I.—AN OUTLINE OF FRENCH HISTORY.
From “The People’s Commentary”—and paragraphed.
1. Gallia was the name under which France was designated by the Romans, who knew little of the country till the time of Cæsar, when it was occupied by the Aquitani, Celtæ, and Belgæ.
2. Under Augustus, Gaul was divided into four provinces, which, under subsequent emperors, were dismembered, and subdivided into seventeen.
3. In the fifth century it fell completely under the power of the Visigoths, Burgundians, and Franks.
4. In 486 A. D., Clovis, a chief of the Salian Franks, raised himself to supreme power in the north. His dynasty, known as the Merovingian, ended in the person of Childeric III., who was deposed 752 A. D.
5. The accession of Pepin gave new vigor to the monarchy, which, under his son and successor, Charlemagne,[A] crowned Emperor in the west in 800 (768-814), rose to the rank of the most powerful empire of the west. With him, however, this vast fabric of power crumbled to pieces, and his weak descendants completed the ruin of the Frankish Empire by the dismemberment of its various parts among the younger branches of the Carlovingian family.
6. On the death of Louis V. the Carlovingian dynasty was replaced by that of Hugues, Count of Paris, whose son, Hugues Capet, was elected king by the army, and consecrated at Rheims 987 A. D.
7. At this period the greater part of France was held by almost independent lords. Louis Le Gros (1108-1137) was the first ruler who succeeded in combining the whole under his scepter. He promoted the establishment of the feudal system, abolished serfdom on his own estates, secured corporate rights to the cities under his jurisdiction, gave efficiency to the central authority of the Crown, carried on a war against Henry I., of England; and when the latter allied himself with the Emperor Henry V., of Germany, against France, he brought into the field an army of 200,000 men.
MAP OF FRANCE
8. The Oriflamme is said to have been borne aloft for the first time on this occasion as the national standard.
9. Louis VII. (1137-’80) was almost incessantly engaged in war with Henry II., of England.
10. His son and successor, Philippe Auguste (1180-1223), recovered Normandy, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou from John of England. He took an active personal share in the crusades. Philippe was the first to levy a tax for the maintenance of the standing army.
11. Many noble institutions date their origin from this reign, as the University of Paris, the Louvre, etc.
12. Louis IX. effected many modifications in the fiscal department, and, before his departure for the crusades, secured the rights of the Gallican church by special statute, in order to counteract the constantly increasing assumptions of the Papal power.
13. Philippe IV. (1285-1314), surnamed Le Bel, acquired Navarre, Champagne, and Brie by marriage.
14. Charles IV. (Le Bel, 1321-’28) was the last direct descendant of the Capetian line.
15. Philippe VI., the first of the House of Valois (1328-’50), succeeded in right of the Salic law. His reign, and those of his successors, Jean (1350-’64) and Charles V. (Le Sage, 1364-’80), were disturbed by constant wars with Edward III., of England. Hostilities began in 1339; in 1346 the Battle of Crécy was fought; at the battle of Poitiers (1356) Jean was made captive; and before the final close, after the death of Edward (1377), the state was reduced to bankruptcy.
16. During the regency for the minor, Charles VI. (Le Bien Aime, 1380-1422), the war was renewed with increased vigor on the part of the English nation.
17. The signal victory won by the English at Agincourt in 1415 aided Henry in his attempts upon the throne. But the extraordinary influence exercised over her countrymen by Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, aided in bringing about a thorough reaction, and, after a period of murder, rapine and anarchy, Charles VII. (Le Victorieux, 1422-’61) was crowned at Rheims.
18. His successor, Louis XI. (1461-’83), succeeded in recovering for the Crown the territories of Maine, Anjou and Provence, while he made himself master of some portions of the territories of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.
19. Charles VIII. (1483-’98), by his marriage with Anne of Brittany, secured that powerful state. With him ended the direct male succession of the House of Valois.
20. Louis XII. (1498-1515), Le Père Du Peuple, was the only representative of the Valois-Orleans family; his successor, Francis I. (1547), was of the Valois-Angoulême branch.
21. The defeat of Francis at the battle of Pavia, in 1525, and his subsequent imprisonment at Madrid, threw the affairs of the nation into the greatest disorder.
22. In the reign of Henri II. began the persecutions of the Protestants. Henri III. (1574-’89) was the last of this branch of the Valois. The massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572) was perpetrated under the direction of the Queen-mother, Catherine de’ Medici, and the confederation of the league, at the head of which were the Guises. The wars of the league, which were carried by the latter against the Bourbon branches of the princes of the blood-royal, involved the whole nation in their vortex.
23. The succession of Henri IV., of Navarre (1589-1610), a Bourbon prince, descended from a younger son of St. Louis, allayed the fury of these religious wars, but his recantation of Protestantism in favor of Catholicism disappointed his own party.
24. During the minority of his son, Louis XIII. (1610-’43), Cardinal Richelieu, under the nominal regency of Marie de’ Medici, the Queen-mother, ruled with a firm hand. Cardinal Mazarin, under the regency of the Queen-mother, Anne of Austria, exerted nearly equal power for some time during the minority of Louis XIV. (1643-1715).
25. The wars of the Fronde, the misconduct of the Parliament, and the humbling of the nobility, gave rise to another civil war, but with the assumption of power by young Louis a new era commenced, and till near the close of his long reign the military successes of the French were most brilliant.
26. Louis XV. (1715-’75) succeeded to a heritage whose glory was tarnished, and whose stability was shaken to its very foundations during his reign.
27. The peace of Paris (1763), by which the greater portion of the colonial possessions of France were given up to England, terminated an inglorious war, in which the French had expended 1350 millions of francs.
28. In 1774 Louis XVI., a well-meaning, weak prince, succeeded to the throne. The American war of freedom had disseminated Republican ideas among the lower orders, while the Assembly of the notables had discussed and made known to all classes the incapacity of the government and the wanton prodigality of the court. The nobles and the tiers état were alike clamorous for a meeting of the states; the former wishing to impose new taxes on the nation, and the latter determined to inaugurate a thorough and systematic reform.
29. After much opposition on the part of the king and court, the États Généraux, which had not met since 1614, assembled at Versailles on the 25th of May, 1789. The resistance made by Louis and his advisers to the reasonable demands of the deputies on the 17th of June, 1789, led to the constitution of the National Assembly. The consequence was the outbreak of insurrectionary movements at Paris, where blood was shed on the 12th of July. On the following day the National Guard was convoked; and on the fourteenth the people took possession of the Bastille. The royal princes and all the nobles who could escape, sought safety in flight.
30. The royal family, having attempted in vain to follow their example, tried to conciliate the people by the feigned assumption of Republican sentiment; but on the 5th of October the rabble, followed by numbers of the National Guard, attacked Versailles, and compelled the king and his family to remove to Paris, whither the Assembly also moved.
31. A war with Austria was begun in April, 1792, and the defeat of the French was visited on Louis, who was confined in August with his family in the temple. In December the king was brought to trial. On the 20th of January, 1793, sentence of death was passed on him, and on the following day he was beheaded.
32. Marie Antoinette, the widowed Queen, was guillotined; the Dauphin and his surviving relatives suffered every indignity that malignity could devise. A reign of blood and terror succeeded.
33. The brilliant exploits of the young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, in Italy, turned men’s thoughts to other channels.
34. In 1795 a general amnesty was declared, peace was concluded with Prussia and Spain, and the war was carried on with double vigor against Austria.
35. The revolution had reached a turning point. A Directory was formed to administer the government, which was now conducted in a spirit of order and conciliation.
36. In 1797 Bonaparte and his brother-commanders were omnipotent in Italy. Austria was compelled to give up Belgium, accede to peace on any terms, and recognize the Cis-Alpine republic.
37. Under the pretext of attacking England, a fleet of 400 ships and an army of 36,000 picked men were equipped; their destination proved, however, to be Egypt, whither the Directory sent Bonaparte; but the young general resigned the command to Kleber, landed in France in 1799, and at once succeeded in supplanting the Directory, and securing his own nomination as Consul.
38. In 1800 a new constitution was promulgated, which vested the sole executive power in Bonaparte. Having resumed his military duties, he marched an army over the Alps, attacked the Austrians unawares, and decided the fate of Italy by his victory at Marengo.
39. In 1804, on an appeal of universal suffrage to the nation, Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor. By his marriage with the archduchess Maria Louisa, daughter of the emperor of Germany, Napoleon seemed to have given to his throne the prestige of birth, which alone it had lacked. The disastrous Russian campaign, in which his noble army was lost amid the rigors of a northern winter, was soon followed by the falling away of his allies and feudatories.
40. Napoleon himself was still victorious wherever he appeared in person, but his generals were beaten in numerous engagements; and the great defeat of Leipsic compelled the French to retreat beyond the Rhine. The Swedes brought reinforcements to swell the ranks of his enemies on the east frontier, while the English pressed on from the west; Paris, in the absence of the emperor, capitulated after a short resistance, March 30, 1814. Napoleon retired to the island of Elba.
41. On the 2d of May, Louis XVIII. (the brother of Louis XVI.) made his entry into Paris.
42. On the 1st of March, 1815, Napoleon left Elba, and landed in France. Crowds followed him; the soldiers flocked around his standard; the Bourbons fled, and he took possession of their lately deserted palaces. The news of his landing spread terror through Europe; and on the 25th of March a treaty of alliance was signed at Vienna between Austria, Russia, Prussia and England, and preparations at once made to put down the movement in his favor, and restore the Bourbon dynasty.
43. At first, the old prestige of success seemed to attend Napoleon; but on the 18th of June he was thoroughly defeated at Waterloo; and, having placed himself under the safeguard of the English, he was sent to the island of St. Helena.
44. In 1821 Napoleon breathed his last at St. Helena; and in 1824 Louis XVIII. died without direct heirs, and his brother, the duc d’Artois, succeeded as Charles X. The same ministerial incapacity, want of good faith, general discontent, and excessive priestly influence characterized his reign, which was abruptly brought to a close by the revolution of 1830, and the election to the throne of Louis Philippe, duke of Orleans, as king, by the will of the people.
45. Louis Philippe having abdicated (February 24, 1848), a republic was proclaimed, under a provisional government. Louis Napoleon was elected president of the Republic in December, 1848, but by the famous coup d’état of December 2, 1851, he violently set aside the Constitution, and assumed dictatorial powers; and a year after was raised, by the almost unanimous voice of the nation, to the dignity of Emperor, as Napoleon III.
46. The result of the appeal made to the nation in 1870, on the plea of securing their sanction for his policy, was not what he had anticipated. The course of events in the short but terrible Franco-German war of 1870-’71, electrified Europe by its unexpected character.
47. On September 2, 1870, Napoleon, with his army of 90,000 men, surrendered at Sedan. With the concurrence of Prussia the French nation next proceeded, by a general election of representatives, to provide for the exigencies of the country.
48. A republic was proclaimed, and the first national assembly met at Bordeaux in February, 1871. After receiving from the provisional government of defense the resignation of the powers confided to them in September, 1870, the Assembly undertook to organize the republican government, and nominated M. Thiers chief of the executive power of the state, with the title of President of the French Republic, but with the condition of responsibility to the National Assembly.
49. The ex-Emperor Napoleon died in 1872, at Chiselhurst, England, where he had resided with his family since his liberation in March, 1871.
50. In 1873 M. Thiers resigned the office of President of the French Republic, and was succeeded by Marshal MacMahon, who resigned in 1879, and was succeeded by M. Grèvy.