The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

♦The French in India.♦

Nearly the same course of things took place in the eastern world as in the western. In India neither English nor French colonized in any strict sense. But commercial settlements grew into dominion, or what seemed likely to become dominion: and in India, as in America, the temporary greatness of France came before the more lasting greatness of England. ♦1664.♦ The French East India Company began later than the English; but its steps towards dominion were for a long time faster. ♦Bourbon. 1657.♦ Before this the French had occupied the Isle of Bourbon, an important point on the road to India. ♦Factory at Surat. 1668.♦ The first French factory on the mainland was at Surat. ♦Pondicherry. 1672.♦ During the later years of the century various attempts at settlement were made; but no important or lasting acquisition was made, except that of Pondicherry. This has ever since remained a French possession, often lost in the course of warfare, but always restored at the next peace. ♦Chandernagore. 1676.♦ A little later France obtained Chandernagore in Bengal. ♦Isle of France. 1720.♦ In the next century the island of Mauritius, abandoned by the Dutch, became a French colony under the name of the Isle of France. Under Labourdonnais and Dupleix France gained for a moment a real Indian dominion. ♦Taking of Madras. 1746.♦ Madras was taken, and a large dominion was obtained on the eastern coast of India in the Carnatic and the Circars. ♦Restored. 1748.♦ But all hope of French supremacy in India came to an end in the later years of the Seven Years’ War. ♦Effects of the Peace of Paris. 1763.♦ France was confined to a few points which have not seriously threatened the eastern dominion of England.

§ 4. Acquisitions of France during the Revolutionary Wars.

Thus the French monarchy grew from the original Parisian duchy into a kingdom which spread north, south, east, and west, taking in all the fiefs of the West-Frankish kings, together with much which had belonged to the other kingdoms of the Empire. ♦Acquisitions in the Revolutionary Wars.♦ With the great French revolution began a series of acquisitions of territory on the part of France which are altogether unparalleled. ♦Different classes of annexations.♦ First of all, there were those small annexations of territory surrounded or nearly so by French territory, whose annexation was necessary if French territory was to be continuous. ♦Avignon.
Mülhausen.♦ Such were Avignon, Venaissin, the county of Montbeliard, the few points in Elsass which had escaped the reunions, with the Confederate city of Mülhausen. Avignon and Venaissin, and the surviving Alsatian fragments, were annexed to France before the time of warfare and conquest had begun. Mülhausen, as Confederate ground, was respected as long as Confederate ground was respected. ♦1796.♦ Montbeliard had been annexed already. ♦Geneva and Bischofbasel. 1801.♦ And with these we might be inclined to place the annexations of Geneva and of the Bishopric of Basel, lands which lay hardly less temptingly when the work of annexation had once begun. ♦Second zone;♦ And beyond these roundings off of the home estate lay a zone of territory which might easily be looked upon as being French soil wrongfully lost. ♦traditions of Gaul and the Rhine frontier.♦ When the Western Francia had made such great strides towards the dimensions of the Gaul of Cæsar, the inference was easily made that it ought to take in all that Gaul had once taken in. The conquest and incorporation of the Austrian Netherlands, of all Germany on the left bank of the Rhine, of Savoy and Nizza, thus became a matter of course. ♦Buonaparte’s feeling towards Switzerland.♦ That the Gaul of Cæsar was not fully completed by the complete incorporation of Switzerland, seems to have been owing to a personal tenderness for the Confederation on the part of Napoleon Buonaparte, who never incorporated with his dominions any part of the territory of the Thirteen Cantons. Otherwise, France under the Consulate might pass for a revival of the Transalpine Gaul of Roman geography. And there were other lands beyond the borders of Transalpine Gaul, which had formed part of Gaul in the earlier sense of the name, and whose annexation, when annexation had once begun, was hardly less wonderful than that of the lands within the Rhine and the Alps. ♦Piedmont, &c.♦ The incorporation of Piedmont and Genoa was not wonderful after the incorporation of Savoy. ♦Distinction between conquests under the Republic and under the ‘Empire.’♦ In short, the annexations of republican France are at least intelligible. They have a meaning; we can follow their purpose and object. They stand distinct from the wild schemes of universal conquest which mark the period of the ‘Empire.’

♦Example of Corsica.♦

Still the example of such schemes was given during the days of the old monarchy. There was nothing to suggest a French annexation of Corsica, any more than a French annexation of Cerigo. ♦Character of Buonaparte’s conquests.♦ Both were works of exactly the kind, works quite different from incorporating isolated scraps of Elsass or of the old Burgundy, from rounding off the frontier by Montbeliard, or even from advancing to the left bank of the Rhine. The shiftings of the map which took place during the ten years of the first French Empire, the divisions and the unions, the different relations of the conquered states, seem like several centuries of the onward march of the old Roman commonwealth crowded into a single day. ♦Dependent and incorporated lands.♦ In both cases we mark the distinction between lands which are merely dependent and lands which are fully incorporated. And in both cases the dependent relation is commonly a step towards full incorporation. All past history and tradition, all national feelings, all distinctions of race and language, were despised in building up the vast fabric of French dominion. Such a power was sure to break in pieces, even without any foreign attack, before its parts could possibly have been fused together. As it was, Buonaparte never professed to incorporate either Spain or the whole of Italy and Germany with his Empire. He was satisfied with leaving large parts either in the formally dependent relation, in the hands of puppet princes, or even in the hands of powers which he deemed too much weakened for further resistance. ♦Buonaparte’s treatment of Germany;♦ A large part of Germany was incorporated with France, another large part was under French protection or dependence, but a large part still remained in the hands of the native princes of Austria and Prussia. ♦of Italy.♦ Much of Italy was incorporated, and the rest was held, partly by the conqueror himself under another title, partly by a prince of his own house. This last was the case with Spain. ♦Division of Europe between France and Russia.♦ Till the final breach with Russia, the idea of Buonaparte’s dominion seems to have been that of a twofold division of Europe between Russia and himself, a kind of revival on a vaster scale of the Eastern and Western Empires. The western potentate was careful to keep everywhere a dominant influence within his own world; but whether the territory should be incorporated, made dependent, or granted out to his kinsfolk and favourites, depended in each case on the conqueror’s will.

♦Europe in 1811.♦

A glance at the map of Europe, as it stood at the beginning of 1811, will show how nearly this scheme was carried out. The kernel of the French Empire was France as it stood at the beginning of the Revolution, together with those conquests of the Republic which gave it the Rhine frontier from Basel to Nimwegen. Beyond these limits the former United Provinces, with the whole oceanic coast of Germany as far as the Elbe, and the cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck, were incorporated with France. France now stretched to the Baltic, and, as Holstein was now incorporated with Denmark, France and Denmark had a common frontier. The Confederation of the Rhine was a protected state, and the Kingdom of Prussia and the self-styled ‘Empire’ of Austria could practically hardly claim a higher place. Of the former Austrian possessions, those parts which had passed to Bavaria and to the kingdom of Italy formally stood in the dependent relation, and the so-called Illyrian provinces were actually incorporated with France. So were the Ionian islands yet further on. In Italy, the whole western side of the ancient kingdom, with Rome itself, was incorporated with France. North-eastern Italy formed a separate kingdom held by the ruler of France. Naples, like Spain, was a dependent kingdom. In northern Europe, Denmark and Sweden, like Prussia and Austria, could practically claim no higher place. And the new duchy of Warsaw and the new republic of Danzig carried French influence beyond the ancient borders of Germany.

♦Arrangements of 1814-1815.♦

Such was the extent of the French dominion when the power of Buonaparte was at its highest. At his fall all the great and distant conquests were given up. ♦The first class of annexations retained by France, the rest restored.♦ But those annexations which were necessary for the completion of France as she then stood were respected. The new Germanic body took back Köln, Trier, and Mainz, Worms and Speyer, but not Montbeliard or any part of Elsass. The new Swiss body received the Bishopric of Basel, Neufchâtel, Geneva, and Wallis. ♦Boundary of Savoy.♦ Savoy and Nizza went back to their own prince. But here a different frontier was drawn after the first and the second fall of Buonaparte. The earlier arrangement left Chambéry to France. The Pope again received Rome and his Italian dominions, but not his outlying Burgundian city of Avignon and county of Venaissin. The frontier of the new kingdom of the Netherlands, though traced at slightly different points by the two arrangements, differed in either case but little from the frontier of the Barrier Treaty. In short the France of the restored Bourbons was the France of the old Bourbons, enlarged by those small isolated scraps of foreign soil which were needed to make it continuous.