When, about 1000 B. C., the first Nordics crossed the lower Rhine they found the Mediterranean race in France everywhere overwhelmed by an Alpine population except in the south. Long before the time of Cæsar the Celtic language of these invaders had been imposed upon the entire population and the country had been saturated with Nordic blood, except in Aquitaine which seems to have retained until at least that date its Anaryan Iberian speech. These earliest Nordics in the west were known to the ancient world as Gauls. These Gauls, or “Celts,” as they were called by Cæsar, occupied in his day the centre of France. The actual racial complexion of this part of France was overwhelmingly Alpine then and is so now, but this population had been Celticized thoroughly by the Gauls, just as it was Latinized as completely at a later date by the Romans.
The northern third of France, that is above Paris, was inhabited in Cæsar’s time by the Belgæ, a Nordic people of the Cymric division of Celtic speech. They were largely of Teutonic blood and in fact should be regarded as the immediate forerunners of the Germans. They probably represent the early Teutons who had crossed from Sweden and adopted the Celtic speech of their Nordic kindred whom they found on the mainland. These Belgæ had followed the earlier Goidels across Germany into Britain and Gaul and were rapidly displacing their Nordic predecessors, who by this time were much weakened by mixture with the autochthones, when Rome appeared upon the scene and set a limit to their conquests by the Pax Romana.
The Belgæ of the north of France and the Low Countries were the bravest of the peoples of Gaul, according to Cæsar’s oft-quoted remark, but the claim of the modern Belgians to descent from this race is without basis and rests solely on the fact that the present kingdom of Belgium, which only became independent and assumed its proud name in 1831, occupies a small and relatively unimportant corner of the land of the Belgæ. The Flemings of Belgium are Nordic Franks speaking a Low German tongue and the Walloons are Alpines whose language is an archaic French.
The Belgæ and the Goidelic remnants of Nordic blood in the centre of Gaul taken together probably constituted only a small minority in blood of the population, but were everywhere the military and ruling classes. These Nordic elements were later reinforced by powerful Teutonic tribes, namely, Vandals, Visigoths, Alans, Saxons, Burgundians and, most important of all, the Franks of the lower Rhine, who founded modern France and made it for long centuries “la grande nation” of Christendom.
The Frankish dynasties long after Charlemagne were of purely Teutonic blood and the aristocratic land owning and military classes down to the great Revolution were very largely of this type, which by the time of the creation of the Frankish kingdom had incorporated all the other Nordic elements of old Roman Gaul, both Gaulish and Belgic.
The last invasion of Teutonic-speaking barbarians was that of the Danish Northmen, who were, of course, of unmixed Nordic blood and who conquered and settled Normandy in 911 A. D. No sooner had the barbarian invasions ceased than the ancient aboriginal blood strains, Mediterranean, Alpine and elements derived from Paleolithic times, began a slow and steady recovery. Step by step with the reappearance of these primitive and deep rooted stocks the Nordic element in France declined and with it the vigor of the nation. Even in Normandy the Alpines now tend to predominate and the French blonds are becoming more and more limited to the northeastern and eastern provinces.
The chief historic events of the last thousand years have hastened this process and the fact that the Nordic element everywhere forms the fighting section of the community caused the loss in war to fall disproportionately as among the three races in France. The religious wars greatly weakened the Nordic provincial nobility, which was before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew largely Protestant and the extermination of the upper classes was hastened by the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. These last wars are said to have shortened the stature of the French by four inches; in other words, the tall Nordic strain was killed off in greater proportions than the little brunet.
When by universal suffrage the transfer of power was completed from a Nordic aristocracy to lower classes predominantly of Alpine and Mediterranean extraction, the decline of France in international power set in. In the country as a whole, the long skulled Mediterraneans are also yielding rapidly to the round skulled Alpines and the average of the cephalic index in France has steadily risen since the Middle Ages and is still rising.
The survivors of the aristocracy, being stripped of political power and to a large extent of wealth, quickly lost their caste pride and committed class suicide by mixing their blood with inferior breeds. One of the most conspicuous features of some of the French nobility of to-day is the strength of Oriental and Mediterranean strains in them. Being for political reasons ardently clerical the nobility welcomes recruits of any racial origin as long as they bring with them money and devotion to the Church.
The loss in war of the best stock through death, wounds or absence from home has been clearly shown in France. The conscripts who were examined for military duty in 1890–2 were those descended in a large measure from the military rejects and other stay-at-homes during the Franco-Prussian War. In Dordogne this contingent showed seven per cent more deficient statures than the normal rate. In some cantons this unfortunate generation was in height an inch below the recruits of preceding years and in it the exemptions for defective physique rose from the normal six per cent to sixteen per cent.