History
The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Gaul is veiled inobscurity, though philologists, anthropologists and archaeologistsare using the glimmer of traditions collected by ancienthistorians to shed a faint twilight upon that remotepast. The subjugation of those primitive tribes didPre-historic Gaul.not mean their annihilation: their blood still flows inthe veins of Frenchmen; and they survive also on those megalithicmonuments (see Stone Monuments) with which the soil ofFrance is dotted, in the drawings and sculptures of caves hollowedout along the sides of the valleys, and in the arms and ornamentsyielded by sepulchral tumuli, while the names of the rivers andmountains of France probably perpetuate the first utterances ofthose nameless generations.
The first peoples of whom we have actual knowledge are theIberians and Ligurians. The Basques who now inhabit bothsides of the Pyrenean range are probably the last representativesof the Iberians, who came from Spain to settle between theMediterranean and the Bay of Biscay. The Ligurians, whoexhibited the hard cunning characteristic of the Genoese Riviera,must have been descendants of that Indo-European vanguardwho occupied all northern Italy and the centre and south-eastIberians and Ligurians.of France, who in the 7th century B.C. received thePhocaean immigrants at Marseilles, and who at a muchlater period were encountered by Hannibal during hismarch to Rome, on the banks of the Rhône, thefrontier of the Iberian and Ligurian territories. Upon thesepeoples it was that the conquering minority of Celts or Gaulsimposed themselves, to be succeeded at a later date by theRoman aristocracy.
When Gaul first enters the field of history, Rome has alreadylaid the foundation of her freedom, Athens dazzles the easternMediterranean with her literature and her art, whilein the west Carthage and Marseilles are lining oppositeshores with their great houses of commerce. ComingEmpire of the Celts.from the valley of the Danube in the 6th century, the Celts orGauls had little by little occupied central and southern Europelong before they penetrated into the plains of the Saône, theSeine, and the Loire as far as the Spanish border, driving outthe former inhabitants of the country. A century later theirpolitical hegemony, extending from the Black Sea to the Strait ofGibraltar, began to disintegrate, and the Gauls then embarkedon more distant migrations, from the Columns of Hercules tothe plateaux of Asia Minor, taking Rome on their way. Theirempire in Gaul, encroached upon in the north by the Belgae,a kindred race, and in the south by the Iberians, graduallycontracted in area and eventually crumbled to pieces. Thisprocess served the turn of the Romans, who little by little hadsubjugated first the Cisalpine Gauls and afterwards those inhabitingThe Roman Conquest.the south-east of France, which was turnedinto a Roman province in the 2nd century. Up tothis time Hellenism and the mercantile spirit of theJews had almost exclusively dominated the Mediterraneanlittoral, and at first the Latin spirit only won footholdfor itself in various spots on the western coast—as at Aix inProvence (123 B.C.) and at Narbonne (118 B.C.). A refuge ofItalian pauperism in the time of the Gracchi, after the triumphof the oligarchy the Narbonnaise became a field for shamelessexploitation, besides providing, under the proconsulate ofCaesar, an excellent point of observation whence to watch theintestine quarrels between the different nations of Gaul.
These are divided by Caesar in his Commentaries into threegroups: the Aquitanians to the south of the Garonne; the Celts,properly so called, from the Garonne to the Seineand the Marne; and the Belgae, from the Seine to theRhine. But these ethnological names cover a veryPolitical divisions
of Gaul.great variety of half-savage tribes, differing in speechand in institutions, each surrounded by frontiers of dense forestsabounding in game. On the edges of these forests stood isolateddwellings like sentinel outposts; while the inhabitants of thescattered hamlets, caves hollowed in the ground, rude circularhuts or lake-dwellings, were less occupied with domestic lifethan with war and the chase. On the heights, as at Bibracte,or on islands in the rivers, as at Lutetia, or protected by marshes,as at Avaricum, oppida—at once fortresses and places of refuge,like the Greek Acropolis—kept watch and ward over the beatentracks and the rivers of Gaul.
These primitive societies of tall, fair-skinned warriors, blue-eyedand red-haired, were gradually organized into politicalbodies of various kinds—kingdoms, republics andfederations—and divided into districts or pagi (pays)to which divisions the minds of the country folk havePolitical institutions of Gaul.remained faithfully attached ever since. The victoriousaristocracy of the kingdom dominated the other classes,strengthened by the prestige of birth, the ownership of the soiland the practice of arms. Side by side with this martial nobilitythe Druids constituted a priesthood unique in ancient times;neither hereditary as in India, nor composed of isolated priestsas in Greece, nor of independent colleges as at Rome, it was atrue corporation, which at first possessed great moral authority,though by Caesar’s time it had lost both strength and prestige.Beneath these were the common people attached to the soil, who did not count for much, but who reacted against the insufficientprotection of the regular institutions by a voluntarysubordination to certain powerful chiefs.
This impotence of the state was a permanent cause of thosediscords and revolts, which in the 1st century B.C. were sosingularly favourable to Caesar’s ambition. Thusafter eight years of incoherent struggles, of scatteredrevolts, and then of more and more energetic efforts,Caesar in Gaul.Gaul, at last aroused by Vercingetorix, for once concentratedher strength, only to perish at Alesia, vanquished by Romandiscipline and struck at from the rear by the conquest of Britain(58–50 B.C.).
This defeat completely altered the destiny of Gaul, and shebecame one of the principal centres of Roman civilization.Of the vast Celtic empire which had dominatedEurope nothing now remained but scattered remnantsin the farthest corners of the land, refuges for allRoman Gaul.the vanquished Gaels, Picts or Gauls; and of its civilizationthere lingered only idioms and dialects—Gaelic, Pict and Gallic—whichgradually dropped out of use. During five centuriesGaul was unfalteringly loyal to her conquerors; for to conqueris nothing if the conquered be not assimilated by the conqueror,and Rome was a past-mistress of this art. The personal charmof Caesar and the prestige of Rome are not of themselves sufficientto explain this double conquest. The generous and enlightenedpolicy of the imperial administration asked nothing of the peopleof Gaul but military service and the payment of the tax; inreturn it freed individuals from patronal domination, the peoplefrom oligarchic greed or Druidic excommunication, and every onein general from material anxiety. Petty tyrannies gave placeto the great Pax Romana. The Julio-Claudian dynasty didmuch to attach the Gauls to the empire; they always occupiedthe first place in the mind of Augustus, and the revolt of theAeduan Julius Sacrovir, provoked by the census of A.D. 21, waseasily repressed by Tiberius. Caligula visited Gaul and foundedliterary competitions at Lyons, which had become the politicaland intellectual capital of the country. Claudius, who wasa native of Lyons, extended the right of Roman citizenshipto many of his fellow-townsmen, gave them access to the magistracyand to the senate, and supplemented the annexation ofGaul by that of Britain. The speech which he pronouncedon this occasion was engraved on tables of bronze at Lyons,and is the first authentic record of Gaul’s admission to thecitizenship of Rome. Though the crimes of Nero and thecatastrophes which resulted from his downfall, provoked thetroubles of the year A.D. 70, the revolt of Sabinus was in themain an attempt by the Germans to pillage Gaul and the preludeto military insurrections. The government of the Flaviansand the Antonines completed a definite reconciliation. Afterthe extinction of the family of Augustus in the 1st centuryGaul had made many emperors—Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasianand Domitian; and in the 2nd century she providedGauls to rule the empire—Antoninus (138–161) came fromNîmes and Claudius from Lyons, as did also Caracalla later on(211–217).
The romanization of the Gauls, like that of the other subjectnations, was effected by slow stages and by very diverse means,furnishing an example of the constant adaptabilityof Roman policy. It was begun by establishing anetwork of roads with Lyons as the central point,Material and political transformation of Roman Gaul.and by the development of a prosperous urban lifein the increasingly wealthy Roman colonies; and itwas continued by the disintegration into independentcities of nearly all the Gaulish states of the Narbonnaise, togetherwith the substitution of the Roman collegial magistracy for theisolated magistracy of the Gauls. This alteration came aboutmore quickly in the north-east in the Rhine-land than in thewest and the centre, owing to the near neighbourhood of thelegions on the frontiers. Rome was too tolerant to imposeher own institutions by force; it was the conquered peopleswho collectively and individually solicited as a favour the rightof adopting the municipal system, the magistracy, the sacerdotaland aristocratic social system of their conquerors. The edictof Caracalla, at the beginning of the 3rd century, by conferringthe right of citizenship on all the inhabitants of the empire,completed an assimilation for which commercial relations,schools, a taste for officialism, and the adaptability and quick intelligenceof the race had already made preparation. The Gaulsnow called themselves Romans and their language Romance.There was neither oppression on the one hand nor servility onthe other to explain this abandonment of their traditions.Thanks to the political and religious unity which a commonworship of the emperor and of Rome gave them, thanks toadministrative centralization tempered by a certain amountof municipal autonomy, Gaul prospered throughout threecenturies.
But this stability of the Roman peace had barely been realizedwhen events began to threaten it both from within and without.The Pax Romana having rendered any armed forceunnecessary amid a formerly very bellicose people, onlyeight legions mounted guard over the Rhine to protectDecline of the imperial authority
in Gaul.it from the barbarians who surrounded the empire.The raids made by the Germans on the eastern frontiers,the incessant competitions for the imperial power, and therepeated revolts of the Pretorian guard, gradually underminedthe internal cohesion of Gaul; while the insurrections of theBagaudae aggravated the destruction wrought by a graspingtreasury and by barbarian incursions; so that the anarchy ofthe 3rd century soon aroused separatist ideas. Under PostumusGaul had already attempted to restore an independent thoughshort-lived empire (258–267); and twenty-eight years laterthe tetrarchy of Diocletian proved that the blood now circulatedwith difficulty from the heart to the extremities of an empireon the eve of disintegration. Rome was to see her universaldominion gradually menaced from all sides. It was in Gaulthat the decisive revolutions of the time were first prepared;Constantine’s crusades to overthrow the altars of paganism,and Julian’s campaigns to set them up again. After Constantinethe emperors of the East in the 4th century merely put in anoccasional appearance at Rome; they resided at Milan or inthe prefectorial capitals of Gaul—at Arles, at Treves (Trier),at Reims or in Paris. The ancient territorial divisions—Belgium,Gallia Lugdunensis (Lyonnaise), Gallia Narbonensis(Narbonnaise)—were split up into seventeen little provinces,which in their turn were divided into two dioceses. Thus thegreat historic division was made between southern and northernFrance. Roman nationality persisted, but the administrativesystem was tottering.
Upon ground that had been so well levelled by Roman legislationaristocratic institutions naturally flourished. From the4th century onward the balance of classes was disturbedby the development of a landed aristocracythat grew more powerful day by day, and by theSocial disorganization
of Gaul.corresponding ruin of the small proprietors and industrialand commercial corporations. The members of thecuria who assisted the magistrates in the cities, crushed by theburden of taxes, now evaded as far as possible public office orsenatorial honours. The vacancies left in this middle class bythis continual desertion were not compensated for by the progressiveadvance of a lower class destitute of personal propertyand constantly unsettled in their work. The peasants, no lessthan the industrial labourers, suffered from the absence of anycapital laid by, which alone could have enabled them to improvetheir land or to face a time of bad harvests. Having no creditthey found themselves at the mercy of their neighbours, thegreat landholders, and by degrees fell into the position of tenants,or into servitude. The curia was thus emptied both from aboveand from below. It was in vain that the emperors tried torivet the chains of the curia in this hereditary bondage, byattaching the small proprietor to his glebe, like the artisanto his gild and the soldier to his legion. To such a miserablepretence of freedom they all preferred servitude, which at leastensured them a livelihood; and the middle class of freementhus became gradually extinct.
The aristocracy, on the contrary, went on increasing in power,
and eventually became masters of the situation. It was throughthem that the emperor, theoretically absolute, practicallycarried on his administration; but he was nolonger either strong or a divinity, and possessedAbsorption of land and power by the aristocracy of Gaul.nothing but the semblance of omnipotence. Hisofficial despotism was opposed by the passive butinvincible competition of an aristocracy, more powerfulthan himself because it derived its support from therevived relation of patron and dependants. But though thearistocracy administered, yet they did not govern. Theysuffered, as did the Empire, from a general state of lassitude.Like their private life, their public life, no longer stimulatedby struggles and difficulties, had become sluggish; their powerof initiative was enfeebled. Feeling their incapacity they nolonger embarked on great political schemes; and the army, theinstrument by which such schemes were carried on, was onlyheld together by the force of habit. In this society, where therewas no traffic in anything but wealth and ideas, the soldier wasnothing more than an agitator or a parasite. The egoism of theupper classes held military duty in contempt, while their avaricedepopulated the countryside, whence the legions had drawn theirrecruits. And now come the barbarians! A prey to perpetualalarm, the people entrenched themselves behind those high wallsof the oppida which Roman security had razed to the ground,but imperial impotence had restored, and where life in themiddle ages was destined to vegetate in unrestful isolation.
Amidst this general apathy, intellectual activity alone persisted.In the 4th century there was a veritable renaissance in Gaul, thelast outburst of a dying flame, which yet bore witnessalso to the general decadence. The agreeable versificationof an amateur like Ausonius, the refinedIntellectual decadence of Gaul.panegyrics of a Eumenius, disguising nullity of thoughtbeneath elegance of form, already foretold the perilous sterilityof scholasticism. Art, so widespread in the wealthy villas ofGaul, contented itself with imitation, produced nothing originaland remained mediocre. Human curiosity, no longer concernedwith philosophy and science, seemed as though stifled, religiouspolemics alone continuing to hold public attention. Disinclinationfor the self-sacrifice of active life and weariness of the thingsof the earth lead naturally to absorption in the things of heaven.After bringing about the success of the Asiatic cults of Mithraand Cybele, these same factors now assured the triumph overexhausted paganism of yet another oriental religion—Christianity—aftera duel which had lasted two centuries.
This new faith had appeared to Constantine likely to infuseyoung and healthy blood into the Empire. In reality Christianity,which had contributed not a little to stimulate thepolitical unity of continental Gaul, now tended todissolve it by destroying that religious unity whichChristianity in Gaul.had heretofore been its complement. Before thisthere had been complete harmony between Church and State;but afterwards came indifference and then disagreement betweenpolitical and religious institutions, between the City of God andthat of Caesar. Christianity, introduced into Gaul during the1st century of the Christian era by those foreign merchants whotraded along the coasts of the Mediterranean, had by the middleof the 2nd century founded communities at Vienne, at Autunand at Lyons. Their propagandizing zeal soon exposed them tothe wrath of an ignorant populace and the contempt of theeducated; and thus it was that in A.D. 177, under MarcusAurelius, the Church of Lyons, founded by St Pothinus, sufferedthose persecutions which were the effective cause of her ultimatevictory. These Christian communities, disguised under thelegally authorized name of burial societies, gradually formed avast secret cosmopolitan association, superimposed upon Romansociety but incompatible with the Empire. Christianity hadto be either destroyed or absorbed. The persecutions underAurelian and Diocletian almost succeeded in accomplishing theformer; the Christian churches were saved by the instability ofthe existing authorities, by military anarchy and by the incursionsof the barbarians. Despite tortures and martyrdoms, and thanksto the seven apostles sent from Rome in 250, during the 3rdcentury their branches extended all over Gaul.
The emperors had now to make terms with these churches,which served to group together all sorts of malcontents,and this was the object of the edict of Milan (313),by which the Church, at the outset simply a Jewishinstitution, was naturalized as Roman; while in 325Triumph of Christianity in Gaul.the Council of Nicaea endowed her with unity. Butfor the security and the power thus attained she had to pay withher independence. On the other hand, pagan and Christianelements in society existed side by side without intermingling,and even openly antagonistic to each other—one aristocraticand the other democratic. In order to induce the masses of thepeople once more to become loyal to the imperial form of governmentthe emperor Julian tried by founding a new religion togive its functionaries a religious prestige which should impressthe popular mind. His plan failed; and the emperor Theodosius,aided by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, preferred to make theChristian clergy into a body of imperial and conservative officials;while in return for their adhesion he abolished the Arian heresyand paganism itself, which could not survive without his support.Thenceforward it was in the name of Christ that persecutionstook place in an Empire now entirely won over to Christianity.
In Gaul the most famous leader of this first merciless, if stillperilous crusade, was a soldier-monk, Saint Martin of Tours.Thanks to him and his disciples in the middle of the4th century and the beginning of the 5th many of thetowns possessed well-established churches; but theOrganisation of
the Church.militant ardour of monks and centuries of labourwere needed to conquer the country districts, and in the meantimeboth dogma and internal organization were subjected toimportant modifications. As regards the former the Churchadopted a course midway between metaphysical explanationsand historical traditions, and reconciled the more extremetheories; while with the admission of pagans a great deal ofpaganism itself was introduced. On the other hand, the need forpolitical and social order involved the necessity for a disciplinedand hom*ogeneous religious body; the exercise of power, moreover,soon transformed the democratic Christianity of the earlierchurches into a federation of little conservative monarchies.The increasing number of her adherents, and her inexperience ofgovernment on such a vast and complicated scale, obliged her tocomply with political necessity and to adopt the system of thestate and its social customs. The Church was no longer afraternity, on a footing of equality, with freedom of belief andtentative as to dogma, but an authoritative aristocratic hierarchy.The episcopate was now recruited from the great familiesin the same way as the imperial and the municipal public services.The Church called on the emperor to convoke and preside overher councils and to combat heresy; and in order more effectuallyto crush the latter she replaced primitive independence and localdiversity by uniformity of doctrine and worship, and by thehierarchy of dioceses and ecclesiastical provinces. The heads ofthe Church, her bishops, her metropolitans, took the titlesof their pagan predecessors as well as their places, and theirjurisdiction was enforced by the laws of the state. Rich andpowerful chiefs, they were administrators as much as priests:Germanus (Germain), bishop of Auxerre (d. 448), St Eucheriusof Lyons (d. 450), Apollinaris Sidonius of Clermont (d. c. 490)assumed the leadership of society, fed the poor, levied tithes,administered justice, and in the towns where they resided,surrounded by priests and deacons, ruled both in temporal andspiritual matters.
But the humiliation of Theodosius before St Ambrose provedthat the emperor could never claim to be a pontiff, and that thedogma of the Church remained independent of thesovereign as well as of the people; if she sacrificedher liberty it was but to claim it again and maintainThe Church’s independence
of the Empire.it more effectively amid the general languor. TheChurch thus escaped the unpopularity of this decadentempire, and during the 5th century she provided a refuge forall those who, wishing to preserve the Roman unity, were terrified by the blackness of the horizon. In fact, whilst in the EasternChurch the metaphysical ardour of the Greeks was spendingitself in terrible combats in the oecumenical councils over theinterpretation of the Nicene Creed, the clergy of Gaul, moresimple and strict in their faith, abjured these theological logomachies;from the first they had preferred action to criticismand had taken no part in the great controversy on free-willraised by Pelagius. Another kind of warfare was about to absorbtheir whole attention; the barbarians were attacking the frontiersof the Empire on every side, and their advent once again modifiedGallo-Roman civilization.
For centuries they had been silently massing themselvesaround ancient Europe, whether Iberian, Celtic or Roman.Many times already during that evening of a decadentcivilization, their threatening presence had seemedlike a dark cloud veiling the radiant sky of the peoplesThe barbarian invasion.established on the Mediterranean seaboard. The cruellightning of the sword of Brennus had illumined the night,setting Rome or Delphi on fire. Sometimes the storm had burstover Gaul, and there had been need of a Marius to stem the torrentof Cimbri and Teutons, or of a Caesar to drive back the Helvetiansinto their mountains. On the morrow the western horizon wouldclear again, until some such disaster as that which befell Varuswould come to mortify cruelly the pride of an Augustus. TheRomans had soon abandoned hope of conquering Germany,with its fluctuating frontiers and nomadic inhabitants. Formore than two centuries they had remained prudently entrenchedbehind the earthworks that extended from Cologne to Ratisbon(Regensburg); but the intestine feuds which prevailed amongthe barbarians and were fostered by Rome, the organizationunder bold and turbulent chiefs of the bands greedy for booty,the pressing forward on populations already settled of tribes intheir rear; all this caused the Germanic invasion to filter bydegrees across the frontier. It was the work of several generationsand took various forms, by turns and simultaneouslycolonization and aggression; but from this time forward thepax romana was at an end. The emperors Probus, Constantine,Julian and Valentinian, themselves foreigners, were worn outwith repulsing these repeated assaults, and the general enervationof society did the rest. The barbarians gradually became partof the Roman population; they permeated the army, until afterTheodosius they recruited it exclusively; they permeatedcivilian society as colonists and agriculturists, till the commandof the army and of important public duties was given over to aStilicho or a Crocus. Thus Rome allowed the wolves to minglewith the dogs in watching over the flock, just at a time when thecivil wars of the 4th century had denuded the Rhenish frontierof troops, whose numbers had already been diminished by Constantine.Then at the beginning of the 5th century, during afurious irruption of Germans fleeing before Huns, the limes wascarried away (406–407); and for more than a hundred years thetorrent of fugitives swept through the Empire, which retreatedbehind the Alps, there to breathe its last.
Whilst for ten years Alaric’s Goths and Stilicho’s Vandalswere drenching Italy with blood, the Vandals and the Alani fromthe steppes of the Black Sea, dragging in their wake thereluctant German tribes who had been allies of Romeand who had already settled down to the cultivation ofThe Germans in Gaul.their lands, invaded the now abandoned Gaul, andhaving come as far as the Pyrenees, crossed over them. After thepassing of this torrent the Visigoths, under their kings Ataulphus,Wallia and Theodoric, still dazzled by the splendours of thisimmense empire, established themselves like submissive vassalsin Aquitaine, with Toulouse as their capital. About the sametime the Burgundians settled even more peaceably in RhenishGaul, and, after 456, to the west of the Jura in the valleys ofThe Franks before Clovis.the Saône and the Rhône. The original Franks ofGermany, already established in the Empire, andpressed upon by the same Huns who had already forcedthe Goths across the Danube, passed beyond theRhine and occupied north-eastern Gaul; Ripuarians of the Rhineestablishing themselves on the Sambre and the Meuse, andSalians in Belgium, as far as the great fortified highroad fromBavai to Cologne. Accepted as allies, and supported by Romanprestige and by the active authority of the general Aetius, allthese barbarians rallied round him and the Romans of Gaul, andin 451 defeated the hordes of Attila, who had advanced as faras Orleans, at the great battle of the Catalaunian plains.
Thus at the end of the 5th century the Roman empire wasnothing but a heap of ruins, and fidelity to the empire was nowonly maintained by the Catholic Church; she alonesurvived, as rich, as much honoured as ever, and morepowerful, owing to the disappearance of the imperialThe clergy and the barbarians.officials for whom she had found substitutes, and thedecadence of the municipal bodies into whose inheritance shehad entered. Owing to her the City of God gradually replaced theRoman imperial polity and preserved its civilization; while theChurch allied herself more closely with the new kingdoms thanshe had ever done with the Empire. In the Gothic or Burgundianstates of the period the bishops, after having for a time opposedthe barbarian invaders, sought and obtained from their chiefthe support formerly received from the emperor. ApollinarisSidonius paid court to Euric, since 476 the independent king ofthe Visigoths, against whom he had defended Auvergne; andAvitus, bishop of Vienne, was graciously received by Gundibald,king of the Burgundians. But these princes were Arians, i.e.foreigners among the Catholic population; the alliance soughtfor by the Church could not reach her from that source, and itwas from the rude and pagan Franks that she gained the materialsupport which she still lacked. The conversion of Clovis was amaster-stroke; it was fortunate both for himself and for theFranks. Unity in faith brought about unity in law.
Clovis was king of the Sicambrians, one of the tribes of theSalian Franks. Having established themselves in the plainsof Northern Gaul, but driven by the necessity of findingnew land to cultivate, in the days of their king Childericthey had descended into the fertile valleys of theClovis, the Frankish chief.Somme and the Oise. Clovis’s victory at Soissonsover the last troops left in the service of Rome (486) extendedtheir settlements as far as the Loire. By his conversion, whichwas due to his wife Clotilda and to Remigius, bishop of Reims,more than to the victory of Tolbiac over the Alamanni,Clovis made definitely sure of the Roman inhabitants and gavethe Church an army (496). Thenceforward he devoted himselfto the foundation of the Frankish monarchy by driving the exhaustedand demoralized heretics out of Gaul, and by puttinghimself in the place of the now enfeebled emperor. In 500 heconquered Gundibald, king of the Burgundians, reduced himto a kind of vassalage, and forced him into reiterated promisesof conversion to orthodoxy. In 507 he conquered and killedAlaric II., king of the Arian Visigoths, and drove the latter intoSpain. Legend adorned his campaign in Aquitaine with miracles;the bishops were the declared allies of both him and his sonTheuderich (Thierry) after his conquest of Auvergne. At Tourshe received from the distant emperor at Constantinople thediploma and insignia of patricius and Roman consul, whichlegalized his military conquests by putting him in possessionof civil powers. From this time forward a great historic transformationClovis as a Roman officer.was effected in the eyes of the bishops andof the Gallo-Romans; the Frankish chief took theplace of the ancient emperors. Instead of blaminghim for the murder of the lesser kings of the Franks,his relatives, by which he had accomplished the union of theFrankish tribes, they saw in this the hand of God rewarding afaithful soldier and a converted pagan. He became their king,their new David, as the Christian emperors had formerly been;he built churches, endowed monasteries, protected St Vaast(Vedastus, d. 540), first bishop of Arras and Cambrai, whor*stored Christianity in northern Gaul. Like the emperorsbefore him Clovis, too, reigned over the Church. Of his ownauthority he called together a council at Orleans in 511, the yearof his death. He was already the grand distributor of ecclesiasticalbenefices, pending the time when his successors were toconfirm the episcopal elections, and his power began to take on a more and more absolute character. But though he felt theascendant influence of Christian teaching, he was not reallypenetrated by its spirit; a professing Christian, and a friend tothe episcopate, Clovis remained a barbarian, crafty and ruthless.The bloody tragedies which disfigured the end of his reign bearsad witness to this; they were a fit prelude to that period duringthe course of which, as Gregory of Tours said, “barbarism waslet loose.”
The conquest of Gaul, begun by Clovis, was finished by hissons: Theuderich, Chlodomer, Childebert and Clotaire. Inthree successive campaigns, from 523 to 532, theyannihilated the Burgundian kingdom, which hadmaintained its independence, and had endured forThe sons of Clovis.nearly a century. Favoured by the war between Justinian,the East Roman emperor, and Theodoric’s Ostrogoths, theFrankish kings divided Provence among them as they had donein the case of Burgundy. Thus the whole of Gaul was subjectedto the sons of Clovis, except Septimania in the south-east, wherethe Visigoths still maintained their power. The Frankish armiesthen overflowed into the neighbouring countries and began topillage them. Their disorderly cohorts made an attack uponItaly, which was repulsed by the Lombards, and another onSpain with the same want of success; but beyond the Rhinethey embarked upon the conquest of Germany, where Clovishad already reduced to submission the country on the banks ofthe Maine, later known as Franconia. In 531 the Thuringians inthe centre of Germany were brought into subjection by his eldestson, King Theuderich, and about the same time the Bavarianswere united to the Franks, though preserving a certain autonomy.The Merovingian monarchy thus attained the utmost limits ofits territorial expansion, bounded as it was by the Pyrenees,the Alps and the Rhine; it exercised influence over the whole ofGermany, which it threw open to the Christian missionaries, andits conquests formed the first beginnings of German history.
But to these wars of aggrandizement and pillage succeededthose fratricidal struggles which disgraced the whole of the sixthcentury and arrested the expansion of the Merovingianpower. When Clotaire, the last surviving son ofClovis, died in 561, the kingdom was divided betweenCivil wars.his four sons like some piece of private property, as in 511, andaccording to the German method. The capitals of these fourkings—Charibert, who died in 567, Guntram, Sigebert andChilperic—were Paris, Orleans, Reims and Soissons—all near oneanother and north of the Loire, where the Germanic inhabitantspredominated; but their respective boundaries were so confusedthat disputes were inevitable. There was no trace of a politicalidea in these disputes; the mutual hatred of two women aggravatedjealousy to the point of causing terrible civil wars from561 to 613, and these finally created a national conflict whichresulted in the dismemberment of the Frankish empire. Recognized,in fact, already as separate provinces were Austrasia, orthe eastern kingdom, Neustria, or north-west Gaul and Burgundy;Aquitaine alone was as yet undifferentiated.
Sigebert had married Brunhilda, the daughter of a Visigothking; she was beautiful and well educated, having been broughtup in Spain, where Roman civilization still flourished.Chilperic had married Galswintha, one of Brunhilda’ssisters, for the sake of her wealth; but despite thisFredegond and Brunhilda.marriage he had continued his amours with a waiting-womannamed Fredegond, who pushed ambition to the point ofcrime, and she induced him to get rid of Galswintha. In order toavenge her sister, Brunhilda incited Sigebert to begin a warwhich terminated in 575 with the assassination of Sigebert byFredegond at the very moment when, thanks to the help of theGermans, he had gained the victory, and with the imprisonmentof Brunhilda at Rouen. Fredegond subsequently caused thedeath of Merovech (Mérovée), the son of Chilperic, who had beensecretly married to Brunhilda, and that of Bishop Praetextatus,who had solemnized their union. After this, Fredegond endeavouredto restore imperial finance to a state of solvency, andto set up a more regular form of government in her Neustria,which was less romanized and less wealthy than Burgundy,where Guntram was reigning, and less turbulent than the easternkingdom, where most of the great warlike chiefs with their largelanded estates were somewhat impatient of royal authority.But the accidental death of two of her children, the assassinationof her husband in 584, and the advice of the Church, inducedher to make overtures to her brother-in-law Guntram. A loverof peace through sheer cowardice and as depraved in his moralsas Chilperic, Guntram had played a vacillating and purelyself-interested part in the family tragedy. He declared himselfthe protector of Fredegond, but his death in 593 delivered upBurgundy and Neustria to Brunhilda’s son Childebert, king ofAustrasia, in consequence of the treaty of Andelot, made in 587.An ephemeral triumph, however; for Childebert died in 596,followed a year later by Fredegond.
The whole of Gaul was now handed over to three children:Childebert’s two sons, Theudebert and Theuderich (Thierry),and the son of Fredegond, Clotaire II. The latter,having vanquished the two former at Latofao in596, was in turn beaten by them at Dormelles inThe fall of Brunhilda.600, and a year later a fresh fratricidal struggle broke outbetween the two grandsons of the aged Brunhilda. Theuderichjoined with Clotaire against Theodobert, and invaded his brother’skingdom, conquering first an army of Austrasians and then onecomposed of Saxons and Thuringians. Strife began again in 613in consequence of Theuderich’s desire to join Austrasia toNeustria, but his death delivered the kingdoms into the handsof Clotaire II. This weak king leant for support upon the noblesof Burgundy and Austrasia, impatient as they were of obedienceto a woman and the representative of Rome. The ecclesiasticalparty also abandoned Brunhilda because of her persecution oftheir saints, after which Clotaire, having now got the upper hand,thanks to the defection of the Austrasian nobles, of Arnulf,bishop of Metz, with his brother Pippin, and of Warnachaire,mayor of the palace, made a terrible end of Brunhilda in 613.Her long reign had not lacked intelligence and even greatness;she alone, amid all these princes, warped by self-indulgence orweakened by discord, had behaved like a statesman, and shealone understood the obligations of the government she hadinherited. She wished to abolish the fatal tradition of dividingup the kingdom, which so constantly prevented any possibleunity; in opposition to the nobles she used her royal authorityto maintain the Roman principles of order and regular administration.Towards the Church she held a courteous but firm policy,renewing relations between the Frankish kingdom and thepope; and she so far maintained the greatness of the Empirethat tradition associated her name with the Roman roads inthe north of France, entitling them “les chaussées de Brunehaut.”
Like his grandfather, Clotaire II. reigned over a once moreunited Gaul of Franks and Gallo-Romans, and like Clovis hewas not too well obeyed by the nobles; moreover,his had been a victory more for the aristocracy thanfor the crown, since it limited the power of the latter.Clotaire II.Not that the permanent constitution of the 18th of October 614was of the nature of an anti-monarchic revolution, for theroyal power still remained very great, decking itself with thepompous titles of the Empire, and continuing to be the dominantinstitution; but the reservations which Clotaire II. had to makein conceding the demands of the bishops and great laymen showthe extent and importance of the concessions these latter werealready aiming at. The bishops, the real inheritors of theimperial idea of government, had become great landownersthrough enormous donations made to the Church, and allied asthey were to the aristocracy, whence their ranks were continuallyrecruited, they had gradually identified themselves with theinterests of their class and had adopted its customs; while thanksto long minorities and civil wars the aristocracy of the highofficials had taken an equally important social position. Thetreaty of Andelot in 587 had already decided that the beneficesor lands granted to them by the kings should be held for life.In the 7th century the Merovingian kings adopted the customof summoning them all, and not merely the officials of theirPalatium, to discuss political affairs; they began, moreover, to choose their counts or administrators from among the greatlandholders. This necessity for approval and support pointsto yet another alteration in the nature of the royal power,absolute as it was in theory.
The Mayoralty of the Palace aimed a third and more seriousblow at the royal authority. By degrees, the high officialsof the Palatium, whether secular or ecclesiastical,and also the provincial counts, had rallied roundthe mayors of the palace as their real leaders. AsThe mayors of the palace.under the Empire, the Palatium was both royal courtand centre of government, with the same bureaucratic hierarchyand the same forms of administration; and the mayor of thepalace was premier official of this itinerant court and ambulatorygovernment. Moreover, since the palace controlled the wholeof each kingdom, the mayors gradually extended their officialauthority so as to include functionaries and agents of everykind, instead of merely those attached immediately to theking’s person. They suggested candidates for office for theroyal selection, often appointed office-holders, and, by royalwarrant, supported or condemned them. Mere subordinateswhile the royal power was strong, they had become, owingto the frequent minorities, and to civil wars which broke thetradition of obedience, the all-powerful ministers of kingsnominally absolute but without any real authority. Before longthey ceased to claim an even greater degree of independencethan that of Warnachaire, who forced Clotaire II. to swearthat he should never be deprived of his mayoralty of Burgundy;they wished to take the first place in the kingdoms they governed,and to be able to attack neighbouring kingdoms on their ownaccount. A struggle, motived by self-interest, no doubt; buta struggle, too, of opposing principles. Since the Frankishmonarchy was now in their power some of them tried to re-establishthe unity of that monarchy in all its integrity, togetherwith the superiority of the State over the Church; others,faithless to the idea of unity, saw in the disintegration of thestate and the supremacy of the nobles a warrant for their ownindependence. These two tendencies were destined to striveagainst one another during an entire century (613–714), and tooccasion two periods of violent conflict, which, divided by a kind ofrenascence of royalty, were to end at last in the triumphant substitutionof the Austrasian mayors for royalty and aristocracy alike.
The first struggle began on the accession of Clotaire II.,when Austrasia, having had a king of her own ever since 561,demanded one now. In 623 Clotaire was obligedto send her his son Dagobert and even to extend histerritory. But in Dagobert’s name two men ruled,First struggle between monarchy and mayoralty.representing the union of the official aristocracy andthe Church. One, Pippin of Landen, derived hispower from his position as mayor of the palace, fromgreat estates in Aquitaine and between the Meuse and the Rhine,and from the immense number of his supporters; the other,Arnulf, bishop of Metz, sprang from a great family, probablyof Roman descent, and was besides immensely wealthy inworldly possessions. By the union of their forces Pippin andArnulf were destined to shape the future. They had already,in 613, treated with Clotaire and betrayed the hopes of Brunhilda,being consequently rewarded with the guardianship of youngDagobert. Burgundy followed the example of Austrasia,demanded the abolition of the mayoralty, and in 627 succeededin obtaining her independence of Neustria and Austrasia anddirect relations with the king.
The death of Clotaire (629) was the signal for a revival ofthe royal power. Dagobert deprived Pippin of Landen ofhis authority and forced him to fly to Aquitaine;but still he had to give the Austrasians his son SigebertIII. for their king (634). He made administrativeRenascence of monarchy under Dagobert, 629–639.progresses through Neustria and Burgundy to recallthe nobles to their allegiance, but again he was forcedto designate his second son Clovis as king of Neustria.He did subdue Aquitaine completely, thanks to his brotherCharibert, with whom he had avoided dividing the kingdom,and he tried to restore his own demesne, which had been despoiledby the granting of benefices or by the pious frauds of the Church.In short, this reign was one of great conquests, impossibleexcept under a strong government. Dagobert’s victories overSamo, king of the Slavs along the Elbe, and his subjugationof the Bretons and the Basques, maintained the prestige of theFrankish empire; while the luxury of his court, his taste forthe fine arts (ministered to by his treasurer Eloi[1]), his numerousachievements in architecture—especially the abbey of St Denis,burial-place of the kings of France—the brilliance and the powerof the churchmen who surrounded him and his revision of theSalic law, ensured for his reign, in spite of the failure of his plansfor unity, a fame celebrated in folksong and ballad.
But for barbarous nations old-age comes early, and afterDagobert’s death (639), the monarchy went swiftly to its doom.The mayors of the palace again became supreme,and the kings not only ceased to appoint them, butmight not even remove them from office. Such mayorsThe “Rois fainéants” (do-nothing kings).were Aega and Erchinoald, in Neustria, Pippin andOtto in Austrasia, and Flaochat in Burgundy. Oneof them, Grimoald, son of Pippin, actually dared to takethe title of king in Austrasia (640). This was a prematureattempt and barren of result, yet it was significant; and notless so is the fact that the palace in which these mayorsbore rule was a huge association of great personages, laymenand ecclesiastics who seem to have had much more independencethan in the 6th century. We find the dukes actually raisingtroops without the royal sanction, and even against the king.In 641 the mayor Flaochat was forced to swear that they shouldhold their offices for life; and though these offices were not yethereditary, official dynasties, as it were, began to be establishedpermanently within the palace. The crown lands, the governorships,the different offices, were looked upon as common propertyto be shared between themselves. Organized into a compactbody they surrounded the king and were far more powerful thanhe. In the general assembly of its members this body of officialsdecided the selection of the mayor; it presented Flaochatto the choice of Queen Nanthilda, Dagobert’s widow; afterlong discussion it appointed Ebroïn as mayor; it submittedrequests that were in reality commands to the Assembly of Bonneuilin 616 and later to Childeric in 670. Moreover, the countriesformerly subdued by the Franks availed themselves of thisopportunity to loosen the yoke; Thuringia was lost by Sigebertin 641, and the revolt of Alamannia in 643 set back the frontierof the kingdom from the Elbe to Austrasia. Aquitaine, hithertothe common prey of all the Frankish kings, having in vain triedto profit by the struggles between Fredegond and Brunhilda,and set up an independent king, Gondibald, now finally bursther bonds in 670. Then came a time when the kings were merechildren, honoured with but the semblance of respect, under thetutelage of a single mayor, Erbroïn of Neustria.
This representative of royalty, chief minister for four-and-twentyyears (656–681), attempted the impossible, endeavouringto re-establish unity in the midst of general dissolutionand to maintain intact a royal authority usurpedeverywhere, by the hereditary power of the greatStruggle between Ebroïn and Léger.palatine families. He soon stirred up against himselfall the dissatisfied nobles, led by Léger (Leodegarius), bishop ofAutun and his brother Gerinus. Clotaire III.’s death gavethe signal for war. Ebroïn’s enemies set up Childeric II. inopposition to Theuderich, the king whom he had chosen withoutsummoning the great provincial officials. Despite a temporarytriumph, when Childeric was forced to recognize the principleof hereditary succession in public offices, and when the mayoraltiesof Neustria and Burgundy were alternated to the profit ofboth, Léger soon fell into disgrace and was exiled to that verymonastery of Luxeuil to which Ebroïn had been relegated.Childeric having regained the mastery restored the mayor’soffice, which was immediately disputed by the two rivals;Ebroïn was successful and established himself as mayor of thepalace in the room of Leudesius, a partisan of Léger (675), following this up by a distribution of offices and dignities rightand left among his adherents. Léger was put to death in 678,and the Austrasians, commanded by the Carolingian Pippin II.,with whom many of the chief Neustrians had taken refuge,were dispersed near Laon (680). But Ebroïn was assassinatednext year in the midst of his triumph, having like Fredegondbeen unable to do more than postpone for a quarter of a centurythe victory of the nobles and of Austrasia; for his successor,Berthar, was unfitted to carry on his work, having neitherhis gifts and energy nor the powerful personality of Pippin.Berthar met his death at the battle of Tertry (687), whichBattle of Tertry.gave the king into the hands of Pippin, as also theroyal treasure and the mayoralty, and by thus enablinghim to reward his followers made him supreme overthe Merovingian dynasty. Thenceforward the degeneratedescendants of Clovis offered no further resistance to hisclaims, though it was not until 752 that their line becameextinct.
In that year the Merovingian dynasty gave place to the ruleof Pippin II. of Heristal, who founded a Carolingian empirefated to be as ephemeral as that of the Merovingians. Thispolitical victory of the aristocracy was merely the consummationof a slow subterranean revolution which by innumerable reiteratedblows had sapped the structure of the body politic, and was aboutto transfer the people of Gaul from the Roman monarchicaland administrative government to the sway of the feudalsystem.
The Merovingian kings, mere war-chiefs before the advent ofClovis, had after the conquest of Gaul become absolute hereditarymonarchs, thanks to the disappearance of the popularassemblies and to the perpetual state of warfare.They concentrated in their own hands all the powersCauses of the fall of the Merovingians.of the empire, judicial, fiscal and military; and eventhe so-called “rois fainéants” enjoyed this unlimited power,in spite of the general disorder and the civil wars. Tomake their authority felt in the provinces they had an army ofofficials at their disposal—a legacy, this, from imperial Rome—whor*presented them in the eyes of their various peoples. Theyhad therefore only to keep up this established government, butthey could not manage even this much; they allowed the ideaof the common interests of kings and their subjects gradually todie out, and forgetting that national taxes are a necessary impost,a charge for service rendered by the state, they had treated theseas though they were illicit and unjustifiable spoils. The taxpayers,with the clergy at their head, adopted the same idea, andevery day contrived fresh methods of evasion. Merovingianjustice was on the same footing as Merovingian finance: itwas arbitrary, violent and self-seeking. The Church, too, neverfailed to oppose it—at first not so much on account of her ownambitions as in a more Christian spirit—and proceeded to weakenthe royal jurisdiction by repeated interventions on behalf of thoseunder sentence, afterwards depriving it of authority over theclergy, and then setting up ecclesiastical tribunals in oppositionto those held by the dukes and counts. At last, just as thekingdom had become the personal property of the king, so theofficials—dukes, counts, royal vicars, tribunes, centenarii—whohad for the most part bought their unpaid offices by means ofpresents to the monarch, came to look upon the public servicerather as a mine of official wealth than as an administrativeorganization for furthering the interests, material or moral, ofthe whole nation. They became petty local tyrants, all the moredespotic because they had nothing to fear save the distantauthority of the king’s missi, and the more rapacious becausethey had no salary save the fines they inflicted and the fees thatthey contrived to multiply. Gregory of Tours tells us that theywere robbers, not protectors of the people, and that justice andthe whole administrative apparatus were merely engines of insatiablegreed. It was the abuses thus committed by the kingsand their agents, who did not understand the art of gloving theiron hand, aided by the absolutely unfettered licence of conductand the absence of any popular liberty, that occasioned thegradual increase of charters of immunity.
Immunity was the direct and personal privilege which forbadeany royal official or his agents to decide cases, to levy taxes, orto exercise any administrative control on the domainsof a bishop, an abbot, or one of the great secularnobles. On thousands of estates the royal governmentImmunity.gradually allowed the law of the land to be superseded by locallaw, and public taxation to change into special contributions;so that the duties of the lower classes towards the state weretransferred to the great landlords, who thus became loyaladherents of the king but absolute masters on their own territory.The Merovingians had no idea that they were abdicating theleast part of their authority, nevertheless the deprivationsacquiesced in by the feebler kings led of necessity to the diminutionof their authority and their judicial powers, and to theabandonment of public taxation. They thought that by grantingimmunity they would strengthen their direct control; in realitythey established the local independence of the great landowners,by allowing royal rights to pass into their hands. Then cameconfusion between the rights of the sovereign and the rights ofproperty. The administrative machinery of the state still existed,but it worked in empty air: its taxpayers disappeared, thosewho were amenable to its legal jurisdiction slipped from its grasp,and the number of those whose affairs it should have directeddwindled away. Thus the Merovingians had shown themselvesincapable of rising above the barbarous notion that royalty isa personal asset to the idea that royalty is of the state, a powerbelonging to the nation and instituted for the benefit of all.They represented in society nothing more than a force whichgrew feebler and feebler as other forces grew strong; they neverstood for a national magistracy.
Society no less than the state was falling asunder by a gradualprocess of decay. Under the Merovingians it was a hierarchywherein grades were marked by the varied scale of thewergild, a man being worth anything from thirty to sixhundred gold pieces. The different degrees were thoseDisruption of the social framework.of slave, freedman, tenant-farmer and great landowner.As in every social scheme where the government iswithout real power, the weakest sought protection of thestrongest; and the system of patron, client and journeyman,which had existed among the Romans, the Gauls and theGermans, spread rapidly in the 6th and 7th centuries, owing topublic disorder and the inadequate protection afforded by thegovernment. The Church’s patronage provided some with arefuge from violence; others ingratiated themselves with therich for the sake of shelter and security; others again soughtplace and honour from men of power; while women, churchmenand warriors alike claimed the king’s direct and personal protection.
This hierarchy of persons, these private relations of man toman, were recognized by custom in default of the law, and weresoon strengthened by another and territorial hierarchy.The large estate, especially if it belonged to the Church,very soon absorbed the few fields of the freeman.The beneficium.In order to farm these, the Church and the rich landownersgranted back the holdings on the temporary and conditionalterms of tenancy-at-will or of the beneficium, thus multiplyingendlessly the land subject to their overlordship and the men whowere dependent upon them as tenants. The kings, like privateindividuals and ecclesiastical establishments, made use of thebeneficium to reward their servants; till finally their demesnewas so reduced by these perpetual grants that they took to distributingamong their champions land owning the overlordshipof the Church, or granted their own lands for single lives only.These various “benefactions” were, as a rule, merely the indirectmethods which the great landowners employed in order to absorbthe small proprietor. And so well did they succeed, that in the6th and 7th centuries the provincial hierarchy consisted of thecultivator, the holder of the beneficium and the owner; whilethis dependence of one man upon another affected the personalliberty of a large section of the community, as well as the conditionof the land. The great landowner tended to become notonly lord over his tenants, but also himself a vassal of the king.
Thus by means of immunities, of the beneficium and ofpatronage, society gradually organized itself independentlyof the state, since it required further security. Suchextra security was first provided by the conqueror ofTertry; for Pippin II. represented the two greatPippin of Heristal.families of Pippin and of Arnulf, and consequently the twointerests then paramount, i.e. land and religion, while hehad at his back a great company of followers and vast landedestates. For forty years (615–655) the office of mayor of Austrasiahad gone down in his family almost continuously in directdescent from father to son. The death of Grimoald had causedthe loss of this post, yet Ansegisus (Ansegisel), Arnulf’s son andPippin’s son-in-law, had continued to hold high office in theAustrasian palace; and about 680 his son, Pippin II., becamemaster of Austrasia, although he had held no previous office inthe palace. His dynasty was destined to supplant that of theMerovingian house.
Pippin of Heristal was a pioneer; he it was who began allthat his descendants were afterwards to carry through. Thus hegathered the nobles about him not by virtue of his position, butbecause of his own personal prowess, and because he could assurethem of justice and protection; instead of being merely the headof the royal palace he was the absolute lord of his own followers.Moreover, he no longer bore the title of mayor, but that of dukeor prince of the Franks; and the mayoralty, like the royal powernow reduced to a shadow, became an hereditary possession whichPippin could bestow upon his sons. The reigns of Theuderich III.,Clovis III. or Childebert III. are of no significance except asserving to date charters and diplomas. Pippin it was whoadministered justice in Austrasia, appointed officials and distributeddukedoms; and it was Pippin, the military leader,who defended the frontiers threatened by Frisians, Alamanniand Bavarians. Descended as he was from Arnulf, bishop ofMetz, he was before all things a churchman, and behind hisarmies marched the missionaries to whom the Carolingian dynasty,of which he was the founder, were to subject all Christendom.Pippin it was, in short, who governed, who set in orderthe social confusions of Neustria, who, after long wars, puta stop to the malpractices of the dukes and counts, andsummoned councils of bishops to make good regulations.But at his death in 714 the child-king Dagobert III. foundhimself subordinated to Pippin’s two grandsons, who, beingminors, were under the wardship of their grandmotherPlectrude.
Pippin’s work was almost undone—a party among theNeustrians under Raginfrid, mayor of the palace, revoltedagainst Pippin II.’s adherents, and Radbod, duke ofthe Frisians, joined them. But the Austrasiansappealed to an illegitimate son of Pippin, CharlesCharles Martel
(715–741).Martel, who had escaped from the prison to whichPlectrude, alarmed at his prowess, had consigned him, and tookhim for their leader. With Charles Martel begins the great periodof Austrasian history. Faithful to the traditions of the Austrasianmayors, he chose kings for himself—Clotaire IV., then Chilperic II.and lastly Theuderich IV. After Theuderich’s death (737) heleft the throne vacant until 742, but he himself was king in allbut name; he presided over the royal tribunals, appointed theroyal officers, issued edicts, disposed of the funds of the treasuryand the churches, conferred immunities upon adherents, who wereno longer the king’s nobles but his own, and even appointed thebishops, though there was nothing of the ecclesiastic about himself.He decided questions of war and peace, and re-establishedunity in Gaul by defeating the Neustrians and the Aquitanianfollowers of Duke Odo (Eudes) at Vincy in 717. When Odo,brought to bay, appealed for help to the Arab troops of Abd-ar-Rahman,who after conquering Spain had crossed the Pyrenees,Charles, like a second Clovis, saved Catholic Christendom in itsperil by crushing the Arabs at Tours (732). The retreat of theArabs, who were further weakened by religious disputes, enabledhim to restore Frankish rule in Aquitaine in spite of Hunald,son of Odo. But Charles’s longest expeditions were made intoGermany, and in these he sought the support of the Church, thenthe greatest of all powers since it was the depositary of theRoman imperial tradition.
No less unconscious of his mission than Clovis had been, CharlesMartel also was a soldier of Christ. He protected the missionarieswho paved the way for his militant invasions. Withouthim the apostle of Germany, the English monk Boniface,would never have succeeded in preserving the purityCharles Martel and the Church.of the faith and keeping the bishops submissive tothe Holy See. The help given by Charles had two very far-reachingresults. Boniface was the instrument of the union ofRome and Germany, of which union the Holy Roman Empire inGermany was in the 10th century to become the most perfectexpression, continuing up to the time of Luther. And Bonifacealso helped on the alliance between the papacy and the Carolingiandynasty, which, more momentous even than that between Clovisand the bishops of Gaul, was to sanctify might by right.
This union was imperative for the bishops of Rome if theywished to establish their supremacy, and their care for orthodoxyby no means excluded all desire of domination. Merereligious authority did not secure to them the obedienceof either the faithful or the clergy; moreover, theyCharles Martel and Gregory III.had to consider the great secular powers, and in thisrespect their temporal position in Italy was growing unbearable.Their relations with the East Roman emperor (solelord of the world after the Roman Senate had sent the imperialinsignia to Constantinople in 476) were confined to receivinginsults from him or suspecting him of heresy. Even in northernItaly there was no longer any opposition to the progress of theLombards, the last great nation to be established towards theend of the 6th century within the ancient Roman empire—theirking Liudprand clearly intended to seize Italy and even Romeitself. Meanwhile from the south attacks were being made bythe rebel dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum. Pope Gregory III.cherished dreams of an alliance with the powerful duke of theFranks, as St Remigius before him had thought of unitingwith Clovis against the Goths. Charles Martel had protectedBoniface on his German missions: he would perhaps lendGregory the support of his armies. But the warrior, like Clovisaforetime, hesitated to put himself at the disposal of the priest.When it was a question of winning followers or keeping them,he had not scrupled to lay hands on ecclesiastical property,nor to fill the Church with his friends and kinsfolk, and thisalliance might embarrass him. So if he loaded the Romanambassadors with gifts in 739, he none the less remembered thatthe Lombards had just helped him to drive the Saracens fromProvence. However, he died soon after this, on the 22nd ofOctober 741, and Gregory III. followed him almost immediately.
Feeling his end near, Charles, before an assembly of nobles,had divided his power between his two sons, Carloman andPippin III. The royal line seemed to have beenforgotten for six years, but in 742 Pippin brought ason of Chilperic II. out of a monastery and made himThe Carolingian dynasty.king. This Childeric III. was but a shadow—andknew it. He made a phantom appearance once every springat the opening of the great annual national convention known asthe Campus Martius (Champ de Mars): a dumb idol, his chariotdrawn in leisurely fashion by oxen, he disappeared again intohis palace or monastery. An unexpected event re-establishedunity in the Carolingian family. Pippin’s brother, the piousCarloman, became a monk in 747, and Pippin, now sole rulerof the kingdom, ordered Childeric also to cut off his royal locks;after which, being king in all but name, he adopted that titlein 752. Thus ended the revolution which had been going onfor two centuries. The disappearance of Grippo, Pippin’sPippin the Short, 752–768.illegitimate brother, who, with the help of all theenemies of the Franks—Alamanni, Aquitanians andBavarians—had disputed his power, now completed thework of centralization, and Pippin had only to maintainit. For this the support of the Church was indispensable, andPippin understood the advantages of such an alliance betterthan Charles Martel. A son of the Church, a protector of bishops,a president of councils, a collector of relics, devoted to Boniface (whom he invited, as papal legate, to reform the clergy ofAustrasia), he astutely accepted the new claims of the vicarof St Peter to the headship of the Church, perceiving the valueof an alliance with this rising power.
Prudent enough to fear resistance if he usurped the Merovingiancrown, Pippin the Short made careful preparations for hisaccession, and discussed the question of the dynastywith Pope Zacharias. Receiving a favourable opinion,he had himself anointed and crowned by BonifaceSacred character of the new monarchy.in the name of the bishops, and was then proclaimedking in an assembly of nobles, counts and bishops atSoissons in November 751. Still, certain disturbances madehim see that aristocratic approval of his kingship might bestrengthened if it could claim a divine sanction which no Merovingianhad ever received. Two years later, therefore, he demandeda consecration of his usurpation from the pope, and inSt Denis on the 28th of July 754 Stephen II. crowned andanointed not only Pippin, but his wife and his two sons as well.
The political results of this custom of coronation were all-importantfor the Carolingians, and later for the first of theCapets. Pippin was hereby invested with new dignity,and when Boniface’s anointing had been confirmedby that of the pope, he became the head of the FrankishPippin and the Papacy.Church, the equal of the pope. Moreover, he astutelycontrived to extend his priestly prestige to his whole family;his royalty was no longer merely a military command or a civiloffice, but became a Christian priesthood. This sacred characterwas not, however, conferred gratuitously. On the very dayof his coronation Pippin allowed himself to be proclaimedpatrician of the Romans by the pope, just as Clovis had beenmade consul. This title of the imperial court was purely honorary,but it attached him still more closely to Rome, though withoutlessening his independence. He had besides given a writtenpromise to defend the Church of Rome, and that not against theLombards only. Qualified by letters of the papal chancery as“liberator and defender of the Church,” his armies twice (754–756)crossed the Alps, despite the opposition of the Frankisharistocracy, and forced Aistulf, king of the Lombards, to cedeto him the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis. Pippingave them back to Pope Stephen II., and by this famous donationfounded that temporal power of the popes which was to endureuntil 1870. He also dragged the Western clergy into the pope’squarrel with the emperor at Constantinople, by summoningthe council of Gentilly, at which the iconoclastic heresy wascondemned (767). Matters being thus settled with Rome,Pippin again took up his wars against the Saxons, against theArabs (whom he drove from Narbonne in 758), and above allagainst Waïfer, duke of Aquitaine, and his ally, duke Tassiloof Bavaria. This last war was carried on systematically from760 to 768, and ended in the death of Waïfer and the definiteestablishment of the Frankish hold on Aquitaine. WhenPippin died, aged fifty-four, on the 24th of September 768, thewhole of Gaul had submitted to his authority.
Pippin left two sons, and before he died he had, with theconsent of the dignitaries of the realm, divided his kingdombetween them, making the elder, Charles (Charlemagne),king of Austrasia, and giving the younger, Carloman,Burgundy, Provence, Septimania, Alsace andCharlemagne.Alamannia, and half of Aquitaine to each. On the 9th of October768 Charles was enthroned at Noyon in solemn assembly, andCarloman at Soissons. The Carolingian sovereignty was thusneither hereditary nor elective, but was handed down by the willof the reigning king, and by a solemn acceptance of the futureking on the part of the nobles. In 771 Carloman, with whomCharles had had disputes, died, leaving sons; but bishops, abbotsand counts all declared for Charles, save a few who took refugein Italy with Desiderius, king of the Lombards. Desiderius,whose daughter Bertha or Desiderata Charles, despite the pope,had married at the instance of his mother Bertrade, supportedthe rights of Carloman’s sons, and threatened Pope Adrian inRome itself after he had despoiled him of Pippin’s territorialgift. At the pope’s appeal Charles crossed the Alps, tookVerona and Pavia after a long siege, assumed the iron crown ofthe Lombard kings (June 774), and made a triumphal entryinto Rome, which had not formed part of the pope’s desires.Pippin’s donation was restored, but the protectorate was nolonger so distant, respectful and intermittent as the pope liked.After the departure of the imperious conqueror, a fresh revoltof the Lombards of Beneventum under Arichis, Desiderius’sson-in-law, supported by a Greek fleet, obliged Pope Adrian towrite fresh entreaties to Charlemagne; and in two campaigns(776–777) the latter conquered the whole Lombard kingdom.But another of Desiderius’s daughters, married to the powerfulduke Tassilo of Bavaria, urged her husband to avenge herfather, now imprisoned in the monastery of Corbie. Afterendless intrigues, however, the duke, hemmed in by threedifferent armies, had in his turn to submit (788), and all Italywas now subject to Charlemagne. These wars in Italy, even thefall of the Lombard kingdom and the recapture of the duchy ofBavaria, were merely episodes: Charlemagne’s great war wasagainst the Saxons and lasted thirty years (772–804).
The work of organizing the three great Carolingian conquests—Aquitaine,Italy and Saxony—had yet to be done. Charlemagneapproached it with a moderation equal to the vigourwhich he had shown in the war. But by multiplyingits advance-posts, the Frankish kingdom came intoOrganization of the conquests.contact with new peoples, and each new neighbourmeant a new enemy. Aquitaine, bordered upon MussulmanSpain; the Avars of Hungary threatened Bavaria with theirtireless horsem*n; beyond the Elbe and the Saal the Slavswere perpetually at war with the Saxons, and to the north ofthe Eider were the Danes. All were pagans; all enemies ofCharlemagne, defender of Christ’s Church, and hence theappointed conqueror of the world.
Various causes—the weakening of the Arabs by the strugglebetween the Omayyads and the Abbasids just after the battleof Tours; the alliance of the petty Christian kings ofthe Spanish peninsula; an appeal from the northernamirs who had revolted against the new caliphate ofWars with the Arabs, Slavs and Danes.Cordova (755)—made Charlemagne resolve to crossthe Pyrenees. He penetrated as far as the Ebro, but wasdefeated before Saragossa; and in their retreat the Frankswere attacked by Vascons, losing many men as they camethrough the passes. This defeat of the rear-guard, famousfor the death of the great Roland and the treachery of Ganelo,induced the Arabs to take the offensive once more and to conquerSeptimania. Charlemagne had created the kingdom of Aquitaineespecially to defend Septimania, and William, duke of Toulouse,from 790 to 806, succeeded in restoring Frankish authoritydown to the Ebro, thus founding the Spanish March with Barcelonaas its capital. For two centuries and a half the Avars,a remnant of the Huns entrenched in the Hungarian Mesopotamia,had made descents alternately upon the Germans and upon theGreeks of the Eastern empire. They had overrun Bavaria inthe very year of its subjugation by Charlemagne (788), and ittook an eight-years’ struggle to destroy the robber stronghold.The empire thus pushed its frontier-line on from the Elbe tothe Oder, ever as it grew menaced by increasing dangers. Thesea came to the help of the depopulated land, and Danish pirates,Widukind’s old allies, came in their leathern boats to harrythe coasts of the North Sea and the Channel. Permanent armiesand walls across isthmuses were alike useless; Charlemagne hadto build fleets to repulse his elusive foes (808–810), and evenafter forty years of war the danger was only postponed.
Meanwhile Pippin’s Frankish kingdom, vast and powerfulas it had been, was doubled. All nations from the Oder to theElbe and from the Danube to the Atlantic were subjector tributary, and Charlemagne’s power even crossedthese frontiers. At his summons Christian princesCharlemagne’s empire.and Mussulman amirs flocked to his palaces. Thekings of Northumbria and Sussex, the kings of the Basquesand of Galicia, Arab amirs of Spain and Fez, and even the caliphof Bagdad came to visit him in person or sent gifts by the handsof ambassadors. A great warrior and an upright ruler, his conquests recalled those of the great Christian emperors, andthe Church completed the parallel by training him in her lore.This still barely civilized German literally went to school to theEnglish Alcuin and to Peter of Pisa, who, between two campaigns,taught him history, writing, grammar and astronomy, satisfyingalso his interest in sacred music, literature (religious literatureespecially), and the traditions of Rome and Constantinople. Whyshould he not be the heir of their Caesars? And so, little bylittle, this man of insatiable energy was possessed by the ambitionof restoring the Empire of the West in his own favour.
There were, however, two serious obstacles in the way: first,the supremacy of the emperor of the East, which though nominalrather than real was upheld by peoples, princes, andeven by popes; secondly, the rivalry of the bishopsof Rome, who since the early years of Adrian’sCharlemagne emperor (800).pontificate had claimed the famous “Donation of Constantine”(q.v.). According to that apocryphal document, theemperor after his baptism had ceded to the sovereign pontiffhis imperial power and honours, the purple chlamys, the goldencrown, “the town of Rome, the districts and cities of Italy andof all the West.” But in 797 the empress of Constantinoplehad just deposed her son Constantine VI. after putting out hiseyes, and the throne might be considered vacant; while on theother hand, Pope Leo III., who had been driven from Romeby a revolt in 799, and had only been restored by a Frankisharmy, counted for little beside the Frankish monarch, andcould not but submit to the wishes of the Carolingian court.So when next year the king of the Franks went to Rome inperson, on Christmas Eve of the year 800 and in the basilicaof St Peter the pope placed on his head the imperial crown anddid him reverence “after the established custom of the timeof the ancient emperors.” The Roman ideal, handed downin tradition through the centuries, was here first revived.
This event, of capital importance for the middle ages, wasfertile in results both beneficial and the reverse. It broughtabout the rupture between the West and Constantinople. ThenCharlemagne raised the papacy on the ruins of Lombardy tothe position of first political power in Italy; and the universalChurch, headed by the pope, made common cause with theEmpire, which all the thinkers of that day regarded as the idealstate. Confusion between these powers was inevitable, but atthis time neither Charles, the pope, nor the people had a suspicionof the troubles latent in the ceremony that seemed so simple.Thirdly, Charlemagne’s title of emperor strengthened his othertitle of king of the Franks, as is proved by the fact that at thegreat assembly of Aix-la-Chapelle in 802 he demanded from all,whether lay or spiritual, a new oath of allegiance to himselfas Caesar. His increased power came rather from moral value,from the prestige attaching to one who had given proof of it,than from actual authority over men or centralization; thisis shown by the division between the Empire and feudalism.Universal sovereignty claimed as a heritage from Rome had aprofound influence upon popular imagination, but in no waymodified that tendency to separation of the various nationswhich was already manifest. Charles himself in his governmentpreferred to restore the ancient Empire by vigorous personalaction, rather than to follow old imperial traditions; he introducedcohesion into his “palace,” and perfect centralizationinto his official administration, inspiring his followers andservants, clerical and lay, with a common and determined zeal.The system was kept in full vigour by the missi dominici, whor*gularly reported or reformed any abuses of administration,and by the courts, military, judicial or political, which broughtto Charlemagne the strength of the wealth of his subjects, carryinghis commands and his ideas to the farthest limits of theEmpire. Under him there was in fact a kind of early renaissanceafter centuries of barbarism and ignorance.
This emperor, who assumed so high a tone with hissubjects, his bishops and his counts, who undertookto uphold public order in civil life, held himself noless responsible for the eternal salvation of men’s soulsin the other world. Thanks to Charlemagne, and through theThe Carolingian Renaissance.restoration of order and of the schools, a common civilizationwas prepared for the varied elements of the Empire. Byhis means the Church was able to concentrate in the palatineacademy all the intellectual culture of the middle ages, havingpreserved some of the ancient traditions of organization andadministration and guarded the imperial ideal. Charlemagneapparently wished, like Theodoric, to use German blood andChristian unity to bring back life to the great body of the Empire.Not the equal of Caesar or Augustus in genius or in the lastingnessof his work, he yet recalls them in his capitularies, his periodiccourts, his official hierarchy, his royal emissaries, his ministers,his sole right of coinage, his great public works, his campaignsagainst barbarism and heathenry, his zeal for learning andliterature, and his divinity as emperor. Once more there existeda great public entity such as had not been seen for many years;but its duration was not to be a long one.
Charlemagne had for the moment succeeded in uniting westernEurope under his sway, but he had not been able to arrest itsevolution towards feudal dismemberment. He had,doubtless conscientiously, laboured for the reconstitutionof the Empire; but it often happens thatDissolution of the Frankish Empire.individual wills produce results other than those atwhich they aimed, sometimes results even contrary totheir wishes, and this was what happened in Charlemagne’scase. He had restored the superstructure of the imperialmonarchy, but he had likewise strengthened and legalizedmethods and institutions till then private and insecure, and these,passing from custom into law, undermined the foundations ofthe structure he had thought himself to be repairing. A quarterof a century after his death his Empire was in ruins.
The practice of giving land as a beneficium to a grantee whoswore personal allegiance to the grantor had persisted, and byhis capitularies Charlemagne had made these personal engagements,these contracts of immunity—hitherto not transferable,nor even for life, but quite conditional—regular, legal, evenobligatory and almost indissoluble. The beneficium was to beas practically irrevocable as the oath of fidelity. He submittedto the yoke of the social system and feudal institutions at thevery moment when he was attempting to revive royal authority;he was ruler of the state, but ruler of vassals also. The monarchicalprinciple no longer sufficed to ensure social discipline; thefear of forfeiting the grant became the only powerful guaranteeof obedience, and as this only applied to his personal vassals,Charlemagne gave up his claim to direct obedience from therest of the people, accepting the mediation of the counts, lordsand bishops, who levied taxes, adjudicated and administeredin virtue of the privileges of patronage, not of the right of thestate. The very multiplication of offices, so noticeable at thistime, furthered this triumph of feudalism by multiplying thelinks of personal dependence, and neutralizing more and morethe direct action of the central authority. The frequent convocationsof military assemblies, far from testifying to politicalliberty, was simply a means of communicating the emperor’scommands to the various feudal groups.
Thus Charlemagne, far from opposing, systematized feudalism,in order that obedience and discipline might pass from one manto another down to the lowest grades of society, and he succeededfor his own lifetime. No authority was more weighty or morerespected than that of this feudal lord of Gaul, Italy andGermany; none was more transient, because it was so purelypersonal.
When the great emperor was buried at Aix-la-Chapelle in814, his work was entombed with him. The fact was that hissuccessors were incapable of maintaining it. Twenty-nineyears after his death the Carolingian Empire hadbeen divided into three kingdoms; forty years laterCauses for the dissolution of
the Empire.one alone of these kingdoms had split into seven;while when a century had passed France was a litter oftiny states each practically independent. This disintegrationwas caused neither by racial hate nor by linguistic patriotism.It was the weakness of princes, the discouragement of freemenand landholders confronted by an inexorable system of financial and military tyranny, and the incompatibility of a vast empirewith a too primitive governmental system, that wrecked thework of Charlemagne.
The Empire fell to Louis the Pious, sole survivor of his threesons. At the Aix assembly in 813 his father had crowned himwith his own hand, thus avoiding the papal sanctionthat had been almost forced upon himself in 800.Louis was a gentle and well-trained prince, but weakLouis the Pious (814–840).and prone to excessive devotion to the Church. Hehad only reigned a few years when dissensions broke out on allsides, as under the Merovingians. Charlemagne had assignedtheir portions to his three sons in 781 and again in 806; likeCharles Martel and Pippin the Short before him, however,what he had divided was not the imperial authority, nor yetcountries, but the whole system of fiefs, offices and adherentswhich had been his own patrimony. The division that Louis thePious made at Aix in 817 among his three sons, Lothair, Pippinand Louis, was of like character, since he reserved the supremeauthority for himself, only associating Lothair, the eldest, withhim in the government of the empire. Following the adviceof his ministers Walla and Agobard, supporters of the policyof unity, Louis the Pious put Bernard of Italy, Charlemagne’sgrandson, to death for refusing to acknowledge Lothair as co-emperor;crushed a revolt in Brittany; and carried on amongthe Danes the work of evangelization begun among the Slavs.A fourth son, Charles, was born to him by his second wife, Judithof Bavaria. Jealousy arose between the children of the twomarriages. Louis tried in vain to satisfy his sons and theirfollowers by repeated divisions—at Worms (829) and at Aix(831)—in which there was no longer question of either unity orsubordination. Yet his elder sons revolted against him in 831and 832, and were supported by Walla and Agobard and bytheir followers, weary of all the contradictory oaths demandedof them. Louis was deposed at the assembly of Compiègne(833), the bishops forcing him to assume the garb of a penitent;but he was re-established on his throne in St Etienne at Metz,the 28th of February 835, from which time until his death in840 he fell more and more under the influence of his ambitiouswife, and thought only of securing an inheritance for Charles,his favourite son.
Hardly was Louis buried in the basilica of Metz before his sonsflew to arms. The first dynastic war broke out between Lothair,who by the settlement of 817 claimed the wholemonarchy with the imperial title, and his brothersLouis and Charles. Lothair wanted, with the Empire,The sons of Louis the Pious.the sole right of patronage over the adherents of hishouse, but each of these latter chose his own lord according toindividual interests, obeying his fears or his preferences. Thethree brothers finished their discussion by fighting for a wholeday (June 25th, 841) on the plain of Fontanet by Auxerre; butthe battle decided nothing, so Charles and Louis, in order to getthe better of Lothair, allied themselves and their vassals by anoath taken in the plain of Strassburg (Feb. 14th, 842).This, the first document in the vulgar tongue in theThe Strassburg oath.history of France and Germany, was merely a mutualcontract of protection for the two armies, which neverthelessdid not risk another battle. An amicable division of theimperial succession was arranged, and after an assessment ofthe empire which took almost a year, an agreement was signedat Verdun in August 843.
This was one of the important events in history. Eachbrother received an equal share of the dismembered empire.Louis had the territory on the right bank of the Rhine,with Spires, Worms and Mainz “because of the abundanceof wine.” Lothair took Italy, the valleys of thePartition of the Empire at Verdun (843).Rhône, the Saône and the Meuse, with the two capitalsof the empire, Aix-la-Chapelle and Rome, and thetitle of emperor. Charles had all the country watered by theScheldt, the Seine, the Loire and the Garonne, as far as theAtlantic and the Ebro. The partition of Verdun separated oncemore, and definitively, the lands of the eastern and westernFranks. The former became modern Germany, the latterFrance, and each from this time forward had its own nationalexistence. However, as the boundary between the possessionsof Charles the Bald and those of Louis was not strictly defined,and as Lothair’s kingdom, having no national basis, soon disintegratedinto the kingdoms of Italy, Burgundy and Arles, inLotharingia, this great undefined territory was to serve as atilting-ground for France and Germany on the very morrow ofthe treaty of Verdun and for ten centuries after.
Charles the Bald was the first king of western France. Anxiousas he was to preserve Charlemagne’s traditions of government,he was not always strong enough to do so, and warfarewithin his own dominions was often forced on him.The Norse pirates who had troubled CharlemagneCharles the Bald (843–877).showed a preference for western France, justified bythe easy access afforded by river estuaries with rich monasterieson their shores. They began in 841 with the sack of Rouen;and from then until 912, when they made a settlement in onepart of the country, though few in numbers they never ceasedattacking Charles’s kingdom, coming in their ships up the Loireas far as Auvergne, up the Garonne to Toulouse, and up theSeine and the Scheldt to Paris, where they made four descentsin forty years, burning towns, pillaging treasure, destroyingharvests and slaughtering the peasants or carrying them off intoslavery. Charles the Bald thus spent his life sword in hand,fighting unsuccessfully against the Bretons, whose two kings,Nomenoé and Erispoé, he had to recognize in turn; and againstthe people of Aquitaine, who, in full revolt, appealed for help tohis brother, Louis the German. He was beaten everywhereand always: by the Bretons at Ballon (845) and Juvardeil(851); by the people of Aquitaine near Angoulême (845); andby the Northmen, who several times extorted heavy ransomsfrom him. Before long, too, Louis the German actually alliedhimself with the people of Brittany and Aquitaine, and invadedFrance at the summons of Charles the Bald’s own vassals.Though the treaty of Coblenz (860) seemed to reconcile the twokings for the moment, no peace was ever possible in Charlesthe Bald’s kingdom. His own son Charles, king of Aquitaine,revolted, and Salomon proclaimed himself king of Brittany insuccession to Erispoé, who had been assassinated. To checkthe Bretons and the Normans, who were attacking from theAtlantic and the Mediterranean, Charles the Bald found himselfobliged to entrust the defence of the country to Robert the Strong,ancestor of the house of Capet and duke of the lands betweenLoire and Seine. Robert the Strong, however, though manytimes victorious over the incorrigible pirates, was killed by themin a fight at Brissarthe (866).
Despite all this, Charles spoke authoritatively in his capitularies,and though incapable of defending western France, covetedother crowns and looked obstinately eastwards.He managed to become king of Lorraine on the deathof his nephew Lothair II., and emperor and king ofDivision of the kingdom into
large fiefs.Germany on that of his other nephew Louis II. (875);though only by breaking the compact of the year 800.In 876, the year before his death, he took a third crown, that ofItaly, though not without a fresh defeat at Andernach by Louisthe German’s troops. His titles increased, indeed, but not hispower; for while his kingdom was thus growing in area it wasfalling to pieces. The duchy with which he rewarded Robertthe Strong was only a military command, but became a powerfulfief. Baldwin I. (d. 879), count of Flanders, turned the countrybetween the Scheldt, the Somme and the sea into another feudalprincipality. Aquitaine and Brittany were almost independent,Burgundy was in full revolt, and within thirty years Rollo,a Norman leader, was to be master of the whole of the lowerSeine from the Cotentin to the Somme. The fact was thatbetween the king’s inability to defend the kingdom, and thepowerlessness of nobles and peasants to protect themselves frompillage, every man made it his business to seek new protectors,and the country, in spite of Charles the Bald’s efforts, began to becovered with strongholds, the peasant learning to live beneaththe shelter of the donjon keeps. Such vassals gave themselvesutterly to the lord who guarded them, working for him sword or pickaxe in hand. The king was far away, the lord closeat hand. Hence the sixty years of terror and confusionwhich came between Charlemagne and the death of Charlesthe Bald suppressed the direct authority of the king infavour of the nobles, and prepared the way for a second destructionof the monarchy at the hands of a stronger power(see Feudalism).
Before long Charles the Bald’s followers were dictating tohim; and in the disaffection caused by his feebleness andcowardice prelates and nobles allied themselvesagainst him. If they acknowledged the king’s authorityat the assemblies of Yütz (near Thionville) in 844,Establishment
of feudalism.they forced from him a promise that they should keeptheir fiefs and their dignities; and while establishing a right ofcontrol over all his actions they deprived him of his right ofjurisdiction over them. Despite Charles’s resistance his royalpower dwindled steadily: an appeal to Hincmar, archbishop ofReims, entailed concessions to the Church. In 856 some of hisvassals deserted him and went over to Louis the German. Towin them back Charles had to sign a new charter, by the termsof which loyalty was no longer a one-sided engagement buta reciprocal contract between king and vassal. He gave up hispersonal right of distributing the fiefs and honours which werethe price of adherence, and thus lost for the Carolingians the freedisposal of the immense territories they had gradually usurped;they retained the over-lordship, it is true, but this over-lordship,without usufruct and without choice of tenant, was but abarren possession.
Like their territories public authority little by little slippedfrom the grasp of the Carolingians, largely because of theirabuse of their too great power. They had concentratedthe entire administration in their own hands. LikeCharlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the BaldDecay of the Carolinglan power.were omnipotent. There were no provincial assemblies,no municipal bodies, no merchant-gilds, no autonomous churches;the people had no means of making themselves heard; theyhad no place in an administration which was completely in thehands of a central hierarchy of officials of all ranks, from dukesto scabini, with counts, viscounts and centenarii in between.However, these dukes and counts were not merely officials: theytoo had become lords of fideles, of their own advocati, centenariiand scabini, whom they nominated, and of all the free men ofthe county, who since Charlemagne’s time had been first allowedand then commanded to “commend” themselves to a lord,receiving feudal benefices in return. Any deprivation or supersessionof the count might impoverish, dispossess or ruin thevassals of the entire county; so that all, vassals or officials,small and great, feeling their danger, united their efforts, andlent each other mutual assistance against the permanent menaceof an overweening monarchy. Hence, at the end of the 9thcentury, the heredity of offices as well as of fiefs. In the disorderedstate of society official stability was a valuable warrantof peace, and the administrative hierarchy, lay or spiritual,thus formed a mould for the hierarchy of feudalism. Therewas no struggle with the king, simply a cessation of obedience;for without strength or support in the kingdom he was powerlessto resist. In vain Charles the Bald affirmed his royal authorityin the capitularies of Quierzy-sur-Oise (857), Reims (860), Pistes(864), Gondreville (872) and Quierzy-sur-Oise (877); each timein exchange for assent to the royal will and renewal of oathshe had to acquiesce in new safeguards against himself and byso much to diminish that power of protection against violenceand injustice for which the weak had always looked to the throne.Far from forbidding the relation of lord and vassal, Charles theBald imposed it upon every man in his kingdom, himself proclaimingthe real incapacity and failure of that theoretic royal powerto which he laid claim. Henceforward royalty had no servants,since it performed no service. There was no longer the leasthesitation over the choice between liberty with danger andsubjection with safety; men sought and found in vassalagethe right to live, and willingly bartered away their libertyfor it.
The degeneration of the monarchy was clearly apparent onthe death of Charles the Bald, when his son, Louis the Stammerer,was only assured of the throne, which had passed byright of birth under the Merovingians and beenhereditary under the earlier Carolingians, through hisLouis the Stammerer (877–879).election by nobles and bishops under the directionof Hugh the Abbot, successor of Robert the Strong, each voterhaving been won over by gift of abbeys, counties or manors.When Louis died two years later (879), the same nobles met,some at Creil, the rest at Meaux, and the first party chose Louisof Germany, who preferred Lorraine to the crown; while therest anointed Louis III. and Carloman, sons of thelate king, themselves deciding how the kingdom wasLouis III. and Carloman (879–884).to be divided between the two princes. Thus theking no longer chose his own vassals; but vassalsand fief-holders actually elected their king according to thematerial advantages they expected from him. Louis III. andCarloman justified their election by their brilliant victoriesover the Normans at Saucourt (881) and near Epernay (883);but at their deaths (882–884), the nobles, instead of takingLouis’s boy-son, Charles the Simple, as king, chose Charles theFat, king of Germany, because he was emperor and seemedCharles the Fat. (884–888.)powerful. He united once more the dominions ofCharlemagne; but he disgraced the imperial throneby his feebleness, and was incapable of using hisimmense army to defend Paris when it was besiegedby the Normans. Expelled from Italy, he only came to Franceto buy a shameful peace. When he died in January 888 he hadnot a single faithful vassal, and the feudal lords resolved neveragain to place the sceptre in a hand that could not wield thesword.
The death-struggle of the Carolingians lasted for a centuryof uncertainty and anarchy, during which time the bishops,counts and lords might well have suppressed themonarchy had they been hostile to it. Such, however,was not their policy; on the contrary, they needed aDeath-struggle of the Carolingians (888–987).king to act as agent for their private interests, sincehe alone could invest their rank and dignities withan official and legitimate character. They did not at onceagree on Charles’s successor; for some of them chose Eudes(Odo), son of Robert the Strong, for his brilliant defence of Parisagainst the Normans in 885; others Guy, duke of Spoleto inItaly, who had himself crowned at Langres; while many wishedfor Arnulf, illegitimate son of Carloman, king of Germany andemperor. Eudes was victor in the struggle, and was crownedand anointed at Compiègne on the 29th of February 888; butfive years later, meeting with defeat after defeat at the hands ofthe Normans, his followers deserted from him to Charles theSimple, grandson of Charles the Bald, who was also supportedby Fulk, archbishop of Reims.
This first Carolingian restoration took place on the 28th ofJanuary 893, and thenceforward throughout this warlike periodfrom 888 to 936 the crown passed from one dynastyto the other according to the interests of the nobles.After desperate strife, an agreement between the twoKing Odo (888–893).rivals, Arnulf’s support, and the death of Odo,secured it for Charles III., surnamed the Simple. His subjectsremained faithful to him for a good while, as he put an end to theNorman invasions which had desolated the kingdom for twocenturies, and cowed those barbarians, much to the benefit ofFrance. By the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte (911) their leaderRolf (Rollo) obtained one of Charles’s daughters in marriageand the district of the Lower Seine which the Normans had longoccupied, on condition that he and his men ceased their attacksand accepted Christianity. Having thus tranquillized the west,Charles the Simple (893–929).Charles took advantage of Louis the Child’s death, andconquered Lorraine, in spite of opposition from Conrad,king of Germany (921). But his preference for his newconquest, and for a Lorrainer of low birth namedHagano, aroused the jealousy and discontent of his nobles.They first elected Robert, count of Paris (923), and then afterhis death in a successful battle near Soissons against Charles the Simple, Rudolph of Burgundy, his son-in-law. But Herbert ofVermandois, one of the successful combatants atRudolph of Burgundy (923–936).Soissons, coveted the countship of Laon, whichRudolph refused him; and he thereupon proclaimedCharles the Simple, who had confided his cause to him,as king once more. Seeing his danger Rudolph ceded the countshipto Herbert, and Charles was relegated to his prison untilhis death in 929. After unsuccessful wars against the noblesof the South, against the Normans, who asserted that they werebound to no one except Charles the Simple, and against theHungarians (who, now the Normans were pacified, were actingtheir part in the East), Rudolph had a return of good fortunein the years between 930 and 936, despite the intrigues of Herbertof Vermandois. Upon his death the nobles assembled to electa king; and Hugh the Great, Rudolph’s brother-in-law, movedby irresolution as much as by prudence, instead of taking thecrown, preferred to restore the Carolingians once more in theperson of Charles the Simple’s son, Louis d’Outremer, himselfclaiming numerous privileges and enjoying the exercise of powerunencumbered by a title which carried with it the jealousy ofthe nobles.
This restoration was no more peaceful than its predecessor.The Carolingians had as it were a fresh access of energy, and thestruggle against the Robertinians went on relentlessly.Both sides employed similar methods: one was supportedby Normandy, the other by Germany; theLouis IV. the Foreigner (936–954.)archbishop of Reims was for the Carolingians, theRobertinians had to be content with the less influential bishopof Sens. Louis soon proved to Hugh the Great, who was tryingto play the part of a mayor of the palace, that he was by nomeans a roi fainéant; and the powerful duke of the Franks,growing uneasy, allied himself with Herbert of Vermandois,William of Normandy and his brother-in-law Otto I. king ofGermany, who resented the loss of Lorraine. Louis defendedhimself with energy, aided chiefly by the nobles of the South,by his relative Edmund, king of the English, and then by Ottohimself, whose brother-in-law he also had become. A peaceadvantageous to him was made in 942, and on the deaths of histwo opponents, Herbert of Vermandois and William of Normandy,all seemed to be going well for him; but his guardianshipof Richard, son of the duke of Normandy, aroused freshstrife, and on the 13th of July 945 he fell into an ambush andsuffered a captivity similar to his father’s of twenty-two yearsbefore. No one had befriended Charles the Simple, but Louis hadhis wife Gerberga, who won over to his cause the kings of Englandand Germany and even Hugh. Hugh set him free, insisting, aspayment for his aid, on the cession of Laon, the capital of thekingdom and the last fortified town remaining to the Carolingians(946). Louis was hardly free before he took vengeance, harriedthe lands of his rival, restored to the archiepiscopal throne ofReims Artald, his faithful adviser, in place of the son of Herbertof Vermandois, and managed to get Hugh excommunicatedby the council of Ingelheim (948) and by the pope. A two years’struggle wearied the rivals, and they made peace in 950. Louisonce more held Laon, and in the following year furtherstrengthened his position by a successful expedition into Burgundy.Still his last years were not peaceful; for besides civilwars there were two Hungarian invasions of France (951and 954).
Louis’s sudden death in 954 once more placed the Carolingianline in peril, since he had not had time to have his son Lothaircrowned. For a third time Hugh had the disposal ofthe crown, and he was no more tempted to take it himselfin 954 than in 923 or 936: it was too profitless aLothair (954–986).possession. Thanks to Hugh’s support and to the good officesof Otto and his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne and dukeof Lorraine, Lothair was chosen king and crowned at Reims.Hugh exacted, as payment for his disinterestedness and fidelity,a renewal of his sovereignty over Burgundy with that of Aquitaineas well; he was in fact the viceroy of the kingdom, and othersimitated him by demanding indemnities, privileges and confirmationof rights, as was customary at the beginning of a reign.Hugh strengthened his position in Burgundy, Lorraine andNormandy by means of marriages; but just as his power wasat its height he died (956). His death and the minority of hissons, Hugh Capet and Eudes, gave the Carolingian dynasty thirtyyears more of life.
For nine years (956–965) Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, wasregent of France, and thanks to him there was a kind of ententecordiale between the Carolingians and the Robertinians and Otto.Bruno made Lothair recognize Hugh as duke of France andEudes as duke of Burgundy; but the sons preserved the father’senmity towards king Louis, despite the archbishop’s repeatedefforts. His death deprived Lothair of a wise and devotedguardian, even if it did set him free from German influence;and the death of Odalric, archbishop of Reims, in 969, wasanother fatal loss for the Carolingians, succeeded as he was byAdalbero, who, though learned, pious and highly intelligent,was none the less ambitious. On the death of Otto I. (973)Lothair wished to regain Lorraine; but his success was small,owing to his limited resources and the uncertain support of hisvassals. In 980, regretting his fruitless quarrel with Otto II.,who had ravaged the whole country as far as Paris, and fearingthat even with the support of the house of Vermandois he wouldbe crushed like his father Louis IV. between the duke of Franceand the emperor, who could count on the archbishop of Reims,Lothair made peace with Otto—a great mistake, which cost himthe prestige he had gained among his nobles by his fairly successfulstruggle with the emperor, drawing down upon him, moreover,the swift wrath of Hugh, who thought himself tricked. Otto,meanwhile, whom he was unwise enough to trust, made peacesecretly with Hugh, as it was his interest to play off his two oldenemies one against the other. However, Otto died first (983),leaving a three-year-old son, Otto III., and Lothair, hoping forLorraine, upheld the claims of Henry of Bavaria, who wished tooust Otto. This was a war-signal for Archbishop Adalberoand his adviser Gerbert, devoted to the idea of the Romanempire, and determined that it should still be vested in the raceof Otto, which had always been beneficent to the Church.
They decided to set the Robertinians against the Carolingians,and on their advice Hugh Capet dispersed the assembly ofCompiègne which Lothair had commissioned to examineAdalbero’s behaviour. On Lothair’s death in986, Hugh surrounded his son and successor, Louis V.,Louis V. (986–987).with intrigues. Louis was a weak-minded and violent young manwith neither authority nor prestige, and Hugh tried to have himplaced under tutelage. After Louis V.’s sudden death, agedtwenty, in 987, Adalbero and Gerbert, with the support of thereformed Cluniac clergy, at the Assembly of Senlis eliminatedfrom the succession the rightful heir, Charles of Lorraine, who,without influence or wealth, had become a stranger in his owncountry, and elected Hugh Capet, who, though rich and powerful,was superior neither in intellect nor character. Thus the triplealliance of Adalbero’s bold and adroit imperialism with thecautious and vacillating ambition of the duke of the Franks,and the impolitic hostility towards Germany of the ruinedCarolingians, resulted in the unlooked-for advent of the newCapetian dynasty.
This event completed the evolution of the forces that hadproduced feudalism, the basis of the medieval social system.The idea of public authority had been replaced by onethat was simpler and therefore better fitted for a half-civilizedsociety—that of dependence of the weak onDismemberment
of the kingdom.the strong, voluntarily entered on by means of mutualcontract. Feudalism had gained ground in the 8th century;feudalism it was which had raised the first Carolingian to thethrone as being the richest and most powerful person in Austrasia;and Charlemagne with all his power had been as utterly unableas the Merovingians to revive the idea of an abstract and impersonalstate. Charlemagne’s vassals, however, had neededhim; while from Charles the Bald onward it was the king whoneeded the vassals—a change more marked with each successiveprince. The feudal system had in fact turned against the throne,the vassals using it to secure a permanent hold upon offices and fiefs, and to get possession of estates and of power. After Charlesthe Bald’s death royalty had only, so to speak, a shell—administrativeofficialdom. No longer firmly rooted in the soil, the monarchywas helpless before local powers which confronted it, seized uponthe land, and cut off connexion between throne and people.The king, the supreme lord, was the only lord without lands, anomad in his own realms, merely lingering there until starved out.Feudalism claimed its new rights in the capitulary of Quierzy-sur-Oisein 857; the rights of the monarchy began to dwindle in877.
But vassalage could only be a cause of disintegration, not ofunity, and that this disintegration did not at once spread indefinitelywas due to the dozen or so great military commands—Flanders,Burgundy, Aquitaine, &c.—which Charles the Baldhad been obliged to establish on a strong territorial basis. Oneof these great vassals, the duke of France, was amply providedwith estates and offices, in contrast to the landless Carolingian,and his power, like that of the future kings of Prussia andAustria, was based on military authority, for he had a frontier—thatof Anjou. Then the inevitable crisis had come. For ahundred years the great feudal lords had disposed of the crownas they pleased, handing it back and forward from one dynastyto another. At the same time the contrast between the vastproportions of the Carolingian empire and its feeble administrativecontrol over a still uncivilized community became moreand more accentuated. The Empire crumbled away by degrees.Each country began to lead its own separate existence, stammeringits own tongue; the different nations no longer understoodone another, and no longer had any general ideas in common.The kingdoms of France and Germany, still too large, owed theirexistence to a series of dispossessions imposed on sovereignstoo feeble to hold their own, and consisted of a great numberof small states united by a very slight bond. At the end of the10th century the duchy of France was the only central part ofthe kingdom which was still free and without organization. Theend was bound to come, and the final struggle was between Laon,the royal capital, and Reims, the ecclesiastical capital, theformer carrying with it the soil of France, and the latter thecrown. The Capets captured the first in 985 and the other in987. Thenceforth all was over for the Carolingians, who wereleft with no heritage save their great name.
Was the day won for the House of Capet? In the 11th centurythe kings of that line possessed meagre domains scattered aboutin the Île de France among the seigniorial possessionsof Brie, Beauce, Beauvaisis and Valois. They werehemmed in by the powerful duchy of Normandy, theThe House of Capet.counties of Blois, Flanders and Champagne, and the duchyof Burgundy. Beyond these again stretched provinces practicallyimpenetrable to royal influence: Brittany, Gascony,Toulouse, Septimania and the Spanish March. The monarchylay stifling in the midst of a luxuriant feudal forest which surroundedits only two towns of any importance: Paris, the cityof the future, and Orleans, the city of learning. Its power,exercised with an energy tempered by prudence, ran to wastelike its wealth in a suzerainty over turbulent vassals devoid ofcommon government or administration, and was underminedby the same lack of social discipline among its vassals which hadsapped the power of the Carolingians. The new dynasty wasthus the poorest and weakest of the great civil and ecclesiasticallordships which occupied the country from the estuary of theScheldt to that of the Llobregat, and bounded approximatelyby the Meuse, the Saône and the ridge of the Cévennes; yet itcherished a great ambition which it revealed at times during itsfirst century (987–1108)—a determination not to repeat theCarolingian failure. It had to wait two centuries after the revolutionof 987 before it was strong enough to take up the dormanttradition of an authority like that of Rome; and until then itcunningly avoided unequal strife in which, victory being impossible,reverses might have weakened those titles, higher thanany due to feudal rights, conferred by the heritage of the Caesarsand the coronation at Reims, and held in reserve for thefuture.
The new dynasty thus at first gave the impression rather ofdecrepitude than of youth, seeming more a continuation of theCarolingian monarchy than a new departure. HughCapet’s reign was one of disturbance and danger;behind his dim personality may be perceived theHugh Capet
(987–996).struggle of greater forces—royalty and feudalism, theFrench clergy and the papacy, the kingdom of France and theEmpire. Hugh Capet needed more than three years and the betrayalof his enemy into his hands before he could parry the attackof a quite second-rate adversary, Charles of Lorraine (990), thelast descendant of Charlemagne. The insubordination of severalgreat vassals—the count of Vermandois, the duke of Burgundy,the count of Flanders—who treated him as he had treated theCarolingian king; the treachery of Arnulf, archbishop of Reims,who let himself be won over by the empress Theophano; thepapal hostility inflamed by the emperor against the claim offeudal France to independence,—all made it seem for a timeas though the unity of the Roman empire of the West wouldbe secured at Hugh’s expense and in Otto’s favour; but asa matter of fact this papal and imperial hostility ended bymaking the Capet dynasty a national one. When Hugh diedin 996, he had succeeded in maintaining his liberty mainly, itis true, by diplomacy, not force, despite opposing powers andhis own weakness. Above all, he had secured the future byassociating his son Robert with him on the throne; and althoughthe nobles and the archbishop of Reims were disturbed by thissuspension of the feudal right of election, and tried to oppose it,they were unsuccessful.
Robert the Pious, a crowned monk, resembled his father ineschewing great schemes, whether from timidity or prudence;yet from 996 to 1031 he preserved intact the authorityhe had inherited from Hugh, despite many domestic disturbances.He maintained a defiant attitude towardsRobert the Pious (996–1031).Germany; increased his heritage; strengthened hisroyal title by the addition of that of duke of Burgundy afterfourteen years of pillage; and augmented the royal domain byadding several countships on the south-east and north-west.Limited in capacity, he yet understood the art of acquisition.
Henry I., his son, had to struggle with a powerful vassal,Eudes, count of Chartres and Troyes, and was obliged for a timeto abandon his father’s anti-German policy. Eudes,who was rash and adventurous, in alliance with thequeen-mother, supported the second son, Robert,Henry I.
(1031–1060).and captured the royal town of Sens. In order toretake it Henry ceded the beautiful valley of the Saône and theRhône to the German emperor Conrad, and henceforth thekingdom of Burgundy was, like Lorraine, to follow the fortunesof Germany. Henry had besides to invest his brother with theduchy of Burgundy—a grave error which hampered Frenchpolitics during three centuries. Like his father, he subsequentlymanaged to retrieve some of the crown lands from William theBastard, the too-powerful duke of Normandy; and he madea praiseworthy though fruitless attempt to regain possessionof Lorraine for the French crown. Finally, by the coronationof his son Philip (1059) he confirmed the hereditary right of theCapets, soon to be superior to the elective rights of the bishopsand great barons of the kingdom. The chief merit of theseearly Capets, indeed, was that they had sons, so that theirdynasty lasted on without disastrous minorities or quarrelsover the division of inheritance.
Philip I. achieved nothing during his long reign of forty-eightyears except the necessary son, Louis the Fat. Unsuccessfuleven in small undertakings he was utterly incapableof great ones; and the two important events of hisreign took place, the one against his will, the otherPhilip I.
(1060–1108).without his help. The first, which lessened Normanaggression in his kingdom, was William the Bastard’s conquestof England (1066); the second was the First Crusade preachedby the French pope Urban II. (1095). A few half-heartedcampaigns against recalcitrant vassals and a long and obstinatequarrel with the papacy over his adulterous union with Bertradede Montfort, countess of Anjou, represented the total activity of Philip’s reign; he was greedy and venal, by no means disdainingthe petty profits of brigandage, and he never left his owndomains.
After a century’s lethargy the house of Capet awoke once morewith Louis VI. and began the destruction of the feudal polity.For thirty-four years of increasing warfare this activeand energetic king, this brave and persevering soldier,never spared himself, energetically policing the royalLouis VI. the Fat (1108–1137).demesne against such pillagers as Hugh of Le Puisetor Thomas of Marle. There was, however, but little differenceyet between a count of Flanders or of Chartres and Louis VI.,the possessor of a but small and perpetually disturbed realm,who was praised by his minister, the monk Suger, for makinghis power felt as far as distant Berril. This was clearly shownwhen he attempted to force the great feudal lords to recognizehis authority. His bold endeavour to establish William cl*toin Flanders ended in failure; and his want of strength wasparticularly humiliating in his unfortunate struggle with HenryI., king of the English and duke of Normandy, who was powerfuland well served, the real master of a comparatively weak baronage.Louis only escaped being crushed because he remembered,as did his successors for long after him, that his house owed itspower to the Church.
The Church has never loved weakness; she has always had asecret sympathy for power, whatever its source, when she couldhope to capture it and make it serve her ends. Louis VI. defendedher against feudal robbers; and she supported him in hisstruggles against the nobles, making him, moreover, by his son’smarriage with the heiress of Aquitaine, the greatest and richestlandholder of the kingdom. But Louis was not the obedienttool she wished for. With equal firmness and success he vindicatedhis rights, whether against the indirect attacks of thepapacy on his independence, or the claims of the ecclesiasticalcourts which, in principle, he made subordinate to the jurisdictionof the crown; whether in episcopal elections, or in ecclesiasticalreforms which might possibly imperil his power or hisrevenues. The prestige of this energetic king, protector of theChurch, of the infant communes in the towns, and of the peasantsas against the constant oppressions of feudalism, became stillgreater at the end of his reign, when an invasion of the Germanemperor Henry V. in alliance with Henry Beauclerk of Normandy(Henry I. of England), rallied his subjects round the oriflamme ofSt Denis, awakening throughout northern France the unanimousand novel sentiment of national danger.
Unfortunately his successor, Louis VII., almost destroyedhis work by a colossal blunder, although circ*mstancesseemed much in his favour. Germany and England, the twopowers especially to be dreaded, were busy withinternal troubles and quarrels of succession. On theLouis VII. the Young (1137–1180).other hand, thanks to his marriage with Eleanorof Aquitaine, Louis’s own domains had been increasedby the greater part of the country between the Loire and thePyrenees; while his father’s minister, the monk Suger, continuedto assist him with his moderation and prudence. His firstsuccesses against Theobald of Champagne, who for thirty yearshad been the most dangerous of the great French barons andhad refused a vassal’s services to Louis VI., as well as the adroitdiplomacy with which he wrested from Geoffrey the Fair, countof Anjou, a part of the Norman Vexin long claimed by the Frenchkings, in exchange for permitting him to conquer Normandy,augured well for his boldness and activity, had he but confinedthem to serving his own interests. The second crusade, undertakento expiate his burning of the church of Vitry, inaugurateda series of magnificent but fruitless exploits; while his wifewas the cause of domestic quarrels still more disastrous. Pietyand a thirst for glory impelled Louis to take the lead in thisThe second crusade.fresh expedition to the Holy Land, despite theopposition of Suger, and the hesitation of the pope,Bernard of Clairvaux and the barons. The alliancewith the German king Conrad III. only enhanced thedifficulties of an enterprise already made hazardous by themisunderstandings between Greeks and Latins. The Crusadeended in the double disaster of military defeat and martialdishonour (1147–1149); and Suger’s death in 1151 deprivedLouis of a counsellor who had exercised the regency skilfullyand with success, just at the very moment when his divorcefrom Eleanor was to jeopardize the fortunes of the Capets.
For the proud and passionate Eleanor married, two monthslater (May 1152), the young Henry, count of Anjou and dukeof Normandy, who held, besides these great fiefs,the whole of the south-west of France, and in twoyears’ time the crown of England as well. Henry andRivalry of the Capets and Angevins.Louis at once engaged in the first Capet-Angevin duel,destined to last a hundred years (1152–1242). When Franceand England thus entered European history, their conditionswere far from being equal. In England royal power was strong;the size of the Angevin empire was vast, and the successionassured. It was only abuse of their too-great powers that ruinedthe early Angevin kings. France in the 12th century was merelya federation of separate states, jealously independent, whichthe king had to negotiate with rather than rule; while his ownpossessions, shorn of the rich heritage of Aquitaine, were, so tospeak, swamped by those of the English king. For some timeit was feared that the French kingdom would be entirely absorbedin consequence of the marriage between Louis’s daughterand Henry II.’s eldest son. The two rivals were typical of theirstates, Henry II. being markedly superior to Louis in politicalresource, military talent and energy. He failed, however, torealize his ambition of shutting in the Capet king and isolatinghim from the rest of Europe by crafty alliances, notably thatwith the emperor Frederick Barbarossa—while watching anopportunity to supplant him upon the French throne. It isextraordinary that Louis should have escaped final destruction,considering that Henry had subdued Scotland, retaken Anjoufrom his brother Geoffrey, won a hold over Brittany, and schemedsuccessfully for Languedoc. But the Church once more cameto the rescue of her devoted son. The retreat to France of PopeAlexander III., after he had been driven from Rome by theemperor Frederick in favour of the anti-pope Victor, revivedLouis’s moral prestige. Henry II.’s quarrel with Thomas Becket,archbishop of Canterbury, which ran its course in France (1164–1171)as a struggle for the independence and reform of the Church,both threatened by the Constitutions of Clarendon, and endedwith the murder of Becket in 1172, gave Louis yet anotheradvantage over his rival. Finally the birth of Philip Augustus(1165), after thirty years of childless wedlock, saved the kingdomfrom a war of succession just at the time when the powerfulAngevin sway, based entirely upon force, was jeopardized bythe rebellion of Henry II.’s sons against their father. Louisnaturally joined the coalition of 1173, but showed no morevigour in this than in his other wars; and his fate would have beensealed had not the pope checked Henry by the threat of aninterdict, and reconciled the combatants (1177). Louis had stilltime left to effect the coronation of his son Philip Augustus(1179), and to associate him with himself in the exercise of theroyal power for which he had grown too old and infirm.
Philip Augustus, who was to be the bitterest enemy of HenryII. and the Angevins, was barely twenty before he revealed thefull measure of his cold energy and unscrupulousambition. In five years (1180–1186) he rid himselfof the overshadowing power of Philip of Alsace, countPhilip Augustus (1180–1223).of Flanders, and his own uncles, the counts ofChampagne; while the treaty of May 20th, 1186, was his firstrough lesson to the feudal leagues, which he had reduced topowerlessness, and to the subjugated duke of Burgundy andcount of Flanders. Northern and eastern France recognized thesuzerainty of the Capet, and Philip Augustus was now boldenough to attack Henry II., the master of the west, whosefriendly neutrality (assured by the treaty of Gisors) had madepossible the successive defeats of the great French barons.Like his father, Philip understood how to make capital out of thequarrels of the aged and ailing Henry II. with his sons, especiallywith Richard, who claimed his French heritage in his father’slifetime, and raised up enemies for the disunited Angevins even in Germany. After two years of constant defeat, Henry’scapitulation at Azai proved once more that fortune is neverwith the old. The English king had to submit himself to “theadvice and desire of the king of France,” doing him homage forall continental fiefs (1187–1189).
The defection of his favourite son John gave Henry his deathblow,and Philip Augustus found himself confronted by a newking of England, Richard Cœur de Lion, as powerful,besides being younger and more energetic. Philip’sambition could not rest satisfied with the pettyPhilip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion.principalities of Amiens, Vermandois and Valois,which he had added to the royal demesne. The thirdcrusade, undertaken, sorely against Philip’s will, inalliance with Richard, only increased the latent hostility betweenthe two kings; and in 1191 Philip abandoned the enterprisein order to return to France and try to plunder his absent rival.Despite his solemn oath no scruples troubled him: witness thelarge sums of money he offered to the emperor Henry VI. if hewould detain Richard, who had been made prisoner by the dukeof Austria on his return from the crusade; and his negotiationswith his brother John Lackland, whom he acknowledged king ofEngland in exchange for the cession of Normandy. But HenryVI. suddenly liberated Richard, and in five years that “devilset free” took from Philip all the profit of his trickery, and shuthim off from Normandy by the strong fortress of Château-Gaillard(1194–1199).
Happily an accident which caused Richard’s death at thesiege of Chalus, and the evil imbecility of his brother and successor,John Lackland, brilliantly restored the fortunesof the Capets. The quarrel between John and hisnephew Arthur of Brittany gave Philip AugustusPhilip Augustus and John Lackland.one of those opportunities of profiting by familydiscord which, coinciding with discontent among the variouspeoples subject to the house of Anjou, had stood him in suchgood stead against Henry II. and Richard. He demandedrenunciation on John’s part, not of Anjou only, but of Poitouand Normandy—of all his French-speaking possessions, in fact—infavour of Arthur, who was supported by William des Roches,the most powerful lord of the region of the Loire. Philip’sdivorce from Ingeborg of Denmark, who appealed successfullyto Pope Innocent III., merely delayed the inevitable conflict.John of England, moreover, was a past-master in the art ofmaking enemies of his friends, and his conduct towards his vassalsof Aquitaine furnished a judicial pretext for conquest. Theroyal judges at Paris condemned John, as a felon, to death andthe forfeiture of his fiefs (1203), and the murder of Arthur completedhis ruin. Philip Augustus made a vigorous onslaught onNormandy in right of justice and of superior force, took theformidable fortress of Château-Gaillard on the Seine after severalmonths’ siege, and invested Rouen, which John abandoned,fleeing to England. In Anjou, Touraine, Maine and Poitou,lords, towns and abbeys made their submission, won over byPhilip’s bribes despite Pope Innocent III.’s attempts at intervention.In 1208 John was obliged to own the Plantagenetcontinental power as lost. There were no longer two rivalmonarchies in France; the feudal equilibrium was destroyed,to the advantage of the duchy of France.
But Philip in his turn nearly allowed himself to be led into anattempt at annexing England, and so reversing for his ownbenefit the work of the Angevins (1213); but, happily for thefuture of the dynasty, Pope Innocent III. prevented this.Thanks to the ecclesiastical sanction of his royalty, Philip hadsuccessfully braved the pope for twenty years, in the matter ofIngeborg and again in that of the German schism, when he hadsupported Philip of Swabia against Otto of Brunswick, thepope’s candidate. In 1213, John Lackland, having been in conflictwith Innocent regarding the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury,had made submission and done homage for his kingdom, andPhilip wished to take vengeance for this at the expense of therebellious vassals of the north-west, and of Renaud and Ferrand,counts of Boulogne and Flanders, thus combating Englishinfluence in those quarters.
This was a return to the old Capet policy; but it was alsomenacing to many interests, and sure to arouse energetic resistance.John seized the opportunity to consolidateagainst Philip a European coalition, which includedmost of the feudal lords in Flanders, Belgium andCoalition against Philip Augustus. (1214).Lorraine, and the emperor Otto IV. So dangerous didthe French monarchy already seem! John beganoperations with an attack from Anjou, supported by the notablycapricious nobles of Aquitaine, and was routed by Philip’s sonat La Roche aux Moines, near Angers, on the 2nd of July1214. Twenty-five days later the northern allies, intending tosurprise the smaller French army on its passage over the bridgeat Bouvines, themselves sustained a complete defeat. This firstnational victory had not only a profound effect on the wholekingdom, but produced consequences of far-reaching importance:in Germany it brought about Otto’s fall before Frederick II.;in England it introduced the great drama of 1215, the first actof which closed with Magna Carta—John Lackland being forcedto acknowledge the control of his barons, and to share with themthe power he had abused and disgraced. In France, on the contrary,the throne was exalted beyond rivalry, raised far above afeudalism which never again ventured on acts of independenceor rebellion. Bouvines gave France the supremacy of the West.The feudalism of Languedoc was all that now remained toconquer.
The whole world, in fact, was unconsciously working forPhilip Augustus. Anxious not to risk his gains, but to consolidatethem by organization, Philip henceforth until his death in 1223operated through diplomacy alone, leaving to others the toiland trouble of conquests, the advantages of which were not forthem. When his son Louis wished to wrest the English crownfrom John, now crushed by his barons, Philip intervened withoutseeming to do so, first with the barons, then with Innocent III.,supporting and disowning his son by turns; until the latter,held in check by Rome, was forced to sign the treaty of Lambeth(1217). When the Church and the needy and fanatical noblesof northern and central France destroyed the feudal dynastyof Toulouse and the rich civilization of the south in theAlbigensian crusade, it was for Philip Augustus that theirleader, Simon de Montfort, all unknowing, conquered Languedoc.At last, instead of the two Frances of the langue d’oc and thelangue d’oïl, there was but one royal France comprising the wholekingdom.
Philip Augustus was not satisfied with the destruction of aturbulent feudalism; he wished to substitute for it such unityand peace as had obtained in the Roman Empire;and just as he had established his supremacy over thefeudal lords, so now he managed to extend it over theAdministration of Philip Augustus.clergy, and to bend them to his will. He took advantageof their weakness in the midst of an age of violence.By contracts of “pariage” the clergy claimed and obtainedthe king’s protection even in places beyond the king’s jurisdiction,to their common advantage. Philip thus set the feudal lordsone against the other; and against them all, first the Church,then the communes. He exploited also the townspeople’s needfor security and the instinct of independence which made themclaim a definite place in the feudal hierarchy. He was the actualcreator of the communes, although an interested creator, sincethey made a breach in the fortress of feudalism and extendedthe royal authority far beyond the king’s demesne. He dideven more: he gave monarchy the instruments of which itstill stood in need, gathering round him in Paris a councilof men humble in origin, but wise and loyal; while in 1190he instituted baillis and seneschals throughout his enlargeddominions, all-powerful over the nobles and subservient tohimself. He filled his treasury with spoils harshly wrung fromall classes; thus inaugurating the monarchy’s long and patientlabours at enlarging the crown lands bit by bit through taxeson private property. Finally he created an army, no longerthe temporary feudal ost, but a more or less permanent royalforce. By virtue of all these organs of government the throneguaranteed peace, justice and a secure future, having routed feudalism with sword and diplomacy. Philip’s son was the firstof the Capets who was not crowned during his father’s lifetime;a fact clearly showing that the principle of heredity had nowbeen established beyond discussion.
Louis VIII.’s short reign was but a prolongation of Philip’sin its realization of his two great designs: the recovery fromHenry III. of England of Poitou as far as the Garonne;and the crusade against the Albigenses, which withsmall pains procured him the succession of AmauryLouis VIII.
(1223–1226).de Montfort, and the Languedoc of the counts ofToulouse, if not the whole of Gascony. Louis VIII. died onhis return from this short campaign without having proved hisfull worth.
But the history of France during the 11th and 12th centuriesdoes not entirely consist of these painful struggles of the Capetdynasty to shake off the fetters of feudalism. France,no longer split up into separate fragments, now beganto exercise both intellectual and military influenceUniversal French activity.over Europe. Everywhere her sons gave proof ofrejuvenated activity. The Christian missions which otherswere reviving in Prussia and beginning in Hungary were undertakenon a vaster scale by the Capets. These “elder sons ofthe Church” made themselves responsible for carrying out the“work of God,” and French pilgrims in the Holy Land preparedthe great movement of the Crusades against the infidels.Religious faith, love of adventure, the hope of making advantageousconquests, anticipations of a promised paradise—allcombined to force this advance upon the Orient, whichthough failing to rescue the sepulchre of Christ, the ephemeralkingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, the dukedom of Athens,or the Latin empire of Constantinople, yet gained for Francethat prestige for military glory and religious piety which forcenturies constituted her strength in the Levant (see Crusades).At the call of the pope other members of the French chivalryalso made victorious expeditions against the Mussulmans, andfounded the Christian kingdom of Portugal. Obeying thatenterprising spirit which was to take them to England half acentury later, Normans descended upon southern Italy andwrested rich lands from Greeks and Saracens.
In the domain of intellect the advance of the French showeda no less dazzling and a no less universal activity; they sangas well as they fought, and their epics were worthyof their swordsmanship, while their cathedrals werehymns in stone as ardent as their soaring flights ofIntellectual development.devotion. In this period of intense religious lifeFrance was always in the vanguard. It was the ideas of Cluniacmonks that freed the Church from feudal supremacy, and inthe 11th century produced a Pope Gregory VII.; the spiritof free investigation shown by the heretics of Orleans inspiredthe rude Breton, Abelard, in the 12th century; and withGerbert and Fulbert of Chartres the schools first kindled thatbrilliant light which the university of Paris, organized by PhilipAugustus, was to shed over the world from the heights ofSainte-Geneviève. In the quarrels of the priesthood underthe Empire it was St Bernard, the great abbot of Clairvaux,who tried to arrest the papacy on the slippery downward pathof theocracy; finally, it was in Suger’s church of St Denisthat French art began that struggle between light againstdarkness which, culminating in Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle,was to teach the architects of the world the delightof building with airiness of effect. The old basilica whichcontains the history of the monarchy sums up the whole of Gothicart to this day, and it was Suger who in the domain of art andpolitics brought forward once more the conception of unity.The courteous ideal of French chivalry, with its “delectable”language, was adopted by all seigniorial Europe, which thusbecame animated, as it were, by the life-blood of France. Similarly,in the universal movement of those forces which made forfreedom, France began the age-long struggle to maintain therights of civil society and continually to enlarge the socialcategories. The townsman enriched by commerce and theemancipated peasant tried more or less valiantly to shake offthe yoke of the feudal system, which had been greatly weakened,if not entirely broken down, by the crusades. Grouped aroundtheir belfry-towers and organized within their gilds, they mademerry in their free jocular language over their own hardships,and still more over the vices of their lords. They insinuatedthemselves into the counsels of their ignorant masters, andthough still sitting humbly at the feet of the barons, theseupright and well-educated servitors were already dreamingof the great deeds they would do when their tyrants should havevacated their high position, and when royalty should havesummoned them to power.
By the beginning of the 13th century the Capet monarchywas so strong that the crisis occasioned by the sudden deathof Louis VIII. was easily surmounted by the foreignwoman and the child whom he left behind him. Itis true that that woman was Blanche of Castile, andLouis IX.
(1226–1270).that child the future Louis IX. A virtuous and verydevout Spanish princess, Blanche assumed the regency of thekingdom and the tutelage of her child, and carried them on fornine years with so much force of character and capacityfor rule that she soon impressed the clamorous anddisorderly leaders of the opposition (1226–1235). Bythe treaty of Meaux (1229), her diplomacy combined with theinfluence of the Church to prepare effectually for the annexationBlanche of Castile.of Languedoc to the kingdom, supplementing this again by aportion of Champagne; and the marriage of her son to Margaretof Provence definitely broke the ties which held the countrywithin the orbit of the German empire. She managed also to keepout of the great quarrel between Frederick II. and the papacywhich was convulsing Germany. But her finest achievementwas the education of her son; she taught him that lofty religiousmorality which in his case was not merely a rule for privateconduct, but also a political programme to which he remainedfaithful even to the detriment of his apparent interests. WithLouis IX. morality for the first time permeated and dominatedpolitics; he had but one end: to do justice to every one and toreconcile all Christendom in view of a general crusade.
The oak of Vincennes, under which the king would sit tomete out justice, cast its shade over the whole political actionof Louis IX. He was the arbiter of townspeople, of feudallords and of kings. The interdiction of the judicialduel, the “quarantaine le roi,” i.e. “the king’s truceLouis IX.’s policy
of arbitration.of forty days” during which no vengeance mightbe taken for private wrongs, and the assurement,[2]went far to diminish the abuses of warfare by allowing hismediation to make for a spirit of reconciliation throughout hiskingdom. When Thibaud (Theobald), count of Champagne,attempted to marry the daughter of Pierre Mauclerc, duke ofBrittany, without the king’s consent, Louis IX., who held thecounty of Champagne at his mercy, contented himself withexacting guarantees of peace. Beyond the borders of France,at the time of the emperor Frederick II.’s conflict with a papacythreatened in its temporal powers, though he made no responseto Frederick’s appeal to the civil authorities urging them topresent a solid front against the pretensions of the Church, andthough he energetically supported the latter, yet he would notadmit her right to place kingdoms under interdict, and refused theimperial crown which Gregory IX. offered him for one of hisbrothers. He always hoped to bring about an honourableagreement between the two adversaries, and in his estimation the advantages of peace outweighed personal interest. Inmatters concerning the succession in Flanders, Hainaut andNavarre; in the quarrels of the princes regarding the Empire,and in those of Henry III. of England with his barons; it wasbecause of his justice and his disinterestedness that he wasappealed to as a trusted mediator. His conduct towards HenryIII. was certainly a most characteristic example of his behaviour.
The king of England had entered into the coalition formedby the nobility of Poitou and the count of Toulouse to preventthe execution of the treaty of 1229 and the enfeoffmentof Poitou to the king’s brother Alphonse. Louis IX.defeated Henry III. twice within two days, at TaillebourgLouis IX. and
Henry III.and at Saintes, and obliged him to demand a truce(1242). It was forbidden that any lord should be a vassal bothof the king of France and of the king of England. After thisLouis IX. had set off upon his first crusade in Egypt (1248–54),and on his return he wanted to make this truce into a definitetreaty and to “set love” between his children and those of theEnglish king. By a treaty signed at Paris (1259), Henry III.renounced all the conquests of Philip Augustus, and Louis IX.those of his father Louis VIII.—an example unique in history of avictorious king spontaneously giving up his spoil solely for thesake of peace and justice, yet proving by his act that honesty isthe best policy; for monarchy gained much by that moralauthority which made Louis IX. the universal arbitrator.
But his love of peace and concord was not always “sans grandsdespens” to the kingdom. In 1258, by renouncing his rights overRoussillon and the countship of Barcelona, conqueredby Charlemagne, he made an advantageous bargainbecause he kept Montpellier; but he committed aThe crusade of Tunis.grave fault in consenting to accept the offers regardingSicily made by Pope Urban IV. to his brother the count of Anjouand Provence. That was the origin of the expeditions into Italyon which the house of Valois was two centuries later to squanderthe resources of France unavailingly, compromising beyond theAlps its interests in the Low Countries and upon the Rhine.But Louis IX.’s worst error was his obsession with regard to thecrusades, to which he sacrificed everything. Despite the signalfailure of the first crusade, when he had been taken prisoner;despite the protests of his mother, of his counsellors, and of thepope himself, he flung himself into the mad adventure of Tunis.Nowhere was his blind faith more plainly shown, combined asit was with total ignorance of the formidable migrations that wereconvulsing Asia, and of the complicated game of politics just thenproceeding between the Christian nations and the Moslems of theMediterranean. At Tunis he found his death, on the 25th ofAugust 1270.
The death of Louis IX. and that of his brother Alphonseof Poitiers, heir of the count of Toulouse, made Philip III., theBold, legitimate master of northern France and undisputedsovereign of southern France. From the latterhe detached the comtat Venaissin in 1274 and gave it toPhilip III., the Bold (1270–1285).the papacy, which held it until 1791. But he had nothis father’s great soul nor disinterested spirit. Urged by PopeMartin IV. he began the fatal era of great international wars byhis unlucky crusade against the king of Aragon, who, thanks to themassacre of the Sicilian Vespers, substituted his own predominancein Sicily for that of Charles of Anjou. Philip returned fromSpain only to die at Perpignan, ending his insignificant reign as hehad begun it, amid the sorrows of a disastrous retreat (1270–1285).His reign was but a halting-place of history between those ofLouis IX. and Philip the Fair, just when the transition wastaking place from the last days of the middle ages to the modernepoch.
The middle ages had been dominated by four great problems.The first of these had been to determine whether there shouldbe a universal empire exercising tutelage over thenations; and if so, to whom this empire shouldbelong, to pope or emperor. The second had beenPhilip IV. the Fair (1285–1314).the extension to the East of that Catholic unity whichreigned in the West. Again, for more than a century, thequestion had also been debated whether the English kings wereto preserve and increase their power over the soil of France.And, finally, two principles had been confronting one anotherin the internal life of all the European states: the feudal and themonarchical principles. France had not escaped any of theseconflicts; but Philip the Fair was the initiator or the instrument(it is difficult to say which) who was to put an end to both imperialand theocratic dreams, and to the international crusades; whowas to remove the political axis from the centre of Europe, muchto the benefit of the western monarchies, now definitely emancipatedfrom the feudal yoke and firmly organized against both theChurch and the barons. The hour had come for Dante, the greatFlorentine poet, to curse the man who was to dismember theempire, precipitate the fall of the papacy and discipline feudalism.
Modern in his practical schemes and in his calculated purpose,Philip the Fair was still more so in his method, that of legalprocedure, and in his agents, the lawyers. With himthe French monarchy defined its ambitions, and littleby little forsook its feudal and ecclesiastical characterLitigious character of Philip the Fair’s reign.in order to clothe itself in juridical forms. His aggressiveand litigious policy and his ruthless financialmethod were due to those lawyers of the south and of Normandywho had been nurtured on Roman law in the universities ofBologna or Montpellier, had practised chicanery in the provincialcourts, had gradually thrust themselves into the great arena ofpolitics, and were now leading the king and filling his parlement.It was no longer upon religion or morality, it was upon imperialand Roman rights that these chevaliers ès lois based the prince’somnipotence; and nothing more clearly marks the new traditionwhich was being elaborated than the fact that all the great eventsof Philip the Fair’s reign were lawsuits.
The first of these was with the papacy. The famous quarrelbetween the priesthood and the Empire, which had culminatedat Canossa under Gregory VII., in the apotheosis ofthe Lateran council under Innocent III., and againin the fall of the house of Hohenstaufen under InnocentPhilip the Fair and the Papacy.IV., was reopened with the king of France by BonifaceVIII. The quarrel began in 1294 about a question of money.In his bull Clericis laicos the pope protested against the taxeslevied upon the French clergy by the king, whose expenses wereincreasing with his conquests. But he had not insisted; becausePhilip, between feudal vassals ruined by the crusades andlower classes fleeced by everybody, had threatened to forbidthe exportation from France of any ecclesiastical gold andsilver. In 1301 and 1302 the arrest of Bernard Saisset, bishopof Pamiers, by the officers of the king, and the citation of thiscleric before the king’s tribunal for the crime of lèse-majesté,revived the conflict and led Boniface to send an order to freeSaisset, and to put forward a claim to reform the kingdomunder the threat of excommunication. In view of the gravityof the occasion Philip made an unusually extended appeal topublic opinion by convoking the states-general at Notre-Damein Paris (1302). Whatever were their views as to the relationsbetween ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction, the Frenchclergy, ruined by the dues levied by the papal court, rangedthemselves on the national side with the nobility and thebourgeoisie; whereupon the king, with a bold stroke far aheadof his time, gave tit for tat. His chancellor, Nogaret, went toAnagni to seize the pope and drag him before a council; butBoniface died without confessing himself vanquished. As amatter of fact the king and his lawyers triumphed, where thehouse of Swabia had failed. After the death of Boniface thesplendid fabric of the medieval theocracy gave place to therights of civil society, the humiliation of Avignon, the disruptionof the great schism, the vain efforts of the councils for reform,and the radical and heretical solutions of Wycliffe and Huss.
The affair of the Templars was another legal process carriedout by the same Nogaret. Of course this military religiousorder had lost utility and justification when the HolyLand had been evacuated and the crusades were over.Their great mistake had lain in becoming rich, andPhilip the Fair and the Templars.rich to excess, through serving as bankers to princes,kings and popes; for great financial powers soon became unpopular. Philip took advantage of this hatred of the lowerclasses and the cowardice of his creature, Pope Clement V.,to satisfy his desire for money. The trial of the order (1307–1313)was a remarkable example of the use of the religioustribunal of the Inquisition as a political instrument. There wasa dramatic completeness about this unexpected result of thecrusades. A general arbitrary arrest of the Templars, thesequestration of their property, examination under torture,the falsifying of procedure, extortion of money from the pope,the auto-da-fé of innocent victims, the dishonest pillaging oftheir goods by the joint action of the king and the pope: suchwas the outcome of this vast process of secularization, whichforeshadowed the events of the 16th and 18th centuries.
External policy had the same litigious character. Philipthe Fair instituted suits against his natural enemies, the kingof England and the count of Flanders, foreign princesholding possessions within his kingdom; and againstthe emperor, whose ancient province of Lorraine andPhilip the Fair and Edward I.kingdom of Arles constantly changed hands betweenGermany and France. Philip began by interfering in theaffairs of Sicily and Aragon, his father’s inheritance; afterwhich, on the pretext of a quarrel between French and Englishsailors, he set up his customary procedure: a citation of the kingof England before the parlement of Paris, and in case of defaulta decree of forfeiture; the whole followed by execution—thatis to say by the unimportant war of 1295. A truce arrangedby Boniface VIII. restored Guienne to Edward I., gave himthe hand of Philip’s sister for himself and that of the king’sdaughter for his son (1298).
A still more lengthy and unfortunate suit was the attemptof Philip the Fair and his successors to incorporate the Flemishfief like the English one (1300–1326), thus cominginto conflict with proud and turbulent republicscomposed of wool and cloth merchants, weavers,Philip the Fair and Flanders.fullers and powerful counts. Guy de Dampierre,count of Namur, who had become count of Flanders on thedeath of his mother Margaret II. in 1279—an ambitious, greedyand avaricious man—was arrested at the Louvre on accountof his attempt to marry his daughter to Edward I.’s eldest sonwithout the consent of his suzerain Philip. Released after twoyears, he sided definitely with the king of England when the latterwas in arms against Philip; and being only weakly supportedby Edward, he was betrayed by the nobles who favoured France,and forced to yield up not only his personal liberty but the wholeof Flanders (1300). The Flemings, however, soon wearying ofthe oppressive administration of the French governor, Jacquesde Châtillon, and the recrudescence of patrician domination,rose and overwhelmed the French chivalry at Courtrai (1302)—aprelude to the coming disasters of the Hundred Years’ War.Philip’s double revenge, on sea at Zierikzee and on land atMons-en-Pévèle (1304), led to the signing of a treaty at Athis-sur-Orge(1305).
The efforts of Philip the Fair to expand the limits of hiskingdom on the eastern border were more fortunate. Hismarriage had gained him Champagne; and he afterwardsextended his influence over Franche Comté,Bar and the bishoprics of Lorraine, acquiring alsoEastern policy of Philip the Fair.Viviers and the important town of Lyons—all thisless by force of arms than by the expenditure of money. Disdainingthe illusory dream of the imperial crown, still cherishedby his legal advisers, he pushed forward towards that fluctuatingeastern frontier, the line of least resistance, which would haveyielded to him had it not been for the unfortunate interruptionof the Hundred Years’ War.
His three sons, Louis X., Philip V. the Tall, and Charles IV.,continued his work. They increased the power of the monarchypolitically by destroying the feudal reaction excitedin 1314 by the tyrannical conduct of the jurists, likeEnguerrand de Marigny, and by the increasing financialThe sons of Philip the Fair (1314–1328).extortions of their father; and they also—notablyPhilip V., one of the most hard-working of the Capets—increasedit on the administrative side by specializing the servicesof justice and of finance, which were separated from the king’scouncil. Under these mute self-effacing kings the progress ofroyal power was only the more striking. With them the seniormale line of the house of Capet became extinct.
During three centuries and a half they had effected greatthings: they had founded a kingdom, a royal family and civilinstitutions. The land subject to Hugh Capet in987, barely representing two of the modern departmentsof France, in 1328 covered a space equal to fifty-nineThe royal house
of Capet.of them. The political unity of the kingdom was onlyfettered by the existence of four large isolated fiefs: Flanderson the north, Brittany on the west, Burgundy on the east andGuienne on the south. The capital, which for long had beenmovable, was now established in the Louvre at Paris, fortifiedby Philip Augustus. Like the fiefs, feudal institutions at largehad been shattered. The Roman tradition which made thewill of the sovereign law, gradually propagated by the teachingof Roman law—the law of servitude, not of liberty—and alreadyproclaimed by the jurist Philippe de Beaumanoir as superiorto the customs, had been of immense support to the interest ofthe state and the views of the monarchs; and finally the Capets,so humble of origin, had created organs of general administrationcommon to all in order to effect an administrative centralization.In their grand council and their domains they would have nonebut silent, servile and well-disciplined agents. The royalexchequer, which was being painfully elaborated in the chambredes comptes, and the treasury of the crown lands at the Louvre,together barely sufficed to meet the expenses of this more complicatedand costly machinery. The uniform justice exercised bythe parlement spread gradually over the whole kingdom bymeans of cas royaux (royal suits), and at the same time the royalcoinage became obligatory. Against this exaltation of theirpower two adversaries might have been formidable; but one,the Church, was a captive in Babylon, and the second, thepeople, was deprived of the communal liberties which it hadabused, or humbly effaced itself in the states-general behind thedeclared will of the king. This well-established authority wasalso supported by the revered memory of “Monseigneur SaintLouis”; and it is this prestige, the strength of this ideal superiorto all other, that explains how the royal prerogative came tosurvive the mistakes and misfortunes of the Hundred Years’War.
On the extinction of the direct line of the Capets the crownpassed to a younger branch, that of the Valois. Its sevenrepresentatives (1328–1498) were on the whole veryinferior to the Capets, and, with the exception ofCharles V. and Louis XI., possessed neither theirAdvent of the Valois.political sense nor even their good common sense;they cost France the loss of her great advantage over all othercountries. During this century and a half France passed throughtwo very severe crises; under the first five Valois the HundredYears’ War imperilled the kingdom’s independence; and underLouis XI. the struggle against the house of Burgundy endangeredthe territorial unity of the monarchy that had been establishedwith such pains upon the ruins of feudalism.
Charles the Fair having died and left only a daughter, thenation’s rights, so long in abeyance, were once more regained.An assembly of peers and barons, relying on twoprecedents under Philip V. and Charles IV., declaredthat “no woman, nor therefore her son, could inPhilip VI.
(1328–1350).accordance with custom succeed to the monarchy ofFrance.” This definite decision, to which the name of the Saliclaw was given much later, set aside Edward III., king of England,grandson of Philip the Fair, nephew of the late kings and son oftheir sister Isabel. Instead it gave the crown to the feudalchief, the hard and coarse Philip VI. of Valois, nephew of Philipthe Fair. This at once provoked war between the two monarchies,English and French, which, including periods of truce, lastedfor a hundred and sixteen years. Of active warfare there weretwo periods, both disastrous to begin with, but ending favourably:one lasted from 1337 to 1378 and the other from 1413 to 1453,thirty-three years of distress and folly coming in between.
However, the Hundred Years’ War was not mainly causedby the pretensions of Edward III. to the throne of the Capets;since after having long hesitated to do homage toPhilip VI. for his possessions in Guienne, Edward atlast brought himself to it—though certainly only afterThe Hundred Years’ War.lengthy negotiations, and even threats of war in 1331.It is true that six years later he renounced his homage and againclaimed the French inheritance; but this was on the groundof personal grievances, and for economic and political reasons.There was a natural rivalry between Edward III. and Philip VI.,both of them young, fond of the life of chivalry, festal magnificence,and the “belles apertises d’armes.” This rivalry wasaggravated by the enmity between Philip VI. and Robert ofArtois, his brother-in-law, who, after having warmly supportedthe disinheriting of Edward III., had been convicted of deceitin a question of succession, had revenged himself on Philip byburning his waxen effigy, and had been welcomed with openarms at Edward’s court. Philip VI. had taken reprisals againsthim in 1336 by making his parlement declare the forfeiture ofEdward’s lands and castles in Guienne; but the Hundred Years’War, at first simply a feudal quarrel between vassal and suzerain,soon became a great national conflict, in consequence of whatwas occurring in Flanders.
The communes of Flanders, rich, hard-working, jealous oftheir liberties, had always been restive under the authority oftheir counts and the influence of their suzerain, the king ofFrance. The affair at Cassel, where Philip VI. had avengedthe injuries done by the people of Bruges in 1325 to theircount, Louis of Nevers, had also compromised Englishinterests. To attack the English through their colonies, Guienneand Flanders, was to injure them in their most vital interests—clothand claret; for England sold her wool to Bruges inorder to pay Bordeaux for her wine. Edward III. had repliedby forbidding the exportation of English wool, and by threateningthe great industrial cities of Flanders with the transferenceto England of the cloth manufacture—an excellent means ofstirring them up against the French, as without wool they coulddo nothing. Workless, and in desperation, they threw themselveson Edward’s mercy, by the advice of a rich citizen of Ghent,Jacob van Artevelde (q.v.); and their last scruples of loyaltygave way when Edward decided to follow the counsels of Robertof Artois and of Artevelde, and to claim the crown of France.
The war began, like every feudal war of that day, with asolemn defiance, and it was soon characterized by terribledisasters. The destruction of the finest Frenchfleet that had yet been seen, surprised in the port ofSluys, closed the sea to the king of France; theThe defeat at Sluys.struggle was continued on land, but with little result.Flanders tired of it, but fortunately for Edward III. Brittanynow took fire, through a quarrel of succession, analogous to thatin France, between Charles of Blois (who had married thedaughter of the late duke and was a nephew of Philip VI., bywhom he was supported) and John of Montfort, brother of theold duke, who naturally asked assistance from the king ofEngland. But here, too, nothing important was accomplished;the capture of John of Montfort at Nantes deprived Edward ofBrittany at the very moment when he finally lost Flandersby the death of Artevelde, who was killed by the people of Ghentin 1345. Under the influence of Godefroi d’Harcourt, whomPhilip VI. had wished to destroy on account of his ambitionswith regard to the duchy of Normandy, Edward III. nowinvaded central France, ravaged Normandy, getting as nearto Paris as Saint-Germain; and profiting by Philip VI.’s hesitationand delay, he reached the north with his spoils by dint offorced marches. Having been pursued and encountered atThe defeat at Crécy and the taking of Calais.Crécy, Edward gained a complete victory there on the26th of April 1346. The seizure of Calais in 1347,despite heroic resistance, gave the English a portwhere they could always find entry into France, justwhen the queen of England had beaten David ofScotland, the ally of France, at Neville’s Cross, and whenCharles of Blois, made prisoner in his turn, was held captivein London. The Black Death put the finishing touch to themilitary disasters and financial upheavals of this unluckyreign; though before his death in 1350 Philip VI. was fortunateenough to augment his territorial acquisitions by the purchaseof the rich port of Montpellier, as well as by that of Dauphiné,which extended to the Alpine frontier, and was to become theappanage of the eldest son of the king of France (see Dauphinéand Dauphin).
Philip VI.’s successor was his son John the Good—or rather,the stupid and the spendthrift. This noble monarch was unspeakablybrutal (as witness the murders, simply onsuspicion, of the constable Raoul de Brienne, countof Eu, and of the count of Harcourt) and incrediblyJohn the Good (1350).extravagant. His need of money led him to debasethe currency eighty-one times between 1350 and 1355. Andthis money, so necessary for the prosecution of the war withEngland, which had been interrupted for a year, thanks to thepope’s intervention, was lavished by him upon his favourite,Charles of La Cerda. The latter was murdered in 1354 byorder of Charles of Navarre, the king’s son-in-law, who alsoprevented the levying of the taxes voted by the states in 1355with the object of replenishing the treasury. The Black Princetook this opportunity to ravage the southern provinces, andthen marched to join the duke of Lancaster and Charles ofDefeat at Poitiers.Navarre in Normandy. John the Good managedto bring the English army to bay at Maupertuis,not far from Poitiers; but the battle was conductedwith such a want of intelligence on his part that the Frencharmy was overwhelmed, though very superior in numbers, andKing John was made prisoner, after a determined resistance,on the 19th of September 1356.
The disaster at Poitiers almost led to the establishment inFrance of institutions analogous to those which England owedto Bouvines. The king a prisoner, the dauphin discreditedand deserted, and the nobility decimated,the people—that is to say, the states-general—couldThe states of
1355–1356.raise their voice. Philip the Fair had never regardedthe states-general as a financial institution, but merely as amoral support. Now, however, in order to obtain substantialhelp from taxes instead of mere driblets, the Valois needed astronger lever than cunning or force. War against the Englishassured them the support of the nation. Exactions, debasem*ntof the currency and extortionate taxation were ruinous palliatives,and insufficient to supply a treasury which the revenue fromcrown lands and various rights taken from the nobles couldnot fill even in times of peace. By the 14th century the motto“N’impose qui ne veut” (i.e. no taxation without consent) wasas firmly established in France as in England. After CrécyPhilip VI. called the states together regularly, that he mightobtain subsidies from them, as an assistance, an “aid” whichsubjects could not refuse their suzerain. In return for thisfavour, which the king could not claim as a right, the states,feeling their power, began to bargain, and at the session ofNovember 1355 demanded the participation of all classes in thetax voted, and obtained guarantees both for its levy and the useto be made of it. A similar situation in England had givenbirth to political liberty; but in France the great crisis of theearly 15th century stifled it. It was with this money that Johnthe Good got himself beaten and taken prisoner at Poitiers.Once more the states-general had to be convoked. Confrontedby a pale weakly boy like the dauphin Charles and the remnantsof the discredited council, the situation of the states was strongerRobert le Coq and Étienne Marcel.than ever. Predominant in influence were the deputiesfrom the towns, and above all the citizens of thecapital, led by Robert le Coq, bishop of Laon, andÉtienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris.Having no cause for confidence in the royal administration,the states refused to treat with the dauphin’s councillors, andproposed to take him under their own tutelage. He himselfhesitated whether to sacrifice the royal authority, or else,without resources or support, to resist an assembly backed bypublic opinion. He decided for resistance. Under pretext of grave news received from his father, and of an interview atMetz with his uncle, the emperor Charles IV., he begged thestates to adjourn till the 3rd of November 1356. This was apolitical coup d’état, and when the time had expired he attempteda financial coup d’état by debasing the currency. An uprisingobliged him to call the states-general together again in February1357, when they transformed themselves into a deliberative,independent and permanent assembly by means of the GrandeOrdonnance.
In order to make this great French charter really effectiveresistance to the royal authority should have been collective,national and even popular, as in the case of the chartersof 1215 and 1258 in England. But the lay and ecclesiasticalfeudal lords continued to show themselvesThe Grande Ordonnance of 1357.in France, as everywhere else except across the Straitsof Dover, a cause of division and oppression. Moreover,the states were never really general; those of the Langued’oc and the Langue d’oil sometimes acted together; but therewas never a common understanding between them and alwaystwo Frances within the kingdom. Besides, they only representedthe three classes who alone had any social standing at thatperiod: the nobles, the clergy, and the burgesses of importanttowns. Étienne Marcel himself protested against councillors“de petit état.” Again, the states, intermittently convokedaccording to the king’s good pleasure, exercised neither periodicalrights nor effective control, but fulfilled a duty which was soonfelt as onerous. Indifference and satiety spread speedily; thebourgeoisie forsook the reformers directly they had recourseto violence (February 1358), and the Parisians became hostilewhen Étienne Marcel complicated his revolutionary work byintrigues with Navarre, releasing from prison the grandson ofLouis X., the Headstrong, an ambitious, fine-spoken courter ofpopularity, covetous of the royal crown. The dauphin’s flightfrom Paris excited a wild outburst of monarchist loyalty andanger against the capital among the nobility and in the states-generalof Compiègne. Marcel, like the dauphin, was not a manto turn back. But neither the support of the peasant insurgents—the“Jacques”—who were annihilated in the market ofMeaux, nor a last but unheeded appeal to the large towns, noryet the uncertain support of Charles the Bad, to whom Marcelin despair proposed to deliver up Paris, saved him from beingput to death by the royalist party of Paris on the 31st of July1358.
Isolated as he was, Étienne Marcel had been unable either toseize the government or to create a fresh one. In the reactionwhich followed his downfall royalty inherited the financialadministration which the states had set up to check extravagance.The “élus” and the superintendents, instead of being delegatesof the states, became royal functionaries like the baillis and theprovosts; imposts, hearth-money (fouage), salt-tax (gabelle),sale-dues (droits de vente), voted for the war, were levied duringthe whole of Charles V.’s reign and added to his personal revenue.The opportunity of founding political liberty upon the vote andthe control of taxation, and of organizing the administrationof the kingdom so as to ensure that the entire military andfinancial resources should be always available, was gone beyondrecall.
Re-establishing the royal authority in Paris was not enough;an end had to be put to the war with England and Navarre, andthis was effected by the treaty of Brétigny (1360).King John ceded Poitou, Saintonge, Agenais, Périgordand Limousin to Edward III., and was offered hisThe treaty of Brétigny.liberty for a ransom of three million gold crowns;but, unable to pay that enormous sum, he returned to hisagreeable captivity in London, where he died in 1364.
Yet through the obstinacy and selfishness of John the Good,France, in stress of suffering, was gradually realizing herself.More strongly than her king she felt the shame ofdefeat. Local or municipal patriotism waxed amongpeasants and townsfolk, and combined with hatredCharles V.
(1364–1380).of the English to develop national sentiment. Manyof the conquered repeated that proud, sad answer of the menof Rochelle to the English: “We will acknowledge you withour lips; but with our hearts, never!”
The peace of Brétigny brought no repose to the kingdom.War having become a congenial and very lucrative industry,its cessation caused want of work, with all the evilsthat entails. For ten years the remnants of the armiesof England, Navarre and Brittany—the “GrandesThe “Grandes Compagnies.”Compagnies,” as they were called—ravaged thecountry; although Charles V., “durement subtil et sage,”succeeded in getting rid of them, thanks to du Guesclin, one oftheir chiefs, who led them to any place where fighting was goingon—to Brittany, Alsace, Spain. Charles also had all townsand large villages fortified; and being a man of affairs he setabout undoing the effect of the treaty of Brétigny by allianceswith Flanders, whose heiress he married to his brother Philip,duke of Burgundy; with Henry, king of Castile, and Ferdinandof Portugal, who possessed fine navies; and, finally, with theemperor Charles IV. Financial and military preparationswere made no less seriously when the harsh administrationof the Black Prince, to whom Edward III. had given Guiennein fief, provoked the nobles of Gascony to complain to Charles V.Cited before the court of Paris, the Black Prince refused toattend, and war broke out in Gascony, Poitou and Normandy,but with fresh tactics (1369). Whilst the English adhered tothe system of wide circuits, under Chandos or Robert Knolles,Charles V. limited himself to defending the towns and exhaustingthe enemy without taking dangerous risks. Thanks to theprudent constable du Guesclin, sitting quietly at home he reconqueredbit by bit what his predecessors had lost upon thebattlefield, helm on head and sword in hand; and when hedied in 1380, after the decease of both Edward III. and theBlack Prince, the only possessions of England in a liberatedbut ruined France were Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourgand Calais.
The death of Charles V. and dynastic revolutions in Englandstopped the war for thirty-five years. Then began an era ofinternal disorder and misery. The men of thatperiod, coarse, violent and simple-minded, with fewpolitical ideas, loved brutal and noisy pleasures—witnessCharles VI.
(1380–1422).the incredible festivities at the marriage ofCharles VI., and the assassinations of the constable de Clisson,the duke of Orleans and John the Fearless. It would haveneeded an energetic hand to hold these passions in check; andCharles VI. was a gentle-natured child, twelve years of age,who attained his majority only to fall into a second childhood.Thence arose a question which remained without reply duringthe whole of his reign. Who should have possession of theroyal person, and, consequently, of the royal power?The king’s uncles and the Marmousets.Should it be the uncles of the king, or his followersClisson and Bureau de la Rivière, whom the noblescalled in mockery the Marmousets? His uncles firstseized the government, each with a view to his own particularinterests, which were by no means those of the kingdom atlarge. The duke of Anjou emptied the treasury in conqueringthe kingdom of Naples, at the call of Queen Joanna of Sicily.The duke of Berry seized upon Languedoc and the wine-tax.The duke of Burgundy, heir through his wife to the countshipof Flanders, wanted to crush the democratic risings among theFlemings. Each of them needed money, but Charles V., prickedby conscience on his death-bed, forbade the levying of thehearth-tax (1380). His brother’s attempt to re-establish it setThe revolt of the Maillotins.Paris in revolt. The Maillotins of Paris found imitatorsin other great towns; and in Auvergne and Vivaraisthe Tuchins renewed the Jacquerie. Revolutionaryattempts between 1380 and 1385 to abolish all taxeswere echoed in England, Florence and Flanders. These isolatedrebellions, however, were crushed by the ever-ready coalitionof royal and feudal forces at Roosebeke (1382). Taxes andsubsidies were maintained and the hearth-money re-established.
The death of the duke of Anjou at Bari (1384) gave preponderantinfluence to Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, whoincreased the large and fruitless expenses of his Burgundian policy to such a point that on the return of a last unfortunateexpedition into Gelderland Charles VI., who had been madeMadness of
Charles VI.by him to marry Isabel of Bavaria, took the governmentfrom his uncles on the 3rd of May 1389, andrecalled the Marmousets. But this young king, agedonly twenty, very much in love with his young wifeand excessively fond of pleasure, soon wrecked the delicatepoise of his mental faculties in the festivities of the Hôtel Saint-Paul;and a violent attack of Pierre de Craon on the constablede Clisson having led to an expedition against his accomplice,the duke of Brittany, Charles was seized by insanity on theroad. The Marmousets were deposed, the king’s brother, theduke of Orleans, set aside, and the old condition of affairs beganagain (1392).
The struggle was now between the two branches of the royalfamily, the Orleanist and the Burgundian, between the aristocraticsouth and the democratic north; while thedeposition of Richard II. of England in favour ofHenry of Lancaster permitted them to vary civil warStruggle between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians.by war against the foreigner. Philip the Bold, dukeof Burgundy, the king’s uncle, had certain advantagesover his rival Louis of Orleans, Charles VI.’s brother:superiority in age, relations with the Lancastriansand with Germany, and territorial wealth and power. The twoadversaries had each the same scheme of government: eachwanted to take charge of Charles VI., who was intermittentlyinsane, and to exclude his rival from the pillage of the royalexchequer; but this rivalry of desires brought them into oppositionon all the great questions of the day—the war with England,the Great Schism and the imperial election. The strugglebecame acute when John the Fearless of Burgundy succeededhis father in 1404. Up to this time the queen, Isabel of Bavaria,had been held in a kind of dependency upon Philip of Burgundy,who had brought about her marriage; but less eager for influencethan for money, since political questions were unintelligible toher and her situation was a precarious one, she suddenly becamefavourable to the duke of Orleans. Whether due to passionor caprice this cost the duke his life, for John the Fearlesshad him assassinated in 1407, and thus let loose against oneanother the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, so-called becausethe son of the murdered duke was the son-in-law of the count ofArmagnac (see Armagnac). Despite all attempts at reconciliationthe country was divided into two parties. Paris, with hertradesmen—the butchers in particular—and her university,played an important part in this quarrel; for to be master ofParis was to be master of the king. In 1413 the duke of Burgundygained the upper hand there, partly owing to the risingof the Cabochiens, i.e. the butchers led by the skinner SimonCaboche, partly to the hostility of the university to the Avignonpope and partly to the Parisian bourgeoisie.
Amid this reign of terror and of revolt the university, the onlymoral and intellectual force, taking the place of the impotentstates-general and of a parlement carefully restricted tothe judiciary sphere, vainly tried to re-establish a firmmonarchical system by means of the Ordonnance Cabochienne;The Ordonnance Cabochienne, 1413.but this had no effect, the government beingnow at the mercy of the mob, themselves at the mercyof incapable hot-headed leaders. The struggle ended in becomingone between factions of the townsmen, led respectively by thehûchier Cirasse and by Jean Caboche. The former overwhelmedJohn the Fearless, who fled from Paris; and the Armagnacs,re-entering on his exit, substituted white terror for red terror,from the 12th of December 1413 to the 28th of July 1414. Thebutchers’ organization was suppressed and all hope of reformlost. Such disorders allowed Henry V. of England to take theoffensive again.
The Armagnacs were in possession of Paris and the kingwhen Henry V. crushed them at Agincourt on the 25th ofOctober 1415. It was as at Crécy and Poitiers;the French chivalry, accustomed to mere playing atbattle in the tourneys, no longer knew how to fight. CharlesAgincourt.of Orleans being a captive and his father-in-law, the count ofArmagnac, highly unpopular, John the Fearless, hithertoprudently neutral, re-entered Paris, amid scenes of carnage, onthe invitation of the citizen Perrinet le Clerc.
Secure from interference, Henry V. had occupied the wholeof Normandy and destroyed in two years the work of PhilipAugustus. The duke of Burgundy, feeling as incapableof coming to an understanding with the masterfulEnglishman as of resisting him unaided, tried toThe Treaty of Troyes, 1420.effect a reconciliation with the Armagnacs, who hadwith them the heir to the throne, the dauphin Charles; but hisassassination at Montereau in 1419 nearly caused the destructionof the kingdom, the whole Burgundian party going over to theside of the English. By the treaty of Troyes (1420) the sonof John the Fearless, Philip the Good, in order to avenge hisfather recognized Henry V. (now married to Catherine, CharlesVI.’s daughter) as heir to the crown of France, to the detrimentof the dauphin Charles, who was disavowed by his mother andcalled in derision “the soi-disant dauphin of Viennois.” WhenHenry V. and Charles VI. died in 1422, Henry VI.—son ofHenry V. and Catherine—was proclaimed at Paris king of Franceand of England, with the concurrence of Philip the Good, dukeof Burgundy. Thus in 1428 the English occupied all easternand northern France, as far as the Loire; while the two mostimportant civil powers of the time, the parlement and theuniversity of Paris, had acknowledged the English king.
But the cause of greatest weakness to the French party wasstill Charles VII. himself, the king of Bourges. This youth ofnineteen, the ill-omened son of a madman and of aBavarian of loose morals, was a symbol of France,timorous and mistrustful. The châteaux of theCharles VII.
(1422–1461).Loire, where he led a restless and enervating existence,held an atmosphere little favourable to enthusiasm and energy.After his victories at Cravant (1423) and Verneuil (1424), theduke of Bedford, appointed regent of the kingdom, had givenCharles VII. four years’ respite, and these had been occupiedin violent intrigues between the constable de Richemont[3] andthe sire de la Trémoille, the young king’s favourites, and solelydesirous of enriching themselves at his expense. The king,melancholy spectacle as he was, seemed indeed to suit that tragichour when Orleans, the last bulwark of the south, was besiegedby the earl of Salisbury, now roused from inactivity (1428).He had neither taste nor capacity like Philip VI. or John theGood for undertaking “belles apertises d’armes”; but thena lack of chivalry combined with a temporizing policy hadnot been particularly unsuccessful in the case of his grandfatherCharles V.
Powerful aid now came from an unexpected quarter. Thewar had been long and cruel, and each successive year naturallyincreased feeling against the English. The damagedone to Burgundian interests by the harsh yet impotentgovernment of Bedford, disgust at the iniquitousJoan of Arc.treaty of Troyes, the monarchist loyalty of many of the warriors,the still deeper sentiment felt by men like Alain Chartier towards“Dame France,” and the “great misery that there was in thekingdom of France”; all these suddenly became incarnate inthe person of Joan of Arc, a young peasant of Domrémy inLorraine. Determined in her faith and proud in her meekness,in opposition to the timid counsels of the military leaders, tothe interested delays of the courtiers, to the scruples of theexperts and the quarrelling of the doctors, she quoted her“voices,” who had, she said, commissioned her to raise thesiege of Orleans and to conduct the gentle dauphin to Reims,there to be crowned. Her sublime folly turned out to be wiserthan their wisdom; in two months, from May to July 1429,she had freed Orleans, destroyed the prestige of the Englisharmy at Patay, and dragged the doubting and passive kingagainst his will to be crowned at Reims. All this produced amarvellous revulsion of political feeling throughout France,Charles VII. now becoming incontestably “him to whom thekingdom of France ought to belong.” After Reims Joan’sfirst thought was for Paris, and to achieve the final overthrow of the English; while Charles VII. was already sighing for theeasy life of Touraine, and recurring to that policy of truce whichwas so strongly urged by his counsellors, and so keenly irritatingto the clear-sighted Joan of Arc. A check before Paris allowedthe jealousy of La Trémoille to waste the heroine for eight monthson operations of secondary importance, until the day when shewas captured by the Burgundians under the walls of Compiègne,and sold by them to the English. The latter incontinentlyprosecuted her as a heretic; they had, indeed, a great interestin seeing her condemned by the Church, which would renderher conquests sacrilegious. After a scandalous four months’duel between this simple innocent girl and a tribunal of craftymalevolent ecclesiastics and doctors of the university of Paris,Joan was burned alive in the old market-place of Rouen, on the30th of May 1431 (see Joan of Arc).
On Charles VII.’s part this meant oblivion and silence untilthe day when in 1450, more for his own sake than for hers, hecaused her memory to be rehabilitated; but Joan had given thecountry new life and heart. From 1431 to 1454 the struggleagainst the English went on energetically; and the king,relieved in 1433 of his evil genius, La Trémoille, then becamea man once more, playing a kingly part under the guidance ofDunois, Richemont, La Hire and Saintrailles, leaders of worthon the field of battle. Moreover, the English territory, a greattriangle, with the Channel for base and Paris for apex, was nota really solid position. Yet the war seemed interminable;until at last Philip of Burgundy, for long embarrassed by hisEnglish alliance, decided in 1435 to become reconciled withCharles VII. This was in consequence of the death of his sister,who had been married to Bedford, and the return of his brother-in-lawRichemont into the French king’s favour. The treatyof Arras, which made him a sovereign prince for life, thoughharsh, at all events gave a united France the opportunity ofexpelling the English from the east, and allowed the king tore-enter Paris in 1436. From 1436 to 1439 there was a terriblerepetition of what happened after the Peace of Brétigny;famine, pestilence, extortions and, later, the aristocratic revoltof the Praguerie, completed the ruin of the country. But thanksto the permanent tax of the taille during this time of truceCharles VII. was able to effect the great military reform of theCompagnies d’Ordonnance, of the Francs-Archers, and of theartillery of the brothers Bureau. From this time forward theEnglish, ruined, demoralized and weakened both by the deathof the duke of Bedford and the beginnings of the Wars of theRoses, continued to lose territory on every recurrence of conflict.Normandy was lost to them at Formigny (1450), and Guienne,English since the 12th century, at Castillon (1453). They keptonly Calais; and now it was their turn to have a madman,Henry VI., for king.
France issued from the Hundred Years’ War victorious,but terribly ruined and depopulated. It is true she had definitelyfreed her territory from the stranger, andthrough the sorrows of defeat and the menace ofdisruption had fortified her national solidarity, andConsequences of the Hundred Years’ War.defined her patriotism, still involved in and not yetdissociated from loyalty to the monarchy. A happyawakening, although it went too far in establishingroyal absolutism; and a victory too complete, in that it enervatedall the forces of resistance. The nation, worn out by the longdisorders consequent on the captivity of King John and theinsanity of Charles VI., abandoned itself to the joys of peace.Preferring the solid advantage of orderly life to an unstableliberty, it acquiesced in the abdication of 1439, when the Statesconsented to taxation for the support of a permanent armywithout any periodical renewal of their authorization. Nodoubt by the prohibition to levy the smallest taille the feudallords escaped direct taxation; but from the day when theprivileged classes selfishly allowed the taxing of the third estate,provided that they themselves were exempt, they opened thedoor to monarchic absolutism. The principle of autocracytriumphed everywhere over the remnants of local or provincialauthority, in the sphere of industry as in that of administration;while the gild system became much more rigid. A loyal bureaucracy,far more powerful than the phantom administration ofBourges or of Poitiers, gradually took the place of the courtnobility; and thanks to this the institutions of control whichthe war had called into power—the provincial states-general—werenipped in the bud, withered by the people’s poverty ofpolitical idea and by the blind worship of royalty. Without thenation’s concurrence the king’s creatures were now to endowroyalty with all the organs necessary for the exertion of authority;by which imprudent compliance, and above all thanks to Jacques Cœur (q.v.), the financial independence of the provinces disappearedlittle by little, and all the public revenues were leftat the discretion of the king alone (1436–1440). By this means,too, and chiefly owing to the constable de Richemont and thebrothers Bureau, the first permanent royal army was established(1445).
Henceforward royalty, strengthened by victory and organizedfor the struggle, was able to reduce the centrifugal social forcesto impotence. The parlement of Paris saw its monopolyencroached upon by the court of Toulouse in 1443,and by the parlement of Grenoble in 1453. TheMonarchical centralization.university of Paris, compromised with the English,like the parlement, witnessed the institution and growth ofprivileged provincial universities. The Church of France wasisolated from the papacy by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges(1438) only to be exploited and enslaved by royalty. Monarchiccentralization, interrupted for the moment by the war, tookup with fresh vigour its attacks upon urban liberties, especiallyin the always more independent south. It caused a slackeningof that spirit of communal initiative which had awakened in themidst of unprecedented disasters. The decimated and impoverishednobility proved their impotence in the coalitionsthey attempted between 1437 and 1442, of which the mostimportant, the Praguerie, fell to pieces almost directly, despitethe support of the dauphin himself.
The life of society, now alarmingly unstable and ruthlesslycruel, was symbolized by the danse macabre painted on thewalls of the cemeteries; the sombre and tragic artof the 15th century, having lost the fine balanceshown by that of the 13th, gave expression in itsSocial life.mournful realism to the general state of exhaustion. Thefavourite subject of the mysteries and of other artistic manifestationswas no longer the triumphant Christ of the middle ages,nor the smiling and teaching Christ of the 13th century, but theMan of sorrows and of death, the naked bleeding Jesus, lyingon the knees of his mother or crowned with thorns. France,like the Christ, had known all the bitterness and weakness of aPassion.
The war of independence over, after a century of fatigue,regrets and doubts, royalty and the nation, now more unitedand more certain of each other, resumed the methodic andutilitarian war of widening boundaries. Leaving dreams aboutcrusades to the poets, and to a papacy delivered from schism,Charles VII. turned his attention to the ancient appanage ofLothair, Alsace and Lorraine, those lands of the north and theeast whose frontiers were constantly changing, and whichseemed to invite aggression. But the chance of annexing themwithout great trouble was lost; by the fatal custom of appanagesthe Valois had set up again those feudal institutions which theCapets had found such difficulty in destroying, and Louis XI.was to make sad experience of this.
To the north and east of the kingdom extended a wide territoryof uncertain limits; countries without a chief like Alsace;principalities like Lorraine, ecclesiastical lordshipslike the bishopric of Liége; and, most important ofall, a royal appanage, that of the duchy of Burgundy,The House of Burgundy.which dated back to the time of John the Good.Through marriages, conquests and inheritance, the dukes ofBurgundy had enormously increased their influence; whileduring the Hundred Years’ War they had benefited alternatelyby their criminal alliance with the English and by their self-interestedreconciliation with their sovereign. They soon appeared the most formidable among the new feudal chiefsso imprudently called into being by Louis XI.’s predecessors.Fleeing from the paternal wrath which he had drawn down uponhimself by his ambition and by his unauthorized marriagewith Charlotte of Savoy, the future Louis XI. had passed fiveyears of voluntary exile at the court of the chief of the Houseof Burgundy, Philip the Good; and he was able to appreciatethe territorial power of a duchy which extended from the ZuyderZee to the Somme, with all the country between the Saôneand the Loire in addition, and its geographical position as acommercial intermediary between Germany, England andFrance. He had traversed the fertile country of Flanders;he had visited the rich commercial and industrial republics ofBruges and Ghent, which had escaped the disasters of theHundred Years’ War; and, finally, he had enjoyed a hospitalityas princely as it was self-interested at Brussels and at Dijon,the two capitals, where he had seen the brilliancy of a courtunique in Europe for the ideal of chivalric life it offered.
But the dauphin Louis, although a bad son and impatient forthe crown, was not dazzled by all this. With very simpletastes, an inquiring mind, and an imagination alwaysat work, he combined a certain easy good-naturewhich inspired confidence, and though stingy inLouis XI.
(1461–1483)spending money on himself, he could be lavish inbuying men either dangerous or likely to be useful. More inclinedto the subtleties of diplomacy than to the risks of battle, he hadrecognized and speedily grasped the disadvantages of warfare.The duke of Burgundy, however rich and powerful, was still theking’s vassal; his wide but insecure authority, of too rapidgrowth and unpopular, lacked sovereign rights. Hardly, therefore,had Louis XI. heard of his father’s death than he made hishost aware of his perfectly independent spirit, and his verydefinite intention to be master in his own house.
But by a kind of poetic justice, Louis XI. had for seven years,from 1465 to 1472, to struggle against fresh Pragueries, calledLeagues of the Public Weal (presumably from theirdisregard of it), composed of the most powerfulFrench nobles, to whom he had set the example ofThe Leagues of
the Public Weal.revolt. His first proceedings had indeed given nopromise of the moderation and prudence afterwardsto characterize him; he had succeeded in exasperating allparties; the officials of his father, “the well-served,” whom hedismissed in favour of inferiors like Jean Balue, Oliver le Daimand Tristan Lermite; the clergy, by abrogating the PragmaticSanction; the university of Paris, by his ill-treatment of it;and the nobles, whom he deprived of their hunting rights, amongthem being those whom Charles VII. had been most carefulto conciliate in view of the inevitable conflict with the duke ofBurgundy—in particular, Francis II., duke of Brittany. Therepurchase in 1463 of the towns of the Somme (to which Philipthe Good, now grown old and engaged in a quarrel with his son,the count of Charolais, had felt obliged to consent on considerationof receiving four hundred thousand gold crowns), and theintrigues of Louis XI. during the periodical revolts of the Liégoisagainst their prince-bishop, set the powder alight. On threedifferent occasions (in 1465, 1467 and 1472), Louis XI.’s ownbrother, the duke of Berry, urged by the duke of Brittany, thecount of Charolais, the duke of Bourbon, and the other feudallords, attempted to set up six kingdoms in France instead of one,and to impose upon Louis XI. a regency which should give themenormous pensions. This was their idea of Public Weal.
Louis XI. won by his favourite method, diplomacyrather than arms. At the time of the first league, the battleof Montlhéry (16th of July 1465) having remainedundecided between the two equally badly organizedarmies, Louis XI. conceded everything in the treatiesCharles the Bold.of Conflans and Saint-Maur—promises costing him little, sincehe had no intention of keeping them. But during the course ofthe second league, provoked by the recapture of Normandy,which he had promised to his brother in exchange for Berry,he was nearly caught in his own trap. On the 15th of June1467 Philip the Good died, and the accession of the count ofCharolais was received with popular risings. In order toembarrass him Louis XI., had secretly encouraged the peopleof Liége to revolt; but preoccupied with the marriage of Charlesthe Bold with Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV. of England,he wished to negotiate personally with him at Péronne, andhardly had he reached that place when news arrived there of therevolt of Liége amid cries of “Vive France.” Charles the Bold,proud, violent, pugnacious, as treacherous as his rival, a hardierThe interview
at Péronne.soldier, though without his political sagacity, imprisonedLouis in the tower where Charles the Simplehad died as a prisoner of the count of Vermandois.He only let him depart when he had sworn in thetreaty of Péronne to fulfil the engagements made at Conflansand Saint-Maur to assist in person at the subjugation of rebelliousLiége, and to give Champagne as an appanage to his ally the dukeof Berry.
Louis XI., supported by the assembly of notables at Tours(1470), had no intention of keeping this last promise, since theduchy of Champagne would have made a bridgebetween Burgundy and Flanders—the two isolatedbranches of the house of Burgundy. He gave the dukeRuin of the feudal coalitions.of Berry distant Guienne. But death eventually ridhim of the duke in 1472, just when a third league was beingorganized, the object of which was to make the duke of Berryking with the help of Edward IV., king of England. The duke ofBrittany, Francis II., was defeated; Charles the Bold, havingfailed at Beauvais in his attempt to recapture the towns of theSomme which had been promised him by the treaty of Conflans,was obliged to sign the peace of Senlis (1472). This was the endof the great feudal coalitions, for royal vengeance soon settledthe account of the lesser vassals; the duke of Alençon wascondemned to prison for life; the count of Armagnac waskilled; and “the Germans” were soon to disembarrass Louisof Charles the Bold.
Charles had indeed only signed the peace so promptly becausehe was looking eastward towards that royal crown and territorialcohesion of which his father had also dreamed. Theking, he said of Louis XI., is always ready. He wantedto provide his future sovereignty with organs analogousCharles the Bold’s imperial dreams.to those of France; a permanent army, and a judiciaryand financial administration modelled on the French parlementand exchequer. Since he could not dismember the kingdomof France, his only course was to reconstitute the ancient kingdomof Lotharingia; while the conquest of the principality of Liégeand of the duchy of Gelderland, and the temporary occupationof Alsace, pledged to him by Sigismund of Austria, made himgreedy for Germany. To get himself elected king of the Romanshe offered his daughter Mary, his eternal candidate for marriage,to the emperor Frederick III. for his son. Thus either he orhis son-in-law Maximilian would have been emperor.
But the Tarpeian rock was a near neighbour of the Capitol.Frederick—distrustful, and in the pay of Louis XI.—evaded ameeting arranged at Trier, and Burgundian influencein Alsace was suddenly brought to a violent end by theputting to death of its tyrannical agent, Peter vonFall of Charles
the Bold.Hagenbach. Charles thought to repair the rebuffof Trier at Cologne, and wasted his resources in an attempt towin over its elector by besieging the insignificant town of Neuss.But the “universal spider”—as he called Louis XI.—wasweaving his web in the darkness, and was eventually to entanglehim in it. First came the reconciliation, in his despite, of thoseirreconcilables, the Swiss and Sigismund of Austria; and thenthe union of both with the duke of Lorraine, who was alsodisturbed at the duke of Burgundy’s ambition. In vain Charlestried to kindle anew the embers of former feudal intrigues;the execution of the duke of Nemours and the count of SaintPol cooled all enthusiasm. In vain did he get his dilatoryfriends, the English Yorkists, to cross the Channel; on the 29thof August 1475, at Picquigny, Louis XI. bribed them with asum of seventy-five thousand crowns to forsake him, Edwardfurther undertaking to guarantee the loyalty of the duke ofBrittany. Exasperated, Charles attacked and took Nancy, wishing, as he said, “to skin the Bernese bear and wear its fur.”To the hanging of the brave garrison of Granson the Swiss respondedby terrible reprisals at Granson and at Morat (Marchto June 1476); while the people of Lorraine finally routedCharles at Nancy on the 5th of January 1477, the duke himselffalling in the battle.
The central administration of Burgundy soon disappeared,swamped by the resurgence of ancient local liberties; the armyfell to pieces; and all hope of joining the two limbsof the great eastern duchy was definitely lost. As forthe remnants that were left, French provinces andRuin of the house
of Burgundy.imperial territory, Louis XI. claimed the whole.He seized everything, alleging different rights in each place;but he displayed such violent haste and such trickery that hethrew the heiress of Burgundy, in despair, into the arms ofMaximilian of Austria. At the treaty of Arras (December 1482)Louis XI. received only Picardy, the Boulonnais and Burgundy;by the marriage of Charles the Bold’s daughter the rest wasannexed to the Empire, and later to Spain. Thus by Louis XI.’sshort-sighted error the house of Austria established itself in theLow Countries. An age-long rivalry between the houses ofFrance and Austria was the result of this disastrous marriage;and as the son who was its issue espoused the heiress of a nowunified Spain, France, hemmed in by the Spaniards and by theEmpire, was thenceforward to encounter them everywhere inher course. The historical progress of France was once moreendangered.
The reasons of state which governed all Louis XI.’s externalpolicy also inspired his internal administration. If they justifiedhim in employing lies and deception in internationalaffairs, in his relations with his subjects they led himto regard as lawful everything which favoured hisThe administration of Louis XI.authority; no question of right could weigh against it.The army and taxation, as the two chief means of dominationwithin and without the kingdom, constituted the mainbulwarks of his policy. As for the nobility, his only thoughtwas to diminish their power by multiplying their number,as his predecessors had done; while he reduced the rebels tosubmission by his iron cages or the axe of his gossip TristanLermite. The Church was treated with the same unconcernedcynicism; he held her in strict tutelage, accentuating her moraldecadence still further by the manner in which he set asideor re-established the Pragmatic Sanction, according to thefluctuations of his financial necessities or his Italian ambitions.It has been said that on the other hand he was a king of thecommon people, and certainly he was one of them in his simplehabits, in his taste for rough pleasantries, and above all in hisreligion, which was limited to superstitious practices and smalldevoutnesses. But in the states of Tours in 1468 he evincedthe same mistrust for fiscal control by the people as for theprivileges of the nobility. He inaugurated that autocratic rulewhich was to continue gaining strength until Louis XV.’s time.Louis XI. was the king of the bourgeoisie; he exacted muchfrom them, but paid them back with interest by allowing themto reduce the power of all who were above them and to lord itover all who were below. As a matter of fact Louis XI.’s mostfaithful ally was death. Saint-Pol, Nemours, Charles the Bold,his brother the duke of Berry, old René of Anjou and his nephewthe count of Maine, heir to the riches of Provence and to rightsover Naples—the skeleton hand mowed down all his adversariesas though it too were in his pay; until the day when at Plessis-les-Toursit struck a final blow, claimed its just dues from LouisXI., and carried him off despite all his relics on the 30th ofAugust 1483.
There was nothing noble about Louis XI. but his aims, andnothing great but the results he attained; yet however differenthe might have been he could not have done better,for what he achieved was the making of France.This was soon seen after his death in the reactionCharles VIII. and Brittany (1483–1498)which menaced his work and those who had servedhim; but thanks to himself and to his true successor,his eldest daughter Anne, married to the sire de Beaujeu, ayounger member of the house of Bourbon, the set-back wasonly partial. Strife began immediately between the numerousmalcontents and the Beaujeu party, who had charge of the littleCharles VIII. These latter prudently made concessions:reducing the taille, sacrificing some of Louis XI.’sThe Mad War, 1483.creatures to the rancour of the parlement, and restoringa certain number of offices or lands to the hostile princes(chief of whom was the duke of Orleans), and even consentingto a convocation of the states-general at Tours (1484). But theelections having been favourable to royalty, the Beaujeu familymade the states reject the regency desired by the duke of Orleans,and organize the king’s council after their own views. Whenthey subsequently eluded the conditions imposed by the states,the deputies—nobles, clergy and burgesses—showed theirincapacity to oppose the progress of despotism. In vain didthe malcontent princes attempt to set up a new League ofPublic Weal, the Guerre folle (Mad War), in which the duke ofBrittany, Francis II., played the part of Charles the Bold,dragging in the people of Lorraine and the king of Navarre.In vain did Charles VIII., his majority attained, at once abandonin the treaty of Sablé the benefits gained by the victory ofSaint-Aubin du Cormier (1488). In vain did Henry VII. ofEngland, Ferdinand the Catholic, and Maximilian of Austriatry to prevent the annexation of Brittany by France; its heiressAnne, deserted by every one, made peace and married CharlesVIII. in 1491. There was no longer a single great fief in Franceto which the malcontents could fly for refuge.
It now remained to consolidate the later successes attainedby the policy of the Valois—the acquisition of the duchies ofBurgundy and Brittany; but instead there was asudden change and that policy seemed about to belost in dreams of recapturing the rights of the AngevinsA policy of “magnificence.”over Naples, and conquering Constantinople. CharlesVIII., a prince with neither intelligence nor resolution, hishead stuffed with chivalric romance, was scarcely freed fromhis sister’s control when he sought in Italy a fatal distractionfrom the struggle with the house of Austria. By this “war ofmagnificence” he caused an interruption of half a centuryin the growth of national sentiment, which was only revived byHenry II.; and he was not alone in thus leaving the bone forthe shadow: his contemporaries, Ferdinand the Catholicwhen delivered from the Moors, and Henry VII. from the powerof the English nobles, followed the same superficial policy, nottaking the trouble to work for that real strength which comesfrom the adhesion of willing subjects to their sovereign. Theyonly cared to aggrandize themselves, without thought of nationalfeeling or geographical conditions. The great theorist of these“conquistadores” was Machiavelli. The regent, Anne ofBeaujeu, worked in her daughter’s interest to the detriment ofthe kingdom, by means of a special treaty destined to preventthe property of the Bourbons from reverting to the crown;while Anne of Brittany did the like for her daughter Claude.Louis XII., the next king of France, thought only of the Milanese;Ferdinand the Catholic all but destroyed the Spanish unity atthe end of his life by his marriage with Germaine de Foix; whilethe house of Austria was for centuries to remain involved in thispetty course of policy. Ministers followed the example of theirself-seeking masters, thinking it no shame to accept pensionsfrom foreign sovereigns. The preponderating considerationeverywhere was direct material advantage; there was disproportioneverywhere between the means employed and thepoverty of the results, a contradiction between the interestsof the sovereigns and those of their subjects, which were associatedby force and not naturally blended. For the sake of amorsel of Italian territory every one forgot the permanentnecessity of opposing the advance of the Turkish crescent, thetwo horns of which were impinging upon Europe on the Danubeand on the Mediterranean.
Italy and Germany were two great tracts of land at the mercyof the highest bidder, rich and easy to dominate, where thesecoarse and alien kings, still reared on medieval traditions, werefor fifty years to gratify their love of conquest. Italy was their first battlefield; Charles VIII. was summoned thither byLodovico Il Moro, tyrant of Milan, involved in a quarrel withThe wars in Italy.his rival, Ferdinand II. of Aragon. The Aragonesehad snatched the kingdom of Naples from theFrench house of Anjou, whose claims Louis XI. hadinherited in 1480. To safeguard himself in the rear Charles VIII.handed over Roussillon and Cerdagne (Cerdaña) to Ferdinandthe Catholic (that is to say, all the profits of Louis XI.’s policy);gave enormous sums of money to Henry VII. of England; andfinally, by the treaty of Senlis ceded Artois and Franche-Comtéto Maximilian of Austria. After these fool’s bargains the paladinset out for Naples in 1494. His journey was long and triumphant,and his return precipitate; indeed it very nearly ended in adisaster at Fornovo, owing to the first of those Italian holyleagues which at the least sign of friction were ready to turnagainst France. At the age of twenty-eight, however, CharlesVIII. died without issue (1498).
The accession of his cousin, Louis of Orleans, under the titleof Louis XII., only involved the kingdom still further in thisItalian imbroglio. Louis did indeed add the fief ofOrleans to the royal domain and hastened to divorceJeanne of France in order to marry Anne, the widowLouis XII.
(1498–1515).of his predecessor, so that he might keep Brittany.But he complicated the Naples affair by claiming Milan in considerationof the marriage of his grandfather, Louis of Orleans,to Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, duke of Milan.In 1499, appealed to by Venice, and encouraged by his favourite,Cardinal d’Amboise (who was hoping to succeed Pope AlexanderVI.), and also by Cesare Borgia, who had lofty ambitions inItaly, Louis XII. conquered Milan in seven months and heldit for fourteen years; while Lodovico Sforza, betrayed by hisSwiss mercenaries, died a prisoner in France. The kingdomof Naples was still left to recapture; and fearing to be thwartedby Ferdinand of Aragon, Louis XII. proposed to this masterof roguery that they should divide the kingdom according tothe treaty of Granada (1500). But no sooner had Louis XII.assumed the title of king of Naples than Ferdinand set aboutdespoiling him of it, and despite the bravery of a Bayard and aLouis d’Ars, Louis XII., being also betrayed by the pope, lostNaples for good in 1504. The treaties of Blois occasioned avast amount of diplomacy, and projects of marriage betweenClaude of France and Charles of Austria, which came to nothingbut served as a prelude to the later quarrels between Bourbonsand Habsburgs.
It was Pope Julius II. who opened the gates of Italy to thehorrors of war. Profiting by Louis XII.’s weakness and theemperor Maximilian’s strange capricious character, this martialpope sacrificed Italian and religious interests alike in order tore-establish the temporal power of the papacy. Jealous ofVenice, at that time the Italian state best provided with powersof expansion, and unable to subjugate it single-handed, Juliussucceeded in obtaining help from France, Spain and the Empire.The league of Cambrai (1508) was his finest diplomatic achievement.But he wanted to be sole master of Italy, so in order toexpel the French “barbarians” whom he had brought in, heappealed to other barbarians who were far more dangerous—Spaniards,Germans and Swiss—to help him against Louis XII.,and stabbed him from behind with the Holy League of 1511.
Weakened by the death of Cardinal d’Amboise, his bestcounsellor, Louis XII. tried vainly in the assembly of Toursand in the unsuccessful council of Pisa to alienate theFrench clergy from a papacy which was now so littleworthy of respect. But even the splendid victoriesLouis XII. and
Julius II.of Gaston de Foix could not shake that formidablecoalition; and despite the efforts of Bayard, La Palice andLa Trémoille, it was the Church that triumphed. Julius II.died in the hour of victory; but Louis XII. was obliged toevacuate Milan, to which he had sacrificed everything, evenFrance itself, with that political stupidity characteristic of thefirst Valois. He died almost immediately after this, on the1st of January 1515, and his subjects, recognizing his thrift,his justice and the secure prosperity of the kingdom, forgot theseventeen years of war in which they had not been consulted,and rewarded him with the fine title of Father of his People.
As Louis XII. left no son, the crown devolved upon his cousinand son-in-law the count of Angoulême, Francis I. No soonerking, Francis, in alliance with Venice, renewed thechimerical attempts to conquer Milan and Naples;also cherishing dreams of his own election as emperorFrancis I.
(1515–1547).and of a partition of Europe. The heroic episode ofMarignano, when he defeated Cardinal Schinner’s Swiss troops(13–15 of September 1515), made him master of the duchy of Milanand obliged his adversaries to make peace. Leo X., Julius II.’ssuccessor, by an astute volte-face exchanged Parma and theConcordat for a guarantee of all the Church’s possessions, whichmeant the defeat of French plans (1515). The Swiss signedthe permanent peace which they were to maintain until theRevolution of 1789; while the emperor and the king of Spainrecognized Francis II.’s very precarious hold upon Milan. Oncemore the French monarchy was pulled up short by the indignationof all Italy (1518).
The question now was how to occupy the military activityof a young, handsome, chivalric and gallant prince, “ondoyantet divers,” intoxicated by his first victory and histardy accession to fortune. This had been hailed withjoy by all who had been his comrades in his days ofCharacter of
Francis I.difficulty; by his mother, Louise of Savoy, and hissister Marguerite; by all the rough young soldiery; by thenobles, tired of the bourgeois ways of Louis XI. and the patriarchalsimplicity of Louis XII.; and finally by all the aristocracywho expected now to have the government in their own hands.So instead of heading the crusade against the Turks, Francisthrew himself into the electoral contest at Frankfort, whichresulted in the election of Charles V., heir of Ferdinand theCatholic, Spain and Germany thus becoming united. PopeLeo X., moreover, handed over three-quarters of Italy to thenew emperor in exchange for Luther’s condemnation, therebykindling that rivalry between Charles V. and the king of Francewhich was to embroil the whole of Europe throughout half acentury (1519–1559), from Pavia to St Quentin.
The territorial power of Charles V., heir to the houses ofBurgundy, Austria, Castile and Aragon, which not only arrestedthe traditional policy of France but hemmed herin on every side; his pretensions to be the head ofChristendom; his ambition to restore the house ofRivalry of Francis I. and Charles V.Burgundy and the Holy Roman Empire; his graveand forceful intellect all rendered rivalry both inevitable andformidable. But the scattered heterogeneity of his possessions,the frequent crippling of his authority by national privilegesor by political discords and religious quarrels, his perpetualstraits for money, and his cautious calculating character, almostoutweighed the advantages which he possessed in the terribleSpanish infantry, the wealthy commerce of the Netherlands,and the inexhaustible mines of the New World. Moreover,Francis I. stirred up enmity everywhere against Charles V.,and after each defeat he found fresh support in the patriotismof his subjects. Immediately after the treaty of Madrid (1526),which Francis I. was obliged to sign after the disaster at PaviaDefeat at Pavia and treaty of Madrid.and a period of captivity, he did not hesitate betweenhis honour as a gentleman and the interests of hiskingdom. Having been unable to win over HenryVIII. of England at their interview on the Field ofthe Cloth of Gold, he joined hands with Suleiman the Magnificent,the conqueror of Mohács; and the Turkish cavalry, crossingthe Hungarian Puszta, made their way as far as Vienna, whilethe mercenaries of Charles V., under the constable de Bourbon,were reviving the saturnalia of Alaric in the sack of Rome (1527).In Germany, Francis I. assisted the Catholic princes to maintaintheir political independence, though he did not make the capitalhe might have made of the reform movement. Italy remainedfaithful to the vanquished in spite of all, while even Henry VIII.of England, who only needed bribing, and Wolsey, accessible toflattery, took part in the temporary coalition. Thus did France,menaced with disruption, embark upon a course of action imposed upon her by the harsh conditions of the treaty of Madrid—otherwiselittle respected—and later by those of Cambrai (1529);but it was not till later, too late indeed, that it was defined andbecame a national policy.
After having, despite so many reverses and mistakes, savedBurgundy, though not Artois nor Flanders, and joined to thecrown lands the domains of the constable de Bourbonwho had gone over to Charles V., Francis I. shouldhave had enough of defending other people’s independenceFurther prosecution of romantic expeditions.as well as his own, and should have thought moreof his interests in the north and east than of Milan.Yet between 1531 and 1547 he manifested the sameregrets and the same invincible ambition for that land of Italywhich Charles V., on his side, regarded as the basis of his strength.Their antagonism, therefore, remained unabated, as also thecontradiction of an official agreement with Charles V., combinedwith secret intrigues with his enemies. Anne de Montmorency,now head of the government in place of the headstrong chancellorDuprat, for four years upheld a policy of reconciliation and ofalmost friendly agreement between the two monarchs (1531–1535).The death of Francis I.’s mother, Louise of Savoy (whohad been partly instrumental in arranging the peace of Cambrai),the replacement of Montmorency by the bellicose Chabot, andthe advent to power of a Burgundian, Granvella, as Charles V.’sprime minister, put an end to this double-faced policy, whichattacked the Calvinists of France while supporting the Lutheransof Germany; made advances to Clement VII. while pretendingto maintain the alliance with Henry VIII. (just then consummatingthe Anglican schism); and sought an alliance with CharlesV. without renouncing the possession of Italy. The death ofthe duke of Milan provoked a third general war (1536–1538);The truce at Nice.but after the conquest of Savoy and Piedmont and afruitless invasion of Provence by Charles V., it resultedin another truce, concluded at Nice, in the interviewat Aigues-mortes, and in the old contradictory policy of thetreaty of Cambrai. This was confirmed by Charles V.’s triumphaljourney through France (1539).
Rivalry between Madame d’Etampes, the imperious mistressof the aged Francis I., and Diane de Poitiers, whose ascendancyover the dauphin was complete, now brought courtintrigues and constant changes in those who heldoffice, to complicate still further this wearisomeFourth outbreak of war.policy of ephemeral “combinazioni” with English,Germans, Italians and Turks, which urgent need of money alwaysbrought to naught. The disillusionment of Francis I., whohad hitherto hoped that Charles V. would be generous enoughto give Milan back to him, and then the assassination of Rincon,his ambassador at Constantinople, led to a fourth war (1544–1546),in the course of which the king of England went over tothe side of Charles V.
Unable in the days of his youth to make Italy French, whenage began to come upon him, Francis tried to make FranceItalian. In his château at Blois he drank greedilyof the cup of Renaissance art; but he found theexciting draughts of diplomacy which he imbibedRoyal absolutism under Francis I.from Machiavelli’s Prince even more intoxicating,and he headed the ship of state straight for the rock of absolutism.He had been the first king “du bon plaisir” (“of his own goodpleasure”)—a “Caesar,” as his mother Louise of Savoy proudlyhailed him in 1515—and to a man of his gallant and hot-headedtemperament love and war were schools little calculated toteach moderation in government. Italy not only gave him ataste for art and letters, but furnished him with an arsenal ofdespotic maxims. Yet his true masters were the jurists of thesouthern universities, passionately addicted to centralizationand autocracy, men like Duprat and Poyet, who revived thepersistent tradition of Philip the Fair’s legists. Grouped togetheron the council of affairs, they managed to control the policyof the common council, with its too mixed and too independentmembership. They successfully strove to separate “the grandeurand superexcellence of the king” from the rest of the nation;to isolate the nobility amid the seductions of a court lavish inpromises of favour and high office; and to win over thebourgeoisie by the buying and selling and afterwards by thehereditary transmission of offices. Thanks to their action,feudalism was attacked in its landed interest in the person ofthe constable de Bourbon; feudalism in its financial aspectby the execution of superintendent Semblançay and the specialprivileges of towns and provinces by administrative centralization.The bureaucracy became a refuge for the nobles, and aboveall for the bourgeois, whose fixed incomes were lowered by theinflux of precious metals from the New World, while the wagesof artisans rose. All those time-worn medieval institutionswhich no longer allowed free scope to private or public life weredemolished by the legists in favour of the monarchy.
Their master-stroke was the Concordat of 1516, which meantan immense stride in the path towards absolutism. WhileGermany and England, where ultramontane doctrineshad been allowed to creep in, were seeking a remedyagainst the economic exactions of the papacy in aThe concordat
of 1516.reform of dogma or in schism, France had supposedherself to have found this in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.But to the royal jurists the right of the churches and abbeysto make appointments to all vacant benefices was a guaranteeof liberties valuable to the clergy, but detestable to themselvesbecause the clergy thus retained the great part of public wealthand authority. By giving the king the ecclesiastical patronagethey not only made a docile instrument of him, but endowedhim with a mine of wealth, even more productive than the saleof offices, and a power of favouring and rewarding that transformeda needy and ill-obeyed king into an absolute monarch.To the pope they offered a mess of pottage in the shape of annatesand the right of canonical institution, in order to induce himto sell the Church of France to the king. By this royal reformthey completely isolated the monarchy, in the presumptuouspride of omnipotence, upon the ruins of the Church and thearistocracy, despite both the university and the parlementof Paris.
Thus is explained Francis I.’s preoccupation with Italianadventures in the latter part of his reign, and also the inordinatesquandering of money, the autos-da-fé in the provinces and inParis, the harsh repression of reform and free thought, and thesale of justice; while the nation became impoverished and thestate was at the mercy of the caprices of royal mistresses—allof which was to become more and more pronounced duringthe twelve years of Henry II.’s government.
Henry II. shone but with a reflected light—in his privatelife reflected from his old mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and in hispolitical action reflected from the views of Montmorencyor the Guises. He only showed his ownpersonality in an egoism more narrow-minded, inHenry II.
(1547–1559).hatred yet bitterer than his father’s; or in a haughtyand jealous insistence upon an absolute authority which he neverhad the wit to maintain.
The struggle with Charles V. was at first delayed by differenceswith England. The treaty of Ardres had left two bones ofcontention: the cession of Boulogne to Englandand the exclusion of the Scotch from the terms ofpeace. At last the regent, the duke of Somerset,Henry II. and Truce of Vaucelles.
Charles V.endeavoured to arrange a marriage between EdwardVI., then a minor, and Mary Stuart, who had been offered inmarriage to the dauphin Francis by her mother, Marie ofLorraine, a Guise who had married the king of Scotland. Thetransference of Mary Stuart to France, and the treaty of 1550which restored Boulogne to France for a sum of 400,000 crowns,suspended the state of war; and then Henry II.’s oppositionto the imperial policy of Charles V. showed itself everywhere:in Savoy and Piedmont, occupied by the French and claimed byPhilibert Emmanuel, Charles V.’s ally; in Navarre, unlawfullyconquered by Ferdinand the Catholic and claimed by the familyof Albret; in Italy, where, aided and abetted by Pope Paul III.,Henry II. was trying to regain support; and, finally, in Germany,where after the victory of Charles V. at Mühlberg (1547) theProtestant princes called Henry II. to their aid, offering to subsidize him and cede to him the towns of Metz, Toul andVerdun. The Protestant alliance was substituted for theTurkish alliance, and Henry II. hastened to accept the offersmade to him (1552); but this was rather late in the day, forthe reform movement had produced civil war and evokedfresh forces. The Germans, in whom national feeling got thebetter of imperialistic ardour, as soon as they saw the Frenchat Strassburg, made terms with the emperor at Passau andpermitted Charles to use all his forces against Henry II. TheDefence of Metz.
Henry II.’s resumption of war, without provocation andwithout allies, was a grave error; but more characterless thanever, the king was urged to it by the Guises, whoseinfluence since the defence of Metz had been supremeat court and who were perhaps hoping to obtainHenry II. and Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis.
Philip II.
The origin and general history of the religious reformationin the 16th century are dealt with elsewhere (see Church Historyand Reformation). In France it hadoriginally no revolutionary character whatever; itproceeded from traditional Gallican theories and fromThe Reformation.the innovating principle of humanism, and it began as a protestagainst Roman decadence and medieval scholasticism. Itfound its first adherents and its first defenders among the clericsand learned men grouped around Faber (Lefèvre) of Étaplesat Meaux; while Marguerite of Navarre, “des Roynes la nonpareille,” was the indefatigable Maecenas of these innovators,and the incarnation of the Protestant spirit at its purest. Thereformers shook off the yoke of systems in order boldly to renovateboth knowledge and faith; and, instead of resting on the abstracta priori principles within which man and nature had beenimprisoned, they returned to the ancient methods of observationand analysis. In so doing, they separated intellectual frompopular life; and acting in this spirit, through the need of amoral renaissance, they reverted to primitive Christianity,substituting the inner and individual authority of consciencefor the general and external authority of the Church. Theirefforts would not, however, have sufficed if they had not beenseconded by events; pure doctrine would not have given birthto a church, nor that church to a party; in France, as inGermany, the religious revolution was conditioned by an economicand social revolution.
The economic renaissance due to the great maritime discoverieshad the consequence of concentrating wealth in the hands of thebourgeoisie. Owing to their mental qualities, their tendencies andtheir resources, the bourgeoisie had been, if not alone, at leastmost apt in profiting by the development of industry, by theextension of commerce, and by the formation of a new and mobilemeans of enriching themselves. But though the bourgeois hadacquired through capitalism certain sources of influence, andgradually monopolized municipal and public functions, the kingand the peasants had also benefited by this revolution. After ahundred and fifty years of foreign war and civil discord, at aperiod when order and unity were ardently desired, an absolutemonarchy had appeared the only power capable of realizingsuch aspirations. The peasants, moreover, had profited by thereduction of the idle landed aristocracy; serfdom had decreasedor had been modified; and the free peasants were more prosperous,had reconquered the soil, and were selling their produceat a higher rate while they everywhere paid less exorbitantrents. The victims of this process were the urban proletariat,whose treatment by their employers in trade became less andless protective and beneficent, and the nobility, straitenedin their financial resources, uprooted from their ancient strongholds,and gradually despoiled of their power by a monarchybased on popular support. The unlimited sovereignty of theprince was established upon the ruins of the feudal system;and the capitalism of the merchants and bankers upon theclosing of the trade-gilds to workmen, upon severe economicpressure and upon the exploitation of the artisans’ labour.
Though reform originated among the educated classes itspeedily found an echo among the industrial classes of the16th century, further assisted by the influence ofGerman and Flemish journeymen. The popularreform-movement was essentially an urban movement;Transformation of religious reform
into party politics.although under Francis I. and Henry II. it had alreadybegun to spread into the country. The artisans,labourers and small shop-keepers who formed thefirst nucleus of the reformed church were numerous enoughto provide an army of martyrs, though too few to form a party.Revering the monarchy and established institutions, theyendured forty years of persecution before they took up arms.It was only during the second half of Henry II.’s reign thatProtestantism, having achieved its religious evolution, becamea political party. Weary of being trodden under foot, it nowdemanded much more radical reform, quitting the ranks ofpeaceable citizens to pass into the only militant class of the timeand adopt its customs. Men like Coligny, d’Andelot and Condétook the place of the timid Lefèvre of Étaples and the harsh andbitter Calvin; and the reform party, in contradiction to itsdoctrines and its doctors, became a political and religious partyof opposition, with all the compromises that presupposes. Thestruggle against it was no longer maintained by the universityand the parlement alone, but also by the king, whose authorityit menaced.
With his intrepid spirit, his disdain for ecclesiastical authorityand his strongly personal religious feeling, Francis I. had fora moment seemed ready to be a reformer himself;but deprived by the Concordat of all interest in theconfiscation of church property, aspiring to politicalRoyal persecution under Francis I.
and Henry II.alliance with the pope, and as mistrustful of popularforces as desirous of absolute power and devotedto Italy, he paused and then drew back. Hence camethe revocation in 1540 of the edict of tolerance of Coucy(1535), and the massacre of the Vaudois (1545). Henry II.,a fanatic, went still further in his edict of Châteaubriant (1551),a code of veritable persecution, and in the coup d’état carried outin the parlement against Antoine du Bourg and his colleagues(1559). At the same time the pastors of the reformed religion, met in synod at Paris, were setting down their confession offaith founded upon the Scriptures, and their ecclesiasticaldiscipline founded upon the independence of the churches.Thenceforward Protestantism adopted a new attitude, andrefused obedience to the orders of a persecuting monarchy whencontrary to its faith and its interests. After the saints camemen. Hence those wars of religion which were to hold themonarchy in check for forty years and even force it to come toterms.
In slaying Henry II. Montgomery’s lance saved the Protestantsfor the time being. His son and successor, Francis II., was buta nervous sickly boy, bandied between two women:his mother, Catherine de’ Medici, hitherto kept in thebackground, and his wife, Mary Stuart, queen ofFrancis II.
(1559–1560).Scotland, who being a niece of the Guises brought heruncles, the constable Francis and the cardinal of Lorraine, intopower. These ambitious and violent men took the governmentout of the hands of the constable de Montmorency and theprinces of the blood: Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre,weak, credulous, always playing a double game on account of hispreoccupation with Navarre; Condé, light-hearted and brave,but not fitted to direct a party; and the cardinal de Bourbon,a mere nonentity. The only plan which these princes couldadopt in the struggle, once they had lost the king, was to makea following for themselves among the Calvinist malcontentsand the gentlemen disbanded after the Italian wars. TheGuises, strengthened by the failure of the conspiracy of Amboise,which had been aimed at them, abused the advantage due totheir victory. Despite the edict of Romorantin, which bygiving the bishops the right of cognizance of heresy preventedthe introduction of the Inquisition on the Spanish model intoFrance; despite the assembly of Fontainebleau, where anattempt was made at a compromise acceptable to both Catholicsand moderate Calvinists; the reform party and its Bourbonleaders, arrested at the states-general of Orleans, were in dangerof their lives. The death of Francis II. in December 1560compromised the influence of the Guises and again savedProtestantism.
Charles IX. also was a minor, and the regent should legallyhave been the first prince of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon;but cleverly flattered by the queen-mother, Catherinede’ Medici, he let her take the reins of government.Hitherto Catherine had been merely the resignedCharles IX.
(1560–1574).and neglected wife of Henry II., and though eloquent,insinuating and ambitious, she had been inactive. She hadattained the age of forty-one when she at last came into poweramidst the hopes and anxieties aroused by the fall of the Guisesand the return of the Bourbons to fortune. Indifferent inreligious matters, she had a passion for authority, a characteristicallyItalian adroitness in intrigue, a fine political sense,and the feeling that the royal authority might be endangeredboth by Calvinistic passions and Catholic violence. She decidedfor a system of tolerance; and Michel de l’Hôpital, the newchancellor, was her spokesman at the states of Orleans (1560).He was a good and honest man, moderate, conciliatory andtemporizing, anxious to lift the monarchy above the strife ofparties and to reconcile them; but he was so little practicalthat he could believe in a reformation of the laws in the midstof all the violent passions which were now to be let loose. Thesetwo, Catherine and her chancellor, attempted, like Charles V.at Augsburg, to bring about religious pacification as a necessarycondition for the maintenance of order; but they were soonoverwhelmed by the different factions.
On one side was the Catholic triumvirate of the constablede Montmorency, the duke of Guise, and the marshal de StAndré; and on the other the Huguenot party ofCondé and Coligny, who, having obtained libertyof conscience in January 1561, now demanded libertyThe parties.of worship. The colloquy at Poissy between the cardinal ofLorraine and Theodore Beza (September 1561), did not endin the agreement hoped for, and the duke of Guise so far abusedits spirit as to embroil the French Calvinists with the GermanLutherans. The rupture seemed irremediable when the assemblyof Poissy recognized the order of the Jesuits, which the Frenchchurch had held in suspicion since its foundation. However,yielding to the current which was carrying the greater part of theEdict of tolerance.nation towards reform, and despite the threats of Philip II.who dreaded Calvinistic propaganda in his Netherlands, Michelde l’Hôpital promulgated the edict of January 17,1562—a true charter of enfranchisem*nt for theProtestants. But the pressure of events and of partieswas too strong; the policy of toleration which had miscarriedat the council of Trent had no chance of success inFrance.
The triumvirate’s relations with Spain and Rome were veryclose; they had complete ascendancy over the king and overCatherine; and now the massacre of two hundredProtestants at Vassy on the 1st of March 1562 madethe cup overflow. The duke of Guise had eitherCharacter of the religious wars.ordered this, or allowed it to take place, on his returnfrom an interview with the duke of Württemberg at Zabern,where he had once more demanded the help of his Lutheranneighbours against the Calvinists; and the Catholics havingcelebrated this as a victory the signal was given for the commencementof religious wars. When these eight fratricidal wars firstbegan, Protestants and Catholics rivalled one another in respectfor royal authority; only they wished to become its mastersso as to get the upper hand themselves. But in course of time,as the struggle became embittered, Catholicism itself grewrevolutionary; and this twofold fanaticism, Catholic andProtestant, even more than the ambition of the leaders, madethe war a ferocious one from the very first. Beginning withsurprise attacks, if these failed, the struggle was continued bymeans of sieges and by terrible exploits like those of the CatholicMontluc and the Protestant des Adrets in the south of France.Neither of these two parties was strong enough to crush theother, owing to the apathy and continual desertions of the gentlemen-cavalierswho formed the élite of the Protestant armyand the insufficient numbers of the Catholic forces. Allies fromoutside were therefore called in, and this it was that gave aEuropean character to these wars of religion; the two partieswere parties of foreigners, the Protestants being supported byGerman Landsknechts and Elizabeth of England’s cavalry, andthe royal army by Italian, Swiss or Spanish auxiliaries. It wasno longer patriotism but religion that distinguished the twocamps. There were three principal theatres of war: in thenorth Normandy and the valley of the Loire, where Orleans,the general centre of reform, ensured communications betweenthe south and Germany; in the south-west Gascony andGuienne; in the south-east Lyonnais and Vivarais.
In the first war, which lasted for a year (1562–1563), thetriumvirs wished to secure Orleans, previously isolated. Thethreat of an English landing decided them to laysiege to Rouen, and it was taken by assault; but thiscost the life of the versatile Antoine de Bourbon. OnFirst religious war.the 19th of December 1562 the duke of Guise barredthe way to Dreux against the German reinforcements ofd’Andelot, who after having threatened Paris were marchingto join forces with the English troops for whom Coligny andCondé had paid by the cession of Havre. The death of marshalde St André, and the capture of the constable de Montmorencyand of Condé, which marked this indecisive battle, left Colignyand Guise face to face. The latter’s success was of brief duration;for on the 18th of February 1563 Poltrot de Méré assassinatedhim before Orleans, which he was trying to take once and forall. Catherine, relieved by the loss of an inconvenient preceptor,and by the disappearance of the other leaders, became mistressof the Catholic party, of whose strength and popularity she hadnow had proof, and her idea was to make peace at once on thebest terms possible. The egoism of Condé, who got himselfmade lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and bargained forfreedom of worship for the Protestant nobility only, compromisedthe future of both his church and his party, though renderingpossible the peace of Amboise, concluded the 19th of March 1563. All now set off together to recapture Havre from theEnglish.
The peace, however, satisfied no one; neither Catholics(because of the rupture of religious unity) nor the parlements;the pope, the emperor and king of Spain alike protestedagainst it. Nor yet did it satisfy the Protestants,who considered its concessions insufficient, above allPeace of Amboise (1563).for the people. It was, however, the maximum oftolerance possible just then, and had to be reverted to; Catherineand Charles IX. soon saw that the times were not ripe for athird party, and that to enforce real toleration would requirean absolute power which they did not possess. After threeyears the Guises reopened hostilities against Coligny, whom theyaccused of having plotted the murder of their chief; whilethe Catholics, egged on by the Spaniards, rose against theProtestants, who had been made uneasy by an interview betweenCatherine and her daughter Elizabeth, wife of Philip II. ofSpain, at Bayonne, and by the duke of Alva’s persecutions ofthe reformed church of the Netherlands—a daughter-church ofGeneva, like their own. The second civil war began like theSecond civil war. Peace of Longjumeau.
This peace was not of long duration. The fall of Michelde l’Hôpital, who had so often guaranteed the loyalty of theHuguenots, ruined the moderate party (May 1568).Catholic propaganda, revived by the monks and theJesuits, and backed by the armed confraternities andThird war.by Catherine’s favourite son, the duke of Anjou, now entrustedwith a prominent part by the cardinal of Lorraine; Catherine’scomplicity in the duke of Alva’s terrible persecution in theNetherlands; and her attempt to capture Coligny and Condéat Noyers all combined to cause a fresh outbreak of hostilitiesin the west. Thanks to Tavannes, the duke of Anjou gainedeasy victories at Jarnac over the prince of Condé, who was killed,and at Moncontour over Coligny, who was wounded (March-October1569); but these successes were rendered fruitless bythe jealousy of Charles IX. Allowing the queen of Navarre toshut herself up in La Rochelle, the citadel of the reformers, andthe king to loiter over the siege of Saint Jean d’Angély, Colignypushed boldly forward towards Paris and, having reachedBurgundy, defeated the royal army at Arnay-le-duc. Catherinehad exhausted all her resources; and having failed in herproject of remarrying Philip II. to one of her daughters, and ofbetrothing Charles IX. to the eldest of the Austrian archduch*esses,exasperated also by the presumption of the Lorraine family, whoaspired to the marriage of their nephew with Charles IX.’sPeace of St Germain (1570).sister, she signed the peace of St Germain on the 8thof August 1570. This was the culminating point ofProtestant liberty; for Coligny exacted and obtained,first, liberty of conscience and of worship, and then,as a guarantee of the king’s word, four fortified places: LaRochelle, a key to the sea; La Charité, in the centre; Cognacand Montauban in the south.
The Guises set aside, Coligny, supported as he was by Jeanned’Albret, queen of Navarre, now received all Charles IX.’sfavour. Catherine de’ Medici, an inveterate matchmaker,and also uneasy at Philip II.’s increasingpower, made advances to Jeanne, proposing to marryColigny and the Netherlands.her own daughter, Marguerite de Valois, to Jeanne’s son,Henry of Navarre, now chief of the Huguenot party. Colignywas a Protestant, but he was a Frenchman before all; andwishing to reconcile all parties in a national struggle, he“trumpeted war” (cornait la guerre) against Spain in theNetherlands—despite the lukewarmness of Elizabeth of Englandand the Germans, and despite the counter-intrigues of the popeand of Venice. He succeeded in getting French troops sentto the Netherlands, but they suffered defeat. None the lessCharles IX. still seemed to see only through the eyes of Coligny;till Catherine, fearing to be supplanted by the latter, dreadingthe results of the threatened war with Spain, and egged on by acrowd of Italian adventurers in the pay of Spain—men likeGondi and Birague, reared like herself in the political theoriesand customs of their native land—saw no hope but in the assassinationof this rival in her son’s esteem. A murderous attackupon Coligny, who had opposed the candidature of Catherine’sfavourite son, the duke of Anjou, for the throne of Poland, havingonly succeeded in wounding him and in exciting the Calvinistleaders, who were congregated in Paris for the occasion ofMarguerite de Valois’ marriage with the king of Navarre, CatherineSt Bartholomew, August 24, 1572.and the Guises resolved together to put them all to death. Therefollowed the wholesale massacre of St Bartholomew’sEve, in Paris and in the provinces; a natural consequenceof public and private hatreds which hadpoisoned the entire social organism. This massacrehad the effect of preventing the expedition intoFlanders, and destroying Francis I.’s policy of alliance with theProtestants against the house of Austria.
Catherine de’ Medici soon perceived that the massacre of StBartholomew had settled nothing. It had, it is true, dealta blow to Calvinism just when, owing to the reformsof the council of Trent, the religious ground had beencrumbling beneath it. Moreover, within the partyThe party of the politiques.itself a gulf had been widening between the pastors,supported by the Protestant democracy and the political nobles.The reformers had now no leaders, and their situation seemedas perilous as that of their co-religionists in the Netherlands;while the sieges of La Rochelle and Leiden, the enforced exileof the prince of Orange, and the conversion under pain of deathof Henry of Navarre and the prince of Condé, made the commondanger more obvious. Salvation came from the very excess ofthe repressive measures. A third party was once more formed,composed of moderates from the two camps, and it was recruitedquite as much by jealousy of the Guises and by ambition as byhorror at the massacres. There were the friends of the Montmorencyparty—Damville at their head; Coligny’s relations;the king of Navarre; Condé; and a prince of the blood, Catherinede’ Medici’s third son, the duke of Alençon, tired of being keptFourth War. Edict of Boulogne (1573).in the background. This party took shape at theend of the fourth war, followed by the edict ofBoulogne (1573), forced from Charles IX. when theCatholics were deprived of their leader by the electionof his brother, the duke of Anjou, as king of Poland.A year later the latter succeeded his brother on the throne ofFrance as Henry III. This meant a new lease of power for thequeen-mother.
The politiques, as the supporters of religious tolerance andan energetic repression of faction were called, offered theiralliance to the Huguenots, but these, having formedthemselves, by means of the Protestant Union, intoa sort of republic within the kingdom, hesitated toFifth War.accept. It is, however, easy to bring about an understandingbetween people in whom religious fury has been extinguishedeither by patriotism or by ambition, like that of the duke ofAlençon, who had now escaped from the Louvre where he hadbeen confined on account of his intrigues. The compact wasconcluded at Millau; Condé becoming a Protestant once morein order to treat with Damville, Montmorency’s brother. Henryof Navarre escaped from Paris. The new king, Henry III.,Henry III.
(1574–1589).vacillating and vicious, and Catherine herself, eagerfor war as she was, had no means of separating theProtestants and the politiques. Despite the victoryof Guise at Dormans, the agreement between theduke of Alençon and John Casimir’s German army obliged theroyal party to grant all that the allied forces demanded of them in the “peace of Monsieur,” signed at Beaulieu on the 6th of MayPeace of Monsieur (1576).1576, the duke of Alençon receiving the appanage of Anjou,Touraine and Berry, the king of Navarre Guienne,and Condé Picardy, while the Protestants were grantedfreedom of worship in all parts of the kingdomexcept Paris, the rehabilitation of Coligny and theother victims of St Bartholomew, their fortified towns, and anequal number of seats in the courts of the parlements.
This was going too fast; and in consequence of a reactionagainst this too liberal edict a fourth party made its appearance,that of the Catholic League, under the Guises—Henryle Balafré, duke of Guise, and his two brothers, Charles,duke of Mayenne, and Louis, archbishop of ReimsThe Catholic League.and cardinal. With the object of destroying Calvinismby effective opposition, they imitated the Protestant organizationof provincial associations, drawing their chief supporters fromthe upper middle class and the lesser nobility. It was not atfirst a demagogy maddened by the preaching of the irreconcilableclergy of Paris, but a union of the more honest and prudentclasses of the nation in order to combat heresy. Despite theimmorality and impotence of Henry III. and the Protestantismof Henry of Navarre, this party talked of re-establishing theauthority of the king; but in reality it inclined more to theGuises, martyrs in the good cause, who were supported by PhilipII. of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII. A sort of popular governmentwas thus established to counteract the incapacity ofroyalty, and it was in the name of the imperilled rights of thepeople that, from the States of Blois onward, this Holy Leaguedemanded the re-establishment of Catholic unity, and set thereligious right of the nation in opposition to the divine right ofincapable or evil-doing kings (1576).
In order to oust his rival Henry of Guise, Henry III. madea desperate effort to outbid him in the eyes of the more extremeCatholics, and by declaring himself head of the Leaguedegraded himself into a party leader. The League,furious at this stroke of policy, tried to impose a councilThe States of Blois (1576).
Sixth War and peace of Bergerac (1577). Seventh War and peace of Fleix (1580).of thirty-six advisers upon the king. But the deputiesof the third estate did not support the other two orders, andthe latter in their turn refused the king money for making waron the heretics, desiring, they said, not war but thedestruction of heresy. This would have reducedHenry III. to impotence; fortunately for him, however,the break of the Huguenots with the “Malcontents,”and the divisions in the court of Navarreand in the various parties at La Rochelle, allowedHenry III., after two little wars in the south west,during which fighting gradually degenerated intobrigandage, to sign terms of peace at Bergerac (1577),which much diminished the concessions made in the edict ofBeaulieu. This peace was confirmed three years after by thatof Fleix. The suppression of both the leagues was stipulatedfor (1580). It remained, however, a question whether the HolyLeague would submit to this.
The death of the duke of Anjou after his mad endeavourto establish himself in the Netherlands (1584), and the accessionof Henry of Navarre, heir to the effeminate Henry III.,reversed the situations of the two parties: the Protestantsagain became supporters of the principle ofUnion between the Guises and Philip II.heredity and divine right; the Catholics appealedto right of election and the sovereignty of the people.Could the crown of the eldest daughter of the Church be allowedto devolve upon a relapsed heretic? Such was the doctrineofficially preached in pulpit and pamphlet. But betweenPhilip II. on the one hand—now master of Portugal and deliveredfrom William of Orange, involved in strife with the EnglishProtestants, and desirous of avenging the injuries inflicted uponhim by the Valois in the Netherlands—and the Guises on theother hand, whose cousin Mary Stuart was a prisoner of QueenElizabeth, there was a common interest in supporting oneanother and pressing things forward. A definite agreementwas made between them at Joinville (December 31, 1584), thereligious and popular pretext being the danger of leaving thekingdom to the king of Navarre, and the ostensible end to securethe succession to a Catholic prince, the old Cardinal de Bourbon,an ambitious and violent man of mean intelligence; while thesecret aim was to secure the crown for the Guises, who hadalready attempted to fabricate for themselves a genealogytracing their descent from Charlemagne. In the meantimePhilip II., being rid of Don John of Austria, whose ambition hedreaded, was to crush the Protestants of England and theNetherlands; and the double result of the compact at Joinvillewas to allow French politics to be controlled by Spain, andto transform the wars of religion into a purely politicalquarrel.
The pretensions of the Guises were, in fact, soon manifestedin the declaration of Péronne (March 30, 1585) against the foulcourt of the Valois; they were again manifested in afurious agitation, fomented by the secret councilof the League at Paris, which favoured the Guises,The committee of Sixteen at Paris. Eighth war of the three Henries.
The League now thought they had no longer anything to fear.Despite the king’s hostility the duke of Guise came to Paris,urged thereto by Philip II., who wanted to occupyParis and be master of the Channel coasts whilst helaunched his invincible Armada to avenge the death ofDay of the Barricades.Mary Stuart in 1587. On the Day of the Barricades(May 12, 1588) Henry III. was besieged in the Louvre by thepopulace in revolt; but his rival dared not go so far as to deposethe king, and appeased the tumult. The king, having succeededin taking refuge at Chartres, ended, however, by granting himin the Act of Union all that he had refused in face of the barricades—thepost of lieutenant-general of the kingdom and the proscriptionof Protestantism. At the second assembly of the statesof Blois, called together on account of the need for money (1588),Assassination of the Guises at the second states-general of Blois.all of Henry III.’s enemies who were elected showedthemselves even bolder than in 1576 in claiming thecontrol of the financial administration of the kingdom;but the destruction of the Armada gave Henry III.,already exasperated by the insults he had received,new vigour. He had the old Cardinal de Bourbonimprisoned, and Henry of Guise and his brother thecardinal assassinated (December 23, 1588). On the 5th ofJanuary, 1589, died his mother, Catherine de’Medici, the astuteFlorentine.
“Now I am king!” cried Henry III. But Paris beingdominated by the duke of Mayenne, who had escaped assassination,and by the council of “Sixteen,” the chiefs of the League,most of the provinces replied by open revolt, and Henry III. had no alternative but an alliance with Henry of Navarre.Assassination of Henry III.Thanks to this he was on the point of seizing Paris,when in his turn he was assassinated on the 1st ofAugust 1589 by a Jacobin monk, Jacques Clément;with his dying breath he designated the king ofNavarre as his successor.
Between the popular League and the menace of the Protestantsit was a question whether the new monarch was to be powerlessin his turn. Henry IV. had almost the whole of hiskingdom to conquer. The Cardinal de Bourbon, kingaccording to the League and proclaimed under the titleThe Bourbons.of Charles X., could count upon the Holy League itself, upon theSpaniards of the Netherlands, and upon the pope. Henry IV.was only supported by a certain number of the Calvinists andby the Catholic minority of the Politiques, who, however,gradually induced the rest of the nation to rally round the onlylegitimate prince. The nation wished for the establishmentof internal unity through religious tolerance and the extinctionof private organizations; it looked for the extension of France’sexternal power through the abasem*nt of the house of Spain,protection of the Protestants in the Netherlands and Germany,and independence of Rome. Henry IV., moreover, was forcedto take an oath at the camp of Saint Cloud to associate the nationin the affairs of the kingdom by means of the states-general.These three conditions were interdependent; and Henry IV.,with his persuasive manners, his frank and charming character,and his personal valour, seemed capable of keeping them allthree.
The first thing for this soldier-king to do was to conquer hiskingdom and maintain its unity. He did not waste time bywithdrawing towards the south; he kept in the neighbourhoodof Paris, on the banks of the Seine, withinreach of help from Elizabeth; and twice—at ArquesHenry IV.
(1589–1610).and at Ivry (1589–1590)—he vanquished the dukeof Mayenne, lieutenant-general of the League. But after havingtried to seize Paris (as later Rouen) by a coup-de-main, he wasobliged to raise the siege in view of reinforcements sent toMayenne by the duke of Parma. Pope Gregory XIV., anenthusiastic supporter of the League and a strong adherentof Spain, having succeeded Sixtus V., who had been very lukewarmtowards the League, made Henry IV.’s position stillmore serious just at the moment when, the old Cardinal deBourbon having died, Philip II. wanted to be declared the protectorof the kingdom in order that he might dismember it, andwhen Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, a grandson of Francis I., andCharles III., duke of Lorraine, a son-in-law of Henry II., wereboth of them claiming the crown. Fortunately, however, theSixteen had disgusted the upper bourgeoisie by their demagogicairs; while their open alliance with Philip II., and their acceptanceof a Spanish garrison in Paris had offended the patriotismof the Politiques or moderate members of the League. Mayenne,who oscillated between Philip II. and Henry IV., was himselfobliged to break up and subdue this party of fanatics andtheologians (December 1591). This game of see-saw betweenthe Politiques and the League furthered his secret ambition, butalso the dissolution of the kingdom; and the pressure of publicopinion, which desired an effective monarchy, put an end to thistemporizing policy and caused the convocation of the states-generalStates-general of 1592.in Paris (December 1592). Philip II., throughthe duke of Feria’s instrumentality, demanded thethrone for his daughter Isabella, grand-daughter ofHenry II. through her mother. But who was to be herhusband? The archduke Ernest of Austria, Guise or Mayenne?The parlement cut short these bargainings by condemning allultramontane pretensions and Spanish intrigues. The unpopularityof Spain, patriotism, the greater predominance of nationalquestions in public opinion, and weariness of both religiousdisputation and indecisive warfare, all these sentiments wereexpressed in the wise and clever pamphlet entitled the SatireMénippée. What had been a slow movement between 1585and 1592 was quickened by Henry IV.’s abjuration of Protestantismat Saint-Denis on the 23rd of July 1593.
The coronation of the king at Chartres in February 1594completed the rout of the League. The parlement of Parisdeclared against Mayenne, who was simply the mouthpieceof Spain, and Brissac, the governor, surrenderedthe capital to the king. The example of Paris andAbjuration of Henry IV., July 23, 1593.Henry IV.’s clemency rallied round him all prudentCatholics, like Villeroy and Jeannin, anxious for national unity;but he had to buy over the adherents of the League, who soldhim his own kingdom for sixty million francs. The pontificalabsolution of September 17, 1595, finally stultified the League,which had been again betrayed by the unsuccessful plot of JeanChastel, the Jesuit’s pupil.
Nothing was now left but to expel the Spaniards, who undercover of religion had worked for their own interests alone.Despite the brilliant charge of Fontaine-Françaisein Burgundy (June 5, 1595), and the submission of theheads of the League, Guise, Mayenne, Joyeuse, andPeace of Vervins.Mercœur, the years 1595–1597 were not fortunate for Henry IV.’sarmies. Indignant at his conversion, Elizabeth, the Germans,and the Swiss Protestants deserted him; while the taking ofAmiens by the Spaniards compromised for the moment thefuture both of the king and the country. But exhaustion ofeach other, by which only England and Holland profited, broughtabout the Peace of Vervins. This confirmed the results of thetreaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (May 2, 1598), that is to say, thedecadence of Spanish power, and its inability either to conqueror to dismember France.
The League, having now no reason for existence, was dissolved;but the Protestant party remained very strong, with itspolitical organization and the fortified places whichthe assemblies of Millau, Nîmes and La Rochelle(1573–1574) had established in the south and the west.Edict of Nantes, 1598.It was a republican state within the kingdom, and,being unwilling to break with it, Henry IV. came to terms bythe edict of Nantes, on the 13th of April 1598. This was acompromise between the royal government and the Huguenotgovernment, the latter giving up the question of public worship,which was only authorized where it had existed before 1597and in two towns of each bailliage, with the exception of Paris;but it secured liberty of conscience throughout the kingdom,state payment for its ministers, admission to all employments,and courts composed equally of Catholics and Protestants in theparlements. An authorization to hold synods and politicalassemblies, to open schools, and to occupy a hundred strongplaces for eight years at the expense of the king, assured to theProtestants not only rights but privileges. In no other countrydid they enjoy so many guarantees against a return of persecution.This explains why the edict of Nantes was not registeredwithout some difficulty.
Thus the blood-stained 16th century closed with a promiseof religious toleration and a dream of international arbitration.This was the end of the long tragedy of civil strifeand of wars of conquest, mingled with the sound ofmadrigals and psalms and pavanes. It had been theResults of the religious wars.golden age of the arquebus and the viol, of sculptorsand musicians, of poets and humanists, of fratricidal conflictsand of love-songs, of mignons and martyrs. At the close of thistroubled century peace descends upon exhausted passions;and amidst the choir of young and ardent voices celebratingthe national reconciliation, the tocsin no longer sounds itssinister and persistent bass. Despite the leagues of either faith,religious liberty was now confirmed by the more free and generousspirit of Henry IV.
Why was this king at once so easygoing and so capricious?Why, again, had the effort and authority of feudal and popularresistance been squandered in the follies of the League and tofurther the ambitions of the rebellious Guises? Why had themonarchy been forced to purchase the obedience of the upperclasses and the provinces with immunities which enfeebled itwithout limiting it? At all events, when the kingdom had beenreconquered from the Spaniards and religious strife ended, inorder to fulfil his engagements, Henry IV. need only have associated the nation with himself in the work of reconstructingthe shattered monarchy. But during the atrocious holocaustsformidable states had grown up around France, observing herand threatening her; and on the other hand, as on the morrowof the Hundred Years’ War, the lassitude of the country, thelack of political feeling on the part of the upper classes and theirselfishness, led to a fresh abdication of the nation’s rights. Theneed of living caused the neglect of that necessity for controlwhich had been maintained by the states-general from 1560to 1593. And this time, moderation on the part of the monarchyno longer made for success. Of the two contrary currents whichhave continually mingled and conflicted throughout the courseof French history, that of monarchic absolutism and that ofaristocratic and democratic liberty, the former was now tocarry all before it.
The kingdom was now issuing from thirty-eight years ofcivil war. Its inhabitants had grown unaccustomed to work;its finances were ruined by dishonesty, disorder, anda very heavy foreign debt. The most characteristicsymptom of this distress was the brigandage carriedThe Bourbons. France in 1610.on incessantly from 1598 to 1610. Side by side withthis temporary disorder there was a more serious administrativedisorganization, a habit of no longer obeying the king. Theharassed population, the municipalities which under cover ofcivil war had resumed the right of self-government, and theparlements elated with their social importance and their securityof position, were not alone in abandoning duty and obedience.Two powers faced each other threateningly: the organized andmalcontent Protestants; and the provincial governors, all greatpersonages possessing an armed following, theoretically agentsof the king, but practically independent. The Montmorencys,the D’Epernons, the Birons, the Guises, were accustomed toconsider their offices as hereditary property. Not that thesetwo powers entered into open revolt against the king; but theyhad adopted the custom of recriminating, of threatening, ofcoming to understandings with the foreign powers, which withsome of them, like Marshal Biron, the D’Entragues and the ducde Bouillon, amounted to conspiracy (1602–1606).
As to the qualifications of the king: he had had the goodfortune not to be educated for the throne. Without muchlearning and sceptical in religious matters, he had thelively intelligence of the Gascon, more subtle thanprofound, more brilliant than steady. Married to aCharacter
of Henry IV.woman of loose morals, and afterwards to a devoutItalian, he was gross and vulgar in his appetites and pleasures.He had retained all the habits of a country gentleman of hisnative Béarn, careless, familiar, boastful, thrifty, cunning,combined since his sojourn at the court of the Valois with ataint of corruption. He worked little but rapidly, with noneof the bureaucratic pedantry of a Philip II. cloistered in the darktowers of the Escurial. Essentially a man of action and a soldier,he preserved his tone of command after he had reached thethrone, the inflexibility of the military chief, the conviction ofhis absolute right to be master. Power quickly intoxicatedhim, and his monarchy was therefore anything but parliamentary.His personality was everything, institutions nothing. If, atthe gathering of the notables at Rouen in 1596, Henry IV.spoke of putting himself in tutelage, that was but preliminaryto a demand for money. The states-general, called together tentimes in the 16th century, and at the death of Henry III. underpromise of convocation, were never assembled. To put hisabsolute right beyond all control he based it upon religion, andto this sceptic disobedience became a heresy. He tried tomake the clergy into an instrument of government by recalling theJesuits, who had been driven away in 1594, partly from fear oftheir regicides, partly because they have always been the bestteachers of servitude; and he gave the youth of the nation intothe hands of this cosmopolitan and ultramontane clerical order.His government was personal, not through departments; heretained the old council though reducing its members; and hisministers, taken from every party, were never—not even Sully—anythingmore than mere clerks, without independent position,mere instruments of his good pleasure. Fortunately this wasnot always capricious.
Henry IV. soon realized that his most urgent duty was toresuscitate the corpse of France. Pilfering was suppressed,and the revolts of the malcontents—the Gauthiers ofNormandy, the Croquants and Tard-avisés of Périgordlater with a sterner hand. He then provided for theThe achievements
of Henry IV.security of the country districts, and reduced the taxes on thepeasants, the most efficacious means of making them productiveand able to pay. Inspired by Barthélemy de Laffémas (1545–1612),controller-general of commerce, and by Olivier de Serres(1539–1619),[4] Henry IV. encouraged the culture of silk, thoughwithout much result, had orchards planted and marshes drained;while though he permitted the free circulation of wine and corn,this depended on the harvests. But the twofold effect of civilwar—the ruin of the farmers and the scarcity and high price ofrural labour—was only reduced arbitrarily and by fits andstarts.
Despite the influence of Sully, a convinced agrarian becauseof his horror of luxury and love of economy, Henry IV. likewiseattempted amelioration in the towns, where the stateof affairs was even worse than in the country. But theedict of 1597, far from inaugurating individual liberty,Industrial policy
of Henry IV.was but a fresh edition of that of 1581, a secondpreface to the legislation of Colbert, and in other ways no betterrespected than the first. As for the new features, the syndicalcourts proposed by Laffémas, they were not even put intopractice. Various industries, nevertheless, concurrent withthose of England, Spain and Italy, were created or reorganized:silk-weaving, printing, tapestry, &c. Sully at least providedrenascent manufacture with the roads necessary for communicationand planted them with trees. In external commerceLaffémas and Henry IV. were equally the precursors of Colbert,freeing raw material and prohibiting the import of productssimilar to those manufactured within the kingdom. Withoutregaining that preponderance in the Levant which had beensecured after the victory of Lepanto and before the civil wars,Marseilles still took an honourable place there, confirmed bythe renewal in 1604 of the capitulations of Francis I. with thesultan. Finally, the system of commercial companies, antipatheticto the French bourgeoisie, was for the first time practisedon a grand scale; but Sully never understood that movementof colonial expansion, begun by Henry II. in Brazil and continuedin Canada by Champlain, which had so marvellously enlargedthe European horizon. His point of view was altogether morelimited than that of Henry IV.; and he did not foresee, likeElizabeth, that the future would belong to the peoples whosenational energy took that line of action.
His sphere was essentially the superintendence of finance,to which he brought the same enthusiasm that he had shownin fighting the League. Vain and imaginative,his reputation was enormously enhanced by his“Économies royales”; he was no innovator, andThe work of Sully.being a true representative of the nation at that period, like ithe was but lukewarm towards reform, accepting it always againstthe grain. He was not a financier of genius; but he administeredthe public moneys with the same probity and exactitude whichhe used in managing his own, retrieving alienated property,straightening accounts, balancing expenditure and receipts,and amassing a reserve in the Bastille. He did not reform thesystem of aides and tailles established by Louis XI. in 1482;but by charging much upon indirect taxation, and slightlylessening the burden of direct taxation, he avoided an appealto the states-general and gave an illusion of relief.
Nevertheless, economic disasters, political circ*mstances andthe personal government of Henry IV. (precursor in this also of Louis XIV.) rendered his task impossible or fatal. Thenobility remained in debt and disaffected; and the clergy, moreremarkable for wealth and breeding than for virtues,Criticism of Henry IV.’s achievement.were won over to the ultramontane ideas of thetriumphant Jesuits. The rich bourgeoisie began moreand more to monopolize the magistracy; and thoughthe country-people were somewhat relieved from theburden which had been crushing them, the working-classesremained impoverished, owing to the increase of prices whichfollowed at a distance the rise of wages. Moreover, underinsinuating and crafty pretexts, Henry IV. undermined asfar as he could the right of control by the states-general, theright of remonstrance by the parlements, and the communalfranchises, while ensuring the impoverishment of the municipalitiesby his fiscal methods. Arbitrary taxation, scandalousintervention in elections, forced candidatures, confusion in theirfinancial administration, bankruptcy and revolt on the part ofthe tenants: all formed an anticipation of the personal ruleof Richelieu and Louis XIV.
Thus Henry IV. evinced very great activity in restoring orderand very great poverty of invention in his methods. His soleoriginal creation, the edict of La Paulette in 1604,was disastrous. In consideration of an annual paymentof one-sixtieth of the salary, it made hereditaryEdict of La Paulette.offices which had hitherto been held only for life;and the millions which it daily poured into the royal exchequerremoved the necessity for seeking more regular and betterdistributed resources. Political liberty and social justice wereequally the losers by this extreme financial measure, whichpaved the way for a catastrophe.
In foreign affairs the abasem*nt of the house of Austriaremained for Henry IV., as it had been for Francis I. and HenryII., a political necessity, while under his successorsit was to become a mechanical obsession. The peaceof Vervins had concluded nothing. The differenceForeign policy of Henry IV.concerning the marquisate of Saluzzo, which the dukeof Savoy had seized upon in 1588, profiting by Henry III.’sembarrassments, is only worth mentioning because the treatyof Lyons (1601) finally dissipated the Italian mirage, andbecause, in exchange for the last of France’s possessions beyondthe Alps, it added to the royal domain the really French territoryof La Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and the district of Gex. Thegreat external affair of the reign was the projected war uponwhich Henry IV. was about to embark when he was assassinated.The “grand design” of Sully, the organization of a “ChristianRepublic” of the European nations for the preservation ofpeace, was but the invention of an irresponsible minister, souredby defeat and wishing to impress posterity. Henry IV., theleast visionary of kings, was between 1598 and 1610 reallyhesitating between two great contradictory political schemes:the war clamoured for by the Protestants, politicians like Sully,and the nobility; and the Spanish alliance, to be cemented bymarriages, and preached by the ultramontane Spanish camarillaformed by the queen, Père Coton, the king’s confessor, theminister Villeroy, and Ubaldini, the papal nuncio. Selfish andsuspicious, Henry IV. consistently played this double game ofpolicy in conjunction with president Jeannin. By his alliancewith the Grisons (1603) he guaranteed the integrity of theValtellina, the natural approach to Lombardy for the imperialforces; and by his intimate union with Geneva he controlledthe routes by which the Spaniards could reach their hereditarypossessions in Franche-Comté and the Low Countries fromItaly. But having defeated the duke of Savoy he had no hesitationin making sure of him by a marriage; though the Swissmight have misunderstood the treaty of Brusol (1610) by whichhe gave one of his daughters to the grandson of Philip II. Onthe other hand he astonished the Protestant world by theimprudence of his mediation between Spain and the rebelliousUnited Provinces (1609). When the succession of Cleves and ofJülich, so long expected and already discounted by the treatyof Halle (1610), was opened up in Germany, the great war waslargely due to an access of senile passion for the charms of theprincesse de Condé. The stroke of Ravaillac’s knife caused atimely descent of the curtain upon this new and tragi-comicTrojan War. Thus, here as elsewhere, we see a vacillatinghand-to-mouth policy, at the mercy of a passion for power orfor sensual gratification. The Cornette blanche of Arques, thePoule au pôt of the peasant, successes as a lover and a dashingspirit, have combined to surround Henry IV. with a halo ofromance not justified by fact.
The extreme instability of monarchical government showeditself afresh after Henry IV.’s death. The reign of Louis XIII.,a perpetual regency by women, priests, and favourites,was indeed a curious prelude to the grand age of theFrench monarchy. The eldest son of Henry IV.The regency of Marie de’Medici.being a minor, Marie de’ Medici induced the parlementto invest her with the regency, thanks to Villeroy and contraryto the last will of Henry IV. This second Florentine, at oncejealous of power and incapable of exercising it, bore little resemblanceto her predecessor. Light-minded, haughty, apatheticand cold-hearted, she took a sort of passionate delight in changingHenry IV.’s whole system of government. Who would supporther in this? On one side were the former ministers, Silleryand president Jeannin, ex-leaguers but loyalists, no lovers ofSpain and still less of Germany; on the other the princes of theblood and the great nobles, Condé, Guise, Mayenne and Nevers,apparently still much more faithful to French ideas, but inreality convinced that the days of kings were over and thattheir own had arrived. Instead of weakening this aristocraticagitation by the see-saw policy of Catherine de’ Medici, Mariecould invent no other device than to despoil the royal treasureby distributing places and money to the chiefs of both parties.The savings all expended and Sully fallen into disgrace, shelost her influence and became the almost unconscious instrumentof an ambitious man of low birth, the Florentine Concini, whowas to drag her down with him in his fall; petty shifts becamethenceforward the order of the day.
Thus Villeroy thought fit to add still further to the pricealready paid to triumphant Madrid and Vienna by disbandingthe army, breaking the treaty of Brusol, and abandoningthe Protestant princes beyond the Rhine and thetrans-Pyrenean Moriscos. France joined hands withLouis XIII.
(1610–1643).Spain in the marriages of Louis XIII. with Anneof Austria and Princess Elizabeth with the son of Philip III.,and the Spanish ambassador was admitted to the secret councilof the queen. To soothe the irritation of England the duc deBouillon was sent to London to offer the hand of the king’ssister to the prince of Wales. Meanwhile, however, still morewas ceded to the princes than to the kings; and after a pretenceof drawing the sword against the prince of Condé, rebelliousthrough jealousy of the Italian surroundings of the queen-mother,recourse was had to the purse. The peace of Sainte Menehould,four years after the death of Henry IV., was a virtual abdicationof the monarchy (May 1614); it was time for a move in the otherdirection. Villeroy inspired the regent with the idea of anarmed expedition, accompanied by the little king, into the West.The convocation of the states-general was about to take place,wrung, as in all minorities, from the royal weakness—this timeby Condé; so the elections were influenced in the monarchistinterest. The king’s majority, solemnly proclaimed on the 28thof October 1614, further strengthened the throne; while owingto the bungling of the third estate, who did not contrive to gainthe support of the clergy and the nobility by some sort of concessions,the states-general, the last until 1789, proved like theothers a mere historic episode, an impotent and inorganicexpedient. In vain Condé tried to play with the parlement ofParis the same game as with the states-general, in a sort ofanticipation of the Fronde. Villeroy demurred; and theparlement, having illegally assumed a political rôle, broke withCondé and effected a reconciliation with the court. After thisdouble victory Marie de’ Medici could at last undertake thefamous journey to Bordeaux and consummate the Spanishmarriages. In order not to countenance by his presence anact which had been the pretext for his opposition, Condé rebelled once more in August 1615; but he was again pacified by thegovernorships and pensions of the peace of Loudun (May 1616).
But Villeroy and the other ministers knew not how to reapthe full advantage of their victory. They had but one desire,to put themselves on a good footing again with Condé,instead of applying themselves honestly to the serviceof the king. The “marshals,” Concini and his wifeConcini, Marshal d’Ancre.Leonora Galigai, more influential with the queen andmore exacting than ever, by dint of clever intrigues forced theministers to retire one after another; and with the last of HenryIV.’s “greybeards” vanished also all the pecuniary reserves left.Concini surrounded himself with new men, insignificant personsready to do his bidding, such as Barbin or Mangot, while inthe background was Richelieu, bishop of Luçon. Condé nowbegan intrigues with the princes whom he had previouslybetrayed; but his pride dissolved in piteous entreaties whenThémines, captain of the guard, arrested him in September1616. Six months later Concini had not even time to protestwhen another captain, Vitry, slew him at the Louvre, underorders from Louis XIII., on the 24th of April 1617.
Richelieu had appeared behind Marie de’ Medici; Albertde Luynes rose behind Louis XIII., the neglected child whomhe had contrived to amuse. “The tavern remained the same,having changed nothing but the bush.” De Luynes was madea duke and marshal in Concini’s place, with no better title;while the duc d’Epernon, supported by the queen-mother(now in disgrace at Blois), took Condé’s place at the head ofthe opposition. The treaties of Angoulême and Angers (1619–1620),negotiated by Richelieu, recalled the “unwholesome”treaties of Sainte-Menehould and Loudun. The revolt of theProtestants was more serious. Goaded by the vigorous revivalof militant Catholicism which marked the opening of the 17thcentury, de Luynes tried to put a finishing touch to the triumphof Catholicism in France, which he had assisted, by abandoningin the treaty of Ulm the defence of the small German statesagainst the ambition of the ruling house of Austria, and bysacrificing the Protestant Grisons to Spain. The re-establishmentof Catholic worship in Béarn was the pretext for a risingamong the Protestants, who had remained loyal during thesetroublous years; and although the military organizationof French Protestantism, arranged by the assembly of LaRochelle, had been checked in 1621, by the defection of mostof the reformed nobles, like Bouillon and Lesdiguières, de Luyneshad to raise the disastrous siege of Montauban. Death alonesaved him from the disgrace suffered by his predecessors(December 15, 1621).
From 1621 to 1624 Marie de’ Medici, re-established in credit,prosecuted her intrigues; and in three years there were threedifferent ministries: de Luynes was succeeded by theprince de Condé, whose Montauban was found atMontpellier; the Brûlarts succeeded Condé, andReturn of Marie de Medici.having, like de Luynes, neglected France’s foreigninterests, they had to give place to La Vieuville; while thislatter was arrested in his turn for having sacrificed the interestsof the English Catholics in the negotiations regarding themarriage of Henrietta of France with the prince of Wales. Allthese personages were undistinguished figures beyond whommight be discerned the cold clear-cut profile of Marie de’ Medici’ssecretary, now a cardinal, who was to take the helm and actas viceroy during eighteen years.
Richelieu came into power at a lucky moment. Every onewas sick of government by deputy; they desired a strong handand an energetic foreign policy, after the defeat ofthe Czechs at the White Mountain by the house ofAustria, the Spanish intrigues in the Valtellina, andCardinal Richelieu 1624–1642.the resumption of war between Spain and Holland.Richelieu contrived to raise hope in the minds of all. Aspresident of the clergy at the states-general of 1614 he hadfigured as an adherent of Spain and the ultramontane interest;he appeared to be a representative of that religious party whichwas identical with the Spanish party. But he had also beenput into the ministry by the party of the Politiques, who hadterminated the civil wars, acclaimed Henry IV., applauded theProtestant alliance, and by the mouth of Miron, president of thethird estate, had in 1614 proclaimed its intention to take upthe national tradition once more. Despite the concessionsnecessary at the outset to the partisans of a Catholic alliance,it was the programme of the Politiques that Richelieu adoptedand laid down with a master’s hand in his Political Testament.
To realize it he had to maintain his position. This was verydifficult with a king who “wished to be governed and yet wasimpatient at being governed.” Incapable of applyinghimself to great affairs, but of sane and even acutejudgment, Louis XIII. excelled only in a passion forLouis XIII. and Richelieu.detail and for manual pastimes. He realized thesuperior qualities of his minister, though with a lively sense ofhis own dignity he often wished him more discreet and lessimperious; he had confidence in him but did not love him.Cold-hearted and formal by nature, he had not even self-love,detested his wife Anne of Austria—too good a Spaniard—andonly attached himself fitfully to his favourites, male or female,who were naturally jealously suspected by the cardinal. Hewas accustomed to listen to his mother, who detested Richelieuas her ungrateful protégé. Neither did he love his brother,Gaston of Orleans, and the feeling was mutual; for the latter,remaining for twenty years heir-presumptive to a crown whichhe could neither defend nor seize, posed as the beloved princein all the conspiracies against Richelieu, and issued from themeach time as a Judas. Add to this that Louis XIII., likeRichelieu himself, had wretched health, aggravated by theextravagant medicines of the day; and it is easy to understandhow this pliable disposition which offered itself to the yokecaused Richelieu always to fear that his king might changehis master, and to declare that “the four square feet of the king’scabinet had been more difficult for him to conquer than all thebattlefields of Europe.”
Richelieu, therefore, passed his time in safeguarding himselffrom his rivals and in spying upon them; his suspicious nature,rendered still more irritable by his painful practice of a dissimulationrepugnant to his headstrong character, making him fancyhimself threatened more than was actually the case. He brutallysuppressed six great plots, several of which were scandalous,and had more than fifty persons executed; and he identifiedhimself with the king, sincerely believing that he was maintainingthe royal authority and not merely his own. He had a preferencefor irregular measures rather than legal prosecutions, and ajealousy of all opinions save his own. He maintained his powerthrough the fear of torture and of special commissions. Itwas Louis XIII. whose cold decree ordained most of the rigoroussentences, but the stain of blood rested on the cardinal’s robeand made his reasons of state pass for private vengeance. Chalaiswas beheaded at Nantes in 1626 for having upheld Gaston ofOrleans in his refusal to wed Mademoiselle de Montpensier,and Marshal d’Ornano died at Vincennes for having given himbad advice in this matter; while the duellist de Bouttevillewas put to the torture for having braved the edict against duels.The royal family itself was not free from his attacks; after theDay of Dupes (1630) he allowed the queen-mother to die in exile,and publicly dishonoured the king’s brother Gaston of Orleansby the publication of his confessions; Marshal de Marillacwas put to the torture for his ingratitude, and the constablede Montmorency for rebellion (1632). The birth of Louis XIV.in 1638 confirmed Richelieu in power. However, at the pointof death he roused himself to order the execution of the king’sfavourite, Cinq-Mars, and his friend de Thou, guilty of treasonwith Spain (1642).
Absolute authority was not in itself sufficient; much moneywas also needed. In his state-papers Richelieu has shown thatat the outset he desired that the Huguenots shouldshare no longer in public affairs, that the nobles shouldcease to behave as rebellious subjects, and the powerfulFinancial policy
of Richelieu.provincial governors as suzerains over the landscommitted to their charge. With his passion for the uniformand the useful on a grand scale, he hoped by means of the Code Michaud to put an end to the sale of offices, to lighten imposts,to suppress brigandage, to reduce the monasteries, &c. To dothis it would have been necessary to make peace, for it wassoon evident that war was incompatible with these reforms. Hechose war, as did his Spanish rival and contemporary Olivares.War is expensive sport; but Richelieu maintained a loftyattitude towards finance, disdained figures, and abandoned allpetty details to subordinate officials like D’Effiat or Bullion.He therefore soon reverted to the old and worse measures,including the debasem*nt of coinage, and put an extremetension on all the springs of the financial system. The land-taxwas doubled and trebled by war, by the pensions of the nobles,by an extortion the profits of which Richelieu disdained neitherfor himself nor for his family; and just when the richer andmore powerful classes had been freed from taxes, causing thewholesale oppression of the poorer, these few remaining werejointly and severally answerable. Perquisites, offices, forcedloans were multiplied to such a point that a critic of the times,Guy Patin, facetiously declared that duties were to be exactedfrom the beggars basking in the sun. Richelieu went so far as tomake poverty systematic and use famine as a means of government.This was the price paid for the national victories.
Thus he procured money at all costs, with an extremelycrude fiscal judgment which ended by exasperating the people;hence numerous insurrections of the poverty-stricken; Dijonrose in revolt against the aides in 1630, Provence against thetax-officers (élus) in 1631, Paris and Lyons in 1632, and Bordeauxagainst the increase of customs in 1635. In 1636 the Croquantsravaged Limousin, Poitou, Angoumois, Gascony and Périgord;in 1639 it needed an army to subdue the Va-nu-pieds (bare-feet)in Normandy. Even the rentiers of the Hôtel-de-Ville, big andlittle, usually very peaceable folk, were excited by the curtailmentof their incomes, and in 1639 and 1642 were roused to fury.
Every one had to bend before this harsh genius, who insistedon uniformity in obedience. After the feudal vassals, decimatedby the wars of religion and the executioner’s hand,and after the recalcitrant taxpayers, the Protestants,in their turn, and by their own fault, experienced this.Struggle with the Protestants.While Richelieu was opposing the designs of the popeand of the Spaniards in the Valtellina, while he was armingthe duke of Savoy and subsidizing Mansfeld in Germany,Henri, duc de Rohan, and his brother Benjamin de Rohan, ducde Soubise, the Protestant chiefs, took the initiative in a freshrevolt despite the majority of their party (1625). This Huguenotrising, in stirring up which Spanish diplomacy had its share,was a revolt of discontented and ambitious individuals whotrusted for success to their compact organization and the ultimateassistance of England. Under pressure of this new danger andurged on by the Catholic dévôts, supported by the influence ofPope Urban VIII., Richelieu concluded with Spain the treatyof Monzon (March 5, 1626), by which the interests of his alliesVenice, Savoy and the Grisons were sacrificed without theirbeing consulted. The Catholic Valtellina, freed from the claimsof the Protestant Grisons, became an independent state underthe joint protection of France and Spain; the question of theright of passage was left open, to trouble France during thecampaigns that followed; but the immediate gain, so far asRichelieu was concerned, was that his hands were freed to dealwith the Huguenots.
Soubise had begun the revolt (January 1625) by seizingPort Blavet in Brittany, with the royal squadron that lay there,and in command of the ships thus acquired, combined withthose of La Rochelle, he ranged the western coast, interceptingcommerce. In September, however, Montmorency succeeded,with a fleet of English and Dutch ships manned by Englishseamen, in defeating Soubise, who took refuge in England.La Rochelle was now invested, the Huguenots were hard pressedalso on land, and, but for the reluctance of the Dutch to allowtheir ships to be used for such a purpose, an end might have beenmade of the Protestant opposition in France; as it was, Richelieuwas forced to accept the mediation of England and conclude atreaty with the Huguenots (February 1626).
He was far, however, from forgiving them for their attitudeor being reconciled to their power. So long as they retainedtheir compact organization in France he could undertake nosuccessful action abroad, and the treaty was in effect no morethan a truce that was badly observed. The oppression of theFrench Protestants was but one of the pretexts for the Englishexpedition under James I.’s favourite, the duke of Buckingham,to La Rochelle in 1627; and, in the end, this intervention of aforeign power compromised their cause. When at last the citizensof the great Huguenot stronghold, caught between two dangers,chose what seemed to them the least and threw in their lotwith the English, they definitely proclaimed their attitude asanti-national; and when, on the 29th of October 1628, aftera heroic resistance, the city surrendered to the French king,Peace of Alais, 1629.this was hailed not as a victory for Catholicism only,but for France. The taking of La Rochelle was acrushing blow to the Huguenots, and the desperatealliance which Rohan, entrenched in the Cévennes,entered into with Philip IV. of Spain, could not prolong theirresistance. The amnesty of Alais, prudent and moderate inreligious matters, gave back to the Protestants their commonrights within the body politic. Unfortunately what was an endfor Richelieu was but a first step for the Catholic party.
The little Protestant group eliminated, Richelieu next wishedto establish Catholic religious uniformity; for though in Francethe Catholic Church was the state church, unity didnot exist in it. There were no fixed principles in therelations between king and church, hence incessantRichelieu and the Catholics.conflicts between Gallicans and Ultramontanes, inwhich Richelieu claimed to hold an even balance. Moreover,a Catholic movement for religious reform in the Church ofFrance began during the 17th century, marked by the creationof seminaries, the foundation of new orthodox religious orders,and the organization of public relief by Saint Vincent de Paul.Jansenism was the most vigorous contemporary effort to renovatenot only morals but Church doctrine (see Jansenism). ButRichelieu had no love for innovators, and showed this veryplainly to du Vergier de Hauranne, abbot of Saint Cyran, whowas imprisoned at Vincennes for the good of Church and State.In affairs of intellect dragooning was equally the policy; and,as Corneille learnt to his cost, the French Academy was createdin 1635 simply to secure in the republic of letters the same unityand conformity to rules that was enforced in the state.
Before Richelieu, there had been no effective monarchy andno institutions for controlling affairs; merely advisory institutionswhich collaborated somewhat vaguely in theadministration of the kingdom. Had the king beenwilling these might have developed further; butDestruction of
public spirit.Richelieu ruthlessly suppressed all such growth, andthey remained embryonic. According to him, the king mustdecide in secret, and the king’s will must be law. No one mightmeddle in political affairs, neither parlements nor states-general;still less had the public any right to judge the actions of thegovernment. Between 1631 and the edict of February 1641Richelieu strove against the continually renewed oppositionof the parlements to his system of special commissions andjudgments; in 1641 he refused them any right of interferencein state affairs; at most would he consent occasionally to takecounsel with assemblies of notables. Provincial and municipalliberties were no better treated when through them the king’ssubjects attempted to break loose from the iron ring of the royalcommissaries and intendants. In Burgundy, Dijon saw hermunicipal liberties restricted in 1631; the provincial assemblyof Dauphiné was suppressed from 1628 onward, and that ofLanguedoc in 1629; that of Provence was in 1639 replaced bycommunal assemblies, and that of Normandy was proroguedfrom 1639 to 1642. Not that Richelieu was hostile to themin principle; but he was obliged at all hazards to find moneyfor the upkeep of the army, and the provincial states were aslow and heavy machine to put in motion. Through an excessivereaction against the disintegration that had menaced the kingdomafter the dissolution of the League, he fell into the abuse of over-centralization; and depriving the people of the habitof criticizing governmental action, he taught them a fatalacquiescence in uncontrolled and undisputed authority. Likeone of those physical forces which tend to reduce everythingto a dead level, he battered down alike characters and fortresses;and in his endeavours to abolish faction, he killed that publicspirit which, formed in the 16th century, had already produced theRépublique of Bodin, de Thou’s History of his Times, La Boetie’sContre un, the Satire Ménippée, and Sully’s Économies royales.
In order to establish this absolute despotism Richelieu createdno new instruments, but made use of a revolutionary institutionof the 16th century, namely “intendants” (q.v.),agents who were forerunners of the commissaries ofthe Convention, gentlemen of the long robe of inferiorMethods employed by Richelieu.condition, hated by every one, and for that reason themore trustworthy. He also drew most of the members of hisspecial commissions from the grand council, a supreme administrativetribunal which owed all its influence to him.
However, having accomplished all these great things, thetreasury was left empty and the reforms were but ill-established;for Richelieu’s policy increased poverty, neglectedthe toiling and suffering peasants, deserted the causeof the workers in order to favour the privileged classes,The results.and left idle and useless that bourgeoisie whose intellectualactivity, spirit of discipline, and civil and political culture wouldhave yielded solid support to a monarchy all the stronger forbeing limited. Richelieu completed the work of Francis I.;he endowed France with the fatal tradition of autocracy. Thispriest by education and by turn of mind was indifferent tomaterial interests, which were secondary in his eyes; he couldorganize neither finance, nor justice, nor an army, nor thecolonies, but at the most a system of police. His method wasnot to reform, but to crush. He was great chiefly in negotiation,the art par excellence of ecclesiastics. His work was entirelyabroad; there it had more continuity, more future, perhapsbecause only in his foreign policy was he unhampered in hisdesigns. He sacrificed everything to it; but he ennobled it bythe genius and audacity of his conceptions, by the energetictension of all the muscles of the body politic.
The Thirty Years’ War in fact dominated all Richelieu’sforeign policy; by it he made France and unmade Germany.It was the support of Germany which Philip II. hadlacked in order to realize his Catholic empire; and theelection of the archduke Ferdinand II. of Styria asExternal policy
of Richelieu.emperor gave that support to his Spanish cousins(1619). Thenceforward all the forces of the Habsburg monarchywould be united, provided that communication could be maintainedin the north with the Netherlands and in the south withthe duchy of Milan, so that there should be no flaw in the ironvice which locked France in on either side. It was therefore Ofthe highest importance to France that she should dominate thevalleys of the Alps and Rhine. As soon as Richelieu becameminister in 1624 there was an end to cordial relations with Spain.He resumed the policy of Henry IV., confining his militaryoperations to the region of the Alps, and contenting himselfat first with opposing the coalition of the Habsburgs with acoalition of Venice, the Turks, Bethlen Gabor, king of Hungary,and the Protestants of Germany and Denmark. But the revoltsof the French Protestants, the resentment of the nobles at hisdictatorial power, and the perpetual ferment of intrigues andtreason in the court, obliged him almost immediately to drawback. During these eight years, however, Richelieu had pressedon matters as fast as possible.
While James I. of England was trying to get a general on thecheap in Denmark to defend his son-in-law, the elector palatine,Richelieu was bargaining with the Spaniards in thetreaty of Monzon (March 1626); but as the strainedrelations between France and England forced himTemporizing policy, except in Italy,
1624–1630.to conciliate Spain still further by the treaty of April1627, the Spaniards profited by this to carry on anintrigue with Rohan, and in concert with the dukeof Savoy, to occupy Montferrat when the death of Vicenzo II.(December 26, 1627) left the succession of Mantua, under thewill of the late duke, to Charles Gonzaga, duke of Nevers, aFrenchman by education and sympathy. But the taking ofLa Rochelle allowed Louis to force the pass of Susa, to inducethe duke of Savoy to treat with him, and to isolate the Spaniardsin Italy by a great Italian league between Genoa, Venice andthe dukes of Savoy and Mantua (April 1629). Unlike the Valois,Richelieu only desired to free Italy from Spain in order torestore her independence.
The fact that the French Protestants in the Cévennes wereagain in arms enabled the Habsburgs and the Spaniards to makea fresh attack upon the Alpine passes; but after the peace ofAlais Richelieu placed himself at the head of forty thousandmen, and stirred up enemies everywhere against the emperor,victorious now over the king of Denmark as in 1621 over theelector palatine. He united Sweden, now reconciled with Poland,and the Catholic and Protestant electors, disquieted by the edictof Restitution and the omnipotence of Wallenstein; and hearoused the United Provinces. But the disaffection of thecourt and the more extreme Catholics made it impossible forhim as yet to enter upon a struggle against both Austria andSpain; he was only able to regulate the affairs of Italy withmuch prudence. The intervention of Mazarin, despatched bythe pope, who saw no other means of detaching Italy from Spainthan by introducing France into the affair, brought about thesignature of the armistice of Rivalte on the 4th of September1630, soon developed into the peace of Cherasco, which re-establishedthe agreement with the still fugitive duke of Savoy(June 1631). Under the harsh tyranny of Spain, Italy was nownothing but a lifeless corpse; young vigorous Germany wasbetter worth saving. So Richelieu’s envoys, Brulart de Léonand Father Joseph, disarmed[5] the emperor at the diet of Regensburg,while at the same time Louis XIII. kept Casale andPinerolo, the gates of the Alps. Lastly, by the treaty of Fontainebleau(May 30th, 1631), Maximilian of Bavaria, the head ofthe Catholic League, engaged to defend the king of France againstall his enemies, even Spain, with the exception of the emperor.Thus by the hand of Richelieu a union against Austrian imperialismwas effected between the Bavarian Catholics and theProtestants who dominated in central and northern Germany.
Twice had Richelieu, by means of the purse and not by forceof arms, succeeded in reopening the passes of the Alps and ofthe Rhine. The kingdom at peace and the Huguenotparty ruined, he was now able to engage upon hispolicy of prudent acquisitions and apparently disinterestedRichelieu and Gustavus Adolphus.alliances. But Gustavus Adolphus, kingof Sweden, called in by Richelieu and Venice to take the placeof the played-out king of Denmark, brought danger to all parties.He would not be content merely to serve French interests inGermany, according to the terms of the secret treaty of Bärwalde(June 1631); but, once master of Germany and the rich valleyof the Rhine, considered chiefly the interests of Protestantismand Sweden. Neither the prayers nor the threats of Richelieu,who wished indeed to destroy Spain but not Catholicism, northe death of Gustavus Adolphus at Lützen (1632), could repairthe evils caused by this immoderate ambition. A violentCatholic reaction against the Protestants ensued; and theunion of Spain and the Empire was consolidated just when thatof the Protestants was dissolved at Nördlingen, despite theefforts of Oxenstierna (September 1634). Moreover, Wallenstein,who had been urged by Richelieu to set up an independentkingdom in Bohemia, had been killed on the 23rd of February1634. In the course of a year Württemberg and Franconiawere reconquered from the Swedes; and the duke of Lorraine,who had taken the side of the Empire, called in the Spanish andthe imperial forces to open the road to the Netherlands throughFranche-Comté.
His allies no longer able to stand alone, Richelieu was obligedto intervene directly (May 19th, 1635). By the treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Layehe purchased the army of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar; by that of Rivoli he united against Spain the dukesof Modena, Parma and Mantua; he signed an open alliance withThe French Thirty Years’ War.the league of Heilbronn, the United Provinces andSweden; and after these alliances military operationsbegan, Marshal de la Force occupying the duchy of Lorraine.Richelieu attempted to operate simultaneouslyin the Netherlands by joining hands with the Dutch,and on the Rhine by uniting with the Swedes; but the badorganization of the French armies, the double invasion of theSpaniards as far as Corbie and the imperial forces as far as thegates of Saint-Jean-de-Losne (1636), and the death of his allies,the dukes of Hesse-Cassel, Savoy and Mantua at first frustratedhis efforts. A decided success was, however, achieved between1638 and 1640, thanks to Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and afterwardsto Guébriant, and to the parallel action of the Swedishgenerals, Banér, Wrangel and Torstensson. Richelieu obtainedAlsace, Breisach and the forest-towns on the Rhine; whilein the north, thanks to the Dutch and owing to the conquest ofArtois, marshals de la Meilleraye, de Châtillon and de Brézéforced the barrier of the Netherlands. Turin, the capital ofPiedmont, was taken by Henri de Lorraine, comte d’Harcourt;the alliance with rebellious Portugal facilitated the occupationof Roussillon and almost the whole of Catalonia, and Spain wasreduced to defending herself; while the embarrassments of theHabsburgs at Madrid made those of Vienna more tractable.The diet of Regensburg, under the mediation of Maximilian ofBavaria, decided in favour of peace with France, and on the 25thof December 1641 the preliminary settlement at Hamburgfixed the opening of negotiations to take place at Münster andOsnabrück. Richelieu’s death (December 4, 1642) preventedhim from seeing the triumph of his policy, but it can be judgedby its results; in 1624 the kingdom had in the east only thefrontier of the Meuse to defend it from invasion; in 1642 thewhole of Alsace, except Strassburg, was occupied and the Rhineguarded by the army of Guébriant. Six months later, on the14th of May 1643, Louis XIII. rejoined his minister in his truekingdom, the land of shades.
But thanks to Mazarin, who completed his work, Francegathered in the harvest sown by Richelieu. At the outset noone believed that the new cardinal would have anysuccess. Every one expected from Anne of Austriaa change in the government which appeared to beMazarin, 1643–1661.justified by the persecutions of Richelieu and thedisdainful unscrupulousness of Louis XIII. On the 16th ofMay the queen took the little four-year-old Louis XIV. to theparlement of Paris which, proud of playing a part in politics,hastened, contrary to Louis XIII.’s last will, to acknowledgethe command of the little king, and to give his mother “free,absolute and entire authority.” The great nobles were alreadylooking upon themselves as established in power, when theylearnt with amazement that the regent had appointed as herchief adviser, not Gaston of Orleans, but Mazarin. The politicalrevenge which in their eyes was owing to them as a body, thequeen claimed for herself alone, and she made it a romantic one.This Spaniard of waning charms, who had been neglected by herhusband and insulted by Richelieu, now gave her indolent andfull-blown person, together with absolute power, into the handsof the Sicilian. Whilst others were triumphing openly, Mazarin,in the shadow and silence of the interregnum, had kept watchupon the heart of the queen; and when the old party of Mariede’ Medici and Anne of Austria wished to come back into power,to impose a general peace, and to substitute for the Protestantalliances an understanding with Spain, the arrest of Françoisde Vendôme, duke of Beaufort, and the exile of other importantnobles proved to the great families that their hour had goneby (September 1643).
Mazarin justified Richelieu’s confidence and the favour ofAnne of Austria. It was upon his foreign policy that he reliedto maintain his authority within the kingdom. Thanks to him,the duke of Enghien (Louis de Bourbon, afterwards prince ofCondé), appointed commander-in-chief at the age of twenty-two,Treaties of Westphalia.caused the downfall of the renowned Spanish infantry atRocroi; and he discovered Turenne, whose prudence temperedCondé’s overbold ideas. It was he too who by renewing the traditionalalliances and resuming against Bavaria, FerdinandIII.’s most powerful ally, the plan of commonaction with Sweden which Richelieu had sketched out,pursued it year after year: in 1644 at Freiburgim Breisgau, despite the death of Guébriant at Rottweil; in1645 at Nördlingen, despite the defeat of Marienthal; and in1646 in Bavaria, despite the rebellion of the Weimar cavalry;to see it finally triumph at Zusmarshausen in May 1648. WithTurenne dominating the Eiser and the Inn, Condé victoriousat Lens, and the Swedes before the gates of Prague, the emperor,left without a single ally, finally authorized his plenipotentiariesto sign on the 24th of October 1648 the peace about whichnegotiations had been going on for seven years. Mazarin hadstood his ground notwithstanding the treachery of the duke ofBavaria, the defection of the United Provinces, the resistance ofthe Germans, and the general confusion which was alreadypervading the internal affairs of the kingdom.
The dream of the Habsburgs was shattered. They hadwished to set up a centralized empire, Catholic and German;but the treaties of Westphalia kept Germany in its passiveand fragmentary condition; while the Catholic and Protestantprinces obtained formal recognition of their territorial independenceand their religious equality. Thus disappeared thetwo principles which justified the Empire’s existence; theuniversal sovereignty to which it laid claim was limited simplyto a German monarchy much crippled in its powers; and theenfranchisem*nt of the Lutherans and Calvinists from papaljurisdiction cut the last tie which bound the Empire to Rome.The victors’ material benefits were no less substantial: the congressof Münster ratified the final cession of the Three Bishopricsand the conquest of Alsace, and Breisach and Philippsburgcompleted these acquisitions. The Spaniards had no longerany hope of adding Luxemburg to their Franche-Comté; whilethe Holy Roman Empire in Germany, taken in the rear bySweden (now mistress of the Baltic and the North Sea), cut offfor good from the United Provinces and the Swiss cantons, andenfeebled by the recognized right of intervention in Germanaffairs on the part of Sweden and France, was now nothing buta meaningless name.
Mazarin had not been so fortunate in Italy, where in 1642the Spanish remained masters. Venice, the duchy of Milan andthe duke of Modena were on his side; the pope and the grand-dukeof Tuscany were trembling, but the romantic expeditionof the duke of Guise to Naples, and the outbreak of the Fronde,saved Spain, who had refused to take part in the treaties ofWestphalia and whose ruin Mazarin wished to compass.
It was, however, easier for Mazarin to remodel the map ofEurope than to govern France. There he found himself face toface with all the difficulties that Richelieu had neglectedto solve, and that were now once more giving trouble.The Lit de Justice of the 18th of May 1643 had provedState of the kingdom.authority to remain still so personal an affair that theperson of the king, insignificant though that was, continued tobe regarded as its absolute depositary. Thus regular obedienceto an abstract principle was under Mazarin as incomprehensibleto the idle and selfish nobility as it had been under Richelieu.The parlement still kept up the same extra-judicial pretensions;but beyond its judicial functions it acted merely as a kind of town-crierto the monarchy, charged with making known the king’sedicts. Yet through its right of remonstrance it was the onlybody that could legally and publicly intervene in politics; a largeand independent body, moreover, which had its own demandsto make upon the monarchy and its ministers. Richelieu, bysetting his special agents above the legal but complicatedmachinery of financial administration, had so corrupted it asto necessitate radical reform; all the more so because financialcharges had been increased to a point far beyond what the nationcould bear. With four armies to keep up, the insurrection inPortugal to maintain, and pensions to serve the needs of theallies, the burden had become a crushing one.
Richelieu had been able to surmount these difficulties becausehe governed in the name of a king of full age, and against isolatedadversaries; while Mazarin had the latter againsthim in a coalition which had lasted ten years, withthe further disadvantages of his foreign origin and aRichelieu and Mazarin.royal minority at a time when every one was sick ofgovernment by ministers. He was the very opposite of Richelieu,as wheedling in his ways as the other had been haughty andscornful, as devoid of vanity and rancour as Richelieu had beenfull of jealous care for his authority; he was gentle where theother had been passionate and irritable, with an intelligence asgreat and more supple, and a far more grasping nature.
It was the fiscal question that arrayed against Mazarin acoalition of all petty interests and frustrated ambitions; thiswas always the Achilles’ heel of the French monarchy,which in 1648 was at the last extremity for money.All imposts were forestalled, and every expedient forFinancial difficulties.obtaining either direct or indirect taxes had beenexhausted by the methods of the financiers. As the countrydistricts could yield nothing more, it became necessary todemand money from the Parisians and from the citizens of thevarious towns, and to search out and furbish up old disusededicts—edicts as to measures and scales of prices—at the verymoment when the luxury and corruption of the parvenus wasinsulting the poverty and suffering of the people, and exasperatingall those officials who took their functions seriously.
A storm burst forth in the parlement against Mazarin as thepatron of these expedients, the occasion for this being the edictof redemption by which the government renewed fornine years the “Paulette” which had now expired,by withholding four years’ salary from all officers ofRebellion of the parlement.the Great Council, of the Chambres des comptes, and ofthe Cour des aides. The parlement, although expressly exempted,associated itself with their protest by the decree of union ofMay 13, 1648, and deliberations in a body upon the reform ofthe state. Despite the queen’s express prohibition, the insurrectionaryassembly of the Chambre Saint Louis criticizedthe whole financial system, founded as it was upon usury, claimedthe right of voting taxes, respect for individual liberty, and thesuppression of the intendants, who were a menace to the newbureaucratic feudalism. The queen, haughty and exasperatedthough she was, yielded for the time being, because the invasionof the Spaniards in the north, the arrest of Charles I. of England,and the insurrection of Masaniello at Naples made the momenta critical one for monarchies; but immediately after the victoryat Lens she attempted a coup d’état, arresting the leaders, andamong them Broussel, a popular member of the parlement(August 26, 1648). Paris at once rose in revolt—a Paris ofswarming and unpoliced streets, that had been making Frenchhistory ever since the reign of Henry IV., and that had notforgotten the barricades of the League. Once more a pretenceof yielding had to be made, until Condé’s arrival enabled thecourt to take refuge at Saint-Germain (January 15, 1649).
Civil war now began against the rebellious coalition of greatnobles, lawyers of the parlement, populace, and mercenariesjust set free from the Thirty Years’ War. It lastedfour years, for motives often as futile as the GrandeMademoiselle’s ambition to wed little Louis XIV.,The Fronde
(1648–1652).Cardinal de Retz’s red hat, or Madame de Longueville’sstool at the queen’s side; it was, as its name of Fronde indicates,a hateful farce, played by grown-up children, in several acts.
Its first and shortest phase was the Fronde of the Parlement.At a period when all the world was a little mad, the parlementhad imagined a loyalist revolt, and, though it raisedan armed protest, this was not against the king butagainst Mazarin and the persons to whom he hadThe Fronde of
the Parlement.delegated power. But the parlement soon becamedisgusted with its allies—the princes and nobles, who had onlydrawn their swords in order to beg more effectively with armsin their hands; and the Parisian mob, whose fanaticism hadbeen aroused by Paul de Gondi, a warlike ecclesiastic, a Catilinein a cassock, who preached the gospel at the dagger’s point.When a suggestion was made to the parlement to receive anenvoy from Spain, the members had no hesitation in makingterms with the court by the peace of Rueil (March 11, 1649),which ended the first Fronde.
As an entr’acte, from April 1649 to January 1650, came theaffair of the Petit* Maîtres: Condé, proud and violent; Gastonof Orleans, pliable and contemptible; Conti, thesimpleton; and Longueville, the betrayed husband.The victor of Lens and Charenton imagined that everyThe Fronde of
the Princes.one was under an obligation to him, and laid claim to adictatorship so insupportable that Anne of Austria and Mazarin—assuredby Gondi of the concurrence of the parlement andpeople—had him arrested. To defend Condé the great conspiracyof women was formed: Madame de Chevreuse, thesubtle and impassioned princess palatine, and the princess ofCondé vainly attempted to arouse Normandy, Burgundy andthe mob of Bordeaux; while Turenne, bewitched by Madamede Longueville, allowed himself to become involved with Spainand was defeated at Rethel (December 15, 1650). Unfortunately,after his custom when victor, Mazarin forgot his promises—aboveall, Gondi’s cardinal’s hat. A union was effected betweenthe two Frondes, that of the Petit* Maîtres and that of theparlements, and Mazarin was obliged to flee for safety to theelectorate of Cologne (February 1651), whence he continuedto govern the queen and the kingdom by means of secret letters.But the heads of the two Frondes—Condé, now set free fromprison at Havre, and Gondi who detested him—were not long inquarrelling fatally. Owing to Mazarin’s exile and to the king’sattainment of his majority (September 5, 1651) quiet was beingrestored, when the return of Mazarin, jealous of Anne of Austria,nearly brought about another reconciliation of all his opponents(January 1652). Condé resumed civil war with the support ofSpain, because he was not given Mazarin’s place; but thoughhe defeated the royal army at Bléneau, he was surprised atÉtampes, and nearly crushed by Turenne at the gate of Saint-Antoine.Saved, however, by the Grande Mademoiselle, daughterof Gaston of Orleans, he lost Paris by the disaster of the Hôtel deVille (July 4, 1652), where he had installed an insurrectionarygovernment. A general weariness of civil war gave plenty ofopportunity after this to the agents of Mazarin, who in order tofacilitate peace made a pretence of exiling himself for a secondtime to Bouillon. Then came the final collapse: Condé havingtaken refuge in Spain for seven years, Gaston of Orleans beingin exile, Retz in prison, and the parlement reduced to its judiciaryfunctions only, the field was left open for Mazarin, who, fourmonths after the king, re-entered in triumph that Paris whichhad driven him forth with jeers and mockery (February 1653).
The task was now to repair these four years of madness andfolly. The nobles who had hoped to set up the League again,half counting upon the king of Spain, were held incheck by Mazarin with the golden dowries of hisnumerous nieces, and were now employed by him inThe administration of Mazarin.warfare and in decorative court functions; whileothers, De Retz and La Rochefoucauld, sought consolation intheir Memoirs or their Maxims, one for his mortifications and theother for his rancour as a statesman out of employment. Theparlement, which had confused political power with judiciaryadministration, was given to understand, in the session of April13, 1655, at Vincennes, that the era of political manifestationswas over; and the money expended by Gourville, Mazarin’sagent, restored the members of the parlement to docility. Thepower of the state was confided to middle-class men, faithfulservants during the evil days: Abel Servien, Michel le Tellier,Hugues de Lionne. Like Henry IV. after the League, Mazarin,after having conquered the Fronde, had to buy back bit by bitthe kingdom he had lost, and, like Richelieu, he spread out anetwork of agents, thenceforward regular and permanent, whoassured him of that security without which he could neverhave carried on his vast plunderings in peace and quiet. Hisimitator and superintendent, Fouquet, the Maecenas of thefuture Augustus, concealed this gambling policy beneath thelustre of the arts and the glamour of a literature remarkable for elevation of thought and vigour of style, and further characterizedby the proud though somewhat restricted freedom conceded tomen like Corneille, Descartes and Pascal, but soon to disappear.
It was also necessary to win back from Spain the territorywhich the Frondeurs had delivered up to her. Both countries,exhausted by twenty years of war, were incapableof bringing it to a successful termination, yet neitherwould be first to give in; Mazarin, therefore, disquietedWar with Spain.by Condé’s victory at Valenciennes (1656), reknit thebond of Protestant alliances, and, having nothing to expectfrom Holland, he deprived Spain of her alliance with OliverCromwell (March 23, 1657). A victory in the Dunes by Turenne,now reinstalled in honour, and above all the conquest of theFlemish seaboard, were the results (June 1658); but when, inorder to prevent the emperor’s intervention in the Netherlands,Mazarin attempted, on the death of Ferdinand III., to wrestthe Empire from the Habsburgs, he was foiled by the gold ofthe Spanish envoy Peñaranda (1657). When the abdication ofChristina of Sweden caused a quarrel between Charles Gustavusof Sweden and John Casimir of Poland, by which the emperorand the elector of Brandenburg hoped to profit, Mazarin (August15, 1658) leagued the Rhine princes against them; while atthe same time the substitution of Pope Alexander VII. forInnocent X., and the marriage of Mazarin’s two nieces withthe duke of Modena and a prince of the house of Savoy, madeSpain anxious about her Italian possessions. The suggestionof a marriage between Louis XIV. and a princess of SavoyPeace of the Pyrenees.decided Spain, now brought to bay, to accord him thehand of Maria Theresa as a chief condition of the peaceof the Pyrenees (November 1659). Roussillon andArtois, with a line of strongholds constituting aformidable northern frontier, were ceded to France; and theacquisition of Alsace and Lorraine under certain conditions wasratified. Thus from this long duel between the two countriesSpain issued much enfeebled, while France obtained the preponderancein Italy, Germany, and throughout northern Europe,as is proved by Mazarin’s successful arbitration at Copenhagenand at Oliva (May-June 1660). That dream of Henry IV. andRichelieu, the ruin of Philip II.’s Catholic empire, was made arealized fact by Mazarin; but the clever engineer, dazzled bysuccess, took the wrong road in national policy when he hopedto crown his work by the Spanish marriage.
The development of events had gradually enlarged the royalprerogative, and it now came to its full flower in the administrativemonarchy of the 17th century. Of this systemLouis XIV. was to be the chief exponent. Hisreign may be divided into two very distinct periods.Louis XIV.
(1661–1715).The death of Colbert and the revocation of the edictof Nantes brought the first to a close (1661–1683–1685); coincidingwith the date when the Revolution in England definitelyreversed the traditional system of alliances, and when theadministration began to disorganize. In the second period(1685–1715) all the germs of decadence were developed until themoment of final dissolution.
In a monarchy so essentially personal the preparation ofthe heir to the throne for his position should have been the chieftask. Anne of Austria, a devoted but unintelligentmother, knew no method of dealing with her son,save devotion combined with the rod. His firstEducation of
Louis XIV.preceptors were nothing but courtiers; and the mostintelligent, his valet Laporte, developed in the royal child’smind his natural instinct of command, a very lively sense of hisrank, and that nobly majestic air of master of the world whichhe preserved even in the commonest actions of his life. Thecontinual agitations of the Fronde prevented him from perseveringin any consistent application during those years which arethe most valuable for study, and only instilled in him a horrorof revolution, parliamentary remonstrance, and disorder ofall kinds; so that this recollection determined the directionof his government. Mazarin, in his later years, at last taughthim his trade as king by admitting him to the council, and byinstructing him in the details of politics and of administration.In 1661 Louis XIV. was a handsome youth of twenty-two,of splendid health and gentle serious mien; eager for pleasure,but discreet and even dissimulating; his rather mediocreintellectual qualities relieved by solid common sense; fullyalive to his rights and his duties.
The duties he conscientiously fulfilled, but he considered heneed render no account of them to any one but his Maker, thelast humiliation for God’s vicegerent being “to takethe law from his people.” In the solemn language ofthe “Memoirs for the Instruction of the Dauphin”His political ideas.he did but affirm the arbitrary and capricious characterof his predecessors’ action. As for his rights, Louis XIV. lookedupon these as plenary and unlimited. Representative of Godupon earth, heir to the sovereignty of the Roman emperors,a universal suzerain and master over the goods and the livesof his vassals, he could conceive no other bounds to his authoritythan his own interests or his obligations towards God, and in thishe was a willing believer of Bossuet. He therefore had but twoaims: to increase his power at home and to enlarge his kingdomabroad. The army and taxation were the chief instrumentsof his policy. Had not Bodin, Hobbes and Bossuet taughtthat the force which gives birth to kingdoms serves best also tofeed and sustain them? His theory of the state, despite Grotiusand Jurieu, rejected as odious and even impious the notionof any popular rights, anterior and superior to his own. Arealist in principle, Louis XIV. was terribly utilitarian andegotistical in practice; and he exacted from his subjects anabsolute, continual and obligatory self-abnegation before hispublic authority, even when improperly exercised.
This deified monarch needed a new temple, and Versailles,where everything was his creation, both men and things, adoredits maker. The highest nobility of France, beginningwith the princes of the blood, competed for postsin the royal household, where an army of ten thousandThe forms of Louis XIV.’s monarchy.soldiers, four thousand servants, and five thousandhorses played its costly and luxurious part in the ordered andalmost religious pageant of the king’s existence. The “anciennescohues de France,” gay, familiar and military, gave place to astilted court life, a perpetual adoration, a very ceremonious andvery complicated ritual, in which the demigod “pontificated”even “in his dressing-gown.” To pay court to himself was thefirst and only duty in the eyes of a proud and haughty princewho saw and noted everything, especially any one’s absence.Versailles, where the delicate refinements of Italy and the gravepoliteness of Spain were fused and mingled with French vivacity,became the centre of national life and a model for foreign royalties;hence if Versailles has played a considerable part in the historyof civilization, it also seriously modified the life of France.Etiquette and self-seeking became the chief rules of a courtier’slife, and this explains the division of the nobility into twosections: the provincial squires, embittered by neglect; andthe courtiers, who were ruined materially and intellectuallyby their way of living. Versailles sterilized all the idle upperclasses, exploited the industrious classes by its extravagance,and more and more broke relations between king andkingdom.
But however divine, the king could not wield his powerunaided. Louis XIV. called to his assistance a hierarchy ofhumbly submissive functionaries, and councils overwhich he regularly presided. Holding the very nameof roi fainéant in abhorrence, he abolished the officeLouis XIV.’s ministers.of mayor of the palace—that is to say, the primeminister—thus imposing upon himself work which he alwaysregularly performed. In choosing his collaborators his principlewas never to select nobles or ecclesiastics, but persons of inferiorbirth. Neither the immense fortunes amassed by these men,nor the venality and robust vitality which made their familiesveritable races of ministers, altered the fact that De Lionne, LeTellier, Louvois and Colbert were in themselves of no account,even though the parts they played were much more importantthan Louis XIV. imagined. This was the age of plebeians, tothe great indignation of the duke and peer Saint Simon. Mere reflected lights, these satellites professed to share their master’sRoyal despotism.honor of all individual and collective rights of such anature as to impose any check upon his public authority.Louis XIV. detested the states-general and neverconvoked them, and the parlements were definitely reducedto silence in 1673; he completed the destruction of municipalliberties, under pretext of bad financial administration; sufferedno public, still less private criticism; was ruthless when hisexasperated subjects had recourse to force; and made the policethe chief bulwark of his government. Prayers and resignationwere the only solace left for the hardships endured by his subjects.All the ties of caste, class, corporation and family were severed;the jealous despotism of Louis XIV. destroyed every opportunityof taking common action; he isolated every man in private life,in individual interests, just as he isolated himself more and morefrom the body social. Freedom he tolerated for himself alone.
His passion for absolutism made him consider himself masterof souls as well as bodies, and Bossuet did nothing to contravenean opinion which was, indeed, common to everysovereign of his day. Louis XIV., like Philip II.,pretending to not only political but religious authority,Louis XIV. and the Church.would not allow the pope to share it, still less wouldhe abide any religious dissent; and this gave rise to manyconflicts, especially with the pope, at that time a temporalsovereign both at Rome and at Avignon, and as the head ofChristendom bound to interfere in the affairs of France. LouisXIV.’s pride caused the first struggle, which turned exclusivelyupon questions of form, as in the affair of the Corsican Guardin 1662. The question of the right of regale (right of the Crownto the revenues of vacant abbeys and bishoprics), which touchedthe essential rights of sovereignty, further inflamed the hostilitybetween Innocent XI. and Louis XIV. Conformably with thetraditions of the administrative monarchy in 1673, the kingwanted to extend to the new additions to the kingdom hisrights of receiving the revenues of vacant bishoprics and makingappointments to their benefices, including taking oaths of fidelityfrom the new incumbents. A protest raised by the bishops ofPamiers and Aleth, followed by the seizure of their revenues,provoked the intervention of Innocent XI. in 1678; but theking was supported by the general assembly of the clergy, whichdeclared that, with certain exceptions, the regale extended overthe whole kingdom (1681). The pope ignored the decisions ofthe assembly; so, dropping the regale, the king demanded that,to obviate further conflict, the assembly should define the limitsof the authority due respectively to the king, the Church and thepope. This was the object of the Declaration of the FourDeclaration of the Four Articles.Articles: the pope has no power in temporal matters;general councils are superior to the pope in spiritualaffairs; the rules of the Church of France are inviolable;decisions of the pope in matters of faith are only irrevocableby consent of the Church. The French laity transferredto the king this quasi-divine authority, which became the politicaltheory of the ancien régime; and since the pope refused to submit,or to institute the new bishops, the Sorbonne was obliged tointerfere. The affair of the “diplomatic prerogatives,” whenLouis XIV. was decidedly in the wrong, made relations evenmore strained (1687), and the idea of a schism was mooted withgreater insistence than in 1681. The death of Innocent XI. in1689 allowed Louis XIV. to engage upon negotiations renderedimperative by his check in the affair of the Cologne bishopric,where his candidate was ousted by the pope’s. In 1693, underthe pontificate of Innocent XII., he went, like so many others,to Canossa.
Recipient now of immense ecclesiastical revenues, which,owing to the number of vacant benefices, constituted a powerfulengine of government, Louis XIV. had immense power over theFrench Church. Religion began to be identified with the state;and the king combated heresy and dissent, not only as a religiousduty, but as a matter of political expediency, unity of faithbeing obviously conducive to unity of law.
Richelieu having deprived the Protestants of all politicalguarantees for their liberty of conscience, an anti-Protestantparty (directed by a cabal of religious devotees, the Compagniedu Saint Sacrement) determined to suppress it completely byconversions and by a jesuitical interpretation of theLouis XIV. and the Protestants.terms of the edict of Nantes. Louis XIV. madethis impolitic policy his own. His passion for absolutism,a religious zeal that was the more active becauseit had to compensate for many affronts to public and privatemorals, the financial necessity of augmenting the free donationsof the clergy, and the political necessity of relying upon that bodyin his conflicts with the pope, led the king between 1661 and1685 to embark upon a double campaign of arbitrary proceedingswith the object of nullifying the edict, conversions being procuredeither by force or by bribery. The promulgation and applicationof systematic measures from above had a response from below,from the corporation, the urban workshop, and the village street,which supported ecclesiastical and royal authority in its suppressionof heresy, and frequently even went further: individualand local fanaticism co-operating with the head of the state,the intendants, and the military and judiciary authorities.Protestants were successively removed from the states-general,the consulates, the town councils, and even from the humblestmunicipal offices; they were deprived of the charge of theirhospitals, their academies, their colleges and their schools, andwere left to ignorance and poverty; while the intoleranceof the clergy united with chicanery of procedure to invadetheir places of worship, insult their adherents, and put a stopto the practice of their ritual. Pellisson’s methods of conversion,Suppression of the edict of Nantes (1685).considered too slow, were accelerated by the violentpersecution of Louvois and by the king’s galleys,until the day came when Louis XIV., deceived by theclergy, crowned his record of complaisant legal methodsby revoking the edict of Nantes. This was the signalfor a Huguenot renaissance, and the Camisards of the Cévennesheld the royal armies in check from 1703 to 1711. Notwithstandingthis, however, Louis XIV. succeeded only too well, sinceProtestantism was reduced both numerically and intellectually.He never perceived how its loss threw France back a fullcentury, to the great profit of foreign nations; while neitherdid the Church perceive that she had been firing on her owntroops.
The same order of ideas produced the persecution of theJansenists, as much a political as a religious sect. Foundedby a bishop of Ypres on the doctrine of predestination,and growing by persecution, it had speedily recruitedadherents among the disillusioned followers of theLouis XIV. and the Jansenists.Fronde, the Gallican clergy, the higher nobility, evenat court, and more important still, among learned men andthinkers, such as the great Arnauld, Pascal and Racine. Pureand austere, it enjoined the strictest morals in the midst ofcorruption, and the most dignified self-respect in face of idolatrousservility. Amid general silence it was a formidable and muchdreaded body of opinion; and in order to stifle it Louis XIV.,the tool of his confessor, the Jesuit Le Tellier, made use of hisusual means. The nuns of Port Royal were in their turn subjectedto persecution, which, after a truce between 1666 and1679, became aggravated by the affair of the regale, the bishopsof Aleth and Pamiers being Jansenists. Port Royal was destroyed,the nuns dispersed, and the ashes of the dead scatteredto the four winds. The bull Unigenitus launched by PopeClement XI. in 1713 against a Jansenist book by Father Quesnelrekindled a quarrel, the end of which Louis XIV. did not live tosee, and which raged throughout the 18th century.
Bossuet, Louis XIV.’s mouthpiece, triumphed in his turn overthe quietism of Madame Guyon, a mystic who recognizedneither definite dogmas nor formal prayers, butabandoned herself “to the torrent of the forces ofGod.” Fénelon, who in his Maximes des Saints hadLouis XIV. and the Libertins.given his adherence to her doctrine, was obliged tosubmit in 1699; but Bossuet could not make the spirit ofauthority prevail against the religious criticism of a RichardSimon or the philosophical polemics of a Bayle. He mightexile their persons; but their doctrines, supported by the scientific and philosophic work of Newton and Leibnitz, wereto triumph over Church and religion in the 18th century.
The chaos of the administrative system caused difficultiesno less great than those produced by opinions and creeds.Traditional rights, differences of language, provincial autonomy,ecclesiastical assemblies, parlements, governors, intendants—vestigesof the past, or promises for the future—all jostledagainst and thwarted each other. The central authority had notyet acquired a vigorous constitution, nor destroyed all theintermediary authorities. Colbert now offered his aid in makingLouis XIV. the sole pivot of public life, as he had already becomethe source of religious authority, thanks to the Jesuits and toBossuet.
Colbert, an agent of Le Tellier, the honest steward ofMazarin’s dishonest fortunes, had a future opened to him bythe fall of Fouquet (1661). Harsh and rough, hecompelled admiration for his delight in work, hisaptitude in disentangling affairs, his desire of continually augmentingColbert.the wealth of the state, and his regard for thepublic welfare without forgetting his own. Born in a draper’sshop, this great administrator always preserved its narrowhorizon, its short-sighted imagination, its taste for detail, and theconceit of the parvenu; while with his insinuating ways, andknowing better than Fouquet how to keep his distance, hemade himself indispensable by his savoir-faire and his readinessfor every emergency. He gradually got everything into hiscontrol: finance, industry, commerce, the fine arts, the navyand colonies, the administration, even the fortifications, and—throughhis uncle Pussort—the law, with all the profits attachingto its offices.
His first care was to restore the exhausted resources of thecountry and to re-establish order in finance. He began bymeasures of liquidation: the Chambre ardente of1661 to 1665 to deal with the farmers of the revenue,the condemnation of Fouquet, and a revision of theColbert and
finance.funds. Next, like a good man of business, Colbertdetermined that the state accounts should be kept as accuratelyas those of a shop; but though in this respect a great minister,he was less so in his manner of levying contributions. Hekept to the old system of revenues from the demesne and fromimposts that were reactionary in their effect, such as the taille,aids, salt-tax (gabelle) and customs; only he managed thembetter. His forest laws have remained a model. He demandedless of the taille, a direct impost, and more from indirect aids,of which he created the code—not, however, out of sympathyfor the common people, towards whom he was very harsh, butbecause these aids covered a greater area and brought in largerreturns. He tried to import more method into the very unequaldistribution of taxation, less brutality in collection, less confusionin the fiscal machine, and more uniformity in the matter of rights;while he diminished the debts of the much-involved townsby putting them through the bankruptcy court. With revolutionaryintentions as to reform, this only ended, after severalyears of normal budgets, in ultimate frustration. He couldnever make the rights over the drink traffic uniform and equal,nor restrict privileges in the matter of the taille; while hewas soon much embarrassed, not only by the coalition ofparticular interests and local immunities, which made despotismacceptable by tempering it, but also by Louis XIV.’s two master-passionsfor conquest and for building. To his great chagrinhe was obliged to begin borrowing again in 1672, and to haverecourse to “affaires extraordinaires”; and this brought him atlast to his grave.
Order was for Colbert the prime condition of work. Hedesired all France to set to work as he did “with a contentedair and rubbing his hands for joy”; but neithergeneral theories nor individual happiness preoccupiedhis attention. He made economy truly political:Colbert and industry.that is to say, the prosperity of industry and commerceafforded him no other interest than that of making the countrywealthy and the state powerful. Louis XIV.’s aspirationstowards glory chimed in very well with the extremely positiveviews of his minister; but here too Colbert was an innovatorand an unsuccessful one. He wanted to give 17th-century Francethe modern and industrial character which the New Worldhad imprinted on the maritime states; and he created industryon a grand scale with an energy of labour, a prodigious geniusfor initiative and for organization; while, in order to attract aforeign clientèle, he imposed upon it the habits of meticulousprobity common to a middle-class draper. But he maintainedthe legislation of the Valois, who placed industry in a state ofstrict dependency on finance, and he instituted a servitude oflabour harder even than that of individuals; his great factoriesof soap, glass, lace, carpets and cloth had the same artificiallife as that of contemporary Russian industry, created andnourished by the state. It was therefore necessary, in order tocompensate for the fatal influence of servitude, that administrativeprotection should be lavished without end upon the royalmanufactures; moreover, in the course of its development,industry on a grand scale encroached in many ways upon theresources of smaller industries. After Colbert’s day, when thecrutches lent by privilege were removed, his achievements lostvigour; industries that ministered to luxury alone escapeddecay; the others became exhausted in struggling against thepersistent and teasing opposition of the municipal bodies andthe bourgeoisie—conceited, ignorant and terrified at any innovation—andagainst the blind and intolerant policy of Louis XIV.
Colbert, in common with all his century, believed that thetrue secret of commerce and the indisputable proof of a country’sprosperity was to sell as many of the products ofnational industry to the foreigner as possible, whilepurchasing as little as possible. In order to do this,Colbert and commerce.he sometimes figured as a free-trader and sometimesas a protectionist, but always in a practical sense; if he imposedprohibitive tariffs, in 1664 and 1667, he also opened the freeports of Marseilles and Dunkirk, and engineered the Canal dumidi. But commerce, like industry, was made to rely only onthe instigation of the state, by the intervention of officials;here, as throughout the national life, private initiative waskept in subjection and under suspicion. Once more Colbertfailed; with regard to internal affairs, he was unable to unifyweights and measures, or to suppress the many custom-houseswhich made France into a miniature Europe; nor could he inexternal affairs reform the consulates of the Levant. He didnot understand that, in order to purge the body of the nationfrom its traditions of routine, it would be necessary to reawakenindividual energy in France. He believed that the state, orrather the bureaucracy, might be the motive power of nationalactivity.
His colonial and maritime policy was the newest and mostfruitful part of his work. He wished to turn the eyes of contemporaryadventurous France towards her distantinterests, the wars of religion having diverted herattention from them to the great profit of EnglishColbert and the colonies.and Dutch merchants. Here too he had no preconceivedideas; the royal and monopolist companies werenever for him an end but a means; and after much experimentinghe at length attained success. In the course of twenty yearshe created many dependencies of France beyond sea. To hercolonial empire in America he added the greater part of SantoDomingo, Tobago and Dominica; he restored Guiana; preparedfor the acquisition of Louisiana by supporting Cavelier de laSalle; extended the suzerainty of the king on the coast of Africafrom the Bay of Arguin to the shores of Sierra Leone, andinstituted the first commercial relations with India. Thepopulation of the Antilles doubled; that of Canada quintupled;while if in 1672 at the time of the war with Holland Louis XIV.had listened to him, Colbert would have sacrificed his pride tothe acquisition of the rich colonies of the Netherlands. In orderto attach and defend these colonies Colbert created a navy whichbecame his passion; he took convicts to man the galleys in theMediterranean, and for the fleet in the Atlantic he establishedthe system of naval reserve which still obtains. But, in the 18thcentury, the monarchy, hypnotized by the classical battlefields of Flanders and Italy, madly squandered the fruits of Colbert’swork as so much material for barter and exchange.
In the administration, the police and the law, Colbert preservedall the old machinery, including the inheritance of office. Inthe great codification of laws, made under the directionof his uncle Pussort, he set aside the parlement ofParis, and justice continued to be ill-administeredColbert and the administration.and cruel. The police, instituted in 1667 by LaReynie, became a public force independent of magistrates andunder the direct orders of the ministers, making the arbitraryroyal and ministerial authority absolute by means oflettres de cachet (q.v.), which were very convenient for the governmentand very terrible for the individuals concerned.
Provincial administration was no longer modified; it wasregularized. The intendant became the king’s factotum, notpurchasing his office but liable to dismissal, the government’sconfidential agent and the real repository of royal authority,the governor being only for show (see Intendant).
Colbert’s system went on working regularly up to the year1675; from that time forward he was cruelly embarrassedfor money, and, seeking new sources of revenue,begged for subsidies from the assembly of the clergy.He did not succeed either in stemming the tide ofRuin of Colbert’s work.expense, nor in his administration, being in no wayin advance of his age, and not perceiving that decisive reformcould not be achieved by a government dealing with the nationas though it were inert and passive material, made to obey and topay. Like a good Cartesian he conceived of the state as animmense machine, every portion of which should receive itsimpulse from outside—that is from him, Colbert. Leibnitz hadnot yet taught that external movement is nothing, and inwardspirit everything. As the minister of an ambitious and magnificentking, Colbert was under the hard necessity of sacrificingeverything to the wars in Flanders and the pomp of Versailles—agulf which swallowed up all the country’s wealth;—and,amid a society which might be supposed submissively docileto the wishes of Louis XIV., he had to retain the most absurdfinancial laws, making the burden of taxation weigh heavieston those who had no other resources than their labour, whilstlanded property escaped free of charge. Habitual privationduring one year in every three drove the peasants to revolt: inBoulonnais, the Pyrenees, Vivarais, in Guyenne from 1670onwards and in Brittany in 1675. Cruel means of repressionassisted natural hardships and the carelessness of the administrationin depopulating and laying waste the countryside; whileLouis XIV.’s martial and ostentatious policy was even moredisastrous than pestilence and famine, when Louvois’ adviceprevailed in council over that of Colbert, now embittered anddesperate. The revocation of the edict of Nantes vitiatedthrough a fatal contradiction all the efforts of the latter tocreate new manufactures; the country was impoverished forthe benefit of the foreigner to such a point that economic conditionsbegan to alarm those private persons most noted for theirtalents, their character, or their regard for the public welfare;such as La Bruyère and Fénelon in 1692, Bois-Guillebert in1697 and Vauban in 1707. The movement attracted eventhe ministers, Boulainvilliers at their head, who caused theintendants to make inquiry into the causes of this generalruin. There was a volume of attack upon Colbert; but as thefundamental system remained unchanged, because reform wouldhave necessitated an attack upon privilege and even upon theconstitution of the monarchy, the evil only went on increasing.The social condition of the time recalls that of present-dayMorocco, in the high price of necessaries and the extortions ofthe financial authorities; every man was either soldier, beggaror smuggler.
Under Pontchartrain, Chamillard and Desmarets, the expensesof the two wars of 1688 and 1701 attained to nearly five milliards.In order to cover this recourse was had as usual, not to remedies,but to palliatives worse than the evil: heavy usurious loans,debasem*nt of the coinage, creation of stocks that were perpetuallyRecourse to revolutionary measures.being converted, and ridiculous charges which thebourgeois, sickened with officialdom, would endure no longer.Richelieu himself had hesitated to tax labour; Louis XIV. trodthe trade organizations under foot. It was necessaryto have recourse to revolutionary measures, to directtaxation, ignoring all class distinction. In 1695 thegraduated poll-tax was a veritable coup d’état againstprivileged persons, who were equally brought under the tax;in 1710 was added the tithe (dixième), a tax upon income fromall landed property. Money scarce, men too were lacking;the institution of the militia, the first germ of obligatory enlistment,was a no less important innovation. But these were onlyprovisionary and desperate expedients, superposed upon theold routine, a further charge in addition to those already existing;and this entirely mechanical system, destructive of privateinitiative and the very sources of public life, worked with difficultyeven in time of peace. As Louis XIV. made war continuallythe result was the same as in Spain under Philip II.: depopulationand bankruptcy within the kingdom and the coalitionsof Europe without.
In 1660 France was predominant in Europe; but she arousedno jealousy except in the house of Habsburg, enfeebled anddivided against itself. It was sufficient to remainfaithful to the practical policy of Henry IV., ofRichelieu and of Mazarin: that of moderation inForeign policy
of Louis XIV.strength. This Louis XIV. very soon altered, whileyet claiming to continue it; he superseded it by one principle:that of replacing the proud tyranny of the Habsburgs of Spain byanother. He claimed to lay down the law everywhere, in thepreliminary negotiations between his ambassador and theSpanish ambassador in London, in the affair of the salute exactedfrom French vessels by the English, and in that of the Corsicanguard in Rome; while he proposed to become the head of thecrusade against the Turks in the Mediterranean as in Hungary.
The eclipse of the great idea of the balance of power in Europewas no sudden affair; the most flourishing years of the reignwere still enlightened by it: witness the repurchase of Dunkirkfrom Charles II. in 1662, the cession of the duchies of Bar andof Lorraine and the war against Portugal. But soon the partialor total conquest of the Spanish inheritance proved “the grandeurof his beginnings and the meanness of his end.” Like Philipthe Fair and like Richelieu, Louis XIV. sought support for hisexternal policy in that public opinion which in internal mattershe held so cheap; and he found equally devoted auxiliariesin the jurists of his parlements.
It was thus that the first of his wars for the extension offrontiers began, the War of Devolution. On the death of hisfather-in-law, Philip IV. of Spain, he transferredinto the realm of politics a civil custom of inheritanceprevailing in Brabant, and laid claim to Flanders inWar of Devolution, 1667.the name of his wife Maria Theresa. The Anglo-DutchWar (1665–1667), in which he was by way of supporting theUnited Provinces without engaging his fleet, retarded thisenterprise by a year. But after his mediation in the treaty ofBreda (July 1667), when Hugues de Lionne, secretary of statefor foreign affairs, had isolated Spain, he substituted soldiersfor the jurists and cannon for diplomacy in the matter of thequeen’s rights.
The secretary of state for war, Michel le Tellier, had organizedhis army; and thanks to his great activity in reform, especiallyafter the Fronde, Louis XIV. found himself in possession of anarmy that was well equipped, well clothed, well provisioned,and very different from the rabble of the Thirty Years’ War,fitted out by dishonest jobbing contractors. Severe discipline,suppression of fraudulent interference, furnishing of clothesand equipment by the king, regulation of rank among theofficers, systematic revictualling of the army, settled means ofmanufacturing and furnishing arms and ammunition, placingof the army under the direct authority of the king, abolition ofgreat military charges, subordination of the governors of strongholds,control by the civil authority over the soldiers effectedby means of paymasters and commissaries of stores; all thisorganization of the royal army was the work of le Tellier.
His son, François Michel le Tellier, marquis de Louvois, hadone sole merit, that of being his father’s pupil. A parvenu ofthe middle classes, he was brutal in his treatment of the lowerorders and a sycophant in his behaviour towards the powerful;prodigiously active, ill-obeyed—as was the custom—but muchdreaded. From 1677 onwards he did but finish perfecting LouisXIV.’s army in accordance with the suggestions left by hisfather, and made no fundamental changes: neither the definiteabandonment of the feudal arrière-ban and of recruiting—sourcesof disorder and insubordination—nor the creation of the militia,which allowed the nation to penetrate into all the ranks of thearmy, nor the adoption of the gun with the bayonet,—whichwas to become the ultima ratio of peoples as the cannon was thatof sovereigns—nor yet the uniform, intended to strengthenesprit de corps, were due to him. He maintained the institutionsof the day, though seeking to diminish their abuse, and heperfected material details; but misfortune would have it thatinstead of remaining a great military administrator he flatteredLouis XIV.’s megalomania, and thus caused his perdition.
Under his orders Turenne conquered Flanders (June-August1667); and as the queen-mother of Spain would not give in,Condé occupied Franche Comté in fourteen days(February 1668). But Europe rose up in wrath; theUnited Provinces and England, jealous and disquietedThe triple alliance
of the Hague.by this near neighbourhood, formed with Swedenthe triple alliance
of the Hague (January 1668), ostensiblyto offer their mediation, though in reality to prevent theoccupation of the Netherlands. Following the advice of Colbertand de Lionne, Louis XIV. appeared to accede, and by thetreaty of Aix-la-Chapelle he preserved his conquests in Flanders(May 1668).
This peace was neither sufficient nor definite enough for LouisXIV.; and during four years he employed all his diplomacyto isolate the republic of the United Provinces inEurope, as he had done for Spain. He wanted to ruinthis nation both in a military and an economic sense,Peace of War with Holland.
Aix-la-Chapelle.
But Louis XIV. had already manifested that unmeasuredand restless passion for glory, that claim to be the exclusivearbiter of western Europe, that blind and narrowinsistence, which were to bear out his motto“Seul contre tous.” Whilst all Europe was disarming heTruce of Ratisbon.kept his troops, and used peace as a means of conquest.Under orders from Colbert de Croissy the jurists came upon thescene once more, and their unjust decrees were sustained byforce of arms. The Chambres de Réunion sought for and joinedto the kingdom those lands which were not actually dependentupon his new conquests, but which had formerly been so: suchas Saarbrücken, Deux Ponts (Zweibrücken) and Montbéliard in1680, Strassburg and Casale in 1681. The power of the houseof Habsburg was paralysed by an invasion of the Turks, andLouis XIV. sent 35,000 men into Belgium; while Luxemburgwas occupied by Créqui and Vauban. The truce of Ratisbon(Regensburg) imposed upon Spain completed the work of thepeace of Nijmwegen (1684); and thenceforward Louis XIV.’sterrified allies avoided his clutches while making ready to fighthim.
This was the moment chosen by Louis XIV.’s implacableenemy, William of Orange, to resume the war. His surpriseof Marshal Luxembourg near Mons, after the signatureof the peace of Nijmwegen, had proved that in his eyesWilliam of Orange.war was the basis, of his authority in Holland andin Europe. His sole arm of support amidst all his allies was notthe English monarchy, sold to Louis XIV., but ProtestantEngland, jealous of France and uneasy about her independence.Being the husband of the duke of York’s daughter, he had anunderstanding in this country with Sunderland, Godolphin andTemple—a party whose success was retarded for several yearsby the intrigues of Shaftesbury. But Louis XIV. added mistaketo mistake; and the revocation of the edict of Nantes addedreligious hatreds to political jealousies. At the same time theLeague of Augsburg.Catholic powers responded by the league of Augsburg(July 1686) to his policy of unlimited aggrandisem*nt.The unsuccessful attempts of Louis XIV. to forcehis partisan Cardinal Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg (seeFürstenberg: House) into the electoral see of Cologne; thebombardment of Genoa; the humiliation of the pope in Romeitself by the marquis de Lavardin; the seizure of the Huguenotemigrants at Mannheim, and their imprisonment at Vincennesunder pretext of a plot, precipitated the conflict. The questionof the succession in the Palatinate, where Louis XIV. supportedthe claims of his sister-in-law the duch*ess of Orleans, gave thesignal for a general war. The French armies devastated thePalatinate instead of attacking William of Orange in the Netherlands,leaving him free to disembark at Torbay, usurp the throneof England, and construct the Grand Alliance of 1689.
Far from reserving all his forces for an important struggleelsewhere, foreshadowed by the approaching death of Charles II.of Spain, Louis XIV., isolated in his turn, committedthe error of wasting it for a space of ten years in awar of conquest, by which he alienated all that remainedWar of the
Grand Alliance.to him of European sympathy. The French armies,notwithstanding the disappearance of Condé and Turenne, hadstill glorious days before them with Luxembourg at Fleurus, atSteenkirk and at Neerwinden (1690–1693), and with Catinatin Piedmont, at Staffarda, and at Marsaglia; but these successesalternated with reverses. Tourville’s fleet, victorious at BeachyHead, came to grief at La Hogue (1692); and though the expeditionsto Ireland in favour of James II. were unsuccessful,thanks to the Huguenot Schomberg, Jean Bart and Duguay-Trouin ruined Anglo-Dutch maritime commerce. Louis XIV.assisted in person at the sieges of Mons and Namur, operationsfor which he had a liking, because, like Louvois, who died in1691, he thought little of the French soldiery in the open field.After three years of strife, ruinous to both sides, he made the firstovertures of peace, thus marking an epoch in his foreign policy;though William took no unfair advantage of this, remainingcontent with the restitution of places taken by the Chambres deRéunion, except Strassburg, with a frontier-line of fortifiedPeace of Ryswick.places for the Dutch, and with the official depositionof the Stuarts. But the treaty of Ryswick (1697)marked the condemnation of the policy pursuedsince that of Nijmwegen. While signing this peace Louis XIV.was only thinking of the succession in Spain. By partitioningher in advance with the other strong powers, England andHolland, by means of the treaties of the Hague and of London(1698–1699),—as he had formerly done with the emperor in1668,—he seemed at first to wish for a pacific solution of the eternalconflict between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, and to restricthimself to the perfecting of his natural frontiers; but on thedeath of Charles II. of Spain (1700) he claimed everything infavour of his grandson, the duke of Anjou, now appointeduniversal heir, though risking the loss of all by once more lettinghimself fall into imprudent and provocative action in the dynasticinterest.
English public opinion, desirous of peace, had forced WilliamIII. to recognize Philip V. of Spain; but Louis XIV.’s maintenanceof the eventual right of his grandson to the crownof France, and the expulsion of the Dutch, who hadnot recognized Philip V., from the Barrier towns,War of the Spanish Succession.brought about the Grand Alliance of 1701 betweenthe maritime Powers and the court of Vienna, desirous of partitioningthe inheritance of Charles II. The recognition of the OldPretender as James III., king of England, was only a responseto the Grand Alliance, but it drew the English Tories into aninevitable war. Despite the death of William III. (March 19,1702) his policy triumphed, and in this war, the longest in thereign, it was the names of the enemy’s generals, Prince Eugèneof Savoy, Mazarin’s grand-nephew, and the duke of Marlborough,which sounded in the ear, instead of Condé, Turenne andLuxembourg. Although during the first campaigns (1701–1703)in Italy, in Germany and in the Netherlands success was equallybalanced, the successors of Villars—thanks to the treason of theduke of Savoy—were defeated at Höchstädt and Landau, andwere reduced to the defensive (1704). In 1706 the defeats atRamillies and Turin led to the evacuation of the Netherlandsand Italy, and endangered the safety of Dauphiné. In 1708Louis XIV. by a supreme effort was still able to maintain hisarmies; but the rout at Oudenarde, due to the misunderstandingbetween the duke of Burgundy and Vendôme, left the northernfrontier exposed, and the cannons of the Dutch were heard atMarly. Louis XIV. had to humble himself to the extent of askingthe Dutch for peace; but they forgot the lesson of 1673, andrevolted by their demands at the Hague, he made a last appealto arms and to the patriotism of his subjects at Malplaquet(September 1709). After this came invasion. Nature herselfconspired with the enemy in the disastrous winter of 1709.
What saved Louis XIV. was not merely his noble constancy ofresolve, the firmness of the marquis de Torcy, secretary of statefor foreign affairs, the victory of Vendôme at Villaviciosa, northe loyalty of his people. The interruption of the conferencesat Gertruydenberg having obliged the Whigs and Marlborough toresign their power into the hands of the Tories, now sick of war,the death of the emperor Joseph I. (April 1711), which riskedthe reconstruction of Charles V.’s colossal and unwieldy monarchyupon the shoulders of the archduke Charles, and Marshal Villars’famous victory of Denain (July 1712) combined to render possiblePeace of Utrecht, 1713.the treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden (1713–1714).These gave Italy and the Netherlands to the Habsburgs,Spain and her colonies to the Bourbons, the places onthe coast and the colonial commerce to England (whohad the lion’s share), and a royal crown to the duke of Savoyand the elector of Brandenburg. The peace of Utrecht was toFrance what the peace of Westphalia had been to Austria, andcurtailed the former acquisitions of Louis XIV.
The ageing of the great king was betrayed not only by thefortune of war in the hands of Villeroy, la Feuillade, or Marsin;disgrace and misery at home were worse than defeat.By the strange and successive deaths of the GrandDauphin (1711), the duke and duch*ess of BurgundyEnd of Louis XIV.’s reign.(1712)—who had been the only joy of the old monarch—andof his two grandsons (1712–1714), it seemed as though hiswhole family were involved under the same curse. The court,whose sentimental history has been related by Madame de laFayette, its official splendours by Loret, and its intrigues by theduc de Saint-Simon, now resembled an infirmary of moroseinvalids, presided over by Louis XIV.’s elderly wife, Madamede Maintenon, under the domination of the Jesuit le Tellier.Neither was it merely the clamours of the people that arose againstthe monarch. All the more remarkable spirits of the time, likeprophets in Israel, denounced a tyranny which put Chamillartat the head of the finances because he played billiards well, andVilleroy in command of the armies although he was utterlyuntrustworthy; which sent the “patriot” Vauban into disgrace,banished from the court Catinat, the Père la Pensée, “exiled”to Cambrai the too clear sighted Fénelon, and suspected Racineof Jansenism and La Fontaine of independence.
Disease and famine; crushing imposts and extortions;official debasem*nt of the currency; bankruptcy; state prisons;religious and political inquisition; suppression of all institutionsfor the safe-guarding of rights; tyranny by the intendants;royal, feudal and clerical oppression burdening every facultyand every necessary of life; “monstrous and incurable luxury”;the horrible drama of poison; the twofold adultery of Madame deMontespan; and the narrow bigotry of Madame de Maintenon—allconcurred to make the end of the reign a sad contrast with thesplendour of its beginning. When reading Molière and Racine,Bossuet and Fénelon, the campaigns of Turenne, or Colbert’sordinances; when enumerating the countless literary andscientific institutions of the great century; when considering theport of Brest, the Canal du Midi, Perrault’s colonnade of theLouvre, Mansart’s Invalides and the palace of Versailles, andVauban’s fine fortifications—admiration is kindled for theradiant splendour of Louis XIV.’s period. But the art andliterature expressed by the genius of the masters, reflected in thetastes of society, and to be taken by Europe as a model throughouta whole century, are no criterion of the social and political orderof the day. They were but a magnificent drapery of pomp andglory thrown across a background of poverty, ignorance, superstition,hypocrisy and cruelty; remove it, and reality appears inall its brutal and sinister nudity. The corpse of Louis XIV.,left to servants for disposal, and saluted all along the road toSaint Denis by the curses of a noisy crowd sitting in the cabarets,celebrating his death by drinking more than their fill as a compensationfor having suffered too much from hunger during hislifetime—such was the coarse but sincere epitaph which popularopinion placed on the tomb of the “Grand Monarque.” Thenation, restive under his now broken yoke, received with ajoyous anticipation, which the future was to discount, the royalinfant whom they called Louis the Well-beloved, and whosefuneral sixty years later was to be greeted with the same proofsof disillusionment.
The death of Louis XIV. closed a great era of French history;the 18th century opens upon a crisis for the monarchy. From1715 to 1723 came the reaction of the Regency, with itsmarvellous effrontery, innovating spirit and frivolousimmorality. From 1723 to 1743 came the mealy-mouthedCharacter of the eighteenth century.despotism of Cardinal Fleury, and hisapathetic policy within and without the kingdom. From 1743to 1774 came the personal rule of Louis XV., when all the differentpowers were in conflicts—the bishops and parlement quarrelling,the government fighting against the clergy and the magistracy,and public opinion in declared opposition to the state. Till atlast, from 1774 to 1789, came Louis XVI. with his honest illusions. his moral pusillanimity and his intellectual impotence, toaggravate still further the accumulated errors of ages and toprepare for the inevitable Revolution.
The 18th century, like the 17th, opened with a politicalcoup d’état. Louis XV. was five years old, and the duke ofOrleans held the regency. But Louis XIV. had in hiswill delegated all the power of the government to acouncil on which the duke of Maine, his legitimatedThe Regency
(1715–1723).son, had the first, but Madame de Maintenon and theJesuits the predominant place. This collective administration,designed to cripple the action of the regent, encountered a twofoldopposition from the nobles and the parlement; but on the2nd of September 1715 the emancipated parlement set asidethe will in favour of the duke of Orleans, who thus togetherwith the title of regent had all the real power. He thereforereinstituted the parlement in its ancient right of remonstrance(suspended since the declarations of 1667 and 1673), and handedover ministerial power to the nobility, replacing the secretariesof state by six councils composed in part of great nobles, on theadvice of the famous duc de Saint-Simon. The duc de Noailles,president of the council of finance, had the direction of this“Polysynodie.”
The duke of Orleans, son of the princess palatine and LouisXIV.’s brother, possessed many gifts—courage, intelligenceand agility of mind—but he lacked the one gift ofusing these to good advantage. The political crisisthat had placed him in power had not put an end toPhilip of Orleans.the financial crisis, and this, it was hoped, might be effected bysubstituting partial and petty bankruptcies for the generalbankruptcy cynically advocated by Saint-Simon. The reductionof the royal revenues did not suffice to fill the treasury; whilethe establishment of a chamber of justice (March 1716) had noother result than that of demoralizing the great lords and ladiesalready mad for pleasure, by bringing them into contact withthe farmers of the revenue who purchased impunity from them.A very clever Scotch adventurer named John Law (q.v.) nowoffered his assistance in dealing with the enormous debt of morethan three milliards, and in providing the treasury. Being wellacquainted with the mechanism of banking, he had adoptedviews as to cash, credit and the circulation of values whichcontained an admixture of truth and falsehood. Authorizedafter many difficulties to organize a private bank of deposit andaccount, which being well conceived prospered and revivedcommerce, Law proposed to lighten the treasury by the profitsaccruing to a great maritime and colonial company. Paymentfor the shares in this new Company of the West, with a capitalof a hundred millions, was to be made in credit notes upon thegovernment, converted into 4% stock. These aggregatedfunds, needed to supply the immense and fertile valley of theMississippi, and the annuities of the treasury destined to payfor the shares, were non-transferable. Law’s idea was to ask thebank for the floating capital necessary, so that the bank and theCompany of the West were to be supplementary to each other;this is what was called Law’s system. After the chancellorD’Aguesseau and the duc de Noailles had been replaced byD’Argenson alone, and after the lit de justice of the 26th ofAugust 1718 had deprived the parlement, hostile to Law, of theauthority left to it, the bank became royal and the Companyof the West universal. But the royal bank, as a state establishment,asked for compulsory privilege to increase the emissionof its credit notes, and that they should receive a premium uponall metallic specie. The Company of the Indies became thegrantee for the farming of tobacco, the coinage of metals, andfarming in general; and in order to procure funds it multipliedthe output of shares, which were adroitly launched and becamemore and more sought for on the exchange in the rue Quincampoix.This soon caused a frenzy of stock-jobbing, whichdisturbed the stability of private fortunes and social positions,and depraved customs and manners with the seductive notionof easily obtained riches. The nomination of Law to the controller-generalship,re-established for his benefit on the resignationof D’Argenson (January 5, 1720), let loose still wilder speculation;till the day came when he could no longer face the terribledifficulty of meeting both private irredeemable shares with avariable return, and the credit notes redeemable at sight andguaranteed by the state. Gold and silver were proscribed;the bank and the company were joined in one; the credit notesand the shares were assimilated. But credit cannot be commandedeither by violence or by expedients; between Julyand September 1720 came the suspension of payments, theflight of Law, and the disastrous liquidation which proved onceagain that respect for the state’s obligations had not yet enteredinto the law of public finance.
Reaction on a no less extensive scale characterized foreignpolicy during the Regency. A close alliance between Franceand her ancient enemies, England and Holland, wasconcluded and maintained from 1717 to 1739: France,after thirty years of fighting, between two periods ofThe Anglo-Dutch Alliance.bankruptcy; Holland reinstalled in her commercialposition; and England, seeing before her the beginning of herempire over the seas—all three had an interest in peace. On theother hand, peace was imperilled by Philip V. of Spain and bythe emperor (who had accepted the portion assigned to themby the treaty of Utrecht, while claiming the whole), by Savoyand Brandenburg (who had profited too much by Europeanconflicts not to desire their perpetuation), by the crisis fromwhich the maritime powers of the Baltic were suffering, and bythe Turks on the Danube. The dream of Cardinal Alberoni,Philip V.’s minister, was to set fire to all this inflammablematerial in order to snatch therefrom a crown of some sort tosatisfy the maternal greed of Elizabeth Farnese; and this hemight have attained by the occupation of Sardinia and theexpedition to Sicily (1717–1718), if Dubois, a priest without areligion, a greedy parvenu and a diplomatist of second rank,though tenacious and full of resources as a minister, had notplaced his common sense at the disposal of the regent’s interestsand those of European peace. He signed the triple alliance atthe Hague, succeeding with the assistance of Stanhope, theEnglish minister, in engaging the emperor therein, after attemptingthis for a year and a half. Whilst the Spanish fleet wasdestroyed before Syracuse by Admiral Byng, the intrigue ofthe Spanish ambassador Cellamare with the duke of Maine toexclude the family of Orleans from the succession on Louis XV.’sdeath was discovered and repressed; and Marshal Berwickburned the dockyards at Pasajes in Spain. Alberoni’s dreamwas shattered by the treaty of London in 1720.
Seized in his turn with a longing for the cardinal’s hat, Duboispaid for it by the registering of the bull Unigenitus and by thepersecution of the Jansenists which the regent had stopped.After the majority of Louis XV. had been proclaimed on the 16thof February 1723, Dubois was the first to depart; and fourmonths after his disappearance the duke of Orleans, exhaustedby his excesses, carried with him into the grave that spirit ofreform which he had compromised by his frivolous voluptuousness(December 2, 1723).
The Regency had been the making of the house of Orleans;thenceforward the question was how to humble it, and the ducde Bourbon, now prime minister—a great-grandsonof the great Condé, but a narrow-minded man oflimited intelligence, led by a worthless woman—setMinistry of the
duc de Bourbon.himself to do so. The marquise de Prie was thefirst of a series of publicly recognized mistresses; from 1723to 1726 she directed foreign policy and internal affairs despitethe king’s majority, moved always more by a spirit of vengeancethan by ambition. This sad pair were dominated by the self-interestedand continual fear of becoming subject to the son ofthe Regent, whom they detested; but danger came upon themfrom elsewhere. They found standing in their way the veryman who had been the author of their fortunes, Louis XV.’stutor, uneasy in the exercise of a veiled authority; for thechurchman Fleury knew how to wait, on condition of ultimatelyattaining his end. Neither the festivities given at Chantillyin honour of the king, nor the dismissal (despite the most solemnpromises) of the Spanish infanta, who had been betrothed to Louis XV., nor yet the young king’s marriage to MariaLeszczynska (1725)—a marriage negotiated by the marquisede Prie in order to bar the throne from the Orleans family—couldalienate the sovereign from his old master. The irritationkept up by the agents of Philip V., incensed by this affront,and the discontent aroused by the institutions of the cinquantièmeand the militia, by the re-establishment of the feudal tax onLouis XV.’s joyful accession, and by the resumption of a persecutionof the Protestants and the Jansenists which had apparentlydied out, were cleverly exploited by Fleury; and a last ill-timedattempt by the queen to separate the king from him broughtabout the fall of the duc de Bourbon, very opportunely forFrance, in June 1726.
From the hands of his unthinking pupil Fleury eventuallyreceived the supreme direction of affairs, which he retained forseventeen years. He was aged seventy-two whenhe thus obtained the power which had been his unmeasuredthough not ill-calculated ambition. Soft-spokenCardinal Fleury, 1726–1743.and polite, crafty and suspicious, he waspacific by temperament and therefore allowed politics to slumber.His turn for economics made Orry,[6] the controller-general offinance, for long his essential partner. The latter laboured atre-establishing order in fiscal affairs; and various measureslike the impost of the dixième upon all property save that of theclergy, together with the end of the corn famine, sufficed torestore a certain amount of well-being. Religious peace wasmore difficult to secure; in fact politico-religious quarrelsdominated all the internal policy of the kingdom during fortyyears, and gradually compromised the royal authority. TheJesuits, returned to power in 1723 with the duc de Bourbonand in 1726 with Fleury, rekindled the old strife regarding thebull Unigenitus in opposition to the Gallicans and the Jansenists.The retractation imposed upon Cardinal de Noailles, and hisreplacement in the archbishopric of Paris by Vintimille, anunequivocal Molinist, excited among the populace a veryviolent agitation against the court of Rome and the Jesuits,the prelude to a united Fronde of the Sorbonne and the parlement.Fleury found no other remedy for this agitation—in whichappeal was made even to miracles—than lits de justice and lettresde cachet; Jansenism remained a potent source of troublewithin the heart of Catholicism.
This worn-out septuagenarian, who prized rest above everything,imported into foreign policy the same mania for economyand the same sloth in action. He naturally adoptedthe idea of reconciling Louis XIV.’s descendants,who had all been embroiled ever since the PolishFleury’s foreign policy.marriage. He succeeded in this by playing veryadroitly on the ambition of Elizabeth Farnese and her husbandPhilip V., who was to reign in France notwithstandingany renunciation that might have taken place. Despitethe birth of a dauphin (September 1729), which cut short theSpanish intrigues, the reconciliation was a lasting one (treaty ofSeville); it led to common action in Italy, and to the installationof Spanish royalties at Parma, Piacenza, and soon after atNaples. Fleury, supported by the English Hanoverian alliance,to which he sacrificed the French navy, obliged the emperorCharles VI. to sacrifice the trade of the Austrian Netherlands tothe maritime powers and Central Italy to the Bourbons, inorder to gain recognition for his Pragmatic Sanction. Thequestion of the succession in France lay dormant until the endof the century, and Fleury thought he had definitely obtainedpeace in the treaty of Vienna (1731).
The war of the Polish succession proved him to have beendeceived. On the death of Augustus II. of Saxony, king ofPoland, Louis XV.’s father-in-law had been proclaimed king bythe Polish diet. This was an ephemeral success, ill-preparedand obtained by taking a sudden advantage of national sentiment;War of the Polish Succession
(1733–1738).it was soon followed by a check, owing to a Russian andGerman coalition and the baseness of Cardinal Fleury, who, inorder to avoid intervening, pretended to tremble before animaginary threat of reprisals on the part of England.But Chauvelin, the keeper of the seals, supported bypublic opinion, avenged on the Rhine and the Po theunlucky heroism of the comte de Plélo at Dànzig,[7] thevanished dream of the queen, the broken word of LouisXV., and the treacherous abandonment of Poland. Fleury neverforgave him for this: Chauvelin had checkmated him with war;he checkmated Chauvelin with peace, and hastened to replaceMarshals Berwick and Villars by diplomatists. The thirdtreaty of Vienna (1738), the reward of so much effort, would onlyhave claimed for France the little duchy of Bar, had not Chauvelinforced Louis XV. to obtain Lorraine for his father-in-law—stillhoping for the reversion of the crown; but Fleury thus renderedimpossible any influence of the queen, and held Stanislaus athis mercy. In order to avenge himself upon Chauvelin hesacrificed him to the cabinets of Vienna and London, alarmedat seeing him revive the national tradition in Italy.
Fleury hardly had time to breathe before a new conflagrationbroke out in the east. The Russian empress Anne and theemperor Charles VI. had planned to begin dismemberingthe Turkish empire. More fortunate than Plélo,Villeneuve, the French ambassador at Constantinople,The Eastern question.endeavoured to postpone this event, and was wellsupported; he revived the courage of the Turks and providedthem with arms, thanks to the comte de Bonneval (q.v.), oneof those adventurers of high renown whose influence in Europeduring the first half of the eighteenth century is one of themost piquant features of that period. The peace of Belgrade(September 1739) was, by its renewal of the capitulations, agreat material success for France, and a great moral victory bythe rebuff to Austria and Russia.
France had become once more the arbiter of Europe, whenthe death of the emperor Charles VI. in 1740 opened up a newperiod of wars and misfortunes for Europe and forthe pacific Fleury. Everyone had signed Charles VI.’sPragmatic Sanction, proclaiming the succession-rightsWar of the Austrian Succession.of his daughter, the archduch*ess Maria Theresa; buton his death there was a general renunciation of signaturesand an attempt to divide the heritage. The safety of thehouse of Austria depended on the attitude of France; forAustria could no longer harm her. Fleury’s inclination wasnot to misuse France’s traditional policy by exaggerating it,but to respect his sworn word; he dared not press his opinion,however, and yielded to the fiery impatience of young hot-headslike the two Belle-Isles, and of all those who, infatuated byFrederick II., felt sick of doing nothing at Versailles and werebacked up by Louis XV.’s bellicose mistresses. He had toexperience the repeated defections of Frederick II. in his owninterests, and the precipitate retreat from Bohemia. He had tohumble himself before Austria and the whole of Europe; and itwas high time for Fleury, now fallen into second childhood, tovanish from the scene (January 1743).
Louis XV. was at last to become his own prime ministerand to reign alone; but in reality he was more embarrassedthan pleased by the responsibility incumbent upon him.He therefore retained the persons who had composedFleury’s staff; though instead of being led by a singlePersonal rule of Louis XV.one of them, he fell into the hands of several, whodisputed among themselves for the ascendancy: Maurepas,incomparable in little things, but neglectful of political affairs;D’Argenson, bold, and strongly attached to his work as minister of war; and the cardinal de Tencin, a frivolous and worldlypriest. Old Marshal de Noailles tried to incite Louis XV. totake his kingship in earnest, thinking to cure him by war of hiseffeminate passions; and, in the spring of 1744, the king’sgrave illness at Metz gave a momentary hope of reconciliationbetween him and the deserted queen. But the duc de Richelieu,a roué who had joined hands with the sisters of the house ofNesle and was jealous of Marshal de Noailles, soon regainedhis lost ground; and, under the influence of this panderer tohis pleasures, Louis XV. settled down into a life of vice. Holdingaloof from active affairs, he tried to relieve the incurable boredomof satiety in the violent exercise of hunting, in supper-partieswith his intimates, and in spicy indiscretions. Brought upreligiously and to shun the society of women, his first experiencesin adultery had been made with many scruples and intermittently.Little by little, however, jealous of power, yet incapable ofexercising it to any purpose, he sank into a sensuality whichbecame utterly shameless under the influence of his chief mistressthe duch*esse de Châteauroux.
Hardly had a catastrophe snatched her away in the zenithof her power when complete corruption and the flagrant triumphof egoism supervened with the accession to power ofthe marquise de Pompadour, and for nearly twentyyears (1745–1764) the whims and caprices of thisMadame de Pompadour.little bourgeoise ruled the realm. A prime ministerin petticoats, she had her political system: reversed the time-honouredalliances of France, appointed or disgraced ministers,directed fleets and armies, concluded treaties, and failed in allher enterprises! She was the queen of fashion in a societywhere corruption blossomed luxuriantly and exquisitely, andin a century of wit hers was second to none. Amidst thisextraordinary instability, when everything was at the mercyof a secret thought of the master, the mistress alone held lastingsway; in a reign of all-pervading satiety and tedium, shemanaged to remain indispensable and bewitching to the dayof her death.
Meanwhile the War of the Austrian Succession broke outagain, and never had secretary of state more intricate questionsto solve than had D’Argenson. In the attemptto make a stage-emperor of Charles Albert of Bavaria,defeat was incurred at Dettingen, and the FrenchPeace of
Aix-la-Chapelle.were driven back on the Rhine (1743). The Bavariandream dissipated, victories gained in Flanders by Marshal Saxe,another adventurer of genius, at Fontenoy, Raucoux andLawfeld (1745–1747), were hailed with joy as continuing thoseof Louis XIV.; even though they resulted in the loss of Germanyand the doubling of English armaments. The “disinterested”peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 1748) had no effectual resultother than that of destroying in Germany, and for the benefitof Prussia, a balance of power that had yet to be secured inItaly, despite the establishment of the Spanish prince Philip atParma. France, meanwhile, was beaten at sea by England,Maria Theresa’s sole ally. While founding her colonial empireEngland had come into collision with France; and the rivalryof the Hundred Years’ War had immediately sprung up againbetween the two countries. Engaged already in both Canadaand in India (where Dupleix was founding an empire with amere handful of men), it was to France’s interest not to becomeinvolved in war upon the Rhine, thus falling into England’scontinental trap. She did fall into it, however: for the sake ofconquering Silesia for the king of Prussia, Canada was left exposedby the capture of Cape Breton; while in order to restore thissame Silesia to Maria Theresa, Canada was lost and with it India.
France had worked for the king of Prussia from 1740 to1748; now it was Maria Theresa’s game that was played inthe Seven Years’ War. In 1755, the English havingmade a sudden attack upon the French at sea, andFrederick II. having by a fresh volte-face passed intoThe Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763.alliance with Great Britain, Louis XV.’s governmentaccepted an alliance with Maria Theresa in the treatyof the 1st of May 1756. Instead of remaining upon the defensivein this continental war—merely accessory as it was—he madeit his chief affair, and placed himself under the petticoat governmentof three women, Maria Theresa, Elizabeth of Russia and themarquise de Pompadour. This error—the worst of all—laid thefoundations of the Prussian and British empires. By threebattles, victories for the enemies of France—Rossbach inGermany, 1757, Plassey in India, 1757, and Quebec in Canada,1759 (owing to the recall of Dupleix, who was not bringing inlarge enough dividends to the Company of the Indies, and tothe abandonment of Montcalm, who could not interest any onein “a few acres of snow”), the expansion of Prussia was assured,and the British relieved of French rivalry in the expansion oftheir empire in India and on the North American continent.
Owing to the blindness of Louis XV. and the vanity of thefavourite, the treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg (1763) oncemore proved the French splendid in their conceptions,but deficient in action. Moreover, Choiseul, secretaryof state for foreign affairs since 1758, made out of thisTreaties of Paris
and Hubertusburg.deceptive Austrian alliance a system which put thefinishing touch to disaster, and after having thrown awayeverything to satisfy Maria Theresa’s hatred of Frederick II.,the reconciliation between these two irreconcilable Germans atNeisse and at Neustadt (1769–1770) was witnessed by France,to the prejudice of Poland, one of her most ancient adherents.The expedient of the Family Compact, concluded with Spainin 1761—with a view to taking vengeance upon England, whosefleets were a continual thorn in the side to France—served onlyto involve Spain herself in misfortune. Choiseul, who at leasthad a policy that was sometimes in the right, and who was veryanxious to carry it out, then realized that the real quarrel hadto be settled with England. Amid the anguish of defeat and ofapproaching ruin, he had an acute sense of the actualities ofthe case, and from 1763 to 1766 devoted himself passionatelyto the reconstruction of the navy. To compensate for the lossof the colonies he annexed Lorraine (1766), and by the acquisitionof Corsica in 1768 he gave France an intermediary position inthe Mediterranean, between friendly Spain and Italy, lookingforward to the time when it should become a stepping-stone toAfrica.
But Louis XV. had two policies. The incoherent effortswhich he made to repair by the secret diplomacy of the comtede Broglie the evils caused by his official policy onlyaggravated his shortcomings and betrayed his weakness.The contradictory intrigues of the king’sFirst partition
of Poland.secret proceedings in the candidature of Prince Xavier,the dauphine’s brother, and the patriotic efforts of the confederationof Bar, contributed to bring about the Polish crisis whichthe partition of 1772 resolved in favour of Frederick II.; andthe Turks were in their turn dragged into the same disastrousaffair. Of the old allies of France, Choiseul preserved at leastSweden by the coup d’état of Gustavus III.; but instead of beingas formerly the centre of great affairs, the cabinet of Versailleslost all its credit, and only exhibited before the eyes of contemptuousEurope France’s extreme state of decay.
The nation felt this humiliation, and showed all the greaterirritation as the want of cohesion in the government and theanarchy in the central authority became more andmore intolerable in home affairs. Though the administrationstill possessed a fund of tradition and aInternal policy
of Louis XV.personnel which, including many men of note, protectedit from the enfeebling influence of the court, it looked as thoughchance regulated everything so far as the government wasconcerned. These fluctuations were owing partly to the characterof Louis XV., and partly also to the fact that society in the 18thcentury was too advanced in its ideas to submit without resistanceto the caprice of such a man. His mistresses were not the onlycause of this; for ever since Fleury’s advent political partieshad come to the fore. From 1749 to 1757 the party of religiousdevotees grouped round the queen and the king’s daughters,with the dauphin as chief and the comte D’Argenson, andMachault d’Arnouville, keeper of the seals, as lieutenants, hadworked against Madame de Pompadour (who leant for supportupon the parlements, the Jansenists and the philosophers) and had gained the upper hand. Thenceforward poverty,disorders, and consequently murmurs increased. The financialreform attempted by Machault d’Arnouville between 1745and 1749—a reduction of the debt through the impost of thetwentieth and the edict of 1749 against the extensive propertyheld in mortmain by the Church—after his disgrace onlyresulted in failure. The army, which D’Argenson (likewisedismissed by Madame de Pompadour) had been from 1743 to1747 trying to restore by useful reforms, was riddled by cabals.Half the people in the kingdom were dying of hunger, whilethe court was insulting poverty by its luxury and waste; andfrom 1750 onwards political ferment was everywhere manifest.It found all the more favourable foothold in that the Church,the State’s best ally, had made herself more and more unpopular.Her refusal of the sacraments to those who would not acceptthe bull Unigenitus (1746) was exploited in the eyes of themasses, as in those of more enlightened people was her selfishand short-sighted resistance to the financial plans of Machault.The general discontent was expressed by the parlements in theirattempt to establish a political supremacy amid universalconfusion, and by the popular voice in pamphlets recalling bytheir violence those of the League. Every one expected anddesired a speedy revolution that should put an end to a policywhich alternated between overheated effervescence, abnormalactivity and lethargy. Nothing can better show the point towhich things had descended than the attempted assassinationof Louis the Well-beloved by Damiens in 1757.
Choiseul was the means of accelerating this revolution, notonly by his abandonment of diplomatic traditions, but stillmore by his improvidence and violence. He reversedthe policy of his predecessors in regard to the parlement.Supported by public opinion, which clamoured for guaranteesChoiseul.against arbitrary power, the parlements had dared not only toinsist on being consulted as to the budget of the state in 1763,but to enter upon a confederation throughout the whole ofFrance, and on repeated occasions to ordain a general strikeof the judicial authorities. Choiseul did not hesitate to attackthrough lits de justice or by exile a judiciary oligarchy whichdoubtless rested its pretensions merely on wealth, high birth,or that encroaching spirit that was the only counteractingagency to the monarchy. LouisXV., wearied with their clamour,called them to order. Choiseul’s religious policy was no lessventuresome; after the condemnation in 1759 of the Jesuitswho were involved in the bankruptcy of Father de la Valette,their general, in the Antilles, he had the order dissolved forrefusing to modify its constitution (1761–1764). Thus, notcontent with encouraging writers with innovating ideas to theprejudice of traditional institutions, he attacked, in the orderof the Jesuits, the strongest defender of these latter, and deliveredover the new generation to revolutionary doctrines.
A woman had elevated him into power; a woman broughthim to the ground. He succumbed to a coalition of the chancellorMaupeou, the duc d’Aiguillon and the Abbé Terray,which depended on the favour of the king’s latestmistress, Madame du Barry (December 1770); andThe Triumvirate, 1770–1774.the Jesuits were avenged by a stroke of authoritysimilar to that by which they themselves had suffered. Followingon an edict registered by the lit de justice, which forbade anyremonstrance in political matters, the parlement had resigned,and had been imitated by the provincial parlements; whereuponMaupeou, an energetic chancellor, suppressed the parlementsand substituted superior councils of magistrates appointed bythe king (1771). This reform was justified by the religiousintolerance of the parlements; by their scandalous trials ofCalas, Pierre Paul Sirven (1709–1777), the chevalier de la Barreand the comte de Lally; by the retrograde spirit that had madethem suppress the Encyclopaedia in 1759 and condemn Émilein 1762; and by their selfishness in perpetuating abuses bywhich they profited. But this reform, being made by the ministerof a hated sovereign, only aided in exasperating public opinion,which was grateful to the parlements in that their remonstranceshad not always been fruitless.
Thus all the buttresses of the monarchical institution beganto fall to pieces: the Church, undermined by the heresy ofJansenism, weakened by the inroads of philosophy,discredited by evil-livers among the priesthood, anddivided against itself, like all losing parties; theAncient influences and institutions.nobility of the court, still brave at heart, thoughincapable of exertion and reduced to beggary, having lost allrespect for discipline and authority, not only in the camp, but incivilian society; and the upper-class officials, narrow-mindedand egotistical, unsettling by their opposition the royal authoritywhich they pretended to safeguard. Even the “liberties,”among the few representative institutions which the ancienrégime had left intact in some provinces, turned against thepeople. The estates opposed most of the intelligent and humanemeasures proposed by such intendants as Tourny and Turgotto relieve the peasants, whose distress was very great; they didtheir utmost to render the selfishness of the privileged classesmore oppressive and vexatious.
Thus the terrible prevalence of poverty and want; thesuccessive famines; the mistakes of the government; thescandals of the Parc aux Cerfs; and the parlementsplaying the Roman senate: all these causes, addedtogether and multiplied, assisted in setting a generalThe new ideas.fermentation to work. The philosophers only helped to precipitatea movement which they had not created; withoutpointing to absolute power as the cause of the trouble,and without pretending to upset the traditional system, theyattempted to instil into princes the feeling of new and moreprecise obligations towards their subjects. Voltaire, Montesquieu,the Encyclopaedists and the Physiocrats (recurring to thetradition of Bayle and Fontenelle), by dissolving in their analyticalcrucible all consecrated beliefs and all fixed institutions,brought back into the human society of the 18th century thathumanity which had been so rudely eliminated. They demandedfreedom of thought and belief with passionate insistence; theyardently discussed institutions and conduct; and they importedinto polemics the idea of natural rights superior to all politicalarrangements. Whilst some, like Voltaire and the Physiocrats,representatives of the privileged classes and careless of politicalrights, wished to make use of the omnipotence of the princeto accomplish desirable reforms, or, like Montesquieu, adverselycriticized despotism and extolled moderate governments,other, plebeians like Rousseau, proclaimed the theory of thesocial contract and the sovereignty of the people. So that duringthis reign of frivolity and passion, so bold in conception and sopoor in execution, the thinkers contributed still further to markthe contrast between grandeur of plan and mediocrity of result.
The preaching of all this generous philosophy, not only inFrance, but throughout the whole of Europe, would have been invain had there not existed at the time a social class interestedin these great changes, and capable of compassing them. Neitherthe witty and lucid form in which the philosophers clothedtheir ideas in their satires, romances, stage-plays and treatises,nor the salons of Madame du Deffand, Madame Geoffrin andMademoiselle de Lespinasse, could possibly have been sufficientlyfar-reaching or active centres of political propaganda. Theformer touched only the more highly educated classes; whileto the latter, where privileged individuals alone had entry,novelties were but an undiluted stimulant for the jaded appetitesof persons whose ideas of good-breeding, moreover, would havedrawn the line at martyrdom.
The class which gave the Revolution its chiefs, its outwardand visible forms, and the irresistible energy of its hopes, wasthe bourgeoisie, intelligent, ambitious and rich; inthe forefront the capitalists and financiers of thehaute bourgeoisie, farmers-general and army contractors,The bourgeoisie—the incarnation of new ideas.who had supplanted or swamped the old landed andmilitary aristocracy, had insensibly reconstructed theinterior of the ancient social edifice with the gilded and incongruousmaterials of wealth, and in order to consolidateor increase their monopolies, needed to secure themselvesagainst the arbitrary action of royalty and the bureaucracy. Next came the crowd of stockholders and creditors of the state,who, in face of the government’s “extravagant anarchy,” nolonger felt safe from partial or total bankruptcy. More powerfulstill, and more masterful, was the commercial, industrial andcolonial bourgeoisie; because under the Regency and underLouis XV. they had been more productive and more creative.Having gradually revolutionized the whole economic system,in Paris, in Lyons, in Nantes, in Bordeaux, in Marseilles, theycould not tamely put up with being excluded from public affairs,which had so much bearing upon their private or collectiveenterprises. Finally, behind this bourgeoisie, and afar off, camethe crowd of serfs, rustics whom the acquisition of land hadgradually enfranchised, and who were the more eager to enjoytheir definitive liberation because it was close at hand.
The habits and sentiments of French society showed similarchanges. From having been almost exclusively national duringLouis XIV.’s reign, owing to the perpetual stateof war and to a sort of proud isolation, it had graduallybecome cosmopolitan. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle,Transformation
of manners and customs.France had been flooded from all quartersof the civilized world, but especially from England,by a concourse of refined and cultured men well acquaintedwith her usages and her universal language, whom she hadreceived sympathetically. Paris became the brain of Europe.This revolution in manners and customs, coinciding with therevolution in ideas, led in its turn to a transformation in feeling,and to new aesthetic needs. Gradually people became sick ofopenly avowed gallantry, of shameless libertinism, of moralobliquity and of the flattering artifices of vice; a long shudderran through the selfish torpor of the social body. After readingthe Nouvelle-Héloïse, Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison,fatigued and wearied society revived as though beneath thefresh breezes of dawn. The principle of examination, thereasoned analysis of human conditions and the discussion ofcauses, far from culminating in disillusioned nihilism, everywherearoused the democratic spirit, the life of sentiment andof human feeling: in the drama, with Marivaux, Diderot andLa Chaussée; in art, with Chardin and Greuze; and in thesalons, in view of the suppression of privilege. So that toLouis XV.’s cynical and hopeless declaration: “Apres moile déluge,” the setting 18th century responded by a belief inprogress and an appeal to the future. A long-drawn echo fromall classes hailed a revolution that was possible because it wasnecessary.
If this revolution did not burst forth sooner, in the actuallifetime of Louis XV., if in Louis XVI.’s reign there was arenewal of loyalty to the king, before the appeal to liberty wasmade, that is to be explained by this hope of recovery. ButLouis XVI.’s reign (1774–1792) was only to be a temporaryhalting-place, an artifice of history for passing through thetransition period whilst elaborating the transformation whichwas to revolutionize, together with France, the whole world.
Louis XVI. was twenty years of age. Physically he wasstout, and a slave to the Bourbon fondness for good living;intellectually a poor creature and but ill-educated,he loved nothing so much as hunting and locksmith’swork. He had a taste for puerile amusem*nts, aLouis XVI.mania for useless little domestic economies in a court wheremillions vanished like smoke, and a natural idleness whichachieved as its masterpiece the keeping a diary from 1766 to1792 of a life so tragic, which was yet but a foolish chronicleof trifles. Add to this that he was a virtuous husband, a kindfather, a fervent Christian and a good-natured man full ofexcellent intentions, yet a spectacle of moral pusillanimity andineptitude.
From 1770 onwards lived side by side with this king, ratherthan at his side, the archduch*ess Marie Antoinette of Austria—oneof the very graceful and very frivolous womenwho were to be found at Versailles, opening to lifelike the flowers she so much loved, enamoured ofMarie Antoinette.pleasure and luxury, delighting to free herself fromthe formalities of court life, and mingling in the amusem*ntsof society; lovable and loving, without ceasing to be virtuous.Flattered and adored at the outset, she very soon furnished asinister illustration to Beaumarchais’ Basile; for evil tonguesbegan to calumniate the queen: those of her brothers-in-law,the duc d’Aiguillon (protector of Madame du Barry and dismissedfrom the ministry), and the Cardinal de Rohan, recalled fromhis embassy in Vienna. She was blamed for her friendshipwith the comtesse de Polignac, who loved her only as the dispenserof titles and positions; and when weary of this persistentbegging for rewards, she was taxed with her preference forforeigners who asked nothing. People brought up against herthe debts and expenditure due to her belief in the inexhaustibleresources of France; and hatred became definite when shewas suspected of trying to imitate her mother Maria Theresa andplay the part of ruler, since her husband neglected his duty. Theythen became persuaded that it was she who caused the weight oftaxation; in the most infamous libels comparison was madebetween her freedom of behaviour and that of Louis XV.’sformer mistresses. Private envy and public misconceptionsvery soon summed up her excessive unpopularity in the menacingnickname, “L’Autrichienne.” (See Marie Antoinette.)
All this shows that Louis XVI. was not a monarch capableof directing or suppressing the inevitable revolution. Hisreign was but a tissue of contradictions. Externalaffairs seemed in even a more dangerous position thanthose at home. Louis XVI. confided to VergennesForeign policy
of Louis XVI.the charge of reverting to the traditions of the crownand raising France from the humiliation suffered by the treatyof Paris and the partition of Poland. His first act was to releaseFrench policy from the Austrian alliance of 1756; in this hewas aided both by public opinion and by the confidence of theking—the latter managing to set aside the desires of the queen,whom the ambition of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. hoped touse as an auxiliary. Vergennes’ object was a double one: tofree the kingdom from English supremacy and to shake off theyoke of Austria. Opportunities offered themselves simultaneously.In 1775 the English colonies in America rebelled, andLouis XVI., after giving them secret aid and encouragementalmost from the first, finally in February 1778, despite MarieAntoinette, formed an open alliance with them; while whenJoseph II., after having partitioned Poland, wanted in addition tobalance the loss of Silesia with that of Bavaria, Vergennes preventedhim from doing so. In vain was he offered a share in thepartition of the Netherlands by way of an inducement. France’sdisinterested action in the peace of Teschen (1779) restored to herthe lost adherence of the secondary states. Europe began torespect her again when she signed a Franco-Dutch-Spanishalliance (1779–1780), and when, after the capitulation of theEnglish at Yorktown, the peace of Versailles (1783) crownedher efforts with at least formal success. Thenceforward,partly from prudence and partly from penury, Vergennescared only for the maintenance of peace—a not too easy task,in opposition to the greed of Catherine II. and Joseph II., whonow wished to divide the Ottoman empire. Joseph II., recognizingthat Louis XVI. would not sacrifice the “sick man” to him,raised the question of the opening of the Scheldt, against theDutch. Vainly did Joseph II. accuse his sister of ingratitudeand complain of her resistance; the treaty of Fontainebleau in1785 maintained the rights of Holland. Later on, Joseph II.,sticking to his point, wanted to settle the house of Bavariain the Netherlands; but Louis XVI. supported the confederationof princes (Fürstenbund) which Frederick II. called togetherin order to keep his turbulent neighbour within bounds. Vergennescompleted his work by signing a commercial treatyin 1786 with England, whose commerce and industry werefavoured above others, and a second in 1787 with Russia. Hedied in 1787, at an opportune moment for himself; thoughhe had temporarily raised France’s position in Europe, hiswork was soon ruined by the very means taken to secure itssuccesses: warfare and armaments had hastened the “hideousbankruptcy.”
From the very beginning of his reign Louis XVI. fell into contradictions and hesitation in internal affairs, which couldnot but bring him to grief. He tried first of all togovern in accordance with public opinion, and wasinduced to flatter it beyond measure; in an extremeInternal policy
of Louis XVI.of inconsistency he re-established the parlements,the worst enemies of reform, at the very moment when he wascalling in the reformers to his councils.
Turgot, the most notable of these latter, was well fitted toplay his great part as an enlightened minister, as much fromthe principle of hard work and domestic economytraditional in his family, as from a maturity of minddeveloped by extensive study at the Sorbonne andTurgot 1774–1776.by frequenting the salons of the Encyclopaedists.He had proved this by his capable administration in the paymaster’soffice at Limoges, from 1761 to 1774. A disciple ofQuesnay and of Gournay, he tried to repeat in great affairs theexperience of liberty which he had found successful in small,and to fortify the unity of the nation and the governmentby social, political and economic reforms. He ordained thefree circulation of grain within the kingdom, and was supportedby Louis XVI. in the course of the flour-war (guerre des farines)(April-May 1775); he substituted a territorial subsidy for theroyal corvée—so burdensome upon the peasants—and thustended to abolish privilege in the matter of imposts; and heestablished the freedom of industry by the dissolution ofprivileged trade corporations (1776). Finance was in a deplorablestate, and as controller-general he formulated a new fiscal policy,consisting of neither fresh taxation nor loans, but of retrenchment.At one fell stroke the two auxiliaries on which he had a rightto count failed him: public opinion, clamouring for reform oncondition of not paying the cost; and the king, too timid todominate public opinion, and not knowing how to refuse thedemands of privilege. Economy in the matter of public financeimplies a grain of severity in the collection of taxes as well as, inexpenditure. By the former Turgot hampered the great interests;by the second he thwarted the desires of courtiers not only ofthe second rank but of the first. Therefore, after he had arousedthe complaints of the commercial world and the bourgeoisie,the court, headed by Marie Antoinette, profited by the generalexcitement to overthrow him. The Choiseul party, which hadgradually been reconstituted, under the influence of the queen,the princes, parlement, the prebendaries, and the trade corporations,worked adroitly to eliminate this reformer of lucrativeabuses. The old courtier Maurepas, jealous of Turgot anddesirous of remaining a minister himself, refrained from defendinghis colleague; and when Turgot, who never knew how to givein, spoke of establishing assemblies of freeholders in the communesand the provinces, in order to relax the tension of over-centralization,Louis XVI., who never dared to pass from sentiment toaction, sacrificed his minister to the rancour of the queen, ashe had already sacrificed Malesherbes (1776). Thus the firstgovernmental act of the queen was an error, and dissipatedthe hope of replacing special privileges by a general guaranteegiven to the nation, which alone could have postponed a revolution.It was still too early for a Fourth of August; but thequeen’s victory was none the less vain, since Turgot’s ideaswere taken up by his successors.
The first of these was Necker, a Genevese financier. Moreable than Turgot, though a man of smaller ideas, he abrogatedthe edicts registered by the lits de justice; and unableor not daring to attack the evil at its root, he thoughthe could suppress its symptoms by a curative processNecker, 1776–1781.of borrowing and economy. Like Turgot he failed,and for the same reasons. The American war had finallyexhausted the exchequer, and, in order to replenish it, he wouldhave needed to inspire confidence in the minds of capitalists;but the resumption in 1778 of the plan of provincial assembliescharged with remodelling the various imposts, and his compte-renduin which he exhibited the monarchy paying its pensionersfor their inactivity as it had never paid its agents for their zeal,aroused a fresh outburst of anger. Necker was carried away inhis turn by the reaction he had helped to bring about (1781).
Having fought the oligarchy of privilege, the monarchy nexttried to rally it to its side, and all the springs of the old régimewere strained to the breaking-point. The militaryrule of the marquis de Ségur eliminated the plebeiansfrom the army; while the great lords, drones in theThe return of feudalism to
the offensive.hive, worked with a kind of fever at the enforcementof their seigniorial rights; the feudal system was makinga last struggle before dying. The Church claimed her rightof ordering the civil estate of all Frenchmen as an absolutemistress more strictly than ever. Joly de Fleury and D’Ormesson,Necker’s successors, pushed their narrow spirit of reaction andthe temerity of their inexperience to the furthest limit; butthe reaction which reinforced the privileged classes was notsufficient to fill the coffers of the treasury, and Marie Antoinette,who seemed gifted with a fatal perversity of instinct, confidedthe finances of the kingdom to Calonne, an upper-class officialand a veritable Cagliostro of finance.
From 1783 to 1787, this man organized his astounding systemof falsification all along the line. His unbridled prodigality,by spreading a belief in unlimited resources, augmentedthe confidence necessary for the success of perpetualloans; until the day came when, having exhausted theCalonne,
1783–1787.system, he tried to suppress privilege and fall back uponthe social reforms of Turgot, and the financial schemes of Necker,by suggesting once more to the assembly of notables a territorialsubsidy from all landed property. He failed, owing to the samereaction that was causing the feudal system to make inroadsupon the army, the magistracy and industry; but in his fall heput on the guise of a reformer, and by a last wild plunge he leftthe monarchy, already compromised bythe affair of the Diamond Necklace (q.v.), hopelessly exposed (April 1787).
The volatile and brilliant archbishop Loménie de Brienne wascharged with the task of laying the affairs of the ancien régimebefore the assembly of notables, and with asking thenation for resources, since the monarchy could nolonger provide for itself; but the notables refused, andLoménie de Brienne.referred the minister to the states-general, the representativeof the nation. Before resorting to this extremity,Brienne preferred to lay before the parlement his two edictsregarding a stamp duty and the territorial subsidy; to be metby the same refusal, and the same reference to the states-general.The exile of the parlement to Troyes, the arrest ofvarious members, and the curt declaration of the king’s absoluteauthority (November 9, 1787) were unsuccessful in breakingdown its resistance. The threat of Chrétien François de Lamoignon,keeper of the seals, to imitate Maupeou, aroused publicopinion and caused a fresh confederation of the parlements ofthe kingdom. The royal government was too much exhaustedto overthrow even a decaying power like that of the parlements,and being still more afraid of the future representatives of theFrench people than of the supreme courts, capitulated to theinsurgent parlements. The recalled parlement seemed at thepinnacle of power.
Its next action ruined its ephemeral popularity, by claimingthe convocation of the states-general “according to the formulaobserved in 1614,” as already demanded by theestates of Dauphiné at Vizille on the 21st of July 1788.The exchequer was empty; it was necessary to comply.Recall of Necker.The royal declaration of the 23rd of September 1788 convokedthe states-general for the 1st of May 1789, and the fall of Brienneand Lamoignon followed the recall of Necker. Thenceforwardpublic opinion, which was looking for something quite differentfrom the superannuated formula of 1614, abandoned the parlements,which in their turn disappeared from view; for thestruggle beginning between the privileged classes and the government,now at bay, had given the public, through the states-general,that means of expression which they had always lacked.
The conflict immediately changed ground, and an engagementbegan between privilege and the people over the twofold questionof the number of deputies and the mode of voting. Voting byhead, and the double representation of the third estate (tiersétat); this was the great revolution; voting by order meant the continued domination of privilege, and the lesser revolution. Themonarchy, standing apart, held the balance, but needed a decisivePrelude to the states-general.policy. Necker, with little backing at court, could notact energetically, and Louis XVI., wavering betweenNecker and the queen, chose the attitude mostconvenient to his indolence and least to his interest:he remained neutral, and his timidity showed clearly in the councilof the 27th of December 1788. Separating the two questionswhich were so closely connected, and despite the sensationalbrochure of the abbé Sieyès, “What is the Third Estate?”he pronounced for the doubling of the third estate withoutdeciding as to the vote by head, yet leaving it to be divined thathe preferred the vote by order. As to the programme there wasno more decisive resolution; but the edict of convocation gaveit to be understood that a reform was under consideration; “theestablishment of lasting and permanent order in all branchesof the administration.” The point as to the place of convocationgave rise to a compromise between the too-distant centreof France and too-tumultuous Paris. Versailles was chosenThe electorate.“because of the hunting!” In the procedure of the electionsthe traditional system of the states-general of 1614was preserved, and the suffrage was almost universal,but in two kinds: for the third estate nearly all citizensover twenty-five years of age, paying a direct contribution,voted—peasants as well as bourgeois; the country clergywere included among the ecclesiastics; the smaller nobilityamong the nobles; and finally, Protestants were electors andeligible.
According to custom, documents (cahiers) were drawn up,containing a list of grievances and proposals for reform. All theorders were agreed in demanding prudently modifiedreform: the vote on the budget, order in finance,regular convocation of the states-general, and a writtenThe addresses.constitution in order to get rid of arbitrary rule. The addressof the clergy, inspired by the great prelates, sought to makeinaccurate lamentations over the progress of impiety a meansof safeguarding their enormous spiritual and temporal powers,their privileges and exemptions, and their vast wealth. Thenobility demanded voting by order, the maintenance of theirprivileges, and, above all, laws to protect them against thearbitrary proceedings of royalty. The third estate insisted on thevote by head, the graduated abolition of privilege in all governmentalaffairs, a written constitution and union. The programmewent on broadening as it descended in the social scale.
The elections sufficed finally to show that the ancien régime,characterized from the social point of view by inequality, fromthe political point of view by arbitrariness, and fromthe religious point of view by intolerance, was completedfrom the administrative point of view by inextricableThe elections.disorder. As even the extent of the jurisdictionof the bailliages was unknown, convocations were made athaphazard, according to the good pleasure of influential persons,and in these assemblies decisions were arrived at by a processthat confused every variety of rights and powers, and wasgoverned by no logical principle; and in this extreme confusionterms and affairs were alike involved.
Whilst the bureaucracy of the ancien régime sought fordesperate expedients to prolong its domination, the whole socialbody gave signs of a yet distant but ever nearing disintegration.The revolution was already completebefore it was declared to the world. Two distinctThe counter-currents of the Revolution.currents of disaffection, one economic, the otherphilosophic, had for long been pervading the nation.There had been much suffering throughout the 17thand 18th centuries; but no one had hitherto thought of apolitico-social rising. But the other, the philosophic current,had been set going in the 18th century; and the policy ofdespotism tempered by privilege had been criticized in the nameof liberty as no longer justifying itself by its services to thestate. The ultramontane and oppressively burdensome churchhad been taunted with its lack of Christian charity, apostolicpoverty and primitive virtue. All vitality had been sappedfrom the old order of nobles, reduced in prestige by the savonnetteà vilains (office purchased to ennoble the holder), enervatedby court life, and so robbed of its roots in the soil, from whichit had once drawn its strength, that it could no longer live saveas a ruinous parasite on the central monarchy. Lastly, to cometo the bottom of the social scale, there were the common people,taxable at will, subject to the arbitrary and burdensome forcedlabour of the corvée, cut off by an impassable barrier from theprivileged classes whom they hated. For them the right to workhad been asserted, among others by Turgot, as a natural rightopposed to the caprices of the arbitrary and selfish aristocracyof the corporations, and a breach had been made in the tyrannyof the masters which had endeavoured to set a barrier to theastonishing outburst of industrial force which was destined tocharacterize the coming age.
The outward and visible progress of the Revolution, dueprimarily to profound economic disturbance, was thus acceleratedand rendered irresistible. Economic reformers found a moraljustification for their dissatisfaction in philosophical theories;the chance conjunction of a philosopho-political idea with anational deficit led to the preponderance of the third estate atthe elections, and to the predominance of the democratic spiritin the states-general. The third estate wanted civil liberty aboveall; political liberty came second only, as a means and guaranteefor the former. They wanted the abolition of the feudal system,the establishment of equality and a share in power. Neither thefamily nor property was violently attacked; the church and themonarchy still appeared to most people two respectable andrespected institutions. The king and the privileged classes hadbut so to desire it, and the revolution would be easy and peaceful.
Louis XVI. was reluctant to abandon a tittle of his absolutepower, nor would the privileged classes sacrifice their time-honouredtraditions; they were inexorable. The king,more ponderous and irresolute every day, vacillatedbetween Necker the liberal on one side and MarieMeeting of the states-general.Antoinette, whose feminine pride was opposed to anyconcessions, with the comte d’Artois, a mischievous nobody whocould neither choose a side nor stick to one, on the other. Whenthe states-general opened on the 5th of May 1789 Louis XVI. haddecided nothing. The conflict between him and the Assemblyimmediately broke out, and became acute over the verificationof the mandates; the third estate desiring this to be made incommon by the deputies of the three orders, which would involvevoting by head, the suppression of classes and the preponderanceof the third estate. On the refusal of the privileged classes andafter an interval of six weeks, the third estate, considering thatthey represented 96% of the nation, and in accordance with theproposal of Sieyès, declared that they represented the nationand therefore were authorized to take resolutions unaided, thefirst being that in future no arrangement for taxation could takeplace without their consent.
The king, urged by the privileged classes, responded to thisfirst revolutionary act, as in 1614, by closing the Salle des MenusPlaisirs where the third estate were sitting; whereupon,gathered in one of the tennis-courts under thepresidency of Bailly, they swore on the 20th of JuneOath of the
tennis-court.not to separate before having established the constitutionof the kingdom.
Louis XVI. then decided, on the 23rd, to make known hispolicy in a royal lit de justice. He declared for the lesser reform,the fiscal, not the social; were this rejected, he declaredthat “he alone would arrange for the welfare of hispeople.” Meanwhile he annulled the sitting of theThe Lit de Justice
of June 23, 1789.17th, and demanded the immediate dispersal of theAssembly. The third estate refused to obey, and by themouth of Bailly and Mirabeau asserted the legitimacy of theRevolution. The refusal of the soldiers to coerce the Assemblyshowed that the monarchy could no longer rely on the army; anda few days later, when the lesser nobility and the lower ranksof the clergy had united with the third estate whose cause wastheir own, the king yielded, and on the 27th of June commandedboth orders to join in the National Assembly, which was thereby recognized and the political revolution sanctioned. But at thesame time, urged by the “infernal cabal” of the queen and thecomte d’Artois, Louis XVI. called in the foreign regiments—theonly ones of which he could be certain—and dismissedNecker. The Assembly, dreading a sudden attack, demandedthe withdrawal of the troops. Meeting with a refusal, ParisTaking of the Bastille.opposed the king’s army with her citizen-soldiers; andby the taking of the Bastille, that mysterious darkfortress which personified the ancien régime, securedthe triumph of the Revolution (July 14). The kingwas obliged to recall Necker, to mount the tricolor co*ckadeat the Hôtel de Ville, and to recognize Bailly as mayor of Parisand La Fayette as commander of the National Guard, whichremained in arms after the victory. The National Assemblyhad right on its side after the 20th of June and might after the14th of July. Thus was accomplished the Revolution whichwas to throw into the melting-pot all that had for centuriesappeared fixed and stable.
As Paris had taken her Bastille, it remained for the townsand country districts to take theirs—all the Bastilles of feudalism.Want, terror and the contagion of examples precipitatedthe disruption of governmental authority and of theold political status; and sudden anarchy dislocatedSpontaneous anarchy.all the organs of authority. Upon the ruins of thecentral administration temporary authorities were founded invarious isolated localities, limited in area but none the lessdefiant of the government. The provincial assemblies ofDauphiné and elsewhere gave the signal; and numerous towns,following the example of Paris, instituted municipalities which substitutedtheir authority for that of the intendants and their subordinates.Clubs were openly organized, pamphlets and journalsappeared, regardless of administrative orders; workmen’s unionsmultiplied in Paris, Bordeaux and Lyons, in face of drastic prohibition;and anarchy finally set in with the defection of thearmy in Paris on the 23rd of June, at Nancy, at Metz and at Brest.The crying abuses of the old régime, an insignificant factor at theoutset, soon combined with the widespread agrarian distress,due to the unjust distribution of land, the disastrous exploitationof the soil, the actions of the government, and the severe winterof 1788. Discontent showed itself in pillage and incendiarism oncountry estates; between March and July 1789 more than threehundred agrarian riots took place, uprooting the feudal idea ofproperty, already compromised by its own excesses. Not onlydid pillaging take place; the boundaries of property were alsoignored, and people no longer held themselves bound to paytaxes. These jacqueries hastened the movement of the regularrevolution.
The decrees of the 4th of August, proposed by those noble“patriots” the duc d’Aiguillon and the vicomte de Noailles,who had already on the 23rd of June made armedresistance to the evacuation of the Hall of Assembly,The night of
August 4.put the final touch to the revolution begun by theprovincial assemblies, by liberating land and labour,and proclaiming equality among all Frenchmen. Instead ofexasperating the demands of the peasants and workmen byrepression and raising civil war between the bourgeoisie and theproletariat, they drew a distinction between personal servitude,which was suppressed, and the rights of contract, which wereto be redeemed—a laudable but impossible distinction. Thewhole feudal system crumbled before the revolutionary insistenceof the peasants; for their masters, bourgeois or nobles,terrified by prolonged riots, capitulated and gradually had toconsent to make the resolutions of the 4th of August areality.
Overjoyed by this social liberation, the Assembly awardedLouis XVI. the title of “renewer of French liberty”; butremaining faithful to his hesitating policy of the23rd of June, he ratified the decrees of the 4th ofAugust, only with a very ill grace. On the other hand,Elaboration of the constitution.the privileged classes, and notably the clergy, who sawthe whole traditional structure of their power threatened, nowrallied to him, and when after the 28th of August the Assemblyset to work on the new constitution, they combined in the effortto recover some of the position they had lost. But whatevertheir theoretical agreement on social questions, politically theywere hopelessly at odds. The bourgeoisie, conscious of theiropportunity, decided for a single chamber against the will of thenoblesse; against that of the king they declared it permanent,and, if they accorded him a suspensory veto, this was only inorder to guard them against the extreme assertion of popularrights. Thus the progress of the Revolution, so far, had left themass of the people still excluded from any constitutional influenceon the government, which was in the hands of the well-to-doclasses, which also controlled the National Guard and the municipalities.The irritation of the disfranchised proletariat was moreoverincreased by the appalling dearness of bread and foodgenerally, which the suspicious temper of the times—fomented bythe tirades of Marat in the Ami du peuple—ascribed to Englishintrigues in revenge for the aid given by France to the Americancolonies, and to the treachery in high places that made theseintrigues successful. The climax came with the rumour that thecourt was preparing a new military coup d’état, a rumour thatseemed to be confirmed by indiscreet toasts proposed at a banquetby the officers of the guard at Versailles; and on the night ofthe 5th to the 6th of October a Parisian mob forced the kingand royal family to return with them to Paris amid cries of“We are bringing the baker, the baker’s wife and the littlebaker’s boy!” The Assembly followed; and henceforth kingand Assembly were more or less under the influence of thewhims and passions of a populace maddened by want andsuspicion, by the fanatical or unscrupulous incitements ofan unfettered press, and by the unrestrained oratory ofobscure demagogues in the streets, the cafés and the politicalclubs.
Convened for the purpose of elaborating a system that shouldconciliate all interests, the Assembly thus found itself forcedinto a conflict between the views of the people, who fearedbetrayal, and the court, which dreaded being overwhelmed.This schism was reflected in the parties of the Assembly; theabsolutists of the extreme Right; the moderate monarchistsof the Right and Centre; the constitutionalists of the LeftCentre and Left; and, finally, on the extreme Left the democraticrevolutionists, among whom Robespierre sat as yet all butunnoticed. Of talent there was enough and to spare in theAssembly; what was conspicuously lacking was common senseand a practical knowledge of affairs. Of all the orators whodeclaimed from the tribune, Mirabeau alone realized the perilsof the situation and possessed the power of mind and will tohave mastered them. Unfortunately, however, he was discreditedby a disreputable past, and yet more by the equivocalattitude he had to assume in order to maintain his authorityin the Assembly while working in what he believed to be the trueinterests of the court. His political ideal for France was thatof the monarchy, rescued from all association with the abusesof the old régime and “broad-based upon the people’s will”;his practical counsel was that the king should frankly proclaimthis ideal to the people as his own, should compete with theAssembly for popular favour, while at the same time usingevery means to win over those by whom his authority wasflouted. For a time Mirabeau influenced the counsels of thecourt through the comte de Montmorin; but the king neithertrusted him nor could be brought to see his point of view, andMarie Antoinette, though she resigned herself to negotiatingwith him, was very far from sympathizing with his ideals.Finally, all hope of the conduct of affairs being entrusted to himwas shattered when the Assembly passed a law forbidding itsmembers to become ministers.
The attempted reconciliation with the king having failed, theAssembly ended by working alone, and made the control thatit should have exerted an instrument, not of co-operationbut of strife. It inaugurated its legislativelabours by a metaphysical declaration of the RightsDeclaration of the rights of man.of Man and of the Citizen (October 2, 1789). Thisenunciation of universal verities, the bulk of which have, sooner or later, been accepted by all civilized nations as “the gospelof modern times,” was inspired by all the philosophy of the 18thcentury in France and by the Contrat Social. It comprisedvarious rational and humane ideas, no longer theological, butprofoundly and deliberately thought out: ideas as to thesovereign-right of the nation, law by general consent, mansuperior to the pretensions of caste and the fetters of dogma,the vindication of the ideal and of human dignity. Unableto rest on historic precedent like England, the ConstituentAssembly took as the basis for its labours the tradition of thethinkers.
Upon the principles proclaimed in this Declaration the constitutionof 1791 was founded. Its provisions are discussed elsewhere(see the section below on Law and Institutions);here it will suffice to say that it established under thesovereign people, for the king was to survive merelyThe constitution.as the supreme executive official, a wholly new modelof government in France, both in Church and State. Thehistoric divisions of the realm were wiped out; for the oldprovinces were substituted eighty-three departments; andwith the provinces vanished the whole organization, territorial,administrative and ecclesiastical, of the ancien régime. In onerespect, indeed, the system of the old monarchy remained intact;the tradition of centralization established by Louis XIV. wastoo strong to be overthrown, and the destruction of the historicprivileges and immunities with which this had been ever inconflict only served to strengthen this tendency. In 1791France was pulverized into innumerable administrative atomsincapable of cohesion; and the result was that Paris becamemore than ever the brain and nerve-centre of France. This factwas soon to be fatal to the new constitution, though the administrativesystem established by it still survives. Paris was ineffect dominated by the armed and organized proletariat, andthis proletariat could never be satisfied with a settlement which,while proclaiming the sovereignty of the people, had, by meansof the property qualification for the franchise, established thepolitical ascendancy of the middle classes. The settlement had,in fact, settled nothing; it had, indeed, merely intensified theprofound cleavage between the opposing tendencies; for if thedemocrats were alienated by the narrow franchise, the CivilConstitution of the Clergy, which cut at the very roots ofthe Catholic system, drove into opposition to the Revolutionnot only the clergy themselves but a vast number of theirflocks.
The policy of the Assembly, moreover, hopelessly aggravatedits misunderstanding with the king. Louis, indeed, acceptedthe constitution and attended the great Feast of Federation(July 14, 1790), when representatives from all the new departmentsassembled in the Champ de Mars to ratify the work of theAssembly; but the king either could not or would not say theexpected word that would have dissipated mistrust. The CivilConstitution of the Clergy, too, seemed to him not only toviolate his rights as a king, but his faith as a Christian also;and when the emigration of the nobility and the death of Mirabeau(April 2, 1791) had deprived him of his natural supporters andhis only adviser, resuming the old plan of withdrawing to thearmy of the marquis de Bouillé at Metz, he made his ill-fatedattempt to escape from Paris (June 20, 1791). The flight toVarennes was an irreparable error; for during the king’s absenceand until his return the insignificance of the royal power becameapparent. La Fayette’s fusillade of the republicans, whodemanded the deposition of the king (July 17, 1791), led to adefinite split between the democratic party and the bourgeoisparty. Vainly did Louis, brought back a captive to Paris, swearon the 14th of September 1791 solemnly mere lip-service to theconstitution; the mistrustful party of revolution abandonedthe constitution they had only just obtained, and to guardagainst the sovereign’s mental reservations and the selfish policyof the middle classes, appealed to the main force of the people.The conflict between the ancien régime and the National Assemblyended in the defeat of the royalists.
Through lassitude or disinterestedness the men of 1791, onRobespierre’s suggestion, had committed one last mistake, byleaving the task of putting the constitution intopractice to new men even more inexperienced thanthemselves. Thus the new Assembly’s time wasThe Legislative Assembly (Oct. 1, 1791–Sept 20, 1792).occupied in a conflict between the Legislative Assemblyand the king, who plotted against it; and, as a result,the monarchy, insulted by the proceedings of the 20thof June, was eliminated altogether by those of the 10thof August 1792.
The new Assembly which had met on the 1st of October 1791had a majority favourable to the constitutional monarchy andto the bourgeois franchise. But, among these bourgeoisthose who were called Feuillants, from the name oftheir club (see Feuillants, Club of the), desired theThe parties.strict and loyal application of the constitution without encroachingupon the authority of the king; the triumvirate, Duport,Barnave and Lameth, were at the head of this party. TheJacobins, on the contrary, considered that the king shouldmerely be hereditary president of the Republic, to be deposedif he attempted to violate the constitution, and that universalsuffrage should be established. The dominant group amongthese was that of the Girondins or Girondists, so called becauseits most brilliant members had been elected in the Gironde(see Girondists). But the republican party was more powerfulwithout than within. Their chief was not so much Robespierre,president of the parliamentary and bourgeois club of the Jacobins(q.v.), which had acquired by means of its two thousand affiliatedbranches great power in the provinces, as the advocate Danton,president of the popular and Parisian club of the Cordeliers (q.v.).Between the Feuillants and the Jacobins, the independents,incapable of keeping to any fixed programme, vacillated sometimesto the right, sometimes to the left.
But the best allies of the republicans against the Feuillantswere the royalists pure and simple, who cared nothing aboutthe constitution, and claimed to “extract good fromthe excess of evil.” The election of a Jacobin, Pétion,instead of Bailly, the resigning mayor, and La Fayette,Royalist intrigues. The émigrés. The war.
But when, owing to the disorganization of the army throughemigration and desertion, the ill-prepared Belgian war wasfollowed by invasion and the trouble in La Vendéeincreased, all France suspected a betrayal. TheAssembly, in order to reduce the number of hostileProceedings of
June 20.forces, voted for the exile of all priests who had refusedto swear to the Civil Constitution and the substitution of a bodyof twenty thousand volunteer national guards, under the authorityof Paris, for the king’s constitutional guard (May 27-June 8,1792). Louis XVI.’s veto and the dismissal of the Girondinministry—thanks to an intrigue of Dumouriez, analogous tothat of Mirabeau and as ineffectual—dismayed the Feuillants andmaddened the Girondins; the latter, to avert popular fury,turned it upon the king. The émeute of the 20th of June, aburlesque which, but for the persistent good-humour of LouisXVI., might have become a tragedy, alarmed but did notoverthrow the monarchy.
The bourgeoisie, the Assembly, the country and La Fayette,one of the leaders of the army, now embarked upon a royalistreaction, which would perhaps have been efficacious,had it not been for the entry into the affair of thePrussians as allies of the Austrians, and for the insolentManifesto of Brunswick.manifesto of the duke of Brunswick. The Assembly’scry of “the country in danger” (July 11) proved to the nationthat the king was incapable of defending France against theforeigner; and the appeal of the federal volunteers in Parisgave to the opposition, together with the war-song of the Marseillaise,the army which had been refused by Louis XVI., nowdisarmed. The vain attempts of the Gironde to reconcile theking and the Revolution, the ill-advised decree of the Assemblyon the 8th of August, freeing La Fayette from his guilt in forsakinghis army; his refusal to vote for the deposition of theking, and the suspected treachery of the court, led to the successof the republican forces when, on the 10th of August, the mobof Paris organized by the revolutionary Commune rose againstthe monarchy.
The suspension and imprisonment of the king left the supremeauthority nominally in the hands of the Assembly, but actuallyin those of the Commune, consisting of delegatesfrom the administrative sections of Paris. Installedat the Hôtel de Ville this attempted to influence theThe insurrectional commune of Paris. The September massacres.
The popular insurrection against Louis XVI. determinedthe simultaneous fall of the bourgeois régime and the establishmentof the democracy in power. The Legislative Assembly,without a mandate for modifying a constitution that hadbecome inapplicable with the suspension of the monarch, hadbefore disappearing convoked a National Convention, and asthe reward of the struggle for liberty had replaced the limitedfranchise by universal suffrage. Public opinion became republicanfrom an excess of patriotism, and owing to the propagandaof the Jacobin club; while the decree of the 25th ofAugust 1792, which marked the destruction of feudalism, nowabolished in principle, caused the peasants to rally definitelyto the Republic.
This had hardly been established before it became distractedby the fratricidal strife of its adherents, from September 22,1792, to the 18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797). The electoralassemblies, in very great majority, had desired this Republic tobe democratic and equalizing in spirit, but on the faceThe Convention, Sept. 21. 1792–Oct. 26, 1795.of it, liberal, uniform and propagandist; in consequence,the 782 deputies of the Convention were notdivided on principles, but only by personal rivalriesand ambition. They all wished for a unanimity andharmony impossible to obtain; and being unable toconvince they destroyed one another.
The Girondins in the Convention played the part of theFeuillants in the Legislative Assembly. Their party was notwell disciplined, they purposely refrained from makingit so, and hence their ruin. Oratorically they representedthe spirit of the South; politically, the ideasThe parties.of the bourgeoisie in opposition to the democracy—which theydespised although making use of it—and the federalist system,from an objection to the preponderance of Paris. Paris, on theother hand, had elected only deputies of the Mountain, as themore advanced of the Jacobins were called, that party beingno more settled and united than the others. They drew supportfrom the Parisian democracy, and considered the decentralizationof the Girondins as endangering France’s unity, circ*mstancesdemanding a strong and highly concentrated government;they opposed a republic on the model of that of Rome to thePolish republic of the Gironde. Between the two came thePlaine, the Marais, the troop of trembling bourgeois, sincerelyattached to the Revolution, but very moderate in the defenceof their ideas; some seeking a refuge from their timidity inhard-working committees, others partaking in the violence ofthe Jacobins out of weakness or for reasons of state.
The Girondins were the first to take the lead; in order toretain it they should have turned the Revolution into a government.They remained an exclusive party, relying onthe mob but with no influence over it. Without aleader or popular power, they might have found bothThe Girondins.in Danton; for, occupied chiefly with the external danger, hemade advances towards them, which they repulsed, partly inhorror at the proceedings of September, but chiefly because theysaw in him the most formidable rival in the path of the government.They waged war against him as relentlessly as did theConstitutionalists against Mirabeau, whom he resembled in hisextreme ugliness and his volcanic eloquence. They drove himinto the arms of Robespierre, Marat and the Commune of Paris.On the other hand, after the 23rd of September they declaredParis dangerous for the Convention, and wanted to reduceit to “eighty-three influential members.” Danton and theMountain responded by decreeing the unity and indivisibilityof the Republic, in order to emphasize the suspicions of federalismwhich weighed upon the Girondins.
The trial of Louis XVI. still further enhanced the contrastsof ideas and characters. The discovery of fresh proofs of treacheryin the iron chest (November 20, 1792) gave the Mountaina pretext for forcing on the clash of parties andraising the question not of legality but of public safety.Trial and death of Louis XVI.By the execution of the king (January 21, 1793) they“cast down a king’s head as a challenge to the kings of Europe.”In order to preserve popular favour and their direction of theRepublic, the Girondins had not dared to pronounce againstthe sentence of death, but had demanded an appeal to the peoplewhich was rejected; morally weakened by this equivocal attitudethey were still more so by foreign events.
The king’s death did not result in the unanimity so muchdesired by all parties; it only caused the reaction on themselvesof the hatred which had been hitherto concentratedupon the king, and also an augmentation in the armiesof the foreigner, which obliged the revolutionists toFirst European coalition.face all Europe. There was a coalition of monarchs,and the people of La Vendée rose in defence of their faith.Dumouriez, the conqueror of Jemappes (November 6, 1792),who invaded Holland, was beaten by the Austrians (March 1793).A levy of 300,000 men was ordered; a Committee of GeneralSecurity was charged with the search for suspects; and thenceforwardmilitary occurrences called forth parliamentary crises and popular upheavals. Girondins and Jacobins unjustlyaccused one another of leaving the traitors, the conspirators,the “stipendiaries of Coblenz” unpunished. To avert thedanger threatened by popular dissatisfaction, the Gironde waspersuaded to vote for the creation of a revolutionary tribunalto judge suspects, while out of spite against Danton who demandedit, they refused the strong government which might havemade a stand against the enemy (March 10, 1793). This was thefirst of the exceptional measures which were to call down ruinupon them. Whilst the insurrection in La Vendée was spreading,and Dumouriez falling back upon Neerwinden, sentence of deathwas laid upon émigrés and refractory priests; the treachery ofFirst committee of pubic safety.Dumouriez, disappointed in his Belgian projects, gave groundsfor all kinds of suspicion, as that of Mirabeau hadformerly done, and led the Gironde to propose thenew government which they had refused to Danton.The transformation of the provisional executive councilinto the Committee of Public Safety—omnipotent save in financialmatters—was voted because the Girondins meant to control it;but Danton got the upper hand (April 6).
The Girondins, discredited in Paris, multiplied their attacksupon Danton, now the master: they attributed the civil warand the disasters of the foreign campaign to thedespotism of the Paris Commune and the clubs; theyaccused Marat of instigating the September massacres;Struggle between the commune and the Gironde.and they began the supreme struggle by demanding theelection of a committee of twelve deputies, charged withbreaking up the anarchic authorities in Paris (May 18).The complete success of the Girondin proposals; the arrest ofHébert—the violent editor of the Père Duchêne; the insurrectionof the Girondins of Lyons against the Montagnard Commune;the bad news from La Vendée—the military reverses; and theeconomic situation which had compelled the fixing of a maximumprice of corn (May 4) excited the “moral insurrections” ofMay 31 and June 2. Marat himself sounded the tocsin, andHanriot, at the head of the Parisian army, surrounded theConvention. Despite the efforts of Danton and the Committeeof Public Safety, the arrest of the Girondins sealed the victoryof the Mountain.
The threat of the Girondin Isnard was fulfilled. The federalistinsurrection, to avenge the violation of national representation,responded to the Parisian insurrection. Sixty-ninedepartmental governments protested against theviolence done to the Convention; but the ultra-democraticFall of the Gironde.constitution of 1793 deprived the Girondins,who were arming in the west, the south and the centre, of all legalforce. To the departments that were hostile to the dictatorshipof Paris, and the tyranny of Danton or Robespierre, it promisedthe referendum, an executive of twenty-four citizens, universalsuffrage, and the free exercise of religion. The populace, whocould not understand this parliamentary quarrel, and were in ahurry to set up a national defence, abandoned the Girondins, andthe latter excited the enthusiasm of only one person, CharlotteCorday, who by the murder of Marat ruined them irretrievably.The battle of Brécourt was a defeat without a fight for theirparty without stamina and their general without troops (July13); while on the 31st of October their leaders perished on theguillotine, where they had been preceded by the queen, MarieAntoinette. The Girondins and their adversaries were differentiatedby neither religious dissensions nor political divergency,but merely by a question of time. The Girondins, when in power,had had scruples which had not troubled them while scaling theladder; idols of Paris, they had flattered her in turn, and whenParis scorned them they sought support in the provinces. Agreat responsibility for this defeat of the liberal and republicanbourgeoisie, whom they represented, is to be laid upon MadameRoland, the Egeria of the party. An ardent patriot and republican,her relations with Danton resembled those of MarieAntoinette with Mirabeau, in each case a woman spoilt byflattery, enraged at indifference. She was the ruin of the Gironde,but taught it how to die.
The fall of the Gironde left the country disturbed by civil war,and the frontiers more seriously threatened than before Valmy.Bouchotte, a totally inefficient minister for war, the Commune’sman of straw, left the army without food or ammunition, whilethe suspected officers remained inactive. In the AngevinVendée the incapable leaders let themselves be beaten at Aubiers,Beaupréau and Thouars, at a time when Cathelineau was takingpossession of Saumur and threatening Nantes, the capture ofwhich would have permitted the insurgents in La Vendée to jointhose of Brittany and receive provisions from England. Meanwhile,the remnants of the Girondin federalists were overcomeby the disguised royalists, who had aroused the whole of theRhône valley from Lyons to Marseilles, had called in theSardinians, and handed over the fleet and the arsenal at Toulonto the English, whilst Paoli left Corsica at their disposal. Thescarcity of money due to the discrediting of the assignats, thecessation of commerce, abroad and on the sea, and the badharvest of 1793, were added to all these dangers, and formed aserious menace to France and the Convention.
This meant a hard task for the first Committee of Public Safetyand its chief Danton. He was the only one to understand theconditions necessary to a firm government; he causedthe adjournment of the decentralizing constitutionof 1793, and set up a revolutionary government. TheThe dictatorship of the first committee of public safety.Committee of Public Safety, now a permanency,annulled the Convention and was itself the centralauthority, its organization in Paris being the twelvecommittees substituted for the provisional executivecommittee and the six ministers, the Committee of GeneralSecurity for the maintenance of the police, and the arbitraryRevolutionary Tribunal. The execution of its orders in thedepartments was carried out by omnipotent representatives“on mission” in the armies, by popular societies—veritablemissionaries of the Revolution—and by the revolutionarycommittees which were its backbone.
Despite this Reign of Terror Danton failed; he could neitherdominate foes within nor divide those without. Representingthe sane and vigorous democracy, and like Jeffersona friend to liberty and self-government, he had beenobliged to set up the most despotic of governmentsDanton’s failure.in face of internal anarchy and foreign invasion. Being of atemperament that expressed itself only in action, and neithera theorist nor a cabinet-minister, he held the views of a statesmanwithout having a following sufficient to realize them. Moreover,the proceedings of the 2nd of June, when the Commune of Parishad triumphed, had dealt him a mortal blow. He in his turntried to stem the tumultuous current which had borne himalong, and to prevent discord; but the check to his policy ofan understanding with Prussia and with Sardinia, to whom,like Richelieu and D’Argenson, he offered the realization of hertransalpine ambition in exchange for Nice and Savoy, wasadded to the failure of his temporizing methods in regard to thefederalist insurgents, and of his military operations againstLa Vendée. A man of action and not of cunning shifts, hesuccumbed on the 10th of July to the blows of his own government,which had passed from his hands into those of Robespierre,his ambitious and crafty rival.
The second Committee of Public Safety lasted until the27th of July 1794. Composed of twelve members, re-eligibleevery month, and dominated by the triumvirate,Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon, it was strongerthan ever, since it obtained the right of appointingSecond committee of public safety.leaders, disposed of money, and muzzled the press.Many of its members were sons of the bourgeoisie, men whohaving been educated at college, thanks to some charitableagency, in the pride of learning, and raised above their originalstation, were ready for anything but had achieved nothing.They had plenty of talent at command, were full of classicaltirades against tyranny, and, though sensitive enough in theirprivate life, were bloodthirsty butchers in their public relations.Such were Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon, Billaud-Varenne,Cambon, Thuriot, Collot d’Herbois, Barrère and Prieur dela Mârne. Working hand in hand with these politicians, not always in accordance with them, but preserving a solid front,were the specialists, Carnot, Robert Lindet, Jean Bon Saint-Andréand Prieur de la Côte d’Or, honourable men, anxiousabove all to safeguard their country. At the head of the formertype Robespierre, without special knowledge or exceptionaltalent, devoured by jealous ambition and gifted with cold graveeloquence, enjoyed a great moral ascendancy, due to his incorruptiblepurity of life and the invariably correct behaviourthat had been wanting in Mirabeau, and by the persevering willwhich Danton had lacked. His marching orders were: no moretemporizing with the federalists or with generals who are afraid ofconquering; war to the death with all Europe in the name of revolutionarypropaganda and the monarchical tradition of naturalfrontiers; and fear, as a means of government. The specialistsanswered foreign foes by their organization of victory; as for foesat home, the triumvirate crushed them beneath the Terror.
France was saved by them and by that admirable outburstof patriotism which provided 750,000 patriots for the armythrough the general levy of the 16th of August 1793,aided, moreover, by the mistakes of her enemies.Instead of profiting by Dumouriez’s treachery andDefeat of the coalition.the successes in La Vendée, the Coalition, dividedover the resuscitated Polish question, lost time on the frontiersof this new Poland of the west which was sacrificing itself forthe sake of a Universal Republic. Thus in January 1794 theterritory of France was cleared of the Prussians and Austriansby the victories at Hondschoote, Wattignies and Wissembourg;the army of La Vendée was repulsed from Granville, overwhelmedby Hoche’s army at Le Mans and Savenay, andits leaders shot; royalist sedition was suppressed at Lyons,Bordeaux, Marseilles and Toulon; federalist insurrectionswere wiped out by the terrible massacres of Carrier at Nantes,the atrocities of Lebon at Arras, and the wholesale executionsof Fouché and Collot d’Herbois at Lyons; Louis XVI. andMarie Antoinette guillotined, the émigrés dispersed, denied orforsaken by all Europe.
But the triumphant Mountain was not as united as it boasted.The second Committee of Public Safety had now to struggleagainst two oppositions: one of the left, representedby Hébert, the Commune of Paris and the Cordeliers;another of the right, Danton and his followers. TheThe new parties.former would not admit that the Terror was only a temporarymethod of defence; for them it was a permanent system whichwas even to be strengthened in order to crush all who werehostile to the Revolution. Their sanguinary violence was combinedwith an anti-religious policy, not atheistical, but inspiredby mistrust of the clergy, and by a civic and deistic creed thatwas a direct outcome of the federations. To these latter weredue the substitution of the Republican for the Gregorian calendar,and the secular Feasts of Reason (November 19, 1793). Thefollowers of Hébert wanted to push forward the movement ofMay 31, 1793, in order to become masters in their turn; whilethose of Danton were by way of arresting it. They considered itThe party of tolerance.time to re-establish the reign of ordinary laws andjustice; sick of bloodshed, with Camille Desmoulinsthey demanded a “Committee of Clemency.” Adeist and therefore hostile to “anti-religious masquerades,”while uneasy at the absolute authority of the ParisCommune, which aimed at suppressing the State, and at itsarmed propaganda abroad, Robespierre resumed the struggleagainst its illegal power, so fatal to the Gironde. His boldnesssucceeded (March 24, 1794), and then, jealous of Danton’sactivity and statesmanship, and exasperated by the jeers of hisfriends, he rid himself of the party of tolerance by a parodyof justice (April 5).
Robespierre now stood alone. During five months, whileaffecting to be the representative of “a reign of justice andvirtue,” he laboured at strengthening his politico-religiousdictatorship—already so formidably armed—withnew powers. “The incorruptible wanted toRobespierre’s dictatorship.become the invulnerable” and the scaffold of theguillotine was crowded. By his dogma of the supreme stateRobespierre founded a theocratic government with the policeas an Inquisition. The festival of the new doctrine, whichturned the head of the new pontiff (June 8), the loi de Prairial,or “code of legal murder” (June 10), which gave the deputiesthemselves into his hand; and the multiplication of executionsat a time when the victory of Fleurus (June 25) showed theuselessness and barbarity of this aggravation of the Reign ofTerror provoked against him the victorious coalition of revenge,9th Thermidor.lassitude and fear. Vanquished and imprisoned, herefused to take part in the illegal action proposedby the Commune against the Convention. Robespierrewas no man of action. On the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794)he fell into the gulf that had opened on the 31st of May, andthrough which the 18th Brumaire was visible.
Although brought about by the Terrorists, the tragic fall ofRobespierre put an end to the Reign of Terror; for their chiefshaving disappeared, the subordinates were too muchdivided to keep up the dictatorship of the thirdCommittee of Public Safety, and reaction soon set in.Third committee of public safety.After a change in personnel in favour of the survivingDantonists, came a limitation to the powers of the Committeeof Public Safety, now placed in dependence upon the Convention;and next followed the destruction of the revolutionary system,the Girondin decentralization and the resuscitation of departmentalgovernments; the reform of the Revolutionary Tribunalon the 10th of August; the suppression of the Commune ofParis on the 1st of September, and of the salary of forty sousgiven to members of the sections; the abolition of the maximum,the suppression of the Guillotine, the opening of the prisons,the closing of the Jacobin club (November 11), and the henceforwardinsignificant existence of the popular societies.
Power reverted to the Girondins and Dantonists, who re-enteredthe Convention on the 18th of December; but withthem re-entered likewise the royalists of Lyons,Marseilles and Toulon, and further, after the peace ofBasel, many young men set free from the army, hostileResuscitation of the royalist party.to the Jacobins and defenders of the now moderateand peace-making Convention. These muscadins and incroyables,led by Fréron, Tallien and Barras—former revolutionistswho had become aristocrats—profited by the restoredliberty of the press to prepare for days of battle in the salonsof the merveilleuses Madame Tallien, Madame de Staël andMadame Récamier, as the sans-culottes had formerly done inthe clubs. The remnants of Robespierre’s faction becamealarmed at this Thermidor reaction, in which they scentedroyalism. Aided by famine, by the suppression of the maximum,and by the imminent bankruptcy of the assignats, they endeavouredto arouse the working classes and the former Hanriotcompanies against a government which was trying to destroy therepublic, and had broken the busts of Marat and guillotinedCarrier and Fouquier-Tinville, the former public prosecutor.Popular risings of Germinal and Prairial.Thus the risings of the 12th Germinal (April 1, 1795)and of the 1st Prairial (May 20) were economic revoltsrather than insurrections excited by the deputies of theMountain; in order to suppress them the reactionariescalled in the army. Owing to this first interventionof the troops in politics, the Committee of Public Safety, whichaimed not so much at a moderate policy as at steering a middlecourse between the Thermidorians of the Right and of the Left,was able to dispense with the latter.
The royalists now supposed that their hour had come. Inthe south, the companions of Jehu and of the Sun inaugurateda “White Terror,” which had not even the apparentexcuse of the public safety or of exasperated patriotism.At the same time they prepared for a twofold insurrectionThe white terror.against the republic—in the west with thehelp of England, and in the east with that of Austria—by anattempt to bribe General Pichegru. But though the heads ofthe government wanted to put an end to the Revolution they hadno thought of restoring the monarchy in favour of the Comte deProvence, who had taken the title of Louis XVIII. on hearingof the death of the dauphin in the Temple, and still less of bringing back the ancien régime. Hoche crushed the insurrection of theChouans and the Bretons at Quiberon on the 2nd of July 1795,and Pichegru, scared, refused to entangle himself any further.
To cut off all danger from royalists or terrorists the Conventionnow voted the Constitution of the year III.; suppressing thatof 1793, in order to counteract the terrorists, andre-establishing the bourgeois limited franchise withelection in two degrees—a less liberal arrangement thanThe constitution The 13th Vendémiaire.
of the year III.
Thus the bourgeois republic reaped the fruits of its predecessor’sexternal policy. After the freeing of the land in January 1794an impulse had been given to the spirit of conquest whichhad gradually succeeded to the disinterested fever ofpropaganda and overheated patriotism. This it wasMilitary achievements of Treaty of Basel.
the convention.
The work of internal construction amidst this continued battleagainst the whole world had been no less remarkable. TheConstituent Assembly had been more destructive thanconstructive; but the Convention preserved intactthose fundamental principles of civil liberty whichInternal achievements.had been the main results of the Revolution: theequality so dear to the French, and the sovereignty of thepeople—the foundation of democracy. It also managed toengage private interests in state reform by creating the GrandLivre de la Dette Publique (September 13–26, 1793), and enlistedpeasant and bourgeois savings in social reforms by the distributionand sale of national property. But with views reachingbeyond equality of rights to a certain equality of property, thecommittees, as regards legislation, poor relief and instruction,laid down principles which have never been realized, save inthe matter of the metric system; so that the Convention whichwas dispersed on the 16th of October 1795 made a greaterimpression on political history and social ideas than on institutions.Its disappearance left a great blank.
During four years the Directory attempted to fill this blank.Being the outcome of the Constitution of the year III., it shouldhave been the organizing and pacifying governmentof the Republic; in reality it sought not to create, butto preserve its own existence. Its internal weakness,The Directory.between the danger of anarchy and the opposition of the monarchists,was extreme; and it soon became discredited by its owncoups d’état and by financial impotence in the eyes of a nationsick of revolution, aspiring towards peace and the resumptionof economic undertakings. As to foreign affairs, its aggressivepolicy imperilled the conquests that had been the glory of theConvention, and caused the frontiers of France, the defence ofwhich had been a point of honour with the Republic, to be calledin question. Finally, there was no real government on the partof the five directors: La Révellière-Lépeaux, an honest manbut weak; Reubell, the negotiator of the Hague; Letourneur,an officer of talent; Barras, a man of intrigue, corrupt andwithout real convictions; and Carnot, the only really worthymember. They never understood one another, and never consultedtogether in hours of danger, save to embroil matters inpolitics as in war. Leaning on the bourgeois, conservative,liberal and anti-clerical republicans, they were no more ablethan was the Thermidor party to re-establish the freedom thathad been suspended by revolutionary despotism; they createda ministry of police, interdicted the clubs and popular societies,distracted the press, and with partiality undertook the separationof Church and State voted on the 18th of September 1794.Their real defence against counter revolution was the army;but, by a further contradiction, they reinforced the army attachedto the Revolution while seeking an alliance with the peacemakingbourgeoisie. Their party had therefore no more hom*ogeneitythan had their policy.
Moreover the Directory could not govern alone; it had torely upon two other parties, according to circ*mstances: therepublican-democrats and the disguised royalists.The former, purely anti-royalist, thought only ofremedying the sufferings of the people. Roused byThe parties.the collapse of the assignats, following upon the ruin of industryand the arrest of commerce, they were still further exasperatedby the speculations of the financiers, by the jobbery whichprevailed throughout the administration, and by the sale ofnational property which had profited hardly any but thebourgeoisie. After the 13th Vendémiaire the royalists too,deceived in their hopes, were expecting to return gradually tothe councils, thanks to the high property qualification for thefranchise. Under the name of “moderates” they demandedan end to this war which England continued and Austriathreatened to recommence, and that the Directory from self-interestedmotives refused to conclude; they desired theabandonment of revolutionary proceedings, order in financeand religious peace.
The Directory, then, was in a minority in the country, andhad to be ever on the alert against faction; all possible methodsseemed legitimate, and during two years appearedsuccessful. Order was maintained in France, even theroyalist west being pacified, thanks to Hoche, whoStruggle against the royalists. Struggle against the republican democrats and the socialists. Babeuf.
The liquidation of the financial inheritance of the Conventionwas no less difficult. The successive issues of assignats, and themultiplication of counterfeits made abroad, had sodepreciated this paper money that an assignat of 100francs was in February 1796 worth only 30 centimes;Financial policy
of the Directory.while the government, obliged to accept them at theirnominal value, no longer collected any taxes and could not paysalaries. The destruction of the plate for printing assignats,on the 18th of February 1796, did not prevent the drop in theforty milliards still in circulation. Territorial mandates werenow tried, which inspired no greater confidence, but served toliquidate two-thirds of the debt, the remaining third being consolidatedby its dependence on the Grand Livre (September 30,1797). This widespread bankruptcy, falling chiefly on thebourgeoisie, inaugurated a reaction which lasted until 1830against the chief principle of the Constituent Assembly, whichhad favoured indirect taxation as producing a large sum withoutimposing any very obvious burden. The bureaucrats of the oldsystem—having returned to their offices and being used to theseindirect taxes—lent their assistance, and thus the Directory wasenabled to maintain its struggle against the Coalition.
All system in finance having disappeared, war provided theDirectory, now in extremis, with a treasury, and was its onlysource for supplying constitutional needs; while itopened a path to the military commanders who wereto be the support and the glory of the state. EnglandExternal policy.remaining invulnerable in her insular position despite Hoche’sattempt to land in Ireland in 1796, the Directory resumed thetraditional policy against Austria of conquering the naturalfrontiers, Carnot furnishing the plans; hence the war in southernGermany, in which Jourdan and Moreau were repulsed by aninferior force under the archduke Charles, and Bonaparte’striumphant Italian campaign. Chief of an army that he hadmade irresistible, not by honour but by glory, and master ofwealth by rapine, Bonaparte imposed his will upon the Directory,which he provided with funds. After having separated the Piedmontesefrom the Austrians, whom he drove back into Tyrol, andrepulsed offensive reprisals of Wurmser and Alvinzi on four occasions,he stopped short at the preliminary negotiations of Léobenjust at the moment when the Directory, discouraged by theproblem of Italian reconstitution, was preparing the army of theRhine to re-enter the field under the command of Hoche. Bonapartethus gained the good opinion of peace-loving Frenchmen;he partitioned Venetian territory with Austria, contrary to Frenchinterests but conformably with his own in Italy, and henceforwardwas the decisive factor in French and European policy, likeCaesar or Pompey of old. England, in consternation, offeredin her turn to negotiate at Lille.
These military successes did not prevent the Directory, likethe Thermidorians, from losing ground in the country. Everystrategic truce since 1795 had been marked by a politicalcrisis; peace reawakened opposition. The constitutionalparty, royalist in reality, had made alarmingStruggle against
the royalists.progress, chiefly owing to the Babouvist conspiracy;they now tried to corrupt the republican generals, and Condéprocured the treachery of Pichegru, Kellermann and GeneralFerrand at Besançon. Moreover, their Clichy club, directedby the abbé Brottier, manipulated Parisian opinion; whilemany of the refractory priests, having returned after the liberalPublic Worship Act of September 1795, made active propagandaagainst the principles of the Revolution, and plotted the fallof the Directory as maintaining the State’s independence of theChurch. Thus the partial elections of the year V. (May 20,1797) had brought back into the two councils a counter-revolutionarymajority of royalists, constitutionalists of 1791, Catholicsand moderates. The Director Letourneur had been replacedby Barthélemy, who had negotiated the treaty of Basel and wasa constitutional monarchist. So that the executive not onlyfound it impossible to govern, owing to the opposition of thecouncils and a vehement press-campaign, but was distractedby ceaseless internal conflict. Carnot and Barthélemy wishedto meet ecclesiastical opposition by legal measures only, anddemanded peace; while Barras, La Révellière and Reubellsaw no other remedy save military force. The attempt of thecounter-revolutionaries to make an army for themselves out ofthe guard of the Legislative Assembly, and the success of theCatholics, who had managed at the end of August 1797 to repealthe laws against refractory priests, determined the Directoryto appeal from the rebellious parliament to the ready swords ofAugereau and Bernadotte. On the 18th Fructidor (September18th Fructidor.4, 1797) Bonaparte’s lieutenants, backed up by thewhole army, stopped the elections in forty-ninedepartments, and deported to Guiana many deputiesof both councils, journalists and non-juring priests, aswell as the director Barthélemy, though Carnot escaped intoSwitzerland. The royalist party was once more overthrown,but with it the republican constitution itself. Thus every actof violence still further confirmed the new empire of the armyand the defeat of principles, preparing the way for militarydespotism.
Political and financial coups d’état were not enough for thedirectors. In order to win back public opinion, tired of internecinequarrels and sickened by the scandalousimmorality of the generals and of those in power,and to remove from Paris an army which after havingAggressive policy
of the Directory.given them a fresh lease of life was now a menace tothem, war appeared their only hopeful course. They attemptedto renew the designs of Louis XIV. and anticipate those ofNapoleon. But Bonaparte saw what they were planning; andto the rupture of the negotiations at Lille and an order for theresumption of hostilities he responded by a fresh act of disobedienceand the infliction on the Directory of the peace ofCampo-Formio, on October 17, 1797. The directors were consoledfor this enforced peace by acquiring the left bank of theRhine and Belgium, and for the forfeiture of republican principlesby attaining what had for so long been the ambition of themonarchy. But the army continued a menace. To avoiddisbanding it, which might, as after the peace of Basel, havegiven the counter-revolution further auxiliaries, the Directoryappointed Bonaparte chief of the Army of England, and employedJourdan to revise the conscription laws so as to make militaryservice a permanent duty of the citizen, since war was now to bethe permanent object of policy. The Directory finally conceivedthe gigantic project of bolstering up the French Republic—thetriumph of which was celebrated by the peace of Campo-Formio—byforming the neighbouring weak states into tributaryvassal republics. This system had already been applied to theBatavian republic in 1795, to the Ligurian and Cisalpine republicsin June 1797; it was extended to that of Mülhausen on the 28thof January 1798, to the Roman republic in February, to theHelvetian in April, while the Parthenopaean republic (Naples)was to be established in 1799. This was an international coup deforce, which presupposed that all these nations in whose eyesindependence was flaunted would make no claim to enjoy it;that though they had been beaten and pillaged they would notlearn to conquer in their turn; and that the king of Sardinia,dispossessed of Milan, the grand-duke of Tuscany who hadgiven refuge to the pope when driven from Rome, and theking of Naples, who had opened his ports to Nelson’s fleet,would not find allies to make a stand against this hypocriticalsystem.
What happened was exactly the contrary. Meanwhile, thearmies were kept in perpetual motion, procuring money for theimpecunious Directory, making a diversion for internaldiscontent, and also permitting of a “reversedFructidor,” against the anarchists, who had got theCoup d’état of the 22nd Floréal.upper hand in the partial elections of May 1798.The social danger was averted in its turn after the clericaldanger had been dissipated. The next task was to relieveParis of Bonaparte, who had already refused to repeatHoche’s unhappy expedition to Ireland and to attack Englandat home without either money or a navy. The pecuniary resources of Berne and the wealth of Rome fortunately tidedover the financial difficulty and provided for the expeditionto Egypt, which permitted Bonaparte to wait“for the fruit to ripen”—i.e. till the Directoryshould be ruined in the eyes of France and of allBonaparte in Egypt. The second coalition.
Although Brune and Masséna retrieved the fight at Bergenand Zürich, and although the Allies lingered on the frontier asthey had done after Valmy, still the fortunes of theDirectory were not restored. Success was reservedfor Bonaparte, suddenly landing at Fréjus with theCoup d’état of the 18th Brumaire.prestige of his victories in the East, and now, afterHoche’s death, appearing as sole master of the armies.He manœuvred among the parties as on the 13th Vendémiaire.On the 18th Brumaire of the year VIII. France andthe army fell together at his feet. By a twofold coup d’état,parliamentary and military, he culled the fruits of the Directory’ssystematic aggression and unpopularity, and realized theuniversal desires of the rich bourgeoisie, tired of warfare; ofthe wretched populace; of landholders, afraid of a return to theold order of things; of royalists, who looked upon Bonaparteas a future Monk; of priests and their people, who hoped for anindulgent treatment of Catholicism; and finally of the immensemajority of the French, who love to be ruled and for long hadhad no efficient government. There was hardly any one to defenda liberty which they had never known. France had, indeed,remained monarchist at heart for all her revolutionary appearance;and Bonaparte added but a name, though an illustriousone, to the series of national or local dictatorships, which, afterthe departure of the weak Louis XVI., had maintained a sortof informal republican royalty.
On the night of the 19th Brumaire a mere ghost of anAssembly abolished the constitution of the year III., ordainedthe provisionary Consulate, and legalized the coupd’état in favour of Bonaparte. A striking and singularevent; for the history of France and a great partThe Consulate, Sept. 11, 1799–May 18, 1804.of Europe was now for fifteen years to be summedup in the person of a single man (see Napoleon).
This night of Brumaire, however, seemed to be a victory forSieyès rather than for Bonaparte. He it was who originatedthe project which the legislative commissions, charged withelaborating the new constitution, had to discuss. Bonaparte’scleverness lay in opposing Daunou’s plan to that of Sieyès, andThe constitution of the year VIII.in retaining only those portions of both which could serve hisambition. Parliamentary institutions annulled by thecomplication of three assemblies—the Council of Statewhich drafted bills, the Tribunate which discussedthem without voting them, and the LegislativeAssembly which voted them without discussing them; popularsuffrage, mutilated by the lists of notables (on which the membersof the Assemblies were to be chosen by the conservative senate);and the triple executive authority of the consuls, elected for tenyears: all these semblances of constitutional authority wereadopted by Bonaparte. But he abolished the post of GrandElector, which Sieyès had reserved for himself, in order toreinforce the real authority of the First Consul himself—byleaving the two other consuls, Cambacérès and Lebrun, as well asthe Assemblies, equally weak. Thus the aristocratic constitutionof Sieyès was transformed into an unavowed dictatorship, apublic ratification of which the First Consul obtained by a thirdcoup d’état from the intimidated and yet reassured electors-reassuredby his dazzling but unconvincing offers of peace to thevictorious Coalition (which repulsed them), by the rapid disarmamentof La Vendée, and by the proclamations in whichhe filled the ears of the infatuated people with the new talk ofstability of government, order, justice and moderation. He gaveevery one a feeling that France was governed once more by areal statesman, that a pilot was at the helm.
Bonaparte had now to rid himself of Sieyès and those republicanswho had no desire to hand over the republic to oneman, particularly of Moreau and Masséna, his military rivals.The victory of Marengo (June 14, 1800) momentarily in thebalance, but secured by Desaix and Kellermann, offered a furtheropportunity to his jealous ambition by increasing his popularity.The royalist plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise (December 24, 1800)allowed him to make a clean sweep of the democratic republicans,who despite their innocence were deported to Guiana, and toannul Assemblies that were a mere show by making the senateomnipotent in constitutional matters; but it was necessaryfor him to transform this deceptive truce into the generalpacification so ardently desired for the last eight years. Thetreaty of Lunéville, signed in February 1801 with Austria whohad been disarmed by Moreau’s victory at Hohenlinden, restoredpeace to the continent, gave nearly the whole of Italy to France,and permitted Bonaparte to eliminate from the Assembliesall the leaders of the opposition in the discussion of the CivilCode. The Concordat (July 1801), drawn up not in the Church’sinterest but in that of his own policy, by giving satisfactionto the religious feeling of the country, allowed him to put downthe constitutional democratic Church, to rally round him theconsciences of the peasants, and above all to deprive the royalistsof their best weapon. The “Articles Organiques” hid fromthe eyes of his companions in arms and councillors a reactionwhich, in fact if not in law, restored to a submissive Church,despoiled of her revenues, her position as the religion of the state.The Consulate.The peace of Amiens with England (March 1802),of which France’s allies, Spain and Holland, paid allthe costs, finally gave the peacemaker a pretext forendowing himself with a Consulate, not for ten years but for life,as a recompense from the nation. The Rubicon was crossedon that day: Bonaparte’s march to empire began with theconstitution of the year X. (August 1802).
Before all things it was now necessary to reorganize France,ravaged as she was by the Revolution, and with her institutionsin a state of utter corruption. The touch of the masterwas at once revealed to all the foreigners who rushedto gaze at the man about whom, after so many catastrophesInternal reorganization.and strange adventures, Paris, “la ville lumière,”and all Europe were talking. First of all, Louis XV.’s systemof roads was improved and that of Louis XVI.’s canals developed;then industry put its shoulder to the wheel; order and disciplinewere re-established everywhere, from the frontiers to the capital,and brigandage suppressed; and finally there was Paris, thecity of cities! Everything was in process of transformation: a second Rome was arising, with its forum, its triumphal arches,its shows and parades; and in this new Rome of a new Caesarfancy, elegance and luxury, a radiance of art and learningfrom the age of Pericles, and masterpieces rifled from the Netherlands,Italy and Egypt illustrated the consular peace. TheMan of Destiny renewed the course of time. He borrowed fromthe ancien régime its plenipotentiaries; its over-centralized,strictly utilitarian administrative and bureaucratic methods;and afterwards, in order to bring them into line, the subservientpedantic scholasticism of its university. On the basis laid downby the Constituent Assembly and the Convention he constructedor consolidated the funds necessary for national institutions,local governments, a judiciary system, organs of finance, banking,codes, traditions of conscientious well-disciplined labour, andin short all the organization which for three-quarters of a centurywas to maintain and regulate the concentrated activity of theFrench nation (see the section Law and Institutions). Peace andorder helped to raise the standard of comfort. Provisions, inthis Paris which had so often suffered from hunger and thirst,and lacked fire and light, had become cheap and abundant;while trade prospered and wages ran high. The pomp andluxury of the nouveaux riches were displayed in the salons of thegood Joséphine, the beautiful Madame Tallien, and the “divine”Juliette Récamier.
But the republicans, and above all the military, saw in all thislittle but the fetters of system; the wily despotism, the bullyingpolice, the prostration before authority, the sympathylavished on royalists, the recall of the émigrés, thecontempt for the Assemblies, the purification of theThe republican opposition.Tribunate, the platitudes of the servile Senate, thesilence of the press. In the formidable machinery of state, aboveall in the creation of the Legion of Honour, the Concordat, andthe restoration of indirect taxes, they saw the rout of the Revolution.But the expulsion of persons like Benjamin Constantand Madame de Staël sufficed to quell this Fronde of the salons.The expedition to San Domingo reduced the republican armyto a nullity; war demoralized or scattered the leaders, who werejealous of their “comrade” Bonaparte; and Moreau, the lastof his rivals, cleverly compromised in a royalist plot, as Dantonhad formerly been by Robespierre, disappeared into exile. Incontradistinction to this opposition of senators and republicangenerals, the immense mass of the people received the ineffaceableimpression of Bonaparte’s superiority. No suggestion of thepossibility of his death was tolerated, of a crime which mightcut short his career. The conspiracy of Cadoudal and Pichegru,after Bonaparte’s refusal to give place to Louis XVIII., and thepolitical execution of the duc d’Enghien, provoked an outburstof adulation, of which Bonaparte took advantage to put thecrowning touch to his ambitious dream.
The decision of the senate on the 18th of May 1804, givinghim the title of emperor, was the counterblast to the dreadhe had excited. Thenceforward “the brow of theemperor broke through the thin mask of the FirstConsul.” Never did a harder master ordain moreNapoleon emperor May 18, 1804–April 6, 1814.imperiously, nor understand better how to commandobedience. “This was because,” as Goethe said,“under his orders men were sure of accomplishingtheir ends. That is why they rallied round him, as one to inspirethem with that kind of certainty.” Indeed no man ever concentratedauthority to such a point, nor showed mental abilitiesat all comparable to his: an extraordinary power of work,prodigious memory for details and fine judgment in their selection;together with a luminous decision and a simple and rapidconception, all placed at the disposal of a sovereign will. Nohead of the state gave expression more imperiously than thisItalian to the popular passions of the French of that day:abhorrence for the emigrant nobility, fear of the ancien régime,dislike of foreigners, hatred of England, an appetite for conquestevoked by revolutionary propaganda, and the love of glory.In this Napoleon was a soldier of the people: because of this hejudged and ruled his contemporaries. Having seen their actionsin the stormy hours of the Revolution, he despised them andlooked upon them as incapable of disinterested conduct, conceited,and obsessed by the notion of equality. Hence hiscolossal egoism, his habitual disregard of others, his jealouspassion for power, his impatience of all contradiction, his vainuntruthful boasting, his unbridled self-sufficiency and lack ofmoderation—passions which were gradually to cloud his clearfaculty of reasoning. His genius, assisted by the impoverishmentof two generations, was like the oak which admits beneathits shade none but the smallest of saplings. With the exceptionof Talleyrand, after 1808 he would have about him only mediocrepeople, without initiative, prostrate at the feet of the giant:his tribe of paltry, rapacious and embarrassing Corsicans; hisadmirably subservient generals; his selfish ministers, docileagents, apprehensive of the future, who for fourteen long yearsfelt a prognostication of defeat and discounted the inevitablecatastrophe.
So France had no internal history outside the plans andtransformations to which Napoleon subjected the institutionsof the Consulate, and the after-effects of his wars. Well knowingthat his fortunes rested on the delighted acquiescence of France,Napoleon expected to continue indefinitely fashioning publicopinion according to his pleasure. To his contempt for menhe added that of all ideas which might put a bridle on his ambition;and to guard against them, he inaugurated the GoldenAge of the police that he might tame every moral force to hishand. Being essentially a man of order, he loathed, as he said,all demagogic action, Jacobinism and visions of liberty, whichhe desired only for himself. To make his will predominant, hestifled or did violence to that of others, through his bishops, hisgendarmes, his university, his press, his catechism. Nourishedlike Frederick II. and Catherine the Great in 18th-century maxims,neither he nor they would allow any of that ideology to filterthrough into their rough but regular ordering of mankind. Thusthe whole political system, being summed up in the emperor,was bound to share his fall.
Although an enemy of idealogues, in his foreign policy Napoleonwas haunted by grandiose visions. A condottiere of the Renaissanceliving in the 19th century, he used France, andall those nations annexed or attracted by the Revolution,to resuscitate the Roman conception of theNapoleon’s political idea.Empire for his own benefit. On the other hand, he wasenslaved by the history and aggressive idealism of the Convention,and of the republican propaganda under the Directory;he was guided by them quite as much as he guided them. Hencethe immoderate extension given to French activity by his classicalLatin spirit; hence also his conquests, leading on from one toanother, and instead of being mutually helpful interfering witheach other; hence, finally, his not entirely coherent policy,interrupted by hesitation and counter-attractions. This explainsthe retention of Italy, imposed on the Directory from 1796 onward,followed by his criminal treatment of Venice, the foundationof the Cisalpine republic—a foretaste of future annexations—therestoration of that republic after his return from Egypt, andin view of his as yet inchoate designs, the postponed solutionof the Italian problem which the treaty of Lunéville had raised.
Marengo inaugurated the political idea which was to continueits development until his Moscow campaign. Napoleon dreamedas yet only of keeping the duchy of Milan, setting aside Austria,and preparing some new enterprise in the East or in Egypt.The peace of Amiens, which cost him Egypt, could only seem tohim a temporary truce; whilst he was gradually extending hisauthority in Italy, the cradle of his race, by the union of Piedmont,and by his tentative plans regarding Genoa, Parma,Tuscany and Naples. He wanted to make this his CisalpineGaul, laying siege to the Roman state on every hand, and preparingin the Concordat for the moral and material servitude ofthe pope. When he recognized his error in having raised thepapacy from decadence by restoring its power over all thechurches, he tried in vain to correct it by the Articles Organiques—wanting,like Charlemagne, to be the legal protector of thepope, and eventually master of the Church. To conceal his planhe aroused French colonial aspirations against England, and also the memory of the spoliations of 1763, exasperating Englishjealousy of France, whose borders now extended to the Rhine,and laying hands on Hanover, Hamburg and Cuxhaven. By the“Recess” of 1803, which brought to his side Bavaria, Württembergand Baden, he followed up the overwhelming tide of revolutionaryideas in Germany, to stem which Pitt, back in power,appealed once more to an Anglo-Austro-Russian coalition againstthis new Charlemagne, who was trying to renew the old Empire,who was mastering France, Italy and Germany; who finally onthe 2nd of December 1804 placed the imperial crown upon hishead, after receiving the iron crown of the Lombard kings, andmade Pius VII. consecrate him in Notre-Dame.
After this, in four campaigns from 1805 to 1809, Napoleontransformed his Carolingian feudal and federal empire into onemodelled on the Roman empire. The memories of imperialRome were for a third time, after Caesar and Charlemagne, tomodify the historical evolution of France. Though the vagueplan for an invasion of England fell to the ground Ulm andAusterlitz obliterated Trafalgar, and the camp at Boulogne putthe best military resources he had ever commanded at Napoleon’sdisposal.
In the first of these campaigns he swept away the remnantsof the old Roman-Germanic empire, and out of its shatteredfragments created in southern Germany the vassalstates of Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadtand Saxony, which he attached to FranceTreaty of Presburg, 1805.under the name of the Confederation of the Rhine;but the treaty of Presburg gave France nothing but thedanger of a more centralized and less docile Germany. Onthe other hand, Napoleon’s creation of the kingdom of Italy,his annexation of Venetia and her ancient Adriatic empire—wipingout the humiliation of 1797—and the occupation ofAncona, marked a new stage in his progress towards his RomanEmpire. His good fortune soon led him from conquest tospoliation, and he complicated his master-idea of the grandempire by his Family Compact; the clan of the Bonapartesinvaded European monarchies, wedding with princesses of blood-royal,and adding kingdom to kingdom. Joseph replaced thedispossessed Bourbons at Naples; Louis was installed on thethrone of Holland; Murat became grand-duke of Berg, Jeromeson-in-law to the king of Württemberg, and Eugène de Beauharnaisto the king of Bavaria; while Stéphanie de Beauhamaismarried the son of the grand-duke of Baden.
Meeting with less and less resistance, Napoleon went still furtherand would tolerate no neutral power. On the 6th of August 1806he forced the Habsburgs, left with only the crown ofAustria, to abdicate their Roman-Germanic title ofemperor. Prussia alone remained outside the Confederation ofJena.
Eylau and Friedland.
Peace of Tilsit, July 8, 1807.
Continental blockade.the Rhine, of which Napoleon was Protector, and to further herdecision he offered her English Hanover. In a second campaignhe destroyed at Jena both the army and the state of FrederickWilliam III., who could not make up his mind between theNapoleonic treaty of Schönbrunn and Russia’s counter-proposalat Potsdam (October 14, 1806). The butchery at Eylau and thevengeance taken at Friedland finally ruined Frederickthe Great’s work, and obliged Russia, the ally ofEngland and Prussia, to allow the latter to be despoiled,and to join Napoleon against the maritime tyranny of the former.After Tilsit, however (July 1807), instead of trying to reconcileEurope to his grandeur, Napoleon had but one thought:to make use of his success to destroy England andcomplete his Italian dominion. It was from Berlin,on the 21st of November 1806, that he had dated thefirst decree of a continental blockade, a monstrous conceptionintended to paralyze his inveterate rival, but which on the contrarycaused his own fall by its immoderate extensionof the empire. To the coalition of the northern powershe added the league of the Baltic and Mediterraneanports, and to the bombardment of Copenhagen by anEnglish fleet he responded by a second decree of blockade, datedfrom Milan on the 17th of December 1807.
But the application of the Concordat and the taking of Naplesled to the first of those struggles with the pope, in which wereformulated two antagonistic doctrines: Napoleon declaringhimself Roman emperor, and Pius VII. renewing the theocraticaffirmations of Gregory VII. The former’s Roman ambition wasmade more and more plainly visible by the occupation of thekingdom of Naples and of the Marches, and the entry of Miollis intoRome; while Junot invaded Portugal, Radet laid hands on thepope himself, and Murat took possession of formerly Roman Spain,whither Joseph was afterwards to be transferred. But Napoleonlittle knew the flame he was kindling. No more far-seeing thanthe Directory or the men of the year III., he thought that, withenergy and execution, he might succeed in the Peninsula as hehad succeeded in Italy in 1796 and 1797, in Egypt, and in Hesse,and that he might cut into Spanish granite as into Italian mosaicor “that big cake, Germany.” He stumbled unawares upon therevolt of a proud national spirit, evolved through ten historiccenturies; and the trap of Bayonne, together with the enthroningof Joseph Bonaparte, made the contemptible prince of theAsturias the elect of popular sentiment, the representative ofreligion and country.
Napoleon thought he had Spain within his grasp, and nowsuddenly everything was slipping from him. The Peninsulabecame the grave of whole armies and a battlefieldfor England. Dupont capitulated at Bailen into thehands of Castaños, and Junot at Cintra to Wellesley; whileBailen.Europe trembled at this first check to the hitherto invincibleimperial armies. To reduce Spanish resistance Napoleon had inhis turn to come to terms with the tsar Alexander at Erfurt;so that abandoning his designs in the East, he could make theGrand Army evacuate Prussia and return in force to Madrid.
Thus Spain swallowed up the soldiers who were wanted forNapoleon’s other fields of battle, and they had to be replacedby forced levies. Europe had only to wait, and hewould eventually be found disarmed in face of a lastcoalition; but Spanish heroism infected Austria, and showedWagram.the force of national resistance. The provocations of Talleyrandand England strengthened the illusion: Why should notthe Austrians emulate the Spaniards? The campaign of 1809,however, was but a pale copy of the Spanish insurrection. Aftera short and decisive action in Bavaria, Napoleon opened up theroad to Vienna for a second time; and after the two days’ battleat Essling, the stubborn fight at Wagram, the failure of a patrioticinsurrection in northern Germany and of the English expeditionagainst Antwerp, the treaty of Vienna (December 14, 1809), withPeace of Vienna.the annexation of the Illyrian provinces, completedthe colossal empire. Napoleon profited, in fact, by thiscampaign which had been planned for his overthrow.The pope was deported to Savona beneath the eyes of indifferentEurope, and his domains were incorporated in the Empire; thesenate’s decision on the 17th of February 1810 created the titleof king of Rome, and made Rome the capital of Italy. The popebanished, it was now desirable to send away those to whom Italyhad been more or less promised. Eugène de Beauharnais,Napoleon’s stepson, was transferred to Frankfort, and Muratcarefully watched until the time should come to take him toRussia and instal him as king of Poland. Between 1810 and1812 Napoleon’s divorce of Joséphine, and his marriage withMarie Louise of Austria, followed by the birth of the king ofRome, shed a brilliant light upon his future policy. He renounceda federation in which his brothers were not sufficiently docile; hegradually withdrew power from them; he concentrated all hisaffection and ambition on the son who was the guarantee of thecontinuance of his dynasty. This was the apogee of his reign.
But undermining forces were already at work: the faults inherentin his unwieldy achievement. England, his chief enemy,was persistently active; and rebellion both of thegoverning and the governed broke out everywhere.Napoleon felt his impotence in coping with the SpanishBeginning of the end. Uprising of nationalism.insurrection, which he underrated, while yet unableto suppress it altogether. Men like Stein, Hardenbergand Scharnhorst were secretly preparing Prussia’sretaliation. Napoleon’s material omnipotence could not stand against the moral force of the pope, a prisoner at Fontainebleau;and this he did not realize. The alliance arranged at Tilsit wasseriously shaken by the Austrian marriage, the threat of aPolish restoration, and the unfriendly policy of Napoleon at Constantinople.The very persons whom he had placed in power werecounteracting his plans: after four years’ experience Napoleonfound himself obliged to treat his Corsican dynasties like thoseof the ancien régime, and all his relations were betraying him.Caroline conspired against her brother and against her husband;the hypochondriacal Louis, now Dutch in his sympathies, foundthe supervision of the blockade taken from him, and also thedefence of the Scheldt, which he had refused to ensure; Jerome,idling in his harem, lost that of the North Sea shores; and Joseph,who was attempting the moral conquest of Spain, was continuallyinsulted at Madrid. The very nature of things was against thenew dynasties, as it had been against the old.
After national insurrections and family recriminations cametreachery from Napoleon’s ministers. Talleyrand betrayed hisdesigns to Metternich, and had to be dismissed;Fouché corresponded with Austria in 1809 and 1810,entered into an understanding with Louis, and also with England;Treachery.while Bourrienne was convicted of peculation. By a natural consequenceof the spirit of conquest he had aroused, all these parvenus,having tasted victory, dreamed of sovereign power:Bernadotte, who had helped him to the Consulate, playedNapoleon false to win the crown of Sweden; Soult, like Murat,coveted the Spanish throne after that of Portugal, thus anticipatingthe treason of 1813 and the defection of 1814; many personshoped for “an accident” which might resemble the tragic end ofAlexander and of Caesar. The country itself, besides, thoughflattered by conquests, was tired of self-sacrifice. It had becomesatiated; “the cry of the mothers rose threateningly” against“the Ogre” and his intolerable imposition of wholesale conscription.The soldiers themselves, discontented after Austerlitz,cried out for peace after Eylau. Finally, amidst profound silencefrom the press and the Assemblies, a protest was raised againstimperial despotism by the literary world, against the excommunicatedsovereign by Catholicism, and against the authorof the continental blockade by the discontented bourgeoisie,ruined by the crisis of 1811.
Napoleon himself was no longer the General Bonaparte of hiscampaign in Italy. He was already showing signs of physicaldecay; the Roman medallion profile had coarsened,the obese body was often lymphatic. Mental degeneration,too, betrayed itself in an unwonted irresolution.Degeneration
of Napoleon.At Eylau, at Wagram, and later at Waterloo, his methodof acting by enormous masses of infantry and cavalry, in a madpassion for conquest, and his misuse of his military resources,were all signs of his moral and technical decadence; and thisat the precise moment when, instead of the armies and governmentsof the old system, which had hitherto reigned supreme,the nations themselves were rising against France, and the eventsof 1792 were being avenged upon her. The three campaigns oftwo years brought the final catastrophe.
Napoleon had hardly succeeded in putting down the revoltin Germany when the tsar himself headed a European insurrectionagainst the ruinous tyranny of the continentalblockade. To put a stop to this, to ensure his ownaccess to the Mediterranean and exclude his chiefRussian campaign.rival, Napoleon made a desperate effort in 1812 against a countryas invincible as Spain. Despite his victorious advance, thetaking of Smolensk, the victory on the Moskwa, and the entryinto Moscow, he was vanquished by Russian patriotism andreligious fervour, by the country and the climate, and byAlexander’s refusal to make terms. After this came the lamentableretreat, while all Europe was concentrating against him.Pushed back, as he had been in Spain, from bastion to bastion,after the action on the Beresina, Napoleon had to fall backupon the frontiers of 1809, and then—having refused the peaceoffered him by Austria at the congress of Prague, from a dread oflosing Italy, where each of his victories had marked a stage inthe accomplishment of his dream—on those of 1805, despiteLützen and Bautzen, and on those of 1802 after his defeat atLeipzig, where Bernadotte turned upon him, Moreau figuredCampaigns of
1813–14.among the Allies, and the Saxons and Bavariansforsook him. Following his retreat from Russia camehis retreat from Germany. After the loss of Spain,reconquered by Wellington, the rising in Holland preliminaryto the invasion and the manifesto of Frankfort whichproclaimed it, he had to fall back upon the frontiers of 1795;and then later was driven yet farther back upon those of 1792,despite the wonderful campaign of 1814 against the invaders, inwhich the old Bonaparte of 1796 seemed to have returned.Paris capitulated on the 30th of March, and the “DelendaCarthago,” pronounced against England, was spoken of Napoleon.The great empire of East and West fell in ruins with the emperor’sabdication at Fontainebleau.
The military struggle ended, the political struggle began.How was France to be governed? The Allies had decided onthe eviction of Napoleon at the Congress of Châtillon;and the precarious nature of the Bonapartist monarchyin France itself was made manifest by the exploit ofDownfall of
the Empire.General Malet, which had almost succeeded during theRussian campaign, and by Lainé’s demand for free exercise ofpolitical rights, when Napoleon made a last appeal to the LegislativeAssembly for support. The defection of the military andcivil aristocracy, which brought about Napoleon’s abdication,the refusal of a regency, and the failure of Bernadotte, whowished to resuscitate the Consulate, enabled Talleyrand, vice-presidentof the senate and desirous of power, to persuade theAllies to accept the Bourbon solution of the difficulty. Thedeclaration of St Ouen (May 2, 1814) indicated that the newmonarchy was only accepted upon conditions. After Napoleon’sabdication, and exile to the island of Elba, came the Revolution’sabdication of her conquests: the first treaty of Paris (May 30th)confirmed France’s renunciation of Belgium and the left bank ofthe Rhine, and her return within her pre-revolutionary frontiers,save for some slight rectifications.
After the scourge of war, the horrors of conscription, and thedespotism which had discounted glory, every one seemed torejoice in the return of the Bourbons, which atoned forhumiliations by restoring liberty. But questions ofform, which aroused questions of sentiment, speedilyFaults of the Bourbons.led to grave dissensions. The hurried armistice ofthe 23rd of April, by which the comte d’Artois delivered overdisarmed France to her conquerors; Louis XVIII.’s excessivegratitude to the prince regent of England; the return of theémigrés; the declaration of St Ouen, dated from the nineteenthyear of the new reign; the charter of June 4th, “concédée etoctroyée,” maintaining the effete doctrine of legitimacy in acountry permeated with the idea of national sovereignty; theslights put upon the army; the obligatory processions orderedby Comte Beugnot, prefect of police; all this provoked aconflict not only between two theories of government butbetween two groups of men and of interests. An avowedlyimperialist party was soon again formed, a centre of heatedopposition to the royalist party; and neither Baron Louis’excellent finance, nor the peace, nor the charter of June 4th—whichdespite the irritation of the émigrés preserved the civilgains of the Revolution—prevented the man who was its incarnationfrom seizing an opportunity to bring about anothermilitary coup d’état. Having landed in the Bay of Jouan onthe 1st of March, on the 20th Napoleon re-entered the Tuileriesin triumph, while Louis XVIII. fled to Ghent. By the Acteadditionnel of the 22nd of April he induced Carnot and Fouché—theThe Hundred Days. March–June 1815.last of the Jacobins—and the heads of the Liberalopposition, Benjamin Constant and La Fayette, to sidewith him against the hostile Powers of Europe, occupiedin dividing the spoils at Vienna. He proclaimed hisintention of founding a new democratic empire; andFrench policy was thus given another illusion, whichwas to be exploited with fatal success by Napoleon’s namesake.But the cannon of Waterloo ended this adventure (June 18, 1815),and, thanks to Fouché’s treachery, the triumphal progress of Milan, Rome, Naples, Vienna, Berlin, and even of Moscow, wasto end at St Helena.
The consequences of the Hundred Days were very serious;France was embroiled with all Europe, though Talleyrand’sclever diplomacy had succeeded in causing divisionover Saxony and Poland by the secret Austro-Anglo-Frenchalliance of the 3rd of January 1815, and theLouis XVIII.Coalition destroyed both France’s political independence andnational integrity by the treaty of peace of November 20th:she found herself far weaker than before the Revolution, and inthe power of the European Alliance. The Hundred Daysdivided the nation itself into two irreconcilable parties: oneultra-royalist, eager for vengeance and retaliation, refusing toaccept the Charter; the other imperialist, composed of Bonapartistsand Republicans, incensed by their defeat—of whomBéranger was the Tyrtaeus—both parties equally revolutionaryand equally obstinate. Louis XVIII., urged by his more ferventsupporters towards the ancien régime, gave his policy an exactlycontrary direction; he had common-sense enough to maintainthe Empire’s legal and administrative tradition, accepting itsinstitutions of the Legion of Honour, the Bank, the University,and the imperial nobility—modifying only formally certainrights and the conscription, since these had aroused the nationagainst Napoleon. He even went so far as to accept advice fromthe imperial ministers Talleyrand and Fouché. Finally, as thechief political organization had become thoroughly demoralized,he imported into France the entire constitutional system ofEngland, with its three powers, king, upper hereditary chamber,and lower elected chamber; with its plutocratic electorate,and even with details like the speech from the throne, thedebate on the address, &c. This meant importing also difficultiessuch as ministerial responsibility, as well as electoral and presslegislation.
Louis XVIII., taught by time and misfortune, wished not toreign over two parties exasperated by contrary passions anddesires; but his dynasty was from the outset implicated in thestruggle, which was to be fatal to it, between old France andrevolutionary France. Anti-monarchical, liberal and anti-clericalFrance at once recommenced its revolutionary work;the whole 19th century was to be filled with great spasmodicupheavals, and Louis XVIII. was soon overwhelmed by theWhite Terrorists of 1815.
Vindictive sentences against men like Ney and Labédoyèrewere followed by violent and unpunished action by the WhiteTerror, which in the south renewed the horrors of St Bartholomewand the September massacres. The elections of August 14,1815, made under the influence of these royalist and religiouspassions, sent the “Chambre introuvable” to Paris, an unforeseenrevival of the ancien régime. Neither the substitution of theduc de Richelieu’s ministry for that of Talleyrand and Fouché,nor a whole series of repressive laws in violation of the charter,were successful in satisfying its tyrannical loyalism, and LouisXVIII. needed something like a coup d’état, in September 1816,to rid himself of the “ultras.”
He succeeded fairly well in quieting the opposition betweenthe dynasty and the constitution, until a reaction took placebetween 1820 and 1822. State departments workedregularly and well, under the direction of Decazes,Lainé, De Serre and Pasquier, power alternatingThe Constitutional party’s rule.between two great well-disciplined parties almost inthe English fashion, and many useful measures were passed:the reconstruction of finance stipulated for as a condition ofevacuation of territory occupied by foreign troops; the electorallaw of February 5, 1817, which, by means of direct electionand a qualification of three hundred francs, renewed the preponderanceof the bourgeoisie; the Gouvion St-Cyr law of1818, which for half a century based the recruiting of theFrench army on the national principle of conscription; and in1819, after Richelieu’s dismissal, liberal regulations for the pressunder control of a commission. But the advance of the Liberalmovement, and the election of the generals—Foy, Lamarque,Lafayette and of Manuel, excited the “ultras” and caused thedismissal of Richelieu; while that of the constitutional bishopGrégoire led to the modification in a reactionary direction of theelectoral law of 1817. The assassination of the duc de Berry,second son of the comte d’Artois (attributed to the influence ofLiberal ideas), caused the downfall of Decazes, and caused theking—more weak and selfish than ever—to override the charterand embark upon a reactionary path. After 1820, Madame duThe reaction of 1820.Cayla, a trusted agent of the ultra-royalist party,gained great influence over the king; and M. deVillèle, its leader, supported by the king’s brother,soon eliminated the Right Centre by the dismissalof the duc de Richelieu, who had been recalled to tide over thecrisis—just as the fall of M. Decazes had signalized the defeatof the Left Centre (December 15, 1821)—and moderate policythus received an irreparable blow.
Thenceforward the government of M. de Villèle—a cleverstatesman, but tied to his party—did nothing for six years butpromulgate a long series of measures against Liberalism and thesocial work of the Revolution; to retain power it had to yieldto the impatience of the comte d’Artois and the majority.The suspension of individual liberty, the re-establishment of thecensorship; the electoral right of the “double vote,” favouringtaxation of the most oppressive kind; and the handing overof education to the clergy: these were the first achievementsof this anti-revolutionary ministry. The Spanish expedition, inwhich M. de Villèle’s hand was forced by Montmorency andChateaubriand, was the united work of the association ofCatholic zealots known as the Congregation and of the autocraticpowers of the Grand Alliance; it was responded to—as at Naplesand in Spain—by secret Carbonari societies, and by severelyrepressed military conspiracies. Politics now bore the doubleimprint of two rival powers: the Congregation and Carbonarism.By 1824, nevertheless, the dynasty seemed firm—the SpanishWar had reconciled the army, by giving back military prestige;the Liberal opposition had been decimated; revolutionaryconspiracies discouraged; and the increase of public credit andmaterial prosperity pleased the whole nation, as was proved bythe “Chambre retrouvée” of 1824. The law of septennial electionstranquillized public life by suspending any legal or regularmanifestation by the nation for seven years.
It was the monarchy which next became revolutionary, onthe accession of Charles X. (September 16, 1824). This inconsistentprince soon exhausted his popularity, andremained the fanatical head of those émigrés who hadlearnt nothing and forgotten nothing. While the oppositionCharles X.became conservative as regards the Charter and French liberties,the king and the clerical party surrounding him challenged thespirit of modern France by a law against sacrilege, by a bill forre-establishing the right of primogeniture, by an indemnity of amilliard francs, which looked like compensation given to theémigrés, and finally by the “loi de liberté et d’amour” against thepress. The challenge was so definite that in 1826 the Chamberof Peers and the Academy had to give the Villèle ministry alesson in Liberalism, for having lent itself to this ancien régimereaction by its weakness and its party-promises. The electionsVictory of the constitutional parties, 1827.“de colère et de vengeance” of January 1827 gave the Lefta majority, and the resultant short-lived Martignacministry tried to revive the Right Centre which hadsupported Richelieu and Decazes (January 1828).Martignac’s accession to power, however, had onlymeant personal concessions from Charles X., not any concessionof principle: he supported his ministry but was no realstand-by. The Liberals, on the other hand, made bargains forsupporting the moderate royalists, and Charles X. profited bythis to form a fighting ministry in conjunction with the prince dePolignac, one of the émigrés, an ignorant and visionary person,and the comte de Bourmont, the traitor of Waterloo. Despiteall kinds of warnings, the former tried by a coup d’état to put intopractice his theories of the supremacy of the royal prerogative;and the battle of Navarino, the French occupation of the Morea,and the Algerian expedition could not make the nation forgetthis conflict at home. The united opposition of monarchist Liberals and imperialist republicans responded by legal resistance,The Revolution
of 1830.then by a popular coup d’état, to the ordinances of July1830, which dissolved the intractable Chamber, eliminatedlicensed dealers from the electoral list, andmuzzled the press. After fighting for three days againstthe troops feebly led by the Marmont of 1814, theworkmen, driven to the barricades by the deliberate closing ofLiberal workshops, gained the victory, and sent the white flagof the Bourbons on the road to exile.
The rapid success of the “Three Glorious Days” (“les TroisGlorieuses”), as the July Days were called, put the leaders of theparliamentary opposition into an embarrassing position.While they had contented themselves with words,the small Republican-Imperialist party, aided by theRepublican and Orleanist parties.almost entire absence of the army and police, and bythe convenience which the narrow, winding, paved streets of thosetimes offered for fighting, had determined upon the revolutionand brought it to pass. But the Republican party, which desiredto re-establish the Republic of 1793, recruited chiefly from amongthe students and workmen, and led by Godefroy Cavaignac,the son of a Conventionalist, and by the chemist Raspail, hadno hold on the departments nor on the dominating opinion inParis. Consequently this premature attempt was promptlyseized upon by the Liberal bourgeoisie and turned to the advantageof the Orleanist party, which had been secretly organizedsince 1829 under the leadership of Thiers, with the National as itsorgan. Before the struggle was yet over, Benjamin Constant,Casimir Périer, Lafitte, and Odilon Barrot had gone to fetchthe duke of Orleans from Neuilly, and on receiving his promiseto defend the Charter and the tricolour flag, installed him at thePalais Bourbon as lieutenant-general of the realm, while La Fayetteand the Republicans established themselves at the Hôtel de Ville.Louis Philippe.An armed conflict between the two governments wasimminent, when Lafayette, by giving his support toLouis Philippe, decided matters in his favour. Inorder to avoid a recurrence of the difficulties which had arisenwith the Bourbons, the following preliminary conditions wereimposed upon the king: the recognition of the supremacyof the people by the title of “king of the French by the grace ofGod and the will of the people,” the responsibility of ministers,the suppression of hereditary succession to the Chamber of Peers,now reduced to the rank of a council of officials, the suppression ofarticle 14 of the charter which had enabled Charles X. to supersedethe laws by means of the ordinances, and the liberty of thepress. The qualification for electors was lowered from 300 to 200francs, and that for eligibility from 1000 to 500 francs, and theage to 25 and 30 instead of 30 and 40; finally, Catholicism lostit* privileged position as the state religion. The bourgeoisNational Guard was made the guardian of the charter. Theliberal ideas of the son of Philippe Égalité, the part he had playedat Valmy and Jemappes, his gracious manner and his domesticvirtues, all united in winning Louis Philippe the good opinionof the public.
He now believed, as did indeed the great majority of theelectors, that the revolution of 1830 had changed nothing butthe head of the state. But in reality the July monarchywas affected by a fundamental weakness. It soughtto model itself upon the English monarchy, whichThe bourgeois monarchy.rested upon one long tradition. But the tradition ofFrance was both twofold and contradictory, i.e. the Catholic-legitimistand the revolutionary. Louis Philippe had themboth against him. His monarchy had but one element in commonwith the English, namely, a parliament elected by a limitedelectorate. There was at this time a cause of violent outcryagainst the English monarchy, which, on the other hand, metwith firm support among the aristocracy and the clergy. TheJuly monarchy had no such support. The aristocracy of theancien régime and of the Empire were alike without socialinfluence; the clergy, which had paid for its too close alliancewith Charles X. by a dangerous unpopularity, and foresaw therise of democracy, was turning more and more towards the people,the future source of all power. Even the monarchical principleitself had suffered from the shock, having proved by its easydefeat how far it could be brought to capitulate. Moreover,the victory of the people, who had shown themselves in the latestruggle to be brave and disinterested, had won for the idea ofnational supremacy a power which was bound to increase.The difficulty of the situation lay in the doubt as to whether thisexpansion would take place gradually and by a progressiveevolution, as in England, or not.
Now Louis Philippe, beneath the genial exterior of a bourgeoisand peace-loving king, was entirely bent upon recovering anauthority which was menaced from the very first on the onehand by the anger of the royalists at their failures, and on theother hand by the impatience of the republicans to follow uptheir victory. He wanted the insurrection to stop at a changein the reigning family, whereas it had in fact revived the revolutionarytradition, and restored to France the sympathies of thenationalities and democratic parties oppressed by Metternich’s“system.” The republican party, which had retired from powerbut not from activity, at once faced the new king with theserious problem of the acquisition of political power by thepeople, and continued to remind him of it. He put himselfat the head of the party of progress (“parti du mouvement”)as opposed to the (“parti de la cour”) court party, and of the“resistance,” which considered that it was now necessary “tocheck the revolution in order to make it fruitful, and in orderto save it.” But none of these parties were hom*ogeneous;The parties.in the chamber they split up into a republican orradical Extreme Left, led by Garnier-Pagès andArago; a dynastic Left, led by the honourable andsincere Odilon Barrot; a constitutional Right Centre andLeft Centre, differing in certain slight respects, and presidedover respectively by Thiers, a wonderful political orator, andGuizot, whose ideas were those of a strict doctrinaire; notto mention a small party which clung to the old legitimist creed,and was dominated by the famous avocat Berryer, whoseeloquence was the chief ornament of the cause of Charles X.’sgrandson, the comte de Chambord. The result was a ministerialmajority which was always uncertain; and the only occasionon which Guizot succeeded in consolidating it during seven yearsresulted in the overthrow of the monarchy.
Louis Philippe first summoned to power the leaders of theparty of “movement,” Dupont de l’Eure, and afterwardsLafitte, in order to keep control of the progressive forces forhis own ends. They wished to introduce democratic reformsand to uphold throughout Europe the revolution, which hadspread from France into Belgium, Germany, Italy and Poland,while Paris was still in a state of unrest. But Louis Philippetook fright at the attack on the Chamber of Peers after thetrial of the ministers of Charles X., at the sack of the churchof Saint Germain l’Auxerrois and the archbishop’s palace(February, 1831), and at the terrible strike of the silk weaversat Lyons. Casimir Périer, who was both a Liberal and a believerin a strong government, was then charged with the task ofheading the resistance to advanced ideas, and applying theprinciple of non-intervention in foreign affairs (March 13, 1831).After his death by cholera in May 1832, the agitation which hehad succeeded by his energy in checking at Lyons, at Grenobleand in the Vendée, where it had been stirred up by the romanticduch*ess of Berry, began to gain ground. The struggle againstthe republicans was still longer; for having lost all their chanceof attaining power by means of the Chamber, they proceededto reorganize themselves into armed secret societies. The press,which was gaining that influence over public opinion which hadbeen lost by the parliamentary debates, openly attacked thegovernment and the king, especially by means of caricature.Between 1832 and 1836 the Soult ministry, of whichThe Republicans crushed.Guizot, Thiers and the duc de Broglie were members,had to combat the terrible insurrections in Lyonsand Paris (1834). The measures of repression werethreefold: military repression, carried out by the NationalGuard and the regulars, both under the command of Bugeaud;judicial repression, effected by the great trial of April 1835; and legislative repression, consisting in the laws of September,which, when to mere ridicule had succeeded acts of violence,such as that of Fieschi (July 28th, 1835), aimed at facilitatingthe condemnation of political offenders and at intimidating thepress. The party of “movement” was vanquished.
But the July Government, born as it was of a popular movement,had to make concessions to popular demands. CasimirPérier had carried a law dealing with municipalorganization, which made the municipal councilselective, as they had been before the year VIII.; andThe bourgeois policy.in 1833 Guizot had completed it by making theconseils généraux also elective. In the same year the law dealingwith primary instruction had also shown the mark of new ideas.But now that the bourgeoisie was raised to power it did notprove itself any more liberal than the aristocracy of birth andfortune in dealing with educational, fiscal and industrial questions.In spite of the increase of riches, the bourgeois régime maintaineda fiscal and social legislation which, while it assured to themiddle class certainty and permanence of benefits, left the labouringmasses poor, ignorant, and in a state of incessant agitation.
The Orleanists, who had been unanimous in supporting theking, disagreed, after their victory, as to what powers he wasto be given. The Left Centre, led by Thiers, heldthat he should reign but not govern; the RightCentre, led by Guizot, would admit him to an activeThe socialist party.part in the government; and the third party (tiers-parti)wavered between these two. And so between 1836 and1840, as the struggle against the king’s claim to govern passedfrom the sphere of outside discussion into parliament, we seethe rise of a bourgeois socialist party, side by side with thenow dwindling republican party. It no longer confined itsdemands to universal suffrage, on the principle of the legitimaterepresentation of all interests, or in the name of justice. Ledby Saint-Simon, Fourier, P. Leroux and Lamennais, it aimedat realizing a better social organization for and by means of thestate. But the question was by what means this was to beaccomplished. The secret societies, under the influence ofBlanqui and Barbès, two revolutionaries who had revived thetraditions of Babeuf, were not willing to wait for the completeeducation of the masses, necessarily a long process. On the12th of May 1839 the Société des Saisons made an attempt tooverthrow the bourgeoisie by force, but was defeated. Democratslike Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin and Lamennais continued torepeat in support of the wisdom of universal suffrage the old professionof faith: vox populi, vox Dei. And finally this republicandoctrine, already confused, was still further complicated by akind of mysticism which aimed at reconciling the most extremedifferences of belief, the Catholicism of Buchez, the Bonapartismof Cormenin, and the humanitarianism of the cosmopolitans.It was in vain that Auguste Comte, Michelet and Quinet denouncedthis vague humanitarian mysticism and the pseudo-liberalismof the Church. The movement had now begun.
At first these moderate republicans, radical or communist,formed only imperceptible groups. Among the peasant classes,and even in the industrial centres, warlike passionswere still rife. Louis Philippe tried to find an outletfor them in the Algerian war, and later by the revivalThe Bonapartist revival.of the Napoleonic legend, which was held to be nolonger dangerous, since the death of the duke of Reichstadt in1832. It was imprudently recalled by Thiers’ History of theConsulate and Empire, by artists and poets, in spite of the propheciesof Lamartine, and by the solemn translation of NapoleonI.’s ashes in 1840 to the Invalides at Paris.
All theories require to be based on practice, especially thosewhich involve force. Now Louis Philippe, though as active ashis predecessors had been slothful, was the least warlikeof men. His only wish was to govern personally, asGeorge III. and George IV. of England had done,Parliamentary opposition to the royal power.especially in foreign affairs, while at home was beingwaged the great duel between Thiers and Guizot,with Molé as intermediary. Thiers, head of the cabinetof the 22nd of February 1836, an astute man but not pliantenough to please the king, fell after a few months, in consequenceof his attempt to stop the Carlist civil war in Spain, and to supportthe constitutional government of Queen Isabella. Louis Philippehoped that, by calling upon Molé to form a ministry, he wouldbe better able to make his personal authority felt. From 1837to 1839 Molé aroused opposition on all hands; this was emphasizedby the refusal of the Chambers to vote one of those endowmentswhich the king was continually asking them to grant forhis children, by two dissolutions of the Chambers, and finally bythe Strasburg affair and the stormy trial of Louis Napoleon,son of the former king of Holland (1836–1837). At the electionsof 1839 Molé was defeated by Thiers, Guizot and Barrot, whohad combined to oppose the tyranny of the “Château,” andafter a long ministerial crisis was replaced by Thiers (March 1,1840). But the latter was too much in favour of war to please theking, who was strongly disposed towards peace and an alliancewith Great Britain, and consequently fell at the time of theEgyptian question, when, in answer to the treaty of Londonconcluded behind his back by Nicholas I. and Palmerston on the15th of July 1840, he fortified Paris and proclaimed his intentionto give armed support to Mehemet Ali, the ally of France (seeMehemet Ali). But the violence of popular Chauvinism andthe renewed attempt of Louis Napoleon at Boulogne proved tothe holders of the doctrine of peace at any price that in the long-runtheir policy tends to turn a peaceful attitude into a warlikeone, and to strengthen the absolutist idea.
In spite of all, from 1840 to 1848 Louis Philippe still furtherextended his activity in foreign affairs, thus bringing himselfinto still greater prominence, though he was alreadyfrequently held responsible for failures in foreignpolitics and unpopular measures in home affairs. TheGuizot’s ministry.catchword of Guizot, who was now his minister, was: Peaceand no reforms. With the exception of the law of 1842 concerningthe railways, not a single measure of importance was proposedby the ministry. France lived under a régime of general corruption:parliamentary corruption, due to the illegal conduct ofthe deputies, consisting of slavish or venal officials; electoralcorruption, effected by the purchase of the 200,000 electorsconstituting the “pays légal,” who were bribed by the advantagesof power; and moral corruption, due to the reign of the plutocracy,the bourgeoisie, a hard-working, educated and honourableclass, it is true, but insolent, like all newly enriched parvenusin the presence of other aristocracies, and with unyieldingselfishness maintaining an attitude of suspicion towards thepeople, whose aspirations they did not share and with whomthey did not feel themselves to have anything in common.This led to a slackening in political life, a sort of exhaustion ofinterest throughout the country, an excessive devotion to materialprosperity. Under a superficial appearance of calm a tempestwas brewing, of which the industrial writings of Balzac, EugèneSue, Lamartine, H. Heine, Vigny, Montalembert and Tocquevillewere the premonitions. But it was in vain that they denouncedthis supremacy of the bourgeoisie, relying on its two main supports,the suffrage based on a property qualification and theNational Guard, for its rallying-cry was the “Enrichissez-vous”of Guizot, and its excessive materialism gained a sinister distinctionfrom scandals connected with the ministers Teste andCubières, and such mysterious crimes as that of Choiseul-Praslin.[8]In vain also did they point out that mere riches are not so mucha protection to the ministry who are in power as a temptationto the majority excluded from power by this barrier of wealth. It was in vain that beneath the inflated haute bourgeoisie whichspeculated in railways and solidly supported the Church, behindthe shopkeeper clique who still remained Voltairian, whoenviously applauded the pamphlets of Cormenin on the luxuryof the court, and who were bitterly satirized by the pencil ofDaumier and Gavarni, did the thinkers give voice to the mutteringsof an immense industrial proletariat, which were re-echoingthroughout the whole of western Europe.
In face of this tragic contrast Guizot remained unmoved,blinded by the superficial brilliance of apparent success andprosperity. He adorned by flights of eloquence hisinvariable theme: no new laws, no reforms, no foreigncomplications, the policy of material interests. HeGuizot’s Foreign Policy.preserved his yielding attitude towards Great Britainin the affair of the right of search in 1841, and in the affair ofthe missionary Pritchard at Tahiti (1843–1845). And when themarriage of the duc de Montpensier with a Spanish infantain 1846 had broken this entente cordiale to which he clung, it wasonly to yield in turn to Metternich, when he took possessionof Cracow, the last remnant of Poland, to protect the Sonderbundin Switzerland, to discourage the Liberal ardour of Pius IX.,and to hand over the education of France to the Ultramontaneclergy. Still further strengthened by the elections of 1846, herefused the demands of the Opposition formed by a coalition ofthe Left Centre and the Radical party for parliamentary andelectoral reform, which would have excluded the officials fromthe Chambers, reduced the electoral qualification to 100 francs,and added to the number of the electors the capacitaireswhose competence was guaranteed by their education. ForGuizot the whole country was represented by the “pays légal,”consisting of the king, the ministers, the deputies and theCampaign of the banquets.electors. When the Opposition appealed to the country,he flung down a disdainful challenge to what “lesbrouillons et les badauds appellent le peuple.” Thechallenge was taken up by all the parties of the Oppositionin the campaign of the banquets got up somewhat artificiallyin 1847 in favour of the extension of the franchise. The monarchyhad arrived at such a state of weakness and corruption that adetermined minority was sufficient to overthrow it. The prohibitionof a last banquet in Paris precipitated the catastrophe.The monarchy which for fifteen years had overcome its adversariescollapsed on the 24th of February 1848 to the astonishment of all.
The industrial population of the faubourgs on its way towardsthe centre of the town was welcomed by the National Guard,among cries of “Vive la réforme.” Barricades wereraised after the unfortunate incident of the firing onthe crowd in the Boulevard des Capucines. On theThe Revolution of Feb. 24, 1848.23rd Guizot’s cabinet resigned, abandoned by thepetite bourgeoisie, on whose support they thought they coulddepend. The heads of the Left Centre and the dynastic Left,Molé and Thiers, declined the offered leadership. OdilonBarrot accepted it, and Bugeaud, commander-in-chief ofthe first military division, who had begun to attack the barricades,was recalled. But it was too late. In face of the insurrectionwhich had now taken possession of the whole capital, LouisPhilippe decided to abdicate in favour of his grandson, the comtede Paris. But it was too late also to be content with the regencyof the duch*ess of Orleans. It was now the turn of the Republic,and it was proclaimed by Lamartine in the name of the provisionalgovernment elected by the Chamber under the pressureof the mob.
This provisional government with Dupont de l’Eure as itspresident, consisted of Lamartine for foreign affairs, Crémieuxfor justice, Ledru-Rollin for the interior, Carnot forpublic instruction, Gondchaux for finance, Arago forthe navy, and Bedeau for war. Garnier-Pagès wasThe Provisional Government.mayor of Paris. But, as in 1830, the republican-socialistparty had set up a rival government at the Hôtel deVille, including L. Blanc, A. Marrast, Flocon, and the workmanAlbert, which bid fair to involve discord and civil war. Butthis time the Palais Bourbon was not victorious over the Hôtelde Ville. It had to consent to a fusion of the two bodies,in which, however, the predominating elements were the moderaterepublicans. It was doubtful what would eventually be thepolicy of the new government. One party, seeing that in spiteof the changes in the last sixty years of all political institutions,the position of the people had not been improved, demanded areform of society itself, the abolition of the privileged position ofproperty, the only obstacle to equality, and as an emblem hoistedthe red flag. The other party wished to maintain society on thebasis of its ancient institutions, and rallied round the tricolour.
The first collision took place as to the form which the revolutionof 1848 was to take. Were they to remain faithful to theiroriginal principles, as Lamartine wished, and acceptthe decision of the country as supreme, or were they,as the revolutionaries under Ledru-Rollin claimed, toUniversal suffrage.declare the republic of Paris superior to the universal suffrage ofan insufficiently educated people? On the 5th of March thegovernment, under the pressure of the Parisian clubs, decidedin favour of an immediate reference to the people, and directuniversal suffrage, and adjourned it till the 26th of April. Inthis fateful and unexpected decision, which instead of addingto the electorate the educated classes, refused by Guizot, admittedto it the unqualified masses, originated the Constituent Assemblyof the 4th of May 1848. The provisional government havingresigned, the republican and anti-socialist majority on the 9thThe Executive Commission.of May entrusted the supreme power to an executivecommission consisting of five members: Arago,Marie, Garnier-Pagès, Lamartine and Ledru-Rollin.But the spell was already broken. This revolutionwhich had been peacefully effected with the most generousaspirations, in the hope of abolishing poverty by organizingindustry on other bases than those of competition and capitalism,and which had at once aroused the fraternal sympathy of thenations, was doomed to be abortive.
The result of the general election, the return of a constituentassembly predominantly moderate if not monarchical, dashedthe hopes of those who had looked for the establishment, by apeaceful revolution, of their ideal socialist state; but they werenot prepared to yield without a struggle, and in Paris itself theycommanded a formidable force. In spite of the preponderance ofthe “tricolour” party in the provisional government, so long asthe voice of France had not spoken, the socialists, supported bythe Parisian proletariat, had exercised an influence on policy outof all proportion to their relative numbers or personal weight.By the decree of the 24th of February the provisional governmenthad solemnly accepted the principle of the “right to work,”and decided to establish “national workshops” for the unemployed;at the same time a sort of industrial parliament wasestablished at the Luxembourg, under the presidency of LouisBlanc, with the object of preparing a scheme for the organizationof labour; and, lastly, by the decree of the 8th of March theproperty qualification for enrolment in the National Guard hadbeen abolished and the workmen were supplied with arms.The socialists thus formed, in some sort, a state within the state,with a government, an organization and an armed force.
In the circ*mstances a conflict was inevitable; and on the15th of May an armed mob, headed by Raspail, Blanqui andBarbès, and assisted by the proletariat Guard, attempted tooverwhelm the Assembly. They were defeated by the bourgeoisbattalions of the National Guard; but the situation none theless remained highly critical. The national workshops wereproducing the results that might have been foreseen. It wasimpossible to provide remunerative work even for the genuineunemployed, and of the thousands who applied the greaternumber were employed in perfectly useless digging and refilling;soon even this expedient failed, and those for whom work couldnot be invented were given a half wage of 1 franc a day. Eventhis pitiful dole, with no obligation to work, proved attractive,and all over France workmen threw up their jobs and streamedto Paris, where they swelled the ranks of the army under thered flag. It was soon clear that the continuance of this experimentwould mean financial ruin; it had been proved by theémeute of the 15th of May that it constituted a perpetual menace to the state; and the government decided to end it. The methodchosen was scarcely a happy one. On the 21st of June M. deFalloux decided in the name of the parliamentary commissionon labour that the workmen should be discharged within threedays and such as were able-bodied should be forced to enlist.The June Days.A furious insurrection at once broke out. Throughoutthe whole of the 24th, 25th and 26th of June, theeastern industrial quarter of Paris, led by Pujol,carried on a furious struggle against the western quarter, ledby Cavaignac, who had been appointed dictator. Vanquishedand decimated, first by fighting and afterwards by deportation,the socialist party was crushed. But they dragged down theRepublic in their ruin. This had already become unpopularwith the peasants, exasperated by the new land tax of 45 centimesimposed in order to fill the empty treasury, and with the bourgeois,in terror of the power of the revolutionary clubs and hard hitby the stagnation of business. By the “massacres” of the JuneDays the working classes were also alienated from it; and abidingfear of the “Reds” did the rest. “France,” wrote the duke ofWellington at this time, “needs a Napoleon! I cannot yet seehim ... Where is he?”[9]
France indeed needed, or thought she needed, a Napoleon;and the demand was soon to be supplied. The granting ofuniversal suffrage to a society with Imperialistsympathies, and unfitted to reconcile the principlesof order with the consequences of liberty, was indeedThe Constitution
of 1848.bound, now that the political balance in France wasso radically changed, to prove a formidable instrument ofreaction; and this was proved by the election of the presidentof the Republic. On the 4th of November 1848 was promulgatedthe new constitution, obviously the work of inexperiencedhands, proclaiming a democratic republic, direct universalsuffrage and the separation of powers; there was to be a singlepermanent assembly of 750 members elected for a term of threeyears by the scrutin de liste, which was to vote on the lawsprepared by a council of state elected by the Assembly for sixyears; the executive power was delegated to a president electedfor four years by direct universal suffrage, i.e. on a broaderbasis than that of the chamber, and not eligible for re-election; hewas to choose his ministers, who, like him, would be responsible.Finally, all revision was made impossible since it involvedobtaining three times in succession a majority of three-quartersof the deputies in a special assembly. It was in vain thatM. Grévy, in the name of those who perceived the obvious andinevitable risk of creating, under the name of a president, amonarch and more than a king, proposed that the head of thestate should be no more than a removable president of theministerial council. Lamartine, thinking that he was sure tobe the choice of the electors under universal suffrage, won overthe support of the Chamber, which did not even take the precautionof rendering ineligible the members of families whichhad reigned over France. It made the presidency an officedependent upon popular acclamation.
The election was keenly contested; the socialists adoptedas their candidate Ledru-Rollin, the republicans Cavaignac;and the recently reorganized Imperialist party PrinceBonaparte. Louis Napoleon, unknown in 1835, andforgotten or despised since 1840, had in the last eightLouis Napoleon.years advanced sufficiently in the public estimation to beelected to the Constituent Assembly in 1848 by five departments.He owed this rapid increase of popularity partly to blundersof the government of July, which had unwisely aroused thememory of the country, filled as it was with recollections of theEmpire, and partly to Louis Napoleon’s campaign carried onfrom his prison at Ham by means of pamphlets of socialistictendencies. Moreover, the monarchists, led by Thiers and thecommittee of the Rue de Poitiers, were no longer content evenwith the safe dictatorship of the upright Cavaignac, and joinedforces with the Bonapartists. On the 10th of December thepeasants gave over 5,000,000 votes to a name: Napoleon,which stood for order at all costs, against 1,400,000 for Cavaignac.
For three years there went on an indecisive struggle betweenthe heterogeneous Assembly and the prince who was silentlyawaiting his opportunity. He chose as his ministersmen but little inclined towards republicanism, forpreference Orleanists, the chief of whom was OdilonExpedition to Rome.Barrot. In order to strengthen his position, heendeavoured to conciliate the reactionary parties, withoutcommitting himself to any of them. The chief instance of thiswas the expedition to Rome, voted by the Catholics with theobject of restoring the papacy, which had been driven out byGaribaldi and Mazzini. The prince-president was also in favourof it, as beginning the work of European renovation and reconstructionwhich he already looked upon as his mission. GeneralOudinot’s entry into Rome provoked in Paris a foolish insurrectionin favour of the Roman republic, that of the Château d’Eau,which was crushed on the 13th of June 1849. On the other hand,when Pius IX., though only just restored, began to yield to thegeneral movement of reaction, the president demanded that heshould set up a Liberal government. The pope’s dilatory replyhaving been accepted by his ministry, the president replacedit on the 1st of November by the Fould-Rouher cabinet.
This looked like a declaration of war against the Catholic andmonarchist majority in the Legislative Assembly which hadbeen elected on the 28th of May in a moment of panic.But the prince-president again pretended to beplaying the game of the Orleanists, as he had doneThe Legislative Assembly.in the case of the Constituent-Assembly. The complementaryelections of March and April 1850 having resulted in anunexpected victory for the advanced republicans, which struckterror into the reactionary leaders, Thiers, Berryer and Montalembert,the president gave his countenance to a clerical campaignagainst the republicans at home. The Church, which had failedin its attempts to gain control of the university under LouisXVIII. and Charles X., aimed at setting up a rival establishment“Loi Falloux.” Electoral law
of May 31.
But the president had only joined in Montalembert’s cry of“Down with the Republicans!” in the hope of effecting arevision of the constitution without having recourseto a coup d’état. His concessions only increased theboldness of the monarchists; while they had onlyStruggle between the President and the Assembly.accepted Louis Napoleon as president in oppositionto the Republic and as a step in the direction of themonarchy. A conflict was now inevitable betweenhis personal policy and the majority of the Chamber, who were,moreover, divided into legitimists and Orleanists, in spite of thedeath of Louis Philippe in August 1850. Louis Napoleon skilfullyexploited their projects for a restoration of the monarchy, whichhe knew to be unpopular in the country, and which gave himthe opportunity of furthering his own personal ambitions.From the 8th of August to the 12th of November 1850 he wentabout France stating the case for a revision of the constitutionin speeches which he varied according to each place; he held reviews, at which cries of “Vive Napoléon” showed that thearmy was with him; he superseded General Changarnier, onwhose arms the parliament relied for the projected monarchicalcoup d’état; he replaced his Orleanist ministry by obscure mendevoted to his own cause, such as Morny, Fleury and Persigny,and gathered round him officers of the African army, brokenmen like General Saint-Arnaud; in fact he practically declaredopen war.
His reply to the votes of censure passed by the Assembly, andtheir refusal to increase his civil list, was to hint at a vast communisticplot in order to scare the bourgeoisie, and to denouncethe electoral law of the 31st of May in order to gain thesupport of the mass of the people. The Assembly retaliatedCoup d’État of
Dec. 2, 1851.by throwing out the proposal for a partialreform of that article of the constitution which prohibitedthe re-election of the president and the re-establishmentof universal suffrage (July). All hope of a peaceful issuewas at an end. When the questors called upon the Chamberto have posted up in all barracks the decree of the 6th of May1848 concerning the right of the Assembly to demand the supportof the troops if attacked, the Mountain, dreading a restoration ofthe monarchy, voted with the Bonapartists against the measure,thus disarming the legislative power. Louis Napoleon saw hisopportunity. On the night between the 1st and 2nd of December1851, the anniversary of Austerlitz, he dissolved the Chamber,re-established universal suffrage, had all the party leaders arrested,and summoned a new assembly to prolong his term of officefor ten years. The deputies who had met under Berryer at theMairie of the tenth arrondissem*nt to defend the constitutionand proclaim the deposition of Louis Napoleon were scatteredby the troops at Mazas and Mont Valérian. The resistanceorganized by the republicans within Paris under Victor Hugowas soon subdued by the intoxicated soldiers. The more seriousresistance in the departments was crushed by declaring a stateof siege and by the “mixed commissions.” The plebiscite ofthe 20th of December ratified by a huge majority the coup d’étatin favour of the prince-president, who alone reaped the benefitof the excesses of the Republicans and the reactionary passionsof the monarchists.
The second attempt to revive the principle of 1789 only servedas a preface to the restoration of the Empire. The new anti-parliamentaryconstitution of the 14th of January1852 was to a large extent merely a repetition of thatof the year VIII. All executive power was entrustedThe Second Empire.to the head of the state, who was solely responsible tothe people, now powerless to exercise any of their rights. Hewas to nominate the members of the council of state, whose dutyit was to prepare the laws, and of the senate, a body permanentlyestablished as a constituent part of the empire. One innovationwas made, namely, that the Legislative Body was elected byuniversal suffrage, but it had no right of initiative, all lawsbeing proposed by the executive power. This new and violentpolitical change was rapidly followed by the same consequenceas had attended that of Brumaire. On the 2nd of December1852, France, still under the effect of the Napoleonic virus,and the fear of anarchy, conferred almost unanimously by aplebiscite the supreme power, with the title of emperor, uponNapoleon III.
But though the machinery of government was almost the sameunder the Second Empire as it had been under the First, theprinciples upon which its founder based it were different. Thefunction of the Empire, as he loved to repeat, was to guide thepeople internally towards justice and externally towards perpetualpeace. Holding his power by universal suffrage, and havingfrequently, from his prison or in exile, reproached former oligarchicalgovernments with neglecting social questions, he set outto solve them by organizing a system of government based on theprinciples of the “Napoleonic Idea,” i.e. of the emperor, theelect of the people as the representative of the democracy, andas such supreme; and of himself, the representative of thegreat Napoleon, “who had sprung armed from the Revolutionlike Minerva from the head of Jove,” as the guardian of thesocial gains of the revolutionary epoch. But he soon proved thatsocial justice did not mean liberty; for he acted in such away that those of the principles of 1848 which he had preservedbecame a mere sham. He proceeded to paralyze all those activenational forces which tend to create the public spirit of a people,such as parliament, universal suffrage, the press, education andassociations. The Legislative Body was not allowed either toelect its own president or to regulate its own procedure, or topropose a law or an amendment, or to vote on the budget in detail,or to make its deliberations public. It was a dumb parliament.Similarly, universal suffrage was supervised and controlled bymeans of official candidature, by forbidding free speech andaction in electoral matters to the Opposition, and by a skilful adjustmentof the electoral districts in such a way as to overwhelmthe Liberal vote in the mass of the rural population. The presswas subjected to a system of cautionnements, i.e. “cautionmoney,” deposited as a guarantee of good behaviour, andavertissem*nts, i.e. requests by the authorities to cease publicationof certain articles, under pain of suspension or suppression;while books were subject to a censorship. France was like a sickroom,where nobody might speak aloud. In order to counteractthe opposition of individuals, a surveillance of suspects wasinstituted. Orsini’s attack on the emperor in 1858, thoughpurely Italian in its motive, served as a pretext for increasingthe severity of this régime by the law of general security (sûretégénérale) which authorized the internment, exile or deportationof any suspect without trial. In the same way public instructionwas strictly supervised, the teaching of philosophy was suppressedin the Lycées, and the disciplinary powers of the administrationwere increased. In fact for seven years France had nopolitical life. The Empire was carried on by a series of plebiscites.Up to 1857 the Opposition did not exist; from then till 1860 itwas reduced to five members: Darimon, Émile Ollivier, Hénon,J. Favre and E. Picard. The royalists waited inactive after thenew and unsuccessful attempt made at Frohsdorf in 1853, by acombination of the legitimists and Orleanists, to re-create aliving monarchy out of the ruin of two royal families. Thus theevents of that ominous night in December were closing the futureto the new generations as well as to those who had grown up duringforty years of liberty.
But it was not enough to abolish liberty by conjuring up thespectre of demagogy. It had to be forgotten, the great silencehad to be covered by the noise of festivities and materialenjoyment, the imagination of the French people hadto be distracted from public affairs by the taste forMaterial prosperity
a condition of despotism.work, the love of gain, the passion for good living.The success of the imperial despotism, as of any other,was bound up with that material prosperity which would makeall interests dread the thought of revolution. Napoleon III.,therefore, looked for support to the clergy, the great financiers,industrial magnates and landed proprietors. He revived onhis own account the “Let us grow rich” of 1840. Under theinfluence of the Saint-Simonians and men of business great creditestablishments were instituted and vast public works enteredupon: the Crédit foncier de France, the Crédit mobilier, theconversion of the railways into six great companies between 1852and 1857. The rage for speculation was increased by the inflowof Californian and Australian gold, and consumption wasfacilitated by a general fall in prices between 1856 and 1860,due to an economic revolution which was soon to overthrow thetariff wall, as it had done already in England. Thus Frenchactivity flourished exceedingly between 1852 and 1857, and wasmerely temporarily checked by the crisis of 1857. The universalExhibition of 1855 was its culminating point. Art felt theeffects of this increase of comfort and luxury. The great enthusiasmsof the romantic period were over; philosophy becamesceptical and literature merely amusing. The festivities of thecourt at Compiègne set the fashion for the bourgeoisie, satisfiedwith this energetic government which kept such good guard overtheir bank balances.
If the Empire was strong, the emperor was weak. At onceheadstrong and a dreamer, he was full of rash plans, but irresolute in carrying them out. An absolute despot, he remained what hislife had made him, a conspirator through the very mysticism ofhis mental habit, and a revolutionary by reason of his demagogicNapoleon III.’s ideas.imperialism and his democratic chauvinism. In hisopinion the artificial work of the congress of Vienna,involving the downfall of his own family and ofFrance, ought to be destroyed, and Europe organizedas a collection of great industrial states, united by community.of interests and bound together by commercial treaties, andexpressing this unity by periodical congresses presided over byhimself, and by universal exhibitions. In this way he wouldreconcile the revolutionary principle of the supremacy of thepeople with historical tradition, a thing which neither theRestoration nor the July monarchy nor the Republic of 1848had been able to achieve. Universal suffrage, the organizationof Rumanian, Italian and German nationality, and commercialliberty; this was to be the work of the Revolution. But thecreation of great states side by side with France brought with itthe necessity for looking for territorial compensation elsewhere,and consequently for violating the principle of nationality andabjuring his system of economic peace. Napoleon III.’s foreignpolicy was as contradictory as his policy in home affairs,“L’Empire, c’est la paix,” was his cry; and he proceeded tomake war.
So long as his power was not yet established, Napoleon III.made especial efforts to reassure European opinion, which hadbeen made uneasy by his previous protestationsagainst the treaties of 1815. The Crimean War, inwhich, supported by England and the king of Sardinia,The Crimean War.he upheld against Russia the policy of the integrityof the Turkish empire, a policy traditional in France sinceFrancis I., won him the adherence both of the old parties andand the Liberals. And this war was the prototype of all the rest.It was entered upon with no clearly defined military purpose,and continued in a hesitating way. This was the cause, afterthe victory of the allies at the Alma (September 14, 1854), ofthe long and costly siege of Sevastopol (September 8, 1855).Napoleon III., whose joy was at its height owing to the signatureof a peace which excluded Russia from the Black Sea, and to thebirth of the prince imperial, which ensured the continuation ofhis dynasty, thought that the time had arrived to make abeginning in applying his system. Count Walewski, his ministerfor foreign affairs, gave a sudden and unexpected extension ofscope to the deliberations of the congress which met at Paris in1856 by inviting the plenipotentiaries to consider the questionsof Greece, Rome, Naples, &c. This motion contained theprinciple of all the upheavals which were to effect such changesin Europe between 1859 and 1871. It was Cavour and Piedmontwho immediately benefited by it, for thanks to Napoleon III.they were able to lay the Italian question before an assemblyof diplomatic Europe.
It was not Orsini’s attack on the 14th of January 1858 whichbrought this question before Napoleon. It had never ceased tooccupy him since he had taken part in the patrioticconspiracies in Italy in his youth. The triumph of hisarmies in the East now gave him the power necessaryThe War in Italy.to accomplish this mission upon which he had set his heart.The suppression of public opinion made it impossible for himto be enlightened as to the conflict between the interests ofthe country and his own generous visions. The sympathy of allEurope was with Italy, torn for centuries past between so manymasters; under Alexander II. Russia, won over since theinterview of Stuttgart by the emperor’s generosity rather thanconquered by armed force, offered no opposition to this act ofjustice; while England applauded it from the first. Theemperor, divided between the empress Eugénie, who as a Spaniardand a devout Catholic was hostile to anything which mightthreaten the papacy, and Prince Napoleon, who as brother-in-lawof Victor Emmanuel favoured the cause of Piedmont, hoped toconciliate both sides by setting up an Italian federation, intendingto reserve the presidency of it to Pope Pius IX., as a mark ofrespect to the moral authority of the Church. Moreover, thevery difficulty of the undertaking appealed to the emperor,elated by his recent success in the Crimea. At the secret meetingbetween Napoleon and Count Cavour (July 20, 1858) the eventualarmed intervention of France, demanded by Orsini before hemounted the scaffold, was definitely promised.
The ill-advised Austrian ultimatum demanding the immediatecessation of Piedmont’s preparations for war precipitated theItalian expedition. On the 3rd of May 1859 Napoleondeclared his intention of making Italy “free from theAlps to the Adriatic.” As he had done four years ago,The peace of Villafranca.he plunged into the war with no settled scheme andwithout preparation; he held out great hopes, but withoutreckoning what efforts would be necessary to realize them. Twomonths later, in spite of the victories of Montebello, Magentaand Solferino, he suddenly broke off, and signed the patched-uppeace of Villafranca with Francis Joseph (July 9). Austria cededLombardy to Napoleon III., who in turn ceded it to VictorEmmanuel; Modena and Tuscany were restored to theirrespective dukes, the Romagna to the pope, now president of anItalian federation. The mountain had brought forth a mouse.
The reasons for this breakdown on the part of the emperorin the midst of his apparent triumph were many. NeitherMagenta nor Solferino had been decisive battles.Further, his idea of a federation was menaced by therevolutionary movement which seemed likely to driveThe Italian problem.out all the princes of central Italy, and to involve himin an unwelcome dispute with the French clerical party. Moreover,he had forgotten to reckon with the Germanic Confederation,which was bound to come to the assistance of Austria.The mobilization of Prussia on the Rhine, combined with militarydifficulties and the risk of a defeat in Venetian territory, ratherdamped his enthusiasm, and decided him to put an end to thewar. The armistice fell upon the Italians as a bolt from the blue,convincing them that they had been betrayed; on all sidesdespair drove them to sacrifice their jealously guarded independenceto national unity. On the one hand the Catholicswere agitating throughout all Europe to obtain the independenceof the papal territory; and the French republicans were protesting,on the other hand, against the abandonment of thoserevolutionary traditions, the revival of which they had hailedso enthusiastically. The emperor, unprepared for the turn whichevents had taken, attempted to disentangle this confusion bysuggesting a fresh congress of the Powers, which should reconciledynastic interests with those of the people. After a while he gaveup the attempt and resigned himself to the position, his actionshaving had more wide-reaching results than he had wished.The treaty of Zürich proclaimed the fallacious principle of non-intervention(November 10, 1859); and then, by the treaty ofTurin of the 24th of May 1860, Napoleon threw over his ill-timedconfederation. He conciliated the mistrust of GreatBritain by replacing Walewski, who was hostile to his policy,by Thouvenel, an anti-clerical and a supporter of the Englishalliance, and he counterbalanced the increase of the new Italiankingdom by the acquisition of Nice and Savoy. Napoleon, likeall French governments, only succeeded in finding a provisionalsolution for the Italian problem.
But this solution would only hold good so long as the emperorwas in a powerful position. Now this Italian war, in which he hadgiven his support to revolution beyond the Alps, and,though unintentionally, compromised the temporalpower of the popes, had given great offence to theCatholic and protectionist opposition.Catholics, to whose support the establishment of theEmpire was largely due. A keen Catholic oppositionsprang up, voiced in L. Veuillot’s paper the Univers, and wasnot silenced even by the Syrian expedition (1860) in favour of theCatholic Maronites, who were being persecuted by the Druses.On the other hand, the commercial treaty with Great Britainwhich was signed in January 1860, and which ratified the free-tradepolicy of Richard Cobden and Michael Chevalier, hadbrought upon French industry the sudden shock of foreigncompetition. Thus both Catholics and protectionists made thediscovery that absolutism may be an excellent thing when it serves their ambitions or interests, but a bad thing when it isexercised at their expense. But Napoleon, in order to restorethe prestige of the Empire before the newly-awakened hostilityof public opinion, tried to gain from the Left the support whichhe had lost from the Right. After the return from Italy thegeneral amnesty of the 16th of August 1859 had marked theevolution of the absolutist empire towards the liberal, and laterparliamentary empire, which was to last for ten years.
Napoleon began by removing the gag which was keeping thecountry in silence. On the 24th of November 1860, “by a coupd’état matured during his solitary meditations,”like a conspirator in his love of hiding his mysteriousthoughts even from his ministers, he granted to theThe Liberal Empire.Chambers the right to vote an address annually inanswer to the speech from the throne, and to the press the rightof reporting parliamentary debates. He counted on the latterconcession to hold in check the growing Catholic opposition, whichwas becoming more and more alarmed by the policy of laissez-fairepractised by the emperor in Italy. But the governmentmajority already showed some signs of independence. The rightof voting on the budget by sections, granted by the emperor in1861, was a new weapon given to his adversaries. Everythingconspired in their favour: the anxiety of those candid friendswho were calling attention to the defective budget; the commercialcrisis, aggravated by the American Civil War; and aboveall, the restless spirit of the emperor, who had annoyed hisopponents in 1860 by insisting on an alliance with Great Britainin order forcibly to open the Chinese ports for trade, in 1863 byhis ill-fated attempt to put down a republic and set up a Latinempire in Mexico in favour of the archduke Maximilian of Austria,and from 1861 to 1863 by embarking on colonizing experimentsin Cochin China and Annam.
The same inconsistencies occurred in the emperor’s Europeanpolitics. The support which he had given to the Italian causehad aroused the eager hopes of other nations. Theproclamation of the kingdom of Italy on the 18th ofFebruary 1861 after the rapid annexation of TuscanyThe policy of nationalism.and the kingdom of Naples had proved the dangerof half-measures. But when a concession, however narrow,had been made to the liberty of one nation, it could hardlybe refused to the no less legitimate aspirations of the rest.In 1863 these “new rights” again clamoured loudly for recognition,in Poland, in Schleswig and Holstein, in Italy, now indeedunited, but with neither frontiers nor capital, and in the Danubianprincipalities. In order to extricate himself from the Polishimpasse, the emperor again had recourse to his expedient—alwaysfruitless because always inopportune—of a congress. Hewas again unsuccessful: England refused even to admit theprinciple of a congress, while Austria, Prussia and Russia gavetheir adhesion only on conditions which rendered it futile, i.e.they reserved the vital questions of Venetia and Poland.
Thus Napoleon had yet again to disappoint the hopes of Italy,let Poland be crushed, and Germany triumph over Denmark inthe Schleswig-Holstein question. These inconsistencies resultedin a combination of the opposition parties, Catholic, Liberal andRepublican, in the Union libérale. The elections of May-June1863 gained the Opposition forty seats and a leader, Thiers, whoat once urgently gave voice to its demand for “the necessaryliberties.”
It would have been difficult for the emperor to mistake theimportance of this manifestation of French opinion, and in viewof his international failures, impossible to repress it.The sacrifice of Persigny, minister of the interior,who was responsible for the elections, the substitutionThe régime of concessions.for the ministers without portfolio of a sort of presidencyof the council filled by Rouher, the “Vice-Emperor,” and thenomination of V. Duruy, an anti-clerical, as minister of publicinstruction, in reply to those attacks of the Church which wereto culminate in the Syllabus of 1864, all indicated a distinctrapprochement between the emperor and the Left. But thoughthe opposition represented by Thiers was rather constitutionalthan dynastic, there was another and irreconcilable opposition,that of the amnestied or voluntarily exiled republicans, of whomVictor Hugo was the eloquent mouthpiece. Thus those who hadformerly constituted the governing classes were again showingsigns of their ambition to govern. There appeared to be somerisk that this movement among the bourgeoisie might spread tothe people. As Antaeus recruited his strength by touching theearth Napoleon believed that he would consolidate his menacedpower by again turning to the labouring masses, by whom thatpower had been established.
This industrial policy he embarked upon as much from motivesof interest as from sympathy, out of opposition to the bourgeoisie,which was ambitious of governing or desirous of hisoverthrow. His course was all the easier, since he hadonly to exploit the prejudices of the working classes.Industrial policy
of the Empire.They had never forgotten the loi Chapelle of 1791, whichby forbidding all combinations among the workmen had placedthem at the mercy of their employers, nor had they forgotten howthe limited suffrage had conferred upon capital a politicalmonopoly which had put it out of reach of the law, nor how eachtime they had left their position of rigid isolation in order to savethe Charter or universal suffrage, the triumphant bourgeoisie hadrepaid them at the last with neglect. The silence of publicopinion under the Empire and the prosperous state of businesshad completed the separation of the labour party from thepolitical parties. The visit of an elected and paid labour delegationto the Universal Exhibition of 1862 in London gave theemperor an opportunity for re-establishing relations with thatparty, and these relations were to his mind all the more profitable,since the labour party, by refusing to associate their social andindustrial claims with the political ambitions of the bourgeoisie,maintained a neutral attitude between the parties, and could, ifnecessary, divide them, while by its keen criticism of society itaroused the conservative instincts of the bourgeoisie and consequentlychecked their enthusiasm for liberty. A law of the23rd of May 1863 gave the workmen the right, as in England,to save money by creating co-operative societies. Another law,of the 25th of May 1864, gave them the right to enforce betterconditions of labour by organizing strikes. Still further, theemperor permitted the workmen to imitate their employers byestablishing unions for the permanent protection of their interests.And finally, when the ouvriers, with the characteristic Frenchtendency to insist on the universal application of a theory, wishedto substitute for the narrow utilitarianism of the English trade-unionsthe ideas common to the wage-earning classes of thewhole world, he put no obstacles in the way of their leaderM. Tolain’s plan for founding an International Association ofWorkers (Société Internationale des Travailleurs). At the sametime he encouraged the provision made by employers for thriftand relief and for improving the condition of the working-classes.
Thus assured of support, the emperor, through the mouthpieceof M. Rouher, who was a supporter of the absolutist régime,was able to refuse all fresh claims on the part of theLiberals. He was aided by the cessation of the industrialcrisis as the American civil war came to anSadowa (1866).end, by the apparent closing of the Roman question by the conventionof the 15th of September, which guaranteed to the papalstates the protection of Italy, and finally by the treaty of the 30thof October 1864, which temporarily put an end to the crisis ofthe Schleswig-Holstein question. But after 1865 the momentaryagreement which had united Austria and Prussia for the purposeof administering the conquered duchies gave place to a silentantipathy which foreboded a rupture. Yet, though the Austro-PrussianWar of 1866 was not unexpected, its rapid terminationand fateful outcome came as a severe and sudden shock to France.Napoleon had hoped to gain fresh prestige for his throne and newinfluence for France by an intervention at the proper momentbetween combatants equally matched and mutually exhausted.His calculations were upset and his hopes dashed by the battleof Sadowa (Königgrätz) on the 4th of July. The treaty of Pragueput an end to the secular rivalry of Habsburg and Hohenzollernfor the hegemony of Germany, which had been France’s opportunity; and Prussia could afford to humour the just claimsof Napoleon by establishing between her North German Confederationand the South German states the illusory frontier ofthe Main. The belated efforts of the French emperor to obtain“compensation” on the left bank of the Rhine, at the expenseof the South German states, made matters worse. Francerealized with an angry surprise that on her eastern frontier hadarisen a military power by which her influence, if not her existence,was threatened; that in the name of the principle of nationalityunwilling populations had been brought under the sway of adynasty by tradition militant and aggressive, by tradition theenemy of France; that this new and threatening power haddestroyed French influence in Italy, which owed the acquisitionof Venetia to a Prussian alliance and to Prussian arms; andthat all this had been due to Napoleon, outwitted and outmanœuvredat every turn, since his first interview with Bismarckat Biarritz in October 1865.
All confidence in the excellence of imperial régime vanishedat once. Thiers and Jules Favre as representatives of theOpposition denounced in the Legislative Body theblunders of 1866. Émile Ollivier split up the officialmajority by the amendment of the 45, and gave it toFurther concessions of Napoleon III. Struggle between Ollivier and Rouher.
The year 1867 was particularly disastrous for the Empire.In Mexico “the greatest idea of the reign” ended in a humiliatingwithdrawal before the ultimatum of the United States,while Italy, relying on her new alliance with Prussiaand already forgetful of her promises, was mobilizingThe year 1867.the revolutionary forces to complete her unity by conqueringRome. The chassepots of Mentana were needed to check theGaribaldians. And when the imperial diplomacy made abelated attempt to obtain from the victorious Bismarck thoseterritorial compensations on the Rhine, in Belgium and inLuxemburg, which it ought to have been possible to exact fromhim earlier at Biarritz, Benedetti added to the mistake ofasking at the wrong time the humiliation of obtaining nothing(see Luxemburg). Napoleon did not dare to take courage andconfess his weakness. And finally was seen the strange contrastof France, though reduced to such a state of real weakness,courting the mockery of Europe by a display of the externalmagnificence which concealed her decline. In the Paris transformedby Baron Haussmann and now become almost exclusivelya city of pleasure and frivolity, the opening of the UniversalExhibition was marked by Berezowski’s attack on the tsarAlexander II., and its success was clouded by the tragic fateof the unhappy emperor Maximilian of Mexico. Well mightThiers exclaim, “There are no blunders left for us to make.”
But the emperor managed to commit still more, of which theconsequences both for his dynasty and for France were irreparable.Old, infirm and embittered, continually keepinghis ministers in suspense by the uncertainty andsecrecy of his plans, surrounded by a people now bentPeace or war.almost entirely on pleasure, and urged on by a growing opposition,there now remained but two courses open to Napoleon III.:either to arrange a peace which should last, or to prepare for adecisive war. He allowed himself to drift in the direction of war,but without bringing things to a necessary state of preparation.It was in vain that Count Beust revived on behalf of the Austriangovernment the project abandoned by Napoleon since 1866 ofa settlement on the basis of the status quo with reciprocal disarmament.Napoleon refused, on hearing from Colonel Stoffel,his military attaché at Berlin, that Prussia would not agree todisarmament. But he was more anxious than he was willingto show. A reconstitution of the military organization seemedto him to be necessary. This Marshal Niel was unable to obtaineither from the Bonapartist Opposition, who feared the electors,in whom the old patriotism had given place to the commercialor cosmopolitan spirit, or from the Republican opposition, whowere unwilling to strengthen the despotism. Both of themwere blinded by party interest to the danger from outside.
The emperor’s good fortune had departed; he was abandonedby men and disappointed by events. He had vainly hoped that,though by the laws of May-June 1868, granting thefreedom of the press and authorizing meetings, he hadconceded the right of speech, he would retain the right ofAction of the revolutionaries.action; but he had played into the hands of his enemies.Victor Hugo’s Châtiments, the insults of Rochefort’s Lanterne,the subscription for the monument to Baudin, the deputy killedat the barricades in 1851, followed by Gambetta’s terriblespeech against the Empire on the occasion of the trial of Delescluze,soon showed that the republican party was irreconcilable,and bent on the Republic. On the other hand, the Ultramontaneparty were becoming more and more discontented, while theindustries formerly protected were equally dissatisfied with thefree-trade reform. Worse still, the working classes had abandonedtheir political neutrality, which had brought them nothing butunpopularity, and gone over to the enemy. Despising Proudhon’simpassioned attacks on the slavery of communism, they hadgradually been won over by the collectivist theories of KarlMarx or the revolutionary theories of Bakounine, as set forthat the congresses of the International. At these Labour congresses,the fame of which was only increased by the fact thatthey were forbidden, it had been affirmed that the social emancipationof the worker was inseparable from his political emancipation.Henceforth the union between the internationalists andthe republican bourgeois was an accomplished fact. TheEmpire, taken by surprise, sought to curb both the middleclasses and the labouring classes, and forced them both intorevolutionary actions. On every side took place strikes, formingas it were a review of the effective forces of the Revolution.
The elections of May 1869, made during these disturbances,inflicted upon the Empire a serious moral defeat. In spite ofthe revival by the government of the cry of the redterror, Ollivier, the advocate of conciliation, wasrejected by Paris, while 40 irreconcilables and 116The parliamentary Empire.members of the Third Party were elected. Concessionshad to be made to these, so by the senatus-consulte of the 8th ofSeptember 1869 a parliamentary monarchy was substituted forpersonal government. On the 2nd of January 1870 Ollivierwas placed at the head of the first hom*ogeneous, united andresponsible ministry. But the republican party, unlike thecountry, which hailed this reconciliation of liberty and order,refused to be content with the liberties they had won; theyrefused all compromise, declaring themselves more than everdecided upon the overthrow of the Empire. The murder of thejournalist Victor Noir by Pierre Bonaparte, a member of theimperial family, gave the revolutionaries their long desiredopportunity (January 10). But the émeute ended in a failure,and the emperor was able to answer the personal threats againsthim by the overwhelming victory of the plebiscite of the 8th ofMay 1870.
But this success, which should have consolidated the Empire,determined its downfall. It was thought that a diplomaticsuccess should complete it, and make the countryforget liberty for glory. It was in vain that after theparliamentary revolution of the 2nd of January thatThe Franco-
German War.prudent statesman Comte Daru revived, throughLord Clarendon, Count Beust’s plan of disarmament afterSadowa. He met with a refusal from Prussia and from theimperial entourage. The Empress Eugénie was credited with the remark, “If there is no war, my son will never be emperor.”The desired pretext was offered on the 3rd of July 1870 by thecandidature of a Hohenzollern prince for the throneof Spain. To the French people it seemed that Prussia,The Hohenzollern candidature.barely mistress of Germany, was reviving againstFrance the traditional policy of the Habsburgs.France, having rejected for dynastic reasons thecandidature of a Frenchman, the duc de Montpensier, sawherself threatened with a German prince. Never had theemperor, now both physically and morally ill, greater need ofthe counsels of a clear-headed statesman and the support of anenlightened public opinion if he was to defeat the statecraft ofBismarck. But he could find neither.
Ollivier’s Liberal ministry, wishing to show itself as jealousfor national interests as any absolutist ministry, bent upondoing something great, and swept away by the forceof that opinion which it had itself set free, at onceaccepted the war as inevitable, and prepared for itThe declaration
of war.with a light heart.[10] In face of the decided declarationof the duc de Gramont, the minister for foreign affairs, beforethe Legislative Body of the 6th of July, Europe, in alarm,supported the efforts of French diplomacy and obtained thewithdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature. This did notsuit the views either of the war party in Paris or of Bismarck,who wanted the other side to declare war. The ill-advised actionof Gramont in demanding from King William one of thosepromises for the future which are humiliating but never binding,gave Bismarck his opportunity, and the king’s refusal wastransformed by him into an insult by the “editing” of the Emstelegram. The chamber, in spite of the desperate efforts ofThiers and Gambetta, now voted by 246 votes to 10 in favourof the war.
France found herself isolated, as much through the duplicityof Napoleon as through that of Bismarck. The disclosure to thediets of Munich and Stuttgart of the written text ofthe claims laid by Napoleon on the territories of Hesseand Bavaria had since the 22nd of August 1866France isolated.estranged southern Germany from France, and disposed thesouthern states to sign the military convention with Prussia.Owing to a similar series of blunders, the rest of Europe hadbecome hostile. Russia, which it had been Bismarck’s studyboth during and after the Polish insurrection of 1863 to drawcloser to Prussia, learnt with annoyance, by the sameindiscretion, how Napoleon was keeping his promises madeat Stuttgart. The hope of gaining a revenge in the East forher defeat of 1856 while France was in difficulties made herdecide on a benevolent neutrality. The disclosure of Benedetti’sdesigns of 1867 on Belgium and Luxemburg equally ensured anunfriendly neutrality on the part of Great Britain. The emperorcounted at least on the alliance of Austria and Italy, for whichhe had been negotiating since the Salzburg interview (August1867). But Austria, having suffered at his hands in 1859 and1866, was not ready and asked for a delay before joining in thewar; while the hesitating friendships of Italy could only bewon by the evacuation of Rome. The chassepots of Mentana,Rouher’s “Never,” and the hostility of the Catholic empress toany secret article which should open to Italy the gates of thecapital, deprived France of her last friend.
Marshal Leboeuf’s armies were no more effective thanGramont’s alliances. The incapacity of the higher officers ofthe French army, the lack of preparation for war atheadquarters, the selfishness and shirking of responsibilityon the part of the field officers, the absence of anySedan.
Fall of the Empire.fixed plan when failure to mobilize had destroyed allchance of the strong offensive which had been counted on, andthe folly of depending on chance, as the emperor had so oftendone successfully, instead of scientific warfare, were all plainlyto be seen as early as the insignificant engagement of Saarbrücken.Thus the French army proceeded by disastrous stages fromWeissenburg, Forbach, Froeschweiler, Borny, Gravelotte, Noissevilleand Saint-Privat to the siege of Metz and the slaughter atIlly. By the capitulation of Sedan the Empire lost its onlysupport, the army, and fell. Paris was left unprotected andemptied of troops, with only a woman at the Tuileries, a terrifiedAssembly at the Palais-Bourbon, a ministry, that of Palikao,without authority, and leaders of the Opposition who fled asthe catastrophe approached.(P. W.)
The Third Republic 1870–1909
The Third Republic may be said to date from the revolutionof the 4th of September 1870, when the republican deputies ofParis at the hôtel de ville constituted a provisionalgovernment under the presidency of General Trochu,military governor of the capital. The Empire hadGovernment of National Defence, 1870.fallen, and the emperor was a prisoner in Germany.As, however, since the great Revolution régimes inFrance have been only passing expedients, not inextricablyassociated with the destinies of the people, but bound to disappearwhen accounted responsible for national disaster, the surrenderof Louis Napoleon’s sword to William of Prussia did not disarmthe country. Hostilities were therefore continued. The provisionalgovernment had to assume the part of a Committee ofNational Defence, and while insurrection was threatening inParis, it had, in the face of the invading Germans, to send adelegation to Tours to maintain the relations of France with theoutside world. Paris was invested, and for five months enduredsiege, bombardment and famine. Before the end of Octoberthe capitulation of Metz, by the treason of Marshal Bazaine,deprived France of the last relic of its regular army. Withindomitable courage the garrison of Paris made useless sorties,while an army of irregular troops vainly essayed to resist theinvader, who had reached the valley of the Loire. The actingGovernment of National Defence, thus driven from Tours, tookrefuge at Bordeaux, where it awaited the capitulation of Paris,which took place on the 29th of January 1871. The same daythe preliminaries of peace were signed at Versailles, which,confirmed by the treaty of Frankfort of the 10th of May, transferredfrom France to Germany the whole of Alsace, exceptingBelfort, and a large portion of Lorraine, including Metz, witha money indemnity of two hundred millions sterling.
On the 13th of February 1871 the National Assembly, electedafter the capitulation of Paris, met at Bordeaux and assumedthe powers hitherto exercised by the Government ofNational Defence. Since the meeting of the states-generalFoundation of the Third Republic, 1871.in 1789 no representative body in France hadever contained so many men of distinction. Electedto conclude a peace, the great majority of its memberswere monarchists, Gambetta, the rising hope of the republicans,having discredited his party in the eyes of the weary populationby his efforts to carry on the war. The Assembly might thus havethere and then restored the monarchy had not the monarchistsbeen divided among themselves as royalist supporters of thecomte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X., and as Orleanistsfavouring the claims of the comte de Paris, grandson of LouisPhilippe. The majority being unable to unite on the essentialpoint of the choice of a sovereign, decided to allow the Republic,declared on the morrow of Sedan, to liquidate the disastroussituation. Consequently, on the 17th of February the NationalAssembly elected Thiers as “Chief of the Executive Power ofthe French Republic,” the abolition of the Empire being formallyvoted a fortnight later. The old minister of Louis Philippe,who had led the opposition to the Empire, and had been the chiefopponent of the war, was further marked out for the positionconferred on him by his election to the Assembly in twenty-sixdepartments in recognition of his tour through Europe after thefirst defeats, undertaken in the patriotic hope of obtaining theintervention of the Powers on behalf of France. Thiers composeda ministry, and announced that the first duty of the government before examining constitutional questions, would be to reorganizethe forces of the nation in order to provide for the enormous warindemnity which had to be paid to Germany before the territorycould be liberated from the presence of the invader. The tacitacceptance of this arrangement by all parties was known as the“pacte de Bordeaux.” Apart from the pressure of patriotic considerations,it pleased the republican minority to have the governmentof France officially proclaimed a Republic, while themonarchists thought that pending their choice Of a monarch itmight popularize their cause not to have it associated withthe imposition of the burden of war taxation. From this fortuitousand informal transaction, accepted by a monarchicalAssembly, sprang the Third Republic, the most durable régimeestablished in France since the ancient monarchy disappearedin 1792.
The Germans marched down the Champs Elysées on the1st of March 1871, and occupied Paris for forty-eight hours.The National Assembly then decided to remove itssittings to Versailles; but two days before its arrivalat the palace, where the king of Prussia had just beenThe Commune.proclaimed German emperor, an insurrection broke out in Paris.The revolutionary element, which had been foremost in proclaimingthe Republic on the 4th of September, had shownsigns of disaffection during the siege. On the conclusion of thepeace the triumphal entry of the German troops, the threateneddisbanding of the national guard by an Assembly known to beanti-republican, and the resumption of orderly civic existenceafter the agitated life of a suffering population isolated bysiege, had excited the nerves of the Parisians, always prone torevolution. The Commune was proclaimed on the 18th of March,and Paris was declared to be a free town, which recognized nogovernment but that chosen by the people within its walls,the communard theory being that the state should consist of afederation of self-governing communes subject to no centralpower. Administrative autonomy was not, however, the realaim of the insurgent leaders. The name of the Commune hadalways been a rallying sign for violent revolutionaries eversince the Terrorists had found their last support in the municipalityof Paris in 1794. In 1871 among the communard chiefswere revolutionaries of every sect, who, disagreeing on governmentaland economic principles, were united in their vague butperpetual hostility to the existing order of things. The regulartroops of the garrison of Paris followed the National Assemblyto Versailles, where they were joined by the soldiers of the armiesof Sedan and Metz, liberated from captivity in Germany. Withthis force the government of the Republic commenced thesecond siege of Paris, in order to capture the city from theCommune, which had established the parody of a governmentthere, having taken possession of the administrative departmentsand set a minister at the head of each office. The second siegelasted six weeks under the eyes of the victorious Germansencamped on the heights overlooking the capital. The presenceof the enemy, far from restraining the humiliating spectacle ofFrenchmen waging war on Frenchmen in the hour of nationaldisaster, seemed to encourage the fury of the combatants. Thecommunards, who had begun their reign by the murder of twogenerals, concluded it, when the Versailles troops were taking thecity, with the massacre of a number of eminent citizens, includingthe archbishop of Paris, and with the destruction by fire of manyof the finest historical buildings, including the palace of theTuileries and the hôtel de ville. History has rarely known amore unpatriotic crime than that of the insurrection of theCommune; but the punishment inflicted on the insurgents bythe Versailles troops was so ruthless that it seemed to be a counter-manifestationof French hatred for Frenchmen in civil disturbancerather than a judicial penalty applied to a heinous offence.The number of Parisians killed by French soldiers in the lastweek of May 1871 was probably 20,000, though the partisansof the Commune declared that 36,000 men and women were shotin the streets or after summary court-martial.
It is from this point that the history of the Third Republiccommences. In spite of the doubly tragic ending of the warthe vitality of the country seemed unimpaired. With ease andwithout murmur it supported the new burden of taxation calledfor by the war indemnity and by the reorganizationRepublicans and Monarchists after the war.of the shattered forces of France. Thiers was thusaided in his task of liberating the territory from thepresence of the enemy. His proposal at Bordeaux tomake the “essai loyal” of the Republic, as the form ofgovernment which caused the least division among Frenchmen,was discouraged by the excesses of the Commune which associatedrepublicanism with revolutionary disorder. Nevertheless, themonarchists of the National Assembly received a note of warningthat the country might dispense with their services unless theydisplayed governmental capacity, when in July 1871 the republicanminority was largely increased at the bye-elections.The next month, within a year of Sedan, a provisional constitutionwas voted, the title of president of the French Republic beingthen conferred on Thiers. The monarchists consented to thisagainst their will; but they had their own way when theyconferred constituent powers on the Assembly in opposition tothe republicans, who argued that it was a usurpation of thesovereignty of the people for a body elected for another purposeto assume the power of giving a constitution to the land without aspecial mandate from the nation. The debate gave Gambettahis first opportunity of appearing as a serious politician. The“fou furieux” of Tours, whom Thiers had denounced for hisefforts to prolong the hopeless war, was about to become thechief support of the aged Orleanist statesman whose supremeachievement was to be the foundation of the Republic.
It was in 1872 that Thiers practically ranged himself withGambetta and the republicans. The divisions in the monarchicalparty made an immediate restoration impossible.This situation induced some of the moderate deputies,whose tendencies were Orleanist, to support the1872: Thiers and Gambetta.organization of a Republic which now no longerfound its chief support in the revolutionary section of the nation,and it suited the ideas of Thiers, whose personal ambition wasnot less than his undoubted patriotism. Having becomeunexpectedly chief of the state at seventy-four he had no wishto descend again to the position of a minister of the Orleansdynasty which he had held at thirty-five. So, while the royalistsrefused to admit the claims of the comte de Paris, the old ministerof Louis Philippe did his best to undermine the popularity ofthe Orleans tradition, which had been great among the Liberalsunder the Second Empire. He moved the Assembly to restoreto the Orleans princes the value of their property confiscatedunder Louis Napoleon. This he did in the well-founded beliefthat the family would discredit itself in the eyes of the nation byaccepting two millions sterling of public money at a momentwhen the country was burdened with the war indemnity. Theincident was characteristic of his wary policy, as in the faceof the anti-republican majority in the Assembly he could notopenly break with the Right; and when it was suggested thathe was too favourable to the maintenance of the Republic heoffered his resignation, the refusal of which he took as indicatingthe indispensable nature of his services. Meanwhile Gambetta,by his popular eloquence, had won for himself in the autumna triumphal progress, in the course of which he declared atGrenoble that political power had passed into the hands of“une couche sociale nouvelle,” and he appealed to the new socialstrata to put an end to the comedy of a Republic withoutrepublicans. When the Assembly resumed its sittings, orderhaving been restored in the land disturbed by war and revolution,the financial system being reconstituted and the reorganizationof the army planned, Thiers read to the house a presidentialmessage which marked such a distinct movement towards theLeft that Gambetta led the applause. “The Republic exists,”said the president, “it is the lawful government of the country,and to devise anything else is to devise the most terrible ofrevolutions.”
The year 1873 was full of events fateful for the history of France.It opened with the death of Napoleon III. at Chislehurst; butthe disasters amid which the Second Empire had ended were too recent for the youthful promise of his heir to be regarded ashaving any connexion with the future fortunes of France, exceptby the small group of Bonapartists. Thiers remained the centreof interest. Much as the monarchists disliked him, they at firstshrank from upsetting him before they were ready with a schemeof monarchical restoration, and while Gambetta’s authority wasgrowing in the land. But when the Left Centre took alarm at thereturn of radical deputies at numerous by-elections the reactionariesutilized the divisions in the republican party, and for theonly time in the history of the Third Republic they gave proof ofparliamentary adroitness. The date for the evacuation of Franceby the German troops had been advanced, largely owing toThiers’ successful efforts to raise the war indemnity. The monarchicalResignation
of Thiers.majority, therefore, thought the moment hadarrived when his services might safely be dispensedwith, and the campaign against him was ably conductedby a coalition of Legitimists, Orleanists andBonapartists. The attack on Thiers was led by the ducde Broglie, the son of another minister of Louis Philippe andgrandson of Madame de Staël. Operations began with theremoval from the chair of the Assembly of Jules Grévy, a moderaterepublican, who was chosen president at Bordeaux, and thesubstitution of Buffet, an old minister of the Second Republicwho had rallied to the Empire. A debate on the political tendencyof the government brought Thiers himself to the tribuneto defend his policy. He maintained that a conservativeRepublic was the only régime possible, seeing that the monarchistsin the Assembly could not make a choice between their threepretenders to the throne. A resolution, however, was carriedwhich provoked the old statesman into tendering his resignation.This time it was not declined, and the majority with unseemlyMarshal MacMahon president of the Republic.haste elected as president of the Republic MarshalMacMahon, duc de Magenta, an honest soldier ofroyalist sympathies, who had won renown and a ducaltitle on the battlefields of the Second Empire. In theeyes of Europe the curt dismissal of the aged liberatorof the territory was an act of ingratitude. Its justificationwould have been the success of the majority in forming astable monarchical government; but the sole result of the 24thof May 1873 was to provide a definite date to mark the openingof the era of anti-republican incompetency in France which haslasted for more than a generation, and has been perhaps the mosteffective guardian of the Third Republic.
The political incompetency of the reactionaries was fated neverto be corrected by the intelligence of its princes or of its chiefs,and the year which saw Thiers dismissed to make way for arestoration saw also that restoration indefinitely postponed bythe fatal action of the legitimist pretender. The comte de Pariswent to Frohsdorf to abandon to the comte de Chambord hisclaims to the crown as the heir of the July Monarchy, and toaccept the position of dauphin, thus implying that his grandfatherLouis Philippe was a usurper. With the “Governmentof Moral Order” in command the restoration of the monarchyseemed imminent, when the royalists had their hopes dashedby the announcement that “Henri V.” would accept the throneonly on the condition that the nation adopted as the standardof France the white flag—at the very sight of which MarshalMacMahon said the rifles in the army would go off by themselves.The comte de Chambord’s refusal to accept the tricolour wasThe comte de Chambord.probably only the pretext of a childless man whohad no wish to disturb his secluded life for the ultimatebenefit of the Orleans family which had usurped hiscrown, had sent him as a child into exile, and outragedhis mother the duch*esse de Berry. Whatever his motive,his decision could have no other effect than that of establishingthe Republic, as he was likely to live for years, during which thecomte de Paris’ claims had to remain suspended. It was notpossible to leave the land for ever under the government improvisedat Bordeaux when the Germans were masters of France;so the majority in the Assembly decided to organize anotherprovisional government on more regular lines, which mightpossibly last till the comte de Chambord had taken the white flagto the grave, leaving the way to the throne clear for the comtede Paris. On the 19th of November 1873 a Bill was passedThe Septennate.which instituted the Septennate, whereby the executivepower was confided to Marshal MacMahon for sevenyears. It also provided for the nomination of a commissionof the National Assembly to take in hand theenactment of a constitutional law. Before this an importantconstitutional innovation had been adopted. Under Thiersthere were no changes of ministry. The president of the Republicwas perpetual prime minister, constantly dismissing individualholders of portfolios, but never changing at one moment thewhole council of ministers. Marshal MacMahon, the day afterhis appointment, nominated a cabinet with a vice-presidentof the council as premier, and thus inaugurated the systemof ministerial instability which has been the most conspicuousfeature of the government of the Third Republic. Under theSeptennate the ministers, monarchist or moderate republican,were socially and perhaps intellectually of a higher class thanthose who governed France during the last twenty years of the19th century. But the duration of the cabinets was just as brief,thus displaying the fact, already similarly demonstrated underthe Restoration and the July Monarchy, that in France parliamentarygovernment is an importation not suited to the nationaltemperament.
The duc de Broglie was the prime minister in MacMahon’sfirst two cabinets which carried on the government of the countryup to the first anniversary of Thiers’ resignation. The duc deBroglie’s defeat by a coalition of Legitimists and Bonapartistswith the Republicans displayed the mutual attitude of parties.The Royalists, chagrined that the fusion of the two branches ofthe Bourbons had not brought the comte de Chambord to thethrone, vented their rage on the Orleanists, who had the chiefshare in the government without being able to utilize it for theirdynasty. The Bonapartists, now that the memory of the warwas receding, were winning elections in the provinces, and werefurther encouraged by the youthful promise of the PrinceImperial. The republicans had so improved their position thatthe duc d’Audiffret-Pasquier, great-nephew of the chancellorPasquier, tried to form a coalition ministry with M. Waddington,afterwards ambassador of the Republic in London, and othermembers of the Left Centre. Out of this uncertain state ofaffairs was evolved the constitution which has lasted the longestof all those that France has tried since the abolition of the oldmonarchy in 1792. Its birth was due to chance. Not beingable to restore a monarchy, the National Assembly was unwillingdefinitively to establish a republic, and as no limit was set bythe law on the duration of its powers, it might have continuedthe provisional state of things had it not been for the Bonapartists.That party displayed so much activity in agitating fora plebiscite, that when the rural voters at by-elections began torally to the Napoleonic idea, alarm seized the constitutionalistsof the Right Centre who had never been persuaded by Thiers’exhortations to accept the Republic. Consequently in January1875 the Assembly, having voted the general principle that theConstitution
voted, 1875.legislative power should be exercised by a Senate anda Chamber of Deputies, without any mention of theexecutive régime, accepted by a majority of one amomentous resolution proposed by M. Wallon, amember of the Right Centre. It provided that the president ofthe Republic should be elected by the absolute majority of theSenate and the Chamber united as a National Assembly, that heshould be elected for seven years, and be eligible for re-election.Thus by one vote the Republic was formally established, “theFather of the Constitution” being M. Wallon, who began hispolitical experiences in the Legislative Assembly of 1849, andsurvived to take an active part in the Senate until the twentiethcentury.
The Republic being thus established, General de Cissey, whohad become prime minister, made way for M. Buffet, but retainedhis portfolio of war in the new coalition cabinet, which containedsome distinguished members of the two central groups, includingM. Léon Say. A fortnight previously, at the end of February 1875, were passed two statutes defining the legislative andexecutive powers in the Republic, and organizing the Senate.Provisions of the Constitution of 1875.These joined to a third enactment, voted in July, formthe body of laws known as the “Constitution of 1875,”which though twice revised, lasted without essentialalteration to the twentieth century. The legislativepower was conferred on a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies,which might unite in congress to revise the constitution,if they both agreed that revision was necessary, and whichwere bound so to meet for the election of the president of theRepublic when a vacancy occurred. It was enacted that thepresident so elected should retain office for seven years, and beeligible for re-election at the end of his term. He was also heldto be irresponsible, except in the case of high treason. The otherprincipal prerogatives bestowed on the presidential office by theconstitution of 1875 were the right of initiating laws concurrentlywith the members of the two chambers; the promulgation ofthe laws; the right of dissolving the Chamber of Deputies beforeits legal term on the advice of the Senate, and that of adjourningthe sittings of both houses for a month; the right of pardon;the disposal of the armed forces of the country; the reception ofdiplomatic envoys, and, under certain limitations, the powerto ratify treaties. The constitution relieved the president ofthe responsibility of private patronage, by providing that everyact of his should be countersigned by a minister. The constitutionallaw provided that the Senate should consist of 300members, 75 being nominated for life by the National Assembly,and the remaining 225 elected for nine years by the departmentsand the colonies. Vacancies among the life members, after thedissolution of the National Assembly, were filled by the Senateuntil 1884, when the nominative system was abolished, thoughthe survivors of it were not disturbed. The law of 1875 enactedthat the elected senators, who were distributed among thedepartments on a rough basis of population, should be electedfor nine years, a third of them retiring triennially. It was providedthat the senatorial electors in each department should bethe deputies, the members of the conseil général and of the conseilsd’arrondissem*nt, and delegates nominated by the municipalcouncils of each commune. As the municipal delegates composedthe majority in each electoral college, Gambetta called theSenate the Grand Council of the Communes; but in practicethe senators elected have always been the nominees of the localdeputies and of the departmental councillors (conseillers généraux).
The Constitutional Law further provided that the deputiesshould be elected to the Chamber for four years by direct manhoodsuffrage, which had been enjoyed in France eversince 1848. The laws relating to registration, which isof admirable simplicity in France, were left practicallyScrutin d’arrondissem*nt and scrutin de liste.the same as under the Second Empire. From 1875 to1885 the elections were held on the basis of scrutind’arrondissem*nt, each department being divided into single-memberdistricts. In 1885 scrutin de liste was tried, the departmentbeing the electoral unit, and each elector having as manyvotes as there were seats ascribed to the department withoutthe power to cumulate—like the voting in the city of Londonwhen it returned four members. In 1889 scrutin d’arrondissem*ntwas resumed. The payment of members continued as underthe Second Empire, the salary now being fixed at 9000 francsa year in both houses, or about a pound sterling a day. TheSenate and the Chamber were endowed with almost identicalpowers. The only important advantage given to the popularhouse in the paper constitution was its initiative in matters offinance, but the right of rejecting or of modifying the financialproposals of the Chamber was successfully upheld by the Senate.In reality the Chamber of Deputies has overshadowed the upperhouse. The constitution did not prescribe that ministers shouldbe selected from either house of parliament, but in practice thedeputies have been in cabinets in the proportion of five to onein excess of the senators. Similarly the very numerous ministerialcrises which have taken place under the Third Republic havewith the rarest exceptions been caused by votes in the lowerchamber. Among minor differences between the two housesordained by the constitution was the legal minimum age of theirmembers, that of senators being forty and of deputies twenty-five.It was enacted, moreover, that the Senate, by presidentialdecree, could be constituted into a high court for the trial ofcertain offences against the security of the state.
The constitution thus produced, the fourteenth since theRevolution of 1789, was the issue of a monarchical Assemblyforced by circ*mstances to establish a republic. Itwas therefore distinguished from others which precededit in that it contained no declaration of principle and1876: Political parties under the new Constitution.no doctrinal theory. The comparative excellence ofthe work must be recognized, seeing that it has lasted.But it owed its duration, as it owed its origin and itscharacter, to the weakness of purpose and to the dissensions ofthe monarchical parties. The first legal act under the newconstitution was the selection by the expiring National Assemblyof seventy-five nominated senators, and here the reactionariesgave a crowning example of that folly which has ever markedtheir conduct each time they have had the chance of scoring anadvantage against the Republic. The principle of nominationhad been carried in the National Assembly by the Right andopposed by the Republicans. But the quarrels of the Legitimistswith the duc de Broglie and his party were so bitter that theformer made a present of the nominated element in the Senateto the Republicans in order to spite the Orleanists; so out ofseventy-five senators nominated by the monarchical Assembly,fifty-seven Republicans were chosen. Without this suicidalact the Republicans would have been in a woeful minority in theSenate when parliament met in 1876 after the first electionsunder the new system of parliamentary government. Theslight advantage which, in spite of their self-destruction, thereactionaries maintained in the upper house was outbalancedby the republican success at the elections to the Chamber.In a house of over 500 members only about 150 monarchicaldeputies were returned, of whom half were Bonapartists. Thefirst cabinet under the new constitution was formed by Dufaure,an old minister of Louis Philippe like Thiers, and like him born inthe 18th century. The premier now took the title of presidentof the council, the chief of the state no longer presiding at themeetings of ministers, though he continued to be present at theirdeliberations. Although the republican victories at the electionswere greatly due to the influence of Gambetta, none of his partisanswas included in the ministry, which was composed of membersof the two central groups. At the end of 1876 Dufaure retired,but nearly all his ministers retained their portfolios under thepresidency of Jules Simon, a pupil of Victor Cousin, who firstentered political life in the Constituent Assembly of 1848, andwas later a leading member of the opposition in the last sevenyears of the Second Empire.
The premiership of Jules Simon came to an end with theabortive coup d’état of 1877, commonly called from its date theSeize Mai. After the election of Marshal MacMahonto the presidency, the clerical party, irritated at thefailure to restore the comte de Chambord, commencedThe Seize Mai 1877.a campaign in favour of the restitution of the temporal power tothe Pope. It provoked the Italian government to make commoncause with Germany, as Prince Bismarck was likewise attackedby the French clericals for his ecclesiastical policy. At lastJules Simon, who was a liberal most friendly to Catholicism,had to accept a resolution of the Chamber, inviting the ministryto adopt the same disciplinary policy towards the Church whichhad been followed by the Second Empire and the Monarchy ofJuly. It was on this occasion that Gambetta used his famousexpression, “Le cléricalisme, voilà l’ennemi.” Some days latera letter appeared in the Journal officiel, dated 16th May 1877,signed by President MacMahon, informing Jules Simon that hehad no longer his confidence, as it was clear that he had lostthat influence over the Chamber which a president of the Councilought to exercise. The dismissal of the prime minister and thepresidential acts which followed did not infringe the letter ofthe new constitution; yet the proceeding was regarded as acoup d’état in favour of the clerical reactionaries. The duc de Broglie formed an anti-republican ministry, and Marshal MacMahon,in virtue of the presidential prerogative conferred by thelaw of 1875, adjourned parliament for a month. When theChamber reassembled the republican majority of 363 denouncedthe coalition of parties hostile to the Republic. The president,again using his constitutional prerogative, obtained the authorizationof the Senate to dissolve the Chamber. Meanwhile theBroglie ministry had put in practice the policy, favoured by allparties in France, of replacing the functionaries hostile to itwith its own partisans. But in spite of the administrativeelectoral machinery being thus in the hands of the reactionaries,a republican majority was sent back to the Chamber, the suddendeath of Thiers on the eve of his expected return to power, andthe demonstration at his funeral, which was described as asilent insurrection, aiding the rout of the monarchists. Theduc de Broglie resigned, and Marshal MacMahon sent for Generalde Rochebouet, who formed a cabinet of unknown reactionaries,but it lasted only a few days, as the Chamber refused to votesupply. Dufaure was then called back to office, and his moderaterepublican ministry lasted for the remainder of the MacMahonpresidency.
Thus ended the episode of the Seize Mai, condemned by thewhole of Europe from its inception. Its chief effects were toprove again to the country the incompetency of the monarchists,and by associating in the public mind the Church with thisill-conceived venture, to provoke reprisals from the anti-clericalswhen they came into power. After the storm, the year 1878was one of political repose. The first international exhibitionheld at Paris after the war displayed to Europe how the secretof France’s recuperative power lay in the industry and artisticinstinct of the nation. Marshal MacMahon presided with1879: Jules Grévy president of the Republic.dignity over the fêtes held in honour of the exhibition,and had he pleased he might have tranquilly fulfilledthe term of his Septennate. But in January 1879he made a difference of opinion on a military questionan excuse for resignation, and Jules Grévy, the presidentof the Chamber, was elected to succeed him by theNational Assembly, which thus met for the first time under theConstitutional Law of 1875.
Henceforth the executive as well as the legislative powerwas in the hands of the republicans. The new president wasa leader of the bar, who had first become known in the ConstituentAssembly of 1848 as the advocate of the principle that a republicwould do better without a president. M. Waddington was hisfirst prime minister, and Gambetta was elected president of theChamber. The latter, encouraged by his rivals in the idea thatthe time was not ripe for him openly to direct the affairs of thecountry, thus put himself, in spite of his occult dictatorship, ina position of official self-effacement from which he did not emergeuntil the jealousies of his own party-colleagues had underminedthe prestige he had gained as chief founder of the Republic.The most active among them was Jules Ferry, minister ofJules Ferry.Education, who having been a republican deputy forParis at the end of the Empire, was one of the membersof the provisional government proclaimed on 4thSeptember 1870. Borrowing Gambetta’s cry that clericalismwas the enemy, he commenced the work of reprisal for the SeizeMai. His educational projects of 1879 were thus anti-clericalin tendency, the most famous being article 7 of his educationbill, which prohibited members of any “unauthorized” religiousorders exercising the profession of teaching in any school inFrance, the disability being applied to all ecclesiastical communities,excepting four or five which had been privileged byspecial legislation. This enactment, aimed chiefly at the Jesuits,was advocated with a sectarian bitterness which will be associatedwith the name of Jules Ferry long after his more statesmanlikequalities are forgotten. The law was rejected by the Senate,Jules Simon being the eloquent champion of the clericals, whoseintrigues had ousted him from office. The unauthorized orderswere then dissolved by decree; but though the forcible expulsionof aged priests and nuns gave rise to painful scenes, it cannotbe said that popular feeling was excited in their favour, sogrievously had the Church blundered in identifying itself withthe conspiracy of the Seize Mai.
Meanwhile the death of the Prince Imperial in Zululand hadshattered the hopes of the Bonapartists, and M. de Freycinet,a former functionary of the Empire, had become prime ministerat the end of 1879. He had retained Jules Ferry at the ministryof Education, but unwilling to adopt all his anti-clerical policy,he resigned the premiership in September 1880. The constitutionof the first Ferry cabinet secured the further exclusion from officeof Gambetta, to which, however, he preferred his “occult dictatorship.”In August he had, as president of the Chamber, accompaniedM. Grévy on an official visit to Cherbourg, and the acclamationscalled forth all over France by his speech, which wasa hopeful defiance to Germany, encouraged the wily chiefof the state to aid the republican conspiracy against the heroof the Republic. In 1881 the only political question beforethe country was the destiny of Gambetta. His influence in theChamber was such that in spite of the opposition of the primeminister he carried his electoral scheme of scrutin de liste, descendingfrom the presidential chair to defend it. Its rejection bythe Senate caused no conflict between the houses. The checkwas inflicted not on the Chamber, but on Gambetta, who countedon his popularity to carry the lists of his candidates in allthe republican departments in France as a quasi-plebiscitarydemonstration in his favour. His rivals dared not openlyquarrel with him. There was the semblance of a reconciliationbetween him and Ferry, and his name was the rallying-cry ofthe Republic at the general election, which was conducted onthe old system of scrutin d’arrondissem*nt.
The triumph for the Republic was great, the combined forceof reactionary members returned being less than one-fifth of thenew Chamber. M. Grévy could no longer abstain fromasking Gambetta to form a ministry, but he hadbided his time till jealousy of the “occult power”Gambetta prime minister.of the president of the Chamber had undermined hisposition in parliament. Consequently, when on the 14th ofNovember 1881 Gambetta announced the composition of hiscabinet, ironically called the “grand ministère,” which was toconsolidate the Republic and to be the apotheosis of its chief,a great feeling of disillusion fell on the country, for his colleagueswere untried politicians. The best known was Paul Bert, a manof science, who as the “reporter” in the Chamber of the FerryEducation Bill had distinguished himself as an aggressive freethinker,and he inappropriately was named minister of publicworship. All the conspicuous republicans who had held officerefused to serve under Gambetta. His cabinet was condemnedin advance. His enemies having succeeded in ruining its composition,declared that the construction of a one-man machinewas ominous of dictatorship, and the “grand ministère” lived foronly ten weeks.
Gambetta was succeeded in January 1882 by M. de Freycinet,who having first taken office in the Dufaure cabinet of 1877, andhaving continued to hold office at intervals until 1899,was the most successful specimen of a “ministrable”—asrecurrent portfolio-holders have been called underDeath of Gambetta.the Third Republic. His second ministry lasted only six months.The failure of Gambetta, though pleasing to his rivals, discouragedthe republican party and disorganized its majority in the Chamber.M. Duclerc, an old minister of the Second Republic, then becamepresident of the council, and before his short term of office wasrun Gambetta died on the last day of 1882, without having hadthe opportunity of displaying his capacity as a minister or anadministrator. He was only forty-four at his death, and his famerests on the unfulfilled promise of a brief career. The men whohad driven him out of public life and had shortened his existencewere the most ostentatious of the mourners at the great pageantwith which he was buried, and to have been of his party was infuture the popular trade-mark of his republican enemies.
Gambetta’s death was followed by a period of anarchy, duringwhich Prince Napoleon, the son of Jerome, king of Westphalia,placarded the walls of Paris with a manifesto. The Chamberthereupon voted the exile of the members of the families which had reigned in France. The Senate rejected the measure, and aconflict arose between the two houses. M. Duclerc resigned theOpportunism.premiership in January 1883 to his minister of theInterior, M. Fallières, a Gascon lawyer, who becamepresident of the Senate in 1899 and president of theRepublic in 1906. He held office for three weeks, when Jules Ferrybecame president of the council for the second time. Several ofthe closest of Gambetta’s friends accepted office under the oldenemy of their chief, and the new combination adopted theepithet “opportunist,” which had been invented by Gambettain 1875 to justify the expediency of his alliance with Thiers.The Opportunists thenceforth formed an important group standingbetween the Left Centre, which was now excluded from office,and the Radicals. It claimed the tradition of Gambetta, but theguiding principle manifested by its members was that of securingthe spoils of place. To this end it often allied itself with theRadicals, and the Ferry cabinet practised this policy in 1883when it removed the Orleans princes from the active list in thearmy as the illogical result of the demonstration of a Bonaparte.How needless was this proceeding was shown a few months laterwhen the comte de Chambord died, as his death, which finallyfused the Royalists with the Orleanists, caused no commotionin France.
The year 1884 was unprecedented seeing that it passedwithout a change of ministry. Jules Ferry displayed real administrativeability, and as an era of steady governmentseemed to be commencing, the opportunity was takento revise the Constitution. The two Chambers thereforeRevision of the Constitution, 1884.met in congress, and enacted that the republicanform of government could never be the subject of revision, andthat all members of families which had reigned in France wereineligible for the presidency of the Republic—a repetition of theadventure of Louis Bonaparte in the middle of the century beingthus made impossible. It also decided that the clauses of thelaw of 1875 relating to the organization of the Senate should nolonger have a constitutional character. This permitted thereform of the Upper House by ordinary parliamentary procedure.So an organic law was passed to abolish the system of nominatingsenators, and to increase the number of municipal delegates inthe electoral colleges in proportion to the population of thecommunes. The French nation, for the first time since it hadenjoyed political life, had revised a constitution by pacific meanswithout a revolution. Gambetta being out of the way, hisfavourite electoral system of scrutin de liste had no longer anyterror for his rivals, so it was voted by the Chamber early in1885. Before the Senate had passed it into law the Ferryministry had fallen at the end of March, after holding office fortwenty-five months, a term rarely exceeded in the annals of theThird Republic. This long tenure of power had excited thedissatisfaction of jealous politicians, and the news of a slightdisaster to the French troops in Tongking called forth all thepent-up rancour which Jules Ferry had inspired in variousgroups. By the exaggerated news of defeat Paris was excitedTongking.to the brink of a revolution. The approaches of theChamber were invaded by an angry mob, and JulesFerry was the object of public hate more bitter than any manhad called forth in France since Napoleon III. on the days afterSedan. Within the Chamber he was attacked in all quarters.The Radicals took the lead, supported by the Monarchists, whor*membered the anti-clerical rigour of the Ferry laws, by theLeft Centre, not sorry for the tribulation of the group which hadsupplanted it, and by place-hunting republicans of all shades. Theattack was led by a politician who disdained office. M. GeorgesClémenceau, who had originally come to Paris from the Vendéeas a doctor, had as a radical leader in the Chamber used hisremarkable talent as an overthrower of ministries, and nearlyevery one of the eight ministerial crises which had alreadyoccurred during the presidency of Grévy had been hastened byhis mordant eloquence.
The next prime minister was M. Brisson, a radical lawyer andjournalist, who in April 1885 formed a cabinet of “concentration”—thatis to say, it was recruited from various groups with theidea of concentrating all republican forces in opposition to the reactionaries.MM. de Freycinet and Carnot, afterwards presidentof the Republic, represented the moderate element in this ministry,which superintended the general elections under scrutin de liste.That system was recommended by its advocates as a remedyfor the rapid decadence in the composition of the Chamber.Manhood suffrage, which had returned to the National Assemblya distinguished body of men to conclude peace with Germany,had chosen a very different type of representative to sit in theChamber created by the constitution of 1875. At each succeedingelection the standard of deputies returned grew lower, tillGambetta described them contemptuously as “sous-vétérinaires,”indicating that they were chiefly chosen from the petty professionalclass, which represented neither the real democracynor the material interests of the country. His view was thatthe election of members by departmental lists would ensure thecandidature of the best men in each region, who under the systemof single-member districts were apt to be neglected in favour oflocal politicians representing narrow interests. When his deathhad removed the fear of his using scrutin de liste as a plebiscitaryorganization, parliament sanctioned its trial. The result wasElections of 1885.not what its promoters anticipated. The compositionof the Chamber was indeed transformed, but only bythe substitution of reactionary deputies for republicans.Of the votes polled, 45% were given to the Monarchists, andif they had obtained one-half of the abstentions the Republicwould have come to an end. At the same time the characterof the republican deputies returned was not improved; so the soleeffect of scrutin de liste was to show that the electorate, weary ofrepublican dissensions, was ready to make a trial of monarchicalgovernment, if only the reactionary party proved that it containedstatesmen capable of leading the nation. So menacing was thesituation that the republicans thought it wise not further toexpose their divisions in the presidential election which wasdue to take place at the end of the year. Consequently, onthe 28th of December 1885, M. Grévy, in spite of his growingunpopularity, was elected president of the Republic for a secondterm of seven years.
The Brisson cabinet at once resigned, and on the 7th of January1886 its most important member, M. de Freycinet, formed histhird ministry, which had momentous influence on thehistory of the Republic. The new minister of warwas General Boulanger, a smart soldier of no remarkableGeneral Boulanger.military record; but being the nominee of M. Clémenceau, he beganhis official career by taking radical measures against commandingofficers of reactionary tendencies. He thus aided the governmentin its campaign against the families which had reigned inFrance, whose situation had been improved by the result of theelections. The fêtes given by the comte de Paris to celebratehis daughter’s marriage with the heir-apparent of Portugalmoved the republican majority in the Chambers to expel fromFrance the heads of the houses of Orleans and of Bonaparte,with their eldest sons. The names of all the princes on the armylist were erased from it, the decree being executed with unseemlyostentation by General Boulanger, who had owed earlypromotion to the protection of the duc d’Aumale, and on thatprince protesting he was exiled too. Meanwhile General Boulangertook advantage of Grévy’s unpopularity to make himselfa popular hero, and at the review, held yearly on the 14th ofJuly, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, his acclamationby the Parisian mob showed that he was taking an unexpectedplace in the imagination of the people. He continued to workwith the Radicals, so when they turned out M. de Freycinet inDecember 1886, one of their group, M. Goblet, a lawyer fromAmiens, formed a ministry, and retained Boulanger as minister ofwar. M. Clémenceau, however, withdrew his support from thegeneral, who was nevertheless loudly patronized by the violentradical press. His bold attitude towards Germany in connexionwith the arrest on the German frontier of a French official namedSchnaebele so roused the enthusiasm of the public, that M. Gobletwas not sorry to resign in May 1887 in order to get rid of his toopopular colleague.
To form the twelfth of his ministries, Grévy called upon M.Rouvier, an Opportunist from Marseilles, who had first held officein Gambetta’s short-lived cabinet. General Boulangerwas sent to command a corps d’armée at Clermont-Ferrand;but the popular press and the peopleThe Wilson scandal.clamoured for the hero who was said to have terrorized PrinceBismarck, and they encouraged him to play the part of aplebiscitary candidate. There were grave reasons for public discontent.Parliament in 1887 was more than usually sterile inlegislation, and in the autumn session it had to attend to a scandalwhich had long been rumoured. The son-in-law of Grévy,Daniel Wilson, a prominent deputy who had been an undersecretary of state, was accused of trafficking the decoration of theLegion of Honour, and of using the Elysée, the president’s officialresidence, where he lived, as an agency for his corrupt practices.The evidence against him was so clear that his colleagues in theChamber put the government into a minority in order to precipitatea presidential crisis, and on Grévy refusing to accept thishint, a long array of politicians, representing all the republicangroups, declined his invitation to aid him in forming a newministry, all being bent on forcing his resignation. Had GeneralBoulanger been a man of resolute courage he might at this crisishave made a coup d’état, for his popularity in the street and in thearmy increased as the Republic sank deeper into scandal andanarchy. At last, when Paris was on the brink of revolution,Grévy was prevailed on to resign. The candidates for his successionto the presidency were two ex-prime ministers, MM. Ferryand de Freycinet, and Floquet, a barrister, who had been conspicuousin the National Assembly for his sympathy with the Commune.The Monarchists had no candidate ready, and resolvedto vote for Ferry, because they believed that if he were electedhis unpopularity with the democracy would cause an insurrectionin Paris and the downfall of the Republic. MM. de Freycinetand Floquet each looked for the support of the Radicals, and eachhad made a secret compact, in the event of his election, to restoreGeneral Boulanger to the war office. But M. Clémenceau, fearingthe election of Jules Ferry, advised his followers to vote for an“outsider,” and after some manœuvring the congress elected by alarge majority Sadi Carnot.
The new president, though the nominee of chance, was anexcellent choice. The grandson of Lazare Carnot, the “organizerof victory” of the Convention, he was also a man ofunsullied probity. The tradition of his family name,only less glorious than that of Bonaparte in the annalsM. Carnot president of the Republic, 1887.of the Revolution, was welcome to France, almostready to throw herself into the arms of a soldier offortune, while his blameless repute reconciled some of thosewhose opposition to the Republic had been quickened by themean vices of Grévy. But the name and character of Carnotwould have been powerless to check the Boulangist movementwithout the incompetency of its leader, who was getting thedemocracy at his back without knowing how to utilize it. Thenew president’s first prime minister was M. Tirard, a senator whohad held office in six of Grévy’s ministries, and he formed acabinet of politicians as colourless as himself. The early monthsof 1888 were occupied with the trial of Wilson, who was sentencedto two years’ imprisonment for fraud, and with the conflictsof the government with General Boulanger, who was deprivedof his command for coming to Paris without leave. Wilsonappealed against his sentence, and General Boulanger waselected deputy for the department of the Aisne by an enormousmajority. It so happened that the day after his election apresidential decree was signed on the advice of the minister ofwar removing General Boulanger from the army, and the courtof appeal quashed Wilson’s conviction. Public feeling wasprofoundly moved by the coincidence of the release of therelative of the ex-president by the judges of the Republic onthe same day that its ministers expelled from the army thepopular hero of universal suffrage.
As General Boulanger had been invented by the Radicalsit was thought that a Radical cabinet might be a remedy tocope with him, so M. Floquet became president of the councilin April 1888, M. de Freycinet taking the portfolio of war,which he retained through many ministries. M. Floquet’s chiefBoulangism.achievement was a duel with General Boulanger,in which, though an elderly civilian, he wounded him.Nothing, however, checked the popularity of the military politician,and though he was a failure as a speaker in the Chamber,several departments returned him as their deputy by greatmajorities. The Bonapartists had joined him, and while in hismanifestos he described himself as the defender of the Republic,the mass of the Monarchists, with the consent of the comte de Paris,entered the Boulangist camp, to the dismay both of old-fashionedRoyalists and of many Orleanists, who resented his recenttreatment of the duc d’Aumale. The centenary of the takingof the Bastille was to be celebrated in Paris by an internationalexhibition, and it appeared likely that it would be inauguratedby General Boulanger, so irresistible seemed his popularity.In January 1889 he was elected member for the metropolitandepartment of the Seine with a quarter of a million votes, andby a majority of eighty thousand over the candidate of thegovernment. Had he marched on the Elysée the night of hiselection, nothing could have saved the parliamentary Republic;but again he let his chance go by. The government in alarmproposed the restoration of scrutin d’arrondissem*nt as theelectoral system for scrutin de liste. The change was rapidlyenacted by the two Chambers, and was a significant commentaryon the respective advantages of the two systems. M. Tirard wasagain called to form a ministry, and he selected as minister ofthe interior M. Constans, originally a professor at Toulouse, whohad already proved himself a skilful manipulator of elections whenhe held the same office in 1881. He was therefore given thesupervision of the machinery of centralization with which itwas supposed that General Boulanger would have to be foughtBoulanger’s flight.at the general election. That incomplete hero, however,saved all further trouble by flying the countrywhen he heard that his arrest was imminent. Thegovernment, in order to prevent any plebiscitary manifestationin his favour, passed a law forbidding a candidate to presenthimself for a parliamentary election in more than one constituency;it also arraigned the general on the charge of treasonbefore the Senate sitting as a high court, and he was sentencedin his absence to perpetual imprisonment. Such measureswere needless. The flight of General Boulanger was the deathof Boulangism. He alone had saved the Republic which haddone nothing to save itself. Its government had, on the contrary,displayed throughout the crisis an anarchic feebleness andincoherency which would have speeded its end had the leaderof the plebiscitary movement possessed sagacity or even commoncourage.
The elections of 1889 showed how completely the reactionarieshad compromised their cause in the Boulangist failure. Insteadof 45% of the votes polled as in 1885, they obtained only 21%,and the comte de Paris, the pretender of constitutional monarchy,was irretrievably prejudiced by his alliance with the militaryadventurer who had outraged the princes of his house. Aperiod of calm succeeded the storm of Boulangism, and for thefirst time under the Third Republic parliament set to work toproduce legislation useful for the state, without rousing partypassion, as in its other period of activity when the Ferry educationlaws were passed. Before the elections of 1889 the reformof the army was undertaken, the general term of active compulsoryservice was made three years, while certain classesh*therto dispensed from serving, including ecclesiastical seminaristsand lay professors, had henceforth to undergo a year’smilitary training. The new parliament turned its attention tosocial and labour questions, as the only clouds on the politicalhorizon were the serious strikes in the manufacturing districts,which displayed the growing political organization of the socialistparty. Otherwise nothing disturbed the calm of the country.The young duc d’Orléans vainly tried to ruffle it by breakinghis exile in order to claim his citizen’s right to perform hismilitary service. The cabinet was rearranged in March 1890, M.de Freycinet becoming prime minister for the fourth time, and retaining the portfolio of war. All seemed to point to the consolidationof the Republic, and even the Church made signalsof reconciliation. Cardinal Lavigerie, a patriotic missionaryand statesman, entertained the officers of the fleet at Algiers,and proposed the toast of the Republic to the tune of the“Marseillaise” played by his pères blancs. The royalist Catholicsprotested, but it was soon intimated that the archbishop ofAlgiers’ demonstration was approved at Rome. The year 1891was one of the few in the annals of the Republic which passedwithout a change of ministry, but the agitations of 1892 were tocounterbalance the repose of the two preceding years.
The first crisis arose out of the peacemaking policy of thePope. Following up his intimation to the archbishop of Algiers,Leo XIII. published in February 1892 an encyclical,bidding French Catholics accept the Republic as thefirmly established form of government. The papalThe papal encyclical, 1892.injunction produced a new political group called the“Ralliés,” the majority of its members being Monarchists whorallied to the Republic in obedience to the Vatican. The mostconspicuous among them was Comte Albert de Mun, an eloquentexponent in the Chamber of legitimism and Christian socialism.The extreme Left mistrusted the adhesion of the new converts tothe Republic, and ecclesiastical questions were the constantsubjects of acrimonious debates in parliament. In the courseof one of them M. de Freycinet found himself in a minority. Heceased to be prime minister, being succeeded by M. Loubet, alawyer from Montélimar, who had previously held office forthree months in the first Tirard cabinet; but M. de Freycinetcontinued to hold his portfolio of war. The confusion of therepublican groups kept pace with the disarray of the reactionaries,and outside parliament the frequency of anarchist outrages didnot increase public confidence. The only figure in the Republicwhich grew in prestige was that of M. Carnot, who in his frequentpresidential tours dignified his office, though his modesty madehim unduly efface his own personality.
When the autumn session of 1892 began all other questionswere overwhelmed by the bursting of the Panama scandal.The company associated for the piercing of the Isthmusof Panama, undertaken by M. de Lesseps, the makerof the Suez Canal, had become insolvent some yearsThe Panama scandal.before. Fifty millions sterling subscribed by thethrift of France had disappeared, but the rumours involvingpolitical personages in the disaster were so confidently assertedto be reactionary libels, that a minister of the Republic, afterwardssent to penal servitude for corruption, obtained damagesfor the publication of one of them. It was known that M. deLesseps was to be tried for misappropriating the money subscribed;but considering the vast sums lost by the public, littleinterest was taken in the matter till it was suddenly stirred bythe dramatic suicide of a well-known Jewish financier closelyconnected with republican politicians, driven to death, it wassaid, by menaces of blackmail. Then succeeded a period ofterror in political circles. Every one who had a grudge againstan enemy found vent for it in the press, and the people of Parislived in an atmosphere of delation. Unhappily it was truethat ministers and members of parliament had been subsidizedby the Panama company. Floquet, the president of the Chamber,avowed that when prime minister he had laid hands on £12,000of the company’s funds for party purposes, and his justificationof the act threw a light on the code of public morality of theparliamentary Republic. Other politicians were more seriouslyimplicated on the charge of having accepted subsidies for theirprivate purposes, and emotion reached its height when the cabinetordered the prosecution of two of its members for corrupt trafficof their offices. These two ministers were afterwards discharged,and they seem to have been accused with recklessness; but theirprosecution by their own colleagues proved that the statesmenof the Republic believed that their high political circles weresapped with corruption. Finally, only twelve senators anddeputies were committed for trial, and the only one convictedwas a minister of M. de Freycinet’s third cabinet, who pleadedguilty to receiving large bribes from the Panama company. Thepublic regarded the convicted politician as a scapegoat, believingthat there were numerous delinquents in parliament, more guiltythan he, who had not even been prosecuted. This feeling wasaggravated by the sentence passed, but afterwards remitted, onthe aged M. de Lesseps, who had involved French people inmisfortune only because he too sanguinely desired to repeat thetriumph he had achieved for France by his great work in Egypt.
Within the nation the moral result of the Panama affair wasa general feeling that politics had become under the Republica profession unworthy of honest citizens. The sentiment evokedby the scandal was one of sceptical lassitude rather than ofindignation. The reactionaries had crowned their record ofpolitical incompetence. At a crisis which gave legitimate opportunityto a respectable and patriotic Opposition they showedthat the country had nothing to expect from them but incoherentand exaggerated invective. If the scandal had come to lightin the time of General Boulanger the parliamentary Republicwould not have survived it. As it was, the sordid story did littlemore than produce several changes of ministry. M. Loubetresigned the premiership in December 1892 to M. Ribot, a formerfunctionary of the Empire, whose ministry lived for three stormyweeks. On the first day of 1893 M. Ribot formed his secondcabinet, which survived till the end of March, when he was succeededby his minister of education, M. Charles Dupuy, an ex-professorwho had never held office till four months previously.M. Dupuy, having taken the portfolio of the interior, supervisedthe general election of 1893, which took place amid the profoundindifference of the population, except in certain localities wherepersonal antagonisms excited violence. An intelligent Oppositionwould have roused the country at the polls against the régimecompromised by the Panama affair. Nothing of the sort occurred,and the electorate preferred the doubtful probity of their republicanrepresentatives to the certain incompetence of thereactionaries. The adversaries of the Republic polled only 16%of the votes recorded, and the chief feature of the election wasthe increased return of socialist and radical-socialist deputies.When parliament met it turned out the Dupuy ministry, andM. Casimir-Périer quitted the presidency of the Chamber totake his place. The new prime minister was the bearer of aneminent name, being the grandson of the statesman of 1831,and the great-grandson of the owner of Vizille, where the estatesof Dauphiné met in 1788, as a prelude to the assembling of thestates-general the next year. His acceptance of office arousedadditional interest because he was a minister possessed of independentwealth, and therefore a rare example of a Frenchpolitician free from the imputation of making a living out ofpolitics. Neither his repute nor his qualities gave long life to hisministry, which fell in four months, and M. Dupuy was sent foragain to form a cabinet in May 1894.
Before the second Dupuy ministry had been in office a monthPresident Carnot died by the knife of an anarchist at Lyons.He was perhaps the most estimable politician of theThird Republic. Although the standard of politicallife was not elevated under his presidency, he at allAssassination of president Carnot. Casimir-Périer president, 1894.
This time the Chambers were unprepared for a presidentialvacancy, and to fill it in forty-eight hours was necessarily amatter of haphazard. The choice of the congress fellon Félix Faure, a merchant of Havre, who, thoughminister of marine in the retiring cabinet, was one ofFélix Faure president, 1895.the least-known politicians who had held office. Theselection was a good one, and introduced to the presidency atype of politician unfortunately rare under the Third Republic—asuccessful man of business. Félix Faure had a fine presenceand polished manners, and having risen from a humble originhe displayed in his person the fact that civilization descendsto a lower social level in France than elsewhere. Although hewas in a sense a man of the people the Radicals and Socialistsin the Chambers had voted against him. Their candidate, likealmost all democratic leaders in France, had never worked withhis hands—M. Brisson, the son of an attorney at Bourges, amember of the Parisian bar, and perpetual candidate for thepresidency. Nevertheless the Left tried to take possession ofPresident Faure. His first ministry, composed of moderaterepublicans, and presided over by M. Ribot, lasted until theautumn session of 1895, when it was turned out and a radicalcabinet was formed by M. Léon Bourgeois, an ex-functionary,who when a prefect had been suspected of reactionary tendencies.
The Bourgeois cabinet of 1895 was remarkable as the firstministry formed since 1877 which did not contain a singlemember of the outgoing cabinet. It was said to be exclusivelyradical in its composition, and thus to indicate that the days of“republican concentration” were over, and that the Republic,being firmly established, an era of party government on theEnglish model had arrived. The new ministry, however, onanalysis did not differ in character from any of its predecessors.Seven of its members were old office-holders of the ordinary“ministrable” type. The most conspicuous was M. Cavaignac,the son of the general who had opposed Louis Bonaparte in 1848,and the grandson of J.B. Cavaignac, the regicide member of theConvention. Like Carnot and Casimir-Périer, he was, therefore,one of those rare politicians of the Republic who possessed somehereditary tradition. An ambitious man, he was now classedas a Radical on the strength of his advocacy of the income-tax,the principle of which has never been popular in France, as beingadverse to the secretive habits of thrift cultivated by the people,which are a great source of the national wealth. The radicalismof the rest of the ministry was not more alarming in character,and its tenure of office was without legislative result. Its fall, however,occasioned the only constitutionally interesting ministerialcrisis of the twenty-four which had taken place since Grévy’selection to the presidency sixteen years before. The Senate,disliking the fiscal policy of the government, refused to votesupply in spite of the support which the Chamber gave to theministry. The collision between the two houses did not producethe revolutionary rising which the Radicals predicted, and theSenate actually forced the Bourgeois cabinet to resign amidprofound popular indifference.
The new prime minister was M. Méline, who began his longpolitical career as a member of the Commune in 1871, but was solittle compromised in the insurrection that Jules Simon gavehim an under-secretaryship in his ministry of 1876. After thathe was once a cabinet minister, and was for a year president ofthe Chamber. He was chiefly known as a protectionist; but itwas as leader of the Progressists, as the Opportunists now calledthemselves, that he formed his cabinet in April 1896, which wasannounced as a moderate ministry opposed to the policy of theRadicals. It is true that it made no attempt to tax incomes, butotherwise its achievements did not differ from those of otherministries, radical or concentration, except in its long survival.It lasted for over two years, and lived as long as the secondFerry cabinet. Its existence was prolonged by certain incidentsof the Franco-Russian alliance. The visit of the Tsar to Parisin October 1896, being the first official visit paid by a Europeansovereign to the Republic, helped the government over theFranco-Russian alliance.critical period at which ministries usually succumbed,and it was further strengthened in parliament by theinvitation to the president of the Republic to returnthe imperial visit at St Petersburg in 1897. TheChamber came to its normal term that autumn; but a law hadbeen passed fixing May as the month for general elections, andthe ministry was allowed to retain office till the dissolution atEaster 1898.
The long duration of the Méline government was said to bea further sign of the arrival of an era of party government withits essential accompaniment, ministerial stability. But in thecountry there was no corresponding sign that the electoratewas being organized into two parties of Progressists and Radicals;while in the Chamber it was ominously observed that persistentopposition to the moderate ministry came from nominal supportersof its views, who were dismayed at one small band offellow-politicians monopolizing office for two years. The lastelection of the century was therefore fought on a confused issue,the most tangible results being the further reduction of theMonarchists, who secured only 12% of the total poll, and theadvance of the Socialists, who obtained nearly 20% of the votesrecorded. The Radicals returned were less numerous than theModerates, but with the aid of the Socialists they nearly balancedthem. A new group entitled Nationalist made its appearance,supported by a miscellaneous electorate representing the malcontentelement in the nation of all political shades from monarchistto revolutionary socialist. The Chamber, so composed,was as incoherent as either of its predecessors. It refused to re-electthe radical leader M. Brisson as its president, and thenrefused its confidence to the moderate leader M. Méline. M.Brisson, the rejected of the Chamber, was sent for to form aministry, on the 28th of June 1898, which survived till the adjournment,only to be turned out when the autumn session began. M.Charles Dupuy thus became prime minister for the third time witha cabinet of the old concentration pattern, and for the thirdtime in less than five years under his premiership the Presidencyof the Republic became vacant. Félix Faure had increased in1899: death of President Faure.pomposity rather than in popularity. His contact with Europeansovereigns seems to have made him over-conscious ofhis superior rank, and he cultivated habits whichaustere republicans make believe to be the monopolyof frivolous courts. The regular domesticityof middle-class life may not be disturbed with impunity whenage is advancing, and Félix Faure died with tragic unexpectednesson the 16th of February 1899. The joys of his high officewere so dear to him that nothing but death would have inducedhim to lay it down before the term of his septennate. There wastherefore no candidate in waiting for the vacancy; and as Pariswas in an agitated mood the majority in the Congress electedM. Loubet president of the Republic, because he happened to holdM. Loubet president.the second place of dignity in the state, the presidencyof the Senate, and was, moreover, a politician who hadthe confidence of the republican groups as an adversaryof plebiscitary pretensions. His only competitor was M. Méline,whose ambitions were not realized, in spite of the alliance of hisProgressist supporters with the Monarchists and Nationalists.The Dupuy ministry lasted till June 1899, when a new cabinetwas formed by M. Waldeck-Rousseau, who, having held officeunder Gambetta and Jules Ferry, had relinquished politics forthe bar, of which he had become a distinguished leader. Thougha moderate republican, he was the first prime minister to giveportfolios to socialist politicians. This was the distinguishingfeature of the last cabinet of the century—the thirty-seventhwhich had taken office in the twenty-six years which had elapsedsince the resignation of Thiers in 1873.
It is now necessary to go back a few years in order to referto a matter which, though not political in its origin, in its developmentfilled the whole political atmosphere of France in theclosing period of the 19th century. Soon after the failure of theBoulangist movement a journal was founded at Paris called the Libre Parole. Its editor, M. Drumont, was known as the authorof La France juive, a violent anti-Semitic work, written to denounceAnti-Semitic movement.the influence exercised by Jewish financiers inthe politics of the Third Republic. It may be said tohave started the anti-Semitic movement in France,where hostility to the Jews had not the pretextexisting in those lands which contain a large Jewish populationexercising local rivalry with the natives of the soil, or spoilingthem with usury. That state of things existed in Algeria, wherethe indigenous Jews were made French citizens during theFranco-Prussian War to secure their support against the Arabsin rebellion. But political anti-Semitism was introduced intoAlgeria only as an offshoot of the movement in continentalFrance, where the great majority of the Jewish community wereof the same social class as the politicians of the Republic.Primarily directed against the Jewish financiers, the movementwas originally looked upon as a branch of the anti-capitalistpropaganda of the Socialists. Thus the Libre Parole joined withthe revolutionary press in attacking the repressive legislationprovoked by the dynamite outrages of the anarchists, clericalreactionaries who supported it being as scurrilously abused bythe anti-Semitic organ as its republican authors. The Panamaaffair, in the exposure of which the Libre Parole took a prominentpart soon after its foundation, was also a bond between anti-Semitesand Socialists, to whom, however, the Monarchists,always incapable of acting alone, united their forces. Theimplication of certain Jewish financiers with republican politiciansin the Panama scandal aided the anti-Semites in their specialpropaganda, of which a main thesis was that the government ofthe Third Republic had been organized by its venal politicians forthe benefit of Jewish immigrants from Germany, who had thusenriched themselves at the expense of the laborious and unsuspectingFrench population. The Libre Parole, which hadbecome a popular organ with reactionaries and with malcontentsof all classes, enlisted the support of the Catholics by attributingthe anti-religious policy of the Republic to the influence of theJews, skilfully reviving bitter memories of the enaction of theFerry decrees, when sometimes the laicization of schools or theexpulsion of monks and nuns had been carried out by a Jewishfunctionary. Thus religious sentiment and race prejudice wereintroduced into a movement which was at first directed againstcapital; and the campaign was conducted with the weapons ofscurrility and defamation which had made an unlicensed pressunder the Third Republic a demoralizing national evil.
An adroit feature of the anti-Semitic campaign was an appealto national patriotism to rid the army of Jewish influence. TheJews, it was said, not content with directing thefinancial, and thereby the general policy of the Republic,had designs on the French army, in which theyCondemnation of Captain Dreyfus.wished to act as secret agents of their Germankindred. In October 1894 the Libre Parole announced that aJewish officer of artillery attached to the general staff, CaptainAlfred Dreyfus, had been arrested on the charge of supplyinga government of the Triple Alliance with French military secrets.Tried by court-martial, he was sentenced to military degradationand to detention for life in a fortress. He was publicly degradedat Paris in January 1895, a few days before Casimir-Périerresigned the presidency of the Republic, and was transportedto the Île du Diable on the coast of French Guiana. His conviction,on the charge of having betrayed to a foreign powerdocuments relating to the national defence, was based on thealleged identity of his handwriting with that of an interceptedcovering-letter, which contained a list of the papers treasonablycommunicated. The possibility of his innocence was notraised outside the circle of his friends; the Socialists, who subsequentlydefended him, even complained that common soldierswere shot for offences less than that for which this richly connectedofficer had been only transported. The secrecy of histrial did not shock public sentiment in France, where at that timeall civilians charged with crime were interrogated by a judge inprivate, and where all accused persons are presumed guiltyuntil proved innocent. In a land subject to invasion there wasless disposition to criticize the decision of a military tribunalacting in the defence of the nation even than there would havebeen in the case of a doubtful judgment passed in a civil court.The country was practically unanimous that Captain Dreyfushad got his deserts. A few, indeed, suggested that had he notbeen a Jew he would never have been accused; but the greaternumber replied that an ordinary French traitor of Gentile birthwould have been forgotten from the moment of his condemnation.The pertinacity with which some of his co-religionists set towork to show that he had been irregularly condemned seemed tojustify the latter proposition. But it was not a Jew who broughtabout the revival of the affair. Colonel Picquart, an officer ofgreat promise, became head of the intelligence department at thewar office, and in 1896 informed the minister of his suspicionthat the letter on which Dreyfus had been condemned waswritten by a certain Major Esterhazy. The military authorities,not wishing to have the case reopened, sent Colonel Picquarton foreign service, and put in his place Colonel Henry. The all-seeingpress published various versions of the incident, and theanti-Semitic journals denounced them as proofs of a Jewishconspiracy against the French army.
At the end of 1897 M. Scheurer-Kestner, an Alsatian devotedto France and a republican senator, tried to persuade his politicalfriends to reopen the case; but M. Méline, the primeminister, declared in the name of the Republic that theDreyfus affair no longer existed. The fact that theDreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards.senator who championed Dreyfus was a Protestantencouraged the clerical press in its already marked tendency toutilize anti-Semitism as a weapon of ecclesiastical warfare.But the religious side-issues of the question would have hadlittle importance had not the army been involved in the controversy,which had become so keen that all the population,outside that large section of it indifferent to all public questions,was divided into “Dreyfusards” and “anti-Dreyfusards.”The strong position of the latter was due to their assuming theposition of defenders of the army, which, at an epoch whenneither the legislature nor the government inspired respect, andthe Church was the object of polemic, was the only institution inFrance to unite the nation by appealing to its martial andpatriotic instincts. That is the explanation of the enthusiasmof the public for generals and other officers by whom the trialof Dreyfus and subsequent proceedings had been conducted in amanner repugnant to those who do not favour the arbitrary waysof military dictatorship, which, however, are not unpopularin France. The acquittal of Major Esterhazy by a court-martial,the conviction of Zola by a civil tribunal for a violent criticismof the military authorities, and the imprisonment without trialof Colonel Picquart for his efforts to exonerate Dreyfus, werepractically approved by the nation. This was shown by theresult of the general elections in May 1898. The clerical reactionarieswere almost swept out of the Chamber, but the overwhelmingrepublican majority was practically united in its hostility tothe defenders of Dreyfus, whose only outspoken representativeswere found in the socialist groups. The moderate Mélineministry was succeeded in June 1898 by the radical Brissonministry. But while the new prime minister was said to bepersonally disposed to revise the sentence on Dreyfus, his civilianminister of war, M. Cavaignac, was as hostile to revision as anyof his military predecessors—General Mercier, under whom thetrial took place, General Zurlinden, and General Billot, a republicansoldier devoted to the parliamentary régime.
The radical minister of war in July 1898 laid before theChamber certain new proofs of the guilt of Dreyfus, in a speechso convincing that the house ordered it to be placardedin all the communes of France. The next monthColonel Henry, the chief of the intelligence department,Political results of Dreyfus agitation.confessed to having forged those new proofs, and thencommitted suicide. M. Cavaignac thereupon resigned office,but declared that the crime of Henry did not prove the innocenceof Dreyfus. Many, however, who had hitherto accepted thejudgment of 1894, reflected that the offence of a guilty man didnot need new crime for its proof. It was further remarked that the forgery had been committed by the intimate colleague ofthe officers of the general staff, who had zealously protectedEsterhazy, the suspected author of the document on whichDreyfus had been convicted. An uneasy misgiving becamewidespread; but partisan spirit was too excited for it to causea general revulsion of feeling. Some journalists and politiciansof the extreme Left had adopted the defence of Dreyfus as ananti-clerical movement in response to the intemperate partisanshipof the Catholic press on the other side. Other members ofthe socialist groups, not content with criticizing the conduct ofthe military authorities in the Dreyfus affair, opened a generalattack on the French army,—an unpopular policy which allowedthe anti-Dreyfusards to utilize the old revolutionary device ofmaking the word “patriotism” a party cry. The defamationand rancour with which the press on both sides flooded the landobscured the point at issue. However, the Brisson ministryjust before its fall remitted the Dreyfus judgment to the criminaldivision of the cour de cassation—the supreme court of revisionin France. M. Dupuy formed a new cabinet in November 1898,and made M. de Freycinet minister of war, but that adroitoffice-holder, though a civilian and a Protestant, did not favourthe anti-military and anti-clerical defenders of Dreyfus. Therefusal of the Senate, the stronghold of the Republic, to re-electM. Scheurer-Kestner as its vice-president, showed that theopportunist minister of war understood the feeling of parliament,which was soon displayed by an extraordinary proceeding.The divisional judges, to whom the case was remitted, showedsigns that their decision would be in favour of a new trial ofDreyfus. The republican legislature, therefore, disregardingthe principle of the separation of the powers, which is the basisof constitutional government, took the arbitrary step of interferingwith the judicial authority. It actually passed a law withdrawingthe partly-heard cause from the criminal chamber of thecour de cassation, and transferring it to the full court of threedivisions, in the hope that a majority of judges would thus befound to decide against the revision of the sentence on Dreyfus.
This flagrant confusion of the legislative with the judicialpower displayed once more the incompetence of the Frenchrightly to use parliamentary institutions; but it left the nationindifferent. It was during the passage of the bill that thepresident of the Republic suddenly died. Félix Faure was saidto be hostile to the defenders of Dreyfus and disposed to utilisethe popular enthusiasm for the army as a means of making thepresidential office independent of parliament. The Chambers,therefore, in spite of their anti-Dreyfusard bias, were determinednot to relinquish any of their constitutional prerogative. Themilitary and plebiscitary parties were now fomenting the publicdiscontent by noisy demonstrations. The president of the Senate,M. Loubet, as has been mentioned, was known to have nosympathy with this agitation, so he was elected president ofthe Republic by a large majority at the congress held at Versailleson 18th February 1899. The new president, who was unknownto the public, though he had once been prime minister for ninemonths, was respected in political circles; but his elevation tothe first office of the State made him the object of that defamationwhich had become the chief characteristic of the partisanpress under the Third Republic. He was recklessly accused ofhaving been an accomplice of the Panama frauds, by screeningcertain guilty politicians when he was prime minister in 1892,and because he was not opposed to the revision of the Dreyfussentence he was wantonly charged with being bought withJewish money. Meanwhile the united divisions of the cour decassation were, in spite of the intimidation of the legislature,reviewing the case with an independence worthy of praise in anill-paid magistracy which owed its promotion to political influence.Instead of justifying the suggestive interference of parliamentit revised the judgment of the court-martial, and ordered Dreyfusto be re-tried by a military tribunal at Rennes. The Dupuyministry, which had wished to prevent this decision, resigned,and M. Waldeck-Rousseau formed a heterogeneous cabinet inwhich Socialists, who for the first time took office, had for theircolleague as minister of war General de Galliffet, whose chiefpolitical fame had been won as the executioner of the Communardsafter the insurrection of 1871. Dreyfus was brought backSecond trial of Dreyfus.from the Devil’s Island, and in August 1899 was putupon his trial a second time. His old accusers, ledby General Mercier, the minister of war of 1894,redoubled their efforts to prove his guilt, and werepermitted by the officers composing the court a wide licenseaccording to English ideas of criminal jurisprudence. Thepublished evidence did not, however, seem to connect Dreyfuswith the charges brought against him. Nevertheless the court,by a majority of five to two, found him guilty, and with illogicalinconsequence added that there were in his treason extenuatingcirc*mstances. He was sentenced to ten years’ detention, andwhile it was being discussed whether the term he had alreadyserved would count as part of his penalty, the ministry completedthe inconsequency of the situation by advising the president ofthe Republic to pardon the prisoner. The result of the secondtrial satisfied neither the partisans of the accused, who desiredhis rehabilitation, some of them reproaching him for acceptinga pardon, nor his adversaries, whose vindictiveness was unsatedby the penalty he had already suffered. But the great mass ofthe French people, who are always ready to treat a publicquestion with indifference, were glad to be rid of a controversywhich had for years infected the national life.
The Dreyfus affair was severely judged by foreign critics asa miscarriage of justice resulting from race-prejudice. If thatsimple appreciation rightly describes its origin, itbecame in its development one of those scandalssymptomatic of the unhealthy political condition ofReal character of the Dreyfus agitation.France, which on a smaller scale had often recurredunder the Third Republic, and which were made thepretext by the malcontents of all parties for gratifying theiranimosities. That in its later stages it was not a question ofrace-persecution was seen in the curious phenomenon of journalsowned or edited by Jews leading the outcry against the Jewishofficer and his defenders. That it was not a mere episode of therivalry between Republicans and Monarchists, or between theadvocates of parliamentarism and of military autocracy, wasevident from the fact that the most formidable opponents ofDreyfus, without whose hostility that of the clericals andreactionaries would have been ineffective, were republicanpoliticians. That it was not a phase of the anti-capitalistmovement was shown by the zealous adherence of the socialistleaders and journalists to the cause of Dreyfus; indeed, oneremarkable result of the affair was its diversion of the socialistparty and press for several years from their normal campaignagainst property. The Dreyfus affair was utilized by the reactionariesagainst the Republic, by the clericals against the non-Catholics,by the anti-clericals against the Church, by the militaryparty against the parliamentarians, and by the revolutionarysocialists against the army. It was also conspicuously utilizedby rival republican politicians against one another, and the chaosof political groups was further confused by it.
An epilogue to the Dreyfus affair was the trial for treason beforethe Senate, at the end of 1899, of a number of persons, mostlyobscure followers either of M. Déroulède the poet,who advocated a plebiscitary republic, or of the ducd’Orléans, the pretender of the constitutional monarchy.The State trial of 1899.On the day of President Faure’s funeral M. Déroulèdehad vainly tried to entice General Roget, a zealous adversaryof Dreyfus, who was on duty with his troops, to march on theElysée in order to evict the newly-elected president of theRepublic. Other demonstrations against M. Loubet ensued,the most offensive being a concerted assault upon him on theracecourse at Auteuil in June 1899. The subsequent resistanceto the police of a band of anti-Semites threatened with arrest,who barricaded themselves in a house in the rue Chabrol, in thecentre of Paris, and, with the marked approval of the populace,sustained a siege for several weeks, indicated that the capitalwas in a condition not far removed from anarchy. M. Déroulède,indicted at the assizes of the Seine for his misdemeanour onthe day of President Faure’s funeral, had been triumphantly acquitted. It was evident that no jury would convict citizensprosecuted for political offences and the government thereforedecided to make use of the article of the Law of 1875, whichallowed the Senate to be constituted a high court for the trial ofoffences endangering the state. A respectable minority of theSenate, including M. Wallon, the venerable “Father of theConstitution” of 1875, vainly protested that the framers of thelaw intended to invest the upper legislative chamber withjudicial power only for the trial of grave crimes of high treason,and not of petty political disorders which a well-organizedgovernment ought to be able to repress with the ordinarymachinery of police and justice. The outvoted protest wasjustified by the proceedings before the High Court, which, undignifiedand disorderly, displayed both the fatuity of the so-calledconspirators and the feebleness of the government whichhad to cope with them. The trial proved that the plebiscitaryfaction was destitute of its essential factor, a chief to put forwardfor the headship of the state, and that it was resolved, if it overturnedthe parliamentary system, not to accept under anyconditions the duc d’Orléans, the only pretender before thepublic. It was shown that royalists and plebiscitary republicansalike had utilized as an organization of disorder the anti-Semiticpropaganda which had won favour among the masses as anationalist movement to protect the French from foreign competition.The evidence adduced before the high court revealed,moreover, the curious fact that certain Jewish royalists had givento the duc d’Orléans large sums of money to found anti-Semiticjournals as the surest means of popularizing his cause.
The last year of the 19th century, though uneventful forFrance, was one of political unrest. This, however, did not takethe form of ministerial crises, as, for the fourth timesince responsible cabinets were introduced in 1873,a whole year, from the 1st of January to the 31st ofFrench parties at the close of the 19th century.December, elapsed without a change of ministry.The prime minister, M. Waldeck-Rousseau, thoughhis domestic policy exasperated a large section of thepolitical world, including one half of the Progressive groupwhich he had helped to found, displayed qualities of statesmanshipalways respected in France, but rarely exhibited under theThird Republic. He had proved himself to be what the Frenchcall un homme de gouvernement—that is to say, an authoritativeadministrator of unimpassioned temperament capable of governingwith the arbitrary machinery of Napoleonic centralization.His alliance with the extreme Left and the admission into hiscabinet of socialist deputies, showed that he understood whichwing of the Chamber it was best to conciliate in order to keep thegovernment in his hands for an abnormal term. The advent tooffice of Socialists disquieted the respectable and prosperouscommercial classes, which in France take little part in politics,though they had small sympathy with the nationalists, whowere the most violent opponents of the Waldeck-Rousseauministry. The alarm caused by the handing over of importantdepartments of the state to socialist politicians arose upon adanger which is not always understood beyond the borders ofFrance. Socialism in France is a movement appealing to therevolutionary instincts of the French democracy, advocated invague terms by the members of rival groups or sects. Thus theincreasing number of socialist deputies in parliament had producedno legislative results, and their presence in the cabinetwas not feared on that account. The fear which their office-holdinginspired was due to the immense administrative patronagewhich the centralized system confides to each member ofthe government. French ministers are wont to bestow the placesat their disposal on their political friends, so the prospect ofadministrative posts being filled all over the land by revolutionariescaused some uneasiness. Otherwise the presence ofSocialists on the ministerial bench seemed to have no other effectthan that of partially muzzling the socialist groups in theChamber. The opposition to the government was heterogeneous.It included the few Monarchists left in the Chamber, the Nationalists,who resembled the Boulangists of twelve years before, andwho had added anti-Semitism to the articles of the revisionistcreed, and a number of republicans, chiefly of the old Opportunistgroup, which had renewed itself under the name of Progressistat the time when M. Waldeck-Rousseau was its most importantmember in the Senate.
The ablest leaders of this Opposition were all malcontentRepublicans; and this fact seemed to show that if ever anyform of monarchy were restored in France, political office wouldprobably remain in the hands of men who were former ministersof the Third Republic. Thus the most conspicuous opponentsof the cabinet were three ex-prime ministers, MM. Méline,Charles Dupuy and Ribot. Less distinguished republican“ministrables” had their normal appetite for office whettedin 1900 by the international exhibition at Paris. It brought theministers of the day into unusual prominence, and endowedthem with large subsidies voted by parliament for officialentertainments. The exhibition was planned on too ambitiousa scale to be a financial success. It also called forth the justregrets of those who deplored the tendency of Parisians underthe Third Republic to turn their once brilliant city into aninternational casino. Its most satisfactory feature was theproof it displayed of the industrial inventiveness and the artisticinstinct of the French. The political importance of the exhibitionlay in the fact that it determined the majority in the Chambernot to permit the foreigners attracted by it to the capital towitness a ministerial crisis. Few strangers of distinction, however,came to it, and not one sovereign of the great powersvisited Paris; but the ministry remained in office, and M.Waldeck-Rousseau had uninterrupted opportunity of showinghis governmental ability. The only change in his cabinet tookplace when General de Galliffet resigned the portfolio of warto General André. The army, as represented by its officers,had shown symptoms of hostility to the ministry in consequenceof the pardon of Dreyfus. The new minister of war repressedsuch demonstrations with proceedings of the same arbitrarycharacter as those which had called forth criticism in Englandwhen used in the Dreyfus affair. In both cases the high-handedpolicy was regarded either with approval or with indifference bythe great majority of the French nation, which ever since theRevolution has shown that its instincts are in favour of authoritativegovernment. The emphatic support given by the radicalgroups to the autocratic policy of M. Waldeck-Rousseau and hisministers was not surprising to those who have studied thehistory of the French democracy. It has always had a tastefor despotism since it first became a political power in the daysof the Jacobins, to whose early protection General Bonaparteowed his career. On the other hand liberalism has always beenrepugnant to the masses, and the only period in which theLiberals governed the country was under the régime of limitedsuffrage—during the Restoration and the Monarchy of July.
The most important event in France during the last year ofthe century, not from its political result, but from the lessonsit taught, was perhaps the Paris municipal election. Thequadrennial renewal of all the municipal councils of France tookplace in May 1900. The municipality of the capital had beenfor many years in the hands of the extreme Radicals and therevolutionary Socialists. The Parisian electors now sent to theHôtel de Ville a council in which the majority were Nationalists,in general sympathy with the anti-Semitic and plebiscitarymovements. The nationalist councillors did not, however, formone solid party, but were divided into five or six groups, representingevery shade of political discontent, from monarchism torevisionist-socialism. While the electorate of Paris thus pronouncedfor the revision of the Constitution, the provincialelections, as far as they had a political bearing, were favourableto the ministry and to the Republic. M. Waldeck-Rousseauaccepted the challenge of the capital, and dealt with its representativeswith the arbitrary weapons of centralization whichthe Republic had inherited from the Napoleonic settlement ofthe Revolution. Municipal autonomy is unknown in France, andthe town council of Paris has to submit to special restrictions onits liberty of action. The prefect of the Seine is always presentat its meetings as agent of the government and the minister of the interior can veto any of its resolutions. The Socialists, whentheir party ruled the municipality, clamoured in parliament forParis and the provinces.the removal of this administrative control. But nowbeing in a minority they supported the governmentin its anti-autonomic rigours. The majority of themunicipal council authorized its president to inviteto a banquet, in honour of the international exhibition,the provincial mayors and a number of foreign municipalmagnates, including the lord mayor of London. The ministerswere not invited, and the prefect of the Seine thereupon informedthe president of the municipality that he had no right, withoutconsulting the agent of the government, to offer a banquet to theprovincial mayors; and they, with the deference which Frenchofficials instinctively show to the central authority, almost allrefused the invitation to the Hôtel de Ville. The municipalbanquet was therefore abandoned, but the government gaveone in the Tuileries gardens, at which no fewer than 22,000 mayorspaid their respects to the chief of the state. These events showedthat, as in the Terror, as at the coup d’état of 1851, and as in theinsurrection of the Commune, the French provinces were neverdisposed to follow the political lead of the capital, whetherthe opinions prevailing there were Jacobin or reactionary.These incidents displayed the tendency of the French democracy,in Paris and in the country alike, to submit to and even to encouragethe arbitrary working of administrative centralization.The elected mayors of the provincial communes, urban andrural, quitted themselves like well-drilled functionaries of thestate, respectful of their hierarchical superiors, just as in the dayswhen they were the nominees of the government; while thepopulation of Paris, in spite of its perennial proneness to revolution,accepted the rebuff inflicted on its chosen representativeswithout any hostile demonstration. The municipal electionsin Paris afforded fresh proof of the unchanging political ineptitudeof the reactionaries. The dissatisfaction of the great capitalwith the government of the Republic might, in spite of thereluctance of the provinces to follow the lead of Paris, have hadgrave results if skilfully organized. But the anti-republicangroups, instead of putting forward men of high ability or reputationto take possession of the Hôtel de Ville, chose their candidatesamong the same inferior class of professional politicians as theRadicals and the Socialists whom they replaced on the municipalcouncil.
The beginning of a century of the common era is a purelyartificial division of time. Yet it has often marked a turning-pointin the history of nations. This was notably thecase in France in 1800. The violent and anarchicalphases of the Revolution of 1789 came to an end withFrance at the opening of the
20th century.the 18th century; and the dawn of the 19th wascoincident with the administrative reconstructionof France by Napoleon, on lines which endured withlittle modification till the end of that century, surviving sevenrevolutions of the executive power. The opening years of the20th century saw no similar changes in the government of thecountry. The Third Republic, which was about to attain anage double that reached by any other regime since the Revolution,continued to live on the basis of the Constitution enacted in1875, before it was five years old. Yet it seems not unlikely thathistorians of the future may take the date 1900 as a landmarkbetween two distinct periods in the evolution of the Frenchnation.
With the close of the 19th century the Dreyfus affair camepractically to an end. Whatever the political and moral causesof the agitation which attended it, its practical resultwas to strengthen the Radical and Socialist parties inthe Republic, and to reduce to unprecedented impotenceResults of the Dreyfus affair.the forces of reaction. This was due more to themaladroitness of the Reactionaries than to the virtues or theprescience of the extreme Left, as the imprisonment of the Jewishcaptain, which agitated and divided the nation, could not havebeen inflicted without the ardent approval of Republicans ofall shades of opinion. But when the majority at last realizedthat a mistake had been committed, the Reactionaries, in greatmeasure through their own unwise policy, got the chief creditfor it. Consequently, as the clericals formed the militant sectionof the anti-Republican parties, and as the Radical-Socialistswere at that time keener in their hostility to the Church than intheir zeal for social or economic reform, the issue of the Dreyfusaffair brought about an anti-clerical movement, which, thoughinitiated and organized by a small minority, met with nothingto resist it in the country, the reactionary forces being effeteand the vast majority of the population indifferent. The mainand absorbing feature therefore of political life in France in thefirst years of the 20th century was a campaign against the RomanCatholic Church, unparalleled in energy since the Revolution.Its most striking result was the rupture of the Concordat betweenFrance and the Vatican. This act was additionally importantas being the first considerable breach made in the administrativestructure reared by Napoleon, which had hitherto survived allthe vicissitudes of the 19th century. Concurrently with thisthe influence of the Socialist party in French policy largelyincreased. A primary principle professed by the Socialiststhroughout Europe is pacificism, and its dissemination in Franceacted in two very different ways. It encouraged in the Frenchpeople a growth of anti-military spirit, which showed some signof infecting the national army, and it impelled the governmentof the Republic to be zealous in cultivating friendly relationswith other powers. The result of the latter phase of pacificismwas that France, under the Radical-Socialist administrationsof the early years of the 20th century, enjoyed a measure ofinternational prestige of that superficial kind which is expressedby the state visits of crowned heads to the chief of the executivepower, greater than at any period since the Second Empire.
The voting of the law which separated the Church from thestate will probably mark a capital date in French history; so,as the ecclesiastical policy of successive ministriesfilled almost entirely the interior chronicles of Francefor the first five years of the new century, it will beChurch policy.convenient to set forth in order the events which during thatperiod led up to the passing of the Separation Act.
The French legislature during the first session of the 20thcentury was chiefly occupied with the passing of the AssociationsLaw. That measure, though it entirely changed the legalposition of all associations in France, was primarily directedagainst the religious associations of the Roman Catholic Church.Their influence in the land, according to the anti-clericals, hadbeen proved by the Dreyfus affair to be excessive. The Jesuitswere alleged, on their own showing, to exercise considerablepower over the officers of the army, and in this way to have beenlargely responsible for the blunders of the Dreyfus case. Anotherless celebrated order, which took an active part against Dreyfus,the Assumptionists, had achieved notoriety by its journalisticenterprise, its cheap newspapers of wide circulation being remarkablefor the violence of their attacks on the institutionsand men of the Republic. The mutual antagonism between theFrench government and religious congregations is a traditionwhich dates from the ancient monarchy and was continued byNapoleon I. long before the Third Republic adopted it in thelegislation associated with the names of Jules Ferry and PaulBert. The prime minister, under whose administration the20th century succeeded the 19th, was M. Waldeck-Rousseau,who had been the colleague of Paul Bert in Gambetta’s grandministère, and in 1883 had served under Jules Ferry in his secondministry. He had retired from political life, though he remaineda member of the Senate, and was making a large fortune at thebar, when in June 1899, at pecuniary sacrifice, he consented toform a ministry for the purpose of “liquidating” the Dreyfusaffair. In 1900, the year after the second condemnation ofDreyfus and his immediate pardon by the government, M.Waldeck-Rousseau in a speech at Toulouse announced thatlegislation was about to be undertaken on the subject of associations.
At that period the hostility of the Revolution to the principleof associations of all kinds, civil as well as religious, was stillenforced by the law. With the exception of certain commercial societies subject to special legislation, no association composedof more than twenty persons could be formed without governmentalauthorization which was always revocable, the restrictionapplying equally to political and social clubs and to religiouscommunities. The law was the same for all, but was differentlyapplied. Authorization was rarely refused to political or socialsocieties, though any club was liable to have its authorizationwithdrawn and to be shut up or dissolved. But to religiousorders new authorization was practically never granted. Onlyfour of them, the orders of Saint Lazare, of the Saint Esprit,of the Missions Étrangères and of Saint Sulpice, were authorizedunder the Third Republic—their authorization dating from theFirst Empire and the Restoration. The Frères de la DoctrineChrétienne were also recognized, not, however, as a religiouscongregation under the jurisdiction of the minister of publicworship, but as a teaching body under that of the minister ofeducation. All the great historical orders, preaching, teachingor contemplative, were “unauthorized”; they led a precariouslife on sufferance, having as corporations no civil existence,and being subject to dissolution at a moment’s notice by theadministrative authority. In spite of this disability and of thedecrees of 1880 directed against unauthorized monastic ordersthey had so increased under the anti-clerical Republic, that thereligious of both sexes were more numerous in France at thebeginning of the 20th century than at the end of the ancientmonarchy. Moreover, in the twenty years during which unauthorizedOrders had been supposed to be suppressed underthe Ferry Decrees, their numbers had become six times morenumerous than before, while it was the authorized Congregationswhich had diminished. The bare catalogue of the religioushouses in the land, with the value of their properties (estimatedby M. Waldeck-Rousseau at a milliard—£40,000,000) filledtwo White Books of two thousand pages, presented to parliamenton the 4th of December 1900. The hostility to the Congregationswas not confined to the anti-clericals. The secularclergy were suffering materially from the enterprising competitionof their old rivals the regulars. Had the legislation for definingthe legal situation of the religious orders been undertaken withthe sole intention of limiting their excessive growth, such ameasure would have been welcome to the parochial clergy.But they saw that the attack upon the congregations was onlypreliminary to a general attack upon the Church, in spite of thesincere assurances of the prime minister, a statesman of conservativetemperament, that no harm would accrue to the secularclergy from the passing of the Associations Law.
In January 1901, on the eve of the first debate in the Chamberof Deputies on the Associations bill, a discussion took placewhich showed that the rupture of the Concordat mightbe nearing the range of practical politics, thoughparliament was as yet unwilling to take it into consideration.Associations Bill.The archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Richard, had publisheda letter addressed to him by Leo XIII. deploring theprojected legislation as being a breach of the Concordat underwhich the free exercise of the Catholic religion in France wasassured. The Socialists argued that this letter was an intolerableintervention on the part of the Vatican in the domestic politicsof the Republic, and proposed that parliament should aftervoting the Associations Law proceed to separate Church andState. M. Waldeck-Rousseau, the prime minister, calm andmoderate, declined to take this view of the pope’s letter, and theresolution was defeated by a majority of more than two to one.But another motion, proposed by a Nationalist, that the Chambershould declare its resolve to maintain the Concordat, was rejectedby a small majority. The discussion of the Associations billwas then commenced by the Chamber and went on until theEaster recess. Its main features when finally voted were thatthe right to associate for purposes not illicit should be henceforthfree of all restrictions, though “juridical capacity” would beaccorded only to such associations as were formally notifiedto the administrative authority. The law did not, however,accord liberty of association to religious “Congregations,”none of which could be formed without a special statute, andany constituted without such authorization would be deemedillicit. The policy of the measure, as applying to religiousorders, was attacked by the extreme Right and the extremeLeft from their several standpoints. The clericals proposedthat under the new law all associations, religious as well as civil,should be free. The Socialists proposed that all religious communities,authorized or unauthorized, should be suppressed.The prime minister took a middle course. But he went fartherthan the moderate Republicans, with whom he was generallyclassed. While he protected the authorized religious ordersagainst the attacks of the extreme anti-clericals, he acceptedfrom the latter a new clause which disqualified any memberof an unauthorized order from teaching in any school. Thiswas a blow at the principle of liberty of instruction, which hadalways been supported by Liberals of the old school, who hadno sympathy with the pretensions of clericalism. Consequentlythis provision, though voted by a large majority, was opposedby the Liberals of the Republican party, notably by M. Ribot,who had been twice prime minister, and M. Aynard, almost thesole survivor of the Left Centre. It was remarked that in these,as in all subsequent debates on ecclesiastical questions, the ablestdefenders of the Church were not found among the clericals,but among the Liberals, whose primary doctrine was that oftolerance, which they believed ought to be applied to the exerciseof the religion nominally professed by a large majority of thenation. Few of the ardent professors of that religion gaveeffective aid to the Church during that period of crisis. M. deMun still used his eloquence in its defence, but the brilliantCatholic orator had entered his sixtieth year with health impaired,and among the young reactionary members there was not onewho displayed any talent. At the other end of the ChamberM. Viviani, a Socialist member for Paris, made an eloquentspeech. As was anticipated the bill received no serious oppositionin the Senate. Though not in sympathy with the attacksof the Socialists in the Chamber on property, the Upper Househad as a whole no objection to their attacks on the Church, andhad become a more persistently anti-clerical body than theChamber of Deputies. The bill was therefore passed withoutany serious amendments, even those which were moved for thepurpose of affirming the principle of liberty of education beingsupported by very few Republican senators. In the debatessome of the utterances of the prime minister were important.On the proposal of M. Rambaud, a professor who was ministerof education in the Méline cabinet of 1896, that religious associationsshould be authorized by decree and not by law, M. Waldeck-Rousseausaid that inasmuch as vows of poverty and celibacywere illegal, nothing but a law would suffice to give legalityto any association in which such vows were imposed on themembers. It was thus laid down by the responsible authorof the law that the third clause, providing that any associationfounded for an illicit cause was null, applied to religious communities.On the other hand the prime minister in anotherspeech repudiated the suggestion that the proposed law wasaimed against any form of religion. He argued that the religiousorders, far from being essential to the existence of the Church,were a hindrance to the work of the parochial clergy, and thatinasmuch as the religious orders were organizations independentof the State they were by their nature and influence a danger tothe State. Consequently their regulation had become necessaryin the interests both of Church and State. The general suppressionof religious congregations, the prime minister said, was notcontemplated; the case of each one would be decided on itsmerits, and he had no doubt that parliament would favourablyconsider the authorization of those whose aim was to alleviatemisery at home or to extend French influence abroad. Thetenor of M. Waldeck-Rousseau’s speech was eminently Concordatory.One of his chief arguments against the religiousorders was that they were not mentioned in the Concordat, andthat their unregulated existence prejudiced the interests of theConcordatory clergy. The speech was therefore an officialdeclaration in favour of the maintenance of the relations betweenChurch and State. That being so, it is important to notice that by a majority of nearly two to one the Senate voted the placardingof the prime minister’s speech in all the communes of France,and that the mover of the resolution was M. Combes, senatorof the Charente-Inférieure, a politician of advanced views whoup to that date had held office only once, when he was ministerof education and public worship for about six months, in theBourgeois administration in 1895–1896.
The “Law relating to the contract of Association” waspromulgated on the 2nd of July 1901, and its enactment was theonly political event of high importance that year.The Socialists, except in their anti-clerical capacity,were more active outside parliament than within. Early in theSocialism.year some formidable strikes took place. At Montceau-les-Minesin Burgundy, where labour demonstrations had often beenviolent, a new feature of a strike was the formation of a trade-unionby the non-strikers, who called their organization “theyellow trade-union” (le syndicat jaune) in opposition to the redtrade-union of the strikers, who adopted the revolutionaryflag and were supported by the Socialist press. At the sametime the dock-labourers at Marseilles went out on strike, by theorders of an international trade-union in that port, as a protestagainst the dismissal of a certain number of foreigners. Thenumber of strikes in France had increased considerably underthe Waldeck-Rousseau government. Its opponents attributedthis to the presence in the cabinet of M. Millerand, who had beenranked as a Socialist. On the other hand, the revolutionarySocialists excommunicated the minister of commerce for havingjoined a “bourgeois government” and retired from the generalcongress of the Socialist party at Lyons, where MM. Briand andViviani, themselves future ministers, persuaded the majoritynot to go so far. The federal committee of miners projected ageneral strike in all the French coal-fields, and to that endorganized a referendum. But of 125,000 miners inscribed ontheir lists nearly 70,000 abstained from voting, and althoughthe general strike was voted in October by a majority of 34,000,it was not put into effect. Another movement favoured by theSocialists was that of anti-militarism. M. Hervé, a professorat the lycée of Sens, had written, in a local journal, the Pioupioude l’Yonne, on the occasion of the departure of the conscriptsfor their regiments, some articles outraging the French flag.He was prosecuted and acquitted at the assizes at Auxerre inNovember, a number of his colleagues in the teaching professioncoming forward to testify that they shared his views. The localeducational authority, the academic council of Dijon, however,dismissed M. Hervé from his official functions, and its sentencewas confirmed by the superior council of public education towhich he had appealed. Thereupon the Socialists in the Chamber,under the lead of M. Viviani, violently attacked the Government—shortlybefore the prorogation at the end of the year. M.Leygues, the minister of education, defended the policy of hisdepartment with equal vigour, declaring that if a professor in the“university” claimed the right of publishing unpatriotic andanti-military opinions he could exercise it only on the conditionof giving up his employment under government—a thesis whichwas supported by the entire Chamber with the exception of theSocialists. This manifestation of anti-military spirit, thoughnot widespread, was the more striking as it followed close upona second visit of the emperor and empress of Russia to France,which took place in September 1901 and was of a military ratherthan of a popular character. The Russian sovereigns did notcome to Paris. After a naval display at Dunkirk, where theylanded, they were the guests of President Loubet at Compiègne,and concluded their visit by attending a review near Reims ofthe troops which had taken part in the Eastern manœuvres.Compared with the welcome given by the French populationto the emperor and empress in 1896 their reception on thisoccasion was not enthusiastic. By not visiting Paris they seemedto wish to avoid contact with the people, who were persuadedby a section of the press that the motive of the imperialjourney to France was financial. The Socialists openly repudiatedthe Russian alliance, and one of them, the mayor of Lille,who refused to decorate his municipal buildings when thesovereigns visited the department of the Nord, was neitherrevoked nor suspended, although he publicly based his refusalon grounds insulting to the tsar.
It may be mentioned that the census returns of 1901 showedthat the total increase of the population of France since theprevious census in 1896 amounted only to 412,364, of which289,662 was accounted for by the capital, while on the otherhand the population of sixty out of eighty-seven departmentshad diminished.
As the quadrennial election of the Chamber of Deputies wasdue to take place in the spring of 1902, the first months of thatyear were chiefly occupied by politicians in preparing for it,though none of them gave any sign of being aware that thelegislation to be effected by the new Chamber would be themost important which any parliament had undertaken under theconstitution of 1875. At the end of the recess the prime ministerin a speech at Saint Etienne, the capital of the Loire, of whichdepartment he was senator, passed in review the work of hisministry. With regard to the future, on the eve of the electionwhich was to return the Chamber destined to disestablish theChurch, he assured the secular clergy that they must not considerthe legislation of the last session as menacing them: far fromthat, the recent law, directed primarily against those monasticorders which were anti-Republican associations, owning politicaljournals and organizing electioneering funds (whose membershe described as “moines ligueurs et moines d’affaires”), wouldbe a guarantee of the Republic’s protection of the parochialclergy. The presence of his colleague, M. Millerand, on thisoccasion showed that M. Waldeck-Rousseau did not intend toseparate himself from the Radical-Socialist group which hadsupported his government; and the next day the Socialistminister of commerce, at Firminy, a mining centre in the samedepartment, made a speech deprecating the pursuit of unpracticalsocial ideals, which might have been a version of Gambetta’sfamous discourse on opportunism edited by an economist of theschool of Léon Say. The Waldeck-Rousseau programme forthe elections seemed therefore to be an implied promise of amoderate opportunist policy which would strengthen and unitethe Republic by conciliating all sections of its supporters.When parliament met, M. Delcassé, minister for foreign affairs,on a proposal to suppress the Embassy to the Vatican, declaredthat even if the Concordat were ever revoked it would still benecessary for France to maintain diplomatic relations with theHoly See. On the other hand, the ministry voted, against themoderate Republicans, for an abstract resolution, proposedby M. Brisson, in favour of the abrogation of the Loi Falloux of1850, which law, by abolishing the monopoly of the “university,”had established the principle of liberty of education. Anotherabstract resolution, supported by the government, whichsubsequently become law, was voted in favour of the reductionof the terms of compulsory military service from three years totwo.
The general elections took place on the 27th of April 1902;with the second ballots on the 11th of May, and were favourableto the ministry, 321 of its avowed supporters beingreturned and 268 members of the Opposition, including140 “Progressist” Republicans, many of whom wereResignation of Waldeck-Rousseau.deputies whose opinions differed little from those ofM. Waldeck-Rousseau. In Paris the government lost a few seatswhich were won by the Nationalist group of reactionaries.The chief surprise of the elections was the announcement madeby M. Waldeck-Rousseau on the 20th of May, while the presidentof the Republic was in Russia on a visit to the tsar, of hisintention to resign office. No one but the prime minister’sintimates knew that his shattered health was the true cause ofhis resignation, which was attributed to the unwillingness of anessentially moderate man to be the leader of an advanced partyand the instrument of an immoderate policy. His retirementfrom public life at this crisis was the most important event ofits kind since the death of his old master Gambetta. He hadlearned opportunist statesmanship in the short-lived grandministère and in the long-lived Ferry administration of 1883–1885, after which he had become an inactive politician in theSenate, while making a large fortune at the bar. In spite ofhaving eschewed politics he had been ranked in the public mindwith Gambetta and Jules Ferry as one of the small number ofpoliticians of the Republic who had risen high above mediocrity.While he had none of the magnetic exuberance which furtheredthe popularity of Gambetta, his cold inexpansiveness had notmade him unpopular as was his other chief, Jules Ferry. Indeed,his unemotional coldness was one of the elements of the powerwith which he dominated parliament; and being regarded by thenation as the strong man whom France is always looking for,he was the first prime minister of the Republic whose name wasmade a rallying cry at a general election. Yet the country gavehim a majority only for it to be handed over to other politiciansto use in a manner which he had not contemplated. On the 3rdof June 1902 he formally resigned office, his ministry havinglasted for three years, all but a few days, a longer duration thanthat of any other under the Third Republic.
M. Loubet called upon M. Léon Bourgeois, who had alreadybeen prime minister under M. Félix Faure, to form a ministry,but he had been nominated president of the newChamber. The president of the Republic then offeredthe post to M. Brisson, who had been twice primeM. Combes
prime minister.minister in 1885 and 1898, but he also refused. Athird member of the Radical party was then sent for, M. EmileCombes, and he accepted. The senator of the Charente Inférieure,in his one short term of office in the Bourgeois ministry, had madeno mark. But he had attained a minor prominence in the debatesof the Senate by his ardent anti-clericalism. He had beeneducated as a seminarist and had taken minor orders, withoutproceeding to the priesthood, and had subsequently practisedas a country doctor before entering parliament. M. Combesretained two of the most important members of the Waldeck-Rousseaucabinet, M. Delcassé, who had been at the foreignoffice for four years, and General André, who had become warminister in 1900 on the resignation of General de Galliffet.General André was an ardent Dreyfusard, strongly opposed toclerical and reactionary influences in the army. Among thenew ministers was M. Rouvier, a colleague of Gambetta in thegrand ministère and prime minister in 1887, whose participation inthe Panama affair had caused his retirement from official life.Being a moderate opportunist and reputed the ablest financieramong French politicians, his return to the ministry of financereassured those who feared the fiscal experiments of an administrationsupported by the Socialists. The nomination as ministerof marine of M. Camille Pelletan (the son of Eugène Pelletan,a notable adversary of the Second Empire), who had been aRadical-Socialist deputy since 1881, though new to office, wasless reassuring. M. Combes reserved for himself the departmentsof the interior and public worship, meaning that the centralizedadministration of France should be in his own hands while hewas keeping watch over the Church. But in spite of the primeminister’s extreme anti-clericalism there was no hint made inhis ministerial declaration, on the 10th of June 1902, on takingoffice that there would be any question of the new Chamberdealing with the Concordat or with the relations of Church andstate. M. Combes, however, warned the secular clergy not tomake common cause with the religious orders, against whichhe soon began vigorous action. Before the end of June he directedthe Préfets of the departments to bring political pressure tobear on all branches of the public service, and he obtained apresidential decree closing a hundred and twenty-five schools,which had been recently opened in buildings belonging to privateindividuals, on the ground that they were conducted by membersof religious associations and that this brought the schools underthe law of 1901. Such action seemed to be opposed to M.Waldeck-Rousseau’s interpretation of the law; but the Chamberhaving supported M. Combes he ordered in July the closing of2500 schools, conducted by members of religious orders, for whichauthorization had not been requested. This again seemedcontrary to the assurances of M. Waldeck-Rousseau, and it calledforth vain protests in the name of liberty from Radicals of theold school, such as M. Goblet, prime minister in 1886, and fromLiberal Protestants, such as M. Gabriel Monod. The executionof the decrees closing the schools of the religious orders causedsome violent agitation in the provinces during the parliamentaryrecess. But the majority of the departmental councils, at theirmeetings in August, passed resolutions in favour of the governmentalpolicy, and a movement led by certain Nationalists,including M. Drumont, editor of the anti-semitic Libre Parole,and M. François Coppée, the Academician, to found a leaguehaving similar aims to those of the “passive resisters” in ourcountry, was a complete failure. On the reassembling of parliament,both houses passed votes of confidence in the ministry andalso an act supplementary to the Associations Law penalizingthe opening of schools by members of religious orders.
In spite of the ardour of parliamentary discussions the Frenchpublic was less moved in 1902 by the anti-clerical action of thegovernment than by a vulgar case of swindling knownas the “Humbert affair.” The wife of a former deputyfor Seine-et-Marne, who was the son of M. GustaveHumbert affair.Humbert, minister of justice in 1882, had for many years maintaineda luxurious establishment, which included a politicalsalon, on the strength of her assertion that she and her family hadinherited several millions sterling from one Crawford, an Englishman.Her story being believed by certain bankers she had beenenabled to borrow colossal sums on the legend, and had almostmarried her daughter as a great heiress to a Moderate Republicandeputy who held a conspicuous position in the Chamber. Theflight of the Humberts, the exposure of the fraud and their arrestin Spain excited the French nation more deeply than the relativequalities of M. Waldeck-Rousseau and M. Combes or the woesof the religious orders. A by-election to the Senate in the springof 1902 merits notice as it brought back to parliament M.Clémenceau, who had lived in comparative retirement since1893 when he lost his seat as deputy for Draguignan, owing to aseries of unusually bitter attacks made against him by his politicalenemies. He had devoted his years of retirement to journalism,taking a leading part in the Dreyfus affair on the side of theaccused. His election as senator for the Var, where he hadformerly been deputy, was an event of importance unanticipatedat the time.
The year 1903 saw in progress a momentous developmentof the anti-clerical movement in France, though little trace ofthis is found in the statute-book. The chief act ofparliament of that year was one which interested thepopulation much more than any law affecting theAnti-clerical movement.Church. This was an act regulating the privilegesof the bouilleurs de cru, the peasant proprietors who, permittedto distil from their produce an annual quantity of alcohol supposedto be sufficient for their domestic needs, in practice fabricatedand sold so large an amount as to prejudice gravely theinland revenue. As there were a million of these illicit distillersin the land they formed a powerful element in the electorate.The crowded and excited debates affecting their interests, inwhich Radicals and Royalists of the rural districts made commoncause against Socialists and Clericals of the towns, were instriking contrast with the less animated discussions concerningthe Church. The prime minister, an anti-clerical zealot, bitterlyhostile to the Church of which he had been a minister, tookadvantage of the relative indifference of parliament and of thenation in matters ecclesiastical. The success of M. Combes inhis campaign against the Church was an example of what energyand pertinacity can do. There was no great wave of popularfeeling on the question, no mandate given to the deputies at thegeneral election or asked for by them. Neither was M. Combesa popular leader or a man of genius. He was rather a trainedpolitician, with a fixed idea, who knew how to utilize to his endsthe ability and organization of the extreme anti-clerical elementin the Chamber, and the weakness of the extreme clericalparty. The majority of the Chamber did not share the primeminister’s animosity towards the Church, for which at the sametime it had not the least enthusiasm, and under the concordatorylead of M. Waldeck-Rousseau it would have been content to curb clerical pretensions without having recourse to extrememeasures of repression. It was, however, equally content tofollow the less tolerant guidance of M. Combes. Thus, earlyin the session of 1903 it approved of his circular forbidding thepriests of Brittany to make use of the Breton language in theirreligious instruction under pain of losing their salaries. It likewisefollowed him on the 26th of January when he declined toaccept, as being premature and unpractical, a Socialist resolutionin favour of suppressing the budget of public worship, thoughthe majority was indeed differently composed on those twooccasions. In the Senate on the 29th of January M. Waldeck-Rousseauindicated what his policy would have been had heretained office, by severely criticizing his successor’s method ofapplying the Associations Law. Instead of asking parliamentto judge on its merits each several demand for authorizationmade by a congregation, the government had divided the religiousorders into two chief categories, teaching orders andpreaching orders, and had recommended that all should besuppressed by a general refusal of authorization. The GrandeChartreuse was put into a category by itself as a trading associationand was dissolved; but Lourdes, which with its crowdsof pilgrims enriched the Pyrenean region and the railway companiesserving it, was spared for electioneering reasons. Adispute arose between the government and the Vatican on thenomination of bishops to vacant sees. The Vatican insisted onthe words “nobis nominavit” in the papal bulls instituting thebishops nominated by the chief of the executive in France underthe Concordat. M. Combes objected to the pronoun, and maintainedthat the complete nomination belonged to the Frenchgovernment, the Holy See having no choice in the matter, butonly the power of canonical institution. This produced a deadlock,with the consequence that no more bishops were ever againappointed under the Concordat, which both before and after theEaster recess M. Combes now threatened to repudiate. Thesem*naces derived an increased importance from the failing healthof the pope. Leo XIII. had attained the great age of ninety-three,and on the choice of his successor grave issues depended.He died on the 20th of July 1903. The conclave indicated ashis successor his secretary of state, Cardinal Rampolla, an ableexponent of the late pope’s diplomatic methods and also a warmfriend of France. It was said to be the latter quality whichinduced Austria to exercise its ancient power of veto on the choiceof a conclave, and finally Cardinal Sarto, patriarch of Venice,a pious prelate inexperienced in diplomacy, was elected and tookthe title of Pius X. In September the inauguration of a statue ofRenan at Tréguier, his birthplace, was made the occasion of ananti-clerical demonstration in Catholic and reactionary Brittany,at which the prime minister made a militant speech in the nameof the freethinkers of France, though Renan was a Voltairianaristocrat who disliked the aims and methods of modern Radical-Socialists.In the course of his speech M. Combes pointed outthat the anti-clerical policy of the government had not causedthe Republic to lose prestige in the eyes of the monarchies ofEurope, which were then showing it unprecedented attentions.This assertion was true, and had reference to the visit of the kingof England to the president of the Republic in May and theprojected visit of the king of Italy. That of Edward VII.,which was the first state visit of a British sovereign to Francefor nearly fifty years, was returned by President Loubet in July,and was welcomed by all parties, excepting some of the reactionaries.M. Millevoye, a Nationalist deputy for Paris, inthe Patrie counselled the Parisians to remember Fashoda, theTransvaal War, and the attitude of the English in the Dreyfusaffair, and to greet the British monarch with cries of “Vivent lesBoers.” M. Déroulède, the most interesting member of theNationalist party, wrote from his exile at Saint-Sébastienprotesting against the folly of this proceeding, which merits tobe put on record as an example of the incorrigible ineptitudeof the reactionaries in France. The incident served only toprove their complete lack of influence on popular feeling, whileit damaged the cause of the Church at a most critical momentby showing that the only persons in France willing to insult afriendly monarch who was the guest of the nation, belongedto the clerical party. Of the royal visits that of the king of Italywas the more important in its immediate effects on the historyof France, as will be seen in the narration of the events of 1904.
The session of 1904 began with the election of a new presidentof the Chamber, on the retirement of M. Bourgeois. The choicefell on M. Henri Brisson, an old Radical, but not a Socialist,who had held that post in 1881 and had subsequently filled iton ten occasions, the election to the office being annual. Thenarrow majority he obtained over M. Paul Bertrand, a little-knownmoderate Republican, by secret ballot, followed by thedefeat of M. Jaurès, the Socialist leader, for one of the vice-presidentialchairs, showed that one half of the Chamber was ofmoderate tendency. But, as events proved, the Moderateslacked energy and leadership, so the influence of the Radicalprime minister prevailed. In a debate on the 22nd of Januaryon the expulsion of an Alsatian priest of French birth from aFrench frontier department by the French police, M. Ribot,who set an example of activity to younger men of the moderategroups, reproached M. Combes with reducing all questions inwhich the French nation was interested to the single one of anti-clericalism,and the prime minister retorted that it was solelyfor that purpose that he took office. In pursuance of this policya bill was introduced, and was passed by the Chamber beforeEaster, interdicting from teaching all members of religiousorders, authorized or not authorized. Among other results thislaw, which the Senate passed in the summer, swept out of existencethe schools of the Frères de la Doctrine Chrétienne (ChristianBrothers) and closed in all 2400 schools before the end of theyear.
This drastic act of anti-clerical policy, which was a totalrepudiation by parliament of the principle of liberty of education,should have warned the authorities of the Church of the relentlessattitude of the government. The most superficial observationought to have shown them that the indifference of the nationwould permit the prime minister to go to any length, and commonprudence should have prevented them from affording him anypretext for more damaging measures. The President of theRepublic accepted an invitation to return the visit of the kingof Italy. When it was submitted to the Chamber on March25th, 1904, a reactionary deputy moved the rejection of the votefor the expenses of the journey on the ground that the chiefof the French executive ought not to visit the representativeof the dynasty which had plundered the papacy. The amendmentwas rejected by a majority of 502 votes to 12, which showedthat at a time of bitter controversy on ecclesiastical questionsFrench opinion was unanimous in approving the visit of thepresident of the Republic to Rome as the guest of the king ofItaly. Nothing could be more gratifying to the entire Frenchnation, both on racial and on traditional grounds, than such atestimony of a complete revival of friendship with Italy, of lateyears obscured by the Triple Alliance. Yet the Holy See sawfit to advance pretensions inevitably certain to serve the endsof the extreme anti-clericals, whose most intolerant acts at thatmoment, such as the removal of the crucifixes from the law-courts,were followed by new electoral successes. Thus thereactionary majority on the Paris municipal council was displacedby the Radical-Socialists on the 1st of May, the day thatM. Loubet returned from his visit to Rome. On the 16th ofMay M. Jaurès’ Socialist organ, L’Humanité, published the textof a protest, addressed by the pope to the powers having diplomaticrelations with the Vatican, against the visit of the presidentof the Republic to the King of Italy. This document, datedthe 28th of April, was offensive in tone both to France and toItaly. It intimated that while Catholic sovereigns refrainedfrom visiting the person who, contrary to right, exercised civilsovereignty in Rome, that “duty” was even more “imperious”for the ruler of France by reason of the “privileges” enjoyedby that country from the Concordat; that the journey of M.Loubet to “pay homage” within the pontifical see to thatperson was an insult to the sovereign pontiff; and that only forreasons of special gravity was the nuncio permitted to remain in Paris. The publication of this document caused some joyamong the extreme clericals, but this was nothing to the exultationof the extreme anti-clericals, who saw that the prudentdiplomacy of Leo XIII., which had risen superior to many aprovocation of the French government, was succeeded by apapal policy which would facilitate their designs in a mannerDiplomatic crisis with Rome.unhoped for. Moderate men were dismayed, seeingthat the Concordat was now in instant danger; butthe majority of the French nation remained entirelyindifferent to its fate. Within a week France tookthe initiative by recalling the ambassador to the Vatican,M. Nisard, leaving a third-secretary in charge. In the debatein the Chamber upon the incident, the foreign minister, M.Delcassé, said that the ambassador was recalled, not becausethe Vatican had protested against the visit of the presidentto the king of Italy, but because it had communicated thisprotest, in terms offensive to France, to foreign powers. TheChamber on the 27th of May approved the recall of the ambassadorby the large majority of 420 to 90. By a much smaller majorityit rejected a Socialist motion that the Nuncio should be given hispassports. The action of the Holy See was not actually aninfringement of the Concordat; so the government, satisfiedwith the effect produced on public opinion, which was nowquite prepared for a rupture with the Vatican, was willingto wait for a new pretext, which was not long in coming. Twobishops, Mgr. Geay of Laval and Mgr. Le Nordez of Dijon, wereon bad terms with the clerical reactionaries in their dioceses.The friends of the prelates, including some of their episcopalbrethren, thought that their chief offence was their loyalty to theRepublic, and it was an unfortunate coincidence that thesebishops, subjected to proceedings which had been unknown underthe long pontificate of Leo XIII., should have been two whohad incurred the animosity of anti-republicans. Their enemiesaccused Mgr. Geay of immorality and Mgr. Le Nordez of beingin league with the freemasons. The bishop of Laval wassummoned by the Holy Office, without any communicationwith the French government, to resign his see, and he submittedthe citation forthwith to the minister of public worship. TheFrench chargé d’affaires at the Vatican was instructed to protestagainst this grave infringement of an article of the Concordat,and, soon after, against another violation of the Concordatcommitted by the Nuncio, who had written to the bishop ofDijon ordering him to suspend his ordinations, the Nunciobeing limited, like all other ambassadors, to communicatingthe instructions of his government through the intermediaryof the minister for foreign affairs. The Vatican declined togive any satisfaction to the French government and summonedthe two bishops to Rome under pain of suspension. So theFrench chargé d’affaires was directed to leave Rome, after havinginformed the Holy See that the government of the Republicconsidered that the mission of the apostolic Nuncio in Paris wasterminated. Thus came to an end on the 30th of July 1904the diplomatic relations which under the Concordat had subsistedbetween France and the Vatican for more than a hundred years.
Twelve days later M. Waldeck-Rousseau died, having livedjust long enough to see this unanticipated result of his policy.It was said that his resolve to regulate the religious associationsarose from his feeling that whatever injustice had been committedin the Dreyfus case had been aggravated by the action ofcertain unauthorized orders. However that may be, his ownutterances showed that he believed that his policy was one offinality. But he had not reckoned that his legislation, whichneeded hands as calm and impartial as his own to apply it,would be used in a manner he had not contemplated by sectarianpoliticians who would be further aided by the self-destructivepolicy of the highest authorities of the Church. When parliamentassembled for the autumn session a general feeling wasexpressed, by moderate politicians as well as by supporters ofthe Combes ministry, that disestablishment was inevitable. Theprime minister said that he had been long in favour of it, thoughthe previous year he had intimated to M. Nisard, ambassadorto the Vatican, that he had not a majority in parliament to voteit. But the papacy and the clergy had since done everythingto change that situation. The Chamber did not move in thematter beyond appointing a committee to consider the generalquestion, to which M. Combes submitted in his own name abill for the separation of the churches from the State.
During the last three months of 1904 public opinion wasdiverted to the cognate question of the existence of masonicdelation in the army. M. Guyot de Villeneuve,Nationalist deputy for Saint Denis, who had beendismissed from the army by General de Galliffet inWar Office difficulties.connexion with the Dreyfus affair, brought before theChamber a collection of documents which, it seemed, had beenabstracted from the Grand Orient of France, the headquartersof French freemasonry, by an official of that order. These papersshowed that an elaborate system of espionage and delationhad been organized by the freemasons throughout France forthe purpose of obtaining information as to the political opinionsand religious practices of the officers of the army, and that thissystem was worked with the connivance of certain officialsof the ministry of war. Its aim appeared to be to ascertain ifofficers went to mass or sent their children to convent schoolsor in any way were in sympathy with the Roman Catholicreligion, the names of officers so secretly denounced being placedon a black-list at the War Office, whereby they were disqualifiedfor promotion. There was no doubt about the authenticity ofthe documents or of the facts which they revealed. Radicalex-ministers joined with moderate Republicans and reactionariesin denouncing the system. Anti-clerical deputies declaredthat it was no use to cleanse the war office of the influence of theJesuits, which was alleged to have prevailed there, if it were tobe replaced by another occult power, more demoralizing becausemore widespread. Only the Socialists and a few of the Radical-Socialistsin the Chamber supported the action of the freemasons.General André, minister of war, was so clearly implicated, withthe evident approval of the prime minister, that a revulsionof feeling against the policy of the anti-clerical cabinet began tooperate in the Chamber. Had the opposition been wisely guidedthere can be little doubt that a moderate ministry wouldhave been called to office and the history of the Church in Francemight have been changed. But the reactionaries, with theiraccustomed folly, played into the hands of their adversaries.The minister of war had made a speech which produced a badimpression. As he stepped down from the tribune he wasstruck in the face by a Nationalist deputy for Paris, a muchyounger man than he. The cowardly assault did not save theminister, who was too deeply compromised in the delation scandal.But it saved the anti-clerical party, by rallying a number ofwaverers who, until this exhibition of reactionary policy, wereprepared to go over to the Moderates, from the “bloc,” as theministerial majority was called. The Nationalist deputy wascommitted to the assizes on the technical charge of assaulting afunctionary while performing his official duties. Towards theend of the year, on the eve of his trial, he met with a violentdeath, and the circ*mstances which led to it, when madepublic, showed that this champion of the Church was a manof low morality. General André had previously resigned andwas succeeded as minister of war by M. Berteaux, a wealthystock-broker and a Socialist.
The Combes cabinet could not survive the delation scandal,in spite of the resignation of the minister of war and the ineptitudeof the opposition. On the 8th of January1905, two days before parliament met, an election tookplace in Paris to fill the vacancy caused by the deathFall of the Combes ministry.of the Nationalist deputy who had assaulted GeneralAndré. The circ*mstances of his death, at that time partiallyrevealed, did not deter the electors from choosing by a largemajority a representative of the same party, Admiral Bienaimé,who the previous year had been removed for political reasonsfrom the post of maritime prefect at Toulon, by M. CamillePelletan, minister of marine. A more serious check to the Combesministry was given by the refusal of the Chamber to re-elect aspresident M. Brisson, who was defeated by a majority of twenty-five by M. Doumer, ex-Governor-General of Indo-China, who,though he had entered politics as a Radical, was now supportedby the anti-republican reactionaries as well as by the moderateRepublicans. A violent debate arose on the question of expellingfrom the Legion of Honour certain members of that order,including a general officer, who had been involved in the delationscandal. M. Jaurès, the eloquent Socialist deputy for Albi, whoplayed the part of Éminence grise to M. Combes in his anti-clericalcampaign, observed that the party which was nowdemanding the purification of the order had been in no hurryto expel from it Esterhazy long after his crimes had been provedin connexion with the Dreyfus case. The debate was inconclusive,and the government on the 14th of January obtained a voteof confidence by a majority of six. But M. Combes, whoseanimosity towards the church was keener than his love of office,saw that his ministry would be constantly liable to be put in aminority, and that thus the consideration of separation mightbe postponed until after the general elections of 1906. Sohe announced his resignation in an unprecedented manifestoaddressed to the president of the Republic on the 18th January.
M. Rouvier, minister of finance in the outgoing government,was called upon for the second time in his career to form a ministry.A moderate opportunist himself, he intended to forma coalition cabinet in which all groups of Republicans,from the Centre to the extreme Left, would be represented.Second Rouvier ministry.But he failed, and the ministry of the 24thof January 1905 contained no members of the Republican oppositionwhich had combated M. Combes. The prime ministerretained the portfolio of finance; M. Delcassé remained at theforeign office, which he had directed since 1898, and M. Berteauxat the war office; M. Etienne, member for Oran, went to theministry of the interior; another Algerian deputy, M. Thomson,succeeded M. Camille Pelletan at the ministry of marine, whichdepartment was said to have fallen into inefficiency; publicworship was separated from the department of the interiorand joined with that of education under M. Bienvenu-Martin,Radical-Socialist deputy for Auxerre, who was new to officiallife. Although M. Rouvier, as befitted a politician of the schoolof Waldeck-Rousseau, disliked the separation of the churchesfrom the state, he accepted that policy as inevitable. After theaction of the Vatican in 1904, which had produced the rupture ofdiplomatic relations with France, many moderates who had beenpersistent in their opposition to the Combes ministry, and evencertain Nationalists, accepted the principle of separation, buturged that it should be effected on liberal terms. So on the 27thof January, after the minister of education and public worshiphad announced that the government intended to introduce aseparation bill, a vote of confidence was obtained by a majorityof 373 to 99, half of the majority being opponents of the Combesministry of various Republican and reactionary groups, whilethe minority was composed of 84 Radicals and Socialists andonly 15 reactionaries.
On the 21st of March the debates on the separation of thechurches from the state began. A commission had been appointedin 1904 to examine the subject. Its reporter was M.Aristide Briand, Socialist member for Saint Etienne.According to French parliamentary procedure, theThe Separation Law.reporter of a commission, directed to draw up a greatscheme of legislation, can make himself a more important personin conducting it through a house of legislature than the ministerin charge of the bill. This is what M. Briand succeeded in doing.He produced with rapidity a “report” on the whole question,in which he traced with superficial haste the history of the Churchin France from the baptism of Clovis, and upon this drafted abill which was accepted by the government. He thus at onebound came from obscurity into the front rank of politicians,and in devising a revolutionary measure learned a lesson ofmoderate statesmanship. In conducting the debates he tookthe line of throwing the responsibility for the rupture of theConcordat on the pope. The leadership of the Opposition fellon M. Ribot, who had been twice prime minister of the Republicand was not a practising Catholic. He recognized that separationhad become inevitable, but argued that it could be accomplishedas a permanent act only in concert with the Holy See. Theclerical party in the Chamber did little in defence of the Church.The abbés Lemire and Gayraud, the only ecclesiastics in parliament,spoke with moderation, and M. Groussau, a Catholicjurist, attacked the measure with less temperate zeal; but thebest serious defence of the interests of the Church came from theRepublican centre. Few amendments from the extreme Leftwere accepted by M. Briand, whose general tone was moderateand not illiberal. One feature of the debates was the reluctanceof the prime minister to take part in them, even when financialclauses were discussed in which his own office was particularlyconcerned. The bill finally passed the Chamber on the 3rd ofJuly by 341 votes against 233, the majority containing a certainnumber of conservative Republicans and Nationalists. At theend the Radical-Socialists manifested considerable discontentat the liberal tendencies of M. Briand, and declared that themeasure as it left the Chamber could be considered only provisional.In the Senate it underwent no amendment whatever,not a single word being altered. The prime minister, M. Rouvier,never once opened his lips during the lengthy debates, in thecourse of which M. Clémenceau, as a philosophical Radical whovoted for the bill, criticized it as too concordatory, while M.Méline, as a moderate Republican, who voted against it, predictedthat it would create such a state of things as wouldnecessitate new negotiations with Rome a few years later. Itwas finally passed by a majority of 181 to 102, the completenumber of senators being 300, and three days later, on the 9thof December 1905, it was promulgated as law by the presidentof the Republic.
The main features of the act were as follows. The first clausesguaranteed liberty of conscience and the free practice of publicworship, and declared that henceforth the Republic neitherrecognized nor remunerated any form of religion, except in thecase of chaplains to public schools, hospitals and prisons. Itprovided that after inventories had been taken of the real andpersonal property in the hands of religious bodies, hithertoremunerated by the state, to ascertain whether such propertybelonged to the state, the department, or the commune, all suchproperty should be transferred to associations of public worship(associations cultuelles) established in each commune in accordancewith the rules of the religion which they represented, for the purposeof carrying on the practices of that religion. As the Vaticansubsequently refused to permit Catholics to take part in theseassociations, the important clauses relating to their organizationand powers became a dead letter, except in the case of the Protestantand Jewish associations, which affected only a minuteproportion of the religious establishments under the act. Nothing,therefore, need be said about them except that the chief discussionsin the Chamber took place with regard to their constitution,which was so amended, contrary to the wishes of the extremeanti-clericals, that many moderate critics of the original billthought that thereby the regular practice of the Catholic religion,under episcopal control, had been safeguarded. A systemof pensions for ministers of religion hitherto paid by the state wasprovided, according to the age and the length of service of theecclesiastics interested, while in small communes of under athousand inhabitants the clergy were to receive in any case theirfull pay for eight years. The bishops’ palaces were to be leftgratuitously at the disposal of the occupiers for two years, andthe presbyteries and seminaries for five years. This provisiontoo became a dead letter, owing to the orders given by the HolySee to the clergy. Other provisions enacted that the churchesshould not be used for political meetings, while the services heldin them were protected by the law from the acts of disturbers.As the plenary operation of the law depended on the associationscultuelles, the subsequent failure to create those bodies makesit useless to give a complete exposition of a statute of whichthey were an essential feature.
The passing of the Separation Law was the chief act of thelast year of the presidency of M. Loubet. One other importantmeasure has to be noted, the law reducing compulsory military service to two years. The law of 1889 had provided a generalservice of three years, with an extensive system of dispensationsaccorded to persons for domestic reasons, or because they belongedto certain categories of students, such citizens being let off withone year’s service with the colours or being entirely exempted.The new law exacted two years’ service from every Frenchman,no one being exempted save for physical incapacity. Underthe act of 1905 even the cadets of the military college of SaintCyr and of the Polytechnic had to serve in the ranks beforeentering those schools. Anti-military doctrines continued tobe encouraged by the Socialist party, M. Hervé, the professorwho had been revoked in 1901 for his suggestion of a militarystrike in case of war and for other unpatriotic utterances, beingelected a member of the administrative committee of the UnifiedSocialist party, of which M. Jaurès was one of the chiefs. Ata congress of elementary schoolmasters at Lille in August, anti-militaryresolutions were passed and a general adherence wasgiven to the doctrines of M. Hervé. At Longwy, in the Easterncoal-field, a strike took place in September, during which themilitary was called out to keep order and a workman was killedin a cavalry charge. The minister of war, M. Berteaux, visitedthe scene of the disturbance, and was reported to have salutedthe red revolutionary flag which was borne by a procession ofstrikers singing the “Internationale.”
During the autumn session in November M. Berteaux suddenlyresigned the portfolio of war during a sitting of the Chamber,and was succeeded by M. Etienne, minister of the interior, amoderate politician who inspired greater confidence. Earlierin the year other industrial strikes of great gravity had takenplace, notably at Limoges, among the potters, where severaldeaths took place in a conflict with the troops and a factorywas burnt. Even more serious were the strikes in the governmentarsenals in November. At Cherbourg and Brest only asmall proportion of the workmen went out, but at Lorient,Rochefort and especially at Toulon the strikes were on a muchlarger scale. In 1905 solemn warnings were given in the Chamberof the coming crisis in the wine-growing regions of the South.Radical-Socialists such as M. Doumergue, the deputy for Nîmesand a member of the Combes ministry, joined with monarchistssuch as M. Lasies, deputy of the Gers, in calling attention tothe distress of the populations dependent on the vine. Theyargued that the wines of the South found no market, not becauseof the alleged over-production, but because of the competitionof artificial wines; that formerly only twenty departments ofFrance were classed in the atlas as wine-producing, but thatthanks to the progress of chemistry seventy departments werenow so described. The deputies of the north of France and ofParis, irrespective of party, opposed these arguments, and thegovernment, while promising to punish fraud, did not seem totake very seriously the legitimate warnings of the representativesof the South.
The Republic continued to extend its friendly relations withforeign powers, and the end of M. Loubet’s term of office wassignalized by a procession of royal visits to Paris, some of whichthe president returned. At the end of May the king of Spaincame and narrowly escaped assassination from a bomb whichwas thrown at him by a Spaniard as he was returning withthe president from the opera. In October M. Loubet returnedthis visit at Madrid and went on to Lisbon to see the king ofPortugal, being received by the queen, who was the daughterof the comte de Paris and the sister of the duc d’Orléans, bothexiled by the Republic. In November the king of Portugalcame to Paris, and the president of the Republic also receivedduring the year less formal visits from the kings of England andof Greece.
One untoward international event affecting the Frenchministry occurred in June 1905. M. Delcassé (see section onExterior Policy), who had been foreign minister longerthan any holder of that office under the Republic,resigned, and it was believed that he had been sacrificedResignation of
M. Delcassé.by the prime minister to the exigencies of Germany,which power was said to be disquieted at his having, in connexionwith the Morocco question, isolated Germany by promoting thefriendly relations of France with England, Spain and Italy.Whether it be true or not that the French government wasreally in alarm at the possibility of a declaration of war byGermany, the impression given was unfavourable, nor was itremoved when M. Rouvier himself took the portfolio of foreignaffairs.
The year 1906 is remarkable in the history of the ThirdRepublic in that it witnessed the renewal of all the publicpowers in the state. A new president of the Republicwas elected on the 17th of January ten days after thetriennial election of one third of the senate, and theM. Fallières president of
the Republic.general election of the chamber of deputies followedin May—the ninth which had taken place under the constitutionof 1875. The senatorial elections of the 7th of January showedthat the delegates of the people who chose the members of theupper house and represented the average opinion of the countryapproved of the anti-clerical legislation of parliament. Theelection of M. Fallières, president of the senate, to the presidencyof the Republic was therefore anticipated, he being the candidateof the parliamentary majorities which had disestablished thechurch. At the congress of the two chambers held at Versailleson the 17th of January he received the absolute majority of 449votes out of 849 recorded. The candidate of the Opposition wasM. Paul Doumer, whose anti-clericalism in the past was soextreme that when married he had dispensed with a religiousceremony and his children were unbaptized. So the curiousspectacle was presented of the Moderate Opportunist M. Fallièresbeing elected by Radicals and Socialists, while the Radicalcandidate was supported by Moderates and Reactionaries. Forthe second time a president of the senate, the second officialpersonage in the Republic, was advanced to the chief magistracy,M. Loubet having been similarly promoted. As in his case,M. Fallières owed his election to M. Clémenceau. When M.Loubet was elected M. Clémenceau had not come to the endof his retirement from parliamentary life; but in politicalcircles, with his powerful pen and otherwise, he was resuminghis former influence as a “king-maker.” He knew of theprecariousness Of Félix Faure’s health and of the indiscretionsof the elderly president. So when the presidency suddenlybecame vacant in January 1899 he had already fixed his choiceon M. Loubet, as a candidate whose unobtrusive name excitedno jealousy among the republicans. At that moment, owingto the crisis caused by the Dreyfus affair, the Republic neededa safe man to protect it against the attacks of the plebiscitaryparty which had been latterly favoured by President Faure.M. Constans, it was said, had in 1899 desired the presidency ofthe senate, vacant by M. Loubet’s promotion, in preference tothe post of ambassador at Constantinople. But M. Clémenceau,deeming that his name had been too much associated withpolemics in the past, contrived the election of M. Fallières to thesecond place of dignity in the Republic, so as to have anothersafe candidate in readiness for the Elysée in case PresidentLoubet suddenly disappeared. M. Loubet, however, completedhis septennate, and to the end of it M. Fallières was regarded ashis probable successor. As he fulfilled his high duties in thesenate inoffensively without making enemies among his politicalfriends, he escaped the fate which had awaited other presidents-designateof the Republic. Previously to presiding over the senatethis Gascon advocate, who had represented his native Lot-et-Garonne,in either chamber, since 1876, had once been primeminister for three weeks in 1883. He had also held office insix other ministries, so no politician in France had a largerexperience in administration and in public affairs.
On New Year’s Day 1906, the absence of the Nuncio fromthe presidential reception of the diplomatic body marked conspicuouslythe rupture of the Concordat; for hitherto the representativeof the Holy See had ranked as doyen of the ambassadorsto the Republic, whatever the relative seniority of his colleagues,and in the name of all the foreign powers had officially salutedthe chief of the state. On the 20th of January the inventoriesof the churches were commenced, under the 3rd clause of the Separation Act, for the purpose of assessing the value of thefurniture and other objects which they contained. In Paristhey occasioned some disturbance; but as the protesting rioterswere led by persons whose hostility to the Republic was morenotorious than their love for religion, the demonstrations wereregarded as political rather than religious. In certain ruraldistricts, where the church had retained its influence and whereits separation from the state was unpopular, the taking of theinventories was impeded by the inhabitants, and in some places,where the troops were called out to protect the civil authorities,further feeling was aroused by the refusal of officers to act.But, as a rule, this first manifest operation of the Separation Lawwas received with indifference by the population. One regionwhere popular feeling was displayed in favour of the church wasThe Sarrien ministry.Flanders, where, in March, at Boeschepe on theBelgian frontier, a man was killed during the takingof an inventory. This accident caused the fall of theministry. The moderate Republicans in the Chamber,who had helped to keep M. Rouvier in office, withheld theirsupport in a debate arising out of the incident, and the governmentwas defeated by thirty-three votes. M. Rouvier resigned,and the new president of the Republic sent for M. Sarrien, a Radicalof the old school from Burgundy, who had been deputy for hisnative Saône-et-Loire from the foundation of the Chamber in1876 and had previously held office in four cabinets. In M.Sarrien’s ministry of the 14th of March 1906 the president of thecouncil was only a minor personage, its real conductor beingM. Clémenceau, who accepted the portfolio of the interior. Uponhim, therefore devolved the function of “making the elections”M. Clèmenceau minister of the interior.of 1906, as it is the minister at the Place Beauvau,where all the wires of administrative government arecentralized, who gives the orders to the prefecturesat each general election. As in France ministers sitand speak in both houses of parliament, M. Clémenceau,though a senator, now returned, after an absence of thirteen years,to the Chamber of Deputies, in which he had played a mighty partin the first seventeen years of its existence. His political experiencewas unique. From an early period after entering theChamber in 1876 he had exercised there an influence not exceededby any deputy. Yet it was not until 1906, thirty years after hisfirst election to parliament, that he held office—though in 1888he just missed the presidency of the Chamber, receiving the samenumber of votes as M. Méline, to whom the post was allotted byright of seniority. He now returned to the tribune of the PalaisBourbon, on which he had been a most formidable orator.During his career as deputy his eloquence was chiefly destructive,and of the nineteen ministries which fell between the electionof M. Grévy to the presidency of the Republic in 1879 and hisown departure from parliamentary life in 1893 there were fewof which the fall had not been expedited by his mordant criticismor denunciation. He now came back to the scene of his formerachievements not to attack but to defend a ministry. Thoughhis old occupation was gone, his re-entry excited the keenestinterest, for at sixty-five he remained the biggest political figurein France. After M. Clémenceau the most interesting of thenew ministers was M. Briand, who was not nine years old whenM. Clémenceau had become conspicuous in political life as themayor of Montmartre on the eve of the Commune. M. Briandhad entered the Chamber, as Socialist deputy for Saint Etienne,only in 1902. The mark he had made as “reporter” of theSeparation Bill has been noted, and on that account he becameminister of education and public worship—the terms of theSeparation Law necessitating the continuation of a departmentfor ecclesiastical affairs. As he had been a militant Socialistof the “unified” group of which M. Jaurès was the chief, andalso a member of the superior council of labour, his appointmentindicated that the new ministry courted the support of theextreme Left. It, however, contained some moderate men,notably M. Poincaré, who had the repute of making the largestincome at the French bar after M. Waldeck-Rousseau gave uphis practice, and who became for the second time minister offinance. The portfolios of the colonies and of public works werealso given to old ministers of moderate tendencies, M. GeorgesLeygues and M. Barthou. A former prime minister, M. LéonBourgeois, went to the foreign office, over which he had alreadypresided, besides having represented France at the peace conferenceat the Hague; while MM. Étienne and Thomson retainedtheir portfolios of war and marine. The cabinet containedso many men of tried ability that it was called the ministry of allthe talents. But the few who understood the origin of the nameknew that it would be even more ephemeral than was the Britishministry of 1806; for the fine show of names belonged to atransient combination which could not survive the approachingelections long enough to leave any mark in politics.
Before the elections took place grave labour troubles showedthat social and economical questions were more likely to giveanxiety to the government than any public movementresulting from the disestablishment of the church.Almost the first ministerial act of M. Clémenceau wasProgress of socialism.to visit the coal basin of the Pas de Calais, where anaccident causing great loss of life was followed by an uprising ofthe working population of the region, which spread into theadjacent department of the Nord and caused the minister of theinterior to take unusual precautions to prevent violent demonstrationsin Paris on Labour Day, the 1st of May. The activity ofthe Socialist leaders in encouraging anti-capitalist agitationdid not seem to alarm the electorate. Nor did it show any sympathywith the appeal of the pope, who in his encyclical letter,Vehementer nos, addressed to the French cardinals on the 11thof February, denounced the Separation Law. So the result ofthe elections of May 1906 was a decisive victory for the anti-clericalsand Socialists.
A brief analysis of the composition of the Chamber of Deputiesis always impossible, the limits of the numerous groups beingill-defined. But in general terms the majority supporting theradical policy of the bloc in the last parliament, which hadusually mustered about 340 votes, now numbered more than 400,including 230 Radical-Socialists and Socialists. The gains of theextreme Left were chiefly at the expense of the moderate orprogressist republicans, who, about 120 strong in the old Chamber,now came back little more than half that number. The anti-republicanRight, comprising Royalists, Bonapartists andNationalists, had maintained their former position and wereabout 130 all told. The general result of the polls of the 6thand 20th of May was thus an electoral vindication of the advancedpolicy adopted by the old Chamber and a repudiation of moderateRepublicanism; while the stationary condition of the reactionarygroups showed that the tribulations inflicted by the last parliamenton the church had not provoked the electorate to increaseits support of clerical politicians.
The Vatican, however, declined to recognize this unmistakabledemonstration. The bishops, taking advantage of their releasefrom the concordatory restrictions which had withheld fromthem the faculty of meeting in assembly, had met at a preliminaryconference to consider their plan of action under the SeparationLaw. They had adjourned for further instructions from theHoly See, which were published on the 10th of August 1906,in a new encyclical Gravissimo officii, wherein, to the consternationof many members of the episcopate, the pope interdictedthe associations cultuelles, the bodies which, under the SeparationLaw, were to be established in each parish, to hold and to organizethe church property and finances, and were essential to theworking of the act. On the 4th of September the bishops metagain and passed a resolution of submission to the Holy See.In spite of their loyalty they could not but deplore an injunctionwhich inevitably would cause distress to the large majority ofthe clergy after the act came into operation on the 12th ofDecember 1906. They knew only too well how hopeless wasthe idea that the distress of the clergy would call forth anyrevulsion of popular feeling in France. The excitement of thepublic that summer over a painful clerical scandal in the dioceseof Chartres showed that the interest taken by the mass of thepopulation in church matters was not of a kind which would aidthe clergy in their difficult situation.
At the close of the parliamentary recess M. Sarrien resignedthe premiership on the pretext of ill-health, and by a presidentialdecree of the 25th of October 1906 M. Clémenceau,who had been called to fill the vacancy, took office.MM. Bourgeois, Poincaré, Etienne and LeyguesThe Clémenceau ministry.retired with M. Sarrien. The new prime ministerplaced at the foreign office M. Pichon, who had learned politicson the staff of the Justice, the organ of M. Clémenceau, by whoseinfluence he had entered the diplomatic service in 1893, aftereight years in the chamber of deputies. He had been ministerat Pekin during the Boxer rebellion and resident at Tunis,and he was now radical senator for the Jura. M. Caillaux, amore adventurous financier than M. Rouvier or M. Poincaré,who had been Waldeck-Rousseau’s minister of finance, resumedthat office. The most significant appointment was that ofGeneral Picquart to the war office. The new minister when acolonel had been willing to sacrifice his career, although he wasan anti-Semite, to redressing the injustice which he believedhad been inflicted on a Jewish officer—whose second condemnation,it may be noted, had been quashed earlier in 1906. M.Viviani became the first minister of labour (Travail et Prévoyancesociale). The creation of the office and the appointment of asocialist lawyer and journalist to fill it showed that M. Clémenceaurecognized the increasing prominence of social and industrialquestions and the growing power of the trade-unions.
The acts and policy of the Clémenceau ministry and the eventswhich took place during the years that it held office are toonear the present time to be appraised historically. It seems notunlikely that the first advent to power, after thirty-five yearsof strenuous political life, of one who must be ranked among theablest of the twenty-seven prime ministers of the Third Republicwill be seen to have been coincident with an important evolutionin the history of the French nation. The separation of the RomanCatholic Church from the state, by the law of December 1905,had deprived the Socialists, the now most powerful party of theextreme Left, of the chief outlet for their activity, which hithertohad chiefly found its scope in anti-clericalism. Having no longerthe church to attack they turned their attention to economicalquestions, the solution of which had always been their theoreticalaim. At the same period the law relating to the Contract ofAssociation of 1901, by removing the restrictions (save in thecase of religious communities) which previously had preventedFrench citizens from forming association without the authorizationof the government, had formally abrogated the individualisticdoctrine of the Revolution, which in all its phases was intolerantof associations. The law of June 1791 declared the destructionof all corporations of persons engaged in the same trade orprofession to be a fundamental article of the French constitution,and it was only in the last six years of the Second Empire thatsome tolerance was granted to trade-unions, which was extendedby the Third Republic only in 1884. In that year the prohibitionof 1791 was repealed. Not quite 70 unions existed at the end of1884. In 1890 they had increased to about 1000, in 1894 to 2000,and in 1901, when the law relating to the Contract of Associationwas passed, they numbered 3287 with 588,832 members. Thelaw of 1901 did not specially affect them; but this general act,completely emancipating all associations formed for secularpurposes, was a definitive break with the individualism of theRevolution which had formed the basis of all legislation in Francefor nearly a century after the fall of the ancient monarchy.It was an encouragement and at the same time a symptom of thespread of anti-individualistic doctrine. This was seen in theaccelerated increase of syndicated workmen during the yearssucceeding the passing of the Associations Law, who in 1909 wereover a million strong. The power exercised by the trade-unionsmoved the functionaries of the government, a vast army underthe centralized system of administration, numbering not less than800,000 persons, to demand equal freedom of association for thepurpose of regulating their salaries paid by the state and theirconditions of labour. This movement brought into new reliefthe long-recognized incompatibility of parliamentary governmentwith administrative centralization as organized by Napoleon.
In another direction the increased activity in the rural districtsof the Socialists, who hitherto had chiefly worked in the industrialcentres, indicated that they looked for support from the peasantproprietors, whose ownership in the soil had hitherto opposedthem to the practice of collectivist doctrine. In the summer of1907 an economic crisis in the wine-growing districts of the Southcreated a general discontent which spread to other rural regions.The Clémenceau ministry, while opposing the excesses of revolutionarysocialism and while incurring the strenuous hostilityof M. Jaurès, the Socialist leader, adopted a programme whichwas more socialistic than that of any previous governmentof the republic. Under its direction a bill for the impositionof a graduated income tax was passed by the lower house,involving a scheme of direct taxation which would transformthe interior fiscal system of France. But the income tax wasstill only a project of law when M. Clémenceau unexpectedlyfell in July 1909, being succeeded as prime minister by hiscolleague M. Briand. His ministry had, however, passed oneimportant measure which individualists regarded as an act ofstate-socialism. It took a long step towards the nationalizationof railways by purchasing the important Western line and addingit to the relatively small system of state railways. Previouslya more generally criticized act of the representatives of thepeople was not of a nature to augment the popularity of parliamentaryinstitutions at a period of economic crisis, when senatorsand deputies increased their own annual salary, or indemnity asit is officially called, to 15,000 francs.(J. E. C. B.)
Exterior Policy 1870–1909
The Franco-German War marks a turning-point in the historyof the exterior policy of France as distinct as does the fall of theancient monarchy or the end of the Napoleonic epoch.With the disappearance of the Second Empire, byits own fault, on the field of Sedan in September 1870,The new epoch.followed in the early months of 1871 by the proclamationof the German empire at Versailles and the annexation ofAlsace and Lorraine under the treaty of peace of Frankfort,France descended from its primacy among the nations of continentalEurope, which it had gradually acquired in the half-centurysubsequent to Waterloo. It was the design of Bismarckthat united Germany, which had been finally established underhis direction by the war of 1870, should take the place hithertooccupied by France in Europe. The situation of France in 1871in no wise resembled that after the French defeat of 1815,when the First Empire, issue of the Revolution, had been upsetby a coalition of the European monarchies which brought backand supported on his restored throne the legitimate heir to theFrench crown. In 1871 the Republic was founded in isolation.France was without allies, and outside its frontiers the form ofits executive government was a matter of interest only to itsGerman conquerors. Bismarck desired that France shouldremain isolated in Europe and divided at home. He thoughtthat the Republican form of government would best serve theseends. The revolutionary tradition of France would, under aRepublic, keep aloof the monarchies of Europe, whereas, in thewords of the German ambassador at Paris, Prince Hohenlohe,a “monarchy would strengthen France and place her in a betterposition to make alliances and would threaten our alliances.”At the same time Bismarck counted on governmental instabilityunder a Republic to bring about domestic disorganization whichwould so disintegrate the French nation as to render it unformidableas a foe and ineffective as an ally. The Franco-GermanWar thus produced a situation unprecedented in the mutualrelations of two great European powers. From that situationresulted all the exterior policy of France, for a whole generation,colonial as well as foreign.
In 1875 Germany saw France in possession of a constitutionwhich gave promise of durability if not of permanence. Germanopinion had already been perturbed by the facility and speedwith which France had paid off the colossal war indemnityexacted by the conqueror, thus giving proof of the inexhaustibleresources of the country and of its powers of recuperation. The successful reorganization of the French army under the militarylaw of 1872 caused further alarm when there appeared to besome possibility of the withdrawal of Russia from the Dreikaiserbund,which had set the seal on Germany’s triumph and France’sabasem*nt in Europe. It seemed, therefore, as though itmight be expedient for Germany to make a sudden aggressionupon France before that country was adequately prepared forwar, in order to crush the nation irreparably and to remove itfrom among the great powers of Europe.
The constitution of the Third Republic was voted by theNational Assembly on the 25th of February 1875. The newconstitution had to be completed by electoral laws and othercomplementary provisions, so it could not become effectiveuntil the following year, after the first elections of the newlyfounded Senate and Chamber of Deputies. M. Buffet was thencharged by the president of the republic, Marshal MacMahon,to form a provisional ministry in which the duc Decazes, whohad been foreign minister since 1873, was retained at the Quaid’Orsay. The cabinet met for the first time on the 11th of March,and ten days later the National Assembly adjourned for a longrecess.
It was during that interval that occurred the incident knownas “The Scare of 1875.” The Kulturkampf had left PrinceBismarck in a state of nervous irritation. In alldirections he was on the look out for traces of Ultramontaneintrigue. The clericals in France after theThe crisis of 1875.fall of Thiers had behaved with great indiscretion in their desireto see the temporal power of the pope revived. But when thereactionaries had placed MacMahon at the head of the state,their divisions and their political ineptitude had shown thatthe government of France would soon pass from their hands,and of this the voting of the Republican constitution bya monarchical assembly was the visible proof. NeverthelessBismarck, influenced by the presence at Berlin of a Frenchambassador, M. de Gontaut-Biron, whom he regarded as anUltramontane agent, seems to have thought otherwise. Amilitary party at Berlin affected alarm at a law passed by theFrench Assembly on the 12th of March, which continued aprovision increasing from three to four the battalions of eachinfantry regiment, and certain journals, supposed to be inspiredby Bismarck, argued that as the French were preparing, itmight be well to anticipate their designs before they wereready. Europe was scared by an article on the 6th of May inThe Times, professing to reveal the designs of Bismarck, fromits Paris correspondent, Blowitz, who was in relations withthe French foreign minister, the duc Decazes, and with PrinceHohenlohe, German ambassador to France, both being prudentdiplomatists, and, though Catholics, opposed to Ultramontanepretensions. Europe was astounded at the revelation andalarmed at the alleged imminence of war. In England theDisraeli ministry addressed the governments of Russia, Austriaand Italy, with a view to restraining Germany from its aggressivedesigns, and Queen Victoria wrote to the German emperor toplead the cause of peace. It is probable that there was no needeither for this intervention or for the panic which had producedit. We know now that the old emperor William was steadfastlyopposed to a fresh war, while his son, the crown prince Frederick,who then seemed likely soon to succeed him for a long reign,was also determined that peace should be maintained. Thescare had, however, a most important result, in sowing the seedsof the subsequent Franco-Russian alliance. Notwithstandingthat the tsar Alexander II. was on terms of affectionate intimacywith his uncle, the emperor William, he gave a personal assuranceto General Le Flô, French ambassador at St Petersburg, thatFrance should have the “moral support” of Russia in the caseof an aggression on the part of Germany. It is possible that thedanger of war was exaggerated by the French foreign ministerand his ambassador at Berlin, as is the opinion of certain Frenchhistorians, who think that M. de Gontaut-Biron, as an oldroyalist, was only too glad to see the Republic under the protection,as it were, of the most reactionary monarchy of Europe.At the same time Bismarck’s denials of having acted withterrorizing intent cannot be accepted. He was more sincere whenhe criticized the ostentation with which the Russian Chancellor,Prince Gortchakoff, had claimed for his master the characterof the defender of France and the obstacle to Germanambitions. It was in memory of this that, in 1878 at thecongress of Berlin, Bismarck did his best to impair theadvantages which Russia had obtained under the treaty of SanStefano.
The events which led to that congress put into abeyance theprospect of a serious understanding between France and Russia.The insurrection in Herzegovina in July 1875 reopenedthe Eastern question, and in the Orient the interestsof France and Russia had been for many years conflicting,Congress of Berlin.as witness the controversy concerning the HolyPlaces, which was one of the causes of the Crimean War. Francehad from the reign of Louis XIV. claimed the exclusive rightof protecting Roman Catholic interests in the East. This claimwas supported not only by the monarchists, for the most partfriendly to Russia in other respects, who directed the foreignpolicy of the Third Republic until the Russo-Turkish War of1877, but by the Republicans, who were coming into perpetualpower at the time of the congress of Berlin—the ablest of theanti-clericals, Gambetta, declaring in this connexion that“anti-clericalism was not an article of exportation.” Thedefeat of the monarchists at the elections of 1877, after the“Seize Mai,” and the departure from office of the duc Decazes,whose policy had tended to prepare the way for an alliance withthe tsar, changed the attitude of French diplomacy towardsRussia. M. Waddington, the first Republican minister for foreignaffairs, was not a Russophil, while Gambetta was ardentlyanti-Russian, and he, though not a minister, was exercising thatpreponderant influence in French politics which he retaineduntil 1882, the last year of his life. Many Republicans consideredthat the monarchists, whom they had turned out, favoured thesupport of Russia not only as a defence against Germany, whichwas not likely to be effective so long as a friendly uncle andnephew were reigning at Berlin and at St Petersburg respectively,but also as a possible means of facilitating a monarchical restorationin France. Consequently at the congress of Berlin M.Waddington and the other French delegates maintained a veryindependent attitude towards Russia. They supported theresolutions which aimed at diminishing the advantages obtainedby Russia in the war, they affirmed the rights of France overthe Holy Places, and they opposed the anti-Semitic views ofthe Russian representatives. The result of the congress of Berlinseemed therefore to draw France and Russia farther apart,especially as Gambetta and the Republicans now in power weremore disposed towards an understanding with England. Thecontrary, however, happened. The treaty of Berlin, which tookthe place of the treaty of San Stefano, was the ruin of Russianhopes. It was attributed to the support given by Bismarckto the anti-Russian policy of England and Austria at thecongress, the German chancellor having previously discouragedthe project of an alliance between Russia and Germany. Theconsequence was that the tsar withdrew from the Dreikaiserbund,and Germany, finding the support of Austria inadequate for itspurposes, sought an understanding with Italy. Hence arosethe Triple Alliance of 1882, which was the work of Bismarck,who thus became eventually the author of the Franco-Russianalliance, which was rather a sedative for the nervous temperamentof the French than a remedy necessary for their protection.The twofold aim of the Triplice was the development of theBismarckian policy of the continued isolation of France and ofthe maintenance of the situation in Europe acquired by theGerman empire in 1871. The most obvious alliance for Germanywas that with Russia, but it was clear that it could be obtainedonly at the price of Russia having a free hand to satisfy itsambitions in the East. This not only would have irritatedEngland against Germany, but also Austria, and so might havebrought about a Franco-Austrian alliance, and a day of reckoningfor Germany for the combined rancours of two nations, leftby 1866 and 1871. It was thus that Germany allied itself first with Austria and then with Italy, leaving Russia eventuallyto unite with France.
As the congress of Berlin took in review the general situationof the Turkish empire, it was natural that the French delegatesshould formulate the position of France in Egypt.Thus the powers of Europe accepted the maintenanceof the condominium in Egypt, financial and administrative,Egyptian question.of England and France. Egypt, nominally a province ofthe Turkish empire, had been invested with a large degree ofautonomy, guaranteed by an agreement made in 1840 and 1841between the Porte and the then five great powers, though someopposition was made to France being a party to this compact.By degrees Austria, Prussia and Russia (as well as Italy when itattained the rank of a great power) had left the internationalcontrol of Egypt to France and England by reason of the preponderanceof the interests of those two powers on the Nile.
In 1875 the interests of England in Egypt, which had hithertobeen considered inferior to those of France, gained a superiorityowing to the purchase by the British government of the sharesof the khedive Ismail in the Suez Canal. Whatever rivalry theremay have been between England and France, they had to presenta united front to the pretensions of Ismail, whose prodigalitiesmade him impatient of the control which they exercised over hisfinances. This led to his deposition and exile. The control wasre-established by his successor Tewfik on the 4th of September1879. The revival ensued of a so-called national party, whichIsmail for his own purposes had encouraged in its movementhostile to foreign domination. In September 1881 took placethe rising led by Arabi, by whose action an assembly of notableswas convoked for the purpose of deposing the governmentauthorized by the European powers. The fear lest the sultanshould intervene gave an appearance of harmony to the policyof England and France, whose interests were too great to permitof any such interference. At the end of 1879 the first Freycinetcabinet had succeeded that of M. Waddington and had in turnbeen succeeded in September 1880 by the first Ferry cabinet.In the latter the foreign minister was M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire,an aged philosopher who had first taken part in politicswhen he helped to dethrone Charles X. in 1830. In September1881 he categorically invited the British government to joinFrance in a military intervention to oppose any interferencewhich the Porte might attempt, and the two powers each senta war-ship to Alexandria. On the 14th of November Gambettaformed his grand ministère, in which he was foreign minister.Though it lasted less than eleven weeks, important measureswere taken by it, as Arabi had become under-secretary for war atCairo, and was receiving secret encouragement from the sultan.On the 7th of January 1882, at the instance of Gambetta, ajoint note was presented by the British and French consuls tothe khedive, to the effect that their governments were resolvedto maintain the status quo, Gambetta having designed this as aconsecration of the Anglo-French alliance in the East. Thereuponthe Porte protested, by a circular addressed to the powers,against this infringement of its suzerainty in Egypt. Meanwhile,the assembly of notables claimed the right of voting the taxesand administering the finances of the country, and Gambetta,considering this as an attempt to emancipate Egypt from thefinancial control of Europe, moved the British government tojoin with France in protesting against any interference on thepart of the notables in the budget. But when Lord Granvilleaccepted this proposal Gambetta had fallen, on the 26th ofJanuary, being succeeded by M. de Freycinet, who for the secondtime became president of the council and foreign minister.Gambetta fell nominally on a scheme of partial revision of theconstitution. It included the re-establishment of scrutin de liste,a method of voting to which many Republicans were hostile, sothis gave his enemies in his own party their opportunity. Hethus fell the victim of republican jealousy, nearly half the Republicansin the chamber voting against him in the fatal division.The subsequent debates of 1882 show that many of Gambetta’sadversaries were also opposed to his policy of uniting withEngland on the Egyptian question. Henceforth the interioraffairs of Egypt have little to do with the subject we are treating;but some of the incidents in France which led to the Englishoccupation of Egypt ought to be mentioned. M. de Freycinetwas opposed to any armed intervention by France; but in theface of the feeling in the country in favour of maintaining thetraditional influence of France in Egypt, his declarations ofpolicy were vague. On the 23rd of February 1882 he said thathe would assure the non-exclusive preponderance in Egypt ofFrance and England by means of an understanding with Europe,and on the 11th of May that he wished to retain for France itspeculiar position of privileged influence. England and Francesent to Alexandria a combined squadron, which did not preventa massacre of Europeans there on the 11th of June, the khedivebeing now in the hands of the military party under Arabi. Onthe 11th of July the English fleet bombarded Alexandria, theFrench ships in anticipation of that action having departed theprevious day. On the 18th of July the Chamber debated thesupplementary vote for the fleet in the Mediterranean, M. deFreycinet declaring that France would take no active part inEgypt except as the mandatory of the European powers. Thiswas the occasion for the last great speech of Gambetta in parliament.In it he earnestly urged close co-operation with England,which he predicted would otherwise become the mistress ofEgypt, and in his concluding sentences he uttered the famous“Ne rompez jamais l’alliance anglaise.” A further vote, proposedin consequence of Arabi’s open rebellion, was abandoned,as M. de Freycinet announced that the European powers declinedto give France and England a collective mandate to intervenein their name. In the Senate on the 25th of July M. Scherer,better known as a philosopher than as a politician, who hadGambetta’s confidence, read a report on the supplementary voteswhich severely criticized the timidity and vacillation of thegovernment in Egyptian policy. Four days later in the ChamberM. de Freycinet proposed an understanding with England limitedto the protection of the Suez Canal. Attacked by M. Clémenceauon the impossibility of separating the question of the canalfrom the general Egyptian question, the ministry was defeatedby a huge majority, and M. de Freycinet fell, having achievedthe distinction of being the chief instrument in removing Egyptfrom the sphere of French interest.
Some of the Republicans whose votes turned out M. de Freycinetwanted Jules Ferry to take his place, as he was consideredto be a strong man in foreign policy, and Gambetta, for thisreason, was willing to see his personal enemy at the head of publicaffairs. But this was prevented by M. Clémenceau and theextreme Left, and the new ministry was formed by M. Duclerc,an old senator whose previous official experience had been underthe Second Republic. On its taking office on the 7th of August,the ministerial declaration announced that its policy would be inconformity with the vote which, by refusing supplies for theoccupation of the Suez Canal, had overthrown M. de Freycinet.The declaration characterized this vote as “a measure of reserveand of prudence but not as an abdication.” Nevertheless theaction of the Chamber—which was due to the hostility toGambetta of rival leaders, who had little mutual affection,including MM. de Freycinet, Jules Ferry, Clémenceau and thepresident of the Republic, M. Grévy, rather than to a desire toabandon Egypt—did result in the abdication of France. AfterEngland single-handed had subdued the rebellion and restoredthe authority of the khedive, the latter signed a decree on the11th of January 1883 abolishing the joint control of Englandand France. Henceforth Egypt continued to be a frequent topicof debate in the Chambers; the interests of France in respectof the Egyptian finances, the judicial system and other institutionsformed the subject of diplomatic correspondence, as didthe irritating question of the eventual evacuation of Egypt byEngland. But though it caused constant friction between thetwo countries up to the Anglo-French convention of the 8th ofApril 1904, there was no longer a French active policy with regardto Egypt. The lost predominance of France in that countrydid, however, quicken French activity in other regions of northernAfrica.
The idea that the Mediterranean might become a French lakehas, in different senses, been a preoccupation for France and forits rivals in Europe ever since Algeria became a Frenchprovince by a series of fortuitous incidents—an insultoffered by the dey to a French consul, his refusal toAlgerian policy.make reparation, and the occasion it afforded of diverting publicattention in France from interior affairs after the Revolutionof 1830. The French policy of preponderance in Egypt had onlyfor a secondary aim the domination of the Mediterranean.The French tradition in Egypt was a relic of Napoleon’s vainscheme to become emperor of the Orient even before he had madehimself emperor of the West. It was because Egypt was thehighway to India that under Napoleon III. the French had constructedthe Suez Canal, and for the same reason England couldnever permit them to become masters of the Nile delta. Butthe possessors of Algeria could extend their coast-line of NorthAfrica without seriously menacing the power which held Gibraltarand Malta. It was Italy which objected to a French occupationof Tunis. Algeria has never been officially a French “colony.”It is in many respects administered as an integral portion ofFrench territory, the governor-general, as agent of the centralpower, exercising wide jurisdiction. Although the Europeansin Algeria are less than a seventh of the population, andalthough the French are actually a minority of the Europeaninhabitants—Spaniards prevailing in the west, Italians andMaltese in the east—the three departments of Constantine,Algiers and Oran are administered like three French departments.Consequently, when disturbances occurred on the borderlandseparating Constantine from Tunis, the French were able to sayto Europe that the integrity of their national frontier was threatenedby the proximity of a turbulent neighbour. The history ofthe relations between Tunis and France were set forth, from theFrench standpoint, in a circular, of which Jules Ferry was saidto be the author, addressed by the foreign minister, M. BarthélemySaint-Hilaire on the 9th of May 1881, to the diplomatic agentsof France abroad. The most important point emphasized byTunis.the French minister was the independence of Tunisfrom the Porte, a situation which would obviate difficultieswith Turkey such as had always hampered the Europeanpowers in Egypt. In support of this contention a protest madeby the British government in 1830, against the French conquestof Algiers, was quoted, as in it Lord Aberdeen had declared thatEurope had always treated the Barbary states as independentpowers. On the other hand, there was the incident of the beyof Tunis having furnished to Turkey a contingent during theCrimean War, which suggested a recognition of its vassalageto the Sublime Porte. But in 1864, when the sultan had sent afleet to La Goulette to affirm his “rights” in Tunis, the Frenchambassador at Constantinople intimated that France declinedto have Turkey for a neighbour in Algeria. France also in 1868essayed to obtain control over the finances of the regency; butEngland and Italy had also large interests in the country, so aninternational financial commission was appointed. In 1871,when France was disabled after the war, the bey obtained fromConstantinople a firman of investiture, thus recognizing thesuzerainty of the Porte. Certain English writers have reproachedthe Foreign Office for its lack of foresight in not taking advantageof France’s disablement by establishing England as the preponderantpower in Tunis. The fact that five-sixths of the commerceof Tunis is now with France and Algeria may seem tojustify such regrets. Yet by the light of subsequent events itseems probable that England would have been diverted frommore profitable undertakings had she been saddled with thevirtual administration and military occupation of a vast territorywhich such preponderance would have entailed. The wonder isthat this opportunity was not seized by Italy; for Mazzini andother workers in the cause of Italian unity, before the Bourbonshad been driven from Naples, had cast eyes on Tunis, lying overagainst the coasts of Sicily at a distance of barely 100 m., as afavourable field for colonization and as the key of the AfricanMediterranean. But when Rome became once more the capitalof Italy, Carthage was not fated to fall again under its dominationand the occasion offered by France’s temporary impotence wasneglected. In 1875 when France was rapidly recovering, therewent to Tunis as consul an able Frenchman, M. Roustan, whobecame virtual ruler of the regency in spite of the resistance ofthe representative of Italy. French action was facilitated bythe attitude of England. On the 26th of July 1878 M. Waddingtonwrote to the marquis d’Harcourt, French ambassador inLondon, that at the congress of Berlin Lord Salisbury had said tohim—the two delegates being the foreign ministers of theirrespective governments—in reply to his protest, on behalf ofFrance, against the proposed English occupation of Cyprus,“Do what you think proper in Tunis: England will offer noopposition.” This was confirmed by Lord Salisbury in a despatchto Lord Lyons, British ambassador in Paris, on the 8th of August,and it was followed in October by an intimation made by theFrench ambassador at Rome that France intended to exercisea preponderant influence in Tunis. Italy was not willing toaccept this situation. In January 1881 a tour made by KingHumbert in Sicily, where he received a Tunisian mission, wastaken to signify that Italy had not done with Tunis, and it wasanswered in April by a French expedition in the regency sent fromAlgeria, on the pretext of punishing the Kroumirs who had beenmarauding on the frontier of Constantine. It was on this occasionthat M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire issued the circular quotedabove. France nominally was never at war with Tunis; yet theresult of the invasion was that that country became virtually aFrench possession, although officially it is only under the protectionof France. The treaty of El Bardo of the 12th of May1881, confirmed by the decree of the 22nd of April 1882, placedTunis under the protectorate of France. The country isadministered under the direction of the French Foreign Office,in which there is a department of Tunisian affairs. The governoris called minister resident-general of France, and he also actsas foreign minister, being assisted by seven French and twonative ministers.
The annexation of Tunis was important for many reasons.It was the first successful achievement of France after thedisasters of the Franco-German War, and it was thefirst enterprise of serious utility to France undertakenbeyond its frontiers since the early period of the SecondExtension of African Territory.Empire. It was also important as establishing thehegemony of France on the southern shores of the Mediterranean.When M. Jules Cambon became governor-general of Algeria, hisbrother M. Paul Cambon having been previously French residentin Tunis and remaining the vigilant ambassador to a Mediterraneanpower, a Parisian wit said that just as Switzerland had itsLac des quatre Cantons, so France had made of the midland seaits Lac des deux Cambons. The jeu d’esprit indicated what wasthe primary significance to the French of their becoming mastersof the Barbary coast from the boundary of Morocco to that ofTripoli. Apart from the Mediterranean question, when thescramble for Africa began and the Hinterland doctrine wasasserted by European powers, the possession of this extendedcoast-line resulted in France laying claim to the Sahara and thewestern Sudan. Consequently, on the maps, the whole of northwestAfrica, from Tunis to the Congo, is claimed by France withthe exception of the relatively small areas on the coast belongingto Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Liberia, Germany and England.On this basis, in point of area, France is the greatest Africanpower, in spite of British annexations in south and equatorialAfrica, its area being estimated at 3,866,950 sq. m. (including227,950 in Madagascar) as against 2,101,411 more effectivelypossessed by Great Britain. The immensity of its domain onpaper is no doubt a satisfaction to a people which prefers topursue its policy of colonial expansion without the aid of emigration.The acquisition of Tunis by France is also important asan example of the system of protectorate as applied to colonization.Open annexation might have more gravely irritated thepowers having interests in the country. England, in spite ofLord Salisbury’s suggestions to the French foreign minister,was none too pleased with France’s policy; while Italy, withits subjects outnumbering all other European settlers in the regency, was in a mood to accept a pretext for a quarrel for thereasons already mentioned. Apart from these considerationsThe protectorate system.the French government favoured a protectoratebecause it did not wish to make of Tunis a secondAlgeria. While the annexation of the latter hadexcellent commercial results for France, it had notbeen followed by successful colonization, though it had costFrance 160 millions sterling in the first sixty years after itbecame French territory. The French cannot govern at homeor abroad without a centralized system of administration.The organization of Algeria, as departments of France with theiradministrative divisions, was not an example to imitate. In thebeylical government France found, ready-made, a sufficientlycentralized system, such as did not exist in Algeria under nativerule, which could form a basis of administration by Frenchfunctionaries under the direction of the Quai d’Orsay. Theresult has not been unpleasing to the numerous advocates inFrance of protectorates as a means of colonization. Accordingto M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the most eminent French authorityon colonization, who knows Tunis well, a protectorate is themost pacific, the most supple, and the least costly method ofcolonization in countries where an organized form of nativegovernment exists; it is the system in which the French can mostnearly approach that of English crown colonies. One evil whichit avoids is the so-called representative system, under whichsenators and deputies are sent to the French parliament not onlyfrom Algeria as an integral part of France, but from the coloniesof Martinique, Guadeloupe and French India, while Cochin-China,Guiana and Senegal send deputies alone. These sixteendeputies and seven senators attach themselves to the variousModerate, Radical and Socialist groups in parliament, whichhave no connexion with the interests of the colonies; and theconsequent introduction of French political controversies intocolonial elections has not been of advantage to the overseapossessions of France. From this the protectorate system hasspared Tunis, and the paucity of French immigration will continueto safeguard that country from parliamentary representation.After twenty years of French rule, of 120,000 Europeanresidents in Tunis, not counting the army, only 22,000 wereFrench, while nearly 70,000 were Italian. If under a so-calledrepresentative system the Italians had demanded nationalization,for the purpose of obtaining the franchise, complications mighthave arisen which are not to be feared under a protectorate.
But of all the results of the French annexation of Tunis, themost important was undoubtedly the Triple Alliance, intowhich Italy entered in resentment at having beendeprived of the African territory which seemed markedout as its natural field for colonial expansion. TheThe Triple Alliance.most manifest cause of Italian hostility towards Francehad passed away four years before the annexation of Tunis,when the reactionaries, who had favoured the restitution of thetemporal power of the pope, fell for ever from power. Theclericalism of the anti-republicans, who favoured a revivalof the fatal policy of the Second Empire whereby France, afterMagenta and Solferino, had by leaving its garrison at St Angelo,been the last obstacle to Italian unity, was one of the chiefcauses of their downfall. For after the war with Germany, themutilated land and the vanquished nation had need to avoidwanton provocations of foreign powers. Henceforth the FrenchRepublic, governed by Republicans, was to be an anti-clericalforce in Europe, sympathizing with the Italian occupation ofRome. But to make Italy realize that France was no longerthe enemy of complete Italian unity it would have been necessarythat all causes of irritation between the two Latin sister nationswere removed. Such causes of dissension did, however, remain,arising from economic questions. The maritime relations ofthe two chief Mediterranean powers were based on a treatyof navigation of 1862—when Venice was no party to it beingan Austrian port—which Crispi denounced as a relic of Italianservility towards Napoleon III. Commercial rivalry wasinduced by the industrial development of northern Italy, whenfreed from Austrian rule. Moreover, the emigrant propensityof the Italians flooded certain regions of France with Italiancheap labour, with the natural result of bitter animosity betweenthe intruders and the inhabitants of the districts thus invaded.The annexation of Tunis, coming on the top of these causesof irritation, exasperated Italy. A new treaty of commercewas nevertheless signed between the two countries on the 3rdof November 1881. Unfortunately for its stability, KingHumbert the previous week had gone to Vienna to see theemperor of Austria. In visiting in his capital the former arch-enemyof Italian unity, who could never return the courtesy,Rome being interdicted for Catholic sovereigns by the “prisonerof the Vatican,” Humbert had only followed the example of hisfather Victor Emmanuel, who went both to Berlin and to Viennain 1873. But that was when in France the duc de Broglie wasprime minister of a clerical government of which many of thesupporters were clamouring for the restitution of the temporalpower. King Humbert’s visit to Vienna at the moment whenGambetta, the great anti-clerical champion, was at the heightof his influence was significant for other reasons. Since the7th of October 1879 Germany and Austria had been united by adefensive treaty, and though its provisions were not publisheduntil 1888, the two central empires were known to be in theclosest alliance. The king of Italy’s visit to Vienna, where hewas accompanied by his ministers Depretis and Mancini, hadtherefore the same significance as though he had gone to Berlinalso. On the 20th of May 1882 was signed the treaty of theTriple Alliance, which for many years bound Italy to Germanyin its relations with the continental powers. The alliance wasfirst publicly announced on the 13th of March 1883, in theItalian Chamber, by Signor Mancini, minister for foreign affairs.The aim of Italy in joining the combination was alliance withGermany, the enemy of France. The connexion with Austriawas only tolerated because it secured a union with the powerfulgovernment of Berlin. It effected the complete isolation ofFrance in Europe. An understanding between the FrenchRepublic and Russia, which alone could alter that situation, wasimpracticable, as its only basis seemed to be the possibility ofhaving a common enemy in Germany or even in England. Butthat double eventuality was anticipated by a secret conventionconcluded at Skiernewice in September 1884 by the tsar andthe German emperor, in which they guaranteed to one anothera benevolent neutrality in case of hostilities between Englandand Russia arising out of the Afghan question.
It will be convenient here to refer to the relations of Francewith Germany and Italy respectively in the years succeedingthe signature of the Triple Alliance. With Germany bothGambetta, who died ten weeks before the treaty was announcedand who was a strong Russophobe, and his adversary Jules Ferrywere inclined to come to an understanding. But in this theyhad not the support of French opinion. In September 1883the king of Spain had visited the sovereigns of Austria andGermany. Alphonso XII., to prove that this journey was nota sign of hostility to France, came to Paris on his way homeon Michaelmas Day on an official visit to President Grévy.Unfortunately it was announced that the German emperor hadmade the king colonel of a regiment of Uhlans garrisoned atStrassburg, the anniversary of the taking of which city was beingcelebrated by the emperor by the inauguration of a monumentmade out of cannon taken from the French, on the very eve ofKing Alphonso’s arrival. Violent protests were made in Parisin the monarchical and in not a few republican journals,with the result that the king of Spain was hooted by the crowdas he drove with the president from the station to his embassy,and again on his way to dine the same night at the Elysée. Theincident was closed by M. Grévy’s apologies and by the retirementof the minister of war, General Thibaudin, who under pressurefrom the extreme Left had declined to meet le roi uhlan. Thoughit displayed the bitter hostility of the population towardsGermany, the incident did not aggravate Franco-Germanrelations. This was due to the policy of the prime minister,Jules Ferry, who to carry it out made himself foreign ministerin November, in the place of Challemel-Lacour, who resigned.
Jules Ferry’s idea was that colonial expansion was the surestmeans for France to recover its prestige, and that this couldbe obtained only by maintaining peaceful relationswith all the powers of Europe. His consequentunpopularity caused his fall in April 1885, and the nextFranco-German relations.year a violent change of military policy was markedby the arrival of General Boulanger at the ministry ofwar, where he remained, in the Freycinet and Goblet cabinets,from January 1886 to the 17th of May 1887. His growing popularityin France was answered by Bismarck, who asked foran increased vote for the German army, indicating that heconsidered Boulanger the coming dictator for the war of revenge;so when the Reichstag, on the 14th of January 1887, voted thesupplies for three years, instead of for the seven demanded by thechancellor, it was dissolved. Bismarck redoubled his efforts in thepress and in diplomacy, vainly attempting to come to an understandingwith Russia and with more success moving the Vaticanto order the German Catholics to support him. He obtainedhis vote for seven years in March, and the same month renewedthe Triple Alliance. In April the Schnaebelé incident seemednearly to cause war between France and Germany. The commissary-special,an agent of the ministry of the interior, atPagny-sur-Moselle, the last French station on the frontier of theannexed territory of Lorraine, having stepped across the boundaryto regulate some official matter with the corresponding functionaryon the German side, was arrested. It was said thatSchnaebelé was arrested actually on French soil, and on whicheverside of the line he was standing he had gone to meet the Germanofficial at the request of the latter. Bismarck justified theoutrage in a speech in the Prussian Landtag which suggestedthat it was impossible to live at peace with a nation so bellicoseas the French. In France the incident was regarded as a traplaid by the chancellor to excite French opinion under the aggressiveguidance of Boulanger, and to produce events which wouldprecipitate a war. The French remained calm, in spite of thegrowing popularity of Boulanger. The Goblet ministry resignedon the 17th of May 1887 after a hostile division on the budget,and the opportunity was taken to get rid of the minister of war,who posed as the coming restorer of Alsace and Lorraine to France.The Boulangist movement soon became anti-Republican, andthe opposition to it of successive ministries improved the officialrelations of the French and German governments. The circ*mstancesattending the fall of President Grévy the same yearstrengthened the Boulangist agitation, and Jules Ferry, whoseemed indicated as his successor, was discarded by the Republicanmajority in the electoral congress, as a revolution wasthreatened in Paris if the choice fell on “the German Ferry.”Sadi Carnot was consequently elected president of the Republicon the 3rd of December 1887. Three months later, on the 9thof March 1888, died the old emperor William who had personifiedthe conquest of France by Germany. His son, the pacific emperorFrederick, died too, on the 15th of June, so the accession ofWilliam II., the pupil of Bismarck, at a moment when Boulangerthreatened to become plebiscitary dictator of France, wasominous for the peace of Europe. But in April 1889 Boulangerignominiously fled the country, and in March 1890 Bismarckfell. France none the less rejected all friendly overtures madeby the young emperor. In February 1891 his mother came toParis and was unluckily induced to visit the scenes of Germantriumph near the capital—the ruins of St Cloud and the Châteauof Versailles where the German empire was proclaimed. Theincident called forth such an explosion of wrath from the Frenchpress that it was clear that France had not forgotten 1871.By this time, however, France was no longer isolated and atthe mercy of Germany, which by reason of the increase of itspopulation while that of France had remained almost stationary,was, under the system of compulsory military service in thetwo countries, more than a match for its neighbour in a single-handedconflict. Even the Triple Alliance ceased to be a terrorfor France. An understanding arose between France andRussia preliminary to the Franco-Russian alliance, which becamethe pivot of French exterior relations until the defeat of Russiain the Japanese war of 1904. So the second renewal of theTriplice was forthwith answered by a visit of the French squadronto Kronstadt in July 1891.
While such were the relations between France and the principalparty to the Triple Alliance, the same period was marked bybitter dissension between France and Italy. Tunishad made Italy Gallophobe, but the diplomaticrelations between the two countries had been courteousFrance and Italy.until the death of Depretis in 1887. When Crispisucceeded him as prime minister, and till 1891 was the directorof the exterior policy of Italy, a change took place. Crispi,though not the author of the Triple Alliance, entered withenthusiasm into its spirit of hostility to France. The old Sicilianrevolutionary hastened to pay his respects to Bismarck at Friedrichsruhin October 1887, the visit being highly approved inItaly. Before that the French Chamber had, in July 1886, by asmall majority, rejected a new treaty of navigation betweenFrance and Italy, this being followed by the failure to renewthe commercial treaty of 1881. Irritating incidents were ofconstant occurrence. In 1888 a conflict between the Frenchconsul at Massowah and the Italians who occupied that Abyssinianport induced Bismarck to instruct the German ambassador inParis to tell M. Goblet, minister for foreign affairs in the Floquetcabinet, in case he should refer to the matter, that if Italy wereinvolved thereby in complications it would not stand alone—thismenace being communicated to Crispi by the Italianambassador at Berlin and officially printed in a green-book.But after Bismarck’s fall relations improved a little, and in April1890 the Italian fleet was sent to Toulon to salute PresidentCarnot in the name of King Humbert, though this did notprevent the French government being suspected of havingdesigns on Tripoli. Italian opinion was again incensed againstFrance by the action of the French clericals, represented by aband of Catholic “pilgrims” who went to Rome to offer theirsympathy to the pope in the autumn of 1891, and outraged theburial-place of Victor Emmanuel by writing in the visitors’ registerkept at the Pantheon the words “Vive le pape.” In August1893 a fight took place at Aigues Mortes, the medieval walledcity on the salt marshes of the Gulf of Lyons, between Frenchand Italian workmen, in which seven Italians were killed. ButCrispi had gone out of office early in 1891, and the ministerswho succeeded him were more disposed to prevent a rupturebetween Italy and France. Crispi became prime minister againin December 1893, but this time without the portfolio of foreignaffairs. He placed at the Consulta Baron Blanc, who though astrong partisan of the Triple Alliance was closely attached toFrance, being a native of Savoy, where he spent his yearlyvacations on French soil. That the relations between the twonations were better was shown by what occurred after themurder of President Carnot in June 1894. The fact that theassassin was an Italian might have caused trouble a little earlier;but the grief of the Italians was so sincere, as shown by populardemonstrations at Rome, that no anti-Italian violence tookplace in France, and in the words of the French ambassador,M. Billot, Caserio’s crime seemed likely to further an understandingbetween the two peoples. The movement was veryslight and made no progress during the short presidency of M.Casimir-Périer. On the 1st of November 1894 Alexander III.died, when the Italian press gave proof of the importance attributedby the Triplice to the Franco-Russian understandingby expressing a hope that the new tsar would put an end to it.But on the 10th of June 1895, the foreign minister, M. Hanotaux,intimated to the French Chamber that the understanding hadbecome an alliance, and on the 17th the Russian ambassadorin Paris conveyed to M. Félix Faure, who was now presidentof the Republic, the collar of St Andrew, while the same daythe French and Russian men-of-war, invited to the opening ofthe Kiel Canal, entered German waters together. The union ofFrance with Russia was no doubt one cause of the cessation ofItalian hostility to France; but others were at work. The inaugurationof the statue of MacMahon at Magenta the same weekas the announcement of the Franco-Russian alliance showed that there was a disposition to revive the old sentiment of fraternitywhich had once united France with Italy. More important wasthe necessity felt by the Italians of improved commercial relationswith the French. Crispi fell on the 4th of March 1896,after the news of the disaster to the Italian troops at Adowa,the war with Abyssinia being a disastrous legacy left by him.The previous year he had caused the withdrawal from Paris ofthe Italian ambassador Signor Ressmann, a friend of France,transferring thither Count Tornielli, who during his missionin London had made a speech, after the visit of the Italian fleetto Toulon, which qualified him to rank as a misogallo. But withthe final disappearance of Crispi the relations of the two Latinneighbours became more natural. Commerce between them haddiminished, and the business men of both countries, exceptingcertain protectionists, felt that the commercial rupture wasmutually prejudicial. Friendly negotiations were initiated onboth sides, and almost the last act of President Félix Faurebefore his sudden death—M. Delcassé being then foreign minister—wasto promulgate, on the 2nd of February 1899, a new commercialarrangement between France and Italy which theFrench parliament had adopted. By that time M. Barrère wasambassador at the Quirinal and was engaged in promotingcordial relations between Italy and France, of which CountTornielli in Paris had already become an ardent advocate.Italy remained a party to the Triple Alliance, which was renewedfor a third period in 1902. But so changed had its significancebecome that in October 1903 the French Republic received forthe first time an official visit from the sovereigns of Italy.This reconciliation of France and Italy was destined to have mostimportant results outside the sphere of the Triple Alliance.The return visit which President Loubet paid to Victor EmmanuelIII. in April 1904, it being the first time that a French chief of thestate had gone to Rome since the pope had lost the temporalsovereignty, provoked a protest from the Vatican which causedthe rupture of diplomatic relations between France and the HolySee, followed by the repudiation of the Concordat by an actpassed in France, in 1905, separating the church from the state.
While the decadence of the Triple Alliance had this importanteffect on the domestic affairs of France, its inception had producedthe Franco-Russian alliance, which took Franceout of its isolation in Europe, and became the pivotof its exterior policy. It has been noted that in theRussian alliance.years succeeding the Franco-Prussian War the tsar Alexander II.had shown a disposition to support France against Germanaggression, as though to make up for his neutrality during thewar, which was so benevolent for Germany that his uncleWilliam I. had ascribed to it a large share of the German victory.The assassination of Alexander II. by revolutionaries in 1881made it difficult for the new autocrat to cultivate closer relationswith a Republican government, although the Third Republic,under the influence of Gambetta, to whom its consolidation waschiefly due, had repudiated that proselytizing spirit, inheritedfrom the great Revolution, which had disquieted the monarchiesof Europe in 1848 and had provoked their hostility to the SecondRepublic. But the Triple Alliance which was concluded theyear after the murder of the tsar indicated the possible expediencyof an understanding between the two great powers of the Westand the East, in response to the combination of the three centralpowers of Europe,—though Bismarck after his fall revealed thatin 1884 a secret treaty was concluded between Germany andRussia, which was, however, said to have in view a war betweenEngland and Russia. Internal dissension on the subject ofcolonial policy in the far East, followed by the fall of JulesFerry and the Boulangist agitation were some of the causeswhich prevented France from strengthening its position inEurope by seeking a formal understanding with Russia in thefirst part of the reign of Alexander III. But when the Boulangistmovement came to an end, entirely from the incompetency ofits leader, it behoved the government of the Republic to find ameans of satisfying the strong patriotic sentiment revealed inthe nation, which, directed by a capable and daring soldier,would have swept away the parliamentary republic and establisheda military dictatorship in its place. The Franco-Russianunderstanding provided that means, and Russia was ready forit, having become, by the termination in 1890 of the secrettreaty with Germany, not less isolated in Europe than France.In July 1891, when the French fleet visited Kronstadt theincident caused such enthusiasm throughout the French nationthat the exiled General Boulanger’s existence would have beenforgotten, except among his dwindling personal followers, hadhe not put an end to it by suicide two months later at Brussels.The Franco-Russian understanding united all parties, not inlove for one another but in the idea that France was therebyabout to resume its place in Europe. The Catholic Royalistsceased to talk of the restitution of the temporal power of thepope in their joy at the deference of the government of therepublic for the most autocratic monarchy of Christendom;the Boulangists, now called Nationalists, hoped that it wouldlead to the war of revenge with Germany, and that it might alsobe the means of humiliating England, as shown by their resentmentat the visit of the French squadron to Portsmouth on itsway home from Kronstadt. It is, however, extremely improbablethat the understanding and subsequent alliance would have beeneffected had the Boulangist movement succeeded. For the lastthing that the Russian government desired was war with Germany.What it needed and obtained was security againstGerman aggression on its frontier and financial aid from France;so a French plebiscitary government, having for its aim therestitution of Alsace and Lorraine, would have found no supportin Russia. As the German chancellor, Count von Caprivi, saidin the Reichstag on the 27th of November 1891, a few weeksafter a Russian loan had been subscribed in France nearlyeight times over, the naval visit to Kronstadt had not broughtwar nearer by one single inch. Nevertheless when in 1893 theRussian fleet paid a somewhat tardy return visit to Toulon,where it was reviewed by President Carnot, a party of Russianofficers who came to Paris was received by the population ofthe capital, which less than five years before had acclaimedGeneral Boulanger, with raptures which could not have beenexceeded had they brought back to France the territory lost in1871. In November 1894, Alexander III. died, and in January1895, M. Casimir-Périer resigned the presidency of the Republic,to which he had succeeded only six months before on the assassinationof M. Carnot. So it was left to Nicholas II. and PresidentFélix Faure to proclaim the existence of a formal alliance betweenFrance and Russia. It appears that in 1891 and 1892, at thetime of the first public manifestations of friendship betweenFrance and Russia, in the words of M. Ribot, secret conventionswere signed by him, being foreign minister, and M. de Freycinet,president of the council, which secured for France “the supportof Russia for the maintenance of the equilibrium in Europe”;and on a later occasion the same statesman said that it was afterthe visit of the empress Frederick to Paris in 1891 that AlexanderIII. made to France certain offers which were accepted. Theword “alliance” was not publicly used by any minister toconnote the relations of France with Russia until the 10th of June1895, when M. Hanotaux used the term with cautious vaguenessamid the applause of the Chamber of Deputies. Yet not evenwhen Nicholas II. came to France in October 1896 was the word“alliance” formally pronounced in any of the official speeches.But the reception given to the tsar and tsaritsa in Paris, whereno European sovereign had come officially since William ofGermany passed down the Champs Elysées as a conqueror,was of such a character that none could doubt that this was theconsecration of the alliance. It was at last formally proclaimedby Nicholas II., on board a French man-of-war, on the occasionof the visit of the president of the Republic to Russia in August1897. From that date until the formation of M. Briand’scabinet in 1909, nine different ministries succeeded one anotherand five ministers of foreign affairs; but they all loyally supportedthe Franco-Russian alliance, although its popularitydiminished in France long before the war between Russia andJapan, which deprived it of its efficacy in Europe. In 1901Nicholas II. came again to France and was the guest of President Loubet at Compiègne. His visit excited little enthusiasmin the nation, which was disposed to attribute it to Russia’sfinancial need of France; while the Socialists, now a strongparty which provided the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry with animportant part of its majority in the Chamber, violently attackedthe alliance of the Republic with a reactionary autocracy.However anomalous that may have been it did not prevent thewhole French nation from welcoming the friendship betweenthe governments of Russia and of France in its early stages.Nor can there be any doubt that the popular instinct was rightin according it that welcome. France in its international relationswas strengthened morally by the understanding and bythe alliance, which also served as a check to Germany. Butit* association with Russia had not the results hoped for bythe French reactionaries. It encouraged them in their oppositionto the parliamentary Republic during the Dreyfus agitation,the more so because the Russian autocracy is anti-Semitic. Italso made a Nationalist of one president of the Republic, FélixFaure, whose head was so turned by his imperial frequentationsthat he adopted some of the less admirable practices of princes,and also seemed ready to assume the bearing of an autocrat.His sudden death was as great a relief to the parliamentaryRepublicans as it was a disappointment to the plebiscitaryparty, which anti-Dreyfusism, with its patriotic pretensions,had again made a formidable force in the land. But the electionof the pacific and constitutional M. Loubet as president of theRepublic at this critical moment in its history counteractedany reactionary influence which the Russian alliance might havehad in France; so the general effect of the alliance was tostrengthen the Republic and to add to its prestige. The visitof the tsar to Paris, the first paid by a friendly sovereign sincethe Second Empire, impressed a population, proud of its capital,by an outward sign which seemed to show that the Republicwas not an obstacle to the recognition by the monarchies ofEurope of the place still held by France among the great powers.Before M. Loubet laid down office the nation, grown morerepublican, saw the visit of the tsar followed by those of thekings of England and of Italy, who might never have beenmoved to present their respects to the French Republic had notRussia shown them the way.
While the French rejoiced at the Russian alliance chiefly asa check to the aggressive designs of Germany, they also likedthe association of France with a power regarded ashostile to England. This traditional feeling was notdiscouraged by one of the chief artificers of the alliance,Relations with England.Baron Mohrenheim, Russian ambassador in Paris,who until 1884 had filled the same position in London, where hehad not learned to love England, and who enjoyed in France apopularity rarely accorded to the diplomatic agent of a foreignpower. An entente cordiale has since been initiated betweenEngland and France. But it is necessary to refer to the lessagreeable relations which existed between the two countries,as they had some influence on the exterior policy of the ThirdRepublic. England and France had no causes of friction withinEurope. But in its policy of colonial expansion, during the lasttwenty years of the 19th century, France constantly encounteredEngland all over the globe. The first important enterprise beyondthe seas seriously undertaken by France after the Franco-GermanWar, was, as we have seen, in Tunis. But even beforethat question had been mentioned at the congress of Berlin,in 1878, France had become involved in an adventure in the FarEast, which in its developments attracted more public attentionat home than the extension of French territory in northernAfrica. Had these pages been written before the end of the19th century it would have seemed necessary to trace theoperations of France in Indo-China with not less detail thanhas been given to the establishment of the protectorate in Tunis.But French hopes of founding a great empire in the Far Eastcame to an end with the partial resuscitation of China and therise to power of Japan. As we have seen, Jules Ferry’s ideawas that in colonial expansion France would find the best meansof recovering prestige after the defeat of 1870–71 in the yearsof recuperation when it was essential to be diverted from Europeancomplications. Jules Ferry was not a friend of Gambetta, inspite of later republican legends. But the policy of colonialexpansion in Tunis and in Indo-China, associated with Ferry’sname, was projected by Gambetta to give satisfaction to Francefor the necessity, imposed, in his opinion, on the French government,of taking its lead in foreign affairs from Berlin. HowJules Ferry developed that system we know now from Bismarck’ssubsequent expressions of regret at Ferry’s fall. He believedthat, had Ferry remained in power, an amicable arrangementwould have been made between France and Germany, a formalagreement having been almost concluded to the effect that Franceshould maintain peaceable and friendly relations with Germany,while Bismarck supported France in Tunis, in Indo-China andgenerally in its schemes of oversea colonization. Even though thefriendly attitude of Germany towards those schemes was notofficial the contrast was manifest between the benevolent toneof the German press and that of the English, which was generallyhostile. Jules Ferry took his stand on the position that hispolicy was one not of colonial conquest, but of colonial conservation,that without Tunis, Algeria was insecure, that withoutTongking and Annam, there was danger of losing Cochin-China,where the French had been in possession since 1861. It was onthe Tongking question that Ferry fell. On the 30th of March1885, on the news of the defeat of the French troops at Lang-Son,the Chamber refused to vote the money for carrying on the campaignby a majority of 306 to 149. Since that day public opinionin France has made amends to the memory of Jules Ferry.His patriotic foresight has been extolled. Criticism has not beenspared for the opponents of his policy in parliament of whomthe most conspicuous, M. Clémenceau and M. Ribot, have survivedto take a leading part in public affairs in the 20th century.The attitude of the Parisian press, which compared Lang-Sonwith Sedan and Jules Ferry with Émile Ollivier, has beengenerally deplored, as has that of the public which was readyto offer violence to the fallen minister, and which was still sohostile to him in 1887 that the congress at Versailles was persuadedthat there would be a revolution in Paris if it elected“the German Ferry” president of the Republic. Neverthelesshis adversaries in parliament, in the press and in the street havebeen justified—not owing to their superior sagacity, but owingto a series of unexpected events which the most foreseeingstatesmen of the world never anticipated. The Indo-Chinadream of Jules Ferry might have led to a magnificent empire inthe East to compensate for that which Dupleix lost and Napoleonfailed to reconquer.
The Russian alliance, which came at the time when Ferry’spolicy was justified in the eyes of the public, too late for himto enjoy any credit, gave a new impetus to the French ideaof establishing an empire in the Far East. In the opinion of allthe prophets of Europe the great international struggle in thenear future was to be that of England with Russia for thepossession of India. If Russia won, France might have a sharein the dismembered Indian empire, of which part of the frontiernow marched with that of French Indo-China, since Burmahad become British and Tongking French. Such aspirations werenot formulated in white-books or in parliamentary speeches.Indeed, the apprehension of difficulty with England limitedFrench ambition on the Siamese frontier. That did not preventdangerous friction arising between England and France on thequestion of the Mekong, the river which flows from China almostdue south into the China Sea traversing the whole length ofFrench Indo-China, and forming part of the eastern boundaryof Upper Burma and Siam. The aim of France was to secure thewhole of the left bank of the Mekong, the highway of commercefrom southern China. The opposition of Siam to this delimitationwas believed by the French to be inspired by England, thesupremacy of France on the Mekong river being prejudicial toBritish commerce with China. The inevitable rivalry betweenthe two powers reached an acute crisis in 1893, the Britishambassador in Paris being Lord Dufferin, who well understoodthe question, upper Burma having been annexed to India under his viceroyalty in 1885. The matter was not settled until 1894,when not only was the French claim to the left bank of theMekong allowed, but the neutrality of a 25-kilometre zone on theSiamese bank was conceded as open to French trade. It is saidthat at one moment in July 1893 England and France were morenearly at war than at any other international crisis under theThird Republic, not excluding that of Fashoda, though the acutetension between the governments was unknown to the public.
The Panama affair had left French public opinion in a nervouscondition. Fantastic charges were brought not only in thepress, but in the chamber of deputies, against newspapers andpoliticians of having accepted bribes from the British government.At the general election in August and September 1893M. Clémenceau was pursued into his distant constituency in theVar by a crowd of Parisian politicians, who brought about hisdefeat less by alleging his connexion with the Panama scandalthan by propagating the legend that he was the paid agent ofEngland. The official republic, which changed its prime ministerthree times and its foreign minister twice in 1893, M. Devellefilling that post in the Ribot and Dupuy ministries and M.Casimir-Périer in his own, repudiated with energy the calumniesas to the attempted interference of England in French domesticaffairs. But the successive governments were not in a mood tomake concessions in foreign questions, as all France was underthe glamour of the preliminary manifestations of the Russianalliance. This was seen, a few weeks after the elections, in thewild enthusiasm with which Paris received Admiral Avelaneand his officers, who had brought the Russian fleet to Toulon toreturn the visit of the French fleet to Kronstadt in 1891. Thedeath of Marshal MacMahon, who had won his first renown in theCrimea, and his funeral at the Invalides while the Russians werein Paris, were used to emphasize the fact that the allies beforeSebastopol were no longer friends. The projector of the Frenchempire in the Far East did not live to see this phase of the seemingjustification of the policy which had cost him place and popularity.Jules Ferry had died on the 17th of March 1893, only three weeksafter his triumphant rehabilitation in the political world by hiselection to the presidency of the Senate, the second post in thestate. The year he died it seemed as though with the activeaid of Russia and the sympathy of Germany the possessions ofFrance in south-eastern Asia might have indefinitely expandedinto southern China. A few years later the defeat of Russiaby Japan and the rise of the sea-power of the Japanese practicallyended the French empire in Indo-China. What the Frenchalready had at the end of the last century is virtually guaranteedto them only by the Anglo-Japanese alliance. It is in the ironyof things that these possessions which were a sign of French rivalrywith England should now be secured to France by England’sfriendliness. For it is now recognized by the French that thedefence of Indo-China is impossible.
Had the French dream been realized of a large expansion ofterritory into southern China, the success of the new empire wouldhave been based on free Chinese labour. This mighthave counterbalanced an initial obstacle to all Frenchcolonial schemes, more important than those whichAfrican policy.arise from international difficulties—the reluctance of theFrench to establish themselves as serious colonists in theiroversea possessions. We have noted how Algeria, which isnearer to Toulon and Marseilles than are Paris and Havre,has been comparatively neglected by the French, after eightyyears of occupation, in spite of the amenity of its climate andits soil for European settlers. The new French colonial schooladvocates the withdrawal of France from adventures in distanttropical countries which can be reached only by long sea voyages,and the concentration of French activity in the northern halfof the African continent. Madagascar is, as we have seen,counted as Africa in computing the area of French colonialterritory. But it lies entirely outside the scheme of Africancolonization, and in spite of the loss of life and money incurredin its conquest, its retention is not popular with the new school,although the first claim of France to it was as long ago as thereign of Louis XIII., when in 1642 a company was founded underthe protection of Richelieu for the colonization of the island.The French of the 19th and 20th centuries may well be consideredless enterprising in both hemispheres than were their ancestorsof the 17th, and Madagascar, after having been the cause ofmuch ill-feeling between England and France under the ThirdRepublic down to the time of its formal annexation, by thelaw of the 9th of August 1896, is not now the object of muchinterest among French politicians. On the African continentit is different. When the Republic succeeded to the SecondEmpire the French African possessions outside Algiers wereinconsiderable in area. The chief was Senegal, which thoughfounded as a French station under Louis XIII., was virtuallythe creation of Faidherbe under the Second Empire, even ina greater degree than were Tunis and Tongking of Jules Ferryunder the Third Republic. There was also Gabun, which isnow included in French Congo. Those outposts in the tropicsbecame the starting-points for the expansion of a French sphereof influence in north Africa, which by the beginning of the 20thcentury made France the nominal possessor of a vast territorystretching from the equatorial region on the gulf of Guinea tothe Mediterranean. A large portion of it is of no importance,including the once mysterious Timbuktu and the wilds of thewaterless Sahara desert. But the steps whereby these wideFrench and English rivalry.tracts of wilderness and of valuable territory came tobe marked on the maps in French colours, by internationalagreement, are important, as they wereassociated with the last serious official dispute betweenEngland and France before the period of entente. M. Hanotaux,who was foreign minister for the then unprecedented term offour years, from 1894 to 1898, with one short interval of a fewmonths, has thrown an instructive light on the feeling with whichFrench politicians up to the end of the 19th century regardedEngland. He declared in 1909, with the high authority ofone who was during years of Anglo-French tension the mouthpieceof the Republic in its relations with other powers, thatevery move in the direction of colonial expansion made byFrance disquieted and irritated England. He complainedthat when France, under the stimulating guidance of JulesFerry, undertook the reconstitution of an oversea domain,England barred the way—in Egypt, in Tunis, in Madagascar,in Indo-China, in the Congo, in Oceania. Writing with theknowledge of an ex-foreign minister, who had enjoyed manyyears of retirement to enable him to weigh his words, M.Hanotaux asserted without any qualification that when hetook office England “had conceived a triple design, to assumethe position of heir to the Portuguese possessions in Africa,to destroy the independence of the South African republics,and to remain in perpetuity in Egypt.” We have not to discussthe truth of those propositions, we have only to note the tendencyof French policy; and in so doing it is useful to remark that theofficial belief of the Third Republic in the last period of the19th century was that England was the enemy of French colonialexpansion all over the globe, and that in the so-called scramblefor Africa English ambition was the chief obstacle to the schemesof France. M. Hanotaux, with the authority of official knowledge,indicated that the English project of a railway from theCape of Good Hope to Cairo was the provocation which stimulatedthe French to essay a similar adventure; though he deniedthat the Marchand mission and other similar expeditions aboutto be mentioned were conceived with the specific object ofpreventing the accomplishment of the British plan. The explorationsof Stanley had demonstrated that access to the Great Lakesand the Upper Nile could be effected as easily from the westcoast of Africa as from other directions. The French, from theirancient possession of Gabun, had extended their operations farto the east, and had by treaties with European powers obtainedthe right bank of the Ubanghi, a great affluent of the Congo,as a frontier between their territory and that of the CongoIndependent State. They thus found themselves, with respectto Europe, in possession of a region which approached thevalley of the Upper Nile. Between the fall of Jules Ferryin 1885 and the beginning of the Russian alliance came a period of decreased activity in French colonial expansion. The unpopularityof the Tongking expedition was one of the causesof the popularity of General Boulanger, who diverted the Frenchpublic from distant enterprises to a contemplation of the Germanfrontier, and when Boulangism came to an end the Panamaaffair took its place in the interest it excited. But the colonialparty in France did not lose sight of the possibility of establishingUpper Nile exploration.a position on the Upper Nile. The partition of Africaseemed to offer an occasion for France to take compensationfor the English occupation of Egypt. In1892 the Budget Commission, on the proposal ofM. Étienne, deputy for Oran, who had three times been colonialunder secretary, voted 300,000 francs for the despatch of amission to explore and report on those regions, which had nothad much attention since the days of Emin. But the projectwas not then carried out. Later, parliament voted a sum sixtimes larger for strengthening the French positions on the UpperUbanghi and their means of communication with the coast.But Colonel Monteil’s expedition, which was the consequenceof this vote, was diverted, and the 1,800,000 francs were spentat Loango, the southern port of French Congo, and on the IvoryCoast, the French territory which lies between Liberia andthe British Gold Coast Colony, where a prolonged war ensuedwith Samory, a Nigerian chieftain. In September 1894, M.Delcassé being colonial minister, M. Liotard was appointedcommissioner of the Upper Ubanghi with instructions to extendFrench influence in the Bahr-el-Ghazal up to the Nile. Inaddition to official missions, numerous expeditions of Frenchexplorers took place in Central Africa during this period, andnegotiations were continually going on between the Britishand French governments. Towards the end of 1895 Lord Salisbury,who had succeeded Lord Kimberley at the foreign office,informed Baron de Courcel, the French ambassador, that anexpedition to the Upper Nile was projected for the purpose ofputting an end to Mahdism. M. Hanotaux was not at thismoment minister of foreign affairs. He had been succeededby M. Berthelot, the eminent chemist, who resigned that officeon the 26th of March 1896, a month before the fall of the Bourgeoiscabinet of which he was a member, in consequence of aquestion raised in the chamber on this subject of the Englishexpedition to the Soudan. According to M. Hanotaux, whor*turned to the Quai d’Orsay, in the Méline ministry, on the29th of April 1896, Lord Salisbury at the end of the previousyear, in announcing the expedition confidentially to M. deCourcel, had assured him that it would not go beyond Dongolawithout a preliminary understanding with France. There musthave been a misunderstanding on this point, as after reachingDongola in September 1896 the Anglo-Egyptian army proceededup the Nile in the direction of Khartoum. Before M. HanotauxMarchand mission.resumed office the Marchand mission had been formallyplanned. On the 24th of February 1896 M. Guieysse,colonial minister in the Bourgeois ministry, had signedCaptain Marchand’s instructions to the effect that he mustmarch through the Upper Ubanghi, in order to extend Frenchinfluence as far as the Nile, and try to reach that riverbefore Colonel Colvile, who was leading an expedition fromthe East. He was also advised to conciliate the Mahdi if the aimof the mission could be benefited thereby. M. Liotard wasraised to the rank of governor of the Upper Ubanghi, and ina despatch to him the new colonial minister, M. André Lebon,wrote that the Marchand mission was not to be considered amilitary enterprise, it being sent out with the intention ofmaintaining the political line which for two years M. Liotardhad persistently been following, and of which the establishmentof France in the basin of the Nile ought to be the crowningreward. Two days later, on the 25th of June 1896, CaptainMarchand embarked for Africa. This is not the place for adescription of his adventures in crossing the continent or whenFashoda.he encountered General Kitchener at Fashoda, twomonths after his arrival there in July 1898 and afortnight after the battle of Omdurman and the capture ofKhartoum. The news was made known to Europe by thesirdar’s telegrams to the British government in Septemberannouncing the presence of the French mission at Fashoda.Then ensued a period of acute tension between the French andEnglish governments, which gave the impression to the publicthat war between the two countries was inevitable. But thosewho were watching the situation in France on the spot knewthat there was no question of fighting. France was unprepared,and was also involved in the toils of the Dreyfus affair. Hadthe situation been that of a year later, when the French domesticcontroversy was ending and the Transvaal War beginning,England might have been in a very difficult position. GeneralKitchener declined to recognize a French occupation of anypart of the Nile valley. A long discussion ensued between theBritish and French governments, which was ended by the latterdeciding on the 6th of November 1898 not to maintain theMarchand mission at Fashoda. Captain Marchand refused toreturn to Europe by way of the Nile and Lower Egypt, marchingacross Abyssinia to Jibuti in French Somaliland, where heembarked for France. He was received with well-meritedenthusiasm in Paris. But the most remarkable feature of hisreception was that the ministry became so alarmed lest thepopularity of the hero of Fashoda should be at the expenseof that of the parliamentary republic, that it put an end to thepublic acclamations by despatching him secretly from thecapital—a somewhat similar treatment having been accorded toGeneral Dodds in 1893 on his return to France after conqueringDahomey. The Marchand mission had little effect on Africanquestions at issue between France and Great Britain, as a greatConvention of 1898.settlement had been effected while it was on its wayacross the continent. On the 14th of June 1898, theday before the fall of the Méline ministry, when M.Hanotaux finally quitted the Quai d’Orsay, a conventionof general delimitation was signed at Paris by that ministerand by the British ambassador, Sir Edmund Monson, which asregards the respective claims of England and France coveredin its scope the whole of the northern half of Africa from Senegambiaand the Congo to the valley of the Nile. Comparativelylittle attention was paid to it amid the exciting events whichfollowed, so little that M. de Courcel has officially recordedthat three months later, on the eve of the Fashoda incident,Lord Salisbury declared to him that he was not sufficientlyacquainted with the geography of Africa to express an opinionon certain questions of delimitation arising out of the successof the British expedition on the Upper Nile. The conventionof June 1898 was, however, of the highest importance, as itaffirmed the junction into one vast territory of the three chiefAfrican domains of France, Algeria and Tunis, Senegal and theNiger, Chad and the Congo, thus conceding to France the wholeof the north-western continent with the exception of Morocco,Liberia and the European colonies on the Atlantic. Thisarrangement, which was completed by an additional conventionon the 21st of March 1899, made Morocco a legitimate objectof French ambition.
The other questions which caused mutual animosity betweenEngland and France in the decline of the 19th century hadnothing whatever to do with their conflicting internationalinterests. The offensive attitude of theEnglish press towards France on account of theThe entente with England.Dreyfus affair was repaid by the French in theircriticism of the Boer War. When those sentimental causes ofmutual irritation had become less acute, the press of the twocountries was moved by certain influences to recognize that itwas in their interest to be on good terms with one another.The importance of their commercial relations was broughtinto relief as though it were a new fact. At last in 1903 statevisits between the rulers of England and of France took placein their respective capitals, for the first time since the early daysof the Second Empire, followed by an Anglo-French conventionsigned on the 8th of April 1904. By this an arrangement wascome to on outstanding questions of controversy betweenEngland and France in various parts of the world. Franceundertook not to interfere with the action of England in Egypt, while England made a like undertaking as to French influencein Morocco. France conceded certain of its fishing rights inNewfoundland which had been a perpetual source of irritationbetween the two countries for nearly two hundred years sincethe treaty of Utrecht of 1713. In return England made severalconcessions to France in Africa, including that of the LosIslands off Sierra Leone and some rectifications of frontier onthe Gambia and between the Niger and Lake Chad. Otherpoints of difference were arranged as to Siam, the New Hebridesand Madagascar. The convention of 1904 was on the wholemore advantageous for England than for France. The freehand which England conceded to France in dealing with Moroccowas a somewhat burdensome gift owing to German interference;but the incidents which arose from the Franco-German conflictin that country are as yet too recent for any estimate of theirpossible consequences.
One result was the retirement of M. Delcassé from the foreignoffice on the 6th of June 1905. He had been foreign ministerfor seven years, a consecutive period of rare length,only once exceeded in England since the creation ofthe office, when Castlereagh held it for ten years,The work of
M. Delcassé.and one of prodigious duration in the history of theThird Republic. He first went to the Quai d’Orsay in the Brissonministry of June 1898, remained there during the Dupuy ministryof the same year, was reappointed by M. Waldeck-Rousseauin his cabinet which lasted from June 1899 to June 1902, wasretained in the post by M. Combes till his ministry fell in January1905, and again by his successor M. Rouvier till his own resignationin June of that year. M. Delcassé had thus an uninterrupted reignat the foreign office during a long critical period of transitionboth in the interior politics of France and in its exterior relations.He went to the Quai d’Orsay when the Dreyfus agitation wasmost acute, and left it when parliament was absorbed in discussingthe separation of church and state. He saw the Franco-Russianalliance lose its popularity in the country even before theRussian defeat by the Japanese in the last days of his ministry.Although in the course of his official duties at the colonial officehe had been partly responsible for some of the expeditions sentto Africa for the purpose of checking British influence, he wasfully disposed to pursue a policy which might lead to a friendlyunderstanding with England. In this he differed from M.Hanotaux, who was essentially the man of the Franco-Russianalliance, owing to it much of his prestige, including his electionto the French Academy, and Russia, to which he gave exclusiveallegiance, was then deemed to be primarily the enemy ofEngland. M. Delcassé on the contrary, from the first, desired toassist a rapprochement between England and Russia as preliminaryto the arrangement he proposed between Englandand France. He was foreign minister when the tsar paid hissecond visit to France, but there was no longer the nationalunanimity which welcomed him in 1896, M. Delcassé also accompaniedPresident Loubet to Russia when he returned the tsar’ssecond visit in 1902. But exchange of compliments betweenFrance and Russia were no longer to be the sole internationalceremonials within the attributes of the French foreign office;M. Delcassé was minister when the procession of Europeansovereigns headed by the kings of England and of Italy in 1903came officially to Paris, and he went with M. Loubet to Londonand to Rome on the president’s return visits to those capitals—thelatter being the immediate cause of the rupture of the concordatwith the Vatican, though M. Delcassé was essentially aconcordatory minister. His retirement from the Rouvierministry in June 1905 was due to pressure from Germany inconsequence of his opposition to German interference in Morocco.His resignation took place just a week after the news had arrivedof the destruction of the Russian fleet by the Japanese, whichcompleted the disablement of the one ally of France. Theimpression was current in France that Germany wished to givethe French nation a fright before the understanding with Englandhad reached an effective stage, and it was actually believedthat the resignation of M. Delcassé averted a declaration of war.Although that belief revived to some extent the fading enmityof the French towards the conquerors of Alsace-Lorraine, thefear which accompanied it moved a considerable section of thenation to favour an understanding with Germany in preferenceto, or even at the expense of, friendly relations with England.M. Clémenceau, who only late in life came into office, andattained it at the moment when a better understanding withEngland was progressing, had been throughout his long career,of all French public men in all political groups, the most consistentfriend of England. His presence at the head of affairswas a guarantee of amicable Anglo-French relations, so far asthey could be protected by statesmanship.
By reason of the increased duration and stability of ministries,the personal influence of ministers in directing the foreign policyof France has in one sense become greater in the 20th centurythan in those earlier periods when France had first to recuperateits strength after the war and then to take its exterior policyfrom Germany. Moreover, not only have cabinets lasted longer,but the foreign minister has often been retained in a successionof them. Of the thirty years which in 1909 had elapsed sinceMarshal MacMahon retired and the republic was governed byrepublicans, in the first fifteen years from 1879 to 1894 fourteendifferent persons held the office of minister of foreign affairs,while six sufficed for the fifteen years succeeding the latter date.One must not, however, exaggerate the effect of this greaterstability in office-holding upon continuity of policy, which waswell maintained even in the days when there was on an averagea new foreign minister every year. Indeed the most markedbreach in the continuity of the foreign policy of France has beenmade in that later period of long terms of office, which, with therepudiation of the Concordat, has seen the withdrawal of theFrench protectorate over Roman Catholic missions in the East—thoughit is too soon to estimate the result. In another respectFrance has under the republic departed a long way from a traditionof the Quai d’Orsay. It no longer troubles itself on thesubject of nationalities. Napoleon III., who had more Frenchtemperament than French blood in his constitution, was anidealist on this question, and one of the causes of his own downfalland the defeat of France was his sympathy in this directionwith German unity. Since Sedan little has been done in Franceto further the doctrine of nationalities. A faint echo of it washeard during the Boer war, but French sympathy with thestruggling Dutch republics of South Africa was based rather onanti-English sentiment than on any abstract theory.(J. E. C. B.)
Bibliography of French History.—The scientific study ofthe history of France only begins with the 16th century. It washampered at first by the traditions of the middle ages and by aservile imitation of antiquity. Paulus Aemilius of Verona (Derebus gestis Francorum, 1517), who may be called the first of modernhistorians, merely applies the oratorical methods of the Latinhistoriographers. It is not till the second half of the century thathistory emancipates itself; Catholics and Protestants alike turnto it for arguments in their religious and political controversies.François Hotman published (1574) his Franco-Gallia; ClaudeFauchet his Antiquités gauloises et françoises (1579); ÉtiennePasquier his Recherches de la France (1611), “the only work oferudition of the 16th century which one can read through withoutbeing bored.” Amateurs like Petau, A. de Thou, Bongars andPeiresc collected libraries to which men of learning went to drawtheir knowledge of the past; Pierre Pithou, one of the authors ofthe Satire Ménippée, published the earliest annals of France (AnnalesFrancorum, 1588, and Historiae Francorum scriptores coetanei XI.,1596), Jacques Bongars collected in his Gesta Dei per Francos (1611–1617)the principal chroniclers of the Crusades. Others made astudy of chronology like J.J. Scaliger (De emendatione temporum,1583; Thesaurus temporum, 1606), sketched the history of literature,like François Grudé, sieur of La Croix in Maine (Bibliothèque françoise,1584), and Antoine du Verdier (Catalogue de tous les auteurs qui ontécrit ou traduit en français, 1585), or discussed the actual principles ofhistorical research, like Jean Bodin (Methodus ad facilem historiarumcognitionem, 1566) and Henri Lancelot Voisin de La Popelinière(Histoire des histoires, 1599).
But the writers of history are as yet very inexpert; the Histoiregénérale des rois de France of Bernard de Girard, seigneur de Haillan(1576), the Grandes Annales de France of François de Belleforest(1579), the Inventaire général de l’histoire de France of Jean de Serres(1597), the Histoire générale de France depuis Pharamond of ScipionDupleix (1621–1645), the Histoire de France (1643–1651) of FrançoisEudes de Mézeray, and above all his Abrégé chronologique de l’histoire de France (1668), are compilations which were eagerly read when theyappeared, but are worthless nowadays. Historical research lackedmethod, leaders and trained workers; it found them all in the 17thcentury, the golden age of learning which was honoured alike bylaymen, priests and members of the monastic orders, especially theBenedictines of the congregation of St Maur. The publication oforiginal documents was carried on with enthusiasm. To Andréduch*esne we owe two great collections of chronicles: the HistoriaeNormannorum scriptores antiqui (1619) and the Historiae Francorumscriptores, continued by his son François (5 vols., 1636–1649).These publications were due to a part only of his prodigious activity;his papers and manuscripts, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationaleat Paris, are an inexhaustible mine. Charles du Fresne, seigneurdu Cange, published Villehardouin (1657) and Joinville (1668);Étienne Baluze, the Capitularia regum Francorum (1674), the Novacollectio conciliorum (1677), the Vitae paparum Avenionensium(1693). The clergy were very much aided in their work by theirprivate libraries and by their co-operation; Père Philippe Labbepublished his Bibliotheca nova manuscriptorum (1657), and began(1671) his Collection des conciles, which was successfully completedby his colleague Père Cossart (18 vols.). In 1643 the Jesuit JeanBolland brought out vol. i. of the Acta sanctorum, a vast collectionof stories and legends which has not yet been completed beyond the4th of November. (See Bollandists.) The Benedictines, fortheir part, published the Acta sanctorum ordinis sancti Benedicti(9 vols., 1668–1701). One of the chief editors of this collection, DomJean Mabillon, published on his own account the Vetera analecta(4 vols., 1675–1685) and prepared the Annales ordinis sancti Benedicti(6 vols., 1703–1793). To Dom Thierri Ruinart we owe good editionsof Gregory of Tours and Fredegarius (1699). The learning of the17th century further inaugurated those specialized studies which areimportant aids to history. Mabillon in his De re diplomatica (1681)creates the science of documents or diplomatics. Adrien de Valoislays a sound foundation for historical geography by his criticaledition of the Notitia Galliarum (1675). Numismatics finds an enlightenedpioneer in François Leblanc (Traité historique des monnaiesde France, 1690). Du Cange, one of the greatest of the Frenchscholars who have studied the middle ages, has defined termsbearing on institutions in his Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis(1678), recast by the Benedictines (1733), with an important supplementby Dom Carpentier (1768), republished twice during the 19thcentury, with additions, by F. Didot (1840–1850), and by L. Favre atNiort (1883–1888); this work is still indispensable to every studentof medieval history. Finally, great biographical or bibliographicalworks were undertaken; the Gallia christiana, which gave a chronologicallist of the archbishops, bishops and abbots of the Gauls andof France, was compiled by two twin brothers, Scévole and Louisde Sainte-Marthe, and by the two sons of Louis (4 vols., 1656); afresh edition, on a better plan, and with great additions, was begunin 1715 by Denys de Sainte-Marthe, continued throughout the 18thcentury by the Benedictines, and finished in the 19th century byBarthélemy Hauréau (1856–1861).
As to the nobility, a series of researches and publications, begunby Pierre d’Hozier (d. 1660) and continued well on into the 19thcentury by several of his descendants, developed into the Armorialgénéral de la France, which was remodelled several times. A similarwork, of a more critical nature, was carried out by Père Anselme(Histoire généalogique de la maison de France et des grands officiersde la couronne, 1674) and by Père Ange and Père Simplicien, whocompleted the work (3rd ed. in 9 vols., 1726–1733). Critical bibliographyis especially represented by certain Protestants, expelledfrom France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. PierreBayle, the sceptic, famous for his Dictionnaire critique (1699),which is in part a refutation of the Dictionnaire historique et géographiquepublished in 1673 by the Abbé Louis Moréri, was thefirst to publish the Nouvelles de la république des lettres (1684–1687),which was continued by Henri Basnage de Beauval under the titleof Histoire des ouvrages des savants (24 vols.). In imitation of this,Jean Le Clerc successively edited a Bibliothèque universelle et historique(1686–1693), a Bibliothèque choisie (1703–1713), and a Bibliothèqueancienne et moderne (1714–1727). These were the first of our“periodicals.”
The 18th century continues the traditions of the 17th. TheBenedictines still for some time hold the first place. Dom EdmondMartène visited numerous archives (which were then closed) inFrance and neighbouring countries, and drew from them the materialfor two important collections: Thesaurus novus anecdotorum (9 vols.,1717, in collaboration with Dom Ursin Durand) and Veterum scriptorumcollectio (9 vols., 1724–1733). Dom Bernard de Montfauconalso travelled in search of illustrated records of antiquity; privatecollections, among others the celebrated collection of Gaignières(now in the Bibliothèque Nationale), provided him with the illustrationswhich he published in his Monuments de la monarchiefrançoise (5 vols., 1729–1733). The text is in two languages, Latinand French. Dom Martin Bouquet took up the work begun by thetwo duch*esnes, and in 1738 published vol. i. of the Historians ofFrance (Rerum Gallicarum et Francicarum scriptores), an enormouscollection which was intended to include all the sources of the historyof France, grouped under centuries and reigns. He produced thefirst eight volumes himself; his work was continued by severalcollaborators, the most active of whom was Dom Michel J. Brial,and already comprised thirteen volumes when it was interruptedby the Revolution. In 1733, Antoine Rivet de La Grange producedvol. i. of the Histoire littéraire de la France, which in 1789 numberedtwelve volumes. While Dom C. François Toustaint and DomRené Prosper Tassin published a Nouveau Traité de diplomatique(6 vols., 1750–1765), others were undertaking the Art de vérifier lesdates (1750; new and much enlarged edition in 1770). Still others,with more or less success, attempted histories of the provinces.
In the second half of the 18th century, the ardour of the Benedictinesof St Maur diminished, and scientific work passed more andmore into the hands of laymen. The Académie des Inscriptions etBelles-lettres, founded in 1663 and reorganized in 1701, became itschief instrument, numbering among its members Denis FrançoisSecousse, who continued the collection of Ordonnances des rois deFrance, begun (1723) by J. de Laurière; J.-B. de La Curne de SaintePalaye (Mémoires sur l’ancienne chevalerie, 1759–1781; Glossaire dela langue française depuis son origine jusqu’à la fin de Louis XIV,printed only in 1875–1882); J.-B. d’Anville (Notice sur l’ancienneGaule tirée des monuments, 1760); and L. G. de Bréquigny, thegreatest of them all, who continued the publication of the Ordonnances,began the Table chronologique des diplômes concernantl’histoire de France (3 vols., 1769–1783), published the Diplomata,chartae, ad res Francicas spectantia (1791, with the collaboration ofLa Porte du Theil), and directed fruitful researches in the archives inLondon, to enrich the Cabinet des chartes, where Henri Bertin (1719–1792),an enlightened minister of Louis XV., had in 1764 set himselfthe task of collecting the documentary sources of the national history.The example set by the religious orders and the government borefruit. The general assembly of the clergy gave orders that itsProcès verbaux (9 vols., 1767–1789) should be printed; some of theprovinces decided to have their history written, and mostly appliedto the Benedictines to have this done. Brittany was treated byDom Lobineau (1707) and Dom Morice (1742); the duchy of Burgundyby Dom Urbain Plancher (1739–1748); Languedoc by DomDominique Vaissète (1730–1749, in collaboration with Dom Claudede Vic; new ed. 1873–1893); for Paris, its secular history wastreated by Dom Michel Félibien and Dom Lobineau (1725), and itsecclesiastical history by the abbé Lebeuf (1745–1760; new ed.1883–1890).
This ever-increasing stream of new evidence aroused curiosity,gave rise to pregnant comparisons, developed and sharpened thecritical sense, but further led to a more and more urgent need forexact information. The Académie des Inscriptions brought out itsHistoire de l’Académie avec les mémoires de littérature tirés de sesregistres (vol. i. 1717; 51 vols. appeared before the Revolution, withfive indexes; vide the Bibliographie of Lasteyrie, vol. iii. pp. 256 etseq.). Other collections, mostly of the nature of bibliographies,were the Journal des savants (111 vols., from 1665 to 1792; vide theTable méthodique by H. Cocheris, 1860); the Journal de Trévoux, orMémoires pour l’histoire des sciences et des beaux-arts, edited byJesuits (265 vols., 1701–1790); the Mercure de France (977 vols.,from 1724 to 1791). To these must be added the dictionaries andencyclopaedias: the Dictionnaire de Moréri, the last edition ofwhich numbers 10 vols. (1759); the Dictionnaire géographique,historique et politique des Gaules et de la France, by the abbé J.J.Expilly (6 vols., 1762–1770; unfinished); the Répertoire universelet raisonné de jurisprudence civile, criminelle, canonique et bénéficiale,by Guyot (64 vols., 1775–1786; supplement in 17 vols., 1784–1785),reorganized and continued by Merlin de Douai, who was afterwardsone of the Montagnards, a member of the Directory, and a countunder the Empire.
The historians did not use to the greatest advantage the treasuresof learning provided for them; they were for the most part superficial,and dominated by their political or religious prejudices.Thus works like that of Père Gabriel Daniel (Histoire de France, 3vols., 1713), of Président Hénault (Abrégé chronologique, 1744; 25editions between 1770 and 1834), of the abbé Paul François Vellyand those who completed his work (Histoire de France, 33 vols.,1765 to 1783), of G.H. Gaillard (Histoire de la rivalité de la Franceet de l’Angleterre, 11 vols., 1771–1777), and of L.P. Anquetil (1805),in spite of the brilliant success with which they met at first, havefallen into a just oblivion. A separate place must be given to theworks of the theorists and philosophers: Histoire de l’ancien gouvernementde la France, by the Comte de Boulainvilliers (1727), Histoirecritique de l’établissem*nt de la monarchie françoise dans les deuxGaules, by the abbé J.B. Dubos (1734); L’Esprit des lois, by theprésident de Montesquieu (1748); the Observations sur l’histoire deFrance, by the abbé de Mably (1765); the Théorie de la politique dela monarchie française, by Marie Pauline de Lézardière (1792). Theseworks have, if nothing else, the merit of provoking reflection.
At the time of the Revolution this activity was checked. Thereligious communities and royal academies were suppressed, andFrance violently broke with even her most recent past, which wasconsidered to belong to the ancien régime. When peace was re-established,she began the task of making good the damage whichhad been done, but a greater effort was now necessary in order torevive the spirit of the institutions which had been overthrown.The new state, which was, in spite of all, bound by so many tiesto the former order of things, seconded this effort, and during the whole of the 19th century, and even longer, had a strong influence onhistorical production. The section of the Institut de France,which in 1816 assumed the old name of Académie des Inscriptionset Belles-lettres, began to reissue the two series of the Mémoiresand of the Notices et extraits des manuscrits tirés de la bibliothèqueroyale (the first volume had appeared in 1787); began (1844) thatof the Mémoires présentés par divers savants and the Comptes rendus(subject index 1857–1900, by G. Ledos, 1906); and continued theRecueil des historiens de France, the plan of which was enlarged bydegrees (Historiens des croisades, obituaires, pouillés, comptes, &c.),the Ordonnances and the Table chronologique des diplômes. Duringthe reign of Louis Philippe, the ministry of the interior reorganizedthe administration of the archives of the departments, communesand hospitals, of which the Inventaires sommaires are a mine ofprecious information (see the Rapport au ministre, by G. Servois,1902). In 1834 the ministry of public instruction founded a committee,which has been called since 1881 the Comité des Travauxhistoriques et scientifiques, under the direction of which have beenpublished: (1) the Collection des documents inédits relatifs à l’histoirede France (more than 260 vols. have appeared since 1836); (2) theCatalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques de France; (3)the Dictionnaires topographiques (25 vols. have appeared); and theRépertoires archéologiques of the French departments (8 vols. between1861 and 1888); (4) several series of Bulletins, the details of which willbe found in the Bibliographie of Lasteyrie. At the same time werefounded or reorganized, both in Paris and the departments, numeroussocieties, devoted sometimes partially and sometimes exclusively tohistory and archaeology; the Académie Celtique (1804), which in1813 became the Société des Antiquaires de France (general index byM. Prou, 1894); the Société de l’Histoire de France (1834); theSociété de l’École des Chartes (1839); the Société de l’Histoire de Pariset de l’Île-de-France (1874; four decennial indexes), &c. The detailswill be found in the excellent Bibliographie générale des travauxhistoriques et archéologiques publiés par les sociétés savantes de France,which has appeared since 1885 under the direction of Robert deLasteyrie.
Individual scholars also associated themselves with this greatliterary movement. Guizot published a Collection de mémoiresrelatifs à l’histoire de France (31 vols., 1824–1835); Buchon, aCollection des chroniques nationales françaises écrites en languevulgaire du XIIIe au XVIe siècle (47 vols., 1824–1829), and aChoix de chroniques et mémoires sur l’histoire de France (14 vols.,1836–1841); Petitot and Monmerqué, a Collection de mémoiresrelatifs à l’histoire de France (131 vols., 1819–1829); Michaud andPoujoulat, a Nouvelle Collection de mémoires pour servir a l’histoirede France (32 vols., 1836–1839); Barrière and de Lescure, a Bibliothèquede mémoires relatifs à l’histoire de France pendant le XVIIIesiècle (30 vols., 1855–1875); and finally Berville and Barrière, aCollection des mémoires relatifs à la Révolution Française (55 vols.,1820–1827). The details are to be found in the Sources de l’histoirede France, by Alfred Franklin (1876). The abbé J. P. Migne in hisPatrologia Latina (221 vols., 1844–1864), re-edited a number of textsanterior to the 13th century. Under the second empire, the administrationof the imperial archives at Paris published ten volumesof documents (Monuments historiques, 1866; Layettes du trésor deschartes, 1863, which were afterwards continued up to 1270; Actesdu parlement de Paris, 1863–1867), not to mention several volumesof Inventaires. The administration of the Bibliothèque impérialehad printed the Catalogue général de l’histoire de France (10 vols.,1855–1870; vol. xi., containing the alphabetical index to the namesof the authors, appeared in 1895). Other countries also supplieda number of useful texts; there is much in the English Rolls series,in the collection of Chroniques belges, and especially in the MonumentaGermaniae historica.
At the same time the scope of history and its auxiliary sciencesbecomes more clearly defined; the École des Chartes produces someexcellent palaeographers, as for instance Natalis de Wailly (Élémentsde paléographie, 1838), and L. Delisle (q.v.), who has also left traces ofhis profound researches in the most varied departments of medievalhistory (Bibliographie des travaux de M. Léopold Delisle, 1902);Anatole de Barthélemy made a study of coins and medals, Douëtd’Arcq and G. Demay of seals. The works of Alexandre Lenoir(Musée des monuments français, 1800–1822), of Arcisse de Caumont(Histoire de l’architecture du moyen âge, 1837; Abécédaire ou rudimentd’archéologie, 1850), of A. Napoléon Didron (Annales archéologiques,1844), of Jules Quicherat (Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire, publishedafter his death, 1886), and the dictionaries of Viollet le Duc(Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française, 1853–1868; Dictionnairedu mobilier français, 1855) displayed to the best advantageone of the most brilliant sides of the French intellect, while othersciences, such as geology, anthropology, the comparative study oflanguages, religions and folk-lore, and political economy, continuedto enlarge the horizon of history. The task of writing the generalhistory of a country became more and more difficult, especiallyfor one man, but the task was none the less undertaken by severalhistorians, and by some of eminence. François Guizot treated ofthe Histoire de la civilisation en France (1828–1830); AugustinThierry after the Récits des temps mérovingiens (1840) publishedthe Monuments de l’histoire du tiers état (1849–1856), the introductionto which was expanded into a book (1855); Charles Simondede Sismondi produced a mediocre Histoire des français in 31 vols.(1821–1844), and Henri Martin a Histoire de France in 16 vols.(1847–1854), now of small use except for the two or three last centuriesof the ancien régime. Finally J. Michelet, in his Histoirede France (17 vols., 1833–1856) and his Histoire de la Révolution(7 vols., 1847–1853), aims at reviving the very soul of the nation’spast.
After the Franco-German War begins a better organization ofscientific studies, modelled on that of Germany. The École desHautes Études, established in 1868, included in its programme thecritical study of the sources, both Latin and French, of the historyof France; and from the séminaire of Gabriel Monod came men oflearning, already prepared by studying at the École des Chartes:Paul Viollet, who revived the study of the history of French law;Julien Havet, who revived that of Merovingian diplomatics; ArthurGiry, who resumed the study of municipal institutions where ithad been left by A. Thierry, prepared the Annales carolingiennes(written by his pupils, Eckel, Favre, Lauer, Lot, Poupardin), andbrought back into honour the study of diplomatics (Manuel dediplomatique, 1894); Auguste Molinier, author of the Sources del’histoire de France (1902–1904; general index, 1906), &c. AugusteLongnon introduced at the École des Hautes Études the study ofhistorical geography (Atlas historique de la France, in course ofpublication since 1888). The universities, at last reorganized,popularized the employment of the new methods. The books ofFustel de Coulanges and Achille Luchaire on the middle ages, andthose of A. Aulard on the revolution, gave a strong, though well-regulated,impetus to historical production. The École du Louvre(1881) increased the value of the museums and placed the historyof art among the studies of higher education, while the Muséearchéologique of St-Germain-en-Laye offered a fruitful field forresearch on Gallic and Gallo-Roman antiquities. Rich archives,hitherto inaccessible, were thrown open to students; at Romethose of the Vatican (Registres pontificaux, published by studentsat the French school of archaeology, since 1884); at Paris, those ofthe Foreign Office (Recueil des instructions données aux ambassadeursdepuis le traité de Westphalie, 16 vols., 1885–1901; besides variouscollections of diplomatic papers, inventories, &c.). Those of theWar Office were used by officers who published numerous documentsbearing on the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, and on that of1870–1871. In 1904 a commission, generously endowed by theFrench parlement, was entrusted with the task of publishing thedocuments relating to economic and social life of the time of theRevolution, and four volumes had appeared by 1908. Certaintowns, Paris, Bordeaux, &c., have made it a point of honour to havetheir chief historical monuments printed. The work now becomesmore and more specialized. L’Histoire de France, by Ernest Lavisse(1900, &c.), is the work of fifteen different authors. It is thereforemore than ever necessary that the work should be under sounddirection. The Manuel de bibliographie historique of Ch. V. Langlois(2nd edition, 1901–1904) is a good guide, as is his Archives de l’histoirede France (1891, in collaboration with H. Stein).
Besides the special bibliographies mentioned above, it will beuseful to consult the Bibliothèque historique of Père Jacques Lelong(1719; new ed. by Fevret de Fontette, 5 vols., 1768–1778); theGeschichte der historischen Forschung und Kunst of Ludwig Wachler(2 vols., 1812–1816); the Bibliographie de la France, establishedin 1811 (1st series, 1811–1856, 45 vols.; 2nd series, 1 vol. per annumsince 1857); the publications of the Société de Bibliographie (Polybiblion,from 1868 on, &c.); the Bibliographie de l’histoire de France,by Gabriel Monod (1888); the Répertoire of the abbé Ulysse Chevalier(Biobibliographie; new ed. 1903–1907; and Topobibliographie,1894–1899). Bearing exclusively on the middle ages are the Bibliothecahistorica medii aevi of August Potthast (new ed. 1896) and theManuel (Les Sources de l’histoire de France, 1901, &c.) of A. Molinier;but the latter is to be continued up to modern times, the 16th centuryhaving already been begun by Henri Hausser (1st part, 1906).Finally, various special reviews, besides teaching historical methodby criticism and by example, try to keep their readers au courantwith literary production; the Revue critique d’histoire et de littérature(1866 fol.), the Revue des questions historiques (1866 fol.), the Revuehistorique (1876 fol.), the Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine,accompanied annually by a valuable Répertoire méthodique (1898fol.); the Revue de synthèse historique (1900 fol.), &c. (C. B.*)
French Law and Institutions
Celtic Period.—The remotest times to which history gives usaccess with reference to the law and institutions formerlyexisting in the country which is now called France are those inwhich the dominant race at least was Celtic. On the whole,our knowledge is small of the law and institutions of these Celts,or Gauls, whose tribes constituted independent Gaul. For theirreconstruction, modern scholars draw upon two sources; firstly,there is the information furnished by the classical writers and byCaesar and Strabo in particular, which is trustworthy but somewhatscanty; the other source, which is not so pure, consists in the accounts found in those legal works of the middle ages writtenin the neo-Celtic dialects, the most important and the greaternumber of which belong to Ireland. A reconstruction from themis always hazardous, however delicate and scientific be thecriticism which is brought to bear on it, as in the case of d’Arboisde Jubainville, for example. Moreover, in the historical evolutionof French institutions those of the Celts or Gauls are of littleimportance. Not one of them can be shown to have survivedin later law. What has survived of the Celtic race is the bloodand temperament, still found in a great many Frenchmen,certain traits which the ancients remarked in the Gauls beingstill recognizable: bellum gerere et argute loqui.
Roman Period.—It was the Roman conquest and rule whichreally formed Gaul, for she was Romanized to the point of losingalmost completely that which persists most stubbornly in aconquered nation, namely, the language; the Breton-speakingpopulation came to France later, from Britain. The institutionsof Roman Gaul became identical with those of the Roman empire,provincial and municipal government undergoing the sameevolution as in the other parts of the empire. It was underRoman supremacy too, as M. d’Arbois de Jubainville has shown,that the ownership of land became personal and free in Gaul.The law for the Gallo-Romans was that which was administeredby the conventus of the magistrate; there are only a few peculiarities,mere Gallicisms, resulting from conventions or usage,which are pointed out by Roman jurisconsults of the classicalage. The administrative reforms of Diocletian and Constantineapplied to Gaul as to the rest of the empire. Gaul under thisrule consisted of seventeen provinces, divided between twodioceses, ten in the diocese of the Gauls, under the authorityof the praetorian prefect, who resided at Treves; and the otherseven in the dioecesis septem provinciarum, under the authorityof a vicarius. The Gallo-Romans became Christian with theother subjects of the empire; the Church extended thither herpowerful organization modelled on the administrative organization,each civitas having a bishop, just as it had a curia andmunicipal magistrates. But, although endowed with privilegesby the Christian emperors, the Church did not yet encroach uponthe civil power. She had the right of acquiring property, ofholding councils, subject to the imperial authority, and of thefree election of bishops. But only the first germs of ecclesiasticaljurisdiction are to be traced. In virtue of the laws, the bishopswere privileged arbitrators, and in the matter of public sinsexercised a disciplinary jurisdiction over the clergy and thefaithful. In the second half of the 4th century, monasteriesappeared in Gaul. After the fall of the Western empire, there wasleft to the Gallo-Romans as an expression of its law, which wasalso theirs, a written legislation. It consisted of the imperialconstitutions, contained in the Gregorian, Hermogenian andTheodosian codes (the two former being private compilations,and the third an official collection), and the writings of thefive jurists (Gaius, Papinian, Paulus, Ulpian and Modestinus),to which Valentinian III. had in 426 given the force of law.
The Barbarian Invasion.—The invasions and settlements ofthe barbarians open a new period. Though there were robberyand violence in every case, the various barbarian kingdomsset up in Gaul were established under different conditions.In those of the Burgundians and Visigoths, the owners of the greatestates, which had been the prevailing form of landed propertyin Roman Gaul, suffered partial dispossession, according to asystem the rules regulating which can, in the case of the Burgundians,be traced almost exactly. It is doubtful whether asimilar process took place in the case of the Frankish settlements,but their first conquests in the north and east seem to have ledto the extermination or total expulsion of the Gallo-Romanpopulation. It is impossible to say to what extent, in thesevarious settlements, the system of collective property prevailingamong the Germanic tribes was adopted. Another importantdifference was that, in embracing Christianity, some of thebarbarians became Arians, as in the case of the Visigoths andBurgundians; others Catholic, as in the case of the Franks.This was probably the main cause of the absorption of the otherkingdoms into the Frankish monarchy. In each case, however,the barbarian king appeared as wishing not to overthrow theRoman administration, but to profit by its continuation. Thekings of the Visigoths and Burgundians were at first actuallyrepresentatives of the Western empire, and Clovis himself wasready to accept from the emperor Anastasius the title of consul;but these were but empty forms, similar to the fictitious tieswhich long existed or still exist between China or Turkey andcertain parts of their former empires, now separated from themfor ever.
As soon as the Merovingian monarch had made himself masterof Gaul, he set himself to maintain and keep in working orderthe administrative machinery of the Romans, save that theadministrative unit was henceforth no longer the provincia butthe civitas, which generally took the name of pagus, and wasplaced under the authority of a count, comes or grafio (Graf).Perhaps this was not entirely an innovation, for it appears thatat the end of the Roman supremacy certain civitates had alreadya comes. Further, several pagi could be united under theauthority of a dux. The pagus seems to have generally beendivided into hundreds (centenae).
But the Roman administrative machinery was too delicateto be handled by barbarians; it could not survive for long,but underwent changes and finally disappeared. Thus theMerovingians tried to levy the same direct taxes as the Romanshad done, the capitatio terrena and the capitatio humana, butthey ceased to be imposts reassessed periodically in accordancewith the total sum fixed as necessary to meet the needs of thestate, and became fixed annual taxes on lands or persons;finally, they disappeared as general imposts, continuing toexist only as personal or territorial dues. In the same way theRoman municipal organization, that of the curiae, survivedfor a considerable time under the Merovingians, but was usedonly for the registration of written deeds; under the Carolingiansit disappeared, and with it the old senatorial nobility whichhad been that of the Empire. The administration of justice(apart from the king’s tribunal) seems to have been organizedon a system borrowed partly from Roman and partly fromGermanic institutions; it naturally tends to assume popularforms. Justice is administered by the count (comes) or hisdeputy (centenarius or vicarius), but on the verdict of notablescalled in the texts boni homines or rachimburgii. This takesplace in an assembly of all the free subjects, called mallus, atwhich every free man is bound to attend at least a certain numberof times a year, and in which are promulgated the general actsemanating from the king. The latter could issue commandsor prohibitions under the name of bannus, the violation of whichentailed a fine of 60 solidi; the king also administered justice(in palatio), assisted by the officers of his household, his jurisdictionbeing unlimited and at the same time undefined. He couldhear all causes, but was not bound to hear any, except, apparently,accusations of deliberate failure of justice and breach of truston the part of the rachimburgii.
But what proved the great disturbing element in Gallo-Romansociety was the fact that the conquerors, owing to their formercustoms and the degree of their civilization, were all warriors,men whose chief interest was to become practised in the handlingof arms, and whose normal state was that of war. It is truethat under the Roman empire all the men of a civitas wereobliged, in case of necessity, to march against the enemy, andunder the Frankish monarchy the count still called together hispagenses for this object. But the condition of the barbarianwas very different; he lived essentially for fighting. Hencethose gatherings or annual reviews of the Campus Martius,which continued so long, in Austrasia at least. They constitutedthe chief armed force; for mercenary troops, in spite of theassertions of some to the contrary, play at this period only asmall part. But this military class, though not an aristocracy(for among the Franks the royal race alone was noble), wasto a large extent independent, and the king had to attachthese leudes or fideles to himself by gifts and favours. At thesame time the authority of the king gradually underwent a change in character, though he always claimed to be thesuccessor of the Roman emperor. It gradually assumed thatCharacter of the Merovingian kingship.domestic or personal character that, among theGermans, marked most of the relations betweenmen. The household of the king gained in politicalimportance, by reason that the heads of the principaloffices in the palace became at the same time highpublic officials. There was, moreover, a body of men moreespecially attached to the king, the antrustions (q.v.) and thecommensals (convivae regis) whose weregeld (i.e. the price of aman’s life in the system of compensation then prevalent) was threetimes greater than that of the other subjects of the same race.
The Frankish monarch had also the power of making laws,which he exercised after consulting the chief men of the kingdom,both lay and ecclesiastical, in the placita, which were meetingsdiffering from the Campus Martius and apparently modelledprincipally on the councils of the Church. But throughout thekingdom in many places the direct authority of the king overthe people ceased to make itself felt. The immunitates, grantedchiefly to the great ecclesiastical properties, limited this authorityin a curious way by forbidding public officials to exercise theirfunctions in the precinct of land which was immunis. Thejudicial and fiscal rights frequently passed to the landowner,who in any case became of necessity the intermediary betweenthe supreme power and the people. In regard to this last point,moreover, the case seems to have been the same with all thegreat landowners or potentes, whose territory was called potestas,and who gained a real authority over those living within it;later in the middle ages they were called homines potestatis(hommes de poeste).
Other principles, arising perhaps less from Germanic customstrictly speaking than from an inferior level of civilization, alsocontributed towards the weakening of the royal power. Themonarch, like his contemporaries, considered the kingdom andthe rights of the king over it to be his property; consequently,he had the power of dealing with it as if it were a private possession;it is this which gave rise to the concessions of royal rightsto individuals, and later to the partitions of the kingdom, andthen of the empire, between the sons of the king or emperor,to the exclusion of the daughters, as in the division of an inheritancein land. This proved one of the chief weaknesses of theMerovingian monarchy.
In order to rule the Gallo-Romans, the barbarians had hadinevitably to ask the help of the Church, which was the representativeof Roman civilization. Further, the Merovingianmonarch and the Catholic Church had comeinto close alliance in their struggle with the Arians.Position of
the Church.The result for the Church had been that she gained newprivileges, but at the same time became to a certain extentdependent. Under the Merovingians the election of the bishopa clero et populo is only valid if it obtains the assent (assensus)of the king, who often directly nominates the prelate. But atthe same time the Church retains her full right of acquiringproperty, and has her jurisdiction partially recognized; that is tosay, she not only exercises more freely than ever a disciplinaryjurisdiction, but the bishop, in place of the civil power, administerscivil and criminal justice over the clergy. The councilshad for a long time forbidden the clergy to cite one another beforesecular tribunals; they had also, in the 6th century, forbiddensecular judges under pain of excommunication to cite before themand judge the clergy, without permission of the bishop. Adecree of Clotaire II. (614) acknowledged the validity of theseclaims, but not completely; a precise interpretation of the textis, however, difficult.
The Merovingian dynasty perished of decay, amid increasinganarchy. The crown passed, with the approval of the papacy,to an Austrasian mayor of the palace and his family,one of those mayors of the palace (i.e. chief officer ofthe king’s household) who had been the last supportCarolingian period.of the preceding dynasty. It was then that theredeveloped a certain number of institutions, which offered themselvesas useful means of consolidating the political organism,and were in reality the direct precursors of feudalism. One wasthe royal benefice (beneficium), of which, without doubt, theChurch provided both the model and, in the first instance, thematerial. The model was the precaria, a form of concession bywhich it was customary for the Church to grant the possessionof her lands to free men; this practice she herself had copiedfrom the five-years leases granted by the Roman exchequer.Gradually, however, the precaria had become a concession made,in most cases, free and for life. As regards the material, whenBeginnings of the feudal system.the Austrasian mayors of the palace (probably CharlesMartel) wished to secure the support of the fidelesby fresh benefits, the royal treasury being exhausted,they turned to the Church, which was at that time thegreatest landowner, and took lands from her to give totheir warriors. In order to disguise the robbery it was decided—perhapsas an afterthought—that these lands should be held asprecariae from the Church, or from the monastic houses whichhad furnished them. Later, when the royal treasury wasreorganized, the grants of land made by the kings naturally tooka similar form: the beneficium, as a free grant for life. Under theMerovingians royal grants of land were in principle made in fullownership, except, as Brunner has shown, that provision wasmade for a revocation under certain circ*mstances. No specialservices seem to have been attached to the benefice, whethergranted by the king or by some other person, but, in the secondhalf of the 9th century at least, the possession of the beneficeis found as the characteristic of the military class and the formof their pay. This we find clearly set forth in the treatisede ecclesiis et capellis of Hincmar of Reims. The beneficium, inobedience to a natural law, soon tended to crystallize into aperpetual and hereditary right. Another institution akin to thebeneficium was the senioratus; by the commendatio, a form ofsolemn contract, probably of Germanic origin, and chieflycharacterized by the placing of the hands between those of thelord, a man swore absolute fidelity to another man, who becamehis senior. It became the generally received idea (as expressedin the capitularies) that it was natural and normal for everyfree man to have a senior. At the same time a benefice wasnever granted unless accompanied by the commendatio of thebeneficiary to the grantor. As the most important seniores werethus bound to the king and received from him their benefices,he expected through them to command their men; but in realitythe king disappeared little by little in the senior. The kinggranted as benefices not only lands, but public functions, suchas those of count or dux, which thus became possessions, held, firstfor life, and later as hereditary properties. The Capitulary ofKiersy-sur-Oise (877), which was formerly considered to havemade fiefs legally and generally hereditary, only proves that itwas already the custom for benefices of this kind, honores, topass from the father to one of the sons.
Charlemagne, while sanctioning these institutions, tried toarrest the political decomposition. He reorganized the administrationof justice, fixing the respective jurisdictions of thecount and the centenarius, substituting for the rachimburgiipermanent scabini, chosen by the count in theReforms of Charlemagne.presence of the people, and defining the relations ofthe count, as the representative of the central authority, withthe advocati or judices of immunitates and potestates. He reorganizedthe army, determining the obligations and the militaryoutfit of free men according to their means. Finally, he establishedthose regular inspections by the missi dominici which arethe subject of so many of his capitularies. From the De ordinepalatii of Hincmar of Reims, who follows the account of a contemporaryof the great emperor, we learn that he also regularlyestablished two general assemblies, conventus or placita, in theyear, one in the autumn, the other in the spring, which wereattended by the chief officials, lay and ecclesiastical. It washere that the capitularies (q.v.) and all important measures werefirst drawn up and then promulgated. The revenues of theCarolingian monarch (which are no longer identical with thefinances of the state) consisted chiefly in the produce of theroyal lands (villae), which the king and his suite often came and consumed on the spot; and it is known how carefully Charlemagneregulated the administration of the villae. There werealso the free gifts which the great men were bound, accordingCarolingian fiscal system.to custom, to bring to the conventus, the contributionsof this character from the monasteries practicallyamounting to a tax; the regular personal or territorialdues into which the old taxes had resolved themselves;the profits arising from the courts (the royal bannus, and thefredum, or part of the compensation-money which went to theking); finally, numberless requisitions in kind, a usage which hadwithout doubt existed continuously since Roman times. TheChurch was loaded with honours and had added a fresh prerogativeto her former privileges, namely, the right of levying areal tax in kind, the tithe. Since the 3rd century she had tried toexact the payment of tithes from the faithful, interpreting asapplicable to the Christian clergy the texts in the Old Testamentbearing on the Levites; Gallican councils had repeatedlyproclaimed it as an obligation, though, it appears, with littlesuccess. But from the reign of Pippin the Short onwards thecivil law recognized and sanctioned this obligation, and thecapitularies of Charlemagne and Louis the Debonnaire containnumerous provisions dealing with it. Ecclesiastical jurisdictionThe Church under Charlemagne.extended farther and farther, but Charlemagne, theprotector of the papacy, maintained firmly his authorityover the Church. He nominated its dignitaries, bothbishops and abbots, who were true ecclesiasticalofficials, parallel with the lay officials. In each pagus,bishop and count owed each other mutual support, and the mission the same circuit were ordinarily a count and a bishop. Inthe first collection of capitularies, that of Ansegisus, two booksout of four are devoted to ecclesiastical capitularies.
What, then, was the private and criminal law of this Frankishmonarchy which had come to embrace so many different races?The men of Roman descent continued under the Romanlaw, and the conquerors could not hope to impose theircustoms upon them. The authorized expression ofThe law under the Frank monarchy.the Roman law was henceforth to be found in the Lexromana Wisigothorum or Breviarium Alarici, drawn up by orderof Alaric II. in 506. It is an abridgment of the codes, of thatof Theodosius especially, and of certain of the writings of thejurists included under the Law of Citations. As to the barbarians,they had hitherto had nothing but customs, and these customs,of which the type nearest to the original is to be found in the oldesttext of the Lex Salica, were nothing more than a series of tariffsof compensations, that is to say, sums of money due to the injuredparty or his family in case of crimes committed against individuals,for which crimes these compensations were the only penalty.They also introduced a barbarous system of trial, that by compurgation,i.e. exculpation by the oath of the defendant supportedby a certain number of cojurantes, and that by ordeal, later calledjudicium Dei. In each new kingdom the barbarians naturallykept their own laws, and when these men of different races allbecame subject to the Frankish monarchy, there evolved itselfa system (called the personnalité des lois) by which every subjecthad, in principle, the right to be tried by the law of the race towhich he belonged by birth (or sometimes for some other reason,such as emancipation or marriage). When the two adversarieswere of different race, it was the law of the defendant which hadto be applied. The customs of the barbarians had been drawnup in Latin. Sometimes, as in the case of the first text of theSalic law, the system on which they were compiled is not exactlyknown; but it was generally done under the royal authority.At this period only these written documents bear the name of“law” (leges romanorum; leges barbarorum), and at least thetacit consent of the people seems to have been required for thesecollections of laws, in accordance with an axiom laid down in alater capitulary; lex fit consensu populi et constitutione regis.It is noteworthy, too, that in the process of being drawn up inLatin, most of the leges barbarorum were very much Romanized.
In the midst of this diversity, a certain number of causestended to produce a partial unity. The capitularies, which hadin themselves the force of law, when there was no question ofmodifying the leges, constituted a legislation which was the samefor all; often they inflicted corporal punishment for graveoffences, which applied to all subjects without distinction. Usageand individual convenience led to the same result. The Gallo-Romans,and even the Church itself, to a certain extent, adoptedthe methods of trial introduced by the Germans, as was likelyin a country relapsing into barbarism. On the other hand,written acts became prevalent among the barbarians, and atthe same time they assimilated a certain amount of Roman law;for these acts continued to be drawn up in Latin, after Romanmodels, which were in most cases simply misinterpreted owingto the general ignorance. The type is preserved for us in thosecollections of Formulae, of which complete and scientific editionshave been published by Eugène de Rozière and Carl Zeumer.During this period, too, the Gallican Church adopted the collectionof councils and decretals, called later the Codex canonumecclesiae Gallicanae, which she continued to preserve. Thiscollection was that of Dionysius Exiguus, which was sent toCharlemagne in 774 by Pope Adrian I. But in the course ofthe 9th century apocryphal collections were also formed in theGallican Church: the False Capitularies of Benedictus Levita,and the False Decretals of Isidorus Mercator (see Decretals).
All the subjects of the Frankish monarchy were not of equalstatus. There was, strictly speaking, no nobility, both theRoman and the Germanic nobility having died out; but slaverycontinued to exist. The Church, however, was preparing thetransformation of the slave into the serf, by giving force andvalidity to their marriages, in cases, at least, when the masterhad approved of them, and by forbidding the latter unjustlyto seize the slave’s peculium. But between the free man (ingenuus)and the slave lay a number of persons of intermediate status;they possessed legal personality but were subject to incapacitiesof various kinds, and had to perform various duties towardsother men. There was, to begin with, the Roman colonist(colonus), a class as to the origin of which there is still a controversy,and of which there is no clear mention in the laws beforethe 4th century; they and their children after them wereattached perpetually to a certain piece of land, which they wereallowed to cultivate on payment of a rent. There were, further,the liti (litus or lidus), a similar class of Germanic origin; alsothe greater number of the freedmen or descendants of freedmen.Many free men who had fled to the great landowners for protectiontook, by arrangement or by custom, a similar position.Under the Merovingian régime, and especially under the Carolingians,the occupation of the land tended to assume the characterof tenure; but free ownership of land continued to exist underthe name of alod (alodis), and there is even evidence for theexistence of this in the form of small properties, held by freemen; the capitularies contain numerous complaints and threatsagainst the counts, who endeavoured by the abuse of theirpower to obtain the surrender of these properties.
Period of Anarchy and the Rise of Feudalism.—The 10th and11th centuries were a period of profound anarchy, during whichfeudalism was free to develop itself and to take definitiveshape. At that time the French people may besaid to have lived without laws, without even fixedAnarchy and
feudal origins.customs and without government. The legislativepower was no longer exercised, for the last Carolingian capitulariesdate from the year 884, and the first laws of the Capetian kings(if they may be called laws) do not appear till during the 12thcentury. During this period the old capitularies and leges fellinto disuse and in their place territorial customs tended to growup, their main constituents being furnished by the law of formertimes, but which were at the outset ill-defined and strictlylocal. As to the government, if the part played by the Churchbe excepted, we shall see that it could be nothing but the applicationof brute force. In this anarchy, as always happens undersimilar conditions, men drew together and formed themselvesinto groups for mutual defence. A nucleus was formed whichwas to become the new social unit, that is to say, the feudalgroup. Of this the centre was a chief, around whom gatheredmen capable of bearing arms, who commended themselves to him according to the old form of vassalage, per manus. Theyowed him fidelity and assistance, the support of their arms butnot of their purse, save in quite exceptional cases; while heowed them protection. Some of them lived in his castle orfortified house, receiving their equipment only and eating at histable. Others received lands from him, which were, or laterbecame, fiefs, on which they lived casati. The name fief, feudum,does not appear, however, till towards the end of this period;these lands are frequently called beneficia as before; the termmost in use at first, in many parts, is casamentum. The fief,moreover, was generally held for life and did not become generallyhereditary till the second half of the 11th century. The landskept by the chief and those which he granted to his men werefor the most part rented from him, or from them, for a certainamount in money or in kind. All these conditions had alreadyexisted previously in much the same form; but the new developmentis that the chief was no longer, as before, merely an intermediarybetween his men and the royal power. The grouphad become in effect independent, so organized as to be sociallyand politically self-sufficient. It constituted a small army,led, naturally, by the chief, and composed of his feudatories,supplemented in case of need by the rustici. It also formed anassembly in which common interests were discussed, the lord,according to custom, being bound to consult his feudatoriesand they to advise him to the best of their power. It alsoformed a court of justice, in which the feudatories gave judgmentunder the presidency of their lord; and all of them claimedto be subject only to the jurisdiction of this tribunal composedof their peers. Generally they also judged the villeins (villani)and the serfs dependent on the group, except in cases wherethe latter obtained as a favour judges of their own status, whichwas, however, at that time a very rare occurrence.
Under these conditions a nobility was formed, those menbecoming nobles who were able to devote themselves to theprofession of arms and were either chiefs or soldiers in one of thegroups which have just been described. The term designatinga noble, miles, corresponds also to that of knight (Fr. chevalier,Low Lat. caballerius), for the reason that chivalry, of which theorigins are uncertain, represents essentially the technical skilland professional duties of this military class. Every noble wasdestined on coming of age to become a knight, and the knightequally as a matter of course received a fief, if he had not onealready by hereditary title. This nobility, moreover, was nota caste but could be indefinitely recruited by the granting offiefs and admission to knighthood (seeKnighthood and Chivalry).
The state of anarchy was by now so far advanced that warbecame an individual right, and the custom of private war arose.Every man had in principle the right of making warto defend his rights or to avenge his wrongs. Lateron, doubtless, in the 13th century, this was a privilegePrivate war.of the noble (gentilhomme); but the texts defining the limitswhich the Church endeavoured to set to this abuse, namely, thePeace of God and the Truce of God, show that this was at theoutset a power possessed by men of all classes. Even a manwho had appeared in a court of law and received judgmenthad the choice of refusing to accept the judgment and ofmaking war instead. Justice, moreover, with its frequentemployment of trial by combat, did not essentially differ fromprivate war.
It is unnecessary to go further and to affirm, with certainhistorians of our time, for example Guilhermoz and Sée, thatthe only free men at that time, besides the clergy, were the nobles,all the rest being serfs. There are many indications which leadus to assume, not only in the towns but even in the countrydistricts, the existence of a class of men of free status who werenot milites, the class later known in the 13th century as vilains,hommes de poeste, and, later, roturiers. The fact more probablywas that only the nobles and ecclesiastics were exempt from theexactions of the feudal lords; while from all the others theseigneurs could at pleasure levy the taille (a direct and arbitrarytax), and those innumerable rights then called consuetudines.Free ownership, the allodium, even under the form of smallfreeholds, still existed by way of exception in many parts.
Had, then, the main public authority disappeared? This ispractically the contention of certain writers, who, like M. Sée,maintain that real property, the possession of a domain, conferredon the big landed proprietor all rights of taxation, command andcoercion over the inhabitants of his domain, who, according tothis view, were always serfs. But this is an exaggeration ofthe thesis upheld by old French authors, who saw in feudalism,though in a different sense, a confusion of property withsovereignty. It appears that in this state of political disintegrationeach part of the country which had a hom*ogeneous charactertended to form itself into a higher unit. In this unit there arosea powerful lord, generally a duke, a count, or a viscount, whosometimes came to be called the capitalis dominus. He waseither a former official of the monarchy, whose function hadbecome hereditary, or a usurper who had formed himself on thismodel. He laid claim to an authority other than that conferredby the possession of real property. He still claimed to exerciseover the whole of his former district certain rights, which we seehim sometimes surrendering for the benefit of churches ormonasteries. His court of justice was held in the highest honour,and to it were referred the most important affairs. But in thisdistrict there were generally a number of more or less powerfullords, who as a rule had as yet no particular feudal title and areoften given the name of principes. Often, but not always, theyhad commended themselves to this duke or count by doinghomage.
On the other hand, the royal power continued to exist, beingrecognized by a considerable part of old Gaul, the regnumFrancorum. But under the last of the Carolingians ithad in fact become elective, as is shown by the electionsof Odo and Robert before that of Hugh Capet. TheThe royal power.electors were the chief lords and prelates of the regnum Francorum.But following a clever policy, each king during hislifetime took as partner of his kingdom his eldest son and consecratedand crowned him in advance, so that the first of theCapetians revived the principle of heredity in favour of theeldest son, while establishing the hereditary indivisibility ofthe kingdom. This custom was recognized at the accession ofLouis the Fat, but the authority of the king was very weak,being merely a vague allegiance. His only real authority laywhere his own possessions were, or where there had not arisena duke, a count, or lord of equal rank with them. He maintained,however, a general right of administering justice, a curia, thejurisdiction of which seems to have been universal. It is truethat the parties in a suit had to submit themselves to it voluntarily,and could accept or reject the judgment given, but this was atthat time the general rule. The king dispensed justice surroundedby the officers of his household (domestici), who thus formed hiscouncil; but these were not the only ones to assist him, whetherin court or council. Periodically, at the great yearly festivals,he called together the chief lords and prelates of his kingdom,thus carrying on the tradition of the Carolingian placita orconventus; but little by little, with the appropriation of thehonores, the character of the gathering changed; it was nolonger an assembly of officials but of independent lords. Thiswas now called the curia regis.
While the power of the State was almost disappearing, thatof the Church, apart from the particular acts of violence ofwhich she was often the victim, continued to grow.Her jurisdiction gained ground, since her procedurewas reasonable and comparatively scientific (exceptThe Church.that she admitted to a certain extent compurgation by oathand the judicia Dei, with the exception of trial by combat).Not only was the privilege of clergy, by which accused clerkswere brought under her jurisdiction, almost absolute, but shehad cognizance of a number of causes in which laymen only wereconcerned, marriage and everything nearly or remotely affectingit, wills, crimes and offences against religion; and even contracts,when the two parties wished it or when the agreement was madeon oath, came within her competence. Such, then, were the ecclesiastical or Christian courts (cours d’église, course de chrétienté).The Church, moreover, remained in close connexion with thecrown, the king preserving a quasi-ecclesiastical character,while the royal prerogatives with regard to the election of bishopswere maintained more successfully than the rights of the crown,though in many of the great fiefs they none the less passed tothe count or the duke. It was at this time too that the Churchtried to break the last ties which still kept her more or lessdependent on the civil power; this was the true import of theInvestiture Contest (see Investiture, and Church History),though this was not very acute in France.
The period of the true feudal monarchy is embraced by the 12thand 13th centuries, that is to say, it was at this time that thecrown again assumed real strength and authority;but so far it had no organs and instruments save thosewhich were furnished by feudalism, now organizedThe feudal monarchy.under a regular hierarchy, of which the king was thehead, the “sovereign enfeoffer of the kingdom” (souverainfieffeux du royaume), as he came later on to be called. This newposition of affairs was the result of three great factors: therevival of Roman Law, the final organization of feudalismand the rise of the privileged towns. The revival of Romanlaw began in France and Italy in the second halfof the 11th century, developing with extraordinaryRoman law.brilliance in the latter country at the university ofBologna, which was destined for a long time to dominate Europe.Roman law spread rapidly in the French schools and universities,except that of Paris, which was closed to it by the papacy; andthe influence of this study was so great that it transformedsociety. On the one hand it contributed largely to the reconstitutionof the royal power, modelling the rights of the king onthose of the Roman emperor. On the other hand it wrought ano less profound change in private law. From this time datesthe division of old France into the Pays de droit écrit, in whichRoman law, under the form in which it was codified by Justinian,was received as the ordinary law; and the Pays de coutume,The customs.where it played only a secondary part, beinggenerally valid only as ratio scripta and not as lexscripta. In this period the customs also took definitive form,and over and above the local customs properly so called therewere formed customs known as general, which held good througha whole province or bailliage, and were based on the jurisprudenceof the higher jurisdictions.
The final organization of feudalism resulted from the strugglefor organization which was proceeding in each district wherethe more powerful lords compelled the others to dothem homage and become their vassals; the capitalis dominushad beneath him a whole hierarchy, and wasFinal organization
of feudalism.himself a part of the feudal system of France (seeFeudalism). Doubtless in the case of lords like the dukes ofBrittany and Burgundy, the king could not actually demandthe strict fulfilment of the feudal obligations; but the principlewas established. The question now arises, did free and absoluteproperty, the allodium, entirely disappear in this process, andwere all lands held as tenures? It continued to exist, by wayof exception, in most districts, unchanged save in the burdenof proof of ownership, with which, according to the customs,sometimes the lord and sometimes the holder of the land was heldcharged. In one respect, however, namely in theFeudal character
of justice.administration of justice, the feudal hierarchy hadabsolute sway. Towards the end of the 13th centuryBeaumanoir clearly laid down this principle: “Allsecular jurisdiction in France is held from the king as a fief oran arrière-fief.” Henceforth it could also be said that “Alljustice emanates from the king.” The law concerning fiefsbecame settled also from another point of view, the fief becomingpatrimonial; that is to say, not only hereditary, but freelyalienable by the vassal, subject in both cases to certain rights oftransfer due to the lord, which were at first fixed by agreementand later by custom. The most salient features of feudalsuccession were the right of primogeniture and the preferencegiven to heirs-male; but from the 13th century onwards theright of primogeniture, which had at first involved the totalexclusion of the younger members of a family, tended to bemodified, except in the case of the chief lords, the eldest sonobtaining the preponderant share or préciput. Non-noble(roturier) tenancies also became patrimonial in similar circ*mstances,except that in their case there was no right of primogeniturenor any privilege of males. The tenure of serfs did notbecome alienable, and only became hereditary by certaindevices.
Feudal society next saw the rise of a new element within it:the privileged towns. At this time many towns acquiredprivileges, the movement beginning towards the endof the 11th century; they were sanctioned by a formalconcession from the lord to whom the town was subject,Rise of the privileged towns.the concession being embodied in a charter or ina record of customs (coutume). Some towns won for themselvestrue political rights, for instance the right of self-administration,rights of justice over the inhabitants, the right of not beingtaxed except by their own consent, of maintaining an armedforce, and of controlling it themselves. Others only obtainedcivil rights, e.g. guarantees against the arbitrary rights of justiceand taxation of the lord or his provost. The chief forms ofmunicipal organization at this time were the commune jurée ofthe north and east, and the consulat, which came from Italy andpenetrated as far as Auvergne and Limousin. The towns withimportant privileges formed in feudal society as it were a newclass of lordships; but their lords, that is to say their burgesses,were inspired by quite a new spirit. The crown courted theirsupport, taking them under its protection, and championingthe causes in which they were interested (see Commune). Finally,it is in this period, under Philip Augustus, that the great fiefsbegan to be effectually reannexed to the crown, a process which,continued by the kings up to the end of the ancien régime, refoundedfor their profit the territorial sovereignty of France.
The crown maintained the machinery of feudalism, the chiefcentral instruments of which were the great officers of the crown,the seneschal, butler, constable and chancellor, whowere to become irremovable officials, those at leastwho survived. But this period saw the rise of aGreat officers of the crown and peers of France.special college of dignitaries, that of the Twelve Peersof France, consisting of six laymen and six ecclesiastics,which took definitive shape at the beginning of the13th century. We cannot yet discern with any certainty bywhat process it was formed, why those six prelates and those sixgreat feudatories in particular were selected rather than othersequally eligible. But there is no doubt that we have here aresult of that process of feudal organization mentioned above;the formation of a similar assembly of twelve peers occurs alsoin a certain number of the great fiefs. Besides the part whichthey played at the consecration of kings, the peers of Franceformed a court in which they judged one another under thepresidency of the king, their overlord, according to feudal custom.But the cour des pairs in this sense was not separate from thecuria regis, and later from the parlement of Paris, of which thepeers of France were by right members. From this time, too,dates another important institution, that of the maîtres desrequêtes.
The legislative power of the crown again began to be exercisedduring the 12th century, and in the 13th century had full authorityover all the territories subject to the crown. Beaumanoirhas a very interesting theory on this subject.The right of war tends to regain its natural equilibrium,Growth of the
royal power.the royal power following the Church in the endeavourto check private wars. Hence arose the quarantaine le roi,due to Philip Augustus or Saint Louis, by which those relativesof the parties to a quarrel who had not been present at the quarrelwere rendered immune from attack for forty days after it;and above all the assurements imposed by the king or lord;on these points too Beaumanoir has an interesting theory.The rule was, moreover, already in force by which private warshad to cease during the time that the king was engaged in aforeign war. But the most appreciable progress took place in the administrative and judicial institutions. Under Philip Augustusarose the royal baillis (see Bailiff: section Bailli), and seneschals(q.v.), who were the representatives of the king in the provinces,and superior judges. At the same time the form of the feudalcourts tended to change, as they began more and more to beinfluenced by the Romano-canonical law. Saint Louis hadstriven to abolish trial by combat, and the Church had condemnedother forms of ordeal, the purgatio vulgaris. In most parts ofthe country the feudal lords began to give place in the courts oflaw to the provosts (prévôts) and baillis of the lords or of thecrown, who were the judges, having as their councillors theavocats (advocates) and procureurs (procurators) of the assize.The feudal courts, which were founded solely on the relations ofhomage and tenure, before which the vassals and tenants assuch appeared, disappeared in part from the 13th century on.Of the seigniorial jurisdictions there soon remained only thehautes or basses justices (in the 14th century arose an intermediategrade, the moyenne justice), all of which were considered to beconcessions of the royal power, and so delegations of the publicauthority. As a result of the application of Roman and canonlaw, there arose the appeal strictly so called, both in the class ofroyal and of seigniorial jurisdictions, the case in the latter instancegoing finally before a royal court, from which henceforth therewas no appeal. In the 13th century too appeared the theoryof crown cases (cas royaux), cases which the lords became incompetentto try and which were reserved for the royal court.Finally, the curia regis was gradually transformed into a regularcourt of justice, the Parlement (q.v.), as it was already calledin the second half of the 13th century. At this time the kingno longer appeared in it regularly, and before each session (forit was not yet a permanent body) a list of properly qualified menwas drawn up in advance to form the parlement, only those whosenames were on the list being capable of sitting in it. Its mainfunction had come to be that of a final court of appeal. At thevarious sessions, which were regularly held at Paris, appearedthe baillis and seneschals, who were called upon to answer forthe cases they had judged and also for their administration.The accounts were received by members of the parlement atthe Temple, and this was the origin of the Cour or Chambre desComptes.
At the end of this period the nobility became an exclusiveclass. It became an established rule that a man had to be noblein order to be made a knight, and even in order toacquire a fief; but in this latter respect the kingmade exceptions in the case of roturiers, who wereNobles, commons and the Church in the 13th century.licensed to take up fiefs, subject to a payment knownas the droits de franc-fief. The roturiers, or villeinswho were not in a state of thraldom, were already anumerous class not only in the towns but in the country.The Church maintained her privileges; a few attempts onlywere made to restrain the abuse, not the extent, of her jurisdiction.This jurisdiction was, during the 12th century, to a certainextent regularized, the bishop nominating a special functionaryto hold his court; this was the officialis (Fr. official), whence thename of officialité later applied in France to the ecclesiasticaljurisdictions. On one point, however, her former rights werediminished. She preserved the right of freely acquiring personaland real property, but though she could still acquire feudaltenures she could not keep them; the customs decided that shemust vider les mains, that is, alienate the property again withina year and a day. The reason for this new rule was that theChurch, the ecclesiastical establishment, is a proprietor whodoes not die and in principle does not surrender her property;consequently, the lords had no longer the right of exacting thetransfer duties on those tenures which she acquired. It waspossible, however, to compromise and allow the Church to keepthe tenure on condition of the consent not only of the lorddirectly concerned, but of all the higher lords up to the capitalisdominus; it goes without saying that this concession was onlyobtained by the payment of pecuniary compensations, the chiefof which was the droit d’amortissem*nt, paid to these differentlords. In this period the form of the episcopal electionsunderwenta change, the electoral college coming to consist only of thecanons composing the chapter of the cathedral church. Butexcept for the official candidatures, which were abused by thekings and great lords, the elections were regular; the PragmaticSanction, attributed to Saint Louis, which implies the contrary,is nowadays considered apocryphal by the best critics.
Finally, it must be added that during the 13th century criminallaw was profoundly modified. Under the influence of Romanlaw a system of arbitrary penalties replaced thoselaid down by the customs, which had usually beenfixed and cruel. The criminal procedure of the feudalChanges in
criminal law.courts had been based on the right of accusationvested only in the person wronged and his relations; for thiswas substituted the inquisitorial procedure (processus perinquisitionem), which had developed in the canon law at the veryend of the 12th century, and was to become the procédure àl’extraordinaire of the ancien régime, which was conducted insecret and without free defence and debate. Of this proceduretorture came to be an ordinary and regular part.
The customs, which at that time contained almost the wholeof the law for a great part of France, were not fixed by beingwritten down. In that part of France which wassubject to customary law (la France coutumière) theywere defined when necessary by the verdict of a juryThe customs.of practitioners in what was called the enquête par turbes; someof them, however, were, in part at least, authentically recordedin seigniorial charters, chartes de ville or chartes de coutume.Their rules were also recorded by experts in private works orcollections called livres coutumiers, or simply coutumiers(customaries). The most notable of these are Les Coutumesde Beauvoisis of Philippe de Beaumanoir, which Montesquieujustly quotes as throwing light on those times; also the Trèsancienne coutume de Normandie and the Grand Coutumier deNormandie; the Conseil à un ami of Pierre des Fontaines, theÉtablissem*nts de Saint Louis; the Livre de jostice et de plet.At the same time the clerks of important judges began to collectin registers notable decisions; it is in this way that we havepreserved to us the old decisions of the exchequer of Normandy,and the Olim registers of the parlement of Paris.
The Limited Monarchy.—The 14th and 15th centuries werethe age of the limited monarchy. Feudal institutions kepttheir political importance; but side by side with them aroseothers of which the object was the direct exercise of the royalauthority; others also arose from the very heart of feudalism,but at the same time transformed its laws in order to adapt themto the new needs of the crown. In this period certain rules forthe succession to the throne were fixed by precedents: theexclusion of women and of male descendants in the femaleline, and the principle that a king could not by an act of willchange the succession of the crown. The old curia regis disappearedand was replaced by the parlement as to its judicialfunctions, while to fulfil its deliberative functions there wasformed a new body, the royal council (conseil du roi), an administrativeand governing council, which was in no way of afeudal character. The number of its members was at first small,but they tended to increase; soon the brevet of conseiller duroi en ses conseils was given to numerous representatives of theclergy and nobility, the great officers of the crown becomingmembers by right. Side by side with these officials, whose powerwas then at its height, there were gradually evolved moresubservient ministers who could be dispensed with at will;the secrétaires des commandements du roi of the 15th century,who in the 16th century developed into the secrétaires d’état,and were themselves descended from the clercs du secret andsecrétaires des finances of the 14th century. The College of theTwelve Peers of France had not its full numbers at the end ofthe 13th century; the six ecclesiastical peerages existed andcontinued to exist to the end, together with the archbishopricand bishoprics to which they were attached, not being suppressed;but several of the great fiefs to which six lay peerages had beenattached had been annexed to the crown. To fill these vacancies,Philip the Fair raised the duchies of Brittany and Anjou and the countship of Artois to the rank of peerages of France. Thisreally amounted to changing the nature of the institution;for the new peers held their rank merely at the king’s will,though the rank continued to belong to a great barony and tobe handed down with it. Before long peers began to be createdwhen there were no gaps in the ranks of the College, and therewas a constant increase in the numbers of the lay peers.
At the beginning of the 14th century appeared the statesgeneral (états généraux), which were often convoked, though notat fixed intervals, throughout the whole of the 14thcentury and the greater part of the 15th. Theirpower reached its height at a critical moment of theStates general and provincial estates.Hundred Years’ War during the reign of King John.At the same time there arose side by side with them,and from the same causes, the provincial estates, which werein miniature for each province what the states general were forthe whole kingdom. Of these provincial assemblies some werefounded in one or other of the great fiefs, being convoked by theduke or count under the pressure of the same needs which ledthe king to convoke the states general; others, in provinceswhich had already been annexed to the crown, probably hadtheir origin in the councils summoned by the bailli or seneschal toaid him in his administration. Later it became a privilege fora province to have its own assembly; those which did so werenever of right subject to the royal taille, and kept, at leastformally, the right of sanctioning, by means of the assembly, thesubsidies which took its place. Hence it became the endeavourof the crown to suppress these provincial assemblies, which inthe 14th century were to be found everywhere; from the outsetof the 15th century they began to disappear in central France.
The most characteristic feature of this period was the institutionof universal taxation by the crown. So far the king’s solerevenues were those which he exacted, in his capacityof feudal lord, wherever another lord did not intervenebetween him and the inhabitants, in addition to the incomeRoyal taxation.arising from certain crown rights which he had preserved orregained. But these revenues, known later as the income of theroyal domain and later still as the finances ordinaires, becameinsufficient in proportion as the royal power increased; itbecame a necessity for the monarch to be able to levy impoststhroughout the whole extent of the provinces annexed to thecrown, even upon the subjects of the different lords. This hecould only do by means of the co-operation of those lords, lay andecclesiastical, who alone had the right of taxing their subjects;the co-operation of the privileged towns, which had the right totax themselves, was also necessary. It was in order to obtainthis consent that the states general, in most cases, and the provincialassemblies, in all cases, were convoked. In some cases,however, the king adopted different methods; for instance,he sometimes utilized the principle of the feudal aids. In caseswhere his vassals owed him, as overlord, a pecuniary aid, hesubstituted for the sum paid directly by his vassals a tax leviedby his own authority on their subjects. It is in this way that forthirty years the necessary sums were raised, without any votefrom the states general, to pay the ransom of King John. Butin principle the taxes were in the 14th century sanctioned bythe states general. Whatever form they took, they were giventhe generic name of Aids or auxilia, and were considered asoccasional and extraordinary subsidies, the king being obligedin principle to “live of his own” (vivre de son domaine). Certainaids, it is true, tended to become permanent under the reign ofCharles VI.; but the taxes subject to the consent of the statesgeneral were at first the sole resource of Charles VII. In thesecond half of his reign the two chief taxes became permanent:in 1435 that of the aids (a tax on the sale of articles of consumption,especially on wine), with the formal consent of thestates general, and that of the taille in 1439. In the latter casethe consent of the states general was not given; but only thenobility protested, for at the same time as the royal taille becamepermanent the seigniorial taille was suppressed. These impostswere increased, on the royal authority, by Louis XI. After hisdeath the states general, which met at Tours in 1484, endeavouredto re-establish the periodical vote of the tax, and only grantedit for two years, reducing it to the sum which it had reachedat the death of Charles VII. But the promise that they wouldagain be convoked before the expiry of two years was not kept.These imposts and that of the gabelle were henceforth permanent.Together with the taxes there was evolved the system of theiradministration. Their main outlines were laid down by thestates general in the reign of King John, in 1355 and the followingyears. For the administration of the subsidies which theygranted, they nominated from among their own numberssurintendants généraux or généraux des finances, and further,for each diocese or equivalent district, élus. Both had not onlythe active administration but also judicial rights, the latterconstituting courts of the first instance and the former courts offinal appeal. After 1360 the crown again adopted this organization,which had before been only temporary; but henceforthgénéraux and élus were nominated by the king. The élus, orofficiers des élections, only existed in districts which were subjectto the royal taille; hence the division, so important in old France,into pays d’élections and pays d’états. The élus kept bothadministration and jurisdiction; but in the higher stage a differentiationwas made: the généraux des finances, who numberedfour, kept the administration, while their jurisdiction as a courtof final appeal was handed over to another body, the cour desaides, which had already been founded at the end of the 14thcentury. Besides the four généraux des finances, who administeredthe taxation, there were four Treasurers of France (trésoriersde France), who administered the royal domain; and these eightofficials together formed in the 15th century a kind of ministryof finance to the monarchy.
The army also was organized. On the one hand, the militaryservice attached to the fiefs was transformed for the profitof the king, who alone had the right of making war:it became the arrière-ban, a term which had formerlyapplied to the levée en masse of all the inhabitants inThe army.times of national danger. Before the 14th century the kinghad only had the power of calling upon his own immediate vassalsfor service. Henceforth all possessors of fiefs owed him, whetherwithin the kingdom or on the frontiers, military service withoutpay and at their own expense. This was for long an importantresource for the king. But Charles VII. organized an army onanother footing. It comprised the francs-archers furnished bythe parishes, a militia which was only summoned in case of war,but in time of peace had to practise archery, and companies ofgendarmerie or heavy cavalry, forming a permanent establishment,which were called compagnies d’ordonnance. It waschiefly to provide for the expense of the first nucleus of a permanentarmy that the taille itself had been made permanent.
The new army led to the institution of the governors of provinces,who were to command the troops quartered there. Atfirst they were only appointed for the frontiers and fortifiedplaces, but later the kingdom was divided into gouvernementsgénéraux. There were at first twelve of these, which were calledin the middle of the 16th century the douze anciens gouvernements.Although, strictly speaking, they had only military powers, thegovernors, always chosen from among the great lords, becamein the provinces the direct representatives of the king and causedthe baillis and seneschals to take a secondary place.
The courts of law continued to develop on the lines alreadylaid down. The parlement, which had come to be a judicialcommittee nominated every year, but always consistingin fact of the same persons, changed in the course of the14th century into a body of magistrates who wereThe law courts.permanent but as yet subject to removal. During this periodwere evolved its organization and definitive features (see Parlement).The provincial parlements had arisen after and in imitationof that of Paris, and had for the most part taken the place ofsome superior jurisdiction which had formerly existed in the samedistrict when it had been independent (like Provence) or hadformed one of the great fiefs (like Normandy or Burgundy).It was during this period also that the parlements acquired theright of opposing the registration, that is to say, the promulgation of laws, of revising them, and of making representations (remontrances)to the king when they refused the registration, givingthe reasons for such refusal. The other royal jurisdictions werecompleted (see Bailiff, Châtelet). Besides them arose anotherof great importance, which was of military origin, but came toinclude all citizens under its sway. These were the provostsof the marshals of France (prévôts des maréchaux de France),who were officers of the Maréchaussée (the gendarmerie of thetime); they exercised criminal jurisdiction without appeal inthe case of crimes committed by vagabonds and fugitives fromjustice, this class being called their gibier (game), and of a numberof crimes of violence, whatever the rank of the offender. Further,another class of officers was created in connexion with the lawcourts: the “king’s men” (gens du roi), the procureurs andavocats du roi, who were at first simply those lawyers whor*presented the king in the law courts, or pleaded for him whenhe had some interest to follow up or to defend. Later they becameofficers of the crown. In the case of the procureurs du roi thisdevelopment took place in the first half of the 14th century.Their duty was not only to represent the king in the law courts,whether as plaintiff or defendant, but also to take care that ineach case the law was applied, and to demand its application.From this time on the procureurs du roi had full control overmatters concerning the public interest, and especially overpublic prosecution. In this period, too, appeared what wasafterwards called justice retenue, that is to say, the justice whichthe king administered, or was supposed to administer, in person.It was based on the idea that, since all justice and all judicialpower reside in the king, he could not deprive himself of themby delegating their exercise to his officers and to the feudallords. Consequently he could, if he thought fit, take the placeof the judges and call up a case before his own council. He couldreverse even the decisions of the courts of final appeal, and insome cases used this means of appealing against the decrees of theparlements (proposition d’erreur, requête civile, pourvoi en révision).In these cases the king was supposed to judge in person; inreality they were examined by the maîtres des requêtes andsubmitted to the royal council (conseil du roi), at which the kingwas always supposed to be present and which had in itself nopower of giving a decision. For this purpose there was soonformed a special committee of the council, which was called theconseil privé or de justice. At the end of the 15th century,Charles VIII., in order to relieve the council of some of its functions,created a new final court, the grand conseil, to deal witha number of these cases. But before long it again became thecustom to appeal to the conseil du roi, so that the grand conseilbecame almost useless. The king frequently, by means oflettres de justice, intervened in the procedure of the courts, bygranting bénéfices, by which rules which were too severe weremodified, and faculties or facilities for overcoming difficultiesarising from flaws in contracts or judgments, cases at that timenot covered by the common law. By lettres de grâce he grantedreprieve or pardon in individual cases. The most extremeform of intervention by the king was made by means of lettres decachet (q.v.), which ordered a subject to go without trial into astate prison or into exile.
The condition of the Church changed greatly during this period.The jurisdiction of the officialités was very much reduced, evenover the clergy. They ceased to be competent tojudge actions concerning the possession of real property,in which the clergy were defendants. In criminalThe Church.law the theory of the cas privilégié, which appears in the 14thcentury, enabled the royal judges to take action against and judgethe clergy for all serious crimes, though without the power ofinflicting any penalties but arbitrary fines, the ecclesiasticaljudge remaining competent, in accordance with the privileges ofclergy, to try the offender for the same crime as what wastechnically called a délit commun. The development of jurisprudencegradually removed from the officialités causes of apurely secular character in which laymen only were concerned,such as wills and contracts; and in matrimonial cases theirjurisdiction was limited to those in which the foedus matrimoniiwas in question. For the acquisition of real property by ecclesiasticalestablishments the consent of the king to the amortizementwas always necessary, even in the case of allodial lands;and if it was a case of feudal tenures the king and the directoverlords alone kept their rights, the intermediate lords beingleft out of the question.
As regards the conferring of ecclesiastical benefices, from the14th century onwards the papacy encroached more and moreupon the rights of the bishops, in whose gift the inferiorbenefices generally were, and of the electors, whousually conferred the superior benefices; at the samePapal encroachments.time it exacted from newly appointed incumbentsheavy dues, which were included under the generic name ofannates (q.v.). During the Great Schism of the Western Church,these abuses became more and more crying, until by a series ofedicts, promulgated with the consent and advice of the parlementand the clergy, the Gallican Church was restored to the possessionof its former liberties, under the royal authority. Thus Francewas ready to accept the decrees of reform issued by the councilof Basel (q.v.), which she did, with a few modifications, in thePragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., adopted after a solemnassembly of the clergy and nobles at Bourges and registeredby the parlement of Paris in 1438. It suppressed the annatesand most of the means by which the popes disposed of the inferiorbenefices: the reservations and the gratiae expectativae. Forthe choice of bishops and abbots, it restored election by thechapters and convents. The Pragmatic Sanction, however,was never recognized by the papacy, nor was it consistently andstrictly applied by the royal power. The transformation of thecivil and criminal law under the influence of Roman and canonlaw had become more and more marked. The production of thecoutumiers, or livres de pratiques, also continued. The chief ofthem were: in the 14th century, the Stylus Vetus Curiae Parlamentiof Guillaume de Breuil; the Très ancienne coutume deBretagne; the Grand Coutumier de France, or Coutumier deCharles VI.; the Somme rural of Boutillier; in the 15th century,for Auvergne, the Practica forensis of Masuer. Charles VII.,in an article of the Grand Ordonnance of Montil-les-Tours (1453),ordered the general customs to be officially recorded under thesupervision of the crown. It was an enormous work, whichwould almost have transformed them into written laws; butup to the 16th century little recording was done, the procedureestablished by the Ordonnance for the purpose not being verysuitable.
The Absolute Monarchy.—From the 16th century to theRevolution was the period of the absolute monarchy, but itcan be further divided into two periods: that of theestablishment of this régime, from 1515 to about1673; and that of the ancien régime when definitivelyGovernment under the absolute monarchy.established, from 1673 to 1789. The reigns of FrancisI. and Henry II. clearly laid down the principle of theabsolute power of the crown and applied it effectually, as isplainly seen from the temporary disappearance of the statesgeneral, which were not assembled under these two reigns.There were merely a few assemblies of notables chosen by theroyal power, the most important of which was that of Cognac,under Francis I., summoned to advise on the non-fulfilmentof the treaty of Madrid. It is true that in the second half ofthe 16th century the states general reappeared. They weresummoned in 1560 at Orleans, then in 1561 at Pontoise, and in1576 and 1588 at Blois. The League even convoked one, whichwas held at Paris in 1593. This represented a crucial and finalstruggle. Two points were then at issue: firstly, whetherFrance was to be Protestant or Catholic; secondly, whethershe was to have a limited or an absolute monarchy. The twoproblems were not necessarily bound up with one another. Forif the Protestants desired political liberty, many of the Catholicswished for it too, as is proved by the writings of the time, andeven by the fact that the League summoned the estates. Butthe states general of the 16th century, in spite of their good intentionsand the great talents which were at their service, weredominated by religious passions, which made them powerless for any practical purpose. They only produced a few greatordinances of reform, which were not well observed. They were,however, to be called together yet again, as a result of thedisturbances which followed the death of Henry IV.; but theirdissensions and powerlessness were again strikingly exemplifiedand they did not reappear until 1789. Other bodies, however,which the royal power had created, were to carry on the struggleagainst it. There were the parlements, the political rivals ofthe states general. Thanks to the principle according to whichno law came into effect so long as it had not been registered bythem, they had, as we have seen, won for themselves the rightof a preliminary discussion of those laws which were presentedto them, and of refusing registration, explaining their reasonsto the king by means of the remontrances. The royal power sawin this merely a concession from itself, a consultative power,which ought to yield before the royal will, when the latter wasclearly manifested, either by lettres de jussion or by the actualwords and presence of the king, when he came in person to procurethe registration of a law in a so-called lit de justice. But fromthe 16th century onwards the members of the parlementsclaimed, on the strength of a historical theory, to have inheritedthe powers of the ancient assemblies (the Merovingian andCarolingian placita and the curia regis), powers which they,moreover, greatly exaggerated. The successful assertion ofthis claim would have made them at once independent of andnecessary to the crown. During the minority of kings, they hadpossessed, in fact, special opportunities for asserting their pretensions,particularly when they had been called upon to intervenein the organization of the regency. It is on this account that atthe beginning of the reign of Louis XIV. the parlement of Pariswished to take part in the government, and in 1648, in concertwith the other supreme courts of the capital, temporarily imposeda sort of charter of liberties. But the first Fronde, of whichthe parlement was the centre and soul, led to its downfall, whichwas completed when later on Louis XIV. became all-powerful.The ordinance of 1667 on civil procedure, and above all a declarationof 1673, ordered the parlement to register the laws assoon as it received them and without any modification. It wasonly after this registration that they were allowed to draw upremonstrances, which were henceforth futile. The nobles, as abody, had also become politically impotent. They had beensorely tried by the wars of religion, and Richelieu, in his strugglesagainst the governors of the provinces, had crushed their chiefleaders. The second Fronde was their last effort (see Fronde).At the same time the central government underwent changes.The great officers of the crown disappeared one by one. Theoffice of constable of France was suppressed by purchase duringthe first half of the 17th century, and of those in the first rankonly the chancellor survived till the Revolution. But thoughhis title could only be taken from him by condemnation on acapital charge, the king was able to deprive him of his functionsby taking from him the custody and use of the seal of France,which were entrusted to a garde des sceaux. Apart from the latter,the king’s real ministers were the secretaries of state, generallyfour in number, who were always removable and were not chosenfrom among the great nobles. For purposes of internal administration,the provinces were divided among them, each of themcorresponding by despatches with those which were assigned tohim. Any other business (with the exception of legal affairs,which belonged to the chancellor, and finance, of which we shallspeak later) was divided among them according to convenience.At the end of the 16th century, however, were evolved tworegular departments, those of war and foreign affairs. UnderFrancis I. and Henry II., the chief administration of financeunderwent a change; for the four généraux des finances, whohad become too powerful, were substituted the intendants desfinances, one of whom soon became a chief minister of finance,with the title surintendant. The généraux des finances, like thetrésoriers de France, became provincial officials, each at the headof a généralité (a superior administrative district for purposesof finance); under Henry II. the two functions were combinedand assigned to the bureaux des finances. The fall of Fouquetled to the suppression of the office of surintendant; but soonColbert again became practically a minister of finance, under thename of contrôleur général des finances, both title and officecontinuing to exist up to the Revolution.
The conseil du roi, the origin of which we have described,was an important organ of the central government, and for along time included among its members a large number of representativesof the nobility and clergy. Besides the councillorsof state (conseillers d’état), its ordinary members, the great officersof the crown and secretaries of state, princes of the blood andpeers of France were members of it by right. Further, the kingwas accustomed to grant the brevet of councillor to a greatnumber of the nobility and clergy, who could be called uponto sit in the council and give an opinion on matters of importance.But in the 17th century the council tended to differentiate itsfunctions, forming three principal sections, one for political,one for financial, and the third for legal affairs. Under LouisXIV. it took a definitely professional, administrative andtechnical character. The conseillers à brevet were all suppressedin 1673, and the peers of France ceased to be members of thecouncil. The political council, or conseil d’en haut, had no exofficio members, not even the chancellor; the secretary of statefor foreign affairs, however, necessarily had entry to it; it alsoincluded a small number of persons chosen by the king andbearing the title of ministers of state (ministres d’état). Theother important sections of the conseil du roi were the conseildes finances, organized after the fall of Fouquet, and the conseildes dépêches, in which sat the four secretaries of state and whereeverything concerned with internal administration (exceptfinance) was dealt with, including the legal business connectedwith this administration. As to the government and the preparationof laws, under Louis XIV. and Louis XV., the conseil du roioften passed into the background, when, as the saying went,a minister who was projecting some important measure travaillaitseul avec le roi (worked alone with the king), having fromthe outset gained the king’s ear.
The chief authority in the provincial administration belongedin the 16th century to the governors of the provinces, though,strictly speaking, the governor had only militarypowers in his gouvernement; for, as we have seen, hewas the direct representative of the king for generalProvincial administration.purposes. But at the end of this century werecreated the intendants of the provinces, who, after a periodof conflict with the governors and the parlements, becameabsolute masters of the administration in all those provinceswhich had no provincial estates, and the instruments of acomplete administrative centralization (see Intendant).
The towns having a corps de ville, that is to say, a municipalorganization, preserved in the 16th century a fairly wideautonomy, and played an important part in the warsof religion, especially under the League. But underLouis XIV. their independence rapidly declined.The towns.They were placed under the tutelage of the intendants, whosesanction, or that of the conseil du roi, was necessary for all actsof any importance. In the closing years of the 17th century,the municipal officials ceased, even in principle, to be elective.Their functions ranked as offices which were, like royal offices,saleable and heritable. The pretext given by the edicts were theintrigues and dissensions caused by the elections; the realcause was that the government wanted to sell these offices,which is proved by the fact that it frequently allowed townsto redeem them and to re-establish the elections.
The sale of royal offices is one of the characteristic features ofthe ancien régime. It had begun early, and, apparently, withthe office of councillor of the parlement of Paris, whenthis became permanent, in the second half of the 14thcentury. It was first practised by magistrates whoSale of offices.wished to dispose of their office in favour of a successor of theirown choice. The resignatio in favorem of ecclesiastical beneficesserved as model, and at first care was taken to conceal themoney transaction between the parties. The crown winkedat these resignations in consideration of a payment in money. But in the 16th century, under Francis I. at the latest, the crownitself began officially to sell offices, whether newly created orvacant by the death of their occupiers, taking a fee from thoseupon whom they were conferred. Under Charles IX. the rightof resigning in favorem was recognized by law in the case ofroyal officials, in return for a payment to the treasury of acertain proportion of the price. In the case of judicial officesthere was a struggle for at least two centuries between the systemof sale and another, also imitated from canon law, i.e. the electionor presentation of candidates by the legal corporations. Theordinances of the second half of the 16th century, granted inanswer to complaints of the states general, restored and confirmedthe latter system, giving a share in the presentationto the towns or provincial notables and forbidding sales. Thesystem of sale, however, triumphed in the end, and, in the caseof judges, had, moreover, a favourable result, assuring to themthat irremovability which Louis XI. had promised in vain; for,under this system, the king could not reasonably dismiss anofficial arbitrarily without refunding the fee which he hadpaid. On the other hand, it contributed to the developmentof the épices, or dues paid by litigants to the judges. The systemof sale, and with it irremovability, was extended to all officialfunctions, even to financial posts. The process was completedby the recognition of the rights in the sale of offices as hereditary,i.e. the right of resigning the office on payment of a fee, eitherin favour of a competent descendant or of a third party, passedto the heirs of an official who had died without having exercisedthis right himself. It was established under Henry IV. in 1604by the system called the Paulette, in return for the paymentby the official of an annual fee (droit annuel) which was definitelyfixed at a hundredth part of the price of the office. Thus theseoffices, though the royal nomination was still required as wellas the professional qualifications required by the law, becameheritable property in virtue of the finance attached to them.This led to the formation of a class of men who, though boundin many ways to the crown, were actually independent. Hencethe tendency in the 18th century to create new and importantfunctions under the form, not of offices, but of simple commissions.
In this period of the history of France were evolved and definedthe essential principles of the old public law. There were,in the first place, the fundamental laws of the realm,which were true constitutional principles, establishedfor the most part not by law but by custom, andFundamental laws
of France.considered as binding in respect of the king himself;so that, although he was sovereign, he could neither abrogate,nor modify, nor violate them. There was, however, some discussionas to what rules actually came under this category, except inthe case of two series about which there was no doubt. Thesewere, on the one hand, those which dealt with the successionto the crown and forbade the king to change its order, and thosewhich proclaimed the inalienability of the royal domain, againstwhich no title by prescription was valid. This last principle,introduced in the 14th century, had been laid down and definedby the edict of Moulins in 1566; it admitted only two exceptions:the formation of appanages (q.v.), and selling (engagement), tomeet the necessities of war, with a perpetual option of redeemingit.
There was in the second place the theory of the rights, franchisesand liberties of the Gallican Church, formed of elements someof which were of great antiquity, and based on the conditionswhich had determined the relations of the Gallican Churchwith the crown and papacy during the Great Schism and underthe Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and defined at the end ofthe 16th and the beginning of the 17th century. This body ofdoctrine was defined by the writings of three men especially,Guy Coquille, Pierre Pithou and Pierre Dupuy, and was solemnlyconfirmed by the declaration of the clergy of France, or Déclarationdes quatres articles of 1682, and by the edict which promulgatedit. Its substance was based chiefly on three principles:firstly, that the temporal power was absolutely independent ofthe spiritual power; secondly, that the pope had authorityover the clergy of France in temporal matters and matters ofdiscipline only by the consent of the king; thirdly, that theking had authority over and could legislate for the GallicanChurch in temporal matters and matters of discipline. The oldpublic law provided a safeguard against the violation of theserules. This was the process known as the appel comme d’abus,formed of various elements, some of them very ancient, anddefinitely established during the 16th century. It was heardbefore the parlements, but could, like every other case, beevoked before the royal council. Its effect was to annul anyact of the ecclesiastical authority due to abuse or contrary toFrench law. The clergy were, when necessary, reduced toobedience by means of arbitrary fines and by the seizure of theirtemporalities. The Pragmatic Sanction had been abrogatedand replaced by the Concordat of 1515, concluded betweenFrancis I. and Leo X., which remained in force until suppressedby the Constituent Assembly. The Concordat, moreover,preserved many of the enactments of the Pragmatic Sanction,notably those which protected the collation of the inferior beneficesfrom the encroachments of the papacy, and which had introducedreforms in certain points of discipline. But in the case of thesuperior benefices (bishoprics and abbeys) election by thechapters was suppressed. The king of France nominated thecandidate, to whom the pope gave canonical institution. As amatter of fact, the pope had no choice; he had to institute thenominee of the king, unless he could show his unworthiness orincapacity, as the result of inquiries regularly conducted inFrance; for the pope it was, as the ancient French authorsused to say, a case of compulsory collation. The annates werere-established at the time of the Concordat, but considerablydiminished in comparison with what they had been before thePragmatic Sanction. We must add, to complete this account,that many of the inferior benefices, in France as in the rest ofChristendom, were conferred according to the rules of patronage,the patron, whether lay or ecclesiastic, presenting a candidatewhom the bishop was bound to appoint, provided he was neitherincapable nor unsuitable. There was some difficulty in gettingthe Concordat registered by the parlement of Paris, and thelatter even announced its intention of not taking the Concordatinto account in those cases concerning benefices which mightcome before it. The crown found an easy method of makingthis opposition ineffectual, namely, to transfer to the GrandConseil the decision of cases arising out of the application of theConcordat.
In the 16th century also, contributions to the public servicesdrawn from the immense possessions of the clergy were regularized.Since the second half of the 12th century at least, thekings had in times of urgent need asked for subsidies from thechurch, and ever since the Saladin tithe (dime saladine) of PhilipAugustus this contribution had assumed the form of a tithe,taking a tenth part of the revenue of the benefices for a givenperiod. Tithes of this kind were fairly frequently granted bythe clergy of France, either with the pope’s consent or without(this being a disputed point). After the conclusion of theConcordat, Leo X. granted the king a tithe (décime) under thepretext of a projected war against the Turks; hitherto concessionsof this kind had been made by the papacy in view ofthe Crusades or of wars against heretics. The concession wasseveral times renewed, until, by force of custom, the levying ofthese tithes became permanent. But in the middle of the 16thcentury the system changed. The crown was heavily in debt,and its needs had increased. The property of the clergy havingbeen threatened by the states general of 1560 and 1561, theking proposed to them to remit the bulk of the tithes and otherdues, in return for the payment by them of a sum equivalentto the proceeds of the taxes which he had mortgaged. A formalcontract to this effect was concluded at Poissy in 1561 betweenthe king and the clergy of France, represented by the prelateswho were then gathered together for the Colloquy of Poissy withthe Protestants, and some of those who had been sitting at thestates general of Pontoise. The fulfilment of this agreement was,however, evaded by the king, who diverted part of the fundsprovided by the clergy from their proper purpose. In 1580, after a period of ten years which had been agreed on, a newassembly of the clergy was called together and, after protestingagainst this action, renewed the agreement, which was henceforwardalways renewed every ten years. Such was the definitiveform of the contribution of the clergy, who also acquired theright of themselves assessing and levying these taxes on theholders of benefices. Thus every ten years there was a greatassembly of the clergy, the members of which were elected.There were two stages in the election, a preliminary one in thedioceses and a further election in the ecclesiastical provinces,each province sending four deputies to the general assembly,two of the first rank, that is to say, chosen from the episcopate,and two of the second rank, which included all the other clergy.The dons gratuits (benevolences) voted by the assembly compriseda fixed sum equivalent to the old tithes and supplementary sumspaid on one occasion only, which were sometimes considerable.The church, on her side, profited by this arrangement in orderto obtain the commutation or redemption of the taxes affectingecclesiastics considered as individuals. This settlement onlyapplied to the “clergy of France,” that is to say, to the clergyof those districts which were united to the crown before the endof the 16th century. The provinces annexed later, called paysétrangers, or pays conquis, had in this matter, as in many others,an arrangement of their own. At last, under Louis XV. theedict of 1749, concernant les établissem*nts et acquisitions des gensde mainmorte, was completely effective in subordinating theacquisition of property by ecclesiastical establishments to theconsent and control of the crown, rendering them incapableof acquiring real property by bequests.
At the end of the 16th century a wise law had been made which,in spite of the traces which it bore of past struggles, had establisheda reasonable balance among the Christians of France.The edict of Nantes, in 1598, granted the Protestants full civilrights, liberty of conscience and public worship in many places,and notably in all the royal bailliages. The Catholics, whosereligion was essentially a state religion, had never accepted thisarrangement as final, and at last, in 1685, under Louis XIV.,the edict of Nantes was revoked and the Protestant pastorsexpelled from France. Their followers were forbidden to leavethe country, but many succeeded nevertheless in escaping abroad.The position of those who remained behind was peculiar. Lawspassed in 1715 and 1724 established the legal theory that therewere no longer any Protestants in France, but only vieux catholiquesand nouveaux convertis. The result was that henceforththey had no longer any regular civil status, the registers containingthe lists of Catholics enjoying civil rights being kept bythe Catholic clergy.
The form of government established under Louis XIV. waspreserved without any fundamental modification under LouisXV. After the death of Louis XIV., however, the regent, underthe inspiration of the duc de St Simon, made trial of a system ofwhich the latter had made a study while in a close correspondencewith the duke of Burgundy. It consisted in substituting for theauthority of the ministers, secretaries of state and controller-generalcouncils, or governmental bodies, mainly composed ofgreat lords and prelates. These only lasted for a few years,when a return was made to the former organization. The parlementshad regained their ancient rights in consequence of theparlement of Paris having, in 1715, set aside the will of LouisXIV. as being contrary to the fundamental laws of the kingdom,in that it laid down rules for the composition of the council ofregency, and limited the power of the regent. This newlyrevived power they exercised freely, and all the more so since theywere the last surviving check on the royal authority. During thisreign there were numerous conflicts between them and thegovernment, the causes of this being primarily the innumerableincidents to which the bull Unigenitus gave rise, and the increaseof taxation; proceedings against Jesuits also figure conspicuouslyin the action of the parlements. They became at this periodthe avowed representatives of the nation; they contested thevalidity of the registration of laws in the lits de justice, assertingthat laws could only be made obligatory when the registrationhad been freely endorsed by themselves. Before the registrationof edicts concerning taxation they demanded a statement of thefinancial situation and the right of examining the accounts.Finally, by the theory of the classes, which considered the variousparlements of France as parts of one and the same body, theyestablished among them a political union. These pretensionsthe crown refused to recognize. Louis XV. solemnly condemnedthem in a lit de justice of December 1770, and in 1771 the chancellorMaupeou took drastic measures against them. Themagistrates of the parlement of Paris were removed, and a newparlement was constituted, including the members of the grandconseil, which had also been abolished. The cour des aides ofParis, which had made common cause with the parlement, wasalso suppressed. Many of the provincial parlements were reorganized,and a certain number of useful reforms were carriedout in the jurisdiction of the parlement of Paris; the object ofthese, however, was in most cases that of diminishing its importance.These actions, the coup d’état of the chancellor Maupeou,as they were called, produced an immense sensation. Therepeated conflicts of the reign of Louis XV. had already givenrise to a whole literature of books, pamphlets and tracts in whichthe rights of the crown were discussed. At the same time thepolitical philosophy of the 18th century was disseminating newprinciples, and especially those of the supremacy of the peopleand the differentiation of powers, the government of Englandalso became known among the French. Thus men’s minds werebeing prepared for the Revolution.
The personal government of Louis XVI. from 1774 to 1789was chiefly marked by two series of facts. Firstly, there wasthe partial application of the principles propounded by theFrench economists of this period, the Physiocrats, who had apolitical doctrine peculiar to themselves. They were not infavour of political liberty, but attached on the contrary to theabsolute monarchy, of which they did not fear the abusesbecause they were convinced that so soon as they should beknown, reason (évidence) alone would suffice to make the crownrespect the “natural and essential laws of bodies politic”(Lois naturelles et essentielles des sociétés politiques, the title of abook by Mercier de La Rivière). On the other hand, theyfavoured civil and economic liberty. They wished, in particular,to decentralize the administration and restore to the landedproprietors the administration and levying of taxes, which theywished to reduce to a tax on land only. This school came intopower with Turgot, who was appointed controller-general ofthe finances, and laid the foundations of many reforms. Heactually accomplished for the moment one very importantreform, namely, the suppression of the trade and craft gilds(communautés, jurandes et maîtrises). This organization, whichwas common to the whole of Europe (see Gilds), had takendefinitive shape in France in the 13th and 14th centuries, buthad subsequently been much abused. Turgot suppressed theprivileges of the maîtres, who alone had been able to work ontheir own account, or to open shops and workshops, and thusproclaimed the freedom of labour, industry and commerce.However, the old organization, slightly amended, was restoredunder his successor Necker. It was Turgot’s purpose to organizeprovincial and other inferior assemblies, whose chief businesswas to be the assessment of taxes. Necker applied this idea,partially and experimentally, by creating a few of these provincialassemblies in various généralités of the pays d’élections. Ageneral reform on these lines and on a very liberal basis wasproposed by Calonne to the assembly of notables in 1787, andit was brought into force for all the pays d’élections, though notunder such good conditions, by an edict of the same year.Louis XVI. had inaugurated his reign by the restoration of theparlements; all the bodies which had been suppressed byMaupeou and all the officials whom he had dismissed wererestored, and all the bodies and officials created by him weresuppressed. But it was not long before the old struggle betweenthe crown and parlements again broke out. It began by theconservative opposition offered by the parlement of Paris toTurgot’s reforms. But the real struggle broke out in 1787 over the edicts coming from the assembly of notables, andparticularly over the two new taxes, the stamp duty and theland tax. The parlement of Paris refused to register them,asserting that the consent of the taxpayers, as represented by thestates general, was necessary to fresh taxation. The struggleseemed to have come to an end in September; but in thefollowing November it again broke out, in spite of the king’spromise to summon the states general. It reached its heightin May 1788, when the king had created a cour plénière distinctfrom the parlements, the chief function of which was to registerthe laws in their stead. A widespread agitation arose, amountingto actual anarchy, and was only ended by the recall of Neckerto power and the promise to convoke the states general for 1789.
Various Institutions.—The permanent army which, as hasbeen stated above, was first established under Charles VII.,was developed and organized during the ancienrégime. The gendarmerie or heavy cavalry wascontinuously increased in numbers. On the other hand, theThe army.francs archers fell into disuse after Louis XI.; and, after afruitless attempt had been made under Francis I. to establisha national infantry, the system was adopted for this also ofrecruiting permanent bodies of mercenaries by voluntaryenlistment. First there were the “old bands” (vieilles bandes),chiefly those of Picardy and Piedmont, and at the end of the16th century appeared the first regiments, the number of whichwas from time to time increased. There were also in the serviceand pay of the king French and foreign regiments, the latterprincipally Swiss, Germans and Scots. The system of purchasepenetrated also to the army. Each regiment was the propertyof a great lord; the captain was, so to speak, owner of hiscompany, or rather a contractor, who, in return for the sumspaid him by the king, recruited his men and gave them theiruniform, arms and equipment. In the second half of the reignof Louis XIV. appeared the militia (milices). To this force eachparish had to furnish one recruit, who was at first chosen by theassembly of the inhabitants, later by drawing lots among thebachelors or widowers without children, who were not exempt.The militia was very rarely raised from the towns. The purposefor which these men were employed varied from time to time.Sometimes, as under Louis XIV., they were formed into specialactive regiments. Under Louis XV. and Louis XVI. they wereformed into régiments provinciaux, which constituted an organizedreserve. But their chief use was during war, when they wereindividually incorporated into various regiments to fill up thegaps.
Under Louis XV., with the duc de Choiseul as minister ofwar, great and useful reforms were effected in the army. Choiseulsuppressed what he called the “farming of companies” (compagnie-ferme);recruiting became a function of the state, andvoluntary enlistment a contract between the recruit and thestate. Arms, uniform and equipment were furnished by theking. Choiseul also equalized the numbers of the militaryunits, and his reforms, together with a few others effected underLouis XVI., produced the army which fought the first campaignsof the Revolution.
One of the most distinctive features of the ancien régimewas excessive taxation. The taxes imposed by the king werenumerous, and, moreover, hardly any of them fell onall parts of the kingdom. To this territorial inequalitywas added the inequality arising from privileges.System of taxation.Ecclesiastics, nobles, and many of the crown officials wereexempted from the heaviest imposts. The chief taxes were thetaille (q.v.), the aides and the gabelle (q.v.), or monopoly of salt, theconsumption of which was generally made compulsory up to theamount determined by regulations. In the 17th and 18thcenturies certain important new taxes were established: from1695 to 1698 the capitation, which was re-established in 1701with considerable modifications, and in 1710 the tax of thedixième, which became under Louis XV. the tax of the vingtièmes.These two imposts had been established on the principle ofequality, being designed to affect every subject in proportionto his income; but so strong was the system of privileges, thatas a matter of fact the chief burden fell upon the roturiers.The income of a roturier who was not exempt was thus subjectin turn to three direct imposts: the taille, the capitation and thevingtièmes, and the apportioning or assessment of these wasextremely arbitrary. In addition to indirect taxation strictlyso called, which was very extensive in the 17th and 18th centuries,France under the ancien régime was subject to the traites, orcustoms, which were not only levied at the frontiers on foreigntrade, but also included many internal custom-houses for tradebetween different provinces. Their origin was generally due tohistorical reasons; thus, among the provinces reputées étrangèreswere those which in the 14th century had refused to pay theaids for the ransom of King John, also certain provinces whichhad refused to allow customs offices to be established on theirforeign frontier. Colbert had tried to abolish these internalduties, but had only succeeded to a limited extent.
The indirect taxes, the traites and the revenues of the royaldomain were farmed out by the crown. At first a separatecontract had been made for each impost in each élection, butlater they were combined into larger lots, as is shown by thename of one of the customs districts, l’enceinte des cinq grossesfermes. From the reign of Henry IV. on the levying of eachindirect impost was farmed en bloc for the whole kingdom, asystem known as the fermes générales; but the real ferme générale,including all the imposts and revenues which were farmed inthe whole of France, was only established under Colbert. Theferme générale was a powerful company, employing a vast numberof men, most of whom enjoyed various privileges. Besides theroyal taxes, seigniorial imposts survived under the form of tollsand market dues. The lords also often possessed local monopolies,e.g. the right of the common bakehouse (four banal), which werecalled the banalités.
The organization of the royal courts of justice underwent butfew modifications during the ancien régime. The number ofparlements, of cours des aides and of cours des comptesincreased; in the 17th century the name of conseil supérieurwas given to some new bodies which actuallyCourts of law.discharged the functions of the parlement, this being the periodof the decline of the parlement. In the 16th century, underHenry II., had been created présidiaux, or courts of final jurisdiction,intended to avoid numerous appeals in small cases, andabove all to avoid a final appeal to the parlements. Seigniorialcourts survived, but were entirely subordinate to the royaljurisdictions and were badly officered by ill-paid and ignorantjudges, the lords having long ago lost the right to sit in them inperson. Their chief use was to deal with cases concerning thepayment of feudal dues to the lord. Both lawyers and peoplewould have preferred only two degrees of justice; and anordinance of May 1788 realized this desire in the main. It didnot suppress the seigniorial jurisdictions, but made their extinctiona certainty by allowing litigants to ignore them and gostraight to the royal judges. This was, however, reversed on therecall of Necker and the temporary triumph of the parlements.
The ecclesiastical jurisdictions survived to the end, but withdiminished scope. Their competency had been considerablyreduced by the Ordinance of Villers Cotterets of 1539,and by an edict of 1693. But a series of ingenious legaltheories had been principally efficacious in graduallyEcclesiastical courts.depriving them of most of the cases which had hithertocome under them. In the 18th century the privilege of clergy didnot prevent civil suits in which the clergy were defendants frombeing almost always taken before secular tribunals, and ever sincethe first half of the 17th century, for all grave offences, or casprivilégiés, the royal judge could pronounce a sentence of corporalpunishment on a guilty cleric without this necessitating hisprevious degradation. The inquiry into the case was, it is true,conducted jointly by the royal and the ecclesiastical judge, buteach of them pronounced his sentence independently. All casesconcerning benefices came before the royal judges. Finally,the officialités had no longer as a rule any jurisdiction overlaymen, even in the matter of marriage, except in questions ofbetrothals, and sometimes in cases of opposition to marriages. The parish priests, however, continued to enter declarations ofbaptisms, marriages and burials in registers kept according tothe civil laws.
The general customs of the pays coutumiers were almost allofficially recorded in the 16th century, definite procedure forthis purpose having been adopted at the end of the15th century. Drafts were prepared by the officialsof the royal courts in the chief town of the districtThe “customs.”in which the particular customs were valid, and were thensubmitted to the government. The king then appointed commissionersto visit the district and promulgate the customs onthe spot. For the purpose of this publication the lords, lay andecclesiastical, of the district, with representatives of the townsand of various bodies of the inhabitants, were summoned for agiven day to the chief town. In this assembly each article wasread, discussed and put to the vote. Those which were approvedby the majority were thereupon decreed (décrétés) by the commissionersin the king’s name; those which gave rise to difficultieswere put aside for the parlement to settle when it registeredthe coutume. The coutumes in this form became practicallywritten law; henceforward their text could only be modifiedby a formal revision carried out according to the same procedureas the first version. Throughout the 16th century a fair numberof coutumes were thus revised (reformées), with the express objectof profiting by the observations and criticisms on the first textwhich had appeared in published commentaries and notes, themost important of which were those of Charles Dumoulin.In the 16th century there had been a revival of the study ofRoman law, thanks to the historical school, among the mostillustrious representatives of which were Jacques Cujas, HuguesDoneau and Jacques Godefroy; but this study had only slightinfluence on practical jurisprudence. Certain institutions,however, such as contracts and obligations, were regulatedthroughout the whole of France by the principles of Roman law.
Legislation by ordonnances, édits, déclarations or lettrespatentes, emanating from the king, became more and morefrequent; but the character of the grandes ordonnances, whichwere of a far-reaching and comprehensive nature, underwenta change during this period. In the 14th, 15th and 16th centuriesthey had been mainly ordonnances de réformation (i.e. revisingprevious laws), which were most frequently drawn up after asitting of the states general, in accordance with the suggestionssubmitted by the deputies. The last of this type was theordinance of 1629, promulgated after the states general of 1614and the assemblies of notables which had followed it. In the17th and 18th centuries they became essentially codifications,comprising a systematic and detailed statement of the wholebranch of law. There are two of these series of codifying ordinances:the first under Louis XIV., inspired by Colbert andcarried out under his direction. The chief ordinances of thisgroup are that of 1667 on civil procedure (code of civil procedure);that of 1670 on the examination of criminal cases(code of penal procedure); that of 1673 on the commerce ofmerchants, and that of 1681 on the regulation of shipping, whichform between them a complete code of commerce by land andsea. The ordinance of 1670 determined the formalities of thatsecret and written criminal procedure, as opposed to the hearingof both parties in a suit, which formerly obtained in France;it even increased its severity, continuing the employment oftorture, binding the accused by oath to speak the truth, andrefusing them counsel save in exceptional cases. The secondseries of codifications was made under Louis XV., through theaction of the chancellor d’Aguesseau. Its chief result was theregulation, by the ordinances of 1731, 1735 and 1747, of deedsof gift between living persons, wills, and property left in trust.Under Louis XVI. some mitigation was made of the criminallaw, notably the abolition of torture.
The feudal régime, in spite of the survival of seigniorial courtsand tolls, was no longer of any political importance; but it stillfurnished the common form of real property. The fief, althoughit still implied homage from the vassal, no longer involved anyservice on his part (excepting that of the arrière-ban due to theking); but when a fief changed hands the lord still exacted hisprofits. Tenures held by roturiers, in addition to some similarLand tenure.rights of transfer, were generally subject to periodicaland fixed contributions for the profit of the lord. Thissystem was still further complicated by tenures whichwere simply real and not feudal, e.g. that by payment ofground rent, which were superadded to the others, and hadbecome all the heavier since, in the 18th century, royal rights oftransfer had been added to the feudal rights. The inhabitantsof the country districts were longing for the liberation of realproperty.
Serfdom had disappeared from most of the provinces of thekingdom; among all the coutumes which were officially codified,not more than ten or so still recognized this institution.This had been brought about especially by the agencyof the custom by which serfs had been transformed into roturiers.Serfdom.An edict of Louis XVI. of 1779 abolished serfdom on crown lands,and mitigated the condition of the serfs who still existed onthe domains of individual lords. The nobility still remained aprivileged class, exempt from certain taxes. Certain officeswere restricted to the nobility; according to an edict of LouisXVI. (1781) it was even necessary to be a noble inorder to become an officer in the army. In fact,the royal favours were reserved for the nobility.The three estates.Certain rules of civil and criminal procedure also distinguishednobles from roturiers. The acquisition of fiefs had ceased tobring nobility with it, but the latter was derived from threesources: birth, lettres d’anoblissem*nt granted by the king andappointment to certain offices. In the 17th and 18th centuriesthe peers of France can be reckoned among the nobility, formingindeed its highest grade, though the rank of peer was still attachedto a fief, which was handed down with it; on the eve of theRevolution there were thirty-eight lay peers. The rest of thenation, apart from the ecclesiastics, consisted of the roturiers,who were not subject to the disabilities of the serfs, but had notthe privileges of the nobility. Hence the three orders (estates)of the kingdom: the clergy, the nobility and the tiers état (thirdestate). An edict of Louis XVI. had made a regular civil statuspossible to the Protestants, and had thrown open offices andprofessions to them, though not entirely; but the exercise oftheir religion was still forbidden.
The Revolution.—With the Revolution France entered theranks of constitutional countries, in which the liberty of men isguaranteed by fixed and definite laws; from this time on, she hashad always (except in the interval between two revolutions) awritten constitution, which could not be touched by the ordinarylegislative power. The first constitution was that of 1791;the states general of 1789, transformed by their own will, backedby public opinion, into the Constituent Assembly, drew it up ontheir own authority. But their work did not stop there. Theyabolished the whole of the old public law of France and part ofthe criminal law, or rather, transformed it in accordance withthe principles laid down by the political philosophy of the 18thcentury. The principles which were then proclaimed are still,on most points, the foundation of modern French law. Thedevelopment resulting from this extraordinary impetus can bedivided into two quite distinct phases: the first, from 1789 tothe coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire in the year VIII., was thecontinuation of the impulse of the Revolution; the secondincludes the Consulate and the first Empire, and was, as it were,the marriage or fusion of the institutions arising from the Revolutionwith those of the ancien régime.
On the whole, the constitutional law of the Revolution is aremarkably united whole, if we consider only the two constitutionswhich were effectively applied during this first phase,that of the 3rd of September 1791, and that of the5th Fructidor in the year III. It is true that betweenThe Constitutions
of the Revolution.them occurred the ultra-democratic constitution of the24th of June 1793, the first voted by the Convention;but although this was ratified by the popular vote, to which ithad been directly submitted, in accordance with a principle proclaimedby the Convention and kept in force under the Consulate and the Empire, it was never carried into effect. It was firstsuspended by the establishment of the revolutionary governmentstrictly so called, and after Thermidor, under the pretext ofcompleting it, the Convention put it aside and made a new one,being taught by experience. As long as it existed it was thesovereign assembly of the Convention itself which really exercisedthe executive power, governing chiefly by means of its greatcommittees.
The constitution of 1791 was without doubt monarchical,in so far as it preserved royalty. The constitution of the yearIII. was, on the contrary, republican. The horror of monarchywas still so strong at that time that an executive college wascreated, a Directory of five members, one of whom retired everyyear; they were elected by a complicated and curious procedure,in which each of the two legislative councils played a distinct part.But this difference, though apparently essential, was not in realityvery profound; this is proved, for example, by the fact that theDirectory had distinctly more extensive powers than those conferredon Louis XVI. by the Constituent Assembly. On almostall points of importance the two constitutions were similar.They were both preceded by a statement of principles, a “Declarationof the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.” They were bothbased on two principles which they construed alike: thesovereignty of the people and the separation of powers. Bothof them (with the exception of what has been said with regard tothe ratification of constitutions after 1793) recognized only representativegovernment. From the principle of the sovereigntyof the people they had not deduced universal suffrage; though,short of this, they had extended the suffrage as far as possible.According to the constitution of 1791, in addition to the conditionsof age and residence, an elector was bound to pay adirect contribution equivalent to three days’ work; the constitutionof the year III. recognized the payment of any directcontribution as sufficient; it even conferred on every citizenthe right of having himself enrolled, without any other qualificationthan a payment equivalent to three days’ work, and thusto become an elector. Further, neither of the two constitutionsadmitted of a direct suffrage; the elections were carried out intwo stages, and only those who paid at a higher rating could bechosen as electors for the second stage. The executive power,which was in the case of both constitutions clearly separatedfrom the legislative, could not initiate legislation. The Directoryhad no veto; Louis XVI. had with difficulty obtained a merelysuspensive veto, which was overridden in the event of threelegislatures successively voting against it. The right of dissolutionwas possessed by neither the king nor the Directory.Neither the king’s ministers nor those of the Directory could bemembers of the legislative body, nor could they even be chosenfrom among its ranks. The ministers of Louis XVI. had, however,thanks to an unfortunate inspiration of the ConstituentAssembly of 1791, the right of entry to, and, to a certain extent,of speaking in the Legislative Assembly; the constitution of theyear III. showed greater wisdom in not bringing them in any wayinto contact with the legislative power. The greatest and mostnotable difference between the two constitutions was that thatof 1791 established a single chamber which was entirely renewedevery two years; that of the year III., on the contrary, profitingby the lessons of the past, established two chambers, one-third ofthe members of which were renewed every year. Moreover,the two chambers, the Council of Five Hundred and the Council ofAncients, were appointed by the same electors, and almost theonly difference between their members was that of age.
The Revolution entirely abolished the ancien régime, and inthe first instance whatever remained of feudalism. The ConstituentAssembly, in the course of its immense workof settlement, wished to draw distinctions, abolishingabsolutely, without indemnity, all rights which hadAbolition of the “ancien régime.”amounted in the beginning to a usurpation and couldnot be justified, e.g. serfdom and seigniorial courts of justice.On the other hand, it declared subject to redemption such feudalcharges as had been the subject of contract or of a concessionof lands. But as it was almost impossible to discover the exactorigin of various feudal rights, the Assembly had proceeded todo this by means of certain legal assumptions which sometimesadmitted of a proof to the contrary. It carefully regulated theconditions and rate of repurchase, and forbade the creation inthe future of any perpetual charge which could not be redeemed:a principle that has remained permanent in French law. Thiswas a rational and equitable solution; but in a period of suchviolent excitement it could not be maintained. The LegislativeAssembly declared the abolishment without indemnity of allfeudal rights for which the original deed of concession could not beproduced; and to produce this was, of course, in most casesimpossible. Finally, the Convention entirely abolished all feudalrights, and commanded that the old deeds should be destroyed;it maintained on the contrary, though subject to redemption,those tenures and charges which were solely connected withlanded property and not feudal.
With feudalism had been abolished serfdom. Further, theConstituent Assembly suppressed nobility; it even forbade anyone to assume and bear the titles, emblems and arms of nobility.Thus was established the equality of citizens before the law.The Assembly also proclaimed the liberty of labour and industry,and suppressed the corporations of artisans and workmen, thejurandes and maîtrises, as Turgot had done. But, in order tomaintain this liberty of the individual, it forbade all associationsbetween workers, or employers, fearing that such contractswould again lead to the formation of corporations similar to theold ones. It even forbade and declared punishable, as beingcontrary to the declaration of the rights of man and the citizen,combinations or strikes, or an agreement between workmen oremployers to refuse to work or to give work except on givenconditions. Such, for a long time, was French legislation on thispoint.
The Constituent Assembly gave to France a new administrativedivision, that into departments, districts, cantons and communes;and this division, which was intended to make theold provincial distinctions disappear, had to serve allpurposes, the department being the unit for all publicAdministrative reorganization.services. This settlement was definitive, with theexception of certain modifications in detail, and exists to thepresent day. But there was a peculiar administrative organismdepending on this arrangement. The constitution of 1791,it is true, made the king the titulary head of the executivepower; but the internal administration of the kingdom was notactually in his hands. It was deputed, under his orders,to bodies elected in each department, district and commune.The municipal bodies were directly elected by citizens dulyqualified; other bodies were chosen by the method of doubleelection. Each body consisted of two parts: a council, fordeliberative purposes, and a bureau or directoire chosen by thecouncil from among its numbers to form the executive. Thesewere the only instruments for the general administration andfor that of the direct taxes. The king could, it is true, annulthe illegal acts of these bodies, but not dismiss their members;he could merely suspend them from exercising their functions,but the matter then went before the Legislative Assembly,which could maintain or remit the suspension as it thought fit.The king had not a single agent chosen by himself for generaladministrative purposes. This was a reaction, though a veryexaggerated one, against the excessive centralization of theancien régime, and resulted in an absolute administrative anarchy.The organization of the revolutionary government partly restoredthe central authority; the councils of the departments weresuppressed; the Committee of Public Safety and the “representativesof the people on mission” were able to remove andreplace the members of the elected bodies; and also, by aningenious arrangement, national agents were established inthe districts. The constitution of the year III. continued inthis course, simplifying the organization established by theConstituent Assembly, while maintaining its principle. Thedepartment had an administration of five members, elected asin the past, but having executive as well as deliberative functions.The district was suppressed. The communes retained only a municipal agent elected by themselves, and the actual municipalbody, the importance of which was considerably increased,was removed to the canton, and consisted of the municipalagents from each commune, and a president elected by the dulyqualified citizens of the canton. The Directory was representedin each departmental and communal administration by acommissary appointed and removable by itself, and could dismissthe members of these administrations.
The Constituent Assembly decided on the complete reorganizationof the judicial organization. This was accomplished on avery simple plan, which realized that ideal of the twodegrees of justice which, as we have noticed, wasthat of France under the ancien régime. In the lowerJudicial system.degrees it created in each canton a justice of the peace (juge depaix), the idea and name of which were borrowed from England,but which differed very much from the English justice of thepeace. He judged, both with and without appeal, civil casesof small importance; and, in cases which did not come withinhis competency, it was his duty to try to reconcile the parties.In each district was established a civil court composed of fivejudges. This completed the judicial organization, except forthe court of cassation, which had functions peculiar to itself,never judging the facts of the case but only the application ofthe law. For cases coming under the district court, the Assemblyhad not thought fit to abolish the guarantee of the appeal incases involving sums above a certain figure. But by a curiousarrangement the district tribunals could hear appeals from oneanother. With regard to penal prosecutions, there was in eachdepartment a criminal court which judged crimes with theassistance of a jury; it consisted of judges borrowed fromdistrict courts, and had its own president and public prosecutor.Correctional tribunals, composed of juges de paix, dealt withmisdemeanours. The Assembly preserved the commercialcourts, or consular jurisdictions, of the ancien régime. Therewas a court of cassation, the purpose of which was to preservethe unity of jurisprudence in France; it dealt with mattersof law and not of fact, considering appeals based on the violationof law, whether in point of matter or of form, and if such violationwere proved, sending the matter before another tribunal ofthe same rank for re-trial. All judges were elected for a termof years; the juges de paix by the primary assembly of the canton,the district judges by the electoral assembly consisting of theelectors of the second degree for the district, the members of thecourt of cassation by the electors of the departments, who weredivided for the purpose into two series, which voted alternately.The Constituent Assembly did, it is true, require professionalguarantees, by proof of a more or less extended exercise ofthe profession of lawyer from all judges except the juges de paix.But the system was really the same as that of the administrativeorganization. The king only appointed the commissaires du roiattached to the district courts, criminal tribunals and the courtof cassation; but the appointment once made could not berevoked by him. These commissaries fulfilled one of the functionsof the old ministère public, their duty being to demand theapplication of laws. The Convention did not change this generalorganization; but it suppressed the professional guaranteesrequired in the case of candidates for a judgeship, so that henceforthall citizens were eligible; and it also caused new electionsto take place. Moreover, the Convention, either directly or bymeans of one of its committees, not infrequently removed andreplaced judges without further election. The constitution ofthe year III. preserved this system, but introduced one considerablemodification. It suppressed the district courts, and intheir place created in each department a civil tribunal consistingof twenty judges. The idea was a happy one, for it gave thecourts more importance, and therefore more weight and dignity.But this reform, beneficial as it would be nowadays, was at thetime premature, in view of the backward condition of meansof communication.
The Constituent Assembly suppressed the militia and maintainedthe standing army, according to the old type, the numbersof which were henceforth to be fixed every year by the LegislativeAssembly. The army was to be recruited by voluntaryenlistment, careful rules for which were drawn up; the onlychange was in the system of appointment to ranks;The army.promotion went chiefly by seniority, and in the lowerranks a system of nomination by equals or inferiors wasorganized. The Assembly proclaimed, however, the principleof compulsory and personal service, but under a particularform, that of the National Guard, to which all qualified citizensbelonged, and in which almost all ranks were conferred byelection. Its chief purpose was to maintain order at home;but it could be called upon to furnish detachments for defenceagainst foreign invasion. This was an institution which, withmany successive modifications, and after various long periodsof inactivity followed by a revival, lasted more than three-quartersof a century, and was not suppressed till 1871. Forpurposes of war the Convention, in addition to voluntary enlistmentsand the resources furnished by the National Guards,and setting aside the forced levy of 200,000 men in 1793, decidedon the expedient of calling upon the communes to furnish men,a course which revived the principle of the old militia. But theDirectory drew up an important military law, that of the 6thFructidor of the year VI., which established compulsory militaryservice for all, under the form of conscription strictly so called.Frenchmen aged from 20 to 25 (défenseurs conscrits) were dividedinto five classes, each including the men born in the same year,and were liable until they were 25 years old to be called up foractive service, the whole period of service not exceeding fouryears. No class was called upon until the younger classeshad been exhausted, and the sending of substitutes was forbidden.This law, with a few later modifications, provided for the Frencharmies up to the end of the Empire.
The Constituent Assembly abolished nearly all the taxesof the ancien régime. Almost the only taxes preserved werethe stamp duty and that on the registration of acts(the old contrôle and centième denier), and these werecompletely reorganized; the customs were maintained only atTaxation.the frontiers for foreign trade. In the establishment of newtaxes the Assembly was influenced by two sentiments: thehatred which had been inspired by the former arbitrary taxation,and the influence of the school of the Physiocrats. Consequentlyit did away with indirect taxation on objects of consumption,and made the principal direct tax the tax on land. Next inimportance were the contribution personnelle et mobilière and thepatentes. The essential elements of the former were a sort ofcapitation-tax equivalent to three days’ work, which was thedistinctive and definite sign of a qualified citizen, and a tax onpersonal income, calculated according to the rent paid. Thepatentes were paid by traders, and were also based on the amountof rent. These taxes, though considerably modified later, arestill essentially the basis of the French system of direct taxation.The Constituent Assembly had on principle repudiated the taxon the gross income, much favoured under the ancien régime,which everybody had felt to be arbitrary and oppressive. Thesystem of public contributions under the Convention wasarbitrary and revolutionary, but the councils of the Directory,side by side with certain bad laws devised to tide over temporarycrises, made some excellent laws on the subject of taxation.They resumed the regulation of the land tax, improving andpartly altering it, and also dealt with the contribution personnelleet mobilière, the patentes, and the stamp and registration duties.It was at this time, too, that the door and window tax, whichstill exists, was provisionally established; there was also apartial reappearance of indirect taxation, in particular theoctrois of the towns, which had been suppressed by the ConstituentAssembly.
The Constituent Assembly gave the Protestants liberty ofworship and full rights; it also gave Jews the status of citizen,which they had not had under the ancien régime,together with political rights. With regard to theCatholic Church, the Assembly placed at the disposalReligious liberty.of the nation the property of the clergy, which had already,in the course of the 18th century, been regarded by most political writers as a national possession; at the same time it providedfor salaries for the members of the clergy and pensions for thosewho had been monks. It abolished tithes and the religiousorders, and forbade the re-formation of the latter in the future.The ecclesiastical districts were next reorganized, the departmentbeing always taken as the chief unit, and a new churchwas organized by the civil constitution of the clergy, the bishopsbeing elected by the electoral assembly of the department (theusual electors), and the curés by the electoral assembly of thedistrict. This was an unfortunate piece of legislation, inspiredpartly by the old Gallican spirit, partly by the theories on civilreligion of J.J. Rousseau and his school, and, together with thecivic oath imposed on the clergy, it was a source of endlesstroubles. The constitutional church established in this waywas, however, abolished as a state institution by the Convention.By laws of the years III. and IV. the Convention and theDirectory, in proclaiming the liberty of worship, declared thatthe Republic neither endowed nor recognized any form ofworship. Buildings formerly consecrated to worship, whichhad not been alienated, were again placed at the disposal ofworshippers for this purpose, but under conditions which werehard for them to accept.
The Assemblies of the Revolution, besides the laws which,by abolishing feudalism, altered the character of real property,passed many others concerning civil law. The mostimportant are those of 1792, passed by the LegislativeAssembly, which organized the registers of the état civil keptCivil law.by the municipalities, and laid down rules for marriageas a purely civil contract. Divorce was admitted to a practicallyunlimited extent; it was possible not only for causes determinedby law, and by mutual consent, but also for incompatibilityof temper and character proved, by either husband or wife,to be of a persistent nature. Next came the laws of the Conventionas to inheritance, imposing perfect equality among thenatural heirs and endeavouring to ensure the division of properties.Illegitimate children were considered by these laws as on thesame level with legitimate children. The Convention and thecouncils of the Directory also made excellent laws on the administrationof hypothèques, and worked at the preparation of aCriminal law.Civil Code (see Code Napoléon). In criminal lawtheir work was still more important. In 1791 theConstituent Assembly gave France her first penalcode. It was inspired by humanitarian ideas, still admittingcapital punishment, though accompanied by no cruelty in theexecution; but none of the remaining punishments was forlife. Long imprisonment with hard labour was introduced.Finally, as a reaction against the former system of arbitrarypenalties, there came a system of fixed penalties determined,both as to its assessment and its nature, for each offence, whichthe judge could not modify. The Constituent Assembly alsoreformed the procedure of criminal trials, taking English law asmodel. It introduced the jury, with the double form of juryd’accusation and jury de jugement. Before the judges procedurewas always public and oral. The prosecution was left in principleto the parties concerned, plaintiffs or dénonciateurs civiques,and the preliminary investigation was handed over to twomagistrates; one was the juge de paix, as in English procedureat this period, and the other a magistrate chosen from thedistrict court and called the directeur du jury. The Convention,before separating, passed the Code des délits et des peines of the3rd Brumaire in the year IV. This piece of work, which wasdue to Merlin de Douai, was intended to deal with criminalprocedure and penal law; but only the first part could becompleted. It was the procedure established by the ConstituentAssembly, but further organized and improved.
The Consulate and the Empire.—The constitutional law ofthe Consulate and the Empire is to be found in a series of documentscalled later the Constitutions de l’Empire, the constitutionpromulgated during the Hundred Days being consequentlygiven the name of Acte additionnel aux Constitutions de l’Empire.These documents consist of (1) the Constitution of the 22ndFrimaire of the year VIII., the work of Sieyès and Bonaparte,the text on which the others were based; (2) the senatus consulteof the 16th Thermidor in the year X., establishing the consulatefor life; and (3) the senatus consulte of the 28th Floréal in theyear XII., which created the Empire. These constitutional acts,which were all, whether in their full text or in principle, submittedto the popular vote by means of a plébiscite, had all thesame object: to assure absolute power to Napoleon, whilepreserving the forms and appearance of liberty. Popular suffragewas maintained, and even became universal; but, since thesystem was that of suffrage in many stages, which, moreover,varied very much, the citizens in effect merely nominated thecandidates, and it was the Senate, playing the part of grandélecteur which Sieyès had dreamed of as his own, which chosefrom among them the members of the various so-called electedbodies, even those of the political assemblies. According to theconstitution of the year VIII., the first consul (to whom hadbeen added two colleagues, the second and third consuls, whodid not disappear until the Empire) possessed the executivepower in the widest sense of the word, and he alone could initiatelegislation. There were three representative assemblies inexistence, elected as we have seen; but one of them, the CorpsLégislatif, passed laws without discussing them, and withoutthe power of amending the suggestions of the government.The Tribunate, on the contrary, discussed them, but its votewas not necessary for the passing of the law. The Senate wasthe guardian and preserver of the constitution; in addition to itsrole of grand électeur, its chief function was to annul laws andacts submitted to it by the Tribunate as being unconstitutional.This original organization was naturally modified during thecourse of the Consulate and the Empire; not only did theemperor obtain the right of directly nominating senators, andthe princes of the imperial family, and grant dignitaries of theEmpire that of entering the Senate by right; but a whole body,the Tribunate, which was the only one which could preservesome independence, disappeared, without resort having beenhad to a plebiscite; it was modified and weakened by senatusconsulte of the year X., and was suppressed in 1807 by a meresenatus consulte. The importance of another body, on thecontrary, the conseil d’état, which had been formed on theimproved type of the ancient conseil du roi, and consisted ofmembers appointed by Napoleon and carefully chosen, continuallyincreased. It was this body which really prepared anddiscussed the laws; and it was its members who advocatedthem before the Corps Législatif, to which the Tribunate alsosent orators to speak on its behalf. The ministers, who had norelation with the legislative power, were merely the agentsof the head of the state, freely chosen by himself. Napoleon,however, found these powers insufficient, and arrogated tohimself others, a fact which the Senate did not forget when itproclaimed his downfall. Thus he frequently declared war uponhis own authority, in spite of the provisions to the contrarymade by the constitution of the year VIII.; and similarly, underthe form of décrets, made what were really laws. They wereafterwards called décrets-lois, and those that were not indissolublyassociated with the political régime of the Empire, and survivedit, were subsequently declared valid by the court of cassation,on the ground that they had not been submitted to the Senateas unconstitutional, as had been provided by the constitutionof the year VIII.
This period saw the rise of a whole new series of great organiclaws. For administrative organization, the most importantwas that of the 28th Pluviôse in the year VIII. Itestablished as chief authority for each department aprefect, and side by side with him a conseil généralAdministrative changes under Consulate and Empire.for deliberative purposes; for each arrondissem*nt(corresponding to the old district) a sub-prefect (sous-préfet)and a conseil d’arrondissem*nt; and for eachcommune, a mayor and a municipal council. But allthese officials, both the members of the councils and the individualagents, were appointed by the head of the state or by the prefect,so that centralization was restored more completely than ever.Together with the prefect there was also established a conseil de préfecture, having administrative functions, and generallyacting as a court of the first instance in disputes and litigationarising out of the acts of the administration; for the ConstituentAssembly had removed such cases from the jurisdiction of thecivil tribunals, and referred them to the administrative bodiesthemselves. The final appeal in these disputes was to the conseild’état, which was supreme judge in these matters. In 1807was created another great administrative jurisdiction, the courdes comptes, after the pattern of that which had existed underthe ancien régime.
Judicial organization had also been fundamentally altered.The system of election was preserved for a time in the case ofthe juges de paix and the members of the court ofcassation, but finally disappeared there, even whereit had already been no more than a form. TheJudicial changes.magistrates were in principle appointed for life, but under theEmpire a device was found for evading the rule of irremovability.For the judgment of civil cases there was a court of first instancein every arrondissem*nt, and above these a certain number ofcourts of appeal, each of which had within its province severaldepartments. The separate criminal tribunals were abolishedin 1809 by the Code d’Instruction Criminelle, and the magistratesforming the cour d’assises, which judged crimes with the aid ofa jury, were drawn from the courts of appeal and from the civiltribunals. The jury d’accusation was also abolished by theCode d’Instruction Criminelle, and the right of pronouncing theindictment was transferred to a chamber of the court of appeal.The correctional tribunals were amalgamated with the civiltribunals of the first instance. The tribunal de cassation, whichtook under the Empire the name of cour de cassation, consistedof magistrates appointed for life, and still kept its powers.The ministère public (consisting of imperial avocats and procureurs)was restored in practically the same form as under the ancienrégime.
The former system of taxation was preserved in principle,but with one considerable addition: Napoleon re-establishedindirect taxation on articles of consumption, whichhad been abolished by the Constituent Assembly;the chief of these were the duties on liquor (droits réunis, orTaxation.excise) and the monopoly of tobacco.
The Concordat concluded by Napoleon with the papacy onthe 26th Messidor of the year IX. re-established the Catholicreligion in France as the form of worship recognizedand endowed by the state. It was in principle drawnup on the lines of that of 1516, and assured to thehead of the French state in his dealings with the papacy theThe Concordat.same prerogatives as had formerly been enjoyed by the kings;the chief of these was that he appointed the bishops, who afterwardshad to ask the pope for canonical institution. Theterritorial distribution of dioceses was preserved practicallyas it had been left by the civil constitution of the clergy. Thestate guaranteed the payment of salaries to bishops and curés;and the pope agreed to renounce all claims referring to theappropriation of the goods of the clergy made by the ConstituentAssembly. Later on, a decree restored to the fabriques (vestries)such of their former possessions as had not been alienated,and the churches which had not been alienated were restoredfor the purposes of worship. The law of the 18th Germinalin the year X., ratifying the Concordat, reasserted, under thename of articles organiques du culte catholique, all the mainprinciples contained in the old doctrine of the liberties of theGallican Church. The Concordat did not include the restorationof the religious orders and congregations; Napoleon sanctionedby decrees only a few establishments of this kind.
One important creation of the Empire was the university.The ancien régime had had its universities for purposes of instructionand for the conferring of degrees; it hadalso, though without any definite organization, suchsecondary schools as the towns admitted within theirThe university.walls, and the primary schools of the parishes. The Revolutionsuppressed the universities and the teaching congregations.The constitution of the year III. proclaimed the liberty ofinstruction and commanded that public schools, both elementaryand secondary, should be established. Under the Directorythere was in each department an école centrale, in which allbranches of human knowledge were taught. Napoleon, developingideas which had been started in the second half of the 18thcentury, founded by laws and decrees of 1806, 1808 and 1811the Université de France, which provided and organized higher,secondary and primary education; this was to be the monopolyof the state, carried on by its facultés, lycées and primary schools.No private educational establishment could be opened withoutthe authorization of the state.
But chief among the documents dating from this period arethe Codes, which still give laws to France. These are the CivilCode of 1804, the Code de Procédure Civile of 1806,the Code de Commerce of 1807, the Code d’Instruction Criminelleof 1809, and the Code Pénal of 1810.The Codes.These monumental works, in the elaboration of which the conseild’état took the chief part, contributed, to a greater or lessextent, towards the fusion of the old law of France with the lawsof the Revolution. It was in the case of the Code Civil that thistask presented the greatest difficulty (see Code Napoléon).The Code de Commerce was scarcely more than a revised andemended edition of the ordonnances of 1673 and 1681; while theCode de Procédure Civile borrowed its chief elements from theordonnance of 1667. In the case of the Code d’InstructionCriminelle a distinctly new departure was made; the procedureintroduced by the Revolution into courts where judgment wasgiven remained public and oral, with full liberty of defence;the preliminary procedure, however, before the examining court(juge d’instruction or chambre des mises en accusation) wasborrowed from the ordonnance of 1670; it was the procedureof the old law, without its cruelty, but secret and written, andgenerally not in the presence of both parties. The Code Pénalmaintained the principles of the Revolution, but increased thepenalties. It substituted for the system of fixed penalties, incases of temporary punishment, a maximum and a minimum,between the limits of which judges could assess the amount.Even in the case of misdemeanours, it admitted the system ofextenuating circ*mstances, which allowed them still further todecrease and alter the penalty in so far as the offence was mitigatedby such circ*mstances. (See further under Napoleon I.)
The Restored Monarchy.—The Restoration and the Monarchyof July, though separated by a revolution, form one period inthe history of French institutions, a period in whichthe same régime was continued and developed. Thiswas the constitutional monarchy, with a parliamentaryConstitutional monarchy.body consisting of two chambers, a system imitatedfrom England. The same constitution was preserved underthese two monarchies—the charter granted by Louis XVIII.in 1814. The revolution of 1830 took place in defence of thecharter which Charles X. had violated by the ordonnancesof July, so that this charter was naturally preserved under the“July Monarchy.” It was merely revised by the Chamber ofDeputies, which had been one of the movers of the revolution,and by what remained of the House of Peers. In order to givethe constitution the appearance of originating in the will of thepeople, the preface, which made it appear to be a favour grantedby the king, was destroyed. The two chambers acquired theinitiative in legislation, which had not been recognized as theirsunder the Restoration, but from this time on belonged to themequally with the king. The sittings of the House of Peers werehenceforth held in public; but this chamber underwent anotherand more fundamental transformation. The peers were nominatedby the king, with no limit of numbers, and accordingto the charter of 1814 their appointment could be either for lifeor hereditary; but, in execution of an ordinance of Louis XVIII.,during the Restoration they were always appointed under thelatter condition. Under the July Monarchy their tenure ofoffice was for life, and the king had to choose them from amongtwenty-two classes of notables fixed by law. The franchisefor the election of the Chamber of Deputies had been limitedby a system of money qualifications; but while, under the Restoration, it had been necessary, in order to be an elector,to pay three hundred francs in direct taxation, this sum wasreduced in 1831 to two hundred francs, while in certain cases evena smaller amount sufficed. In order to be elected as a deputyit was necessary, according to the charter of 1814, to pay athousand francs in direct taxation, and according to that of 1830five hundred francs. From 1817 onwards there was directsuffrage, the electors directly electing the deputies. The idea ofthose who had framed the charter of 1814 had been to give thechief influence to the great landed proprietors, though the meansadopted to this end were not adequate: in 1830 the chief aimhad been to give a preponderating influence to the middle andlower middle classes, and this had met with greater success.The House of Peers, under the name of cour des pairs, had alsothe function of judging attempts and plots against the securityof the state, and it had frequently to exercise this function bothunder the Restoration and the July Monarchy.
This was a period of parliamentary government; that is, ofgovernment by a cabinet, resting on the responsibility of theministers to the Chamber of Deputies. The only interruptionwas that caused by the resistance of Charles X. at the end of hisreign, which led to the revolution of July. Parliamentary governmentwas practised regularly and in an enlightened spirit underthe Restoration, although the Chamber had not then all thepowers which it has since acquired. It is noteworthy that duringthis period the right of the House of Peers to force a ministry toresign by a hostile vote was not recognized. By the creation of acertain number of new peers, a fournée de pairs, as it was thencalled, the majority in this House could be changed whennecessary. But the government of the Restoration had to dealwith two extreme parties of a very opposite nature: the Ultras,who wished to restore as far as possible the ancien régime, towhom were due the acts of the chambre introuvable of 1816, andlater the laws of the ministry of Villèle, especially the law ofsacrilege and that voting compensation to the dispossessednobles, known as the milliard des émigrés; and on the otherhand the Liberals, including the Bonapartists and Republicans,who were attached to the principles of the Revolution. In orderto prevent either of these parties from predominating in thechamber, the government made a free use of its power of dissolution.It further employed two means to check the progressof the Liberals; firstly, there were various alterations successivelymade in the electoral law, and the press laws, frequently restrictivein their effect, which introduced the censorship and a preliminaryauthorization in the case of periodical publications, and gavethe correctional tribunals jurisdiction in cases of press offences.The best electoral law was that of 1817, and the best press lawswere those of 1819; but these were not of long duration. Underthe July Monarchy parliamentary government, although itsmachinery was further perfected, was not so brilliant. Themajorities in the Chamber of Deputies were often uncertain, somuch so, that more than once the right of dissolution was exercisedin order to try by new elections to arrive at an undividedand certain majority. King Louis Philippe, though sober-minded,wished to exercise a personal influence on the policyof the cabinet, so that there were then two schools, representedrespectively by Thiers and Guizot, one of which held the theorythat “the king reigns but does not govern”; while the othermaintained that he might exercise a personal influence, providedthat he could rely on a ministry supported by a majority of theChamber of Deputies. But the weak point in the July Monarchywas above all the question of the franchise. A powerful movementof opinion set in towards demanding an extension, somewishing for universal suffrage, but the majority proposing whatwas called the adjonction des capacités, that is to say, that to thenumber of qualified electors should be added those citizens who,by virtue of their professions, capacity or acquirements, wereinscribed after them on the general list for juries. But thegovernment obstinately refused all electoral reform, and heldto the law of 1831. It also refused parliamentary reform, bywhich was meant a rule which would have made most publicoffices incompatible with the position of deputy, the Chamber ofDeputies being at that time full of officials. The press, thanksto the Charter, was perfectly free, without either censorshipor preliminary authorization, and press offences were judged bya jury.
In another respect also the Restoration and the July Monarchywere at one, the second continuing the spirit of the first, viz.in maintaining in principle the civil, legal and administrativeinstitutions of the Empire. The preface tothe charter of 1814 sanctioned and guaranteed mostThe system of the Empire retained.of the legal rights won by the Revolution; even thealienation of national property was confirmed. Itwas said, it is true, that the old nobility regained their titles, andthat the nobility of the Empire kept those which Napoleon hadgiven them; but these were merely titles and nothing more;there was no privileged nobility, and the equality of citizensbefore the law was maintained. Judicial and administrativeorganization, the system of taxation, military organization, therelations of church and state, remained the same, and the universityalso continued to exist. The government did, it is true,negotiate a new Concordat with the papacy in 1817, but did notdare even to submit it to the chambers. The most importantreform was that of the law concerning recruiting for the army.The charter of 1814 had promised the abolition of conscription,in the form in which it had been created by the law of the yearVI. The law of the 10th of March 1818 actually establisheda new system. The contingent voted by the chambers for annualincorporation into the standing army was divided up among allthe cantons; and, in order to furnish it, lots were drawn amongall the men of a certain class, that is to say, among the youngFrenchmen who arrived at their majority that year. Thosewho were not chosen by lot were definitely set free from militaryservice. The sending of substitutes, a custom which had beenpermitted by Napoleon, was recognized. This was the type of allthe laws on recruiting in France, of which there were a goodnumber in succession up to 1867. On other points they vary, inparticular as to the duration of service, which was six years,and later eight years, under the Restoration; but the systemremained the same.
The Restoration produced a code, the Code forestier of 1827,for the regulation of forests (eaux et forêts). In 1816 a law hadabolished divorce, making marriage indissoluble, as it had beenin the old law. But the best laws of this period were those onfinance. Now, for the first time, was introduced the practice ofdrawing up regular budgets, voted before the year to which theyapplied, and divided since 1819 into the budget of expenditureand budget of receipts.
Together with other institutions of the Empire, the Restorationhad preserved the exaggerated system of administrativecentralization established in the year VIII.; and proposals forits relaxation submitted to the chambers had come to nothing.It was only under the July Monarchy that it was relaxed. Themunicipal law of the 21st of March 1831 made the municipalcouncils elective, and extended widely the right of voting in theelections for them; the maires and their assistants continuedto be appointed by the government, but had to be chosen fromamong the members of the municipal councils. The law of the22nd of June 1833 made the general councils of the departmentsalso elective, and brought the adjonction des capacités into effectfor their election. The powers of these bodies were enlarged in1838, and they gained the right of electing their president.In 1833 was granted another liberty, that of primary education;but in spite of violent protestations, coming especially from theCatholics, secondary and higher education continued to be amonopoly of the state. Many organic laws were promulgated,one concerning the National Guard, which was reorganized inorder to adapt it to the system of citizen qualifications; one in1832 on the recruiting of the army, fixing the period of service atseven years; and another in 1834 securing the status of officers.A law of the 11th of June 1842 established the great railwaylines. In 1832 the Code Pénal and Code d’Instruction Criminellewere revised, with the object of lightening penalties; the systemof extenuating circ*mstances, as recognized by a jury, was extended to the judgment of all crimes. There was also a revisionof Book III. of the Code de Commerce, treating of bankruptcy.Finally, from this period date the laws of the 3rd of May1841, on expropriation for purposes of public utility, and of the30th of June 1838, on the treatment of the insane, which is stillin force. Judicial organization remained as it was, but theamount of the sum up to which civil tribunals of the first instancecould judge without appeal was raised from 1000 francs to 1500,and the competency of the juges de paix was widened.
The Second Republic and the Second Empire.—From the pointof view of constitutional law, the Second Republic and the SecondEmpire were each in a certain sense a return to the past. Theformer revived the tradition of the Assemblies of the Revolution;the latter was obviously and avowedly an imitation of the Consulateand the First Empire.
The provisional government set up by the revolution of the24th of February 1848 proclaimed universal suffrage, and bythis means was elected a Constituent Assembly, whichsat till May 1849, and, after first organizing variousforms of another provisional government, passed theRepublican constitution of 1848.Republican constitution of the 4th of November 1848.This constitution, which was preceded by a preface recallingthe Declarations of Rights of the Revolution, gave the legislativepower to a single permanent assembly, elected by direct universalsuffrage, and entirely renewed every three years. The executiveauthority, with very extensive powers, was given to a presidentof the Republic, also elected by the universal and direct suffrageof the French citizens. The constitution was not very clear uponthe point of whether it adopted parliamentary governmentin the strict sense, or whether the president, who was declaredresponsible, was free to choose his ministers and to retain ordismiss them at his own pleasure. This gave rise to an almostpermanent dispute between the president, who claimed to havehis own political opinions and to direct the government, and theAssembly, which wished to carry on the traditions of cabinetgovernment and to make the ministers fully responsible to itself.Consequently, in January 1851, a solemn debate was held, whichended in the affirmation of the responsibility of ministers to theAssembly. On the other hand, the president, though veryproperly given great power by the constitution, was not immediatelyeligible for re-election on giving up his office. Now LouisNapoleon, who was elected president on the 10th of December1848 by a huge majority, wished to be re-elected. Variouspropositions were submitted to the Assembly in July 1851 witha view to modifying the constitution; but they could not succeed,as the number of votes demanded by the constitution for theconvocation of a Constituent Assembly was not reached. Moreover,the Legislative Assembly elected in May 1849 was verydifferent from the Constituent Assembly of 1848. The latter wasanimated by that spirit of harmony and, in the main, of adhesionto the Republic which had followed on the February Revolution.The new assembly, on the contrary, was composed for the mostpart of representatives of the old parties, and had monarchistaspirations. By the unfortunate law of the 31st of May 1850 iteven tried by a subterfuge to restrict the universal suffrageguaranteed by the constitution. It suspended the right of holdingmeetings, but, on the whole, respected the liberty of the press.It was especially impelled to these measures by the growingfear of socialism. The result was the coup d’état of the 2nd ofDecember 1851. A detail of some constitutional importanceis to be noticed in this period. The conseil d’état, which hadremained under the Restoration and the July Monarchy anadministrative council and the supreme arbiter in administrativetrials, acquired new importance under the Second Republic.The ordinary conseillers d’état (en service ordinaire) were electedby the Legislative Assembly, and consultation with the conseild’état was often insisted on by the constitution or by law. Thiswas the means of obtaining a certain modifying power as a substitutefor the second chamber, which had not met with popularapproval. During its short existence the Second Republicproduced many important laws. It abolished the penalty ofdeath for political crimes, and suppressed negro slavery in thecolonies. The election of conseillers généraux was thrown opento universal suffrage, and the municipal councils were allowedto elect the maires and their colleagues. The law of the 15thof March 1850 established the liberty of secondary education,but it conferred certain privileges on the Catholic clergy, a clearsign of the spirit of social conservatism which was the leadingmotive for its enactment. Certain humanitarian laws werepassed, applying to the working classes.
With the coup d’état of the 2nd of December 1851 began a newera of constitutional plebiscites and disguised absolutism.The proclamations of Napoleon on the 2nd of Decembercontained a criticism of parliamentary government,and formulated the wish to restore to France theConstitution of
Jan. 14, 1852.constitutional institutions of the Consulate and theEmpire, just as she had preserved their civil, administrativeand military institutions. Napoleon asked the people for thepowers necessary to draw up a constitution on these principles;the plebiscite issued in a vast majority of votes in his favour,and the constitution of the 14th of January 1852 was the result.It bore a strong resemblance to the constitution of the FirstEmpire after 1807. The executive power was conferred onLouis Napoleon for ten years, with the title of president of theRepublic and very extended powers. Two assemblies werecreated. The conservative Senate, composed of ex officio members(cardinals, marshals of France and admirals) and life membersappointed by the head of the state, was charged with the taskof seeing that the laws were constitutional, of opposing thepromulgation of unconstitutional laws, and of receiving thepetitions of citizens; it had also the duty of providing everythingnot already provided but necessary for the proper working ofthe constitution. The second assembly was the Corps Législatif,elected by direct universal suffrage for six years, which passedthe laws, the government having the initiative in legislation.This body was not altogether a corps des muets, as in the yearVIII., but its powers were very limited; thus the general sessionassured to it by the constitution was only for three months,and it could only discuss and put to the vote amendmentsapproved by the conseil d’état; the ministers did not in any waycome into contact with it and could not be members of it, beingresponsible only to the head of the state, and only the Senatehaving the right of accusing them before a high court of justice.The conseil d’état was composed in the same way and had thesame authority as it had possessed from the year VIII. to 1814;and it was the members of it who supported projected lawsbefore the Corps Législatif. To this was added a Draconianpress legislation; not only were press offences, many of whichwere mere expressions of opinion, judged not by a jury but bythe correctional tribunals; but further, political papers couldnot be founded without an authorization, and were subject toa regular administrative discipline; they could be warned,suspended or suppressed without a trial, by a simple act ofthe administration. The constitution of January 1852 wasstill Republican in name, though less so than that of the yearVIII. The period corresponding with the Consulate was alsoshorter in the case of Louis Napoleon. The year 1852 hadnot come to an end before a senatus consulte, that of the10th of November, ratified by a plebiscite, re-establishedthe imperial rank in favour of Napoleon III.; it alsoRestoration of
the Empire.conferred on him certain new powers, especially withreference to the budget and foreign treaties; thusvarious cracks, which experience had revealed in theoriginal structure of the Empire, were filled up. Thisperiod was called that of the empire autoritaire. Further featuresof it were the free appointment of the maires by the emperor,the oath of fidelity to him imposed on all officials, and the legalorganization of official candidatures for the elections. Twomeasures marked the highest point reached by this system:the loi de sureté générale of the 27th of February 1858, whichallowed the government to intern in France or Algeria, or toexile certain French citizens, without a trial. The other wasthe senatus consulte of the 17th of February 1858, which madethe validity of candidatures for the Corps Législatif subject to a preliminary oath of fidelity on the part of the candidate.But for various causes, which cannot be examined here, a seriesof measures was soon to be initiated which were gradually toThe empire libéral.lead back again to political liberty, and definitivelyto found what has been called the empire libéral.One by one the different rules and proceedings ofparliamentary government as it had existed in Franceregained their force. The first step was the decree of the 24thof November 1860, which re-established for each ordinary sessionthe address voted by the chambers in response to the speechfrom the throne. In 1867 this movement took a more decisiveform. It led to a new constitution, that of the 21st of May1870, which was again ratified by popular suffrage. Whilemaintaining the Empire and the imperial dynasty, it organizedparliamentary government practically in the form in which ithad operated under the July Monarchy, with two legislativechambers, the Senate and the Corps Législatif, the consent ofboth of which was necessary for legislation, and which, togetherwith the emperor, had the initiative in this matter. The lawsof the 11th of May 1868 and the 6th of June 1868 restored to acertain extent the liberty of the press and of holding meetings,though without abolishing offences of opinion, or again bringingpress offences under the jurisdiction of a jury. Laws of the 22ndand 23rd of July 1870 gave the conseils généraux, whose powershad been somewhat widened, the right of electing their presidents,and provided that the maires and their colleagues should bechosen from among the members of the municipal councils.
The legislation of the Second Empire led to a considerablenumber of reforms. Its chief aim was the development ofcommerce, industry and agriculture, and generally thematerial prosperity of the country. The Empire,though restricting liberty in political matters, increasedEconomic and social reforms under the Second Empire.it in economic matters. Such were the decrees andlaws of 1852 and 1853 relating to land-banks (établissem*ntsde crédit foncier) and that of 1857 on trade-marks,those of 1863 and 1867 on commercial companies, that of 1858on general stores (magasins généraux) and warrants, that of1856 on drainage, that of 1865 on the associations syndicales depropriétaires, that of 1866 on the mercantile marine. The lawof the 14th of June 1865 introduced into France the institution,borrowed from England, of cheques. But of still greater importancefor economic development than all these laws were thetreaties concluded by the emperor with foreign powers,in order to introduce, as far as possible, free exchangeCommercial treaties.of commodities; the chief of these, which was themodel of all the others, was that concluded with GreatBritain on the 23rd of January 1860. Moreover, the law ofthe 25th of May 1864 admitted for the first time the right ofstrikes and lock-outs among workmen or employers, annullingarticles 414 and following of the Code Pénal, which had so farmade them a penal offence, even when not accompanied byfraudulent practices, threats or violence, tending to hinder theliberty of labour. The superannuation fund (caisse des retraitespour la vieillesse), supported by voluntary payments from thoseparticipating in it, which had been created by the law of the 18thof June 1850, was reorganized and perfected, and a law of the11th of July 1868 established, with the guarantee of the state,two funds for voluntary insurance, one in case of death, the otheragainst accidents occurring in industrial or agricultural employment.A decree of 1863 established in principle the freedomof bakeries, and another in 1864 that of theatrical management.
Criminal law was the subject of important legislation. Twocodes were promulgated on special points, the codes of militaryjustice for the land forces (1857) and for the navalforces (1858). But the common law was also largelyremodelled. A law of the 10th of June 1858, it is true,Reforms in the criminal law.created certain new crimes, with a view to protectingthe members of the imperial family, and that of the 17th ofJuly 1856 increased the powers and independence of the jugesd’instruction; but, on the other hand, useful improvementswere introduced by laws of 1856 and 1865, and notably withregard to precautionary detention and provisional release with orwithout bail. A law of the 20th of May 1863 organized a simpleand rapid procedure, copied from that followed in Englandbefore the police courts, for summary jurisdiction. A law of1868 permitted the revision of criminal trials after the deathof the condemned person. But the most far-reaching reformstook place in 1854, namely, the abolition of the total loss ofcivil rights which formerly accompanied condemnation toimprisonment for life, and the law of the 30th of May on penalservitude (travaux forcés) which substituted transportation tothe colonies for the system of continental convict prisons.Finally, in 1863, there was a revision of the Code Pénal, which,in the process of lightening penalties, made a certain number ofcrimes into misdemeanours, and in consequence transferredCivil legislation. Taxation and army.
The Third Republic.—The Third Republic had at first aprovisional government, unanimously acclaimed by the peopleof Paris. It was accepted by France, exercised full powers,and sustained by no means ingloriously a desperate struggleagainst the enemy; a certain number of its décrets-lois are stillin force. After the capitulation of Paris, a National Assemblywas elected to treat with Germany. It was elected in accordancewith the electoral law of 1849, which had been revived with afew modifications, and it met at Bordeaux to the number of753 members on the 13th of February 1871. It was a sovereignassembly, since France had no longer a constitution, and forthis very reason it claimed from the outset constituent powers;the Republican party at the time, however, contested this claim,the majority in the assembly being frankly monarchist, thoughdivided as to the choice of a monarch. But for some time theNational Assembly either could not or would not exercise thispower, and up to 1875 affairs remained in a provisional state,legalized and regulated this time by the Assembly. This was anapplication, though unconscious, of a form of government whichM. Grévy had proposed to the Constituent Assembly in 1848.There was a single assembly, with one man elected by it as headof the executive power (the first to be elected was M. Thiers,who received the title of president of the Republic in August1871), who was responsible to the Assembly and governed withthe help of ministers chosen by himself, who were also responsibleto it. Thiers fell on the 24th of May 1873. His place was takenby Marshal MacMahon, on whom the Assembly later conferred, inNovember 1873, the position of president of the Republic forseven years, when the refusal of the comte de Chambord toaccept the tricolour in place of the white flag of the Bourbonshad made any attempt to restore the monarchy impossible.Henceforth the definitive adoption of the Republican form ofgovernment became inevitable, and the opinion of the countrybegan to turn in this direction, as was shown by the electionsof deputies which took place to fill up the gaps occurring in theAssembly. The Assembly, however, shrank from the inevitable solution, and when a discussion was begun in January 1875 onthe projected constitutional laws prepared by the commissiondes trente, the only proposals made by the latter were for a morecomplete organization of the powers of one man, MarshalMacMahon. But on the 30th of January 1875 was adopted,by 353 votes to 352, an amendment by M. Wallon which providedfor the election of an indefinite succession of presidents of theDefinitive establishment
of the Republic.Republic; this amounted to a definitive recognitionof the Republic. In this connexion it has often beensaid that the Republic was established by a majorityof one. This is not an accurate statement, for it wasonly the case on the first reading of the law; themajority on the second and third readings increased until itbecame considerable. There was a strong movement in thedirection of a reconciliation between the parties; and there hadbeen a rapprochement between the Republicans and the RightCentre. At the end of February were passed and promulgatedtwo constitutional laws, that of the 25th of February 1875, onthe organization of the public powers, and that of the 24th ofFebruary 1875, on the organization of the senate. In the middleof the year they were supplemented by a third, that of the 16thof July 1875, on the relations between the public powers.
Thus was built up the actual constitution of France. Itdiffers fundamentally, both in form and contents, from previousconstitutions. As to its form, instead of a singlemethodical text divided into an uninterrupted series ofarticles, it consisted of three distinct laws. As toThe French Constitution.matter, it is obviously a work of an essentially practicalnature, the result of compromise and reciprocal concessions.It does not lay down any theoretical principles, and its provisions,which were arrived at with difficulty, confine themselves strictlyto what is necessary to ensure the proper operation of thegovernmental machinery. The result is a compromise betweenRepublican principles and the rules of constitutional and parliamentarymonarchy. On this account it has been accused, thoughunjustly, of being too monarchical. Its duration, by far thelongest of any French constitution since 1791, is a sign of itsvalue and vitality. It is in fact a product of history, and notof imagination. Its composition is as follows. The legislativepower was given to two elective chambers, having equal powers,the vote of both of which is necessary for legislation, and bothhaving the right of initiating and amending laws. The constitutionassures them an ordinary session of five months, whichopens by right on the second Tuesday in January. One house,the Chamber of Deputies, is elected by direct universal suffrageand is entirely renewed every four years; the other, the Senate,consists of 300 members, divided by the law of the 27th ofFebruary 1875 into two categories; 75 of the senators wereelected for life and irremovable, and the first of them were electedby the National Assembly, but afterwards it was the Senateitself which held elections to fill up vacancies. The 225 remainingsenators were elected by the departments and by certain colonies,among which they were apportioned in proportion to the population;they are elected for nine years, a third of the house beingrenewed every three years. The electoral college in each departmentwhich nominated them included the deputies, the membersof the general council of the department and of the councilsof the arrondissem*nts, and one delegate elected by each municipalcouncil, whatever the importance of the commune. This waspractically a system of election in two and, partly, three degrees,but with this distinguishing feature, that the electors of thesecond degree had not been chosen purely with a view to thiselection, but chiefly for the exercise of other functions. Themost important elements in this electoral college were thedelegates from the municipal councils, and by giving one delegateto each, to Paris just as to the smallest commune in France, theNational Assembly intended to counterbalance the power ofnumbers, which governed the elections for the Chamber ofDeputies, and, at the same time, to give a preponderance to thecountry districts. The 75 irremovable senators were anotherprecaution against the danger from violent waves of publicopinion. The executive power was entrusted to a president,elected for seven years (as Marshal MacMahon had been in 1873),by the Chamber and the Senate, combined into a single bodyunder the name of National Assembly. He is always eligiblefor re-election, and is irresponsible except in case of high treason.His powers are of the widest, including the initiative in legislationjointly with the two chambers, the appointment to all civil andmilitary offices, the disposition, and, if he wish it, the leadershipof the armed forces, the right of pardon, the right of negotiatingtreaties with foreign powers, and, in principle, of ratifying themon his own authority, the consent of the two chambers beingrequired only in certain cases defined by the constitution. Thenomination of conseillers d’état for ordinary service, whom theNational Assembly had made elective, as in 1848, and electeditself, was restored to the president of the Republic, togetherwith the right of dismissing them. But these powers he canonly exercise through the medium of a ministry, politically andjointly responsible to the chambers, and forming a council,over which the president usually presides.
The French Republic is essentially a parliamentary republic.The right of dissolving the Chamber of Deputies before theexpiration of its term of office belongs to the president, but inorder to do so he must have, besides a ministry which will takethe responsibility for it, the preliminary sanction of the Senate.The Senate is at the same time a high court of justice, which canjudge the president of the Republic and ministers accused ofcrimes committed by them in the exercise of their functions;in these two cases the prosecution is instituted by the Chamberof Deputies. The Senate can also be called upon to judge anyperson accused of an attempt upon the safety of the state, whois then seized by a decree of the president of the Republic,drawn up in the council of ministers. Possible revision of theconstitution is provided for very simply: it has to be proposedas a law, and for its acceptance a resolution passed by eachchamber separately, by an absolute majority, is necessary.The revision is then carried out by the Senate and the Chamber ofDeputies to form a National Assembly. There have been tworevisions since 1875. The first time, in 1879, it was simply aquestion of transferring the seat of the government and of thechambers back to Paris from Versailles, where it had been fixedby one of the constitutional laws. The second time, in 1884,more fundamental modifications were required. The mostimportant point was to change the composition and electionof the Senate. With a view to this, the new constitutional lawof the 14th of August 1884 abolished the constitutional characterof a certain number of articles of the law of the 24th of February1875, thus making it possible to modify them by an ordinarylaw. This took place in the same year; the 75 senators for lifewere suppressed for the future by a process of extinction, andtheir seats divided among the most populous departments.Further, in the electoral college which elects the senators, therewas allotted to the municipal councils a number of delegatesproportionate to the number of members of the councils, whichdepends on the importance of the commune. The law of the14th of August 1884 also modified the constitution in anotherimportant respect. The law of the 25th of February 1875 hadadmitted the possibility not only of a partial, but even of a totalrevision, which could affect and even change the form of thestate. The law of the 14th of August 1884, however, declaredthat no proposition for a revision could be accepted whichaimed at changing the republican form of government. Thecomposition of the Chamber of Deputies was not fixed by theconstitution, and consequently admitted more easily of variation.Since 1871 the mode of election has oscillated between the scrutinde liste for the departments and the scrutin uninominal for thearrondissem*nts. The organic law of the 30th of November 1875had established the latter system; in 1885 the scrutin de listewas established by law, but in 1889 the scrutin d’arrondissem*ntwas restored; and in this same year, on account of the ambitionsof General Boulanger and the suggestion which was made for asort of plebiscite in his favour, was passed the law on pluralcandidatures, which forbids anyone to become a candidate forthe Chamber of Deputies in more than one district at a time.
The system established by the constitution of 1875 has workedexcellently in some of its departments; for instance, the mode ofelecting the president of the Republic. Between 1875and 1906 there were seven elections, sometimes undertragic or very difficult conditions; the election hasWorking of the constitution.always taken place without delay or obstruction,and the choice has been of the best. The high court of justice,which has twice been called into requisition, in 1889 and in1899–1900, has acted as an efficient check, in spite of the difficultiesconfronting such a tribunal when feeling runs high.Parliamentary government in the form set up by the constitution,besides the criticism to which this system is open in all countrieswhere it is established, even in England, met with specialdifficulties in France. In the first place, the useful but rathersecondary rôle assigned to the president of the Republic has byno means satisfied all those who have occupied this high office.Two presidents have resigned on the ground that their powerswere insufficient. Another, even after re-election, had towithdraw in face of the opposition of the two chambers, beingno longer able to obtain a parliamentary ministry. It is difficult,however, to accept the theory of an eminent American politicalwriter, Mr John W. Burgess,[11] that in order to attain to a positionof stable equilibrium, the French Republic ought to adopt thepresidential system of the United States. In France this sharpdivision between the two powers has never been observed exceptin those periods when the representative assemblies were powerless,under the First and Second Empires. It is true that theapparent multiplicity of parties and their lack of discipline,together with the French procedure of interpellations and theorders of the day by which they are concluded, make the formationof hom*ogeneous and lasting cabinets difficult; but sincethe end of the 19th century there has been great progress in thisrespect. Another difficulty arose in 1896. The Senate, appealingto the letter of the constitution and relying on its elective character,claimed the right of forcing a ministry to resign by its vote,in the same way as the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate wasvictorious in the struggle, and forced the ministry presided overby M. Léon Bourgeois to resign; but the precedent is notdecisive, for in order to gain its ends the Senate had recourse tothe means of refusing to sanction the taxes, declining to considerthe proposals for the supplies necessary for the Madagascarexpedition so long as the ministry which it was attacking wasin existence. The weakest point in the French parliamentaryorganism is perhaps the right of dissolution. It is difficult ofapplication, for the reason that the president must obtain thepreliminary consent of the Senate before exercising it; moreover,this valuable right has been discredited by its abuse byMarshal MacMahon in the campaign of the 16th of May 1877,on which occasion he exercised his right of dissolution againsta chamber, the moderate but decidedly republican majority inwhich he was re-elected by the country.
The legislative reforms carried out under the Third Republicare very numerous. As to public law, it is only possible tomention here those of a really organic character,chief among which are those which safeguard andregulate the exercise of the liberties of the individual.Reforms under the Third Republic.The law of the 30th of June 1881, modified in 1901,established the right of holding meetings. Public meetings,whether for ordinary or electoral purposes, may be held withoutpreliminary authorization; the law of 1881 prescribed a declarationmade by a certain number of citizens enjoying full civiland political rights, which is now remitted. The only reallyrestrictive provision is that which does not allow them to beheld in the public highway, but only in an enclosed space. Butthis is made necessary by the customs of France. The law of the21st of July 1881 on the press is one of the most liberal in theworld. By it all offences committed by any kind of publicationare submitted to a jury; the punishment for the mere expressionof obnoxious opinions is abolished, the only punishment beingfor slander, libel, defamation, inciting to crime, and in certaincases the publication of false news. The law of the 1st of July1901 established in France the right of forming associations.It recognizes the legality of all associations strictly so called,the objects of which are not contrary to law or to public orderor morality. On condition of a simple declaration to the administrativeauthority, it grants them a civil status in a wide senseof the term. Religious congregations, on the contrary, whichThe religious congregations.are not authorized by a law, are forbidden by this law.This was not a new principle, but the traditional rulein France both before and after the Revolution,except that under certain governments authorizationby decree had sufficed. As a matter of fact the unauthorizedcongregations had been tolerated for a long time, although onvarious occasions, and especially in 1881, their partial dissolutionhad been proclaimed by decrees. The law of 1901 dissolvedthem all, and made it an offence to belong to such a congregation.The members of unauthorized congregations, and later, in 1904,even those of the authorized congregations, were disqualifiedfrom teaching in any kind of establishment. The liberty ofprimary education was confirmed and reorganized by the lawof the 30th of October 1886, which simply deprived the clergyof the privileges granted them by the law of 1850, though thelatter remains in force with regard to the liberty of secondaryeducation. A law passed by the National Assembly (July 12,1875) established the liberty of higher education. It even wentEducation.beyond this, for it granted to students in privatefacultés who aspired to state degrees the right of beingexamined before a board composed partly of private and partlyof state professors. The law of the 18th of March 1880 abolishedthis privilege. Another law, that of the 22nd of March 1882,made primary education obligatory, though allowing parents tosend their children either to private schools or to those of thestate; the law of the 16th of June 1881 established secular(laïque) education in the case of the latter. The Third Republicalso organized secondary education for girls in lycées or specialcolleges (collèges de fille). Finally, a law of the 10th of July1896 dealing with higher education and the faculties of the statereorganized the universities, which form distinct bodies, enjoyinga fairly wide autonomy. A law of the 19th of December 1905,abrogating that of the 18th Germinal in the year X., whichSeparation of church and state.had sanctioned the Concordat, proclaimed the separationof the church from the state. It is based on theprinciple of the secular state (état laïque) which recognizesno form of religion, though respecting the rightof every citizen to worship according to his beliefs, and it aimedat organizing associations of citizens, the object of which was tocollect the funds and acquire the property necessary for themaintenance of worship, under the form of associations cultuelles,differing in certain respects from the associations sanctionedby the law of the 1st of July 1901, but having a wider scope. Italso handed over to these regularly formed associations the propertyof the ecclesiastical establishments formerly in existence,while taking precautions to ensure their proper application,and allowed the associations the free use of the churches andplaces of worship belonging to the state, the departments or thecommunes. If no association cultuelle was founded in a parish,the property of the former fabrique should devolve to the commune.But this law was condemned by the papacy, as contraryto the church hierarchy; and almost nowhere were associationscultuelles formed, except by Protestants and Jews, who compliedwith the law. After many incidents, but no church having beenclosed, a new law of the 2nd of January 1907 was enacted.It permits the public exercise of any cult, by means of ordinaryassociations regulated by the law of the 1st of July 1901, and evenof public meetings summoned by individuals. Failing all associations,either cultuelles or others, churches, with their ornamentsand furniture, are left to the disposition of the faithful andministers, for the purpose of exercising the cult; and, on certainconditions, the long use of them can be granted as a free gift toministers of the cult.
Among the organic laws concerning administrative affairsthere are two of primary importance; that of the 10th of August 1871, on the conseils généraux, considerably increasedthe powers and independence of these elective bodies,which have become important deliberative assemblies,Administrative changes.their sessions being held in public. The law of 1871created a new administrative organ for the departments,the commission départmentale, elected by the council-generalof the department from among its own members andassociated with the administration of the prefect. The other lawis the municipal law of the 5th of April 1884, which effected awidespread decentralization; the maires and their adjoints areelected by the municipal council.
The war of 1870–71 necessarily led to a modification of themilitary organization. The law of the 25th of July 1872 establishedthe principle of compulsory service for all, first inthe standing army, the period of service in which wasfixed at five years, then in the reserve, and finally inReorganization
of the army.the territorial army. But the application of this principlewas by no means absolute, only holding good in time of war.Each annual class was divided into two parts, by means of drawinglots, and in time of peace one of these parts had only a year ofservice with the active army. The previous exemptions, basedeither on the position of supporter of the family (as in the case ofthe son of a widow or aged father, &c.) or on equivalent servicesrendered to the state (as in the case of young ecclesiastics ormembers of the teaching profession), were preserved, but onlyheld good for service in the active army in times of peace.Finally, the system of conditional engagement for a year allowedyoung men, for the purposes of study or apprenticeship to theirprofession, only to serve a year with the active army in time ofpeace. By this means it was sought to combine the advantages ofan army of veterans with those of a numerous and truly nationalarmy. But the conditional volunteering (volontariat conditionnel)for a year was open to too great a number of people, and sobrought the system into discredit. As those who profited byit had to be clothed and maintained at their own expense, andthe sum which they had to furnish for this purpose was generallyfixed at 1500 francs, it came to be considered the privilege ofthose who could pay this sum. A new law of the 15th of July 1889lessened the difference between the two terms which it attemptedto reconcile. It reduced the term of service in the active armyto three years, and the exemptions, which were still preserved,merely reduced the period to a year in times of peace. The samereduction was also granted to those who were really pursuingimportant scientific, technical or professional studies; the systemwas so strict on this point that the number of those who profitedby those exemptions did not amount to 2000 in a year. This wasa compromise between two opposing principles; the democraticprinciple of equality, being the stronger, was bound to triumph.The law of the 21st of March 1905 reduced the term of servicein the active army to two years, but made it equal for all, admittingof no exemption, but only certain facilities as to the age atwhich it had to be accomplished.
In 1883 the judicial personnel was reorganized and reducedin number. With the exception of a few modifications the mainlines of judicial organization remained the same.In 1879 the conseil d’état was also reorganized. Thewhole fabric of administrative jurisdiction was carefullyJustice and taxation.organized, and almost entirely separated from theactive administration.
The system of taxation has remained essentially unaltered;we may notice, however, the laws of 1897, 1898 and 1900, whichabolished or lessened the duties on so called hygienic drinks(wine, beer, cider), and the financial law of 1901, which rearrangedand increased the transfer fees, and established a system ofprogressive taxation in the case of succession dues.
The labour laws, which generally partook of the natureboth of public and of private law, are a sign of our times. Underthe Third Republic they have been numerous, themost notable being: the law of the 21st of March1884 on professional syndicates, which introducedLabour legislation.the liberty of association in matters of this kindbefore it became part of the common law (see Trade Unions);the law of the 9th of April 1898 on the liability for accidentsincurred during work, and those which have completed it;that of the 22nd of December 1892 on conciliation and arbitrationin the case of collective disputes between employers and workmen;that of the 29th of June 1893 on the hygiene and safeguardingof workers in industrial establishments, and the laws whichregulate the work of children and women in factories; finally,that of the 15th of July 1893 on free medical attendance (seeLabour Legislation).
As to criminal law, there have been more than fifty enactments,mostly involving important modifications, due to more scientificideas of punishment, so that we may say that it hasbeen almost entirely recast since the establishmentof the Third Republic. The separate system applied inCriminal law.cases of preventive detention and imprisonment for shortperiods; liberation before the expiry of the term of sentence,subject to the condition that no fresh offence shall be committedwithin a given time; transportation to the colonies of habitualoffenders; the remission of the penalty in the case of firstoffenders, and the lapsing of the penalty when a certain timehas gone by without a fresh condemnation; greater facilitiesfor the rehabilitation of condemned persons, which now becamesimply a matter for the courts, and occurred as a matter ofcourse at the end of a certain time; such were the chief resultsof this legislation. Finally, the law of the 8th of December 1897completely altered the form of the preliminary examinationbefore the juge d’instruction, which had been the weakest pointin the French criminal procedure, though it was still held inprivate; the new law made this examination really a hearingof both sides, and made the appearance of counsel for the defencepractically compulsory.
As to private law, both civil and commercial, we couldenumerate between 1871 and 1906 more than a hundred lawswhich have modified it, sometimes profoundly, and have forthe most part done very useful work without attracting muchattention. They are generally examined and drawn up bycommissions of competent men, and pass both chambers almostwithout discussion. There have, however, been a few whicharoused public interest and even deep feeling. Firstly, therewas the law of the 27th of July 1884, and those which completedit; this law re-established divorce, which had been abolishedsince 1816, but only permitted it for certain definite causesdetermined by law. On the other hand, the law of the 6th ofFebruary 1893 increased the liberty and independence of awoman who was simply judicially separated, in order toencourage separation, as opposed to divorce, when the conditionsallowed it. The law of the 25th of March 1896 on the successionof illegitimate children, who were recognized by the parents,treated them not in the same way as legitimate children, butgave them the title of heirs in the succession of their father andmother, together with much greater rights than they hadpossessed under the Code Civil. The law of the 24th of July 1899,on the protection of children who are ill-treated or morallyneglected, also modified some of the provisions of the lawas applied to the family, with a view to greater justice andhumanity. Finally, on the occasion of the centenary of theCode Civil (see Code Napoléon), a commission, composedof members of the chambers, magistrates, professors of law,lawyers, political writers, and even novelists and dramaticauthors, was given the task of revising the whole structure ofthe code.
See generally Adhémar Esmein, Cours élémentaire d’histoire dudroit français (6th ed., 1906); J. Brissand, Cours d’histoire généraledu droit français public et privé (1904); Ernest Glasson, Histoire dudroit et des institutions en France (1887–1904); Paul Viollet, Histoiredes institutions politiques et administratives de la France (3rd ed.,1903); Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques del’ancienne France; Jacques Flach, Les Origines de l’ancienne France(1875–1889); Achille Luchaire, Histoire des institutions monarchiquesde la France sous les premiers Capétiens (2nd ed., 1900); HippolyteTaine, Les Origines de la France contemporaine (1878–1894); AdhémarEsmein, Eléments de droit constitutionnel français et comparé (4th ed.,1906); Léon Duguit et Henry Monnier, Les Constitutions et les principaleslois politiques de la France depuis 1789 (1898).(J. P. E.)
- ↑ St Eligius, bishop of Noyon, apostle of the Belgians and Frisians(d. 659?).
- ↑ The assurement (assecuratio, assecuramentum) differed from thetruce, which was a suspension of hostilities by mutual consent,in so far as it was a peace forced by judicial authority on one of theparties at the request of the other. The party desiring protectionapplied for the assurement, either before or during hostilities, to anyroyal, seigniorial or communal judge, who thereupon cited the otherparty to appear and take an oath that he would assure the person,property and dependents of his adversary (qu’il l’assurera, elle et lessiens). This custom, which became common in the 13th century,of course depended for its effectiveness on the degree of respectinspired in the feudal nobles by the courts. It was difficult, forinstance, to refuse or to violate an assurement imposed by a royalbailli or by the parlement itself. See A. Luchaire, Manuel desinstitutions françaises (Paris, 1892), p. 233.—W. A. P.
- ↑ Earl of Richmond; afterwards Arthur, duke of Brittany (q.v.).
- ↑ Olivier de Serres, sieur de Pradel, spent most of his life on hismodel farm at Pradel. In 1599 he dedicated a pamphlet on thecultivation of silk to Henry IV., and in 1600 published his Théâtred’agriculture et ménage des champs, which passed through nineteeneditions up to 1675.
- ↑ Ferdinand is reported to have said: “Le capucin m’a désarméavec son scapulaire et a mis dans capuchon six bonnets électoraux.”
- ↑ Jean Orry Louis Orry de Fulvy (1703–1751), counsel to theparlement in 1723, intendant of finances in 1737, founded at Vincennesthe manufactory of porcelain which was bought in 1750 by thefarmers general and transferred to Sèvres.
- ↑ Louis Robert Hippolyte de Bréhan, comte de Plélo (1699–1734),a Breton by birth, originally a soldier, was at the time of the siegeof Danzig French ambassador to Denmark. Enraged at the returnto Copenhagen, without having done anything, of the French forcesent to help Stanislaus, he himself led it back to Danzig and fell in anattack on the Russians on the 27th of May 1734. Plélo was a poetof considerable charm, and well-read both in science and literature.
See Marquis de Bréhan, Le Comte de Plélo (Nantes, 1874); R.Rathery, Le Comte de Plélo (Paris, 1876); and P. Boyé, StanislausLeszczynski et le troisième traité de Vienne (Paris, 1898).
- ↑ Charles Laure Hugues Théobald, duc de Choiseul-Praslin (1805–1847),was deputy in 1839, created a peer of France in 1840. Hehad married a daughter of General Sebastiani, with whom he livedon good terms till 1840, when he entered into open relations withhis children’s governess. The duch*ess threatened a separation;and the duke consented to send his mistress out of the house, butdid not cease to correspond with and visit her. On the 18th ofAugust 1847 the duch*ess was found stabbed to death, with morethan thirty wounds, in her room. The duke was arrested on the20th and imprisoned in the Luxembourg, where he died of poison,self-administered on the 24th. It was, however, popularly believedthat the government had smuggled him out of the country and thathe was living under a feigned name in England.
- ↑ T. T. de Martens, Recueil des traités, &c., xii. 248.
- ↑ In the 14th volume of his L’Empire libéral (1909) M. ÉmileOllivier gives a detailed and illuminating account of the events thatled up to the war. He indignantly denies that he ever said that hecontemplated it “with a light heart,” and says that he disapprovedof Gramont’s demand for “guarantees,” to which he was not privy.His object is to prove that France was entrapped by Bismarck into aposition in which she was bound in honour to declare war. (Ed.)
- ↑ Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law (Boston,1896).
