History Primers. _Edited by_ J. R. GREEN. 

HISTORY OF FRANCE. 

BY

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. 

NEW YORK:D. APPLETON AND COMPANY1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 1882. 

CONTENTS. 

 PAGE

CHAPTER I. 

THE EARLIER KINGS OF FRANCE 1

CHAPTER II. 

THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 25

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 116

[Illustration: MAP OF FRANCE. 

_Shewing the Provinces. _]

[Illustration: MAP OF FRANCE. 

_Shewing the Departments. _]

FRANCE. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE EARLIER KINGS OF FRANCE. 

1. France. --The country we now know as France is the tract of landshut in by the British Channel, the Bay of Biscay, the Pyrenees, theMediterranean, and the Alps. But this country only gained the name ofFrance by degrees. In the earliest days of which we have any account, itwas peopled by the Celts, and it was known to the Romans as part of alarger country which bore the name of Gaul. After all of it, save thenorth-western moorlands, or what we now call Brittany, had beenconquered and settled by the Romans, it was overrun by tribes of thegreat Teutonic race, the same family to which Englishmen belong. Ofthese tribes, the Goths settled in the provinces to the south; theBurgundians, in the east, around the Jura; while the Franks, comingover the rivers in its unprotected north-eastern corner, and makingthemselves masters of a far wider territory, broke up into twokingdoms--that of the Eastern Franks in what is now Germany, and that ofthe Western Franks reaching from the Rhine to the Atlantic. These Frankssubdued all the other Teutonic conquerors of Gaul, while they adoptedthe religion, the language, and some of the civilization of theRomanized Gauls who became their subjects. Under the second Frankishdynasty, the Empire was renewed in the West, where it had been for atime put an end to by these Teutonic invasions, and the then Frankishking, Charles the Great, took his place as Emperor at its head. But inthe time of his grandsons the various kingdoms and nations of which theEmpire was composed, fell apart again under different descendants ofhis. One of these, _Charles the Bald_, was made King of the WesternFranks in what was termed the Neustrian, or "not eastern, " kingdom, fromwhich the present France has sprung. This kingdom in name covered allthe country west of the Upper Meuse, but practically the Neustrian kinghad little power south of the Loire; and the Celts of Brittany werenever included in it. 

2. The House of Paris. --The great danger which this Neustrian kingdomhad to meet came from the Northmen, or as they were called in Englandthe Danes. These ravaged in Neustria as they ravaged in England; and alarge part of the northern coast, including the mouth of the Seine, wasgiven by Charles the Bald to Rolf or Rollo, one of their leaders, whoseland became known as the Northman's land, or Normandy. What most checkedthe ravages of these pirates was the resistance of Paris, a town whichcommanded the road along the river Seine; and it was in defending thecity of Paris from the Northmen, that a warrior named Robert the Stronggained the trust and affection of the inhabitants of the Neustriankingdom. He and his family became Counts (_i. E. _, judges and protectors)of Paris, and Dukes (or leaders) of the Franks. Three generations ofthem 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 ofthe Franks, _Hugh Capet_, was in 987 crowned King of the Franks. All theafter kings of France down to Louis Philippe were descendants of HughCapet. By this change, however, he gained little in real power; for, though he claimed to rule over the whole country of the NeustrianFranks, his authority was little heeded, save in the domain which he hadpossessed as Count of Paris, including the cities of Paris, Orleans, Amiens, and Rheims (the coronation place). He was guardian, too, of thegreat Abbeys of St. Denys and St. Martin of Tours. The Duke of Normandyand the Count of Anjou to the west, the Count of Flanders to the north, the Count of Champagne to the east, and the Duke of Aquitaine to thesouth, paid him homage, but were the only actual rulers in their owndomains. 

3. The Kingdom of Hugh Capet. --The language of Hugh's kingdom wasclipped Latin; the peasantry and townsmen were mostly Gaulish; thenobles were almost entirely Frank. There was an understanding that theking could only act by their consent, and must be chosen by them; butmatters went more by old custom and the right of the strongest than byany law. A Salic law, so called from the place whence the Franks hadcome, was supposed to exist; but this had never been used by theirsubjects, whose law remained that of the old Roman Empire. Both of thesesystems of law, however, fell into disuse, and were replaced by rudebodies of "customs, " which gradually grew up. The habits of the timewere exceedingly rude and ferocious. The Franks had been the fiercestand most untamable of all the Teutonic nations, and only submittedthemselves to the influence of Christianity and civilization from therespect which the Roman Empire inspired. Charles the Great had tried tobring in Roman cultivation, but we find him reproaching the young Franksin his schools with letting themselves be surpassed by the Gauls, whomthey despised; and in the disorders that followed his death, barbarismincreased again. The convents alone kept up any remnants of culture; butas the fury of the Northmen was chiefly directed to them, numbers hadbeen destroyed, and there was more ignorance and wretchedness than atany other time. In the duchy of Aquitaine, much more of the old Romancivilization survived, both among the cities and the nobility; and theNormans, newly settled in the north, had brought with them the vigour oftheir race. They had taken up such dead or dying culture as they foundin France, and were carrying it further, so as in some degree to awakentheir neighbours. Kings and their great vassals could generally read andwrite, and understand the Latin in which all records were made, but fewexcept the clergy studied at all. There were schools in convents, andalready at Paris a university was growing up for the study of theology, grammar, law, philosophy, and music, the sciences which were held toform a course of education. The doctors of these sciences lectured; thescholars of low degree lived, begged, and struggled as best they could;and gentlemen were lodged with clergy, who served as a sort of privatetutors. 

4. Earlier Kings of the House of Paris. --Neither Hugh nor the nextthree kings (_Robert_, 996-1031; _Henry_, 1031-1060; _Philip_, 1060-1108) were able men, and they were almost helpless among thefierce nobles of their own domain, and the great counts and dukes aroundthem. Castles were built of huge strength, and served as nests ofplunderers, who preyed on travellers and made war on each other, grievously tormenting one another's "villeins"--as the peasants weretermed. Men could travel nowhere in safety, and horrid ferocity andmisery prevailed. The first three kings were good and pious men, but tooweak to deal with their ruffian nobles. _Robert, called the Pious_, wasextremely devout, but weak. He became embroiled with the Pope on accountof having married Bertha--a lady pronounced to be within the degrees ofaffinity prohibited by the Church. He was excommunicated, but held outtill there was a great religious reaction, produced by the belief thatthe world would end in 1000. In this expectation many persons left theirland untilled, and the consequence was a terrible famine, followed by apestilence; and the misery of France was probably unequalled in thisreign, when it was hardly possible to pass safely from one to another ofthe three royal cities, Paris, Orleans, and Tours. Beggars swarmed, andthe king gave to them everything he could lay his hands on, and evenwinked at their stealing gold off his dress, to the great wrath of asecond wife, the imperious Constance of Provence, who, coming from themore luxurious and corrupt south, hated and despised the roughness andasceticism of her husband. She was a fierce and passionate woman, andbrought an element of cruelty into the court. In this reign the firstinstance of persecution to the death for heresy took place. The victimhad been the queen's confessor; but so far was she from pitying him thatshe struck out one of his eyes with her staff, as he was led past her tothe hut where he was shut in and burnt. On Robert's death Constance tookpart against her son, _Henry I. _, on behalf of his younger brother, butHenry prevailed. During his reign the clergy succeeded in proclaimingwhat was called the Truce of God, which forbade war and bloodshed atcertain seasons of the year and on certain days of the week, and madechurches and clerical lands places of refuge and sanctuary, which oftenindeed protected the lawless, but which also saved the weak andoppressed. It was during these reigns that the Papacy was beginning thegreat struggle for temporal power, and freedom from the influence of theEmpire, which resulted in the increased independence and power of theclergy. The religious fervour which had begun with the century led tothe foundation of many monasteries, and to much grand churcharchitecture. In the reign of _Philip I. _, William, Duke of Normandy, obtained the kingdom of England, and thus became far more powerful thanhis suzerain, the King of France, a weak man of vicious habits, who layfor many years of his life under sentence of excommunication for anadulterous marriage with Bertrade de Montfort, Countess of Anjou. Thepower of the king and of the law was probably at the very lowest ebbduring the time of Philip I. , though minds and manners were less debasedthan in the former century. 

5. The First Crusade (1095--1100). --Pilgrimage to the Holy Land hadnow become one great means by which the men of the West sought pardonfor their sins. Jerusalem had long been held by the Arabs, who hadtreated the pilgrims well; but these had been conquered by a fierceTurcoman tribe, who robbed and oppressed the pilgrims. Peter the Hermit, returning from a pilgrimage, persuaded Pope Urban II. That it would bewell to stir up Christendom to drive back the Moslem power, and deliverJerusalem and the holy places. Urban II. Accordingly, when holding acouncil at Clermont, in Auvergne, permitted Peter to describe in glowingwords the miseries of pilgrims and the profanation of the holy places. Cries broke out, "God wills it!" and multitudes thronged to receivecrosses cut out in cloth, which were fastened to the shoulder, andpledged the wearer to the holy war or crusade, as it was called. PhilipI. Took no interest in the cause, but his brother Hugh, Count ofVermandois, Stephen, Count of Blois, Robert, Duke of Normandy, andRaymond, Count of Toulouse, joined the expedition, which was made underGodfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine, or what we now call theNetherlands. The crusade proved successful; Jerusalem was gained, and akingdom of detached cities and forts was founded in Palestine, of whichGodfrey became the first king. The whole of the West was supposed tokeep up the defence of the Holy Land, but, in fact, most of those whowent as armed pilgrims were either French, Normans, or Aquitanians; andthe men of the East called all alike Franks. Two orders of monks, whowere also knights, became the permanent defenders of the kingdom--theKnights of St. John, also called Hospitallers, because they also lodgedpilgrims and tended the sick; and the Knights Templars. Both hadestablishments in different countries in Europe, where youths weretrained to the rules of their order. The old custom of solemnly girdinga young warrior with his sword was developing into a system by which thenobly born man was trained through the ranks of page and squire to fullknighthood, and made to take vows which bound him to honourable customsto equals, though, unhappily, no account was taken of his inferiors. 

6. Louis VI. And VII. --Philip's son, _Louis VI. , or the Fat_, was thefirst able man whom the line of Hugh Capet had produced since it mountedthe throne. He made the first attempt at curbing the nobles, assisted bySuger, the Abbot of St. Denys. The only possibility of doing this was toobtain the aid of one party of nobles against another; and when anyunusually flagrant offence had been committed, Louis called together thenobles, bishops, and abbots of his domain, and obtained their consentand assistance in making war on the guilty man, and overthrowing hiscastle, thus, in some degree, lessening the sense of utter impunitywhich had caused so many violences and such savage recklessness. He alsopermitted 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 muchguided by any fixed principle, as by his private interests and feelingstowards the individual city or lord in question. However, the royalauthority had begun to be respected by 1137, when Louis VI. Died, havingjust effected the marriage of his son, _Louis VII. _, with Eleanor, theheiress of the Dukes of Aquitaine--thus hoping to make the crown reallymore powerful than the great princes who owed it homage. At this timelived the great St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, who had a wonderfulinfluence over men's minds. It was a time of much thought andspeculation, and Peter Abailard, an able student of the ParisUniversity, held a controversy with Bernard, in which we see the firststruggle between intellect and authority. Bernard roused the young king, Louis VII. , to go on the second crusade, which was undertaken by theEmperor and the other princes of Europe to relieve the distress of thekingdom of Palestine. France had no navy, so the war was by land, through the rugged hills of Asia Minor, where the army was almostdestroyed by the Saracens. Though Louis did reach Palestine, it was withweakened forces; he could effect nothing by his campaign, and Eleanor, who had accompanied him, seems to have been entirely corrupted by theevil 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 ourHenry II. , as well as the duchy of Normandy, and betrothed his third sonto the heiress of Brittany. Eleanor's marriage seemed to undo all thatLouis VI. Had done in raising the royal power; for Henry completelyovershadowed Louis, whose only resource was in feeble endeavours to takepart against him in his many family quarrels. The whole reign of Louisthe Young, the title that adhered to him on account of his simple, childish nature, is only a record of weakness and disaster, till he diedin 1180. What life went on in France, went on principally in the south. The lands of Aquitaine and Provence had never dropped the old classicallove of poetry and art. A softer form of broken Latin was then spoken, and the art of minstrelsy was frequent among all ranks. Poets werecalled troubadours and _trouvères_ (finders). Courts of love were held, where there were competitions in poetry, the prize being a goldenviolet; and many of the bravest warriors were also distinguishedtroubadours--among them the elder sons of Queen Eleanor. There was muchlicense of manners, much turbulence; and as the Aquitanians hatedAngevin rule, the troubadours never ceased to stir up the sons of HenryII. Against him. 

7. Philip II. (1180--1223). --Powerful in fact as Henry II. Was, it washis gathering so large a part of France under his rule which was, in theend, to build up the greatness of the French kings. What had held themin check was the existence of the great fiefs or provinces, each withits own line of dukes or counts, and all practically independent of theking. But now nearly all the provinces of southern and western Francewere gathered into the hand of a single ruler; and though he was aFrenchman in blood, yet, as he was King of England, this ruler seemed tohis French subjects no Frenchman, but a foreigner. They began thereforeto look to the French king to free them from a foreign ruler; and theson of Louis VII. , called _Philip Augustus_, was ready to take advantageof their disposition. Philip was a really able man, making up by addressfor want of personal courage. He set himself to lower the power of thehouse of Anjou and increase that of the house of Paris. As a boy he hadwatched conferences between his father and Henry under the great elm ofGisors, 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 thepower, he cut down the elm, which was so large that 300 horsemen couldbe sheltered under its branches. He supported the sons of Henry II. Intheir rebellions, and was always the bitter foe of the head of thefamily. Philip assumed the cross in 1187, on the tidings of the loss ofJerusalem, and in 1190 joined Richard I. Of England at Messina, wherethey wintered, and then sailed for St. Jean d'Acre. After this city wastaken, Philip returned to France, where he continued to profit by thecrimes and dissensions of the Angevins, and gained, both as their enemyand as King of France. When Richard's successor, John, murdered Arthur, the heir of the dukedom of Brittany and claimant of both Anjou andNormandy, Philip took advantage of the general indignation to hold acourt of peers, in which John, on his non-appearance, was adjudged tohave forfeited his fiefs. In the war which followed and ended in 1204, Philip not only gained the great Norman dukedom, which gave him thecommand of Rouen and of the mouth of the Seine, as well as Anjou, Maine, and Poitou, the countries which held the Loire in their power, butestablished 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 heheld by wisdom and good government. Seeing that the cities were capableof being made to balance the power of the nobles, he granted themprivileges which caused him to be esteemed their best friend, and hepromoted all improvements. Though once laid under an interdict by PopeInnocent III. For an unlawful marriage, Philip usually followed thepolicy which gained for the Kings of France the title of "Most ChristianKing. " The real meaning of this was that he should always support thePope against the Emperor, and in return be allowed more than ordinarypower over his clergy. The great feudal vassals of eastern France, witha strong instinct that he was their enemy, made a league with theEmperor Otto IV. And his uncle King John, against Philip Augustus. Johnattacked him in the south, and was repulsed by Philip's son, Louis, called the "Lion;" while the king himself, backed by the burghers of hischief cities, gained at Bouvines, over Otto, the first real Frenchvictory, in 1214, thus establishing the power of the crown. Two yearslater, Louis the Lion, who had married John's niece, Blanche of Castile, was invited by the English barons to become their king on John'srefusing to be bound by the Great Charter; and Philip saw his sonactually in possession of London at the time of the death of the lastof the sons of his enemy, Henry II. On John's death, however, the baronspreferred his child to the French prince, and fell away from Louis, whowas forced to return to France. 

8. The Albigenses (1203--1240). --The next great step in the buildingup of the French kingdom was made by taking advantage of a religiousstrife in the south. The lands near the Mediterranean still had much ofthe old Roman cultivation, and also of the old corruption, and herearose a sect called the Albigenses, who held opinions other than thoseof the Church on the origin of evil. Pope Innocent III. , after sendingsome of the order of friars freshly established by the Spaniard, Dominic, to preach to them in vain, declared them as great enemies ofthe faith as Mahometans, and proclaimed a crusade against them and theirchief supporter, Raymond, Count of Toulouse. Shrewd old King Philipmerely permitted this crusade; but the dislike of the north of France tothe south made hosts of adventurers flock to the banner of its leader, Simon de Montfort, a Norman baron, devout and honourable, but harsh andpitiless. Dreadful execution was done; the whole country was laid waste, and Raymond reduced to such distress that Peter I. , King of Aragon, whowas regarded as the natural head of the southern races, came to hisaid, but was defeated and slain at the battle of Muret. After thisRaymond was forced to submit, but such hard terms were forced on himthat his people revolted. His country was granted to De Montfort, wholaid siege to Toulouse, and was killed before he could take the city. The war was then carried on by _Louis the Lion_, who had succeeded hisfather as Louis VIII. In 1223, though only to reign three years, as hedied of a fever caught in a southern campaign in 1226. His widow, Blanche, made peace in the name of her son, _Louis IX. _, and Raymond wasforced 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 thusbecame possessor of all southern France, save Guienne, which stillremained to the English kings. But the whole of the district oncepeopled by the Albigenses had been so much wasted as never to recoverits prosperity, and any cropping up of their opinions was guardedagainst by the establishment of the Inquisition, which appointedDominican friars to _inquire_ into and exterminate all that differedfrom the Church. At the same time the order of St. Francis did much toinstruct and quicken the consciences of the people; and at theuniversities--especially that of Paris--a great advance both in thoughtand learning was made. Louis IX. 's confessor, Henry de Sorbonne, founded, for the study of divinity, the college which was known by hisname, and whose decisions were afterwards received as of paramountauthority. 

9. The Parliament of Paris. --France had a wise ruler in Blanche, and astill 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 toestablish the Parliament of Paris--a court consisting of the greatfeudal vassals, lay and ecclesiastical, who held of the king direct, andwho 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 toguide the decisions. The Parliament was thus only a court of justice andan office for registering wills and edicts. The representative assemblyof France was called the States-General, and consisted of all estates ofthe realm, but was only summoned in time of emergency. Louis IX. Was thefirst king to bring nobles of the highest rank to submit to the judgmentof Parliament when guilty of a crime. Enguerrand de Coucy, one of theproudest nobles of France, who had hung two Flemish youths for killing arabbit, was sentenced to death. The penalty was commuted, but theprinciple was established. Louis's uprightness and wisdom gained himhonour and love everywhere, and he was always remembered as sittingunder the great oak at Vincennes, doing equal justice to rich and poor. Louis was equally upright in his dealings with foreign powers. He wouldnot take advantage of the weakness of Henry III. Of England to attackhis lands in Guienne, though he maintained the right of France toNormandy as having been forfeited by King John. So much was he respectedthat he was called in to judge between Henry and his barons, respectingthe oaths exacted from the king by the Mad Parliament. His decision infavour of Henry was probably an honest one; but he was misled by thevery different relations of the French and English kings to theirnobles, who in France maintained lawlessness and violence, while inEngland they were struggling for law and order. Throughout the strugglesbetween the Popes and the Emperor Frederick II. , Louis would not beinduced to assist in a persecution of the Emperor which he consideredunjust, nor permit one of his sons to accept the kingdom of Apulia andSicily, when the Pope declared that Frederick had forfeited it. He couldnot, however, prevent his brother Charles, Count of Anjou, fromaccepting it; for Charles had married Beatrice, heiress of the imperialfief of Provence, and being thus independent of his brother Louis, wasable to establish a branch of the French royal family on the throne atNaples. The reign of St. Louis was a time of much progress andimprovement. There were great scholars and thinkers at all theuniversities. Romance and poetry were flourishing, and influencingpeople's habits, so that courtesy, _i. E. _ the manners taught in castlecourts, was softening the demeanour of knights and nobles. Architecturewas at its most beautiful period, as is seen, above all, in the SainteChapelle at Paris. This was built by Louis IX. To receive a gift of theGreek Emperor, namely, a thorn, which was believed to be from the crownof thorns. It is one of the most perfect buildings in existence. 

10. Crusade of Louis IX. --Unfortunately, Louis, during a severeillness, made a vow to go on a crusade. His first fulfilment of this vowwas made early in his reign, in 1250, when his mother was still alive toundertake the regency. His attempt was to attack the heart of theSaracen power in Egypt, and he effected a landing and took the city ofDamietta. There he left his queen, and advanced on Cairo; but nearMansourah he found himself entangled in the canals of the Nile, and witha great army of Mamelukes in front. A ford was found, and the EnglishEarl of Salisbury, who had brought a troop to join the crusade, advisedthat 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 asany Frenchman. They both charged headlong, were enclosed by the enemy, and slain; and though the king at last put the Mamelukes to flight, hisloss was dreadful. The Nile rose and cut off his return. He lost greatpart of his troops from sickness, and was horribly harassed by theMamelukes, who threw among his host a strange burning missile, calledGreek fire; and he was finally forced to surrender himself as a prisonerat Mansourah, with all his army. He obtained his release by giving upDamietta, and paying a heavy ransom. After twenty years, in 1270, heattempted another crusade, which was still more unfortunate, for helanded at Tunis to wait for his brother to arrive from Sicily, apparently on some delusion of favourable dispositions on the part ofthe Bey. Sickness broke out in the camp, and the king, his daughter, andhis third son all died of fever; and so fatal was the expedition, thathis son Philip III. Returned to France escorting five coffins, those ofhis father, his brother, his sister and her husband, and his own wifeand child. 

11. Philip the Fair. --The reign of _Philip III. _ was very short. Theinsolence and cruelty of the Provençals in Sicily had provoked thenatives to a massacre known as the Sicilian Vespers, and they thencalled in the King of Aragon, who finally obtained the island, as aseparate kingdom from that on the Italian mainland where Charles ofAnjou and his descendants still reigned. While fighting his uncle'sbattles on the Pyrenees, and besieging Gerona, Philip III. Caught afever, and died on his way home in 1285. His successor, _Philip IV. , called the Fair_, was crafty, cruel, and greedy, and made the Parliamentof Paris the instrument of his violence and exactions, which he carriedout in the name of the law. To prevent Guy de Dampierre, Count ofFlanders, 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 intoprison, while he offered his own daughter Isabel to Edward of Carnarvonin her stead. The Scottish wars prevented Edward I. From taking up thecause of Guy; but the Pope, Boniface VIII. , a man of a fierce temper, though of a great age, loudly called on Philip to do justice toFlanders, and likewise blamed in unmeasured terms his exactions from theclergy, his debasement of the coinage, and his foul and vicious life. Furious abuse passed on both sides. Philip availed himself of a flaw inthe Pope's election to threaten him with deposition, and in return wasexcommunicated. He then sent a French knight named William de Nogaret, with Sciarra Colonna, a turbulent Roman, the hereditary enemy ofBoniface, and a band of savage mercenary soldiers to Anagni, where thePope then was, to force him to recall the sentence, apparently intendingthem to act like the murderers of Becket. The old man's dignity, however, overawed them at the moment, and they retired without layinghands on him, but the shock he had undergone caused his death a few dayslater. His successor was poisoned almost immediately on his election, being known to be adverse to Philip. Parties were equally balanced inthe conclave; but Philip's friends advised him to buy over to hisinterest one of his supposed foes, whom they would then unite inchoosing. Bertrand de Goth, Archbishop of Bordeaux, was the man, and ina secret interview promised Philip to fulfil six conditions if he weremade Pope by his interest. These were: 1st, the reconciliation of Philipwith the Church; 2nd, that of his agents; 3rd, a grant to the king of atenth of all clerical property for five years; 4th, the restoration ofthe Colonna family to Rome; 5th, the censure of Boniface's memory. Thesefive were carried out by Clement V. , as he called himself, as soon as hewas on the Papal throne; the sixth remained a secret, but was probablythe destruction of the Knights Templars. This order of military monkshad been created for the defence of the crusading kingdom of Jerusalem, and had acquired large possessions in Europe. Now that their occupationin the East was gone, they were hated and dreaded by the kings, andPhilip was resolved on their wholesale destruction. 

12. The Papacy at Avignon. --Clement had never quitted France, but hadgone through the ceremonies of his installation at Lyons; and Philip, fearing that in Italy he would avoid carrying out the scheme for theruin of the Templars, had him conducted to Avignon, a city of the Empirewhich belonged to the Angevin King of Naples, as Count of Provence, andthere for eighty years the Papal court remained. As they were thussettled close to the French frontier, the Popes became almost vassals ofFrance; and this added greatly to the power and renown of the Frenchkings. How real their hold on the Papacy was, was shown in the ruin ofthe Templars. The order was now abandoned by the Pope, and its knightswere invited in large numbers to Paris, under pretence of arranging acrusade. Having been thus entrapped, they were accused of horrible andmonstrous crimes, and torture elicited a few supposed confessions. Theywere then tried by the Inquisition, and the greater number were put todeath by fire, the Grand Master last of all, while their lands wereseized by the king. They seem to have been really a fierce, arrogant, and oppressive set of men, or else there must have been some endeavourto save them, belonging, as most of them did, to noble French families. The "Pest of France, " as Dante calls Philip the Fair, was now the mostformidable prince in Europe. He contrived to annex to his dominions thecity of Lyons, hitherto an imperial city under its archbishop. Philipdied in 1314; and his three sons--_Louis X. _, _Philip V. _, and _CharlesIV. _, --were as cruel and harsh as himself, but without his talent, andbrought the crown and people to disgrace and misery. Each reigned a fewyears and then died, leaving only daughters, and the question arosewhether the inheritance should go to females. When Louis X. Died, in1316, his brother Philip, after waiting for the birth of a posthumouschild who only lived a few days, took the crown, and the Parliament thendeclared that the law of the old Salian Franks had been against theinheritance of women. By this newly discovered Salic law, Charles IV. , the third brother, reigned on Philip's death; but the kingdom of Navarrehaving accrued to the family through their grandmother, and not beingsubject to the Salic law, went to the eldest daughter of Louis X. , Jane, wife of the Count of Evreux. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 

1. Wars of Edward III. --By the Salic law, as the lawyers called it, the crown was given, on the death of Charles IV. , to _Philip, Count ofValois_, son to a brother of Philip IV. , but it was claimed by EdwardIII. Of England as son of the daughter of Philip IV. Edward contentedhimself, however, with the mere assertion of his pretensions, untilPhilip exasperated him by attacks on the borders of Guienne, which theFrench kings had long been coveting to complete their possession of thesouth, and by demanding the surrender of Robert of Artois, who, beingdisappointed in his claim to the county of Artois by the judgment of theParliament of Paris, was practising by sorcery on the life of the Kingof France. Edward then declared war, and his supposed right caused acentury of warfare between France and England, in which the broken, down-trodden state of the French peasantry gave England an immenseadvantage. The knights and squires were fairly matched; but while theEnglish yeomen were strong, staunch, and trustworthy, the French wereuseless, and only made a defeat worse by plundering the fallen on eachside alike. The war began in Flanders, where Philip took the part of thecount, whose tyrannies had caused his expulsion. Edward was called in tothe 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 noimportant result. At the same time the two kings took opposite sides inthe war of the succession in Brittany, each defending the claim mostinconsistent with his own pretensions to the French crown--Edwardupholding the male heir, John de Montfort, and Philip the direct femalerepresentative, the wife of Charles de Blois. 

2. Creçy and Poitiers. --Further difficulties arose through Charles theBad, King of Navarre and Count of Evreux, who was always on the watch toassert his claim to the French throne through his mother, the daughterof Louis X. , and was much hated and distrusted by Philip VI. And his sonJohn, Duke of Normandy. Fearing the disaffection of the Norman andBreton 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, thusdriving their kindred to join his enemies. One of these offendedNormans, Godfrey of Harcourt, invited Edward to Normandy, where helanded, and having consumed his supplies was on his march to Flanders, when Philip, with the whole strength of the kingdom, endeavoured tointercept him at _Creçy_ in Picardy, in 1348. Philip was utterlyincapable as a general; his knights were wrong-headed and turbulent, andabsolutely cut down their own Genoese hired archers for being in theirway. The defeat was total. Philip rode away to Amiens, and Edward laidsiege to Calais. The place was so strong that he was forced to blockadeit, and Philip had time to gather another army to attempt its relief;but the English army were so posted that he could not attack themwithout great loss. He retreated, and the men of Calais surrendered, Edward insisting that six burghers should bring him the keys with ropesround their necks, to submit themselves to him. Six offered themselves, but their lives were spared, and they were honourably treated. Edwardexpelled all the French, and made Calais an English settlement. A trucefollowed, chiefly in consequence of the ravages of the Black Death, which swept off multitudes throughout Europe, a pestilence apparentlybred by filth, famine, and all the miseries of war and lawlessness, butwhich spared no ranks. It had scarcely ceased before Philip died, in1350. His son, _John_, was soon involved in a fresh war with England bythe intrigues of Charles the Bad, and in 1356 advanced southwards tocheck the Prince of Wales, who had come out of Guienne on a plunderingexpedition. The French were again totally routed at Poitiers, and theking himself, with his third son, Philip, were made prisoners andcarried to London with most of the chief nobles. 

3. The Jacquerie. --The calls made on their vassals by these captivenobles to supply their ransoms brought the misery to a height. The salttax, or _gabelle_, which was first imposed to meet the expenses of thewar, was only paid by those who were neither clergy nor nobles, and thegeneral saying was--"Jacques Bonhomme (the nickname for the peasant) hasa broad back, let him bear all the burthens. " Either by the king, thefeudal lords, the clergy, or the bands of men-at-arms who roved throughthe country, selling themselves to any prince who would employ them, thewretched people were stripped of everything, and used to hide in holesand caves from ill-usage or insult, till they broke out in a rebellioncalled the Jacquerie, and whenever they could seize a castle revengedthemselves, like the brutes they had been made, on those within it. Taxation was so levied by the king's officers as to be frightfullyoppressive, and corruption reigned everywhere. As the king was inprison, and his heir, Charles, had fled ignominiously from Poitiers, the citizens of Paris hoped to effect a reform, and rose with theirprovost-marshal, Stephen Marcel, at their head, threatened Charles, andslew two of his officers before his eyes. On their demand theStates-General were convoked, and made wholesome regulations as to themanner of collecting the taxes, but no one, except perhaps Marcel, hadany real zeal or public spirit. Charles the Bad, of Navarre, who hadpretended to espouse their cause, betrayed it; the king declared thedecisions of the States-General null and void; and the crafty managementof his son prevented any union between the malcontents. The gentryrallied, and put down the Jacquerie with horrible cruelty and revenge. The burghers of Paris found that Charles the Bad only wanted to gain thethrone, and Marcel would have proclaimed him; but those who thought himeven worse than his cousins of Valois admitted the other Charles, bywhom Marcel and his partisans were put to death. The attempt at reformthus ended in talk and murder, and all fell back into the same state ofmisery and oppression. 

4. The Peace of Bretigny. --This Charles, eldest son of John, obtainedby purchase the imperial fief of Vienne, of which the counts had alwaysbeen called Dauphins, a title thenceforth borne by the heir apparent ofthe kingdom. His father's captivity and the submission of Paris lefthim 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 whichthe English king demanded as the price of peace. The Peace of Bretignypermitted King John to ransom himself, but resigned to England thesovereignty over the duchy of Aquitaine, and left Calais and Ponthieu inthe hands of Edward III. John died in 1364, before his ransom was paid, and his son mounted the throne as _Charles V_. Charles showed himselffrom this time a wary, able man, and did much to regain what had beenlost by craftily watching his opportunity. The war went on between theallies of each party, though the French and English kings professed tobe at peace; and at the battle of Cocherel, in 1364, Charles the Bad wasdefeated, and forced to make peace with France. On the other hand, theFrench party in Brittany, led by Charles de Blois and the gallant Bretonknight, Bertrand du Guesclin, were routed, the same year, by the Englishparty under Sir John Chandos; Charles de Blois was killed, and the houseof Montfort established in the duchy. These years of war had created adreadful class of men, namely, hired soldiers of all nations, who, undersome noted leader, sold their services to whatever prince might needthem, under the name of Free Companies, and when unemployed lived byplunder. The peace had only let these wretches loose on the peasants. Some had seized castles, whence they could plunder travellers; othersroamed the country, preying on the miserable peasants, who, fleeced asthey were by king, barons, and clergy, were tortured and murdered bythese ruffians, so that many lived in holes in the ground that theirdwellings might not attract attention. Bertrand du Guesclin offered theking to relieve the country from these Free Companies by leading them toassist 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 battleof Navarete, on the Ebro, in 1367. 

5. Renewal of the War. --This expedition ruined the prince's health, and exhausted his treasury. A hearth-tax was laid on the inhabitants ofAquitaine, 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 assuzerain. The treaty, however, was still not formally settled, and onthis ground Charles received their complaint. The war thus began again, and the sword of the Constable of France--the highest military dignityof the realm--was given to Du Guesclin, but only on condition that hewould avoid pitched battles, and merely harass the English and taketheir castles. This policy was so strictly followed, that the Duke ofLancaster was allowed to march from Brittany to Gascony without meetingan enemy in the field; and when King Edward III. Made his sixth and lastinvasion, nearly to the walls of Paris, he was only turned back byfamine, and by a tremendous thunderstorm, which made him believe thatHeaven was against him. Du Guesclin died while besieging a castle, andsuch was his fame that the English captain would place the keys in nohand but that of his corpse. The Constable's sword was given to Oliverde Clisson, also a Breton, and called the "Butcher, " because he gave noquarter to the English in revenge for the death of his brother. TheBretons were, almost to a man, of the French party, having been offendedby the insolence and oppression of the English; and John de Montfort, after clinging to the King of England as long as possible, was forced tomake his peace at length with Charles. Charles V. Had nearly regainedall that had been lost, when, in 1380 his death left the kingdom to hisson. 

6. House of Burgundy. --_Charles VI. _ was a boy of nine years old, motherless, and beset with ambitious uncles. These uncles were Louis, Duke of Anjou, to whom Queen Joanna, the last of the earlier Angevinline in Naples, bequeathed her rights; John, Duke of Berry, a weaktime-server; and Philip, the ablest and most honest of the three. Hisgrandmother Joan, the wife of Philip VI. , had been heiress of the duchyand county of Burgundy, and these now became his inheritance, giving himthe richest part of France. By still better fortune he had marriedMargaret, the only child of Louis, Count of Flanders. Flanders containedthe great cloth-manufacturing towns of Europe--Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, etc. , all wealthy and independent, and much inclined to close alliancewith England, whence they obtained their wool, while their counts wereequally devoted to France. Just as Count Louis II. Had, for his lawlessrapacity, been driven out of Ghent by Jacob van Arteveldt, so his son, Louis III. , was expelled by Philip van Arteveldt, son to Jacob. Charleshad 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 inthe council to conduct the whole power of France to Flanders, whereArteveldt was defeated and trodden to death in the battle of Rosbecque, in 1382. On the count's death, Philip succeeded him as Count of Flandersin right of his wife; and thus was laid the foundation of the powerfuland wealthy house of Burgundy, which for four generations almostovershadowed the crown of France. 

7. Insanity of Charles VI. --The Constable, Clisson, was much hated bythe Duke of Brittany, and an attack which was made on him in thestreets of Paris was clearly traced to Montfort. The young king, who wasmuch attached to Clisson, set forth to exact punishment. On his way, amadman 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, theirgarments of pitched flax caught fire. Four were burnt, and the shockbrought back the king's madness. He became subject to fits of insanityof longer or shorter duration, and in their intervals he seems to havebeen almost imbecile. No provision had then been made for thecontingency of a mad king. The condition of the country became worsethan ever, and power was grasped at by whoever could obtain it. Of theking's three uncles, the Duke of Anjou and his sons were generallyengrossed by a vain struggle to obtain Naples; the Duke of Berry wasdull and weak; and the chief struggle for influence was between Philipof Burgundy and his son, John the Fearless, on the one hand, and on theother the king's wife, Isabel of Bavaria, and his brother Louis, Duke ofOrleans, who was suspected of being her lover; while the unhappy kingand his little children were left in a wretched state, often scarcelyprovided with clothes or food. 

8. Burgundians and Armagnacs. --Matters grew worse after the death ofDuke Philip in 1404; and in 1407, just after a seeming reconciliation, the Duke of Orleans was murdered in the streets of Paris by servants ofJohn the Fearless. Louis of Orleans had been a vain, foolish man, heedless of all save his own pleasure, but his death increased themisery of France through the long and deadly struggle for vengeance thatfollowed. The king was helpless, and the children of the Duke of Orleanswere young; but their cause was taken up by a Gascon noble, Bernard, Count of Armagnac, whose name the party took. The Duke of Burgundy wasalways 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 theuniversity, justifying the murder. There was again a feeble attempt atreform made by the burghers; but, as before, the more violent andlawless were guilty of such excesses that the opposite party were calledin to put them down. The Armagnacs were admitted into Paris, and took aterrible vengeance on the Butchers and on all adherents of Burgundy, inthe name of the Dauphin Louis, the king's eldest son, a weak, dissipatedyouth, who was entirely led by the Count of Armagnac. 

9. Invasion of Henry V. --All this time the war with England hadsmouldered on, only broken by brief truces; and when France was in thiswretched state Henry V. Renewed the claim of Edward III. , and in 1415landed before Harfleur. After delaying till he had taken the city, thedauphin called together the whole nobility of the kingdom, and advancedagainst Henry, who, like Edward III. , had been obliged to leave Normandyand march towards Calais in search of supplies. The armies met atAgincourt, where, though the French greatly outnumbered the English, theskill of Henry and the folly and confusion of the dauphin's army led toa total defeat, and the captivity of half the chief men in France of theArmagnac party--among them the young Duke of Orleans. It was Henry V. 'spolicy to treat France, not as a conquest, but as an inheritance; and hetherefore refused to let these captives be ransomed till he should havereduced the country to obedience, while he treated all the places thatsubmitted to him with great kindness. The Duke of Burgundy held alooffrom the contest, and the Armagnacs, who ruled in Paris, were too weakor too careless to send aid to Rouen, which was taken by Henry after along siege. The Dauphin Louis died in 1417; his next brother, John, whowas more inclined to Burgundy, did not survive him a year; and the thirdbrother, Charles, a mere boy, was in the hands of the Armagnacs. In 1418their reckless misuse of power provoked the citizens of Paris intoletting in the Burgundians, when an unspeakably horrible massacre tookplace. Bernard of Armagnac himself was killed; his naked corpse, scoredwith his red cross, was dragged about the streets; and men, women, andeven infants of his party were slaughtered pitilessly. TanneguyDuchatel, one of his partisans, carried off the dauphin; but the queen, weary of Armagnac insolence, had joined the Burgundian party. 

10. Treaty of Troyes. --Meanwhile Henry V. Continued to advance, andJohn of Burgundy felt the need of joining the whole strength of Franceagainst him, and made overtures to the dauphin. Duchatel, either fearingto be overshadowed by his power, or else in revenge for Orleans andArmagnac, no sooner saw that a reconciliation was likely to take place, than he murdered John the Fearless before the dauphin's eyes, at aconference on the bridge of Montereau-sur-Yonne (1419). John's wound wassaid to be the hole which let the English into France. His son Philip, the new Duke of Burgundy, viewing the dauphin as guilty of his death, went over with all his forces to Henry V. , taking with him the queen andthe poor helpless king. At the treaty of Troyes, in 1420, Henry wasdeclared regent, and heir of the kingdom, at the same time as hereceived the hand of Catherine, daughter of Charles VI. This gave himParis and all the chief cities in northern France; but the Armagnacsheld the south, with the Dauphin Charles at their head. Charles wasdeclared an outlaw by his father's court, but he was in truth the leaderof what had become the national and patriotic cause. During this time, after a long struggle and schism, the Pope again returned to Rome. 

11. The Maid of Orleans. --When Henry V. Died in 1422, and the unhappyCharles a few weeks later, the infant Henry VI. Was proclaimed King ofFrance as well as of England, at both Paris and London, while _CharlesVII. _ was only proclaimed at Bourges, and a few other places in thesouth. Charles was of a slow, sluggish nature, and the men around himwere selfish and pleasure-loving intriguers, who kept aloof all thebolder spirits from him. The brother of Henry V. , John, Duke of Bedford, ruled all the country north of the Loire, with Rouen as hishead-quarters. For seven years little was done; but in 1429 he causedOrleans to be besieged. The city held out bravely, all France looked onanxiously, and a young peasant girl, named Joan d'Arc, believed herselfcalled by voices from the saints to rescue the city, and lead the kingto his coronation at Rheims. With difficulty she obtained a hearing ofthe king, and was allowed to proceed to Orleans. Leading the army with aconsecrated sword, which she never stained with blood, she filled theFrench with confidence, the English with fear as of a witch, and thusshe gained the day wherever she appeared. Orleans was saved, and shethen conducted Charles VII. To Rheims, and stood beside his throne whenhe was crowned. Then she said her work was done, and would have returnedhome; but, though the wretched king and his court never appreciated her, they thought her useful with the soldiers, and would not let her leavethem. She had lost her heart and hope, and the men began to be angeredat her for putting down all vice and foul language. The captains wereenvious of her; and at last, when she had led a sally out of thebesieged town of Compiègne, the gates were shut, and she was madeprisoner by a Burgundian, John of Luxembourg. The Burgundians hated hereven more than the English. The inquisitor was of their party, and acourt was held at Rouen, which condemned her to die as a witch. Bedfordconsented, but left the city before the execution. Her own king made noeffort to save her, though, many years later, he caused enquiries to bemade, established her innocence, ennobled her family, and freed hervillage from taxation. 

12. Recovery of France (1434--1450). --But though Joan was gone, herwork lasted. The Constable, Artur of Richmond, the Count of Dunois, andother brave leaders, continued to attack the English. After seventeenyears' vengeance for his father's death, the Duke of Burgundy made hispeace with Charles by a treaty at Arras, on condition of paying no morehomage, in 1434. Bedford died soon after, and there were nothing butdisputes among the English. Paris opened its gates to the king, andCharles, almost in spite of himself, was restored. An able merchant, named Jacques Cœur, lent him money which equipped his men for therecovery of Normandy, and he himself, waking into activity, took Rouenand the other cities on the coast. 

13. Conquest of Aquitaine (1450). --By these successes Charles hadrecovered all, save Calais, that Henry V. Or Edward III. Had taken fromFrance. But he was now able to do more. The one province of the southwhich the French kings had never been able to win was Guienne, the duchyon the river Garonne. Guienne had been a part of Eleanor's inheritance, and passed through her to the English kings; but though they had lostall else, the hatred of its inhabitants to the French enabled them toretain this, and Guienne had never yet passed under French rule. It waswrested, however, from Eleanor's descendants in this flood-tide ofconquest. Bordeaux held out as long as it could, but Henry VI. Couldsend no aid, and it was forced to yield. Two years later, brave old LordTalbot led 5000 men to recover the duchy, and was gladly welcomed; buthe was slain in the battle of Castillon, fighting like a lion. His twosons fell beside him, and his army was broken. Bordeaux againsurrendered, and the French kings at last found themselves master of thegreat fief of the south. Calais was, at the close of the great HundredYears' 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 theHundred Years' War, the great difficulty in time of peace was thepresence of the bands of free companions, or mercenary soldiers, who, when war and plunder failed them, lived by violence and robbery of thepeasants. Charles VII. , who had awakened into vigour, thereupon tookinto regular pay all who would submit to discipline, and the rest wereled off on two futile expeditions into Switzerland and Germany, andthere left to their fate. The princes and nobles were at first so muchdisgusted at the regulations which bound the soldiery to respect themagistracy, that they raised a rebellion, which was fostered by theDauphin Louis, who was ready to do anything that could annoy his father. But he was soon detached from them; the Duke of Burgundy would notassist them, and the league fell to pieces. Charles VII. By thusretaining companies of hired troops in his pay laid the foundation ofthe first standing army in Europe, and enabled the monarchy to treaddown 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 beforeit recovered from the miseries of the long strife. The war had kept backmuch of progress. There had been grievous havoc of buildings in thenorth and centre of France; much lawlessness and cruelty prevailed; andyet there was a certain advance in learning, and much love of romanceand the theory of chivalry. Pages of noble birth were bred up in castlesto be first squires and then knights. There was immense formality andstateliness, the order of precedence was most minute, and pomp anddisplay were wonderful. Strange alternations took place. One month thestreets of Paris would be a scene of horrible famine, where hungry dogs, and even wolves, put an end to the miseries of starving, homelesschildren of slaughtered parents; another, the people would be gazing atroyal banquets, lasting a whole day, with allegorical "subtleties" ofjelly on the table, and pageants coming between the courses, where allthe Virtues harangued in turn, or where knights delivered maidens fromgiants and "salvage men. " In the south there was less misery and moreprogress. Jacques Cœur's house at Bourges is still a marvel of householdarchitecture; and René, Duke of Anjou and Count of Provence, was anexcellent painter on glass, and also a poet. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE STRUGGLE WITH BURGUNDY. 

1. Power of Burgundy. --All the troubles of France, for the last 80years, had gone to increase the strength of the Dukes of Burgundy. Thecounty and duchy, of which Dijon was the capital, lay in the mostfertile district of France, and had, as we have seen, been conferred onPhilip the Bold. His marriage had given to him Flanders, with a gallantnobility, and with the chief manufacturing cities of Northern Europe. Philip's son, John the Fearless, had married a lady who ultimatelybrought into the family the great imperial counties of Holland andZealand; and her son, Duke Philip the Good, by purchase or inheritance, obtained possession of all the adjoining little fiefs forming thecountry called the Netherlands, some belonging to the Empire, some toFrance. Philip had turned the scale in the struggle between England andFrance, and, as his reward, had won the cities on the Somme. He hadthus become the richest and most powerful prince in Europe, and seemedon the point of founding a middle state lying between France andGermany, his weak point being that the imperial fiefs in Lorraine andElsass lay between his dukedom of Burgundy and his counties in theNetherlands. No European court equalled in splendour that of Philip. Thegreat cities of Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, and the rest, though full offierce and resolute men, paid him dues enough to make him the richest ofprinces, and the Flemish knights were among the boldest in Europe. Allthe arts of life, above all painting and domestic architecture, nourished at Brussels; and nowhere were troops so well equipped, burghers more prosperous, learning more widespread, than in his domains. Here, too, were the most ceremonious courtesy, the most splendidbanquets, and the most wonderful display of jewels, plate, andcloth-of-gold. Charles VII. , a clever though a cold-hearted, indolentman, let Philip alone, already seeing how the game would go for thefuture; 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 XI. 's Policy. --_Louis XI. _ succeeded his father Charles in1461. He was a man of great skill and craft, with an iron will, andsubtle though pitiless nature, who knew in what the greatness of a kingconsisted, and worked out his ends mercilessly and unscrupulously. Theold feudal dukes and counts had all passed away, except the Duke ofBrittany; but the Dukes of Orleans, Burgundy, and Anjou held princelyappanages, and there was a turbulent nobility who had grown up duringthe wars, foreign and civil, and been encouraged by the favouritism ofCharles VI. All these, feeling that Louis was their natural foe, unitedagainst him in what was called the "League of the Public Good, " with hisown brother, the Duke of Berry, and Count Charles of Charolais, who wasknown as Charles the Bold, the son of Duke Philip of Burgundy, at theirhead. Louis was actually defeated by Charles of Charolais in the battleof Montlhéry; but he contrived so cleverly to break up the league, bypromises to each member and by sowing dissension among them, that heended by becoming more powerful 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 moreardently the plan of forming a new kingdom of Burgundy, and had evenhopes of being chosen Emperor. First, however, he had to consolidate hisdominions, by making himself master of the countries which partedBurgundy from the Netherlands. With this view he obtained Elsass inpledge from its owner, a needy son of the house of Austria, who wasnever likely to redeem it. Lorraine had been inherited by Yolande, thewife of René, Duke of Anjou and titular King of Sicily, and had passedfrom her to her daughter, who had married the nearest heir in the maleline, the Count of Vaudémont; but Charles the Bold unjustly seized thedukedom, driving out the lawful heir, René de Vaudémont, son of thismarriage. Louis, meantime, was on the watch for every error of Charles, and constantly sowing dangers in his path. Sometimes his mines explodedtoo soon, as when he had actually put himself into Charles's power byvisiting him at Peronne at the very moment when his emissaries hadencouraged the city of Liège to rise in revolt against their bishop, anally of the duke; and he only bought his freedom by profuse promises, and by aiding Charles in a most savage destruction of Liège. But afterthis his caution prevailed. He gave secret support to the adherents ofRené de Vaudémont, and intrigued with the Swiss, who were often at issuewith the Burgundian bailiffs and soldiery in Elsass--greedy, recklessmen, from whom the men of Elsass revolted in favour of their formerAustrian 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 actually crossed the sea with a splendid host; but whileCharles was prevented from joining him by the siege of Neuss, a city inalliance with Sigismund of Austria, Louis met Edward on the bridge ofPecquigny, and by cajolery, bribery, and accusations of Charles, contrived to persuade him to carry home his army without striking ablow. That meeting was a curious one. A wooden barrier, like a wildbeast's cage, was erected in the middle of the bridge, through which thetwo kings kissed one another. Edward was the tallest and handsomest manpresent, and splendidly attired. Louis was small and mean-looking, andclad in an old blue suit, with a hat decorated with little leaden imagesof the saints, but his smooth tongue quite overcame the duller intellectof Edward; and in the mean time the English soldiers were feasted andallowed their full swing, the French being strictly watched to preventall quarrels. So skilfully did Louis manage, that Edward consented tomake peace and return home. 

4. The Fall of Charles the Bold (1477). --Charles had become entangledin many difficulties. He was a harsh, stern man, much disliked; and hisgovernors in Elsass were fierce, violent men, who used every pretext forpreying upon travellers. The Governor of Breisach, Hagenbach, had beenput to death in a popular rising, aided by the Swiss of Berne, in 1474;and the men of Elsass themselves raised part of the sum for which thecountry had been pledged, and revolted against Charles. The Swiss wereincited by Louis to join them; René of Lorraine made common cause withthem. In two great battles, Granson and Morat, Charles and all hischivalry were beaten by the Swiss pikemen; but he pushed on the war. Nancy, the chief city of Lorraine, had risen against him, and hebesieged it. On the night of the 5th of January, 1477, René led theSwiss to relieve the town by falling in early morning on the besiegers'camp. There was a terrible fight; the Burgundians were routed, and afterlong search the corpse of Duke Charles was found in a frozen pool, stripped, plundered, and covered with blood. He was the last of the maleline of Burgundy, and its great possessions broke up with his death. Hisonly child, Marie, did not inherit the French dukedom nor the county, though most of the fiefs in the Low Countries, which could descend tothe female line, were her undisputed portion. Louis tried, by stirringup her subjects, to force her into a marriage with his son Charles; butshe threw herself on the protection of the house of Austria, andmarrying Maximilian, son of the Emperor Frederick III. , carried herborder lands to swell the power of his family. 

5. Louis's Home Government. --Louis's system of repression of thenobles went on all this time. His counsellors were of low birth (Oliverle Daim, his barber, was the man he most trusted), his habits frugal, his manners reserved and ironical; he was dreaded, hated, anddistrusted, and he became constantly more bitter, suspicious, andmerciless. Those who fell under his displeasure were imprisoned in ironcages, or put to death; and the more turbulent families, such as thehouse of Armagnac, were treated with frightful severity. But his was notwanton violence. He acted on a regular system of depressing the lawlessnobility and increasing the royal authority, by bringing the power ofthe cities forward, by trusting for protection to the standing army, chiefly of hired Scots, Swiss, and Italians, and by saving money. Bythis means he was able to purchase the counties of Roussillon andPerpignan from the King of Aragon, thus making the Pyrenees hisfrontier, and on several occasions he made his treasury fight hisbattles instead of the swords of his knights. He lived in the castle ofPlessis les Tours, guarded by the utmost art of fortification, andfilled with hired Scottish archers of his guard, whom he preferred asdefenders to his own nobles. He was exceedingly unpopular with hisnobles; but the statesman and historian, Philip de Comines, who had goneover to him from Charles of Burgundy, viewed him as the best and ablestof kings. He did much to promote trade and manufacture, improved thecities, fostered the university, and was in truth the first king sincePhilip Augustus who had any real sense of statesmanship. But though theburghers throve under him, and the lawless nobles were depressed, thestate of the peasants was not improved; feudal rights pressed heavily onthem, and they were little better than savages, ground down by burthensimposed by their lords. 

6. Provence and Brittany. --Louis had added much to the Frenchmonarchy. He had won back Artois; he had seized the duchy and county ofBurgundy; he had bought Roussillon. His last acquisition was the countyof Provence. The second Angevin family, beginning with Louis, the son ofKing John, had never succeeded in gaining a footing in Naples, thoughthey bore the royal title. They held, however, the imperial fief ofProvence, and Louis XI. , whose mother had been of this family, obtainedfrom her two brothers, René and Charles, that Provence should bebequeathed to him instead of passing to René's grandson, the Duke ofLorraine. The Kings of France were thenceforth Counts of Provence; andthough the county was not viewed as part of the kingdom, it waspractically one with it. A yet greater acquisition was made soon afterLouis's death in 1483. The great Celtic duchy of Brittany fell to afemale, Anne of Brittany, and the address of Louis's daughter, the Ladyof Beaujeu, who was regent of the realm, prevailed to secure the hand ofthe heiress for her brother, Charles VIII. Thus the crown of France hadby purchase, conquest, or inheritance, obtained all the great feudalstates that made up the country between the English Channel and thePyrenees; but each still remained a separate state, with different lawsand customs, and a separate parliament in each to register laws, and toact as a court of justice. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE ITALIAN WARS. 

1. Campaign of Charles VIII. (1493). --From grasping at province afterprovince on their own border, however, the French kings were now to turnto wider dreams of conquest abroad. Together with the county ofProvence, Louis XI. Had bought from King René all the claims of thehouse of Anjou. Among these was included a claim to the kingdom ofNaples. Louis's son, _Charles VIII. _, a vain and shallow lad, wastempted by the possession of large treasures and a fine army to listento the persuasions of an Italian intriguer, Ludovico Sforza, Duke ofMilan, and put forward these pretensions, thus beginning a war whichlasted nearly as long as the Hundred Years' War with England. But it wasa war of aggression instead of a war of self-defence. Charles crossedthe Alps in 1493, marched the whole length of Italy without opposition, and was crowned at Naples; while its royal family, an illegitimateoffshoot from the Kings of Aragon, fled into Sicily, and called onSpain for help. But the insolent exactions of the French soldiery causedthe people to rise against them; and when Charles returned, he was besetat Fornovo by a great league of Italians, over whom he gained a completevictory. Small and puny though he was, he fought like a lion, and seemedquite inspired by the ardour of combat. The "French fury, " _la furiaFrancese_, became a proverb among the Italians. Charles neglected, however, to send any supplies or reinforcements to the garrisons he hadleft 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 hiswidow, and thus prevented Brittany from again parting from the crown. Louis not only succeeded to the Angevin right to Naples, but through hisgrandmother he viewed himself as heir of Milan. She was ValentinaVisconti, wife to that Duke of Orleans who had been murdered by John theFearless. Louis himself never advanced further than to Milan, whosesurrender made him master of Lombardy, which he held for the greaterpart of his reign. But after a while the Spanish king, Ferdinand, agreedwith him to throw over the cause of the unfortunate royal family ofNaples, and divide that kingdom between them. Louis XII. Sent abrilliant army to take possession of his share, but the bounds of eachportion had not been defined, and the French and Spanish troops began awar even while their kings were still treating with one another. Theindividual French knights did brilliant exploits, for indeed it was thetime of the chief blossom of fanciful chivalry, a knight of Dauphiné, named Bayard, called the Fearless and Stainless Knight, and honoured byfriend and foe; but the Spaniards were under Gonzalo de Cordova, calledthe Great Captain, and after the battles of Cerignola and the Gariglianodrove the French out of the kingdom of Naples, though the war continuedin Lombardy. 

3. The Holy League. --It was an age of leagues. The Italians, hatingFrench and Spaniards both alike, were continually forming combinationsamong themselves and with foreign powers against whichever happened tobe the strongest. The chief of these was called the Holy League, becauseit was formed by Pope Julius II. , who drew into it Maximilian, then headof the German Empire, Ferdinand of Spain, and Henry VIII. Of England. The French troops were attacked in Milan; and though they gained thebattle of Ravenna in 1512, it was with the loss of their general, Gastonde Foix, Duke of Nemours, whose death served as an excuse to Ferdinandof Spain for setting up a claim to the kingdom of Navarre. He cunninglypersuaded Henry VIII. To aid him in the attack, by holding out the vainidea of going on to regain Gascony; and while one troop of English wereattacking Pampeluna, Henry himself landed at Calais and took Tournay andTerouenne. The French forces were at the same time being chased out ofItaly. However, when Pampeluna had been taken, and the French finallydriven 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 kingover-exerted himself at the banquets, and died six weeks after themarriage, in 1515. During this reign the waste of blood and treasure onwars of mere ambition was frightful, and the country had been heavilytaxed; but a brilliant soldiery had been trained up, and national vanityhad much increased. The king, though without deserving much love, was sokindly in manner that he was a favourite, and was called the Father ofthe People. His first wife, Anne of Brittany, was an excellent andhigh-spirited woman, who kept the court of France in a better state thanever before or since. 

4. Campaigns of Francis I. --Louis left only two daughters, the elderof whom, Claude, carried Brittany to his male heir, Francis, Count ofAngoulêine. Anne of Brittany had been much averse to the match; butLouis said he kept his mice for his own cats, and gave his daughter andher duchy to Francis as soon as Anne was dead. _Francis I. _ was one ofthe vainest, falsest, and most dashing of Frenchmen. In fact, he was anexaggeration in every way of the national character, and thus became anational hero, much overpraised. He at once resolved to recoverLombardy; and after crossing the Alps encountered an army of Swisstroops, who had been hired to defend the Milanese duchy, on the field ofMarignano. Francis had to fight a desperate battle with them; afterwhich he caused Bayard to dub him knight, though French kings were saidto be born knights. In gaining the victory over these mercenaries, whohad been hitherto deemed invincible, he opened for himself a way intoItaly, and had all Lombardy at his feet. The Pope, Leo X. , met him atBologna, and a concordat took place, by which the French Church becamemore entirely subject to the Pope, while in return all patronage wasgiven up to the crown. The effects were soon seen in the increasedcorruption of the clergy and people. Francis brought home from thisexpedition much taste for Italian art and literature, and all matters ofelegance and ornament made great progress from this time. The greatItalian masters worked for him; Raphael painted some of his mostbeautiful pictures for him, and Leonardo da Vinci came to his court, andthere died in his arms. His palaces, especially that of Blois, wereexceedingly beautiful, in the new classic style, called the Renaissance. Great richness and splendour reigned at court, and set off hispretensions 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 evenher 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 powerin Christendom; but its king was soon to find a mighty and active rival. The old hatred between France and Burgundy again awoke. Mary ofBurgundy, the daughter of Charles the Bold, had married Maximilian, Archduke of Austria and King of the Romans, though never actuallycrowned Emperor. Their son, Philip, married Juana, the daughter ofFerdinand, and heiress of Spain, who lost her senses from grief onPhilip's untimely death; and thus the direct heir to Spain, Austria, andthe Netherlands, was Charles, her eldest son. On the death of Maximilianin 1518, Francis proposed himself to the electors as Emperor, butfailed, in spite of bribery. Charles was chosen, and from that timeFrancis pursued him with unceasing hatred. The claims to Milan andNaples were renewed. Francis sent troops to occupy Milan, and wasfollowing them himself; but the most powerful of all his nobles, theDuke of Bourbon, Constable of France, had been alienated by an injusticeperpetrated on him in favour of the king's mother, and deserted to theSpaniards, offering to assist them and the English in dividing France, while he reserved for himself Provence. His desertion hindered Francisfrom sending support to the troops in Milan, who were forced to retreat. Bayard was shot in the spine while defending the rear-guard, and wasleft to die under a tree. The utmost honour was shown him by theSpaniards; but when Bourbon came near him, he bade him take pity, not onone who was dying as a true soldier, but on himself as a traitor to kingand country. When the French, in 1525, invaded Lombardy, Francissuffered a terrible defeat at Pavia, and was carried a prisoner toMadrid, where he remained for a year, and was only set free on making atreaty by which he was to give up all claims in Italy both to Naples andMilan, also the county of Burgundy and the suzerainty of those Flemishcounties which had been fiefs of the French crown, as well as tosurrender his two sons as hostages for the performance of theconditions. 

6. Wars of Francis and Charles. --All the rest of the king's life wasan attempt to elude or break these conditions, against which he hadprotested in his prison, but when there was no Spaniard present to hearhim do so. The county of Burgundy refused to be transferred; and thePope, Clement VII. , hating the Spanish power in Italy, contrived a freshleague against Charles, in which Francis joined, but was justly rewardedby the miserable loss of another army. His mother and Charles's aunt metat Cambrai, and concluded, in 1529, what was called the Ladies' Peace, which bore as hardly on France as the peace of Madrid, excepting thatCharles gave up his claim to Burgundy. Still Francis's plans were not atan end. He married his second son, Henry, to Catherine, the onlylegitimate child of the great Florentine house of Medici, and tried toinduce Charles to set up an Italian dukedom of Milan for the young pair;but when the dauphin died, and Henry became heir of France, Charleswould not give him any footing in Italy. Francis never let any occasionpass of harassing the Emperor, but was always defeated. Charles onceactually invaded Provence, but was forced to retreat through thedevastation of the country before him by Montmorençy, afterwardsConstable of France. Francis, by loud complaints, and by talking much ofhis honour, contrived to make the world fancy him the injured man, whilehe was really breaking oaths in a shameless manner. At last, in 1537, the king and Emperor met at Aigues Mortes, and came to terms. Francismarried, as his second wife, Charles's sister Eleanor, and in 1540, whenCharles was in haste to quell a revolt in the Low Countries, he asked asafe conduct through France, and was splendidly entertained at Paris. Yet so low was the honour of the French, that Francis scarcely withstoodthe temptation of extorting the duchy of Milan from him when in hispower, and gave so many broad hints that Charles was glad to be past thefrontier. The war was soon renewed. Francis set up a claim to Savoy, asthe key of Italy, allied himself with the Turks and Moors, and slavestaken by them on the coasts of Italy and Spain were actually broughtinto Marseilles. Nice was burnt; but the citadel held out, and as HenryVIII. Had allied himself with the Emperor, and had taken Boulogne, Francis made a final peace at Crespy in 1545. He died only two yearslater, in 1547. 

7. Henry II. --His only surviving son, _Henry II. _, followed the samepolicy. The rise of Protestantism was now dividing the Empire inGermany; and Henry took advantage of the strife which broke out betweenCharles and the Protestant princes to attack the Emperor, and makeconquests across the German border. He called himself Protector of theLiberties of the Germans, and leagued himself with them, seizing Metz, which the Duke of Guise bravely defended when the Emperor tried toretake it. This seizure of Metz was the first attempt of France to makeconquests in Germany, and the beginning of a contest between the Frenchand German peoples which has gone on to the present day. After the siegea five years' truce was made, during which Charles V. Resigned hiscrowns. His brother had been already elected to the Empire, but his sonPhilip II. Became King of Spain and Naples, and also inherited the LowCountries. The Pope, Paul IV. , who was a Neapolitan, and hated theSpanish rule, incited Henry, a vain, weak man, to break the truce andsend one army to Italy, under the Duke of Guise, while another attackedthe frontier of the Netherlands. Philip, assisted by the forces of hiswife, Mary I. Of England, met this last attack with an army commanded bythe Duke of Savoy. It advanced into France, and besieged St. Quentin. The French, under the Constable of Montmorençy, came to relieve thecity, and were utterly defeated, the Constable himself being madeprisoner. His nephew, the Admiral de Coligny, held out St. Quentin tothe last, and thus gave the country time to rally against the invader;and Guise was recalled in haste from Italy. He soon after surprisedCalais, which was thus restored to the French, after having been heldby the English for two hundred years. This was the only conquest theFrench retained when the final peace of Cateau Cambresis was made in theyear 1558, for all else that had been taken on either side was thenrestored. Savoy was given back to its duke, together with the hand ofHenry's sister, Margaret. During a tournament held in honour of thewedding, Henry II. Was mortally injured by the splinter of a lance, in1559; and in the home troubles that followed, all pretensions to Italianpower were dropped by France, after wars which had lasted sixty-fouryears. 

CHAPTER V. 

THE WARS OF RELIGION. 

1. The Bourbons and Guises. --Henry II. Had left four sons, the eldestof whom, _Francis II. _, was only fifteen years old; and the country wasdivided by two great factions--one headed by the Guise family, anoffshoot of the house of Lorraine; the other by the Bourbons, who, beingdescended in a direct male line from a younger son of St. Louis, werethe next heirs to the throne in case the house of Valois should becomeextinct. Antony, the head of the Bourbon family, was called King ofNavarre, because of his marriage with Jeanne d'Albrêt, the queen, in herown right, of this Pyrenean kingdom, which was in fact entirely in thehands of the Spaniards, so that her only actual possession consisted ofthe little French counties of Foix and Béarn. Antony himself was dulland indolent, but his wife was a woman of much ability; and his brother, Louis, Prince of Condé, was full of spirit and fire, and littleinclined to brook the ascendancy which the Duke of Guise and hisbrothers enjoyed at court, partly in consequence of his exploit atCalais, and partly from being uncle to the young Queen Mary of Scotland, wife of Francis II. The Bourbons likewise headed the party among thenobles who hoped to profit by the king's youth to recover the privilegesof which they had been gradually deprived, while the house of Guise wereready to maintain the power of the crown, as long as that meant theirown power. 

2. The Reformation. --The enmity of these two parties was muchincreased by the reaction against the prevalent doctrines and thecorruptions of the clergy. This reaction had begun in the reign ofFrancis I. , when the Bible had been translated into French by twostudents at the University of Paris, and the king's sister, Margaret, Queen of Navarre, had encouraged the Reformers. Francis had leagued withthe German Protestants because they were foes to the Emperor, while hepersecuted the like opinions at home to satisfy the Pope. John Calvin, anative of Picardy, the foremost French reformer, was invited to the freecity of Geneva, and there was made chief pastor, while the scheme oftheology called his "Institutes" became the text-book of the Reformed inFrance, Scotland, and Holland. His doctrine was harsh and stern, aimingat the utmost simplicity of worship, and denouncing the existingpractices so fiercely, that the people, who held themselves to have beenwilfully led astray by their clergy, committed such violence in thechurches that the Catholics loudly called for punishment on them. Theshameful lives of many of the clergy and the wickedness of the Court hadcaused a strong reaction against them, and great numbers of both noblesand burghers became Calvinists. They termed themselves Sacramentariansor Reformers, but their nickname was Huguenots; probably from the Swiss, "_Eidgenossen_" or oath comrades. Henry II. , like his father, protectedGerman Lutherans and persecuted French Calvinists; but the lawyers ofthe Parliament of Paris interposed, declaring that men ought not to beburnt for heresy until a council of the Church should have condemnedtheir opinions, and it was in the midst of this dispute that Henry wasslain. 

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 sincereand earnest Reformers. A third party, headed by the old Constable DeMontmorençy, was Catholic in faith, but not unwilling to join with theHuguenots in pulling down the Guises, and asserting the power of thenobility. A conspiracy for seizing the person of the king anddestroying the Guises at the castle of Amboise was detected in time tomake it fruitless. The two Bourbon princes kept in the background, though Condé was universally known to have been the true head and moverin it, and he was actually brought to trial. The discovery onlystrengthened the hands of Guise. 

4. Regency of Catherine de' Medici. --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 FlorentineCatherine, a wily, cat-like woman, who had always hitherto been kept inthe background, and whose chief desire was to keep things quiet byplaying off one party against the other. She at once released Condé, andfavoured the Bourbons and the Huguenots to keep down the Guises, evenpermitting conferences to see whether the French Church could bereformed so as to satisfy the Calvinists. Proposals were sent by Guise'sbrother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, to the council then sitting at Trent, for vernacular services, the marriage of the clergy, and otheralterations which might win back the Reformers. But an attack by thefollowers of Guise on a meeting of Calvinists at Vassy, of whose ringingof bells his mother had complained, led to the first bloodshed and theoutbreak of a civil war. 

5. The Religious War. --To trace each stage of the war would beimpossible within these limits. It was a war often lulled for a shorttime, and often breaking out again, and in which the actors grew moreand more cruel. The Reformed influence was in the south, the Catholic inthe east. Most of the provincial cities at first held with the Bourbons, for the sake of civil and religious freedom; though the Guise familysucceeded to the popularity of the Burgundian dukes in Paris. StillCatherine persuaded Antony of Bourbon to return to court just as hiswife, Queen Jeanne of Navarre, had become a staunch Calvinist, and whiledreaming of exchanging his claim on Navarre for the kingdom of Sardinia, he was killed on the Catholic side while besieging Rouen. At the firstoutbreak the Huguenots seemed to have by far the greatest influence. Anendeavour was made to seize the king's person, and this led to a battleat Dreux. While it was doubtful Catherine actually declared, "We shallhave to say our prayers in French. " Guise, however, retrieved the day, and though Montmorençy was made prisoner on the one side, Condé wastaken on the other. Orleans was the Huguenot rallying-place, and whilebesieging it Guise himself was assassinated. His death was believed byhis family to be due to the Admiral de Coligny. The city of Rochelle, fortified by Jeanne of Navarre, became the stronghold of the Huguenots. Leader after leader fell--Montmorençy, on the one hand, was killed atMontcontour; Condé, on the other, was shot in cold blood after the fightof Jarnac. A truce followed, but was soon broken again, and in 1571Coligny was the only man of age and standing at the head of the Huguenotparty; while the Catholics had as leaders Henry, Duke of Anjou, theking's brother, and Henry, Duke of Guise, both young men of little morethan twenty. The Huguenots had been beaten at all points, but were stillstrong enough to have wrung from their enemies permission to holdmeetings for public worship within unwalled towns and on the estates ofsuch nobles as held with them. 

6. Catherine's Policy. --Catherine made use of the suspension of armsto try to detach the Huguenot leaders, by entangling them in thepleasures of the court and lowering their sense of duty. The court wasstudiously brilliant. Catherine surrounded herself with a bevy ofladies, called the Queen-Mother's Squadron, whose amusements were foundfor the whole day. The ladies sat at their tapestry frames, whileItalian poetry and romance was read or love-songs sung by the gentlemen;they had garden games and hunting-parties, with every opening for theladies to act as sirens to any whom the queen wished to detach from theprinciples of honour and virtue, and bind to her service. Balls, pageants, and theatricals followed in the evening, and there was hardlya prince or noble in France who was not carried away by these seductionsinto darker habits of profligacy. Jeanne of Navarre dreaded them for herson Henry, whom she kept as long as possible under training in religion, learning, and hardy habits, in the mountains of Béarn; and whenCatherine tried to draw him to court by proposing a marriage between himand her youngest daughter Margaret, Jeanne left him at home, and wentherself to court. Catherine tried in vain to bend her will or discoverher secrets, and her death, early in 1572, while still at court, wasattributed to the queen-mother. 

7. Massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572). --Jeanne's son Henry wasimmediately summoned to conclude the marriage, and came attended by allthe most distinguished Huguenots, though the more wary of them remainedat home, and the Baron of Rosny said, "If that wedding takes place thefavours will be crimson. " The Duke of Guise seems to have resolved ontaking 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, hadbeen attracted by their honesty and uprightness, and was ready to throwhimself into their hands, and escape from hers. An abortive attempt onGuise's part to murder the Admiral Coligny led to all the Huguenotsgoing about armed, and making demonstrations which alarmed both thequeen and the people of Paris. Guise and the Duke of Anjou were, therefore, allowed to work their will, and to rouse the bloodthirstinessof the Paris mob. At midnight of the 24th of August, 1572, St. Bartholomew's night, the bell of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerroisbegan to ring, and the slaughter was begun by men distinguished by awhite sleeve. The king sheltered his Huguenot surgeon and nurse in hisroom. The young King of Navarre and Prince of Condé were threatened intoconforming to the Church, but every other Huguenot who could be foundwas massacred, from Coligny, who was slain kneeling in his bedroom bythe followers of Guise, down to the poorest and youngest, and thestreets resounded with the cry, "Kill! kill!" In every city where royaltroops and Guisard partisans had been living among Huguenots, the samehideous work took place for three days, sparing neither age nor sex. Howmany thousands died, it is impossible to reckon, but the work was sowholesale that none were left except those in the southern cities, wherethe Huguenots had been too strong to be attacked, and in those castleswhere the seigneur was of "the religion. " The Catholic party thought thedestruction complete, the court went in state to return thanks fordeliverance from a supposed plot, while Coligny's body was hung on agibbet. The Pope ordered public thanksgivings, while Queen Elizabeth puton mourning, and the Emperor Maximilian II. , alone among Catholicprinces, showed any horror or indignation. But the heart of the unhappyyoung king was broken by the guilt he had incurred. Charles IX. Sankinto a decline, and died in 1574, finding no comfort save in the surgeonand nurse he had saved. 

8. The League. --His brother, _Henry III. _, who had been elected Kingof Poland, threw up that crown in favour of that of France. He was of avain, false, weak character, superstitiously devout, and at the sametime ferocious, so as to alienate every one. All were ashamed of a manwho dressed in the extreme of foppery, with a rosary of death's heads athis girdle, and passed from wild dissipation to abject penance. He wascalled "the Paris Church-warden and the Queen's Hairdresser, " for hepassed from her toilette to the decoration of the walls of churches withilluminations cut out of old service-books. Sometimes he went aboutsurrounded with little dogs, sometimes flogged himself walking barefootin a procession, and his _mignons_, or favourites, were the scandal ofthe country by their pride, license, and savage deeds. The war broke outagain, and his only remaining brother, Francis, Duke of Alençon, anequally hateful and contemptible being, fled from court to the Huguenotarmy, hoping to force his brother into buying his submission; but whenthe King of Navarre had followed him and begun the struggle in earnest, he accepted the duchy of Anjou, and returned to his allegiance. Franciswas invited by the insurgent Dutch to become their chief, and spent sometime in Holland, but returned, unsuccessful and dying. As the king waschildless, the next male heir was Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre, whohad fled from court soon after Alençon returned to the Huguenot faith, and was reigning in his two counties of Béarn and Foix, the head of theHuguenots. In the resolve never to permit a heretic to wear the Frenchcrown, 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 againmastered by the duke at Blois, and could so ill brook his arrogance, asto have recourse to assassination. He caused him to be slain at thepalace at Blois in 1588. The fury of the League was so great that HenryIII. Was driven to take refuge with the King of Navarre, and they weretogether besieging Paris, when Henry III. Was in his turn murdered by amonk, named Clement, in 1589. 

9. Henry IV. --The Leaguers proclaimed as king an old uncle of theKing of Navarre, the Cardinal of Bourbon, but all the more moderateCatholics rallied round Henry of Navarre, who took the title of _HenryIV. _ At Ivry, in Normandy, Henry met the force of Leaguers, and defeatedthem by his brilliant courage. "Follow my white plume, " his last orderto 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 byalmost fanatical fury, and while he was besieging it France was invadedfrom the Netherlands. The old Cardinal of Bourbon was now dead, andPhilip II. Considered his daughter Isabel, whose mother was the eldestdaughter of Henry II. , to be rightful Queen of France. He sent thereforehis ablest general, the Duke of Parma, to co-operate with the Leaguersand place her on the throne. A war of strategy was carried on, duringwhich Henry kept the enemy at bay, but could do no more, since thelarger number of his people, though intending to have no king buthimself, did not wish him to gain too easy a victory, lest in that casehe should remain a Calvinist. However, he was only waiting to recanttill he could do so with a good grace. He really preferred Catholicism, and had only been a political Huguenot; and his best and most faithfuladviser, the Baron of Rosny, better known as Duke of Sully, though astaunch Calvinist himself, recommended the change as the only means ofrestoring peace to the kingdom. There was little more resistance toHenry after he had again been received by the Church in 1592. Paris, weary of the long war, opened its gates in 1593, and the inhabitantscrowded round him with ecstasy, so that he said, "Poor people, they arehungry for the sight of a king!" The Leaguers made their peace, and whenPhilip of Spain again attacked Henry, the young Duke of Guise was one ofthe first to hasten to the defence. Philip saw that there were nofurther hopes for his daughter, and peace was made in 1596. 

10. The Edict of Nantes. --Two years later, in 1598, Henry put forthwhat was called the Edict of Nantes, because first registered in thatparliament. It secured to the Huguenots equal civil rights with those ofthe Catholics, accepted their marriages, gave them, under restrictions, permission to meet for worship and for consultations, and granted themcities for the security of their rights, of which La Rochelle was thechief. The Calvinists had been nearly exterminated in the north, butthere were still a large number in the south of France, and the burghersof the chief southern cities were mostly Huguenot. The war had been fromthe first a very horrible one; there had been savage slaughter, andstill more savage reprisals on each side. The young nobles had beentrained into making a fashion of ferocity, and practising graceful waysof striking death-blows. Whole districts had been laid waste, churchesand abbeys destroyed, tombs rifled, and the whole population accustomedto every sort of horror and suffering; while nobody but Henry IV. Himself, and the Duke of Sully, had any notion either of statesmanshipor of religious toleration. 

11. Henry's Plans. --Just as the reign of Louis XI. Had been a periodof rest and recovery from the English wars, so that of Henry IV. Was oneof restoration from the ravages of thirty years of intermittent civilwar. The king himself not only had bright and engaging manners, but wasa man of large heart and mind; and Sully did much for the welfare of thecountry. Roads, canals, bridges, postal communications, manufactures, extended commerce, all owed their promotion to him, and broughtprosperity to the burgher class; and the king was especially endeared tothe peasantry by his saying that he hoped for the time when no cottagewould be without a good fowl in its pot. The great silk manufactories ofsouthern France chiefly arose under his encouragement, and there wasprosperity of every kind. The Church itself was in a far better statethan before. Some of the best men of any time were then living--inespecial Vincent de Paul, who did much to improve the training of theparochial clergy, and who founded the order of Sisters of Charity, whoprevented the misery of the streets of Paris from ever being sofrightful as in those days when deserted children became the prey ofwolves, dogs, and pigs. The nobles, who had grown into insolence duringthe wars, either as favourites of Henry III. Or as zealous supporters ofthe Huguenot cause, were subdued and tamed. The most noted of these werethe Duke of Bouillon, the owner of the small principality of Sedan, whowas reduced to obedience by the sight of Sully's formidable train ofartillery; and the Marshal Duke of Biron, who, thinking that Henry hadnot sufficiently rewarded his services, intrigued with Spain and Savoy, and was beheaded for his treason. Hatred to the house of Austria inSpain and Germany was as keen as ever in France; and in 1610 Henry IV. Was prepared for another war on the plea of a disputed succession to theduchy of Cleves. The old fanaticism still lingered in Paris, and Henryhad been advised to beware of pageants there; but it was necessary thathis second wife, Mary de' Medici, should be crowned before he went tothe war, as she was to be left regent. Two days after the coronation, asHenry was going to the arsenal to visit his old friend Sully, he wasstabbed to the heart in his coach, in the streets of Paris, by a fanaticnamed Ravaillac. The French call him Le Grand Monarque; and he was oneof the most attractive and benevolent of men, winning the hearts of allwho approached him, but the immorality of his life did much to confirmthe already low standard that prevailed among princes and nobles inFrance. 

12. The States-General of 1614. --Henry's second wife, Mary de' Medici, became regent, for her son, _Louis XIII. _, was only ten years old, andindeed his character was so weak that his whole reign was only one longminority. Mary de' Medici was entirely under the dominion of an Italianfavourite named Concini, and his wife, and their whole endeavour was toamass riches for themselves and keep the young king in helplessignorance, while they undid all that Sully had effected, and took bribesshamelessly. The Prince of Condé tried to overthrow them, and, in hopesof strengthening herself, in 1614 Mary summoned together theStates-General. There came 464 members, 132 for the nobles, 140 for theclergy, and 192 for the third estate, _i. E. _ the burghers, and these, being mostly lawyers and magistrates from the provinces, were resolvedto make their voices heard. Taxation was growing worse and worse. Notonly was it confined to the burgher and peasant class, exempting theclergy and the nobles, among which last were included their families tothe remotest generation, but it had become the court custom to multiplyoffices, in order to pension the nobles, and keep them quiet; and this, together with the expenses of the army, made the weight of taxationruinous. Moreover, the presentation to the civil offices held bylawyers was made hereditary in their families, on payment of a sum down, and of fees at the death of each holder. All these abuses werecomplained of; and one of the deputies even told the nobility that ifthey did not learn to treat the despised classes below them as youngerbrothers, they would lay up a terrible store of retribution forthemselves. A petition to the king was drawn up, and was received, butnever answered. The doors of the house of assembly were closed--themembers were told it was by order of the king--and the States-Generalnever met again for 177 years, when the storm was just ready to fall. 

13. The Siege of Rochelle. --The rottenness of the State was chieflyowing to the nobility, who, as long as they were allowed to grind downtheir peasants and shine at court, had no sense of duty or publicspirit, and hated the burghers and lawyers far too much to make commoncause 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 powertill 1614, when one of the king's gentlemen, Albert de Luynes, plottedwith the king himself and a few of his guards for his deliverance. Nothing could be easier than the execution. The king ordered thecaptain 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, andLouis exclaimed, "At last I am a king. " But it was not in him to be aking, and he never was one all his life. He only passed under thedominion of De Luynes, who was a high-spirited young noble. TheHuguenots had been holding assemblies, which were considered morepolitical than religious, and their towns of security were a grievanceto royalty. War broke out again, and Louis himself went with De Luynesto besiege Montauban. The place was taken, but disease broke out in thearmy, and De Luynes died. There was a fresh struggle for power betweenthe queen-mother and the Prince of Condé, ending in both being set asideby the queen's almoner, Armand de Richelieu, Bishop of Luçon, andafterwards a cardinal, the ablest statesman then in Europe, who gainedcomplete dominion over the king and country, and ruled them both with arod of iron. The Huguenots were gradually driven out of all theirstrongholds, till only Rochelle remained to them. This city was bravelyand patiently defended by the magistrates and the Duke of Rohan, withhopes of succour from England, until these being disconcerted by themurder of the Duke of Buckingham, they were forced to surrender, afterhaving held out for more than a year. Louis XIII. Entered in triumph, deprived the city of all its privileges, and thus in 1628 concluded thewar that had begun by the attack of the Guisards on the congregation atVassy, in 1561. The lives and properties of the Huguenots were stillsecure, but all favour was closed against them, and every encouragementheld out to them to join the Church. Many of the worst scandals had beenremoved, and the clergy were much improved; and, from whatever motive itmight be, many of the more influential Huguenots began to conform to theState religion. 

CHAPTER VI. 

POWER OF THE CROWN. 

1. Richelieu's Administration. --Cardinal de Richelieu's whole idea ofstatesmanship consisted in making the King of France the greatest ofprinces at home and abroad. To make anything great of Louis XIII. , whowas feeble alike in mind and body, was beyond any one's power, andRichelieu kept him in absolute subjection, allowing him a favourite withwhom to hunt, talk, and amuse himself, but if the friend attempted torouse the king to shake off the yoke, crushing him ruthlessly. It wasthe crown rather than the king that the cardinal exalted, putting downwhatever resisted. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, the king's only brother, made a futile struggle for power, and freedom of choice in marriage, butwas 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, wasbrought to the block, amid the pity and terror of all France. Whoeverseemed dangerous to the State, or showed any spirit of independence, was marked by the cardinal, and suffered a hopeless imprisonment, ifnothing worse; but at the same time his government was intelligent andable, and promoted prosperity, as far as was possible where there wassuch a crushing of individual spirit and enterprise. Richelieu's plan, in fact, was to found a despotism, though a wise and well-ordereddespotism, at home, while he made France great by conquests abroad. Andat this time the ambition of France found a favourable field in thestate both of Germany and of Spain. 

2. The War in Flanders and Italy. --The Thirty Years' War had beenraging in Germany for many years, and France had taken no part in it, beyond encouraging the Swedes and the Protestant Germans, as the enemiesof the Emperor. But the policy of Richelieu required that the disunionbetween its Catholic and Protestant states should be maintained, andwhen things began to tend towards peace from mutual exhaustion, thecardinal interfered, and induced the Protestant party to continue thewar by giving them money and reinforcements. A war had already begun inItaly on behalf of the Duke of Nevers, who had become heir to the duchyof Mantua, but whose family had lived in France so long that the Emperorand the King of Spain supported a more distant claim of the Duke ofSavoy to part of the duchy, rather than admit a French prince intoItaly. 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 meansof acquiring the Netherlands, which belonged to the Spanish crown. Atfirst nothing important was done, but the Spaniards and Germans wereworn out, while two young and able captains were growing up among theFrench--the Viscount of Turenne, younger son to the Duke of Bouillon, and the Duke of Enghien, eldest son of the Prince of Condé--andRichelieu's policy soon secured a brilliant career of success. Elsass, Lorraine, Artois, Catalonia, and Savoy, all fell into the hands of theFrench, and from a chamber of sickness the cardinal directed the affairsof three armies, as well as made himself feared and respected by thewhole kingdom. Cinq Mars, the last favourite he had given the king, plotted his overthrow, with the help of the Spaniards, but was detectedand executed, when the great minister was already at death's door. Richelieu recommended an Italian priest, Julius Mazarin, whom he hadtrained to work under him, to carry on the government, and died in theDecember of 1642. The king only survived him five months, dying on the14th of May, 1643. The war was continued on the lines Richelieu had laiddown, and four days after the death of Louis XIII. The army in the LowCountries gained a splendid victory at Rocroy, under the Duke ofEnghien, entirely destroying the old Spanish infantry. The battles ofFreiburg, Nordlingen, and Lens raised the fame of the French generals tothe highest pitch, and in 1649 reduced the Emperor to make peace in thetreaty of Münster. 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 continuedtill 1659, when Louis XIV. Engaged to marry Maria Theresa, a daughter ofthe King of Spain. 

3. The Fronde. --When an heir had long been despaired of, Anne ofAustria, the wife of Louis XIII. , had become the mother of two sons, theeldest of whom, _Louis XIV. _, was only five years old at the time of hisfather's death. The queen-mother became regent, and trusted entirely toMazarin, who had become a cardinal, and pursued the policy of Richelieu. But what had been endured from a man by birth a French noble, wasintolerable from a low-born Italian. "After the lion comes the fox, " wasthe saying, and the Parliament of Paris made a last stand by refusing toregister the royal edict for fresh taxes, being supported both by theburghers of Paris, and by a great number of the nobility, who werepersonally jealous of Mazarin. This party was called the Fronde, becausein their discussions each man stood forth, launched his speech, andretreated, just as the boys did with slings (_fronde_) and stones in thestreets. The struggle became serious, but only a few of the lawyers inthe parliament had any real principle or public spirit; all the otheractors caballed out of jealousy and party spirit, making tools of "themen of the gown, " whom they hated and despised, though mostly far theirsuperiors in worth and intelligence. Anne of Austria held fast byMazarin, and was supported by the Duke of Enghien, whom his father'sdeath had made Prince of Condé. Condé's assistance enabled her toblockade Paris and bring the parliament to terms, which concluded thefirst act of the Fronde, with the banishment of Mazarin as a peaceoffering. Condé, however, became so arrogant and overbearing that thequeen caused him to be imprisoned, whereupon his wife and his otherfriends began a fresh war for his liberation, and the queen was forcedto yield; but he again showed himself so tyrannical that the queen andthe parliament became reconciled and united to put him down, giving thecommand of the troops to Turenne. Again there was a battle at the gatesof Paris, in which all Condé's friends were wounded, and he himself soentirely worsted that he had to go into exile, when he entered theSpanish service, while Mazarin returned to power at home. 

4. The Court of Anne of Austria. --The court of France, though neverpure, was much improved during the reign of Louis XIII. And the regencyof Anne of Austria. There was a spirit of romance and grace about it, somewhat cumbrous and stately, but outwardly pure and refined, and quitea step out of the gross and open vice of the former reigns. The Duchessde Rambouillet, a lady of great grace and wit, made her house the centreof a brilliant society, which set itself to raise and refine themanners, literature, and language of the time. No word that wasconsidered vulgar or coarse was allowed to pass muster; and though inprocess of time this censorship became pedantic and petty, there is nodoubt that much was done to purify both the language and the tone ofthought. Poems, plays, epigrams, eulogiums, and even sermons wererehearsed before the committee of taste in the Hôtel de Rambouillet, anda wonderful new stimulus was there given, not only to ornamental but tosolid literature. Many of the great men who made France illustrious wereeither ending or beginning their careers at this time. Memoir writingspecially flourished, and the characters of the men and women of thecourt are known to us on all sides. Cardinal de Retz and the Duke ofRochefoucauld, both deeply engaged in the Fronde, have left, the onememoirs, the other maxims of great power of irony. Mme. De Motteville, one of the queen's ladies, wrote a full history of the court. BlaisePascal, one of the greatest geniuses of all times, was attachinghimself to the Jansenists. This religious party, so called from Jansen, a Dutch priest, whose opinions were imputed to them, had sprung uparound the reformed convent of Port Royal, and numbered among them someof the ablest and best men of the time; but the Jesuits considered themto hold false doctrine, and there was a continual debate, ending atlength in the persecution of the Jansenists. Pascal's "ProvincialLetters, " exposing the Jesuit system, were among the ablest writings ofthe age. Philosophy, poetry, science, history, art, were all makinggreat progress, though there was a stateliness and formality in all thatwas said and done, redolent of the Spanish queen's etiquette and thefastidious refinement of the Hôtel Rambouillet. 

5. Court of Louis XIV. --The attempt from the earliest times of theFrench monarchy had been to draw all government into the hands of thesovereign, and the suppression of the Fronde completed the work. LouisXIV. , though ill educated, was a man of considerable ability, muchindustry, and great force of character, arising from a profound beliefthat France was the first country in the world, and himself the first ofFrenchmen; and he had a magnificent courtesy of demeanour, which soimpressed all who came near him as to make them his willing slaves. "There is enough in him to make four kings and one respectable manbesides" was what Mazarin said of him; and when in 1661 the cardinaldied, the king showed himself fully equal to becoming his own primeminister. "The State is myself, " he said, and all centred upon him sothat no room was left for statesmen. The court was, however, in a mostbrilliant state. There had been an unusual outburst of talent of everykind in the lull after the Wars of Religion, and in generals, thinkers, artists, and men of literature, France was unusually rich. The king hada wonderful power of self-assertion, which attached them all to himalmost as if he were a sort of divinity. The stately, elaborate Spanishetiquette brought in by his mother, Anne of Austria, became absolutelyan engine of government. Henry IV. Had begun the evil custom of keepingthe nobles quiet by giving them situations at court, with pensionsattached, and these offices were multiplied to the most enormous andabsurd degree, so that every royal personage had some hundreds ofpersonal attendants. Princes of the blood and nobles of every degreewere contented to hang about the court, crowding into the most narrowlodgings at Versailles, and thronging its anterooms; and to be orderedto remain in the country was a most severe punishment. 

6. France under Louis XIV. --There was, in fact, nothing but the chaseto occupy a gentleman on his own estate, for he was allowed no dutiesor responsibilities. Each province had a governor or _intendant_, a sortof viceroy, and the administration of the cities was managed chiefly onthe part of the king, even the mayors obtaining their posts by purchase. The unhappy peasants had to pay in the first place the taxes toGovernment, out of which were defrayed an intolerable number ofpensions, many for useless offices; next, the rents and dues whichsupported their lord's expenditure at court; and, thirdly, the tithesand fees of the clergy. Besides which, they were called off from thecultivation of their own fields for a certain number of days to work atthe roads; their horses might be used by royal messengers; their lord'scrops had to be got in by their labour gratis, while their own werespoiling; and, in short, the only wonder is how they existed at all. Their hovels and their food were wretched, and any attempt to amendtheir condition on the part of their lord would have been looked on asbetokening dangerous designs, and probably have landed him in theBastille. The peasants of Brittany--where the old constitution had beenless entirely ruined--and those of Anjou were in a less oppressedcondition, and in the cities trade flourished. Colbert, thecomptroller-general of the finances, was so excellent a manager that thepressure of taxation was endurable in his time, and he promoted newmanufactures, such as glass at Cherbourg, cloth at Abbeville, silk atLyons; he also tried to promote commerce and colonization, and to createa navy. There was a great appearance of prosperity, and in everydepartment there was wonderful ability. The Reformation had led to aconsiderable revival among the Roman Catholics themselves. Thetheological colleges established in the last reign had much improved thetone of the clergy. Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, was one of the most notedpreachers who ever existed, and Fénélon, Archbishop of Cambrai, one ofthe best of men. A reform of discipline, begun in the convent of PortRoyal, ended by attracting and gathering together some of the mostexcellent and able persons in France--among them Blaise Pascal, a man ofmarvellous genius and depth of thought, and Racine, the chief Frenchdramatic poet. Their chief director, the Abbot of St. Cyran, washowever, a pupil of Jansen, a Dutch ecclesiastic, whose views onabstruse questions of grace were condemned by the Jesuits; and as thePort-Royalists would not disown the doctrines attributed to him, theywere discouraged and persecuted throughout Louis's reign, more becausehe was jealous of what would not bend to his will than for any real wantof conformity. Pascal's famous "Provincial Letters" were put forthduring this controversy; and in fact, the literature of France reachedits Augustan age during this reign, and the language acquired itsstandard perfection. 

7. War in the Low Countries. --Maria Theresa, the queen of Louis XIV. , was the child of the first marriage of Philip IV. Of Spain; and on herfather's death in 1661, Louis, on pretext of an old law in Brabant, which gave the daughters of a first marriage the preference over thesons 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 oldstruggle between France and Burgundy, and of the endeavour of France tostretch her frontier to the Rhine. At first England, Holland, and Swedenunited against him, and obliged him to make the peace of Aix-la-Chapellein 1668; but he then succeeded in bribing Charles II. Of England toforsake the cause of the Dutch, and the war was renewed 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 andSpain, through a six years' terrible war, in which the great Turenne waskilled at Saltzbach, in Germany. At last, from exhaustion, all partieswere compelled to conclude the peace of Nimeguen in 1678. Takingadvantage of undefined terms in this treaty, Louis seized various citiesbelonging to German princes, and likewise the free imperial city ofStrassburg, when all Germany was too much worn out by the long war tooffer resistance. France was full of self-glorification, the king wasviewed almost as a demi-god, and the splendour of his court and of hisbuildings, especially the palace at Versailles, with its gardens andfountains, kept up the delusion of his greatness. 

8. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. --In 1685 Louis supposed that theHuguenots had been so reduced in numbers that the Edict of Nantes couldbe repealed. All freedom of worship was denied them; their ministerswere banished, but their flocks were not allowed to follow them. Iftaken while trying to escape, men were sent to the galleys, women tocaptivity, and children to convents for education. Dragoons werequartered on families to torment them into going to mass. A few madehead in the wild moors of the Cevennes under a brave youth namedCavalier, and others endured severe persecution in the south of France. Dragoons were quartered on them, who made it their business to tormentand insult them; their marriages were declared invalid, their childrentaken from them to be educated in the Roman Catholic faith. A greatnumber, amounting to at least 100, 000, succeeded in escaping, chiefly toPrussia, Holland, and England, whither they carried many of themanufactures that Colbert had taken so much pains to establish. Many ofthose who settled in England were silk weavers, and a large colony wasthus established at Spitalfields, which long kept up its Frenchcharacter. 

9. The War of the Palatinate. --This brutal act of tyranny was followedby a fresh attack on Germany. On the plea of a supposed inheritance ofhis sister-in-law, the Duchess of Orleans, Louis invaded the Palatinateon 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, JamesII. Of England, after he had fled and abdicated on the arrival ofWilliam of Orange. During this war, however, that generation of able menwho had grown up with Louis began to pass away, and his success was notso uniform; while, Colbert being dead, taxation began to be more felt bythe exhausted people, and peace was made at Ryswick in 1697. 

10. The War of the Succession in Spain. --The last of the four greatwars of Louis's reign was far more unfortunate. Charles II. Of Spaindied childless, naming as his successor a French prince, Philip, Duke ofAnjou, the second son of the only son of Charles's eldest sister, thequeen 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 Leopold, who was the descendant of youngersisters of the royal Spanish line, but did not excite the fear andjealousy of Europe, as did a scion of the already overweening house ofBourbon. This led to the War of the Spanish Succession, England andHolland supporting Charles, and fighting with Louis in Spain, Savoy, andthe Low Countries. In Spain Louis was ultimately successful, and hisgrandson Philip V. Retained the throne; but the troops which his ally, the Elector of Bavaria, introduced into Germany were totally overthrownat Blenheim by the English army under the Duke of Marlborough, and theAustrian under Prince Eugene, a son of a younger branch of the house ofSavoy. Eugene had been bred up in France, but, having bitterly offendedLouis by calling him a stage king for show and a chess king for use, hadentered the Emperor's service, and was one of his chief enemies. Heaided his cousin, Duke Victor Amadeus of Savoy, in repulsing the Frenchattacks in that quarter, gained a great victory at Turin, and advancedinto Provence. Marlborough was likewise in full career of victory in theLow Countries, and gained there the battle of Ramillies. 

11. Peace of Utrecht. --Louis had outlived his good fortune. His greatgenerals and statesmen had passed away. The country was exhausted, famine was preying on the wretched peasantry, supplies could not befound, and one city after another, of those Louis had seized, wasretaken. New victories at Oudenarde and Malplaquet were gained over theFrench armies; and, though Louis was as resolute and undaunted as ever, his affairs were in a desperate state, when he was saved by a suddenchange of policy on the part of Queen Anne of England, who recalled herarmy and left her allies to continue the contest alone. Eugene was not amatch for France without Marlborough, and the Archduke Charles, havingsucceeded his brother the Emperor, gave up his pretensions to the crownof Spain, so that it became possible to conclude a general peace atUtrecht in 1713. By this time Louis was seventy-five years of age, andhad suffered grievous family losses--first by the death of his only son, and then of his eldest grandson, a young man of much promise ofexcellence, who, with his wife died of malignant measles, probably fromignorant medical treatment, since their infant, whose illness wasconcealed by his nurses, was the only one of the family who survived. The old king, in spite of sorrow and reverse, toiled with indomitableenergy to the end of his reign, the longest on record, having lastedseventy-two years, when he died in 1715. He had raised the French crownto its greatest splendour, but had sacrificed the country to himself andhis false notions of greatness. 

12. The Regency. --The crown now descended to _Louis XV. _, a weaklychild of four years old. His great-grandfather had tried to provide forhis good by leaving the chief seat in the council of regency to his ownillegitimate son, the Duke of Maine, the most honest and conscientiousman then in the family, but, though clever, unwise and very unpopular. His birth caused the appointment to be viewed as an outrage by thenobility, and the king's will was set aside. The first prince of theblood royal, Philip, Duke of Orleans, the late king's nephew, becamesole regent--a man of good ability, but of easy, indolent nature; andwho, in the enforced idleness of his life, had become dissipated andvicious beyond all imagination or description. He was kindly andgracious, and his mother said of him that he was like the prince in afable whom all the fairies had endowed with gifts, except one malignantsprite who had prevented any favour being of use to him. In the generalexhaustion produced by the wars of Louis XIV. , a Scotchman named JamesLaw began the great system of hollow speculation which has continuedever since to tempt people to their ruin. He tried raising sums of moneyon national credit, and also devised a company who were to lend money tofound a great settlement on the Mississippi, the returns from which wereto be enormous. Every one speculated in shares, and the wildestexcitement prevailed. Law's house was mobbed by people seekinginterviews with him, and nobles disguised themselves in liveries to getaccess to him. Fortunes were made one week and lost the next, andfinally the whole plan proved to have been a mere baseless scheme; ruinfollowed, and the misery of the country increased. The Duke of Orleansdied suddenly in 1723. The king was now legally of age; but he was dulland backward, and little fitted for government, and the country wasreally ruled by the Duke of Bourbon, and after him by Cardinal Fleury, an aged statesman, but filled with the same schemes of ambition asRichelieu or Mazarin. 

13. War of the Austrian Succession. --Thus France plunged into newwars. Louis XV. Married the daughter of Stanislas Lecksinsky, a Polishnoble, who, after being raised to the throne, was expelled by Austrianintrigues and violence. Louis was obliged to take up arms on behalf ofhis father-in-law, but was bought off by a gift from the Emperor CharlesVI. Of the duchy of Lorraine to Stanislas, to revert to his daughterafter his death and thus become united to France. Lorraine belonged toDuke Francis, the husband of Maria Theresa, eldest daughter to theEmperor, and Francis received instead the duchy of Tuscany; while allthe chief Powers in Europe agreed to the so-called Pragmatic Sanction, by which Charles decreed that Maria Theresa should inherit Austria andHungary and the other hereditary states on her father's death, to theexclusion of the daughters of his elder brother, Joseph. When CharlesVI. Died, however, in 1740, a great European war began on this matter. Frederick II. Of Prussia would neither allow Maria Theresa's claim tothe hereditary states, nor join in electing her husband to the Empire;and France took part against her, sending Marshal Belleisle to supportthe Elector of Bavaria, who had been chosen Emperor. George II. OfEngland held with Maria Theresa, and gained a victory over the French atDettingen, in 1744. Louis XV. Then joined his army, and the battle ofFontenoy, in 1745, was one of the rare victories of France over England. Another victory followed at Laufeldt, but elsewhere France had had heavylosses, and in 1748, after the death of Charles VII. , peace was made atAix-la-Chapelle. 

14. The Seven Years' War. --Louis, dull and selfish by nature, had beenabsolutely led into vice by his courtiers, especially the Duke ofBourbon, who feared his becoming active in public affairs. He had nosense of duty to his people; and whereas his great-grandfather hadsought display and so-called glory, he cared solely for pleasure, andthat of the grossest and most sensual order, so that his court was ahotbed of shameless vice. All that could be wrung from the impoverishedcountry was lavished on the overgrown establishments of every member ofthe royal family, in pensions to nobles, and in shameful amusements ofthe king. In 1756 another war broke out, in consequence of the hatredsleft between Prussia and Austria by the former struggle. Maria Theresahad, by flatteries she ought to have disdained, gained over France totake part with her, and England was allied with Frederick II. In thiswar France and England chiefly fought in their distant possessions, where the English were uniformly successful; and after seven yearsanother peace followed, leaving the boundaries of the German states justwhere they were before, after a frightful amount of bloodshed. ButFrance had had terrible losses. She was driven from India, and lost allher settlements in America and Canada. 

15. France under Louis XV. --Meantime the gross vice and licentiousnessof the king was beyond description, and the nobility retained about thecourt by the system established by Louis XIV. Were, if not his equals incrime, equally callous to the suffering caused by the recklessexpensiveness of the court, the whole cost of which was defrayed by theburghers and peasants. No taxes were asked from clergy or nobles, andthis latter term included all sprung of a noble line to the utmostgeneration. The owner of an estate had no means of benefiting histenants, even if he wished it; for all matters, even of localgovernment, depended on the crown. All he could do was to draw hisincome from them, and he was often forced, either by poverty or by hisexpensive life, to strain to the utmost the old feudal system. If helived at court, his expenses were heavy, and only partly met by hispension, likewise raised from the taxes paid by the poor farmer; if helived in the country, he was a still greater tyrant, and was called bythe people a _hobereau_, or kite. No career was open to his youngersons, except in the court, the Church, or the army, and here theymonopolized the prizes, obtaining all the richer dioceses and abbeys, and all the promotion in the army. The magistracies were almost allhereditary among lawyers, who had bought them for their families fromthe crown, and paid for the appointment of each son. The officialsattached to each member of the royal family were almost incredible innumber, and all paid by the taxes. The old _gabelle_, or salt-tax, hadgone on ever since the English wars, and every member of a family had topay it, not according to what they used, but what they were supposed toneed. Every pig was rated at what he ought to require for salting. Everycow, sheep, or hen had a toll to pay to king, lord, bishop--sometimesalso to priest and abbey. The peasant was called off from his own workto give the dues of labour to the roads or to his lord. He might notspread manure that could interfere with the game, nor drive away thepartridges that ate his corn. So scanty were his crops that faminesslaying thousands passed unnoticed, and even if, by any wonder, prosperity smiled on the peasant, he durst not live in any kind ofcomfort, lest the stewards of his lord or of Government should pounce onhis wealth. 

16. Reaction. --Meantime there was a strong feeling that change mustcome. Classical literature was studied, and Greek and Roman manners andinstitutions were thought ideal perfection. There was great disgust atthe fetters of a highly artificial life in which every one was bound, and at the institutions which had been so misused. Writers arose, amongwhom Voltaire and Rousseau were the most eminent, who aimed at theoverthrow of all the ideas which had come to be thus abused. The one byhis caustic wit, the other by his enthusiastic simplicity, gainedwilling ears, and, the writers in a great Encyclopædia then in course ofpublication, contrived to attack most of the notions which had beenhitherto taken for granted, and were closely connected with faith andwith government. The king himself was dully aware that he was living onthe crust of a volcano, but he said it would last his time; and so itdid. Louis XV. Died of smallpox in 1774, leaving his grandsons to reapthe harvest that generations had been sowing. 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE REVOLUTION. 

1. Attempts at Reform. --It was evident that a change must be made. _Louis XVI. _ himself knew it, and slurred over the words in hiscoronation 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 thanhe could hardly have dealt with the dead-lock above, without causing afrightful outbreak of the pent-up masses below. His queen, MarieAntoinette, was hated for being of Austrian birth, and, though aspotless and noble woman, her most trivial actions gave occasion tocalumnies founded on the crimes of the last generation. Unfortunately, the king, though an honest and well-intentioned man, was totally unfitto guide a country through a dangerous crisis. His courage was passive, his manners were heavy, dull, and shy, and, though steadily industrious, he was slow of comprehension and unready in action; and reformation wasthe more difficult because to abolish the useless court offices wouldhave been utter starvation to many of their holders, who had nothing buttheir 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-lockwhich made improvement impossible. The Government was bankrupt, whilethe taxes were intolerable, and the first years of the reign were spentin experiments. Necker, a Swiss banker, was invited to take the chargeof the finances, and large loans were made to Government, for which hecontrived to pay interest regularly; some reduction was made in theexpenditure; but the king's old minister, Maurepas, grew jealous of hispopularity, and obtained his dismissal. The French took the part of theAmerican colonies in their revolt from England, and the war thusoccasioned brought on an increase of the load of debt, the generaldistress increased, and it became necessary to devise some mode oftaxing which might divide the burthens between the whole nation, insteadof making the peasants pay all and the nobles and clergy nothing. Louisdecided on calling together the Notables, or higher nobility; but theywere by no means disposed to tax themselves, and only abused hisministers. He then resolved on convoking the whole States-General of thekingdom, which had never met since the reign of Louis XIII. 

2. The States-General. --No one exactly knew the limits of the powersof the States-General when it met in 1789. Nobles, clergy, and thedeputies who represented the commonalty, all formed the assembly atVersailles; and though the king would have kept apart these last, whowere called the _Tiers Etât_, or third estate, they refused to withdrawfrom the great hall of Versailles. The Count of Mirabeau, the youngerson of a noble family, who sat as a deputy, declared that nothing shortof 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 adeputy all counted alike. The party names of democrat for those whowanted to exalt the power of the people, and of aristocrat for those whomaintained the privileges of the nobles, came into use, and the mostextreme democrats were called Jacobins, from an old convent of Jacobinfriars, 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 aristocrats, hanging them to the iron rods by which lamps were suspended over thestreets. The king in alarm drew the army nearer, and it was supposedthat he was going to prevent all change by force of arms. Thereupon thecitizens enrolled themselves as a National Guard, wearing cockades ofred, blue, and white, and commanded by La Fayette, a noble of democraticopinions, who had run away at seventeen to serve in the American War. Ona report that the cannon of the Bastille had been pointed upon Paris, the mob rose in a frenzy, rushed upon it, hanged the guard, andabsolutely tore down the old castle to its foundations, though they didnot find a single prisoner in it. "This is a revolt, " said Louis, whenhe heard of it. "Sire, it is a revolution, " was the answer. 

3. The New Constitution. --The mob had found out its power. Thefishwomen of the markets, always a peculiar and privileged class, werefrantically excited, and were sure to be foremost in all thedemonstrations stirred up by Jacobins. There was a great scarcity ofprovisions in Paris, and this, together with the continual dread thatreforms would be checked by violence, maddened the people. On a reportthat the Guards had shown enthusiasm for the king, the whole populacecame pouring out of Paris to Versailles, and, after threatening the lifeof the queen, brought the family back with them to Paris, and kept themalmost as prisoners while the Assembly, which followed them to Paris, debated on the new constitution. The nobles were viewed as the worstenemies of the nation, and all over the country there were risings ofthe peasants, headed by democrats from the towns, who sacked theircastles, and often seized their persons. Many fled to England andGermany, and the dread that these would unite and return to bring backthe old system continually increased the fury of the people. TheAssembly, now known as the Constituent Assembly, swept away all titlesand privileges, and no one was henceforth to bear any prefix to his namebut citizen; while at the same time the clergy were to renounce all theproperty of the Church, and to swear that their office and commissionwas derived from the will of the people alone, and that they owed noobedience save to the State. The estates thus yielded up were supposedto be enough to supply all State expenses without taxes; but as theycould not at once be turned into money, promissory notes, or assignats, were issued. But, as coin was scarce, these were not worth nearly theirprofessed value, and the general distress was thus much increased. Theother oath the great body of the clergy utterly refused, and they weretherefore driven out of their benefices, and became objects of greatsuspicion to the democrats. All the old boundaries and otherdistinctions between the provinces were destroyed, and France wasdivided into departments, each of which was to elect deputies, in whoseassembly all power was to be vested, except that the king retained aright of veto, _i. E. _, of refusing his sanction to any measure. He sworeon the 13th of August, 1791, to observe this new constitution. 

4. The Republic. --The Constituent Assembly now dissolved itself, and afresh Assembly, called the Legislative, took its place. For a timethings went on more peacefully. Distrust was, however, deeply sown. Theking was closely watched as an enemy; and those of the nobles who hademigrated began to form armies, aided by the Germans, on the frontierfor his rescue. This enraged the people, who expected that their newlywon liberties would be overthrown. The first time the king exercised hisright of _veto_ the mob rose in fury; and though they then did no morethan threaten, on the advance of the emigrant army on the 10th ofAugust, 1792, a more terrible rising took place. The Tuilleries wassacked, the guards slaughtered, the unresisting king and his familydeposed and imprisoned in the tower of the Temple. In terror lest thenobles in the prisons should unite with the emigrants, they weremassacred by wholesale; while, with a vigour born of the excitement, theemigrant armies were repulsed and beaten. The monarchy came to an end;and France became a Republic, in which the National Convention, whichfollowed the Legislative Assembly, was supreme. The more moderatemembers of this were called Girondins from the Gironde, the estuary ofthe Garonne, from the neighbourhood of which many of them came. Theywere able men, scholars and philosophers, full of schemes for revivingclassical times, but wishing to stop short of the plans of theJacobins, of whom the chief was Robespierre, a lawyer from Artois, filled with fanatical notions of the rights of man. He, with a party ofother violent republicans, called the Mountain, of whom Danton and Maratwere most noted, set to work to destroy all that interfered with theirplans of general equality. The guillotine, a recently invented machinefor beheading, was set in all the chief market-places, and hundreds wereput to death on the charge of "conspiring against the nation. " LouisXVI. Was executed early in 1793; and it was enough to have any sort ofbirthright to be thought dangerous and put to death. 

5. The Reign of Terror. --Horror at the bloodshed perpetrated by theMountain led a young girl, named Charlotte Corday, to assassinate Marat, whom she supposed to be the chief cause of the cruelties that weretaking place; but his death only added to the dread of reaction. ACommittee of Public Safety was appointed by the Convention, andendeavoured to sweep away every being who either seemed adverse toequality, or who might inherit any claim to rank. The queen was put todeath nine months after her husband; and the Girondins, who had begun totry to stem the tide of slaughter, soon fell under the denunciation ofthe more violent. To be accused of "conspiring against the State" wasinstantly fatal, and no one's life was safe. Danton was denounced byRobespierre, and perished; and for three whole years the Reign of Terrorlasted. The emigrants, by forming an army and advancing on France, assisted by the forces of Germany, only made matters worse. There wassuch a dread of the old oppressions coming back, that the peasants wereready 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 thechange, that they were full of fresh spirit, and repulsed the army ofGermans and emigrants all along the frontier. The city of Lyons, whichhad tried to resist the changes, was taken, and frightfully used byCollot d'Herbois, a member of the Committee of Public Safety. Theguillotine was too slow for him, and he had the people mown down withgrape-shot, declaring that of this great city nothing should be left buta monument inscribed, "Lyons resisted liberty--Lyons is no more!" In LaVendée--a district of Anjou, where the peasants were much attached totheir clergy and nobles--they rose and gained such successes, that theydreamt for a little while of rescuing and restoring the little captiveson of Louis XVI. ; but they were defeated and put down by fire andsword, and at Nantes an immense number of executions took place, chieflyby drowning. It was reckoned that no less than 18, 600 persons wereguillotined in the three years between 1790 and 1794, besides those whodied by other means. Everything was changed. Religion was to be doneaway with; the churches were closed; the tenth instead of the seventhday appointed for rest. "Death is an eternal sleep" was inscribed on theschools; and Reason, represented by a classically dressed woman, wasenthroned in the cathedral of Notre Dâme. At the same time a new era wasinvented, the 22nd of September, 1792; the months had new names, and thedecimal measures of length, weight, and capacity, which are based on theproportions of the earth, were planned. All this time Robespierre reallyseems to have thought himself the benefactor of the human race; but atlast the other members of the Convention took courage to denounce him, and he, with five more, was arrested and sent to the guillotine. Thebloodthirsty fever was over, the Committee of Public Safety wasoverthrown, and people breathed again. 

6. The Directory. --The chief executive power was placed in the handsof a Directory, consisting of more moderate men, and a time of muchprosperity set in. Already in the new vigour born of the strong emotionsof the country the armies won great victories, not only repelling theGermans and the emigrants, but uniting Holland to France. NapoleonBuonaparte, a Corsican officer, who was called on to protect theDirectory from being again overawed by the mob, became the leadingspirit in France, through his Italian victories. He conquered Lombardyand Tuscany, and forced the Emperor to let them become republics underFrench protection, also to resign Flanders to France by the Treaty ofCampo Formio. Buonaparte then made a descent on Egypt, hoping to attackIndia from that side, but he was foiled by Nelson, who destroyed hisfleet in the battle of the Nile, and Sir Sydney Smith, who held out Acreagainst him. He hurried home to France on finding that the Directory hadbegun a fresh European war, seizing Switzerland, and forcing it to giveup its treasures and become a republic on their model, and carrying thePope off into captivity. All the European Powers had united againstthem, and Lombardy had been recovered chiefly by Russian aid; so thatBuonaparte, on the ground that a nation at war needed a less cumbrousgovernment than a Directory, contrived to get himself chosen FirstConsul, 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 onlycountry that still resisted him, till a general peace was made at Amiensin 1803; but it only lasted for a year, for the French failed toperform the conditions, and began the war afresh. In the mean timeBuonaparte had restored religion and order, and so entirely masteredFrance 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 saymass at his coronation, though he put the crown on his own head. Aconcordat with the Pope reinstated the clergy, but altered the divisionof the dioceses, and put the bishops and priests in the pay of theState. 

8. The Empire. --The union of Italy to this new French Empire caused afresh war with all Europe. The Austrian army, however, was defeated atUlm and Austerlitz, the Prussians were entirely crushed at Jena, and theRussians fought two terrible but almost drawn battles at Eylau andFriedland. Peace was then made with all three at Tilsit, in 1807, theterms pressing exceedingly hard upon Prussia. Schemes of invadingEngland were entertained by the Emperor, but were disconcerted by thedestruction of the French and Spanish fleets by Nelson at Trafalgar. Spain was then in alliance with France; but Napoleon, treacherouslygetting the royal family into his hands, seized their kingdom, makinghis brother Joseph its king. But the Spaniards would not submit, andcalled in the English to their aid. The Peninsular War resulted in aseries of victories on the part of the English under Wellington, whileAustria, beginning another war, was again so crushed that the Emperordurst not refuse to give his daughter in marriage to Napoleon. However, in 1812, the conquest of Russia proved an exploit beyond Napoleon'spowers. He reached Moscow with his Grand Army, but the city was burntdown immediately after his arrival, and he had no shelter or means ofsupport. He was forced to retreat, through a fearful winter, withoutprovisions and harassed by the Cossacks, who hung on the rear and cutoff the stragglers, so that his whole splendid army had become a meremiserable, broken, straggling remnant by the time the survivors reachedthe Prussian frontier. He himself had hurried back to Paris as soon ashe found their case hopeless, to arrange his resistance to allEurope--for every country rose against him on his first disaster--andthe next year was spent in a series of desperate battles in Germanybetween him and the Allied Powers. Lützen and Bautzen were doubtful, butthe two days' battle of Leipzic was a terrible defeat. In the year 1814, four armies--those of Austria, Russia, England, and Prussia--enteredFrance at once; and though Napoleon resisted, stood bravely andskilfully, and gained single battles against Austria and Prussia, hecould not stand against all Europe. In April the Allies entered Paris, and he was forced to abdicate, being sent under a strong guard to thelittle Mediterranean isle of Elba. He had drained France of men by hisconstant call for soldiers, who were drawn by conscription from thewhole 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 herone great benefit in the great code of laws called the "_CodeNapoléon_, " which has ever since continued in force. 

9. France under Napoleon. --The old laws and customs, varying indifferent provinces, had been swept away, so that the field was clear;and the system of government which Napoleon devised has remainedpractically unchanged from that time to this. Everything was made todepend upon the central government. The Ministers of Religion, ofJustice, of Police, of Education, etc. , have the regulation of allinterior affairs, and appoint all who work under them, so that nobodylearns how to act alone; and as the Government has been in fact eversince dependent on the will of the people of Paris, the whole country ishelplessly in their hands. The army, as in almost all foreign nations, is raised by conscription--that is, by drawing lots among the young menliable to serve, and who can only escape by paying a substitute to servein their stead; and this is generally the first object of the savings ofa family. All feudal claims had been done away with, and with them theright of primogeniture; and, indeed, it is not possible for a testatorto avoid leaving his property to be shared among his family, though hecan make some small differences in the amount each receives, and thusestates are continually freshly divided, and some portions become verysmall indeed. French peasants are, however, most eager to own land, andare usually very frugal, sober, and saving; and the country has gone onincreasing in prosperity and comfort. It is true that, probably from thelong habit of concealing any wealth they might possess, the Frenchfarmers and peasantry care little for display, or what we should callcomfort, and live rough hard-working lives even while well off and withlarge hoards of wealth; but their condition has been wonderfully changedfor the better ever since the Revolution. All this has continued underthe numerous changes that have taken place in the forms of government. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

FRANCE SINCE THE REVOLUTION. 

1. The Restoration. --The Allies left the people of France free tochoose their Government, and they accepted the old royal family, whowere on their borders awaiting a recall. The son of Louis XVI. Hadperished in the hands of his jailers, and thus the king's next brother, _Louis XVIII. _, succeeded to the throne, bringing back a large emigrantfollowing. Things were not settled down, when Napoleon, in the spring of1815, escaped from Elba. The army welcomed him with delight, and Louiswas forced to flee to Ghent. However, the Allies immediately rose inarms, and the troops of England and Prussia crushed Napoleon entirely atWaterloo, on the 18th of June, 1815. He was sent to the lonely rock ofSt. Helena, in the Atlantic, whence he could not again return to troublethe peace of Europe. There he died in 1821. Louis XVIII. Was restored, and a charter was devised by which a limited monarchy was established, aking at the head, and two chambers--one of peers, the other ofdeputies, but with a very narrow franchise. It did not, however, workamiss; till, after Louis's death in 1824, his brother, _Charles X. _, tried to fall back on the old system. He checked the freedom of thepress, and interfered with the freedom of elections. The consequence wasa fresh revolution in July, 1830, happily with little bloodshed, butwhich 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 thecrown to _Louis Philippe_, Duke of Orleans. He was descended from theregent; his father had been one of the democratic party in theRevolution, and, when titles were abolished, had called himself Philip_Egalité_ (Equality). This had not saved his head under the Reign ofTerror, and his son had been obliged to flee and lead a wandering life, at one time gaining his livelihood by teaching mathematics at a schoolin Switzerland. He had recovered his family estates at the Restoration, and, as the head of the Liberal party, was very popular. He was electedKing of the French, not of France, with a chamber of peers nominated forlife only, and another of deputies elected by voters, whosequalification was two hundred francs, or eight pounds a year. He did hisutmost to gain the good will of the people, living a simple, friendlyfamily life, and trying to merit the term of the "citizen king, " and inthe earlier years of his reign he was successful. The country wasprosperous, and a great colony was settled in Algiers, and endured along and desperate war with the wild Arab tribes. A colony was alsoestablished in New Caledonia, in the Pacific, and attempts were carriedout to compensate thus for the losses of colonial possessions whichFrance had sustained in wars with England. Discontents, however, beganto arise, on the one hand from those who remembered only the successesof Buonaparte, and not the miseries they had caused, and on the otherfrom the working-classes, who declared that the _bourgeois_, ortradespeople, had gained everything by the revolution of July, but theythemselves nothing. Louis Philippe did his best to gratify and amuse thepeople by sending for the remains of Napoleon, and giving him amagnificent funeral and splendid monument among his old soldiers--theInvalides; but his popularity was waning. In 1842 his eldest son, theDuke of Orleans, a favourite with the people, was killed by a fall fromhis carriage, and this was another shock to his throne. Two younggrandsons were left; and the king had also several sons, one of whom, the Duke of Montpensier, he gave in marriage to Louise, the sister andheiress presumptive to the Queen of Spain; though, by treaty with theother European Powers, it had been agreed that she should not marry aFrench prince unless the queen had children of her own. Ambition forhis family was a great offence to his subjects, and at the same time anobleman, the Duke de Praslin, who had murdered his wife, committedsuicide in prison to avoid public execution; and the republicansdeclared, whether justly or unjustly, that this had been allowed ratherthan let a noble die a felon's death. 

3. The Revolution of 1848. --In spite of the increased prosperity ofthe country, there was general disaffection. There were fourparties--the Orleanists, who held by Louis Philippe and his ministerGuizot, and whose badge was the tricolour; the Legitimists, who retainedtheir loyalty to the exiled Henry, and whose symbol was the whiteBourbon flag; the Buonapartists; and the Republicans, whose badge wasthe red cap and flag. A demand for a franchise that should include themass of the people was rejected, and the general displeasure poureditself out in speeches at political banquets. An attempt to stop one ofthese led to an uproar. The National Guard refused to fire on thepeople, and their fury rose unchecked; so that the king, thinkingresistance vain, signed an abdication, and fled to England in February, 1848. A provisional Government was formed, and a new constitution was tobe arranged; but the Paris mob, who found their condition unchanged, andreally wanted equality of wealth, not of rights, made disturbances againand again, and barricaded the streets, till they were finally put downby General Cavaignac, while the rest of France was entirely dependent onthe will of the capital. After some months, a republic was determinedon, which was to have a president at its head, chosen every five yearsby universal suffrage. Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, nephew to the greatNapoleon, was the first president thus chosen; and, after somestruggles, he not only mastered Paris, but, by the help of the army, which was mostly Buonapartist, he dismissed the chamber of deputies, andimprisoned or exiled all the opponents whom the troops had not put todeath, on the plea of an expected rising of the mob. This was called a_coup d'état_, and Louis Napoleon was then declared president for tenyears. 

4. The Second Empire. --In December, 1852, the president took the titleof Emperor, calling himself Napoleon III. , as successor to the young sonof the great Napoleon. He kept up a splendid and expensive court, madeParis more than ever the toy-shop of the world, and did much to improveit by the widening of streets and removal of old buildings. Treatieswere made which much improved trade, and the country advanced inprosperity. The reins of government were, however, tightly held, andnothing was so much avoided as the letting men think or act forthemselves, while their eyes were to be dazzled with splendour andvictory. In 1853, when Russia was attacking Turkey, the Emperor unitedwith England in opposition, and the two armies together besiegedSebastopol, and fought the battles of Alma and Inkermann, taking thecity after nearly a year's siege; and then making what is known as theTreaty of Paris, which guaranteed the safety of Turkey so long as thesubject Christian nations were not misused. In 1859 Napoleon III. Joinedin an attack on the Austrian power in Italy, and together with VictorEmanuel, King of Sardinia, and the Italians, gained two great victoriesat Magenta and Solferino; but made peace as soon as it was convenient tohim, without regard to his promises to the King of Sardinia, who wasobliged to purchase his consent to becoming King of United Italy byyielding up to France his old inheritance of Savoy and Nice. Meantimediscontent began to spring up at home, and the Red Republican spirit wasworking on. The huge fortunes made by the successful only added to thesense of contrast; secret societies were at work, and the Emperor, aftertwenty years of success, felt his popularity waning. 

5. The Franco-German War. --In 1870 the Spaniards, who had deposedtheir queen, Isabel II. , made choice of a relation of the King ofPrussia as their king. There had long been bitter jealousy betweenFrance and Prussia, and, though the prince refused the offer of Spain, the French showed such an overbearing spirit that a war broke out. Thereal desire of France was to obtain the much-coveted frontier of theRhine, and the Emperor heated their armies with boastful proclamationswhich were but the prelude to direful defeats, at Weissenburg, Wörth, and Forbach. At Sedan, the Emperor was forced to surrender himself as aprisoner, and the tidings no sooner arrived at Paris than the whole ofthe people turned their wrath on him and his family. His wife, theEmpress Eugènie, had to flee, a republic was declared, and the cityprepared to stand a siege. The Germans advanced, and put down allresistance in other parts of France. Great part of the army had beenmade prisoners, and, though there was much bravado, there was littlesteadiness or courage left among those who now took up arms. Paris, which was blockaded, after suffering much from famine, surrendered inFebruary, 1871; and peace was purchased in a treaty by which great partof Elsass and Lorraine, and the city of Metz, were given back toGermany. 

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