5^ 
 
 YS4- 
 
GIFT OF HEIRS OF 
 DR. LOUIS R. KLEMM 
 
HISTORY PRIMERS, edited by 
 
 J. R. Green. 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
W^tov^ prtmerg. Edited by ]. R. Green. 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLOTTE M, YONGK 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 I, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 
 1882. 
 

 Louis E. Klemm 
 Beetles t 
 Feb. 1926 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGH 
 
 THE EARLIER KINGS OF FRANCE I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 2$ 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE WITH BURGUNDY , . 43 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ITALIAN WARS 52 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE WARS OF RELIGION 63 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 POWER OF THE CROWN 81 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE REVOLUTION 102 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FRANCE SINCE THE REVOLUTION I16 
 
MAP OF FRANCE. 
 
 ,5,0 roo lj O.Mile3 
 
 Lendai3:3IaemiIIan& Co. 
 
 Stimfordi Geogi Ettabi 
 
 Shelving the Provinces. 
 
MAP OFFRANCF 
 
 ^fmiford'a Geog' Eatab.t 
 
 Shewing the Departments, 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE EARLIER KINGS OF FRANCE. 
 
 I. France. — The country we now know as France 
 is the tract of land shut in by the British Channel, the 
 Bay of Biscay, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, and 
 the Alps. But this country only gained the name of 
 France by degrees. In the earliest days of which we 
 have any account, it was peopled by the Celts, and it 
 was known to the Romans as part of a larger country 
 which bore the name of Gaul. After ail of it, save the 
 north-western moorlands, or what we now call Brittany, 
 had been conquered and settled by the Romans, it 
 was overrun by tribes of the great Teutonic race, the 
 same family to which Englishmen belong. Of these 
 tribes, the Goths settled in the provinces to the south ; 
 the Burgundians, in the east, around the Jura ; while 
 
2 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 the Franks, coming over the rivers in its unprotected 
 north-eastern corner, and making themselves masters 
 of a far wider territory, broke up into two kingdoms — ■ 
 that of the Eastern Franks m what is now Germany, 
 and that of the Western Franks reaching from the 
 Rhine to the Atlantic. These Franks subdued all the 
 other Teutonic conquerors of Gaul, while they adopted 
 the religion, the language, and some of the civilization 
 of the Romanized Gauls who became their subjects. 
 Under the second Frankish dynasty, the Empire was 
 renewed in the West, where it had been for a time 
 put an end to by these Teutonic invasions, and the 
 then Frankish king, Charles the Great, took his place 
 as Emperor at its head. But in the time of his grand- 
 sons the various kingdoms and nations of which the 
 Empire was composed, fell apart again under different 
 descendants of his. One of these, Charles the Bald^ 
 was made King of the Western Franks in what was 
 termed the Neustrian, or "not eastern," kingdom, 
 from which the present France has sprung. This 
 kingdom in name covered all the country west of the 
 Upper Meuse, but practically the Neustrian king had 
 little power south of the Loire ; and the Celts of 
 Brittany were never included in it. 
 
 2. The House of Paris. — The great danger 
 which this Neustrian kingdom had to meet came 
 from the Northmen, or as they were called in Eng- 
 
I.] THE HOUSE OF PARIS. 3 
 
 land the Danes. These ravaged in Neustria as they 
 ravaged in England j and a large part of the northern 
 coast, including the mouth of the Seine, was given by 
 Charles the Bald to Rolf or Rollo, one of their 
 leaders, whose land became known as the Northman's 
 land, or Normandy. What most checked the ravages 
 of these pirates was the resistance of Paris, a town 
 which commanded the road along the river Seine ; 
 and it was in defending the city of Paris from the 
 Northmen that a warrior named Robert the Strong 
 gained the trust and affection of the inhabitants of the 
 Neustrian kingdom. He and his family became 
 Counts {i.e., judges and protectors) of Paris, and 
 Dukes (or leaders) of the Franks. Three generations 
 of them were really great men — Robert the Strong, 
 Odo, and Hugh the White;- and when the descendants 
 of Charles the Great had died out, a Duke of the 
 Franks, Hugh Capet, was in 987 crowned King of the 
 Franks. All the after kings of France down to Louis 
 Philippe were descendants of Hugh Capet. By this 
 change, however, he gained little in real power ; for, 
 though he claimed to rule over the whole country of 
 the Neustrian Franks, his authority was little heeded, 
 save in the domain which he had possessed as Count 
 of Paris, including the cities of Paris, Orleans, Amiens, 
 and Rheims (the coronation place). He was guar- 
 dian, too, of the great Abbeys of St. Denys and St. 
 Martin of Tours. The Duke of Normandy and the 
 
4 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 Count of Anjou to the west, the Count of Planders to 
 the north, the Count of Champagne to the east, and 
 the Duke of Aquitaine to the south, paid him homage, 
 but were the only actual rulers in their own domains. 
 
 3. The Kingdom of Hugh Capet— The lan- 
 guage of Hugh's kingdom was clipped Latin ; the pea- 
 santry and townsmen were mostly Gaulish; the nobles 
 were almost entirely Frank. There was an under- 
 standing that the king could only act by their con- 
 sent, and must be chosen by them; but matters went 
 more by old custom and the right of the strongest 
 than by any law. A Salic law, so called from the place 
 whence the Franks had come, was supposed to exist ; 
 but this had never been used by their subjects, whose 
 law remained that of the old Roman Empire. Both of 
 these systems of law, however, fell into disuse, and were 
 replaced by rude bodies of "customs," which gradually 
 grew up. The habits of the time were exceedingly rude 
 and ferocious. The Franks had been the fiercest and 
 most untamable of all the Teutonic nations, and only 
 submitted themselves to the influence of Christianity 
 and civilization from the respect which the Roman 
 Empire inspired. Charles the Great had tried to 
 bring in Roman cultivation, but we find him reproach- 
 ing the young Franks in his schools with letting them- 
 selves be surpassed by the Gauls, whom they despised ; 
 and in the disorders that followed his death, barbarism 
 
I.] THE KINGDOM OF HUGH CAPET. 5 
 
 increased again. The convents alone kept up any 
 remnants of culture \ but as the fury of the Northmen 
 was chiefly directed to them, numbers had been de- 
 stroyed, and there was more ignorance and wretched- 
 ness than at any other time. In the duchy of 
 Aquitaine, much more of the old Roman civilization 
 survived, both among the cities and the nobility ; and 
 the Normans, newly settled in the north, had brought 
 with them the vigour of their race. They had taken 
 up such dead or dying culture as they found in France, 
 and were carrying it further, so as in some degree to 
 awaken their neighbours. Kings and their great 
 vassals could generally read and write, and understand 
 the Latin in which all records were made, but few 
 except the clergy studied at all. There were schools 
 in convents, and already at Paris a university was 
 growing up for the study of theology, grammar, law, 
 philosophy, and music, the sciences which were held 
 to form a course of education. The doctors of these 
 sciences lectured ; the scholars of low degree lived, 
 begged, and struggled as best they could ; and gentle- 
 men were lodged with clergy, who served as a sort of 
 private tutors. 
 
 4. Earlier Kings of the House of Paris. — 
 
 Neither Hugh nor the next three kings {Robert, 996- 
 1031; Henry, \oT^\-\o(io\ Philip, 1060-1 108) were 
 able men, and they were almost helpless among the 
 
6 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 fierce nobles of their own domain, and the great counts 
 and dukes around them. Castles were built of huge 
 strength, and served as nests of plunderers, who preyed 
 on travellers and made war on each other, grievously 
 tormenting one another's "villeins" — as the peasants 
 were termed. Men could travel nowhere in safety, 
 and horrid ferocity and misery prevailed. The first 
 three kings were good and pious men, but too 
 weak to deal with their rufiEian nobles. Robert, called 
 the Pious, was extremely devout, but weak. He 
 became embroiled with the Pope on account of having 
 married Bertha — a lady pronounced to be within the 
 degrees of affinity prohibited by the Church. He was 
 excommunicated, but held out till there was a greai''^ 
 religious reaction, produced by the belief that the 
 world would end in looo. In this expectation many 
 persons left their land untilled, and the consequence 
 was a terrible famine, followed by a pestilence ; and 
 the misery of France was probably unequalled in this 
 reign, when it was hardly possible to pass safely from 
 one to another of the three royal cities, Paris, Orleans, 
 and Tours. Beggars swarmed, and the king gave to 
 them everything he could lay his hands on, and even 
 winked at their stealing gold off his dress, to the great 
 wrath of a second wife, the imperious Constance of 
 Provence, who, coming from the more luxurious and 
 corrupt south, hated and despised the roughness and 
 asceticism of her husband. She was a fierce and 
 
I.] EARLIER KINGS OF HOUSE OF PARIS. 7 
 
 passionate woman, and brought an element of cruelty 
 into the court. In this reign the first instance of per- 
 secution to the death for heresy took place. The vic- 
 tim had been the queen's confessor ; but so far was she 
 from pitying him that she struck out one of his eyes 
 with her staff, as he was led past her to the hut where 
 he was shut in and burnt. On Robert's death Con- 
 stance took part against her son, Henry I., on behalf 
 of his younger brother, but Henry prevailed. During 
 his reign the clergy succeeded in proclaiming what 
 was called the Truce of God, which forbade war and 
 bloodshed at certain seasons of the year and on certain 
 days of the week, and made churches and clerical 
 lands places of refuge and sanctuary, which often 
 indeed protected the lawless, but which also saved 
 the weak and oppressed. It was during these reigns 
 that the Papacy was beginning the great struggle for 
 temporal power, and freedom from the influence of the 
 Empire, which resulted in the increased independence 
 and power of the clergy. The religious fervour which 
 had begun with the century led to the foundation of 
 many monasteries, and to much grand church architec- 
 ture. In the reign of F/ulzp I., William, Duke of Nor- 
 mandy, obtained the kingdom of England, and thus 
 became far more powerful than his suzerain, the King 
 of France, a weak man of vicious habits, who lay for 
 many years of his life under sentence of excommuni- 
 cation for an adulterous marriage with Bertrade de 
 
8 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 Montfort, Countess of Anjou. The power of the king 
 and of the law was probably at the very lowest ebb 
 during the time of Philip I., though minds and manners 
 were less debased than in the former century. 
 
 5. The First Crusade (1095 — hoc). — Pilgrimage 
 to the Holy Land had now become one great means by 
 which the men of the West sought pardon for their 
 sins. Jerusalem had long been held by the Arabs, 
 who had treated the pilgrims well ; but these had been 
 conquered by a fierce Turcoman tribe, who robbed and 
 oppressed the pilgrims. Peter the Hermit, returning 
 from a pilgrimage, persuaded Pope Urban II. that it 
 would be well to stir up Christendom to drive back 
 the Moslem power, and deliver Jerusalem and the 
 holy places. Urban 11. accordingly, when holding a 
 council at Clermont, in Auvergne, permitted Peter to 
 describe in glowing words the miseries of pilgrims and 
 the profanation of the holy places. Cries broke out, 
 " God wills it ! " and multitudes thronged to receive 
 crosses cut out in cloth, which were fastened to the 
 shoulder, and pledged the wearer to the holy war or 
 crusade, as it was called. Philip I. took no interest in 
 the cause, but his brother Hugh, Count of Vermandois, 
 Stephen, Count of Blois, Robert, Duke of Normandy, 
 and Raymond, Count of Toulouse, joined the expe- 
 dition, which was made under Godfrey of Bouillon, 
 Duke of Lower Lorraine, or what we now call the 
 
I.] THE FIRST CRUSADE. 9 
 
 Netherlands. The crusade proved successful ; Jeru- 
 salem was gained, and a kingdom of detached cities 
 and forts was founded in Palestine, of which Godfrey- 
 became the first king. The whole of the West was sup- 
 posed to keep up the defence of the Holy Land, but, in 
 fact, most of those who went as armed pilgrims were 
 either French, Normans, or Aquitanians ; and the men 
 of the East called all alike Franks. Two orders of 
 monks, who were also knights, became the permanent 
 defenders of the kingdom — the Knights of St. John, 
 also called Hospitallers, because they also lodged pil- 
 grims and tended the sick; and the Knights Templars. 
 Both had establishments in different countries in 
 Europe, where youths were trained to the rules of their 
 order. The old custom of solemnly girding a young 
 warrior with his sword was developing into a system 
 by which the nobly born man was trained through 
 the ranks of page and squire to full knighthood, and 
 made to take vows which bound him to honourable 
 customs to equals, though, unhappily, no account was 
 taken of his inferiors. 
 
 6. Louis VI. and VI I. — Philip's son, Louis VI., 
 or the Fat, v/as the first able man whom the line of 
 Hugh Capet had produced since it mounted the 
 throne. He made the first attempt at curbing the 
 nobles, assisted by Suger, the Abbot of St. Denys. 
 The only possibility of doing this was to obtain the 
 
lo FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 aid of one party of nobles against another ; and when 
 any unusually flagrant offence had been committed, 
 Louis called together the nobles, bishops, and abbots 
 of his domain, and obtained their consent and assist- 
 ance in making war on the guilty man, and over- 
 throwing his castle, thus, in some degree, lessening 
 the sense of utter impunity which had caused so 
 many violences and such savage recklessness. He 
 also permitted a few of the cities to purchase the 
 right of self-government, and freedom from the ill 
 usage of the counts, who, from their guardians, had 
 become their tyrants ; but in this he seems not to 
 have been so much guided by any fixed principle, as 
 by his private interests and feelings towards the in- 
 dividual city or lord in question. However, the royal 
 authority had begun to be respected by 1137, when 
 Louis VI. died, having just effected the marriage of 
 his son, Louis VII., with Eleanor, the heiress of the 
 Dukes of Aquitaine — thus hoping to make the crown 
 really more powerful than the great princes who owed 
 it homage. At this time lived the great St. Bernard, 
 Abbot of Clairvaux, who had a wonderful influence 
 over men's minds. It was a time of much thought 
 and speculation, and Peter Abailard, an able student 
 of the Paris University, held a controversy with Ber- 
 nard, in which we see the first struggle between in- 
 tellect and authority. Bernard roused the young 
 king, Louis VI I. , to go on the second crusade, which 
 
I.] LOUIS VI. AND VII. II 
 
 was undertaken by the Emperor and the other princes 
 of Europe to relieve the distress of the kingdom of 
 Palestine. France had no navy, so the war was by 
 land, through the rugged hills of Asia Minor, where 
 the army was almost destroyed by the Saracens. 
 Though Louis did reach Palestine, it was with 
 weakened forces ; he could effect nothing by his 
 campaign, and Eleanor, who had accompanied him, 
 seems to have been entirely corrupted by the evil 
 habits of the Franks settled in the East. Soon 
 after his return, Louis dissolved his marriage; and 
 Eleanor became the wife of Henry, Count of Anjou, 
 who soon after inherited the kingdom of England as 
 our Henry IL, as well as the duchy of Normandy, 
 and betrothed his third son to the heiress of Brittany. 
 Eleanor's marriage seemed to undo all that Louis VL 
 had done in raising the royal power ; for Henry com- 
 pletely overshadowed Louis, whose only resource was 
 in feeble endeavours to take part against him in his 
 many family quarrels. The whole reign of Louis the 
 Young, the title that adhered to him on account of 
 his simple, childish nature, is only a record of weak- 
 ness and disaster, till he died in 1180. What hfe 
 went on in France, went on principally in the south. 
 The lands of Aquitaine and Provence had never 
 dropped the old classical love of poetry and art. 
 A softer form of broken Latin was then spoken, and 
 the art of minstrelsy was frequent among all ranks. 
 
12 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 Poets were called troubadours and trouvhrs (finders). 
 Courts of love were held, where there were com- 
 petitions in poetry, the prize being a golden violet; 
 and many of the bravest warriors were also distin- 
 guished troubadours — among them the elder sons of 
 Queen Eleanor. There was much license of manners, 
 much turbulence ; and as the Aquitanians hated 
 Angevin rule, the troubadours never ceased to stir 
 up the sons of Henry II. against him. 
 
 7. Philip II. (1180— 1223).— Powerful in fact as 
 Henry 11. was, it was his gathering so large a part of 
 France under his rule which was, in the end, to build 
 up the greatness of the French kings. What had 
 held them in check was the existence of the great 
 fiefs or provinces, each with its own line of dukes or 
 counts, and all practically independent of the king. 
 But now nearly all the provinces of southern and 
 western France were gathered into the hand of a 
 single ruler; and though he was a Frenchman in 
 blood, yet, as he was King of England, this ruler 
 seemed to his French subjects no Frenchman, but a 
 foreigner. They began therefore to look to the 
 French king to free them from a foreign ruler; and 
 the son of Louis VII., called Philip Augustus, was 
 ready to take advantage of their disposition. Philip 
 was a really able man, making up by address for want 
 of personal courage. He set himself to lower the 
 
I.] PHILIP IL 13 
 
 power of the house of Anjou and increase that of 
 the house of Paris. As a boy he had watched con- 
 ferences between his father and Henry under the 
 great elm of Gisors, on the borders of Normandy, 
 and seeing his father overreached, he laid up a 
 store of hatred to the rival king. As soon as he 
 had the power, he cut down the elm, which was so 
 large that 300 horsemen could be sheltered under its 
 branches. He supported the sons of Henry H. in 
 their rebellions, and was always the bitter foe of the 
 head of the family. Philip assumed the cross in 1187, 
 on the tidings of the loss of Jerusalem, and in 11 90 
 joined Richard I. of England at Messina, where they 
 wintered, and then sailed for St. Jean d'Acre. After 
 this city was taken, Philip returned to France, where 
 he continued to profit by the crimes and dissensions 
 of the Angevins, and gained, both as their enemy 
 and as King of France. When Richard's successor, 
 John, murdered Arthur, the heir of the dukedom of 
 Brittany and claimant of both Anjou and Normandy, 
 Philip took advantage of the general indignation to 
 hold a court of peers, in which John, on his non- 
 appearance, was adjudged to have forfeited his fiefs. 
 In the war which followed and ended in 1204, 
 Philip not only gained the great Norman dukedom, 
 which gave him the command of Rouen and of the 
 mouth of tlfe Seine, as well as Anjou, Maine, and 
 Poitou, the countries which held the Loire in their 
 
14 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 power, but established the precedent that a crown 
 vassal was amenable to justice, and might be made to 
 forfeit his lands. What he had won by the sword 
 he held by wisdom and good government. Seeing 
 that the cities were capable of being made to balance 
 the power of the nobles, he granted them privileges 
 which caused him to be esteemed their best friend, 
 and he promoted all improvements. Though once 
 laid under an interdict by Pope Innocent III. for 
 an unlawful marriage, Philip usually followed the 
 policy which gained for the Kings of France the title 
 of *'Most Christian King." The real meaning of this 
 was that he should always support the Pope against 
 the Emperor, and in return be allowed more than 
 ordinary power over his clergy. The great feudal 
 vassals of eastern France, with a strong instinct that 
 he was their enemy, made a league with the Emperor 
 Otto IV. and his uncle King John, against Philip 
 Augustus. John attacked him in the south, and was 
 repulsed by Philip's son, Louis, called the "Lion;" 
 while the king himself, backed by the burghers of his 
 chief cities, gained at Bouvines, over Otto, the first 
 real French victory, in 12 14, thus establishing the 
 power of the crown. Two years later, Louis the 
 Lion, who had married John's niece, Blanche of 
 Castile, was invited by the English barons to become 
 their king on John's refusing to be bound by the 
 Great Charter; and Philip saw his son actually in 
 
I.] THE ALBIGENSES. 15 
 
 possession of London at the time of the death of the 
 last of the sons of his enemy, Henry II. On John's 
 death, however, the barons preferred his child to the 
 French prince, and fell away from Louis, who was 
 forced to return to France. 
 
 8. The Albigenses (1203— 1240). — The next 
 great step in the building up of the French kingdom 
 was made by taking advantage of a religious strife in 
 the south. The lands near the Mediterranean still 
 had much of the old Roman cultivation, and also of 
 the old corruption, and here arose a sect called the 
 Albigenses, who held opinions other than those of 
 the Church on the origin of e^dl. Pope Innocent 
 III., after sending some of the order of friars freshly 
 established by the Spaniard, Dominic, to preach to 
 them in vain, declared them as great enemies of 
 the faith as Mahometans, and proclaimed a crusade 
 against them and their chief supporter, Raymond, 
 Count of Toulouse. Shrewd old King Philip merely 
 permitted this crusade; but the dislike of the north 
 of France to the south made hosts of adventurers flock 
 to the banner of its leader, Simon de Montfort, a 
 Norman baron, devout and honourable, but harsh and 
 pitiless. Dreadful execution was done ; the whole 
 country was laid waste, and Raymond reduced to 
 such distress that Peter I., King of Aragon, who was 
 regarded as the natural head of the southern races. 
 
i6 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 came to his aid, but was defeated and slain at the 
 battle of Muret. After this Raymond was forced to 
 submit, but such hard terms were forced on him that 
 his people revolted. His country was granted to De 
 Montfort, who laid siege to Toulouse, and was killed 
 before he could take the city. The war was then 
 carried on by Louis the Lio7t, who had succeeded 
 his father as Louis VIII. in 1223, though only to 
 reign three years, as he died of a fever caught in a 
 southern campaign in 1226. His widow, Blanche, 
 made peace in the name of her son. Louts LX., and 
 Raymond was forced to give his only daughter in 
 marriage to one of her younger sons. On their 
 death, the county of Toulouse lapsed to the crown, 
 which thus became possessor of all southern France, 
 save Guienne, which still remained to the English 
 kings. But the whole of the district once peopled 
 by the Albigenses had been so much wasted as never 
 to recover its prosperity, and any cropping up of 
 their opinions was guarded against by the establish- 
 ment of the Inquisition, which appointed Dominican 
 friars to inquire into and exterminate all that differed 
 from the Church. At the same time the order of St. 
 Francis did much to instruct and quicken the con- 
 sciences of the people; and at the universities — 
 especially that ' of Paris — a great advance both in 
 thought and learning was made. Louis IX.'s con- 
 fessor, Henry de Sorbonne, founded, for the study of 
 
I.] THE PARLIAMENT OF PARIS. 17 
 
 divinity, the college which was known by his name, 
 and whose decisions were afterwards received as of 
 paramount authority. 
 
 9. The Parliament of Paris. ^France had a 
 wise ruler in Blanche, and a still better one in her 
 son, Louis IX., who is better known as St Louis, and 
 who was a really good and great man. He was the 
 first to establish the Parliament of Paris — a court con- 
 sisting of the great feudal vassals, lay and ecclesiastical, 
 who held of the king direct, and who had to try all 
 causes. They much disliked giving such attendance, 
 and a certain number of men trained to the law were 
 added to them to guide the decisions. The Parlia- 
 ment was thus only a court of justice and an office for 
 registering wills and edicts. The representative assem- 
 bly of France was called the States-General, and con- 
 sisted of all estates of the realm, but was only sum- 
 moned in time of emergency. Louis IX. was the first 
 king to bring nobles of the highest rank to submit to 
 the judgment of Parliament when guilty of a crime. 
 Enguerrand de Coucy, one of the proudest nobles of 
 France, who had hung two Flemish youths for killing 
 a rabbit, was sentenced to death. The penalty was 
 commuted, but the principle was estabHshed. Louis's 
 uprightness and wisdom gained him honour and love 
 everywhere, and he was always remembered as sitting 
 under the great oak at Vincennes. doing equal justice to 
 
i8 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 rich and poor. Louis was equally upright in his dealings 
 with foreign powers. He would not take advantage of 
 the weakness of Henry IH. of England to attack his 
 lands in Guienne, though he maintained the right of 
 France to Normandy as having been forfeited by King 
 John. So much was he respected that he was called 
 in to judge between Henry and his barons, respecting 
 the oaths exacted from the king by the Mad Parlia- 
 ment. His decision in favour of Henry was probably 
 an honest one 3 but he was misled by the very 
 different relations of the French and English kings to 
 their nobles, who in France maintained lawlessness 
 and violence, while in England they were struggling 
 for law and order. Throughout the struggles between 
 the Popes and the Emperor Frederick H., Louis would 
 not be induced to assist in a persecution of the Em- 
 peror which he considered unjust, nor permit one of 
 his sons to accept the kingdom of Apulia and Sicily, 
 when the Pope declared that Frederick had forfeited 
 it. He could not, however, prevent his brother 
 Charles, Count of Anjou, from accepting it; for Charles 
 had married Beatrice, heiress of the imperial fief of 
 Provence, and being thus independent of his brother 
 Louis, was able to establish a branch of the French 
 royal family on the throne at Naples. The reign of 
 St. Louis was a time of much progress and improve- 
 ment. There were great scholars and thinkers at all 
 the universities. Romance and poetry were flourish- 
 
I.] CRUSADE OF LOUIS IX. 19 
 
 ing, and influencing people's habits, so that courtesy, 
 i.e. the manners taught in castle courts, was softening 
 the demeanour of knights and nobles. Architecture 
 was at its most beautiful period, as is seen, above all, 
 in the Sainte Chapelle at Paris. This was built by 
 Louis IX. to receive a gift of the Greek Emperor, 
 namely, a thorn, which was believed to be from the 
 crown of thorns. It is one of the most perfect 
 buildings in existence. 
 
 10. Crusade of Louis IX. — Unfortunately, Louis, 
 during a severe illness, made a vow to go on a cru- 
 sade. His first fulfilment of this vow was made early 
 in his reign, in 1250, when his mother was still 
 alive to undertake the regency. His attempt was 
 to attack the heart of the Saracen power in Egypt, 
 and he effected a landing and took the city of 
 Damietta. There he left his queen, and advanced 
 on Cairo; but near Mansourah he found himself 
 entangled in the canals of the Nile, and with a great 
 army of Mamelukes in front. A ford was found, 
 and the English Earl of Salisbury, who had brought 
 a troop to join the crusade, advised that the first to 
 cross should wait and guard the passage of the next. 
 But the king's brother, Robert, Count of Artois, called 
 this cowardice. The earl was stung, and declared he 
 would be as forward among the foe as any French- 
 man. They both charged headlong, were enclosed by 
 
20 FRANCE, [CHAP. 
 
 the enemy, and slain ; and though the king at last put 
 the Mamelukes to flight, his loss was dreadful. The 
 Nile rose and cut off his return. He lost great part of 
 his troops from sickness, and was horribly harassed by 
 the Mamelukes, who threw among his host a strange 
 burning missile, called Greek fire ; and he was finally 
 forced to surrender himself as a prisoner at Man- 
 sourah, with all his army. He obtained his release by 
 giving up Damietta, and paying a heavy ransom. 
 After twenty years, in 1270, he attempted another 
 crusade, which was still more unfortunate, for he 
 landed at Tunis to wait for his brother to arrive from^ 
 Sicily, apparently on some delusion of favourable dis- 
 positions on the part of the Bey. Sickness broke out 
 in the camp, and the king, his daughter, and his third 
 son all died of fever ; and so fatal was the expedition, 
 that his son Philip IH. returned to France escorting 
 five coffins, those of his father, his brother, his sister 
 and her husband, and his own wife and child. 
 
 II. Philip the Fair. — The reign of Philip III. 
 was very short. The insolence and cruelty of the 
 Provengals in Sicily had provoked the natives to a 
 massacre known as the SiciHan Vespers, and they 
 then called in the King of Aragon, who finally 
 obtained the island, as a separate kingdom from 
 that on the Italian mainland where Charles of 
 Anjou and his descendants still reigned. While 
 
I.] PHILIP THE FAIR. 21 
 
 fighting his uncle's battles on the Pyrenees, and be- 
 sieging Gerona, Philip III. caught a fever, and died 
 on his way home in 1285. His successor, Philip IV., 
 called the Fair, was crafty, cruel, and greedy, and 
 made the Parliament of Paris the instrument of his 
 violence and exactions, which he carried out in the 
 name of the law. To prevent Guy de Dampierre, 
 Count of Flanders, from marrying his daughter to the 
 son of Edward I. of England, he invited her and her 
 father to his court, and threw them both into prison, 
 while he offered his own daughter Isabel to Edward 
 of Carnarvon in her stead. The Scottish wars pre- 
 vented Edward I. from taking up the cause of Guy ; 
 but the Pope, Boniface VIIL, a man of a fierce 
 temper, though of a great age, loudly called on Philip 
 to do justice to Flanders, and likewise blamed in un- 
 measured terms his exactions from the clergy, his 
 debasement of the coinage, and his foul and vicious 
 life. Furious abuse passed on both sides. Philip 
 availed himself of a flaw in the Pope's election to 
 threaten him with deposition, and in return was ex- 
 communicated. He then sent a French knight named 
 William de Nogaret, with Sciarra Colonna, a turbulent 
 Roman, the hereditary enemy of Boniface, and a band 
 of savage mercenary soldiers to Anagni, where the 
 Pope then was, to force him to recall the sentence, ap- 
 parently intending them to act like the murderers of 
 Becket. The old man's dignity, however, overawed 
 
22 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 them at the moment, and they retired without laying 
 hands on him, but the shock he had undergone caused 
 his death a few days later. His successor was poisoned 
 almost immediately on his election, being known to be 
 adverse to Philip. Parties were equally balanced in 
 the conclave ; but Philip's friends advised him to buy 
 over to his interest one of his supposed foes, whom 
 they would then unite in choosing. Bertrand de 
 Goth, Archbishop of Bordeaux, was the man, and in a 
 secret interview promised Philip to fulfil six conditions 
 if he were made Pope by his interest. These were : 
 I St, the reconciliation of Philip with the Church; 2nd, 
 that of his agents ; 3rd, a grant to the king of a tenth 
 of all clerical property for five years ; 4th, the restora- 
 tion of the Colonna family to Rome; 5 th, the censure 
 of Boniface's memory. These five were carried out 
 by Clement V., as he called himself, as soon as he was 
 on the Papal throne ; the sixth remained a secret, but 
 was probably the destruction of the Knights Templars. 
 This order of military monks had been created for 
 the defence of the crusading kingdom of Jerusalem, 
 and had acquired large possessions in Europe. Now 
 that their occupation in the East was gone, they were 
 hated and dreaded by the kings, and Philip was resolved 
 on their wholesale destruction. 
 
 12. The Papacy at Avignon. — Clement had 
 never quitted France, but ha<d gone through the cere- 
 
I.] THE PAPACY AT AVIGNON. 23 
 
 monies of his installation at Lyons ; and Philip, fearing 
 that in Italy he would avoid carrying out the scheme 
 for the ruin of the Templars, had him conducted to 
 Avignon, a city of the Empire which belonged to the 
 Angevin King of Naples, as Count of Provence, and 
 there for eighty years the Papal court remained. As 
 they were thus settled close to the French frontier, 
 the Popes became almost vassals of France ; and this 
 added greatly to the power and renown of the French 
 kings. How real their hold on the Papacy was, was 
 shown in the ruin of the Templars. The order was 
 now abandoned by the Pope, and its knights were 
 invited in large numbers to Paris, under pretence of 
 arranging a crusade. Having been thus entrapped, 
 they were accused of horrible and monstrous crimes, 
 and torture elicited a few supposed confessions. They 
 were then tried by the Inquisition, and the greater 
 number were put to death by fire, the Grand Master 
 last of all, while their lands were seized by the king. 
 They seem to have been really a fierce, arrogant, and 
 oppressive set of men, or else there must have been 
 some endeavour to save them, belonging, as most 
 of them did, to noble French famihes. The "Pest 
 of France," as Dante calls Philip the Fair, was 
 now the most formidable prince in Europe. He 
 contrived to annex to his dominions the city of 
 Lyons, hitherto an imperial city under its archbishop. 
 Philip died in 13 14; and his three sons — Louis X.^ 
 
24 FRANCE. [CHAP. i. 
 
 Philip v., and Cha?'les IV. — were as cruel and harsh ^ 
 as himself, but without his talent, and brought the 
 crown and people to disgrace and misery. Each 
 reigned a few years and then died, leaving only 
 daughters, and the question arose whether the inherit- 
 ance should go to females. When Louis X. died, in 
 13 16, his brother Philip, after waiting for the birth of a 
 posthumous child who only lived a few days, took the 
 crown, and the Parliament then declared that the law 
 of the old Salian Franks had been against the in- 
 heritance of women. By this newly discovered Salic 
 law, Charles IV., the third brother, reigned on Phihp's 
 death ; but the kingdom of Navarre having accrued 
 to the family through their grandmother, and not 
 being subject to the Salic law, went to the eldest 
 daughter of Louis X., Jane, wife of the Count of 
 Evreux. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 
 
 I. "Wars of Edv^ard III. — By the Salic law, 
 as the lawyers called it, the crown was given, on 
 the death of Charles IV., to Philips Count of Valois, 
 son to a brother of Philip IV., but it was claimed 
 by Edward III. of England as son of the daughter 
 of Philip IV. Edward contented himself, however, 
 with the mere assertion of his pretensions, until Philip 
 exasperated him by attacks on the borders of Guienne, 
 which the French kings had long been coveting to 
 complete their possession of the south, and by demand- 
 ing the surrender of Robert of Artois, who, being 
 disappointed in his claim to the county of Artois 
 by the judgment of the Parliament of Paris, was 
 practising by sorcery on the life of the King of France. 
 Edward then declared war, and his supposed right 
 caused a century of warfare between France and Eng- 
 land, in which the broken, down-trodden state of the 
 French peasantry gave England an immense advantage. 
 
26 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 The knights and squires were fairly matched; but 
 while the English yeomen were strong, staunch, and 
 trustworthy, the French were useless, and only made 
 a defeat worse by plundering the fallen on each side 
 alike. The war began in Flanders, where Philip took 
 the part of the count, whose tyrannies had caused his 
 expulsion. Edward was called in to the aid of the 
 citizens of Ghent by their leader Jacob van Arteveldt; 
 and gained a great victory over the French fleet at 
 Sluys, but with no important result. At the same time 
 the two kings took opposite sides in the war of the 
 succession in Brittany, each defending the claim most 
 inconsistent with his own pretensions to the French 
 crown — Edward upholding the male heir, John de 
 Montfort, and Philip the direct female representative, 
 the wife of Charles de Blois. 
 
 2. Crecy and Poitiers. — Further difficulties 
 arose through Charles the Bad, King of Navarre 
 and Count of Evreux, who was always on the watch 
 to assert his claim to the French throne through 
 his mother, the daughter of Louis X., and was 
 much hated and distrusted by Philip VI. and his 
 son John, Duke of Normandy. Fearing the dis- 
 affection of the Norman and Breton nobles, Philip 
 invited a number of them to a tournament at Paris, 
 and there had them put to death after a hasty form 
 of trial, thus driving their kindred to join his 
 
11.] CRECY AND POITIERS. 27 
 
 enemies. One of these offended Normans, Godfrey of 
 Harcourt, invited Edward to Normandy, where he 
 landed, and having consumed his suppHes was on his 
 march to Flanders, when Philip, with the whole strength 
 of the kingdom, endeavoured to intercept him at 
 Cre9y in Picardy, in 1348. Philip was utterly in- 
 capable as a general ; his knights were wrong-headed 
 and turbulent, and absolutely cut down their own 
 Genoese hired archers for being in their way. The 
 defeat was total. Philip rode away to Amiens, and 
 Edward laid siege to Calais. The place was so 
 strong that he was forced to blockade it, and Philip 
 had time to gather another army to attempt its rehef ; 
 but the English army were so posted that he could 
 not attack them without great loss. He retreated, 
 and the men of Calais surrendered, Edward insisting 
 that six burghers should bring him the keys with ropes 
 round their necks, to submit themselves to him. Six 
 offered themselves, but their lives were spared, and 
 they were honourably treated. Edward expelled all the 
 French, and made Calais an English settlement. A 
 truce followed, chiefly in consequence of the ravages 
 of the Black Death, which swept off multitudes 
 throughout Europe, a pestilence apparently bred 
 by filth, famine, and all the miseries of war and law- 
 lessness, but which spared no ranks. It had scarcely 
 ceased before Philip died, in 1350. His son, John^ 
 was soon involved in a fresh war with England by the 
 
28 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 intrigues of Charles the Bad, and in 1356 advanced 
 southwards to check the Prince of Wales, who had 
 come out of Guienne on a plundering expedition. 
 The French were again totally routed at Poitiers, and 
 the king himself, with his third son, Philip, were made 
 prisoners and carried to London with most of the 
 chief nobles. 
 
 3. The Jacquerie. — The calls made on their 
 vassals by these captive nobles to supply their 
 ransoms brought the misery to a height. The salt tax, 
 or gabelle, which was first imposed to meet the ex- 
 penses of the war, was only paid by those who were 
 neither clergy nor nobles, and the general saying was 
 — "Jacques Bonhomme (the nickname for the peasant) 
 has a broad back, let him bear all the burthens." 
 Either by the king, the feudal lords, the clergy, or 
 the bands of men-at-arms who roved through the 
 country, selling themselves to any prince who would 
 employ them, the wretched people were stripped of 
 everything, and used to hide in holes and caves 
 from ill-usage or insult, till they broke out in a re- 
 bellion called the Jacquerie, and whenever they 
 could seize a castle revenged themselves, like the 
 brutes they had been made, on those within it. 
 Taxation was so levied by the king's officers as to 
 be frightfully oppressive, and corruption reigned every- 
 where. As the king was in prison, and his heir, 
 
11.] THE JACQUERIE. 29 
 
 Charles, had fled ignominiously from Poitiers, the citi- 
 zens of Paris hoped to effect a reform, and rose with 
 their provost-marshal, Stephen Marcel, at their head, 
 threatened Charles, and slew two of his officers be- 
 fore his eyes. On their demand the States-General 
 were convoked, and made wholesome regulations 
 as to the manner of collecting the taxes, but no one, 
 except perhaps Marcel, had any real zeal or public 
 spirit. Charles the Bad, of Navarre, who had pretended 
 to espouse their cause, betrayed it ; the king declared 
 the decisions of the States-General null and void ; and 
 the crafty management of his son prevented any union 
 between the malcontents. The gentry rallied, and put 
 down the Jacquerie with horrible cruelty and revenge. 
 The burghers of Paris found that Charles the Bad only 
 wanted to gain the throne, and Marcel would have 
 proclaimed him ; but those who thought him even worse 
 than his cousins of Valois admitted the other Charles, 
 by whom Marcel and his partisans were put to death. 
 The attempt at reform thus ended in talk and murder, 
 and all fell back into the same state of misery and 
 oppression. 
 
 4. The Peace of Bretigny. — This Charles, 
 eldest son of John, obtained by purchase the imperial 
 fief of Vienne, of which the counts had always been 
 called Dauphins, a title thenceforth borne by the heir 
 apparent of the kingdom. His father's captivity and 
 
30 FRANCE, [chap. 
 
 the submission of Paris left him master of the realm : 
 
 but he did little to defend it when Edward III. again 
 attacked it, and in 1360 he was forced to bow to the 
 terms which the English king demanded as the price 
 of peace. The Peace of Bretigny permitted King 
 John to ransom himself, but resigned to England the 
 sovereignty over the duchy of Aquitaine, and left 
 Calais and Ponthieu in the hands of Edward III. 
 John died in 1364, before his ransom was paid, and 
 his son mounted the throne as Charles V . Charles 
 showed himself from this time a wary, able man, and 
 did much to regain what had been lost by craftily 
 watching his opportunity. The war went on between 
 the allies of each party, though the French and 
 English kings professed to be at peace ; and at the 
 batde of Cocherel, in 1364, Charles the Bad was 
 defeated, and forced to make peace with France. 
 On the other hand, the French party in Brittany, 
 led by Charles de Blois and the gallant Breton 
 knight, Bertrand du Guesclin, were routed, the same 
 year, by the English party under Sir John Chandos ; 
 Charles de Blois was killed, and the house of Mont- 
 fort estabhshed in the duchy. These years of war 
 had created a dreadful class of men, namely, hired 
 soldiers of all nations, who, under some noted leader, 
 sold their services to whatever prince might need them, 
 under the name of Free Companies, and when un- 
 employed lived by plunder. The peace had only 
 
II.] RENEWAL OF THE WAR. 31 
 
 let these wretches loose on the peasants. Some had 
 seized castles, whence they could plunder travellers ; 
 others roamed the country, preying on the miserable 
 peasants, who, fleeced as they were by king, barons, 
 and clergy, were tortured and murdered by these 
 ruffians, so that many lived in holes in the ground 
 that their dwellings might not attract attention. Ber- 
 trand du Guesclin offered the king to relieve the 
 country from these Free Companies by leading them 
 to assist the Castilians against their tyrannical king, 
 Peter the Cruel. Edward, the Black Prince, who was 
 then acting as Governor of Aquitaine, took, however, 
 the part of Peter, and defeated Du Guesclin at the 
 batde of Navarete, on the Ebro, in 1367. 
 
 5. Renew^al of the War. — This expedition 
 ruined the prince's health, and exhausted his treasury. 
 A hearth-tax was laid on the inhabitants of Aquitaine, 
 and they appealed against it to the King of France, 
 although, by the Peace of Bretigny, he had given up 
 all right to hear appeals as suzerain. The treaty, 
 however, was still not formally settled, and on this 
 ground Charles received their complaint. The war 
 thus began again, and the sword of the Constable of 
 France — the highest military dignity of the realm 
 — was given to Du Guesclin, but only on condition 
 that he would avoid pitched battles, and merely harass 
 the English and take their castles. This policy was 
 
32 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 SO strictly followed, that the Duke of Lancaster was 
 allowed to march from Brittany to Gascony without 
 meeting an enemy in the field; and when King 
 Edward III. made his sixth and last invasion, nearly 
 to the walls of Paris, he was only turned back by 
 famine, and by a tremendous thunderstorm, which 
 made him believe that Heaven was against him. 
 Du Guesclin died while besieging a castle, and such 
 was his fame that the English captain would place 
 the keys in no hand but that of his corpse. The 
 Constable's sword was given to Oliver de Clisson, also a 
 Breton, and called the " Butcher," because he gave 
 no quarter to the English in revenge for the death 
 of his brother. The Bretons were, almost to a man, 
 of the French party, having been offended by the 
 insolence and oppression of the English ; and John 
 de Montfort, after clinging to the King of England 
 as long as possible, was forced to make his peace at 
 length with Charles. Charles V. had nearly regained 
 all that had been lost, when, in 1380 his death left 
 the kingdom to his son. 
 
 6. House of Burgundy. — Charles VI. was a 
 boy of nine years old, motherless, and beset with am- 
 bitious uncles. These uncles were Louis, Duke of 
 Anjou, to whom Queen Joanna, the last of the earHer 
 Angevin line in Naples, bequeathed her rights ; John, 
 Duke of Berry, a weak time-server ; and Philip, the 
 
n.] HOUSE OF BURGUNDY. 33 
 
 ablest and most honest of the three. His grandmother 
 Joan, the wife of Phihp VI., had been heiress of the 
 duchy and county of Burgundy, and these now became 
 his inheritance, giving him the richest part of France. 
 By still better fortune he had married Margaret, the 
 only child of Louis, Count of Flanders. Flanders 
 contained the great cloth-manufacturing towns of 
 Europe — Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, etc., all wealthy and 
 independent, and much inclined to close alliance 
 with England, whence they obtained their wool, while 
 their counts were equally devoted to France. Just 
 as Count Louis II. had, for his lawless rapacity, 
 been driven out of Ghent by Jacob van Arteveldt^ 
 so his son, Louis III., was expelled by Philip van 
 Arteveldt, son to Jacob. Charles had been disgusted 
 by Louis's coarse violence, and would not help him ; 
 but after the old king's death, Philip of Burgundy 
 used his influence in the council to conduct the whole 
 power of France to Flanders, where Arteveldt was 
 defeated and trodden to death in the battle of Ros- 
 becque, in 1382. On the count's death, Philip suc- 
 ceeded him as Count of Flanders in right of his wife ; 
 and thus was laid the foundation of the powerful and 
 wealthy house of Burgundy, which for four genera- 
 tions almost overshadowed the crown of France. 
 
 7. Insanity of Charles VI. — The Constable, 
 Clisson, was much hated bv the Duke of Brittany, 
 
34 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 and an attack which was made on him in the streets 
 of Paris was clearly traced to Montfort. The young 
 king, who was much attached to Clisson, set forth 
 to exact punishment. On his way, a madman rushed 
 out of a forest and called out, " King, you are 
 betrayed ! " Charles was much frightened, and further 
 seems to have had a sunstroke, for he at once became 
 insane. He recovered for a time ; but at Christmas, 
 while he and five others were dancing, disguised as 
 wild men, their garments of pitched flax caught fire. 
 Four were burnt, and the shock brought back the 
 king's madness. He became subject to fits of insanity 
 of longer or shorter duration, and in their intervals he 
 seems to have been almost imbecile. No provision 
 had then been made for the contingency of a mad 
 king. The condition of the country became worse 
 than ever, and power was grasped at by whoever 
 could obtain it. Of the king's three uncles, the Duke 
 of Anjou and his sons were generally engrossed by a 
 vain struggle to obtain Naples; the Duke of Berry 
 was dull and weak; and the chief struggle for influence 
 was between Philip of Burgundy and his son, John 
 the Fearless, on the one hand, and on the other the 
 king's wife, Isabel of Bavaria, and his brother Louis, 
 Duke of Orleans, who was suspected of being her 
 lover ; while the unhappy king and his little children 
 were left in a wretched state, often scarcely provided 
 with clothes or food. 
 
II.] BURGUNDIANS AND ARMAGNACS. 35 
 
 8. Burgundians and Armagnacs. — Matters 
 grew worse after the death of Duke PhiHp in 1404; 
 and in 1407, just after a seeming reconciHation, the 
 Duke of Orleans was murdered in the streets of Paris 
 by servants of John the Fearless. Louis of Orleans had 
 been a vain, foolish man, heedless of all save his own 
 pleasure, but his death increased the misery of France 
 through the long and deadly struggle for vengeance 
 that followed. The king was helpless, and the children 
 of the Duke of Orleans were young; but their cause 
 was taken up by a Gascon noble, Bernard, Count of 
 Armagnac, whose name the party took. The Duke 
 of Burgundy was always popular in Paris, where the 
 people, led by the Guild of Butchers, were so devoted 
 to him that he ventured to have a sermon preached at 
 the university, justifying the murder. There was again 
 a feeble attempt at reform made by the burghers ; but, 
 as before, the more violent and lawless were guilty of 
 such excesses that the opposite party were called in 
 to put them down. The Armagnacs were admitted 
 into Paris, and took a terrible vengeance on the 
 Butchers and on all adherents of Burgundy, in the 
 name of the Dauphin Louis, the king's eldest son, 
 a weak, dissipated youth, who was entirely led by the 
 Count of Armagnac. 
 
 9. Invasion of Henry V. — All this time the 
 war with England had smouldered on, only broken by 
 
36 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 brief truces j and when France was in this wretched 
 state Henry V. renewed the claim of Edward III., and 
 in 14 1 5 landed before Harfleur. After delaying till 
 he had taken the city, the dauphin called together the 
 whole nobility of the kingdom, and advanced against 
 Henry, who, like Edward IH., had been obliged to 
 leave Normandy and march towards Calais in search 
 of supplies. The armies met at Agincourt, where, 
 though the French greatly outnumbered the English, 
 the skill of Henry and the folly and confusion of the 
 dauphin's army led to a total defeat, and the cap- 
 tivity of half the chief men in France of the Armagnac 
 party — among them the young Duke of Orleans. It 
 was Henry V.'s policy to treat France, not as a 
 conquest, but as an inheritance ; and he therefore 
 refused to let these captives be ransomed till he 
 should have reduced the country to obedience, while 
 he treated all the places that submitted to him with 
 great kindness. The Duke of Burgundy held aloof 
 from the contest, and the Armagnacs, who ruled in 
 Paris, were too weak or too careless to send aid 
 to Rouen, which was taken by Henry after a 
 long siege. The Dauphin Louis died in 141 7; his 
 next brother, John, who was more inclined to Bur- 
 gundy, did not survive him a year; and the third 
 brother, Charles, a mere boy, was in the hands of the 
 Armagnacs. In 141 8 their reckless misuse of power 
 provoked the citizens of Paris into letting in the Bur- 
 
II.] TREATY OF TROYES. 37 
 
 gundians, when an unspeakably horrible massacre 
 took place. Bernard of Armagnac himself was killed ; 
 his naked corpse, scored with his red cross, was 
 dragged about the streets ; and men, women, and even 
 infants of his party were slaughtered pitilessly. Tan- 
 neguy Duchatel, one of his partisans, carried off the 
 dauphin; but the queen, weary of Armagnac inso- 
 lence, had joined the Burgundian party. 
 
 10. Treaty of Troyes. — Meanwhile Henry V. 
 continued to advance, and John of Burgundy felt 
 the need of joining the whole strength of France 
 against him, and made overtures to the dauphin. 
 Duchatel, either fearing to be overshadowed by his 
 power, or else in revenge for Orleans and Armagnac, 
 no sooner saw that a reconciliation was likely to 
 take place, than he murdered John the Fearless 
 before the dauphin's eyes, at a conference on the 
 bridge of Montereau-sur-Yonne (141 9). John's wound 
 was said to be the hole which let the English into 
 France. His son Philip, the new Duke of Bur- 
 gundy, viewing the dauphin as guilty of his death, 
 went over with all his forces to Henry V., taking 
 with him the queen and the poor helpless king. 
 At the treaty of Troyes, in 1420, Henry was de- 
 clared regent, and heir of the kingdom, at the 
 same time as he received the hand of Catherine, 
 daughter of Charles VI. This gave him Paris and 
 
38 FRANCE, [chap. 
 
 all the chief cities in northern France ; but the 
 Armagnacs held the south, with the Dauphin Charles 
 at their head. Charles was declared an outlaw by 
 his father's court, but he was in truth the leader of 
 what had become the national and patriotic cause. 
 During this time, after a long struggle and schism, 
 the Pope again returned to Rome. 
 
 II. The Maid of Orleans. — When Henry V. 
 died in 1422, and the unhappy Charles a few weeks 
 later, the infant Henry VI. was proclaimed King of 
 France as well as of England, at both Paris and Lon- 
 don, while Chai'les F/Zwasonly proclaimed at Bourges, 
 and a few other places in the south. Charles was of 
 a slow, sluggish nature, and the men around him 
 were selfish and pleasure-loving intriguers, who kept 
 aloof all the bolder spirits from him. The brother of 
 Henry V., John, Duke of Bedford, ruled all the country 
 north of the Loire, with Rouen as his head-quarters. 
 For seven years little was done ; but in 1429 he 
 caused Orleans to be besieged. The city held out 
 bravely, all France looked on anxiously, and a young 
 peasant girl, named Joan d'Arc, believed herself called 
 by voices from the saints to rescue the city, and lead 
 the king to his coronation at Rheims. With difficulty 
 she obtained a hearing of the king, and was allowed 
 to proceed to Orleans. Leading the army with a 
 consecrated sword, which she never stained with 
 
II.] THE MAID OF ORLEANS. 
 
 39 
 
 blood, she filled the French with confidence, the Eng- 
 lish with fear as of a witch, and thus she gained the 
 day wherever she appeared. Orleans was saved, and 
 she then conducted Charles VII. to Rheims, and stood 
 beside his throne when he was crowned. Then she 
 said her work was done, and would have returned 
 home ; but, though the wretched king and his court 
 never appreciated her, they thought her useful with 
 the soldiers, and would not let her leave them. She 
 had lost her heart and hope, and the men began to 
 be angered at her for putting down all vice and foul 
 language. The captains were envious of her ; and at 
 last, when she had led a sally out of the besieged 
 town of Compiegne, the gates were shut, and she was 
 made prisoner by a Burgundian, John of Luxembourg. 
 The Burgundians hated her even more than the Eng- 
 lish. The inquisitor was of their party, and a court 
 was held at Rouen, which condemned her to die as a 
 witch. Bedford consented, but left the city before the 
 execution. Her own king made no effort to save her, 
 though, many years later, he caused enquiries to be 
 made, established her innocence, ennobled her family, 
 and freed her village from taxation. 
 
 12. Recovery of France (1434 — 1450). — But 
 though Joan was gone, her work lasted. The Con- 
 stable, Artur of Richmond, the Count of Dunois, 
 and other brave leaders, continued to attack the 
 
40 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 English. After seventeen years' vengeance for his 
 father's death, the Duke of Burgundy made his peace 
 with Charles by a treaty at Arras, on condition of 
 paying no more homage, in 1434. Bedford died 
 soon after, and there were nothing but disputes 
 among the English. Paris opened its gates to the 
 king, and Charles, almost in spite of himself, was 
 restored. An able merchant, named Jacques Coeur, 
 lent him money which equipped his men for the 
 recovery of Normandy, and he himself, waking into 
 activity, took Rouen and the other cities on the coast. 
 
 13. Conquest of Aquitaine (1450). — By these 
 successes Charles had recovered all, save Calais, 
 that Henry V. or Edward III. had taken from 
 France. But he was now able to do more. The 
 one province of the south which the French kings 
 had never been able to win was Guienne, the duchy 
 on the river Garonne. Guienne had been a part of 
 Eleanor's inheritance, and passed through her to the 
 English kings ; but though they had lost all else, 
 the hatred of its inhabitants to the French enabled 
 them to retain this, and Guienne had never yet 
 passed under French rule. It was wrested, how- 
 ever, from Eleanor's descendants in this flood-tide of 
 conquest Bordeaux held out as long as it could, but 
 Henry VI. could send no aid, and it was forced to 
 yield. Two years later, brave old Lord Talbot led 
 
II.] THE STANDING ARMY. 41 
 
 5000 men to recover the duchy, and was gladly 
 welcomed ; but he was slain in the battle of Castillon, 
 fighting like a lion. His two sons fell beside him, and 
 his army was broken. Bordeaux again surrendered, 
 and the French kings at last found themselves master 
 of the great fief of the south. Calais was, at the 
 close of the great Hundred Years' War, the only 
 possession left to England south of the Channel. 
 
 14. The Standing Army (1452). — As at the end 
 of the first act in the Hundred Years' War, the great 
 difficulty in time of peace was the presence of the 
 bands of free companions, or mercenary soldiers, who, 
 when war and plunder failed them, lived by violence 
 and robbery of the peasants. Charles VII., who had 
 awakened into vigour, thereupon took into regular pay 
 all who would submit to discipline, and the rest were 
 led off on two futile expeditions into Switzerland and 
 Germany, and there left to their fate. The princes 
 and nobles were at first so much disgusted at the 
 regulations which bound the soldiery to respect the 
 magistracy, that they raised a rebellion, which was 
 fostered by the Dauphin Louis, who was ready to 
 do anything that could annoy his father. But he 
 was soon detached from them ; the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy would not assist them, and the league fell to 
 pieces. Charles VII. by thus retaining companies of 
 
 hired troops in his pay laid the foundation of the 
 5 
 
42 FRANCE. [CHAP. ii. 
 
 first standing army in Europe, and enabled the mon- 
 archy to tread down the feudal force of the nobles. 
 His government was firm and wise; and with his 
 reign began better times for France. But it was 
 long before it recovered from the miseries of the 
 long strife. The war had kept back much of pro- 
 gress. There had been grievous havoc of buildings 
 in the north and centre of France; much lawlessness 
 and cruelty prevailed; and yet there was a certain 
 advance in learning, and much love of romance and 
 the theory of chivalry. Pages of noble birth were 
 bred up in castles to be first squires and then 
 knights. There was immense formality and state- 
 liness, the order of precedence was most minute, 
 and pomp and display were wonderful. Strange 
 alternations took place. One month the streets of 
 Paris would be a scene of horrible famine, where 
 hungry dogs, and even wolves, put an end to the 
 miseries of starving, homeless children of slaughtered 
 parents ; another, the people would be gazing at royal 
 banquets, lasting a whole day, with allegorical ''subtle- 
 ties " of jelly on the table, and pageants coming 
 between the courses, where all the Virtues harangued 
 in turn, or where knights delivered maidens from 
 giants and " salvage men." In the south there was 
 less misery and more progress. Jacques Coeur's house 
 at Bourges is still a marvel of household architecture ; 
 and Rene, Duke of Anjou and Count of Provence, 
 was an excellent painter on glass, and also a poet. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE WITH BURGUNDY. 
 
 I. Power of Burgundy. — All the troubles of 
 France, for the last 80 years, had gone to increase 
 the strength of the Dukes of Burgundy. The county 
 and duchy, of which Dijon .was the capital, lay in 
 the most fertile district of France, and had, as we 
 have seen, been conferred on PhiHp the Bold. His 
 marriage had given to him Flanders, with a gallant 
 nobility, and with the chief manufacturing cities of 
 Northern Europe. Philip's son, John the Fearless, 
 had married a lady who ultimately brought into the 
 family the great imperial counties of Holland and 
 Zealand j and her son, Duke Philip the Good, by 
 purchase or inheritance, obtained possession of all 
 the adjoining little fiefs forming the country called 
 the Netherlands, some belonging to the Empire, 
 some to France. Philip had turned the scale in 
 the struggle between England and France, and, as 
 his reward, had won the cities on the Somme. He 
 
44 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 had thus become the richest and most powerful 
 prince in Europe, and seemed on the point of found- 
 ing a middle state lying between France and Ger- 
 many, his weak point being that the imperial fiefs in 
 Lorraine and Elsass lay between his dukedom of 
 Burgundy and his counties in the Netherlands. No 
 European court equalled in splendour that of Philip. 
 The great cities of Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, and 
 the rest, though full of fierce and resolute men, paid 
 him dues enough to make him the richest of princes, 
 and the Flemish knights were among the boldest in 
 Europe. All the arts of life, above all painting and 
 domestic architecture, flourished at Brussels ; and no- 
 where were troops so well equipped, burghers more 
 prosperous, learning more widespread, than in his 
 domains. Here, too, were the most ceremonious 
 courtesy, the most splendid banquets, and the most 
 wonderful display of jewels, plate, and cloth-of-gold. 
 Charles VII., a clever though a cold-hearted, indo- 
 lent man, let Philip alone, already seeing how the 
 game would go for the future; for when the dauphin 
 had quarrelled with the reigning favourite, and was 
 kindly received on his flight to Burgundy, the old 
 king sneered, saying that the duke was fostering the 
 fox who would steal his chickens. 
 
 2. Louis XL's Policy. — Louis XL succeeded 
 his father Charles in 146 1. He was a man of great 
 
Til.] LOUIS XL'S POLLCY. 45 
 
 skill and craft, with an iron will, and subtle though 
 pitiless nature, who knew in what the greatness of a 
 king consisted, and worked out his ends mercilessly 
 and unscrupulously. The old feudal dukes and counts 
 had all passed away, except the Duke of Brittany; but 
 the Dukes of Orleans, Burgundy, and Anjou held 
 princely appanages, and there was a turbulent nobility 
 who had grown up during the wars, foreign and civil, 
 and been encouraged by the favouritism of Charles VI. 
 All these, feeling that Louis was their natural foe, 
 united against him in what was called the "League of 
 the Public Good," with his own brother, the Duke of 
 Berry, and Count Charles of Charolais, who was known 
 as Charles the Bold, the son of Duke Philip of Bur- 
 gundy, at their head. Louis was actually defeated by 
 Charles of Charolais in the battle of Montlhery; but 
 he contrived so cleverly to break up the league, by 
 promises to each member and by sowing dissension 
 among them, that he ended by becoming more power- 
 ful than before. 
 
 3. Charles the Bold.— On the death of Philip 
 the Good, in 1467, Charles the Bold succeeded to 
 the duchy of Burgundy. He pursued more ardently 
 the plan of forming a new kingdom of Burgundy, 
 and had even hopes of being chosen Emperor. First, 
 however, he had to consolidate his dominions, by 
 making himself master of the countries which parted 
 
46 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 Burgundy from the Netherlands. With this view 
 he obtained Elsass in pledge from its owner, a 
 needy son of the house of Austria, who was never 
 likely to redeem it. Lorraine had been inherited 
 by Yolande, the wife of Rene, Duke of Anjou and 
 titular King of Sicily, and had passed from her to 
 her daughter, who had married the nearest heir in 
 the male line, the Count of Vaudemont ; but Charles 
 the Bold unjustly seized the dukedom, driving out 
 the lawful heir, Rene de Vaudemont, son of this 
 marriage. Louis, meantime, was on the watch for 
 every error of Charles, and constantly sowing dangers 
 in his path. Sometimes his mines exploded too soon, 
 as when he had actually put himself into Charles's 
 power by visiting him at Peronne at the very moment 
 when his emissaries had encouraged the city of Liege 
 to rise in revolt against their bishop, an ally of the 
 duke; and he only bought his freedom by profuse 
 promises, and by aiding Charles in a most savage de- 
 struction of Liege. But after this his caution prevailed. 
 He gave secret support to the adherents of Rene de 
 Vaudemont, and intrigued with the Swiss, who were 
 often at issue with the Burgundian bailiffs and soldiery 
 in Elsass — greedy, reckless men, from whom the men 
 of Elsass revolted in favour of their former Austrian 
 lord. Meantime Edward IV. of England, Charles's 
 brother-in-law, had planned with him an invasion of 
 France and division of the kingdom, and in 1475 
 
III.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 47 
 
 actually crossed the sea with a splendid host ; but 
 while Charles was prevented from joining him by the 
 siege of Neuss, a city in alliance with Sigismund of 
 Austria, Louis met Edward on the bridge of Pecquigny, 
 and by cajolery, bribery, and accusations of Charles, 
 contrived to persuade him to carry home his army 
 without striking a blow. That meeting was a curious 
 one. A wooden barrier, like a wild beast's cage, was 
 erected in the middle of the bridge, through which 
 the two kings kissed one another. Edward was the 
 tallest and handsomest man present, and splendidly 
 attired. Louis was small and mean-looking, and clad 
 in an old blue suit, with a hat decorated with little 
 leaden images of the saints, but his smooth tongue 
 quite overcame the duller intellect of Edward j and in 
 the mean time the English soldiers were feasted and 
 allowed their full swing, the French being strictly 
 watched to prevent all quarrels. So skilfully did 
 Louis manage, that Edward consented to make peace 
 and return home. 
 
 4. The Fall of Charles the Bold (1477).— 
 Charles had become entangled in many difficulties. 
 He was a harsh, stern man, much disliked ; and his 
 governors in Elsass were fierce, violent men, who 
 used every pretext for preying upon travellers. The 
 Governor of Breisach, Hagenbach, had been put to 
 death in a popular rising, aided by the Swiss of Berne, 
 
48 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 in 1474; and the men of Elsass themselves raised 
 part of the sum for which the country had been 
 pledged, and revolted against Charles. The Swiss 
 were incited by Louis to join them; Rene of Lorraine 
 made common cause with them. In two great battles, 
 Granson and Morat, Charles and all his chivalry 
 were beaten by the Swiss pikemen ; but he pushed on 
 the war. Nancy, the chief city of Lorraine, had risen 
 against him, and he besieged it. On the night of the 
 5th of January, 1477, Rene led the Swiss to relieve 
 the town by falling in early morning on the besiegers' 
 camp. There was a terrible fight; the Burgundians 
 were routed, and after long search the corpse of 
 Duke Charles was found in a frozen pool, stripped, 
 plundered, and covered with blood. He was the 
 last of the male line of Burgundy, and its great pos- 
 sessions broke up with his death. His only child, 
 Marie, did not inherit the French dukedom nor the 
 county, though most of the fiefs in the Low Countries, 
 which could descend to the female line, were her 
 undisputed portion. Louis tried, by stirring up her 
 subjects, to force her into a marriage with his son 
 Charles; but she threw herself on the protection of 
 the house of Austria, and marrying Maximilian, son 
 of the Emperor Frederick III., carried her border 
 lands to swell the power of his family. 
 
 5, Louis's Home Government. — Louis's 
 
III.] LOUIS'S HOME GOVERNMENT. 49 
 
 system of repression of the nobles went on all this 
 time. His counsellors were of low birth (Oliver le 
 Daim, his barber, was the man he most trusted), his 
 habits frugal, his manners reserved and ironical ; he 
 was dreaded, hated, and distrusted, and he became con- 
 stantly more bitter, suspicious, and merciless. Those 
 who fell under his displeasure were imprisoned in iron 
 cages, or put to death; and the more turbulent fami- 
 lies, such as the house of Armagnac, were treated with 
 frightful severity. But his was not wanton violence. 
 He acted on a regular system of depressing the lawless 
 nobility and increasing the royal authority, by bringing 
 the power of the cities forward, by trusting for protec- 
 tion to the standing army, chiefly of hired Scots, Swiss, 
 and Italians, and by saving money. By this means he 
 was able to purchase the counties of Roussillon and 
 Perpignan from the King of Aragon, thus making 
 the Pyrenees his frontier, and on several occa- 
 sions he made his treasury fight his battles instead of 
 the swords of his knights. He lived in the castle of 
 Plessis les Tours, guarded by the utmost art of fortifi- 
 cation, and filled with hired Scottish archers of his 
 guard, whom he preferred as defenders to his own 
 nobles. He was exceedingly unpopular with his 
 nobles ; but the statesman and historian, Philip de 
 Comines, who had gone over to him from Charles of 
 Burgundy, viewed him as the best and ablest of kings. 
 He did much to promote trade and manufacture, im- 
 
so FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 proved the cities, fostered the university, and was 
 in truth the first king since Philip Augustus who had 
 any real sense of statesmanship. But though the 
 burghers throve under him, and the lawless nobles 
 were depressed, the state of the peasants was not im- 
 proved ; feudal rights pressed heavily on them, and 
 they were little better than savages, ground down by 
 burthens imposed by their lords. 
 
 6. Provence and Brittany. — Louis had added 
 much to the French monarchy. He had won back 
 Artois ; he had seized the duchy and county of 
 Burgundy; he had bought Roussillon. His last 
 acquisition was the county of Provence. The second 
 Angevin family, beginning with Louis, the son ot 
 King John, had never succeeded in gaining a footing 
 in Naples, though they bore the royal title. They 
 held, however, the imperial fief of Provence, and 
 Louis XI., whose mother had been of this family, 
 obtained from her two brothers, Rene and Charles, 
 that Provence should be bequeathed to him instead 
 of passing to Rene's grandson, the Duke of Lorraine. 
 The Kings of France were thenceforth Counts of Pro- 
 vence ; and though the county was not viewed as part 
 of the kingdom, it was practically one with it. A yet 
 greater acquisition was made soon after Louis's death 
 in 1483. The great Celtic duchy of Brittany fell to a 
 female, Anne of Brittany, and the address of Louis's 
 
III.] PROVENCE AND BRITTANY. 51 
 
 daughter, the Lady of Beaujeu, who was regent of the 
 realm, prevailed to secure the hand of the heiress 
 for her brother, Charles VIII. Thus the crown 
 of France had by purchase, conquest, or inheritance, 
 obtained all the great feudal states that made up 
 the country between the English Channel and the 
 Pyrenees; but each still remained a separate state, 
 with different laws and customs, and a separate par- 
 liament in each to register laws, and to act as a court 
 of justice. 
 
52 FRANCE. [^"AP. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ITALIAN WARS. 
 
 I. Campaign of Charles VIII. (1493).— From 
 grasping at province after province on their own 
 border, however, the French kings were now to turn 
 to wider dreams of conquest abroad. Together with 
 the county of Provence, Louis XL had bought from 
 King Rene all the claims of the house of Anjou. 
 Among these was included a claim to the kingdom of 
 Naples. Louis's son, Charles VIII., a vain and shallow 
 lad, was tempted by the possession of large treasures 
 and a fine army to listen to the persuasions of an 
 Italian intriguer, Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and 
 put forward these pretensions, thus beginning a war 
 which lasted nearly as long as the Hundred Years' 
 War with England. But it was a war of aggression 
 instead of a war of self-defence. Charles crossed the 
 Alps in 1493, marched the whole length of Italy with- 
 out opposition, and was crowned at Naples ; while its 
 royal family, an illegitimate offshoot from the Kings of 
 
IV.] CAMPAIGN OF LOUIS XII 53 
 
 Aragon, fled into Sicily, and called on Spain for help. 
 But the insolent exactions of the French soldiery caused 
 the people to rise against themj and when Charles 
 returned, he was beset at Fornovo by a great league 
 of Italians, over whom he gained a complete victory. 
 Small and puny though he was, he fought like a lion, 
 and seemed quite inspired by the ardour of combat. 
 The " French fury," la furia Francese, became a pro- 
 verb among the Italians. Charles neglected, however, 
 to send any supplies or reinforcements to the garrisons 
 he had left behind him in Naples, and they all perished 
 under want, sickness, and the sword of the Spaniards. 
 He was meditating another expedition, when he 
 struck his head against the top of a doorway, and 
 died in 1498. 
 
 2. Campaign of Louis XII. — His cousin, 
 Louis XII., married his widow, and thus prevented 
 Brittany from again parting from the crown. Louis 
 not only succeeded to the Angevin right to Naples, 
 but through his grandmother he viewed himself as 
 heir of Milan. She was Valentina Visconti, wife to 
 that Duke of Orleans who had been murdered by 
 John the Fearless. Louis himself never advanced 
 further than to Milan, whose surrender made him 
 master of Lombardy, which he held for the greater 
 part of his reign. But after a while the Spanish 
 king, Ferdinand, agreed with him to throw over 
 6 
 
54 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 the cause of the unfortunate royal family of Naples, 
 and divide that kingdom between them. Louis XI I. 
 sent a brilliant army to take possession of his share, 
 but the bounds of each portion had not been defined, 
 and the French and Spanish troops began a war 
 even while their kings were still treating with one 
 another. The individual French knights did brilliant 
 exploits, for indeed it was the time of the chief 
 blossom of fanciful chivalry, a knight of Dauphine, 
 named Bayard, called the Fearless and Stainless 
 Knight, and honoured by friend and foe; but the 
 Spaniards were under Gonzalo de Cordova, called 
 the Great Captain, and after the battles of Cerignola 
 and the Garigliano drove the French out of the king- 
 dom of Naples, though the war continued in Lombardy. 
 
 3. The Holy League. — It was an age of 
 
 leagues. The Italians, hating French and Spaniards 
 both alike, were continually forming combinations 
 among themselves and with foreign powers against 
 whichever happened to be the strongest. The 
 chief of these was called the Holy League, because 
 it was formed by Pope Julius IL, who drew into 
 it Maximilian, then head of the German Empire, 
 Ferdinand of Spain, and Henry VI I L of England. 
 The French troops were attacked in Milan ; and 
 though they gained the battle of Ravenna in 15 12, 
 it was with the loss of their general, Gaston de 
 
IV.] THE HOLY LEAGUE. 55 
 
 Foix, Duke of Nemours, whose death served as an 
 excuse to Ferdinand of Spain for setting up a claim 
 to the kingdom of Navarre. He cunningly per- 
 suaded Henry VI 1 1, to aid him in the attack, by 
 holding out the vain idea of going on to regain Gas- 
 cony; and while one troop of EngHsh were attacking 
 Pampeluna, Henry himself landed at Calais and took 
 Tournay and Terouenne. The French forces were at 
 the same time being chased out of Italy. However, 
 when Pampeluna had been taken, and the French 
 finally driven out of Lombardy, the Pope and king, 
 who had gained their ends, left Henry to fight his own 
 battles. He thus was induced to make peace, giving 
 his young sister Mary as second wife to Louis; but 
 that king over-exerted himself at the banquets, and 
 died six weeks after the marriage, in 15 15. During 
 this reign the waste of blood and treasure on wars 
 of mere ambition was frightful, and the country had 
 been heavily taxed ; but a brilliant soldiery had been 
 trained up, and national vanity had much increased. 
 The king, though without deserving much love, was 
 so kindly in manner that he was a favourite, and was 
 called the Father of the People. His first wife, 
 Anne of Brittany, was an excellent and high-spirited 
 woman, who kept the court of France in a better 
 state than ever before or since. 
 
 4. Campaigns of Francis I. — Louis left only 
 
56 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 two daughters, the elder of whom, Claude, carried 
 Brittany to his male heir, Francis, Count of Angou- 
 leine Anne of Brittany had been much averse to 
 the match; but Louis said he kept his mice for his 
 own cats, and gave his daughter and her duchy to 
 Francis as soon as Anne was dead. Francis I. was 
 one of the vainest, falsest, and most dashing of 
 Frenchmen. In fact, he was an exaggeration in 
 every way of the national character, and thus became 
 a national hero, much overpraised. He at once 
 resolved to recover Lombardy ; and after crossing the 
 Alps encountered an army of Swiss troops, who had 
 been hired to defend the Milanese duchy, on the field 
 of Marignano. Francis had to fight a desperate battle 
 with them; after which he caused Bayard to dub 
 him knight, though French kings were said to be 
 born knights. In gaining the victory over these 
 mercenaries, who had been hitherto deemed in- 
 vmcible, he opened for himself a way into Italy, and 
 had all Lombardy at his feet. The Pope, Leo X., 
 met 'him at Bologna, and a concordat took place, by 
 which the French Church became more entirely sub- 
 ject to the Pope, while in return all patronage was 
 given up to the crown. The effects were soon seen 
 in the increased corruption of the clergy and people. 
 Francis brought home from this expedition much taste 
 for Italian art and literature, and all matters of ele- 
 gance and ornament made great progress from this 
 
IV.] CHARLES V. 57 
 
 time. The great Italian masters worked for him ; 
 Raphael painted some of his most beautiful pictures 
 for him, and Leonardo da Vinci came to his court, 
 and there died in his arms. His palaces, especially 
 that of Blois, were exceedingly beautiful, in the new 
 classic style, called the Renaissance. Great richness 
 and splendour reigned at court, and set off his pre- 
 tensions to romance and chivalry. Learning and 
 scholarship, especially classical, increased much ; and 
 the king's sister, Margaret, Queen of Navarre, was an 
 excellent and highly cultivated woman, but even her 
 writings prove that the whole tone of feeling was 
 terribly coarse, when not vicious. 
 
 5. Charles V. — The conquest of Lombardy made 
 France the greatest power in Christendom ; but its 
 king was soon to find a mighty and active rival. The 
 old hatred between France and Burgundy again 
 awoke. Mary of Burgundy, the daughter of Charles 
 the Bold, had married Maximilian, Archduke of 
 Austria and King of the Romans, though never 
 actually crowned Emperor. Their son, Philip, mar- 
 ried Juana, the daughter of Ferdinand, and heiress 
 of Spain, who lost her senses from grief on Philip's 
 untimely death; and thus the direct heir to Spain, 
 Austria, and the Netherlands, was Charles, her eldest 
 son. On the death of Maximilian in 15 18, Francis 
 proposed himself to the electors as Emperor, but 
 
58 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 failed, in spite of bribery. Charles was chosen, and 
 from that time Francis pursued him with unceasing 
 hatred. The claims to Milan and Naples were re- 
 newed. Francis sent troops to occupy Milan, and 
 was following them himself; but the most powerful of 
 all his nobles, the Duke of Bourbon, Constable ot 
 France, had been alienated by an injustice perpetrated 
 on him in favour of the king's mother, and deserted to 
 the Spaniards, offering to assist them and the English 
 in dividing France, while he reserved for himself Pro- 
 vence. His desertion hindered Francis from sending 
 support to the troops in Milan, who were forced to 
 retreat. Bayard was shot in the spine while defending 
 the rear-guard, and was left to die under a tree. The 
 utmost honour was shown him by the Spaniards ; but 
 when Bourbon came near him, he bade him take 
 pity, not on one who was dying as a true soldier, but 
 on himself as a traitor to king and country. When 
 the French, in 1525, invaded Lombardy, Francis 
 suffered a terrible defeat at Pavia, and was carried 
 a prisoner to Madrid, where he remained for a year, 
 and was only set free on making a treaty by which 
 he was to give up all claims in Italy both to Naples 
 and Milan, also the county of Burgundy and the 
 suzerainty of those Flemish counties which had been 
 fiefs of the French crown, as well as to surrrender his 
 two sons as hostages for the performance of the 
 conditions. 
 
IV.] H^JJ^S OF FRANCIS AND CHARLES. 59 
 
 6. Wars of Francis and Charles. — All the 
 rest of the king's life was an attempt to elude or break 
 these conditions, against which he had protested in 
 his prison, but when there was no Spaniard present 
 to hear him do so. The county of Burgundy refused 
 to be transferred; and the Pope, Clement VII., hating 
 the Spanish power in Italy, contrived a fresh league 
 against Charles, in which Francis joined, but was 
 justly rewarded by the miserable loss of another army. 
 His mother and Charles's aunt met at Cambrai, and 
 concluded, in 1529, what was called the Ladies' Peace, 
 which bore as hardly on France as the peace of 
 Madrid, excepting that Charles gave up his claim to 
 Burgundy. Still Francis's plans were not at an end. 
 He married his second son, Henry, to Catherine, the 
 only legitimate child of the great Florentine house of 
 Medici, and tried to induce Charles to set up an 
 Italian dukedom of Milan for the young pair; but 
 when the dauphin died, and Henry became heir of 
 France, Charles would not give him any footing in 
 Italy. Francis never let any occasion pass of harass- 
 ing the Emperor, but was always defeated. Charles 
 once actually invaded Provence, but was forced to 
 retreat through the devastation of the country before 
 him by Montmorency, afterwards Constable of France. 
 Francis, by loud complaints, and by talking much of 
 his honour, contrived to make the world fancy him the 
 injured man, while he was really breaking oaths in a 
 
6o FRANCE, [chap. 
 
 shameless manner. At last, in 1537, the king and 
 Emperor met at Aigues Mortes, and came to terms. 
 Francis married, as his second wife, Charles's sister 
 Eleanor, and in 1540, when Charles was in haste 
 to quell a revolt in the Low Countries, he asked a 
 safe conduct through France, and was splendidly 
 entertained at Paris. Yet so low was the honour 
 of the French, that Francis scarcely withstood the 
 temptation of extorting the duchy of Milan from 
 him when in his power, and gave so many broad hints 
 that Charles was glad to be past the frontier. The 
 war was soon renewed. Francis set up a claim to 
 Savoy, as the key of Italy, allied himself with the 
 Turks and Moors, and slaves taken by them on the 
 coasts of Italy and Spain were actually brought into 
 Marseilles. Nice was burnt; but the citadel held 
 out, and as Henry VIII. had allied himself with 
 the Emperor, and had taken Boulogne, Francis made 
 a final peace at Crespy in 1545. He died only two 
 years later, in 1547. 
 
 7. Henry II. — His only surviving son, Henry II., 
 followed the same policy. The rise of Protestantism 
 was now dividing the Empire in Germany ; and Henry 
 took advantage of the strife which broke out between 
 Charles and the Protestant princes to attack the 
 Emperor, and make conquests across the German 
 border. He called himself Protector of the Liberties 
 
IV.] HENRY II. 6i 
 
 of the Germans, and leagued himself with them, 
 seizing Metz, which the Duke of Guise bravely de- 
 fended when the Emperor tried to retake it. This 
 seizure of Metz was the first attempt of France to 
 make conquests in Germany, and the beginning of a 
 contest between the French and German peoples 
 which has gone on to the present day. After the 
 siege a five years' truce was made, during which 
 Charles V. resigned his crowns. His brother had 
 been already elected to the Empire, but his son 
 Philip II. became King of Spain and Naples, and also 
 inherited the Low Countries. The Pope, Paul IV., 
 who was a Neapolitan, and hated the Spanish rule, 
 incited Henry, a vain, weak man, to break the truce 
 and send one army to Italy, under the Duke of Guise, 
 while another attacked the frontier of the Netherlands. 
 Philip, assisted by the forces of his wife, Mary I. of 
 England, met this last attack with an army com- 
 manded by the Duke of Savoy. It advanced into 
 France, and besieged St. Quentin. The French, 
 under the Constable of Montmorency, came to 
 relieve the city, and were utterly defeated, the 
 Constable himself being made prisoner. His nephew, 
 the Admiral de Coligny, held out St. Quentin to the 
 last, and thus gave the country time to rally against 
 the invader; and Guise was recalled in haste from 
 Italy. He soon after surprised Calais, which was 
 thus restored to the French^ after having been held 
 
62 FRANCE. [CHAP. iv. 
 
 by the English for two hundred years. This was the 
 only conquest the French retained when the final 
 peace of Cateau Cambresis was made in the year 
 1558, for all else that had been taken on either side 
 was then restored. Savoy was given back to its duke, 
 together with the hand of Henry's sister, Margaret. 
 During a tournament held in honour of the wedding, 
 Henry II. was mortally injured by the splinter of a 
 lance, in 1559; and in the home troubles that fol- 
 lowed, all pretensions to Italian power were dropped 
 by France, after wars which had lasted sixty -four years. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 I The Bourbons and Guises. — Henry H. had 
 left four sons, the eldest of whom, Francis II., was 
 only fifteen years oldj and the country was divided 
 by two great factions — one headed by the Guise 
 family, an offshoot of the house of Lorraine; the other 
 by the Bourbons, who, being descended in a direct 
 male line from a younger son of St. Louis, were the 
 next heirs to the throne in case the house of Valois 
 should become extinct. Antony, the head of the 
 Bourbon family, was called King of Navarre, because 
 of his marriage with Jeanne d'Albret, the queen, in her 
 own right, of this Pyrenean kingdom, which was in 
 fact entirely in the hands of the Spaniards, so that 
 her only actual possession consisted of the little 
 French counties of Foix and Beam. Antony himself 
 was dull and indolent, but his wife was a woman 
 of much ability; and his brother, Louis, Prince of 
 Conde, was full of spirit and fire, and little inclined 
 
64 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 to brook the ascendancy which the Duke of Guise 
 and his brothers enjoyed at court, partly in conse- 
 quence of his exploit at Calais, and partly from being 
 uncle to the young Queen Mary of Scotland, wife of 
 Francis II. The Bourbons likewise headed the party 
 among the nobles who hoped to profit by the king's 
 youth to recover the privileges of which they had been 
 gradually deprived, while the house of Guise were 
 ready to maintain the power of the crown, as long as 
 that meant their own power. 
 
 2. The Reformation. — The enmity of these two 
 parties was much increased by the reaction against the 
 prevalent doctrines and the corruptions of the clergy. 
 This reaction had begun in the reign of Francis I., 
 when the Bible had been translated into French by two 
 students at the University of Paris, and the king's sister, 
 Margaret, Queen of Navarre, had encouraged the Re- 
 formers. Francis had leagued with the German Pro- 
 testants because they were foes to the Emperor, while 
 he persecuted the like opinions at home to satisfy the 
 Pope. John Calvin, a native of Picardy, the foremost 
 French reformer, was invited to the free city of 
 Geneva, and there was made chief pastor, while the 
 scheme of theology called his ''Institutes" became 
 the text-book of the Reformed in France, Scotland, 
 and Holland. His doctrine was harsh and stern, 
 aiming at the utmost simplicity of worship, and de- 
 
v.] THE REFORMATION, 65 
 
 noancing the existing practices so fiercely, that the 
 people, who held themselves to have been wilfully- 
 led astray by their clergy, committed such violence 
 in the churches that the Catholics loudly called for 
 punishment on them. The shameful lives of many of 
 the clergy and the wickedness of the Court had caused 
 a strong reaction against them, and great tiumbers of 
 both nobles and burghers became Calvinists. They 
 termed themselves Sacramentarians or Reformers, but 
 their nickname was Huguenots ; probably from the 
 Swiss, ^^ Eidgenossen" or oath comrades. Henry H., 
 like his father, protected German Lutherans and per- 
 secuted French Calvinists ; but the lawyers of the 
 Parliament of Paris interposed, declaring that men 
 ought not to be burnt for heresy until a council of 
 the Church should have condemned their opinions, 
 and it was in the midst of this dispute that Henry 
 was slain. 
 
 3. The Conspiracy of Amboise. — The Guise 
 family were strong Catholics; the Bourbons were 
 the heads of the Huguenot party, chiefly from policy ; 
 but Admiral Coligny and his brother, the Sieur 
 D'Andelot, were sincere and earnest Reformers. A 
 chird party, headed by the old Constable De Mont- 
 morengy, was Catholic in faith, but not unwilling to 
 join with the Huguenots in pulling down the Guises, 
 and asserting the power of the nobility. A con- 
 
 r 
 
66 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 spiracy for seizing the person of the king and destroy- 
 ing the Guises at the castle of Amboise was detected 
 in time to make it fruitless. The two Bourbon princes 
 kept in the background, though Conde was universally 
 known to have been the true head and mover in it, 
 and he was actually brought to trial. The discovery 
 only strengthened the hands of Guise. 
 
 4. Regency of Catherine de' Medicin — Even 
 then, however, Francis II. was dying, and his brother, 
 Charles IX., who succeeded him in 1560, was but ten 
 years old. The regency passed to his mother, the 
 Florentine Catherine, a wily, cat-like woman, who had 
 always hitherto been kept in the background, and 
 whose chief desire was to keep things quiet by play- 
 ing off one party against the other. She at once re- 
 leased Conde, and favoured the Bourbons and the 
 Huguenots to keep down the Guises, even permit- 
 ting conferences to see whether the French Church 
 could be reformed so as to satisfy the Calvinists. 
 Proposals were sent by Guise's brother, the Cardinal 
 of Lorraine, to the council then sitting at Trent, for 
 vernacular services, the marriage of the clergy, and 
 other alterations which might win back the Reformers. 
 But an attack by the followers of Guise on a meeting 
 of Calvinists at Vassy, of whose ringing of bells his 
 mother had complained, led to the first bloodshed 
 and the outbreak of a civil war. 
 
v.] THE RELIGIOUS WAR. 67 
 
 5. The Religious "War. — To trace each stage 
 of the war would be impossible within these limits. 
 It was a war often lulled for a short time, and often 
 breaking out again, and in which the actors grew 
 more and more cruel. The Reformed influence 
 was in the south, the Catholic in the east. Most of 
 the provincial cities at first held with the Bourbons, 
 for the sake of civil and religious freedom ; though 
 the Guise family succeeded to the popularity of the 
 Burgundian dukes in Paris. Still Catherine persuaded 
 Antony of Bourbon to return to court just as his 
 wife, Queen Jeanne of Navarre, had become a staunch 
 Calvinist, and while dreaming of exchanging his claim 
 on Navarre for the kingdom of Sardinia, he was killed 
 on the Catholic side while besieging Rouen. At the 
 first outbreak the Huguenots seemed to have by far 
 the greatest influence. An endeavour was made to 
 seize the king's person, and this led to a battle at 
 Dreux. While it was doubtful Catherine actually 
 declared, ''We shall have to say our prayers in 
 French." Guise, however, retrieved the day, and 
 though Montmorengy was made prisoner on the one 
 side, Conde was taken on the other. Orleans was 
 the Huguenot rallying-place, and while besieging it 
 Guise himself was assassinated. His death was be- 
 lieved by his family to be due to the Admiral de 
 Coligny. The city of Rochelle, fortified by Jeanne of 
 Navarre, became the stronghold of the Huguenots. 
 
68 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 Leader after leader fell — Montmorengy, on the one 
 hand, was killed at Montcontour; Conde, on the other, 
 was shot in cold blood after the fight of Jarnac. A 
 truce followed, but was soon broken again, and in 
 15 7 1 Coligny was the only man of age and stand- 
 ing at the head of the Huguenot party; while the 
 Catholics had as leaders Henry, Duke of Anjou, the 
 king's brother, and Henry, Duke of Guise, both young 
 men of little more than twenty. The Huguenots had 
 been beaten at all points, but were still strong enough 
 to have wrung from their enemies permission to hold 
 meetings for public worship within unwalled towns 
 and on the estates of such nobles as held with them. 
 
 6. Catherine's Policy. — Catherine made use of 
 the suspension of arms to try to detach the Huguenot 
 leaders, by entangling them in the pleasures of the 
 court and lowering their sense of duty. The court 
 was studiously brihiant. Catherine surrounded herself 
 with a bevy of ladies, called the Queen-Mother's 
 Squadron, whose amusements were found for the 
 whole day. The ladies sat at their tapestry frames, 
 while Italian poetry and romance was read or love- 
 songs sung by the gentlemen ; they had garden 
 games and hunting-parties, with every opening for 
 the ladies to act as sirens to any whom the queen 
 wished to detach from the principles of honour and 
 virtue, and bind to her service. Balls, pageants, and 
 
v.] MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 69 
 
 theatricals followed in the evening, and there was 
 hardly a prince or noble in France who was not 
 carried away by these seductions into darker habits of 
 profligacy. Jeanne of Navarre dreaded them for her 
 son Henry, whom she kept as long as possible under 
 training in religion, learning, and hardy habits, in 
 the mountains of Beam ; and when Catherine tried to 
 draw him to court by proposing a marriage between 
 him" and her youngest daughter Margaret, Jeanne left 
 him at home, and went herself to court. Catherine 
 tried in vain to bend her will or discover her secrets, 
 and her death, early in 1572, while still at court, was 
 attributed to the queen-mother. 
 
 7. Massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572). — 
 Jeanne's son Henry was immediately summoned to con- 
 clude the marriage, and came attended by all the most 
 distinguished Huguenots, though the more wary of 
 them remained at home, and the Baron of Rosny said, 
 "If that wedding takes place the favours will be 
 crimson." The Duke of Guise seems to have resolved 
 on taking this opportunity of revenging himself for his 
 father's murder, but the queen-mother was undecided 
 until she found that her son Charles, who had been 
 bidden to cajole and talk over the Huguenot chiefs, 
 had been attracted by their honesty and uprightness, 
 and was ready to throw himself into their hands, 
 and escape from hers. An abortive attempt on 
 
70 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 Guise's part to murder the Admiral Coligny led to 
 all the Huguenots going about armed, and making 
 demonstrations which alarmed both the queen and 
 the people of Paris. Guise and the Duke of Anjou 
 were, therefore, allowed to work their will, and to 
 rouse the bloodthirstiness of the Paris mob. At 
 midnight of the 24th of August, 1572, St. Bartholo- 
 mew's night, the bell of the church of St. Germain 
 I'Auxerrois began to ring, and the slaughter was 
 begun by men distinguished by a white sleeve. The 
 king sheltered his Huguenot surgeon and nurse in 
 his room. The young King of Navarre and Prince 
 of Conde were threatened into conforming to the 
 Church, but every other Huguenot who could be 
 found was massacred, from -Coligny, who was slain 
 kneeling in his bedroom by the followers of Guise, 
 down to the poorest and youngest, and the streets 
 resounded with the cry, " Kill ! kill ! " In every city 
 where royal troops and Guisard partisans had been 
 living among Huguenots, the same hideous work 
 took place for three days, sparing neither age nor 
 sex. How many thousands died, it is impossible 
 to reckon, but the work was so wholesale that none 
 were left except those in the southern cities, where the 
 Huguenots had been too strong to be attacked, and 
 in those castles where the seigneur was of "the religion." 
 The Catholic party thought the destruction complete, 
 the court went in state to return thanks for deliver^ 
 
v.] THE LEAGUE. 71 
 
 ance from a supposed plot, while Coligny's body was 
 hung on a gibbet. The Pope ordered public thanks- 
 givings, while Queen Elizabeth put on mourning, and 
 the Emperor Maximilian II., alone among Catholic 
 princes, showed any horror or indignation. But the 
 heart of the unhappy young king was broken by the 
 guilt he had incurred. Charles IX. sank into a 
 decline, and died in 1574, finding no comfort save 
 in the surgeon and nurse he had saved. 
 
 8. The League. — His brother, Henry III., who 
 had been elected King of Poland, threw up that 
 crown in favour of that of France. He was of a 
 vain, false, weak character, superstitiously devout, and 
 at the same time ferocious, so as to alienate every 
 one. All were ashamed of a man who dressed in 
 the extreme of foppery, with a rosary of death's 
 heads at his girdle, and passed from wild dissipation 
 to abject penance. He was called " the Paris Church- 
 warden and the Queen's Hairdresser," for he passed 
 from her toilette to the decoration of the walls of 
 churches with illuminations cut out of old service- 
 books. Sometimes he went about surrounded with 
 little dogs, sometimes flogged himself walking bare- 
 foot in a procession, and his mig7ions, or favourites, 
 were the scandal of the country by their pride, 
 license, and savage deeds. The war broke out 
 again, and his only remaining brother, Francis, Duke 
 
72 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 of Alengon, an equally hateful and contemptible 
 being, fled from court to the Huguenot army, hoping 
 to force his brother into buying his submission; but 
 when the King of Navarre had followed him and 
 begun the struggle in earnest, he accepted the duchy 
 of Anjou, and returned to his allegiance. Francis was 
 invited by the insurgent Dutch to become their chief, 
 and spent some time in Holland, but returned, un- 
 successful and dying. As the king was childless, 
 the next male heir was Henry of Bourbon, King of 
 Navarre, who had fled from court soon after Alengon 
 returned to the Huguenot faith, and was reigning in 
 his two counties of Beam and Foix, the head of the 
 Huguenots. In the resolve never to permit a heretic to 
 wear the French crown. Guise and his party formed a 
 Catholic league, to force Henry III. to choose another 
 successor. Paris was devoted to Guise, and the king, 
 finding himself almost a prisoner there, left the city, 
 but was again mastered by the duke at Blois, and 
 could so ill brook his arrogance, as to have recourse to 
 assassination. He caused him to be slain at the palace 
 at Blois in 1588. The fury of the League was so great 
 that Henry III. was driven to take refuge with the 
 King of Navarre, and they were together besieging 
 Paris, when Henry III. was in his turn murdered by a 
 monk, named Clement, in 1589. 
 
 9. Henry IV. — The Leaguers proclaimed as king 
 
v.] HENRY IV. 73 
 
 an old uncle of the King of Navarre, the Cardinal 
 of Bourbon, but all the more moderate Catholics 
 rallied round Henry of Navarre, who took the title of 
 Henry IV. At Ivry, in Normandy, Henry met the 
 force of Leaguers, and defeated them by his brilliant 
 courage. "Follow my white plume," his last order 
 to his troops, became one of the sayings the French 
 love to remember. But his cause was still not won — 
 Paris held out against him, animated by almost fana- 
 tical fury, and while he was besieging it France was 
 invaded from the Netherlands. The old Cardinal of 
 Bourbon was now dead, and Philip II. considered his 
 daughter Isabel, whose mother was the eldest daughter 
 of Henry II., to be rightful Queen of France. He sent 
 therefore his ablest general, the Duke of Parma, to co- 
 operate with the Leaguers and place her on the throne. 
 A war of strategy was carried on, during which Henry 
 kept the enemy at bay, but could do no more, since 
 the larger number of his people, though intending to 
 have no king but himself, did not wish him to gain 
 too easy a victory, lest in that case he should remain 
 a Calvinist. However, he was only waiting to recant 
 till he could do so with a good grace. He really 
 preferred Catholicism, and had only been a political 
 Huguenot ; and his best and most faithful adviser, the 
 Baron of Rosny, better known as Duke of Sully, 
 though a staunch Calvinist himself, recommended the 
 change as the only means of restoring peace to the 
 
74 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 kingdom. There was little more resistance to Henry 
 after he had again been received by the Church in 
 1592. Paris, weary of the long war, opened its 
 gates in 1593, and the inhabitants crowded round 
 him with ecstasy, so that he said, " Poor people, 
 they are hungry for the sight of a king ! " The 
 Leaguers made their peace, and when Philip of Spain 
 again attacked Henry, the young Duke of Guise was 
 one of the first to hasten to the defence. Philip saw 
 that there were no further hopes for his daughter, and 
 peace was made in 1596. 
 
 10. The Edict of Nantes. — Two years later, in 
 1598, Henry put forth what was called the Edict of 
 Nantes, because first registered in that parliament. It 
 secured to the Huguenots equal civil rights with those 
 of the Catholics, accepted their marriages, gave them, 
 under restrictions, permission to meet for worship 
 and for consultations, and granted them cities for the 
 security of their rights, of which La Rochelle was the 
 chief The Calvinists had been nearly exterminated 
 in the north, but there were still a large number in the 
 south of France, and the burghers of the chief southern 
 cities were mostly Huguenot. The war had been from 
 the first a very horrible one; there had been savage 
 slaughter, and still more savage reprisals on each side. 
 The young nobles had been trained into making a 
 fashion of ferocity, and practising graceful ways of 
 
v.] HENRY'S PLANS. 75 
 
 Striking death-blows. Whole districts had been laid 
 waste, churches and abbeys destroyed, tombs rifled, 
 and the whole population accustomed to every sort of 
 horror and suffering; while nobody but Henry IV. 
 himself, and the Duke of Sully, had any notion either 
 of statesmanship or of religious toleration. 
 
 II. Henry's Plans. — just as the reign of Louis 
 XI. had been a period of rest and recovery from the 
 English wars, so that of Henry IV. was one of re- 
 storation from the ravages of thirty years of intermittent' 
 civil war. The king himself not only had bright and 
 engaging manners, but was a man of large heart and 
 mind; and Sully did much for the welfare of the coun- 
 try. Roads, canals, bridges, postal communications, 
 manufactures, extended commerce, all owed their pro- 
 motion to him, and brought prosperity to the burgher 
 class; and the king was especially endeared to the 
 peasantry by his saying that he hoped for the time 
 when no cottage would be without a good fowl in its 
 pot. The great silk manufactories of southern France 
 chiefly arose under his encouragement, and there was 
 prosperity of every kind. The Church itself was in a 
 far better state than before. Some of the best men 
 of any time were then living — in especial Vincent de 
 Paul, who did much to improve the training of the 
 parochial clergy, and who founded the order of Sisters 
 of Charity, who prevented the misery of the streets of 
 
76 FRANCE, [chap. 
 
 Paris from ever being so frightful as in those days when 
 deserted children became the prey of wolves, dogs, 
 and pigs. The nobles, who had grown into insolence 
 during the wars, either as favourites of Henry III. or 
 as zealous supporters of the Huguenot cause, were 
 subdued and tamed. The most noted of these were 
 the Duke of Bouillon, the owner of the small princi- 
 pality of Sedan, who was reduced to obedience by 
 the sight of Sully's formidable train of artillery ; and 
 the Marshal Duke of Biron, who, thinking that Henry 
 had not sufficiently rewarded his services, intrigued 
 with Spain and Savoy, and was beheaded for his trea- 
 son. Hatred to the house of Austria in Spain and 
 Germany was as keen as ever in France ; and in 1 6 1 o 
 Henry IV. was prepared for another war on the plea 
 of a disputed succession to the duchy of Cleves. The 
 old fanaticism still lingered in Paris, and Henry had 
 been advised to beware of pageants there ; but it was 
 necessary that his second wife, Mary de' Medici, 
 should be crowned before he went to the war, as she 
 was to be left regent. Two days after the coronation, 
 as Henry was going to the arsenal to visit his old 
 friend Sully, he was stabbed to the heart in his coach, 
 in the streets of Paris, by a fanatic named Ravaillac. 
 The French call him Le Grand Monarque; and he 
 was one of the most attractive and benevolent of 
 men, winning the hearts of all who approached him, 
 but the immorality of his life did much to confirm the 
 
v.] THE STATES-GENERAL OF \ii\^. 77 
 
 already low standard that prevailed among princes 
 and nobles in France. 
 
 12. The States-General of 1614. — Henry's 
 second wife, Mary de' Medici, became regent, for her 
 son, Louis XLII., was only ten years old, and indeed 
 his character was so weak that his whole reign was 
 only one long minority. Mary de' Medici was entirely 
 under the dominion of an Italian favourite named 
 Concini, and his wife, and their whole endeavour was 
 to amass riches for themselves and keep the young 
 king in helpless ignorance, while they undid all that 
 Sully had effected, and took bribes shamelessly. The 
 Prince of Conde tried to overthrow them, and, in 
 hopes of strengthening herself, in 16 14 Mary sum- 
 moned together the States-General. There came 464 
 members, 132 for the nobles, 140 for the clergy, and 
 192 for the third estate, i.e. the burghers, and these, 
 being mostly lawyers and magistrates from the pro- 
 vinces, were resolved to make their voices heard. 
 Taxation was growing worse and worse. Not only 
 was it confined to the burgher and peasant class, 
 exempting the clergy and the nobles, among which last 
 were included their families to the remotest generation, 
 but it had become the court custom to multiply 
 offices, in order to pension the nobles, and keep them 
 quiet; and this, together with the expenses of the army, 
 
 made the weight of taxation ruinous. Moreover, the 
 8 
 
78 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 presentation to the civil offices held by lawyers was 
 made hereditary in their families, on payment of a 
 sum down, and of fees at the death of each holder. 
 All these abuses were complained of ; and one of the 
 deputies even told the nobility that if they did not 
 learn to treat the despised classes below them as 
 younger brothers, they would lay up a terrible store 
 of retribution for themselves. A petition to the king 
 was drawn up, and was received, but never answered. 
 The doors of the house of assembly were closed — the 
 members were told it was by order of the king — and 
 the States-General never met again for 177 years, 
 when the storm was just ready to fall. 
 
 13. The Siege of Rochelle.— The rottenness 
 of the State was chiefly owing to the nobility, who, 
 as long as they were allowed to grind down their 
 peasants and shine at court, had no sense of duty or 
 public spirit, and hated the burghers and lawyers far too 
 much to make common cause with them against the 
 constantly increasing power of the throne They only 
 intrigued and struggled for personal advantages and 
 rivalries, and never thought of the good of the State. 
 They bitterly hated Concini, the Marshal d'Ancre, as 
 he had been created, but he remained in power till 
 1 6 14, when one of the king's gentlemen, Albert de 
 Luynes, plotted with the king himself and a few of 
 his guards for his deliverance. Nothing could be 
 
v.] THE SIEGE OF ROCHELLE. 79 
 
 easier than the execution. The king ordered the 
 captain of the guards to arrest Concini, and kill him 
 if he resisted ; and this was done. Concini was cut 
 down on the steps of the Louvre, and Louis exclaimed, 
 " At last I am a king." But it was not in him to be 
 a king, and he never was one all his life. He only 
 passed under the dominion of De Luynes, who was 
 a high-spirited young noble. The Huguenots had 
 been holding assemblies, which were considered more 
 political than religious, and their towns of security 
 were a grievance to royalty. War broke out again, 
 and Louis himself went with De Luynes to be- 
 siege Montauban. The place was taken, but disease 
 broke out in the army, and De Luynes died. There 
 was a fresh- struggle for power between the queen- 
 mother and the Prince of Conde, ending in both being 
 set aside by the queen's almoner, Armand de Riche- 
 lieu, Bishop of Lu9on, and afterwards a cardinal, the 
 ablest statesman then in Europe, who gained complete 
 dominion over the king and country, and ruled them 
 both with a rod of iron. The Huguenots were gra- 
 dually driven out of all their strongholds, till only 
 Rochelle remained to them. This city was bravely 
 and patiently defended by the magistrates and the 
 Duke of Rohan, with hopes of succour from England, 
 until these being disconcerted by the murder of the 
 Duke of Buckingham, they were forced to surrender, 
 after having held out for more than a year. Louis 
 
8o FRANCE. [chap. v. 
 
 XIII. entered in triumph, deprived the city of all its 
 privileges, and thus in 1628 concluded the war that 
 had begun by the attack of the Guisards on the con- 
 gregation at Vassy, in 156 1. The lives and properties 
 of the Huguenots were still secure, but all favour was 
 closed against them, and every encouragement held 
 out to them to join the Church. Many of the worst 
 scandals had been removed, and the clergy were much 
 improved; and, from whatever motive it might be, 
 many of the more influential Huguenots began to 
 conform to the State religion. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 POWER OF THE CROWN. 
 
 I. Richelieu's Administration. — Cardinal de 
 Richelieu's whole idea of statesmanship consisted in 
 making the King of France the greatest of princes 
 at home and abroad. To make anything great of 
 Louis XIIL, who was feeble alike in mind and body, 
 was beyond any one's power, and Richelieu kept him 
 in absolute subjection, allowing him a favourite with 
 whom to hunt, talk, and amuse himself, but if the 
 friend attempted to rouse the king to shake off the 
 yoke, crushing him ruthlessly. It was the crown rather 
 than the king that the cardinal exalted, putting down 
 whatever resisted. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, the king's 
 only brother, made a futile struggle for power, and free- 
 dom of choice in marriage, but was soon overcome. 
 He was spared, as being the only heir to the kingdom, 
 but the Duke of Montmorency, who had been led into 
 his rebellion, was brought to the block, amid the pity 
 and terror of all France. Whoever seemed dangerous 
 
82 . FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 to the State, or showed any spirit of independence, was 
 marked by the cardinal, and suffered a hopeless im- 
 prisonment, if nothing worse ; but at the same time his 
 government was intelligent and able, and promoted 
 prosperity, as far as was possible where there was such 
 a crushing of individual spirit and enterprise. Riche- 
 lieu's plan, in fact, was to found a despotism, though 
 a wise and well-ordered despotism, at home, while 
 he made France great by conquests abroad. And at 
 this time the ambition of France found a favourable 
 field in the state both of Germany and of Spain. 
 
 2. The 'War in Flanders and Italy. — The 
 
 Thirty Years' War had been raging in Germany for 
 many years, and France had taken no part in it, 
 beyond encouraging the Swedes and the Protestant 
 Germans, as the enemies of the Emperor. But the 
 policy of Richelieu required that the disunion 
 between its Catholic and Protestant states should be 
 maintained, and when things began to tend towards 
 peace from mutual exhaustion, the cardinal interfered, 
 and induced the Protestant party to continue the war 
 by giving them money and reinforcements. A war 
 had already begun in Italy on behalf of the Duke of 
 Nevers, who had become heir to the duchy of Mantua, 
 but whose family had lived in France so long that the 
 Emperor and the King of Spain supported a more 
 distant claim of the Duke of Savoy to part of the 
 
VI.] THE WAR IN FLANDERS AND ITALY. 83 
 
 duchy, rather than admit a French prince into Italy. 
 Richelieu was quick to seize this pretext for attacking 
 Spain, for Spain was now dying into a weak power, 
 and he saw in the war a means of acquiring the 
 Netherlands, which belonged to the Spanish crown. 
 At first nothing important was done, but the Spaniards 
 and Germans were worn out, while two young and able 
 captains were growing up among the French — the Vis- 
 count of Turenne, younger son to the Duke of Bouillon, 
 and the Duke of Enghien, eldest son of the Prince of 
 Conde — and Richelieu's policy soon secured a brilliant 
 career of success. Elsass, Lorraine, Artois, Catalonia, 
 and Savoy, all fell into the hands of the French, and 
 from a chamber of sickness the cardinal directed the 
 affairs of three armies, as well as made himself feared 
 and respected by the whole kingdom. Cinq Mars, the 
 last favourite he had given the king, plotted his over- 
 throw, with the help of the Spaniards, but was detected 
 and executed, when the great minister was already at 
 death's door. Richelieu recommended an Italian 
 priest, Julius Mazarin, whom he had trained to work 
 under him, to carry on the government, and died in the 
 December of 1642. The king only survived him five 
 months, dying on the 14th of May, 1643. The war was 
 continued on the lines Richelieu had laid down, and 
 four days after the death of Louis XIII. 'the army in 
 the Low Countries gained a splendid victory at Rocroy, 
 under the Duke of Enghien, entirely destroying the old 
 
84 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 Spanish infantry. The battles of Freiburg, Nordhngen, 
 and Lens raised the fame of the French generals to 
 the highest pitch, and in 1649 reduced the Emperor to 
 make peace in the treaty of Miinster. France obtained 
 as her spoil the three bishoprics, Metz, Toul, and 
 Verdun, ten cities in Elsass, Brisach, and the Sundgau, 
 with the Savoyard town of Pignerol; but the war with 
 Spain continued till 1659, when Louis XIV. engaged to 
 marry Maria Theresa, a daughter of the King of Spain. 
 
 3. The Fronde. — When an heir had long been 
 despaired of, Anne of Austria, the wife of Louis 
 XIIL, had become the mother of two sons, the 
 eldest of ^\\.om.* Louis XIV.^ was only five years old 
 at the time of his father's death. The queen-mother 
 became regent, and trusted entirely to Mazarin, who 
 had become a cardinal, and pursued the policy of 
 Richelieu. But what had been endured from a man by 
 birth a French noble, was intolerable from a low-born 
 Italian. " After the lion comes the fox," was the 
 saying, and the Parliament of Paris made a last stand 
 by refusing to register the royal edict for fresh taxes, 
 being supported both by the burghers of Paris, and by 
 a great number of the nobility, who were personally 
 jealous of Mazarin. This party was called the Fronde, 
 because in their discussions each man stood forth, 
 launched his speech, and retreated, just as the boys 
 did with slings {fronde) and stones in the streets. 
 
VI.] THE FRONDE. 85 
 
 The struggle became serious, but only a few of the 
 lawyers in the parliament had any real principle or 
 public spirit ; all the other actors caballed out of 
 jealousy and party spirit, making tools of " the men of 
 the gown," whom they hated and despised, though 
 mostly far their superiors in worth and intelligence. 
 Anne of Austria held fast by Mazarin, and was sup- 
 ported by the Duke of Enghien, whom his father's 
 death had made Prince of Conde. Conde's assistance 
 enabled her to blockade Paris and bring the parlia- 
 ment to terms, which concluded the first act of the 
 Fronde, with the banishment of Mazarin as a peace 
 offering. Conde, however, became so arrogant and 
 overbearing that the queen caused him to be im- 
 prisoned, whereupon his wife and his other friends 
 began a fresh war for his liberation, and the queen 
 was forced to yield ; but he again showed himself so 
 tyrannical that the queen and the parliament became 
 reconciled and united to put him down, giving the 
 command of the troops to Turenne. Again there was 
 a battle at the gates of Paris, in which all Conde's 
 friends were wounded, and he himself so entirely 
 worsted that he had to go into exile, when he entered 
 the Spanish service, while Mazarin returned to power 
 at home. 
 
 4. The Court of Anne of Austria. — The 
 court of France, though never pure, was much im- 
 
86 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 proved during the reign of Louis XIII. and the 
 regency of Anne of Austria. There was a spirit of 
 romance and grace about it, somewhat cumbrous and 
 stately, but outwardly pure and refined, and quite 
 a step out of the gross and open vice of the former 
 reigns. The Duchess de Rambouillet, a lady of 
 great grace and wit, made her house the centre of a 
 brilliant society, which set itself to raise and refine 
 the manners, literature, and language of the time. 
 No word that was considered vulgar or coarse was 
 allowed to pass muster; and though in process of 
 time this censorship became pedantic and petty, 
 there is no doubt that much was done to purify both 
 the language and the tone of thought. Poems, plays, 
 epigrams, eulogiums, and even sermons were re- 
 hearsed before the committee of taste in the Hotel 
 de Rambouillet, and a wonderful new stimulus was 
 there given, not only to ornamental but to solid 
 literature. Many of the great men who made France 
 illustrious were either ending or beginning their 
 careers at this time. Memoir writing specially 
 flourished, and the characters of the men and women 
 of the court are known to us on all sides. Cardinal 
 de Retz and the Duke of Rochefoucauld, both deeply 
 engaged in the Fronde, have left, the one memoirs, 
 the other maxims of great power of irony. Mme. 
 de Motteville, one of the queen's ladies, wrote a full 
 history of the court. Blaise Pascal, one of the greatest 
 
VI.] THE COURT OF ANNE OF AUSTRIA. 87 
 
 geniuses of all times, was attaching himself to the 
 Jansenists. This religious party, so called from 
 Jansen, a Dutch priest, whose opinions were imputed 
 to them, had sprung up around the reformed convent 
 of Port Royal, and numbered among them some of 
 the ablest and best men of the time ; but the Jesuits 
 considered them to hold false doctrine, and there was 
 a continual debate, ending at length in the persecu- 
 tion of the Jansenists. Pascal's " Provincial Letters," 
 exposing the Jesuit system, were among the ablest 
 writings of the age. Philosophy, poetry, science, his- 
 tory, art, were all making great progress, though there 
 was a stateliness and formality in all that was said and 
 done, redolent of the Spanish queen's etiquette and 
 the fastidious refinement of the Hotel Rambouillet. 
 
 5. Court of Louis XIV.— The attempt from 
 the earliest times of the French monarchy had been to 
 draw all government into the hands of the sovereign, 
 and the suppression of the Fronde completed the 
 work. Louis XIV., though ill educated, was a man 
 of considerable ability, much industry, and great 
 force of character, arising from a profound belief that 
 France was the first country in the world, and himself 
 the first of Frenchmen; and he had a magnificent 
 courtesy of demeanour, which so impressed all who 
 came near him as to make them his willing slaves. 
 " There is enough in him to make four kings and one 
 
88 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 respectable man besides " was what Mazarin said of 
 him; and when in 1661 the cardinal died, the king 
 showed himself fully equal to becoming his own prime 
 minister. "The State is myself," he said, and all 
 centred upon him so that no room was left for 
 statesmen. The court was, however, in a most bril- 
 liant state. There had been an unusual outburst 
 of talent of every kind in the lull after the Wars 
 of Religion, and in generals, thinkers, artists, and 
 men of literature, France was unusually rich. The 
 king had a wonderful power of self-assertion, which 
 attached them all to him almost as if he were a sort 
 of divinity. The stately, elaborate Spanish etiquette 
 brought in by his mother, Anne of Austria, became 
 absolutely an engine of government Henry IV. had 
 begun the evil custom of keeping the nobles quiet 
 by giving them situations at court, with pensions 
 attached, and these offices were multiplied to the most 
 enormous and absurd degree, so that every royal 
 personage had some hundreds of personal attendants. 
 Princes of the blood and nobles of every degree were 
 contented to hang about the court, crowding into 
 the most narrow lodgings at Versailles, and throng- 
 ing its anterooms ; and to be ordered to remain in 
 the country was a most severe punishment. 
 
 6. France under Louis XIV. — There was, in 
 fact, nothing but the chase to occupy a gentleman 
 
VI.] FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV. 89 
 
 on his own estate, for he was allowed no duties or 
 responsibilities. Each province had a gov^ernor or 
 intendant^ a sort of viceroy, and the administration of 
 the cities was managed chiefly on the part of the king, 
 even the mayors obtaining their posts by purchase. 
 The unhappy peasants had to pay in the first place 
 the taxes to Government, out of which were defrayed 
 an intolerable number of pensions, many for useless 
 offices ; next, the rents and dues which supported their 
 lord's expenditure at court ; and, thirdly, the tithes and 
 fees of the clergy. Besides which, they were called off 
 from the cultivation of their own fields for a certain 
 number of days to work at the roads ; their horses 
 might be used by royal messengers ; their lord's crops 
 had to be got in by their labour gratis, while their own 
 were spoiling ; and, in short, the only wonder is how 
 they existed at all. Their hovels and their food were 
 wretched, and any attempt to amend their condition 
 on the part of their lord would have been looked on 
 as betokening dangerous designs, and probably have 
 landed' him in the Bastille. The peasants of Brittany 
 — where the old constitution had been less entirely 
 ruined — and those of Anjou were in a less oppressed 
 condition, and in the cities trade flourished. Colbert, 
 the comptroUer-general of the finances, was so ex- 
 cellent a manager that the pressure of taxation was 
 endurable in his time, and he promoted new manu- 
 factures, such as glass at Cherbourg, cloth at Abbeville, 
 9 
 
90 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 silk at Lyons ; he also tried to promote commerce and 
 colonization, and to create a navy. There was a 
 great appearance of prosperity, and in every depart- 
 ment there was wonderful ability. The Reformation 
 had led to a considerable revival among the Roman 
 Catholics themselves. The theological colleges estab- 
 lished in the last reign had much improved the tone 
 of the clergy. Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, was one 
 of the most noted preachers who ever existed, and 
 Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambrai, one of the best of 
 men. A reform of discipline, begun in the convent 
 of Port Royal, ended by attracting and gathering to- 
 gether some of the most excellent and able persons in 
 France — among them Blaise Pascal, a man of mar- 
 vellous genius and depth of thought, and Racine, the 
 chief French dramatic poet. Their chief director, the 
 Abbot of St. Cyran, was however, a pupil of Jansen, a 
 Dutch ecclesiastic, whose views on abstruse questions 
 of grace were condemned by the Jesuits ; and as the 
 Port- Royalists would not disown the doctrines attri- 
 buted to him, they were discouraged and persecuted 
 throughout Louis's reign, more because he was jealous 
 of what would not bend to his will than for any real 
 want of conformity. Pascal's famous " Provincial 
 Letters " were put forth during this controversy ; and 
 in fact, the literature of France reached its Augustan 
 age during this reign, and the language acquired its 
 standard perfection. 
 
VI.] U^AJ^ IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. 91 
 
 7. War in the Low^ Countries. — Maria Theresa, 
 the queen of Louis XIV., was the child of the first 
 marriage of Phihp IV. of Spain ; and on her father's 
 death in 1661, Louis, on pretext of an old law in 
 Brabant, which gave the daughters of a first mar- 
 riage the preference over the sons of a second, 
 claimed the Low Countries from the young Charles II. 
 of Spain. He thus began a war which was really a 
 continuance of the old struggle between France and 
 Burgundy, and of the endeavour of France to stretch 
 her frontier to the Rhine. At first England, Holland, 
 and Sweden united against him, and obliged him to 
 make the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668; but he 
 then succeeded in bribing Charles II. of England to 
 forsake the cause of the Dutch, and the war was re- 
 newed in 1672. William, Prince of Orange, Louis's 
 most determined enemy through life, kept up the 
 spirits of the Dutch, and they obtained aid from 
 Germany and Spain, through a six years' terrible war, 
 in which the great Turenne was killed at Saltzbach, in 
 Germany. At last, from exhaustion, all parties were 
 compelled to conclude the peace of Nimeguen in 
 1678. Taking advantage of undefined terms in 
 this treaty, Louis seized various cities belonging to 
 German princes, and likewise the free imperial city 
 of Strassburg, when all Germany was too much worn 
 out by the long war to offer resistance. France was 
 full of self-glorification, the king was viewed almost 
 
92 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 as a demi-god, and the splendour of his court and 
 of his buildings, especially the palace at Versailles, 
 with its gardens and fountains, kept up the delusion of 
 his greatness. 
 
 8. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. — In 
 1685 Louis supposed that the Huguenots had been so 
 reduced in numbers that the Edict of Nantes could 
 be repealed. All freedom of worship was denied 
 them ; their ministers were banished, but their flocks 
 were not allowed to follow them. If taken while try- 
 ing to escape, men were sent to the galleys, women 
 to captivity, and children to convents for education. 
 Dragoons were quartered on famihes to torment them 
 into going to mass. A few made head in the wild 
 moors of the Cevennes under a brave youth named 
 Cavalier, and others endured severe persecution in 
 the south of France. Dragoons were quartered on 
 them, who made it their business to torment and 
 insult them ; their marriages were declared invalid, 
 their children taken from them to be educated in the 
 Roman Catholic faith. A great number, amounting 
 to at least 100,000, succeeded in escaping, chiefly to 
 Prussia, Holland, and England, whither they carried 
 many of the manufactures that Colbert had taken so 
 much pains to establish. Many of those who settled 
 in England were silk weavers, and a large colony was 
 thus established at Spitalfields, which long kept up its 
 French character. 
 
VI. 1 THE WAR OF THE SUCCESSION IN SPAIN. 93 
 
 9. The 'SATar of the Palatinate. — This brutal act 
 of tyranny was followed by a fresh attack on Germany. 
 On the plea of a supposed inheritance of his sister-in- 
 law, the Duchess of Orleans, Louis invaded the Pala- 
 tinate on the Rhine, and carried on one of the most 
 ferocious wars in history, while he was at the same 
 time supporting the cause of his cousin, James II. of 
 England, after he had fled and abdicated on the 
 arrival of William of Orange. During this war, how- 
 ever, that generation of able men who had grown up 
 with Louis began to pass away, and his success was 
 not so uniform ; while, Colbert being dead, taxation 
 began to be more felt by the exhausted people, and 
 peace was made at Ryswick in 1697. 
 
 10. TheWar of the Succession in Spain. — The 
 
 last of the four great wars of Louis's reign was far 
 more unfortunate. Charles II. of Spain died child- 
 less, naming as his successor a French prince, Philip, 
 Duke of Anjou, the second son of the only son of 
 Charles's eldest sister, the queen of Louis XIV. But 
 the Powers of Europe, at the Peace of Ryswick, 
 had agreed that the crown of Spain should go to 
 Charles of Austria, second son of the Emperor Leo- 
 pold, who was the descendant of younger sisters of 
 the royal Spanish line, but did not excite the fear 
 and jealousy of Europe, as did a scion of the already 
 overweening house of Bourbon. This led to the War 
 
94 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 of the Spanish Succession, England and Holland sup- 
 porting Charles, and fighting with Louis in Spain, 
 Savoy, and the Low Countries. In Spain Louis was 
 ultimately successful, and his grandson Philip V. re- 
 tained the throne ; but the troops which his ally, the 
 Elector of Bavaria, introduced into Germany were 
 totally overthrown at Blenheim by the English army 
 under the Duke of Marlborough, and the Austrian 
 under Prince Eugene, a son of a younger branch of the 
 house of Savoy. Eugene had been bred up in France, 
 but, having bitterly offended Louis by calling him a 
 stage king for show and a chess king for use, had 
 entered the Emperor's service, and was one of his 
 chief enemies. He aided his cousin, Duke Victor 
 Amadeus of Savoy, in repulsing the French attacks 
 in that quarter, gained a great victory at Turin, and 
 advanced into Provence. Marlborough was likewise 
 in full career of victory in the Low Countries, and 
 gained there the battle of Ramillies. 
 
 II. Peace of Utrecht — Louis had outlived his 
 good fortune. His great generals and statesmen had 
 passed away. The country was exhausted, famine was 
 preying on the wretched peasantry, supplies could not 
 be found, and one city after another, of those Louis 
 had seized, was retaken. New victories at Oudenarde 
 and Malplaquet were gained over the French armies ; 
 and, though Louis was as resolute and undaunted as 
 
VI.] PEACE OF UTRECHT. 95 
 
 ever, his affairs were in a desperate state, when he 
 was saved by a sudden change of policy on the part 
 of Queen Anne of England, who recalled her army 
 and left her alHes to continue the contest alone. 
 Eugene was not a match for France without Marl- 
 borough; and the Archduke Charles, having succeeded 
 his brother the Emperor, gave up his pretensions to the 
 crown of Spain, so that it became possible to conclude 
 a general peace at Utrecht in 1713. By this time 
 Louis was seventy-five years of age, and had suffered 
 grievous family losses — first by the death of his only 
 son, and then of his eldest grandson, a young man 
 of much promise of excellence, who, with his wife 
 died of malignant measles, probably from ignorant 
 medical treatment, since their infant, whose illness 
 was concealed by his nurses, was the only one of the 
 family who survived. The old king, in spite of 
 sorrow and reverse, toiled with indomitable energy to 
 the end of his reign, the longest on record, having 
 lasted seventy-two years, when he died in 17 15. He 
 had raised the French crown to its greatest splendour, 
 but had sacrificed the country to himself and his false 
 notions of greatness. 
 
 12. The Regency. — The crown now descended 
 to Louis XV., a weakly child of four years old. His 
 great-grandfather had tried to provide for his good 
 by leaving the chief seat in the council of regency to 
 
96 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 his own illegitimate son, the Duke of Maine, the most 
 honest and conscientious man then in the family, 
 but, though clever, unwise and very unpopular. His 
 birth caused the appointment to be viewed as an out- 
 rage by the nobility, and the king's will was set aside. 
 The first prince of the blood royal, Philip, Duke of 
 Orleans, the late king's nephew, became sole regent — 
 a man of good ability, but of easy, indolent nature ; 
 and who, in the enforced idleness of his life, had 
 become dissipated and vicious beyond all imagination 
 or description. He was kindly and gracious, and his 
 mother said of him that he was like the prince in a fable 
 whom all the fairies had endowed with gifts, except one 
 malignant sprite who had prevented any favour being 
 of use to him. In the general exhaustion produced 
 by the wars of Louis XIV., a Scotchman named 
 James Law began the great system of hollow specula- 
 tion which has continued ever since to tempt people 
 to their ruin. He tried raising sums of money on 
 national credit, and also devised a company who were 
 to lend money to found a great settlement on the 
 Mississippi, the returns from which were to be enor- 
 mous. Every one speculated in shares, and the 
 wildest excitement prevailed. Law's house was 
 mobbed by people seeking interviews with him, 
 and nobles disguised themselves irt liveries to get 
 access to him. Fortunes were made one week and 
 lost the next, and finally the whole plan proved to 
 
VI.] WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION. 97 
 
 have been a mere baseless scheme; ruin followed, 
 and the misery of the country increased. The Duke 
 of Orleans died suddenly in 1723. The king was 
 now legally of age ; but he was dull and backward, 
 and little fitted for government, and the country was 
 really ruled by the Duke of Bourbon, and after him 
 by Cardinal Fleury, an aged statesman, but filled 
 with the same schemes of ambition as Richelieu or 
 Mazarin. 
 
 13. ^War of the Austrian Succession. — Thus 
 France plunged into new wars. Louis XV. married 
 the daughter of Stanislas Lecksinsky, a Polish noble, 
 who, after being raised to the throne, was expelled 
 by Austrian intrigues and violence. Louis was obliged 
 to take up arms on behalf of his father-in-law, but 
 was bought off by a gift from the Emperor Charles VI. 
 of the duchy of Lorraine to Stanislas, to revert to 
 his daughter after his death and thus become united 
 to France. Lorraine belonged to Duke Francis, the 
 husband of Maria Theresa, eldest daughter to the 
 Emperor, and Francis received instead the duchy of 
 Tuscany ; while all the chief Powers in Europe agreed 
 to the so-called Pragmatic Sanction, by which Charles 
 decreed that Maria Theresa should inherit Austria 
 and Hungary and the other hereditary states on her 
 father's death, to the exclusion of the daughters of 
 his elder brother, Joseph. When Charles VI. died. 
 
98 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 however, in 1740, a great European war began 
 on this matter. Frederick II. of Prussia would 
 n'either allow Maria Theresa's claim to the hereditary- 
 states, nor join in electing her husband to the 
 Empire; and France took part against her, sending 
 Marshal Belleisle to support the Elector of Bavaria, 
 who had been chosen Emperor. George II. of 
 England held with Maria Theresa, and gained a 
 victory over the French at Dettingen, in 1744. Louis 
 XV. then joined his army, and the battle of Fonte- 
 noy, in 1745, was one of the rare victories of France 
 over England. Another victory followed at Laufeldt, 
 but elsewhere France had had heavy losses, and in 
 1 748, after the death of Charles VIL, peace was made 
 at Aix-la-Chapelle. 
 
 14. The Seven Years' War. — Louis, dull and 
 selfish by nature, had been absolutely led into vice by 
 his courtiers, especially the Duke of Bourbon, who 
 feared his becoming active in public affairs. He had 
 no sense of duty to his people; and whereas his 
 great-grandfather had sought display and so-called 
 glory, he cared solely for pleasure, and that of the 
 grossest and most sensual order, so that his court 
 was a hotbed of shameless vice. All that could be 
 wrung from the impoverished country was lavished 
 on the overgrown establishments of every member 
 of the royal family, in pensions to nobles, and in 
 
VI.] THE SEVEN YEARS' WA7^, 99 
 
 shameful amusements of the king. In 1756 another 
 war broke out, in consequence of the hatreds left 
 between Prussia and Austria by the former struggle. 
 Maria Theresa had, by flatteries she ought to have 
 disdained, gained over France to take part with her, 
 and England was allied with Frederick II. In this 
 war France and England chiefly fought in their 
 distant possessions, where the English were uniformly 
 successful ; and after ^seven years another peace fol- 
 lowed, leaving the boundaries of the German states 
 just where they were before, after a frightful amount of 
 bloodshed. But France had had terrible losses. She 
 was driven from India, and lost all her settlements in 
 America and Canada. 
 
 15. France under Louis XV. — Meantime the 
 gross vice and licentiousness of the king was beyond 
 description, and the nobility retained about the court 
 by the system established by Louis XIV. were, if not 
 his equals in crime, equally callous to the sufl"ering 
 caused by the reckless expensiveness of the court, the 
 whole cost of which was defrayed by the burghers and 
 peasants. No taxes were asked from clergy or nobles, 
 and this latter term included all sprung of a noble 
 line to the utmost generation. The owner of an estate 
 had no means of benefiting his tenants, even if he 
 wished it ; for all matters, even of local government, 
 depended on the crown. All he could do was to 
 
loo FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 draw his income from them, and he was often .forced, 
 either by poverty or by his expensive life, to strain to 
 the utmost the old feudal system. If he lived at court, 
 his expenses were heavy, and only partly met by his 
 pension, likewise raised from the taxes paid by the 
 poor farmer j if he lived in the country, he was a still 
 greater tyrant, and was called by the people a hobereau, 
 or kite No career was open to his younger sons, 
 except in the court, the Church, or the army, and 
 here they monopolized the prizes, obtaining all the 
 richer dioceses and abbeys, and all the promotion in 
 the army. The magistracies were almost all hereditary 
 among lawyers, who had bought them for their fami- 
 lies from the crown, and paid for the appointment of 
 each son. The officials attached to each member of 
 the royal family were almost incredible in number, 
 and all paid by the taxes. The old gabelle, or salt- 
 tax, had gone on ever since the English wars, and 
 every member of a family had to pay it, not according 
 to what they used, but what they were supposed to 
 need. Every pig was rated at what he ought to 
 require for salting. Every cow, sheep, or hen had a 
 toll to pay to king, lord, bishop — sometimes also to 
 priest and abbey. The peasant was called off from 
 his own work to give the dues of labour to the roads 
 or to his lord. He might not spread manure that 
 could interfere with the game, nor drive away the 
 partridges that ate his corn. So scanty were his 
 
VI.] REACTION. loi 
 
 crops that famines slaying thousands passed unnoticed, 
 and even if, by any wonder, prosperity smiled on the 
 peasant, he durst not live in any kind of comfort, 
 lest the stewards of his lord or of Government should 
 pounce on his wealth. 
 
 1 6. Reaction. — Meantime there was a strong feel- 
 ing that change must come. Classical literature was 
 studied, and Greek and Roman manners and institu- 
 tions were thought ideal perfection. There was great 
 disgust at the fetters of a highly artificial life in which 
 every one was bound, and at the institutions which 
 had been so misused. Writers arose, among whom 
 Voltaire and Rousseau were the most eminent, who 
 aimed at the overthrow of all the ideas which had 
 come to be thus abused. The one by his caustic wit, 
 the other by his enthusiastic simplicity, gained willing 
 ears, and, the writers in a great Encyclopaedia then in 
 course of publication, contrived to attack most of the 
 notions which had been hitherto taken for granted, 
 and were closely connected with faith and with gov- 
 ernment. The king himself was dully aware that he 
 was living on the crust of a volcano, but he said it 
 would last his time ; and so it did. Louis XV. died of 
 smallpox in 1774, leaving his grandsons to reap the 
 harvest that generations had been sowing. 
 
 10 
 
FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TH E REVOLUTIO N. 
 
 I. Attempts at Reform. — It was evident that 
 a change must be made. Louis XVI. himself knew 
 it, and slurred over the words in his coronation oath 
 that bound him to extirpate heresy ; but he was a 
 slow, dull man, and affairs had come to such a pass 
 that a far abler man than he could hardly have dealt 
 with the dead-lock above, without causing a frightful 
 outbreak of the pent-up masses below. His queen, 
 Marie Antoinette, was hated for being of Austrian 
 birth, and, though a spotless and noble woman, her 
 most trivial actions gave occasion to calumnies founded 
 on the crimes of the last generation. Unfortunately, 
 the king, though an honest and well-intentioned man, 
 was totally unfit to guide a country through a danger- 
 ous crisis. His courage was passive, his manners 
 were heavy, dull, and shy, and, though steadily in- 
 dustrious, he was slow of comprehension and unready 
 in action ; and reformation was the more difficult 
 
VII. J A TTEMPTS A T REFORM. 103 
 
 because to abolish the useless court offices would 
 have been utter starvation to many of their holders, 
 who had nothing but their pensions to live upon. 
 Yet there was a general passion for reform ; all ranks 
 alike looked to some change to free them from the 
 dead-lock which made improvement impossible. The 
 Government was bankrupt, while the taxes were in- 
 tolerable, and the first years of the reign were spent 
 in experiments. Necker, a Swiss banker, was invited 
 to take the charge of the finances, and large loans 
 were made to Government, for which he contrived to 
 pay interest regularly ; some reduction was made in 
 the expenditure; but the king's old minister, Mau- 
 repas, grew jealous of his popularity, and obtained 
 his dismissal. The French took the part of the 
 American colonies in their revolt from England, and 
 the war thus occasioned brought on an increase of the 
 load of debt, the general distress increased, and it 
 became necessary to devise some mode of taxing 
 which might divide the burthens between the whole 
 nation, instead of making the peasant^ pay all and 
 the" nobles and clergy nothing. Louis decided 
 on calling together the Notables, or higher nobiHty; 
 but they were by no means disposed to tax them- 
 selves, and only abused his ministers. He then 
 resolved on convoking the whole States-General of 
 the kingdom, which had never met since the reign 
 of Louis XIIL 
 
104 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 2. The States-General. — No one exactly knew 
 the limits of the powers of the States-General when it 
 met in 1789. Nobles, clergy, and the deputies who 
 represented the commonalty, all formed the assembly 
 at Versailles ; and though the king would have kept 
 apart these last, who were called the Tiers Etdt, or third 
 estate, they refused to withdraw from the great hall of 
 Versailles. The Count of Mirabeau, the younger son 
 of a noble family, who sat as a deputy, declared that 
 nothing short of bayonets should drive out those who 
 sat by the will of the people, and Louis yielded. 
 Thenceforth the votes of a noble, a bishop, or a 
 deputy all counted alike. The party names of 
 democrat for those who wanted to exalt the power of 
 the people, and of aristocrat for those who maintained 
 the privileges of the nobles, came into use, and the 
 most extreme democrats were called Jacobins, from 
 an old convent of Jacobin friars, where they used to 
 meet. The mob of Paris, always eager, fickle, and 
 often blood-thirsty, were excited to the last degree by 
 the debates ; and, full of the remembrance of the 
 insolence and cruelty of the nobles, sometimes rose 
 and hunted down persons whom they deemed aristo- 
 crats, hanging them to the iron rods by which lamps 
 were suspended over the streets. The king in alarm 
 drew the army nearer, and it was supposed that he 
 was going to prevent all change by force of arms. 
 Thereupon the citizens .enrolled themselves as a 
 
VII.] THE NEW CONSTITUTION. 105 
 
 National Guard, wearing cockades of red, blue, and 
 white, and commanded by La Fayette, a noble of 
 democratic opinions, who had run away at seventeen 
 to serve in the American War. On a report that the 
 cannon of the Bastille had been pointed upon Paris, 
 the mob rose in a frenzy, rushed upon it, hanged the 
 guard, and absolutely tore down the old castle to its 
 foundations, though they did not find a single prisoner 
 in it. '' This is a revolt," said Louis, when he heard 
 of it. ^' Sire, it is a revolution," was the answer. 
 
 3. The New Constitution. — The mob had 
 found out its power. The fishwomen of the markets, 
 always a peculiar and privileged class, were frantically 
 excited, and were sure to be foremost in all the 
 demonstrations stirred up by Jacobins. There was 
 a great scarcity of provisions in Paris, and this, 
 together with the continual dread that reforms would 
 be checked by violence, maddened the people. On 
 a report that the Guards had shown enthusiasm for 
 the king, the whole populace came pouring out of 
 Paris to Versailles, and, after threatening the life of 
 the queen, brought the family back with them to 
 Paris, and kept them aJmost as prisoners while the 
 Assembly, which followed them to Paris, debated on 
 the new constitution. The nobles were viewed as the 
 worst enemies of the nation, and all over the country 
 there were risings of the peasants, headed by democrats 
 
io6 FRANCE. [chap, 
 
 from the towns, who sacked their castles, and often 
 seized their persons. Many fled to England and Ger- 
 many, and the dread that these would unite and re- 
 turn to bring back the old system continually in- 
 creased the fury of the people. The Assembly, now 
 known as the Constituent Assembly, swept away all 
 titles and privileges, and no one was henceforth to 
 bear any prefix to his name but citizen ; while at the 
 same time the clergy were to renounce all the pro- 
 perty of the Church, and to swear that their office 
 and commission was derived from the will of the 
 people alone, and that they owed no obedience save 
 to the State. The estates thus yielded up were sup- 
 posed to be enough to supply all State expenses with- 
 out taxes ; but as they could not at once be turned 
 into money, promissory notes, or assignats, were issued. 
 But, as coin was scarce, these were not worth nearly 
 their professed value, and the general distress was 
 thus much increased. The other oath the great body 
 of the clergy utterly refused, and they were therefore 
 driven out of their benefices, and became objects of 
 great suspicion to the democrats. All the old bound- 
 aries and other distinctions between the provinces 
 were destroyed, and France was divided into depart- 
 ments, each of which was to elect deputies, in whose 
 assembly all power was to be vested, except that the 
 kin? retained a right of veto, />., of refusing his 
 sanction to any measure. He swore on the 13th of 
 August, 1 791, to observe this new constitution. 
 
VII.] THE REPUBLIC. 107 
 
 4. The Republic. — The Constituent Assembly 
 now dissolved itself, and a fresh Assembly, called 
 the Legislative, took its place. For a time things 
 went on more peacefully. Distrust was, however, 
 deeply sown. The king was closely watched as an 
 enemy ; and those of the nobles who had emigrated 
 began to form armies, aided by the Germans, on the 
 frontier for his rescue. This enraged the people, who 
 expected that their newly won liberties would be over- 
 thrown. The first time the king exercised his right of 
 veto the mob rose in fury; and though they then did no 
 more than threaten, on the advance of the emigrant 
 army on the loth of August, 1792, a more terrible 
 rising took place. The Tuilleries was sacked, the 
 guards slaughtered, the unresisting king and his family 
 deposed and imprisoned in the tower of the Temple. 
 In terror lest the nobles in the prisons should unite 
 with the emigrants, they were massacred by wholesale; 
 while, with a vigour born of the excitement, the emi- 
 grant armies were repulsed and beaten. The monarchy 
 came to an end ; and France became a Republic, in 
 which the National Convention, which followed the 
 Legislative Assembly, was supreme. The more 
 moderate members of this were called Girondins from 
 the Gironde, the estuary of the Garonne, from the 
 neighbourhood of which many of them came. They 
 were able men, scholars and philosophers, full of 
 schemes for reviving classical times, but wishing to 
 
io8 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 stop short of the plans of the Jacobins, of whom 
 the chief was Robespierre, a lawyer from Artois, 
 filled with fanatical notions of the rights of man. 
 He, with a party of other violent republicans, called 
 the Mountain, of whom Danton and Marat were 
 most noted, set to work to destroy all that interfered 
 with their plans of general equality. The guillotine, 
 a recently invented machine for beheading, was set 
 in all the chief market-places, and hundreds were 
 put to death on the charge of "conspiring against 
 the nation." Louis XVI. was executed early in 1793 ; 
 and it was enough to have any sort of birthright to 
 be thought dangerous and put to death. 
 
 5. The Reign of Terror. — Horror at the blood- 
 shed perpetrated by the Mountain led a young girl, 
 named Charlotte Corday, to assassinate Marat, whom 
 she supposed to be the chief cause of the cruelties that 
 were taking place; but his death only added to the 
 dread of reaction. A Committee of Public Safety was 
 appointed by the Convention, and endeavoured to 
 sweep away every being who either seemed adverse 
 to equality, or who might inherit any claim to rank. 
 The queen was put to death nine months after her 
 husband; and the Girondins, who had begun to try 
 to stem the tide of slaughter, soon fell under the 
 denunciation of the more violent. To be accused of 
 " conspiring against the State " was instantly fatal, and 
 
VII.] THE REIGN OF TERROJi. 109 
 
 no one's life was safe. Danton was denounced by 
 Robespierre, and perished ; and for three whole years 
 the Reign of Terror lasted. The emigrants, by form- 
 ing an army and advancing on France, assisted by the 
 forces of Germany, only made matters worse. There 
 was such a dread of the old oppressions coming back, 
 that the peasants were ready to fight to the death 
 against the return of the nobles. The army, where 
 promotion used to go by rank instead of merit, were 
 so glad of the change, that they were full of fresh 
 spirit, and repulsed the army of Germans and emi- 
 grants all along the frontier. The city of Lyons, 
 which had tried to resist the changes, was taken, and 
 frightfully used by Collot d'Herbois, a member of the 
 Committee of Public Safety. The guillotine was too 
 slow for him, and he had the people mown down with 
 grape-shot, declaring that of this great city nothing 
 should be left but a monument inscribed, " Lyons re- 
 sisted liberty — Lyons is no more ! " In La Vendee — 
 a district of Anjou, where the peasants were much 
 attached to their clergy and nobles — they rose and 
 gained such successes, that they dreamt for a little 
 while of rescuing and restoring the little captive son 
 of Louis XVI. ; but they were defeated and put down 
 by fire and sword, and at Nantes an immense number 
 of executions took place, chiefly by drowning. It was 
 reckoned that no less than 18,600 persons were guillo- 
 tined in the three years between 1790 and 1794, be- 
 
no FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 sides those who died by other means. Everything was 
 changed. Religion was to be done away with; the 
 churches were closed; the tenth instead of the seventh 
 day appointed for rest. '^ Death is an eternal sleep " 
 was inscribed on the schools; and Reason, represented 
 by a classically dressed woman, was enthroned in the 
 cathedral of Notre Dame. At the same time a new 
 era was invented, the 22nd of September, 1792 ; the 
 months had new names, and the decimal measures 
 of length, weight, and capacity, which are based on 
 the proportions of the earth, were planned. All this 
 time Robespierre really seems to have thought himself 
 the benefactor of the human race ; but at last the other 
 members of the Convention took courage to denounce 
 him., and he, with five more, was arrested and sent to 
 the guillotine. The bloodthirsty fever was over, the 
 Committee of Public Safety was overthrown, and 
 people breathed again. 
 
 6. The Directory. — The chief executive power 
 was placed in the hands of a Directory, consisting of 
 more moderate men, and a time of much prosperity 
 set in. Already in the new vigour born of the 
 strong emotions of the country the armies won great 
 victories, not only repelling the Germans and the 
 emigrants, but uniting Holland to France. Napoleon 
 Buonaparte, a Corsican officer, who was called on to 
 protect the Directory from being again overawed 
 
viL THE DIRECTORY. in 
 
 by the mob, became the leading spirit in France, 
 through his ItaHan victories. He conquered Lom- 
 bardy and Tuscany, and forced the Emperor to let 
 them become republics under French protection, also 
 to resign Flanders to France by the Treaty of Campo 
 Formio. Buonaparte then made a descent on Egypt, 
 hoping to attack India from that side, but he was 
 foiled by Nelson, who destroyed his fleet in the battle 
 of the Nile, and Sir Sydney Smith, who held out Acre 
 against him. He hurried home to France on finding 
 that the Directory had begun a fresh European war, 
 seizing Switzerland, and forcing it to give up its trea- 
 sures and become a repubHc on their model, and 
 carrying the Pope off into captivity. All the European 
 Powers had united against them, and Lombardy had 
 been recovered chiefly by Russian aid ; so that Buona- 
 parte, on the ground that a nation at war needed a 
 less cumbrous government than a Directory, contrived 
 to get himself chosen First Consul, with two inferiors, 
 in 1799. 
 
 7. The Consulate. — A great course of victories 
 followed in Italy, where Buonaparte commanded in 
 person, and in Germany under Moreau. Austria 
 and Russia were forced to make peace, and England 
 was the only country that still resisted him, till 
 a general peace was made at Amiens in 1803 ; but it 
 only lasted for a year, for the French failed to perform 
 
112 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 the conditions, and began the war afresh. In the mean 
 time Buonaparte had restored rehgion and order, and so 
 entirely mastered France that, in 1804, he was able 
 to form the republic into an empire, and affecting to 
 be another Charles the Great, he caused the Pope to 
 say mass at his coronation, though he put the crown 
 on his own head. A concordat with the Pope rein- 
 stated the clergy, but altered the division of the 
 dioceses, and put the bishops and priests in the pay 
 of the State. 
 
 8. The Empire. — The union of Italy to this new 
 French Empire caused a fresh war with all Europe. 
 The Austrian army, however, was defeated at Ulm 
 and Austerlitz, the Prussians were entirely crushed at 
 Jena, and the Russians fought two terrible but 
 almost drawn battles at Eylau and Friedland. Peace 
 was then made with all three at Tilsit, in 1807, 
 the terms pressing exceedingly hard upon Prussia. 
 Schemes of invading England were entertained by 
 the Emperor, but were disconcerted by the de- 
 struction of the French and Spanish fleets by Nelson 
 at Trafalgar. Spain was then in alliance with France ; 
 but Napoleon, treacherously getting the royal family 
 into his hands, seized their kingdom, making his 
 brother Joseph its king. But the Spaniards would 
 not submit, and called in the English to their aid. The 
 Peninsular War resulted in a series of victories on the 
 
VII.] THE EMPIRE. 113 
 
 part of the English under WelHngton, while Austria, 
 beginning another war, was again so crushed that the 
 Emperor durst not refuse to give his daughter in 
 marriage to Napoleon. However, in 181 2, the con- 
 quest of Russia proved an exploit beyond Napoleon's 
 powers. He reached Moscow with his Grand Army, 
 but the city was burnt down immediately after his 
 arrival, and he had no shelter or means of support. 
 He was forced to retreat, through a fearful winter, 
 without provisions and harassed by the Cossacks, 
 who hung on the rear and cut off the stragglers, so 
 that his whole splendid army had become a mere 
 miserable, broken, straggling remnant by the time 
 the survivors reached the Prussian frontier. He him- 
 self had hurried back to Paris as soon as he found 
 their case hopeless, to arrange his resistance to all 
 Europe — for every country rose against him on his first 
 disaster — and the next year was spent in a series of 
 desperate battles in Germany between him and the 
 Allied Powers. Liitzen and Bautzen were doubtful, but 
 the two days' battle of Leipzic was a terrible defeat. 
 In the year 1814, four armies — those of Austria, Russia, 
 England, and Prussia — entered France at once; and 
 though Napoleon resisted, stood bravely and skilfully, 
 and gained single battles against Austria and Prussia, 
 he could not stand against all Europe. In April the 
 Allies entered Paris, and he was forced to abdicate, 
 being sent under a strong guard to the little Mediter- 
 11 
 
114 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 ranean isle of Elba. He had drained France of men 
 by his constant call for soldiers, who were drawn by 
 conscription from the whole country, till there were 
 not enough to do the work in the fields, and foreign 
 prisoners had to be employed ; but he had conferred 
 on her one great benefit in the great code of laws 
 called the " Code Napoleon^^ which has ever since 
 continued in force. 
 
 9. France under Napoleon. — The old laws 
 and customs, varying in different provinces, had been 
 swept away, so that the field was clear; and the 
 system of government which Napoleon devised has 
 remained practically unchanged from that time to thiso 
 Everything was made to depend upon the central 
 government. The Ministers of Religion, of Justice, 
 of Police, of Education, etc., have the regulation of all 
 interior affairs, and appoint all who work under them, 
 so that nobody learns how to act alone ; and as the 
 Government has been in fact ever since dependent on 
 the will of the people of Paris, the whole country is 
 helplessly in their hands. The army, as in almost all 
 foreign nations, is raised by conscription — that is, by 
 drawing lots among the young men liable to serve, 
 and who can only escape by paying a substitute to 
 serve in their stead; and this is generally the first 
 object of the savings of a family. All feudal claims 
 had been done away with, and with them the right of 
 
VII.] FRANCE UNDER NAPOLEON. 115 
 
 primogeniture ; and, indeed, it is not possible for a 
 testator to avoid leaving his property to be shared 
 among his family, though he can make some small 
 differences in the amount each receives, and thus 
 estates are continually freshly divided, and some por- 
 tions become very small indeed. French peasants 
 are, however, most eager to own land, and are usually 
 very frugal, sober, and saving ; and the country has 
 gone on increasing in prosperity and comfort. It is 
 true that, probably from the long habit of concealing 
 any wealth they might possess, the French farmers and 
 peasantry care little for display, or what we should call 
 comfort, and live rough hard-working lives even while 
 well off and with large hoards of wealth ; but their 
 condition has been wonderfully changed for the better 
 ever since the Revolution. All this has continued 
 under the numerous changes that have taken place in 
 the forms of government 
 
i6 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FRANCE SINCE THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 I. The Restoration.— The Allies left the people 
 of France free to choose their Government, and they 
 accepted the old royal family, who were on their 
 borders awaiting a recall. The son of Louis XVI. had 
 perished in the hands of his jailers, and thus the king's 
 next brother, Louis XVIII., succeeded to the throne, 
 bringing back a large emigrant following. Things 
 were not settled down, when Napoleon, in the spring 
 of 1815, escaped from Elba. The army welcomed him 
 with delight, and Louis was forced to flee to Ghent. 
 However, the AUies immediately rose in arms, and 
 the troops of England and Prussia crushed Napoleon 
 entirely at Waterloo, on the i8th of June, 1815. He 
 was sent to the lonely rock of St. Helena, in the 
 Atlantic, whence he could not again return to trouble 
 the peace of Europe. There he died in 1821. Louis 
 XVIII. was restored, and a charter was devised by 
 which a limited monarchy was established, a king at 
 
VIII. ] REIGN OF LO UIS PHILIPPE. 1 1 7 
 
 the head, and two chambers — one of peers, the other of 
 deputies, but with a very narrow franchise. It did not, 
 however, work amiss; till, after Louis's death in 1824, 
 his brother, Charles X., tried to fall back on the old 
 system. He checked the freedom of the press, and 
 interfered with the freedom of elections. The conse- 
 quence was a fresh revolution in July, 1830, happily 
 with little bloodshed, but which forced Charles X. to 
 go into exile with his grandchild Henry, whose father, 
 the Duke of Berry, had been assassinated in 1820. 
 
 2. Reign of Louis Philippe. — The chambers of 
 deputies offered the crown to Louis Philippe, Duke 
 of Orleans. He was descended from the regent ; his 
 father had been one of the democratic party in the 
 Revolution, and, when titles were abolished, had called 
 himself Philip Egalite (Equality). This had not saved 
 his head under the Reign of Terror, and his son had 
 been obliged to flee and lead a wandering life, at one 
 time gaining his livelihood by teaching mathematics at 
 a school in Switzerland. He had recovered his family 
 estates at the Restoration, and, as the head of the 
 Liberal party, was very popular. He was elected 
 King of the French, not of France, with a chamber of 
 peers nominated for life only, and another of deputies 
 elected by voters, whose qualification was two hundred 
 francs, or eight pounds a year. He did his utmost to 
 ^ain the good will of the people, living a simple, 
 
ii8 FRANCE. [CHAP. 
 
 friendly family life, and trying to merit the term of the 
 *' citizen king," and in the earlier years of his reign 
 he was successful. The country was prosperous, and 
 a great colony was settled in Algiers, and endured a 
 long and desperate war with the wild Arab tribes. A 
 colony was also established in New Caledonia, in the 
 Pacific -y and attempts were carried out to compensate 
 thus for the losses of colonial possessions which France 
 had sustained in wars with England. Discontents, 
 however, began to arise, on the one hand from those 
 who remembered only the successes of Buonaparte, and 
 not the miseries they had caused, and on the other 
 from the working-classes, who declared that the bour- 
 geois, or tradespeople, had gained everything by the 
 revolution of July, but they themselves nothing. Louis 
 Philippe did his best to gratify and amuse the people 
 by sending for the remains of Napoleon, and giving 
 him a magnificent funeral and splendid monument 
 among his old soldiers — the Invalides ; but his popu- 
 larity was waning. In 1842 his eldest son, the Duke 
 of Orleans, a favourite with the people, was killed by 
 a fall from his carriage, and this was another shock to 
 his throne. Two young grandsons were left ; and the 
 king had also several sons, one of whom, the Duke of 
 Montpensier, he gave in marriage to Louise, the sister 
 and heiress presumptive to the Queen of Spain; though, 
 by treaty with the other European Powers, it had beer, 
 agreed that she should not marry a French prince 
 
VIII.] THE REVOLUTION OF 1848. 119 
 
 unless the queen had children of her own. Ambition 
 for his family was a great offence to his subjects, and 
 at the same time a nobleman, the Duke de Praslin, 
 who had murdered his wife, committed suicide in 
 prison to avoid public execution ; and the republicans 
 declared, whether justly or unjustly, that this had been 
 allowed rather than let a noble die a felon's death. 
 
 3. The Revolution of 1848. — In spite of the 
 increased prosperity of the country, there was general 
 disaffection. There were four parties — the Orleanists, 
 who held by Louis Philippe and his minister Guizot, 
 and whose badge was the tricolour; the Legitimists, 
 who retained their loyalty to the exiled Henry, and 
 whose symbol was the white Bourbon flag ; the Buona- 
 partists j and the Republicans, whose badge was the 
 red cap and flag. A demand for a franchise that 
 should include the mass of the people was rejected, 
 and the general displeasure poured itself out in speeches 
 at political banquets. An attempt to stop one of these 
 led to an uproar. The National Guard refused to fire 
 on the people, and their fury rose unchecked ; so that 
 the king, thinking resistance vain, signed an abdication, 
 and fled to England in February, 1848. A provisional 
 Government was formed, and a new constitution was 
 to be arranged; but the Paris mob, who found their 
 condition unchanged, and really wanted equality of 
 wealth, not of rights, made disturbances again and 
 
I20 FRANCE. [chap. 
 
 again, and barricaded the streets, till they were finally- 
 put down by General Cavaignac, while the rest of 
 France was entirely dependent on the will of the capital. 
 After some months, a republic was determined on, 
 which was to have a president at its head, chosen 
 every five years by universal suffrage. Louis Napoleon 
 Buonaparte, nephew to the great Napoleon, was the 
 first president thus chosen ; and, after some struggles, 
 he not only mastered Paris, but, by the help of the 
 army, which was mostly Buonapartist, he dismissed the 
 chamber of deputies, and imprisoned or exiled all the 
 opponents whom the troops had not put to death, on 
 the plea of an expected rising of the mob. This was 
 called a coup d'etat, and Louis Napoleon was then 
 declared president for ten years. 
 
 4. The Second Empire. — In December, 1852, 
 the president took the title of Emperor, calling himself 
 Napoleon III., as successor to the young son of the 
 great Napoleon. He kept up a splendid and expensive 
 court, made Paris more than ever the toy-shop of the 
 world, and did much to improve it by the widening of 
 streets and removal of old buildings. Treaties were 
 made which much improved trade, and the country 
 advanced in prosperity. The reins of government 
 were, however, tightly held, and nothing was so much 
 avoided as the letting men think or act for them- 
 selves, while their eyes were to be dazzled with 
 
viiL] THE SECOND EMPIRE, 121 
 
 splendour and victory. In 1853, when Russia was 
 attacking Turkey, the Emperor united with England 
 in opposition, and the two armies together besieged 
 Sebastopol, and fought the battles of Alma and In- 
 kermann, taking the city after nearly a year's siege ; 
 and then making what is known as the Treaty of 
 Paris, which guaranteed the safety of Turkey so long 
 as the subject Christian nations were not misused. 
 In 1859 Napoleon III. joined in an attack on the 
 Austrian power in Italy, and together with Victor 
 Emanuel, King of Sardinia, and the Italians, gained 
 two great victories at Magenta and Solferino; but 
 made peace as soon as it was convenient to him, 
 without regard to his promises to the King of 
 Sardinia, who was obliged to purchase his consent 
 to becoming King of United Italy by yielding up 
 to France his old inheritance of Savoy and Nice. 
 Meantime discontent began to spring up at home, and 
 the Red Republican spirit was working on. The huge 
 fortunes made by the successful only added to the 
 sense of contrast ; secret societies were at work, and 
 the Emperor, after twenty years of success, felt his 
 popularity waning. 
 
 5. The Franco-German 'War. — In 1870 the 
 Spaniards, who had deposed their queen, Isabel 11. , 
 made choice of a relation of the King of Prussia as 
 their king. There had long been bitter jealousy between 
 
122 FRANCE. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 France and Prussia, and, though the prince refused the 
 offer of Spain, the French showed such an overbearing 
 spirit that a war broke out. The real desire of France 
 was to obtain the much-coveted frontier of the Rhine, 
 and the Emperor heated their armies with boastful 
 proclamations which were but the prelude to direful 
 defeats, at Weissenburg, Worth, and Forbach. At 
 Sedan, the Emperor was forced to surrender himself as 
 a prisoner, and the tidings no sooner arrived at Paris 
 than the whole of the people turned their wrath on 
 him and his family. His wife, the Empress Eugenie, 
 had to flee, a republic was declared, and the city pre- 
 pared to stand a siege. The Germans advanced, and 
 put down all resistance in other parts of France. 
 Great part of the army had been made prisoners, and, 
 though there was much bravado, there was little 
 steadiness or courage left among those who now took 
 up arms. Paris, which was blockaded, after suffering 
 much from famine, surrendered in February, 187 1; 
 and peace was purchased in a treaty by which great 
 part of Elsass and Lorraine, and the city of Metz, 
 were given back to Germany. 
 
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