Nearly the same may be said of the geographical relations between France and Spain. The long wars between those countries have added to France a large part of the outlying dominions of Spain; but they have not greatly affected the boundaries of the two countries themselves. ♦Roussillon, its shiftings.♦ The only important exception is the county of Roussillon, the land which Aragon kept on the north side of the mountain range. ♦Finally becomes French. 1659.♦ United to France by Lewis the Eleventh, given back by Charles the Eighth, it was finally annexed to France by the Peace of the Pyrenees. Towards the other end of the mountain frontier, a small portion of Spanish territory has been annexed to France, perhaps quite unconsciously. ♦Navarre north of the Pyrenees.♦ The old kingdom of Navarre, though it lay chiefly south of the Pyrenees, contained a small territory to the north. ♦Union of France and Navarre. 1589.♦ The accidents of female succession had given Navarre to more than one King of France, and in the person of Henry the Fourth the crown of France passed to a King of Navarre who held only the part of his kingdom north of the Pyrenees. This little piece of Spain within the borders of Gaul was thus united with France. ♦Protectorate of Andorra.♦ On the other hand, the Kings of France, as successors of the Counts of Foix, and the other rulers of France after them, have held, not any dominion but certain rights as advocates or protectors, over the small commonwealth of Andorra on the Spanish side of the mountains.
♦Advance at the expense of the Imperial kingdoms.♦
Of far greater importance is the steady acquisition of territory by France at the expense of the Imperial kingdoms, and of the modern states by which those kingdoms are represented. ♦Burgundy.
1310-1860.♦ In the case of Burgundy, French annexation has taken the form of a gradual swallowing up of nearly the whole kingdom, a process which has been spread over more than five hundred years, from the annexation of Lyons by Philip the Fair to the last annexation of Savoy in our own day. ♦Annexations from Germany. 1552-1811.♦ The advance at the expense of the German kingdom did not begin till the greater part of the Burgundian kingdom was already swallowed up. ♦Late beginning of annexations from Germany.♦ The north-eastern frontier of the Western Kingdom changed but little from the accession of the Parisian house in the tenth century till the growth of the Dukes of Burgundy in the fifteenth. After Lotharingia finally became a part of the Eastern Kingdom, there was no doubt that the homage of Flanders was due to France, no doubt that the homage of the states which had formed the Lower Lotharingia was due to the Empire. The frontier towards the Upper Lotharingia and the Burgundian county also remained untouched. The Saône remained a boundary stream long after the Rhone had ceased to be one. ♦Effect of the Burgundian acquisitions of France;♦ It was on this latter river that the great Burgundian annexations of France began, annexations which gave France a wholly new European position.[22] ♦of the Dauphiny;
of Provence.♦ The acquisition of the Dauphiny of Viennois made France the immediate neighbour of Italy; the acquisition of Provence at once strengthened this last position and more than doubled her Mediterranean coast. ♦Relations with the Swiss.♦ Add to this that, though France and the Confederate territory did not yet actually touch, yet the Burgundian wars and many other events in the latter half of the fifteenth century enabled France to establish a close connexion with the power which had grown up north of Lake Leman. France had thus become a great Mediterranean and Alpine power, ready to threaten Italy in the next generation. Later acquisitions within the old border of the Burgundian kingdom had a somewhat different character. ♦Annexations at the expense of Savoy;♦ Annexations at the expense of Savoy, even when geographically Burgundian, were annexations at the cost of a power which was beginning to be Italian rather than Burgundian. ♦of the County of Burgundy.♦ The annexation of the County of Burgundy goes rather with the Alsatian annexations. It was territory won at the cost of the Empire and of the House of Austria. ♦Middle character of the Burgundian lands.♦ But the lands between the Rhone, the Alps, and the sea, still kept, negatively at least, their middle character. They were lands which at least were neither German, French, nor Italian. ♦They become French.♦ The events of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ruled that this intermediate region should become French. And none of the acquisitions of France ever helped more towards the real growth of her power.
It was while the later stages of this process were going on that the French kings added to their dominions the Aquitanian lands on one side and the Burgundian duchy on the other. The acquisition of Aquitaine has, besides its other characters, a third aspect which closely connects it with the annexations between the Rhone and the Alps. ♦Effect of French annexations on the Langue d’oc.♦ The strife between Northern and Southern Gaul, between the tongue of oil and the tongue of oc, now came to an end. Had the chief power in Gaul settled somewhere in Burgundy or Aquitaine, the tongue of oil might now pass for a patois of the tongue of oc. Had French dominion in Italy begun as soon and lasted as permanently as French dominion in Burgundy and Aquitaine, the tongue of si, as well as the tongue of oc, might now pass for a patois of the tongue of oil. But now it was settled that French, not Provençal, was to be the ruling speech of Gaul. The lands of the Southern speech which escaped were almost wholly portions of the dominions of other powers. There was no longer any separate state wholly of that speech, except the little principality of Orange. ♦Extinction of the Provençal speech and nation.♦ The work which the French kings had now ended amounted to little short of the extinction of an European nation. A tongue, once of at least equal dignity with the tongue of Paris and Tours, has sunk from the rank of a national language to the rank of a provincial dialect.
♦Italian conquests of France.♦
The next great conquests of France were made on Italian soil, but they are conquests which do not greatly concern geography. This distinguishes the relations of France towards Italy from her relations towards Burgundy. France has constantly interfered in Italian affairs; she has at various times held large Italian territories, and brought all Italy under French influence. But France has never permanently kept any large amount of Italian territory. The French possession of Naples and Milan was only temporary. ♦Not strictly extensions of France.♦ And, if it had been lasting, the possession of these isolated territories by the French king could hardly have been looked on as an extension of the actual French frontier. Those lands could never have been incorporated with France in the same way in which other French conquests had been. Their retention would in truth have given the later history of France quite a different character, a character more like that which actually belonged to Spain. The long occupation of Savoyard territory on both sides of the Alps[23] would, if it had lasted, have been a real extension of the French kingdom. But down to our own day, while the lands won by France from the Burgundian kingdom form a large proportion of the whole French territory, French acquisitions from Italy hardly go beyond the island of Corsica and the insignificant district of Mentone.
♦Annexations at the expense of Germany.♦
The great annexations of France at the expense of the German kingdom and the lands more closely connected with it begin in the middle of the sixteenth century. ♦Annexation of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. 1552.♦ The first great advance was the practical annexation of the three Lotharingian bishoprics, though their separation from the Empire was not formally acknowledged till the Peace of Westfalia. ♦Effect of isolated conquests.♦ This kind of conquest can hardly fail to lead to other conquests. France now held certain patches of territory which lay detached from one another and from the main body of the kingdom. Yet the rounding off of the frontier was not the next step taken in this direction. The cause was most likely the close connexion which for somewhile existed between the ruling houses of France and Lorraine.
Before the next French advance on German ground, the frontier had been extended in other directions. ♦Recovery of Calais, 1558;
of Boulogne, 1550.♦ Almost at the same time as the acquisition of the Three Bishoprics, Calais was won back from England—the short English possession of Boulogne had already come to an end. ♦Surrender of Saluzzo and annexation of Bresse, Bugey, and Gex.♦ The first year of the sixteenth century saw the surrender of Saluzzo, in exchange for Bresse, Bugey, and Gex. ♦Occupation of Pinerolo. 1630-1696.♦ Thirty years later came the renewed occupation of Italian territory at Pinerolo and other points in Piedmont, which lasted till nearly the end of the seventeenth century.
The next great advance was the work of the Thirty Years’ War and of the war with Spain which went on for eleven years longer. ♦The Bishoprics surrendered by the Empire.♦ Now came the legal cession of the Bishoprics and the further acquisition of the Alsatian dominions and rights of the House of Austria. The irregularities of the frontier, and the temptation to round off its angles, were increased tenfold. ♦French acquisitions in Elsass. 1648.♦ France received another and larger isolated territory lying to the east both of her earlier conquests and of the independent lands which surrounded them. A part of her dominion, itself sprinkled with isolated towns and districts which did not belong to her dominion, stretched out without any connexion into the middle of the Empire. The Duchy of Lorraine, dotted over by the French lands of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, lay between the old French land of Champagne and the new French land of Elsass or Alsace. ♦Breisach.♦ And while France was allowed, by the possession of Breisach, to establish herself at one point on the right bank of the Rhine, her new territory on the left bank was broken up by the continued independence of Strassburg and the other Alsatian towns and districts which were still left to the Empire. ♦France reaches the Rhine.♦ Such a frontier could hardly be lasting; now that France had reached and even crossed the Rhine, the annexation of the outlying Imperial lands to the west of that river was sure to follow.