CHARTIER, ALAIN (c. 1392-c. 1430), French poet and political writer, was born at Bayeux about 1392. Chartier belonged to a family marked by considerable ability. His eldest brother Guillaume became bishop of Paris; and Thomas became notary to the king. Jean Chartier, a monk of St Denis, whose history of Charles VII. is printed in vol. iii. of Les Grands Chroniques de Saint-Denis (1477), was not, as is sometimes stated, also a brother of the poet Alain studied, as his elder brother had done, at the university of Paris. His earliest poem is the Livre des quatre dames, written after the battle of Agincourt. This was followed by the Débat du réveille-matin, La Belle Dame sans merci, and others. None of these poems show any very patriotic feeling, though Chartier’s prose is evidence that he was not indifferent to the misfortunes of his country. He followed the fortunes of the dauphin, afterwards Charles VII., acting in the triple capacity of clerk, notary and financial secretary. In 1422 he wrote the famous Quadrilogue-invectif. The interlocutors in this dialogue are France herself and the three orders of the state. Chartier lays bare the abuses of the feudal army and the sufferings of the peasants. He rendered an immense service to his country by maintaining that the cause of France, though desperate to all appearance, was not yet lost if the contending factions could lay aside their differences in the face of the common enemy. In 1424 Chartier was sent on an embassy to Germany, and three years later he accompanied to Scotland the mission sent to negotiate the marriage of Margaret of Scotland, then not four years old, with the dauphin, afterwards Louis XI. In 1429 he wrote the Livre d’espérance, which contains a fierce attack on the nobility and clergy. He was the author of a diatribe on the courtiers of Charles VII. entitled Le Curial, translated into English (Here foloweth the copy of a lettre whyche maistre A. Charetier wrote to his brother) by Caxton about 1484. The date of his death is to be placed about 1430. A Latin epitaph, discovered in the 18th century, says, however, that he was archdeacon of Paris, and declares that he died in the city of Avignon in 1449. This is obviously not authentic, for Alain described himself as a simple clerc and certainly died long before 1449. The story of the famous kiss bestowed by Margaret of Scotland on la précieuse bouche de laquelle sont issus et sortis tant de bons mots et vertueuses paroles is mythical, for Margaret did not come to France till 1436, after the poet’s death; but the story, first told by Guillaume Bouchet in his Annales d’Aquitaine (1524), is interesting, if only as a proof of the high degree of estimation in which the ugliest man of his day was held. Jean de Masles, who annotated a portion of his verse, has recorded how the pages and young gentlemen of that epoch were required daily to learn by heart passages of his Bréviaire des nobles. John Lydgate studied him affectionately. His Belle Dame sans merci was translated into English by Sir Richard Ros about 1640, with an introduction of his own; and Clément Marot and Octavien de Saint-Gelais, writing fifty years after his death, find many fair words for the old poet, their master and predecessor.
See Mancel, Alain Chartier, étude bibliographique et littéraire, 8vo (Paris, 1849); D. Delaunay’s Étude sur Alain Chartier (1876), with considerable extracts from his writings. His works were edited by A. Duchesne (Paris, 1617). On Jean Chartier see Vallet de Viriville, “Essais critiques sur les historiens originaux du règne de Charles VIII,” in the Bibl. de l’École des Chartes (July-August 1857).
CHARTISM, the name given to a movement for political reform in England, from the so-called “People’s Charter” or “National Charter,” the document in which in 1838 the scheme of reforms was embodied. The movement itself may be traced to the latter years of the 18th century. Checked for a while by the reaction due to the excesses of the French Revolution, it received a fresh impetus from the awful misery that followed the Napoleonic wars and the economic changes due to the introduction of machinery. The Six Acts of 1819 were directed, not only against agrarian and industrial rioting, but against the political movement of which Sir Francis Burdett was the spokesman in the House of Commons, which demanded manhood suffrage, the ballot, annual parliaments, the abolition of the property qualification for members of parliament and their payment. The movement was checked for a while by the Reform Bill of 1832; but it was soon discovered that, though the middle classes had been enfranchised, the economic and political grievances of the labouring population remained unredressed. Two separate movements now developed: one socialistic, associated with the name of Robert Owen; the other radical, aiming at the enfranchisement of the “masses” as the first step to the amelioration of their condition. The latter was represented in the Working Men’s Association, by which in 1838 the “People’s Charter” was drawn up. It embodied exactly the same programme as that of the radical reformers mentioned above, with the addition of a demand for equal electoral districts.
In support of this programme a vigorous agitation began, the principal leader of which was Feargus O’Connor, whose irresponsible and erratic oratory produced a vast effect. Monster meetings were held, at which seditious language was occasionally used, and slight collisions with the military took place. Petitions of enormous size, signed in great part with fictitious names, were presented to parliament; and a great many newspapers were started, of which the Northern Star, conducted by Feargus O’Connor, had a circulation of 50,000. In November 1839 a Chartist mob consisting of miners and others made an attack on Newport, Mon. The rising was a total failure; the leaders, John Frost and two others, were seized, were found guilty of high treason, and were condemned to death. The sentence, however, was changed to one of transportation, and Frost spent over fourteen years in Van Diemen’s Land. In 1854 he was pardoned, and from 1856 until his death on the 29th of July 1877 he lived in England. In 1840 the Chartist movement was still further organized by the inauguration at Manchester of the National Charter Association, which rapidly became powerful, being the head of about 400 sister societies, which are said to have numbered 40,000 members. Some time after, efforts were made towards a coalition with the more moderate radicals, but these failed; and a land scheme was started by O’Connor, which prospered for a few years. In 1844 the uncompromising spirit of some of the leaders was well illustrated by their hostile attitude towards the Anti-Corn-Law League. O’Connor, especially, entered into a public controversy with Cobden and Bright, in which he was worsted. But it was not till 1848, during a season of great suffering among the working classes, and under the influence of the revolution at Paris, that the real strength of the Chartist movement was discovered and the prevalent discontent became known. Early in March disturbances occurred in Glasgow which required the intervention of the military, while in the manufacturing districts all over the west of Scotland the operatives were ready to rise in the event of the main movement succeeding. Some agitation, too, took place in Edinburgh and in Manchester, but of a milder nature; in fact, while there was a real and widespread discontent, men were indisposed to resort to decided measures.
The principal scene of intended Chartist demonstration was London. An enormous gathering of half a million was announced for the 10th of April on Kennington Common, from which they were to march to the Houses of Parliament to present a petition signed by nearly six million names, in order by this imposing display of numbers to secure the enactment of the six points. Probably some of the more violent members of the party thought to imitate the Parisian mob by taking power entirely into their own hands. The announcement of the procession excited great alarm, and the most decided measures were taken by the authorities to prevent a rising. The procession was forbidden. The military were called out under the command of the duke of Wellington, and by him concealed near the bridges and other points where the procession might attempt to force its way. Even the Bank of England and other public buildings were put in a state of defence, and special constables, to the number, it is said, of 170,000, were enrolled, one of whom was destined shortly after to be the emperor of the French. After all these gigantic preparations on both sides the Chartist demonstration proved to be a very insignificant affair. Instead of half a million, only about 50,000 assembled on Kennington Common, and their leaders, Feargus O’Connor and Ernest Charles Jones, shrank from the responsibility of braving the authorities by conducting the procession to the Houses of Parliament. The monster petition was duly presented, and scrutinized, with the result that the number of signatures was found to have been grossly exaggerated, and that the most unheard-of falsification of names had been resorted to. Thereafter the movement specially called Chartism soon died out. It became merged, so far as its political programme is concerned, with the advancing radicalism of the general democratic movement.
CHARTRES, a city of north-western France, capital of the department of Eure-et-Loir, 55 m. S.W. of Paris on the railway to Le Mans. Pop. (1906) 19,433. Chartres is built on the left bank of the Eure, on a hill crowned by its famous cathedral, the spires of which are a landmark in the surrounding country. To the south-east stretches the fruitful plain of Beauce, “the granary of France,” of which the town is the commercial centre. The Eure, which at this point divides into three branches, is crossed by several bridges, some of them ancient, and is fringed in places by remains of the old fortifications, of which the Porte Guillaume (14th century), a gateway flanked by towers, is the most complete specimen. The steep, narrow streets of the old town contrast with the wide, shady boulevards which encircle it and divide it from the suburbs. The Clos St Jean, a pleasant park, lies to the north-west, and squares and open spaces are numerous. The cathedral of Notre-Dame (see [Architecture]: Romanesque and Gothic Architecture in France; and [Cathedral]), one of the finest Gothic churches in France, was founded in the 11th century by Bishop Fulbert on the site of an earlier church destroyed by fire. In 1194 another conflagration laid waste the new building then hardly completed; but clergy and people set zealously to work, and the main part of the present structure was finished by 1240. Though there have been numerous minor additions and alterations since that time, the general character of the cathedral is unimpaired. The upper woodwork was consumed by fire in 1836, but the rest of the building was saved. The statuary of the lateral portals, the stained glass of the 13th century, and the choir-screen of the Renaissance are all unique from the artistic standpoint. The cathedral is also renowned for the beauty and perfect proportions of its western towers. That to the south, the Clocher Vieux (351 ft. high), dates from the 13th century; its upper portion is lower and less rich in design than that of the Clocher Neuf (377 ft.), which was not completed till the 16th century. In length the cathedral measures 440 ft., its choir measures 150 ft. across, and the height of the vaulting is 121 ft. The abbey church of St Pierre, dating chiefly from the 13th century, contains, besides some fine stained glass, twelve representations of the apostles in enamel, executed about 1547 by Léonard Limosin. Of the other churches of Chartres the chief are St Aignan (13th, 16th and 17th centuries) and St Martin-au-Val (12th century). The hôtel de ville, a building of the 17th century, containing a museum and library, an older hôtel de ville of the 13th century, and several medieval and Renaissance houses, are of interest. There is a statue of General F.S. Marceau-Desgraviers (b. 1769), a native of the town.
The town is the seat of a bishop, a prefecture, a court of assizes, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, training colleges, a lycée for boys, a communal college for girls, and a branch of the Bank of France. Its trade is carried on chiefly on market-days, when the peasants of the Beauce bring their crops and live-stock to be sold and make their purchases. The game-pies and other delicacies of Chartres are well known, and the industries also include flour-milling, brewing, distilling, iron-founding, leather manufacture, dyeing, and the manufacture of stained glass, billiard requisites, hosiery, &c.