip&rsquo;s double revenge, on sea at Zierikzee and on land at
+Mons-en-Pévèle (1304), led to the signing of a treaty at Athis-sur-Orge
+(1305).</p>
+
+<p>The efforts of Philip the Fair to expand the limits of his
+kingdom on the eastern border were more fortunate. His
+marriage had gained him Champagne; and he afterwards
+extended his influence over Franche Comté,
+<span class="sidenote">Eastern policy of Philip the Fair.</span>
+Bar and the bishoprics of Lorraine, acquiring also
+Viviers and the important town of Lyons&mdash;all this
+less by force of arms than by the expenditure of money. Disdaining
+the illusory dream of the imperial crown, still cherished
+by his legal advisers, he pushed forward towards that fluctuating
+eastern frontier, the line of least resistance, which would have
+yielded to him had it not been for the unfortunate interruption
+of the Hundred Years&rsquo; War.</p>
+
+<p>His three sons, Louis X., Philip V. the Tall, and Charles IV.,
+continued his work. They increased the power of the monarchy
+politically by destroying the feudal reaction excited
+in 1314 by the tyrannical conduct of the jurists, like
+<span class="sidenote">The sons of Philip the Fair (1314-1328).</span>
+Enguerrand de Marigny, and by the increasing financial
+extortions of their father; and they also&mdash;notably
+Philip V., one of the most hard-working of the Capets&mdash;increased
+it on the administrative side by specializing the services
+of justice and of finance, which were separated from the king&rsquo;s
+council. Under these mute self-effacing kings the progress of
+royal power was only the more striking. With them the senior
+male line of the house of Capet became extinct.</p>
+
+<p>During three centuries and a half they had effected great
+things: they had founded a kingdom, a royal family and civil
+institutions. The land subject to Hugh Capet in
+987, barely representing two of the modern departments
+<span class="sidenote">The royal house of Capet.</span>
+of France, in 1328 covered a space equal to fifty-nine
+of them. The political unity of the kingdom was only
+fettered by the existence of four large isolated fiefs: Flanders
+on the north, Brittany on the west, Burgundy on the east and
+Guienne on the south. The capital, which for long had been
+movable, was now established in the Louvre at Paris, fortified
+by Philip Augustus. Like the fiefs, feudal institutions at large
+had been shattered. The Roman tradition which made the
+will of the sovereign law, gradually propagated by the teaching
+of Roman law&mdash;the law of servitude, not of liberty&mdash;and already
+proclaimed by the jurist Philippe de Beaumanoir as superior
+to the customs, had been of immense support to the interest of
+the state and the views of the monarchs; and finally the Capets,
+so humble of origin, had created organs of general administration
+common to all in order to effect an administrative centralization.
+In their grand council and their domains they would have none
+but silent, servile and well-disciplined agents. The royal
+exchequer, which was being painfully elaborated in the <i>chambre
+des comptes</i>, and the treasury of the crown lands at the Louvre,
+together barely sufficed to meet the expenses of this more complicated
+and costly machinery. The uniform justice exercised by
+the parlement spread gradually over the whole kingdom by
+means of <i>cas royaux</i> (royal suits), and at the same time the royal
+coinage became obligatory. Against this exaltation of their
+power two adversaries might have been formidable; but one,
+the Church, was a captive in Babylon, and the second, the
+people, was deprived of the communal liberties which it had
+abused, or humbly effaced itself in the states-general behind the
+declared will of the king. This well-established authority was
+also supported by the revered memory of &ldquo;Monseigneur Saint
+Louis&rdquo;; and it is this prestige, the strength of this ideal superior
+to all other, that explains how the royal prerogative came to
+survive the mistakes and misfortunes of the Hundred Years&rsquo;
+War.</p>
+
+<p>On the extinction of the direct line of the Capets the crown
+passed to a younger branch, that of the Valois. Its seven
+representatives (1328-1498) were on the whole very
+inferior to the Capets, and, with the exception of
+<span class="sidenote">Advent of the Valois.</span>
+Charles V. and Louis XI., possessed neither their
+political sense nor even their good common sense;
+they cost France the loss of her great advantage over all other
+countries. During this century and a half France passed through
+two very severe crises; under the first five Valois the Hundred
+Years&rsquo; War imperilled the kingdom&rsquo;s independence; and under
+Louis XI. the struggle against the house of Burgundy endangered
+the territorial unity of the monarchy that had been established
+with such pains upon the ruins of feudalism.</p>
+
+<p>Charles the Fair having died and left only a daughter, the
+nation&rsquo;s rights, so long in abeyance, were once more regained.
+An assembly of peers and barons, relying on two
+precedents under Philip V. and Charles IV., declared
+<span class="sidenote">Philip VI. (1328-1350).</span>
+that &ldquo;no woman, nor therefore her son, could in
+accordance with custom succeed to the monarchy of
+France.&rdquo; This definite decision, to which the name of the Salic
+law was given much later, set aside Edward III., king of England,
+grandson of Philip the Fair, nephew of the late kings and son of
+their sister Isabel. Instead it gave the crown to the feudal
+chief, the hard and coarse Philip VI. of Valois, nephew of Philip
+the Fair. This at once provoked war between the two monarchies,
+English and French, which, including periods of truce, lasted
+for a hundred and sixteen years. Of active warfare there were
+two periods, both disastrous to begin with, but ending favourably:
+one lasted from 1337 to 1378 and the other from 1413 to 1453,
+thirty-three years of distress and folly coming in between.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page820" id="page820"></a>820</span></p>
+
+<p>However, the Hundred Years&rsquo; War was not mainly caused
+by the pretensions of Edward III. to the throne of the Capets;
+since after having long hesitated to do homage to
+Philip VI. for his possessions in Guienne, Edward at
+<span class="sidenote">The Hundred Years&rsquo; War.</span>
+last brought himself to it&mdash;though certainly only after
+lengthy negotiations, and even threats of war in 1331.
+It is true that six years later he renounced his homage and again
+claimed the French inheritance; but this was on the ground
+of personal grievances, and for economic and political reasons.
+There was a natural rivalry between Edward III. and Philip VI.,
+both of them young, fond of the life of chivalry, festal magnificence,
+and the &ldquo;belles apertises d&rsquo;armes.&rdquo; This rivalry was
+aggravated by the enmity between Philip VI. and Robert of
+Artois, his brother-in-law, who, after having warmly supported
+the disinheriting of Edward III., had been convicted of deceit
+in a question of succession, had revenged himself on Philip by
+burning his waxen effigy, and had been welcomed with open
+arms at Edward&rsquo;s court. Philip VI. had taken reprisals against
+him in 1336 by making his parlement declare the forfeiture of
+Edward&rsquo;s lands and castles in Guienne; but the Hundred Years&rsquo;
+War, at first simply a feudal quarrel between vassal and suzerain,
+soon became a great national conflict, in consequence of what
+was occurring in Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>The communes of Flanders, rich, hard-working, jealous of
+their liberties, had always been restive under the authority of
+their counts and the influence of their suzerain, the king of
+France. The affair at Cassel, where Philip VI. had avenged
+the injuries done by the people of Bruges in 1325 to their
+count, Louis of Nevers, had also compromised English
+interests. To attack the English through their colonies, Guienne
+and Flanders, was to injure them in their most vital interests&mdash;cloth
+and claret; for England sold her wool to Bruges in
+order to pay Bordeaux for her wine. Edward III. had replied
+by forbidding the exportation of English wool, and by threatening
+the great industrial cities of Flanders with the transference
+to England of the cloth manufacture&mdash;an excellent means of
+stirring them up against the French, as without wool they could
+do nothing. Workless, and in desperation, they threw themselves
+on Edward&rsquo;s mercy, by the advice of a rich citizen of Ghent,
+Jacob van Artevelde (<i>q.v.</i>); and their last scruples of loyalty
+gave way when Edward decided to follow the counsels of Robert
+of Artois and of Artevelde, and to claim the crown of France.</p>
+
+<p>The war began, like every feudal war of that day, with a
+solemn defiance, and it was soon characterized by terrible
+disasters. The destruction of the finest French
+fleet that had yet been seen, surprised in the port of
+<span class="sidenote">The defeat at Sluys.</span>
+Sluys, closed the sea to the king of France; the
+struggle was continued on land, but with little result.
+Flanders tired of it, but fortunately for Edward III. Brittany
+now took fire, through a quarrel of succession, analogous to that
+in France, between Charles of Blois (who had married the
+daughter of the late duke and was a nephew of Philip VI., by
+whom he was supported) and John of Montfort, brother of the
+old duke, who naturally asked assistance from the king of
+England. But here, too, nothing important was accomplished;
+the capture of John of Montfort at Nantes deprived Edward of
+Brittany at the very moment when he finally lost Flanders
+by the death of Artevelde, who was killed by the people of Ghent
+in 1345. Under the influence of Godefroi d&rsquo;Harcourt, whom
+Philip VI. had wished to destroy on account of his ambitions
+with regard to the duchy of Normandy, Edward III. now
+invaded central France, ravaged Normandy, getting as near
+to Paris as Saint-Germain; and profiting by Philip VI.&rsquo;s hesitation
+and delay, he reached the north with his spoils by dint of
+forced marches. Having been pursued and encountered at
+<span class="sidenote">The defeat at Crécy and the taking of Calais.</span>
+Crécy, Edward gained a complete victory there on the
+26th of April 1346. The seizure of Calais in 1347,
+despite heroic resistance, gave the English a port
+where they could always find entry into France, just
+when the queen of England had beaten David of
+Scotland, the ally of France, at Neville&rsquo;s Cross, and when
+Charles of Blois, made prisoner in his turn, was held captive
+in London. The Black Death put the finishing touch to the
+military disasters and financial upheavals of this unlucky
+reign; though before his death in 1350 Philip VI. was fortunate
+enough to augment his territorial acquisitions by the purchase
+of the rich port of Montpellier, as well as by that of Dauphiné,
+which extended to the Alpine frontier, and was to become the
+appanage of the eldest son of the king of France (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Dauphiné</a></span>
+and <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Dauphin</a></span>).</p>
+
+<p>Philip VI.&rsquo;s successor was his son John the Good&mdash;or rather,
+the stupid and the spendthrift. This noble monarch was unspeakably
+brutal (as witness the murders, simply on
+<span class="sidenote">John the Good (1350).</span>
+suspicion, of the constable Raoul de Brienne, count
+of Eu, and of the count of Harcourt) and incredibly
+extravagant. His need of money led him to debase
+the currency eighty-one times between 1350 and 1355. And
+this money, so necessary for the prosecution of the war with
+England, which had been interrupted for a year, thanks to the
+pope&rsquo;s intervention, was lavished by him upon his favourite,
+Charles of La Cerda. The latter was murdered in 1354 by
+order of Charles of Navarre, the king&rsquo;s son-in-law, who also
+prevented the levying of the taxes voted by the states in 1355
+with the object of replenishing the treasury. The Black Prince
+took this opportunity to ravage the southern provinces, and
+then marched to join the duke of Lancaster and Charles of
+<span class="sidenote">Defeat at Poitiers.</span>
+Navarre in Normandy. John the Good managed
+to bring the English army to bay at Maupertuis,
+not far from Poitiers; but the battle was conducted
+with such a want of intelligence on his part that the French
+army was overwhelmed, though very superior in numbers, and
+King John was made prisoner, after a determined resistance,
+on the 19th of September 1356.</p>
+
+<p>The disaster at Poitiers almost led to the establishment in
+France of institutions analogous to those which England owed
+to Bouvines. The king a prisoner, the dauphin discredited
+and deserted, and the nobility decimated,
+<span class="sidenote">The states of 1355-1356.</span>
+the people&mdash;that is to say, the states-general&mdash;could
+raise their voice. Philip the Fair had never regarded
+the states-general as a financial institution, but merely as a
+moral support. Now, however, in order to obtain substantial
+help from taxes instead of mere driblets, the Valois needed a
+stronger lever than cunning or force. War against the English
+assured them the support of the nation. Exactions, debasement
+of the currency and extortionate taxation were ruinous palliatives,
+and insufficient to supply a treasury which the revenue from
+crown lands and various rights taken from the nobles could
+not fill even in times of peace. By the 14th century the motto
+&ldquo;<i>N&rsquo;impose qui ne veut</i>&rdquo; (<i>i.e.</i> no taxation without consent) was
+as firmly established in France as in England. After Crécy
+Philip VI. called the states together regularly, that he might
+obtain subsidies from them, as an assistance, an &ldquo;aid&rdquo; which
+subjects could not refuse their suzerain. In return for this
+favour, which the king could not claim as a right, the states,
+feeling their power, began to bargain, and at the session of
+November 1355 demanded the participation of all classes in the
+tax voted, and obtained guarantees both for its levy and the use
+to be made of it. A similar situation in England had given
+birth to political liberty; but in France the great crisis of the
+early 15th century stifled it. It was with this money that John
+the Good got himself beaten and taken prisoner at Poitiers.
+Once more the states-general had to be convoked. Confronted
+by a pale weakly boy like the dauphin Charles and the remnants
+of the discredited council, the situation of the states was stronger
+<span class="sidenote">Robert le Coq and Étienne Marcel.</span>
+than ever. Predominant in influence were the deputies
+from the towns, and above all the citizens of the
+capital, led by Robert le Coq, bishop of Laon, and
+Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris.
+Having no cause for confidence in the royal administration,
+the states refused to treat with the dauphin&rsquo;s councillors, and
+proposed to take him under their own tutelage. He himself
+hesitated whether to sacrifice the royal authority, or else,
+without resources or support, to resist an assembly backed by
+public opinion. He decided for resistance. Under pretext of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page821" id="page821"></a>821</span>
+grave news received from his father, and of an interview at
+Metz with his uncle, the emperor Charles IV., he begged the
+states to adjourn till the 3rd of November 1356. This was a
+political <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>, and when the time had expired he attempted
+a financial <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i> by debasing the currency. An uprising
+obliged him to call the states-general together again in February
+1357, when they transformed themselves into a deliberative,
+independent and permanent assembly by means of the <i>Grande
+Ordonnance</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In order to make this great French charter really effective
+resistance to the royal authority should have been collective,
+national and even popular, as in the case of the charters
+of 1215 and 1258 in England. But the lay and ecclesiastical
+<span class="sidenote">The Grande Ordonnance of 1357.</span>
+feudal lords continued to show themselves
+in France, as everywhere else except across the Straits
+of Dover, a cause of division and oppression. Moreover,
+the states were never really general; those of the Langue
+d&rsquo;oc and the Langue d&rsquo;oil sometimes acted together; but there
+was never a common understanding between them and always
+two Frances within the kingdom. Besides, they only represented
+the three classes who alone had any social standing at that
+period: the nobles, the clergy, and the burgesses of important
+towns. Étienne Marcel himself protested against councillors
+&ldquo;<i>de petit état</i>.&rdquo; Again, the states, intermittently convoked
+according to the king&rsquo;s good pleasure, exercised neither periodical
+rights nor effective control, but fulfilled a duty which was soon
+felt as onerous. Indifference and satiety spread speedily; the
+bourgeoisie forsook the reformers directly they had recourse
+to violence (February 1358), and the Parisians became hostile
+when Étienne Marcel complicated his revolutionary work by
+intrigues with Navarre, releasing from prison the grandson of
+Louis X., the Headstrong, an ambitious, fine-spoken courter of
+popularity, covetous of the royal crown. The dauphin&rsquo;s flight
+from Paris excited a wild outburst of monarchist loyalty and
+anger against the capital among the nobility and in the states-general
+of Compiègne. Marcel, like the dauphin, was not a man
+to turn back. But neither the support of the peasant insurgents&mdash;the
+&ldquo;Jacques&rdquo;&mdash;who were annihilated in the market of
+Meaux, nor a last but unheeded appeal to the large towns, nor
+yet the uncertain support of Charles the Bad, to whom Marcel
+in despair proposed to deliver up Paris, saved him from being
+put to death by the royalist party of Paris on the 31st of July
+1358.</p>
+
+<p>Isolated as he was, Étienne Marcel had been unable either to
+seize the government or to create a fresh one. In the reaction
+which followed his downfall royalty inherited the financial
+administration which the states had set up to check extravagance.
+The &ldquo;élus&rdquo; and the superintendents, instead of being delegates
+of the states, became royal functionaries like the <i>baillis</i> and the
+provosts; imposts, hearth-money (<i>fouage</i>), salt-tax (<i>gabelle</i>),
+sale-dues (<i>droits de vente</i>), voted for the war, were levied during
+the whole of Charles V.&rsquo;s reign and added to his personal revenue.
+The opportunity of founding political liberty upon the vote and
+the control of taxation, and of organizing the administration
+of the kingdom so as to ensure that the entire military and
+financial resources should be always available, was gone beyond
+recall.</p>
+
+<p>Re-establishing the royal authority in Paris was not enough;
+an end had to be put to the war with England and Navarre, and
+<span class="sidenote">The treaty of Brétigny.</span>
+this was effected by the treaty of Brétigny (1360).
+King John ceded Poitou, Saintonge, Agenais, Périgord
+and Limousin to Edward III., and was offered his
+liberty for a ransom of three million gold crowns;
+but, unable to pay that enormous sum, he returned to his
+agreeable captivity in London, where he died in 1364.</p>
+
+<p>Yet through the obstinacy and selfishness of John the Good,
+France, in stress of suffering, was gradually realizing herself.
+More strongly than her king she felt the shame of
+<span class="sidenote">Charles V. (1364-1380).</span>
+defeat. Local or municipal patriotism waxed among
+peasants and townsfolk, and combined with hatred
+of the English to develop national sentiment. Many
+of the conquered repeated that proud, sad answer of the men
+of Rochelle to the English: &ldquo;We will acknowledge you with
+our lips; but with our hearts, never!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The peace of Brétigny brought no repose to the kingdom.
+War having become a congenial and very lucrative industry,
+its cessation caused want of work, with all the evils
+that entails. For ten years the remnants of the armies
+<span class="sidenote">The &ldquo;Grandes Compagnies.&rdquo;</span>
+of England, Navarre and Brittany&mdash;the &ldquo;Grandes
+Compagnies,&rdquo; as they were called&mdash;ravaged the
+country; although Charles V., &ldquo;<i>durement subtil et sage</i>,&rdquo;
+succeeded in getting rid of them, thanks to du Guesclin, one of
+their chiefs, who led them to any place where fighting was going
+on&mdash;to Brittany, Alsace, Spain. Charles also had all towns
+and large villages fortified; and being a man of affairs he set
+about undoing the effect of the treaty of Brétigny by alliances
+with Flanders, whose heiress he married to his brother Philip,
+duke of Burgundy; with Henry, king of Castile, and Ferdinand
+of Portugal, who possessed fine navies; and, finally, with the
+emperor Charles IV. Financial and military preparations
+were made no less seriously when the harsh administration
+of the Black Prince, to whom Edward III. had given Guienne
+in fief, provoked the nobles of Gascony to complain to Charles V.
+Cited before the court of Paris, the Black Prince refused to
+attend, and war broke out in Gascony, Poitou and Normandy,
+but with fresh tactics (1369). Whilst the English adhered to
+the system of wide circuits, under Chandos or Robert Knolles,
+Charles V. limited himself to defending the towns and exhausting
+the enemy without taking dangerous risks. Thanks to the
+prudent constable du Guesclin, sitting quietly at home he reconquered
+bit by bit what his predecessors had lost upon the
+battlefield, helm on head and sword in hand; and when he
+died in 1380, after the decease of both Edward III. and the
+Black Prince, the only possessions of England in a liberated
+but ruined France were Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg
+and Calais.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Charles V. and dynastic revolutions in England
+stopped the war for thirty-five years. Then began an era of
+<span class="sidenote">Charles VI. (1380-1422).</span>
+internal disorder and misery. The men of that
+period, coarse, violent and simple-minded, with few
+political ideas, loved brutal and noisy pleasures&mdash;witness
+the incredible festivities at the marriage of
+Charles VI., and the assassinations of the constable de Clisson,
+the duke of Orleans and John the Fearless. It would have
+needed an energetic hand to hold these passions in check; and
+Charles VI. was a gentle-natured child, twelve years of age,
+who attained his majority only to fall into a second childhood.
+Thence arose a question which remained without reply during
+<span class="sidenote">The king&rsquo;s uncles and the Marmousets.</span>
+the whole of his reign. Who should have possession of the
+royal person, and, consequently, of the royal power?
+Should it be the uncles of the king, or his followers
+Clisson and Bureau de la Rivière, whom the nobles
+called in mockery the <i>Marmousets</i>? His uncles first
+seized the government, each with a view to his own particular
+interests, which were by no means those of the kingdom at
+large. The duke of Anjou emptied the treasury in conquering
+the kingdom of Naples, at the call of Queen Joanna of Sicily.
+The duke of Berry seized upon Languedoc and the wine-tax.
+The duke of Burgundy, heir through his wife to the countship
+of Flanders, wanted to crush the democratic risings among the
+Flemings. Each of them needed money, but Charles V., pricked
+by conscience on his death-bed, forbade the levying of the
+hearth-tax (1380). His brother&rsquo;s attempt to re-establish it set
+<span class="sidenote">The revolt of the Maillotins.</span>
+Paris in revolt. The <i>Maillotins</i> of Paris found imitators
+in other great towns; and in Auvergne and Vivarais
+the <i>Tuchins</i> renewed the Jacquerie. Revolutionary
+attempts between 1380 and 1385 to abolish all taxes
+were echoed in England, Florence and Flanders. These isolated
+rebellions, however, were crushed by the ever-ready coalition
+of royal and feudal forces at Roosebeke (1382). Taxes and
+subsidies were maintained and the hearth-money re-established.</p>
+
+<p>The death of the duke of Anjou at Bari (1384) gave preponderant
+influence to Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, who
+increased the large and fruitless expenses of his Burgundian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page822" id="page822"></a>822</span>
+policy to such a point that on the return of a last unfortunate
+<span class="sidenote">Madness of Charles VI.</span>
+expedition into Gelderland Charles VI., who had been made
+by him to marry Isabel of Bavaria, took the government
+from his uncles on the 3rd of May 1389, and
+recalled the <i>Marmousets</i>. But this young king, aged
+only twenty, very much in love with his young wife
+and excessively fond of pleasure, soon wrecked the delicate
+poise of his mental faculties in the festivities of the Hôtel Saint-Paul;
+and a violent attack of Pierre de Craon on the constable
+de Clisson having led to an expedition against his accomplice,
+the duke of Brittany, Charles was seized by insanity on the
+road. The <i>Marmousets</i> were deposed, the king&rsquo;s brother, the
+duke of Orleans, set aside, and the old condition of affairs began
+again (1392).</p>
+
+<p>The struggle was now between the two branches of the royal
+family, the Orleanist and the Burgundian, between the aristocratic
+south and the democratic north; while the
+deposition of Richard II. of England in favour of
+<span class="sidenote">Struggle between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians.</span>
+Henry of Lancaster permitted them to vary civil war
+by war against the foreigner. Philip the Bold, duke
+of Burgundy, the king&rsquo;s uncle, had certain advantages
+over his rival Louis of Orleans, Charles VI.&rsquo;s brother:
+superiority in age, relations with the Lancastrians
+and with Germany, and territorial wealth and power. The two
+adversaries had each the same scheme of government: each
+wanted to take charge of Charles VI., who was intermittently
+insane, and to exclude his rival from the pillage of the royal
+exchequer; but this rivalry of desires brought them into opposition
+on all the great questions of the day&mdash;the war with England,
+the Great Schism and the imperial election. The struggle
+became acute when John the Fearless of Burgundy succeeded
+his father in 1404. Up to this time the queen, Isabel of Bavaria,
+had been held in a kind of dependency upon Philip of Burgundy,
+who had brought about her marriage; but less eager for influence
+than for money, since political questions were unintelligible to
+her and her situation was a precarious one, she suddenly became
+favourable to the duke of Orleans. Whether due to passion
+or caprice this cost the duke his life, for John the Fearless
+had him assassinated in 1407, and thus let loose against one
+another the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, so-called because
+the son of the murdered duke was the son-in-law of the count of
+Armagnac (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Armagnac</a></span>). Despite all attempts at reconciliation
+the country was divided into two parties. Paris, with her
+tradesmen&mdash;the butchers in particular&mdash;and her university,
+played an important part in this quarrel; for to be master of
+Paris was to be master of the king. In 1413 the duke of Burgundy
+gained the upper hand there, partly owing to the rising
+of the <i>Cabochiens</i>, <i>i.e.</i> the butchers led by the skinner Simon
+Caboche, partly to the hostility of the university to the Avignon
+pope and partly to the Parisian bourgeoisie.</p>
+
+<p>Amid this reign of terror and of revolt the university, the only
+moral and intellectual force, taking the place of the impotent
+states-general and of a parlement carefully restricted to
+the judiciary sphere, vainly tried to re-establish a firm
+<span class="sidenote">The Ordonnance Cabochienne, 1413.</span>
+monarchical system by means of the <i>Ordonnance Cabochienne</i>;
+but this had no effect, the government being
+now at the mercy of the mob, themselves at the mercy
+of incapable hot-headed leaders. The struggle ended in becoming
+one between factions of the townsmen, led respectively by the
+<i>hûchier</i> Cirasse and by Jean Caboche. The former overwhelmed
+John the Fearless, who fled from Paris; and the Armagnacs,
+re-entering on his exit, substituted white terror for red terror,
+from the 12th of December 1413 to the 28th of July 1414. The
+butchers&rsquo; organization was suppressed and all hope of reform
+lost. Such disorders allowed Henry V. of England to take the
+offensive again.</p>
+
+<p>The Armagnacs were in possession of Paris and the king
+when Henry V. crushed them at Agincourt on the 25th of
+<span class="sidenote">Agincourt.</span>
+October 1415. It was as at Crécy and Poitiers;
+the French chivalry, accustomed to mere playing at
+battle in the tourneys, no longer knew how to fight. Charles
+of Orleans being a captive and his father-in-law, the count of
+Armagnac, highly unpopular, John the Fearless, hitherto
+prudently neutral, re-entered Paris, amid scenes of carnage, on
+the invitation of the citizen Perrinet le Clerc.</p>
+
+<p>Secure from interference, Henry V. had occupied the whole
+of Normandy and destroyed in two years the work of Philip
+Augustus. The duke of Burgundy, feeling as incapable
+of coming to an understanding with the masterful
+<span class="sidenote">The Treaty of Troyes, 1420.</span>
+Englishman as of resisting him unaided, tried to
+effect a reconciliation with the Armagnacs, who had
+with them the heir to the throne, the dauphin Charles; but his
+assassination at Montereau in 1419 nearly caused the destruction
+of the kingdom, the whole Burgundian party going over to the
+side of the English. By the treaty of Troyes (1420) the son
+of John the Fearless, Philip the Good, in order to avenge his
+father recognized Henry V. (now married to Catherine, Charles
+VI.&rsquo;s daughter) as heir to the crown of France, to the detriment
+of the dauphin Charles, who was disavowed by his mother and
+called in derision &ldquo;the soi-disant dauphin of Viennois.&rdquo; When
+Henry V. and Charles VI. died in 1422, Henry VI.&mdash;son of
+Henry V. and Catherine&mdash;was proclaimed at Paris king of France
+and of England, with the concurrence of Philip the Good, duke
+of Burgundy. Thus in 1428 the English occupied all eastern
+and northern France, as far as the Loire; while the two most
+important civil powers of the time, the parlement and the
+university of Paris, had acknowledged the English king.</p>
+
+<p>But the cause of greatest weakness to the French party was
+still Charles VII. himself, the king of Bourges. This youth of
+nineteen, the ill-omened son of a madman and of a
+Bavarian of loose morals, was a symbol of France,
+<span class="sidenote">Charles VII. (1422-1461).</span>
+timorous and mistrustful. The châteaux of the
+Loire, where he led a restless and enervating existence,
+held an atmosphere little favourable to enthusiasm and energy.
+After his victories at Cravant (1423) and Verneuil (1424), the
+duke of Bedford, appointed regent of the kingdom, had given
+Charles VII. four years&rsquo; respite, and these had been occupied
+in violent intrigues between the constable de Richemont<a name="fa30c" id="fa30c" href="#ft30c"><span class="sp">30</span></a> and
+the sire de la Trémoille, the young king&rsquo;s favourites, and solely
+desirous of enriching themselves at his expense. The king,
+melancholy spectacle as he was, seemed indeed to suit that tragic
+hour when Orleans, the last bulwark of the south, was besieged
+by the earl of Salisbury, now roused from inactivity (1428).
+He had neither taste nor capacity like Philip VI. or John the
+Good for undertaking &ldquo;belles apertises d&rsquo;armes&rdquo;; but then
+a lack of chivalry combined with a temporizing policy had
+not been particularly unsuccessful in the case of his grandfather
+Charles V.</p>
+
+<p>Powerful aid now came from an unexpected quarter. The
+war had been long and cruel, and each successive year naturally
+increased feeling against the English. The damage
+done to Burgundian interests by the harsh yet impotent
+<span class="sidenote">Joan of Arc.</span>
+government of Bedford, disgust at the iniquitous
+treaty of Troyes, the monarchist loyalty of many of the warriors,
+the still deeper sentiment felt by men like Alain Chartier towards
+&ldquo;Dame France,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;great misery that there was in the
+kingdom of France&rdquo;; all these suddenly became incarnate in
+the person of Joan of Arc, a young peasant of Domrémy in
+Lorraine. Determined in her faith and proud in her meekness,
+in opposition to the timid counsels of the military leaders, to
+the interested delays of the courtiers, to the scruples of the
+experts and the quarrelling of the doctors, she quoted her
+&ldquo;voices,&rdquo; who had, she said, commissioned her to raise the
+siege of Orleans and to conduct the gentle dauphin to Reims,
+there to be crowned. Her sublime folly turned out to be wiser
+than their wisdom; in two months, from May to July 1429,
+she had freed Orleans, destroyed the prestige of the English
+army at Patay, and dragged the doubting and passive king
+against his will to be crowned at Reims. All this produced a
+marvellous revulsion of political feeling throughout France,
+Charles VII. now becoming incontestably &ldquo;him to whom the
+kingdom of France ought to belong.&rdquo; After Reims Joan&rsquo;s
+first thought was for Paris, and to achieve the final overthrow
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page823" id="page823"></a>823</span>
+of the English; while Charles VII. was already sighing for the
+easy life of Touraine, and recurring to that policy of truce which
+was so strongly urged by his counsellors, and so keenly irritating
+to the clear-sighted Joan of Arc. A check before Paris allowed
+the jealousy of La Trémoille to waste the heroine for eight months
+on operations of secondary importance, until the day when she
+was captured by the Burgundians under the walls of Compiègne,
+and sold by them to the English. The latter incontinently
+prosecuted her as a heretic; they had, indeed, a great interest
+in seeing her condemned by the Church, which would render
+her conquests sacrilegious. After a scandalous four months&rsquo;
+duel between this simple innocent girl and a tribunal of crafty
+malevolent ecclesiastics and doctors of the university of Paris,
+Joan was burned alive in the old market-place of Rouen, on the
+30th of May 1431 (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Joan of Arc</a></span>).</p>
+
+<p>On Charles VII.&rsquo;s part this meant oblivion and silence until
+the day when in 1450, more for his own sake than for hers, he
+caused her memory to be rehabilitated; but Joan had given the
+country new life and heart. From 1431 to 1454 the struggle
+against the English went on energetically; and the king,
+relieved in 1433 of his evil genius, La Trémoille, then became
+a man once more, playing a kingly part under the guidance of
+Dunois, Richemont, La Hire and Saintrailles, leaders of worth
+on the field of battle. Moreover, the English territory, a great
+triangle, with the Channel for base and Paris for apex, was not
+a really solid position. Yet the war seemed interminable;
+until at last Philip of Burgundy, for long embarrassed by his
+English alliance, decided in 1435 to become reconciled with
+Charles VII. This was in consequence of the death of his sister,
+who had been married to Bedford, and the return of his brother-in-law
+Richemont into the French king&rsquo;s favour. The treaty
+of Arras, which made him a sovereign prince for life, though
+harsh, at all events gave a united France the opportunity of
+expelling the English from the east, and allowed the king to
+re-enter Paris in 1436. From 1436 to 1439 there was a terrible
+repetition of what happened after the Peace of Brétigny;
+famine, pestilence, extortions and, later, the aristocratic revolt
+of the Praguerie, completed the ruin of the country. But thanks
+to the permanent tax of the <i>taille</i> during this time of truce
+Charles VII. was able to effect the great military reform of the
+Compagnies d&rsquo;Ordonnance, of the Francs-Archers, and of the
+artillery of the brothers Bureau. From this time forward the
+English, ruined, demoralized and weakened both by the death
+of the duke of Bedford and the beginnings of the Wars of the
+Roses, continued to lose territory on every recurrence of conflict.
+Normandy was lost to them at Formigny (1450), and Guienne,
+English since the 12th century, at Castillon (1453). They kept
+only Calais; and now it was their turn to have a madman,
+Henry VI., for king.</p>
+
+<p>France issued from the Hundred Years&rsquo; War victorious,
+but terribly ruined and depopulated. It is true she had definitely
+freed her territory from the stranger, and
+through the sorrows of defeat and the menace of
+<span class="sidenote">Consequences of the Hundred Years&rsquo; War.</span>
+disruption had fortified her national solidarity, and
+defined her patriotism, still involved in and not yet
+dissociated from loyalty to the monarchy. A happy
+awakening, although it went too far in establishing
+royal absolutism; and a victory too complete, in that it enervated
+all the forces of resistance. The nation, worn out by the long
+disorders consequent on the captivity of King John and the
+insanity of Charles VI., abandoned itself to the joys of peace.
+Preferring the solid advantage of orderly life to an unstable
+liberty, it acquiesced in the abdication of 1439, when the States
+consented to taxation for the support of a permanent army
+without any periodical renewal of their authorization. No
+doubt by the prohibition to levy the smallest <i>taille</i> the feudal
+lords escaped direct taxation; but from the day when the
+privileged classes selfishly allowed the taxing of the third estate,
+provided that they themselves were exempt, they opened the
+door to monarchic absolutism. The principle of autocracy
+triumphed everywhere over the remnants of local or provincial
+authority, in the sphere of industry as in that of administration;
+while the gild system became much more rigid. A loyal bureaucracy,
+far more powerful than the phantom administration of
+Bourges or of Poitiers, gradually took the place of the court
+nobility; and thanks to this the institutions of control which
+the war had called into power&mdash;the provincial states-general&mdash;were
+nipped in the bud, withered by the people&rsquo;s poverty of
+political idea and by the blind worship of royalty. Without the
+nation&rsquo;s concurrence the king&rsquo;s creatures were now to endow
+royalty with all the organs necessary for the exertion of authority;
+by which imprudent compliance, and above all thanks to Jacques
+C&oelig;ur (<i>q.v.</i>), the financial independence of the provinces disappeared
+little by little, and all the public revenues were left
+at the discretion of the king alone (1436-1440). By this means,
+too, and chiefly owing to the constable de Richemont and the
+brothers Bureau, the first permanent royal army was established
+(1445).</p>
+
+<p>Henceforward royalty, strengthened by victory and organized
+for the struggle, was able to reduce the centrifugal social forces
+to impotence. The parlement of Paris saw its monopoly
+encroached upon by the court of Toulouse in 1443,
+<span class="sidenote">Monarchical centralization.</span>
+and by the parlement of Grenoble in 1453. The
+university of Paris, compromised with the English,
+like the parlement, witnessed the institution and growth of
+privileged provincial universities. The Church of France was
+isolated from the papacy by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges
+(1438) only to be exploited and enslaved by royalty. Monarchic
+centralization, interrupted for the moment by the war, took
+up with fresh vigour its attacks upon urban liberties, especially
+in the always more independent south. It caused a slackening
+of that spirit of communal initiative which had awakened in the
+midst of unprecedented disasters. The decimated and impoverished
+nobility proved their impotence in the coalitions
+they attempted between 1437 and 1442, of which the most
+important, the Praguerie, fell to pieces almost directly, despite
+the support of the dauphin himself.</p>
+
+<p>The life of society, now alarmingly unstable and ruthlessly
+cruel, was symbolized by the <i>danse macabre</i> painted on the
+walls of the cemeteries; the sombre and tragic art
+of the 15th century, having lost the fine balance
+<span class="sidenote">Social life.</span>
+shown by that of the 13th, gave expression in its
+mournful realism to the general state of exhaustion. The
+favourite subject of the mysteries and of other artistic manifestations
+was no longer the triumphant Christ of the middle ages,
+nor the smiling and teaching Christ of the 13th century, but the
+Man of sorrows and of death, the naked bleeding Jesus, lying
+on the knees of his mother or crowned with thorns. France,
+like the Christ, had known all the bitterness and weakness of a
+Passion.</p>
+
+<p>The war of independence over, after a century of fatigue,
+regrets and doubts, royalty and the nation, now more united
+and more certain of each other, resumed the methodic and
+utilitarian war of widening boundaries. Leaving dreams about
+crusades to the poets, and to a papacy delivered from schism,
+Charles VII. turned his attention to the ancient appanage of
+Lothair, Alsace and Lorraine, those lands of the north and the
+east whose frontiers were constantly changing, and which
+seemed to invite aggression. But the chance of annexing them
+without great trouble was lost; by the fatal custom of appanages
+the Valois had set up again those feudal institutions which the
+Capets had found such difficulty in destroying, and Louis XI.
+was to make sad experience of this.</p>
+
+<p>To the north and east of the kingdom extended a wide territory
+of uncertain limits; countries without a chief like Alsace;
+principalities like Lorraine, ecclesiastical lordships
+like the bishopric of Liége; and, most important of
+<span class="sidenote">The House of Burgundy.</span>
+all, a royal appanage, that of the duchy of Burgundy,
+which dated back to the time of John the Good.
+Through marriages, conquests and inheritance, the dukes of
+Burgundy had enormously increased their influence; while
+during the Hundred Years&rsquo; War they had benefited alternately
+by their criminal alliance with the English and by their self-interested
+reconciliation with their sovereign. They soon
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page824" id="page824"></a>824</span>
+appeared the most formidable among the new feudal chiefs
+so imprudently called into being by Louis XI.&rsquo;s predecessors.
+Fleeing from the paternal wrath which he had drawn down upon
+himself by his ambition and by his unauthorized marriage
+with Charlotte of Savoy, the future Louis XI. had passed five
+years of voluntary exile at the court of the chief of the House
+of Burgundy, Philip the Good; and he was able to appreciate
+the territorial power of a duchy which extended from the Zuyder
+Zee to the Somme, with all the country between the Saône
+and the Loire in addition, and its geographical position as a
+commercial intermediary between Germany, England and
+France. He had traversed the fertile country of Flanders;
+he had visited the rich commercial and industrial republics of
+Bruges and Ghent, which had escaped the disasters of the
+Hundred Years&rsquo; War; and, finally, he had enjoyed a hospitality
+as princely as it was self-interested at Brussels and at Dijon,
+the two capitals, where he had seen the brilliancy of a court
+unique in Europe for the ideal of chivalric life it offered.</p>
+
+<p>But the dauphin Louis, although a bad son and impatient for
+the crown, was not dazzled by all this. With very simple
+tastes, an inquiring mind, and an imagination always
+at work, he combined a certain easy good-nature
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XI. (1461-1483)</span>
+which inspired confidence, and though stingy in
+spending money on himself, he could be lavish in
+buying men either dangerous or likely to be useful. More inclined
+to the subtleties of diplomacy than to the risks of battle, he had
+recognized and speedily grasped the disadvantages of warfare.
+The duke of Burgundy, however rich and powerful, was still the
+king&rsquo;s vassal; his wide but insecure authority, of too rapid
+growth and unpopular, lacked sovereign rights. Hardly, therefore,
+had Louis XI. heard of his father&rsquo;s death than he made his
+host aware of his perfectly independent spirit, and his very
+definite intention to be master in his own house.</p>
+
+<p>But by a kind of poetic justice, Louis XI. had for seven years,
+from 1465 to 1472, to struggle against fresh Pragueries, called
+Leagues of the Public Weal (presumably from their
+disregard of it), composed of the most powerful
+<span class="sidenote">The Leagues of the Public Weal.</span>
+French nobles, to whom he had set the example of
+revolt. His first proceedings had indeed given no
+promise of the moderation and prudence afterwards
+to characterize him; he had succeeded in exasperating all
+parties; the officials of his father, &ldquo;the well-served,&rdquo; whom he
+dismissed in favour of inferiors like Jean Balue, Oliver le Daim
+and Tristan Lermite; the clergy, by abrogating the Pragmatic
+Sanction; the university of Paris, by his ill-treatment of it;
+and the nobles, whom he deprived of their hunting rights, among
+them being those whom Charles VII. had been most careful
+to conciliate in view of the inevitable conflict with the duke of
+Burgundy&mdash;in particular, Francis II., duke of Brittany. The
+repurchase in 1463 of the towns of the Somme (to which Philip
+the Good, now grown old and engaged in a quarrel with his son,
+the count of Charolais, had felt obliged to consent on consideration
+of receiving four hundred thousand gold crowns), and the
+intrigues of Louis XI. during the periodical revolts of the Liégois
+against their prince-bishop, set the powder alight. On three
+different occasions (in 1465, 1467 and 1472), Louis XI.&rsquo;s own
+brother, the duke of Berry, urged by the duke of Brittany, the
+count of Charolais, the duke of Bourbon, and the other feudal
+lords, attempted to set up six kingdoms in France instead of one,
+and to impose upon Louis XI. a regency which should give them
+enormous pensions. This was their idea of Public Weal.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XI. won by his favourite method, diplomacy
+rather than arms. At the time of the first league, the battle
+of Montlhéry (16th of July 1465) having remained
+undecided between the two equally badly organized
+<span class="sidenote">Charles the Bold.</span>
+armies, Louis XI. conceded everything in the treaties
+of Conflans and Saint-Maur&mdash;promises costing him little, since
+he had no intention of keeping them. But during the course of
+the second league, provoked by the recapture of Normandy,
+which he had promised to his brother in exchange for Berry,
+he was nearly caught in his own trap. On the 15th of June
+1467 Philip the Good died, and the accession of the count of
+Charolais was received with popular risings. In order to
+embarrass him Louis XI., had secretly encouraged the people
+of Liége to revolt; but preoccupied with the marriage of Charles
+the Bold with Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV. of England,
+he wished to negotiate personally with him at Péronne, and
+hardly had he reached that place when news arrived there of the
+revolt of Liége amid cries of &ldquo;Vive France.&rdquo; Charles the Bold,
+proud, violent, pugnacious, as treacherous as his rival, a hardier
+<span class="sidenote">The interview at Péronne.</span>
+soldier, though without his political sagacity, imprisoned
+Louis in the tower where Charles the Simple
+had died as a prisoner of the count of Vermandois.
+He only let him depart when he had sworn in the
+treaty of Péronne to fulfil the engagements made at Conflans
+and Saint-Maur to assist in person at the subjugation of rebellious
+Liége, and to give Champagne as an appanage to his ally the duke
+of Berry.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XI., supported by the assembly of notables at Tours
+(1470), had no intention of keeping this last promise, since the
+duchy of Champagne would have made a bridge
+between Burgundy and Flanders&mdash;the two isolated
+<span class="sidenote">Ruin of the feudal coalitions.</span>
+branches of the house of Burgundy. He gave the duke
+of Berry distant Guienne. But death eventually rid
+him of the duke in 1472, just when a third league was being
+organized, the object of which was to make the duke of Berry
+king with the help of Edward IV., king of England. The duke of
+Brittany, Francis II., was defeated; Charles the Bold, having
+failed at Beauvais in his attempt to recapture the towns of the
+Somme which had been promised him by the treaty of Conflans,
+was obliged to sign the peace of Senlis (1472). This was the end
+of the great feudal coalitions, for royal vengeance soon settled
+the account of the lesser vassals; the duke of Alençon was
+condemned to prison for life; the count of Armagnac was
+killed; and &ldquo;the Germans&rdquo; were soon to disembarrass Louis
+of Charles the Bold.</p>
+
+<p>Charles had indeed only signed the peace so promptly because
+he was looking eastward towards that royal crown and territorial
+cohesion of which his father had also dreamed. The
+king, he said of Louis XI., is always ready. He wanted
+<span class="sidenote">Charles the Bold&rsquo;s imperial dreams.</span>
+to provide his future sovereignty with organs analogous
+to those of France; a permanent army, and a judiciary
+and financial administration modelled on the French parlement
+and exchequer. Since he could not dismember the kingdom
+of France, his only course was to reconstitute the ancient kingdom
+of Lotharingia; while the conquest of the principality of Liége
+and of the duchy of Gelderland, and the temporary occupation
+of Alsace, pledged to him by Sigismund of Austria, made him
+greedy for Germany. To get himself elected king of the Romans
+he offered his daughter Mary, his eternal candidate for marriage,
+to the emperor Frederick III. for his son. Thus either he or
+his son-in-law Maximilian would have been emperor.</p>
+
+<p>But the Tarpeian rock was a near neighbour of the Capitol.
+Frederick&mdash;distrustful, and in the pay of Louis XI.&mdash;evaded a
+meeting arranged at Trier, and Burgundian influence
+in Alsace was suddenly brought to a violent end by the
+<span class="sidenote">Fall of Charles the Bold.</span>
+putting to death of its tyrannical agent, Peter von
+Hagenbach. Charles thought to repair the rebuff
+of Trier at Cologne, and wasted his resources in an attempt to
+win over its elector by besieging the insignificant town of Neuss.
+But the &ldquo;universal spider&rdquo;&mdash;as he called Louis XI.&mdash;was
+weaving his web in the darkness, and was eventually to entangle
+him in it. First came the reconciliation, in his despite, of those
+irreconcilables, the Swiss and Sigismund of Austria; and then
+the union of both with the duke of Lorraine, who was also
+disturbed at the duke of Burgundy&rsquo;s ambition. In vain Charles
+tried to kindle anew the embers of former feudal intrigues;
+the execution of the duke of Nemours and the count of Saint
+Pol cooled all enthusiasm. In vain did he get his dilatory
+friends, the English Yorkists, to cross the Channel; on the 29th
+of August 1475, at Picquigny, Louis XI. bribed them with a
+sum of seventy-five thousand crowns to forsake him, Edward
+further undertaking to guarantee the loyalty of the duke of
+Brittany. Exasperated, Charles attacked and took Nancy,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page825" id="page825"></a>825</span>
+wishing, as he said, &ldquo;to skin the Bernese bear and wear its fur.&rdquo;
+To the hanging of the brave garrison of Granson the Swiss responded
+by terrible reprisals at Granson and at Morat (March
+to June 1476); while the people of Lorraine finally routed
+Charles at Nancy on the 5th of January 1477, the duke himself
+falling in the battle.</p>
+
+<p>The central administration of Burgundy soon disappeared,
+swamped by the resurgence of ancient local liberties; the army
+fell to pieces; and all hope of joining the two limbs
+of the great eastern duchy was definitely lost. As for
+<span class="sidenote">Ruin of the house of Burgundy.</span>
+the remnants that were left, French provinces and
+imperial territory, Louis XI. claimed the whole.
+He seized everything, alleging different rights in each place;
+but he displayed such violent haste and such trickery that he
+threw the heiress of Burgundy, in despair, into the arms of
+Maximilian of Austria. At the treaty of Arras (December 1482)
+Louis XI. received only Picardy, the Boulonnais and Burgundy;
+by the marriage of Charles the Bold&rsquo;s daughter the rest was
+annexed to the Empire, and later to Spain. Thus by Louis XI.&rsquo;s
+short-sighted error the house of Austria established itself in the
+Low Countries. An age-long rivalry between the houses of
+France and Austria was the result of this disastrous marriage;
+and as the son who was its issue espoused the heiress of a now
+unified Spain, France, hemmed in by the Spaniards and by the
+Empire, was thenceforward to encounter them everywhere in
+her course. The historical progress of France was once more
+endangered.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons of state which governed all Louis XI.&rsquo;s external
+policy also inspired his internal administration. If they justified
+him in employing lies and deception in international
+affairs, in his relations with his subjects they led him
+<span class="sidenote">The administration of Louis XI.</span>
+to regard as lawful everything which favoured his
+authority; no question of right could weigh against it.
+The army and taxation, as the two chief means of domination
+within and without the kingdom, constituted the main
+bulwarks of his policy. As for the nobility, his only thought
+was to diminish their power by multiplying their number,
+as his predecessors had done; while he reduced the rebels to
+submission by his iron cages or the axe of his gossip Tristan
+Lermite. The Church was treated with the same unconcerned
+cynicism; he held her in strict tutelage, accentuating her moral
+decadence still further by the manner in which he set aside
+or re-established the Pragmatic Sanction, according to the
+fluctuations of his financial necessities or his Italian ambitions.
+It has been said that on the other hand he was a king of the
+common people, and certainly he was one of them in his simple
+habits, in his taste for rough pleasantries, and above all in his
+religion, which was limited to superstitious practices and small
+devoutnesses. But in the states of Tours in 1468 he evinced
+the same mistrust for fiscal control by the people as for the
+privileges of the nobility. He inaugurated that autocratic rule
+which was to continue gaining strength until Louis XV.&rsquo;s time.
+Louis XI. was the king of the bourgeoisie; he exacted much
+from them, but paid them back with interest by allowing them
+to reduce the power of all who were above them and to lord it
+over all who were below. As a matter of fact Louis XI.&rsquo;s most
+faithful ally was death. Saint-Pol, Nemours, Charles the Bold,
+his brother the duke of Berry, old René of Anjou and his nephew
+the count of Maine, heir to the riches of Provence and to rights
+over Naples&mdash;the skeleton hand mowed down all his adversaries
+as though it too were in his pay; until the day when at Plessis-les-Tours
+it struck a final blow, claimed its just dues from Louis
+XI., and carried him off despite all his relics on the 30th of
+August 1483.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing noble about Louis XI. but his aims, and
+nothing great but the results he attained; yet however different
+he might have been he could not have done better,
+for what he achieved was the making of France.
+<span class="sidenote">Charles VIII. and Brittany (1483-1498)</span>
+This was soon seen after his death in the reaction
+which menaced his work and those who had served
+him; but thanks to himself and to his true successor,
+his eldest daughter Anne, married to the sire de Beaujeu, a
+younger member of the house of Bourbon, the set-back was
+only partial. Strife began immediately between the numerous
+malcontents and the Beaujeu party, who had charge of the little
+Charles VIII. These latter prudently made concessions:
+reducing the <i>taille</i>, sacrificing some of Louis XI.&rsquo;s
+<span class="sidenote">The Mad War, 1483.</span>
+creatures to the rancour of the parlement, and restoring
+a certain number of offices or lands to the hostile princes
+(chief of whom was the duke of Orleans), and even consenting
+to a convocation of the states-general at Tours (1484). But the
+elections having been favourable to royalty, the Beaujeu family
+made the states reject the regency desired by the duke of Orleans,
+and organize the king&rsquo;s council after their own views. When
+they subsequently eluded the conditions imposed by the states,
+the deputies&mdash;nobles, clergy and burgesses&mdash;showed their
+incapacity to oppose the progress of despotism. In vain did
+the malcontent princes attempt to set up a new League of
+Public Weal, the <i>Guerre folle</i> (Mad War), in which the duke of
+Brittany, Francis II., played the part of Charles the Bold,
+dragging in the people of Lorraine and the king of Navarre.
+In vain did Charles VIII., his majority attained, at once abandon
+in the treaty of Sablé the benefits gained by the victory of
+Saint-Aubin du Cormier (1488). In vain did Henry VII. of
+England, Ferdinand the Catholic, and Maximilian of Austria
+try to prevent the annexation of Brittany by France; its heiress
+Anne, deserted by every one, made peace and married Charles
+VIII. in 1491. There was no longer a single great fief in France
+to which the malcontents could fly for refuge.</p>
+
+<p>It now remained to consolidate the later successes attained
+by the policy of the Valois&mdash;the acquisition of the duchies of
+Burgundy and Brittany; but instead there was a
+sudden change and that policy seemed about to be
+<span class="sidenote">A policy of &ldquo;magnificence.&rdquo;</span>
+lost in dreams of recapturing the rights of the Angevins
+over Naples, and conquering Constantinople. Charles
+VIII., a prince with neither intelligence nor resolution, his
+head stuffed with chivalric romance, was scarcely freed from
+his sister&rsquo;s control when he sought in Italy a fatal distraction
+from the struggle with the house of Austria. By this &ldquo;war of
+magnificence&rdquo; he caused an interruption of half a century
+in the growth of national sentiment, which was only revived by
+Henry II.; and he was not alone in thus leaving the bone for
+the shadow: his contemporaries, Ferdinand the Catholic
+when delivered from the Moors, and Henry VII. from the power
+of the English nobles, followed the same superficial policy, not
+taking the trouble to work for that real strength which comes
+from the adhesion of willing subjects to their sovereign. They
+only cared to aggrandize themselves, without thought of national
+feeling or geographical conditions. The great theorist of these
+&ldquo;conquistadores&rdquo; was Machiavelli. The regent, Anne of
+Beaujeu, worked in her daughter&rsquo;s interest to the detriment of
+the kingdom, by means of a special treaty destined to prevent
+the property of the Bourbons from reverting to the crown;
+while Anne of Brittany did the like for her daughter Claude.
+Louis XII., the next king of France, thought only of the Milanese;
+Ferdinand the Catholic all but destroyed the Spanish unity at
+the end of his life by his marriage with Germaine de Foix; while
+the house of Austria was for centuries to remain involved in this
+petty course of policy. Ministers followed the example of their
+self-seeking masters, thinking it no shame to accept pensions
+from foreign sovereigns. The preponderating consideration
+everywhere was direct material advantage; there was disproportion
+everywhere between the means employed and the
+poverty of the results, a contradiction between the interests
+of the sovereigns and those of their subjects, which were associated
+by force and not naturally blended. For the sake of a
+morsel of Italian territory every one forgot the permanent
+necessity of opposing the advance of the Turkish crescent, the
+two horns of which were impinging upon Europe on the Danube
+and on the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>Italy and Germany were two great tracts of land at the mercy
+of the highest bidder, rich and easy to dominate, where these
+coarse and alien kings, still reared on medieval traditions, were
+for fifty years to gratify their love of conquest. Italy was their
+<span class="sidenote">The wars in Italy.</span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page826" id="page826"></a>826</span>
+first battlefield; Charles VIII. was summoned thither by
+Lodovico Il Moro, tyrant of Milan, involved in a quarrel with
+his rival, Ferdinand II. of Aragon. The Aragonese
+had snatched the kingdom of Naples from the
+French house of Anjou, whose claims Louis XI. had
+inherited in 1480. To safeguard himself in the rear Charles VIII.
+handed over Roussillon and Cerdagne (Cerdaña) to Ferdinand
+the Catholic (that is to say, all the profits of Louis XI.&rsquo;s policy);
+gave enormous sums of money to Henry VII. of England; and
+finally, by the treaty of Senlis ceded Artois and Franche-Comté
+to Maximilian of Austria. After these fool&rsquo;s bargains the paladin
+set out for Naples in 1494. His journey was long and triumphant,
+and his return precipitate; indeed it very nearly ended in a
+disaster at Fornovo, owing to the first of those Italian holy
+leagues which at the least sign of friction were ready to turn
+against France. At the age of twenty-eight, however, Charles
+VIII. died without issue (1498).</p>
+
+<p>The accession of his cousin, Louis of Orleans, under the title
+of Louis XII., only involved the kingdom still further in this
+Italian imbroglio. Louis did indeed add the fief of
+Orleans to the royal domain and hastened to divorce
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XII. (1498-1515).</span>
+Jeanne of France in order to marry Anne, the widow
+of his predecessor, so that he might keep Brittany.
+But he complicated the Naples affair by claiming Milan in consideration
+of the marriage of his grandfather, Louis of Orleans,
+to Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, duke of Milan.
+In 1499, appealed to by Venice, and encouraged by his favourite,
+Cardinal d&rsquo;Amboise (who was hoping to succeed Pope Alexander
+VI.), and also by Cesare Borgia, who had lofty ambitions in
+Italy, Louis XII. conquered Milan in seven months and held
+it for fourteen years; while Lodovico Sforza, betrayed by his
+Swiss mercenaries, died a prisoner in France. The kingdom
+of Naples was still left to recapture; and fearing to be thwarted
+by Ferdinand of Aragon, Louis XII. proposed to this master
+of roguery that they should divide the kingdom according to
+the treaty of Granada (1500). But no sooner had Louis XII.
+assumed the title of king of Naples than Ferdinand set about
+despoiling him of it, and despite the bravery of a Bayard and a
+Louis d&rsquo;Ars, Louis XII., being also betrayed by the pope, lost
+Naples for good in 1504. The treaties of Blois occasioned a
+vast amount of diplomacy, and projects of marriage between
+Claude of France and Charles of Austria, which came to nothing
+but served as a prelude to the later quarrels between Bourbons
+and Habsburgs.</p>
+
+<p>It was Pope Julius II. who opened the gates of Italy to the
+horrors of war. Profiting by Louis XII.&rsquo;s weakness and the
+emperor Maximilian&rsquo;s strange capricious character, this martial
+pope sacrificed Italian and religious interests alike in order to
+re-establish the temporal power of the papacy. Jealous of
+Venice, at that time the Italian state best provided with powers
+of expansion, and unable to subjugate it single-handed, Julius
+succeeded in obtaining help from France, Spain and the Empire.
+The league of Cambrai (1508) was his finest diplomatic achievement.
+But he wanted to be sole master of Italy, so in order to
+expel the French &ldquo;barbarians&rdquo; whom he had brought in, he
+appealed to other barbarians who were far more dangerous&mdash;Spaniards,
+Germans and Swiss&mdash;to help him against Louis XII.,
+and stabbed him from behind with the Holy League of 1511.</p>
+
+<p>Weakened by the death of Cardinal d&rsquo;Amboise, his best
+counsellor, Louis XII. tried vainly in the assembly of Tours
+and in the unsuccessful council of Pisa to alienate the
+French clergy from a papacy which was now so little
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XII. and Julius II.</span>
+worthy of respect. But even the splendid victories
+of Gaston de Foix could not shake that formidable
+coalition; and despite the efforts of Bayard, La Palice and
+La Trémoille, it was the Church that triumphed. Julius II.
+died in the hour of victory; but Louis XII. was obliged to
+evacuate Milan, to which he had sacrificed everything, even
+France itself, with that political stupidity characteristic of the
+first Valois. He died almost immediately after this, on the
+1st of January 1515, and his subjects, recognizing his thrift,
+his justice and the secure prosperity of the kingdom, forgot the
+seventeen years of war in which they had not been consulted,
+and rewarded him with the fine title of Father of his People.</p>
+
+<p>As Louis XII. left no son, the crown devolved upon his cousin
+and son-in-law the count of Angoulême, Francis I. No sooner
+king, Francis, in alliance with Venice, renewed the
+chimerical attempts to conquer Milan and Naples;
+<span class="sidenote">Francis I. (1515-1547).</span>
+also cherishing dreams of his own election as emperor
+and of a partition of Europe. The heroic episode of
+Marignano, when he defeated Cardinal Schinner&rsquo;s Swiss troops
+(13-15 of September 1515), made him master of the duchy of Milan
+and obliged his adversaries to make peace. Leo X., Julius II.&rsquo;s
+successor, by an astute volte-face exchanged Parma and the
+Concordat for a guarantee of all the Church&rsquo;s possessions, which
+meant the defeat of French plans (1515). The Swiss signed
+the permanent peace which they were to maintain until the
+Revolution of 1789; while the emperor and the king of Spain
+recognized Francis II.&rsquo;s very precarious hold upon Milan. Once
+more the French monarchy was pulled up short by the indignation
+of all Italy (1518).</p>
+
+<p>The question now was how to occupy the military activity
+of a young, handsome, chivalric and gallant prince, &ldquo;ondoyant
+et divers,&rdquo; intoxicated by his first victory and his
+tardy accession to fortune. This had been hailed with
+<span class="sidenote">Character of Francis I.</span>
+joy by all who had been his comrades in his days of
+difficulty; by his mother, Louise of Savoy, and his
+sister Marguerite; by all the rough young soldiery; by the
+nobles, tired of the bourgeois ways of Louis XI. and the patriarchal
+simplicity of Louis XII.; and finally by all the aristocracy
+who expected now to have the government in their own hands.
+So instead of heading the crusade against the Turks, Francis
+threw himself into the electoral contest at Frankfort, which
+resulted in the election of Charles V., heir of Ferdinand the
+Catholic, Spain and Germany thus becoming united. Pope
+Leo X., moreover, handed over three-quarters of Italy to the
+new emperor in exchange for Luther&rsquo;s condemnation, thereby
+kindling that rivalry between Charles V. and the king of France
+which was to embroil the whole of Europe throughout half a
+century (1519-1559), from Pavia to St Quentin.</p>
+
+<p>The territorial power of Charles V., heir to the houses of
+Burgundy, Austria, Castile and Aragon, which not only arrested
+the traditional policy of France but hemmed her
+in on every side; his pretensions to be the head of
+<span class="sidenote">Rivalry of Francis I. and Charles V.</span>
+Christendom; his ambition to restore the house of
+Burgundy and the Holy Roman Empire; his grave
+and forceful intellect all rendered rivalry both inevitable and
+formidable. But the scattered heterogeneity of his possessions,
+the frequent crippling of his authority by national privileges
+or by political discords and religious quarrels, his perpetual
+straits for money, and his cautious calculating character, almost
+outweighed the advantages which he possessed in the terrible
+Spanish infantry, the wealthy commerce of the Netherlands,
+and the inexhaustible mines of the New World. Moreover,
+Francis I. stirred up enmity everywhere against Charles V.,
+and after each defeat he found fresh support in the patriotism
+of his subjects. Immediately after the treaty of Madrid (1526),
+which Francis I. was obliged to sign after the disaster at Pavia
+<span class="sidenote">Defeat at Pavia and treaty of Madrid.</span>
+and a period of captivity, he did not hesitate between
+his honour as a gentleman and the interests of his
+kingdom. Having been unable to win over Henry
+VIII. of England at their interview on the Field of
+the Cloth of Gold, he joined hands with Suleiman the Magnificent,
+the conqueror of Mohács; and the Turkish cavalry, crossing
+the Hungarian <i>Puszta</i>, made their way as far as Vienna, while
+the mercenaries of Charles V., under the constable de Bourbon,
+were reviving the saturnalia of Alaric in the sack of Rome (1527).
+In Germany, Francis I. assisted the Catholic princes to maintain
+their political independence, though he did not make the capital
+he might have made of the reform movement. Italy remained
+faithful to the vanquished in spite of all, while even Henry VIII.
+of England, who only needed bribing, and Wolsey, accessible to
+flattery, took part in the temporary coalition. Thus did France,
+menaced with disruption, embark upon a course of action imposed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page827" id="page827"></a>827</span>
+upon her by the harsh conditions of the treaty of Madrid&mdash;otherwise
+little respected&mdash;and later by those of Cambrai (1529);
+but it was not till later, too late indeed, that it was defined and
+became a national policy.</p>
+
+<p>After having, despite so many reverses and mistakes, saved
+Burgundy, though not Artois nor Flanders, and joined to the
+crown lands the domains of the constable de Bourbon
+who had gone over to Charles V., Francis I. should
+<span class="sidenote">Further prosecution of romantic expeditions.</span>
+have had enough of defending other people&rsquo;s independence
+as well as his own, and should have thought more
+of his interests in the north and east than of Milan.
+Yet between 1531 and 1547 he manifested the same
+regrets and the same invincible ambition for that land of Italy
+which Charles V., on his side, regarded as the basis of his strength.
+Their antagonism, therefore, remained unabated, as also the
+contradiction of an official agreement with Charles V., combined
+with secret intrigues with his enemies. Anne de Montmorency,
+now head of the government in place of the headstrong chancellor
+Duprat, for four years upheld a policy of reconciliation and of
+almost friendly agreement between the two monarchs (1531-1535).
+The death of Francis I.&rsquo;s mother, Louise of Savoy (who
+had been partly instrumental in arranging the peace of Cambrai),
+the replacement of Montmorency by the bellicose Chabot, and
+the advent to power of a Burgundian, Granvella, as Charles V.&rsquo;s
+prime minister, put an end to this double-faced policy, which
+attacked the Calvinists of France while supporting the Lutherans
+of Germany; made advances to Clement VII. while pretending
+to maintain the alliance with Henry VIII. (just then consummating
+the Anglican schism); and sought an alliance with Charles
+V. without renouncing the possession of Italy. The death of
+the duke of Milan provoked a third general war (1536-1538);
+<span class="sidenote">The truce at Nice.</span>
+but after the conquest of Savoy and Piedmont and a
+fruitless invasion of Provence by Charles V., it resulted
+in another truce, concluded at Nice, in the interview
+at Aigues-mortes, and in the old contradictory policy of the
+treaty of Cambrai. This was confirmed by Charles V.&rsquo;s triumphal
+journey through France (1539).</p>
+
+<p>Rivalry between Madame d&rsquo;Etampes, the imperious mistress
+of the aged Francis I., and Diane de Poitiers, whose ascendancy
+over the dauphin was complete, now brought court
+intrigues and constant changes in those who held
+<span class="sidenote">Fourth outbreak of war.</span>
+office, to complicate still further this wearisome
+policy of ephemeral &ldquo;combinazioni&rdquo; with English,
+Germans, Italians and Turks, which urgent need of money always
+brought to naught. The disillusionment of Francis I., who
+had hitherto hoped that Charles V. would be generous enough
+to give Milan back to him, and then the assassination of Rincon,
+his ambassador at Constantinople, led to a fourth war (1544-1546),
+in the course of which the king of England went over to
+the side of Charles V.</p>
+
+<p>Unable in the days of his youth to make Italy French, when
+age began to come upon him, Francis tried to make France
+Italian. In his château at Blois he drank greedily
+of the cup of Renaissance art; but he found the
+<span class="sidenote">Royal absolutism under Francis I.</span>
+exciting draughts of diplomacy which he imbibed
+from Machiavelli&rsquo;s <i>Prince</i> even more intoxicating,
+and he headed the ship of state straight for the rock of absolutism.
+He had been the first king &ldquo;<i>du bon plaisir</i>&rdquo; (&ldquo;of his own good
+pleasure&rdquo;)&mdash;a &ldquo;Caesar,&rdquo; as his mother Louise of Savoy proudly
+hailed him in 1515&mdash;and to a man of his gallant and hot-headed
+temperament love and war were schools little calculated to
+teach moderation in government. Italy not only gave him a
+taste for art and letters, but furnished him with an arsenal of
+despotic maxims. Yet his true masters were the jurists of the
+southern universities, passionately addicted to centralization
+and autocracy, men like Duprat and Poyet, who revived the
+persistent tradition of Philip the Fair&rsquo;s legists. Grouped together
+on the council of affairs, they managed to control the policy
+of the common council, with its too mixed and too independent
+membership. They successfully strove to separate &ldquo;the grandeur
+and superexcellence of the king&rdquo; from the rest of the nation;
+to isolate the nobility amid the seductions of a court lavish in
+promises of favour and high office; and to win over the
+bourgeoisie by the buying and selling and afterwards by the
+hereditary transmission of offices. Thanks to their action,
+feudalism was attacked in its landed interest in the person of
+the constable de Bourbon; feudalism in its financial aspect
+by the execution of superintendent Semblançay and the special
+privileges of towns and provinces by administrative centralization.
+The bureaucracy became a refuge for the nobles, and above
+all for the bourgeois, whose fixed incomes were lowered by the
+influx of precious metals from the New World, while the wages
+of artisans rose. All those time-worn medieval institutions
+which no longer allowed free scope to private or public life were
+demolished by the legists in favour of the monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>Their master-stroke was the Concordat of 1516, which meant
+an immense stride in the path towards absolutism. While
+Germany and England, where ultramontane doctrines
+had been allowed to creep in, were seeking a remedy
+<span class="sidenote">The concordat of 1516.</span>
+against the economic exactions of the papacy in a
+reform of dogma or in schism, France had supposed
+herself to have found this in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.
+But to the royal jurists the right of the churches and abbeys
+to make appointments to all vacant benefices was a guarantee
+of liberties valuable to the clergy, but detestable to themselves
+because the clergy thus retained the great part of public wealth
+and authority. By giving the king the ecclesiastical patronage
+they not only made a docile instrument of him, but endowed
+him with a mine of wealth, even more productive than the sale
+of offices, and a power of favouring and rewarding that transformed
+a needy and ill-obeyed king into an absolute monarch.
+To the pope they offered a mess of pottage in the shape of <i>annates</i>
+and the right of canonical institution, in order to induce him
+to sell the Church of France to the king. By this royal reform
+they completely isolated the monarchy, in the presumptuous
+pride of omnipotence, upon the ruins of the Church and the
+aristocracy, despite both the university and the parlement
+of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Thus is explained Francis I.&rsquo;s preoccupation with Italian
+adventures in the latter part of his reign, and also the inordinate
+squandering of money, the autos-da-fé in the provinces and in
+Paris, the harsh repression of reform and free thought, and the
+sale of justice; while the nation became impoverished and the
+state was at the mercy of the caprices of royal mistresses&mdash;all
+of which was to become more and more pronounced during
+the twelve years of Henry II.&rsquo;s government.</p>
+
+<p>Henry II. shone but with a reflected light&mdash;in his private
+life reflected from his old mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and in his
+<span class="sidenote">Henry II. (1547-1559).</span>
+political action reflected from the views of Montmorency
+or the Guises. He only showed his own
+personality in an egoism more narrow-minded, in
+hatred yet bitterer than his father&rsquo;s; or in a haughty
+and jealous insistence upon an absolute authority which he never
+had the wit to maintain.</p>
+
+<p>The struggle with Charles V. was at first delayed by differences
+with England. The treaty of Ardres had left two bones of
+contention: the cession of Boulogne to England
+and the exclusion of the Scotch from the terms of
+<span class="sidenote">Henry II. and Charles V.</span>
+peace. At last the regent, the duke of Somerset,
+endeavoured to arrange a marriage between Edward
+VI., then a minor, and Mary Stuart, who had been offered in
+marriage to the dauphin Francis by her mother, Marie of
+Lorraine, a Guise who had married the king of Scotland. The
+transference of Mary Stuart to France, and the treaty of 1550
+which restored Boulogne to France for a sum of 400,000 crowns,
+suspended the state of war; and then Henry II.&rsquo;s opposition
+to the imperial policy of Charles V. showed itself everywhere:
+in Savoy and Piedmont, occupied by the French and claimed by
+Philibert Emmanuel, Charles V.&rsquo;s ally; in Navarre, unlawfully
+conquered by Ferdinand the Catholic and claimed by the family
+of Albret; in Italy, where, aided and abetted by Pope Paul III.,
+Henry II. was trying to regain support; and, finally, in Germany,
+where after the victory of Charles V. at Mühlberg (1547) the
+Protestant princes called Henry II. to their aid, offering to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page828" id="page828"></a>828</span>
+subsidize him and cede to him the towns of Metz, Toul and
+Verdun. The Protestant alliance was substituted for the
+Turkish alliance, and Henry II. hastened to accept the offers
+made to him (1552); but this was rather late in the day, for
+the reform movement had produced civil war and evoked
+fresh forces. The Germans, in whom national feeling got the
+better of imperialistic ardour, as soon as they saw the French
+at Strassburg, made terms with the emperor at Passau and
+permitted Charles to use all his forces against Henry II. The
+<span class="sidenote">Defence of Metz.<br /><br />
+Truce of Vaucelles.</span>
+defence of Metz by Francis of Guise was admirable
+and successful; but in Picardy operations continued
+their course without much result, owing to the incapacity
+of the constable de Montmorency. Fortunately,
+despite the marriage of Charles V.&rsquo;s son Philip to Mary Tudor,
+which gave him the support of England (1554), and despite
+the religious pacification of Germany through the peace of
+Augsburg (1555), Charles V., exhausted by illness
+and by thirty years of intense activity, in the truce
+of Vaucelles abandoned Henry II.&rsquo;s conquests&mdash;Piedmont
+and the Three Bishoprics. He then abdicated the
+government of his kingdoms, which he divided between his son
+Philip II. and his brother Ferdinand (1556). A double victory,
+this, for France.</p>
+
+<p>Henry II.&rsquo;s resumption of war, without provocation and
+without allies, was a grave error; but more characterless than
+ever, the king was urged to it by the Guises, whose
+influence since the defence of Metz had been supreme
+<span class="sidenote">Henry II. and Philip II.<br /><br />Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis.</span>
+at court and who were perhaps hoping to obtain
+Naples for themselves. On the other hand, Pope Paul
+IV. and his nephew Carlo Caraffa embarked upon the struggle,
+because as Neapolitans they detested the Spaniards, whom they
+considered as &ldquo;barbarous&rdquo; as the Germans or the
+French. The constable de Montmorency&rsquo;s disaster
+at Saint Quentin (August 1557), by which Philip II.
+had not the wit to profit, was successfully avenged
+by Guise, who was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
+He took Calais by assault in January 1558, after the English
+had held it for two centuries, and occupied Luxemburg. The
+treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (August 1559) finally put an end to
+the Italian follies, Naples, Milan and Piedmont; but it also
+lost Savoy, making a gap in the frontier for a century. The
+question of Burgundy was definitely settled, too; but the
+Netherlands had still to be conquered. By the possession of
+the three bishoprics and the recapture of Calais an effort towards
+a natural line of frontier and towards a national policy seemed
+indicated; but while the old soldiers could not forget Marignano,
+Ceresole, nor Italy perishing with the name of France on her
+lips, the secret alliance between the cardinal of Lorraine and
+Granvella against the Protestant heresy foretold the approaching
+subordination of national questions to religious differences, and
+a decisive attempt to purge the kingdom of the new doctrines.</p>
+
+<p>The origin and general history of the religious reformation
+in the 16th century are dealt with elsewhere (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Church
+History</a></span> and <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Reformation</a></span>). In France it had
+originally no revolutionary character whatever; it
+<span class="sidenote">The Reformation.</span>
+proceeded from traditional Gallican theories and from
+the innovating principle of humanism, and it began as a protest
+against Roman decadence and medieval scholasticism. It
+found its first adherents and its first defenders among the clerics
+and learned men grouped around Faber (Lefèvre) of Étaples
+at Meaux; while Marguerite of Navarre, &ldquo;des Roynes la non
+pareille,&rdquo; was the indefatigable Maecenas of these innovators,
+and the incarnation of the Protestant spirit at its purest. The
+reformers shook off the yoke of systems in order boldly to renovate
+both knowledge and faith; and, instead of resting on the abstract
+<i>a priori</i> principles within which man and nature had been
+imprisoned, they returned to the ancient methods of observation
+and analysis. In so doing, they separated intellectual from
+popular life; and acting in this spirit, through the need of a
+moral renaissance, they reverted to primitive Christianity,
+substituting the inner and individual authority of conscience
+for the general and external authority of the Church. Their
+efforts would not, however, have sufficed if they had not been
+seconded by events; pure doctrine would not have given birth
+to a church, nor that church to a party; in France, as in
+Germany, the religious revolution was conditioned by an economic
+and social revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The economic renaissance due to the great maritime discoveries
+had the consequence of concentrating wealth in the hands of the
+bourgeoisie. Owing to their mental qualities, their tendencies and
+their resources, the bourgeoisie had been, if not alone, at least
+most apt in profiting by the development of industry, by the
+extension of commerce, and by the formation of a new and mobile
+means of enriching themselves. But though the bourgeois had
+acquired through capitalism certain sources of influence, and
+gradually monopolized municipal and public functions, the king
+and the peasants had also benefited by this revolution. After a
+hundred and fifty years of foreign war and civil discord, at a
+period when order and unity were ardently desired, an absolute
+monarchy had appeared the only power capable of realizing
+such aspirations. The peasants, moreover, had profited by the
+reduction of the idle landed aristocracy; serfdom had decreased
+or had been modified; and the free peasants were more prosperous,
+had reconquered the soil, and were selling their produce
+at a higher rate while they everywhere paid less exorbitant
+rents. The victims of this process were the urban proletariat,
+whose treatment by their employers in trade became less and
+less protective and beneficent, and the nobility, straitened
+in their financial resources, uprooted from their ancient strongholds,
+and gradually despoiled of their power by a monarchy
+based on popular support. The unlimited sovereignty of the
+prince was established upon the ruins of the feudal system;
+and the capitalism of the merchants and bankers upon the
+closing of the trade-gilds to workmen, upon severe economic
+pressure and upon the exploitation of the artisans&rsquo; labour.</p>
+
+<p>Though reform originated among the educated classes it
+speedily found an echo among the industrial classes of the
+16th century, further assisted by the influence of
+German and Flemish journeymen. The popular
+<span class="sidenote">Transformation of religious reform into party politics.</span>
+reform-movement was essentially an urban movement;
+although under Francis I. and Henry II. it had already
+begun to spread into the country. The artisans,
+labourers and small shop-keepers who formed the
+first nucleus of the reformed church were numerous enough
+to provide an army of martyrs, though too few to form a party.
+Revering the monarchy and established institutions, they
+endured forty years of persecution before they took up arms.
+It was only during the second half of Henry II.&rsquo;s reign that
+Protestantism, having achieved its religious evolution, became
+a political party. Weary of being trodden under foot, it now
+demanded much more radical reform, quitting the ranks of
+peaceable citizens to pass into the only militant class of the time
+and adopt its customs. Men like Coligny, d&rsquo;Andelot and Condé
+took the place of the timid Lefèvre of Étaples and the harsh and
+bitter Calvin; and the reform party, in contradiction to its
+doctrines and its doctors, became a political and religious party
+of opposition, with all the compromises that presupposes. The
+struggle against it was no longer maintained by the university
+and the parlement alone, but also by the king, whose authority
+it menaced.</p>
+
+<p>With his intrepid spirit, his disdain for ecclesiastical authority
+and his strongly personal religious feeling, Francis I. had for
+a moment seemed ready to be a reformer himself;
+but deprived by the Concordat of all interest in the
+<span class="sidenote">Royal persecution under Francis I. and Henry II.</span>
+confiscation of church property, aspiring to political
+alliance with the pope, and as mistrustful of popular
+forces as desirous of absolute power and devoted
+to Italy, he paused and then drew back. Hence came
+the revocation in 1540 of the edict of tolerance of Coucy
+(1535), and the massacre of the Vaudois (1545). Henry II.,
+a fanatic, went still further in his edict of Châteaubriant (1551),
+a code of veritable persecution, and in the <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i> carried out
+in the parlement against Antoine du Bourg and his colleagues
+(1559). At the same time the pastors of the reformed religion,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page829" id="page829"></a>829</span>
+met in synod at Paris, were setting down their confession of
+faith founded upon the Scriptures, and their ecclesiastical
+discipline founded upon the independence of the churches.
+Thenceforward Protestantism adopted a new attitude, and
+refused obedience to the orders of a persecuting monarchy when
+contrary to its faith and its interests. After the saints came
+men. Hence those wars of religion which were to hold the
+monarchy in check for forty years and even force it to come to
+terms.</p>
+
+<p>In slaying Henry II. Montgomery&rsquo;s lance saved the Protestants
+for the time being. His son and successor, Francis II., was but
+a nervous sickly boy, bandied between two women:
+his mother, Catherine de&rsquo; Medici, hitherto kept in the
+<span class="sidenote">Francis II. (1559-1560).</span>
+background, and his wife, Mary Stuart, queen of
+Scotland, who being a niece of the Guises brought her
+uncles, the constable Francis and the cardinal of Lorraine, into
+power. These ambitious and violent men took the government
+out of the hands of the constable de Montmorency and the
+princes of the blood: Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre,
+weak, credulous, always playing a double game on account of his
+preoccupation with Navarre; Condé, light-hearted and brave,
+but not fitted to direct a party; and the cardinal de Bourbon,
+a mere nonentity. The only plan which these princes could
+adopt in the struggle, once they had lost the king, was to make
+a following for themselves among the Calvinist malcontents
+and the gentlemen disbanded after the Italian wars. The
+Guises, strengthened by the failure of the conspiracy of Amboise,
+which had been aimed at them, abused the advantage due to
+their victory. Despite the edict of Romorantin, which by
+giving the bishops the right of cognizance of heresy prevented
+the introduction of the Inquisition on the Spanish model into
+France; despite the assembly of Fontainebleau, where an
+attempt was made at a compromise acceptable to both Catholics
+and moderate Calvinists; the reform party and its Bourbon
+leaders, arrested at the states-general of Orleans, were in danger
+of their lives. The death of Francis II. in December 1560
+compromised the influence of the Guises and again saved
+Protestantism.</p>
+
+<p>Charles IX. also was a minor, and the regent should legally
+have been the first prince of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon;
+but cleverly flattered by the queen-mother, Catherine
+de&rsquo; Medici, he let her take the reins of government.
+<span class="sidenote">Charles IX. (1560-1574).</span>
+Hitherto Catherine had been merely the resigned
+and neglected wife of Henry II., and though eloquent,
+insinuating and ambitious, she had been inactive. She had
+attained the age of forty-one when she at last came into power
+amidst the hopes and anxieties aroused by the fall of the Guises
+and the return of the Bourbons to fortune. Indifferent in
+religious matters, she had a passion for authority, a characteristically
+Italian adroitness in intrigue, a fine political sense,
+and the feeling that the royal authority might be endangered
+both by Calvinistic passions and Catholic violence. She decided
+for a system of tolerance; and Michel de l&rsquo;Hôpital, the new
+chancellor, was her spokesman at the states of Orleans (1560).
+He was a good and honest man, moderate, conciliatory and
+temporizing, anxious to lift the monarchy above the strife of
+parties and to reconcile them; but he was so little practical
+that he could believe in a reformation of the laws in the midst
+of all the violent passions which were now to be let loose. These
+two, Catherine and her chancellor, attempted, like Charles V.
+at Augsburg, to bring about religious pacification as a necessary
+condition for the maintenance of order; but they were soon
+overwhelmed by the different factions.</p>
+
+<p>On one side was the Catholic triumvirate of the constable
+de Montmorency, the duke of Guise, and the marshal de St
+André; and on the other the Huguenot party of
+Condé and Coligny, who, having obtained liberty
+<span class="sidenote">The parties.</span>
+of conscience in January 1561, now demanded liberty
+of worship. The colloquy at Poissy between the cardinal of
+Lorraine and Theodore Beza (September 1561), did not end
+in the agreement hoped for, and the duke of Guise so far abused
+its spirit as to embroil the French Calvinists with the German
+Lutherans. The rupture seemed irremediable when the assembly
+of Poissy recognized the order of the Jesuits, which the French
+church had held in suspicion since its foundation. However,
+yielding to the current which was carrying the greater part of the
+<span class="sidenote">Edict of tolerance.</span>
+nation towards reform, and despite the threats of Philip II.
+who dreaded Calvinistic propaganda in his Netherlands, Michel
+de l&rsquo;Hôpital promulgated the edict of January 17,
+1562&mdash;a true charter of enfranchisement for the
+Protestants. But the pressure of events and of parties
+was too strong; the policy of toleration which had miscarried
+at the council of Trent had no chance of success in
+France.</p>
+
+<p>The triumvirate&rsquo;s relations with Spain and Rome were very
+close; they had complete ascendancy over the king and over
+Catherine; and now the massacre of two hundred
+Protestants at Vassy on the 1st of March 1562 made
+<span class="sidenote">Character of the religious wars.</span>
+the cup overflow. The duke of Guise had either
+ordered this, or allowed it to take place, on his return
+from an interview with the duke of Württemberg at Zabern,
+where he had once more demanded the help of his Lutheran
+neighbours against the Calvinists; and the Catholics having
+celebrated this as a victory the signal was given for the commencement
+of religious wars. When these eight fratricidal wars first
+began, Protestants and Catholics rivalled one another in respect
+for royal authority; only they wished to become its masters
+so as to get the upper hand themselves. But in course of time,
+as the struggle became embittered, Catholicism itself grew
+revolutionary; and this twofold fanaticism, Catholic and
+Protestant, even more than the ambition of the leaders, made
+the war a ferocious one from the very first. Beginning with
+surprise attacks, if these failed, the struggle was continued by
+means of sieges and by terrible exploits like those of the Catholic
+Montluc and the Protestant des Adrets in the south of France.
+Neither of these two parties was strong enough to crush the
+other, owing to the apathy and continual desertions of the gentlemen-cavaliers
+who formed the élite of the Protestant army
+and the insufficient numbers of the Catholic forces. Allies from
+outside were therefore called in, and this it was that gave a
+European character to these wars of religion; the two parties
+were parties of foreigners, the Protestants being supported by
+German <i>Landsknechts</i> and Elizabeth of England&rsquo;s cavalry, and
+the royal army by Italian, Swiss or Spanish auxiliaries. It was
+no longer patriotism but religion that distinguished the two
+camps. There were three principal theatres of war: in the
+north Normandy and the valley of the Loire, where Orleans,
+the general centre of reform, ensured communications between
+the south and Germany; in the south-west Gascony and
+Guienne; in the south-east Lyonnais and Vivarais.</p>
+
+<p>In the first war, which lasted for a year (1562-1563), the
+triumvirs wished to secure Orleans, previously isolated. The
+threat of an English landing decided them to lay
+siege to Rouen, and it was taken by assault; but this
+<span class="sidenote">First religious war.</span>
+cost the life of the versatile Antoine de Bourbon. On
+the 19th of December 1562 the duke of Guise barred
+the way to Dreux against the German reinforcements of
+d&rsquo;Andelot, who after having threatened Paris were marching
+to join forces with the English troops for whom Coligny and
+Condé had paid by the cession of Havre. The death of marshal
+de St André, and the capture of the constable de Montmorency
+and of Condé, which marked this indecisive battle, left Coligny
+and Guise face to face. The latter&rsquo;s success was of brief duration;
+for on the 18th of February 1563 Poltrot de Méré assassinated
+him before Orleans, which he was trying to take once and for
+all. Catherine, relieved by the loss of an inconvenient preceptor,
+and by the disappearance of the other leaders, became mistress
+of the Catholic party, of whose strength and popularity she had
+now had proof, and her idea was to make peace at once on the
+best terms possible. The egoism of Condé, who got himself
+made lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and bargained for
+freedom of worship for the Protestant nobility only, compromised
+the future of both his church and his party, though rendering
+possible the peace of Amboise, concluded the 19th of March
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page830" id="page830"></a>830</span>
+1563. All now set off together to recapture Havre from the
+English.</p>
+
+<p>The peace, however, satisfied no one; neither Catholics
+(because of the rupture of religious unity) nor the parlements;
+the pope, the emperor and king of Spain alike protested
+against it. Nor yet did it satisfy the Protestants,
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of Amboise (1563).</span>
+who considered its concessions insufficient, above all
+for the people. It was, however, the maximum of
+tolerance possible just then, and had to be reverted to; Catherine
+and Charles IX. soon saw that the times were not ripe for a
+third party, and that to enforce real toleration would require
+an absolute power which they did not possess. After three
+years the Guises reopened hostilities against Coligny, whom they
+accused of having plotted the murder of their chief; while
+the Catholics, egged on by the Spaniards, rose against the
+Protestants, who had been made uneasy by an interview between
+Catherine and her daughter Elizabeth, wife of Philip II. of
+Spain, at Bayonne, and by the duke of Alva&rsquo;s persecutions of
+the reformed church of the Netherlands&mdash;a daughter-church of
+Geneva, like their own. The second civil war began like the
+<span class="sidenote">Second civil war.<br /><br />Peace of Longjumeau.</span>
+first with a frustrated attempt to kidnap the king, at
+the castle of Montceaux, near Meaux, in September
+1567; and with a siege of Paris, the general centre
+of Catholicism, in the course of which the constable
+de Montmorency was killed at Saint-Denis. Condé, with the
+men-at-arms of John Casimir, son of the Count Palatine, tried
+to starve out the capital; but once more the defection
+of the nobles obliged him to sign a treaty of peace at
+Longjumeau on the 23rd of March 1568, by which
+the conditions of Amboise were re-established. After
+the attempt at Montceaux the Protestants had to be contented
+with Charles IX.&rsquo;s word.</p>
+
+<p>This peace was not of long duration. The fall of Michel
+de l&rsquo;Hôpital, who had so often guaranteed the loyalty of the
+Huguenots, ruined the moderate party (May 1568).
+Catholic propaganda, revived by the monks and the
+<span class="sidenote">Third war.</span>
+Jesuits, and backed by the armed confraternities and
+by Catherine&rsquo;s favourite son, the duke of Anjou, now entrusted
+with a prominent part by the cardinal of Lorraine; Catherine&rsquo;s
+complicity in the duke of Alva&rsquo;s terrible persecution in the
+Netherlands; and her attempt to capture Coligny and Condé
+at Noyers all combined to cause a fresh outbreak of hostilities
+in the west. Thanks to Tavannes, the duke of Anjou gained
+easy victories at Jarnac over the prince of Condé, who was killed,
+and at Moncontour over Coligny, who was wounded (March-October
+1569); but these successes were rendered fruitless by
+the jealousy of Charles IX. Allowing the queen of Navarre to
+shut herself up in La Rochelle, the citadel of the reformers, and
+the king to loiter over the siege of Saint Jean d&rsquo;Angély, Coligny
+pushed boldly forward towards Paris and, having reached
+Burgundy, defeated the royal army at Arnay-le-duc. Catherine
+had exhausted all her resources; and having failed in her
+project of remarrying Philip II. to one of her daughters, and of
+betrothing Charles IX. to the eldest of the Austrian archduchesses,
+exasperated also by the presumption of the Lorraine family, who
+aspired to the marriage of their nephew with Charles IX.&rsquo;s
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of St Germain (1570).</span>
+sister, she signed the peace of St Germain on the 8th
+of August 1570. This was the culminating point of
+Protestant liberty; for Coligny exacted and obtained,
+first, liberty of conscience and of worship, and then,
+as a guarantee of the king&rsquo;s word, four fortified places: La
+Rochelle, a key to the sea; La Charité, in the centre; Cognac
+and Montauban in the south.</p>
+
+<p>The Guises set aside, Coligny, supported as he was by Jeanne
+d&rsquo;Albret, queen of Navarre, now received all Charles IX.&rsquo;s
+favour. Catherine de&rsquo; Medici, an inveterate matchmaker,
+and also uneasy at Philip II.&rsquo;s increasing
+<span class="sidenote">Coligny and the Netherlands.</span>
+power, made advances to Jeanne, proposing to marry
+her own daughter, Marguerite de Valois, to Jeanne&rsquo;s son,
+Henry of Navarre, now chief of the Huguenot party. Coligny
+was a Protestant, but he was a Frenchman before all; and
+wishing to reconcile all parties in a national struggle, he
+&ldquo;trumpeted war&rdquo; (<i>cornait la guerre</i>) against Spain in the
+Netherlands&mdash;despite the lukewarmness of Elizabeth of England
+and the Germans, and despite the counter-intrigues of the pope
+and of Venice. He succeeded in getting French troops sent
+to the Netherlands, but they suffered defeat. None the less
+Charles IX. still seemed to see only through the eyes of Coligny;
+till Catherine, fearing to be supplanted by the latter, dreading
+the results of the threatened war with Spain, and egged on by a
+crowd of Italian adventurers in the pay of Spain&mdash;men like
+Gondi and Birague, reared like herself in the political theories
+and customs of their native land&mdash;saw no hope but in the assassination
+of this rival in her son&rsquo;s esteem. A murderous attack
+upon Coligny, who had opposed the candidature of Catherine&rsquo;s
+favourite son, the duke of Anjou, for the throne of Poland, having
+only succeeded in wounding him and in exciting the Calvinist
+leaders, who were congregated in Paris for the occasion of
+Marguerite de Valois&rsquo; marriage with the king of Navarre, Catherine
+<span class="sidenote">St Bartholomew, August 24, 1572.</span>
+and the Guises resolved together to put them all to death. There
+followed the wholesale massacre of St Bartholomew&rsquo;s
+Eve, in Paris and in the provinces; a natural consequence
+of public and private hatreds which had
+poisoned the entire social organism. This massacre
+had the effect of preventing the expedition into
+Flanders, and destroying Francis I.&rsquo;s policy of alliance with the
+Protestants against the house of Austria.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine de&rsquo; Medici soon perceived that the massacre of St
+Bartholomew had settled nothing. It had, it is true, dealt
+a blow to Calvinism just when, owing to the reforms
+of the council of Trent, the religious ground had been
+<span class="sidenote">The party of the politiques.</span>
+crumbling beneath it. Moreover, within the party
+itself a gulf had been widening between the pastors,
+supported by the Protestant democracy and the political nobles.
+The reformers had now no leaders, and their situation seemed
+as perilous as that of their co-religionists in the Netherlands;
+while the sieges of La Rochelle and Leiden, the enforced exile
+of the prince of Orange, and the conversion under pain of death
+of Henry of Navarre and the prince of Condé, made the common
+danger more obvious. Salvation came from the very excess of
+the repressive measures. A third party was once more formed,
+composed of moderates from the two camps, and it was recruited
+quite as much by jealousy of the Guises and by ambition as by
+horror at the massacres. There were the friends of the Montmorency
+party&mdash;Damville at their head; Coligny&rsquo;s relations;
+the king of Navarre; Condé; and a prince of the blood, Catherine
+de&rsquo; Medici&rsquo;s third son, the duke of Alençon, tired of being kept
+<span class="sidenote">Fourth War. Edict of Boulogne (1573).</span>
+in the background. This party took shape at the
+end of the fourth war, followed by the edict of
+Boulogne (1573), forced from Charles IX. when the
+Catholics were deprived of their leader by the election
+of his brother, the duke of Anjou, as king of Poland.
+A year later the latter succeeded his brother on the throne of
+France as Henry III. This meant a new lease of power for the
+queen-mother.</p>
+
+<p>The politiques, as the supporters of religious tolerance and
+an energetic repression of faction were called, offered their
+alliance to the Huguenots, but these, having formed
+<span class="sidenote">Fifth War.</span>
+themselves, by means of the Protestant Union, into
+a sort of republic within the kingdom, hesitated to
+accept. It is, however, easy to bring about an understanding
+between people in whom religious fury has been extinguished
+either by patriotism or by ambition, like that of the duke of
+Alençon, who had now escaped from the Louvre where he had
+been confined on account of his intrigues. The compact was
+concluded at Millau; Condé becoming a Protestant once more
+in order to treat with Damville, Montmorency&rsquo;s brother. Henry
+of Navarre escaped from Paris. The new king, Henry III.,
+<span class="sidenote">Henry III. (1574-1589).</span>
+vacillating and vicious, and Catherine herself, eager
+for war as she was, had no means of separating the
+Protestants and the <i>politiques</i>. Despite the victory
+of Guise at Dormans, the agreement between the
+duke of Alençon and John Casimir&rsquo;s German army obliged the
+royal party to grant all that the allied forces demanded of them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page831" id="page831"></a>831</span>
+in the &ldquo;peace of Monsieur,&rdquo; signed at Beaulieu on the 6th of May
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of Monsieur (1576).</span>
+1576, the duke of Alençon receiving the appanage of Anjou,
+Touraine and Berry, the king of Navarre Guienne,
+and Condé Picardy, while the Protestants were granted
+freedom of worship in all parts of the kingdom
+except Paris, the rehabilitation of Coligny and the
+other victims of St Bartholomew, their fortified towns, and an
+equal number of seats in the courts of the parlements.</p>
+
+<p>This was going too fast; and in consequence of a reaction
+against this too liberal edict a fourth party made its appearance,
+that of the Catholic League, under the Guises&mdash;Henry
+le Balafré, duke of Guise, and his two brothers, Charles,
+<span class="sidenote">The Catholic League.</span>
+duke of Mayenne, and Louis, archbishop of Reims
+and cardinal. With the object of destroying Calvinism
+by effective opposition, they imitated the Protestant organization
+of provincial associations, drawing their chief supporters from
+the upper middle class and the lesser nobility. It was not at
+first a demagogy maddened by the preaching of the irreconcilable
+clergy of Paris, but a union of the more honest and prudent
+classes of the nation in order to combat heresy. Despite the
+immorality and impotence of Henry III. and the Protestantism
+of Henry of Navarre, this party talked of re-establishing the
+authority of the king; but in reality it inclined more to the
+Guises, martyrs in the good cause, who were supported by Philip
+II. of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII. A sort of popular government
+was thus established to counteract the incapacity of
+royalty, and it was in the name of the imperilled rights of the
+people that, from the States of Blois onward, this Holy League
+demanded the re-establishment of Catholic unity, and set the
+religious right of the nation in opposition to the divine right of
+incapable or evil-doing kings (1576).</p>
+
+<p>In order to oust his rival Henry of Guise, Henry III. made
+a desperate effort to outbid him in the eyes of the more extreme
+Catholics, and by declaring himself head of the League
+<span class="sidenote">The States of Blois (1576).<br />
+Sixth War and peace of Bergerac (1577). Seventh War and peace of Fleix (1580).</span>
+degraded himself into a party leader. The League,
+furious at this stroke of policy, tried to impose a council
+of thirty-six advisers upon the king. But the deputies
+of the third estate did not support the other two orders, and
+the latter in their turn refused the king money for making war
+on the heretics, desiring, they said, not war but the
+destruction of heresy. This would have reduced
+Henry III. to impotence; fortunately for him, however,
+the break of the Huguenots with the &ldquo;Malcontents,&rdquo;
+and the divisions in the court of Navarre
+and in the various parties at La Rochelle, allowed
+Henry III., after two little wars in the south west,
+during which fighting gradually degenerated into
+brigandage, to sign terms of peace at Bergerac (1577),
+which much diminished the concessions made in the edict of
+Beaulieu. This peace was confirmed three years after by that
+of Fleix. The suppression of both the leagues was stipulated
+for (1580). It remained, however, a question whether the Holy
+League would submit to this.</p>
+
+<p>The death of the duke of Anjou after his mad endeavour
+to establish himself in the Netherlands (1584), and the accession
+of Henry of Navarre, heir to the effeminate Henry III.,
+reversed the situations of the two parties: the Protestants
+<span class="sidenote">Union between the Guises and Philip II.</span>
+again became supporters of the principle of
+heredity and divine right; the Catholics appealed
+to right of election and the sovereignty of the people.
+Could the crown of the eldest daughter of the Church be allowed
+to devolve upon a relapsed heretic? Such was the doctrine
+officially preached in pulpit and pamphlet. But between
+Philip II. on the one hand&mdash;now master of Portugal and delivered
+from William of Orange, involved in strife with the English
+Protestants, and desirous of avenging the injuries inflicted upon
+him by the Valois in the Netherlands&mdash;and the Guises on the
+other hand, whose cousin Mary Stuart was a prisoner of Queen
+Elizabeth, there was a common interest in supporting one
+another and pressing things forward. A definite agreement
+was made between them at Joinville (December 31, 1584), the
+religious and popular pretext being the danger of leaving the
+kingdom to the king of Navarre, and the ostensible end to secure
+the succession to a Catholic prince, the old Cardinal de Bourbon,
+an ambitious and violent man of mean intelligence; while the
+secret aim was to secure the crown for the Guises, who had
+already attempted to fabricate for themselves a genealogy
+tracing their descent from Charlemagne. In the meantime
+Philip II., being rid of Don John of Austria, whose ambition he
+dreaded, was to crush the Protestants of England and the
+Netherlands; and the double result of the compact at Joinville
+was to allow French politics to be controlled by Spain, and
+to transform the wars of religion into a purely political
+quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>The pretensions of the Guises were, in fact, soon manifested
+in the declaration of Péronne (March 30, 1585) against the foul
+court of the Valois; they were again manifested in a
+furious agitation, fomented by the secret council
+<span class="sidenote">The committee of Sixteen at Paris.<br /><br />
+Eighth war of the three Henries.</span>
+of the League at Paris, which favoured the Guises,
+and which now worked on the people through their
+terror of Protestant retaliations and the Church&rsquo;s peril. Incited
+by Philip II., who wished to see him earning his pension of
+600,000 golden crowns, Henry of Guise began the war in the end
+of April, and in a few days the whole kingdom was on fire. The
+situation was awkward for Henry III., who had not
+the courage to ask Queen Elizabeth for the soldiers
+and money that he lacked. The crafty king of Navarre
+being unwilling to alienate the Protestants save by an
+apostasy profitable to himself, Henry III., by the treaty of
+Nemours (July 7, 1585), granted everything to the head of
+the League in order to save his crown. By a stroke of the pen
+he suppressed Protestantism, while Pope Sixtus V., who had
+at first been unfavourable to the treaty of Joinville as a purely
+political act, though he eventually yielded to the solicitations
+of the League, excommunicated the two Bourbons, Henry and
+Condé. But the duke of Guise&rsquo;s audacity did not make Henry III.
+forget his desire for vengeance. He hoped to ruin him by
+attaching him to his cause. His favourite Joyeuse was to defeat
+the king of Navarre, whose forces were very weak, while Guise
+was to deal with the strong reinforcement of Germans that
+Elizabeth was sending to Henry of Navarre. Exactly the
+contrary happened. By the defeat of Joyeuse at Coutras
+Henry III. found himself wounded on his strongest side; and
+by Henry of Guise&rsquo;s successes at Vimory and Auneau the Germans,
+who should have been his best auxiliaries against the League,
+were crushed (October-November 1587).</p>
+
+<p>The League now thought they had no longer anything to fear.
+Despite the king&rsquo;s hostility the duke of Guise came to Paris,
+urged thereto by Philip II., who wanted to occupy
+Paris and be master of the Channel coasts whilst he
+<span class="sidenote">Day of the Barricades.</span>
+launched his invincible Armada to avenge the death of
+Mary Stuart in 1587. On the Day of the Barricades
+(May 12, 1588) Henry III. was besieged in the Louvre by the
+populace in revolt; but his rival dared not go so far as to depose
+the king, and appeased the tumult. The king, having succeeded
+in taking refuge at Chartres, ended, however, by granting him
+in the Act of Union all that he had refused in face of the barricades&mdash;the
+post of lieutenant-general of the kingdom and the proscription
+of Protestantism. At the second assembly of the states
+of Blois, called together on account of the need for money (1588),
+<span class="sidenote">Assassination of the Guises at the second states-general of Blois.</span>
+all of Henry III.&rsquo;s enemies who were elected showed
+themselves even bolder than in 1576 in claiming the
+control of the financial administration of the kingdom;
+but the destruction of the Armada gave Henry III.,
+already exasperated by the insults he had received,
+new vigour. He had the old Cardinal de Bourbon
+imprisoned, and Henry of Guise and his brother the
+cardinal assassinated (December 23, 1588). On the 5th of
+January, 1589, died his mother, Catherine de&rsquo;Medici, the astute
+Florentine.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now I am king!&rdquo; cried Henry III. But Paris being
+dominated by the duke of Mayenne, who had escaped assassination,
+and by the council of &ldquo;Sixteen,&rdquo; the chiefs of the League,
+<span class="sidenote">Assassination of Henry III.</span>
+most of the provinces replied by open revolt, and Henry III.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page832" id="page832"></a>832</span>
+had no alternative but an alliance with Henry of Navarre.
+Thanks to this he was on the point of seizing Paris,
+when in his turn he was assassinated on the 1st of
+August 1589 by a Jacobin monk, Jacques Clément;
+with his dying breath he designated the king of
+Navarre as his successor.</p>
+
+<p>Between the popular League and the menace of the Protestants
+it was a question whether the new monarch was to be powerless
+in his turn. Henry IV. had almost the whole of his
+kingdom to conquer. The Cardinal de Bourbon, king
+<span class="sidenote">The Bourbons.</span>
+according to the League and proclaimed under the title
+of Charles X., could count upon the Holy League itself, upon the
+Spaniards of the Netherlands, and upon the pope. Henry IV.
+was only supported by a certain number of the Calvinists and
+by the Catholic minority of the <i>Politiques</i>, who, however,
+gradually induced the rest of the nation to rally round the only
+legitimate prince. The nation wished for the establishment
+of internal unity through religious tolerance and the extinction
+of private organizations; it looked for the extension of France&rsquo;s
+external power through the abasement of the house of Spain,
+protection of the Protestants in the Netherlands and Germany,
+and independence of Rome. Henry IV., moreover, was forced
+to take an oath at the camp of Saint Cloud to associate the nation
+in the affairs of the kingdom by means of the states-general.
+These three conditions were interdependent; and Henry IV.,
+with his persuasive manners, his frank and charming character,
+and his personal valour, seemed capable of keeping them all
+three.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing for this soldier-king to do was to conquer his
+kingdom and maintain its unity. He did not waste time by
+withdrawing towards the south; he kept in the neighbourhood
+of Paris, on the banks of the Seine, within
+<span class="sidenote">Henry IV. (1589-1610).</span>
+reach of help from Elizabeth; and twice&mdash;at Arques
+and at Ivry (1589-1590)&mdash;he vanquished the duke
+of Mayenne, lieutenant-general of the League. But after having
+tried to seize Paris (as later Rouen) by a <i>coup-de-main</i>, he was
+obliged to raise the siege in view of reinforcements sent to
+Mayenne by the duke of Parma. Pope Gregory XIV., an
+enthusiastic supporter of the League and a strong adherent
+of Spain, having succeeded Sixtus V., who had been very lukewarm
+towards the League, made Henry IV.&rsquo;s position still
+more serious just at the moment when, the old Cardinal de
+Bourbon having died, Philip II. wanted to be declared the protector
+of the kingdom in order that he might dismember it, and
+when Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, a grandson of Francis I., and
+Charles III., duke of Lorraine, a son-in-law of Henry II., were
+both of them claiming the crown. Fortunately, however, the
+Sixteen had disgusted the upper bourgeoisie by their demagogic
+airs; while their open alliance with Philip II., and their acceptance
+of a Spanish garrison in Paris had offended the patriotism
+of the <i>Politiques</i> or moderate members of the League. Mayenne,
+who oscillated between Philip II. and Henry IV., was himself
+obliged to break up and subdue this party of fanatics and
+theologians (December 1591). This game of see-saw between
+the <i>Politiques</i> and the League furthered his secret ambition, but
+also the dissolution of the kingdom; and the pressure of public
+opinion, which desired an effective monarchy, put an end to this
+temporizing policy and caused the convocation of the states-general
+<span class="sidenote">States-general of 1592.</span>
+in Paris (December 1592). Philip II., through
+the duke of Feria&rsquo;s instrumentality, demanded the
+throne for his daughter Isabella, grand-daughter of
+Henry II. through her mother. But who was to be her
+husband? The archduke Ernest of Austria, Guise or Mayenne?
+The parlement cut short these bargainings by condemning all
+ultramontane pretensions and Spanish intrigues. The unpopularity
+of Spain, patriotism, the greater predominance of national
+questions in public opinion, and weariness of both religious
+disputation and indecisive warfare, all these sentiments were
+expressed in the wise and clever pamphlet entitled the <i>Satire
+Ménippée</i>. What had been a slow movement between 1585
+and 1592 was quickened by Henry IV.&rsquo;s abjuration of Protestantism
+at Saint-Denis on the 23rd of July 1593.</p>
+
+<p>The coronation of the king at Chartres in February 1594
+completed the rout of the League. The parlement of Paris
+declared against Mayenne, who was simply the mouthpiece
+of Spain, and Brissac, the governor, surrendered
+<span class="sidenote">Abjuration of Henry IV., July 23, 1593.</span>
+the capital to the king. The example of Paris and
+Henry IV.&rsquo;s clemency rallied round him all prudent
+Catholics, like Villeroy and Jeannin, anxious for national unity;
+but he had to buy over the adherents of the League, who sold
+him his own kingdom for sixty million francs. The pontifical
+absolution of September 17, 1595, finally stultified the League,
+which had been again betrayed by the unsuccessful plot of Jean
+Chastel, the Jesuit&rsquo;s pupil.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was now left but to expel the Spaniards, who under
+cover of religion had worked for their own interests alone.
+Despite the brilliant charge of Fontaine-Française
+in Burgundy (June 5, 1595), and the submission of the
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of Vervins.</span>
+heads of the League, Guise, Mayenne, Joyeuse, and
+Merc&oelig;ur, the years 1595-1597 were not fortunate for Henry IV.&rsquo;s
+armies. Indignant at his conversion, Elizabeth, the Germans,
+and the Swiss Protestants deserted him; while the taking of
+Amiens by the Spaniards compromised for the moment the
+future both of the king and the country. But exhaustion of
+each other, by which only England and Holland profited, brought
+about the Peace of Vervins. This confirmed the results of the
+treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (May 2, 1598), that is to say, the
+decadence of Spanish power, and its inability either to conquer
+or to dismember France.</p>
+
+<p>The League, having now no reason for existence, was dissolved;
+but the Protestant party remained very strong, with its
+political organization and the fortified places which
+the assemblies of Millau, Nîmes and La Rochelle
+<span class="sidenote">Edict of Nantes, 1598.</span>
+(1573-1574) had established in the south and the west.
+It was a republican state within the kingdom, and,
+being unwilling to break with it, Henry IV. came to terms by
+the edict of Nantes, on the 13th of April 1598. This was a
+compromise between the royal government and the Huguenot
+government, the latter giving up the question of public worship,
+which was only authorized where it had existed before 1597
+and in two towns of each <i>bailliage</i>, with the exception of Paris;
+but it secured liberty of conscience throughout the kingdom,
+state payment for its ministers, admission to all employments,
+and courts composed equally of Catholics and Protestants in the
+parlements. An authorization to hold synods and political
+assemblies, to open schools, and to occupy a hundred strong
+places for eight years at the expense of the king, assured to the
+Protestants not only rights but privileges. In no other country
+did they enjoy so many guarantees against a return of persecution.
+This explains why the edict of Nantes was not registered
+without some difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the blood-stained 16th century closed with a promise
+of religious toleration and a dream of international arbitration.
+This was the end of the long tragedy of civil strife
+and of wars of conquest, mingled with the sound of
+<span class="sidenote">Results of the religious wars.</span>
+madrigals and psalms and pavanes. It had been the
+golden age of the arquebus and the viol, of sculptors
+and musicians, of poets and humanists, of fratricidal conflicts
+and of love-songs, of <i>mignons</i> and martyrs. At the close of this
+troubled century peace descends upon exhausted passions;
+and amidst the choir of young and ardent voices celebrating
+the national reconciliation, the tocsin no longer sounds its
+sinister and persistent bass. Despite the leagues of either faith,
+religious liberty was now confirmed by the more free and generous
+spirit of Henry IV.</p>
+
+<p>Why was this king at once so easygoing and so capricious?
+Why, again, had the effort and authority of feudal and popular
+resistance been squandered in the follies of the League and to
+further the ambitions of the rebellious Guises? Why had the
+monarchy been forced to purchase the obedience of the upper
+classes and the provinces with immunities which enfeebled it
+without limiting it? At all events, when the kingdom had been
+reconquered from the Spaniards and religious strife ended, in
+order to fulfil his engagements, Henry IV. need only have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page833" id="page833"></a>833</span>
+associated the nation with himself in the work of reconstructing
+the shattered monarchy. But during the atrocious holocausts
+formidable states had grown up around France, observing her
+and threatening her; and on the other hand, as on the morrow
+of the Hundred Years&rsquo; War, the lassitude of the country, the
+lack of political feeling on the part of the upper classes and their
+selfishness, led to a fresh abdication of the nation&rsquo;s rights. The
+need of living caused the neglect of that necessity for control
+which had been maintained by the states-general from 1560
+to 1593. And this time, moderation on the part of the monarchy
+no longer made for success. Of the two contrary currents which
+have continually mingled and conflicted throughout the course
+of French history, that of monarchic absolutism and that of
+aristocratic and democratic liberty, the former was now to
+carry all before it.</p>
+
+<p>The kingdom was now issuing from thirty-eight years of
+civil war. Its inhabitants had grown unaccustomed to work;
+its finances were ruined by dishonesty, disorder, and
+a very heavy foreign debt. The most characteristic
+<span class="sidenote">The Bourbons. France in 1610.</span>
+symptom of this distress was the brigandage carried
+on incessantly from 1598 to 1610. Side by side with
+this temporary disorder there was a more serious administrative
+disorganization, a habit of no longer obeying the king. The
+harassed population, the municipalities which under cover of
+civil war had resumed the right of self-government, and the
+parlements elated with their social importance and their security
+of position, were not alone in abandoning duty and obedience.
+Two powers faced each other threateningly: the organized and
+malcontent Protestants; and the provincial governors, all great
+personages possessing an armed following, theoretically agents
+of the king, but practically independent. The Montmorencys,
+the D&rsquo;Epernons, the Birons, the Guises, were accustomed to
+consider their offices as hereditary property. Not that these
+two powers entered into open revolt against the king; but they
+had adopted the custom of recriminating, of threatening, of
+coming to understandings with the foreign powers, which with
+some of them, like Marshal Biron, the D&rsquo;Entragues and the duc
+de Bouillon, amounted to conspiracy (1602-1606).</p>
+
+<p>As to the qualifications of the king: he had had the good
+fortune not to be educated for the throne. Without much
+learning and sceptical in religious matters, he had the
+lively intelligence of the Gascon, more subtle than
+<span class="sidenote">Character of Henry IV.</span>
+profound, more brilliant than steady. Married to a
+woman of loose morals, and afterwards to a devout
+Italian, he was gross and vulgar in his appetites and pleasures.
+He had retained all the habits of a country gentleman of his
+native Béarn, careless, familiar, boastful, thrifty, cunning,
+combined since his sojourn at the court of the Valois with a
+taint of corruption. He worked little but rapidly, with none
+of the bureaucratic pedantry of a Philip II. cloistered in the dark
+towers of the Escurial. Essentially a man of action and a soldier,
+he preserved his tone of command after he had reached the
+throne, the inflexibility of the military chief, the conviction of
+his absolute right to be master. Power quickly intoxicated
+him, and his monarchy was therefore anything but parliamentary.
+His personality was everything, institutions nothing. If, at
+the gathering of the notables at Rouen in 1596, Henry IV.
+spoke of putting himself in tutelage, that was but preliminary
+to a demand for money. The states-general, called together ten
+times in the 16th century, and at the death of Henry III. under
+promise of convocation, were never assembled. To put his
+absolute right beyond all control he based it upon religion, and
+to this sceptic disobedience became a heresy. He tried to
+make the clergy into an instrument of government by recalling the
+Jesuits, who had been driven away in 1594, partly from fear of
+their regicides, partly because they have always been the best
+teachers of servitude; and he gave the youth of the nation into
+the hands of this cosmopolitan and ultramontane clerical order.
+His government was personal, not through departments; he
+retained the old council though reducing its members; and his
+ministers, taken from every party, were never&mdash;not even Sully&mdash;anything
+more than mere clerks, without independent position,
+mere instruments of his good pleasure. Fortunately this was
+not always capricious.</p>
+
+<p>Henry IV. soon realized that his most urgent duty was to
+resuscitate the corpse of France. Pilfering was suppressed,
+and the revolts of the malcontents&mdash;the <i>Gauthiers</i> of
+Normandy, the <i>Croquants</i> and <i>Tard-avisés</i> of Périgord
+<span class="sidenote">The achievements of Henry IV.</span>
+and Limousin&mdash;were quelled, adroitly at first, and
+later with a sterner hand. He then provided for the
+security of the country districts, and reduced the taxes on the
+peasants, the most efficacious means of making them productive
+and able to pay. Inspired by Barthélemy de Laffémas (1545-1612),
+controller-general of commerce, and by Olivier de Serres
+(1539-1619),<a name="fa31c" id="fa31c" href="#ft31c"><span class="sp">31</span></a> Henry IV. encouraged the culture of silk, though
+without much result, had orchards planted and marshes drained;
+while though he permitted the free circulation of wine and corn,
+this depended on the harvests. But the twofold effect of civil
+war&mdash;the ruin of the farmers and the scarcity and high price of
+rural labour&mdash;was only reduced arbitrarily and by fits and
+starts.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the influence of Sully, a convinced agrarian because
+of his horror of luxury and love of economy, Henry IV. likewise
+attempted amelioration in the towns, where the state
+of affairs was even worse than in the country. But the
+<span class="sidenote">Industrial policy of Henry IV.</span>
+edict of 1597, far from inaugurating individual liberty,
+was but a fresh edition of that of 1581, a second
+preface to the legislation of Colbert, and in other ways no better
+respected than the first. As for the new features, the syndical
+courts proposed by Laffémas, they were not even put into
+practice. Various industries, nevertheless, concurrent with
+those of England, Spain and Italy, were created or reorganized:
+silk-weaving, printing, tapestry, &amp;c. Sully at least provided
+renascent manufacture with the roads necessary for communication
+and planted them with trees. In external commerce
+Laffémas and Henry IV. were equally the precursors of Colbert,
+freeing raw material and prohibiting the import of products
+similar to those manufactured within the kingdom. Without
+regaining that preponderance in the Levant which had been
+secured after the victory of Lepanto and before the civil wars,
+Marseilles still took an honourable place there, confirmed by
+the renewal in 1604 of the capitulations of Francis I. with the
+sultan. Finally, the system of commercial companies, antipathetic
+to the French bourgeoisie, was for the first time practised
+on a grand scale; but Sully never understood that movement
+of colonial expansion, begun by Henry II. in Brazil and continued
+in Canada by Champlain, which had so marvellously enlarged
+the European horizon. His point of view was altogether more
+limited than that of Henry IV.; and he did not foresee, like
+Elizabeth, that the future would belong to the peoples whose
+national energy took that line of action.</p>
+
+<p>His sphere was essentially the superintendence of finance,
+to which he brought the same enthusiasm that he had shown
+in fighting the League. Vain and imaginative,
+his reputation was enormously enhanced by his
+<span class="sidenote">The work of Sully.</span>
+&ldquo;Économies royales&rdquo;; he was no innovator, and
+being a true representative of the nation at that period, like it
+he was but lukewarm towards reform, accepting it always against
+the grain. He was not a financier of genius; but he administered
+the public moneys with the same probity and exactitude which
+he used in managing his own, retrieving alienated property,
+straightening accounts, balancing expenditure and receipts,
+and amassing a reserve in the Bastille. He did not reform the
+system of <i>aides</i> and <i>tailles</i> established by Louis XI. in 1482;
+but by charging much upon indirect taxation, and slightly
+lessening the burden of direct taxation, he avoided an appeal
+to the states-general and gave an illusion of relief.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, economic disasters, political circumstances and
+the personal government of Henry IV. (precursor in this also
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page834" id="page834"></a>834</span>
+of Louis XIV.) rendered his task impossible or fatal. The
+nobility remained in debt and disaffected; and the clergy, more
+<span class="sidenote">Criticism of Henry IV.&rsquo;s achievement.</span>
+remarkable for wealth and breeding than for virtues,
+were won over to the ultramontane ideas of the
+triumphant Jesuits. The rich bourgeoisie began more
+and more to monopolize the magistracy; and though
+the country-people were somewhat relieved from the
+burden which had been crushing them, the working-classes
+remained impoverished, owing to the increase of prices which
+followed at a distance the rise of wages. Moreover, under
+insinuating and crafty pretexts, Henry IV. undermined as
+far as he could the right of control by the states-general, the
+right of remonstrance by the parlements, and the communal
+franchises, while ensuring the impoverishment of the municipalities
+by his fiscal methods. Arbitrary taxation, scandalous
+intervention in elections, forced candidatures, confusion in their
+financial administration, bankruptcy and revolt on the part of
+the tenants: all formed an anticipation of the personal rule
+of Richelieu and Louis XIV.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Henry IV. evinced very great activity in restoring order
+and very great poverty of invention in his methods. His sole
+original creation, the edict of La Paulette in 1604,
+<span class="sidenote">Edict of La Paulette.</span>
+was disastrous. In consideration of an annual payment
+of one-sixtieth of the salary, it made hereditary
+offices which had hitherto been held only for life;
+and the millions which it daily poured into the royal exchequer
+removed the necessity for seeking more regular and better
+distributed resources. Political liberty and social justice were
+equally the losers by this extreme financial measure, which
+paved the way for a catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>In foreign affairs the abasement of the house of Austria
+remained for Henry IV., as it had been for Francis I. and Henry
+II., a political necessity, while under his successors
+it was to become a mechanical obsession. The peace
+<span class="sidenote">Foreign policy of Henry IV.</span>
+of Vervins had concluded nothing. The difference
+concerning the marquisate of Saluzzo, which the duke
+of Savoy had seized upon in 1588, profiting by Henry III.&rsquo;s
+embarrassments, is only worth mentioning because the treaty
+of Lyons (1601) finally dissipated the Italian mirage, and
+because, in exchange for the last of France&rsquo;s possessions beyond
+the Alps, it added to the royal domain the really French territory
+of La Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and the district of Gex. The
+great external affair of the reign was the projected war upon
+which Henry IV. was about to embark when he was assassinated.
+The &ldquo;grand design&rdquo; of Sully, the organization of a &ldquo;Christian
+Republic&rdquo; of the European nations for the preservation of
+peace, was but the invention of an irresponsible minister, soured
+by defeat and wishing to impress posterity. Henry IV., the
+least visionary of kings, was between 1598 and 1610 really
+hesitating between two great contradictory political schemes:
+the war clamoured for by the Protestants, politicians like Sully,
+and the nobility; and the Spanish alliance, to be cemented by
+marriages, and preached by the ultramontane Spanish camarilla
+formed by the queen, Père Coton, the king&rsquo;s confessor, the
+minister Villeroy, and Ubaldini, the papal nuncio. Selfish and
+suspicious, Henry IV. consistently played this double game of
+policy in conjunction with president Jeannin. By his alliance
+with the Grisons (1603) he guaranteed the integrity of the
+Valtellina, the natural approach to Lombardy for the imperial
+forces; and by his intimate union with Geneva he controlled
+the routes by which the Spaniards could reach their hereditary
+possessions in Franche-Comté and the Low Countries from
+Italy. But having defeated the duke of Savoy he had no hesitation
+in making sure of him by a marriage; though the Swiss
+might have misunderstood the treaty of Brusol (1610) by which
+he gave one of his daughters to the grandson of Philip II. On
+the other hand he astonished the Protestant world by the
+imprudence of his mediation between Spain and the rebellious
+United Provinces (1609). When the succession of Cleves and of
+Jülich, so long expected and already discounted by the treaty
+of Halle (1610), was opened up in Germany, the great war was
+largely due to an access of senile passion for the charms of the
+princesse de Condé. The stroke of Ravaillac&rsquo;s knife caused a
+timely descent of the curtain upon this new and tragi-comic
+Trojan War. Thus, here as elsewhere, we see a vacillating
+hand-to-mouth policy, at the mercy of a passion for power or
+for sensual gratification. The <i>Cornette blanche</i> of Arques, the
+<i>Poule au pôt</i> of the peasant, successes as a lover and a dashing
+spirit, have combined to surround Henry IV. with a halo of
+romance not justified by fact.</p>
+
+<p>The extreme instability of monarchical government showed
+itself afresh after Henry IV.&rsquo;s death. The reign of Louis XIII.,
+a perpetual regency by women, priests, and favourites,
+was indeed a curious prelude to the grand age of the
+<span class="sidenote">The regency of Marie de&rsquo;Medici.</span>
+French monarchy. The eldest son of Henry IV.
+being a minor, Marie de&rsquo; Medici induced the parlement
+to invest her with the regency, thanks to Villeroy and contrary
+to the last will of Henry IV. This second Florentine, at once
+jealous of power and incapable of exercising it, bore little resemblance
+to her predecessor. Light-minded, haughty, apathetic
+and cold-hearted, she took a sort of passionate delight in changing
+Henry IV.&rsquo;s whole system of government. Who would support
+her in this? On one side were the former ministers, Sillery
+and president Jeannin, ex-leaguers but loyalists, no lovers of
+Spain and still less of Germany; on the other the princes of the
+blood and the great nobles, Condé, Guise, Mayenne and Nevers,
+apparently still much more faithful to French ideas, but in
+reality convinced that the days of kings were over and that
+their own had arrived. Instead of weakening this aristocratic
+agitation by the see-saw policy of Catherine de&rsquo; Medici, Marie
+could invent no other device than to despoil the royal treasure
+by distributing places and money to the chiefs of both parties.
+The savings all expended and Sully fallen into disgrace, she
+lost her influence and became the almost unconscious instrument
+of an ambitious man of low birth, the Florentine Concini, who
+was to drag her down with him in his fall; petty shifts became
+thenceforward the order of the day.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Villeroy thought fit to add still further to the price
+already paid to triumphant Madrid and Vienna by disbanding
+the army, breaking the treaty of Brusol, and abandoning
+the Protestant princes beyond the Rhine and the
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XIII.(1610-1643).</span>
+trans-Pyrenean Moriscos. France joined hands with
+Spain in the marriages of Louis XIII. with Anne
+of Austria and Princess Elizabeth with the son of Philip III.,
+and the Spanish ambassador was admitted to the secret council
+of the queen. To soothe the irritation of England the duc de
+Bouillon was sent to London to offer the hand of the king&rsquo;s
+sister to the prince of Wales. Meanwhile, however, still more
+was ceded to the princes than to the kings; and after a pretence
+of drawing the sword against the prince of Condé, rebellious
+through jealousy of the Italian surroundings of the queen-mother,
+recourse was had to the purse. The peace of Sainte Menehould,
+four years after the death of Henry IV., was a virtual abdication
+of the monarchy (May 1614); it was time for a move in the other
+direction. Villeroy inspired the regent with the idea of an
+armed expedition, accompanied by the little king, into the West.
+The convocation of the states-general was about to take place,
+wrung, as in all minorities, from the royal weakness&mdash;this time
+by Condé; so the elections were influenced in the monarchist
+interest. The king&rsquo;s majority, solemnly proclaimed on the 28th
+of October 1614, further strengthened the throne; while owing
+to the bungling of the third estate, who did not contrive to gain
+the support of the clergy and the nobility by some sort of concessions,
+the states-general, the last until 1789, proved like the
+others a mere historic episode, an impotent and inorganic
+expedient. In vain Condé tried to play with the parlement of
+Paris the same game as with the states-general, in a sort of
+anticipation of the Fronde. Villeroy demurred; and the
+parlement, having illegally assumed a political rôle, broke with
+Condé and effected a reconciliation with the court. After this
+double victory Marie de&rsquo; Medici could at last undertake the
+famous journey to Bordeaux and consummate the Spanish
+marriages. In order not to countenance by his presence an
+act which had been the pretext for his opposition, Condé rebelled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page835" id="page835"></a>835</span>
+once more in August 1615; but he was again pacified by the
+governorships and pensions of the peace of Loudun (May 1616).</p>
+
+<p>But Villeroy and the other ministers knew not how to reap
+the full advantage of their victory. They had but one desire,
+to put themselves on a good footing again with Condé,
+instead of applying themselves honestly to the service
+<span class="sidenote">Concini, Marshal d&rsquo;Ancre.</span>
+of the king. The &ldquo;marshals,&rdquo; Concini and his wife
+Leonora Galigai, more influential with the queen and
+more exacting than ever, by dint of clever intrigues forced the
+ministers to retire one after another; and with the last of Henry
+IV.&rsquo;s &ldquo;greybeards&rdquo; vanished also all the pecuniary reserves left.
+Concini surrounded himself with new men, insignificant persons
+ready to do his bidding, such as Barbin or Mangot, while in
+the background was Richelieu, bishop of Luçon. Condé now
+began intrigues with the princes whom he had previously
+betrayed; but his pride dissolved in piteous entreaties when
+Thémines, captain of the guard, arrested him in September
+1616. Six months later Concini had not even time to protest
+when another captain, Vitry, slew him at the Louvre, under
+orders from Louis XIII., on the 24th of April 1617.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu had appeared behind Marie de&rsquo; Medici; Albert
+de Luynes rose behind Louis XIII., the neglected child whom
+he had contrived to amuse. &ldquo;The tavern remained the same,
+having changed nothing but the bush.&rdquo; De Luynes was made
+a duke and marshal in Concini&rsquo;s place, with no better title;
+while the duc d&rsquo;Epernon, supported by the queen-mother
+(now in disgrace at Blois), took Condé&rsquo;s place at the head of
+the opposition. The treaties of Angoulême and Angers (1619-1620),
+negotiated by Richelieu, recalled the &ldquo;unwholesome&rdquo;
+treaties of Sainte-Menehould and Loudun. The revolt of the
+Protestants was more serious. Goaded by the vigorous revival
+of militant Catholicism which marked the opening of the 17th
+century, de Luynes tried to put a finishing touch to the triumph
+of Catholicism in France, which he had assisted, by abandoning
+in the treaty of Ulm the defence of the small German states
+against the ambition of the ruling house of Austria, and by
+sacrificing the Protestant Grisons to Spain. The re-establishment
+of Catholic worship in Béarn was the pretext for a rising
+among the Protestants, who had remained loyal during these
+troublous years; and although the military organization
+of French Protestantism, arranged by the assembly of La
+Rochelle, had been checked in 1621, by the defection of most
+of the reformed nobles, like Bouillon and Lesdiguières, de Luynes
+had to raise the disastrous siege of Montauban. Death alone
+saved him from the disgrace suffered by his predecessors
+(December 15, 1621).</p>
+
+<p>From 1621 to 1624 Marie de&rsquo; Medici, re-established in credit,
+prosecuted her intrigues; and in three years there were three
+different ministries: de Luynes was succeeded by the
+prince de Condé, whose Montauban was found at
+<span class="sidenote">Return of Marie de Medici</span>
+Montpellier; the Brûlarts succeeded Condé, and
+having, like de Luynes, neglected France&rsquo;s foreign
+interests, they had to give place to La Vieuville; while this
+latter was arrested in his turn for having sacrificed the interests
+of the English Catholics in the negotiations regarding the
+marriage of Henrietta of France with the prince of Wales. All
+these personages were undistinguished figures beyond whom
+might be discerned the cold clear-cut profile of Marie de&rsquo; Medici&rsquo;s
+secretary, now a cardinal, who was to take the helm and act
+as viceroy during eighteen years.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu came into power at a lucky moment. Every one
+was sick of government by deputy; they desired a strong hand
+and an energetic foreign policy, after the defeat of
+the Czechs at the White Mountain by the house of
+<span class="sidenote">Cardinal Richelieu 1624-1642.</span>
+Austria, the Spanish intrigues in the Valtellina, and
+the resumption of war between Spain and Holland.
+Richelieu contrived to raise hope in the minds of all. As
+president of the clergy at the states-general of 1614 he had
+figured as an adherent of Spain and the ultramontane interest;
+he appeared to be a representative of that religious party which
+was identical with the Spanish party. But he had also been
+put into the ministry by the party of the <i>Politiques</i>, who had
+terminated the civil wars, acclaimed Henry IV., applauded the
+Protestant alliance, and by the mouth of Miron, president of the
+third estate, had in 1614 proclaimed its intention to take up
+the national tradition once more. Despite the concessions
+necessary at the outset to the partisans of a Catholic alliance,
+it was the programme of the <i>Politiques</i> that Richelieu adopted
+and laid down with a master&rsquo;s hand in his Political Testament.</p>
+
+<p>To realize it he had to maintain his position. This was very
+difficult with a king who &ldquo;wished to be governed and yet was
+impatient at being governed.&rdquo; Incapable of applying
+himself to great affairs, but of sane and even acute
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XIII. and Richelieu.</span>
+judgment, Louis XIII. excelled only in a passion for
+detail and for manual pastimes. He realized the
+superior qualities of his minister, though with a lively sense of
+his own dignity he often wished him more discreet and less
+imperious; he had confidence in him but did not love him.
+Cold-hearted and formal by nature, he had not even self-love,
+detested his wife Anne of Austria&mdash;too good a Spaniard&mdash;and
+only attached himself fitfully to his favourites, male or female,
+who were naturally jealously suspected by the cardinal. He
+was accustomed to listen to his mother, who detested Richelieu
+as her ungrateful protégé. Neither did he love his brother,
+Gaston of Orleans, and the feeling was mutual; for the latter,
+remaining for twenty years heir-presumptive to a crown which
+he could neither defend nor seize, posed as the beloved prince
+in all the conspiracies against Richelieu, and issued from them
+each time as a Judas. Add to this that Louis XIII., like
+Richelieu himself, had wretched health, aggravated by the
+extravagant medicines of the day; and it is easy to understand
+how this pliable disposition which offered itself to the yoke
+caused Richelieu always to fear that his king might change
+his master, and to declare that &ldquo;the four square feet of the king&rsquo;s
+cabinet had been more difficult for him to conquer than all the
+battlefields of Europe.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu, therefore, passed his time in safeguarding himself
+from his rivals and in spying upon them; his suspicious nature,
+rendered still more irritable by his painful practice of a dissimulation
+repugnant to his headstrong character, making him fancy
+himself threatened more than was actually the case. He brutally
+suppressed six great plots, several of which were scandalous,
+and had more than fifty persons executed; and he identified
+himself with the king, sincerely believing that he was maintaining
+the royal authority and not merely his own. He had a preference
+for irregular measures rather than legal prosecutions, and a
+jealousy of all opinions save his own. He maintained his power
+through the fear of torture and of special commissions. It
+was Louis XIII. whose cold decree ordained most of the rigorous
+sentences, but the stain of blood rested on the cardinal&rsquo;s robe
+and made his reasons of state pass for private vengeance. Chalais
+was beheaded at Nantes in 1626 for having upheld Gaston of
+Orleans in his refusal to wed Mademoiselle de Montpensier,
+and Marshal d&rsquo;Ornano died at Vincennes for having given him
+bad advice in this matter; while the duellist de Boutteville
+was put to the torture for having braved the edict against duels.
+The royal family itself was not free from his attacks; after the
+Day of Dupes (1630) he allowed the queen-mother to die in exile,
+and publicly dishonoured the king&rsquo;s brother Gaston of Orleans
+by the publication of his confessions; Marshal de Marillac
+was put to the torture for his ingratitude, and the constable
+de Montmorency for rebellion (1632). The birth of Louis XIV.
+in 1638 confirmed Richelieu in power. However, at the point
+of death he roused himself to order the execution of the king&rsquo;s
+favourite, Cinq-Mars, and his friend de Thou, guilty of treason
+with Spain (1642).</p>
+
+<p>Absolute authority was not in itself sufficient; much money
+was also needed. In his state-papers Richelieu has shown that
+at the outset he desired that the Huguenots should
+share no longer in public affairs, that the nobles should
+<span class="sidenote">Financial policy of Richelieu.</span>
+cease to behave as rebellious subjects, and the powerful
+provincial governors as suzerains over the lands
+committed to their charge. With his passion for the uniform
+and the useful on a grand scale, he hoped by means of the Code
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page836" id="page836"></a>836</span>
+Michaud to put an end to the sale of offices, to lighten imposts,
+to suppress brigandage, to reduce the monasteries, &amp;c. To do
+this it would have been necessary to make peace, for it was
+soon evident that war was incompatible with these reforms. He
+chose war, as did his Spanish rival and contemporary Olivares.
+War is expensive sport; but Richelieu maintained a lofty
+attitude towards finance, disdained figures, and abandoned all
+petty details to subordinate officials like D&rsquo;Effiat or Bullion.
+He therefore soon reverted to the old and worse measures,
+including the debasement of coinage, and put an extreme
+tension on all the springs of the financial system. The land-tax
+was doubled and trebled by war, by the pensions of the nobles,
+by an extortion the profits of which Richelieu disdained neither
+for himself nor for his family; and just when the richer and
+more powerful classes had been freed from taxes, causing the
+wholesale oppression of the poorer, these few remaining were
+jointly and severally answerable. Perquisites, offices, forced
+loans were multiplied to such a point that a critic of the times,
+Guy Patin, facetiously declared that duties were to be exacted
+from the beggars basking in the sun. Richelieu went so far as to
+make poverty systematic and use famine as a means of government.
+This was the price paid for the national victories.</p>
+
+<p>Thus he procured money at all costs, with an extremely
+crude fiscal judgment which ended by exasperating the people;
+hence numerous insurrections of the poverty-stricken; Dijon
+rose in revolt against the <i>aides</i> in 1630, Provence against the
+tax-officers (<i>élus</i>) in 1631, Paris and Lyons in 1632, and Bordeaux
+against the increase of customs in 1635. In 1636 the <i>Croquants</i>
+ravaged Limousin, Poitou, Angoumois, Gascony and Périgord;
+in 1639 it needed an army to subdue the <i>Va-nu-pieds</i> (bare-feet)
+in Normandy. Even the <i>rentiers</i> of the Hôtel-de-Ville, big and
+little, usually very peaceable folk, were excited by the curtailment
+of their incomes, and in 1639 and 1642 were roused to fury.</p>
+
+<p>Every one had to bend before this harsh genius, who insisted
+on uniformity in obedience. After the feudal vassals, decimated
+by the wars of religion and the executioner&rsquo;s hand,
+and after the recalcitrant taxpayers, the Protestants,
+<span class="sidenote">Struggle with the Protestants.</span>
+in their turn, and by their own fault, experienced this.
+While Richelieu was opposing the designs of the pope
+and of the Spaniards in the Valtellina, while he was arming
+the duke of Savoy and subsidizing Mansfeld in Germany,
+Henri, duc de Rohan, and his brother Benjamin de Rohan, duc
+de Soubise, the Protestant chiefs, took the initiative in a fresh
+revolt despite the majority of their party (1625). This Huguenot
+rising, in stirring up which Spanish diplomacy had its share,
+was a revolt of discontented and ambitious individuals who
+trusted for success to their compact organization and the ultimate
+assistance of England. Under pressure of this new danger and
+urged on by the Catholic <i>dévôts</i>, supported by the influence of
+Pope Urban VIII., Richelieu concluded with Spain the treaty
+of Monzon (March 5, 1626), by which the interests of his allies
+Venice, Savoy and the Grisons were sacrificed without their
+being consulted. The Catholic Valtellina, freed from the claims
+of the Protestant Grisons, became an independent state under
+the joint protection of France and Spain; the question of the
+right of passage was left open, to trouble France during the
+campaigns that followed; but the immediate gain, so far as
+Richelieu was concerned, was that his hands were freed to deal
+with the Huguenots.</p>
+
+<p>Soubise had begun the revolt (January 1625) by seizing
+Port Blavet in Brittany, with the royal squadron that lay there,
+and in command of the ships thus acquired, combined with
+those of La Rochelle, he ranged the western coast, intercepting
+commerce. In September, however, Montmorency succeeded,
+with a fleet of English and Dutch ships manned by English
+seamen, in defeating Soubise, who took refuge in England.
+La Rochelle was now invested, the Huguenots were hard pressed
+also on land, and, but for the reluctance of the Dutch to allow
+their ships to be used for such a purpose, an end might have been
+made of the Protestant opposition in France; as it was, Richelieu
+was forced to accept the mediation of England and conclude a
+treaty with the Huguenots (February 1626).</p>
+
+<p>He was far, however, from forgiving them for their attitude
+or being reconciled to their power. So long as they retained
+their compact organization in France he could undertake no
+successful action abroad, and the treaty was in effect no more
+than a truce that was badly observed. The oppression of the
+French Protestants was but one of the pretexts for the English
+expedition under James I.&rsquo;s favourite, the duke of Buckingham,
+to La Rochelle in 1627; and, in the end, this intervention of a
+foreign power compromised their cause. When at last the citizens
+of the great Huguenot stronghold, caught between two dangers,
+chose what seemed to them the least and threw in their lot
+with the English, they definitely proclaimed their attitude as
+anti-national; and when, on the 29th of October 1628, after
+a heroic resistance, the city surrendered to the French king,
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of Alais, 1629.</span>
+this was hailed not as a victory for Catholicism only,
+but for France. The taking of La Rochelle was a
+crushing blow to the Huguenots, and the desperate
+alliance which Rohan, entrenched in the Cévennes,
+entered into with Philip IV. of Spain, could not prolong their
+resistance. The amnesty of Alais, prudent and moderate in
+religious matters, gave back to the Protestants their common
+rights within the body politic. Unfortunately what was an end
+for Richelieu was but a first step for the Catholic party.</p>
+
+<p>The little Protestant group eliminated, Richelieu next wished
+to establish Catholic religious uniformity; for though in France
+the Catholic Church was the state church, unity did
+not exist in it. There were no fixed principles in the
+<span class="sidenote">Richelieu and the Catholics.</span>
+relations between king and church, hence incessant
+conflicts between Gallicans and Ultramontanes, in
+which Richelieu claimed to hold an even balance. Moreover,
+a Catholic movement for religious reform in the Church of
+France began during the 17th century, marked by the creation
+of seminaries, the foundation of new orthodox religious orders,
+and the organization of public relief by Saint Vincent de Paul.
+Jansenism was the most vigorous contemporary effort to renovate
+not only morals but Church doctrine (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Jansenism</a></span>). But
+Richelieu had no love for innovators, and showed this very
+plainly to du Vergier de Hauranne, abbot of Saint Cyran, who
+was imprisoned at Vincennes for the good of Church and State.
+In affairs of intellect dragooning was equally the policy; and,
+as Corneille learnt to his cost, the French Academy was created
+in 1635 simply to secure in the republic of letters the same unity
+and conformity to rules that was enforced in the state.</p>
+
+<p>Before Richelieu, there had been no effective monarchy and
+no institutions for controlling affairs; merely advisory institutions
+which collaborated somewhat vaguely in the
+administration of the kingdom. Had the king been
+<span class="sidenote">Destruction of public spirit.</span>
+willing these might have developed further; but
+Richelieu ruthlessly suppressed all such growth, and
+they remained embryonic. According to him, the king must
+decide in secret, and the king&rsquo;s will must be law. No one might
+meddle in political affairs, neither parlements nor states-general;
+still less had the public any right to judge the actions of the
+government. Between 1631 and the edict of February 1641
+Richelieu strove against the continually renewed opposition
+of the parlements to his system of special commissions and
+judgments; in 1641 he refused them any right of interference
+in state affairs; at most would he consent occasionally to take
+counsel with assemblies of notables. Provincial and municipal
+liberties were no better treated when through them the king&rsquo;s
+subjects attempted to break loose from the iron ring of the royal
+commissaries and intendants. In Burgundy, Dijon saw her
+municipal liberties restricted in 1631; the provincial assembly
+of Dauphiné was suppressed from 1628 onward, and that of
+Languedoc in 1629; that of Provence was in 1639 replaced by
+communal assemblies, and that of Normandy was prorogued
+from 1639 to 1642. Not that Richelieu was hostile to them
+in principle; but he was obliged at all hazards to find money
+for the upkeep of the army, and the provincial states were a
+slow and heavy machine to put in motion. Through an excessive
+reaction against the disintegration that had menaced the kingdom
+after the dissolution of the League, he fell into the abuse of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page837" id="page837"></a>837</span>
+over-centralization; and depriving the people of the habit
+of criticizing governmental action, he taught them a fatal
+acquiescence in uncontrolled and undisputed authority. Like
+one of those physical forces which tend to reduce everything
+to a dead level, he battered down alike characters and fortresses;
+and in his endeavours to abolish faction, he killed that public
+spirit which, formed in the 16th century, had already produced the
+<i>République</i> of Bodin, de Thou&rsquo;s <i>History of his Times</i>, La Boetie&rsquo;s
+<i>Contre un</i>, the <i>Satire Ménippée</i>, and Sully&rsquo;s <i>Économies royales</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In order to establish this absolute despotism Richelieu created
+no new instruments, but made use of a revolutionary institution
+<span class="sidenote">Methods employed by Richelieu.</span>
+of the 16th century, namely &ldquo;intendants&rdquo; (<i>q.v.</i>),
+agents who were forerunners of the commissaries of
+the Convention, gentlemen of the long robe of inferior
+condition, hated by every one, and for that reason the
+more trustworthy. He also drew most of the members of his
+special commissions from the grand council, a supreme administrative
+tribunal which owed all its influence to him.</p>
+
+<p>However, having accomplished all these great things, the
+treasury was left empty and the reforms were but ill-established;
+for Richelieu&rsquo;s policy increased poverty, neglected
+the toiling and suffering peasants, deserted the cause
+<span class="sidenote">The results.</span>
+of the workers in order to favour the privileged classes,
+and left idle and useless that bourgeoisie whose intellectual
+activity, spirit of discipline, and civil and political culture would
+have yielded solid support to a monarchy all the stronger for
+being limited. Richelieu completed the work of Francis I.;
+he endowed France with the fatal tradition of autocracy. This
+priest by education and by turn of mind was indifferent to
+material interests, which were secondary in his eyes; he could
+organize neither finance, nor justice, nor an army, nor the
+colonies, but at the most a system of police. His method was
+not to reform, but to crush. He was great chiefly in negotiation,
+the art <i>par excellence</i> of ecclesiastics. His work was entirely
+abroad; there it had more continuity, more future, perhaps
+because only in his foreign policy was he unhampered in his
+designs. He sacrificed everything to it; but he ennobled it by
+the genius and audacity of his conceptions, by the energetic
+tension of all the muscles of the body politic.</p>
+
+<p>The Thirty Years&rsquo; War in fact dominated all Richelieu&rsquo;s
+foreign policy; by it he made France and unmade Germany.
+It was the support of Germany which Philip II. had
+lacked in order to realize his Catholic empire; and the
+<span class="sidenote">External policy of Richelieu.</span>
+election of the archduke Ferdinand II. of Styria as
+emperor gave that support to his Spanish cousins
+(1619). Thenceforward all the forces of the Habsburg monarchy
+would be united, provided that communication could be maintained
+in the north with the Netherlands and in the south with
+the duchy of Milan, so that there should be no flaw in the iron
+vice which locked France in on either side. It was therefore Of
+the highest importance to France that she should dominate the
+valleys of the Alps and Rhine. As soon as Richelieu became
+minister in 1624 there was an end to cordial relations with Spain.
+He resumed the policy of Henry IV., confining his military
+operations to the region of the Alps, and contenting himself
+at first with opposing the coalition of the Habsburgs with a
+coalition of Venice, the Turks, Bethlen Gabor, king of Hungary,
+and the Protestants of Germany and Denmark. But the revolts
+of the French Protestants, the resentment of the nobles at his
+dictatorial power, and the perpetual ferment of intrigues and
+treason in the court, obliged him almost immediately to draw
+back. During these eight years, however, Richelieu had pressed
+on matters as fast as possible.</p>
+
+<p>While James I. of England was trying to get a general on the
+cheap in Denmark to defend his son-in-law, the elector palatine,
+Richelieu was bargaining with the Spaniards in the
+treaty of Monzon (March 1626); but as the strained
+<span class="sidenote">Temporizing policy, except in Italy, 1624-1630.</span>
+relations between France and England forced him
+to conciliate Spain still further by the treaty of April
+1627, the Spaniards profited by this to carry on an
+intrigue with Rohan, and in concert with the duke
+of Savoy, to occupy Montferrat when the death of Vicenzo II.
+(December 26, 1627) left the succession of Mantua, under the
+will of the late duke, to Charles Gonzaga, duke of Nevers, a
+Frenchman by education and sympathy. But the taking of
+La Rochelle allowed Louis to force the pass of Susa, to induce
+the duke of Savoy to treat with him, and to isolate the Spaniards
+in Italy by a great Italian league between Genoa, Venice and
+the dukes of Savoy and Mantua (April 1629). Unlike the Valois,
+Richelieu only desired to free Italy from Spain in order to
+restore her independence.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that the French Protestants in the Cévennes were
+again in arms enabled the Habsburgs and the Spaniards to make
+a fresh attack upon the Alpine passes; but after the peace of
+Alais Richelieu placed himself at the head of forty thousand
+men, and stirred up enemies everywhere against the emperor,
+victorious now over the king of Denmark as in 1621 over the
+elector palatine. He united Sweden, now reconciled with Poland,
+and the Catholic and Protestant electors, disquieted by the edict
+of Restitution and the omnipotence of Wallenstein; and he
+aroused the United Provinces. But the disaffection of the
+court and the more extreme Catholics made it impossible for
+him as yet to enter upon a struggle against both Austria and
+Spain; he was only able to regulate the affairs of Italy with
+much prudence. The intervention of Mazarin, despatched by
+the pope, who saw no other means of detaching Italy from Spain
+than by introducing France into the affair, brought about the
+signature of the armistice of Rivalte on the 4th of September
+1630, soon developed into the peace of Cherasco, which re-established
+the agreement with the still fugitive duke of Savoy
+(June 1631). Under the harsh tyranny of Spain, Italy was now
+nothing but a lifeless corpse; young vigorous Germany was
+better worth saving. So Richelieu&rsquo;s envoys, Brulart de Léon
+and Father Joseph, disarmed<a name="fa32c" id="fa32c" href="#ft32c"><span class="sp">32</span></a> the emperor at the diet of Regensburg,
+while at the same time Louis XIII. kept Casale and
+Pinerolo, the gates of the Alps. Lastly, by the treaty of Fontainebleau
+(May 30th, 1631), Maximilian of Bavaria, the head of
+the Catholic League, engaged to defend the king of France against
+all his enemies, even Spain, with the exception of the emperor.
+Thus by the hand of Richelieu a union against Austrian imperialism
+was effected between the Bavarian Catholics and the
+Protestants who dominated in central and northern Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Twice had Richelieu, by means of the purse and not by force
+of arms, succeeded in reopening the passes of the Alps and of
+the Rhine. The kingdom at peace and the Huguenot
+party ruined, he was now able to engage upon his
+<span class="sidenote">Richelieu and Gustavus Adolphus.</span>
+policy of prudent acquisitions and apparently disinterested
+alliances. But Gustavus Adolphus, king
+of Sweden, called in by Richelieu and Venice to take the place
+of the played-out king of Denmark, brought danger to all parties.
+He would not be content merely to serve French interests in
+Germany, according to the terms of the secret treaty of Bärwalde
+(June 1631); but, once master of Germany and the rich valley
+of the Rhine, considered chiefly the interests of Protestantism
+and Sweden. Neither the prayers nor the threats of Richelieu,
+who wished indeed to destroy Spain but not Catholicism, nor
+the death of Gustavus Adolphus at Lützen (1632), could repair
+the evils caused by this immoderate ambition. A violent
+Catholic reaction against the Protestants ensued; and the
+union of Spain and the Empire was consolidated just when that
+of the Protestants was dissolved at Nördlingen, despite the
+efforts of Oxenstierna (September 1634). Moreover, Wallenstein,
+who had been urged by Richelieu to set up an independent
+kingdom in Bohemia, had been killed on the 23rd of February
+1634. In the course of a year Württemberg and Franconia
+were reconquered from the Swedes; and the duke of Lorraine,
+who had taken the side of the Empire, called in the Spanish and
+the imperial forces to open the road to the Netherlands through
+Franche-Comté.</p>
+
+<p>His allies no longer able to stand alone, Richelieu was obliged
+to intervene directly (May 19th, 1635). By the treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
+he purchased the army of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page838" id="page838"></a>838</span>
+by that of Rivoli he united against Spain the dukes
+<span class="sidenote">The French Thirty Years&rsquo; War.</span>
+of Modena, Parma and Mantua; he signed an open alliance with
+the league of Heilbronn, the United Provinces and
+Sweden; and after these alliances military operations
+began, Marshal de la Force occupying the duchy of Lorraine.
+Richelieu attempted to operate simultaneously
+in the Netherlands by joining hands with the Dutch,
+and on the Rhine by uniting with the Swedes; but the bad
+organization of the French armies, the double invasion of the
+Spaniards as far as Corbie and the imperial forces as far as the
+gates of Saint-Jean-de-Losne (1636), and the death of his allies,
+the dukes of Hesse-Cassel, Savoy and Mantua at first frustrated
+his efforts. A decided success was, however, achieved between
+1638 and 1640, thanks to Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and afterwards
+to Guébriant, and to the parallel action of the Swedish
+generals, Banér, Wrangel and Torstensson. Richelieu obtained
+Alsace, Breisach and the forest-towns on the Rhine; while
+in the north, thanks to the Dutch and owing to the conquest of
+Artois, marshals de la Meilleraye, de Châtillon and de Brézé
+forced the barrier of the Netherlands. Turin, the capital of
+Piedmont, was taken by Henri de Lorraine, comte d&rsquo;Harcourt;
+the alliance with rebellious Portugal facilitated the occupation
+of Roussillon and almost the whole of Catalonia, and Spain was
+reduced to defending herself; while the embarrassments of the
+Habsburgs at Madrid made those of Vienna more tractable.
+The diet of Regensburg, under the mediation of Maximilian of
+Bavaria, decided in favour of peace with France, and on the 25th
+of December 1641 the preliminary settlement at Hamburg
+fixed the opening of negotiations to take place at Münster and
+Osnabrück. Richelieu&rsquo;s death (December 4, 1642) prevented
+him from seeing the triumph of his policy, but it can be judged
+by its results; in 1624 the kingdom had in the east only the
+frontier of the Meuse to defend it from invasion; in 1642 the
+whole of Alsace, except Strassburg, was occupied and the Rhine
+guarded by the army of Guébriant. Six months later, on the
+14th of May 1643, Louis XIII. rejoined his minister in his true
+kingdom, the land of shades.</p>
+
+<p>But thanks to Mazarin, who completed his work, France
+gathered in the harvest sown by Richelieu. At the outset no
+one believed that the new cardinal would have any
+success. Every one expected from Anne of Austria
+<span class="sidenote">Mazarin, 1643-1661.</span>
+a change in the government which appeared to be
+justified by the persecutions of Richelieu and the
+disdainful unscrupulousness of Louis XIII. On the 16th of
+May the queen took the little four-year-old Louis XIV. to the
+parlement of Paris which, proud of playing a part in politics,
+hastened, contrary to Louis XIII.&rsquo;s last will, to acknowledge
+the command of the little king, and to give his mother &ldquo;free,
+absolute and entire authority.&rdquo; The great nobles were already
+looking upon themselves as established in power, when they
+learnt with amazement that the regent had appointed as her
+chief adviser, not Gaston of Orleans, but Mazarin. The political
+revenge which in their eyes was owing to them as a body, the
+queen claimed for herself alone, and she made it a romantic one.
+This Spaniard of waning charms, who had been neglected by her
+husband and insulted by Richelieu, now gave her indolent and
+full-blown person, together with absolute power, into the hands
+of the Sicilian. Whilst others were triumphing openly, Mazarin,
+in the shadow and silence of the interregnum, had kept watch
+upon the heart of the queen; and when the old party of Marie
+de&rsquo; Medici and Anne of Austria wished to come back into power,
+to impose a general peace, and to substitute for the Protestant
+alliances an understanding with Spain, the arrest of François
+de Vendôme, duke of Beaufort, and the exile of other important
+nobles proved to the great families that their hour had gone
+by (September 1643).</p>
+
+<p>Mazarin justified Richelieu&rsquo;s confidence and the favour of
+Anne of Austria. It was upon his foreign policy that he relied
+to maintain his authority within the kingdom. Thanks to him,
+the duke of Enghien (Louis de Bourbon, afterwards prince of
+<span class="sidenote">Treaties of Westphalia.</span>
+Condé), appointed commander-in-chief at the age of twenty-two,
+caused the downfall of the renowned Spanish infantry at
+Rocroi; and he discovered Turenne, whose prudence tempered
+Condé&rsquo;s overbold ideas. It was he too who by renewing the traditional
+alliances and resuming against Bavaria, Ferdinand
+III.&rsquo;s most powerful ally, the plan of common
+action with Sweden which Richelieu had sketched out,
+pursued it year after year: in 1644 at Freiburg
+im Breisgau, despite the death of Guébriant at Rottweil; in
+1645 at Nördlingen, despite the defeat of Marienthal; and in
+1646 in Bavaria, despite the rebellion of the Weimar cavalry;
+to see it finally triumph at Zusmarshausen in May 1648. With
+Turenne dominating the Eiser and the Inn, Condé victorious
+at Lens, and the Swedes before the gates of Prague, the emperor,
+left without a single ally, finally authorized his plenipotentiaries
+to sign on the 24th of October 1648 the peace about which
+negotiations had been going on for seven years. Mazarin had
+stood his ground notwithstanding the treachery of the duke of
+Bavaria, the defection of the United Provinces, the resistance of
+the Germans, and the general confusion which was already
+pervading the internal affairs of the kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>The dream of the Habsburgs was shattered. They had
+wished to set up a centralized empire, Catholic and German;
+but the treaties of Westphalia kept Germany in its passive
+and fragmentary condition; while the Catholic and Protestant
+princes obtained formal recognition of their territorial independence
+and their religious equality. Thus disappeared the
+two principles which justified the Empire&rsquo;s existence; the
+universal sovereignty to which it laid claim was limited simply
+to a German monarchy much crippled in its powers; and the
+enfranchisement of the Lutherans and Calvinists from papal
+jurisdiction cut the last tie which bound the Empire to Rome.
+The victors&rsquo; material benefits were no less substantial: the congress
+of Münster ratified the final cession of the Three Bishoprics
+and the conquest of Alsace, and Breisach and Philippsburg
+completed these acquisitions. The Spaniards had no longer
+any hope of adding Luxemburg to their Franche-Comté; while
+the Holy Roman Empire in Germany, taken in the rear by
+Sweden (now mistress of the Baltic and the North Sea), cut off
+for good from the United Provinces and the Swiss cantons, and
+enfeebled by the recognized right of intervention in German
+affairs on the part of Sweden and France, was now nothing but
+a meaningless name.</p>
+
+<p>Mazarin had not been so fortunate in Italy, where in 1642
+the Spanish remained masters. Venice, the duchy of Milan and
+the duke of Modena were on his side; the pope and the grand-duke
+of Tuscany were trembling, but the romantic expedition
+of the duke of Guise to Naples, and the outbreak of the Fronde,
+saved Spain, who had refused to take part in the treaties of
+Westphalia and whose ruin Mazarin wished to compass.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, easier for Mazarin to remodel the map of
+Europe than to govern France. There he found himself face to
+face with all the difficulties that Richelieu had neglected
+to solve, and that were now once more giving trouble.
+<span class="sidenote">State of the kingdom.</span>
+The <i>Lit de Justice</i> of the 18th of May 1643 had proved
+authority to remain still so personal an affair that the
+person of the king, insignificant though that was, continued to
+be regarded as its absolute depositary. Thus regular obedience
+to an abstract principle was under Mazarin as incomprehensible
+to the idle and selfish nobility as it had been under Richelieu.
+The parlement still kept up the same extra-judicial pretensions;
+but beyond its judicial functions it acted merely as a kind of town-crier
+to the monarchy, charged with making known the king&rsquo;s
+edicts. Yet through its right of remonstrance it was the only
+body that could legally and publicly intervene in politics; a large
+and independent body, moreover, which had its own demands
+to make upon the monarchy and its ministers. Richelieu, by
+setting his special agents above the legal but complicated
+machinery of financial administration, had so corrupted it as
+to necessitate radical reform; all the more so because financial
+charges had been increased to a point far beyond what the nation
+could bear. With four armies to keep up, the insurrection in
+Portugal to maintain, and pensions to serve the needs of the
+allies, the burden had become a crushing one.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page839" id="page839"></a>839</span></p>
+
+<p>Richelieu had been able to surmount these difficulties because
+he governed in the name of a king of full age, and against isolated
+adversaries; while Mazarin had the latter against
+him in a coalition which had lasted ten years, with
+<span class="sidenote">Richelieu and Mazarin.</span>
+the further disadvantages of his foreign origin and a
+royal minority at a time when every one was sick of
+government by ministers. He was the very opposite of Richelieu,
+as wheedling in his ways as the other had been haughty and
+scornful, as devoid of vanity and rancour as Richelieu had been
+full of jealous care for his authority; he was gentle where the
+other had been passionate and irritable, with an intelligence as
+great and more supple, and a far more grasping nature.</p>
+
+<p>It was the fiscal question that arrayed against Mazarin a
+coalition of all petty interests and frustrated ambitions; this
+was always the Achilles&rsquo; heel of the French monarchy,
+which in 1648 was at the last extremity for money.
+<span class="sidenote">Financial difficulties.</span>
+All imposts were forestalled, and every expedient for
+obtaining either direct or indirect taxes had been
+exhausted by the methods of the financiers. As the country
+districts could yield nothing more, it became necessary to
+demand money from the Parisians and from the citizens of the
+various towns, and to search out and furbish up old disused
+edicts&mdash;edicts as to measures and scales of prices&mdash;at the very
+moment when the luxury and corruption of the <i>parvenus</i> was
+insulting the poverty and suffering of the people, and exasperating
+all those officials who took their functions seriously.</p>
+
+<p>A storm burst forth in the parlement against Mazarin as the
+patron of these expedients, the occasion for this being the edict
+of redemption by which the government renewed for
+nine years the &ldquo;Paulette&rdquo; which had now expired,
+<span class="sidenote">Rebellion of the parlement.</span>
+by withholding four years&rsquo; salary from all officers of
+the Great Council, of the <i>Chambres des comptes</i>, and of
+the <i>Cour des aides</i>. The parlement, although expressly exempted,
+associated itself with their protest by the decree of union of
+May 13, 1648, and deliberations in a body upon the reform of
+the state. Despite the queen&rsquo;s express prohibition, the insurrectionary
+assembly of the Chambre Saint Louis criticized
+the whole financial system, founded as it was upon usury, claimed
+the right of voting taxes, respect for individual liberty, and the
+suppression of the intendants, who were a menace to the new
+bureaucratic feudalism. The queen, haughty and exasperated
+though she was, yielded for the time being, because the invasion
+of the Spaniards in the north, the arrest of Charles I. of England,
+and the insurrection of Masaniello at Naples made the moment
+a critical one for monarchies; but immediately after the victory
+at Lens she attempted a <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>, arresting the leaders, and
+among them Broussel, a popular member of the parlement
+(August 26, 1648). Paris at once rose in revolt&mdash;a Paris of
+swarming and unpoliced streets, that had been making French
+history ever since the reign of Henry IV., and that had not
+forgotten the barricades of the League. Once more a pretence
+of yielding had to be made, until Condé&rsquo;s arrival enabled the
+court to take refuge at Saint-Germain (January 15, 1649).</p>
+
+<p>Civil war now began against the rebellious coalition of great
+<span class="sidenote">The Fronde (1648-1652).</span>
+nobles, lawyers of the parlement, populace, and mercenaries
+just set free from the Thirty Years&rsquo; War. It lasted
+four years, for motives often as futile as the Grande
+Mademoiselle&rsquo;s ambition to wed little Louis XIV.,
+Cardinal de Retz&rsquo;s red hat, or Madame de Longueville&rsquo;s
+stool at the queen&rsquo;s side; it was, as its name of <i>Fronde</i> indicates,
+a hateful farce, played by grown-up children, in several acts.</p>
+
+<p>Its first and shortest phase was the Fronde of the Parlement.
+At a period when all the world was a little mad, the parlement
+had imagined a loyalist revolt, and, though it raised
+an armed protest, this was not against the king but
+<span class="sidenote">The Fronde of the Parlement.</span>
+against Mazarin and the persons to whom he had
+delegated power. But the parlement soon became
+disgusted with its allies&mdash;the princes and nobles, who had only
+drawn their swords in order to beg more effectively with arms
+in their hands; and the Parisian mob, whose fanaticism had
+been aroused by Paul de Gondi, a warlike ecclesiastic, a Catiline
+in a cassock, who preached the gospel at the dagger&rsquo;s point.
+When a suggestion was made to the parlement to receive an
+envoy from Spain, the members had no hesitation in making
+terms with the court by the peace of Rueil (March 11, 1649),
+which ended the first Fronde.</p>
+
+<p>As an <i>entr&rsquo;acte</i>, from April 1649 to January 1650, came the
+affair of the <i>Petits Maîtres</i>: Condé, proud and violent; Gaston
+of Orleans, pliable and contemptible; Conti, the
+simpleton; and Longueville, the betrayed husband.
+<span class="sidenote">The Fronde of the Princes.</span>
+The victor of Lens and Charenton imagined that every
+one was under an obligation to him, and laid claim to a
+dictatorship so insupportable that Anne of Austria and Mazarin&mdash;assured
+by Gondi of the concurrence of the parlement and
+people&mdash;had him arrested. To defend Condé the great conspiracy
+of women was formed: Madame de Chevreuse, the
+subtle and impassioned princess palatine, and the princess of
+Condé vainly attempted to arouse Normandy, Burgundy and
+the mob of Bordeaux; while Turenne, bewitched by Madame
+de Longueville, allowed himself to become involved with Spain
+and was defeated at Rethel (December 15, 1650). Unfortunately,
+after his custom when victor, Mazarin forgot his promises&mdash;above
+all, Gondi&rsquo;s cardinal&rsquo;s hat. A union was effected between
+the two Frondes, that of the Petits Maîtres and that of the
+parlements, and Mazarin was obliged to flee for safety to the
+electorate of Cologne (February 1651), whence he continued
+to govern the queen and the kingdom by means of secret letters.
+But the heads of the two Frondes&mdash;Condé, now set free from
+prison at Havre, and Gondi who detested him&mdash;were not long in
+quarrelling fatally. Owing to Mazarin&rsquo;s exile and to the king&rsquo;s
+attainment of his majority (September 5, 1651) quiet was being
+restored, when the return of Mazarin, jealous of Anne of Austria,
+nearly brought about another reconciliation of all his opponents
+(January 1652). Condé resumed civil war with the support of
+Spain, because he was not given Mazarin&rsquo;s place; but though
+he defeated the royal army at Bléneau, he was surprised at
+Étampes, and nearly crushed by Turenne at the gate of Saint-Antoine.
+Saved, however, by the Grande Mademoiselle, daughter
+of Gaston of Orleans, he lost Paris by the disaster of the Hôtel de
+Ville (July 4, 1652), where he had installed an insurrectionary
+government. A general weariness of civil war gave plenty of
+opportunity after this to the agents of Mazarin, who in order to
+facilitate peace made a pretence of exiling himself for a second
+time to Bouillon. Then came the final collapse: Condé having
+taken refuge in Spain for seven years, Gaston of Orleans being
+in exile, Retz in prison, and the parlement reduced to its judiciary
+functions only, the field was left open for Mazarin, who, four
+months after the king, re-entered in triumph that Paris which
+had driven him forth with jeers and mockery (February 1653).</p>
+
+<p>The task was now to repair these four years of madness and
+folly. The nobles who had hoped to set up the League again,
+half counting upon the king of Spain, were held in
+check by Mazarin with the golden dowries of his
+<span class="sidenote">The administration of Mazarin.</span>
+numerous nieces, and were now employed by him in
+warfare and in decorative court functions; while
+others, De Retz and La Rochefoucauld, sought consolation in
+their Memoirs or their Maxims, one for his mortifications and the
+other for his rancour as a statesman out of employment. The
+parlement, which had confused political power with judiciary
+administration, was given to understand, in the session of April
+13, 1655, at Vincennes, that the era of political manifestations
+was over; and the money expended by Gourville, Mazarin&rsquo;s
+agent, restored the members of the parlement to docility. The
+power of the state was confided to middle-class men, faithful
+servants during the evil days: Abel Servien, Michel le Tellier,
+Hugues de Lionne. Like Henry IV. after the League, Mazarin,
+after having conquered the Fronde, had to buy back bit by bit
+the kingdom he had lost, and, like Richelieu, he spread out a
+network of agents, thenceforward regular and permanent, who
+assured him of that security without which he could never
+have carried on his vast plunderings in peace and quiet. His
+imitator and superintendent, Fouquet, the Maecenas of the
+future Augustus, concealed this gambling policy beneath the
+lustre of the arts and the glamour of a literature remarkable for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page840" id="page840"></a>840</span>
+elevation of thought and vigour of style, and further characterized
+by the proud though somewhat restricted freedom conceded to
+men like Corneille, Descartes and Pascal, but soon to disappear.</p>
+
+<p>It was also necessary to win back from Spain the territory
+which the Frondeurs had delivered up to her. Both countries,
+exhausted by twenty years of war, were incapable
+of bringing it to a successful termination, yet neither
+<span class="sidenote">War with Spain.</span>
+would be first to give in; Mazarin, therefore, disquieted
+by Condé&rsquo;s victory at Valenciennes (1656), reknit the
+bond of Protestant alliances, and, having nothing to expect
+from Holland, he deprived Spain of her alliance with Oliver
+Cromwell (March 23, 1657). A victory in the Dunes by Turenne,
+now reinstalled in honour, and above all the conquest of the
+Flemish seaboard, were the results (June 1658); but when, in
+order to prevent the emperor&rsquo;s intervention in the Netherlands,
+Mazarin attempted, on the death of Ferdinand III., to wrest
+the Empire from the Habsburgs, he was foiled by the gold of
+the Spanish envoy Peñaranda (1657). When the abdication of
+Christina of Sweden caused a quarrel between Charles Gustavus
+of Sweden and John Casimir of Poland, by which the emperor
+and the elector of Brandenburg hoped to profit, Mazarin (August
+15, 1658) leagued the Rhine princes against them; while at
+the same time the substitution of Pope Alexander VII. for
+Innocent X., and the marriage of Mazarin&rsquo;s two nieces with
+the duke of Modena and a prince of the house of Savoy, made
+Spain anxious about her Italian possessions. The suggestion
+of a marriage between Louis XIV. and a princess of Savoy
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of the Pyrenees.</span>
+decided Spain, now brought to bay, to accord him the
+hand of Maria Theresa as a chief condition of the peace
+of the Pyrenees (November 1659). Roussillon and
+Artois, with a line of strongholds constituting a
+formidable northern frontier, were ceded to France; and the
+acquisition of Alsace and Lorraine under certain conditions was
+ratified. Thus from this long duel between the two countries
+Spain issued much enfeebled, while France obtained the preponderance
+in Italy, Germany, and throughout northern Europe,
+as is proved by Mazarin&rsquo;s successful arbitration at Copenhagen
+and at Oliva (May-June 1660). That dream of Henry IV. and
+Richelieu, the ruin of Philip II.&rsquo;s Catholic empire, was made a
+realized fact by Mazarin; but the clever engineer, dazzled by
+success, took the wrong road in national policy when he hoped
+to crown his work by the Spanish marriage.</p>
+
+<p>The development of events had gradually enlarged the royal
+prerogative, and it now came to its full flower in the administrative
+monarchy of the 17th century. Of this system
+Louis XIV. was to be the chief exponent. His
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XIV. (1661-1715).</span>
+reign may be divided into two very distinct periods.
+The death of Colbert and the revocation of the edict
+of Nantes brought the first to a close (1661-1683-1685); coinciding
+with the date when the Revolution in England definitely
+reversed the traditional system of alliances, and when the
+administration began to disorganize. In the second period
+(1685-1715) all the germs of decadence were developed until the
+moment of final dissolution.</p>
+
+<p>In a monarchy so essentially personal the preparation of
+the heir to the throne for his position should have been the chief
+task. Anne of Austria, a devoted but unintelligent
+mother, knew no method of dealing with her son,
+<span class="sidenote">Education of Louis XIV.</span>
+save devotion combined with the rod. His first
+preceptors were nothing but courtiers; and the most
+intelligent, his valet Laporte, developed in the royal child&rsquo;s
+mind his natural instinct of command, a very lively sense of his
+rank, and that nobly majestic air of master of the world which
+he preserved even in the commonest actions of his life. The
+continual agitations of the Fronde prevented him from persevering
+in any consistent application during those years which are
+the most valuable for study, and only instilled in him a horror
+of revolution, parliamentary remonstrance, and disorder of
+all kinds; so that this recollection determined the direction
+of his government. Mazarin, in his later years, at last taught
+him his trade as king by admitting him to the council, and by
+instructing him in the details of politics and of administration.
+In 1661 Louis XIV. was a handsome youth of twenty-two,
+of splendid health and gentle serious mien; eager for pleasure,
+but discreet and even dissimulating; his rather mediocre
+intellectual qualities relieved by solid common sense; fully
+alive to his rights and his duties.</p>
+
+<p>The duties he conscientiously fulfilled, but he considered he
+need render no account of them to any one but his Maker, the
+last humiliation for God&rsquo;s vicegerent being &ldquo;to take
+the law from his people.&rdquo; In the solemn language of
+<span class="sidenote">His political ideas.</span>
+the &ldquo;Memoirs for the Instruction of the Dauphin&rdquo;
+he did but affirm the arbitrary and capricious character
+of his predecessors&rsquo; action. As for his rights, Louis XIV. looked
+upon these as plenary and unlimited. Representative of God
+upon earth, heir to the sovereignty of the Roman emperors,
+a universal suzerain and master over the goods and the lives
+of his vassals, he could conceive no other bounds to his authority
+than his own interests or his obligations towards God, and in this
+he was a willing believer of Bossuet. He therefore had but two
+aims: to increase his power at home and to enlarge his kingdom
+abroad. The army and taxation were the chief instruments
+of his policy. Had not Bodin, Hobbes and Bossuet taught
+that the force which gives birth to kingdoms serves best also to
+feed and sustain them? His theory of the state, despite Grotius
+and Jurieu, rejected as odious and even impious the notion
+of any popular rights, anterior and superior to his own. A
+realist in principle, Louis XIV. was terribly utilitarian and
+egotistical in practice; and he exacted from his subjects an
+absolute, continual and obligatory self-abnegation before his
+public authority, even when improperly exercised.</p>
+
+<p>This deified monarch needed a new temple, and Versailles,
+where everything was his creation, both men and things, adored
+its maker. The highest nobility of France, beginning
+with the princes of the blood, competed for posts
+<span class="sidenote">The forms of Louis XIV.&rsquo;s monarchy.</span>
+in the royal household, where an army of ten thousand
+soldiers, four thousand servants, and five thousand
+horses played its costly and luxurious part in the ordered and
+almost religious pageant of the king&rsquo;s existence. The &ldquo;<i>anciennes
+cohues de France</i>,&rdquo; gay, familiar and military, gave place to a
+stilted court life, a perpetual adoration, a very ceremonious and
+very complicated ritual, in which the demigod &ldquo;pontificated&rdquo;
+even &ldquo;in his dressing-gown.&rdquo; To pay court to himself was the
+first and only duty in the eyes of a proud and haughty prince
+who saw and noted everything, especially any one&rsquo;s absence.
+Versailles, where the delicate refinements of Italy and the grave
+politeness of Spain were fused and mingled with French vivacity,
+became the centre of national life and a model for foreign royalties;
+hence if Versailles has played a considerable part in the history
+of civilization, it also seriously modified the life of France.
+Etiquette and self-seeking became the chief rules of a courtier&rsquo;s
+life, and this explains the division of the nobility into two
+sections: the provincial squires, embittered by neglect; and
+the courtiers, who were ruined materially and intellectually
+by their way of living. Versailles sterilized all the idle upper
+classes, exploited the industrious classes by its extravagance,
+and more and more broke relations between king and
+kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>But however divine, the king could not wield his power
+unaided. Louis XIV. called to his assistance a hierarchy of
+humbly submissive functionaries, and councils over
+which he regularly presided. Holding the very name
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XIV.&rsquo;s ministers.</span>
+of <i>roi fainéant</i> in abhorrence, he abolished the office
+of mayor of the palace&mdash;that is to say, the prime
+minister&mdash;thus imposing upon himself work which he always
+regularly performed. In choosing his collaborators his principle
+was never to select nobles or ecclesiastics, but persons of inferior
+birth. Neither the immense fortunes amassed by these men,
+nor the venality and robust vitality which made their families
+veritable races of ministers, altered the fact that De Lionne, Le
+Tellier, Louvois and Colbert were in themselves of no account,
+even though the parts they played were much more important
+than Louis XIV. imagined. This was the age of plebeians, to
+the great indignation of the duke and peer Saint Simon. Mere
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page841" id="page841"></a>841</span>
+reflected lights, these satellites professed to share their master&rsquo;s
+<span class="sidenote">Royal despotism.</span>
+honor of all individual and collective rights of such a
+nature as to impose any check upon his public authority.
+Louis XIV. detested the states-general and never
+convoked them, and the parlements were definitely reduced
+to silence in 1673; he completed the destruction of municipal
+liberties, under pretext of bad financial administration; suffered
+no public, still less private criticism; was ruthless when his
+exasperated subjects had recourse to force; and made the police
+the chief bulwark of his government. Prayers and resignation
+were the only solace left for the hardships endured by his subjects.
+All the ties of caste, class, corporation and family were severed;
+the jealous despotism of Louis XIV. destroyed every opportunity
+of taking common action; he isolated every man in private life,
+in individual interests, just as he isolated himself more and more
+from the body social. Freedom he tolerated for himself alone.</p>
+
+<p>His passion for absolutism made him consider himself master
+of souls as well as bodies, and Bossuet did nothing to contravene
+an opinion which was, indeed, common to every
+sovereign of his day. Louis XIV., like Philip II.,
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XIV. and the Church.</span>
+pretending to not only political but religious authority,
+would not allow the pope to share it, still less would
+he abide any religious dissent; and this gave rise to many
+conflicts, especially with the pope, at that time a temporal
+sovereign both at Rome and at Avignon, and as the head of
+Christendom bound to interfere in the affairs of France. Louis
+XIV.&rsquo;s pride caused the first struggle, which turned exclusively
+upon questions of form, as in the affair of the Corsican Guard
+in 1662. The question of the right of <i>regale</i> (right of the Crown
+to the revenues of vacant abbeys and bishoprics), which touched
+the essential rights of sovereignty, further inflamed the hostility
+between Innocent XI. and Louis XIV. Conformably with the
+traditions of the administrative monarchy in 1673, the king
+wanted to extend to the new additions to the kingdom his
+rights of receiving the revenues of vacant bishoprics and making
+appointments to their benefices, including taking oaths of fidelity
+from the new incumbents. A protest raised by the bishops of
+Pamiers and Aleth, followed by the seizure of their revenues,
+provoked the intervention of Innocent XI. in 1678; but the
+king was supported by the general assembly of the clergy, which
+declared that, with certain exceptions, the <i>regale</i> extended over
+the whole kingdom (1681). The pope ignored the decisions of
+the assembly; so, dropping the <i>regale</i>, the king demanded that,
+to obviate further conflict, the assembly should define the limits
+of the authority due respectively to the king, the Church and the
+pope. This was the object of the Declaration of the Four
+<span class="sidenote">Declaration of the Four Articles.</span>
+Articles: the pope has no power in temporal matters;
+general councils are superior to the pope in spiritual
+affairs; the rules of the Church of France are inviolable;
+decisions of the pope in matters of faith are only irrevocable
+by consent of the Church. The French laity transferred
+to the king this quasi-divine authority, which became the political
+theory of the <i>ancien régime</i>; and since the pope refused to submit,
+or to institute the new bishops, the Sorbonne was obliged to
+interfere. The affair of the &ldquo;diplomatic prerogatives,&rdquo; when
+Louis XIV. was decidedly in the wrong, made relations even
+more strained (1687), and the idea of a schism was mooted with
+greater insistence than in 1681. The death of Innocent XI. in
+1689 allowed Louis XIV. to engage upon negotiations rendered
+imperative by his check in the affair of the Cologne bishopric,
+where his candidate was ousted by the pope&rsquo;s. In 1693, under
+the pontificate of Innocent XII., he went, like so many others,
+to Canossa.</p>
+
+<p>Recipient now of immense ecclesiastical revenues, which,
+owing to the number of vacant benefices, constituted a powerful
+engine of government, Louis XIV. had immense power over the
+French Church. Religion began to be identified with the state;
+and the king combated heresy and dissent, not only as a religious
+duty, but as a matter of political expediency, unity of faith
+being obviously conducive to unity of law.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu having deprived the Protestants of all political
+guarantees for their liberty of conscience, an anti-Protestant
+party (directed by a cabal of religious devotees, the <i>Compagnie
+du Saint Sacrement</i>) determined to suppress it completely by
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XIV. and the Protestants.</span>
+conversions and by a jesuitical interpretation of the
+terms of the edict of Nantes. Louis XIV. made
+this impolitic policy his own. His passion for absolutism,
+a religious zeal that was the more active because
+it had to compensate for many affronts to public and private
+morals, the financial necessity of augmenting the free donations
+of the clergy, and the political necessity of relying upon that body
+in his conflicts with the pope, led the king between 1661 and
+1685 to embark upon a double campaign of arbitrary proceedings
+with the object of nullifying the edict, conversions being procured
+either by force or by bribery. The promulgation and application
+of systematic measures from above had a response from below,
+from the corporation, the urban workshop, and the village street,
+which supported ecclesiastical and royal authority in its suppression
+of heresy, and frequently even went further: individual
+and local fanaticism co-operating with the head of the state,
+the <i>intendants</i>, and the military and judiciary authorities.
+Protestants were successively removed from the states-general,
+the consulates, the town councils, and even from the humblest
+municipal offices; they were deprived of the charge of their
+hospitals, their academies, their colleges and their schools, and
+were left to ignorance and poverty; while the intolerance
+of the clergy united with chicanery of procedure to invade
+their places of worship, insult their adherents, and put a stop
+to the practice of their ritual. Pellisson&rsquo;s methods of conversion,
+<span class="sidenote">Suppression of the edict of Nantes (1685).</span>
+considered too slow, were accelerated by the violent
+persecution of Louvois and by the king&rsquo;s galleys,
+until the day came when Louis XIV., deceived by the
+clergy, crowned his record of complaisant legal methods
+by revoking the edict of Nantes. This was the signal
+for a Huguenot renaissance, and the Camisards of the Cévennes
+held the royal armies in check from 1703 to 1711. Notwithstanding
+this, however, Louis XIV. succeeded only too well, since
+Protestantism was reduced both numerically and intellectually.
+He never perceived how its loss threw France back a full
+century, to the great profit of foreign nations; while neither
+did the Church perceive that she had been firing on her own
+troops.</p>
+
+<p>The same order of ideas produced the persecution of the
+Jansenists, as much a political as a religious sect. Founded
+by a bishop of Ypres on the doctrine of predestination,
+and growing by persecution, it had speedily recruited
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XIV. and the Jansenists.</span>
+adherents among the disillusioned followers of the
+Fronde, the Gallican clergy, the higher nobility, even
+at court, and more important still, among learned men and
+thinkers, such as the great Arnauld, Pascal and Racine. Pure
+and austere, it enjoined the strictest morals in the midst of
+corruption, and the most dignified self-respect in face of idolatrous
+servility. Amid general silence it was a formidable and much
+dreaded body of opinion; and in order to stifle it Louis XIV.,
+the tool of his confessor, the Jesuit Le Tellier, made use of his
+usual means. The nuns of Port Royal were in their turn subjected
+to persecution, which, after a truce between 1666 and
+1679, became aggravated by the affair of the <i>regale</i>, the bishops
+of Aleth and Pamiers being Jansenists. Port Royal was destroyed,
+the nuns dispersed, and the ashes of the dead scattered
+to the four winds. The bull <i>Unigenitus</i> launched by Pope
+Clement XI. in 1713 against a Jansenist book by Father Quesnel
+rekindled a quarrel, the end of which Louis XIV. did not live to
+see, and which raged throughout the 18th century.</p>
+
+<p>Bossuet, Louis XIV.&rsquo;s mouthpiece, triumphed in his turn over
+the quietism of Madame Guyon, a mystic who recognized
+neither definite dogmas nor formal prayers, but
+abandoned herself &ldquo;to the torrent of the forces of
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XIV. and the Libertins.</span>
+God.&rdquo; Fénelon, who in his <i>Maximes des Saints</i> had
+given his adherence to her doctrine, was obliged to
+submit in 1699; but Bossuet could not make the spirit of
+authority prevail against the religious criticism of a Richard
+Simon or the philosophical polemics of a Bayle. He might
+exile their persons; but their doctrines, supported by the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page842" id="page842"></a>842</span>
+scientific and philosophic work of Newton and Leibnitz, were
+to triumph over Church and religion in the 18th century.</p>
+
+<p>The chaos of the administrative system caused difficulties
+no less great than those produced by opinions and creeds.
+Traditional rights, differences of language, provincial autonomy,
+ecclesiastical assemblies, parlements, governors, intendants&mdash;vestiges
+of the past, or promises for the future&mdash;all jostled
+against and thwarted each other. The central authority had not
+yet acquired a vigorous constitution, nor destroyed all the
+intermediary authorities. Colbert now offered his aid in making
+Louis XIV. the sole pivot of public life, as he had already become
+the source of religious authority, thanks to the Jesuits and to
+Bossuet.</p>
+
+<p>Colbert, an agent of Le Tellier, the honest steward of
+Mazarin&rsquo;s dishonest fortunes, had a future opened to him by
+the fall of Fouquet (1661). Harsh and rough, he
+compelled admiration for his delight in work, his
+<span class="sidenote">Colbert.</span>
+aptitude in disentangling affairs, his desire of continually augmenting
+the wealth of the state, and his regard for the
+public welfare without forgetting his own. Born in a draper&rsquo;s
+shop, this great administrator always preserved its narrow
+horizon, its short-sighted imagination, its taste for detail, and the
+conceit of the parvenu; while with his insinuating ways, and
+knowing better than Fouquet how to keep his distance, he
+made himself indispensable by his <i>savoir-faire</i> and his readiness
+for every emergency. He gradually got everything into his
+control: finance, industry, commerce, the fine arts, the navy
+and colonies, the administration, even the fortifications, and&mdash;through
+his uncle Pussort&mdash;the law, with all the profits attaching
+to its offices.</p>
+
+<p>His first care was to restore the exhausted resources of the
+country and to re-establish order in finance. He began by
+measures of liquidation: the <i>Chambre ardente</i> of
+1661 to 1665 to deal with the farmers of the revenue,
+<span class="sidenote">Colbert and finance.</span>
+the condemnation of Fouquet, and a revision of the
+funds. Next, like a good man of business, Colbert
+determined that the state accounts should be kept as accurately
+as those of a shop; but though in this respect a great minister,
+he was less so in his manner of levying contributions. He
+kept to the old system of revenues from the demesne and from
+imposts that were reactionary in their effect, such as the <i>taille</i>,
+aids, salt-tax (<i>gabelle</i>) and customs; only he managed them
+better. His forest laws have remained a model. He demanded
+less of the <i>taille</i>, a direct impost, and more from indirect aids,
+of which he created the code&mdash;not, however, out of sympathy
+for the common people, towards whom he was very harsh, but
+because these aids covered a greater area and brought in larger
+returns. He tried to import more method into the very unequal
+distribution of taxation, less brutality in collection, less confusion
+in the fiscal machine, and more uniformity in the matter of rights;
+while he diminished the debts of the much-involved towns
+by putting them through the bankruptcy court. With revolutionary
+intentions as to reform, this only ended, after several
+years of normal budgets, in ultimate frustration. He could
+never make the rights over the drink traffic uniform and equal,
+nor restrict privileges in the matter of the <i>taille</i>; while he
+was soon much embarrassed, not only by the coalition of
+particular interests and local immunities, which made despotism
+acceptable by tempering it, but also by Louis XIV.&rsquo;s two master-passions
+for conquest and for building. To his great chagrin
+he was obliged to begin borrowing again in 1672, and to have
+recourse to &ldquo;<i>affaires extraordinaires</i>&rdquo;; and this brought him at
+last to his grave.</p>
+
+<p>Order was for Colbert the prime condition of work. He
+desired all France to set to work as he did &ldquo;with a contented
+air and rubbing his hands for joy&rdquo;; but neither
+general theories nor individual happiness preoccupied
+<span class="sidenote">Colbert and industry.</span>
+his attention. He made economy truly political:
+that is to say, the prosperity of industry and commerce
+afforded him no other interest than that of making the country
+wealthy and the state powerful. Louis XIV.&rsquo;s aspirations
+towards glory chimed in very well with the extremely positive
+views of his minister; but here too Colbert was an innovator
+and an unsuccessful one. He wanted to give 17th-century France
+the modern and industrial character which the New World
+had imprinted on the maritime states; and he created industry
+on a grand scale with an energy of labour, a prodigious genius
+for initiative and for organization; while, in order to attract a
+foreign clientèle, he imposed upon it the habits of meticulous
+probity common to a middle-class draper. But he maintained
+the legislation of the Valois, who placed industry in a state of
+strict dependency on finance, and he instituted a servitude of
+labour harder even than that of individuals; his great factories
+of soap, glass, lace, carpets and cloth had the same artificial
+life as that of contemporary Russian industry, created and
+nourished by the state. It was therefore necessary, in order to
+compensate for the fatal influence of servitude, that administrative
+protection should be lavished without end upon the royal
+manufactures; moreover, in the course of its development,
+industry on a grand scale encroached in many ways upon the
+resources of smaller industries. After Colbert&rsquo;s day, when the
+crutches lent by privilege were removed, his achievements lost
+vigour; industries that ministered to luxury alone escaped
+decay; the others became exhausted in struggling against the
+persistent and teasing opposition of the municipal bodies and
+the bourgeoisie&mdash;conceited, ignorant and terrified at any innovation&mdash;and
+against the blind and intolerant policy of Louis XIV.</p>
+
+<p>Colbert, in common with all his century, believed that the
+true secret of commerce and the indisputable proof of a country&rsquo;s
+prosperity was to sell as many of the products of
+national industry to the foreigner as possible, while
+<span class="sidenote">Colbert and commerce.</span>
+purchasing as little as possible. In order to do this,
+he sometimes figured as a free-trader and sometimes
+as a protectionist, but always in a practical sense; if he imposed
+prohibitive tariffs, in 1664 and 1667, he also opened the free
+ports of Marseilles and Dunkirk, and engineered the <i>Canal du
+midi</i>. But commerce, like industry, was made to rely only on
+the instigation of the state, by the intervention of officials;
+here, as throughout the national life, private initiative was
+kept in subjection and under suspicion. Once more Colbert
+failed; with regard to internal affairs, he was unable to unify
+weights and measures, or to suppress the many custom-houses
+which made France into a miniature Europe; nor could he in
+external affairs reform the consulates of the Levant. He did
+not understand that, in order to purge the body of the nation
+from its traditions of routine, it would be necessary to reawaken
+individual energy in France. He believed that the state, or
+rather the bureaucracy, might be the motive power of national
+activity.</p>
+
+<p>His colonial and maritime policy was the newest and most
+fruitful part of his work. He wished to turn the eyes of contemporary
+adventurous France towards her distant
+interests, the wars of religion having diverted her
+<span class="sidenote">Colbert and the colonies.</span>
+attention from them to the great profit of English
+and Dutch merchants. Here too he had no preconceived
+ideas; the royal and monopolist companies were
+never for him an end but a means; and after much experimenting
+he at length attained success. In the course of twenty years
+he created many dependencies of France beyond sea. To her
+colonial empire in America he added the greater part of Santo
+Domingo, Tobago and Dominica; he restored Guiana; prepared
+for the acquisition of Louisiana by supporting Cavelier de la
+Salle; extended the suzerainty of the king on the coast of Africa
+from the Bay of Arguin to the shores of Sierra Leone, and
+instituted the first commercial relations with India. The
+population of the Antilles doubled; that of Canada quintupled;
+while if in 1672 at the time of the war with Holland Louis XIV.
+had listened to him, Colbert would have sacrificed his pride to
+the acquisition of the rich colonies of the Netherlands. In order
+to attach and defend these colonies Colbert created a navy which
+became his passion; he took convicts to man the galleys in the
+Mediterranean, and for the fleet in the Atlantic he established
+the system of naval reserve which still obtains. But, in the 18th
+century, the monarchy, hypnotized by the classical battlefields
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page843" id="page843"></a>843</span>
+of Flanders and Italy, madly squandered the fruits of Colbert&rsquo;s
+work as so much material for barter and exchange.</p>
+
+<p>In the administration, the police and the law, Colbert preserved
+all the old machinery, including the inheritance of office. In
+the great codification of laws, made under the direction
+of his uncle Pussort, he set aside the parlement of
+<span class="sidenote">Colbert and the administration.</span>
+Paris, and justice continued to be ill-administered
+and cruel. The police, instituted in 1667 by La
+Reynie, became a public force independent of magistrates and
+under the direct orders of the ministers, making the arbitrary
+royal and ministerial authority absolute by means of <i>lettres de
+cachet</i> (<i>q.v.</i>), which were very convenient for the government
+and very terrible for the individuals concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Provincial administration was no longer modified; it was
+regularized. The intendant became the king&rsquo;s factotum, not
+purchasing his office but liable to dismissal, the government&rsquo;s
+confidential agent and the real repository of royal authority,
+the governor being only for show (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Intendant</a></span>).</p>
+
+<p>Colbert&rsquo;s system went on working regularly up to the year
+1675; from that time forward he was cruelly embarrassed
+for money, and, seeking new sources of revenue,
+begged for subsidies from the assembly of the clergy.
+<span class="sidenote">Ruin of Colbert&rsquo;s work.</span>
+He did not succeed either in stemming the tide of
+expense, nor in his administration, being in no way
+in advance of his age, and not perceiving that decisive reform
+could not be achieved by a government dealing with the nation
+as though it were inert and passive material, made to obey and to
+pay. Like a good Cartesian he conceived of the state as an
+immense machine, every portion of which should receive its
+impulse from outside&mdash;that is from him, Colbert. Leibnitz had
+not yet taught that external movement is nothing, and inward
+spirit everything. As the minister of an ambitious and magnificent
+king, Colbert was under the hard necessity of sacrificing
+everything to the wars in Flanders and the pomp of Versailles&mdash;a
+gulf which swallowed up all the country&rsquo;s wealth;&mdash;and,
+amid a society which might be supposed submissively docile
+to the wishes of Louis XIV., he had to retain the most absurd
+financial laws, making the burden of taxation weigh heaviest
+on those who had no other resources than their labour, whilst
+landed property escaped free of charge. Habitual privation
+during one year in every three drove the peasants to revolt: in
+Boulonnais, the Pyrenees, Vivarais, in Guyenne from 1670
+onwards and in Brittany in 1675. Cruel means of repression
+assisted natural hardships and the carelessness of the administration
+in depopulating and laying waste the countryside; while
+Louis XIV.&rsquo;s martial and ostentatious policy was even more
+disastrous than pestilence and famine, when Louvois&rsquo; advice
+prevailed in council over that of Colbert, now embittered and
+desperate. The revocation of the edict of Nantes vitiated
+through a fatal contradiction all the efforts of the latter to
+create new manufactures; the country was impoverished for
+the benefit of the foreigner to such a point that economic conditions
+began to alarm those private persons most noted for their
+talents, their character, or their regard for the public welfare;
+such as La Bruyère and Fénelon in 1692, Bois-Guillebert in
+1697 and Vauban in 1707. The movement attracted even
+the ministers, Boulainvilliers at their head, who caused the
+intendants to make inquiry into the causes of this general
+ruin. There was a volume of attack upon Colbert; but as the
+fundamental system remained unchanged, because reform would
+have necessitated an attack upon privilege and even upon the
+constitution of the monarchy, the evil only went on increasing.
+The social condition of the time recalls that of present-day
+Morocco, in the high price of necessaries and the extortions of
+the financial authorities; every man was either soldier, beggar
+or smuggler.</p>
+
+<p>Under Pontchartrain, Chamillard and Desmarets, the expenses
+of the two wars of 1688 and 1701 attained to nearly five milliards.
+In order to cover this recourse was had as usual, not to remedies,
+but to palliatives worse than the evil: heavy usurious loans,
+<span class="sidenote">Recourse to revolutionary measures.</span>
+debasement of the coinage, creation of stocks that were perpetually
+being converted, and ridiculous charges which the
+bourgeois, sickened with officialdom, would endure no longer.
+Richelieu himself had hesitated to tax labour; Louis XIV. trod
+the trade organizations under foot. It was necessary
+to have recourse to revolutionary measures, to direct
+taxation, ignoring all class distinction. In 1695 the
+graduated poll-tax was a veritable <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i> against
+privileged persons, who were equally brought under the tax;
+in 1710 was added the tithe (<i>dixième</i>), a tax upon income from
+all landed property. Money scarce, men too were lacking;
+the institution of the militia, the first germ of obligatory enlistment,
+was a no less important innovation. But these were only
+provisionary and desperate expedients, superposed upon the
+old routine, a further charge in addition to those already existing;
+and this entirely mechanical system, destructive of private
+initiative and the very sources of public life, worked with difficulty
+even in time of peace. As Louis XIV. made war continually
+the result was the same as in Spain under Philip II.: depopulation
+and bankruptcy within the kingdom and the coalitions
+of Europe without.</p>
+
+<p>In 1660 France was predominant in Europe; but she aroused
+no jealousy except in the house of Habsburg, enfeebled and
+divided against itself. It was sufficient to remain
+faithful to the practical policy of Henry IV., of
+<span class="sidenote">Foreign policy of Louis XIV.</span>
+Richelieu and of Mazarin: that of moderation in
+strength. This Louis XIV. very soon altered, while
+yet claiming to continue it; he superseded it by one principle:
+that of replacing the proud tyranny of the Habsburgs of Spain by
+another. He claimed to lay down the law everywhere, in the
+preliminary negotiations between his ambassador and the
+Spanish ambassador in London, in the affair of the salute exacted
+from French vessels by the English, and in that of the Corsican
+guard in Rome; while he proposed to become the head of the
+crusade against the Turks in the Mediterranean as in Hungary.</p>
+
+<p>The eclipse of the great idea of the balance of power in Europe
+was no sudden affair; the most flourishing years of the reign
+were still enlightened by it: witness the repurchase of Dunkirk
+from Charles II. in 1662, the cession of the duchies of Bar and
+of Lorraine and the war against Portugal. But soon the partial
+or total conquest of the Spanish inheritance proved &ldquo;the grandeur
+of his beginnings and the meanness of his end.&rdquo; Like Philip
+the Fair and like Richelieu, Louis XIV. sought support for his
+external policy in that public opinion which in internal matters
+he held so cheap; and he found equally devoted auxiliaries
+in the jurists of his parlements.</p>
+
+<p>It was thus that the first of his wars for the extension of
+frontiers began, the War of Devolution. On the death of his
+father-in-law, Philip IV. of Spain, he transferred
+into the realm of politics a civil custom of inheritance
+<span class="sidenote">War of Devolution, 1667.</span>
+prevailing in Brabant, and laid claim to Flanders in
+the name of his wife Maria Theresa. The Anglo-Dutch
+War (1665-1667), in which he was by way of supporting the
+United Provinces without engaging his fleet, retarded this
+enterprise by a year. But after his mediation in the treaty of
+Breda (July 1667), when Hugues de Lionne, secretary of state
+for foreign affairs, had isolated Spain, he substituted soldiers
+for the jurists and cannon for diplomacy in the matter of the
+queen&rsquo;s rights.</p>
+
+<p>The secretary of state for war, Michel le Tellier, had organized
+his army; and thanks to his great activity in reform, especially
+after the Fronde, Louis XIV. found himself in possession of an
+army that was well equipped, well clothed, well provisioned,
+and very different from the rabble of the Thirty Years&rsquo; War,
+fitted out by dishonest jobbing contractors. Severe discipline,
+suppression of fraudulent interference, furnishing of clothes
+and equipment by the king, regulation of rank among the
+officers, systematic revictualling of the army, settled means of
+manufacturing and furnishing arms and ammunition, placing
+of the army under the direct authority of the king, abolition of
+great military charges, subordination of the governors of strongholds,
+control by the civil authority over the soldiers effected
+by means of paymasters and commissaries of stores; all this
+organization of the royal army was the work of le Tellier.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page844" id="page844"></a>844</span></p>
+
+<p>His son, François Michel le Tellier, marquis de Louvois, had
+one sole merit, that of being his father&rsquo;s pupil. A parvenu of
+the middle classes, he was brutal in his treatment of the lower
+orders and a sycophant in his behaviour towards the powerful;
+prodigiously active, ill-obeyed&mdash;as was the custom&mdash;but much
+dreaded. From 1677 onwards he did but finish perfecting Louis
+XIV.&rsquo;s army in accordance with the suggestions left by his
+father, and made no fundamental changes: neither the definite
+abandonment of the feudal <i>arrière-ban</i> and of recruiting&mdash;sources
+of disorder and insubordination&mdash;nor the creation of the militia,
+which allowed the nation to penetrate into all the ranks of the
+army, nor the adoption of the gun with the bayonet,&mdash;which
+was to become the <i>ultima ratio</i> of peoples as the cannon was that
+of sovereigns&mdash;nor yet the uniform, intended to strengthen
+<i>esprit de corps</i>, were due to him. He maintained the institutions
+of the day, though seeking to diminish their abuse, and he
+perfected material details; but misfortune would have it that
+instead of remaining a great military administrator he flattered
+Louis XIV.&rsquo;s megalomania, and thus caused his perdition.</p>
+
+<p>Under his orders Turenne conquered Flanders (June-August
+1667); and as the queen-mother of Spain would not give in,
+Condé occupied Franche Comté in fourteen days
+(February 1668). But Europe rose up in wrath; the
+<span class="sidenote">The triple alliance of the Hague.</span>
+United Provinces and England, jealous and disquieted
+by this near neighbourhood, formed with Sweden
+the triple alliance of the Hague (January 1668), ostensibly
+to offer their mediation, though in reality to prevent the
+occupation of the Netherlands. Following the advice of Colbert
+and de Lionne, Louis XIV. appeared to accede, and by the
+treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle he preserved his conquests in Flanders
+(May 1668).</p>
+
+<p>This peace was neither sufficient nor definite enough for Louis
+XIV.; and during four years he employed all his diplomacy
+to isolate the republic of the United Provinces in
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.<br /><br />
+War with Holland.</span>
+Europe, as he had done for Spain. He wanted to ruin
+this nation both in a military and an economic sense,
+in order to annex to French Flanders the rest of the
+Catholic Netherlands allotted to him by a secret treaty for partitioning
+the Spanish possessions, signed with his brother-in-law the
+emperor Leopold on the 19th of January 1668. Colbert&mdash;very
+envious of Holland&rsquo;s wealth&mdash;prepared the finances, le Tellier
+the army and de Lionne the alliances. In vain did the grand-pensionary
+of the province of Holland, Jan de Witt,
+offer concessions of all kinds; both England, bound
+by the secret treaty of Dover (January 1670), and
+France had need of this war. Avoiding the Spanish Netherlands,
+Louis XIV. effected the passage of the Rhine in
+June 1672; and the disarmed United Provinces, which had on
+their side only Brandenburg and Spain, were occupied in a few
+days. The brothers de Witt, in consequence of their fresh offer
+to treat at any price, were assassinated; the broken dykes of
+Muiden arrested the victorious march of Condé and Turenne;
+while the popular and military party, directed by the stadtholder
+William of Orange, took the upper hand and preached resistance
+to the death. &ldquo;The war is over,&rdquo; said the new secretary of
+state for foreign affairs, Arnauld de Pomponne; but Louvois
+and Louis XIV. said no. The latter wished not only to take
+possession of the Netherlands, which were to be given up to him
+with half of the United Provinces and their colonial empire;
+he wanted &ldquo;to play the Charlemagne,&rdquo; to re-establish Catholicism
+in that country as Philip II. had formerly attempted to do,
+to occupy all the territory as far as the Lech, and to exact an
+annual oath of fealty. But the patriotism and the religious
+fanaticism of the Dutch revolted against this insupportable
+tyranny. Power had passed from the hands of the burghers
+of Amsterdam into those of William of Orange, who on the 30th
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of Nijmwegen, 1678.</span>
+of August 1673, profiting by the arrest of the army
+brought about by the inundation and by the fears of
+Europe, joined in a coalition with the emperor, the
+king of Spain, the duke of Lorraine, many of the
+princes of the Empire, and with England, now at last enlightened
+as to the projects of Catholic restoration which Louis XIV. was
+planning with Charles II. It was necessary to evacuate and
+then to settle with the United Provinces, and to turn against
+Spain. After fighting for five years against the whole of Europe
+by land and by sea, the efforts of Turenne, Condé and Duquesne
+culminated at Nijmwegen in fresh acquisitions (1678). Spain
+had to cede to Louis XIV., Franche Comté, Dunkirk and half
+of Flanders. This was another natural and glorious result
+of the treaty of the Pyrenees. The Spanish monarchy was
+disarmed.</p>
+
+<p>But Louis XIV. had already manifested that unmeasured
+and restless passion for glory, that claim to be the exclusive
+arbiter of western Europe, that blind and narrow
+insistence, which were to bear out his motto
+<span class="sidenote">Truce of Ratisbon.</span>
+&ldquo;<i>Seul contre tous.</i>&rdquo; Whilst all Europe was disarming he
+kept his troops, and used peace as a means of conquest.
+Under orders from Colbert de Croissy the jurists came upon the
+scene once more, and their unjust decrees were sustained by
+force of arms. The <i>Chambres de Réunion</i> sought for and joined
+to the kingdom those lands which were not actually dependent
+upon his new conquests, but which had formerly been so: such
+as Saarbrücken, Deux Ponts (Zweibrücken) and Montbéliard in
+1680, Strassburg and Casale in 1681. The power of the house
+of Habsburg was paralysed by an invasion of the Turks, and
+Louis XIV. sent 35,000 men into Belgium; while Luxemburg
+was occupied by Créqui and Vauban. The truce of Ratisbon
+(Regensburg) imposed upon Spain completed the work of the
+peace of Nijmwegen (1684); and thenceforward Louis XIV.&rsquo;s
+terrified allies avoided his clutches while making ready to fight
+him.</p>
+
+<p>This was the moment chosen by Louis XIV.&rsquo;s implacable
+enemy, William of Orange, to resume the war. His surprise
+of Marshal Luxembourg near Mons, after the signature
+<span class="sidenote">William of Orange.</span>
+of the peace of Nijmwegen, had proved that in his eyes
+war was the basis, of his authority in Holland and
+in Europe. His sole arm of support amidst all his allies was not
+the English monarchy, sold to Louis XIV., but Protestant
+England, jealous of France and uneasy about her independence.
+Being the husband of the duke of York&rsquo;s daughter, he had an
+understanding in this country with Sunderland, Godolphin and
+Temple&mdash;a party whose success was retarded for several years
+by the intrigues of Shaftesbury. But Louis XIV. added mistake
+to mistake; and the revocation of the edict of Nantes added
+religious hatreds to political jealousies. At the same time the
+<span class="sidenote">League of Augsburg.</span>
+Catholic powers responded by the league of Augsburg
+(July 1686) to his policy of unlimited aggrandisement.
+The unsuccessful attempts of Louis XIV. to force
+his partisan Cardinal Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg (see
+<span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Fürstenberg</a></span>: <i>House</i>) into the electoral see of Cologne; the
+bombardment of Genoa; the humiliation of the pope in Rome
+itself by the marquis de Lavardin; the seizure of the Huguenot
+emigrants at Mannheim, and their imprisonment at Vincennes
+under pretext of a plot, precipitated the conflict. The question
+of the succession in the Palatinate, where Louis XIV. supported
+the claims of his sister-in-law the duchess of Orleans, gave the
+signal for a general war. The French armies devastated the
+Palatinate instead of attacking William of Orange in the Netherlands,
+leaving him free to disembark at Torbay, usurp the throne
+of England, and construct the Grand Alliance of 1689.</p>
+
+<p>Far from reserving all his forces for an important struggle
+elsewhere, foreshadowed by the approaching death of Charles II.
+of Spain, Louis XIV., isolated in his turn, committed
+the error of wasting it for a space of ten years in a
+<span class="sidenote">War of the Grand Alliance.</span>
+war of conquest, by which he alienated all that remained
+to him of European sympathy. The French armies,
+notwithstanding the disappearance of Condé and Turenne, had
+still glorious days before them with Luxembourg at Fleurus, at
+Steenkirk and at Neerwinden (1690-1693), and with Catinat
+in Piedmont, at Staffarda, and at Marsaglia; but these successes
+alternated with reverses. Tourville&rsquo;s fleet, victorious at Beachy
+Head, came to grief at La Hogue (1692); and though the expeditions
+to Ireland in favour of James II. were unsuccessful,
+thanks to the Huguenot Schomberg, Jean Bart and Duguay-Trouin
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page845" id="page845"></a>845</span>
+ruined Anglo-Dutch maritime commerce. Louis XIV.
+assisted in person at the sieges of Mons and Namur, operations
+for which he had a liking, because, like Louvois, who died in
+1691, he thought little of the French soldiery in the open field.
+After three years of strife, ruinous to both sides, he made the first
+overtures of peace, thus marking an epoch in his foreign policy;
+though William took no unfair advantage of this, remaining
+content with the restitution of places taken by the <i>Chambres de
+Réunion</i>, except Strassburg, with a frontier-line of fortified
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of Ryswick.</span>
+places for the Dutch, and with the official deposition
+of the Stuarts. But the treaty of Ryswick (1697)
+marked the condemnation of the policy pursued
+since that of Nijmwegen. While signing this peace Louis XIV.
+was only thinking of the succession in Spain. By partitioning
+her in advance with the other strong powers, England and
+Holland, by means of the treaties of the Hague and of London
+(1698-1699),&mdash;as he had formerly done with the emperor in
+1668,&mdash;he seemed at first to wish for a pacific solution of the eternal
+conflict between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, and to restrict
+himself to the perfecting of his natural frontiers; but on the
+death of Charles II. of Spain (1700) he claimed everything in
+favour of his grandson, the duke of Anjou, now appointed
+universal heir, though risking the loss of all by once more letting
+himself fall into imprudent and provocative action in the dynastic
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>English public opinion, desirous of peace, had forced William
+III. to recognize Philip V. of Spain; but Louis XIV.&rsquo;s maintenance
+of the eventual right of his grandson to the crown
+of France, and the expulsion of the Dutch, who had
+<span class="sidenote">War of the Spanish Succession.</span>
+not recognized Philip V., from the Barrier towns,
+brought about the Grand Alliance of 1701 between
+the maritime Powers and the court of Vienna, desirous of partitioning
+the inheritance of Charles II. The recognition of the Old
+Pretender as James III., king of England, was only a response
+to the Grand Alliance, but it drew the English Tories into an
+inevitable war. Despite the death of William III. (March 19,
+1702) his policy triumphed, and in this war, the longest in the
+reign, it was the names of the enemy&rsquo;s generals, Prince Eugène
+of Savoy, Mazarin&rsquo;s grand-nephew, and the duke of Marlborough,
+which sounded in the ear, instead of Condé, Turenne and
+Luxembourg. Although during the first campaigns (1701-1703)
+in Italy, in Germany and in the Netherlands success was equally
+balanced, the successors of Villars&mdash;thanks to the treason of the
+duke of Savoy&mdash;were defeated at Höchstädt and Landau, and
+were reduced to the defensive (1704). In 1706 the defeats at
+Ramillies and Turin led to the evacuation of the Netherlands
+and Italy, and endangered the safety of Dauphiné. In 1708
+Louis XIV. by a supreme effort was still able to maintain his
+armies; but the rout at Oudenarde, due to the misunderstanding
+between the duke of Burgundy and Vendôme, left the northern
+frontier exposed, and the cannons of the Dutch were heard at
+Marly. Louis XIV. had to humble himself to the extent of asking
+the Dutch for peace; but they forgot the lesson of 1673, and
+revolted by their demands at the Hague, he made a last appeal
+to arms and to the patriotism of his subjects at Malplaquet
+(September 1709). After this came invasion. Nature herself
+conspired with the enemy in the disastrous winter of 1709.</p>
+
+<p>What saved Louis XIV. was not merely his noble constancy of
+resolve, the firmness of the marquis de Torcy, secretary of state
+for foreign affairs, the victory of Vendôme at Villaviciosa, nor
+the loyalty of his people. The interruption of the conferences
+at Gertruydenberg having obliged the Whigs and Marlborough to
+resign their power into the hands of the Tories, now sick of war,
+the death of the emperor Joseph I. (April 1711), which risked
+the reconstruction of Charles V.&rsquo;s colossal and unwieldy monarchy
+upon the shoulders of the archduke Charles, and Marshal Villars&rsquo;
+famous victory of Denain (July 1712) combined to render possible
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of Utrecht, 1713.</span>
+the treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden (1713-1714).
+These gave Italy and the Netherlands to the Habsburgs,
+Spain and her colonies to the Bourbons, the places on
+the coast and the colonial commerce to England (who
+had the lion&rsquo;s share), and a royal crown to the duke of Savoy
+and the elector of Brandenburg. The peace of Utrecht was to
+France what the peace of Westphalia had been to Austria, and
+curtailed the former acquisitions of Louis XIV.</p>
+
+<p>The ageing of the great king was betrayed not only by the
+fortune of war in the hands of Villeroy, la Feuillade, or Marsin;
+disgrace and misery at home were worse than defeat.
+By the strange and successive deaths of the Grand
+<span class="sidenote">End of Louis XIV.&rsquo;s reign.</span>
+Dauphin (1711), the duke and duchess of Burgundy
+(1712)&mdash;who had been the only joy of the old monarch&mdash;and
+of his two grandsons (1712-1714), it seemed as though his
+whole family were involved under the same curse. The court,
+whose sentimental history has been related by Madame de la
+Fayette, its official splendours by Loret, and its intrigues by the
+duc de Saint-Simon, now resembled an infirmary of morose
+invalids, presided over by Louis XIV.&rsquo;s elderly wife, Madame
+de Maintenon, under the domination of the Jesuit le Tellier.
+Neither was it merely the clamours of the people that arose against
+the monarch. All the more remarkable spirits of the time, like
+prophets in Israel, denounced a tyranny which put Chamillart
+at the head of the finances because he played billiards well, and
+Villeroy in command of the armies although he was utterly
+untrustworthy; which sent the &ldquo;patriot&rdquo; Vauban into disgrace,
+banished from the court Catinat, the Père la Pensée, &ldquo;exiled&rdquo;
+to Cambrai the too clear sighted Fénelon, and suspected Racine
+of Jansenism and La Fontaine of independence.</p>
+
+<p>Disease and famine; crushing imposts and extortions;
+official debasement of the currency; bankruptcy; state prisons;
+religious and political inquisition; suppression of all institutions
+for the safe-guarding of rights; tyranny by the intendants;
+royal, feudal and clerical oppression burdening every faculty
+and every necessary of life; &ldquo;monstrous and incurable luxury&rdquo;;
+the horrible drama of poison; the twofold adultery of Madame de
+Montespan; and the narrow bigotry of Madame de Maintenon&mdash;all
+concurred to make the end of the reign a sad contrast with the
+splendour of its beginning. When reading Molière and Racine,
+Bossuet and Fénelon, the campaigns of Turenne, or Colbert&rsquo;s
+ordinances; when enumerating the countless literary and
+scientific institutions of the great century; when considering the
+port of Brest, the Canal du Midi, Perrault&rsquo;s colonnade of the
+Louvre, Mansart&rsquo;s Invalides and the palace of Versailles, and
+Vauban&rsquo;s fine fortifications&mdash;admiration is kindled for the
+radiant splendour of Louis XIV.&rsquo;s period. But the art and
+literature expressed by the genius of the masters, reflected in the
+tastes of society, and to be taken by Europe as a model throughout
+a whole century, are no criterion of the social and political order
+of the day. They were but a magnificent drapery of pomp and
+glory thrown across a background of poverty, ignorance, superstition,
+hypocrisy and cruelty; remove it, and reality appears in
+all its brutal and sinister nudity. The corpse of Louis XIV.,
+left to servants for disposal, and saluted all along the road to
+Saint Denis by the curses of a noisy crowd sitting in the <i>cabarets</i>,
+celebrating his death by drinking more than their fill as a compensation
+for having suffered too much from hunger during his
+lifetime&mdash;such was the coarse but sincere epitaph which popular
+opinion placed on the tomb of the &ldquo;Grand Monarque.&rdquo; The
+nation, restive under his now broken yoke, received with a
+joyous anticipation, which the future was to discount, the royal
+infant whom they called Louis the Well-beloved, and whose
+funeral sixty years later was to be greeted with the same proofs
+of disillusionment.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Louis XIV. closed a great era of French history;
+the 18th century opens upon a crisis for the monarchy. From
+1715 to 1723 came the reaction of the Regency, with its
+marvellous effrontery, innovating spirit and frivolous
+<span class="sidenote">Character of the eighteenth century.</span>
+immorality. From 1723 to 1743 came the mealy-mouthed
+despotism of Cardinal Fleury, and his
+apathetic policy within and without the kingdom. From 1743
+to 1774 came the personal rule of Louis XV., when all the different
+powers were in conflicts&mdash;the bishops and parlement quarrelling,
+the government fighting against the clergy and the magistracy,
+and public opinion in declared opposition to the state. Till at
+last, from 1774 to 1789, came Louis XVI. with his honest illusions.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page846" id="page846"></a>846</span>
+his moral pusillanimity and his intellectual impotence, to
+aggravate still further the accumulated errors of ages and to
+prepare for the inevitable Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The 18th century, like the 17th, opened with a political
+<i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>. Louis XV. was five years old, and the duke of
+Orleans held the regency. But Louis XIV. had in his
+will delegated all the power of the government to a
+<span class="sidenote">The Regency (1715-1723).</span>
+council on which the duke of Maine, his legitimated
+son, had the first, but Madame de Maintenon and the
+Jesuits the predominant place. This collective administration,
+designed to cripple the action of the regent, encountered a twofold
+opposition from the nobles and the parlement; but on the
+2nd of September 1715 the emancipated parlement set aside
+the will in favour of the duke of Orleans, who thus together
+with the title of regent had all the real power. He therefore
+reinstituted the parlement in its ancient right of remonstrance
+(suspended since the declarations of 1667 and 1673), and handed
+over ministerial power to the nobility, replacing the secretaries
+of state by six councils composed in part of great nobles, on the
+advice of the famous duc de Saint-Simon. The duc de Noailles,
+president of the council of finance, had the direction of this
+&ldquo;Polysynodie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The duke of Orleans, son of the princess palatine and Louis
+XIV.&rsquo;s brother, possessed many gifts&mdash;courage, intelligence
+and agility of mind&mdash;but he lacked the one gift of
+using these to good advantage. The political crisis
+<span class="sidenote">Philip of Orleans.</span>
+that had placed him in power had not put an end to
+the financial crisis, and this, it was hoped, might be effected by
+substituting partial and petty bankruptcies for the general
+bankruptcy cynically advocated by Saint-Simon. The reduction
+of the royal revenues did not suffice to fill the treasury; while
+the establishment of a chamber of justice (March 1716) had no
+other result than that of demoralizing the great lords and ladies
+already mad for pleasure, by bringing them into contact with
+the farmers of the revenue who purchased impunity from them.
+A very clever Scotch adventurer named John Law (<i>q.v.</i>) now
+offered his assistance in dealing with the enormous debt of more
+than three milliards, and in providing the treasury. Being well
+acquainted with the mechanism of banking, he had adopted
+views as to cash, credit and the circulation of values which
+contained an admixture of truth and falsehood. Authorized
+after many difficulties to organize a private bank of deposit and
+account, which being well conceived prospered and revived
+commerce, Law proposed to lighten the treasury by the profits
+accruing to a great maritime and colonial company. Payment
+for the shares in this new Company of the West, with a capital
+of a hundred millions, was to be made in credit notes upon the
+government, converted into 4% stock. These aggregated
+funds, needed to supply the immense and fertile valley of the
+Mississippi, and the annuities of the treasury destined to pay
+for the shares, were non-transferable. Law&rsquo;s idea was to ask the
+bank for the floating capital necessary, so that the bank and the
+Company of the West were to be supplementary to each other;
+this is what was called Law&rsquo;s system. After the chancellor
+D&rsquo;Aguesseau and the duc de Noailles had been replaced by
+D&rsquo;Argenson alone, and after the <i>lit de justice</i> of the 26th of
+August 1718 had deprived the parlement, hostile to Law, of the
+authority left to it, the bank became royal and the Company
+of the West universal. But the royal bank, as a state establishment,
+asked for compulsory privilege to increase the emission
+of its credit notes, and that they should receive a premium upon
+all metallic specie. The Company of the Indies became the
+grantee for the farming of tobacco, the coinage of metals, and
+farming in general; and in order to procure funds it multiplied
+the output of shares, which were adroitly launched and became
+more and more sought for on the exchange in the rue Quincampoix.
+This soon caused a frenzy of stock-jobbing, which
+disturbed the stability of private fortunes and social positions,
+and depraved customs and manners with the seductive notion
+of easily obtained riches. The nomination of Law to the controller-generalship,
+re-established for his benefit on the resignation
+of D&rsquo;Argenson (January 5, 1720), let loose still wilder speculation;
+till the day came when he could no longer face the terrible
+difficulty of meeting both private irredeemable shares with a
+variable return, and the credit notes redeemable at sight and
+guaranteed by the state. Gold and silver were proscribed;
+the bank and the company were joined in one; the credit notes
+and the shares were assimilated. But credit cannot be commanded
+either by violence or by expedients; between July
+and September 1720 came the suspension of payments, the
+flight of Law, and the disastrous liquidation which proved once
+again that respect for the state&rsquo;s obligations had not yet entered
+into the law of public finance.</p>
+
+<p>Reaction on a no less extensive scale characterized foreign
+policy during the Regency. A close alliance between France
+and her ancient enemies, England and Holland, was
+concluded and maintained from 1717 to 1739: France,
+<span class="sidenote">The Anglo-Dutch Alliance.</span>
+after thirty years of fighting, between two periods of
+bankruptcy; Holland reinstalled in her commercial
+position; and England, seeing before her the beginning of her
+empire over the seas&mdash;all three had an interest in peace. On the
+other hand, peace was imperilled by Philip V. of Spain and by
+the emperor (who had accepted the portion assigned to them
+by the treaty of Utrecht, while claiming the whole), by Savoy
+and Brandenburg (who had profited too much by European
+conflicts not to desire their perpetuation), by the crisis from
+which the maritime powers of the Baltic were suffering, and by
+the Turks on the Danube. The dream of Cardinal Alberoni,
+Philip V.&rsquo;s minister, was to set fire to all this inflammable
+material in order to snatch therefrom a crown of some sort to
+satisfy the maternal greed of Elizabeth Farnese; and this he
+might have attained by the occupation of Sardinia and the
+expedition to Sicily (1717-1718), if Dubois, a priest without a
+religion, a greedy parvenu and a diplomatist of second rank,
+though tenacious and full of resources as a minister, had not
+placed his common sense at the disposal of the regent&rsquo;s interests
+and those of European peace. He signed the triple alliance at
+the Hague, succeeding with the assistance of Stanhope, the
+English minister, in engaging the emperor therein, after attempting
+this for a year and a half. Whilst the Spanish fleet was
+destroyed before Syracuse by Admiral Byng, the intrigue of
+the Spanish ambassador Cellamare with the duke of Maine to
+exclude the family of Orleans from the succession on Louis XV.&rsquo;s
+death was discovered and repressed; and Marshal Berwick
+burned the dockyards at Pasajes in Spain. Alberoni&rsquo;s dream
+was shattered by the treaty of London in 1720.</p>
+
+<p>Seized in his turn with a longing for the cardinal&rsquo;s hat, Dubois
+paid for it by the registering of the bull <i>Unigenitus</i> and by the
+persecution of the Jansenists which the regent had stopped.
+After the majority of Louis XV. had been proclaimed on the 16th
+of February 1723, Dubois was the first to depart; and four
+months after his disappearance the duke of Orleans, exhausted
+by his excesses, carried with him into the grave that spirit of
+reform which he had compromised by his frivolous voluptuousness
+(December 2, 1723).</p>
+
+<p>The Regency had been the making of the house of Orleans;
+thenceforward the question was how to humble it, and the duc
+de Bourbon, now prime minister&mdash;a great-grandson
+of the great Condé, but a narrow-minded man of
+<span class="sidenote">Ministry of the duc de Bourbon.</span>
+limited intelligence, led by a worthless woman&mdash;set
+himself to do so. The marquise de Prie was the
+first of a series of publicly recognized mistresses; from 1723
+to 1726 she directed foreign policy and internal affairs despite
+the king&rsquo;s majority, moved always more by a spirit of vengeance
+than by ambition. This sad pair were dominated by the self-interested
+and continual fear of becoming subject to the son of
+the Regent, whom they detested; but danger came upon them
+from elsewhere. They found standing in their way the very
+man who had been the author of their fortunes, Louis XV.&rsquo;s
+tutor, uneasy in the exercise of a veiled authority; for the
+churchman Fleury knew how to wait, on condition of ultimately
+attaining his end. Neither the festivities given at Chantilly
+in honour of the king, nor the dismissal (despite the most solemn
+promises) of the Spanish infanta, who had been betrothed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page847" id="page847"></a>847</span>
+to Louis XV., nor yet the young king&rsquo;s marriage to Maria
+Leszczynska (1725)&mdash;a marriage negotiated by the marquise
+de Prie in order to bar the throne from the Orleans family&mdash;could
+alienate the sovereign from his old master. The irritation
+kept up by the agents of Philip V., incensed by this affront,
+and the discontent aroused by the institutions of the <i>cinquantième</i>
+and the militia, by the re-establishment of the feudal tax on
+Louis XV.&rsquo;s joyful accession, and by the resumption of a persecution
+of the Protestants and the Jansenists which had apparently
+died out, were cleverly exploited by Fleury; and a last ill-timed
+attempt by the queen to separate the king from him brought
+about the fall of the duc de Bourbon, very opportunely for
+France, in June 1726.</p>
+
+<p>From the hands of his unthinking pupil Fleury eventually
+received the supreme direction of affairs, which he retained for
+seventeen years. He was aged seventy-two when
+he thus obtained the power which had been his unmeasured
+<span class="sidenote">Cardinal Fleury, 1726-1743.</span>
+though not ill-calculated ambition. Soft-spoken
+and polite, crafty and suspicious, he was
+pacific by temperament and therefore allowed politics to slumber.
+His turn for economics made Orry,<a name="fa33c" id="fa33c" href="#ft33c"><span class="sp">33</span></a> the controller-general of
+finance, for long his essential partner. The latter laboured at
+re-establishing order in fiscal affairs; and various measures
+like the impost of the <i>dixième</i> upon all property save that of the
+clergy, together with the end of the corn famine, sufficed to
+restore a certain amount of well-being. Religious peace was
+more difficult to secure; in fact politico-religious quarrels
+dominated all the internal policy of the kingdom during forty
+years, and gradually compromised the royal authority. The
+Jesuits, returned to power in 1723 with the duc de Bourbon
+and in 1726 with Fleury, rekindled the old strife regarding the
+bull <i>Unigenitus</i> in opposition to the Gallicans and the Jansenists.
+The retractation imposed upon Cardinal de Noailles, and his
+replacement in the archbishopric of Paris by Vintimille, an
+unequivocal Molinist, excited among the populace a very
+violent agitation against the court of Rome and the Jesuits,
+the prelude to a united Fronde of the Sorbonne and the parlement.
+Fleury found no other remedy for this agitation&mdash;in which
+appeal was made even to miracles&mdash;than <i>lits de justice</i> and <i>lettres
+de cachet</i>; Jansenism remained a potent source of trouble
+within the heart of Catholicism.</p>
+
+<p>This worn-out septuagenarian, who prized rest above everything,
+imported into foreign policy the same mania for economy
+and the same sloth in action. He naturally adopted
+the idea of reconciling Louis XIV.&rsquo;s descendants,
+<span class="sidenote">Fleury&rsquo;s foreign policy.</span>
+who had all been embroiled ever since the Polish
+marriage. He succeeded in this by playing very
+adroitly on the ambition of Elizabeth Farnese and her husband
+Philip V., who was to reign in France notwithstanding
+any renunciation that might have taken place. Despite
+the birth of a dauphin (September 1729), which cut short the
+Spanish intrigues, the reconciliation was a lasting one (treaty of
+Seville); it led to common action in Italy, and to the installation
+of Spanish royalties at Parma, Piacenza, and soon after at
+Naples. Fleury, supported by the English Hanoverian alliance,
+to which he sacrificed the French navy, obliged the emperor
+Charles VI. to sacrifice the trade of the Austrian Netherlands to
+the maritime powers and Central Italy to the Bourbons, in
+order to gain recognition for his Pragmatic Sanction. The
+question of the succession in France lay dormant until the end
+of the century, and Fleury thought he had definitely obtained
+peace in the treaty of Vienna (1731).</p>
+
+<p>The war of the Polish succession proved him to have been
+deceived. On the death of Augustus II. of Saxony, king of
+Poland, Louis XV.&rsquo;s father-in-law had been proclaimed king by
+the Polish diet. This was an ephemeral success, ill-prepared
+<span class="sidenote">War of the Polish Succession (1733-1738).</span>
+and obtained by taking a sudden advantage of national sentiment;
+it was soon followed by a check, owing to a Russian and
+German coalition and the baseness of Cardinal Fleury, who, in
+order to avoid intervening, pretended to tremble before an
+imaginary threat of reprisals on the part of England.
+But Chauvelin, the keeper of the seals, supported by
+public opinion, avenged on the Rhine and the Po the
+unlucky heroism of the comte de Plélo at Dànzig,<a name="fa34c" id="fa34c" href="#ft34c"><span class="sp">34</span></a> the
+vanished dream of the queen, the broken word of Louis
+XV., and the treacherous abandonment of Poland. Fleury never
+forgave him for this: Chauvelin had checkmated him with war;
+he checkmated Chauvelin with peace, and hastened to replace
+Marshals Berwick and Villars by diplomatists. The third
+treaty of Vienna (1738), the reward of so much effort, would only
+have claimed for France the little duchy of Bar, had not Chauvelin
+forced Louis XV. to obtain Lorraine for his father-in-law&mdash;still
+hoping for the reversion of the crown; but Fleury thus rendered
+impossible any influence of the queen, and held Stanislaus at
+his mercy. In order to avenge himself upon Chauvelin he
+sacrificed him to the cabinets of Vienna and London, alarmed
+at seeing him revive the national tradition in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Fleury hardly had time to breathe before a new conflagration
+broke out in the east. The Russian empress Anne and the
+emperor Charles VI. had planned to begin dismembering
+the Turkish empire. More fortunate than Plélo,
+<span class="sidenote">The Eastern question.</span>
+Villeneuve, the French ambassador at Constantinople,
+endeavoured to postpone this event, and was well
+supported; he revived the courage of the Turks and provided
+them with arms, thanks to the comte de Bonneval (<i>q.v.</i>), one
+of those adventurers of high renown whose influence in Europe
+during the first half of the eighteenth century is one of the
+most piquant features of that period. The peace of Belgrade
+(September 1739) was, by its renewal of the capitulations, a
+great material success for France, and a great moral victory by
+the rebuff to Austria and Russia.</p>
+
+<p>France had become once more the arbiter of Europe, when
+the death of the emperor Charles VI. in 1740 opened up a new
+period of wars and misfortunes for Europe and for
+the pacific Fleury. Everyone had signed Charles VI.&rsquo;s
+<span class="sidenote">War of the Austrian Succession.</span>
+Pragmatic Sanction, proclaiming the succession-rights
+of his daughter, the archduchess Maria Theresa; but
+on his death there was a general renunciation of signatures
+and an attempt to divide the heritage. The safety of the
+house of Austria depended on the attitude of France; for
+Austria could no longer harm her. Fleury&rsquo;s inclination was
+not to misuse France&rsquo;s traditional policy by exaggerating it,
+but to respect his sworn word; he dared not press his opinion,
+however, and yielded to the fiery impatience of young hot-heads
+like the two Belle-Isles, and of all those who, infatuated by
+Frederick II., felt sick of doing nothing at Versailles and were
+backed up by Louis XV.&rsquo;s bellicose mistresses. He had to
+experience the repeated defections of Frederick II. in his own
+interests, and the precipitate retreat from Bohemia. He had to
+humble himself before Austria and the whole of Europe; and it
+was high time for Fleury, now fallen into second childhood, to
+vanish from the scene (January 1743).</p>
+
+<p>Louis XV. was at last to become his own prime minister
+and to reign alone; but in reality he was more embarrassed
+than pleased by the responsibility incumbent upon him.
+He therefore retained the persons who had composed
+<span class="sidenote">Personal rule of Louis XV.</span>
+Fleury&rsquo;s staff; though instead of being led by a single
+one of them, he fell into the hands of several, who
+disputed among themselves for the ascendancy: Maurepas,
+incomparable in little things, but neglectful of political affairs;
+D&rsquo;Argenson, bold, and strongly attached to his work as minister
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page848" id="page848"></a>848</span>
+of war; and the cardinal de Tencin, a frivolous and worldly
+priest. Old Marshal de Noailles tried to incite Louis XV. to
+take his kingship in earnest, thinking to cure him by war of his
+effeminate passions; and, in the spring of 1744, the king&rsquo;s
+grave illness at Metz gave a momentary hope of reconciliation
+between him and the deserted queen. But the duc de Richelieu,
+a roué who had joined hands with the sisters of the house of
+Nesle and was jealous of Marshal de Noailles, soon regained
+his lost ground; and, under the influence of this panderer to
+his pleasures, Louis XV. settled down into a life of vice. Holding
+aloof from active affairs, he tried to relieve the incurable boredom
+of satiety in the violent exercise of hunting, in supper-parties
+with his intimates, and in spicy indiscretions. Brought up
+religiously and to shun the society of women, his first experiences
+in adultery had been made with many scruples and intermittently.
+Little by little, however, jealous of power, yet incapable of
+exercising it to any purpose, he sank into a sensuality which
+became utterly shameless under the influence of his chief mistress
+the duchesse de Châteauroux.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had a catastrophe snatched her away in the zenith
+of her power when complete corruption and the flagrant triumph
+of egoism supervened with the accession to power of
+the marquise de Pompadour, and for nearly twenty
+<span class="sidenote">Madame de Pompadour.</span>
+years (1745-1764) the whims and caprices of this
+little <i>bourgeoise</i> ruled the realm. A prime minister
+in petticoats, she had her political system: reversed the time-honoured
+alliances of France, appointed or disgraced ministers,
+directed fleets and armies, concluded treaties, and failed in all
+her enterprises! She was the queen of fashion in a society
+where corruption blossomed luxuriantly and exquisitely, and
+in a century of wit hers was second to none. Amidst this
+extraordinary instability, when everything was at the mercy
+of a secret thought of the master, the mistress alone held lasting
+sway; in a reign of all-pervading satiety and tedium, she
+managed to remain indispensable and bewitching to the day
+of her death.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the War of the Austrian Succession broke out
+again, and never had secretary of state more intricate questions
+to solve than had D&rsquo;Argenson. In the attempt
+to make a stage-emperor of Charles Albert of Bavaria,
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.</span>
+defeat was incurred at Dettingen, and the French
+were driven back on the Rhine (1743). The Bavarian
+dream dissipated, victories gained in Flanders by Marshal Saxe,
+another adventurer of genius, at Fontenoy, Raucoux and
+Lawfeld (1745-1747), were hailed with joy as continuing those
+of Louis XIV.; even though they resulted in the loss of Germany
+and the doubling of English armaments. The &ldquo;disinterested&rdquo;
+peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 1748) had no effectual result
+other than that of destroying in Germany, and for the benefit
+of Prussia, a balance of power that had yet to be secured in
+Italy, despite the establishment of the Spanish prince Philip at
+Parma. France, meanwhile, was beaten at sea by England,
+Maria Theresa&rsquo;s sole ally. While founding her colonial empire
+England had come into collision with France; and the rivalry
+of the Hundred Years&rsquo; War had immediately sprung up again
+between the two countries. Engaged already in both Canada
+and in India (where Dupleix was founding an empire with a
+mere handful of men), it was to France&rsquo;s interest not to become
+involved in war upon the Rhine, thus falling into England&rsquo;s
+continental trap. She did fall into it, however: for the sake of
+conquering Silesia for the king of Prussia, Canada was left exposed
+by the capture of Cape Breton; while in order to restore this
+same Silesia to Maria Theresa, Canada was lost and with it India.</p>
+
+<p>France had worked for the king of Prussia from 1740 to
+1748; now it was Maria Theresa&rsquo;s game that was played in
+the Seven Years&rsquo; War. In 1755, the English having
+made a sudden attack upon the French at sea, and
+<span class="sidenote">The Seven Years&rsquo; War, 1756-1763.</span>
+Frederick II. having by a fresh <i>volte-face</i> passed into
+alliance with Great Britain, Louis XV.&rsquo;s government
+accepted an alliance with Maria Theresa in the treaty
+of the 1st of May 1756. Instead of remaining upon the defensive
+in this continental war&mdash;merely accessory as it was&mdash;he made
+it his chief affair, and placed himself under the petticoat government
+of three women, Maria Theresa, Elizabeth of Russia and the
+marquise de Pompadour. This error&mdash;the worst of all&mdash;laid the
+foundations of the Prussian and British empires. By three
+battles, victories for the enemies of France&mdash;Rossbach in
+Germany, 1757, Plassey in India, 1757, and Quebec in Canada,
+1759 (owing to the recall of Dupleix, who was not bringing in
+large enough dividends to the Company of the Indies, and to
+the abandonment of Montcalm, who could not interest any one
+in &ldquo;a few acres of snow&rdquo;), the expansion of Prussia was assured,
+and the British relieved of French rivalry in the expansion of
+their empire in India and on the North American continent.</p>
+
+<p>Owing to the blindness of Louis XV. and the vanity of the
+favourite, the treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg (1763) once
+more proved the French splendid in their conceptions,
+but deficient in action. Moreover, Choiseul, secretary
+<span class="sidenote">Treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg.</span>
+of state for foreign affairs since 1758, made out of this
+deceptive Austrian alliance a system which put the
+finishing touch to disaster, and after having thrown away
+everything to satisfy Maria Theresa&rsquo;s hatred of Frederick II.,
+the reconciliation between these two irreconcilable Germans at
+Neisse and at Neustadt (1769-1770) was witnessed by France,
+to the prejudice of Poland, one of her most ancient adherents.
+The expedient of the Family Compact, concluded with Spain
+in 1761&mdash;with a view to taking vengeance upon England, whose
+fleets were a continual thorn in the side to France&mdash;served only
+to involve Spain herself in misfortune. Choiseul, who at least
+had a policy that was sometimes in the right, and who was very
+anxious to carry it out, then realized that the real quarrel had
+to be settled with England. Amid the anguish of defeat and of
+approaching ruin, he had an acute sense of the actualities of
+the case, and from 1763 to 1766 devoted himself passionately
+to the reconstruction of the navy. To compensate for the loss
+of the colonies he annexed Lorraine (1766), and by the acquisition
+of Corsica in 1768 he gave France an intermediary position in
+the Mediterranean, between friendly Spain and Italy, looking
+forward to the time when it should become a stepping-stone to
+Africa.</p>
+
+<p>But Louis XV. had two policies. The incoherent efforts
+which he made to repair by the secret diplomacy of the comte
+de Broglie the evils caused by his official policy only
+aggravated his shortcomings and betrayed his weakness.
+<span class="sidenote">First partition of Poland.</span>
+The contradictory intrigues of the king&rsquo;s
+secret proceedings in the candidature of Prince Xavier,
+the dauphine&rsquo;s brother, and the patriotic efforts of the confederation
+of Bar, contributed to bring about the Polish crisis which
+the partition of 1772 resolved in favour of Frederick II.; and
+the Turks were in their turn dragged into the same disastrous
+affair. Of the old allies of France, Choiseul preserved at least
+Sweden by the <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i> of Gustavus III.; but instead of being
+as formerly the centre of great affairs, the cabinet of Versailles
+lost all its credit, and only exhibited before the eyes of contemptuous
+Europe France&rsquo;s extreme state of decay.</p>
+
+<p>The nation felt this humiliation, and showed all the greater
+irritation as the want of cohesion in the government and the
+anarchy in the central authority became more and
+more intolerable in home affairs. Though the administration
+<span class="sidenote">Internal policy of Louis XV.</span>
+still possessed a fund of tradition and a
+personnel which, including many men of note, protected
+it from the enfeebling influence of the court, it looked as though
+chance regulated everything so far as the government was
+concerned. These fluctuations were owing partly to the character
+of Louis XV., and partly also to the fact that society in the 18th
+century was too advanced in its ideas to submit without resistance
+to the caprice of such a man. His mistresses were not the only
+cause of this; for ever since Fleury&rsquo;s advent political parties
+had come to the fore. From 1749 to 1757 the party of religious
+devotees grouped round the queen and the king&rsquo;s daughters,
+with the dauphin as chief and the comte D&rsquo;Argenson, and
+Machault d&rsquo;Arnouville, keeper of the seals, as lieutenants, had
+worked against Madame de Pompadour (who leant for support
+upon the parlements, the Jansenists and the philosophers)
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page849" id="page849"></a>849</span>
+and had gained the upper hand. Thenceforward poverty,
+disorders, and consequently murmurs increased. The financial
+reform attempted by Machault d&rsquo;Arnouville between 1745
+and 1749&mdash;a reduction of the debt through the impost of the
+twentieth and the edict of 1749 against the extensive property
+held in mortmain by the Church&mdash;after his disgrace only
+resulted in failure. The army, which D&rsquo;Argenson (likewise
+dismissed by Madame de Pompadour) had been from 1743 to
+1747 trying to restore by useful reforms, was riddled by cabals.
+Half the people in the kingdom were dying of hunger, while
+the court was insulting poverty by its luxury and waste; and
+from 1750 onwards political ferment was everywhere manifest.
+It found all the more favourable foothold in that the Church,
+the State&rsquo;s best ally, had made herself more and more unpopular.
+Her refusal of the sacraments to those who would not accept
+the bull <i>Unigenitus</i> (1746) was exploited in the eyes of the
+masses, as in those of more enlightened people was her selfish
+and short-sighted resistance to the financial plans of Machault.
+The general discontent was expressed by the parlements in their
+attempt to establish a political supremacy amid universal
+confusion, and by the popular voice in pamphlets recalling by
+their violence those of the League. Every one expected and
+desired a speedy revolution that should put an end to a policy
+which alternated between overheated effervescence, abnormal
+activity and lethargy. Nothing can better show the point to
+which things had descended than the attempted assassination
+of Louis the Well-beloved by Damiens in 1757.</p>
+
+<p>Choiseul was the means of accelerating this revolution, not
+only by his abandonment of diplomatic traditions, but still
+more by his improvidence and violence. He reversed
+the policy of his predecessors in regard to the parlement.
+<span class="sidenote">Choiseul.</span>
+Supported by public opinion, which clamoured for guarantees
+against abitrary power, the parlements had dared not only to
+insist on being consulted as to the budget of the state in 1763,
+but to enter upon a confederation throughout the whole of
+France, and on repeated occasions to ordain a general strike
+of the judicial authorities. Choiseul did not hesitate to attack
+through <i>lits de justice</i> or by exile a judiciary oligarchy which
+doubtless rested its pretensions merely on wealth, high birth,
+or that encroaching spirit that was the only counteracting
+agency to the monarchy. Louis XV., wearied with their clamour,
+called them to order. Choiseul&rsquo;s religious policy was no less
+venturesome; after the condemnation in 1759 of the Jesuits
+who were involved in the bankruptcy of Father de la Valette,
+their general, in the Antilles, he had the order dissolved for
+refusing to modify its constitution (1761-1764). Thus, not
+content with encouraging writers with innovating ideas to the
+prejudice of traditional institutions, he attacked, in the order
+of the Jesuits, the strongest defender of these latter, and delivered
+over the new generation to revolutionary doctrines.</p>
+
+<p>A woman had elevated him into power; a woman brought
+him to the ground. He succumbed to a coalition of the chancellor
+Maupeou, the duc d&rsquo;Aiguillon and the Abbé Terray,
+which depended on the favour of the king&rsquo;s latest
+<span class="sidenote">The Triumvirate, 1770-1774.</span>
+mistress, Madame du Barry (December 1770); and
+the Jesuits were avenged by a stroke of authority
+similar to that by which they themselves had suffered. Following
+on an edict registered by the <i>lit de justice</i>, which forbade any
+remonstrance in political matters, the parlement had resigned,
+and had been imitated by the provincial parlements; whereupon
+Maupeou, an energetic chancellor, suppressed the parlements
+and substituted superior councils of magistrates appointed by
+the king (1771). This reform was justified by the religious
+intolerance of the parlements; by their scandalous trials of
+Calas, Pierre Paul Sirven (1709-1777), the chevalier de la Barre
+and the comte de Lally; by the retrograde spirit that had made
+them suppress the Encyclopaedia in 1759 and condemn <i>Émile</i>
+in 1762; and by their selfishness in perpetuating abuses by
+which they profited. But this reform, being made by the minister
+of a hated sovereign, only aided in exasperating public opinion,
+which was grateful to the parlements in that their remonstrances
+had not always been fruitless.</p>
+
+<p>Thus all the buttresses of the monarchical institution began
+to fall to pieces: the Church, undermined by the heresy of
+Jansenism, weakened by the inroads of philosophy,
+discredited by evil-livers among the priesthood, and
+<span class="sidenote">Ancient influences and institutions.</span>
+divided against itself, like all losing parties; the
+nobility of the court, still brave at heart, though
+incapable of exertion and reduced to beggary, having lost all
+respect for discipline and authority, not only in the camp, but in
+civilian society; and the upper-class officials, narrow-minded
+and egotistical, unsettling by their opposition the royal authority
+which they pretended to safeguard. Even the &ldquo;liberties,&rdquo;
+among the few representative institutions which the <i>ancien
+régime</i> had left intact in some provinces, turned against the
+people. The estates opposed most of the intelligent and humane
+measures proposed by such intendants as Tourny and Turgot
+to relieve the peasants, whose distress was very great; they did
+their utmost to render the selfishness of the privileged classes
+more oppressive and vexatious.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the terrible prevalence of poverty and want; the
+successive famines; the mistakes of the government; the
+scandals of the Parc aux Cerfs; and the parlements
+playing the Roman senate: all these causes, added
+<span class="sidenote">The new ideas.</span>
+together and multiplied, assisted in setting a general
+fermentation to work. The philosophers only helped to precipitate
+a movement which they had not created; without
+pointing to absolute power as the cause of the trouble,
+and without pretending to upset the traditional system, they
+attempted to instil into princes the feeling of new and more
+precise obligations towards their subjects. Voltaire, Montesquieu,
+the Encyclopaedists and the Physiocrats (recurring to the
+tradition of Bayle and Fontenelle), by dissolving in their analytical
+crucible all consecrated beliefs and all fixed institutions,
+brought back into the human society of the 18th century that
+humanity which had been so rudely eliminated. They demanded
+freedom of thought and belief with passionate insistence; they
+ardently discussed institutions and conduct; and they imported
+into polemics the idea of natural rights superior to all political
+arrangements. Whilst some, like Voltaire and the Physiocrats,
+representatives of the privileged classes and careless of political
+rights, wished to make use of the omnipotence of the prince
+to accomplish desirable reforms, or, like Montesquieu, adversely
+criticized despotism and extolled moderate governments,
+other, plebeians like Rousseau, proclaimed the theory of the
+social contract and the sovereignty of the people. So that during
+this reign of frivolity and passion, so bold in conception and so
+poor in execution, the thinkers contributed still further to mark
+the contrast between grandeur of plan and mediocrity of result.</p>
+
+<p>The preaching of all this generous philosophy, not only in
+France, but throughout the whole of Europe, would have been in
+vain had there not existed at the time a social class interested
+in these great changes, and capable of compassing them. Neither
+the witty and lucid form in which the philosophers clothed
+their ideas in their satires, romances, stage-plays and treatises,
+nor the salons of Madame du Deffand, Madame Geoffrin and
+Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, could possibly have been sufficiently
+far-reaching or active centres of political propaganda. The
+former touched only the more highly educated classes; while
+to the latter, where privileged individuals alone had entry,
+novelties were but an undiluted stimulant for the jaded appetites
+of persons whose ideas of good-breeding, moreover, would have
+drawn the line at martyrdom.</p>
+
+<p>The class which gave the Revolution its chiefs, its outward
+and visible forms, and the irresistible energy of its hopes, was
+the <i>bourgeoisie</i>, intelligent, ambitious and rich; in
+the forefront the capitalists and financiers of the
+<span class="sidenote">The bourgeoisie&mdash;the incarnation of new ideas.</span>
+<i>haute bourgeoisie</i>, farmers-general and army contractors,
+who had supplanted or swamped the old landed and
+military aristocracy, had insensibly reconstructed the
+interior of the ancient social edifice with the gilded and incongruous
+materials of wealth, and in order to consolidate
+or increase their monopolies, needed to secure themselves
+against the arbitrary action of royalty and the bureaucracy.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page850" id="page850"></a>850</span>
+Next came the crowd of stockholders and creditors of the state,
+who, in face of the government&rsquo;s &ldquo;extravagant anarchy,&rdquo; no
+longer felt safe from partial or total bankruptcy. More powerful
+still, and more masterful, was the commercial, industrial and
+colonial <i>bourgeoisie</i>; because under the Regency and under
+Louis XV. they had been more productive and more creative.
+Having gradually revolutionized the whole economic system,
+in Paris, in Lyons, in Nantes, in Bordeaux, in Marseilles, they
+could not tamely put up with being excluded from public affairs,
+which had so much bearing upon their private or collective
+enterprises. Finally, behind this <i>bourgeoisie</i>, and afar off, came
+the crowd of serfs, rustics whom the acquisition of land had
+gradually enfranchised, and who were the more eager to enjoy
+their definitive liberation because it was close at hand.</p>
+
+<p>The habits and sentiments of French society showed similar
+changes. From having been almost exclusively national during
+Louis XIV.&rsquo;s reign, owing to the perpetual state
+of war and to a sort of proud isolation, it had gradually
+<span class="sidenote">Transformation of manners and customs.</span>
+become cosmopolitan. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle,
+France had been flooded from all quarters
+of the civilized world, but especially from England,
+by a concourse of refined and cultured men well acquainted
+with her usages and her universal language, whom she had
+received sympathetically. Paris became the brain of Europe.
+This revolution in manners and customs, coinciding with the
+revolution in ideas, led in its turn to a transformation in feeling,
+and to new aesthetic needs. Gradually people became sick of
+openly avowed gallantry, of shameless libertinism, of moral
+obliquity and of the flattering artifices of vice; a long shudder
+ran through the selfish torpor of the social body. After reading
+the <i>Nouvelle-Héloïse</i>, <i>Clarissa</i> and <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i>,
+fatigued and wearied society revived as though beneath the
+fresh breezes of dawn. The principle of examination, the
+reasoned analysis of human conditions and the discussion of
+causes, far from culminating in disillusioned nihilism, everywhere
+aroused the democratic spirit, the life of sentiment and
+of human feeling: in the drama, with Marivaux, Diderot and
+La Chaussée; in art, with Chardin and Greuze; and in the
+salons, in view of the suppression of privilege. So that to
+Louis XV.&rsquo;s cynical and hopeless declaration: &ldquo;Apres moi
+le déluge,&rdquo; the setting 18th century responded by a belief in
+progress and an appeal to the future. A long-drawn echo from
+all classes hailed a revolution that was possible because it was
+necessary.</p>
+
+<p>If this revolution did not burst forth sooner, in the actual
+lifetime of Louis XV., if in Louis XVI.&rsquo;s reign there was a
+renewal of loyalty to the king, before the appeal to liberty was
+made, that is to be explained by this hope of recovery. But
+Louis XVI.&rsquo;s reign (1774-1792) was only to be a temporary
+halting-place, an artifice of history for passing through the
+transition period whilst elaborating the transformation which
+was to revolutionize, together with France, the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XVI. was twenty years of age. Physically he was
+stout, and a slave to the Bourbon fondness for good living;
+intellectually a poor creature and but ill-educated,
+he loved nothing so much as hunting and locksmith&rsquo;s
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XVI.</span>
+work. He had a taste for puerile amusements, a
+mania for useless little domestic economies in a court where
+millions vanished like smoke, and a natural idleness which
+achieved as its masterpiece the keeping a diary from 1766 to
+1792 of a life so tragic, which was yet but a foolish chronicle
+of trifles. Add to this that he was a virtuous husband, a kind
+father, a fervent Christian and a good-natured man full of
+excellent intentions, yet a spectacle of moral pusillanimity and
+ineptitude.</p>
+
+<p>From 1770 onwards lived side by side with this king, rather
+than at his side, the archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria&mdash;one
+of the very graceful and very frivolous women
+who were to be found at Versailles, opening to life
+<span class="sidenote">Marie Antoinette.</span>
+like the flowers she so much loved, enamoured of
+pleasure and luxury, delighting to free herself from
+the formalities of court life, and mingling in the amusements
+of society; lovable and loving, without ceasing to be virtuous.
+Flattered and adored at the outset, she very soon furnished a
+sinister illustration to Beaumarchais&rsquo; <i>Basile</i>; for evil tongues
+began to calumniate the queen: those of her brothers-in-law,
+the duc d&rsquo;Aiguillon (protector of Madame du Barry and dismissed
+from the ministry), and the Cardinal de Rohan, recalled from
+his embassy in Vienna. She was blamed for her friendship
+with the comtesse de Polignac, who loved her only as the dispenser
+of titles and positions; and when weary of this persistent
+begging for rewards, she was taxed with her preference for
+foreigners who asked nothing. People brought up against her
+the debts and expenditure due to her belief in the inexhaustible
+resources of France; and hatred became definite when she
+was suspected of trying to imitate her mother Maria Theresa and
+play the part of ruler, since her husband neglected his duty. They
+then became persuaded that it was she who caused the weight of
+taxation; in the most infamous libels comparison was made
+between her freedom of behaviour and that of Louis XV.&rsquo;s
+former mistresses. Private envy and public misconceptions
+very soon summed up her excessive unpopularity in the menacing
+nickname, &ldquo;L&rsquo;Autrichienne.&rdquo; (See <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Marie Antoinette</a></span>.)</p>
+
+<p>All this shows that Louis XVI. was not a monarch capable
+of directing or suppressing the inevitable revolution. His
+reign was but a tissue of contradictions. External
+affairs seemed in even a more dangerous position than
+<span class="sidenote">Foreign policy of Louis XVI.</span>
+those at home. Louis XVI. confided to Vergennes
+the charge of reverting to the traditions of the crown
+and raising France from the humiliation suffered by the treaty
+of Paris and the partition of Poland. His first act was to release
+French policy from the Austrian alliance of 1756; in this he
+was aided both by public opinion and by the confidence of the
+king&mdash;the latter managing to set aside the desires of the queen,
+whom the ambition of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. hoped to
+use as an auxiliary. Vergennes&rsquo; object was a double one: to
+free the kingdom from English supremacy and to shake off the
+yoke of Austria. Opportunities offered themselves simultaneously.
+In 1775 the English colonies in America rebelled, and
+Louis XVI., after giving them secret aid and encouragement
+almost from the first, finally in February 1778, despite Marie
+Antoinette, formed an open alliance with them; while when
+Joseph II., after having partitioned Poland, wanted in addition to
+balance the loss of Silesia with that of Bavaria, Vergennes prevented
+him from doing so. In vain was he offered a share in the
+partition of the Netherlands by way of an inducement. France&rsquo;s
+disinterested action in the peace of Teschen (1779) restored to her
+the lost adherence of the secondary states. Europe began to
+respect her again when she signed a Franco-Dutch-Spanish
+alliance (1779-1780), and when, after the capitulation of the
+English at Yorktown, the peace of Versailles (1783) crowned
+her efforts with at least formal success. Thenceforward,
+partly from prudence and partly from penury, Vergennes
+cared only for the maintenance of peace&mdash;a not too easy task,
+in opposition to the greed of Catherine II. and Joseph II., who
+now wished to divide the Ottoman empire. Joseph II., recognizing
+that Louis XVI. would not sacrifice the &ldquo;sick man&rdquo; to him,
+raised the question of the opening of the Scheldt, against the
+Dutch. Vainly did Joseph II. accuse his sister of ingratitude
+and complain of her resistance; the treaty of Fontainebleau in
+1785 maintained the rights of Holland. Later on, Joseph II.,
+sticking to his point, wanted to settle the house of Bavaria
+in the Netherlands; but Louis XVI. supported the confederation
+of princes (Fürstenbund) which Frederick II. called together
+in order to keep his turbulent neighbour within bounds. Vergennes
+completed his work by signing a commercial treaty
+in 1786 with England, whose commerce and industry were
+favoured above others, and a second in 1787 with Russia. He
+died in 1787, at an opportune moment for himself; though
+he had temporarily raised France&rsquo;s position in Europe, his
+work was soon ruined by the very means taken to secure its
+successes: warfare and armaments had hastened the &ldquo;hideous
+bankruptcy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>From the very beginning of his reign Louis XVI. fell into
+<span class="sidenote">Internal policy of Louis XVI.</span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page851" id="page851"></a>851</span>
+contradictions and hesitation in internal affairs, which could
+not but bring him to grief. He tried first of all to
+govern in accordance with public opinion, and was
+induced to flatter it beyond measure; in an extreme
+of inconsistency he re-established the parlements,
+the worst enemies of reform, at the very moment when he was
+calling in the reformers to his councils.</p>
+
+<p>Turgot, the most notable of these latter, was well fitted to
+play his great part as an enlightened minister, as much from
+the principle of hard work and domestic economy
+traditional in his family, as from a maturity of mind
+<span class="sidenote">Turgot 1774-1776.</span>
+developed by extensive study at the Sorbonne and
+by frequenting the salons of the Encyclopaedists.
+He had proved this by his capable administration in the paymaster&rsquo;s
+office at Limoges, from 1761 to 1774. A disciple of
+Quesnay and of Gournay, he tried to repeat in great affairs the
+experience of liberty which he had found successful in small,
+and to fortify the unity of the nation and the government
+by social, political and economic reforms. He ordained the
+free circulation of grain within the kingdom, and was supported
+by Louis XVI. in the course of the flour-war (<i>guerre des farines</i>)
+(April-May 1775); he substituted a territorial subsidy for the
+royal <i>corvée</i>&mdash;so burdensome upon the peasants&mdash;and thus
+tended to abolish privilege in the matter of imposts; and he
+established the freedom of industry by the dissolution of
+privileged trade corporations (1776). Finance was in a deplorable
+state, and as controller-general he formulated a new fiscal policy,
+consisting of neither fresh taxation nor loans, but of retrenchment.
+At one fell stroke the two auxiliaries on which he had a right
+to count failed him: public opinion, clamouring for reform on
+condition of not paying the cost; and the king, too timid to
+dominate public opinion, and not knowing how to refuse the
+demands of privilege. Economy in the matter of public finance
+implies a grain of severity in the collection of taxes as well as, in
+expenditure. By the former Turgot hampered the great interests;
+by the second he thwarted the desires of courtiers not only of
+the second rank but of the first. Therefore, after he had aroused
+the complaints of the commercial world and the bourgeoisie,
+the court, headed by Marie Antoinette, profited by the general
+excitement to overthrow him. The Choiseul party, which had
+gradually been reconstituted, under the influence of the queen,
+the princes, parlement, the prebendaries, and the trade corporations,
+worked adroitly to eliminate this reformer of lucrative
+abuses. The old courtier Maurepas, jealous of Turgot and
+desirous of remaining a minister himself, refrained from defending
+his colleague; and when Turgot, who never knew how to give
+in, spoke of establishing assemblies of freeholders in the communes
+and the provinces, in order to relax the tension of over-centralization,
+Louis XVI., who never dared to pass from sentiment to
+action, sacrificed his minister to the rancour of the queen, as
+he had already sacrificed Malesherbes (1776). Thus the first
+governmental act of the queen was an error, and dissipated
+the hope of replacing special privileges by a general guarantee
+given to the nation, which alone could have postponed a revolution.
+It was still too early for a Fourth of August; but the
+queen&rsquo;s victory was none the less vain, since Turgot&rsquo;s ideas
+were taken up by his successors.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these was Necker, a Genevese financier. More
+able than Turgot, though a man of smaller ideas, he abrogated
+the edicts registered by the <i>lits de justice</i>; and unable
+or not daring to attack the evil at its root, he thought
+<span class="sidenote">Necker, 1776-1781.</span>
+he could suppress its symptoms by a curative process
+of borrowing and economy. Like Turgot he failed,
+and for the same reasons. The American war had finally
+exhausted the exchequer, and, in order to replenish it, he would
+have needed to inspire confidence in the minds of capitalists;
+but the resumption in 1778 of the plan of provincial assemblies
+charged with remodelling the various imposts, and his <i>compte-rendu</i>
+in which he exhibited the monarchy paying its pensioners
+for their inactivity as it had never paid its agents for their zeal,
+aroused a fresh outburst of anger. Necker was carried away in
+his turn by the reaction he had helped to bring about (1781).</p>
+
+<p>Having fought the oligarchy of privilege, the monarchy next
+tried to rally it to its side, and all the springs of the old régime
+were strained to the breaking-point. The military
+rule of the marquis de Ségur eliminated the plebeians
+<span class="sidenote">The return of feudalism to the offensive.</span>
+from the army; while the great lords, drones in the
+hive, worked with a kind of fever at the enforcement
+of their seigniorial rights; the feudal system was making
+a last struggle before dying. The Church claimed her right
+of ordering the civil estate of all Frenchmen as an absolute
+mistress more strictly than ever. Joly de Fleury and D&rsquo;Ormesson,
+Necker&rsquo;s successors, pushed their narrow spirit of reaction and
+the temerity of their inexperience to the furthest limit; but
+the reaction which reinforced the privileged classes was not
+sufficient to fill the coffers of the treasury, and Marie Antoinette,
+who seemed gifted with a fatal perversity of instinct, confided
+the finances of the kingdom to Calonne, an upper-class official
+and a veritable Cagliostro of finance.</p>
+
+<p>From 1783 to 1787, this man organized his astounding system
+of falsification all along the line. His unbridled prodigality,
+by spreading a belief in unlimited resources, augmented
+the confidence necessary for the success of perpetual
+<span class="sidenote">Calonne, 1783-1787.</span>
+loans; until the day came when, having exhausted the
+system, he tried to suppress privilege and fall back upon
+the social reforms of Turgot, and the financial schemes of Necker,
+by suggesting once more to the assembly of notables a territorial
+subsidy from all landed property. He failed, owing to the same
+reaction that was causing the feudal system to make inroads
+upon the army, the magistracy and industry; but in his fall he
+put on the guise of a reformer, and by a last wild plunge he left
+the monarchy, already compromised by the affair of the Diamond
+Necklace (<i>q.v.</i>), hopelessly exposed (April 1787).</p>
+
+<p>The volatile and brilliant archbishop Loménie de Brienne was
+charged with the task of laying the affairs of the <i>ancien régime</i>
+before the assembly of notables, and with asking the
+nation for resources, since the monarchy could no
+<span class="sidenote">Loménie de Brienne.</span>
+longer provide for itself; but the notables refused, and
+referred the minister to the states-general, the representative
+of the nation. Before resorting to this extremity,
+Brienne preferred to lay before the parlement his two edicts
+regarding a stamp duty and the territorial subsidy; to be met
+by the same refusal, and the same reference to the states-general.
+The exile of the parlement to Troyes, the arrest of
+various members, and the curt declaration of the king&rsquo;s absolute
+authority (November 9, 1787) were unsuccessful in breaking
+down its resistance. The threat of Chrétien François de Lamoignon,
+keeper of the seals, to imitate Maupeou, aroused public
+opinion and caused a fresh confederation of the parlements of
+the kingdom. The royal government was too much exhausted
+to overthrow even a decaying power like that of the parlements,
+and being still more afraid of the future representatives of the
+French people than of the supreme courts, capitulated to the
+insurgent parlements. The recalled parlement seemed at the
+pinnacle of power.</p>
+
+<p>Its next action ruined its ephemeral popularity, by claiming
+the convocation of the states-general &ldquo;according to the formula
+observed in 1614,&rdquo; as already demanded by the
+estates of Dauphiné at Vizille on the 21st of July 1788.
+<span class="sidenote">Recall of Necker.</span>
+The exchequer was empty; it was necessary to comply.
+The royal declaration of the 23rd of September 1788 convoked
+the states-general for the 1st of May 1789, and the fall of Brienne
+and Lamoignon followed the recall of Necker. Thenceforward
+public opinion, which was looking for something quite different
+from the superannuated formula of 1614, abandoned the parlements,
+which in their turn disappeared from view; for the
+struggle beginning between the privileged classes and the government,
+now at bay, had given the public, through the states-general,
+that means of expression which they had always lacked.</p>
+
+<p>The conflict immediately changed ground, and an engagement
+began between privilege and the people over the twofold question
+of the number of deputies and the mode of voting. Voting by
+<span class="sidenote">Prelude to the states-general.</span>
+head, and the double representation of the third estate (<i>tiers
+état</i>); this was the great revolution; voting by order meant the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page852" id="page852"></a>852</span>
+continued domination of privilege, and the lesser revolution. The
+monarchy, standing apart, held the balance, but needed a decisive
+policy. Necker, with little backing at court, could not
+act energetically, and Louis XVI., wavering between
+Necker and the queen, chose the attitude most
+convenient to his indolence and least to his interest:
+he remained neutral, and his timidity showed clearly in the council
+of the 27th of December 1788. Separating the two questions
+which were so closely connected, and despite the sensational
+brochure of the abbé Sieyès, &ldquo;What is the Third Estate?&rdquo;
+he pronounced for the doubling of the third estate without
+deciding as to the vote by head, yet leaving it to be divined that
+he preferred the vote by order. As to the programme there was
+no more decisive resolution; but the edict of convocation gave
+it to be understood that a reform was under consideration; &ldquo;the
+establishment of lasting and permanent order in all branches
+of the administration.&rdquo; The point as to the place of convocation
+gave rise to a compromise between the too-distant centre
+of France and too-tumultuous Paris. Versailles was chosen
+<span class="sidenote">The electorate.</span>
+&ldquo;because of the hunting!&rdquo; In the procedure of the elections
+the traditional system of the states-general of 1614
+was preserved, and the suffrage was almost universal,
+but in two kinds: for the third estate nearly all citizens
+over twenty-five years of age, paying a direct contribution,
+voted&mdash;peasants as well as bourgeois; the country clergy
+were included among the ecclesiastics; the smaller nobility
+among the nobles; and finally, Protestants were electors and
+eligible.</p>
+
+<p>According to custom, documents (<i>cahiers</i>) were drawn up,
+containing a list of grievances and proposals for reform. All the
+orders were agreed in demanding prudently modified
+reform: the vote on the budget, order in finance,
+<span class="sidenote">The addresses.</span>
+regular convocation of the states-general, and a written
+constitution in order to get rid of arbitrary rule. The address
+of the clergy, inspired by the great prelates, sought to make
+inaccurate lamentations over the progress of impiety a means
+of safeguarding their enormous spiritual and temporal powers,
+their privileges and exemptions, and their vast wealth. The
+nobility demanded voting by order, the maintenance of their
+privileges, and, above all, laws to protect them against the
+arbitrary proceedings of royalty. The third estate insisted on the
+vote by head, the graduated abolition of privilege in all governmental
+affairs, a written constitution and union. The programme
+went on broadening as it descended in the social scale.</p>
+
+<p>The elections sufficed finally to show that the <i>ancien régime</i>,
+characterized from the social point of view by inequality, from
+the political point of view by arbitrariness, and from
+the religious point of view by intolerance, was completed
+<span class="sidenote">The elections.</span>
+from the administrative point of view by inextricable
+disorder. As even the extent of the jurisdiction
+of the <i>bailliages</i> was unknown, convocations were made at
+haphazard, according to the good pleasure of influential persons,
+and in these assemblies decisions were arrived at by a process
+that confused every variety of rights and powers, and was
+governed by no logical principle; and in this extreme confusion
+terms and affairs were alike involved.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst the bureaucracy of the <i>ancien régime</i> sought for
+desperate expedients to prolong its domination, the whole social
+body gave signs of a yet distant but ever nearing disintegration.
+The revolution was already complete
+<span class="sidenote">The counter-currents of the Revolution.</span>
+before it was declared to the world. Two distinct
+currents of disaffection, one economic, the other
+philosophic, had for long been pervading the nation.
+There had been much suffering throughout the 17th
+and 18th centuries; but no one had hitherto thought of a
+politico-social rising. But the other, the philosophic current,
+had been set going in the 18th century; and the policy of
+despotism tempered by privilege had been criticized in the name
+of liberty as no longer justifying itself by its services to the
+state. The ultramontane and oppressively burdensome church
+had been taunted with its lack of Christian charity, apostolic
+poverty and primitive virtue. All vitality had been sapped
+from the old order of nobles, reduced in prestige by the <i>savonnette
+à vilains</i> (office purchased to ennoble the holder), enervated
+by court life, and so robbed of its roots in the soil, from which
+it had once drawn its strength, that it could no longer live save
+as a ruinous parasite on the central monarchy. Lastly, to come
+to the bottom of the social scale, there were the common people,
+taxable at will, subject to the arbitrary and burdensome forced
+labour of the <i>corvée</i>, cut off by an impassable barrier from the
+privileged classes whom they hated. For them the right to work
+had been asserted, among others by Turgot, as a natural right
+opposed to the caprices of the arbitrary and selfish aristocracy
+of the corporations, and a breach had been made in the tyranny
+of the masters which had endeavoured to set a barrier to the
+astonishing outburst of industrial force which was destined to
+characterize the coming age.</p>
+
+<p>The outward and visible progress of the Revolution, due
+primarily to profound economic disturbance, was thus accelerated
+and rendered irresistible. Economic reformers found a moral
+justification for their dissatisfaction in philosophical theories;
+the chance conjunction of a philosopho-political idea with a
+national deficit led to the preponderance of the third estate at
+the elections, and to the predominance of the democratic spirit
+in the states-general. The third estate wanted civil liberty above
+all; political liberty came second only, as a means and guarantee
+for the former. They wanted the abolition of the feudal system,
+the establishment of equality and a share in power. Neither the
+family nor property was violently attacked; the church and the
+monarchy still appeared to most people two respectable and
+respected institutions. The king and the privileged classes had
+but so to desire it, and the revolution would be easy and peaceful.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XVI. was reluctant to abandon a tittle of his absolute
+power, nor would the privileged classes sacrifice their time-honoured
+traditions; they were inexorable. The king,
+more ponderous and irresolute every day, vacillated
+<span class="sidenote">Meeting of the states-general.</span>
+between Necker the liberal on one side and Marie
+Antoinette, whose feminine pride was opposed to any
+concessions, with the comte d&rsquo;Artois, a mischievous nobody who
+could neither choose a side nor stick to one, on the other. When
+the states-general opened on the 5th of May 1789 Louis XVI. had
+decided nothing. The conflict between him and the Assembly
+immediately broke out, and became acute over the verification
+of the mandates; the third estate desiring this to be made in
+common by the deputies of the three orders, which would involve
+voting by head, the suppression of classes and the preponderance
+of the third estate. On the refusal of the privileged classes and
+after an interval of six weeks, the third estate, considering that
+they represented 96% of the nation, and in accordance with the
+proposal of Sieyès, declared that they represented the nation
+and therefore were authorized to take resolutions unaided, the
+first being that in future no arrangement for taxation could take
+place without their consent.</p>
+
+<p>The king, urged by the privileged classes, responded to this
+<span class="sidenote">Oath of the tennis-court.</span>
+first revolutionary act, as in 1614, by closing the Salle des Menus
+Plaisirs where the third estate were sitting; whereupon,
+gathered in one of the tennis-courts under the
+presidency of Bailly, they swore on the 20th of June
+not to separate before having established the constitution
+of the kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XVI. then decided, on the 23rd, to make known his
+policy in a royal <i>lit de justice</i>. He declared for the lesser reform,
+the fiscal, not the social; were this rejected, he declared
+that &ldquo;he alone would arrange for the welfare of his
+people.&rdquo; Meanwhile he annulled the sitting of the
+<span class="sidenote">The Lit de Justice of June 23, 1789.</span>
+17th, and demanded the immediate dispersal of the
+Assembly. The third estate refused to obey, and by the
+mouth of Bailly and Mirabeau asserted the legitimacy of the
+Revolution. The refusal of the soldiers to coerce the Assembly
+showed that the monarchy could no longer rely on the army; and
+a few days later, when the lesser nobility and the lower ranks
+of the clergy had united with the third estate whose cause was
+their own, the king yielded, and on the 27th of June commanded
+both orders to join in the National Assembly, which was thereby
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page853" id="page853"></a>853</span>
+recognized and the political revolution sanctioned. But at the
+same time, urged by the &ldquo;infernal cabal&rdquo; of the queen and the
+comte d&rsquo;Artois, Louis XVI. called in the foreign regiments&mdash;the
+only ones of which he could be certain&mdash;and dismissed
+Necker. The Assembly, dreading a sudden attack, demanded
+the withdrawal of the troops. Meeting with a refusal, Paris
+<span class="sidenote">Taking of the Bastille.</span>
+opposed the king&rsquo;s army with her citizen-soldiers; and
+by the taking of the Bastille, that mysterious dark
+fortress which personified the <i>ancien régime</i>, secured
+the triumph of the Revolution (July 14). The king
+was obliged to recall Necker, to mount the tricolor cockade
+at the Hôtel de Ville, and to recognize Bailly as mayor of Paris
+and La Fayette as commander of the National Guard, which
+remained in arms after the victory. The National Assembly
+had right on its side after the 20th of June and might after the
+14th of July. Thus was accomplished the Revolution which
+was to throw into the melting-pot all that had for centuries
+appeared fixed and stable.</p>
+
+<p>As Paris had taken her Bastille, it remained for the towns
+and country districts to take theirs&mdash;all the Bastilles of feudalism.
+Want, terror and the contagion of examples precipitated
+the disruption of governmental authority and of the
+<span class="sidenote">Spontaneous anarchy.</span>
+old political status; and sudden anarchy dislocated
+all the organs of authority. Upon the ruins of the
+central administration temporary authorities were founded in
+various isolated localities, limited in area but none the less
+defiant of the government. The provincial assemblies of
+Dauphiné and elsewhere gave the signal; and numerous towns,
+following the example of Paris, instituted municipalities which substituted
+their authority for that of the intendants and their subordinates.
+Clubs were openly organized, pamphlets and journals
+appeared, regardless of administrative orders; workmen&rsquo;s unions
+multiplied in Paris, Bordeaux and Lyons, in face of drastic prohibition;
+and anarchy finally set in with the defection of the
+army in Paris on the 23rd of June, at Nancy, at Metz and at Brest.
+The crying abuses of the old régime, an insignificant factor at the
+outset, soon combined with the widespread agrarian distress,
+due to the unjust distribution of land, the disastrous exploitation
+of the soil, the actions of the government, and the severe winter
+of 1788. Discontent showed itself in pillage and incendiarism on
+country estates; between March and July 1789 more than three
+hundred agrarian riots took place, uprooting the feudal idea of
+property, already compromised by its own excesses. Not only
+did pillaging take place; the boundaries of property were also
+ignored, and people no longer held themselves bound to pay
+taxes. These <i>jacqueries</i> hastened the movement of the regular
+revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The decrees of the 4th of August, proposed by those noble
+&ldquo;patriots&rdquo; the duc d&rsquo;Aiguillon and the vicomte de Noailles,
+who had already on the 23rd of June made armed
+resistance to the evacuation of the Hall of Assembly,
+<span class="sidenote">The night of August 4.</span>
+put the final touch to the revolution begun by the
+provincial assemblies, by liberating land and labour,
+and proclaiming equality among all Frenchmen. Instead of
+exasperating the demands of the peasants and workmen by
+repression and raising civil war between the bourgeoisie and the
+proletariat, they drew a distinction between personal servitude,
+which was suppressed, and the rights of contract, which were
+to be redeemed&mdash;a laudable but impossible distinction. The
+whole feudal system crumbled before the revolutionary insistence
+of the peasants; for their masters, bourgeois or nobles,
+terrified by prolonged riots, capitulated and gradually had to
+consent to make the resolutions of the 4th of August a
+reality.</p>
+
+<p>Overjoyed by this social liberation, the Assembly awarded
+Louis XVI. the title of &ldquo;renewer of French liberty&rdquo;; but
+remaining faithful to his hesitating policy of the
+23rd of June, he ratified the decrees of the 4th of
+<span class="sidenote">Elaboration of the constitution.</span>
+August, only with a very ill grace. On the other hand,
+the privileged classes, and notably the clergy, who saw
+the whole traditional structure of their power threatened, now
+rallied to him, and when after the 28th of August the Assembly
+set to work on the new constitution, they combined in the effort
+to recover some of the position they had lost. But whatever
+their theoretical agreement on social questions, politically they
+were hopelessly at odds. The bourgeoisie, conscious of their
+opportunity, decided for a single chamber against the will of the
+noblesse; against that of the king they declared it permanent,
+and, if they accorded him a suspensory veto, this was only in
+order to guard them against the extreme assertion of popular
+rights. Thus the progress of the Revolution, so far, had left the
+mass of the people still excluded from any constitutional influence
+on the government, which was in the hands of the well-to-do
+classes, which also controlled the National Guard and the municipalities.
+The irritation of the disfranchised proletariat was moreover
+increased by the appalling dearness of bread and food
+generally, which the suspicious temper of the times&mdash;fomented by
+the tirades of Marat in the <i>Ami du peuple</i>&mdash;ascribed to English
+intrigues in revenge for the aid given by France to the American
+colonies, and to the treachery in high places that made these
+intrigues successful. The climax came with the rumour that the
+court was preparing a new military <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>, a rumour that
+seemed to be confirmed by indiscreet toasts proposed at a banquet
+by the officers of the guard at Versailles; and on the night of
+the 5th to the 6th of October a Parisian mob forced the king
+and royal family to return with them to Paris amid cries of
+&ldquo;We are bringing the baker, the baker&rsquo;s wife and the little
+baker&rsquo;s boy!&rdquo; The Assembly followed; and henceforth king
+and Assembly were more or less under the influence of the
+whims and passions of a populace maddened by want and
+suspicion, by the fanatical or unscrupulous incitements of
+an unfettered press, and by the unrestrained oratory of
+obscure demagogues in the streets, the cafés and the political
+clubs.</p>
+
+<p>Convened for the purpose of elaborating a system that should
+conciliate all interests, the Assembly thus found itself forced
+into a conflict between the views of the people, who feared
+betrayal, and the court, which dreaded being overwhelmed.
+This schism was reflected in the parties of the Assembly; the
+absolutists of the extreme Right; the moderate monarchists
+of the Right and Centre; the constitutionalists of the Left
+Centre and Left; and, finally, on the extreme Left the democratic
+revolutionists, among whom Robespierre sat as yet all but
+unnoticed. Of talent there was enough and to spare in the
+Assembly; what was conspicuously lacking was common sense
+and a practical knowledge of affairs. Of all the orators who
+declaimed from the tribune, Mirabeau alone realized the perils
+of the situation and possessed the power of mind and will to
+have mastered them. Unfortunately, however, he was discredited
+by a disreputable past, and yet more by the equivocal
+attitude he had to assume in order to maintain his authority
+in the Assembly while working in what he believed to be the true
+interests of the court. His political ideal for France was that
+of the monarchy, rescued from all association with the abuses
+of the old régime and &ldquo;broad-based upon the people&rsquo;s will&rdquo;;
+his practical counsel was that the king should frankly proclaim
+this ideal to the people as his own, should compete with the
+Assembly for popular favour, while at the same time using
+every means to win over those by whom his authority was
+flouted. For a time Mirabeau influenced the counsels of the
+court through the comte de Montmorin; but the king neither
+trusted him nor could be brought to see his point of view, and
+Marie Antoinette, though she resigned herself to negotiating
+with him, was very far from sympathizing with his ideals.
+Finally, all hope of the conduct of affairs being entrusted to him
+was shattered when the Assembly passed a law forbidding its
+members to become ministers.</p>
+
+<p>The attempted reconciliation with the king having failed, the
+Assembly ended by working alone, and made the control that
+it should have exerted an instrument, not of co-operation
+but of strife. It inaugurated its legislative
+<span class="sidenote">Declaration of the rights of man.</span>
+labours by a metaphysical declaration of the Rights
+of Man and of the Citizen (October 2, 1789). This
+enunciation of universal verities, the bulk of which have, sooner
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page854" id="page854"></a>854</span>
+or later, been accepted by all civilized nations as &ldquo;the gospel
+of modern times,&rdquo; was inspired by all the philosophy of the 18th
+century in France and by the <i>Contrat Social</i>. It comprised
+various rational and humane ideas, no longer theological, but
+profoundly and deliberately thought out: ideas as to the
+sovereign-right of the nation, law by general consent, man
+superior to the pretensions of caste and the fetters of dogma,
+the vindication of the ideal and of human dignity. Unable
+to rest on historic precedent like England, the Constituent
+Assembly took as the basis for its labours the tradition of the
+thinkers.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the principles proclaimed in this Declaration the constitution
+of 1791 was founded. Its provisions are discussed elsewhere
+(see the section below on <i>Law and Institutions</i>);
+here it will suffice to say that it established under the
+<span class="sidenote">The constitution.</span>
+sovereign people, for the king was to survive merely
+as the supreme executive official, a wholly new model
+of government in France, both in Church and State. The
+historic divisions of the realm were wiped out; for the old
+provinces were substituted eighty-three departments; and
+with the provinces vanished the whole organization, territorial,
+administrative and ecclesiastical, of the <i>ancien régime</i>. In one
+respect, indeed, the system of the old monarchy remained intact;
+the tradition of centralization established by Louis XIV. was
+too strong to be overthrown, and the destruction of the historic
+privileges and immunities with which this had been ever in
+conflict only served to strengthen this tendency. In 1791
+France was pulverized into innumerable administrative atoms
+incapable of cohesion; and the result was that Paris became
+more than ever the brain and nerve-centre of France. This fact
+was soon to be fatal to the new constitution, though the administrative
+system established by it still survives. Paris was in
+effect dominated by the armed and organized proletariat, and
+this proletariat could never be satisfied with a settlement which,
+while proclaiming the sovereignty of the people, had, by means
+of the property qualification for the franchise, established the
+political ascendancy of the middle classes. The settlement had,
+in fact, settled nothing; it had, indeed, merely intensified the
+profound cleavage between the opposing tendencies; for if the
+democrats were alienated by the narrow franchise, the Civil
+Constitution of the Clergy, which cut at the very roots of
+the Catholic system, drove into opposition to the Revolution
+not only the clergy themselves but a vast number of their
+flocks.</p>
+
+<p>The policy of the Assembly, moreover, hopelessly aggravated
+its misunderstanding with the king. Louis, indeed, accepted
+the constitution and attended the great Feast of Federation
+(July 14, 1790), when representatives from all the new departments
+assembled in the Champ de Mars to ratify the work of the
+Assembly; but the king either could not or would not say the
+expected word that would have dissipated mistrust. The Civil
+Constitution of the Clergy, too, seemed to him not only to
+violate his rights as a king, but his faith as a Christian also;
+and when the emigration of the nobility and the death of Mirabeau
+(April 2, 1791) had deprived him of his natural supporters and
+his only adviser, resuming the old plan of withdrawing to the
+army of the marquis de Bouillé at Metz, he made his ill-fated
+attempt to escape from Paris (June 20, 1791). The flight to
+Varennes was an irreparable error; for during the king&rsquo;s absence
+and until his return the insignificance of the royal power became
+apparent. La Fayette&rsquo;s fusillade of the republicans, who
+demanded the deposition of the king (July 17, 1791), led to a
+definite split between the democratic party and the bourgeois
+party. Vainly did Louis, brought back a captive to Paris, swear
+on the 14th of September 1791 solemnly mere lip-service to the
+constitution; the mistrustful party of revolution abandoned
+the constitution they had only just obtained, and to guard
+against the sovereign&rsquo;s mental reservations and the selfish policy
+of the middle classes, appealed to the main force of the people.
+The conflict between the <i>ancien régime</i> and the National Assembly
+ended in the defeat of the royalists.</p>
+
+<p>Through lassitude or disinterestedness the men of 1791, on
+<span class="sidenote">The Legislative Assembly (Oct. 1, 1791-Sept 20, 1792).</span>
+Robespierre&rsquo;s suggestion, had committed one last mistake, by
+leaving the task of putting the constitution into
+practice to new men even more inexperienced than
+themselves. Thus the new Assembly&rsquo;s time was
+occupied in a conflict between the Legislative Assembly
+and the king, who plotted against it; and, as a result,
+the monarchy, insulted by the proceedings of the 20th
+of June, was eliminated altogether by those of the 10th
+of August 1792.</p>
+
+<p>The new Assembly which had met on the 1st of October 1791
+had a majority favourable to the constitutional monarchy and
+to the bourgeois franchise. But, among these bourgeois
+those who were called Feuillants, from the name of
+<span class="sidenote">The parties.</span>
+their club (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Feuillants, Club of the</a></span>), desired the
+strict and loyal application of the constitution without encroaching
+upon the authority of the king; the triumvirate, Duport,
+Barnave and Lameth, were at the head of this party. The
+Jacobins, on the contrary, considered that the king should
+merely be hereditary president of the Republic, to be deposed
+if he attempted to violate the constitution, and that universal
+suffrage should be established. The dominant group among
+these was that of the Girondins or Girondists, so called because
+its most brilliant members had been elected in the Gironde
+(see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Girondists</a></span>). But the republican party was more powerful
+without than within. Their chief was not so much Robespierre,
+president of the parliamentary and bourgeois club of the Jacobins
+(<i>q.v.</i>), which had acquired by means of its two thousand affiliated
+branches great power in the provinces, as the advocate Danton,
+president of the popular and Parisian club of the Cordeliers (<i>q.v.</i>).
+Between the Feuillants and the Jacobins, the independents,
+incapable of keeping to any fixed programme, vacillated sometimes
+to the right, sometimes to the left.</p>
+
+<p>But the best allies of the republicans against the Feuillants
+were the royalists pure and simple, who cared nothing about
+the constitution, and claimed to &ldquo;extract good from
+the excess of evil.&rdquo; The election of a Jacobin, Pétion,
+<span class="sidenote">Royalist intrigues.<br /><br />
+The émigrés.</span>
+instead of Bailly, the resigning mayor, and La Fayette,
+the candidate for office, was their first achievement. The court,
+on its side, showed little sign of a conciliatory spirit, though,
+realizing its danger, it attempted to restrain the foolish violence
+of the <i>émigrés</i>, <i>i.e.</i> the nobles who after the suppression
+of titles of nobility in 1790 and the arrest
+of the king at Varennes, had fled in a body to Coblenz
+and joined Louis XVI.&rsquo;s brothers, the counts of Provence and
+Artois. They it was who set in motion the national and European
+conflict. Under the prince of Condé they had collected a little
+army round Trier; and in concert with the &ldquo;Austrian Committee&rdquo;
+of Paris they solicited the armed intervention of monarchical
+Europe. The declaration of Pilnitz, which was but an excuse
+<span class="sidenote">Declaration of Pilnitz.</span>
+for non-interference on the part of the emperor and the
+king of Prussia, interested in the prolongation of these
+internal troubles, was put forward by them as an
+assurance of forthcoming support (August 27, 1791).
+At the same time the application of the Civil Constitution of
+the Clergy roused the whole of western La Vendée; and in face
+of the danger threatened by the refractory clergy and by the
+army of the <i>émigrés</i>, the Girondins set about confounding the
+court with the Feuillants in the minds of the public, and compromising
+Louis XVI. by a national agitation, denouncing him
+as an accomplice of the foreigner. Owing to the decrees against
+<span class="sidenote">The decrees.<br /><br />
+The war.</span>
+the comte de Provence, the emigrants, and the
+refractory priests, voted by the Legislative Assembly
+in November 1791, they forced Louis XVI. to show
+his hand by using his veto, so that his complicity should be
+plainly declared, to replace his Feuillant ministry&mdash;disparate
+in birth, opinions and ambitions&mdash;by the Girondin ministry of
+Dumouriez-Roland (March 10), no more united than the other,
+but believers in a republican crusade for the overthrow
+of thrones, that of Louis XVI. first of all; and finally
+to declare war against the king of Bohemia and Hungary, a step
+also desired by the court in the hope of ridding itself of the
+Assembly at the first note of victory (April 20, 1792).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page855" id="page855"></a>855</span></p>
+
+<p>But when, owing to the disorganization of the army through
+emigration and desertion, the ill-prepared Belgian war was
+followed by invasion and the trouble in La Vendée
+increased, all France suspected a betrayal. The
+<span class="sidenote">Proceedings of June 20.</span>
+Assembly, in order to reduce the number of hostile
+forces, voted for the exile of all priests who had refused
+to swear to the Civil Constitution and the substitution of a body
+of twenty thousand volunteer national guards, under the authority
+of Paris, for the king&rsquo;s constitutional guard (May 27-June 8,
+1792). Louis XVI.&rsquo;s veto and the dismissal of the Girondin
+ministry&mdash;thanks to an intrigue of Dumouriez, analogous to
+that of Mirabeau and as ineffectual&mdash;dismayed the Feuillants and
+maddened the Girondins; the latter, to avert popular fury,
+turned it upon the king. The <i>émeute</i> of the 20th of June, a
+burlesque which, but for the persistent good-humour of Louis
+XVI., might have become a tragedy, alarmed but did not
+overthrow the monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>The bourgeoisie, the Assembly, the country and La Fayette,
+one of the leaders of the army, now embarked upon a royalist
+reaction, which would perhaps have been efficacious,
+had it not been for the entry into the affair of the
+<span class="sidenote">Manifesto of Brunswick.</span>
+Prussians as allies of the Austrians, and for the insolent
+manifesto of the duke of Brunswick. The Assembly&rsquo;s
+cry of &ldquo;the country in danger&rdquo; (July 11) proved to the nation
+that the king was incapable of defending France against the
+foreigner; and the appeal of the federal volunteers in Paris
+gave to the opposition, together with the war-song of the Marseillaise,
+the army which had been refused by Louis XVI., now
+disarmed. The vain attempts of the Gironde to reconcile the
+king and the Revolution, the ill-advised decree of the Assembly
+on the 8th of August, freeing La Fayette from his guilt in forsaking
+his army; his refusal to vote for the deposition of the
+king, and the suspected treachery of the court, led to the success
+of the republican forces when, on the 10th of August, the mob
+of Paris organized by the revolutionary Commune rose against
+the monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>The suspension and imprisonment of the king left the supreme
+authority nominally in the hands of the Assembly, but actually
+in those of the Commune, consisting of delegates
+from the administrative sections of Paris. Installed
+<span class="sidenote">The insurrectional commune of Paris.<br /><br />
+The September massacres.</span>
+at the Hôtel de Ville this attempted to influence the
+discredited government, entered into conflict with
+the Legislative Assembly, which considered its mission at
+an end, and paralyzed the action of the executive council,
+particularly during the bloody days of September, provoked
+by the discovery of the court&rsquo;s intrigues with the foreigner,
+by the treachery of La Fayette, the capture of Longwy,
+the investiture of Verdun by the Prussians (August
+19-30), and finally by the incendiary placards of Marat.
+Danton, a master of diplomatic and military operations,
+had to avoid any rupture with the Commune. Fortunately,
+on the very day of the dispersal of the Legislative Assembly,
+Dumouriez saved France from a Prussian invasion by the
+victory of Valmy, and by unauthorized negotiations which
+prefigured those of Bonaparte at Léoben (September 22,
+1792).</p>
+
+<p>The popular insurrection against Louis XVI. determined
+the simultaneous fall of the bourgeois régime and the establishment
+of the democracy in power. The Legislative Assembly,
+without a mandate for modifying a constitution that had
+become inapplicable with the suspension of the monarch, had
+before disappearing convoked a National Convention, and as
+the reward of the struggle for liberty had replaced the limited
+franchise by universal suffrage. Public opinion became republican
+from an excess of patriotism, and owing to the propaganda
+of the Jacobin club; while the decree of the 25th of
+August 1792, which marked the destruction of feudalism, now
+abolished in principle, caused the peasants to rally definitely
+to the Republic.</p>
+
+<p>This had hardly been established before it became distracted
+by the fratricidal strife of its adherents, from September 22,
+1792, to the 18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797). The electoral
+<span class="sidenote">The Convention, Sept. 21. 1792-Oct. 26, 1795.</span>
+assemblies, in very great majority, had desired this Republic to
+be democratic and equalizing in spirit, but on the face
+of it, liberal, uniform and propagandist; in consequence,
+the 782 deputies of the Convention were not
+divided on principles, but only by personal rivalries
+and ambition. They all wished for a unanimity and
+harmony impossible to obtain; and being unable to
+convince they destroyed one another.</p>
+
+<p>The Girondins in the Convention played the part of the
+Feuillants in the Legislative Assembly. Their party was not
+well disciplined, they purposely refrained from making
+it so, and hence their ruin. Oratorically they represented
+<span class="sidenote">The parties.</span>
+the spirit of the South; politically, the ideas
+of the bourgeoisie in opposition to the democracy&mdash;which they
+despised although making use of it&mdash;and the federalist system,
+from an objection to the preponderance of Paris. Paris, on the
+other hand, had elected only deputies of the Mountain, as the
+more advanced of the Jacobins were called, that party being
+no more settled and united than the others. They drew support
+from the Parisian democracy, and considered the decentralization
+of the Girondins as endangering France&rsquo;s unity, circumstances
+demanding a strong and highly concentrated government;
+they opposed a republic on the model of that of Rome to the
+Polish republic of the Gironde. Between the two came the
+<i>Plaine</i>, the <i>Marais</i>, the troop of trembling bourgeois, sincerely
+attached to the Revolution, but very moderate in the defence
+of their ideas; some seeking a refuge from their timidity in
+hard-working committees, others partaking in the violence of
+the Jacobins out of weakness or for reasons of state.</p>
+
+<p>The Girondins were the first to take the lead; in order to
+retain it they should have turned the Revolution into a government.
+They remained an exclusive party, relying on
+the mob but with no influence over it. Without a
+<span class="sidenote">The Girondins.</span>
+leader or popular power, they might have found both
+in Danton; for, occupied chiefly with the external danger, he
+made advances towards them, which they repulsed, partly in
+horror at the proceedings of September, but chiefly because they
+saw in him the most formidable rival in the path of the government.
+They waged war against him as relentlessly as did the
+Constitutionalists against Mirabeau, whom he resembled in his
+extreme ugliness and his volcanic eloquence. They drove him
+into the arms of Robespierre, Marat and the Commune of Paris.
+On the other hand, after the 23rd of September they declared
+Paris dangerous for the Convention, and wanted to reduce
+it to &ldquo;eighty-three influential members.&rdquo; Danton and the
+Mountain responded by decreeing the unity and indivisibility
+of the Republic, in order to emphasize the suspicions of federalism
+which weighed upon the Girondins.</p>
+
+<p>The trial of Louis XVI. still further enhanced the contrasts
+of ideas and characters. The discovery of fresh proofs of treachery
+in the iron chest (November 20, 1792) gave the Mountain
+a pretext for forcing on the clash of parties and
+<span class="sidenote">Trial and death of Louis XVI.</span>
+raising the question not of legality but of public safety.
+By the execution of the king (January 21, 1793) they
+&ldquo;cast down a king&rsquo;s head as a challenge to the kings of Europe.&rdquo;
+In order to preserve popular favour and their direction of the
+Republic, the Girondins had not dared to pronounce against
+the sentence of death, but had demanded an appeal to the people
+which was rejected; morally weakened by this equivocal attitude
+they were still more so by foreign events.</p>
+
+<p>The king&rsquo;s death did not result in the unanimity so much
+desired by all parties; it only caused the reaction on themselves
+of the hatred which had been hitherto concentrated
+upon the king, and also an augmentation in the armies
+<span class="sidenote">First European coalition.</span>
+of the foreigner, which obliged the revolutionists to
+face all Europe. There was a coalition of monarchs,
+and the people of La Vendée rose in defence of their faith.
+Dumouriez, the conqueror of Jemappes (November 6, 1792),
+who invaded Holland, was beaten by the Austrians (March 1793).
+A levy of 300,000 men was ordered; a Committee of General
+Security was charged with the search for suspects; and thenceforward
+military occurrences called forth parliamentary crises
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page856" id="page856"></a>856</span>
+and popular upheavals. Girondins and Jacobins unjustly
+accused one another of leaving the traitors, the conspirators,
+the &ldquo;stipendiaries of Coblenz&rdquo; unpunished. To avert the
+danger threatened by popular dissatisfaction, the Gironde was
+persuaded to vote for the creation of a revolutionary tribunal
+to judge suspects, while out of spite against Danton who demanded
+it, they refused the strong government which might have
+made a stand against the enemy (March 10, 1793). This was the
+first of the exceptional measures which were to call down ruin
+upon them. Whilst the insurrection in La Vendée was spreading,
+and Dumouriez falling back upon Neerwinden, sentence of death
+was laid upon <i>émigrés</i> and refractory priests; the treachery of
+<span class="sidenote">First committee of pubic safety.</span>
+Dumouriez, disappointed in his Belgian projects, gave grounds
+for all kinds of suspicion, as that of Mirabeau had
+formerly done, and led the Gironde to propose the
+new government which they had refused to Danton.
+The transformation of the provisional executive council
+into the Committee of Public Safety&mdash;omnipotent save in financial
+matters&mdash;was voted because the Girondins meant to control it;
+but Danton got the upper hand (April 6).</p>
+
+<p>The Girondins, discredited in Paris, multiplied their attacks
+upon Danton, now the master: they attributed the civil war
+and the disasters of the foreign campaign to the
+despotism of the Paris Commune and the clubs; they
+<span class="sidenote">Struggle between the commune and the Gironde.</span>
+accused Marat of instigating the September massacres;
+and they began the supreme struggle by demanding the
+election of a committee of twelve deputies, charged with
+breaking up the anarchic authorities in Paris (May 18).
+The complete success of the Girondin proposals; the arrest of
+Hébert&mdash;the violent editor of the <i>Père Duchêne</i>; the insurrection
+of the Girondins of Lyons against the Montagnard Commune;
+the bad news from La Vendée&mdash;the military reverses; and the
+economic situation which had compelled the fixing of a maximum
+price of corn (May 4) excited the &ldquo;moral insurrections&rdquo; of
+May 31 and June 2. Marat himself sounded the tocsin, and
+Hanriot, at the head of the Parisian army, surrounded the
+Convention. Despite the efforts of Danton and the Committee
+of Public Safety, the arrest of the Girondins sealed the victory
+of the Mountain.</p>
+
+<p>The threat of the Girondin Isnard was fulfilled. The federalist
+insurrection, to avenge the violation of national representation,
+responded to the Parisian insurrection. Sixty-nine
+departmental governments protested against the
+<span class="sidenote">Fall of the Gironde.</span>
+violence done to the Convention; but the ultra-democratic
+constitution of 1793 deprived the Girondins,
+who were arming in the west, the south and the centre, of all legal
+force. To the departments that were hostile to the dictatorship
+of Paris, and the tyranny of Danton or Robespierre, it promised
+the referendum, an executive of twenty-four citizens, universal
+suffrage, and the free exercise of religion. The populace, who
+could not understand this parliamentary quarrel, and were in a
+hurry to set up a national defence, abandoned the Girondins, and
+the latter excited the enthusiasm of only one person, Charlotte
+Corday, who by the murder of Marat ruined them irretrievably.
+The battle of Brécourt was a defeat without a fight for their
+party without stamina and their general without troops (July
+13); while on the 31st of October their leaders perished on the
+guillotine, where they had been preceded by the queen, Marie
+Antoinette. The Girondins and their adversaries were differentiated
+by neither religious dissensions nor political divergency,
+but merely by a question of time. The Girondins, when in power,
+had had scruples which had not troubled them while scaling the
+ladder; idols of Paris, they had flattered her in turn, and when
+Paris scorned them they sought support in the provinces. A
+great responsibility for this defeat of the liberal and republican
+bourgeoisie, whom they represented, is to be laid upon Madame
+Roland, the Egeria of the party. An ardent patriot and republican,
+her relations with Danton resembled those of Marie
+Antoinette with Mirabeau, in each case a woman spoilt by
+flattery, enraged at indifference. She was the ruin of the Gironde,
+but taught it how to die.</p>
+
+<p>The fall of the Gironde left the country disturbed by civil war,
+and the frontiers more seriously threatened than before Valmy.
+Bouchotte, a totally inefficient minister for war, the Commune&rsquo;s
+man of straw, left the army without food or ammunition, while
+the suspected officers remained inactive. In the Angevin
+Vendée the incapable leaders let themselves be beaten at Aubiers,
+Beaupréau and Thouars, at a time when Cathelineau was taking
+possession of Saumur and threatening Nantes, the capture of
+which would have permitted the insurgents in La Vendée to join
+those of Brittany and receive provisions from England. Meanwhile,
+the remnants of the Girondin federalists were overcome
+by the disguised royalists, who had aroused the whole of the
+Rhône valley from Lyons to Marseilles, had called in the
+Sardinians, and handed over the fleet and the arsenal at Toulon
+to the English, whilst Paoli left Corsica at their disposal. The
+scarcity of money due to the discrediting of the assignats, the
+cessation of commerce, abroad and on the sea, and the bad
+harvest of 1793, were added to all these dangers, and formed a
+serious menace to France and the Convention.</p>
+
+<p>This meant a hard task for the first Committee of Public Safety
+and its chief Danton. He was the only one to understand the
+conditions necessary to a firm government; he caused
+the adjournment of the decentralizing constitution
+<span class="sidenote">The dictatorship of the first committee of public safety.</span>
+of 1793, and set up a revolutionary government. The
+Committee of Public Safety, now a permanency,
+annulled the Convention and was itself the central
+authority, its organization in Paris being the twelve
+committees substituted for the provisional executive
+committee and the six ministers, the Committee of General
+Security for the maintenance of the police, and the arbitrary
+Revolutionary Tribunal. The execution of its orders in the
+departments was carried out by omnipotent representatives
+&ldquo;on mission&rdquo; in the armies, by popular societies&mdash;veritable
+missionaries of the Revolution&mdash;and by the revolutionary
+committees which were its backbone.</p>
+
+<p>Despite this Reign of Terror Danton failed; he could neither
+dominate foes within nor divide those without. Representing
+the sane and vigorous democracy, and like Jefferson
+a friend to liberty and self-government, he had been
+<span class="sidenote">Danton&rsquo;s failure.</span>
+obliged to set up the most despotic of governments
+in face of internal anarchy and foreign invasion. Being of a
+temperament that expressed itself only in action, and neither
+a theorist nor a cabinet-minister, he held the views of a statesman
+without having a following sufficient to realize them. Moreover,
+the proceedings of the 2nd of June, when the Commune of Paris
+had triumphed, had dealt him a mortal blow. He <span class="correction" title="amended from is">in</span> his turn
+tried to stem the tumultuous current which had borne him
+along, and to prevent discord; but the check to his policy of
+an understanding with Prussia and with Sardinia, to whom,
+like Richelieu and D&rsquo;Argenson, he offered the realization of her
+transalpine ambition in exchange for Nice and Savoy, was
+added to the failure of his temporizing methods in regard to the
+federalist insurgents, and of his military operations against
+La Vendée. A man of action and not of cunning shifts, he
+succumbed on the 10th of July to the blows of his own government,
+which had passed from his hands into those of Robespierre,
+his ambitious and crafty rival.</p>
+
+<p>The second Committee of Public Safety lasted until the
+27th of July 1794. Composed of twelve members, re-eligible
+every month, and dominated by the triumvirate,
+Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon, it was stronger
+<span class="sidenote">Second committee of public safety.</span>
+than ever, since it obtained the right of appointing
+leaders, disposed of money, and muzzled the press.
+Many of its members were sons of the bourgeoisie, men who
+having been educated at college, thanks to some charitable
+agency, in the pride of learning, and raised above their original
+station, were ready for anything but had achieved nothing.
+They had plenty of talent at command, were full of classical
+tirades against tyranny, and, though sensitive enough in their
+private life, were bloodthirsty butchers in their public relations.
+Such were Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon, Billaud-Varenne,
+Cambon, Thuriot, Collot d&rsquo;Herbois, Barrère and Prieur de
+la Mârne. Working hand in hand with these politicians, not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page857" id="page857"></a>857</span>
+always in accordance with them, but preserving a solid front,
+were the specialists, Carnot, Robert Lindet, Jean Bon Saint-André
+and Prieur de la Côte d&rsquo;Or, honourable men, anxious
+above all to safeguard their country. At the head of the former
+type Robespierre, without special knowledge or exceptional
+talent, devoured by jealous ambition and gifted with cold grave
+eloquence, enjoyed a great moral ascendancy, due to his incorruptible
+purity of life and the invariably correct behaviour
+that had been wanting in Mirabeau, and by the persevering will
+which Danton had lacked. His marching orders were: no more
+temporizing with the federalists or with generals who are afraid of
+conquering; war to the death with all Europe in the name of revolutionary
+propaganda and the monarchical tradition of natural
+frontiers; and fear, as a means of government. The specialists
+answered foreign foes by their organization of victory; as for foes
+at home, the triumvirate crushed them beneath the Terror.</p>
+
+<p>France was saved by them and by that admirable outburst
+of patriotism which provided 750,000 patriots for the army
+through the general levy of the 16th of August 1793,
+aided, moreover, by the mistakes of her enemies.
+<span class="sidenote">Defeat of the coalition.</span>
+Instead of profiting by Dumouriez&rsquo;s treachery and
+the successes in La Vendée, the Coalition, divided
+over the resuscitated Polish question, lost time on the frontiers
+of this new Poland of the west which was sacrificing itself for
+the sake of a Universal Republic. Thus in January 1794 the
+territory of France was cleared of the Prussians and Austrians
+by the victories at Hondschoote, Wattignies and Wissembourg;
+the army of La Vendée was repulsed from Granville, overwhelmed
+by Hoche&rsquo;s army at Le Mans and Savenay, and
+its leaders shot; royalist sedition was suppressed at Lyons,
+Bordeaux, Marseilles and Toulon; federalist insurrections
+were wiped out by the terrible massacres of Carrier at Nantes,
+the atrocities of Lebon at Arras, and the wholesale executions
+of Fouché and Collot d&rsquo;Herbois at Lyons; Louis XVI. and
+Marie Antoinette guillotined, the <i>émigrés</i> dispersed, denied or
+forsaken by all Europe.</p>
+
+<p>But the triumphant Mountain was not as united as it boasted.
+The second Committee of Public Safety had now to struggle
+against two oppositions: one of the left, represented
+by Hébert, the Commune of Paris and the Cordeliers;
+<span class="sidenote">The new parties.</span>
+another of the right, Danton and his followers. The
+former would not admit that the Terror was only a temporary
+method of defence; for them it was a permanent system which
+was even to be strengthened in order to crush all who were
+hostile to the Revolution. Their sanguinary violence was combined
+with an anti-religious policy, not atheistical, but inspired
+by mistrust of the clergy, and by a civic and deistic creed that
+was a direct outcome of the federations. To these latter were
+due the substitution of the Republican for the Gregorian calendar,
+and the secular Feasts of Reason (November 19, 1793). The
+followers of Hébert wanted to push forward the movement of
+May 31, 1793, in order to become masters in their turn; while
+those of Danton were by way of arresting it. They considered it
+<span class="sidenote">The party of tolerance.</span>
+time to re-establish the reign of ordinary laws and
+justice; sick of bloodshed, with Camille Desmoulins
+they demanded a &ldquo;Committee of Clemency.&rdquo; A
+deist and therefore hostile to &ldquo;anti-religious masquerades,&rdquo;
+while uneasy at the absolute authority of the Paris
+Commune, which aimed at suppressing the State, and at its
+armed propaganda abroad, Robespierre resumed the struggle
+against its illegal power, so fatal to the Gironde. His boldness
+succeeded (March 24, 1794), and then, jealous of Danton&rsquo;s
+activity and statesmanship, and exasperated by the jeers of his
+friends, he rid himself of the party of tolerance by a parody
+of justice (April 5).</p>
+
+<p>Robespierre now stood alone. During five months, while
+affecting to be the representative of &ldquo;a reign of justice and
+virtue,&rdquo; he laboured at strengthening his politico-religious
+dictatorship&mdash;already so formidably armed&mdash;with
+<span class="sidenote">Robespierre&rsquo;s dictatorship.</span>
+new powers. &ldquo;The incorruptible wanted to
+become the invulnerable&rdquo; and the scaffold of the
+guillotine was crowded. By his dogma of the supreme state
+Robespierre founded a theocratic government with the police
+as an Inquisition. The festival of the new doctrine, which
+turned the head of the new pontiff (June 8), the <i>loi de Prairial</i>,
+or &ldquo;code of legal murder&rdquo; (June 10), which gave the deputies
+themselves into his hand; and the multiplication of executions
+at a time when the victory of Fleurus (June 25) showed the
+uselessness and barbarity of this aggravation of the Reign of
+Terror provoked against him the victorious coalition of revenge,
+<span class="sidenote">9th Thermidor.</span>
+lassitude and fear. Vanquished and imprisoned, he
+refused to take part in the illegal action proposed
+by the Commune against the Convention. Robespierre
+was no man of action. On the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794)
+he fell into the gulf that had opened on the 31st of May, and
+through which the 18th Brumaire was visible.</p>
+
+<p>Although brought about by the Terrorists, the tragic fall of
+Robespierre put an end to the Reign of Terror; for their chiefs
+having disappeared, the subordinates were too much
+divided to keep up the dictatorship of the third
+<span class="sidenote">Third committee of public safety.</span>
+Committee of Public Safety, and reaction soon set in.
+After a change in <i>personnel</i> in favour of the surviving
+Dantonists, came a limitation to the powers of the Committee
+of Public Safety, now placed in dependence upon the Convention;
+and next followed the destruction of the revolutionary system,
+the Girondin decentralization and the resuscitation of departmental
+governments; the reform of the Revolutionary Tribunal
+on the 10th of August; the suppression of the Commune of
+Paris on the 1st of September, and of the salary of forty <i>sous</i>
+given to members of the sections; the abolition of the maximum,
+the suppression of the Guillotine, the opening of the prisons,
+the closing of the Jacobin club (November 11), and the henceforward
+insignificant existence of the popular societies.</p>
+
+<p>Power reverted to the Girondins and Dantonists, who re-entered
+the Convention on the 18th of December; but with
+them re-entered likewise the royalists of Lyons,
+Marseilles and Toulon, and further, after the peace of
+<span class="sidenote">Resuscitation of the royalist party.</span>
+Basel, many young men set free from the army, hostile
+to the Jacobins and defenders of the now moderate
+and peace-making Convention. These <i>muscadins</i> and <i>incroyables</i>,
+led by Fréron, Tallien and Barras&mdash;former revolutionists
+who had become aristocrats&mdash;profited by the restored
+liberty of the press to prepare for days of battle in the salons
+of the <i>merveilleuses</i> Madame Tallien, Madame de Staël and
+Madame Récamier, as the <i>sans-culottes</i> had formerly done in
+the clubs. The remnants of Robespierre&rsquo;s faction became
+alarmed at this Thermidor reaction, in which they scented
+royalism. Aided by famine, by the suppression of the maximum,
+and by the imminent bankruptcy of the assignats, they endeavoured
+to arouse the working classes and the former Hanriot
+companies against a government which was trying to destroy the
+republic, and had broken the busts of Marat and guillotined
+Carrier and Fouquier-Tinville, the former public prosecutor.
+<span class="sidenote">Popular risings of Germinal and Prairial.</span>
+Thus the risings of the 12th Germinal (April 1, 1795)
+and of the 1st Prairial (May 20) were economic revolts
+rather than insurrections excited by the deputies of the
+Mountain; in order to suppress them the reactionaries
+called in the army. Owing to this first intervention
+of the troops in politics, the Committee of Public Safety, which
+aimed not so much at a moderate policy as at steering a middle
+course between the Thermidorians of the Right and of the Left,
+was able to dispense with the latter.</p>
+
+<p>The royalists now supposed that their hour had come. In
+the south, the companions of Jehu and of the Sun inaugurated
+a &ldquo;White Terror,&rdquo; which had not even the apparent
+excuse of the public safety or of exasperated patriotism.
+<span class="sidenote">The white terror.</span>
+At the same time they prepared for a twofold insurrection
+against the republic&mdash;in the west with the
+help of England, and in the east with that of Austria&mdash;by an
+attempt to bribe General Pichegru. But though the heads of
+the government wanted to put an end to the Revolution they had
+no thought of restoring the monarchy in favour of the Comte de
+Provence, who had taken the title of Louis XVIII. on hearing
+of the death of the dauphin in the Temple, and still less of bringing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page858" id="page858"></a>858</span>
+back the <i>ancien régime</i>. Hoche crushed the insurrection of the
+Chouans and the Bretons at Quiberon on the 2nd of July 1795,
+and Pichegru, scared, refused to entangle himself any further.</p>
+
+<p>To cut off all danger from royalists or terrorists the Convention
+now voted the Constitution of the year III.; suppressing that
+of 1793, in order to counteract the terrorists, and
+re-establishing the bourgeois limited franchise with
+<span class="sidenote">The constitution of the year III.<br /><br />
+The 13th Vendémiaire.</span>
+election in two degrees&mdash;a less liberal arrangement than
+that granted from 1789 to 1792. The chambers of the
+Five Hundred and of the Ancients were elected by the moneyed
+and intellectual aristocracy, and were to be re-elected by thirds
+annually. The executive authority, entrusted to five Directors,
+was no more than a definite and very strong Committee of Public
+Safety; but Sieyès, the author of the new constitution, in opposition
+to the royalists, had secured places of refuge for his party
+by reserving posts as directors for the regicides, and two-thirds
+of the deputies&rsquo; seats for members of the Convention. In self-defence
+against this continuance of the policy and the
+<i>personnel</i> of the Convention&mdash;a modern &ldquo;Long Parliament&rdquo;&mdash;the
+royalists, persistent street-fighters and
+masters in the &ldquo;sections&rdquo; after the suppression of
+the daily indemnification of forty <i>sous</i>, attempted the insurrection
+of the 13th Vendémiaire (October 5, 1795), which was easily
+put down by General Bonaparte.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the bourgeois republic reaped the fruits of its predecessor&rsquo;s
+external policy. After the freeing of the land in January 1794
+an impulse had been given to the spirit of conquest which
+had gradually succeeded to the disinterested fever of
+<span class="sidenote">Military achievements of the convention.<br /><br />
+Treaty of Basel.</span>
+propaganda and overheated patriotism. This it was
+which had sustained Robespierre&rsquo;s dictatorship; and,
+owing to the &ldquo;amalgam&rdquo; and the re-establishment of
+discipline, Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine had been conquered
+and Holland occupied, simultaneously with Kosciusko&rsquo;s
+rising in Poland, Prussia&rsquo;s necessity of keeping and extending
+her Polish acquisitions, Robespierre&rsquo;s death, the prevalent
+desires of the majority, and the continued victories of Pichegru,
+Jourdan and Moreau, enfeebled the coalition. At Basel (April-July
+1795) republican France, having rejoined the
+concert of Europe, signed the long-awaited peace with
+Prussia, Spain, Holland and the grand-duke of Tuscany.
+But thanks to the past influence of the Girondin party, who
+had caused the war, and of the regicides of the Mountain, this
+peace not only ratified the conquest of Belgium, the left bank
+of the Rhine and Santo Domingo, but paved the way for fresh
+conquests; for the old spirit of domination and persistent
+hostility to Austria attracted the destinies of the Revolution
+definitely towards war.</p>
+
+<p>The work of internal construction amidst this continued battle
+against the whole world had been no less remarkable. The
+Constituent Assembly had been more destructive than
+constructive; but the Convention preserved intact
+<span class="sidenote">Internal achievements.</span>
+those fundamental principles of civil liberty which
+had been the main results of the Revolution: the
+equality so dear to the French, and the sovereignty of the
+people&mdash;the foundation of democracy. It also managed to
+engage private interests in state reform by creating the Grand
+Livre de la Dette Publique (September 13-26, 1793), and enlisted
+peasant and bourgeois savings in social reforms by the distribution
+and sale of national property. But with views reaching
+beyond equality of rights to a certain equality of property, the
+committees, as regards legislation, poor relief and instruction,
+laid down principles which have never been realized, save in
+the matter of the metric system; so that the Convention which
+was dispersed on the 16th of October 1795 made a greater
+impression on political history and social ideas than on institutions.
+Its disappearance left a great blank.</p>
+
+<p>During four years the Directory attempted to fill this blank.
+Being the outcome of the Constitution of the year III., it should
+have been the organizing and pacifying government
+of the Republic; in reality it sought not to create, but
+<span class="sidenote">The Directory.</span>
+to preserve its own existence. Its internal weakness,
+between the danger of anarchy and the opposition of the monarchists,
+was extreme; and it soon became discredited by its own
+<i>coups d&rsquo;état</i> and by financial impotence in the eyes of a nation
+sick of revolution, aspiring towards peace and the resumption
+of economic undertakings. As to foreign affairs, its aggressive
+policy imperilled the conquests that had been the glory of the
+Convention, and caused the frontiers of France, the defence of
+which had been a point of honour with the Republic, to be called
+in question. Finally, there was no real government on the part
+of the five directors: La Révellière-Lépeaux, an honest man
+but weak; Reubell, the negotiator of the Hague; Letourneur,
+an officer of talent; Barras, a man of intrigue, corrupt and
+without real convictions; and Carnot, the only really worthy
+member. They never understood one another, and never consulted
+together in hours of danger, save to embroil matters in
+politics as in war. Leaning on the bourgeois, conservative,
+liberal and anti-clerical republicans, they were no more able
+than was the Thermidor party to re-establish the freedom that
+had been suspended by revolutionary despotism; they created
+a ministry of police, interdicted the clubs and popular societies,
+distracted the press, and with partiality undertook the separation
+of Church and State voted on the 18th of September 1794.
+Their real defence against counter revolution was the army;
+but, by a further contradiction, they reinforced the army attached
+to the Revolution while seeking an alliance with the peacemaking
+bourgeoisie. Their party had therefore no more homogeneity
+than had their policy.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover the Directory could not govern alone; it had to
+rely upon two other parties, according to circumstances: the
+republican-democrats and the disguised royalists.
+The former, purely anti-royalist, thought only of
+<span class="sidenote">The parties.</span>
+remedying the sufferings of the people. Roused by
+the collapse of the assignats, following upon the ruin of industry
+and the arrest of commerce, they were still further exasperated
+by the speculations of the financiers, by the jobbery which
+prevailed throughout the administration, and by the sale of
+national property which had profited hardly any but the
+bourgeoisie. After the 13th Vendémiaire the royalists too,
+deceived in their hopes, were expecting to return gradually to
+the councils, thanks to the high property qualification for the
+franchise. Under the name of &ldquo;moderates&rdquo; they demanded
+an end to this war which England continued and Austria
+threatened to recommence, and that the Directory from self-interested
+motives refused to conclude; they desired the
+abandonment of revolutionary proceedings, order in finance
+and religious peace.</p>
+
+<p>The Directory, then, was in a minority in the country, and
+had to be ever on the alert against faction; all possible methods
+seemed legitimate, and during two years appeared
+successful. Order was maintained in France, even the
+<span class="sidenote">Struggle against the royalists.<br /><br />
+Struggle against the republican democrats and the socialists.</span>
+royalist west being pacified, thanks to Hoche, who
+finished his victorious campaign of 1796 against
+Stofflet, Charette and Cadoudal, by using mild and just measures
+to complete the subjection of the country. The greatest danger
+lay in the republican-democrats and their socialist ally, François
+Noel (&ldquo;Gracchus&rdquo;) Babeuf (<i>q.v.</i>). The former had united the
+Jacobins and the more violent members of the Convention
+in their club, the Société du Panthéon; and
+their fusion, after the closing of the club, with the
+secret society of the Babouvists lent formidable
+strength to this party, with which Barras was secretly
+in league. The terrorist party, deprived of its head,
+had found a new leader, who, by developing the
+consequences of the Revolution&rsquo;s acts to their logical conclusion,
+gave first expression to the levelling principle of communism.
+He proclaimed the right of property as appertaining
+to the state, that is, to the whole community;
+<span class="sidenote">Babeuf.</span>
+the doctrine of equality as absolutely opposed to social
+inequality of any kind&mdash;that of property as well as that of rank;
+and finally the inadequacy of the solution of the agrarian question,
+which had profited scarcely any one, save a new class of privileged
+individuals. But these socialist demands were premature;
+the attack of the camp of Grenelle upon constitutional order
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page859" id="page859"></a>859</span>
+ended merely in the arrest and guillotining of Babeuf (September
+9, 1796-May 25, 1797).</p>
+
+<p>The liquidation of the financial inheritance of the Convention
+was no less difficult. The successive issues of assignats, and the
+multiplication of counterfeits made abroad, had so
+depreciated this paper money that an assignat of 100
+<span class="sidenote">Financial policy of the Directory.</span>
+francs was in February 1796 worth only 30 centimes;
+while the government, obliged to accept them at their
+nominal value, no longer collected any taxes and could not pay
+salaries. The destruction of the plate for printing assignats,
+on the 18th of February 1796, did not prevent the drop in the
+forty milliards still in circulation. Territorial mandates were
+now tried, which inspired no greater confidence, but served to
+liquidate two-thirds of the debt, the remaining third being consolidated
+by its dependence on the Grand Livre (September 30,
+1797). This widespread bankruptcy, falling chiefly on the
+bourgeoisie, inaugurated a reaction which lasted until 1830
+against the chief principle of the Constituent Assembly, which
+had favoured indirect taxation as producing a large sum without
+imposing any very obvious burden. The bureaucrats of the old
+system&mdash;having returned to their offices and being used to these
+indirect taxes&mdash;lent their assistance, and thus the Directory was
+enabled to maintain its struggle against the Coalition.</p>
+
+<p>All system in finance having disappeared, war provided the
+Directory, now <i>in extremis</i>, with a treasury, and was its only
+source for supplying constitutional needs; while it
+opened a path to the military commanders who were
+<span class="sidenote">External policy.</span>
+to be the support and the glory of the state. England
+remaining invulnerable in her insular position despite Hoche&rsquo;s
+attempt to land in Ireland in 1796, the Directory resumed the
+traditional policy against Austria of conquering the natural
+frontiers, Carnot furnishing the plans; hence the war in southern
+Germany, in which Jourdan and Moreau were repulsed by an
+inferior force under the archduke Charles, and Bonaparte&rsquo;s
+triumphant Italian campaign. Chief of an army that he had
+made irresistible, not by honour but by glory, and master of
+wealth by rapine, Bonaparte imposed his will upon the Directory,
+which he provided with funds. After having separated the Piedmontese
+from the Austrians, whom he drove back into Tyrol, and
+repulsed offensive reprisals of Wurmser and Alvinzi on four occasions,
+he stopped short at the preliminary negotiations of Léoben
+just at the moment when the Directory, discouraged by the
+problem of Italian reconstitution, was preparing the army of the
+Rhine to re-enter the field under the command of Hoche. Bonaparte
+thus gained the good opinion of peace-loving Frenchmen;
+he partitioned Venetian territory with Austria, contrary to French
+interests but conformably with his own in Italy, and henceforward
+was the decisive factor in French and European policy, like
+Caesar or Pompey of old. England, in consternation, offered
+in her turn to negotiate at Lille.</p>
+
+<p>These military successes did not prevent the Directory, like
+the Thermidorians, from losing ground in the country. Every
+strategic truce since 1795 had been marked by a political
+crisis; peace reawakened opposition. The constitutional
+<span class="sidenote">Struggle against the royalists.</span>
+party, royalist in reality, had made alarming
+progress, chiefly owing to the Babouvist conspiracy;
+they now tried to corrupt the republican generals, and Condé
+procured the treachery of Pichegru, Kellermann and General
+Ferrand at Besançon. Moreover, their Clichy club, directed
+by the abbé Brottier, manipulated Parisian opinion; while
+many of the refractory priests, having returned after the liberal
+Public Worship Act of September 1795, made active propaganda
+against the principles of the Revolution, and plotted the fall
+of the Directory as maintaining the State&rsquo;s independence of the
+Church. Thus the partial elections of the year V. (May 20,
+1797) had brought back into the two councils a counter-revolutionary
+majority of royalists, constitutionalists of 1791, Catholics
+and moderates. The Director Letourneur had been replaced
+by Barthélemy, who had negotiated the treaty of Basel and was
+a constitutional monarchist. So that the executive not only
+found it impossible to govern, owing to the opposition of the
+councils and a vehement press-campaign, but was distracted
+by ceaseless internal conflict. Carnot and Barthélemy wished
+to meet ecclesiastical opposition by legal measures only, and
+demanded peace; while Barras, La Révellière and Reubell
+saw no other remedy save military force. The attempt of the
+counter-revolutionaries to make an army for themselves out of
+the guard of the Legislative Assembly, and the success of the
+Catholics, who had managed at the end of August 1797 to repeal
+the laws against refractory priests, determined the Directory
+to appeal from the rebellious parliament to the ready swords of
+Augereau and Bernadotte. On the 18th Fructidor (September
+<span class="sidenote">18th Fructidor.</span>
+4, 1797) Bonaparte&rsquo;s lieutenants, backed up by the
+whole army, stopped the elections in forty-nine
+departments, and deported to Guiana many deputies
+of both councils, journalists and non-juring priests, as
+well as the director Barthélemy, though Carnot escaped into
+Switzerland. The royalist party was once more overthrown,
+but with it the republican constitution itself. Thus every act
+of violence still further confirmed the new empire of the army
+and the defeat of principles, preparing the way for military
+despotism.</p>
+
+<p>Political and financial <i>coups d&rsquo;état</i> were not enough for the
+directors. In order to win back public opinion, tired of internecine
+quarrels and sickened by the scandalous
+immorality of the generals and of those in power,
+<span class="sidenote">Aggressive policy of the Directory.</span>
+and to remove from Paris an army which after having
+given them a fresh lease of life was now a menace to
+them, war appeared their only hopeful course. They attempted
+to renew the designs of Louis XIV. and anticipate those of
+Napoleon. But Bonaparte saw what they were planning; and
+to the rupture of the negotiations at Lille and an order for the
+resumption of hostilities he responded by a fresh act of disobedience
+and the infliction on the Directory of the peace of
+Campo-Formio, on October 17, 1797. The directors were consoled
+for this enforced peace by acquiring the left bank of the
+Rhine and Belgium, and for the forfeiture of republican principles
+by attaining what had for so long been the ambition of the
+monarchy. But the army continued a menace. To avoid
+disbanding it, which might, as after the peace of Basel, have
+given the counter-revolution further auxiliaries, the Directory
+appointed Bonaparte chief of the Army of England, and employed
+Jourdan to revise the conscription laws so as to make military
+service a permanent duty of the citizen, since war was now to be
+the permanent object of policy. The Directory finally conceived
+the gigantic project of bolstering up the French Republic&mdash;the
+triumph of which was celebrated by the peace of Campo-Formio&mdash;by
+forming the neighbouring weak states into tributary
+vassal republics. This system had already been applied to the
+Batavian republic in 1795, to the Ligurian and Cisalpine republics
+in June 1797; it was extended to that of Mülhausen on the 28th
+of January 1798, to the Roman republic in February, to the
+Helvetian in April, while the Parthenopaean republic (Naples)
+was to be established in 1799. This was an international <i>coup de
+force</i>, which presupposed that all these nations in whose eyes
+independence was flaunted would make no claim to enjoy it;
+that though they had been beaten and pillaged they would not
+learn to conquer in their turn; and that the king of Sardinia,
+dispossessed of Milan, the grand-duke of Tuscany who had
+given refuge to the pope when driven from Rome, and the
+king of Naples, who had opened his ports to Nelson&rsquo;s fleet,
+would not find allies to make a stand against this hypocritical
+system.</p>
+
+<p>What happened was exactly the contrary. Meanwhile, the
+armies were kept in perpetual motion, procuring money for the
+impecunious Directory, making a diversion for internal
+discontent, and also permitting of a &ldquo;reversed
+<span class="sidenote">Coup d&rsquo;état of the 22nd Floréal.</span>
+Fructidor,&rdquo; against the anarchists, who had got the
+upper hand in the partial elections of May 1798.
+The social danger was averted in its turn after the clerical
+danger had been dissipated. The next task was to relieve
+Paris of Bonaparte, who had already refused to repeat
+Hoche&rsquo;s unhappy expedition to Ireland and to attack England
+at home without either money or a navy. The pecuniary
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page860" id="page860"></a>860</span>
+resources of Berne and the wealth of Rome fortunately tided
+over the financial difficulty and provided for the expedition
+<span class="sidenote">Bonaparte in Egypt.<br /><br />
+The second coalition.</span>
+to Egypt, which permitted Bonaparte to wait
+&ldquo;for the fruit to ripen&rdquo;&mdash;<i>i.e.</i> till the Directory
+should be ruined in the eyes of France and of all
+Europe. The disaster of Aboukir (August 1, 1798) speedily
+decided the coalition pending between England, Austria, the
+Empire, Portugal, Naples, Russia and Turkey. The Directory
+had to make a stand or perish, and with it the Republic. The
+directors had thought France might retain a monopoly
+in numbers and in initiative. They soon perceived
+that enthusiasm is not as great for a war of policy
+and conquest as for a war of national defence; and
+the army dwindled, since a country cannot bleed itself to death.
+The law of conscription was voted on the 5th of September 1798;
+and the tragedy of Rastadt, where the French commissioners
+were assassinated, was the opening of a war, desired but ill-prepared
+for, in which the Directory showed hesitation in
+strategy and incoherence in tactics, over a disproportionate
+area in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Military reverses
+were inevitable, and responsibility for them could not be shirked.
+As though shattered by a reverberant echo from the cannon of
+the Trebbia, the Directory crumbled to pieces, succumbing
+on the 18th of June 1799 beneath the reprobation showered on
+Treilhard, Merlin de Douai, and La Révellière-Lépeaux. A
+few more military disasters, royalist insurrections in the south,
+Chouan disturbances in Normandy, Orleanist intrigues and the
+end came. To soothe the populace and protect the frontier
+more was required than the resumption, as in all grave crises of
+the Revolution, of terrorist measures such as forced taxation
+or the law of hostages; the new Directory, Sieyès presiding,
+saw that for the indispensable revision of the constitution
+&ldquo;a head and a sword&rdquo; were needed. Moreau being unattainable,
+Joubert was to be the sword of Sieyès; but, when he was
+killed at the battle of Novi, the sword of the Revolution fell
+into the hands of Bonaparte.</p>
+
+<p>Although Brune and Masséna retrieved the fight at Bergen
+and Zürich, and although the Allies lingered on the frontier as
+they had done after Valmy, still the fortunes of the
+Directory were not restored. Success was reserved
+<span class="sidenote">Coup d&rsquo;état of the 18th Brumaire.</span>
+for Bonaparte, suddenly landing at Fréjus with the
+prestige of his victories in the East, and now, after
+Hoche&rsquo;s death, appearing as sole master of the armies.
+He man&oelig;uvred among the parties as on the 13th Vendémiaire.
+On the 18th Brumaire of the year VIII. France and
+the army fell together at his feet. By a twofold <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>,
+parliamentary and military, he culled the fruits of the Directory&rsquo;s
+systematic aggression and unpopularity, and realized the
+universal desires of the rich bourgeoisie, tired of warfare; of
+the wretched populace; of landholders, afraid of a return to the
+old order of things; of royalists, who looked upon Bonaparte
+as a future Monk; of priests and their people, who hoped for an
+indulgent treatment of Catholicism; and finally of the immense
+majority of the French, who love to be ruled and for long had
+had no efficient government. There was hardly any one to defend
+a liberty which they had never known. France had, indeed,
+remained monarchist at heart for all her revolutionary appearance;
+and Bonaparte added but a name, though an illustrious
+one, to the series of national or local dictatorships, which, after
+the departure of the weak Louis XVI., had maintained a sort
+of informal republican royalty.</p>
+
+<p>On the night of the 19th Brumaire a mere ghost of an
+<span class="sidenote">The Consulate, Sept. 11, 1799-May 18, 1804.</span>
+Assembly abolished the constitution of the year III., ordained
+the provisionary Consulate, and legalized the coup
+d&rsquo;état in favour of Bonaparte. A striking and singular
+event; for the history of France and a great part
+of Europe was now for fifteen years to be summed
+up in the person of a single man (see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Napoleon</a></span>).</p>
+
+<p>This night of Brumaire, however, seemed to be a victory for
+Sieyès rather than for Bonaparte. He it was who originated
+the project which the legislative commissions, charged with
+elaborating the new constitution, had to discuss. Bonaparte&rsquo;s
+<span class="sidenote">The constitution of the year VIII.</span>
+cleverness lay in opposing Daunou&rsquo;s plan to that of Sieyès, and
+in retaining only those portions of both which could serve his
+ambition. Parliamentary institutions annulled by the
+complication of three assemblies&mdash;the Council of State
+which drafted bills, the Tribunate which discussed
+them without voting them, and the Legislative
+Assembly which voted them without discussing them; popular
+suffrage, mutilated by the lists of notables (on which the members
+of the Assemblies were to be chosen by the conservative senate);
+and the triple executive authority of the consuls, elected for ten
+years: all these semblances of constitutional authority were
+adopted by Bonaparte. But he abolished the post of Grand
+Elector, which Sieyès had reserved for himself, in order to
+reinforce the real authority of the First Consul himself&mdash;by
+leaving the two other consuls, Cambacérès and Lebrun, as well as
+the Assemblies, equally weak. Thus the aristocratic constitution
+of Sieyès was transformed into an unavowed dictatorship, a
+public ratification of which the First Consul obtained by a third
+<i>coup d&rsquo;état</i> from the intimidated and yet reassured electors-reassured
+by his dazzling but unconvincing offers of peace to the
+victorious Coalition (which repulsed them), by the rapid disarmament
+of La Vendée, and by the proclamations in which
+he filled the ears of the infatuated people with the new talk of
+stability of government, order, justice and moderation. He gave
+every one a feeling that France was governed once more by a
+real statesman, that a pilot was at the helm.</p>
+
+<p>Bonaparte had now to rid himself of Sieyès and those republicans
+who had no desire to hand over the republic to one
+man, particularly of Moreau and Masséna, his military rivals.
+The victory of Marengo (June 14, 1800) momentarily in the
+balance, but secured by Desaix and Kellermann, offered a further
+opportunity to his jealous ambition by increasing his popularity.
+The royalist plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise (December 24, 1800)
+allowed him to make a clean sweep of the democratic republicans,
+who despite their innocence were deported to Guiana, and to
+annul Assemblies that were a mere show by making the senate
+omnipotent in constitutional matters; but it was necessary
+for him to transform this deceptive truce into the general
+pacification so ardently desired for the last eight years. The
+treaty of Lunéville, signed in February 1801 with Austria who
+had been disarmed by Moreau&rsquo;s victory at Hohenlinden, restored
+peace to the continent, gave nearly the whole of Italy to France,
+and permitted Bonaparte to eliminate from the Assemblies
+all the leaders of the opposition in the discussion of the Civil
+Code. The Concordat (July 1801), drawn up not in the Church&rsquo;s
+interest but in that of his own policy, by giving satisfaction
+to the religious feeling of the country, allowed him to put down
+the constitutional democratic Church, to rally round him the
+consciences of the peasants, and above all to deprive the royalists
+of their best weapon. The &ldquo;Articles Organiques&rdquo; hid from
+the eyes of his companions in arms and councillors a reaction
+which, in fact if not in law, restored to a submissive Church,
+despoiled of her revenues, her position as the religion of the state.
+<span class="sidenote">The Consulate.</span>
+The peace of Amiens with England (March 1802),
+of which France&rsquo;s allies, Spain and Holland, paid all
+the costs, finally gave the peacemaker a pretext for
+endowing himself with a Consulate, not for ten years but for life,
+as a recompense from the nation. The Rubicon was crossed
+on that day: Bonaparte&rsquo;s march to empire began with the
+constitution of the year X. (August 1802).</p>
+
+<p>Before all things it was now necessary to reorganize France,
+ravaged as she was by the Revolution, and with her institutions
+in a state of utter corruption. The touch of the master
+was at once revealed to all the foreigners who rushed
+<span class="sidenote">Internal reorganization.</span>
+to gaze at the man about whom, after so many catastrophes
+and strange adventures, Paris, &ldquo;la ville lumière,&rdquo;
+and all Europe were talking. First of all, Louis XV.&rsquo;s system
+of roads was improved and that of Louis XVI.&rsquo;s canals developed;
+then industry put its shoulder to the wheel; order and discipline
+were re-established everywhere, from the frontiers to the capital,
+and brigandage suppressed; and finally there was Paris, the
+city of cities! Everything was in process of transformation:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page861" id="page861"></a>861</span>
+a second Rome was arising, with its forum, its triumphal arches,
+its shows and parades; and in this new Rome of a new Caesar
+fancy, elegance and luxury, a radiance of art and learning
+from the age of Pericles, and masterpieces rifled from the Netherlands,
+Italy and Egypt illustrated the consular peace. The
+Man of Destiny renewed the course of time. He borrowed from
+the <i>ancien régime</i> its plenipotentiaries; its over-centralized,
+strictly utilitarian administrative and bureaucratic methods;
+and afterwards, in order to bring them into line, the subservient
+pedantic scholasticism of its university. On the basis laid down
+by the Constituent Assembly and the Convention he constructed
+or consolidated the funds necessary for national institutions,
+local governments, a judiciary system, organs of finance, banking,
+codes, traditions of conscientious well-disciplined labour, and
+in short all the organization which for three-quarters of a century
+was to maintain and regulate the concentrated activity of the
+French nation (see the section <i>Law and Institutions</i>). Peace and
+order helped to raise the standard of comfort. Provisions, in
+this Paris which had so often suffered from hunger and thirst,
+and lacked fire and light, had become cheap and abundant;
+while trade prospered and wages ran high. The pomp and
+luxury of the <i>nouveaux riches</i> were displayed in the salons of the
+good Joséphine, the beautiful Madame Tallien, and the &ldquo;divine&rdquo;
+Juliette Récamier.</p>
+
+<p>But the republicans, and above all the military, saw in all this
+little but the fetters of system; the wily despotism, the bullying
+police, the prostration before authority, the sympathy
+lavished on royalists, the recall of the <i>émigrés</i>, the
+<span class="sidenote">The republican opposition.</span>
+contempt for the Assemblies, the purification of the
+Tribunate, the platitudes of the servile Senate, the
+silence of the press. In the formidable machinery of state, above
+all in the creation of the Legion of Honour, the Concordat, and
+the restoration of indirect taxes, they saw the rout of the Revolution.
+But the expulsion of persons like Benjamin Constant
+and Madame de Staël sufficed to quell this Fronde of the salons.
+The expedition to San Domingo reduced the republican army
+to a nullity; war demoralized or scattered the leaders, who were
+jealous of their &ldquo;comrade&rdquo; Bonaparte; and Moreau, the last
+of his rivals, cleverly compromised in a royalist plot, as Danton
+had formerly been by Robespierre, disappeared into exile. In
+contradistinction to this opposition of senators and republican
+generals, the immense mass of the people received the ineffaceable
+impression of Bonaparte&rsquo;s superiority. No suggestion of the
+possibility of his death was tolerated, of a crime which might
+cut short his career. The conspiracy of Cadoudal and Pichegru,
+after Bonaparte&rsquo;s refusal to give place to Louis XVIII., and the
+political execution of the duc d&rsquo;Enghien, provoked an outburst
+of adulation, of which Bonaparte took advantage to put the
+crowning touch to his ambitious dream.</p>
+
+<p>The decision of the senate on the 18th of May 1804, giving
+him the title of emperor, was the counterblast to the dread
+he had excited. Thenceforward &ldquo;the brow of the
+emperor broke through the thin mask of the First
+<span class="sidenote">Napoleon emperor May 18, 1804-April 6, 1814.</span>
+Consul.&rdquo; Never did a harder master ordain more
+imperiously, nor understand better how to command
+obedience. &ldquo;This was because,&rdquo; as Goethe said,
+&ldquo;under his orders men were sure of accomplishing
+their ends. That is why they rallied round him, as one to inspire
+them with that kind of certainty.&rdquo; Indeed no man ever concentrated
+authority to such a point, nor showed mental abilities
+at all comparable to his: an extraordinary power of work,
+prodigious memory for details and fine judgment in their selection;
+together with a luminous decision and a simple and rapid
+conception, all placed at the disposal of a sovereign will. No
+head of the state gave expression more imperiously than this
+Italian to the popular passions of the French of that day:
+abhorrence for the emigrant nobility, fear of the <i>ancien régime</i>,
+dislike of foreigners, hatred of England, an appetite for conquest
+evoked by revolutionary propaganda, and the love of glory.
+In this Napoleon was a soldier of the people: because of this he
+judged and ruled his contemporaries. Having seen their actions
+in the stormy hours of the Revolution, he despised them and
+looked upon them as incapable of disinterested conduct, conceited,
+and obsessed by the notion of equality. Hence his
+colossal egoism, his habitual disregard of others, his jealous
+passion for power, his impatience of all contradiction, his vain
+untruthful boasting, his unbridled self-sufficiency and lack of
+moderation&mdash;passions which were gradually to cloud his clear
+faculty of reasoning. His genius, assisted by the impoverishment
+of two generations, was like the oak which admits beneath
+its shade none but the smallest of saplings. With the exception
+of Talleyrand, after 1808 he would have about him only mediocre
+people, without initiative, prostrate at the feet of the giant:
+his tribe of paltry, rapacious and embarrassing Corsicans; his
+admirably subservient generals; his selfish ministers, docile
+agents, apprehensive of the future, who for fourteen long years
+felt a prognostication of defeat and discounted the inevitable
+catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>So France had no internal history outside the plans and
+transformations to which Napoleon subjected the institutions
+of the Consulate, and the after-effects of his wars. Well knowing
+that his fortunes rested on the delighted acquiescence of France,
+Napoleon expected to continue indefinitely fashioning public
+opinion according to his pleasure. To his contempt for men
+he added that of all ideas which might put a bridle on his ambition;
+and to guard against them, he inaugurated the Golden
+Age of the police that he might tame every moral force to his
+hand. Being essentially a man of order, he loathed, as he said,
+all demagogic action, Jacobinism and visions of liberty, which
+he desired only for himself. To make his will predominant, he
+stifled or did violence to that of others, through his bishops, his
+gendarmes, his university, his press, his catechism. Nourished
+like Frederick II. and Catherine the Great in 18th-century maxims,
+neither he nor they would allow any of that ideology to filter
+through into their rough but regular ordering of mankind. Thus
+the whole political system, being summed up in the emperor,
+was bound to share his fall.</p>
+
+<p>Although an enemy of idealogues, in his foreign policy Napoleon
+was haunted by grandiose visions. A condottiere of the Renaissance
+living in the 19th century, he used France, and
+all those nations annexed or attracted by the Revolution,
+<span class="sidenote">Napoleon&rsquo;s political idea.</span>
+to resuscitate the Roman conception of the
+Empire for his own benefit. On the other hand, he was
+enslaved by the history and aggressive idealism of the Convention,
+and of the republican propaganda under the Directory;
+he was guided by them quite as much as he guided them. Hence
+the immoderate extension given to French activity by his classical
+Latin spirit; hence also his conquests, leading on from one to
+another, and instead of being mutually helpful interfering with
+each other; hence, finally, his not entirely coherent policy,
+interrupted by hesitation and counter-attractions. This explains
+the retention of Italy, imposed on the Directory from 1796 onward,
+followed by his criminal treatment of Venice, the foundation
+of the Cisalpine republic&mdash;a foretaste of future annexations&mdash;the
+restoration of that republic after his return from Egypt, and
+in view of his as yet inchoate designs, the postponed solution
+of the Italian problem which the treaty of Lunéville had raised.</p>
+
+<p>Marengo inaugurated the political idea which was to continue
+its development until his Moscow campaign. Napoleon dreamed
+as yet only of keeping the duchy of Milan, setting aside Austria,
+and preparing some new enterprise in the East or in Egypt.
+The peace of Amiens, which cost him Egypt, could only seem to
+him a temporary truce; whilst he was gradually extending his
+authority in Italy, the cradle of his race, by the union of Piedmont,
+and by his tentative plans regarding Genoa, Parma,
+Tuscany and Naples. He wanted to make this his Cisalpine
+Gaul, laying siege to the Roman state on every hand, and preparing
+in the Concordat for the moral and material servitude of
+the pope. When he recognized his error in having raised the
+papacy from decadence by restoring its power over all the
+churches, he tried in vain to correct it by the <i>Articles Organiques</i>&mdash;wanting,
+like Charlemagne, to be the legal protector of the
+pope, and eventually master of the Church. To conceal his plan
+he aroused French colonial aspirations against England, and also
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page862" id="page862"></a>862</span>
+the memory of the spoliations of 1763, exasperating English
+jealousy of France, whose borders now extended to the Rhine,
+and laying hands on Hanover, Hamburg and Cuxhaven. By the
+&ldquo;Recess&rdquo; of 1803, which brought to his side Bavaria, Württemberg
+and Baden, he followed up the overwhelming tide of revolutionary
+ideas in Germany, to stem which Pitt, back in power,
+appealed once more to an Anglo-Austro-Russian coalition against
+this new Charlemagne, who was trying to renew the old Empire,
+who was mastering France, Italy and Germany; who finally on
+the 2nd of December 1804 placed the imperial crown upon his
+head, after receiving the iron crown of the Lombard kings, and
+made Pius VII. consecrate him in Notre-Dame.</p>
+
+<p>After this, in four campaigns from 1805 to 1809, Napoleon
+transformed his Carolingian feudal and federal empire into one
+modelled on the Roman empire. The memories of imperial
+Rome were for a third time, after Caesar and Charlemagne, to
+modify the historical evolution of France. Though the vague
+plan for an invasion of England fell to the ground Ulm and
+Austerlitz obliterated Trafalgar, and the camp at Boulogne put
+the best military resources he had ever commanded at Napoleon&rsquo;s
+disposal.</p>
+
+<p>In the first of these campaigns he swept away the remnants
+of the old Roman-Germanic empire, and out of its shattered
+fragments created in southern Germany the vassal
+states of Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt
+<span class="sidenote">Treaty of Presburg, 1805.</span>
+and Saxony, which he attached to France
+under the name of the Confederation of the Rhine;
+but the treaty of Presburg gave France nothing but the
+danger of a more centralized and less docile Germany. On
+the other hand, Napoleon&rsquo;s creation of the kingdom of Italy,
+his annexation of Venetia and her ancient Adriatic empire&mdash;wiping
+out the humiliation of 1797&mdash;and the occupation of
+Ancona, marked a new stage in his progress towards his Roman
+Empire. His good fortune soon led him from conquest to
+spoliation, and he complicated his master-idea of the grand
+empire by his Family Compact; the clan of the Bonapartes
+invaded European monarchies, wedding with princesses of blood-royal,
+and adding kingdom to kingdom. Joseph replaced the
+dispossessed Bourbons at Naples; Louis was installed on the
+throne of Holland; Murat became grand-duke of Berg, Jerome
+son-in-law to the king of Württemberg, and Eugène de Beauharnais
+to the king of Bavaria; while Stéphanie de Beauhamais
+married the son of the grand-duke of Baden.</p>
+
+<p>Meeting with less and less resistance, Napoleon went still further
+and would tolerate no neutral power. On the 6th of August 1806
+he forced the Habsburgs, left with only the crown of
+Austria, to abdicate their Roman-Germanic title of
+<span class="sidenote">Jena.<br />
+Eylau and Friedland.<br />
+Peace of Tilsit, July 8, 1807.<br />
+Continental blockade.</span>
+emperor. Prussia alone remained outside the Confederation of
+the Rhine, of which Napoleon was Protector, and to further her
+decision he offered her English Hanover. In a second campaign
+he destroyed at Jena both the army and the state of Frederick
+William III., who could not make up his mind between the
+Napoleonic treaty of Schönbrunn and Russia&rsquo;s counter-proposal
+at Potsdam (October 14, 1806). The butchery at Eylau and the
+vengeance taken at Friedland finally ruined Frederick
+the Great&rsquo;s work, and obliged Russia, the ally of
+England and Prussia, to allow the latter to be despoiled,
+and to join Napoleon against the maritime tyranny of the former.
+After Tilsit, however (July 1807), instead of trying to reconcile
+Europe to his grandeur, Napoleon had but one thought:
+to make use of his success to destroy England and
+complete his Italian dominion. It was from Berlin,
+on the 21st of November 1806, that he had dated the
+first decree of a continental blockade, a monstrous conception
+intended to paralyze his inveterate rival, but which on the contrary
+caused his own fall by its immoderate extension
+of the empire. To the coalition of the northern powers
+he added the league of the Baltic and Mediterranean
+ports, and to the bombardment of Copenhagen by an
+English fleet he responded by a second decree of blockade, dated
+from Milan on the 17th of December 1807.</p>
+
+<p>But the application of the Concordat and the taking of Naples
+led to the first of those struggles with the pope, in which were
+formulated two antagonistic doctrines: Napoleon declaring
+himself Roman emperor, and Pius VII. renewing the theocratic
+affirmations of Gregory VII. The former&rsquo;s Roman ambition was
+made more and more plainly visible by the occupation of the
+kingdom of Naples and of the Marches, and the entry of Miollis into
+Rome; while Junot invaded Portugal, Radet laid hands on the
+pope himself, and Murat took possession of formerly Roman Spain,
+whither Joseph was afterwards to be transferred. But Napoleon
+little knew the flame he was kindling. No more far-seeing than
+the Directory or the men of the year III., he thought that, with
+energy and execution, he might succeed in the Peninsula as he
+had succeeded in Italy in 1796 and 1797, in Egypt, and in Hesse,
+and that he might cut into Spanish granite as into Italian mosaic
+or &ldquo;that big cake, Germany.&rdquo; He stumbled unawares upon the
+revolt of a proud national spirit, evolved through ten historic
+centuries; and the trap of Bayonne, together with the enthroning
+of Joseph Bonaparte, made the contemptible prince of the
+Asturias the elect of popular sentiment, the representative of
+religion and country.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon thought he had Spain within his grasp, and now
+suddenly everything was slipping from him. The Peninsula
+became the grave of whole armies and a battlefield
+<span class="sidenote">Bailen.</span>
+for England. Dupont capitulated at Bailen into the
+hands of Castaños, and Junot at Cintra to Wellesley; while
+Europe trembled at this first check to the hitherto invincible
+imperial armies. To reduce Spanish resistance Napoleon had in
+his turn to come to terms with the tsar Alexander at Erfurt;
+so that abandoning his designs in the East, he could make the
+Grand Army evacuate Prussia and return in force to Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Spain swallowed up the soldiers who were wanted for
+Napoleon&rsquo;s other fields of battle, and they had to be replaced
+by forced levies. Europe had only to wait, and he
+<span class="sidenote">Wagram.</span>
+would eventually be found disarmed in face of a last
+coalition; but Spanish heroism infected Austria, and showed
+the force of national resistance. The provocations of Talleyrand
+and England strengthened the illusion: Why should not
+the Austrians emulate the Spaniards? The campaign of 1809,
+however, was but a pale copy of the Spanish insurrection. After
+a short and decisive action in Bavaria, Napoleon opened up the
+road to Vienna for a second time; and after the two days&rsquo; battle
+at Essling, the stubborn fight at Wagram, the failure of a patriotic
+insurrection in northern Germany and of the English expedition
+against Antwerp, the treaty of Vienna (December 14, 1809), with
+<span class="sidenote">Peace of Vienna.</span>
+the annexation of the Illyrian provinces, completed
+the colossal empire. Napoleon profited, in fact, by this
+campaign which had been planned for his overthrow.
+The pope was deported to Savona beneath the eyes of indifferent
+Europe, and his domains were incorporated in the Empire; the
+senate&rsquo;s decision on the 17th of February 1810 created the title
+of king of Rome, and made Rome the capital of Italy. The pope
+banished, it was now desirable to send away those to whom Italy
+had been more or less promised. Eugène de Beauharnais,
+Napoleon&rsquo;s stepson, was transferred to Frankfort, and Murat
+carefully watched until the time should come to take him to
+Russia and <span class="correction" title="amended from instal">install</span> him as king of Poland. Between 1810 and
+1812 Napoleon&rsquo;s divorce of Joséphine, and his marriage with
+Marie Louise of Austria, followed by the birth of the king of
+Rome, shed a brilliant light upon his future policy. He renounced
+a federation in which his brothers were not sufficiently docile; he
+gradually withdrew power from them; he concentrated all his
+affection and ambition on the son who was the guarantee of the
+continuance of his dynasty. This was the apogee of his reign.</p>
+
+<p>But undermining forces were already at work: the faults inherent
+in his unwieldy achievement. England, his chief enemy,
+was persistently active; and rebellion both of the
+governing and the governed broke out everywhere.
+<span class="sidenote">Beginning of the end. Uprising of nationalism.</span>
+Napoleon felt his impotence in coping with the Spanish
+insurrection, which he underrated, while yet unable
+to suppress it altogether. Men like Stein, Hardenberg
+and Scharnhorst were secretly preparing Prussia&rsquo;s
+retaliation. Napoleon&rsquo;s material omnipotence could not stand
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page863" id="page863"></a>863</span>
+against the moral force of the pope, a prisoner at Fontainebleau;
+and this he did not realize. The alliance arranged at Tilsit was
+seriously shaken by the Austrian marriage, the threat of a
+Polish restoration, and the unfriendly policy of Napoleon at Constantinople.
+The very persons whom he had placed in power were
+counteracting his plans: after four years&rsquo; experience Napoleon
+found himself obliged to treat his Corsican dynasties like those
+of the <i>ancien régime</i>, and all his relations were betraying him.
+Caroline conspired against her brother and against her husband;
+the hypochondriacal Louis, now Dutch in his sympathies, found
+the supervision of the blockade taken from him, and also the
+defence of the Scheldt, which he had refused to ensure; Jerome,
+idling in his harem, lost that of the North Sea shores; and Joseph,
+who was attempting the moral conquest of Spain, was continually
+insulted at Madrid. The very nature of things was against the
+new dynasties, as it had been against the old.</p>
+
+<p>After national insurrections and family recriminations came
+treachery from Napoleon&rsquo;s ministers. Talleyrand betrayed his
+designs to Metternich, and had to be dismissed;
+Fouché corresponded with Austria in 1809 and 1810,
+<span class="sidenote">Treachery.</span>
+entered into an understanding with Louis, and also with England;
+while Bourrienne was convicted of peculation. By a natural consequence
+of the spirit of conquest he had aroused, all these parvenus,
+having tasted victory, dreamed of sovereign power:
+Bernadotte, who had helped him to the Consulate, played
+Napoleon false to win the crown of Sweden; Soult, like Murat,
+coveted the Spanish throne after that of Portugal, thus anticipating
+the treason of 1813 and the defection of 1814; many persons
+hoped for &ldquo;an accident&rdquo; which might resemble the tragic end of
+Alexander and of Caesar. The country itself, besides, though
+flattered by conquests, was tired of self-sacrifice. It had become
+satiated; &ldquo;the cry of the mothers rose threateningly&rdquo; against
+&ldquo;the Ogre&rdquo; and his intolerable imposition of wholesale conscription.
+The soldiers themselves, discontented after Austerlitz,
+cried out for peace after Eylau. Finally, amidst profound silence
+from the press and the Assemblies, a protest was raised against
+imperial despotism by the literary world, against the excommunicated
+sovereign by Catholicism, and against the author
+of the continental blockade by the discontented bourgeoisie,
+ruined by the crisis of 1811.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon himself was no longer the General Bonaparte of his
+campaign in Italy. He was already showing signs of physical
+decay; the Roman medallion profile had coarsened,
+the obese body was often lymphatic. Mental degeneration,
+<span class="sidenote">Degeneration of Napoleon.</span>
+too, betrayed itself in an unwonted irresolution.
+At Eylau, at Wagram, and later at Waterloo, his method
+of acting by enormous masses of infantry and cavalry, in a mad
+passion for conquest, and his misuse of his military resources,
+were all signs of his moral and technical decadence; and this
+at the precise moment when, instead of the armies and governments
+of the old system, which had hitherto reigned supreme,
+the nations themselves were rising against France, and the events
+of 1792 were being avenged upon her. The three campaigns of
+two years brought the final catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon had hardly succeeded in putting down the revolt
+in Germany when the tsar himself headed a European insurrection
+against the ruinous tyranny of the continental
+blockade. To put a stop to this, to ensure his own
+<span class="sidenote">Russian campaign.</span>
+access to the Mediterranean and exclude his chief
+rival, Napoleon made a desperate effort in 1812 against a country
+as invincible as Spain. Despite his victorious advance, the
+taking of Smolensk, the victory on the Moskwa, and the entry
+into Moscow, he was vanquished by Russian patriotism and
+religious fervour, by the country and the climate, and by
+Alexander&rsquo;s refusal to make terms. After this came the lamentable
+retreat, while all Europe was concentrating against him.
+Pushed back, as he had been in Spain, from bastion to bastion,
+after the action on the Beresina, Napoleon had to fall back
+upon the frontiers of 1809, and then&mdash;having refused the peace
+offered him by Austria at the congress of Prague, from a dread of
+losing Italy, where each of his victories had marked a stage in
+the accomplishment of his dream&mdash;on those of 1805, despite
+Lützen and Bautzen, and on those of 1802 after his defeat at
+Leipzig, where Bernadotte turned upon him, Moreau figured
+<span class="sidenote">Campaigns of 1813-14.</span>
+among the Allies, and the Saxons and Bavarians
+forsook him. Following his retreat from Russia came
+his retreat from Germany. After the loss of Spain,
+reconquered by Wellington, the rising in Holland preliminary
+to the invasion and the manifesto of Frankfort which
+proclaimed it, he had to fall back upon the frontiers of 1795;
+and then later was driven yet farther back upon those of 1792,
+despite the wonderful campaign of 1814 against the invaders, in
+which the old Bonaparte of 1796 seemed to have returned.
+Paris capitulated on the 30th of March, and the &ldquo;Delenda
+Carthago,&rdquo; pronounced against England, was spoken of Napoleon.
+The great empire of East and West fell in ruins with the emperor&rsquo;s
+abdication at Fontainebleau.</p>
+
+<p>The military struggle ended, the political struggle began.
+How was France to be governed? The Allies had decided on
+the eviction of Napoleon at the Congress of Châtillon;
+and the precarious nature of the Bonapartist monarchy
+<span class="sidenote">Downfall of the Empire.</span>
+in France itself was made manifest by the exploit of
+General Malet, which had almost succeeded during the
+Russian campaign, and by Lainé&rsquo;s demand for free exercise of
+political rights, when Napoleon made a last appeal to the Legislative
+Assembly for support. The defection of the military and
+civil aristocracy, which brought about Napoleon&rsquo;s abdication,
+the refusal of a regency, and the failure of Bernadotte, who
+wished to resuscitate the Consulate, enabled Talleyrand, vice-president
+of the senate and desirous of power, to persuade the
+Allies to accept the Bourbon solution of the difficulty. The
+declaration of St Ouen (May 2, 1814) indicated that the new
+monarchy was only accepted upon conditions. After Napoleon&rsquo;s
+abdication, and exile to the island of Elba, came the Revolution&rsquo;s
+abdication of her conquests: the first treaty of Paris (May 30th)
+confirmed France&rsquo;s renunciation of Belgium and the left bank of
+the Rhine, and her return within her pre-revolutionary frontiers,
+save for some slight rectifications.</p>
+
+<p>After the scourge of war, the horrors of conscription, and the
+despotism which had discounted glory, every one seemed to
+rejoice in the return of the Bourbons, which atoned for
+humiliations by restoring liberty. But questions of
+<span class="sidenote">Faults of the Bourbons.</span>
+form, which aroused questions of sentiment, speedily
+led to grave dissensions. The hurried armistice of
+the 23rd of April, by which the comte d&rsquo;Artois delivered over
+disarmed France to her conquerors; Louis XVIII.&rsquo;s excessive
+gratitude to the prince regent of England; the return of the
+<i>émigrés</i>; the declaration of St Ouen, dated from the nineteenth
+year of the new reign; the charter of June 4th, &ldquo;<i>concédée et
+octroyée</i>,&rdquo; maintaining the effete doctrine of legitimacy in a
+country permeated with the idea of national sovereignty; the
+slights put upon the army; the obligatory processions ordered
+by Comte Beugnot, prefect of police; all this provoked a
+conflict not only between two theories of government but
+between two groups of men and of interests. An avowedly
+imperialist party was soon again formed, a centre of heated
+opposition to the royalist party; and neither Baron Louis&rsquo;
+excellent finance, nor the peace, nor the charter of June 4th&mdash;which
+despite the irritation of the <i>émigrés</i> preserved the civil
+gains of the Revolution&mdash;prevented the man who was its incarnation
+from seizing an opportunity to bring about another
+military <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>. Having landed in the Bay of Jouan on
+the 1st of March, on the 20th Napoleon re-entered the Tuileries
+in triumph, while Louis XVIII. fled to Ghent. By the <i>Acte
+additionnel</i> of the 22nd of April he induced Carnot and Fouché&mdash;the
+<span class="sidenote">The Hundred Days. March-June 1815.</span>
+last of the Jacobins&mdash;and the heads of the Liberal
+opposition, Benjamin Constant and La Fayette, to side
+with him against the hostile Powers of Europe, occupied
+in dividing the spoils at Vienna. He proclaimed his
+intention of founding a new democratic empire; and
+French policy was thus given another illusion, which
+was to be exploited with fatal success by Napoleon&rsquo;s namesake.
+But the cannon of Waterloo ended this adventure (June 18, 1815),
+and, thanks to Fouché&rsquo;s treachery, the triumphal progress of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page864" id="page864"></a>864</span>
+Milan, Rome, Naples, Vienna, Berlin, and even of Moscow, was
+to end at St Helena.</p>
+
+<p>The consequences of the Hundred Days were very serious;
+France was embroiled with all Europe, though Talleyrand&rsquo;s
+clever diplomacy had succeeded in causing division
+over Saxony and Poland by the secret Austro-Anglo-French
+<span class="sidenote">Louis XVIII.</span>
+alliance of the 3rd of January 1815, and the
+Coalition destroyed both France&rsquo;s political independence and
+national integrity by the treaty of peace of November 20th:
+she found herself far weaker than before the Revolution, and in
+the power of the European Alliance. The Hundred Days
+divided the nation itself into two irreconcilable parties: one
+ultra-royalist, eager for vengeance and retaliation, refusing to
+accept the Charter; the other imperialist, composed of Bonapartists
+and Republicans, incensed by their defeat&mdash;of whom
+Béranger was the Tyrtaeus&mdash;both parties equally revolutionary
+and equally obstinate. Louis XVIII., urged by his more fervent
+supporters towards the <i>ancien régime</i>, gave his policy an exactly
+contrary direction; he had common-sense enough to maintain
+the Empire&rsquo;s legal and administrative tradition, accepting its
+institutions of the Legion of Honour, the Bank, the University,
+and the imperial nobility&mdash;modifying only formally certain
+rights and the conscription, since these had aroused the nation
+against Napoleon. He even went so far as to accept advice from
+the imperial ministers Talleyrand and Fouché. Finally, as the
+chief political organization had become thoroughly demoralized,
+he imported into France the entire constitutional system of
+England, with its three powers, king, upper hereditary chamber,
+and lower elected chamber; with its plutocratic electorate,
+and even with details like the speech from the throne, the
+debate on the address, &amp;c. This meant importing also difficulties
+such as ministerial responsibility, as well as electoral and press
+legislation.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XVIII., taught by time and misfortune, wished not to
+reign over two parties exasperated by contrary passions and
+desires; but his dynasty was from the outset implicated in the
+struggle, which was to be fatal to it, between old France and
+revolutionary France. Anti-monarchical, liberal and anti-clerical
+France at once recommenced its revolutionary work;
+the whole 19th century was to be filled with great spasmodic
+upheavals, and Louis XVIII. was soon overwhelmed by the
+White Terrorists of 1815.</p>
+
+<p>Vindictive sentences against men like Ney and Labédoyère
+were followed by violent and unpunished action by the White
+Terror, which in the south renewed the horrors of St Bartholomew
+and the September massacres. The elections of August 14,
+1815, made under the influence of these royalist and religious
+passions, sent the &ldquo;<i>Chambre introuvable</i>&rdquo; to Paris, an unforeseen
+revival of the <i>ancien régime</i>. Neither the substitution of the
+duc de Richelieu&rsquo;s ministry for that of Talleyrand and Fouché,
+nor a whole series of repressive laws in violation of the charter,
+were successful in satisfying its tyrannical loyalism, and Louis
+XVIII. needed something like a <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>, in September 1816,
+to rid himself of the &ldquo;ultras.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He succeeded fairly well in quieting the opposition between
+the dynasty and the constitution, until a reaction took place
+between 1820 and 1822. State departments worked
+regularly and well, under the direction of Decazes,
+<span class="sidenote">The Constitutional party&rsquo;s rule.</span>
+Lainé, De Serre and Pasquier, power alternating
+between two great well-disciplined parties almost in
+the English fashion, and many useful measures were passed:
+the reconstruction of finance stipulated for as a condition of
+evacuation of territory occupied by foreign troops; the electoral
+law of February 5, 1817, which, by means of direct election
+and a qualification of three hundred francs, renewed the preponderance
+of the <i>bourgeoisie</i>; the Gouvion St-Cyr law of
+1818, which for half a century based the recruiting of the
+French army on the national principle of conscription; and in
+1819, after Richelieu&rsquo;s dismissal, liberal regulations for the press
+under control of a commission. But the advance of the Liberal
+movement, and the election of the generals&mdash;Foy, Lamarque,
+Lafayette and of Manuel, excited the &ldquo;ultras&rdquo; and caused the
+dismissal of Richelieu; while that of the constitutional bishop
+Grégoire led to the modification in a reactionary direction of the
+electoral law of 1817. The assassination of the duc de Berry,
+second son of the comte d&rsquo;Artois (attributed to the influence of
+Liberal ideas), caused the downfall of Decazes, and caused the
+king&mdash;more weak and selfish than ever&mdash;to override the charter
+and embark upon a reactionary path. After 1820, Madame du
+<span class="sidenote">The reaction of 1820.</span>
+Cayla, a trusted agent of the ultra-royalist party,
+gained great influence over the king; and M. de
+Villèle, its leader, supported by the king&rsquo;s brother,
+soon eliminated the Right Centre by the dismissal
+of the duc de Richelieu, who had been recalled to tide over the
+crisis&mdash;just as the fall of M. Decazes had signalized the defeat
+of the Left Centre (December 15, 1821)&mdash;and moderate policy
+thus received an irreparable blow.</p>
+
+<p>Thenceforward the government of M. de Villèle&mdash;a clever
+statesman, but tied to his party&mdash;did nothing for six years but
+promulgate a long series of measures against Liberalism and the
+social work of the Revolution; to retain power it had to yield
+to the impatience of the comte d&rsquo;Artois and the majority.
+The suspension of individual liberty, the re-establishment of the
+censorship; the electoral right of the &ldquo;double vote,&rdquo; favouring
+taxation of the most oppressive kind; and the handing over
+of education to the clergy: these were the first achievements
+of this anti-revolutionary ministry. The Spanish expedition, in
+which M. de Villèle&rsquo;s hand was forced by Montmorency and
+Chateaubriand, was the united work of the association of
+Catholic zealots known as the Congregation and of the autocratic
+powers of the Grand Alliance; it was responded to&mdash;as at Naples
+and in Spain&mdash;by secret Carbonari societies, and by severely
+repressed military conspiracies. Politics now bore the double
+imprint of two rival powers: the Congregation and Carbonarism.
+By 1824, nevertheless, the dynasty seemed firm&mdash;the Spanish
+War had reconciled the army, by giving back military prestige;
+the Liberal opposition had been decimated; revolutionary
+conspiracies discouraged; and the increase of public credit and
+material prosperity pleased the whole nation, as was proved by
+the &ldquo;<i>Chambre retrouvée</i>&rdquo; of 1824. The law of septennial elections
+tranquillized public life by suspending any legal or regular
+manifestation by the nation for seven years.</p>
+
+<p>It was the monarchy which next became revolutionary, on
+the accession of Charles X. (September 16, 1824). This inconsistent
+prince soon exhausted his popularity, and
+remained the fanatical head of those <i>émigrés</i> who had
+<span class="sidenote">Charles X.</span>
+learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. While the opposition
+became conservative as regards the Charter and French liberties,
+the king and the clerical party surrounding him challenged the
+spirit of modern France by a law against sacrilege, by a bill for
+re-establishing the right of primogeniture, by an indemnity of a
+milliard francs, which looked like compensation given to the
+<i>émigrés</i>, and finally by the &ldquo;<i>loi de liberté et d&rsquo;amour</i>&rdquo; against the
+press. The challenge was so definite that in 1826 the Chamber
+of Peers and the Academy had to give the Villèle ministry a
+lesson in Liberalism, for having lent itself to this <i>ancien régime</i>
+reaction by its weakness and its party-promises. The elections
+<span class="sidenote">Victory of the constitutional parties, 1827.</span>
+&ldquo;<i>de colère et de vengeance</i>&rdquo; of January 1827 gave the Left
+a majority, and the resultant short-lived Martignac
+ministry tried to revive the Right Centre which had
+supported Richelieu and Decazes (January 1828).
+Martignac&rsquo;s accession to power, however, had only
+meant personal concessions from Charles X., not any concession
+of principle: he supported his ministry but was no real
+stand-by. The Liberals, on the other hand, made bargains for
+supporting the moderate royalists, and Charles X. profited by
+this to form a fighting ministry in conjunction with the prince de
+Polignac, one of the <i>émigrés</i>, an ignorant and visionary person,
+and the comte de Bourmont, the traitor of Waterloo. Despite
+all kinds of warnings, the former tried by a <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i> to put into
+practice his theories of the supremacy of the royal prerogative;
+and the battle of Navarino, the French occupation of the Morea,
+and the Algerian expedition could not make the nation forget
+this conflict at home. The united opposition of monarchist
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page865" id="page865"></a>865</span>
+Liberals and imperialist republicans responded by legal resistance,
+<span class="sidenote">The Revolution of 1830.</span>
+then by a popular <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>, to the ordinances of July
+1830, which dissolved the intractable Chamber, eliminated
+licensed dealers from the electoral list, and
+muzzled the press. After fighting for three days against
+the troops feebly led by the Marmont of 1814, the
+workmen, driven to the barricades by the deliberate closing of
+Liberal workshops, gained the victory, and sent the white flag
+of the Bourbons on the road to exile.</p>
+
+<p>The rapid success of the &ldquo;Three Glorious Days&rdquo; (&ldquo;<i>les Trois
+Glorieuses</i>&rdquo;), as the July Days were called, put the leaders of the
+parliamentary opposition into an embarrassing position.
+While they had contented themselves with words,
+<span class="sidenote">Republican and Orleanist parties.</span>
+the small Republican-Imperialist party, aided by the
+almost entire absence of the army and police, and by
+the convenience which the narrow, winding, paved streets of those
+times offered for fighting, had determined upon the revolution
+and brought it to pass. But the Republican party, which desired
+to re-establish the Republic of 1793, recruited chiefly from among
+the students and workmen, and led by Godefroy Cavaignac,
+the son of a Conventionalist, and by the chemist Raspail, had
+no hold on the departments nor on the dominating opinion in
+Paris. Consequently this premature attempt was promptly
+seized upon by the Liberal <i>bourgeoisie</i> and turned to the advantage
+of the Orleanist party, which had been secretly organized
+since 1829 under the leadership of Thiers, with the <i>National</i> as its
+organ. Before the struggle was yet over, Benjamin Constant,
+Casimir Périer, Lafitte, and Odilon Barrot had gone to fetch
+the duke of Orleans from Neuilly, and on receiving his promise
+to defend the Charter and the tricolour flag, installed him at the
+Palais Bourbon as lieutenant-general of the realm, while La Fayette
+and the Republicans established themselves at the Hôtel de Ville.
+<span class="sidenote">Louis Philippe.</span>
+An armed conflict between the two governments was
+imminent, when Lafayette, by giving his support to
+Louis Philippe, decided matters in his favour. In
+order to avoid a recurrence of the difficulties which had arisen
+with the Bourbons, the following preliminary conditions were
+imposed upon the king: the recognition of the supremacy
+of the people by the title of &ldquo;king of the French by the grace of
+God and the will of the people,&rdquo; the responsibility of ministers,
+the suppression of hereditary succession to the Chamber of Peers,
+now reduced to the rank of a council of officials, the suppression of
+article 14 of the charter which had enabled Charles X. to supersede
+the laws by means of the ordinances, and the liberty of the
+press. The qualification for electors was lowered from 300 to 200
+francs, and that for eligibility from 1000 to 500 francs, and the
+age to 25 and 30 instead of 30 and 40; finally, Catholicism lost
+its privileged position as the state religion. The <i>bourgeois</i>
+National Guard was made the guardian of the charter. The
+liberal ideas of the son of Philippe Égalité, the part he had played
+at Valmy and Jemappes, his gracious manner and his domestic
+virtues, all united in winning Louis Philippe the good opinion
+of the public.</p>
+
+<p>He now believed, as did indeed the great majority of the
+electors, that the revolution of 1830 had changed nothing but
+the head of the state. But in reality the July monarchy
+was affected by a fundamental weakness. It sought
+<span class="sidenote">The bourgeois monarchy.</span>
+to model itself upon the English monarchy, which
+rested upon one long tradition. But the tradition of
+France was both twofold and contradictory, <i>i.e.</i> the Catholic-legitimist
+and the revolutionary. Louis Philippe had them
+both against him. His monarchy had but one element in common
+with the English, namely, a parliament elected by a limited
+electorate. There was at this time a cause of violent outcry
+against the English monarchy, which, on the other hand, met
+with firm support among the aristocracy and the clergy. The
+July monarchy had no such support. The aristocracy of the
+<i>ancien régime</i> and of the Empire were alike without social
+influence; the clergy, which had paid for its too close alliance
+with Charles X. by a dangerous unpopularity, and foresaw the
+rise of democracy, was turning more and more towards the people,
+the future source of all power. Even the monarchical principle
+itself had suffered from the shock, having proved by its easy
+defeat how far it could be brought to capitulate. Moreover,
+the victory of the people, who had shown themselves in the late
+struggle to be brave and disinterested, had won for the idea of
+national supremacy a power which was bound to increase.
+The difficulty of the situation lay in the doubt as to whether this
+expansion would take place gradually and by a progressive
+evolution, as in England, or not.</p>
+
+<p>Now Louis Philippe, beneath the genial exterior of a bourgeois
+and peace-loving king, was entirely bent upon recovering an
+authority which was menaced from the very first on the one
+hand by the anger of the royalists at their failures, and on the
+other hand by the impatience of the republicans to follow up
+their victory. He wanted the insurrection to stop at a change
+in the reigning family, whereas it had in fact revived the revolutionary
+tradition, and restored to France the sympathies of the
+nationalities and democratic parties oppressed by Metternich&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;system.&rdquo; The republican party, which had retired from power
+but not from activity, at once faced the new king with the
+serious problem of the acquisition of political power by the
+people, and continued to remind him of it. He put himself
+at the head of the party of progress (&ldquo;parti du mouvement&rdquo;)
+as opposed to the (&ldquo;parti de la cour&rdquo;) court party, and of the
+&ldquo;resistance,&rdquo; which considered that it was now necessary &ldquo;to
+check the revolution in order to make it fruitful, and in order
+to save it.&rdquo; But none of these parties were homogeneous;
+<span class="sidenote">The parties.</span>
+in the chamber they split up into a republican or
+radical Extreme Left, led by Garnier-Pagès and
+Arago; a dynastic Left, led by the honourable and
+sincere Odilon Barrot; a constitutional Right Centre and
+Left Centre, differing in certain slight respects, and presided
+over respectively by Thiers, a wonderful political orator, and
+Guizot, whose ideas were those of a strict doctrinaire; not
+to mention a small party which clung to the old legitimist creed,
+and was dominated by the famous <i>avocat</i> Berryer, whose
+eloquence was the chief ornament of the cause of Charles X.&rsquo;s
+grandson, the comte de Chambord. The result was a ministerial
+majority which was always uncertain; and the only occasion
+on which Guizot succeeded in consolidating it during seven years
+resulted in the overthrow of the monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>Louis Philippe first summoned to power the leaders of the
+party of &ldquo;movement,&rdquo; Dupont de l&rsquo;Eure, and afterwards
+Lafitte, in order to keep control of the progressive forces for
+his own ends. They wished to introduce democratic reforms
+and to uphold throughout Europe the revolution, which had
+spread from France into Belgium, Germany, Italy and Poland,
+while Paris was still in a state of unrest. But Louis Philippe
+took fright at the attack on the Chamber of Peers after the
+trial of the ministers of Charles X., at the sack of the church
+of Saint Germain l&rsquo;Auxerrois and the archbishop&rsquo;s palace
+(February, 1831), and at the terrible strike of the silk weavers
+at Lyons. Casimir Périer, who was both a Liberal and a believer
+in a strong government, was then charged with the task of
+heading the resistance to advanced ideas, and applying the
+principle of non-intervention in foreign affairs (March 13, 1831).
+After his death by cholera in May 1832, the agitation which he
+had succeeded by his energy in checking at Lyons, at Grenoble
+and in the Vendée, where it had been stirred up by the romantic
+duchess of Berry, began to gain ground. The struggle against
+the republicans was still longer; for having lost all their chance
+of attaining power by means of the Chamber, they proceeded
+to reorganize themselves into armed secret societies. The press,
+which was gaining that influence over public opinion which had
+been lost by the parliamentary debates, openly attacked the
+government and the king, especially by means of caricature.
+Between 1832 and 1836 the Soult ministry, of which
+<span class="sidenote">The Republicans crushed.</span>
+Guizot, Thiers and the duc de Broglie were members,
+had to combat the terrible insurrections in Lyons
+and Paris (1834). The measures of repression were
+threefold: military repression, carried out by the National
+Guard and the regulars, both under the command of Bugeaud;
+judicial repression, effected by the great trial of April 1835;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page866" id="page866"></a>866</span>
+and legislative repression, consisting in the laws of September,
+which, when to mere ridicule had succeeded acts of violence,
+such as that of Fieschi (July 28th, 1835), aimed at facilitating
+the condemnation of political offenders and at intimidating the
+press. The party of &ldquo;movement&rdquo; was vanquished.</p>
+
+<p>But the July Government, born as it was of a popular movement,
+had to make concessions to popular demands. Casimir
+Périer had carried a law dealing with municipal
+organization, which made the municipal councils
+<span class="sidenote">The bourgeois policy.</span>
+elective, as they had been before the year VIII.; and
+in 1833 Guizot had completed it by making the
+<i>conseils généraux</i> also elective. In the same year the law dealing
+with primary instruction had also shown the mark of new ideas.
+But now that the bourgeoisie was raised to power it did not
+prove itself any more liberal than the aristocracy of birth and
+fortune in dealing with educational, fiscal and industrial questions.
+In spite of the increase of riches, the bourgeois régime maintained
+a fiscal and social legislation which, while it assured to the
+middle class certainty and permanence of benefits, left the labouring
+masses poor, ignorant, and in a state of incessant agitation.</p>
+
+<p>The Orleanists, who had been unanimous in supporting the
+king, disagreed, after their victory, as to what powers he was
+to be given. The Left Centre, led by Thiers, held
+that he should reign but not govern; the Right
+<span class="sidenote">The socialist party.</span>
+Centre, led by Guizot, would admit him to an active
+part in the government; and the third party (tiers-parti)
+wavered between these two. And so between 1836 and
+1840, as the struggle against the king&rsquo;s claim to govern passed
+from the sphere of outside discussion into parliament, we see
+the rise of a bourgeois socialist party, side by side with the
+now dwindling republican party. It no longer confined its
+demands to universal suffrage, on the principle of the legitimate
+representation of all interests, or in the name of justice. Led
+by Saint-Simon, Fourier, P. Leroux and Lamennais, it aimed
+at realizing a better social organization for and by means of the
+state. But the question was by what means this was to be
+accomplished. The secret societies, under the influence of
+Blanqui and Barbès, two revolutionaries who had revived the
+traditions of Babeuf, were not willing to wait for the complete
+education of the masses, necessarily a long process. On the
+12th of May 1839 the <i>Société des Saisons</i> made an attempt to
+overthrow the bourgeoisie by force, but was defeated. Democrats
+like Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin and Lamennais continued to
+repeat in support of the wisdom of universal suffrage the old profession
+of faith: <i>vox populi, vox Dei</i>. And finally this republican
+doctrine, already confused, was still further complicated by a
+kind of mysticism which aimed at reconciling the most extreme
+differences of belief, the Catholicism of Buchez, the Bonapartism
+of Cormenin, and the humanitarianism of the cosmopolitans.
+It was in vain that Auguste Comte, Michelet and Quinet denounced
+this vague humanitarian mysticism and the pseudo-liberalism
+of the Church. The movement had now begun.</p>
+
+<p>At first these moderate republicans, radical or communist,
+formed only imperceptible groups. Among the peasant classes,
+and even in the industrial centres, warlike passions
+were still rife. Louis Philippe tried to find an outlet
+<span class="sidenote">The Bonapartist revival.</span>
+for them in the Algerian war, and later by the revival
+of the Napoleonic legend, which was held to be no
+longer dangerous, since the death of the duke of Reichstadt in
+1832. It was imprudently recalled by Thiers&rsquo; <i>History of the
+Consulate and Empire</i>, by artists and poets, in spite of the prophecies
+of Lamartine, and by the solemn translation of Napoleon
+I.&rsquo;s ashes in 1840 to the Invalides at Paris.</p>
+
+<p>All theories require to be based on practice, especially those
+which involve force. Now Louis Philippe, though as active as
+his predecessors had been slothful, was the least warlike
+of men. His only wish was to govern personally, as
+<span class="sidenote">Parliamentary opposition to the royal power.</span>
+George III. and George IV. of England had done,
+especially in foreign affairs, while at home was being
+waged the great duel between Thiers and Guizot,
+with Molé as intermediary. Thiers, head of the cabinet
+of the 22nd of February 1836, an astute man but not pliant
+enough to please the king, fell after a few months, in consequence
+of his attempt to stop the Carlist civil war in Spain, and to support
+the constitutional government of Queen Isabella. Louis Philippe
+hoped that, by calling upon Molé to form a ministry, he would
+be better able to make his personal authority felt. From 1837
+to 1839 Molé aroused opposition on all hands; this was emphasized
+by the refusal of the Chambers to vote one of those endowments
+which the king was continually asking them to grant for
+his children, by two dissolutions of the Chambers, and finally by
+the Strasburg affair and the stormy trial of Louis Napoleon,
+son of the former king of Holland (1836-1837). At the elections
+of 1839 Molé was defeated by Thiers, Guizot and Barrot, who
+had combined to oppose the tyranny of the &ldquo;Château,&rdquo; and
+after a long ministerial crisis was replaced by Thiers (March 1,
+1840). But the latter was too much in favour of war to please the
+king, who was strongly disposed towards peace and an alliance
+with Great Britain, and consequently fell at the time of the
+Egyptian question, when, in answer to the treaty of London
+concluded behind his back by Nicholas I. and Palmerston on the
+15th of July 1840, he fortified Paris and proclaimed his intention
+to give armed support to Mehemet Ali, the ally of France (see
+<span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Mehemet Ali</a></span>). But the violence of popular Chauvinism and
+the renewed attempt of Louis Napoleon at Boulogne proved to
+the holders of the doctrine of peace at any price that in the long-run
+their policy tends to turn a peaceful attitude into a warlike
+one, and to strengthen the absolutist idea.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of all, from 1840 to 1848 Louis Philippe still further
+extended his activity in foreign affairs, thus bringing himself
+into still greater prominence, though he was already
+frequently held responsible for failures in foreign
+<span class="sidenote">Guizot&rsquo;s ministry.</span>
+politics and unpopular measures in home affairs. The
+catchword of Guizot, who was now his minister, was: Peace
+and no reforms. With the exception of the law of 1842 concerning
+the railways, not a single measure of importance was proposed
+by the ministry. France lived under a régime of general corruption:
+parliamentary corruption, due to the illegal conduct of
+the deputies, consisting of slavish or venal officials; electoral
+corruption, effected by the purchase of the 200,000 electors
+constituting the &ldquo;<i>pays légal</i>,&rdquo; who were bribed by the advantages
+of power; and moral corruption, due to the reign of the plutocracy,
+the bourgeoisie, a hard-working, educated and honourable
+class, it is true, but insolent, like all newly enriched parvenus
+in the presence of other aristocracies, and with unyielding
+selfishness maintaining an attitude of suspicion towards the
+people, whose aspirations they did not share and with whom
+they did not feel themselves to have anything in common.
+This led to a slackening in political life, a sort of exhaustion of
+interest throughout the country, an excessive devotion to material
+prosperity. Under a superficial appearance of calm a tempest
+was brewing, of which the industrial writings of Balzac, Eugène
+Sue, Lamartine, H. Heine, Vigny, Montalembert and Tocqueville
+were the premonitions. But it was in vain that they denounced
+this supremacy of the bourgeoisie, relying on its two main supports,
+the suffrage based on a property qualification and the
+National Guard, for its rallying-cry was the &ldquo;Enrichissez-vous&rdquo;
+of Guizot, and its excessive materialism gained a sinister distinction
+from scandals connected with the ministers Teste and
+Cubières, and such mysterious crimes as that of Choiseul-Praslin.<a name="fa35c" id="fa35c" href="#ft35c"><span class="sp">35</span></a>
+In vain also did they point out that mere riches are not so much
+a protection to the ministry who are in power as a temptation
+to the majority excluded from power by this barrier of wealth.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page867" id="page867"></a>867</span>
+It was in vain that beneath the inflated <i>haute bourgeoisie</i> which
+speculated in railways and solidly supported the Church, behind
+the shopkeeper clique who still remained Voltairian, who
+enviously applauded the pamphlets of Cormenin on the luxury
+of the court, and who were bitterly satirized by the pencil of
+Daumier and Gavarni, did the thinkers give voice to the mutterings
+of an immense industrial proletariat, which were re-echoing
+throughout the whole of western Europe.</p>
+
+<p>In face of this tragic contrast Guizot remained unmoved,
+blinded by the superficial brilliance of apparent success and
+prosperity. He adorned by flights of eloquence his
+invariable theme: no new laws, no reforms, no foreign
+<span class="sidenote">Guizot&rsquo;s Foreign Policy.</span>
+complications, the policy of material interests. He
+preserved his yielding attitude towards Great Britain
+in the affair of the right of search in 1841, and in the affair of
+the missionary Pritchard at Tahiti (1843-1845). And when the
+marriage of the duc de Montpensier with a Spanish infanta
+in 1846 had broken this <i>entente cordiale</i> to which he clung, it was
+only to yield in turn to Metternich, when he took possession
+of Cracow, the last remnant of Poland, to protect the <i>Sonderbund</i>
+in Switzerland, to discourage the Liberal ardour of Pius IX.,
+and to hand over the education of France to the Ultramontane
+clergy. Still further strengthened by the elections of 1846, he
+refused the demands of the Opposition formed by a coalition of
+the Left Centre and the Radical party for parliamentary and
+electoral reform, which would have excluded the officials from
+the Chambers, reduced the electoral qualification to 100 francs,
+and added to the number of the electors the <i>capacitaires</i>
+whose competence was guaranteed by their education. For
+Guizot the whole country was represented by the &ldquo;<i>pays légal</i>,&rdquo;
+consisting of the king, the ministers, the deputies and the
+<span class="sidenote">Campaign of the banquets.</span>
+electors. When the Opposition appealed to the country,
+he flung down a disdainful challenge to what &ldquo;les
+brouillons et les badauds appellent le peuple.&rdquo; The
+challenge was taken up by all the parties of the Opposition
+in the campaign of the banquets got up somewhat artificially
+in 1847 in favour of the extension of the franchise. The monarchy
+had arrived at such a state of weakness and corruption that a
+determined minority was sufficient to overthrow it. The prohibition
+of a last banquet in Paris precipitated the catastrophe.
+The monarchy which for fifteen years had overcome its adversaries
+collapsed on the 24th of February 1848 to the astonishment of all.</p>
+
+<p>The industrial population of the faubourgs on its way towards
+the centre of the town was welcomed by the National Guard,
+among cries of &ldquo;Vive la réforme.&rdquo; Barricades were
+raised after the unfortunate incident of the firing on
+<span class="sidenote">The Revolution of Feb. 24, 1848.</span>
+the crowd in the Boulevard des Capucines. On the
+23rd Guizot&rsquo;s cabinet resigned, abandoned by the
+<i>petite bourgeoisie</i>, on whose support they thought they could
+depend. The heads of the Left Centre and the dynastic Left,
+Molé and Thiers, declined the offered leadership. Odilon
+Barrot accepted it, and Bugeaud, commander-in-chief of
+the first military division, who had begun to attack the barricades,
+was recalled. But it was too late. In face of the insurrection
+which had now taken possession of the whole capital, Louis
+Philippe decided to abdicate in favour of his grandson, the comte
+de Paris. But it was too late also to be content with the regency
+of the duchess of Orleans. It was now the turn of the Republic,
+and it was proclaimed by Lamartine in the name of the provisional
+government elected by the Chamber under the pressure
+of the mob.</p>
+
+<p>This provisional government with Dupont de l&rsquo;Eure as its
+president, consisted of Lamartine for foreign affairs, Crémieux
+for justice, Ledru-Rollin for the interior, Carnot for
+public instruction, Gondchaux for finance, Arago for
+<span class="sidenote">The Provisional Government.</span>
+the navy, and Bedeau for war. Garnier-Pagès was
+mayor of Paris. But, as in 1830, the republican-socialist
+party had set up a rival government at the Hôtel de
+Ville, including L. Blanc, A. Marrast, Flocon, and the workman
+Albert, which bid fair to involve discord and civil war. But
+this time the Palais Bourbon was not victorious over the Hôtel
+de Ville. It had to consent to a fusion of the two bodies,
+in which, however, the predominating elements were the moderate
+republicans. It was doubtful what would eventually be the
+policy of the new government. One party, seeing that in spite
+of the changes in the last sixty years of all political institutions,
+the position of the people had not been improved, demanded a
+reform of society itself, the abolition of the privileged position of
+property, the only obstacle to equality, and as an emblem hoisted
+the red flag. The other party wished to maintain society on the
+basis of its ancient institutions, and rallied round the tricolour.</p>
+
+<p>The first collision took place as to the form which the revolution
+of 1848 was to take. Were they to remain faithful to their
+original principles, as Lamartine wished, and accept
+the decision of the country as supreme, or were they,
+<span class="sidenote">Universal suffrage.</span>
+as the revolutionaries under Ledru-Rollin claimed, to
+declare the republic of Paris superior to the universal suffrage of
+an insufficiently educated people? On the 5th of March the
+government, under the pressure of the Parisian clubs, decided
+in favour of an immediate reference to the people, and direct
+universal suffrage, and adjourned it till the 26th of April. In
+this fateful and unexpected decision, which instead of adding
+to the electorate the educated classes, refused by Guizot, admitted
+to it the unqualified masses, originated the Constituent Assembly
+of the 4th of May 1848. The provisional government having
+resigned, the republican and anti-socialist majority on the 9th
+<span class="sidenote">The Executive Commission.</span>
+of May entrusted the supreme power to an executive
+commission consisting of five members: Arago,
+Marie, Garnier-Pagès, Lamartine and Ledru-Rollin.
+But the spell was already broken. This revolution
+which had been peacefully effected with the most generous
+aspirations, in the hope of abolishing poverty by organizing
+industry on other bases than those of competition and capitalism,
+and which had at once aroused the fraternal sympathy of the
+nations, was doomed to be abortive.</p>
+
+<p>The result of the general election, the return of a constituent
+assembly predominantly moderate if not monarchical, dashed
+the hopes of those who had looked for the establishment, by a
+peaceful revolution, of their ideal socialist state; but they were
+not prepared to yield without a struggle, and in Paris itself they
+commanded a formidable force. In spite of the preponderance of
+the &ldquo;tricolour&rdquo; party in the provisional government, so long as
+the voice of France had not spoken, the socialists, supported by
+the Parisian proletariat, had exercised an influence on policy out
+of all proportion to their relative numbers or personal weight.
+By the decree of the 24th of February the provisional government
+had solemnly accepted the principle of the &ldquo;right to work,&rdquo;
+and decided to establish &ldquo;national workshops&rdquo; for the unemployed;
+at the same time a sort of industrial parliament was
+established at the Luxembourg, under the presidency of Louis
+Blanc, with the object of preparing a scheme for the organization
+of labour; and, lastly, by the decree of the 8th of March the
+property qualification for enrolment in the National Guard had
+been abolished and the workmen were supplied with arms.
+The socialists thus formed, in some sort, a state within the state,
+with a government, an organization and an armed force.</p>
+
+<p>In the circumstances a conflict was inevitable; and on the
+15th of May an armed mob, headed by Raspail, Blanqui and
+Barbès, and assisted by the proletariat Guard, attempted to
+overwhelm the Assembly. They were defeated by the bourgeois
+battalions of the National Guard; but the situation none the
+less remained highly critical. The national workshops were
+producing the results that might have been foreseen. It was
+impossible to provide remunerative work even for the genuine
+unemployed, and of the thousands who applied the greater
+number were employed in perfectly useless digging and refilling;
+soon even this expedient failed, and those for whom work could
+not be invented were given a half wage of 1 franc a day. Even
+this pitiful dole, with no obligation to work, proved attractive,
+and all over France workmen threw up their jobs and streamed
+to Paris, where they swelled the ranks of the army under the
+red flag. It was soon clear that the continuance of this experiment
+would mean financial ruin; it had been proved by the
+<i>émeute</i> of the 15th of May that it constituted a perpetual menace
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page868" id="page868"></a>868</span>
+to the state; and the government decided to end it. The method
+chosen was scarcely a happy one. On the 21st of June M. de
+Falloux decided in the name of the parliamentary commission
+on labour that the workmen should be discharged within three
+days and such as were able-bodied should be forced to enlist.
+<span class="sidenote">The June Days.</span>
+A furious insurrection at once broke out. Throughout
+the whole of the 24th, 25th and 26th of June, the
+eastern industrial quarter of Paris, led by Pujol,
+carried on a furious struggle against the western quarter, led
+by Cavaignac, who had been appointed dictator. Vanquished
+and decimated, first by fighting and afterwards by deportation,
+the socialist party was crushed. But they dragged down the
+Republic in their ruin. This had already become unpopular
+with the peasants, exasperated by the new land tax of 45 centimes
+imposed in order to fill the empty treasury, and with the <i>bourgeois</i>,
+in terror of the power of the revolutionary clubs and hard hit
+by the stagnation of business. By the &ldquo;massacres&rdquo; of the June
+Days the working classes were also alienated from it; and abiding
+fear of the &ldquo;Reds&rdquo; did the rest. &ldquo;France,&rdquo; wrote the duke of
+Wellington at this time, &ldquo;needs a Napoleon! I cannot yet see
+him ... Where is he?&rdquo;<a name="fa36c" id="fa36c" href="#ft36c"><span class="sp">36</span></a></p>
+
+<p>France indeed needed, or thought she needed, a Napoleon;
+and the demand was soon to be supplied. The granting of
+universal suffrage to a society with Imperialist
+sympathies, and unfitted to reconcile the principles
+<span class="sidenote">The Constitution of 1848.</span>
+of order with the consequences of liberty, was indeed
+bound, now that the political balance in France was
+so radically changed, to prove a formidable instrument of
+reaction; and this was proved by the election of the president
+of the Republic. On the 4th of November 1848 was promulgated
+the new constitution, obviously the work of inexperienced
+hands, proclaiming a democratic republic, direct universal
+suffrage and the separation of powers; there was to be a single
+permanent assembly of 750 members elected for a term of three
+years by the <i>scrutin de liste</i>, which was to vote on the laws
+prepared by a council of state elected by the Assembly for six
+years; the executive power was delegated to a president elected
+for four years by direct universal suffrage, <i>i.e.</i> on a broader
+basis than that of the chamber, and not eligible for re-election; he
+was to choose his ministers, who, like him, would be responsible.
+Finally, all revision was made impossible since it involved
+obtaining three times in succession a majority of three-quarters
+of the deputies in a special assembly. It was in vain that
+M. Grévy, in the name of those who perceived the obvious and
+inevitable risk of creating, under the name of a president, a
+monarch and more than a king, proposed that the head of the
+state should be no more than a removable president of the
+ministerial council. Lamartine, thinking that he was sure to
+be the choice of the electors under universal suffrage, won over
+the support of the Chamber, which did not even take the precaution
+of rendering ineligible the members of families which
+had reigned over France. It made the presidency an office
+dependent upon popular acclamation.</p>
+
+<p>The election was keenly contested; the socialists adopted
+as their candidate Ledru-Rollin, the republicans Cavaignac;
+and the recently reorganized Imperialist party Prince
+Bonaparte. Louis Napoleon, unknown in 1835, and
+<span class="sidenote">Louis Napoleon.</span>
+forgotten or despised since 1840, had in the last eight
+years advanced sufficiently in the public estimation to be
+elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1848 by five departments.
+He owed this rapid increase of popularity partly to blunders
+of the government of July, which had unwisely aroused the
+memory of the country, filled as it was with recollections of the
+Empire, and partly to Louis Napoleon&rsquo;s campaign carried on
+from his prison at Ham by means of pamphlets of socialistic
+tendencies. Moreover, the monarchists, led by Thiers and the
+committee of the Rue de Poitiers, were no longer content even
+with the safe dictatorship of the upright Cavaignac, and joined
+forces with the Bonapartists. On the 10th of December the
+peasants gave over 5,000,000 votes to a name: Napoleon,
+which stood for order at all costs, against 1,400,000 for Cavaignac.</p>
+
+<p>For three years there went on an indecisive struggle between
+the heterogeneous Assembly and the prince who was silently
+awaiting his opportunity. He chose as his ministers
+men but little inclined towards republicanism, for
+<span class="sidenote">Expedition to Rome.</span>
+preference Orleanists, the chief of whom was Odilon
+Barrot. In order to strengthen his position, he
+endeavoured to conciliate the reactionary parties, without
+committing himself to any of them. The chief instance of this
+was the expedition to Rome, voted by the Catholics with the
+object of restoring the papacy, which had been driven out by
+Garibaldi and Mazzini. The prince-president was also in favour
+of it, as beginning the work of European renovation and reconstruction
+which he already looked upon as his mission. General
+Oudinot&rsquo;s entry into Rome provoked in Paris a foolish insurrection
+in favour of the Roman republic, that of the Château d&rsquo;Eau,
+which was crushed on the 13th of June 1849. On the other hand,
+when Pius IX., though only just restored, began to yield to the
+general movement of reaction, the president demanded that he
+should set up a Liberal government. The pope&rsquo;s dilatory reply
+having been accepted by his ministry, the president replaced
+it on the 1st of November by the Fould-Rouher cabinet.</p>
+
+<p>This looked like a declaration of war against the Catholic and
+monarchist majority in the Legislative Assembly which had
+<span class="sidenote">The Legislative Assembly.</span>
+been elected on the 28th of May in a moment of panic.
+But the prince-president again pretended to be
+playing the game of the Orleanists, as he had done
+in the case of the Constituent-Assembly. The complementary
+elections of March and April 1850 having resulted in an
+unexpected victory for the advanced republicans, which struck
+terror into the reactionary leaders, Thiers, Berryer and Montalembert,
+the president gave his countenance to a clerical campaign
+against the republicans at home. The Church, which had failed
+in its attempts to gain control of the university under Louis
+XVIII. and Charles X., aimed at setting up a rival establishment
+<span class="sidenote">&ldquo;Loi Falloux.&rdquo;<br /><br />
+Electoral law of May 31.</span>
+of its own. The <i>Loi Falloux</i> of the 15th of March
+1850, under the pretext of establishing the liberty
+of instruction promised by the charter, again placed
+the teaching of the university under the direction of the Catholic
+Church, as a measure of social safety, and, by the facilities which
+it granted to the Church for propagating teaching in harmony
+with its own dogmas, succeeded in obstructing for half a century
+the work of intellectual enfranchisement effected by the men of
+the 18th century and of the Revolution. The electoral law
+of the 31st of May was another class law directed
+against subversive ideas. It required as a proof of
+three years&rsquo; domicile the entries in the record of direct
+taxes, thus cutting down universal suffrage by taking
+away the vote from the industrial population, which was not as
+a rule stationary. The law of the 16th of July aggravated the
+severity of the press restrictions by re-establishing the &ldquo;caution
+money&rdquo; (<i>cautionnement</i>) deposited by proprietors and editors
+of papers with the government as a guarantee of good behaviour.
+Finally, a skilful interpretation of the law on clubs and political
+societies suppressed about this time all the Republican societies.
+It was now their turn to be crushed like the socialists.</p>
+
+<p>But the president had only joined in Montalembert&rsquo;s cry of
+&ldquo;Down with the Republicans!&rdquo; in the hope of effecting a
+revision of the constitution without having recourse
+to a <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>. His concessions only increased the
+<span class="sidenote">Struggle between the President and the Assembly.</span>
+boldness of the monarchists; while they had only
+accepted Louis Napoleon as president in opposition
+to the Republic and as a step in the direction of the
+monarchy. A conflict was now inevitable between
+his personal policy and the majority of the Chamber, who were,
+moreover, divided into legitimists and Orleanists, in spite of the
+death of Louis Philippe in August 1850. Louis Napoleon skilfully
+exploited their projects for a restoration of the monarchy, which
+he knew to be unpopular in the country, and which gave him
+the opportunity of furthering his own personal ambitions.
+From the 8th of August to the 12th of November 1850 he went
+about France stating the case for a revision of the constitution
+in speeches which he varied according to each place; he held
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page869" id="page869"></a>869</span>
+reviews, at which cries of &ldquo;<i>Vive Napoléon</i>&rdquo; showed that the
+army was with him; he superseded General Changarnier, on
+whose arms the parliament relied for the projected monarchical
+<i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>; he replaced his Orleanist ministry by obscure men
+devoted to his own cause, such as Morny, Fleury and Persigny,
+and gathered round him officers of the African army, broken
+men like General Saint-Arnaud; in fact he practically declared
+open war.</p>
+
+<p>His reply to the votes of censure passed by the Assembly, and
+their refusal to increase his civil list, was to hint at a vast communistic
+plot in order to scare the bourgeoisie, and to denounce
+the electoral law of the 31st of May in order to gain the
+<span class="sidenote">Coup d&rsquo;État of Dec. 2, 1851.</span>
+support of the mass of the people. The Assembly retaliated
+by throwing out the proposal for a partial
+reform of that article of the constitution which prohibited
+the re-election of the president and the re-establishment
+of universal suffrage (July). All hope of a peaceful issue
+was at an end. When the questors called upon the Chamber
+to have posted up in all barracks the decree of the 6th of May
+1848 concerning the right of the Assembly to demand the support
+of the troops if attacked, the Mountain, dreading a restoration of
+the monarchy, voted with the Bonapartists against the measure,
+thus disarming the legislative power. Louis Napoleon saw his
+opportunity. On the night between the 1st and 2nd of December
+1851, the anniversary of Austerlitz, he dissolved the Chamber,
+re-established universal suffrage, had all the party leaders arrested,
+and summoned a new assembly to prolong his term of office
+for ten years. The deputies who had met under Berryer at the
+<i>Mairie</i> of the tenth arrondissement to defend the constitution
+and proclaim the deposition of Louis Napoleon were scattered
+by the troops at Mazas and Mont Valérian. The resistance
+organized by the republicans within Paris under Victor Hugo
+was soon subdued by the intoxicated soldiers. The more serious
+resistance in the departments was crushed by declaring a state
+of siege and by the &ldquo;mixed commissions.&rdquo; The plebiscite of
+the 20th of December ratified by a huge majority the <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>
+in favour of the prince-president, who alone reaped the benefit
+of the excesses of the Republicans and the reactionary passions
+of the monarchists.</p>
+
+<p>The second attempt to revive the principle of 1789 only served
+as a preface to the restoration of the Empire. The new anti-parliamentary
+constitution of the 14th of January
+1852 was to a large extent merely a repetition of that
+<span class="sidenote">The Second Empire.</span>
+of the year VIII. All executive power was entrusted
+to the head of the state, who was solely responsible to
+the people, now powerless to exercise any of their rights. He
+was to nominate the members of the council of state, whose duty
+it was to prepare the laws, and of the senate, a body permanently
+established as a constituent part of the empire. One innovation
+was made, namely, that the Legislative Body was elected by
+universal suffrage, but it had no right of initiative, all laws
+being proposed by the executive power. This new and violent
+political change was rapidly followed by the same consequence
+as had attended that of Brumaire. On the 2nd of December
+1852, France, still under the effect of the Napoleonic <i>virus</i>,
+and the fear of anarchy, conferred almost unanimously by a
+plebiscite the supreme power, with the title of emperor, upon
+Napoleon III.</p>
+
+<p>But though the machinery of government was almost the same
+under the Second Empire as it had been under the First, the
+principles upon which its founder based it were different. The
+function of the Empire, as he loved to repeat, was to guide the
+people internally towards justice and externally towards perpetual
+peace. Holding his power by universal suffrage, and having
+frequently, from his prison or in exile, reproached former oligarchical
+governments with neglecting social questions, he set out
+to solve them by organizing a system of government based on the
+principles of the &ldquo;Napoleonic Idea,&rdquo; <i>i.e.</i> of the emperor, the
+elect of the people as the representative of the democracy, and
+as such supreme; and of himself, the representative of the
+great Napoleon, &ldquo;who had sprung armed from the Revolution
+like Minerva from the head of Jove,&rdquo; as the guardian of the
+social gains of the revolutionary epoch. But he soon proved that
+social justice did not mean liberty; for he acted in such a
+way that those of the principles of 1848 which he had preserved
+became a mere sham. He proceeded to paralyze all those active
+national forces which tend to create the public spirit of a people,
+such as parliament, universal suffrage, the press, education and
+associations. The Legislative Body was not allowed either to
+elect its own president or to regulate its own procedure, or to
+propose a law or an amendment, or to vote on the budget in detail,
+or to make its deliberations public. It was a dumb parliament.
+Similarly, universal suffrage was supervised and controlled by
+means of official candidature, by forbidding free speech and
+action in electoral matters to the Opposition, and by a skilful adjustment
+of the electoral districts in such a way as to overwhelm
+the Liberal vote in the mass of the rural population. The press
+was subjected to a system of <i>cautionnements</i>, <i>i.e.</i> &ldquo;caution
+money,&rdquo; deposited as a guarantee of good behaviour, and
+<i>avertissements</i>, <i>i.e.</i> requests by the authorities to cease publication
+of certain articles, under pain of suspension or suppression;
+while books were subject to a censorship. France was like a sickroom,
+where nobody might speak aloud. In order to counteract
+the opposition of individuals, a <i>surveillance</i> of suspects was
+instituted. Orsini&rsquo;s attack on the emperor in 1858, though
+purely Italian in its motive, served as a pretext for increasing
+the severity of this régime by the law of general security (<i>sûreté
+générale</i>) which authorized the internment, exile or deportation
+of any suspect without trial. In the same way public instruction
+was strictly supervised, the teaching of philosophy was suppressed
+in the <i>Lycées</i>, and the disciplinary powers of the administration
+were increased. In fact for seven years France had no
+political life. The Empire was carried on by a series of plebiscites.
+Up to 1857 the Opposition did not exist; from then till 1860 it
+was reduced to five members: Darimon, Émile Ollivier, Hénon,
+J. Favre and E. Picard. The royalists waited inactive after the
+new and unsuccessful attempt made at Frohsdorf in 1853, by a
+combination of the legitimists and Orleanists, to re-create a
+living monarchy out of the ruin of two royal families. Thus the
+events of that ominous night in December were closing the future
+to the new generations as well as to those who had grown up during
+forty years of liberty.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not enough to abolish liberty by conjuring up the
+spectre of demagogy. It had to be forgotten, the great silence
+had to be covered by the noise of festivities and material
+enjoyment, the imagination of the French people had
+<span class="sidenote">Material prosperity a condition of despotism.</span>
+to be distracted from public affairs by the taste for
+work, the love of gain, the passion for good living.
+The success of the imperial despotism, as of any other,
+was bound up with that material prosperity which would make
+all interests dread the thought of revolution. Napoleon III.,
+therefore, looked for support to the clergy, the great financiers,
+industrial magnates and landed proprietors. He revived on
+his own account the &ldquo;Let us grow rich&rdquo; of 1840. Under the
+influence of the Saint-Simonians and men of business great credit
+establishments were instituted and vast public works entered
+upon: the Crédit foncier de France, the Crédit mobilier, the
+conversion of the railways into six great companies between 1852
+and 1857. The rage for speculation was increased by the inflow
+of Californian and Australian gold, and consumption was
+facilitated by a general fall in prices between 1856 and 1860,
+due to an economic revolution which was soon to overthrow the
+tariff wall, as it had done already in England. Thus French
+activity flourished exceedingly between 1852 and 1857, and was
+merely temporarily checked by the crisis of 1857. The universal
+Exhibition of 1855 was its culminating point. Art felt the
+effects of this increase of comfort and luxury. The great enthusiasms
+of the romantic period were over; philosophy became
+sceptical and literature merely amusing. The festivities of the
+court at Compiègne set the fashion for the bourgeoisie, satisfied
+with this energetic government which kept such good guard over
+their bank balances.</p>
+
+<p>If the Empire was strong, the emperor was weak. At once
+headstrong and a dreamer, he was full of rash plans, but irresolute
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page870" id="page870"></a>870</span>
+in carrying them out. An absolute despot, he remained what his
+life had made him, a conspirator through the very mysticism of
+<span class="sidenote">Napoleon III.&rsquo;s ideas.</span>
+his mental habit, and a revolutionary by reason of his demagogic
+imperialism and his democratic chauvinism. In his
+opinion the artificial work of the congress of Vienna,
+involving the downfall of his own family and of
+France, ought to be destroyed, and Europe organized
+as a collection of great industrial states, united by community.
+of interests and bound together by commercial treaties, and
+expressing this unity by periodical congresses presided over by
+himself, and by universal exhibitions. In this way he would
+reconcile the revolutionary principle of the supremacy of the
+people with historical tradition, a thing which neither the
+Restoration nor the July monarchy nor the Republic of 1848
+had been able to achieve. Universal suffrage, the organization
+of Rumanian, Italian and German nationality, and commercial
+liberty; this was to be the work of the Revolution. But the
+creation of great states side by side with France brought with it
+the necessity for looking for territorial compensation elsewhere,
+and consequently for violating the principle of nationality and
+abjuring his system of economic peace. Napoleon III.&rsquo;s foreign
+policy was as contradictory as his policy in home affairs,
+&ldquo;L&rsquo;Empire, c&rsquo;est la paix,&rdquo; was his cry; and he proceeded to
+make war.</p>
+
+<p>So long as his power was not yet established, Napoleon III.
+made especial efforts to reassure European opinion, which had
+been made uneasy by his previous protestations
+against the treaties of 1815. The Crimean War, in
+<span class="sidenote">The Crimean War.</span>
+which, supported by England and the king of Sardinia,
+he upheld against Russia the policy of the integrity
+of the Turkish empire, a policy traditional in France since
+Francis I., won him the adherence both of the old parties and
+and the Liberals. And this war was the prototype of all the rest.
+It was entered upon with no clearly defined military purpose,
+and continued in a hesitating way. This was the cause, after
+the victory of the allies at the Alma (September 14, 1854), of
+the long and costly siege of Sevastopol (September 8, 1855).
+Napoleon III., whose joy was at its height owing to the signature
+of a peace which excluded Russia from the Black Sea, and to the
+birth of the prince imperial, which ensured the continuation of
+his dynasty, thought that the time had arrived to make a
+beginning in applying his system. Count Walewski, his minister
+for foreign affairs, gave a sudden and unexpected extension of
+scope to the deliberations of the congress which met at Paris in
+1856 by inviting the plenipotentiaries to consider the questions
+of Greece, Rome, Naples, &amp;c. This motion contained the
+principle of all the upheavals which were to effect such changes
+in Europe between 1859 and 1871. It was Cavour and Piedmont
+who immediately benefited by it, for thanks to Napoleon III.
+they were able to lay the Italian question before an assembly
+of diplomatic Europe.</p>
+
+<p>It was not Orsini&rsquo;s attack on the 14th of January 1858 which
+brought this question before Napoleon. It had never ceased to
+occupy him since he had taken part in the patriotic
+conspiracies in Italy in his youth. The triumph of his
+<span class="sidenote">The War in Italy.</span>
+armies in the East now gave him the power necessary
+to accomplish this mission upon which he had set his heart.
+The suppression of public opinion made it impossible for him
+to be enlightened as to the conflict between the interests of
+the country and his own generous visions. The sympathy of all
+Europe was with Italy, torn for centuries past between so many
+masters; under Alexander II. Russia, won over since the
+interview of Stuttgart by the emperor&rsquo;s generosity rather than
+conquered by armed force, offered no opposition to this act of
+justice; while England applauded it from the first. The
+emperor, divided between the empress Eugénie, who as a Spaniard
+and a devout Catholic was hostile to anything which might
+threaten the papacy, and Prince Napoleon, who as brother-in-law
+of Victor Emmanuel favoured the cause of Piedmont, hoped to
+conciliate both sides by setting up an Italian federation, intending
+to reserve the presidency of it to Pope Pius IX., as a mark of
+respect to the moral authority of the Church. Moreover, the
+very difficulty of the undertaking appealed to the emperor,
+elated by his recent success in the Crimea. At the secret meeting
+between Napoleon and Count Cavour (July 20, 1858) the eventual
+armed intervention of France, demanded by Orsini before he
+mounted the scaffold, was definitely promised.</p>
+
+<p>The ill-advised Austrian ultimatum demanding the immediate
+cessation of Piedmont&rsquo;s preparations for war precipitated the
+Italian expedition. On the 3rd of May 1859 Napoleon
+declared his intention of making Italy &ldquo;free from the
+<span class="sidenote">The peace of Villafranca.</span>
+Alps to the Adriatic.&rdquo; As he had done four years ago,
+he plunged into the war with no settled scheme and
+without preparation; he held out great hopes, but without
+reckoning what efforts would be necessary to realize them. Two
+months later, in spite of the victories of Montebello, Magenta
+and Solferino, he suddenly broke off, and signed the patched-up
+peace of Villafranca with Francis Joseph (July 9). Austria ceded
+Lombardy to Napoleon III., who in turn ceded it to Victor
+Emmanuel; Modena and Tuscany were restored to their
+respective dukes, the Romagna to the pope, now president of an
+Italian federation. The mountain had brought forth a mouse.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons for this breakdown on the part of the emperor
+in the midst of his apparent triumph were many. Neither
+Magenta nor Solferino had been decisive battles.
+Further, his idea of a federation was menaced by the
+<span class="sidenote">The Italian problem.</span>
+revolutionary movement which seemed likely to drive
+out all the princes of central Italy, and to involve him
+in an unwelcome dispute with the French clerical party. Moreover,
+he had forgotten to reckon with the Germanic Confederation,
+which was bound to come to the assistance of Austria.
+The mobilization of Prussia on the Rhine, combined with military
+difficulties and the risk of a defeat in Venetian territory, rather
+damped his enthusiasm, and decided him to put an end to the
+war. The armistice fell upon the Italians as a bolt from the blue,
+convincing them that they had been betrayed; on all sides
+despair drove them to sacrifice their jealously guarded independence
+to national unity. On the one hand the Catholics
+were agitating throughout all Europe to obtain the independence
+of the papal territory; and the French republicans were protesting,
+on the other hand, against the abandonment of those
+revolutionary traditions, the revival of which they had hailed
+so enthusiastically. The emperor, unprepared for the turn which
+events had taken, attempted to disentangle this confusion by
+suggesting a fresh congress of the Powers, which should reconcile
+dynastic interests with those of the people. After a while he gave
+up the attempt and resigned himself to the position, his actions
+having had more wide-reaching results than he had wished.
+The treaty of Zürich proclaimed the fallacious principle of non-intervention
+(November 10, 1859); and then, by the treaty of
+Turin of the 24th of May 1860, Napoleon threw over his ill-timed
+confederation. He conciliated the mistrust of Great
+Britain by replacing Walewski, who was hostile to his policy,
+by Thouvenel, an anti-clerical and a supporter of the English
+alliance, and he counterbalanced the increase of the new Italian
+kingdom by the acquisition of Nice and Savoy. Napoleon, like
+all French governments, only succeeded in finding a provisional
+solution for the Italian problem.</p>
+
+<p>But this solution would only hold good so long as the emperor
+was in a powerful position. Now this Italian war, in which he had
+given his support to revolution beyond the Alps, and,
+though unintentionally, compromised the temporal
+<span class="sidenote">Catholic and protectionist opposition.</span>
+power of the popes, had given great offence to the
+Catholics, to whose support the establishment of the
+Empire was largely due. A keen Catholic opposition
+sprang up, voiced in L. Veuillot&rsquo;s paper the <i>Univers</i>, and was
+not silenced even by the Syrian expedition (1860) in favour of the
+Catholic Maronites, who were being persecuted by the Druses.
+On the other hand, the commercial treaty with Great Britain
+which was signed in January 1860, and which ratified the free-trade
+policy of Richard Cobden and Michael Chevalier, had
+brought upon French industry the sudden shock of foreign
+competition. Thus both Catholics and protectionists made the
+discovery that absolutism may be an excellent thing when it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page871" id="page871"></a>871</span>
+serves their ambitions or interests, but a bad thing when it is
+exercised at their expense. But Napoleon, in order to restore
+the prestige of the Empire before the newly-awakened hostility
+of public opinion, tried to gain from the Left the support which
+he had lost from the Right. After the return from Italy the
+general amnesty of the 16th of August 1859 had marked the
+evolution of the absolutist empire towards the liberal, and later
+parliamentary empire, which was to last for ten years.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon began by removing the gag which was keeping the
+country in silence. On the 24th of November 1860, &ldquo;by a <i>coup
+d&rsquo;état</i> matured during his solitary meditations,&rdquo;
+like a conspirator in his love of hiding his mysterious
+<span class="sidenote">The Liberal Empire.</span>
+thoughts even from his ministers, he granted to the
+Chambers the right to vote an address annually in
+answer to the speech from the throne, and to the press the right
+of reporting parliamentary debates. He counted on the latter
+concession to hold in check the growing Catholic opposition, which
+was becoming more and more alarmed by the policy of <i>laissez-faire</i>
+practised by the emperor in Italy. But the government
+majority already showed some signs of independence. The right
+of voting on the budget by sections, granted by the emperor in
+1861, was a new weapon given to his adversaries. Everything
+conspired in their favour: the anxiety of those candid friends
+who were calling attention to the defective budget; the commercial
+crisis, aggravated by the American Civil War; and above
+all, the restless spirit of the emperor, who had annoyed his
+opponents in 1860 by insisting on an alliance with Great Britain
+in order forcibly to open the Chinese ports for trade, in 1863 by
+his ill-fated attempt to put down a republic and set up a Latin
+empire in Mexico in favour of the archduke Maximilian of Austria,
+and from 1861 to 1863 by embarking on colonizing experiments
+in Cochin China and Annam.</p>
+
+<p>The same inconsistencies occurred in the emperor&rsquo;s European
+politics. The support which he had given to the Italian cause
+had aroused the eager hopes of other nations. The
+proclamation of the kingdom of Italy on the 18th of
+<span class="sidenote">The policy of nationalism.</span>
+February 1861 after the rapid annexation of Tuscany
+and the kingdom of Naples had proved the danger
+of half-measures. But when a concession, however narrow,
+had been made to the liberty of one nation, it could hardly
+be refused to the no less legitimate aspirations of the rest.
+In 1863 these &ldquo;new rights&rdquo; again clamoured loudly for recognition,
+in Poland, in Schleswig and Holstein, in Italy, now indeed
+united, but with neither frontiers nor capital, and in the Danubian
+principalities. In order to extricate himself from the Polish
+<i>impasse</i>, the emperor again had recourse to his expedient&mdash;always
+fruitless because always inopportune&mdash;of a congress. He
+was again unsuccessful: England refused even to admit the
+principle of a congress, while Austria, Prussia and Russia gave
+their adhesion only on conditions which rendered it futile, <i>i.e.</i>
+they reserved the vital questions of Venetia and Poland.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Napoleon had yet again to disappoint the hopes of Italy,
+let Poland be crushed, and Germany triumph over Denmark in
+the Schleswig-Holstein question. These inconsistencies resulted
+in a combination of the opposition parties, Catholic, Liberal and
+Republican, in the <i>Union libérale</i>. The elections of May-June
+1863 gained the Opposition forty seats and a leader, Thiers, who
+at once urgently gave voice to its demand for &ldquo;the necessary
+liberties.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It would have been difficult for the emperor to mistake the
+importance of this manifestation of French opinion, and in view
+of his international failures, impossible to repress it.
+The sacrifice of Persigny, minister of the interior,
+<span class="sidenote">The régime of concessions.</span>
+who was responsible for the elections, the substitution
+for the ministers without portfolio of a sort of presidency
+of the council filled by Rouher, the &ldquo;Vice-Emperor,&rdquo; and the
+nomination of V. Duruy, an anti-clerical, as minister of public
+instruction, in reply to those attacks of the Church which were
+to culminate in the Syllabus of 1864, all indicated a distinct
+rapprochement between the emperor and the Left. But though
+the opposition represented by Thiers was rather constitutional
+than dynastic, there was another and irreconcilable opposition,
+that of the amnestied or voluntarily exiled republicans, of whom
+Victor Hugo was the eloquent mouthpiece. Thus those who had
+formerly constituted the governing classes were again showing
+signs of their ambition to govern. There appeared to be some
+risk that this movement among the <i>bourgeoisie</i> might spread to
+the people. As Antaeus recruited his strength by touching the
+earth Napoleon believed that he would consolidate his menaced
+power by again turning to the labouring masses, by whom that
+power had been established.</p>
+
+<p>This industrial policy he embarked upon as much from motives
+of interest as from sympathy, out of opposition to the <i>bourgeoisie</i>,
+which was ambitious of governing or desirous of his
+overthrow. His course was all the easier, since he had
+<span class="sidenote">Industrial policy of the Empire.</span>
+only to exploit the prejudices of the working classes.
+They had never forgotten the <i>loi Chapelle</i> of 1791, which
+by forbidding all combinations among the workmen had placed
+them at the mercy of their employers, nor had they forgotten how
+the limited suffrage had conferred upon capital a political
+monopoly which had put it out of reach of the law, nor how each
+time they had left their position of rigid isolation in order to save
+the Charter or universal suffrage, the triumphant <i>bourgeoisie</i> had
+repaid them at the last with neglect. The silence of public
+opinion under the Empire and the prosperous state of business
+had completed the separation of the labour party from the
+political parties. The visit of an elected and paid labour delegation
+to the Universal Exhibition of 1862 in London gave the
+emperor an opportunity for re-establishing relations with that
+party, and these relations were to his mind all the more profitable,
+since the labour party, by refusing to associate their social and
+industrial claims with the political ambitions of the <i>bourgeoisie</i>,
+maintained a neutral attitude between the parties, and could, if
+necessary, divide them, while by its keen criticism of society it
+aroused the conservative instincts of the <i>bourgeoisie</i> and consequently
+checked their enthusiasm for liberty. A law of the
+23rd of May 1863 gave the workmen the right, as in England,
+to save money by creating co-operative societies. Another law,
+of the 25th of May 1864, gave them the right to enforce better
+conditions of labour by organizing strikes. Still further, the
+emperor permitted the workmen to imitate their employers by
+establishing unions for the permanent protection of their interests.
+And finally, when the <i>ouvriers</i>, with the characteristic French
+tendency to insist on the universal application of a theory, wished
+to substitute for the narrow utilitarianism of the English trade-unions
+the ideas common to the wage-earning classes of the
+whole world, he put no obstacles in the way of their leader
+M. Tolain&rsquo;s plan for founding an International Association of
+Workers (<i>Société Internationale des Travailleurs</i>). At the same
+time he encouraged the provision made by employers for thrift
+and relief and for improving the condition of the working-classes.</p>
+
+<p>Thus assured of support, the emperor, through the mouthpiece
+of M. Rouher, who was a supporter of the absolutist régime,
+was able to refuse all fresh claims on the part of the
+Liberals. He was aided by the cessation of the industrial
+<span class="sidenote">Sadowa (1866).</span>
+crisis as the American civil war came to an
+end, by the apparent closing of the Roman question by the convention
+of the 15th of September, which guaranteed to the papal
+states the protection of Italy, and finally by the treaty of the 30th
+of October 1864, which temporarily put an end to the crisis of
+the Schleswig-Holstein question. But after 1865 the momentary
+agreement which had united Austria and Prussia for the purpose
+of administering the conquered duchies gave place to a silent
+antipathy which foreboded a rupture. Yet, though the Austro-Prussian
+War of 1866 was not unexpected, its rapid termination
+and fateful outcome came as a severe and sudden shock to France.
+Napoleon had hoped to gain fresh prestige for his throne and new
+influence for France by an intervention at the proper moment
+between combatants equally matched and mutually exhausted.
+His calculations were upset and his hopes dashed by the battle
+of Sadowa (Königgrätz) on the 4th of July. The treaty of Prague
+put an end to the secular rivalry of Habsburg and Hohenzollern
+for the hegemony of Germany, which had been France&rsquo;s
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page872" id="page872"></a>872</span>
+opportunity; and Prussia could afford to humour the just claims
+of Napoleon by establishing between her North German Confederation
+and the South German states the illusory frontier of
+the Main. The belated efforts of the French emperor to obtain
+&ldquo;compensation&rdquo; on the left bank of the Rhine, at the expense
+of the South German states, made matters worse. France
+realized with an angry surprise that on her eastern frontier had
+arisen a military power by which her influence, if not her existence,
+was threatened; that in the name of the principle of nationality
+unwilling populations had been brought under the sway of a
+dynasty by tradition militant and aggressive, by tradition the
+enemy of France; that this new and threatening power had
+destroyed French influence in Italy, which owed the acquisition
+of Venetia to a Prussian alliance and to Prussian arms; and
+that all this had been due to Napoleon, outwitted and outman&oelig;uvred
+at every turn, since his first interview with Bismarck
+at Biarritz in October 1865.</p>
+
+<p>All confidence in the excellence of imperial régime vanished
+at once. Thiers and Jules Favre as representatives of the
+Opposition denounced in the Legislative Body the
+blunders of 1866. Émile Ollivier split up the official
+majority by the amendment of the 45, and gave it to
+<span class="sidenote">Further concessions of Napoleon III.<br />
+Struggle between Ollivier and Rouher.</span>
+be understood that a reconciliation with the Empire
+would be impossible until the emperor would grant
+entire liberty. The recall of the French troops from Rome,
+in accordance with the convention of 1864, also led to further
+attacks by the Ultramontane party, who were alarmed for the
+papacy. Napoleon III. felt the necessity for developing
+&ldquo;the great act of 1860&rdquo; by the decree of the 19th of
+January 1867. In spite of Rouher, by a secret agreement
+with Ollivier the right of interpellation was
+restored to the Chambers. Reforms in press supervision
+and the right of holding meetings were promised. It was in
+vain that M. Rouher tried to meet the Liberal opposition by
+organizing a party for the defence of the Empire, the &ldquo;Union
+dynastique.&rdquo; But the rapid succession of international reverses
+prevented him from effecting anything.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1867 was particularly disastrous for the Empire.
+In Mexico &ldquo;the greatest idea of the reign&rdquo; ended in a humiliating
+withdrawal before the ultimatum of the United States,
+while Italy, relying on her new alliance with Prussia
+<span class="sidenote">The year 1867.</span>
+and already forgetful of her promises, was mobilizing
+the revolutionary forces to complete her unity by conquering
+Rome. The chassepots of Mentana were needed to check the
+Garibaldians. And when the imperial diplomacy made a
+belated attempt to obtain from the victorious Bismarck those
+territorial compensations on the Rhine, in Belgium and in
+Luxemburg, which it ought to have been possible to exact from
+him earlier at Biarritz, Benedetti added to the mistake of
+asking at the wrong time the humiliation of obtaining nothing
+(see <span class="sc"><a href="#artlinks">Luxemburg</a></span>). Napoleon did not dare to take courage and
+confess his weakness. And finally was seen the strange contrast
+of France, though reduced to such a state of real weakness,
+courting the mockery of Europe by a display of the external
+magnificence which concealed her decline. In the Paris transformed
+by Baron Haussmann and now become almost exclusively
+a city of pleasure and frivolity, the opening of the Universal
+Exhibition was marked by Berezowski&rsquo;s attack on the tsar
+Alexander II., and its success was clouded by the tragic fate
+of the unhappy emperor Maximilian of Mexico. Well might
+Thiers exclaim, &ldquo;There are no blunders left for us to make.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But the emperor managed to commit still more, of which the
+consequences both for his dynasty and for France were irreparable.
+Old, infirm and embittered, continually keeping
+his ministers in suspense by the uncertainty and
+<span class="sidenote">Peace or war.</span>
+secrecy of his plans, surrounded by a people now bent
+almost entirely on pleasure, and urged on by a growing opposition,
+there now remained but two courses open to Napoleon III.:
+either to arrange a peace which should last, or to prepare for a
+decisive war. He allowed himself to drift in the direction of war,
+but without bringing things to a necessary state of preparation.
+It was in vain that Count Beust revived on behalf of the Austrian
+government the project abandoned by Napoleon since 1866 of
+a settlement on the basis of the <i>status quo</i> with reciprocal disarmament.
+Napoleon refused, on hearing from Colonel Stoffel,
+his military attaché at Berlin, that Prussia would not agree to
+disarmament. But he was more anxious than he was willing
+to show. A reconstitution of the military organization seemed
+to him to be necessary. This Marshal Niel was unable to obtain
+either from the Bonapartist Opposition, who feared the electors,
+in whom the old patriotism had given place to the commercial
+or cosmopolitan spirit, or from the Republican opposition, who
+were unwilling to strengthen the despotism. Both of them
+were blinded by party interest to the danger from outside.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor&rsquo;s good fortune had departed; he was abandoned
+by men and disappointed by events. He had vainly hoped that,
+though by the laws of May-June 1868, granting the
+freedom of the press and authorizing meetings, he had
+<span class="sidenote">Action of the revolutionaries.</span>
+conceded the right of speech, he would retain the right of
+action; but he had played into the hands of his enemies.
+Victor Hugo&rsquo;s <i>Châtiments</i>, the insults of Rochefort&rsquo;s <i>Lanterne</i>,
+the subscription for the monument to Baudin, the deputy killed
+at the barricades in 1851, followed by Gambetta&rsquo;s terrible
+speech against the Empire on the occasion of the trial of Delescluze,
+soon showed that the republican party was irreconcilable,
+and bent on the Republic. On the other hand, the Ultramontane
+party were becoming more and more discontented, while the
+industries formerly protected were equally dissatisfied with the
+free-trade reform. Worse still, the working classes had abandoned
+their political neutrality, which had brought them nothing but
+unpopularity, and gone over to the enemy. Despising Proudhon&rsquo;s
+impassioned attacks on the slavery of communism, they had
+gradually been won over by the collectivist theories of Karl
+Marx or the revolutionary theories of Bakounine, as set forth
+at the congresses of the International. At these Labour congresses,
+the fame of which was only increased by the fact that
+they were forbidden, it had been affirmed that the social emancipation
+of the worker was inseparable from his political emancipation.
+Henceforth the union between the internationalists and
+the republican bourgeois was an accomplished fact. The
+Empire, taken by surprise, sought to curb both the middle
+classes and the labouring classes, and forced them both into
+revolutionary actions. On every side took place strikes, forming
+as it were a review of the effective forces of the Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The elections of May 1869, made during these disturbances,
+inflicted upon the Empire a serious moral defeat. In spite of
+the revival by the government of the cry of the red
+terror, Ollivier, the advocate of conciliation, was
+<span class="sidenote">The parliamentary Empire.</span>
+rejected by Paris, while 40 irreconcilables and 116
+members of the Third Party were elected. Concessions
+had to be made to these, so by the <i>senatus-consulte</i> of the 8th of
+September 1869 a parliamentary monarchy was substituted for
+personal government. On the 2nd of January 1870 Ollivier
+was placed at the head of the first homogeneous, united and
+responsible ministry. But the republican party, unlike the
+country, which hailed this reconciliation of liberty and order,
+refused to be content with the liberties they had won; they
+refused all compromise, declaring themselves more than ever
+decided upon the overthrow of the Empire. The murder of the
+journalist Victor Noir by Pierre Bonaparte, a member of the
+imperial family, gave the revolutionaries their long desired
+opportunity (January 10). But the <i>émeute</i> ended in a failure,
+and the emperor was able to answer the personal threats against
+him by the overwhelming victory of the plebiscite of the 8th of
+May 1870.</p>
+
+<p>But this success, which should have consolidated the Empire,
+determined its downfall. It was thought that a diplomatic
+success should complete it, and make the country
+forget liberty for glory. It was in vain that after the
+<span class="sidenote">The Franco-German War.</span>
+parliamentary revolution of the 2nd of January that
+prudent statesman Comte Daru revived, through
+Lord Clarendon, Count Beust&rsquo;s plan of disarmament after
+Sadowa. He met with a refusal from Prussia and from the
+imperial <i>entourage</i>. The Empress Eugénie was credited with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page873" id="page873"></a>873</span>
+the remark, &ldquo;If there is no war, my son will never be emperor.&rdquo;
+The desired pretext was offered on the 3rd of July 1870 by the
+candidature of a Hohenzollern prince for the throne
+of Spain. To the French people it seemed that Prussia,
+<span class="sidenote">The Hohenzollern candidature.</span>
+barely mistress of Germany, was reviving against
+France the traditional policy of the Habsburgs.
+France, having rejected for dynastic reasons the
+candidature of a Frenchman, the duc de Montpensier, saw
+herself threatened with a German prince. Never had the
+emperor, now both physically and morally ill, greater need of
+the counsels of a clear-headed statesman and the support of an
+enlightened public opinion if he was to defeat the statecraft of
+Bismarck. But he could find neither.</p>
+
+<p>Ollivier&rsquo;s Liberal ministry, wishing to show itself as jealous
+for national interests as any absolutist ministry, bent upon
+doing something great, and swept away by the force
+of that opinion which it had itself set free, at once
+<span class="sidenote">The declaration of war.</span>
+accepted the war as inevitable, and prepared for it
+with a light heart.<a name="fa37c" id="fa37c" href="#ft37c"><span class="sp">37</span></a> In face of the decided declaration
+of the duc de Gramont, the minister for foreign affairs, before
+the Legislative Body of the 6th of July, Europe, in alarm,
+supported the efforts of French diplomacy and obtained the
+withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature. This did not
+suit the views either of the war party in Paris or of Bismarck,
+who wanted the other side to declare war. The ill-advised action
+of Gramont in demanding from King William one of those
+promises for the future which are humiliating but never binding,
+gave Bismarck his opportunity, and the king&rsquo;s refusal was
+transformed by him into an insult by the &ldquo;editing&rdquo; of the Ems
+telegram. The chamber, in spite of the desperate efforts of
+Thiers and Gambetta, now voted by 246 votes to 10 in favour
+of the war.</p>
+
+<p>France found herself isolated, as much through the duplicity
+of Napoleon as through that of Bismarck. The disclosure to the
+diets of Munich and Stuttgart of the written text of
+the claims laid by Napoleon on the territories of Hesse
+<span class="sidenote">France isolated.</span>
+and Bavaria had since the 22nd of August 1866
+estranged southern Germany from France, and disposed the
+southern states to sign the military convention with Prussia.
+Owing to a similar series of blunders, the rest of Europe had
+become hostile. Russia, which it had been Bismarck&rsquo;s study
+both during and after the Polish insurrection of 1863 to draw
+closer to Prussia, learnt with annoyance, by the same
+indiscretion, how Napoleon was keeping his promises made
+at Stuttgart. The hope of gaining a revenge in the East for
+her defeat of 1856 while France was in difficulties made her
+decide on a benevolent neutrality. The disclosure of Benedetti&rsquo;s
+designs of 1867 on Belgium and Luxemburg equally ensured an
+unfriendly neutrality on the part of Great Britain. The emperor
+counted at least on the alliance of Austria and Italy, for which
+he had been negotiating since the Salzburg interview (August
+1867). But Austria, having suffered at his hands in 1859 and
+1866, was not ready and asked for a delay before joining in the
+war; while the hesitating friendships of Italy could only be
+won by the evacuation of Rome. The chassepots of Mentana,
+Rouher&rsquo;s &ldquo;Never,&rdquo; and the hostility of the Catholic empress to
+any secret article which should open to Italy the gates of the
+capital, deprived France of her last friend.</p>
+
+<p>Marshal Leboeuf&rsquo;s armies were no more effective than
+Gramont&rsquo;s alliances. The incapacity of the higher officers of
+the French army, the lack of preparation for war at
+headquarters, the selfishness and shirking of responsibility
+<span class="sidenote">Sedan. Fall of the Empire.</span>
+on the part of the field officers, the absence of any
+fixed plan when failure to mobilize had destroyed all
+chance of the strong offensive which had been counted on, and
+the folly of depending on chance, as the emperor had so often
+done successfully, instead of scientific warfare, were all plainly
+to be seen as early as the insignificant engagement of Saarbrücken.
+Thus the French army proceeded by disastrous stages from
+Weissenburg, Forbach, Froeschweiler, Borny, Gravelotte, Noisseville
+and Saint-Privat to the siege of Metz and the slaughter at
+Illy. By the capitulation of Sedan the Empire lost its only
+support, the army, and fell. Paris was left unprotected and
+emptied of troops, with only a woman at the Tuileries, a terrified
+Assembly at the Palais-Bourbon, a ministry, that of Palikao,
+without authority, and leaders of the Opposition who fled as
+the catastrophe approached.</p>
+<div class="author">(P. W.)</div>
+
+<p class="pt1 center sc">The Third Republic 1870-1909</p>
+
+<p>The Third Republic may be said to date from the revolution
+of the 4th of September 1870, when the republican deputies of
+Paris at the hôtel de ville constituted a provisional
+government under the presidency of General Trochu,
+<span class="sidenote">Government of National Defence, 1870.</span>
+military governor of the capital. The Empire had
+fallen, and the emperor was a prisoner in Germany.
+As, however, since the great Revolution régimes in
+France have been only passing expedients, not inextricably
+associated with the destinies of the people, but bound to disappear
+when accounted responsible for national disaster, the surrender
+of Louis Napoleon&rsquo;s sword to William of Prussia did not disarm
+the country. Hostilities were therefore continued. The provisional
+government had to assume the part of a Committee of
+National Defence, and while insurrection was threatening in
+Paris, it had, in the face of the invading Germans, to send a
+delegation to Tours to maintain the relations of France with the
+outside world. Paris was invested, and for five months endured
+siege, bombardment and famine. Before the end of October
+the capitulation of Metz, by the treason of Marshal Bazaine,
+deprived France of the last relic of its regular army. With
+indomitable courage the garrison of Paris made useless sorties,
+while an army of irregular troops vainly essayed to resist the
+invader, who had reached the valley of the Loire. The acting
+Government of National Defence, thus driven from Tours, took
+refuge at Bordeaux, where it awaited the capitulation of Paris,
+which took place on the 29th of January 1871. The same day
+the preliminaries of peace were signed at Versailles, which,
+confirmed by the treaty of Frankfort of the 10th of May, transferred
+from France to Germany the whole of Alsace, excepting
+Belfort, and a large portion of Lorraine, including Metz, with
+a money indemnity of two hundred millions sterling.</p>
+
+<p>On the 13th of February 1871 the National Assembly, elected
+after the capitulation of Paris, met at Bordeaux and assumed
+the powers hitherto exercised by the Government of
+National Defence. Since the meeting of the states-general
+<span class="sidenote">Foundation of the Third Republic, 1871.</span>
+in 1789 no representative body in France had
+ever contained so many men of distinction. Elected
+to conclude a peace, the great majority of its members
+were monarchists, Gambetta, the rising hope of the republicans,
+having discredited his party in the eyes of the weary population
+by his efforts to carry on the war. The Assembly might thus have
+there and then restored the monarchy had not the monarchists
+been divided among themselves as royalist supporters of the
+comte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X., and as Orleanists
+favouring the claims of the comte de Paris, grandson of Louis
+Philippe. The majority being unable to unite on the essential
+point of the choice of a sovereign, decided to allow the Republic,
+declared on the morrow of Sedan, to liquidate the disastrous
+situation. Consequently, on the 17th of February the National
+Assembly elected Thiers as &ldquo;Chief of the Executive Power of
+the French Republic,&rdquo; the abolition of the Empire being formally
+voted a fortnight later. The old minister of Louis Philippe,
+who had led the opposition to the Empire, and had been the chief
+opponent of the war, was further marked out for the position
+conferred on him by his election to the Assembly in twenty-six
+departments in recognition of his tour through Europe after the
+first defeats, undertaken in the patriotic hope of obtaining the
+intervention of the Powers on behalf of France. Thiers composed
+a ministry, and announced that the first duty of the government
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page874" id="page874"></a>874</span>
+before examining constitutional questions, would be to reorganize
+the forces of the nation in order to provide for the enormous war
+indemnity which had to be paid to Germany before the territory
+could be liberated from the presence of the invader. The tacit
+acceptance of this arrangement by all parties was known as the
+&ldquo;<i>pacte de Bordeaux</i>.&rdquo; Apart from the pressure of patriotic considerations,
+it pleased the republican minority to have the government
+of France officially proclaimed a Republic, while the
+monarchists thought that pending their choice Of a monarch it
+might popularize their cause not to have it associated with
+the imposition of the burden of war taxation. From this fortuitous
+and informal transaction, accepted by a monarchical
+Assembly, sprang the Third Republic, the most durable régime
+established in France since the ancient monarchy disappeared
+in 1792.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans marched down the Champs Elysées on the
+1st of March 1871, and occupied Paris for forty-eight hours.
+The National Assembly then decided to remove its
+sittings to Versailles; but two days before its arrival
+<span class="sidenote">The Commune.</span>
+at the palace, where the king of Prussia had just been
+proclaimed German emperor, an insurrection broke out in Paris.
+The revolutionary element, which had been foremost in proclaiming
+the Republic on the 4th of September, had shown
+signs of disaffection during the siege. On the conclusion of the
+peace the triumphal entry of the German troops, the threatened
+disbanding of the national guard by an Assembly known to be
+anti-republican, and the resumption of orderly civic existence
+after the agitated life of a suffering population isolated by
+siege, had excited the nerves of the Parisians, always prone to
+revolution. The Commune was proclaimed on the 18th of March,
+and Paris was declared to be a free town, which recognized no
+government but that chosen by the people within its walls,
+the communard theory being that the state should consist of a
+federation of self-governing communes subject to no central
+power. Administrative autonomy was not, however, the real
+aim of the insurgent leaders. The name of the Commune had
+always been a rallying sign for violent revolutionaries ever
+since the Terrorists had found their last support in the municipality
+of Paris in 1794. In 1871 among the communard chiefs
+were revolutionaries of every sect, who, disagreeing on governmental
+and economic principles, were united in their vague but
+perpetual hostility to the existing order of things. The regular
+troops of the garrison of Paris followed the National Assembly
+to Versailles, where they were joined by the soldiers of the armies
+of Sedan and Metz, liberated from captivity in Germany. With
+this force the government of the Republic commenced the
+second siege of Paris, in order to capture the city from the
+Commune, which had established the parody of a government
+there, having taken possession of the administrative departments
+and set a minister at the head of each office. The second siege
+lasted six weeks under the eyes of the victorious Germans
+encamped on the heights overlooking the capital. The presence
+of the enemy, far from restraining the humiliating spectacle of
+Frenchmen waging war on Frenchmen in the hour of national
+disaster, seemed to encourage the fury of the combatants. The
+communards, who had begun their reign by the murder of two
+generals, concluded it, when the Versailles troops were taking the
+city, with the massacre of a number of eminent citizens, including
+the archbishop of Paris, and with the destruction by fire of many
+of the finest historical buildings, including the palace of the
+Tuileries and the hôtel de ville. History has rarely known a
+more unpatriotic crime than that of the insurrection of the
+Commune; but the punishment inflicted on the insurgents by
+the Versailles troops was so ruthless that it seemed to be a counter-manifestation
+of French hatred for Frenchmen in civil disturbance
+rather than a judicial penalty applied to a heinous offence.
+The number of Parisians killed by French soldiers in the last
+week of May 1871 was probably 20,000, though the partisans
+of the Commune declared that 36,000 men and women were shot
+in the streets or after summary court-martial.</p>
+
+<p>It is from this point that the history of the Third Republic
+commences. In spite of the doubly tragic ending of the war
+the vitality of the country seemed unimpaired. With ease and
+without murmur it supported the new burden of taxation called
+<span class="sidenote">Republicans and Monarchists after the war.</span>
+for by the war indemnity and by the reorganization
+of the shattered forces of France. Thiers was thus
+aided in his task of liberating the territory from the
+presence of the enemy. His proposal at Bordeaux to
+make the &ldquo;<i>essai loyal</i>&rdquo; of the Republic, as the form of
+government which caused the least division among Frenchmen,
+was discouraged by the excesses of the Commune which associated
+republicanism with revolutionary disorder. Nevertheless, the
+monarchists of the National Assembly received a note of warning
+that the country might dispense with their services unless they
+displayed governmental capacity, when in July 1871 the republican
+minority was largely increased at the bye-elections.
+The next month, within a year of Sedan, a provisional constitution
+was voted, the title of president of the French Republic being
+then conferred on Thiers. The monarchists consented to this
+against their will; but they had their own way when they
+conferred constituent powers on the Assembly in opposition to
+the republicans, who argued that it was a usurpation of the
+sovereignty of the people for a body elected for another purpose
+to assume the power of giving a constitution to the land without a
+special mandate from the nation. The debate gave Gambetta
+his first opportunity of appearing as a serious politician. The
+&ldquo;<i>fou furieux</i>&rdquo; of Tours, whom Thiers had denounced for his
+efforts to prolong the hopeless war, was about to become the
+chief support of the aged Orleanist statesman whose supreme
+achievement was to be the foundation of the Republic.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1872 that Thiers practically ranged himself with
+Gambetta and the republicans. The divisions in the monarchical
+party made an immediate restoration impossible.
+This situation induced some of the moderate deputies,
+<span class="sidenote">1872: Thiers and Gambetta.</span>
+whose tendencies were Orleanist, to support the
+organization of a Republic which now no longer
+found its chief support in the revolutionary section of the nation,
+and it suited the ideas of Thiers, whose personal ambition was
+not less than his undoubted patriotism. Having become
+unexpectedly chief of the state at seventy-four he had no wish
+to descend again to the position of a minister of the Orleans
+dynasty which he had held at thirty-five. So, while the royalists
+refused to admit the claims of the comte de Paris, the old minister
+of Louis Philippe did his best to undermine the popularity of
+the Orleans tradition, which had been great among the Liberals
+under the Second Empire. He moved the Assembly to restore
+to the Orleans princes the value of their property confiscated
+under Louis Napoleon. This he did in the well-founded belief
+that the family would discredit itself in the eyes of the nation by
+accepting two millions sterling of public money at a moment
+when the country was burdened with the war indemnity. The
+incident was characteristic of his wary policy, as in the face
+of the anti-republican majority in the Assembly he could not
+openly break with the Right; and when it was suggested that
+he was too favourable to the maintenance of the Republic he
+offered his resignation, the refusal of which he took as indicating
+the indispensable nature of his services. Meanwhile Gambetta,
+by his popular eloquence, had won for himself in the autumn
+a triumphal progress, in the course of which he declared at
+Grenoble that political power had passed into the hands of
+&ldquo;<i>une couche sociale nouvelle</i>,&rdquo; and he appealed to the new social
+strata to put an end to the comedy of a Republic without
+republicans. When the Assembly resumed its sittings, order
+having been restored in the land disturbed by war and revolution,
+the financial system being reconstituted and the reorganization
+of the army planned, Thiers read to the house a presidential
+message which marked such a distinct movement towards the
+Left that Gambetta led the applause. &ldquo;The Republic exists,&rdquo;
+said the president, &ldquo;it is the lawful government of the country,
+and to devise anything else is to devise the most terrible of
+revolutions.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The year 1873 was full of events fateful for the history of France.
+It opened with the death of Napoleon III. at Chislehurst; but
+the disasters amid which the Second Empire had ended were too
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page875" id="page875"></a>875</span>
+recent for the youthful promise of his heir to be regarded as
+having any connexion with the future fortunes of France, except
+by the small group of Bonapartists. Thiers remained the centre
+of interest. Much as the monarchists disliked him, they at first
+shrank from upsetting him before they were ready with a scheme
+of monarchical restoration, and while Gambetta&rsquo;s authority was
+growing in the land. But when the Left Centre took alarm at the
+return of radical deputies at numerous by-elections the reactionaries
+utilized the divisions in the republican party, and for the
+only time in the history of the Third Republic they gave proof of
+parliamentary adroitness. The date for the evacuation of France
+by the German troops had been advanced, largely owing to
+Thiers&rsquo; successful efforts to raise the war indemnity. The monarchical
+<span class="sidenote">Resignation of Thiers.</span>
+majority, therefore, thought the moment had
+arrived when his services might safely be dispensed
+with, and the campaign against him was ably conducted
+by a coalition of Legitimists, Orleanists and
+Bonapartists. The attack on Thiers was led by the duc
+de Broglie, the son of another minister of Louis Philippe and
+grandson of Madame de Staël. Operations began with the
+removal from the chair of the Assembly of Jules Grévy, a moderate
+republican, who was chosen president at Bordeaux, and the
+substitution of Buffet, an old minister of the Second Republic
+who had rallied to the Empire. A debate on the political tendency
+of the government brought Thiers himself to the tribune
+to defend his policy. He maintained that a conservative
+Republic was the only régime possible, seeing that the monarchists
+in the Assembly could not make a choice between their three
+pretenders to the throne. A resolution, however, was carried
+which provoked the old statesman into tendering his resignation.
+This time it was not declined, and the majority with unseemly
+<span class="sidenote">Marshal MacMahon president of the Republic.</span>
+haste elected as president of the Republic Marshal
+MacMahon, duc de Magenta, an honest soldier of
+royalist sympathies, who had won renown and a ducal
+title on the battlefields of the Second Empire. In the
+eyes of Europe the curt dismissal of the aged liberator
+of the territory was an act of ingratitude. Its justification
+would have been the success of the majority in forming a
+stable monarchical government; but the sole result of the 24th
+of May 1873 was to provide a definite date to mark the opening
+of the era of anti-republican incompetency in France which has
+lasted for more than a generation, and has been perhaps the most
+effective guardian of the Third Republic.</p>
+
+<p>The political incompetency of the reactionaries was fated never
+to be corrected by the intelligence of its princes or of its chiefs,
+and the year which saw Thiers dismissed to make way for a
+restoration saw also that restoration indefinitely postponed by
+the fatal action of the legitimist pretender. The comte de Paris
+went to Frohsdorf to abandon to the comte de Chambord his
+claims to the crown as the heir of the July Monarchy, and to
+accept the position of dauphin, thus implying that his grandfather
+Louis Philippe was a usurper. With the &ldquo;Government
+of Moral Order&rdquo; in command the restoration of the monarchy
+seemed imminent, when the royalists had their hopes dashed
+by the announcement that &ldquo;Henri V.&rdquo; would accept the throne
+only on the condition that the nation adopted as the standard
+of France the white flag&mdash;at the very sight of which Marshal
+MacMahon said the rifles in the army would go off by themselves.
+The comte de Chambord&rsquo;s refusal to accept the tricolour was
+<span class="sidenote">The comte de Chambord.</span>
+probably only the pretext of a childless man who
+had no wish to disturb his secluded life for the ultimate
+benefit of the Orleans family which had usurped his
+crown, had sent him as a child into exile, and outraged
+his mother the duchesse de Berry. Whatever his motive,
+his decision could have no other effect than that of establishing
+the Republic, as he was likely to live for years, during which the
+comte de Paris&rsquo; claims had to remain suspended. It was not
+possible to leave the land for ever under the government improvised
+at Bordeaux when the Germans were masters of France;
+so the majority in the Assembly decided to organize another
+provisional government on more regular lines, which might
+possibly last till the comte de Chambord had taken the white flag
+to the grave, leaving the way to the throne clear for the comte
+de Paris. On the 19th of November 1873 a Bill was passed
+<span class="sidenote">The Septennate.</span>
+which instituted the Septennate, whereby the executive
+power was confided to Marshal MacMahon for seven
+years. It also provided for the nomination of a commission
+of the National Assembly to take in hand the
+enactment of a constitutional law. Before this an important
+constitutional innovation had been adopted. Under Thiers
+there were no changes of ministry. The president of the Republic
+was perpetual prime minister, constantly dismissing individual
+holders of portfolios, but never changing at one moment the
+whole council of ministers. Marshal MacMahon, the day after
+his appointment, nominated a cabinet with a vice-president
+of the council as premier, and thus inaugurated the system
+of ministerial instability which has been the most conspicuous
+feature of the government of the Third Republic. Under the
+Septennate the ministers, monarchist or moderate republican,
+were socially and perhaps intellectually of a higher class than
+those who governed France during the last twenty years of the
+19th century. But the duration of the cabinets was just as brief,
+thus displaying the fact, already similarly demonstrated under
+the Restoration and the July Monarchy, that in France parliamentary
+government is an importation not suited to the national
+temperament.</p>
+
+<p>The duc de Broglie was the prime minister in MacMahon&rsquo;s
+first two cabinets which carried on the government of the country
+up to the first anniversary of Thiers&rsquo; resignation. The duc de
+Broglie&rsquo;s defeat by a coalition of Legitimists and Bonapartists
+with the Republicans displayed the mutual attitude of parties.
+The Royalists, chagrined that the fusion of the two branches of
+the Bourbons had not brought the comte de Chambord to the
+throne, vented their rage on the Orleanists, who had the chief
+share in the government without being able to utilize it for their
+dynasty. The Bonapartists, now that the memory of the war
+was receding, were winning elections in the provinces, and were
+further encouraged by the youthful promise of the Prince
+Imperial. The republicans had so improved their position that
+the duc d&rsquo;Audiffret-Pasquier, great-nephew of the chancellor
+Pasquier, tried to form a coalition ministry with M. Waddington,
+afterwards ambassador of the Republic in London, and other
+members of the Left Centre. Out of this uncertain state of
+affairs was evolved the constitution which has lasted the longest
+of all those that France has tried since the abolition of the old
+monarchy in 1792. Its birth was due to chance. Not being
+able to restore a monarchy, the National Assembly was unwilling
+definitively to establish a republic, and as no limit was set by
+the law on the duration of its powers, it might have continued
+the provisional state of things had it not been for the Bonapartists.
+That party displayed so much activity in agitating for
+a plebiscite, that when the rural voters at by-elections began to
+rally to the Napoleonic idea, alarm seized the constitutionalists
+of the Right Centre who had never been persuaded by Thiers&rsquo;
+exhortations to accept the Republic. Consequently in January
+1875 the Assembly, having voted the general principle that the
+<span class="sidenote">Constitution voted, 1875.</span>
+legislative power should be exercised by a Senate and
+a Chamber of Deputies, without any mention of the
+executive régime, accepted by a majority of one a
+momentous resolution proposed by M. Wallon, a
+member of the Right Centre. It provided that the president of
+the Republic should be elected by the absolute majority of the
+Senate and the Chamber united as a National Assembly, that he
+should be elected for seven years, and be eligible for re-election.
+Thus by one vote the Republic was formally established, &ldquo;the
+Father of the Constitution&rdquo; being M. Wallon, who began his
+political experiences in the Legislative Assembly of 1849, and
+survived to take an active part in the Senate until the twentieth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>The Republic being thus established, General de Cissey, who
+had become prime minister, made way for M. Buffet, but retained
+his portfolio of war in the new coalition cabinet, which contained
+some distinguished members of the two central groups, including
+<span class="sidenote">Provisions of the Constitution of 1875.</span>
+M. Léon Say. A fortnight previously, at the end of February
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page876" id="page876"></a>876</span>
+1875, were passed two statutes defining the legislative and
+executive powers in the Republic, and organizing the Senate.
+These joined to a third enactment, voted in July, form
+the body of laws known as the &ldquo;Constitution of 1875,&rdquo;
+which though twice revised, lasted without essential
+alteration to the twentieth century. The legislative
+power was conferred on a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies,
+which might unite in congress to revise the constitution,
+if they both agreed that revision was necessary, and which
+were bound so to meet for the election of the president of the
+Republic when a vacancy occurred. It was enacted that the
+president so elected should retain office for seven years, and be
+eligible for re-election at the end of his term. He was also held
+to be irresponsible, except in the case of high treason. The other
+principal prerogatives bestowed on the presidential office by the
+constitution of 1875 were the right of initiating laws concurrently
+with the members of the two chambers; the promulgation of
+the laws; the right of dissolving the Chamber of Deputies before
+its legal term on the advice of the Senate, and that of adjourning
+the sittings of both houses for a month; the right of pardon;
+the disposal of the armed forces of the country; the reception of
+diplomatic envoys, and, under certain limitations, the power
+to ratify treaties. The constitution relieved the president of
+the responsibility of private patronage, by providing that every
+act of his should be countersigned by a minister. The constitutional
+law provided that the Senate should consist of 300
+members, 75 being nominated for life by the National Assembly,
+and the remaining 225 elected for nine years by the departments
+and the colonies. Vacancies among the life members, after the
+dissolution of the National Assembly, were filled by the Senate
+until 1884, when the nominative system was abolished, though
+the survivors of it were not disturbed. The law of 1875 enacted
+that the elected senators, who were distributed among the
+departments on a rough basis of population, should be elected
+for nine years, a third of them retiring triennially. It was provided
+that the senatorial electors in each department should be
+the deputies, the members of the <i>conseil général</i> and of the <i>conseils
+d&rsquo;arrondissement</i>, and delegates nominated by the municipal
+councils of each commune. As the municipal delegates composed
+the majority in each electoral college, Gambetta called the
+Senate the Grand Council of the Communes; but in practice
+the senators elected have always been the nominees of the local
+deputies and of the departmental councillors (<i>conseillers généraux</i>).</p>
+
+<p>The Constitutional Law further provided that the deputies
+should be elected to the Chamber for four years by direct manhood
+suffrage, which had been enjoyed in France ever
+since 1848. The laws relating to registration, which is
+<span class="sidenote">Scrutin d&rsquo;arrondissement and scrutin de liste.</span>
+of admirable simplicity in France, were left practically
+the same as under the Second Empire. From 1875 to
+1885 the elections were held on the basis of <i>scrutin
+d&rsquo;arrondissement</i>, each department being divided into single-member
+districts. In 1885 <i>scrutin de liste</i> was tried, the department
+being the electoral unit, and each elector having as many
+votes as there were seats ascribed to the department without
+the power to cumulate&mdash;like the voting in the city of London
+when it returned four members. In 1889 <i>scrutin d&rsquo;arrondissement</i>
+was resumed. The payment of members continued as under
+the Second Empire, the salary now being fixed at 9000 francs
+a year in both houses, or about a pound sterling a day. The
+Senate and the Chamber were endowed with almost identical
+powers. The only important advantage given to the popular
+house in the paper constitution was its initiative in matters of
+finance, but the right of rejecting or of modifying the financial
+proposals of the Chamber was successfully upheld by the Senate.
+In reality the Chamber of Deputies has overshadowed the upper
+house. The constitution did not prescribe that ministers should
+be selected from either house of parliament, but in practice the
+deputies have been in cabinets in the proportion of five to one
+in excess of the senators. Similarly the very numerous ministerial
+crises which have taken place under the Third Republic have
+with the rarest exceptions been caused by votes in the lower
+chamber. Among minor differences between the two houses
+ordained by the constitution was the legal minimum age of their
+members, that of senators being forty and of deputies twenty-five.
+It was enacted, moreover, that the Senate, by presidential
+decree, could be constituted into a high court for the trial of
+certain offences against the security of the state.</p>
+
+<p>The constitution thus produced, the fourteenth since the
+Revolution of 1789, was the issue of a monarchical Assembly
+forced by circumstances to establish a republic. It
+was therefore distinguished from others which preceded
+<span class="sidenote">1876: Political parties under the new Constitution.</span>
+it in that it contained no declaration of principle and
+no doctrinal theory. The comparative excellence of
+the work must be recognized, seeing that it has lasted.
+But it owed its duration, as it owed its origin and its
+character, to the weakness of purpose and to the dissensions of
+the monarchical parties. The first legal act under the new
+constitution was the selection by the expiring National Assembly
+of seventy-five nominated senators, and here the reactionaries
+gave a crowning example of that folly which has ever marked
+their conduct each time they have had the chance of scoring an
+advantage against the Republic. The principle of nomination
+had been carried in the National Assembly by the Right and
+opposed by the Republicans. But the quarrels of the Legitimists
+with the duc de Broglie and his party were so bitter that the
+former made a present of the nominated element in the Senate
+to the Republicans in order to spite the Orleanists; so out of
+seventy-five senators nominated by the monarchical Assembly,
+fifty-seven Republicans were chosen. Without this suicidal
+act the Republicans would have been in a woeful minority in the
+Senate when parliament met in 1876 after the first elections
+under the new system of parliamentary government. The
+slight advantage which, in spite of their self-destruction, the
+reactionaries maintained in the upper house was outbalanced
+by the republican success at the elections to the Chamber.
+In a house of over 500 members only about 150 monarchical
+deputies were returned, of whom half were Bonapartists. The
+first cabinet under the new constitution was formed by Dufaure,
+an old minister of Louis Philippe like Thiers, and like him born in
+the 18th century. The premier now took the title of president
+of the council, the chief of the state no longer presiding at the
+meetings of ministers, though he continued to be present at their
+deliberations. Although the republican victories at the elections
+were greatly due to the influence of Gambetta, none of his partisans
+was included in the ministry, which was composed of members
+of the two central groups. At the end of 1876 Dufaure retired,
+but nearly all his ministers retained their portfolios under the
+presidency of Jules Simon, a pupil of Victor Cousin, who first
+entered political life in the Constituent Assembly of 1848, and
+was later a leading member of the opposition in the last seven
+years of the Second Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The premiership of Jules Simon came to an end with the
+abortive <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i> of 1877, commonly called from its date the
+<i>Seize Mai</i>. After the election of Marshal MacMahon
+to the presidency, the clerical party, irritated at the
+<span class="sidenote">The Seize Mai 1877.</span>
+failure to restore the comte de Chambord, commenced
+a campaign in favour of the restitution of the temporal power to
+the Pope. It provoked the Italian government to make common
+cause with Germany, as Prince Bismarck was likewise attacked
+by the French clericals for his ecclesiastical policy. At last
+Jules Simon, who was a liberal most friendly to Catholicism,
+had to accept a resolution of the Chamber, inviting the ministry
+to adopt the same disciplinary policy towards the Church which
+had been followed by the Second Empire and the Monarchy of
+July. It was on this occasion that Gambetta used his famous
+expression, &ldquo;<i>Le cléricalisme, voilà l&rsquo;ennemi</i>.&rdquo; Some days later
+a letter appeared in the <i>Journal officiel</i>, dated 16th May 1877,
+signed by President MacMahon, informing Jules Simon that he
+had no longer his confidence, as it was clear that he had lost
+that influence over the Chamber which a president of the Council
+ought to exercise. The dismissal of the prime minister and the
+presidential acts which followed did not infringe the letter of
+the new constitution; yet the proceeding was regarded as a
+<i>coup d&rsquo;état</i> in favour of the clerical reactionaries. The duc de
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page877" id="page877"></a>877</span>
+Broglie formed an anti-republican ministry, and Marshal MacMahon,
+in virtue of the presidential prerogative conferred by the
+law of 1875, adjourned parliament for a month. When the
+Chamber reassembled the republican majority of 363 denounced
+the coalition of parties hostile to the Republic. The president,
+again using his constitutional prerogative, obtained the authorization
+of the Senate to dissolve the Chamber. Meanwhile the
+Broglie ministry had put in practice the policy, favoured by all
+parties in France, of replacing the functionaries hostile to it
+with its own partisans. But in spite of the administrative
+electoral machinery being thus in the hands of the reactionaries,
+a republican majority was sent back to the Chamber, the sudden
+death of Thiers on the eve of his expected return to power, and
+the demonstration at his funeral, which was described as a
+silent insurrection, aiding the rout of the monarchists. The
+duc de Broglie resigned, and Marshal MacMahon sent for General
+de Rochebouet, who formed a cabinet of unknown reactionaries,
+but it lasted only a few days, as the Chamber refused to vote
+supply. Dufaure was then called back to office, and his moderate
+republican ministry lasted for the remainder of the MacMahon
+presidency.</p>
+
+<p>Thus ended the episode of the <i>Seize Mai</i>, condemned by the
+whole of Europe from its inception. Its chief effects were to
+prove again to the country the incompetency of the monarchists,
+and by associating in the public mind the Church with this
+ill-conceived venture, to provoke reprisals from the anti-clericals
+when they came into power. After the storm, the year 1878
+was one of political repose. The first international exhibition
+held at Paris after the war displayed to Europe how the secret
+of France&rsquo;s recuperative power lay in the industry and artistic
+instinct of the nation. Marshal MacMahon presided with
+<span class="sidenote">1879: Jules Grévy president of the Republic.</span>
+dignity over the fêtes held in honour of the exhibition,
+and had he pleased he might have tranquilly fulfilled
+the term of his Septennate. But in January 1879
+he made a difference of opinion on a military question
+an excuse for resignation, and Jules Grévy, the president
+of the Chamber, was elected to succeed him by the
+National Assembly, which thus met for the first time under the
+Constitutional Law of 1875.</p>
+
+<p>Henceforth the executive as well as the legislative power
+was in the hands of the republicans. The new president was
+a leader of the bar, who had first become known in the Constituent
+Assembly of 1848 as the advocate of the principle that a republic
+would do better without a president. M. Waddington was his
+first prime minister, and Gambetta was elected president of the
+Chamber. The latter, encouraged by his rivals in the idea that
+the time was not ripe for him openly to direct the affairs of the
+country, thus put himself, in spite of his occult dictatorship, in
+a position of official self-effacement from which he did not emerge
+until the jealousies of his own party-colleagues had undermined
+the prestige he had gained as chief founder of the Republic.
+The most active among them was Jules Ferry, minister of
+<span class="sidenote">Jules Ferry.</span>
+Education, who having been a republican deputy for
+Paris at the end of the Empire, was one of the members
+of the provisional government proclaimed on 4th
+September 1870. Borrowing Gambetta&rsquo;s cry that clericalism
+was the enemy, he commenced the work of reprisal for the Seize
+Mai. His educational projects of 1879 were thus anti-clerical
+in tendency, the most famous being article 7 of his education
+bill, which prohibited members of any &ldquo;unauthorized&rdquo; religious
+orders exercising the profession of teaching in any school in
+France, the disability being applied to all ecclesiastical communities,
+excepting four or five which had been privileged by
+special legislation. This enactment, aimed chiefly at the Jesuits,
+was advocated with a sectarian bitterness which will be associated
+with the name of Jules Ferry long after his more statesmanlike
+qualities are forgotten. The law was rejected by the Senate,
+Jules Simon being the eloquent champion of the clericals, whose
+intrigues had ousted him from office. The unauthorized orders
+were then dissolved by decree; but though the forcible expulsion
+of aged priests and nuns gave rise to painful scenes, it cannot
+be said that popular feeling was excited in their favour, so
+grievously had the Church blundered in identifying itself with
+the conspiracy of the <i>Seize Mai</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the death of the Prince Imperial in Zululand had
+shattered the hopes of the Bonapartists, and M. de Freycinet,
+a former functionary of the Empire, had become prime minister
+at the end of 1879. He had retained Jules Ferry at the ministry
+of Education, but unwilling to adopt all his anti-clerical policy,
+he resigned the premiership in September 1880. The constitution
+of the first Ferry cabinet secured the further exclusion from office
+of Gambetta, to which, however, he preferred his &ldquo;occult dictatorship.&rdquo;
+In August he had, as president of the Chamber, accompanied
+M. Grévy on an official visit to Cherbourg, and the acclamations
+called forth all over France by his speech, which was
+a hopeful defiance to Germany, encouraged the wily chief
+of the state to aid the republican conspiracy against the hero
+of the Republic. In 1881 the only political question before
+the country was the destiny of Gambetta. His influence in the
+Chamber was such that in spite of the opposition of the prime
+minister he carried his electoral scheme of <i>scrutin de liste</i>, descending
+from the presidential chair to defend it. Its rejection by
+the Senate caused no conflict between the houses. The check
+was inflicted not on the Chamber, but on Gambetta, who counted
+on his popularity to carry the lists of his candidates in all
+the republican departments in France as a quasi-plebiscitary
+demonstration in his favour. His rivals dared not openly
+quarrel with him. There was the semblance of a reconciliation
+between him and Ferry, and his name was the rallying-cry of
+the Republic at the general election, which was conducted on
+the old system of <i>scrutin d&rsquo;arrondissement</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The triumph for the Republic was great, the combined force
+of reactionary members returned being less than one-fifth of the
+new Chamber. M. Grévy could no longer abstain from
+asking Gambetta to form a ministry, but he had
+<span class="sidenote">Gambetta prime minister.</span>
+bided his time till jealousy of the &ldquo;occult power&rdquo;
+of the president of the Chamber had undermined his
+position in parliament. Consequently, when on the 14th of
+November 1881 Gambetta announced the composition of his
+cabinet, ironically called the &ldquo;<i>grand ministère</i>,&rdquo; which was to
+consolidate the Republic and to be the apotheosis of its chief,
+a great feeling of disillusion fell on the country, for his colleagues
+were untried politicians. The best known was Paul Bert, a man
+of science, who as the &ldquo;reporter&rdquo; in the Chamber of the Ferry
+Education Bill had distinguished himself as an aggressive freethinker,
+and he inappropriately was named minister of public
+worship. All the conspicuous republicans who had held office
+refused to serve under Gambetta. His cabinet was condemned
+in advance. His enemies having succeeded in ruining its composition,
+declared that the construction of a one-man machine
+was ominous of dictatorship, and the &ldquo;<i>grand ministère</i>&rdquo; lived for
+only ten weeks.</p>
+
+<p>Gambetta was succeeded in January 1882 by M. de Freycinet,
+who having first taken office in the Dufaure cabinet of 1877, and
+having continued to hold office at intervals until 1899,
+was the most successful specimen of a &ldquo;<i>ministrable</i>&rdquo;&mdash;as
+<span class="sidenote">Death of Gambetta.</span>
+recurrent portfolio-holders have been called under
+the Third Republic. His second ministry lasted only six months.
+The failure of Gambetta, though pleasing to his rivals, discouraged
+the republican party and disorganized its majority in the Chamber.
+M. Duclerc, an old minister of the Second Republic, then became
+president of the council, and before his short term of office was
+run Gambetta died on the last day of 1882, without having had
+the opportunity of displaying his capacity as a minister or an
+administrator. He was only forty-four at his death, and his fame
+rests on the unfulfilled promise of a brief career. The men who
+had driven him out of public life and had shortened his existence
+were the most ostentatious of the mourners at the great pageant
+with which he was buried, and to have been of his party was in
+future the popular trade-mark of his republican enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Gambetta&rsquo;s death was followed by a period of anarchy, during
+which Prince Napoleon, the son of Jerome, king of Westphalia,
+placarded the walls of Paris with a manifesto. The Chamber
+thereupon voted the exile of the members of the families which
+<span class="sidenote">Opportunism.</span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page878" id="page878"></a>878</span>
+had reigned in France. The Senate rejected the measure, and a
+conflict arose between the two houses. M. Duclerc resigned the
+premiership in January 1883 to his minister of the
+Interior, M. Fallières, a Gascon lawyer, who became
+president of the Senate in 1899 and president of the
+Republic in 1906. He held office for three weeks, when Jules Ferry
+became president of the council for the second time. Several of
+the closest of Gambetta&rsquo;s friends accepted office under the old
+enemy of their chief, and the new combination adopted the
+epithet &ldquo;opportunist,&rdquo; which had been invented by Gambetta
+in 1875 to justify the expediency of his alliance with Thiers.
+The Opportunists thenceforth formed an important group standing
+between the Left Centre, which was now excluded from office,
+and the Radicals. It claimed the tradition of Gambetta, but the
+guiding principle manifested by its members was that of securing
+the spoils of place. To this end it often allied itself with the
+Radicals, and the Ferry cabinet practised this policy in 1883
+when it removed the Orleans princes from the active list in the
+army as the illogical result of the demonstration of a Bonaparte.
+How needless was this proceeding was shown a few months later
+when the comte de Chambord died, as his death, which finally
+fused the Royalists with the Orleanists, caused no commotion
+in France.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1884 was unprecedented seeing that it passed
+without a change of ministry. Jules Ferry displayed real administrative
+ability, and as an era of steady government
+seemed to be commencing, the opportunity was taken
+<span class="sidenote">Revision of the Constitution, 1884.</span>
+to revise the Constitution. The two Chambers therefore
+met in congress, and enacted that the republican
+form of government could never be the subject of revision, and
+that all members of families which had reigned in France were
+ineligible for the presidency of the Republic&mdash;a repetition of the
+adventure of Louis Bonaparte in the middle of the century being
+thus made impossible. It also decided that the clauses of the
+law of 1875 relating to the organization of the Senate should no
+longer have a constitutional character. This permitted the
+reform of the Upper House by ordinary parliamentary procedure.
+So an organic law was passed to abolish the system of nominating
+senators, and to increase the number of municipal delegates in
+the electoral colleges in proportion to the population of the
+communes. The French nation, for the first time since it had
+enjoyed political life, had revised a constitution by pacific means
+without a revolution. Gambetta being out of the way, his
+favourite electoral system of <i>scrutin de liste</i> had no longer any
+terror for his rivals, so it was voted by the Chamber early in
+1885. Before the Senate had passed it into law the Ferry
+ministry had fallen at the end of March, after holding office for
+twenty-five months, a term rarely exceeded in the annals of the
+Third Republic. This long tenure of power had excited the
+dissatisfaction of jealous politicians, and the news of a slight
+disaster to the French troops in Tongking called forth all the
+pent-up rancour which Jules Ferry had inspired in various
+groups. By the exaggerated news of defeat Paris was excited
+<span class="sidenote">Tongking.</span>
+to the brink of a revolution. The approaches of the
+Chamber were invaded by an angry mob, and Jules
+Ferry was the object of public hate more bitter than any man
+had called forth in France since Napoleon III. on the days after
+Sedan. Within the Chamber he was attacked in all quarters.
+The Radicals took the lead, supported by the Monarchists, who
+remembered the anti-clerical rigour of the Ferry laws, by the
+Left Centre, not sorry for the tribulation of the group which had
+supplanted it, and by place-hunting republicans of all shades. The
+attack was led by a politician who disdained office. M. Georges
+Clémenceau, who had originally come to Paris from the Vendée
+as a doctor, had as a radical leader in the Chamber used his
+remarkable talent as an overthrower of ministries, and nearly
+every one of the eight ministerial crises which had already
+occurred during the presidency of Grévy had been hastened by
+his mordant eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>The next prime minister was M. Brisson, a radical lawyer and
+journalist, who in April 1885 formed a cabinet of &ldquo;concentration&rdquo;&mdash;that
+is to say, it was recruited from various groups with the
+idea of concentrating all republican forces in opposition to the reactionaries.
+MM. de Freycinet and Carnot, afterwards president
+of the Republic, represented the moderate element in this ministry,
+which superintended the general elections under <i>scrutin de liste</i>.
+That system was recommended by its advocates as a remedy
+for the rapid decadence in the composition of the Chamber.
+Manhood suffrage, which had returned to the National Assembly
+a distinguished body of men to conclude peace with Germany,
+had chosen a very different type of representative to sit in the
+Chamber created by the constitution of 1875. At each succeeding
+election the standard of deputies returned grew lower, till
+Gambetta described them contemptuously as &ldquo;<i>sous-vétérinaires</i>,&rdquo;
+indicating that they were chiefly chosen from the petty professional
+class, which represented neither the real democracy
+nor the material interests of the country. His view was that
+the election of members by departmental lists would ensure the
+candidature of the best men in each region, who under the system
+of single-member districts were apt to be neglected in favour of
+local politicians representing narrow interests. When his death
+had removed the fear of his using <i>scrutin de liste</i> as a plebiscitary
+organization, parliament sanctioned its trial. The result was
+<span class="sidenote">Elections of 1885.</span>
+not what its promoters anticipated. The composition
+of the Chamber was indeed transformed, but only by
+the substitution of reactionary deputies for republicans.
+Of the votes polled, 45% were given to the Monarchists, and
+if they had obtained one-half of the abstentions the Republic
+would have come to an end. At the same time the character
+of the republican deputies returned was not improved; so the sole
+effect of <i>scrutin de liste</i> was to show that the electorate, weary of
+republican dissensions, was ready to make a trial of monarchical
+government, if only the reactionary party proved that it contained
+statesmen capable of leading the nation. So menacing was the
+situation that the republicans thought it wise not further to
+expose their divisions in the presidential election which was
+due to take place at the end of the year. Consequently, on
+the 28th of December 1885, M. Grévy, in spite of his growing
+unpopularity, was elected president of the Republic for a second
+term of seven years.</p>
+
+<p>The Brisson cabinet at once resigned, and on the 7th of January
+1886 its most important member, M. de Freycinet, formed his
+third ministry, which had momentous influence on the
+history of the Republic. The new minister of war
+<span class="sidenote">General Boulanger.</span>
+was General Boulanger, a smart soldier of no remarkable
+military record; but being the nominee of M. Clémenceau, he began
+his official career by taking radical measures against commanding
+officers of reactionary tendencies. He thus aided the government
+in its campaign against the families which had reigned in
+France, whose situation had been improved by the result of the
+elections. The fêtes given by the comte de Paris to celebrate
+his daughter&rsquo;s marriage with the heir-apparent of Portugal
+moved the republican majority in the Chambers to expel from
+France the heads of the houses of Orleans and of Bonaparte,
+with their eldest sons. The names of all the princes on the army
+list were erased from it, the decree being executed with unseemly
+ostentation by General Boulanger, who had owed early
+promotion to the protection of the duc d&rsquo;Aumale, and on that
+prince protesting he was exiled too. Meanwhile General Boulanger
+took advantage of Grévy&rsquo;s unpopularity to make himself
+a popular hero, and at the review, held yearly on the 14th of
+July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, his acclamation
+by the Parisian mob showed that he was taking an unexpected
+place in the imagination of the people. He continued to work
+with the Radicals, so when they turned out M. de Freycinet in
+December 1886, one of their group, M. Goblet, a lawyer from
+Amiens, formed a ministry, and retained Boulanger as minister of
+war. M. Clémenceau, however, withdrew his support from the
+general, who was nevertheless loudly patronized by the violent
+radical press. His bold attitude towards Germany in connexion
+with the arrest on the German frontier of a French official named
+Schnaebele so roused the enthusiasm of the public, that M. Goblet
+was not sorry to resign in May 1887 in order to get rid of his too
+popular colleague.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page879" id="page879"></a>879</span></p>
+
+<p>To form the twelfth of his ministries, Grévy called upon M.
+Rouvier, an Opportunist from Marseilles, who had first held office
+in Gambetta&rsquo;s short-lived cabinet. General Boulanger
+was sent to command a <i>corps d&rsquo;armée</i> at Clermont-Ferrand;
+<span class="sidenote">The Wilson scandal.</span>
+but the popular press and the people
+clamoured for the hero who was said to have terrorized Prince
+Bismarck, and they encouraged him to play the part of a
+plebiscitary candidate. There were grave reasons for public discontent.
+Parliament in 1887 was more than usually sterile in
+legislation, and in the autumn session it had to attend to a scandal
+which had long been rumoured. The son-in-law of Grévy,
+Daniel Wilson, a prominent deputy who had been an under
+secretary of state, was accused of trafficking the decoration of the
+Legion of Honour, and of using the Elysée, the president&rsquo;s official
+residence, where he lived, as an agency for his corrupt practices.
+The evidence against him was so clear that his colleagues in the
+Chamber put the government into a minority in order to precipitate
+a presidential crisis, and on Grévy refusing to accept this
+hint, a long array of politicians, representing all the republican
+groups, declined his invitation to aid him in forming a new
+ministry, all being bent on forcing his resignation. Had General
+Boulanger been a man of resolute courage he might at this crisis
+have made a <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i>, for his popularity in the street and in the
+army increased as the Republic sank deeper into scandal and
+anarchy. At last, when Paris was on the brink of revolution,
+Grévy was prevailed on to resign. The candidates for his succession
+to the presidency were two ex-prime ministers, MM. Ferry
+and de Freycinet, and Floquet, a barrister, who had been conspicuous
+in the National Assembly for his sympathy with the Commune.
+The Monarchists had no candidate ready, and resolved
+to vote for Ferry, because they believed that if he were elected
+his unpopularity with the democracy would cause an insurrection
+in Paris and the downfall of the Republic. MM. de Freycinet
+and Floquet each looked for the support of the Radicals, and each
+had made a secret compact, in the event of his election, to restore
+General Boulanger to the war office. But M. Clémenceau, fearing
+the election of Jules Ferry, advised his followers to vote for an
+&ldquo;outsider,&rdquo; and after some man&oelig;uvring the congress elected by a
+large majority Sadi Carnot.</p>
+
+<p>The new president, though the nominee of chance, was an
+excellent choice. The grandson of Lazare Carnot, the &ldquo;organizer
+of victory&rdquo; of the Convention, he was also a man of
+unsullied probity. The tradition of his family name,
+<span class="sidenote">M. Carnot president of the Republic, 1887.</span>
+only less glorious than that of Bonaparte in the annals
+of the Revolution, was welcome to France, almost
+ready to throw herself into the arms of a soldier of
+fortune, while his blameless repute reconciled some of those
+whose opposition to the Republic had been quickened by the
+mean vices of Grévy. But the name and character of Carnot
+would have been powerless to check the Boulangist movement
+without the incompetency of its leader, who was getting the
+democracy at his back without knowing how to utilize it. The
+new president&rsquo;s first prime minister was M. Tirard, a senator who
+had held office in six of Grévy&rsquo;s ministries, and he formed a
+cabinet of politicians as colourless as himself. The early months
+of 1888 were occupied with the trial of Wilson, who was sentenced
+to two years&rsquo; imprisonment for fraud, and with the conflicts
+of the government with General Boulanger, who was deprived
+of his command for coming to Paris without leave. Wilson
+appealed against his sentence, and General Boulanger was
+elected deputy for the department of the Aisne by an enormous
+majority. It so happened that the day after his election a
+presidential decree was signed on the advice of the minister of
+war removing General Boulanger from the army, and the court
+of appeal quashed Wilson&rsquo;s conviction. Public feeling was
+profoundly moved by the coincidence of the release of the
+relative of the ex-president by the judges of the Republic on
+the same day that its ministers expelled from the army the
+popular hero of universal suffrage.</p>
+
+<p>As General Boulanger had been invented by the Radicals
+it was thought that a Radical cabinet might be a remedy to
+cope with him, so M. Floquet became president of the council
+in April 1888, M. de Freycinet taking the portfolio of war,
+<span class="sidenote">Boulangism.</span>
+which he retained through many ministries. M. Floquet&rsquo;s chief
+achievement was a duel with General Boulanger,
+in which, though an elderly civilian, he wounded him.
+Nothing, however, checked the popularity of the military politician,
+and though he was a failure as a speaker in the Chamber,
+several departments returned him as their deputy by great
+majorities. The Bonapartists had joined him, and while in his
+manifestos he described himself as the defender of the Republic,
+the mass of the Monarchists, with the consent of the comte de Paris,
+entered the Boulangist camp, to the dismay both of old-fashioned
+Royalists and of many Orleanists, who resented his recent
+treatment of the duc d&rsquo;Aumale. The centenary of the taking
+of the Bastille was to be celebrated in Paris by an international
+exhibition, and it appeared likely that it would be inaugurated
+by General Boulanger, so irresistible seemed his popularity.
+In January 1889 he was elected member for the metropolitan
+department of the Seine with a quarter of a million votes, and
+by a majority of eighty thousand over the candidate of the
+government. Had he marched on the Elysée the night of his
+election, nothing could have saved the parliamentary Republic;
+but again he let his chance go by. The government in alarm
+proposed the restoration of <i>scrutin d&rsquo;arrondissement</i> as the
+electoral system for <i>scrutin de liste</i>. The change was rapidly
+enacted by the two Chambers, and was a significant commentary
+on the respective advantages of the two systems. M. Tirard was
+again called to form a ministry, and he selected as minister of
+the interior M. Constans, originally a professor at Toulouse, who
+had already proved himself a skilful manipulator of elections when
+he held the same office in 1881. He was therefore given the
+supervision of the machinery of centralization with which it
+was supposed that General Boulanger would have to be fought
+<span class="sidenote">Boulanger&rsquo;s flight.</span>
+at the general election. That incomplete hero, however,
+saved all further trouble by flying the country
+when he heard that his arrest was imminent. The
+government, in order to prevent any plebiscitary manifestation
+in his favour, passed a law forbidding a candidate to present
+himself for a parliamentary election in more than one constituency;
+it also arraigned the general on the charge of treason
+before the Senate sitting as a high court, and he was sentenced
+in his absence to perpetual imprisonment. Such measures
+were needless. The flight of General Boulanger was the death
+of Boulangism. He alone had saved the Republic which had
+done nothing to save itself. Its government had, on the contrary,
+displayed throughout the crisis an anarchic feebleness and
+incoherency which would have speeded its end had the leader
+of the plebiscitary movement possessed sagacity or even common
+courage.</p>
+
+<p>The elections of 1889 showed how completely the reactionaries
+had compromised their cause in the Boulangist failure. Instead
+of 45% of the votes polled as in 1885, they obtained only 21%,
+and the comte de Paris, the pretender of constitutional monarchy,
+was irretrievably prejudiced by his alliance with the military
+adventurer who had outraged the princes of his house. A
+period of calm succeeded the storm of Boulangism, and for the
+first time under the Third Republic parliament set to work to
+produce legislation useful for the state, without rousing party
+passion, as in its other period of activity when the Ferry education
+laws were passed. Before the elections of 1889 the reform
+of the army was undertaken, the general term of active compulsory
+service was made three years, while certain classes
+hitherto dispensed from serving, including ecclesiastical seminarists
+and lay professors, had henceforth to undergo a year&rsquo;s
+military training. The new parliament turned its attention to
+social and labour questions, as the only clouds on the political
+horizon were the serious strikes in the manufacturing districts,
+which displayed the growing political organization of the socialist
+party. Otherwise nothing disturbed the calm of the country.
+The young duc d&rsquo;Orléans vainly tried to ruffle it by breaking
+his exile in order to claim his citizen&rsquo;s right to perform his
+military service. The cabinet was rearranged in March 1890, M.
+de Freycinet becoming prime minister for the fourth time, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page880" id="page880"></a>880</span>
+retaining the portfolio of war. All seemed to point to the consolidation
+of the Republic, and even the Church made signals
+of reconciliation. Cardinal Lavigerie, a patriotic missionary
+and statesman, entertained the officers of the fleet at Algiers,
+and proposed the toast of the Republic to the tune of the
+&ldquo;Marseillaise&rdquo; played by his <i>pères blancs</i>. The royalist Catholics
+protested, but it was soon intimated that the archbishop of
+Algiers&rsquo; demonstration was approved at Rome. The year 1891
+was one of the few in the annals of the Republic which passed
+without a change of ministry, but the agitations of 1892 were to
+counterbalance the repose of the two preceding years.</p>
+
+<p>The first crisis arose out of the peacemaking policy of the
+Pope. Following up his intimation to the archbishop of Algiers,
+Leo XIII. published in February 1892 an encyclical,
+bidding French Catholics accept the Republic as the
+<span class="sidenote">The papal encyclical, 1892.</span>
+firmly established form of government. The papal
+injunction produced a new political group called the
+&ldquo;Ralliés,&rdquo; the majority of its members being Monarchists who
+rallied to the Republic in obedience to the Vatican. The most
+conspicuous among them was Comte Albert de Mun, an eloquent
+exponent in the Chamber of legitimism and Christian socialism.
+The extreme Left mistrusted the adhesion of the new converts to
+the Republic, and ecclesiastical questions were the constant
+subjects of acrimonious debates in parliament. In the course
+of one of them M. de Freycinet found himself in a minority. He
+ceased to be prime minister, being succeeded by M. Loubet, a
+lawyer from Montélimar, who had previously held office for
+three months in the first Tirard cabinet; but M. de Freycinet
+continued to hold his portfolio of war. The confusion of the
+republican groups kept pace with the disarray of the reactionaries,
+and outside parliament the frequency of anarchist outrages did
+not increase public confidence. The only figure in the Republic
+which grew in prestige was that of M. Carnot, who in his frequent
+presidential tours dignified his office, though his modesty made
+him unduly efface his own personality.</p>
+
+<p>When the autumn session of 1892 began all other questions
+were overwhelmed by the bursting of the Panama scandal.
+The company associated for the piercing of the Isthmus
+of Panama, undertaken by M. de Lesseps, the maker
+<span class="sidenote">The Panama scandal.</span>
+of the Suez Canal, had become insolvent some years
+before. Fifty millions sterling subscribed by the
+thrift of France had disappeared, but the rumours involving
+political personages in the disaster were so confidently asserted
+to be reactionary libels, that a minister of the Republic, afterwards
+sent to penal servitude for corruption, obtained damages
+for the publication of one of them. It was known that M. de
+Lesseps was to be tried for misappropriating the money subscribed;
+but considering the vast sums lost by the public, little
+interest was taken in the matter till it was suddenly stirred by
+the dramatic suicide of a well-known Jewish financier closely
+connected with republican politicians, driven to death, it was
+said, by menaces of blackmail. Then succeeded a period of
+terror in political circles. Every one who had a grudge against
+an enemy found vent for it in the press, and the people of Paris
+lived in an atmosphere of delation. Unhappily it was true
+that ministers and members of parliament had been subsidized
+by the Panama company. Floquet, the president of the Chamber,
+avowed that when prime minister he had laid hands on £12,000
+of the company&rsquo;s funds for party purposes, and his justification
+of the act threw a light on the code of public morality of the
+parliamentary Republic. Other politicians were more seriously
+implicated on the charge of having accepted subsidies for their
+private purposes, and emotion reached its height when the cabinet
+ordered the prosecution of two of its members for corrupt traffic
+of their offices. These two ministers were afterwards discharged,
+and they seem to have been accused with recklessness; but their
+prosecution by their own colleagues proved that the statesmen
+of the Republic believed that their high political circles were
+sapped with corruption. Finally, only twelve senators and
+deputies were committed for trial, and the only one convicted
+was a minister of M. de Freycinet&rsquo;s third cabinet, who pleaded
+guilty to receiving large bribes from the Panama company. The
+public regarded the convicted politician as a scapegoat, believing
+that there were numerous delinquents in parliament, more guilty
+than he, who had not even been prosecuted. This feeling was
+aggravated by the sentence passed, but afterwards remitted, on
+the aged M. de Lesseps, who had involved French people in
+misfortune only because he too sanguinely desired to repeat the
+triumph he had achieved for France by his great work in Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>Within the nation the moral result of the Panama affair was
+a general feeling that politics had become under the Republic
+a profession unworthy of honest citizens. The sentiment evoked
+by the scandal was one of sceptical lassitude rather than of
+indignation. The reactionaries had crowned their record of
+political incompetence. At a crisis which gave legitimate opportunity
+to a respectable and patriotic Opposition they showed
+that the country had nothing to expect from them but incoherent
+and exaggerated invective. If the scandal had come to light
+in the time of General Boulanger the parliamentary Republic
+would not have survived it. As it was, the sordid story did little
+more than produce several changes of ministry. M. Loubet
+resigned the premiership in December 1892 to M. Ribot, a former
+functionary of the Empire, whose ministry lived for three stormy
+weeks. On the first day of 1893 M. Ribot formed his second
+cabinet, which survived till the end of March, when he was succeeded
+by his minister of education, M. Charles Dupuy, an ex-professor
+who had never held office till four months previously.
+M. Dupuy, having taken the portfolio of the interior, supervised
+the general election of 1893, which took place amid the profound
+indifference of the population, except in certain localities where
+personal antagonisms excited violence. An intelligent Opposition
+would have roused the country at the polls against the régime
+compromised by the Panama affair. Nothing of the sort occurred,
+and the electorate preferred the doubtful probity of their republican
+representatives to the certain incompetence of the
+reactionaries. The adversaries of the Republic polled only 16%
+of the votes recorded, and the chief feature of the election was
+the increased return of socialist and radical-socialist deputies.
+When parliament met it turned out the Dupuy ministry, and
+M. Casimir-Périer quitted the presidency of the Chamber to
+take his place. The new prime minister was the bearer of an
+eminent name, being the grandson of the statesman of 1831,
+and the great-grandson of the owner of Vizille, where the estates
+of Dauphiné met in 1788, as a prelude to the assembling of the
+states-general the next year. His acceptance of office aroused
+additional interest because he was a minister possessed of independent
+wealth, and therefore a rare example of a French
+politician free from the imputation of making a living out of
+politics. Neither his repute nor his qualities gave long life to his
+ministry, which fell in four months, and M. Dupuy was sent for
+again to form a cabinet in May 1894.</p>
+
+<p>Before the second Dupuy ministry had been in office a month
+President Carnot died by the knife of an anarchist at Lyons.
+He was perhaps the most estimable politician of the
+Third Republic. Although the standard of political
+<span class="sidenote">Assassination of president Carnot.<br /><br />
+Casimir-Périer president, 1894.</span>
+life was not elevated under his presidency, he at all
+events set a good personal example, and to have filled
+unscathed the most conspicuous position in the land during a
+period unprecedented for the scurrility of libels on public men
+was a testimony to his blameless character. As the term of his
+septennate was near, parliament was not unprepared for a presidential
+election, and M. Casimir-Périer, who had been spoken
+of as his possible successor, was elected by the Congress
+which met at Versailles on the 27th of June 1894, three
+days after Carnot&rsquo;s assassination. The election of
+one who bore respectably a name not less distinguished
+in history than that of Carnot seemed to ensure that the Republic
+would reach the end of the century under the headship of a
+president of exceptional prestige. But instead of remaining chief
+of the state for seven years, in less than seven months M. Casimir-Périer
+astonished France and Europe by his resignation. Scurrilously
+defamed by the socialist press, the new president found
+that the Republicans in the Chamber were not disposed to defend
+him in his high office; so, on the 15th of January 1895, he seized
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page881" id="page881"></a>881</span>
+the occasion of the retirement of the Dupuy ministry to address
+a message to the two houses intimating his resignation of the
+presidency, which, he said, was endowed with too many responsibilities
+and not sufficient powers.</p>
+
+<p>This time the Chambers were unprepared for a presidential
+vacancy, and to fill it in forty-eight hours was necessarily a
+matter of haphazard. The choice of the congress fell
+on Félix Faure, a merchant of Havre, who, though
+<span class="sidenote">Félix Faure president, 1895.</span>
+minister of marine in the retiring cabinet, was one of
+the least-known politicians who had held office. The
+selection was a good one, and introduced to the presidency a
+type of politician unfortunately rare under the Third Republic&mdash;a
+successful man of business. Félix Faure had a fine presence
+and polished manners, and having risen from a humble origin
+he displayed in his person the fact that civilization descends
+to a lower social level in France than elsewhere. Although he
+was in a sense a man of the people the Radicals and Socialists
+in the Chambers had voted against him. Their candidate, like
+almost all democratic leaders in France, had never worked with
+his hands&mdash;M. Brisson, the son of an attorney at Bourges, a
+member of the Parisian bar, and perpetual candidate for the
+presidency. Nevertheless the Left tried to take possession of
+President Faure. His first ministry, composed of moderate
+republicans, and presided over by M. Ribot, lasted until the
+autumn session of 1895, when it was turned out and a radical
+cabinet was formed by M. Léon Bourgeois, an ex-functionary,
+who when a prefect had been suspected of reactionary tendencies.</p>
+
+<p>The Bourgeois cabinet of 1895 was remarkable as the first
+ministry formed since 1877 which did not contain a single
+member of the outgoing cabinet. It was said to be exclusively
+radical in its composition, and thus to indicate that the days of
+&ldquo;republican concentration&rdquo; were over, and that the Republic,
+being firmly established, an era of party government on the
+English model had arrived. The new ministry, however, on
+analysis did not differ in character from any of its predecessors.
+Seven of its members were old office-holders of the ordinary
+&ldquo;ministrable&rdquo; type. The most conspicuous was M. Cavaignac,
+the son of the general who had opposed Louis Bonaparte in 1848,
+and the grandson of J.B. Cavaignac, the regicide member of the
+Convention. Like Carnot and Casimir-Périer, he was, therefore,
+one of those rare politicians of the Republic who possessed some
+hereditary tradition. An ambitious man, he was now classed
+as a Radical on the strength of his advocacy of the income-tax,
+the principle of which has never been popular in France, as being
+adverse to the secretive habits of thrift cultivated by the people,
+which are a great source of the national wealth. The radicalism
+of the rest of the ministry was not more alarming in character,
+and its tenure of office was without legislative result. Its fall, however,
+occasioned the only constitutionally interesting ministerial
+crisis of the twenty-four which had taken place since Grévy&rsquo;s
+election to the presidency sixteen years before. The Senate,
+disliking the fiscal policy of the government, refused to vote
+supply in spite of the support which the Chamber gave to the
+ministry. The collision between the two houses did not produce
+the revolutionary rising which the Radicals predicted, and the
+Senate actually forced the Bourgeois cabinet to resign amid
+profound popular indifference.</p>
+
+<p>The new prime minister was M. Méline, who began his long
+political career as a member of the Commune in 1871, but was so
+little compromised in the insurrection that Jules Simon gave
+him an under-secretaryship in his ministry of 1876. After that
+he was once a cabinet minister, and was for a year president of
+the Chamber. He was chiefly known as a protectionist; but it
+was as leader of the Progressists, as the Opportunists now called
+themselves, that he formed his cabinet in April 1896, which was
+announced as a moderate ministry opposed to the policy of the
+Radicals. It is true that it made no attempt to tax incomes, but
+otherwise its achievements did not differ from those of other
+ministries, radical or concentration, except in its long survival.
+It lasted for over two years, and lived as long as the second
+Ferry cabinet. Its existence was prolonged by certain incidents
+of the Franco-Russian alliance. The visit of the Tsar to Paris
+in October 1896, being the first official visit paid by a European
+sovereign to the Republic, helped the government over the
+<span class="sidenote">Franco-Russian alliance.</span>
+critical period at which ministries usually succumbed,
+and it was further strengthened in parliament by the
+invitation to the president of the Republic to return
+the imperial visit at St Petersburg in 1897. The
+Chamber came to its normal term that autumn; but a law had
+been passed fixing May as the month for general elections, and
+the ministry was allowed to retain office till the dissolution at
+Easter 1898.</p>
+
+<p>The long duration of the Méline government was said to be
+a further sign of the arrival of an era of party government with
+its essential accompaniment, ministerial stability. But in the
+country there was no corresponding sign that the electorate
+was being organized into two parties of Progressists and Radicals;
+while in the Chamber it was ominously observed that persistent
+opposition to the moderate ministry came from nominal supporters
+of its views, who were dismayed at one small band of
+fellow-politicians monopolizing office for two years. The last
+election of the century was therefore fought on a confused issue,
+the most tangible results being the further reduction of the
+Monarchists, who secured only 12% of the total poll, and the
+advance of the Socialists, who obtained nearly 20% of the votes
+recorded. The Radicals returned were less numerous than the
+Moderates, but with the aid of the Socialists they nearly balanced
+them. A new group entitled Nationalist made its appearance,
+supported by a miscellaneous electorate representing the malcontent
+element in the nation of all political shades from monarchist
+to revolutionary socialist. The Chamber, so composed,
+was as incoherent as either of its predecessors. It refused to re-elect
+the radical leader M. Brisson as its president, and then
+refused its confidence to the moderate leader M. Méline. M.
+Brisson, the rejected of the Chamber, was sent for to form a
+ministry, on the 28th of June 1898, which survived till the adjournment,
+only to be turned out when the autumn session began. M.
+Charles Dupuy thus became prime minister for the third time with
+a cabinet of the old concentration pattern, and for the third
+time in less than five years under his premiership the Presidency
+of the Republic became vacant. Félix Faure had increased in
+<span class="sidenote">1899: death of President Faure.</span>
+pomposity rather than in popularity. His contact with European
+sovereigns seems to have made him over-conscious of
+his superior rank, and he cultivated habits which
+austere republicans make believe to be the monopoly
+of frivolous courts. The regular domesticity
+of middle-class life may not be disturbed with impunity when
+age is advancing, and Félix Faure died with tragic unexpectedness
+on the 16th of February 1899. The joys of his high office
+were so dear to him that nothing but death would have induced
+him to lay it down before the term of his septennate. There was
+therefore no candidate in waiting for the vacancy; and as Paris
+was in an agitated mood the majority in the Congress elected
+M. Loubet president of the Republic, because he happened to hold
+<span class="sidenote">M. Loubet president.</span>
+the second place of dignity in the state, the presidency
+of the Senate, and was, moreover, a politician who had
+the confidence of the republican groups as an adversary
+of plebiscitary pretensions. His only competitor was M. Méline,
+whose ambitions were not realized, in spite of the alliance of his
+Progressist supporters with the Monarchists and Nationalists.
+The Dupuy ministry lasted till June 1899, when a new cabinet
+was formed by M. Waldeck-Rousseau, who, having held office
+under Gambetta and Jules Ferry, had relinquished politics for
+the bar, of which he had become a distinguished leader. Though
+a moderate republican, he was the first prime minister to give
+portfolios to socialist politicians. This was the distinguishing
+feature of the last cabinet of the century&mdash;the thirty-seventh
+which had taken office in the twenty-six years which had elapsed
+since the resignation of Thiers in 1873.</p>
+
+<p>It is now necessary to go back a few years in order to refer
+to a matter which, though not political in its origin, in its development
+filled the whole political atmosphere of France in the
+closing period of the 19th century. Soon after the failure of the
+<span class="sidenote">Anti-Semitic movement.</span>
+Boulangist movement a journal was founded at Paris called the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page882" id="page882"></a>882</span>
+<i>Libre Parole</i>. Its editor, M. Drumont, was known as the author
+of <i>La France juive</i>, a violent anti-Semitic work, written to denounce
+the influence exercised by Jewish financiers in
+the politics of the Third Republic. It may be said to
+have started the anti-Semitic movement in France,
+where hostility to the Jews had not the pretext
+existing in those lands which contain a large Jewish population
+exercising local rivalry with the natives of the soil, or spoiling
+them with usury. That state of things existed in Algeria, where
+the indigenous Jews were made French citizens during the
+Franco-Prussian War to secure their support against the Arabs
+in rebellion. But political anti-Semitism was introduced into
+Algeria only as an offshoot of the movement in continental
+France, where the great majority of the Jewish community were
+of the same social class as the politicians of the Republic.
+Primarily directed against the Jewish financiers, the movement
+was originally looked upon as a branch of the anti-capitalist
+propaganda of the Socialists. Thus the <i>Libre Parole</i> joined with
+the revolutionary press in attacking the repressive legislation
+provoked by the dynamite outrages of the anarchists, clerical
+reactionaries who supported it being as scurrilously abused by
+the anti-Semitic organ as its republican authors. The Panama
+affair, in the exposure of which the <i>Libre Parole</i> took a prominent
+part soon after its foundation, was also a bond between anti-Semites
+and Socialists, to whom, however, the Monarchists,
+always incapable of acting alone, united their forces. The
+implication of certain Jewish financiers with republican politicians
+in the Panama scandal aided the anti-Semites in their special
+propaganda, of which a main thesis was that the government of
+the Third Republic had been organized by its venal politicians for
+the benefit of Jewish immigrants from Germany, who had thus
+enriched themselves at the expense of the laborious and unsuspecting
+French population. The <i>Libre Parole</i>, which had
+become a popular organ with reactionaries and with malcontents
+of all classes, enlisted the support of the Catholics by attributing
+the anti-religious policy of the Republic to the influence of the
+Jews, skilfully reviving bitter memories of the enaction of the
+Ferry decrees, when sometimes the laicization of schools or the
+expulsion of monks and nuns had been carried out by a Jewish
+functionary. Thus religious sentiment and race prejudice were
+introduced into a movement which was at first directed against
+capital; and the campaign was conducted with the weapons of
+scurrility and defamation which had made an unlicensed press
+under the Third Republic a demoralizing national evil.</p>
+
+<p>An adroit feature of the anti-Semitic campaign was an appeal
+to national patriotism to rid the army of Jewish influence. The
+Jews, it was said, not content with directing the
+financial, and thereby the general policy of the Republic,
+<span class="sidenote">Condemnation of Captain Dreyfus.</span>
+had designs on the French army, in which they
+wished to act as secret agents of their German
+kindred. In October 1894 the <i>Libre Parole</i> announced that a
+Jewish officer of artillery attached to the general staff, Captain
+Alfred Dreyfus, had been arrested on the charge of supplying
+a government of the Triple Alliance with French military secrets.
+Tried by court-martial, he was sentenced to military degradation
+and to detention for life in a fortress. He was publicly degraded
+at Paris in January 1895, a few days before Casimir-Périer
+resigned the presidency of the Republic, and was transported
+to the Île du Diable on the coast of French Guiana. His conviction,
+on the charge of having betrayed to a foreign power
+documents relating to the national defence, was based on the
+alleged identity of his handwriting with that of an intercepted
+covering-letter, which contained a list of the papers treasonably
+communicated. The possibility of his innocence was not
+raised outside the circle of his friends; the Socialists, who subsequently
+defended him, even complained that common soldiers
+were shot for offences less than that for which this richly connected
+officer had been only transported. The secrecy of his
+trial did not shock public sentiment in France, where at that time
+all civilians charged with crime were interrogated by a judge in
+private, and where all accused persons are presumed guilty
+until proved innocent. In a land subject to invasion there was
+less disposition to criticize the decision of a military tribunal
+acting in the defence of the nation even than there would have
+been in the case of a doubtful judgment passed in a civil court.
+The country was practically unanimous that Captain Dreyfus
+had got his deserts. A few, indeed, suggested that had he not
+been a Jew he would never have been accused; but the greater
+number replied that an ordinary French traitor of Gentile birth
+would have been forgotten from the moment of his condemnation.
+The pertinacity with which some of his co-religionists set to
+work to show that he had been irregularly condemned seemed to
+justify the latter proposition. But it was not a Jew who brought
+about the revival of the affair. Colonel Picquart, an officer of
+great promise, became head of the intelligence department at the
+war office, and in 1896 informed the minister of his suspicion
+that the letter on which Dreyfus had been condemned was
+written by a certain Major Esterhazy. The military authorities,
+not wishing to have the case reopened, sent Colonel Picquart
+on foreign service, and put in his place Colonel Henry. The all-seeing
+press published various versions of the incident, and the
+anti-Semitic journals denounced them as proofs of a Jewish
+conspiracy against the French army.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of 1897 M. Scheurer-Kestner, an Alsatian devoted
+to France and a republican senator, tried to persuade his political
+friends to reopen the case; but M. Méline, the prime
+minister, declared in the name of the Republic that the
+<span class="sidenote">Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards.</span>
+Dreyfus affair no longer existed. The fact that the
+senator who championed Dreyfus was a Protestant
+encouraged the clerical press in its already marked tendency to
+utilize anti-Semitism as a weapon of ecclesiastical warfare.
+But the religious side-issues of the question would have had
+little importance had not the army been involved in the controversy,
+which had become so keen that all the population,
+outside that large section of it indifferent to all public questions,
+was divided into &ldquo;Dreyfusards&rdquo; and &ldquo;anti-Dreyfusards.&rdquo;
+The strong position of the latter was due to their assuming the
+position of defenders of the army, which, at an epoch when
+neither the legislature nor the government inspired respect, and
+the Church was the object of polemic, was the only institution in
+France to unite the nation by appealing to its martial and
+patriotic instincts. That is the explanation of the enthusiasm
+of the public for generals and other officers by whom the trial
+of Dreyfus and subsequent proceedings had been conducted in a
+manner repugnant to those who do not favour the arbitrary ways
+of military dictatorship, which, however, are not unpopular
+in France. The acquittal of Major Esterhazy by a court-martial,
+the conviction of Zola by a civil tribunal for a violent criticism
+of the military authorities, and the imprisonment without trial
+of Colonel Picquart for his efforts to exonerate Dreyfus, were
+practically approved by the nation. This was shown by the
+result of the general elections in May 1898. The clerical reactionaries
+were almost swept out of the Chamber, but the overwhelming
+republican majority was practically united in its hostility to
+the defenders of Dreyfus, whose only outspoken representatives
+were found in the socialist groups. The moderate Méline
+ministry was succeeded in June 1898 by the radical Brisson
+ministry. But while the new prime minister was said to be
+personally disposed to revise the sentence on Dreyfus, his civilian
+minister of war, M. Cavaignac, was as hostile to revision as any
+of his military predecessors&mdash;General Mercier, under whom the
+trial took place, General Zurlinden, and General Billot, a republican
+soldier devoted to the parliamentary régime.</p>
+
+<p>The radical minister of war in July 1898 laid before the
+Chamber certain new proofs of the guilt of Dreyfus, in a speech
+so convincing that the house ordered it to be placarded
+in all the communes of France. The next month
+<span class="sidenote">Political results of Dreyfus agitation.</span>
+Colonel Henry, the chief of the intelligence department,
+confessed to having forged those new proofs, and then
+committed suicide. M. Cavaignac thereupon resigned office,
+but declared that the crime of Henry did not prove the innocence
+of Dreyfus. Many, however, who had hitherto accepted the
+judgment of 1894, reflected that the offence of a guilty man did
+not need new crime for its proof. It was further remarked that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page883" id="page883"></a>883</span>
+the forgery had been committed by the intimate colleague of
+the officers of the general staff, who had zealously protected
+Esterhazy, the suspected author of the document on which
+Dreyfus had been convicted. An uneasy misgiving became
+widespread; but partisan spirit was too excited for it to cause
+a general revulsion of feeling. Some journalists and politicians
+of the extreme Left had adopted the defence of Dreyfus as an
+anti-clerical movement in response to the intemperate partisanship
+of the Catholic press on the other side. Other members of
+the socialist groups, not content with criticizing the conduct of
+the military authorities in the Dreyfus affair, opened a general
+attack on the French army,&mdash;an unpopular policy which allowed
+the anti-Dreyfusards to utilize the old revolutionary device of
+making the word &ldquo;patriotism&rdquo; a party cry. The defamation
+and rancour with which the press on both sides flooded the land
+obscured the point at issue. However, the Brisson ministry
+just before its fall remitted the Dreyfus judgment to the criminal
+division of the cour de cassation&mdash;the supreme court of revision
+in France. M. Dupuy formed a new cabinet in November 1898,
+and made M. de Freycinet minister of war, but that adroit
+office-holder, though a civilian and a Protestant, did not favour
+the anti-military and anti-clerical defenders of Dreyfus. The
+refusal of the Senate, the stronghold of the Republic, to re-elect
+M. Scheurer-Kestner as its vice-president, showed that the
+opportunist minister of war understood the feeling of parliament,
+which was soon displayed by an extraordinary proceeding.
+The divisional judges, to whom the case was remitted, showed
+signs that their decision would be in favour of a new trial of
+Dreyfus. The republican legislature, therefore, disregarding
+the principle of the separation of the powers, which is the basis
+of constitutional government, took the arbitrary step of interfering
+with the judicial authority. It actually passed a law withdrawing
+the partly-heard cause from the criminal chamber of the
+cour de cassation, and transferring it to the full court of three
+divisions, in the hope that a majority of judges would thus be
+found to decide against the revision of the sentence on Dreyfus.</p>
+
+<p>This flagrant confusion of the legislative with the judicial
+power displayed once more the incompetence of the French
+rightly to use parliamentary institutions; but it left the nation
+indifferent. It was during the passage of the bill that the
+president of the Republic suddenly died. Félix Faure was said
+to be hostile to the defenders of Dreyfus and disposed to utilise
+the popular enthusiasm for the army as a means of making the
+presidential office independent of parliament. The Chambers,
+therefore, in spite of their anti-Dreyfusard bias, were determined
+not to relinquish any of their constitutional prerogative. The
+military and plebiscitary parties were now fomenting the public
+discontent by noisy demonstrations. The president of the Senate,
+M. Loubet, as has been mentioned, was known to have no
+sympathy with this agitation, so he was elected president of
+the Republic by a large majority at the congress held at Versailles
+on 18th February 1899. The new president, who was unknown
+to the public, though he had once been prime minister for nine
+months, was respected in political circles; but his elevation to
+the first office of the State made him the object of that defamation
+which had become the chief characteristic of the partisan
+press under the Third Republic. He was recklessly accused of
+having been an accomplice of the Panama frauds, by screening
+certain guilty politicians when he was prime minister in 1892,
+and because he was not opposed to the revision of the Dreyfus
+sentence he was wantonly charged with being bought with
+Jewish money. Meanwhile the united divisions of the cour de
+cassation were, in spite of the intimidation of the legislature,
+reviewing the case with an independence worthy of praise in an
+ill-paid magistracy which owed its promotion to political influence.
+Instead of justifying the suggestive interference of parliament
+it revised the judgment of the court-martial, and ordered Dreyfus
+to be re-tried by a military tribunal at Rennes. The Dupuy
+ministry, which had wished to prevent this decision, resigned,
+and M. Waldeck-Rousseau formed a heterogeneous cabinet in
+which Socialists, who for the first time took office, had for their
+colleague as minister of war General de Galliffet, whose chief
+political fame had been won as the executioner of the Communards
+after the insurrection of 1871. Dreyfus was brought back
+<span class="sidenote">Second trial of Dreyfus.</span>
+from the Devil&rsquo;s Island, and in August 1899 was put
+upon his trial a second time. His old accusers, led
+by General Mercier, the minister of war of 1894,
+redoubled their efforts to prove his guilt, and were
+permitted by the officers composing the court a wide license
+according to English ideas of criminal jurisprudence. The
+published evidence did not, however, seem to connect Dreyfus
+with the charges brought against him. Nevertheless the court,
+by a majority of five to two, found him guilty, and with illogical
+inconsequence added that there were in his treason extenuating
+circumstances. He was sentenced to ten years&rsquo; detention, and
+while it was being discussed whether the term he had already
+served would count as part of his penalty, the ministry completed
+the inconsequency of the situation by advising the president of
+the Republic to pardon the prisoner. The result of the second
+trial satisfied neither the partisans of the accused, who desired
+his rehabilitation, some of them reproaching him for accepting
+a pardon, nor his adversaries, whose vindictiveness was unsated
+by the penalty he had already suffered. But the great mass of
+the French people, who are always ready to treat a public
+question with indifference, were glad to be rid of a controversy
+which had for years infected the national life.</p>
+
+<p>The Dreyfus affair was severely judged by foreign critics as
+a miscarriage of justice resulting from race-prejudice. If that
+simple appreciation rightly describes its origin, it
+became in its development one of those scandals
+<span class="sidenote">Real character of the Dreyfus agitation.</span>
+symptomatic of the unhealthy political condition of
+France, which on a smaller scale had often recurred
+under the Third Republic, and which were made the
+pretext by the malcontents of all parties for gratifying their
+animosities. That in its later stages it was not a question of
+race-persecution was seen in the curious phenomenon of journals
+owned or edited by Jews leading the outcry against the Jewish
+officer and his defenders. That it was not a mere episode of the
+rivalry between Republicans and Monarchists, or between the
+advocates of parliamentarism and of military autocracy, was
+evident from the fact that the most formidable opponents of
+Dreyfus, without whose hostility that of the clericals and
+reactionaries would have been ineffective, were republican
+politicians. That it was not a phase of the anti-capitalist
+movement was shown by the zealous adherence of the socialist
+leaders and journalists to the cause of Dreyfus; indeed, one
+remarkable result of the affair was its diversion of the socialist
+party and press for several years from their normal campaign
+against property. The Dreyfus affair was utilized by the reactionaries
+against the Republic, by the clericals against the non-Catholics,
+by the anti-clericals against the Church, by the military
+party against the parliamentarians, and by the revolutionary
+socialists against the army. It was also conspicuously utilized
+by rival republican politicians against one another, and the chaos
+of political groups was further confused by it.</p>
+
+<p>An epilogue to the Dreyfus affair was the trial for treason before
+the Senate, at the end of 1899, of a number of persons, mostly
+obscure followers either of M. Déroulède the poet,
+who advocated a plebiscitary republic, or of the duc
+<span class="sidenote">The State trial of 1899.</span>
+d&rsquo;Orléans, the pretender of the constitutional monarchy.
+On the day of President Faure&rsquo;s funeral M. Déroulède
+had vainly tried to entice General Roget, a zealous adversary
+of Dreyfus, who was on duty with his troops, to march on the
+Elysée in order to evict the newly-elected president of the
+Republic. Other demonstrations against M. Loubet ensued,
+the most offensive being a concerted assault upon him on the
+racecourse at Auteuil in June 1899. The subsequent resistance
+to the police of a band of anti-Semites threatened with arrest,
+who barricaded themselves in a house in the rue Chabrol, in the
+centre of Paris, and, with the marked approval of the populace,
+sustained a siege for several weeks, indicated that the capital
+was in a condition not far removed from anarchy. M. Déroulède,
+indicted at the assizes of the Seine for his misdemeanour on
+the day of President Faure&rsquo;s funeral, had been triumphantly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page884" id="page884"></a>884</span>
+acquitted. It was evident that no jury would convict citizens
+prosecuted for political offences and the government therefore
+decided to make use of the article of the Law of 1875, which
+allowed the Senate to be constituted a high court for the trial of
+offences endangering the state. A respectable minority of the
+Senate, including M. Wallon, the venerable &ldquo;Father of the
+Constitution&rdquo; of 1875, vainly protested that the framers of the
+law intended to invest the upper legislative chamber with
+judicial power only for the trial of grave crimes of high treason,
+and not of petty political disorders which a well-organized
+government ought to be able to repress with the ordinary
+machinery of police and justice. The outvoted protest was
+justified by the proceedings before the High Court, which, undignified
+and disorderly, displayed both the fatuity of the so-called
+conspirators and the feebleness of the government which
+had to cope with them. The trial proved that the plebiscitary
+faction was destitute of its essential factor, a chief to put forward
+for the headship of the state, and that it was resolved, if it overturned
+the parliamentary system, not to accept under any
+conditions the duc d&rsquo;Orléans, the only pretender before the
+public. It was shown that royalists and plebiscitary republicans
+alike had utilized as an organization of disorder the anti-Semitic
+propaganda which had won favour among the masses as a
+nationalist movement to protect the French from foreign competition.
+The evidence adduced before the high court revealed,
+moreover, the curious fact that certain Jewish royalists had given
+to the duc d&rsquo;Orléans large sums of money to found anti-Semitic
+journals as the surest means of popularizing his cause.</p>
+
+<p>The last year of the 19th century, though uneventful for
+France, was one of political unrest. This, however, did not take
+the form of ministerial crises, as, for the fourth time
+since responsible cabinets were introduced in 1873,
+<span class="sidenote">French parties at the close of the 19th century.</span>
+a whole year, from the 1st of January to the 31st of
+December, elapsed without a change of ministry.
+The prime minister, M. Waldeck-Rousseau, though
+his domestic policy exasperated a large section of the
+political world, including one half of the Progressive group
+which he had helped to found, displayed qualities of statesmanship
+always respected in France, but rarely exhibited under the
+Third Republic. He had proved himself to be what the French
+call <i>un homme de gouvernement</i>&mdash;that is to say, an authoritative
+administrator of unimpassioned temperament capable of governing
+with the arbitrary machinery of Napoleonic centralization.
+His alliance with the extreme Left and the admission into his
+cabinet of socialist deputies, showed that he understood which
+wing of the Chamber it was best to conciliate in order to keep the
+government in his hands for an abnormal term. The advent to
+office of Socialists disquieted the respectable and prosperous
+commercial classes, which in France take little part in politics,
+though they had small sympathy with the nationalists, who
+were the most violent opponents of the Waldeck-Rousseau
+ministry. The alarm caused by the handing over of important
+departments of the state to socialist politicians arose upon a
+danger which is not always understood beyond the borders of
+France. Socialism in France is a movement appealing to the
+revolutionary instincts of the French democracy, advocated in
+vague terms by the members of rival groups or sects. Thus the
+increasing number of socialist deputies in parliament had produced
+no legislative results, and their presence in the cabinet
+was not feared on that account. The fear which their office-holding
+inspired was due to the immense administrative patronage
+which the centralized system confides to each member of
+the government. French ministers are wont to bestow the places
+at their disposal on their political friends, so the prospect of
+administrative posts being filled all over the land by revolutionaries
+caused some uneasiness. Otherwise the presence of
+Socialists on the ministerial bench seemed to have no other effect
+than that of partially muzzling the socialist groups in the
+Chamber. The opposition to the government was heterogeneous.
+It included the few Monarchists left in the Chamber, the Nationalists,
+who resembled the Boulangists of twelve years before, and
+who had added anti-Semitism to the articles of the revisionist
+creed, and a number of republicans, chiefly of the old Opportunist
+group, which had renewed itself under the name of Progressist
+at the time when M. Waldeck-Rousseau was its most important
+member in the Senate.</p>
+
+<p>The ablest leaders of this Opposition were all malcontent
+Republicans; and this fact seemed to show that if ever any
+form of monarchy were restored in France, political office would
+probably remain in the hands of men who were former ministers
+of the Third Republic. Thus the most conspicuous opponents
+of the cabinet were three ex-prime ministers, MM. Méline,
+Charles Dupuy and Ribot. Less distinguished republican
+&ldquo;ministrables&rdquo; had their normal appetite for office whetted
+in 1900 by the international exhibition at Paris. It brought the
+ministers of the day into unusual prominence, and endowed
+them with large subsidies voted by parliament for official
+entertainments. The exhibition was planned on too ambitious
+a scale to be a financial success. It also called forth the just
+regrets of those who deplored the tendency of Parisians under
+the Third Republic to turn their once brilliant city into an
+international casino. Its most satisfactory feature was the
+proof it displayed of the industrial inventiveness and the artistic
+instinct of the French. The political importance of the exhibition
+lay in the fact that it determined the majority in the Chamber
+not to permit the foreigners attracted by it to the capital to
+witness a ministerial crisis. Few strangers of distinction, however,
+came to it, and not one sovereign of the great powers
+visited Paris; but the ministry remained in office, and M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau had uninterrupted opportunity of showing
+his governmental ability. The only change in his cabinet took
+place when General de Galliffet resigned the portfolio of war
+to General André. The army, as represented by its officers,
+had shown symptoms of hostility to the ministry in consequence
+of the pardon of Dreyfus. The new minister of war repressed
+such demonstrations with proceedings of the same arbitrary
+character as those which had called forth criticism in England
+when used in the Dreyfus affair. In both cases the high-handed
+policy was regarded either with approval or with indifference by
+the great majority of the French nation, which ever since the
+Revolution has shown that its instincts are in favour of authoritative
+government. The emphatic support given by the radical
+groups to the autocratic policy of M. Waldeck-Rousseau and his
+ministers was not surprising to those who have studied the
+history of the French democracy. It has always had a taste
+for despotism since it first became a political power in the days
+of the Jacobins, to whose early protection General Bonaparte
+owed his career. On the other hand liberalism has always been
+repugnant to the masses, and the only period in which the
+Liberals governed the country was under the régime of limited
+suffrage&mdash;during the Restoration and the Monarchy of July.</p>
+
+<p>The most important event in France during the last year of
+the century, not from its political result, but from the lessons
+it taught, was perhaps the Paris municipal election. The
+quadrennial renewal of all the municipal councils of France took
+place in May 1900. The municipality of the capital had been
+for many years in the hands of the extreme Radicals and the
+revolutionary Socialists. The Parisian electors now sent to the
+Hôtel de Ville a council in which the majority were Nationalists,
+in general sympathy with the anti-Semitic and plebiscitary
+movements. The nationalist councillors did not, however, form
+one solid party, but were divided into five or six groups, representing
+every shade of political discontent, from monarchism to
+revisionist-socialism. While the electorate of Paris thus pronounced
+for the revision of the Constitution, the provincial
+elections, as far as they had a political bearing, were favourable
+to the ministry and to the Republic. M. Waldeck-Rousseau
+accepted the challenge of the capital, and dealt with its representatives
+with the arbitrary weapons of centralization which
+the Republic had inherited from the Napoleonic settlement of
+the Revolution. Municipal autonomy is unknown in France, and
+the town council of Paris has to submit to special restrictions on
+its liberty of action. The prefect of the Seine is always present
+at its meetings as agent of the government and the minister of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page885" id="page885"></a>885</span>
+the interior can veto any of its resolutions. The Socialists, when
+their party ruled the municipality, clamoured in parliament for
+<span class="sidenote">Paris and the provinces.</span>
+the removal of this administrative control. But now
+being in a minority they supported the government
+in its anti-autonomic rigours. The majority of the
+municipal council authorized its president to invite
+to a banquet, in honour of the international exhibition,
+the provincial mayors and a number of foreign municipal
+magnates, including the lord mayor of London. The ministers
+were not invited, and the prefect of the Seine thereupon informed
+the president of the municipality that he had no right, without
+consulting the agent of the government, to offer a banquet to the
+provincial mayors; and they, with the deference which French
+officials instinctively show to the central authority, almost all
+refused the invitation to the Hôtel de Ville. The municipal
+banquet was therefore abandoned, but the government gave
+one in the Tuileries gardens, at which no fewer than 22,000 mayors
+paid their respects to the chief of the state. These events showed
+that, as in the Terror, as at the <i>coup d&rsquo;état</i> of 1851, and as in the
+insurrection of the Commune, the French provinces were never
+disposed to follow the political lead of the capital, whether
+the opinions prevailing there were Jacobin or reactionary.
+These incidents displayed the tendency of the French democracy,
+in Paris and in the country alike, to submit to and even to encourage
+the arbitrary working of administrative centralization.
+The elected mayors of the provincial communes, urban and
+rural, quitted themselves like well-drilled functionaries of the
+state, respectful of their hierarchical superiors, just as in the days
+when they were the nominees of the government; while the
+population of Paris, in spite of its perennial proneness to revolution,
+accepted the rebuff inflicted on its chosen representatives
+without any hostile demonstration. The municipal elections
+in Paris afforded fresh proof of the unchanging political ineptitude
+of the reactionaries. The dissatisfaction of the great capital
+with the government of the Republic might, in spite of the
+reluctance of the provinces to follow the lead of Paris, have had
+grave results if skilfully organized. But the anti-republican
+groups, instead of putting forward men of high ability or reputation
+to take possession of the Hôtel de Ville, chose their candidates
+among the same inferior class of professional politicians as the
+Radicals and the Socialists whom they replaced on the municipal
+council.</p>
+
+<p>The beginning of a century of the common era is a purely
+artificial division of time. Yet it has often marked a turning-point
+in the history of nations. This was notably the
+case in France in 1800. The violent and anarchical
+<span class="sidenote">France at the opening of the 20th century.</span>
+phases of the Revolution of 1789 came to an end with
+the 18th century; and the dawn of the 19th was
+coincident with the administrative reconstruction
+of France by Napoleon, on lines which endured with
+little modification till the end of that century, surviving seven
+revolutions of the executive power. The opening years of the
+20th century saw no similar changes in the government of the
+country. The Third Republic, which was about to attain an
+age double that reached by any other regime since the Revolution,
+continued to live on the basis of the Constitution enacted in
+1875, before it was five years old. Yet it seems not unlikely that
+historians of the future may take the date 1900 as a landmark
+between two distinct periods in the evolution of the French
+nation.</p>
+
+<p>With the close of the 19th century the Dreyfus affair came
+practically to an end. Whatever the political and moral causes
+of the agitation which attended it, its practical result
+was to strengthen the Radical and Socialist parties in
+<span class="sidenote">Results of the Dreyfus affair.</span>
+the Republic, and to reduce to unprecedented impotence
+the forces of reaction. This was due more to the
+maladroitness of the Reactionaries than to the virtues or the
+prescience of the extreme Left, as the imprisonment of the Jewish
+captain, which agitated and divided the nation, could not have
+been inflicted without the ardent approval of Republicans of
+all shades of opinion. But when the majority at last realized
+that a mistake had been committed, the Reactionaries, in great
+measure through their own unwise policy, got the chief credit
+for it. Consequently, as the clericals formed the militant section
+of the anti-Republican parties, and as the Radical-Socialists
+were at that time keener in their hostility to the Church than in
+their zeal for social or economic reform, the issue of the Dreyfus
+affair brought about an anti-clerical movement, which, though
+initiated and organized by a small minority, met with nothing
+to resist it in the country, the reactionary forces being effete
+and the vast majority of the population indifferent. The main
+and absorbing feature therefore of political life in France in the
+first years of the 20th century was a campaign against the Roman
+Catholic Church, unparalleled in energy since the Revolution.
+Its most striking result was the rupture of the Concordat between
+France and the Vatican. This act was additionally important
+as being the first considerable breach made in the administrative
+structure reared by Napoleon, which had hitherto survived all
+the vicissitudes of the 19th century. Concurrently with this
+the influence of the Socialist party in French policy largely
+increased. A primary principle professed by the Socialists
+throughout Europe is pacificism, and its dissemination in France
+acted in two very different ways. It encouraged in the French
+people a growth of anti-military spirit, which showed some sign
+of infecting the national army, and it impelled the government
+of the Republic to be zealous in cultivating friendly relations
+with other powers. The result of the latter phase of pacificism
+was that France, under the Radical-Socialist administrations
+of the early years of the 20th century, enjoyed a measure of
+international prestige of that superficial kind which is expressed
+by the state visits of crowned heads to the chief of the executive
+power, greater than at any period since the Second Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The voting of the law which separated the Church from the
+<span class="sidenote">Church policy.</span>
+state will probably mark a capital date in French history; so,
+as the ecclesiastical policy of successive ministries
+filled almost entirely the interior chronicles of France
+for the first five years of the new century, it will be
+convenient to set forth in order the events which during that
+period led up to the passing of the Separation Act.</p>
+
+<p>The French legislature during the first session of the 20th
+century was chiefly occupied with the passing of the Associations
+Law. That measure, though it entirely changed the legal
+position of all associations in France, was primarily directed
+against the religious associations of the Roman Catholic Church.
+Their influence in the land, according to the anti-clericals, had
+been proved by the Dreyfus affair to be excessive. The Jesuits
+were alleged, on their own showing, to exercise considerable
+power over the officers of the army, and in this way to have been
+largely responsible for the blunders of the Dreyfus case. Another
+less celebrated order, which took an active part against Dreyfus,
+the Assumptionists, had achieved notoriety by its journalistic
+enterprise, its cheap newspapers of wide circulation being remarkable
+for the violence of their attacks on the institutions
+and men of the Republic. The mutual antagonism between the
+French government and religious congregations is a tradition
+which dates from the ancient monarchy and was continued by
+Napoleon I. long before the Third Republic adopted it in the
+legislation associated with the names of Jules Ferry and Paul
+Bert. The prime minister, under whose administration the
+20th century succeeded the 19th, was M. Waldeck-Rousseau,
+who had been the colleague of Paul Bert in Gambetta&rsquo;s <i>grand
+ministère</i>, and in 1883 had served under Jules Ferry in his second
+ministry. He had retired from political life, though he remained
+a member of the Senate, and was making a large fortune at the
+bar, when in June 1899, at pecuniary sacrifice, he consented to
+form a ministry for the purpose of &ldquo;liquidating&rdquo; the Dreyfus
+affair. In 1900, the year after the second condemnation of
+Dreyfus and his immediate pardon by the government, M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau in a speech at Toulouse announced that
+legislation was about to be undertaken on the subject of associations.</p>
+
+<p>At that period the hostility of the Revolution to the principle
+of associations of all kinds, civil as well as religious, was still
+enforced by the law. With the exception of certain commercial
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page886" id="page886"></a>886</span>
+societies subject to special legislation, no association composed
+of more than twenty persons could be formed without governmental
+authorization which was always revocable, the restriction
+applying equally to political and social clubs and to religious
+communities. The law was the same for all, but was differently
+applied. Authorization was rarely refused to political or social
+societies, though any club was liable to have its authorization
+withdrawn and to be shut up or dissolved. But to religious
+orders new authorization was practically never granted. Only
+four of them, the orders of Saint Lazare, of the Saint Esprit,
+of the Missions Étrangères and of Saint Sulpice, were authorized
+under the Third Republic&mdash;their authorization dating from the
+First Empire and the Restoration. The Frères de la Doctrine
+Chrétienne were also recognized, not, however, as a religious
+congregation under the jurisdiction of the minister of public
+worship, but as a teaching body under that of the minister of
+education. All the great historical orders, preaching, teaching
+or contemplative, were &ldquo;unauthorized&rdquo;; they led a precarious
+life on sufferance, having as corporations no civil existence,
+and being subject to dissolution at a moment&rsquo;s notice by the
+administrative authority. In spite of this disability and of the
+decrees of 1880 directed against unauthorized monastic orders
+they had so increased under the anti-clerical Republic, that the
+religious of both sexes were more numerous in France at the
+beginning of the 20th century than at the end of the ancient
+monarchy. Moreover, in the twenty years during which unauthorized
+Orders had been supposed to be suppressed under
+the Ferry Decrees, their numbers had become six times more
+numerous than before, while it was the authorized Congregations
+which had diminished. The bare catalogue of the religious
+houses in the land, with the value of their properties (estimated
+by M. Waldeck-Rousseau at a milliard&mdash;£40,000,000) filled
+two White Books of two thousand pages, presented to parliament
+on the 4th of December 1900. The hostility to the Congregations
+was not confined to the anti-clericals. The secular
+clergy were suffering materially from the enterprising competition
+of their old rivals the regulars. Had the legislation for defining
+the legal situation of the religious orders been undertaken with
+the sole intention of limiting their excessive growth, such a
+measure would have been welcome to the parochial clergy.
+But they saw that the attack upon the congregations was only
+preliminary to a general attack upon the Church, in spite of the
+sincere assurances of the prime minister, a statesman of conservative
+temperament, that no harm would accrue to the secular
+clergy from the passing of the Associations Law.</p>
+
+<p>In January 1901, on the eve of the first debate in the Chamber
+of Deputies on the Associations bill, a discussion took place
+which showed that the rupture of the Concordat might
+be nearing the range of practical politics, though
+<span class="sidenote">Associations Bill.</span>
+parliament was as yet unwilling to take it into consideration.
+The archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Richard, had published
+a letter addressed to him by Leo XIII. deploring the
+projected legislation as being a breach of the Concordat under
+which the free exercise of the Catholic religion in France was
+assured. The Socialists argued that this letter was an intolerable
+intervention on the part of the Vatican in the domestic politics
+of the Republic, and proposed that parliament should after
+voting the Associations Law proceed to separate Church and
+State. M. Waldeck-Rousseau, the prime minister, calm and
+moderate, declined to take this view of the pope&rsquo;s letter, and the
+resolution was defeated by a majority of more than two to one.
+But another motion, proposed by a Nationalist, that the Chamber
+should declare its resolve to maintain the Concordat, was rejected
+by a small majority. The discussion of the Associations bill
+was then commenced by the Chamber and went on until the
+Easter recess. Its main features when finally voted were that
+the right to associate for purposes not illicit should be henceforth
+free of all restrictions, though &ldquo;juridical capacity&rdquo; would be
+accorded only to such associations as were formally notified
+to the administrative authority. The law did not, however,
+accord liberty of association to religious &ldquo;Congregations,&rdquo;
+none of which could be formed without a special statute, and
+any constituted without such authorization would be deemed
+illicit. The policy of the measure, as applying to religious
+orders, was attacked by the extreme Right and the extreme
+Left from their several standpoints. The clericals proposed
+that under the new law all associations, religious as well as civil,
+should be free. The Socialists proposed that all religious communities,
+authorized or unauthorized, should be suppressed.
+The prime minister took a middle course. But he went farther
+than the moderate Republicans, with whom he was generally
+classed. While he protected the authorized religious orders
+against the attacks of the extreme anti-clericals, he accepted
+from the latter a new clause which disqualified any member
+of an unauthorized order from teaching in any school. This
+was a blow at the principle of liberty of instruction, which had
+always been supported by Liberals of the old school, who had
+no sympathy with the pretensions of clericalism. Consequently
+this provision, though voted by a large majority, was opposed
+by the Liberals of the Republican party, notably by M. Ribot,
+who had been twice prime minister, and M. Aynard, almost the
+sole survivor of the Left Centre. It was remarked that in these,
+as in all subsequent debates on ecclesiastical questions, the ablest
+defenders of the Church were not found among the clericals,
+but among the Liberals, whose primary doctrine was that of
+tolerance, which they believed ought to be applied to the exercise
+of the religion nominally professed by a large majority of the
+nation. Few of the ardent professors of that religion gave
+effective aid to the Church during that period of crisis. M. de
+Mun still used his eloquence in its defence, but the brilliant
+Catholic orator had entered his sixtieth year with health impaired,
+and among the young reactionary members there was not one
+who displayed any talent. At the other end of the Chamber
+M. Viviani, a Socialist member for Paris, made an eloquent
+speech. As was anticipated the bill received no serious opposition
+in the Senate. Though not in sympathy with the attacks
+of the Socialists in the Chamber on property, the Upper House
+had as a whole no objection to their attacks on the Church, and
+had become a more persistently anti-clerical body than the
+Chamber of Deputies. The bill was therefore passed without
+any serious amendments, even those which were moved for the
+purpose of affirming the principle of liberty of education being
+supported by very few Republican senators. In the debates
+some of the utterances of the prime minister were important.
+On the proposal of M. Rambaud, a professor who was minister
+of education in the Méline cabinet of 1896, that religious associations
+should be authorized by decree and not by law, M. Waldeck-Rousseau
+said that inasmuch as vows of poverty and celibacy
+were illegal, nothing but a law would suffice to give legality
+to any association in which such vows were imposed on the
+members. It was thus laid down by the responsible author
+of the law that the third clause, providing that any association
+founded for an illicit cause was null, applied to religious communities.
+On the other hand the prime minister in another
+speech repudiated the suggestion that the proposed law was
+aimed against any form of religion. He argued that the religious
+orders, far from being essential to the existence of the Church,
+were a hindrance to the work of the parochial clergy, and that
+inasmuch as the religious orders were organizations independent
+of the State they were by their nature and influence a danger to
+the State. Consequently their regulation had become necessary
+in the interests both of Church and State. The general suppression
+of religious congregations, the prime minister said, was not
+contemplated; the case of each one would be decided on its
+merits, and he had no doubt that parliament would favourably
+consider the authorization of those whose aim was to alleviate
+misery at home or to extend French influence abroad. The
+tenor of M. Waldeck-Rousseau&rsquo;s speech was eminently Concordatory.
+One of his chief arguments against the religious
+orders was that they were not mentioned in the Concordat, and
+that their unregulated existence prejudiced the interests of the
+Concordatory clergy. The speech was therefore an official
+declaration in favour of the maintenance of the relations between
+Church and State. That being so, it is important to notice that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page887" id="page887"></a>887</span>
+by a majority of nearly two to one the Senate voted the placarding
+of the prime minister&rsquo;s speech in all the communes of France,
+and that the mover of the resolution was M. Combes, senator
+of the Charente-Inférieure, a politician of advanced views who
+up to that date had held office only once, when he was minister
+of education and public worship for about six months, in the
+Bourgeois administration in 1895-1896.</p>
+
+<p>The &ldquo;Law relating to the contract of Association&rdquo; was
+promulgated on the 2nd of July 1901, and its enactment was the
+only political event of high importance that year.
+The Socialists, except in their anti-clerical capacity,
+<span class="sidenote">Socialism.</span>
+were more active outside parliament than within. Early in the
+year some formidable strikes took place. At Montceau-les-Mines
+in Burgundy, where labour demonstrations had often been
+violent, a new feature of a strike was the formation of a trade-union
+by the non-strikers, who called their organization &ldquo;the
+yellow trade-union&rdquo; (<i>le syndicat jaune</i>) in opposition to the red
+trade-union of the strikers, who adopted the revolutionary
+flag and were supported by the Socialist press. At the same
+time the dock-labourers at Marseilles went out on strike, by the
+orders of an international trade-union in that port, as a protest
+against the dismissal of a certain number of foreigners. The
+number of strikes in France had increased considerably under
+the Waldeck-Rousseau government. Its opponents attributed
+this to the presence in the cabinet of M. Millerand, who had been
+ranked as a Socialist. On the other hand, the revolutionary
+Socialists excommunicated the minister of commerce for having
+joined a &ldquo;bourgeois government&rdquo; and retired from the general
+congress of the Socialist party at Lyons, where MM. Briand and
+Viviani, themselves future ministers, persuaded the majority
+not to go so far. The federal committee of miners projected a
+general strike in all the French coal-fields, and to that end
+organized a referendum. But of 125,000 miners inscribed on
+their lists nearly 70,000 abstained from voting, and although
+the general strike was voted in October by a majority of 34,000,
+it was not put into effect. Another movement favoured by the
+Socialists was that of anti-militarism. M. Hervé, a professor
+at the lycée of Sens, had written, in a local journal, the <i>Pioupiou
+de l&rsquo;Yonne</i>, on the occasion of the departure of the conscripts
+for their regiments, some articles outraging the French flag.
+He was prosecuted and acquitted at the assizes at Auxerre in
+November, a number of his colleagues in the teaching profession
+coming forward to testify that they shared his views. The local
+educational authority, the academic council of Dijon, however,
+dismissed M. Hervé from his official functions, and its sentence
+was confirmed by the superior council of public education to
+which he had appealed. Thereupon the Socialists in the Chamber,
+under the lead of M. Viviani, violently attacked the Government&mdash;shortly
+before the prorogation at the end of the year. M.
+Leygues, the minister of education, defended the policy of his
+department with equal vigour, declaring that if a professor in the
+&ldquo;university&rdquo; claimed the right of publishing unpatriotic and
+anti-military opinions he could exercise it only on the condition
+of giving up his employment under government&mdash;a thesis which
+was supported by the entire Chamber with the exception of the
+Socialists. This manifestation of anti-military spirit, though
+not widespread, was the more striking as it followed close upon
+a second visit of the emperor and empress of Russia to France,
+which took place in September 1901 and was of a military rather
+than of a popular character. The Russian sovereigns did not
+come to Paris. After a naval display at Dunkirk, where they
+landed, they were the guests of President Loubet at Compiègne,
+and concluded their visit by attending a review near Reims of
+the troops which had taken part in the Eastern man&oelig;uvres.
+Compared with the welcome given by the French population
+to the emperor and empress in 1896 their reception on this
+occasion was not enthusiastic. By not visiting Paris they seemed
+to wish to avoid contact with the people, who were persuaded
+by a section of the press that the motive of the imperial
+journey to France was financial. The Socialists openly repudiated
+the Russian alliance, and one of them, the mayor of Lille,
+who refused to decorate his municipal buildings when the
+sovereigns visited the department of the Nord, was neither
+revoked nor suspended, although he publicly based his refusal
+on grounds insulting to the tsar.</p>
+
+<p>It may be mentioned that the census returns of 1901 showed
+that the total increase of the population of France since the
+previous census in 1896 amounted only to 412,364, of which
+289,662 was accounted for by the capital, while on the other
+hand the population of sixty out of eighty-seven departments
+had diminished.</p>
+
+<p>As the quadrennial election of the Chamber of Deputies was
+due to take place in the spring of 1902, the first months of that
+year were chiefly occupied by politicians in preparing for it,
+though none of them gave any sign of being aware that the
+legislation to be effected by the new Chamber would be the
+most important which any parliament had undertaken under the
+constitution of 1875. At the end of the recess the prime minister
+in a speech at Saint Etienne, the capital of the Loire, of which
+department he was senator, passed in review the work of his
+ministry. With regard to the future, on the eve of the election
+which was to return the Chamber destined to disestablish the
+Church, he assured the secular clergy that they must not consider
+the legislation of the last session as menacing them: far from
+that, the recent law, directed primarily against those monastic
+orders which were anti-Republican associations, owning political
+journals and organizing electioneering funds (whose members
+he described as &ldquo;moines ligueurs et moines d&rsquo;affaires&rdquo;), would
+be a guarantee of the Republic&rsquo;s protection of the parochial
+clergy. The presence of his colleague, M. Millerand, on this
+occasion showed that M. Waldeck-Rousseau did not intend to
+separate himself from the Radical-Socialist group which had
+supported his government; and the next day the Socialist
+minister of commerce, at Firminy, a mining centre in the same
+department, made a speech deprecating the pursuit of unpractical
+social ideals, which might have been a version of Gambetta&rsquo;s
+famous discourse on opportunism edited by an economist of the
+school of Léon Say. The Waldeck-Rousseau programme for
+the elections seemed therefore to be an implied promise of a
+moderate opportunist policy which would strengthen and unite
+the Republic by conciliating all sections of its supporters.
+When parliament met, M. Delcassé, minister for foreign affairs,
+on a proposal to suppress the Embassy to the Vatican, declared
+that even if the Concordat were ever revoked it would still be
+necessary for France to maintain diplomatic relations with the
+Holy See. On the other hand, the ministry voted, against the
+moderate Republicans, for an abstract resolution, proposed
+by M. Brisson, in favour of the abrogation of the Loi Falloux of
+1850, which law, by abolishing the monopoly of the &ldquo;university,&rdquo;
+had established the principle of liberty of education. Another
+abstract resolution, supported by the government, which
+subsequently become law, was voted in favour of the reduction
+of the terms of compulsory military service from three years to
+two.</p>
+
+<p>The general elections took place on the 27th of April 1902;
+with the second ballots on the 11th of May, and were favourable
+to the ministry, 321 of its avowed supporters being
+returned and 268 members of the Opposition, including
+<span class="sidenote">Resignation of Waldeck-Rousseau.</span>
+140 &ldquo;Progressist&rdquo; Republicans, many of whom were
+deputies whose opinions differed little from those of
+M. Waldeck-Rousseau. In Paris the government lost a few seats
+which were won by the Nationalist group of reactionaries.
+The chief surprise of the elections was the announcement made
+by M. Waldeck-Rousseau on the 20th of May, while the president
+of the Republic was in Russia on a visit to the tsar, of his
+intention to resign office. No one but the prime minister&rsquo;s
+intimates knew that his shattered health was the true cause of
+his resignation, which was attributed to the unwillingness of an
+essentially moderate man to be the leader of an advanced party
+and the instrument of an immoderate policy. His retirement
+from public life at this crisis was the most important event of
+its kind since the death of his old master Gambetta. He had
+learned opportunist statesmanship in the short-lived <i>grand
+ministère</i> and in the long-lived Ferry administration of 1883-1885,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page888" id="page888"></a>888</span>
+after which he had become an inactive politician in the
+Senate, while making a large fortune at the bar. In spite of
+having eschewed politics he had been ranked in the public mind
+with Gambetta and Jules Ferry as one of the small number of
+politicians of the Republic who had risen high above mediocrity.
+While he had none of the magnetic exuberance which furthered
+the popularity of Gambetta, his cold inexpansiveness had not
+made him unpopular as was his other chief, Jules Ferry. Indeed,
+his unemotional coldness was one of the elements of the power
+with which he dominated parliament; and being regarded by the
+nation as the strong man whom France is always looking for,
+he was the first prime minister of the Republic whose name was
+made a rallying cry at a general election. Yet the country gave
+him a majority only for it to be handed over to other politicians
+to use in a manner which he had not contemplated. On the 3rd
+of June 1902 he formally resigned office, his ministry having
+lasted for three years, all but a few days, a longer duration than
+that of any other under the Third Republic.</p>
+
+<p>M. Loubet called upon M. Léon Bourgeois, who had already
+been prime minister under M. Félix Faure, to form a ministry,
+but he had been nominated president of the new
+Chamber. The president of the Republic then offered
+<span class="sidenote">M. Combes prime minister.</span>
+the post to M. Brisson, who had been twice prime
+minister in 1885 and 1898, but he also refused. A
+third member of the Radical party was then sent for, M. Emile
+Combes, and he accepted. The senator of the Charente Inférieure,
+in his one short term of office in the Bourgeois ministry, had made
+no mark. But he had attained a minor prominence in the debates
+of the Senate by his ardent anti-clericalism. He had been
+educated as a seminarist and had taken minor orders, without
+proceeding to the priesthood, and had subsequently practised
+as a country doctor before entering parliament. M. Combes
+retained two of the most important members of the Waldeck-Rousseau
+cabinet, M. Delcassé, who had been at the foreign
+office for four years, and General André, who had become war
+minister in 1900 on the resignation of General de Galliffet.
+General André was an ardent Dreyfusard, strongly opposed to
+clerical and reactionary influences in the army. Among the
+new ministers was M. Rouvier, a colleague of Gambetta in the
+<i>grand ministère</i> and prime minister in 1887, whose participation in
+the Panama affair had caused his retirement from official life.
+Being a moderate opportunist and reputed the ablest financier
+among French politicians, his return to the ministry of finance
+reassured those who feared the fiscal experiments of an administration
+supported by the Socialists. The nomination as minister
+of marine of M. Camille Pelletan (the son of Eugène Pelletan,
+a notable adversary of the Second Empire), who had been a
+Radical-Socialist deputy since 1881, though new to office, was
+less reassuring. M. Combes reserved for himself the departments
+of the interior and public worship, meaning that the centralized
+administration of France should be in his own hands while he
+was keeping watch over the Church. But in spite of the prime
+minister&rsquo;s extreme anti-clericalism there was no hint made in
+his ministerial declaration, on the 10th of June 1902, on taking
+office that there would be any question of the new Chamber
+dealing with the Concordat or with the relations of Church and
+state. M. Combes, however, warned the secular clergy not to
+make common cause with the religious orders, against which
+he soon began vigorous action. Before the end of June he directed
+the Préfets of the departments to bring political pressure to
+bear on all branches of the public service, and he obtained a
+presidential decree closing a hundred and twenty-five schools,
+which had been recently opened in buildings belonging to private
+individuals, on the ground that they were conducted by members
+of religious associations and that this brought the schools under
+the law of 1901. Such action seemed to be opposed to M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau&rsquo;s interpretation of the law; but the Chamber
+having supported M. Combes he ordered in July the closing of
+2500 schools, conducted by members of religious orders, for which
+authorization had not been requested. This again seemed
+contrary to the assurances of M. Waldeck-Rousseau, and it called
+forth vain protests in the name of liberty from Radicals of the
+old school, such as M. Goblet, prime minister in 1886, and from
+Liberal Protestants, such as M. Gabriel Monod. The execution
+of the decrees closing the schools of the religious orders caused
+some violent agitation in the provinces during the parliamentary
+recess. But the majority of the departmental councils, at their
+meetings in August, passed resolutions in favour of the governmental
+policy, and a movement led by certain Nationalists,
+including M. Drumont, editor of the anti-semitic <i>Libre Parole</i>,
+and M. François Coppée, the Academician, to found a league
+having similar aims to those of the &ldquo;passive resisters&rdquo; in our
+country, was a complete failure. On the reassembling of parliament,
+both houses passed votes of confidence in the ministry and
+also an act supplementary to the Associations Law penalizing
+the opening of schools by members of religious orders.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the ardour of parliamentary discussions the French
+public was less moved in 1902 by the anti-clerical action of the
+government than by a vulgar case of swindling known
+as the &ldquo;Humbert affair.&rdquo; The wife of a former deputy
+<span class="sidenote">Humbert affair.</span>
+for Seine-et-Marne, who was the son of M. Gustave
+Humbert, minister of justice in 1882, had for many years maintained
+a luxurious establishment, which included a political
+salon, on the strength of her assertion that she and her family had
+inherited several millions sterling from one Crawford, an Englishman.
+Her story being believed by certain bankers she had been
+enabled to borrow colossal sums on the legend, and had almost
+married her daughter as a great heiress to a Moderate Republican
+deputy who held a conspicuous position in the Chamber. The
+flight of the Humberts, the exposure of the fraud and their arrest
+in Spain excited the French nation more deeply than the relative
+qualities of M. Waldeck-Rousseau and M. Combes or the woes
+of the religious orders. A by-election to the Senate in the spring
+of 1902 merits notice as it brought back to parliament M.
+Clémenceau, who had lived in comparative retirement since
+1893 when he lost his seat as deputy for Draguignan, owing to a
+series of unusually bitter attacks made against him by his political
+enemies. He had devoted his years of retirement to journalism,
+taking a leading part in the Dreyfus affair on the side of the
+accused. His election as senator for the Var, where he had
+formerly been deputy, was an event of importance unanticipated
+at the time.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1903 saw in progress a momentous development
+of the anti-clerical movement in France, though little trace of
+this is found in the statute-book. The chief act of
+parliament of that year was one which interested the
+<span class="sidenote">Anti-clerical movement.</span>
+population much more than any law affecting the
+Church. This was an act regulating the privileges
+of the <i>bouilleurs de cru</i>, the peasant proprietors who, permitted
+to distil from their produce an annual quantity of alcohol supposed
+to be sufficient for their domestic needs, in practice fabricated
+and sold so large an amount as to prejudice gravely the
+inland revenue. As there were a million of these illicit distillers
+in the land they formed a powerful element in the electorate.
+The crowded and excited debates affecting their interests, in
+which Radicals and Royalists of the rural districts made common
+cause against Socialists and Clericals of the towns, were in
+striking contrast with the less animated discussions concerning
+the Church. The prime minister, an anti-clerical zealot, bitterly
+hostile to the Church of which he had been a minister, took
+advantage of the relative indifference of parliament and of the
+nation in matters ecclesiastical. The success of M. Combes in
+his campaign against the Church was an example of what energy
+and pertinacity can do. There was no great wave of popular
+feeling on the question, no mandate given to the deputies at the
+general election or asked for by them. Neither was M. Combes
+a popular leader or a man of genius. He was rather a trained
+politician, with a fixed idea, who knew how to utilize to his ends
+the ability and organization of the extreme anti-clerical element
+in the Chamber, and the weakness of the extreme clerical
+party. The majority of the Chamber did not share the prime
+minister&rsquo;s animosity towards the Church, for which at the same
+time it had not the least enthusiasm, and under the concordatory
+lead of M. Waldeck-Rousseau it would have been content to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page889" id="page889"></a>889</span>
+curb clerical pretensions without having recourse to extreme
+measures of repression. It was, however, equally content to
+follow the less tolerant guidance of M. Combes. Thus, early
+in the session of 1903 it approved of his circular forbidding the
+priests of Brittany to make use of the Breton language in their
+religious instruction under pain of losing their salaries. It likewise
+followed him on the 26th of January when he declined to
+accept, as being premature and unpractical, a Socialist resolution
+in favour of suppressing the budget of public worship, though
+the majority was indeed differently composed on those two
+occasions. In the Senate on the 29th of January M. Waldeck-Rousseau
+indicated what his policy would have been had he
+retained office, by severely criticizing his successor&rsquo;s method of
+applying the Associations Law. Instead of asking parliament
+to judge on its merits each several demand for authorization
+made by a congregation, the government had divided the religious
+orders into two chief categories, teaching orders and
+preaching orders, and had recommended that all should be
+suppressed by a general refusal of authorization. The Grande
+Chartreuse was put into a category by itself as a trading association
+and was dissolved; but Lourdes, which with its crowds
+of pilgrims enriched the Pyrenean region and the railway companies
+serving it, was spared for electioneering reasons. A
+dispute arose between the government and the Vatican on the
+nomination of bishops to vacant sees. The Vatican insisted on
+the words &ldquo;<i>nobis nominavit</i>&rdquo; in the papal bulls instituting the
+bishops nominated by the chief of the executive in France under
+the Concordat. M. Combes objected to the pronoun, and maintained
+that the complete nomination belonged to the French
+government, the Holy See having no choice in the matter, but
+only the power of canonical institution. This produced a deadlock,
+with the consequence that no more bishops were ever again
+appointed under the Concordat, which both before and after the
+Easter recess M. Combes now threatened to repudiate. These
+menaces derived an increased importance from the failing health
+of the pope. Leo XIII. had attained the great age of ninety-three,
+and on the choice of his successor grave issues depended.
+He died on the 20th of July 1903. The conclave indicated as
+his successor his secretary of state, Cardinal Rampolla, an able
+exponent of the late pope&rsquo;s diplomatic methods and also a warm
+friend of France. It was said to be the latter quality which
+induced Austria to exercise its ancient power of veto on the choice
+of a conclave, and finally Cardinal Sarto, patriarch of Venice,
+a pious prelate inexperienced in diplomacy, was elected and took
+the title of Pius X. In September the inauguration of a statue of
+Renan at Tréguier, his birthplace, was made the occasion of an
+anti-clerical demonstration in Catholic and reactionary Brittany,
+at which the prime minister made a militant speech in the name
+of the freethinkers of France, though Renan was a Voltairian
+aristocrat who disliked the aims and methods of modern Radical-Socialists.
+In the course of his speech M. Combes pointed out
+that the anti-clerical policy of the government had not caused
+the Republic to lose prestige in the eyes of the monarchies of
+Europe, which were then showing it unprecedented attentions.
+This assertion was true, and had reference to the visit of the king
+of England to the president of the Republic in May and the
+projected visit of the king of Italy. That of Edward VII.,
+which was the first state visit of a British sovereign to France
+for nearly fifty years, was returned by President Loubet in July,
+and was welcomed by all parties, excepting some of the reactionaries.
+M. Millevoye, a Nationalist deputy for Paris, in
+the <i>Patrie</i> counselled the Parisians to remember Fashoda, the
+Transvaal War, and the attitude of the English in the Dreyfus
+affair, and to greet the British monarch with cries of &ldquo;<i>Vivent les
+Boers</i>.&rdquo; M. Déroulède, the most interesting member of the
+Nationalist party, wrote from his exile at Saint-Sébastien
+protesting against the folly of this proceeding, which merits to
+be put on record as an example of the incorrigible ineptitude
+of the reactionaries in France. The incident served only to
+prove their complete lack of influence on popular feeling, while
+it damaged the cause of the Church at a most critical moment
+by showing that the only persons in France willing to insult a
+friendly monarch who was the guest of the nation, belonged
+to the clerical party. Of the royal visits that of the king of Italy
+was the more important in its immediate effects on the history
+of France, as will be seen in the narration of the events of 1904.</p>
+
+<p>The session of 1904 began with the election of a new president
+of the Chamber, on the retirement of M. Bourgeois. The choice
+fell on M. Henri Brisson, an old Radical, but not a Socialist,
+who had held that post in 1881 and had subsequently filled it
+on ten occasions, the election to the office being annual. The
+narrow majority he obtained over M. Paul Bertrand, a little-known
+moderate Republican, by secret ballot, followed by the
+defeat of M. Jaurès, the Socialist leader, for one of the vice-presidential
+chairs, showed that one half of the Chamber was of
+moderate tendency. But, as events proved, the Moderates
+lacked energy and leadership, so the influence of the Radical
+prime minister prevailed. In a debate on the 22nd of January
+on the expulsion of an Alsatian priest of French birth from a
+French frontier department by the French police, M. Ribot,
+who set an example of activity to younger men of the moderate
+groups, reproached M. Combes with reducing all questions in
+which the French nation was interested to the single one of anti-clericalism,
+and the prime minister retorted that it was solely
+for that purpose that he took office. In pursuance of this policy
+a bill was introduced, and was passed by the Chamber before
+Easter, interdicting from teaching all members of religious
+orders, authorized or not authorized. Among other results this
+law, which the Senate passed in the summer, swept out of existence
+the schools of the Frères de la Doctrine Chrétienne (Christian
+Brothers) and closed in all 2400 schools before the end of the
+year.</p>
+
+<p>This drastic act of anti-clerical policy, which was a total
+repudiation by parliament of the principle of liberty of education,
+should have warned the authorities of the Church of the relentless
+attitude of the government. The most superficial observation
+ought to have shown them that the indifference of the nation
+would permit the prime minister to go to any length, and common
+prudence should have prevented them from affording him any
+pretext for more damaging measures. The President of the
+Republic accepted an invitation to return the visit of the king
+of Italy. When it was submitted to the Chamber on March
+25th, 1904, a reactionary deputy moved the rejection of the vote
+for the expenses of the journey on the ground that the chief
+of the French executive ought not to visit the representative
+of the dynasty which had plundered the papacy. The amendment
+was rejected by a majority of 502 votes to 12, which showed
+that at a time of bitter controversy on ecclesiastical questions
+French opinion was unanimous in approving the visit of the
+president of the Republic to Rome as the guest of the king of
+Italy. Nothing could be more gratifying to the entire French
+nation, both on racial and on traditional grounds, than such a
+testimony of a complete revival of friendship with Italy, of late
+years obscured by the Triple Alliance. Yet the Holy See saw
+fit to advance pretensions inevitably certain to serve the ends
+of the extreme anti-clericals, whose most intolerant acts at that
+moment, such as the removal of the crucifixes from the law-courts,
+were followed by new electoral successes. Thus the
+reactionary majority on the Paris municipal council was displaced
+by the Radical-Socialists on the 1st of May, the day that
+M. Loubet returned from his visit to Rome. On the 16th of
+May M. Jaurès&rsquo; Socialist organ, <i>L&rsquo;Humanité</i>, published the text
+of a protest, addressed by the pope to the powers having diplomatic
+relations with the Vatican, against the visit of the president
+of the Republic to the King of Italy. This document, dated
+the 28th of April, was offensive in tone both to France and to
+Italy. It intimated that while Catholic sovereigns refrained
+from visiting the person who, contrary to right, exercised civil
+sovereignty in Rome, that &ldquo;duty&rdquo; was even more &ldquo;imperious&rdquo;
+for the ruler of France by reason of the &ldquo;privileges&rdquo; enjoyed
+by that country from the Concordat; that the journey of M.
+Loubet to &ldquo;pay homage&rdquo; within the pontifical see to that
+person was an insult to the sovereign pontiff; and that only for
+reasons of special gravity was the nuncio permitted to remain
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page890" id="page890"></a>890</span>
+in Paris. The publication of this document caused some joy
+among the extreme clericals, but this was nothing to the exultation
+of the extreme anti-clericals, who saw that the prudent
+diplomacy of Leo XIII., which had risen superior to many a
+provocation of the French government, was succeeded by a
+papal policy which would facilitate their designs in a manner
+<span class="sidenote">Diplomatic crisis with Rome.</span>
+unhoped for. Moderate men were dismayed, seeing
+that the Concordat was now in instant danger; but
+the majority of the French nation remained entirely
+indifferent to its fate. Within a week France took
+the initiative by recalling the ambassador to the Vatican,
+M. Nisard, leaving a third-secretary in charge. In the debate
+in the Chamber upon the incident, the foreign minister, M.
+Delcassé, said that the ambassador was recalled, not because
+the Vatican had protested against the visit of the president
+to the king of Italy, but because it had communicated this
+protest, in terms offensive to France, to foreign powers. The
+Chamber on the 27th of May approved the recall of the ambassador
+by the large majority of 420 to 90. By a much smaller majority
+it rejected a Socialist motion that the Nuncio should be given his
+passports. The action of the Holy See was not actually an
+infringement of the Concordat; so the government, satisfied
+with the effect produced on public opinion, which was now
+quite prepared for a rupture with the Vatican, was willing
+to wait for a new pretext, which was not long in coming. Two
+bishops, Mgr. Geay of Laval and Mgr. Le Nordez of Dijon, were
+on bad terms with the clerical reactionaries in their dioceses.
+The friends of the prelates, including some of their episcopal
+brethren, thought that their chief offence was their loyalty to the
+Republic, and it was an unfortunate coincidence that these
+bishops, subjected to proceedings which had been unknown under
+the long pontificate of Leo XIII., should have been two who
+had incurred the animosity of anti-republicans. Their enemies
+accused Mgr. Geay of immorality and Mgr. Le Nordez of being
+in league with the freemasons. The bishop of Laval was
+summoned by the Holy Office, without any communication
+with the French government, to resign his see, and he submitted
+the citation forthwith to the minister of public worship. The
+French chargé d&rsquo;affaires at the Vatican was instructed to protest
+against this grave infringement of an article of the Concordat,
+and, soon after, against another violation of the Concordat
+committed by the Nuncio, who had written to the bishop of
+Dijon ordering him to suspend his ordinations, the Nuncio
+being limited, like all other ambassadors, to communicating
+the instructions of his government through the intermediary
+of the minister for foreign affairs. The Vatican declined to
+give any satisfaction to the French government and summoned
+the two bishops to Rome under pain of suspension. So the
+French chargé d&rsquo;affaires was directed to leave Rome, after having
+informed the Holy See that the government of the Republic
+considered that the mission of the apostolic Nuncio in Paris was
+terminated. Thus came to an end on the 30th of July 1904
+the diplomatic relations which under the Concordat had subsisted
+between France and the Vatican for more than a hundred years.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve days later M. Waldeck-Rousseau died, having lived
+just long enough to see this unanticipated result of his policy.
+It was said that his resolve to regulate the religious associations
+arose from his feeling that whatever injustice had been committed
+in the Dreyfus case had been aggravated by the action of
+certain unauthorized orders. However that may be, his own
+utterances showed that he believed that his policy was one of
+finality. But he had not reckoned that his legislation, which
+needed hands as calm and impartial as his own to apply it,
+would be used in a manner he had not contemplated by sectarian
+politicians who would be further aided by the self-destructive
+policy of the highest authorities of the Church. When parliament
+assembled for the autumn session a general feeling was
+expressed, by moderate politicians as well as by supporters of
+the Combes ministry, that disestablishment was inevitable. The
+prime minister said that he had been long in favour of it, though
+the previous year he had intimated to M. Nisard, ambassador
+to the Vatican, that he had not a majority in parliament to vote
+it. But the papacy and the clergy had since done everything
+to change that situation. The Chamber did not move in the
+matter beyond appointing a committee to consider the general
+question, to which M. Combes submitted in his own name a
+bill for the separation of the churches from the State.</p>
+
+<p>During the last three months of 1904 public opinion was
+diverted to the cognate question of the existence of masonic
+delation in the army. M. Guyot de Villeneuve,
+Nationalist deputy for Saint Denis, who had been
+<span class="sidenote">War Office difficulties.</span>
+dismissed from the army by General de Galliffet in
+connexion with the Dreyfus affair, brought before the
+Chamber a collection of documents which, it seemed, had been
+abstracted from the Grand Orient of France, the headquarters
+of French freemasonry, by an official of that order. These papers
+showed that an elaborate system of espionage and delation
+had been organized by the freemasons throughout France for
+the purpose of obtaining information as to the political opinions
+and religious practices of the officers of the army, and that this
+system was worked with the connivance of certain officials
+of the ministry of war. Its aim appeared to be to ascertain if
+officers went to mass or sent their children to convent schools
+or in any way were in sympathy with the Roman Catholic
+religion, the names of officers so secretly denounced being placed
+on a black-list at the War Office, whereby they were disqualified
+for promotion. There was no doubt about the authenticity of
+the documents or of the facts which they revealed. Radical
+ex-ministers joined with moderate Republicans and reactionaries
+in denouncing the system. Anti-clerical deputies declared
+that it was no use to cleanse the war office of the influence of the
+Jesuits, which was alleged to have prevailed there, if it were to
+be replaced by another occult power, more demoralizing because
+more widespread. Only the Socialists and a few of the Radical-Socialists
+in the Chamber supported the action of the freemasons.
+General André, minister of war, was so clearly implicated, with
+the evident approval of the prime minister, that a revulsion
+of feeling against the policy of the anti-clerical cabinet began to
+operate in the Chamber. Had the opposition been wisely guided
+there can be little doubt that a moderate ministry would
+have been called to office and the history of the Church in France
+might have been changed. But the reactionaries, with their
+accustomed folly, played into the hands of their adversaries.
+The minister of war had made a speech which produced a bad
+impression. As he stepped down from the tribune he was
+struck in the face by a Nationalist deputy for Paris, a much
+younger man than he. The cowardly assault did not save the
+minister, who was too deeply compromised in the delation scandal.
+But it saved the anti-clerical party, by rallying a number of
+waverers who, until this exhibition of reactionary policy, were
+prepared to go over to the Moderates, from the &ldquo;bloc,&rdquo; as the
+ministerial majority was called. The Nationalist deputy was
+committed to the assizes on the technical charge of assaulting a
+functionary while performing his official duties. Towards the
+end of the year, on the eve of his trial, he met with a violent
+death, and the circumstances which led to it, when made
+public, showed that this champion of the Church was a man
+of low morality. General André had previously resigned and
+was succeeded as minister of war by M. Berteaux, a wealthy
+stock-broker and a Socialist.</p>
+
+<p>The Combes cabinet could not survive the delation scandal,
+in spite of the resignation of the minister of war and the ineptitude
+of the opposition. On the 8th of January
+1905, two days before parliament met, an election took
+<span class="sidenote">Fall of the Combes ministry.</span>
+place in Paris to fill the vacancy caused by the death
+of the Nationalist deputy who had assaulted General
+André. The circumstances of his death, at that time partially
+revealed, did not deter the electors from choosing by a large
+majority a representative of the same party, Admiral Bienaimé,
+who the previous year had been removed for political reasons
+from the post of maritime prefect at Toulon, by M. Camille
+Pelletan, minister of marine. A more serious check to the Combes
+ministry was given by the refusal of the Chamber to re-elect as
+president M. Brisson, who was defeated by a majority of twenty-five
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page891" id="page891"></a>891</span>
+by M. Doumer, ex-Governor-General of Indo-China, who,
+though he had entered politics as a Radical, was now supported
+by the anti-republican reactionaries as well as by the moderate
+Republicans. A violent debate arose on the question of expelling
+from the Legion of Honour certain members of that order,
+including a general officer, who had been involved in the delation
+scandal. M. Jaurès, the eloquent Socialist deputy for Albi, who
+played the part of <i>Éminence grise</i> to M. Combes in his anti-clerical
+campaign, observed that the party which was now
+demanding the purification of the order had been in no hurry
+to expel from it Esterhazy long after his crimes had been proved
+in connexion with the Dreyfus case. The debate was inconclusive,
+and the government on the 14th of January obtained a vote
+of confidence by a majority of six. But M. Combes, whose
+animosity towards the church was keener than his love of office,
+saw that his ministry would be constantly liable to be put in a
+minority, and that thus the consideration of separation might
+be postponed until after the general elections of 1906. So
+he announced his resignation in an unprecedented manifesto
+addressed to the president of the Republic on the 18th January.</p>
+
+<p>M. Rouvier, minister of finance in the outgoing government,
+was called upon for the second time in his career to form a ministry.
+A moderate opportunist himself, he intended to form
+a coalition cabinet in which all groups of Republicans,
+<span class="sidenote">Second Rouvier ministry.</span>
+from the Centre to the extreme Left, would be represented.
+But he failed, and the ministry of the 24th
+of January 1905 contained no members of the Republican opposition
+which had combated M. Combes. The prime minister
+retained the portfolio of finance; M. Delcassé remained at the
+foreign office, which he had directed since 1898, and M. Berteaux
+at the war office; M. Etienne, member for Oran, went to the
+ministry of the interior; another Algerian deputy, M. Thomson,
+succeeded M. Camille Pelletan at the ministry of marine, which
+department was said to have fallen into inefficiency; public
+worship was separated from the department of the interior
+and joined with that of education under M. Bienvenu-Martin,
+Radical-Socialist deputy for Auxerre, who was new to official
+life. Although M. Rouvier, as befitted a politician of the school
+of Waldeck-Rousseau, disliked the separation of the churches
+from the state, he accepted that policy as inevitable. After the
+action of the Vatican in 1904, which had produced the rupture of
+diplomatic relations with France, many moderates who had been
+persistent in their opposition to the Combes ministry, and even
+certain Nationalists, accepted the principle of separation, but
+urged that it should be effected on liberal terms. So on the 27th
+of January, after the minister of education and public worship
+had announced that the government intended to introduce a
+separation bill, a vote of confidence was obtained by a majority
+of 373 to 99, half of the majority being opponents of the Combes
+ministry of various Republican and reactionary groups, while
+the minority was composed of 84 Radicals and Socialists and
+only 15 reactionaries.</p>
+
+<p>On the 21st of March the debates on the separation of the
+churches from the state began. A commission had been appointed
+in 1904 to examine the subject. Its reporter was M.
+Aristide Briand, Socialist member for Saint Etienne.
+<span class="sidenote">The Separation Law.</span>
+According to French parliamentary procedure, the
+reporter of a commission, directed to draw up a great
+scheme of legislation, can make himself a more important person
+in conducting it through a house of legislature than the minister
+in charge of the bill. This is what M. Briand succeeded in doing.
+He produced with rapidity a &ldquo;report&rdquo; on the whole question,
+in which he traced with superficial haste the history of the Church
+in France from the baptism of Clovis, and upon this drafted a
+bill which was accepted by the government. He thus at one
+bound came from obscurity into the front rank of politicians,
+and in devising a revolutionary measure learned a lesson of
+moderate statesmanship. In conducting the debates he took
+the line of throwing the responsibility for the rupture of the
+Concordat on the pope. The leadership of the Opposition fell
+on M. Ribot, who had been twice prime minister of the Republic
+and was not a practising Catholic. He recognized that separation
+had become inevitable,; but argued that it could be accomplished
+as a permanent act only in concert with the Holy See. The
+clerical party in the Chamber did little in defence of the Church.
+The abbés Lemire and Gayraud, the only ecclesiastics in parliament,
+spoke with moderation, and M. Groussau, a Catholic
+jurist, attacked the measure with less temperate zeal; but the
+best serious defence of the interests of the Church came from the
+Republican centre. Few amendments from the extreme Left
+were accepted by M. Briand, whose general tone was moderate
+and not illiberal. One feature of the debates was the reluctance
+of the prime minister to take part in them, even when financial
+clauses were discussed in which his own office was particularly
+concerned. The bill finally passed the Chamber on the 3rd of
+July by 341 votes against 233, the majority containing a certain
+number of conservative Republicans and Nationalists. At the
+end the Radical-Socialists manifested considerable discontent
+at the liberal tendencies of M. Briand, and declared that the
+measure as it left the Chamber could be considered only provisional.
+In the Senate it underwent no amendment whatever,
+not a single word being altered. The prime minister, M. Rouvier,
+never once opened his lips during the lengthy debates, in the
+course of which M. Clémenceau, as a philosophical Radical who
+voted for the bill, criticized it as too concordatory, while M.
+Méline, as a moderate Republican, who voted against it, predicted
+that it would create such a state of things as would
+necessitate new negotiations with Rome a few years later. It
+was finally passed by a majority of 181 to 102, the complete
+number of senators being 300, and three days later, on the 9th
+of December 1905, it was promulgated as law by the president
+of the Republic.</p>
+
+<p>The main features of the act were as follows. The first clauses
+guaranteed liberty of conscience and the free practice of public
+worship, and declared that henceforth the Republic neither
+recognized nor remunerated any form of religion, except in the
+case of chaplains to public schools, hospitals and prisons. It
+provided that after inventories had been taken of the real and
+personal property in the hands of religious bodies, hitherto
+remunerated by the state, to ascertain whether such property
+belonged to the state, the department, or the commune, all such
+property should be transferred to associations of public worship
+(<i>associations cultuelles</i>) established in each commune in accordance
+with the rules of the religion which they represented, for the purpose
+of carrying on the practices of that religion. As the Vatican
+subsequently refused to permit Catholics to take part in these
+associations, the important clauses relating to their organization
+and powers became a dead letter, except in the case of the Protestant
+and Jewish associations, which affected only a minute
+proportion of the religious establishments under the act. Nothing,
+therefore, need be said about them except that the chief discussions
+in the Chamber took place with regard to their constitution,
+which was so amended, contrary to the wishes of the extreme
+anti-clericals, that many moderate critics of the original bill
+thought that thereby the regular practice of the Catholic religion,
+under episcopal control, had been safeguarded. A system
+of pensions for ministers of religion hitherto paid by the state was
+provided, according to the age and the length of service of the
+ecclesiastics interested, while in small communes of under a
+thousand inhabitants the clergy were to receive in any case their
+full pay for eight years. The bishops&rsquo; palaces were to be left
+gratuitously at the disposal of the occupiers for two years, and
+the presbyteries and seminaries for five years. This provision
+too became a dead letter, owing to the orders given by the Holy
+See to the clergy. Other provisions enacted that the churches
+should not be used for political meetings, while the services held
+in them were protected by the law from the acts of disturbers.
+As the plenary operation of the law depended on the <i>associations
+cultuelles</i>, the subsequent failure to create those bodies makes
+it useless to give a complete exposition of a statute of which
+they were an essential feature.</p>
+
+<p>The passing of the Separation Law was the chief act of the
+last year of the presidency of M. Loubet. One other important
+measure has to be noted, the law reducing compulsory military
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page892" id="page892"></a>892</span>
+service to two years. The law of 1889 had provided a general
+service of three years, with an extensive system of dispensations
+accorded to persons for domestic reasons, or because they belonged
+to certain categories of students, such citizens being let off with
+one year&rsquo;s service with the colours or being entirely exempted.
+The new law exacted two years&rsquo; service from every Frenchman,
+no one being exempted save for physical incapacity. Under
+the act of 1905 even the cadets of the military college of Saint
+Cyr and of the Polytechnic had to serve in the ranks before
+entering those schools. Anti-military doctrines continued to
+be encouraged by the Socialist party, M. Hervé, the professor
+who had been revoked in 1901 for his suggestion of a military
+strike in case of war and for other unpatriotic utterances, being
+elected a member of the administrative committee of the Unified
+Socialist party, of which M. Jaurès was one of the chiefs. At
+a congress of elementary schoolmasters at Lille in August, anti-military
+resolutions were passed and a general adherence was
+given to the doctrines of M. Hervé. At Longwy, in the Eastern
+coal-field, a strike took place in September, during which the
+military was called out to keep order and a workman was killed
+in a cavalry charge. The minister of war, M. Berteaux, visited
+the scene of the disturbance, and was reported to have saluted
+the red revolutionary flag which was borne by a procession of
+strikers singing the &ldquo;Internationale.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>During the autumn session in November M. Berteaux suddenly
+resigned the portfolio of war during a sitting of the Chamber,
+and was succeeded by M. Etienne, minister of the interior, a
+moderate politician who inspired greater confidence. Earlier
+in the year other industrial strikes of great gravity had taken
+place, notably at Limoges, among the potters, where several
+deaths took place in a conflict with the troops and a factory
+was burnt. Even more serious were the strikes in the government
+arsenals in November. At Cherbourg and Brest only a
+small proportion of the workmen went out, but at Lorient,
+Rochefort and especially at Toulon the strikes were on a much
+larger scale. In 1905 solemn warnings were given in the Chamber
+of the coming crisis in the wine-growing regions of the South.
+Radical-Socialists such as M. Doumergue, the deputy for Nîmes
+and a member of the Combes ministry, joined with monarchists
+such as M. Lasies, deputy of the Gers, in calling attention to
+the distress of the populations dependent on the vine. They
+argued that the wines of the South found no market, not because
+of the alleged over-production, but because of the competition
+of artificial wines; that formerly only twenty departments of
+France were classed in the atlas as wine-producing, but that
+thanks to the progress of chemistry seventy departments were
+now so described. The deputies of the north of France and of
+Paris, irrespective of party, opposed these arguments, and the
+government, while promising to punish fraud, did not seem to
+take very seriously the legitimate warnings of the representatives
+of the South.</p>
+
+<p>The Republic continued to extend its friendly relations with
+foreign powers, and the end of M. Loubet&rsquo;s term of office was
+signalized by a procession of royal visits to Paris, some of which
+the president returned. At the end of May the king of Spain
+came and narrowly escaped assassination from a bomb which
+was thrown at him by a Spaniard as he was returning with
+the president from the opera. In October M. Loubet returned
+this visit at Madrid and went on to Lisbon to see the king of
+Portugal, being received by the queen, who was the daughter
+of the comte de Paris and the sister of the duc d&rsquo;Orléans, both
+exiled by the Republic. In November the king of Portugal
+came to Paris, and the president of the Republic also received
+during the year less formal visits from the kings of England and
+of Greece.</p>
+
+<p>One untoward international event affecting the French
+ministry occurred in June 1905. M. Delcassé (see section on
+<i>Exterior Policy</i>), who had been foreign minister longer
+than any holder of that office under the Republic,
+<span class="sidenote">Resignation of M. Delcassé.</span>
+resigned, and it was believed that he had been sacrificed
+by the prime minister to the exigencies of Germany,
+which power was said to be disquieted at his having, in connexion
+with the Morocco question, isolated Germany by promoting the
+friendly relations of France with England, Spain and Italy.
+Whether it be true or not that the French government was
+really in alarm at the possibility of a declaration of war by
+Germany, the impression given was unfavourable, nor was it
+removed when M. Rouvier himself took the portfolio of foreign
+affairs.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1906 is remarkable in the history of the Third
+Republic in that it witnessed the renewal of all the public
+powers in the state. A new president of the Republic
+was elected on the 17th of January ten days after the
+<span class="sidenote">M. Fallières president of the Republic.</span>
+triennial election of one third of the senate, and the
+general election of the chamber of deputies followed
+in May&mdash;the ninth which had taken place under the constitution
+of 1875. The senatorial elections of the 7th of January showed
+that the delegates of the people who chose the members of the
+upper house and represented the average opinion of the country
+approved of the anti-clerical legislation of parliament. The
+election of M. Fallières, president of the senate, to the presidency
+of the Republic was therefore anticipated, he being the candidate
+of the parliamentary majorities which had disestablished the
+church. At the congress of the two chambers held at Versailles
+on the 17th of January he received the absolute majority of 449
+votes out of 849 recorded. The candidate of the Opposition was
+M. Paul Doumer, whose anti-clericalism in the past was so
+extreme that when married he had dispensed with a religious
+ceremony and his children were unbaptized. So the curious
+spectacle was presented of the Moderate Opportunist M. Fallières
+being elected by Radicals and Socialists, while the Radical
+candidate was supported by Moderates and Reactionaries. For
+the second time a president of the senate, the second official
+personage in the Republic, was advanced to the chief magistracy,
+M. Loubet having been similarly promoted. As in his case,
+M. Fallières owed his election to M. Clémenceau. When M.
+Loubet was elected M. Clémenceau had not come to the end
+of his retirement from parliamentary life; but in political
+circles, with his powerful pen and otherwise, he was resuming
+his former influence as a &ldquo;king-maker.&rdquo; He knew of the
+precariousness Of Félix Faure&rsquo;s health and of the indiscretions
+of the elderly president. So when the presidency suddenly
+became vacant in January 1899 he had already fixed his choice
+on M. Loubet, as a candidate whose unobtrusive name excited
+no jealousy among the republicans. At that moment, owing
+to the crisis caused by the Dreyfus affair, the Republic needed
+a safe man to protect it against the attacks of the plebiscitary
+party which had been latterly favoured by President Faure.
+M. Constans, it was said, had in 1899 desired the presidency of
+the senate, vacant by M. Loubet&rsquo;s promotion, in preference to
+the post of ambassador at Constantinople. But M. Clémenceau,
+deeming that his name had been too much associated with
+polemics in the past, contrived the election of M. Fallières to the
+second place of dignity in the Republic, so as to have another
+safe candidate in readiness for the Elysée in case President
+Loubet suddenly disappeared. M. Loubet, however, completed
+his septennate, and to the end of it M. Fallières was regarded as
+his probable successor. As he fulfilled his high duties in the
+senate inoffensively without making enemies among his political
+friends, he escaped the fate which had awaited other presidents-designate
+of the Republic. Previously to presiding over the senate
+this Gascon advocate, who had represented his native Lot-et-Garonne,
+in either chamber, since 1876, had once been prime
+minister for three weeks in 1883. He had also held office in
+six other ministries, so no politician in France had a larger
+experience in administration and in public affairs.</p>
+
+<p>On New Year&rsquo;s Day 1906, the absence of the Nuncio from
+the presidential reception of the diplomatic body marked conspicuously
+the rupture of the Concordat; for hitherto the representative
+of the Holy See had ranked as <i>doyen</i> of the ambassadors
+to the Republic, whatever the relative seniority of his colleagues,
+and in the name of all the foreign powers had officially saluted
+the chief of the state. On the 20th of January the inventories
+of the churches were commenced, under the 3rd clause of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page893" id="page893"></a>893</span>
+Separation Act, for the purpose of assessing the value of the
+furniture and other objects which they contained. In Paris
+they occasioned some disturbance; but as the protesting rioters
+were led by persons whose hostility to the Republic was more
+notorious than their love for religion, the demonstrations were
+regarded as political rather than religious. In certain rural
+districts, where the church had retained its influence and where
+its separation from the state was unpopular, the taking of the
+inventories was impeded by the inhabitants, and in some places,
+where the troops were called out to protect the civil authorities,
+further feeling was aroused by the refusal of officers to act.
+But, as a rule, this first manifest operation of the Separation Law
+was received with indifference by the population. One region
+where popular feeling was displayed in favour of the church was
+<span class="sidenote">The Sarrien ministry.</span>
+Flanders, where, in March, at Boeschepe on the
+Belgian frontier, a man was killed during the taking
+of an inventory. This accident caused the fall of the
+ministry. The moderate Republicans in the Chamber,
+who had helped to keep M. Rouvier in office, withheld their
+support in a debate arising out of the incident, and the government
+was defeated by thirty-three votes. M. Rouvier resigned,
+and the new president of the Republic sent for M. Sarrien, a Radical
+of the old school from Burgundy, who had been deputy for his
+native Saône-et-Loire from the foundation of the Chamber in
+1876 and had previously held office in four cabinets. In M.
+Sarrien&rsquo;s ministry of the 14th of March 1906 the president of the
+council was only a minor personage, its real conductor being
+M. Clémenceau, who accepted the portfolio of the interior. Upon
+him, therefore devolved the function of &ldquo;making the elections&rdquo;
+<span class="sidenote">M. Clèmenceau minister of the interior.</span>
+of 1906, as it is the minister at the Place Beauvau,
+where all the wires of administrative government are
+centralized, who gives the orders to the prefectures
+at each general election. As in France ministers sit
+and speak in both houses of parliament, M. Clémenceau,
+though a senator, now returned, after an absence of thirteen years,
+to the Chamber of Deputies, in which he had played a mighty part
+in the first seventeen years of its existence. His political experience
+was unique. From an early period after entering the
+Chamber in 1876 he had exercised there an influence not exceeded
+by any deputy. Yet it was not until 1906, thirty years after his
+first election to parliament, that he held office&mdash;though in 1888
+he just missed the presidency of the Chamber, receiving the same
+number of votes as M. Méline, to whom the post was allotted by
+right of seniority. He now returned to the tribune of the Palais
+Bourbon, on which he had been a most formidable orator.
+During his career as deputy his eloquence was chiefly destructive,
+and of the nineteen ministries which fell between the election
+of M. Grévy to the presidency of the Republic in 1879 and his
+own departure from parliamentary life in 1893 there were few
+of which the fall had not been expedited by his mordant criticism
+or denunciation. He now came back to the scene of his former
+achievements not to attack but to defend a ministry. Though
+his old occupation was gone, his re-entry excited the keenest
+interest, for at sixty-five he remained the biggest political figure
+in France. After M. Clémenceau the most interesting of the
+new ministers was M. Briand, who was not nine years old when
+M. Clémenceau had become conspicuous in political life as the
+mayor of Montmartre on the eve of the Commune. M. Briand
+had entered the Chamber, as Socialist deputy for Saint Etienne,
+only in 1902. The mark he had made as &ldquo;reporter&rdquo; of the
+Separation Bill has been noted, and on that account he became
+minister of education and public worship&mdash;the terms of the
+Separation Law necessitating the continuation of a department
+for ecclesiastical affairs. As he had been a militant Socialist
+of the &ldquo;unified&rdquo; group of which M. Jaurès was the chief, and
+also a member of the superior council of labour, his appointment
+indicated that the new ministry courted the support of the
+extreme Left. It, however, contained some moderate men,
+notably M. Poincaré, who had the repute of making the largest
+income at the French bar after M. Waldeck-Rousseau gave up
+his practice, and who became for the second time minister of
+finance. The portfolios of the colonies and of public works were
+also given to old ministers of moderate tendencies, M. Georges
+Leygues and M. Barthou. A former prime minister, M. Léon
+Bourgeois, went to the foreign office, over which he had already
+presided, besides having represented France at the peace conference
+at the Hague; while MM. Étienne and Thomson retained
+their portfolios of war and marine. The cabinet contained
+so many men of tried ability that it was called the ministry of all
+the talents. But the few who understood the origin of the name
+knew that it would be even more ephemeral than was the British
+ministry of 1806; for the fine show of names belonged to a
+transient combination which could not survive the approaching
+elections long enough to leave any mark in politics.</p>
+
+<p>Before the elections took place grave labour troubles showed
+that social and economical questions were more likely to give
+anxiety to the government than any public movement
+resulting from the disestablishment of the church.
+<span class="sidenote">Progress of socialism.</span>
+Almost the first ministerial act of M. Clémenceau was
+to visit the coal basin of the Pas de Calais, where an
+accident causing great loss of life was followed by an uprising of
+the working population of the region, which spread into the
+adjacent department of the Nord and caused the minister of the
+interior to take unusual precautions to prevent violent demonstrations
+in Paris on Labour Day, the 1st of May. The activity of
+the Socialist leaders in encouraging anti-capitalist agitation
+did not seem to alarm the electorate. Nor did it show any sympathy
+with the appeal of the pope, who in his encyclical letter,
+<i>Vehementer nos</i>, addressed to the French cardinals on the 11th
+of February, denounced the Separation Law. So the result of
+the elections of May 1906 was a decisive victory for the anti-clericals
+and Socialists.</p>
+
+<p>A brief analysis of the composition of the Chamber of Deputies
+is always impossible, the limits of the numerous groups being
+ill-defined. But in general terms the majority supporting the
+radical policy of the <i>bloc</i> in the last parliament, which had
+usually mustered about 340 votes, now numbered more than 400,
+including 230 Radical-Socialists and Socialists. The gains of the
+extreme Left were chiefly at the expense of the moderate or
+progressist republicans, who, about 120 strong in the old Chamber,
+now came back little more than half that number. The anti-republican
+Right, comprising Royalists, Bonapartists and
+Nationalists, had maintained their former position and were
+about 130 all told. The general result of the polls of the 6th
+and 20th of May was thus an electoral vindication of the advanced
+policy adopted by the old Chamber and a repudiation of moderate
+Republicanism; while the stationary condition of the reactionary
+groups showed that the tribulations inflicted by the last parliament
+on the church had not provoked the electorate to increase
+its support of clerical politicians.</p>
+
+<p>The Vatican, however, declined to recognize this unmistakable
+demonstration. The bishops, taking advantage of their release
+from the concordatory restrictions which had withheld from
+them the faculty of meeting in assembly, had met at a preliminary
+conference to consider their plan of action under the Separation
+Law. They had adjourned for further instructions from the
+Holy See, which were published on the 10th of August 1906,
+in a new encyclical <i>Gravissimo officii</i>, wherein, to the consternation
+of many members of the episcopate, the pope interdicted
+the <i>associations cultuelles</i>, the bodies which, under the Separation
+Law, were to be established in each parish, to hold and to organize
+the church property and finances, and were essential to the
+working of the act. On the 4th of September the bishops met
+again and passed a resolution of submission to the Holy See.
+In spite of their loyalty they could not but deplore an injunction
+which inevitably would cause distress to the large majority of
+the clergy after the act came into operation on the 12th of
+December 1906. They knew only too well how hopeless was
+the idea that the distress of the clergy would call forth any
+revulsion of popular feeling in France. The excitement of the
+public that summer over a painful clerical scandal in the diocese
+of Chartres showed that the interest taken by the mass of the
+population in church matters was not of a kind which would aid
+the clergy in their difficult situation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page894" id="page894"></a>894</span></p>
+
+<p>At the close of the parliamentary recess M. Sarrien resigned
+the premiership on the pretext of ill-health, and by a presidential
+decree of the 25th of October 1906 M. Clémenceau,
+who had been called to fill the vacancy, took office.
+<span class="sidenote">The Clémenceau ministry.</span>
+MM. Bourgeois, Poincaré, Etienne and Leygues
+retired with M. Sarrien. The new prime minister
+placed at the foreign office M. Pichon, who had learned politics
+on the staff of the <i>Justice</i>, the organ of M. Clémenceau, by whose
+influence he had entered the diplomatic service in 1893, after
+eight years in the chamber of deputies. He had been minister
+at Pekin during the Boxer rebellion and resident at Tunis,
+and he was now radical senator for the Jura. M. Caillaux, a
+more adventurous financier than M. Rouvier or M. Poincaré,
+who had been Waldeck-Rousseau&rsquo;s minister of finance, resumed
+that office. The most significant appointment was that of
+General Picquart to the war office. The new minister when a
+colonel had been willing to sacrifice his career, although he was
+an anti-Semite, to redressing the injustice which he believed
+had been inflicted on a Jewish officer&mdash;whose second condemnation,
+it may be noted, had been quashed earlier in 1906. M.
+Viviani became the first minister of labour (<i>Travail et Prévoyance
+sociale</i>). The creation of the office and the appointment of a
+socialist lawyer and journalist to fill it showed that M. Clémenceau
+recognized the increasing prominence of social and industrial
+questions and the growing power of the trade-unions.</p>
+
+<p>The acts and policy of the Clémenceau ministry and the events
+which took place during the years that it held office are too
+near the present time to be appraised historically. It seems not
+unlikely that the first advent to power, after thirty-five years
+of strenuous political life, of one who must be ranked among the
+ablest of the twenty-seven prime ministers of the Third Republic
+will be seen to have been coincident with an important evolution
+in the history of the French nation. The separation of the Roman
+Catholic Church from the state, by the law of December 1905,
+had deprived the Socialists, the now most powerful party of the
+extreme Left, of the chief outlet for their activity, which hitherto
+had chiefly found its scope in anti-clericalism. Having no longer
+the church to attack they turned their attention to economical
+questions, the solution of which had always been their theoretical
+aim. At the same period the law relating to the Contract of
+Association of 1901, by removing the restrictions (save in the
+case of religious communities) which previously had prevented
+French citizens from forming association without the authorization
+of the government, had formally abrogated the individualistic
+doctrine of the Revolution, which in all its phases was intolerant
+of associations. The law of June 1791 declared the destruction
+of all corporations of persons engaged in the same trade or
+profession to be a fundamental article of the French constitution,
+and it was only in the last six years of the Second Empire that
+some tolerance was granted to trade-unions, which was extended
+by the Third Republic only in 1884. In that year the prohibition
+of 1791 was repealed. Not quite 70 unions existed at the end of
+1884. In 1890 they had increased to about 1000, in 1894 to 2000,
+and in 1901, when the law relating to the Contract of Association
+was passed, they numbered 3287 with 588,832 members. The
+law of 1901 did not specially affect them; but this general act,
+completely emancipating all associations formed for secular
+purposes, was a definitive break with the individualism of the
+Revolution which had formed the basis of all legislation in France
+for nearly a century after the fall of the ancient monarchy.
+It was an encouragement and at the same time a symptom of the
+spread of anti-individualistic doctrine. This was seen in the
+accelerated increase of syndicated workmen during the years
+succeeding the passing of the Associations Law, who in 1909 were
+over a million strong. The power exercised by the trade-unions
+moved the functionaries of the government, a vast army under
+the centralized system of administration, numbering not less than
+800,000 persons, to demand equal freedom of association for the
+purpose of regulating their salaries paid by the state and their
+conditions of labour. This movement brought into new relief
+the long-recognized incompatibility of parliamentary government
+with administrative centralization as organized by Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>In another direction the increased activity in the rural districts
+of the Socialists, who hitherto had chiefly worked in the industrial
+centres, indicated that they looked for support from the peasant
+proprietors, whose ownership in the soil had hitherto opposed
+them to the practice of collectivist doctrine. In the summer of
+1907 an economic crisis in the wine-growing districts of the South
+created a general discontent which spread to other rural regions.
+The Clémenceau ministry, while opposing the excesses of revolutionary
+socialism and while incurring the strenuous hostility
+of M. Jaurès, the Socialist leader, adopted a programme which
+was more socialistic than that of any previous government
+of the republic. Under its direction a bill for the imposition
+of a graduated income tax was passed by the lower house,
+involving a scheme of direct taxation which would transform
+the interior fiscal system of France. But the income tax was
+still only a project of law when M. Clémenceau unexpectedly
+fell in July 1909, being succeeded as prime minister by his
+colleague M. Briand. His ministry had, however, passed one
+important measure which individualists regarded as an act of
+state-socialism. It took a long step towards the nationalization
+of railways by purchasing the important Western line and adding
+it to the relatively small system of state railways. Previously
+a more generally criticized act of the representatives of the
+people was not of a nature to augment the popularity of parliamentary
+institutions at a period of economic crisis, when senators
+and deputies increased their own annual salary, or indemnity as
+it is officially called, to 15,000 francs.</p>
+<div class="author">(J. E. C. B.)</div>
+
+<p>(<i>Continued in volume X slice VIII.</i>)</p>
+
+<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="ft1c" id="ft1c" href="#fa1c"><span class="fn">1</span></a> By the <i>Service géographique de l&rsquo;armée</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft2c" id="ft2c" href="#fa2c"><span class="fn">2</span></a> The etymology of this name (sometimes wrongly written Golfe
+de Lyon) is unknown.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft3c" id="ft3c" href="#fa3c"><span class="fn">3</span></a> In 1907 deaths were superior in number to births by
+nearly 20,000.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft4c" id="ft4c" href="#fa4c"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The following list comprises the three most densely-populated
+and the three most sparsely populated departments
+in France:</p>
+
+<table class="ws" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcc" colspan="4"><i>Inhabitants to the Square Mile.</i></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tcl">Seine</td> <td class="tcr rb">20,803</td> <td class="tcl">Basses-Alpes</td> <td class="tcc">42</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Nord</td> <td class="tcr rb">850</td> <td class="tcl">Hautes-Alpes</td> <td class="tcc">49</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Rhône</td> <td class="tcr rb">778</td> <td class="tcl">Lozère</td> <td class="tcc">64</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><a name="ft5c" id="ft5c" href="#fa5c"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Inspectors are placed at the head of the synodal circumscriptions;
+their functions are to consecrate candidates for the ministry, install
+the pastors, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft6c" id="ft6c" href="#fa6c"><span class="fn">6</span></a> <i>Cultures industrielles.</i>&mdash;Under this head the French group
+beetroot, hemp, flax and other plants, the products of which pass
+through some process of manufacture before they reach the consumer.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft7c" id="ft7c" href="#fa7c"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Fibre only. In the years 1896-1905, 8130 tons of hemp-seed
+and 12,137 tons of flax-seed was the average annual production in
+addition to fibre.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft8c" id="ft8c" href="#fa8c"><span class="fn">8</span></a> The chief breeds of horses are the <i>Boulonnais</i> (heavy draught),
+the <i>Percheron</i> (light and heavy draught), the <i>Anglo-Norman</i> (light
+draught and heavy cavalry) and the <i>Tarbais</i> of the western Pyrenees
+(saddle horses and light cavalry). Of cattle besides the breeds named
+the <i>Norman</i> (beef and milk), the <i>Limousin</i> (beef), the <i>Montbéliard</i>,
+the <i>Bazadais</i>, the <i>Flamand</i>, the <i>Breton</i> and the <i>Parthenais</i> breeds
+may be mentioned.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft9c" id="ft9c" href="#fa9c"><span class="fn">9</span></a> The department is also entrusted
+with surveillance over river-fishing,
+pisciculture and the amelioration of
+pasture.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft10c" id="ft10c" href="#fa10c"><span class="fn">10</span></a> The metric ton = 1000 kilogrammes or 2204 &#8468;.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft11c" id="ft11c" href="#fa11c"><span class="fn">11</span></a> Includes manufactories of glue, tallow, soap, perfumery, fertilizers,
+soda, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft12c" id="ft12c" href="#fa12c"><span class="fn">12</span></a> See the <i>Guide officiel de la navigation intérieure</i> issued by the
+ministry of public works (Paris, 1903).</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft13c" id="ft13c" href="#fa13c"><span class="fn">13</span></a> Includes horses, mules and asses.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft14c" id="ft14c" href="#fa14c"><span class="fn">14</span></a> Except certain manufactures which come under the category
+of articles of food.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft15c" id="ft15c" href="#fa15c"><span class="fn">15</span></a> Includes small fancy wares, toys, also wooden wares and furniture,
+brushes, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft16c" id="ft16c" href="#fa16c"><span class="fn">16</span></a> Decrease largely due to Spanish-American War (1898).</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft17c" id="ft17c" href="#fa17c"><span class="fn">17</span></a> The administration of posts, telegraphs and telephones is assigned to the ministry of commerce and industry or to that of public
+works.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft18c" id="ft18c" href="#fa18c"><span class="fn">18</span></a> The province or provinces named are those out of which the department was chiefly formed.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft19c" id="ft19c" href="#fa19c"><span class="fn">19</span></a> The tax on land (<i>propriétés non bâties</i>) and that on buildings
+(<i>propriétés bâties</i>) are included under the head of <i>contribution foncière</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft20c" id="ft20c" href="#fa20c"><span class="fn">20</span></a> With revenues of over £1200.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft21c" id="ft21c" href="#fa21c"><span class="fn">21</span></a> For a history of the French debt, see C.F. Bastable, <i>Public
+Finance</i> (1903).</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft22c" id="ft22c" href="#fa22c"><span class="fn">22</span></a> In 1894 the rentes then standing at 4½% were reduced to 3½%,
+and in 1902 to 3%.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft23c" id="ft23c" href="#fa23c"><span class="fn">23</span></a> Algerian native troops are recruited by voluntary enlistment.
+But in 1908, owing to the prevailing want of trained soldiers in
+France, it was proposed to set free the white troops in Algeria by
+applying the principles of universal service to the natives, as in Tunis.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft24c" id="ft24c" href="#fa24c"><span class="fn">24</span></a> Kerguelen lies in the Great Southern Ocean, but is included here
+for the sake of convenience.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft25c" id="ft25c" href="#fa25c"><span class="fn">25</span></a> In 1906 the number of registered electors in these colonies was
+199,055, of whom 106,695 exercised their suffrage.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft26c" id="ft26c" href="#fa26c"><span class="fn">26</span></a> In the case of Madagascar by decree of the 11th of December
+1895.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft27c" id="ft27c" href="#fa27c"><span class="fn">27</span></a> The Indo-China budget is reckoned in piastres, a silver coin of
+fluctuating value (1s. 10d. to 2s.). The budget of 1907 balanced at
+50,000,000 piastres.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft28c" id="ft28c" href="#fa28c"><span class="fn">28</span></a> St Eligius, bishop of Noyon, apostle of the Belgians and Frisians
+(d. 659?).</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft29c" id="ft29c" href="#fa29c"><span class="fn">29</span></a> The <i>assurement</i> (<i>assecuratio</i>, <i>assecuramentum</i>) differed from the
+truce, which was a suspension of hostilities by mutual consent,
+in so far as it was a peace forced by judicial authority on one of the
+parties at the request of the other. The party desiring protection
+applied for the <i>assurement</i>, either before or during hostilities, to any
+royal, seigniorial or communal judge, who thereupon cited the other
+party to appear and take an oath that he would assure the person,
+property and dependents of his adversary (<i>qu&rsquo;il l&rsquo;assurera, elle et les
+siens</i>). This custom, which became common in the 13th century,
+of course depended for its effectiveness on the degree of respect
+inspired in the feudal nobles by the courts. It was difficult, for
+instance, to refuse or to violate an <i>assurement</i> imposed by a royal
+<i>bailli</i> or by the parlement itself. See A. Luchaire, <i>Manuel des
+institutions françaises</i> (Paris, 1892), p. 233.&mdash;(W. A. P.)</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft30c" id="ft30c" href="#fa30c"><span class="fn">30</span></a> Earl of Richmond; afterwards Arthur, duke of Brittany (<i>q.v.</i>).</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft31c" id="ft31c" href="#fa31c"><span class="fn">31</span></a> Olivier de Serres, sieur de Pradel, spent most of his life on his
+model farm at Pradel. In 1599 he dedicated a pamphlet on the
+cultivation of silk to Henry IV., and in 1600 published his <i>Théâtre
+d&rsquo;agriculture et ménage des champs</i>, which passed through nineteen
+editions up to 1675.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft32c" id="ft32c" href="#fa32c"><span class="fn">32</span></a> Ferdinand is reported to have said: &ldquo;Le capucin m&rsquo;a désarmé
+avec son scapulaire et a mis dans capuchon six bonnets électoraux.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft33c" id="ft33c" href="#fa33c"><span class="fn">33</span></a> Jean Orry Louis Orry de Fulvy (1703-1751), counsel to the
+parlement in 1723, intendant of finances in 1737, founded at Vincennes
+the manufactory of porcelain which was bought in 1750 by the
+farmers general and transferred to Sèvres.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft34c" id="ft34c" href="#fa34c"><span class="fn">34</span></a> Louis Robert Hippolyte de Bréhan, comte de Plélo (1699-1734),
+a Breton by birth, originally a soldier, was at the time of the siege
+of Danzig French ambassador to Denmark. Enraged at the return
+to Copenhagen, without having done anything, of the French force
+sent to help Stanislaus, he himself led it back to Danzig and fell in an
+attack on the Russians on the 27th of May 1734. Plélo was a poet
+of considerable charm, and well-read both in science and literature.</p>
+
+<p>See Marquis de Bréhan, <i>Le Comte de Plélo</i> (Nantes, 1874); R.
+Rathery, <i>Le Comte de Plélo</i> (Paris, 1876); and P. Boyé, <i>Stanislaus
+Leszczynski et le troisième traité de Vienne</i> (Paris, 1898).</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft35c" id="ft35c" href="#fa35c"><span class="fn">35</span></a> Charles Laure Hugues Théobald, duc de Choiseul-Praslin (1805-1847),
+was deputy in 1839, created a peer of France in 1840. He
+had married a daughter of General Sebastiani, with whom he lived
+on good terms till 1840, when he entered into open relations with
+his children&rsquo;s governess. The duchess threatened a separation;
+and the duke consented to send his mistress out of the house, but
+did not cease to correspond with and visit her. On the 18th of
+August 1847 the duchess was found stabbed to death, with more
+than thirty wounds, in her room. The duke was arrested on the
+20th and imprisoned in the Luxembourg, where he died of poison,
+self-administered on the 24th. It was, however, popularly believed
+that the government had smuggled him out of the country and that
+he was living under a feigned name in England.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft36c" id="ft36c" href="#fa36c"><span class="fn">36</span></a> T.T. de Martens, <i>Recueil des traités, &amp;c.</i>, xii. 248.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ft37c" id="ft37c" href="#fa37c"><span class="fn">37</span></a> In the 14th volume of his <i>L&rsquo;Empire libéral</i> (1909) M. Émile
+Ollivier gives a detailed and illuminating account of the events that
+led up to the war. He indignantly denies that he ever said that he
+contemplated it &ldquo;with a light heart,&rdquo; and says that he disapproved
+of Gramont&rsquo;s demand for &ldquo;guarantees,&rdquo; to which he was not privy.
+His object is to prove that France was entrapped by Bismarck into a
+position in which she was bound in honour to declare war.  (<span class="sc">Ed.</span>)</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th
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+</body>
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+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition,
+Volume 10, Slice 7, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 7
+       "Fox, George" to "France"
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2011 [EBook #36104]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYC. BRITANNICA, VOL 10 SL 7 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes:
+
+(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally
+      printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an
+      underscore, like C_n.
+
+(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.
+
+(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective
+      paragraphs.
+
+(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not
+      inserted.
+
+(5) The following typographical errors have been corrected:
+
+    ARTICLE FOX, RICHARD: "He also appears to have studied at
+      Cambridge, but nothing definite is known of the first thirty-five
+      years of his career." 'thirty-five' amended from 'thiry-five'.
+
+    ARTICLE France: "After desperate strife, an agreement between the
+      two rivals, Arnulf's support, and the death of Odo, secured it for
+      Charles III., surnamed the Simple." 'agreement' amended from
+      'agreeement'.
+
+    ARTICLE France: "He in his turn tried to stem the tumultuous
+      current which had borne him along, and to prevent discord; but the
+      check to his policy of an understanding with Prussia and with
+      Sardinia ..." 'in' amended from 'is'.
+
+    ARTICLE France: "The pope banished, it was now desirable to send
+      away those to whom Italy had been more or less promised. Eugene de
+      Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, was transferred to Frankfort, and
+      Murat carefully watched until the time should come to take him to
+      Russia and install him as king of Poland." 'install' amended from
+      'instal'.
+
+
+
+
+          ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
+
+  A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE
+           AND GENERAL INFORMATION
+
+              ELEVENTH EDITION
+
+
+            VOLUME X, SLICE VII
+
+           Fox, George to France
+
+
+
+
+ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:
+
+
+  FOX, GEORGE                   FRAGONARD, JEAN-HONORE
+  FOX, RICHARD                  FRAHN, CHRISTIAN MARTIN
+  FOX, RORERT WERE              FRAME
+  FOX, SIR STEPHEN              FRAMINGHAM
+  FOX, SIR WILLIAM              FRAMLINGHAM
+  FOX                           FRANC
+  FOXE, JOHN                    FRANCAIS, ANTOINE
+  FOXGLOVE                      FRANCAIS, FRANCOIS LOUIS
+  FOX INDIANS                   FRANCATELLI, CHARLES ELME
+  FOX MORCILLO, SEBASTIAN       FRANCAVILLA FONTANA
+  FOY, MAXIMILIEN SEBASTIEN     FRANCE, ANATOLE
+  FRAAS, KARL NIKOLAS           FRANCE (part)
+  FRACASTORO, GIROLAMO
+
+
+
+
+FOX, GEORGE (1624-1691), the founder of the "Society of Friends" or
+"Quakers," was born at Drayton, Leicestershire, in July 1624. His
+father, Christopher Fox, called by the neighbours "Righteous Christer,"
+was a weaver by occupation; and his mother, Mary Lago, "an upright woman
+and accomplished above most of her degree," was "of the stock of the
+martyrs." George from his childhood "appeared of another frame than the
+rest of his brethren, being more religious, inward, still, solid and
+observing beyond his years"; and he himself declares: "When I came to
+eleven years of age I knew pureness and righteousness; for while a child
+I was taught how to walk to be kept pure." Some of his relations wished
+that he should be educated for the ministry; but his father apprenticed
+him to a shoemaker, who also dealt in wool and cattle. In this service
+he remained till his nineteenth year. According to Penn, "he took most
+delight in sheep," but he himself simply says: "A good deal went through
+my hands.... People had generally a love to me for my innocency and
+honesty." In 1643, being upon business at a fair, and having accompanied
+some friends to the village public-house, he was troubled by a proposal
+to "drink healths," and withdrew in grief of spirit. "When I had done
+what business I had to do I returned home, but did not go to bed that
+night, nor could I sleep, but sometimes walked up and down, and
+sometimes prayed and cried to the Lord, who said unto me, 'Thou seest
+how young people go together into vanity and old people into the earth;
+thou must forsake all, both young and old, and keep out of all, and be a
+stranger unto all.' Then, at the command of God, on the ninth day of the
+seventh month, 1643, I left my relations and broke off all familiarity
+or fellowship with old or young."
+
+Thus briefly he describes what appears to have been the greatest moral
+crisis in his life. The four years which followed were a time of great
+perplexity and distress, though sometimes "I had intermissions, and was
+sometimes brought into such a heavenly joy that I thought I had been in
+Abraham's bosom." He would go from town to town, "travelling up and down
+as a stranger in the earth, which way the Lord inclined my heart; taking
+a chamber to myself in the town where I came, and tarrying sometimes a
+month, more or less, in a place"; and the reason he gives for this
+migratory habit is that he was "afraid both of professor and profane,
+lest, being a tender young man, he should be hurt by conversing much
+with either." The same fear often led him to shun all society for days
+at a time; but frequently he would apply to "professors" for spiritual
+direction and consolation. These applications, however, never proved
+successful; he invariably found that his advisers "possessed not what
+they professed." Some recommended marriage, others enlistment as a
+soldier in the civil wars; one "ancient priest" bade him take tobacco
+and sing psalms; another of the same fraternity, "in high account,"
+advised physic and blood-letting.
+
+About the beginning of 1646 his thoughts began to take more definite
+shape. One day, approaching Coventry, "the Lord opened to him" that none
+were true believers but such as were born of God and had passed from
+death unto life; and this was soon followed by other "openings" to the
+effect that "being bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough to fit and
+qualify men to be ministers of Christ," and that "God who made the world
+did not dwell in temples made with hands." He also experienced deeper
+manifestations of Christ within his own soul. "When I myself was in the
+deep, shut up under all [the burden of corruptions], I could not believe
+that I should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows and my temptations
+were so great that I thought many times I should have despaired, I was
+so tempted. But when Christ opened to me how He was tempted by the same
+devil, and overcame him and bruised his head, and that through Him, and
+His power, light, grace and spirit, I should overcome also, I had
+confidence in Him; so He it was that opened to me, when I was shut up
+and had no hope nor faith. Christ, who had enlightened me, gave me His
+light to believe in; He gave me hope which He himself revealed in me;
+and He gave me His spirit and grace, which I found sufficient in the
+deeps and in weakness." In 1647 he records that at a time when all
+outward help had failed "I heard a voice which said, 'There is one, even
+Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.' And when I heard it my
+heart did leap for joy." In the same year he first openly declared his
+message in the neighbourhood of Dukinfield and Manchester (see FRIENDS,
+SOCIETY OF).
+
+In 1649, as he was walking towards Nottingham, he heard the bell of the
+"steeple house" of the city, and was admonished by an inward voice to go
+forward and cry against the great idol and the worshippers in it.
+Entering the church he found the preacher engaged in expounding the
+words, "We have also a more sure word of prophecy," from which the
+ordinary Protestant doctrine of the supreme authority of Scripture was
+being enforced in a manner which appeared to Fox so defective or
+erroneous as to call for his immediate and most energetic protest.
+Lifting up his voice against the preacher's doctrine, he declared that
+it is not by the Scripture alone, but by the divine light by which the
+Scriptures were given, that doctrines ought to be judged. He was carried
+off to prison, where he was detained for some time, and from which he
+was released only by the favour of the sheriff, whose sympathies he had
+succeeded in enlisting. In 1650 he was imprisoned for about a year at
+Derby on a charge of blasphemy. On his release, overwrought and weakened
+by six months spent "in the common gaol and dungeon," he performed what
+was almost the only and certainly the most pronounced act of his life
+which had the appearance of wild fanaticism. Through the streets of
+Lichfield, on market day, he walked barefoot, crying, "Woe to the bloody
+city of Lichfield." His own explanation of the act, connecting it with
+the martyrdom of a thousand Christians in the time of Diocletian, is not
+convincing. His proceeding was probably due to a horror of the city
+arising from a subconscious memory of what he must have heard in
+childhood from his mother ("of the stock of the martyrs") concerning a
+martyr, a woman, burnt in the reign of Mary at Lichfield, who had been
+taken thither from Mancetter, a village two miles from his home in which
+he had worked as a journeyman shoemaker (see _The Martyrs Glover and
+Lewis of Mancetter_, by the Rev. B. Richings). He must also have heard
+of the burning of Edward Wightman in the same city in 1612, the last
+person burned for heresy in England.
+
+It would be here out of place to follow with any minuteness the details
+of his subsequent imprisonments, such as that at Carlisle in 1653;
+London 1654; Launceston 1656; Lancaster 1660, and again in 1663, whence
+he was taken to Scarborough in 1665; and Worcester 1673. During these
+terms of imprisonment his pen was not idle, as is amply shown by the
+very numerous letters, pastorals and exhortations which have been
+preserved; while during his intervals of liberty he was unwearied in the
+work of "declaring truth" in all parts of the country. In 1669 he
+married Margaret, widow of Judge Fell, of Swarthmoor, near Ulverston,
+who, with her family, had been among his earliest converts. In 1671 he
+visited Barbados, Jamaica, and the American continent, and shortly after
+his return in 1673 he was, as has been already noted, apprehended in
+Worcestershire for attending meetings that were forbidden by the law. At
+Worcester he suffered a captivity of nearly fourteen months. In 1677 he
+visited Holland along with Barclay, Penn and seven others; and this
+visit he repeated (with five others) in 1684. The later years of his
+life were spent mostly in London, where he continued to speak in public,
+comparatively unmolested, until within a few days of his death, which
+took place on the 13th of January 1691 (1690 O.S.).
+
+William Penn has left on record an account of Fox from personal
+knowledge--a _Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People
+called Quakers_, written as a preface to Fox's _Journal_. Although a man
+of large size and great bodily strength, he was "very temperate, eating
+little and sleeping less." He was a man of strong personality, of
+measured utterance, "civil" (says Penn) "beyond all forms of breeding."
+From his _Journal_ we gather that he had piercing eyes and a very loud
+voice, and wore good clothes. Unlike the Roundheads, he wore his hair
+long. Even before his marriage with Margaret Fell he seems to have been
+fairly well off; he does not appear to have worked for a living after he
+was nineteen, and yet he had a horse, and speaks of having money to give
+to those who were in need. He had much practical common-sense, and keen
+sympathy for all who were in distress and for animals. The mere fact
+that he was able to attract to himself so considerable a body of
+respectable followers, including such men as Ellwood, Barclay, Penington
+and Penn, is sufficient to prove that he possessed in a very eminent
+degree the power of conviction, persuasion, and moral ascendancy; while
+of his personal uprightness, single-mindedness and sincerity there can
+be no question.
+
+  The writings of Fox are enumerated in Joseph Smith's _Catalogue of
+  Friends' Books_. The _Journal_ is especially interesting; of it Sir
+  James Mackintosh has said that "it is one of the most extraordinary
+  and instructive narratives in the world, which no reader of competent
+  judgment can peruse without revering the virtue of the writer." The
+  _Journal_ was originally published in London in 1694; the edition
+  known as the Bicentenary Edition, with notes biographical and
+  historical (reprint of 1901 or later), will be found the most useful
+  in practice. An exact transcript of the _Journal_ has been issued by
+  the Cambridge University Press. A _Life of George Fox_, by Dr Thomas
+  Hodgkin; _The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall_, by Maria Webb; and _The Life
+  and Character of George Fox_, by John Stephenson Rowntree, are
+  valuable. For a mention of other works, and for details of the
+  principles and history of the Society of Friends, together with some
+  further information about Fox, see the article FRIENDS, SOCIETY OF.
+       (A. N. B.)
+
+
+
+
+FOX, RICHARD (c. 1448-1528), successively bishop of Exeter, Bath and
+Wells, Durham, and Winchester, lord privy seal, and founder of Corpus
+Christi College, Oxford, was born about 1448 at Ropesley near Grantham,
+Lincolnshire. His parents belonged to the yeoman class, and there is
+some obscurity about Fox's early career. It is not known at what school
+he was educated, nor at what college, though the presumption is in
+favour of Magdalen, Oxford, whence he drew so many members of his
+subsequent foundation, Corpus Christi. He also appears to have studied
+at Cambridge, but nothing definite is known of the first thirty-five
+years of his career. In 1484 he was in Paris, whether merely for the
+sake of learning or because he had rendered himself obnoxious to Richard
+III. is a matter of speculation. At any rate he was brought into contact
+with the earl of Richmond, who was then beginning his quest for the
+English throne, and was taken into his service. In January 1485 Richard
+intervened to prevent Fox's appointment to the vicarage of Stepney on
+the ground that he was keeping company with the "great rebel, Henry ap
+Tuddor."
+
+The important offices conferred on Fox immediately after the battle of
+Bosworth imply that he had already seen more extensive political service
+than can be traced in records. Doubtless Henry VII. had every reason to
+reward his companions in exile, and to rule like Ferdinand of Aragon by
+means of lawyers and churchmen rather than trust nobles like those who
+had made the Wars of the Roses. But without an intimate knowledge of
+Fox's political experience and capacity he would hardly have made him
+his principal secretary, and soon afterwards lord privy seal and bishop
+of Exeter (1487). The ecclesiastical preferment was merely intended to
+provide a salary not at Henry's expense; for Fox never saw either Exeter
+or the diocese of Bath and Wells to which he was translated in 1492. His
+activity was confined to political and especially diplomatic channels;
+so long as Morton lived, Fox was his subordinate, but after the
+archbishop's death he was second to none in Henry's confidence, and he
+had an important share in all the diplomatic work of the reign. In 1487
+he negotiated a treaty with James III. of Scotland, in 1491 he baptized
+the future Henry VIII., in 1492 he helped to conclude the treaty of
+Etaples, and in 1497 he was chief commissioner in the negotiations for
+the famous commercial agreement with the Netherlands which Bacon seems
+to have been the first to call the _Magnus Intercursus_.
+
+Meanwhile in 1494 Fox had been translated to Durham, not merely because
+it was a richer see than Bath and Wells but because of its political
+importance as a palatine earldom and its position with regard to the
+Borders and relations with Scotland. For these reasons rather than from
+any ecclesiastical scruples Fox visited and resided in his new diocese;
+and he occupied Norham Castle, which he fortified and defended against a
+Scottish raid in Perkin Warbeck's interests (1497). But his energies
+were principally devoted to pacific purposes. In that same year he
+negotiated Perkin's retirement from the court of James IV., and in
+1498-1499 he completed the negotiations for that treaty of marriage
+between the Scottish king and Henry's daughter Margaret which led
+ultimately to the union of the two crowns in 1603 and of the two
+kingdoms in 1707. The marriage itself did not take place until 1503,
+just a century before the accession of James I.
+
+This consummated Fox's work in the north, and in 1501 he was once more
+translated to Winchester, then reputed the richest bishopric in England.
+In that year he brought to a conclusion marriage negotiations not less
+momentous in their ultimate results, when Prince Arthur was betrothed to
+Catherine of Aragon. His last diplomatic achievement in the reign of
+Henry VII. was the betrothal of the king's younger daughter Mary to the
+future emperor Charles V. In 1500 he was elected chancellor of Cambridge
+University, an office not confined to noble lords until a much more
+democratic age, and in 1507 master of Pembroke Hall in the same
+university. The Lady Margaret Beaufort made him one of her executors,
+and in this capacity as well as in that of chancellor, he had the chief
+share with Fisher in regulating the foundation of St John's College and
+the Lady Margaret professorships and readerships. His financial work
+brought him a less enviable notoriety, though a curious freak of history
+has deprived him of the credit which is his due for "Morton's fork." The
+invention of that ingenious dilemma for extorting contributions from
+poor and rich alike is ascribed as a tradition to Morton by Bacon; but
+the story is told in greater detail of Fox by Erasmus, who says he had
+it from Sir Thomas More, a well-informed contemporary authority. It is
+in keeping with the somewhat malicious saying about Fox reported by
+Tyndale that he would sacrifice his father to save his king, which after
+all is not so damning as Wolsey's dying words.
+
+The accession of Henry VIII. made no immediate difference to Fox's
+position. If anything, the substitution of the careless pleasure-loving
+youth for Henry VII. increased the power of his ministry, the personnel
+of which remained unaltered. The Venetian ambassador calls Fox "alter
+rex" and the Spanish ambassador Carroz says that Henry VIII. trusted him
+more than any other adviser, although he also reports Henry's warning
+that the bishop of Winchester was, as his name implied, "a fox indeed."
+He was the chief of the ecclesiastical statesmen who belonged to the
+school of Morton, believed in frequent parliaments, and opposed the
+spirited foreign policy which laymen like Surrey are supposed to have
+advocated. His colleagues were Warham and Ruthal, but Warham and Fox
+differed on the question of Henry's marriage. Fox advising the
+completion of the match with Catherine while Warham expressed doubts as
+to its canonical validity. They also differed over the prerogatives of
+Canterbury with regard to probate and other questions of ecclesiastical
+jurisdiction.
+
+Wolsey's rapid rise in 1511 put an end to Fox's influence. The pacific
+policy of the first two years of Henry VIII.'s reign was succeeded by an
+adventurous foreign policy directed mainly against France; and Fox
+complained that no one durst do anything in opposition to Wolsey's
+wishes. Gradually Warham and Fox retired from the government; the
+occasion of Fox's resignation of the privy seal was Wolsey's
+ill-advised attempt to drive Francis I. out of Milan by financing an
+expedition led by the emperor Maximilian in 1516. Tunstall protested,
+Wolsey took Warham's place as chancellor, and Fox was succeeded by
+Ruthal, who, said the Venetian ambassador, "sang treble to Wolsey's
+bass." He bore Wolsey no ill-will, and warmly congratulated him two
+years later when warlike adventures were abandoned at the peace of
+London. But in 1522 when war was again declared he emphatically refused
+to bear any part of the responsibility, and in 1523 he opposed in
+convocation the financial demands which met with a more strenuous
+resistance in the House of Commons.
+
+He now devoted himself assiduously to his long-neglected episcopal
+duties. He expressed himself as being as anxious for the reformation of
+the clergy as Simeon for the coming of the Messiah; but while he
+welcomed Wolsey's never-realized promises, he was too old to accomplish
+much himself in the way of remedying the clerical and especially the
+monastic depravity, licence and corruption he deplored. His sight failed
+during the last ten years of his life, and there is no reason to doubt
+Matthew Parker's story that Wolsey suggested his retirement from his
+bishopric on a pension. Fox replied with some warmth, and Wolsey had to
+wait until Fox's death before he could add Winchester to his
+archbishopric of York and his abbey of St Albans, and thus leave Durham
+vacant as he hoped for the illegitimate son on whom (aged 18) he had
+already conferred a deanery, four archdeaconries, five prebends and a
+chancellorship.
+
+The crown of Fox's career was his foundation of Corpus Christi College,
+which he established in 1515-1516. Originally he intended it as an
+Oxford house for the monks of St Swithin's, Winchester; but he is said
+to have been dissuaded by Bishop Oldham, who denounced the monks and
+foretold their fall. The scheme adopted breathed the spirit of the
+Renaissance; provision was made for the teaching of Greek, Erasmus
+lauded the institution and Pole was one of its earliest fellows. The
+humanist Vives was brought from Italy to teach Latin, and the reader in
+theology was instructed to follow the Greek and Latin Fathers rather
+than the scholastic commentaries. Fox also built and endowed schools at
+Taunton and Grantham, and was a benefactor to numerous other
+institutions. He died at Wolvesey on the 5th of October 1528; Corpus
+possesses several portraits and other relics of its founder.
+
+  See _Letters and Papers of Henry VII. and Henry VIII._, vols. i.-iv.;
+  _Spanish and Venetian Calendars of State Papers_; Gairdner's _Lollardy
+  and the Reformation and Church History 1485-1558_; Pollard's _Henry
+  VIII._; Longman's Political History, vol. v.; other authorities cited
+  in the article by Dr T. Fowler (formerly president of Corpus) in the
+  _Dict. Nat. Biog._     (A. F. P.)
+
+
+
+
+FOX, RORERT WERE (1789-1877), English geologist and natural philosopher,
+was born at Falmouth on the 26th of April 1789. He was a member of the
+Society of Friends, and was descended from members who had long settled
+in Cornwall, although he was not related to George Fox who had
+introduced the community into the county. He was distinguished for his
+researches on the internal temperature of the earth, being the first to
+prove that the heat increased definitely with the depth; his
+observations being conducted in Cornish mines from 1815 for a period of
+forty years. In 1829 he commenced a series of experiments on the
+artificial production of miniature metalliferous veins by means of the
+long-continued influence of electric currents, and his main results were
+published in _Observations on Mineral Veins_ (_Rep. Royal Cornwall
+Polytech. Soc._, 1836). He was one of the founders in 1833 of the Royal
+Cornwall Polytechnic Society. He constructed in 1834 an improved form of
+deflector dipping needle. In 1848 he was elected F.R.S. His garden at
+Penjerrick near Falmouth became noted for the number of exotic plants
+which he had naturalized. He died on the 25th of July 1877. (See _A
+Catalogue of the Works of Robert Were Fox, F.R.S., with a Sketch of his
+Life_, by J.H. Collins, 1878.)
+
+His daughter, CAROLINE FOX (1819-1871), born at Falmouth on the 24th of
+May 1819, is well known as the authoress of a diary, recording memories
+of many distinguished people, such as John Stuart Mill, John Sterling
+and Carlyle. Selections from her diary and correspondence (1835-1871)
+were published under the title of _Memories of Old Friends_ (ed. by H.N.
+Pym, 1881; 2nd ed., 1882). She died on the 12th of January 1871.
+
+
+
+
+FOX, SIR STEPHEN (1627-1716), English statesman, born on the 27th of
+March 1627, was the son of William Fox, of Farley, in Wiltshire, a
+yeoman farmer. At the age of fifteen he first obtained a situation in
+the household of the earl of Northumberland; then he entered the service
+of Lord Percy, the earl's brother, and was present with the royalist
+army at the battle of Worcester as Lord Percy's deputy at the ordnance
+board. Accompanying Charles II. in his flight to the continent, he was
+appointed manager of the royal household, on Clarendon's recommendation
+as "a young man bred under the severe discipline of Lord Percy ... very
+well qualified with languages, and all other parts of clerkship, honesty
+and discretion." The skill with which he managed the exiguous finances
+of the exiled court earned him further confidence and promotion. He was
+employed on several important missions, and acted eventually as
+intermediary between the king and General Monk. Honours and emolument
+were his reward after the Restoration; he was appointed to the lucrative
+offices of first clerk of the board of green cloth and paymaster-general
+of the forces. In November 1661 he became member of parliament for
+Salisbury. In 1665 he was knighted, was returned as M. P. for
+Westminster on the 27th of February 1679, and succeeded the earl of
+Rochester as a commissioner of the treasury, filling that office for
+twenty-three years and during three reigns. In 1680 he resigned the
+paymastership and was made first commissioner of horse. In 1684 he
+became sole commissioner of horse. He was offered a peerage by James
+II., on condition of turning Roman Catholic, but refused, in spite of
+which he was allowed to retain his commissionerships. In 1685 he was
+again M. P. for Salisbury, and opposed the bill for a standing army
+supported by the king. During the Revolution he maintained an attitude
+of decent reserve, but on James's flight, submitted to William III., who
+confirmed him in his offices. He was again elected for Westminster in
+1691 and 1695, for Cricklade in 1698, and finally in 1713 once more for
+Salisbury. He died on the 28th of October 1716. It is his distinction to
+have founded Chelsea hospital, and to have contributed L13,000 in aid of
+this laudable public work. Though his place as a statesman is in the
+second or even the third rank, yet he was a useful man in his
+generation, and a public servant who creditably discharged all the
+duties with which he was entrusted. Unlike other statesmen of his day,
+he grew rich in the service of the nation without being suspected of
+corruption, and without forfeiting the esteem of his contemporaries.
+
+He was twice married (1651 and 1703); by his first wife, Elizabeth
+Whittle, he had seven sons, who predeceased him, and three daughters; by
+his second, Christian Hopes, he had two sons and two daughters. The
+elder son by the second marriage, Stephen (1704-1776), was created Lord
+Ilchester and Stavordale in 1747 and earl of Ilchester in 1756; in 1758
+he took the additional name of Strangways, and his descendants, the
+family of Fox-Strangways, still hold the earldom of Ilchester. The
+younger son, Henry, became the 1st Lord Holland (q.v.).
+
+
+
+
+FOX, SIR WILLIAM (1812-1893), New Zealand statesman, third son of George
+Townshend Fox, deputy-lieutenant for Durham county, was born in England
+on the 9th of June 1812, and educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where
+he took his degree in 1832. Called to the bar in 1842, he emigrated
+immediately thereafter to New Zealand, where, on the death of Captain
+Arthur Wakefield, killed in 1843 in the Wairau massacre, he became the
+New Zealand Company's agent for the South Island. While holding this
+position he made a memorable exploring march on foot from Nelson to
+Canterbury, through Cannibal Gorge, in the course of which he discovered
+the fertile pastoral country of Amuri. In 1848 Governor Grey made Fox
+attorney-general, but he gave up the post almost at once in order to
+join the agitation, then at its height, for a free constitution. As the
+political agent of the Wellington settlers he sailed to London in 1850
+to urge their demands in Downing Street. The colonial office, however,
+refused to recognize him, and, after publishing a sketch of the New
+Zealand settlements, _The Six Colonies of New Zealand_, and travelling
+in the United States, he returned to New Zealand and again threw himself
+with energy into public affairs. When government by responsible
+ministers was at last initiated, in 1856, Fox ousted the first ministry
+and formed a cabinet, only to be himself beaten in turn after holding
+office but thirteen days. In 1861 he regained office, and was somewhat
+more fortunate, for he remained premier for nearly thirteen months.
+Again, in the latter part of 1863 he took office: this time with Sir
+Frederick Whitaker as premier, an arrangement which endured for another
+thirteen months. Fox's third premiership began in 1869 and lasted until
+1872. His fourth, which was a matter of temporary convenience to his
+party, lasted only five weeks in March and April 1873. Soon afterwards
+he left politics, and, though he reappeared after some years and led the
+attack which overthrew Sir George Grey's ministry in 1879, he lost his
+seat in the dissolution which followed in that year and did not again
+enter parliament. He was made K.C.M.G. in 1880.
+
+For the thirty years between 1850 and 1880 Sir William Fox was one of
+the half-dozen most notable public men in the colony. Impulsive and
+controversial, a fluent and rousing speaker, and a ready writer, his
+warm and sympathetic nature made him a good friend and a troublesome
+foe. He was considered for many years to be the most dangerous leader of
+the Opposition in the colony's parliament, though as premier he was at a
+disadvantage when measured against more patient and more astute party
+managers. His activities were first devoted to secure self-government
+for the New Zealand colonists. Afterwards his sympathies made him
+prominent among the champions of the Maori race, and he laboured
+indefatigably for their rights and to secure permanent peace with the
+tribes and a just settlement of their claims. It was during his third
+premiership that this peace, so long deferred, was at last gained,
+mainly through the influence and skill of Sir Donald M'Lean, native
+minister in the Fox cabinet. Finally, after Fox had left parliament he
+devoted himself, as joint-commissioner with Sir Francis Dillon Bell, to
+the adjustment of the native land-claims on the west coast of the North
+Island. The able reports of the commissioners were his last public
+service, and the carrying out of their recommendations gradually removed
+the last serious native trouble in New Zealand. When, however, in the
+course of the native wars from 1860 to 1870 the colonists of New Zealand
+were exposed to cruel and unjust imputations in England, Fox zealously
+defended them in a book, _The War in New Zealand_ (1866), which was not
+only a spirited vindication of his fellow-settlers, but a scathing
+criticism of the generalship of the officers commanding the imperial
+troops in New Zealand. Throughout his life Fox was a consistent advocate
+of total abstinence. It was he who founded the New Zealand Alliance, and
+he undoubtedly aided the growth of the prohibition movement afterwards
+so strong in the colony. He died on the 23rd of June 1893, exactly
+twelve months after his wife, Sarah, daughter of William Halcombe.
+     (W. P. R.)
+
+
+
+
+FOX, a name (female, "vixen"[1]) properly applicable to the single wild
+British representative of the family _Canidae_ (see CARNIVORA), but in a
+wider sense used to denote fox-like species from all parts of the world,
+inclusive of many from South America which do not really belong to the
+same group. The fox was included by Linnaeus in the same genus with the
+dog and the wolf, under the name of _Canis vulpes_, but at the present
+day is regarded by most naturalists as the type of a separate genus, and
+should then be known as _Vulpes alopex_ or _Vulpes vulpes_. From dogs,
+wolves, jackals, &c., which constitute the genus _Canis_ in its more
+restricted sense, foxes are best distinguished by the circumstance that
+in the skull the (postorbital) projection immediately behind the socket
+for the eye has its upper surface concave, with a raised ridge in front,
+in place of regularly convex. Another character is the absence of a
+hollow chamber, or sinus, within the frontal bone of the forehead. Foxes
+are likewise distinguished by their slighter build, longer and bushy
+tail, which always exceeds half the length of the head and body, sharper
+muzzle, and relatively longer body and shorter limbs. Then again, the
+ears are large in proportion to the head, the pupil of the eye is
+elliptical and vertical when in a strong light, and the female has six
+pairs of teats, in place of the three to five pairs found in dogs,
+wolves and jackals. From the North American grey foxes, constituting the
+genus or subgenus _Urocyon_, the true foxes are distinguished by the
+absence of a crest of erectile long hairs along the middle line of the
+upper surface of the tail, and also of a projection (subangular process)
+to the postero-inferior angle of the lower jaw. With the exception of
+certain South African species, foxes differ from wolves and jackals in
+that they do not associate in packs, but go about in pairs or are
+solitary.
+
+From the Scandinavian peninsula and the British Islands the range of the
+fox extends eastwards across Europe and central and northern Asia to
+Japan, while to the south it embraces northern Africa and Arabia,
+Persia, Baluchistan, and the north-western districts of India and the
+Himalaya. On the North American side of the Atlantic the fox reappears.
+With such an enormous geographical range the species must of necessity
+present itself under a considerable number of local phases, differing
+from one another to a greater or less degree in the matters of size and
+colouring. By some naturalists many of these local forms are regarded as
+specifically distinct, but it seems better and simpler to class them all
+as local phases or races of a single species primarily characterized by
+the white tip to the tail and the black or dark-brown hind surface of
+the ear. The "foxy red" colouring of the typical race of north-western
+Europe is too well known to require description. From this there is a
+more or less nearly complete gradation on the one hand to pale-coloured
+forms like the white-footed fox (_V. alopex leucopus_) of Persia, N.W.
+India and Arabia, and on the other to the silver or black fox (_V. a.
+argentatus_) of North America which yields the valuable silver-tipped
+black fur. Silver foxes apparently also occur in northern Asia.
+
+To mention all the other local races would be superfluous, and it will
+suffice to note that the North African fox is known as _V. a.
+niloticus_, the Himalayan as _V. a. montanus_, the Tibetan as _V. a.
+wadelli_, the North American red or cross fox as _V. a. pennsylvanicus_,
+and the Alaskan as _V. a. harrimani_; the last named, like several other
+animals from Alaska, being the largest of its kind.
+
+The cunning and stratagem of the fox have been proverbial for many ages,
+and he has figured as a central character in fables from the earliest
+times, as in Aesop, down to "Uncle Remus," most notably as Reynard
+(_Raginohardus_, strong in counsel) in the great medieval beast-epic
+"Reynard the Fox" (q.v.). It is not unlikely that, owing to the
+conditions under which it now lives, these traits are even more
+developed in England than elsewhere. In habits the fox is to a great
+extent solitary, and its home is usually a burrow, which may be
+excavated by its own labour, but is more often the usurped or deserted
+tenement of a badger or a rabbit. Foxes will, however, often take up
+their residence in woods, or even in water-meadows with large tussocks
+of grass, remaining concealed during the day and issuing forth on
+marauding expeditions at night. Rabbits, hares, domesticated poultry,
+game-birds, and, when these run short, rats, mice and even insects, form
+the chief diet of the fox. When living near the coast foxes will,
+however, visit the shore at low water in search of crabs and whelks; and
+the old story of the fox and the grapes seems to be founded upon a
+partiality on the part of the creature for that fruit. Flesh that has
+become tainted appears to be specially acceptable; but it is a curious
+fact that on no account will a fox eat any kind of bird of prey.
+
+After a gestation of from 60 to 65 days, the vixen during the month of
+April gives birth to cubs, of which from five to eight usually go to
+form a litter. When first born these are clothed with a uniform
+slaty-grey fur, which in due course gives place to a coat of more tawny
+hue than the adult livery. In a year and a half the cubs attain their
+full development; and from observations on captive specimens it appears
+that the duration of life ought to extend to some thirteen or fourteen
+years. In the care and defence of her young the vixen displays
+extraordinary solicitude and boldness, altogether losing on such
+occasions her accustomed timidity and caution. Like most other young
+animals, fox-cubs are exceedingly playful, and may be seen chasing one
+another in front of the mouth of the burrow, or even running after their
+own tails.
+
+Young foxes can be tamed to a certain extent, and do not then emit the
+well-known odour to any great degree unless excited. The species cannot,
+however, be completely domesticated, and never displays the affectionate
+traits of the dog. It was long believed that foxes and dogs would never
+interbreed; but several instances of such unions have been recorded,
+although they are undoubtedly rare. When suddenly confronted in a
+situation where immediate escape is impossible, the fox, like the wolf,
+will not hesitate to resort to the death-feigning instinct. Smartness in
+avoiding traps is one of the most distinctive traits in the character of
+the species; but when a trap has once claimed its victim, and is
+consequently no longer dangerous, the fox is always ready to take
+advantage of the gratuitous meal.
+
+Red fox-skins are largely imported into Europe for various purposes, the
+American imports alone formerly reaching as many as 60,000 skins
+annually. Silver fox is one of the most valuable of all furs, as much as
+L480 having been given for an unusually fine pair of skins in 1902.
+
+Of foxes certainly distinct specifically from the typical representative
+of the group, one of the best known is the Indian _Vulpes bengalensis_,
+a species much inferior in point of size to its European relative, and
+lacking the strong odour of the latter, from which it is also
+distinguished by the black tip to the tail and the pale-coloured backs
+of the ears. The corsac fox (_V. corsac_), ranging from southern Russia
+and the Caspian provinces across Asia to Amurland, may be regarded as a
+northern representative of the Indian species; while the pale fox (_V.
+pallidus_), of the Suakin and Dongola deserts, may be regarded as the
+African representative of the group. Possibly the kit-fox (_V. velox_),
+which has likewise a black tail-tip and pale ears, may be the North
+American form of the same group. The northern fennec (_V. famelicus_),
+whose range extends apparently from Egypt and Somaliland through
+Palestine and Persia into Afghanistan, seems to form a connecting link
+between the more typical foxes and the small African species properly
+known as fennecs. The long and bushy tail in the northern species has a
+white tip and a dark gland-patch near the root, but the backs of the
+ears are fawn-coloured. The enormous length of the ears and the small
+bodily size (inferior to that of any other member of the family) suffice
+to distinguish the true fennec (_V. zerda_) of Algeria and Egypt, in
+which the general colour is pale and the tip of the relatively short
+tail black. South of the Zambezi the group reappears in the shape of the
+asse-fox or fennec, (_V. cama_), a dark-coloured species, with a black
+tip to the long, bushy tail and reddish-brown ears.
+
+Passing from South Africa to the north polar regions of both the Old and
+the New World, inclusive of Iceland, we enter the domain of the Arctic
+fox (_V. lagopus_), a very distinct species characterized by the hairy
+soles of its feet, the short, blunt ears, the long, bushy tail, and the
+great length of the fur in winter. The upper parts in summer are usually
+brownish and the under parts white; but in winter the whole coat, in
+this phase of the species, turns white. In a second phase of the
+species, the colour, which often displays a slaty hue (whence the name
+of blue fox), remains more or less the same throughout the year, the
+winter coat being, however, recognizable by the great length of the fur.
+Many at least of the "blue fox" skins of the fur-trade are white skins
+dyed. About 2000 blue fox-skins were annually imported into London from
+Alaska some five-and-twenty years ago. Arctic foxes feed largely on
+sea-birds and lemmings, laying up hidden stores of the last-named
+rodents for winter use.
+
+The American grey fox, or Virginian fox, is now generally ranged as a
+distinct genus (or a subgenus of _Canis_) under the name of _Urocyon
+cinereo-argentatus_, on account of being distinguished, as already
+mentioned, by the presence of a ridge of long erectile hairs along the
+upper surface of the tail and of a projection to the postero-inferior
+angle of the lower jaw. The prevailing colour of the fur of the upper
+parts is iron-grey.
+
+The so-called foxes of South America, such as the crab-eating fox (_C.
+thous_), Azara's fox (_C. azarae_), and the colpeo (_C. magellanicus_),
+are aberrant members of the typical genus _Canis_. On the other hand,
+the long-eared fox or Delalande's fox (_Otocyon megalotis_) of south and
+east Africa represents a totally distinct genus.
+
+  See St George Mivart, _Dogs, Jackals, Wolves and Foxes_ (London,
+  1890); R.I. Pocock, "Ancestors and Relatives of the Dog," in _The
+  Kennel Encyclopaedia_ (London, 1907). For fox-hunting, see HUNTING.
+       (R. L.*)
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+  [1] The word is common to the Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch _vos_,
+    Ger. _Fuchs_; the ultimate origin is unknown, but a connexion has
+    been suggested with Sanskrit _puccha_, tail. The feminine "vixen"
+    represents the O. Eng. _fyxen_, due to the change from _o_ to _y_,
+    and addition of the feminine termination _-en_, cf. O. Eng. _gyden_,
+    goddess, and Ger. _Fuchsin_, vixen. The _v_, for _f_, is common in
+    southern English pronunciation; vox, for fox, is found in the _Ancren
+    Riwle_, c. 1230.
+
+
+
+
+FOXE, JOHN (1516-1587), the author of the famous _Book of Martyrs_, was
+born at Boston, in Lincolnshire, in 1516. At the age of sixteen he is
+said to have entered Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was the pupil
+of John Harding or Hawarden, and had for room-mate Alexander Nowell,
+afterwards dean of St. Paul's. His authenticated connexion at the
+university is, however, with Magdalen College. He took his B.A. degree
+in 1537 and his M.A. in 1543. He was lecturer on logic in 1540-1541. He
+wrote several Latin plays on Scriptural subjects, of which the best, _De
+Christo triumphante_, was repeatedly printed, (London, 1551; Basel,
+1556, &c.), and was translated into English by Richard Day, son of the
+printer. He became a fellow of Magdalen College in 1539, resigning in
+1545. It is said that he refused to conform to the rules for regular
+attendance at chapel, and that he protested both against the enforced
+celibacy of fellows and the obligation to take holy orders within seven
+years of their election. The customary statement that he was expelled
+from his fellowship is based on the untrustworthy biography attributed
+to his son Samuel Foxe, but the college records state that he resigned
+of his own accord and _ex honesta causa_. The letter in which he
+protests to President Oglethorpe against the charges of irreverence,
+&c., brought against him is printed in Pratt's edition (vol. i.
+Appendix, pp. 58-61).
+
+On leaving Oxford he acted as tutor for a short time in the house of the
+Lucys of Charlecote, near Stratford-on-Avon, where he married Agnes
+Randall. Late in 1547 or early in the next year he went to London. He
+found a patron in Mary Fitzroy, duchess of Richmond, and having been
+ordained deacon by Ridley in 1550, he settled at Reigate Castle, where
+he acted as tutor to the duchess's nephews, the orphan children of Henry
+Howard, earl of Surrey. On the accession of Queen Mary, Foxe was
+deprived of his tutorship by the boys' grandfather, the duke of Norfolk,
+who was now released from prison. He retired to Strassburg, and occupied
+himself with a Latin history of the Christian persecutions which he had
+begun at the suggestion of Lady Jane Grey. He had assistance from two
+clerics of widely differing opinions--from Edmund Grindal, who was
+later, as archbishop of Canterbury, to maintain his Puritan convictions
+in opposition to Elizabeth; and from John Aylmer, afterwards one of the
+bitterest opponents of the Puritan party. This book, dealing chiefly
+with Wycliffe and Huss, and coming down to 1500, formed the first
+outline of the _Actes and Monuments_. It was printed by Wendelin
+Richelius with the title of _Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum_
+(Strasburg, 1554). In the year of its publication Foxe removed to
+Frankfort, where he found the English colony of Protestant refugees
+divided into two camps. He made a vain attempt to frame a compromise
+which should be accepted by the extreme Calvinists and by the partisans
+of the Anglican doctrine. He removed (1555) to Basel, where he worked as
+printer's reader to Johann Herbst or Oporinus. He made steady progress
+with his great book as he received reports from England of the
+religious persecutions there, and he issued from the press of Oporinus
+his pamphlet _Ad inclytos ac praepotentes Angliae proceres ...
+supplicatio_ (1557), a plea for toleration addressed to the English
+nobility. In 1559 he completed the Latin edition[1] of his martyrology
+and returned to England. He lived for some time at Aldgate, London, in
+the house of his former pupil, Thomas Howard, now duke of Norfolk, who
+retained a sincere regard for his tutor and left him a small pension in
+his will. He became associated with John Day the printer, himself once a
+Protestant exile. Foxe was ordained priest by Edmund Grindal, bishop of
+London, in 1560, and besides much literary work he occasionally preached
+at Paul's Cross and other places. His work had rendered great service to
+the government, and he might have had high preferment in the Church but
+for the Puritan views which he consistently maintained. He held,
+however, the prebend of Shipton in Salisbury cathedral, and is said to
+have been for a short time rector of Cripplegate.
+
+In 1563 was issued from the press of John Day the first English edition
+of the _Actes and Monuments of these latter and perillous Dayes,
+touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described
+the great Persecution and horrible Troubles that have been wrought and
+practised by the Romishe Prelates, speciallye in this Realme of England
+and Scotland, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande to the time now
+present. Gathered and collected according to the true Copies and
+Wrytinges certificatorie as well of the Parties themselves that
+Suffered, as also out of the Bishop's Registers, which were the Doers
+thereof, by John Foxe_, commonly known as the _Book of Martyrs_. Several
+gross errors which had appeared in the Latin version, and had been since
+exposed, were corrected in this edition. Its popularity was immense and
+signal. The Marian persecution was still fresh in men's minds, and the
+graphic narrative intensified in its numerous readers the fierce hatred
+of Spain and of the Inquisition which was one of the master passions of
+the reign. Nor was its influence transient. For generations the popular
+conception of Roman Catholicism was derived from its bitter pages. Its
+accuracy was immediately attacked by Catholic writers, notably in the
+_Dialogi sex_ (1566), nominally from the pen of Alan Cope, but in
+reality by Nicholas Harpsfield and by Robert Parsons in _Three
+Conversions of England_ (1570). These criticisms induced Foxe to produce
+a second corrected edition, _Ecclesiastical History, contayning the
+Actes and Monuments of things passed in every kynges tyme_... in 1570, a
+copy of which was ordered by Convocation to be placed in every
+collegiate church. Foxe based his accounts of the martyrs partly on
+authentic documents and reports of the trials, and on statements
+received direct from the friends of the sufferers, but he was too hasty
+a worker and too violent a partisan to produce anything like a correct
+or impartial account of the mass of facts with which he had to deal.
+Anthony a Wood says that Foxe "believed and reported all that was told
+him, and there is every reason to suppose that he was purposely misled,
+and continually deceived by those whose interest it was to bring
+discredit on his work," but he admits that the book is a monument of his
+industry, his laborious research and his sincere piety. The gross
+blunders due to carelessness have often been exposed, and there is no
+doubt that Foxe was only too ready to believe evil of the Catholics, and
+he cannot always be exonerated from the charge of wilful falsification
+of evidence. It should, however, be remembered in his honour that his
+advocacy of religious toleration was far in advance of his day. He
+pleaded for the despised Dutch Anabaptists, and remonstrated with John
+Knox on the rancour of his _First Blast of the Trumpet_. Foxe was one of
+the earliest students of Anglo-Saxon, and he and Day published an
+edition of the Saxon gospels under the patronage of Archbishop Parker.
+He died on the 18th of April 1587 and was buried at St Giles's,
+Cripplegate.
+
+  A list of his Latin tracts and sermons is given by Wood, and others,
+  some of which were never printed, appear in Bale. Four editions of the
+  _Actes and Monuments_ appeared in Foxe's lifetime. The eighth edition
+  (1641) contains a memoir of Foxe purporting to be by his son Samuel,
+  the MS. of which is in the British Museum (Lansdowne MS. 388). Samuel
+  Foxe's authorship is disputed, with much show of reason, by Dr S.R.
+  Maitland in _On the Memoirs of Foxe ascribed to his Son_ (1841). The
+  best-known modern edition of the Martyrology is that (1837-1841) by
+  the Rev. Stephen R. Cattley, with an introductory life by Canon George
+  Townsend. The numerous inaccuracies of this life and the frequent
+  errors of Foxe's narrative were exposed by Dr Maitland in a series of
+  tracts (1837-1842), collected (1841-1842) as _Notes on the
+  Contributions of the Rev. George Townsend, M.A. ... to the New Edition
+  of Fox's Martyrology_. The criticism lavished on Cattley and
+  Townsend's edition led to a new one (1846-1849) under the same
+  editorship. A new text prepared by the Rev. Josiah Pratt was issued
+  (1870) in the "Reformation Series" of the _Church Historians of
+  England_, with a revised version of Townsend's _Life_ and appendices
+  giving copies of original documents. Later edition by W. Grinton Berry
+  (1907).
+
+  Foxe's papers are preserved in the Harleian and Lansdowne collections
+  in the British Museum. Extracts from these were edited by J.G. Nichols
+  for the Camden Society (1859). See also W. Winters, _Biographical
+  Notes on John Foxe_ (1876); James Gairdner, _History of the English
+  Church in the Sixteenth Century_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+  [1] Printed by Oporinus and Nicolaus Brylinger. The title is _Rerum
+    in ecclesia gestarum ... pars prima, in qua primum de rebus per
+    Angliam et Scotiam gestis atque in primis de horrenda sub Maria nuper
+    regina persecutione narratio continetur_.
+
+
+
+
+FOXGLOVE, a genus of biennial and perennial plants of the natural order
+Scrophulariaceae. The common or purple foxglove, _D. purpurea_, is
+common in dry hilly pastures and rocky places and by road-sides in
+various parts of Europe; it ranges in Great Britain from Cornwall and
+Kent to Orkney, but it does not occur in Shetland or in some of the
+eastern counties of England. It flourishes best in siliceous soils, and
+is not found in the Jura and Swiss Alps. The characters of the plant are
+as follows: stem erect, roundish, downy, leafy below, and from 18 in. to
+5 ft. or more in height; leaves alternate, crenate, rugose, ovate or
+elliptic oblong, and of a dull green, with the under surface downy and
+paler than the upper; radical leaves together with their stalks often a
+foot in length; root of numerous, slender, whitish fibres; flowers
+1(3/4)-2(1/2) in. long, pendulous, on one side of the stem, purplish
+crimson, and hairy and marked with eye-like spots within; segments of
+calyx ovate, acute, cleft to the base; corolla bell-shaped with a
+broadly two-lipped obtuse mouth, the upper lip entire or obscurely
+divided; stamens four, two longer than the other two (_didynamous_);
+anthers yellow and bilobed; capsule bivalved, ovate and pointed; and
+seeds numerous, small, oblong, pitted and of a pale brown. As Parkinson
+remarks of the plant, "It flowreth seldome before July, and the seed is
+ripe in August"; but it may occasionally be found in blossom as late as
+September. Many varieties of the common foxglove have been raised by
+cultivation, with flowers varying in colour from white to deep rose and
+purple; in the variety _gloxinioides_ the flowers are almost regular,
+suggesting those of the cultivated gloxinia. Other species of foxglove
+with variously coloured flowers have been introduced into Britain from
+the continent of Europe. The plants may be propagated by unflowered
+off-sets from the roots, but being biennials are best raised from seed.
+
+[Illustration: Foxglove (_Digitalis purpurea_), one-third nat. size.
+
+  1. Corolla cut open showing the four stamens; rather more than half
+  nat. size.
+
+  2. Unripe fruit cut lengthwise, showing the thick axial placenta
+  bearing numerous small seeds.
+
+  3. Ripe capsule split open.]
+
+The foxglove, probably from folks'-glove, that is fairies' glove, is
+known by a great variety of popular names in Britain. In the south of
+Scotland it is called bloody fingers; farther north, dead-men's-bells;
+and on the eastern borders, ladies' thimbles, wild mercury and Scotch
+mercury. In Ireland it is generally known under the name of fairy
+thimble. Among its Welsh synonyms are _menyg-ellyllon_ (elves' gloves),
+_menyg y llwynog_ (fox's gloves), _bysedd cochion_ (redfingers) and
+_bysedd y cwn_ (dog's fingers). In France its designations are _gants de
+notre dame_ and _doigts de la Vierge_. The German name _Fingerhut_
+(thimble) suggested to Fuchs, in 1542, the employment of the Latin
+adjective _digitalis_ as a designation for the plant. Other species of
+foxglove or _Digitalis_ although found in botanical collections are not
+generally grown. For medicinal uses see DIGITALIS.
+
+
+
+
+FOX INDIANS, the name, from one of their clans, of an Algonquian tribe,
+whose former range was central Wisconsin. They call themselves
+Muskwakiuk, "red earth people." Owing to heavy losses in their wars with
+the Ojibways and the French, they allied themselves with the Sauk tribe
+about 1780, the two tribes being now practically one.
+
+
+
+
+FOX MORCILLO, SEBASTIAN (1526?-1559?), Spanish scholar and philosopher,
+was born at Seville between 1526 and 1528. About 1548 he studied at
+Louvain, and, following the example of the Spanish Jew, Judas Abarbanel,
+published commentaries on Plato and Aristotle in which he endeavoured to
+reconcile their teaching. In 1559 he was appointed tutor to Don Carlos,
+son of Philip II., but did not live to take up the duties of the post,
+as he was lost at sea on his way to Spain. His most original work is the
+_De imitatione, seu de informandi styli ratione libri II_. (1554), a
+dialogue in which the author and his brother take part under the
+pseudonyms of Gaspar and Francisco Enuesia. Among Fox Morcillo's other
+publications are: (1) _In Topica Ciceronis paraphrasis et scholia_
+(1550); (2) _In Platonis Timaeum commentarii_ (1554); (3) _Compendium
+ethices philosophiae ex Platone, Aristotele, aliisque philosophis
+collectum_; (4) _De historiae institutione dialogus_ (1557), and (5) _De
+naturae philosophia_.
+
+  He is the subject of an excellent monograph by Urbano Gonzalez de
+  Calle, _Sebastian Fox Morcillo: estudio historico-critico de sus
+  doctrinas_ (Madrid, 1903).
+
+
+
+
+FOY, MAXIMILIEN SEBASTIEN (1775-1825), French general and statesman, was
+born at Ham in Picardy on the 3rd of February 1775. He was the son of an
+old soldier who had fought at Fontenoy and had become post-master of the
+town in which he lived. His father died in 1780, and his early
+instruction was given by his mother, a woman of English origin and of
+superior ability. He continued his education at the college of
+Soissons, and thence passed at the age of fifteen to the artillery
+school of La Fere. After eighteen months' successful study he entered
+the army, served his first campaign in Flanders (1791-92), and was
+present at the battle of Jemmapes. He soon attained the rank of captain,
+and served successively under Dampierre, Jourdan, Pichegru and Houchard.
+In 1794, in consequence of having spoken freely against the violence of
+the extreme party at Paris, he was imprisoned by order of the
+commissioner of the Convention, Joseph Lebon, at Cambray, but regained
+his liberty soon after the fall of Robespierre. He served under Moreau
+in the campaigns of 1796 and 1797, distinguishing himself in many
+engagements. The leisure which the treaty of Campo Formio gave him he
+devoted to the study of public law and modern history, attending the
+lectures of Christoph Wilhelm von Koch (1737-1813), the famous professor
+of public law at Strassburg. He was recommended by Desaix to the notice
+of General Bonaparte, but declined to serve on the staff of the Egyptian
+expedition. In the campaign of Switzerland (1798) he distinguished
+himself afresh, though he served only with the greatest reluctance
+against a people which possessed republican institutions. In Massena's
+brilliant campaign of 1799 Foy won the rank of _chef de brigade_. In the
+following year he served under Moncey in the Marengo campaign and
+afterwards in Tirol.
+
+Foy's republican principles caused him to oppose the gradual rise of
+Napoleon to the supreme power and at the time of Moreau's trial he
+escaped arrest only by joining the army in Holland. Foy voted against
+the establishment of the empire, but the only penalty for his
+independence was a long delay before attaining the rank of general. In
+1806 he married a daughter of General Baraguay d'Hilliers. In the
+following year he was sent to Constantinople, and there took part in the
+defence of the Dardanelles against the English fleet. He was next sent
+to Portugal, and thenceforward he served in the Peninsular War from
+first to last. Under Junot he won at last his rank of general of
+brigade, under Soult he held a command in the pursuit of Sir John
+Moore's army, and under Massena he fought in the third invasion of
+Portugal (1810). Massena reposed the greatest confidence in Foy, and
+employed him after Busaco in a mission to the emperor. Napoleon now made
+Foy's acquaintance for the first time, and was so far impressed with his
+merits as to make him a general of division at once. The part played by
+General Foy at the battle of Salamanca won him new laurels, but above
+all he distinguished himself when the disaster of Vittoria had broken
+the spirit of the army. Foy rose to the occasion; his resistance in the
+Pyrenees was steady and successful, and only a wound (at first thought
+mortal) which he received at Orthez prevented him from keeping the field
+to the last. At the first restoration of the Bourbons he received the
+grand cross of the Legion of Honour and a command, and on the return of
+Napoleon from Elba he declined to join him until the king had fled from
+the country. He held a divisional command in the Waterloo campaign, and
+at Waterloo was again severely wounded at the head of his division (see
+WATERLOO CAMPAIGN). After the second restoration he returned to civil
+life, devoting his energies for a time to his projected history of the
+Peninsular War, and in 1819 was elected to the chamber of deputies. For
+this position his experience and his studies had especially fitted him,
+and by his first speech he gained a commanding place in the chamber,
+which he never lost, his clear, manly eloquence being always employed on
+the side of the liberal principles of 1789. In 1823 he made a powerful
+protest against French intervention in Spain, and after the dissolution
+of 1824 he was re-elected for three constituencies. He died at Paris on
+the 28th of November 1825, and his funeral was attended, it is said, by
+100,000 persons. His early death was regarded by all as a national
+calamity. His family was provided for by a general subscription.
+
+  The _Histoire de la guerre de la Peninsula sous Napoleon_ was
+  published from his notes in 1827, and a collection of his speeches
+  (with memoir by Tissot) appeared in 1826 soon after his death. See
+  Cuisin, _Vie militaire, politique, &c., du general Foy_; Vidal, _Vie
+  militaire et politique du general Foy_.
+
+
+
+
+
+FRAAS, KARL NIKOLAS (1810-1875), German botanist and agriculturist, was
+born at Rattelsdorf, near Bamberg, on the 8th of September 1810. After
+receiving his preliminary education at the gymnasium of Bamberg, he in
+1830 entered the university of Munich, where he took his doctor's degree
+in 1834. Having devoted great attention to the study of botany, he went
+to Athens in 1835 as inspector of the court garden; and in April 1836 he
+became professor of botany at the university. In 1842 he returned to
+Germany and became teacher at the central agricultural school at
+Schleissheim. In 1847 he was appointed professor of agriculture at
+Munich, and in 1851 director of the central veterinary college. For many
+years he was secretary of the Agricultural Society of Bavaria, but
+resigned in 1861. He died at his estate of Neufreimann, near Munich, on
+the 9th of November 1875.
+
+  His principal works are: [Greek: Stoicheia tes Botanikes] (Athens,
+  1835); _Synopsis florae classicae_ (Munich, 1845); _Klima und
+  Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit_ (Landsh., 1847); _Histor.-encyklopad.
+  Grundriss der Landwirthschaftslehre_ (Stuttgart, 1848); _Geschichte
+  der Landwirthschaft_ (Prague, 1851); _Die Schule des Landbaues_
+  (Munich, 1852); _Baierns Rinderrassen_ (Munich, 1853); _Die kunstliche
+  Fischerzeugung_ (Munich, 1854); _Die Natur der Landwirthschaft_
+  (Munich, 1857); _Buch der Natur fur Landwirthe_ (Munich, 1860); _Die
+  Ackerbaukrisen und ihre Heilmittel_ (Munich, 1866); _Das Wurzelleben
+  der Culturpflanzen_ (Berlin, 1872); and _Geschichte der Landbau und
+  Forstwissenschaft seit dem 16^ten Jahrh._ (Munich, 1865). He also
+  founded and edited a weekly agricultural paper, the _Schranne_.
+
+
+
+
+FRACASTORO [FRACASTORIUS], GIROLAMO [HIERONYMUS] (1483-1553), Italian
+physician and poet, was born at Verona in 1483. It is related of him
+that at his birth his lips adhered so closely that a surgeon was obliged
+to divide them with his incision knife, and that during his infancy his
+mother was killed by lightning, while he, though in her arms at the
+moment, escaped unhurt. Fracastoro became eminently skilled, not only in
+medicine and belles-lettres, but in most arts and sciences. He studied
+at Padua, and became professor of philosophy there in 1502, afterwards
+practising as a physician in Verona. It was by his advice that Pope Paul
+III., on account of the prevalence of a contagious distemper, removed
+the council of Trent to Bologna. He was the author of many works, both
+poetical and medical, and was intimately acquainted with Cardinal Bembo,
+Julius Scaliger, Gianbattista Ramusio (q.v.), and most of the great men
+of his time. In 1517, when the builders of the citadel of San Felice
+(Verona) found fossil mussels in the rocks, Fracastoro was consulted
+about the marvel, and he took the same view--following Leonardo da
+Vinci, but very advanced for those days--that they were the remains of
+animals once capable of living in the locality. He died of apoplexy at
+Casi, near Verona, on the 8th of August 1553; and in 1559 the town of
+Verona erected a statue in his honour.
+
+  The principal work of Fracastoro is a kind of medical poem entitled
+  _Syphilidis, sive Morbi Gallici, libri tres_ (Verona, 1530), which has
+  been often reprinted and also translated into French and Italian.
+  Among his other works (all published at Venice) are _De vini
+  temperatura_ (1534); _Homocentricorum_ (1535); _De sympatha et
+  antipathia rerum_ (1546); and _De contagionibus_ (1546). His complete
+  works were published at Venice in 1555, and his poetical productions
+  were collected and printed at Padua in 1728.
+
+
+
+
+FRAGONARD, JEAN-HONORE (1732-1806), French painter, was born at Grasse,
+the son of a glover. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's
+circumstances became straitened through unsuccessful speculations, but
+he showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the
+age of eighteen to Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but
+disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to
+Chardin's _atelier_. Fragonard studied for six months under the great
+luminist, and then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style
+he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the
+execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not a pupil of the
+Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of
+"Jeroboam sacrificing to the Idols," but before proceeding to Rome he
+continued to study for three years under Van Loo. In the year preceding
+his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles"
+now at Grasse cathedral. In 1755 he took up his abode at the French
+Academy in Rome, then presided over by Natoire. There he benefited from
+the study of the old masters whom he was set to copy--always remembering
+Boucher's parting advice not to take Raphael and Michelangelo too
+seriously. He successively passed through the studios of masters as
+widely different in their aims and technique as Chardin, Boucher, Van
+Loo and Natoire, and a summer sojourn at the Villa d'Este in the company
+of the abbe de Saint-Non, who engraved many of Fragonard's studies of
+these entrancing gardens, did more towards forming his personal style
+than all the training at the various schools. It was in these romantic
+gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that he
+conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to embody in his art.
+Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by
+the florid sumptuousness of Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity
+of studying in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761. In 1765 his
+"Coresus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. It was made
+the subject of a pompous eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king,
+who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had
+hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the
+demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV.'s pleasure-loving and
+licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and
+voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which
+are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his colour and the
+virtuosity of his facile brushwork--such works as the "Serment d'amour"
+(Love Vow), "Le Verrou" (The Bolt), "La Culbute" (The Tumble), "La
+Chemise enlevee" (The Shift Withdrawn), and "The Swing" (Wallace
+collection), and his decorations for the apartments of Mme du Barry and
+the dancer Marie Guimard.
+
+The Revolution made an end to the _ancien regime_, and Fragonard, who
+was so closely allied to its representatives, left Paris in 1793 and
+found shelter in the house of his friend Maubert at Grasse, which he
+decorated with the series of decorative panels known as the "Roman
+d'amour de la jeunesse," originally painted for Mme du Barry's pavilion
+at Louvreciennes. The panels in recent years came into the possession of
+Mr Pierpont Morgan. Fragonard returned to Paris early in the 19th
+century, where he died in 1806, neglected and almost forgotten. For half
+a century or more he was so completely ignored that Lubke, in his
+history of art (1873), omits the very mention of his name. But within
+the last thirty years he has regained the position among the masters of
+painting to which he is entitled by his genius. If the appreciation of
+his art by the modern collector can be expressed in figures, it is
+significant that the small and sketchy "Billet Doux," which appeared at
+the Cronier sale in Paris in 1905 and was subsequently exhibited by
+Messrs Duveen in London (1906), realized close on L19,000 at the Hotel
+Drouot.
+
+Besides the works already mentioned, there are four important pictures
+by Fragonard in the Wallace collection: "The Fountain of Love," "The
+Schoolmistress," "A Lady carving her Name on a Tree" (usually known as
+"Le Chiffre d'amour") and "The Fair-haired Child." The Louvre contains
+thirteen examples of his art, among them the "Coresus," "The Sleeping
+Bacchante," "The Shift Withdrawn," "The Bathers," "The Shepherd's Hour"
+("L'Heure du berger"), and "Inspiration." Other works are in the museums
+of Lille, Besancon, Rouen, Tours, Nantes, Avignon, Amiens, Grenoble,
+Nancy, Orleans, Marseilles, &c., as well as at Chantilly. Some of
+Fragonard's finest work is in the private collections of the Rothschild
+family in London and Paris.
+
+  See R. Portalis, _Fragonard_ (Paris, 1899), fully illustrated; Felix
+  Naquet, _Fragonard_ (Paris, 1890); Virgile Josz, _Fragonard--moeurs du
+  XVIII^e siecle_ (Paris, 1901); E. and J. de Goncourt, _L'Art du
+  dix-huitieme siecle--Fragonard_ (Paris, 1883).     (P. G. K.)
+
+
+
+
+FRAHN, CHRISTIAN MARTIN (1782-1851), German numismatist and historian,
+was born at Rostock. He began his Oriental studies under Tychsen at the
+university of Rostock, and afterwards prosecuted them at Gottingen and
+Tubingen. He became a Latin master in Pestalozzi's famous institute in
+1804, returned home in 1806, and in the following year was chosen to
+fill the chair of Oriental languages in the Russian university of Kazan.
+Though in 1815 he was invited to succeed Tychsen at Rostock, he
+preferred to go to St Petersburg, where he became director of the
+Asiatic museum and councillor of state. He died at St Petersburg.
+
+  Frahn wrote over 150 works. Among the more important are:
+  _Numophylacium orientale Pototianum_ (1813); _De numorum Bulgharicorum
+  fonte antiquissimo_ (1816); _Das muhammedanische Munzkabinet des
+  asiatischen Museum der kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu St
+  Petersburg_ (1821); _Numi cufici ex variis museis selecti_ (1823);
+  _Notice d'une centaine d'ouvrages arabes, &c., qui manquent en grande
+  partie aux bibliotheques de l'Europe_ (1834); and _Nova supplementa ad
+  recensionem Num. Muham. Acad. Imp. Sci. Petropolitanae_ (1855). His
+  description of some medals struck by the Samanid and Bouid princes
+  (1804) was composed in Arabic because he had no Latin types.
+
+
+
+
+FRAME, a word employed in many different senses, signifying something
+joined together or shaped. It is derived ultimately from O.E. _fram_,
+from, in its primary meaning "forward." In constructional work it
+connotes the union of pieces of wood, metal or other material for
+purposes of enclosure as in the case of a picture or mirror frame.
+Frames intended for these uses are of great artistic interest but
+comparatively modern origin. There is no record of their existence
+earlier than the 16th century, but the decorative opportunities which
+they afforded caused speedy popularity in an artistic age, and the
+Renaissance found in the picture frame a rich and attractive means of
+expression. The impulses which made frames beautiful have long been
+extinct or dormant, but fine work was produced in such profusion that
+great numbers of examples are still extant. Frames for pictures or
+mirrors are usually square, oblong, round or oval, and, although they
+have usually been made of wood or composition overlaid upon wood, the
+richest and most costly materials have often been used. Ebony, ivory and
+tortoiseshell; crystal, amber and mother-of-pearl; lacquer, gold and
+silver, and almost every other metal have been employed for this
+purpose. The domestic frame has in fact varied from the simplest and
+cheapest form of a plain wooden moulding to the most richly carved
+examples. The introduction in the 17th century of larger sheets of glass
+gave the art of frame-making a great _essor_, and in the 18th century
+the increased demand for frames, caused chiefly by the introduction of
+cheaper forms of mirrors, led to the invention of a composition which
+could be readily moulded into stereotyped patterns and gilded. This was
+eventually the deathblow of the artistic frame, and since the use of
+composition moulding became normal, no important school of wood-carving
+has turned its attention to frames. The carvers of the Renaissance, and
+down to the middle of the 18th century, produced work which was often of
+the greatest beauty and elegance. In England nothing comparable to that
+of Grinling Gibbons and his school has since been produced. Chippendale
+was a great frame maker, but he not only had recourse to composition,
+but his designs were often extravagantly rococo. Even in France there
+has been no return of the great days when Oeben enclosed the
+looking-glasses which mirrored the Pompadour in frames that were among
+the choicest work of a gorgeous and artificial age. In the decoration of
+frames as in so many other respects France largely followed the fashions
+of Italy, which throughout the 16th and 17th centuries produced the most
+elaborate and grandiose, the richest and most palatial, of the mirror
+frames that have come down to us. English art in this respect was less
+exotic and more restrained, and many of the mirrors of the 18th century
+received frames the grace and simplicity of which have ensured their
+constant reproduction even to our own day.
+
+
+
+
+FRAMINGHAM, a township of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A.,
+having an area of 27 sq. m. of hilly surface, dotted with lakes and
+ponds. Pop. (1890) 9239; (1900) 11,302, of whom 2391 were foreign-born;
+(1910 census) 12,948. It is served by the Boston & Albany, and the New
+York, New Haven & Hartford railways. Included within the township are
+three villages, Framingham Center, Saxonville and South Framingham, the
+last being much the most important. Framingham Academy was established
+in 1792, and in 1851 became a part of the public school system. A state
+normal school (the first normal school in the United States, established
+at Lexington in 1839, removed to Newton in 1844 and to Framingham in
+1853) is situated here; and near South Framingham, in the township of
+Sherborn, is the state reformatory prison for women. South Framingham
+has large manufactories of paper tags, shoes, boilers, carriage wheels
+and leather board; formerly straw braid and bonnets were the principal
+manufactures. Saxonville manufactures worsted cloth. The value of the
+township's factory products increased from $3,007,301 in 1900 to
+$4,173,579 in 1905, or 38.8%. Framingham was first settled about 1640,
+and was named in honour of the English home (Framlingham) of Governor
+Thomas Danforth (1622-1699), to whom the land once belonged. In 1700 it
+was incorporated as a township. The "old Connecticut path," the
+Boston-to-Worcester turnpike, was important to the early fortunes of
+Framingham Center, while the Boston & Worcester railway (1834) made the
+greater fortune of South Framingham.
+
+  See J.H. Temple, _History of Framingham ... 1640-1880_ (Framingham,
+  1887).
+
+
+
+
+FRAMLINGHAM, a market town in the Eye parliamentary division of Suffolk,
+91 m. N.E. from London by a branch of the Great Eastern railway. Pop.
+(1901) 2526. The church of St Michael is a fine Perpendicular and
+Decorated building of black flint, surmounted by a tower 96 ft. high. In
+the interior there are a number of interesting monuments, among which
+the most noticeable are those of Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of Norfolk, and
+of Henry Howard, the famous earl of Surrey, who was beheaded by Henry
+VIII. The castle forms a picturesque ruin, consisting of the outer walls
+44 ft. high and 8 ft. thick, 13 towers about 58 ft. high, a gateway and
+some outworks. About half a mile from the town is the Albert Memorial
+Middle Class College, opened in 1865, and capable of accommodating 300
+boys. A bronze statue of the Prince Consort by Joseph Durham adorns the
+front terrace.
+
+Framlingham (Frendlingham, Framalingaham) in early Saxon times was
+probably the site of a fortified earthwork to which St Edmund the Martyr
+is said to have fled from the Danes in 870. The Danes captured the
+stronghold after the escape of the king, but it was won back in 921, and
+remained in the hands of the crown, passing to William I. at the
+Conquest. Henry I. in 1100 granted it to Roger Bigod, who in all
+probability raised the first masonry castle. Hugh, son of Roger, created
+earl of Norfolk in 1141, succeeded his father, and the manor and castle
+remained in the Bigod family until 1306, when in default of heirs it
+reverted to the crown, and was granted by Edward II. to his half-brother
+Thomas de Brotherton, created earl of Norfolk in 1312. On an account
+roll of Framlingham Castle of 1324 there is an entry of "rent received
+from the borough," also of "rent from those living outside the borough,"
+and in all probability burghal rights had existed at a much earlier
+date, when the town had grown into some importance under the shelter of
+the castle. Town and castle followed the vicissitudes of the dukedom of
+Norfolk, passing to the crown in 1405, and being alternately restored
+and forfeited by Henry V., Richard III., Henry VII., Edward VI., Mary,
+Elizabeth and James I., and finally sold in 1635 to Sir Robert Hitcham,
+who left it in 1636 to the master and fellows of Pembroke Hall,
+Cambridge.
+
+In the account roll above mentioned reference is made to a fair and a
+market, but no early grant of either is to be found. In 1792 two annual
+fairs were held, one on Whit Monday, the other on the 10th of October;
+and a market was held every Saturday. The market day is still Saturday,
+but the fairs are discontinued.
+
+  See Robert Hawes, _History of Framlingham in the County of Suffolk_,
+  edited by R. Loder (Woodbridge, 1798).
+
+
+
+
+FRANC, a French coin current at different periods and of varying values.
+The first coin so called was one struck in gold by John II. of France in
+1360. On it was the legend _Johannes Dei gracia Francorum rex_; hence,
+it is said, the name. It also bore an effigy of King John on horseback,
+from which it was called a _franc a cheval_, to distinguish it from
+another coin of the same value, issued by Charles V., on which the king
+was represented standing upright under a Gothic dais; this coin was
+termed a _franc a pied_. As a coin it disappeared after the reign of
+Charles VI., but the name continued to be used as an equivalent for the
+_livre tournois_, which was worth twenty sols. French writers would
+speak without distinction of so many livres or so many francs, so long
+as the sum mentioned was an even sum; otherwise livre was the correct
+term, thus "_trois livres_" or "_trois francs_," but "_trois livres cinq
+sols_." In 1795 the livre was legally converted into the franc, at the
+rate of 81 livres to 80 francs, the silver franc being made to weigh
+exactly five grammes. The franc is now the unit of the monetary system
+and also the money of account in France, as well as in Belgium and
+Switzerland. In Italy the equivalent is the lira, and in Greece the
+drachma. The franc is divided into 100 centimes, the lira into 100
+centesimi and the drachma into 100 lepta. Gold is now the standard, the
+coins in common use being ten and twenty franc pieces. The twenty franc
+gold piece weighs 6.4516 grammes, .900 fine. The silver coins are five,
+two, one, and half franc pieces. The five franc silver piece weighs 25
+grammes, .900 fine, while the franc piece weighs 5 grammes, .835 fine.
+See also MONEY.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCAIS, ANTOINE, COUNT (1756-1836), better known as FRANCAIS OF
+NANTES, French politician and author, was born at Beaurepaire, in the
+department of Isere. In 1791 he was elected to the legislative assembly
+by the department of Loire Inferieure, and was noted for his violent
+attacks upon the farmers general, the pope and the priests; but he was
+not re-elected to the Convention. During the Terror, as he had belonged
+to the Girondin party, he was obliged to seek safety in the mountains.
+In 1798 he was elected to the council of Five Hundred by the department
+of Isere, and became one of its secretaries; and in the following year
+he voted against the Directory. He took office under the consulate as
+prefect of Charente Inferieure, rose to be a member of the council of
+state, and in 1804 obtained the important post of director-general of
+the indirect taxes (_droits reunis_). The value of his services was
+recognized by the titles of count of the empire and grand officer of the
+Legion of Honour. On the second restoration he retired into private
+life; but from 1819 to 1822 he was representative of the department of
+Isere, and after the July revolution he was made a peer of France. He
+died at Paris on the 7th of March 1836.
+
+  Francais wrote a number of works, but his name is more likely to be
+  preserved by the eulogies of the literary men to whom he afforded
+  protection and assistance. It is sufficient to mention _Le Manuscrit
+  de feu M. Jerome_ (1825); _Recueil de fadaises compose sur la montagne
+  a l'usage des habitants de la plaine_ (1826); _Voyage dans la vallee
+  des originaux_ (1828); _Tableau de la vie rurale, ou l'agriculture
+  enseignee d'une maniere dramatique_ (1829).
+
+
+
+
+FRANCAIS, FRANCOIS LOUIS (1814-1897), French painter, was born at
+Plombieres (Vosges), and, on attaining the age of fifteen, was placed as
+office-boy with a bookseller. After a few years of hard struggle, during
+which he made a precarious living by drawing on stone and designing
+woodcut vignettes for book illustration, he studied painting under
+Gigoux, and subsequently under Corot, whose influence remained decisive
+upon Francais's style of landscape painting. He generally found his
+subjects in the neighbourhood of Paris, and though he never rivalled his
+master in lightness of touch and in the lyric poetry which is the
+principal charm of Corot's work, he is still counted among the leading
+landscape painters of his country and period. He exhibited first at the
+Salon in 1837 and was elected to the Academie des Beaux-Arts in 1890.
+Comparatively few of his pictures are to be found in public galleries,
+but his painting of "An Italian Sunset" is at the Luxembourg Museum in
+Paris. Other works of importance are "Daphnis et Chloe" (1872), "Bas
+Meudon" (1861), "Orpheus" (1863), "Le Bois sacre" (1864), "Le Lac de
+Nemi" (1868).
+
+
+
+
+FRANCATELLI, CHARLES ELME (1805-1876), Anglo-Italian cook, was born in
+London, of Italian extraction, in 1805, and was educated in France,
+where he studied the art of cookery. Coming to England, he was employed
+successively by various noblemen, subsequently becoming manager of
+Crockford's club. He left Crockford's to become chief cook to Queen
+Victoria, and afterwards he was chef at the Reform Club. He was the
+author of _The Modern Cook_ (1845), which has since been frequently
+republished; of a _Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes_ (1861),
+and of _The Royal English and Foreign Confectionery Book_ (1862).
+Francatelli died at Eastbourne on the 10th of August 1876.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCAVILLA FONTANA, a town and episcopal see of Apulia, Italy, in the
+province of Lecce, 22 m. by rail E. by N. of Taranto, 460 ft. above
+sea-level. Pop. (1901) 17,759 (town); 20,510 (commune). It is in a fine
+situation, and has a massive square castle of the Umperiali family, to
+whom, with Oria, it was sold by S. Carlo Borromeo in the 16th century
+for 40,000 ounces of gold, which he distributed in one day to the poor.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCE, ANATOLE (1844- ), French critic, essayist and novelist (whose
+real name was Jacques Anatole Thibault), was born in Paris on the 16th
+of April 1844. His father was a bookseller, one of the last of the
+booksellers, if we are to believe the Goncourts, into whose
+establishment men came, not merely to order and buy, but to dip, and
+turn over pages and discuss. As a child he used to listen to the nightly
+talks on literary subjects which took place in his father's shop.
+Nurtured in an atmosphere so essentially bookish, he turned naturally to
+literature. In 1868 his first work appeared, a study of Alfred de Vigny,
+followed in 1873 by a volume of verse, _Les Poemes dores_, dedicated to
+Leconte de Lisle, and, as such a dedication suggests, an outcome of the
+"Parnassian" movement; and yet another volume of verse appeared in 1876,
+_Les Noces corinthiennes_. But the poems in these volumes, though
+unmistakably the work of a man of great literary skill and cultured
+taste, are scarcely the poems of a man with whom verse is the highest
+form of expression.
+
+He was to find his richest vein in prose. He himself, avowing his
+preference for a simple, or seemingly simple, style as compared with the
+_artistic_ style, vaunted by the Goncourts--a style compounded of
+neologisms and "rare" epithets, and startling forms of
+expression--observes: "A simple style is like white light. It is
+complex, but not to outward seeming. In language, a beautiful and
+desirable simplicity is but an appearance, and results only from the
+good order and sovereign economy of the various parts of speech." And
+thus one may say of his own style that its beautiful translucency is the
+result of many qualities--felicity, grace, the harmonious grouping of
+words, a perfect measure. Anatole France is a sceptic. The essence of
+his philosophy, if a spirit so light; evanescent, elusive, can be said
+to have a philosophy, is doubt. He is a doubter in religion,
+metaphysics, morals, politics, aesthetics, science--a most genial and
+kindly doubter, and not at all without doubts even as to his own
+negative conclusions. Sometimes his doubts are expressed in his own
+person--as in the _Jardin d'epicure_ (1894) from which the above
+extracts are taken, or _Le Livre de mon ami_ (1885), which may be
+accepted, perhaps, as partly autobiographical; sometimes, as in _La
+Rotisserie de la reine Pedauque_ (1893) and _Les Opinions de M. Jerome
+Coignard_ (1893), or _L'Orme du mail_ (1897), Le Mannequin d'osier
+(1897), _L'Anneau d'amethyste_ (1899), and _M. Bergeret a Paris_ (1901),
+he entrusts the expression of his opinions, dramatically, to some
+fictitious character--the abbe Coignard, for instance, projecting, as it
+were, from the 18th century some very effective criticisms on the
+popular political theories of contemporary France--or the M. Bergeret of
+the four last-named novels, which were published with the collective
+title of _Histoire contemporaine_. This series deals with some modern
+problems, and particularly, in _L'Anneau d'amethyste_ and _M. Bergeret a
+Paris_, with the humours and follies of the anti-Dreyfusards. All this
+makes a piquant combination. Neither should reference be omitted to his
+_Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard_ (1881), crowned by the Institute, nor to
+works more distinctly of fancy, such as _Balthasar_ (1889), the story of
+one of the Magi or _Thais_ (1890), the story of an actress and courtesan
+of Alexandria, whom a hermit converts, but with the loss of his own
+soul. His ironic comedy, _Crainquebille_ (Renaissance theatre, 1903),
+was founded on his novel (1902) of the same year. His more recent work
+includes his anti-clerical _Vie de Jeanne d'Arc_ (1908); his pungent
+satire the _Ile des penguins_ (1908); and a volume of stories, _Les Sept
+Femmes de la Barbe-Bleue_ (1909). Lightly as he bears his erudition, it
+is very real and extensive, and is notably shown in his utilization of
+modern archaeological and historical research in his fiction (as in the
+stories in _Sur une pierre blanche_). As a critic--see the _Vie
+litteraire_ (1888-1892), reprinted mainly from _Le Temps_--he is
+graceful and appreciative. Academic in the best sense, he found a place
+in the French Academy, taking the seat vacated by Lesseps, and was
+received into that body on the 24th of December 1896. In the _affaire
+Dreyfus_ he sided with M. Zola.
+
+  For studies of M. Anatole France's talent see Maurice Barres, _Anatole
+  France_ (1885); Jules Lemaitre, _Les Contemporains_ (2nd series,
+  1886); and G. Brandes, _Anatole France_ (1908). In 1908 Frederic
+  Chapman began an edition of _The works of Anatole France in an English
+  translation_ (John Lane).
+
+
+
+
+FRANCE, a country of western Europe, situated between 51 deg. 5' and 42
+deg. 20' N., and 4 deg. 42' W. and 7 deg. 39' E. It is hexagonal in
+form, being bounded N.W. by the North Sea, the Strait of Dover (_Pas de
+Calais_) and the English Channel (_La Manche_), W. by the Atlantic
+Ocean, S.W. by Spain, S.E. by the Mediterranean Sea, E. by Italy,
+Switzerland and Germany, N.E. by Germany, Luxemburg and Belgium. From
+north to south its length is about 600 m., measured from Dunkirk to the
+Col de Falgueres; its breadth from east to west is 528 m., from the
+Vosges to Cape Saint Mathieu at the extremity of Brittany. The total
+area is estimated[1] at 207,170 sq. m., including the island of Corsica,
+which comprises 3367 sq. m. The coast-line of France extends for 384 m.
+on the Mediterranean, 700 on the North Sea, the Strait of Dover and the
+Channel, and 865 on the Atlantic. The country has the advantage of being
+separated from its neighbours over the greater part of its frontier by
+natural barriers of great strength, the Pyrenees forming a powerful
+bulwark on the south-west, the Alps on the south-east, and the Jura and
+the greater portion of the Vosges Mountains on the east. The frontier
+generally follows the crest line of these ranges. Germany possesses both
+slopes of the Vosges north of Mont Donon, from which point the
+north-east boundary is conventional and unprotected by nature.
+
+France is geographically remarkable for its possession of great natural
+and historical highways between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic
+Ocean. The one, following the depression between the central plateau and
+the eastern mountains by way of the valleys of the Rhone and Saone,
+traverses the Cote d'Or hills and so gains the valley of the Seine; the
+other, skirting the southern base of the Cevennes, reaches the ocean by
+way of the Garonne valley. Another natural highway, traversing the
+lowlands to the west of the central plateau, unites the Seine basin with
+that of the Garonne.
+
+  _Physiography._--A line drawn from Bayonne through Agen, Poitiers,
+  Troyes, Reims and Valenciennes divides the country roughly into two
+  dissimilar physical regions--to the west and north-west a country of
+  plains and low plateaus; in the centre, east and south-east a country
+  of mountains and high plateaus with a minimum elevation of 650 ft. To
+  the west of this line the only highlands of importance are the
+  granitic plateaus of Brittany and the hills of Normandy and Perche,
+  which, uniting with the plateau of Beauce, separate the basins of the
+  Seine and Loire. The highest elevations of these ranges do not exceed
+  1400 ft. The configuration of the region east of the dividing line is
+  widely different. Its most striking feature is the mountainous and
+  eruptive area known as the Massif Central, which covers south-central
+  France. The central point of this huge tract is formed by the
+  mountains of Auvergne comprising the group of Cantal, where the Plomb
+  du Cantal attains 6096 ft., and that of Mont Dore, containing the Puy
+  de Sancy (6188 ft.), the culminating point of the Massif, and to the
+  north the lesser elevations of the Monts Dome. On the west the
+  downward slope is gradual by way of lofty plateaus to the heights of
+  Limousin and Marche and the table-land of Quercy, thence to the plains
+  of Poitou, Angoumois and Guienne. On the east only river valleys
+  divide the Auvergne mountains from those of Forez and Margeride,
+  western spurs of the Cevennes. On the south the Aubrac mountains and
+  the barren plateaus known as the Causses intervene between them and
+  the Cevennes. The main range of the Cevennes (highest point Mont
+  Lozere, 5584 ft.) sweeps in a wide curve from the granitic table-land
+  of Morvan in the north along the right banks of the Saone and Rhone to
+  the Montagne Noire in the south, where it is separated from the
+  Pyrenean system by the river Aude. On the south-western border of
+  France the Pyrenees include several peaks over 10,000 ft. within
+  French territory; the highest elevation therein, the Vignemale, in the
+  centre of the range, reaches 10,820 ft. On the north their most
+  noteworthy offshoots are, in the centre, the plateau of Lannemezan
+  from which rivers radiate fanwise to join the Adour and Garonne; and
+  in the east the Corbiere. On the south-eastern frontier the French
+  Alps, which include Mont Blanc (15,800 ft.), and, more to the south,
+  other summits over 11,000 ft. in height, cover Savoy and most of
+  Dauphine and Provence, that is to say, nearly the whole of France to
+  the south and east of the Rhone. North of that river the parallel
+  chains of the Jura form an arc of a circle with its convexity towards
+  the north-west. In the southern and most elevated portion of the range
+  there are several summits exceeding 5500 ft. Separated from the Jura
+  by the defile of Belfort (Trouee de Belfort) the Vosges extend
+  northward parallel to the course of the Rhine. Their culminating
+  points in French territory, the Ballon d'Alsace and the Hohneck in the
+  southern portion of the chain, reach 4100 ft. and 4480 ft. The Vosges
+  are buttressed on the west by the Faucilles, which curve southwards to
+  meet the plateau of Langres, and by the plateaus of Haute-Marne,
+  united to the Ardennes on the north-eastern frontier by the wooded
+  highlands of Argonne.
+
+  [Illustration: Map of France (Physical Devisions).]
+
+  _Seaboard._--The shore of the Mediterranean encircling the Gulf of the
+  Lion (Golfe du Lion)[2] from Cape Cerbera to Martigues is low-lying
+  and unbroken, and characterized chiefly by lagoons separated from the
+  sea by sand-dunes. The coast, constantly encroaching on the sea by
+  reason of the alluvium washed down by the rivers of the Pyrenees and
+  Cevennes, is without important harbours saving that of Cette, itself
+  continually invaded by the sand. East of Martigues the coast is rocky
+  and of greater altitude, and is broken by projecting capes (Couronne,
+  Croisette, Sicie, the peninsula of Giens and Cape Antibes), and by
+  deep gulfs forming secure roadsteads such as those of Marseilles,
+  which has the chief port in France, Toulon, with its great naval
+  harbour, and Hyeres, to which may be added the Gulf of St Tropez.
+
+  Along the Atlantic coast from the mouth of the Adour to the estuary
+  of the Gironde there stretches a monotonous line of sand-dunes
+  bordered by lagoons on the land side, but towards the sea harbourless
+  and unbroken save for the Bay of Arcachon. To the north as far as the
+  rocky point of St Gildas, sheltering the mouth of the Loire, the
+  shore, often occupied by salt marshes (marshes of Poitou and
+  Brittany), is low-lying and hollowed by deep bays sheltered by large
+  islands, those of Oleron and Re lying opposite the ports of Rochefort
+  and La Rochelle, while Noirmoutier closes the Bay of Bourgneuf.
+
+  Beyond the Loire estuary, on the north shore of which is the port of
+  St Nazaire, the peninsula of Brittany projects into the ocean and here
+  begins the most rugged, wild and broken portion of the French
+  seaboard; the chief of innumerable indentations are, on the south the
+  Gulf of Morbihan, which opens into a bay protected to the west by the
+  narrow peninsula of Quiberon, the Bay of Lorient with the port of
+  Lorient, and the Bay of Concarneau; on the west the dangerous Bay of
+  Audierne and the Bay of Douarnenez separated from the spacious
+  roadstead of Brest, with its important naval port, by the peninsula of
+  Crozon, and forming with it a great indentation sheltered by Cape St
+  Mathieu on the north and by Cape Raz on the south; on the north,
+  opening into the English Channel, the Morlaix roads, the Bay of St
+  Brieuc, the estuary of the Rance, with the port of St Malo and the Bay
+  of St Michel. Numerous small archipelagoes and islands, of which the
+  chief are Belle Ile, Groix and Ushant, fringe the Breton coast. North
+  of the Bay of St Michel the peninsula of Cotentin, terminating in the
+  promontories of Hague and Barfleur, juts north into the English
+  Channel and closes the bay of the Seine on the west. Cherbourg, its
+  chief harbour, lies on the northern shore between the two
+  promontories. The great port of Le Havre stands at the mouth of the
+  Seine estuary, which opens into the bay of the Seine on the east.
+  North of that point a line of high cliffs, in which occur the ports of
+  Fecamp and Dieppe, stretches nearly to the sandy estuary of the Somme.
+  North of that river the coast is low-lying and bordered by sand-dunes,
+  to which succeed on the Strait of Dover the cliffs in the
+  neighbourhood of the port of Boulogne and the marshes and sand-dunes
+  of Flanders, with the ports of Calais and Dunkirk, the latter the
+  principal French port on the North Sea.
+
+  To the maritime ports mentioned above must be added the river ports of
+  Bayonne (on the Adour), Bordeaux (on the Garonne), Nantes (on the
+  Loire), Rouen (on the Seine). On the whole, however, France is
+  inadequately provided with natural harbours; her long tract of coast
+  washed by the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay has scarcely three or
+  four good seaports, and those on the southern shore of the Channel
+  form a striking contrast to the spacious maritime inlets on the
+  English side.
+
+  _Rivers._--The greater part of the surface of France is divided
+  between four principal and several secondary basins.
+
+  The basin of the Rhone, with an area (in France) of about 35,000 sq.
+  m., covers eastern France from the Mediterranean to the Vosges, from
+  the Cevennes and the Plateau de Langres to the crests of the Jura and
+  the Alps. Alone among French rivers, the Rhone, itself Alpine in
+  character in its upper course, is partly fed by Alpine rivers (the
+  Arve, the Isere and the Durance) which have their floods in spring at
+  the melting of the snow, and are maintained by glacier-water in
+  summer. The Rhone, the source of which is in Mont St Gothard, in
+  Switzerland, enters France by the narrow defile of L'Ecluse, and has a
+  somewhat meandering course, first flowing south, then north-west, and
+  then west as far as Lyons, whence it runs straight south till it
+  reaches the Mediterranean, into which it discharges itself by two
+  principal branches, which form the delta or island of the Camargue.
+  The Ain, the Saone (which rises in the Faucilles and in the lower part
+  of its course skirting the regions of Bresse and Dombes, receives the
+  Doubs and joins the Rhone at Lyons), the Ardeche and the Gard are the
+  affluents on the right; on the left it is joined by the Arve, the
+  Isere, the Drome and the Durance. The small independent river, the
+  Var, drains that portion of the Alps which fringes the Mediterranean.
+
+  The basin of the Garonne occupies south-western France with the
+  exception of the tracts covered by the secondary basins of the Adour,
+  the Aude, the Herault, the Orb and other smaller rivers, and the
+  low-lying plain of the Landes, which is watered by numerous coast
+  rivers, notably by the Leyre. Its area is nearly 33,000 sq. m., and
+  extends from the Pyrenees to the uplands of Saintonge, Perigord and
+  Limousin. The Garonne rises in the valley of Aran (Spanish Pyrenees),
+  enters France near Bagneres-de-Luchon, has first a north-west course,
+  then bends to the north-east, and soon resumes its first direction.
+  Joining the Atlantic between Royan and the Pointe de Grave, opposite
+  the tower of Cordouan. In the lower part of its course, from the
+  Bec-d'Ambez, where it receives the Dordogne, it becomes considerably
+  wider, and takes the name of Gironde. The principal affluents are the
+  Ariege, the Tarn with the Aveyron and the Agout, the Lot and the
+  Dordogne, which descends from Mont Dore-les-Bains, and joins the
+  Garonne at Bec-d'Ambez, to form the Gironde. All these affluents are
+  on the right, and with the exception of the Ariege, which descends
+  from the eastern Pyrenees, rise in the mountains of Auvergne and the
+  southern Cevennes, their sources often lying close to those of the
+  rivers of the Loire and Rhone basins. The Neste, a Pyrenean torrent,
+  and the Save, the Gers and the Baise, rising on the plateau of
+  Lannemezan, are the principal left-hand tributaries of the Garonne.
+  North of the basin of the Garonne an area of over 3800 sq. m. is
+  watered by the secondary system of the Charente, which descends from
+  Cheronnac (Haute-Vienne), traverses Angouleme and falls into the
+  Atlantic near Rochefort. Farther to the north a number of small
+  rivers, the chief of which is the Sevre Niortaise, drain the coast
+  region to the south of the plateau of Gatine.
+
+  The basin of the Loire, with an area of about 47,000 sq. m., includes
+  a great part of central and western France or nearly a quarter of the
+  whole country. The Loire rises in Mont Gerbier de Jonc, in the range
+  of the Vivarais mountains, flows due north to Nevers, then turns to
+  the north-west as far as Orleans, in the neighbourhood of which it
+  separates the marshy region of the Sologne (q.v.) on the south from
+  the wheat-growing region of Beauce and the Gatinais on the north.
+  Below Orleans it takes its course towards the south-west, and lastly
+  from Saumur runs west, till it reaches the Atlantic between Paimboeuf
+  and St Nazaire. On the right the Loire receives the waters of the
+  Furens, the Arroux, the Nievre, the Maine (formed by the Mayenne and
+  the Sarthe with its affluent the Loir), and the Erdre, which joins the
+  Loire at Nantes; on the left, the Allier (which receives the Dore and
+  the Sioule), the Loiret, the Cher, the Indre, the Vienne with its
+  affluent the Creuse, the Thouet, and the Sevre-Nantaise. The peninsula
+  of Brittany and the coasts of Normandy on both sides of the Seine
+  estuary are watered by numerous independent streams. Amongst these the
+  Vilaine, which passes Rennes and Redon, waters, with its tributaries,
+  an area of 4200 sq. m. The Orne, which rises in the hills of Normandy
+  and falls into the Channel below Caen, is of considerably less
+  importance.
+
+  The basin of the Seine, though its area of a little over 30,000 sq. m.
+  is smaller than that of any of the other main systems, comprises the
+  finest network of navigable rivers in the country. It is by far the
+  most important basin of northern France, those of the Somme and
+  Scheldt in the north-west together covering less than 5000 sq. m.,
+  those of the Meuse and the Rhine in the north-east less than 7000 sq.
+  m. The Seine descends from the Langres plateau, flows north-west down
+  to Mery, turns to the west, resumes its north-westerly direction at
+  Montereau, passes through Paris and Rouen and discharges itself into
+  the Channel between Le Havre and Honfleur. Its affluents are, on the
+  right, the Aube; the Marne, which joins the Seine at Charenton near
+  Paris; the Oise, which has its source in Belgium and is enlarged by
+  the Aisne; and the Epte; on the left the Yonne, the Loing, the
+  Essonne, the Eure and the Rille.
+
+  _Lakes._--France has very few lakes. The Lake of Geneva, which forms
+  32 m. of the frontier, belongs to Switzerland. The most important
+  French lake is that of Grand-Lieu, between Nantes and Paimboeuf
+  (Loire-Inferieure), which presents a surface of 17,300 acres. There
+  may also be mentioned the lakes of Bourget and Annecy (both in Savoy),
+  St Point (Jura), Paladru (Isere) and Nantua (Ain). The marshy
+  districts of Sologne, Brenne, Landes and Dombes still contain large
+  undrained tracts. The coasts present a number of maritime inlets,
+  forming inland bays, which communicate with the sea by channels of
+  greater or less width. Some of these are on the south-west coast, in
+  the Landes, as Carcans, Lacanau, Biscarosse, Cazau, Sanguinet; but
+  more are to be found in the south and south-east, in Languedoc and
+  Provence, as Leucate, Sigean, Thau, Vaccares, Berre, &c. Their want of
+  depth prevents them from serving as roadsteads for shipping, and they
+  are useful chiefly for fishing or for the manufacture of bay-salt.
+
+  _Climate._--The north and north-west of France bear a great
+  resemblance, both in temperature and produce, to the south of England,
+  rain occurring frequently, and the country being consequently suited
+  for pasture. In the interior the rains are less frequent, but when
+  they occur are far more heavy, so that there is much less difference
+  in the annual rainfall there as compared with the rest of the country
+  than in the number of rainy days. The annual rainfall for the whole of
+  France averages about 32 in. The precipitation is greatest on the
+  Atlantic seaboard and in the elevated regions of the interior. It
+  attains over 60 in. in the basin of the Adour (71 in. at the western
+  extremity of the Pyrenees), and nearly as much in the Vosges, Morvan,
+  Cevennes and parts of the central plateau. The zone of level country
+  extending from Reims and Troyes to Angers and Poitiers, with the
+  exception of the Loire valley and the Brie, receives less than 24 in.
+  of rain annually (Paris about 23 in.), as also does the Mediterranean
+  coast west of Marseilles. The prevailing winds, mild and humid, are
+  west winds from the Atlantic; continental climatic influence makes
+  itself felt in the east wind, which is frequent in winter and in the
+  east of France, while the _mistral_, a violent wind from the
+  north-west, is characteristic of the Mediterranean region. The local
+  climates of France may be grouped under the following seven
+  designations: (1) Sequan climate, characterizing the Seine basin and
+  northern France, with a mean temperature of 50 deg. F., the winters
+  being cold, the summers mild; (2) Breton climate, with a mean
+  temperature of 51.8 deg. F., the winters being mild, the summers
+  temperate, it is characterized by west and south-west winds and
+  frequent fine rains; (3) Girondin climate (characterizing Bordeaux,
+  Agen, Pau, &c.), having a mean of 53.6 deg. F., with mild winters and
+  hot summers, the prevailing wind is from the north-west, the average
+  rainfall about 28 in.; (4) Auvergne climate, comprising the Cevennes,
+  central plateau, Clermont, Limoges and Rodez, mean temperature 51.8
+  deg. F., with cold winters and hot summers; (5) Vosges climate
+  (comprehending Epinal, Mezieres and Nancy), having a mean of 48.2 deg.
+  F., with long and severe winters and hot and rainy summers; (6) Rhone
+  climate (experienced by Lyons, Chalon, Macon, Grenoble) mean
+  temperature 51.8 deg. F., with cold and wet winters and hot summers,
+  the prevailing winds are north and south; (7) Mediterranean climate,
+  ruling at Valence, Nimes, Nice and Marseilles, mean temperature, 57.5
+  deg. F., with mild winters and hot and almost rainless summers.
+
+  _Flora and Fauna._--The flora of southern France and the Mediterranean
+  is distinct from that of the rest of the country, which does not
+  differ in vegetation from western Europe generally. Evergreens
+  predominate in the south, where grow subtropical plants such as the
+  myrtle, arbutus, laurel, holm-oak, olive and fig; varieties of the
+  same kind are also found on the Atlantic coast (as far north as the
+  Cotentin), where the humidity and mildness of the climate favour their
+  growth. The orange, date-palm and eucalyptus have been acclimatized on
+  the coast of Provence and the Riviera. Other trees of southern France
+  are the cork-oak and the Aleppo and maritime pines. In north and
+  central France the chief trees are the oak, the beech, rare south of
+  the Loire, and the hornbeam; less important varieties are the birch,
+  poplar, ash, elm and walnut. The chestnut covers considerable areas in
+  Perigord, Limousin and Bearn; resinous trees (firs, pines, larches,
+  &c.) form fine forests in the Vosges and Jura.
+
+  The indigenous fauna include the bear, now very rare but still found
+  in the Alps and Pyrenees, the wolf, harbouring chiefly in the Cevennes
+  and Vosges, but in continually decreasing areas; the fox, marten,
+  badger, weasel, otter, the beaver in the extreme south of the Rhone
+  valley, and in the Alps the marmot; the red deer and roe deer are
+  preserved in many of the forests, and the wild boar is found in
+  several districts; the chamois and wild goat survive in the Pyrenees
+  and Alps. Hares, rabbits and squirrels are common. Among birds of prey
+  may be mentioned the eagle and various species of hawk, and among
+  game-birds the partridge and pheasant. The reptiles include the
+  ringed-snake, slow-worm, viper and lizard.     (R. Tr.)
+
+  _Geology._--Many years ago it was pointed out by Elie de Beaumont and
+  Dufrenoy that the Jurassic rocks of France form upon the map an
+  incomplete figure of 8. Within the northern circle of the 8 lie the
+  Mesozoic and Tertiary beds of the Paris basin, dipping inwards; within
+  the southern circle lie the ancient rocks of the Central Plateau, from
+  which the later beds dip outwards. Outside the northern circle lie on
+  the west the folded Palaeozoic rocks of Brittany, and on the north the
+  Palaeozoic _massif_ of the Ardennes. Outside the southern circle lie
+  on the west the Mesozoic and Tertiary beds of the basin of the
+  Garonne, with the Pyrenees beyond, and on the east the Mesozoic and
+  Tertiary beds of the valley of the Rhone, with the Alps beyond.
+
+  In the geological history of France there have been two great periods
+  of folding since Archean times. The first of these occurred towards
+  the close of the Palaeozoic era, when a great mountain system was
+  raised in the north running approximately from E. to W., and another
+  chain arose in the south, running from S.W. to N.E. Of the former the
+  remnants are now seen in Brittany and the Ardennes; of the latter the
+  Cevennes and the Montagne Noire are the last traces visible on the
+  surface. The second great folding took place in Tertiary times, and to
+  it was due the final elevation of the Jura and the Western Alps and of
+  the Pyrenees. No great mountain chain was ever raised by a single
+  effort, and folding went on to some extent in other periods besides
+  those mentioned. There were, moreover, other and broader oscillations
+  which raised or lowered extensive areas without much crumpling of the
+  strata, and to these are due some of the most important breaks in the
+  geological series.
+
+  The oldest rocks, the gneisses and schists of the Archean period, form
+  nearly the whole of the Central Plateau, and are also exposed in the
+  axes of the folds in Brittany. The Central Plateau has probably been a
+  land mass ever since this period, but the rest of the country was
+  flooded by the Palaeozoic sea. The earlier deposits of that sea now
+  rise to the surface in Brittany, the Ardennes, the Montagne Noire and
+  the Cevennes, and in all these regions they are intensely folded.
+  Towards the close of the Palaeozoic era France had become a part of a
+  great continent; in the north the Coal Measures of the Boulonnais and
+  the Nord were laid down in direct connexion with those of Belgium and
+  England, while in the Central Plateau the Coal Measures were deposited
+  in isolated and scattered basins. The Permian and Triassic deposits
+  were also, for the most part, of continental origin; but with the
+  formation of the Rhaetic beds the sea again began to spread, and
+  throughout the greater part of the Jurassic period it covered nearly
+  the whole of the country except the Central Plateau, Brittany and the
+  Ardennes. Towards the end of the period, however, during the
+  deposition of the Portlandian beds, the sea again retreated, and in
+  the early part of the Cretaceous period was limited (in France) to the
+  catchment basins of the Saone and Rhone--in the Paris basin the
+  contemporaneous deposits were chiefly estuarine and were confined to
+  the northern and eastern rim. Beginning with the Aptian and Albian the
+  sea again gradually spread over the country and attained its maximum
+  in the early part of the Senonian epoch, when once more the ancient
+  massifs of the Central Plateau, Brittany and the Ardennes, alone rose
+  above the waves. There was still, however, a well-marked difference
+  between the deposits of the northern and the southern parts of France,
+  the former consisting of chalk, as in England, and the latter of
+  sandstones and limestones with Hippurites. During the later part of
+  the Cretaceous period the sea gradually retreated and left the whole
+  country dry.
+
+  During the Tertiary period arms of the sea spread into France--in the
+  Paris basin from the north, in the basins of the Loire and the Garonne
+  from the west, and in the Rhone area from the south. The changes,
+  however, were too numerous and complex to be dealt with here.
+
+  [Illustration: Geologic Map.]
+
+  In France, as in Great Britain, volcanic eruptions occurred during
+  several of the Palaeozoic periods, but during the Mesozoic era the
+  country was free from outbursts, except in the regions of the Alps and
+  Pyrenees. In Tertiary times the Central Plateau was the theatre of
+  great volcanic activity from the Miocene to the Pleistocene periods,
+  and many of the volcanoes remain as nearly perfect cones to the
+  present day. The rocks are mainly basalts and andesites, together with
+  trachytes and phonolites, and some of the basaltic flows are of
+  enormous extent.
+
+  On the geology of France see the classic _Explication de la carte
+  geologique de la France_ (Paris, vol. i. 1841, vol. ii. 1848), by
+  Dufrenoy and Elie de Beaumont; a more modern account, with full
+  references, is given by A. de Lapparent, _Traite de geologie_ (Paris,
+  1906).     (J. A. H.)
+
+
+_Population._
+
+The French nation is formed of many different elements. Iberian
+influence in the south-west, Ligurian on the shores of the
+Mediterranean, Germanic immigrations from east of the Rhine and
+Scandinavian immigrations in the north-west have tended to produce
+ethnographical diversities which ease of intercommunication and other
+modern conditions have failed to obliterate. The so-called Celtic type,
+exemplified by individuals of rather less than average height,
+brown-haired and brachycephalic, is the fundamental element in the
+nation and peoples the region between the Seine and the Garonne; in
+southern France a different type, dolichocephalic, short and with black
+hair and eyes, predominates. The tall, fair and blue-eyed individuals
+who are found to the north-east of the Seine and in Normandy appear to
+be nearer in race to the Scandinavian and Germanic invaders; a tall and
+darker type with long faces and aquiline noses occurs in some parts of
+Franche-Comte and Champagne, the Vosges and the Perche. From the Celts
+has been derived the gay, brilliant and adventurous temperament easily
+moved to extremes of enthusiasm and depression, which combined with
+logical and organizing faculties of a high order, the heritage from the
+Latin domination, and with the industry, frugality and love of the soil
+natural in an agricultural people go to make up the national character.
+The Bretons, who most nearly represent the Celts, and the Basques, who
+inhabit parts of the western versant of the Pyrenees, have preserved
+their distinctive languages and customs, and are ethnically the most
+interesting sections of the nation; the Flemings of French Flanders
+where Flemish is still spoken are also racially distinct. The
+immigration of Belgians into the northern departments and of Italians
+into those of the south-east exercise a constant modifying influence on
+the local populations.
+
+[Illustration: Map of France.]
+
+During the 19th century the population of France increased to a less
+extent than that of any other country (except Ireland) for which
+definite data exist, and during the last twenty years of that period it
+was little more than stationary. The following table exhibits the rate
+of increase as indicated by the censuses from 1876 to 1906.
+
+            Population.
+
+  1876      36,905,788
+  1881      37,672,048
+  1886      38,218,903
+  1891      38,342,948
+  1896      38,517,975
+  1901      38,961,945
+  1906      39,252,245
+
+Thus the rate of increase during the decade 1891-1901 was .16%, whereas
+during the same period the population of England increased 1.08%. The
+birth-rate markedly decreased during the 19th century; despite an
+increase of population between 1801 and 1901 amounting to 40%, the
+number of births in the former was 904,000, as against 857,000 in the
+latter year, the diminution being accompanied by a decrease in the
+annual number of deaths.[3] In the following table the decrease in
+births and deaths for the decennial periods during the thirty years
+ending 1900 are compared.
+
+                       _Births._
+
+  1871-1880     935,000 or 25.4 per 1000
+  1881-1890     909,000 "  23.9     "
+  1891-1900     853,000 "  22.2     "
+
+                       _Deaths._
+
+  1871-1880     870,900 or 23.7 per 1000
+  1881-1890     841,700 "  22.1     "
+  1891-1900     829,000 "  21.5     "
+
+About two-thirds of the French departments, comprising a large
+proportion of those situated in mountainous districts and in the basin
+of the Garonne, where the birth-rate is especially feeble, show a
+decrease in population. Those which show an increase usually possess
+large centres of industry and are already thickly populated, e.g. Seine
+and Pas-de-Calais. In most departments the principal cause of decrease
+of population is the attraction of great centres. The average density of
+population in France is about 190 to the square mile, the tendency being
+for the large towns to increase at the expense of the small towns as
+well as the rural communities. In 1901 37% of the population lived in
+centres containing more than 2000 inhabitants, whereas in 1861 the
+proportion was 28%. Besides the industrial districts the most thickly
+populated regions include the coast of the department of
+Seine-Inferieure and Brittany, the wine-growing region of the Bordelais
+and the Riviera.[4]
+
+In the quinquennial period 1901-1905, out of the total number of births
+the number of illegitimate births to every 1000 inhabitants was 2.0, as
+compared with 2.1 in the four preceding periods of like duration.
+
+In 1906 the number of foreigners in France was 1,009,415 as compared
+with 1,027,491 in 1896 and 1,115,214 in 1886. The departments with the
+largest population of foreigners were Nord (191,678), in which there is
+a large proportion of Belgians; Bouches-du-Rhone (123,497),
+Alpes-Maritimes (93,554), Var (47,475), Italians being numerous in these
+three departments; Seine (153,647), Meurthe-et-Moselle (44,595),
+Pas-de-Calais (21,436) and Ardennes (21,401).
+
+The following table gives the area in square miles of each of the
+eighty-seven departments with its population according to the census
+returns of 1886, 1896 and 1906:
+
+  +-----------------------+--------+-----------+-----------------------+
+  |                       |  Area  |           |      Population.      |
+  |     Departments.      | sq. m. +-----------+-----------+-----------+
+  |                       |        |   1886.   |   1896.   |   1906.   |
+  +-----------------------+--------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+  | Ain                   |  2,249 |   364,408 |   351,569 |   345,856 |
+  | Aisne                 |  2,867 |   555,925 |   541,613 |   534,495 |
+  | Allier                |  2,849 |   424,582 |   424,378 |   417,961 |
+  | Alpes-Maritimes       |  1,442 |   238,057 |   265,155 |   334,007 |
+  | Ardeche               |  2,145 |   375,472 |   363,501 |   347,140 |
+  | Ardennes              |  2,028 |   332,759 |   318,865 |   317,505 |
+  | Ariege                |  1,893 |   237,619 |   219,641 |   205,684 |
+  | Aube                  |  2,326 |   257,374 |   251,435 |   243,670 |
+  | Aude                  |  2,448 |   332,080 |   310,513 |   308,327 |
+  | Aveyron               |  3,386 |   415,826 |   389,464 |   377,299 |
+  | Basses-Alpes          |  2,698 |   129,494 |   118,142 |   113,126 |
+  | Basses-Pyrenees       |  2,977 |   432,999 |   423,572 |   426,817 |
+  | Belfort, Territoire de|    235 |    79,758 |    88,047 |    95,421 |
+  | Bouches-du-Rhone      |  2,026 |   604,857 |   673,820 |   765,918 |
+  | Calvados              |  2,197 |   437,267 |   417,176 |   403,431 |
+  | Cantal                |  2,231 |   241,742 |   234,382 |   228,690 |
+  | Charente              |  2,305 |   366,408 |   356,236 |   351,733 |
+  | Charente-Inferieure   |  2,791 |   462,803 |   453,455 |   453,793 |
+  | Cher                  |  2,819 |   355,349 |   347,725 |   343,484 |
+  | Correze               |  2,273 |   326,494 |   322,393 |   317,430 |
+  | Corse (Corsica)       |  3,367 |   278,501 |   290,168 |   291,160 |
+  | Cote-d'Or             |  3,392 |   381,574 |   368,168 |   357,959 |
+  | Cotes-du-Nord         |  2,786 |   628,256 |   616,074 |   611,506 |
+  | Creuse                |  2,164 |   284,942 |   279,366 |   274,094 |
+  | Deux-Sevres           |  2,337 |   353,766 |   346,694 |   339,466 |
+  | Dordogne              |  3,561 |   492,205 |   464,822 |   447,052 |
+  | Doubs                 |  2,030 |   310,963 |   302,046 |   298,438 |
+  | Drome                 |  2,533 |   314,615 |   303,491 |   297,270 |
+  | Eure                  |  2,330 |   358,829 |   340,652 |   330,140 |
+  | Eure-et-Loir          |  2,293 |   283,719 |   280,469 |   273,823 |
+  | Finistere             |  2,713 |   707,820 |   739,648 |   795,103 |
+  | Gard                  |  2,270 |   417,099 |   416,036 |   421,166 |
+  | Gers                  |  2,428 |   274,391 |   250,472 |   231,088 |
+  | Gironde               |  4,140 |   775,845 |   809,902 |   823,925 |
+  | Haute-Garonne         |  2,458 |   481,169 |   459,377 |   442,065 |
+  | Haute-Loire           |  1,931 |   320,063 |   316,699 |   314,770 |
+  | Haute-Marne           |  2,415 |   247,781 |   232,057 |   221,724 |
+  | Hautes-Alpes          |  2,178 |   122,924 |   113,229 |   107,498 |
+  | Haute-Saone           |  2,075 |   290,954 |   272,891 |   263,890 |
+  | Haute-Savoie          |  1,775 |   275,018 |   265,872 |   260,617 |
+  | Hautes-Pyrenees       |  1,750 |   234,825 |   218,973 |   209,397 |
+  | Haute-Vienne          |  2,144 |   363,182 |   375,724 |   385,732 |
+  | Herault               |  2,403 |   439,044 |   469,684 |   482,799 |
+  | Ille-et-Vilaine       |  2,699 |   621,384 |   622,039 |   611,805 |
+  | Indre                 |  2,666 |   296,147 |   289,206 |   290,216 |
+  | Indre-et-Loire        |  2,377 |   340,921 |   337,064 |   337,916 |
+  | Isere                 |  3,179 |   581,680 |   568,933 |   562,315 |
+  | Jura                  |  1,951 |   281,292 |   266,143 |   257,725 |
+  | Landes                |  3,615 |   302,266 |   292,884 |   293,397 |
+  | Loir-et-Cher          |  2,479 |   279,214 |   278,153 |   276,019 |
+  | Loire                 |  1,853 |   603,384 |   625,336 |   643,943 |
+  | Loire-Inferieure      |  2,694 |   643,884 |   646,172 |   666,748 |
+  | Loiret                |  2,629 |   374,875 |   371,019 |   364,999 |
+  | Lot                   |  2,017 |   271,514 |   240,403 |   216,611 |
+  | Lot-et-Garonne        |  2,079 |   307,437 |   286,377 |   274,610 |
+  | Lozere                |  1,999 |   141,264 |   132,151 |   128,016 |
+  | Maine-et-Loire        |  2,706 |   527,680 |   514,870 |   513,490 |
+  | Manche                |  2,475 |   520,865 |   500,052 |   487,443 |
+  | Marne                 |  3,167 |   429,494 |   439,577 |   434,157 |
+  | Mayenne               |  2,012 |   340,063 |   321,187 |   305,457 |
+  | Meurthe-et-Moselle    |  2,038 |   431,693 |   466,417 |   517,508 |
+  | Meuse                 |  2,409 |   291,971 |   290,384 |   280,220 |
+  | Morbihan              |  2,738 |   535,256 |   552,028 |   573,152 |
+  | Nievre                |  2,659 |   347,645 |   333,899 |   313,972 |
+  | Nord                  |  2,229 | 1,670,184 | 1,811,868 | 1,895,861 |
+  | Oise                  |  2,272 |   403,146 |   404,511 |   410,049 |
+  | Orne                  |  2,372 |   367,248 |   339,162 |   315,993 |
+  | Pas-de-Calais         |  2,606 |   853,526 |   906,249 | 1,012,466 |
+  | Puy-de-Dome           |  3,094 |   570,964 |   555,078 |   535,419 |
+  | Pyrenees-Orientales   |  1,599 |   211,187 |   208,387 |   213,171 |
+  | Rhone                 |  1,104 |  772,912  |   839,329 |   858,907 |
+  | Saone-et-Loire        |  3,330 |  625,885  |   621,237 |   613,377 |
+  | Sarthe                |  2,410 |  436,111  |   425,077 |   421,470 |
+  | Savoie                |  2,389 |  267,428  |   259,790 |   253,297 |
+  | Seine                 |    185 | 2,961,089 | 3,340,514 | 3,848,618 |
+  | Seine-Inferieure      |  2,448 |   833,386 |   837,824 |   863,879 |
+  | Seine-et-Marne        |  2,289 |   355,136 |   359,044 |   361,939 |
+  | Seine-et-Oise         |  2,184 |   618,089 |   669,098 |   749,753 |
+  | Somme                 |  2,423 |   548,982 |   543,279 |   532,567 |
+  | Tarn                  |  2,231 |   358,757 |   339,827 |   330,533 |
+  | Tarn-et-Garonne       |  1,440 |   214,046 |   200,390 |   188,553 |
+  | Var                   |  2,325 |   283,689 |   309,191 |   324,638 |
+  | Vaucluse              |  1,381 |   241,787 |   236,313 |   239,178 |
+  | Vendee                |  2,708 |   434,808 |   441,735 |   442,777 |
+  | Vienne                |  2,719 |   342,785 |   338,114 |   333,621 |
+  | Vosges                |  2,279 |   413,707 |   421,412 |   429,812 |
+  | Yonne                 |  2,880 |   355,364 |   332,656 |   315,199 |
+  +-----------------------+--------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+  |           Total       |207,076 |38,218,903 |38,517,975 |39,252,245 |
+  +-----------------------+--------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+
+The French census uses the commune as the basis of its returns, and
+employs the following classifications in respect to communal population:
+(1) Total communal population. (2) _Population comptee a part_, which
+includes soldiers and sailors, inmates of prisons, asylums, schools,
+members of religious communities, and workmen temporarily engaged in
+public works. (3) Total _municipal_ population, i.e. communal population
+minus the _population comptee a part_. (4) _Population municipale
+agglomeree au chef-lieu de la commune_, which embraces the urban
+population as opposed to the rural population. The following tables,
+showing the growth of the largest towns in France, are drawn up on the
+basis of the fourth classification, which is used throughout this work
+in the articles on French towns, except where otherwise stated.
+
+  In 1906 there were in France twelve towns with a population of over
+  100,000 inhabitants. Their growth or decrease from 1886 to 1906 is
+  shown in the following table:
+
+    +------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    |            |   1886.  |   1896.  |   1906.  |
+    +------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    | Paris      |2,294,108 |2,481,223 |2,711,931 |
+    | Lyons      |  344,124 |  398,867 |  430,186 |
+    | Marseilles |  249,938 |  332,515 |  421,116 |
+    | Bordeaux   |  225,281 |  239,806 |  237,707 |
+    | Lille      |  143,135 |  160,723 |  196,624 |
+    | St Etienne |  103,229 |  120,300 |  130,940 |
+    | Le Havre   |  109,199 |  117,009 |  129,403 |
+    | Toulouse   |  123,040 |  124,187 |  125,856 |
+    | Roubaix    |   89,781 |  113,899 |  119,955 |
+    | Nantes     |  110,638 |  107,137 |  118,244 |
+    | Rouen      |  100,043 |  106,825 |  111,402 |
+    | Reims      |   91,130 |   99,001 |  102,800 |
+    +------------+----------+----------+----------+
+
+  In the same years the following eighteen towns, now numbering from
+  50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, each had:
+
+    +------------+--------+--------+--------+
+    |            |  1886. |  1896. |  1906. |
+    +------------+--------+--------+--------+
+    | Nice       | 61,464 | 69,140 | 99,556 |
+    | Nancy      | 69,463 | 83,668 | 98,302 |
+    | Toulon     | 53,941 | 70,843 | 87,997 |
+    | Amiens     | 68,177 | 74,808 | 78,407 |
+    | Limoges    | 56,699 | 64,718 | 75,906 |
+    | Angers     | 65,152 | 69,484 | 73,585 |
+    | Brest      | 59,352 | 64,144 | 71,163 |
+    | Nimes      | 62,198 | 66,905 | 70,708 |
+    | Montpellier| 45,930 | 62,717 | 65,983 |
+    | Dijon      | 50,684 | 58,355 | 65,516 |
+    | Tourcoing  | 41,183 | 55,705 | 62,694 |
+    | Rennes     | 52,614 | 57,249 | 62,024 |
+    | Tours      | 51,467 | 56,706 | 61,507 |
+    | Calais     | 52,839 | 50,818 | 59,623 |
+    | Grenoble   | 43,260 | 50,084 | 58,641 |
+    | Orleans    | 51,208 | 56,915 | 57,544 |
+    | Le Mans    | 46,991 | 49,665 | 54,907 |
+    | Troyes     | 44,864 | 50,676 | 51,228 |
+    +------------+--------+--------+--------+
+
+  Of the population in 1901, 18,916,889 were males and 19,533,899
+  females, an excess of females over males of 617,010, i.e. 1.6% or
+  about 508 females to every 492 males. In 1881 the proportion was 501
+  females to every 499 males, since when the disparity has been slightly
+  more marked at every census. Below is a list of the departments in
+  which the number of women to every thousand men was (1) greatest and
+  (2) least.
+
+              (1)          |           (2)
+                           |
+    Creuse           1131  |  Belfort            886
+    Cotes-du-Nord    1117  |  Basses-Alpes       893
+    Seine            1103  |  Var                894
+    Calvados         1100  |  Meuse              905
+    Cantal           1098  |  Hautes-Alpes       908
+    Seine-Inferieure 1084  |  Meurthe-et-Moselle 918
+    Basses-Pyrenees  1080  |  Haute-Savoie       947
+
+  Departments from which the adult males emigrate regularly either to
+  sea or to seek employment in towns tend to fall under the first head,
+  those in which large bodies of troops are stationed under the second.
+
+  The annual number of emigrants from France is small. The Basques of
+  Basses-Pyrenees go in considerable numbers to the Argentine Republic,
+  the inhabitants of Basses Alpes to Mexico and the United States, and
+  there are important French colonies in Algeria and Tunisia.
+
+  The following table shows the distribution of the active population of
+  France according to their occupations in 1901.
+
+    +--------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+    |        Occupation        |   Males.  |  Females. |   Total.  |
+    +--------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+    | Forestry and agriculture | 5,517,617 | 2,658,952 | 8,176,569 |
+    | Manufacturing industries | 3,695,213 | 2,124,642 | 5,819,855 |
+    | Trade                    | 1,132,621 |   689,999 | 1,822,620 |
+    | Domestic service         |   223,861 |   791,176 | 1,015,037 |
+    | Transport                |   617,849 |   212,794 |   830,643 |
+    | Public service           | 1,157,835 |   139,734 | 1,297,569 |
+    | Liberal professions      |   226,561 |   173,278 |   399,839 |
+    | Mining, quarries         |   261,320 |     5,031 |   266,351 |
+    | Fishing                  |    63,372 |     4,400 |    67,772 |
+    | Unclassed                |    14,316 |     4,504 |    18,820 |
+    +--------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+    |       Grand Total        |12,910,565 | 6,804,510 |19,715,075 |
+    +--------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
+
+
+_Religion._
+
+Great alterations were made with regard to religious matters in France
+by a law of December 1905, supplemented by a law of January 1907 (see
+below, _Law and Institutions_). Before that time three religions
+(_cultes_) were recognized and supported by the state--the Roman
+Catholic, the Protestant (subdivided into the Reformed and Lutheran) and
+the Hebrew. In Algeria the Mahommedan religion received similar
+recognition. By the law of 1905 all the churches ceased to be recognized
+or supported by the state and became entirely separated therefrom, while
+the adherents of all creeds were permitted to form associations for
+public worship (_associations cultuelles_), upon which the expenses of
+maintenance were from that time to devolve. The state, the departments,
+and the communes were thus relieved from the payment of salaries and
+grants to religious bodies, an item of expenditure which amounted in the
+last year of the old system to L1,101,000 paid by the state and L302,200
+contributed by the departments and communes. Before these alterations
+the relations between the state and the Roman Catholic communion, by far
+the largest and most important in France, were chiefly regulated by the
+provisions of the Concordat of 1801, concluded between the first consul,
+Bonaparte, and Pope Pius VII. and by other measures passed in 1802.
+
+  France is divided into provinces and dioceses as follows:
+
+   Archbishoprics.              Bishoprics.
+
+    PARIS       Chartres, Meaux, Orleans, Blois, Versailles.
+    AIX         Marseilles, Frejus, Digne, Gap, Nice, Ajaccio.
+    ALBI        Rodez, Cahors, Mende, Perpignan.
+    AUCH        Aire, Tarbes, Bayonne.
+    AVIGNON     Nimes, Valence, Viviers, Montpellier.
+    BESANCON    Verdun, Bellay, St Die, Nancy.
+    BORDEAUX    Agen, Angouleme, Poitiers, Perigueux, La Rochelle, Lucon.
+    BOURGES     Clermont, Limoges, Le Puy, Tulle, St Flour.
+    CAMBRAI     Arras.
+    CHAMBERY    Annecy, Tarentaise, St Jean-de-Maurienne.
+    LYONS       Autun, Langres, Dijon, St Claude, Grenoble.
+    REIMS       Soissons, Chalons-sur-Marne, Beauvais, Amiens.
+    RENNES      Quimper, Vannes, St Brieuc.
+    ROUEN       Bayeux, Evreux, Sees, Coutances.
+    SENS        Troyes, Nevers, Moulins.
+    TOULOUSE    Montauban, Pamiers, Carcassonne.
+    TOURS       Le Mans, Angers, Nantes, Laval.
+
+  The dioceses are divided into parishes each under a parish priest
+  known as a _cure_ or _desservant_ (incumbent). The bishops and
+  archbishops, formerly nominated by the government and canonically
+  confirmed by the pope, are now chosen by the latter. The appointment
+  of cures rested with the bishops and had to be confirmed by the
+  government, but this confirmation is now dispensed with. The
+  archbishops used to receive an annual salary of L600 each and the
+  bishops L400.
+
+  The archbishops and bishops are assisted by vicars-general (at
+  salaries previously ranging from L100 to L180), and to each cathedral
+  is attached a chapter of canons. A cure, in addition to his regular
+  salary, received fees for baptisms, marriages, funerals and special
+  masses, and had the benefit of a free house called a _presbytere_. The
+  total personnel of state-paid Roman Catholic clergy amounted in 1903
+  to 36,169. The Roman priests are drawn from the seminaries,
+  established by the church for the education of young men intending to
+  join its ranks, and divided into lower and higher seminaries (_grands
+  et petits seminaires_), the latter giving the same class of
+  instruction as the _lycees_.
+
+  The number of Protestants may be estimated at about 600,000 and the
+  Jews at about 70,000. The greatest number of Jews is to be found at
+  Paris, Lyons and Bordeaux, while the departments of the centre and of
+  the south along the range of the Cevennes, where Calvinism flourishes,
+  are the principal Protestant localities, Nimes being the most
+  important centre. Considerable sprinklings of Protestants are also to
+  be found in the two Charentes, in Dauphine, in Paris and in
+  Franche-Comte. The two Protestant bodies used to cost the state about
+  L60,000 a year and the Jewish Church about L6000.
+
+  Both Protestant churches have a parochial organization and a
+  presbyterian form of church government. In the Reformed Church (far
+  the more numerous of the two bodies) each parish has a council of
+  presbyters, consisting of the pastor and lay-members elected by the
+  congregation. Several parishes form a consistorial circumscription,
+  which has a consistorial council consisting of the council of
+  presbyters of the chief town of the circumscription, the pastor and
+  one delegate of the council of presbyters from each parish and other
+  elected members. There are 103 circumscriptions (including Algeria),
+  which are grouped into 21 provincial synods composed of a pastor and
+  lay delegate from each consistory. All the more important questions of
+  church discipline and all decisions regulating the doctrine and
+  practice of the church are dealt with by the synods. At the head of
+  the whole organization is a General Synod, sitting at Paris. The
+  organization of the Lutheran Church (_Eglise de la confession
+  d'Augsburg_) is broadly similar. Its consistories are grouped into two
+  special synods, one at Paris and one at Montbeliard (for the
+  department of Doubs and Haute-Saone and the territory of Belfort,
+  where the churches of this denomination are principally situated). It
+  also has a general synod--composed of 2 inspectors,[5] 5 pastors
+  elected by the synod of Paris, and 6 by that of Montbeliard, 22 laymen
+  and a delegate of the theological faculty at Paris--which holds
+  periodical meetings and is represented in its relations with the
+  government by a permanent executive commission.
+
+  The Jewish parishes, called synagogues, are grouped into departmental
+  consistories (Paris, Bordeaux, Nancy, Marseilles, Bayonne, Lille,
+  Vesoul, Besancon and three in Algeria). Each synagogue is served by a
+  rabbi assisted by an officiating minister, and in each consistory is a
+  grand rabbi. At Paris is the central consistory, controlled by the
+  government and presided over by the supreme grand rabbi.
+
+
+_Agriculture._
+
+Of the population of France some 17,000,000 depend upon agriculture for
+their livelihood, though only about 6,500,000 are engaged in work on the
+land. The cultivable land of the country occupies some 195,000 sq. m. or
+about 94% of the total area; of this 171,000 sq. m. are cultivated.
+There are besides 12,300 sq. m. of uncultivable area covered by lakes,
+rivers, towns, &c. Only the roughest estimate is possible as to the
+sizes of holdings, but in general terms it may be said that about 3
+million persons are proprietors of holdings under 25 acres in extent
+amounting to between 15 and 20% of the cultivated area, the rest being
+owned by some 750,000 proprietors, of whom 150,000 possess half the area
+in holdings averaging 400 acres in extent. About 80% of holdings
+(amounting to about 60% of the cultivated area) are cultivated by the
+proprietor; of the rest approximately 13% are let on lease and 7% are
+worked on the system known as _metayage_ (q.v.).
+
+The capital value of land, which greatly decreased during the last
+twenty years of the 19th century, is estimated at L3,120,000,000, and
+that of stock, buildings, implements, &c., at L340,000,000. The value
+per acre of land, which exceeds L48 in the departments of Seine, Rhone
+and those fringing the north-west coast from Nord to Manche inclusive,
+is on the average about L29, though it drops to L16 and less in
+Morbihan, Landes, Basses-Pyrenees, and parts of the Alps and the central
+plateau.
+
+  While wheat and wine constitute the staples of French agriculture, its
+  distinguishing characteristic is the variety of its products.
+  _Cereals_ occupy about one-third of the cultivated area. For the
+  production of _wheat_, in respect of which France is self-supporting,
+  French Flanders, the Seine basin, notably the Beauce and the Brie, and
+  the regions bordering on the lower course of the Loire and the upper
+  course of the Garonne, are the chief areas. Rye, on the other hand,
+  one of the least valuable of the cereals, is grown chiefly in the poor
+  agricultural territories of the central plateau and western Brittany.
+  Buckwheat is cultivated mainly in Brittany. Oats and barley are
+  generally cultivated, the former more especially in the Parisian
+  region, the latter in Mayenne and one or two of the neighbouring
+  departments. Meslin, a mixture of wheat and rye, is produced in the
+  great majority of French departments, but to a marked extent in the
+  basin of the Sarthe. Maize covers considerable areas in Landes,
+  Basses-Pyrenees and other south-western departments.
+
+    +----------+---------------------+-----------------------+---------------------+
+    |          |   Average Acreage   |  Average Production   |    Average Yield    |
+    |          |(Thousands of Acres).|(Thousands of Bushels).| per Acre (Bushels). |
+    |          +----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------+
+    |          |1886-1895.|1896-1905.| 1886-1895.| 1896-1905.|1886-1895.|1896-1905.|
+    +----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------+
+    | Wheat    |  17,004  |  16,580  |  294,564  |  317,707  |   17.3   |   19.1   |
+    | Meslin   |     720  |     491  |   12,193  |    8,826  |   16.9   |   17.0   |
+    | Rye      |   3,888  |   3,439  |   64,651  |   56,612  |   16.6   |   16.4   |
+    | Barley   |   2,303  |   1,887  |   47,197  |   41,066  |   20.4   |   21.0   |
+    | Oats     |   9,507  |   9,601  |  240,082  |  253,799  |   25.2   |   26.4   |
+    | Buckwheat|   1,484  |   1,392  |   26,345  |   23,136  |   17.7   |   16.6   |
+    | Maize    |   1,391  |   1,330  |   25,723  |   24,459  |   18.4   |   18.4   |
+    +----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------+
+
+  _Forage Crops._--The mangold-wurzel, occupying four times the acreage
+  of swedes and turnips, is by far the chief root-crop in France. It is
+  grown largely in the departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais and in
+  those of the Seine basin, the southern limit of its cultivation being
+  roughly a line drawn from Bordeaux to Lyons. The average area occupied
+  by it in the years from 1896 to 1905 was 1,043,000 acres, the total
+  average production being 262,364,000 cwt. and the average production
+  per acre 10-1/2 tons. Clover, lucerne and sainfoin make up the bulk of
+  artificial pasturage, while vetches, crimson clover and cabbage are
+  the other chief forage crops.
+
+  _Vegetables.--Potatoes_ are not a special product of any region,
+  though grown in great quantities in the Bresse and the Vosges. Early
+  potatoes and other vegetables (_primeurs_) are largely cultivated in
+  the districts bordering the English Channel. Market-gardening is an
+  important industry in the regions round Paris, Amiens and Angers, as
+  it is round Toulouse, Montauban, Avignon and in southern France
+  generally. The market-gardeners of Paris and its vicinity have a high
+  reputation for skill in the forcing of early vegetables under glass.
+
+    _Potatoes: Decennial Averages._
+
+    +-----------+-----------+------------+-------------+
+    |           |           |            |Average Yield|
+    |           |  Acreage. | Total Yield|  per Acre   |
+    |           |           |  (Tons).   |   (Tons).   |
+    +-----------+-----------+------------+-------------+
+    | 1886-1895 | 3,690,000 | 11,150,000 |    3.02     |
+    | 1896-1905 | 3,735,000 | 11,594,000 |    3.1      |
+    +-----------+-----------+------------+-------------+
+
+  _Industrial Plants._[6]--The manufacture of sugar from beetroot, owing
+  to the increased use of sugar, became highly important during the
+  latter half of the 19th century, the industry both of cultivation and
+  manufacture being concentrated in the northern departments of Aisne,
+  Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Somme and Oise, the first named supplying nearly
+  a quarter of the whole amount produced in France.
+
+  _Flax and hemp_ showed a decreasing acreage from 1881 onwards. Flax is
+  cultivated chiefly in the northern departments of Nord,
+  Seine-Inferieure, Pas-de-Calais, Cotes-du-Nord, hemp in Sarthe,
+  Morbihan and Maine-et-Loire.
+
+  _Colza_, grown chiefly in the lower basin of the Seine
+  (Seine-Inferieure and Eure), is the most important of the
+  oil-producing plants, all of which show a diminishing acreage. The
+  three principal regions for the production of tobacco are the basin of
+  the Garonne (Lot-et-Garonne, Dordogne, Lot and Gironde), the basin of
+  the Isere (Isere and Savoie) and the department of Pas-de-Calais. The
+  state controls its cultivation, which is allowed only in a limited
+  number of departments. Hops cover only about 7000 acres, being almost
+  confined to the departments of Nord, Cote d'Or and Meurthe-et-Moselle.
+
+    _Decennial Averages 1896-1905._
+
+    +------------+----------+--------------+---------------+
+    |            |          |              | Average Yield |
+    |            | Acreage. |  Production  |   per Acre    |
+    |            |          |    (Tons).   |    (Tons).    |
+    +------------+----------+--------------+---------------+
+    | Sugar beet | 672,000  | 6,868,000    |     10.2      |
+    | Hemp       |  64,856  |    18,451[7] |       .28[7]  |
+    | Flax       |  57,893  |    17,857[7] |       .30[7]  |
+    | Colza      | 102,454  |    47,697    |       .46     |
+    | Tobacco    |  41,564  |    22,453    |       .54     |
+    +------------+----------+--------------+---------------+
+
+  _Vineyards_ (see WINE).--The vine grows generally in France, except in
+  the extreme north and in Normandy and Brittany. The great
+  wine-producing regions are:
+
+  1. The country fringing the Mediterranean coast and including Herault
+  (240,822,000 gals. in 1905), and Aude (117,483,000 gals. in 1905), the
+  most productive departments in France in this respect.
+
+  2. The department of Gironde (95,559,000 gals. in 1905), whence come
+  Medoc and the other wines for which Bordeaux is the market.
+
+  3. The lower valley of the Loire, including Touraine and Anjou, and
+  the district of Saumur.
+
+  4. The valley of the Rhone.
+
+  5. The Burgundian region, including Cote d'Or and the valley of the
+  Saone (Beaujolais, Maconnais).
+
+  6. The Champagne.
+
+  7. The Charente region, the grapes of which furnish brandy, as do
+  those of Armagnac (department of Gers).
+
+  The decennial averages for the years 1896-1905 were as follows:
+
+    Acreage of productive vines                 4,056,725
+    Total production in gallons             1,072,622,000
+    Average production in gallons per acre            260
+
+  _Fruit._--Fruit-growing is general all over France, which, apart from
+  bananas and pine-apples, produces in the open air all the ordinary
+  species of fruit which its inhabitants consume. Some of these may be
+  specially mentioned. The cider apple, which ranks first in importance,
+  is produced in those districts where cider is the habitual drink, that
+  is to say, chiefly in the region north-west of a line drawn from Paris
+  to the mouth of the Loire. The average annual production of cider
+  during the years 1896 to 1905 was 304,884,000 gallons. Dessert apples
+  and pears are grown there and in the country on both banks of the
+  lower Loire, the valley of which abounds in orchards wherein many
+  varieties of fruit flourish and in nursery-gardens. The hilly regions
+  of Limousin, Perigord and the Cevennes are the home of the chestnut,
+  which in some places is still a staple food; walnuts grow on the lower
+  levels of the central plateau and in lower Dauphine and Provence, figs
+  and almonds in Provence, oranges and citrons on the Mediterranean
+  coast, apricots in central France, the olive in Provence and the lower
+  valleys of the Rhone and Durance. Truffles are found under the oaks of
+  Perigord, Comtat-Venaissin and lower Dauphine. The mulberry grows in
+  the valleys of the Rhone and its tributaries, the Isere, the Drome,
+  the Ardeche, the Gard and the Durance, and also along the coast of
+  the Mediterranean. Silk-worm rearing, which is encouraged by state
+  grants, is carried on in the valleys mentioned and on the
+  Mediterranean coast east of Marseilles. The numbers of growers
+  decreased from 139,000 in 1891 to 124,000 in 1905. The decrease in the
+  annual average production of cocoons is shown in the preceding table.
+
+    +-----------------------------+------------+------------+------------+
+    |        Silk Cocoons.        | 1891-1895. | 1896-1900. | 1901-1905. |
+    +-----------------------------+------------+------------+------- ----+
+    | Annual average production   |            |            |            |
+    |   over quinquennial periods | 19,587,000 | 17,696,000 | 16,566,000 |
+    |   in lb.                    |            |            |            |
+    +-----------------------------+------------+------------+------------+
+
+  Snails are reared in some parts of the country as an article of food,
+  those of Burgundy being specially esteemed.
+
+  _Stock-raising._--From this point of view the soil of France may be
+  divided into four categories:
+
+  1. The rich pastoral regions where dairy-farming and the fattening of
+  cattle are carried on with most success, viz. (a) Normandy, Perche,
+  Cotentin and maritime Flanders, where horses are bred in great
+  numbers; (b) the strip of coast between the Gironde and the mouth of
+  the Loire; (c) the Morvan including the Nivernais and the Charolais,
+  from which the famous Charolais breed of oxen takes its name; (d) the
+  central region of the central plateau including the districts of
+  Cantal and Aubrac, the home of the famous beef-breeds of Salers and
+  Aubrac.[8] The famous _pre-sale_ sheep are also reared in the Vendee
+  and Cotentin.
+
+  2. The poorer grazing lands on the upper levels of the Alps, Pyrenees,
+  Jura and Vosges, the Landes, the more outlying regions of the central
+  plateau, southern Brittany, Sologne, Berry, Champagne-Pouilleuse, the
+  Crau and the Camargue, these districts being given over for the most
+  part to sheep-raising.
+
+  3. The plain of Toulouse, which with the rest of south-western France
+  produces good draught oxen, the Parisian basin, the plains of the
+  north to the east of the maritime region, the lower valley of the
+  Rhone and the Bresse, where there is little or no natural pasturage,
+  and forage is grown from seed.
+
+  4. West, west-central and eastern France outside these areas, where
+  meadows are predominant and both dairying and fattening are general.
+  Included therein are the dairying and horse-raising district of
+  northern Brittany and the dairying regions of Jura and Savoy.
+
+  In the industrial regions of northern France cattle are stall-fed with
+  the waste products of the beet-sugar factories, oil-works and
+  distilleries. _Swine_, bred all over France, are more numerous in
+  Brittany, Anjou (whence comes the well-known breed of Craon), Poitou,
+  Burgundy, the west and north of the central plateau and Bearn. Upper
+  Poitou and the zone of south-western France to the north of the
+  Pyrenees are the chief regions for the breeding of mules. Asses are
+  reared in Bearn, Corsica, Upper Poitou, the Limousin, Berry and other
+  central regions. Goats are kept in the mountainous regions (Auvergne,
+  Provence, Corsica). The best poultry come from the Bresse, the
+  district of Houdan (Seine-et-Oise), the district of Le Mans and
+  Crevecoeur (Calvados).
+
+  The _pres naturels_ (meadows) and _herbages_ (unmown pastures) of
+  France, i.e. the grass-land of superior quality as distinguished from
+  _paturages et pacages_, which signifies pasture of poorer quality,
+  increased in area between 1895 and 1905 as is shown below:
+
+                   1895 (Acres).  1905 (Acres).
+    Pres naturels   10,852,000     11,715,000
+    Herbages         2,822,000      3,022,000
+
+  The following table shows the number of live stock in the country at
+  intervals of ten years since 1885.
+
+    +-------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+-----------+---------+---------+
+    |                   Cattle.                 |            |           |           |         |         |
+    +------+-----------+-----------+------------+ Sheep and  |   Pigs.   |  Horses.  |  Mules. |  Asses. |
+    |      |   Cows.   |   Other   |   Total.   |   Lambs.   |           |           |         |         |
+    |      |           |   Kinds.  |            |            |           |           |         |         |
+    +------+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-----------+---------+---------+
+    | 1885 | 6,414,487 | 6,690,483 | 13,104,970 | 22,616,547 | 5,881,088 | 2,911,392 | 238,620 | 387,227 |
+    | 1895 | 6,359,795 | 6,874,033 | 13,233,828 | 21,163,767 | 6,306,019 | 2,812,447 | 211,479 | 357,778 |
+    | 1905 | 7,515,564 | 6,799,988 | 14,315,552 | 17,783,209 | 7,558,779 | 3,169,224 | 198,865 | 365,181 |
+    +------+-----------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-----------+---------+---------+
+
+  _Agricultural Organization._--In France the interests of agriculture
+  are entrusted to a special ministry, comprising the following
+  divisions: (1) forests, (2) breeding-studs (_haras_); (3) agriculture,
+  a department which supervises agricultural instruction and the
+  distribution of grants and premiums; (4) agricultural improvements,
+  draining, irrigation, &c.; (5) an intelligence department which
+  prepares statistics, issues information as to prices and markets, &c.
+  The minister is assisted by a superior council of agriculture, the
+  members of which, numbering a hundred, include senators, deputies and
+  prominent agriculturists. The ministry employs inspectors, whose duty
+  it is to visit the different parts of the country and to report on
+  their respective position and wants. The reports which they furnish
+  help to determine the distribution of the moneys dispensed by the
+  state in the form of subventions to agricultural societies and in
+  many other ways. The chief type of agricultural society is the _comice
+  agricole_, an association for the discussion of agricultural problems
+  and the organization of provincial shows. There are besides several
+  thousands of local syndicates, engaged in the purchase of materials
+  and sale of produce on the most advantageous terms for their members,
+  credit banks and mutual insurance societies (see CO-OPERATION). Three
+  societies demand special mention: the _Union centrale des agriculteurs
+  de France_, to which the above syndicates are affiliated; the _Societe
+  nationale d'agriculture_, whose mission is to further agricultural
+  progress and to supply the government with information on everything
+  appertaining thereto and the _Societe des agriculteurs de France_.
+
+  Among a variety of premiums awarded by the state are those for the
+  best cultivated estates and for irrigation works, and to the owners of
+  the best stallions and brood-mares. _Haras_ or stallion stables
+  containing in all over 3000 horses are established in twenty-two
+  central towns, and annually send stallions, which are at the disposal
+  of private individuals in return for a small fee, to various stations
+  throughout the country. Other institutions belonging to the state are
+  the national sheep-fold of Rambouillet (Seine-et-Oise) and the
+  cow-house of Vieux-Pin (Orne) for the breeding of Durham cows. Four
+  different grades of institution for agricultural instruction are under
+  state direction: (1) farm-schools and schools of apprenticeship in
+  dairying, &c., to which the age of admission is from 14 to 16 years;
+  (2) practical schools, to which boys of from 13 to 18 years of age are
+  admitted. These number forty-eight, and are intended for sons of
+  farmers of good position; (3) national schools, which are established
+  at Grignon (Seine-et-Oise), Rennes and Montpellier, candidates for
+  which must be 17 years of age; (4) the National Agronomic Institute at
+  Paris, which is intended for the training of estate agents,
+  professors, &c. There are also departmental chairs of agriculture, the
+  holders of which give instruction in training-colleges and elsewhere
+  and advise farmers.
+
+  _Forests._--In relation to its total extent, France presents but a
+  very limited area of forest land, amounting to only 36,700 sq. m. or
+  about 18% of the entire surface of the country. Included under the
+  denomination of "forest" are lands--_surfaces boisees_--which are
+  _bush_ rather than _forest_. The most wooded parts of France are the
+  mountains and plateaus of the east and of the north-east, comprising
+  the pine-forests of the Vosges and Jura (including the beautiful
+  Forest of Chaux), the Forest of Haye, the Forest of Ardennes, the
+  Forest of Argonne, &c.; the Landes, where replanting with maritime
+  pines has transformed large areas of marsh into forest; and the
+  departments of Var and Ariege. The Central Mountains and the Morvan
+  also have considerable belts of wood. In the Parisian region there are
+  the Forests of Fontainebleau (66 sq. m.), of Compiegne (56 sq. m.), of
+  Rambouillet, of Villers-Cotterets, &c. The Forest of Orleans, the
+  largest in France, covers about 145 sq. m. The Alps and Pyrenees are
+  in large part deforested, but reafforestation with a view to
+  minimizing the effects of avalanches and sudden floods is continually
+  in progress.
+
+  Of the forests of the country approximately one-third belongs to the
+  state, communes and public institutions. The rest belongs to private
+  owners who are, however, subject to certain restrictions. The
+  Department of Waters[9] and Forests (Administration des Eaux et
+  Forets) forms a branch of the ministry of agriculture. It is
+  administered by a director-general, who has his headquarters at Paris,
+  assisted by three administrators who are charged with the working of
+  the forests, questions of rights and law, finance and plantation
+  works. The establishment consists of 32 conservators, each at the head
+  of a district comprising one or more departments, 200 inspectors, 215
+  sub-inspectors and about 300 _gardes generaux_. These officials form
+  the higher grade of the service (_agents_). There are besides several
+  thousand forest-rangers and other employes (_preposes_). The
+  department is supplied with officials of the higher class from the
+  National School of Waters and Forests at Nancy, founded in 1824.
+
+
+_Industries._
+
+In France, as in other countries, the development of machinery, whether
+run by steam, water-power or other motive forces, has played a great
+part in the promotion of industry; the increase in the amount of steam
+horse-power employed in industrial establishments is, to a certain
+degree, an index to the activity of the country as regards manufactures.
+
+The appended table shows the progress made since 1850 with regard to
+steam power. Railway and marine locomotives are not included.
+
+  +------+----------------+---------------+--------------+
+  |Years.|    No. of      |     No. of    |     Total    |
+  |      | Establishments.| Steam-Engines.| Horse-Power. |
+  +------+----------------+---------------+--------------+
+  | 1852 |      6,543     |      6,080    |     76,000   |
+  | 1861 |     14,153     |     15,805    |    191,000   |
+  | 1871 |     22,192     |     26,146    |    316,000   |
+  | 1881 |     35,712     |     44,010    |    576,000   |
+  | 1891 |     46,828     |     58,967    |    916,000   |
+  | 1901 |     58,151     |     75,866    |  1,907,730   |
+  | 1905 |     61,112     |     79,203    |  2,232,263   |
+  +------+----------------+---------------+--------------+
+
+With the exception of Loire, Bouches-du-Rhone and Rhone, the chief
+industrial departments of France are to be found in the north and
+north-east of the country. In 1901 and 1896 those in which the working
+inhabitants of both sexes were engaged in industry as opposed to
+agriculture to the extent of 50% (approximately) or over, numbered
+eleven, viz.:--
+
+  +-----------------------+--------------+------------+--------------------+
+  |                       |              |            | Percentage engaged |
+  |                       | Total Working| Industrial |    in Industry.    |
+  |     Departments.      |  Population  | Population +---------+----------+
+  |                       |    (1901).   |   (1901).  |  1901.  |   1896.  |
+  +-----------------------+--------------+------------+---------+----------+
+  | Nord                  |    848,306   |   544,177  |  64.15  |   63.45  |
+  | Territoire de Belfort |     40,703   |    24,470  |  60.10  |   58.77  |
+  | Loire                 |    292,808   |   167,693  |  57.27  |   54.73  |
+  | Seine                 |  2,071,344   | 1,143,809  |  55.22  |   53.54  |
+  | Bouches-du-Rhone      |    341,823   |   187,801  |  54.94  |   51.00  |
+  | Rhone                 |    449,121   |   243,571  |  54.23  |   54.78  |
+  | Meurthe-et-Moselle    |    215,501   |   115,214  |  53.46  |   50.19  |
+  | Ardennes              |    139,270   |    73,250  |  52.60  |   52.42  |
+  | Vosges                |    208,142   |   107,547  |  51.67  |   51.05  |
+  | Pas-de-Calais         |    404,153   |   200,402  |  49.58  |   46.55  |
+  | Seine-Inferieure      |    428,591   |   206,612  |  48.21  |   49.85  |
+  +-----------------------+--------------+------------+---------+----------+
+
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |                 |                            |                     | Average Production|
+  |     Groups.     |          Basins.           |     Departments.    |   (Thousands of   |
+  |                 |                            |                     |    Metric Tons)   |
+  |                 |                            |                     |     1901-1905.    |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  | Nord and      / | Valenciennes               | Nord, Pas-de-Calais | \     20,965      |
+  | Pas-de-Calais \ | Le Boulonnais              | Pas-de-Calais       | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |               / | St Etienne and Rive-de-Gier| Loire               | \                 |
+  | Loire        <  | Communay                   | Isere               |  >     3,601      |
+  |               | | Ste Foy l'Argentiere       | Rhone               | |                 |
+  |               \ | Roannais                   | Loire               | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |               / | Alais                      | Gard, Ardeche       | \                 |
+  | Gard         <  | Aubenas                    | Ardeche             |  >     1,954      |
+  |               \ | Le Vigan                   | Gard                | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |               / | Decize                     | Nievre              | \                 |
+  | Bourgogne    <  | La Chapelle-sous-Dun       | Saone-et-Loire      |  >     1,881      |
+  | and Nivernais | | Bert                       | Allier              | |                 |
+  |               \ | Sincey                     | Cote-d'Or           | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |               / | Aubin                      | Aveyron             | \                 |
+  | Tarn and     <  | Carmaux and Albi           | Tarn                |  >     1,770      |
+  | Aveyron       | | Rodez                      | Aveyron             | |                 |
+  |               \ | St Perdoux                 | Lot                 | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+  |               / | Commentry and Doyet        | Allier              | \                 |
+  | Bourbonnais  <  | St Eloi                    | Puy-de-Dome         |  >       994      |
+  |               | | L'Aumance                  | Allier              | |                 |
+  |               \ | La Queune                  | Allier              | /                 |
+  +-----------------+----------------------------+---------------------+-------------------+
+
+The department of Seine, comprising Paris and its suburbs, which has the
+largest manufacturing population, is largely occupied with the
+manufacture of dress, millinery and articles of luxury (perfumery, &c.),
+but it plays the leading part in almost every great branch of industry
+with the exception of spinning and weaving. The typically industrial
+region of France is the department of Nord, the seat of the woollen
+industry, but also prominently concerned in other textile industries, in
+metal working, and in a variety of other manufactures, fuel for which is
+supplied by its coal-fields. The following sketch of the manufacturing
+industry of France takes account chiefly of those of its branches which
+are capable in some degree of localization. Many of the great industries
+of the country, e.g. tanning, brick-making, the manufacture of garments,
+&c., are evenly distributed throughout it, and are to be found in or
+near all larger centres of population.
+
+  _Coal._--The principal mines of France are coal and iron mines. The
+  production of coal and lignite averaging 33,465,000 metric tons[10] in
+  the years 1901-1905 represents about 73% of the total consumption of
+  the country; the surplus is supplied from Great Britain, Belgium and
+  Germany. The preceding table shows the average output of the chief
+  coal-groups for the years 1901-1905 inclusive. The Flemish coal-basin,
+  employing over 100,000 hands, produces 60% of the coal mined in
+  France.
+
+  French lignite comes for the most part from the department of
+  Bouches-du-Rhone (near Fuveau).
+
+  The development of French coal and lignite mining in the 19th century,
+  together with records of prices, which rose considerably at the end of
+  the period, is set forth in the table below:
+
+    +-----------+----------------+---------------+
+    |           | Average Yearly | Average Price |
+    |   Years.  |   Production   |  per Ton at   |
+    |           | (Thousands of  |  Pit Mouth    |
+    |           | Metric Tons).  |  (Francs).    |
+    +-----------+----------------+---------------+
+    | 1821-1830 |      1,495     |     10.23     |
+    | 1831-1840 |      2,571     |      9.83     |
+    | 1841-1850 |      4,078.5   |      9.69     |
+    | 1851-1860 |      6,857     |     11.45     |
+    | 1861-1870 |     11,831     |     11.61     |
+    | 1871-1880 |     16,774     |     14.34     |
+    | 1881-1890 |     21,542     |     11.55     |
+    | 1891-1900 |     29,190     |     11.96     |
+    | 1901-1905 |     33,465     |     14.18     |
+    +-----------+----------------+---------------+
+
+  _Iron._--The iron-mines of France are more numerous than its
+  coal-mines, but they do not yield a sufficient quantity of ore for the
+  needs of the metallurgical industries of the country; as will be seen
+  in the table below the production of iron in France gradually
+  increased during the 19th century; on the other hand, a decline in
+  prices operated against a correspondingly marked increase in its
+  annual value.
+
+    +-----------+----------------+--------------+
+    |           | Average Annual |              |
+    |   Years.  |   Production   |  Price per   |
+    |           | (Thousands of  |  Metric Ton  |
+    |           |  Metric Tons). |   (Francs).  |
+    +-----------+----------------+--------------+
+    | 1841-1850 |      1247      |     6.76     |
+    | 1851-1860 |      2414.5    |     5.51     |
+    | 1861-1870 |      3035      |     4.87     |
+    | 1871-1880 |      2514      |     5.39     |
+    | 1881-1890 |      2934      |     3.99     |
+    | 1891-1900 |      4206      |     3.37     |
+    | 1901-1905 |      6072      |     3.72     |
+    +-----------+----------------+--------------+
+
+  The department of Meurthe-et-Moselle (basins of Nancy and
+  Longwy-Briey) furnished 84% of the total output during the
+  quinquennial period 1901-1905, may be reckoned as one of the principal
+  iron-producing regions of the world. The other chief producers were
+  Pyrenees-Orientales, Calvados, Haute-Marne (Vassy) and Saone-et-Loire
+  (Mazenay and Change).
+
+  _Other Ores._--The mining of zinc, the chief deposits of which are at
+  Malines (Gard), Les Bormettes (Var) and Planioles (Lot), and of lead,
+  produced especially at Chaliac (Ardeche), ranks next in importance to
+  that of iron. Iron-pyrites come almost entirely from Sain-Bel
+  (Rhone), manganese chiefly from Ariege and Saone-et-Loire, antimony
+  from the departments of Mayenne, Haute-Loire and Cantal. Copper and
+  mispickel are mined only in small quantities. The table below gives
+  the average production of zinc, argentiferous lead, iron-pyrites and
+  other ores during the quinquennial period 1901-1905.
+
+    +--------------+--------------+---------+
+    |              |  Production  |         |
+    |              |(Thousands of | Value L.|
+    |              | Metric Tons).|         |
+    +--------------+--------------+---------+
+    | Zinc         |     60.3     | 206,912 |
+    | Lead         |     18.5     | 100,424 |
+    | Iron-pyrites |    297.2     | 170,312 |
+    | Other ores   |     36.0     |  68,376 |
+    +--------------+--------------+---------+
+
+  _Salt, &c._--Rock-salt is worked chiefly in the department of
+  Meurthe-et-Moselle, which produces more than half the average annual
+  product of salt. For the years 1896-1905, this was 1,010,000 tons,
+  including both rock- and sea-salt. The salt-marshes of the
+  Mediterranean coast, especially the Etang de Berre and those of
+  Loire-Inferieure, are the principal sources of sea-salt. Sulphur is
+  obtained near Apt (Vaucluse) and in a few other localities of
+  south-eastern France; bituminous schist near Autun (Saone-et-Loire)
+  and Buxieres (Allier). The most extensive peat-workings are in the
+  valleys of the Somme; asphalt comes from Seyssel (Ain) and
+  Puy-de-Dome.
+
+  The mineral springs of France are numerous, of varied character and
+  much frequented. Leading resorts are: in the Pyrenean region,
+  Amelie-les-Bains, Bagneres-de-Luchon, Bagneres-de-Bigorre, Bareges,
+  Cauterets, Eaux-Bonnes, Eaux-Chaudes and Dax; in the Central Plateau,
+  Mont-Dore, La Bourboule, Bourbon l'Archambault, Vichy, Royat,
+  Chaudes-Aigues, Vais, Lamalon; in the Alps, Aix-les-Bains and Evian;
+  in the Vosges and Faucilles, Plombieres, Luxeuil, Contrexeville,
+  Vittel, Martigny and Bourbonne-les-Bains. Outside these main groups St
+  Amand-les-Eaux and Foyes-les-Eaux may be mentioned.
+
+  _Quarry-Products._--Quarries of various descriptions are numerous all
+  over France. Slate is obtained in large quantities from the
+  departments of Maine-et-Loire (Angers), Ardennes (Fumay) and Mayenne
+  (Renaze). Stone-quarrying is specially active in the departments round
+  Paris, Seine-et-Oise employing more persons in this occupation than
+  any other department. The environs of Creil (Oise) and Chateau-Landon
+  (Seine-et-Marne) are noted for their freestone (_pierre de taille_),
+  which is also abundant at Euville and Lerouville in Meuse; the
+  production of plaster is particularly important in the environs of
+  Paris, of kaolin of fine quality at Yrieix (Haute-Vienne), of
+  hydraulic lime in Ardeche (Le Teil), of lime phosphates in the
+  department of Somme, of marble in the departments of Haute-Garonne (St
+  Beat), Hautes-Pyrenees (Campan, Sarrancolin), Isere and Pas-de-Calais,
+  and of cement in Pas-de-Calais (vicinity of Boulogne) and Isere
+  (Grenoble). Paving-stone is supplied in large quantities by
+  Seine-et-Oise, and brick-clay is worked chiefly in Nord, Seine and
+  Pas-de-Calais. The products of the quarries of France for the five
+  years 1901-1905 averaged L9,311,000 per annum in value, of which
+  building material brought in over two-thirds.
+
+  _Metallurgy._--The average production and value of iron and steel
+  manufactured in France in the last four decades of the 19th century is
+  shown below:
+
+    +----------+----------------------+------------------------+
+    |          |      Cast Iron.      | Wrought Iron and Steel.|
+    |          +-----------+----------+-----------+------------+
+    |          |  Product  |          |  Product  |            |
+    |  Years.  |(Thousands |  Value   |(Thousands |   Value    |
+    |          | of Metric |(Thousands| of Metric | (Thousands |
+    |          |   Tons).  |   of L). |   Tons).  |   of L).   |
+    +----------+-----------+----------+-----------+------------+
+    |1861-1870 |   1191.5  |   5012   |    844    |    8,654   |
+    |1871-1880 |   1391    |   5783   |   1058.5  |   11,776   |
+    |1881-1890 |   1796    |   5119   |   1376    |   11,488   |
+    |1891-1900 |   2267    |   5762   |   1686    |   14,540   |
+    |   1903   |   2841    |   7334   |   1896    |   15,389   |
+    +----------+-----------+----------+-----------+------------+
+
+  Taking the number of hands engaged in the industry as a basis of
+  comparison, the most important departments as regards iron and steel
+  working in 1901 were:
+
+    +------------------+-----------------------------------------------+-------------------+---------------+
+    |                  |                                               |                   | Hands engaged |
+    |                  |                                               |                   | in Production |
+    |                  |                                               | Hands engaged in  | of Engineering|
+    |   Department.    |               Chief Centres.                  |   Production of   |  Material and |
+    |                  |                                               |Pig-Iron and Steel.|  Manufactured |
+    |                  |                                               |                   |     Goods.    |
+    +------------------+-----------------------------------------------+-------------------+---------------+
+    |Seine             |  . .      . .       . .        . .      . .   |         600       |    102,500    |
+    |Nord              |Lille, Anzin, Denain, Douai, Hautmont, Maubeuge|      14,000       |     45,000    |
+    |Loire             |Rive-de-Gier, Firminy, St Etienne, St Chamond  |       9,500       |     17,500    |
+    |Meurthe-et-Moselle|Pont-a-Mousson, Frouard, Longwy, Nancy         |      16,500       |      6,500    |
+    |Ardennes          |Charleville, Nouzon                            |         800       |     23,000    |
+    +------------------+-----------------------------------------------+-------------------+---------------+
+
+  Rhone (Lyons), Saone-et-Loire (Le Creusot, Chalon-sur-Saone) and
+  Loire-Inferieure (Basse-Indre, Indret, Coueron, Trignac) also play a
+  considerable part in this industry.
+
+  The chief centres for the manufacture of cutlery are Chattelerault
+  (Vienne), Langres (Haute-Marne) and Thiers (Puy-de-Dome); for that of
+  arms St Etienne, Tulle and Chattelerault; for that of watches and
+  clocks, Besancon (Doubs) and Montbeliard (Doubs); for that of optical
+  and mathematical instruments Paris, Morez (Jura) and St Claude (Jura);
+  for that of locksmiths' ware the region of Vimeu (Pas-de-Calais).
+
+  There are important zinc works at Auby and St Amand (Nord) and Viviez
+  (Aveyron) and Noyelles-Godault (Pas-de-Calais); there are lead works
+  at the latter place, and others of greater importance at Coueron
+  (Loire-Inferieure). Copper is smelted in Ardennes and Pas-de-Calais.
+  The production of these metals, which are by far the most important
+  after iron and steel, increased steadily during the period 1890-1905,
+  and reached its highest point in 1905, details for which year are
+  given below:
+
+    +----------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
+    |                            |    Zinc.   |   Lead.  |  Copper. |
+    +----------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
+    | Production (in metric tons)|     43,200 |   24,100 |    7,600 |
+    | Value                      | L1,083,000 | L386,000 | L526,000 |
+    +----------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
+
+  _Wool._--In 1901, 161,000 persons were engaged in the spinning and
+  other preparatory processes and in the weaving of wool. The woollen
+  industry is carried on most extensively in the department of Nord
+  (Roubaix, Tourcoing, Fourmies). Of second rank are Reims and Sedan in
+  the Champagne group; Elbeuf, Louviers and Rouen in Normandy; and
+  Mazamet (Tarn).
+
+  _Cotton._--In 1901, 166,000 persons were employed in the spinning and
+  weaving of cotton, French cotton goods being distinguished chiefly for
+  the originality of their design. The cotton industry is distributed in
+  three principal groups. The longest established is that of Normandy,
+  having its centres at Rouen, Havre, Evreux, Falaise and Flers. Another
+  group in the north of France has its centres at Lille, Tourcoing,
+  Roubaix, St Quentin and Amiens. That of the Vosges, which has
+  experienced a great extension since the loss of Alsace-Lorraine,
+  comprises Epinal, St Die, Remiremont and Belfort. Other groups of less
+  importance are situated in the Lyonnais (Roanne and Tarare) and
+  Mayenne (Laval and Mayenne).
+
+  _Silk._--The silk industry occupied 134,000 hands in 1901. The silk
+  fabrics of France hold the first place, particularly the more
+  expensive kinds. The industry is concentrated in the departments
+  bordering the river Rhone, the chief centres being Lyons (Rhone),
+  Voiron (Isere), St Etienne and St Chamond (Loire) (the two latter
+  being especially noted for their ribbons and trimmings) and Annonay
+  (Ardeche) and other places in the departments of Ain, Gard and Drome.
+
+  _Flax, Hemp, Jute, &c._--The preparation and spinning of these
+  materials and the manufacture of nets and rope, together with the
+  weaving of linen and other fabrics, give occupation to 112,000 persons
+  chiefly in the departments of Nord (Lille, Armentieres, Dunkirk),
+  Somme (Amiens) and Maine-et-Loire (Angers, Cholet).
+
+  _Hosiery_, the manufacture of which employs 55,000 hands, has its
+  chief centre in Aube (Troyes). The production of lace and guipure,
+  occupying 112,000 persons, is carried on mainly in the towns and
+  villages of Haute-Loire and in Vosges (Mirecourt), Rhone (Lyons),
+  Pas-de-Calais (Calais) and Paris.
+
+  _Leather._--Tanning and leather-dressing are widely spread industries,
+  and the same may be said of the manufacture of boots and shoes, though
+  these trades employ more hands in the department of Seine than
+  elsewhere; in the manufacture of gloves Isere (Grenoble) and Aveyron
+  (Millau) hold the first place amongst French departments.
+
+  _Sugar._--The manufacture of sugar is carried on in the departments of
+  the north, in which the cultivation of beetroot is general--Aisne,
+  Nord, Somme, Pas-de-Calais, Oise and Seine-et-Marne, the three first
+  being by far the largest producers. The increase in production in the
+  last twenty years of the 19th century is indicated in the following
+  table:--
+
+    +-----------+-------------------+-----------------+
+    |           |                   |  Average Annual |
+    |   Years.  | Annual Average of |  Production in  |
+    |           |   Men employed    |   Metric Tons.  |
+    +-----------+-------------------+-----------------+
+    | 1881-1891 |      43,108       |     415,786     |
+    | 1891-1901 |      42,841       |     696,038     |
+    | 1901-1906 |      43,061       |     820,553     |
+    +-----------+-------------------+-----------------+
+
+  _Alcohol._--The distillation of alcohol is in the hands of three
+  classes of persons. (1) Professional distillers (_bouilleurs et
+  distillateurs de profession_); (2) private distillers (_bouilleurs de
+  cru_) under state control; (3) small private distillers, not under
+  state control, but giving notice to the state that they distil. The
+  two last classes number over 400,000 (1903), but the quantity of
+  alcohol distilled by them is small. Beetroot, molasses and grain are
+  the chief sources of spirit. The department of Nord produces by far
+  the greatest quantity, its average annual output in the decade
+  1895-1904 being 13,117,000 gallons, or about 26% of the average
+  annual production of France during the same period (49,945,000
+  gallons). Aisne, Pas-de-Calais and Somme rank next to Nord.
+
+  _Glass_ is manufactured in the departments of Nord (Aniche, &c.),
+  Seine, Loire (Rive-de-Gier) and Meurthe-et-Moselle, Baccarat in the
+  latter department being famous for its table-glass. Limoges is the
+  chief centre for the manufacture of porcelain, and the artistic
+  products of the national porcelain factory of Sevres have a world-wide
+  reputation.
+
+  The manufacture of paper and cardboard is largely carried on in Isere
+  (Voiron), Seine-et-Oise (Essonnes), Vosges (Epinal) and of the finer
+  sorts of paper in Charente (Angouleme). That of oil, candles and soap
+  has its chief centre at Marseilles. Brewing and malting are localized
+  chiefly in Nord. There are well-known chemical works at Dombasle
+  (close to Nancy) and Chauny (Aisne) and in Rhone.
+
+  _Occupations._--The following table, which shows the approximate
+  numbers of persons engaged in the various manufacturing industries of
+  France, who number in all about 5,820,000, indicates their relative
+  importance from the point of view of employment:
+
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |              Occupation.             |   1901.  |   1866.  |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Baking                               |  163,500 |    ..    |
+    | Milling                              |   99,400 |    ..    |
+    | _Charcuterie_                        |   39,600 |    ..    |
+    | Other alimentary industries          |  161,500 |    ..    |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Alimentary industries: total       |  464,000 |  308,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Gas-works                            |   26,000 |    ..    |
+    | Tobacco factories                    |   16,000 |    ..    |
+    | Oil-works                            |   10,000 |    ..    |
+    | Other "chemical"[11] industries      |   58,000 |    ..    |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Chemical industries: total         |  110,000 |   49,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Rubber factories                     |    9,000 |\         |
+    | Paper factories                      |   61,000 |/  25,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Typographic and lithographic printing|   76,000 |    ..    |
+    | Other branches of book production    |   23,000 |    ..    |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Book production: total             |   99,000 |   38,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Spinning and weaving                 |  892,000 | 1,072,000|
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Clothing, millinery and making up of |1,484,000 |\         |
+    |   fabrics generally.                 |          | >761,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+ |        |
+    | Basket work, straw goods, feathers   |   39,000 |/         |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Leather and skin                     |  338,000 |  286,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Joinery                              |  153,000 |    ..    |
+    | Builder's carpentering               |   94,900 |    ..    |
+    | Wheelwright's work                   |   82,700 |    ..    |
+    | Cooperage                            |   46,600 |    ..    |
+    | Wooden shoes                         |   52,400 |    ..    |
+    | Other wood industries                |  280,400 |    ..    |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Wood industries: total             |  710,000 |  671,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Metallurgy and metal working         |  783,000 |  345,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Goldsmiths' and jewellers' work      |   35,000 |   55,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Stone-working                        |   56,000 |   12,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Construction, building, decorating   |  572,000 |  443,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    | Glass manufacture                    |   43,000 |    ..    |
+    | Tiles                                |   29,000 |    ..    |
+    | Porcelain and faience                |   27,000 |    ..    |
+    | Bricks                               |   17,000 |    ..    |
+    | Other kiln industries                |   45,000 |    ..    |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Kiln industries: total             |  161,000 |  110,000 |
+    +--------------------------------------+----------+----------+
+    |   Some 9000 individuals were engaged in unclassified       |
+    |     industries.                                            |
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+  _Fisheries._--The fishing population of France is most numerous in the
+  Breton departments of Finistere, Cotes-du-Nord and Morbihan and in
+  Pas-de-Calais. Dunkirk, Gravelines, Boulogne and Paimpol send
+  considerable fleets to the Icelandic cod-fisheries, and St Malo,
+  Fecamp, Granville and Cancale to those of Newfoundland. The Dogger
+  Bank is frequented by numbers of French fishing-boats. Besides the
+  above, Boulogne, the most important fishing port in the country,
+  Calais, Dieppe, Concarneau, Douarnenez, Les Sables d'Olonne, La
+  Rochelle, Marennes and Arcachon are leading ports for the herring,
+  sardine, mackerel and other coast-fisheries of the ocean, while Cette,
+  Agde and other Mediterranean ports are engaged in the tunny and
+  anchovy fisheries. Sardine preserving is an important industry at
+  Nantes and other places on the west coast. Oysters are reared chiefly
+  at Marennes, which is the chief French market for them, and at
+  Arcachon, Vannes, Oleron, Auray, Cancale and Courseulles. The total
+  value of the produce of fisheries increased from L4,537,000 in 1892 to
+  L5,259,000 in 1902. In 1902 the number of men employed in the home
+  fisheries was 144,000 and the number of vessels 25,481 (tonnage
+  127,000); in the deep-sea fisheries 10,500 men and 450 vessels
+  (tonnage 51,000) were employed.
+
+
+_Communications._
+
+_Roads._--Admirable highways known as _routes nationales_ and kept up at
+the expense of the state radiate from Paris to the great towns of
+France. Averaging 52-1/2 ft. in breadth, they covered in 1905 a distance
+of nearly 24,000 m. The Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees at Paris is
+maintained by the government for the training of the engineers for the
+construction and upkeep of roads and bridges. Each department controls
+and maintains the _routes departementales_, usually good macadamized
+roads connecting the chief places within its limits and extending in
+1903 over 9700 m. The routes nationales and the routes departementales
+come under the category of _la grande voirie_ and are under the
+supervision of the Ministry of Public Works. The urban and rural
+district roads, covering a much greater mileage and classed as _la
+petite voirie_, are maintained chiefly by the communes under the
+supervision of the Minister of the Interior.
+
+_Waterways._[12]--The waterways of France, 7543 m. in length, of which
+canals cover 3031 m., are also classed under _la grande voirie_; they
+are the property of the state, and for the most part are free of tolls.
+They are divided into two classes. Those of the first class, which
+comprise rather less than half the entire system, have a minimum depth
+of 6-1/2 ft., with locks 126 ft. long and 17 ft. wide; those of the
+second class are of smaller dimensions. Water traffic, which is chiefly
+in heavy merchandise, as coal, building materials, and agriculture and
+food produce, more than doubled in volume between 1881 and 1905. The
+canal and river system attains its greatest utility in the north,
+north-east and north-centre of the country; traffic is thickest along
+the Seine below Paris; along the rivers and small canals of the rich
+departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais and along the Oise and the canal
+of St Quentin whereby they communicate with Paris; along the canal from
+the Marne to the Rhine and the succession of waterways which unite it
+with the Oise; along the Canal de l'Est (departments of Meuse and
+Ardennes); and along the waterways uniting Paris with the Saone at
+Chalon (Seine, Canal du Loing, Canal de Briare, Lateral canal of the
+Loire and Canal du Centre) and along the Saone between Chalon and Lyons.
+
+  In point of length the following are the principal canals:
+
+                                                      Miles.
+
+  Est (uniting Meuse with Moselle and Saone)          270
+  From Nates to Brest                                 225
+  Berry (uniting Montlucon with the canalized Cher
+    and the Loire canal)                              163
+  Midi (Toulouse to Mediterranean via Beziers); see
+    CANAL                                             175
+  Burgundy (uniting the Yonne and Saone)              151
+  Lateral canal of Loire                              137
+  From Marne to Rhine (on French territory)           131
+  Lateral canal of Garonne                            133
+  Rhone to Rhine (on French territory)                119
+  Nivernais (uniting Loire and Yonne)                 111
+  Canal de la Somme                                    97
+  Centre (uniting Saone and Loire)                     81
+  Canal de l'Ourcq                                     67
+  Ardennes (uniting Aisne and Canal de l'Est)          62
+  From Rhone to Cette                                  77
+  Canal de la Haute Marne                              60
+  St Quentin (uniting Scheldt with Somme and Oise)     58
+
+  The chief navigable rivers are:
+
+  +-------------------+-----------+-------------+
+  |                   |   Total   |             |
+  |                   | navigated | First Class |
+  |                   |  Length.  |Navigability.|
+  +-------------------+-----------+-------------+
+  |                   |   Miles.  |   Miles.    |
+  |                   |           |             |
+  | Seine             |   339     |    293      |
+  | Aisne             |    37     |     37      |
+  | Marne             |   114     |    114      |
+  | Oise              |    99     |     65      |
+  | Yonne             |    67     |     53      |
+  | Rhone             |   309     |     30      |
+  | Saone             |   234     |    234      |
+  | Adour             |    72     |     21      |
+  | Garonne           |   289     |     96      |
+  | Dordogne          |   167     |     26      |
+  | Loire             |   452     |     35      |
+  | Charente          |   106     |     16      |
+  | Vilaine           |    91     |     31      |
+  | Escaut (in France)|    39     |     39      |
+  | Scarpe            |    41     |     41      |
+  | Lys               |    45     |     45      |
+  | Aa                |    18     |     18      |
+  +-------------------+-----------+-------------+
+
+_Railways._--The first important line in France, from Paris to Rouen,
+was constructed through the instrumentality of Sir Edward Blount
+(1809-1905), an English banker in Paris, who was afterwards for thirty
+years chairman of the Ouest railway. After the rejection in 1838 of the
+government's proposals for the construction of seven trunk lines to be
+worked by the state, he obtained a concession for that piece of line on
+the terms that the French treasury would advance one-third of the
+capital at 3% if he would raise the remaining two-thirds, half in France
+and half in England. The contract for building the railway was put in
+the hands of Thomas Brassey; English navvies were largely employed on
+the work, and a number of English engine-drivers were employed when
+traffic was begun in 1843. A law passed in 1842 laid the foundation of
+the plan under which the railways have since been developed, and mapped
+out nine main lines, running from Paris to the frontiers and from the
+Mediterranean to the Rhine and to the Atlantic coast. Under it the cost
+of the necessary land was to be found as to one-third by the state and
+as to the residue locally, but this arrangement proved unworkable and
+was abandoned in 1845, when it was settled that the state should provide
+the land and construct the earthworks and stations, the various
+companies which obtained concessions being left to make the permanent
+way, provide rolling stock and work the lines for certain periods.
+Construction proceeded under this law, but not with very satisfactory
+results, and new arrangements had to be made between 1852 and 1857, when
+the railways were concentrated in the hands of six great companies, the
+Nord, the Est, the Ouest, the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranee, the Orleans and
+the Midi. Each of these companies was allotted a definite sphere of
+influence, and was granted a concession for ninety-nine years from its
+date of formation, the concessions thus terminating at various dates
+between 1950 and 1960. In return for the privileges granted them the
+companies undertook the construction out of their own unaided resources
+of 1500 m. of subsidiary lines, but the railway expenditure of the
+country at this period was so large that in a few years they found it
+impossible to raise the capital they required. In these circumstances
+the state agreed to guarantee the interest on the capital, the sums it
+paid in this way being regarded as advances to be reimbursed in the
+future with interest at 4%. This measure proved successful and the
+projected lines were completed. But demands for more lines were
+constantly arising, and the existing companies, in view of their
+financial position, were disinclined to undertake their construction.
+The government therefore found itself obliged to inaugurate a system of
+direct subventions, not only to the old large companies, but also to new
+small ones, to encourage the development of branch and local lines, and
+local authorities were also empowered to contribute a portion of the
+required capital. The result came to be that many small lines were begun
+by companies that had not the means to complete them, and again the
+state had to come to the rescue. In 1878 it agreed to spend L20,000,000
+in purchasing and completing a number of these lines, some of which
+were handed over to the great companies, while others were retained in
+the hands of the government, forming the system known as the Chemins de
+Fer de l'Etat. Next year a large programme of railway expansion was
+adopted, at an estimated cost to the state of L140,000,000, and from
+1880 to 1882 nearly L40,000,000 was expended and some 1800 m. of line
+constructed. Then there was a change in the financial situation, and it
+became difficult to find the money required. In these circumstances the
+conventions of 1883 were concluded, and the great companies partially
+relieved the government of its obligations by agreeing to contribute a
+certain proportion of the cost of the new lines and to provide the
+rolling stock for working them. In former cases when the railways had
+had recourse to state aid, it was the state whose contributions were
+fixed, while the railways were left to find the residue; but on this
+occasion the position was reversed. The state further guaranteed a
+minimum rate of interest on the capital invested, and this guarantee,
+which by the convention of 1859 had applied to "new" lines only, was now
+extended to cover both "old" and "new" lines, the receipts and
+expenditure from both kinds being lumped together. As before, the sums
+paid out in respect of guaranteed dividend were to be regarded as
+advances which were to be paid back to the state out of the profits
+made, when these permitted, and when the advances were wiped out, the
+profits, after payment of a certain dividend, were to be divided between
+the state and the railway, two-thirds going to the former and one-third
+to the latter. All the companies, except the Nord, have at one time or
+another had to take advantage of the guarantee, and the fact that the
+Ouest had been one of the most persistent and heavy borrowers in this
+respect was one of the reasons that induced the government to take it
+over as from the 1st of January 1909. By the 1859 conventions the state
+railway system obtained an entry into Paris by means of running powers
+over the Ouest from Chartres, and its position was further improved by
+the exchange of certain lines with the Orleans company.
+
+  The great railway systems of France are as follows:
+
+  1. The Nord, which serves the rich mining, industrial and farming
+  districts of Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Aisne and Somme, connecting with the
+  Belgian railways at several points. Its main lines run from Paris to
+  Calais, via Creil, Amiens and Boulogne, from Paris to Lille, via Creil
+  and Arras, and from Paris to Maubeuge via Creil, Tergnier and St
+  Quentin.
+
+  2. The Ouest-Etat, a combination of the West and state systems. The
+  former traversed Normandy in every direction and connected Paris with
+  the towns of Brittany. Its chief lines ran from Paris to Le Havre via
+  Mantes and Rouen, to Dieppe via Rouen, to Cherbourg, to Granville and
+  to Brest. The state railways served a large portion of western France,
+  their chief lines being from Nantes via La Rochelle to Bordeaux, and
+  from Bordeaux via Saintes, Niort and Saumur to Chartres.
+
+  3. The Est, running from Paris via Chalons and Nancy to Avricourt (for
+  Strassburg), via Troyes and Langres to Belfort and on via Basel to the
+  Saint Gotthard, and via Reims and Mezieres to Longwy.
+
+  4. The Orleans, running from Paris to Orleans, and thence serving
+  Bordeaux via Tours, Poitiers and Angouleme, Nantes via Tours and
+  Angers, and Montauban and Toulouse via Vierzon and Limoges.
+
+  5. The Paris-Lyon-Mediterranee, connecting Paris with Marseilles via
+  Moret, Laroche, Dijon, Macon and Lyons, and with Nimes via Moret,
+  Nevers and Clermont-Ferrand. It establishes communication between
+  France and Switzerland and Italy via Macon and Culoz (for the Mt.
+  Cenis Tunnel) and via Dijon and Pontarlier (for the Simplon), and also
+  has a direct line along the Mediterranean coast from Marseilles to
+  Genoa via Toulon and Nice.
+
+  6. The Midi (Southern) has lines radiating from Toulouse to Bordeaux
+  via Agen, to Bayonne via Tarbes and Pau, and to Cette via Carcassonne,
+  Narbonne and Beziers. From Bordeaux there is also a direct line to
+  Bayonne and Irun (for Madrid), and at the other end of the Pyrenees a
+  line leads from Narbonne to Perpignan and Barcelona.
+
+  The following table, referring to lines "of general interest,"
+  indicates the development of railways after 1885:
+
+    +------+--------+------------+----------+-----------+--------------+
+    |      |        | Receipts in| Expenses | Passengers| Goods carried|
+    | Year.|Mileage.|  Thousands | Thousands|  carried  | (1000 Metric |
+    |      |        |    of L.   |   of L.  | (1000's). |    Tons).    |
+    +------+--------+------------+----------+-----------+--------------+
+    | 1885 | 18,650 |   42,324   |  23,508  |  214,451  |    75,192    |
+    | 1890 | 20,800 |   46,145   |  24,239  |   41,119  |    92,506    |
+    | 1895 | 22,650 |   50,542   |  27,363  |  348,852  |   100,834    |
+    | 1900 | 23,818 |   60,674   |  32,966  |  453,193  |   126,830    |
+    | 1904 | 24,755 |   60,589   |  31,477  |  433,913  |   130,144    |
+    +------+--------+------------+----------+-----------+--------------+
+
+  Narrow gauge and normal gauge railways "of local interest" covered
+  3905 m. in 1904.
+
+
+_Commerce._
+
+After entering on a regime of free trade in 1860 France gradually
+reverted towards protection; this system triumphed in the Customs Law of
+1892, which imposed more or less considerable duties on imports--a law
+associated with the name of M. Meline. While raising the taxes both on
+agricultural products and manufactured goods, this law introduced,
+between France and all the powers trading with her, relations different
+from those in the past. It left the government free either to apply to
+foreign countries the general tariff or to enter into negotiations with
+them for the application, under certain conditions, of a minimum tariff.
+The policy of protection was further accentuated by raising the impost
+on corn from 5 to 7 francs per hectolitre (2-3/4 bushels). This system,
+however, which is opposed by a powerful party, has at various times
+undergone modifications. On the one hand it became necessary, in face of
+an inadequate harvest, to suspend in 1898 the application of the law on
+the import of corn. On the other hand, in order to check the decline of
+exports and neutralize the harmful effects of a prolonged customs war, a
+commercial treaty was in 1896 concluded with Switzerland, carrying with
+it a reduction, in respect of certain articles, of the imposts which had
+been fixed by the law of 1892. An accord was likewise in 1898 effected
+with Italy, which since 1886 had been in a state of economic rupture
+with France, and in July 1899 an accord was concluded with the United
+States of America. Almost all other countries, moreover, share in the
+benefit of the minimum tariff, and profit by the modifications it may
+successively undergo.
+
+  _Commerce, in Millions of Pounds Sterling._
+
+  +-----------+--------------------------+--------------------------+
+  |           |         General          |         Special          |
+  |           +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
+  |           |Imports.|Exports.| Total. |Imports.|Exports.| Total. |
+  +-----------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
+  | 1876-1880 |  210.1 |  175.3 |  385.4 |  171.7 |  135.1 |  306.8 |
+  | 1881-1885 |  224.1 |  177.8 |  401.9 |  183.4 |  135.3 |  318.7 |
+  | 1886-1890 |  208.2 |  179.4 |  387.6 |  168.8 |  137.6 |  306.4 |
+  | 1891-1895 |  205.9 |  178.6 |  384.5 |  163.0 |  133.8 |  296.8 |
+  | 1896-1900 |  237.8 |  201.0 |  438.8 |  171.9 |  150.8 |  322.7 |
+  | 1901-1905 |  233.3 |  227.5 |  460.8 |  182.8 |  174.7 |  357.5 |
+  +-----------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
+
+  +------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
+  |                  |       Imports.       |       Exports.       |
+  |                  +-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
+  |                  |   Value   | Per cent |   Value   | Per cent |
+  |                  |(Thousands | of Total |(Thousands | of Total |
+  |                  |   of L).  |  Value.  |   of L).  |  Value.  |
+  +------------------+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
+  |Articles of Food--|           |          |           |          |
+  |   1886-1890      |   58,856  |   34.9   |  30,830   |   22.4   |
+  |   1891-1895      |   50,774  |   30.9   |  28,287   |   21.1   |
+  |   1896-1900      |   42,488  |   24.9   |  27,838   |   18.6   |
+  |   1901-1905      |   33,631  |   18.4   |  28,716   |   16.5   |
+  |                  +-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
+  |Raw Materials[13] |           |          |           |          |
+  |   1886-1890      |   85,778  |   50.8   |  33,848   |   24.6   |
+  |   1891-1895      |   88,211  |   54.3   |  32,557   |   24.4   |
+  |   1896-1900      |  101,727  |   59.2   |  40,060   |   26.6   |
+  |   1901-1905      |  116,580  |   63.8   |  47,385   |   27.1   |
+  |                  +-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
+  |Manufactured      |           |          |           |          |
+  |     Articles[14] |           |          |           |          |
+  |   1886-1890      |   24,125  |   14.3   |  72,917   |   53.0   |
+  |   1891-1895      |   24,054  |   14.8   |  72,906   |   54.5   |
+  |   1896-1900      |   27,330  |   15.9   |  82,270   |   54.8   |
+  |   1901-1905      |   32,554  |   17.8   |  98,582   |   56.4   |
+  +------------------+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+
+
+Being in the main a self-supporting country France carries on most of
+her trade within her own borders, and ranks below Great Britain, Germany
+and the United States in volume of exterior trade. The latter is
+subdivided into _general_ commerce, which includes all goods entering or
+leaving the country, and _special_ commerce which includes imports for
+home use and exports of home produce. The above table shows the
+developments of French trade during the years from 1876 to 1905 by means
+of quinquennial averages. A permanent body (the _commission permanente
+des valeurs_) fixes the average prices of the articles in the customs
+list; this value is estimated at the end of the year in accordance with
+the variations that have taken place and is applied provisionally to the
+following year.
+
+  Amongst imports raw materials (wool, cotton and silk, coal, oil-seeds,
+  timber, &c.) hold the first place, articles of food (cereals, wine,
+  coffee, &c.) and manufactured goods (especially machinery) ranking
+  next. Amongst exports manufactured goods (silk, cotton and woollen
+  goods, fancy wares, apparel, &c.) come before raw materials and
+  articles of food (wine and dairy products bought chiefly by England).
+
+  Divided into these classes the imports and exports (special trade) for
+  quinquennial periods from 1886 to 1905 averaged as shown in the
+  preceding table.
+
+  The decline both in imports and in exports of articles of food, which
+  is the most noteworthy fact exhibited in the preceding table, was due
+  to the almost prohibitive tax in the Customs Law of 1892, upon
+  agricultural products.
+
+  The average value of the principal articles of import and export
+  (special trade) over quinquennial periods following 1890 is shown in
+  the two tables below.
+
+    _Principal Imports (Thousands of L)._
+
+    +-----------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    |                             |1891-1895.|1896-1900.|1901-1905.|
+    +-----------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    | Coal, coke, &c              |   7,018  |   9,883  |  10,539  |
+    | Coffee                      |   6,106  |   4,553  |   3,717  |
+    | Cotton, raw                 |   7,446  |   7,722  |  11,987  |
+    | Flax                        |   2,346  |   2,435  |   3,173  |
+    | Fruit and seeds (oleaginous)|   7,175  |   6,207  |   8,464  |
+    | Hides and skins, raw        |   6,141  |   5,261  |   6,369  |
+    | Machinery                   |   2,181  |   3,632  |   4,614  |
+    | Silk, raw                   |   9,488  |  10,391  |  11,765  |
+    | Timber                      |   6,054  |   6,284  |   6,760  |
+    | Wheat                       |  10,352  |   5,276  |   1,995  |
+    | Wine                        |   9,972  |  10,454  |   5,167  |
+    | Wool, raw                   |  13,372  |  16,750  |  16,395  |
+    +-----------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+
+    _Principal Exports (Thousands of L)._
+
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    |                                |1891-1895.|1896-1900.|1901-1905.|
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    | Apparel                        |   4,726  |   4,513  |   5,079  |
+    | Brandy and other spirits       |   2,402  |   1,931  |   1,678  |
+    | Butter                         |   2,789  |   2,783  |   2,618  |
+    | Cotton manufactures            |   4,233  |   5,874  |   7,965  |
+    | Haberdashery[15]               |   5,830  |   6,039  |   6,599  |
+    | Hides, raw                     |   2,839  |   3,494  |   4,813  |
+    | Hides, tanned or curried       |   4,037  |   4,321  |   4,753  |
+    | Iron and steel, manufactures of|     ..   |   2,849  |   4,201  |
+    | Millinery                      |   1,957  |   3,308  |   4,951  |
+    | Motor cars and vehicles        |     ..   |     160  |   2,147  |
+    | Paper and manufactures of      |   2,095  |   2,145  |   2,551  |
+    | Silk, raw, thrown, waste and   |          |          |          |
+    |   cocoons                      |   4,738  |   4,807  |   6,090  |
+    | Silk and waste silk,           |          |          |          |
+    |   manufactured of              |   9,769  |  10,443  |  11,463  |
+    | Wine                           |   8,824  |   9,050  |   9,139  |
+    | Wool, raw                      |   5,003  |   7,813  |   9,159  |
+    | Wool, manufactures of          |  11,998  |  10,190  |   8,459  |
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+
+  The following were the countries sending the largest quantities of
+  goods (special trade) to France (during the same periods as in
+  previous table).
+
+    Trade with Principal Countries. Imports (Thousands of L).
+
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    |                                |1891-1895.|1896-1900.|1901-1905.|
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    | Germany                        |  13,178  |  13,904  |  17,363  |
+    | Belgium                        |  15,438  |  13,113  |  13,057  |
+    | United Kingdom                 |  20,697  |  22,132  |  22,725  |
+    | Spain                          |  10,294  |  10,560  | 6,525[16]|
+    | United States                  |  15,577  |  18,491  |  19,334  |
+    | Argentine Republic             |   7,119  |  10,009  |  10,094  |
+    +--------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+
+
+  Other countries importing largely into France are Russia, Algeria and
+  British India, whose imports in each case averaged over L9,000,000 in
+  value in the period 1901-1905; China (average value L7,000,000); and
+  Italy (average value L6,000,000).
+
+  The following are the principal countries receiving the exports of
+  France (special trade), with values for the same periods.
+
+    _Trade with Principal Countries. Exports (Thousands of L)._
+
+    +----------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    |                |1891-1895.|1896-1900.|1901-1905.|
+    +----------------+----------+----------+----------+
+    | Germany        |  13,712  |  16,285  |  21,021  |
+    | Belgium|       |  19,857  |  22,135  |  24,542  |
+    | United Kingdom |  39,310  |  45,203  |  49,156  |
+    | United States  |   9,337  |   9,497  |  10,411  |
+    | Algeria        |   7,872  |   9,434  |  11,652  |
+    +----------------+----------+----------+----------+
+
+  The other chief customers of France were Switzerland and Italy, whose
+  imports from France averaged in 1901-1905 nearly L10,000,000 and over
+  L7,200,000 respectively in value. In the same period Spain received
+  exports from France averaging L4,700,000.
+
+  The trade of France was divided between foreign countries and her
+  colonies in the following proportions (imports and exports combined).
+
+    +-----------+-----------------------+----------------------+
+    |           |     General Trade.    |  Special Trade.      |
+    |           +------------+----------+-----------+----------+
+    |           |  Foreign   | Colonies.|  Foreign  | Colonies.|
+    |           | Countries. |          | Countries.|          |
+    +-----------+------------+----------+-----------+----------+
+    | 1891-1895 |   92.00    |   8.00   |   90.89   |   9.11   |
+    | 1896-1900 |   91.18    |   8.82   |   89.86   |  10.14   |
+    | 1901-1905 |   90.41    |   9.59   |   88.78   |  11.22   |
+    +-----------+------------+----------+-----------+----------+
+
+  The respective shares of the leading customs in the trade of the
+  country is approximately shown in the following table, which gives the
+  value of their exports and imports (general trade) in 1905 in millions
+  sterling.
+
+                     L    |                       L
+    Marseilles      88.8  |  Boulogne.           17.5
+    Le Havre        79.5  |  Calais              14.1
+    Paris           42.8  |  Dieppe              13.5
+    Dunkirk         34.8  |  Rouen               11.3
+    Bordeaux        27.4  |  Belfort-Petit-Croix 10.7
+
+  In the same year the other chief customs in order of importance were
+  Tourcoing, Jeumont, Cette, St Nazaire and Avricourt.
+
+  The chief local bodies concerned with commerce and industry are the
+  _chambres de commerce_ and the _chambres consultatives d'arts et
+  manufactures_, the members of which are elected from their own number
+  by the traders and industrialists of a certain standing. They are
+  established in the chief towns, and their principal function is to
+  advise the government on measures for improving and facilitating
+  commerce and industry within their circumscription. See also BANKS AND
+  BANKING; SAVINGS BANKS; POST AND POSTAL SERVICE.
+
+  _Shipping._--The following table shows the increase in tonnage of
+  sailing and steam shipping engaged in foreign trade entered and
+  cleared at the ports of France over quinquennial periods from 1890.
+
+    +-----------+------------------------+------------------------+
+    |           |        Entered.        |        Cleared.        |
+    |           +-----------+------------+-----------+------------+
+    |           |  French.  |  Foreign.  |  French.  |  Foreign.  |
+    +-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+------------+
+    | 1891-1895 | 4,277,967 |  9,947,893 | 4,521,928 | 10,091,000 |
+    | 1896-1900 | 4,665,268 | 12,037,571 | 5,005,563 | 12,103,358 |
+    | 1901-1905 | 4,782,101 | 14,744,626 | 5,503,463 | 14,823,217 |
+    +-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+------------+
+
+  The increase of the French mercantile marine (which is fifth in
+  importance in the world) over the same period is traced in the
+  following table. Vessels of 2 net tons and upwards are enumerated.
+
+    +-----------+------------------+------------------+-------------------+
+    |           |     Sailing.     |      Steam.      |       Total.      |
+    |           +------------------+------------------+--------+----------+
+    |           | Number |         | Number |         | Number |          |
+    |           |   of   | Tonnage.|   of   | Tonnage.|   of   | Tonnage. |
+    |           |Vessels.|         |Vessels.|         |Vessels.|          |
+    +-----------+--------+---------+--------+---------+--------+----------+
+    | 1891-1895 | 14,183 | 402,982 |  1182  | 502,363 | 15,365 |  905,345 |
+    | 1896-1900 | 14,327 | 437,468 |  1231  | 504,674 | 15,558 |  942,142 |
+    | 1901-1905 | 14,867 | 642,562 |  1388  | 617,536 | 16,255 |1,260,098 |
+    +-----------+--------+---------+--------+---------+--------+----------+
+
+  At the beginning of 1908 the total was 17,193 (tonnage, 1,402,647); of
+  these 13,601 (tonnage, 81,833) were vessels of less than 20 tons,
+  while 502 (tonnage, 1,014,506) were over 800 tons.
+
+  The increase in the tonnage of sailing vessels, which in other
+  countries tends to decline, was due to the bounties voted by
+  parliament to its merchant sailing fleet with the view of increasing
+  the number of skilled seamen. The prosperity of the French shipping
+  trade is hampered by the costliness of shipbuilding and by the
+  scarcity of outward-bound cargo. Shipping has been fostered by paying
+  bounties for vessels constructed in France and sailing under the
+  French flag, and by reserving the coasting trade, traffic between
+  France and Algeria, &c., to French vessels. Despite these monopolies,
+  three-fourths of the shipping in French ports is foreign, and France
+  is without shipping companies comparable in importance to those of
+  other great maritime nations. The three chief companies are the
+  _Messageries Maritimes_ (Marseilles and Bordeaux), the _Compagnie
+  Generale Transatlantique_ (Le Havre, St Nazaire and Marseilles) and
+  the _Chargeurs Reunis_ (Le Havre).
+
+
+_Government and Administration._
+
+_Central Government._--The principles upon which the French constitution
+is based are representative government (by two chambers), manhood
+suffrage, responsibility of ministers and irresponsibility of the head
+of the state. Alterations or modifications of the constitution can only
+be effected by the National Assembly, consisting of both chambers
+sitting together _ad hoc_. The legislative power resides in these two
+chambers--the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies; the executive is
+vested in the president of the republic and the ministers. The members
+of both chambers owe their election to universal suffrage; but the
+Senate is not elected directly by the people and the Chamber of Deputies
+is.
+
+The Chamber of Deputies, consisting of 584 members, is elected by the
+_scrutin d'arrondissement_ (each elector voting for one deputy) for a
+term of four years, the conditions of election being as follows: Each
+arrondissement sends one deputy if its population does not exceed
+100,000, and an additional deputy for every additional 100,000
+inhabitants or fraction of that number. Every citizen of twenty-one
+years of age, unless subject to some legal disability, such as actual
+engagement in military service, bankruptcy or condemnation to certain
+punishments, has a vote, provided that he can prove a residence of six
+months' duration in any one town or commune. A deputy must be a French
+citizen, not under twenty-five years old. Each candidate must make, at
+least five days before the elections, a declaration setting forth in
+what constituency he intends to stand. He may only stand for one, and
+all votes given for him in any other than that specified in the
+declaration are void. To secure election a candidate must at the first
+voting poll an absolute majority and a number of votes equal to
+one-fourth of the number of electors. If a second poll is necessary a
+relative majority is sufficient.
+
+The Senate (see below, _Law and Institutions_) is composed of 300
+members who must be French citizens at least forty years of age. They
+are elected by the "_scrutin de liste_" for a period of nine years, and
+one-third of the body retires every three years. The department which is
+to elect a senator when a vacancy occurs is settled by lot.
+
+Both senators and deputies receive a salary of L600 per annum. No member
+of a family that has reigned in France is eligible for either chamber.
+
+Bills may be proposed either by ministers (in the name of the president
+of the republic), or by private members, and may be initiated in either
+chamber, but money-bills must be submitted in the first place to the
+Chamber of Deputies. Every bill is first examined by a committee, a
+member of which is chosen to "report" on it to the chamber, after which
+it must go through two readings (_deliberations_), before it is
+presented to the other chamber. Either house may pass a vote of no
+confidence in the government, and in practice the government resigns in
+face of the passing of such a vote by the deputies, but not if it is
+passed by the Senate only. The chambers usually assemble in January each
+year, and the ordinary session lasts not less than five months; usually
+it continues till July. There is an extraordinary session from October
+till Christmas.
+
+The president (see below, _Law and Institutions_) is elected for seven
+years, by a majority of votes, by the Senate and Chamber of Deputies
+sitting together as the National Assembly. Any French citizen may be
+chosen president, no fixed age being required. The only exception to
+this rule is that no member of a royal family which has once reigned in
+France can be elected. The president receives 1,200,000 francs (L48,000)
+a year, half as salary, half for travelling expenses and the charges
+incumbent upon the official representative of the country. Both the
+chambers are summoned by the president, who has the power of dissolving
+the Chamber of Deputies with the assent of the Senate. When a change of
+Government occurs the president chooses a prominent parliamentarian as
+premier and president of the council. This personage, who himself holds
+a portfolio, nominates the other ministers, his choice being subject to
+the ratification of the chief of the state. The ministerial council
+(_conseil des ministres_) is presided over by the president of the
+republic; less formal meetings (_conseils de cabinet_) under the
+presidency of the premier, or even of some other minister, are also
+held.
+
+The ministers, whether members of parliament or not, have the right to
+sit in both chambers and can address the house whenever they choose,
+though a minister may only vote in the chamber of which he happens to be
+a member. There are twelve ministries[17] comprising those of justice;
+finance; war; the interior; marine; colonies; public instruction and
+fine arts; foreign affairs; commerce and industry; agriculture; public
+works; and labour and public thrift. Individual ministers are
+responsible for all acts done in connexion with their own departments,
+and the body of ministers collectively is responsible for the general
+policy of the government.
+
+The council of state (_conseil d'etat_) is the principal council of the
+head of the state and his ministers, who consult it on various
+legislative problems, more particularly on questions of administration.
+It is divided for despatch of business into four sections, each of which
+corresponds to a group of two or three ministerial departments, and is
+composed of (1) 32 councillors "_en service ordinaire_" (comprising a
+vice-president and sectional presidents), and 19 councillors "_en
+service extraordinaire_," i.e. government officials who are deputed to
+watch the interests of the ministerial departments to which they belong,
+and in matters not concerned with those departments have a merely
+consultative position; (2) 32 _maitres des requetes_; (3) 40 auditors.
+
+The presidency of the council of state belongs _ex officio_ to the
+minister of justice.
+
+The theory of "_droit administratif_" lays down the principle that an
+agent of the government cannot be prosecuted or sued for acts relating
+to his administrative functions before the ordinary tribunals.
+Consequently there is a special system of administrative jurisdiction
+for the trial of "_le contentieux administratif_" or disputes in which
+the administration is concerned. The council of state is the highest
+administrative tribunal, and includes a special "_Section du
+contentieux_" to deal with judicial work of this nature.
+
+_Local Government._--France is divided into 86 administrative
+departments (including Corsica) or 87 if the Territory of Belfort, a
+remnant of the Haut Rhin department, be included. These departments are
+subdivided into 362 arrondissements, 2911 cantons and 36,222 communes.
+
+  +------------------------+-------------------+---------------------------------------------------+
+  |      Departments.      |   Capital Towns.  |              Ancient Provinces.[18]               |
+  +------------------------+-------------------+---------------------------------------------------+
+  | AIN                    | Bourg             | Bourgogne (Bresse, Bugey, Valromey, Dombes).      |
+  | AISNE                  | Laon              | Ile-de-France; Picardie.                          |
+  | ALLIER                 | Moulins           | Bourbonnais.                                      |
+  | ALPES-MARITIMES        | Nice              |                                                   |
+  | ARDECHE                | Privas            | Languedoc (Vivarais).                             |
+  | ARDENNES               | Mezieres          | Champagne.                                        |
+  | ARIEGE                 | Foix              | Foix; Gascogne (Couserans).                       |
+  | AUBE                   | Troyes            | Champagne; Bourgogne.                             |
+  | AUDE                   | Carcassonne       | Languedoc.                                        |
+  | AVEYRON                | Rodez             | Guienne (Rouergue).                               |
+  | BASSES-ALPES           | Digne             | Provence.                                         |
+  | BASSES-PYRENEES        | Pau               | Bearn; Gascogne (Basse-Navarre, Soule, Labourd).  |
+  | BELFORT, TERRITOIRE DE | Belfort           | Alsace.                                           |
+  | BOUCHES-DU-RHONE       | Marseilles        | Provence.                                         |
+  | CALVADOS               | Caen              | Normandie (Bessin, Bocage).                       |
+  | CANTAL                 | Aurillac          | Auvergne.                                         |
+  | CHARENTE               | Angouleme         | Angoumois; Saintonge.                             |
+  | CHARENTE-INFERIEURE    | La Rochelle       | Aunis; Saintonge.                                 |
+  | CHER                   | Bourges           | Berry; Bourbonnais.                               |
+  | CORREZE                | Tulle             | Limousin.                                         |
+  | COTE-D'OR              | Dijon             | Bourgogne (Dijonnais, Auxois).                    |
+  | COTES-DU-NORD          | St Brieuc         | Bretagne.                                         |
+  | CREUSE                 | Gueret            | Marche.                                           |
+  | DEUX-SEVRES            | Niort             | Poitou.                                           |
+  | DORDOGNE               | Perigueux         | Guienne (Perigord).                               |
+  | DOUBS                  | Besancon          | Franche-Comte; Montbeliard.                       |
+  | DROME                  | Valence           | Dauphine.                                         |
+  | EURE                   | Evreux            | Normandie; Perche.                                |
+  | EURE-ET-LOIR           | Chartres          | Orleanais; Normandie.                             |
+  | FINISTERE              | Quimper           | Bretagne.                                         |
+  | GARD                   | Nimes             | Languedoc.                                        |
+  | GERS                   | Auch              | Gascogne (Astarac, Armagnac).                     |
+  | GIRONDE                | Bordeaux          | Guienne (Bordelais, Bazadais).                    |
+  | HAUTE-GARONNE          | Toulouse          | Languedoc; Gascogne (Comminges).                  |
+  | HAUTE-LOIRE            | Le Puy            | Languedoc (Velay); Auvergne; Lyonnais.            |
+  | HAUTE-MARNE            | Chaumont          | Champagne (Bassigny, Vallage).                    |
+  | HAUTES-ALPES           | Gap               | Dauphine.                                         |
+  | HAUTE-SAONE            | Vesoul            | Franche-Comte.                                    |
+  | HAUTE-SAVOIE           | Annecy            |                                                   |
+  | HAUTES-PYRENEES        | Tarbes            | Gascogne.                                         |
+  | HAUTE-VIENNE           | Limoges           | Limousin; Marche.                                 |
+  | HERAULT                | Montpellier       | Languedoc.                                        |
+  | ILLE-ET-VILAINE        | Rennes            | Bretagne.                                         |
+  | INDRE                  | Chateauroux       | Berry.                                            |
+  | INDRE-ET-LOIRE         | Tours             | Touraine.                                         |
+  | ISERE                  | Grenoble          | Dauphine.                                         |
+  | JURA                   | Lons-le-Saunier   | Franche-Comte.                                    |
+  | LANDES                 | Mont-de-Marsan    | Gascogne (Landes, Chalosse).                      |
+  | LOIRE                  | St-Etienne        | Lyonnais.                                         |
+  | LOIRE-INFERIEURE       | Nantes            | Bretagne.                                         |
+  | LOIRET                 | Orleans           | Orleanais (Orleanais proper, Gatinais, Dunois).   |
+  | LOIR-ET-CHER           | Blois             | Orleanais.                                        |
+  | LOT                    | Cahors            | Guienne (Quercy).                                 |
+  | LOT-ET-GARONNE         | Agen              | Guienne; Gascogne.                                |
+  | LOZERE                 | Mende             | Languedoc (Gevaudan).                             |
+  | MAINE-ET-LOIRE         | Angers            | Anjou.                                            |
+  | MANCHE                 | St-Lo             | Normandie (Cotentin).                             |
+  | MARNE                  | Chalons-sur-Marne | Champagne.                                        |
+  | MAYENNE                | Laval             | Maine; Anjou.                                     |
+  | MEURTHE-ET-MOSELLE     | Nancy             | Lorraine; Trois-Eveches.                          |
+  | MEUSE                  | Bar-le-Duc        | Lorraine (Barrois, Verdunois).                    |
+  | MORBIHAN               | Vannes            | Bretagne.                                         |
+  | NIEVRE                 | Nevers            | Nivernais; Orleanais.                             |
+  | NORD                   | Lille             | Flandre; Hainaut.                                 |
+  | OISE                   | Beauvais          | Ile-de-France.                                    |
+  | ORNE                   | Alencon           | Normandie; Perche.                                |
+  | PAS-DE-CALAIS          | Arras             | Artois; Picardie.                                 |
+  | PUY-DE-DOME            | Clermont-Ferrand  | Auvergne.                                         |
+  | PYRENEES-ORIENTALES    | Perpignan         | Roussillon; Languedoc.                            |
+  | RHONE                  | Lyon              | Lyonnais; Beaujolais.                             |
+  | SAONE-ET-LOIRE         | Macon             | Bourgogne.                                        |
+  | SARTHE                 | Le Mans           | Maine; Anjou.                                     |
+  | SAVOIE                 | Chambery          |                                                   |
+  | SEINE                  | Paris             | Ile-de-France.                                    |
+  | SEINE-ET-MARNE         | Melun             | Ile-de-France; Champagne.                         |
+  | SEINE-ET-OISE          | Versailles        | Ile-de-France.                                    |
+  | SEINE-INFERIEURE       | Rouen             | Normandie.                                        |
+  | SOMME                  | Amiens            | Picardie.                                         |
+  | TARN                   | Albi              | Languedoc (Albigeois).                            |
+  | TARN-ET-GARONNE        | Montauban         | Guienne; Gascogne; Languedoc.                     |                      |
+  | VAR                    | Draguignan        | Provence.                                         |
+  | VAUCLUSE               | Avignon           | Comtat; Venaissin; Provence; Principaute d'Orange.|
+  | VENDEE                 | La Roche-sur-Yon  | Poitou.                                           |
+  | VIENNE                 | Poitiers          | Poitou; Touraine.                                 |
+  | VOSGES                 | Epinal            | Lorraine.                                         |
+  | YONNE                  | Auxerre           | Bourgogne; Champagne.                             |
+  | CORSE (CORSICA)        | Ajaccio           | Corse.                                            |
+  +------------------------+-------------------+---------------------------------------------------+
+
+  Before 1790 France was divided into thirty-three great and seven small
+  military governments, often called provinces, which are, however, to
+  be distinguished from the provinces formed under the feudal system.
+  The great governments were: Alsace, Saintonge and Angournois, Anjou,
+  Artois, Aunis, Auvergne, Bearn and Navarre, Berry, Bourbonnais;
+  Bourgogne (Burgundy), Bretagne (Brittany), Champagne, Dauphine,
+  Flandre, Foix, Franche-Comte, Guienne and Gascogne (Gascony),
+  Ile-de-France, Languedoc, Limousin, Lorraine, Lyonnais, Maine, Marche,
+  Nivernais, Normandie, Orleanais, Picardie, Poitou, Provence,
+  Roussillon, Touraine and Corse. The eight small governments were:
+  Paris, Boulogne and Boulonnais, Le Havre, Sedan, Toulois, Pays Messin
+  and Verdunois and Saumurois.
+
+At the head of each department is a prefect, a political official
+nominated by the minister of the interior and appointed by the
+president, who acts as general agent of the government and
+representative of the central authority. To aid him the prefect has a
+general secretary and an advisory body (_conseil de prefecture_), the
+members of which are appointed by the president, which has jurisdiction
+in certain classes of disputes arising out of administration and must,
+in certain cases, be consulted, though the prefect is not compelled to
+follow its advice. The prefect supervises the execution of the laws; has
+wide authority in regard to policing, public hygiene and relief of
+pauper children; has the nomination of various subordinate officials;
+and is in correspondence with the subordinate functionaries in his
+department, to whom he transmits the orders and instructions of the
+government. Although the management of local affairs is in the hands of
+the prefect his power with regard to these is checked by a deliberative
+body known as the general council (_conseil general_). This council,
+which consists for the most part of business and professional men, is
+elected by universal suffrage, each canton in the department
+contributing one member. The general council controls the departmental
+administration of the prefect, and its decisions on points of local
+government are usually final. It assigns its quota of taxes
+(_contingent_) to each arrondissement, authorizes the sale, purchase or
+exchange of departmental property, superintends the management thereof,
+authorizes the construction of new roads, railways or canals, and
+advises on matters of local interest. Political questions are rigorously
+excluded from its deliberations. The general council, when not sitting,
+is represented by a permanent delegation (_commission departementale_).
+
+As the prefect in the department, so the sub-prefect in the
+arrondissement, though with a more limited power, is the representative
+of the central authority. He is assisted, and in some degree controlled,
+in his work by the district council (_conseil d'arrondissement_), to
+which each canton sends a member, chosen by universal suffrage. As the
+arrondissement has neither property nor budget, the principal business
+of the council is to allot to each commune its share of the direct taxes
+imposed on the arrondissement by the general council.
+
+The canton is purely an administrative division, containing, on an
+average, about twelve communes, though some exceptional communes are big
+enough to contain more than one canton. It is the seat of a justice of
+the peace, and is the electoral unit for the general council and the
+district council.
+
+The communes, varying greatly in area and population, are the
+administrative units in France. The chief magistrate of the commune is
+the mayor (_maire_), who is (1) the agent of the central government and
+charged as such with the local promulgation and execution of the general
+laws and decrees of the country; (2) the executive head of the
+municipality, in which capacity he supervises the police, the revenue
+and public works of the commune, and acts as the representative of the
+corporation in general. He also acts as registrar of births, deaths and
+marriages, and officiates at civil marriages. Mayors are usually
+assisted by deputies (_adjoints_). In a commune of 2500 inhabitants or
+less there is one deputy; in more populous communes there may be more,
+but in no case must the number exceed twelve, except at Lyons, where as
+many as seventeen are allowed. Both mayors and deputy mayors are elected
+by and from among members of the municipal council for four years. This
+body consists, according to the population of the commune, of from 10 to
+36 members, elected for four years on the principle of the _scrutin de
+liste_ by Frenchmen who have reached the age of twenty-one years and
+have a six months' residence qualification.
+
+The local affairs of the commune are decided by the municipal council,
+and its decisions become operative after the expiration of a month, save
+in matters which involve interests transcending those of the commune. In
+such cases the prefect must approve them, and in some cases the sanction
+of the general council or even ratification by the president is
+necessary. The council also chooses communal delegates to elect
+senators; and draws up the list of _repartiteurs_, whose function is to
+settle how the commune's share of direct taxes shall be allotted among
+the taxpayers. The sub-prefect then selects from this list ten of whom
+he approves for the post. The meetings of the council are open to the
+public.
+
+
+_Justice._
+
+The ordinary judicial system of France comprises two classes of courts:
+(1) civil and criminal, (2) special, including courts dealing only with
+purely commercial cases; in addition there are the administrative
+courts, including bodies, the Conseil d'Etat and the Conseils de
+Prefecture, which deal, in their judicial capacity, with cases coming
+under the _droit administratif_. Mention may also be made of the
+Tribunal des Conflits, a special court whose function it is to decide
+which is the competent tribunal when an administration and a judicial
+court both claim or refuse to deal with a given case.
+
+Taking the first class of courts, which have both civil and criminal
+jurisdiction, the lowest tribunal in the system is that of the _juge de
+paix_.
+
+In each canton is a _juge de paix_, who in his capacity as a civil judge
+takes cognizance, without appeal, of disputes where the amount sought to
+be recovered does not exceed L12 in value. Where the amount exceeds L12
+but not L24 an appeal lies from his decision to the court of first
+instance. In some particular cases where special promptitude or local
+knowledge is necessary, as disputes between hotelkeepers and travellers,
+and the like, he has jurisdiction (subject to appeal to the court of
+first instance) up to L60. He has also a criminal jurisdiction in
+_contraventions_, i.e. breaches of law punishable by a fine not
+exceeding 12s. or by imprisonment not exceeding five days. If the
+sentence be one of imprisonment or the fine exceeds 4s., appeal lies to
+the court of first instance. It is an important function of the _juge de
+paix_ to endeavour to reconcile disputants who come before him, and no
+suit can be brought before the court of first instance until he has
+endeavoured without success to bring the parties to an agreement.
+
+_Tribunaux de premiere instance_, also called _tribunaux
+d'arrondissement_, of which there is one in every arrondissement (with
+few exceptions), besides serving as courts of appeal from the _juges de
+paix_ have an original jurisdiction in matters civil and criminal. The
+court consists of a president, one or more vice-presidents and a
+variable number of judges. A _procureur_, or public prosecutor, is also
+attached to each court. In civil matters the tribunal takes cognizance
+of actions relating to personal property to the value of L60, and
+actions relating to land to the value of 60 fr. (L2: 8s.) per annum.
+When it deals with matters involving larger sums an appeal lies to the
+courts of appeal. In penal cases its jurisdiction extends to all
+offences of the class known as _delits_--offences punishable by a more
+serious penalty than the "contraventions" dealt with by the _juge de
+paix_, but not entailing such heavy penalties as the code applies to
+_crimes_, with which the assize courts (see below) deal. When sitting in
+its capacity as a criminal court it is known as the _tribunal
+correctionnel_. Its judgments are invariably subject in these matters to
+appeal before the court of appeal.
+
+There are twenty-six courts of appeal (_cours d'appel_), to each of
+which are attached from one to five departments.
+
+  Cours d'Appel.        Departments depending on them.
+
+  PARIS        Seine, Aube, Eure-et-Loir, Marne, Seine-et-Marne,
+                          Seine-et-Oise, Yonne.
+  AGEN . . . . Gers, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne.
+  AIX  . . . . Basses-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhone, Var.
+  AMIENS . . . Aisne, Oise, Somme.
+  ANGERS . . . Maine-et-Loire, Mayenne, Sarthe.
+  BASTIA . . . Corse.
+  BESANCON . . Doubs, Jura, Haute-Saone, Territoire de Belfort.
+  BORDEAUX . . Charente, Dordogne, Gironde.
+  BOURGES  . . Cher, Indre, Nievre.
+  CAEN   . . . Calvados, Manche, Orne.
+  CHAMBERY . . Savoie, Haute-Savoie.
+  DIJON  . . . Cote-d'Or, Haute-Marne, Saone-et-Loire.
+  DOUAI  . . . Nord, Pas-de-Calais.
+  GRENOBLE . . Hautes-Alpes, Drome, Isere.
+  LIMOGES  . . Correze, Creuse, Haute-Vienne.
+  LYONS  . . . Ain, Loire, Rhone.
+  MONTPELLIER  Aude, Aveyron, Herault, Pyrenees-Orientales.
+  NANCY  . . . Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Vosges, Ardennes.
+  NIMES  . . . Ardeche, Gard, Lozere, Vaucluse.
+  ORLEANS  . . Indre-et-Loire, Loir-et-Cher, Loiret.
+  PAU  . . . . Landes, Basses-Pyrenees, Hautes-Pyrenees.
+  POITIERS . . Charente-Inferieure, Deux-Sevres, Vendee, Vienne.
+  RENNES . . . Cotes-du-Nord, Finistere, Ille-et-Vilaine,
+                 Loire-Inferieure, Morbihan.
+  RIOM . . . . Allier, Cantal, Haute-Loire, Puy-de-Dome.
+  ROUEN  . . . Eure, Seine-Inferieure.
+  TOULOUSE . . Ariege, Haute-Garonne, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne.
+
+At the head of each court, which is divided into sections (_chambres_),
+is a _premier president_. Each section (_chambre_) consists of a
+_president de chambre_ and four judges (_conseillers_).
+_Procureurs-generaux_ and _avocats-generaux_ are also attached to the
+_parquet_, or permanent official staff, of the courts of appeal. The
+principal function of these courts is the hearing of appeals both civil
+and criminal from the courts of first instance; only in some few cases
+(e.g. discharge of bankrupts) do they exercise an original jurisdiction.
+One of the sections is termed the _chambre des mises en accusation_. Its
+function is to examine criminal cases and to decide whether they shall
+be referred for trial to the lower courts or the _cours d'assises_. It
+may also dismiss a case on grounds of insufficient evidence.
+
+The _cours d'assises_ are not separate and permanent tribunals. Every
+three months an assize is held in each department, usually at the chief
+town, by a _conseiller_, appointed _ad hoc_, of the court of appeal upon
+which the department depends. The _cour d'assises_ occupies itself
+entirely with offences of the most serious type, classified under the
+penal code as _crimes_, in accordance with the severity of the penalties
+attached. The president is assisted in his duties by two other
+magistrates, who may be chosen either from among the _conseillers_ of
+the court of appeal or the presidents or judges of the local court of
+first instance. In this court and in this court alone there is always a
+jury of twelve. They decide, as in England, on facts only, leaving the
+application of the law to the judges. The verdict is given by a simple
+majority.
+
+In all criminal prosecutions, other than those coming before the _juge
+de paix_, a secret preliminary investigation is made by an official
+called a _juge d'instruction_. He may either dismiss the case at once by
+an order of "non-lieu," or order it to be tried, when the prosecution is
+undertaken by the _procureur_ or _procureur-general_. This process in
+some degree corresponds to the manner in which English magistrates
+dismiss a case or commit the prisoner to quarter sessions or assizes,
+but the powers of the _juge d'instruction_ are more arbitrary and
+absolute.
+
+The highest tribunal in France is the _cour de cassation_, sitting at
+Paris, and consisting of a first president, three sectional presidents
+and forty-five _conseillers_, with a ministerial staff (_parquet_)
+consisting of a _procureur-general_ and six advocates-general. It is
+divided into three sections: the Chambre des Requetes, or court of
+petitions, the civil court and the criminal court. The _cour de
+cassation_ can review the decision of any other tribunal, except
+administrative courts. Criminal appeals usually go straight to the
+criminal section, while civil appeals are generally taken before the
+Chambre des Requetes, where they undergo a preliminary examination. If
+the demand for rehearing is refused such refusal is final; but if it is
+granted the case is then heard by the civil chamber, and after argument
+_cassation_ (annulment) is granted or refused. The Court of Cassation
+does not give the ultimate decision on a case; it pronounces, not on the
+question of fact, but on the legal principle at issue, or the competence
+of the court giving the original decision. Any decision, even one of a
+_cour d'assises_, may be brought before it in the last resort, and may
+be _casse_--annulled. If it pronounces _cassation_ it remits the case to
+the hearing of a court of the same order.
+
+Commercial courts (_tribunaux de commerce_) are established in all the
+more important commercial towns to decide as expeditiously as possible
+disputed points arising out of business transactions. They consist of
+judges, chosen, from among the leading merchants, and elected by
+_commercants patentes depuis cinq ans_, i.e. persons who have held the
+licence to trade (see FINANCE) for five years and upwards. In the
+absence of a _tribunal de commerce_ commercial cases come before the
+ordinary _tribunal d'arrondissement_.
+
+In important industrial towns tribunals called _conseils de prud'hommes_
+are instituted to deal with disputes between employers and employees,
+actions arising out of contracts of apprenticeship and the like. They
+are composed of employers and workmen in equal numbers and are
+established by decree of the council of state, advised by the minister
+of justice. The minister of justice is notified of the necessity for a
+_conseil de prud'hommes_ by the prefect, acting on the advice of the
+municipal council and the Chamber of Commerce or the Chamber of Arts and
+Manufactures. The judges are elected by employers and workmen of a
+certain standing. When the amount claimed exceeds L12 appeal lies to the
+_tribunaux d'arrondissement_.
+
+_Police._--Broadly, the police of France may be divided into two great
+branches--administrative police (_la police administrative_) and
+judicial police (_la police judiciaire_), the former having for its
+object the maintenance of order, and the latter charged with tracing out
+offenders, collecting the proofs, and delivering the presumed offenders
+to the tribunals charged by law with their trial and punishment.
+Subdivisions may be, and often are, named according to the particular
+duties to which they are assigned, as _la police politique_, _police des
+moeurs_, _police sanitaire_, &c. The officers of the judicial police
+comprise the _juge de paix_ (equivalent to the English police
+magistrate), the _maire_, the _commissaire de police_, the _gendarmerie_
+and, in rural districts, the _gardes champetres_ and the _gardes
+forestiers_. _Gardiens de la paix_ (sometimes called _sergents de
+ville_, _gardes de ville_ or _agents de police_) are not to be
+confounded with the gendarmerie, being a branch of the administrative
+police and corresponding more or less nearly with the English equivalent
+"police constables," which the gendarmerie do not, although both perform
+police duty. The gendarmerie, however, differ from the agents or gardes
+both in uniform and in the fact that they are for the most part country
+patrols. The organization of the Paris police, which is typical of that
+in other large towns, may be outlined briefly. The central
+administration (_administration centrale_) comprises three classes of
+functions which together constitute _la police_. First there is the
+office or _cabinet_ of the prefect for the general police (_la police
+generale_), with bureaus for various objects, such as the safety of the
+president of the republic, the regulation and order of public
+ceremonies, theatres, amusements and entertainments, &c.; secondly, the
+judicial police (_la police judiciaire_), with numerous bureaus also, in
+constant communication with the courts of judicature; thirdly, the
+administrative police (_la police administrative_) including bureaus,
+which superintend navigation, public carriages, animals, public health,
+&c. Concurrently with these divisions there is the municipal police,
+which comprises all the agents in enforcing police regulations in the
+streets or public thoroughfares, acting under the orders of a chief
+(_chef de la police municipale_) with a central bureau. The municipal
+police is divided into two principal branches--the service in uniform of
+the _agents de police_ and the service out of uniform of _inspecteurs de
+police_. In Paris the municipal police are divided among the twenty
+arrondissements, which the uniform police patrol (see further PARIS and
+POLICE).
+
+_Prisons._--The prisons of France, some of them attached to the ministry
+of the interior, are complex in their classification. It is only from
+the middle of the 19th century that close attention has been given to
+the principle of individual separation. Cellular imprisonment was,
+however, partially adopted for persons awaiting trial. Central prisons,
+in which prisoners lived and worked in association, had been in
+existence from the commencement of the 19th century. These prisons
+received all sentenced to short terms of imprisonment, the long-term
+convicts going to the _bagnes_ (the great convict prisons at the
+arsenals of Rochefort, Brest and Toulon), while in 1851 transportation
+to penal colonies was adopted. In 1869 and 1871 commissions were
+appointed to inquire into prison discipline, and as a consequence of the
+report of the last commission, issued in 1874, the principle of cellular
+confinement was put in operation the following year. There were,
+however, but few prisons in France adapted for the cellular system, and
+the process of reconstruction has been slow. In 1898 the old Paris
+prisons of Grande-Roquette, Saint-Pelagie and Mazas were demolished, and
+to replace them a large prison with 1500 cells was erected at
+Fresnes-les-Rungis. There are (1) the _maison d'arret_, temporary places
+of durance in every arrondissement for persons charged with offences,
+and those sentenced to more than a year's imprisonment who are awaiting
+transfer to a _maison centrale_; (2) the _maison de justice_, often part
+and parcel of the former, but only existing in the assize court towns
+for the safe custody of those tried or condemned at the assizes; (3)
+departmental prisons, or _maisons de correction_, for summary
+convictions, or those sentenced to less than a year, or, if provided
+with sufficient cells, those amenable to separate confinement; (4)
+_maisons centrales_ and _penitenciers agricoles_, for all sentenced to
+imprisonment for more than a year, or to hard labour, or to those
+condemned to _travaux forces_ for offences committed in prison. There
+are eleven _maisons centrales_, nine for men (Loos, Clairvaux, Beaulieu,
+Poissy, Melun, Fontevrault, Thouars, Riom and Nimes); two for women
+(Rennes and Montpellier). The _penitenciers agricoles_ only differ from
+the _maisons centrales_ in the matter of regime; there are two--at
+Castelluccio and at Chiavari (Corsica). There are also reformatory
+establishments for juvenile offenders, and _depots de surete_ for
+prisoners who are travelling, at places where there are no other
+prisons. For the penal settlements at a distance from France see
+DEPORTATION.
+
+
+_Finance._
+
+At the head of the financial organization of France, and exercising a
+general jurisdiction, is the minister of finance, who co-ordinates in
+one general budget the separate budgets prepared by his colleagues and
+assigns to each ministerial department the sums necessary for its
+expenses.
+
+
+  Budget.
+
+The financial year in France begins on the 1st of January, and the
+budget of each financial year must be laid on the table of the Chamber
+of Deputies in the course of the ordinary session of the preceding year
+in time for the discussion upon it to begin in October and be concluded
+before the 31st of December. It is then submitted to a special
+commission of the Chamber of Deputies, elected for one year, who appoint
+a general reporter and one or more special reporters for each of the
+ministries. When the Chamber of Deputies has voted the budget it is
+submitted to a similar course of procedure in the Senate. When the
+budget has passed both chambers it is promulgated by the president under
+the title of _Loi des finances_. In the event of its not being voted
+before the 31st of December, recourse is had to the system of
+"provisional twelfths" (_douziemes provisoires_), whereby the government
+is authorized by parliament to incur expenses for one, two or three
+months on the scale of the previous year. The expenditure of the
+government has several times been regulated for as long as six months
+upon this system.
+
+
+    Taxation.
+
+  In each department an official collector (_Tresorier payeur general_)
+  receives the taxes and public revenue collected therein and accounts
+  for them to the central authority in Paris. In view of his
+  responsibilities he has, before appointment, to pay a large deposit to
+  the treasury. Besides receiving taxes, they pay the creditors of the
+  state in their departments, conduct all operations affecting
+  departmental loans, buy and sell government stock (_rentes_) on behalf
+  of individuals, and conduct certain banking operations. The
+  _tresorier_ nearly always lives at the chief town of the department,
+  and is assisted by a _receveur particulier des finances_ in each
+  arrondissement (except that in which the _tresorier_ himself resides).
+  From the _receveur_ is demanded a security equal to five times his
+  total income. The direct taxes are actually collected by
+  _percepteurs_. In the commune an official known as the _receveur
+  municipal_ receives all moneys due to it, and, subject to the
+  authorization of the mayor, makes all payments due from it. In
+  communes with a revenue of less than L2400 the _percepteur_ fulfils
+  the functions of _receveur municipal_, but a special official may be
+  appointed in communes with large incomes.
+
+  The direct taxes fall into two classes. (1) _Impots de repartition_
+  (apportionment), the amount to be raised being fixed in advance
+  annually and then apportioned among the departments. They include the
+  land tax,[19] the personal and habitation tax (_contribution
+  personnelle-mobiliere_), and door and window tax. (2) _Impots de
+  quotite_, which are levied directly on the individual, who pays his
+  quota according to a fixed tariff. These comprise the tax on
+  buildings[19] and the trade-licence tax (_impot des patentes_).
+  Besides these, certain other taxes (_taxes assimilees aux
+  contributions directes_) are included under the heading of direct
+  taxation, e.g. the tax on property in mortmain, dues for the
+  verification of weights and measures, the tax on royalties from mines,
+  on horses, mules and carriages, on cycles, &c.
+
+  _The land tax_ falls upon land not built upon in proportion to its net
+  yearly revenue. It is collected in accordance with a register of
+  property (_cadastre_) drawn up for the most part in the first half of
+  the 19th century, dealing with every piece of property in France, and
+  giving its extent and value and the name of the owner. The
+  responsibility of keeping this register accurate and up to date is
+  divided between the state, the departments and the communes, and
+  involves a special service and staff of experts. _The building tax_
+  consists of a levy of 3.20% of the rental value of the property, and
+  is charged upon the owner.
+
+  _The personal and habitation tax_ consists in fact of two different
+  taxes, one imposing a fixed capitation charge on all citizens alike of
+  every department, the charge, however, varying according to the
+  department from 1 fc. 50 c. (1s. 3d.) to 4 fcs. 50 c. (3s. 9d.), the
+  other levied on every occupier of a furnished house or of apartments
+  in proportion to its rental value.
+
+  _The tax on doors and windows_ is levied in each case according to the
+  number of apertures, and is fixed with reference to population, the
+  inhabitants of the more populous paying more than those of the less
+  populous communes.
+
+  _The trade-licence tax_ (_impot des patentes_) is imposed on every
+  person carrying on any business whatever; it affects professional men,
+  bankers and manufacturers, as well as wholesale and retail traders,
+  and consists of (1) a fixed duty levied not on actual profits but with
+  reference to the extent of a business or calling as indicated by
+  number of employes, population of the locality and other
+  considerations. (2) An assessment on the letting value of the premises
+  in which a business or profession is carried on.
+
+  The administrative staff includes, for the purpose of computing the
+  individual quotas of the direct taxes, a director assisted by
+  _controleurs_ in each department and subordinate to a central
+  authority in Paris, the _direction generale des contributions
+  directes_.
+
+  The indirect taxes comprise the charges on registration; stamps;
+  customs; and a group of taxes specially described as "indirect taxes."
+
+  _Registration_ (_enregistrement_) _duties_ are charged on the transfer
+  of property in the way of business (_a titre onereux_); on changes in
+  ownership effected in the way of donation or succession (_a titre
+  gratuit_), and on a variety of other transactions which must be
+  registered according to law. The revenue from _stamps_ includes as its
+  chief items the returns from stamped paper, stamps on goods traffic,
+  securities and share certificates and receipts and cheques.
+
+  The _Direction generale de l'enregistrement, des domaines et du
+  timbre_, comprising a central department and a director and staff of
+  agents in each department, combines the administration of state
+  property (not including forests) with the exaction of registration and
+  stamp duties.
+
+  The Customs (_douane_), at one time only a branch of the
+  administration of the _contributions indirectes_, were organized in
+  1869 as a special service. The central office at Paris consists of a
+  _directeur general_ and two _administrateurs_, nominated by the
+  president of the republic. These officials form a council of
+  administration presided over by the minister of finance. The service
+  in the departments comprises _brigades_, which are actually engaged in
+  guarding the frontiers, and a clerical staff (_service de bureau_)
+  entrusted with the collection of the duties. There are twenty-four
+  districts, each under the control of a _directeur_, assisted by
+  inspectors, sub-inspectors and other officials. The chief towns of
+  these districts are Algiers, Bayonne, Besancon, Bordeaux, Boulogne,
+  Brest, Chambery, Charleville, Dunkirk, Epinal, La Rochelle, Le Havre,
+  Lille, Lyons, Marseilles, Montpellier, Nancy, Nantes, Nice, Paris,
+  Perpignan, Rouen, St-Malo, Valenciennes. There is also an official
+  performing the functions of a director at Bastia, in Corsica.
+
+  The group specially described as indirect taxes includes those on
+  alcohol, wine, beer, cider and other alcoholic drinks, on passenger
+  and goods traffic by railway, on licences to distillers,
+  spirit-sellers, &c., on salt and on sugar of home manufacture. The
+  collection of these excise duties as well as the sale of matches,
+  tobacco and gunpowder to retailers, is assigned to a special service
+  in each department subordinated to a central administration. To the
+  above taxes must be added the _tax on Stock Exchange transactions_ and
+  the _tax of 4% on dividends from stocks and shares_ (_other than state
+  loans_).
+
+  Other main sources of revenue are: the _domains and forests_ managed
+  by the state; _government monopolies_, comprising tobacco, matches,
+  gunpowder; _posts_, _telegraphs_, _telephones_; and _state_
+  _railways_. An administrative tribunal called the _cour des comptes_
+  subjects the accounts of the state's financial agents
+  (_tresoriers-payeurs_, _receveurs_ of registration fees, of customs,
+  of indirect taxes, &c.) and of the communes[20] to a close
+  investigation, and a vote of definitive settlement is finally passed
+  by parliament. The Cour des Comptes, an ancient tribunal, was
+  abolished in 1791, and reorganized by Napoleon I. in 1807. It consists
+  of a president and 110 other officials, assisted by 25 auditors. All
+  these are nominated for life by the president of the republic. Besides
+  the accounts of the state and of the communes, those of charitable
+  institutions[20] and training colleges[20] and a great variety of
+  other public establishments are scrutinized by the Cour des Comptes.
+
+  The following table shows the rapid growth of the state revenue of
+  France during the period 1875-1905, the figures for the specified
+  years representing millions of pounds.
+
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+    | 1875. | 1880. | 1885. | 1890. | 1895. |  Average  |  Average  |
+    |       |       |       |       |       | 1896-1900.| 1901-1905.|
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+    |  108  |  118  |  122  |  129  |  137  |    144    |    147    |
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+
+  Of the revenue in 1905 (150-1/2 million pounds) the four direct taxes
+  produced approximately 20 millions. Other principal items of revenue
+  were: Registration 25 millions, stamps 7-1/2 millions, customs 18
+  millions, inland revenue on liquors 16-1/2 millions, receipts from the
+  tobacco monopoly 18 millions, receipts from post office 10-1/2
+  millions.
+
+
+    Expenditure.
+
+  Since 1875 the expenditure of the state has passed through
+  considerable fluctuations. It reached its maximum in 1883, descended
+  in 1888 and 1889, and since then has continuously increased. It was
+  formerly the custom to divide the credits voted for the discharge of
+  the public services into two heads--the ordinary and extraordinary
+  budget. The ordinary budget of expenditure was that met entirely by
+  the produce of the taxes, while the extraordinary budget of
+  expenditure was that which had to be incurred either in the way of an
+  immediate loan or in aid of the funds of the floating debt. The policy
+  adopted after 1890 of incorporating in the ordinary budget the
+  expenditure on war, marine and public works, each under its own head,
+  rendered the "extraordinary budget" obsolete, but there are still,
+  besides the ordinary budget, _budgets annexes_, comprising the credits
+  voted to certain establishments under state supervision, e.g. the
+  National Savings Bank, state railways, &c. The growth of the
+  expenditure of France is shown in the following summary figures, which
+  represent millions of pounds.
+
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+    | 1875. | 1880. | 1885. | 1890. | 1895. |  Average  |  Average  |
+    |       |       |       |       |       | 1896-1900.| 1901-1905.|
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+    |  117  |  135  |  139  |  132  |  137  |    143    |    147    |
+    +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+
+
+  The chief item of expenditure (which totalled 148 million pounds in
+  1905) is the service of the public debt, which in 1905 cost 48-1/4
+  million pounds sterling. Of the rest of the sum assigned to the
+  ministry of finance (59-3/4 millions in all) 8-1/2 millions went in
+  the expense of collection of revenue. The other ministries with the
+  largest outgoings were the ministry of war (the expenditure of which
+  rose from 25-1/2 millions in 1895 to over 30 millions in 1905), the
+  ministry of marine (10-3/4 millions in 1895, over 12-1/2 millions in
+  1905), the ministry of public works (with an expenditure in 1905 of
+  over 20 millions, 10 millions of which was assigned to posts,
+  telegraphs and telephones) and the ministry of public instruction,
+  fine arts and public worship, the expenditure on education having
+  risen from 7-1/2 millions in 1895 to 9-1/2 millions in 1905.
+
+  _Public Debt._--The national debt of France is the heaviest of any
+  country in the world. Its foundation was laid early in the 15th
+  century, and the continuous wars of succeeding centuries, combined
+  with the extravagance of the monarchs, as well as deliberate disregard
+  of financial and economic conditions, increased it at an alarming
+  rate. The duke of Sully carried out a revision in 1604, and other
+  attempts were made by Mazarin and Colbert, but the extravagances of
+  Louis XV. swelled it again heavily. In 1764 the national debt amounted
+  to 2,360,000,000 livres, and the annual change to 93,000,000 livres. A
+  consolidation was effected in 1793, but the lavish issue of assignats
+  (q.v.) destroyed whatever advantage might have accrued, and the debt
+  was again dealt with by a law of the 9th of Vendemiaire year VI. (27th
+  of September 1797), the annual interest paid yearly to creditors then
+  amounting to 40,216,000 francs (L1,600,000). During the Directory a
+  sum of L250,000 was added to the interest charge, and by 1814 this
+  annual charge had risen to L2,530,000. This large increase is to be
+  accounted for by the fact that during the Napoleonic regime the
+  government steadily refused to issue inconvertible paper currency or
+  to meet war expenditure by borrowing. The following table shows the
+  increase of the funded debt since 1814.[21]
+
+    +------------------+------------------+-----------------+
+    |       Date.      | Nominal Capital  |    Interest     |
+    |                  | (Millions of L). | (Millions of L).|
+    +------------------+------------------+-----------------+
+    | April 1,    1814 |       50-3/4     |      2-1/2      |
+    | April 1,    1830 |      177         |      8          |
+    | March 1,    1848 |      238-1/4     |      9-3/4      |
+    | January 1,  1852 |      220-3/4     |      9-1/2      |
+    |    "        1871 |      498-1/4     |     15-1/2      |
+    |    "        1876 |      796-1/4     |     30          |
+    |    "        1887 |      986-1/2     |     34-1/4      |
+    |    "        1895 |     1038-3/4[22] |     32-1/2      |
+    |    "        1905 |     1037-1/4     |     31          |
+    +------------------+------------------+-----------------+
+
+  The French debt as constituted in 1905 was made up of funded debt and
+  floating debt as follows:
+
+                        _Funded Debt._
+
+    Perpetual 3% _rentes_                       L888,870,400
+    Terminable 3% _rentes_                       148,490,400
+                                              --------------
+        Total of funded debt                  L1,037,360,800
+                                              ==============
+    Guarantees to railway companies, &c. (in
+      capital)                                   L89,724,080
+    Other debt in capital                         46,800,840
+                                                 -----------
+                        _Floating Debt._
+
+    Exchequer bills                               L9,923,480
+    Liabilities on behalf of communes and public
+      establishments, including departmental
+      services                                    17,366,520
+    Deposit and current accounts of Caisse des
+      depots, &c., including savings banks        15,328,840
+    Caution money of Tresoriers payeurs-generaux   1,431,680
+    Other liabilities                              6,456,200
+                                                 -----------
+        Total of floating debt                   L50,506,720
+
+  _Departmental Finances._--Every department has a budget of its own,
+  which is prepared and presented by the prefect, voted by the
+  departmental council and approved by decree of the president of the
+  republic. The ordinary receipts include the revenues from the property
+  of the department, the produce of _additional centimes_, which are
+  levied in conjunction with the direct taxes for the maintenance of
+  both departmental and communal finances, state subventions and
+  contributions of the communes towards certain branches of poor relief
+  and to maintenance of roads. The chief expenses of the departments are
+  the care of pauper children and lunatics, the maintenance of
+  high-roads and the service of the departmental debt.
+
+  _Communal Finances._--The budget of the commune is prepared by the
+  mayor, voted by the municipal council and approved by the prefect. But
+  in communes the revenues of which exceed L120,000, the budget is
+  always submitted to the president of the republic. The ordinary
+  revenues include the produce of "additional centimes" allocated to
+  communal purposes, the rents and profits of communal property, sums
+  produced by municipal taxes and dues, concessions to gas, water and
+  other companies, and by the _octroi_ (q.v.) or duty on a variety of
+  articles imported into the commune for local consumption. The
+  repairing of highways, the upkeep of public buildings, the support of
+  public education, the remuneration of numerous officials connected
+  with the collection of state taxes, the keeping of the _cadastre_,
+  &c., constitute the principal objects of communal expenditure.
+
+  Both the departments and the communes have considerable public debts.
+  The departmental debt in 1904 stood at 24 million pounds, and the
+  communal debt at 153 million pounds.     (R. Tr.)
+
+
+_Army._
+
+_Recruiting and Strength._--Universal compulsory service was adopted
+after the disasters of 1870-1871, though in principle it had been
+established by Marshal Niel's reforms a few years before that date. The
+most important of the recruiting laws passed since 1870 are those of
+1872, 1889 and 1905, the last the "loi de deux ans" which embodies the
+last efforts of the French war department to keep pace with the
+ever-growing numbers of the German empire. Compulsory service with the
+colours is in Germany no longer universal, as there are twice as many
+able-bodied men presented by the recruiting commissions as the active
+army can absorb. France, with a greatly inferior population, now trains
+every man who is physically capable. This law naturally made a deep
+impression on military Europe, not merely because the period of colour
+service was reduced--Germany had taken this step years before--but
+because of the almost entire absence of the usual exemptions. Even
+bread-winners are required to serve, the state pensioning their
+dependants (75 centimes per diem, up to 10% of the strength) during
+their period of service. Dispensations, and also the one-year
+voluntariat, which had become a short cut for the so-called
+"intellectual class" to employment in the civil service rather than a
+means of training reserve officers, were abolished. Every Frenchman
+therefore is a member of the army practically or potentially from the
+age of twenty to the age of forty-five. Each year there is drawn up in
+every commune a list of the young men who attained the age of twenty
+during the previous year. These young men are then examined by a
+revising body (_Conseil de revision cantonal_) composed of civil and
+military officials. Men physically unfit are wholly exempted, and men
+who have not, at the time of the examination, attained the required
+physical standard are put back for re-examination after an interval. Men
+who, otherwise suitable, have some slight infirmity are drafted into the
+non-combatant branches. The minimum height for the infantry soldier is
+1.54 m., or 5 ft. 1/2 in., but men of special physique are taken below
+this height. In 1904, under the old system of three-years' service with
+numerous total and partial exemptions, 324,253 men became liable to
+incorporation, of whom 25,432 were rejected as unfit, 55,265 were
+admitted as one-year volunteers, 62,160 were put back, 27,825 had
+already enlisted with a view to making the army a career, 5257 were
+taken for the navy, and thus, with a few extra details and casualties,
+the contingent for full service dwindled to 147,549 recruits. In 1906,
+326,793 men had to present themselves, 25,348 had already enlisted, 4923
+went to the navy, 68,526 were put back, 33,777 found unfit, which,
+deducting 3128 details, gives an actual incorporated contingent of
+191,091 young men of twenty-one to serve for two full years (in each
+case, for the sake of comparison, men put back from former years who
+were enrolled are omitted). In theory a two-years' contingent of course
+should be half as large again as a three-years' one, but in practice,
+France has not men enough for so great an increase. Still the law of
+1905 provides a system whereby there is room with the colours for every
+available man, and moreover ensures his services. The net gain in the
+1906 class is not far short of 50,000, and the proportion of the new
+contingent to the old is practically 5:4. The _loi des cadres_ of 1907
+introduced many important changes of detail supplementary to the _loi de
+deux ans_. Important changes were also made in the provisions and
+administration of military law. The active army, then, at a given
+moment, say November 1, 1908, is composed of all the young men, not
+legally exempted, who have reached the age of twenty in the years 1906
+and 1907. It is at the disposal of the minister of war, who can decree
+the recall of all men discharged to the reserve the previous year and
+all those whose time of service has for any reason been shortened. The
+reserves of the active army are composed of those who have served the
+legal period in the active army. These are recalled twice, in the eleven
+years during which they are members of the reserve, for refresher
+courses. The active army and its reserve are not localized, but drawn
+from and distributed over the whole of France. The advantages of a
+purely territorial system have tempted various War Ministers to apply
+it, but the results were not good, owing to the want of uniformity in
+the military qualities and the political subordination of the different
+districts. One result of this is that mobilization and concentration are
+much slower processes than they are in Germany.
+
+The Territorial Army and its reserve (members of which undergo two short
+periods of training) are, however, allocated to local service. The
+soldier spends six years in the Territorial Army, and six in the reserve
+of the Territorial Army. The reserves of the active army and the
+Territorial Army and its reserve can only be recalled to active service
+in case of emergency and by decree of the head of the state.
+
+The total service rendered by the individual soldier is thus twenty-five
+years. He is registered at the age of twenty, is called to the colours
+on the 1st of October of the next year, discharged to the active army
+reserve on the 30th of September of the second year thereafter, to the
+Territorial Army at the same date thirteen complete years after his
+incorporation, and finally discharged from the reserve of the
+Territorial Army on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his entry into the
+active army. On November 1, 1908, then the active army was composed of
+the classes registered 1906 and 1907, the reserve of the classes
+1895-1905, the Territorial Army of those of 1889-1894 and the
+Territorial Army reserve of those of 1883-1888.
+
+In 1906 the peace strength of the army in France was estimated at
+532,593 officers and men; in Algeria 54,580; in Tunis 20,320; total
+607,493. Deducting vacancies, sick and absent, the effective strength of
+the active army in 1906 was 540,563; of the gendarmerie and Garde
+Republicaine 24,512; of colonial troops in the colonies 58,568. The full
+number of persons liable to be called upon for military service and
+engaged in such service is calculated (1908) as 4,800,000, of whom
+1,350,000 of the active army and the younger classes of army reserve
+would constitute the field armies set on foot at the outbreak of war.
+150,000 horses and mules are maintained on a peace footing and 600,000
+on a war footing.
+
+_Organization._--The general organization of the French army at home is
+based on the system of permanent army corps, the headquarters of which
+are as follows: I. Lille, II. Amiens, III. Rouen, IV. Le Mans, V.
+Orleans, VI. Chalons-sur-Marne, VII. Besancon, VIII. Bourges, IX. Tours,
+X. Rennes, XI. Nantes, XII. Limoges, XIII. Clermont-Ferrand, XIV. Lyons,
+XV. Marseilles, XVI. Montpellier, XVII. Toulouse, XVIII. Bordeaux, XIX.
+Algiers and XX. Nancy. Each army corps consists in principle of two
+infantry divisions, one cavalry brigade, one brigade of horse and field
+artillery, one engineer battalion and one squadron of train. But certain
+army corps have a special organization. The VI. corps (Chalons) and the
+VII. (Besancon) consist of three divisions each, and the XIX. (Algiers)
+has three divisions of its own as well as the division occupying Tunis.
+In addition to these corps there are eight permanent cavalry divisions
+with headquarters at Paris, Luneville, Meaux, Sedan, Reims, Lyons, Melun
+and Dole. The military government of Paris is independent of the army
+corps system and comprises, besides a division of the colonial army
+corps (see below), 3-1/2 others detached from the II., III., IV. and V.
+corps, as well as the 1st and 3rd cavalry divisions and many smaller
+bodies of troops. The military government of Lyons is another
+independent and special command; it comprises practically the XIV. army
+corps and the 6th cavalry division. The infantry division consists of 2
+brigades, each of 2 regiments of 3 or 4 battalions (the 4 battalion
+regiments have recently been reduced for the most part to 3), with 1
+squadron cavalry and 12 batteries, attached from the corps troops, in
+war a proportion of the artillery would, however, be taken back to form
+the corps artillery (see ARTILLERY and TACTICS). The cavalry division
+consists of 2 or 3 brigades, each of 2 regiments or 8 squadrons, with 2
+horse artillery batteries attached. The army corps consists of
+headquarters, 2 (or 3) infantry divisions, 1 cavalry brigade, 1
+artillery brigade (2 regiments, comprising 21 field and 2 horse
+batteries), 1 engineer battalion, &c. In war a group of "Rimailho" heavy
+howitzers (see ORDNANCE: _Heavy Field and Light Siege Units_) would be
+attached. It is proposed, and accepted in principle, to increase the
+number of guns in the army corps by converting the horse batteries in 18
+army corps to field batteries, which, with other measures, enables the
+number of the latter to be increased to 36 (144 guns).
+
+The organization of the "metropolitan troops" by regiments is (a) 163
+regiments of line infantry, some of which are affected to "regional"
+duties and do not enter into the composition of their army corps for
+war, 31 battalions of _chasseurs a pied_, mostly stationed in the Alps
+and the Vosges, 4 regiments of Zouaves, 4 regiments of Algerian
+tirailleurs (natives, often called Turcos[23]), 2 foreign legion
+regiments, 5 battalions of African light infantry (disciplinary
+regiments), &c; (b) 12 regiments of cuirassiers, 32 of dragoons, 21 of
+_chasseurs a cheval_, 14 of hussars, 6 of _chasseurs d'Afrique_ and 4 of
+Spahis (Algerian natives); (c) 40 regiments of artillery, comprising 445
+field batteries, 14 mountain batteries and 52 horse batteries (see,
+however, above), 18 battalions of garrison artillery, with in addition
+13 companies of artificers, &c.; (d) 6 regiments of engineers forming 22
+battalions, and 1 railway regiment; (e) 20 squadrons of train, 27
+legions of gendarmerie and the Paris Garde Republicaine, administrative
+and medical units.
+
+_Colonial Troops._--These form an expeditionary army corps in France to
+which are attached the actual corps of occupation to the various
+colonies, part white, part natives. The colonial army corps,
+headquarters at Paris, has three divisions, at Paris, Toulon and Brest.
+
+The French colonial (formerly marine) infantry, recruited by voluntary
+enlistment, comprises 18 regiments and 5 independent battalions (of
+which 12 regiments are at home), 74 batteries of field, fortress and
+mountain artillery (of which 32 are at home), with a few cavalry and
+engineers, &c., and other services in proportion. The native troops
+include 13 regiments and 8 independent battalions. The strength of this
+army corps is 28,700 in France and 61,300 in the colonies.
+
+_Command._--The commander-in-chief of all the armed forces is the
+president of the Republic, but the practical direction of affairs lies
+in the hand of the minister of war, who is assisted by the _Conseil
+superieur de la guerre_, a body of senior generals who have been
+selected to be appointed to the higher commands in war. The
+vice-president is the destined commander-in-chief of the field armies
+and is styled the generalissimo. The chief of staff of the army is also
+a member of the council. In war the latter would probably remain at the
+ministry of war in Paris, and the generalissimo would have his own chief
+of staff. The ministry of war is divided into branches for infantry,
+cavalry, &c.--and services for special subjects such as military law,
+explosives, health, &c. The general staff (_etat major de l'armee_) has
+its functions classed as follows: personnel; material and finance; 1st
+bureau (organization and mobilization), 2nd (intelligence), 3rd
+(military operations and training) and 4th (communications and
+transport); and the famous historical section. The president of the
+Republic has a military household, and the minister a cabinet, both of
+which are occupied chiefly with questions of promotion, patronage and
+decorations.
+
+The general staff and also the staff of the corps and divisions are
+composed of certificated (_brevetes_) officers who have passed all
+through the Ecole de Guerre. In time of peace an officer is attached to
+the staff for not more than four years. He must then return to
+regimental duty for at least two years.
+
+The officers of the army are obtained partly from the old-established
+military schools, partly from the ranks of the non-commissioned
+officers, the proportion of the latter being about one-third of the
+total number of officers. Artillery and engineer officers come from the
+Ecole Polytechnique, infantry and cavalry from the Ecole speciale
+militaire de St-Cyr. Other important training institutions are the staff
+college (Ecole superieure de Guerre) which trains annually 70 to 90
+selected captains and lieutenants; the musketry school of Chalons, the
+gymnastic school at Joinville-le-Pont and the schools of St Maixent,
+Saumur and Versailles for the preparation of non-commissioned officers
+for commissions in the infantry, cavalry, artillery and engineers
+respectively. The non-commissioned officers are, as usual in universal
+service armies, drawn partly from men who voluntarily enlist at a
+relatively early age, and partly from men who at the end of their
+compulsory period of service are re-engaged. Voluntary enlistments in
+the French army are permissible, within certain limits, at the age of
+eighteen, and the _engages_ serve for at least three years. The law
+further provides for the re-engagement of men of all ranks, under
+conditions varying according to their rank. Such re-engagements are for
+one to three years' effective service but may be extended to fifteen.
+They date from the time of the legal expiry of each man's compulsory
+active service. _Rengages_ receive a bounty, a higher rate of pay and a
+pension at the conclusion of their service. The total number of men who
+had re-enlisted stood in 1903 at 8594.
+
+_Armament._--The field artillery is armed with the 75 mm. gun, a
+shielded quick-firer (see ORDNANCE: _Field Equipments_, for illustration
+and details); this weapon was the forerunner of all modern models of
+field gun, and is handled on tactical principles specially adapted for
+it, which gives the French field artillery a unique position amongst the
+military nations. The infantry, which was the first in Europe to be
+armed with the magazine rifle, still carries this, the Lebel, rifle
+which dates from 1886. It is believed, however, that a satisfactory type
+of automatic rifle (see RIFLE) has been evolved and is now (1908) in
+process of manufacture. Details are kept strictly secret. The cavalry
+weapons are a straight sword (that of the heavy cavalry is illustrated
+in the article SWORD), a bamboo lance and the Lebel carbine.
+
+It is convenient to mention in this place certain institutions attached
+to the war department and completing the French military organization.
+The Hotel des Invalides founded by Louis XIV. and Louvois is a house of
+refuge for old and infirm soldiers of all grades. The number of the
+inmates is decreasing; but the institution is an expensive one. In 1875
+the "Invalides" numbered 642, and the hotel cost the state 1,123,053
+francs. The order of the Legion of Honour is treated under KNIGHTHOOD
+AND CHIVALRY. The _medaille militaire_ is awarded to private soldiers
+and non-commissioned officers who have distinguished themselves or
+rendered long and meritorious services. This was introduced in 1852,
+carries a yearly pension of 100 frs. and has been granted occasionally
+to officers.
+
+_Fortifications._--After 1870 France embarked upon a policy of elaborate
+frontier and inner defences, with the object of ensuring, as against an
+unexpected German invasion, the time necessary for the effective
+development of her military forces, which were then in process of
+reorganization. Some information as to the types of fortification
+adopted in 1870-1875 will be found in FORTIFICATION AND SIEGECRAFT. The
+general lines of the scheme adopted were as follows: On the Meuse, which
+forms the principal natural barrier on the side of Lorraine, Verdun
+(q.v.) was fortified as a large entrenched camp, and along the river
+above this were constructed a series of _forts d'arret_ (see MEUSE LINE)
+ending in another entrenched camp at Toul (q.v.). From this point a gap
+(the _trouee d'Epinal_) was left, so as "in some sort to canalize the
+flow of invasion" (General Bonnal), until the upper Moselle was reached
+at Epinal (q.v.). Here another entrenched camp was made and from it the
+"Moselle line" (q.v.) of _forts d'arret_ continues the barrier to
+Belfort (q.v.), another large entrenched camp, beyond which a series of
+fortifications at Montbeliard and the Lomont range carries the line of
+defence to the Swiss border, which in turn is protected by works at
+Pontarlier and elsewhere. In rear of these lines Verdun-Toul and
+Epinal-Belfort, respectively, lie two large defended areas in which
+under certain circumstances the main armies would assemble preparatory
+to offensive movements. One of these areas is defined by the three
+fortresses, La Fere, Laon and Reims, the other by the triangle,
+Langres--Dijon--Besancon. On the side of Belgium the danger of irruption
+through neutral territory, which has for many years been foreseen, is
+provided against by the fortresses of Lille, Valenciennes and Maubeuge,
+but (with a view to tempting the Germans to attack through Luxemburg, as
+is stated by German authorities) the frontier between Maubeuge and
+Verdun is left practically undefended. The real defence of this region
+lies in the field army which would, if the case arose, assemble in the
+area La Fere-Reims-Laon. On the Italian frontier the numerous _forts
+d'arret_ in the mountains are strongly supported by the entrenched camps
+of Besancon, Grenoble and Nice. Behind all this huge development of
+fixed defences lie the central fortresses of Paris and Lyons. The
+defences, of the Spanish frontier consist of the entrenched camps of
+Bayonne and Perpignan and the various small _forts d'arret_ of the
+Pyrenees. Of the coast defences the principal are Toulon, Antibes,
+Rochefort, Lorient, Brest, Oleron, La Rochelle, Belle-Isle, Cherbourg,
+St-Malo, Havre, Calais, Gravelines and Dunkirk. A number of the older
+fortresses, dating for the most part from Louis XIV.'s time, are still
+in existence, but are no longer of military importance. Such are Arras,
+Longwy, Mezieres and Montmedy.
+
+
+_Navy._
+
+_Central Administration._--The head of the French navy is the Minister
+of Marine, who like the other ministers is appointed by decree of the
+head of the state, and is usually a civilian. He selects for himself a
+staff of civilians (the _cabinet du ministre_), which is divided into
+bureaux for the despatch of business. The head of the cabinet prepares
+for the consideration of the minister all the business of the navy,
+especially questions of general importance. His chief professional
+assistant is the _chef d'etat-major general_ (chief of the general
+staff), a vice-admiral, who is responsible for the organization of the
+naval forces, the mobilization and movements of the fleet, &c.
+
+The central organization also comprises a number of departments
+(_services_) entrusted with the various branches of naval
+administration, such as administration of the active fleet, construction
+of ships, arsenals, recruiting, finance, &c. The minister has the
+assistance of the _Conseil superieur de la Marine_, over which he
+presides, consisting of three vice-admirals, the chief of staff and some
+other members. The _Conseil superieur_ devotes its attention to all
+questions touching the fighting efficiency of the fleet, naval bases and
+arsenals and coast defence. Besides the _Conseil superieur_ the minister
+is advised on a very wide range of naval topics (including pay, quarters
+and recruiting) by the _Comite consultatif de la Marine_. Advisory
+committees are also appointed to deal with special subjects, e.g. the
+_commissions de classement_ which attend to questions of promotion in
+the various branches of the navy, the naval works council and others.
+
+The French coast is divided into five naval arrondissements, which have
+their headquarters at the five naval ports, of which Cherbourg, Brest,
+and Toulon are the most important, Lorient and Rochefort being of lesser
+degree. All are building and fitting-out yards. Each arrondissement is
+divided into sous-arrondissements, having their centres in the great
+commercial ports, but this arrangement is purely for the embodiment of
+the men of the Inscription Maritime, and has nothing to do with the
+dockyards as naval arsenals. In each arrondissement the vice-admiral,
+who is naval prefect, is the immediate representative of the minister of
+marine, and has full direction and command of the arsenal, which is his
+headquarters. He is thus commander-in-chief, as also governor-designate
+for time of war, but his authority does not extend to ships belonging to
+organized squadrons or divisions. The naval prefect is assisted by a
+rear-admiral as chief of the staff (except at Lorient and Rochefort,
+where the office is filled by a captain), and a certain number of other
+officers, the special functions of the chief of the staff having
+relation principally to the efficiency and _personnel_ of the fleet,
+while the "major-general," who is usually a rear-admiral, is concerned
+chiefly with the _materiel_. There are also directors of stores, of
+naval construction, of the medical service, and of the submarine
+defences (which are concerned with torpedoes, mines and torpedo-boats),
+as well as of naval ordnance and works, The prefect directs the
+operations of the arsenal, and is responsible for its efficiency and for
+that of the ships which are there in reserve. In regard to the
+constitution and maintenance of the naval forces, the administration of
+the arsenals is divided into three principal departments, the first
+concerned with naval construction, the second with ordnance, including
+gun-mountings and small-arms, and the third with the so-called submarine
+defences, dealing with all torpedo _materiel_.
+
+The French navy is manned partly by voluntary enlistment, partly by the
+transference to the navy of a certain proportion of each year's recruits
+for the army, but mainly by a system known as _inscription maritime_.
+This system, devised and introduced by Colbert in 1681, has continued,
+with various modifications, ever since. All French sailors between the
+ages of eighteen and fifty must be enrolled as members of the _armee de
+mer_. The term sailor is used in a very wide sense and includes all
+persons earning their living by navigation on the sea, or in the
+harbours or roadsteads, or on salt lakes or canals within the maritime
+domain of the state, or on rivers and canals as far as the tide goes up
+or sea-going ships can pass. The inscript usually begins his service at
+the age of twenty and passes through a period of obligatory service
+lasting seven years, and generally comprising five years of active
+service and two years furlough.
+
+Besides the important harbours already referred to, the French fleet has
+naval bases at Oran in Algeria, Bizerta in Tunisia, Saigon in Cochin
+China and Hongaj in Tongking, Diego-Suarez in Madagascar, Dakar in
+Senegal, Fort de France in Martinique, Noumea in New Caledonia.
+
+The ordnance department of the navy is carried on by a large detachment
+of artillery officers and artificers provided by the war office for this
+special duty.
+
+The fleet is divided into the Mediterranean squadron, the Northern
+squadron, the Atlantic division, the Far Eastern division, the Pacific
+division, the Indian Ocean division, the Cochin China division.
+
+The chief naval school is the _Ecole navale_ at Brest, which is devoted
+to the training of officers; the age of admission is from fifteen to
+eighteen years, and pupils after completing their course pass a year on
+a frigate school. At Paris there is a more advanced school (_Ecole
+superieure de la Marine_) for the supplementary training of officers.
+Other schools are the school of naval medicine at Bordeaux with annexes
+at Toulon, Brest and Rochefort; schools of torpedoes and mines and of
+gunnery at Toulon, &c., &c. The _ecoles d'hydrographie_ established at
+various ports are for theoretical training for the higher grades of the
+merchant service. (See also NAVY.)
+
+The total personnel of the _armee de mer_ in 1909 is given as 56,800
+officers and men. As to the number of vessels, which fluctuates from
+month to month, little can be said that is wholly accurate at any given
+moment, but, very roughly, the French navy in 1909 included 25
+battleships, 7 coast defence ironclads, 19 armoured cruisers, 36
+protected cruisers, 22 sloops, gunboats, &c., 45 destroyers, 319 torpedo
+boats, 71 submersibles and submarines and 8 auxiliary cruisers. It was
+stated that, according to proposed arrangements, the principal fighting
+elements of the fleet would be, in 1919, 34 battleships, 36 armoured
+cruisers, 6 smaller cruisers of modern type, 109 destroyers, 170 torpedo
+boats and 171 submersibles and submarines. The budgetary cost of the
+navy in 1908 was stated as 312,000,000 fr. (L12,480,000).     (C. F. A.)
+
+
+_Education._
+
+The burden of public instruction in France is shared by the communes,
+departments and state, while side by side with the public schools of all
+grades are private schools subjected to a state supervision and certain
+restrictions. At the head of the whole organization is the minister of
+public instruction. He is assisted and advised by the superior council
+of public instruction, over which he presides.
+
+France is divided into sixteen _academies_ or educational districts,
+having their centres at the seats of the universities. The capitals of
+these _academies_, together with the departments included in them, are
+tabulated below:
+
+     Academies.             Departments included in them.
+
+  PARIS  . . . . . Seine, Cher, Eure-et-Loir, Loir-et-Cher, Loiret,
+                     Marne, Oise, Seine-et-Marne, Seine-et-Oise.
+  AIX  . . . . . . Bouches-du-Rhone, Basses-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes,
+                     Corse, Var, Vaucluse.
+  BESANCON . . . . Doubs, Jura, Haute-Saone, Territoire de
+                     Belfort.
+  BORDEAUX . . . . Gironde, Dordogne, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne,
+                     Basses-Pyrenees.
+  CAEN . . . . . . Calvados, Eure, Manche, Orne, Sarthe,
+                     Seine-Inferieure.
+  CHAMBERY  .  . . Savoie, Haute-Savoie.
+  CLERMONT-FERRAND Puy-de-Dome, Allier, Cantal, Correze, Creuse,
+                     Haute-Loire.
+  DIJON  . . . . . Cote-d'Or, Aube, Haute-Marne, Nievre, Yonne.
+  GRENOBLE . . . . Isere, Hautes-Alpes, Ardeche, Drome.
+  LILLE  . . . . . Nord, Aisne, Ardennes, Pas-de-Calais, Somme.
+  LYONS  . . . . . Rhone, Ain, Loire, Saone-et-Loire.
+  MONTPELLIER  . . Herault, Aude, Gard, Lozere, Pyrenees-Orientales.
+  NANCY  . . . . . Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Vosges.
+  POITIERS . . . . Vienne, Charente, Charente-Inferieure, Indre,
+                     Indre-et-Loire, Deux-Sevres, Vendee, Haute-Vienne.
+  RENNES . . . . . Ille-et-Vilaine, Cotes-du-Nord, Finistere,
+                     Loire-Inferieure,
+                     Maine-et-Loire, Mayenne, Morbihan.
+  TOULOUSE . . . . Haute-Garonne, Ariege, Aveyron, Gers, Lot,
+                     Hautes-Pyrenees, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne.
+
+    There is also an _academie_ comprising Algeria.
+
+For the administrative organization of education in France see
+EDUCATION.
+
+Any person fulfilling certain legal requirements with regard to
+capacity, age and character may set up privately an educational
+establishment of any grade, but by the law of 1904 all religious
+congregations are prohibited from keeping schools of any kind whatever.
+
+  _Primary Instruction._--All primary public instruction is free and
+  compulsory for children of both sexes between the ages of six and
+  thirteen, but if a child can gain a certificate of primary studies at
+  the age of eleven or after, he may be excused the rest of the period
+  demanded by law. A child may receive instruction in a public or
+  private school or at home. But if the parents wish him to be taught in
+  a private school they must give notice to the mayor of the commune of
+  their intention and the school chosen. If educated at home, the child
+  (after two years of the compulsory period has expired) must undergo a
+  yearly examination, and if it is unsatisfactory the parents will be
+  compelled to send him to a public or private school.
+
+  Each commune is in theory obliged to maintain at least one public
+  primary school, but with the approval of the minister, the
+  departmental council may authorize a commune to combine with other
+  communes in the upkeep of a school. If the number of inhabitants
+  exceed 500, the commune must also provide a special school for girls,
+  unless the Departmental Council authorizes it to substitute a mixed
+  school. Each department is bound to maintain two primary training
+  colleges, one for masters, the other for mistresses of primary
+  schools. There are two higher training colleges of primary instruction
+  at Fontenay-aux-Roses and St Cloud for the training of mistresses and
+  masters of training colleges and higher primary schools.
+
+  The Laws of 1882 and 1886 "laicized" the schools of this class, the
+  former suppressing religious instruction, the latter providing that
+  only laymen should be eligible for masterships. There were also a
+  great many schools in the control of various religious congregations,
+  but a law of 1904 required that they should all be suppressed within
+  ten years from the date of its enactment.
+
+  Public primary schools include (1) _ecoles maternelles_--infant
+  schools for children from two to six years old; (2) elementary primary
+  schools--these are the ordinary schools for children from six to
+  thirteen; (3) higher primary schools (_ecoles primaires superieures_)
+  and "supplementary courses"; these admit pupils who have gained the
+  certificate of primary elementary studies (_certificat d'etudes
+  primaires_), offer a more advanced course and prepare for technical
+  instruction; (4) primary technical schools (_ecoles manuelles
+  d'apprentissage_, _ecoles primaires superieures professionnelles_)
+  kept by the communes or departments. Primary courses for adults are
+  instituted by the prefect on the recommendation of the municipal
+  council and academy inspector.
+
+  Persons keeping private primary schools are free with regard to their
+  methods, programmes and books employed, except that they may not use
+  books expressly prohibited by the superior council of public
+  instruction. Before opening a private school the person proposing to
+  do so must give notice to the mayor, prefect and academy inspector,
+  and forward his diplomas and other particulars to the latter official.
+
+  _Secondary Education._--Secondary education is given by the state in
+  _lycees_, by the communes in _colleges_ and by private individuals and
+  associations in private secondary schools. It is not compulsory, nor
+  is it entirely gratuitous, but the fees are small and the state offers
+  a great many scholarships, by means of which a clever child can pay
+  for its own instruction. Cost of tuition (simply) ranges from L2 to
+  L16 a year. The lycees also take boarders--the cost of boarding
+  ranging from L22 to L52 a year. A lycee is founded in a town by decree
+  of the president of the republic, with the advice of the superior
+  council of public instruction. The municipality has to pay the cost of
+  building, furnishing and upkeep. At the head of the lycee is the
+  principal (_proviseur_), an official nominated by the minister, and
+  assisted by a teaching staff of professors and _charges de cours_ or
+  teachers of somewhat lower standing. To become professor in a lycee it
+  is necessary to pass an examination known as the "_agregation_,"
+  candidates for which must be licentiates of a faculty (or have passed
+  through the _Ecole normale superieure_).
+
+  The system of studies--reorganized in 1902--embraces a full
+  curriculum of seven years, which is divided into two periods. The
+  first lasts four years, and at the end of this the pupil may obtain
+  (after examination) the "certificate of secondary studies." During the
+  second period the pupil has a choice of four courses: (1) Latin and
+  Greek; (2) Latin and sciences; (3) Latin and modern languages; (4)
+  sciences and modern languages. At the end of this period he presents
+  himself for a degree called the _Baccalaureat de l'enseignement
+  secondaire_. This is granted (after two examinations) by the faculties
+  of letters and sciences jointly (see below), and in most cases it is
+  necessary for a student to hold this general degree before he may be
+  enrolled in a particular faculty of a university and proceed to a
+  Baccalaureat in a particular subject, such as law, theology or
+  medicine.
+
+  The colleges, though of a lower grade, are in most respects similar to
+  the lycees, but they are financed by the communes: the professors may
+  have certain less important qualifications in lieu of the
+  "_agregation_." Private secondary schools are subjected to state
+  inspection. The teachers must not belong to any congregation, and must
+  have a diploma of aptitude for teaching and the degree of
+  "_licencie_." The establishment of lycees for girls was first
+  attempted in 1880. They give an education similar to that offered in
+  the lycees for boys--with certain modifications--in a curriculum of
+  five or six years. There is a training-college for teachers in
+  secondary schools for girls at Sevres.
+
+  _Higher education_ is given by the state in the universities, and in
+  special higher schools; and, since the law of 1875 established the
+  freedom of higher education, by private individuals and bodies in
+  private schools and "faculties" (_facultes libres_). The law of 1880
+  reserved to the state "faculties" the right to confer degrees, and the
+  law of 1896 established various universities each containing one or
+  more faculties. There are five kinds of faculties: medicine, letters,
+  science, law and Protestant theology. The faculties of letters and
+  sciences, besides granting the _Baccalaureat de l'enseignement
+  secondaire_, confer the degrees of licentiate and doctor (_la Licence,
+  le Doctorat_). The faculties of medicine confer the degree of doctor
+  of medicine. The faculties of theology confer the degrees of bachelor,
+  licentiate and doctor of theology. The faculties of law confer the
+  same degrees in law and also grant "certificates of capacity," which
+  enable the holder to practise as an _avoue_; a _licence_ is necessary
+  for the profession of barrister. Students of the private faculties
+  have to be examined by and take their degrees from the state
+  faculties. There are 2 faculties of Protestant theology (Paris and
+  Montauban); 12 faculties of law (Paris, Aix, Bordeaux, Caen, Grenoble,
+  Lille, Lyons, Montpellier, Nancy, Poitiers, Rennes, Toulouse); 3
+  faculties of medicine (Paris, Montpellier and Nancy), and 4 joint
+  faculties of medicine and pharmacy (Bordeaux, Lille, Lyons, Toulouse);
+  15 faculties of sciences (Paris, Besancon, Bordeaux, Caen, Clermont,
+  Dijon, Grenoble, Lille, Lyons, Marseilles, Montpellier, Nancy,
+  Poitiers, Rennes, Toulouse); 15 faculties of letters (at the same
+  towns, substituting Aix for Marseilles). The private faculties are at
+  Paris (the Catholic Institute with a faculty of law); Angers (law,
+  science and letters); Lille (law, medicine and pharmacy, science,
+  letters); Lyons (law, science, letters); Marseilles (law); Toulouse
+  (Catholic Institute with faculties of theology and letters). The work
+  of the faculties of medicine and pharmacy is in some measure shared by
+  the _ecoles superieures de pharmacie_ (Paris, Montpellier, Nancy),
+  which grant the highest degrees in pharmacy, and by the _ecoles de
+  plein exercice de medecine et de pharmacie_ (Marseilles, Rennes and
+  Nantes) and the more numerous _ecoles preparatoires de medecine et de
+  pharmacie_; there are also _ecoles preparatoires a l'enseignement
+  superieur des sciences et des lettres_ at Chambery, Rouen and Nantes.
+
+  Besides the faculties there are a number of institutions, both
+  state-supported and private, giving higher instruction of various
+  special kinds. In the first class must be mentioned the College de
+  France, founded 1530, giving courses of highest study of all sorts,
+  the Museum of Natural History, the Ecole des Chartes (palaeography and
+  archives), the School of Modern Oriental Languages, the Ecole Pratique
+  des Hautes Etudes (scientific research), &c. All these institutions
+  are in Paris. The most important free institution in this class is the
+  Ecole des Sciences Politiques, which prepares pupils for the civil
+  services and teaches a great number of political subjects, connected
+  with France and foreign countries, not included in the state
+  programmes.
+
+  Commercial and technical instruction is given in various institutions
+  comprising national establishments such as the _ecoles nationales
+  professionnelles_ of Armentieres, Vierzon, Voiron and Nantes for the
+  education of working men; the more advanced _ecoles d'arts et metiers_
+  of Chalons, Angers, Aix, Lille and Cluny; and the Central School of
+  Arts and Manufactures at Paris; schools depending on the communes and
+  state in combination, e.g. the _ecoles pratiques de commerce et
+  d'industrie_ for the training of clerks and workmen; private schools
+  controlled by the state, such as the _ecoles superieures de commerce_;
+  certain municipal schools, such as the Industrial Institute of Lille;
+  and private establishments, e.g. the school of watch-making at Paris.
+  At Paris the Ecole Superieure des Mines and the Ecole des Ponts et
+  Chaussees are controlled by the minister of public works, the Ecole
+  des Beaux-Arts, the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and the Conservatoire
+  National de Musique et de Declamation by the under-secretary for fine
+  arts, and other schools mentioned elsewhere are attached to several
+  of the ministries. In the provinces there are national schools of fine
+  art and of music and other establishments and free subventioned
+  schools.
+
+  In addition to the educational work done by the state, communes and
+  private individuals, there exist in France a good many societies which
+  disseminate instruction by giving courses of lectures and holding
+  classes both for children and adults. Examples of such bodies are the
+  Society for Elementary Instruction, the Polytechnic Association, the
+  Philotechnic Association and the French Union of the Young at Paris;
+  the Philomathic Society of Bordeaux; the Popular Education Society at
+  Havre; the Rhone Society of Professional Instruction at Lyons; the
+  Industrial Society of Amiens and others.
+
+  The highest institution of learning is the _Institut de France_,
+  founded and kept up by the French government on behalf of science and
+  literature, and composed of five academies: the _Academie francaise_,
+  the _Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres_, the _Academie des
+  Sciences_, the _Academie des Beaux-Arts_ and the _Academie des
+  Sciences Morales et Politiques_ (see ACADEMIES). The _Academie de
+  Medecine_ is a separate body.
+
+_Poor Relief_ (_Assistance publique_).--In France the pauper, _as such_,
+has no legal claim to help from the community, which however, is bound
+to provide for destitute children (see FOUNDLING HOSPITALS) and pauper
+lunatics (both these being under the care of the department), aged and
+infirm people without resources and victims of incurable illness, and to
+furnish medical assistance gratuitously to those without resources who
+are afflicted with curable illness. The funds for these purposes are
+provided by the department, the commune and the central authority.
+
+  There are four main types of public benevolent institutions, all of
+  which are communal in character: (1) The _hopital_, for maternity
+  cases and cases of curable illness; (2) the _hospice_, where the aged
+  poor, cases of incurable malady, orphans, foundlings and other
+  children without means of support, and in some cases lunatics, are
+  received; (3) the _bureau de bienfaisance_, charged with the provision
+  of out-door relief (_secours a domicile_) in money or in kind, to the
+  aged poor or those who, though capable of working, are prevented from
+  doing so by illness or strikes; (4) the _bureau d'assistance_, which
+  dispenses free medical treatment to the destitute.
+
+  These institutions are under the supervision of a branch of the
+  ministry of the interior. The hospices and hopitaux and the bureaux de
+  bienfaisance, the foundation of which is optional for the commune, are
+  managed by committees consisting of the mayor of the municipality and
+  six members, two elected by the municipal council and four nominated
+  by the prefect. The members of these committees are unpaid, and have
+  no concern with ways and means which are in the hands of a paid
+  treasurer (_receveur_). The bureaux de bienfaisance in the larger
+  centres are aided by unpaid workers (_commissaires_ or _dames de
+  charite_), and in the big towns by paid inquiry officers. _Bureaux
+  d'assistance_ exist in every commune, and are managed by the combined
+  committees of the hospices and the bureaux de bienfaisance or by one
+  of these in municipalities, where only one of those institutions
+  exists.
+
+  No poor-rate is levied in France. Funds for hopitals, hospices and
+  bureaux de bienfaisance comprise:
+
+  1. A 10% surtax on the fees of admission to places of public
+  amusement.
+
+  2. A proportion of the sums payable in return for concessions of
+  land in municipal cemeteries.
+
+  3. Profits of the communal Monts de Piete (pawn-shops).
+
+  4. Donations, bequests and the product of collections in
+  churches.
+
+  5. The product of certain fines.
+
+  6. Subventions from the departments and communes.
+
+  7. Income from endowments.     (R. Tr.)
+
+
+_Colonies._
+
+In the extent and importance of her colonial dominion France is second
+only to Great Britain. The following table gives the name, area and
+population of each colony and protectorate as well as the date of
+acquisition or establishment of a protectorate. It should be noted that
+the figures for area and population are, as a rule, only estimates, but
+in most instances they probably approximate closely to accuracy.
+Detailed notices of the separate countries will be found under their
+several heads:
+
+  +-----------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+
+  |              Colony.              |  Date of   |Area in sq. m.|Population.|
+  |                                   |Acquisition.|              |           |
+  +-----------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+
+  | In Asia--                         |            |              |           |
+  |  Establishments in India          | 1683-1750  |        200   |   273,000 |
+  |  In Indo-China--                  |            |              |           |
+  |   Annarn                          |    1883    |     60,000   | 6,000,000 |
+  |   Cambodia                        |    1863    |     65,000   | 1,500,000 |
+  |   Cochin-China                    |    1862    |     22,000   | 3,000,000 |
+  |   Tongking                        |    1883    |     46,000   | 6,000,000 |
+  |   Laos                            |    1893    |    100,000   |   600,000 |
+  |   Kwang-Chow-Wan                  |    1898    |        325   |   189,000 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  |       Total in Asia               |            |    293,525   |17,562,000 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  | In Africa and the Indian Ocean--  |            |              |           |
+  |  Algeria                          | 1830-1847  |    185,000   | 5,231,850 |
+  |  Algerian Sahara                  | 1872-1890  |    760,000   |           |
+  |  Tunisia                          |    1881    |     51,000   | 2,000,000 |
+  | West Africa--                     |            |              |           |
+  |  Senegal                          |    1626    |     74,000   | 1,800,000 |
+  |  Upper Senegal and Niger          |            |              |           |
+  |    (including part of Sahara)     |    1880    |  1,580,000   | 4,000,000 |
+  |  Guinea                           |    1848    |    107,000   | 2,500,000 |
+  |  Ivory Coast                      |    1842    |    129,000   | 2,000,000 |
+  |  Dahomey                          | 1863-1894 |     40,000   | 1,000,000 |
+  | Congo (French Equatorial Africa)--|            |              |           |
+  |  Gabun                            |   1839   \ |              |   376,000 |
+  |  Mid. Congo                       |   1882    >|    700,000   |   259,000 |
+  |  Ubangi-Chad                      | 1885-1899/ |              | 3,015,000 |
+  | Madagascar                        | 1885-1896\ |              |           |
+  |  Nossi-be Island                  |   1840    >|    228,000   | 2,664,000 |
+  |  Ste Marie Island                 |   1750   / |              |           |
+  |  Comoro Islands                   | 1843-1886  |        760   |    82,000 |
+  | Somali Coast                      | 1862-1884  |     12,000   |    50,000 |
+  | Reunion                           |    1643    |        965   |   173,315 |
+  | St Paul   \                       |    1892    |          3 \ |           |
+  | Amsterdam /                       |            |         19  >|uninhabited|
+  | Kerguelen[24]                     |    1893    |      1,400 / |           |
+  |                                   +------------+--------------+-----------+
+  |  Total in Africa and Indian Ocean.|            |  3,869,147   |25,151,165 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  | In America--                      |            |              |           |
+  |  Guiana                           |    1626    |     51,000   |    30,000 |
+  |  Guadeloupe                       |    1634    |        619   |   182,112 |
+  |  Martinique                       |    1635    |        380   |   182,024 |
+  |  St Pierre and Miquelon           |    1635    |         92   |     6,500 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  |          Total in America         |            |     52,092   |   400,636 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  | In Oceania--                      |            |              |           |
+  |   New Caledonia and Dependencies  | 1854-1887  |      7,500   |    72,000 |
+  |  Establishments in Oceania        | 1841-1881  |      1,641   |    34,300 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  |          Total in Oceania         |            |      9,141   |   106,300 |
+  |                                   |            +--------------+-----------+
+  |                     Grand Total   |            |  4,223,905   |43,220,101 |
+  +-----------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+
+
+  It will be seen that nearly all the colonies and protectorates lie
+  within the tropics. The only countries in which there is a
+  considerable white population are Algeria, Tunisia and New Caledonia.
+  The "year of acquisition" in the table, when one date only is given,
+  indicates the period when the country or some part of it first fell
+  under French influence, and does not imply continuous possession
+  since.
+
+_Government._--The principle underlying the administration of the French
+possessions overseas, from the earliest days until the close of the 19th
+century, was that of "domination" and "assimilation," notwithstanding
+that after the loss of Canada and the sale of Louisiana France ceased to
+hold any considerable colony in which Europeans could settle in large
+numbers. With the vast extension of the colonial empire in tropical
+countries in the last quarter of the 19th century the evils of the
+system of assimilation, involving also intense centralization, became
+obvious. This, coupled with the realization of the fact that the value
+to France of her colonies was mainly commercial, led at length to the
+abandonment of the attempt to impose on a great number of diverse
+peoples, some possessing (as in Indo-China and parts of West Africa)
+ancient and highly complex civilizations, French laws, habits of mind,
+tastes and manners. For the policy of assimilation there was substituted
+the policy of "association," which had for aim the development of the
+colonies and protectorates upon natural, i.e. national, lines. Existing
+civilizations were respected, a considerable degree of autonomy was
+granted, and every effort made to raise the moral and economic status of
+the natives. The first step taken in this direction was in 1900 when a
+law was passed which laid down that the colonies were to provide for
+their own civil expenditure. This law was followed by further measures
+tending to decentralization and the protection of the native races.
+
+The system of administration bears nevertheless many marks of the
+"assimilation" era. None of the French possessions is self-governing in
+the manner of the chief British colonies. Several colonies, however,
+elect members of the French legislature, in which body is the power of
+fixing the form of government and the laws of each colony or
+protectorate. In default of legislation the necessary measures are taken
+by decree of the head of the state; these decrees having the force of
+law. A partial exception to this rule is found in Algeria, where all
+laws in force in France before the conquest of the country are also (in
+theory, not in practice) in force in Algeria. In all colonies Europeans
+preserve the political rights they held in France, and these rights have
+been extended, in whole or in part, to various classes of natives. Where
+these rights have not been conferred, native races are _subjects_ and
+not _citizens_. To this rule Tunisia presents an exception, Tunisians
+retaining their nationality and laws.
+
+In addition to Algeria, which sends three senators and six deputies to
+Paris and is treated in many respects not as a colony but as part of
+France, the colonies represented in the legislature are: Martinique,
+Guadeloupe and Reunion (each electing one senator and two deputies),
+French India (one senator and one deputy), Guiana, Senegal and
+Cochin-China (one deputy each). The franchise in the three first-named
+colonies is enjoyed by all classes of inhabitants, white, negro and
+mulatto, who are all French citizens. In India the franchise is
+exercised without distinction of colour or nationality; in Senegal the
+electors are the inhabitants (black and white) of the communes which
+have been given full powers. In Guiana and Cochin-China the franchise is
+restricted to citizens, in which category the natives (in those
+colonies) are not included.[25] The inhabitants of Tahiti though
+accorded French citizenship have not been allotted a representative in
+parliament. The colonial representatives enjoy equal rights with those
+elected for constituencies in France.
+
+The oversight of all the colonies and protectorates save Algeria and
+Tunisia is confided to a minister of the colonies (law of March 20,
+1894)[26] whose powers correspond to those exercised in France by the
+minister of the interior. The colonial army is nevertheless attached (law
+of 1900) to the ministry of war. The colonial minister is assisted by a
+number of organizations of which the most important is the superior
+council of the colonies (created by decree in 1883), an advisory body
+which includes the senators and deputies elected by the colonies, and
+delegates elected by the universal suffrage of all citizens in the
+colonies and protectorates which do not return members to parliament. To
+the ministry appertains the duty of fixing the duties on foreign produce
+in those colonies which have not been, by law, subjected to the same
+tariff as in France. (Nearly all the colonies save those of West Africa
+and the Congo have been, with certain modifications, placed under the
+French tariff.) The budget of all colonies not possessing a council
+general (see below) must also be approved by the minister. Each colony and
+protectorate, including Algeria, has a separate budget. As provided by the
+law of 1900 all local charges are borne by the colonies--supplemented at
+need by grants in aid--but the military expenses are borne by the state.
+In all the colonies the judicature has been rendered independent of the
+executive.
+
+The colonies are divisible into two classes, (1) those possessing
+considerable powers of local self-government, (2) those in which the
+local government is autocratic. To this second class may be added the
+protectorates (and some colonies) where the native form of government is
+maintained under the supervision of French officials.
+
+Class (1) includes the American colonies, Reunion, French India,
+Senegal, Cochin-China and New Caledonia. In these colonies the system of
+assimilation was carried to great lengths. At the head of the
+administration is a governor under whom is a secretary-general, who
+replaces him at need. The governor is aided by a privy council, an
+advisory body to which the governor nominates a minority of unofficial
+members, and a council general, to which is confided the control of
+local affairs, including the voting of the budget. The councils general
+are elected by universal suffrage of all citizens and those who, though
+not citizens, have been granted the political franchise. In
+Cochin-China, in place of a council general, there is a colonial council
+which fulfils the functions of a council general.
+
+In the second class of colonies the governor, sometimes assisted by a
+privy council, on which non-official members find seats, sometimes
+simply by a council of administration, is responsible only to the
+minister of the colonies. In Indo-China, West Africa, French Congo and
+Madagascar, the colonies and protectorates are grouped under
+governors-general, and to these high officials extensive powers have
+been granted by presidential decree. The colonies under the
+governor-general of West Africa are ruled by lieutenant-governors with
+restricted powers, the budget of each colony being fixed by the
+governor-general, who is assisted by an advisory government council
+comprising representatives of all the colonies under his control. In
+Indo-China the governor-general has under his authority the
+lieutenant-governor of the colony of Cochin-China, and the residents
+superior at the courts of the kings of Cambodia and Annam and in
+Tongking (nominally a viceroyalty of Annam). There is a superior council
+for the whole of Indo-China on which the natives and the European
+commercial community are represented, while in Cochin-China a privy
+council, and in the protectorates a council of the protectorate, assists
+in the work of administration. In each of the governments general there
+is a financial controller with extensive powers who corresponds directly
+with the metropolitan authorities (decree of March 22, 1907). Details
+and local differences in form of government will be found under the
+headings of the various colonies and protectorates.
+
+  _Colonial Finance._--The cost of the extra-European possessions, other
+  than Algeria and Tunisia, to the state is shown in the expenses of the
+  colonial ministry. In the budget of 1885 these expenses were put at
+  L1,380,000; in 1895 they had increased to L3,200,000 and in 1900 to
+  L5,100,000. In 1905 they were placed at L4,431,000. Fully
+  three-fourths of the state contributions is expenditure on military
+  necessities; in addition there are subventions to various colonies and
+  to colonial railways and cables, and the expenditure on the
+  penitentiary establishments; an item not properly chargeable to the
+  colonies. In return the state receives the produce of convict labour
+  in Guiana and New Caledonia. Save for the small item of military
+  expenditure Tunisia is no charge to the French exchequer. The similar
+  expenses of Algeria borne by the state are not separately shown, but
+  are estimated at L2,000,000.
+
+  The colonial budgets totalled in 1907 some L16,760,000, being
+  divisible into six categories: Algeria L4,120,000; Tunisia L3,640,000;
+  Indo-China[27] about L5,000,000; West Africa L1,600,000; Madagascar
+  L960,000; all other colonies combined L1,440,000. The authorized
+  colonial loans, omitting Algeria and Tunisia, during the period
+  1884-1904 amounted to L19,200,000, the sums paid for interest and
+  sinking funds on loans varying from L600,000 to L800,000 a year. The
+  amount of French capital invested in French colonies and
+  protectorates, including Algeria and Tunisia, was estimated in 1905 at
+  L120,000,000, French capital invested in foreign countries at the same
+  date being estimated at ten times that amount (see _Ques. Dip. et
+  Col._, February 16, 1905).
+
+  _Commerce._--The value of the external trade of the French
+  possessions, exclusive of Algeria and Tunisia, increased in the ten
+  years 1896-1905 from L18,784,060 to L34,957,479. In the last-named
+  year the commerce of Algeria amounted to L24,506,020 and that of
+  Tunisia to L5,969,248, making a grand total for French colonial trade
+  in 1905 of L65,432,746. The figures were made up as follows:
+
+    +--------------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
+    |                    |   Imports.  |  Exports.  |    Total.   |
+    +--------------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
+    | Algeria            | L15,355,500 | L9,150,520 | L24,506,020 |
+    | Tunisia            |   3,638,185 |  2,331,063 |   5,969,248 |
+    | Indo-China         |  10,182,411 |  6,750,306 |  16,932,717 |
+    | West Africa        |   3,874,698 |  2,248,317 |   6,123,015 |
+    | Madagascar         |   1,247,936 |    914,024 |   2,161,960 |
+    | All other colonies.|   4,258,134 |  5,481,652 |   9,739,786 |
+    +--------------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
+    |           Total    | L38,556,864 |L26,875,882 | L65,432,746 |
+    +--------------------+-------------+------------+-------------+
+
+  Over three-fourths of the trade of Algeria and Tunisia is with France
+  and other French possessions. In the other colonies and protectorates
+  more than half the trade is with foreign countries. The foreign
+  countries trading most largely with the French colonies are, in the
+  order named, British colonies and Great Britain, China and Japan, the
+  United States and Germany. The value of the trade with British
+  colonies and Great Britain in 1905 was over L7,200,000.     (F. R. C.)
+
+  BIBLIOGRAPHY.--P. Joanne, _Dictionnaire geographique et administrative
+  de la France_ (8 vols., Paris, 1890-1905); C. Brossard, _La France et
+  ses colonies_ (6 vols., Paris, 1900-1906); O. Reclus, _Le Plus Beau
+  Royaume sous le ciel_ (Paris, 1899); Vidal de La Blache, _La France.
+  Tableau geographique_ (Paris, 1908); V.E. Ardouin-Dumazet, _Voyage en
+  France_ (Paris, 1894); H. Havard, _La France artistique et
+  monumentale_ (6 vols., Paris, 1892-1895); A. Lebon and P. Pelet,
+  _France as it is_, tr. Mrs W. Arnold (London, 1888); articles on
+  "Local Government in France" in the _Stock Exchange Official
+  Intelligence Annuals_ (London, 1908 and 1909); M. Block, _Dictionnaire
+  de l'administration francaise_, the articles in which contain full
+  bibliographies (2 vols., Paris, 1905); E. Levasseur, _La France et ses
+  colonies_ (3 vols., Paris, 1890); M. Fallex and A. Mairey, _La France
+  et sis colonies au debut du XX^e siecle_, which has numerous
+  bibliographies (Paris, 1909); J. du Plessis de Grenedan, _Geographie
+  agricole de la France et du monde_ (Paris, 1903); F. de St Genis, _La
+  Propriete rurale en France_ (Paris, 1902); H. Baudrillart, _Les
+  Populations agricoles de la France_ (3 vols., Paris, 1885-1893);
+  J.E.C. Bodley, _France_ (London, 1899); A. Girault, _Principes de
+  colonisation et de legislation coloniale_ (3 vols., Paris, 1907-1908);
+  _Les Colonies francaises_, an encyclopaedia edited by M. Petit (2
+  vols., Paris, 1902). Official statistical works: _Annuaire statistique
+  de la France_ (a summary of the statistical publications of the
+  government), _Statistique agricole annuelle, Statistique de
+  l'industrie minerale et des appareils de vapeur, Tableau general du
+  commerce et de la navigation_, Reports on the various colonies issued
+  annually by the British Foreign Office, &c. Guide Books: Karl
+  Baedeker, _Northern France, Southern France_; P. Joanne, _Nord,
+  Champagne et Ardenne; Normandie_; and other volumes dealing with every
+  region of the country.
+
+
+HISTORY
+
+  Pre-historic Gaul.
+
+The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Gaul is veiled in obscurity,
+though philologists, anthropologists and archaeologists are using the
+glimmer of traditions collected by ancient historians to shed a faint
+twilight upon that remote past. The subjugation of those primitive
+tribes did not mean their annihilation: their blood still flows in the
+veins of Frenchmen; and they survive also on those megalithic monuments
+(see STONE MONUMENTS) with which the soil cf France is dotted, in the
+drawings and sculptures of caves hollowed out along the sides of the
+valleys, and in the arms and ornaments yielded by sepulchral tumuli,
+while the names of the rivers and mountains of France probably
+perpetuate the first utterances of those nameless generations.
+
+
+  Iberians and Ligurians.
+
+The first peoples of whom we have actual knowledge are the Iberians and
+Ligurians. The Basques who now inhabit both sides of the Pyrenean range
+are probably the last representatives of the Iberians, who came from
+Spain to settle between the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay. The
+Ligurians, who exhibited the hard cunning characteristic of the Genoese
+Riviera, must have been descendants of that Indo-European vanguard who
+occupied all northern Italy and the centre and south-east of France, who
+in the 7th century B.C. received the Phocaean immigrants at Marseilles,
+and who at a much later period were encountered by Hannibal during his
+march to Rome, on the banks of the Rhone, the frontier of the Iberian
+and Ligurian territories. Upon these peoples it was that the conquering
+minority of Celts or Gauls imposed themselves, to be succeeded at a
+later date by the Roman aristocracy.
+
+
+  Empire of the Celts.
+
+  The Roman Conquest.
+
+When Gaul first enters the field of history, Rome has already laid the
+foundation of her freedom, Athens dazzles the eastern Mediterranean with
+her literature and her art, while in the west Carthage and Marseilles
+are lining opposite shores with their great houses of commerce. Coming
+from the valley of the Danube in the 6th century, the Celts or Gauls had
+little by little occupied central and southern Europe long before they
+penetrated into the plains of the Saone, the Seine, and the Loire as far
+as the Spanish border, driving out the former inhabitants of the
+country. A century later their political hegemony, extending from the
+Black Sea to the Strait of Gibraltar, began to disintegrate, and the
+Gauls then embarked on more distant migrations, from the Columns of
+Hercules to the plateaux of Asia Minor, taking Rome on their way. Their
+empire in Gaul, encroached upon in the north by the Belgae, a kindred
+race, and in the south by the Iberians, gradually contracted in area and
+eventually crumbled to pieces. This process served the turn of the
+Romans, who little by little had subjugated first the Cisalpine Gauls
+and afterwards those inhabiting the south-east of France, which was
+turned into a Roman province in the 2nd century. Up to this time
+Hellenism and the mercantile spirit of the Jews had almost exclusively
+dominated the Mediterranean littoral, and at first the Latin spirit only
+won foothold for itself in various spots on the western coast--as at Aix
+in Provence (123 B.C.) and at Narbonne (118 B.C.). A refuge of Italian
+pauperism in the time of the Gracchi, after the triumph of the oligarchy
+the Narbonnaise became a field for shameless exploitation, besides
+providing, under the proconsulate of Caesar, an excellent point of
+observation whence to watch the intestine quarrels between the different
+nations of Gaul.
+
+
+  Political divisions of Gaul.
+
+These are divided by Caesar in his _Commentaries_ into three groups: the
+Aquitanians to the south of the Garonne; the Celts, properly so called,
+from the Garonne to the Seine and the Marne; and the Belgae, from the
+Seine to the Rhine. But these ethnological names cover a very great
+variety of half-savage tribes, differing in speech and in institutions,
+each surrounded by frontiers of dense forests abounding in game. On the
+edges of these forests stood isolated dwellings like sentinel outposts;
+while the inhabitants of the scattered hamlets, caves hollowed in the
+ground, rude circular huts or lake-dwellings, were less occupied with
+domestic life than with war and the chase. On the heights, as at
+Bibracte, or on islands in the rivers, as at Lutetia, or protected by
+marshes, as at Avaricum, _oppida_--at once fortresses and places of
+refuge, like the Greek Acropolis--kept watch and ward over the beaten
+tracks and the rivers of Gaul.
+
+
+  Political institutions of Gaul.
+
+These primitive societies of tall, fair-skinned warriors, blue-eyed and
+red-haired, were gradually organized into political bodies of various
+kinds--kingdoms, republics and federations--and divided into districts
+or _pagi_ (_pays_) to which divisions the minds of the country folk have
+remained faithfully attached ever since. The victorious aristocracy of
+the kingdom dominated the other classes, strengthened by the prestige of
+birth, the ownership of the soil and the practice of arms. Side by side
+with this martial nobility the Druids constituted a priesthood unique in
+ancient times; neither hereditary as in India, nor composed of isolated
+priests as in Greece, nor of independent colleges as at Rome, it was a
+true corporation, which at first possessed great moral authority, though
+by Caesar's time it had lost both strength and prestige. Beneath these
+were the common people attached to the soil, who did not count for
+much, but who reacted against the insufficient protection of the regular
+institutions by a voluntary subordination to certain powerful chiefs.
+
+
+  Caesar in Gaul.
+
+This impotence of the state was a permanent cause of those discords and
+revolts, which in the 1st century B.C. were so singularly favourable to
+Caesar's ambition. Thus after eight years of incoherent struggles, of
+scattered revolts, and then of more and more energetic efforts, Gaul, at
+last aroused by Vercingetorix, for once concentrated her strength, only
+to perish at Alesia, vanquished by Roman discipline and struck at from
+the rear by the conquest of Britain (58-50 B.C.).
+
+
+  Roman Gaul.
+
+This defeat completely altered the destiny of Gaul, and she became one
+of the principal centres of Roman civilization. Of the vast Celtic
+empire which had dominated Europe nothing now remained but scattered
+remnants in the farthest corners of the land, refuges for all the
+vanquished Gaels, Picts or Gauls; and of its civilization there lingered
+only idioms and dialects--Gaelic, Pict and Gallic--which gradually
+dropped out of use. During five centuries Gaul was unfalteringly loyal
+to her conquerors; for to conquer is nothing if the conquered be not
+assimilated by the conqueror, and Rome was a past-mistress of this art.
+The personal charm of Caesar and the prestige of Rome are not of
+themselves sufficient to explain this double conquest. The generous and
+enlightened policy of the imperial administration asked nothing of the
+people of Gaul but military service and the payment of the tax; in
+return it freed individuals from patronal domination, the people from
+oligarchic greed or Druidic excommunication, and every one in general
+from material anxiety. Petty tyrannies gave place to the great _Pax
+Romana_. The Julio-Claudian dynasty did much to attach the Gauls to the
+empire; they always occupied the first place in the mind of Augustus,
+and the revolt of the Aeduan Julius Sacrovir, provoked by the census of
+A.D. 21, was easily repressed by Tiberius. Caligula visited Gaul and
+founded literary competitions at Lyons, which had become the political
+and intellectual capital of the country. Claudius, who was a native of
+Lyons, extended the right of Roman citizenship to many of his
+fellow-townsmen, gave them access to the magistracy and to the senate,
+and supplemented the annexation of Gaul by that of Britain. The speech
+which he pronounced on this occasion was engraved on tables of bronze at
+Lyons, and is the first authentic record of Gaul's admission to the
+citizenship of Rome. Though the crimes of Nero and the catastrophes
+which resulted from his downfall, provoked the troubles of the year A.D.
+70, the revolt of Sabinus was in the main an attempt by the Germans to
+pillage Gaul and the prelude to military insurrections. The government
+of the Flavians and the Antonines completed a definite reconciliation.
+After the extinction of the family of Augustus in the 1st century Gaul
+had made many emperors--Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian and Domitian;
+and in the 2nd century she provided Gauls to rule the empire--Antoninus
+(138-161) came from Nimes and Claudius from Lyons, as did also Caracalla
+later on (211-217).
+
+
+  Material and political transformation of Roman Gaul.
+
+The romanization of the Gauls, like that of the other subject nations,
+was effected by slow stages and by very diverse means, furnishing an
+example of the constant adaptability of Roman policy. It was begun by
+establishing a network of roads with Lyons as the central point, and by
+the development of a prosperous urban life in the increasingly wealthy
+Roman colonies; and it was continued by the disintegration into
+independent cities of nearly all the Gaulish states of the Narbonnaise,
+together with the substitution of the Roman collegial magistracy for the
+isolated magistracy of the Gauls. This alteration came about more
+quickly in the north-east in the Rhine-land than in the west and the
+centre, owing to the near neighbourhood of the legions on the frontiers.
+Rome was too tolerant to impose her own institutions by force; it was
+the conquered peoples who collectively and individually solicited as a
+favour the right of adopting the municipal system, the magistracy, the
+sacerdotal and aristocratic social system of their conquerors. The
+edict of Caracalla, at the beginning of the 3rd century, by conferring
+the right of citizenship on all the inhabitants of the empire, completed
+an assimilation for which commercial relations, schools, a taste for
+officialism, and the adaptability and quick intelligence of the race had
+already made preparation. The Gauls now called themselves Romans and
+their language Romance. There was neither oppression on the one hand nor
+servility on the other to explain this abandonment of their traditions.
+Thanks to the political and religious unity which a common worship of
+the emperor and of Rome gave them, thanks to administrative
+centralization tempered by a certain amount of municipal autonomy, Gaul
+prospered throughout three centuries.
+
+
+  Decline of the imperial authority in Gaul.
+
+But this stability of the Roman peace had barely been realized when
+events began to threaten it both from within and without. The _Pax
+Romana_ having rendered any armed force unnecessary amid a formerly very
+bellicose people, only eight legions mounted guard over the Rhine to
+protect it from the barbarians who surrounded the empire. The raids made
+by the Germans on the eastern frontiers, the incessant competitions for
+the imperial power, and the repeated revolts of the Pretorian guard,
+gradually undermined the internal cohesion of Gaul; while the
+insurrections of the Bagaudae aggravated the destruction wrought by a
+grasping treasury and by barbarian incursions; so that the anarchy of
+the 3rd century soon aroused separatist ideas. Under Postumus Gaul had
+already attempted to restore an independent though short-lived empire
+(258-267); and twenty-eight years later the tetrarchy of Diocletian
+proved that the blood now circulated with difficulty from the heart to
+the extremities of an empire on the eve of disintegration. Rome was to
+see her universal dominion gradually menaced from all sides. It was in
+Gaul that the decisive revolutions of the time were first prepared;
+Constantine's crusades to overthrow the altars of paganism, and Julian's
+campaigns to set them up again. After Constantine the emperors of the
+East in the 4th century merely put in an occasional appearance at Rome;
+they resided at Milan or in the prefectorial capitals of Gaul--at Arles,
+at Treves (Trier), at Reims or in Paris. The ancient territorial
+divisions--Belgium, Gallia Lugdunensis (Lyonnaise), Gallia Narbonensis
+(Narbonnaise)--were split up into seventeen little provinces, which in
+their turn were divided into two dioceses. Thus the great historic
+division was made between southern and northern France. Roman
+nationality persisted, but the administrative system was tottering.
+
+
+  Social disorganization of Gaul.
+
+Upon ground that had been so well levelled by Roman legislation
+aristocratic institutions naturally flourished. From the 4th century
+onward the balance of classes was disturbed by the development of a
+landed aristocracy that grew more powerful day by day, and by the
+corresponding ruin of the small proprietors and industrial and
+commercial corporations. The members of the _curia_ who assisted the
+magistrates in the cities, crushed by the burden of taxes, now evaded as
+far as possible public office or senatorial honours. The vacancies left
+in this middle class by this continual desertion were not compensated
+for by the progressive advance of a lower class destitute of personal
+property and constantly unsettled in their work. The peasants, no less
+than the industrial labourers, suffered from the absence of any capital
+laid by, which alone could have enabled them to improve their land or to
+face a time of bad harvests. Having no credit they found themselves at
+the mercy of their neighbours, the great landholders, and by degrees
+fell into the position of tenants, or into servitude. The curia was thus
+emptied both from above and from below. It was in vain that the emperors
+tried to rivet the chains of the curia in this hereditary bondage, by
+attaching the small proprietor to his glebe, like the artisan to his
+gild and the soldier to his legion. To such a miserable pretence of
+freedom they all preferred servitude, which at least ensured them a
+livelihood; and the middle class of freemen thus became gradually
+extinct.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  FRANCE at the end of the 10th. Century.
+
+  FRANCE in the 13th. Century.
+
+  FRANCE in the 14th. Century.
+
+  FRANCE The Eastern Frontier, 1598-1789.]
+
+
+  Absorption of land and power by the aristocracy of Gaul.
+
+The aristocracy, on the contrary, went on increasing in power, and
+eventually became masters of the situation. It was through them that the
+emperor, theoretically absolute, practically carried on his
+administration; but he was no longer either strong or a divinity, and
+possessed nothing but the semblance of omnipotence. His official
+despotism was opposed by the passive but invincible competition of an
+aristocracy, more powerful than himself because it derived its support
+from the revived relation of patron and dependants. But though the
+aristocracy administered, yet they did not govern. They suffered, as did
+the Empire, from a general state of lassitude. Like their private life,
+their public life, no longer stimulated by struggles and difficulties,
+had become sluggish; their power of initiative was enfeebled. Feeling
+their incapacity they no longer embarked on great political schemes; and
+the army, the instrument by which such schemes were carried on, was only
+held together by the force of habit. In this society, where there was no
+traffic in anything but wealth and ideas, the soldier was nothing more
+than an agitator or a parasite. The egoism of the upper classes held
+military duty in contempt, while their avarice depopulated the
+countryside, whence the legions had drawn their recruits. And now come
+the barbarians! A prey to perpetual alarm, the people entrenched
+themselves behind those high walls of the _oppida_ which Roman security
+had razed to the ground, but imperial impotence had restored, and where
+life in the middle ages was destined to vegetate in unrestful isolation.
+
+
+  Intellectual decadence of Gaul.
+
+Amidst this general apathy, intellectual activity alone persisted. In
+the 4th century there was a veritable renaissance in Gaul, the last
+outburst of a dying flame, which yet bore witness also to the general
+decadence. The agreeable versification of an amateur like Ausonius, the
+refined panegyrics of a Eumenius, disguising nullity of thought beneath
+elegance of form, already foretold the perilous sterility of
+scholasticism. Art, so widespread in the wealthy villas of Gaul,
+contented itself with imitation, produced nothing original and remained
+mediocre. Human curiosity, no longer concerned with philosophy and
+science, seemed as though stifled, religious polemics alone continuing
+to hold public attention. Disinclination for the self-sacrifice of
+active life and weariness of the things of the earth lead naturally to
+absorption in the things of heaven. After bringing about the success of
+the Asiatic cults of Mithra and Cybele, these same factors now assured
+the triumph over exhausted paganism of yet another oriental
+religion--Christianity--after a duel which had lasted two centuries.
+
+
+  Christianity in Gaul.
+
+This new faith had appeared to Constantine likely to infuse young and
+healthy blood into the Empire. In reality Christianity, which had
+contributed not a little to stimulate the political unity of continental
+Gaul, now tended to dissolve it by destroying that religious unity which
+had heretofore been its complement. Before this there had been complete
+harmony between Church and State; but afterwards came indifference and
+then disagreement between political and religious institutions, between
+the City of God and that of Caesar. Christianity, introduced into Gaul
+during the 1st century of the Christian era by those foreign merchants
+who traded along the coasts of the Mediterranean, had by the middle of
+the 2nd century founded communities at Vienne, at Autun and at Lyons.
+Their propagandizing zeal soon exposed them to the wrath of an ignorant
+populace and the contempt of the educated; and thus it was that in A.D.
+177, under Marcus Aurelius, the Church of Lyons, founded by St Pothinus,
+suffered those persecutions which were the effective cause of her
+ultimate victory. These Christian communities, disguised under the
+legally authorized name of burial societies, gradually formed a vast
+secret cosmopolitan association, superimposed upon Roman society but
+incompatible with the Empire. Christianity had to be either destroyed or
+absorbed. The persecutions under Aurelian and Diocletian almost
+succeeded in accomplishing the former; the Christian churches were saved
+by the instability of the existing authorities, by military anarchy and
+by the incursions of the barbarians. Despite tortures and martyrdoms,
+and thanks to the seven apostles sent from Rome in 250, during the 3rd
+century their branches extended all over Gaul.
+
+
+  Triumph of Christianity in Gaul.
+
+The emperors had now to make terms with these churches, which served to
+group together all sorts of malcontents, and this was the object of the
+edict of Milan (313), by which the Church, at the outset simply a Jewish
+institution, was naturalized as Roman; while in 325 the Council of
+Nicaea endowed her with unity. But for the security and the power thus
+attained she had to pay with her independence. On the other hand, pagan
+and Christian elements in society existed side by side without
+intermingling, and even openly antagonistic to each other--one
+aristocratic and the other democratic. In order to induce the masses of
+the people once more to become loyal to the imperial form of government
+the emperor Julian tried by founding a new religion to give its
+functionaries a religious prestige which should impress the popular
+mind. His plan failed; and the emperor Theodosius, aided by Ambrose,
+bishop of Milan, preferred to make the Christian clergy into a body of
+imperial and conservative officials; while in return for their adhesion
+he abolished the Arian heresy and paganism itself, which could not
+survive without his support. Thenceforward it was in the name of Christ
+that persecutions took place in an Empire now entirely won over to
+Christianity.
+
+
+  Organisation of the Church.
+
+In Gaul the most famous leader of this first merciless, if still
+perilous crusade, was a soldier-monk, Saint Martin of Tours. Thanks to
+him and his disciples in the middle of the 4th century and the beginning
+of the 5th many of the towns possessed well-established churches; but
+the militant ardour of monks and centuries of labour were needed to
+conquer the country districts, and in the meantime both dogma and
+internal organization were subjected to important modifications. As
+regards the former the Church adopted a course midway between
+metaphysical explanations and historical traditions, and reconciled the
+more extreme theories; while with the admission of pagans a great deal
+of paganism itself was introduced. On the other hand, the need for
+political and social order involved the necessity for a disciplined and
+homogeneous religious body; the exercise of power, moreover, soon
+transformed the democratic Christianity of the earlier churches into a
+federation of little conservative monarchies. The increasing number of
+her adherents, and her inexperience of government on such a vast and
+complicated scale, obliged her to comply with political necessity and to
+adopt the system of the state and its social customs. The Church was no
+longer a fraternity, on a footing of equality, with freedom of belief
+and tentative as to dogma, but an authoritative aristocratic hierarchy.
+The episcopate was now recruited from the great families in the same way
+as the imperial and the municipal public services. The Church called on
+the emperor to convoke and preside over her councils and to combat
+heresy; and in order more effectually to crush the latter she replaced
+primitive independence and local diversity by uniformity of doctrine and
+worship, and by the hierarchy of dioceses and ecclesiastical provinces.
+The heads of the Church, her bishops, her metropolitans, took the titles
+of their pagan predecessors as well as their places, and their
+jurisdiction was enforced by the laws of the state. Rich and powerful
+chiefs, they were administrators as much as priests: Germanus (Germain),
+bishop of Auxerre (d. 448), St Eucherius of Lyons (d. 450), Apollinaris
+Sidonius of Clermont (d. c. 490) assumed the leadership of society, fed
+the poor, levied tithes, administered justice, and in the towns where
+they resided, surrounded by priests and deacons, ruled both in temporal
+and spiritual matters.
+
+
+  The Church's independence of the Empire.
+
+But the humiliation of Theodosius before St Ambrose proved that the
+emperor could never claim to be a pontiff, and that the dogma of the
+Church remained independent of the sovereign as well as of the people;
+if she sacrificed her liberty it was but to claim it again and maintain
+it more effectively amid the general languor. The Church thus escaped
+the unpopularity of this decadent empire, and during the 5th century she
+provided a refuge for all those who, wishing to preserve the Roman
+unity, were terrified by the blackness of the horizon. In fact, whilst
+in the Eastern Church the metaphysical ardour of the Greeks was spending
+itself in terrible combats in the oecumenical councils over the
+interpretation of the Nicene Creed, the clergy of Gaul, more simple and
+strict in their faith, abjured these theological logomachies; from the
+first they had preferred action to criticism and had taken no part in
+the great controversy on free-will raised by Pelagius. Another kind of
+warfare was about to absorb their whole attention; the barbarians were
+attacking the frontiers of the Empire on every side, and their advent
+once again modified Gallo-Roman civilization.
+
+
+  The barbarian invasion.
+
+For centuries they had been silently massing themselves around ancient
+Europe, whether Iberian, Celtic or Roman. Many times already during that
+evening of a decadent civilization, their threatening presence had
+seemed like a dark cloud veiling the radiant sky of the peoples
+established on the Mediterranean seaboard. The cruel lightning of the
+sword of Brennus had illumined the night, setting Rome or Delphi on
+fire. Sometimes the storm had burst over Gaul, and there had been need
+of a Marius to stem the torrent of Cimbri and Teutons, or of a Caesar to
+drive back the Helvetians into their mountains. On the morrow the
+western horizon would clear again, until some such disaster as that
+which befell Varus would come to mortify cruelly the pride of an
+Augustus. The Romans had soon abandoned hope of conquering Germany, with
+its fluctuating frontiers and nomadic inhabitants. For more than two
+centuries they had remained prudently entrenched behind the earthworks
+that extended from Cologne to Ratisbon (Regensburg); but the intestine
+feuds which prevailed among the barbarians and were fostered by Rome,
+the organization under bold and turbulent chiefs of the bands greedy for
+booty, the pressing forward on populations already settled of tribes in
+their rear; all this caused the Germanic invasion to filter by degrees
+across the frontier. It was the work of several generations and took
+various forms, by turns and simultaneously colonization and aggression;
+but from this time forward the _pax romana_ was at an end. The emperors
+Probus, Constantine, Julian and Valentinian, themselves foreigners, were
+worn out with repulsing these repeated assaults, and the general
+enervation of society did the rest. The barbarians gradually became part
+of the Roman population; they permeated the army, until after Theodosius
+they recruited it exclusively; they permeated civilian society as
+colonists and agriculturists, till the command of the army and of
+important public duties was given over to a Stilicho or a Crocus. Thus
+Rome allowed the wolves to mingle with the dogs in watching over the
+flock, just at a time when the civil wars of the 4th century had denuded
+the Rhenish frontier of troops, whose numbers had already been
+diminished by Constantine. Then at the beginning of the 5th century,
+during a furious irruption of Germans fleeing before Huns, the _limes_
+was carried away (406-407); and for more than a hundred years the
+torrent of fugitives swept through the Empire, which retreated behind
+the Alps, there to breathe its last.
+
+
+  The Germans in Gaul.
+
+  The Franks before Clovis.
+
+Whilst for ten years Alaric's Goths and Stilicho's Vandals were
+drenching Italy with blood, the Vandals and the Alani from the steppes
+of the Black Sea, dragging in their wake the reluctant German tribes who
+had been allies of Rome and who had already settled down to the
+cultivation of their lands, invaded the now abandoned Gaul, and having
+come as far as the Pyrenees, crossed over them. After the passing of
+this torrent the Visigoths, under their kings Ataulphus, Wallia and
+Theodoric, still dazzled by the splendours of this immense empire,
+established themselves like submissive vassals in Aquitaine, with
+Toulouse as their capital. About the same time the Burgundians settled
+even more peaceably in Rhenish Gaul, and, after 456, to the west of the
+Jura in the valleys of the Saone and the Rhone. The original Franks of
+Germany, already established in the Empire, and pressed upon by the same
+Huns who had already forced the Goths across the Danube, passed beyond
+the Rhine and occupied north-eastern Gaul; Ripuarians of the Rhine
+establishing themselves on the Sambre and the Meuse, and Salians in
+Belgium, as far as the great fortified highroad from Bavai to Cologne.
+Accepted as allies, and supported by Roman prestige and by the active
+authority of the general Aetius, all these barbarians rallied round him
+and the Romans of Gaul, and in 451 defeated the hordes of Attila, who
+had advanced as far as Orleans, at the great battle of the Catalaunian
+plains.
+
+
+  The clergy and the barbarians.
+
+Thus at the end of the 5th century the Roman empire was nothing but a
+heap of ruins, and fidelity to the empire was now only maintained by the
+Catholic Church; she alone survived, as rich, as much honoured as ever,
+and more powerful, owing to the disappearance of the imperial officials
+for whom she had found substitutes, and the decadence of the municipal
+bodies into whose inheritance she had entered. Owing to her the City of
+God gradually replaced the Roman imperial polity and preserved its
+civilization; while the Church allied herself more closely with the new
+kingdoms than she had ever done with the Empire. In the Gothic or
+Burgundian states of the period the bishops, after having for a time
+opposed the barbarian invaders, sought and obtained from their chief the
+support formerly received from the emperor. Apollinaris Sidonius paid
+court to Euric, since 476 the independent king of the Visigoths, against
+whom he had defended Auvergne; and Avitus, bishop of Vienne, was
+graciously received by Gundibald, king of the Burgundians. But these
+princes were Arians, i.e. foreigners among the Catholic population; the
+alliance sought for by the Church could not reach her from that source,
+and it was from the rude and pagan Franks that she gained the material
+support which she still lacked. The conversion of Clovis was a
+master-stroke; it was fortunate both for himself and for the Franks.
+Unity in faith brought about unity in law.
+
+
+  Clovis, the Frankish chief.
+
+  Clovis as a Roman officer.
+
+Clovis was king of the Sicambrians, one of the tribes of the Salian
+Franks. Having established themselves in the plains of Northern Gaul,
+but driven by the necessity of finding new land to cultivate, in the
+days of their king Childeric they had descended into the fertile valleys
+of the Somme and the Oise. Clovis's victory at Soissons over the last
+troops left in the service of Rome (486) extended their settlements as
+far as the Loire. By his conversion, which was due to his wife Clotilda
+and to Remigius, bishop of Reims, more than to the victory of Tolbiac
+over the Alamanni, Clovis made definitely sure of the Roman inhabitants
+and gave the Church an army (496). Thenceforward he devoted himself to
+the foundation of the Frankish monarchy by driving the exhausted and
+demoralized heretics out of Gaul, and by putting himself in the place of
+the now enfeebled emperor. In 500 he conquered Gundibald, king of the
+Burgundians, reduced him to a kind of vassalage, and forced him into
+reiterated promises of conversion to orthodoxy. In 507 he conquered and
+killed Alaric II., king of the Arian Visigoths, and drove the latter
+into Spain. Legend adorned his campaign in Aquitaine with miracles; the
+bishops were the declared allies of both him and his son Theuderich
+(Thierry) after his conquest of Auvergne. At Tours he received from the
+distant emperor at Constantinople the diploma and insignia of
+_patricius_ and Roman consul, which legalized his military conquests by
+putting him in possession of civil powers. From this time forward a
+great historic transformation was effected in the eyes of the bishops
+and of the Gallo-Romans; the Frankish chief took the place of the
+ancient emperors. Instead of blaming him for the murder of the lesser
+kings of the Franks, his relatives, by which he had accomplished the
+union of the Frankish tribes, they saw in this the hand of God rewarding
+a faithful soldier and a converted pagan. He became their king, their
+new David, as the Christian emperors had formerly been; he built
+churches, endowed monasteries, protected St Vaast (Vedastus, d. 540),
+first bishop of Arras and Cambrai, who restored Christianity in northern
+Gaul. Like the emperors before him Clovis, too, reigned over the Church.
+Of his own authority he called together a council at Orleans in 511, the
+year of his death. He was already the grand distributor of
+ecclesiastical benefices, pending the time when his successors were to
+confirm the episcopal elections, and his power began to take on a more
+and more absolute character. But though he felt the ascendant influence
+of Christian teaching, he was not really penetrated by its spirit; a
+professing Christian, and a friend to the episcopate, Clovis remained a
+barbarian, crafty and ruthless. The bloody tragedies which disfigured
+the end of his reign bear sad witness to this; they were a fit prelude
+to that period during the course of which, as Gregory of Tours said,
+"barbarism was let loose."
+
+
+  The sons of Clovis.
+
+The conquest of Gaul, begun by Clovis, was finished by his sons:
+Theuderich, Chlodomer, Childebert and Clotaire. In three successive
+campaigns, from 523 to 532, they annihilated the Burgundian kingdom,
+which had maintained its independence, and had endured for nearly a
+century. Favoured by the war between Justinian, the East Roman emperor,
+and Theodoric's Ostrogoths, the Frankish kings divided Provence among
+them as they had done in the case of Burgundy. Thus the whole of Gaul
+was subjected to the sons of Clovis, except Septimania in the
+south-east, where the Visigoths still maintained their power. The
+Frankish armies then overflowed into the neighbouring countries and
+began to pillage them. Their disorderly cohorts made an attack upon
+Italy, which was repulsed by the Lombards, and another on Spain with the
+same want of success; but beyond the Rhine they embarked upon the
+conquest of Germany, where Clovis had already reduced to submission the
+country on the banks of the Maine, later known as Franconia. In 531 the
+Thuringians in the centre of Germany were brought into subjection by his
+eldest son, King Theuderich, and about the same time the Bavarians were
+united to the Franks, though preserving a certain autonomy. The
+Merovingian monarchy thus attained the utmost limits of its territorial
+expansion, bounded as it was by the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Rhine; it
+exercised influence over the whole of Germany, which it threw open to
+the Christian missionaries, and its conquests formed the first
+beginnings of German history.
+
+
+  Civil wars.
+
+But to these wars of aggrandizement and pillage succeeded those
+fratricidal struggles which disgraced the whole of the sixth century and
+arrested the expansion of the Merovingian power. When Clotaire, the last
+surviving son of Clovis, died in 561, the kingdom was divided between
+his four sons like some piece of private property, as in 511, and
+according to the German method. The capitals of these four
+kings--Charibert, who died in 567, Guntram, Sigebert and Chilperic--were
+Paris, Orleans, Reims and Soissons--all near one another and north of
+the Loire, where the Germanic inhabitants predominated; but their
+respective boundaries were so confused that disputes were inevitable.
+There was no trace of a political idea in these disputes; the mutual
+hatred of two women aggravated jealousy to the point of causing terrible
+civil wars from 561 to 613, and these finally created a national
+conflict which resulted in the dismemberment of the Frankish empire.
+Recognized, in fact, already as separate provinces were Austrasia, or
+the eastern kingdom, Neustria, or north-west Gaul and Burgundy;
+Aquitaine alone was as yet undifferentiated.
+
+
+  Fredegond and Brunhilda.
+
+Sigebert had married Brunhilda, the daughter of a Visigoth king; she was
+beautiful and well educated, having been brought up in Spain, where
+Roman civilization still flourished. Chilperic had married Galswintha,
+one of Brunhilda's sisters, for the sake of her wealth; but despite this
+marriage he had continued his amours with a waiting-woman named
+Fredegond, who pushed ambition to the point of crime, and she induced
+him to get rid of Galswintha. In order to avenge her sister, Brunhilda
+incited Sigebert to begin a war which terminated in 575 with the
+assassination of Sigebert by Fredegond at the very moment when, thanks
+to the help of the Germans, he had gained the victory, and with the
+imprisonment of Brunhilda at Rouen. Fredegond subsequently caused the
+death of Merovech (Merovee), the son of Chilperic, who had been secretly
+married to Brunhilda, and that of Bishop Praetextatus, who had
+solemnized their union. After this, Fredegond endeavoured to restore
+imperial finance to a state of solvency, and to set up a more regular
+form of government in her Neustria, which was less romanized and less
+wealthy than Burgundy, where Guntram was reigning, and less turbulent
+than the eastern kingdom, where most of the great warlike chiefs with
+their large landed estates were somewhat impatient of royal authority.
+But the accidental death of two of her children, the assassination of
+her husband in 584, and the advice of the Church, induced her to make
+overtures to her brother-in-law Guntram. A lover of peace through sheer
+cowardice and as depraved in his morals as Chilperic, Guntram had played
+a vacillating and purely self-interested part in the family tragedy. He
+declared himself the protector of Fredegond, but his death in 593
+delivered up Burgundy and Neustria to Brunhilda's son Childebert, king
+of Austrasia, in consequence of the treaty of Andelot, made in 587. An
+ephemeral triumph, however; for Childebert died in 596, followed a year
+later by Fredegond.
+
+
+  The fall of Brunhilda.
+
+The whole of Gaul was now handed over to three children: Childebert's
+two sons, Theudebert and Theuderich (Thierry), and the son of Fredegond,
+Clotaire II. The latter, having vanquished the two former at Latofao in
+596, was in turn beaten by them at Dormelles in 600, and a year later a
+fresh fratricidal struggle broke out between the two grandsons of the
+aged Brunhilda. Theuderich joined with Clotaire against Theodobert, and
+invaded his brother's kingdom, conquering first an army of Austrasians
+and then one composed of Saxons and Thuringians. Strife began again in
+613 in consequence of Theuderich's desire to join Austrasia to Neustria,
+but his death delivered the kingdoms into the hands of Clotaire II. This
+weak king leant for support upon the nobles of Burgundy and Austrasia,
+impatient as they were of obedience to a woman and the representative of
+Rome. The ecclesiastical party also abandoned Brunhilda because of her
+persecution of their saints, after which Clotaire, having now got the
+upper hand, thanks to the defection of the Austrasian nobles, of Arnulf,
+bishop of Metz, with his brother Pippin, and of Warnachaire, mayor of
+the palace, made a terrible end of Brunhilda in 613. Her long reign had
+not lacked intelligence and even greatness; she alone, amid all these
+princes, warped by self-indulgence or weakened by discord, had behaved
+like a statesman, and she alone understood the obligations of the
+government she had inherited. She wished to abolish the fatal tradition
+of dividing up the kingdom, which so constantly prevented any possible
+unity; in opposition to the nobles she used her royal authority to
+maintain the Roman principles of order and regular administration.
+Towards the Church she held a courteous but firm policy, renewing
+relations between the Frankish kingdom and the pope; and she so far
+maintained the greatness of the Empire that tradition associated her
+name with the Roman roads in the north of France, entitling them "les
+chaussees de Brunehaut."
+
+
+  Clotaire II.
+
+Like his grandfather, Clotaire II. reigned over a once more united Gaul
+of Franks and Gallo-Romans, and like Clovis he was not too well obeyed
+by the nobles; moreover, his had been a victory more for the aristocracy
+than for the crown, since it limited the power of the latter. Not that
+the permanent constitution of the 18th of October 614 was of the nature
+of an anti-monarchic revolution, for the royal power still remained very
+great, decking itself with the pompous titles of the Empire, and
+continuing to be the dominant institution; but the reservations which
+Clotaire II. had to make in conceding the demands of the bishops and
+great laymen show the extent and importance of the concessions these
+latter were already aiming at. The bishops, the real inheritors of the
+imperial idea of government, had become great landowners through
+enormous donations made to the Church, and allied as they were to the
+aristocracy, whence their ranks were continually recruited, they had
+gradually identified themselves with the interests of their class and
+had adopted its customs; while thanks to long minorities and civil wars
+the aristocracy of the high officials had taken an equally important
+social position. The treaty of Andelot in 587 had already decided that
+the benefices or lands granted to them by the kings should be held for
+life. In the 7th century the Merovingian kings adopted the custom of
+summoning them all, and not merely the officials of their _Palatium_, to
+discuss political affairs; they began, moreover, to choose their counts
+or administrators from among the great landholders. This necessity for
+approval and support points to yet another alteration in the nature of
+the royal power, absolute as it was in theory.
+
+
+  The mayors of the palace.
+
+The Mayoralty of the Palace aimed a third and more serious blow at the
+royal authority. By degrees, the high officials of the _Palatium_,
+whether secular or ecclesiastical, and also the provincial counts, had
+rallied round the mayors of the palace as their real leaders. As under
+the Empire, the Palatium was both royal court and centre of government,
+with the same bureaucratic hierarchy and the same forms of
+administration; and the mayor of the palace was premier official of this
+itinerant court and ambulatory government. Moreover, since the palace
+controlled the whole of each kingdom, the mayors gradually extended
+their official authority so as to include functionaries and agents of
+every kind, instead of merely those attached immediately to the king's
+person. They suggested candidates for office for the royal selection,
+often appointed office-holders, and, by royal warrant, supported or
+condemned them. Mere subordinates while the royal power was strong, they
+had become, owing to the frequent minorities, and to civil wars which
+broke the tradition of obedience, the all-powerful ministers of kings
+nominally absolute but without any real authority. Before long they
+ceased to claim an even greater degree of independence than that of
+Warnachaire, who forced Clotaire II. to swear that he should never be
+deprived of his mayoralty of Burgundy; they wished to take the first
+place in the kingdoms they governed, and to be able to attack
+neighbouring kingdoms on their own account. A struggle, motived by
+self-interest, no doubt; but a struggle, too, of opposing principles.
+Since the Frankish monarchy was now in their power some of them tried to
+re-establish the unity of that monarchy in all its integrity, together
+with the superiority of the State over the Church; others, faithless to
+the idea of unity, saw in the disintegration of the state and the
+supremacy of the nobles a warrant for their own independence. These two
+tendencies were destined to strive against one another during an entire
+century (613-714), and to occasion two periods of violent conflict,
+which, divided by a kind of renascence of royalty, were to end at last
+in the triumphant substitution of the Austrasian mayors for royalty and
+aristocracy alike.
+
+
+  First struggle between monarchy and mayoralty.
+
+The first struggle began on the accession of Clotaire II., when
+Austrasia, having had a king of her own ever since 561, demanded one
+now. In 623 Clotaire was obliged to send her his son Dagobert and even
+to extend his territory. But in Dagobert's name two men ruled,
+representing the union of the official aristocracy and the Church. One,
+Pippin of Landen, derived his power from his position as mayor of the
+palace, from great estates in Aquitaine and between the Meuse and the
+Rhine, and from the immense number of his supporters; the other, Arnulf,
+bishop of Metz, sprang from a great family, probably of Roman descent,
+and was besides immensely wealthy in worldly possessions. By the union
+of their forces Pippin and Arnulf were destined to shape the future.
+They had already, in 613, treated with Clotaire and betrayed the hopes
+of Brunhilda, being consequently rewarded with the guardianship of young
+Dagobert. Burgundy followed the example of Austrasia, demanded the
+abolition of the mayoralty, and in 627 succeeded in obtaining her
+independence of Neustria and Austrasia and direct relations with the
+king.
+
+
+  Renascence of monarchy under Dagobert, 629-639.
+
+The death of Clotaire (629) was the signal for a revival of the royal
+power. Dagobert deprived Pippin of Landen of his authority and forced
+him to fly to Aquitaine; but still he had to give the Austrasians his
+son Sigebert III. for their king (634). He made administrative
+progresses through Neustria and Burgundy to recall the nobles to their
+allegiance, but again he was forced to designate his second son Clovis
+as king of Neustria. He did subdue Aquitaine completely, thanks to his
+brother Charibert, with whom he had avoided dividing the kingdom, and he
+tried to restore his own demesne, which had been despoiled by the
+granting of benefices or by the pious frauds of the Church. In short,
+this reign was one of great conquests, impossible except under a strong
+government. Dagobert's victories over Samo, king of the Slavs along the
+Elbe, and his subjugation of the Bretons and the Basques, maintained the
+prestige of the Frankish empire; while the luxury of his court, his
+taste for the fine arts (ministered to by his treasurer Eloi[28]), his
+numerous achievements in architecture--especially the abbey of St Denis,
+burial-place of the kings of France--the brilliance and the power of the
+churchmen who surrounded him and his revision of the Salic law, ensured
+for his reign, in spite of the failure of his plans for unity, a fame
+celebrated in folksong and ballad.
+
+
+  The "Rois faineants" (do-nothing kings).
+
+But for barbarous nations old-age comes early, and after Dagobert's
+death (639), the monarchy went swiftly to its doom. The mayors of the
+palace again became supreme, and the kings not only ceased to appoint
+them, but might not even remove them from office. Such mayors were Aega
+and Erchinoald, in Neustria, Pippin and Otto in Austrasia, and Flaochat
+in Burgundy. One of them, Grimoald, son of Pippin, actually dared to
+take the title of king in Austrasia (640). This was a premature attempt
+and barren of result, yet it was significant; and not less so is the
+fact that the palace in which these mayors bore rule was a huge
+association of great personages, laymen and ecclesiastics who seem to
+have had much more independence than in the 6th century. We find the
+dukes actually raising troops without the royal sanction, and even
+against the king. In 641 the mayor Flaochat was forced to swear that
+they should hold their offices for life; and though these offices were
+not yet hereditary, official dynasties, as it were, began to be
+established permanently within the palace. The crown lands, the
+governorships, the different offices, were looked upon as common
+property to be shared between themselves. Organized into a compact body
+they surrounded the king and were far more powerful than he. In the
+general assembly of its members this body of officials decided the
+selection of the mayor; it presented Flaochat to the choice of Queen
+Nanthilda, Dagobert's widow; after long discussion it appointed Ebroin
+as mayor; it submitted requests that were in reality commands to the
+Assembly of Bonneuil in 616 and later to Childeric in 670. Moreover, the
+countries formerly subdued by the Franks availed themselves of this
+opportunity to loosen the yoke; Thuringia was lost by Sigebert in 641,
+and the revolt of Alamannia in 643 set back the frontier of the kingdom
+from the Elbe to Austrasia. Aquitaine, hitherto the common prey of all
+the Frankish kings, having in vain tried to profit by the struggles
+between Fredegond and Brunhilda, and set up an independent king,
+Gondibald, now finally burst her bonds in 670. Then came a time when the
+kings were mere children, honoured with but the semblance of respect,
+under the tutelage of a single mayor, Erbroin of Neustria.
+
+
+  Struggle between Ebroin and Leger.
+
+  Battle of Tertry.
+
+This representative of royalty, chief minister for four-and-twenty years
+(656-681), attempted the impossible, endeavouring to re-establish unity
+in the midst of general dissolution and to maintain intact a royal
+authority usurped everywhere, by the hereditary power of the great
+palatine families. He soon stirred up against himself all the
+dissatisfied nobles, led by Leger (Leodegarius), bishop of Autun and his
+brother Gerinus. Clotaire III.'s death gave the signal for war. Ebroin's
+enemies set up Childeric II. in opposition to Theuderich, the king whom
+he had chosen without summoning the great provincial officials. Despite
+a temporary triumph, when Childeric was forced to recognize the
+principle of hereditary succession in public offices, and when the
+mayoralties of Neustria and Burgundy were alternated to the profit of
+both, Leger soon fell into disgrace and was exiled to that very
+monastery of Luxeuil to which Ebroin had been relegated. Childeric
+having regained the mastery restored the mayor's office, which was
+immediately disputed by the two rivals; Ebroin was successful and
+established himself as mayor of the palace in the room of Leudesius, a
+partisan of Leger (675), following this up by a distribution of offices
+and dignities right and left among his adherents. Leger was put to death
+in 678, and the Austrasians, commanded by the Carolingian Pippin II.,
+with whom many of the chief Neustrians had taken refuge, were dispersed
+near Laon (680). But Ebroin was assassinated next year in the midst of
+his triumph, having like Fredegond been unable to do more than postpone
+for a quarter of a century the victory of the nobles and of Austrasia;
+for his successor, Berthar, was unfitted to carry on his work, having
+neither his gifts and energy nor the powerful personality of Pippin.
+Berthar met his death at the battle of Tertry (687), which gave the king
+into the hands of Pippin, as also the royal treasure and the mayoralty,
+and by thus enabling him to reward his followers made him supreme over
+the Merovingian dynasty. Thenceforward the degenerate descendants of
+Clovis offered no further resistance to his claims, though it was not
+until 752 that their line became extinct.
+
+In that year the Merovingian dynasty gave place to the rule of Pippin
+II. of Heristal, who founded a Carolingian empire fated to be as
+ephemeral as that of the Merovingians. This political victory of the
+aristocracy was merely the consummation of a slow subterranean
+revolution which by innumerable reiterated blows had sapped the
+structure of the body politic, and was about to transfer the people of
+Gaul from the Roman monarchical and administrative government to the
+sway of the feudal system.
+
+
+  Causes of the fall of the Merovingians.
+
+The Merovingian kings, mere war-chiefs before the advent of Clovis, had
+after the conquest of Gaul become absolute hereditary monarchs, thanks
+to the disappearance of the popular assemblies and to the perpetual
+state of warfare. They concentrated in their own hands all the powers of
+the empire, judicial, fiscal and military; and even the so-called "rois
+faineants" enjoyed this unlimited power, in spite of the general
+disorder and the civil wars. To make their authority felt in the
+provinces they had an army of officials at their disposal--a legacy,
+this, from imperial Rome--who represented them in the eyes of their
+various peoples. They had therefore only to keep up this established
+government, but they could not manage even this much; they allowed the
+idea of the common interests of kings and their subjects gradually to
+die out, and forgetting that national taxes are a necessary impost, a
+charge for service rendered by the state, they had treated these as
+though they were illicit and unjustifiable spoils. The taxpayers, with
+the clergy at their head, adopted the same idea, and every day contrived
+fresh methods of evasion. Merovingian justice was on the same footing as
+Merovingian finance: it was arbitrary, violent and self-seeking. The
+Church, too, never failed to oppose it--at first not so much on account
+of her own ambitions as in a more Christian spirit--and proceeded to
+weaken the royal jurisdiction by repeated interventions on behalf of
+those under sentence, afterwards depriving it of authority over the
+clergy, and then setting up ecclesiastical tribunals in opposition to
+those held by the dukes and counts. At last, just as the kingdom had
+become the personal property of the king, so the officials--dukes,
+counts, royal vicars, tribunes, _centenarii_--who had for the most part
+bought their unpaid offices by means of presents to the monarch, came to
+look upon the public service rather as a mine of official wealth than as
+an administrative organization for furthering the interests, material or
+moral, of the whole nation. They became petty local tyrants, all the
+more despotic because they had nothing to fear save the distant
+authority of the king's _missi_, and the more rapacious because they had
+no salary save the fines they inflicted and the fees that they contrived
+to multiply. Gregory of Tours tells us that they were robbers, not
+protectors of the people, and that justice and the whole administrative
+apparatus were merely engines of insatiable greed. It was the abuses
+thus committed by the kings and their agents, who did not understand the
+art of gloving the iron hand, aided by the absolutely unfettered licence
+of conduct and the absence of any popular liberty, that occasioned the
+gradual increase of charters of immunity.
+
+
+  Immunity.
+
+Immunity was the direct and personal privilege which forbade any royal
+official or his agents to decide cases, to levy taxes, or to exercise
+any administrative control on the domains of a bishop, an abbot, or one
+of the great secular nobles. On thousands of estates the royal
+government gradually allowed the law of the land to be superseded by
+local law, and public taxation to change into special contributions; so
+that the duties of the lower classes towards the state were transferred
+to the great landlords, who thus became loyal adherents of the king but
+absolute masters on their own territory. The Merovingians had no idea
+that they were abdicating the least part of their authority,
+nevertheless the deprivations acquiesced in by the feebler kings led of
+necessity to the diminution of their authority and their judicial
+powers, and to the abandonment of public taxation. They thought that by
+granting immunity they would strengthen their direct control; in reality
+they established the local independence of the great landowners, by
+allowing royal rights to pass into their hands. Then came confusion
+between the rights of the sovereign and the rights of property. The
+administrative machinery of the state still existed, but it worked in
+empty air: its taxpayers disappeared, those who were amenable to its
+legal jurisdiction slipped from its grasp, and the number of those whose
+affairs it should have directed dwindled away. Thus the Merovingians had
+shown themselves incapable of rising above the barbarous notion that
+royalty is a personal asset to the idea that royalty is of the state, a
+power belonging to the nation and instituted for the benefit of all.
+They represented in society nothing more than a force which grew feebler
+and feebler as other forces grew strong; they never stood for a national
+magistracy.
+
+
+  Disruption of the social framework.
+
+Society no less than the state was falling asunder by a gradual process
+of decay. Under the Merovingians it was a hierarchy wherein grades were
+marked by the varied scale of the _wergild_, a man being worth anything
+from thirty to six hundred gold pieces. The different degrees were those
+of slave, freedman, tenant-farmer and great landowner. As in every
+social scheme where the government is without real power, the weakest
+sought protection of the strongest; and the system of patron, client and
+journeyman, which had existed among the Romans, the Gauls and the
+Germans, spread rapidly in the 6th and 7th centuries, owing to public
+disorder and the inadequate protection afforded by the government. The
+Church's patronage provided some with a refuge from violence; others
+ingratiated themselves with the rich for the sake of shelter and
+security; others again sought place and honour from men of power; while
+women, churchmen and warriors alike claimed the king's direct and
+personal protection.
+
+
+  The beneficium.
+
+This hierarchy of persons, these private relations of man to man, were
+recognized by custom in default of the law, and were soon strengthened
+by another and territorial hierarchy. The large estate, especially if it
+belonged to the Church, very soon absorbed the few fields of the
+freeman. In order to farm these, the Church and the rich landowners
+granted back the holdings on the temporary and conditional terms of
+tenancy-at-will or of the _beneficium_, thus multiplying endlessly the
+land subject to their overlordship and the men who were dependent upon
+them as tenants. The kings, like private individuals and ecclesiastical
+establishments, made use of the _beneficium_ to reward their servants;
+till finally their demesne was so reduced by these perpetual grants that
+they took to distributing among their champions land owning the
+overlordship of the Church, or granted their own lands for single lives
+only. These various "benefactions" were, as a rule, merely the indirect
+methods which the great landowners employed in order to absorb the small
+proprietor. And so well did they succeed, that in the 6th and 7th
+centuries the provincial hierarchy consisted of the cultivator, the
+holder of the _beneficium_ and the owner; while this dependence of one
+man upon another affected the personal liberty of a large section of the
+community, as well as the condition of the land. The great landowner
+tended to become not only lord over his tenants, but also himself a
+vassal of the king.
+
+
+  Pippin of Heristal.
+
+Thus by means of immunities, of the _beneficium_ and of patronage,
+society gradually organized itself independently of the state, since it
+required further security. Such extra security was first provided by the
+conqueror of Tertry; for Pippin II. represented the two great families
+of Pippin and of Arnulf, and consequently the two interests then
+paramount, i.e. land and religion, while he had at his back a great
+company of followers and vast landed estates. For forty years (615-655)
+the office of mayor of Austrasia had gone down in his family almost
+continuously in direct descent from father to son. The death of Grimoald
+had caused the loss of this post, yet Ansegisus (Ansegisel), Arnulf's
+son and Pippin's son-in-law, had continued to hold high office in the
+Austrasian palace; and about 680 his son, Pippin II., became master of
+Austrasia, although he had held no previous office in the palace. His
+dynasty was destined to supplant that of the Merovingian house.
+
+Pippin of Heristal was a pioneer; he it was who began all that his
+descendants were afterwards to carry through. Thus he gathered the
+nobles about him not by virtue of his position, but because of his own
+personal prowess, and because he could assure them of justice and
+protection; instead of being merely the head of the royal palace he was
+the absolute lord of his own followers. Moreover, he no longer bore the
+title of mayor, but that of duke or prince of the Franks; and the
+mayoralty, like the royal power now reduced to a shadow, became an
+hereditary possession which Pippin could bestow upon his sons. The
+reigns of Theuderich III., Clovis III. or Childebert III. are of no
+significance except as serving to date charters and diplomas. Pippin it
+was who administered justice in Austrasia, appointed officials and
+distributed dukedoms; and it was Pippin, the military leader, who
+defended the frontiers threatened by Frisians, Alamanni and Bavarians.
+Descended as he was from Arnulf, bishop of Metz, he was before all
+things a churchman, and behind his armies marched the missionaries to
+whom the Carolingian dynasty, of which he was the founder, were to
+subject all Christendom. Pippin it was, in short, who governed, who set
+in order the social confusions of Neustria, who, after long wars, put a
+stop to the malpractices of the dukes and counts, and summoned councils
+of bishops to make good regulations. But at his death in 714 the
+child-king Dagobert III. found himself subordinated to Pippin's two
+grandsons, who, being minors, were under the wardship of their
+grandmother Plectrude.
+
+
+  Charles Martel (715-741).
+
+Pippin's work was almost undone--a party among the Neustrians under
+Raginfrid, mayor of the palace, revolted against Pippin II.'s adherents,
+and Radbod, duke of the Frisians, joined them. But the Austrasians
+appealed to an illegitimate son of Pippin, Charles Martel, who had
+escaped from the prison to which Plectrude, alarmed at his prowess, had
+consigned him, and took him for their leader. With Charles Martel begins
+the great period of Austrasian history. Faithful to the traditions of
+the Austrasian mayors, he chose kings for himself--Clotaire IV., then
+Chilperic II. and lastly Theuderich IV. After Theuderich's death (737)
+he left the throne vacant until 742, but he himself was king in all but
+name; he presided over the royal tribunals, appointed the royal
+officers, issued edicts, disposed of the funds of the treasury and the
+churches, conferred immunities upon adherents, who were no longer the
+king's nobles but his own, and even appointed the bishops, though there
+was nothing of the ecclesiastic about himself. He decided questions of
+war and peace, and re-established unity in Gaul by defeating the
+Neustrians and the Aquitanian followers of Duke Odo (Eudes) at Vincy in
+717. When Odo, brought to bay, appealed for help to the Arab troops of
+Abd-ar-Rahman, who after conquering Spain had crossed the Pyrenees,
+Charles, like a second Clovis, saved Catholic Christendom in its peril
+by crushing the Arabs at Tours (732). The retreat of the Arabs, who were
+further weakened by religious disputes, enabled him to restore Frankish
+rule in Aquitaine in spite of Hunald, son of Odo. But Charles's longest
+expeditions were made into Germany, and in these he sought the support
+of the Church, then the greatest of all powers since it was the
+depositary of the Roman imperial tradition.
+
+
+  Charles Martel and the Church.
+
+No less unconscious of his mission than Clovis had been, Charles Martel
+also was a soldier of Christ. He protected the missionaries who paved
+the way for his militant invasions. Without him the apostle of Germany,
+the English monk Boniface, would never have succeeded in preserving the
+purity of the faith and keeping the bishops submissive to the Holy See.
+The help given by Charles had two very far-reaching results. Boniface
+was the instrument of the union of Rome and Germany, of which union the
+Holy Roman Empire in Germany was in the 10th century to become the most
+perfect expression, continuing up to the time of Luther. And Boniface
+also helped on the alliance between the papacy and the Carolingian
+dynasty, which, more momentous even than that between Clovis and the
+bishops of Gaul, was to sanctify might by right.
+
+
+  Charles Martel and Gregory III.
+
+This union was imperative for the bishops of Rome if they wished to
+establish their supremacy, and their care for orthodoxy by no means
+excluded all desire of domination. Mere religious authority did not
+secure to them the obedience of either the faithful or the clergy;
+moreover, they had to consider the great secular powers, and in this
+respect their temporal position in Italy was growing unbearable. Their
+relations with the East Roman emperor (sole lord of the world after the
+Roman Senate had sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople in 476)
+were confined to receiving insults from him or suspecting him of heresy.
+Even in northern Italy there was no longer any opposition to the
+progress of the Lombards, the last great nation to be established
+towards the end of the 6th century within the ancient Roman
+empire--their king Liudprand clearly intended to seize Italy and even
+Rome itself. Meanwhile from the south attacks were being made by the
+rebel dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum. Pope Gregory III. cherished
+dreams of an alliance with the powerful duke of the Franks, as St
+Remigius before him had thought of uniting with Clovis against the
+Goths. Charles Martel had protected Boniface on his German missions: he
+would perhaps lend Gregory the support of his armies. But the warrior,
+like Clovis aforetime, hesitated to put himself at the disposal of the
+priest. When it was a question of winning followers or keeping them, he
+had not scrupled to lay hands on ecclesiastical property, nor to fill
+the Church with his friends and kinsfolk, and this alliance might
+embarrass him. So if he loaded the Roman ambassadors with gifts in 739,
+he none the less remembered that the Lombards had just helped him to
+drive the Saracens from Provence. However, he died soon after this, on
+the 22nd of October 741, and Gregory III. followed him almost
+immediately.
+
+
+  The Carolingian dynasty.
+
+  Pippin the Short, 752-768.
+
+Feeling his end near, Charles, before an assembly of nobles, had divided
+his power between his two sons, Carloman and Pippin III. The royal line
+seemed to have been forgotten for six years, but in 742 Pippin brought a
+son of Chilperic II. out of a monastery and made him king. This
+Childeric III. was but a shadow--and knew it. He made a phantom
+appearance once every spring at the opening of the great annual national
+convention known as the Campus Martius (Champ de Mars): a dumb idol, his
+chariot drawn in leisurely fashion by oxen, he disappeared again into
+his palace or monastery. An unexpected event re-established unity in the
+Carolingian family. Pippin's brother, the pious Carloman, became a monk
+in 747, and Pippin, now sole ruler of the kingdom, ordered Childeric
+also to cut off his royal locks; after which, being king in all but
+name, he adopted that title in 752. Thus ended the revolution which had
+been going on for two centuries. The disappearance of Grippo, Pippin's
+illegitimate brother, who, with the help of all the enemies of the
+Franks--Alamanni, Aquitanians and Bavarians--had disputed his power, now
+completed the work of centralization, and Pippin had only to maintain
+it. For this the support of the Church was indispensable, and Pippin
+understood the advantages of such an alliance better than Charles
+Martel. A son of the Church, a protector of bishops, a president of
+councils, a collector of relics, devoted to Boniface (whom he invited,
+as papal legate, to reform the clergy of Austrasia), he astutely
+accepted the new claims of the vicar of St Peter to the headship of the
+Church, perceiving the value of an alliance with this rising power.
+
+
+  Sacred character of the new monarchy.
+
+Prudent enough to fear resistance if he usurped the Merovingian crown,
+Pippin the Short made careful preparations for his accession, and
+discussed the question of the dynasty with Pope Zacharias. Receiving a
+favourable opinion, he had himself anointed and crowned by Boniface in
+the name of the bishops, and was then proclaimed king in an assembly of
+nobles, counts and bishops at Soissons in November 751. Still, certain
+disturbances made him see that aristocratic approval of his kingship
+might be strengthened if it could claim a divine sanction which no
+Merovingian had ever received. Two years later, therefore, he demanded a
+consecration of his usurpation from the pope, and in St Denis on the
+28th of July 754 Stephen II. crowned and anointed not only Pippin, but
+his wife and his two sons as well.
+
+
+  Pippin and the Papacy.
+
+The political results of this custom of coronation were all-important
+for the Carolingians, and later for the first of the Capets. Pippin was
+hereby invested with new dignity, and when Boniface's anointing had been
+confirmed by that of the pope, he became the head of the Frankish
+Church, the equal of the pope. Moreover, he astutely contrived to extend
+his priestly prestige to his whole family; his royalty was no longer
+merely a military command or a civil office, but became a Christian
+priesthood. This sacred character was not, however, conferred
+gratuitously. On the very day of his coronation Pippin allowed himself
+to be proclaimed patrician of the Romans by the pope, just as Clovis had
+been made consul. This title of the imperial court was purely honorary,
+but it attached him still more closely to Rome, though without lessening
+his independence. He had besides given a written promise to defend the
+Church of Rome, and that not against the Lombards only. Qualified by
+letters of the papal chancery as "liberator and defender of the Church,"
+his armies twice (754-756) crossed the Alps, despite the opposition of
+the Frankish aristocracy, and forced Aistulf, king of the Lombards, to
+cede to him the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis. Pippin gave
+them back to Pope Stephen II., and by this famous donation founded that
+temporal power of the popes which was to endure until 1870. He also
+dragged the Western clergy into the pope's quarrel with the emperor at
+Constantinople, by summoning the council of Gentilly, at which the
+iconoclastic heresy was condemned (767). Matters being thus settled with
+Rome, Pippin again took up his wars against the Saxons, against the
+Arabs (whom he drove from Narbonne in 758), and above all against
+Waifer, duke of Aquitaine, and his ally, duke Tassilo of Bavaria. This
+last war was carried on systematically from 760 to 768, and ended in the
+death of Waifer and the definite establishment of the Frankish hold on
+Aquitaine. When Pippin died, aged fifty-four, on the 24th of September
+768, the whole of Gaul had submitted to his authority.
+
+
+  Charlemagne.
+
+Pippin left two sons, and before he died he had, with the consent of the
+dignitaries of the realm, divided his kingdom between them, making the
+elder, Charles (Charlemagne), king of Austrasia, and giving the younger,
+Carloman, Burgundy, Provence, Septimania, Alsace and Alamannia, and half
+of Aquitaine to each. On the 9th of October 768 Charles was enthroned at
+Noyon in solemn assembly, and Carloman at Soissons. The Carolingian
+sovereignty was thus neither hereditary nor elective, but was handed
+down by the will of the reigning king, and by a solemn acceptance of the
+future king on the part of the nobles. In 771 Carloman, with whom
+Charles had had disputes, died, leaving sons; but bishops, abbots and
+counts all declared for Charles, save a few who took refuge in Italy
+with Desiderius, king of the Lombards. Desiderius, whose daughter Bertha
+or Desiderata Charles, despite the pope, had married at the instance of
+his mother Bertrade, supported the rights of Carloman's sons, and
+threatened Pope Adrian in Rome itself after he had despoiled him of
+Pippin's territorial gift. At the pope's appeal Charles crossed the
+Alps, took Verona and Pavia after a long siege, assumed the iron crown
+of the Lombard kings (June 774), and made a triumphal entry into Rome,
+which had not formed part of the pope's desires. Pippin's donation was
+restored, but the protectorate was no longer so distant, respectful and
+intermittent as the pope liked. After the departure of the imperious
+conqueror, a fresh revolt of the Lombards of Beneventum under Arichis,
+Desiderius's son-in-law, supported by a Greek fleet, obliged Pope Adrian
+to write fresh entreaties to Charlemagne; and in two campaigns (776-777)
+the latter conquered the whole Lombard kingdom. But another of
+Desiderius's daughters, married to the powerful duke Tassilo of Bavaria,
+urged her husband to avenge her father, now imprisoned in the monastery
+of Corbie. After endless intrigues, however, the duke, hemmed in by
+three different armies, had in his turn to submit (788), and all Italy
+was now subject to Charlemagne. These wars in Italy, even the fall of
+the Lombard kingdom and the recapture of the duchy of Bavaria, were
+merely episodes: Charlemagne's great war was against the Saxons and
+lasted thirty years (772-804).
+
+
+  Organization of the conquests.
+
+The work of organizing the three great Carolingian conquests--Aquitaine,
+Italy and Saxony--had yet to be done. Charlemagne approached it with a
+moderation equal to the vigour which he had shown in the war. But by
+multiplying its advance-posts, the Frankish kingdom came into contact
+with new peoples, and each new neighbour meant a new enemy. Aquitaine,
+bordered upon Mussulman Spain; the Avars of Hungary threatened Bavaria
+with their tireless horsemen; beyond the Elbe and the Saal the Slavs
+were perpetually at war with the Saxons, and to the north of the Eider
+were the Danes. All were pagans; all enemies of Charlemagne, defender of
+Christ's Church, and hence the appointed conqueror of the world.
+
+
+  Wars with the Arabs, Slavs and Danes.
+
+Various causes--the weakening of the Arabs by the struggle between the
+Omayyads and the Abbasids just after the battle of Tours; the alliance
+of the petty Christian kings of the Spanish peninsula; an appeal from
+the northern amirs who had revolted against the new caliphate of Cordova
+(755)--made Charlemagne resolve to cross the Pyrenees. He penetrated as
+far as the Ebro, but was defeated before Saragossa; and in their retreat
+the Franks were attacked by Vascons, losing many men as they came
+through the passes. This defeat of the rear-guard, famous for the death
+of the great Roland and the treachery of Ganelo, induced the Arabs to
+take the offensive once more and to conquer Septimania. Charlemagne had
+created the kingdom of Aquitaine especially to defend Septimania, and
+William, duke of Toulouse, from 790 to 806, succeeded in restoring
+Frankish authority down to the Ebro, thus founding the Spanish March
+with Barcelona as its capital. For two centuries and a half the Avars, a
+remnant of the Huns entrenched in the Hungarian Mesopotamia, had made
+descents alternately upon the Germans and upon the Greeks of the Eastern
+empire. They had overrun Bavaria in the very year of its subjugation by
+Charlemagne (788), and it took an eight-years' struggle to destroy the
+robber stronghold. The empire thus pushed its frontier-line on from the
+Elbe to the Oder, ever as it grew menaced by increasing dangers. The sea
+came to the help of the depopulated land, and Danish pirates, Widukind's
+old allies, came in their leathern boats to harry the coasts of the
+North Sea and the Channel. Permanent armies and walls across isthmuses
+were alike useless; Charlemagne had to build fleets to repulse his
+elusive foes (808-810), and even after forty years of war the danger was
+only postponed.
+
+
+  Charlemagne's empire.
+
+Meanwhile Pippin's Frankish kingdom, vast and powerful as it had been,
+was doubled. All nations from the Oder to the Elbe and from the Danube
+to the Atlantic were subject or tributary, and Charlemagne's power even
+crossed these frontiers. At his summons Christian princes and Mussulman
+amirs flocked to his palaces. The kings of Northumbria and Sussex, the
+kings of the Basques and of Galicia, Arab amirs of Spain and Fez, and
+even the caliph of Bagdad came to visit him in person or sent gifts by
+the hands of ambassadors. A great warrior and an upright ruler, his
+conquests recalled those of the great Christian emperors, and the
+Church completed the parallel by training him in her lore. This still
+barely civilized German literally went to school to the English Alcuin
+and to Peter of Pisa, who, between two campaigns, taught him history,
+writing, grammar and astronomy, satisfying also his interest in sacred
+music, literature (religious literature especially), and the traditions
+of Rome and Constantinople. Why should he not be the heir of their
+Caesars? And so, little by little, this man of insatiable energy was
+possessed by the ambition of restoring the Empire of the West in his own
+favour.
+
+
+  Charlemagne emperor (800).
+
+There were, however, two serious obstacles in the way: first, the
+supremacy of the emperor of the East, which though nominal rather than
+real was upheld by peoples, princes, and even by popes; secondly, the
+rivalry of the bishops of Rome, who since the early years of Adrian's
+pontificate had claimed the famous "Donation of Constantine" (q.v.).
+According to that apocryphal document, the emperor after his baptism had
+ceded to the sovereign pontiff his imperial power and honours, the
+purple chlamys, the golden crown, "the town of Rome, the districts and
+cities of Italy and of all the West." But in 797 the empress of
+Constantinople had just deposed her son Constantine VI. after putting
+out his eyes, and the throne might be considered vacant; while on the
+other hand, Pope Leo III., who had been driven from Rome by a revolt in
+799, and had only been restored by a Frankish army, counted for little
+beside the Frankish monarch, and could not but submit to the wishes of
+the Carolingian court. So when next year the king of the Franks went to
+Rome in person, on Christmas Eve of the year 800 and in the basilica of
+St Peter the pope placed on his head the imperial crown and did him
+reverence "after the established custom of the time of the ancient
+emperors." The Roman ideal, handed down in tradition through the
+centuries, was here first revived.
+
+This event, of capital importance for the middle ages, was fertile in
+results both beneficial and the reverse. It brought about the rupture
+between the West and Constantinople. Then Charlemagne raised the papacy
+on the ruins of Lombardy to the position of first political power in
+Italy; and the universal Church, headed by the pope, made common cause
+with the Empire, which all the thinkers of that day regarded as the
+ideal state. Confusion between these powers was inevitable, but at this
+time neither Charles, the pope, nor the people had a suspicion of the
+troubles latent in the ceremony that seemed so simple. Thirdly,
+Charlemagne's title of emperor strengthened his other title of king of
+the Franks, as is proved by the fact that at the great assembly of
+Aix-la-Chapelle in 802 he demanded from all, whether lay or spiritual, a
+new oath of allegiance to himself as Caesar. His increased power came
+rather from moral value, from the prestige attaching to one who had
+given proof of it, than from actual authority over men or
+centralization; this is shown by the division between the Empire and
+feudalism. Universal sovereignty claimed as a heritage from Rome had a
+profound influence upon popular imagination, but in no way modified that
+tendency to separation of the various nations which was already
+manifest. Charles himself in his government preferred to restore the
+ancient Empire by vigorous personal action, rather than to follow old
+imperial traditions; he introduced cohesion into his "palace," and
+perfect centralization into his official administration, inspiring his
+followers and servants, clerical and lay, with a common and determined
+zeal. The system was kept in full vigour by the _missi dominici_, who
+regularly reported or reformed any abuses of administration, and by the
+courts, military, judicial or political, which brought to Charlemagne
+the strength of the wealth of his subjects, carrying his commands and
+his ideas to the farthest limits of the Empire. Under him there was in
+fact a kind of early renaissance after centuries of barbarism and
+ignorance.
+
+
+  The Carolingian Renaissance.
+
+This emperor, who assumed so high a tone with his subjects, his bishops
+and his counts, who undertook to uphold public order in civil life, held
+himself no less responsible for the eternal salvation of men's souls in
+the other world. Thanks to Charlemagne, and through the restoration of
+order and of the schools, a common civilization was prepared for the
+varied elements of the Empire. By his means the Church was able to
+concentrate in the palatine academy all the intellectual culture of the
+middle ages, having preserved some of the ancient traditions of
+organization and administration and guarded the imperial ideal.
+Charlemagne apparently wished, like Theodoric, to use German blood and
+Christian unity to bring back life to the great body of the Empire. Not
+the equal of Caesar or Augustus in genius or in the lastingness of his
+work, he yet recalls them in his capitularies, his periodic courts, his
+official hierarchy, his royal emissaries, his ministers, his sole right
+of coinage, his great public works, his campaigns against barbarism and
+heathenry, his zeal for learning and literature, and his divinity as
+emperor. Once more there existed a great public entity such as had not
+been seen for many years; but its duration was not to be a long one.
+
+
+  Dissolution of the Frankish Empire.
+
+Charlemagne had for the moment succeeded in uniting western Europe under
+his sway, but he had not been able to arrest its evolution towards
+feudal dismemberment. He had, doubtless conscientiously, laboured for
+the reconstitution of the Empire; but it often happens that individual
+wills produce results other than those at which they aimed, sometimes
+results even contrary to their wishes, and this was what happened in
+Charlemagne's case. He had restored the superstructure of the imperial
+monarchy, but he had likewise strengthened and legalized methods and
+institutions till then private and insecure, and these, passing from
+custom into law, undermined the foundations of the structure he had
+thought himself to be repairing. A quarter of a century after his death
+his Empire was in ruins.
+
+The practice of giving land as a _beneficium_ to a grantee who swore
+personal allegiance to the grantor had persisted, and by his
+capitularies Charlemagne had made these personal engagements, these
+contracts of immunity--hitherto not transferable, nor even for life, but
+quite conditional--regular, legal, even obligatory and almost
+indissoluble. The _beneficium_ was to be as practically irrevocable as
+the oath of fidelity. He submitted to the yoke of the social system and
+feudal institutions at the very moment when he was attempting to revive
+royal authority; he was ruler of the state, but ruler of vassals also.
+The monarchical principle no longer sufficed to ensure social
+discipline; the fear of forfeiting the grant became the only powerful
+guarantee of obedience, and as this only applied to his personal
+vassals, Charlemagne gave up his claim to direct obedience from the rest
+of the people, accepting the mediation of the counts, lords and bishops,
+who levied taxes, adjudicated and administered in virtue of the
+privileges of patronage, not of the right of the state. The very
+multiplication of offices, so noticeable at this time, furthered this
+triumph of feudalism by multiplying the links of personal dependence,
+and neutralizing more and more the direct action of the central
+authority. The frequent convocations of military assemblies, far from
+testifying to political liberty, was simply a means of communicating the
+emperor's commands to the various feudal groups.
+
+Thus Charlemagne, far from opposing, systematized feudalism, in order
+that obedience and discipline might pass from one man to another down to
+the lowest grades of society, and he succeeded for his own lifetime. No
+authority was more weighty or more respected than that of this feudal
+lord of Gaul, Italy and Germany; none was more transient, because it was
+so purely personal.
+
+
+  Causes for the dissolution of the Empire.
+
+When the great emperor was buried at Aix-la-Chapelle in 814, his work
+was entombed with him. The fact was that his successors were incapable
+of maintaining it. Twenty-nine years after his death the Carolingian
+Empire had been divided into three kingdoms; forty years later one alone
+of these kingdoms had split into seven; while when a century had passed
+France was a litter of tiny states each practically independent. This
+disintegration was caused neither by racial hate nor by linguistic
+patriotism. It was the weakness of princes, the discouragement of
+freemen and landholders confronted by an inexorable system of financial
+and military tyranny, and the incompatibility of a vast empire with a
+too primitive governmental system, that wrecked the work of Charlemagne.
+
+
+  Louis the Pious (814-840).
+
+The Empire fell to Louis the Pious, sole survivor of his three sons. At
+the Aix assembly in 813 his father had crowned him with his own hand,
+thus avoiding the papal sanction that had been almost forced upon
+himself in 800. Louis was a gentle and well-trained prince, but weak and
+prone to excessive devotion to the Church. He had only reigned a few
+years when dissensions broke out on all sides, as under the
+Merovingians. Charlemagne had assigned their portions to his three sons
+in 781 and again in 806; like Charles Martel and Pippin the Short before
+him, however, what he had divided was not the imperial authority, nor
+yet countries, but the whole system of fiefs, offices and adherents
+which had been his own patrimony. The division that Louis the Pious made
+at Aix in 817 among his three sons, Lothair, Pippin and Louis, was of
+like character, since he reserved the supreme authority for himself,
+only associating Lothair, the eldest, with him in the government of the
+empire. Following the advice of his ministers Walla and Agobard,
+supporters of the policy of unity, Louis the Pious put Bernard of Italy,
+Charlemagne's grandson, to death for refusing to acknowledge Lothair as
+co-emperor; crushed a revolt in Brittany; and carried on among the Danes
+the work of evangelization begun among the Slavs. A fourth son, Charles,
+was born to him by his second wife, Judith of Bavaria. Jealousy arose
+between the children of the two marriages. Louis tried in vain to
+satisfy his sons and their followers by repeated divisions--at Worms
+(829) and at Aix (831)--in which there was no longer question of either
+unity or subordination. Yet his elder sons revolted against him in 831
+and 832, and were supported by Walla and Agobard and by their followers,
+weary of all the contradictory oaths demanded of them. Louis was deposed
+at the assembly of Compiegne (833), the bishops forcing him to assume
+the garb of a penitent; but he was re-established on his throne in St
+Etienne at Metz, the 28th of February 835, from which time until his
+death in 840 he fell more and more under the influence of his ambitious
+wife, and thought only of securing an inheritance for Charles, his
+favourite son.
+
+
+  The sons of Louis the Pious.
+
+  The Strassburg oath.
+
+Hardly was Louis buried in the basilica of Metz before his sons flew to
+arms. The first dynastic war broke out between Lothair, who by the
+settlement of 817 claimed the whole monarchy with the imperial title,
+and his brothers Louis and Charles. Lothair wanted, with the Empire, the
+sole right of patronage over the adherents of his house, but each of
+these latter chose his own lord according to individual interests,
+obeying his fears or his preferences. The three brothers finished their
+discussion by fighting for a whole day (June 25th, 841) on the plain of
+Fontanet by Auxerre; but the battle decided nothing, so Charles and
+Louis, in order to get the better of Lothair, allied themselves and
+their vassals by an oath taken in the plain of Strassburg (Feb. 14th,
+842). This, the first document in the vulgar tongue in the history of
+France and Germany, was merely a mutual contract of protection for the
+two armies, which nevertheless did not risk another battle. An amicable
+division of the imperial succession was arranged, and after an
+assessment of the empire which took almost a year, an agreement was
+signed at Verdun in August 843.
+
+
+  Partition of the Empire at Verdun (843).
+
+This was one of the important events in history. Each brother received
+an equal share of the dismembered empire. Louis had the territory on the
+right bank of the Rhine, with Spires, Worms and Mainz "because of the
+abundance of wine." Lothair took Italy, the valleys of the Rhone, the
+Saone and the Meuse, with the two capitals of the empire,
+Aix-la-Chapelle and Rome, and the title of emperor. Charles had all the
+country watered by the Scheldt, the Seine, the Loire and the Garonne, as
+far as the Atlantic and the Ebro. The partition of Verdun separated once
+more, and definitively, the lands of the eastern and western Franks. The
+former became modern Germany, the latter France, and each from this
+time forward had its own national existence. However, as the boundary
+between the possessions of Charles the Bald and those of Louis was not
+strictly defined, and as Lothair's kingdom, having no national basis,
+soon disintegrated into the kingdoms of Italy, Burgundy and Arles, in
+Lotharingia, this great undefined territory was to serve as a
+tilting-ground for France and Germany on the very morrow of the treaty
+of Verdun and for ten centuries after.
+
+
+  Charles the Bald (843-877).
+
+Charles the Bald was the first king of western France. Anxious as he was
+to preserve Charlemagne's traditions of government, he was not always
+strong enough to do so, and warfare within his own dominions was often
+forced on him. The Norse pirates who had troubled Charlemagne showed a
+preference for western France, justified by the easy access afforded by
+river estuaries with rich monasteries on their shores. They began in 841
+with the sack of Rouen; and from then until 912, when they made a
+settlement in one part of the country, though few in numbers they never
+ceased attacking Charles's kingdom, coming in their ships up the Loire
+as far as Auvergne, up the Garonne to Toulouse, and up the Seine and the
+Scheldt to Paris, where they made four descents in forty years, burning
+towns, pillaging treasure, destroying harvests and slaughtering the
+peasants or carrying them off into slavery. Charles the Bald thus spent
+his life sword in hand, fighting unsuccessfully against the Bretons,
+whose two kings, Nomenoe and Erispoe, he had to recognize in turn; and
+against the people of Aquitaine, who, in full revolt, appealed for help
+to his brother, Louis the German. He was beaten everywhere and always:
+by the Bretons at Ballon (845) and Juvardeil (851); by the people of
+Aquitaine near Angouleme (845); and by the Northmen, who several times
+extorted heavy ransoms from him. Before long, too, Louis the German
+actually allied himself with the people of Brittany and Aquitaine, and
+invaded France at the summons of Charles the Bald's own vassals. Though
+the treaty of Coblenz (860) seemed to reconcile the two kings for the
+moment, no peace was ever possible in Charles the Bald's kingdom. His
+own son Charles, king of Aquitaine, revolted, and Salomon proclaimed
+himself king of Brittany in succession to Erispoe, who had been
+assassinated. To check the Bretons and the Normans, who were attacking
+from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, Charles the Bald found himself
+obliged to entrust the defence of the country to Robert the Strong,
+ancestor of the house of Capet and duke of the lands between Loire and
+Seine. Robert the Strong, however, though many times victorious over the
+incorrigible pirates, was killed by them in a fight at Brissarthe (866).
+
+
+  Division of the kingdom into large fiefs.
+
+Despite all this, Charles spoke authoritatively in his capitularies, and
+though incapable of defending western France, coveted other crowns and
+looked obstinately eastwards. He managed to become king of Lorraine on
+the death of his nephew Lothair II., and emperor and king of Germany on
+that of his other nephew Louis II. (875); though only by breaking the
+compact of the year 800. In 876, the year before his death, he took a
+third crown, that of Italy, though not without a fresh defeat at
+Andernach by Louis the German's troops. His titles increased, indeed,
+but not his power; for while his kingdom was thus growing in area it was
+falling to pieces. The duchy with which he rewarded Robert the Strong
+was only a military command, but became a powerful fief. Baldwin I. (d.
+879), count of Flanders, turned the country between the Scheldt, the
+Somme and the sea into another feudal principality. Aquitaine and
+Brittany were almost independent, Burgundy was in full revolt, and
+within thirty years Rollo, a Norman leader, was to be master of the
+whole of the lower Seine from the Cotentin to the Somme. The fact was
+that between the king's inability to defend the kingdom, and the
+powerlessness of nobles and peasants to protect themselves from pillage,
+every man made it his business to seek new protectors, and the country,
+in spite of Charles the Bald's efforts, began to be covered with
+strongholds, the peasant learning to live beneath the shelter of the
+donjon keeps. Such vassals gave themselves utterly to the lord who
+guarded them, working for him sword or pickaxe in hand. The king was
+far away, the lord close at hand. Hence the sixty years of terror and
+confusion which came between Charlemagne and the death of Charles the
+Bald suppressed the direct authority of the king in favour of the
+nobles, and prepared the way for a second destruction of the monarchy at
+the hands of a stronger power (see FEUDALISM).
+
+
+  Establishment of feudalism.
+
+Before long Charles the Bald's followers were dictating to him; and in
+the disaffection caused by his feebleness and cowardice prelates and
+nobles allied themselves against him. If they acknowledged the king's
+authority at the assemblies of Yutz (near Thionville) in 844, they
+forced from him a promise that they should keep their fiefs and their
+dignities; and while establishing a right of control over all his
+actions they deprived him of his right of jurisdiction over them.
+Despite Charles's resistance his royal power dwindled steadily: an
+appeal to Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, entailed concessions to the
+Church. In 856 some of his vassals deserted him and went over to Louis
+the German. To win them back Charles had to sign a new charter, by the
+terms of which loyalty was no longer a one-sided engagement but a
+reciprocal contract between king and vassal. He gave up his personal
+right of distributing the fiefs and honours which were the price of
+adherence, and thus lost for the Carolingians the free disposal of the
+immense territories they had gradually usurped; they retained the
+over-lordship, it is true, but this over-lordship, without usufruct and
+without choice of tenant, was but a barren possession.
+
+
+  Decay of the Carolinglan power.
+
+Like their territories public authority little by little slipped from
+the grasp of the Carolingians, largely because of their abuse of their
+too great power. They had concentrated the entire administration in
+their own hands. Like Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald
+were omnipotent. There were no provincial assemblies, no municipal
+bodies, no merchant-gilds, no autonomous churches; the people had no
+means of making themselves heard; they had no place in an administration
+which was completely in the hands of a central hierarchy of officials of
+all ranks, from dukes to _scabini_, with counts, viscounts and
+_centenarii_ in between. However, these dukes and counts were not merely
+officials: they too had become lords of _fideles_, of their own
+_advocati_, _centenarii_ and _scabini_, whom they nominated, and of all
+the free men of the county, who since Charlemagne's time had been first
+allowed and then commanded to "commend" themselves to a lord, receiving
+feudal benefices in return. Any deprivation or supersession of the count
+might impoverish, dispossess or ruin the vassals of the entire county;
+so that all, vassals or officials, small and great, feeling their
+danger, united their efforts, and lent each other mutual assistance
+against the permanent menace of an overweening monarchy. Hence, at the
+end of the 9th century, the heredity of offices as well as of fiefs. In
+the disordered state of society official stability was a valuable
+warrant of peace, and the administrative hierarchy, lay or spiritual,
+thus formed a mould for the hierarchy of feudalism. There was no
+struggle with the king, simply a cessation of obedience; for without
+strength or support in the kingdom he was powerless to resist. In vain
+Charles the Bald affirmed his royal authority in the capitularies of
+Quierzy-sur-Oise (857), Reims (860), Pistes (864), Gondreville (872) and
+Quierzy-sur-Oise (877); each time in exchange for assent to the royal
+will and renewal of oaths he had to acquiesce in new safeguards against
+himself and by so much to diminish that power of protection against
+violence and injustice for which the weak had always looked to the
+throne. Far from forbidding the relation of lord and vassal, Charles the
+Bald imposed it upon every man in his kingdom, himself proclaiming the
+real incapacity and failure of that theoretic royal power to which he
+laid claim. Henceforward royalty had no servants, since it performed no
+service. There was no longer the least hesitation over the choice
+between liberty with danger and subjection with safety; men sought and
+found in vassalage the right to live, and willingly bartered away their
+liberty for it.
+
+
+  Louis the Stammerer (877-879).
+
+  Louis III. and Carloman (879-884).
+
+  Charles the Fat. (884-888.)
+
+The degeneration of the monarchy was clearly apparent on the death of
+Charles the Bald, when his son, Louis the Stammerer, was only assured of
+the throne, which had passed by right of birth under the Merovingians
+and been hereditary under the earlier Carolingians, through his election
+by nobles and bishops under the direction of Hugh the Abbot, successor
+of Robert the Strong, each voter having been won over by gift of abbeys,
+counties or manors. When Louis died two years later (879), the same
+nobles met, some at Creil, the rest at Meaux, and the first party chose
+Louis of Germany, who preferred Lorraine to the crown; while the rest
+anointed Louis III. and Carloman, sons of the late king, themselves
+deciding how the kingdom was to be divided between the two princes. Thus
+the king no longer chose his own vassals; but vassals and fief-holders
+actually elected their king according to the material advantages they
+expected from him. Louis III. and Carloman justified their election by
+their brilliant victories over the Normans at Saucourt (881) and near
+Epernay (883); but at their deaths (882-884), the nobles, instead of
+taking Louis's boy-son, Charles the Simple, as king, chose Charles the
+Fat, king of Germany, because he was emperor and seemed powerful. He
+united once more the dominions of Charlemagne; but he disgraced the
+imperial throne by his feebleness, and was incapable of using his
+immense army to defend Paris when it was besieged by the Normans.
+Expelled from Italy, he only came to France to buy a shameful peace.
+When he died in January 888 he had not a single faithful vassal, and the
+feudal lords resolved never again to place the sceptre in a hand that
+could not wield the sword.
+
+
+  Death-struggle of the Carolingians (888-987).
+
+The death-struggle of the Carolingians lasted for a century of
+uncertainty and anarchy, during which time the bishops, counts and lords
+might well have suppressed the monarchy had they been hostile to it.
+Such, however, was not their policy; on the contrary, they needed a king
+to act as agent for their private interests, since he alone could invest
+their rank and dignities with an official and legitimate character. They
+did not at once agree on Charles's successor; for some of them chose
+Eudes (Odo), son of Robert the Strong, for his brilliant defence of
+Paris against the Normans in 885; others Guy, duke of Spoleto in Italy,
+who had himself crowned at Langres; while many wished for Arnulf,
+illegitimate son of Carloman, king of Germany and emperor. Eudes was
+victor in the struggle, and was crowned and anointed at Compiegne on the
+29th of February 888; but five years later, meeting with defeat after
+defeat at the hands of the Normans, his followers deserted from him to
+Charles the Simple, grandson of Charles the Bald, who was also supported
+by Fulk, archbishop of Reims.
+
+
+  King Odo (888-893).
+
+  Charles the Simple (893-929).
+
+  Rudolph of Burgundy (923-936).
+
+This first Carolingian restoration took place on the 28th of January
+893, and thenceforward throughout this warlike period from 888 to 936
+the crown passed from one dynasty to the other according to the
+interests of the nobles. After desperate strife, an agreement between
+the two rivals, Arnulf's support, and the death of Odo, secured it for
+Charles III., surnamed the Simple. His subjects remained faithful to him
+for a good while, as he put an end to the Norman invasions which had
+desolated the kingdom for two centuries, and cowed those barbarians,
+much to the benefit of France. By the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte (911)
+their leader Rolf (Rollo) obtained one of Charles's daughters in
+marriage and the district of the Lower Seine which the Normans had long
+occupied, on condition that he and his men ceased their attacks and
+accepted Christianity. Having thus tranquillized the west, Charles took
+advantage of Louis the Child's death, and conquered Lorraine, in spite
+of opposition from Conrad, king of Germany (921). But his preference for
+his new conquest, and for a Lorrainer of low birth named Hagano, aroused
+the jealousy and discontent of his nobles. They first elected Robert,
+count of Paris (923), and then after his death in a successful battle
+near Soissons against Charles the Simple, Rudolph of Burgundy, his
+son-in-law. But Herbert of Vermandois, one of the successful combatants
+at Soissons, coveted the countship of Laon, which Rudolph refused him;
+and he thereupon proclaimed Charles the Simple, who had confided his
+cause to him, as king once more. Seeing his danger Rudolph ceded the
+countship to Herbert, and Charles was relegated to his prison until his
+death in 929. After unsuccessful wars against the nobles of the South,
+against the Normans, who asserted that they were bound to no one except
+Charles the Simple, and against the Hungarians (who, now the Normans
+were pacified, were acting their part in the East), Rudolph had a return
+of good fortune in the years between 930 and 936, despite the intrigues
+of Herbert of Vermandois. Upon his death the nobles assembled to elect a
+king; and Hugh the Great, Rudolph's brother-in-law, moved by
+irresolution as much as by prudence, instead of taking the crown,
+preferred to restore the Carolingians once more in the person of Charles
+the Simple's son, Louis d'Outremer, himself claiming numerous privileges
+and enjoying the exercise of power unencumbered by a title which carried
+with it the jealousy of the nobles.
+
+
+  Louis IV. the Foreigner (936-954.)
+
+This restoration was no more peaceful than its predecessor. The
+Carolingians had as it were a fresh access of energy, and the struggle
+against the Robertinians went on relentlessly. Both sides employed
+similar methods: one was supported by Normandy, the other by Germany;
+the archbishop of Reims was for the Carolingians, the Robertinians had
+to be content with the less influential bishop of Sens. Louis soon
+proved to Hugh the Great, who was trying to play the part of a mayor of
+the palace, that he was by no means a _roi faineant_; and the powerful
+duke of the Franks, growing uneasy, allied himself with Herbert of
+Vermandois, William of Normandy and his brother-in-law Otto I. king of
+Germany, who resented the loss of Lorraine. Louis defended himself with
+energy, aided chiefly by the nobles of the South, by his relative
+Edmund, king of the English, and then by Otto himself, whose
+brother-in-law he also had become. A peace advantageous to him was made
+in 942, and on the deaths of his two opponents, Herbert of Vermandois
+and William of Normandy, all seemed to be going well for him; but his
+guardianship of Richard, son of the duke of Normandy, aroused fresh
+strife, and on the 13th of July 945 he fell into an ambush and suffered
+a captivity similar to his father's of twenty-two years before. No one
+had befriended Charles the Simple, but Louis had his wife Gerberga, who
+won over to his cause the kings of England and Germany and even Hugh.
+Hugh set him free, insisting, as payment for his aid, on the cession of
+Laon, the capital of the kingdom and the last fortified town remaining
+to the Carolingians (946). Louis was hardly free before he took
+vengeance, harried the lands of his rival, restored to the
+archiepiscopal throne of Reims Artald, his faithful adviser, in place of
+the son of Herbert of Vermandois, and managed to get Hugh excommunicated
+by the council of Ingelheim (948) and by the pope. A two years' struggle
+wearied the rivals, and they made peace in 950. Louis once more held
+Laon, and in the following year further strengthened his position by a
+successful expedition into Burgundy. Still his last years were not
+peaceful; for besides civil wars there were two Hungarian invasions of
+France (951 and 954).
+
+
+  Lothair (954-986).
+
+Louis's sudden death in 954 once more placed the Carolingian line in
+peril, since he had not had time to have his son Lothair crowned. For a
+third time Hugh had the disposal of the crown, and he was no more
+tempted to take it himself in 954 than in 923 or 936: it was too
+profitless a possession. Thanks to Hugh's support and to the good
+offices of Otto and his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne and duke of
+Lorraine, Lothair was chosen king and crowned at Reims. Hugh exacted, as
+payment for his disinterestedness and fidelity, a renewal of his
+sovereignty over Burgundy with that of Aquitaine as well; he was in fact
+the viceroy of the kingdom, and others imitated him by demanding
+indemnities, privileges and confirmation of rights, as was customary at
+the beginning of a reign. Hugh strengthened his position in Burgundy,
+Lorraine and Normandy by means of marriages; but just as his power was
+at its height he died (956). His death and the minority of his sons,
+Hugh Capet and Eudes, gave the Carolingian dynasty thirty years more of
+life.
+
+For nine years (956-965) Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, was regent of
+France, and thanks to him there was a kind of _entente cordiale_ between
+the Carolingians and the Robertinians and Otto. Bruno made Lothair
+recognize Hugh as duke of France and Eudes as duke of Burgundy; but the
+sons preserved the father's enmity towards king Louis, despite the
+archbishop's repeated efforts. His death deprived Lothair of a wise and
+devoted guardian, even if it did set him free from German influence; and
+the death of Odalric, archbishop of Reims, in 969, was another fatal
+loss for the Carolingians, succeeded as he was by Adalbero, who, though
+learned, pious and highly intelligent, was none the less ambitious. On
+the death of Otto I. (973) Lothair wished to regain Lorraine; but his
+success was small, owing to his limited resources and the uncertain
+support of his vassals. In 980, regretting his fruitless quarrel with
+Otto II., who had ravaged the whole country as far as Paris, and fearing
+that even with the support of the house of Vermandois he would be
+crushed like his father Louis IV. between the duke of France and the
+emperor, who could count on the archbishop of Reims, Lothair made peace
+with Otto--a great mistake, which cost him the prestige he had gained
+among his nobles by his fairly successful struggle with the emperor,
+drawing down upon him, moreover, the swift wrath of Hugh, who thought
+himself tricked. Otto, meanwhile, whom he was unwise enough to trust,
+made peace secretly with Hugh, as it was his interest to play off his
+two old enemies one against the other. However, Otto died first (983),
+leaving a three-year-old son, Otto III., and Lothair, hoping for
+Lorraine, upheld the claims of Henry of Bavaria, who wished to oust
+Otto. This was a war-signal for Archbishop Adalbero and his adviser
+Gerbert, devoted to the idea of the Roman empire, and determined that it
+should still be vested in the race of Otto, which had always been
+beneficent to the Church.
+
+
+  Louis V. (986-987).
+
+They decided to set the Robertinians against the Carolingians, and on
+their advice Hugh Capet dispersed the assembly of Compiegne which
+Lothair had commissioned to examine Adalbero's behaviour. On Lothair's
+death in 986, Hugh surrounded his son and successor, Louis V., with
+intrigues. Louis was a weak-minded and violent young man with neither
+authority nor prestige, and Hugh tried to have him placed under
+tutelage. After Louis V.'s sudden death, aged twenty, in 987, Adalbero
+and Gerbert, with the support of the reformed Cluniac clergy, at the
+Assembly of Senlis eliminated from the succession the rightful heir,
+Charles of Lorraine, who, without influence or wealth, had become a
+stranger in his own country, and elected Hugh Capet, who, though rich
+and powerful, was superior neither in intellect nor character. Thus the
+triple alliance of Adalbero's bold and adroit imperialism with the
+cautious and vacillating ambition of the duke of the Franks, and the
+impolitic hostility towards Germany of the ruined Carolingians, resulted
+in the unlooked-for advent of the new Capetian dynasty.
+
+
+  Dismemberment of the kingdom.
+
+This event completed the evolution of the forces that had produced
+feudalism, the basis of the medieval social system. The idea of public
+authority had been replaced by one that was simpler and therefore better
+fitted for a half-civilized society--that of dependence of the weak on
+the strong, voluntarily entered on by means of mutual contract.
+Feudalism had gained ground in the 8th century; feudalism it was which
+had raised the first Carolingian to the throne as being the richest and
+most powerful person in Austrasia; and Charlemagne with all his power
+had been as utterly unable as the Merovingians to revive the idea of an
+abstract and impersonal state. Charlemagne's vassals, however, had
+needed him; while from Charles the Bald onward it was the king who
+needed the vassals--a change more marked with each successive prince.
+The feudal system had in fact turned against the throne, the vassals
+using it to secure a permanent hold upon offices and fiefs, and to get
+possession of estates and of power. After Charles the Bald's death
+royalty had only, so to speak, a shell--administrative officialdom. No
+longer firmly rooted in the soil, the monarchy was helpless before local
+powers which confronted it, seized upon the land, and cut off connexion
+between throne and people. The king, the supreme lord, was the only lord
+without lands, a nomad in his own realms, merely lingering there until
+starved out. Feudalism claimed its new rights in the capitulary of
+Quierzy-sur-Oise in 857; the rights of the monarchy began to dwindle in
+877.
+
+But vassalage could only be a cause of disintegration, not of unity, and
+that this disintegration did not at once spread indefinitely was due to
+the dozen or so great military commands--Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine,
+&c.--which Charles the Bald had been obliged to establish on a strong
+territorial basis. One of these great vassals, the duke of France, was
+amply provided with estates and offices, in contrast to the landless
+Carolingian, and his power, like that of the future kings of Prussia and
+Austria, was based on military authority, for he had a frontier--that of
+Anjou. Then the inevitable crisis had come. For a hundred years the
+great feudal lords had disposed of the crown as they pleased, handing it
+back and forward from one dynasty to another. At the same time the
+contrast between the vast proportions of the Carolingian empire and its
+feeble administrative control over a still uncivilized community became
+more and more accentuated. The Empire crumbled away by degrees. Each
+country began to lead its own separate existence, stammering its own
+tongue; the different nations no longer understood one another, and no
+longer had any general ideas in common. The kingdoms of France and
+Germany, still too large, owed their existence to a series of
+dispossessions imposed on sovereigns too feeble to hold their own, and
+consisted of a great number of small states united by a very slight
+bond. At the end of the 10th century the duchy of France was the only
+central part of the kingdom which was still free and without
+organization. The end was bound to come, and the final struggle was
+between Laon, the royal capital, and Reims, the ecclesiastical capital,
+the former carrying with it the soil of France, and the latter the
+crown. The Capets captured the first in 985 and the other in 987.
+Thenceforth all was over for the Carolingians, who were left with no
+heritage save their great name.
+
+
+  The House of Capet.
+
+Was the day won for the House of Capet? In the 11th century the kings of
+that line possessed meagre domains scattered about in the Ile de France
+among the seigniorial possessions of Brie, Beauce, Beauvaisis and
+Valois. They were hemmed in by the powerful duchy of Normandy, the
+counties of Blois, Flanders and Champagne, and the duchy of Burgundy.
+Beyond these again stretched provinces practically impenetrable to royal
+influence: Brittany, Gascony, Toulouse, Septimania and the Spanish
+March. The monarchy lay stifling in the midst of a luxuriant feudal
+forest which surrounded its only two towns of any importance: Paris, the
+city of the future, and Orleans, the city of learning. Its power,
+exercised with an energy tempered by prudence, ran to waste like its
+wealth in a suzerainty over turbulent vassals devoid of common
+government or administration, and was undermined by the same lack of
+social discipline among its vassals which had sapped the power of the
+Carolingians. The new dynasty was thus the poorest and weakest of the
+great civil and ecclesiastical lordships which occupied the country from
+the estuary of the Scheldt to that of the Llobregat, and bounded
+approximately by the Meuse, the Saone and the ridge of the Cevennes; yet
+it cherished a great ambition which it revealed at times during its
+first century (987-1108)--a determination not to repeat the Carolingian
+failure. It had to wait two centuries after the revolution of 987 before
+it was strong enough to take up the dormant tradition of an authority
+like that of Rome; and until then it cunningly avoided unequal strife in
+which, victory being impossible, reverses might have weakened those
+titles, higher than any due to feudal rights, conferred by the heritage
+of the Caesars and the coronation at Reims, and held in reserve for the
+future.
+
+
+  Hugh Capet (987-996).
+
+The new dynasty thus at first gave the impression rather of decrepitude
+than of youth, seeming more a continuation of the Carolingian monarchy
+than a new departure. Hugh Capet's reign was one of disturbance and
+danger; behind his dim personality may be perceived the struggle of
+greater forces--royalty and feudalism, the French clergy and the papacy,
+the kingdom of France and the Empire. Hugh Capet needed more than three
+years and the betrayal of his enemy into his hands before he could parry
+the attack of a quite second-rate adversary, Charles of Lorraine (990),
+the last descendant of Charlemagne. The insubordination of several great
+vassals--the count of Vermandois, the duke of Burgundy, the count of
+Flanders--who treated him as he had treated the Carolingian king; the
+treachery of Arnulf, archbishop of Reims, who let himself be won over by
+the empress Theophano; the papal hostility inflamed by the emperor
+against the claim of feudal France to independence,--all made it seem
+for a time as though the unity of the Roman empire of the West would be
+secured at Hugh's expense and in Otto's favour; but as a matter of fact
+this papal and imperial hostility ended by making the Capet dynasty a
+national one. When Hugh died in 996, he had succeeded in maintaining his
+liberty mainly, it is true, by diplomacy, not force, despite opposing
+powers and his own weakness. Above all, he had secured the future by
+associating his son Robert with him on the throne; and although the
+nobles and the archbishop of Reims were disturbed by this suspension of
+the feudal right of election, and tried to oppose it, they were
+unsuccessful.
+
+
+  Robert the Pious (996-1031).
+
+Robert the Pious, a crowned monk, resembled his father in eschewing
+great schemes, whether from timidity or prudence; yet from 996 to 1031
+he preserved intact the authority he had inherited from Hugh, despite
+many domestic disturbances. He maintained a defiant attitude towards
+Germany; increased his heritage; strengthened his royal title by the
+addition of that of duke of Burgundy after fourteen years of pillage;
+and augmented the royal domain by adding several countships on the
+south-east and north-west. Limited in capacity, he yet understood the
+art of acquisition.
+
+
+  Henry I. (1031-1060).
+
+Henry I., his son, had to struggle with a powerful vassal, Eudes, count
+of Chartres and Troyes, and was obliged for a time to abandon his
+father's anti-German policy. Eudes, who was rash and adventurous, in
+alliance with the queen-mother, supported the second son, Robert, and
+captured the royal town of Sens. In order to retake it Henry ceded the
+beautiful valley of the Saone and the Rhone to the German emperor
+Conrad, and henceforth the kingdom of Burgundy was, like Lorraine, to
+follow the fortunes of Germany. Henry had besides to invest his brother
+with the duchy of Burgundy--a grave error which hampered French politics
+during three centuries. Like his father, he subsequently managed to
+retrieve some of the crown lands from William the Bastard, the
+too-powerful duke of Normandy; and he made a praiseworthy though
+fruitless attempt to regain possession of Lorraine for the French crown.
+Finally, by the coronation of his son Philip (1059) he confirmed the
+hereditary right of the Capets, soon to be superior to the elective
+rights of the bishops and great barons of the kingdom. The chief merit
+of these early Capets, indeed, was that they had sons, so that their
+dynasty lasted on without disastrous minorities or quarrels over the
+division of inheritance.
+
+
+  Philip I. (1060-1108).
+
+Philip I. achieved nothing during his long reign of forty-eight years
+except the necessary son, Louis the Fat. Unsuccessful even in small
+undertakings he was utterly incapable of great ones; and the two
+important events of his reign took place, the one against his will, the
+other without his help. The first, which lessened Norman aggression in
+his kingdom, was William the Bastard's conquest of England (1066); the
+second was the First Crusade preached by the French pope Urban II.
+(1095). A few half-hearted campaigns against recalcitrant vassals and a
+long and obstinate quarrel with the papacy over his adulterous union
+with Bertrade de Montfort, countess of Anjou, represented the total
+activity of Philip's reign; he was greedy and venal, by no means
+disdaining the petty profits of brigandage, and he never left his own
+domains.
+
+
+  Louis VI. the Fat (1108-1137).
+
+After a century's lethargy the house of Capet awoke once more with Louis
+VI. and began the destruction of the feudal polity. For thirty-four
+years of increasing warfare this active and energetic king, this brave
+and persevering soldier, never spared himself, energetically policing
+the royal demesne against such pillagers as Hugh of Le Puiset or Thomas
+of Marle. There was, however, but little difference yet between a count
+of Flanders or of Chartres and Louis VI., the possessor of a but small
+and perpetually disturbed realm, who was praised by his minister, the
+monk Suger, for making his power felt as far as distant Berril. This was
+clearly shown when he attempted to force the great feudal lords to
+recognize his authority. His bold endeavour to establish William Clito
+in Flanders ended in failure; and his want of strength was particularly
+humiliating in his unfortunate struggle with Henry I., king of the
+English and duke of Normandy, who was powerful and well served, the real
+master of a comparatively weak baronage. Louis only escaped being
+crushed because he remembered, as did his successors for long after him,
+that his house owed its power to the Church.
+
+The Church has never loved weakness; she has always had a secret
+sympathy for power, whatever its source, when she could hope to capture
+it and make it serve her ends. Louis VI. defended her against feudal
+robbers; and she supported him in his struggles against the nobles,
+making him, moreover, by his son's marriage with the heiress of
+Aquitaine, the greatest and richest landholder of the kingdom. But Louis
+was not the obedient tool she wished for. With equal firmness and
+success he vindicated his rights, whether against the indirect attacks
+of the papacy on his independence, or the claims of the ecclesiastical
+courts which, in principle, he made subordinate to the jurisdiction of
+the crown; whether in episcopal elections, or in ecclesiastical reforms
+which might possibly imperil his power or his revenues. The prestige of
+this energetic king, protector of the Church, of the infant communes in
+the towns, and of the peasants as against the constant oppressions of
+feudalism, became still greater at the end of his reign, when an
+invasion of the German emperor Henry V. in alliance with Henry Beauclerk
+of Normandy (Henry I. of England), rallied his subjects round the
+oriflamme of St Denis, awakening throughout northern France the
+unanimous and novel sentiment of national danger.
+
+
+  Louis VII. the Young (1137-1180).
+
+  The second crusade.
+
+Unfortunately his successor, Louis VII., almost destroyed his work by a
+colossal blunder, although circumstances seemed much in his favour.
+Germany and England, the two powers especially to be dreaded, were busy
+with internal troubles and quarrels of succession. On the other hand,
+thanks to his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, Louis's own domains
+had been increased by the greater part of the country between the Loire
+and the Pyrenees; while his father's minister, the monk Suger, continued
+to assist him with his moderation and prudence. His first successes
+against Theobald of Champagne, who for thirty years had been the most
+dangerous of the great French barons and had refused a vassal's services
+to Louis VI., as well as the adroit diplomacy with which he wrested from
+Geoffrey the Fair, count of Anjou, a part of the Norman Vexin long
+claimed by the French kings, in exchange for permitting him to conquer
+Normandy, augured well for his boldness and activity, had he but
+confined them to serving his own interests. The second crusade,
+undertaken to expiate his burning of the church of Vitry, inaugurated a
+series of magnificent but fruitless exploits; while his wife was the
+cause of domestic quarrels still more disastrous. Piety and a thirst for
+glory impelled Louis to take the lead in this fresh expedition to the
+Holy Land, despite the opposition of Suger, and the hesitation of the
+pope, Bernard of Clairvaux and the barons. The alliance with the German
+king Conrad III. only enhanced the difficulties of an enterprise already
+made hazardous by the misunderstandings between Greeks and Latins. The
+Crusade ended in the double disaster of military defeat and martial
+dishonour (1147-1149); and Suger's death in 1151 deprived Louis of a
+counsellor who had exercised the regency skilfully and with success,
+just at the very moment when his divorce from Eleanor was to jeopardize
+the fortunes of the Capets.
+
+
+  Rivalry of the Capets and Angevins.
+
+For the proud and passionate Eleanor married, two months later (May
+1152), the young Henry, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy, who held,
+besides these great fiefs, the whole of the south-west of France, and in
+two years' time the crown of England as well. Henry and Louis at once
+engaged in the first Capet-Angevin duel, destined to last a hundred
+years (1152-1242). When France and England thus entered European
+history, their conditions were far from being equal. In England royal
+power was strong; the size of the Angevin empire was vast, and the
+succession assured. It was only abuse of their too-great powers that
+ruined the early Angevin kings. France in the 12th century was merely a
+federation of separate states, jealously independent, which the king had
+to negotiate with rather than rule; while his own possessions, shorn of
+the rich heritage of Aquitaine, were, so to speak, swamped by those of
+the English king. For some time it was feared that the French kingdom
+would be entirely absorbed in consequence of the marriage between
+Louis's daughter and Henry II.'s eldest son. The two rivals were typical
+of their states, Henry II. being markedly superior to Louis in political
+resource, military talent and energy. He failed, however, to realize his
+ambition of shutting in the Capet king and isolating him from the rest
+of Europe by crafty alliances, notably that with the emperor Frederick
+Barbarossa--while watching an opportunity to supplant him upon the
+French throne. It is extraordinary that Louis should have escaped final
+destruction, considering that Henry had subdued Scotland, retaken Anjou
+from his brother Geoffrey, won a hold over Brittany, and schemed
+successfully for Languedoc. But the Church once more came to the rescue
+of her devoted son. The retreat to France of Pope Alexander III., after
+he had been driven from Rome by the emperor Frederick in favour of the
+anti-pope Victor, revived Louis's moral prestige. Henry II.'s quarrel
+with Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, which ran its course in
+France (1164-1171) as a struggle for the independence and reform of the
+Church, both threatened by the Constitutions of Clarendon, and ended
+with the murder of Becket in 1172, gave Louis yet another advantage over
+his rival. Finally the birth of Philip Augustus (1165), after thirty
+years of childless wedlock, saved the kingdom from a war of succession
+just at the time when the powerful Angevin sway, based entirely upon
+force, was jeopardized by the rebellion of Henry II.'s sons against
+their father. Louis naturally joined the coalition of 1173, but showed
+no more vigour in this than in his other wars; and his fate would have
+been sealed had not the pope checked Henry by the threat of an
+interdict, and reconciled the combatants (1177). Louis had still time
+left to effect the coronation of his son Philip Augustus (1179), and to
+associate him with himself in the exercise of the royal power for which
+he had grown too old and infirm.
+
+
+  Philip Augustus (1180-1223).
+
+Philip Augustus, who was to be the bitterest enemy of Henry II. and the
+Angevins, was barely twenty before he revealed the full measure of his
+cold energy and unscrupulous ambition. In five years (1180-1186) he rid
+himself of the overshadowing power of Philip of Alsace, count of
+Flanders, and his own uncles, the counts of Champagne; while the treaty
+of May 20th, 1186, was his first rough lesson to the feudal leagues,
+which he had reduced to powerlessness, and to the subjugated duke of
+Burgundy and count of Flanders. Northern and eastern France recognized
+the suzerainty of the Capet, and Philip Augustus was now bold enough to
+attack Henry II., the master of the west, whose friendly neutrality
+(assured by the treaty of Gisors) had made possible the successive
+defeats of the great French barons. Like his father, Philip understood
+how to make capital out of the quarrels of the aged and ailing Henry II.
+with his sons, especially with Richard, who claimed his French heritage
+in his father's lifetime, and raised up enemies for the disunited
+Angevins even in Germany. After two years of constant defeat, Henry's
+capitulation at Azai proved once more that fortune is never with the
+old. The English king had to submit himself to "the advice and desire of
+the king of France," doing him homage for all continental fiefs
+(1187-1189).
+
+
+  Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur de Lion.
+
+The defection of his favourite son John gave Henry his deathblow, and
+Philip Augustus found himself confronted by a new king of England,
+Richard Coeur de Lion, as powerful, besides being younger and more
+energetic. Philip's ambition could not rest satisfied with the petty
+principalities of Amiens, Vermandois and Valois, which he had added to
+the royal demesne. The third crusade, undertaken, sorely against
+Philip's will, in alliance with Richard, only increased the latent
+hostility between the two kings; and in 1191 Philip abandoned the
+enterprise in order to return to France and try to plunder his absent
+rival. Despite his solemn oath no scruples troubled him: witness the
+large sums of money he offered to the emperor Henry VI. if he would
+detain Richard, who had been made prisoner by the duke of Austria on his
+return from the crusade; and his negotiations with his brother John
+Lackland, whom he acknowledged king of England in exchange for the
+cession of Normandy. But Henry VI. suddenly liberated Richard, and in
+five years that "devil set free" took from Philip all the profit of his
+trickery, and shut him off from Normandy by the strong fortress of
+Chateau-Gaillard (1194-1199).
+
+
+  Philip Augustus and John Lackland.
+
+Happily an accident which caused Richard's death at the siege of Chalus,
+and the evil imbecility of his brother and successor, John Lackland,
+brilliantly restored the fortunes of the Capets. The quarrel between
+John and his nephew Arthur of Brittany gave Philip Augustus one of those
+opportunities of profiting by family discord which, coinciding with
+discontent among the various peoples subject to the house of Anjou, had
+stood him in such good stead against Henry II. and Richard. He demanded
+renunciation on John's part, not of Anjou only, but of Poitou and
+Normandy--of all his French-speaking possessions, in fact--in favour of
+Arthur, who was supported by William des Roches, the most powerful lord
+of the region of the Loire. Philip's divorce from Ingeborg of Denmark,
+who appealed successfully to Pope Innocent III., merely delayed the
+inevitable conflict. John of England, moreover, was a past-master in the
+art of making enemies of his friends, and his conduct towards his
+vassals of Aquitaine furnished a judicial pretext for conquest. The
+royal judges at Paris condemned John, as a felon, to death and the
+forfeiture of his fiefs (1203), and the murder of Arthur completed his
+ruin. Philip Augustus made a vigorous onslaught on Normandy in right of
+justice and of superior force, took the formidable fortress of
+Chateau-Gaillard on the Seine after several months' siege, and invested
+Rouen, which John abandoned, fleeing to England. In Anjou, Touraine,
+Maine and Poitou, lords, towns and abbeys made their submission, won
+over by Philip's bribes despite Pope Innocent III.'s attempts at
+intervention. In 1208 John was obliged to own the Plantagenet
+continental power as lost. There were no longer two rival monarchies in
+France; the feudal equilibrium was destroyed, to the advantage of the
+duchy of France.
+
+But Philip in his turn nearly allowed himself to be led into an attempt
+at annexing England, and so reversing for his own benefit the work of
+the Angevins (1213); but, happily for the future of the dynasty, Pope
+Innocent III. prevented this. Thanks to the ecclesiastical sanction of
+his royalty, Philip had successfully braved the pope for twenty years,
+in the matter of Ingeborg and again in that of the German schism, when
+he had supported Philip of Swabia against Otto of Brunswick, the pope's
+candidate. In 1213, John Lackland, having been in conflict with Innocent
+regarding the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, had made submission and
+done homage for his kingdom, and Philip wished to take vengeance for
+this at the expense of the rebellious vassals of the north-west, and of
+Renaud and Ferrand, counts of Boulogne and Flanders, thus combating
+English influence in those quarters.
+
+
+  Coalition against Philip Augustus. (1214).
+
+This was a return to the old Capet policy; but it was also menacing to
+many interests, and sure to arouse energetic resistance. John seized the
+opportunity to consolidate against Philip a European coalition, which
+included most of the feudal lords in Flanders, Belgium and Lorraine, and
+the emperor Otto IV. So dangerous did the French monarchy already seem!
+John began operations with an attack from Anjou, supported by the
+notably capricious nobles of Aquitaine, and was routed by Philip's son
+at La Roche aux Moines, near Angers, on the 2nd of July 1214.
+Twenty-five days later the northern allies, intending to surprise the
+smaller French army on its passage over the bridge at Bouvines,
+themselves sustained a complete defeat. This first national victory had
+not only a profound effect on the whole kingdom, but produced
+consequences of far-reaching importance: in Germany it brought about
+Otto's fall before Frederick II.; in England it introduced the great
+drama of 1215, the first act of which closed with Magna Carta--John
+Lackland being forced to acknowledge the control of his barons, and to
+share with them the power he had abused and disgraced. In France, on the
+contrary, the throne was exalted beyond rivalry, raised far above a
+feudalism which never again ventured on acts of independence or
+rebellion. Bouvines gave France the supremacy of the West. The feudalism
+of Languedoc was all that now remained to conquer.
+
+The whole world, in fact, was unconsciously working for Philip Augustus.
+Anxious not to risk his gains, but to consolidate them by organization,
+Philip henceforth until his death in 1223 operated through diplomacy
+alone, leaving to others the toil and trouble of conquests, the
+advantages of which were not for them. When his son Louis wished to
+wrest the English crown from John, now crushed by his barons, Philip
+intervened without seeming to do so, first with the barons, then with
+Innocent III., supporting and disowning his son by turns; until the
+latter, held in check by Rome, was forced to sign the treaty of Lambeth
+(1217). When the Church and the needy and fanatical nobles of northern
+and central France destroyed the feudal dynasty of Toulouse and the rich
+civilization of the south in the Albigensian crusade, it was for Philip
+Augustus that their leader, Simon de Montfort, all unknowing, conquered
+Languedoc. At last, instead of the two Frances of the _langue d'oc_ and
+the _langue d'oil_, there was but one royal France comprising the whole
+kingdom.
+
+
+  Administration of Philip Augustus.
+
+Philip Augustus was not satisfied with the destruction of a turbulent
+feudalism; he wished to substitute for it such unity and peace as had
+obtained in the Roman Empire; and just as he had established his
+supremacy over the feudal lords, so now he managed to extend it over the
+clergy, and to bend them to his will. He took advantage of their
+weakness in the midst of an age of violence. By contracts of "pariage"
+the clergy claimed and obtained the king's protection even in places
+beyond the king's jurisdiction, to their common advantage. Philip thus
+set the feudal lords one against the other; and against them all, first
+the Church, then the communes. He exploited also the townspeople's need
+for security and the instinct of independence which made them claim a
+definite place in the feudal hierarchy. He was the actual creator of the
+communes, although an interested creator, since they made a breach in
+the fortress of feudalism and extended the royal authority far beyond
+the king's demesne. He did even more: he gave monarchy the instruments
+of which it still stood in need, gathering round him in Paris a council
+of men humble in origin, but wise and loyal; while in 1190 he instituted
+_baillis_ and seneschals throughout his enlarged dominions, all-powerful
+over the nobles and subservient to himself. He filled his treasury with
+spoils harshly wrung from all classes; thus inaugurating the monarchy's
+long and patient labours at enlarging the crown lands bit by bit through
+taxes on private property. Finally he created an army, no longer the
+temporary feudal _ost_, but a more or less permanent royal force. By
+virtue of all these organs of government the throne guaranteed peace,
+justice and a secure future, having routed feudalism with sword and
+diplomacy. Philip's son was the first of the Capets who was not crowned
+during his father's lifetime; a fact clearly showing that the principle
+of heredity had now been established beyond discussion.
+
+
+  Louis VIII. (1223-1226).
+
+Louis VIII.'s short reign was but a prolongation of Philip's in its
+realization of his two great designs: the recovery from Henry III. of
+England of Poitou as far as the Garonne; and the crusade against the
+Albigenses, which with small pains procured him the succession of Amaury
+de Montfort, and the Languedoc of the counts of Toulouse, if not the
+whole of Gascony. Louis VIII. died on his return from this short
+campaign without having proved his full worth.
+
+
+  Universal French activity.
+
+But the history of France during the 11th and 12th centuries does not
+entirely consist of these painful struggles of the Capet dynasty to
+shake off the fetters of feudalism. France, no longer split up into
+separate fragments, now began to exercise both intellectual and military
+influence over Europe. Everywhere her sons gave proof of rejuvenated
+activity. The Christian missions which others were reviving in Prussia
+and beginning in Hungary were undertaken on a vaster scale by the
+Capets. These "elder sons of the Church" made themselves responsible for
+carrying out the "work of God," and French pilgrims in the Holy Land
+prepared the great movement of the Crusades against the infidels.
+Religious faith, love of adventure, the hope of making advantageous
+conquests, anticipations of a promised paradise--all combined to force
+this advance upon the Orient, which though failing to rescue the
+sepulchre of Christ, the ephemeral kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, the
+dukedom of Athens, or the Latin empire of Constantinople, yet gained for
+France that prestige for military glory and religious piety which for
+centuries constituted her strength in the Levant (see CRUSADES). At the
+call of the pope other members of the French chivalry also made
+victorious expeditions against the Mussulmans, and founded the Christian
+kingdom of Portugal. Obeying that enterprising spirit which was to take
+them to England half a century later, Normans descended upon southern
+Italy and wrested rich lands from Greeks and Saracens.
+
+
+  Intellectual development.
+
+In the domain of intellect the advance of the French showed a no less
+dazzling and a no less universal activity; they sang as well as they
+fought, and their epics were worthy of their swordsmanship, while their
+cathedrals were hymns in stone as ardent as their soaring flights of
+devotion. In this period of intense religious life France was always in
+the vanguard. It was the ideas of Cluniac monks that freed the Church
+from feudal supremacy, and in the 11th century produced a Pope Gregory
+VII.; the spirit of free investigation shown by the heretics of Orleans
+inspired the rude Breton, Abelard, in the 12th century; and with Gerbert
+and Fulbert of Chartres the schools first kindled that brilliant light
+which the university of Paris, organized by Philip Augustus, was to shed
+over the world from the heights of Sainte-Genevieve. In the quarrels of
+the priesthood under the Empire it was St Bernard, the great abbot of
+Clairvaux, who tried to arrest the papacy on the slippery downward path
+of theocracy; finally, it was in Suger's church of St Denis that French
+art began that struggle between light against darkness which,
+culminating in Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, was to teach the
+architects of the world the delight of building with airiness of effect.
+The old basilica which contains the history of the monarchy sums up the
+whole of Gothic art to this day, and it was Suger who in the domain of
+art and politics brought forward once more the conception of unity. The
+courteous ideal of French chivalry, with its "delectable" language, was
+adopted by all seigniorial Europe, which thus became animated, as it
+were, by the life-blood of France. Similarly, in the universal movement
+of those forces which made for freedom, France began the age-long
+struggle to maintain the rights of civil society and continually to
+enlarge the social categories. The townsman enriched by commerce and the
+emancipated peasant tried more or less valiantly to shake off the yoke
+of the feudal system, which had been greatly weakened, if not entirely
+broken down, by the crusades. Grouped around their belfry-towers and
+organized within their gilds, they made merry in their free jocular
+language over their own hardships, and still more over the vices of
+their lords. They insinuated themselves into the counsels of their
+ignorant masters, and though still sitting humbly at the feet of the
+barons, these upright and well-educated servitors were already dreaming
+of the great deeds they would do when their tyrants should have vacated
+their high position, and when royalty should have summoned them to
+power.
+
+
+  Louis IX. (1226-1270).
+
+  Blanche of Castile.
+
+By the beginning of the 13th century the Capet monarchy was so strong
+that the crisis occasioned by the sudden death of Louis VIII. was easily
+surmounted by the foreign woman and the child whom he left behind him.
+It is true that that woman was Blanche of Castile, and that child the
+future Louis IX. A virtuous and very devout Spanish princess, Blanche
+assumed the regency of the kingdom and the tutelage of her child, and
+carried them on for nine years with so much force of character and
+capacity for rule that she soon impressed the clamorous and disorderly
+leaders of the opposition (1226-1235). By the treaty of Meaux (1229),
+her diplomacy combined with the influence of the Church to prepare
+effectually for the annexation of Languedoc to the kingdom,
+supplementing this again by a portion of Champagne; and the marriage of
+her son to Margaret of Provence definitely broke the ties which held the
+country within the orbit of the German empire. She managed also to keep
+out of the great quarrel between Frederick II. and the papacy which was
+convulsing Germany. But her finest achievement was the education of her
+son; she taught him that lofty religious morality which in his case was
+not merely a rule for private conduct, but also a political programme to
+which he remained faithful even to the detriment of his apparent
+interests. With Louis IX. morality for the first time permeated and
+dominated politics; he had but one end: to do justice to every one and
+to reconcile all Christendom in view of a general crusade.
+
+
+  Louis IX.'s policy of arbitration.
+
+The oak of Vincennes, under which the king would sit to mete out
+justice, cast its shade over the whole political action of Louis IX. He
+was the arbiter of townspeople, of feudal lords and of kings. The
+interdiction of the judicial duel, the "quarantaine le roi," i.e. "the
+king's truce of forty days" during which no vengeance might be taken for
+private wrongs, and the assurement,[29] went far to diminish the abuses
+of warfare by allowing his mediation to make for a spirit of
+reconciliation throughout his kingdom. When Thibaud (Theobald), count of
+Champagne, attempted to marry the daughter of Pierre Mauclerc, duke of
+Brittany, without the king's consent, Louis IX., who held the county of
+Champagne at his mercy, contented himself with exacting guarantees of
+peace. Beyond the borders of France, at the time of the emperor
+Frederick II.'s conflict with a papacy threatened in its temporal
+powers, though he made no response to Frederick's appeal to the civil
+authorities urging them to present a solid front against the pretensions
+of the Church, and though he energetically supported the latter, yet he
+would not admit her right to place kingdoms under interdict, and refused
+the imperial crown which Gregory IX. offered him for one of his
+brothers. He always hoped to bring about an honourable agreement between
+the two adversaries, and in his estimation the advantages of peace
+outweighed personal interest. In matters concerning the succession in
+Flanders, Hainaut and Navarre; in the quarrels of the princes regarding
+the Empire, and in those of Henry III. of England with his barons; it
+was because of his justice and his disinterestedness that he was
+appealed to as a trusted mediator. His conduct towards Henry III. was
+certainly a most characteristic example of his behaviour.
+
+
+  Louis IX. and Henry III.
+
+The king of England had entered into the coalition formed by the
+nobility of Poitou and the count of Toulouse to prevent the execution of
+the treaty of 1229 and the enfeoffment of Poitou to the king's brother
+Alphonse. Louis IX. defeated Henry III. twice within two days, at
+Taillebourg and at Saintes, and obliged him to demand a truce (1242). It
+was forbidden that any lord should be a vassal both of the king of
+France and of the king of England. After this Louis IX. had set off upon
+his first crusade in Egypt (1248-54), and on his return he wanted to
+make this truce into a definite treaty and to "set love" between his
+children and those of the English king. By a treaty signed at Paris
+(1259), Henry III. renounced all the conquests of Philip Augustus, and
+Louis IX. those of his father Louis VIII.--an example unique in history
+of a victorious king spontaneously giving up his spoil solely for the
+sake of peace and justice, yet proving by his act that honesty is the
+best policy; for monarchy gained much by that moral authority which made
+Louis IX. the universal arbitrator.
+
+
+  The crusade of Tunis.
+
+But his love of peace and concord was not always "sans grands despens"
+to the kingdom. In 1258, by renouncing his rights over Roussillon and
+the countship of Barcelona, conquered by Charlemagne, he made an
+advantageous bargain because he kept Montpellier; but he committed a
+grave fault in consenting to accept the offers regarding Sicily made by
+Pope Urban IV. to his brother the count of Anjou and Provence. That was
+the origin of the expeditions into Italy on which the house of Valois
+was two centuries later to squander the resources of France
+unavailingly, compromising beyond the Alps its interests in the Low
+Countries and upon the Rhine. But Louis IX.'s worst error was his
+obsession with regard to the crusades, to which he sacrificed
+everything. Despite the signal failure of the first crusade, when he had
+been taken prisoner; despite the protests of his mother, of his
+counsellors, and of the pope himself, he flung himself into the mad
+adventure of Tunis. Nowhere was his blind faith more plainly shown,
+combined as it was with total ignorance of the formidable migrations
+that were convulsing Asia, and of the complicated game of politics just
+then proceeding between the Christian nations and the Moslems of the
+Mediterranean. At Tunis he found his death, on the 25th of August 1270.
+
+
+  Philip III., the Bold (1270-1285).
+
+The death of Louis IX. and that of his brother Alphonse of Poitiers,
+heir of the count of Toulouse, made Philip III., the Bold, legitimate
+master of northern France and undisputed sovereign of southern France.
+From the latter he detached the _comtat_ Venaissin in 1274 and gave it
+to the papacy, which held it until 1791. But he had not his father's
+great soul nor disinterested spirit. Urged by Pope Martin IV. he began
+the fatal era of great international wars by his unlucky crusade against
+the king of Aragon, who, thanks to the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers,
+substituted his own predominance in Sicily for that of Charles of Anjou.
+Philip returned from Spain only to die at Perpignan, ending his
+insignificant reign as he had begun it, amid the sorrows of a disastrous
+retreat (1270-1285). His reign was but a halting-place of history
+between those of Louis IX. and Philip the Fair, just when the transition
+was taking place from the last days of the middle ages to the modern
+epoch.
+
+
+  Philip IV. the Fair (1285-1314).
+
+The middle ages had been dominated by four great problems. The first of
+these had been to determine whether there should be a universal empire
+exercising tutelage over the nations; and if so, to whom this empire
+should belong, to pope or emperor. The second had been the extension to
+the East of that Catholic unity which reigned in the West. Again, for
+more than a century, the question had also been debated whether the
+English kings were to preserve and increase their power over the soil
+of France. And, finally, two principles had been confronting one another
+in the internal life of all the European states: the feudal and the
+monarchical principles. France had not escaped any of these conflicts;
+but Philip the Fair was the initiator or the instrument (it is difficult
+to say which) who was to put an end to both imperial and theocratic
+dreams, and to the international crusades; who was to remove the
+political axis from the centre of Europe, much to the benefit of the
+western monarchies, now definitely emancipated from the feudal yoke and
+firmly organized against both the Church and the barons. The hour had
+come for Dante, the great Florentine poet, to curse the man who was to
+dismember the empire, precipitate the fall of the papacy and discipline
+feudalism.
+
+
+  Litigious character of Philip the Fair's reign.
+
+Modern in his practical schemes and in his calculated purpose, Philip
+the Fair was still more so in his method, that of legal procedure, and
+in his agents, the lawyers. With him the French monarchy defined its
+ambitions, and little by little forsook its feudal and ecclesiastical
+character in order to clothe itself in juridical forms. His aggressive
+and litigious policy and his ruthless financial method were due to those
+lawyers of the south and of Normandy who had been nurtured on Roman law
+in the universities of Bologna or Montpellier, had practised chicanery
+in the provincial courts, had gradually thrust themselves into the great
+arena of politics, and were now leading the king and filling his
+parlement. It was no longer upon religion or morality, it was upon
+imperial and Roman rights that these _chevaliers es lois_ based the
+prince's omnipotence; and nothing more clearly marks the new tradition
+which was being elaborated than the fact that all the great events of
+Philip the Fair's reign were lawsuits.
+
+
+  Philip the Fair and the Papacy.
+
+The first of these was with the papacy. The famous quarrel between the
+priesthood and the Empire, which had culminated at Canossa under Gregory
+VII., in the apotheosis of the Lateran council under Innocent III., and
+again in the fall of the house of Hohenstaufen under Innocent IV., was
+reopened with the king of France by Boniface VIII. The quarrel began in
+1294 about a question of money. In his bull _Clericis laicos_ the pope
+protested against the taxes levied upon the French clergy by the king,
+whose expenses were increasing with his conquests. But he had not
+insisted; because Philip, between feudal vassals ruined by the crusades
+and lower classes fleeced by everybody, had threatened to forbid the
+exportation from France of any ecclesiastical gold and silver. In 1301
+and 1302 the arrest of Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, by the
+officers of the king, and the citation of this cleric before the king's
+tribunal for the crime of _lese-majeste_, revived the conflict and led
+Boniface to send an order to free Saisset, and to put forward a claim to
+reform the kingdom under the threat of excommunication. In view of the
+gravity of the occasion Philip made an unusually extended appeal to
+public opinion by convoking the states-general at Notre-Dame in Paris
+(1302). Whatever were their views as to the relations between
+ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction, the French clergy, ruined by
+the dues levied by the papal court, ranged themselves on the national
+side with the nobility and the _bourgeoisie_; whereupon the king, with a
+bold stroke far ahead of his time, gave tit for tat. His chancellor,
+Nogaret, went to Anagni to seize the pope and drag him before a council;
+but Boniface died without confessing himself vanquished. As a matter of
+fact the king and his lawyers triumphed, where the house of Swabia had
+failed. After the death of Boniface the splendid fabric of the medieval
+theocracy gave place to the rights of civil society, the humiliation of
+Avignon, the disruption of the great schism, the vain efforts of the
+councils for reform, and the radical and heretical solutions of Wycliffe
+and Huss.
+
+
+  Philip the Fair and the Templars.
+
+The affair of the Templars was another legal process carried out by the
+same Nogaret. Of course this military religious order had lost utility
+and justification when the Holy Land had been evacuated and the crusades
+were over. Their great mistake had lain in becoming rich, and rich to
+excess, through serving as bankers to princes, kings and popes; for
+great financial powers soon became unpopular. Philip took advantage of
+this hatred of the lower classes and the cowardice of his creature, Pope
+Clement V., to satisfy his desire for money. The trial of the order
+(1307-1313) was a remarkable example of the use of the religious
+tribunal of the Inquisition as a political instrument. There was a
+dramatic completeness about this unexpected result of the crusades. A
+general arbitrary arrest of the Templars, the sequestration of their
+property, examination under torture, the falsifying of procedure,
+extortion of money from the pope, the _auto-da-fe_ of innocent victims,
+the dishonest pillaging of their goods by the joint action of the king
+and the pope: such was the outcome of this vast process of
+secularization, which foreshadowed the events of the 16th and 18th
+centuries.
+
+
+  Philip the Fair and Edward I.
+
+External policy had the same litigious character. Philip the Fair
+instituted suits against his natural enemies, the king of England and
+the count of Flanders, foreign princes holding possessions within his
+kingdom; and against the emperor, whose ancient province of Lorraine and
+kingdom of Arles constantly changed hands between Germany and France.
+Philip began by interfering in the affairs of Sicily and Aragon, his
+father's inheritance; after which, on the pretext of a quarrel between
+French and English sailors, he set up his customary procedure: a
+citation of the king of England before the parlement of Paris, and in
+case of default a decree of forfeiture; the whole followed by
+execution--that is to say by the unimportant war of 1295. A truce
+arranged by Boniface VIII. restored Guienne to Edward I., gave him the
+hand of Philip's sister for himself and that of the king's daughter for
+his son (1298).
+
+
+  Philip the Fair and Flanders.
+
+A still more lengthy and unfortunate suit was the attempt of Philip the
+Fair and his successors to incorporate the Flemish fief like the English
+one (1300-1326), thus coming into conflict with proud and turbulent
+republics composed of wool and cloth merchants, weavers, fullers and
+powerful counts. Guy de Dampierre, count of Namur, who had become count
+of Flanders on the death of his mother Margaret II. in 1279--an
+ambitious, greedy and avaricious man--was arrested at the Louvre on
+account of his attempt to marry his daughter to Edward I.'s eldest son
+without the consent of his suzerain Philip. Released after two years, he
+sided definitely with the king of England when the latter was in arms
+against Philip; and being only weakly supported by Edward, he was
+betrayed by the nobles who favoured France, and forced to yield up not
+only his personal liberty but the whole of Flanders (1300). The
+Flemings, however, soon wearying of the oppressive administration of the
+French governor, Jacques de Chatillon, and the recrudescence of
+patrician domination, rose and overwhelmed the French chivalry at
+Courtrai (1302)--a prelude to the coming disasters of the Hundred Years'
+War. Philip's double revenge, on sea at Zierikzee and on land at
+Mons-en-Pevele (1304), led to the signing of a treaty at Athis-sur-Orge
+(1305).
+
+
+  Eastern policy of Philip the Fair.
+
+The efforts of Philip the Fair to expand the limits of his kingdom on
+the eastern border were more fortunate. His marriage had gained him
+Champagne; and he afterwards extended his influence over Franche Comte,
+Bar and the bishoprics of Lorraine, acquiring also Viviers and the
+important town of Lyons--all this less by force of arms than by the
+expenditure of money. Disdaining the illusory dream of the imperial
+crown, still cherished by his legal advisers, he pushed forward towards
+that fluctuating eastern frontier, the line of least resistance, which
+would have yielded to him had it not been for the unfortunate
+interruption of the Hundred Years' War.
+
+
+  The sons of Philip the Fair (1314-1328).
+
+His three sons, Louis X., Philip V. the Tall, and Charles IV., continued
+his work. They increased the power of the monarchy politically by
+destroying the feudal reaction excited in 1314 by the tyrannical conduct
+of the jurists, like Enguerrand de Marigny, and by the increasing
+financial extortions of their father; and they also--notably Philip V.,
+one of the most hard-working of the Capets--increased it on the
+administrative side by specializing the services of justice and of
+finance, which were separated from the king's council. Under these mute
+self-effacing kings the progress of royal power was only the more
+striking. With them the senior male line of the house of Capet became
+extinct.
+
+
+  The royal house of Capet.
+
+During three centuries and a half they had effected great things: they
+had founded a kingdom, a royal family and civil institutions. The land
+subject to Hugh Capet in 987, barely representing two of the modern
+departments of France, in 1328 covered a space equal to fifty-nine of
+them. The political unity of the kingdom was only fettered by the
+existence of four large isolated fiefs: Flanders on the north, Brittany
+on the west, Burgundy on the east and Guienne on the south. The capital,
+which for long had been movable, was now established in the Louvre at
+Paris, fortified by Philip Augustus. Like the fiefs, feudal institutions
+at large had been shattered. The Roman tradition which made the will of
+the sovereign law, gradually propagated by the teaching of Roman
+law--the law of servitude, not of liberty--and already proclaimed by the
+jurist Philippe de Beaumanoir as superior to the customs, had been of
+immense support to the interest of the state and the views of the
+monarchs; and finally the Capets, so humble of origin, had created
+organs of general administration common to all in order to effect an
+administrative centralization. In their grand council and their domains
+they would have none but silent, servile and well-disciplined agents.
+The royal exchequer, which was being painfully elaborated in the
+_chambre des comptes_, and the treasury of the crown lands at the
+Louvre, together barely sufficed to meet the expenses of this more
+complicated and costly machinery. The uniform justice exercised by the
+parlement spread gradually over the whole kingdom by means of _cas
+royaux_ (royal suits), and at the same time the royal coinage became
+obligatory. Against this exaltation of their power two adversaries might
+have been formidable; but one, the Church, was a captive in Babylon, and
+the second, the people, was deprived of the communal liberties which it
+had abused, or humbly effaced itself in the states-general behind the
+declared will of the king. This well-established authority was also
+supported by the revered memory of "Monseigneur Saint Louis"; and it is
+this prestige, the strength of this ideal superior to all other, that
+explains how the royal prerogative came to survive the mistakes and
+misfortunes of the Hundred Years' War.
+
+
+  Advent of the Valois.
+
+On the extinction of the direct line of the Capets the crown passed to a
+younger branch, that of the Valois. Its seven representatives
+(1328-1498) were on the whole very inferior to the Capets, and, with the
+exception of Charles V. and Louis XI., possessed neither their political
+sense nor even their good common sense; they cost France the loss of her
+great advantage over all other countries. During this century and a half
+France passed through two very severe crises; under the first five
+Valois the Hundred Years' War imperilled the kingdom's independence; and
+under Louis XI. the struggle against the house of Burgundy endangered
+the territorial unity of the monarchy that had been established with
+such pains upon the ruins of feudalism.
+
+
+  Philip VI. (1328-1350).
+
+Charles the Fair having died and left only a daughter, the nation's
+rights, so long in abeyance, were once more regained. An assembly of
+peers and barons, relying on two precedents under Philip V. and Charles
+IV., declared that "no woman, nor therefore her son, could in accordance
+with custom succeed to the monarchy of France." This definite decision,
+to which the name of the Salic law was given much later, set aside
+Edward III., king of England, grandson of Philip the Fair, nephew of the
+late kings and son of their sister Isabel. Instead it gave the crown to
+the feudal chief, the hard and coarse Philip VI. of Valois, nephew of
+Philip the Fair. This at once provoked war between the two monarchies,
+English and French, which, including periods of truce, lasted for a
+hundred and sixteen years. Of active warfare there were two periods,
+both disastrous to begin with, but ending favourably: one lasted from
+1337 to 1378 and the other from 1413 to 1453, thirty-three years of
+distress and folly coming in between.
+
+
+  The Hundred Years' War.
+
+However, the Hundred Years' War was not mainly caused by the pretensions
+of Edward III. to the throne of the Capets; since after having long
+hesitated to do homage to Philip VI. for his possessions in Guienne,
+Edward at last brought himself to it--though certainly only after
+lengthy negotiations, and even threats of war in 1331. It is true that
+six years later he renounced his homage and again claimed the French
+inheritance; but this was on the ground of personal grievances, and for
+economic and political reasons. There was a natural rivalry between
+Edward III. and Philip VI., both of them young, fond of the life of
+chivalry, festal magnificence, and the "belles apertises d'armes." This
+rivalry was aggravated by the enmity between Philip VI. and Robert of
+Artois, his brother-in-law, who, after having warmly supported the
+disinheriting of Edward III., had been convicted of deceit in a question
+of succession, had revenged himself on Philip by burning his waxen
+effigy, and had been welcomed with open arms at Edward's court. Philip
+VI. had taken reprisals against him in 1336 by making his parlement
+declare the forfeiture of Edward's lands and castles in Guienne; but the
+Hundred Years' War, at first simply a feudal quarrel between vassal and
+suzerain, soon became a great national conflict, in consequence of what
+was occurring in Flanders.
+
+The communes of Flanders, rich, hard-working, jealous of their
+liberties, had always been restive under the authority of their counts
+and the influence of their suzerain, the king of France. The affair at
+Cassel, where Philip VI. had avenged the injuries done by the people of
+Bruges in 1325 to their count, Louis of Nevers, had also compromised
+English interests. To attack the English through their colonies, Guienne
+and Flanders, was to injure them in their most vital interests--cloth
+and claret; for England sold her wool to Bruges in order to pay Bordeaux
+for her wine. Edward III. had replied by forbidding the exportation of
+English wool, and by threatening the great industrial cities of Flanders
+with the transference to England of the cloth manufacture--an excellent
+means of stirring them up against the French, as without wool they could
+do nothing. Workless, and in desperation, they threw themselves on
+Edward's mercy, by the advice of a rich citizen of Ghent, Jacob van
+Artevelde (q.v.); and their last scruples of loyalty gave way when
+Edward decided to follow the counsels of Robert of Artois and of
+Artevelde, and to claim the crown of France.
+
+
+  The defeat at Sluys.
+
+  The defeat at Crecy and the taking of Calais.
+
+The war began, like every feudal war of that day, with a solemn
+defiance, and it was soon characterized by terrible disasters. The
+destruction of the finest French fleet that had yet been seen, surprised
+in the port of Sluys, closed the sea to the king of France; the struggle
+was continued on land, but with little result. Flanders tired of it, but
+fortunately for Edward III. Brittany now took fire, through a quarrel of
+succession, analogous to that in France, between Charles of Blois (who
+had married the daughter of the late duke and was a nephew of Philip
+VI., by whom he was supported) and John of Montfort, brother of the old
+duke, who naturally asked assistance from the king of England. But here,
+too, nothing important was accomplished; the capture of John of Montfort
+at Nantes deprived Edward of Brittany at the very moment when he finally
+lost Flanders by the death of Artevelde, who was killed by the people of
+Ghent in 1345. Under the influence of Godefroi d'Harcourt, whom Philip
+VI. had wished to destroy on account of his ambitions with regard to the
+duchy of Normandy, Edward III. now invaded central France, ravaged
+Normandy, getting as near to Paris as Saint-Germain; and profiting by
+Philip VI.'s hesitation and delay, he reached the north with his spoils
+by dint of forced marches. Having been pursued and encountered at Crecy,
+Edward gained a complete victory there on the 26th of April 1346. The
+seizure of Calais in 1347, despite heroic resistance, gave the English a
+port where they could always find entry into France, just when the queen
+of England had beaten David of Scotland, the ally of France, at
+Neville's Cross, and when Charles of Blois, made prisoner in his turn,
+was held captive in London. The Black Death put the finishing touch to
+the military disasters and financial upheavals of this unlucky reign;
+though before his death in 1350 Philip VI. was fortunate enough to
+augment his territorial acquisitions by the purchase of the rich port of
+Montpellier, as well as by that of Dauphine, which extended to the
+Alpine frontier, and was to become the appanage of the eldest son of the
+king of France (see DAUPHINE and DAUPHIN).
+
+
+  John the Good (1350).
+
+  Defeat at Poitiers.
+
+Philip VI.'s successor was his son John the Good--or rather, the stupid
+and the spendthrift. This noble monarch was unspeakably brutal (as
+witness the murders, simply on suspicion, of the constable Raoul de
+Brienne, count of Eu, and of the count of Harcourt) and incredibly
+extravagant. His need of money led him to debase the currency eighty-one
+times between 1350 and 1355. And this money, so necessary for the
+prosecution of the war with England, which had been interrupted for a
+year, thanks to the pope's intervention, was lavished by him upon his
+favourite, Charles of La Cerda. The latter was murdered in 1354 by order
+of Charles of Navarre, the king's son-in-law, who also prevented the
+levying of the taxes voted by the states in 1355 with the object of
+replenishing the treasury. The Black Prince took this opportunity to
+ravage the southern provinces, and then marched to join the duke of
+Lancaster and Charles of Navarre in Normandy. John the Good managed to
+bring the English army to bay at Maupertuis, not far from Poitiers; but
+the battle was conducted with such a want of intelligence on his part
+that the French army was overwhelmed, though very superior in numbers,
+and King John was made prisoner, after a determined resistance, on the
+19th of September 1356.
+
+
+  The states of 1355-1356.
+
+  Robert le Coq and Etienne Marcel.
+
+The disaster at Poitiers almost led to the establishment in France of
+institutions analogous to those which England owed to Bouvines. The king
+a prisoner, the dauphin discredited and deserted, and the nobility
+decimated, the people--that is to say, the states-general--could raise
+their voice. Philip the Fair had never regarded the states-general as a
+financial institution, but merely as a moral support. Now, however, in
+order to obtain substantial help from taxes instead of mere driblets,
+the Valois needed a stronger lever than cunning or force. War against
+the English assured them the support of the nation. Exactions,
+debasement of the currency and extortionate taxation were ruinous
+palliatives, and insufficient to supply a treasury which the revenue
+from crown lands and various rights taken from the nobles could not fill
+even in times of peace. By the 14th century the motto "_N'impose qui ne
+veut_" (i.e. no taxation without consent) was as firmly established in
+France as in England. After Crecy Philip VI. called the states together
+regularly, that he might obtain subsidies from them, as an assistance,
+an "aid" which subjects could not refuse their suzerain. In return for
+this favour, which the king could not claim as a right, the states,
+feeling their power, began to bargain, and at the session of November
+1355 demanded the participation of all classes in the tax voted, and
+obtained guarantees both for its levy and the use to be made of it. A
+similar situation in England had given birth to political liberty; but
+in France the great crisis of the early 15th century stifled it. It was
+with this money that John the Good got himself beaten and taken prisoner
+at Poitiers. Once more the states-general had to be convoked. Confronted
+by a pale weakly boy like the dauphin Charles and the remnants of the
+discredited council, the situation of the states was stronger than ever.
+Predominant in influence were the deputies from the towns, and above all
+the citizens of the capital, led by Robert le Coq, bishop of Laon, and
+Etienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris. Having no cause for
+confidence in the royal administration, the states refused to treat with
+the dauphin's councillors, and proposed to take him under their own
+tutelage. He himself hesitated whether to sacrifice the royal authority,
+or else, without resources or support, to resist an assembly backed by
+public opinion. He decided for resistance. Under pretext of grave news
+received from his father, and of an interview at Metz with his uncle,
+the emperor Charles IV., he begged the states to adjourn till the 3rd of
+November 1356. This was a political _coup d'etat_, and when the time had
+expired he attempted a financial _coup d'etat_ by debasing the currency.
+An uprising obliged him to call the states-general together again in
+February 1357, when they transformed themselves into a deliberative,
+independent and permanent assembly by means of the _Grande Ordonnance_.
+
+
+  The Grande Ordonnance of 1357.
+
+In order to make this great French charter really effective resistance
+to the royal authority should have been collective, national and even
+popular, as in the case of the charters of 1215 and 1258 in England. But
+the lay and ecclesiastical feudal lords continued to show themselves in
+France, as everywhere else except across the Straits of Dover, a cause
+of division and oppression. Moreover, the states were never really
+general; those of the Langue d'oc and the Langue d'oil sometimes acted
+together; but there was never a common understanding between them and
+always two Frances within the kingdom. Besides, they only represented
+the three classes who alone had any social standing at that period: the
+nobles, the clergy, and the burgesses of important towns. Etienne Marcel
+himself protested against councillors "_de petit etat_." Again, the
+states, intermittently convoked according to the king's good pleasure,
+exercised neither periodical rights nor effective control, but fulfilled
+a duty which was soon felt as onerous. Indifference and satiety spread
+speedily; the bourgeoisie forsook the reformers directly they had
+recourse to violence (February 1358), and the Parisians became hostile
+when Etienne Marcel complicated his revolutionary work by intrigues with
+Navarre, releasing from prison the grandson of Louis X., the Headstrong,
+an ambitious, fine-spoken courter of popularity, covetous of the royal
+crown. The dauphin's flight from Paris excited a wild outburst of
+monarchist loyalty and anger against the capital among the nobility and
+in the states-general of Compiegne. Marcel, like the dauphin, was not a
+man to turn back. But neither the support of the peasant insurgents--the
+"Jacques"--who were annihilated in the market of Meaux, nor a last but
+unheeded appeal to the large towns, nor yet the uncertain support of
+Charles the Bad, to whom Marcel in despair proposed to deliver up Paris,
+saved him from being put to death by the royalist party of Paris on the
+31st of July 1358.
+
+Isolated as he was, Etienne Marcel had been unable either to seize the
+government or to create a fresh one. In the reaction which followed his
+downfall royalty inherited the financial administration which the states
+had set up to check extravagance. The "elus" and the superintendents,
+instead of being delegates of the states, became royal functionaries
+like the _baillis_ and the provosts; imposts, hearth-money (_fouage_),
+salt-tax (_gabelle_), sale-dues (_droits de vente_), voted for the war,
+were levied during the whole of Charles V.'s reign and added to his
+personal revenue. The opportunity of founding political liberty upon the
+vote and the control of taxation, and of organizing the administration
+of the kingdom so as to ensure that the entire military and financial
+resources should be always available, was gone beyond recall.
+
+
+  The treaty of Bretigny.
+
+Re-establishing the royal authority in Paris was not enough; an end had
+to be put to the war with England and Navarre, and this was effected by
+the treaty of Bretigny (1360). King John ceded Poitou, Saintonge,
+Agenais, Perigord and Limousin to Edward III., and was offered his
+liberty for a ransom of three million gold crowns; but, unable to pay
+that enormous sum, he returned to his agreeable captivity in London,
+where he died in 1364.
+
+
+  Charles V. (1364-1380).
+
+Yet through the obstinacy and selfishness of John the Good, France, in
+stress of suffering, was gradually realizing herself. More strongly than
+her king she felt the shame of defeat. Local or municipal patriotism
+waxed among peasants and townsfolk, and combined with hatred of the
+English to develop national sentiment. Many of the conquered repeated
+that proud, sad answer of the men of Rochelle to the English: "We will
+acknowledge you with our lips; but with our hearts, never!"
+
+
+  The "Grandes Compagnies."
+
+The peace of Bretigny brought no repose to the kingdom. War having
+become a congenial and very lucrative industry, its cessation caused
+want of work, with all the evils that entails. For ten years the
+remnants of the armies of England, Navarre and Brittany--the "Grandes
+Compagnies," as they were called--ravaged the country; although Charles
+V., "_durement subtil et sage_," succeeded in getting rid of them,
+thanks to du Guesclin, one of their chiefs, who led them to any place
+where fighting was going on--to Brittany, Alsace, Spain. Charles also
+had all towns and large villages fortified; and being a man of affairs
+he set about undoing the effect of the treaty of Bretigny by alliances
+with Flanders, whose heiress he married to his brother Philip, duke of
+Burgundy; with Henry, king of Castile, and Ferdinand of Portugal, who
+possessed fine navies; and, finally, with the emperor Charles IV.
+Financial and military preparations were made no less seriously when the
+harsh administration of the Black Prince, to whom Edward III. had given
+Guienne in fief, provoked the nobles of Gascony to complain to Charles
+V. Cited before the court of Paris, the Black Prince refused to attend,
+and war broke out in Gascony, Poitou and Normandy, but with fresh
+tactics (1369). Whilst the English adhered to the system of wide
+circuits, under Chandos or Robert Knolles, Charles V. limited himself to
+defending the towns and exhausting the enemy without taking dangerous
+risks. Thanks to the prudent constable du Guesclin, sitting quietly at
+home he reconquered bit by bit what his predecessors had lost upon the
+battlefield, helm on head and sword in hand; and when he died in 1380,
+after the decease of both Edward III. and the Black Prince, the only
+possessions of England in a liberated but ruined France were Bayonne,
+Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg and Calais.
+
+
+  Charles VI. (1380-1422).
+
+  The king's uncles and the Marmousets.
+
+  The revolt of the Maillotins.
+
+The death of Charles V. and dynastic revolutions in England stopped the
+war for thirty-five years. Then began an era of internal disorder and
+misery. The men of that period, coarse, violent and simple-minded, with
+few political ideas, loved brutal and noisy pleasures--witness the
+incredible festivities at the marriage of Charles VI., and the
+assassinations of the constable de Clisson, the duke of Orleans and John
+the Fearless. It would have needed an energetic hand to hold these
+passions in check; and Charles VI. was a gentle-natured child, twelve
+years of age, who attained his majority only to fall into a second
+childhood. Thence arose a question which remained without reply during
+the whole of his reign. Who should have possession of the royal person,
+and, consequently, of the royal power? Should it be the uncles of the
+king, or his followers Clisson and Bureau de la Riviere, whom the nobles
+called in mockery the _Marmousets_? His uncles first seized the
+government, each with a view to his own particular interests, which were
+by no means those of the kingdom at large. The duke of Anjou emptied the
+treasury in conquering the kingdom of Naples, at the call of Queen
+Joanna of Sicily. The duke of Berry seized upon Languedoc and the
+wine-tax. The duke of Burgundy, heir through his wife to the countship
+of Flanders, wanted to crush the democratic risings among the Flemings.
+Each of them needed money, but Charles V., pricked by conscience on his
+death-bed, forbade the levying of the hearth-tax (1380). His brother's
+attempt to re-establish it set Paris in revolt. The _Maillotins_ of
+Paris found imitators in other great towns; and in Auvergne and Vivarais
+the _Tuchins_ renewed the Jacquerie. Revolutionary attempts between 1380
+and 1385 to abolish all taxes were echoed in England, Florence and
+Flanders. These isolated rebellions, however, were crushed by the
+ever-ready coalition of royal and feudal forces at Roosebeke (1382).
+Taxes and subsidies were maintained and the hearth-money re-established.
+
+
+  Madness of Charles VI.
+
+The death of the duke of Anjou at Bari (1384) gave preponderant
+influence to Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, who increased the large
+and fruitless expenses of his Burgundian policy to such a point that on
+the return of a last unfortunate expedition into Gelderland Charles VI.,
+who had been made by him to marry Isabel of Bavaria, took the government
+from his uncles on the 3rd of May 1389, and recalled the _Marmousets_.
+But this young king, aged only twenty, very much in love with his young
+wife and excessively fond of pleasure, soon wrecked the delicate poise
+of his mental faculties in the festivities of the Hotel Saint-Paul; and
+a violent attack of Pierre de Craon on the constable de Clisson having
+led to an expedition against his accomplice, the duke of Brittany,
+Charles was seized by insanity on the road. The _Marmousets_ were
+deposed, the king's brother, the duke of Orleans, set aside, and the old
+condition of affairs began again (1392).
+
+
+  Struggle between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians.
+
+The struggle was now between the two branches of the royal family, the
+Orleanist and the Burgundian, between the aristocratic south and the
+democratic north; while the deposition of Richard II. of England in
+favour of Henry of Lancaster permitted them to vary civil war by war
+against the foreigner. Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, the king's
+uncle, had certain advantages over his rival Louis of Orleans, Charles
+VI.'s brother: superiority in age, relations with the Lancastrians and
+with Germany, and territorial wealth and power. The two adversaries had
+each the same scheme of government: each wanted to take charge of
+Charles VI., who was intermittently insane, and to exclude his rival
+from the pillage of the royal exchequer; but this rivalry of desires
+brought them into opposition on all the great questions of the day--the
+war with England, the Great Schism and the imperial election. The
+struggle became acute when John the Fearless of Burgundy succeeded his
+father in 1404. Up to this time the queen, Isabel of Bavaria, had been
+held in a kind of dependency upon Philip of Burgundy, who had brought
+about her marriage; but less eager for influence than for money, since
+political questions were unintelligible to her and her situation was a
+precarious one, she suddenly became favourable to the duke of Orleans.
+Whether due to passion or caprice this cost the duke his life, for John
+the Fearless had him assassinated in 1407, and thus let loose against
+one another the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, so-called because the son
+of the murdered duke was the son-in-law of the count of Armagnac (see
+ARMAGNAC). Despite all attempts at reconciliation the country was
+divided into two parties. Paris, with her tradesmen--the butchers in
+particular--and her university, played an important part in this
+quarrel; for to be master of Paris was to be master of the king. In 1413
+the duke of Burgundy gained the upper hand there, partly owing to the
+rising of the _Cabochiens_, i.e. the butchers led by the skinner Simon
+Caboche, partly to the hostility of the university to the Avignon pope
+and partly to the Parisian bourgeoisie.
+
+
+  The Ordonnance Cabochienne, 1413.
+
+Amid this reign of terror and of revolt the university, the only moral
+and intellectual force, taking the place of the impotent states-general
+and of a parlement carefully restricted to the judiciary sphere, vainly
+tried to re-establish a firm monarchical system by means of the
+_Ordonnance Cabochienne_; but this had no effect, the government being
+now at the mercy of the mob, themselves at the mercy of incapable
+hot-headed leaders. The struggle ended in becoming one between factions
+of the townsmen, led respectively by the _huchier_ Cirasse and by Jean
+Caboche. The former overwhelmed John the Fearless, who fled from Paris;
+and the Armagnacs, re-entering on his exit, substituted white terror for
+red terror, from the 12th of December 1413 to the 28th of July 1414. The
+butchers' organization was suppressed and all hope of reform lost. Such
+disorders allowed Henry V. of England to take the offensive again.
+
+
+  Agincourt.
+
+The Armagnacs were in possession of Paris and the king when Henry V.
+crushed them at Agincourt on the 25th of October 1415. It was as at
+Crecy and Poitiers; the French chivalry, accustomed to mere playing at
+battle in the tourneys, no longer knew how to fight. Charles of Orleans
+being a captive and his father-in-law, the count of Armagnac, highly
+unpopular, John the Fearless, hitherto prudently neutral, re-entered
+Paris, amid scenes of carnage, on the invitation of the citizen Perrinet
+le Clerc.
+
+
+  The Treaty of Troyes, 1420.
+
+Secure from interference, Henry V. had occupied the whole of Normandy
+and destroyed in two years the work of Philip Augustus. The duke of
+Burgundy, feeling as incapable of coming to an understanding with the
+masterful Englishman as of resisting him unaided, tried to effect a
+reconciliation with the Armagnacs, who had with them the heir to the
+throne, the dauphin Charles; but his assassination at Montereau in 1419
+nearly caused the destruction of the kingdom, the whole Burgundian party
+going over to the side of the English. By the treaty of Troyes (1420)
+the son of John the Fearless, Philip the Good, in order to avenge his
+father recognized Henry V. (now married to Catherine, Charles VI.'s
+daughter) as heir to the crown of France, to the detriment of the
+dauphin Charles, who was disavowed by his mother and called in derision
+"the soi-disant dauphin of Viennois." When Henry V. and Charles VI. died
+in 1422, Henry VI.--son of Henry V. and Catherine--was proclaimed at
+Paris king of France and of England, with the concurrence of Philip the
+Good, duke of Burgundy. Thus in 1428 the English occupied all eastern
+and northern France, as far as the Loire; while the two most important
+civil powers of the time, the parlement and the university of Paris, had
+acknowledged the English king.
+
+
+  Charles VII. (1422-1461).
+
+But the cause of greatest weakness to the French party was still Charles
+VII. himself, the king of Bourges. This youth of nineteen, the
+ill-omened son of a madman and of a Bavarian of loose morals, was a
+symbol of France, timorous and mistrustful. The chateaux of the Loire,
+where he led a restless and enervating existence, held an atmosphere
+little favourable to enthusiasm and energy. After his victories at
+Cravant (1423) and Verneuil (1424), the duke of Bedford, appointed
+regent of the kingdom, had given Charles VII. four years' respite, and
+these had been occupied in violent intrigues between the constable de
+Richemont[30] and the sire de la Tremoille, the young king's favourites,
+and solely desirous of enriching themselves at his expense. The king,
+melancholy spectacle as he was, seemed indeed to suit that tragic hour
+when Orleans, the last bulwark of the south, was besieged by the earl of
+Salisbury, now roused from inactivity (1428). He had neither taste nor
+capacity like Philip VI. or John the Good for undertaking "belles
+apertises d'armes"; but then a lack of chivalry combined with a
+temporizing policy had not been particularly unsuccessful in the case of
+his grandfather Charles V.
+
+
+  Joan of Arc.
+
+Powerful aid now came from an unexpected quarter. The war had been long
+and cruel, and each successive year naturally increased feeling against
+the English. The damage done to Burgundian interests by the harsh yet
+impotent government of Bedford, disgust at the iniquitous treaty of
+Troyes, the monarchist loyalty of many of the warriors, the still deeper
+sentiment felt by men like Alain Chartier towards "Dame France," and the
+"great misery that there was in the kingdom of France"; all these
+suddenly became incarnate in the person of Joan of Arc, a young peasant
+of Domremy in Lorraine. Determined in her faith and proud in her
+meekness, in opposition to the timid counsels of the military leaders,
+to the interested delays of the courtiers, to the scruples of the
+experts and the quarrelling of the doctors, she quoted her "voices," who
+had, she said, commissioned her to raise the siege of Orleans and to
+conduct the gentle dauphin to Reims, there to be crowned. Her sublime
+folly turned out to be wiser than their wisdom; in two months, from May
+to July 1429, she had freed Orleans, destroyed the prestige of the
+English army at Patay, and dragged the doubting and passive king against
+his will to be crowned at Reims. All this produced a marvellous
+revulsion of political feeling throughout France, Charles VII. now
+becoming incontestably "him to whom the kingdom of France ought to
+belong." After Reims Joan's first thought was for Paris, and to achieve
+the final overthrow of the English; while Charles VII. was already
+sighing for the easy life of Touraine, and recurring to that policy of
+truce which was so strongly urged by his counsellors, and so keenly
+irritating to the clear-sighted Joan of Arc. A check before Paris
+allowed the jealousy of La Tremoille to waste the heroine for eight
+months on operations of secondary importance, until the day when she was
+captured by the Burgundians under the walls of Compiegne, and sold by
+them to the English. The latter incontinently prosecuted her as a
+heretic; they had, indeed, a great interest in seeing her condemned by
+the Church, which would render her conquests sacrilegious. After a
+scandalous four months' duel between this simple innocent girl and a
+tribunal of crafty malevolent ecclesiastics and doctors of the
+university of Paris, Joan was burned alive in the old market-place of
+Rouen, on the 30th of May 1431 (see JOAN OF ARC).
+
+On Charles VII.'s part this meant oblivion and silence until the day
+when in 1450, more for his own sake than for hers, he caused her memory
+to be rehabilitated; but Joan had given the country new life and heart.
+From 1431 to 1454 the struggle against the English went on
+energetically; and the king, relieved in 1433 of his evil genius, La
+Tremoille, then became a man once more, playing a kingly part under the
+guidance of Dunois, Richemont, La Hire and Saintrailles, leaders of
+worth on the field of battle. Moreover, the English territory, a great
+triangle, with the Channel for base and Paris for apex, was not a really
+solid position. Yet the war seemed interminable; until at last Philip of
+Burgundy, for long embarrassed by his English alliance, decided in 1435
+to become reconciled with Charles VII. This was in consequence of the
+death of his sister, who had been married to Bedford, and the return of
+his brother-in-law Richemont into the French king's favour. The treaty
+of Arras, which made him a sovereign prince for life, though harsh, at
+all events gave a united France the opportunity of expelling the English
+from the east, and allowed the king to re-enter Paris in 1436. From 1436
+to 1439 there was a terrible repetition of what happened after the Peace
+of Bretigny; famine, pestilence, extortions and, later, the aristocratic
+revolt of the Praguerie, completed the ruin of the country. But thanks
+to the permanent tax of the _taille_ during this time of truce Charles
+VII. was able to effect the great military reform of the Compagnies
+d'Ordonnance, of the Francs-Archers, and of the artillery of the
+brothers Bureau. From this time forward the English, ruined, demoralized
+and weakened both by the death of the duke of Bedford and the beginnings
+of the Wars of the Roses, continued to lose territory on every
+recurrence of conflict. Normandy was lost to them at Formigny (1450),
+and Guienne, English since the 12th century, at Castillon (1453). They
+kept only Calais; and now it was their turn to have a madman, Henry VI.,
+for king.
+
+
+  Consequences of the Hundred Years' War.
+
+France issued from the Hundred Years' War victorious, but terribly
+ruined and depopulated. It is true she had definitely freed her
+territory from the stranger, and through the sorrows of defeat and the
+menace of disruption had fortified her national solidarity, and defined
+her patriotism, still involved in and not yet dissociated from loyalty
+to the monarchy. A happy awakening, although it went too far in
+establishing royal absolutism; and a victory too complete, in that it
+enervated all the forces of resistance. The nation, worn out by the long
+disorders consequent on the captivity of King John and the insanity of
+Charles VI., abandoned itself to the joys of peace. Preferring the solid
+advantage of orderly life to an unstable liberty, it acquiesced in the
+abdication of 1439, when the States consented to taxation for the
+support of a permanent army without any periodical renewal of their
+authorization. No doubt by the prohibition to levy the smallest _taille_
+the feudal lords escaped direct taxation; but from the day when the
+privileged classes selfishly allowed the taxing of the third estate,
+provided that they themselves were exempt, they opened the door to
+monarchic absolutism. The principle of autocracy triumphed everywhere
+over the remnants of local or provincial authority, in the sphere of
+industry as in that of administration; while the gild system became
+much more rigid. A loyal bureaucracy, far more powerful than the phantom
+administration of Bourges or of Poitiers, gradually took the place of
+the court nobility; and thanks to this the institutions of control which
+the war had called into power--the provincial states-general--were
+nipped in the bud, withered by the people's poverty of political idea
+and by the blind worship of royalty. Without the nation's concurrence
+the king's creatures were now to endow royalty with all the organs
+necessary for the exertion of authority; by which imprudent compliance,
+and above all thanks to Jacques Coeur (q.v.), the financial independence
+of the provinces disappeared little by little, and all the public
+revenues were left at the discretion of the king alone (1436-1440). By
+this means, too, and chiefly owing to the constable de Richemont and the
+brothers Bureau, the first permanent royal army was established (1445).
+
+
+  Monarchical centralization.
+
+Henceforward royalty, strengthened by victory and organized for the
+struggle, was able to reduce the centrifugal social forces to impotence.
+The parlement of Paris saw its monopoly encroached upon by the court of
+Toulouse in 1443, and by the parlement of Grenoble in 1453. The
+university of Paris, compromised with the English, like the parlement,
+witnessed the institution and growth of privileged provincial
+universities. The Church of France was isolated from the papacy by the
+Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) only to be exploited and enslaved
+by royalty. Monarchic centralization, interrupted for the moment by the
+war, took up with fresh vigour its attacks upon urban liberties,
+especially in the always more independent south. It caused a slackening
+of that spirit of communal initiative which had awakened in the midst of
+unprecedented disasters. The decimated and impoverished nobility proved
+their impotence in the coalitions they attempted between 1437 and 1442,
+of which the most important, the Praguerie, fell to pieces almost
+directly, despite the support of the dauphin himself.
+
+
+  Social life.
+
+The life of society, now alarmingly unstable and ruthlessly cruel, was
+symbolized by the _danse macabre_ painted on the walls of the
+cemeteries; the sombre and tragic art of the 15th century, having lost
+the fine balance shown by that of the 13th, gave expression in its
+mournful realism to the general state of exhaustion. The favourite
+subject of the mysteries and of other artistic manifestations was no
+longer the triumphant Christ of the middle ages, nor the smiling and
+teaching Christ of the 13th century, but the Man of sorrows and of
+death, the naked bleeding Jesus, lying on the knees of his mother or
+crowned with thorns. France, like the Christ, had known all the
+bitterness and weakness of a Passion.
+
+The war of independence over, after a century of fatigue, regrets and
+doubts, royalty and the nation, now more united and more certain of each
+other, resumed the methodic and utilitarian war of widening boundaries.
+Leaving dreams about crusades to the poets, and to a papacy delivered
+from schism, Charles VII. turned his attention to the ancient appanage
+of Lothair, Alsace and Lorraine, those lands of the north and the east
+whose frontiers were constantly changing, and which seemed to invite
+aggression. But the chance of annexing them without great trouble was
+lost; by the fatal custom of appanages the Valois had set up again those
+feudal institutions which the Capets had found such difficulty in
+destroying, and Louis XI. was to make sad experience of this.
+
+
+  The House of Burgundy.
+
+To the north and east of the kingdom extended a wide territory of
+uncertain limits; countries without a chief like Alsace; principalities
+like Lorraine, ecclesiastical lordships like the bishopric of Liege;
+and, most important of all, a royal appanage, that of the duchy of
+Burgundy, which dated back to the time of John the Good. Through
+marriages, conquests and inheritance, the dukes of Burgundy had
+enormously increased their influence; while during the Hundred Years'
+War they had benefited alternately by their criminal alliance with the
+English and by their self-interested reconciliation with their
+sovereign. They soon appeared the most formidable among the new feudal
+chiefs so imprudently called into being by Louis XI.'s predecessors.
+Fleeing from the paternal wrath which he had drawn down upon himself by
+his ambition and by his unauthorized marriage with Charlotte of Savoy,
+the future Louis XI. had passed five years of voluntary exile at the
+court of the chief of the House of Burgundy, Philip the Good; and he was
+able to appreciate the territorial power of a duchy which extended from
+the Zuyder Zee to the Somme, with all the country between the Saone and
+the Loire in addition, and its geographical position as a commercial
+intermediary between Germany, England and France. He had traversed the
+fertile country of Flanders; he had visited the rich commercial and
+industrial republics of Bruges and Ghent, which had escaped the
+disasters of the Hundred Years' War; and, finally, he had enjoyed a
+hospitality as princely as it was self-interested at Brussels and at
+Dijon, the two capitals, where he had seen the brilliancy of a court
+unique in Europe for the ideal of chivalric life it offered.
+
+
+  Louis XI. (1461-1483)
+
+But the dauphin Louis, although a bad son and impatient for the crown,
+was not dazzled by all this. With very simple tastes, an inquiring mind,
+and an imagination always at work, he combined a certain easy
+good-nature which inspired confidence, and though stingy in spending
+money on himself, he could be lavish in buying men either dangerous or
+likely to be useful. More inclined to the subtleties of diplomacy than
+to the risks of battle, he had recognized and speedily grasped the
+disadvantages of warfare. The duke of Burgundy, however rich and
+powerful, was still the king's vassal; his wide but insecure authority,
+of too rapid growth and unpopular, lacked sovereign rights. Hardly,
+therefore, had Louis XI. heard of his father's death than he made his
+host aware of his perfectly independent spirit, and his very definite
+intention to be master in his own house.
+
+
+  The Leagues of the Public Weal.
+
+But by a kind of poetic justice, Louis XI. had for seven years, from
+1465 to 1472, to struggle against fresh Pragueries, called Leagues of
+the Public Weal (presumably from their disregard of it), composed of the
+most powerful French nobles, to whom he had set the example of revolt.
+His first proceedings had indeed given no promise of the moderation and
+prudence afterwards to characterize him; he had succeeded in
+exasperating all parties; the officials of his father, "the
+well-served," whom he dismissed in favour of inferiors like Jean Balue,
+Oliver le Daim and Tristan Lermite; the clergy, by abrogating the
+Pragmatic Sanction; the university of Paris, by his ill-treatment of it;
+and the nobles, whom he deprived of their hunting rights, among them
+being those whom Charles VII. had been most careful to conciliate in
+view of the inevitable conflict with the duke of Burgundy--in
+particular, Francis II., duke of Brittany. The repurchase in 1463 of the
+towns of the Somme (to which Philip the Good, now grown old and engaged
+in a quarrel with his son, the count of Charolais, had felt obliged to
+consent on consideration of receiving four hundred thousand gold
+crowns), and the intrigues of Louis XI. during the periodical revolts of
+the Liegois against their prince-bishop, set the powder alight. On three
+different occasions (in 1465, 1467 and 1472), Louis XI.'s own brother,
+the duke of Berry, urged by the duke of Brittany, the count of
+Charolais, the duke of Bourbon, and the other feudal lords, attempted to
+set up six kingdoms in France instead of one, and to impose upon Louis
+XI. a regency which should give them enormous pensions. This was their
+idea of Public Weal.
+
+
+  Charles the Bold.
+
+  The interview at Peronne.
+
+Louis XI. won by his favourite method, diplomacy rather than arms. At
+the time of the first league, the battle of Montlhery (16th of July
+1465) having remained undecided between the two equally badly organized
+armies, Louis XI. conceded everything in the treaties of Conflans and
+Saint-Maur--promises costing him little, since he had no intention of
+keeping them. But during the course of the second league, provoked by
+the recapture of Normandy, which he had promised to his brother in
+exchange for Berry, he was nearly caught in his own trap. On the 15th of
+June 1467 Philip the Good died, and the accession of the count of
+Charolais was received with popular risings. In order to embarrass him
+Louis XI., had secretly encouraged the people of Liege to revolt; but
+preoccupied with the marriage of Charles the Bold with Margaret of York,
+sister of Edward IV. of England, he wished to negotiate personally with
+him at Peronne, and hardly had he reached that place when news arrived
+there of the revolt of Liege amid cries of "Vive France." Charles the
+Bold, proud, violent, pugnacious, as treacherous as his rival, a hardier
+soldier, though without his political sagacity, imprisoned Louis in the
+tower where Charles the Simple had died as a prisoner of the count of
+Vermandois. He only let him depart when he had sworn in the treaty of
+Peronne to fulfil the engagements made at Conflans and Saint-Maur to
+assist in person at the subjugation of rebellious Liege, and to give
+Champagne as an appanage to his ally the duke of Berry.
+
+
+  Ruin of the feudal coalitions.
+
+Louis XI., supported by the assembly of notables at Tours (1470), had no
+intention of keeping this last promise, since the duchy of Champagne
+would have made a bridge between Burgundy and Flanders--the two isolated
+branches of the house of Burgundy. He gave the duke of Berry distant
+Guienne. But death eventually rid him of the duke in 1472, just when a
+third league was being organized, the object of which was to make the
+duke of Berry king with the help of Edward IV., king of England. The
+duke of Brittany, Francis II., was defeated; Charles the Bold, having
+failed at Beauvais in his attempt to recapture the towns of the Somme
+which had been promised him by the treaty of Conflans, was obliged to
+sign the peace of Senlis (1472). This was the end of the great feudal
+coalitions, for royal vengeance soon settled the account of the lesser
+vassals; the duke of Alencon was condemned to prison for life; the count
+of Armagnac was killed; and "the Germans" were soon to disembarrass
+Louis of Charles the Bold.
+
+
+  Charles the Bold's imperial dreams.
+
+Charles had indeed only signed the peace so promptly because he was
+looking eastward towards that royal crown and territorial cohesion of
+which his father had also dreamed. The king, he said of Louis XI., is
+always ready. He wanted to provide his future sovereignty with organs
+analogous to those of France; a permanent army, and a judiciary and
+financial administration modelled on the French parlement and exchequer.
+Since he could not dismember the kingdom of France, his only course was
+to reconstitute the ancient kingdom of Lotharingia; while the conquest
+of the principality of Liege and of the duchy of Gelderland, and the
+temporary occupation of Alsace, pledged to him by Sigismund of Austria,
+made him greedy for Germany. To get himself elected king of the Romans
+he offered his daughter Mary, his eternal candidate for marriage, to the
+emperor Frederick III. for his son. Thus either he or his son-in-law
+Maximilian would have been emperor.
+
+
+  Fall of Charles the Bold.
+
+But the Tarpeian rock was a near neighbour of the Capitol.
+Frederick--distrustful, and in the pay of Louis XI.--evaded a meeting
+arranged at Trier, and Burgundian influence in Alsace was suddenly
+brought to a violent end by the putting to death of its tyrannical
+agent, Peter von Hagenbach. Charles thought to repair the rebuff of
+Trier at Cologne, and wasted his resources in an attempt to win over its
+elector by besieging the insignificant town of Neuss. But the "universal
+spider"--as he called Louis XI.--was weaving his web in the darkness,
+and was eventually to entangle him in it. First came the reconciliation,
+in his despite, of those irreconcilables, the Swiss and Sigismund of
+Austria; and then the union of both with the duke of Lorraine, who was
+also disturbed at the duke of Burgundy's ambition. In vain Charles tried
+to kindle anew the embers of former feudal intrigues; the execution of
+the duke of Nemours and the count of Saint Pol cooled all enthusiasm. In
+vain did he get his dilatory friends, the English Yorkists, to cross the
+Channel; on the 29th of August 1475, at Picquigny, Louis XI. bribed them
+with a sum of seventy-five thousand crowns to forsake him, Edward
+further undertaking to guarantee the loyalty of the duke of Brittany.
+Exasperated, Charles attacked and took Nancy, wishing, as he said, "to
+skin the Bernese bear and wear its fur." To the hanging of the brave
+garrison of Granson the Swiss responded by terrible reprisals at Granson
+and at Morat (March to June 1476); while the people of Lorraine finally
+routed Charles at Nancy on the 5th of January 1477, the duke himself
+falling in the battle.
+
+
+  Ruin of the house of Burgundy.
+
+The central administration of Burgundy soon disappeared, swamped by the
+resurgence of ancient local liberties; the army fell to pieces; and all
+hope of joining the two limbs of the great eastern duchy was definitely
+lost. As for the remnants that were left, French provinces and imperial
+territory, Louis XI. claimed the whole. He seized everything, alleging
+different rights in each place; but he displayed such violent haste and
+such trickery that he threw the heiress of Burgundy, in despair, into
+the arms of Maximilian of Austria. At the treaty of Arras (December
+1482) Louis XI. received only Picardy, the Boulonnais and Burgundy; by
+the marriage of Charles the Bold's daughter the rest was annexed to the
+Empire, and later to Spain. Thus by Louis XI.'s short-sighted error the
+house of Austria established itself in the Low Countries. An age-long
+rivalry between the houses of France and Austria was the result of this
+disastrous marriage; and as the son who was its issue espoused the
+heiress of a now unified Spain, France, hemmed in by the Spaniards and
+by the Empire, was thenceforward to encounter them everywhere in her
+course. The historical progress of France was once more endangered.
+
+
+  The administration of Louis XI.
+
+The reasons of state which governed all Louis XI.'s external policy also
+inspired his internal administration. If they justified him in employing
+lies and deception in international affairs, in his relations with his
+subjects they led him to regard as lawful everything which favoured his
+authority; no question of right could weigh against it. The army and
+taxation, as the two chief means of domination within and without the
+kingdom, constituted the main bulwarks of his policy. As for the
+nobility, his only thought was to diminish their power by multiplying
+their number, as his predecessors had done; while he reduced the rebels
+to submission by his iron cages or the axe of his gossip Tristan
+Lermite. The Church was treated with the same unconcerned cynicism; he
+held her in strict tutelage, accentuating her moral decadence still
+further by the manner in which he set aside or re-established the
+Pragmatic Sanction, according to the fluctuations of his financial
+necessities or his Italian ambitions. It has been said that on the other
+hand he was a king of the common people, and certainly he was one of
+them in his simple habits, in his taste for rough pleasantries, and
+above all in his religion, which was limited to superstitious practices
+and small devoutnesses. But in the states of Tours in 1468 he evinced
+the same mistrust for fiscal control by the people as for the privileges
+of the nobility. He inaugurated that autocratic rule which was to
+continue gaining strength until Louis XV.'s time. Louis XI. was the king
+of the bourgeoisie; he exacted much from them, but paid them back with
+interest by allowing them to reduce the power of all who were above them
+and to lord it over all who were below. As a matter of fact Louis XI.'s
+most faithful ally was death. Saint-Pol, Nemours, Charles the Bold, his
+brother the duke of Berry, old Rene of Anjou and his nephew the count of
+Maine, heir to the riches of Provence and to rights over Naples--the
+skeleton hand mowed down all his adversaries as though it too were in
+his pay; until the day when at Plessis-les-Tours it struck a final blow,
+claimed its just dues from Louis XI., and carried him off despite all
+his relics on the 30th of August 1483.
+
+
+  Charles VIII. and Brittany (1483-1498)
+
+  The Mad War, 1483.
+
+There was nothing noble about Louis XI. but his aims, and nothing great
+but the results he attained; yet however different he might have been he
+could not have done better, for what he achieved was the making of
+France. This was soon seen after his death in the reaction which menaced
+his work and those who had served him; but thanks to himself and to his
+true successor, his eldest daughter Anne, married to the sire de
+Beaujeu, a younger member of the house of Bourbon, the set-back was
+only partial. Strife began immediately between the numerous malcontents
+and the Beaujeu party, who had charge of the little Charles VIII. These
+latter prudently made concessions: reducing the _taille_, sacrificing
+some of Louis XI.'s creatures to the rancour of the parlement, and
+restoring a certain number of offices or lands to the hostile princes
+(chief of whom was the duke of Orleans), and even consenting to a
+convocation of the states-general at Tours (1484). But the elections
+having been favourable to royalty, the Beaujeu family made the states
+reject the regency desired by the duke of Orleans, and organize the
+king's council after their own views. When they subsequently eluded the
+conditions imposed by the states, the deputies--nobles, clergy and
+burgesses--showed their incapacity to oppose the progress of despotism.
+In vain did the malcontent princes attempt to set up a new League of
+Public Weal, the _Guerre folle_ (Mad War), in which the duke of
+Brittany, Francis II., played the part of Charles the Bold, dragging in
+the people of Lorraine and the king of Navarre. In vain did Charles
+VIII., his majority attained, at once abandon in the treaty of Sable the
+benefits gained by the victory of Saint-Aubin du Cormier (1488). In vain
+did Henry VII. of England, Ferdinand the Catholic, and Maximilian of
+Austria try to prevent the annexation of Brittany by France; its heiress
+Anne, deserted by every one, made peace and married Charles VIII. in
+1491. There was no longer a single great fief in France to which the
+malcontents could fly for refuge.
+
+
+  A policy of "magnificence."
+
+It now remained to consolidate the later successes attained by the
+policy of the Valois--the acquisition of the duchies of Burgundy and
+Brittany; but instead there was a sudden change and that policy seemed
+about to be lost in dreams of recapturing the rights of the Angevins
+over Naples, and conquering Constantinople. Charles VIII., a prince with
+neither intelligence nor resolution, his head stuffed with chivalric
+romance, was scarcely freed from his sister's control when he sought in
+Italy a fatal distraction from the struggle with the house of Austria.
+By this "war of magnificence" he caused an interruption of half a
+century in the growth of national sentiment, which was only revived by
+Henry II.; and he was not alone in thus leaving the bone for the shadow:
+his contemporaries, Ferdinand the Catholic when delivered from the
+Moors, and Henry VII. from the power of the English nobles, followed the
+same superficial policy, not taking the trouble to work for that real
+strength which comes from the adhesion of willing subjects to their
+sovereign. They only cared to aggrandize themselves, without thought of
+national feeling or geographical conditions. The great theorist of these
+"conquistadores" was Machiavelli. The regent, Anne of Beaujeu, worked in
+her daughter's interest to the detriment of the kingdom, by means of a
+special treaty destined to prevent the property of the Bourbons from
+reverting to the crown; while Anne of Brittany did the like for her
+daughter Claude. Louis XII., the next king of France, thought only of
+the Milanese; Ferdinand the Catholic all but destroyed the Spanish unity
+at the end of his life by his marriage with Germaine de Foix; while the
+house of Austria was for centuries to remain involved in this petty
+course of policy. Ministers followed the example of their self-seeking
+masters, thinking it no shame to accept pensions from foreign
+sovereigns. The preponderating consideration everywhere was direct
+material advantage; there was disproportion everywhere between the means
+employed and the poverty of the results, a contradiction between the
+interests of the sovereigns and those of their subjects, which were
+associated by force and not naturally blended. For the sake of a morsel
+of Italian territory every one forgot the permanent necessity of
+opposing the advance of the Turkish crescent, the two horns of which
+were impinging upon Europe on the Danube and on the Mediterranean.
+
+
+  The wars in Italy.
+
+Italy and Germany were two great tracts of land at the mercy of the
+highest bidder, rich and easy to dominate, where these coarse and alien
+kings, still reared on medieval traditions, were for fifty years to
+gratify their love of conquest. Italy was their first battlefield;
+Charles VIII. was summoned thither by Lodovico Il Moro, tyrant of Milan,
+involved in a quarrel with his rival, Ferdinand II. of Aragon. The
+Aragonese had snatched the kingdom of Naples from the French house of
+Anjou, whose claims Louis XI. had inherited in 1480. To safeguard
+himself in the rear Charles VIII. handed over Roussillon and Cerdagne
+(Cerdana) to Ferdinand the Catholic (that is to say, all the profits of
+Louis XI.'s policy); gave enormous sums of money to Henry VII. of
+England; and finally, by the treaty of Senlis ceded Artois and
+Franche-Comte to Maximilian of Austria. After these fool's bargains the
+paladin set out for Naples in 1494. His journey was long and triumphant,
+and his return precipitate; indeed it very nearly ended in a disaster at
+Fornovo, owing to the first of those Italian holy leagues which at the
+least sign of friction were ready to turn against France. At the age of
+twenty-eight, however, Charles VIII. died without issue (1498).
+
+
+  Louis XII. (1498-1515).
+
+The accession of his cousin, Louis of Orleans, under the title of Louis
+XII., only involved the kingdom still further in this Italian imbroglio.
+Louis did indeed add the fief of Orleans to the royal domain and
+hastened to divorce Jeanne of France in order to marry Anne, the widow
+of his predecessor, so that he might keep Brittany. But he complicated
+the Naples affair by claiming Milan in consideration of the marriage of
+his grandfather, Louis of Orleans, to Valentina, daughter of Gian
+Galeazzo Visconti, duke of Milan. In 1499, appealed to by Venice, and
+encouraged by his favourite, Cardinal d'Amboise (who was hoping to
+succeed Pope Alexander VI.), and also by Cesare Borgia, who had lofty
+ambitions in Italy, Louis XII. conquered Milan in seven months and held
+it for fourteen years; while Lodovico Sforza, betrayed by his Swiss
+mercenaries, died a prisoner in France. The kingdom of Naples was still
+left to recapture; and fearing to be thwarted by Ferdinand of Aragon,
+Louis XII. proposed to this master of roguery that they should divide
+the kingdom according to the treaty of Granada (1500). But no sooner had
+Louis XII. assumed the title of king of Naples than Ferdinand set about
+despoiling him of it, and despite the bravery of a Bayard and a Louis
+d'Ars, Louis XII., being also betrayed by the pope, lost Naples for good
+in 1504. The treaties of Blois occasioned a vast amount of diplomacy,
+and projects of marriage between Claude of France and Charles of
+Austria, which came to nothing but served as a prelude to the later
+quarrels between Bourbons and Habsburgs.
+
+It was Pope Julius II. who opened the gates of Italy to the horrors of
+war. Profiting by Louis XII.'s weakness and the emperor Maximilian's
+strange capricious character, this martial pope sacrificed Italian and
+religious interests alike in order to re-establish the temporal power of
+the papacy. Jealous of Venice, at that time the Italian state best
+provided with powers of expansion, and unable to subjugate it
+single-handed, Julius succeeded in obtaining help from France, Spain and
+the Empire. The league of Cambrai (1508) was his finest diplomatic
+achievement. But he wanted to be sole master of Italy, so in order to
+expel the French "barbarians" whom he had brought in, he appealed to
+other barbarians who were far more dangerous--Spaniards, Germans and
+Swiss--to help him against Louis XII., and stabbed him from behind with
+the Holy League of 1511.
+
+
+  Louis XII. and Julius II.
+
+Weakened by the death of Cardinal d'Amboise, his best counsellor, Louis
+XII. tried vainly in the assembly of Tours and in the unsuccessful
+council of Pisa to alienate the French clergy from a papacy which was
+now so little worthy of respect. But even the splendid victories of
+Gaston de Foix could not shake that formidable coalition; and despite
+the efforts of Bayard, La Palice and La Tremoille, it was the Church
+that triumphed. Julius II. died in the hour of victory; but Louis XII.
+was obliged to evacuate Milan, to which he had sacrificed everything,
+even France itself, with that political stupidity characteristic of the
+first Valois. He died almost immediately after this, on the 1st of
+January 1515, and his subjects, recognizing his thrift, his justice and
+the secure prosperity of the kingdom, forgot the seventeen years of war
+in which they had not been consulted, and rewarded him with the fine
+title of Father of his People.
+
+
+  Francis I. (1515-1547).
+
+As Louis XII. left no son, the crown devolved upon his cousin and
+son-in-law the count of Angouleme, Francis I. No sooner king, Francis,
+in alliance with Venice, renewed the chimerical attempts to conquer
+Milan and Naples; also cherishing dreams of his own election as emperor
+and of a partition of Europe. The heroic episode of Marignano, when he
+defeated Cardinal Schinner's Swiss troops (13-15 of September 1515),
+made him master of the duchy of Milan and obliged his adversaries to
+make peace. Leo X., Julius II.'s successor, by an astute volte-face
+exchanged Parma and the Concordat for a guarantee of all the Church's
+possessions, which meant the defeat of French plans (1515). The Swiss
+signed the permanent peace which they were to maintain until the
+Revolution of 1789; while the emperor and the king of Spain recognized
+Francis II.'s very precarious hold upon Milan. Once more the French
+monarchy was pulled up short by the indignation of all Italy (1518).
+
+
+  Character of Francis I.
+
+The question now was how to occupy the military activity of a young,
+handsome, chivalric and gallant prince, "ondoyant et divers,"
+intoxicated by his first victory and his tardy accession to fortune.
+This had been hailed with joy by all who had been his comrades in his
+days of difficulty; by his mother, Louise of Savoy, and his sister
+Marguerite; by all the rough young soldiery; by the nobles, tired of the
+bourgeois ways of Louis XI. and the patriarchal simplicity of Louis
+XII.; and finally by all the aristocracy who expected now to have the
+government in their own hands. So instead of heading the crusade against
+the Turks, Francis threw himself into the electoral contest at
+Frankfort, which resulted in the election of Charles V., heir of
+Ferdinand the Catholic, Spain and Germany thus becoming united. Pope Leo
+X., moreover, handed over three-quarters of Italy to the new emperor in
+exchange for Luther's condemnation, thereby kindling that rivalry
+between Charles V. and the king of France which was to embroil the whole
+of Europe throughout half a century (1519-1559), from Pavia to St
+Quentin.
+
+
+  Rivalry of Francis I. and Charles V.
+
+  Defeat at Pavia and treaty of Madrid.
+
+The territorial power of Charles V., heir to the houses of Burgundy,
+Austria, Castile and Aragon, which not only arrested the traditional
+policy of France but hemmed her in on every side; his pretensions to be
+the head of Christendom; his ambition to restore the house of Burgundy
+and the Holy Roman Empire; his grave and forceful intellect all rendered
+rivalry both inevitable and formidable. But the scattered heterogeneity
+of his possessions, the frequent crippling of his authority by national
+privileges or by political discords and religious quarrels, his
+perpetual straits for money, and his cautious calculating character,
+almost outweighed the advantages which he possessed in the terrible
+Spanish infantry, the wealthy commerce of the Netherlands, and the
+inexhaustible mines of the New World. Moreover, Francis I. stirred up
+enmity everywhere against Charles V., and after each defeat he found
+fresh support in the patriotism of his subjects. Immediately after the
+treaty of Madrid (1526), which Francis I. was obliged to sign after the
+disaster at Pavia and a period of captivity, he did not hesitate between
+his honour as a gentleman and the interests of his kingdom. Having been
+unable to win over Henry VIII. of England at their interview on the
+Field of the Cloth of Gold, he joined hands with Suleiman the
+Magnificent, the conqueror of Mohacs; and the Turkish cavalry, crossing
+the Hungarian _Puszta_, made their way as far as Vienna, while the
+mercenaries of Charles V., under the constable de Bourbon, were reviving
+the saturnalia of Alaric in the sack of Rome (1527). In Germany, Francis
+I. assisted the Catholic princes to maintain their political
+independence, though he did not make the capital he might have made of
+the reform movement. Italy remained faithful to the vanquished in spite
+of all, while even Henry VIII. of England, who only needed bribing, and
+Wolsey, accessible to flattery, took part in the temporary coalition.
+Thus did France, menaced with disruption, embark upon a course of action
+imposed upon her by the harsh conditions of the treaty of
+Madrid--otherwise little respected--and later by those of Cambrai
+(1529); but it was not till later, too late indeed, that it was defined
+and became a national policy.
+
+
+  Further prosecution of romantic expeditions.
+
+  The truce at Nice.
+
+After having, despite so many reverses and mistakes, saved Burgundy,
+though not Artois nor Flanders, and joined to the crown lands the
+domains of the constable de Bourbon who had gone over to Charles V.,
+Francis I. should have had enough of defending other people's
+independence as well as his own, and should have thought more of his
+interests in the north and east than of Milan. Yet between 1531 and 1547
+he manifested the same regrets and the same invincible ambition for that
+land of Italy which Charles V., on his side, regarded as the basis of
+his strength. Their antagonism, therefore, remained unabated, as also
+the contradiction of an official agreement with Charles V., combined
+with secret intrigues with his enemies. Anne de Montmorency, now head of
+the government in place of the headstrong chancellor Duprat, for four
+years upheld a policy of reconciliation and of almost friendly agreement
+between the two monarchs (1531-1535). The death of Francis I.'s mother,
+Louise of Savoy (who had been partly instrumental in arranging the peace
+of Cambrai), the replacement of Montmorency by the bellicose Chabot, and
+the advent to power of a Burgundian, Granvella, as Charles V.'s prime
+minister, put an end to this double-faced policy, which attacked the
+Calvinists of France while supporting the Lutherans of Germany; made
+advances to Clement VII. while pretending to maintain the alliance with
+Henry VIII. (just then consummating the Anglican schism); and sought an
+alliance with Charles V. without renouncing the possession of Italy. The
+death of the duke of Milan provoked a third general war (1536-1538); but
+after the conquest of Savoy and Piedmont and a fruitless invasion of
+Provence by Charles V., it resulted in another truce, concluded at Nice,
+in the interview at Aigues-mortes, and in the old contradictory policy
+of the treaty of Cambrai. This was confirmed by Charles V.'s triumphal
+journey through France (1539).
+
+
+  Fourth outbreak of war.
+
+Rivalry between Madame d'Etampes, the imperious mistress of the aged
+Francis I., and Diane de Poitiers, whose ascendancy over the dauphin was
+complete, now brought court intrigues and constant changes in those who
+held office, to complicate still further this wearisome policy of
+ephemeral "combinazioni" with English, Germans, Italians and Turks,
+which urgent need of money always brought to naught. The disillusionment
+of Francis I., who had hitherto hoped that Charles V. would be generous
+enough to give Milan back to him, and then the assassination of Rincon,
+his ambassador at Constantinople, led to a fourth war (1544-1546), in
+the course of which the king of England went over to the side of Charles
+V.
+
+
+  Royal absolutism under Francis I.
+
+Unable in the days of his youth to make Italy French, when age began to
+come upon him, Francis tried to make France Italian. In his chateau at
+Blois he drank greedily of the cup of Renaissance art; but he found the
+exciting draughts of diplomacy which he imbibed from Machiavelli's
+_Prince_ even more intoxicating, and he headed the ship of state
+straight for the rock of absolutism. He had been the first king "_du bon
+plaisir_" ("of his own good pleasure")--a "Caesar," as his mother Louise
+of Savoy proudly hailed him in 1515--and to a man of his gallant and
+hot-headed temperament love and war were schools little calculated to
+teach moderation in government. Italy not only gave him a taste for art
+and letters, but furnished him with an arsenal of despotic maxims. Yet
+his true masters were the jurists of the southern universities,
+passionately addicted to centralization and autocracy, men like Duprat
+and Poyet, who revived the persistent tradition of Philip the Fair's
+legists. Grouped together on the council of affairs, they managed to
+control the policy of the common council, with its too mixed and too
+independent membership. They successfully strove to separate "the
+grandeur and superexcellence of the king" from the rest of the nation;
+to isolate the nobility amid the seductions of a court lavish in
+promises of favour and high office; and to win over the bourgeoisie by
+the buying and selling and afterwards by the hereditary transmission of
+offices. Thanks to their action, feudalism was attacked in its landed
+interest in the person of the constable de Bourbon; feudalism in its
+financial aspect by the execution of superintendent Semblancay and the
+special privileges of towns and provinces by administrative
+centralization. The bureaucracy became a refuge for the nobles, and
+above all for the bourgeois, whose fixed incomes were lowered by the
+influx of precious metals from the New World, while the wages of
+artisans rose. All those time-worn medieval institutions which no longer
+allowed free scope to private or public life were demolished by the
+legists in favour of the monarchy.
+
+
+  The concordat of 1516.
+
+Their master-stroke was the Concordat of 1516, which meant an immense
+stride in the path towards absolutism. While Germany and England, where
+ultramontane doctrines had been allowed to creep in, were seeking a
+remedy against the economic exactions of the papacy in a reform of dogma
+or in schism, France had supposed herself to have found this in the
+Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. But to the royal jurists the right of the
+churches and abbeys to make appointments to all vacant benefices was a
+guarantee of liberties valuable to the clergy, but detestable to
+themselves because the clergy thus retained the great part of public
+wealth and authority. By giving the king the ecclesiastical patronage
+they not only made a docile instrument of him, but endowed him with a
+mine of wealth, even more productive than the sale of offices, and a
+power of favouring and rewarding that transformed a needy and ill-obeyed
+king into an absolute monarch. To the pope they offered a mess of
+pottage in the shape of _annates_ and the right of canonical
+institution, in order to induce him to sell the Church of France to the
+king. By this royal reform they completely isolated the monarchy, in the
+presumptuous pride of omnipotence, upon the ruins of the Church and the
+aristocracy, despite both the university and the parlement of Paris.
+
+Thus is explained Francis I.'s preoccupation with Italian adventures in
+the latter part of his reign, and also the inordinate squandering of
+money, the autos-da-fe in the provinces and in Paris, the harsh
+repression of reform and free thought, and the sale of justice; while
+the nation became impoverished and the state was at the mercy of the
+caprices of royal mistresses--all of which was to become more and more
+pronounced during the twelve years of Henry II.'s government.
+
+
+  Henry II. (1547-1559).
+
+Henry II. shone but with a reflected light--in his private life
+reflected from his old mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and in his political
+action reflected from the views of Montmorency or the Guises. He only
+showed his own personality in an egoism more narrow-minded, in hatred
+yet bitterer than his father's; or in a haughty and jealous insistence
+upon an absolute authority which he never had the wit to maintain.
+
+
+  Henry II. and Charles V.
+
+  Defence of Metz.
+
+  Truce of Vaucelles.
+
+The struggle with Charles V. was at first delayed by differences with
+England. The treaty of Ardres had left two bones of contention: the
+cession of Boulogne to England and the exclusion of the Scotch from the
+terms of peace. At last the regent, the duke of Somerset, endeavoured to
+arrange a marriage between Edward VI., then a minor, and Mary Stuart,
+who had been offered in marriage to the dauphin Francis by her mother,
+Marie of Lorraine, a Guise who had married the king of Scotland. The
+transference of Mary Stuart to France, and the treaty of 1550 which
+restored Boulogne to France for a sum of 400,000 crowns, suspended the
+state of war; and then Henry II.'s opposition to the imperial policy of
+Charles V. showed itself everywhere: in Savoy and Piedmont, occupied by
+the French and claimed by Philibert Emmanuel, Charles V.'s ally; in
+Navarre, unlawfully conquered by Ferdinand the Catholic and claimed by
+the family of Albret; in Italy, where, aided and abetted by Pope Paul
+III., Henry II. was trying to regain support; and, finally, in Germany,
+where after the victory of Charles V. at Muhlberg (1547) the Protestant
+princes called Henry II. to their aid, offering to subsidize him and
+cede to him the towns of Metz, Toul and Verdun. The Protestant alliance
+was substituted for the Turkish alliance, and Henry II. hastened to
+accept the offers made to him (1552); but this was rather late in the
+day, for the reform movement had produced civil war and evoked fresh
+forces. The Germans, in whom national feeling got the better of
+imperialistic ardour, as soon as they saw the French at Strassburg, made
+terms with the emperor at Passau and permitted Charles to use all his
+forces against Henry II. The defence of Metz by Francis of Guise was
+admirable and successful; but in Picardy operations continued their
+course without much result, owing to the incapacity of the constable de
+Montmorency. Fortunately, despite the marriage of Charles V.'s son
+Philip to Mary Tudor, which gave him the support of England (1554), and
+despite the religious pacification of Germany through the peace of
+Augsburg (1555), Charles V., exhausted by illness and by thirty years of
+intense activity, in the truce of Vaucelles abandoned Henry II.'s
+conquests--Piedmont and the Three Bishoprics. He then abdicated the
+government of his kingdoms, which he divided between his son Philip II.
+and his brother Ferdinand (1556). A double victory, this, for France.
+
+
+  Henry II. and Philip II.
+
+  Peace of Cateau-Cambresis.
+
+Henry II.'s resumption of war, without provocation and without allies,
+was a grave error; but more characterless than ever, the king was urged
+to it by the Guises, whose influence since the defence of Metz had been
+supreme at court and who were perhaps hoping to obtain Naples for
+themselves. On the other hand, Pope Paul IV. and his nephew Carlo
+Caraffa embarked upon the struggle, because as Neapolitans they detested
+the Spaniards, whom they considered as "barbarous" as the Germans or the
+French. The constable de Montmorency's disaster at Saint Quentin (August
+1557), by which Philip II. had not the wit to profit, was successfully
+avenged by Guise, who was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
+He took Calais by assault in January 1558, after the English had held it
+for two centuries, and occupied Luxemburg. The treaty of
+Cateau-Cambresis (August 1559) finally put an end to the Italian
+follies, Naples, Milan and Piedmont; but it also lost Savoy, making a
+gap in the frontier for a century. The question of Burgundy was
+definitely settled, too; but the Netherlands had still to be conquered.
+By the possession of the three bishoprics and the recapture of Calais an
+effort towards a natural line of frontier and towards a national policy
+seemed indicated; but while the old soldiers could not forget Marignano,
+Ceresole, nor Italy perishing with the name of France on her lips, the
+secret alliance between the cardinal of Lorraine and Granvella against
+the Protestant heresy foretold the approaching subordination of national
+questions to religious differences, and a decisive attempt to purge the
+kingdom of the new doctrines.
+
+
+  The Reformation.
+
+The origin and general history of the religious reformation in the 16th
+century are dealt with elsewhere (see CHURCH HISTORY and REFORMATION).
+In France it had originally no revolutionary character whatever; it
+proceeded from traditional Gallican theories and from the innovating
+principle of humanism, and it began as a protest against Roman decadence
+and medieval scholasticism. It found its first adherents and its first
+defenders among the clerics and learned men grouped around Faber
+(Lefevre) of Etaples at Meaux; while Marguerite of Navarre, "des Roynes
+la non pareille," was the indefatigable Maecenas of these innovators,
+and the incarnation of the Protestant spirit at its purest. The
+reformers shook off the yoke of systems in order boldly to renovate both
+knowledge and faith; and, instead of resting on the abstract _a priori_
+principles within which man and nature had been imprisoned, they
+returned to the ancient methods of observation and analysis. In so
+doing, they separated intellectual from popular life; and acting in this
+spirit, through the need of a moral renaissance, they reverted to
+primitive Christianity, substituting the inner and individual authority
+of conscience for the general and external authority of the Church.
+Their efforts would not, however, have sufficed if they had not been
+seconded by events; pure doctrine would not have given birth to a
+church, nor that church to a party; in France, as in Germany, the
+religious revolution was conditioned by an economic and social
+revolution.
+
+The economic renaissance due to the great maritime discoveries had the
+consequence of concentrating wealth in the hands of the bourgeoisie.
+Owing to their mental qualities, their tendencies and their resources,
+the bourgeoisie had been, if not alone, at least most apt in profiting
+by the development of industry, by the extension of commerce, and by the
+formation of a new and mobile means of enriching themselves. But though
+the bourgeois had acquired through capitalism certain sources of
+influence, and gradually monopolized municipal and public functions, the
+king and the peasants had also benefited by this revolution. After a
+hundred and fifty years of foreign war and civil discord, at a period
+when order and unity were ardently desired, an absolute monarchy had
+appeared the only power capable of realizing such aspirations. The
+peasants, moreover, had profited by the reduction of the idle landed
+aristocracy; serfdom had decreased or had been modified; and the free
+peasants were more prosperous, had reconquered the soil, and were
+selling their produce at a higher rate while they everywhere paid less
+exorbitant rents. The victims of this process were the urban
+proletariat, whose treatment by their employers in trade became less and
+less protective and beneficent, and the nobility, straitened in their
+financial resources, uprooted from their ancient strongholds, and
+gradually despoiled of their power by a monarchy based on popular
+support. The unlimited sovereignty of the prince was established upon
+the ruins of the feudal system; and the capitalism of the merchants and
+bankers upon the closing of the trade-gilds to workmen, upon severe
+economic pressure and upon the exploitation of the artisans' labour.
+
+
+  Transformation of religious reform into party politics.
+
+Though reform originated among the educated classes it speedily found an
+echo among the industrial classes of the 16th century, further assisted
+by the influence of German and Flemish journeymen. The popular
+reform-movement was essentially an urban movement; although under
+Francis I. and Henry II. it had already begun to spread into the
+country. The artisans, labourers and small shop-keepers who formed the
+first nucleus of the reformed church were numerous enough to provide an
+army of martyrs, though too few to form a party. Revering the monarchy
+and established institutions, they endured forty years of persecution
+before they took up arms. It was only during the second half of Henry
+II.'s reign that Protestantism, having achieved its religious evolution,
+became a political party. Weary of being trodden under foot, it now
+demanded much more radical reform, quitting the ranks of peaceable
+citizens to pass into the only militant class of the time and adopt its
+customs. Men like Coligny, d'Andelot and Conde took the place of the
+timid Lefevre of Etaples and the harsh and bitter Calvin; and the reform
+party, in contradiction to its doctrines and its doctors, became a
+political and religious party of opposition, with all the compromises
+that presupposes. The struggle against it was no longer maintained by
+the university and the parlement alone, but also by the king, whose
+authority it menaced.
+
+
+  Royal persecution under Francis I. and Henry II.
+
+With his intrepid spirit, his disdain for ecclesiastical authority and
+his strongly personal religious feeling, Francis I. had for a moment
+seemed ready to be a reformer himself; but deprived by the Concordat of
+all interest in the confiscation of church property, aspiring to
+political alliance with the pope, and as mistrustful of popular forces
+as desirous of absolute power and devoted to Italy, he paused and then
+drew back. Hence came the revocation in 1540 of the edict of tolerance
+of Coucy (1535), and the massacre of the Vaudois (1545). Henry II., a
+fanatic, went still further in his edict of Chateaubriant (1551), a code
+of veritable persecution, and in the _coup d'etat_ carried out in the
+parlement against Antoine du Bourg and his colleagues (1559). At the
+same time the pastors of the reformed religion, met in synod at Paris,
+were setting down their confession of faith founded upon the Scriptures,
+and their ecclesiastical discipline founded upon the independence of the
+churches. Thenceforward Protestantism adopted a new attitude, and
+refused obedience to the orders of a persecuting monarchy when contrary
+to its faith and its interests. After the saints came men. Hence those
+wars of religion which were to hold the monarchy in check for forty
+years and even force it to come to terms.
+
+
+  Francis II. (1559-1560).
+
+In slaying Henry II. Montgomery's lance saved the Protestants for the
+time being. His son and successor, Francis II., was but a nervous sickly
+boy, bandied between two women: his mother, Catherine de' Medici,
+hitherto kept in the background, and his wife, Mary Stuart, queen of
+Scotland, who being a niece of the Guises brought her uncles, the
+constable Francis and the cardinal of Lorraine, into power. These
+ambitious and violent men took the government out of the hands of the
+constable de Montmorency and the princes of the blood: Antoine de
+Bourbon, king of Navarre, weak, credulous, always playing a double game
+on account of his preoccupation with Navarre; Conde, light-hearted and
+brave, but not fitted to direct a party; and the cardinal de Bourbon, a
+mere nonentity. The only plan which these princes could adopt in the
+struggle, once they had lost the king, was to make a following for
+themselves among the Calvinist malcontents and the gentlemen disbanded
+after the Italian wars. The Guises, strengthened by the failure of the
+conspiracy of Amboise, which had been aimed at them, abused the
+advantage due to their victory. Despite the edict of Romorantin, which
+by giving the bishops the right of cognizance of heresy prevented the
+introduction of the Inquisition on the Spanish model into France;
+despite the assembly of Fontainebleau, where an attempt was made at a
+compromise acceptable to both Catholics and moderate Calvinists; the
+reform party and its Bourbon leaders, arrested at the states-general of
+Orleans, were in danger of their lives. The death of Francis II. in
+December 1560 compromised the influence of the Guises and again saved
+Protestantism.
+
+
+  Charles IX. (1560-1574).
+
+Charles IX. also was a minor, and the regent should legally have been
+the first prince of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon; but cleverly
+flattered by the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, he let her take the
+reins of government. Hitherto Catherine had been merely the resigned and
+neglected wife of Henry II., and though eloquent, insinuating and
+ambitious, she had been inactive. She had attained the age of forty-one
+when she at last came into power amidst the hopes and anxieties aroused
+by the fall of the Guises and the return of the Bourbons to fortune.
+Indifferent in religious matters, she had a passion for authority, a
+characteristically Italian adroitness in intrigue, a fine political
+sense, and the feeling that the royal authority might be endangered both
+by Calvinistic passions and Catholic violence. She decided for a system
+of tolerance; and Michel de l'Hopital, the new chancellor, was her
+spokesman at the states of Orleans (1560). He was a good and honest man,
+moderate, conciliatory and temporizing, anxious to lift the monarchy
+above the strife of parties and to reconcile them; but he was so little
+practical that he could believe in a reformation of the laws in the
+midst of all the violent passions which were now to be let loose. These
+two, Catherine and her chancellor, attempted, like Charles V. at
+Augsburg, to bring about religious pacification as a necessary condition
+for the maintenance of order; but they were soon overwhelmed by the
+different factions.
+
+
+  The parties.
+
+  Edict of tolerance.
+
+On one side was the Catholic triumvirate of the constable de
+Montmorency, the duke of Guise, and the marshal de St Andre; and on the
+other the Huguenot party of Conde and Coligny, who, having obtained
+liberty of conscience in January 1561, now demanded liberty of worship.
+The colloquy at Poissy between the cardinal of Lorraine and Theodore
+Beza (September 1561), did not end in the agreement hoped for, and the
+duke of Guise so far abused its spirit as to embroil the French
+Calvinists with the German Lutherans. The rupture seemed irremediable
+when the assembly of Poissy recognized the order of the Jesuits, which
+the French church had held in suspicion since its foundation. However,
+yielding to the current which was carrying the greater part of the
+nation towards reform, and despite the threats of Philip II. who dreaded
+Calvinistic propaganda in his Netherlands, Michel de l'Hopital
+promulgated the edict of January 17, 1562--a true charter of
+enfranchisement for the Protestants. But the pressure of events and of
+parties was too strong; the policy of toleration which had miscarried at
+the council of Trent had no chance of success in France.
+
+
+  Character of the religious wars.
+
+The triumvirate's relations with Spain and Rome were very close; they
+had complete ascendancy over the king and over Catherine; and now the
+massacre of two hundred Protestants at Vassy on the 1st of March 1562
+made the cup overflow. The duke of Guise had either ordered this, or
+allowed it to take place, on his return from an interview with the duke
+of Wurttemberg at Zabern, where he had once more demanded the help of
+his Lutheran neighbours against the Calvinists; and the Catholics having
+celebrated this as a victory the signal was given for the commencement
+of religious wars. When these eight fratricidal wars first began,
+Protestants and Catholics rivalled one another in respect for royal
+authority; only they wished to become its masters so as to get the upper
+hand themselves. But in course of time, as the struggle became
+embittered, Catholicism itself grew revolutionary; and this twofold
+fanaticism, Catholic and Protestant, even more than the ambition of the
+leaders, made the war a ferocious one from the very first. Beginning
+with surprise attacks, if these failed, the struggle was continued by
+means of sieges and by terrible exploits like those of the Catholic
+Montluc and the Protestant des Adrets in the south of France. Neither of
+these two parties was strong enough to crush the other, owing to the
+apathy and continual desertions of the gentlemen-cavaliers who formed
+the elite of the Protestant army and the insufficient numbers of the
+Catholic forces. Allies from outside were therefore called in, and this
+it was that gave a European character to these wars of religion; the two
+parties were parties of foreigners, the Protestants being supported by
+German _Landsknechts_ and Elizabeth of England's cavalry, and the royal
+army by Italian, Swiss or Spanish auxiliaries. It was no longer
+patriotism but religion that distinguished the two camps. There were
+three principal theatres of war: in the north Normandy and the valley of
+the Loire, where Orleans, the general centre of reform, ensured
+communications between the south and Germany; in the south-west Gascony
+and Guienne; in the south-east Lyonnais and Vivarais.
+
+
+  First religious war.
+
+In the first war, which lasted for a year (1562-1563), the triumvirs
+wished to secure Orleans, previously isolated. The threat of an English
+landing decided them to lay siege to Rouen, and it was taken by assault;
+but this cost the life of the versatile Antoine de Bourbon. On the 19th
+of December 1562 the duke of Guise barred the way to Dreux against the
+German reinforcements of d'Andelot, who after having threatened Paris
+were marching to join forces with the English troops for whom Coligny
+and Conde had paid by the cession of Havre. The death of marshal de St
+Andre, and the capture of the constable de Montmorency and of Conde,
+which marked this indecisive battle, left Coligny and Guise face to
+face. The latter's success was of brief duration; for on the 18th of
+February 1563 Poltrot de Mere assassinated him before Orleans, which he
+was trying to take once and for all. Catherine, relieved by the loss of
+an inconvenient preceptor, and by the disappearance of the other
+leaders, became mistress of the Catholic party, of whose strength and
+popularity she had now had proof, and her idea was to make peace at once
+on the best terms possible. The egoism of Conde, who got himself made
+lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and bargained for freedom of worship
+for the Protestant nobility only, compromised the future of both his
+church and his party, though rendering possible the peace of Amboise,
+concluded the 19th of March 1563. All now set off together to recapture
+Havre from the English.
+
+
+  Peace of Amboise (1563).
+
+
+  Second civil war.
+
+  Peace of Longjumeau.
+
+The peace, however, satisfied no one; neither Catholics (because of the
+rupture of religious unity) nor the parlements; the pope, the emperor
+and king of Spain alike protested against it. Nor yet did it satisfy the
+Protestants, who considered its concessions insufficient, above all for
+the people. It was, however, the maximum of tolerance possible just
+then, and had to be reverted to; Catherine and Charles IX. soon saw that
+the times were not ripe for a third party, and that to enforce real
+toleration would require an absolute power which they did not possess.
+After three years the Guises reopened hostilities against Coligny, whom
+they accused of having plotted the murder of their chief; while the
+Catholics, egged on by the Spaniards, rose against the Protestants, who
+had been made uneasy by an interview between Catherine and her daughter
+Elizabeth, wife of Philip II. of Spain, at Bayonne, and by the duke of
+Alva's persecutions of the reformed church of the Netherlands--a
+daughter-church of Geneva, like their own. The second civil war began
+like the first with a frustrated attempt to kidnap the king, at the
+castle of Montceaux, near Meaux, in September 1567; and with a siege of
+Paris, the general centre of Catholicism, in the course of which the
+constable de Montmorency was killed at Saint-Denis. Conde, with the
+men-at-arms of John Casimir, son of the Count Palatine, tried to starve
+out the capital; but once more the defection of the nobles obliged him
+to sign a treaty of peace at Longjumeau on the 23rd of March 1568, by
+which the conditions of Amboise were re-established. After the attempt
+at Montceaux the Protestants had to be contented with Charles IX.'s
+word.
+
+
+  Third war.
+
+  Peace of St Germain (1570).
+
+This peace was not of long duration. The fall of Michel de l'Hopital,
+who had so often guaranteed the loyalty of the Huguenots, ruined the
+moderate party (May 1568). Catholic propaganda, revived by the monks and
+the Jesuits, and backed by the armed confraternities and by Catherine's
+favourite son, the duke of Anjou, now entrusted with a prominent part by
+the cardinal of Lorraine; Catherine's complicity in the duke of Alva's
+terrible persecution in the Netherlands; and her attempt to capture
+Coligny and Conde at Noyers all combined to cause a fresh outbreak of
+hostilities in the west. Thanks to Tavannes, the duke of Anjou gained
+easy victories at Jarnac over the prince of Conde, who was killed, and
+at Moncontour over Coligny, who was wounded (March-October 1569); but
+these successes were rendered fruitless by the jealousy of Charles IX.
+Allowing the queen of Navarre to shut herself up in La Rochelle, the
+citadel of the reformers, and the king to loiter over the siege of Saint
+Jean d'Angely, Coligny pushed boldly forward towards Paris and, having
+reached Burgundy, defeated the royal army at Arnay-le-duc. Catherine had
+exhausted all her resources; and having failed in her project of
+remarrying Philip II. to one of her daughters, and of betrothing Charles
+IX. to the eldest of the Austrian archduchesses, exasperated also by the
+presumption of the Lorraine family, who aspired to the marriage of their
+nephew with Charles IX.'s sister, she signed the peace of St Germain on
+the 8th of August 1570. This was the culminating point of Protestant
+liberty; for Coligny exacted and obtained, first, liberty of conscience
+and of worship, and then, as a guarantee of the king's word, four
+fortified places: La Rochelle, a key to the sea; La Charite, in the
+centre; Cognac and Montauban in the south.
+
+
+  Coligny and the Netherlands.
+
+  St Bartholomew, August 24, 1572.
+
+The Guises set aside, Coligny, supported as he was by Jeanne d'Albret,
+queen of Navarre, now received all Charles IX.'s favour. Catherine de'
+Medici, an inveterate matchmaker, and also uneasy at Philip II.'s
+increasing power, made advances to Jeanne, proposing to marry her own
+daughter, Marguerite de Valois, to Jeanne's son, Henry of Navarre, now
+chief of the Huguenot party. Coligny was a Protestant, but he was a
+Frenchman before all; and wishing to reconcile all parties in a national
+struggle, he "trumpeted war" (_cornait la guerre_) against Spain in the
+Netherlands--despite the lukewarmness of Elizabeth of England and the
+Germans, and despite the counter-intrigues of the pope and of Venice. He
+succeeded in getting French troops sent to the Netherlands, but they
+suffered defeat. None the less Charles IX. still seemed to see only
+through the eyes of Coligny; till Catherine, fearing to be supplanted by
+the latter, dreading the results of the threatened war with Spain, and
+egged on by a crowd of Italian adventurers in the pay of Spain--men like
+Gondi and Birague, reared like herself in the political theories and
+customs of their native land--saw no hope but in the assassination of
+this rival in her son's esteem. A murderous attack upon Coligny, who had
+opposed the candidature of Catherine's favourite son, the duke of Anjou,
+for the throne of Poland, having only succeeded in wounding him and in
+exciting the Calvinist leaders, who were congregated in Paris for the
+occasion of Marguerite de Valois' marriage with the king of Navarre,
+Catherine and the Guises resolved together to put them all to death.
+There followed the wholesale massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, in Paris
+and in the provinces; a natural consequence of public and private
+hatreds which had poisoned the entire social organism. This massacre had
+the effect of preventing the expedition into Flanders, and destroying
+Francis I.'s policy of alliance with the Protestants against the house
+of Austria.
+
+
+  The party of the politiques.
+
+  Fourth War. Edict of Boulogne (1573).
+
+Catherine de' Medici soon perceived that the massacre of St Bartholomew
+had settled nothing. It had, it is true, dealt a blow to Calvinism just
+when, owing to the reforms of the council of Trent, the religious ground
+had been crumbling beneath it. Moreover, within the party itself a gulf
+had been widening between the pastors, supported by the Protestant
+democracy and the political nobles. The reformers had now no leaders,
+and their situation seemed as perilous as that of their co-religionists
+in the Netherlands; while the sieges of La Rochelle and Leiden, the
+enforced exile of the prince of Orange, and the conversion under pain of
+death of Henry of Navarre and the prince of Conde, made the common
+danger more obvious. Salvation came from the very excess of the
+repressive measures. A third party was once more formed, composed of
+moderates from the two camps, and it was recruited quite as much by
+jealousy of the Guises and by ambition as by horror at the massacres.
+There were the friends of the Montmorency party--Damville at their head;
+Coligny's relations; the king of Navarre; Conde; and a prince of the
+blood, Catherine de' Medici's third son, the duke of Alencon, tired of
+being kept in the background. This party took shape at the end of the
+fourth war, followed by the edict of Boulogne (1573), forced from
+Charles IX. when the Catholics were deprived of their leader by the
+election of his brother, the duke of Anjou, as king of Poland. A year
+later the latter succeeded his brother on the throne of France as Henry
+III. This meant a new lease of power for the queen-mother.
+
+
+  Fifth War.
+
+  Henry III. (1574-1589).
+
+  Peace of Monsieur (1576).
+
+The politiques, as the supporters of religious tolerance and an
+energetic repression of faction were called, offered their alliance to
+the Huguenots, but these, having formed themselves, by means of the
+Protestant Union, into a sort of republic within the kingdom, hesitated
+to accept. It is, however, easy to bring about an understanding between
+people in whom religious fury has been extinguished either by patriotism
+or by ambition, like that of the duke of Alencon, who had now escaped
+from the Louvre where he had been confined on account of his intrigues.
+The compact was concluded at Millau; Conde becoming a Protestant once
+more in order to treat with Damville, Montmorency's brother. Henry of
+Navarre escaped from Paris. The new king, Henry III., vacillating and
+vicious, and Catherine herself, eager for war as she was, had no means
+of separating the Protestants and the _politiques_. Despite the victory
+of Guise at Dormans, the agreement between the duke of Alencon and John
+Casimir's German army obliged the royal party to grant all that the
+allied forces demanded of them in the "peace of Monsieur," signed at
+Beaulieu on the 6th of May 1576, the duke of Alencon receiving the
+appanage of Anjou, Touraine and Berry, the king of Navarre Guienne, and
+Conde Picardy, while the Protestants were granted freedom of worship in
+all parts of the kingdom except Paris, the rehabilitation of Coligny and
+the other victims of St Bartholomew, their fortified towns, and an equal
+number of seats in the courts of the parlements.
+
+
+  The Catholic League.
+
+This was going too fast; and in consequence of a reaction against this
+too liberal edict a fourth party made its appearance, that of the
+Catholic League, under the Guises--Henry le Balafre, duke of Guise, and
+his two brothers, Charles, duke of Mayenne, and Louis, archbishop of
+Reims and cardinal. With the object of destroying Calvinism by effective
+opposition, they imitated the Protestant organization of provincial
+associations, drawing their chief supporters from the upper middle class
+and the lesser nobility. It was not at first a demagogy maddened by the
+preaching of the irreconcilable clergy of Paris, but a union of the more
+honest and prudent classes of the nation in order to combat heresy.
+Despite the immorality and impotence of Henry III. and the Protestantism
+of Henry of Navarre, this party talked of re-establishing the authority
+of the king; but in reality it inclined more to the Guises, martyrs in
+the good cause, who were supported by Philip II. of Spain and Pope
+Gregory XIII. A sort of popular government was thus established to
+counteract the incapacity of royalty, and it was in the name of the
+imperilled rights of the people that, from the States of Blois onward,
+this Holy League demanded the re-establishment of Catholic unity, and
+set the religious right of the nation in opposition to the divine right
+of incapable or evil-doing kings (1576).
+
+
+  The States of Blois (1576).
+
+[Sidenote: Sixth War and peace of Bergerac (1577). Seventh War and peace
+of Fleix (1580).]
+
+In order to oust his rival Henry of Guise, Henry III. made a desperate
+effort to outbid him in the eyes of the more extreme Catholics, and by
+declaring himself head of the League degraded himself into a party
+leader. The League, furious at this stroke of policy, tried to impose a
+council of thirty-six advisers upon the king. But the deputies of the
+third estate did not support the other two orders, and the latter in
+their turn refused the king money for making war on the heretics,
+desiring, they said, not war but the destruction of heresy. This would
+have reduced Henry III. to impotence; fortunately for him, however, the
+break of the Huguenots with the "Malcontents," and the divisions in the
+court of Navarre and in the various parties at La Rochelle, allowed
+Henry III., after two little wars in the south west, during which
+fighting gradually degenerated into brigandage, to sign terms of peace
+at Bergerac (1577), which much diminished the concessions made in the
+edict of Beaulieu. This peace was confirmed three years after by that of
+Fleix. The suppression of both the leagues was stipulated for (1580). It
+remained, however, a question whether the Holy League would submit to
+this.
+
+
+  Union between the Guises and Philip II.
+
+The death of the duke of Anjou after his mad endeavour to establish
+himself in the Netherlands (1584), and the accession of Henry of
+Navarre, heir to the effeminate Henry III., reversed the situations of
+the two parties: the Protestants again became supporters of the
+principle of heredity and divine right; the Catholics appealed to right
+of election and the sovereignty of the people. Could the crown of the
+eldest daughter of the Church be allowed to devolve upon a relapsed
+heretic? Such was the doctrine officially preached in pulpit and
+pamphlet. But between Philip II. on the one hand--now master of Portugal
+and delivered from William of Orange, involved in strife with the
+English Protestants, and desirous of avenging the injuries inflicted
+upon him by the Valois in the Netherlands--and the Guises on the other
+hand, whose cousin Mary Stuart was a prisoner of Queen Elizabeth, there
+was a common interest in supporting one another and pressing things
+forward. A definite agreement was made between them at Joinville
+(December 31, 1584), the religious and popular pretext being the danger
+of leaving the kingdom to the king of Navarre, and the ostensible end
+to secure the succession to a Catholic prince, the old Cardinal de
+Bourbon, an ambitious and violent man of mean intelligence; while the
+secret aim was to secure the crown for the Guises, who had already
+attempted to fabricate for themselves a genealogy tracing their descent
+from Charlemagne. In the meantime Philip II., being rid of Don John of
+Austria, whose ambition he dreaded, was to crush the Protestants of
+England and the Netherlands; and the double result of the compact at
+Joinville was to allow French politics to be controlled by Spain, and to
+transform the wars of religion into a purely political quarrel.
+
+
+  The committee of Sixteen at Paris.
+
+  Eighth war of the three Henries.
+
+The pretensions of the Guises were, in fact, soon manifested in the
+declaration of Peronne (March 30, 1585) against the foul court of the
+Valois; they were again manifested in a furious agitation, fomented by
+the secret council of the League at Paris, which favoured the Guises,
+and which now worked on the people through their terror of Protestant
+retaliations and the Church's peril. Incited by Philip II., who wished
+to see him earning his pension of 600,000 golden crowns, Henry of Guise
+began the war in the end of April, and in a few days the whole kingdom
+was on fire. The situation was awkward for Henry III., who had not the
+courage to ask Queen Elizabeth for the soldiers and money that he
+lacked. The crafty king of Navarre being unwilling to alienate the
+Protestants save by an apostasy profitable to himself, Henry III., by
+the treaty of Nemours (July 7, 1585), granted everything to the head of
+the League in order to save his crown. By a stroke of the pen he
+suppressed Protestantism, while Pope Sixtus V., who had at first been
+unfavourable to the treaty of Joinville as a purely political act,
+though he eventually yielded to the solicitations of the League,
+excommunicated the two Bourbons, Henry and Conde. But the duke of
+Guise's audacity did not make Henry III. forget his desire for
+vengeance. He hoped to ruin him by attaching him to his cause. His
+favourite Joyeuse was to defeat the king of Navarre, whose forces were
+very weak, while Guise was to deal with the strong reinforcement of
+Germans that Elizabeth was sending to Henry of Navarre. Exactly the
+contrary happened. By the defeat of Joyeuse at Coutras Henry III. found
+himself wounded on his strongest side; and by Henry of Guise's successes
+at Vimory and Auneau the Germans, who should have been his best
+auxiliaries against the League, were crushed (October-November 1587).
+
+
+  Day of the Barricades.
+
+  Assassination of the Guises at the second states-general of Blois.
+
+The League now thought they had no longer anything to fear. Despite the
+king's hostility the duke of Guise came to Paris, urged thereto by
+Philip II., who wanted to occupy Paris and be master of the Channel
+coasts whilst he launched his invincible Armada to avenge the death of
+Mary Stuart in 1587. On the Day of the Barricades (May 12, 1588) Henry
+III. was besieged in the Louvre by the populace in revolt; but his rival
+dared not go so far as to depose the king, and appeased the tumult. The
+king, having succeeded in taking refuge at Chartres, ended, however, by
+granting him in the Act of Union all that he had refused in face of the
+barricades--the post of lieutenant-general of the kingdom and the
+proscription of Protestantism. At the second assembly of the states of
+Blois, called together on account of the need for money (1588), all of
+Henry III.'s enemies who were elected showed themselves even bolder than
+in 1576 in claiming the control of the financial administration of the
+kingdom; but the destruction of the Armada gave Henry III., already
+exasperated by the insults he had received, new vigour. He had the old
+Cardinal de Bourbon imprisoned, and Henry of Guise and his brother the
+cardinal assassinated (December 23, 1588). On the 5th of January, 1589,
+died his mother, Catherine de'Medici, the astute Florentine.
+
+
+  Assassination of Henry III.
+
+"Now I am king!" cried Henry III. But Paris being dominated by the duke
+of Mayenne, who had escaped assassination, and by the council of
+"Sixteen," the chiefs of the League, most of the provinces replied by
+open revolt, and Henry III. had no alternative but an alliance with
+Henry of Navarre. Thanks to this he was on the point of seizing Paris,
+when in his turn he was assassinated on the 1st of August 1589 by a
+Jacobin monk, Jacques Clement; with his dying breath he designated the
+king of Navarre as his successor.
+
+
+  The Bourbons.
+
+Between the popular League and the menace of the Protestants it was a
+question whether the new monarch was to be powerless in his turn. Henry
+IV. had almost the whole of his kingdom to conquer. The Cardinal de
+Bourbon, king according to the League and proclaimed under the title of
+Charles X., could count upon the Holy League itself, upon the Spaniards
+of the Netherlands, and upon the pope. Henry IV. was only supported by a
+certain number of the Calvinists and by the Catholic minority of the
+_Politiques_, who, however, gradually induced the rest of the nation to
+rally round the only legitimate prince. The nation wished for the
+establishment of internal unity through religious tolerance and the
+extinction of private organizations; it looked for the extension of
+France's external power through the abasement of the house of Spain,
+protection of the Protestants in the Netherlands and Germany, and
+independence of Rome. Henry IV., moreover, was forced to take an oath at
+the camp of Saint Cloud to associate the nation in the affairs of the
+kingdom by means of the states-general. These three conditions were
+interdependent; and Henry IV., with his persuasive manners, his frank
+and charming character, and his personal valour, seemed capable of
+keeping them all three.
+
+
+  Henry IV. (1589-1610).
+
+  States-general of 1592.
+
+The first thing for this soldier-king to do was to conquer his kingdom
+and maintain its unity. He did not waste time by withdrawing towards the
+south; he kept in the neighbourhood of Paris, on the banks of the Seine,
+within reach of help from Elizabeth; and twice--at Arques and at Ivry
+(1589-1590)--he vanquished the duke of Mayenne, lieutenant-general of
+the League. But after having tried to seize Paris (as later Rouen) by a
+_coup-de-main_, he was obliged to raise the siege in view of
+reinforcements sent to Mayenne by the duke of Parma. Pope Gregory XIV.,
+an enthusiastic supporter of the League and a strong adherent of Spain,
+having succeeded Sixtus V., who had been very lukewarm towards the
+League, made Henry IV.'s position still more serious just at the moment
+when, the old Cardinal de Bourbon having died, Philip II. wanted to be
+declared the protector of the kingdom in order that he might dismember
+it, and when Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, a grandson of Francis I., and
+Charles III., duke of Lorraine, a son-in-law of Henry II., were both of
+them claiming the crown. Fortunately, however, the Sixteen had disgusted
+the upper bourgeoisie by their demagogic airs; while their open alliance
+with Philip II., and their acceptance of a Spanish garrison in Paris had
+offended the patriotism of the _Politiques_ or moderate members of the
+League. Mayenne, who oscillated between Philip II. and Henry IV., was
+himself obliged to break up and subdue this party of fanatics and
+theologians (December 1591). This game of see-saw between the
+_Politiques_ and the League furthered his secret ambition, but also the
+dissolution of the kingdom; and the pressure of public opinion, which
+desired an effective monarchy, put an end to this temporizing policy and
+caused the convocation of the states-general in Paris (December 1592).
+Philip II., through the duke of Feria's instrumentality, demanded the
+throne for his daughter Isabella, grand-daughter of Henry II. through
+her mother. But who was to be her husband? The archduke Ernest of
+Austria, Guise or Mayenne? The parlement cut short these bargainings by
+condemning all ultramontane pretensions and Spanish intrigues. The
+unpopularity of Spain, patriotism, the greater predominance of national
+questions in public opinion, and weariness of both religious disputation
+and indecisive warfare, all these sentiments were expressed in the wise
+and clever pamphlet entitled the _Satire Menippee_. What had been a slow
+movement between 1585 and 1592 was quickened by Henry IV.'s abjuration
+of Protestantism at Saint-Denis on the 23rd of July 1593.
+
+
+  Abjuration of Henry IV., July 23, 1593.
+
+The coronation of the king at Chartres in February 1594 completed the
+rout of the League. The parlement of Paris declared against Mayenne, who
+was simply the mouthpiece of Spain, and Brissac, the governor,
+surrendered the capital to the king. The example of Paris and Henry
+IV.'s clemency rallied round him all prudent Catholics, like Villeroy
+and Jeannin, anxious for national unity; but he had to buy over the
+adherents of the League, who sold him his own kingdom for sixty million
+francs. The pontifical absolution of September 17, 1595, finally
+stultified the League, which had been again betrayed by the unsuccessful
+plot of Jean Chastel, the Jesuit's pupil.
+
+
+  Peace of Vervins.
+
+Nothing was now left but to expel the Spaniards, who under cover of
+religion had worked for their own interests alone. Despite the brilliant
+charge of Fontaine-Francaise in Burgundy (June 5, 1595), and the
+submission of the heads of the League, Guise, Mayenne, Joyeuse, and
+Mercoeur, the years 1595-1597 were not fortunate for Henry IV.'s armies.
+Indignant at his conversion, Elizabeth, the Germans, and the Swiss
+Protestants deserted him; while the taking of Amiens by the Spaniards
+compromised for the moment the future both of the king and the country.
+But exhaustion of each other, by which only England and Holland
+profited, brought about the Peace of Vervins. This confirmed the results
+of the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (May 2, 1598), that is to say, the
+decadence of Spanish power, and its inability either to conquer or to
+dismember France.
+
+
+  Edict of Nantes, 1598.
+
+The League, having now no reason for existence, was dissolved; but the
+Protestant party remained very strong, with its political organization
+and the fortified places which the assemblies of Millau, Nimes and La
+Rochelle (1573-1574) had established in the south and the west. It was a
+republican state within the kingdom, and, being unwilling to break with
+it, Henry IV. came to terms by the edict of Nantes, on the 13th of April
+1598. This was a compromise between the royal government and the
+Huguenot government, the latter giving up the question of public
+worship, which was only authorized where it had existed before 1597 and
+in two towns of each _bailliage_, with the exception of Paris; but it
+secured liberty of conscience throughout the kingdom, state payment for
+its ministers, admission to all employments, and courts composed equally
+of Catholics and Protestants in the parlements. An authorization to hold
+synods and political assemblies, to open schools, and to occupy a
+hundred strong places for eight years at the expense of the king,
+assured to the Protestants not only rights but privileges. In no other
+country did they enjoy so many guarantees against a return of
+persecution. This explains why the edict of Nantes was not registered
+without some difficulty.
+
+
+  Results of the religious wars.
+
+Thus the blood-stained 16th century closed with a promise of religious
+toleration and a dream of international arbitration. This was the end of
+the long tragedy of civil strife and of wars of conquest, mingled with
+the sound of madrigals and psalms and pavanes. It had been the golden
+age of the arquebus and the viol, of sculptors and musicians, of poets
+and humanists, of fratricidal conflicts and of love-songs, of _mignons_
+and martyrs. At the close of this troubled century peace descends upon
+exhausted passions; and amidst the choir of young and ardent voices
+celebrating the national reconciliation, the tocsin no longer sounds its
+sinister and persistent bass. Despite the leagues of either faith,
+religious liberty was now confirmed by the more free and generous spirit
+of Henry IV.
+
+Why was this king at once so easygoing and so capricious? Why, again,
+had the effort and authority of feudal and popular resistance been
+squandered in the follies of the League and to further the ambitions of
+the rebellious Guises? Why had the monarchy been forced to purchase the
+obedience of the upper classes and the provinces with immunities which
+enfeebled it without limiting it? At all events, when the kingdom had
+been reconquered from the Spaniards and religious strife ended, in order
+to fulfil his engagements, Henry IV. need only have associated the
+nation with himself in the work of reconstructing the shattered
+monarchy. But during the atrocious holocausts formidable states had
+grown up around France, observing her and threatening her; and on the
+other hand, as on the morrow of the Hundred Years' War, the lassitude of
+the country, the lack of political feeling on the part of the upper
+classes and their selfishness, led to a fresh abdication of the nation's
+rights. The need of living caused the neglect of that necessity for
+control which had been maintained by the states-general from 1560 to
+1593. And this time, moderation on the part of the monarchy no longer
+made for success. Of the two contrary currents which have continually
+mingled and conflicted throughout the course of French history, that of
+monarchic absolutism and that of aristocratic and democratic liberty,
+the former was now to carry all before it.
+
+
+  The Bourbons. France in 1610.
+
+The kingdom was now issuing from thirty-eight years of civil war. Its
+inhabitants had grown unaccustomed to work; its finances were ruined by
+dishonesty, disorder, and a very heavy foreign debt. The most
+characteristic symptom of this distress was the brigandage carried on
+incessantly from 1598 to 1610. Side by side with this temporary disorder
+there was a more serious administrative disorganization, a habit of no
+longer obeying the king. The harassed population, the municipalities
+which under cover of civil war had resumed the right of self-government,
+and the parlements elated with their social importance and their
+security of position, were not alone in abandoning duty and obedience.
+Two powers faced each other threateningly: the organized and malcontent
+Protestants; and the provincial governors, all great personages
+possessing an armed following, theoretically agents of the king, but
+practically independent. The Montmorencys, the D'Epernons, the Birons,
+the Guises, were accustomed to consider their offices as hereditary
+property. Not that these two powers entered into open revolt against the
+king; but they had adopted the custom of recriminating, of threatening,
+of coming to understandings with the foreign powers, which with some of
+them, like Marshal Biron, the D'Entragues and the duc de Bouillon,
+amounted to conspiracy (1602-1606).
+
+
+  Character of Henry IV.
+
+As to the qualifications of the king: he had had the good fortune not to
+be educated for the throne. Without much learning and sceptical in
+religious matters, he had the lively intelligence of the Gascon, more
+subtle than profound, more brilliant than steady. Married to a woman of
+loose morals, and afterwards to a devout Italian, he was gross and
+vulgar in his appetites and pleasures. He had retained all the habits of
+a country gentleman of his native Bearn, careless, familiar, boastful,
+thrifty, cunning, combined since his sojourn at the court of the Valois
+with a taint of corruption. He worked little but rapidly, with none of
+the bureaucratic pedantry of a Philip II. cloistered in the dark towers
+of the Escurial. Essentially a man of action and a soldier, he preserved
+his tone of command after he had reached the throne, the inflexibility
+of the military chief, the conviction of his absolute right to be
+master. Power quickly intoxicated him, and his monarchy was therefore
+anything but parliamentary. His personality was everything, institutions
+nothing. If, at the gathering of the notables at Rouen in 1596, Henry
+IV. spoke of putting himself in tutelage, that was but preliminary to a
+demand for money. The states-general, called together ten times in the
+16th century, and at the death of Henry III. under promise of
+convocation, were never assembled. To put his absolute right beyond all
+control he based it upon religion, and to this sceptic disobedience
+became a heresy. He tried to make the clergy into an instrument of
+government by recalling the Jesuits, who had been driven away in 1594,
+partly from fear of their regicides, partly because they have always
+been the best teachers of servitude; and he gave the youth of the nation
+into the hands of this cosmopolitan and ultramontane clerical order. His
+government was personal, not through departments; he retained the old
+council though reducing its members; and his ministers, taken from every
+party, were never--not even Sully--anything more than mere clerks,
+without independent position, mere instruments of his good pleasure.
+Fortunately this was not always capricious.
+
+
+  The achievements of Henry IV.
+
+Henry IV. soon realized that his most urgent duty was to resuscitate the
+corpse of France. Pilfering was suppressed, and the revolts of the
+malcontents--the _Gauthiers_ of Normandy, the _Croquants_ and
+_Tard-avises_ of Perigord and Limousin--were quelled, adroitly at first,
+and later with a sterner hand. He then provided for the security of the
+country districts, and reduced the taxes on the peasants, the most
+efficacious means of making them productive and able to pay. Inspired by
+Barthelemy de Laffemas (1545-1612), controller-general of commerce, and
+by Olivier de Serres (1539-1619),[31] Henry IV. encouraged the culture
+of silk, though without much result, had orchards planted and marshes
+drained; while though he permitted the free circulation of wine and
+corn, this depended on the harvests. But the twofold effect of civil
+war--the ruin of the farmers and the scarcity and high price of rural
+labour--was only reduced arbitrarily and by fits and starts.
+
+
+  Industrial policy of Henry IV.
+
+Despite the influence of Sully, a convinced agrarian because of his
+horror of luxury and love of economy, Henry IV. likewise attempted
+amelioration in the towns, where the state of affairs was even worse
+than in the country. But the edict of 1597, far from inaugurating
+individual liberty, was but a fresh edition of that of 1581, a second
+preface to the legislation of Colbert, and in other ways no better
+respected than the first. As for the new features, the syndical courts
+proposed by Laffemas, they were not even put into practice. Various
+industries, nevertheless, concurrent with those of England, Spain and
+Italy, were created or reorganized: silk-weaving, printing, tapestry,
+&c. Sully at least provided renascent manufacture with the roads
+necessary for communication and planted them with trees. In external
+commerce Laffemas and Henry IV. were equally the precursors of Colbert,
+freeing raw material and prohibiting the import of products similar to
+those manufactured within the kingdom. Without regaining that
+preponderance in the Levant which had been secured after the victory of
+Lepanto and before the civil wars, Marseilles still took an honourable
+place there, confirmed by the renewal in 1604 of the capitulations of
+Francis I. with the sultan. Finally, the system of commercial companies,
+antipathetic to the French bourgeoisie, was for the first time practised
+on a grand scale; but Sully never understood that movement of colonial
+expansion, begun by Henry II. in Brazil and continued in Canada by
+Champlain, which had so marvellously enlarged the European horizon. His
+point of view was altogether more limited than that of Henry IV.; and he
+did not foresee, like Elizabeth, that the future would belong to the
+peoples whose national energy took that line of action.
+
+
+  The work of Sully.
+
+His sphere was essentially the superintendence of finance, to which he
+brought the same enthusiasm that he had shown in fighting the League.
+Vain and imaginative, his reputation was enormously enhanced by his
+"Economies royales"; he was no innovator, and being a true
+representative of the nation at that period, like it he was but lukewarm
+towards reform, accepting it always against the grain. He was not a
+financier of genius; but he administered the public moneys with the same
+probity and exactitude which he used in managing his own, retrieving
+alienated property, straightening accounts, balancing expenditure and
+receipts, and amassing a reserve in the Bastille. He did not reform the
+system of _aides_ and _tailles_ established by Louis XI. in 1482; but by
+charging much upon indirect taxation, and slightly lessening the burden
+of direct taxation, he avoided an appeal to the states-general and gave
+an illusion of relief.
+
+
+  Criticism of Henry IV.'s achievement.
+
+Nevertheless, economic disasters, political circumstances and the
+personal government of Henry IV. (precursor in this also of Louis XIV.)
+rendered his task impossible or fatal. The nobility remained in debt and
+disaffected; and the clergy, more remarkable for wealth and breeding
+than for virtues, were won over to the ultramontane ideas of the
+triumphant Jesuits. The rich bourgeoisie began more and more to
+monopolize the magistracy; and though the country-people were somewhat
+relieved from the burden which had been crushing them, the
+working-classes remained impoverished, owing to the increase of prices
+which followed at a distance the rise of wages. Moreover, under
+insinuating and crafty pretexts, Henry IV. undermined as far as he could
+the right of control by the states-general, the right of remonstrance by
+the parlements, and the communal franchises, while ensuring the
+impoverishment of the municipalities by his fiscal methods. Arbitrary
+taxation, scandalous intervention in elections, forced candidatures,
+confusion in their financial administration, bankruptcy and revolt on
+the part of the tenants: all formed an anticipation of the personal rule
+of Richelieu and Louis XIV.
+
+
+  Edict of La Paulette.
+
+Thus Henry IV. evinced very great activity in restoring order and very
+great poverty of invention in his methods. His sole original creation,
+the edict of La Paulette in 1604, was disastrous. In consideration of an
+annual payment of one-sixtieth of the salary, it made hereditary offices
+which had hitherto been held only for life; and the millions which it
+daily poured into the royal exchequer removed the necessity for seeking
+more regular and better distributed resources. Political liberty and
+social justice were equally the losers by this extreme financial
+measure, which paved the way for a catastrophe.
+
+
+  Foreign policy of Henry IV.
+
+In foreign affairs the abasement of the house of Austria remained for
+Henry IV., as it had been for Francis I. and Henry II., a political
+necessity, while under his successors it was to become a mechanical
+obsession. The peace of Vervins had concluded nothing. The difference
+concerning the marquisate of Saluzzo, which the duke of Savoy had seized
+upon in 1588, profiting by Henry III.'s embarrassments, is only worth
+mentioning because the treaty of Lyons (1601) finally dissipated the
+Italian mirage, and because, in exchange for the last of France's
+possessions beyond the Alps, it added to the royal domain the really
+French territory of La Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and the district of Gex.
+The great external affair of the reign was the projected war upon which
+Henry IV. was about to embark when he was assassinated. The "grand
+design" of Sully, the organization of a "Christian Republic" of the
+European nations for the preservation of peace, was but the invention of
+an irresponsible minister, soured by defeat and wishing to impress
+posterity. Henry IV., the least visionary of kings, was between 1598 and
+1610 really hesitating between two great contradictory political
+schemes: the war clamoured for by the Protestants, politicians like
+Sully, and the nobility; and the Spanish alliance, to be cemented by
+marriages, and preached by the ultramontane Spanish camarilla formed by
+the queen, Pere Coton, the king's confessor, the minister Villeroy, and
+Ubaldini, the papal nuncio. Selfish and suspicious, Henry IV.
+consistently played this double game of policy in conjunction with
+president Jeannin. By his alliance with the Grisons (1603) he guaranteed
+the integrity of the Valtellina, the natural approach to Lombardy for
+the imperial forces; and by his intimate union with Geneva he controlled
+the routes by which the Spaniards could reach their hereditary
+possessions in Franche-Comte and the Low Countries from Italy. But
+having defeated the duke of Savoy he had no hesitation in making sure of
+him by a marriage; though the Swiss might have misunderstood the treaty
+of Brusol (1610) by which he gave one of his daughters to the grandson
+of Philip II. On the other hand he astonished the Protestant world by
+the imprudence of his mediation between Spain and the rebellious United
+Provinces (1609). When the succession of Cleves and of Julich, so long
+expected and already discounted by the treaty of Halle (1610), was
+opened up in Germany, the great war was largely due to an access of
+senile passion for the charms of the princesse de Conde. The stroke of
+Ravaillac's knife caused a timely descent of the curtain upon this new
+and tragi-comic Trojan War. Thus, here as elsewhere, we see a
+vacillating hand-to-mouth policy, at the mercy of a passion for power or
+for sensual gratification. The _Cornette blanche_ of Arques, the _Poule
+au pot_ of the peasant, successes as a lover and a dashing spirit, have
+combined to surround Henry IV. with a halo of romance not justified by
+fact.
+
+
+  The regency of Marie de'Medici.
+
+The extreme instability of monarchical government showed itself afresh
+after Henry IV.'s death. The reign of Louis XIII., a perpetual regency
+by women, priests, and favourites, was indeed a curious prelude to the
+grand age of the French monarchy. The eldest son of Henry IV. being a
+minor, Marie de' Medici induced the parlement to invest her with the
+regency, thanks to Villeroy and contrary to the last will of Henry IV.
+This second Florentine, at once jealous of power and incapable of
+exercising it, bore little resemblance to her predecessor. Light-minded,
+haughty, apathetic and cold-hearted, she took a sort of passionate
+delight in changing Henry IV.'s whole system of government. Who would
+support her in this? On one side were the former ministers, Sillery and
+president Jeannin, ex-leaguers but loyalists, no lovers of Spain and
+still less of Germany; on the other the princes of the blood and the
+great nobles, Conde, Guise, Mayenne and Nevers, apparently still much
+more faithful to French ideas, but in reality convinced that the days of
+kings were over and that their own had arrived. Instead of weakening
+this aristocratic agitation by the see-saw policy of Catherine de'
+Medici, Marie could invent no other device than to despoil the royal
+treasure by distributing places and money to the chiefs of both parties.
+The savings all expended and Sully fallen into disgrace, she lost her
+influence and became the almost unconscious instrument of an ambitious
+man of low birth, the Florentine Concini, who was to drag her down with
+him in his fall; petty shifts became thenceforward the order of the day.
+
+
+  Louis XIII.(1610-1643).
+
+Thus Villeroy thought fit to add still further to the price already paid
+to triumphant Madrid and Vienna by disbanding the army, breaking the
+treaty of Brusol, and abandoning the Protestant princes beyond the Rhine
+and the trans-Pyrenean Moriscos. France joined hands with Spain in the
+marriages of Louis XIII. with Anne of Austria and Princess Elizabeth
+with the son of Philip III., and the Spanish ambassador was admitted to
+the secret council of the queen. To soothe the irritation of England the
+duc de Bouillon was sent to London to offer the hand of the king's
+sister to the prince of Wales. Meanwhile, however, still more was ceded
+to the princes than to the kings; and after a pretence of drawing the
+sword against the prince of Conde, rebellious through jealousy of the
+Italian surroundings of the queen-mother, recourse was had to the purse.
+The peace of Sainte Menehould, four years after the death of Henry IV.,
+was a virtual abdication of the monarchy (May 1614); it was time for a
+move in the other direction. Villeroy inspired the regent with the idea
+of an armed expedition, accompanied by the little king, into the West.
+The convocation of the states-general was about to take place, wrung, as
+in all minorities, from the royal weakness--this time by Conde; so the
+elections were influenced in the monarchist interest. The king's
+majority, solemnly proclaimed on the 28th of October 1614, further
+strengthened the throne; while owing to the bungling of the third
+estate, who did not contrive to gain the support of the clergy and the
+nobility by some sort of concessions, the states-general, the last until
+1789, proved like the others a mere historic episode, an impotent and
+inorganic expedient. In vain Conde tried to play with the parlement of
+Paris the same game as with the states-general, in a sort of
+anticipation of the Fronde. Villeroy demurred; and the parlement, having
+illegally assumed a political role, broke with Conde and effected a
+reconciliation with the court. After this double victory Marie de'
+Medici could at last undertake the famous journey to Bordeaux and
+consummate the Spanish marriages. In order not to countenance by his
+presence an act which had been the pretext for his opposition, Conde
+rebelled once more in August 1615; but he was again pacified by the
+governorships and pensions of the peace of Loudun (May 1616).
+
+
+  Concini, Marshal d'Ancre.
+
+But Villeroy and the other ministers knew not how to reap the full
+advantage of their victory. They had but one desire, to put themselves
+on a good footing again with Conde, instead of applying themselves
+honestly to the service of the king. The "marshals," Concini and his
+wife Leonora Galigai, more influential with the queen and more exacting
+than ever, by dint of clever intrigues forced the ministers to retire
+one after another; and with the last of Henry IV.'s "greybeards"
+vanished also all the pecuniary reserves left. Concini surrounded
+himself with new men, insignificant persons ready to do his bidding,
+such as Barbin or Mangot, while in the background was Richelieu, bishop
+of Lucon. Conde now began intrigues with the princes whom he had
+previously betrayed; but his pride dissolved in piteous entreaties when
+Themines, captain of the guard, arrested him in September 1616. Six
+months later Concini had not even time to protest when another captain,
+Vitry, slew him at the Louvre, under orders from Louis XIII., on the
+24th of April 1617.
+
+Richelieu had appeared behind Marie de' Medici; Albert de Luynes rose
+behind Louis XIII., the neglected child whom he had contrived to amuse.
+"The tavern remained the same, having changed nothing but the bush." De
+Luynes was made a duke and marshal in Concini's place, with no better
+title; while the duc d'Epernon, supported by the queen-mother (now in
+disgrace at Blois), took Conde's place at the head of the opposition.
+The treaties of Angouleme and Angers (1619-1620), negotiated by
+Richelieu, recalled the "unwholesome" treaties of Sainte-Menehould and
+Loudun. The revolt of the Protestants was more serious. Goaded by the
+vigorous revival of militant Catholicism which marked the opening of the
+17th century, de Luynes tried to put a finishing touch to the triumph of
+Catholicism in France, which he had assisted, by abandoning in the
+treaty of Ulm the defence of the small German states against the
+ambition of the ruling house of Austria, and by sacrificing the
+Protestant Grisons to Spain. The re-establishment of Catholic worship in
+Bearn was the pretext for a rising among the Protestants, who had
+remained loyal during these troublous years; and although the military
+organization of French Protestantism, arranged by the assembly of La
+Rochelle, had been checked in 1621, by the defection of most of the
+reformed nobles, like Bouillon and Lesdiguieres, de Luynes had to raise
+the disastrous siege of Montauban. Death alone saved him from the
+disgrace suffered by his predecessors (December 15, 1621).
+
+
+  Return of Marie de Medici
+
+From 1621 to 1624 Marie de' Medici, re-established in credit, prosecuted
+her intrigues; and in three years there were three different ministries:
+de Luynes was succeeded by the prince de Conde, whose Montauban was
+found at Montpellier; the Brularts succeeded Conde, and having, like de
+Luynes, neglected France's foreign interests, they had to give place to
+La Vieuville; while this latter was arrested in his turn for having
+sacrificed the interests of the English Catholics in the negotiations
+regarding the marriage of Henrietta of France with the prince of Wales.
+All these personages were undistinguished figures beyond whom might be
+discerned the cold clear-cut profile of Marie de' Medici's secretary,
+now a cardinal, who was to take the helm and act as viceroy during
+eighteen years.
+
+
+  Cardinal Richelieu 1624-1642.
+
+Richelieu came into power at a lucky moment. Every one was sick of
+government by deputy; they desired a strong hand and an energetic
+foreign policy, after the defeat of the Czechs at the White Mountain by
+the house of Austria, the Spanish intrigues in the Valtellina, and the
+resumption of war between Spain and Holland. Richelieu contrived to
+raise hope in the minds of all. As president of the clergy at the
+states-general of 1614 he had figured as an adherent of Spain and the
+ultramontane interest; he appeared to be a representative of that
+religious party which was identical with the Spanish party. But he had
+also been put into the ministry by the party of the _Politiques_, who
+had terminated the civil wars, acclaimed Henry IV., applauded the
+Protestant alliance, and by the mouth of Miron, president of the third
+estate, had in 1614 proclaimed its intention to take up the national
+tradition once more. Despite the concessions necessary at the outset to
+the partisans of a Catholic alliance, it was the programme of the
+_Politiques_ that Richelieu adopted and laid down with a master's hand
+in his Political Testament.
+
+
+  Louis XIII. and Richelieu.
+
+To realize it he had to maintain his position. This was very difficult
+with a king who "wished to be governed and yet was impatient at being
+governed." Incapable of applying himself to great affairs, but of sane
+and even acute judgment, Louis XIII. excelled only in a passion for
+detail and for manual pastimes. He realized the superior qualities of
+his minister, though with a lively sense of his own dignity he often
+wished him more discreet and less imperious; he had confidence in him
+but did not love him. Cold-hearted and formal by nature, he had not even
+self-love, detested his wife Anne of Austria--too good a Spaniard--and
+only attached himself fitfully to his favourites, male or female, who
+were naturally jealously suspected by the cardinal. He was accustomed to
+listen to his mother, who detested Richelieu as her ungrateful protege.
+Neither did he love his brother, Gaston of Orleans, and the feeling was
+mutual; for the latter, remaining for twenty years heir-presumptive to a
+crown which he could neither defend nor seize, posed as the beloved
+prince in all the conspiracies against Richelieu, and issued from them
+each time as a Judas. Add to this that Louis XIII., like Richelieu
+himself, had wretched health, aggravated by the extravagant medicines of
+the day; and it is easy to understand how this pliable disposition which
+offered itself to the yoke caused Richelieu always to fear that his king
+might change his master, and to declare that "the four square feet of
+the king's cabinet had been more difficult for him to conquer than all
+the battlefields of Europe."
+
+Richelieu, therefore, passed his time in safeguarding himself from his
+rivals and in spying upon them; his suspicious nature, rendered still
+more irritable by his painful practice of a dissimulation repugnant to
+his headstrong character, making him fancy himself threatened more than
+was actually the case. He brutally suppressed six great plots, several
+of which were scandalous, and had more than fifty persons executed; and
+he identified himself with the king, sincerely believing that he was
+maintaining the royal authority and not merely his own. He had a
+preference for irregular measures rather than legal prosecutions, and a
+jealousy of all opinions save his own. He maintained his power through
+the fear of torture and of special commissions. It was Louis XIII. whose
+cold decree ordained most of the rigorous sentences, but the stain of
+blood rested on the cardinal's robe and made his reasons of state pass
+for private vengeance. Chalais was beheaded at Nantes in 1626 for having
+upheld Gaston of Orleans in his refusal to wed Mademoiselle de
+Montpensier, and Marshal d'Ornano died at Vincennes for having given him
+bad advice in this matter; while the duellist de Boutteville was put to
+the torture for having braved the edict against duels. The royal family
+itself was not free from his attacks; after the Day of Dupes (1630) he
+allowed the queen-mother to die in exile, and publicly dishonoured the
+king's brother Gaston of Orleans by the publication of his confessions;
+Marshal de Marillac was put to the torture for his ingratitude, and the
+constable de Montmorency for rebellion (1632). The birth of Louis XIV.
+in 1638 confirmed Richelieu in power. However, at the point of death he
+roused himself to order the execution of the king's favourite,
+Cinq-Mars, and his friend de Thou, guilty of treason with Spain (1642).
+
+
+  Financial policy of Richelieu.
+
+Absolute authority was not in itself sufficient; much money was also
+needed. In his state-papers Richelieu has shown that at the outset he
+desired that the Huguenots should share no longer in public affairs,
+that the nobles should cease to behave as rebellious subjects, and the
+powerful provincial governors as suzerains over the lands committed to
+their charge. With his passion for the uniform and the useful on a grand
+scale, he hoped by means of the Code Michaud to put an end to the sale
+of offices, to lighten imposts, to suppress brigandage, to reduce the
+monasteries, &c. To do this it would have been necessary to make peace,
+for it was soon evident that war was incompatible with these reforms. He
+chose war, as did his Spanish rival and contemporary Olivares. War is
+expensive sport; but Richelieu maintained a lofty attitude towards
+finance, disdained figures, and abandoned all petty details to
+subordinate officials like D'Effiat or Bullion. He therefore soon
+reverted to the old and worse measures, including the debasement of
+coinage, and put an extreme tension on all the springs of the financial
+system. The land-tax was doubled and trebled by war, by the pensions of
+the nobles, by an extortion the profits of which Richelieu disdained
+neither for himself nor for his family; and just when the richer and
+more powerful classes had been freed from taxes, causing the wholesale
+oppression of the poorer, these few remaining were jointly and severally
+answerable. Perquisites, offices, forced loans were multiplied to such a
+point that a critic of the times, Guy Patin, facetiously declared that
+duties were to be exacted from the beggars basking in the sun. Richelieu
+went so far as to make poverty systematic and use famine as a means of
+government. This was the price paid for the national victories.
+
+Thus he procured money at all costs, with an extremely crude fiscal
+judgment which ended by exasperating the people; hence numerous
+insurrections of the poverty-stricken; Dijon rose in revolt against the
+_aides_ in 1630, Provence against the tax-officers (_elus_) in 1631,
+Paris and Lyons in 1632, and Bordeaux against the increase of customs in
+1635. In 1636 the _Croquants_ ravaged Limousin, Poitou, Angoumois,
+Gascony and Perigord; in 1639 it needed an army to subdue the
+_Va-nu-pieds_ (bare-feet) in Normandy. Even the _rentiers_ of the
+Hotel-de-Ville, big and little, usually very peaceable folk, were
+excited by the curtailment of their incomes, and in 1639 and 1642 were
+roused to fury.
+
+
+  Struggle with the Protestants.
+
+Every one had to bend before this harsh genius, who insisted on
+uniformity in obedience. After the feudal vassals, decimated by the wars
+of religion and the executioner's hand, and after the recalcitrant
+taxpayers, the Protestants, in their turn, and by their own fault,
+experienced this. While Richelieu was opposing the designs of the pope
+and of the Spaniards in the Valtellina, while he was arming the duke of
+Savoy and subsidizing Mansfeld in Germany, Henri, duc de Rohan, and his
+brother Benjamin de Rohan, duc de Soubise, the Protestant chiefs, took
+the initiative in a fresh revolt despite the majority of their party
+(1625). This Huguenot rising, in stirring up which Spanish diplomacy had
+its share, was a revolt of discontented and ambitious individuals who
+trusted for success to their compact organization and the ultimate
+assistance of England. Under pressure of this new danger and urged on by
+the Catholic _devots_, supported by the influence of Pope Urban VIII.,
+Richelieu concluded with Spain the treaty of Monzon (March 5, 1626), by
+which the interests of his allies Venice, Savoy and the Grisons were
+sacrificed without their being consulted. The Catholic Valtellina, freed
+from the claims of the Protestant Grisons, became an independent state
+under the joint protection of France and Spain; the question of the
+right of passage was left open, to trouble France during the campaigns
+that followed; but the immediate gain, so far as Richelieu was
+concerned, was that his hands were freed to deal with the Huguenots.
+
+Soubise had begun the revolt (January 1625) by seizing Port Blavet in
+Brittany, with the royal squadron that lay there, and in command of the
+ships thus acquired, combined with those of La Rochelle, he ranged the
+western coast, intercepting commerce. In September, however, Montmorency
+succeeded, with a fleet of English and Dutch ships manned by English
+seamen, in defeating Soubise, who took refuge in England. La Rochelle
+was now invested, the Huguenots were hard pressed also on land, and, but
+for the reluctance of the Dutch to allow their ships to be used for such
+a purpose, an end might have been made of the Protestant opposition in
+France; as it was, Richelieu was forced to accept the mediation of
+England and conclude a treaty with the Huguenots (February 1626).
+
+
+  Peace of Alais, 1629.
+
+He was far, however, from forgiving them for their attitude or being
+reconciled to their power. So long as they retained their compact
+organization in France he could undertake no successful action abroad,
+and the treaty was in effect no more than a truce that was badly
+observed. The oppression of the French Protestants was but one of the
+pretexts for the English expedition under James I.'s favourite, the duke
+of Buckingham, to La Rochelle in 1627; and, in the end, this
+intervention of a foreign power compromised their cause. When at last
+the citizens of the great Huguenot stronghold, caught between two
+dangers, chose what seemed to them the least and threw in their lot with
+the English, they definitely proclaimed their attitude as anti-national;
+and when, on the 29th of October 1628, after a heroic resistance, the
+city surrendered to the French king, this was hailed not as a victory
+for Catholicism only, but for France. The taking of La Rochelle was a
+crushing blow to the Huguenots, and the desperate alliance which Rohan,
+entrenched in the Cevennes, entered into with Philip IV. of Spain, could
+not prolong their resistance. The amnesty of Alais, prudent and moderate
+in religious matters, gave back to the Protestants their common rights
+within the body politic. Unfortunately what was an end for Richelieu was
+but a first step for the Catholic party.
+
+
+  Richelieu and the Catholics.
+
+The little Protestant group eliminated, Richelieu next wished to
+establish Catholic religious uniformity; for though in France the
+Catholic Church was the state church, unity did not exist in it. There
+were no fixed principles in the relations between king and church, hence
+incessant conflicts between Gallicans and Ultramontanes, in which
+Richelieu claimed to hold an even balance. Moreover, a Catholic movement
+for religious reform in the Church of France began during the 17th
+century, marked by the creation of seminaries, the foundation of new
+orthodox religious orders, and the organization of public relief by
+Saint Vincent de Paul. Jansenism was the most vigorous contemporary
+effort to renovate not only morals but Church doctrine (see JANSENISM).
+But Richelieu had no love for innovators, and showed this very plainly
+to du Vergier de Hauranne, abbot of Saint Cyran, who was imprisoned at
+Vincennes for the good of Church and State. In affairs of intellect
+dragooning was equally the policy; and, as Corneille learnt to his cost,
+the French Academy was created in 1635 simply to secure in the republic
+of letters the same unity and conformity to rules that was enforced in
+the state.
+
+
+  Destruction of public spirit.
+
+Before Richelieu, there had been no effective monarchy and no
+institutions for controlling affairs; merely advisory institutions which
+collaborated somewhat vaguely in the administration of the kingdom. Had
+the king been willing these might have developed further; but Richelieu
+ruthlessly suppressed all such growth, and they remained embryonic.
+According to him, the king must decide in secret, and the king's will
+must be law. No one might meddle in political affairs, neither
+parlements nor states-general; still less had the public any right to
+judge the actions of the government. Between 1631 and the edict of
+February 1641 Richelieu strove against the continually renewed
+opposition of the parlements to his system of special commissions and
+judgments; in 1641 he refused them any right of interference in state
+affairs; at most would he consent occasionally to take counsel with
+assemblies of notables. Provincial and municipal liberties were no
+better treated when through them the king's subjects attempted to break
+loose from the iron ring of the royal commissaries and intendants. In
+Burgundy, Dijon saw her municipal liberties restricted in 1631; the
+provincial assembly of Dauphine was suppressed from 1628 onward, and
+that of Languedoc in 1629; that of Provence was in 1639 replaced by
+communal assemblies, and that of Normandy was prorogued from 1639 to
+1642. Not that Richelieu was hostile to them in principle; but he was
+obliged at all hazards to find money for the upkeep of the army, and the
+provincial states were a slow and heavy machine to put in motion.
+Through an excessive reaction against the disintegration that had
+menaced the kingdom after the dissolution of the League, he fell into
+the abuse of over-centralization; and depriving the people of the habit
+of criticizing governmental action, he taught them a fatal acquiescence
+in uncontrolled and undisputed authority. Like one of those physical
+forces which tend to reduce everything to a dead level, he battered down
+alike characters and fortresses; and in his endeavours to abolish
+faction, he killed that public spirit which, formed in the 16th century,
+had already produced the _Republique_ of Bodin, de Thou's _History of
+his Times_, La Boetie's _Contre un_, the _Satire Menippee_, and Sully's
+_Economies royales_.
+
+
+  Methods employed by Richelieu.
+
+In order to establish this absolute despotism Richelieu created no new
+instruments, but made use of a revolutionary institution of the 16th
+century, namely "intendants" (q.v.), agents who were forerunners of the
+commissaries of the Convention, gentlemen of the long robe of inferior
+condition, hated by every one, and for that reason the more trustworthy.
+He also drew most of the members of his special commissions from the
+grand council, a supreme administrative tribunal which owed all its
+influence to him.
+
+
+  The results.
+
+However, having accomplished all these great things, the treasury was
+left empty and the reforms were but ill-established; for Richelieu's
+policy increased poverty, neglected the toiling and suffering peasants,
+deserted the cause of the workers in order to favour the privileged
+classes, and left idle and useless that bourgeoisie whose intellectual
+activity, spirit of discipline, and civil and political culture would
+have yielded solid support to a monarchy all the stronger for being
+limited. Richelieu completed the work of Francis I.; he endowed France
+with the fatal tradition of autocracy. This priest by education and by
+turn of mind was indifferent to material interests, which were secondary
+in his eyes; he could organize neither finance, nor justice, nor an
+army, nor the colonies, but at the most a system of police. His method
+was not to reform, but to crush. He was great chiefly in negotiation,
+the art _par excellence_ of ecclesiastics. His work was entirely abroad;
+there it had more continuity, more future, perhaps because only in his
+foreign policy was he unhampered in his designs. He sacrificed
+everything to it; but he ennobled it by the genius and audacity of his
+conceptions, by the energetic tension of all the muscles of the body
+politic.
+
+
+  External policy of Richelieu.
+
+The Thirty Years' War in fact dominated all Richelieu's foreign policy;
+by it he made France and unmade Germany. It was the support of Germany
+which Philip II. had lacked in order to realize his Catholic empire; and
+the election of the archduke Ferdinand II. of Styria as emperor gave
+that support to his Spanish cousins (1619). Thenceforward all the forces
+of the Habsburg monarchy would be united, provided that communication
+could be maintained in the north with the Netherlands and in the south
+with the duchy of Milan, so that there should be no flaw in the iron
+vice which locked France in on either side. It was therefore Of the
+highest importance to France that she should dominate the valleys of the
+Alps and Rhine. As soon as Richelieu became minister in 1624 there was
+an end to cordial relations with Spain. He resumed the policy of Henry
+IV., confining his military operations to the region of the Alps, and
+contenting himself at first with opposing the coalition of the Habsburgs
+with a coalition of Venice, the Turks, Bethlen Gabor, king of Hungary,
+and the Protestants of Germany and Denmark. But the revolts of the
+French Protestants, the resentment of the nobles at his dictatorial
+power, and the perpetual ferment of intrigues and treason in the court,
+obliged him almost immediately to draw back. During these eight years,
+however, Richelieu had pressed on matters as fast as possible.
+
+
+  Temporizing policy, except in Italy, 1624-1630.
+
+While James I. of England was trying to get a general on the cheap in
+Denmark to defend his son-in-law, the elector palatine, Richelieu was
+bargaining with the Spaniards in the treaty of Monzon (March 1626); but
+as the strained relations between France and England forced him to
+conciliate Spain still further by the treaty of April 1627, the
+Spaniards profited by this to carry on an intrigue with Rohan, and in
+concert with the duke of Savoy, to occupy Montferrat when the death of
+Vicenzo II. (December 26, 1627) left the succession of Mantua, under
+the will of the late duke, to Charles Gonzaga, duke of Nevers, a
+Frenchman by education and sympathy. But the taking of La Rochelle
+allowed Louis to force the pass of Susa, to induce the duke of Savoy to
+treat with him, and to isolate the Spaniards in Italy by a great Italian
+league between Genoa, Venice and the dukes of Savoy and Mantua (April
+1629). Unlike the Valois, Richelieu only desired to free Italy from
+Spain in order to restore her independence.
+
+The fact that the French Protestants in the Cevennes were again in arms
+enabled the Habsburgs and the Spaniards to make a fresh attack upon the
+Alpine passes; but after the peace of Alais Richelieu placed himself at
+the head of forty thousand men, and stirred up enemies everywhere
+against the emperor, victorious now over the king of Denmark as in 1621
+over the elector palatine. He united Sweden, now reconciled with Poland,
+and the Catholic and Protestant electors, disquieted by the edict of
+Restitution and the omnipotence of Wallenstein; and he aroused the
+United Provinces. But the disaffection of the court and the more extreme
+Catholics made it impossible for him as yet to enter upon a struggle
+against both Austria and Spain; he was only able to regulate the affairs
+of Italy with much prudence. The intervention of Mazarin, despatched by
+the pope, who saw no other means of detaching Italy from Spain than by
+introducing France into the affair, brought about the signature of the
+armistice of Rivalte on the 4th of September 1630, soon developed into
+the peace of Cherasco, which re-established the agreement with the still
+fugitive duke of Savoy (June 1631). Under the harsh tyranny of Spain,
+Italy was now nothing but a lifeless corpse; young vigorous Germany was
+better worth saving. So Richelieu's envoys, Brulart de Leon and Father
+Joseph, disarmed[32] the emperor at the diet of Regensburg, while at the
+same time Louis XIII. kept Casale and Pinerolo, the gates of the Alps.
+Lastly, by the treaty of Fontainebleau (May 30th, 1631), Maximilian of
+Bavaria, the head of the Catholic League, engaged to defend the king of
+France against all his enemies, even Spain, with the exception of the
+emperor. Thus by the hand of Richelieu a union against Austrian
+imperialism was effected between the Bavarian Catholics and the
+Protestants who dominated in central and northern Germany.
+
+
+  Richelieu and Gustavus Adolphus.
+
+Twice had Richelieu, by means of the purse and not by force of arms,
+succeeded in reopening the passes of the Alps and of the Rhine. The
+kingdom at peace and the Huguenot party ruined, he was now able to
+engage upon his policy of prudent acquisitions and apparently
+disinterested alliances. But Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, called
+in by Richelieu and Venice to take the place of the played-out king of
+Denmark, brought danger to all parties. He would not be content merely
+to serve French interests in Germany, according to the terms of the
+secret treaty of Barwalde (June 1631); but, once master of Germany and
+the rich valley of the Rhine, considered chiefly the interests of
+Protestantism and Sweden. Neither the prayers nor the threats of
+Richelieu, who wished indeed to destroy Spain but not Catholicism, nor
+the death of Gustavus Adolphus at Lutzen (1632), could repair the evils
+caused by this immoderate ambition. A violent Catholic reaction against
+the Protestants ensued; and the union of Spain and the Empire was
+consolidated just when that of the Protestants was dissolved at
+Nordlingen, despite the efforts of Oxenstierna (September 1634).
+Moreover, Wallenstein, who had been urged by Richelieu to set up an
+independent kingdom in Bohemia, had been killed on the 23rd of February
+1634. In the course of a year Wurttemberg and Franconia were reconquered
+from the Swedes; and the duke of Lorraine, who had taken the side of the
+Empire, called in the Spanish and the imperial forces to open the road
+to the Netherlands through Franche-Comte.
+
+
+  The French Thirty Years' War.
+
+His allies no longer able to stand alone, Richelieu was obliged to
+intervene directly (May 19th, 1635). By the treaty of
+Saint-Germain-en-Laye he purchased the army of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar;
+by that of Rivoli he united against Spain the dukes of Modena, Parma and
+Mantua; he signed an open alliance with the league of Heilbronn, the
+United Provinces and Sweden; and after these alliances military
+operations began, Marshal de la Force occupying the duchy of Lorraine.
+Richelieu attempted to operate simultaneously in the Netherlands by
+joining hands with the Dutch, and on the Rhine by uniting with the
+Swedes; but the bad organization of the French armies, the double
+invasion of the Spaniards as far as Corbie and the imperial forces as far
+as the gates of Saint-Jean-de-Losne (1636), and the death of his allies,
+the dukes of Hesse-Cassel, Savoy and Mantua at first frustrated his
+efforts. A decided success was, however, achieved between 1638 and 1640,
+thanks to Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and afterwards to Guebriant, and to the
+parallel action of the Swedish generals, Baner, Wrangel and Torstensson.
+Richelieu obtained Alsace, Breisach and the forest-towns on the Rhine;
+while in the north, thanks to the Dutch and owing to the conquest of
+Artois, marshals de la Meilleraye, de Chatillon and de Breze forced the
+barrier of the Netherlands. Turin, the capital of Piedmont, was taken by
+Henri de Lorraine, comte d'Harcourt; the alliance with rebellious
+Portugal facilitated the occupation of Roussillon and almost the whole of
+Catalonia, and Spain was reduced to defending herself; while the
+embarrassments of the Habsburgs at Madrid made those of Vienna more
+tractable. The diet of Regensburg, under the mediation of Maximilian of
+Bavaria, decided in favour of peace with France, and on the 25th of
+December 1641 the preliminary settlement at Hamburg fixed the opening of
+negotiations to take place at Munster and Osnabruck. Richelieu's death
+(December 4, 1642) prevented him from seeing the triumph of his policy,
+but it can be judged by its results; in 1624 the kingdom had in the east
+only the frontier of the Meuse to defend it from invasion; in 1642 the
+whole of Alsace, except Strassburg, was occupied and the Rhine guarded by
+the army of Guebriant. Six months later, on the 14th of May 1643, Louis
+XIII. rejoined his minister in his true kingdom, the land of shades.
+
+
+  Mazarin, 1643-1661.
+
+But thanks to Mazarin, who completed his work, France gathered in the
+harvest sown by Richelieu. At the outset no one believed that the new
+cardinal would have any success. Every one expected from Anne of Austria
+a change in the government which appeared to be justified by the
+persecutions of Richelieu and the disdainful unscrupulousness of Louis
+XIII. On the 16th of May the queen took the little four-year-old Louis
+XIV. to the parlement of Paris which, proud of playing a part in
+politics, hastened, contrary to Louis XIII.'s last will, to acknowledge
+the command of the little king, and to give his mother "free, absolute
+and entire authority." The great nobles were already looking upon
+themselves as established in power, when they learnt with amazement that
+the regent had appointed as her chief adviser, not Gaston of Orleans,
+but Mazarin. The political revenge which in their eyes was owing to them
+as a body, the queen claimed for herself alone, and she made it a
+romantic one. This Spaniard of waning charms, who had been neglected by
+her husband and insulted by Richelieu, now gave her indolent and
+full-blown person, together with absolute power, into the hands of the
+Sicilian. Whilst others were triumphing openly, Mazarin, in the shadow
+and silence of the interregnum, had kept watch upon the heart of the
+queen; and when the old party of Marie de' Medici and Anne of Austria
+wished to come back into power, to impose a general peace, and to
+substitute for the Protestant alliances an understanding with Spain, the
+arrest of Francois de Vendome, duke of Beaufort, and the exile of other
+important nobles proved to the great families that their hour had gone
+by (September 1643).
+
+
+  Treaties of Westphalia.
+
+Mazarin justified Richelieu's confidence and the favour of Anne of
+Austria. It was upon his foreign policy that he relied to maintain his
+authority within the kingdom. Thanks to him, the duke of Enghien (Louis
+de Bourbon, afterwards prince of Conde), appointed commander-in-chief at
+the age of twenty-two, caused the downfall of the renowned Spanish
+infantry at Rocroi; and he discovered Turenne, whose prudence tempered
+Conde's overbold ideas. It was he too who by renewing the traditional
+alliances and resuming against Bavaria, Ferdinand III.'s most powerful
+ally, the plan of common action with Sweden which Richelieu had sketched
+out, pursued it year after year: in 1644 at Freiburg im Breisgau,
+despite the death of Guebriant at Rottweil; in 1645 at Nordlingen,
+despite the defeat of Marienthal; and in 1646 in Bavaria, despite the
+rebellion of the Weimar cavalry; to see it finally triumph at
+Zusmarshausen in May 1648. With Turenne dominating the Eiser and the
+Inn, Conde victorious at Lens, and the Swedes before the gates of
+Prague, the emperor, left without a single ally, finally authorized his
+plenipotentiaries to sign on the 24th of October 1648 the peace about
+which negotiations had been going on for seven years. Mazarin had stood
+his ground notwithstanding the treachery of the duke of Bavaria, the
+defection of the United Provinces, the resistance of the Germans, and
+the general confusion which was already pervading the internal affairs
+of the kingdom.
+
+The dream of the Habsburgs was shattered. They had wished to set up a
+centralized empire, Catholic and German; but the treaties of Westphalia
+kept Germany in its passive and fragmentary condition; while the
+Catholic and Protestant princes obtained formal recognition of their
+territorial independence and their religious equality. Thus disappeared
+the two principles which justified the Empire's existence; the universal
+sovereignty to which it laid claim was limited simply to a German
+monarchy much crippled in its powers; and the enfranchisement of the
+Lutherans and Calvinists from papal jurisdiction cut the last tie which
+bound the Empire to Rome. The victors' material benefits were no less
+substantial: the congress of Munster ratified the final cession of the
+Three Bishoprics and the conquest of Alsace, and Breisach and
+Philippsburg completed these acquisitions. The Spaniards had no longer
+any hope of adding Luxemburg to their Franche-Comte; while the Holy
+Roman Empire in Germany, taken in the rear by Sweden (now mistress of
+the Baltic and the North Sea), cut off for good from the United
+Provinces and the Swiss cantons, and enfeebled by the recognized right
+of intervention in German affairs on the part of Sweden and France, was
+now nothing but a meaningless name.
+
+Mazarin had not been so fortunate in Italy, where in 1642 the Spanish
+remained masters. Venice, the duchy of Milan and the duke of Modena were
+on his side; the pope and the grand-duke of Tuscany were trembling, but
+the romantic expedition of the duke of Guise to Naples, and the outbreak
+of the Fronde, saved Spain, who had refused to take part in the treaties
+of Westphalia and whose ruin Mazarin wished to compass.
+
+
+  State of the kingdom.
+
+It was, however, easier for Mazarin to remodel the map of Europe than to
+govern France. There he found himself face to face with all the
+difficulties that Richelieu had neglected to solve, and that were now
+once more giving trouble. The _Lit de Justice_ of the 18th of May 1643
+had proved authority to remain still so personal an affair that the
+person of the king, insignificant though that was, continued to be
+regarded as its absolute depositary. Thus regular obedience to an
+abstract principle was under Mazarin as incomprehensible to the idle and
+selfish nobility as it had been under Richelieu. The parlement still
+kept up the same extra-judicial pretensions; but beyond its judicial
+functions it acted merely as a kind of town-crier to the monarchy,
+charged with making known the king's edicts. Yet through its right of
+remonstrance it was the only body that could legally and publicly
+intervene in politics; a large and independent body, moreover, which had
+its own demands to make upon the monarchy and its ministers. Richelieu,
+by setting his special agents above the legal but complicated machinery
+of financial administration, had so corrupted it as to necessitate
+radical reform; all the more so because financial charges had been
+increased to a point far beyond what the nation could bear. With four
+armies to keep up, the insurrection in Portugal to maintain, and
+pensions to serve the needs of the allies, the burden had become a
+crushing one.
+
+
+  Richelieu and Mazarin.
+
+Richelieu had been able to surmount these difficulties because he
+governed in the name of a king of full age, and against isolated
+adversaries; while Mazarin had the latter against him in a coalition
+which had lasted ten years, with the further disadvantages of his
+foreign origin and a royal minority at a time when every one was sick of
+government by ministers. He was the very opposite of Richelieu, as
+wheedling in his ways as the other had been haughty and scornful, as
+devoid of vanity and rancour as Richelieu had been full of jealous care
+for his authority; he was gentle where the other had been passionate and
+irritable, with an intelligence as great and more supple, and a far more
+grasping nature.
+
+
+  Financial difficulties.
+
+It was the fiscal question that arrayed against Mazarin a coalition of
+all petty interests and frustrated ambitions; this was always the
+Achilles' heel of the French monarchy, which in 1648 was at the last
+extremity for money. All imposts were forestalled, and every expedient
+for obtaining either direct or indirect taxes had been exhausted by the
+methods of the financiers. As the country districts could yield nothing
+more, it became necessary to demand money from the Parisians and from
+the citizens of the various towns, and to search out and furbish up old
+disused edicts--edicts as to measures and scales of prices--at the very
+moment when the luxury and corruption of the _parvenus_ was insulting
+the poverty and suffering of the people, and exasperating all those
+officials who took their functions seriously.
+
+
+  Rebellion of the parlement.
+
+A storm burst forth in the parlement against Mazarin as the patron of
+these expedients, the occasion for this being the edict of redemption by
+which the government renewed for nine years the "Paulette" which had now
+expired, by withholding four years' salary from all officers of the
+Great Council, of the _Chambres des comptes_, and of the _Cour des
+aides_. The parlement, although expressly exempted, associated itself
+with their protest by the decree of union of May 13, 1648, and
+deliberations in a body upon the reform of the state. Despite the
+queen's express prohibition, the insurrectionary assembly of the Chambre
+Saint Louis criticized the whole financial system, founded as it was
+upon usury, claimed the right of voting taxes, respect for individual
+liberty, and the suppression of the intendants, who were a menace to the
+new bureaucratic feudalism. The queen, haughty and exasperated though
+she was, yielded for the time being, because the invasion of the
+Spaniards in the north, the arrest of Charles I. of England, and the
+insurrection of Masaniello at Naples made the moment a critical one for
+monarchies; but immediately after the victory at Lens she attempted a
+_coup d'etat_, arresting the leaders, and among them Broussel, a popular
+member of the parlement (August 26, 1648). Paris at once rose in
+revolt--a Paris of swarming and unpoliced streets, that had been making
+French history ever since the reign of Henry IV., and that had not
+forgotten the barricades of the League. Once more a pretence of yielding
+had to be made, until Conde's arrival enabled the court to take refuge
+at Saint-Germain (January 15, 1649).
+
+
+  The Fronde (1648-1652).
+
+Civil war now began against the rebellious coalition of great nobles,
+lawyers of the parlement, populace, and mercenaries just set free from
+the Thirty Years' War. It lasted four years, for motives often as futile
+as the Grande Mademoiselle's ambition to wed little Louis XIV., Cardinal
+de Retz's red hat, or Madame de Longueville's stool at the queen's side;
+it was, as its name of _Fronde_ indicates, a hateful farce, played by
+grown-up children, in several acts.
+
+
+  The Fronde of the Parlement.
+
+Its first and shortest phase was the Fronde of the Parlement. At a
+period when all the world was a little mad, the parlement had imagined a
+loyalist revolt, and, though it raised an armed protest, this was not
+against the king but against Mazarin and the persons to whom he had
+delegated power. But the parlement soon became disgusted with its
+allies--the princes and nobles, who had only drawn their swords in order
+to beg more effectively with arms in their hands; and the Parisian mob,
+whose fanaticism had been aroused by Paul de Gondi, a warlike
+ecclesiastic, a Catiline in a cassock, who preached the gospel at the
+dagger's point. When a suggestion was made to the parlement to receive
+an envoy from Spain, the members had no hesitation in making terms with
+the court by the peace of Rueil (March 11, 1649), which ended the first
+Fronde.
+
+
+  The Fronde of the Princes.
+
+As an _entr'acte_, from April 1649 to January 1650, came the affair of
+the _Petits Maitres_: Conde, proud and violent; Gaston of Orleans,
+pliable and contemptible; Conti, the simpleton; and Longueville, the
+betrayed husband. The victor of Lens and Charenton imagined that every
+one was under an obligation to him, and laid claim to a dictatorship so
+insupportable that Anne of Austria and Mazarin--assured by Gondi of the
+concurrence of the parlement and people--had him arrested. To defend
+Conde the great conspiracy of women was formed: Madame de Chevreuse, the
+subtle and impassioned princess palatine, and the princess of Conde
+vainly attempted to arouse Normandy, Burgundy and the mob of Bordeaux;
+while Turenne, bewitched by Madame de Longueville, allowed himself to
+become involved with Spain and was defeated at Rethel (December 15,
+1650). Unfortunately, after his custom when victor, Mazarin forgot his
+promises--above all, Gondi's cardinal's hat. A union was effected
+between the two Frondes, that of the Petits Maitres and that of the
+parlements, and Mazarin was obliged to flee for safety to the electorate
+of Cologne (February 1651), whence he continued to govern the queen and
+the kingdom by means of secret letters. But the heads of the two
+Frondes--Conde, now set free from prison at Havre, and Gondi who
+detested him--were not long in quarrelling fatally. Owing to Mazarin's
+exile and to the king's attainment of his majority (September 5, 1651)
+quiet was being restored, when the return of Mazarin, jealous of Anne of
+Austria, nearly brought about another reconciliation of all his
+opponents (January 1652). Conde resumed civil war with the support of
+Spain, because he was not given Mazarin's place; but though he defeated
+the royal army at Bleneau, he was surprised at Etampes, and nearly
+crushed by Turenne at the gate of Saint-Antoine. Saved, however, by the
+Grande Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston of Orleans, he lost Paris by the
+disaster of the Hotel de Ville (July 4, 1652), where he had installed an
+insurrectionary government. A general weariness of civil war gave plenty
+of opportunity after this to the agents of Mazarin, who in order to
+facilitate peace made a pretence of exiling himself for a second time to
+Bouillon. Then came the final collapse: Conde having taken refuge in
+Spain for seven years, Gaston of Orleans being in exile, Retz in prison,
+and the parlement reduced to its judiciary functions only, the field was
+left open for Mazarin, who, four months after the king, re-entered in
+triumph that Paris which had driven him forth with jeers and mockery
+(February 1653).
+
+
+  The administration of Mazarin.
+
+The task was now to repair these four years of madness and folly. The
+nobles who had hoped to set up the League again, half counting upon the
+king of Spain, were held in check by Mazarin with the golden dowries of
+his numerous nieces, and were now employed by him in warfare and in
+decorative court functions; while others, De Retz and La Rochefoucauld,
+sought consolation in their Memoirs or their Maxims, one for his
+mortifications and the other for his rancour as a statesman out of
+employment. The parlement, which had confused political power with
+judiciary administration, was given to understand, in the session of
+April 13, 1655, at Vincennes, that the era of political manifestations
+was over; and the money expended by Gourville, Mazarin's agent, restored
+the members of the parlement to docility. The power of the state was
+confided to middle-class men, faithful servants during the evil days:
+Abel Servien, Michel le Tellier, Hugues de Lionne. Like Henry IV. after
+the League, Mazarin, after having conquered the Fronde, had to buy back
+bit by bit the kingdom he had lost, and, like Richelieu, he spread out a
+network of agents, thenceforward regular and permanent, who assured him
+of that security without which he could never have carried on his vast
+plunderings in peace and quiet. His imitator and superintendent,
+Fouquet, the Maecenas of the future Augustus, concealed this gambling
+policy beneath the lustre of the arts and the glamour of a literature
+remarkable for elevation of thought and vigour of style, and further
+characterized by the proud though somewhat restricted freedom conceded
+to men like Corneille, Descartes and Pascal, but soon to disappear.
+
+
+  War with Spain.
+
+
+  Peace of the Pyrenees.
+
+It was also necessary to win back from Spain the territory which the
+Frondeurs had delivered up to her. Both countries, exhausted by twenty
+years of war, were incapable of bringing it to a successful termination,
+yet neither would be first to give in; Mazarin, therefore, disquieted by
+Conde's victory at Valenciennes (1656), reknit the bond of Protestant
+alliances, and, having nothing to expect from Holland, he deprived Spain
+of her alliance with Oliver Cromwell (March 23, 1657). A victory in the
+Dunes by Turenne, now reinstalled in honour, and above all the conquest
+of the Flemish seaboard, were the results (June 1658); but when, in
+order to prevent the emperor's intervention in the Netherlands, Mazarin
+attempted, on the death of Ferdinand III., to wrest the Empire from the
+Habsburgs, he was foiled by the gold of the Spanish envoy Penaranda
+(1657). When the abdication of Christina of Sweden caused a quarrel
+between Charles Gustavus of Sweden and John Casimir of Poland, by which
+the emperor and the elector of Brandenburg hoped to profit, Mazarin
+(August 15, 1658) leagued the Rhine princes against them; while at the
+same time the substitution of Pope Alexander VII. for Innocent X., and
+the marriage of Mazarin's two nieces with the duke of Modena and a
+prince of the house of Savoy, made Spain anxious about her Italian
+possessions. The suggestion of a marriage between Louis XIV. and a
+princess of Savoy decided Spain, now brought to bay, to accord him the
+hand of Maria Theresa as a chief condition of the peace of the Pyrenees
+(November 1659). Roussillon and Artois, with a line of strongholds
+constituting a formidable northern frontier, were ceded to France; and
+the acquisition of Alsace and Lorraine under certain conditions was
+ratified. Thus from this long duel between the two countries Spain
+issued much enfeebled, while France obtained the preponderance in Italy,
+Germany, and throughout northern Europe, as is proved by Mazarin's
+successful arbitration at Copenhagen and at Oliva (May-June 1660). That
+dream of Henry IV. and Richelieu, the ruin of Philip II.'s Catholic
+empire, was made a realized fact by Mazarin; but the clever engineer,
+dazzled by success, took the wrong road in national policy when he hoped
+to crown his work by the Spanish marriage.
+
+
+  Louis XIV. (1661-1715).
+
+The development of events had gradually enlarged the royal prerogative,
+and it now came to its full flower in the administrative monarchy of the
+17th century. Of this system Louis XIV. was to be the chief exponent.
+His reign may be divided into two very distinct periods. The death of
+Colbert and the revocation of the edict of Nantes brought the first to a
+close (1661-1683-1685); coinciding with the date when the Revolution in
+England definitely reversed the traditional system of alliances, and
+when the administration began to disorganize. In the second period
+(1685-1715) all the germs of decadence were developed until the moment
+of final dissolution.
+
+
+  Education of Louis XIV.
+
+In a monarchy so essentially personal the preparation of the heir to the
+throne for his position should have been the chief task. Anne of
+Austria, a devoted but unintelligent mother, knew no method of dealing
+with her son, save devotion combined with the rod. His first preceptors
+were nothing but courtiers; and the most intelligent, his valet Laporte,
+developed in the royal child's mind his natural instinct of command, a
+very lively sense of his rank, and that nobly majestic air of master of
+the world which he preserved even in the commonest actions of his life.
+The continual agitations of the Fronde prevented him from persevering in
+any consistent application during those years which are the most
+valuable for study, and only instilled in him a horror of revolution,
+parliamentary remonstrance, and disorder of all kinds; so that this
+recollection determined the direction of his government. Mazarin, in his
+later years, at last taught him his trade as king by admitting him to
+the council, and by instructing him in the details of politics and of
+administration. In 1661 Louis XIV. was a handsome youth of twenty-two,
+of splendid health and gentle serious mien; eager for pleasure, but
+discreet and even dissimulating; his rather mediocre intellectual
+qualities relieved by solid common sense; fully alive to his rights and
+his duties.
+
+
+  His political ideas.
+
+The duties he conscientiously fulfilled, but he considered he need
+render no account of them to any one but his Maker, the last humiliation
+for God's vicegerent being "to take the law from his people." In the
+solemn language of the "Memoirs for the Instruction of the Dauphin" he
+did but affirm the arbitrary and capricious character of his
+predecessors' action. As for his rights, Louis XIV. looked upon these as
+plenary and unlimited. Representative of God upon earth, heir to the
+sovereignty of the Roman emperors, a universal suzerain and master over
+the goods and the lives of his vassals, he could conceive no other
+bounds to his authority than his own interests or his obligations
+towards God, and in this he was a willing believer of Bossuet. He
+therefore had but two aims: to increase his power at home and to enlarge
+his kingdom abroad. The army and taxation were the chief instruments of
+his policy. Had not Bodin, Hobbes and Bossuet taught that the force
+which gives birth to kingdoms serves best also to feed and sustain them?
+His theory of the state, despite Grotius and Jurieu, rejected as odious
+and even impious the notion of any popular rights, anterior and superior
+to his own. A realist in principle, Louis XIV. was terribly utilitarian
+and egotistical in practice; and he exacted from his subjects an
+absolute, continual and obligatory self-abnegation before his public
+authority, even when improperly exercised.
+
+
+  The forms of Louis XIV.'s monarchy.
+
+This deified monarch needed a new temple, and Versailles, where
+everything was his creation, both men and things, adored its maker. The
+highest nobility of France, beginning with the princes of the blood,
+competed for posts in the royal household, where an army of ten thousand
+soldiers, four thousand servants, and five thousand horses played its
+costly and luxurious part in the ordered and almost religious pageant of
+the king's existence. The "_anciennes cohues de France_," gay, familiar
+and military, gave place to a stilted court life, a perpetual adoration,
+a very ceremonious and very complicated ritual, in which the demigod
+"pontificated" even "in his dressing-gown." To pay court to himself was
+the first and only duty in the eyes of a proud and haughty prince who
+saw and noted everything, especially any one's absence. Versailles,
+where the delicate refinements of Italy and the grave politeness of
+Spain were fused and mingled with French vivacity, became the centre of
+national life and a model for foreign royalties; hence if Versailles has
+played a considerable part in the history of civilization, it also
+seriously modified the life of France. Etiquette and self-seeking became
+the chief rules of a courtier's life, and this explains the division of
+the nobility into two sections: the provincial squires, embittered by
+neglect; and the courtiers, who were ruined materially and
+intellectually by their way of living. Versailles sterilized all the
+idle upper classes, exploited the industrious classes by its
+extravagance, and more and more broke relations between king and
+kingdom.
+
+
+  Louis XIV.'s ministers.
+
+  Royal despotism.
+
+But however divine, the king could not wield his power unaided. Louis
+XIV. called to his assistance a hierarchy of humbly submissive
+functionaries, and councils over which he regularly presided. Holding
+the very name of _roi faineant_ in abhorrence, he abolished the office
+of mayor of the palace--that is to say, the prime minister--thus
+imposing upon himself work which he always regularly performed. In
+choosing his collaborators his principle was never to select nobles or
+ecclesiastics, but persons of inferior birth. Neither the immense
+fortunes amassed by these men, nor the venality and robust vitality
+which made their families veritable races of ministers, altered the fact
+that De Lionne, Le Tellier, Louvois and Colbert were in themselves of no
+account, even though the parts they played were much more important than
+Louis XIV. imagined. This was the age of plebeians, to the great
+indignation of the duke and peer Saint Simon. Mere reflected lights,
+these satellites professed to share their master's honor of all
+individual and collective rights of such a nature as to impose any check
+upon his public authority. Louis XIV. detested the states-general and
+never convoked them, and the parlements were definitely reduced to
+silence in 1673; he completed the destruction of municipal liberties,
+under pretext of bad financial administration; suffered no public, still
+less private criticism; was ruthless when his exasperated subjects had
+recourse to force; and made the police the chief bulwark of his
+government. Prayers and resignation were the only solace left for the
+hardships endured by his subjects. All the ties of caste, class,
+corporation and family were severed; the jealous despotism of Louis XIV.
+destroyed every opportunity of taking common action; he isolated every
+man in private life, in individual interests, just as he isolated
+himself more and more from the body social. Freedom he tolerated for
+himself alone.
+
+
+  Louis XIV. and the Church.
+
+  Declaration of the Four Articles.
+
+His passion for absolutism made him consider himself master of souls as
+well as bodies, and Bossuet did nothing to contravene an opinion which
+was, indeed, common to every sovereign of his day. Louis XIV., like
+Philip II., pretending to not only political but religious authority,
+would not allow the pope to share it, still less would he abide any
+religious dissent; and this gave rise to many conflicts, especially with
+the pope, at that time a temporal sovereign both at Rome and at Avignon,
+and as the head of Christendom bound to interfere in the affairs of
+France. Louis XIV.'s pride caused the first struggle, which turned
+exclusively upon questions of form, as in the affair of the Corsican
+Guard in 1662. The question of the right of _regale_ (right of the Crown
+to the revenues of vacant abbeys and bishoprics), which touched the
+essential rights of sovereignty, further inflamed the hostility between
+Innocent XI. and Louis XIV. Conformably with the traditions of the
+administrative monarchy in 1673, the king wanted to extend to the new
+additions to the kingdom his rights of receiving the revenues of vacant
+bishoprics and making appointments to their benefices, including taking
+oaths of fidelity from the new incumbents. A protest raised by the
+bishops of Pamiers and Aleth, followed by the seizure of their revenues,
+provoked the intervention of Innocent XI. in 1678; but the king was
+supported by the general assembly of the clergy, which declared that,
+with certain exceptions, the _regale_ extended over the whole kingdom
+(1681). The pope ignored the decisions of the assembly; so, dropping the
+_regale_, the king demanded that, to obviate further conflict, the
+assembly should define the limits of the authority due respectively to
+the king, the Church and the pope. This was the object of the
+Declaration of the Four Articles: the pope has no power in temporal
+matters; general councils are superior to the pope in spiritual affairs;
+the rules of the Church of France are inviolable; decisions of the pope
+in matters of faith are only irrevocable by consent of the Church. The
+French laity transferred to the king this quasi-divine authority, which
+became the political theory of the _ancien regime_; and since the pope
+refused to submit, or to institute the new bishops, the Sorbonne was
+obliged to interfere. The affair of the "diplomatic prerogatives," when
+Louis XIV. was decidedly in the wrong, made relations even more strained
+(1687), and the idea of a schism was mooted with greater insistence than
+in 1681. The death of Innocent XI. in 1689 allowed Louis XIV. to engage
+upon negotiations rendered imperative by his check in the affair of the
+Cologne bishopric, where his candidate was ousted by the pope's. In
+1693, under the pontificate of Innocent XII., he went, like so many
+others, to Canossa.
+
+Recipient now of immense ecclesiastical revenues, which, owing to the
+number of vacant benefices, constituted a powerful engine of government,
+Louis XIV. had immense power over the French Church. Religion began to
+be identified with the state; and the king combated heresy and dissent,
+not only as a religious duty, but as a matter of political expediency,
+unity of faith being obviously conducive to unity of law.
+
+
+  Louis XIV. and the Protestants.
+
+  Suppression of the edict of Nantes (1685).
+
+Richelieu having deprived the Protestants of all political guarantees
+for their liberty of conscience, an anti-Protestant party (directed by
+a cabal of religious devotees, the _Compagnie du Saint Sacrement_)
+determined to suppress it completely by conversions and by a jesuitical
+interpretation of the terms of the edict of Nantes. Louis XIV. made this
+impolitic policy his own. His passion for absolutism, a religious zeal
+that was the more active because it had to compensate for many affronts
+to public and private morals, the financial necessity of augmenting the
+free donations of the clergy, and the political necessity of relying
+upon that body in his conflicts with the pope, led the king between 1661
+and 1685 to embark upon a double campaign of arbitrary proceedings with
+the object of nullifying the edict, conversions being procured either by
+force or by bribery. The promulgation and application of systematic
+measures from above had a response from below, from the corporation, the
+urban workshop, and the village street, which supported ecclesiastical
+and royal authority in its suppression of heresy, and frequently even
+went further: individual and local fanaticism co-operating with the head
+of the state, the _intendants_, and the military and judiciary
+authorities. Protestants were successively removed from the
+states-general, the consulates, the town councils, and even from the
+humblest municipal offices; they were deprived of the charge of their
+hospitals, their academies, their colleges and their schools, and were
+left to ignorance and poverty; while the intolerance of the clergy
+united with chicanery of procedure to invade their places of worship,
+insult their adherents, and put a stop to the practice of their ritual.
+Pellisson's methods of conversion, considered too slow, were accelerated
+by the violent persecution of Louvois and by the king's galleys, until
+the day came when Louis XIV., deceived by the clergy, crowned his record
+of complaisant legal methods by revoking the edict of Nantes. This was
+the signal for a Huguenot renaissance, and the Camisards of the Cevennes
+held the royal armies in check from 1703 to 1711. Notwithstanding this,
+however, Louis XIV. succeeded only too well, since Protestantism was
+reduced both numerically and intellectually. He never perceived how its
+loss threw France back a full century, to the great profit of foreign
+nations; while neither did the Church perceive that she had been firing
+on her own troops.
+
+
+  Louis XIV. and the Jansenists.
+
+The same order of ideas produced the persecution of the Jansenists, as
+much a political as a religious sect. Founded by a bishop of Ypres on
+the doctrine of predestination, and growing by persecution, it had
+speedily recruited adherents among the disillusioned followers of the
+Fronde, the Gallican clergy, the higher nobility, even at court, and
+more important still, among learned men and thinkers, such as the great
+Arnauld, Pascal and Racine. Pure and austere, it enjoined the strictest
+morals in the midst of corruption, and the most dignified self-respect
+in face of idolatrous servility. Amid general silence it was a
+formidable and much dreaded body of opinion; and in order to stifle it
+Louis XIV., the tool of his confessor, the Jesuit Le Tellier, made use
+of his usual means. The nuns of Port Royal were in their turn subjected
+to persecution, which, after a truce between 1666 and 1679, became
+aggravated by the affair of the _regale_, the bishops of Aleth and
+Pamiers being Jansenists. Port Royal was destroyed, the nuns dispersed,
+and the ashes of the dead scattered to the four winds. The bull
+_Unigenitus_ launched by Pope Clement XI. in 1713 against a Jansenist
+book by Father Quesnel rekindled a quarrel, the end of which Louis XIV.
+did not live to see, and which raged throughout the 18th century.
+
+
+  Louis XIV. and the Libertins.
+
+Bossuet, Louis XIV.'s mouthpiece, triumphed in his turn over the
+quietism of Madame Guyon, a mystic who recognized neither definite
+dogmas nor formal prayers, but abandoned herself "to the torrent of the
+forces of God." Fenelon, who in his _Maximes des Saints_ had given his
+adherence to her doctrine, was obliged to submit in 1699; but Bossuet
+could not make the spirit of authority prevail against the religious
+criticism of a Richard Simon or the philosophical polemics of a Bayle.
+He might exile their persons; but their doctrines, supported by the
+scientific and philosophic work of Newton and Leibnitz, were to triumph
+over Church and religion in the 18th century.
+
+The chaos of the administrative system caused difficulties no less great
+than those produced by opinions and creeds. Traditional rights,
+differences of language, provincial autonomy, ecclesiastical assemblies,
+parlements, governors, intendants--vestiges of the past, or promises for
+the future--all jostled against and thwarted each other. The central
+authority had not yet acquired a vigorous constitution, nor destroyed
+all the intermediary authorities. Colbert now offered his aid in making
+Louis XIV. the sole pivot of public life, as he had already become the
+source of religious authority, thanks to the Jesuits and to Bossuet.
+
+
+  Colbert.
+
+Colbert, an agent of Le Tellier, the honest steward of Mazarin's
+dishonest fortunes, had a future opened to him by the fall of Fouquet
+(1661). Harsh and rough, he compelled admiration for his delight in
+work, his aptitude in disentangling affairs, his desire of continually
+augmenting the wealth of the state, and his regard for the public
+welfare without forgetting his own. Born in a draper's shop, this great
+administrator always preserved its narrow horizon, its short-sighted
+imagination, its taste for detail, and the conceit of the parvenu; while
+with his insinuating ways, and knowing better than Fouquet how to keep
+his distance, he made himself indispensable by his _savoir-faire_ and
+his readiness for every emergency. He gradually got everything into his
+control: finance, industry, commerce, the fine arts, the navy and
+colonies, the administration, even the fortifications, and--through his
+uncle Pussort--the law, with all the profits attaching to its offices.
+
+
+  Colbert and finance.
+
+His first care was to restore the exhausted resources of the country and
+to re-establish order in finance. He began by measures of liquidation:
+the _Chambre ardente_ of 1661 to 1665 to deal with the farmers of the
+revenue, the condemnation of Fouquet, and a revision of the funds. Next,
+like a good man of business, Colbert determined that the state accounts
+should be kept as accurately as those of a shop; but though in this
+respect a great minister, he was less so in his manner of levying
+contributions. He kept to the old system of revenues from the demesne
+and from imposts that were reactionary in their effect, such as the
+_taille_, aids, salt-tax (_gabelle_) and customs; only he managed them
+better. His forest laws have remained a model. He demanded less of the
+_taille_, a direct impost, and more from indirect aids, of which he
+created the code--not, however, out of sympathy for the common people,
+towards whom he was very harsh, but because these aids covered a greater
+area and brought in larger returns. He tried to import more method into
+the very unequal distribution of taxation, less brutality in collection,
+less confusion in the fiscal machine, and more uniformity in the matter
+of rights; while he diminished the debts of the much-involved towns by
+putting them through the bankruptcy court. With revolutionary intentions
+as to reform, this only ended, after several years of normal budgets, in
+ultimate frustration. He could never make the rights over the drink
+traffic uniform and equal, nor restrict privileges in the matter of the
+_taille_; while he was soon much embarrassed, not only by the coalition
+of particular interests and local immunities, which made despotism
+acceptable by tempering it, but also by Louis XIV.'s two master-passions
+for conquest and for building. To his great chagrin he was obliged to
+begin borrowing again in 1672, and to have recourse to "_affaires
+extraordinaires_"; and this brought him at last to his grave.
+
+
+  Colbert and industry.
+
+Order was for Colbert the prime condition of work. He desired all France
+to set to work as he did "with a contented air and rubbing his hands for
+joy"; but neither general theories nor individual happiness preoccupied
+his attention. He made economy truly political: that is to say, the
+prosperity of industry and commerce afforded him no other interest than
+that of making the country wealthy and the state powerful. Louis XIV.'s
+aspirations towards glory chimed in very well with the extremely
+positive views of his minister; but here too Colbert was an innovator
+and an unsuccessful one. He wanted to give 17th-century France the
+modern and industrial character which the New World had imprinted on the
+maritime states; and he created industry on a grand scale with an energy
+of labour, a prodigious genius for initiative and for organization;
+while, in order to attract a foreign clientele, he imposed upon it the
+habits of meticulous probity common to a middle-class draper. But he
+maintained the legislation of the Valois, who placed industry in a state
+of strict dependency on finance, and he instituted a servitude of labour
+harder even than that of individuals; his great factories of soap,
+glass, lace, carpets and cloth had the same artificial life as that of
+contemporary Russian industry, created and nourished by the state. It
+was therefore necessary, in order to compensate for the fatal influence
+of servitude, that administrative protection should be lavished without
+end upon the royal manufactures; moreover, in the course of its
+development, industry on a grand scale encroached in many ways upon the
+resources of smaller industries. After Colbert's day, when the crutches
+lent by privilege were removed, his achievements lost vigour; industries
+that ministered to luxury alone escaped decay; the others became
+exhausted in struggling against the persistent and teasing opposition of
+the municipal bodies and the bourgeoisie--conceited, ignorant and
+terrified at any innovation--and against the blind and intolerant policy
+of Louis XIV.
+
+
+  Colbert and commerce.
+
+Colbert, in common with all his century, believed that the true secret
+of commerce and the indisputable proof of a country's prosperity was to
+sell as many of the products of national industry to the foreigner as
+possible, while purchasing as little as possible. In order to do this,
+he sometimes figured as a free-trader and sometimes as a protectionist,
+but always in a practical sense; if he imposed prohibitive tariffs, in
+1664 and 1667, he also opened the free ports of Marseilles and Dunkirk,
+and engineered the _Canal du midi_. But commerce, like industry, was
+made to rely only on the instigation of the state, by the intervention
+of officials; here, as throughout the national life, private initiative
+was kept in subjection and under suspicion. Once more Colbert failed;
+with regard to internal affairs, he was unable to unify weights and
+measures, or to suppress the many custom-houses which made France into a
+miniature Europe; nor could he in external affairs reform the consulates
+of the Levant. He did not understand that, in order to purge the body of
+the nation from its traditions of routine, it would be necessary to
+reawaken individual energy in France. He believed that the state, or
+rather the bureaucracy, might be the motive power of national activity.
+
+
+  Colbert and the colonies.
+
+His colonial and maritime policy was the newest and most fruitful part
+of his work. He wished to turn the eyes of contemporary adventurous
+France towards her distant interests, the wars of religion having
+diverted her attention from them to the great profit of English and
+Dutch merchants. Here too he had no preconceived ideas; the royal and
+monopolist companies were never for him an end but a means; and after
+much experimenting he at length attained success. In the course of
+twenty years he created many dependencies of France beyond sea. To her
+colonial empire in America he added the greater part of Santo Domingo,
+Tobago and Dominica; he restored Guiana; prepared for the acquisition of
+Louisiana by supporting Cavelier de la Salle; extended the suzerainty of
+the king on the coast of Africa from the Bay of Arguin to the shores of
+Sierra Leone, and instituted the first commercial relations with India.
+The population of the Antilles doubled; that of Canada quintupled; while
+if in 1672 at the time of the war with Holland Louis XIV. had listened
+to him, Colbert would have sacrificed his pride to the acquisition of
+the rich colonies of the Netherlands. In order to attach and defend
+these colonies Colbert created a navy which became his passion; he took
+convicts to man the galleys in the Mediterranean, and for the fleet in
+the Atlantic he established the system of naval reserve which still
+obtains. But, in the 18th century, the monarchy, hypnotized by the
+classical battlefields of Flanders and Italy, madly squandered the
+fruits of Colbert's work as so much material for barter and exchange.
+
+
+  Colbert and the administration.
+
+In the administration, the police and the law, Colbert preserved all the
+old machinery, including the inheritance of office. In the great
+codification of laws, made under the direction of his uncle Pussort, he
+set aside the parlement of Paris, and justice continued to be
+ill-administered and cruel. The police, instituted in 1667 by La Reynie,
+became a public force independent of magistrates and under the direct
+orders of the ministers, making the arbitrary royal and ministerial
+authority absolute by means of _lettres de cachet_ (q.v.), which were
+very convenient for the government and very terrible for the individuals
+concerned.
+
+Provincial administration was no longer modified; it was regularized.
+The intendant became the king's factotum, not purchasing his office but
+liable to dismissal, the government's confidential agent and the real
+repository of royal authority, the governor being only for show (see
+INTENDANT).
+
+
+  Ruin of Colbert's work.
+
+Colbert's system went on working regularly up to the year 1675; from
+that time forward he was cruelly embarrassed for money, and, seeking new
+sources of revenue, begged for subsidies from the assembly of the
+clergy. He did not succeed either in stemming the tide of expense, nor
+in his administration, being in no way in advance of his age, and not
+perceiving that decisive reform could not be achieved by a government
+dealing with the nation as though it were inert and passive material,
+made to obey and to pay. Like a good Cartesian he conceived of the state
+as an immense machine, every portion of which should receive its impulse
+from outside--that is from him, Colbert. Leibnitz had not yet taught
+that external movement is nothing, and inward spirit everything. As the
+minister of an ambitious and magnificent king, Colbert was under the
+hard necessity of sacrificing everything to the wars in Flanders and the
+pomp of Versailles--a gulf which swallowed up all the country's
+wealth;--and, amid a society which might be supposed submissively docile
+to the wishes of Louis XIV., he had to retain the most absurd financial
+laws, making the burden of taxation weigh heaviest on those who had no
+other resources than their labour, whilst landed property escaped free
+of charge. Habitual privation during one year in every three drove the
+peasants to revolt: in Boulonnais, the Pyrenees, Vivarais, in Guyenne
+from 1670 onwards and in Brittany in 1675. Cruel means of repression
+assisted natural hardships and the carelessness of the administration in
+depopulating and laying waste the countryside; while Louis XIV.'s
+martial and ostentatious policy was even more disastrous than pestilence
+and famine, when Louvois' advice prevailed in council over that of
+Colbert, now embittered and desperate. The revocation of the edict of
+Nantes vitiated through a fatal contradiction all the efforts of the
+latter to create new manufactures; the country was impoverished for the
+benefit of the foreigner to such a point that economic conditions began
+to alarm those private persons most noted for their talents, their
+character, or their regard for the public welfare; such as La Bruyere
+and Fenelon in 1692, Bois-Guillebert in 1697 and Vauban in 1707. The
+movement attracted even the ministers, Boulainvilliers at their head,
+who caused the intendants to make inquiry into the causes of this
+general ruin. There was a volume of attack upon Colbert; but as the
+fundamental system remained unchanged, because reform would have
+necessitated an attack upon privilege and even upon the constitution of
+the monarchy, the evil only went on increasing. The social condition of
+the time recalls that of present-day Morocco, in the high price of
+necessaries and the extortions of the financial authorities; every man
+was either soldier, beggar or smuggler.
+
+
+  Recourse to revolutionary measures.
+
+Under Pontchartrain, Chamillard and Desmarets, the expenses of the two
+wars of 1688 and 1701 attained to nearly five milliards. In order to
+cover this recourse was had as usual, not to remedies, but to
+palliatives worse than the evil: heavy usurious loans, debasement of the
+coinage, creation of stocks that were perpetually being converted, and
+ridiculous charges which the bourgeois, sickened with officialdom,
+would endure no longer. Richelieu himself had hesitated to tax labour;
+Louis XIV. trod the trade organizations under foot. It was necessary to
+have recourse to revolutionary measures, to direct taxation, ignoring
+all class distinction. In 1695 the graduated poll-tax was a veritable
+_coup d'etat_ against privileged persons, who were equally brought under
+the tax; in 1710 was added the tithe (_dixieme_), a tax upon income from
+all landed property. Money scarce, men too were lacking; the institution
+of the militia, the first germ of obligatory enlistment, was a no less
+important innovation. But these were only provisionary and desperate
+expedients, superposed upon the old routine, a further charge in
+addition to those already existing; and this entirely mechanical system,
+destructive of private initiative and the very sources of public life,
+worked with difficulty even in time of peace. As Louis XIV. made war
+continually the result was the same as in Spain under Philip II.:
+depopulation and bankruptcy within the kingdom and the coalitions of
+Europe without.
+
+
+  Foreign policy of Louis XIV.
+
+In 1660 France was predominant in Europe; but she aroused no jealousy
+except in the house of Habsburg, enfeebled and divided against itself.
+It was sufficient to remain faithful to the practical policy of Henry
+IV., of Richelieu and of Mazarin: that of moderation in strength. This
+Louis XIV. very soon altered, while yet claiming to continue it; he
+superseded it by one principle: that of replacing the proud tyranny of
+the Habsburgs of Spain by another. He claimed to lay down the law
+everywhere, in the preliminary negotiations between his ambassador and
+the Spanish ambassador in London, in the affair of the salute exacted
+from French vessels by the English, and in that of the Corsican guard in
+Rome; while he proposed to become the head of the crusade against the
+Turks in the Mediterranean as in Hungary.
+
+The eclipse of the great idea of the balance of power in Europe was no
+sudden affair; the most flourishing years of the reign were still
+enlightened by it: witness the repurchase of Dunkirk from Charles II. in
+1662, the cession of the duchies of Bar and of Lorraine and the war
+against Portugal. But soon the partial or total conquest of the Spanish
+inheritance proved "the grandeur of his beginnings and the meanness of
+his end." Like Philip the Fair and like Richelieu, Louis XIV. sought
+support for his external policy in that public opinion which in internal
+matters he held so cheap; and he found equally devoted auxiliaries in
+the jurists of his parlements.
+
+
+  War of Devolution, 1667.
+
+It was thus that the first of his wars for the extension of frontiers
+began, the War of Devolution. On the death of his father-in-law, Philip
+IV. of Spain, he transferred into the realm of politics a civil custom
+of inheritance prevailing in Brabant, and laid claim to Flanders in the
+name of his wife Maria Theresa. The Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667), in
+which he was by way of supporting the United Provinces without engaging
+his fleet, retarded this enterprise by a year. But after his mediation
+in the treaty of Breda (July 1667), when Hugues de Lionne, secretary of
+state for foreign affairs, had isolated Spain, he substituted soldiers
+for the jurists and cannon for diplomacy in the matter of the queen's
+rights.
+
+The secretary of state for war, Michel le Tellier, had organized his
+army; and thanks to his great activity in reform, especially after the
+Fronde, Louis XIV. found himself in possession of an army that was well
+equipped, well clothed, well provisioned, and very different from the
+rabble of the Thirty Years' War, fitted out by dishonest jobbing
+contractors. Severe discipline, suppression of fraudulent interference,
+furnishing of clothes and equipment by the king, regulation of rank
+among the officers, systematic revictualling of the army, settled means
+of manufacturing and furnishing arms and ammunition, placing of the army
+under the direct authority of the king, abolition of great military
+charges, subordination of the governors of strongholds, control by the
+civil authority over the soldiers effected by means of paymasters and
+commissaries of stores; all this organization of the royal army was the
+work of le Tellier.
+
+His son, Francois Michel le Tellier, marquis de Louvois, had one sole
+merit, that of being his father's pupil. A parvenu of the middle
+classes, he was brutal in his treatment of the lower orders and a
+sycophant in his behaviour towards the powerful; prodigiously active,
+ill-obeyed--as was the custom--but much dreaded. From 1677 onwards he
+did but finish perfecting Louis XIV.'s army in accordance with the
+suggestions left by his father, and made no fundamental changes: neither
+the definite abandonment of the feudal _arriere-ban_ and of
+recruiting--sources of disorder and insubordination--nor the creation of
+the militia, which allowed the nation to penetrate into all the ranks of
+the army, nor the adoption of the gun with the bayonet,--which was to
+become the _ultima ratio_ of peoples as the cannon was that of
+sovereigns--nor yet the uniform, intended to strengthen _esprit de
+corps_, were due to him. He maintained the institutions of the day,
+though seeking to diminish their abuse, and he perfected material
+details; but misfortune would have it that instead of remaining a great
+military administrator he flattered Louis XIV.'s megalomania, and thus
+caused his perdition.
+
+
+  The triple alliance of the Hague.
+
+Under his orders Turenne conquered Flanders (June-August 1667); and as
+the queen-mother of Spain would not give in, Conde occupied Franche
+Comte in fourteen days (February 1668). But Europe rose up in wrath; the
+United Provinces and England, jealous and disquieted by this near
+neighbourhood, formed with Sweden the triple alliance of the Hague
+(January 1668), ostensibly to offer their mediation, though in reality
+to prevent the occupation of the Netherlands. Following the advice of
+Colbert and de Lionne, Louis XIV. appeared to accede, and by the treaty
+of Aix-la-Chapelle he preserved his conquests in Flanders (May 1668).
+
+
+  Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.
+
+  War with Holland.
+
+  Peace of Nijmwegen, 1678.
+
+This peace was neither sufficient nor definite enough for Louis XIV.;
+and during four years he employed all his diplomacy to isolate the
+republic of the United Provinces in Europe, as he had done for Spain. He
+wanted to ruin this nation both in a military and an economic sense, in
+order to annex to French Flanders the rest of the Catholic Netherlands
+allotted to him by a secret treaty for partitioning the Spanish
+possessions, signed with his brother-in-law the emperor Leopold on the
+19th of January 1668. Colbert--very envious of Holland's
+wealth--prepared the finances, le Tellier the army and de Lionne the
+alliances. In vain did the grand-pensionary of the province of Holland,
+Jan de Witt, offer concessions of all kinds; both England, bound by the
+secret treaty of Dover (January 1670), and France had need of this war.
+Avoiding the Spanish Netherlands, Louis XIV. effected the passage of the
+Rhine in June 1672; and the disarmed United Provinces, which had on
+their side only Brandenburg and Spain, were occupied in a few days. The
+brothers de Witt, in consequence of their fresh offer to treat at any
+price, were assassinated; the broken dykes of Muiden arrested the
+victorious march of Conde and Turenne; while the popular and military
+party, directed by the stadtholder William of Orange, took the upper
+hand and preached resistance to the death. "The war is over," said the
+new secretary of state for foreign affairs, Arnauld de Pomponne; but
+Louvois and Louis XIV. said no. The latter wished not only to take
+possession of the Netherlands, which were to be given up to him with
+half of the United Provinces and their colonial empire; he wanted "to
+play the Charlemagne," to re-establish Catholicism in that country as
+Philip II. had formerly attempted to do, to occupy all the territory as
+far as the Lech, and to exact an annual oath of fealty. But the
+patriotism and the religious fanaticism of the Dutch revolted against
+this insupportable tyranny. Power had passed from the hands of the
+burghers of Amsterdam into those of William of Orange, who on the 30th
+of August 1673, profiting by the arrest of the army brought about by the
+inundation and by the fears of Europe, joined in a coalition with the
+emperor, the king of Spain, the duke of Lorraine, many of the princes of
+the Empire, and with England, now at last enlightened as to the projects
+of Catholic restoration which Louis XIV. was planning with Charles II.
+It was necessary to evacuate and then to settle with the United
+Provinces, and to turn against Spain. After fighting for five years
+against the whole of Europe by land and by sea, the efforts of Turenne,
+Conde and Duquesne culminated at Nijmwegen in fresh acquisitions (1678).
+Spain had to cede to Louis XIV., Franche Comte, Dunkirk and half of
+Flanders. This was another natural and glorious result of the treaty of
+the Pyrenees. The Spanish monarchy was disarmed.
+
+
+  Truce of Ratisbon.
+
+But Louis XIV. had already manifested that unmeasured and restless
+passion for glory, that claim to be the exclusive arbiter of western
+Europe, that blind and narrow insistence, which were to bear out his
+motto _"Seul contre tous."_ Whilst all Europe was disarming he kept his
+troops, and used peace as a means of conquest. Under orders from Colbert
+de Croissy the jurists came upon the scene once more, and their unjust
+decrees were sustained by force of arms. The _Chambres de Reunion_
+sought for and joined to the kingdom those lands which were not actually
+dependent upon his new conquests, but which had formerly been so: such
+as Saarbrucken, Deux Ponts (Zweibrucken) and Montbeliard in 1680,
+Strassburg and Casale in 1681. The power of the house of Habsburg was
+paralysed by an invasion of the Turks, and Louis XIV. sent 35,000 men
+into Belgium; while Luxemburg was occupied by Crequi and Vauban. The
+truce of Ratisbon (Regensburg) imposed upon Spain completed the work of
+the peace of Nijmwegen (1684); and thenceforward Louis XIV.'s terrified
+allies avoided his clutches while making ready to fight him.
+
+
+  William of Orange.
+
+  League of Augsburg.
+
+This was the moment chosen by Louis XIV.'s implacable enemy, William of
+Orange, to resume the war. His surprise of Marshal Luxembourg near Mons,
+after the signature of the peace of Nijmwegen, had proved that in his
+eyes war was the basis, of his authority in Holland and in Europe. His
+sole arm of support amidst all his allies was not the English monarchy,
+sold to Louis XIV., but Protestant England, jealous of France and uneasy
+about her independence. Being the husband of the duke of York's
+daughter, he had an understanding in this country with Sunderland,
+Godolphin and Temple--a party whose success was retarded for several
+years by the intrigues of Shaftesbury. But Louis XIV. added mistake to
+mistake; and the revocation of the edict of Nantes added religious
+hatreds to political jealousies. At the same time the Catholic powers
+responded by the league of Augsburg (July 1686) to his policy of
+unlimited aggrandisement. The unsuccessful attempts of Louis XIV. to
+force his partisan Cardinal Wilhelm Egon von Furstenberg (see
+FURSTENBERG: _House_) into the electoral see of Cologne; the bombardment
+of Genoa; the humiliation of the pope in Rome itself by the marquis de
+Lavardin; the seizure of the Huguenot emigrants at Mannheim, and their
+imprisonment at Vincennes under pretext of a plot, precipitated the
+conflict. The question of the succession in the Palatinate, where Louis
+XIV. supported the claims of his sister-in-law the duchess of Orleans,
+gave the signal for a general war. The French armies devastated the
+Palatinate instead of attacking William of Orange in the Netherlands,
+leaving him free to disembark at Torbay, usurp the throne of England,
+and construct the Grand Alliance of 1689.
+
+
+  War of the Grand Alliance.
+
+  Peace of Ryswick.
+
+Far from reserving all his forces for an important struggle elsewhere,
+foreshadowed by the approaching death of Charles II. of Spain, Louis
+XIV., isolated in his turn, committed the error of wasting it for a
+space of ten years in a war of conquest, by which he alienated all that
+remained to him of European sympathy. The French armies, notwithstanding
+the disappearance of Conde and Turenne, had still glorious days before
+them with Luxembourg at Fleurus, at Steenkirk and at Neerwinden
+(1690-1693), and with Catinat in Piedmont, at Staffarda, and at
+Marsaglia; but these successes alternated with reverses. Tourville's
+fleet, victorious at Beachy Head, came to grief at La Hogue (1692); and
+though the expeditions to Ireland in favour of James II. were
+unsuccessful, thanks to the Huguenot Schomberg, Jean Bart and
+Duguay-Trouin ruined Anglo-Dutch maritime commerce. Louis XIV. assisted
+in person at the sieges of Mons and Namur, operations for which he had a
+liking, because, like Louvois, who died in 1691, he thought little of
+the French soldiery in the open field. After three years of strife,
+ruinous to both sides, he made the first overtures of peace, thus
+marking an epoch in his foreign policy; though William took no unfair
+advantage of this, remaining content with the restitution of places
+taken by the _Chambres de Reunion_, except Strassburg, with a
+frontier-line of fortified places for the Dutch, and with the official
+deposition of the Stuarts. But the treaty of Ryswick (1697) marked the
+condemnation of the policy pursued since that of Nijmwegen. While
+signing this peace Louis XIV. was only thinking of the succession in
+Spain. By partitioning her in advance with the other strong powers,
+England and Holland, by means of the treaties of the Hague and of London
+(1698-1699),--as he had formerly done with the emperor in 1668,--he
+seemed at first to wish for a pacific solution of the eternal conflict
+between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, and to restrict himself to the
+perfecting of his natural frontiers; but on the death of Charles II. of
+Spain (1700) he claimed everything in favour of his grandson, the duke
+of Anjou, now appointed universal heir, though risking the loss of all
+by once more letting himself fall into imprudent and provocative action
+in the dynastic interest.
+
+
+  War of the Spanish Succession.
+
+English public opinion, desirous of peace, had forced William III. to
+recognize Philip V. of Spain; but Louis XIV.'s maintenance of the
+eventual right of his grandson to the crown of France, and the expulsion
+of the Dutch, who had not recognized Philip V., from the Barrier towns,
+brought about the Grand Alliance of 1701 between the maritime Powers and
+the court of Vienna, desirous of partitioning the inheritance of Charles
+II. The recognition of the Old Pretender as James III., king of England,
+was only a response to the Grand Alliance, but it drew the English
+Tories into an inevitable war. Despite the death of William III. (March
+19, 1702) his policy triumphed, and in this war, the longest in the
+reign, it was the names of the enemy's generals, Prince Eugene of Savoy,
+Mazarin's grand-nephew, and the duke of Marlborough, which sounded in
+the ear, instead of Conde, Turenne and Luxembourg. Although during the
+first campaigns (1701-1703) in Italy, in Germany and in the Netherlands
+success was equally balanced, the successors of Villars--thanks to the
+treason of the duke of Savoy--were defeated at Hochstadt and Landau, and
+were reduced to the defensive (1704). In 1706 the defeats at Ramillies
+and Turin led to the evacuation of the Netherlands and Italy, and
+endangered the safety of Dauphine. In 1708 Louis XIV. by a supreme
+effort was still able to maintain his armies; but the rout at Oudenarde,
+due to the misunderstanding between the duke of Burgundy and Vendome,
+left the northern frontier exposed, and the cannons of the Dutch were
+heard at Marly. Louis XIV. had to humble himself to the extent of asking
+the Dutch for peace; but they forgot the lesson of 1673, and revolted by
+their demands at the Hague, he made a last appeal to arms and to the
+patriotism of his subjects at Malplaquet (September 1709). After this
+came invasion. Nature herself conspired with the enemy in the disastrous
+winter of 1709.
+
+
+  Peace of Utrecht, 1713.
+
+What saved Louis XIV. was not merely his noble constancy of resolve, the
+firmness of the marquis de Torcy, secretary of state for foreign
+affairs, the victory of Vendome at Villaviciosa, nor the loyalty of his
+people. The interruption of the conferences at Gertruydenberg having
+obliged the Whigs and Marlborough to resign their power into the hands
+of the Tories, now sick of war, the death of the emperor Joseph I.
+(April 1711), which risked the reconstruction of Charles V.'s colossal
+and unwieldy monarchy upon the shoulders of the archduke Charles, and
+Marshal Villars' famous victory of Denain (July 1712) combined to render
+possible the treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden (1713-1714). These
+gave Italy and the Netherlands to the Habsburgs, Spain and her colonies
+to the Bourbons, the places on the coast and the colonial commerce to
+England (who had the lion's share), and a royal crown to the duke of
+Savoy and the elector of Brandenburg. The peace of Utrecht was to
+France what the peace of Westphalia had been to Austria, and curtailed
+the former acquisitions of Louis XIV.
+
+
+  End of Louis XIV.'s reign.
+
+The ageing of the great king was betrayed not only by the fortune of war
+in the hands of Villeroy, la Feuillade, or Marsin; disgrace and misery
+at home were worse than defeat. By the strange and successive deaths of
+the Grand Dauphin (1711), the duke and duchess of Burgundy (1712)--who
+had been the only joy of the old monarch--and of his two grandsons
+(1712-1714), it seemed as though his whole family were involved under
+the same curse. The court, whose sentimental history has been related by
+Madame de la Fayette, its official splendours by Loret, and its
+intrigues by the duc de Saint-Simon, now resembled an infirmary of
+morose invalids, presided over by Louis XIV.'s elderly wife, Madame de
+Maintenon, under the domination of the Jesuit le Tellier. Neither was it
+merely the clamours of the people that arose against the monarch. All
+the more remarkable spirits of the time, like prophets in Israel,
+denounced a tyranny which put Chamillart at the head of the finances
+because he played billiards well, and Villeroy in command of the armies
+although he was utterly untrustworthy; which sent the "patriot" Vauban
+into disgrace, banished from the court Catinat, the Pere la Pensee,
+"exiled" to Cambrai the too clear sighted Fenelon, and suspected Racine
+of Jansenism and La Fontaine of independence.
+
+Disease and famine; crushing imposts and extortions; official debasement
+of the currency; bankruptcy; state prisons; religious and political
+inquisition; suppression of all institutions for the safe-guarding of
+rights; tyranny by the intendants; royal, feudal and clerical oppression
+burdening every faculty and every necessary of life; "monstrous and
+incurable luxury"; the horrible drama of poison; the twofold adultery of
+Madame de Montespan; and the narrow bigotry of Madame de Maintenon--all
+concurred to make the end of the reign a sad contrast with the splendour
+of its beginning. When reading Moliere and Racine, Bossuet and Fenelon,
+the campaigns of Turenne, or Colbert's ordinances; when enumerating the
+countless literary and scientific institutions of the great century;
+when considering the port of Brest, the Canal du Midi, Perrault's
+colonnade of the Louvre, Mansart's Invalides and the palace of
+Versailles, and Vauban's fine fortifications--admiration is kindled for
+the radiant splendour of Louis XIV.'s period. But the art and literature
+expressed by the genius of the masters, reflected in the tastes of
+society, and to be taken by Europe as a model throughout a whole
+century, are no criterion of the social and political order of the day.
+They were but a magnificent drapery of pomp and glory thrown across a
+background of poverty, ignorance, superstition, hypocrisy and cruelty;
+remove it, and reality appears in all its brutal and sinister nudity.
+The corpse of Louis XIV., left to servants for disposal, and saluted all
+along the road to Saint Denis by the curses of a noisy crowd sitting in
+the _cabarets_, celebrating his death by drinking more than their fill
+as a compensation for having suffered too much from hunger during his
+lifetime--such was the coarse but sincere epitaph which popular opinion
+placed on the tomb of the "Grand Monarque." The nation, restive under
+his now broken yoke, received with a joyous anticipation, which the
+future was to discount, the royal infant whom they called Louis the
+Well-beloved, and whose funeral sixty years later was to be greeted with
+the same proofs of disillusionment.
+
+
+  Character of the eighteenth century.
+
+The death of Louis XIV. closed a great era of French history; the 18th
+century opens upon a crisis for the monarchy. From 1715 to 1723 came the
+reaction of the Regency, with its marvellous effrontery, innovating
+spirit and frivolous immorality. From 1723 to 1743 came the
+mealy-mouthed despotism of Cardinal Fleury, and his apathetic policy
+within and without the kingdom. From 1743 to 1774 came the personal rule
+of Louis XV., when all the different powers were in conflicts--the
+bishops and parlement quarrelling, the government fighting against the
+clergy and the magistracy, and public opinion in declared opposition to
+the state. Till at last, from 1774 to 1789, came Louis XVI. with his
+honest illusions. his moral pusillanimity and his intellectual
+impotence, to aggravate still further the accumulated errors of ages and
+to prepare for the inevitable Revolution.
+
+
+  The Regency (1715-1723).
+
+The 18th century, like the 17th, opened with a political _coup d'etat_.
+Louis XV. was five years old, and the duke of Orleans held the regency.
+But Louis XIV. had in his will delegated all the power of the government
+to a council on which the duke of Maine, his legitimated son, had the
+first, but Madame de Maintenon and the Jesuits the predominant place.
+This collective administration, designed to cripple the action of the
+regent, encountered a twofold opposition from the nobles and the
+parlement; but on the 2nd of September 1715 the emancipated parlement
+set aside the will in favour of the duke of Orleans, who thus together
+with the title of regent had all the real power. He therefore
+reinstituted the parlement in its ancient right of remonstrance
+(suspended since the declarations of 1667 and 1673), and handed over
+ministerial power to the nobility, replacing the secretaries of state by
+six councils composed in part of great nobles, on the advice of the
+famous duc de Saint-Simon. The duc de Noailles, president of the council
+of finance, had the direction of this "Polysynodie."
+
+
+  Philip of Orleans.
+
+The duke of Orleans, son of the princess palatine and Louis XIV.'s
+brother, possessed many gifts--courage, intelligence and agility of
+mind--but he lacked the one gift of using these to good advantage. The
+political crisis that had placed him in power had not put an end to the
+financial crisis, and this, it was hoped, might be effected by
+substituting partial and petty bankruptcies for the general bankruptcy
+cynically advocated by Saint-Simon. The reduction of the royal revenues
+did not suffice to fill the treasury; while the establishment of a
+chamber of justice (March 1716) had no other result than that of
+demoralizing the great lords and ladies already mad for pleasure, by
+bringing them into contact with the farmers of the revenue who purchased
+impunity from them. A very clever Scotch adventurer named John Law
+(q.v.) now offered his assistance in dealing with the enormous debt of
+more than three milliards, and in providing the treasury. Being well
+acquainted with the mechanism of banking, he had adopted views as to
+cash, credit and the circulation of values which contained an admixture
+of truth and falsehood. Authorized after many difficulties to organize a
+private bank of deposit and account, which being well conceived
+prospered and revived commerce, Law proposed to lighten the treasury by
+the profits accruing to a great maritime and colonial company. Payment
+for the shares in this new Company of the West, with a capital of a
+hundred millions, was to be made in credit notes upon the government,
+converted into 4% stock. These aggregated funds, needed to supply the
+immense and fertile valley of the Mississippi, and the annuities of the
+treasury destined to pay for the shares, were non-transferable. Law's
+idea was to ask the bank for the floating capital necessary, so that the
+bank and the Company of the West were to be supplementary to each other;
+this is what was called Law's system. After the chancellor D'Aguesseau
+and the duc de Noailles had been replaced by D'Argenson alone, and after
+the _lit de justice_ of the 26th of August 1718 had deprived the
+parlement, hostile to Law, of the authority left to it, the bank became
+royal and the Company of the West universal. But the royal bank, as a
+state establishment, asked for compulsory privilege to increase the
+emission of its credit notes, and that they should receive a premium
+upon all metallic specie. The Company of the Indies became the grantee
+for the farming of tobacco, the coinage of metals, and farming in
+general; and in order to procure funds it multiplied the output of
+shares, which were adroitly launched and became more and more sought for
+on the exchange in the rue Quincampoix. This soon caused a frenzy of
+stock-jobbing, which disturbed the stability of private fortunes and
+social positions, and depraved customs and manners with the seductive
+notion of easily obtained riches. The nomination of Law to the
+controller-generalship, re-established for his benefit on the
+resignation of D'Argenson (January 5, 1720), let loose still wilder
+speculation; till the day came when he could no longer face the
+terrible difficulty of meeting both private irredeemable shares with a
+variable return, and the credit notes redeemable at sight and guaranteed
+by the state. Gold and silver were proscribed; the bank and the company
+were joined in one; the credit notes and the shares were assimilated.
+But credit cannot be commanded either by violence or by expedients;
+between July and September 1720 came the suspension of payments, the
+flight of Law, and the disastrous liquidation which proved once again
+that respect for the state's obligations had not yet entered into the
+law of public finance.
+
+
+  The Anglo-Dutch Alliance.
+
+Reaction on a no less extensive scale characterized foreign policy
+during the Regency. A close alliance between France and her ancient
+enemies, England and Holland, was concluded and maintained from 1717 to
+1739: France, after thirty years of fighting, between two periods of
+bankruptcy; Holland reinstalled in her commercial position; and England,
+seeing before her the beginning of her empire over the seas--all three
+had an interest in peace. On the other hand, peace was imperilled by
+Philip V. of Spain and by the emperor (who had accepted the portion
+assigned to them by the treaty of Utrecht, while claiming the whole), by
+Savoy and Brandenburg (who had profited too much by European conflicts
+not to desire their perpetuation), by the crisis from which the maritime
+powers of the Baltic were suffering, and by the Turks on the Danube. The
+dream of Cardinal Alberoni, Philip V.'s minister, was to set fire to all
+this inflammable material in order to snatch therefrom a crown of some
+sort to satisfy the maternal greed of Elizabeth Farnese; and this he
+might have attained by the occupation of Sardinia and the expedition to
+Sicily (1717-1718), if Dubois, a priest without a religion, a greedy
+parvenu and a diplomatist of second rank, though tenacious and full of
+resources as a minister, had not placed his common sense at the disposal
+of the regent's interests and those of European peace. He signed the
+triple alliance at the Hague, succeeding with the assistance of
+Stanhope, the English minister, in engaging the emperor therein, after
+attempting this for a year and a half. Whilst the Spanish fleet was
+destroyed before Syracuse by Admiral Byng, the intrigue of the Spanish
+ambassador Cellamare with the duke of Maine to exclude the family of
+Orleans from the succession on Louis XV.'s death was discovered and
+repressed; and Marshal Berwick burned the dockyards at Pasajes in Spain.
+Alberoni's dream was shattered by the treaty of London in 1720.
+
+Seized in his turn with a longing for the cardinal's hat, Dubois paid
+for it by the registering of the bull _Unigenitus_ and by the
+persecution of the Jansenists which the regent had stopped. After the
+majority of Louis XV. had been proclaimed on the 16th of February 1723,
+Dubois was the first to depart; and four months after his disappearance
+the duke of Orleans, exhausted by his excesses, carried with him into
+the grave that spirit of reform which he had compromised by his
+frivolous voluptuousness (December 2, 1723).
+
+
+  Ministry of the duc de Bourbon.
+
+The Regency had been the making of the house of Orleans; thenceforward
+the question was how to humble it, and the duc de Bourbon, now prime
+minister--a great-grandson of the great Conde, but a narrow-minded man
+of limited intelligence, led by a worthless woman--set himself to do so.
+The marquise de Prie was the first of a series of publicly recognized
+mistresses; from 1723 to 1726 she directed foreign policy and internal
+affairs despite the king's majority, moved always more by a spirit of
+vengeance than by ambition. This sad pair were dominated by the
+self-interested and continual fear of becoming subject to the son of the
+Regent, whom they detested; but danger came upon them from elsewhere.
+They found standing in their way the very man who had been the author of
+their fortunes, Louis XV.'s tutor, uneasy in the exercise of a veiled
+authority; for the churchman Fleury knew how to wait, on condition of
+ultimately attaining his end. Neither the festivities given at Chantilly
+in honour of the king, nor the dismissal (despite the most solemn
+promises) of the Spanish infanta, who had been betrothed to Louis XV.,
+nor yet the young king's marriage to Maria Leszczynska (1725)--a
+marriage negotiated by the marquise de Prie in order to bar the throne
+from the Orleans family--could alienate the sovereign from his old
+master. The irritation kept up by the agents of Philip V., incensed by
+this affront, and the discontent aroused by the institutions of the
+_cinquantieme_ and the militia, by the re-establishment of the feudal
+tax on Louis XV.'s joyful accession, and by the resumption of a
+persecution of the Protestants and the Jansenists which had apparently
+died out, were cleverly exploited by Fleury; and a last ill-timed
+attempt by the queen to separate the king from him brought about the
+fall of the duc de Bourbon, very opportunely for France, in June 1726.
+
+
+  Cardinal Fleury, 1726-1743.
+
+From the hands of his unthinking pupil Fleury eventually received the
+supreme direction of affairs, which he retained for seventeen years. He
+was aged seventy-two when he thus obtained the power which had been his
+unmeasured though not ill-calculated ambition. Soft-spoken and polite,
+crafty and suspicious, he was pacific by temperament and therefore
+allowed politics to slumber. His turn for economics made Orry,[33] the
+controller-general of finance, for long his essential partner. The
+latter laboured at re-establishing order in fiscal affairs; and various
+measures like the impost of the _dixieme_ upon all property save that of
+the clergy, together with the end of the corn famine, sufficed to
+restore a certain amount of well-being. Religious peace was more
+difficult to secure; in fact politico-religious quarrels dominated all
+the internal policy of the kingdom during forty years, and gradually
+compromised the royal authority. The Jesuits, returned to power in 1723
+with the duc de Bourbon and in 1726 with Fleury, rekindled the old
+strife regarding the bull _Unigenitus_ in opposition to the Gallicans
+and the Jansenists. The retractation imposed upon Cardinal de Noailles,
+and his replacement in the archbishopric of Paris by Vintimille, an
+unequivocal Molinist, excited among the populace a very violent
+agitation against the court of Rome and the Jesuits, the prelude to a
+united Fronde of the Sorbonne and the parlement. Fleury found no other
+remedy for this agitation--in which appeal was made even to
+miracles--than _lits de justice_ and _lettres de cachet_; Jansenism
+remained a potent source of trouble within the heart of Catholicism.
+
+
+  Fleury's foreign policy.
+
+This worn-out septuagenarian, who prized rest above everything, imported
+into foreign policy the same mania for economy and the same sloth in
+action. He naturally adopted the idea of reconciling Louis XIV.'s
+descendants, who had all been embroiled ever since the Polish marriage.
+He succeeded in this by playing very adroitly on the ambition of
+Elizabeth Farnese and her husband Philip V., who was to reign in France
+notwithstanding any renunciation that might have taken place. Despite
+the birth of a dauphin (September 1729), which cut short the Spanish
+intrigues, the reconciliation was a lasting one (treaty of Seville); it
+led to common action in Italy, and to the installation of Spanish
+royalties at Parma, Piacenza, and soon after at Naples. Fleury,
+supported by the English Hanoverian alliance, to which he sacrificed the
+French navy, obliged the emperor Charles VI. to sacrifice the trade of
+the Austrian Netherlands to the maritime powers and Central Italy to the
+Bourbons, in order to gain recognition for his Pragmatic Sanction. The
+question of the succession in France lay dormant until the end of the
+century, and Fleury thought he had definitely obtained peace in the
+treaty of Vienna (1731).
+
+
+  War of the Polish Succession (1733-1738).
+
+The war of the Polish succession proved him to have been deceived. On
+the death of Augustus II. of Saxony, king of Poland, Louis XV.'s
+father-in-law had been proclaimed king by the Polish diet. This was an
+ephemeral success, ill-prepared and obtained by taking a sudden
+advantage of national sentiment; it was soon followed by a check, owing
+to a Russian and German coalition and the baseness of Cardinal Fleury,
+who, in order to avoid intervening, pretended to tremble before an
+imaginary threat of reprisals on the part of England. But Chauvelin, the
+keeper of the seals, supported by public opinion, avenged on the Rhine
+and the Po the unlucky heroism of the comte de Plelo at Danzig,[34] the
+vanished dream of the queen, the broken word of Louis XV., and the
+treacherous abandonment of Poland. Fleury never forgave him for this:
+Chauvelin had checkmated him with war; he checkmated Chauvelin with
+peace, and hastened to replace Marshals Berwick and Villars by
+diplomatists. The third treaty of Vienna (1738), the reward of so much
+effort, would only have claimed for France the little duchy of Bar, had
+not Chauvelin forced Louis XV. to obtain Lorraine for his
+father-in-law--still hoping for the reversion of the crown; but Fleury
+thus rendered impossible any influence of the queen, and held Stanislaus
+at his mercy. In order to avenge himself upon Chauvelin he sacrificed
+him to the cabinets of Vienna and London, alarmed at seeing him revive
+the national tradition in Italy.
+
+
+  The Eastern question.
+
+Fleury hardly had time to breathe before a new conflagration broke out
+in the east. The Russian empress Anne and the emperor Charles VI. had
+planned to begin dismembering the Turkish empire. More fortunate than
+Plelo, Villeneuve, the French ambassador at Constantinople, endeavoured
+to postpone this event, and was well supported; he revived the courage
+of the Turks and provided them with arms, thanks to the comte de
+Bonneval (q.v.), one of those adventurers of high renown whose influence
+in Europe during the first half of the eighteenth century is one of the
+most piquant features of that period. The peace of Belgrade (September
+1739) was, by its renewal of the capitulations, a great material success
+for France, and a great moral victory by the rebuff to Austria and
+Russia.
+
+
+  War of the Austrian Succession.
+
+France had become once more the arbiter of Europe, when the death of the
+emperor Charles VI. in 1740 opened up a new period of wars and
+misfortunes for Europe and for the pacific Fleury. Everyone had signed
+Charles VI.'s Pragmatic Sanction, proclaiming the succession-rights of
+his daughter, the archduchess Maria Theresa; but on his death there was
+a general renunciation of signatures and an attempt to divide the
+heritage. The safety of the house of Austria depended on the attitude of
+France; for Austria could no longer harm her. Fleury's inclination was
+not to misuse France's traditional policy by exaggerating it, but to
+respect his sworn word; he dared not press his opinion, however, and
+yielded to the fiery impatience of young hot-heads like the two
+Belle-Isles, and of all those who, infatuated by Frederick II., felt
+sick of doing nothing at Versailles and were backed up by Louis XV.'s
+bellicose mistresses. He had to experience the repeated defections of
+Frederick II. in his own interests, and the precipitate retreat from
+Bohemia. He had to humble himself before Austria and the whole of
+Europe; and it was high time for Fleury, now fallen into second
+childhood, to vanish from the scene (January 1743).
+
+
+  Personal rule of Louis XV.
+
+Louis XV. was at last to become his own prime minister and to reign
+alone; but in reality he was more embarrassed than pleased by the
+responsibility incumbent upon him. He therefore retained the persons who
+had composed Fleury's staff; though instead of being led by a single one
+of them, he fell into the hands of several, who disputed among
+themselves for the ascendancy: Maurepas, incomparable in little things,
+but neglectful of political affairs; D'Argenson, bold, and strongly
+attached to his work as minister of war; and the cardinal de Tencin, a
+frivolous and worldly priest. Old Marshal de Noailles tried to incite
+Louis XV. to take his kingship in earnest, thinking to cure him by war
+of his effeminate passions; and, in the spring of 1744, the king's grave
+illness at Metz gave a momentary hope of reconciliation between him and
+the deserted queen. But the duc de Richelieu, a roue who had joined
+hands with the sisters of the house of Nesle and was jealous of Marshal
+de Noailles, soon regained his lost ground; and, under the influence of
+this panderer to his pleasures, Louis XV. settled down into a life of
+vice. Holding aloof from active affairs, he tried to relieve the
+incurable boredom of satiety in the violent exercise of hunting, in
+supper-parties with his intimates, and in spicy indiscretions. Brought
+up religiously and to shun the society of women, his first experiences
+in adultery had been made with many scruples and intermittently. Little
+by little, however, jealous of power, yet incapable of exercising it to
+any purpose, he sank into a sensuality which became utterly shameless
+under the influence of his chief mistress the duchesse de Chateauroux.
+
+
+  Madame de Pompadour.
+
+Hardly had a catastrophe snatched her away in the zenith of her power
+when complete corruption and the flagrant triumph of egoism supervened
+with the accession to power of the marquise de Pompadour, and for nearly
+twenty years (1745-1764) the whims and caprices of this little
+_bourgeoise_ ruled the realm. A prime minister in petticoats, she had
+her political system: reversed the time-honoured alliances of France,
+appointed or disgraced ministers, directed fleets and armies, concluded
+treaties, and failed in all her enterprises! She was the queen of
+fashion in a society where corruption blossomed luxuriantly and
+exquisitely, and in a century of wit hers was second to none. Amidst
+this extraordinary instability, when everything was at the mercy of a
+secret thought of the master, the mistress alone held lasting sway; in a
+reign of all-pervading satiety and tedium, she managed to remain
+indispensable and bewitching to the day of her death.
+
+
+  Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.
+
+Meanwhile the War of the Austrian Succession broke out again, and never
+had secretary of state more intricate questions to solve than had
+D'Argenson. In the attempt to make a stage-emperor of Charles Albert of
+Bavaria, defeat was incurred at Dettingen, and the French were driven
+back on the Rhine (1743). The Bavarian dream dissipated, victories
+gained in Flanders by Marshal Saxe, another adventurer of genius, at
+Fontenoy, Raucoux and Lawfeld (1745-1747), were hailed with joy as
+continuing those of Louis XIV.; even though they resulted in the loss of
+Germany and the doubling of English armaments. The "disinterested" peace
+of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 1748) had no effectual result other than
+that of destroying in Germany, and for the benefit of Prussia, a balance
+of power that had yet to be secured in Italy, despite the establishment
+of the Spanish prince Philip at Parma. France, meanwhile, was beaten at
+sea by England, Maria Theresa's sole ally. While founding her colonial
+empire England had come into collision with France; and the rivalry of
+the Hundred Years' War had immediately sprung up again between the two
+countries. Engaged already in both Canada and in India (where Dupleix
+was founding an empire with a mere handful of men), it was to France's
+interest not to become involved in war upon the Rhine, thus falling into
+England's continental trap. She did fall into it, however: for the sake
+of conquering Silesia for the king of Prussia, Canada was left exposed
+by the capture of Cape Breton; while in order to restore this same
+Silesia to Maria Theresa, Canada was lost and with it India.
+
+
+  The Seven Years' War, 1756-1763.
+
+France had worked for the king of Prussia from 1740 to 1748; now it was
+Maria Theresa's game that was played in the Seven Years' War. In 1755,
+the English having made a sudden attack upon the French at sea, and
+Frederick II. having by a fresh _volte-face_ passed into alliance with
+Great Britain, Louis XV.'s government accepted an alliance with Maria
+Theresa in the treaty of the 1st of May 1756. Instead of remaining upon
+the defensive in this continental war--merely accessory as it was--he
+made it his chief affair, and placed himself under the petticoat
+government of three women, Maria Theresa, Elizabeth of Russia and the
+marquise de Pompadour. This error--the worst of all--laid the
+foundations of the Prussian and British empires. By three battles,
+victories for the enemies of France--Rossbach in Germany, 1757, Plassey
+in India, 1757, and Quebec in Canada, 1759 (owing to the recall of
+Dupleix, who was not bringing in large enough dividends to the Company
+of the Indies, and to the abandonment of Montcalm, who could not
+interest any one in "a few acres of snow"), the expansion of Prussia was
+assured, and the British relieved of French rivalry in the expansion of
+their empire in India and on the North American continent.
+
+
+  Treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg.
+
+Owing to the blindness of Louis XV. and the vanity of the favourite, the
+treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg (1763) once more proved the French
+splendid in their conceptions, but deficient in action. Moreover,
+Choiseul, secretary of state for foreign affairs since 1758, made out of
+this deceptive Austrian alliance a system which put the finishing touch
+to disaster, and after having thrown away everything to satisfy Maria
+Theresa's hatred of Frederick II., the reconciliation between these two
+irreconcilable Germans at Neisse and at Neustadt (1769-1770) was
+witnessed by France, to the prejudice of Poland, one of her most ancient
+adherents. The expedient of the Family Compact, concluded with Spain in
+1761--with a view to taking vengeance upon England, whose fleets were a
+continual thorn in the side to France--served only to involve Spain
+herself in misfortune. Choiseul, who at least had a policy that was
+sometimes in the right, and who was very anxious to carry it out, then
+realized that the real quarrel had to be settled with England. Amid the
+anguish of defeat and of approaching ruin, he had an acute sense of the
+actualities of the case, and from 1763 to 1766 devoted himself
+passionately to the reconstruction of the navy. To compensate for the
+loss of the colonies he annexed Lorraine (1766), and by the acquisition
+of Corsica in 1768 he gave France an intermediary position in the
+Mediterranean, between friendly Spain and Italy, looking forward to the
+time when it should become a stepping-stone to Africa.
+
+
+  First partition of Poland.
+
+But Louis XV. had two policies. The incoherent efforts which he made to
+repair by the secret diplomacy of the comte de Broglie the evils caused
+by his official policy only aggravated his shortcomings and betrayed his
+weakness. The contradictory intrigues of the king's secret proceedings
+in the candidature of Prince Xavier, the dauphine's brother, and the
+patriotic efforts of the confederation of Bar, contributed to bring
+about the Polish crisis which the partition of 1772 resolved in favour
+of Frederick II.; and the Turks were in their turn dragged into the same
+disastrous affair. Of the old allies of France, Choiseul preserved at
+least Sweden by the _coup d'etat_ of Gustavus III.; but instead of being
+as formerly the centre of great affairs, the cabinet of Versailles lost
+all its credit, and only exhibited before the eyes of contemptuous
+Europe France's extreme state of decay.
+
+
+  Internal policy of Louis XV.
+
+The nation felt this humiliation, and showed all the greater irritation
+as the want of cohesion in the government and the anarchy in the central
+authority became more and more intolerable in home affairs. Though the
+administration still possessed a fund of tradition and a personnel
+which, including many men of note, protected it from the enfeebling
+influence of the court, it looked as though chance regulated everything
+so far as the government was concerned. These fluctuations were owing
+partly to the character of Louis XV., and partly also to the fact that
+society in the 18th century was too advanced in its ideas to submit
+without resistance to the caprice of such a man. His mistresses were not
+the only cause of this; for ever since Fleury's advent political parties
+had come to the fore. From 1749 to 1757 the party of religious devotees
+grouped round the queen and the king's daughters, with the dauphin as
+chief and the comte D'Argenson, and Machault d'Arnouville, keeper of the
+seals, as lieutenants, had worked against Madame de Pompadour (who leant
+for support upon the parlements, the Jansenists and the philosophers)
+and had gained the upper hand. Thenceforward poverty, disorders, and
+consequently murmurs increased. The financial reform attempted by
+Machault d'Arnouville between 1745 and 1749--a reduction of the debt
+through the impost of the twentieth and the edict of 1749 against the
+extensive property held in mortmain by the Church--after his disgrace
+only resulted in failure. The army, which D'Argenson (likewise dismissed
+by Madame de Pompadour) had been from 1743 to 1747 trying to restore by
+useful reforms, was riddled by cabals. Half the people in the kingdom
+were dying of hunger, while the court was insulting poverty by its
+luxury and waste; and from 1750 onwards political ferment was everywhere
+manifest. It found all the more favourable foothold in that the Church,
+the State's best ally, had made herself more and more unpopular. Her
+refusal of the sacraments to those who would not accept the bull
+_Unigenitus_ (1746) was exploited in the eyes of the masses, as in those
+of more enlightened people was her selfish and short-sighted resistance
+to the financial plans of Machault. The general discontent was expressed
+by the parlements in their attempt to establish a political supremacy
+amid universal confusion, and by the popular voice in pamphlets
+recalling by their violence those of the League. Every one expected and
+desired a speedy revolution that should put an end to a policy which
+alternated between overheated effervescence, abnormal activity and
+lethargy. Nothing can better show the point to which things had
+descended than the attempted assassination of Louis the Well-beloved by
+Damiens in 1757.
+
+
+  Choiseul.
+
+Choiseul was the means of accelerating this revolution, not only by his
+abandonment of diplomatic traditions, but still more by his improvidence
+and violence. He reversed the policy of his predecessors in regard to
+the parlement. Supported by public opinion, which clamoured for
+guarantees against abitrary power, the parlements had dared not only to
+insist on being consulted as to the budget of the state in 1763, but to
+enter upon a confederation throughout the whole of France, and on
+repeated occasions to ordain a general strike of the judicial
+authorities. Choiseul did not hesitate to attack through _lits de
+justice_ or by exile a judiciary oligarchy which doubtless rested its
+pretensions merely on wealth, high birth, or that encroaching spirit
+that was the only counteracting agency to the monarchy. Louis XV.,
+wearied with their clamour, called them to order. Choiseul's religious
+policy was no less venturesome; after the condemnation in 1759 of the
+Jesuits who were involved in the bankruptcy of Father de la Valette,
+their general, in the Antilles, he had the order dissolved for refusing
+to modify its constitution (1761-1764). Thus, not content with
+encouraging writers with innovating ideas to the prejudice of
+traditional institutions, he attacked, in the order of the Jesuits, the
+strongest defender of these latter, and delivered over the new
+generation to revolutionary doctrines.
+
+
+  The Triumvirate, 1770-1774.
+
+A woman had elevated him into power; a woman brought him to the ground.
+He succumbed to a coalition of the chancellor Maupeou, the duc
+d'Aiguillon and the Abbe Terray, which depended on the favour of the
+king's latest mistress, Madame du Barry (December 1770); and the Jesuits
+were avenged by a stroke of authority similar to that by which they
+themselves had suffered. Following on an edict registered by the _lit de
+justice_, which forbade any remonstrance in political matters, the
+parlement had resigned, and had been imitated by the provincial
+parlements; whereupon Maupeou, an energetic chancellor, suppressed the
+parlements and substituted superior councils of magistrates appointed by
+the king (1771). This reform was justified by the religious intolerance
+of the parlements; by their scandalous trials of Calas, Pierre Paul
+Sirven (1709-1777), the chevalier de la Barre and the comte de Lally; by
+the retrograde spirit that had made them suppress the Encyclopaedia in
+1759 and condemn _Emile_ in 1762; and by their selfishness in
+perpetuating abuses by which they profited. But this reform, being made
+by the minister of a hated sovereign, only aided in exasperating public
+opinion, which was grateful to the parlements in that their
+remonstrances had not always been fruitless.
+
+
+  Ancient influences and institutions.
+
+Thus all the buttresses of the monarchical institution began to fall to
+pieces: the Church, undermined by the heresy of Jansenism, weakened by
+the inroads of philosophy, discredited by evil-livers among the
+priesthood, and divided against itself, like all losing parties; the
+nobility of the court, still brave at heart, though incapable of
+exertion and reduced to beggary, having lost all respect for discipline
+and authority, not only in the camp, but in civilian society; and the
+upper-class officials, narrow-minded and egotistical, unsettling by
+their opposition the royal authority which they pretended to safeguard.
+Even the "liberties," among the few representative institutions which
+the _ancien regime_ had left intact in some provinces, turned against
+the people. The estates opposed most of the intelligent and humane
+measures proposed by such intendants as Tourny and Turgot to relieve the
+peasants, whose distress was very great; they did their utmost to render
+the selfishness of the privileged classes more oppressive and vexatious.
+
+
+  The new ideas.
+
+Thus the terrible prevalence of poverty and want; the successive
+famines; the mistakes of the government; the scandals of the Parc aux
+Cerfs; and the parlements playing the Roman senate: all these causes,
+added together and multiplied, assisted in setting a general
+fermentation to work. The philosophers only helped to precipitate a
+movement which they had not created; without pointing to absolute power
+as the cause of the trouble, and without pretending to upset the
+traditional system, they attempted to instil into princes the feeling of
+new and more precise obligations towards their subjects. Voltaire,
+Montesquieu, the Encyclopaedists and the Physiocrats (recurring to the
+tradition of Bayle and Fontenelle), by dissolving in their analytical
+crucible all consecrated beliefs and all fixed institutions, brought
+back into the human society of the 18th century that humanity which had
+been so rudely eliminated. They demanded freedom of thought and belief
+with passionate insistence; they ardently discussed institutions and
+conduct; and they imported into polemics the idea of natural rights
+superior to all political arrangements. Whilst some, like Voltaire and
+the Physiocrats, representatives of the privileged classes and careless
+of political rights, wished to make use of the omnipotence of the prince
+to accomplish desirable reforms, or, like Montesquieu, adversely
+criticized despotism and extolled moderate governments, other, plebeians
+like Rousseau, proclaimed the theory of the social contract and the
+sovereignty of the people. So that during this reign of frivolity and
+passion, so bold in conception and so poor in execution, the thinkers
+contributed still further to mark the contrast between grandeur of plan
+and mediocrity of result.
+
+The preaching of all this generous philosophy, not only in France, but
+throughout the whole of Europe, would have been in vain had there not
+existed at the time a social class interested in these great changes,
+and capable of compassing them. Neither the witty and lucid form in
+which the philosophers clothed their ideas in their satires, romances,
+stage-plays and treatises, nor the salons of Madame du Deffand, Madame
+Geoffrin and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, could possibly have been
+sufficiently far-reaching or active centres of political propaganda. The
+former touched only the more highly educated classes; while to the
+latter, where privileged individuals alone had entry, novelties were but
+an undiluted stimulant for the jaded appetites of persons whose ideas of
+good-breeding, moreover, would have drawn the line at martyrdom.
+
+
+  The bourgeoisie--the incarnation of new ideas.
+
+The class which gave the Revolution its chiefs, its outward and visible
+forms, and the irresistible energy of its hopes, was the _bourgeoisie_,
+intelligent, ambitious and rich; in the forefront the capitalists and
+financiers of the _haute bourgeoisie_, farmers-general and army
+contractors, who had supplanted or swamped the old landed and military
+aristocracy, had insensibly reconstructed the interior of the ancient
+social edifice with the gilded and incongruous materials of wealth, and
+in order to consolidate or increase their monopolies, needed to secure
+themselves against the arbitrary action of royalty and the bureaucracy.
+Next came the crowd of stockholders and creditors of the state, who, in
+face of the government's "extravagant anarchy," no longer felt safe from
+partial or total bankruptcy. More powerful still, and more masterful,
+was the commercial, industrial and colonial _bourgeoisie_; because under
+the Regency and under Louis XV. they had been more productive and more
+creative. Having gradually revolutionized the whole economic system, in
+Paris, in Lyons, in Nantes, in Bordeaux, in Marseilles, they could not
+tamely put up with being excluded from public affairs, which had so much
+bearing upon their private or collective enterprises. Finally, behind
+this _bourgeoisie_, and afar off, came the crowd of serfs, rustics whom
+the acquisition of land had gradually enfranchised, and who were the
+more eager to enjoy their definitive liberation because it was close at
+hand.
+
+
+  Transformation of manners and customs.
+
+The habits and sentiments of French society showed similar changes. From
+having been almost exclusively national during Louis XIV.'s reign, owing
+to the perpetual state of war and to a sort of proud isolation, it had
+gradually become cosmopolitan. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle,
+France had been flooded from all quarters of the civilized world, but
+especially from England, by a concourse of refined and cultured men well
+acquainted with her usages and her universal language, whom she had
+received sympathetically. Paris became the brain of Europe. This
+revolution in manners and customs, coinciding with the revolution in
+ideas, led in its turn to a transformation in feeling, and to new
+aesthetic needs. Gradually people became sick of openly avowed
+gallantry, of shameless libertinism, of moral obliquity and of the
+flattering artifices of vice; a long shudder ran through the selfish
+torpor of the social body. After reading the _Nouvelle-Heloise_,
+_Clarissa_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_, fatigued and wearied society
+revived as though beneath the fresh breezes of dawn. The principle of
+examination, the reasoned analysis of human conditions and the
+discussion of causes, far from culminating in disillusioned nihilism,
+everywhere aroused the democratic spirit, the life of sentiment and of
+human feeling: in the drama, with Marivaux, Diderot and La Chaussee; in
+art, with Chardin and Greuze; and in the salons, in view of the
+suppression of privilege. So that to Louis XV.'s cynical and hopeless
+declaration: "Apres moi le deluge," the setting 18th century responded
+by a belief in progress and an appeal to the future. A long-drawn echo
+from all classes hailed a revolution that was possible because it was
+necessary.
+
+If this revolution did not burst forth sooner, in the actual lifetime of
+Louis XV., if in Louis XVI.'s reign there was a renewal of loyalty to
+the king, before the appeal to liberty was made, that is to be explained
+by this hope of recovery. But Louis XVI.'s reign (1774-1792) was only to
+be a temporary halting-place, an artifice of history for passing through
+the transition period whilst elaborating the transformation which was to
+revolutionize, together with France, the whole world.
+
+
+  Louis XVI.
+
+Louis XVI. was twenty years of age. Physically he was stout, and a slave
+to the Bourbon fondness for good living; intellectually a poor creature
+and but ill-educated, he loved nothing so much as hunting and
+locksmith's work. He had a taste for puerile amusements, a mania for
+useless little domestic economies in a court where millions vanished
+like smoke, and a natural idleness which achieved as its masterpiece the
+keeping a diary from 1766 to 1792 of a life so tragic, which was yet but
+a foolish chronicle of trifles. Add to this that he was a virtuous
+husband, a kind father, a fervent Christian and a good-natured man full
+of excellent intentions, yet a spectacle of moral pusillanimity and
+ineptitude.
+
+
+  Marie Antoinette.
+
+From 1770 onwards lived side by side with this king, rather than at his
+side, the archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria--one of the very
+graceful and very frivolous women who were to be found at Versailles,
+opening to life like the flowers she so much loved, enamoured of
+pleasure and luxury, delighting to free herself from the formalities of
+court life, and mingling in the amusements of society; lovable and
+loving, without ceasing to be virtuous. Flattered and adored at the
+outset, she very soon furnished a sinister illustration to Beaumarchais'
+_Basile_; for evil tongues began to calumniate the queen: those of her
+brothers-in-law, the duc d'Aiguillon (protector of Madame du Barry and
+dismissed from the ministry), and the Cardinal de Rohan, recalled from
+his embassy in Vienna. She was blamed for her friendship with the
+comtesse de Polignac, who loved her only as the dispenser of titles and
+positions; and when weary of this persistent begging for rewards, she
+was taxed with her preference for foreigners who asked nothing. People
+brought up against her the debts and expenditure due to her belief in
+the inexhaustible resources of France; and hatred became definite when
+she was suspected of trying to imitate her mother Maria Theresa and play
+the part of ruler, since her husband neglected his duty. They then
+became persuaded that it was she who caused the weight of taxation; in
+the most infamous libels comparison was made between her freedom of
+behaviour and that of Louis XV.'s former mistresses. Private envy and
+public misconceptions very soon summed up her excessive unpopularity in
+the menacing nickname, "L'Autrichienne." (See MARIE ANTOINETTE.)
+
+
+  Foreign policy of Louis XVI.
+
+All this shows that Louis XVI. was not a monarch capable of directing or
+suppressing the inevitable revolution. His reign was but a tissue of
+contradictions. External affairs seemed in even a more dangerous
+position than those at home. Louis XVI. confided to Vergennes the charge
+of reverting to the traditions of the crown and raising France from the
+humiliation suffered by the treaty of Paris and the partition of Poland.
+His first act was to release French policy from the Austrian alliance of
+1756; in this he was aided both by public opinion and by the confidence
+of the king--the latter managing to set aside the desires of the queen,
+whom the ambition of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. hoped to use as an
+auxiliary. Vergennes' object was a double one: to free the kingdom from
+English supremacy and to shake off the yoke of Austria. Opportunities
+offered themselves simultaneously. In 1775 the English colonies in
+America rebelled, and Louis XVI., after giving them secret aid and
+encouragement almost from the first, finally in February 1778, despite
+Marie Antoinette, formed an open alliance with them; while when Joseph
+II., after having partitioned Poland, wanted in addition to balance the
+loss of Silesia with that of Bavaria, Vergennes prevented him from doing
+so. In vain was he offered a share in the partition of the Netherlands
+by way of an inducement. France's disinterested action in the peace of
+Teschen (1779) restored to her the lost adherence of the secondary
+states. Europe began to respect her again when she signed a
+Franco-Dutch-Spanish alliance (1779-1780), and when, after the
+capitulation of the English at Yorktown, the peace of Versailles (1783)
+crowned her efforts with at least formal success. Thenceforward, partly
+from prudence and partly from penury, Vergennes cared only for the
+maintenance of peace--a not too easy task, in opposition to the greed of
+Catherine II. and Joseph II., who now wished to divide the Ottoman
+empire. Joseph II., recognizing that Louis XVI. would not sacrifice the
+"sick man" to him, raised the question of the opening of the Scheldt,
+against the Dutch. Vainly did Joseph II. accuse his sister of
+ingratitude and complain of her resistance; the treaty of Fontainebleau
+in 1785 maintained the rights of Holland. Later on, Joseph II., sticking
+to his point, wanted to settle the house of Bavaria in the Netherlands;
+but Louis XVI. supported the confederation of princes (Furstenbund)
+which Frederick II. called together in order to keep his turbulent
+neighbour within bounds. Vergennes completed his work by signing a
+commercial treaty in 1786 with England, whose commerce and industry were
+favoured above others, and a second in 1787 with Russia. He died in
+1787, at an opportune moment for himself; though he had temporarily
+raised France's position in Europe, his work was soon ruined by the very
+means taken to secure its successes: warfare and armaments had hastened
+the "hideous bankruptcy."
+
+
+  Internal policy of Louis XVI.
+
+From the very beginning of his reign Louis XVI. fell into
+contradictions and hesitation in internal affairs, which could not but
+bring him to grief. He tried first of all to govern in accordance with
+public opinion, and was induced to flatter it beyond measure; in an
+extreme of inconsistency he re-established the parlements, the worst
+enemies of reform, at the very moment when he was calling in the
+reformers to his councils.
+
+
+  Turgot 1774-1776.
+
+Turgot, the most notable of these latter, was well fitted to play his
+great part as an enlightened minister, as much from the principle of
+hard work and domestic economy traditional in his family, as from a
+maturity of mind developed by extensive study at the Sorbonne and by
+frequenting the salons of the Encyclopaedists. He had proved this by his
+capable administration in the paymaster's office at Limoges, from 1761
+to 1774. A disciple of Quesnay and of Gournay, he tried to repeat in
+great affairs the experience of liberty which he had found successful in
+small, and to fortify the unity of the nation and the government by
+social, political and economic reforms. He ordained the free circulation
+of grain within the kingdom, and was supported by Louis XVI. in the
+course of the flour-war (_guerre des farines_) (April-May 1775); he
+substituted a territorial subsidy for the royal _corvee_--so burdensome
+upon the peasants--and thus tended to abolish privilege in the matter of
+imposts; and he established the freedom of industry by the dissolution
+of privileged trade corporations (1776). Finance was in a deplorable
+state, and as controller-general he formulated a new fiscal policy,
+consisting of neither fresh taxation nor loans, but of retrenchment. At
+one fell stroke the two auxiliaries on which he had a right to count
+failed him: public opinion, clamouring for reform on condition of not
+paying the cost; and the king, too timid to dominate public opinion, and
+not knowing how to refuse the demands of privilege. Economy in the
+matter of public finance implies a grain of severity in the collection
+of taxes as well as, in expenditure. By the former Turgot hampered the
+great interests; by the second he thwarted the desires of courtiers not
+only of the second rank but of the first. Therefore, after he had
+aroused the complaints of the commercial world and the bourgeoisie, the
+court, headed by Marie Antoinette, profited by the general excitement to
+overthrow him. The Choiseul party, which had gradually been
+reconstituted, under the influence of the queen, the princes, parlement,
+the prebendaries, and the trade corporations, worked adroitly to
+eliminate this reformer of lucrative abuses. The old courtier Maurepas,
+jealous of Turgot and desirous of remaining a minister himself,
+refrained from defending his colleague; and when Turgot, who never knew
+how to give in, spoke of establishing assemblies of freeholders in the
+communes and the provinces, in order to relax the tension of
+over-centralization, Louis XVI., who never dared to pass from sentiment
+to action, sacrificed his minister to the rancour of the queen, as he
+had already sacrificed Malesherbes (1776). Thus the first governmental
+act of the queen was an error, and dissipated the hope of replacing
+special privileges by a general guarantee given to the nation, which
+alone could have postponed a revolution. It was still too early for a
+Fourth of August; but the queen's victory was none the less vain, since
+Turgot's ideas were taken up by his successors.
+
+
+  Necker, 1776-1781.
+
+The first of these was Necker, a Genevese financier. More able than
+Turgot, though a man of smaller ideas, he abrogated the edicts
+registered by the _lits de justice_; and unable or not daring to attack
+the evil at its root, he thought he could suppress its symptoms by a
+curative process of borrowing and economy. Like Turgot he failed, and
+for the same reasons. The American war had finally exhausted the
+exchequer, and, in order to replenish it, he would have needed to
+inspire confidence in the minds of capitalists; but the resumption in
+1778 of the plan of provincial assemblies charged with remodelling the
+various imposts, and his _compte-rendu_ in which he exhibited the
+monarchy paying its pensioners for their inactivity as it had never paid
+its agents for their zeal, aroused a fresh outburst of anger. Necker was
+carried away in his turn by the reaction he had helped to bring about
+(1781).
+
+
+  The return of feudalism to the offensive.
+
+Having fought the oligarchy of privilege, the monarchy next tried to
+rally it to its side, and all the springs of the old regime were
+strained to the breaking-point. The military rule of the marquis de
+Segur eliminated the plebeians from the army; while the great lords,
+drones in the hive, worked with a kind of fever at the enforcement of
+their seigniorial rights; the feudal system was making a last struggle
+before dying. The Church claimed her right of ordering the civil estate
+of all Frenchmen as an absolute mistress more strictly than ever. Joly
+de Fleury and D'Ormesson, Necker's successors, pushed their narrow
+spirit of reaction and the temerity of their inexperience to the
+furthest limit; but the reaction which reinforced the privileged classes
+was not sufficient to fill the coffers of the treasury, and Marie
+Antoinette, who seemed gifted with a fatal perversity of instinct,
+confided the finances of the kingdom to Calonne, an upper-class official
+and a veritable Cagliostro of finance.
+
+
+  Calonne, 1783-1787.
+
+From 1783 to 1787, this man organized his astounding system of
+falsification all along the line. His unbridled prodigality, by
+spreading a belief in unlimited resources, augmented the confidence
+necessary for the success of perpetual loans; until the day came when,
+having exhausted the system, he tried to suppress privilege and fall
+back upon the social reforms of Turgot, and the financial schemes of
+Necker, by suggesting once more to the assembly of notables a
+territorial subsidy from all landed property. He failed, owing to the
+same reaction that was causing the feudal system to make inroads upon
+the army, the magistracy and industry; but in his fall he put on the
+guise of a reformer, and by a last wild plunge he left the monarchy,
+already compromised by the affair of the Diamond Necklace (q.v.),
+hopelessly exposed (April 1787).
+
+
+  Lomenie de Brienne.
+
+The volatile and brilliant archbishop Lomenie de Brienne was charged
+with the task of laying the affairs of the _ancien regime_ before the
+assembly of notables, and with asking the nation for resources, since
+the monarchy could no longer provide for itself; but the notables
+refused, and referred the minister to the states-general, the
+representative of the nation. Before resorting to this extremity,
+Brienne preferred to lay before the parlement his two edicts regarding a
+stamp duty and the territorial subsidy; to be met by the same refusal,
+and the same reference to the states-general. The exile of the parlement
+to Troyes, the arrest of various members, and the curt declaration of
+the king's absolute authority (November 9, 1787) were unsuccessful in
+breaking down its resistance. The threat of Chretien Francois de
+Lamoignon, keeper of the seals, to imitate Maupeou, aroused public
+opinion and caused a fresh confederation of the parlements of the
+kingdom. The royal government was too much exhausted to overthrow even a
+decaying power like that of the parlements, and being still more afraid
+of the future representatives of the French people than of the supreme
+courts, capitulated to the insurgent parlements. The recalled parlement
+seemed at the pinnacle of power.
+
+
+  Recall of Necker.
+
+Its next action ruined its ephemeral popularity, by claiming the
+convocation of the states-general "according to the formula observed in
+1614," as already demanded by the estates of Dauphine at Vizille on the
+21st of July 1788. The exchequer was empty; it was necessary to comply.
+The royal declaration of the 23rd of September 1788 convoked the
+states-general for the 1st of May 1789, and the fall of Brienne and
+Lamoignon followed the recall of Necker. Thenceforward public opinion,
+which was looking for something quite different from the superannuated
+formula of 1614, abandoned the parlements, which in their turn
+disappeared from view; for the struggle beginning between the privileged
+classes and the government, now at bay, had given the public, through
+the states-general, that means of expression which they had always
+lacked.
+
+
+  Prelude to the states-general.
+
+
+  The electorate.
+
+The conflict immediately changed ground, and an engagement began between
+privilege and the people over the twofold question of the number of
+deputies and the mode of voting. Voting by head, and the double
+representation of the third estate (_tiers etat_); this was the great
+revolution; voting by order meant the continued domination of
+privilege, and the lesser revolution. The monarchy, standing apart, held
+the balance, but needed a decisive policy. Necker, with little backing
+at court, could not act energetically, and Louis XVI., wavering between
+Necker and the queen, chose the attitude most convenient to his
+indolence and least to his interest: he remained neutral, and his
+timidity showed clearly in the council of the 27th of December 1788.
+Separating the two questions which were so closely connected, and
+despite the sensational brochure of the abbe Sieyes, "What is the Third
+Estate?" he pronounced for the doubling of the third estate without
+deciding as to the vote by head, yet leaving it to be divined that he
+preferred the vote by order. As to the programme there was no more
+decisive resolution; but the edict of convocation gave it to be
+understood that a reform was under consideration; "the establishment of
+lasting and permanent order in all branches of the administration." The
+point as to the place of convocation gave rise to a compromise between
+the too-distant centre of France and too-tumultuous Paris. Versailles
+was chosen "because of the hunting!" In the procedure of the elections
+the traditional system of the states-general of 1614 was preserved, and
+the suffrage was almost universal, but in two kinds: for the third
+estate nearly all citizens over twenty-five years of age, paying a
+direct contribution, voted--peasants as well as bourgeois; the country
+clergy were included among the ecclesiastics; the smaller nobility among
+the nobles; and finally, Protestants were electors and eligible.
+
+
+  The addresses.
+
+According to custom, documents (_cahiers_) were drawn up, containing a
+list of grievances and proposals for reform. All the orders were agreed
+in demanding prudently modified reform: the vote on the budget, order in
+finance, regular convocation of the states-general, and a written
+constitution in order to get rid of arbitrary rule. The address of the
+clergy, inspired by the great prelates, sought to make inaccurate
+lamentations over the progress of impiety a means of safeguarding their
+enormous spiritual and temporal powers, their privileges and exemptions,
+and their vast wealth. The nobility demanded voting by order, the
+maintenance of their privileges, and, above all, laws to protect them
+against the arbitrary proceedings of royalty. The third estate insisted
+on the vote by head, the graduated abolition of privilege in all
+governmental affairs, a written constitution and union. The programme
+went on broadening as it descended in the social scale.
+
+
+  The elections.
+
+The elections sufficed finally to show that the _ancien regime_,
+characterized from the social point of view by inequality, from the
+political point of view by arbitrariness, and from the religious point
+of view by intolerance, was completed from the administrative point of
+view by inextricable disorder. As even the extent of the jurisdiction of
+the _bailliages_ was unknown, convocations were made at haphazard,
+according to the good pleasure of influential persons, and in these
+assemblies decisions were arrived at by a process that confused every
+variety of rights and powers, and was governed by no logical principle;
+and in this extreme confusion terms and affairs were alike involved.
+
+
+  The counter-currents of the Revolution.
+
+Whilst the bureaucracy of the _ancien regime_ sought for desperate
+expedients to prolong its domination, the whole social body gave signs
+of a yet distant but ever nearing disintegration. The revolution was
+already complete before it was declared to the world. Two distinct
+currents of disaffection, one economic, the other philosophic, had for
+long been pervading the nation. There had been much suffering throughout
+the 17th and 18th centuries; but no one had hitherto thought of a
+politico-social rising. But the other, the philosophic current, had been
+set going in the 18th century; and the policy of despotism tempered by
+privilege had been criticized in the name of liberty as no longer
+justifying itself by its services to the state. The ultramontane and
+oppressively burdensome church had been taunted with its lack of
+Christian charity, apostolic poverty and primitive virtue. All vitality
+had been sapped from the old order of nobles, reduced in prestige by
+the _savonnette a vilains_ (office purchased to ennoble the holder),
+enervated by court life, and so robbed of its roots in the soil, from
+which it had once drawn its strength, that it could no longer live save
+as a ruinous parasite on the central monarchy. Lastly, to come to the
+bottom of the social scale, there were the common people, taxable at
+will, subject to the arbitrary and burdensome forced labour of the
+_corvee_, cut off by an impassable barrier from the privileged classes
+whom they hated. For them the right to work had been asserted, among
+others by Turgot, as a natural right opposed to the caprices of the
+arbitrary and selfish aristocracy of the corporations, and a breach had
+been made in the tyranny of the masters which had endeavoured to set a
+barrier to the astonishing outburst of industrial force which was
+destined to characterize the coming age.
+
+The outward and visible progress of the Revolution, due primarily to
+profound economic disturbance, was thus accelerated and rendered
+irresistible. Economic reformers found a moral justification for their
+dissatisfaction in philosophical theories; the chance conjunction of a
+philosopho-political idea with a national deficit led to the
+preponderance of the third estate at the elections, and to the
+predominance of the democratic spirit in the states-general. The third
+estate wanted civil liberty above all; political liberty came second
+only, as a means and guarantee for the former. They wanted the abolition
+of the feudal system, the establishment of equality and a share in
+power. Neither the family nor property was violently attacked; the
+church and the monarchy still appeared to most people two respectable
+and respected institutions. The king and the privileged classes had but
+so to desire it, and the revolution would be easy and peaceful.
+
+
+  Meeting of the states-general.
+
+Louis XVI. was reluctant to abandon a tittle of his absolute power, nor
+would the privileged classes sacrifice their time-honoured traditions;
+they were inexorable. The king, more ponderous and irresolute every day,
+vacillated between Necker the liberal on one side and Marie Antoinette,
+whose feminine pride was opposed to any concessions, with the comte
+d'Artois, a mischievous nobody who could neither choose a side nor stick
+to one, on the other. When the states-general opened on the 5th of May
+1789 Louis XVI. had decided nothing. The conflict between him and the
+Assembly immediately broke out, and became acute over the verification
+of the mandates; the third estate desiring this to be made in common by
+the deputies of the three orders, which would involve voting by head,
+the suppression of classes and the preponderance of the third estate. On
+the refusal of the privileged classes and after an interval of six
+weeks, the third estate, considering that they represented 96% of the
+nation, and in accordance with the proposal of Sieyes, declared that
+they represented the nation and therefore were authorized to take
+resolutions unaided, the first being that in future no arrangement for
+taxation could take place without their consent.
+
+
+  Oath of the tennis-court.
+
+The king, urged by the privileged classes, responded to this first
+revolutionary act, as in 1614, by closing the Salle des Menus Plaisirs
+where the third estate were sitting; whereupon, gathered in one of the
+tennis-courts under the presidency of Bailly, they swore on the 20th of
+June not to separate before having established the constitution of the
+kingdom.
+
+
+  The Lit de Justice of June 23, 1789.
+
+  Taking of the Bastille.
+
+Louis XVI. then decided, on the 23rd, to make known his policy in a
+royal _lit de justice_. He declared for the lesser reform, the fiscal,
+not the social; were this rejected, he declared that "he alone would
+arrange for the welfare of his people." Meanwhile he annulled the
+sitting of the 17th, and demanded the immediate dispersal of the
+Assembly. The third estate refused to obey, and by the mouth of Bailly
+and Mirabeau asserted the legitimacy of the Revolution. The refusal of
+the soldiers to coerce the Assembly showed that the monarchy could no
+longer rely on the army; and a few days later, when the lesser nobility
+and the lower ranks of the clergy had united with the third estate whose
+cause was their own, the king yielded, and on the 27th of June commanded
+both orders to join in the National Assembly, which was thereby
+recognized and the political revolution sanctioned. But at the same
+time, urged by the "infernal cabal" of the queen and the comte d'Artois,
+Louis XVI. called in the foreign regiments--the only ones of which he
+could be certain--and dismissed Necker. The Assembly, dreading a sudden
+attack, demanded the withdrawal of the troops. Meeting with a refusal,
+Paris opposed the king's army with her citizen-soldiers; and by the
+taking of the Bastille, that mysterious dark fortress which personified
+the _ancien regime_, secured the triumph of the Revolution (July 14).
+The king was obliged to recall Necker, to mount the tricolor cockade at
+the Hotel de Ville, and to recognize Bailly as mayor of Paris and La
+Fayette as commander of the National Guard, which remained in arms after
+the victory. The National Assembly had right on its side after the 20th
+of June and might after the 14th of July. Thus was accomplished the
+Revolution which was to throw into the melting-pot all that had for
+centuries appeared fixed and stable.
+
+
+  Spontaneous anarchy.
+
+As Paris had taken her Bastille, it remained for the towns and country
+districts to take theirs--all the Bastilles of feudalism. Want, terror
+and the contagion of examples precipitated the disruption of
+governmental authority and of the old political status; and sudden
+anarchy dislocated all the organs of authority. Upon the ruins of the
+central administration temporary authorities were founded in various
+isolated localities, limited in area but none the less defiant of the
+government. The provincial assemblies of Dauphine and elsewhere gave the
+signal; and numerous towns, following the example of Paris, instituted
+municipalities which substituted their authority for that of the
+intendants and their subordinates. Clubs were openly organized,
+pamphlets and journals appeared, regardless of administrative orders;
+workmen's unions multiplied in Paris, Bordeaux and Lyons, in face of
+drastic prohibition; and anarchy finally set in with the defection of
+the army in Paris on the 23rd of June, at Nancy, at Metz and at Brest.
+The crying abuses of the old regime, an insignificant factor at the
+outset, soon combined with the widespread agrarian distress, due to the
+unjust distribution of land, the disastrous exploitation of the soil,
+the actions of the government, and the severe winter of 1788. Discontent
+showed itself in pillage and incendiarism on country estates; between
+March and July 1789 more than three hundred agrarian riots took place,
+uprooting the feudal idea of property, already compromised by its own
+excesses. Not only did pillaging take place; the boundaries of property
+were also ignored, and people no longer held themselves bound to pay
+taxes. These _jacqueries_ hastened the movement of the regular
+revolution.
+
+
+  The night of August 4.
+
+The decrees of the 4th of August, proposed by those noble "patriots" the
+duc d'Aiguillon and the vicomte de Noailles, who had already on the 23rd
+of June made armed resistance to the evacuation of the Hall of Assembly,
+put the final touch to the revolution begun by the provincial
+assemblies, by liberating land and labour, and proclaiming equality
+among all Frenchmen. Instead of exasperating the demands of the peasants
+and workmen by repression and raising civil war between the bourgeoisie
+and the proletariat, they drew a distinction between personal servitude,
+which was suppressed, and the rights of contract, which were to be
+redeemed--a laudable but impossible distinction. The whole feudal system
+crumbled before the revolutionary insistence of the peasants; for their
+masters, bourgeois or nobles, terrified by prolonged riots, capitulated
+and gradually had to consent to make the resolutions of the 4th of
+August a reality.
+
+
+  Elaboration of the constitution.
+
+Overjoyed by this social liberation, the Assembly awarded Louis XVI. the
+title of "renewer of French liberty"; but remaining faithful to his
+hesitating policy of the 23rd of June, he ratified the decrees of the
+4th of August, only with a very ill grace. On the other hand, the
+privileged classes, and notably the clergy, who saw the whole
+traditional structure of their power threatened, now rallied to him, and
+when after the 28th of August the Assembly set to work on the new
+constitution, they combined in the effort to recover some of the
+position they had lost. But whatever their theoretical agreement on
+social questions, politically they were hopelessly at odds. The
+bourgeoisie, conscious of their opportunity, decided for a single
+chamber against the will of the noblesse; against that of the king they
+declared it permanent, and, if they accorded him a suspensory veto, this
+was only in order to guard them against the extreme assertion of popular
+rights. Thus the progress of the Revolution, so far, had left the mass
+of the people still excluded from any constitutional influence on the
+government, which was in the hands of the well-to-do classes, which also
+controlled the National Guard and the municipalities. The irritation of
+the disfranchised proletariat was moreover increased by the appalling
+dearness of bread and food generally, which the suspicious temper of the
+times--fomented by the tirades of Marat in the _Ami du peuple_--ascribed
+to English intrigues in revenge for the aid given by France to the
+American colonies, and to the treachery in high places that made these
+intrigues successful. The climax came with the rumour that the court was
+preparing a new military _coup d'etat_, a rumour that seemed to be
+confirmed by indiscreet toasts proposed at a banquet by the officers of
+the guard at Versailles; and on the night of the 5th to the 6th of
+October a Parisian mob forced the king and royal family to return with
+them to Paris amid cries of "We are bringing the baker, the baker's wife
+and the little baker's boy!" The Assembly followed; and henceforth king
+and Assembly were more or less under the influence of the whims and
+passions of a populace maddened by want and suspicion, by the fanatical
+or unscrupulous incitements of an unfettered press, and by the
+unrestrained oratory of obscure demagogues in the streets, the cafes and
+the political clubs.
+
+Convened for the purpose of elaborating a system that should conciliate
+all interests, the Assembly thus found itself forced into a conflict
+between the views of the people, who feared betrayal, and the court,
+which dreaded being overwhelmed. This schism was reflected in the
+parties of the Assembly; the absolutists of the extreme Right; the
+moderate monarchists of the Right and Centre; the constitutionalists of
+the Left Centre and Left; and, finally, on the extreme Left the
+democratic revolutionists, among whom Robespierre sat as yet all but
+unnoticed. Of talent there was enough and to spare in the Assembly; what
+was conspicuously lacking was common sense and a practical knowledge of
+affairs. Of all the orators who declaimed from the tribune, Mirabeau
+alone realized the perils of the situation and possessed the power of
+mind and will to have mastered them. Unfortunately, however, he was
+discredited by a disreputable past, and yet more by the equivocal
+attitude he had to assume in order to maintain his authority in the
+Assembly while working in what he believed to be the true interests of
+the court. His political ideal for France was that of the monarchy,
+rescued from all association with the abuses of the old regime and
+"broad-based upon the people's will"; his practical counsel was that the
+king should frankly proclaim this ideal to the people as his own, should
+compete with the Assembly for popular favour, while at the same time
+using every means to win over those by whom his authority was flouted.
+For a time Mirabeau influenced the counsels of the court through the
+comte de Montmorin; but the king neither trusted him nor could be
+brought to see his point of view, and Marie Antoinette, though she
+resigned herself to negotiating with him, was very far from sympathizing
+with his ideals. Finally, all hope of the conduct of affairs being
+entrusted to him was shattered when the Assembly passed a law forbidding
+its members to become ministers.
+
+
+  Declaration of the rights of man.
+
+The attempted reconciliation with the king having failed, the Assembly
+ended by working alone, and made the control that it should have exerted
+an instrument, not of co-operation but of strife. It inaugurated its
+legislative labours by a metaphysical declaration of the Rights of Man
+and of the Citizen (October 2, 1789). This enunciation of universal
+verities, the bulk of which have, sooner or later, been accepted by all
+civilized nations as "the gospel of modern times," was inspired by all
+the philosophy of the 18th century in France and by the _Contrat
+Social_. It comprised various rational and humane ideas, no longer
+theological, but profoundly and deliberately thought out: ideas as to
+the sovereign-right of the nation, law by general consent, man superior
+to the pretensions of caste and the fetters of dogma, the vindication of
+the ideal and of human dignity. Unable to rest on historic precedent
+like England, the Constituent Assembly took as the basis for its labours
+the tradition of the thinkers.
+
+
+  The constitution.
+
+Upon the principles proclaimed in this Declaration the constitution of
+1791 was founded. Its provisions are discussed elsewhere (see the
+section below on _Law and Institutions_); here it will suffice to say
+that it established under the sovereign people, for the king was to
+survive merely as the supreme executive official, a wholly new model of
+government in France, both in Church and State. The historic divisions
+of the realm were wiped out; for the old provinces were substituted
+eighty-three departments; and with the provinces vanished the whole
+organization, territorial, administrative and ecclesiastical, of the
+_ancien regime_. In one respect, indeed, the system of the old monarchy
+remained intact; the tradition of centralization established by Louis
+XIV. was too strong to be overthrown, and the destruction of the
+historic privileges and immunities with which this had been ever in
+conflict only served to strengthen this tendency. In 1791 France was
+pulverized into innumerable administrative atoms incapable of cohesion;
+and the result was that Paris became more than ever the brain and
+nerve-centre of France. This fact was soon to be fatal to the new
+constitution, though the administrative system established by it still
+survives. Paris was in effect dominated by the armed and organized
+proletariat, and this proletariat could never be satisfied with a
+settlement which, while proclaiming the sovereignty of the people, had,
+by means of the property qualification for the franchise, established
+the political ascendancy of the middle classes. The settlement had, in
+fact, settled nothing; it had, indeed, merely intensified the profound
+cleavage between the opposing tendencies; for if the democrats were
+alienated by the narrow franchise, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy,
+which cut at the very roots of the Catholic system, drove into
+opposition to the Revolution not only the clergy themselves but a vast
+number of their flocks.
+
+The policy of the Assembly, moreover, hopelessly aggravated its
+misunderstanding with the king. Louis, indeed, accepted the constitution
+and attended the great Feast of Federation (July 14, 1790), when
+representatives from all the new departments assembled in the Champ de
+Mars to ratify the work of the Assembly; but the king either could not
+or would not say the expected word that would have dissipated mistrust.
+The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, too, seemed to him not only to
+violate his rights as a king, but his faith as a Christian also; and
+when the emigration of the nobility and the death of Mirabeau (April 2,
+1791) had deprived him of his natural supporters and his only adviser,
+resuming the old plan of withdrawing to the army of the marquis de
+Bouille at Metz, he made his ill-fated attempt to escape from Paris
+(June 20, 1791). The flight to Varennes was an irreparable error; for
+during the king's absence and until his return the insignificance of the
+royal power became apparent. La Fayette's fusillade of the republicans,
+who demanded the deposition of the king (July 17, 1791), led to a
+definite split between the democratic party and the bourgeois party.
+Vainly did Louis, brought back a captive to Paris, swear on the 14th of
+September 1791 solemnly mere lip-service to the constitution; the
+mistrustful party of revolution abandoned the constitution they had only
+just obtained, and to guard against the sovereign's mental reservations
+and the selfish policy of the middle classes, appealed to the main force
+of the people. The conflict between the _ancien regime_ and the National
+Assembly ended in the defeat of the royalists.
+
+
+  The Legislative Assembly (Oct. 1, 1791-Sept 20, 1792).
+
+Through lassitude or disinterestedness the men of 1791, on
+Robespierre's suggestion, had committed one last mistake, by leaving
+the task of putting the constitution into practice to new men even more
+inexperienced than themselves. Thus the new Assembly's time was occupied
+in a conflict between the Legislative Assembly and the king, who plotted
+against it; and, as a result, the monarchy, insulted by the proceedings
+of the 20th of June, was eliminated altogether by those of the 10th of
+August 1792.
+
+
+  The parties.
+
+The new Assembly which had met on the 1st of October 1791 had a majority
+favourable to the constitutional monarchy and to the bourgeois
+franchise. But, among these bourgeois those who were called Feuillants,
+from the name of their club (see FEUILLANTS, CLUB OF THE), desired the
+strict and loyal application of the constitution without encroaching
+upon the authority of the king; the triumvirate, Duport, Barnave and
+Lameth, were at the head of this party. The Jacobins, on the contrary,
+considered that the king should merely be hereditary president of the
+Republic, to be deposed if he attempted to violate the constitution, and
+that universal suffrage should be established. The dominant group among
+these was that of the Girondins or Girondists, so called because its
+most brilliant members had been elected in the Gironde (see GIRONDISTS).
+But the republican party was more powerful without than within. Their
+chief was not so much Robespierre, president of the parliamentary and
+bourgeois club of the Jacobins (q.v.), which had acquired by means of
+its two thousand affiliated branches great power in the provinces, as
+the advocate Danton, president of the popular and Parisian club of the
+Cordeliers (q.v.). Between the Feuillants and the Jacobins, the
+independents, incapable of keeping to any fixed programme, vacillated
+sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left.
+
+
+  Royalist intrigues.
+
+  The emigres.
+
+  Declaration of Pilnitz.
+
+  The decrees.
+
+  The war.
+
+But the best allies of the republicans against the Feuillants were the
+royalists pure and simple, who cared nothing about the constitution, and
+claimed to "extract good from the excess of evil." The election of a
+Jacobin, Petion, instead of Bailly, the resigning mayor, and La Fayette,
+the candidate for office, was their first achievement. The court, on its
+side, showed little sign of a conciliatory spirit, though, realizing its
+danger, it attempted to restrain the foolish violence of the _emigres_,
+i.e. the nobles who after the suppression of titles of nobility in 1790
+and the arrest of the king at Varennes, had fled in a body to Coblenz
+and joined Louis XVI.'s brothers, the counts of Provence and Artois.
+They it was who set in motion the national and European conflict. Under
+the prince of Conde they had collected a little army round Trier; and in
+concert with the "Austrian Committee" of Paris they solicited the armed
+intervention of monarchical Europe. The declaration of Pilnitz, which
+was but an excuse for non-interference on the part of the emperor and
+the king of Prussia, interested in the prolongation of these internal
+troubles, was put forward by them as an assurance of forthcoming support
+(August 27, 1791). At the same time the application of the Civil
+Constitution of the Clergy roused the whole of western La Vendee; and in
+face of the danger threatened by the refractory clergy and by the army
+of the _emigres_, the Girondins set about confounding the court with the
+Feuillants in the minds of the public, and compromising Louis XVI. by a
+national agitation, denouncing him as an accomplice of the foreigner.
+Owing to the decrees against the comte de Provence, the emigrants, and
+the refractory priests, voted by the Legislative Assembly in November
+1791, they forced Louis XVI. to show his hand by using his veto, so that
+his complicity should be plainly declared, to replace his Feuillant
+ministry--disparate in birth, opinions and ambitions--by the Girondin
+ministry of Dumouriez-Roland (March 10), no more united than the other,
+but believers in a republican crusade for the overthrow of thrones, that
+of Louis XVI. first of all; and finally to declare war against the king
+of Bohemia and Hungary, a step also desired by the court in the hope of
+ridding itself of the Assembly at the first note of victory (April 20,
+1792).
+
+
+  Proceedings of June 20.
+
+But when, owing to the disorganization of the army through emigration
+and desertion, the ill-prepared Belgian war was followed by invasion and
+the trouble in La Vendee increased, all France suspected a betrayal. The
+Assembly, in order to reduce the number of hostile forces, voted for the
+exile of all priests who had refused to swear to the Civil Constitution
+and the substitution of a body of twenty thousand volunteer national
+guards, under the authority of Paris, for the king's constitutional
+guard (May 27-June 8, 1792). Louis XVI.'s veto and the dismissal of the
+Girondin ministry--thanks to an intrigue of Dumouriez, analogous to that
+of Mirabeau and as ineffectual--dismayed the Feuillants and maddened the
+Girondins; the latter, to avert popular fury, turned it upon the king.
+The _emeute_ of the 20th of June, a burlesque which, but for the
+persistent good-humour of Louis XVI., might have become a tragedy,
+alarmed but did not overthrow the monarchy.
+
+
+  Manifesto of Brunswick.
+
+The bourgeoisie, the Assembly, the country and La Fayette, one of the
+leaders of the army, now embarked upon a royalist reaction, which would
+perhaps have been efficacious, had it not been for the entry into the
+affair of the Prussians as allies of the Austrians, and for the insolent
+manifesto of the duke of Brunswick. The Assembly's cry of "the country
+in danger" (July 11) proved to the nation that the king was incapable of
+defending France against the foreigner; and the appeal of the federal
+volunteers in Paris gave to the opposition, together with the war-song
+of the Marseillaise, the army which had been refused by Louis XVI., now
+disarmed. The vain attempts of the Gironde to reconcile the king and the
+Revolution, the ill-advised decree of the Assembly on the 8th of August,
+freeing La Fayette from his guilt in forsaking his army; his refusal to
+vote for the deposition of the king, and the suspected treachery of the
+court, led to the success of the republican forces when, on the 10th of
+August, the mob of Paris organized by the revolutionary Commune rose
+against the monarchy.
+
+
+  The insurrectional commune of Paris.
+
+  The September massacres.
+
+The suspension and imprisonment of the king left the supreme authority
+nominally in the hands of the Assembly, but actually in those of the
+Commune, consisting of delegates from the administrative sections of
+Paris. Installed at the Hotel de Ville this attempted to influence the
+discredited government, entered into conflict with the Legislative
+Assembly, which considered its mission at an end, and paralyzed the
+action of the executive council, particularly during the bloody days of
+September, provoked by the discovery of the court's intrigues with the
+foreigner, by the treachery of La Fayette, the capture of Longwy, the
+investiture of Verdun by the Prussians (August 19-30), and finally by
+the incendiary placards of Marat. Danton, a master of diplomatic and
+military operations, had to avoid any rupture with the Commune.
+Fortunately, on the very day of the dispersal of the Legislative
+Assembly, Dumouriez saved France from a Prussian invasion by the victory
+of Valmy, and by unauthorized negotiations which prefigured those of
+Bonaparte at Leoben (September 22, 1792).
+
+The popular insurrection against Louis XVI. determined the simultaneous
+fall of the bourgeois regime and the establishment of the democracy in
+power. The Legislative Assembly, without a mandate for modifying a
+constitution that had become inapplicable with the suspension of the
+monarch, had before disappearing convoked a National Convention, and as
+the reward of the struggle for liberty had replaced the limited
+franchise by universal suffrage. Public opinion became republican from
+an excess of patriotism, and owing to the propaganda of the Jacobin
+club; while the decree of the 25th of August 1792, which marked the
+destruction of feudalism, now abolished in principle, caused the
+peasants to rally definitely to the Republic.
+
+
+  The Convention, Sept. 21. 1792-Oct. 26, 1795.
+
+This had hardly been established before it became distracted by the
+fratricidal strife of its adherents, from September 22, 1792, to the
+18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797). The electoral assemblies, in very
+great majority, had desired this Republic to be democratic and
+equalizing in spirit, but on the face of it, liberal, uniform and
+propagandist; in consequence, the 782 deputies of the Convention were
+not divided on principles, but only by personal rivalries and ambition.
+They all wished for a unanimity and harmony impossible to obtain; and
+being unable to convince they destroyed one another.
+
+
+  The parties.
+
+The Girondins in the Convention played the part of the Feuillants in the
+Legislative Assembly. Their party was not well disciplined, they
+purposely refrained from making it so, and hence their ruin.
+Oratorically they represented the spirit of the South; politically, the
+ideas of the bourgeoisie in opposition to the democracy--which they
+despised although making use of it--and the federalist system, from an
+objection to the preponderance of Paris. Paris, on the other hand, had
+elected only deputies of the Mountain, as the more advanced of the
+Jacobins were called, that party being no more settled and united than
+the others. They drew support from the Parisian democracy, and
+considered the decentralization of the Girondins as endangering France's
+unity, circumstances demanding a strong and highly concentrated
+government; they opposed a republic on the model of that of Rome to the
+Polish republic of the Gironde. Between the two came the _Plaine_, the
+_Marais_, the troop of trembling bourgeois, sincerely attached to the
+Revolution, but very moderate in the defence of their ideas; some
+seeking a refuge from their timidity in hard-working committees, others
+partaking in the violence of the Jacobins out of weakness or for reasons
+of state.
+
+
+  The Girondins.
+
+The Girondins were the first to take the lead; in order to retain it
+they should have turned the Revolution into a government. They remained
+an exclusive party, relying on the mob but with no influence over it.
+Without a leader or popular power, they might have found both in Danton;
+for, occupied chiefly with the external danger, he made advances towards
+them, which they repulsed, partly in horror at the proceedings of
+September, but chiefly because they saw in him the most formidable rival
+in the path of the government. They waged war against him as
+relentlessly as did the Constitutionalists against Mirabeau, whom he
+resembled in his extreme ugliness and his volcanic eloquence. They drove
+him into the arms of Robespierre, Marat and the Commune of Paris. On the
+other hand, after the 23rd of September they declared Paris dangerous
+for the Convention, and wanted to reduce it to "eighty-three influential
+members." Danton and the Mountain responded by decreeing the unity and
+indivisibility of the Republic, in order to emphasize the suspicions of
+federalism which weighed upon the Girondins.
+
+
+  Trial and death of Louis XVI.
+
+The trial of Louis XVI. still further enhanced the contrasts of ideas
+and characters. The discovery of fresh proofs of treachery in the iron
+chest (November 20, 1792) gave the Mountain a pretext for forcing on the
+clash of parties and raising the question not of legality but of public
+safety. By the execution of the king (January 21, 1793) they "cast down
+a king's head as a challenge to the kings of Europe." In order to
+preserve popular favour and their direction of the Republic, the
+Girondins had not dared to pronounce against the sentence of death, but
+had demanded an appeal to the people which was rejected; morally
+weakened by this equivocal attitude they were still more so by foreign
+events.
+
+
+  First European coalition.
+
+  First committee of pubic safety.
+
+The king's death did not result in the unanimity so much desired by all
+parties; it only caused the reaction on themselves of the hatred which
+had been hitherto concentrated upon the king, and also an augmentation
+in the armies of the foreigner, which obliged the revolutionists to face
+all Europe. There was a coalition of monarchs, and the people of La
+Vendee rose in defence of their faith. Dumouriez, the conqueror of
+Jemappes (November 6, 1792), who invaded Holland, was beaten by the
+Austrians (March 1793). A levy of 300,000 men was ordered; a Committee
+of General Security was charged with the search for suspects; and
+thenceforward military occurrences called forth parliamentary crises
+and popular upheavals. Girondins and Jacobins unjustly accused one
+another of leaving the traitors, the conspirators, the "stipendiaries of
+Coblenz" unpunished. To avert the danger threatened by popular
+dissatisfaction, the Gironde was persuaded to vote for the creation of a
+revolutionary tribunal to judge suspects, while out of spite against
+Danton who demanded it, they refused the strong government which might
+have made a stand against the enemy (March 10, 1793). This was the first
+of the exceptional measures which were to call down ruin upon them.
+Whilst the insurrection in La Vendee was spreading, and Dumouriez
+falling back upon Neerwinden, sentence of death was laid upon _emigres_
+and refractory priests; the treachery of Dumouriez, disappointed in his
+Belgian projects, gave grounds for all kinds of suspicion, as that of
+Mirabeau had formerly done, and led the Gironde to propose the new
+government which they had refused to Danton. The transformation of the
+provisional executive council into the Committee of Public
+Safety--omnipotent save in financial matters--was voted because the
+Girondins meant to control it; but Danton got the upper hand (April 6).
+
+
+  Struggle between the commune and the Gironde.
+
+The Girondins, discredited in Paris, multiplied their attacks upon
+Danton, now the master: they attributed the civil war and the disasters
+of the foreign campaign to the despotism of the Paris Commune and the
+clubs; they accused Marat of instigating the September massacres; and
+they began the supreme struggle by demanding the election of a committee
+of twelve deputies, charged with breaking up the anarchic authorities in
+Paris (May 18). The complete success of the Girondin proposals; the
+arrest of Hebert--the violent editor of the _Pere Duchene_; the
+insurrection of the Girondins of Lyons against the Montagnard Commune;
+the bad news from La Vendee--the military reverses; and the economic
+situation which had compelled the fixing of a maximum price of corn (May
+4) excited the "moral insurrections" of May 31 and June 2. Marat himself
+sounded the tocsin, and Hanriot, at the head of the Parisian army,
+surrounded the Convention. Despite the efforts of Danton and the
+Committee of Public Safety, the arrest of the Girondins sealed the
+victory of the Mountain.
+
+
+  Fall of the Gironde.
+
+The threat of the Girondin Isnard was fulfilled. The federalist
+insurrection, to avenge the violation of national representation,
+responded to the Parisian insurrection. Sixty-nine departmental
+governments protested against the violence done to the Convention; but
+the ultra-democratic constitution of 1793 deprived the Girondins, who
+were arming in the west, the south and the centre, of all legal force.
+To the departments that were hostile to the dictatorship of Paris, and
+the tyranny of Danton or Robespierre, it promised the referendum, an
+executive of twenty-four citizens, universal suffrage, and the free
+exercise of religion. The populace, who could not understand this
+parliamentary quarrel, and were in a hurry to set up a national defence,
+abandoned the Girondins, and the latter excited the enthusiasm of only
+one person, Charlotte Corday, who by the murder of Marat ruined them
+irretrievably. The battle of Brecourt was a defeat without a fight for
+their party without stamina and their general without troops (July 13);
+while on the 31st of October their leaders perished on the guillotine,
+where they had been preceded by the queen, Marie Antoinette. The
+Girondins and their adversaries were differentiated by neither religious
+dissensions nor political divergency, but merely by a question of time.
+The Girondins, when in power, had had scruples which had not troubled
+them while scaling the ladder; idols of Paris, they had flattered her in
+turn, and when Paris scorned them they sought support in the provinces.
+A great responsibility for this defeat of the liberal and republican
+bourgeoisie, whom they represented, is to be laid upon Madame Roland,
+the Egeria of the party. An ardent patriot and republican, her relations
+with Danton resembled those of Marie Antoinette with Mirabeau, in each
+case a woman spoilt by flattery, enraged at indifference. She was the
+ruin of the Gironde, but taught it how to die.
+
+The fall of the Gironde left the country disturbed by civil war, and
+the frontiers more seriously threatened than before Valmy. Bouchotte, a
+totally inefficient minister for war, the Commune's man of straw, left
+the army without food or ammunition, while the suspected officers
+remained inactive. In the Angevin Vendee the incapable leaders let
+themselves be beaten at Aubiers, Beaupreau and Thouars, at a time when
+Cathelineau was taking possession of Saumur and threatening Nantes, the
+capture of which would have permitted the insurgents in La Vendee to
+join those of Brittany and receive provisions from England. Meanwhile,
+the remnants of the Girondin federalists were overcome by the disguised
+royalists, who had aroused the whole of the Rhone valley from Lyons to
+Marseilles, had called in the Sardinians, and handed over the fleet and
+the arsenal at Toulon to the English, whilst Paoli left Corsica at their
+disposal. The scarcity of money due to the discrediting of the
+assignats, the cessation of commerce, abroad and on the sea, and the bad
+harvest of 1793, were added to all these dangers, and formed a serious
+menace to France and the Convention.
+
+
+  The dictatorship of the first committee of public safety.
+
+This meant a hard task for the first Committee of Public Safety and its
+chief Danton. He was the only one to understand the conditions necessary
+to a firm government; he caused the adjournment of the decentralizing
+constitution of 1793, and set up a revolutionary government. The
+Committee of Public Safety, now a permanency, annulled the Convention
+and was itself the central authority, its organization in Paris being
+the twelve committees substituted for the provisional executive
+committee and the six ministers, the Committee of General Security for
+the maintenance of the police, and the arbitrary Revolutionary Tribunal.
+The execution of its orders in the departments was carried out by
+omnipotent representatives "on mission" in the armies, by popular
+societies--veritable missionaries of the Revolution--and by the
+revolutionary committees which were its backbone.
+
+
+  Danton's failure.
+
+Despite this Reign of Terror Danton failed; he could neither dominate
+foes within nor divide those without. Representing the sane and vigorous
+democracy, and like Jefferson a friend to liberty and self-government,
+he had been obliged to set up the most despotic of governments in face
+of internal anarchy and foreign invasion. Being of a temperament that
+expressed itself only in action, and neither a theorist nor a
+cabinet-minister, he held the views of a statesman without having a
+following sufficient to realize them. Moreover, the proceedings of the
+2nd of June, when the Commune of Paris had triumphed, had dealt him a
+mortal blow. He in his turn tried to stem the tumultuous current which
+had borne him along, and to prevent discord; but the check to his policy
+of an understanding with Prussia and with Sardinia, to whom, like
+Richelieu and D'Argenson, he offered the realization of her transalpine
+ambition in exchange for Nice and Savoy, was added to the failure of his
+temporizing methods in regard to the federalist insurgents, and of his
+military operations against La Vendee. A man of action and not of
+cunning shifts, he succumbed on the 10th of July to the blows of his own
+government, which had passed from his hands into those of Robespierre,
+his ambitious and crafty rival.
+
+
+  Second committee of public safety.
+
+The second Committee of Public Safety lasted until the 27th of July
+1794. Composed of twelve members, re-eligible every month, and dominated
+by the triumvirate, Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon, it was stronger
+than ever, since it obtained the right of appointing leaders, disposed
+of money, and muzzled the press. Many of its members were sons of the
+bourgeoisie, men who having been educated at college, thanks to some
+charitable agency, in the pride of learning, and raised above their
+original station, were ready for anything but had achieved nothing. They
+had plenty of talent at command, were full of classical tirades against
+tyranny, and, though sensitive enough in their private life, were
+bloodthirsty butchers in their public relations. Such were Robespierre,
+Saint-Just, Couthon, Billaud-Varenne, Cambon, Thuriot, Collot d'Herbois,
+Barrere and Prieur de la Marne. Working hand in hand with these
+politicians, not always in accordance with them, but preserving a solid
+front, were the specialists, Carnot, Robert Lindet, Jean Bon Saint-Andre
+and Prieur de la Cote d'Or, honourable men, anxious above all to
+safeguard their country. At the head of the former type Robespierre,
+without special knowledge or exceptional talent, devoured by jealous
+ambition and gifted with cold grave eloquence, enjoyed a great moral
+ascendancy, due to his incorruptible purity of life and the invariably
+correct behaviour that had been wanting in Mirabeau, and by the
+persevering will which Danton had lacked. His marching orders were: no
+more temporizing with the federalists or with generals who are afraid of
+conquering; war to the death with all Europe in the name of
+revolutionary propaganda and the monarchical tradition of natural
+frontiers; and fear, as a means of government. The specialists answered
+foreign foes by their organization of victory; as for foes at home, the
+triumvirate crushed them beneath the Terror.
+
+
+  Defeat of the coalition.
+
+France was saved by them and by that admirable outburst of patriotism
+which provided 750,000 patriots for the army through the general levy of
+the 16th of August 1793, aided, moreover, by the mistakes of her
+enemies. Instead of profiting by Dumouriez's treachery and the successes
+in La Vendee, the Coalition, divided over the resuscitated Polish
+question, lost time on the frontiers of this new Poland of the west
+which was sacrificing itself for the sake of a Universal Republic. Thus
+in January 1794 the territory of France was cleared of the Prussians and
+Austrians by the victories at Hondschoote, Wattignies and Wissembourg;
+the army of La Vendee was repulsed from Granville, overwhelmed by
+Hoche's army at Le Mans and Savenay, and its leaders shot; royalist
+sedition was suppressed at Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles and Toulon;
+federalist insurrections were wiped out by the terrible massacres of
+Carrier at Nantes, the atrocities of Lebon at Arras, and the wholesale
+executions of Fouche and Collot d'Herbois at Lyons; Louis XVI. and Marie
+Antoinette guillotined, the _emigres_ dispersed, denied or forsaken by
+all Europe.
+
+
+  The new parties.
+
+  The party of tolerance.
+
+But the triumphant Mountain was not as united as it boasted. The second
+Committee of Public Safety had now to struggle against two oppositions:
+one of the left, represented by Hebert, the Commune of Paris and the
+Cordeliers; another of the right, Danton and his followers. The former
+would not admit that the Terror was only a temporary method of defence;
+for them it was a permanent system which was even to be strengthened in
+order to crush all who were hostile to the Revolution. Their sanguinary
+violence was combined with an anti-religious policy, not atheistical,
+but inspired by mistrust of the clergy, and by a civic and deistic creed
+that was a direct outcome of the federations. To these latter were due
+the substitution of the Republican for the Gregorian calendar, and the
+secular Feasts of Reason (November 19, 1793). The followers of Hebert
+wanted to push forward the movement of May 31, 1793, in order to become
+masters in their turn; while those of Danton were by way of arresting
+it. They considered it time to re-establish the reign of ordinary laws
+and justice; sick of bloodshed, with Camille Desmoulins they demanded a
+"Committee of Clemency." A deist and therefore hostile to
+"anti-religious masquerades," while uneasy at the absolute authority of
+the Paris Commune, which aimed at suppressing the State, and at its
+armed propaganda abroad, Robespierre resumed the struggle against its
+illegal power, so fatal to the Gironde. His boldness succeeded (March
+24, 1794), and then, jealous of Danton's activity and statesmanship, and
+exasperated by the jeers of his friends, he rid himself of the party of
+tolerance by a parody of justice (April 5).
+
+
+  Robespierre's dictatorship.
+
+  9th Thermidor.
+
+Robespierre now stood alone. During five months, while affecting to be
+the representative of "a reign of justice and virtue," he laboured at
+strengthening his politico-religious dictatorship--already so formidably
+armed--with new powers. "The incorruptible wanted to become the
+invulnerable" and the scaffold of the guillotine was crowded. By his
+dogma of the supreme state Robespierre founded a theocratic government
+with the police as an Inquisition. The festival of the new doctrine,
+which turned the head of the new pontiff (June 8), the _loi de
+Prairial_, or "code of legal murder" (June 10), which gave the deputies
+themselves into his hand; and the multiplication of executions at a time
+when the victory of Fleurus (June 25) showed the uselessness and
+barbarity of this aggravation of the Reign of Terror provoked against
+him the victorious coalition of revenge, lassitude and fear. Vanquished
+and imprisoned, he refused to take part in the illegal action proposed
+by the Commune against the Convention. Robespierre was no man of action.
+On the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794) he fell into the gulf that had
+opened on the 31st of May, and through which the 18th Brumaire was
+visible.
+
+
+  Third committee of public safety.
+
+Although brought about by the Terrorists, the tragic fall of Robespierre
+put an end to the Reign of Terror; for their chiefs having disappeared,
+the subordinates were too much divided to keep up the dictatorship of
+the third Committee of Public Safety, and reaction soon set in. After a
+change in _personnel_ in favour of the surviving Dantonists, came a
+limitation to the powers of the Committee of Public Safety, now placed
+in dependence upon the Convention; and next followed the destruction of
+the revolutionary system, the Girondin decentralization and the
+resuscitation of departmental governments; the reform of the
+Revolutionary Tribunal on the 10th of August; the suppression of the
+Commune of Paris on the 1st of September, and of the salary of forty
+_sous_ given to members of the sections; the abolition of the maximum,
+the suppression of the Guillotine, the opening of the prisons, the
+closing of the Jacobin club (November 11), and the henceforward
+insignificant existence of the popular societies.
+
+
+  Resuscitation of the royalist party.
+
+  Popular risings of Germinal and Prairial.
+
+Power reverted to the Girondins and Dantonists, who re-entered the
+Convention on the 18th of December; but with them re-entered likewise
+the royalists of Lyons, Marseilles and Toulon, and further, after the
+peace of Basel, many young men set free from the army, hostile to the
+Jacobins and defenders of the now moderate and peace-making Convention.
+These _muscadins_ and _incroyables_, led by Freron, Tallien and
+Barras--former revolutionists who had become aristocrats--profited by
+the restored liberty of the press to prepare for days of battle in the
+salons of the _merveilleuses_ Madame Tallien, Madame de Stael and Madame
+Recamier, as the _sans-culottes_ had formerly done in the clubs. The
+remnants of Robespierre's faction became alarmed at this Thermidor
+reaction, in which they scented royalism. Aided by famine, by the
+suppression of the maximum, and by the imminent bankruptcy of the
+assignats, they endeavoured to arouse the working classes and the former
+Hanriot companies against a government which was trying to destroy the
+republic, and had broken the busts of Marat and guillotined Carrier and
+Fouquier-Tinville, the former public prosecutor. Thus the risings of the
+12th Germinal (April 1, 1795) and of the 1st Prairial (May 20) were
+economic revolts rather than insurrections excited by the deputies of
+the Mountain; in order to suppress them the reactionaries called in the
+army. Owing to this first intervention of the troops in politics, the
+Committee of Public Safety, which aimed not so much at a moderate policy
+as at steering a middle course between the Thermidorians of the Right
+and of the Left, was able to dispense with the latter.
+
+
+  The white terror.
+
+The royalists now supposed that their hour had come. In the south, the
+companions of Jehu and of the Sun inaugurated a "White Terror," which
+had not even the apparent excuse of the public safety or of exasperated
+patriotism. At the same time they prepared for a twofold insurrection
+against the republic--in the west with the help of England, and in the
+east with that of Austria--by an attempt to bribe General Pichegru. But
+though the heads of the government wanted to put an end to the
+Revolution they had no thought of restoring the monarchy in favour of
+the Comte de Provence, who had taken the title of Louis XVIII. on
+hearing of the death of the dauphin in the Temple, and still less of
+bringing back the _ancien regime_. Hoche crushed the insurrection of
+the Chouans and the Bretons at Quiberon on the 2nd of July 1795, and
+Pichegru, scared, refused to entangle himself any further.
+
+
+  The constitution of the year III.
+
+  The 13th Vendemiaire.
+
+To cut off all danger from royalists or terrorists the Convention now
+voted the Constitution of the year III.; suppressing that of 1793, in
+order to counteract the terrorists, and re-establishing the bourgeois
+limited franchise with election in two degrees--a less liberal
+arrangement than that granted from 1789 to 1792. The chambers of the
+Five Hundred and of the Ancients were elected by the moneyed and
+intellectual aristocracy, and were to be re-elected by thirds annually.
+The executive authority, entrusted to five Directors, was no more than a
+definite and very strong Committee of Public Safety; but Sieyes, the
+author of the new constitution, in opposition to the royalists, had
+secured places of refuge for his party by reserving posts as directors
+for the regicides, and two-thirds of the deputies' seats for members of
+the Convention. In self-defence against this continuance of the policy
+and the _personnel_ of the Convention--a modern "Long Parliament"--the
+royalists, persistent street-fighters and masters in the "sections"
+after the suppression of the daily indemnification of forty _sous_,
+attempted the insurrection of the 13th Vendemiaire (October 5, 1795),
+which was easily put down by General Bonaparte.
+
+
+  Military achievements of the convention.
+
+  Treaty of Basel.
+
+Thus the bourgeois republic reaped the fruits of its predecessor's
+external policy. After the freeing of the land in January 1794 an
+impulse had been given to the spirit of conquest which had gradually
+succeeded to the disinterested fever of propaganda and overheated
+patriotism. This it was which had sustained Robespierre's dictatorship;
+and, owing to the "amalgam" and the re-establishment of discipline,
+Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine had been conquered and Holland
+occupied, simultaneously with Kosciusko's rising in Poland, Prussia's
+necessity of keeping and extending her Polish acquisitions,
+Robespierre's death, the prevalent desires of the majority, and the
+continued victories of Pichegru, Jourdan and Moreau, enfeebled the
+coalition. At Basel (April-July 1795) republican France, having rejoined
+the concert of Europe, signed the long-awaited peace with Prussia,
+Spain, Holland and the grand-duke of Tuscany. But thanks to the past
+influence of the Girondin party, who had caused the war, and of the
+regicides of the Mountain, this peace not only ratified the conquest of
+Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine and Santo Domingo, but paved the way
+for fresh conquests; for the old spirit of domination and persistent
+hostility to Austria attracted the destinies of the Revolution
+definitely towards war.
+
+
+  Internal achievements.
+
+The work of internal construction amidst this continued battle against
+the whole world had been no less remarkable. The Constituent Assembly
+had been more destructive than constructive; but the Convention
+preserved intact those fundamental principles of civil liberty which had
+been the main results of the Revolution: the equality so dear to the
+French, and the sovereignty of the people--the foundation of democracy.
+It also managed to engage private interests in state reform by creating
+the Grand Livre de la Dette Publique (September 13-26, 1793), and
+enlisted peasant and bourgeois savings in social reforms by the
+distribution and sale of national property. But with views reaching
+beyond equality of rights to a certain equality of property, the
+committees, as regards legislation, poor relief and instruction, laid
+down principles which have never been realized, save in the matter of
+the metric system; so that the Convention which was dispersed on the
+16th of October 1795 made a greater impression on political history and
+social ideas than on institutions. Its disappearance left a great blank.
+
+
+  The Directory.
+
+During four years the Directory attempted to fill this blank. Being the
+outcome of the Constitution of the year III., it should have been the
+organizing and pacifying government of the Republic; in reality it
+sought not to create, but to preserve its own existence. Its internal
+weakness, between the danger of anarchy and the opposition of the
+monarchists, was extreme; and it soon became discredited by its own
+_coups d'etat_ and by financial impotence in the eyes of a nation sick
+of revolution, aspiring towards peace and the resumption of economic
+undertakings. As to foreign affairs, its aggressive policy imperilled
+the conquests that had been the glory of the Convention, and caused the
+frontiers of France, the defence of which had been a point of honour
+with the Republic, to be called in question. Finally, there was no real
+government on the part of the five directors: La Revelliere-Lepeaux, an
+honest man but weak; Reubell, the negotiator of the Hague; Letourneur,
+an officer of talent; Barras, a man of intrigue, corrupt and without
+real convictions; and Carnot, the only really worthy member. They never
+understood one another, and never consulted together in hours of danger,
+save to embroil matters in politics as in war. Leaning on the bourgeois,
+conservative, liberal and anti-clerical republicans, they were no more
+able than was the Thermidor party to re-establish the freedom that had
+been suspended by revolutionary despotism; they created a ministry of
+police, interdicted the clubs and popular societies, distracted the
+press, and with partiality undertook the separation of Church and State
+voted on the 18th of September 1794. Their real defence against counter
+revolution was the army; but, by a further contradiction, they
+reinforced the army attached to the Revolution while seeking an alliance
+with the peacemaking bourgeoisie. Their party had therefore no more
+homogeneity than had their policy.
+
+
+  The parties.
+
+Moreover the Directory could not govern alone; it had to rely upon two
+other parties, according to circumstances: the republican-democrats and
+the disguised royalists. The former, purely anti-royalist, thought only
+of remedying the sufferings of the people. Roused by the collapse of the
+assignats, following upon the ruin of industry and the arrest of
+commerce, they were still further exasperated by the speculations of the
+financiers, by the jobbery which prevailed throughout the
+administration, and by the sale of national property which had profited
+hardly any but the bourgeoisie. After the 13th Vendemiaire the royalists
+too, deceived in their hopes, were expecting to return gradually to the
+councils, thanks to the high property qualification for the franchise.
+Under the name of "moderates" they demanded an end to this war which
+England continued and Austria threatened to recommence, and that the
+Directory from self-interested motives refused to conclude; they desired
+the abandonment of revolutionary proceedings, order in finance and
+religious peace.
+
+
+  Struggle against the royalists.
+
+  Struggle against the republican democrats and the socialists.
+
+  Babeuf.
+
+The Directory, then, was in a minority in the country, and had to be
+ever on the alert against faction; all possible methods seemed
+legitimate, and during two years appeared successful. Order was
+maintained in France, even the royalist west being pacified, thanks to
+Hoche, who finished his victorious campaign of 1796 against Stofflet,
+Charette and Cadoudal, by using mild and just measures to complete the
+subjection of the country. The greatest danger lay in the
+republican-democrats and their socialist ally, Francois Noel
+("Gracchus") Babeuf (q.v.). The former had united the Jacobins and the
+more violent members of the Convention in their club, the Societe du
+Pantheon; and their fusion, after the closing of the club, with the
+secret society of the Babouvists lent formidable strength to this party,
+with which Barras was secretly in league. The terrorist party, deprived
+of its head, had found a new leader, who, by developing the consequences
+of the Revolution's acts to their logical conclusion, gave first
+expression to the levelling principle of communism. He proclaimed the
+right of property as appertaining to the state, that is, to the whole
+community; the doctrine of equality as absolutely opposed to social
+inequality of any kind--that of property as well as that of rank; and
+finally the inadequacy of the solution of the agrarian question, which
+had profited scarcely any one, save a new class of privileged
+individuals. But these socialist demands were premature; the attack of
+the camp of Grenelle upon constitutional order ended merely in the
+arrest and guillotining of Babeuf (September 9, 1796-May 25, 1797).
+
+
+  Financial policy of the Directory.
+
+The liquidation of the financial inheritance of the Convention was no
+less difficult. The successive issues of assignats, and the
+multiplication of counterfeits made abroad, had so depreciated this
+paper money that an assignat of 100 francs was in February 1796 worth
+only 30 centimes; while the government, obliged to accept them at their
+nominal value, no longer collected any taxes and could not pay salaries.
+The destruction of the plate for printing assignats, on the 18th of
+February 1796, did not prevent the drop in the forty milliards still in
+circulation. Territorial mandates were now tried, which inspired no
+greater confidence, but served to liquidate two-thirds of the debt, the
+remaining third being consolidated by its dependence on the Grand Livre
+(September 30, 1797). This widespread bankruptcy, falling chiefly on the
+bourgeoisie, inaugurated a reaction which lasted until 1830 against the
+chief principle of the Constituent Assembly, which had favoured indirect
+taxation as producing a large sum without imposing any very obvious
+burden. The bureaucrats of the old system--having returned to their
+offices and being used to these indirect taxes--lent their assistance,
+and thus the Directory was enabled to maintain its struggle against the
+Coalition.
+
+
+  External policy.
+
+All system in finance having disappeared, war provided the Directory,
+now _in extremis_, with a treasury, and was its only source for
+supplying constitutional needs; while it opened a path to the military
+commanders who were to be the support and the glory of the state.
+England remaining invulnerable in her insular position despite Hoche's
+attempt to land in Ireland in 1796, the Directory resumed the
+traditional policy against Austria of conquering the natural frontiers,
+Carnot furnishing the plans; hence the war in southern Germany, in which
+Jourdan and Moreau were repulsed by an inferior force under the archduke
+Charles, and Bonaparte's triumphant Italian campaign. Chief of an army
+that he had made irresistible, not by honour but by glory, and master of
+wealth by rapine, Bonaparte imposed his will upon the Directory, which
+he provided with funds. After having separated the Piedmontese from the
+Austrians, whom he drove back into Tyrol, and repulsed offensive
+reprisals of Wurmser and Alvinzi on four occasions, he stopped short at
+the preliminary negotiations of Leoben just at the moment when the
+Directory, discouraged by the problem of Italian reconstitution, was
+preparing the army of the Rhine to re-enter the field under the command
+of Hoche. Bonaparte thus gained the good opinion of peace-loving
+Frenchmen; he partitioned Venetian territory with Austria, contrary to
+French interests but conformably with his own in Italy, and henceforward
+was the decisive factor in French and European policy, like Caesar or
+Pompey of old. England, in consternation, offered in her turn to
+negotiate at Lille.
+
+
+  Struggle against the royalists.
+
+  18th Fructidor.
+
+These military successes did not prevent the Directory, like the
+Thermidorians, from losing ground in the country. Every strategic truce
+since 1795 had been marked by a political crisis; peace reawakened
+opposition. The constitutional party, royalist in reality, had made
+alarming progress, chiefly owing to the Babouvist conspiracy; they now
+tried to corrupt the republican generals, and Conde procured the
+treachery of Pichegru, Kellermann and General Ferrand at Besancon.
+Moreover, their Clichy club, directed by the abbe Brottier, manipulated
+Parisian opinion; while many of the refractory priests, having returned
+after the liberal Public Worship Act of September 1795, made active
+propaganda against the principles of the Revolution, and plotted the
+fall of the Directory as maintaining the State's independence of the
+Church. Thus the partial elections of the year V. (May 20, 1797) had
+brought back into the two councils a counter-revolutionary majority of
+royalists, constitutionalists of 1791, Catholics and moderates. The
+Director Letourneur had been replaced by Barthelemy, who had negotiated
+the treaty of Basel and was a constitutional monarchist. So that the
+executive not only found it impossible to govern, owing to the
+opposition of the councils and a vehement press-campaign, but was
+distracted by ceaseless internal conflict. Carnot and Barthelemy wished
+to meet ecclesiastical opposition by legal measures only, and demanded
+peace; while Barras, La Revelliere and Reubell saw no other remedy save
+military force. The attempt of the counter-revolutionaries to make an
+army for themselves out of the guard of the Legislative Assembly, and
+the success of the Catholics, who had managed at the end of August 1797
+to repeal the laws against refractory priests, determined the Directory
+to appeal from the rebellious parliament to the ready swords of Augereau
+and Bernadotte. On the 18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797) Bonaparte's
+lieutenants, backed up by the whole army, stopped the elections in
+forty-nine departments, and deported to Guiana many deputies of both
+councils, journalists and non-juring priests, as well as the director
+Barthelemy, though Carnot escaped into Switzerland. The royalist party
+was once more overthrown, but with it the republican constitution
+itself. Thus every act of violence still further confirmed the new
+empire of the army and the defeat of principles, preparing the way for
+military despotism.
+
+
+  Aggressive policy of the Directory.
+
+Political and financial _coups d'etat_ were not enough for the
+directors. In order to win back public opinion, tired of internecine
+quarrels and sickened by the scandalous immorality of the generals and
+of those in power, and to remove from Paris an army which after having
+given them a fresh lease of life was now a menace to them, war appeared
+their only hopeful course. They attempted to renew the designs of Louis
+XIV. and anticipate those of Napoleon. But Bonaparte saw what they were
+planning; and to the rupture of the negotiations at Lille and an order
+for the resumption of hostilities he responded by a fresh act of
+disobedience and the infliction on the Directory of the peace of
+Campo-Formio, on October 17, 1797. The directors were consoled for this
+enforced peace by acquiring the left bank of the Rhine and Belgium, and
+for the forfeiture of republican principles by attaining what had for so
+long been the ambition of the monarchy. But the army continued a menace.
+To avoid disbanding it, which might, as after the peace of Basel, have
+given the counter-revolution further auxiliaries, the Directory
+appointed Bonaparte chief of the Army of England, and employed Jourdan
+to revise the conscription laws so as to make military service a
+permanent duty of the citizen, since war was now to be the permanent
+object of policy. The Directory finally conceived the gigantic project
+of bolstering up the French Republic--the triumph of which was
+celebrated by the peace of Campo-Formio--by forming the neighbouring
+weak states into tributary vassal republics. This system had already
+been applied to the Batavian republic in 1795, to the Ligurian and
+Cisalpine republics in June 1797; it was extended to that of Mulhausen
+on the 28th of January 1798, to the Roman republic in February, to the
+Helvetian in April, while the Parthenopaean republic (Naples) was to be
+established in 1799. This was an international _coup de force_, which
+presupposed that all these nations in whose eyes independence was
+flaunted would make no claim to enjoy it; that though they had been
+beaten and pillaged they would not learn to conquer in their turn; and
+that the king of Sardinia, dispossessed of Milan, the grand-duke of
+Tuscany who had given refuge to the pope when driven from Rome, and the
+king of Naples, who had opened his ports to Nelson's fleet, would not
+find allies to make a stand against this hypocritical system.
+
+
+  Coup d'etat of the 22nd Floreal.
+
+  Bonaparte in Egypt.
+
+  The second coalition.
+
+What happened was exactly the contrary. Meanwhile, the armies were kept
+in perpetual motion, procuring money for the impecunious Directory,
+making a diversion for internal discontent, and also permitting of a
+"reversed Fructidor," against the anarchists, who had got the upper hand
+in the partial elections of May 1798. The social danger was averted in
+its turn after the clerical danger had been dissipated. The next task
+was to relieve Paris of Bonaparte, who had already refused to repeat
+Hoche's unhappy expedition to Ireland and to attack England at home
+without either money or a navy. The pecuniary resources of Berne and
+the wealth of Rome fortunately tided over the financial difficulty and
+provided for the expedition to Egypt, which permitted Bonaparte to wait
+"for the fruit to ripen"--i.e. till the Directory should be ruined in
+the eyes of France and of all Europe. The disaster of Aboukir (August 1,
+1798) speedily decided the coalition pending between England, Austria,
+the Empire, Portugal, Naples, Russia and Turkey. The Directory had to
+make a stand or perish, and with it the Republic. The directors had
+thought France might retain a monopoly in numbers and in initiative.
+They soon perceived that enthusiasm is not as great for a war of policy
+and conquest as for a war of national defence; and the army dwindled,
+since a country cannot bleed itself to death. The law of conscription
+was voted on the 5th of September 1798; and the tragedy of Rastadt,
+where the French commissioners were assassinated, was the opening of a
+war, desired but ill-prepared for, in which the Directory showed
+hesitation in strategy and incoherence in tactics, over a
+disproportionate area in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Military
+reverses were inevitable, and responsibility for them could not be
+shirked. As though shattered by a reverberant echo from the cannon of
+the Trebbia, the Directory crumbled to pieces, succumbing on the 18th of
+June 1799 beneath the reprobation showered on Treilhard, Merlin de
+Douai, and La Revelliere-Lepeaux. A few more military disasters,
+royalist insurrections in the south, Chouan disturbances in Normandy,
+Orleanist intrigues and the end came. To soothe the populace and protect
+the frontier more was required than the resumption, as in all grave
+crises of the Revolution, of terrorist measures such as forced taxation
+or the law of hostages; the new Directory, Sieyes presiding, saw that
+for the indispensable revision of the constitution "a head and a sword"
+were needed. Moreau being unattainable, Joubert was to be the sword of
+Sieyes; but, when he was killed at the battle of Novi, the sword of the
+Revolution fell into the hands of Bonaparte.
+
+
+  Coup d'etat of the 18th Brumaire.
+
+Although Brune and Massena retrieved the fight at Bergen and Zurich, and
+although the Allies lingered on the frontier as they had done after
+Valmy, still the fortunes of the Directory were not restored. Success
+was reserved for Bonaparte, suddenly landing at Frejus with the prestige
+of his victories in the East, and now, after Hoche's death, appearing as
+sole master of the armies. He manoeuvred among the parties as on the
+13th Vendemiaire. On the 18th Brumaire of the year VIII. France and the
+army fell together at his feet. By a twofold _coup d'etat_,
+parliamentary and military, he culled the fruits of the Directory's
+systematic aggression and unpopularity, and realized the universal
+desires of the rich bourgeoisie, tired of warfare; of the wretched
+populace; of landholders, afraid of a return to the old order of things;
+of royalists, who looked upon Bonaparte as a future Monk; of priests and
+their people, who hoped for an indulgent treatment of Catholicism; and
+finally of the immense majority of the French, who love to be ruled and
+for long had had no efficient government. There was hardly any one to
+defend a liberty which they had never known. France had, indeed,
+remained monarchist at heart for all her revolutionary appearance; and
+Bonaparte added but a name, though an illustrious one, to the series of
+national or local dictatorships, which, after the departure of the weak
+Louis XVI., had maintained a sort of informal republican royalty.
+
+
+  The Consulate, Sept. 11, 1799-May 18, 1804.
+
+On the night of the 19th Brumaire a mere ghost of an Assembly abolished
+the constitution of the year III., ordained the provisionary Consulate,
+and legalized the coup d'etat in favour of Bonaparte. A striking and
+singular event; for the history of France and a great part of Europe was
+now for fifteen years to be summed up in the person of a single man (see
+NAPOLEON).
+
+
+  The constitution of the year VIII.
+
+This night of Brumaire, however, seemed to be a victory for Sieyes
+rather than for Bonaparte. He it was who originated the project which
+the legislative commissions, charged with elaborating the new
+constitution, had to discuss. Bonaparte's cleverness lay in opposing
+Daunou's plan to that of Sieyes, and in retaining only those portions of
+both which could serve his ambition. Parliamentary institutions annulled
+by the complication of three assemblies--the Council of State which
+drafted bills, the Tribunate which discussed them without voting them,
+and the Legislative Assembly which voted them without discussing them;
+popular suffrage, mutilated by the lists of notables (on which the
+members of the Assemblies were to be chosen by the conservative senate);
+and the triple executive authority of the consuls, elected for ten
+years: all these semblances of constitutional authority were adopted by
+Bonaparte. But he abolished the post of Grand Elector, which Sieyes had
+reserved for himself, in order to reinforce the real authority of the
+First Consul himself--by leaving the two other consuls, Cambaceres and
+Lebrun, as well as the Assemblies, equally weak. Thus the aristocratic
+constitution of Sieyes was transformed into an unavowed dictatorship, a
+public ratification of which the First Consul obtained by a third _coup
+d'etat_ from the intimidated and yet reassured electors-reassured by his
+dazzling but unconvincing offers of peace to the victorious Coalition
+(which repulsed them), by the rapid disarmament of La Vendee, and by the
+proclamations in which he filled the ears of the infatuated people with
+the new talk of stability of government, order, justice and moderation.
+He gave every one a feeling that France was governed once more by a real
+statesman, that a pilot was at the helm.
+
+
+  The Consulate.
+
+Bonaparte had now to rid himself of Sieyes and those republicans who had
+no desire to hand over the republic to one man, particularly of Moreau
+and Massena, his military rivals. The victory of Marengo (June 14, 1800)
+momentarily in the balance, but secured by Desaix and Kellermann,
+offered a further opportunity to his jealous ambition by increasing his
+popularity. The royalist plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise (December 24,
+1800) allowed him to make a clean sweep of the democratic republicans,
+who despite their innocence were deported to Guiana, and to annul
+Assemblies that were a mere show by making the senate omnipotent in
+constitutional matters; but it was necessary for him to transform this
+deceptive truce into the general pacification so ardently desired for
+the last eight years. The treaty of Luneville, signed in February 1801
+with Austria who had been disarmed by Moreau's victory at Hohenlinden,
+restored peace to the continent, gave nearly the whole of Italy to
+France, and permitted Bonaparte to eliminate from the Assemblies all the
+leaders of the opposition in the discussion of the Civil Code. The
+Concordat (July 1801), drawn up not in the Church's interest but in that
+of his own policy, by giving satisfaction to the religious feeling of
+the country, allowed him to put down the constitutional democratic
+Church, to rally round him the consciences of the peasants, and above
+all to deprive the royalists of their best weapon. The "Articles
+Organiques" hid from the eyes of his companions in arms and councillors
+a reaction which, in fact if not in law, restored to a submissive
+Church, despoiled of her revenues, her position as the religion of the
+state. The peace of Amiens with England (March 1802), of which France's
+allies, Spain and Holland, paid all the costs, finally gave the
+peacemaker a pretext for endowing himself with a Consulate, not for ten
+years but for life, as a recompense from the nation. The Rubicon was
+crossed on that day: Bonaparte's march to empire began with the
+constitution of the year X. (August 1802).
+
+
+  Internal reorganization.
+
+Before all things it was now necessary to reorganize France, ravaged as
+she was by the Revolution, and with her institutions in a state of utter
+corruption. The touch of the master was at once revealed to all the
+foreigners who rushed to gaze at the man about whom, after so many
+catastrophes and strange adventures, Paris, "la ville lumiere," and all
+Europe were talking. First of all, Louis XV.'s system of roads was
+improved and that of Louis XVI.'s canals developed; then industry put
+its shoulder to the wheel; order and discipline were re-established
+everywhere, from the frontiers to the capital, and brigandage
+suppressed; and finally there was Paris, the city of cities! Everything
+was in process of transformation: a second Rome was arising, with its
+forum, its triumphal arches, its shows and parades; and in this new Rome
+of a new Caesar fancy, elegance and luxury, a radiance of art and
+learning from the age of Pericles, and masterpieces rifled from the
+Netherlands, Italy and Egypt illustrated the consular peace. The Man of
+Destiny renewed the course of time. He borrowed from the _ancien regime_
+its plenipotentiaries; its over-centralized, strictly utilitarian
+administrative and bureaucratic methods; and afterwards, in order to
+bring them into line, the subservient pedantic scholasticism of its
+university. On the basis laid down by the Constituent Assembly and the
+Convention he constructed or consolidated the funds necessary for
+national institutions, local governments, a judiciary system, organs of
+finance, banking, codes, traditions of conscientious well-disciplined
+labour, and in short all the organization which for three-quarters of a
+century was to maintain and regulate the concentrated activity of the
+French nation (see the section _Law and Institutions_). Peace and order
+helped to raise the standard of comfort. Provisions, in this Paris which
+had so often suffered from hunger and thirst, and lacked fire and light,
+had become cheap and abundant; while trade prospered and wages ran high.
+The pomp and luxury of the _nouveaux riches_ were displayed in the
+salons of the good Josephine, the beautiful Madame Tallien, and the
+"divine" Juliette Recamier.
+
+
+  The republican opposition.
+
+But the republicans, and above all the military, saw in all this little
+but the fetters of system; the wily despotism, the bullying police, the
+prostration before authority, the sympathy lavished on royalists, the
+recall of the _emigres_, the contempt for the Assemblies, the
+purification of the Tribunate, the platitudes of the servile Senate, the
+silence of the press. In the formidable machinery of state, above all in
+the creation of the Legion of Honour, the Concordat, and the restoration
+of indirect taxes, they saw the rout of the Revolution. But the
+expulsion of persons like Benjamin Constant and Madame de Stael sufficed
+to quell this Fronde of the salons. The expedition to San Domingo
+reduced the republican army to a nullity; war demoralized or scattered
+the leaders, who were jealous of their "comrade" Bonaparte; and Moreau,
+the last of his rivals, cleverly compromised in a royalist plot, as
+Danton had formerly been by Robespierre, disappeared into exile. In
+contradistinction to this opposition of senators and republican
+generals, the immense mass of the people received the ineffaceable
+impression of Bonaparte's superiority. No suggestion of the possibility
+of his death was tolerated, of a crime which might cut short his career.
+The conspiracy of Cadoudal and Pichegru, after Bonaparte's refusal to
+give place to Louis XVIII., and the political execution of the duc
+d'Enghien, provoked an outburst of adulation, of which Bonaparte took
+advantage to put the crowning touch to his ambitious dream.
+
+
+  Napoleon emperor May 18, 1804-April 6, 1814.
+
+The decision of the senate on the 18th of May 1804, giving him the title
+of emperor, was the counterblast to the dread he had excited.
+Thenceforward "the brow of the emperor broke through the thin mask of
+the First Consul." Never did a harder master ordain more imperiously,
+nor understand better how to command obedience. "This was because," as
+Goethe said, "under his orders men were sure of accomplishing their
+ends. That is why they rallied round him, as one to inspire them with
+that kind of certainty." Indeed no man ever concentrated authority to
+such a point, nor showed mental abilities at all comparable to his: an
+extraordinary power of work, prodigious memory for details and fine
+judgment in their selection; together with a luminous decision and a
+simple and rapid conception, all placed at the disposal of a sovereign
+will. No head of the state gave expression more imperiously than this
+Italian to the popular passions of the French of that day: abhorrence
+for the emigrant nobility, fear of the _ancien regime_, dislike of
+foreigners, hatred of England, an appetite for conquest evoked by
+revolutionary propaganda, and the love of glory. In this Napoleon was a
+soldier of the people: because of this he judged and ruled his
+contemporaries. Having seen their actions in the stormy hours of the
+Revolution, he despised them and looked upon them as incapable of
+disinterested conduct, conceited, and obsessed by the notion of
+equality. Hence his colossal egoism, his habitual disregard of others,
+his jealous passion for power, his impatience of all contradiction, his
+vain untruthful boasting, his unbridled self-sufficiency and lack of
+moderation--passions which were gradually to cloud his clear faculty of
+reasoning. His genius, assisted by the impoverishment of two
+generations, was like the oak which admits beneath its shade none but
+the smallest of saplings. With the exception of Talleyrand, after 1808
+he would have about him only mediocre people, without initiative,
+prostrate at the feet of the giant: his tribe of paltry, rapacious and
+embarrassing Corsicans; his admirably subservient generals; his selfish
+ministers, docile agents, apprehensive of the future, who for fourteen
+long years felt a prognostication of defeat and discounted the
+inevitable catastrophe.
+
+So France had no internal history outside the plans and transformations
+to which Napoleon subjected the institutions of the Consulate, and the
+after-effects of his wars. Well knowing that his fortunes rested on the
+delighted acquiescence of France, Napoleon expected to continue
+indefinitely fashioning public opinion according to his pleasure. To his
+contempt for men he added that of all ideas which might put a bridle on
+his ambition; and to guard against them, he inaugurated the Golden Age
+of the police that he might tame every moral force to his hand. Being
+essentially a man of order, he loathed, as he said, all demagogic
+action, Jacobinism and visions of liberty, which he desired only for
+himself. To make his will predominant, he stifled or did violence to
+that of others, through his bishops, his gendarmes, his university, his
+press, his catechism. Nourished like Frederick II. and Catherine the
+Great in 18th-century maxims, neither he nor they would allow any of
+that ideology to filter through into their rough but regular ordering of
+mankind. Thus the whole political system, being summed up in the
+emperor, was bound to share his fall.
+
+
+  Napoleon's political idea.
+
+Although an enemy of idealogues, in his foreign policy Napoleon was
+haunted by grandiose visions. A condottiere of the Renaissance living in
+the 19th century, he used France, and all those nations annexed or
+attracted by the Revolution, to resuscitate the Roman conception of the
+Empire for his own benefit. On the other hand, he was enslaved by the
+history and aggressive idealism of the Convention, and of the republican
+propaganda under the Directory; he was guided by them quite as much as
+he guided them. Hence the immoderate extension given to French activity
+by his classical Latin spirit; hence also his conquests, leading on from
+one to another, and instead of being mutually helpful interfering with
+each other; hence, finally, his not entirely coherent policy,
+interrupted by hesitation and counter-attractions. This explains the
+retention of Italy, imposed on the Directory from 1796 onward, followed
+by his criminal treatment of Venice, the foundation of the Cisalpine
+republic--a foretaste of future annexations--the restoration of that
+republic after his return from Egypt, and in view of his as yet inchoate
+designs, the postponed solution of the Italian problem which the treaty
+of Luneville had raised.
+
+Marengo inaugurated the political idea which was to continue its
+development until his Moscow campaign. Napoleon dreamed as yet only of
+keeping the duchy of Milan, setting aside Austria, and preparing some
+new enterprise in the East or in Egypt. The peace of Amiens, which cost
+him Egypt, could only seem to him a temporary truce; whilst he was
+gradually extending his authority in Italy, the cradle of his race, by
+the union of Piedmont, and by his tentative plans regarding Genoa,
+Parma, Tuscany and Naples. He wanted to make this his Cisalpine Gaul,
+laying siege to the Roman state on every hand, and preparing in the
+Concordat for the moral and material servitude of the pope. When he
+recognized his error in having raised the papacy from decadence by
+restoring its power over all the churches, he tried in vain to correct
+it by the _Articles Organiques_--wanting, like Charlemagne, to be the
+legal protector of the pope, and eventually master of the Church. To
+conceal his plan he aroused French colonial aspirations against England,
+and also the memory of the spoliations of 1763, exasperating English
+jealousy of France, whose borders now extended to the Rhine, and laying
+hands on Hanover, Hamburg and Cuxhaven. By the "Recess" of 1803, which
+brought to his side Bavaria, Wurttemberg and Baden, he followed up the
+overwhelming tide of revolutionary ideas in Germany, to stem which Pitt,
+back in power, appealed once more to an Anglo-Austro-Russian coalition
+against this new Charlemagne, who was trying to renew the old Empire,
+who was mastering France, Italy and Germany; who finally on the 2nd of
+December 1804 placed the imperial crown upon his head, after receiving
+the iron crown of the Lombard kings, and made Pius VII. consecrate him
+in Notre-Dame.
+
+After this, in four campaigns from 1805 to 1809, Napoleon transformed
+his Carolingian feudal and federal empire into one modelled on the Roman
+empire. The memories of imperial Rome were for a third time, after
+Caesar and Charlemagne, to modify the historical evolution of France.
+Though the vague plan for an invasion of England fell to the ground Ulm
+and Austerlitz obliterated Trafalgar, and the camp at Boulogne put the
+best military resources he had ever commanded at Napoleon's disposal.
+
+
+  Treaty of Presburg, 1805.
+
+In the first of these campaigns he swept away the remnants of the old
+Roman-Germanic empire, and out of its shattered fragments created in
+southern Germany the vassal states of Bavaria, Baden, Wurttemberg,
+Hesse-Darmstadt and Saxony, which he attached to France under the name
+of the Confederation of the Rhine; but the treaty of Presburg gave
+France nothing but the danger of a more centralized and less docile
+Germany. On the other hand, Napoleon's creation of the kingdom of Italy,
+his annexation of Venetia and her ancient Adriatic empire--wiping out
+the humiliation of 1797--and the occupation of Ancona, marked a new
+stage in his progress towards his Roman Empire. His good fortune soon
+led him from conquest to spoliation, and he complicated his master-idea
+of the grand empire by his Family Compact; the clan of the Bonapartes
+invaded European monarchies, wedding with princesses of blood-royal, and
+adding kingdom to kingdom. Joseph replaced the dispossessed Bourbons at
+Naples; Louis was installed on the throne of Holland; Murat became
+grand-duke of Berg, Jerome son-in-law to the king of Wurttemberg, and
+Eugene de Beauharnais to the king of Bavaria; while Stephanie de
+Beauhamais married the son of the grand-duke of Baden.
+
+
+  Jena.
+
+  Eylau and Friedland.
+
+  Peace of Tilsit, July 8, 1807.
+
+  Continental blockade.
+
+Meeting with less and less resistance, Napoleon went still further and
+would tolerate no neutral power. On the 6th of August 1806 he forced the
+Habsburgs, left with only the crown of Austria, to abdicate their
+Roman-Germanic title of emperor. Prussia alone remained outside the
+Confederation of the Rhine, of which Napoleon was Protector, and to
+further her decision he offered her English Hanover. In a second
+campaign he destroyed at Jena both the army and the state of Frederick
+William III., who could not make up his mind between the Napoleonic
+treaty of Schonbrunn and Russia's counter-proposal at Potsdam (October
+14, 1806). The butchery at Eylau and the vengeance taken at Friedland
+finally ruined Frederick the Great's work, and obliged Russia, the ally
+of England and Prussia, to allow the latter to be despoiled, and to join
+Napoleon against the maritime tyranny of the former. After Tilsit,
+however (July 1807), instead of trying to reconcile Europe to his
+grandeur, Napoleon had but one thought: to make use of his success to
+destroy England and complete his Italian dominion. It was from Berlin,
+on the 21st of November 1806, that he had dated the first decree of a
+continental blockade, a monstrous conception intended to paralyze his
+inveterate rival, but which on the contrary caused his own fall by its
+immoderate extension of the empire. To the coalition of the northern
+powers he added the league of the Baltic and Mediterranean ports, and to
+the bombardment of Copenhagen by an English fleet he responded by a
+second decree of blockade, dated from Milan on the 17th of December
+1807.
+
+But the application of the Concordat and the taking of Naples led to
+the first of those struggles with the pope, in which were formulated two
+antagonistic doctrines: Napoleon declaring himself Roman emperor, and
+Pius VII. renewing the theocratic affirmations of Gregory VII. The
+former's Roman ambition was made more and more plainly visible by the
+occupation of the kingdom of Naples and of the Marches, and the entry of
+Miollis into Rome; while Junot invaded Portugal, Radet laid hands on the
+pope himself, and Murat took possession of formerly Roman Spain, whither
+Joseph was afterwards to be transferred. But Napoleon little knew the
+flame he was kindling. No more far-seeing than the Directory or the men
+of the year III., he thought that, with energy and execution, he might
+succeed in the Peninsula as he had succeeded in Italy in 1796 and 1797,
+in Egypt, and in Hesse, and that he might cut into Spanish granite as
+into Italian mosaic or "that big cake, Germany." He stumbled unawares
+upon the revolt of a proud national spirit, evolved through ten historic
+centuries; and the trap of Bayonne, together with the enthroning of
+Joseph Bonaparte, made the contemptible prince of the Asturias the elect
+of popular sentiment, the representative of religion and country.
+
+
+  Bailen.
+
+Napoleon thought he had Spain within his grasp, and now suddenly
+everything was slipping from him. The Peninsula became the grave of
+whole armies and a battlefield for England. Dupont capitulated at Bailen
+into the hands of Castanos, and Junot at Cintra to Wellesley; while
+Europe trembled at this first check to the hitherto invincible imperial
+armies. To reduce Spanish resistance Napoleon had in his turn to come to
+terms with the tsar Alexander at Erfurt; so that abandoning his designs
+in the East, he could make the Grand Army evacuate Prussia and return in
+force to Madrid.
+
+
+  Wagram.
+
+  Peace of Vienna.
+
+Thus Spain swallowed up the soldiers who were wanted for Napoleon's
+other fields of battle, and they had to be replaced by forced levies.
+Europe had only to wait, and he would eventually be found disarmed in
+face of a last coalition; but Spanish heroism infected Austria, and
+showed the force of national resistance. The provocations of Talleyrand
+and England strengthened the illusion: Why should not the Austrians
+emulate the Spaniards? The campaign of 1809, however, was but a pale
+copy of the Spanish insurrection. After a short and decisive action in
+Bavaria, Napoleon opened up the road to Vienna for a second time; and
+after the two days' battle at Essling, the stubborn fight at Wagram, the
+failure of a patriotic insurrection in northern Germany and of the
+English expedition against Antwerp, the treaty of Vienna (December 14,
+1809), with the annexation of the Illyrian provinces, completed the
+colossal empire. Napoleon profited, in fact, by this campaign which had
+been planned for his overthrow. The pope was deported to Savona beneath
+the eyes of indifferent Europe, and his domains were incorporated in the
+Empire; the senate's decision on the 17th of February 1810 created the
+title of king of Rome, and made Rome the capital of Italy. The pope
+banished, it was now desirable to send away those to whom Italy had been
+more or less promised. Eugene de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, was
+transferred to Frankfort, and Murat carefully watched until the time
+should come to take him to Russia and install him as king of Poland.
+Between 1810 and 1812 Napoleon's divorce of Josephine, and his marriage
+with Marie Louise of Austria, followed by the birth of the king of Rome,
+shed a brilliant light upon his future policy. He renounced a federation
+in which his brothers were not sufficiently docile; he gradually
+withdrew power from them; he concentrated all his affection and ambition
+on the son who was the guarantee of the continuance of his dynasty. This
+was the apogee of his reign.
+
+
+  Beginning of the end. Uprising of nationalism.
+
+But undermining forces were already at work: the faults inherent in his
+unwieldy achievement. England, his chief enemy, was persistently active;
+and rebellion both of the governing and the governed broke out
+everywhere. Napoleon felt his impotence in coping with the Spanish
+insurrection, which he underrated, while yet unable to suppress it
+altogether. Men like Stein, Hardenberg and Scharnhorst were secretly
+preparing Prussia's retaliation. Napoleon's material omnipotence could
+not stand against the moral force of the pope, a prisoner at
+Fontainebleau; and this he did not realize. The alliance arranged at
+Tilsit was seriously shaken by the Austrian marriage, the threat of a
+Polish restoration, and the unfriendly policy of Napoleon at
+Constantinople. The very persons whom he had placed in power were
+counteracting his plans: after four years' experience Napoleon found
+himself obliged to treat his Corsican dynasties like those of the
+_ancien regime_, and all his relations were betraying him. Caroline
+conspired against her brother and against her husband; the
+hypochondriacal Louis, now Dutch in his sympathies, found the
+supervision of the blockade taken from him, and also the defence of the
+Scheldt, which he had refused to ensure; Jerome, idling in his harem,
+lost that of the North Sea shores; and Joseph, who was attempting the
+moral conquest of Spain, was continually insulted at Madrid. The very
+nature of things was against the new dynasties, as it had been against
+the old.
+
+
+  Treachery.
+
+After national insurrections and family recriminations came treachery
+from Napoleon's ministers. Talleyrand betrayed his designs to
+Metternich, and had to be dismissed; Fouche corresponded with Austria in
+1809 and 1810, entered into an understanding with Louis, and also with
+England; while Bourrienne was convicted of peculation. By a natural
+consequence of the spirit of conquest he had aroused, all these
+parvenus, having tasted victory, dreamed of sovereign power: Bernadotte,
+who had helped him to the Consulate, played Napoleon false to win the
+crown of Sweden; Soult, like Murat, coveted the Spanish throne after
+that of Portugal, thus anticipating the treason of 1813 and the
+defection of 1814; many persons hoped for "an accident" which might
+resemble the tragic end of Alexander and of Caesar. The country itself,
+besides, though flattered by conquests, was tired of self-sacrifice. It
+had become satiated; "the cry of the mothers rose threateningly" against
+"the Ogre" and his intolerable imposition of wholesale conscription. The
+soldiers themselves, discontented after Austerlitz, cried out for peace
+after Eylau. Finally, amidst profound silence from the press and the
+Assemblies, a protest was raised against imperial despotism by the
+literary world, against the excommunicated sovereign by Catholicism, and
+against the author of the continental blockade by the discontented
+bourgeoisie, ruined by the crisis of 1811.
+
+
+  Degeneration of Napoleon.
+
+Napoleon himself was no longer the General Bonaparte of his campaign in
+Italy. He was already showing signs of physical decay; the Roman
+medallion profile had coarsened, the obese body was often lymphatic.
+Mental degeneration, too, betrayed itself in an unwonted irresolution.
+At Eylau, at Wagram, and later at Waterloo, his method of acting by
+enormous masses of infantry and cavalry, in a mad passion for conquest,
+and his misuse of his military resources, were all signs of his moral
+and technical decadence; and this at the precise moment when, instead of
+the armies and governments of the old system, which had hitherto reigned
+supreme, the nations themselves were rising against France, and the
+events of 1792 were being avenged upon her. The three campaigns of two
+years brought the final catastrophe.
+
+
+  Russian campaign.
+
+  Campaigns of 1813-14.
+
+Napoleon had hardly succeeded in putting down the revolt in Germany when
+the tsar himself headed a European insurrection against the ruinous
+tyranny of the continental blockade. To put a stop to this, to ensure
+his own access to the Mediterranean and exclude his chief rival,
+Napoleon made a desperate effort in 1812 against a country as invincible
+as Spain. Despite his victorious advance, the taking of Smolensk, the
+victory on the Moskwa, and the entry into Moscow, he was vanquished by
+Russian patriotism and religious fervour, by the country and the
+climate, and by Alexander's refusal to make terms. After this came the
+lamentable retreat, while all Europe was concentrating against him.
+Pushed back, as he had been in Spain, from bastion to bastion, after the
+action on the Beresina, Napoleon had to fall back upon the frontiers of
+1809, and then--having refused the peace offered him by Austria at the
+congress of Prague, from a dread of losing Italy, where each of his
+victories had marked a stage in the accomplishment of his dream--on
+those of 1805, despite Lutzen and Bautzen, and on those of 1802 after
+his defeat at Leipzig, where Bernadotte turned upon him, Moreau figured
+among the Allies, and the Saxons and Bavarians forsook him. Following
+his retreat from Russia came his retreat from Germany. After the loss of
+Spain, reconquered by Wellington, the rising in Holland preliminary to
+the invasion and the manifesto of Frankfort which proclaimed it, he had
+to fall back upon the frontiers of 1795; and then later was driven yet
+farther back upon those of 1792, despite the wonderful campaign of 1814
+against the invaders, in which the old Bonaparte of 1796 seemed to have
+returned. Paris capitulated on the 30th of March, and the "Delenda
+Carthago," pronounced against England, was spoken of Napoleon. The great
+empire of East and West fell in ruins with the emperor's abdication at
+Fontainebleau.
+
+
+  Downfall of the Empire.
+
+The military struggle ended, the political struggle began. How was
+France to be governed? The Allies had decided on the eviction of
+Napoleon at the Congress of Chatillon; and the precarious nature of the
+Bonapartist monarchy in France itself was made manifest by the exploit
+of General Malet, which had almost succeeded during the Russian
+campaign, and by Laine's demand for free exercise of political rights,
+when Napoleon made a last appeal to the Legislative Assembly for
+support. The defection of the military and civil aristocracy, which
+brought about Napoleon's abdication, the refusal of a regency, and the
+failure of Bernadotte, who wished to resuscitate the Consulate, enabled
+Talleyrand, vice-president of the senate and desirous of power, to
+persuade the Allies to accept the Bourbon solution of the difficulty.
+The declaration of St Ouen (May 2, 1814) indicated that the new monarchy
+was only accepted upon conditions. After Napoleon's abdication, and
+exile to the island of Elba, came the Revolution's abdication of her
+conquests: the first treaty of Paris (May 30th) confirmed France's
+renunciation of Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, and her return
+within her pre-revolutionary frontiers, save for some slight
+rectifications.
+
+
+  Faults of the Bourbons.
+
+  The Hundred Days. March-June 1815.
+
+After the scourge of war, the horrors of conscription, and the despotism
+which had discounted glory, every one seemed to rejoice in the return of
+the Bourbons, which atoned for humiliations by restoring liberty. But
+questions of form, which aroused questions of sentiment, speedily led to
+grave dissensions. The hurried armistice of the 23rd of April, by which
+the comte d'Artois delivered over disarmed France to her conquerors;
+Louis XVIII.'s excessive gratitude to the prince regent of England; the
+return of the _emigres_; the declaration of St Ouen, dated from the
+nineteenth year of the new reign; the charter of June 4th, "_concedee et
+octroyee_," maintaining the effete doctrine of legitimacy in a country
+permeated with the idea of national sovereignty; the slights put upon
+the army; the obligatory processions ordered by Comte Beugnot, prefect
+of police; all this provoked a conflict not only between two theories of
+government but between two groups of men and of interests. An avowedly
+imperialist party was soon again formed, a centre of heated opposition
+to the royalist party; and neither Baron Louis' excellent finance, nor
+the peace, nor the charter of June 4th--which despite the irritation of
+the _emigres_ preserved the civil gains of the Revolution--prevented the
+man who was its incarnation from seizing an opportunity to bring about
+another military _coup d'etat_. Having landed in the Bay of Jouan on the
+1st of March, on the 20th Napoleon re-entered the Tuileries in triumph,
+while Louis XVIII. fled to Ghent. By the _Acte additionnel_ of the 22nd
+of April he induced Carnot and Fouche--the last of the Jacobins--and the
+heads of the Liberal opposition, Benjamin Constant and La Fayette, to
+side with him against the hostile Powers of Europe, occupied in dividing
+the spoils at Vienna. He proclaimed his intention of founding a new
+democratic empire; and French policy was thus given another illusion,
+which was to be exploited with fatal success by Napoleon's namesake. But
+the cannon of Waterloo ended this adventure (June 18, 1815), and, thanks
+to Fouche's treachery, the triumphal progress of Milan, Rome, Naples,
+Vienna, Berlin, and even of Moscow, was to end at St Helena.
+
+
+  Louis XVIII.
+
+The consequences of the Hundred Days were very serious; France was
+embroiled with all Europe, though Talleyrand's clever diplomacy had
+succeeded in causing division over Saxony and Poland by the secret
+Austro-Anglo-French alliance of the 3rd of January 1815, and the
+Coalition destroyed both France's political independence and national
+integrity by the treaty of peace of November 20th: she found herself far
+weaker than before the Revolution, and in the power of the European
+Alliance. The Hundred Days divided the nation itself into two
+irreconcilable parties: one ultra-royalist, eager for vengeance and
+retaliation, refusing to accept the Charter; the other imperialist,
+composed of Bonapartists and Republicans, incensed by their defeat--of
+whom Beranger was the Tyrtaeus--both parties equally revolutionary and
+equally obstinate. Louis XVIII., urged by his more fervent supporters
+towards the _ancien regime_, gave his policy an exactly contrary
+direction; he had common-sense enough to maintain the Empire's legal and
+administrative tradition, accepting its institutions of the Legion of
+Honour, the Bank, the University, and the imperial nobility--modifying
+only formally certain rights and the conscription, since these had
+aroused the nation against Napoleon. He even went so far as to accept
+advice from the imperial ministers Talleyrand and Fouche. Finally, as
+the chief political organization had become thoroughly demoralized, he
+imported into France the entire constitutional system of England, with
+its three powers, king, upper hereditary chamber, and lower elected
+chamber; with its plutocratic electorate, and even with details like the
+speech from the throne, the debate on the address, &c. This meant
+importing also difficulties such as ministerial responsibility, as well
+as electoral and press legislation.
+
+Louis XVIII., taught by time and misfortune, wished not to reign over
+two parties exasperated by contrary passions and desires; but his
+dynasty was from the outset implicated in the struggle, which was to be
+fatal to it, between old France and revolutionary France.
+Anti-monarchical, liberal and anti-clerical France at once recommenced
+its revolutionary work; the whole 19th century was to be filled with
+great spasmodic upheavals, and Louis XVIII. was soon overwhelmed by the
+White Terrorists of 1815.
+
+Vindictive sentences against men like Ney and Labedoyere were followed
+by violent and unpunished action by the White Terror, which in the south
+renewed the horrors of St Bartholomew and the September massacres. The
+elections of August 14, 1815, made under the influence of these royalist
+and religious passions, sent the "_Chambre introuvable_" to Paris, an
+unforeseen revival of the _ancien regime_. Neither the substitution of
+the duc de Richelieu's ministry for that of Talleyrand and Fouche, nor a
+whole series of repressive laws in violation of the charter, were
+successful in satisfying its tyrannical loyalism, and Louis XVIII.
+needed something like a _coup d'etat_, in September 1816, to rid himself
+of the "ultras."
+
+
+  The Constitutional party's rule.
+
+  The reaction of 1820.
+
+He succeeded fairly well in quieting the opposition between the dynasty
+and the constitution, until a reaction took place between 1820 and 1822.
+State departments worked regularly and well, under the direction of
+Decazes, Laine, De Serre and Pasquier, power alternating between two
+great well-disciplined parties almost in the English fashion, and many
+useful measures were passed: the reconstruction of finance stipulated
+for as a condition of evacuation of territory occupied by foreign
+troops; the electoral law of February 5, 1817, which, by means of direct
+election and a qualification of three hundred francs, renewed the
+preponderance of the _bourgeoisie_; the Gouvion St-Cyr law of 1818,
+which for half a century based the recruiting of the French army on the
+national principle of conscription; and in 1819, after Richelieu's
+dismissal, liberal regulations for the press under control of a
+commission. But the advance of the Liberal movement, and the election of
+the generals--Foy, Lamarque, Lafayette and of Manuel, excited the
+"ultras" and caused the dismissal of Richelieu; while that of the
+constitutional bishop Gregoire led to the modification in a reactionary
+direction of the electoral law of 1817. The assassination of the duc de
+Berry, second son of the comte d'Artois (attributed to the influence of
+Liberal ideas), caused the downfall of Decazes, and caused the
+king--more weak and selfish than ever--to override the charter and
+embark upon a reactionary path. After 1820, Madame du Cayla, a trusted
+agent of the ultra-royalist party, gained great influence over the king;
+and M. de Villele, its leader, supported by the king's brother, soon
+eliminated the Right Centre by the dismissal of the duc de Richelieu,
+who had been recalled to tide over the crisis--just as the fall of M.
+Decazes had signalized the defeat of the Left Centre (December 15,
+1821)--and moderate policy thus received an irreparable blow.
+
+Thenceforward the government of M. de Villele--a clever statesman, but
+tied to his party--did nothing for six years but promulgate a long
+series of measures against Liberalism and the social work of the
+Revolution; to retain power it had to yield to the impatience of the
+comte d'Artois and the majority. The suspension of individual liberty,
+the re-establishment of the censorship; the electoral right of the
+"double vote," favouring taxation of the most oppressive kind; and the
+handing over of education to the clergy: these were the first
+achievements of this anti-revolutionary ministry. The Spanish
+expedition, in which M. de Villele's hand was forced by Montmorency and
+Chateaubriand, was the united work of the association of Catholic
+zealots known as the Congregation and of the autocratic powers of the
+Grand Alliance; it was responded to--as at Naples and in Spain--by
+secret Carbonari societies, and by severely repressed military
+conspiracies. Politics now bore the double imprint of two rival powers:
+the Congregation and Carbonarism. By 1824, nevertheless, the dynasty
+seemed firm--the Spanish War had reconciled the army, by giving back
+military prestige; the Liberal opposition had been decimated;
+revolutionary conspiracies discouraged; and the increase of public
+credit and material prosperity pleased the whole nation, as was proved
+by the "_Chambre retrouvee_" of 1824. The law of septennial elections
+tranquillized public life by suspending any legal or regular
+manifestation by the nation for seven years.
+
+
+  Charles X.
+
+  Victory of the constitutional parties, 1827.
+
+  The Revolution of 1830.
+
+It was the monarchy which next became revolutionary, on the accession of
+Charles X. (September 16, 1824). This inconsistent prince soon exhausted
+his popularity, and remained the fanatical head of those _emigres_ who
+had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. While the opposition became
+conservative as regards the Charter and French liberties, the king and
+the clerical party surrounding him challenged the spirit of modern
+France by a law against sacrilege, by a bill for re-establishing the
+right of primogeniture, by an indemnity of a milliard francs, which
+looked like compensation given to the _emigres_, and finally by the
+"_loi de liberte et d'amour_" against the press. The challenge was so
+definite that in 1826 the Chamber of Peers and the Academy had to give
+the Villele ministry a lesson in Liberalism, for having lent itself to
+this _ancien regime_ reaction by its weakness and its party-promises.
+The elections "_de colere et de vengeance_" of January 1827 gave the
+Left a majority, and the resultant short-lived Martignac ministry tried
+to revive the Right Centre which had supported Richelieu and Decazes
+(January 1828). Martignac's accession to power, however, had only meant
+personal concessions from Charles X., not any concession of principle:
+he supported his ministry but was no real stand-by. The Liberals, on the
+other hand, made bargains for supporting the moderate royalists, and
+Charles X. profited by this to form a fighting ministry in conjunction
+with the prince de Polignac, one of the _emigres_, an ignorant and
+visionary person, and the comte de Bourmont, the traitor of Waterloo.
+Despite all kinds of warnings, the former tried by a _coup d'etat_ to
+put into practice his theories of the supremacy of the royal
+prerogative; and the battle of Navarino, the French occupation of the
+Morea, and the Algerian expedition could not make the nation forget this
+conflict at home. The united opposition of monarchist Liberals and
+imperialist republicans responded by legal resistance, then by a popular
+_coup d'etat_, to the ordinances of July 1830, which dissolved the
+intractable Chamber, eliminated licensed dealers from the electoral
+list, and muzzled the press. After fighting for three days against the
+troops feebly led by the Marmont of 1814, the workmen, driven to the
+barricades by the deliberate closing of Liberal workshops, gained the
+victory, and sent the white flag of the Bourbons on the road to exile.
+
+
+  Republican and Orleanist parties.
+
+  Louis Philippe.
+
+The rapid success of the "Three Glorious Days" ("_les Trois
+Glorieuses_"), as the July Days were called, put the leaders of the
+parliamentary opposition into an embarrassing position. While they had
+contented themselves with words, the small Republican-Imperialist party,
+aided by the almost entire absence of the army and police, and by the
+convenience which the narrow, winding, paved streets of those times
+offered for fighting, had determined upon the revolution and brought it
+to pass. But the Republican party, which desired to re-establish the
+Republic of 1793, recruited chiefly from among the students and workmen,
+and led by Godefroy Cavaignac, the son of a Conventionalist, and by the
+chemist Raspail, had no hold on the departments nor on the dominating
+opinion in Paris. Consequently this premature attempt was promptly
+seized upon by the Liberal _bourgeoisie_ and turned to the advantage of
+the Orleanist party, which had been secretly organized since 1829 under
+the leadership of Thiers, with the _National_ as its organ. Before the
+struggle was yet over, Benjamin Constant, Casimir Perier, Lafitte, and
+Odilon Barrot had gone to fetch the duke of Orleans from Neuilly, and on
+receiving his promise to defend the Charter and the tricolour flag,
+installed him at the Palais Bourbon as lieutenant-general of the realm,
+while La Fayette and the Republicans established themselves at the Hotel
+de Ville. An armed conflict between the two governments was imminent,
+when Lafayette, by giving his support to Louis Philippe, decided matters
+in his favour. In order to avoid a recurrence of the difficulties which
+had arisen with the Bourbons, the following preliminary conditions were
+imposed upon the king: the recognition of the supremacy of the people by
+the title of "king of the French by the grace of God and the will of the
+people," the responsibility of ministers, the suppression of hereditary
+succession to the Chamber of Peers, now reduced to the rank of a council
+of officials, the suppression of article 14 of the charter which had
+enabled Charles X. to supersede the laws by means of the ordinances, and
+the liberty of the press. The qualification for electors was lowered
+from 300 to 200 francs, and that for eligibility from 1000 to 500
+francs, and the age to 25 and 30 instead of 30 and 40; finally,
+Catholicism lost its privileged position as the state religion. The
+_bourgeois_ National Guard was made the guardian of the charter. The
+liberal ideas of the son of Philippe Egalite, the part he had played at
+Valmy and Jemappes, his gracious manner and his domestic virtues, all
+united in winning Louis Philippe the good opinion of the public.
+
+
+  The bourgeois monarchy.
+
+He now believed, as did indeed the great majority of the electors, that
+the revolution of 1830 had changed nothing but the head of the state.
+But in reality the July monarchy was affected by a fundamental weakness.
+It sought to model itself upon the English monarchy, which rested upon
+one long tradition. But the tradition of France was both twofold and
+contradictory, i.e. the Catholic-legitimist and the revolutionary. Louis
+Philippe had them both against him. His monarchy had but one element in
+common with the English, namely, a parliament elected by a limited
+electorate. There was at this time a cause of violent outcry against the
+English monarchy, which, on the other hand, met with firm support among
+the aristocracy and the clergy. The July monarchy had no such support.
+The aristocracy of the _ancien regime_ and of the Empire were alike
+without social influence; the clergy, which had paid for its too close
+alliance with Charles X. by a dangerous unpopularity, and foresaw the
+rise of democracy, was turning more and more towards the people, the
+future source of all power. Even the monarchical principle itself had
+suffered from the shock, having proved by its easy defeat how far it
+could be brought to capitulate. Moreover, the victory of the people, who
+had shown themselves in the late struggle to be brave and disinterested,
+had won for the idea of national supremacy a power which was bound to
+increase. The difficulty of the situation lay in the doubt as to whether
+this expansion would take place gradually and by a progressive
+evolution, as in England, or not.
+
+
+  The parties.
+
+Now Louis Philippe, beneath the genial exterior of a bourgeois and
+peace-loving king, was entirely bent upon recovering an authority which
+was menaced from the very first on the one hand by the anger of the
+royalists at their failures, and on the other hand by the impatience of
+the republicans to follow up their victory. He wanted the insurrection
+to stop at a change in the reigning family, whereas it had in fact
+revived the revolutionary tradition, and restored to France the
+sympathies of the nationalities and democratic parties oppressed by
+Metternich's "system." The republican party, which had retired from
+power but not from activity, at once faced the new king with the serious
+problem of the acquisition of political power by the people, and
+continued to remind him of it. He put himself at the head of the party
+of progress ("parti du mouvement") as opposed to the ("parti de la
+cour") court party, and of the "resistance," which considered that it
+was now necessary "to check the revolution in order to make it fruitful,
+and in order to save it." But none of these parties were homogeneous; in
+the chamber they split up into a republican or radical Extreme Left, led
+by Garnier-Pages and Arago; a dynastic Left, led by the honourable and
+sincere Odilon Barrot; a constitutional Right Centre and Left Centre,
+differing in certain slight respects, and presided over respectively by
+Thiers, a wonderful political orator, and Guizot, whose ideas were those
+of a strict doctrinaire; not to mention a small party which clung to the
+old legitimist creed, and was dominated by the famous _avocat_ Berryer,
+whose eloquence was the chief ornament of the cause of Charles X.'s
+grandson, the comte de Chambord. The result was a ministerial majority
+which was always uncertain; and the only occasion on which Guizot
+succeeded in consolidating it during seven years resulted in the
+overthrow of the monarchy.
+
+
+  The Republicans crushed.
+
+Louis Philippe first summoned to power the leaders of the party of
+"movement," Dupont de l'Eure, and afterwards Lafitte, in order to keep
+control of the progressive forces for his own ends. They wished to
+introduce democratic reforms and to uphold throughout Europe the
+revolution, which had spread from France into Belgium, Germany, Italy
+and Poland, while Paris was still in a state of unrest. But Louis
+Philippe took fright at the attack on the Chamber of Peers after the
+trial of the ministers of Charles X., at the sack of the church of Saint
+Germain l'Auxerrois and the archbishop's palace (February, 1831), and at
+the terrible strike of the silk weavers at Lyons. Casimir Perier, who
+was both a Liberal and a believer in a strong government, was then
+charged with the task of heading the resistance to advanced ideas, and
+applying the principle of non-intervention in foreign affairs (March 13,
+1831). After his death by cholera in May 1832, the agitation which he
+had succeeded by his energy in checking at Lyons, at Grenoble and in the
+Vendee, where it had been stirred up by the romantic duchess of Berry,
+began to gain ground. The struggle against the republicans was still
+longer; for having lost all their chance of attaining power by means of
+the Chamber, they proceeded to reorganize themselves into armed secret
+societies. The press, which was gaining that influence over public
+opinion which had been lost by the parliamentary debates, openly
+attacked the government and the king, especially by means of caricature.
+Between 1832 and 1836 the Soult ministry, of which Guizot, Thiers and
+the duc de Broglie were members, had to combat the terrible
+insurrections in Lyons and Paris (1834). The measures of repression were
+threefold: military repression, carried out by the National Guard and
+the regulars, both under the command of Bugeaud; judicial repression,
+effected by the great trial of April 1835; and legislative repression,
+consisting in the laws of September, which, when to mere ridicule had
+succeeded acts of violence, such as that of Fieschi (July 28th, 1835),
+aimed at facilitating the condemnation of political offenders and at
+intimidating the press. The party of "movement" was vanquished.
+
+
+  The bourgeois policy.
+
+But the July Government, born as it was of a popular movement, had to
+make concessions to popular demands. Casimir Perier had carried a law
+dealing with municipal organization, which made the municipal councils
+elective, as they had been before the year VIII.; and in 1833 Guizot had
+completed it by making the _conseils generaux_ also elective. In the
+same year the law dealing with primary instruction had also shown the
+mark of new ideas. But now that the bourgeoisie was raised to power it
+did not prove itself any more liberal than the aristocracy of birth and
+fortune in dealing with educational, fiscal and industrial questions. In
+spite of the increase of riches, the bourgeois regime maintained a
+fiscal and social legislation which, while it assured to the middle
+class certainty and permanence of benefits, left the labouring masses
+poor, ignorant, and in a state of incessant agitation.
+
+
+  The socialist party.
+
+The Orleanists, who had been unanimous in supporting the king,
+disagreed, after their victory, as to what powers he was to be given.
+The Left Centre, led by Thiers, held that he should reign but not
+govern; the Right Centre, led by Guizot, would admit him to an active
+part in the government; and the third party (tiers-parti) wavered
+between these two. And so between 1836 and 1840, as the struggle against
+the king's claim to govern passed from the sphere of outside discussion
+into parliament, we see the rise of a bourgeois socialist party, side by
+side with the now dwindling republican party. It no longer confined its
+demands to universal suffrage, on the principle of the legitimate
+representation of all interests, or in the name of justice. Led by
+Saint-Simon, Fourier, P. Leroux and Lamennais, it aimed at realizing a
+better social organization for and by means of the state. But the
+question was by what means this was to be accomplished. The secret
+societies, under the influence of Blanqui and Barbes, two
+revolutionaries who had revived the traditions of Babeuf, were not
+willing to wait for the complete education of the masses, necessarily a
+long process. On the 12th of May 1839 the _Societe des Saisons_ made an
+attempt to overthrow the bourgeoisie by force, but was defeated.
+Democrats like Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin and Lamennais continued to
+repeat in support of the wisdom of universal suffrage the old profession
+of faith: _vox populi, vox Dei_. And finally this republican doctrine,
+already confused, was still further complicated by a kind of mysticism
+which aimed at reconciling the most extreme differences of belief, the
+Catholicism of Buchez, the Bonapartism of Cormenin, and the
+humanitarianism of the cosmopolitans. It was in vain that Auguste Comte,
+Michelet and Quinet denounced this vague humanitarian mysticism and the
+pseudo-liberalism of the Church. The movement had now begun.
+
+
+  The Bonapartist revival.
+
+At first these moderate republicans, radical or communist, formed only
+imperceptible groups. Among the peasant classes, and even in the
+industrial centres, warlike passions were still rife. Louis Philippe
+tried to find an outlet for them in the Algerian war, and later by the
+revival of the Napoleonic legend, which was held to be no longer
+dangerous, since the death of the duke of Reichstadt in 1832. It was
+imprudently recalled by Thiers' _History of the Consulate and Empire_,
+by artists and poets, in spite of the prophecies of Lamartine, and by
+the solemn translation of Napoleon I.'s ashes in 1840 to the Invalides
+at Paris.
+
+
+  Parliamentary opposition to the royal power.
+
+All theories require to be based on practice, especially those which
+involve force. Now Louis Philippe, though as active as his predecessors
+had been slothful, was the least warlike of men. His only wish was to
+govern personally, as George III. and George IV. of England had done,
+especially in foreign affairs, while at home was being waged the great
+duel between Thiers and Guizot, with Mole as intermediary. Thiers, head
+of the cabinet of the 22nd of February 1836, an astute man but not
+pliant enough to please the king, fell after a few months, in
+consequence of his attempt to stop the Carlist civil war in Spain, and
+to support the constitutional government of Queen Isabella. Louis
+Philippe hoped that, by calling upon Mole to form a ministry, he would
+be better able to make his personal authority felt. From 1837 to 1839
+Mole aroused opposition on all hands; this was emphasized by the refusal
+of the Chambers to vote one of those endowments which the king was
+continually asking them to grant for his children, by two dissolutions
+of the Chambers, and finally by the Strasburg affair and the stormy
+trial of Louis Napoleon, son of the former king of Holland (1836-1837).
+At the elections of 1839 Mole was defeated by Thiers, Guizot and Barrot,
+who had combined to oppose the tyranny of the "Chateau," and after a
+long ministerial crisis was replaced by Thiers (March 1, 1840). But the
+latter was too much in favour of war to please the king, who was
+strongly disposed towards peace and an alliance with Great Britain, and
+consequently fell at the time of the Egyptian question, when, in answer
+to the treaty of London concluded behind his back by Nicholas I. and
+Palmerston on the 15th of July 1840, he fortified Paris and proclaimed
+his intention to give armed support to Mehemet Ali, the ally of France
+(see MEHEMET ALI). But the violence of popular Chauvinism and the
+renewed attempt of Louis Napoleon at Boulogne proved to the holders of
+the doctrine of peace at any price that in the long-run their policy
+tends to turn a peaceful attitude into a warlike one, and to strengthen
+the absolutist idea.
+
+
+  Guizot's ministry.
+
+In spite of all, from 1840 to 1848 Louis Philippe still further extended
+his activity in foreign affairs, thus bringing himself into still
+greater prominence, though he was already frequently held responsible
+for failures in foreign politics and unpopular measures in home affairs.
+The catchword of Guizot, who was now his minister, was: Peace and no
+reforms. With the exception of the law of 1842 concerning the railways,
+not a single measure of importance was proposed by the ministry. France
+lived under a regime of general corruption: parliamentary corruption,
+due to the illegal conduct of the deputies, consisting of slavish or
+venal officials; electoral corruption, effected by the purchase of the
+200,000 electors constituting the "_pays legal_," who were bribed by the
+advantages of power; and moral corruption, due to the reign of the
+plutocracy, the bourgeoisie, a hard-working, educated and honourable
+class, it is true, but insolent, like all newly enriched parvenus in the
+presence of other aristocracies, and with unyielding selfishness
+maintaining an attitude of suspicion towards the people, whose
+aspirations they did not share and with whom they did not feel
+themselves to have anything in common. This led to a slackening in
+political life, a sort of exhaustion of interest throughout the country,
+an excessive devotion to material prosperity. Under a superficial
+appearance of calm a tempest was brewing, of which the industrial
+writings of Balzac, Eugene Sue, Lamartine, H. Heine, Vigny, Montalembert
+and Tocqueville were the premonitions. But it was in vain that they
+denounced this supremacy of the bourgeoisie, relying on its two main
+supports, the suffrage based on a property qualification and the
+National Guard, for its rallying-cry was the "Enrichissez-vous" of
+Guizot, and its excessive materialism gained a sinister distinction from
+scandals connected with the ministers Teste and Cubieres, and such
+mysterious crimes as that of Choiseul-Praslin.[35] In vain also did they
+point out that mere riches are not so much a protection to the ministry
+who are in power as a temptation to the majority excluded from power by
+this barrier of wealth. It was in vain that beneath the inflated _haute
+bourgeoisie_ which speculated in railways and solidly supported the
+Church, behind the shopkeeper clique who still remained Voltairian, who
+enviously applauded the pamphlets of Cormenin on the luxury of the
+court, and who were bitterly satirized by the pencil of Daumier and
+Gavarni, did the thinkers give voice to the mutterings of an immense
+industrial proletariat, which were re-echoing throughout the whole of
+western Europe.
+
+
+  Guizot's Foreign Policy.
+
+  Campaign of the banquets.
+
+In face of this tragic contrast Guizot remained unmoved, blinded by the
+superficial brilliance of apparent success and prosperity. He adorned by
+flights of eloquence his invariable theme: no new laws, no reforms, no
+foreign complications, the policy of material interests. He preserved
+his yielding attitude towards Great Britain in the affair of the right
+of search in 1841, and in the affair of the missionary Pritchard at
+Tahiti (1843-1845). And when the marriage of the duc de Montpensier with
+a Spanish infanta in 1846 had broken this _entente cordiale_ to which he
+clung, it was only to yield in turn to Metternich, when he took
+possession of Cracow, the last remnant of Poland, to protect the
+_Sonderbund_ in Switzerland, to discourage the Liberal ardour of Pius
+IX., and to hand over the education of France to the Ultramontane
+clergy. Still further strengthened by the elections of 1846, he refused
+the demands of the Opposition formed by a coalition of the Left Centre
+and the Radical party for parliamentary and electoral reform, which
+would have excluded the officials from the Chambers, reduced the
+electoral qualification to 100 francs, and added to the number of the
+electors the _capacitaires_ whose competence was guaranteed by their
+education. For Guizot the whole country was represented by the "_pays
+legal_," consisting of the king, the ministers, the deputies and the
+electors. When the Opposition appealed to the country, he flung down a
+disdainful challenge to what "les brouillons et les badauds appellent le
+peuple." The challenge was taken up by all the parties of the Opposition
+in the campaign of the banquets got up somewhat artificially in 1847 in
+favour of the extension of the franchise. The monarchy had arrived at
+such a state of weakness and corruption that a determined minority was
+sufficient to overthrow it. The prohibition of a last banquet in Paris
+precipitated the catastrophe. The monarchy which for fifteen years had
+overcome its adversaries collapsed on the 24th of February 1848 to the
+astonishment of all.
+
+
+  The Revolution of Feb. 24, 1848.
+
+The industrial population of the faubourgs on its way towards the centre
+of the town was welcomed by the National Guard, among cries of "Vive la
+reforme." Barricades were raised after the unfortunate incident of the
+firing on the crowd in the Boulevard des Capucines. On the 23rd Guizot's
+cabinet resigned, abandoned by the _petite bourgeoisie_, on whose
+support they thought they could depend. The heads of the Left Centre and
+the dynastic Left, Mole and Thiers, declined the offered leadership.
+Odilon Barrot accepted it, and Bugeaud, commander-in-chief of the first
+military division, who had begun to attack the barricades, was recalled.
+But it was too late. In face of the insurrection which had now taken
+possession of the whole capital, Louis Philippe decided to abdicate in
+favour of his grandson, the comte de Paris. But it was too late also to
+be content with the regency of the duchess of Orleans. It was now the
+turn of the Republic, and it was proclaimed by Lamartine in the name of
+the provisional government elected by the Chamber under the pressure of
+the mob.
+
+
+  The Provisional Government.
+
+This provisional government with Dupont de l'Eure as its president,
+consisted of Lamartine for foreign affairs, Cremieux for justice,
+Ledru-Rollin for the interior, Carnot for public instruction, Gondchaux
+for finance, Arago for the navy, and Bedeau for war. Garnier-Pages was
+mayor of Paris. But, as in 1830, the republican-socialist party had set
+up a rival government at the Hotel de Ville, including L. Blanc, A.
+Marrast, Flocon, and the workman Albert, which bid fair to involve
+discord and civil war. But this time the Palais Bourbon was not
+victorious over the Hotel de Ville. It had to consent to a fusion of the
+two bodies, in which, however, the predominating elements were the
+moderate republicans. It was doubtful what would eventually be the
+policy of the new government. One party, seeing that in spite of the
+changes in the last sixty years of all political institutions, the
+position of the people had not been improved, demanded a reform of
+society itself, the abolition of the privileged position of property,
+the only obstacle to equality, and as an emblem hoisted the red flag.
+The other party wished to maintain society on the basis of its ancient
+institutions, and rallied round the tricolour.
+
+
+  Universal suffrage.
+
+  The Executive Commission.
+
+The first collision took place as to the form which the revolution of
+1848 was to take. Were they to remain faithful to their original
+principles, as Lamartine wished, and accept the decision of the country
+as supreme, or were they, as the revolutionaries under Ledru-Rollin
+claimed, to declare the republic of Paris superior to the universal
+suffrage of an insufficiently educated people? On the 5th of March the
+government, under the pressure of the Parisian clubs, decided in favour
+of an immediate reference to the people, and direct universal suffrage,
+and adjourned it till the 26th of April. In this fateful and unexpected
+decision, which instead of adding to the electorate the educated
+classes, refused by Guizot, admitted to it the unqualified masses,
+originated the Constituent Assembly of the 4th of May 1848. The
+provisional government having resigned, the republican and
+anti-socialist majority on the 9th of May entrusted the supreme power to
+an executive commission consisting of five members: Arago, Marie,
+Garnier-Pages, Lamartine and Ledru-Rollin. But the spell was already
+broken. This revolution which had been peacefully effected with the most
+generous aspirations, in the hope of abolishing poverty by organizing
+industry on other bases than those of competition and capitalism, and
+which had at once aroused the fraternal sympathy of the nations, was
+doomed to be abortive.
+
+The result of the general election, the return of a constituent assembly
+predominantly moderate if not monarchical, dashed the hopes of those who
+had looked for the establishment, by a peaceful revolution, of their
+ideal socialist state; but they were not prepared to yield without a
+struggle, and in Paris itself they commanded a formidable force. In
+spite of the preponderance of the "tricolour" party in the provisional
+government, so long as the voice of France had not spoken, the
+socialists, supported by the Parisian proletariat, had exercised an
+influence on policy out of all proportion to their relative numbers or
+personal weight. By the decree of the 24th of February the provisional
+government had solemnly accepted the principle of the "right to work,"
+and decided to establish "national workshops" for the unemployed; at the
+same time a sort of industrial parliament was established at the
+Luxembourg, under the presidency of Louis Blanc, with the object of
+preparing a scheme for the organization of labour; and, lastly, by the
+decree of the 8th of March the property qualification for enrolment in
+the National Guard had been abolished and the workmen were supplied with
+arms. The socialists thus formed, in some sort, a state within the
+state, with a government, an organization and an armed force.
+
+
+  The June Days.
+
+In the circumstances a conflict was inevitable; and on the 15th of May
+an armed mob, headed by Raspail, Blanqui and Barbes, and assisted by the
+proletariat Guard, attempted to overwhelm the Assembly. They were
+defeated by the bourgeois battalions of the National Guard; but the
+situation none the less remained highly critical. The national workshops
+were producing the results that might have been foreseen. It was
+impossible to provide remunerative work even for the genuine unemployed,
+and of the thousands who applied the greater number were employed in
+perfectly useless digging and refilling; soon even this expedient
+failed, and those for whom work could not be invented were given a half
+wage of 1 franc a day. Even this pitiful dole, with no obligation to
+work, proved attractive, and all over France workmen threw up their jobs
+and streamed to Paris, where they swelled the ranks of the army under
+the red flag. It was soon clear that the continuance of this experiment
+would mean financial ruin; it had been proved by the _emeute_ of the
+15th of May that it constituted a perpetual menace to the state; and
+the government decided to end it. The method chosen was scarcely a happy
+one. On the 21st of June M. de Falloux decided in the name of the
+parliamentary commission on labour that the workmen should be discharged
+within three days and such as were able-bodied should be forced to
+enlist. A furious insurrection at once broke out. Throughout the whole
+of the 24th, 25th and 26th of June, the eastern industrial quarter of
+Paris, led by Pujol, carried on a furious struggle against the western
+quarter, led by Cavaignac, who had been appointed dictator. Vanquished
+and decimated, first by fighting and afterwards by deportation, the
+socialist party was crushed. But they dragged down the Republic in their
+ruin. This had already become unpopular with the peasants, exasperated
+by the new land tax of 45 centimes imposed in order to fill the empty
+treasury, and with the _bourgeois_, in terror of the power of the
+revolutionary clubs and hard hit by the stagnation of business. By the
+"massacres" of the June Days the working classes were also alienated
+from it; and abiding fear of the "Reds" did the rest. "France," wrote
+the duke of Wellington at this time, "needs a Napoleon! I cannot yet see
+him ... Where is he?"[36]
+
+
+  The Constitution of 1848.
+
+France indeed needed, or thought she needed, a Napoleon; and the demand
+was soon to be supplied. The granting of universal suffrage to a society
+with Imperialist sympathies, and unfitted to reconcile the principles of
+order with the consequences of liberty, was indeed bound, now that the
+political balance in France was so radically changed, to prove a
+formidable instrument of reaction; and this was proved by the election
+of the president of the Republic. On the 4th of November 1848 was
+promulgated the new constitution, obviously the work of inexperienced
+hands, proclaiming a democratic republic, direct universal suffrage and
+the separation of powers; there was to be a single permanent assembly of
+750 members elected for a term of three years by the _scrutin de liste_,
+which was to vote on the laws prepared by a council of state elected by
+the Assembly for six years; the executive power was delegated to a
+president elected for four years by direct universal suffrage, i.e. on a
+broader basis than that of the chamber, and not eligible for
+re-election; he was to choose his ministers, who, like him, would be
+responsible. Finally, all revision was made impossible since it involved
+obtaining three times in succession a majority of three-quarters of the
+deputies in a special assembly. It was in vain that M. Grevy, in the
+name of those who perceived the obvious and inevitable risk of creating,
+under the name of a president, a monarch and more than a king, proposed
+that the head of the state should be no more than a removable president
+of the ministerial council. Lamartine, thinking that he was sure to be
+the choice of the electors under universal suffrage, won over the
+support of the Chamber, which did not even take the precaution of
+rendering ineligible the members of families which had reigned over
+France. It made the presidency an office dependent upon popular
+acclamation.
+
+
+  Louis Napoleon.
+
+The election was keenly contested; the socialists adopted as their
+candidate Ledru-Rollin, the republicans Cavaignac; and the recently
+reorganized Imperialist party Prince Bonaparte. Louis Napoleon, unknown
+in 1835, and forgotten or despised since 1840, had in the last eight
+years advanced sufficiently in the public estimation to be elected to
+the Constituent Assembly in 1848 by five departments. He owed this rapid
+increase of popularity partly to blunders of the government of July,
+which had unwisely aroused the memory of the country, filled as it was
+with recollections of the Empire, and partly to Louis Napoleon's
+campaign carried on from his prison at Ham by means of pamphlets of
+socialistic tendencies. Moreover, the monarchists, led by Thiers and the
+committee of the Rue de Poitiers, were no longer content even with the
+safe dictatorship of the upright Cavaignac, and joined forces with the
+Bonapartists. On the 10th of December the peasants gave over 5,000,000
+votes to a name: Napoleon, which stood for order at all costs, against
+1,400,000 for Cavaignac.
+
+
+  Expedition to Rome.
+
+For three years there went on an indecisive struggle between the
+heterogeneous Assembly and the prince who was silently awaiting his
+opportunity. He chose as his ministers men but little inclined towards
+republicanism, for preference Orleanists, the chief of whom was Odilon
+Barrot. In order to strengthen his position, he endeavoured to
+conciliate the reactionary parties, without committing himself to any of
+them. The chief instance of this was the expedition to Rome, voted by
+the Catholics with the object of restoring the papacy, which had been
+driven out by Garibaldi and Mazzini. The prince-president was also in
+favour of it, as beginning the work of European renovation and
+reconstruction which he already looked upon as his mission. General
+Oudinot's entry into Rome provoked in Paris a foolish insurrection in
+favour of the Roman republic, that of the Chateau d'Eau, which was
+crushed on the 13th of June 1849. On the other hand, when Pius IX.,
+though only just restored, began to yield to the general movement of
+reaction, the president demanded that he should set up a Liberal
+government. The pope's dilatory reply having been accepted by his
+ministry, the president replaced it on the 1st of November by the
+Fould-Rouher cabinet.
+
+
+  The Legislative Assembly.
+
+  "Loi Falloux."
+
+  Electoral law of May 31.
+
+This looked like a declaration of war against the Catholic and
+monarchist majority in the Legislative Assembly which had been elected
+on the 28th of May in a moment of panic. But the prince-president again
+pretended to be playing the game of the Orleanists, as he had done in
+the case of the Constituent-Assembly. The complementary elections of
+March and April 1850 having resulted in an unexpected victory for the
+advanced republicans, which struck terror into the reactionary leaders,
+Thiers, Berryer and Montalembert, the president gave his countenance to
+a clerical campaign against the republicans at home. The Church, which
+had failed in its attempts to gain control of the university under Louis
+XVIII. and Charles X., aimed at setting up a rival establishment of its
+own. The _Loi Falloux_ of the 15th of March 1850, under the pretext of
+establishing the liberty of instruction promised by the charter, again
+placed the teaching of the university under the direction of the
+Catholic Church, as a measure of social safety, and, by the facilities
+which it granted to the Church for propagating teaching in harmony with
+its own dogmas, succeeded in obstructing for half a century the work of
+intellectual enfranchisement effected by the men of the 18th century and
+of the Revolution. The electoral law of the 31st of May was another
+class law directed against subversive ideas. It required as a proof of
+three years' domicile the entries in the record of direct taxes, thus
+cutting down universal suffrage by taking away the vote from the
+industrial population, which was not as a rule stationary. The law of
+the 16th of July aggravated the severity of the press restrictions by
+re-establishing the "caution money" (_cautionnement_) deposited by
+proprietors and editors of papers with the government as a guarantee of
+good behaviour. Finally, a skilful interpretation of the law on clubs
+and political societies suppressed about this time all the Republican
+societies. It was now their turn to be crushed like the socialists.
+
+
+  Struggle between the President and the Assembly.
+
+But the president had only joined in Montalembert's cry of "Down with
+the Republicans!" in the hope of effecting a revision of the
+constitution without having recourse to a _coup d'etat_. His concessions
+only increased the boldness of the monarchists; while they had only
+accepted Louis Napoleon as president in opposition to the Republic and
+as a step in the direction of the monarchy. A conflict was now
+inevitable between his personal policy and the majority of the Chamber,
+who were, moreover, divided into legitimists and Orleanists, in spite of
+the death of Louis Philippe in August 1850. Louis Napoleon skilfully
+exploited their projects for a restoration of the monarchy, which he
+knew to be unpopular in the country, and which gave him the opportunity
+of furthering his own personal ambitions. From the 8th of August to the
+12th of November 1850 he went about France stating the case for a
+revision of the constitution in speeches which he varied according to
+each place; he held reviews, at which cries of "_Vive Napoleon_" showed
+that the army was with him; he superseded General Changarnier, on whose
+arms the parliament relied for the projected monarchical _coup d'etat_;
+he replaced his Orleanist ministry by obscure men devoted to his own
+cause, such as Morny, Fleury and Persigny, and gathered round him
+officers of the African army, broken men like General Saint-Arnaud; in
+fact he practically declared open war.
+
+
+  Coup d'Etat of Dec. 2, 1851.
+
+His reply to the votes of censure passed by the Assembly, and their
+refusal to increase his civil list, was to hint at a vast communistic
+plot in order to scare the bourgeoisie, and to denounce the electoral
+law of the 31st of May in order to gain the support of the mass of the
+people. The Assembly retaliated by throwing out the proposal for a
+partial reform of that article of the constitution which prohibited the
+re-election of the president and the re-establishment of universal
+suffrage (July). All hope of a peaceful issue was at an end. When the
+questors called upon the Chamber to have posted up in all barracks the
+decree of the 6th of May 1848 concerning the right of the Assembly to
+demand the support of the troops if attacked, the Mountain, dreading a
+restoration of the monarchy, voted with the Bonapartists against the
+measure, thus disarming the legislative power. Louis Napoleon saw his
+opportunity. On the night between the 1st and 2nd of December 1851, the
+anniversary of Austerlitz, he dissolved the Chamber, re-established
+universal suffrage, had all the party leaders arrested, and summoned a
+new assembly to prolong his term of office for ten years. The deputies
+who had met under Berryer at the _Mairie_ of the tenth arrondissement to
+defend the constitution and proclaim the deposition of Louis Napoleon
+were scattered by the troops at Mazas and Mont Valerian. The resistance
+organized by the republicans within Paris under Victor Hugo was soon
+subdued by the intoxicated soldiers. The more serious resistance in the
+departments was crushed by declaring a state of siege and by the "mixed
+commissions." The plebiscite of the 20th of December ratified by a huge
+majority the _coup d'etat_ in favour of the prince-president, who alone
+reaped the benefit of the excesses of the Republicans and the
+reactionary passions of the monarchists.
+
+
+  The Second Empire.
+
+The second attempt to revive the principle of 1789 only served as a
+preface to the restoration of the Empire. The new anti-parliamentary
+constitution of the 14th of January 1852 was to a large extent merely a
+repetition of that of the year VIII. All executive power was entrusted
+to the head of the state, who was solely responsible to the people, now
+powerless to exercise any of their rights. He was to nominate the
+members of the council of state, whose duty it was to prepare the laws,
+and of the senate, a body permanently established as a constituent part
+of the empire. One innovation was made, namely, that the Legislative
+Body was elected by universal suffrage, but it had no right of
+initiative, all laws being proposed by the executive power. This new and
+violent political change was rapidly followed by the same consequence as
+had attended that of Brumaire. On the 2nd of December 1852, France,
+still under the effect of the Napoleonic _virus_, and the fear of
+anarchy, conferred almost unanimously by a plebiscite the supreme power,
+with the title of emperor, upon Napoleon III.
+
+But though the machinery of government was almost the same under the
+Second Empire as it had been under the First, the principles upon which
+its founder based it were different. The function of the Empire, as he
+loved to repeat, was to guide the people internally towards justice and
+externally towards perpetual peace. Holding his power by universal
+suffrage, and having frequently, from his prison or in exile, reproached
+former oligarchical governments with neglecting social questions, he set
+out to solve them by organizing a system of government based on the
+principles of the "Napoleonic Idea," i.e. of the emperor, the elect of
+the people as the representative of the democracy, and as such supreme;
+and of himself, the representative of the great Napoleon, "who had
+sprung armed from the Revolution like Minerva from the head of Jove," as
+the guardian of the social gains of the revolutionary epoch. But he
+soon proved that social justice did not mean liberty; for he acted in
+such a way that those of the principles of 1848 which he had preserved
+became a mere sham. He proceeded to paralyze all those active national
+forces which tend to create the public spirit of a people, such as
+parliament, universal suffrage, the press, education and associations.
+The Legislative Body was not allowed either to elect its own president
+or to regulate its own procedure, or to propose a law or an amendment,
+or to vote on the budget in detail, or to make its deliberations public.
+It was a dumb parliament. Similarly, universal suffrage was supervised
+and controlled by means of official candidature, by forbidding free
+speech and action in electoral matters to the Opposition, and by a
+skilful adjustment of the electoral districts in such a way as to
+overwhelm the Liberal vote in the mass of the rural population. The
+press was subjected to a system of _cautionnements_, i.e. "caution
+money," deposited as a guarantee of good behaviour, and
+_avertissements_, i.e. requests by the authorities to cease publication
+of certain articles, under pain of suspension or suppression; while
+books were subject to a censorship. France was like a sickroom, where
+nobody might speak aloud. In order to counteract the opposition of
+individuals, a _surveillance_ of suspects was instituted. Orsini's
+attack on the emperor in 1858, though purely Italian in its motive,
+served as a pretext for increasing the severity of this regime by the
+law of general security (_surete generale_) which authorized the
+internment, exile or deportation of any suspect without trial. In the
+same way public instruction was strictly supervised, the teaching of
+philosophy was suppressed in the _Lycees_, and the disciplinary powers
+of the administration were increased. In fact for seven years France had
+no political life. The Empire was carried on by a series of plebiscites.
+Up to 1857 the Opposition did not exist; from then till 1860 it was
+reduced to five members: Darimon, Emile Ollivier, Henon, J. Favre and E.
+Picard. The royalists waited inactive after the new and unsuccessful
+attempt made at Frohsdorf in 1853, by a combination of the legitimists
+and Orleanists, to re-create a living monarchy out of the ruin of two
+royal families. Thus the events of that ominous night in December were
+closing the future to the new generations as well as to those who had
+grown up during forty years of liberty.
+
+
+  Material prosperity a condition of despotism.
+
+But it was not enough to abolish liberty by conjuring up the spectre of
+demagogy. It had to be forgotten, the great silence had to be covered by
+the noise of festivities and material enjoyment, the imagination of the
+French people had to be distracted from public affairs by the taste for
+work, the love of gain, the passion for good living. The success of the
+imperial despotism, as of any other, was bound up with that material
+prosperity which would make all interests dread the thought of
+revolution. Napoleon III., therefore, looked for support to the clergy,
+the great financiers, industrial magnates and landed proprietors. He
+revived on his own account the "Let us grow rich" of 1840. Under the
+influence of the Saint-Simonians and men of business great credit
+establishments were instituted and vast public works entered upon: the
+Credit foncier de France, the Credit mobilier, the conversion of the
+railways into six great companies between 1852 and 1857. The rage for
+speculation was increased by the inflow of Californian and Australian
+gold, and consumption was facilitated by a general fall in prices
+between 1856 and 1860, due to an economic revolution which was soon to
+overthrow the tariff wall, as it had done already in England. Thus
+French activity flourished exceedingly between 1852 and 1857, and was
+merely temporarily checked by the crisis of 1857. The universal
+Exhibition of 1855 was its culminating point. Art felt the effects of
+this increase of comfort and luxury. The great enthusiasms of the
+romantic period were over; philosophy became sceptical and literature
+merely amusing. The festivities of the court at Compiegne set the
+fashion for the bourgeoisie, satisfied with this energetic government
+which kept such good guard over their bank balances.
+
+
+  Napoleon III.'s ideas.
+
+If the Empire was strong, the emperor was weak. At once headstrong and a
+dreamer, he was full of rash plans, but irresolute in carrying them
+out. An absolute despot, he remained what his life had made him, a
+conspirator through the very mysticism of his mental habit, and a
+revolutionary by reason of his demagogic imperialism and his democratic
+chauvinism. In his opinion the artificial work of the congress of
+Vienna, involving the downfall of his own family and of France, ought to
+be destroyed, and Europe organized as a collection of great industrial
+states, united by community. of interests and bound together by
+commercial treaties, and expressing this unity by periodical congresses
+presided over by himself, and by universal exhibitions. In this way he
+would reconcile the revolutionary principle of the supremacy of the
+people with historical tradition, a thing which neither the Restoration
+nor the July monarchy nor the Republic of 1848 had been able to achieve.
+Universal suffrage, the organization of Rumanian, Italian and German
+nationality, and commercial liberty; this was to be the work of the
+Revolution. But the creation of great states side by side with France
+brought with it the necessity for looking for territorial compensation
+elsewhere, and consequently for violating the principle of nationality
+and abjuring his system of economic peace. Napoleon III.'s foreign
+policy was as contradictory as his policy in home affairs, "L'Empire,
+c'est la paix," was his cry; and he proceeded to make war.
+
+
+  The Crimean War.
+
+So long as his power was not yet established, Napoleon III. made
+especial efforts to reassure European opinion, which had been made
+uneasy by his previous protestations against the treaties of 1815. The
+Crimean War, in which, supported by England and the king of Sardinia, he
+upheld against Russia the policy of the integrity of the Turkish empire,
+a policy traditional in France since Francis I., won him the adherence
+both of the old parties and and the Liberals. And this war was the
+prototype of all the rest. It was entered upon with no clearly defined
+military purpose, and continued in a hesitating way. This was the cause,
+after the victory of the allies at the Alma (September 14, 1854), of the
+long and costly siege of Sevastopol (September 8, 1855). Napoleon III.,
+whose joy was at its height owing to the signature of a peace which
+excluded Russia from the Black Sea, and to the birth of the prince
+imperial, which ensured the continuation of his dynasty, thought that
+the time had arrived to make a beginning in applying his system. Count
+Walewski, his minister for foreign affairs, gave a sudden and unexpected
+extension of scope to the deliberations of the congress which met at
+Paris in 1856 by inviting the plenipotentiaries to consider the
+questions of Greece, Rome, Naples, &c. This motion contained the
+principle of all the upheavals which were to effect such changes in
+Europe between 1859 and 1871. It was Cavour and Piedmont who immediately
+benefited by it, for thanks to Napoleon III. they were able to lay the
+Italian question before an assembly of diplomatic Europe.
+
+
+  The War in Italy.
+
+It was not Orsini's attack on the 14th of January 1858 which brought
+this question before Napoleon. It had never ceased to occupy him since
+he had taken part in the patriotic conspiracies in Italy in his youth.
+The triumph of his armies in the East now gave him the power necessary
+to accomplish this mission upon which he had set his heart. The
+suppression of public opinion made it impossible for him to be
+enlightened as to the conflict between the interests of the country and
+his own generous visions. The sympathy of all Europe was with Italy,
+torn for centuries past between so many masters; under Alexander II.
+Russia, won over since the interview of Stuttgart by the emperor's
+generosity rather than conquered by armed force, offered no opposition
+to this act of justice; while England applauded it from the first. The
+emperor, divided between the empress Eugenie, who as a Spaniard and a
+devout Catholic was hostile to anything which might threaten the papacy,
+and Prince Napoleon, who as brother-in-law of Victor Emmanuel favoured
+the cause of Piedmont, hoped to conciliate both sides by setting up an
+Italian federation, intending to reserve the presidency of it to Pope
+Pius IX., as a mark of respect to the moral authority of the Church.
+Moreover, the very difficulty of the undertaking appealed to the
+emperor, elated by his recent success in the Crimea. At the secret
+meeting between Napoleon and Count Cavour (July 20, 1858) the eventual
+armed intervention of France, demanded by Orsini before he mounted the
+scaffold, was definitely promised.
+
+
+  The peace of Villafranca.
+
+The ill-advised Austrian ultimatum demanding the immediate cessation of
+Piedmont's preparations for war precipitated the Italian expedition. On
+the 3rd of May 1859 Napoleon declared his intention of making Italy
+"free from the Alps to the Adriatic." As he had done four years ago, he
+plunged into the war with no settled scheme and without preparation; he
+held out great hopes, but without reckoning what efforts would be
+necessary to realize them. Two months later, in spite of the victories
+of Montebello, Magenta and Solferino, he suddenly broke off, and signed
+the patched-up peace of Villafranca with Francis Joseph (July 9).
+Austria ceded Lombardy to Napoleon III., who in turn ceded it to Victor
+Emmanuel; Modena and Tuscany were restored to their respective dukes,
+the Romagna to the pope, now president of an Italian federation. The
+mountain had brought forth a mouse.
+
+
+  The Italian problem.
+
+The reasons for this breakdown on the part of the emperor in the midst
+of his apparent triumph were many. Neither Magenta nor Solferino had
+been decisive battles. Further, his idea of a federation was menaced by
+the revolutionary movement which seemed likely to drive out all the
+princes of central Italy, and to involve him in an unwelcome dispute
+with the French clerical party. Moreover, he had forgotten to reckon
+with the Germanic Confederation, which was bound to come to the
+assistance of Austria. The mobilization of Prussia on the Rhine,
+combined with military difficulties and the risk of a defeat in Venetian
+territory, rather damped his enthusiasm, and decided him to put an end
+to the war. The armistice fell upon the Italians as a bolt from the
+blue, convincing them that they had been betrayed; on all sides despair
+drove them to sacrifice their jealously guarded independence to national
+unity. On the one hand the Catholics were agitating throughout all
+Europe to obtain the independence of the papal territory; and the French
+republicans were protesting, on the other hand, against the abandonment
+of those revolutionary traditions, the revival of which they had hailed
+so enthusiastically. The emperor, unprepared for the turn which events
+had taken, attempted to disentangle this confusion by suggesting a fresh
+congress of the Powers, which should reconcile dynastic interests with
+those of the people. After a while he gave up the attempt and resigned
+himself to the position, his actions having had more wide-reaching
+results than he had wished. The treaty of Zurich proclaimed the
+fallacious principle of non-intervention (November 10, 1859); and then,
+by the treaty of Turin of the 24th of May 1860, Napoleon threw over his
+ill-timed confederation. He conciliated the mistrust of Great Britain by
+replacing Walewski, who was hostile to his policy, by Thouvenel, an
+anti-clerical and a supporter of the English alliance, and he
+counterbalanced the increase of the new Italian kingdom by the
+acquisition of Nice and Savoy. Napoleon, like all French governments,
+only succeeded in finding a provisional solution for the Italian
+problem.
+
+
+  Catholic and protectionist opposition.
+
+But this solution would only hold good so long as the emperor was in a
+powerful position. Now this Italian war, in which he had given his
+support to revolution beyond the Alps, and, though unintentionally,
+compromised the temporal power of the popes, had given great offence to
+the Catholics, to whose support the establishment of the Empire was
+largely due. A keen Catholic opposition sprang up, voiced in L.
+Veuillot's paper the _Univers_, and was not silenced even by the Syrian
+expedition (1860) in favour of the Catholic Maronites, who were being
+persecuted by the Druses. On the other hand, the commercial treaty with
+Great Britain which was signed in January 1860, and which ratified the
+free-trade policy of Richard Cobden and Michael Chevalier, had brought
+upon French industry the sudden shock of foreign competition. Thus both
+Catholics and protectionists made the discovery that absolutism may be
+an excellent thing when it serves their ambitions or interests, but a
+bad thing when it is exercised at their expense. But Napoleon, in order
+to restore the prestige of the Empire before the newly-awakened
+hostility of public opinion, tried to gain from the Left the support
+which he had lost from the Right. After the return from Italy the
+general amnesty of the 16th of August 1859 had marked the evolution of
+the absolutist empire towards the liberal, and later parliamentary
+empire, which was to last for ten years.
+
+
+  The Liberal Empire.
+
+Napoleon began by removing the gag which was keeping the country in
+silence. On the 24th of November 1860, "by a _coup d'etat_ matured
+during his solitary meditations," like a conspirator in his love of
+hiding his mysterious thoughts even from his ministers, he granted to
+the Chambers the right to vote an address annually in answer to the
+speech from the throne, and to the press the right of reporting
+parliamentary debates. He counted on the latter concession to hold in
+check the growing Catholic opposition, which was becoming more and more
+alarmed by the policy of _laissez-faire_ practised by the emperor in
+Italy. But the government majority already showed some signs of
+independence. The right of voting on the budget by sections, granted by
+the emperor in 1861, was a new weapon given to his adversaries.
+Everything conspired in their favour: the anxiety of those candid
+friends who were calling attention to the defective budget; the
+commercial crisis, aggravated by the American Civil War; and above all,
+the restless spirit of the emperor, who had annoyed his opponents in
+1860 by insisting on an alliance with Great Britain in order forcibly to
+open the Chinese ports for trade, in 1863 by his ill-fated attempt to
+put down a republic and set up a Latin empire in Mexico in favour of the
+archduke Maximilian of Austria, and from 1861 to 1863 by embarking on
+colonizing experiments in Cochin China and Annam.
+
+
+  The policy of nationalism.
+
+The same inconsistencies occurred in the emperor's European politics.
+The support which he had given to the Italian cause had aroused the
+eager hopes of other nations. The proclamation of the kingdom of Italy
+on the 18th of February 1861 after the rapid annexation of Tuscany and
+the kingdom of Naples had proved the danger of half-measures. But when a
+concession, however narrow, had been made to the liberty of one nation,
+it could hardly be refused to the no less legitimate aspirations of the
+rest. In 1863 these "new rights" again clamoured loudly for recognition,
+in Poland, in Schleswig and Holstein, in Italy, now indeed united, but
+with neither frontiers nor capital, and in the Danubian principalities.
+In order to extricate himself from the Polish _impasse_, the emperor
+again had recourse to his expedient--always fruitless because always
+inopportune--of a congress. He was again unsuccessful: England refused
+even to admit the principle of a congress, while Austria, Prussia and
+Russia gave their adhesion only on conditions which rendered it futile,
+i.e. they reserved the vital questions of Venetia and Poland.
+
+Thus Napoleon had yet again to disappoint the hopes of Italy, let Poland
+be crushed, and Germany triumph over Denmark in the Schleswig-Holstein
+question. These inconsistencies resulted in a combination of the
+opposition parties, Catholic, Liberal and Republican, in the _Union
+liberale_. The elections of May-June 1863 gained the Opposition forty
+seats and a leader, Thiers, who at once urgently gave voice to its
+demand for "the necessary liberties."
+
+
+  The regime of concessions.
+
+It would have been difficult for the emperor to mistake the importance
+of this manifestation of French opinion, and in view of his
+international failures, impossible to repress it. The sacrifice of
+Persigny, minister of the interior, who was responsible for the
+elections, the substitution for the ministers without portfolio of a
+sort of presidency of the council filled by Rouher, the "Vice-Emperor,"
+and the nomination of V. Duruy, an anti-clerical, as minister of public
+instruction, in reply to those attacks of the Church which were to
+culminate in the Syllabus of 1864, all indicated a distinct
+rapprochement between the emperor and the Left. But though the
+opposition represented by Thiers was rather constitutional than
+dynastic, there was another and irreconcilable opposition, that of the
+amnestied or voluntarily exiled republicans, of whom Victor Hugo was the
+eloquent mouthpiece. Thus those who had formerly constituted the
+governing classes were again showing signs of their ambition to govern.
+There appeared to be some risk that this movement among the
+_bourgeoisie_ might spread to the people. As Antaeus recruited his
+strength by touching the earth Napoleon believed that he would
+consolidate his menaced power by again turning to the labouring masses,
+by whom that power had been established.
+
+
+  Industrial policy of the Empire.
+
+This industrial policy he embarked upon as much from motives of interest
+as from sympathy, out of opposition to the _bourgeoisie_, which was
+ambitious of governing or desirous of his overthrow. His course was all
+the easier, since he had only to exploit the prejudices of the working
+classes. They had never forgotten the _loi Chapelle_ of 1791, which by
+forbidding all combinations among the workmen had placed them at the
+mercy of their employers, nor had they forgotten how the limited
+suffrage had conferred upon capital a political monopoly which had put
+it out of reach of the law, nor how each time they had left their
+position of rigid isolation in order to save the Charter or universal
+suffrage, the triumphant _bourgeoisie_ had repaid them at the last with
+neglect. The silence of public opinion under the Empire and the
+prosperous state of business had completed the separation of the labour
+party from the political parties. The visit of an elected and paid
+labour delegation to the Universal Exhibition of 1862 in London gave the
+emperor an opportunity for re-establishing relations with that party,
+and these relations were to his mind all the more profitable, since the
+labour party, by refusing to associate their social and industrial
+claims with the political ambitions of the _bourgeoisie_, maintained a
+neutral attitude between the parties, and could, if necessary, divide
+them, while by its keen criticism of society it aroused the conservative
+instincts of the _bourgeoisie_ and consequently checked their enthusiasm
+for liberty. A law of the 23rd of May 1863 gave the workmen the right,
+as in England, to save money by creating co-operative societies. Another
+law, of the 25th of May 1864, gave them the right to enforce better
+conditions of labour by organizing strikes. Still further, the emperor
+permitted the workmen to imitate their employers by establishing unions
+for the permanent protection of their interests. And finally, when the
+_ouvriers_, with the characteristic French tendency to insist on the
+universal application of a theory, wished to substitute for the narrow
+utilitarianism of the English trade-unions the ideas common to the
+wage-earning classes of the whole world, he put no obstacles in the way
+of their leader M. Tolain's plan for founding an International
+Association of Workers (_Societe Internationale des Travailleurs_). At
+the same time he encouraged the provision made by employers for thrift
+and relief and for improving the condition of the working-classes.
+
+
+  Sadowa (1866).
+
+Thus assured of support, the emperor, through the mouthpiece of M.
+Rouher, who was a supporter of the absolutist regime, was able to refuse
+all fresh claims on the part of the Liberals. He was aided by the
+cessation of the industrial crisis as the American civil war came to an
+end, by the apparent closing of the Roman question by the convention of
+the 15th of September, which guaranteed to the papal states the
+protection of Italy, and finally by the treaty of the 30th of October
+1864, which temporarily put an end to the crisis of the
+Schleswig-Holstein question. But after 1865 the momentary agreement
+which had united Austria and Prussia for the purpose of administering
+the conquered duchies gave place to a silent antipathy which foreboded a
+rupture. Yet, though the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 was not unexpected,
+its rapid termination and fateful outcome came as a severe and sudden
+shock to France. Napoleon had hoped to gain fresh prestige for his
+throne and new influence for France by an intervention at the proper
+moment between combatants equally matched and mutually exhausted. His
+calculations were upset and his hopes dashed by the battle of Sadowa
+(Koniggratz) on the 4th of July. The treaty of Prague put an end to the
+secular rivalry of Habsburg and Hohenzollern for the hegemony of
+Germany, which had been France's opportunity; and Prussia could afford
+to humour the just claims of Napoleon by establishing between her North
+German Confederation and the South German states the illusory frontier
+of the Main. The belated efforts of the French emperor to obtain
+"compensation" on the left bank of the Rhine, at the expense of the
+South German states, made matters worse. France realized with an angry
+surprise that on her eastern frontier had arisen a military power by
+which her influence, if not her existence, was threatened; that in the
+name of the principle of nationality unwilling populations had been
+brought under the sway of a dynasty by tradition militant and
+aggressive, by tradition the enemy of France; that this new and
+threatening power had destroyed French influence in Italy, which owed
+the acquisition of Venetia to a Prussian alliance and to Prussian arms;
+and that all this had been due to Napoleon, outwitted and outmanoeuvred
+at every turn, since his first interview with Bismarck at Biarritz in
+October 1865.
+
+
+  Further concessions of Napoleon III.
+
+  Struggle between Ollivier and Rouher.
+
+All confidence in the excellence of imperial regime vanished at once.
+Thiers and Jules Favre as representatives of the Opposition denounced in
+the Legislative Body the blunders of 1866. Emile Ollivier split up the
+official majority by the amendment of the 45, and gave it to be
+understood that a reconciliation with the Empire would be impossible
+until the emperor would grant entire liberty. The recall of the French
+troops from Rome, in accordance with the convention of 1864, also led to
+further attacks by the Ultramontane party, who were alarmed for the
+papacy. Napoleon III. felt the necessity for developing "the great act
+of 1860" by the decree of the 19th of January 1867. In spite of Rouher,
+by a secret agreement with Ollivier the right of interpellation was
+restored to the Chambers. Reforms in press supervision and the right of
+holding meetings were promised. It was in vain that M. Rouher tried to
+meet the Liberal opposition by organizing a party for the defence of the
+Empire, the "Union dynastique." But the rapid succession of
+international reverses prevented him from effecting anything.
+
+
+  The year 1867.
+
+The year 1867 was particularly disastrous for the Empire. In Mexico "the
+greatest idea of the reign" ended in a humiliating withdrawal before the
+ultimatum of the United States, while Italy, relying on her new alliance
+with Prussia and already forgetful of her promises, was mobilizing the
+revolutionary forces to complete her unity by conquering Rome. The
+chassepots of Mentana were needed to check the Garibaldians. And when
+the imperial diplomacy made a belated attempt to obtain from the
+victorious Bismarck those territorial compensations on the Rhine, in
+Belgium and in Luxemburg, which it ought to have been possible to exact
+from him earlier at Biarritz, Benedetti added to the mistake of asking
+at the wrong time the humiliation of obtaining nothing (see LUXEMBURG).
+Napoleon did not dare to take courage and confess his weakness. And
+finally was seen the strange contrast of France, though reduced to such
+a state of real weakness, courting the mockery of Europe by a display of
+the external magnificence which concealed her decline. In the Paris
+transformed by Baron Haussmann and now become almost exclusively a city
+of pleasure and frivolity, the opening of the Universal Exhibition was
+marked by Berezowski's attack on the tsar Alexander II., and its success
+was clouded by the tragic fate of the unhappy emperor Maximilian of
+Mexico. Well might Thiers exclaim, "There are no blunders left for us to
+make."
+
+
+  Peace or war.
+
+But the emperor managed to commit still more, of which the consequences
+both for his dynasty and for France were irreparable. Old, infirm and
+embittered, continually keeping his ministers in suspense by the
+uncertainty and secrecy of his plans, surrounded by a people now bent
+almost entirely on pleasure, and urged on by a growing opposition, there
+now remained but two courses open to Napoleon III.: either to arrange a
+peace which should last, or to prepare for a decisive war. He allowed
+himself to drift in the direction of war, but without bringing things to
+a necessary state of preparation. It was in vain that Count Beust
+revived on behalf of the Austrian government the project abandoned by
+Napoleon since 1866 of a settlement on the basis of the _status quo_
+with reciprocal disarmament. Napoleon refused, on hearing from Colonel
+Stoffel, his military attache at Berlin, that Prussia would not agree to
+disarmament. But he was more anxious than he was willing to show. A
+reconstitution of the military organization seemed to him to be
+necessary. This Marshal Niel was unable to obtain either from the
+Bonapartist Opposition, who feared the electors, in whom the old
+patriotism had given place to the commercial or cosmopolitan spirit, or
+from the Republican opposition, who were unwilling to strengthen the
+despotism. Both of them were blinded by party interest to the danger
+from outside.
+
+
+  Action of the revolutionaries.
+
+The emperor's good fortune had departed; he was abandoned by men and
+disappointed by events. He had vainly hoped that, though by the laws of
+May-June 1868, granting the freedom of the press and authorizing
+meetings, he had conceded the right of speech, he would retain the right
+of action; but he had played into the hands of his enemies. Victor
+Hugo's _Chatiments_, the insults of Rochefort's _Lanterne_, the
+subscription for the monument to Baudin, the deputy killed at the
+barricades in 1851, followed by Gambetta's terrible speech against the
+Empire on the occasion of the trial of Delescluze, soon showed that the
+republican party was irreconcilable, and bent on the Republic. On the
+other hand, the Ultramontane party were becoming more and more
+discontented, while the industries formerly protected were equally
+dissatisfied with the free-trade reform. Worse still, the working
+classes had abandoned their political neutrality, which had brought them
+nothing but unpopularity, and gone over to the enemy. Despising
+Proudhon's impassioned attacks on the slavery of communism, they had
+gradually been won over by the collectivist theories of Karl Marx or the
+revolutionary theories of Bakounine, as set forth at the congresses of
+the International. At these Labour congresses, the fame of which was
+only increased by the fact that they were forbidden, it had been
+affirmed that the social emancipation of the worker was inseparable from
+his political emancipation. Henceforth the union between the
+internationalists and the republican bourgeois was an accomplished fact.
+The Empire, taken by surprise, sought to curb both the middle classes
+and the labouring classes, and forced them both into revolutionary
+actions. On every side took place strikes, forming as it were a review
+of the effective forces of the Revolution.
+
+
+  The parliamentary Empire.
+
+The elections of May 1869, made during these disturbances, inflicted
+upon the Empire a serious moral defeat. In spite of the revival by the
+government of the cry of the red terror, Ollivier, the advocate of
+conciliation, was rejected by Paris, while 40 irreconcilables and 116
+members of the Third Party were elected. Concessions had to be made to
+these, so by the _senatus-consulte_ of the 8th of September 1869 a
+parliamentary monarchy was substituted for personal government. On the
+2nd of January 1870 Ollivier was placed at the head of the first
+homogeneous, united and responsible ministry. But the republican party,
+unlike the country, which hailed this reconciliation of liberty and
+order, refused to be content with the liberties they had won; they
+refused all compromise, declaring themselves more than ever decided upon
+the overthrow of the Empire. The murder of the journalist Victor Noir by
+Pierre Bonaparte, a member of the imperial family, gave the
+revolutionaries their long desired opportunity (January 10). But the
+_emeute_ ended in a failure, and the emperor was able to answer the
+personal threats against him by the overwhelming victory of the
+plebiscite of the 8th of May 1870.
+
+
+  The Franco-German War.
+
+  The Hohenzollern candidature.
+
+But this success, which should have consolidated the Empire, determined
+its downfall. It was thought that a diplomatic success should complete
+it, and make the country forget liberty for glory. It was in vain that
+after the parliamentary revolution of the 2nd of January that prudent
+statesman Comte Daru revived, through Lord Clarendon, Count Beust's plan
+of disarmament after Sadowa. He met with a refusal from Prussia and from
+the imperial _entourage_. The Empress Eugenie was credited with the
+remark, "If there is no war, my son will never be emperor." The desired
+pretext was offered on the 3rd of July 1870 by the candidature of a
+Hohenzollern prince for the throne of Spain. To the French people it
+seemed that Prussia, barely mistress of Germany, was reviving against
+France the traditional policy of the Habsburgs. France, having rejected
+for dynastic reasons the candidature of a Frenchman, the duc de
+Montpensier, saw herself threatened with a German prince. Never had the
+emperor, now both physically and morally ill, greater need of the
+counsels of a clear-headed statesman and the support of an enlightened
+public opinion if he was to defeat the statecraft of Bismarck. But he
+could find neither.
+
+
+  The declaration of war.
+
+Ollivier's Liberal ministry, wishing to show itself as jealous for
+national interests as any absolutist ministry, bent upon doing something
+great, and swept away by the force of that opinion which it had itself
+set free, at once accepted the war as inevitable, and prepared for it
+with a light heart.[37] In face of the decided declaration of the duc de
+Gramont, the minister for foreign affairs, before the Legislative Body
+of the 6th of July, Europe, in alarm, supported the efforts of French
+diplomacy and obtained the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature.
+This did not suit the views either of the war party in Paris or of
+Bismarck, who wanted the other side to declare war. The ill-advised
+action of Gramont in demanding from King William one of those promises
+for the future which are humiliating but never binding, gave Bismarck
+his opportunity, and the king's refusal was transformed by him into an
+insult by the "editing" of the Ems telegram. The chamber, in spite of
+the desperate efforts of Thiers and Gambetta, now voted by 246 votes to
+10 in favour of the war.
+
+
+  France isolated.
+
+France found herself isolated, as much through the duplicity of Napoleon
+as through that of Bismarck. The disclosure to the diets of Munich and
+Stuttgart of the written text of the claims laid by Napoleon on the
+territories of Hesse and Bavaria had since the 22nd of August 1866
+estranged southern Germany from France, and disposed the southern states
+to sign the military convention with Prussia. Owing to a similar series
+of blunders, the rest of Europe had become hostile. Russia, which it had
+been Bismarck's study both during and after the Polish insurrection of
+1863 to draw closer to Prussia, learnt with annoyance, by the same
+indiscretion, how Napoleon was keeping his promises made at Stuttgart.
+The hope of gaining a revenge in the East for her defeat of 1856 while
+France was in difficulties made her decide on a benevolent neutrality.
+The disclosure of Benedetti's designs of 1867 on Belgium and Luxemburg
+equally ensured an unfriendly neutrality on the part of Great Britain.
+The emperor counted at least on the alliance of Austria and Italy, for
+which he had been negotiating since the Salzburg interview (August
+1867). But Austria, having suffered at his hands in 1859 and 1866, was
+not ready and asked for a delay before joining in the war; while the
+hesitating friendships of Italy could only be won by the evacuation of
+Rome. The chassepots of Mentana, Rouher's "Never," and the hostility of
+the Catholic empress to any secret article which should open to Italy
+the gates of the capital, deprived France of her last friend.
+
+
+  Sedan. Fall of the Empire.
+
+Marshal Leboeuf's armies were no more effective than Gramont's
+alliances. The incapacity of the higher officers of the French army, the
+lack of preparation for war at headquarters, the selfishness and
+shirking of responsibility on the part of the field officers, the
+absence of any fixed plan when failure to mobilize had destroyed all
+chance of the strong offensive which had been counted on, and the folly
+of depending on chance, as the emperor had so often done successfully,
+instead of scientific warfare, were all plainly to be seen as early as
+the insignificant engagement of Saarbrucken. Thus the French army
+proceeded by disastrous stages from Weissenburg, Forbach, Froeschweiler,
+Borny, Gravelotte, Noisseville and Saint-Privat to the siege of Metz and
+the slaughter at Illy. By the capitulation of Sedan the Empire lost its
+only support, the army, and fell. Paris was left unprotected and emptied
+of troops, with only a woman at the Tuileries, a terrified Assembly at
+the Palais-Bourbon, a ministry, that of Palikao, without authority, and
+leaders of the Opposition who fled as the catastrophe approached.
+     (P. W.)
+
+
+THE THIRD REPUBLIC 1870-1909
+
+  Government of National Defence, 1870.
+
+The Third Republic may be said to date from the revolution of the 4th of
+September 1870, when the republican deputies of Paris at the hotel de
+ville constituted a provisional government under the presidency of
+General Trochu, military governor of the capital. The Empire had fallen,
+and the emperor was a prisoner in Germany. As, however, since the great
+Revolution regimes in France have been only passing expedients, not
+inextricably associated with the destinies of the people, but bound to
+disappear when accounted responsible for national disaster, the
+surrender of Louis Napoleon's sword to William of Prussia did not disarm
+the country. Hostilities were therefore continued. The provisional
+government had to assume the part of a Committee of National Defence,
+and while insurrection was threatening in Paris, it had, in the face of
+the invading Germans, to send a delegation to Tours to maintain the
+relations of France with the outside world. Paris was invested, and for
+five months endured siege, bombardment and famine. Before the end of
+October the capitulation of Metz, by the treason of Marshal Bazaine,
+deprived France of the last relic of its regular army. With indomitable
+courage the garrison of Paris made useless sorties, while an army of
+irregular troops vainly essayed to resist the invader, who had reached
+the valley of the Loire. The acting Government of National Defence, thus
+driven from Tours, took refuge at Bordeaux, where it awaited the
+capitulation of Paris, which took place on the 29th of January 1871. The
+same day the preliminaries of peace were signed at Versailles, which,
+confirmed by the treaty of Frankfort of the 10th of May, transferred
+from France to Germany the whole of Alsace, excepting Belfort, and a
+large portion of Lorraine, including Metz, with a money indemnity of two
+hundred millions sterling.
+
+
+  Foundation of the Third Republic, 1871.
+
+On the 13th of February 1871 the National Assembly, elected after the
+capitulation of Paris, met at Bordeaux and assumed the powers hitherto
+exercised by the Government of National Defence. Since the meeting of
+the states-general in 1789 no representative body in France had ever
+contained so many men of distinction. Elected to conclude a peace, the
+great majority of its members were monarchists, Gambetta, the rising
+hope of the republicans, having discredited his party in the eyes of the
+weary population by his efforts to carry on the war. The Assembly might
+thus have there and then restored the monarchy had not the monarchists
+been divided among themselves as royalist supporters of the comte de
+Chambord, grandson of Charles X., and as Orleanists favouring the claims
+of the comte de Paris, grandson of Louis Philippe. The majority being
+unable to unite on the essential point of the choice of a sovereign,
+decided to allow the Republic, declared on the morrow of Sedan, to
+liquidate the disastrous situation. Consequently, on the 17th of
+February the National Assembly elected Thiers as "Chief of the Executive
+Power of the French Republic," the abolition of the Empire being
+formally voted a fortnight later. The old minister of Louis Philippe,
+who had led the opposition to the Empire, and had been the chief
+opponent of the war, was further marked out for the position conferred
+on him by his election to the Assembly in twenty-six departments in
+recognition of his tour through Europe after the first defeats,
+undertaken in the patriotic hope of obtaining the intervention of the
+Powers on behalf of France. Thiers composed a ministry, and announced
+that the first duty of the government before examining constitutional
+questions, would be to reorganize the forces of the nation in order to
+provide for the enormous war indemnity which had to be paid to Germany
+before the territory could be liberated from the presence of the
+invader. The tacit acceptance of this arrangement by all parties was
+known as the "_pacte de Bordeaux_." Apart from the pressure of patriotic
+considerations, it pleased the republican minority to have the
+government of France officially proclaimed a Republic, while the
+monarchists thought that pending their choice Of a monarch it might
+popularize their cause not to have it associated with the imposition of
+the burden of war taxation. From this fortuitous and informal
+transaction, accepted by a monarchical Assembly, sprang the Third
+Republic, the most durable regime established in France since the
+ancient monarchy disappeared in 1792.
+
+
+  The Commune.
+
+The Germans marched down the Champs Elysees on the 1st of March 1871,
+and occupied Paris for forty-eight hours. The National Assembly then
+decided to remove its sittings to Versailles; but two days before its
+arrival at the palace, where the king of Prussia had just been
+proclaimed German emperor, an insurrection broke out in Paris. The
+revolutionary element, which had been foremost in proclaiming the
+Republic on the 4th of September, had shown signs of disaffection during
+the siege. On the conclusion of the peace the triumphal entry of the
+German troops, the threatened disbanding of the national guard by an
+Assembly known to be anti-republican, and the resumption of orderly
+civic existence after the agitated life of a suffering population
+isolated by siege, had excited the nerves of the Parisians, always prone
+to revolution. The Commune was proclaimed on the 18th of March, and
+Paris was declared to be a free town, which recognized no government but
+that chosen by the people within its walls, the communard theory being
+that the state should consist of a federation of self-governing communes
+subject to no central power. Administrative autonomy was not, however,
+the real aim of the insurgent leaders. The name of the Commune had
+always been a rallying sign for violent revolutionaries ever since the
+Terrorists had found their last support in the municipality of Paris in
+1794. In 1871 among the communard chiefs were revolutionaries of every
+sect, who, disagreeing on governmental and economic principles, were
+united in their vague but perpetual hostility to the existing order of
+things. The regular troops of the garrison of Paris followed the
+National Assembly to Versailles, where they were joined by the soldiers
+of the armies of Sedan and Metz, liberated from captivity in Germany.
+With this force the government of the Republic commenced the second
+siege of Paris, in order to capture the city from the Commune, which had
+established the parody of a government there, having taken possession of
+the administrative departments and set a minister at the head of each
+office. The second siege lasted six weeks under the eyes of the
+victorious Germans encamped on the heights overlooking the capital. The
+presence of the enemy, far from restraining the humiliating spectacle of
+Frenchmen waging war on Frenchmen in the hour of national disaster,
+seemed to encourage the fury of the combatants. The communards, who had
+begun their reign by the murder of two generals, concluded it, when the
+Versailles troops were taking the city, with the massacre of a number of
+eminent citizens, including the archbishop of Paris, and with the
+destruction by fire of many of the finest historical buildings,
+including the palace of the Tuileries and the hotel de ville. History
+has rarely known a more unpatriotic crime than that of the insurrection
+of the Commune; but the punishment inflicted on the insurgents by the
+Versailles troops was so ruthless that it seemed to be a
+counter-manifestation of French hatred for Frenchmen in civil
+disturbance rather than a judicial penalty applied to a heinous offence.
+The number of Parisians killed by French soldiers in the last week of
+May 1871 was probably 20,000, though the partisans of the Commune
+declared that 36,000 men and women were shot in the streets or after
+summary court-martial.
+
+
+  Republicans and Monarchists after the war.
+
+It is from this point that the history of the Third Republic commences.
+In spite of the doubly tragic ending of the war the vitality of the
+country seemed unimpaired. With ease and without murmur it supported the
+new burden of taxation called for by the war indemnity and by the
+reorganization of the shattered forces of France. Thiers was thus aided
+in his task of liberating the territory from the presence of the enemy.
+His proposal at Bordeaux to make the "_essai loyal_" of the Republic, as
+the form of government which caused the least division among Frenchmen,
+was discouraged by the excesses of the Commune which associated
+republicanism with revolutionary disorder. Nevertheless, the monarchists
+of the National Assembly received a note of warning that the country
+might dispense with their services unless they displayed governmental
+capacity, when in July 1871 the republican minority was largely
+increased at the bye-elections. The next month, within a year of Sedan,
+a provisional constitution was voted, the title of president of the
+French Republic being then conferred on Thiers. The monarchists
+consented to this against their will; but they had their own way when
+they conferred constituent powers on the Assembly in opposition to the
+republicans, who argued that it was a usurpation of the sovereignty of
+the people for a body elected for another purpose to assume the power of
+giving a constitution to the land without a special mandate from the
+nation. The debate gave Gambetta his first opportunity of appearing as a
+serious politician. The "_fou furieux_" of Tours, whom Thiers had
+denounced for his efforts to prolong the hopeless war, was about to
+become the chief support of the aged Orleanist statesman whose supreme
+achievement was to be the foundation of the Republic.
+
+
+  1872: Thiers and Gambetta.
+
+It was in 1872 that Thiers practically ranged himself with Gambetta and
+the republicans. The divisions in the monarchical party made an
+immediate restoration impossible. This situation induced some of the
+moderate deputies, whose tendencies were Orleanist, to support the
+organization of a Republic which now no longer found its chief support
+in the revolutionary section of the nation, and it suited the ideas of
+Thiers, whose personal ambition was not less than his undoubted
+patriotism. Having become unexpectedly chief of the state at
+seventy-four he had no wish to descend again to the position of a
+minister of the Orleans dynasty which he had held at thirty-five. So,
+while the royalists refused to admit the claims of the comte de Paris,
+the old minister of Louis Philippe did his best to undermine the
+popularity of the Orleans tradition, which had been great among the
+Liberals under the Second Empire. He moved the Assembly to restore to
+the Orleans princes the value of their property confiscated under Louis
+Napoleon. This he did in the well-founded belief that the family would
+discredit itself in the eyes of the nation by accepting two millions
+sterling of public money at a moment when the country was burdened with
+the war indemnity. The incident was characteristic of his wary policy,
+as in the face of the anti-republican majority in the Assembly he could
+not openly break with the Right; and when it was suggested that he was
+too favourable to the maintenance of the Republic he offered his
+resignation, the refusal of which he took as indicating the
+indispensable nature of his services. Meanwhile Gambetta, by his popular
+eloquence, had won for himself in the autumn a triumphal progress, in
+the course of which he declared at Grenoble that political power had
+passed into the hands of "_une couche sociale nouvelle_," and he
+appealed to the new social strata to put an end to the comedy of a
+Republic without republicans. When the Assembly resumed its sittings,
+order having been restored in the land disturbed by war and revolution,
+the financial system being reconstituted and the reorganization of the
+army planned, Thiers read to the house a presidential message which
+marked such a distinct movement towards the Left that Gambetta led the
+applause. "The Republic exists," said the president, "it is the lawful
+government of the country, and to devise anything else is to devise the
+most terrible of revolutions."
+
+
+  Resignation of Thiers.
+
+  Marshal MacMahon president of the Republic.
+
+The year 1873 was full of events fateful for the history of France. It
+opened with the death of Napoleon III. at Chislehurst; but the disasters
+amid which the Second Empire had ended were too recent for the youthful
+promise of his heir to be regarded as having any connexion with the
+future fortunes of France, except by the small group of Bonapartists.
+Thiers remained the centre of interest. Much as the monarchists disliked
+him, they at first shrank from upsetting him before they were ready with
+a scheme of monarchical restoration, and while Gambetta's authority was
+growing in the land. But when the Left Centre took alarm at the return
+of radical deputies at numerous by-elections the reactionaries utilized
+the divisions in the republican party, and for the only time in the
+history of the Third Republic they gave proof of parliamentary
+adroitness. The date for the evacuation of France by the German troops
+had been advanced, largely owing to Thiers' successful efforts to raise
+the war indemnity. The monarchical majority, therefore, thought the
+moment had arrived when his services might safely be dispensed with, and
+the campaign against him was ably conducted by a coalition of
+Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists. The attack on Thiers was led
+by the duc de Broglie, the son of another minister of Louis Philippe and
+grandson of Madame de Stael. Operations began with the removal from the
+chair of the Assembly of Jules Grevy, a moderate republican, who was
+chosen president at Bordeaux, and the substitution of Buffet, an old
+minister of the Second Republic who had rallied to the Empire. A debate
+on the political tendency of the government brought Thiers himself to
+the tribune to defend his policy. He maintained that a conservative
+Republic was the only regime possible, seeing that the monarchists in
+the Assembly could not make a choice between their three pretenders to
+the throne. A resolution, however, was carried which provoked the old
+statesman into tendering his resignation. This time it was not declined,
+and the majority with unseemly haste elected as president of the
+Republic Marshal MacMahon, duc de Magenta, an honest soldier of royalist
+sympathies, who had won renown and a ducal title on the battlefields of
+the Second Empire. In the eyes of Europe the curt dismissal of the aged
+liberator of the territory was an act of ingratitude. Its justification
+would have been the success of the majority in forming a stable
+monarchical government; but the sole result of the 24th of May 1873 was
+to provide a definite date to mark the opening of the era of
+anti-republican incompetency in France which has lasted for more than a
+generation, and has been perhaps the most effective guardian of the
+Third Republic.
+
+
+  The comte de Chambord.
+
+  The Septennate.
+
+The political incompetency of the reactionaries was fated never to be
+corrected by the intelligence of its princes or of its chiefs, and the
+year which saw Thiers dismissed to make way for a restoration saw also
+that restoration indefinitely postponed by the fatal action of the
+legitimist pretender. The comte de Paris went to Frohsdorf to abandon to
+the comte de Chambord his claims to the crown as the heir of the July
+Monarchy, and to accept the position of dauphin, thus implying that his
+grandfather Louis Philippe was a usurper. With the "Government of Moral
+Order" in command the restoration of the monarchy seemed imminent, when
+the royalists had their hopes dashed by the announcement that "Henri V."
+would accept the throne only on the condition that the nation adopted as
+the standard of France the white flag--at the very sight of which
+Marshal MacMahon said the rifles in the army would go off by themselves.
+The comte de Chambord's refusal to accept the tricolour was probably
+only the pretext of a childless man who had no wish to disturb his
+secluded life for the ultimate benefit of the Orleans family which had
+usurped his crown, had sent him as a child into exile, and outraged his
+mother the duchesse de Berry. Whatever his motive, his decision could
+have no other effect than that of establishing the Republic, as he was
+likely to live for years, during which the comte de Paris' claims had to
+remain suspended. It was not possible to leave the land for ever under
+the government improvised at Bordeaux when the Germans were masters of
+France; so the majority in the Assembly decided to organize another
+provisional government on more regular lines, which might possibly last
+till the comte de Chambord had taken the white flag to the grave,
+leaving the way to the throne clear for the comte de Paris. On the 19th
+of November 1873 a Bill was passed which instituted the Septennate,
+whereby the executive power was confided to Marshal MacMahon for seven
+years. It also provided for the nomination of a commission of the
+National Assembly to take in hand the enactment of a constitutional law.
+Before this an important constitutional innovation had been adopted.
+Under Thiers there were no changes of ministry. The president of the
+Republic was perpetual prime minister, constantly dismissing individual
+holders of portfolios, but never changing at one moment the whole
+council of ministers. Marshal MacMahon, the day after his appointment,
+nominated a cabinet with a vice-president of the council as premier, and
+thus inaugurated the system of ministerial instability which has been
+the most conspicuous feature of the government of the Third Republic.
+Under the Septennate the ministers, monarchist or moderate republican,
+were socially and perhaps intellectually of a higher class than those
+who governed France during the last twenty years of the 19th century.
+But the duration of the cabinets was just as brief, thus displaying the
+fact, already similarly demonstrated under the Restoration and the July
+Monarchy, that in France parliamentary government is an importation not
+suited to the national temperament.
+
+
+  Constitution voted, 1875.
+
+The duc de Broglie was the prime minister in MacMahon's first two
+cabinets which carried on the government of the country up to the first
+anniversary of Thiers' resignation. The duc de Broglie's defeat by a
+coalition of Legitimists and Bonapartists with the Republicans displayed
+the mutual attitude of parties. The Royalists, chagrined that the fusion
+of the two branches of the Bourbons had not brought the comte de
+Chambord to the throne, vented their rage on the Orleanists, who had the
+chief share in the government without being able to utilize it for their
+dynasty. The Bonapartists, now that the memory of the war was receding,
+were winning elections in the provinces, and were further encouraged by
+the youthful promise of the Prince Imperial. The republicans had so
+improved their position that the duc d'Audiffret-Pasquier, great-nephew
+of the chancellor Pasquier, tried to form a coalition ministry with M.
+Waddington, afterwards ambassador of the Republic in London, and other
+members of the Left Centre. Out of this uncertain state of affairs was
+evolved the constitution which has lasted the longest of all those that
+France has tried since the abolition of the old monarchy in 1792. Its
+birth was due to chance. Not being able to restore a monarchy, the
+National Assembly was unwilling definitively to establish a republic,
+and as no limit was set by the law on the duration of its powers, it
+might have continued the provisional state of things had it not been for
+the Bonapartists. That party displayed so much activity in agitating for
+a plebiscite, that when the rural voters at by-elections began to rally
+to the Napoleonic idea, alarm seized the constitutionalists of the Right
+Centre who had never been persuaded by Thiers' exhortations to accept
+the Republic. Consequently in January 1875 the Assembly, having voted
+the general principle that the legislative power should be exercised by
+a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, without any mention of the executive
+regime, accepted by a majority of one a momentous resolution proposed by
+M. Wallon, a member of the Right Centre. It provided that the president
+of the Republic should be elected by the absolute majority of the Senate
+and the Chamber united as a National Assembly, that he should be elected
+for seven years, and be eligible for re-election. Thus by one vote the
+Republic was formally established, "the Father of the Constitution"
+being M. Wallon, who began his political experiences in the Legislative
+Assembly of 1849, and survived to take an active part in the Senate
+until the twentieth century.
+
+
+  Provisions of the Constitution of 1875.
+
+The Republic being thus established, General de Cissey, who had become
+prime minister, made way for M. Buffet, but retained his portfolio of
+war in the new coalition cabinet, which contained some distinguished
+members of the two central groups, including M. Leon Say. A fortnight
+previously, at the end of February 1875, were passed two statutes
+defining the legislative and executive powers in the Republic, and
+organizing the Senate. These joined to a third enactment, voted in July,
+form the body of laws known as the "Constitution of 1875," which though
+twice revised, lasted without essential alteration to the twentieth
+century. The legislative power was conferred on a Senate and a Chamber
+of Deputies, which might unite in congress to revise the constitution,
+if they both agreed that revision was necessary, and which were bound so
+to meet for the election of the president of the Republic when a vacancy
+occurred. It was enacted that the president so elected should retain
+office for seven years, and be eligible for re-election at the end of
+his term. He was also held to be irresponsible, except in the case of
+high treason. The other principal prerogatives bestowed on the
+presidential office by the constitution of 1875 were the right of
+initiating laws concurrently with the members of the two chambers; the
+promulgation of the laws; the right of dissolving the Chamber of
+Deputies before its legal term on the advice of the Senate, and that of
+adjourning the sittings of both houses for a month; the right of pardon;
+the disposal of the armed forces of the country; the reception of
+diplomatic envoys, and, under certain limitations, the power to ratify
+treaties. The constitution relieved the president of the responsibility
+of private patronage, by providing that every act of his should be
+countersigned by a minister. The constitutional law provided that the
+Senate should consist of 300 members, 75 being nominated for life by the
+National Assembly, and the remaining 225 elected for nine years by the
+departments and the colonies. Vacancies among the life members, after
+the dissolution of the National Assembly, were filled by the Senate
+until 1884, when the nominative system was abolished, though the
+survivors of it were not disturbed. The law of 1875 enacted that the
+elected senators, who were distributed among the departments on a rough
+basis of population, should be elected for nine years, a third of them
+retiring triennially. It was provided that the senatorial electors in
+each department should be the deputies, the members of the _conseil
+general_ and of the _conseils d'arrondissement_, and delegates nominated
+by the municipal councils of each commune. As the municipal delegates
+composed the majority in each electoral college, Gambetta called the
+Senate the Grand Council of the Communes; but in practice the senators
+elected have always been the nominees of the local deputies and of the
+departmental councillors (_conseillers generaux_).
+
+
+  Scrutin d'arrondissement and scrutin de liste.
+
+The Constitutional Law further provided that the deputies should be
+elected to the Chamber for four years by direct manhood suffrage, which
+had been enjoyed in France ever since 1848. The laws relating to
+registration, which is of admirable simplicity in France, were left
+practically the same as under the Second Empire. From 1875 to 1885 the
+elections were held on the basis of _scrutin d'arrondissement_, each
+department being divided into single-member districts. In 1885 _scrutin
+de liste_ was tried, the department being the electoral unit, and each
+elector having as many votes as there were seats ascribed to the
+department without the power to cumulate--like the voting in the city of
+London when it returned four members. In 1889 _scrutin d'arrondissement_
+was resumed. The payment of members continued as under the Second
+Empire, the salary now being fixed at 9000 francs a year in both houses,
+or about a pound sterling a day. The Senate and the Chamber were endowed
+with almost identical powers. The only important advantage given to the
+popular house in the paper constitution was its initiative in matters of
+finance, but the right of rejecting or of modifying the financial
+proposals of the Chamber was successfully upheld by the Senate. In
+reality the Chamber of Deputies has overshadowed the upper house. The
+constitution did not prescribe that ministers should be selected from
+either house of parliament, but in practice the deputies have been in
+cabinets in the proportion of five to one in excess of the senators.
+Similarly the very numerous ministerial crises which have taken place
+under the Third Republic have with the rarest exceptions been caused by
+votes in the lower chamber. Among minor differences between the two
+houses ordained by the constitution was the legal minimum age of their
+members, that of senators being forty and of deputies twenty-five. It
+was enacted, moreover, that the Senate, by presidential decree, could be
+constituted into a high court for the trial of certain offences against
+the security of the state.
+
+
+  1876: Political parties under the new Constitution.
+
+The constitution thus produced, the fourteenth since the Revolution of
+1789, was the issue of a monarchical Assembly forced by circumstances to
+establish a republic. It was therefore distinguished from others which
+preceded it in that it contained no declaration of principle and no
+doctrinal theory. The comparative excellence of the work must be
+recognized, seeing that it has lasted. But it owed its duration, as it
+owed its origin and its character, to the weakness of purpose and to the
+dissensions of the monarchical parties. The first legal act under the
+new constitution was the selection by the expiring National Assembly of
+seventy-five nominated senators, and here the reactionaries gave a
+crowning example of that folly which has ever marked their conduct each
+time they have had the chance of scoring an advantage against the
+Republic. The principle of nomination had been carried in the National
+Assembly by the Right and opposed by the Republicans. But the quarrels
+of the Legitimists with the duc de Broglie and his party were so bitter
+that the former made a present of the nominated element in the Senate to
+the Republicans in order to spite the Orleanists; so out of seventy-five
+senators nominated by the monarchical Assembly, fifty-seven Republicans
+were chosen. Without this suicidal act the Republicans would have been
+in a woeful minority in the Senate when parliament met in 1876 after the
+first elections under the new system of parliamentary government. The
+slight advantage which, in spite of their self-destruction, the
+reactionaries maintained in the upper house was outbalanced by the
+republican success at the elections to the Chamber. In a house of over
+500 members only about 150 monarchical deputies were returned, of whom
+half were Bonapartists. The first cabinet under the new constitution was
+formed by Dufaure, an old minister of Louis Philippe like Thiers, and
+like him born in the 18th century. The premier now took the title of
+president of the council, the chief of the state no longer presiding at
+the meetings of ministers, though he continued to be present at their
+deliberations. Although the republican victories at the elections were
+greatly due to the influence of Gambetta, none of his partisans was
+included in the ministry, which was composed of members of the two
+central groups. At the end of 1876 Dufaure retired, but nearly all his
+ministers retained their portfolios under the presidency of Jules Simon,
+a pupil of Victor Cousin, who first entered political life in the
+Constituent Assembly of 1848, and was later a leading member of the
+opposition in the last seven years of the Second Empire.
+
+
+  The Seize Mai 1877.
+
+The premiership of Jules Simon came to an end with the abortive _coup
+d'etat_ of 1877, commonly called from its date the _Seize Mai_. After
+the election of Marshal MacMahon to the presidency, the clerical party,
+irritated at the failure to restore the comte de Chambord, commenced a
+campaign in favour of the restitution of the temporal power to the Pope.
+It provoked the Italian government to make common cause with Germany, as
+Prince Bismarck was likewise attacked by the French clericals for his
+ecclesiastical policy. At last Jules Simon, who was a liberal most
+friendly to Catholicism, had to accept a resolution of the Chamber,
+inviting the ministry to adopt the same disciplinary policy towards the
+Church which had been followed by the Second Empire and the Monarchy of
+July. It was on this occasion that Gambetta used his famous expression,
+"_Le clericalisme, voila l'ennemi_." Some days later a letter appeared
+in the _Journal officiel_, dated 16th May 1877, signed by President
+MacMahon, informing Jules Simon that he had no longer his confidence, as
+it was clear that he had lost that influence over the Chamber which a
+president of the Council ought to exercise. The dismissal of the prime
+minister and the presidential acts which followed did not infringe the
+letter of the new constitution; yet the proceeding was regarded as a
+_coup d'etat_ in favour of the clerical reactionaries. The duc de
+Broglie formed an anti-republican ministry, and Marshal MacMahon, in
+virtue of the presidential prerogative conferred by the law of 1875,
+adjourned parliament for a month. When the Chamber reassembled the
+republican majority of 363 denounced the coalition of parties hostile to
+the Republic. The president, again using his constitutional prerogative,
+obtained the authorization of the Senate to dissolve the Chamber.
+Meanwhile the Broglie ministry had put in practice the policy, favoured
+by all parties in France, of replacing the functionaries hostile to it
+with its own partisans. But in spite of the administrative electoral
+machinery being thus in the hands of the reactionaries, a republican
+majority was sent back to the Chamber, the sudden death of Thiers on the
+eve of his expected return to power, and the demonstration at his
+funeral, which was described as a silent insurrection, aiding the rout
+of the monarchists. The duc de Broglie resigned, and Marshal MacMahon
+sent for General de Rochebouet, who formed a cabinet of unknown
+reactionaries, but it lasted only a few days, as the Chamber refused to
+vote supply. Dufaure was then called back to office, and his moderate
+republican ministry lasted for the remainder of the MacMahon presidency.
+
+
+  1879: Jules Grevy president of the Republic.
+
+Thus ended the episode of the _Seize Mai_, condemned by the whole of
+Europe from its inception. Its chief effects were to prove again to the
+country the incompetency of the monarchists, and by associating in the
+public mind the Church with this ill-conceived venture, to provoke
+reprisals from the anti-clericals when they came into power. After the
+storm, the year 1878 was one of political repose. The first
+international exhibition held at Paris after the war displayed to Europe
+how the secret of France's recuperative power lay in the industry and
+artistic instinct of the nation. Marshal MacMahon presided with dignity
+over the fetes held in honour of the exhibition, and had he pleased he
+might have tranquilly fulfilled the term of his Septennate. But in
+January 1879 he made a difference of opinion on a military question an
+excuse for resignation, and Jules Grevy, the president of the Chamber,
+was elected to succeed him by the National Assembly, which thus met for
+the first time under the Constitutional Law of 1875.
+
+
+  Jules Ferry.
+
+Henceforth the executive as well as the legislative power was in the
+hands of the republicans. The new president was a leader of the bar, who
+had first become known in the Constituent Assembly of 1848 as the
+advocate of the principle that a republic would do better without a
+president. M. Waddington was his first prime minister, and Gambetta was
+elected president of the Chamber. The latter, encouraged by his rivals
+in the idea that the time was not ripe for him openly to direct the
+affairs of the country, thus put himself, in spite of his occult
+dictatorship, in a position of official self-effacement from which he
+did not emerge until the jealousies of his own party-colleagues had
+undermined the prestige he had gained as chief founder of the Republic.
+The most active among them was Jules Ferry, minister of Education, who
+having been a republican deputy for Paris at the end of the Empire, was
+one of the members of the provisional government proclaimed on 4th
+September 1870. Borrowing Gambetta's cry that clericalism was the enemy,
+he commenced the work of reprisal for the Seize Mai. His educational
+projects of 1879 were thus anti-clerical in tendency, the most famous
+being article 7 of his education bill, which prohibited members of any
+"unauthorized" religious orders exercising the profession of teaching in
+any school in France, the disability being applied to all ecclesiastical
+communities, excepting four or five which had been privileged by special
+legislation. This enactment, aimed chiefly at the Jesuits, was advocated
+with a sectarian bitterness which will be associated with the name of
+Jules Ferry long after his more statesmanlike qualities are forgotten.
+The law was rejected by the Senate, Jules Simon being the eloquent
+champion of the clericals, whose intrigues had ousted him from office.
+The unauthorized orders were then dissolved by decree; but though the
+forcible expulsion of aged priests and nuns gave rise to painful scenes,
+it cannot be said that popular feeling was excited in their favour, so
+grievously had the Church blundered in identifying itself with the
+conspiracy of the _Seize Mai_.
+
+Meanwhile the death of the Prince Imperial in Zululand had shattered the
+hopes of the Bonapartists, and M. de Freycinet, a former functionary of
+the Empire, had become prime minister at the end of 1879. He had
+retained Jules Ferry at the ministry of Education, but unwilling to
+adopt all his anti-clerical policy, he resigned the premiership in
+September 1880. The constitution of the first Ferry cabinet secured the
+further exclusion from office of Gambetta, to which, however, he
+preferred his "occult dictatorship." In August he had, as president of
+the Chamber, accompanied M. Grevy on an official visit to Cherbourg, and
+the acclamations called forth all over France by his speech, which was a
+hopeful defiance to Germany, encouraged the wily chief of the state to
+aid the republican conspiracy against the hero of the Republic. In 1881
+the only political question before the country was the destiny of
+Gambetta. His influence in the Chamber was such that in spite of the
+opposition of the prime minister he carried his electoral scheme of
+_scrutin de liste_, descending from the presidential chair to defend it.
+Its rejection by the Senate caused no conflict between the houses. The
+check was inflicted not on the Chamber, but on Gambetta, who counted on
+his popularity to carry the lists of his candidates in all the
+republican departments in France as a quasi-plebiscitary demonstration
+in his favour. His rivals dared not openly quarrel with him. There was
+the semblance of a reconciliation between him and Ferry, and his name
+was the rallying-cry of the Republic at the general election, which was
+conducted on the old system of _scrutin d'arrondissement_.
+
+
+  Gambetta prime minister.
+
+The triumph for the Republic was great, the combined force of
+reactionary members returned being less than one-fifth of the new
+Chamber. M. Grevy could no longer abstain from asking Gambetta to form a
+ministry, but he had bided his time till jealousy of the "occult power"
+of the president of the Chamber had undermined his position in
+parliament. Consequently, when on the 14th of November 1881 Gambetta
+announced the composition of his cabinet, ironically called the "_grand
+ministere_," which was to consolidate the Republic and to be the
+apotheosis of its chief, a great feeling of disillusion fell on the
+country, for his colleagues were untried politicians. The best known was
+Paul Bert, a man of science, who as the "reporter" in the Chamber of the
+Ferry Education Bill had distinguished himself as an aggressive
+freethinker, and he inappropriately was named minister of public
+worship. All the conspicuous republicans who had held office refused to
+serve under Gambetta. His cabinet was condemned in advance. His enemies
+having succeeded in ruining its composition, declared that the
+construction of a one-man machine was ominous of dictatorship, and the
+"_grand ministere_" lived for only ten weeks.
+
+
+  Death of Gambetta.
+
+Gambetta was succeeded in January 1882 by M. de Freycinet, who having
+first taken office in the Dufaure cabinet of 1877, and having continued
+to hold office at intervals until 1899, was the most successful specimen
+of a "_ministrable_"--as recurrent portfolio-holders have been called
+under the Third Republic. His second ministry lasted only six months.
+The failure of Gambetta, though pleasing to his rivals, discouraged the
+republican party and disorganized its majority in the Chamber. M.
+Duclerc, an old minister of the Second Republic, then became president
+of the council, and before his short term of office was run Gambetta
+died on the last day of 1882, without having had the opportunity of
+displaying his capacity as a minister or an administrator. He was only
+forty-four at his death, and his fame rests on the unfulfilled promise
+of a brief career. The men who had driven him out of public life and had
+shortened his existence were the most ostentatious of the mourners at
+the great pageant with which he was buried, and to have been of his
+party was in future the popular trade-mark of his republican enemies.
+
+
+  Opportunism.
+
+Gambetta's death was followed by a period of anarchy, during which
+Prince Napoleon, the son of Jerome, king of Westphalia, placarded the
+walls of Paris with a manifesto. The Chamber thereupon voted the exile
+of the members of the families which had reigned in France. The Senate
+rejected the measure, and a conflict arose between the two houses. M.
+Duclerc resigned the premiership in January 1883 to his minister of the
+Interior, M. Fallieres, a Gascon lawyer, who became president of the
+Senate in 1899 and president of the Republic in 1906. He held office for
+three weeks, when Jules Ferry became president of the council for the
+second time. Several of the closest of Gambetta's friends accepted
+office under the old enemy of their chief, and the new combination
+adopted the epithet "opportunist," which had been invented by Gambetta
+in 1875 to justify the expediency of his alliance with Thiers. The
+Opportunists thenceforth formed an important group standing between the
+Left Centre, which was now excluded from office, and the Radicals. It
+claimed the tradition of Gambetta, but the guiding principle manifested
+by its members was that of securing the spoils of place. To this end it
+often allied itself with the Radicals, and the Ferry cabinet practised
+this policy in 1883 when it removed the Orleans princes from the active
+list in the army as the illogical result of the demonstration of a
+Bonaparte. How needless was this proceeding was shown a few months later
+when the comte de Chambord died, as his death, which finally fused the
+Royalists with the Orleanists, caused no commotion in France.
+
+
+  Revision of the Constitution, 1884.
+
+  Tongking.
+
+The year 1884 was unprecedented seeing that it passed without a change
+of ministry. Jules Ferry displayed real administrative ability, and as
+an era of steady government seemed to be commencing, the opportunity was
+taken to revise the Constitution. The two Chambers therefore met in
+congress, and enacted that the republican form of government could never
+be the subject of revision, and that all members of families which had
+reigned in France were ineligible for the presidency of the Republic--a
+repetition of the adventure of Louis Bonaparte in the middle of the
+century being thus made impossible. It also decided that the clauses of
+the law of 1875 relating to the organization of the Senate should no
+longer have a constitutional character. This permitted the reform of the
+Upper House by ordinary parliamentary procedure. So an organic law was
+passed to abolish the system of nominating senators, and to increase the
+number of municipal delegates in the electoral colleges in proportion to
+the population of the communes. The French nation, for the first time
+since it had enjoyed political life, had revised a constitution by
+pacific means without a revolution. Gambetta being out of the way, his
+favourite electoral system of _scrutin de liste_ had no longer any
+terror for his rivals, so it was voted by the Chamber early in 1885.
+Before the Senate had passed it into law the Ferry ministry had fallen
+at the end of March, after holding office for twenty-five months, a term
+rarely exceeded in the annals of the Third Republic. This long tenure of
+power had excited the dissatisfaction of jealous politicians, and the
+news of a slight disaster to the French troops in Tongking called forth
+all the pent-up rancour which Jules Ferry had inspired in various
+groups. By the exaggerated news of defeat Paris was excited to the brink
+of a revolution. The approaches of the Chamber were invaded by an angry
+mob, and Jules Ferry was the object of public hate more bitter than any
+man had called forth in France since Napoleon III. on the days after
+Sedan. Within the Chamber he was attacked in all quarters. The Radicals
+took the lead, supported by the Monarchists, who remembered the
+anti-clerical rigour of the Ferry laws, by the Left Centre, not sorry
+for the tribulation of the group which had supplanted it, and by
+place-hunting republicans of all shades. The attack was led by a
+politician who disdained office. M. Georges Clemenceau, who had
+originally come to Paris from the Vendee as a doctor, had as a radical
+leader in the Chamber used his remarkable talent as an overthrower of
+ministries, and nearly every one of the eight ministerial crises which
+had already occurred during the presidency of Grevy had been hastened by
+his mordant eloquence.
+
+
+  Elections of 1885.
+
+The next prime minister was M. Brisson, a radical lawyer and journalist,
+who in April 1885 formed a cabinet of "concentration"--that is to say,
+it was recruited from various groups with the idea of concentrating all
+republican forces in opposition to the reactionaries. MM. de Freycinet
+and Carnot, afterwards president of the Republic, represented the
+moderate element in this ministry, which superintended the general
+elections under _scrutin de liste_. That system was recommended by its
+advocates as a remedy for the rapid decadence in the composition of the
+Chamber. Manhood suffrage, which had returned to the National Assembly a
+distinguished body of men to conclude peace with Germany, had chosen a
+very different type of representative to sit in the Chamber created by
+the constitution of 1875. At each succeeding election the standard of
+deputies returned grew lower, till Gambetta described them
+contemptuously as "_sous-veterinaires_," indicating that they were
+chiefly chosen from the petty professional class, which represented
+neither the real democracy nor the material interests of the country.
+His view was that the election of members by departmental lists would
+ensure the candidature of the best men in each region, who under the
+system of single-member districts were apt to be neglected in favour of
+local politicians representing narrow interests. When his death had
+removed the fear of his using _scrutin de liste_ as a plebiscitary
+organization, parliament sanctioned its trial. The result was not what
+its promoters anticipated. The composition of the Chamber was indeed
+transformed, but only by the substitution of reactionary deputies for
+republicans. Of the votes polled, 45% were given to the Monarchists, and
+if they had obtained one-half of the abstentions the Republic would have
+come to an end. At the same time the character of the republican
+deputies returned was not improved; so the sole effect of _scrutin de
+liste_ was to show that the electorate, weary of republican dissensions,
+was ready to make a trial of monarchical government, if only the
+reactionary party proved that it contained statesmen capable of leading
+the nation. So menacing was the situation that the republicans thought
+it wise not further to expose their divisions in the presidential
+election which was due to take place at the end of the year.
+Consequently, on the 28th of December 1885, M. Grevy, in spite of his
+growing unpopularity, was elected president of the Republic for a second
+term of seven years.
+
+
+  General Boulanger.
+
+The Brisson cabinet at once resigned, and on the 7th of January 1886 its
+most important member, M. de Freycinet, formed his third ministry, which
+had momentous influence on the history of the Republic. The new minister
+of war was General Boulanger, a smart soldier of no remarkable military
+record; but being the nominee of M. Clemenceau, he began his official
+career by taking radical measures against commanding officers of
+reactionary tendencies. He thus aided the government in its campaign
+against the families which had reigned in France, whose situation had
+been improved by the result of the elections. The fetes given by the
+comte de Paris to celebrate his daughter's marriage with the
+heir-apparent of Portugal moved the republican majority in the Chambers
+to expel from France the heads of the houses of Orleans and of
+Bonaparte, with their eldest sons. The names of all the princes on the
+army list were erased from it, the decree being executed with unseemly
+ostentation by General Boulanger, who had owed early promotion to the
+protection of the duc d'Aumale, and on that prince protesting he was
+exiled too. Meanwhile General Boulanger took advantage of Grevy's
+unpopularity to make himself a popular hero, and at the review, held
+yearly on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille,
+his acclamation by the Parisian mob showed that he was taking an
+unexpected place in the imagination of the people. He continued to work
+with the Radicals, so when they turned out M. de Freycinet in December
+1886, one of their group, M. Goblet, a lawyer from Amiens, formed a
+ministry, and retained Boulanger as minister of war. M. Clemenceau,
+however, withdrew his support from the general, who was nevertheless
+loudly patronized by the violent radical press. His bold attitude
+towards Germany in connexion with the arrest on the German frontier of a
+French official named Schnaebele so roused the enthusiasm of the public,
+that M. Goblet was not sorry to resign in May 1887 in order to get rid
+of his too popular colleague.
+
+
+  The Wilson scandal.
+
+To form the twelfth of his ministries, Grevy called upon M. Rouvier, an
+Opportunist from Marseilles, who had first held office in Gambetta's
+short-lived cabinet. General Boulanger was sent to command a _corps
+d'armee_ at Clermont-Ferrand; but the popular press and the people
+clamoured for the hero who was said to have terrorized Prince Bismarck,
+and they encouraged him to play the part of a plebiscitary candidate.
+There were grave reasons for public discontent. Parliament in 1887 was
+more than usually sterile in legislation, and in the autumn session it
+had to attend to a scandal which had long been rumoured. The son-in-law
+of Grevy, Daniel Wilson, a prominent deputy who had been an under
+secretary of state, was accused of trafficking the decoration of the
+Legion of Honour, and of using the Elysee, the president's official
+residence, where he lived, as an agency for his corrupt practices. The
+evidence against him was so clear that his colleagues in the Chamber put
+the government into a minority in order to precipitate a presidential
+crisis, and on Grevy refusing to accept this hint, a long array of
+politicians, representing all the republican groups, declined his
+invitation to aid him in forming a new ministry, all being bent on
+forcing his resignation. Had General Boulanger been a man of resolute
+courage he might at this crisis have made a _coup d'etat_, for his
+popularity in the street and in the army increased as the Republic sank
+deeper into scandal and anarchy. At last, when Paris was on the brink of
+revolution, Grevy was prevailed on to resign. The candidates for his
+succession to the presidency were two ex-prime ministers, MM. Ferry and
+de Freycinet, and Floquet, a barrister, who had been conspicuous in the
+National Assembly for his sympathy with the Commune. The Monarchists had
+no candidate ready, and resolved to vote for Ferry, because they
+believed that if he were elected his unpopularity with the democracy
+would cause an insurrection in Paris and the downfall of the Republic.
+MM. de Freycinet and Floquet each looked for the support of the
+Radicals, and each had made a secret compact, in the event of his
+election, to restore General Boulanger to the war office. But M.
+Clemenceau, fearing the election of Jules Ferry, advised his followers
+to vote for an "outsider," and after some manoeuvring the congress
+elected by a large majority Sadi Carnot.
+
+
+  M. Carnot president of the Republic, 1887.
+
+The new president, though the nominee of chance, was an excellent
+choice. The grandson of Lazare Carnot, the "organizer of victory" of the
+Convention, he was also a man of unsullied probity. The tradition of his
+family name, only less glorious than that of Bonaparte in the annals of
+the Revolution, was welcome to France, almost ready to throw herself
+into the arms of a soldier of fortune, while his blameless repute
+reconciled some of those whose opposition to the Republic had been
+quickened by the mean vices of Grevy. But the name and character of
+Carnot would have been powerless to check the Boulangist movement
+without the incompetency of its leader, who was getting the democracy at
+his back without knowing how to utilize it. The new president's first
+prime minister was M. Tirard, a senator who had held office in six of
+Grevy's ministries, and he formed a cabinet of politicians as colourless
+as himself. The early months of 1888 were occupied with the trial of
+Wilson, who was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for fraud, and with
+the conflicts of the government with General Boulanger, who was deprived
+of his command for coming to Paris without leave. Wilson appealed
+against his sentence, and General Boulanger was elected deputy for the
+department of the Aisne by an enormous majority. It so happened that the
+day after his election a presidential decree was signed on the advice of
+the minister of war removing General Boulanger from the army, and the
+court of appeal quashed Wilson's conviction. Public feeling was
+profoundly moved by the coincidence of the release of the relative of
+the ex-president by the judges of the Republic on the same day that its
+ministers expelled from the army the popular hero of universal suffrage.
+
+
+  Boulangism.
+
+  Boulanger's flight.
+
+As General Boulanger had been invented by the Radicals it was thought
+that a Radical cabinet might be a remedy to cope with him, so M. Floquet
+became president of the council in April 1888, M. de Freycinet taking
+the portfolio of war, which he retained through many ministries. M.
+Floquet's chief achievement was a duel with General Boulanger, in which,
+though an elderly civilian, he wounded him. Nothing, however, checked
+the popularity of the military politician, and though he was a failure
+as a speaker in the Chamber, several departments returned him as their
+deputy by great majorities. The Bonapartists had joined him, and while
+in his manifestos he described himself as the defender of the Republic,
+the mass of the Monarchists, with the consent of the comte de Paris,
+entered the Boulangist camp, to the dismay both of old-fashioned
+Royalists and of many Orleanists, who resented his recent treatment of
+the duc d'Aumale. The centenary of the taking of the Bastille was to be
+celebrated in Paris by an international exhibition, and it appeared
+likely that it would be inaugurated by General Boulanger, so
+irresistible seemed his popularity. In January 1889 he was elected
+member for the metropolitan department of the Seine with a quarter of a
+million votes, and by a majority of eighty thousand over the candidate
+of the government. Had he marched on the Elysee the night of his
+election, nothing could have saved the parliamentary Republic; but again
+he let his chance go by. The government in alarm proposed the
+restoration of _scrutin d'arrondissement_ as the electoral system for
+_scrutin de liste_. The change was rapidly enacted by the two Chambers,
+and was a significant commentary on the respective advantages of the two
+systems. M. Tirard was again called to form a ministry, and he selected
+as minister of the interior M. Constans, originally a professor at
+Toulouse, who had already proved himself a skilful manipulator of
+elections when he held the same office in 1881. He was therefore given
+the supervision of the machinery of centralization with which it was
+supposed that General Boulanger would have to be fought at the general
+election. That incomplete hero, however, saved all further trouble by
+flying the country when he heard that his arrest was imminent. The
+government, in order to prevent any plebiscitary manifestation in his
+favour, passed a law forbidding a candidate to present himself for a
+parliamentary election in more than one constituency; it also arraigned
+the general on the charge of treason before the Senate sitting as a high
+court, and he was sentenced in his absence to perpetual imprisonment.
+Such measures were needless. The flight of General Boulanger was the
+death of Boulangism. He alone had saved the Republic which had done
+nothing to save itself. Its government had, on the contrary, displayed
+throughout the crisis an anarchic feebleness and incoherency which would
+have speeded its end had the leader of the plebiscitary movement
+possessed sagacity or even common courage.
+
+The elections of 1889 showed how completely the reactionaries had
+compromised their cause in the Boulangist failure. Instead of 45% of the
+votes polled as in 1885, they obtained only 21%, and the comte de Paris,
+the pretender of constitutional monarchy, was irretrievably prejudiced
+by his alliance with the military adventurer who had outraged the
+princes of his house. A period of calm succeeded the storm of
+Boulangism, and for the first time under the Third Republic parliament
+set to work to produce legislation useful for the state, without rousing
+party passion, as in its other period of activity when the Ferry
+education laws were passed. Before the elections of 1889 the reform of
+the army was undertaken, the general term of active compulsory service
+was made three years, while certain classes hitherto dispensed from
+serving, including ecclesiastical seminarists and lay professors, had
+henceforth to undergo a year's military training. The new parliament
+turned its attention to social and labour questions, as the only clouds
+on the political horizon were the serious strikes in the manufacturing
+districts, which displayed the growing political organization of the
+socialist party. Otherwise nothing disturbed the calm of the country.
+The young duc d'Orleans vainly tried to ruffle it by breaking his exile
+in order to claim his citizen's right to perform his military service.
+The cabinet was rearranged in March 1890, M. de Freycinet becoming prime
+minister for the fourth time, and retaining the portfolio of war. All
+seemed to point to the consolidation of the Republic, and even the
+Church made signals of reconciliation. Cardinal Lavigerie, a patriotic
+missionary and statesman, entertained the officers of the fleet at
+Algiers, and proposed the toast of the Republic to the tune of the
+"Marseillaise" played by his _peres blancs_. The royalist Catholics
+protested, but it was soon intimated that the archbishop of Algiers'
+demonstration was approved at Rome. The year 1891 was one of the few in
+the annals of the Republic which passed without a change of ministry,
+but the agitations of 1892 were to counterbalance the repose of the two
+preceding years.
+
+
+  The papal encyclical, 1892.
+
+The first crisis arose out of the peacemaking policy of the Pope.
+Following up his intimation to the archbishop of Algiers, Leo XIII.
+published in February 1892 an encyclical, bidding French Catholics
+accept the Republic as the firmly established form of government. The
+papal injunction produced a new political group called the "Rallies,"
+the majority of its members being Monarchists who rallied to the
+Republic in obedience to the Vatican. The most conspicuous among them
+was Comte Albert de Mun, an eloquent exponent in the Chamber of
+legitimism and Christian socialism. The extreme Left mistrusted the
+adhesion of the new converts to the Republic, and ecclesiastical
+questions were the constant subjects of acrimonious debates in
+parliament. In the course of one of them M. de Freycinet found himself
+in a minority. He ceased to be prime minister, being succeeded by M.
+Loubet, a lawyer from Montelimar, who had previously held office for
+three months in the first Tirard cabinet; but M. de Freycinet continued
+to hold his portfolio of war. The confusion of the republican groups
+kept pace with the disarray of the reactionaries, and outside parliament
+the frequency of anarchist outrages did not increase public confidence.
+The only figure in the Republic which grew in prestige was that of M.
+Carnot, who in his frequent presidential tours dignified his office,
+though his modesty made him unduly efface his own personality.
+
+
+  The Panama scandal.
+
+When the autumn session of 1892 began all other questions were
+overwhelmed by the bursting of the Panama scandal. The company
+associated for the piercing of the Isthmus of Panama, undertaken by M.
+de Lesseps, the maker of the Suez Canal, had become insolvent some years
+before. Fifty millions sterling subscribed by the thrift of France had
+disappeared, but the rumours involving political personages in the
+disaster were so confidently asserted to be reactionary libels, that a
+minister of the Republic, afterwards sent to penal servitude for
+corruption, obtained damages for the publication of one of them. It was
+known that M. de Lesseps was to be tried for misappropriating the money
+subscribed; but considering the vast sums lost by the public, little
+interest was taken in the matter till it was suddenly stirred by the
+dramatic suicide of a well-known Jewish financier closely connected with
+republican politicians, driven to death, it was said, by menaces of
+blackmail. Then succeeded a period of terror in political circles. Every
+one who had a grudge against an enemy found vent for it in the press,
+and the people of Paris lived in an atmosphere of delation. Unhappily it
+was true that ministers and members of parliament had been subsidized by
+the Panama company. Floquet, the president of the Chamber, avowed that
+when prime minister he had laid hands on L12,000 of the company's funds
+for party purposes, and his justification of the act threw a light on
+the code of public morality of the parliamentary Republic. Other
+politicians were more seriously implicated on the charge of having
+accepted subsidies for their private purposes, and emotion reached its
+height when the cabinet ordered the prosecution of two of its members
+for corrupt traffic of their offices. These two ministers were
+afterwards discharged, and they seem to have been accused with
+recklessness; but their prosecution by their own colleagues proved that
+the statesmen of the Republic believed that their high political circles
+were sapped with corruption. Finally, only twelve senators and deputies
+were committed for trial, and the only one convicted was a minister of
+M. de Freycinet's third cabinet, who pleaded guilty to receiving large
+bribes from the Panama company. The public regarded the convicted
+politician as a scapegoat, believing that there were numerous
+delinquents in parliament, more guilty than he, who had not even been
+prosecuted. This feeling was aggravated by the sentence passed, but
+afterwards remitted, on the aged M. de Lesseps, who had involved French
+people in misfortune only because he too sanguinely desired to repeat
+the triumph he had achieved for France by his great work in Egypt.
+
+Within the nation the moral result of the Panama affair was a general
+feeling that politics had become under the Republic a profession
+unworthy of honest citizens. The sentiment evoked by the scandal was one
+of sceptical lassitude rather than of indignation. The reactionaries had
+crowned their record of political incompetence. At a crisis which gave
+legitimate opportunity to a respectable and patriotic Opposition they
+showed that the country had nothing to expect from them but incoherent
+and exaggerated invective. If the scandal had come to light in the time
+of General Boulanger the parliamentary Republic would not have survived
+it. As it was, the sordid story did little more than produce several
+changes of ministry. M. Loubet resigned the premiership in December 1892
+to M. Ribot, a former functionary of the Empire, whose ministry lived
+for three stormy weeks. On the first day of 1893 M. Ribot formed his
+second cabinet, which survived till the end of March, when he was
+succeeded by his minister of education, M. Charles Dupuy, an
+ex-professor who had never held office till four months previously. M.
+Dupuy, having taken the portfolio of the interior, supervised the
+general election of 1893, which took place amid the profound
+indifference of the population, except in certain localities where
+personal antagonisms excited violence. An intelligent Opposition would
+have roused the country at the polls against the regime compromised by
+the Panama affair. Nothing of the sort occurred, and the electorate
+preferred the doubtful probity of their republican representatives to
+the certain incompetence of the reactionaries. The adversaries of the
+Republic polled only 16% of the votes recorded, and the chief feature of
+the election was the increased return of socialist and radical-socialist
+deputies. When parliament met it turned out the Dupuy ministry, and M.
+Casimir-Perier quitted the presidency of the Chamber to take his place.
+The new prime minister was the bearer of an eminent name, being the
+grandson of the statesman of 1831, and the great-grandson of the owner
+of Vizille, where the estates of Dauphine met in 1788, as a prelude to
+the assembling of the states-general the next year. His acceptance of
+office aroused additional interest because he was a minister possessed
+of independent wealth, and therefore a rare example of a French
+politician free from the imputation of making a living out of politics.
+Neither his repute nor his qualities gave long life to his ministry,
+which fell in four months, and M. Dupuy was sent for again to form a
+cabinet in May 1894.
+
+
+  Assassination of president Carnot.
+
+  Casimir-Perier president, 1894.
+
+Before the second Dupuy ministry had been in office a month President
+Carnot died by the knife of an anarchist at Lyons. He was perhaps the
+most estimable politician of the Third Republic. Although the standard
+of political life was not elevated under his presidency, he at all
+events set a good personal example, and to have filled unscathed the
+most conspicuous position in the land during a period unprecedented for
+the scurrility of libels on public men was a testimony to his blameless
+character. As the term of his septennate was near, parliament was not
+unprepared for a presidential election, and M. Casimir-Perier, who had
+been spoken of as his possible successor, was elected by the Congress
+which met at Versailles on the 27th of June 1894, three days after
+Carnot's assassination. The election of one who bore respectably a name
+not less distinguished in history than that of Carnot seemed to ensure
+that the Republic would reach the end of the century under the headship
+of a president of exceptional prestige. But instead of remaining chief
+of the state for seven years, in less than seven months M.
+Casimir-Perier astonished France and Europe by his resignation.
+Scurrilously defamed by the socialist press, the new president found
+that the Republicans in the Chamber were not disposed to defend him in
+his high office; so, on the 15th of January 1895, he seized the
+occasion of the retirement of the Dupuy ministry to address a message to
+the two houses intimating his resignation of the presidency, which, he
+said, was endowed with too many responsibilities and not sufficient
+powers.
+
+
+  Felix Faure president, 1895.
+
+This time the Chambers were unprepared for a presidential vacancy, and
+to fill it in forty-eight hours was necessarily a matter of haphazard.
+The choice of the congress fell on Felix Faure, a merchant of Havre,
+who, though minister of marine in the retiring cabinet, was one of the
+least-known politicians who had held office. The selection was a good
+one, and introduced to the presidency a type of politician unfortunately
+rare under the Third Republic--a successful man of business. Felix Faure
+had a fine presence and polished manners, and having risen from a humble
+origin he displayed in his person the fact that civilization descends to
+a lower social level in France than elsewhere. Although he was in a
+sense a man of the people the Radicals and Socialists in the Chambers
+had voted against him. Their candidate, like almost all democratic
+leaders in France, had never worked with his hands--M. Brisson, the son
+of an attorney at Bourges, a member of the Parisian bar, and perpetual
+candidate for the presidency. Nevertheless the Left tried to take
+possession of President Faure. His first ministry, composed of moderate
+republicans, and presided over by M. Ribot, lasted until the autumn
+session of 1895, when it was turned out and a radical cabinet was formed
+by M. Leon Bourgeois, an ex-functionary, who when a prefect had been
+suspected of reactionary tendencies.
+
+The Bourgeois cabinet of 1895 was remarkable as the first ministry
+formed since 1877 which did not contain a single member of the outgoing
+cabinet. It was said to be exclusively radical in its composition, and
+thus to indicate that the days of "republican concentration" were over,
+and that the Republic, being firmly established, an era of party
+government on the English model had arrived. The new ministry, however,
+on analysis did not differ in character from any of its predecessors.
+Seven of its members were old office-holders of the ordinary
+"ministrable" type. The most conspicuous was M. Cavaignac, the son of
+the general who had opposed Louis Bonaparte in 1848, and the grandson of
+J.B. Cavaignac, the regicide member of the Convention. Like Carnot and
+Casimir-Perier, he was, therefore, one of those rare politicians of the
+Republic who possessed some hereditary tradition. An ambitious man, he
+was now classed as a Radical on the strength of his advocacy of the
+income-tax, the principle of which has never been popular in France, as
+being adverse to the secretive habits of thrift cultivated by the
+people, which are a great source of the national wealth. The radicalism
+of the rest of the ministry was not more alarming in character, and its
+tenure of office was without legislative result. Its fall, however,
+occasioned the only constitutionally interesting ministerial crisis of
+the twenty-four which had taken place since Grevy's election to the
+presidency sixteen years before. The Senate, disliking the fiscal policy
+of the government, refused to vote supply in spite of the support which
+the Chamber gave to the ministry. The collision between the two houses
+did not produce the revolutionary rising which the Radicals predicted,
+and the Senate actually forced the Bourgeois cabinet to resign amid
+profound popular indifference.
+
+
+  Franco-Russian alliance.
+
+The new prime minister was M. Meline, who began his long political
+career as a member of the Commune in 1871, but was so little compromised
+in the insurrection that Jules Simon gave him an under-secretaryship in
+his ministry of 1876. After that he was once a cabinet minister, and was
+for a year president of the Chamber. He was chiefly known as a
+protectionist; but it was as leader of the Progressists, as the
+Opportunists now called themselves, that he formed his cabinet in April
+1896, which was announced as a moderate ministry opposed to the policy
+of the Radicals. It is true that it made no attempt to tax incomes, but
+otherwise its achievements did not differ from those of other
+ministries, radical or concentration, except in its long survival. It
+lasted for over two years, and lived as long as the second Ferry
+cabinet. Its existence was prolonged by certain incidents of the
+Franco-Russian alliance. The visit of the Tsar to Paris in October
+1896, being the first official visit paid by a European sovereign to the
+Republic, helped the government over the critical period at which
+ministries usually succumbed, and it was further strengthened in
+parliament by the invitation to the president of the Republic to return
+the imperial visit at St Petersburg in 1897. The Chamber came to its
+normal term that autumn; but a law had been passed fixing May as the
+month for general elections, and the ministry was allowed to retain
+office till the dissolution at Easter 1898.
+
+
+  1899: death of President Faure.
+
+  M. Loubet president.
+
+The long duration of the Meline government was said to be a further sign
+of the arrival of an era of party government with its essential
+accompaniment, ministerial stability. But in the country there was no
+corresponding sign that the electorate was being organized into two
+parties of Progressists and Radicals; while in the Chamber it was
+ominously observed that persistent opposition to the moderate ministry
+came from nominal supporters of its views, who were dismayed at one
+small band of fellow-politicians monopolizing office for two years. The
+last election of the century was therefore fought on a confused issue,
+the most tangible results being the further reduction of the
+Monarchists, who secured only 12% of the total poll, and the advance of
+the Socialists, who obtained nearly 20% of the votes recorded. The
+Radicals returned were less numerous than the Moderates, but with the
+aid of the Socialists they nearly balanced them. A new group entitled
+Nationalist made its appearance, supported by a miscellaneous electorate
+representing the malcontent element in the nation of all political
+shades from monarchist to revolutionary socialist. The Chamber, so
+composed, was as incoherent as either of its predecessors. It refused to
+re-elect the radical leader M. Brisson as its president, and then
+refused its confidence to the moderate leader M. Meline. M. Brisson, the
+rejected of the Chamber, was sent for to form a ministry, on the 28th of
+June 1898, which survived till the adjournment, only to be turned out
+when the autumn session began. M. Charles Dupuy thus became prime
+minister for the third time with a cabinet of the old concentration
+pattern, and for the third time in less than five years under his
+premiership the Presidency of the Republic became vacant. Felix Faure
+had increased in pomposity rather than in popularity. His contact with
+European sovereigns seems to have made him over-conscious of his
+superior rank, and he cultivated habits which austere republicans make
+believe to be the monopoly of frivolous courts. The regular domesticity
+of middle-class life may not be disturbed with impunity when age is
+advancing, and Felix Faure died with tragic unexpectedness on the 16th
+of February 1899. The joys of his high office were so dear to him that
+nothing but death would have induced him to lay it down before the term
+of his septennate. There was therefore no candidate in waiting for the
+vacancy; and as Paris was in an agitated mood the majority in the
+Congress elected M. Loubet president of the Republic, because he
+happened to hold the second place of dignity in the state, the
+presidency of the Senate, and was, moreover, a politician who had the
+confidence of the republican groups as an adversary of plebiscitary
+pretensions. His only competitor was M. Meline, whose ambitions were not
+realized, in spite of the alliance of his Progressist supporters with
+the Monarchists and Nationalists. The Dupuy ministry lasted till June
+1899, when a new cabinet was formed by M. Waldeck-Rousseau, who, having
+held office under Gambetta and Jules Ferry, had relinquished politics
+for the bar, of which he had become a distinguished leader. Though a
+moderate republican, he was the first prime minister to give portfolios
+to socialist politicians. This was the distinguishing feature of the
+last cabinet of the century--the thirty-seventh which had taken office
+in the twenty-six years which had elapsed since the resignation of
+Thiers in 1873.
+
+
+  Anti-Semitic movement.
+
+It is now necessary to go back a few years in order to refer to a matter
+which, though not political in its origin, in its development filled the
+whole political atmosphere of France in the closing period of the 19th
+century. Soon after the failure of the Boulangist movement a journal was
+founded at Paris called the _Libre Parole_. Its editor, M. Drumont, was
+known as the author of _La France juive_, a violent anti-Semitic work,
+written to denounce the influence exercised by Jewish financiers in the
+politics of the Third Republic. It may be said to have started the
+anti-Semitic movement in France, where hostility to the Jews had not the
+pretext existing in those lands which contain a large Jewish population
+exercising local rivalry with the natives of the soil, or spoiling them
+with usury. That state of things existed in Algeria, where the
+indigenous Jews were made French citizens during the Franco-Prussian War
+to secure their support against the Arabs in rebellion. But political
+anti-Semitism was introduced into Algeria only as an offshoot of the
+movement in continental France, where the great majority of the Jewish
+community were of the same social class as the politicians of the
+Republic. Primarily directed against the Jewish financiers, the movement
+was originally looked upon as a branch of the anti-capitalist propaganda
+of the Socialists. Thus the _Libre Parole_ joined with the revolutionary
+press in attacking the repressive legislation provoked by the dynamite
+outrages of the anarchists, clerical reactionaries who supported it
+being as scurrilously abused by the anti-Semitic organ as its republican
+authors. The Panama affair, in the exposure of which the _Libre Parole_
+took a prominent part soon after its foundation, was also a bond between
+anti-Semites and Socialists, to whom, however, the Monarchists, always
+incapable of acting alone, united their forces. The implication of
+certain Jewish financiers with republican politicians in the Panama
+scandal aided the anti-Semites in their special propaganda, of which a
+main thesis was that the government of the Third Republic had been
+organized by its venal politicians for the benefit of Jewish immigrants
+from Germany, who had thus enriched themselves at the expense of the
+laborious and unsuspecting French population. The _Libre Parole_, which
+had become a popular organ with reactionaries and with malcontents of
+all classes, enlisted the support of the Catholics by attributing the
+anti-religious policy of the Republic to the influence of the Jews,
+skilfully reviving bitter memories of the enaction of the Ferry decrees,
+when sometimes the laicization of schools or the expulsion of monks and
+nuns had been carried out by a Jewish functionary. Thus religious
+sentiment and race prejudice were introduced into a movement which was
+at first directed against capital; and the campaign was conducted with
+the weapons of scurrility and defamation which had made an unlicensed
+press under the Third Republic a demoralizing national evil.
+
+
+  Condemnation of Captain Dreyfus.
+
+An adroit feature of the anti-Semitic campaign was an appeal to national
+patriotism to rid the army of Jewish influence. The Jews, it was said,
+not content with directing the financial, and thereby the general policy
+of the Republic, had designs on the French army, in which they wished to
+act as secret agents of their German kindred. In October 1894 the _Libre
+Parole_ announced that a Jewish officer of artillery attached to the
+general staff, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, had been arrested on the charge
+of supplying a government of the Triple Alliance with French military
+secrets. Tried by court-martial, he was sentenced to military
+degradation and to detention for life in a fortress. He was publicly
+degraded at Paris in January 1895, a few days before Casimir-Perier
+resigned the presidency of the Republic, and was transported to the Ile
+du Diable on the coast of French Guiana. His conviction, on the charge
+of having betrayed to a foreign power documents relating to the national
+defence, was based on the alleged identity of his handwriting with that
+of an intercepted covering-letter, which contained a list of the papers
+treasonably communicated. The possibility of his innocence was not
+raised outside the circle of his friends; the Socialists, who
+subsequently defended him, even complained that common soldiers were
+shot for offences less than that for which this richly connected officer
+had been only transported. The secrecy of his trial did not shock public
+sentiment in France, where at that time all civilians charged with crime
+were interrogated by a judge in private, and where all accused persons
+are presumed guilty until proved innocent. In a land subject to invasion
+there was less disposition to criticize the decision of a military
+tribunal acting in the defence of the nation even than there would have
+been in the case of a doubtful judgment passed in a civil court. The
+country was practically unanimous that Captain Dreyfus had got his
+deserts. A few, indeed, suggested that had he not been a Jew he would
+never have been accused; but the greater number replied that an ordinary
+French traitor of Gentile birth would have been forgotten from the
+moment of his condemnation. The pertinacity with which some of his
+co-religionists set to work to show that he had been irregularly
+condemned seemed to justify the latter proposition. But it was not a Jew
+who brought about the revival of the affair. Colonel Picquart, an
+officer of great promise, became head of the intelligence department at
+the war office, and in 1896 informed the minister of his suspicion that
+the letter on which Dreyfus had been condemned was written by a certain
+Major Esterhazy. The military authorities, not wishing to have the case
+reopened, sent Colonel Picquart on foreign service, and put in his place
+Colonel Henry. The all-seeing press published various versions of the
+incident, and the anti-Semitic journals denounced them as proofs of a
+Jewish conspiracy against the French army.
+
+
+  Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards.
+
+At the end of 1897 M. Scheurer-Kestner, an Alsatian devoted to France
+and a republican senator, tried to persuade his political friends to
+reopen the case; but M. Meline, the prime minister, declared in the name
+of the Republic that the Dreyfus affair no longer existed. The fact that
+the senator who championed Dreyfus was a Protestant encouraged the
+clerical press in its already marked tendency to utilize anti-Semitism
+as a weapon of ecclesiastical warfare. But the religious side-issues of
+the question would have had little importance had not the army been
+involved in the controversy, which had become so keen that all the
+population, outside that large section of it indifferent to all public
+questions, was divided into "Dreyfusards" and "anti-Dreyfusards." The
+strong position of the latter was due to their assuming the position of
+defenders of the army, which, at an epoch when neither the legislature
+nor the government inspired respect, and the Church was the object of
+polemic, was the only institution in France to unite the nation by
+appealing to its martial and patriotic instincts. That is the
+explanation of the enthusiasm of the public for generals and other
+officers by whom the trial of Dreyfus and subsequent proceedings had
+been conducted in a manner repugnant to those who do not favour the
+arbitrary ways of military dictatorship, which, however, are not
+unpopular in France. The acquittal of Major Esterhazy by a
+court-martial, the conviction of Zola by a civil tribunal for a violent
+criticism of the military authorities, and the imprisonment without
+trial of Colonel Picquart for his efforts to exonerate Dreyfus, were
+practically approved by the nation. This was shown by the result of the
+general elections in May 1898. The clerical reactionaries were almost
+swept out of the Chamber, but the overwhelming republican majority was
+practically united in its hostility to the defenders of Dreyfus, whose
+only outspoken representatives were found in the socialist groups. The
+moderate Meline ministry was succeeded in June 1898 by the radical
+Brisson ministry. But while the new prime minister was said to be
+personally disposed to revise the sentence on Dreyfus, his civilian
+minister of war, M. Cavaignac, was as hostile to revision as any of his
+military predecessors--General Mercier, under whom the trial took place,
+General Zurlinden, and General Billot, a republican soldier devoted to
+the parliamentary regime.
+
+
+  Political results of Dreyfus agitation.
+
+The radical minister of war in July 1898 laid before the Chamber certain
+new proofs of the guilt of Dreyfus, in a speech so convincing that the
+house ordered it to be placarded in all the communes of France. The next
+month Colonel Henry, the chief of the intelligence department, confessed
+to having forged those new proofs, and then committed suicide. M.
+Cavaignac thereupon resigned office, but declared that the crime of
+Henry did not prove the innocence of Dreyfus. Many, however, who had
+hitherto accepted the judgment of 1894, reflected that the offence of a
+guilty man did not need new crime for its proof. It was further remarked
+that the forgery had been committed by the intimate colleague of the
+officers of the general staff, who had zealously protected Esterhazy,
+the suspected author of the document on which Dreyfus had been
+convicted. An uneasy misgiving became widespread; but partisan spirit
+was too excited for it to cause a general revulsion of feeling. Some
+journalists and politicians of the extreme Left had adopted the defence
+of Dreyfus as an anti-clerical movement in response to the intemperate
+partisanship of the Catholic press on the other side. Other members of
+the socialist groups, not content with criticizing the conduct of the
+military authorities in the Dreyfus affair, opened a general attack on
+the French army,--an unpopular policy which allowed the anti-Dreyfusards
+to utilize the old revolutionary device of making the word "patriotism"
+a party cry. The defamation and rancour with which the press on both
+sides flooded the land obscured the point at issue. However, the Brisson
+ministry just before its fall remitted the Dreyfus judgment to the
+criminal division of the cour de cassation--the supreme court of
+revision in France. M. Dupuy formed a new cabinet in November 1898, and
+made M. de Freycinet minister of war, but that adroit office-holder,
+though a civilian and a Protestant, did not favour the anti-military and
+anti-clerical defenders of Dreyfus. The refusal of the Senate, the
+stronghold of the Republic, to re-elect M. Scheurer-Kestner as its
+vice-president, showed that the opportunist minister of war understood
+the feeling of parliament, which was soon displayed by an extraordinary
+proceeding. The divisional judges, to whom the case was remitted, showed
+signs that their decision would be in favour of a new trial of Dreyfus.
+The republican legislature, therefore, disregarding the principle of the
+separation of the powers, which is the basis of constitutional
+government, took the arbitrary step of interfering with the judicial
+authority. It actually passed a law withdrawing the partly-heard cause
+from the criminal chamber of the cour de cassation, and transferring it
+to the full court of three divisions, in the hope that a majority of
+judges would thus be found to decide against the revision of the
+sentence on Dreyfus.
+
+
+  Second trial of Dreyfus.
+
+This flagrant confusion of the legislative with the judicial power
+displayed once more the incompetence of the French rightly to use
+parliamentary institutions; but it left the nation indifferent. It was
+during the passage of the bill that the president of the Republic
+suddenly died. Felix Faure was said to be hostile to the defenders of
+Dreyfus and disposed to utilise the popular enthusiasm for the army as a
+means of making the presidential office independent of parliament. The
+Chambers, therefore, in spite of their anti-Dreyfusard bias, were
+determined not to relinquish any of their constitutional prerogative.
+The military and plebiscitary parties were now fomenting the public
+discontent by noisy demonstrations. The president of the Senate, M.
+Loubet, as has been mentioned, was known to have no sympathy with this
+agitation, so he was elected president of the Republic by a large
+majority at the congress held at Versailles on 18th February 1899. The
+new president, who was unknown to the public, though he had once been
+prime minister for nine months, was respected in political circles; but
+his elevation to the first office of the State made him the object of
+that defamation which had become the chief characteristic of the
+partisan press under the Third Republic. He was recklessly accused of
+having been an accomplice of the Panama frauds, by screening certain
+guilty politicians when he was prime minister in 1892, and because he
+was not opposed to the revision of the Dreyfus sentence he was wantonly
+charged with being bought with Jewish money. Meanwhile the united
+divisions of the cour de cassation were, in spite of the intimidation of
+the legislature, reviewing the case with an independence worthy of
+praise in an ill-paid magistracy which owed its promotion to political
+influence. Instead of justifying the suggestive interference of
+parliament it revised the judgment of the court-martial, and ordered
+Dreyfus to be re-tried by a military tribunal at Rennes. The Dupuy
+ministry, which had wished to prevent this decision, resigned, and M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau formed a heterogeneous cabinet in which Socialists, who
+for the first time took office, had for their colleague as minister of
+war General de Galliffet, whose chief political fame had been won as
+the executioner of the Communards after the insurrection of 1871.
+Dreyfus was brought back from the Devil's Island, and in August 1899 was
+put upon his trial a second time. His old accusers, led by General
+Mercier, the minister of war of 1894, redoubled their efforts to prove
+his guilt, and were permitted by the officers composing the court a wide
+license according to English ideas of criminal jurisprudence. The
+published evidence did not, however, seem to connect Dreyfus with the
+charges brought against him. Nevertheless the court, by a majority of
+five to two, found him guilty, and with illogical inconsequence added
+that there were in his treason extenuating circumstances. He was
+sentenced to ten years' detention, and while it was being discussed
+whether the term he had already served would count as part of his
+penalty, the ministry completed the inconsequency of the situation by
+advising the president of the Republic to pardon the prisoner. The
+result of the second trial satisfied neither the partisans of the
+accused, who desired his rehabilitation, some of them reproaching him
+for accepting a pardon, nor his adversaries, whose vindictiveness was
+unsated by the penalty he had already suffered. But the great mass of
+the French people, who are always ready to treat a public question with
+indifference, were glad to be rid of a controversy which had for years
+infected the national life.
+
+
+  Real character of the Dreyfus agitation.
+
+The Dreyfus affair was severely judged by foreign critics as a
+miscarriage of justice resulting from race-prejudice. If that simple
+appreciation rightly describes its origin, it became in its development
+one of those scandals symptomatic of the unhealthy political condition
+of France, which on a smaller scale had often recurred under the Third
+Republic, and which were made the pretext by the malcontents of all
+parties for gratifying their animosities. That in its later stages it
+was not a question of race-persecution was seen in the curious
+phenomenon of journals owned or edited by Jews leading the outcry
+against the Jewish officer and his defenders. That it was not a mere
+episode of the rivalry between Republicans and Monarchists, or between
+the advocates of parliamentarism and of military autocracy, was evident
+from the fact that the most formidable opponents of Dreyfus, without
+whose hostility that of the clericals and reactionaries would have been
+ineffective, were republican politicians. That it was not a phase of the
+anti-capitalist movement was shown by the zealous adherence of the
+socialist leaders and journalists to the cause of Dreyfus; indeed, one
+remarkable result of the affair was its diversion of the socialist party
+and press for several years from their normal campaign against property.
+The Dreyfus affair was utilized by the reactionaries against the
+Republic, by the clericals against the non-Catholics, by the
+anti-clericals against the Church, by the military party against the
+parliamentarians, and by the revolutionary socialists against the army.
+It was also conspicuously utilized by rival republican politicians
+against one another, and the chaos of political groups was further
+confused by it.
+
+
+  The State trial of 1899.
+
+An epilogue to the Dreyfus affair was the trial for treason before the
+Senate, at the end of 1899, of a number of persons, mostly obscure
+followers either of M. Deroulede the poet, who advocated a plebiscitary
+republic, or of the duc d'Orleans, the pretender of the constitutional
+monarchy. On the day of President Faure's funeral M. Deroulede had
+vainly tried to entice General Roget, a zealous adversary of Dreyfus,
+who was on duty with his troops, to march on the Elysee in order to
+evict the newly-elected president of the Republic. Other demonstrations
+against M. Loubet ensued, the most offensive being a concerted assault
+upon him on the racecourse at Auteuil in June 1899. The subsequent
+resistance to the police of a band of anti-Semites threatened with
+arrest, who barricaded themselves in a house in the rue Chabrol, in the
+centre of Paris, and, with the marked approval of the populace,
+sustained a siege for several weeks, indicated that the capital was in a
+condition not far removed from anarchy. M. Deroulede, indicted at the
+assizes of the Seine for his misdemeanour on the day of President
+Faure's funeral, had been triumphantly acquitted. It was evident that
+no jury would convict citizens prosecuted for political offences and the
+government therefore decided to make use of the article of the Law of
+1875, which allowed the Senate to be constituted a high court for the
+trial of offences endangering the state. A respectable minority of the
+Senate, including M. Wallon, the venerable "Father of the Constitution"
+of 1875, vainly protested that the framers of the law intended to invest
+the upper legislative chamber with judicial power only for the trial of
+grave crimes of high treason, and not of petty political disorders which
+a well-organized government ought to be able to repress with the
+ordinary machinery of police and justice. The outvoted protest was
+justified by the proceedings before the High Court, which, undignified
+and disorderly, displayed both the fatuity of the so-called conspirators
+and the feebleness of the government which had to cope with them. The
+trial proved that the plebiscitary faction was destitute of its
+essential factor, a chief to put forward for the headship of the state,
+and that it was resolved, if it overturned the parliamentary system, not
+to accept under any conditions the duc d'Orleans, the only pretender
+before the public. It was shown that royalists and plebiscitary
+republicans alike had utilized as an organization of disorder the
+anti-Semitic propaganda which had won favour among the masses as a
+nationalist movement to protect the French from foreign competition. The
+evidence adduced before the high court revealed, moreover, the curious
+fact that certain Jewish royalists had given to the duc d'Orleans large
+sums of money to found anti-Semitic journals as the surest means of
+popularizing his cause.
+
+
+  French parties at the close of the 19th century.
+
+The last year of the 19th century, though uneventful for France, was one
+of political unrest. This, however, did not take the form of ministerial
+crises, as, for the fourth time since responsible cabinets were
+introduced in 1873, a whole year, from the 1st of January to the 31st of
+December, elapsed without a change of ministry. The prime minister, M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau, though his domestic policy exasperated a large section
+of the political world, including one half of the Progressive group
+which he had helped to found, displayed qualities of statesmanship
+always respected in France, but rarely exhibited under the Third
+Republic. He had proved himself to be what the French call _un homme de
+gouvernement_--that is to say, an authoritative administrator of
+unimpassioned temperament capable of governing with the arbitrary
+machinery of Napoleonic centralization. His alliance with the extreme
+Left and the admission into his cabinet of socialist deputies, showed
+that he understood which wing of the Chamber it was best to conciliate
+in order to keep the government in his hands for an abnormal term. The
+advent to office of Socialists disquieted the respectable and prosperous
+commercial classes, which in France take little part in politics, though
+they had small sympathy with the nationalists, who were the most violent
+opponents of the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry. The alarm caused by the
+handing over of important departments of the state to socialist
+politicians arose upon a danger which is not always understood beyond
+the borders of France. Socialism in France is a movement appealing to
+the revolutionary instincts of the French democracy, advocated in vague
+terms by the members of rival groups or sects. Thus the increasing
+number of socialist deputies in parliament had produced no legislative
+results, and their presence in the cabinet was not feared on that
+account. The fear which their office-holding inspired was due to the
+immense administrative patronage which the centralized system confides
+to each member of the government. French ministers are wont to bestow
+the places at their disposal on their political friends, so the prospect
+of administrative posts being filled all over the land by
+revolutionaries caused some uneasiness. Otherwise the presence of
+Socialists on the ministerial bench seemed to have no other effect than
+that of partially muzzling the socialist groups in the Chamber. The
+opposition to the government was heterogeneous. It included the few
+Monarchists left in the Chamber, the Nationalists, who resembled the
+Boulangists of twelve years before, and who had added anti-Semitism to
+the articles of the revisionist creed, and a number of republicans,
+chiefly of the old Opportunist group, which had renewed itself under the
+name of Progressist at the time when M. Waldeck-Rousseau was its most
+important member in the Senate.
+
+The ablest leaders of this Opposition were all malcontent Republicans;
+and this fact seemed to show that if ever any form of monarchy were
+restored in France, political office would probably remain in the hands
+of men who were former ministers of the Third Republic. Thus the most
+conspicuous opponents of the cabinet were three ex-prime ministers, MM.
+Meline, Charles Dupuy and Ribot. Less distinguished republican
+"ministrables" had their normal appetite for office whetted in 1900 by
+the international exhibition at Paris. It brought the ministers of the
+day into unusual prominence, and endowed them with large subsidies voted
+by parliament for official entertainments. The exhibition was planned on
+too ambitious a scale to be a financial success. It also called forth
+the just regrets of those who deplored the tendency of Parisians under
+the Third Republic to turn their once brilliant city into an
+international casino. Its most satisfactory feature was the proof it
+displayed of the industrial inventiveness and the artistic instinct of
+the French. The political importance of the exhibition lay in the fact
+that it determined the majority in the Chamber not to permit the
+foreigners attracted by it to the capital to witness a ministerial
+crisis. Few strangers of distinction, however, came to it, and not one
+sovereign of the great powers visited Paris; but the ministry remained
+in office, and M. Waldeck-Rousseau had uninterrupted opportunity of
+showing his governmental ability. The only change in his cabinet took
+place when General de Galliffet resigned the portfolio of war to General
+Andre. The army, as represented by its officers, had shown symptoms of
+hostility to the ministry in consequence of the pardon of Dreyfus. The
+new minister of war repressed such demonstrations with proceedings of
+the same arbitrary character as those which had called forth criticism
+in England when used in the Dreyfus affair. In both cases the
+high-handed policy was regarded either with approval or with
+indifference by the great majority of the French nation, which ever
+since the Revolution has shown that its instincts are in favour of
+authoritative government. The emphatic support given by the radical
+groups to the autocratic policy of M. Waldeck-Rousseau and his ministers
+was not surprising to those who have studied the history of the French
+democracy. It has always had a taste for despotism since it first became
+a political power in the days of the Jacobins, to whose early protection
+General Bonaparte owed his career. On the other hand liberalism has
+always been repugnant to the masses, and the only period in which the
+Liberals governed the country was under the regime of limited
+suffrage--during the Restoration and the Monarchy of July.
+
+
+  Paris and the provinces.
+
+The most important event in France during the last year of the century,
+not from its political result, but from the lessons it taught, was
+perhaps the Paris municipal election. The quadrennial renewal of all the
+municipal councils of France took place in May 1900. The municipality of
+the capital had been for many years in the hands of the extreme Radicals
+and the revolutionary Socialists. The Parisian electors now sent to the
+Hotel de Ville a council in which the majority were Nationalists, in
+general sympathy with the anti-Semitic and plebiscitary movements. The
+nationalist councillors did not, however, form one solid party, but were
+divided into five or six groups, representing every shade of political
+discontent, from monarchism to revisionist-socialism. While the
+electorate of Paris thus pronounced for the revision of the
+Constitution, the provincial elections, as far as they had a political
+bearing, were favourable to the ministry and to the Republic. M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau accepted the challenge of the capital, and dealt with
+its representatives with the arbitrary weapons of centralization which
+the Republic had inherited from the Napoleonic settlement of the
+Revolution. Municipal autonomy is unknown in France, and the town
+council of Paris has to submit to special restrictions on its liberty of
+action. The prefect of the Seine is always present at its meetings as
+agent of the government and the minister of the interior can veto any
+of its resolutions. The Socialists, when their party ruled the
+municipality, clamoured in parliament for the removal of this
+administrative control. But now being in a minority they supported the
+government in its anti-autonomic rigours. The majority of the municipal
+council authorized its president to invite to a banquet, in honour of
+the international exhibition, the provincial mayors and a number of
+foreign municipal magnates, including the lord mayor of London. The
+ministers were not invited, and the prefect of the Seine thereupon
+informed the president of the municipality that he had no right, without
+consulting the agent of the government, to offer a banquet to the
+provincial mayors; and they, with the deference which French officials
+instinctively show to the central authority, almost all refused the
+invitation to the Hotel de Ville. The municipal banquet was therefore
+abandoned, but the government gave one in the Tuileries gardens, at
+which no fewer than 22,000 mayors paid their respects to the chief of
+the state. These events showed that, as in the Terror, as at the _coup
+d'etat_ of 1851, and as in the insurrection of the Commune, the French
+provinces were never disposed to follow the political lead of the
+capital, whether the opinions prevailing there were Jacobin or
+reactionary. These incidents displayed the tendency of the French
+democracy, in Paris and in the country alike, to submit to and even to
+encourage the arbitrary working of administrative centralization. The
+elected mayors of the provincial communes, urban and rural, quitted
+themselves like well-drilled functionaries of the state, respectful of
+their hierarchical superiors, just as in the days when they were the
+nominees of the government; while the population of Paris, in spite of
+its perennial proneness to revolution, accepted the rebuff inflicted on
+its chosen representatives without any hostile demonstration. The
+municipal elections in Paris afforded fresh proof of the unchanging
+political ineptitude of the reactionaries. The dissatisfaction of the
+great capital with the government of the Republic might, in spite of the
+reluctance of the provinces to follow the lead of Paris, have had grave
+results if skilfully organized. But the anti-republican groups, instead
+of putting forward men of high ability or reputation to take possession
+of the Hotel de Ville, chose their candidates among the same inferior
+class of professional politicians as the Radicals and the Socialists
+whom they replaced on the municipal council.
+
+
+  France at the opening of the 20th century.
+
+The beginning of a century of the common era is a purely artificial
+division of time. Yet it has often marked a turning-point in the history
+of nations. This was notably the case in France in 1800. The violent and
+anarchical phases of the Revolution of 1789 came to an end with the 18th
+century; and the dawn of the 19th was coincident with the administrative
+reconstruction of France by Napoleon, on lines which endured with little
+modification till the end of that century, surviving seven revolutions
+of the executive power. The opening years of the 20th century saw no
+similar changes in the government of the country. The Third Republic,
+which was about to attain an age double that reached by any other regime
+since the Revolution, continued to live on the basis of the Constitution
+enacted in 1875, before it was five years old. Yet it seems not unlikely
+that historians of the future may take the date 1900 as a landmark
+between two distinct periods in the evolution of the French nation.
+
+
+  Results of the Dreyfus affair.
+
+With the close of the 19th century the Dreyfus affair came practically
+to an end. Whatever the political and moral causes of the agitation
+which attended it, its practical result was to strengthen the Radical
+and Socialist parties in the Republic, and to reduce to unprecedented
+impotence the forces of reaction. This was due more to the maladroitness
+of the Reactionaries than to the virtues or the prescience of the
+extreme Left, as the imprisonment of the Jewish captain, which agitated
+and divided the nation, could not have been inflicted without the ardent
+approval of Republicans of all shades of opinion. But when the majority
+at last realized that a mistake had been committed, the Reactionaries,
+in great measure through their own unwise policy, got the chief credit
+for it. Consequently, as the clericals formed the militant section of
+the anti-Republican parties, and as the Radical-Socialists were at that
+time keener in their hostility to the Church than in their zeal for
+social or economic reform, the issue of the Dreyfus affair brought about
+an anti-clerical movement, which, though initiated and organized by a
+small minority, met with nothing to resist it in the country, the
+reactionary forces being effete and the vast majority of the population
+indifferent. The main and absorbing feature therefore of political life
+in France in the first years of the 20th century was a campaign against
+the Roman Catholic Church, unparalleled in energy since the Revolution.
+Its most striking result was the rupture of the Concordat between France
+and the Vatican. This act was additionally important as being the first
+considerable breach made in the administrative structure reared by
+Napoleon, which had hitherto survived all the vicissitudes of the 19th
+century. Concurrently with this the influence of the Socialist party in
+French policy largely increased. A primary principle professed by the
+Socialists throughout Europe is pacificism, and its dissemination in
+France acted in two very different ways. It encouraged in the French
+people a growth of anti-military spirit, which showed some sign of
+infecting the national army, and it impelled the government of the
+Republic to be zealous in cultivating friendly relations with other
+powers. The result of the latter phase of pacificism was that France,
+under the Radical-Socialist administrations of the early years of the
+20th century, enjoyed a measure of international prestige of that
+superficial kind which is expressed by the state visits of crowned heads
+to the chief of the executive power, greater than at any period since
+the Second Empire.
+
+
+  Church policy.
+
+The voting of the law which separated the Church from the state will
+probably mark a capital date in French history; so, as the
+ecclesiastical policy of successive ministries filled almost entirely
+the interior chronicles of France for the first five years of the new
+century, it will be convenient to set forth in order the events which
+during that period led up to the passing of the Separation Act.
+
+The French legislature during the first session of the 20th century was
+chiefly occupied with the passing of the Associations Law. That measure,
+though it entirely changed the legal position of all associations in
+France, was primarily directed against the religious associations of the
+Roman Catholic Church. Their influence in the land, according to the
+anti-clericals, had been proved by the Dreyfus affair to be excessive.
+The Jesuits were alleged, on their own showing, to exercise considerable
+power over the officers of the army, and in this way to have been
+largely responsible for the blunders of the Dreyfus case. Another less
+celebrated order, which took an active part against Dreyfus, the
+Assumptionists, had achieved notoriety by its journalistic enterprise,
+its cheap newspapers of wide circulation being remarkable for the
+violence of their attacks on the institutions and men of the Republic.
+The mutual antagonism between the French government and religious
+congregations is a tradition which dates from the ancient monarchy and
+was continued by Napoleon I. long before the Third Republic adopted it
+in the legislation associated with the names of Jules Ferry and Paul
+Bert. The prime minister, under whose administration the 20th century
+succeeded the 19th, was M. Waldeck-Rousseau, who had been the colleague
+of Paul Bert in Gambetta's _grand ministere_, and in 1883 had served
+under Jules Ferry in his second ministry. He had retired from political
+life, though he remained a member of the Senate, and was making a large
+fortune at the bar, when in June 1899, at pecuniary sacrifice, he
+consented to form a ministry for the purpose of "liquidating" the
+Dreyfus affair. In 1900, the year after the second condemnation of
+Dreyfus and his immediate pardon by the government, M. Waldeck-Rousseau
+in a speech at Toulouse announced that legislation was about to be
+undertaken on the subject of associations.
+
+At that period the hostility of the Revolution to the principle of
+associations of all kinds, civil as well as religious, was still
+enforced by the law. With the exception of certain commercial societies
+subject to special legislation, no association composed of more than
+twenty persons could be formed without governmental authorization which
+was always revocable, the restriction applying equally to political and
+social clubs and to religious communities. The law was the same for all,
+but was differently applied. Authorization was rarely refused to
+political or social societies, though any club was liable to have its
+authorization withdrawn and to be shut up or dissolved. But to religious
+orders new authorization was practically never granted. Only four of
+them, the orders of Saint Lazare, of the Saint Esprit, of the Missions
+Etrangeres and of Saint Sulpice, were authorized under the Third
+Republic--their authorization dating from the First Empire and the
+Restoration. The Freres de la Doctrine Chretienne were also recognized,
+not, however, as a religious congregation under the jurisdiction of the
+minister of public worship, but as a teaching body under that of the
+minister of education. All the great historical orders, preaching,
+teaching or contemplative, were "unauthorized"; they led a precarious
+life on sufferance, having as corporations no civil existence, and being
+subject to dissolution at a moment's notice by the administrative
+authority. In spite of this disability and of the decrees of 1880
+directed against unauthorized monastic orders they had so increased
+under the anti-clerical Republic, that the religious of both sexes were
+more numerous in France at the beginning of the 20th century than at the
+end of the ancient monarchy. Moreover, in the twenty years during which
+unauthorized Orders had been supposed to be suppressed under the Ferry
+Decrees, their numbers had become six times more numerous than before,
+while it was the authorized Congregations which had diminished. The bare
+catalogue of the religious houses in the land, with the value of their
+properties (estimated by M. Waldeck-Rousseau at a milliard--L40,000,000)
+filled two White Books of two thousand pages, presented to parliament on
+the 4th of December 1900. The hostility to the Congregations was not
+confined to the anti-clericals. The secular clergy were suffering
+materially from the enterprising competition of their old rivals the
+regulars. Had the legislation for defining the legal situation of the
+religious orders been undertaken with the sole intention of limiting
+their excessive growth, such a measure would have been welcome to the
+parochial clergy. But they saw that the attack upon the congregations
+was only preliminary to a general attack upon the Church, in spite of
+the sincere assurances of the prime minister, a statesman of
+conservative temperament, that no harm would accrue to the secular
+clergy from the passing of the Associations Law.
+
+
+  Associations Bill.
+
+In January 1901, on the eve of the first debate in the Chamber of
+Deputies on the Associations bill, a discussion took place which showed
+that the rupture of the Concordat might be nearing the range of
+practical politics, though parliament was as yet unwilling to take it
+into consideration. The archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Richard, had
+published a letter addressed to him by Leo XIII. deploring the projected
+legislation as being a breach of the Concordat under which the free
+exercise of the Catholic religion in France was assured. The Socialists
+argued that this letter was an intolerable intervention on the part of
+the Vatican in the domestic politics of the Republic, and proposed that
+parliament should after voting the Associations Law proceed to separate
+Church and State. M. Waldeck-Rousseau, the prime minister, calm and
+moderate, declined to take this view of the pope's letter, and the
+resolution was defeated by a majority of more than two to one. But
+another motion, proposed by a Nationalist, that the Chamber should
+declare its resolve to maintain the Concordat, was rejected by a small
+majority. The discussion of the Associations bill was then commenced by
+the Chamber and went on until the Easter recess. Its main features when
+finally voted were that the right to associate for purposes not illicit
+should be henceforth free of all restrictions, though "juridical
+capacity" would be accorded only to such associations as were formally
+notified to the administrative authority. The law did not, however,
+accord liberty of association to religious "Congregations," none of
+which could be formed without a special statute, and any constituted
+without such authorization would be deemed illicit. The policy of the
+measure, as applying to religious orders, was attacked by the extreme
+Right and the extreme Left from their several standpoints. The clericals
+proposed that under the new law all associations, religious as well as
+civil, should be free. The Socialists proposed that all religious
+communities, authorized or unauthorized, should be suppressed. The prime
+minister took a middle course. But he went farther than the moderate
+Republicans, with whom he was generally classed. While he protected the
+authorized religious orders against the attacks of the extreme
+anti-clericals, he accepted from the latter a new clause which
+disqualified any member of an unauthorized order from teaching in any
+school. This was a blow at the principle of liberty of instruction,
+which had always been supported by Liberals of the old school, who had
+no sympathy with the pretensions of clericalism. Consequently this
+provision, though voted by a large majority, was opposed by the Liberals
+of the Republican party, notably by M. Ribot, who had been twice prime
+minister, and M. Aynard, almost the sole survivor of the Left Centre. It
+was remarked that in these, as in all subsequent debates on
+ecclesiastical questions, the ablest defenders of the Church were not
+found among the clericals, but among the Liberals, whose primary
+doctrine was that of tolerance, which they believed ought to be applied
+to the exercise of the religion nominally professed by a large majority
+of the nation. Few of the ardent professors of that religion gave
+effective aid to the Church during that period of crisis. M. de Mun
+still used his eloquence in its defence, but the brilliant Catholic
+orator had entered his sixtieth year with health impaired, and among the
+young reactionary members there was not one who displayed any talent. At
+the other end of the Chamber M. Viviani, a Socialist member for Paris,
+made an eloquent speech. As was anticipated the bill received no serious
+opposition in the Senate. Though not in sympathy with the attacks of the
+Socialists in the Chamber on property, the Upper House had as a whole no
+objection to their attacks on the Church, and had become a more
+persistently anti-clerical body than the Chamber of Deputies. The bill
+was therefore passed without any serious amendments, even those which
+were moved for the purpose of affirming the principle of liberty of
+education being supported by very few Republican senators. In the
+debates some of the utterances of the prime minister were important. On
+the proposal of M. Rambaud, a professor who was minister of education in
+the Meline cabinet of 1896, that religious associations should be
+authorized by decree and not by law, M. Waldeck-Rousseau said that
+inasmuch as vows of poverty and celibacy were illegal, nothing but a law
+would suffice to give legality to any association in which such vows
+were imposed on the members. It was thus laid down by the responsible
+author of the law that the third clause, providing that any association
+founded for an illicit cause was null, applied to religious communities.
+On the other hand the prime minister in another speech repudiated the
+suggestion that the proposed law was aimed against any form of religion.
+He argued that the religious orders, far from being essential to the
+existence of the Church, were a hindrance to the work of the parochial
+clergy, and that inasmuch as the religious orders were organizations
+independent of the State they were by their nature and influence a
+danger to the State. Consequently their regulation had become necessary
+in the interests both of Church and State. The general suppression of
+religious congregations, the prime minister said, was not contemplated;
+the case of each one would be decided on its merits, and he had no doubt
+that parliament would favourably consider the authorization of those
+whose aim was to alleviate misery at home or to extend French influence
+abroad. The tenor of M. Waldeck-Rousseau's speech was eminently
+Concordatory. One of his chief arguments against the religious orders
+was that they were not mentioned in the Concordat, and that their
+unregulated existence prejudiced the interests of the Concordatory
+clergy. The speech was therefore an official declaration in favour of
+the maintenance of the relations between Church and State. That being
+so, it is important to notice that by a majority of nearly two to one
+the Senate voted the placarding of the prime minister's speech in all
+the communes of France, and that the mover of the resolution was M.
+Combes, senator of the Charente-Inferieure, a politician of advanced
+views who up to that date had held office only once, when he was
+minister of education and public worship for about six months, in the
+Bourgeois administration in 1895-1896.
+
+
+  Socialism.
+
+The "Law relating to the contract of Association" was promulgated on the
+2nd of July 1901, and its enactment was the only political event of high
+importance that year. The Socialists, except in their anti-clerical
+capacity, were more active outside parliament than within. Early in the
+year some formidable strikes took place. At Montceau-les-Mines in
+Burgundy, where labour demonstrations had often been violent, a new
+feature of a strike was the formation of a trade-union by the
+non-strikers, who called their organization "the yellow trade-union"
+(_le syndicat jaune_) in opposition to the red trade-union of the
+strikers, who adopted the revolutionary flag and were supported by the
+Socialist press. At the same time the dock-labourers at Marseilles went
+out on strike, by the orders of an international trade-union in that
+port, as a protest against the dismissal of a certain number of
+foreigners. The number of strikes in France had increased considerably
+under the Waldeck-Rousseau government. Its opponents attributed this to
+the presence in the cabinet of M. Millerand, who had been ranked as a
+Socialist. On the other hand, the revolutionary Socialists
+excommunicated the minister of commerce for having joined a "bourgeois
+government" and retired from the general congress of the Socialist party
+at Lyons, where MM. Briand and Viviani, themselves future ministers,
+persuaded the majority not to go so far. The federal committee of miners
+projected a general strike in all the French coal-fields, and to that
+end organized a referendum. But of 125,000 miners inscribed on their
+lists nearly 70,000 abstained from voting, and although the general
+strike was voted in October by a majority of 34,000, it was not put into
+effect. Another movement favoured by the Socialists was that of
+anti-militarism. M. Herve, a professor at the lycee of Sens, had
+written, in a local journal, the _Pioupiou de l'Yonne_, on the occasion
+of the departure of the conscripts for their regiments, some articles
+outraging the French flag. He was prosecuted and acquitted at the
+assizes at Auxerre in November, a number of his colleagues in the
+teaching profession coming forward to testify that they shared his
+views. The local educational authority, the academic council of Dijon,
+however, dismissed M. Herve from his official functions, and its
+sentence was confirmed by the superior council of public education to
+which he had appealed. Thereupon the Socialists in the Chamber, under
+the lead of M. Viviani, violently attacked the Government--shortly
+before the prorogation at the end of the year. M. Leygues, the minister
+of education, defended the policy of his department with equal vigour,
+declaring that if a professor in the "university" claimed the right of
+publishing unpatriotic and anti-military opinions he could exercise it
+only on the condition of giving up his employment under government--a
+thesis which was supported by the entire Chamber with the exception of
+the Socialists. This manifestation of anti-military spirit, though not
+widespread, was the more striking as it followed close upon a second
+visit of the emperor and empress of Russia to France, which took place
+in September 1901 and was of a military rather than of a popular
+character. The Russian sovereigns did not come to Paris. After a naval
+display at Dunkirk, where they landed, they were the guests of President
+Loubet at Compiegne, and concluded their visit by attending a review
+near Reims of the troops which had taken part in the Eastern manoeuvres.
+Compared with the welcome given by the French population to the emperor
+and empress in 1896 their reception on this occasion was not
+enthusiastic. By not visiting Paris they seemed to wish to avoid contact
+with the people, who were persuaded by a section of the press that the
+motive of the imperial journey to France was financial. The Socialists
+openly repudiated the Russian alliance, and one of them, the mayor of
+Lille, who refused to decorate his municipal buildings when the
+sovereigns visited the department of the Nord, was neither revoked nor
+suspended, although he publicly based his refusal on grounds insulting
+to the tsar.
+
+It may be mentioned that the census returns of 1901 showed that the
+total increase of the population of France since the previous census in
+1896 amounted only to 412,364, of which 289,662 was accounted for by the
+capital, while on the other hand the population of sixty out of
+eighty-seven departments had diminished.
+
+As the quadrennial election of the Chamber of Deputies was due to take
+place in the spring of 1902, the first months of that year were chiefly
+occupied by politicians in preparing for it, though none of them gave
+any sign of being aware that the legislation to be effected by the new
+Chamber would be the most important which any parliament had undertaken
+under the constitution of 1875. At the end of the recess the prime
+minister in a speech at Saint Etienne, the capital of the Loire, of
+which department he was senator, passed in review the work of his
+ministry. With regard to the future, on the eve of the election which
+was to return the Chamber destined to disestablish the Church, he
+assured the secular clergy that they must not consider the legislation
+of the last session as menacing them: far from that, the recent law,
+directed primarily against those monastic orders which were
+anti-Republican associations, owning political journals and organizing
+electioneering funds (whose members he described as "moines ligueurs et
+moines d'affaires"), would be a guarantee of the Republic's protection
+of the parochial clergy. The presence of his colleague, M. Millerand, on
+this occasion showed that M. Waldeck-Rousseau did not intend to separate
+himself from the Radical-Socialist group which had supported his
+government; and the next day the Socialist minister of commerce, at
+Firminy, a mining centre in the same department, made a speech
+deprecating the pursuit of unpractical social ideals, which might have
+been a version of Gambetta's famous discourse on opportunism edited by
+an economist of the school of Leon Say. The Waldeck-Rousseau programme
+for the elections seemed therefore to be an implied promise of a
+moderate opportunist policy which would strengthen and unite the
+Republic by conciliating all sections of its supporters. When parliament
+met, M. Delcasse, minister for foreign affairs, on a proposal to
+suppress the Embassy to the Vatican, declared that even if the Concordat
+were ever revoked it would still be necessary for France to maintain
+diplomatic relations with the Holy See. On the other hand, the ministry
+voted, against the moderate Republicans, for an abstract resolution,
+proposed by M. Brisson, in favour of the abrogation of the Loi Falloux
+of 1850, which law, by abolishing the monopoly of the "university," had
+established the principle of liberty of education. Another abstract
+resolution, supported by the government, which subsequently become law,
+was voted in favour of the reduction of the terms of compulsory military
+service from three years to two.
+
+
+  Resignation of Waldeck-Rousseau.
+
+The general elections took place on the 27th of April 1902; with the
+second ballots on the 11th of May, and were favourable to the ministry,
+321 of its avowed supporters being returned and 268 members of the
+Opposition, including 140 "Progressist" Republicans, many of whom were
+deputies whose opinions differed little from those of M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau. In Paris the government lost a few seats which were
+won by the Nationalist group of reactionaries. The chief surprise of the
+elections was the announcement made by M. Waldeck-Rousseau on the 20th
+of May, while the president of the Republic was in Russia on a visit to
+the tsar, of his intention to resign office. No one but the prime
+minister's intimates knew that his shattered health was the true cause
+of his resignation, which was attributed to the unwillingness of an
+essentially moderate man to be the leader of an advanced party and the
+instrument of an immoderate policy. His retirement from public life at
+this crisis was the most important event of its kind since the death of
+his old master Gambetta. He had learned opportunist statesmanship in the
+short-lived _grand ministere_ and in the long-lived Ferry administration
+of 1883-1885, after which he had become an inactive politician in the
+Senate, while making a large fortune at the bar. In spite of having
+eschewed politics he had been ranked in the public mind with Gambetta
+and Jules Ferry as one of the small number of politicians of the
+Republic who had risen high above mediocrity. While he had none of the
+magnetic exuberance which furthered the popularity of Gambetta, his cold
+inexpansiveness had not made him unpopular as was his other chief, Jules
+Ferry. Indeed, his unemotional coldness was one of the elements of the
+power with which he dominated parliament; and being regarded by the
+nation as the strong man whom France is always looking for, he was the
+first prime minister of the Republic whose name was made a rallying cry
+at a general election. Yet the country gave him a majority only for it
+to be handed over to other politicians to use in a manner which he had
+not contemplated. On the 3rd of June 1902 he formally resigned office,
+his ministry having lasted for three years, all but a few days, a longer
+duration than that of any other under the Third Republic.
+
+
+  M. Combes prime minister.
+
+M. Loubet called upon M. Leon Bourgeois, who had already been prime
+minister under M. Felix Faure, to form a ministry, but he had been
+nominated president of the new Chamber. The president of the Republic
+then offered the post to M. Brisson, who had been twice prime minister
+in 1885 and 1898, but he also refused. A third member of the Radical
+party was then sent for, M. Emile Combes, and he accepted. The senator
+of the Charente Inferieure, in his one short term of office in the
+Bourgeois ministry, had made no mark. But he had attained a minor
+prominence in the debates of the Senate by his ardent anti-clericalism.
+He had been educated as a seminarist and had taken minor orders, without
+proceeding to the priesthood, and had subsequently practised as a
+country doctor before entering parliament. M. Combes retained two of the
+most important members of the Waldeck-Rousseau cabinet, M. Delcasse, who
+had been at the foreign office for four years, and General Andre, who
+had become war minister in 1900 on the resignation of General de
+Galliffet. General Andre was an ardent Dreyfusard, strongly opposed to
+clerical and reactionary influences in the army. Among the new ministers
+was M. Rouvier, a colleague of Gambetta in the _grand ministere_ and
+prime minister in 1887, whose participation in the Panama affair had
+caused his retirement from official life. Being a moderate opportunist
+and reputed the ablest financier among French politicians, his return to
+the ministry of finance reassured those who feared the fiscal
+experiments of an administration supported by the Socialists. The
+nomination as minister of marine of M. Camille Pelletan (the son of
+Eugene Pelletan, a notable adversary of the Second Empire), who had been
+a Radical-Socialist deputy since 1881, though new to office, was less
+reassuring. M. Combes reserved for himself the departments of the
+interior and public worship, meaning that the centralized administration
+of France should be in his own hands while he was keeping watch over the
+Church. But in spite of the prime minister's extreme anti-clericalism
+there was no hint made in his ministerial declaration, on the 10th of
+June 1902, on taking office that there would be any question of the new
+Chamber dealing with the Concordat or with the relations of Church and
+state. M. Combes, however, warned the secular clergy not to make common
+cause with the religious orders, against which he soon began vigorous
+action. Before the end of June he directed the Prefets of the
+departments to bring political pressure to bear on all branches of the
+public service, and he obtained a presidential decree closing a hundred
+and twenty-five schools, which had been recently opened in buildings
+belonging to private individuals, on the ground that they were conducted
+by members of religious associations and that this brought the schools
+under the law of 1901. Such action seemed to be opposed to M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau's interpretation of the law; but the Chamber having
+supported M. Combes he ordered in July the closing of 2500 schools,
+conducted by members of religious orders, for which authorization had
+not been requested. This again seemed contrary to the assurances of M.
+Waldeck-Rousseau, and it called forth vain protests in the name of
+liberty from Radicals of the old school, such as M. Goblet, prime
+minister in 1886, and from Liberal Protestants, such as M. Gabriel
+Monod. The execution of the decrees closing the schools of the religious
+orders caused some violent agitation in the provinces during the
+parliamentary recess. But the majority of the departmental councils, at
+their meetings in August, passed resolutions in favour of the
+governmental policy, and a movement led by certain Nationalists,
+including M. Drumont, editor of the anti-semitic _Libre Parole_, and M.
+Francois Coppee, the Academician, to found a league having similar aims
+to those of the "passive resisters" in our country, was a complete
+failure. On the reassembling of parliament, both houses passed votes of
+confidence in the ministry and also an act supplementary to the
+Associations Law penalizing the opening of schools by members of
+religious orders.
+
+
+  Humbert affair.
+
+In spite of the ardour of parliamentary discussions the French public
+was less moved in 1902 by the anti-clerical action of the government
+than by a vulgar case of swindling known as the "Humbert affair." The
+wife of a former deputy for Seine-et-Marne, who was the son of M.
+Gustave Humbert, minister of justice in 1882, had for many years
+maintained a luxurious establishment, which included a political salon,
+on the strength of her assertion that she and her family had inherited
+several millions sterling from one Crawford, an Englishman. Her story
+being believed by certain bankers she had been enabled to borrow
+colossal sums on the legend, and had almost married her daughter as a
+great heiress to a Moderate Republican deputy who held a conspicuous
+position in the Chamber. The flight of the Humberts, the exposure of the
+fraud and their arrest in Spain excited the French nation more deeply
+than the relative qualities of M. Waldeck-Rousseau and M. Combes or the
+woes of the religious orders. A by-election to the Senate in the spring
+of 1902 merits notice as it brought back to parliament M. Clemenceau,
+who had lived in comparative retirement since 1893 when he lost his seat
+as deputy for Draguignan, owing to a series of unusually bitter attacks
+made against him by his political enemies. He had devoted his years of
+retirement to journalism, taking a leading part in the Dreyfus affair on
+the side of the accused. His election as senator for the Var, where he
+had formerly been deputy, was an event of importance unanticipated at
+the time.
+
+
+  Anti-clerical movement.
+
+The year 1903 saw in progress a momentous development of the
+anti-clerical movement in France, though little trace of this is found
+in the statute-book. The chief act of parliament of that year was one
+which interested the population much more than any law affecting the
+Church. This was an act regulating the privileges of the _bouilleurs de
+cru_, the peasant proprietors who, permitted to distil from their
+produce an annual quantity of alcohol supposed to be sufficient for
+their domestic needs, in practice fabricated and sold so large an amount
+as to prejudice gravely the inland revenue. As there were a million of
+these illicit distillers in the land they formed a powerful element in
+the electorate. The crowded and excited debates affecting their
+interests, in which Radicals and Royalists of the rural districts made
+common cause against Socialists and Clericals of the towns, were in
+striking contrast with the less animated discussions concerning the
+Church. The prime minister, an anti-clerical zealot, bitterly hostile to
+the Church of which he had been a minister, took advantage of the
+relative indifference of parliament and of the nation in matters
+ecclesiastical. The success of M. Combes in his campaign against the
+Church was an example of what energy and pertinacity can do. There was
+no great wave of popular feeling on the question, no mandate given to
+the deputies at the general election or asked for by them. Neither was
+M. Combes a popular leader or a man of genius. He was rather a trained
+politician, with a fixed idea, who knew how to utilize to his ends the
+ability and organization of the extreme anti-clerical element in the
+Chamber, and the weakness of the extreme clerical party. The majority of
+the Chamber did not share the prime minister's animosity towards the
+Church, for which at the same time it had not the least enthusiasm, and
+under the concordatory lead of M. Waldeck-Rousseau it would have been
+content to curb clerical pretensions without having recourse to extreme
+measures of repression. It was, however, equally content to follow the
+less tolerant guidance of M. Combes. Thus, early in the session of 1903
+it approved of his circular forbidding the priests of Brittany to make
+use of the Breton language in their religious instruction under pain of
+losing their salaries. It likewise followed him on the 26th of January
+when he declined to accept, as being premature and unpractical, a
+Socialist resolution in favour of suppressing the budget of public
+worship, though the majority was indeed differently composed on those
+two occasions. In the Senate on the 29th of January M. Waldeck-Rousseau
+indicated what his policy would have been had he retained office, by
+severely criticizing his successor's method of applying the Associations
+Law. Instead of asking parliament to judge on its merits each several
+demand for authorization made by a congregation, the government had
+divided the religious orders into two chief categories, teaching orders
+and preaching orders, and had recommended that all should be suppressed
+by a general refusal of authorization. The Grande Chartreuse was put
+into a category by itself as a trading association and was dissolved;
+but Lourdes, which with its crowds of pilgrims enriched the Pyrenean
+region and the railway companies serving it, was spared for
+electioneering reasons. A dispute arose between the government and the
+Vatican on the nomination of bishops to vacant sees. The Vatican
+insisted on the words "_nobis nominavit_" in the papal bulls instituting
+the bishops nominated by the chief of the executive in France under the
+Concordat. M. Combes objected to the pronoun, and maintained that the
+complete nomination belonged to the French government, the Holy See
+having no choice in the matter, but only the power of canonical
+institution. This produced a deadlock, with the consequence that no more
+bishops were ever again appointed under the Concordat, which both before
+and after the Easter recess M. Combes now threatened to repudiate. These
+menaces derived an increased importance from the failing health of the
+pope. Leo XIII. had attained the great age of ninety-three, and on the
+choice of his successor grave issues depended. He died on the 20th of
+July 1903. The conclave indicated as his successor his secretary of
+state, Cardinal Rampolla, an able exponent of the late pope's diplomatic
+methods and also a warm friend of France. It was said to be the latter
+quality which induced Austria to exercise its ancient power of veto on
+the choice of a conclave, and finally Cardinal Sarto, patriarch of
+Venice, a pious prelate inexperienced in diplomacy, was elected and took
+the title of Pius X. In September the inauguration of a statue of Renan
+at Treguier, his birthplace, was made the occasion of an anti-clerical
+demonstration in Catholic and reactionary Brittany, at which the prime
+minister made a militant speech in the name of the freethinkers of
+France, though Renan was a Voltairian aristocrat who disliked the aims
+and methods of modern Radical-Socialists. In the course of his speech M.
+Combes pointed out that the anti-clerical policy of the government had
+not caused the Republic to lose prestige in the eyes of the monarchies
+of Europe, which were then showing it unprecedented attentions. This
+assertion was true, and had reference to the visit of the king of
+England to the president of the Republic in May and the projected visit
+of the king of Italy. That of Edward VII., which was the first state
+visit of a British sovereign to France for nearly fifty years, was
+returned by President Loubet in July, and was welcomed by all parties,
+excepting some of the reactionaries. M. Millevoye, a Nationalist deputy
+for Paris, in the _Patrie_ counselled the Parisians to remember Fashoda,
+the Transvaal War, and the attitude of the English in the Dreyfus
+affair, and to greet the British monarch with cries of "_Vivent les
+Boers_." M. Deroulede, the most interesting member of the Nationalist
+party, wrote from his exile at Saint-Sebastien protesting against the
+folly of this proceeding, which merits to be put on record as an example
+of the incorrigible ineptitude of the reactionaries in France. The
+incident served only to prove their complete lack of influence on
+popular feeling, while it damaged the cause of the Church at a most
+critical moment by showing that the only persons in France willing to
+insult a friendly monarch who was the guest of the nation, belonged to
+the clerical party. Of the royal visits that of the king of Italy was
+the more important in its immediate effects on the history of France, as
+will be seen in the narration of the events of 1904.
+
+The session of 1904 began with the election of a new president of the
+Chamber, on the retirement of M. Bourgeois. The choice fell on M. Henri
+Brisson, an old Radical, but not a Socialist, who had held that post in
+1881 and had subsequently filled it on ten occasions, the election to
+the office being annual. The narrow majority he obtained over M. Paul
+Bertrand, a little-known moderate Republican, by secret ballot, followed
+by the defeat of M. Jaures, the Socialist leader, for one of the
+vice-presidential chairs, showed that one half of the Chamber was of
+moderate tendency. But, as events proved, the Moderates lacked energy
+and leadership, so the influence of the Radical prime minister
+prevailed. In a debate on the 22nd of January on the expulsion of an
+Alsatian priest of French birth from a French frontier department by the
+French police, M. Ribot, who set an example of activity to younger men
+of the moderate groups, reproached M. Combes with reducing all questions
+in which the French nation was interested to the single one of
+anti-clericalism, and the prime minister retorted that it was solely for
+that purpose that he took office. In pursuance of this policy a bill was
+introduced, and was passed by the Chamber before Easter, interdicting
+from teaching all members of religious orders, authorized or not
+authorized. Among other results this law, which the Senate passed in the
+summer, swept out of existence the schools of the Freres de la Doctrine
+Chretienne (Christian Brothers) and closed in all 2400 schools before
+the end of the year.
+
+
+  Diplomatic crisis with Rome.
+
+This drastic act of anti-clerical policy, which was a total repudiation
+by parliament of the principle of liberty of education, should have
+warned the authorities of the Church of the relentless attitude of the
+government. The most superficial observation ought to have shown them
+that the indifference of the nation would permit the prime minister to
+go to any length, and common prudence should have prevented them from
+affording him any pretext for more damaging measures. The President of
+the Republic accepted an invitation to return the visit of the king of
+Italy. When it was submitted to the Chamber on March 25th, 1904, a
+reactionary deputy moved the rejection of the vote for the expenses of
+the journey on the ground that the chief of the French executive ought
+not to visit the representative of the dynasty which had plundered the
+papacy. The amendment was rejected by a majority of 502 votes to 12,
+which showed that at a time of bitter controversy on ecclesiastical
+questions French opinion was unanimous in approving the visit of the
+president of the Republic to Rome as the guest of the king of Italy.
+Nothing could be more gratifying to the entire French nation, both on
+racial and on traditional grounds, than such a testimony of a complete
+revival of friendship with Italy, of late years obscured by the Triple
+Alliance. Yet the Holy See saw fit to advance pretensions inevitably
+certain to serve the ends of the extreme anti-clericals, whose most
+intolerant acts at that moment, such as the removal of the crucifixes
+from the law-courts, were followed by new electoral successes. Thus the
+reactionary majority on the Paris municipal council was displaced by the
+Radical-Socialists on the 1st of May, the day that M. Loubet returned
+from his visit to Rome. On the 16th of May M. Jaures' Socialist organ,
+_L'Humanite_, published the text of a protest, addressed by the pope to
+the powers having diplomatic relations with the Vatican, against the
+visit of the president of the Republic to the King of Italy. This
+document, dated the 28th of April, was offensive in tone both to France
+and to Italy. It intimated that while Catholic sovereigns refrained from
+visiting the person who, contrary to right, exercised civil sovereignty
+in Rome, that "duty" was even more "imperious" for the ruler of France
+by reason of the "privileges" enjoyed by that country from the
+Concordat; that the journey of M. Loubet to "pay homage" within the
+pontifical see to that person was an insult to the sovereign pontiff;
+and that only for reasons of special gravity was the nuncio permitted to
+remain in Paris. The publication of this document caused some joy among
+the extreme clericals, but this was nothing to the exultation of the
+extreme anti-clericals, who saw that the prudent diplomacy of Leo XIII.,
+which had risen superior to many a provocation of the French government,
+was succeeded by a papal policy which would facilitate their designs in
+a manner unhoped for. Moderate men were dismayed, seeing that the
+Concordat was now in instant danger; but the majority of the French
+nation remained entirely indifferent to its fate. Within a week France
+took the initiative by recalling the ambassador to the Vatican, M.
+Nisard, leaving a third-secretary in charge. In the debate in the
+Chamber upon the incident, the foreign minister, M. Delcasse, said that
+the ambassador was recalled, not because the Vatican had protested
+against the visit of the president to the king of Italy, but because it
+had communicated this protest, in terms offensive to France, to foreign
+powers. The Chamber on the 27th of May approved the recall of the
+ambassador by the large majority of 420 to 90. By a much smaller
+majority it rejected a Socialist motion that the Nuncio should be given
+his passports. The action of the Holy See was not actually an
+infringement of the Concordat; so the government, satisfied with the
+effect produced on public opinion, which was now quite prepared for a
+rupture with the Vatican, was willing to wait for a new pretext, which
+was not long in coming. Two bishops, Mgr. Geay of Laval and Mgr. Le
+Nordez of Dijon, were on bad terms with the clerical reactionaries in
+their dioceses. The friends of the prelates, including some of their
+episcopal brethren, thought that their chief offence was their loyalty
+to the Republic, and it was an unfortunate coincidence that these
+bishops, subjected to proceedings which had been unknown under the long
+pontificate of Leo XIII., should have been two who had incurred the
+animosity of anti-republicans. Their enemies accused Mgr. Geay of
+immorality and Mgr. Le Nordez of being in league with the freemasons.
+The bishop of Laval was summoned by the Holy Office, without any
+communication with the French government, to resign his see, and he
+submitted the citation forthwith to the minister of public worship. The
+French charge d'affaires at the Vatican was instructed to protest
+against this grave infringement of an article of the Concordat, and,
+soon after, against another violation of the Concordat committed by the
+Nuncio, who had written to the bishop of Dijon ordering him to suspend
+his ordinations, the Nuncio being limited, like all other ambassadors,
+to communicating the instructions of his government through the
+intermediary of the minister for foreign affairs. The Vatican declined
+to give any satisfaction to the French government and summoned the two
+bishops to Rome under pain of suspension. So the French charge
+d'affaires was directed to leave Rome, after having informed the Holy
+See that the government of the Republic considered that the mission of
+the apostolic Nuncio in Paris was terminated. Thus came to an end on the
+30th of July 1904 the diplomatic relations which under the Concordat had
+subsisted between France and the Vatican for more than a hundred years.
+
+Twelve days later M. Waldeck-Rousseau died, having lived just long
+enough to see this unanticipated result of his policy. It was said that
+his resolve to regulate the religious associations arose from his
+feeling that whatever injustice had been committed in the Dreyfus case
+had been aggravated by the action of certain unauthorized orders.
+However that may be, his own utterances showed that he believed that his
+policy was one of finality. But he had not reckoned that his
+legislation, which needed hands as calm and impartial as his own to
+apply it, would be used in a manner he had not contemplated by sectarian
+politicians who would be further aided by the self-destructive policy of
+the highest authorities of the Church. When parliament assembled for the
+autumn session a general feeling was expressed, by moderate politicians
+as well as by supporters of the Combes ministry, that disestablishment
+was inevitable. The prime minister said that he had been long in favour
+of it, though the previous year he had intimated to M. Nisard,
+ambassador to the Vatican, that he had not a majority in parliament to
+vote it. But the papacy and the clergy had since done everything to
+change that situation. The Chamber did not move in the matter beyond
+appointing a committee to consider the general question, to which M.
+Combes submitted in his own name a bill for the separation of the
+churches from the State.
+
+
+  War Office difficulties.
+
+During the last three months of 1904 public opinion was diverted to the
+cognate question of the existence of masonic delation in the army. M.
+Guyot de Villeneuve, Nationalist deputy for Saint Denis, who had been
+dismissed from the army by General de Galliffet in connexion with the
+Dreyfus affair, brought before the Chamber a collection of documents
+which, it seemed, had been abstracted from the Grand Orient of France,
+the headquarters of French freemasonry, by an official of that order.
+These papers showed that an elaborate system of espionage and delation
+had been organized by the freemasons throughout France for the purpose
+of obtaining information as to the political opinions and religious
+practices of the officers of the army, and that this system was worked
+with the connivance of certain officials of the ministry of war. Its aim
+appeared to be to ascertain if officers went to mass or sent their
+children to convent schools or in any way were in sympathy with the
+Roman Catholic religion, the names of officers so secretly denounced
+being placed on a black-list at the War Office, whereby they were
+disqualified for promotion. There was no doubt about the authenticity of
+the documents or of the facts which they revealed. Radical ex-ministers
+joined with moderate Republicans and reactionaries in denouncing the
+system. Anti-clerical deputies declared that it was no use to cleanse
+the war office of the influence of the Jesuits, which was alleged to
+have prevailed there, if it were to be replaced by another occult power,
+more demoralizing because more widespread. Only the Socialists and a few
+of the Radical-Socialists in the Chamber supported the action of the
+freemasons. General Andre, minister of war, was so clearly implicated,
+with the evident approval of the prime minister, that a revulsion of
+feeling against the policy of the anti-clerical cabinet began to operate
+in the Chamber. Had the opposition been wisely guided there can be
+little doubt that a moderate ministry would have been called to office
+and the history of the Church in France might have been changed. But the
+reactionaries, with their accustomed folly, played into the hands of
+their adversaries. The minister of war had made a speech which produced
+a bad impression. As he stepped down from the tribune he was struck in
+the face by a Nationalist deputy for Paris, a much younger man than he.
+The cowardly assault did not save the minister, who was too deeply
+compromised in the delation scandal. But it saved the anti-clerical
+party, by rallying a number of waverers who, until this exhibition of
+reactionary policy, were prepared to go over to the Moderates, from the
+"bloc," as the ministerial majority was called. The Nationalist deputy
+was committed to the assizes on the technical charge of assaulting a
+functionary while performing his official duties. Towards the end of the
+year, on the eve of his trial, he met with a violent death, and the
+circumstances which led to it, when made public, showed that this
+champion of the Church was a man of low morality. General Andre had
+previously resigned and was succeeded as minister of war by M. Berteaux,
+a wealthy stock-broker and a Socialist.
+
+
+  Fall of the Combes ministry.
+
+The Combes cabinet could not survive the delation scandal, in spite of
+the resignation of the minister of war and the ineptitude of the
+opposition. On the 8th of January 1905, two days before parliament met,
+an election took place in Paris to fill the vacancy caused by the death
+of the Nationalist deputy who had assaulted General Andre. The
+circumstances of his death, at that time partially revealed, did not
+deter the electors from choosing by a large majority a representative of
+the same party, Admiral Bienaime, who the previous year had been removed
+for political reasons from the post of maritime prefect at Toulon, by M.
+Camille Pelletan, minister of marine. A more serious check to the Combes
+ministry was given by the refusal of the Chamber to re-elect as
+president M. Brisson, who was defeated by a majority of twenty-five by
+M. Doumer, ex-Governor-General of Indo-China, who, though he had entered
+politics as a Radical, was now supported by the anti-republican
+reactionaries as well as by the moderate Republicans. A violent debate
+arose on the question of expelling from the Legion of Honour certain
+members of that order, including a general officer, who had been
+involved in the delation scandal. M. Jaures, the eloquent Socialist
+deputy for Albi, who played the part of _Eminence grise_ to M. Combes in
+his anti-clerical campaign, observed that the party which was now
+demanding the purification of the order had been in no hurry to expel
+from it Esterhazy long after his crimes had been proved in connexion
+with the Dreyfus case. The debate was inconclusive, and the government
+on the 14th of January obtained a vote of confidence by a majority of
+six. But M. Combes, whose animosity towards the church was keener than
+his love of office, saw that his ministry would be constantly liable to
+be put in a minority, and that thus the consideration of separation
+might be postponed until after the general elections of 1906. So he
+announced his resignation in an unprecedented manifesto addressed to the
+president of the Republic on the 18th January.
+
+
+  Second Rouvier ministry.
+
+M. Rouvier, minister of finance in the outgoing government, was called
+upon for the second time in his career to form a ministry. A moderate
+opportunist himself, he intended to form a coalition cabinet in which
+all groups of Republicans, from the Centre to the extreme Left, would be
+represented. But he failed, and the ministry of the 24th of January 1905
+contained no members of the Republican opposition which had combated M.
+Combes. The prime minister retained the portfolio of finance; M.
+Delcasse remained at the foreign office, which he had directed since
+1898, and M. Berteaux at the war office; M. Etienne, member for Oran,
+went to the ministry of the interior; another Algerian deputy, M.
+Thomson, succeeded M. Camille Pelletan at the ministry of marine, which
+department was said to have fallen into inefficiency; public worship was
+separated from the department of the interior and joined with that of
+education under M. Bienvenu-Martin, Radical-Socialist deputy for
+Auxerre, who was new to official life. Although M. Rouvier, as befitted
+a politician of the school of Waldeck-Rousseau, disliked the separation
+of the churches from the state, he accepted that policy as inevitable.
+After the action of the Vatican in 1904, which had produced the rupture
+of diplomatic relations with France, many moderates who had been
+persistent in their opposition to the Combes ministry, and even certain
+Nationalists, accepted the principle of separation, but urged that it
+should be effected on liberal terms. So on the 27th of January, after
+the minister of education and public worship had announced that the
+government intended to introduce a separation bill, a vote of confidence
+was obtained by a majority of 373 to 99, half of the majority being
+opponents of the Combes ministry of various Republican and reactionary
+groups, while the minority was composed of 84 Radicals and Socialists
+and only 15 reactionaries.
+
+
+  The Separation Law.
+
+On the 21st of March the debates on the separation of the churches from
+the state began. A commission had been appointed in 1904 to examine the
+subject. Its reporter was M. Aristide Briand, Socialist member for Saint
+Etienne. According to French parliamentary procedure, the reporter of a
+commission, directed to draw up a great scheme of legislation, can make
+himself a more important person in conducting it through a house of
+legislature than the minister in charge of the bill. This is what M.
+Briand succeeded in doing. He produced with rapidity a "report" on the
+whole question, in which he traced with superficial haste the history of
+the Church in France from the baptism of Clovis, and upon this drafted a
+bill which was accepted by the government. He thus at one bound came
+from obscurity into the front rank of politicians, and in devising a
+revolutionary measure learned a lesson of moderate statesmanship. In
+conducting the debates he took the line of throwing the responsibility
+for the rupture of the Concordat on the pope. The leadership of the
+Opposition fell on M. Ribot, who had been twice prime minister of the
+Republic and was not a practising Catholic. He recognized that
+separation had become inevitable,; but argued that it could be
+accomplished as a permanent act only in concert with the Holy See. The
+clerical party in the Chamber did little in defence of the Church. The
+abbes Lemire and Gayraud, the only ecclesiastics in parliament, spoke
+with moderation, and M. Groussau, a Catholic jurist, attacked the
+measure with less temperate zeal; but the best serious defence of the
+interests of the Church came from the Republican centre. Few amendments
+from the extreme Left were accepted by M. Briand, whose general tone was
+moderate and not illiberal. One feature of the debates was the
+reluctance of the prime minister to take part in them, even when
+financial clauses were discussed in which his own office was
+particularly concerned. The bill finally passed the Chamber on the 3rd
+of July by 341 votes against 233, the majority containing a certain
+number of conservative Republicans and Nationalists. At the end the
+Radical-Socialists manifested considerable discontent at the liberal
+tendencies of M. Briand, and declared that the measure as it left the
+Chamber could be considered only provisional. In the Senate it underwent
+no amendment whatever, not a single word being altered. The prime
+minister, M. Rouvier, never once opened his lips during the lengthy
+debates, in the course of which M. Clemenceau, as a philosophical
+Radical who voted for the bill, criticized it as too concordatory, while
+M. Meline, as a moderate Republican, who voted against it, predicted
+that it would create such a state of things as would necessitate new
+negotiations with Rome a few years later. It was finally passed by a
+majority of 181 to 102, the complete number of senators being 300, and
+three days later, on the 9th of December 1905, it was promulgated as law
+by the president of the Republic.
+
+The main features of the act were as follows. The first clauses
+guaranteed liberty of conscience and the free practice of public
+worship, and declared that henceforth the Republic neither recognized
+nor remunerated any form of religion, except in the case of chaplains to
+public schools, hospitals and prisons. It provided that after
+inventories had been taken of the real and personal property in the
+hands of religious bodies, hitherto remunerated by the state, to
+ascertain whether such property belonged to the state, the department,
+or the commune, all such property should be transferred to associations
+of public worship (_associations cultuelles_) established in each
+commune in accordance with the rules of the religion which they
+represented, for the purpose of carrying on the practices of that
+religion. As the Vatican subsequently refused to permit Catholics to
+take part in these associations, the important clauses relating to their
+organization and powers became a dead letter, except in the case of the
+Protestant and Jewish associations, which affected only a minute
+proportion of the religious establishments under the act. Nothing,
+therefore, need be said about them except that the chief discussions in
+the Chamber took place with regard to their constitution, which was so
+amended, contrary to the wishes of the extreme anti-clericals, that many
+moderate critics of the original bill thought that thereby the regular
+practice of the Catholic religion, under episcopal control, had been
+safeguarded. A system of pensions for ministers of religion hitherto
+paid by the state was provided, according to the age and the length of
+service of the ecclesiastics interested, while in small communes of
+under a thousand inhabitants the clergy were to receive in any case
+their full pay for eight years. The bishops' palaces were to be left
+gratuitously at the disposal of the occupiers for two years, and the
+presbyteries and seminaries for five years. This provision too became a
+dead letter, owing to the orders given by the Holy See to the clergy.
+Other provisions enacted that the churches should not be used for
+political meetings, while the services held in them were protected by
+the law from the acts of disturbers. As the plenary operation of the law
+depended on the _associations cultuelles_, the subsequent failure to
+create those bodies makes it useless to give a complete exposition of a
+statute of which they were an essential feature.
+
+The passing of the Separation Law was the chief act of the last year of
+the presidency of M. Loubet. One other important measure has to be
+noted, the law reducing compulsory military service to two years. The
+law of 1889 had provided a general service of three years, with an
+extensive system of dispensations accorded to persons for domestic
+reasons, or because they belonged to certain categories of students,
+such citizens being let off with one year's service with the colours or
+being entirely exempted. The new law exacted two years' service from
+every Frenchman, no one being exempted save for physical incapacity.
+Under the act of 1905 even the cadets of the military college of Saint
+Cyr and of the Polytechnic had to serve in the ranks before entering
+those schools. Anti-military doctrines continued to be encouraged by the
+Socialist party, M. Herve, the professor who had been revoked in 1901
+for his suggestion of a military strike in case of war and for other
+unpatriotic utterances, being elected a member of the administrative
+committee of the Unified Socialist party, of which M. Jaures was one of
+the chiefs. At a congress of elementary schoolmasters at Lille in
+August, anti-military resolutions were passed and a general adherence
+was given to the doctrines of M. Herve. At Longwy, in the Eastern
+coal-field, a strike took place in September, during which the military
+was called out to keep order and a workman was killed in a cavalry
+charge. The minister of war, M. Berteaux, visited the scene of the
+disturbance, and was reported to have saluted the red revolutionary flag
+which was borne by a procession of strikers singing the
+"Internationale."
+
+During the autumn session in November M. Berteaux suddenly resigned the
+portfolio of war during a sitting of the Chamber, and was succeeded by
+M. Etienne, minister of the interior, a moderate politician who inspired
+greater confidence. Earlier in the year other industrial strikes of
+great gravity had taken place, notably at Limoges, among the potters,
+where several deaths took place in a conflict with the troops and a
+factory was burnt. Even more serious were the strikes in the government
+arsenals in November. At Cherbourg and Brest only a small proportion of
+the workmen went out, but at Lorient, Rochefort and especially at Toulon
+the strikes were on a much larger scale. In 1905 solemn warnings were
+given in the Chamber of the coming crisis in the wine-growing regions of
+the South. Radical-Socialists such as M. Doumergue, the deputy for Nimes
+and a member of the Combes ministry, joined with monarchists such as M.
+Lasies, deputy of the Gers, in calling attention to the distress of the
+populations dependent on the vine. They argued that the wines of the
+South found no market, not because of the alleged over-production, but
+because of the competition of artificial wines; that formerly only
+twenty departments of France were classed in the atlas as
+wine-producing, but that thanks to the progress of chemistry seventy
+departments were now so described. The deputies of the north of France
+and of Paris, irrespective of party, opposed these arguments, and the
+government, while promising to punish fraud, did not seem to take very
+seriously the legitimate warnings of the representatives of the South.
+
+The Republic continued to extend its friendly relations with foreign
+powers, and the end of M. Loubet's term of office was signalized by a
+procession of royal visits to Paris, some of which the president
+returned. At the end of May the king of Spain came and narrowly escaped
+assassination from a bomb which was thrown at him by a Spaniard as he
+was returning with the president from the opera. In October M. Loubet
+returned this visit at Madrid and went on to Lisbon to see the king of
+Portugal, being received by the queen, who was the daughter of the comte
+de Paris and the sister of the duc d'Orleans, both exiled by the
+Republic. In November the king of Portugal came to Paris, and the
+president of the Republic also received during the year less formal
+visits from the kings of England and of Greece.
+
+
+  Resignation of M. Delcasse.
+
+One untoward international event affecting the French ministry occurred
+in June 1905. M. Delcasse (see section on _Exterior Policy_), who had
+been foreign minister longer than any holder of that office under the
+Republic, resigned, and it was believed that he had been sacrificed by
+the prime minister to the exigencies of Germany, which power was said to
+be disquieted at his having, in connexion with the Morocco question,
+isolated Germany by promoting the friendly relations of France with
+England, Spain and Italy. Whether it be true or not that the French
+government was really in alarm at the possibility of a declaration of
+war by Germany, the impression given was unfavourable, nor was it
+removed when M. Rouvier himself took the portfolio of foreign affairs.
+
+
+  M. Fallieres president of the Republic.
+
+The year 1906 is remarkable in the history of the Third Republic in that
+it witnessed the renewal of all the public powers in the state. A new
+president of the Republic was elected on the 17th of January ten days
+after the triennial election of one third of the senate, and the general
+election of the chamber of deputies followed in May--the ninth which had
+taken place under the constitution of 1875. The senatorial elections of
+the 7th of January showed that the delegates of the people who chose the
+members of the upper house and represented the average opinion of the
+country approved of the anti-clerical legislation of parliament. The
+election of M. Fallieres, president of the senate, to the presidency of
+the Republic was therefore anticipated, he being the candidate of the
+parliamentary majorities which had disestablished the church. At the
+congress of the two chambers held at Versailles on the 17th of January
+he received the absolute majority of 449 votes out of 849 recorded. The
+candidate of the Opposition was M. Paul Doumer, whose anti-clericalism
+in the past was so extreme that when married he had dispensed with a
+religious ceremony and his children were unbaptized. So the curious
+spectacle was presented of the Moderate Opportunist M. Fallieres being
+elected by Radicals and Socialists, while the Radical candidate was
+supported by Moderates and Reactionaries. For the second time a
+president of the senate, the second official personage in the Republic,
+was advanced to the chief magistracy, M. Loubet having been similarly
+promoted. As in his case, M. Fallieres owed his election to M.
+Clemenceau. When M. Loubet was elected M. Clemenceau had not come to the
+end of his retirement from parliamentary life; but in political circles,
+with his powerful pen and otherwise, he was resuming his former
+influence as a "king-maker." He knew of the precariousness Of Felix
+Faure's health and of the indiscretions of the elderly president. So
+when the presidency suddenly became vacant in January 1899 he had
+already fixed his choice on M. Loubet, as a candidate whose unobtrusive
+name excited no jealousy among the republicans. At that moment, owing to
+the crisis caused by the Dreyfus affair, the Republic needed a safe man
+to protect it against the attacks of the plebiscitary party which had
+been latterly favoured by President Faure. M. Constans, it was said, had
+in 1899 desired the presidency of the senate, vacant by M. Loubet's
+promotion, in preference to the post of ambassador at Constantinople.
+But M. Clemenceau, deeming that his name had been too much associated
+with polemics in the past, contrived the election of M. Fallieres to the
+second place of dignity in the Republic, so as to have another safe
+candidate in readiness for the Elysee in case President Loubet suddenly
+disappeared. M. Loubet, however, completed his septennate, and to the
+end of it M. Fallieres was regarded as his probable successor. As he
+fulfilled his high duties in the senate inoffensively without making
+enemies among his political friends, he escaped the fate which had
+awaited other presidents-designate of the Republic. Previously to
+presiding over the senate this Gascon advocate, who had represented his
+native Lot-et-Garonne, in either chamber, since 1876, had once been
+prime minister for three weeks in 1883. He had also held office in six
+other ministries, so no politician in France had a larger experience in
+administration and in public affairs.
+
+
+  The Sarrien ministry.
+
+  M. Clemenceau minister of the interior.
+
+On New Year's Day 1906, the absence of the Nuncio from the presidential
+reception of the diplomatic body marked conspicuously the rupture of the
+Concordat; for hitherto the representative of the Holy See had ranked as
+_doyen_ of the ambassadors to the Republic, whatever the relative
+seniority of his colleagues, and in the name of all the foreign powers
+had officially saluted the chief of the state. On the 20th of January
+the inventories of the churches were commenced, under the 3rd clause of
+the Separation Act, for the purpose of assessing the value of the
+furniture and other objects which they contained. In Paris they
+occasioned some disturbance; but as the protesting rioters were led by
+persons whose hostility to the Republic was more notorious than their
+love for religion, the demonstrations were regarded as political rather
+than religious. In certain rural districts, where the church had
+retained its influence and where its separation from the state was
+unpopular, the taking of the inventories was impeded by the inhabitants,
+and in some places, where the troops were called out to protect the
+civil authorities, further feeling was aroused by the refusal of
+officers to act. But, as a rule, this first manifest operation of the
+Separation Law was received with indifference by the population. One
+region where popular feeling was displayed in favour of the church was
+Flanders, where, in March, at Boeschepe on the Belgian frontier, a man
+was killed during the taking of an inventory. This accident caused the
+fall of the ministry. The moderate Republicans in the Chamber, who had
+helped to keep M. Rouvier in office, withheld their support in a debate
+arising out of the incident, and the government was defeated by
+thirty-three votes. M. Rouvier resigned, and the new president of the
+Republic sent for M. Sarrien, a Radical of the old school from Burgundy,
+who had been deputy for his native Saone-et-Loire from the foundation of
+the Chamber in 1876 and had previously held office in four cabinets. In
+M. Sarrien's ministry of the 14th of March 1906 the president of the
+council was only a minor personage, its real conductor being M.
+Clemenceau, who accepted the portfolio of the interior. Upon him,
+therefore devolved the function of "making the elections" of 1906, as it
+is the minister at the Place Beauvau, where all the wires of
+administrative government are centralized, who gives the orders to the
+prefectures at each general election. As in France ministers sit and
+speak in both houses of parliament, M. Clemenceau, though a senator, now
+returned, after an absence of thirteen years, to the Chamber of
+Deputies, in which he had played a mighty part in the first seventeen
+years of its existence. His political experience was unique. From an
+early period after entering the Chamber in 1876 he had exercised there
+an influence not exceeded by any deputy. Yet it was not until 1906,
+thirty years after his first election to parliament, that he held
+office--though in 1888 he just missed the presidency of the Chamber,
+receiving the same number of votes as M. Meline, to whom the post was
+allotted by right of seniority. He now returned to the tribune of the
+Palais Bourbon, on which he had been a most formidable orator. During
+his career as deputy his eloquence was chiefly destructive, and of the
+nineteen ministries which fell between the election of M. Grevy to the
+presidency of the Republic in 1879 and his own departure from
+parliamentary life in 1893 there were few of which the fall had not been
+expedited by his mordant criticism or denunciation. He now came back to
+the scene of his former achievements not to attack but to defend a
+ministry. Though his old occupation was gone, his re-entry excited the
+keenest interest, for at sixty-five he remained the biggest political
+figure in France. After M. Clemenceau the most interesting of the new
+ministers was M. Briand, who was not nine years old when M. Clemenceau
+had become conspicuous in political life as the mayor of Montmartre on
+the eve of the Commune. M. Briand had entered the Chamber, as Socialist
+deputy for Saint Etienne, only in 1902. The mark he had made as
+"reporter" of the Separation Bill has been noted, and on that account he
+became minister of education and public worship--the terms of the
+Separation Law necessitating the continuation of a department for
+ecclesiastical affairs. As he had been a militant Socialist of the
+"unified" group of which M. Jaures was the chief, and also a member of
+the superior council of labour, his appointment indicated that the new
+ministry courted the support of the extreme Left. It, however, contained
+some moderate men, notably M. Poincare, who had the repute of making the
+largest income at the French bar after M. Waldeck-Rousseau gave up his
+practice, and who became for the second time minister of finance. The
+portfolios of the colonies and of public works were also given to old
+ministers of moderate tendencies, M. Georges Leygues and M. Barthou. A
+former prime minister, M. Leon Bourgeois, went to the foreign office,
+over which he had already presided, besides having represented France at
+the peace conference at the Hague; while MM. Etienne and Thomson
+retained their portfolios of war and marine. The cabinet contained so
+many men of tried ability that it was called the ministry of all the
+talents. But the few who understood the origin of the name knew that it
+would be even more ephemeral than was the British ministry of 1806; for
+the fine show of names belonged to a transient combination which could
+not survive the approaching elections long enough to leave any mark in
+politics.
+
+
+  Progress of socialism.
+
+Before the elections took place grave labour troubles showed that social
+and economical questions were more likely to give anxiety to the
+government than any public movement resulting from the disestablishment
+of the church. Almost the first ministerial act of M. Clemenceau was to
+visit the coal basin of the Pas de Calais, where an accident causing
+great loss of life was followed by an uprising of the working population
+of the region, which spread into the adjacent department of the Nord and
+caused the minister of the interior to take unusual precautions to
+prevent violent demonstrations in Paris on Labour Day, the 1st of May.
+The activity of the Socialist leaders in encouraging anti-capitalist
+agitation did not seem to alarm the electorate. Nor did it show any
+sympathy with the appeal of the pope, who in his encyclical letter,
+_Vehementer nos_, addressed to the French cardinals on the 11th of
+February, denounced the Separation Law. So the result of the elections
+of May 1906 was a decisive victory for the anti-clericals and
+Socialists.
+
+A brief analysis of the composition of the Chamber of Deputies is always
+impossible, the limits of the numerous groups being ill-defined. But in
+general terms the majority supporting the radical policy of the _bloc_
+in the last parliament, which had usually mustered about 340 votes, now
+numbered more than 400, including 230 Radical-Socialists and Socialists.
+The gains of the extreme Left were chiefly at the expense of the
+moderate or progressist republicans, who, about 120 strong in the old
+Chamber, now came back little more than half that number. The
+anti-republican Right, comprising Royalists, Bonapartists and
+Nationalists, had maintained their former position and were about 130
+all told. The general result of the polls of the 6th and 20th of May was
+thus an electoral vindication of the advanced policy adopted by the old
+Chamber and a repudiation of moderate Republicanism; while the
+stationary condition of the reactionary groups showed that the
+tribulations inflicted by the last parliament on the church had not
+provoked the electorate to increase its support of clerical politicians.
+
+The Vatican, however, declined to recognize this unmistakable
+demonstration. The bishops, taking advantage of their release from the
+concordatory restrictions which had withheld from them the faculty of
+meeting in assembly, had met at a preliminary conference to consider
+their plan of action under the Separation Law. They had adjourned for
+further instructions from the Holy See, which were published on the 10th
+of August 1906, in a new encyclical _Gravissimo officii_, wherein, to
+the consternation of many members of the episcopate, the pope
+interdicted the _associations cultuelles_, the bodies which, under the
+Separation Law, were to be established in each parish, to hold and to
+organize the church property and finances, and were essential to the
+working of the act. On the 4th of September the bishops met again and
+passed a resolution of submission to the Holy See. In spite of their
+loyalty they could not but deplore an injunction which inevitably would
+cause distress to the large majority of the clergy after the act came
+into operation on the 12th of December 1906. They knew only too well how
+hopeless was the idea that the distress of the clergy would call forth
+any revulsion of popular feeling in France. The excitement of the public
+that summer over a painful clerical scandal in the diocese of Chartres
+showed that the interest taken by the mass of the population in church
+matters was not of a kind which would aid the clergy in their difficult
+situation.
+
+
+  The Clemenceau ministry.
+
+At the close of the parliamentary recess M. Sarrien resigned the
+premiership on the pretext of ill-health, and by a presidential decree
+of the 25th of October 1906 M. Clemenceau, who had been called to fill
+the vacancy, took office. MM. Bourgeois, Poincare, Etienne and Leygues
+retired with M. Sarrien. The new prime minister placed at the foreign
+office M. Pichon, who had learned politics on the staff of the
+_Justice_, the organ of M. Clemenceau, by whose influence he had entered
+the diplomatic service in 1893, after eight years in the chamber of
+deputies. He had been minister at Pekin during the Boxer rebellion and
+resident at Tunis, and he was now radical senator for the Jura. M.
+Caillaux, a more adventurous financier than M. Rouvier or M. Poincare,
+who had been Waldeck-Rousseau's minister of finance, resumed that
+office. The most significant appointment was that of General Picquart to
+the war office. The new minister when a colonel had been willing to
+sacrifice his career, although he was an anti-Semite, to redressing the
+injustice which he believed had been inflicted on a Jewish
+officer--whose second condemnation, it may be noted, had been quashed
+earlier in 1906. M. Viviani became the first minister of labour
+(_Travail et Prevoyance sociale_). The creation of the office and the
+appointment of a socialist lawyer and journalist to fill it showed that
+M. Clemenceau recognized the increasing prominence of social and
+industrial questions and the growing power of the trade-unions.
+
+The acts and policy of the Clemenceau ministry and the events which took
+place during the years that it held office are too near the present time
+to be appraised historically. It seems not unlikely that the first
+advent to power, after thirty-five years of strenuous political life, of
+one who must be ranked among the ablest of the twenty-seven prime
+ministers of the Third Republic will be seen to have been coincident
+with an important evolution in the history of the French nation. The
+separation of the Roman Catholic Church from the state, by the law of
+December 1905, had deprived the Socialists, the now most powerful party
+of the extreme Left, of the chief outlet for their activity, which
+hitherto had chiefly found its scope in anti-clericalism. Having no
+longer the church to attack they turned their attention to economical
+questions, the solution of which had always been their theoretical aim.
+At the same period the law relating to the Contract of Association of
+1901, by removing the restrictions (save in the case of religious
+communities) which previously had prevented French citizens from forming
+association without the authorization of the government, had formally
+abrogated the individualistic doctrine of the Revolution, which in all
+its phases was intolerant of associations. The law of June 1791 declared
+the destruction of all corporations of persons engaged in the same trade
+or profession to be a fundamental article of the French constitution,
+and it was only in the last six years of the Second Empire that some
+tolerance was granted to trade-unions, which was extended by the Third
+Republic only in 1884. In that year the prohibition of 1791 was
+repealed. Not quite 70 unions existed at the end of 1884. In 1890 they
+had increased to about 1000, in 1894 to 2000, and in 1901, when the law
+relating to the Contract of Association was passed, they numbered 3287
+with 588,832 members. The law of 1901 did not specially affect them; but
+this general act, completely emancipating all associations formed for
+secular purposes, was a definitive break with the individualism of the
+Revolution which had formed the basis of all legislation in France for
+nearly a century after the fall of the ancient monarchy. It was an
+encouragement and at the same time a symptom of the spread of
+anti-individualistic doctrine. This was seen in the accelerated increase
+of syndicated workmen during the years succeeding the passing of the
+Associations Law, who in 1909 were over a million strong. The power
+exercised by the trade-unions moved the functionaries of the government,
+a vast army under the centralized system of administration, numbering
+not less than 800,000 persons, to demand equal freedom of association
+for the purpose of regulating their salaries paid by the state and their
+conditions of labour. This movement brought into new relief the
+long-recognized incompatibility of parliamentary government with
+administrative centralization as organized by Napoleon.
+
+In another direction the increased activity in the rural districts of
+the Socialists, who hitherto had chiefly worked in the industrial
+centres, indicated that they looked for support from the peasant
+proprietors, whose ownership in the soil had hitherto opposed them to
+the practice of collectivist doctrine. In the summer of 1907 an economic
+crisis in the wine-growing districts of the South created a general
+discontent which spread to other rural regions. The Clemenceau ministry,
+while opposing the excesses of revolutionary socialism and while
+incurring the strenuous hostility of M. Jaures, the Socialist leader,
+adopted a programme which was more socialistic than that of any previous
+government of the republic. Under its direction a bill for the
+imposition of a graduated income tax was passed by the lower house,
+involving a scheme of direct taxation which would transform the interior
+fiscal system of France. But the income tax was still only a project of
+law when M. Clemenceau unexpectedly fell in July 1909, being succeeded
+as prime minister by his colleague M. Briand. His ministry had, however,
+passed one important measure which individualists regarded as an act of
+state-socialism. It took a long step towards the nationalization of
+railways by purchasing the important Western line and adding it to the
+relatively small system of state railways. Previously a more generally
+criticized act of the representatives of the people was not of a nature
+to augment the popularity of parliamentary institutions at a period of
+economic crisis, when senators and deputies increased their own annual
+salary, or indemnity as it is officially called, to 15,000 francs.
+     (J. E. C. B.)
+
+(Continued in volume X slice VIII.)
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [1] By the _Service geographique de l'armee_.
+
+  [2] The etymology of this name (sometimes wrongly written Golfe de
+    Lyon) is unknown.
+
+  [3] In 1907 deaths were superior in number to births by nearly
+    20,000.
+
+  [4] The following list comprises the three most densely-populated and
+   the three most sparsely populated departments in France:
+
+       _Inhabitants to the Square Mile._
+
+     Seine    20,803  |  Basses-Alpes    42
+     Nord        850  |  Hautes-Alpes    49
+     Rhone       778  |  Lozere          64
+
+  [5] Inspectors are placed at the head of the synodal
+    circumscriptions; their functions are to consecrate candidates for
+    the ministry, install the pastors, &c.
+
+  [6] _Cultures industrielles._--Under this head the French group
+    beetroot, hemp, flax and other plants, the products of which pass
+    through some process of manufacture before they reach the consumer.
+
+  [7] Fibre only. In the years 1896-1905, 8130 tons of hemp-seed and
+    12,137 tons of flax-seed was the average annual production in
+    addition to fibre.
+
+  [8] The chief breeds of horses are the _Boulonnais_ (heavy draught),
+    the _Percheron_ (light and heavy draught), the _Anglo-Norman_ (light
+    draught and heavy cavalry) and the _Tarbais_ of the western Pyrenees
+    (saddle horses and light cavalry). Of cattle besides the breeds named
+    the _Norman_ (beef and milk), the _Limousin_ (beef), the
+    _Montbeliard_, the _Bazadais_, the _Flamand_, the _Breton_ and the
+    _Parthenais_ breeds may be mentioned.
+
+  [9] The department is also entrusted with surveillance over
+    river-fishing, pisciculture and the amelioration of pasture.
+
+  [10] The metric ton = 1000 kilogrammes or 2204 lb.
+
+  [11] Includes manufactories of glue, tallow, soap, perfumery,
+    fertilizers, soda, &c.
+
+  [12] See the _Guide officiel de la navigation interieure_ issued by
+    the ministry of public works (Paris, 1903).
+
+  [13] Includes horses, mules and asses.
+
+  [14] Except certain manufactures which come under the category of
+    articles of food.
+
+  [15] Includes small fancy wares, toys, also wooden wares and
+    furniture, brushes, &c.
+
+  [16] Decrease largely due to Spanish-American War (1898).
+
+  [17] The administration of posts, telegraphs and telephones is
+    assigned to the ministry of commerce and industry or to that of
+    public works.
+
+  [18] The province or provinces named are those out of which the
+    department was chiefly formed.
+
+  [19] The tax on land (_proprietes non baties_) and that on buildings
+    (_proprietes baties_) are included under the head of _contribution
+    fonciere_.
+
+  [20] With revenues of over L1200.
+
+  [21] For a history of the French debt, see C.F. Bastable, _Public
+    Finance_ (1903).
+
+  [22] In 1894 the rentes then standing at 4-1/2% were reduced to 3-1/2%,
+    and in 1902 to 3%.
+
+  [23] Algerian native troops are recruited by voluntary enlistment.
+    But in 1908, owing to the prevailing want of trained soldiers in
+    France, it was proposed to set free the white troops in Algeria by
+    applying the principles of universal service to the natives, as in
+    Tunis.
+
+  [24] Kerguelen lies in the Great Southern Ocean, but is included here
+    for the sake of convenience.
+
+  [25] In 1906 the number of registered electors in these colonies was
+    199,055, of whom 106,695 exercised their suffrage.
+
+  [26] In the case of Madagascar by decree of the 11th of December
+    1895.
+
+  [27] The Indo-China budget is reckoned in piastres, a silver coin of
+    fluctuating value (1s. 10d. to 2s.). The budget of 1907 balanced at
+    50,000,000 piastres.
+
+  [28] St Eligius, bishop of Noyon, apostle of the Belgians and
+    Frisians (d. 659?).
+
+  [29] The _assurement_ (_assecuratio_, _assecuramentum_) differed from
+    the truce, which was a suspension of hostilities by mutual consent,
+    in so far as it was a peace forced by judicial authority on one of
+    the parties at the request of the other. The party desiring
+    protection applied for the _assurement_, either before or during
+    hostilities, to any royal, seigniorial or communal judge, who
+    thereupon cited the other party to appear and take an oath that he
+    would assure the person, property and dependents of his adversary
+    (_qu'il l'assurera, elle et les siens_). This custom, which became
+    common in the 13th century, of course depended for its effectiveness
+    on the degree of respect inspired in the feudal nobles by the courts.
+    It was difficult, for instance, to refuse or to violate an
+    _assurement_ imposed by a royal _bailli_ or by the parlement itself.
+    See A. Luchaire, _Manuel des institutions francaises_ (Paris, 1892),
+    p. 233.--(W. A. P.)
+
+  [30] Earl of Richmond; afterwards Arthur, duke of Brittany (q.v.).
+
+  [31] Olivier de Serres, sieur de Pradel, spent most of his life on
+    his model farm at Pradel. In 1599 he dedicated a pamphlet on the
+    cultivation of silk to Henry IV., and in 1600 published his _Theatre
+    d'agriculture et menage des champs_, which passed through nineteen
+    editions up to 1675.
+
+  [32] Ferdinand is reported to have said: "Le capucin m'a desarme avec
+    son scapulaire et a mis dans capuchon six bonnets electoraux."
+
+  [33] Jean Orry Louis Orry de Fulvy (1703-1751), counsel to the
+    parlement in 1723, intendant of finances in 1737, founded at
+    Vincennes the manufactory of porcelain which was bought in 1750 by
+    the farmers general and transferred to Sevres.
+
+  [34] Louis Robert Hippolyte de Brehan, comte de Plelo (1699-1734), a
+    Breton by birth, originally a soldier, was at the time of the siege
+    of Danzig French ambassador to Denmark. Enraged at the return to
+    Copenhagen, without having done anything, of the French force sent to
+    help Stanislaus, he himself led it back to Danzig and fell in an
+    attack on the Russians on the 27th of May 1734. Plelo was a poet of
+    considerable charm, and well-read both in science and literature.
+
+    See Marquis de Brehan, _Le Comte de Plelo_ (Nantes, 1874); R.
+    Rathery, _Le Comte de Plelo_ (Paris, 1876); and P. Boye, _Stanislaus
+    Leszczynski et le troisieme traite de Vienne_ (Paris, 1898).
+
+  [35] Charles Laure Hugues Theobald, duc de Choiseul-Praslin
+    (1805-1847), was deputy in 1839, created a peer of France in 1840. He
+    had married a daughter of General Sebastiani, with whom he lived on
+    good terms till 1840, when he entered into open relations with his
+    children's governess. The duchess threatened a separation; and the
+    duke consented to send his mistress out of the house, but did not
+    cease to correspond with and visit her. On the 18th of August 1847
+    the duchess was found stabbed to death, with more than thirty wounds,
+    in her room. The duke was arrested on the 20th and imprisoned in the
+    Luxembourg, where he died of poison, self-administered on the 24th.
+    It was, however, popularly believed that the government had smuggled
+    him out of the country and that he was living under a feigned name in
+    England.
+
+  [36] T.T. de Martens, _Recueil des traites, &c._, xii. 248.
+
+  [37] In the 14th volume of his _L'Empire liberal_ (1909) M. Emile
+    Ollivier gives a detailed and illuminating account of the events that
+    led up to the war. He indignantly denies that he ever said that he
+    contemplated it "with a light heart," and says that he disapproved of
+    Gramont's demand for "guarantees," to which he was not privy. His
+    object is to prove that France was entrapped by Bismarck into a
+    position in which she was bound in honour to declare war. (ED.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th
+Edition, Volume 10, Slice 7, by Various
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