JOAN OK Alio YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF FRANCE BY CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe," "Little Lucy' Wonderful Globe," "Book of Golden Deeds," " Young Folks' History of Germany," "Greece," " Eome." "England," &c. BOSTON: D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY, FRANKLIN ST., CORNER OF HAWLEY. \ ^t^o \ COPYRIGHT BY D. LOTHROP & CO, 1879. PREFACE THESE Stories on the History of France are meant for children perliaps a year older than those on the History of England. They try to put such facts as need most to be remembered in a comprehensible form, and to attach some real characteristic to each reign; though, in later political history, it is difficult to translate the leading ideas into any- thing that can enter an intellect of seven or eight years old. The gentleman who, some time ago, recommended teaching history backwards from our own time, could never have prac- tically tried how much harder it is to make la Charte or the Reform Bill interesting to the childish mind, than how King Kobert fed the beggars or William Rufus was killed by an arrow. Early history is generally personal, and thus can be far more easily recollected than that which concerns the mul- titude, who are indeed everything to the philanthropist, but are nothing to tlie child. Even the popular fairy tale has its princes and princesses, and the wonder tale of history can only be carried on in the infant imagination by the like dramatis personod. CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. CONTENTS. CHAP. 1.— The Old Kelts. B.C. 150 . 2. — The Roman Conquest. B.C. 67. a.d. 79 3. — The Conversion of Gaul. 100 ■ - 400 4. — The Frank Kingdom. 450 — 533 5.— The Long-haired Kings. 533— 6S1 . 6. — Carl of the Hammer. 681 7. — Carl the Great. 768 . 8. — The CarUngs. 814—887 . 9. —The Counts of Paris. 887—987. 10. — Hugli Capet. 987—997 . 11.— Robert the Pious. 997—1031 . Henry I. 1031—1060 Philip I. 1060—1108 12. —Louis VI. Le Gros. 1108—1137 . 13. —Louis VII. The Young. 1137—1180 14.— Philip IL, Augustus. 1180—1223 . 15. — The Albigenses. 1190 Louis VIII., The Lion. 1223— 122P> 16. —St. Louis IX. 1226 .... 17. — Philip III., The Hardy. 1271—1284 Philip IV., The Fair. 1284—1314 . 18. —Louis X., Hutin. 1314—1316 Philip v., Le Long. 1316—1322 Charles IV., Le Bel. 1322 Philip VL 1350 19. —John. 1350—1364 .... (V.) y 185 190 VI. CONTENTS. CHAP. 20.- 21.- 22. - 23.- 24.- 25. - 26.- 27.- 28.- 29.- 30.- 31.- 32. - Q'^ — 34- 35.- 36.- 37.- 38.- 39.- 40.- 41.- 42.- 43.- 44.- 45.- 46.- 47.- CharlesV. 1364—1380 ■ Charles VI. 1380—1396 . Burgundians and Armagnacs. 1415 — 1422 ■Charles YIL 1422—1461 . Louis XI. 1461—1483 ■Charles VIII. 1483—1498 . Louis XII. 1498—1515 . ■ Francis I. Youth. 1515—1526 ■Francis I. Middle Age. 1526—1547 Henry II. 1547—1559 - Francis II. 1559—1560 . Charles IX. 1560—1572 , ■ Charles IX. 1572—1574 . -Henry III. 1574 -Henry I Y. 1589—1610 -Louis XIIL 1610—1643 . -Louis XIY. Youth. 1643—1061 ■ Louis XIY. Middle Age. 1661— L6S8 - Louis XIY. Old Age. 16SS— 1715 ■Louis XY. 1715 — 1774 -Louis XYI. 1774—1793 . - The Great French Revolution. 1792—1796 - Xapoleon I. 1796—1814 . -Louis XYIII. 1814—1824. -Charles X. 1824—1830 . -Louis Philippe. 1830—1848 -The Republic. 1848—1852 - The Second Empire. 1852—1870 The Siege of Paris. 1870—1871 -The Communists. 1871. PAGE. 209 218 227 237 246 257 268 276 289 300 [ 210 322 230 340 352 364 374 383 392 402 411 420 429 437 443 452 , 458 , 465 , 474 List of illustrations. Frontispiece. PAGE. Keltic Tribe H The Gauls in Rome 15 Mounted Gauls . 19 Roman Arm}^ in Gaul . 22 Vercingetorix surrenders to Caesar 27 Conversion of Gaul 32 Druid Sacrifice '39 Huns at Chalons 45 Death of Hlodimir's Children 51 The Meerwings 54 Arabs had Decamped . 65 Charlemagne at the Head of his Arm y 70 Baptism of Saxons by Charlemagne 71 Death of Roland 75 School of the Palace . 79 Barks of Northmen 84 " He Shed Tears at the Sight " 87 N"orthmen before Paris 91 Count Eudes entering Paris . 95 Knights and Peasants . 101 Coronation of Hugh Capet 109 The Accolades . . 115 Crusaders' March 118 Robert and The Poor . . . 121 (vii.) Vlll. List of Illustrations. *' God willeth it " The Leaders of the First Crusade Louis the Fat on an Expedition Crusaders' Return Capture of Acre The Battle of Muret . Death of Louis . . - . Colonna Striking tlie Pope Edward III. doing Homage " Bade them look out at the Sea " "This Way, Father" . Murder of tlie Marshals The Attack on Marcel . Laying the Keys on Du Gueslin's Bier " Thou art Betrayed " The Night before the Battle of Agincourt Murder of the Duke of Burgundy . Joan of Arc .... Joan of Arc examined in Prison Louis XL .... Interview of Louis XI. and Charles the Bold Charles VIII. Crossing the Alps Meeting of Charles and Anne of Brittany Charles VIII Chevalier Bayard going to the Wars Bayard knighting Francis I. . Francis I. at Marignano Death of Bayard Capture of Francis I. . Breaking of the Statue of the Virgin Mary Duke of Orleans and Charles V.. Guise at Metz .... List of Illustrations. IX. Death of Henry II. Francis II. and Mary Stuart Death of Francis II. Massacre of St. Bartholomew Henry III. and Favorites Murder of Guise Henry IV. at Ivry Henry lY. and Ministers Henry becomes a Catholic Concini and Mary de Medicis. Louis VIII. and Albert de Luy Richelieu and Father Joseph King and Cardinal Death of Cardinal Mazarin Louis XIV. in Cabinet Theatrical Representation Death of Turenne Louis XIV. presenting King Death of Louis XfV. . Maria Leczinska Battle of Fontenoy French Chateau Louis XVI. Marat Tuileries Battle of Waterloo Guizot Versailles PAGE. 307 311 315 325 331 335 341 345 347 353 357 361 364 369 371 374 377 383 389 393 397 402 403 413 423 431 447 469 YOUNG FOLKS' HISTOKY OF FRANCE. CHAPTER I. THE OLD KELTS. B.C. 150. I BEGAN the " History of England " with Julius Caesar's landing in Britain, and did not tr}^ to tell you who the people were whom he found there, for I thought it Avould puzzle you ; but you are a little older now, and can understand rather more. 11 12 Young Folks' History of France. You must learn that in the old times, before people wrote down histories, Europe was over- spread by a great people, whom it is convenient to call altogether the Kelts — fierce, bold, warrior people, who kept together in large families or clans, all nearly related, and each clan with a chief. The clans joined together and formed tribes, and the cleverest chief of the clans would lead the rest. They spoke a language nearly alike — the language which has named a great many rivers and hills. I will tell 3"0U a few. Ben or Pen means a hill. So we see that the Ap-pen-nine mountains were named by the Kelts. Again, Avon is a river. You know we have several Avons. Ren Avon meant the running river, and Rhine and Rhone are both the same word, differently pronounced. Sen Avon was the slow river — the Seine and Saone ; and Garr Avon was the swift river — the Garonne. There were two great varieties of Kelts — the Gael and the Kymry (you should call this word Kewmri) . The Gael were the tallest, largest, wildest, and fiercest, but they were not so clever as the black- eyed little Kymry. The Kymry seem to have been the people who had the Druid priests, who lived in groves of oak, and cut down mistletoe with golden knives ; and most likely they set up The Old Kelts. 13 the Avonclerful circles of huge stones which seem to have been meant to worship in ; at least, wherever those stones are the Kymry have been. But we know little about them, as all their knowledge was in verse, which the Druids and bards taught one another by word of mouth, and which was never written down. All we do know is from their neighbors the Greeks and Romans, wdio thought them very savage, and were very much afraid of them, when every now and then a tribe set out on a robbing expedition into the lands to the south. When the Kelts did thus come, it was generally because they were driven from their own homes. There were a still fiercer, stronger set of people behind them, coming from the east to the west; and when the Kelts found that they could not hold their own against these people, they put their wives q,nd children into wagons, made of wood or wicker work, collected their oxen, sheep, and goats, called their great shaggy hounds, and set forth to find new homes. The men had long streaming hair and beards, and wore loose trousers of woollen, woven and dyed in checks by the women — tartan plaids, in fact. The chiefs always had gold collars round their necks, an,d they used, round wicker shields, long spears, and heavy swords, and they 14 Young Folks' History of France. were very terrible enemies. When the country was free to the Avest, they went on thither, and generally settled down in a wood near a river, closing in their town with a wall of trunks of trees and banks of earth, and setting up their hovels within of stone or wood. But if other clans whom they could not beat were to the west of them, they would turn to the south into Greece or Italy, and do great damage there. One set of them, in very old times, even managed to make a home in the middle of Asia Minor, and it was to their descendants that St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians. Another great troop, under a very mighty Bran, or chief, who, in Latin, is called Brennus, even broke into the great city of Rome itself. All the women and children of Rome had been sent away, and only a few brave men remained in the strong place called the Capitol, on the top of the steepest hill. There they stayed for seven months, while the Bran and his Gauls kept the city, drank up the wine in the long narrow jars, and drove in the pale-colored, long-horned oxen from the meadow land round. The Bran never did get into the Capitol, but the Romans were obliged to pay him a great sum of money before he would go away. However, this THE GAULS IN KOME. The Old Kelts. 17 belongs to the history of Rome, and I only mean further to say, that the tribe who came with him sta3^ed seventeen years in tlie middle parts of Italy before they were entirely beaten. When the Kelts were beaten and saw there was no hope, they generally came within the enclosure they had made with their wagons, and slew their wives and chil- dren, set fire to everything, and then killed them- selves, that they might not be slaves. All the north part of Italy be3^ond the River Po was filled with Kelts, and there were man}' more of them beyond the Alps. So it came about that from the word Gael the Romans called the north of Italy Gallia Cis-Alpina — Gauls on this side the Alps; and the country westward Gallia Trans-Alpina, or Gaul beyond the Alps, and all the people there were known as Gauls, whether they were Gael or Kymry. Now, far up in Gaul, in the high ground that divides the rivers Loire, Saone, and Rliine, there were rocks full of metal, tin, copper, and some- times a little silver. The clever sailors and mer- chants called Phoenicians found these out, and taught the Gauls to work the mines, and send the metals in boats down the Rhone to the Mediterra- nean sea. There is a beautiful bay where Gaul 18 Youny Folks'' History of France. touches the Mediterranean, and not only the Phoe- nicians found it out, but the Greeks. They carae to live there, and built the cities of Marseilles, Nice, Antibes, and several more. Lovely cities the Greeks always built, with marble temples to their gods, pillars standing on steps, and gardens with statues in them, and theatres for seeing pla3^s acted in the open air. Inside these towns and close round them everything was beautiful; but the Gauls who lived near learnt some Greek ways, and were getting tamed. They coined money, wrote in Greek letters, and bought and sold with the Greeks; but their wilder brethren beyond did not approve of this, and whenever they could catch a Greek on his journey would kill him, rob him, or make him prisoner. Sometimes, indeed, they threatened to rob the cities, and the Greeks beo^o^ed the Romans to protect them. So the Romans sent an officer and an army, who built two new towns, Aix and Narbonne, and made war on the Gauls, who tried to hinder him. Then a messeno^er was sent to the Roman camp. He was an immensely tall man, with a collar and bracelets of gold, and beside him came a bard singing the praises of his clan, the Arverni. There were man}^ other attend- ants ; but his chief guards were a pack of immense ^^ MOUNTKD GAiri.s. The Old Kelts, 21 hounds, which came pacing after him in ranks like soldiers. He bade the Romans, in the name of his chief Bituitus, to leave the country, and cease to luirm the Gauls. The Roman General turned his back and would not listen ; so the messenger went back in anger, and the Arverni prepared for battle. When Bituitus saw the Roman army he thought it so small that he said, '' This handfid of men will hardly furnish food for my dogs." He was not beaten in the battle, but just after it he was made prisoner, and sent to Ital\', where he was kept a captive all the rest of his life, while his son was brought up in Ronuin learning and habits, and then sent home to ride his clan, and teach them to be friends with Rome. This was about one hun- dred and fifty years before the coming of our Blessed Lord. CHAPTER IL THE KOMAN CONQUEST. B.C, (i7 — A.D. 79. THE Romjins called the country they had taken for themselves in Gaul the Province, and Provence has always continued to be its name. They filled it with colonies. A colony was a city built by Romans, generally old soldiers, who received a grant of land if they would defend it. 22 The Roman Conquest. 23 The first thing they did was to set up an altar. Then they dug trenches the shape of their intended city, marked out streets, and made little flat bricks, everywhere after one pattern, with which the}' built a temple, houses (each standing round a paved court), a theatre, and public baths, with causeways as straight as an arrow joining tlie cities toofcther. Eacii town had two mao^istrates elected every year, and a governor lived at the chief town with a legion of the army to keep the country round in order. When the Romans once began in this way, they always ended by gaining the whole country in time. They took nearl}^ a hundred years to gain Gaul. First there came a terrible inroad of some wilder Kymry, whom the Romans called Cimbri, from the west, with some Teutons, of that fiercer German race I told you of. They broke into Gaul, and defeated a G^reat Roman armv ; and there was ten years' fighting v/ith them before the stout old Roman, Caius iNIarius, beat them in a great battle near Aix. All the men were killed in battle, and the women killed their children and themselves rather than fall into Roman hands. That was B.C. 103; and Julius Csesar, the same who first came to Britain, was nephew to Marius. 24 Young Folks' History of France, He did not conquer Britain, but he did really conquer Gaul. It would only confuse and puzzle you now to tell you how it was done ; but by this time many of the Gaulish tribes had come to be friendly with the Romans and ask their help. Some wanted help because they were quarrelling with other tribes, and others because the Germans behind them had squeezed a great tribe of Kymry out of the Alps, and they wanted to come down and make a settlement in Gaul. Julius Caesar made short work of beating these new-comers, and he beat the Germans who were also trying to get into Gaul. Then he expected all the Gauls to submit to him — not only those who lived round the Province, and had always been friendly to Rome, but all the free ones in the north. He was one of the most wonderful soldiers who ever lived. He gained first, all the east side. He subdued the Belgse, who lived between the Alps and the sea, all the Armoricans along the north, and then the still wilder people on the coast towards the Atlantic ocean. But while he was away in the north, the Gaulish chiefs in the south agreed that they would make one great attempt to set their country free from the enem}^ They resolved all to rise at once, and B07 The Roman Conquest. 25 put themselves under the command of the brave young mountain chief of the Arverni, from whom Auvergne was named. The Romans called his name Vercingetorix ; and as it really was even longer and harder to speak than this word, we will call him so. He was not a wild shaggy savage like Bituitus, but a graceful, spirited chief, who had been trained to Roman manners, and knew their ways of fighting. All in one night the Gauls rose. Men stood on the hill-tops, and shouted from clan to clan to rise up in arms. It was the depth of winter, and Csesar was away resting in Italy ; but back he came on the first tidings, and led his men over six feet of snow, taking every Gallic town by the way. Vercingetorix saw that the wisest thing for the Gauls to do would be to burn and lay waste the land themselves, so that the Romans might find nothing to eat. " It was sad," he said, " to see burning houses, but worse to have wife and chil- dren led into captivity." One city, that now called Bourges, was left ; the inhabitants beseeched him on their knees to spare it ; and it seemed to be safe, for there was a river on one side and a bog on all the rest, with only one narrow road across. But in twenty-five days Csesar made his waj^ in. 26 Young Folks' History of France, ' and slew all he found there ; and then he followed Vercingetorix to his own hills of Aiivergne, and fought a battle, the only defeat the great Roman captain ever met with ; indeed, he was obliged to retreat from the face of the brave Arverni. They followed him again, and fought another battle, in which he was in great danger, and was forced even to leave his sword in the hands of the Gauls, who hung it up in a temple in thanksgiving to their gods. But the Gauls were not so steady as they were brave ; they fled, and all Vercingetorix could do was to lead them to a great camp under the hill of Alesia. He sent horsemen to rouse the rest of Gaul, and shut himself up in a great enclosure with his men. Caesar and the Romans came and made another enclosure outside, eleven miles round, so that no help, no food could come to them, and they had only provisions for thirty days. Their friends outside did try to break through to them, but in vain ; they were beaten off ; and then brave Vercingetorix offered to give himself up to the Romans, provided the lives of the rest of the Gauls were spared. Csesar gave his word that this should be done. Accordingly, at the appointed hour the gates of the Gallic camp opened. Out came Ver- cingetorix in his richest armor, mounted on his The Roman Conquest, 29 finest steed. He gallo[)ecl about, wheeled round Dnce, then drawing np suddenly before Caesar's seat, sprang to the ground, and laid his sword at ^he yictor's feet. Csesar was not touched. He kept a cold, stern face ; ordered the gallant chief into captivity, and kept him for six years, while finishing other conquests, and then took him to Rome, to walk in chains behind the car in which the victorious general entered in triumph, with all the standards taken from the Gauls displayed; and then, with the other captives, this noble war- rior was put to death in the dark vaults under the hill of the Capitol. With Vercingetorix ended the freedom of Gaul. The Romans took possession of all the country, 3,nd made the cities like their own. The old clans were broken up. The fighting men were enlisted in the Roman army, and sent to fight as far away as possible from home, and the chiefs thought it an honor to be enrolled as Roman citizens ; they wore the Roman tunic and toga, spoke and wrote Latin, and, except among the Kymry of the far nortli- kvest, the old Gaulish tongue was forgotten. Very grand temples and amphitheatres still remain in the Province of Roman building, especially at Nismes, Aries, and Autun ; and a huge acqueduct, 30 Young Folks' History of France. called the Pont du Gard, still stands across a valley near Nismes, with 600 feet of three tier of arcades, altogether 160 feet high. Roads made as only Romans made them crossed hither and thither throughout the country, and, except in the wilder' and more distant pai'ts, to live in Gaul was very like living in Home. After Julius Csesar, the Romans had Emperors at the head of their state, and some of these were very fond of Gaul. But when the first twelve who had some coiniection with Julius were all dead, a Gaul named Julius Sabinus rose up and called himself Emperor. The real Emperor, chosen at Rome, named Vespasian, soon came and over- threw his cause, and hunted him to his country house. Flames burst out of it, and it was declared that Sabinus had burnt himself there. But no ; lie was safely hidden in a cave in the woods. No one knew of it but his wife Eponina and one trusty slave, and there they lived together for nine years, and had two little sons. Eponina twice left him to go to Rome to consult her friends whether they could obtain a pardon for her husband; but Ves- pasian was a stern man, and they saw no hope, so she went back disappointed ; and the second time she was watclied and followed, and Sabinus was The Roman Conquest, 31 found. He was taken and chained, and carried to Rome, and she and her two boys came with him. jShe knelt before the Emperor, and besought his pardon, saying that here were two more to plead for their father. Tears came into Vespasian's eyes, bnt he would not forgive, and the husband and wife were both sentenced to die. The last thing Eponina said before his judgment-seat was, that it was better to die together than to be alive as such an Emperor. Her two boys were taken care of, and one of them lived long after in Greece, as far away from his home as possible. » CHAPTER III. THE CONVERSION OF GAUL. A.D. 100-400. GAUL could not be free in her own way, but the truth that maketh free was come to her. The Druids, though their worship was cruel, had better notions of the true God than the Romans with their multitude of idols, and when they heard more of the truth, many of them gladly embraced 32 The Conversion of Gaid. 33 it. The Province was so near Rome that very soon after the Apostles had reached the great city, they sent on to Gaul. The people in Provence believe . tliat Lazarus and his two sisters came thither, but this is not likely. However, the fiist Bishop of Aries was Trophimus, and we may quite believe him to have been the Ephesian who was with St. Paul in his third journey, and was at Jerusalem with him when he was made prisoner. Trophimus brought a service-book with him very like the one that St. John the Evangelist liad drawn up for the Churches of Asia. It uas to Vienne, one of these Roman cities, that Pontius Pilate had been banished for his cruelty. In tliis town and in the larger one at Lyons there were many Christians, and their bishop was Pothinus, Avho had been instructed by St. John. It was many years before the Gallic Chris- tians suffered any danger for their faith, not till the year 177, when Pothinus was full ninety years old. Then, under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a governor was sent to the Province who was resolved to put an end to Christianity. The difficulty was that there Avere no crimes of which to accuse the Christians. So he caused several slaves to be 34 Young Folks' History of France. seized and put to torture, while they were asked questions. There were two young girls among them, Blandina and Biblis. Blandina was a weak, delicate maiden, but whatever pain they gave her, she still said, "I am a Christian, and no evil is done among us." Biblis, however, in her fright and agony, said " Yes " to all her tormentors asked, and accused the Christians of killing babies, eating human flesh, and all sorts of horrible things. Afterwards she was shocked at herself, declared there was not a word of truth in what she had said, and bore fresh and worse torture bravely. The Christians were seized. The old bishop was dragged through the streets, and so pelted and ill- treated that after a few days he died in prison. The others were for fifteen days brought out before all the people in the amphitheatre, while every torture that could be thought of was tried upon them. All were brave, but Blandina was the bravest of all. She did not seem to feel when she was put to sit on a red hot iron chair, but encour- aged her young brother through all. At last she was put into a net and tossed by a bull, and then, being found to be still alive, her throat was pierced, everyone declaring that never had woman endured so much. The persecution did not last much The Conversion of G-aul. 35 longer after this, and the bones of the martyrs iwere collected and buried, and a church built over them, the same, though of course much altered, which is now the Cathedral of Lyons. Instead of the martyred Pothinus, the new bishop was Irenseus, a holy man who left so many writings that he is counted as one of the Fathers of the Church. Almost all the townsmen of Lyons became Christians under his wise persuasion and good Example, but the rough people in the country were much less easily reached. Indeed, the word pagan, which now means a heathen, was only the old Latin word for a peasant or villager. In the year 202, the Emperor Severus, who had himself been born at Lyons, put out an edict against the Chris- tians. The fierce Gauls in the adjoining country hearing of it, broke furiously into the city, and slaughtered every Christian they laid hands upon, St. Irenaeus among them. There is an old mosaic pavement in a church at Lyons where the inscrip- tion declares that nineteen thousand died in this [massacre, but it can hardly be believed that the tnumbers were so large. The northerly parts of Gaul were not yet con- verted, and a bishop named Dionysius was sent to teach a tribe called the Parisii, whose chief city 36 Young Folks' History of France. was Lutetia, on the banks of the Seine. He was taken in the year 272, and was beheaded just out- side the walls on a hill which is still known ai; Mont Martre, the martyr's mount, and his name,, cut short into St. Denys, became one of the mostt famous in a.11 France. The three Keltic provinces, Gaul, Spain, and: Britain, used to be put together under one governor, and the brave, kindly Constantius ruled over them, and hindered persecution as much as he could. His son Constantine was also much loved, and it was while marching to Italy with an arm}^, in which were many Gauls, to obtain the empire, that Constantine saw the vision of a bright cross in the sky, surrounded by the words, "In this sign thou shalt conquer." He did conquer, and did confess himself a Christian two j^ears later, and under him the Church of Gaul flourished. Gallic bishops were at the great council of Nicea, in Asia Minor, when the Nicene creed was drawn up, and many beautiful hymns for Christian worship were written: in Gaul. After Constantine's death, his son Constantius fostered the false doctrine that the Nicene creed contradicted. He lived at Constantinople, and dressed and lived like an Eastern prince, and the The Co7iverdon of G-aul. 37 Gauls were growing discontented ; more especially as the Franks — a terrible tribe of their Teuton enemies to the east — Avere trying to break into their lands. A young cousin of Constantius, named Julian, was sent to fight with them. He fixed his chief abode in a little island in the middle of the River Seine, at Lutetia, among his dear Parisii, as he called the tribe around, and thence he came out to drive back the Franks whenever they tried to attack the Gauls. He was a very brave, able man, but he had seen so much selfishness among the Christians in Rome and Constantinople, that he fancied their faults arose from their faitli; and tried to be an old heathen again as soon as Con- stantius was dead, and he became emperor. He only reigned three years, and then, in the year 863, was killed in a war with the Persians. Ver}^ sad times followed his death. He was the last of his family, and several emperors rose and fell at Rome. The governor of Gaul, Maximus, called himself emperor, and, raising an army in Britain, defeated the young man who had reigned at Rome in the year 881, and ruled the Keltic provinces for seven 3^ears. He was a brave soldier, and not wholly a bad man, for he much loved and valued the great Bishop Martin, of Tours. Martin had 38 Young Folks' History of France, been brought up as a soldier, but he was so kind that once when he saw a shivering beggar he cut his cloak into two with his sword, and gave the poor man half. He was then not baptized, but at eighteen he became altogether a Christian, andi was the pupil of the great Bishop Hilary of Poitiers. It was in these days that men were first beginning to band together to live in toil, poverty, and devo- tion in monasteries or abbeys, and Martin was the first person in Gaul to form one, near Poitiers; but hc' was called from it to be Bishop of Tours, and near that city he began another abbey, which still bears his name, Marmoutiers, or Martin's Monastery. He and the monks used to go out from thence to teach the Pagans, who still remairied in the far west, and whom Roman punishment had never cured of the old Druid ways. These people could not learn the Latin that all the rest of the country spoke, but lived on their granite moors as their forefathers had lived four hundred 3^ears before. However, Martin did what no one else had ever done : he taught them to become staunch Christians, though they still remained a people apart, speaking their own tongue and following their own customs. This was the good St. Martin's work while his DRUID SACKIFICE. The Conversion of Graul, 41 friend, the false Emperor Maximus, was being overthrown by the true Emperor Theodosius ; and much more struggling and fighting was going on among the Romans and Gauls, while in the mean- time the dreadful Franks were every now and then bursting into the country from across the Rhine to plunder and burn and kill and make slaves. St. Martin had finished the conversion of Gaul, just before he died in his monastery at Marmou- tiers, in the year 400. He died in time to escape the terrible times that were coming upon all the Gauls, or rather Romans. For all the southern and eastern Gauls called themselves Romans, spoke nothing but Latin, and had entirely forgotten all thoughts, ways, and manners but those they had learnt from the Greeks and Romans. CHAPTER IV. THE FRANK KINGDOM. A.D. 450-533. THAT race of people which had been driving the Kelts westward for six or seven hundred years was making a way into Gaul at last ; indeed, they had been only held back by Roman skill. These were the race which, as a general name, is called Teutonic, but which divided into many different nations. All were large-limbed, blue- eyed, and light-haired. They all spoke a language like rough German, and all had the same religion, believing in the great warlike gods, Odin, Thor, and Frey ; worshipping them at stone altars, and expecting to live with them in the hall of heroes after death. That is, all so called who were brave and who were chosen by the valkyr, or slaughter- choosing goddesses, to die nobly in battle. Cow- ards were sent to dwell with Hela, the pale, gloomy goddess of death. 42 The Frank Kingdom. 43 Of course the different tribes were not exactl\^ alike, but they all had these features in common. They had lived for at least five hundred ^ears in the centre of Europe, now and then attacking their neighbors, when, being harassed by another fierce race who came behind them, they made more great efforts. The chief tribes whose names must be remembered were the Goths, who conquered Rome and settled in Spain ; the Longbeards, or Lombards, who spread over the north of Italy ; the Burgundians (burg or town livers), who held all the country round the Al]3s ; the Swabians and Germans, who stayed in the middle of Europe ; the Saxons, who dwelt about the south of the Baltic, and finally conquered South Britain ; tlie Northmen, who found a home in Scandinavia ; and the Franks, who had been long settled on the rivers Sale, Meuse, and Rhine. Their name meant Freemen, and they were noted for using an axe called after them. There were two tribes — the Salian, from the River Sale, and the Ripuarian. They were great horsemen, and dreadful pillagers, and the Salians had a family of kings, which, like the kings of all the other tribes, was supposed to descend from Odin. The king was always of this family, called Meerwings, after 44 Young Folks' History of France. Meerwig, the son of Wehrmuncl, one of the first chiefs. After the death of the great Theodosius, who liad conquered the false Emperor Maximus, there was no power to keep these Franks back, and they were continually dashing into Gaul, and carrying off slaves and plunder. Even worse was the great rush that, in the year 450, was made all across Europe by the Huns, a terrible nation of another race, whose chief was called Etzel, or Attila, and who named himself the Scourge of God. In 451, he invaded Gaul with his army, horrible looking men, whose faces had been gashed by their savage •parents in their infancy, that they might look more dreadful. It was worse to fall into their hands than into those of the Franks, and everywhere there was terror. At Lutetia there was a great desire to flee away, but they were persuaded to remain by the holy woman, Genoveva. She was a young shepherdess of Nanterre, near Paris, who had devoted herself to the service of God, and whose hol}^ life made the people listen to her as a kind of prophet. And she was right. The Huns , did not come further that Orleans, where the good Bishop Lupus made the people shut their gates, and defend their town, until an army, composed of ^^>. ^ -^c ^V^ -v^ ,^^ HUXS AT ('HA1>0>-S. The Frank Kingdom. 47 Franks, Goths, Burgundians, Gauls, all under the Roman General Aetius, attacked the Huns at Chalons-sur-Marne, beat them, and drove them back in 451. Chalons was the last victory won under the old Roman eagles. There was too much trouble in Italy for Rome to help any one. In came the Franks whenever they pleased, and Hil- perik, the son of Meerwig, came to Lutetia, or Paris, as it was now called from the tribe round it, and there he rioted in Julian's old palace. He had a great respect for Genoveva, heathen though he was ; and when he came home from plundering, with crowds of prisoners driven before him, Geno- veva would go and stand before him, and entreat for their pardon, and he never could withstand her, but set them all free. She died at eighty-nine years old, and St. Genevieve, as she was afterwards called, was honored at Paris as much as St. Denys. Hilperik's son was named Hlodwig, which means loud or renowned \a ar, but as the name is harsh, histories generally name him Clovis. He wanted to marry a Burgundian maiden named Clothilda and as she was a Christian, he promised that she sliould be allowed to pray to her God in the churches which still stood throughout Gaul. When her first child was born, she persuaded Clovis to 48 Young Folks'* Sistory of France. let her have it baptized. It died very soon, and Clovis fancied it was because her God could not save it. However, she caused the next child to be baptized, and when it fell sick she prayed for it, and it recovered. He began to listen more to what she said of her God, and when, soon after, the Germans came with a great army across the Rhine, and he drew out his Franks to fight with them at Tolbiac, near Cologne, he was in great danger in the battle, and he cried aloud, " Christ, whom Clothilda calls the true God, I have called on my own gods, and the}^ help me not ! Send help, and I will own Thy name." The Germans fled, and Clovis had the victor}^ He kept his word, and was baptized at Rlieims by St. Remigius, with his two sisters, three thousand men, and many women and children ; and as he was the first great Teutonic prince wlio was a Catholic Christian, the King of France, ever since his time, has been called the IMost Christian King and eldest son of the Church. Clovis was the first Frank chief who really made a home of Gaul, or who wore a purple robe and a crown like a Roman emperor. He made his chief home at Paris, where he built a church in the little island on the Seine, in honor of the Blessed Virgin, measuring the The Frank Kingdom, 49 length by how far he could throw an axe ; but, though he honored the Gaulish clergy, he was still a fierce and violent savage, who did many cruel things. He generally repented of them afterwards, and gave gifts to churches to show his soitow, and holy men were about him when, in 511, he died at Paris. His sons had all been baptized, but they were worse men than he had been. The Frank kingdom was only the north part of the country above the Loire. In the south, where the Romans had had possession so much longer, and built so many more walled towns, the Franks never really lived. They used to rush down and plunder the country round about ; but then the townsmen shut themselves in, closed their gates, and strengthened their walls, and the Franks had no machines to batter the walls, no patience for a blockade, and went home again with only the spoil of the country round ; while in the Province people called themselves Roman citizens still, and each place governed itself by the old Roman law. Plenty of Gauls were in the northern part too, speaking Latin still. They had to bear much rough treatment from the Franks, but all the time their knowledge and skill made them respected. 50 Young Folks* History of France. The clergy, too, were almost all Gauls ; and now that the Franks were Christians, in name at least, they were afraid of them,' and seldom damaged a church or broke into a monastery. Indeed, if there was any good in a Frank, he was apt to go into a monastery out of the horrid barbarous ways of his comrades, and perhaps this left those outside to be still worse, as they had hardly any better men among them. The four sons of Clovis divided the kingdom. That is, they were all kings, and each had towns of his own, but all a good deal mixed up together ; and in the four chief towns — Paris, Orleans, Soissons, and Metz — they all had equal shares. Not that they really governed, only each had a strong box filled with gold and je\^■els, and they always were leaders when the Franks went out to plunder in the southern lands of Pro- vincia and Aquitaine. There was another part the Franks never conquered, namely, that far north- western corner called Armorica, which Julius Csesar had conquered, and St. Martin had converted last of all. The granite moors did not temjDt the Franks, and the Kymri there were bold and free. More- over, so many of their kindred Kymri from Britain came over thither for fear of the Saxons, that the country came to be called from them Bretagne, or DEATH OF HU_)D1MIK S CHILDKEN. The Frank Kingdom, 53 Bnttan}^ and the Kymric tongue is spoken there to this day. When Hlodmir, one of the sons of Clovis, died, his three little sons were sent to Paris to bo under the care of their grandmother, Clothilda. She was so fond of them that their uncles, Hloter and Hildebert, were afraid she would require that their father's inheritance should be given to them. So they asked her to send the boys to them on a visit, and as soon as they arrived, a messenger was sent to the Queen with a sword and a pair of scissors, desiring her to choose. This meant that she would choose whether the poor boys should be killed, or have their heads shaven and become monks. Clo- thilda answered that she had rather see them dead than monks. So Hloter killed the eldest, who wa* only ten, with his sword ; the second clung to Hildebert, and begged hard for life, but Hloter forced his brother to give him up, and killed him too ; the third, whose name was Hlodoald, was helped by some of the bystanders to hide himself, and when he grew older, he cut off his long hair, went into a monastery, and was so good a man that he is now called St. Cloud. This horrible murder happened about the year 533. CHAPTER Y THE LONG-HAIRED KINGS. A.D. 533-681. THE Meer wings, or long-haired kings, were altogether the most wicked dynasty (or race of kings) who ever called themselves Christian. They do not seem to have put off any of their heathen customs, except the actual worship of Frey and Odin. They murdered, plundered, and 54 The Long-Haired Kings. 55 married numerous wives, just as if they had been heathens still. jNIost likely they thought that as Christ Avas the God of Gaul, he must be honored there; but they had no notion of obeying Him, and if a Gallic bishop rebuked them, they only plundered his church. By the Frank law, a mur- der might be redeemed by a payment, and it was full twice as costly to kill a Frank as to kill a Roman, that is to say, a Gaul ; for, except in the cities in the Province and Aquitaine, this term of Roman, once so proud, was only a little better than that of slave. Out of all the Meerwing names, one or two have to be remembered above the rest for their crimes. Hlother, the murderous son of Clovis, left four sons, among whom the kingdom was, as usual, divided. Two of these sons, Hilperik and Sieg- bert, wished for queenlj- wives, though Hilperik, at least, had a houseful of wives before, and among them a slave girl named Fredegond. The two brothers married the two daughters of the King of the Goths in Spain, Galswinth and Brj-nhild. Siegbert seems to have really loved Brynhild, but Hilperik cared for the beautiful and clever Frede- gond more than anyone else, and ver}^ soon poor Galswinth was found in her bed strano^led. Frede- 56 Young Folks' History of France. gond reigned as queen, and Biynhild hated lier bitterly, and constantly stirred up lier husband to avenge her sister's death. Siegbert raised an army and defeated Hilperik, but Fredegond contrived to have him stabbed. She also contrived to have all her husband's other children killed by different means, and at last, fearing he would find out crimes greater than even he could bear with, she contrived that he too should be stabbed when returning from hunting, in the year 584. She had lost several infants, and now had only one child left, Hloter II., a few months old, but in his name she ruled what the Franks called the Ne-oster-ik, the not eastern, or western kingdom, namely, France, from the Saone westward ; while Brynhild and her son Hil- debert ruled in the Austerik, or eastern kingdom, from the Saone to the Sale and Rhine. There was a most bitter hatred between the two sisters-in-law. It seems as if Fredegond was of a wicked nature, and would have been a bad woman anywhere. One's mind shrinks from the horrible stories of murder, treachery, and every sort of vice that are told of her; but no outward punishment came upon her in this world, and she died in 597 at Paris, leaving her son, Hlother II., on the throne. Brynhild often did bad things, but she erred The Long-Haired Kings. 57 more from the bad times in which she lived than from her own disposition. She tried, so far as she knew how, to do good; she made friends with the clergy, she helped the few learned men, she tried to stop cruelty, she tried to repair the old Roman roads and bridges, and many places are called after her — Queen Brynhild's tower, or stone, or the like — and she was very kind to the poor, and gave them large alms. But she grew worse as she grew older; she had furious quarrels with the Frank chiefs, and when the Bishops found fault with her she attacked them, and even caused the saintly Bishop of Vienne to be assassinated. In her time there came from Ire- land a number of ver}^ holy men, Keltic Christians, who had set forth from the monasteries to convert such Gauls and Franks as remained heathen, and to tr}' to bring the rest to a better sense of what a Christian life was. St. Columbanus came into the Austerick when Brynhild's two grandsons, Theude- bert and Theuderick, were reigning there. Theu- derick listened willingly, to the holy man, and was proceeding to put away his many wives and mend his waj's; but the old Queen's pride was offended, and she could not forgive him for not allowing her to come mto his monastery, because no woman was permitted there. She stirred up Theuderick to 58 Young Folks' History of France, drive him away, whereupon he went to the Alps and converted the people there, who were still worshippers of Odin. Soon after there was a fierce quarrel between her two grandsons. Theuderick was taken prisoner by his brother, and forced to cut his hair and become a monk, but this did not save his life. He was put to death shortly after, and his brother soon after died ; so that Brynhild, after having ruled in the name of her son and grandsons, now governed for her great-grandson, Siegbert, thirty-nine years after her husband's death. But she was old and weak, and her foe, Fredegond's son, Hlother, attacked her, defeated her forces, and made her and her great-grandchil- dren prisoners. The boys were slain, and the poor old Gothic Queen, after being placed on a camel and led through the camp to be mocked by all the savage Franks, was tied to the tail of a wild horse, to be dragged to death by it ! This was in 614. Hlother thus became King of all the Franks, and so was his son Dagobert I., who was not much better as a man, but was not such a savage, and took interest in the beautiful goldsmith's work done by the good Bishop Eligius ; and, somehow, his name has been more remembered at Paris than he seems properly to deserve. In fact, the Franks The Long-Haired Kings, 59 were getting gradually civilized by tlie Romanized Gauls — the conquerors by the conquered.; and the daughters, when taken from their homes, some- times showed themselves excellent women. It was Bertha, the daughter of King Haribert, the mur- derer of his nephews, who persuaded her husband, Ethelbert of Kent, to receive St. Augustine ; and Ingund, the daughter of Brj^nhild and Siegbert, was married to a Gothic Prince in Spain, whom she brought to die a martyr for the true faith. Twelve more Meerwings reigned after Dagobert. If they had become less savage they were less spirited, and they hardly attended at all to the affairs of their kingdoms, but only amused them- selves in their rude palaces at Soissons or Paris, thus obtaining the name of Rois Faineants^ or sluggard kings. The affairs of the kingdom fell into the hands of the Major Domi^ as he was called, or Mayor of the Palace. The Franks, as they tried to have courts and keep up state, followed Roman j)atterns so far as they knew them, and gave Roman names from the Emperor's Court to the men in attendance on them. So the steward, or Major Bomi^ master of the household, rose to be the chief person in the kingdom next to the king himself. The next great- 60 Touny Folks' History of France. est people were called Oomites, companions of the King, Counts; and the chief of these was the Master of the Horse, Comes Stahuli^ the Count of the Stable, or, as he came to be called in the end, the Constable. The leader of the arni}^ was called Dux, a Latin word meaning to lead ; and this word is our word Duke. But the Mayor of the Palace under these foolish do-nothing Meerwings soon came to be a much greater man than the King himself, and the Mayor of the Palace of the Oster- rik or Austrasia fought with the Palace Mayor of the Ne-oster-rik or Neustria, as if they were two sovereigns. The Austrian Franks stretched far away eastward, and were much more bold and spirited than the Neustrians, who had mixed a great deal with the Gauls. And, finally, Ebroin, the last Neustrian Mayor, was murdered in 681, the Neustrian army was defeated, and the Austra- sians became the most powerful. Their mayors were all one family, the first of whom was named Pepin of Landen. He was one of Queen Bryn- hild's great enemies, but he was a friend of Dago- bert I., and he and his family were brave defenders of the Franks from the other German nations, who, like them, loved war better than anything else. CHAPTER VI. CABL OF THE HAMMER. A.D. G81. THE grandson of Pepin of Lanclen is commonly called Pepin L'Heristal. He was Mayor of the Palace through the reigns of four do-nothing Meerwings, and was a brave leader of the Franks, fighting hard with their heathen neighbors on the other side of the Rhine, the Saxons and Tliurin- gians, along the banks of the Meuse and Elbe ; and not only fighting \\ith them, but helping the missionaries who came from England and from Ireland to endeavor to convert them. He died in 714, and after him came his brave son Car] of the Hammer, after whom all the family are known in history as Carlings. He was Duke of Austrasia and Mayor of the Palace, over (one cannot say under^ Hlother IV. and Theuderick IV., and fought the battles of the Franks against 61 62 Young Folks'^ History of France. the Saxons and Frisians, besides making himself known and respected in the Province and Aqui- taine, where the soft Roman speech softened his name into Carolns and translated his nickname into Martellus, so that he has come down to our day as Charles Martel. Whether it was meant that he was a hammer himself, or that he carried a hammer, is not clear, but it is quite certain that he was the greatest man in Europe at that time, and he who did her the greatest benefit. It was a hundred years since Mahommed had risen up in Arabia, teaching the wild Arabs a strict law, and declaring that God is but one, and that he was His prophet, by which he meant that he was a greater and a truer prophet than the Lord Jesus Christ. He had carried away many of the Eastern nations after him and had conquered others. He taught that it was right to. fight for the spread of the religion he taught, and his Arabs did fight so mightily that they overcame the Holy Land and held the city of Jerusalem. Besides this, they had conquered Egj-pt and spread all along the north of Africa, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea ; and thence they had crossed over into Spain, and subdued the Christian Goths, Carl of the Hammer, 63 all but the few who had got together in the Pyre- nean mountains aiid their continuation in the Asturias, along the coast of the Bay of Biscay. And now these Arabs — also called Saracens and Moors — were trying to pass the Pyrenees and make attacks upon Gaul, and it seemed as if all Europe was going to be given up to them and to become Mahommedan. Abdul Rhaman, the great Arab Governor of Spain, crossed the Pyrennees at the pass of Roncevalles, burst into Aquitaine, gained a great battle near Bordeaux, and pillaged the city, which was so rich a place that every soldier was loaded with topazes and emeralds, and gold was quite common ! Then they marched on towards Tours, where the Abbey of Marmoutiers was said» to be the richest in all Gaul. But by this time Carl of the Hammer had got together his army ; not only Franks, but Burgundians, Gauls of the Province, Germans from be^^ond the Rhine — all who will- ingly owned the sovereignty of Austrasia, provided they could be saved from the Arabs. The battle of Tours, between Charles Martel and Abdul Rhaman, was fought in the autumn oi 732, and was one of the great battles that decide the fate of the world. For it was this which fixed 64 Young Folks' History of France. whether Europe should be Christian or Mahomme- daii. It was a hotly-fought combat, but the tall powerful Franks and Germans stood like rocks against every charge of the Arab horsemen, till darkness came on. The Franks slept where they stood, and drew up the next morning to begin the battle again, but no enemy appeared. Some Franks were sent to reconnoitre, entered the enemy's camp, and penetrated into their tents. But no living man was to be found. The Arabs had decamped silently in the night, and had left nearly all their booty behind them, and the battle of Tours had saved Europe. However, the Hammer had still to strike many blows before they were driven back into Spain, and this tended to bring the south of Gaul much more under his power. Carl was looked upon as the great defender of Christendom, and, as at this time the king of the Lombards in Northern Italy seemed disposed to make himself master of Rome, the Pope sent two nuncios, as Pope's mes- sengers are called, to carry him presents, among them the keys of the tomb of St. Peter, and to beg for his protection. Still, great as he was in reality, he never called himself more than Mayor of the Palace and Duke of Austrasia, and when he died in 741, his sons, Pepin and Carloman, divided the ,1, ^^ ARABS HAD DKCAMPED. Carl of the Hammer, 67 government, still as Majors, for the Meerwing llilderick III. In 746, however, Carloman, weary of the world, caused his head to be shaven by Pope Zacharias, and retired into the great monas- tery of Monte Cassino, where, about a hundred years before, St. Benedict had begun a ride that became the pattern of most of the convents of the west. Pepin, commonly called le bref^ or the Short, ruled alone, and in 751 he sent to ask Pope Zacha- rias whether it would not be wiser that the family who had all the power should bear the name of kings. The Pope replied that so it should be. Hilderick was put into a convent, and the great English Missionary-bishop, St. Boniface, whom Pepin and his father had aided in his work among the Germans, anointed Pepin as King of the Franks at Soissons, and two years later, the next Pope, Stephen II., came into Gaul again to ask aid against the Lombards, and at the Abbey of St„ Deny's anointed Pepin again, together with his two young sons, Carl and Carloman. And so the Meerwings passed away, and the Carlings began-r Pepin was a great friend and supporter of St. Boniface, who had been made Archbishop of May- intz. Re did much by his advice to bring the Church of Gaul into good order, and he was much 68 Young Folks' History of France. grieved when the holy man was martyred while preaching to the savage men of Friesland. Pepin was constantly fighting with the heathen Saxons and Germans to the east of him, and he so far subdued them that they promised to send three hundred horses as a ]3resent to the General Assem- bly of Franks. To the north he had the old Gauls in Brittany, who had to be well watched lest they should plunder their neighbors ; and to the south were the Arabs, continually trying to maraud in the Province and Aquitaine ; while the Dukes of Aquitaine, though they were quite unable to keep back the Moors without the help of the Franks, could not endure their allies, and hated to acknowl- edge the upstart Pepin as their master. These Dukes, though Teuton themselves, had lived so lono; in the Roman civilization of the southern cities, that they despised the Franks as rude barba- rians ; and the Franks, on their side, thought them very slippery, untrustworthy people. Pepin was a great improvement in good sense, understanding, and civilization on the do-nothing Meerwings, but even he looked on writing as only the accomplishment of clergy, and did not cause his sons to learn to write. Yet Pope Stephen was for a whole winter his guest, and when the Franks Carl of the Hammer, 69 entered Italy and defeated Astolfo, King of the Lombards, Pepin was rewarded by being made " Senator of Rome." Afterwards the Lombards attacked the Pope again. Pepin again came to his help, and after gaining several victories, forced King Astolfo to give up j)art of his lands near Rome. Of ' these Pepin made a gift to the Pope, and this was the beginning of tlie Pope's becoming a temporal sovereign, that is, holding lands like a king or prince, instead of only holding a spiritual power over men's consciences as chief Bisliop of the Western Church. Pepin died at the Abbey of St. Denys in the year 768. Do not call him King of France, buf King of the Franks, which does not mean the same thing. CHAPTER YIL CAKL THE GREAT. 708. CARL and Carloman, the two sons of Pepin, at first divided the Frank domains ; hut Carlo- man soon died, and Carl reigned alone. He is one of the mightiest of the princes who ever bore the name of Great. Carl der Grosse, the Franks called him ; Carolcs Magnus in Latin, and this has become 70 BAPTISM OF SAXONS HV CHAKLEMAGNE. Carl the G-reat, 73 ill French, Cliarlemagne ; and as this is the name by which everybody knows him, it will be the most convenient way to call him so here, though no one ever knew him thus in his own time. He was a most warlike king. When the Saxons failed to send him three hundred horses, he entered their country, ravaged it, and overthrew an image or pillar near the source of tlie Lippe, which they used as an idol, and called Irmin'sul. Thereupon the Saxons burnt the church at Fritzlar, which St. Boniface had built, and the war went on for years. Charlemagne was resolved to force the Saxons to be Christians, and Witikind, the great Saxon leader, was fiercely resolved against yielding, viewing the honor of Odin as the honor of his country. They fought on and on, till, in 785, Charlemagne win- tered in Saxony, and at last persuaded Witikind to come and meet him at Attigny. There the Saxon chief owned that Christ had conquered, and con- sented to be baptized. Charlemagne made him Duke of Saxony, and he lived in good faith to the new vows he had taken. The Frisians and Bavari- ans, and all who lived in Germany, were forced to submit to the great King of the Franks. There was a new king of the Lombards, Deside- rio, and a new Pope, Adrian I. ; and, as usual, they Y4 Young Folks' History of France, were at war, and Adrian entreated for the aid of Charlemagne. He came with a great army, drove Desiderio into Pavia, and besieged him tliere. It was a long siege, and Charlemagne had a chapel set up in his camp to keep Christmas in ; but for Easter he went to Rome, and was met a mile off by all the chief citizens and scholars carrying palm branches in their hands, and as he mounted the steps to St. Peter's Church, the Pope met him, saying, " Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." He prayed at all the chief churches in Home, and then returned to Pavia, which was taken soon after. He carried off Desiderio as a prisoner, and took the title of King of the Franks and the Lombards. This was in 775, while the Saxon war was still croing^ on. He had likewise a war with the Arabs in Spain, ,^nd in 778 he crossed the Pyrenees, and overran the country as far as the Ebro, where the Arabs offered him large gifts of gold and jewels if he would return Avithout touching their splendid cities in the South. He consented, but as he was return- ing, the wild Basque people — a strange people who lived unconquered in the mountains — fell upon the rear guard of his army in the Pass of Ponce valles, and plundered the baggage, slaying ^ffp,,, ^ ^Wi^ mM Wk mm ''"^^^ DKATH OF IfOLAND. Carl the Crreat. 77 some of the bravest leaders, among them one Roland, Warden of the Marches of Brittany. Round this Roland wonderful stories have hune. It is said, and it may be true, that he blew a blast on his bugle-horn with his last strength, which first told Charlemagne, on far before, of this direful mischance ; and further legends have made him the foremost and most perfect knight in the army, nay, raised him to gigantic strength, for there is a great cleft in the Pyrenean Hills called La Breche de Roland, and said to have been made with one stroke of his sword. Pfalgraf, or Count of the Palace, was the title of some of the great Frank lords, and thus in these romances Roland and his friends are called the Paladins. But to return to Charlemagne. He had three sons — Carl, Pepin, and Lodwig. When the two younger were four and three years old, he took them both with him to Rome, and there Pope Adrian anointed the elder to be King of Lom- bardy ; the younger. King of Aqidtania. As soon as they had returned, Charlemagne had the little Lodwig taken to his kingdom. As far as the Loire he was carried in his cradle, but when he entered Aquitania he was dressed in a little suit of armor and placed on horseback, that he might be shown 78 Yo^mg Folks' History of France. to his subjects in maiil}^ fashion. Wise, strong men formed his council, whose whole work was keeping the Arabs back beyond the Ebro ; but he was taken back after a time to be educated in his father's palace at Aachen. Charlemagne had gath- ered there the most learned men he could find — Alcuin, an Englishman, being one — and hud a kind of academy, called the School of the Palace, where his young nobles and clergy might acquire the learning of the old Roman times. Discussions on philosophy were held, everyone taking some old name, Charlemagne himself being called Dayid. He strove hard to remedy the want of a good education ; and such was his ability, that he could calculate the courses of the planets in his head, though he never wrote easily, in spite of carrying about tablets in his bosom, and practising at odd times. Latin was, of course, familiar to him ; St. Augustine's " City of God " was his favorite book ; and he composed several hymns, among them the Veni Creator Spiritus — that invocation of the Holy Spirit which is sung at Ordinations. He also knew Greek, and he had begun to arrange a Frankish Grammar, and collect the old songs of his people. No one was so much honored and respected in i^l' Mmm^j SCHOOL OF THK PALACE. Carl The armt. 81 Europe, and after t\yo more journeys to Rome on behalf of tlie Pope, Leo III., the greatest honor possible was conferred upon him. In the old Ro- man times, the Roman people had always been supposed to elect their Emperor. They now elected him. On the Christmas Day of the year 800, as Carl the Frank knelt before the altar of St. Peter's, the Pope placed a crown on his head, and the Roman people cried aloud, '' To Carolus Augustus, crowned by God, the great and peaceful Emperor of the Romans, life and victor}^ ! " So the Empire of the West, which had died away for a time, or been merged in the Empire of the East at Constantinople, was brought to life again in the jjerson of Carl the Great ; while his two sons were rulers of kingdoms, and all around him were numerous dukes and counts of different subject nations, all owning his empire. The old cities, likewise, in Provence — Aquitania, Lom- bardy, and Gaul — though they had councils that governed themselves, owned him as their Emperor. Moreover, he made the new territories which he had conquered along the German rivers great bishoprics, especially at Triers, Mentz, and Koln, thinking that bishops would more safely and loy- ally guard the frontier, and tame the heathen 82 Young Folks' History of France, borderers, than fierce warrior counts and dukes. Aachen was the capital of this Empire. There Carl had built a noble cathedral, and a palace for himself; and he collected from Italy the most learned clerks and the best singers of church music. His chosen name of David did not ill befit him, for he was a great founder and benefactor of the church, and gathered together synods of his bishops several times during his reign to consult for her good and defence. Indeed, his benefits to her, and his loyal service, were such that he has been placed in the calendar as a saint ; although he had several serious faults, the worst of which was that he did not rightly esteem the holiness and closeness of the tie of wedlock, and married and put away wives in a lax wa}^ that makes a great blot in his character. He was of a tall figure, with a long neck, and exceedingly active and dextrous in all exercises — a powerful warrior, and very fond of hunting, but preferring swimming to anything else. Nobody could swim or dive like him ; and he used to take large parties to bathe with him, so that a hundred men were sometimes in the river at once. His dress was stately on occasion, but he did not ap- prove of mere finery ; and when he saw some Carl The areat. 83 young noble over-dressed, would rather enjoy tak- ing liim on a long muddy ride in the rain. He had intended his eldest son Carl to be Emperor, and Pepin and Lodwig to rule Lom- bardy and Aquitaine under him as kings ; but Pepin died in 810, and Carl in 811, and only Lod- wig was left. This last son he caused to be ac- cepted as Emperor by all his chief nobles in the church at Aachen, and then made him a discourse on the duties of a sovereign to his people ; after which he bade the young man take a crown that lay on the altar and put it on his own head. "• Blessed be the Lord, who hath granted me to see my son sitting on my throne," he said. Charlemagne died the next year, in 814, in his seventy-first 3'ear, and was buried at Aachen, sit- ting upright, robed and crowned, in his chair, with his sword by liis side. CHAPTER VIII. THE CABLINGS. 814—887. THE Callings after Charlemagne are nearly as difficult to understand or care about as the Meerwings. The best way to understand the state of things is to remember that the Empire — the Holy Roman Empire of the West — consisted of a whole collection of separate states — German, 84 The Carlings, 85 Frank, Lombard, Burgundian, Gallic, Latin, and that a Calling was always king in one or more of these, and the chief of the family Emperor ; but they were constanth' quarrelling, and whenever any of them died, it was as if the whole were shaken up together and the parts picked out afresh. They were far from being as wicked or as ignorant as the Faineants; but it really was almost impossible for their utmost efforts to have succeeded in keeping the peace, even if they had been such giants in mind as Charlemagne had been. His only son, Lodwig — Ludovicus Pius, as the Latins called him ; Louis le Debonnaire, as he stands in French books — was a good, gentle, pious man, but his life was one continual warfare with his sons. After he had given three kingdoms to his three sons, their mother died ; he married again, and had a younger son, Carl or Charles ; and his desire to give a share to this poor boy led to no less than three great revolts on the part of the elder brothers, till at last their poor father died worn out and broken-hearted, on a little islet in the Rhine, in the year 840. The eldest son, Lothar, w^as then Emperor, and had for his own, besides the kingdom of Italy and 86 Young Folks' History of France, tliat country where Aachen (the capital) stood, the strip which . is bounded by the Rhine and the Alps to the east, and the Meuse and the Rhone to the west. He was in the middle between his brothers — Lodwig, who had Germany ; and Charles, who had all the remainder of France. Of course, they fought over this ; and when Lothar died, his two sons divided his dominions again — the elder (whose name was the same as his own) got the northern half, between the Meuse and Rhine ; and the younger had the old Provin- cia. They both died soon, and would not be worth speaking of, but that the name of the two Lothars remained to the northern kingdom, Loth- arik or Lorraine, and because we shall sometimes hear of the old kingdom of Aries or Provence. Charles survived all his brothers, and came to be the head of the family, the second Emperor Charles, commonly called the Bald. He was King from his father's death in 840, but Emperor only for two years, from 875 to 877 ; and his life was a dreary time of tumult afid warfare, though he was an active, able man, and did his best. He had a good deal more learning than Charlemagne had to begin with, and like him had a school in his pal- ace, where the most remarkable person Avas a Kelt HE SHED TEAKS AT THE SIGHT. The Carlings. .89 from one of the old Scottish or Irish monasteries, called John ; and also Scot, or Erigena (a native of Erin). He was a great arguer and philosopher, and got into trouble with the Pope about some of his definitions. King Alfred the Great of Eng- land, who had his own palace school, invited Scot to it, and afterwards placed him in the abbey at Malmesbury ; but there the rude English schol- ars' hatred to Scot broke out, and when he tried to keep order they killed him with the iron pens with which they wrote on wax tablets. At least so goes the story. Charles the Bald had little peace to enjoy his palace school, for the same reason as Alfred was at war. The Northmen were even more dreadful enemies to France than to England. The first fleet of their ships had been seen by Charlemagne, and he had shed tears at the sight ; for he per- ceived that all his efforts to subdue and convert Bavarians, Saxons, and Frisians had not saved his people from a terrible enemy of their own stock, far more earnest in the worship of Odin, and (as he foresaw) likely to come in greater numbers. All through the troubles of Louis le Debonnaire parties of Northmen were landing, and j)lundering any city or abbey that was not strong enough to 90 Young Folks^ History of France. keep them off ; and when Alfred had made Eng- land too mighty for them, they came all the more to France. Sometmies they were met in battle, sometimes a sum was offered to them to spare a city from their plunder ; and if the walls were strong, they would generally accept it. Paris was thus bought off in the time of Charles the Bald from the terrible sea-king, Hasting. Sometimes the bishop of the threatened place would fancy he had converted the sea-king and would add baptism to the treaty. But once when this was done, and there was a scarcity of white robes for the con- verts, they turned round in a rage, declaring that wherever they had been washed before they had been more handsomely treated. Another heathen had almost accepted the faith, when he paused and asked what had become of all his dead fathers. His teachers, instead of answering that God is merciful, and deals with men according to what they have, not according to what they have not, replied that they were in hell fire. " Then," said the pupil, " do you think I will desert them ?' I cast in my lot with them wherever they are." It is not certain whether it was one of Witikind's Saxons or a Northman who made this answer. After Charles the Bald, three very short reigns. NOKTHMEN BEFORE PARIS. The Carlings, 93 only lasting seven years altogether, of his son and his two grandsons, and then the head of the Carl- ings was Charles III., commonly called der dicke (the Thick or the Fat) — in France known as Charles le Gros. He was the son of Lodwig called the German, the son of Lodwig the Pious, and seems to have been less fit than most of his kindred for the difficulties of ]iis post as Emperor of the West, or King of the Franks. The Northmen were worse than ever in his time, not so much from his weakness, as because Harald the Fairhaired had made himself sole King of Norway, driving out all opposition ; and those who would not brook his dominion now came south- ward, intending not only to plunder, but to win homes for themselves. One of these was the famous Rolf Gauge, or Walker, so called because he went into battle on foot. In the year 885 Rolf and another sea-king named Sigurd sailed up the Seine w^ith seven hundred great ships, which stretched for six miles along the stream, and pre- pared to take Paris. First, however, Sigurd sent for Bishop Gozlin, and promised that if the city were only yielded to him he would allow no harm to be done, no man's goods to be touched. But the bishop said the city had been entrusted to 94 Young Folks' History of France. him and Count Eudes (the governer) by the- Emperor, and that they could not yield it up ; and for full thirteen months the place was besieged, until at last the Emperor arrived with an arm}' collected from all the nations under him : but, after all, he did not fight — he only paid the Northmen to leave Paris, and go to winter in Burgundy, which was at enmity with him. In fact, every j)art of the domains of the empire was at enmit}" with poor fat Charles ; and the next year (887) a diet or council met on the banks of the Rhine and deposed him. Arnulf, a son of the short-lived Carloman, was made Emperor, Count Eudes was crowned King of France, Guy (Duke of Spoleto) set up a kingdom in Italy, Boso of Aries called himself King of Provence, and Podolf (another count) was crowned at St. Moritz King of Burgundy; so that the whole Empire of Charle- magne seemed to have been broken up, and Rolf went on conquering more than ever, especial!}^ in Neustria. The seige of Paris, here mentioned, made an immense impression on French and Italian fancy, and was the subject of many poems and romances in later times. Only they mixed up together in one the three Karls — the Hammer, the Great, and COUNT KUDKS KNTKKING PAKIS. The Cnrlings, 97 the Fat — and called him Carlo Magno, sur- rounded him with Paladins, of whom Roland or Orlando was foremost ; made the Saracens besiege Paris, and be beaten off, and pursued into Spain, where the battle of Roncevalles and the horn of Roland played their part — all having of course the manners of knights and ladies of the fifteenth century, with plenty of giants, enchanters, and wonders of all kinds of magical and fairy lore. CHAPTER IX. THE COUNTS OF PAKIS. 887—987. POOR Carl the Fat died of misery and grief the 3^ear after he was deposed, but he was not the last Carling. Besides the Emperor Arnulf, there was a son of Ludwig the Stammerer (another Carl), who tried to win the old French domains back from Eudes. In fact, the westerly Franks, who held Paris and all the country up to the At- lantic Ocean, had become much mixed with the old Gauls, and had learned to speak Latin a little altered — in fact, the beginning of what we call French — and they held with Eudes ; while the Franks round Laon and Soissons were much more German, and chiefly clung to the Carling Carl, though he bore no better surname than the Simple. The further eastward Franks of Franconia, as we now call it, with all the other German tribes — The Counts of Paris. 99 Swabians, Frisians, Saxoas, Bavarians, &c., — were under Arnulf, and made up the kingdom of Germany. Tlie Franks west of the Rhine never were joined to it again ; and after the death of Arnulf s only son, Ludwig the Child, no more Carlings reigned there, and soon the Saxons ob- tained the headship. The Counts of Paris were not Gauls, but Sax- ons who had settled in the Frank country and made common cause with the Gauls. They had the same sort of patience with which the first Carlings had waited till the Meerwings were quite worn out. Eudes let Charles the Simple govern the lands between the Meuse and Seine, and when Eudes died, in 898, his brother Robert the Strong only called himself Duke of France, and left Charles the Simple to be King of the Franks. All this time Rolf and his Northmen had gone on conquering a home in Northern Gaul. They did not plunder and ravage like common vikings, but they spared the towns and made friends with the bishops ; and though they fouglit with the nations beyond, they treated all the country be- tween Brittany and the River Epte as if it were their own. Charles the Simple came to an agree- ment with Rolf. He said that if Rolf would 100 Young Folks'' History of France. become a Christian, and accept him as his king, he would give him his daughter in marriage, and grant him the possession of all these lands, as Duke of the Northmen. Rolf consented, and in 911 he was baptized at Rouen, married Gisla (the king's daughter), and then went to swear to be faithful to the king. Now, this ceremony was called swearing fealty. It was repeated whenever there was a change either of the over or the under-lord. The duke, count, or whatever he was, knelt down before the over-lord, and, holding his hands, swore to follow him in war, and to be true to him always. The over-lord, in his turn, swore to aid him and be true and good lord to him in return, and kissed his brow. In return, the under- lord — vassal, as he was called — was to kiss the foot of his superior. This was paying homage. Kings thus paid homage, and swore allegiance to the emperor ; dukes or counts, to kings ; lesser counts or barons, to dukes ; and for the lands they owned they were bound to serve their lord in council and in war, and not to fight against him. Lands so held were called fiefs, and the whole was called the feudal system. Now, Rolf was to hold his lands in fief from the king, and he swore his oath, but he could not bear to stoop to kiss the KIVKJHTS AN1> PEASANTS. The Counts of Paris. 103 foot of Charles. So he was allowed to pay hom- age by deputy ; but the Northman he chose was as proud as himself, and, instead of bending, lifted the king's foot to his lips, so that poor Charles the Simple was upset backwards, throne and all. Rolf was a sincere Christian ; he made great gifts to the church, divided the land among his Northmen, and kept up such good laws that Nor- mand}^, as his domains came to be called, was the happiest part of the country. It was even said that a gold bracelet could be left hanging on a tree in the forest for a whole year without any one steal- ing it. Charles the Simple, in the meantime, was over- thrown in another way ; for Robert of Paris and Duke Raoul of Burgundy made war on him, and took him prisoner. His wife was a sister of the English king Athelstan, and she fled to him with her young son Ludwig, or Louis. They stayed there while first Robert was king for a year, and then Raoul, and poor Charles was dying in prison at Peroune ; but when Raoid died, in 936, the young Louis was invited to come back from Eng- land and be king. The Count of Paris, Hugh the Great, and Rolf's son, William Longsword (Duke of Normandy), joined together in making him 104 Young Folks' History of France. king ; but he was much afraid of them, and lived at Laon in constant hatred and suspicion. The French people, indeed, held him as a stranger, and called him Louis d'Outre Mer, or from beyond seas. At last William Longsword was murdered by the Count of Flanders, when his little son Richard was only seven years old. Louis thought this his opportunity. He went to Rouen, declared himself the little boy's right guardian, and carried him off to Laon, and there treated him so harshly that it was plain that there was an intention of getting rid of the child. So Osmond de Centeville, the little duke's squire, rolled him up in a bundle of straw, and carried him to the stable like fodder for his horse, then galloped off with him by night to Normandyo A great war began, and Harald Blue- tooth, King of Denmark, came to the help of the Northmen. Louis was made prisoner, and only gained his freedom by giving up his two sons as hostages in his stead. Hugh, Count of Paris, aided young Richard of Normandy ; while the Saxon Emperor of Germany, Otho, aided Louis ; and there was a fierce struggle, ending in the vic- tory of the Count of Paris and the Northmen. One of the young Frank princes died in the hands The Counts of Paris, 106 of the Normans ; the other, Lothar, was given back to his father when peace was made^ giving the Counts of Paris another great step in power. In the year 954 Louis IV. died at Rheims., and his widow entreated that the great Count Hugh would protect Lothar. He did so, and so did his son and successor, Hugh — commonly called Capet, from the hood he wore — who managed everything for the young king. When there was a war with Otho, the Emperor, the Franks said, '' It is a pity so many brave men should die for two men's quarrel. Let them fight a single combat, and we will have for chief which- ever gains." This shocked the Germans, and one of them said, " We always heard that the Franks despised their king. Now we hear it proved." Peace was made, and the Emperor gave Lothar's younger brother Charles the province of Lotliarik, or Lorraine, as it was coming to be called. Lothar died soon after, in 986 ; and though his son Louis V. was crowned, he only lived a year, and when he died in 987, the great counts and dlukes met in consultation with the chief of the clWgy, and agreed that, as the counts of Paris iwe\re the real heads of the State, and nobody cared iforuhe Carlings, it would be better to do like the 106 Young Folks' History of France. Germans, and pass over the worn-out Carlings, who spoke old Frank, while the Paris Counts spoke the altered Latin, which came to be called French. So Charles, Duke of Lorraine, was not listened to when he claimed his nephew's crown, but was forced to return to his own dukedom, where his descendants ruled for full eight hundred years, and then again obtained the empire, as you will hear. And in 987, Hugh Capet, Count of Paris, was crowned King of France, and from that time French history, begins. At first it was Gaulish history, then it was Frank history, but at last it has become French history. The family which began with Robert the Strong exists still, after more than one thousand years, of which it reigned over France for nine hundred at o least. It is usually called the House of Capet, from Hugh's nickname, though it would be more sensible to call it the House of Paris. So, remem- ber three great families — Meerwings or Mero- vingians, Frank chiefs; Carlings or Carlo vingians/ , the chief of whom was Emperor of the West ; House of Paris, or Capetians, Kings of France. CHAPTER X. HUGH CAPET. 987—997. GET one of the older maps of France, where it is in provinces, and not departments, and I will try to show you what it was to be King of France when Hngli Capet was crowned at Rheims. Remember, there had once been a great Empire of the West ; indeed, there was an empire still, only the head of it Avas a Saxon instead of a Frank, and it had been divided into different nations or tribes, as it were, each ruled over by an officer or count or duke of the Emperor's. Now, the na- tions had fallen apart in groups, and their chiefs held together according to what suited them, or who was the strongest, and some with more, some with less, feeling that the Emperor had a right over them all. But as to meddling in the manage- 107 108 Young Folks' History of France. ment of a duke or count's province, no emperor nor king had any power to do tliat. The new king was Duke of France, and Count of Paris, and Guardian of the Abbej^ of St. Denys. So in the pUice called the Isle of France he was really master, and his brother Henri was Duke of Burgundy. On the Loire was the great county of Anjou, with a very spirited race of counts ; and to the eastward were Vermandois and Champagne, also counties. In all these places the nobles, like the king himself, were descended from the old Franks ; but the people in the towns and villages were Gauls, and they all talked the form of broken Latin which was then called the Langue d'oil^ because oil or oui was the word for yes. This has now turned into French. In Normandy the people were Northmen, but were fast learning to talk nothing but French ; and in Brittany both duke and people were still old Kymr}^ and talked Kymric, They had never been much under the Romans or Franks. They hated the French and Normans, and never paid them any homage if they could help it ; but the Norman dukes always con- sidered that Brittany had been put under them, and this led to plenty of wars. The southern half of the country had only been Hugh Capet. Ill overrun from time to time, never subdued or peo- pled even in the greatest Carling times. There the people were less Gaul than Roman, and talked a less altered Latin, which was called Langue d'oc^ because they said oc instead of oui ; and it was also called Romance or Provencal. Old Latin learning and manners, with their graces and ele- gances, were still kept up in these parts, and the few Frank chieftains who had come in had con- formed to them. These were the Dukes of Aquitaine or Guyenne, the Counts of Toulouse, and the Counts of Narbonne. But in the south- west of Aquitaine, near the Pyrenees and the sea, were an old race called Basques, who seem to be older still than the Gauls, and do not speak their language, but a strange and very difficult one of their own. The Basques, where more mixed with the other inhabitants in the plains, were called Gascons in France, Yascons in Spain, and were thought great boasters. These Romance-speaking counts were consid- ered by the King of France to belong to him ; but whether they considered themselves to belong to the King of France was quite a different thing. The County of Provence, Old Provincia, certainly did not, but held straight from the Holy Roman 112 Young Folks' History of France, Empire. So did the other countries to the east- ward, where a German tongue was spoken, but which had much to do with the history of France — namel}^ Lorraine, where the old Carlings still ruled, and Flanders. So you see a king of France was not a very mighty person, and had little to call his own. But just as the empire was cut up into little divisions, so each dukedom or county was cut into lesser ones. If the duke or count did homage to emperor or king, he had under him barons (some- times counts) who did homage in their turn for the lands they held. And as the king could not make war without a council of his counts and dukes, no more could the duke or count without a parliament or council of his barons. When money was wanted, the clergy and the burghers from the towns had to be called too, and to settle what they would give. The lands held in this way were called fiefs, and the great men who held straight from the king himself were crown vassals; those under them were their vassals. In time of war the king called his crown vassals, they called their barons, the barons called the vavasours or freemen under them, and got their men in from working on the farms, and out they went. Money was not Hugh Capet, 113 common then, so the lands were held on condition of serving the lord in war or by council, of giving a share of help on great occasions in his family or their own, and so many days' work on his own farm when it was wanted. This was called the feudal system, and some- times it worked well ; but if the baron was a hard man, the poor peasants often suffered sadly, for he would call them to work for him when their own crops were spoiling, or take the best of all they had. And the Franks had got into such a way of despising and ill-treating the poor Gauls, that they hardly looked on them as the same creatures as themselves. When two barons went to war — and this they were always doing — the first thing they did was to burn and destroy the cottages, corn, or cattle on each other's property, and often the peas- ants too. The barons themselves lived in strong castles, with walls so thick that, as there was no gunpowder, it was not possible to break into them. They filled them with youths whom they were training to arms — the younger ones called pages, the elder esquires or shield-bearers ; and as they practised their exercises in the castle court, the bearing of a gentleman was called courtesy. When a squire had attended his knight battle, 114 Young Folk's History of France, grown perfect in all his feats of arms, could move about easily in his heavy shirt of little chains of linked steel, and ride a tilt with his lance against another man armed like himself, and had learned enough to be a leader, he was made a knight or chevalier, as the French called it, by the accolade, that is a blow on the shoulders with the flat of the sword before an elder knight. A belt and gilded spurs marked the knight ; and he was re- quired to vow that he would fight for God and his Church, be faithful and true, and defend the poor and weak. Gradually chivalr}^ as this spirit of knighthood came to be called, did much to bring in a sense of honor and generosity ; but at this time, in the reign of Hugh Capet, there was very little good to be seen in the world. All over France there was turbulence, cruelty, and savage ways ; except, perhaps, in Normandy, where Duke Richard the fearless and his son Duke Richard the Good kept order and peace, and were brave, up- right, religious men, making their subjects learn the better, rather than the worse ways of France. Just at this time, too, the Church and the clergy were going on badl}-. The Pope had — ever since, at least, the time of Carl the Great — been looked on as the head of the whole Western Church, and THE AOCOLADKS. Hugh Capet, 117 the people at Rome had the power of choosing the Pope. Two wicked women, named Marozia and Theodora, gained such power by their riches and flatteries, that they managed to have anyone chosen Pope whom they liked ; and of course they chose bad men, who would do as they pleased. This had gone on till the year 962, when the Emperor Otho came over the Alps, conquered Italy, and turned out the last of these shameful Popes. Then he and his successors chose the Pope ; but this was not the right way of doing things, and the whole Church felt it, for tliere was no proper restraint upon the Avickedness of the nobles. The bishops were too apt to care only for riches and power, and often fought like the lay nobles ; and in the monasteries, where prayer and good works and learning ought to have been kept up, there was sloth and greediness, if not worse ; and as to the people, they were hardly like Christians at all, but more like brute beasts in their ignorance and bad habits. Indeed, there hardly was a worse time in all the histor}^ of Europe than the reign of Hugh Capet, which lasted from 987 to 997. CHAPTER XL ROBERT THE PIOUS, 997—1031. HENRY I., 1031—1060. PHILIP I., ......... 1060—1108. IN a very curious way a better spirit was stirred up in the world. In the Book of Revelation it is said that Satan is to be bound for a thousand years. Now, as the year 1000 of our Lord was close at hand, it was thought that this meant that the Day of Judgment was coming then, and there 118 Henry I, 119 was great fear and dread at the thought. At first, however, the effect only seemed to be that the wicked grew worse, for they feasted and drank and revelled, like the men before the flood ; and when the year 1000 began, so many thought it not worth while to sow their corn, that there was a most dreadful famine and great distress every- where, so that there were even wretches who set traps in the woods to catch little children for their food. But all this time there were good men who taught repentance, and one blessed thing they brought about while people's hearts were soft with dread, was what was called the Truce of God, namely, an agreement that nobody should fight on Sundays, Saturdays, or Fridays, so that three days in the week were peaceable. The monasteries began to improve, the clergy to be more diligent, and the king himself, whose name was Kobert, was one of the best and most religious men in his kingdom. He used to come to the Abbey at St. Denys every morning to sing with the monks ; he used the Psalms every day in prayer and praise, and wrote and set to music several Latin hymns, which he carried to Home and laid on the altar at St. Peter's : and he loved nothine so well as wait- 120 Young Folks' History of France. ing on beggars, and dressing the wounds of the sick. But he could not manage his kingdom well, and everyone took advaiitage of him. He had married his cousin, Bertha of Burgundy, who was heiress of ArJes in Provence. Now Provence belonged to the Empire, and the Emperor did not choose that the Kings of France should have it ; so he made the Pope, whom he had appointed, declare that Robert and Bertha were such near relations that they could not be husband and wife, and, with great grief, Robert submitted. Bertha went into a nunnery, and he married Constance of Aquitaine. She brought all the gay fashions of Southern France with her, and her followers wore their clothes and cut their hair, sung songs and made jokes, in a way that offended the Northern French very much. She was vain and light- minded herself, could not endure the king and his beggars, and grew weary of his hymns and prayers. The sons were more like her than like their father, and Robert had a troubled life, finding little peace except in church, until he died in the year 1031. His eldest son, Henry I., reigned after him, and the second, Robert, became Duke of Burgundy, and began a family of dukes which lasted on four hundred years. The spirit of improvement that ^i .^' ,* Jl .^i '1*11 KOBEltT ANB THE POOR. Henry I. 123 had begun to stir was going on. Everybody was becoming more religious. The monks in their con- vents began either to set themselves to rights, or else they founded fresh monasteries in new places, with stricter rules, so as to make a new beofinninsr. And a very great man, whose name was Hilde- brand, was stirring up the Church not to go on leaving the choice of the Pope to the Emperor, but to have him properly appointed by the clergy of the Diocese of Rome, who were called Cardinals — that is, chiefs. Though there was much fierce- ness and wildness, and much wickedness and cru- elty, among the great nobles, they still cared more for religion ; they built churches, they tried to repent as they grew old, and some went on pil- grimage to pray for the forgiveness of their sins at the Holy Sepulchre, where our Blessed Lord once lay. One of these pilgrims was Robert the Magnifi- cent, Duke of Normandy. He Avalked on foot very humbly in the country, but at Constanti- nople, he rode through the gates of the city with his mule shod with silver shoes, loosely fastened on, so that the people might pick them up. He died on his way, and his young son, William, had 124 Young Folks' History of France. to fight very hard with enemies on all sides before he could keep his dukedom. Henry I. had been dead six years, and his son Phillip I. had reigned six, from 1060, when this great Duke of Normandy became still greater, b}' winning for himself the kingdom of England. Philip did not much wish this. He was afraid of William, and did not at all wish to see him grow so much more powerful than himself. He spoke contemptuously of the new King of England whenever lie could, and at last it was one of his foolish speeches that made William so angry as to begin the war in which the great conqueror met with the accident that caused his death. Philip was by no means a good man. After he had lost his first wife, he fell in love with the beautiful Countess of Anjou, Bertrade de Mont- fort, and persuaded her to come and pretend to be his wife. His son Louis, who was so active and spirited that he was called Veveille^ which means the Wide-awake, showed his displeasure, and Philip and Bertrade so persecuted him, that he was obliged to come for refuge to England. How- ever, in spite of the king's wickedness, there was much more spirit of religion in the people. There were many excellent Bishops and Abbots, and <;OD WILLKTIt IT. Pliilip I. 127 some good nobles ; Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine, the descendant of the old Carlings, was one of the very best of the princes at that, or in- deed any other time. It was in this reign that a pilgrim, named Peter the Hermit, came home with a piteous history of the cruelty of the Mahometans, who had possession of the Holy Land. He obtained leave from the Pope, Urban II., to call all the Avarriors of Christ- endom to save the Holy Sepulchre, where our Blessed Lord had lain, from the hands of the un- believers. Tlie first great preaching was at Cler- mont, in Auvergne ; and there the whole people were so much moved that they cried as if with one voice, " God willeth it," and came crowding round to have their left shoulders marked with a cross made of two strips of cloth. An army came to- gether from many of the lands of the west, and the princes agreed to lay aside all their quarrels while the Crusade lasted. The good Duke Godfrey led them, all through Germany and Hungary, and across the narrow straits of the Bosphorus, meet- ing Avith many troubles and perils as they went ; but at last they did get safe to Jerusalem, laid seige to it and conquered it. Then they chose Godfrey to be King of Jerusalem, but he would 128 Young Folks' History of France. never be crowned ; he said it was not fitting for him to wear a crown of gold where his Lord had worn a crown of thorns. Many nobles and knights stayed with him to help him to guard the holy places, while the others went home. Two convents of monks resolved that, besides being monks they would be soldiers of the Holy War. These were called the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, or Hospitaller Knights, and the Knights of the Tem- ple. The Hospitallers had their name because they had a house at Jerusalem for receiving the poor pilgrims, and nursing them if they were sick or wounded. People from England, Spain, Germany and Italy were of the Crusade, and might belong to the two orders of knighthood, but there were always more French there than of any other nation. Louis the Wide-awake was fetched home by the French barons, and ruled for his father for the last six years of Philip's reign, though the old king did not die till the year 1108. i'l r -'MlWf" \l ,..^ THE LEADERS OF THK FIRST CRUSADE. CHAPTER XII. L O U I S V I. L E G K O S. 1108-1137. IT is disappointing to find that Louis the Wide- awake soon became Louis the Fat (Louis le Gros, as in that time when everybody had a nickname, he was called). But still he was spirited and ac- tive, and much more like the old Counts of Paris than any of the four kings before him had been ; and he was a good, brave and just man, who made himself respected. One great change was going on in his time, which had begun in that of his father. The old Roman cities in the South of France had gone on governing themselves much as in the Roman times, but the northern towns had most of them fallen under the power of some Prankish noble family, who were apt to call on them for money, and take away the young men to fight. Whenever one of these towns grew rich and strong enough, it would buy leave from the king and the noble to take care of itself. Then 131 132 Young Folks' History of France. the noble liad no more right over it ; but the burgh- ers built their walls, practiced themselves in fight- ing, and guarded their gates and towers. All the chief inen in each trade made up a town council, and one of them was chosen each year to be the major or provost, and manage their affair^. A great bell was rung Avhen the people were wanted to come together, or in time of danger ; and they knew well how to take care of themselves. The burghers only went out to war when the king him- self wanted them, and then they went on foot, and wore ]3lain armor, not like the gentlemen, who were all knights and squires. Tlie free towns were called communes ; but often they could not get or keep their freedom without a great deal of fighting, for the nobles were very jealous of them, and the Idngs never made more communes than they could help. Do you remember that when Robert, Duke of Normandy, governed so badly, his Normans asked King Henry I., his brother, to help them ? Louis did not choose to see the eldest brother despoiled, and he was glad that the King of England and the Duke of Normandy should not be the same person. So he helped Robert, but could not keep him from be- ing beaten at Tenchebray, and afterwards made pris- Louis FZ, Le Gros. 133 oner. Afterwards Louis befriended poor young William, Robert's son ; but he was beaten again at Brenneville. There were nine hundred knights in the battle of Brenneville, and only three were killed, the armor they wore was so strong. After- wards Louis helped William to obtain the County of Flanders, which he inherited in right of his grandmother, Queen Matilda ; but the poor young prince had not long been settled in it before he died of a hurt in the hand from a lance-point. Three noted men lived in the time of Louis YI. They were Suger, St. Bernard, and Pierre Abail- ard. Suger was abbot of the monastery of St. Denys', of which the Kings of France, as Counts of Paris, were always the protectors ; where their most precious banner, the oriflamme, was kept, and where they alwaj^s were buried. He was a clever and able man, the king's chief adviser, and may, perhaps, be counted as the first of the men who filled the place of king's adviser, or, as we now call it, prime minister. In those times these statesmen were almost always clerg}^, because few others had any learning. Pierre Abailard was a learned Bre- ton, wdio studied deeply at Paris (where there was a Universit}^ much esteemed), and went very far into all sorts of sciences. He became the teacher 134 Young Folks'^ History of France. of a young lady called Heloise, niece to a clergy- man at Paris. They fell in love with one another, and he took her away to Brittany ; but she left him soon after their marriage, because a married man could not be a priest, and only clergy could flourish as scholars. So she went into a convent, and at last became the abbess ; and Abailard became a monk of St. Denys', where he went on studying and writing till at last he confused himself, and taught wrong doctrines, which a council of the Church condemned ; but the struggle and debate went on many j^ears longer, until the deatli of Abailard in the course of the next reign. Heloise, who survived him, made this epitaph for him in Latin : " Here lies Pierre Abailard, to whom alone was open all possible knowledge." But to know all that can be known does not bring peace and happiness ; and Bernard, the monk, was a more really great man. He was the son of a nobleman in Burgundy, and had been brought up by a good mother. One of the monasteries that ha'd lately been made the most strict, and which was much esteemed for the holy lives led there, was at Cit- eaux ; and Bernard, at the age of twenty-three, not onh^ retired there himself, but persuaded all his brothers (six in number) to go thither with him. LOUIS THE FAT OK AK EXPEDITION. Louis FZ, Le Gros, 137 Thej intended to have left the youngest, a little boy, to keejD up the castle and inherit the lands ; but he said, '• What ! all heaven for you, and earth for me ? " and insisted on going with tliem. It seems to us a mistake ; but we must remember that a noble in the twelfth century had dreadful temp- tations to be cruel and lawless, and that a convent often seemed the only way to avoid them. Citeaux grew so overfull of monks that a branch convent was founded at Clairvaux, of which Ber- nard was made the abbot. His brothers went thither with him, and their old father came after a time to end his days among his sons. Bernard was one of the most holy and earnest of men, and so learned and wise that he is sometimes called the last of the Fathers of the Church, for many of his writings still remain. His sermons were full of love and beauty, though he never failed to reprove men for their crimes ; and though he was the most humble of men, his fame reached throughout his own country and the whole Church, and he was the adviser of kings and popes. He was the person best able to argue with Abailard's subtle errors, and the discussion between them lasted for many years — on, indeed, into the next 138 Young Folks' History of France, For Louis VL, though not an old man, fell soon into declining health. He thought he had con- trived admirably to get more power for the kings, by giving his son in marriage to Eleanor, the daughter of the Duke of Aqiiitaine. As she had no brother, her son would own that great southern dukedom as entirely as the County of Paris, and this would make a great difference. Young Louis was sent to marry the lady, and fetch her home ; but while he was gone his father became worse, and died in the year 1137. It will help you with the dates to remember that Louis began to govern in his father's name in 1100, just as the English Henry I. came to the crown ; and that he died three years after Henry, while Stephen and Matilda were fighting in England, CHAPTER XTTL LOUIS VII., THTC YOUNG. 1137—1180. THE " Young" is an odd historical name for a king who reigned a good many years ; hut he was called so at first because he was only eighteen years old when he came to the throne, and the name clung to him because there was alwa3^s some- thing young and simple about his character. The first great event of his reign was that St. Bernard stirred Europe once more to a crusade to help the Christians in Palestine, who were hard pressed by the Mahometans. At Vezelay there was a great assembl}' of bishops and clergy, knights and nobles ; and St. Bernard preached to them so eagerly, that soon all were fastening crosses to their arms, and tearing up mantles and robes because enough crosses had not been made before- 139 140 Young Folks' History of France. hand for the numbers who took them. The young kmg and his beautiful queen, Eleanor of Aqui- taine, vowed to make the crusade, too, and set out with a great army of fighting men, and, besides them, of pilgrims, monks, women and children. The queen was very beautiful and very vain ; and though she called herself a pilgrim, she had no no- tion of denying herself, so she carried all her fine robes and rich hangings, her ladies, waiting-maids, minstrels and jesters. The French had no ships to take them direct to the Holy Land, but had to go by land all the way, along the shore of xlsia Minor. Numbers of the poor pilgrims sank down and per- ished by the way ; and just as they had passed the city of Laodicea, the Mahometan army came down on the rear guard in a narrow valley, and began to make a great slaughter. The king himself had sometimes to get behind a tree, sometimes behind a rock ; and the whole army would have been cut off, if a poor knight named Gilbert, whom no one had thought much of, had not come forward, taken the lead, and helped the remains of the rear guard to struggle out of the valley. Through all the rest of the march, Gilbert really led the- army ; and yet after this he never is heard of again, and never seems to have looked for any reward. i^WBS^^^M^ itUSADEKS' RF.TURN. Louis VIL, The Young, 143 When Palestine was reached at List, there were not 10,000 left out of the 400,000 who had set out from home ; and the gay queen's zeal was quite spent ; and while the king was praying at the Holy Sepulchre, and trying to fight for it, she was amus- ing herself with all the lively youths she could get around her. She despised her good, pious hus- band, and said he was more like a monk than a king ; and as soon as they returned from this un- happy crusade, they tried to find some excuse for breaking their marriage. The Pope allowed the king to rid himself of this wicked lady, and let them both marry again. He married Constance, of Castille, and Eleanor took for her husband the young English king, Henry II., and brought him all her great possessions. The very thing had come to pass that the King of France feared — namely, that the Dukes of Nor- mandy should get more powerful than he was. For Henry II. was at once King of England and Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, and his wife was Duchess of Aquitaine and Guienne ; and as time went on, Henry betrothed his little son Geof- frey to Constance, the orphan girl who was heiress to Brittany, and undertook to rule her lands for her ; so that the lands over which Louis had any 144 Young Folks' Eistory of France, real power were a sort of little island within tlie great sea of the possessions of the English king. Besides, Henry was a mnch cleverer man than Louis, and always got the better of him in their treaties. The Kings of France and Dukes of Normandy always met at Gisors, on their border, under an enormous elm-tree, so large that three hundred horsemen could find shelter under its branches; and these meetings never Avent on well for Louis. He was obliged to promise that his two daughters, Margaret and Alice, should marry Henry's two sons, Henry and Richard, and to give them to Henr}^ to be brought up. When Henry had his great dispute with Archbishop Becket, about the question whether clergymen were subject to the law of the land, Becket fied to France. Louis loved and respected him very much, gave him shelter in an abbey, and tried hard to make peace between him and Henry, but could never succeed, till, after six years, Henry pretended to be recon- ciled, and Becket went home in the year 1170. He was murdered very soon after, as you have heard in the history of England. Louis must have been very much surprised when his own former wife. Queen Eleanor, came dis- guised as a man with her three eldest sons to his Louis VIL, The Young. 145 court, making great complaints of Henry for keep- ing the government of their provinces in his own hands. He must have thought it only what they and he both deserved, and he gave them wdiat help he could ; but Henry was a great deal more strong and crafty than any of them, and soon put them down. Eleaiior was thrown into prison, and kept there as long as she lived. She richly deserved it ; but her sons and the people of Aquitaine did not think so. Those people of Aquitaine were a curi- ous race — they were very courtly, though not very good ; and they thought more of music, poetry, and love-making than of anything else, though they were brave men, too. Every knight was ex- pected to be able to hold an argument in the courts of love. The best poets among them were called troubadours; and Eleanor herself, and her two sons, Richard and Geoffrey, could compose songs and sing them. All were as much beloved in Aqui- taine as Henry was hated ; and the troubadours did nothing but stir up tlie youths to fight with their father and set their mother free ; but though they broke out mau}^ times, they could never pre- vail against him. Louis YH. was married three times — to Elea- nor of Aquitaine, to Constance of Castille, and to 14G Young Folks^ History of France, Alice of Champagne. These three queens had among them six daughters, but no son ; and tMs was a great grief, since no woman had ever reigned in France, and it was believed that the old Salian Franks had a law against women reigning. At any rate, this grew to be the rule in France, and it is called the Salic law. However. ' the question had not to be settled this time, for at last a son was born to Louis ; and in his joy he caused the babe to be christened Philip, Bieu-domie^ or God- given. The boy was the cleverest son who had sprung from the House of Paris for ages past ; and while still quite young, cared for all that concerned his father and his kingdom, at an age when other boys care only for sports and games. When his father met the English king at the elm of Gisors, young Philip looked on and saw how Henr}^ over-reached and took advantage of Louis ; and he was bitterly grieved and angered, and made up his mind that some day he would get back all that his father was losing. However, in the midst of his plans, young Philip was one day out hunting in a forest with his father, when he missed his companions, lost his way, and wandered about all night. When he was found, he was so spent with hunger and cold that he had Louis VIL, The Yoimg. 14T a bad illness, and was in great danger for some days. When he grew better, King Louis, in great jo}', thought this precious life had been granted for the prayers of his old friend Thomas a Becket, and asked leave of Henry to come and give thanks at the archbishop's tomb at Canterbury. He came, and was welcomed as a friend and guest. He gave great gifts to the cathedral, and especiall}- a beau- tiful ring, Avhich became one of the great treasures of the place. He had had his beloved son, though only fifteen, crowned, that France might have a king over her while he was away ; and Philip was very soon the only king, for good, honest, simple-minded Louis the Young died ver}" soon after his return from Canterbury, in the year 1180, jiine years before the death of his great enemy, Henry II. CHAPTER XIV. PHILLIP II., AUGUSTUS. 1180-122:1. PHILIP the Gift of God is most commonly known in history as Philip Angnstns. Why, is not quite plain ; but as he became a very power- ful King of France, it is most likely that one of the old names of the Western Emperors, who were all Caesar Augustus, got applied to him. If his father had still been Louis the Young in his old age, Philip might in his youth have been called Philip the Old, for he was much older in skill and cunning at fifteen than his father had been all his life. The wdiole history of his reign is of his endeavor to get the better of the Plantage- net kings of England. He so much hated the thought of what he had seen under the elm-tree of Gisors, that he cut it down ; and though he hated 148 -^ Philip IL, Augustus. 149 King Henry and his sons all alike, lie saw that the best way to do them harm was by pretending to be the friend of whichever was not the king, and so helping on their quarrels. The eldest and third sons, Henry and Geoffrey, were by this time dead, and Richard, of the Lion-heart was the favor- ite of the Aquitaine troubadours. There came news from Palestine that the Chris- tians had been conquered by the great Saracen chief Saladin, and that Jerusalem had been taken by him. There was great lamentation, and a fresh crusade was determined on by all the princes of Europe, the Emperor, the King of France, the King of England, and his sons. The Emperor, Frederick of the Red Beard, set off first, but he was lost by the way while bathing in a river in Asia Minor ; and the two kings waited to arrange their affairs. Philip's way of doing this was to get Richard to his court, and to pretend to be so fond of him that they both slept in the same bed, drank out of the same cup, and ate out of the same dish ; but he was stirring up Richard — who needed it little — to demand his mother's freedom and the land of Aquitaine, and to rebel against his father, leading his brother John with him. This was the rebellion which broke the heart of Henry II. He 150 Young Folks'' HUtory of France. died, and Richard went on his crusade as king. It was the first crusade when the armies went by sea instead of land. Richard liad his own fleet, but Philip was obliged to hire ships of the mer- chants of Genoa ; and when the two fleets reached Sicily, they did not venture to sail on till the win- ter was over, but waited till spring. Now that Richard was king, Philip no longer pretended to love him i and there were many disputes among the Crusaders. At last they sailed on to help the Christians, who were besieging Acre. Philip ar- rived first, and quickened the works ; but still no great things were done till Richard arrived ; and then Philip was vexed that every one talked so much more of the English king's brave doings than of himself. The heat of the climate soon made both kings fall sick ; and when the city was taken, Philip's doctors declared that he must go home at once if he wished to recover. Most likely they were right ; but he was glad to go, for he hoped to do Richard a great deal of harm in his absence. The Pope forbade any one to attack a Crusader's lands while he was away ; but Philip could stir up Richard's subjects and his brother against him. And when, as you remember, Richard was made captive in Austria, on his way home, Philip even CAPTUKE OF AOKE. Philip n., Augustus. 153 sent money to the Emperor of Germany to keep him prisoner. At hist, when the German princes had forced the Emperor to set him free, Philip sent word to John, in this short note, " Take care of yourself, for the devil is let loose. '' But when, two years later, Richard of the Lion- heart was killed at Limoges, Philip became John's most bitter enemy, and the friend of the only other Plantagenet left, namely, Geoffrey's son, Arthur, Dake of Brittany, who appealed to his suzerain, Philip, to make him Duke of Xormand}' and Count of Anjou, as son of the elder brother. Philip called on John to give up these lands ; but John offered to make a peace by marrying his niece, Blanche, the dausfhter of his sister and the Kingrof Castnie, to Philip's son, Louis the Lion. Philip was in trouble himself at the time, and consented to make peace. Philip's trouble was by his own fault. His first wife, Isabel of Hainault, was dead, and he had thought to make friends with the King of Den- mark by marrying his daughter Ingeborg. But the Danes were then very rough and untaught, and poor Ingeborg was a dull, clumsy, ignorant girl, not at all like a courtly lady. Philip took such a dislike to her that he sent her into a convent, and 154 Young Folks'' History of France. married the beautiful Agnes cle Meranie, the daughter of the Duke of the Tj^rol. But there was then ruling one of the mightiest Popes who ever lived, called Innocent III. He was deter- mined not to let any one, however great, go on in sin unwarned ; and he called on Philip to put Agnes -away, and take back his only true wife. And when Philip would not. Innocent laid the kingdom under an interdict — that is, he forbade any service to go on in any church except in those of the monks and the nuns, and there only with the doors shut against all outside. The whole na- tion Avas, as it were, cut off from God for their prince's sin. Philip tried to stand up against this dreadful sentence, at first ; but he found the peo- ple could not bear it, so he sent Agnes away, and took Ingeborg back. He was then absolved, and his kingdom went on prospering. When, in 1203, Arthur of Brittany perished in prison, Philip sum- moned John, as a vassal of France, to answer for the murder. The great vassals met, the trumpets sounded, and John was called on to appear ; but as he did not come, he was sentenced to have for- feited his lands of Normandy and Anjou, and Philip entered them with his army and took the castle, while John could not get men or money to Philip 11.^ Augustus. 155 come and stop him ; and only the lands of old Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was still alive, remained to the English. This forfeit made a great step in the power of the French kings, since not only had the English kings lost Normandy and Anjou, but these two great domains belonged to the French king as entire- ly as his County of Paris. He had no duke or count between him and the barons or cities. Philip's de- signs against the Plantagenets were favored by John's own crimes. The quarrel with the Pope that you have heard of, about the Archbishop of Canterbur}^ made Innocent III. invite Philip to go and conquer England, but the fear of this brought John to make peace with the Pope. However, John's nephew, Otho of Brunswick, was emperor, and he too had quarrelled with the Pope, who wanted to make 3'oung Frederick of Sicily emperor. Philip took Frederick's j^art, and Otho marched against him into Flanders. All the French nobles had gathered round their king, and at Bouvines there was one of the greatest battles and victories that French history tells of. Otho had to gallop away from the battle, and Philip said, " We shall see nothing more of him than his 156 Young Folks' History of France. back." This great battle was fought in the year 1214. Very shortly after, Philip's eldest son, Louis, called the Lion, was invited to England by the barons, because they could no longer bear the hor- rible cruelties and wickednesses of John ; and he would not keep Magna Charta, which he had signed. Louis went to England, and London was put in his hands ; but when King John died, the barons liked better to have his little innocent son, Henry III., as their king, than to be joined on to France. So, after Louis's troops had been beaten by land and by sea, he came home and gave up the attempt. But Philip Augustus certainly had the wish of his life fulfilled, for he had seen his foes of the House of Plantagenet humbled and brought to bitter trouble, and he had taken to himself the chief of their great possessions. He died in the year 1223, having lived in the reigns of four English kings, and done his utmost to injure them all. He was not a good man ; but as he was brave and clever, and a good friend to the towns, the French were very proud of him. CHAPTER XV. THE ALBIGENSES ..... 1190. LOUIS VIII., THE LION . . . 1223—1226. LOUIS, the Lion had a very short reign, but most of his doings had been in his father's time ; and I left them out that you might hear, all in one, as it were, the history of Philip Augustus and his crafty dealings with the House of Planta- genet. Now, we will go back and speak of Louis, before he came to the throne, and of the people he chiefly fought with. You remember that the South of France, which had first been settled by the Komans, and had never been peopled by the Franks, was much more full of learning and thinking than the northern part. The Langue doc was much more used for poetry and elegant speech than the Langue d'oui. But somehow, among these people there 157 158 Young Folks'^ History of France. arose up a heresy (that is, a false doctrine), which seems to have come to them from the East. It would not be well to tell you all about it, even if you or I could understand it ; but one great point in it was that these people said that the Power of Evil is as great and strong as the Power of Good, thus making Satan like another God, as some old Eastern pagans thought. The evil ways of Chris- tians strengthened the notions of these people, who were called Albigenses, from the town of Albi. Their southern cleverness saw what was amiss, and they made songs laughing at the clergy, and at the way they dealt with holy things, and often at the holy things themselves, till they led away a great many people after them, and even some of the great princes of the South, who began to feel as if the Albigenses were something specially be- longing to themselves, and to the old culture of the Roman Provincia. But the great Pope, Innocent III., could not allow all this country to fall away from the Church. While he was thinking what was to be done, two men offered themselves to him. One was a Span- iard, named Dominic, who wished to found an order of brethren to go forth, preach, teach and bring back heretics ; the other Avas an Italian, The Alhigenses. 159 named Francis, who cared above all for holiness, and longed to be like our Lord, and wanted to draw together men within the Church to be more spiritual and less worldly, and give the enemj^ no cause to take offence at their faults. Both these good men were allowed to institute brotherhoods, orders not quite like tlie monks in the old con- vents, but still poorer. Their brethren were called friars, and went about preaching and hearing con- fessions, and helping men and women to lead holier lives — those of St. Francis in Christian places, those of St. Dominic wherever there was heresy. Dominic was further allowed to judge and punish with severe penances and captivity such as would not be convinced, and the inquiry into oj3inions which he and his friars made was called the Inquisition. ,But the great dukes and counts in the South of France — in Provence, Toulouse, Foix, Albi, and many others — did not choose to have their people interfered with. They all spoke much the same language, and they were resolved, right or wrong, to hold together ; and it is really one of the most difficult questions in the world whether it is well or ill to put down false teachings. The more peo- ple think and read the more tliey doubt about per- 160 Young FolJcs^ History of France. secution ; and so these Provencal princes, being cleverer than their rough neighbors, were the less disposed to punish their subjects ; but they Avere also less religious and less earnest, and Pope Inno- cent had no question but that they ought to be called to an account. So he proclaimed a crusade against them, as if they had been Saracens, and made the leader of it Simon, Count de Montfort, a stern, hard, though pious old knight, the father of the Simon de Montfort who fought with Henry III. Pedro II., King of Aragon, joined the Albigrenses, and there was a terrible war all over the south. In the year 1213. a great battle was fought at Muret, in the County of Toulouse, in which the Albigenses were beaten, and the ' King of Aragon killed. Those were cruel times, and the Crusaders treated their captives very savagely. The Count of Toulouse, Raymond, stood against the Crusaders, and with his son, also named Ray- mond, fought hard ; but the Pope declared them unworthy to rule, and granted Simon de Montfort all the lands he had conquered in the South of France. In the northern parts he was looked on as a saint, and when he went to do homage to the king, people ran to touch his horse and his clothes as something holy. Indeed, he was a sincerely THE HATTI,K OF MUKET. Louis VIIL, The Lion. 163 good man ; and though he did many things so cruel that I cannot tell you of them, it was all be- cause he thought it his duty. Louis the Lion aided him, and learnt the art of war during these battles ; but when the Crusaders tried to take the city of Toulouse, the people, knowing how horribly they would be treated, held out against them ; and at last, in 1217, the year of our King John's death, one night, when Simon was attacking the walls, a woman threw down a heavy stone, which struck him on the head and killed him. His eldest son, Amaury. was not such an able warrior, and the Albigenses began to get the better of the Crusaders, while Louis the Lion was away in England ; but in the year 1223, when Philip died, and he became King of France, he was called upon by the Pope to begin war again. He fought with all his might ; but in spite of his title of the Lion, he was not as able a soldier as he was a brave man, and in the three years of his reign he did not much weaken the Albigenses, though he was at war w ith them all through his short reign. While he was passing through Auvergne, a sickness broke out in his army, he fell ill himself, and died in the year 1226. His eldest son, Louis IX., was only eleven years 164 Young Folks' History of France. old ; but the queen, Blanche of Castille, his mother, was a very good and spirited woman, and man- aged the kingdom excellently. She sent troops, who gained such successes that at last Count Ray- mond of Toulouse was forced to make peace, and to give his only child into Blanche's hands to be brought up as a wife for her third son, Alfonso. The Count of Provence, who held from the Em- peror, had four daughters, and no son, and these ladies were married in due time to the King of France and his brother Charles, and to the King of England and his brother Kichard, and thus all that great country of the Languedoc was brought under the power and influence of the north. The Dominican friars and the Inquisition were put in authority everywhere, that the false doctrine of the Albigenses might be rooted out ; and there was much of barbarous punishment, imprisonment tor- ture, and even burning of heretics. It was a cruel age, and no doubt terrible things Avere done ; but that the punishments were savage does not make the faith of the Albigenses right. It was a time when much thought was going on throughout Europe. Pope Innocent III. had made the Church of Rome very powerful, and though no one who came after was as great as he was, his Louis VIII., The Lion. 165 plans were followed out, and the King of France, who was always called the Eldest Son of the Church, was one of the first to be reckoned on for carrying them out. They were often plans for mere earthly power more than spiritual, but all good men thought it their duty to aid them, and it was a time when there were many good men. ' The work of St. Bernard and the example of St. Francis were doing much to make the lives of men and women more pure and holy, and there was more learning and less roughness than in the last age. Everything that was then made was strangely beautiful too — castles, churches and cities were in most graceful architecture ; armor and dress were exquisite in color and shape, and the illuminations in the manuscripts were as lovely as hand could make them. CHAPTER XVL ST. LOUIS IX. 1226. THE little king, Louis IX, who came to the throne in 1226, when he was only eleven years old, was happy in having a good and wise mother, Queen Blanche of Castille, who both brought him up carefully, and ruled his kingdom for him well and wisely. She was sometimes a little too jealous and stern, and as he grew up she was jealous of his caring for anybody else. When he married Margaret of Provence, she did not like the young husband and wife to be very much together, for fear Louis should be drawn off from graver matters ; but on the whole she was an excellent mother and queen, and there have been very few kings in any country so good and just and holy as Louis was. He never 166 /' jSt. Louis IX. 167 seems in all his life, to have clone anything that he knew to be wrong, and he cared more for God's honor than anything else. Sometimes such very pions kings forgot that they had any duty to their people and did not make good rulers ; but Louis knew that he could not do his duty properly to God if he did not do it to man, so he showed himself a wise, just prince and good warrior. He was so much stronger and cleverer than our poor foolish Henry III., that his barons thought he could take away all Guyenne, which had been left to King John ; but he said he would not do an injustice. Henry had married his queen's sister, and their children would be cousins, so he would not do what would lead to wars between them. But when Henry wanted him to give back Normandy and Anjou, he had the matter well looked into ; and he decided that King John had justly forfeited them for murdering Arthur of Brittany, and so he ought to keep them. So he was always sensible as well as just. He was still a young man, when he had a very bad illness and nearly died. In the midst of it he made a vow that if he got well he would go to the Holy Land, and fight to set Christ's Sepulchre free from the Mahometans. As soon as he grew better ,:^ 168 Young Folhs* History of France. he renewed the yow, though it grieved all his peo- ple very much ; but he left them to be governed by his mother, and as soon as he could get his army too-ether, he set out on his crusade vi^ith his wife and his brothers. As the Mahometans who held the Holy Land came from Egypt, it was thought that the best way of fiofhting; them would be to attack them in their own country. So Louis sailed for Egypt, and be- seiged and took Damietta ; and there he left his queen, Margaret, while he marched on by the side of the Nile, hoping to meet the enem3\ But it was a bad season, for the Nile was overflowing, and the whole country was one swamp, where the knights and horses could hardly move, and grievous sick- ness broke out. The king himself became very ill, but he and his men roused themselves when they found that a battle was near. It was fought at Mansoureh. The adversaries were not native Egyptians, but soldiers called Memlooks. They had been taken from their homes in early infancy, made Mahometans, and bred up to nothing but war ; and very terrible warriors they were and quite as much feared by the Sultan and the Egyp- tians as by the enemy. However, the French feared nothing ; they were only too fool-hardy ; aS'^. Louis IX. 169 and when the English Earl of Salisbury gave ad- vice to be prudent and keep a guard at the camp, the lvinc!-':j brother Robert called out that he was afraid, and the earl answered in a j^assion that he should go as far among the enemy as Kobert him- self. So they all dashed in, and many others, and the Memlooks got between them and the camp, and cut them off and killed them. The king was so weak that he could hardly sit on his horse, but he tried to call his men together and save them ; but it was all in vain, the Memlooks were all round them, and he was so faint that his knights took him off his horse, and laid his head in a woman's lap, fearing each moment to see him die. He gave himself up as a prisoner, and lay day after day in a hut with two priests waiting on him. He re- spected them so much that he could not bear to let them do servants' work for him ; and he was so patient and brave, that the Memlooks themselves said he was the best man they had ever seen, and wanted to make him Sultan of Egypt. At last it was settled that he should be set free, if he would pay a heavy ransom, and give up the cit}^ of Damietta, which he had taken. This was done, and afterwards he embarked Avith his queen and the remains of his army, and went to the Holy 170 Young Folks' History of France. Land ; but there was a peace just then, and no fighting ; and after he had fulfilled his vow of pilgrimage, he returned to France, but not to find his mother there, for she had died in his absence. Fourteen most happy and good j-ears followed his return. He was a most wise and valiant king in his own kingdom, and thoroughly just and up- right. There was a great oak-tree near his palace of Vincennes, under which he used to sit, hearing the causes of the poor as well as the rich, and doing justice to all. He had a clear good sense and judgment, that made him see the right thing to do. The Pope had a great quarrel with the Emperor Frederick n., and tried to make Louis take up arras against him, as his father had done against King John of England; but the good king saw that even the Pope's bidding would not make this right, and held back. He and Henry III. of England were very loving brothers-in-law ; and during the barons' wars in England, Eleanor, the young wife of Ed- ward, the heir of England, was left with his aunt. Queen Margaret of France. You recollect that Louis IX. and Henry III. and their two brothers, Charles, Count of Anjou, and Richard, Earl of Cornwall, had married the four daughters of the St. Louis IX. 171 Count of Provence. The Earl of Cornwall was chosen to be King of the Romans — that is, next heir to the Western Empire — and when her three sisters were queens, the fourth sister, Beatrice, kept the County of Provence. She is said to have been imhappy because her sisters sat on thrones, when she only sat on a stool ; but before long the Pope offered the kingdom of the two Sicilies to her husband, Charles of Anjou. It rightl}- be- longed to the grandson of the Emperor Frederick, and Louis wished his brother to have nothing to do with it ; but Charles was a false and ambitious man, though he ]3i"etended to be as religious as Louis ; and with an army of Provencals he set out and gained the kingdom we now call Naples and Sicily. The young heir Conradin set off to tr}^ to regain his inheritance, but Charles defied him in battle, made him j^risoner, and put him to death on the scaffold. Louis had always intended to make another cru- sade, and Charles promised to join him in it, as well as Edward of England. All the North of Africa was held by the Moors, who were Mahom- etans ; but Louis had had letters that made him think that there was a chance of converting the Dey of Tunis to the Christian faith, and his brother 172 Young Folks^ History of France. Charles wished to show them the crusading army in hopes of alarming them, and getting power there. So Louis, with his ami}-, landed in the Bay of Tunis, and encamped in the plains of Old Carthage to wait for King Charles and Edward of England ; but the Moors were foes instead of friends. It was very hot and unwholesome, and deadly sickness broke out. The good king went about from one tent to another, comforting and helping the sick, but he was soon laid low himself. He lay repeating Psalms, and dictating a beautiful letter of advice to his daughter, as he grew worse and vv^orse ; and at last, with the words, " O Jeru- salem, Jerusalem ! " on his tongue, he died in the year 1270, nor has there ever been such a king in France again, and few in any other ^ country. Charles of Sicily and Edward of England came three days later ; and as soon as they could get together the poor, broken, sad and sick army, they sailed for Sicily, taking with them the poor young king, Philip, who was very ill himself, and could not go on with the crusade, so that Edward was obliged to go alone, as we all know. Louis and his youngest son, who had died a day or two before him, were buried together at St. Denys, and he has ever since borne the well-deserved title of saint. '^\\ \7- DEATH OF I.OUIS. CHAPTER XVII. PHILIP ni., THE HARDY ; AXD PHILIP IV., THE FAIR. 1271—1284—1814. ST. LOUIS left three sons. The second, Rob- ert, Count of Clermont, must be remembered, because three hundred years later his descendants, the House of Bourbon, came to the throne of France. The eldest son, Philip III., was a man who left very little mark, thougli lie reigned thir- teen years. The most remarkable thing that hap- pened. in his time was a great rising against his uncle, Charles of Anjou, in Sicily. The French and Provencal knights he had brought with him were proud, and rude in their behavior to the peo- ple of the country, and oppressed them lieavily. At last, on Easter Monday of 1282, as the people of Palermo were on their way to hear vespers, all in holiday attire, a French soldier was rude to a 175 176 Young Folks' History of France. Sicilian girl, and a fight broke out, -which ended in the killing of all the Frenchmen in the island ex- cept one, who had been more kind and gentle than the rest. This was called the Sicilian Yespers. The Sicilians then sent to offer the crown to Pedro, King of Aragon, the nearest kinsman of their old line. The Pope was so angry with him for accept- ing it as to declare his own kingdom forfeited, and to send Philip of France to take it from him. But soon after the French army had advanced into Aragon, sickness broke out among them, the king himself caught it, and died in the 3^ear 1284 ; and Pedro of Aragon gained the island of Sicily and kept it, though Charles of Anjou and his sons reigned on in Naples on the mainland. Philip lY., called Le Bel^ or the Fair, was onty seventeen years old when he came to the crown ; but he was as clever and cunning as his uncle, Charles of Anjou, or his great grandfather Philip Augustus, and his great object was to increase the power of the crown by any means he could. He had not to deal with an English king like John ; but Edward I. was so much more anxious to make one kingdom of Great Britain than to be pow^erful in France, that he took little concern for his French duchies. So when Philip lY. picked a quarrel and Philip in.. The Hardy, 17T seized Guyennc, Edward would not draw off his men from Scotland to fight for it, but made a peace which onl}^ left him Gascony, and sealed it by him- self marrying Philip's sister Margaret, and be- trothed his son Edward to Philip's little daughter Isabel. It was very wrong — almost the Avorst action of the great king's life — for young Edward was alread}' betrothed to the young daughter of the poor Count of Flanders, Guy Dampierre, whom Philip was cruelh' oppressing. When England thus forsook their cause, Philip made the count prisoner, and so kept him all the rest of his life. Nothing but misery came of the marriage. But the most remarkable part of the history of Philip ly. is what concerns the Church and the Popes. For the last two hundred years the Popes had been growing more and more powerful, and ruling over kings and princes — sometimes rebuk- ing them manfully for their crimes, but too often only interfering with what disturbed the worldly power of the Church. Now Philip was a man of evil life, and was, besides, very hard and grasping in requiring money from the clergy. The Pope, Boniface VHP, was an old man, but full of fiery yehemence ; and he sent a letter of reprimand, 178 Young Folks' History of France, bidding the king release the Count of Flanders, make x^eace, and exact no more from the clergy. Philip was very angry, and the two Avent on writing letters that made matters worse, until the Pope threatened to depose the king ; and Philip sent off to Anagni, where the Pope generally lived, a French knight, named Nogaret, and an Italian called Sciarra Colonna, who had quarrelled with the Pope and fled to France. They rode into Anagni, cry- ing, " Long live the King of France I death to Boniface ! " at the head of a troop of worthless fellows who had gathered round them. The people of Anagni were so shocked that they never moved, and the men went on to the church, where they found the Pope, a grand old man of eighty-six, seated calmly by the altar in his robes, wdth his tiara on his head. They rushed up to him, insult- ing him and striking him on the cheeks ; indeed, Colonna would have killed him on the spot but for Nogaret. They dragged him out of the church, and kept him prisoner three days ; but after that, the townspeople recovered from their fright, rose, rescued him, and conducted him safely to Rome ; but what he had gone through had been too much for him, and a few mornings later he was found ^^p^^ COJLOJs'JSTA STKIKIJSTG THE POPE. Philip IK, The Fair. 181 lying quite dead, the head of his stick at his lips, gnawed and covered witli foam, and his white hair stained with blood, as if in a fit of terror he had dashed his head against the wall. This piteous death was in the year 1303. Another Pope was chosen ; but as soon as Philip found that the new one was determined to control him, he caused him to be poisoned, and then deter- mined to get the future one into his hands. There were a good many French cardinals who would, he knew, vote for any one he chose ; and meeting in secret the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the king told him he should have their votes on six condi- tions. Five of these related to the making up of the old quarrel with Boniface ; the sixth Philip would not tell then, but the archbishop swore it should be fulfilled ; and the king then brought about his election as Pope, when he took the name of Clement V. To everyone's surprise, he chose to be crowned at Lyons instead of Rome, and then took up his abode at Avignon, in Provence, which, though it belonged to the empire, was so much in France as to be entirely in the king's jpower. As long as the Popes remained at Avignon, they were nothing but tools to the kings of France ; and this really 182 Young Folks' History of France. seems to have been the greatest misfortune that happened to France. The power of the Popes was stretched much too far, and their interference in temporal matters was often wrong, but it was the only authority that ever kept kings and princes in order: and when the Popes lived on French ground, and were afraid to reprove the lords of the countr}', there was nothing to hinder the evil ways of either kings and nobles, and they went on from bad to worse, unrestrained by the Church, the wit- ness of truth. Philip the Fair was a very greedy man, always seeking after mone}^, and oppressing his people heavily to obtain it. Now, you remember that two orders of soldier monks had been set up to defend the Holy Sepulchre. Soon after St. Louis' last crusade, Acre, the last spot that belonged to the Christians, had been taken from them. The Knights Hospitallers had settled in the island of Rhodes, hoping some day to return ; but the Knights Templars had gone to the houses in Europe, where they used to train up young men to arms. They were rich in lands, and, having nothing to do, were proud and insolent. And Philip cast his eyes on their great wealth, and told tlie Pope that his sixth condition was that all the Templars should Philip IK, The Fair. 183 be destroyecL Most of them were living in France, but the others were invited to hold a great chapter there ; and when almost all were come, horrible accusations were made — that they were really heathen, that no one came into their order without being made to renounce his baptism and trample on the Cross, that they murdered little children, and other frightful stories ; and then five hundred and two were imprisoned by the Inquisition, and seventy-two tortured to make them confess. Most of them were brave and denied it all ; but there were a few who could not bear the j^ain, and said whatever was put into their mouths. Then, after being kept in prison two years, the rest Avere sentenced, brought out in parties of fifty and burnt to death, while the Pope declared the order dissolved, and gave the king all his possessions. This was in 1311. The Grand Master, James de Molay, was kept in prison three years longer, but then was brought out at Paris, and burnt before the king's palace garden. He was a fine old white- bearded man ; and as he stood there in the fire, he called on Clement, Pope of Rome, and Philip, King of France, to appear before the judgment seat of God — the first within fort}' dajs, the sec- 184 Young Folks' Hhtory of France. oncl within a year — to answer for their usage of him and his knights. Before the fortieth day, Clement Y. actually died ; and before the year was out, Philip the Fair sank away from consumption, and died in his forty- ' sixth year, in the year 1314, leaving the most hate- ful name in French history. CHAPTER XVIII. LOUIS X., HUTIN, l;n4— 1316. PHILIP v., LE LONG, 131G— 1322 CHARLES IV., LE BEL, 1322. PHILIP VL, 1350. PHILIP the Fair left three sods — Louis, PhiUp, and Charles — and one daughter, Isabel, who was married to Edward of England. Louis X. was called by the nickname of Hutiji^ which is said to mean the Peevish or Ill-tempered. He was married to the young Queen of Navarre, in her own right ; but he only reigned two years, and his only son lived but five days. The French barons declared it was against the old law of the Salic Franks that their kingdom should fall to a woman, so Louis's little daughter Joan was only to be Queen of Navarre, while his brother, Philip V. (X(? Long^ or the Tall), became king. He must have been as cruel as his father, for there rose up in his time a 185 186 Young FoWs History of France. foolish story that the fountains of water had been poisoned by the lepers and the Jews, whereupon he gave orders that they should suffer for it. They were killed on the spot, or else burnt at the stake throughout France, while the king and his nobles seized the treasures of the Jews ; but in the midst the king died, at only thirty years old, in the year 1322, leaving only four girls ; so that his brother, Charles IV., reigned after him. It was during the six years that Charles was on the throne that his sister Isabel came from England with complaints of her husband, Edward II., and succeeded in collect- ing the knights, who helped her to dethrone him, after which he was brought to a miserable end in prison. Every one believed that the sins of the wicked father had been visited on these three sons — dying young, and without heirs ; and the French were glad when Charles the Fair died, in 1328, that their kingdom should go to Philip VI., Count of Valois, the son of the younger brother of Philip IV., Charles of Valois. But Edward III. of England called himself the right heir, declaring himself nearer in blood to his uncle, Charles IV., than Philip of Valois, their first cousin, could be. This was true ; but, then, if all Philip IT. 1S9 the daughters of the last three kings were shut out from reigning, it was not reasonable that he should pretend to a right through their aunt. At first, though he put his claim forward, he seems to have been willing to let it sleep, for he appeared before the French king in the Cathedral at Amiens, and did homage for the duchy of Aquitaine : but there was a certain Robert of Artois. who had been deprived of what he thought his lawful inheritance, and who was suspected of wanting to bring about Philip's death by sorcery. He was said to have made a waxen ima2:e of the kins^ and stuck it full of pins and set it before the fire, expecting that as the wax melted, so Philip would perish away and die. Philip believed the story, and Robert was obliged to fly to England, where, out of hatred and revenge, he stirred up the king to put forward his claim, and to begin the war with France which is sometimes called the Hundred Years' War. The great cities in Flanders, where cloth was woven, were friendly to the English, because in that peace- able country the sheep that bore the wool could feed quietly, and their supplies of material came from thence. Besides. Pliilip had tried to make them accept a count whom they liated, so they drove him awa}', and invited Edward to Glient. 190 Young Folks' History of France. The French fleet tried to meet and stop him, but their ships were defeated and snnk, with great loss of men, off Sluys, in the year 1340. Not long after, there was a great dispute about the dukedom of Brittany, which was claimed by the daughter of the elder brother, and by the younger brother of the late duke. The niece had married Charles de Blois ; the uncle was the Count de Montfort. The King of France took the part of the niece, the King of England that of Montfort. Before long, Montfort was made prisoner and sent to Paris ; but his Avife, the brave Joan, defended his cause as well as any knight of them all. She shut herself up in Hennebonne, and held out the town while De Blois besieged her ; and when the townsmen began to lose heart, and say they must surrender, she bade them look out to the sea ; and there was the English fleet coming to their aid. Sir Walter Manny commanded the troops it brought, and the first thing he did was to lead a party to sally out and burn the French machines for battering the town. When they came back, Countess Joan came to meet them, and kissed all the knights, like a right valiant lady that she was, says the old chronicler Froissart, who has left us a charming history of these times, The war in Brit- bajDB them Look oir-r ax thk sea. PhUip VL 193 tany lasted twenty-four years altogether. Montfort made his escape from prison, but he died very soon after he reached home ; and his widow sent her little son to be bred up in Edward's court in Eng- land, while she took care of his cause at home. The Eiighsh were ver}- much hated and disliked in Brittany, and seem to have been very fierce and rough with the people, whose language they did not understand ; and some of the knights who were the greatest foes of all to the English grew up in Brittany, more especially Bertrand du Guesclin and Oliver de Clisson, but they were as yet boys. Edward made his greatest attack on France in the year 1346. Philip had gathered all the very best of his kingdom to meet him. The knights of France were nearly as strong as the knights of England, but there was one great difference be- tween the two armies, and that arose from the harshness of the counts and barons. Every one below them was a poor, miserable serf (unless he lived in a town), and had never handled arms. Now, in England there were farmers and stout peasants, who used to practice shooting with the bow once a week. So there were always sturdy English archers to fight, and the French had nothing of the same kind to meet them, and tried 194 Young Folhs^ History of France, hiring men from Genoa. The battle was fought at Crecy, near Ponthieu ; and when it was to begin by each troop of archers shooting a flight of arrows at one another, it turned out that a shower of rain which had just fallen had slackened the bow-strings of the Genoese archers; but the Englishmen had their bows safe in leathern cases, and their strings were in full order, so the arrows galled the French knights, and a charge was ordered to cut them down. But full in the way stood the poor Genoese, fumbling to tighten their strings ; and the knights were so angry at being hindered, that they began cutting them down right and left, thus spending their strength against their own army, so that it was no wonder that they were beaten and put to flight. King Philip himself had to ride as fast as he could from the battle-field ; and coming to a castle just as night set in, he blew his horn at the gates, and when the warder called out to know who was there,, he answered, " Open, open I it is the fortune of France ! " The English went on to besiege and take the city of Calais ; and in Brittan}' Charles cle Blois was defeated and made prisoner ; and there was the further misfortune of a horrible plague, called the black death, raging all through France. Five Philip VL 195 hundred people a-day died in the great hospital called the Hotel Dieu, at Paris, and it was bad also in England ; so that both kings were glad to have a truce, and rest for a few years, though Edward still called himself King of France, and the dispute was far from settled. Philip paid his men by causing the nation to pay a tax upon salt, while Edward's chief tax was on wool ; so while Philip called his rival the wool merchant, Edward said that the Valois did indeed reign by the Salic law (saZ being the Latin for salt.) The Counts of the Viennois, in the South of France, used to be called Counts Dauphin, because there was a dolphin in their coat of arms. The Dauphin Humbert, having neither children nor brothers, bequeathed his county to the king's eldest grandson, Charles, on condition that it should always be kept separate from the Crown lands. Ever since that time the eldest son of the King of France has always been called the Dauphin. A year later Philip died, in the year 1350, after a reign that had been little more than one long war. CHAPTER XIX. JOHN. 1350—1364. IF Philip VI. had a reign which was all one war, it was much the same with his son John, who thought himself a brave and honorable knight, though he often did eyil and cruel actions. The little kingdom of Navarre, in the Pyrenees, had passed from the daughter of Louis Hutin to her son, Charles, called the Bad. In right of his father, the Count D'Evreux, he was a French noble, and he wanted to hold the highest office a noble could hold — namely, that of Constable of France. The Constable commanded all the armies, and was the most mighty person in the realm next to the king ; and when John gave the appointment to the Lord Charles de la Cerda, Charles the Bad, in his rage and disappointment, contrived to poison the 196 John. ' 199 new constable ; and he was also said to have tried to poison the Dauphin Charles ; and though the dose failed to kill, it ruined the young man's health, and in the end shortened his life. It was owing to the Dauphin that Charles the Bad was seized at last. He invited him to dinner, and appeared to be very friendly ; but in the midst of the feast the king appeared with a band of soldiers, seized the King of Navarre, and carried him to prison. It was very treacherous ; but the Dauphin Charles, young as he was, was much more cunning than his father. Charles the Bad was clever, and had many friends who were angered by his imprisonment, and went over to the cause of the King of England. Edward, the Prince of Wales, who was at Bordeaux, the capital of Gascony, took the opportunity of ad- vancing into the French dominions, and John as- sembled an army to meet and drive him back. The battle was fought at Poitiers ; John was there, with his sons and his brother, and all his best knights, and the battle was long and hotly fought. The French did much better than at Crecy ; but the English were too strong for them, though the king was as brave as a lion, and struck vehemently with his battle-axe, his youngest son, Philip, keep- 200 Young Folks'' History of France. \ng close to him, and warning him where to strike. " This way, father ! " or, "- That way, father ! " " To the right ! " " To the left ! " But at last the father and son found themselves almost alone, with all their men scattered and dispersed, and nothing but enemies around. The king had lost his helmet, and was slightly wounded, and greatly worn out ; so he called to the first squire he saw — one Denis de Morbeque — and finding that he was a gentleman, surrendered to him. He was brought to the Prince of Wales, who . treated him with the utmost kindness and courtesy, and did his best to lighten the pain and humiliation of captivity. The Dauphin had fled early in the day, and was thought to have been the cause of the loss of the battle. Everything fell into a deplorable state. The Prince of Wales ruled the old English Gascon territory at Bordeaux ; and though there was a truce between the two kings, troops of soldiers — Free Companions, as they called themselves — roamed about, plundering and robbing all over France, while the king was a prisoner in England. The Dauphin was hated and despised, and had no power at all ; and in Paris, a burgher named Stephen Marcel was chosen provost, and led all the populace to terrify the Government into doing what he MUKDIiK OF THE MAltSHAJuS, John. 203 pleased. The mark of his followers was a hood, half red and half blue; and thinking that the Dauphin's friends gave him bad advice, Marcel sud- denly rushed into his presence, at the head of a whole troop of Parisians, wearing these colors, and demanded, '' Will you put an end to the troubles, and provide for the defence of the kingdom ? " " That is not my part," said Charles, " but that of those who receive the money of the taxes." Mar- cel made a sign, and his followers murdered the two noblemen who stood beside the Dauphin. The prince, in terror, fell on his knees and begged for his life ; and Marcel thrust one of the red and blue hoods upon his head, and then told him, pointing to the two corpses, " I require you, in the name of the people, to consent to their death, for it is done by the will of the people." The Dauphin consented ; but he soon made his escape, and took up arms against Marcel. Charles of Navarre had been released from his prison, and was fighting in the South of France ; and Charles de Blois had been ransomed, and was fio-htino- in Brittany ; and to add to all these, the peasants, who had been alwa3^s ill-used and trampled down by the nobles, began to rise against them. " Bon homme Jacques'^ had been the nickname given them by the 204 Yoimg FolJcs' History of Franee. nobles, and hence this rebellion was called the Jacquerie, and a terrible one it was ; for the peas- ants were almost savages, and whenever they could surprise a castle, they murdered every one in it. They set up a king from among them, and soon one hundred thousand had arisen in Picardy and Champagne ; but they were armed only with scythes and axes, and the nobles soon put them down and then were just as brutal themselves in their revenge. The " King of the Jacques " was crowned with a red-hot tripod, and hung ; and the poor wretches were hunted clown like wild beasts, and slaughtered everywhere, and nothing was done to lessen the misery that made them rebel. The Dauphin beseiged Paris, and Marcel, find- ing he could not hold out, invited the King of Navarre to help him ; but another magistrate, who hated Charles the Bad, contrived to attack Marcel as he was changing the guard, killed him and six of his friends and brought him back to Paris. This was only the first of the mauy fierce and tumult- uous outbreaks that have stained the fair city of Paris with blood. King John was so anxious to return that he prom- ised to give up to Edward all that Henry II. and Coeur de Lion had held ; but the Dauphin and the %L. •^%'' \ THE ATTACK ON MARCEI^. John. 20T States-General did not choose to confirm his pro- posal, thinking it better to leave him in prison, than to weaken the kingdom so mnch. So Edward invaded France again, and marched almost up to Paris, intending to fight another battle ; but the Dauphin had made up his mind never to fight a a battle with the English again ; and between the war and the Jacquerie, the whole countr}'- was bare of inhabitants, cattle, or crops. The English army was almost starved, and a frightful tempest did it much damage ; so that Edward consented to make peace and set John free, on condition that his two sons should be given up as hostages for the paj^- ment of a great ransom, and a large part of Aqui- taine ceded to England. King John returned ; but he found the kingdom in such a dreadful state of misery and povert}^ that he did not collect money for the ransom, nor would liis sons remain as pledges for it. They were al- lowed to live at Calais, and make short journeys into France : but they Avould not submit to this, and at last stayed away altogether. John was much grieved and ashamed, and said the only thing he could do was to return and give himself up as a prisoner, since he could not fulfil the conditions of 208 Young Folks' History of France. his release. When he was entreated to remam at home, he said, " Where should honor find a refuge if not in the breasts of kings? " and accordingly he went back to London, where he was welcomed as a friend by King Edward, and there he died in the year 1364. He left four sons — the Dauphin Charles ; Louis, the Duke of Anjou ; John, Duke of Berry ; and Philip, who had married the heiress of Burgundy, and was made duke of that province. CHAPTER XX. CHARLES V. 1364—1880. CHARLES v., in spite of his troubles as Dau- phin, was a much abler man than his father John ; and he had seen the best way to treat the English enemy — namely, not to fight them, but to starve them out. The French knights could beat anyone except the English ; and just noAV there professed to be peace with Edward IH., but with Charles the Bad of Navarre there was still war, until a battle was fought at Cocherel, between the French, under the brave Breton knight, Bertrand du Guesclin, and the Navarrese, under the great friend of the Black Prince, the brave Gascon knight, the Captal de Buch. Du Guesclin gained a great victory, and made the Captal prisoner, and from that time no 209 210 Young Folks' History of France. French knight was equal to hmi in fame. Thus Charles the Bad had to make peace. The young De Montfort, who had been brought up in England, was by this time old enough to try to fight for Brittany ; and though the kings were at peace, the Prince of Wales lent him a troop of English, commanded by the best captain in all Europe, Sir John Chandos; and at the battle of Auray, Charles de Blois, who had so long striven to win the duchy, was killed, and Du Guesclin was made prisoner. After this, the king accepted Mont- fort as Duke of Brittany, and this war was like- wise over. But after so many years of fighting, there were a great many men who knew and cared for nothing else. They could not be quiet. All they wanted was a horse and armor, and some one to hire them to fight, let them gain plunder, and take prisoners to but to ransom. They called themselves Free Companions, or Free Lances, and used to get some skilful warrior to be their leader. When the wars were over and nobody wanted to hire them, they would take possession of some castle, and live by plundering the travellers in the country round, so that they were the most dreadful plague imaginable. King Charles asked Du Guescliii how to get rid Charles V. 211 of them, and BertrancI thought of apian. Castille, in Spain, had just then one of the wickedest kings who ever lived, Peter the Crnel, who murdered his wife (a cousin of Charles), and killed most of his half-brothers, besides many other persons. One of these brothers, Henry of Trastamere, managed to escape, and came to France to beg for help ; and Du Guesclin told the king that it would be an ex- cellent way to get rid of the Free Companions to draw them off into Spain. Charles consented, and Du Guesclin invited their leaders to meet him ; and when they found he would lead them, they all consented, making sure of plenty of fighting and plundering. As they rode past Avignon, they frightened the Pope into giving them a large con- tribution ; and as soon as they entered Castille, Peter the Cruel fled away, and Henry was crowned king. He kept Du Guesclin in his service, but sent all the others back to France. However, Peter came to Bordeaux, and showed himself to the Black Prince as an ill-used, dis- tressed king ; and Edward took up his cause, and undertook to set him on the throne as^aiu. All the Free "Companions, who were coming back from Spain, no sooner heard that the Prince was going 212 Young Folks' History of France, there, than they took service with him to restore the very king they had just dethroned. A great battle was fought at Navareta, in Avhich the Prince was victorious. Du Guesclin was made prisoner, and Henry of Trastamere fled for his hfe. Pedro was phiced on the throne once more ; but he kept none of his promises to the English, and the}^ soon perceived what a horribly cruel and wicked wretch he was. Sickness broke out among them, and they went back to Bordeaux, leaving him to his fate. Every one in France was most anxious to have Du Guesclin free again, and even the maidens of Brit- tany are said to have spun day and night to earn money for his ransom. As soon as the sum was raised and he was at liberty, he returned to Spain with Henry, and they chased Pedro into the castle of Montiel, whence he came out in the night and attempted to murder his brother, but in the struggle was himself killed, to the great relief of all con- cerned with him. The Black Prince was, in the meantime, ill at Bordeaux, and in trouble how to pay the Free Companions, since Pedro had not given him the promised sum. He was obliged to tax his Saxon subjects, and this made them angry. They ap- Charles V. 213 pealed to Charles Y., who was their suzerain, and he summoned the prince to appear at Paris and answer their complaint. Edward said he should only come with his hel- met on his head and sixty thousand men behind him, and so the war began again ; but the Prince was out of health, and could not fight as he used to do, and the French king forbade his captains even to give battle, even Du Guesclin, whom he made Constable of France, and who grumbled at being forbidden. The war was carried on by sieges of castles, which, one by one, fell into French hands for want of means on the part of the English prince, to re- lieve them. Stung and embittered, at last he roused himself ; and though he could no longer mount his horse, he went in a litter to besiege the city of Limoges, and when it was taken, he sought his revenge in a ter- rible massacre of all the inhabitants. This, his saddest expedition, was his last. He went back to England and never recovered. Governors were sent to Bordeaux ; but they could do little against the continually advancing French, and at last nothing in France was left to Edward but the province of Gascony and the city of Calais. A 214 Young Folks^ History of France. truce was made ; and before the end of it both the great Edwards were dead, and Richard II. on the tiirone, under the regency of his uncles, who tried to carry on the war, but still with no better fortune. It was while besieging a little castle, named Chateau Randon, that the brave Du Guesclin fell sick of a fever and died. The English captain had promised to surrender if help did not come to him within a certain time ; and when he heard that the great constable was dead, he would not yield to an}^ one else, but caused himself to be led to the tent of the dead man, on whose breast he laid down the keys of the castle. The king made Du Gues- clin's friend, Oliver de Clisson, Constable in his stead. He was a Breton too, a brave knight, and a skilful leader ; but his brother had been made prisoner by the English, and hung, and he had made the savage a^ow that he would never spare the life of an Englishman, so that he was called the Butcher ; and it was a dreadful thing to fall into his hands. The king himself did not live much longer. He had never entirely shaken off the effects of the poison his bad namesake had given him, and knew he should die young. He carefully instructed his queen, Joan de Bourbon, how to protect Lis two LAYIIsra THE KEY ON DU GUESMN's BIER. Charles V. 217 young sons, Charles and Louis ; but to liis great grief she died first, and he was obliged to leave the boys to the care of their uncles, when he died, on the 16th of September, 1380, after a reign of so much success that he is commonly known as Charles the Wise. CHAPTER XXI. CHAELES VI. 1380—1396. IT was an evil hour for poor young Charles VI., when, at twelve years old, he was left an orphan king. His uncles — the Dukes of Anjou, Berri, and Burgundy (his father's brothers), quarrelled about the government, and he Avas allowed to grow up little heeded or restrained, and with all his pas- sions unchecked. The Church was in a most unsettled state. The Popes, while living at Avignon, were at the beck of the French kings, and this could not be borne by the other lands of the Western Church. Be- sides, they and their cardinals had not enough to do in this little town, and idleness led to all kinds of wickedness, while their proper abode at Rome was left to wild tumults and confusion. So at last, in 218 Charles VI. 219 the year 1376, Pox3e Gregoiy XI. had decided on going back to Rome, thougli Charles V. and all the cardinals of French birth did all they could to j)re- vent him. He died two years after he came there ; and then all the cardinals who wanted to sta}^ in Italy chose one Pope, and all the cardinals who wished to live at Avignon chose another, and went back with him. So there were two Popes, the real Pope and the anti-Pope, and this made a grievous division, which is known as the Great Schism. The French and all their friends held by the Pope at Avignon, the English and all theirs by the Pope at Rome ; and things grew worse than ever, for both Popes were very poor and wanted as much money as they could ; and they were also afraid to offend either kings or bishops, for fear they should leave their party, and so sin and wickedness went on unchecked. One 6f the proudest nobles was Louis, Count of Flanders. He had many rich cities in his county, where almost all the best cloth, linen, and lace of the time was made, and where the burghers were rich and resolute. There was always much dislike and distrust between the counts and the cities ; and Louis was so severe, that at last the men of Ghent rose against him and shut their gates, choos- 220 Young Fanes' History of France. ing as their leader Philip von Artevelcle, the son of the brewer, Jacob von Artevelcle, who had been a friend of Edward III. Artevelde led them out to fight with the count, gained a great victory, and hunted him into the city of Bruges. There he was as much hated as he was in Ghent ; all the people in the streets rose up against him, and no- body would give him shelter, till at last he found himself in the house of a poor widow who had sometimes received alms at his gate. He begged her to hide him, and she bade him creep under the bed, where her three little children were lying asleep. He had only just time to do so, when his enemies burst open the door, declaring he had gone in there ; but the widow bade them look in, and when they saw only the bed full of children, they thought he could not be there, and went away. In the morning he managed to get out of the city and escaped to Paris where he begged the king and his uncles to come to his help. He had but one daughter, who was to marry the son of the Duke of Burgundy ; so it was their interest to bring the Flemish towns to obedience, and the young king was very eager to make his first campaign. All the revolted burghers came out to battle with the knights and gentlemen, but they could not make Charles VL 221 head against such a well-tried old leader as the Constable de Clisson, though they fought desper- ately ; and at the battle of Rosbecque twenty-six thousand men were killed, and Philip von Arte- velde was trampled to death in the flight. The young king loved and admired the Constable de Clisson more than any one else ; but the old man was much hated by many others for his harsh- ness and cruelty ; and one night in the streets of Paris, he was set upon by some murderers, who wounded him badly, and he was only saved by fall- ing against a house door, which gave way with his weight, so that he fell into a dark passage, where his enemies left him for dead, and fled away into Brittany. The king demanded that they should be sent back to be put to death, but the Duke of Brit- tany, who hated Clisson, would not give them up. Charles made sure that the duke had set them on, and in a great rage declared he would lay all Brit- tany waste. He collected his troops and set out, but a strange thing happened as he was riding through the forest of Mans, on a burning hot sum- mer day. A man, probably mad, rushed out from the bushes, caught his bridle, and cried, " Ride no further, king ; thou art betrayed ! " The man was drawn away ; but presently after, as they rode on. 222 Young Folks' Histor-y of France. a 25age who had charge of the king's lance fell asleep on horseback, and let the pomt ring against the helmet of the man in front. This must have made the king fancy the treason had begun, and becoming frantic that moment, he drew his sword and rushed upon his followers, crying, " Down with the traitors ! " He killed four, but the others saved themselves by pretending to fall before the stroke ; and at last, as his strength became spent, a tall, strong knight sprang on his horse behind him and overpowered him. He was carried back to Mans, where he had a brain fever ; but he recovered and was for some time in perfect health, governing, not perhaps well, but with kind intentions. He married Isabel of Bavaria ; and had she taken better care of him, his life Avould have been far happier ; but she was a dull, and selfish woman, who cared more for good eating and amusement than for her hus- band and children, whom she neglected greatly. At a great festival, the king and five of liis nobles dressed themselves up as wild men of the woods, in close garments, covered with pitch, with long loose flakes of tow, hanging to them to represent hair, and green boughs round their heads and waists. Chained together, they danced in among the ladies, who were to guess who they were. The king's 'thou art betrayed. Charles VL 225 brother (the Duke of Orleans) held a torch so near one of them, the better to see who it was, that he set fire to the tow, and the flames spread to the whole party. Four were burnt to death, one saved himself by breaking the chain and leaping into a tub of water, aud the king himself was preserved by the Duchess of Berri, who threw her mantle over him ; but the shock had been so great that his insanity came on again, and he was never sensible for long together through the rest of his life. But he still was supposed to rule France, and so the power was in the hands of whoever had possession of him, and this at first was his uncle Philip, Duke of Burgundy. Still, as there was peace with England, the knights thought of crusades. Indeed, the Turks, under their great leader Bajazet, were beginning to make their way into Europe ; and the eldest son of the Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, set out with a party of French knights to succor the Hun- garians against them. They came just as peace had been sworn to on either side ; but it seemed such a pity that their aid should be wasted, that the Hungarians broke their word, and attacked the Turks. But their breach of faith met a due reward, for the whole army was defeated and butchered, 226 Young FolJcs^ History of France, and John himself, with twenty-seven nobles, alone lived to be ransomed. Afterwards, Marshal Boucicault led another troop to help the Emperor of Constantinople, Palgeologos, and brought him home to France to visit the king, and ask further aid from the princes of Europe. CHAPTER XXII. BUEGUNDIANS AND ARMAGNACS, 1415—1422. NOTHING could be more sad than the state of France under the mad king. As long as his uncle (the Duke of Burgundy) lived, he was not so ill cared for, and the country was under some sort of government ; but when Duke Philip died, and the dukedom passed to his son, John the Fearless, there was a perpetual quarrel between this rough and violent duke and the king's brother Louis, Duke of Orleans. The Duchess of Orleans — a gentle Italian lady ( Valentina of Milan) — was the only person who could calm the poor king in his fits of frenzy, and the friends of Burgundy de- clared she bewitched him and made him worse. In the meantime, Queen Isabel would do nothing but amuse herself with the Duke of Orleans, and -the king and her little children jvei^ left without attend- 227 228 Young Folks* History of France. ants, and often without proper clothes or food. The people of Paris hated Orleans, and loved the Duke of Burgundy, and this last was resolved to get the king into his power. So one night, as the Duke of Orleans was going home from supper with the queen, he was set upon by murderers and killed in the streets of Paris ; and what was even more horrible, the Duke of Burgundy caused a priest to preach a sermon defending the wicked act. The Duchess of Orleans came with her sons and knelt at the king's feet, imploring for the mur- derer to be punished ; but he could do nothing for her, and she went home and died broken hearted. Plowever, her son, the young Duke of Orleans,' mar- ried the daughter of the Count of Armagnac, who took up his cause so vehemently, that all the friends of the House of Orleans were called Armagnacs, and were known by wearing a white scarf over the left shoulder, while the Burgundians wore blue hoods. The king's eldest son, the Dauphin Louis, was sixteen years old, and tried to get into power ; but he was a foolish, idle youth, whom no one heeded. When he heard that the new king, Henry V., mea^it to invade France, Louis sent him a present of a basket of tennis balls, saying they were his THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE AGINCOITRT. Burgundians and Armagnacs. 231 most fitting weapons, considering his way of life as the madcap prince. Henry answered that he hoped to return balls from the mouths of cannon against Paris ; and it was not long before he actually crossed the channel, and laid siege to Harfleur, in Normandy. He soon took it, for no aid was sent to it ; and he proclaimed himself king of France, like Edward HI. before him, and proceeded to endeavor to con- quer the country. The Dauphin collected an army, and marched to intercept him, as he was on the way from Harfleur to Calais to obtain fresh supplies. The French army greatly outnumbered the English, and thought it would be easy to cut them off, see- ing them hungry, sick, and worn with a long march. But the carelessness, the dissensions, and the insubordination of the French army would have caused it to be beaten by a far less skilful general than Henry V. ; and though each noble and knight was personally valiant, this did little good when they were not united. There was an immense slaughter at this far-famed battle of Agincourt, and many noted prisoners were taken by the English, especiall}^ the Duke of Orleans ; and Henrj^ would not allow these nobles to be ransomed, but kept them in captivity in England, until he should have finished winning the kingdom. 232 Young Folks' History of France. The Dauphin Louis escaped from the battle, but died soon after ; liis next brother (the Dauphin John) did not survive him long ; and the third brother (the Dauphin Charles) was entirely under the power of the Armagnac party, as well as his father and mother. But the Count of Armagnac was so insolent that queen Isabel could bear it no longer, and fled to the Duke of Burgundy's protection ; and soon after the people of Paris rose against the Armagnacs, and murdered every one whom they found belonging to it. The count himself was horribly gashed, and his body was dragged up and down the streets. The poor king was in a fit of madness in his palace ; the Dauphin was carried away by his friend, Sir Tanneguy du Chastel ; and for a whole month there were nothing but savage murders throughout Paris, of all who were supposed to be Armagnacs, until the queen and the Duke of Burgundy ar- rived, and restored something like order. No one, of course, had leisure to do anything to relieve Rouen, which Henry V. was besieging, and took in spite of the citizens holding out bravely. The queen and duke determined to make peace with him, and met him at a meadow near Pontoise, where beautiful embroidered tents were pitched ; w^ MUKDKK OF THK DUKE OF BURGUNDY. Burgundians and Armar/nacs. 235 and tliey liekl a conference, in which Henry asked in marriage Catherine, the youngest daughter of Charles and Isabel, with the whole of the provinces that had once belonged to the English kings as her dowry — Normand}', Aquitaine, and all. If this were refused, he would conquer the whole kingdom for himself. No promises were absolutely made. The Duke of Burgundy could not make up his mind to give up so large a portion of his native realm, and be- gan to consider of going over to the Dauphin and helping him to defend himself. A meeting was arranged for the duke and Dauphin on the bridge of Montereau ; but Tanneguy du Chastel and the prince's other friends had no intention of letting the boy get into the power of the great duke, and during the conference the}^ treacherousl}' stabbed John the Fearless to the heart. His murder of the Duke of Orleans was thus visited upon him, but the crime was dreadful in those who committed it. The consequence was that his son Philip, called the Good, went entirely over to the English ; and be- fore long Henry Y. was married to Catherine, and was to be Regent of France as long as poor Charles lived, and after that, king, the Dauphin being dis- inherited as a murderer. 236 Young Folks' History of France. All the North of France had been conquered by the English, and the Dauphin and his friends had retired to the South. Thence they sent to the Scots to ask for help, and many brave Scotsmen came, glad of a chance of fighting with the English. Henry had gone home to England to take his bride, and had left his brother, the Duke of Clarence, in command, when, as the English were marching into Anjou, the Scots fell on them at Beauje and defeated them, killing the Duke of Clarence. Henry came back in haste, and again carried all before him. He took the town of Meaux, where a horrible robber lived, cruelly preying on the inhab- itants of Paris; but the siege lasted the w^hole winter. Henry caught cold there, and never was well again, though he kept his Whitsuntide at Paris with great state. Soon after, he set out for another campaign, but he became so ill on the journey that he had to be carried back to Yincennes, and there died. No one of all his own children had ever been so good to poor King Charles as Henry had been, and the loss at last broke his heart. He wept and wailed constantly for his good son Henry, pined away, and died only three months later, in October, 1422, after thirty years of madness. CHAPTER XXIII. CHARLES VII. 1422— 14G1. T HOUGH all history counts the reign of Charles VII. as beginning from the death of his un- happy father, yet it was really the infant Henry, son of his sister Catherine and of Henry V. of England, who was proclaimed King of F'rance over the grave in which Charles VI. was buried, and 237 238 Young 'Folks' History of France. who was acknowledged throughout France, as far as Loire, while his uncle, the Duke of Bedford, acted as Regent. Charles YII. was proclaimed king by the Armag- nacs, but most people called him the Dauphin, and many termed him the King of Bourges, for he lived in that little town, never seeming to trouble himself about the state of his kingdom, but only thinking how to amuse himself from day to day, and some- times even talking of fleeing to Scotland, and leaving everything to the English. Bedford, in the meantime, determined to push on the work of conquest, and sent the Earl of Salis- bury to lay siege to Orleans ; but the place was bravely defended, and Salisbury was killed by a shot in the throat while looking on at the works. Soon after, as some stores were being sent to the English, a party of French nobles resolved to stop them, aud fell upon the wagons. The English came out to defend them, and there was a general battle, which is known as the Battle of Herrings, because the provisions chiefly consisted of salt fish, intended to be eaten in Lent. The siege lasted on, but a wonderful aid came to the French. In the summer of 1425 a young girl, named Joan d'Arc, as she was in her father's little Chxrles VIL 289 garden, thought she was called by the Angel St. Michael, and the Virgin Saints, Catherine and Mar- garet, to deliver her country and lead the king to be crowned at Rheims. At first no one would be- lieve her, but she was so earnest that at last the king heard of her, and sent for her. He received her by torchlight, and standing in the midst of many nobles, more richly dressed than he was ; but she knew him at once among them all, and led him a little apart, when she told him things that he de- clared no one else could have known but himself, and which made him sure she must have some un- earthly knowledge. She said her Voices directed her to go and fetch a marvellous sword from the shrine of St. Catherine, at Fierbois, and with this in her hand she led the troops to drive the English from Orleans ; but she never herself fought or struck a blow ; she only led the French, who had such trust in her, that wherever she led the}^ will- ingly followed. The English soldiers, on the other hand, believed her to be a witch, and fled in horror and disma}^, leaving their leaders, who stood firm, to be slain. Thus it was that she succeeded in en- tering Orleans and delivering it from the siege. Thenceforth she was called the Maid of Orleans, and victory seemed to follow her. She fought in 240 Young Folks' History of France. the name of Heaven, and did all she could to make her followers holy and good, rebuking them for all bad language or excess ; and at last she had the great joy of opening the way to Rheims, the city where all the French kings had been crowned ever since the beginning of the Meerwings. She saw Charles VII. crowned and anointed, and then she begged to go home to her cottage ; but the king and his council would not permit this, because she was such an encouragement to their men, and a terror to the English. But her hope and confidence were gone, and the French captains did not like her, though their men did ; and at Compiegne the governor shut the gates, and left her outside to be made prisoner by the Burgundians. She was kept in prison a long time — first in Burgundy, and then at Kouen — and tried before French and Burgun- dian bishops, who decided that her Voices had been delusions of Satan, and her victories his work ; therefore, that she ought to be burnt as a witch. To the eternal disgrace of Charles VII., he never stirred a finger to save her, and she was burnt to death in the market-place at Rouen. No one ever deserved less to win back a kingdom than Charles. He amused himself with one un- worthy favorite after another ; but there was a JOAN OF ARC EXAMINED IN PKISON. Charles VIL 243 brave spirit among his knights and nobles, and the ablest of them was Arthur, Count de Richemont, brother to the Duke of Brittany, and Constable of France. As they grew stronger, the English grew weaker and less prudent. The Duke of Burgundy was offended, and made his peace with the King of France ; and the Duke of Bedford soon after died at Rouen, worn out with care and trouble. Step by step, and bit by bit, did the French king regain his dominion. When his cause began to look hopeful, he shook off his sluggishness, and came in person to receive the submission of Paris, and to reconquer Normandy. But the war was not finally ended till the year 1453, when Bordeaux itself was taken by the French; and thus finished the hundred years' war that Edward III. had begun. Charles VII. was not at all a foolish person when once he chose to exert himself. When the war was over, and the bands of men-at-arms had nothing to do, he managed better than his grandfather, Charles V. ; for he laid them under strict rules, and gave them pay, so that they made him stronger, instead of being a torment to the whole countr}- . But the nobles were very angry, and rose in an insurrection, which the Dauphin Louis joined, chiefly because he thought it would give his father trouble ; but when 244 Young FolJcs' History of France. he found the king too strong for the rebels, he made his peace, and left them to their fate. Charles was a prosperous man, and established peace. In the church, too, there was peace : for at the council held by the Lake of Constance, in the year 1415, the rival Popes of Rome and Avignon had both been made to resign, and a new one had been elected, who was reigning at Rome ; but a great deal of evil had grown up during the Great Schism, which had not been remedied, and things were growing worse and worse ; for if religion was not rightly taught, sin was sure to get unrestrained. One of the worst parts of Charles's nature was that he was so cold and ungrateful. The merchant, Jacques Cceur, had counselled him and lent him money, and done more than any one else to bear him through his troubles ; and j-et he let false and ridiculous accusations be brought forward, on which this great man was stripped of all his property, and sent away to die in exile. Yet Charles's name in history is the Well-served ! But his son, Louis the Dauphin, hated him, and in a cunning, bitter way did all he could to vex and anger him. After many quarrels, Louis fled from court, and asked the protection of Duke Philip of Burgund}^, who had become the most magnificent and stately of Charles VII. 245 European princes, and hoped to make himself or his son king of the Low Countries. The okl king lived in continual fear of this son of his, and at last fancied that Lonis meant to poison him, and refused to take any food or drink, until he lost the power of swallowing ; and thus this cold-hearted, ungrateful king died a miserable death, in the year 1461. His coldness had made everyone the more admire the splendid and gen- erous Duke of Burgundy, whose riches and liber- ality were the talk of all, and whose court was the mojt stately in existence. Through his mother he held inhetited Flanders, with all the rich manufac- turing towns; and Holland, with her merchant cities ; and his court was full of beauty and luxury. CHAPTER XXIV. LOUIS XI. 1461—1483. LOUIS XI. was one of the cleverest of men, but also one of the most crafty and cruel, and who has left the most hateful name in history. The one thing he cared for was to be powerful, and no sense of truth or pity would stop him in bringing this about. But it was not for state or splendor that he cared. He wore the meanest and most shabby clothes, and an old hat, surmounted by little leaden images of the saints, Avhich he would take down and invoke to help him. For though his re- ligion could have been good for nothing, since it did not keep him from ever committing any crime, he was wonderfully superstitious. He must really have been taught, like all of his Church, that the saints did not bestow benefits, and could only be ,246 il i ^-.- LOUIS XI. Louis XL 249 asked to intercede for them ; but he not only prayed to them direct, but to their images ; and it actually seems that he thought that if he told one image of the Blessed Virgin of some crime, or made it some promise, it was a different thing from telling another. His court fool once overheard him at his devo- tions, and thought them so absurd and foolish that he could not help telling of them. The truth was that Louis had no love for God or man, he had only fear ; and so tried to bribe the saints to keep from him the punishments he knew he deserved, by fine promises of gifts at their shrines. And his fear of man made him shut himself up in a grim castle at Plessis-les-Tours, with walls and moats all round, and a guard of archers from Scotland, posted in iron cages on the battlements, to shoot at any dan- gerous person. He did not like the company of his nobles and knights, but preferred that of his barber, Oliver le Daim, and his chief executioner, Tristan I'Hermite ; and whoever offended him, if not put to death, was imprisoned in the castle of Loches, often in an iron cage, so small that it was impossible to stand upright or lie at full length. He had one brother, the Duke of Berri, whom he feared and hated, persecuting him till the Duke of Burgundy took the young man's part ; but Louis 250 Young Folks'' History of France, managed to break up their alliance, and get his brother back into his own hands, and then to poison him. The old duke, Philip the Good, died just after Louis came to the throne, and his son, Charles the Bold, Avas a brave, high-spirited prince, with much that was noble and earnest about him, though very ambitious, and even more bent than his father on making his dukedom into a kingdom, reaching from the German Ocean to the Alps. To upset this power was Louis's great object. First, he began to stir up the turbulent towns of Flanders to break out against Charles ; and then, while this was at work, he came to visit him at his town of Peronne, hoping to talk^ him over, and cajole him with polite words. But what the king had not expected came to pass. The mischief he had been brewing at Liege broke out suddenly ; and the people rose in tumult, killed the duke's officers, and shut their gates. No wonder Charles went into a great rage ; and since Louis had put himself into a trap, thought it only fair to close the door on him. He kept him there till the French army had been summoned, and helped to reduce and punish Liege ; besides which Louis made all manner of oaths, which, of course, he never meant to keep. iplHJill I »&.^ til INTERVIEW OF LOUIS XI. AND CHARLES THE BOLD. Louis XL 253 King and duke hated one another more than ever ; and Charles, who had married the sister of Edward IV. of England, promised to aid the English if they would come to conquer France. Then Edward should have all the western parts, and he all the eastern. Edward actually came, with one of the finest armies that had ever sailed from England ; but the Duke of Burgundy had been drawn into war with the German emperor and could not join him ; and Louis sent cunning messages and bribes to Edward and his friends, to persuade him to go away without fighting. The two kings met on the bridge of Pecquiguy, across the Somme, with a great wooden barrier put up between, for fear they would murder one another ; and they kissed each other through the bars, while the two armies looked on — the English ashamed, and the French well pleased, but laughing at them for going back in this dishonorable way. Charles the Bold would have gone on with the war, but Louis stirred up fresh enemies for him in Switzerland. The French king sent secret messen- gers into the Swiss towns and cantons to set them against the duke. The town of Basle rose, and murdered Charles's governor, and then joined the young Duke of Lorraine, his bitter enemy, and 254 Young Folks'^ History of France. made war on liim. Charles was beaten in two battles, at Morat and Granson ; and at last, when he was besieging Nancy (the capital of Lorraine), the wicked Count Campobasso, the commander of his hired Italian troops, on Epiphany night, be- trayed him to the Swiss, opened the gates of the camp, and went over to the enemy. There was a great slaughter of the Burgundians ; and after it was over, the body of the brave Duke Charles was found, stripped naked and gashed, lying half in and half out of a frozen pool of water. He only left one daughter, named Mary. His dukedom of Burgundy could not go to a woman, so that returned to France ; but Mary had all Flanders and Holland. Her father had betrothed her to Maximilian of Austria (the son of the German Emperor) ; and when Louis was stirring up the towns to rebel against her, she sent her be- trothed a ring as a token to beg him to come to h@r help. He did so at once, and they were married, and were most happy and prosperous for five years, till Mary was killed by a fall from her horse, and her baby son Philip had her inheritance. So Louis obtained the French part of the duchy of Burgundy. His mother, (Mary of Anjou) had been the sister of the Duke of Anjou, who had been Louis XL 255 adopted as the son of Queen Jane of Naples, the descendant of Charles of Anjou, St. Louis's brother. Rene, Duke of Anjou, his brother (the father of our Queen Margaret), had never been able to get the kingdom of Naples, though he was always called Kiijg Reno, but he did get the county of Provence, which belonged to it ; and there he led a cheerful, peaceable life, among painters, poets and musicians, and was one of the few good men of his time. His wife had been Duchess of Lorraine in her own right, and the young Duke of Lorraine who fought with Charles the Bold, was the son of his eldest daughter, for all his sons died young. Louis could not take away Lorraine from the young duke ; but he did persuade old King Rene at his death to leave the French kings all his claims to the kingdom of Naples — a very unhappy legacy, as you will see. Louis had three children — Anne, who married the Duke of Bourbon's brother, the Lord of Beaujeu, and whom he loved ; and Jane, a poor, deformed, sickly girl, whom he cruelly teased because she was ugly, so that she used to hide behind her sister to escape his eye. She wanted to go into a convent, but he forced her to marry her cousin Louis, Duke of Orleans, who made no secret that he hated the very sight of her, though she was as good and meek 256 Young FoWs History of France, as possible. Charles the Dauphin was sickly, too, and the king himself had lost his health. He was in great dread of death — sent for a hermit from Italy (Francis de Paula) to pray for him, and vowed to give silver and gold images and candle- sticks and shrines to half the saints if they would save him ; but death came to him at last, in 1483, just as the wicked Richard III. had gained the crown of England. CHAPTER XXV. CHARLES VI ir. 148:^—1498. YOUNG Charles VIII. was but nine years old when he came to the crown. He was a weakly boy, with tliiii legs and large head, but very full of spirit. His father had never cared about his learn- ing, saj^ing that to know how to dissimulate was all that signified to a king ; and his sister Anne, the 257 258 Young Folks' History of France. Lady of Beaujeu, who had charge of him and his kingdom, thought like her father, and took no pains to teach him. He read nothing but poems and romances about knights and ladies, dragons and en- chanters ; but lie really did gain the best lessons they could teach him, for instead of learning dis- simulation, he hated it. He never deceived any- one, never broke his word, was always courteous ; and so far from showing mean spite, like his father, he never wilfully grieved or vexed any one of any sort through his whole life. At first the Lady of Beaujeu was taken up with quarrels with their cousin and brother-in-law, the Duke of Orleans, who thought he had a better right to be Regent than a woman ; and when he could not rule, went oif to Brittany and made mischief there. The Duke of Brittany had no son, and everybody wanted to marry his little daughter Anne. Orleans himself had hopes of getting him- self divorced from his poor, good Jane, and marry- ing this young girl ; and at last a battle was fought between the Bretons and French, in which Orleans was knocked down, and made prisoner. He was sent off to one castle after another ; but his good wife Jane always followed him to do her best to comfort him, and never left him except to try and Charles VIII. 259 gain his pardon ; but the Lady of Beaujen knew better than to let him out as long as Anne of Brit- tany was not married. Indeed, the Lady thought the best thing would be if young Charles could marry Anne, and join the great dukedom to his dominions. But on the one hand, Charles was betrotlied to Maximilian's daughter Margaret, and Anne to Max- imilian himself; and on the other, there Avas nothing the Bretons hated so much as the notion of being joined on to the Frencli. They w^anted the poor girl of fourteen to marry a grim old baron, Alan de Albret, who had eight children already, because they thought he would fight for the duchy. In the midst of the dispute, the Duke of Brittany died, and poor young Anne had to strive for herself — on the one side against the French, who wanted to get her duchy into their hands ; and on the other, against her own Bretons, who wanted to force her into taking old Alan d' Albret. She waited in vain for Maximilian, hoping he would come to her, as he had once come to Mary of Burgundy ; and. he was setting off, when his son's Flemish subjects, jealous of his raising troops, rose in tumult ; so that he had to hide in an apothecary's shop, till he was carried to prison in the castle at Bruges. 260 Young Folks' History of France. Anne of Beaujeii, in tke meantime, raised an army and entered Brittany, taking one town after another. Still Anne of Brittany held out in her city of Rennes. But late one evening a young gentleman, with a small suite, came to the gates and desired to see the duchess= It was the king ; and so sweet in manner, so gentle and knightly was he, that Duchess Anne forgot her objections, and consented to marry him. And so the duchy of Brittany was joined to the crown of France. The w^orst of it was, that Charles YIII. had been be- trothed to Maximilian's daughter Margaret ; but his sister cared little for scruples, and he was still under her charge. As soon as Charles and Anne were married, the Duke of Orleans was released. Charles had always lived on romances, and wanted to be a king^ of romance himself. So he recollected the right to the kingdom of Naples which old King Rene had left to his father, and he gathered to- gether one of the most splendid armies that ever was seen in France to go and conquer it for him- self. Nobod}^ in Italy was ready to oppose him, for the cities were all quarrelling among themselves ; and the Pope who was reigning then, Alexander YIc, was one of the wickedest men who ever lived. All good men hoped that this young king would Charles VIIL 263 set things to rights — call a council of the Church, and have the court of Rome purified ; but Charles was a mere youth who cared as yet chiefly for mak- ing a grand knightly display ; and yet he could not even keep his army in order, so that they did dreadful mischief to the people in Italy, and made themselves very much liated. He was crowned King of Naples, and then left a division of his army to guard the kingdom, while he rode back again the whole length of Italy, and on the way claimed the duchy of Milan for his brother-in-law, the Duke of Orleans, whose grandmother, Valen- tina Visconti, had been a daughter of the Duke of Milan. The Italian States, however, had all leagued against him, and a great army gathered together to attack him at Fornova. Then he shewed all the high spirit and bravery there Avas in him. He reall}^ seemed to grow bigger with joy and courage ; he fought like a lion, and gained a grand victory, so that he could go home to Queen Anne feeling like a true knight. But more goes to make a king than knighthood, and he did not keep up what he had conquered, nor send men or provisions to his army in Naples ; so they were all driven out by the great Spanish 264 Young Folks' History of France, captain, Gonzalo de Cordova, and only a remnant of them came home to France, in a miserable con- dition. Charles began to think more deeply as he grew older. He lost both his infant sons, and his grief changed him a good deal. He read better books than the romances of chivalry ; and as he had learnt truth, honor, and kindness before, so now he learnt piet}^, justice and firmness. He resolved to live like St. Louis, and began, like him, sitting under the oak-tree to hear the causes of the rich and poor, and doing justice to all. AboA^e all, he knew how vain and foolish he had been in Italy, and what a great opportunity he had thrown away of trying to get the terrible evils that were going on among the Pope and his cardinals cured, by helping the good men left in Itah^, to- gether with Maximilian and Henry VII., to call a council of the Church, and set matters to rights. He was just beginning to make arrangements for another expedition to make up for his former mis- takes, when, one day, as he was going through a dark passage leading to the tennis court at Blois, he struck his forehead against the top of a doorway, was knocked backward, taken up senseless, and after lying in that state for a couple of hours, died. CHARI-F.S Yin. Charles VIIL 26T in the twenty-ninth year of his life and the fif- teenth of his reign, in 1498. He was so much loved that one of his servants died of grief, and his noble temper had trained up in France such a race of knightly men as perhaps has never been seen at any other time. CHAPTER XXVI. LOUIS xir. 1498—1515. CHAELES VIIE had lost both his children, so the throne went to Louis, Duke of Orleans, grandson to the second son of Charles Y. He was a kindly man when selfishness did not come in his way, and he was much admired for saying, when asked to punish some of his old enemies, that the King of France forgot all injuries to the Duke of Orleans. The first thing he did, however, was to bribe the wicked old Pope, Alexander YL, to sep- arate him from his good, faithful wife, Jane, who went into a convent and spent the rest of her life in praying for him ; while he married Anne of Brittany, in order to keep her duchy united with the crown. She was a very noble and high-spirited queen, and kept her court in such excellent order, 268 Louis XII. 269 that the time of good Queen Anne has always been looked back npoii as the very best time of the French court. Louis was a vain man, and could not rest till he had done as much, as Charles VIII. So he allied himself with the Pope, set off into Italy with an- other brilliant army, and seized Milan. He did not himself go to Naples, but he sent thither an arm}^ who seized a large portion of the kingdom ; but then the Spanish King Ferdinand persuaded Louis to make peace, and divide the kingdom of Naples in half. But while the two kings and their ministers were settling where the division should be, the soldiers in the kingdom itself were con- stantly quarrelling, and the war went on there just as if the kings Avere not making a treaty. At first the French had the advantage, for their knights were courage itself, especially one whose name was Bayard, and who was commonly called " the fear- less and blameless knight." The Spaniards, with Gonzalo de Cordova, their captain, were shut up in the city of Barletta, and stood a long and weary siege ; but he was wonderfully patient, and held out till fresh troops came out to him from Spain, and then beat the French completely at the battle 270 Young Folks'' History of France. of Cerignola, and then drove them out, city by city, castle by castle, as he had done once before. The Italians themselves hated both French and Spaniards alike, and only wanted to get Italy free of them ; but instead of all joining openly together against them, their little states and princes took different sides, according to what they thought most likely to be profitable, though in a battle they did not care much who they killed, so long as he was a foreigner. A clever Florentine, named Machiavelli, w^rote a book called " The Prince," in wdiich he made out that craft and trickery was the right way for small states to prosper and overthrow their enemies ; and this spirit of falsehood was taken for good polic}' , and is known by his name. The manner of fighting was curious. Able cap- tains used to get together bands of men-at-arms, who had been trained to skill in warfare, but who did not care on what side they fought, provided they were paid well, allowed to plunder the towns they took, and to make prisoners, whom they put to ransom. Some of these bands were on horse- back, some on foot, and the most feared of all among the foot soldiers were the Swiss, who were very terrible with their long pikes, and would hire themselves out to any one who paid them well ; but CHEVALIER BAYAKD GOING TO THE WAKS. Louis XIL 273 if they did not get money enough, were apt to mutiny and go over to the other side. The wicked Pope, Alexander VI., was poisoned by drinking by mistake the wine he had meant to poison another person with ; and the new Pope, Julius II., made a league with Louis and Maxi- milian against the Venetians. It was called the League of Cambrai, but no sooner had the brave French army gained and given to Julius the towns he had been promised, than he turned again to his Italian hatred of the foreigner, and deserted their cause. He made another league, which he called the Lloly League, with the Emperor Maximilian, the Spanish Ferdinand, and Henry VIII., for driving the French out of Italy. This was the sort of bad faith that Machiavelli had taught men to think good policy. The French army in Italy was attacked by the Spaniards and Italians, and though the brave young general, Gaston de Foix, Duke of Nemours, gained a grand battle at Ravenna, he was killed at the close of the day ; and the French having everybody against them, were driven back out of the duchy of Milan, and over the Alps, and entirely out of Italy. Louis XII. could not send help to them, for Ferdinand was attacking him in the south of France, 274 Young Folks' History of France. and Henry VIII. in the north. The sister of the Duke of Nemours was the second \\'ife of Ferdi- nand, and he said she ought to be Queen of Navarre ; and as the real queen was Avife to a French count, Ferdinand seized the little kingdom, and left only the i)ossessions that belonged to the French side of the family ; so that henceforth the King of Navarre was only a French noble. Henry YIII. l)rought a line army with him, with which he besieged and took the city of Tournay, and fought a battle at Enguingate, in which the French were taken by surprise ; a panic seized them, they left their brave knights. Bayard among them, to be made prisoners, and galloped of so fast that there were only forty men killed, and the English called it the Battle of the Spurs. Terouenne was also taken, and Louis thought it time to make peace. His wife, Anne of Brittany, was just dead. She had had only two daughters, Claude and Renee ; and as Claude was heiress of Brittany, it was thought well to marry her to Francis, Duke of Angouleme, who was first cousin to her father, and who would be King of France. Francis Avas a fine, handsome, graceful young man. but he had a very bad mother, Louise of Savoy. Queen Anne kncAV Claude would not be happy, and Louis XIL 275 tried hard to prevent the match, but she could not succeed, and she died soon after it was concluded. Louis then offered himself to marry Henry's young- est sister, Mary, and the most beautiful princess in Europe, and she was obliged to consent. Louis was not an old man, but he had been long obliged to take great care of his health, and the feastings and pageants with whicli he received his young bride quite wore him out, so that he died at the end of six weeks, on the New Year's Day of 1515. He is sometimes called the father of his people, tliough lie does not seem to have done much for their good, only taxed them lieavily for his wars in Ital}^ ; but his manners were pleasant, and that went for a great deal with the Frencli. The Italian wars, thougli very bad in themselves, improved the French in taste by causing them to see the sjjlendid libraries and buildings, and the Avonderful collection of statues, gems, and vases of the old Greek times, which the Italian princes were making, and those most beautiful pictures that were being produced by the greatest artists wlio have lived. This lu'oaght in a love of all these forms of ])eauty, and from that time forward the French gentlemen Avere much more cultivated than they had been in the old knightly days, though, unfortunately, they were much less religious, for the sight of those wicked Popes had done them all much harm. CHAPTER XXYII. FRANCIS I. — YOUTH. 1515—1526. FRANCIS I., the new King of France, was twenty years old, and very brilliant, hand- some, gracious, brave, and clever, with his head full of chivalrous notions, but no real sense of religion to keep him up to the truth and honor that are the most real part of cliivalry. . 276 .^m-mu.m ^^^^^Sj FKANCIS I. AT MAKIGNANO. Fraiicis L — Youth, 279 To conquer Italy was, as usual, his first notion, and lie set out across the Alps; but the Swiss had turned against him, and blocked up his way at Marignano. There was a terrible battle, beginning late in the day, and when night came on everything was in confusion. The king lay down on a cannon, and asked for some water ; but the only water that could be found was red with blood, and he turned from it, sickened. All iiight the great cow-horns which were the signal of the Swiss troops, were heard blowing, to gather them together ; but the French rallied sooner, and won a complete victory, which was very much thought of as no one had ever beaten the Swiss before. When it was over, Francis knelt down before Bayard, and desired to be dubbed a knight by him, as the bravest and truest of knights. When this was done, Bayard kissed his sword and declared that it should never be put to au}^ meaner use. After this, Francis went on to take possession of Milan; and he had an interview witli the Pope at Bologna. It was a new Pope, called Leo X., a man very fond of art and learning and everything beau- tiful, though he cared little for duty or religion. He made an agreement with Francis, which is called the Concordat of Bologna. By this the king gave 280 Young Folks' History of Frmice. the Pope certain pa3-ments every year for ever, and gave up the calling synods of his clergy regularly ; and the Pope, in return, gave the king the right for himself and his successors of appointing all the bishops, deans, abbots, and abbesses in France for ever. Nothing ever did so much harm in France, for the courtiers used to get bad men, little children, and all sorts of unfit persons appointed for the sake of their lands and Avealth; and the clergy, being hindered from taking counsel together, grew more idle and dull. The people were taught nothing good, and every sin that they were prone to grew worse and worse. Francis himself was a spoilt child, caring only for pleasure, and what he called glory. He wanted to be Emperor of Germany, and tried to get Henry yill. to help him ; and they had a great meeting at Ardres (near Calais), when such splendors in tents, ornaments, and apparel were displayed, that the conference was known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The two kings were both joyous young men, and they wrestled and played together like two boys ; but nothing came of this displa}^, for Henry really preferred the young King Charles of Spain, who was grandson to the Emperor Maxi- r^:^-:; tr^'vm-tfJLS' i