Class J1(^.j3_2- 7^^ ■73 ?y OUTLIJSTES HISTORY OF FEANC FRANCOIS PlERRli: GUILLAUME GUIZOT. OUTLINES HISTORY OF FRANCE FEOM THE EAllLIEST TIMES TO THE OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION. AN ABRIDGMENT OF M. GUIZCT'S POPULAR HISTORY OF FRANCE. WITH CHRONOIOCICAL INDEX, HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL TABLES. PORTRAITS, ETC. BY GUSTAYE MASSON, B.A. Univ. Gall. OFFICIER D'ACADEMIE, ASSI.STANT JIASTEI: AN'D LIBRAPJAX, n.XKROW SCHOOL, A:nD member of the "SOCIEIE UE L'IIISTOIRE DE FR.V>'CE." BOSTON: ESTES AND LAURIAT, 299 TO 305 ■Washixgton Street. 11 TO THE REV. H. M. BUTLER, D.D. HEAD MASTER, AND TO THE ASSISTAlfT MASTEKS OF HAKBO^ SCHOOa^j TUESE "OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF FRANCE '" AKE KESPECTFULLY DEBICATEUi HY THEIB rAlTUfU-L oEKVANX A^D COLLEAGUE, GUSTAVE MASSON PREFACE. In preparing" the following' abridgment of M. Guizot's History of France, I have scrupulously abstained from altering the translation, except in a limited number of cases, where con- densation was absolutely necessary. One of the distinctive features of the original work is the number of characteristic extracts taken from the picturesque pages of contemporary chroniclers and annalists. As it was impossible to retain these consistently with the nature of a mere resume, I have given, instead, a tolerably complete list of all the sources of French history, so that the reader may be able to refer without diffi- culty to the authors quoted or alluded to by M. Guizot. This seemed a natural opportunity for mentioning a few standard works on French legislation, civil, political, and ecclesiastical, on literature, etc. T could not do more here than name one writer in each speciality; for further details the student is referred to the "Catalogue de FHistoire de France" (Biblio- theque National e), 10 vols., 4to.; M„ Ludovic Lalanne^s " Dictionnaire Hlstorique de la France" (published by Messrs. Hachette of Paris), 1 vol., 8vo.; and M. Alfred Franklin's *^ Sources de FHistoire de France" (Paris, Didot, 8vo.), three storehouses of the most valuable information on the historv of France. I can only trust, in conclusion, that this unpretending volume^ with its pictorial illustrations, and its necessary VI PEEFACE. appendix of genealogicalj chronological, and historical tables, will be favourably received by the public | and 1 gladly acknowledge that whatever merit it possesses must be ascribed to the illustrious author and English translator of " L'Histoire de France racontee ^ mes petits-enfants.^' GUST AVE MASSON. Harrow-on-the-Hill, June 13th, 1879. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Preface . Chronological Chapter L H IL »» III. n IV. n V. » VI. n VII. »» VIIL » IX. »» X. tt XL » XII. »j XIII. n XIV. >» XV. Appendix A. »> B. w C, D. E. PAGB • • • • ' . • • « V Tablb ....... f ix The Gauls and the Eomans ... 1 Christianity in Gaul. The Barbartans. The Merovinqian Dynasty. Charlb- MAGNB ....... 23 The Carlovingians. Feudal France. The Crusades ...... 52 The Kingship, the Commoners and the Third Estate 9G The Hundred Years' "War , . .140 Louis XL Charles VIII. Louis XII. (1461—1515) . . . . . . 201 The Eenaissance and the Reformation. Francis L and Henry IL (1515—1559) 241 The Wars of Eeligion. Francis IL (1559). Henry IIL (1589) . . 285 Reign op Henry IV. (1589—1593). Louis XIIL, Richelieu and the Court . 316 Richelieu and Mazarin . . . . 346 Louis XIV., his foreign policy, successes AND REVERSKS 375 Louis XIV. Home administration. Lite- rature, tue Court and Society . 399 Louis XV., the Regency, Cardinal Dubois AND Cardinal de Fleury (1715 — 1748) 447 Louis XI. The Colonies. The Seven Years' War (1748—1774). Literature AND philosophy 481 Louis XVL (1778—1789) . . . . 532 Sources op the History op France . 566 Principal features op the feudal system 574 Table op the feudal dismemberment op the kingdom of France . . .575 Table showing the constitution of the Parliament of Paris • . . . 576 Genealogical Tables . . 577 — 584 Index 685 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAQ£ m. guizot ...... (frontispiece) Gerbert ........ 62 Sire db Joinville . . . . . . 90 Charles V. 162 Bertrand Du Guesclin 168 John the Fearless 174 Jacques Cceur 196 Louis XIL 226 Francis 1 242 Henry IL 306 Henry IV . . . 320 Sully .332 Louis XIV 376 Pascal . . . . . . . .420 BossuET ........ 422 Peter Corneille ..,.,. 428 Louis XrV. IN HIS OLD AGE 442 The Regent Orleans 448 Cardinal Dubois 454 Louis XV 472 Madame de Pompadour . , . . . 496 BuFFON ........ 524 I^Tecker at Saint Ouen 550 Marie Antoinette ...... 658 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. b, d, fi, stand respectively for born, died, and flourished. B.C. 687 The Gaula in Germany and Italy. 340 The Gauls in Greece. 283 A Roman army destrojed by the Gauls at Arctium. 279 The Gauls near Delphi. 24L The Gauls attacked by Eumenes and Attains. 154 Marseilles calls in the assistance of the Romans. 122 Sextius founds Aqua3 Scotia) in Pro- vence. 118 Foundation of Naibo Martins. 102 Marius defeats the Teutons in two battles. 100 Birth of Julius Caesar. 58 Ctesar obtains the government of Cisalpine Gaul for five years. Attacks the Helvetii. 51 Graul made a Roman province. 4.D. 70 Civilis surrenders. 79 Death of Sabinus and of his wife Eponina. 273 The Emperor Aurelian in Gaul. „ Battle of Chalons-sur-Marne. 277 Frobua goes on an expedition to Gaul, in which counti y the Franks settle about this time. 305 The Franks defeated by Constantiua in Gaul. 355 The Franks take Cologne, and de- stroy it; Julian named prefect of Transalpine Gaul. 357 Julian defeats six German kings at Strasburg. 413 The kingdom of the Burgundians begins under Gondicarius. 420 Pharamond supposed to begin the kingdom of the Franks. 426 Aetius defeats the Franks on the borders of the Rhine. 438 The Franks obtain a permanent footing in Gaul. 451 Battle of Chalons. 458 Childeric, king of the Franks, de- posed by his subjects. 462 The Ripuaiian Franks take Cologne from the Romans. 463 Childeric recalled by the Franka. 477 Marseilles, Aries, and Aix occupied by the Visigoths. Merovingian dynasty. 481 Death of Childeric ; his son Clovia succeeds to the throne. 486 Battle of Soissons gained by Clovia against Siagrius, the Roman general in Gaul. 493 Marriage ofClovis with Clotilda. 496 Clovis, king of France, is baptized after the battle of Tolbiac. 501 Gondebaud, king of the Burgundians, publishes his code, entitled " La Loi Gombette." 507 Battle of Vouille, near Poictiers ; Alario is defeated and slain by Clovis. 509 Clovis receives the titles of Patrician and Consul. 510 Clovis makes Paris the capital of the French dominions. 511 Clovis dying, his dominions are divided among his children. 524 Battle of Voiron ; Chlodomir, king of Orleans, is killed by Gondemar, king of Burgundy. 531 Thierry, king of Metz, seizes Thurir - gia from Hermanfroi. 532 The kingdom of Burgundy ends, being conquered by Childebert and Clotaire, kings of Paris and Soissons. 556 Civil wars in France ; the dominions of Theodebald, king of Metz, are divided between Clotaire, king of Soissons, and Childebert, king of Paris. 558 Childebert dies, and is succeeded by his son Clotaire, who becomes sovereign of all France. 560 Chramn, natural son of Clotaire, defeated and burnt alive. 567 Death of Charibert, king of Paris; his territories are divided amon» his brothers ; but the city of Paris is held by them in common. History of France. A.D. 557 Kivalry of the two qneens, Brane- haut and Fredegonde. 612 Theodebert II., king of Austrasia, defeated and confined in a monas- tery by his brother, Thierry II., king of Orleans and Burgundy. ni3 Clotaire king of all France ; death of Brunehaut, widow of Sigebert, king of Austrasia. 028 Clotaire II., king of France, dies, and is succeeded by his son Dago- bert. 6S1 Childeric, son and successor of Charibert, poisoned by Dagobert, who remains sole monarch of France. fi38 Dagobert, king of France, is suc- ceeded by his two sons, Sigebert II. in Austrasia, and Clevis 11. in Keustria and Burgundy. The Maires du Palais begin to usurp the royal authority. 678 Death of Dagob.rt II., king of Neustria ,- Martin and Pepin *> ■ Heristal, Mayors of the palace. Thierry III. is sufiFered to eujoy <■ the title of king of Austrasia. '691 Clovis III. king. 715 Charles Martel, son of Pepin Ileris- tal, governs as Mayor of the palace. 717 Charles Martel defeats king Chil- peric II. and the Noustrians. 732 Charles Martel defeats the Saracens. 735 Charles Martel becomes master of Aquitaiue. 737 On the death of of Thierry III., Charles Martel governs France, with the title of Duke, for six years. 741 Charles Martel dies, and is succeeded by his sons, Carlomau in Aus- trasia and Thuriiigia, and Pepin in Neustria, Burg'indy and Pro- vence. ■ 742 Pepin places Childeric ITT. on the throne of Neustria and Burgundy. ■ — Charlemagne b. Carloringian dynasty. 752 Pepin deposes Childeric, confines him in a monastery, and is conse- crated at Soissons. 754 Pepin's expedition into Italy. 758 Pepin reduces the Saxons in Ger- many. 768 P^pin dies at St. Denis, and is suc- ceeded by his sons Charles and Carloman. 771 Carloman dyingin November, Char le- A.D. 772 773 774 776 778 78-1 791 793 800 806 813 814 817 840 841 843 814 877 879 880 881 882 887 888 magne remains sovereign of all France. Charlemagne begins the Saxon war, which continues thirty years. Charlemagne defeats tlie troops of Didier, king of the Lombards, and lays siege to Pavia. Surrender of Pavia, and captnre of Didier. The abbey church of St. Denis near Paris founded. Battle of Roucevaux. Charle'.nagne defeats Witikind and the Saxons. Charlemagne defeats the Avari, in Pannonia. The Saracens ravage Gallia Nar- bonnensis, where they are at length defeated by Charlemagne. Charlemagne crowned king of Italy and emperor of the West. Partition of the empire. Charlemagne associates his son Louis, surnaraed the Debonnair, or the Pious, to the Western Em- pire. Charlemagne dies ; succeeded as em- peror and king by his son Louis. Louis divides his empire among his children. Louis the Debonnair dies ; his eldest son, Lothaire, has Italy, with the title of Emperor ; Charles the Bald the kingdom of France ; and Louis, that of Bavaria or Ger- many. Battle of Fontanet. New partition of the French do- minions in an assembly at Thion- ville. Charles the Bald defeated in Aqui- taiue by Pepin II. Charles the Bald poisoned His son, Louis II., surnamed the Stam- merer, succeeds him. Louis the Stammerer dies, and is succeeded by his sons Louis III. and Carloman. Boson seizes Dauphiny and Provence, and begins the kingdom of Aries. The Normans invade France, and destroy several abbeys. Louis III., king of France, defeats the Normans at Saucourt. Louis III. of France dies, leaving his brother Carloman sole sovereign. Hincmar d. Paris besieged by the Normans. On the death of Charles his do- minions are divided into five kingdoms : Eudes becomes king Ol^Ok f^'C XI 4.D. of Western France and Aqui- taine. 893 Charles the Simple crowned king of France. 898 Charles the Simple is reoognized king of France. 905 The Normans take the town of Rouen. 906 The Normans conquer Colentin and and Maine, and ravage Brittany, Picardy, and Cliampagne. 912 Cbarlesthe Simple cedes to Normans a part of Neustria, which thence- forward is called Normandy. 922 Robert elected and anointed king of France at Rheims. 923 Rodolph, duke of Burgundy, is elected and crowned king of France. Charles the Simple is confined in the castle of Peronne. 929 Charles the Simple dies in prison. 936 Louis IV. surnamed d'Outremer, sonof Charles the Simple, anointed king of France. Capetian Dynasty. 987 Louis v., king of France, dies. Hugh Capet is anointed at Rheims. 994 Charles, duke of Lorraine, the only survivor of the race of Charle- magne, dies in prison at Orleans. 996 Hugh Capet d. Robert succeeds to the crown. 1031 Henry I. king of France. 1066 Conquest of England by William, duke of Normandy, in the battle of Senlac. 1095 Council held at Clermont ; preach- ing of the crusade. 1096 The crusades begin. 1097 Godfrey of Bouillon and the cru- saders take Nice. 1098 Battle of Dorylceum, 1099 Jerusalem taken by the crusaders. 1100 Godfrey of Bouillon d. 1108 Philip I. d. 1112 Robert Wace b. 1113 War begins between England and France. 1115 Peter the Hermit d- 1119 Louis VI., king of France, defeated at Brenneville. Baldwin, II., king of Jerusalem, defeats the Turks at Antioch. 1124 War between France and Germany. 1137 Louis VIL king of France. 1143 Vitry besieged and burnt by Louis VII. 1147 Second crusade preached by Bernard of Clairvaux. Giraud le Roux, troubadour, ji. A.D. 1148 The crusaders besiege Damascus without success. The emperor Conrad and king Louis VII. arrive at Jerusalem. 1149 Louis Vli. returns to France. 1150 Villehardouin b. Arnauld Daniel, trouoadowfi. The cowrs d'omowr. 1152 Sugerd. 1179 Louis VIL, king of France, arrives in England, on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Becket. 1180 Philip Augustus king of France. Robert Wace d. 1187 Jerusalem taken by Saladin (2nd of October). 1188 A third crusade undertaken for the recovery of Jerusalem. The tax called Saladin's tithe imposed in most countries of Christendom. 1190 Richard Coeur de Lion, king of England, and Philip Augustus go to the holy wars. The walls and gatep of Paris are built. 1191 St. Jean d'Acre taken by the crusa- ders. Philip Augustus returns to France. — Chrestien de Troyes d. 1196 Philip Augustus marries Agnes of Merania. 1201 A war begins between John, king of England, and Philip Augustus of France. Thibaut de Cham- pagne h. Agnes of Merauia d. 1203 John, king of England, accused of the murder of his nephew Arthur, is cited to appear before an assembly of the peers of France ; his estates in that country are confiscated. The French and Venetian crusaders take Constan- tinople on the 10th of July. 1210 Crusade against the Albigenses. Chronicle of the crusade composed in the Langue d'oc. 1213 Villehardouin, d. Jaufre aoid Bru- nissende, a Provencal romance, compoi-ed about that time. 1214 Philip Augustus defeats the emperor Otho, near Bouvines. 1215 Louis IX., king of France, h. 1216 Philip Augustus invades England, and is received by the barons; but on the death of John, Henry III. is crowned king. 1218 Simon de Montfort d. 1222 Joinville h. 1223 Louis VIII. king of France. 1226 Louis IX. king of France. Regency of Blanche of Castile. 1234 Louis IX. marries Marguerite of Provence. 1242 Battle of TailleboTirg. Xll History of France, A.D. 124-8 Louis IX. seta out for the crusade. 1249 Damietta, in Egypt, taken by Louis on the 5th of June. 1250 Battle of Mansourah. Louis' de- feated aud taken prisoner in Egypt. Marcabras, troubadour, fl. 1252 Biancho of Castile d. 1254 St. Louis leaves Palestine. 1258 Stephen Boileau provost of Paris. 1264 Ilenry, king of England, taken prisoner by the barons at the battle of Lewes. St. Louis arbi- trates between them. 1270 Louis dies at Tunis, his son Philip the Bold succeeds him. 1278 Peter de la Brosse banged at Paris. 1282 The Sicilians, excited by Peter IIL, king of Arragon, massacre all the French they can find in their Island. 1255 Philip IV. king of France. 129(5 Bull " Clericis Laicos." 1297 Flanders invaded by the French. 1301 Eevolt at Bruges. Bull "Ausculta fili." 1302 Battle of Courtrai. States-General ■ convoked. 1303 Pope Boniface VIII. arrested. He dies. 1304 Battle of Mons-en-Puelle. Pope Benedict XL d. 1308 The States- General assembled at Tours approve the measures directed against the Templars. 1314 Molay, grand master of the order of Templars, and a great number of knights companions, burned alive at Paris, on the 11th of March. Death of Pope Clement V., and of Phih'p the Handsome. States- General (August). 1315 Louis X. emancipates the serfs on the royal dominions. Enguerrand de Marigny d. 1319 Joinville d. Branch of the Valois. t328 Pliilip VI., king of France, gains the battle of Cassel. L336 Edward III. of England supports the cause of the Flemings against Philip VI. of France. 1337 Froissart h. 1340 Edward III. defeats the French in a naval engagement near Sluys : viuce of four years. L341 Beginning of the war for the succession of Brittany, between Charles of Blois and John of Montfort. Petrarch crowned at the Capitol. 1344 Edward III. renews the war with France 1346 Battle of Cressy. 1347 Calais surrenders to Edward III., after a siege of eleven months and a few days. William of Ock- ham d. 1348 The black plague. The Jews per- secuted. 1349 Cession of Vienness and of Mont- pell ier to France. 1350 Philip VI. d. 1356 John II., king of Prance, taken prisoner in the battle of Poictiers, September 19th, and sent to England. 1358 Treaty of Calais, between Edward III. of England and the French. Stephen Marcel. The Jacque- rie. 1360 King John, set at liberty, returns to France. Treaty of Bretigny. Buridan d. 1364 Battle uf Cocherel (6th of May)., and of Auray (29th of Sept.) John II. dies iu England, his son Charles V. succeeds him, and is crowned at Eheims. A Univer- sity founded at Angers. 1367 Battle of Navarette. — De Guesclin made a prisoner. 1376 Edward, prince of Wales, sumamed the Black Prince, d. (June 8th). 1377 Edward IIL, king of England, d. Brittany invaded by Oliver de Clisson. 1380 Du Guesclin d. Charles V. d. 1382 Battle of Rosebecque. The Mai- leteers. Nicolas Oresme d. 1392 Murder of Oliver de Clisson. 1400 Chaucer d. 1407 The duke of Orleans murdered. 1408 Valentine of Milan d. The king of France excommunicated by the Pope. 1410 Beginning of the civil war in France. 1415 Battle of Agincourt (October 23). 1418 Massacre of the Armagnac faction in Paris. 1419 The Duke of Burgundy murdered at Montereau. 1420 Treaty of Troyes signed on the 21st of May. A Parliament estab- lished at Toulouse (March 20). 1421 Battle of Beauge on the 3rd of April, in which the duke of Clarence is killed. 1422 Henry V., king of England, d. at Chronolopical TaMe. xui Vincennes in France. Charles VI., king of France, d. 1423 Battle of Crevant (June). 1428 The duke of Bedford defeats the French at Verneuil (August 16) . 1428 The siege of Orleans begins on the 12th of October. 1429 Battle of Herrings (12th February). Joan of Arc obliges the English to raise the siege of Orleans. 1431 Trial and death of Joan of Arc. 1435 Treaty of Arras. 1436 Paris recovered by the French, on the 13th of April. 1437 Siege of Montereau. Charles VII. makes his solemn entry in Paris. 1440 The " Praguery." 1444 Truce between England and France signed at Tours. 1449 War renewed between England and France. 1450 Battle of Formigny gained over the English. Agnes Sorel d. 1451 The English evacuate Eouen and several places in France. Cam- paign in Guyenne. 1453 Talbot cZ. 1456 Jacques Occur A. 1461 Louis XI. king of France. 1464 The league against Louis XI. of France, called " La Guerre du Bien Public." 1 165 Treaties of Conflans and of Saint- Maur. 1467 Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, d. ^ 1468 Louis XI. at Peronne. Eevolt of the Liegese. 1476 Charles, duke of Burgundy, defeated at Granson ( 20th of June) . 1477 The duke of Burgundy slain at Nancy. 1479 Battle of Guinegate. 14-83 Louis XI. d. . Eabelais b. Luther 6. Charles VIII. king of France. 1484 The States-General convoked at Tours. 1488 Battle of St. Anbin : the duke of Brittany is defeated and the duke of Orleans taken prisoner (28th of June). 1492 Brittany united to the French crown. 1494 Charles VIII., king of France, goes on an expedition into Italy. 1495 Battle of Fornovo between Charles VIII. and the Venetians (6th July). Clement Marot b. Branch of Orleans. 1498 Death of Charles VIIL, king of France (April 7th). 1499 Louis XII., king of France, takes possession of Milaness, and enters Milan on the 6th of October. 1500 Insurrection at Milan. 1501 Louis XII. of France and Fer- dinand V. of Spain seize on the kingdom of Naples. 1503 The power of the French in Naples ends with the loss of the battles of Cerignola, Seminara, and Gari gliano. Pope Alexander VI. d. Michel de I'Hospital h. 1504 Truce between France and Spain. 1508 The pope and the emperor join the king of France in the trea ty of Cambray, against the Venetians. 1509 Battle of Agnadello, (14th of May). Calvin h. fitienne Dolet b. Mar- tial d'Auvergne d. 1510 Cardinal d'Amboise d. 1512 Battle of Eavenna. Gaston de Foix d. 1513 The French defeated by the Swiss in the battle of Novarra. Jacques Amyot h. Pope Julius II. d. 1514 Anne of Brittany d. Branch of AngouUme. 1515 Battle of Melegnano between the French and Swiss. Louis XII. d. Eamus b. 1516 Treaty of Noyons signed on the 16th of August. 1520 Interview between Henry VIIL of England and Francis I. of France (4th of June). Pierre Viret b. 1521 League between the emperor Charles V. of Spain and Henry VIII. of England, against the king of France. 1523 League against Francis I. of France, by Pope Clement VII., the em- peror, and the Venetians. Ba- yard cZ. The memoirs of Commines published. 1525 Fiancis I. taken prisoner in the battle of Pavia (24th of February), and sent to Madrid. 1526 Treaty of Madrid (14th of January \ Francis is restored to liberty. The Holy League. 1527 Henri Estienne b. Brant6me b. 1529 Peace of Cambray, between Charles V. and Francis I. Louis de Ber- quin put to death, fitienne Pas- quier b. 1536 League between Francis I. of France, and Solyman II., sultan of the Turks, against the emperor Charles V. Vauquelin de la Fresnaye b. 1543 Treaty of alliance between Sultan Solyman and Francis I. of Franca against the emperor Charles V. XIV History of France. A.l> 1544 Battle of Cerisoles. Treaty of Crespy (ISth of September). Bonaven- ture des Periers d. Clement Marot d. Du Bartas b. 1545 Massacre of the Vaudois. Robert Garuier h. 1547 Henry II. king of France. 1548 Rebellion in the South of France. La Boetie writes his Centre un. First edition of the Salic law. 1556 Charles V. resigns the crown of Spain and all his other dominions and retires to the monastery of St. Just. Malherbe b. 1557 Battle of St. Quentin (10th of Auo-ust). 1558 The French recover Calais from the English. Mellin de St. Gelais d. 1559 Henry II. d. Peace of Cateau- Carabresis. f-dict of ficouen. Am- yot translates Plutarch. Anne Dubourg put to death. "1560 Conspiracy of Amboise. Francis II. cZ. Charles IX., king. Joa- chim du Bellay d. 1562 Massacre of Vassy. Battle of Dreux (19th December). 1563 The duke of Guise is assassinated by Poltrot (24th February). Peace of Amboise. 1567 The religious wars recommence in France ; battle of St Denis, be- tween the prince of Conde and the constable Montmorency, in which the latter is mortally wounded. 1569 The Huguenots defeated in the battles of Jarnac, on the 13th May, and of Moncontour, on the 3i-d October. 1572 Massacre of the Huguenots at Paris, on Sunday, the 24th August. Ramus d. Jean Goujon d. 1574 Charles IX. d. Hotman publishes his Franco-Gallia. 1576 Edict of pacification in France. 1584 The Cardinal de Bourbon proposed as eventual king of France. La Croix du Maine publishes his Bihliotheiue Frarifaise. 1587 Battle of Coutras (10th of October) the Duke de Joyeuse is defeated by Henry, king of Navarre. .An Arabic lectureship is created at the college royal. 1588 The duke of Guise and his brother the cardinal murdered at Blois. Dynasty of the Bourbons. 1589 Henry III. of France murdered (22nd of July). Henry IV. of Navarre succeeds to the vacant throne. Battle of Arques. Ron- sard, Hotman d. 1590 Battle of Ivry (4th of March). Germain Pilon, Jean Cousin, Dn Bartas, Cujas, Ambrose Pare, Palissy d. Theophile de Viaud b. 1591 The Pope excommunicates Henry IV. : the parliament of Paris oppose the sentence. Guy Co- qnUle'sLibeytds del' eglisede France published. La None d. 1593 Henry IV. abjures the Protestant religion, on Sunday, the 25th of of July, at St. Denis. The Satire M^nippSe published. Amyot d. 1594 Henry IV. anointed at Chartres : attempt on his life (17th Decem- ber). Pierre Pithou yj. Balzac, St. Amand b. 1595 Battle of Fontaine-Francjaise. Des- marets de St. Sorlin b. 1598 Edict of Nantes (April). Peace of Vervins signed on the 22nd of the same month. Voiture b. 1602 Marshal Biron's conspiracy detected and punished. 1610 Henry IV. assassinated by Ravaillao (4th of May). Louis XIII. king of France. Scarron, La Calpre- nfede b. 1617 Murder of Concini. 1621 The civil war renewed with the Huguenots in France, and con- tinues nine years. The Benedic- tines of the congregation of St. Maur receive their statutes. La Fontaine b. 1628 Rochelle besieged and taken by Louis XIII. (I8th of October). 1629 Peace restored between France and England. Malherbe d. Corneille brings out MelUe, his first play. 1630 Treaty of Cherasco. " Joumee des Dupes." Hardy, Agrippa d'Au- bigne d. 1632 Battles of Lutzen and of Castel- naudary. Flechier, Bourdaloue b. 1636 Treaty between Louis XIII. of France, and Christina, queen of Sweden (10th of March). Port Royal des Champs founded. Le Cid brought, out. Boileau b. 1642 Conspiracy of Cinq-Mars. Riche- lieu d. 1643 Louis XIII. d (4th of May). The duked'Enghien, afterwards prince of Conde, defeats the Spaniards at Rooroy (9th of i\ ay). St. Cyrand. 164'8 The pi-inco of Conde defeats the archduke S.C Sens (10th of August). Chronological Table. XV Treaty of Munster (14th of October) between France, Sweden and the empire. The civil war of the Fronde breaks out in Paris. Mer- eenne, Voiture d. La Sueur finishes his series of paintings illustrating the history of St. Bruno. 1659 Peace restored between France and Spain, by the treaty called the "Peace of the Pyrenees." Louis XIV. marries the Infanta of Spain. Moliere and the Prdcieuses ridi- cules. 1661 Cardinal Mazarin d. Bossuet's first sermon before Louis XIV. 1667 War renewed between France and Spain. Moliere and Tartuffe. Eacine and Andromaque. 1668 A triple alliance between Great Britain, Sweden, and the States- General, against France (23rd of January). Peace of Aix-la-Cha- pelle, between France and Spain (22nd of April). Racine and Les Plaidev/rSfM.oliereajidL'Avare. Le Sage b. 1672 War declared by England and France, against the Dutch. A treaty be- tween the empire and Holland, against France (15th of July). Boileau and Le Lutrin. Moliere and Les Femmes savantes. 1673 The English and French defeat the Dutch (28th of May) at Schon- velt ; again (4th of June), and (11th of August), in the mouth of the Texel. Louis XIV. declares waragainst Spain (9th of October). Racine and Mithridate. 1674 Battle of Seneffe, in Flanders, be- tween the prince of Orange and the prince of Conde (1st of August). First settlement of the French at Pondicherry. Marshal Turenne defeats the Imperialists Chape- lain d. Racine and I-phigSnie. Malebranche and the Recherche de la Veritd. 1675 Conference for a peace held at Nimeguen. Madame de la Valliere takes the veil. 1678 Peace of Nimeguen (31st of July). La Fontaine publishes his second series of fables. Ducange's Latin Glossary. 1681 The city of Strasbnrg submits to Louis XIV. Mabillon publishes his Be re diplomatica. 1684 Luxemburg taken by Louis XIV. A truce between {'ranee and Spain concluded at Ratisbon (31st of July) and between France and the empire (5th of August). P. Corneille d. 1685 Louis XIV. revokes the edict of N antes. 168G Treaty of alliance between Germany, Great Britain, and Holland against France. Conde d. 1689 The French fleet defeated by the En-glish and Dutch in Ban try Bay (1st of May). Racine and Esther. 1690 Battle of Fleurus; Luxemburg de- feats the allies (21st of June). The allied English and Dutch fleets defeated by the French off" Beachy Head (30th of June). 1691 A congress at the Hague, in Jan. Mons taken by the French (30th of March). Louvois d. Racine and Athalie. 1692 Battle of La Hogue : the English defeat the French fleet (19th of May). Namur, in Flanders, be- sieged and taken by Louis XIV. (25th of May). Luxemburg de- feats the allies at Steinkirk (24th of July). 1693 The English and Dutch fleets de- feated by the French ofl' Cape St. Vincent (16th of June). Theduke of Savoy defeated by Marshal Catinat, at Marsaglia (24th of September). Pelisson, Bassy- Rabutin, Mdme. de La Fayette, Mdlle. de Montpensier d. 1697 Peace of Ryswick (11th of Septem- ber) between Great Britain and France — France and Holland — France and Spain ; and on the 20th of October, between France and the empire. Santeuil d. The Abb^ Prevost h. 1698 The first treaty of partition between Great Britain, France and Hoi- land signed (19th of August) for the dismemberment of Spain, to Charles II., king of that country, makes his will in favour of a prince of the house of Bourbon. Le Nain de Tillemont d. 1700 Charles II., king of Spain, d. (21st of October). The dukeof Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV., succeeds by the name of Philip V. • 1702 Battle of Luzzara, in Italy (4th of August) ; the Imperialists de- feated by the French ; the French fleet destroyed in the port of Vigo, by the British and Dutch (12th of October). Jean Bart d. XV3 History of France. 1704 Battle of Hochfetedt or Blenheim (2nd of August). Bossuet, Bour- daloue cZ. 1706 Battle of Eamilies (12tli of May) the French are defeated by the duke of Marlborough. 1708 Battle of Audenarde (30th of June), the French defeated by the duke of Alarlborough and Prince Eu- gene. Regnard and Le Legataire universel, Le Sage and Turcaret. 1709 Battle of Malplaquet (31st of Aug.), the French defeated by the allies. Mens taken by the allies (21st of October). Port Royal des Champs destroyed. 1710 Battle of Villa Viciosa (29th of No- vember), the Imperialists, under Count Stahremburg, are defeated by Philip V 1712 Negotiations for a general peace opened at Utrecht. Jean Jacques Rousseau b. 1713 Peace of Utrecht, concluded by France and Spain, with England, Savoy, Portugal, Prussia, and Holland, signed on the 30th of March O.S. Fenelon publishes his Trait4 de V existence deDieu. 1714 The bull " Unigenitus" received in France. 1715 Louis XIV. d. (21st of August), suc- ceeded by his great-grandson, Louis XV. under the regency of the duke of Orleans. Malebranche, Fenelon d. liC Sage's Gil Bias. 1717 Triple alliance between Great Bri- tain, France, and Holland, signed at the Hague (24th of December) . The memoirs of Cardinal de Retz published. Massillon's Petit Ca- reme preached. 1718 Quadruple alliance between Ger- many, Great Britain, France, and Holland, for the maintenance ■ of the treaties of Utrecht and Baden. Conspiracy of Cellamare. Great Britaindeclares war against Spain (11th of December) Vol- taire and (Edipe, his first tragedy. 1719 The Mississippi scheme at its height in France. Madame de Main- tenon d. 1720 The French Mississippi company dis- solved. The plague breaks out at Marseilles, and causes great dis- tress. 1723 Duke of Orleans d. Voltaire pub- lishes his Poeme de la, Ligne {La Henriade). 1725 Treal^ of Hanover, between Great Britain, France, and Russia, against Germany and Spain (3rcl September). 1733 Stanislaus proclaimed king of Po- land (5th of Ootober^. 1731 The Imperialists defeated by the French and Piedmonteseat Parira (18th of June), and in the battle of Guastalla, by the king of Sar- dinia, and the Marshals Coigny and Broglie (8th of September). Montesquieu's Grandeur et De- cadence des Romains. 1735 Treaty of Vienna (3rd of October). Voltaire publishes his ieWresp/uZo- sophiques. 1740 The Emperor Charles VI. d. (9th of October). Voltaire publishes his Essai sur les mceurs. 1741 The archduchess Maria Theresa crowned queen of Hungary, at Presburg (25th of June). 1743 Battle of Dettingen (16th of June). Cardinal de Fleuiy d. Voltaire and M4rope. 1745 Battle of Fontenoy, the French de- feat the allies, commanded by the duke of Cumberland. 1746 (April 16th) Battle of Culloden. j, (September 30th) Count Saxe de- feats the allies at Raucoux. Vau- venargues and the Introduction a la connaissance de V esprit humain. 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, between Great Britain, France, Spain, Austria, Sardinia, and Holland (7th of October). Montesquieu's Esprit des lois. 1754 (April 17) the French attack an Eng- lish fort on Monongahela, and Logstown on the Ohio. General Braddock defeated and killed by the French (July 9), near Fort Du Quesne, on the Ohio. 1756 May 29, Admiral Byng defeated by the French. The duke of Riche- lieu takes Port Mahon (June 28). 1757 Damien attempts to assassinate Louis XV. The French garrison of Chandernugger surrenders to the British (March 23). Battle of Hastenbeck, the French defeat the duke of Cumberland (July 26). The marquis of Montcalm besieges Fort George (August 3), the Eng- lish surrender on the 9th. Con- vention of Closter-Seven, between Marshal Richelieu and the duke of Cumberland (September 8). Battle of Rosbach (November 5). 1758 Maroh 14th. The French garrison in Chronological Table. XVI 1 Minden capitulates. The French defeated at Crevelt (June 23). Helvetius publishes De I'Esprit. Quesnay's Tableau iconomique. 1759 (SeptemberSO.) The British defeated by the French in the East Indies, near Arcot. Rousseau's Nouvelle Uelo'ise. 1760 (April28th.) The English defeated by the French near Quebec. Mdme. de Souza b. 1761 (August 15th.) The family compact concluded between Louis XV. of France and Charles III. of Spain. Voltaire's L'Ingenu. 1762 (August 6.) The Jesuits suppressed in France. Treaty of peace signed at Fontainebleau, between France, Spain and Great Britain. Eous- seau's Emile. 1763 (February 10.) Peace of Paris, be- tween Great Britain, Franco and Spain, acceded to by Portugal. I'abbe Prevost d. 1767 (May 15.) Corsica ceded to France, by the Genoese. Benjamin Con- stant, Fievee, b. 4.D. 1769 1774 1778 1782 1783 ITCP Napoleon Bonaparte, Cuvics:, Cha- teaubriand, b. (May 10) Louis XV. of France d. Succeeded by Louis XVI. (February 6.) Treaty of alliance n.ud defence between France and the Americans. Pondichery taken by the British. Jlousseau, Voltaire, d. Buffon's Ejooques de la- nature. (April 12th^ ) Sir George Rodney de- feats the French fleet under Count de Grasse, off Dominica Another engagement near Trincomalee, on the same day ; and a third in Sep- tember. (January 20.) Preliminaries of peace between Great Britain, France and Spain, by which the independence of America is confirmed. (November 6.) The French notables, convoked by Louis XVI., assemble at Paris Buffon d. Bernardin de St. Pierre's Paul et Virginie. (May 4.) The States General of France assemble. The Bastille at Paris destroyed (July 14). Chenier s Clia/rles IX. performed. V=; CHAPTEE I. THE GAULS AND THE ROMANS. Three or four centuries before the Christian era, on that vast [Jaul : its territory comprised between the ocean, the Pyrenees, tlie Mediter- t^nts. " ranean, the Alps, and the Ehine, lived six or seven millions of men a bestial life, enclosed in dwellings dark and low, the best of them built of wood and clay, covered with branches or straw, made in a single round piece, open to daylight by the door alone, and confusedly heaped together behind a rampart, not inartistically composed, of timber, earth, and stone, which surrounded and pro- • tected what they were pleased to call a town. Of even such towns thei'e were scarcely any as yet, save in the most populous and least uncultivated portion of Gaul ; that is to say, in the southern and eastern regions, at the foot of the moun- tains of Auvergne and the Cevennes, and along the coasts of the Mediterranean, In the north and the west were paltry hamlets, as transferable almost as the people themselves ; and on some islet amidst the morasses, or in some hiJtIen recess of the forest, were huge entrenchments formed of the trees that were felled, where the population, at the first sound of the "\1rar-cry, ran to shelter them- selves, with their flocks and all their movables. Gaul was not occupied by one and the same nation, with the same traditions and the same chiefs. Tribes, very different in origin, habits and date of settlement, were continually disputing the territory. In the south were Iberians or Aquitanians, Phoenicians and Greeks ; in the north and north-west Kymrians or Belgians ; every where else ^ History of France. Gauls or Celts, the most numerous settlers, "vtIio had the honour of giving their name to the country. Who were the first to come, then? and what was the date of the first settlement? I^obody knows. Of the Greeks alone does history mark with any precision the arrival in southern Gaul. The Phoenicians preceded them by several centuries ; but it is impossible to fix any exact time. The information is equally vague about the period when the Kymrians invaded the north of Gaul. As for the Gauls and the Iberians, there is not a word about their first entrance into the country, for they are discovered there already at the first appearance of the country itself in the domain of history. Iberians. The Iberians, Avhom Eoman writers call Aquitanians, dwelt at the foot of the Pyrenees, in the territory comprised between the mountains, the Garonne, and the ocean. They belonged to the race which, under the same appellation, had peopled Spain, and which abides still in the department of the Lower Pyrenees, under the name of Basques ; a peoplet^ distinct from all its neighbours in features, costume, and especially language, which resembles none of the present languages of Europe, contains many words which are to be found in the names of rivers, mountains, and towns of olden Spain, and which presents a considerable analogy to the idioms, ancient and modern, of certain peoples of northern Africa. The Phoenicians did not leave, as the Iberians did, in the south of France distinct and well-authenticated descendants. Greeks. As merchants and colonists, the Greeks were, in Gaul, the suc- cessors of the Phoenicians, and Marseilles was one of their first and Marseilles most considerable colonies ; she extended her walls all round the its colonies bay and her enterprises far away. She founded, on the southern coast of Gaul and on the eastern coast of Spain, permanent settle- ments, which are to this day towns : eastward of the Rhone, Her- cules' harbour, Monoscus (Monaco), Niccea (Nice), Antipolis (An- tibes) ; westward, Heradea Cacabaria (Saint Gilles), Agatha (Agde) Emporice (Ampurias in Catalonia), &c., &c. In the valley of the Rhone, several towns of the Gauls, Cahellio (Cavaillon), Avenio (Avignon), Arelate (Aries), for instance, were like Greek colonies, so great there was the number of travellers or established merchants who spoke Greek. With this commercial activity Marseilles united intellectual and scientific activity ; her grammarians were among the first to revise and annotate the poems of Homer ; and bold travellers from Marseilles, Euthymenes and Pytheas by name, cruised, one along the western coast of Africa beyond the straits of * l^f. " peuplade," from feo^le, on the analogy of circlet from circln. — Trans, The Gauls and the Romans. 3 Gibraltar, and the other the southern and western coasts of Europ»^, from the mouth of the Tanais (Don), in the Black Sea, to the lati- tudes and perhaps into the interior of the Baltic. They lived, both of them, in the second half of the fourth century B.C., and they wrote each a Periplus, or tales of their travels, which have unfortunately been almost entirely lost. Beyond a strip of land of uneven breadth, along the Mediter- ranean, and save the space peopled towards the south-west by the Iberians, the country, which received its name from the former of . the two, was occupied by the Gauls and the Kymrians ; by the Gauls in the centre, south-east, and east, in the highlands of modern France, between the Alps, the "Vosges, the mountains of Auvergne and the Cevennes ; by the Kymrians in the north, north-west, and west, in the lowlands, from the western boundary of the Gauls to the ocean. Whether the Gauls and the Kymrians were originally of the Kymrians. . same race, or at least of races closely connected ; whether they were both anciently comprised under the general name of Celts ; and whether the Kymrians, if they were not of the same race as the Gauls, belonged to that of the Germans, the final conquerors of the Roman empire, are questions which the learned have been a long, long while discussing without deciding. Each of these races, far from forming a single people bound to the same destiny and under the same chieftains, split into peoplets, more or less independent, who foregathered or separated according to the shifts of circumstances, and who pursued each on their own account and at their own pleasure, their fortunes or their fancies. Three grand leagues existed amongst the Gauls ; that of the Arvernians, formed of peoplets established in the country which received from them the name of Auvergne ; that of the -^duans, in Burgundy, whose centre was Bihrade (Autun); and that of the Sequanians, in Franche-Comte, whose centre was Vesontio (Besan^on). Amongst the Kymrians of the West, the Armoric league bound together the tribes of Brittany and lower Normandy. These alliances, intended to group together scattered forces, led to fresh passions or interests, which became so many fresh causes of discord and hostility. From the earliest times to the first century before the Christian Migra- era, Gaul appears a prey to an incessant and disorderly movement tionsoftlie of the population ; they change settlement and neighbourhood ; disappear from one point and reappear at another ; cross one another ; avoid one another ; absorb and are absorbed. And the movement was not confined within Gaul ; the Gauls of every race went, sometimes in very numerous hordes, to seek far away plunder B 2 4 History of France. and a settlement. Spain, Italy, Germany, Hreece, Asia Minor and Al'rica have been in turn the theatre of tiiude Gallic expeditions which entailed long wars, grand displacements of peoples, and some- times the formation of new nations. Let us niakt a slight acquaint- ance with this outer history of the Gauls ; for it is well worth while to follow them a space upon their distant wanderings. "VVe will then return to the soil of France and concern ourselves solely with what has passed within her boundaries. It is only with the sixth century before our era that we light •upon the really historical expeditions of the Gauls away from Gaul, those, in fact, of which we may follow the course and estimate the effects. B.C. 587, Towards the year 587 B.C., almost at the very moment when The Gauls \^^^ Phoceans had iust founded Marseilles, two great Gallic hordes in Gcr- . many and gf*^ '^^ motion at the same time and crossed, one the Ehine, the in Italy, other the Alfis, making one for Germany, the other for Italy. The former foUowed the course of the Danube and settled in Illyria, on the right bank of the river. It is too much, perhaps, to say that they settled ; the greater part of them continued wan- dering and fighting, sometimes amalgamating with the peoplets they encountered, sometimes chasing them and exterminating them, whilst themselves were incessantly pushed forward by fresh bands coming also from Gaul. Thus marching and spreading, leaving here and there on their route, along the rivers, and in the valleys of the Alps, tribes that remained and founded peoples, the Gauls B.C. 340, had reached, towards the year 340 B.C., the confines of Macedonia ; The Gauls additional hordes, in great numbers, arrived amongst them about in Greece« ^ o o the year 281 B.C. They had before them Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, Greece, rich, but distracted and weakened by civil strife. They effected an entrance at several points, devastating, plundering, loading their cars with booty, and dividing their prisoners into two parts ; one offered in sacrifice to their gods, the other strung up to trees and abandoned to the gais and matars, or javelins and pikes of the conquerors. B.C. 279. Three years later, another and a more formidable invasion came a^ n*i t'^rsting upon Thessaly and Greece. It was, according to the phi. unquestionably exaggerated account of the ancient historians, 200,000 strong, and commanded by a famous, ferocious, and insolent chieftain {Brenn), whom the Latins and Greeks call Brennus. His idea was to strike a blow which should simul- taneously enrich the Gauls and stun the Greeks. He meant to pluxider the temple at Delphi, the most venerated place in all Greece, whither flowed from century to century all kinds of The Gauls and the Romans. 5 offerings, and where, no doubt, enormous treasure was deposited ; thoroughly defeated, however, the barbarians traversed, flying and fighting, Thessaly and Macedonia ; and on returning whence they had set out, they dispersed, some to settle at the foot of a neigh- bouring mountain, under the command of a chieftain named Ba- tlianet or Baedhannat, i. e. son of the wild boar; others to march back towards their own country ; the greatest part to resume the same life of incursion and' adventure. But they changed the scene of operations ; they crossed the Hellespont and passed into Asia Minor ; there, at one time in the pay of the kings of Bithynia, Pergamos, Cappadocia, and Syria, or of the free commercial cities which were struggling against the kings, at another carrying on wars on their own account, they wandered for more than thirty years, divided into three great hordes, which parcelled out the territories among themselves, overran and plun- dered them during the fine weather, entrenched themselves during winter in their camp of cars, or in some fortified place, sold their services to the highest bidder, changed masters according to interest or inclination, and by their bravery became tlie terror of these effeminate populations, and the arbiters of these petty states. At last both princes and people grew weary. Antiochus, King of Syria, attacked one of the three bands which formed the barbarian multitude — that of the Tectosagians, conquered it, and cantoned it in a district of Upper Phrygia. Later still, about ■241 B.C., Eumenes, sovereign of Pergamos, and Attains, his successor, drove and shut up the other two bands, the Tolistoboians and Trocmians, likewise in the same region. The victories of B.C. 24 1. Attalus over the Gauls excited veritable enthusiasm. He was ■^'°-^^f^= and A'ta- celebrated as a special envoy from Zens. He took the title of Ins defea i King, which his predecessors had not hitherto borne. Attacked *^® Gauls. in their strongholds on Mount Olympus and Mount Magaba, 189 B.C., the three Gallic bands, after a short but stout resistance, were at last conquered and subjugated; and thenceforth losing aU national importance, they amalgamated little by little with the Asiatic populations around them. Nevertheless the fusion of the Gauls of Galatia with the natives always remained very imperfect ; for towards the end of the fourth century of the Christian era they did not speak Greek, as the latter did, but their national tongue, that of the Kymro- Belgians ; and St. Jerome testifies that it diffeied very little from that which was spoken in Belgica itself, in the region of Treves. D History of France. The details of the struggle between the Gauls and the Romans belong specially to Eoman history; they have been transmitted to us only by Roman historians ; and the Romans it was who were left ultimately in possession of the battle-field, that is, of Italy. B.C. 391 — Four distinct periods may be recognized in this history ; and Etruge.es ^^^ marks a different phase in the course of events, and, so to oftheGaula speak, an act of the drama. During the first period, which lasted with the forty-two years, from 391 to 349 B.C., the Gauls carried on a war let epoch, of aggression and conquest against Rome. To this epoch belonged those marvels of daring recorded in Roman tradition, those acts of heroism tinged with fable, which are met with amongst so many peoples, either in their earliest age or in their days of great peril. In the year 361 B.C., Titus Manlius, and twelve years later, M Valerius, a young military tribune, were the two Roman heroes who vanquished in single combat the two Gallic giants who insolently defied Rome. The gratitude towards them was general and of long duration, for two centuries afterwards (in the year 167 B.C.) the head of the Gaul with his tongue out still appeared at Rome, above the shop of a money-changer, on a circular sign-board, called "the Kymrian shield" {scutum Gimhricum). After seventeen years' stay in Latium, the Gauls at last withdrew, and returned to their adopted country in those lovely valleys of the Po which already bore the name of Cisalpine Gaul. They began to get disgusted with a wandering life. Their population multiplied ; their towns spread ; their fields were better cultivated ; their manners became less barbarous. For fifty years there was scarcely any trace of hostiKty or even contact between them and the Romans. But at the beginning of the third century before our era, the coalition of the Samnites and Etruscans against Rome was near its climax ; they eagerly pressed the Gauls to join, and the latter assented easily. Then commenced the second period of struggles between the two peoples. 2nd epoch. During this second period Rome was more than once in danger. ■R^tH ^^^ f ^'^ ^^® y^^^ ^^^ ^•^" ^^® Gauls destroyed one of her arnlies noar Aretium. Aretivm (Arezzo), and advanced to the Roman frontier, saying, ."We are bound for Rome 5 the Gauls know how to take it." Seventy-two years afterwards the Cisalpine Gauls swore they would not put off their baldricks till they had mounted the Capitol, and » they arrived within three days' march of Rome. In spite of sometimes urgent perO, in spite of popular alarms, Rome, during the course of this period, from 299 to 258 B.O., The Gaiils and the Romans. 7 maintained an increasing ascendency over the Gauls. She always cleared them off her territory, several times ravaged theirs, on the two hanks of the Po, called respectively Transpadan and Cispadan Gaul, and gained the majority of the great battles she had to fight. Finally, in the year 283 B.C., the proprsetor Drusus, after having ravaged the country of the Senonic Gauls, carried ofiF the very ingots and jewels, it was said, which had been given to their ancestors as the price of their retreat. Towards the close of the third century before our era, the triumph Hannibal, of Eome in Cisalpine Gaul seemed nigh to accomplishment, when news arrived that the Eomans' most formidable enemy, Hannibal, meditating a passage from Africa into Italy by Spain and Gaul, was already at. work, by his emissaries, to ensure for his enterprise the concurrence of the Transalpine and Cisalpine Gauls. Tlie Senate ordered the envoys they had just then at Carthage to traverse Gaul on returning, and seek out allies there against Hannibal. However, this scheme failed, and the delights of victory and of pillage brought into full play the Cisalpine Gauls' natural hatred of Eome. After Ticinus and Trebia, Hannibal had no more zealous and devoted troops. This was the third period of | q *^°o_! the struggle between the Gauls and the Eomans in Italy. Eome, 170. well advised by this terrible Avar of the danger with which she was ever menaced by the Cisalpine Gauls, formed the resolution of no longer restraining them, but of subduing them and conquering their territory. She spent thirty years (from 200 to 170 B.C.) in the execution of this design, proceeding by means of war, of found- ing Eoman colonies, and of sowing dissension among the Gallic peoplets. In vain did the two principal, the Boians and the Insubrians, endeavour to rouse and rally all the rest : some hesi- tated ; some absolutely refused, and remained neutral. Day by day did Eome advance. At length, in the year 190 B.C., the wrecks of the 112 tribes which had formed the nation of the Boians, unable any longer to resist, and uuwilling to submit, rose as one man, and departed from Italy. The Senate, with its usual wisdom, multiplied the number of, ™^° ^^ _ 1 . • ..1 - • 1 • , -, - lonies m Eoman colonies m the conquerea territory, treated with moderation Gaul. the tribes that submitted, and gave to Cisalpine Gaul the name of the Cisalpine or Hither Gallic Province, which was afterwards changed for that of Gallia, Togata or Roman Gaul. Then, de- claring that nature herself had placed the Alps between Gaul and Italy as an insurmountable barrier, the Senate pronounced " a curse on whosoever should attempt to cross it." It was Eome herself that soon crossed that barrier of the Alps S History of France. which she had pronounced fixed by nature and insurmountable. Scarcely was she mistress of Cisalpine Gaul when she entered upon, a quarrel with the tribes which occupied the mountain-passes. It is likely that the Gallic mountaineers were not careful to abstain, they and their flocks, from descending upon the territory that had become Eoman. 'The Romans, in turn, penetrated into the ham- lets, carried off flocks and people, and 'sold them in the public markets at Cremona, at Placentia, and in all their colonies. Towards the middle of the second century B.C. Marseilles, then an ally of Eome, was at war with certain Gallic tribes, her neigh- bours, whose territory she coveted. Two of her colonies, Eice and Antibes, were threatened. She called on Eome for help. A Eoman deputation went to decide the quarrel ; but the Gauls refused to obey its summons, and treated it with insolence. The deputation returned with an army, succeeded in beating the re- fractory tribes, and gave their land to the Massilians. The same thing occurred repeatedly with the same result. "Within the space of thirty years nearly all the tribes between the Ebone and the Var, in the country which was afterwards Provence, were subdued. and driven back amongst the mountains, with notice not to approach within a mile of the coast in general, and a mile and a half of the places of disembarkation. But the Eomans did not B.C. 123. stop there. They did not mean to conquer for Marseilles alone. The Ko- jj^ ^j^g J. J 23 B.C., at some lengues to the north of the Greek mans m ,. Gaul. city, near a little river, then called the Coenus and now-a-days the Arc, the consul C. Sextius Calvinus had noticed, during his campaign, an abundance of thermal springs, agreeably situated amidst wood-covered hills. There he constructed an enclosure, aqueducts, baths, houses, a town in fact, which he called after himself, Aquoe Sextice, the modern Aix, the first Eoman establish- ment in Transalpine Gaul. As in the case of Cisalpine Gaul, with Eoman colonies came Eoman intrigue, and dissensions got up and War be- fomented amongst the Gauls. The Gauls, moreover, ran of tween the j^j^gj^ggiygg £^^0 i]^q Eoman trap. Two of their confederations, and the ^^'^^ ^Eduans, of whom mention has already been made, and the AUobro- AUobrogians, who were settled between the Alps, the Isere, and gians. ^-^Q Rhone, were at war. A third confederation, the most powerful in Gaul at this time, the Arvernians, who were rivals of the .^duans, gave their countenance to the AUobrogians. The .^duans, with whom the Massilians had commercial dealings, solicited through these latter the assistance of Eome. A treaty was easily concluded. The .^duans obtained from the Eomans the title friends and allies ; and the Eomans received from the JEiluans The Gauls and the Romans. g that of brothers, which amongst the Gauls implied a sacred tie. The consul Domitius forthwith commanded the Allobrogians tn respect the territory of the allies of Rome. "War broke out ; tho Allobrogians, with the usual confidence and hastiness of all bar- barians, attacked alone, without waiting for the Arvernians, and were beaten at the confluence of the Rhone and the Sorgue, a little above Avignon. The next year, 121 B.C., the Arvernians in their q,?'^»^!^° turn descended from the mountains, and crossed the Rhone with all niansccs, their tribes ; they were beaten, as the Allobrogians had been, t^e Rhone Rome treated the Arvernians with consideration ; but the Allo- brogians lost their existence as a nation. The Senate declared them subject to the Roman people; and all the country comprised between the Alps, the Rhone from its entry into the Lake of Geneva to its mouth, and the Meditenanean, was made a Roman consular province. In the three following years, indeed, the consuls extended the boundaries of the new province, on the right bank of the Rhone, to the frontier of the Pyrenees southward. In the year 110 B.C. the Kymrians or Cimbrians, and the B.C. 110. Teutons, having their numbers swelled by other tribes, Gallic or y-^^^g ^^^^ German, the Ambrons, among others, entered Gaul, at first by way the ;«u- of Belgica, and then, continuing their wanderings and ravages in ^'^^' central Gaul, they at last reached the Rhone, on the frontiers of the Roman province. There four successive armies were defeated and slaughtered by the barbarians ; but at last Marius attacked them (102 B.C.) near Aix [Aquce Sextice). The battle lasted two days ; B.C. 103. the first against the Ambrons, the second against the Teutons Defeated Both were beaten, in spite of their savage bravery, and the equal by Marius bravery of their women, who defended, with indomitable obstinacy, the cars with which they had remained almost alone, in charge of the children and the booty. There remained the Kymrians, who had repassed the Helvetic Alps and entered Italy on the north- east, by way of the Adige. Marius marched against them in July of the following year, 101 B.C., and defeated them in the Raudine Plains, a large tract near Verceil. The victories of Marius arrested the torrent of the invasion, but did not dry up its source. The great movement which drove from Asia to Europe, and from eastern to western Europe, masses of roving populations, followed its course, bringing incessantly upon the Roman frontiers n&w comers and new perils. A greater man than Marius, Julius Caesar in fact, saw that to effectually resi.^t these clouds of barbaric assailants, the country into Avhich they poured must be conquered and made Roman. The conquest of Gaul was lo History of France. the accomplisliment of that idea, and the decisive step towards the transformation of the Roman republic into a Eoman empire. A.riovi$taSo In spite of the victories of Marius, and the destruction or disper- sion of the Teutons and Cimbrians, the whole of Gaul remained seriously disturbed and threatened. In eastern and central Gaul, in the valleys of the Jura and Auvergne, on the banks of the Saone, the Allier, and the Doubs, the two great Gallic confedera- tions, that of the -^Eduans and that of the Arvernians, were dis- puting the preponderance, and making war one upon another, seeking the aid, respectively, of the Eomans and of the Germans. Every where floods of barbaric populations were pressing upon Gaul, were carrying disquietude even where they had not them- selves yet penetrated, and causing presentiments of a general com- motion. The danger burst before long upon particular places and in connexion with particular names which have remained historical. In the war with the confederation of the ^duans, that of the Arvernians called to their aid the German Ariovistus, chieftain of a confederation of tribes which, under the name of Suevians, were roving over the right bank of the Ehine, ready at any time to cross the river. Ariovistus, with 15,000 w^arriors at his back, was not slow in responding to the appeal. The -^duans were beaten ; and Ariovistus settled amongst the Gauls, who had been thoughtless enough to appeal to him. Numerous bands of the Suevians came and rejoined him ; and in two or three years after his victory he had about him, it was said, 120,000 warriors. He had appro- priated to them a third of the territory of his Gallic allies, and he imperiously demanded another third to satisfy other 25,000 of his old German comrades, who asked to share his booty and his new country. One of the foremost ^duans, Divitiacus by name, went and invoked the succour of the Eoman people, the patrons of his confederation. The Eoman Senate, with the indecision and in- dolence of all declining powers, hesitated to engage, for the .iEduans' sake, in a war against the invaders of a corner of Gallic territory. At the same time that they gave a cordial welcome to Divitiacus, they entered into negotiations with Ariovistus himself; they gave him beautiful presents, the title of King, and even of friend ; the only demand they made was that he should live peace- ably in his new settlement, and not lend his support to the fresh invasions of which there were symptoms in Gaul, and which were becoming too serious for resolutions not to be taken to repel them. A people of Gallic race, the Helvetians, who inhabited the present Switzerland, where the old name stOl abides beside the modern, The Gauls and the Romans. 1 1 found themselves incessantly threatened, ravaged, and invaded by the German tribes which pressed upon their frontiers. After some years of perplexity and internal discord, the whole Helvetic nation decided upon abandoning its territory, and going to seek in Gaul, westward, it is said, on the borders of the ocean, a more tranquil settlement. Being informed of this design, the Roman Senate and Caesar, at that time consul, resolved to protect the Eoman province and their Gallic allies, the ^duans, against this inundation of roving neighbours. The Helvetians none the less persisted in their plan ; and in the spring of the year of Eome 696 (58 B.C.) they committed to the flames, in the country they were about to leave, twelve towns, four hundred villages, and all their houf?es ; B-C» 58. loaded their cars with provisions for three months, and agreed to ^etians meet at the southern point of the Lake of Geneva. But when they attempt tc would have entered Gaul, they found there Ceasar, who after having ^J^j ® got himself appointed proconsul for five years, had arrived suddenly at Geneva, prepared to forbid their passage. Thus foiled, they at- tempted to take another road, and to cross not the Eh one but the Saone, and march thence towards western Gaul. But whilst they were arranging for the execution of this moA'^ement, Caesar, who had up to that time only four legions at his disposal, returned to Italy, brought away five fresh legions, and arrived on the left bank of the Saone at the moment when the rear-guard of the Hel- vetians was embarking to rejoin the main body which had already pitched its camp on the right bank. Caesar cut to pieces this rear- guard, crossed the river in his turn with his legions, pursued the emigrants without relaxation, came in contact with them on several occasions, at one time attacking them or repelling their attacks, at another receiving and giving audience to their envoys without ever consenting to treat with them, and before the end of the year he had so completely beaten, decimated, dispersed and driven them back, that of 368,000 Helvetians who had entered Gaul, but 110,000 escaped from the Eomans, and were enabled by flight to regain their country. .^duans, Sequanians, or Arvernians, all the Gauls interested in the struggle thus terminated, were eager to congratulate Caesar upon his victory ; but if they were delivered from the invasion of the Helvetians, another scourge fell heavily upon them ; Ariovistus and the Germans, who were settled upon their territory, op- pressed them cruelly, and day by day fresh bands were continually coming to aggravate the evil and the danger. They adjured Caesar to protect them from these swarms of barbarians. Tke 12 History of France, Caesar .«- pels ihe Helve- tians. Eoman general gave ear to the prayer of the Gauls ; after having uselessly attempted to negotiate with the German chieftain, find- ing that Ariovistus with all his forces was making towards Vesontio (Besan9on), the chief town of the Seqaanians, he forthwith put himself in motion, occupied Yesontio, estahlished there a strong garrison, and fetching a considerable compass to spare his soldiers the passage of thick forests, after a seven days' march, arrived at a short dist3.nce from the camp of Ariovistus. Several days in succession he offered battle ; but Ariovistus remained within his lines. Ctesar then took the resolution of assailing the German camp. At his approach, the Germans at length moved out from their entrenchments, arrayed by peoplets, and defiling in front of cars filled with their women, who implored them with tears not to deliver them in slavery to the Romans. The struggle was obstinate, and not without moments of anxiety and partial check for the Romans ; but the genius of Csesar and strict dis- cipline of the legions carried the day. The rout of the Germans was complete; they fled towards the Ebine, which was only a few leagues from the field of battle. Ariovistus himself was amongst the fugitives ; he found a boat by the river-side, and re-crossed into Germany, where he died shortly afterwards, "to the great grief of the Germans," says Csesar. The Suevian bands, who were awaiting on the right bank the result of the struggle, plunged back again within their own territory. And so the invasion of the Germans was stopped as the emigration of the Helvetians had been ; and Csesar had only to conquer Gaul. ^ The expulsion of the Helvetian emigrants and of the German invaders left the Romans and Gauls alone face to face ; and from that moment the Romans were, in the eyes of the Gauls, foreigners, A.U.C. 6t,6 conquerors, oppressors. Conspiracies were hatched, insurrections — 705. soon broke out in nearly every part of Gaul, in the heart even of of Cffisaf in ^^® peoplets most subject to Roman dominion. Every movement Gaul, of the kind was for Csesar a provocation, a temptation, almost an obligation to conquest. He accepted them and profited by them, with that promptitude in resolution, boldness and address in execution, and cool indifference as to the means employed, which were characteristic of his genius. During nine years, from A-U.c. 696 to 705, and in eight successive campaigns, he carried his troops, his lieutenants, himself, and, ere long, war or negotiation, corruption, discord, or destruction in his path, amongst the different nations and confederations of Gaul, Celtic, Kymric, Germanic, Iberian or hybrid, northward and eastward, in Belgica, between The Gauls and the Romans. 1 3 the Seine and the Rhine ; westward, in Armorica, on the "borders of the ocean ; south-westward, in Aquitania ; centro-ward amongst the peoplets established between the Seine, the Loire anci the Saone. He was nearly always victorious, and then at one time he pushed his victory to the bitter end, at another stopped at the right moment, that it might not be compromised. He did not confine himself to conquering and subjecting the Gauls in Gaul ; his ideas were ever out-stripping his deeds, and he knew how to make his power felt even where he had made no attempt to establish it. Twice he crossed the Ehine to hurl back the Germans beyond their river, and to strike to the very hearts of their forests the terror of the Roman name (a.u.c. 699, 700). He equipped two fleets, made two descents on Great Britain (a.u.c. 699, 700), several times defeated the Britons and their principal chieftain Caswallon (Cassivellaunus), and set up, across the channel, the lirst landmarks of Roman conquest. He thus became more and more famous and terrible, both in Gaul, whence he sometimes departed for a moment, to go and look after his political pros- pects in Italy, and in more distant lands, where he was but an ap- parition. Nor were the rigours of administration less than those His admi- of warfare, Ca?sar wanted a great deal of money, not only to main- nistratiou. tain satisfactorily his troops in Gaul, but to defray the enormous expenses he was at in Italy, for the purpose of enriching his par- tisans, or securing the favour of the Roman people. It was with the produce of imposts and plunder in Gaul that he undertook the reconstruction at Rome of the basilica of the Forum, the site whereof, extending to the temple of Liberty, was valued, it is said, at more than twenty million five hundred thousand francs (820,000^.). After six years' struggling Csesar was victor; he had successively A.U.C, 7C2 dealt with aU the different populations of Gaul ; he had passed getorix. through and subjected them all, either by his own strong arm, or thanks to their rivalries. In the year of Rome 702 he was sud- denly informed in Italy, whither he had gone on his Roman business, that most of the Gallic nations, united under a chieftaia hitherto unknown, were rising with one common impulse, and recommencing war. Amongst the Arvernians lived a young Gaul whose real name has remained unknown, and whom history has called Vercingetorix, that is, chief over a hundred heads, general- in-chief. He came of an ancient and powerful family, and his father had been put to death in his own city for attempting to make himself king. Ctesar knew him, and had taken some paina to attach him to himsel£ It does not appear that the Arvernian 14 History of France. aristocrat had absolutely declined the overtures ; but when the hope of Bational independence was aroused, Vercingetorix was its representative and chief. He descended with his followers from the mountains, and seized Gergovia, the capital of his nation. Thence his messengers spread over the centre, the north-west, and west of Gaul °, the greater part of the peoplets and cities of those regions pronounced from the first moment for insurrection. Ver- cingetorix was immediately invested with the chief command, and he made use of it with all the passion engendered by patriotism and the possession of power; he regulated the movement, demanded hostages, fixed the contingents of troops, imposed taxes, inflicted summary punishment on the traitors, the dastards and the indif- ferent, and subjected those who turned a deaf ear to the appeal of their common country to the same pains and the same mutila- tions that Csesar inflicted on those who obstinately resisted the Roman yoke. At the news of this great movement Csesar immediately left Italy, and returned to Gaul. Starting at the beginning of 702 A.U.C., he passed two months in traversing within Gaul the Roman province and its neighbourhood, in visiting the points threatened by the insurrection, and the openings by which he might get at it, in assembling his troops, in confirming his wavering allies ; and it was not before the early part of March that he moved with his whole army to Agendicum (Sens), the very centre of revolt, and started thence to push on the war with vigour. In less than three months he had spread devastation throughout the insurgent country ; he had attacked and taken its principal cities, Vellaunod- unum (Trigueres), Genabum (Gien), Noviodunum (Sancerre), and Avaricum (Bourges), delivering up every where country and city, lands and inhabitants, to the rage of the Roman soldiery, maddened at having again to conquer enemies so often conquered. To strike a decisive blow, he penetrated at last to the heart of the country of the Arvernians, and laid siege to Gergovia, their capital and the birthplace of Vercingetorix, Defeat of "^^^ firmness and the ability of the Gallic chieftain were not Vercia- inferior to such a struggle ; Caesar encountered an obstinate re- g-etonr gistance; whilst Vercingetorix, encamped on the heights which surrounded his birthplace, every where embarrassed, sometimes attacked, and incessantly threatened the Romans. The eighth legion, drawn on one day to make an imprudent assault, was repulsed, and lost forty-six of its bravest centurions. Csesar de- termined to raise the siege, and to transfer the struggle to places where the population could be more safely depended upon. It was The Gauls and the Romans. 1 5 the first decisive check he had experienced in Gaul, the first Gallic town he had been unable to take, the first retrograde movement he had executed in the face of the Gallic insurgents and their chieftain, Vercingetorix could not and would not restrain his joy ; it seemed to him that the day had dawned and an excellent chance arrived for attempting a decisive blow. He had under his orders^ it is said, 80,000 men, mostly his own Arvernians, and a numerous cavalry furnished by the difi'erent peoplets his allies. He followed all Caesar's movements in retreat towards the Saone, and on arriving at Longeau, not far from Langres, near a little river called the Vingeanne, he halted and pitched his camp about nine miles from the Eomans. The action began between the cavalry on both sides ; a portion of the Gallic had taken up position on the road followed by the Eoman army, to bar its passage ; but whilst the fighting at this point was getting more and more obstinate, the German horse in Ca;sar's service gained a neighbouring height, drove off the Gallic horse that were in occupation, and pursued them as far as the river, near which was Vercingetorix with his infantry. Disorder took place amongst this infantry so unexpectedly attacked. Csesar launched his legions at them, and there was a general panic and rout among the Gauls. Vercingetorix had great trouble in rallying them, and he rallied them only to order a general retreat, for which they clamoured. Hurriedly striking his camp, he made for Alesia (Semur in Auxois), a neighbouring tov.'n and the capital of the Mandubians, a peoplet in clientship to the iEduans. Caesar immediately went in pursuit of the Gauls ; killed, he says, 3000 ; made important prisoners ; and encamped with his legions before Alesia the day but one after Vercingetorix, with his fugitive army, had occupied the place as weU as the neighbouring hills, and was hard at work intrenching himself, probably without any clear idea as yet of what he should do to continue the struggle. Caesar at once took a resolution as unexpectedly as it was dis- creetly bold. Here was the whole Gallic insurrection, chieftain and soldiery, united together within or beneath the walls of a town of moderate extent. He undertook to keep it there and destroy it on the spot, instead of having to pursue it every whither with- out ever being sure of getting at it. The struggle was fierce, but siego c' short. Every time that the fresh Gallic army attacked the be- Alesia, siegers, Vercingetorix and the Gauls ©f Alesia sallied forth, and joined in the attack. Csesar and his legions, on their side, at one time repulsed these double attacks, at another themselves took the initiative, and assailed at one and the same time the besieged and the auxiliaries Gaul had sent them. The feeling was passionate i6 History of France. on both sides : Eonaan pride was pitted against Gallic patriotism. Eut in four or five days the strong organization, the disciplined valour of the Eoman legions, and the genius of Caesar triumphed. * The Gallic reinforcements, beaten and slaughtered without mercy, dispersed; and Vercingetorix and the besieged were crowded back within their walls without hope of escape. Alesia taken, and her brave defender a prisoner, Gaul was subdued, Caesar, however, had in the following year (a.u.c. 703) a campaign to make to subjugate some peoplets who tried to main- tain their local independence. A year afterwards, again, attempts at insurrection took place in Belgica, and towards the mouth of the Loire ; but they were easily repressed ; they had no national or formidable characteristics ; Csesar and his lieutenants willingly contented themselves with an apparent submission, and in the year 705 a.u.c. the Roman legions, after nine years' occupation in the conquest of Gaul, were able to depart therefrom to Italy and the East for a plunge into civil war. Gaul under From the conquest of Gaul by Caesar to the establishment there Roman do- ^^ ^j^g Franks under Clovis, she remained for more than five Qunion. . '. centuries under Eoman dominion ; first under the Pagan, afterwards under the Christian empire. In her primitive state of independence she had struggled for ten years against the best armies and the greatest man of Eome ; after five centuries of Eoman dominion she opposed no resistance to the invasion of the barbarians, Germans, Goths, Alans, Burgundians, and Franks, who destroyed bit by bit the Eoman empire. In this humiliation and, one might say, annihilation of a population so independent, so active, and so valiant at its first appearance in history, is to be seen the charac- teristic of this long epoch. It is worth while to learn and to understand how it was. Gaul lived, during those five centuries, under very different rules and rulers. They may be summed up under five names which correspond with governments very unequal in merit and defect, in good and evil wrought for their epoch : 1st, the Caesars, from Julius to Nero (from 49 B.C. to a.d. 68) ; 2nd, the Flavians, from Vespasian to Domitian (from a.d. 69 to 95) ; 3rd, the Antonines, from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius (from a.d. 96 to 180) ; 4th, the imperial anarchy, or the thirty-nine emperors and the thirty-one tyrants, from Commodus to Carinus and ISTumerian (from A.D. 180 to 284) \ 5th, Diocletian (from a.d. 284 to 305). Through all these governments, and in spite of their different results for their contemporary subjects, the fact already pointed out as the general and definite charasteristic of that long epoch, to wit, The Gauls and the Romans. 1 7 the moral and social decadence of Gaul as well as of the Eoman empire, never ceased to continue and spread. On quitting conquered Gaul to become master at Eome, Caesar New divi- neglected nothing to assure his conquest and make it conducive to ^^""^ °^ *^® . . . country, the establishment of his empire. He formed of all the Gallic districts that he had subjugated a special province, which received the name of Gallia Comata (Gaul of the long-hair)*, whilst the old province was called Gallia Togata (Gaul of the toga). Caesar caused to be enrolled amongst his troops a multitude of Gauls, Belgians, Arvernians, and Aquitanians, of whose bravery he had made proof. He even formed, almost entirely of Gauls, a special legion, called Alauda (lark), because it bore on the helmets a lark with out-spread wings, the symbol of wakefulness. At the same time he gave in Gallia Comata, to the towns and families that declared for him, all kinds of favours, the rights of Eoman citizen- ship, the titles of allies, clients, and friends, even to the extent of the Julian name, a sign of the most powerful Roman patronage. After Caesar, Augustus, left sole master of the Roman world, Augastus. assumed in Gaul, as elsewhere, the part of pacificator, repairer, con- Character servator, and organizer, whilst taking care, with all his moderation, vernmeat. to remain always the master. He divided the provinces into im- perial and senatorial, reserving to himself the entire government of the former, and leaving the latter under the authority of the senate. Gaul "of the long hair," all that Caesar had conquered, was imperial province. Augustus divided it into three districts, Lugdunensian (Lyonese), Belgian, and Aquitanian. He recognized therein sixty nations or distinct cityships which continued to have themselves the government of their own affairs, according to their traditions and manners, whilst conforming to the general laws of the empire and abiding under the supervision of imperial governors, charged with maintaining every where, in the words of Pliny the Younger, "the majesty of Roman peace." The administrative energy of Augustus was not confined to the erection of monuments and to festivals ; he applied himself to the development in Gaul of the material elements of civilization and social order. His most intimate and able adviser, Agrippa, being settled at Lyons as governor of the Gauls, caused to be opened four great roads, starting from a mile- stone placed in the middle of the Lyonese forum, and going, one centrewards to Saintes and the ocean, another south- wards to l^arbonne and the Pyrenees, the third north-westwards and towards the Channel by Amiens and Boulogne, and the fourth north-westwards and towards the Rhine. Agrippa founded several considerable colonies, amongst others Cologne, which bore his name ; c IS History of France. Tiberius and Cali- gula. Claudius. and he admitted to Gallic territory bands of Germans who asked tor an establishment there. But side by side with this work in the cause of civilization and organization, Augustus and his Roman agents were pursuing a work of quite a contrary tendency. They laboured to extirpate from Gaul the spirit of nationality, independence and freedom ; they took every pains to efface every where Gallic mem u lies and sentiments. Gallic towns were losing their old and receiving Koman names : Augustonemetum, Augusta, and Augustodunum took the place of Gergovia, Noviodunum, and Bihrade. The national Gallic religion, which was Druidism, was attacked as well as tlie Gallic fatherland, with the same design and by the same means. Tiberius carried on in Gaul, but with less energy and less care for the provincial administration, the pacific and moderate policy of Augustus. He had to extinguish in Belgica, and even in the Lyonese province, two insurrections kindled by the sparks that remained of national and Druidic spirit. He repressed them effectually, and without any violent display of vengeance. He was succeeded by Germanicus' unworthy son, Caligula, who did just one sensible and useful thing during the whole of his stay in Gaul : he had a light house constructed to illumine the passage between Gaul and Great Britain. Some traces of it, they say, have been discovered. His successor, Claudius, brother of the great Germanicus, and married to his own niece, the second Agrippina, was born at Lyons, at the very moment when his father, Drusus, was celebrating there the erection of an altar to Augustus. During his whole reign he showed to the city of his birth the most lively good- will, and the constant aim as well as principal result of this good-will was to render the city of Lyons more and more Roman by effacing all Gallic characteristics and memories. He undertook to assure to all free men of " long-haired " Gaul the same Roman privileges that were enjoyed by the inhabitants of Lyons ; and, amongst others, that of entering the senate of Rome and holding the great public offices. He was, however, neither liberal nor humane towards a notable portion of the Gallic populations, to wit, the Druids, During his stay in Gaul he proscribed them and persecuted them without intermission ; forbidding, under pain of death, their form of worship and every exterior sign of their ceremonies. He drove them away and pursued them even into Great Britain, whither he conducted, a.d. 43, a military expedition. In proportion as Claudius had been popular in Gaul did his adopted son and successor, '^e.xo, <|uickly become hated. At the vacancy that occurred after Lis The Gauls and the Romans. 19 death, and amid the claims of various pretenders, the authority of the Eoman name and the pressure of the imperial power diminished rapidly in Gaul ; and the memory and desire of independence were re-awakened. In the northern part of Belgica, towards the mouths a.D. 70 of the Ehine, where a Batavian peoplet lived, a man of note amongst B.ebellion his compatriots and in the service of the Eomans, amongst whom he had received the name of Claudius Civilis, embraced first secretly, and afterwards openly, the cause of insurrection. Petilius Cerealis, a commander of renown for his campaigns on the Ehine, was sent off to Belgica with seven fresh legions. He was as skilful in negotiation and persuasion as he was in battle. The struggle that ensued was fierce, but brief; and nearly all the towns and legions that had been guilty of defection returned to their Eoman allegiance. Civilis, though not more than half vanquished, himself asked leave to surrender. The Batavian might, as was said at the time, have inundated the country, and drowned the Eoman armies. Vespasian, therefore, not being inclined to drive men or matters to extremity, gave Civilis leave to go into retirement and live in peace amongst the marshes of his own land. The Gallic chieftains alone, the projectors of a Gallic empire, were rigorously pursued and chastised. During the period known in history as the age of the Antonines The Anto- (a.d. 96 — 180), five notable sovereigns, Xerva, Trajan, Hadrian, J^J^es. Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius swayed the Eoman empire. It would be a great error to take them as representatives of the society amidst which they lived, and as giving, in a certain degree, the measure of its enlightenment, its morality, its prosperity, its disposition and condition in general. Those five princes were not only picked men, superior in mind and character to the majority of • their contemporaries, but they were men almost isolated in their generation : in them there was a resumption of aU that had been acquired by Greek and Eoman antiquity of enlightenment and virtue, practical wisdom and philosophical morality : they were the heirs and the survivors of the great minds and the great politicians of Athens and Eome, of the Areopagus and the Senate. They were not in intellectual and moral harmony with the society they governed, and their action upon it served hardly to preserve it partially and temporarily from the evils to which it was committed by its own vices and to break its fall. When they were thoughtful and modest, as Marcus Aurelius was, they were gloomy and dis- posed to discouragement, for they had a secret foreboding of the uselessness of their efforts. The empe- After the death of Marcus Aurelius decay manifested and ^jarcus^^ 2 Anrelius, 20 History of France. developed itself, almost without interruption for the space of a century, the outward and visible sign of it being the disorganization and repeated falls of the government itself. The series of em- perors given to the Eoman world by heirship or adoption, from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, was succeeded by what may be termed an imperial anarchy; in the course of one hundred and thirty-two years the sceptre passed into the hands of thirty-nine sovereigns with the title of emperor {Augustus), and was clutched at by thirty-one pretenders, whom history has dubbed tyrants, and amongst whom were Italians, Africans, Spaniards, Gauls, Britons, Illyrians, and Asiatics ; in the number could be found some cases of eminence in war and politics, and some even of rare virtue and patriotism, such as Pertinax, Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, Decius, Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, Tacitus, and Probus. Gaul had her share in this series of ephemeral emperors and tyrants ; one of the most wicked and most insane, though issue of one of the most valorous and able, Caracalla, son of Septimius Severus, was born at Lyons, four years after the death of Marcus Aurelius. A hundred years later !N"arbonne gave, in two years, to the Eoman world three emperors, Cams and his two sons, Carinus and E"ume- rian. Amongst the thirty-one tyrants who did not attain to the title of Augustus, six were Gauls; and the last two, Amandus and ^lianus, were, a.d. 285, the chiefs of that great insurrection of peasants, slaves or half-slaves, who, under the name of Bagaudians (signifying, according to Ducange, a wandering troop of insurgents from field and forest), spread themselves over the north of Gaul, between the Ehine and the Loire, pillaging and ravaging in all directions, after having themselves endured the pillaging and ravages of the fiscal agents and soldiers of the Empire. A.D. 245 When public evils have reached such a pitch, and nevertheless 313. the day has not yet arrived for the entire disappearance of the * system that causes them, there arises nearly always a new power, which, in the name of necessity, applies some remedy to an in- tolerable condition. On the present occasion that power was wielded by a Dalmatian soldier, named Diocletian, who having been raised to the throne, set to work ably, if not successfully, to master the difficulty of government. Convinced that the empire was too vast, and that a single man did not suffice to make head against the two evils that were destroying it — war against bar- barians on the frontiers, and anarchy within — he divided the Eoman world into two portions, gave the West to Maximian, one of his com- rades, a coarse but valiant soldier, and kept the East himself. To the anarchy that reigned within he opposed a general despotic admi- The Gauls and the Romans. 21 nistrative organization, a vast hierarchy of civil and military agents, every where present, every where masters, and dependent upon the emperor alone. By his incontestable and admitted superiority, Diocletian remained the soul of these two bodies. Ak the end of eight years he saw that the two empires were still too vast ; and to each Augustus he added a Caesar— Gal erius and Constantius Chlorus — who, save a nominal, rather than a real, subordination to the two emperors, had, each in his own State, the imperial power with the same administrative system. In this partition of the Roman world Gaul had the best of it ; she had for master Constantius Chlorus, a tried warrior, but just, gentle, and disposed to temper the exercise of absolute power with moderation and equity. He had a son, Constantine, at this time eighteen years of age, whom he was educating carefully for government as well as for war. Weary, however, of his burden, and disgusted with the imperfection of his work, Diocletian abdicated, a.d. 305. He had persuaded or rather dragged his first colleague, Maximian, into abdication after him ; and so Galerius in the East, and Constantius Chlorus in the West, remained sole emperors. After the retirement of Diocletian, ambitions, rivalries and intrigues were not slow to make head; Maximian reappeared on the scene of empire, but only to speedily disappear (a.d. 310), leaving in his place his son Maxentius. Constantius Chlorus had died a.d. 306, and his son, Constantine, had immediately been proclaimed by his army Caesar and Augustus. Galerius died a.d. 311, and Constantine remained to dispute the Constan- mastery with Maxentius in the West, and in the East with Maxi- *'°® *^® minus and Licinius, the last colleagues taken by Diocletian and Galerius. On the 29th of October, a.d. 312, after having gained several battles against Maxentius in Italy, at Milan, Brescia, and Verona, Constantine pursued and defeated him before Rome, on the borders of the Tiber, at the foot of the Milvian bridge ; and the son of Maximian, drowned in the Tiber, left to the son of Constantius Chlorus the Empire of the West, to which that of the East was destined to be in a few years added, by the defeat and death of Licinius. Constantine, more clear-sighted and more fortunate than any of his predecessors, had understood his era, and opened his eyes to the iieAV light which was rising upon the world. Ear from persecuting the Christians, he had given them protection, countenance, and audience ; and towards him turned all their hopes. He had even, it is said, in his last battle against Maxen- tius, displayed the Christian banner, the cross, with this inscrip- tion : Hoc signo vinces (" With this device thou shalt conquer"). There is no knowing what was at that time the state Oi his soul. 22 History of France, and to what extent it was penetrated by the first rays of Christian faith ; but it is certain that he was the first amongst the masters of the Eoman world to perceive and accept its influence. With him Paganism fell, and Christianity mounted the throne. With him the decay of Eoman society stops, and the era of modern society commences. CHAPTER TI. CHRISTIANITY IN GAUL. THE BARBARIANS. THE MEROVINGIAN DYNASTY.— CHARLEMAGNE. "When Chnstiaiiity began to penetrate into Gaii], it encountered there two religions very different one from the otlier, and infinitely more different from the Christian religion ; these were Druidisra and Paganism— hostile one to the other, but with a hostility political only, and nnconnected with those really religious questions that Christianity was coming to raise. Druidism, considered as a religion, was a mass of confusion, Druidisir wherein the instinctive notions of the human race concerning the origin and destiny of the world and of mankind were mingled with the oriental dreams of metempsychosis — that pretended transmigra- tion, at successive periods, of immortal souls into divers creatures. This confusion was worse confounded by traditions borrowed from the mythologies of the East and the North, by shadowy remnants of a symbolical worship paid to the material forces of nature, and by barbaric practices, such as human sacrifices, in honour of the gods or of the dead. A general and strong, but vague and inco- herent, belief in the immortality of the soul was its noblest characteristic. But with the religious elements, at the same time coarse and mystical, were united two facts of importance : the Druids formed a veritable ecclesiastical corporation ; and in 24 History of France. Paganism. Christi- anity the wars with. Rome this corporation became the most faithful representatives and the most persistent defenders of Gallic inde- pendence and nationality. The Grseco-Roman Paganism was, at this time, far more powerful than Druidism in Gaul, and yet more lukewarm and destitute of all religious vitality. It was the religion of the conquerors and of the State, and was invested, in that quality, with real power ; but beyond that, it had but the power derived from popular customs and superstitions. As a religious creed, the Latin Paganism was at bottom empty, indifferent, and inclined to tolerate all religions in the State, provided only that they, in their turn, were indifferent at any rate towards itself, and that they did not come troubling the State, either by disobeying her rulers or by attacking her old deities, dead and buried beneath their own still standing altars. Such were the two religions with which in Gaul nascent Chris- tianity had to contend. Compared with them it was, to all appearance, very small and very weak ; but it was provided with the most efficient weapons for fighting and beating them, for it had exactly the moral forces which they lacked. To the pagan indifference of the Eoman world the Christians opposed the pro- found conviction of their faith, and not only their firmness in defending it against all powers and all dangers, but also their ardent passion for propagating it, without any motive but the yearning to make their fellows share in its benehts and its hopes. And it was not in memory of old and obsolete mythologies, but in the name of recent deeds and persons, in obedience to laws pro- ceeding from God, One and Universal, in fulfilment and continua- tion of a contemporary and superhuman history — that of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of IMan — that the Christians of the first two centuries laboured to convert to their faith the whole Roman world. It is impossible to assign with exactness the date of the first foot-prints and first labours of Christianity in Gaul. It was not, however, from Italy, nor in the Latin tongue and through Latin writers, but from the East and through the Greeks, that it first came and began to spread. Marseilles and the different Greek colonies, originally from Asia Minor, and settled upon the shores of the Mediterranean or along the Rhone, mark the route, and were the places whither the first Christian missionaries carried their teaching : on this point the letters of the Apostles and the writings of the first two generations of their disciples are clear and IheChtirch abiding proof. Lyons became the chief centre of Christian preach- 3t Lyons, ^^g ^^^ association in Gatil. As early as the first half of the second century there existed there a Christian congregation, regularly Christianity in Gaul. 25 organized as a Church, and already sufficiently important to be in intimate and frequent communication with the Christian Churches of the East and West. There is a tradition, generally admitted, that St. Pothinus, the first Bishop of Lyons, was sent thither from the East by the Bishop of Smyrna, St. Polycarp, himself a disciple of St. John. One thing is certain, tht the Christian Church of Lyons produced Gaul's first martyrs, amongst whom was the Bishop, St. Pothinus. It was under Marcus Aurelius, the most philosophical and most conscientious of the emperors, that there was enacted for the first time in Gaul, against nascent Christianity, that scene of tyranny and barbarity which was to be renewed so often and during so many centuries in the midst of Christendom itself : for in the year J^-^' ^'^'^- F6r£ccu* 177, that is only three years after the victory of Marcus Aurelius tioa of the over the Germans, there took place, undoubtedly by his orders, the Christians. persecution which caused at Lyons the first Gallic martyrdom. This was the fourth, or, according to others, the fifth great imperial persecution of the Christians. Most tales of the martyrs were written long after the event, and came to be nothing more than legends laden with details often utterly puerile ox devoid of proof. The martyrs of Lyons in the second century wrote, so to speak, their own history ; for it was their comrades, eye-witnesses of tiieir sufferings and their virtue, who gave an account of them in a long letter addressed to their friends in Asia Minor, and written with passionate sympathy and pious prolixity, but bearing all the characteristics of truth. The persecution of the Christians did not stop at Lyons, or with Marcus Aurelius ; it became, during the third century, the common practice of the emperors in all parts of the empire : from A.D. 202 to 312, under the reigns of Septimius Severus, Maximinus A.D. 202— the Eirst, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, Diocletian, Maximian, and „. ^^''^• . . . S;x perse- Galerius, there are reckoned six great general persecutions, without cutions. counting others more circumscribed or less severe. The emperors Alexander Severus, Philip the Arabian, and Constantius Chlorus were almost the only exceptions to this cruel system ; and nearly always, wherever it was in force, the Pagan mob, in its brutality or fanatical superstition, added to imperial rigour its own atrocious and cynical excesses. But Christian zeal was superior in perseverance and efficacy to Pagan persecution. St. Pothinus the Martyr was succeeded as bishop at Lyons by St. Irenaius, the most learned, most judicious, and most illustrious of the early heads of the Church in GauL Originally from Asia Minor, probalily from Smyrna, he had migrated 26 History of France. A.D. 312. Constan. tine era- braces Christi- anity. to Gaul, at what particular date is not known, and had settled as a simple priest in the diocese of Lyons, where it was not long before he exercised vast influence, as well on the spot as also during certain missions entrusted to him, and amongst them one, they say, to the Pope St. Eleutherius at Rome. Whilst Bishop of Lyons, from AD. 177 to 202, he employed the five and twenty years in propa- gating the Christian faith in Gaul, and in defending, by his writings, the Christian doctrines against the discord to which they had already been subjected in the East, and which was beginning to penetrate to the West. In 202, during the persecution instituted by Septimius Severus, St. Iren^us crowned by martyrdom his active and influ- ential life. It was in his episcopate that there began what may be called the swarm of Christian missionaries, who, towards the end of the second and during the third centuries, spread over the whole of Gaul, preaching the faith and forming churches. Some went from Lyons at the instigation of St. Irenseus ; others from Eome, 'especially under the pontificate of Pope St. Fabian, himself mar- tyred in 249 ; St. Felix and St. Fortunatus to Valence, St. Ferreol to Besan9on, St. MarceUus to Chalonssur-Saone, St. Benignus to Dijon, St. Trophimus to Aries, St. Paul to Narbonne, St. Saturninus to Toulouse, St. Martial to Limoges, St. Andeol and St. Privatus to the Cevennes, St. Austremoine to Clermont-Ferrand, St. Gatian to Tours, St. Denis to Paris, and so many others that their names are scarcely known beyond the pages of erudite historians, or the very spots where they preached, struggled, and conquered, often at the price of their lives. Such were the founders of the faith and of the Christian Church in France. At the commencement of the fourth century their work was, if not accomplished, at any rate triumphant; and when, a.d. 312, Constantino declared himself a Christian, he confirmed the fact of the conquest of the Eoman world, and of Gaul in particular, by Christianity. No doubt the majority of the inhabitants were not as yet Christians ; but it was clear that the Christians Avere in the ascendant and had command of the future. Of the two grand elements which were to meet together, on the ruins of Eoman society, for the formation of modern society, the moral element, the Christian religion, had already taken possession of souls ; the devastated territory awaited the coming of new peoples known to history under the general name of Germans, whom the Eomans called the barbarians. About A.D. 241 or 242 the sixth Eoman legion, commanded by Aurelian, at that time military tribune, and thirty years later emperor, had just finished a campaign on the Eliine, undertaken for the purpose of driving the Germans from Gaul, and was pre- Christianity in Gaul, 27 paring for Eastern service, to make "war on the Persians. Tlie soldiers sang, — We have slain a thousand Franks and a thousand Sarmatians ; we want a thousand, thousand, Thousand Persians. It is the first time the name of Franks appears in history ; and A.D. 241, it indicated no particular single people, but a confederation of ^^'^^^ ^P Germanic peoplets, settled or roving on the right bank of the of the Ehine, from the Mayn to the ocean. The number and the names ^^ranks. of the tribes united in this confederation are uncertain. The tabula Peutingeri^ bears, over a large territory on the right bank of the Ebine, the word Francia, and the following enumeration : — " The Chaucians, the Ampsuarians, the Cheruscans, and the Chamavians, who are also called Franks ;" and to these tribes divers chroniclers added several others, " the Attuarians, the Bructerians, the Cattians, and the Sicambrians." Whatever may have been the specific names of these peoplets, they were all of German race, called them- selves Franks, that is " freemen," and made, sometimes separately, sometimes collectively, continued incursions into Gavil — especially Belgica and the northern portions of Lyonnes — at one time plun- dering and ravaging, at another occupying forcibly, or demanding of the Eoman emperors lands whereon to settle. From the middle of the third to the beginning of the fifth century the history of the Western empire presents an almost uninterrupted series of these invasions on the part of the Franks, together with the different relationships established between them and the Imperial Government. After the commencement of the fifth century, from a.d. 406 to AD. 406— 409, it was no longer by incursions limited to certain points, and _ *°.^* ' . jr ' Invasion sometimes repelled with success, that the Germans harassed the of the Eoman provinces ; a veritable deluge of divers nations, forced one Barba- upon another, from Asia into Europe, by wars and migration in mass, inundated the empire and gave the decisive signal for its fall. Then took place throughout the Eoman empire, in the East as well as in the West, in Asia and Africa as well as in Europe, the last grand struggle between the Eoman armies and the barbarians, struggle It was in Gaul that it was most obstinate and most promptly ^'^ G^^^X. brought to a decisive issue, and the confusion there was as great as the obstinacy. Barbaric peoplets served in the ranks and barbaric leaders held the command of the Eoman armies : Stilicho was a Goth ; Arbogastes and Mellobaudes were Franks : Eicimer was a Suevian. The Eoman generals, Bonifacius, Aetius, ^gidius, Syagrius, at one time fought the barbarians, at another negotiated 28 History of France. with such and such of tliem, either to entice them to take service against :.ther barbarians, or to promote the objects of personal ambition ; for the Roman generals also, under the title of patrician, consul, or proconsul, aspired to and attained a sort of political independence, and contributed to the dismemberment of the empire in the very act of defending it. !N"o later than a.d. 412 two German nations, the Visigoths and the Burgundians, took their stand definitely in Gaul, and founded there two new kingdoms : the Visigoths, under their kings Ataulph andWallia, in Aquitania and Narbonness ; the Burgundians, under their kings Gundichaire and Gundioch, in Lyonness, from the southern point of Alsatia right into Provence, along the two banks of the Saone and the left A.D. 451. ^ank of the Rhone, and also in Switzerland. In 451 the arrival in a.ttila and Gaul nf the Huns and their king Attila gravely complicated the ^ ^'^^* situation. The common interest of resistance against the most barbarous of barbarians, and the renown and energy of the Roman general Aetius, united, for the moment, the old and new masters of Gaul ; Romans, Gauls, Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, Alans, Saxons, and Britons, formed the army led by Aetius against that of Attila, who also had in his ranks Goths, Burgundians, Gepidians, Alans, and beyond-Rhine Franks, gathered together and enlisted on his road. Driven from Orleans, the Huns retired towards Champagne, which they had already crossed at their coming into Gaul, and arrived at the plains hard by Chalons-sur-Marne ; Aetiua and all his allies had followed them ; and Attila, perceiving that A.D. 451. ^ battle was inevitable, halted in a position for delivering it. " It Battle of was," says the Gothic historian Jornandes, " a battle which for ^ *'^^' atrocity, multitude, horror, and stubbornness has not the like in the records of antiqiiity." Historians vary in their exaggerations of the numbers engaged and killed : according to some, three hundred thousand, according to others, one hundred and sixty-two thousand were left on the field of battle. Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, was killed. The battle of Chalons drove the Huns out of Gaul, and was the last victory in Gaul, gained still in the name of the Roman empire, but in reality for the advantage of the German nations which had already conquered it. Twenty-four years afterwards the very name of Roman empire disappeared with Augustulus, the last of the emperors of the West. Thirty years after the battle of Chalons the Franks settled in Gaul were not yet united as one nation ; the two principal Frankish tribes were those of the Salian Franks and the Ripuarian Franks, established, the latter in the east of Belgica, on the banks of the Moselle and the Rhine ; the former, towards the west, between the Clovis. 29 Meuse, the ocean, and the Somme. Meroveus, whose name wa;s perpetuated in his line, was one of the principal chieftains of tho Salian Franks ; and his son Childeric, who resided at Tournay, where his tomh was discovered in 1655, was the father of Clovis, . who succeeded him in 481, and with whom really commenced the kingdom and history of France. Clovis was fifteen or sixteen years old when he became King of A.B. 481. the Salian Franks of Tournay, Five years afterwards his ruling ^!°^^®', passion, ambition, exhibited itself, together with that mixture of Saliaa boldness and craft which was to characterize his whole life. He Franks, attacked first the Eoman patrician Syagrius, who was left master at Soissons after the death of his father ^Egidius, and whom Gregory of Tours calls "King of the Eomans;" having put him to death, he settled himself at Soissons, and from thence set on foot, in the country between the Aisne and the Loire, plun- dering and subjugating expeditions which speedily increased his domains and wealth, and extended far and wide his fame as well as his ambition. His marriage with Clotilde, niece of A.D. 493, Gondebaud, then King of the Burgundians (493) was, for the public ^arriage of the period, for the barbarians and for the Gallo-Eomans, a great matter. Clovis and the Franks were still pagans ; Gondebaud and the Burgundians were Christians, but Arians; Clotilde was a Catholic Christian. To which of the two, Catholics or Arians, would Clovis ally himself? To whom, Arian, pagan, or Catholic, would Clotilde be married % Assuredly the bishops, priests and all the Gallo-Koman clergy, for the most part Catholics, desired to see Clovis, that young and audacious Frankish chieftain, take to wife a Catholic rather than an Arian or a pagan, and hoped to convert the pagan Clovis to Christianity much more than an Arian to orthodoxy. The consequences of the marriage justified before^long the im- portance which had on all sides been attached to it. In 496 the Allemannians, a Germanic confederation like the Franks, who also had been, for some time past, assailing the Eoman empire on the banks of the Ehine or the frontiers of Switzerland, crossed the river, and invaded the settlements of the Franks on the left bank. Clovis went to the aid of his confederation and attacked the Allemannians at Tolbiac, near Cologne. He had with him Aurelian, a D. 4S9i who had been his messenger to Clotilde, whom he had made Duke Battle of of Melun, and who commanded the forces of Sens, The battle was going ill ; the Franks were wavering and Clovis was anxious. Before setting out he had, it is said, promised his wife that if he were victorious he would turn Christian. Some chroniclers tell ua 30 History of France. that Aurelian, seeing the battle in danger of being lost, said to Clovis, " My lord king, believe only on the Lord of heaven whom the queen, my mistress, preacheth." Clovis cried out with emotion, " Christ Jesus, Thou whom my queen Clo tilde calloth the Son of the living God, I have invoked my own gods, and they have with- drawn from me ; I believe that they have no power since they aid not those who call upon them. Thee, very God and Lord, I invoke ; if Thou give me victory over these foes, if I find in Thee the power that the people proclaim of Thee, I will believe on Thee, and will be baptized in Thy name." The tide of battle turned : the Franks recovered confidence and courage ; and the AUeman- nians, beaten and seeing their king slain, surrendered themselves to Clovis, saying, " Cease, of thy grace, to cause any more of our people to perish ; for we are thine." The baptism of Clovis took place in the Cathedral of Eheims on Christmas Day, 496; " at the moment," says the historian Hincmar, " when the king bent his head over the fountain of life, * Lower thy head with humility, Sicambrian,' cried the eloquent bishop ; * adore A.D. 496. what thou hast burned : burn what thoii hast adored.' The king's ^°d^^^^°^ two sisters, Alboflede and Lantechilde, likewise received baptism; tism of and so at the same time did three thousand of the Frankish army, Clovis. besides a large number of women and children." Clovis was not a man to omit turning his Catholic popularity to the account of his ambition. He learned that Gondebaud, dis- quieted, no doubt, at the conversion of his powerful neighbour, had just made a vain attempt, at a conference held at Lyons, to recon- Clovis in- cile in his kingdom the Catholics and the Arians. Clovis considered eundv " ^^® moment favourable to his projects of aggrandizement at the expense of the Burgundian king; he fomented the dissensions which already prevailed between Gondebaud and his brother Godegisile, assured to himself the latter's complicity, and suddenly entered Burgundy with his army. Gondebaud, betrayed and beaten at the first encounter at Dijon, fled to the south of his kingdom, and went and shut himself up in Avignon. Clovis pursued and besieged him there ; and having reduced him to the humble position of a tributary, he transferred to the Visigoths of Aquitania and their king, Alaric II., his views of conquest. He and Aqui- had there the same pretexts for attack and the same means of success. Alaric and his Visigoths were Arians, and between them and the bishops of Southern Gaul, nearly all orthodox Catholics, there were permanent ill-will and distrust. In 507 Clovis assembled his principal chieftains : and " It displeases me greatly," said he, " that these Arians should possess a portion of tania. Clovis. 3 1 the Grauls ; march \ve forth with the help of God, drive we them from that land, for it is very goodly, and bring we it under our own power. The Franks applauded their king ; and the army set out on the march in the direction of Poitiers, where Alaric happened at that time to be. The king of the Visigoths had prepared for the struggle ; and the two armies met in the plain of Vouille, on the banks of the little river Clain, a few leagues from Poitiers. The battle was very severe. " The Goths," says Gregory a.D. 507, of Tours, "fought with missiles; the Franks sword in hand, ^^^-l®?* Clovis met and with his own hand slew Alaric in the fray." Beaten and kingless, the Goths retreated in great disorder ; and Clovis, pursuing his march, arrived without opposition at Bordeaux, where he settled down with his Franks for the winter. When the war-season returned, he marched on Toulouse, the capital of the Visigoths, which he likewise occupied without resistance, and where he seized a portion of the treasure of the Visigothic kings. He quitted it to lay siege to Carcassonne, which had been made by the Romans into the stronghold of Septimania. There his course of conquest was destined to end. After the battle of Vouille he had sent his eldest son Theodoric in command of a division, with orders to cross Central Gaul from west to east, to go and join the Burgundians of Gondebaud, who had promised his assistance, and in conjunction with them to attack the Visigotha on the banks of the Ehone and in I^arbonness. The young Frank boldly executed his father's orders, but the intervention of Theodoric the Great, king of Italy, prevented the success of the operation. He sent an army into Gaul to the aid of his son-in-law Alaric ; and the united Franks and Burgundians failed in their attacks upon the Visigoths of the Eastern Provinces. Clovis had no idea of compromising by his obstinacy the conquests already accom- plished ; he therefore raised the siege of Carcassonne, returned first to Toulouse, and then to Bordeaux, took Angouleme, the only town of importance he did not possess in Aquitania ; and feeling reasonably sure that the Visigoths, who, even with the aid that had come from Italy, had great difficulty in defending what re- mained to them of Southern Gaul, would not come and dispute with him what he had already conquered, he halted at Tours, and stayed there some time, to enjoy on the very spot the fruits of his victory and to establish his power ia his possessions. It appears that even the Britons of Armorica tendered to him at that • AD 509 lime, through the interposition of Melanius, Bishop of Eennes, if not /jig^g ^ el their actual submission, at any rate their subordination and homage, ceives the Clovis at the same time had his self-respect flattered in a ^^ ^^. . * Patrician andCoasul, 5 2 History oj France. manner to which barbaric conquerors always attach great im- portance. Anastasiiis, Emperor of the East, with whom he had already had some communication, sent to him at Tours a ■ tiolenm embassy, bringing him the titles and insignia of Patrician and Consul. On leaving the city of Tours Clovis repaired to Paris, where he fixed the seat of his government. Paris was certainly the political centre of his dominions, the intermediate point between the early settlements of his race and himself in Gaul and his new Gallic conquests ; but he lacked some of the possessions nearest to him and most naturally, in his own opinion, his. To the east, north, and south-west of Paris were settled some independent Prankish tribes, governed by chieftains with the name of kings. So soon as he had settled at Paris, it was the one fixed idea of Clovis to reduce them all to subjection. He had conquered the Burgundians and the Visigoths ; it remained for him to conquer and unite together all the Franks. The A.D. 509. "bg^j.'barian showed himself in his true colours, during this new Murders of ' o Sio-eijert enterprise, with his violence. Lis craft, his cruelty, and his perfidy. Chararic, He began with the most powerful of the tribes, the Pi,ipuarian nacairef Pranks ; then came the Pranks of Terouanne, and Chararic their king ; Eagnacaire, king of the Franks of Cambria, was the third to be attacked ; finally, Rignomer, who ruled over the Franks of Le Mans, was put toadeath by the order of Clovis. So Clovis remained sole king of the Franks, for all the independent chieftains had disappeared. A.L. 511. In 511, the very year of his death, the last act of Clovis in life Deatn of ^^g ^^ convocation at Orleans of a Council, which was attended Clovis. . . , ,. . . by tliirty bishops from the different parts of his kingdom, and at which were adopted thirty-one canons that, whilst granting to the Church great privileges and means of influence, in many cases favourable to humanity and respect for the right of individuals, bound the Church closely to the State, and gave to royalty, even in ecclesiastical matters, great power. The bishops, on brealcing up, sent these canons to Clovis, praying him to give them the sanction of his adhesion, which he did. A few months afterwards, on the 27th of November, 511, Clovis died at Paris, and was buried in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, now-a-days St. Genevieve, built by his wife. Queen Clotilde, who survived him. A.D. 511— From A.D. 511 to a.d. 752, that is, from the death of Clovis to 752 . . Partition ^^® accession of the Carlovingians, is two hundred and forty-one of tlie Me- years, which was the duration of the dynasty of the Merovingians. do^TT^as ^^I'i^S *^is *™6 there reigned twenty-eight Merovingian kings^ which reduces to eight years and seven months the average reign The Merovingian Dynasty. 33 of each, a short duration compared with that of most of the royal dynasties. Five of these kings, Clotaire I., Clotaire II., Dagobert I., Thierry IV., and Childeric III. alone, at different intervals, united under their power all the dominions possessed by Clovis or his successors. The other kings of this line reigned only over special kingdoms, formed by virtue of divers partitions at the death of their general possessor. From ad. 511 to 638 five such partitions took place. In 511, after the death of Clovis, his dominions were divided amongst his four sons ; Theodoric, or Thierry L, was king of Metz ; Clodomir, of Orleans ; Childebert, of Paris ; Clotaire I., of Soissons. To each of these capitals fixed boundaries Avere attached. In 558, in consequence of divers incidents brought about naturally, or by violence, Clotaire I. ended by possessing alone, during three years, all the dominions of his fathers. At his death, in 561, they were partitioned afresh amongst his four sons ; Charibert was king of Paris ; Gontran, of Orleans and Burgundy ; Sigebert I., of Metz ; and Chilperic, of Soissons. In 567 Charibert, king of Paris, died without chil- dren, and a new partition left only three kingdoms, Austrasia, 2^eustria, and Burgundy. Austrasia, in the East, extended over the two banks of the Ehine, and comprised, side by side with Roman towns and districts, populations that had remained Germanic. Keustria, in the West, was ev. '.ntially Gallo-Roman, though it comprised in the north the old territory of the Salian Franks, on the borders of the Scheldt. Burgundy was the. old kingdom of the Burgundians, enlarged in the north by some few counties. Paris, the residence of Clovis, was reserved and undivided amongst the three kings, kept as a sort of neutral city into which they could not enter without the common consent of all. In 613 new incidents connected with family matters placed A.D. 613. Clotaire II., son of Chilperic, and heretofore king of Soissons, in Clotaire II possession of the three kingdoms. He kept them united up to 628, and left them so to his son Dagobert I., who remained in possession of them up to 638. At his death a new division of the Prankish dominions took place, no longer into three, but two kingdoms, Austrasia being one, and Neustria and Burgundy the other. This was the definitive dismemberment of the great Prankish dominion to the time of its last two Merovingian kings, Thierry IV. and Childeric III., who were kings in name only, dragged from the cloister as ghosts from the tomb, to play a motionless part in the drama. For a long time past the real power had been in the hands of that valiant Austrasian family D 34 History of France, Southern Taul J Drives to be inde- pendent. Character of the Me- rovingian kings. which was to furnish the dominions of Clovis with a new dynasty and a greater king than Clovis. Southern Gaul, that is to say, Aquitania, A^'asconia, Narbonness, called Septimania, and the two banks of the Rhone near its mouths, were not comprised in these partitions of the Prankish dominions. Each of the co-partitioners assigned to themselves, to the south of the Garonne and on the coasts of the Mediterranean, in that beautiful region of old Roman Gaul, such and such a district or such and such a town, just as heirs-at-law keep to themselves severally such and such a piece of furniture or such and such a valuable jewel out of a rich property to which they succeed, and which thoy divide amongst them. The peculiar situation of those provinces at their distance from the Franks' own settlements contributed much towards the independence which Southern Gaul, and especially Aquitania, was constantly striving and partly managed to recover. Amongst the various Prankish States, springing from a common base and subdivided between the different members of one and the same family, rivalries, enmities, hostile machinations, deeds of violence and atrocity, struggles, and wars soon became as frequent, as bloody, and as Obstinate as they have ever been amongst states and sovereigns as unconnected as possible one with another. The Merovingian kings were as greedy and licentious as they were cruel JS'^ot only was pillage, in their estimation, the end and object of war, but they pillaged even in the midst of peace and in their own dominions ; sometimes after the Roman practice, by aggravation of taxes and fiscal manoeuvres, at others after the barbaric fashion, by sudden attacks on places and persons they knew to be rich. Treason, murder, and poisoning were the familiar processes of ambition, covetous ness, hatred, vengeance and fear. Eight kings or royal heirs of the Merovingian line died of brutal murder or secret assassination, to say nothing of innumerable crimes of the same kind committed in their circle, and left unpunished, save by similar crimes. Nevertheless, justice is due to the very worst times and the very worst govern- ments ; and it must be recorded that, whilst sharing in many of the vices of their age and race, especially their extreme licence cf morals, three of Clovis's successors, Theodebert, king of Austrasia (from 534 to 548), Gontran, king of Burgundy (from 561 to 593), and Dagobert I., who united under his own sway the whole Frankish monarchy (irom 622 to 638), were less violent, less cruel, less iniquitous, and less grossly ignorant or blind than the majority of the Merovingians, Dagobert I. 35 The rivalry between the two queens Fredegonde and Brunehaut occupies an important place in the history of the Merovingian epoch. After the execution of Brunehaut and the death of Clotaire II., the history of the Franks becomes a little less dark and less bloody. Despite of many excesses and scandals, Dagobert was the most A.D. 628. wisely energetic, the least cruel in feeling, the most prudent in crohtxi enterprise, and the most capable of governing with some little regularity and effectiveness, of all the kings furnished, since Clovis, by the Merovingian race. He had, on ascending the throne, this immense advantage, that the three Frankish dominions, Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy, were re-united under his sway ; and at the death of his brother Charibert he added thereto Aquitania. The unity of the vast Frankish monarchy was thus re-established, and Dagobert retained it by his moderation at home and abroad. Either by his own energy, or by surrounding himself with wise and influential counsellors, such as Pepin of Landen, mayor of the palace of Austrasia, St. Arnoul, bishop of Metz, St. Eligius, bishop of l^oyon, and St. Audoenus, bishop of Rouen, he applied himself to, and succeeded in assuring to himself, in the exercise of his power, a pretty large measure of independence and popularity. At the beginning of his reign he held, in Austrasia and Burgundy, a sort of administrative and judicial inspection, halting at the principal towns, listening to complaints, and checking, sometimes with a rigour arbitrary indeed, but approved of by the people, the violence and irregularities of the grandees. Nor did he confine himself to this unceremonious exercise of the royal authority. Some of his predecessors, and amongst them Childebert I., Clotaire I., and Clotaire II., had caused to be drawn up in Latin, and by scholars, digests more or less complete of the laws and customs handed down by tradition, amongst certain of the Germanic peoples established on Eo'man soil, notably the laws of the Salian Franks and Eipuarian Franks ; and Dagobert ordered a continuation of these first legislative labours amongst the new-born nations. It was, apparently, in his reign that a digest was made of the laws of the Allemannians and Bavarians. He had also some taste for the arts, and the pious talents displayed by Saints Eloi (Eligius) and Ouen (Audoenus) in goldsmiths' -work and sculpture, applied to the service of religion or the decoration of churches, received from him the support of the royal favour and munificence. His authority was maintained in his dominions, his reputation spread far and wide, and the name of great King Dagobert was his abiding title in the memory of the D 2 36 History of France, people. Taken all in all, he was, next to Clo-vis, the most distinguished of Frankish kings, and the last really king in the mf^ line of the Merovincjians. After him, from 638 to 752, twelve 752. ° /->. • / Last Me- princes of this line, one named Sigebert, two Clovis, two Childeric, rovingian Qjjg Clotaire, two Dagobert, one Childebert, one Chilperic, and two kind's ' o ' X Theodoric or Thierry, bore in Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy, or in the three kingdoms united, the title of king, without deserving in history more than room for their names. There was already heard the rumbling of great events to come around the Frankish dominion ; and in the very womb of this dominion was being formed a new race of kings more able to bear, in ac- cordance with the spirit and wants of their times, the burden of power. Mayors of The last of the kings sprung from Clovis acquitted themselves too the palace. -^ ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^ ^^ their task ; and the mayors of the palace were naturally summoned to supply their deficiencies, and to give the populations assurance of more intelligence and energy in the exercise of power. The origin and primitive character of these supplements of royalty were different according to circumstances ; some being appointed by the kings to support royalty against the "leudes" (lieges), others chosen by the "leudes" against the kings. It was especially between the ]!Teustrian and Austrasian mayors of the palace that this difference became striking. Gallo- Eoman feeling was more prevalent in Neustria, Germanic in Austrasia. The majority of the Neustrian mayors supported the interests of royalty, the Austrasian, those of the aristocracy of landholders and warriors. The last years of the Merovingian line were full of their struggles ; but a cause far more general and more powerful than these differences and conflicts in the very heart of the Frankish dominions determined the definitive fall of that line and the accession of another dynasty ; we allude to tbe great invasions of barbarians which took place during the sixth century. Power of Everywhere resistance to this new movement became the the Austra- national attitude of the Franks, and they proudly proclaimed Franki. themselves the defenders of that West of wbich they had but lately been the conquerors. The ascendency in the heart of the whole of Frankish Gaul thus passed to the Austrasians, already bound by their geographical position to the defence of their nation in its new settlement. There had risen up amongst them a family, powerful from its vast domains, from its military and political services, and already also from the prestige belonging to the hereditary transmission of name and power. Its first chief Pepin of Heristal. — Charles Martel. 37 known in history had been Pepin of Landen, called Tlie Ancient ; he died in 639, leaving to his family an influence already extensive. His son Grimoald succeeded him as mayor of the AT) R87 palace, ingloriously ; but his grandson, by his daughter Bega, Pepin of Pepin of Heristal, was for twenty-seven years not only virtually, Heristal, as mayor of the palace, but ostensibly and with the title of duke, ^e^paiace the real sovereign of Austrasia and all the Prankish dominion. He did not, however, take the name of king ; and four descendants of Clovis, Thierry III., Clovis III., Childebert III. and Dago- bert III. continued to bear that title in ITeustria and Burgundy, under the preponderating influence of Pepin of Heristal. He did, during his long sway, three things of importance. He struggled without cessation to keep or bring back under the rule of the Franks the Germanic nations on the right bank of the Rliine, Prisons, Saxons, Thuringians, Bavarians, and Alleraannians ; and thus to make the Prankish dominion a bulwark against the new flood of barbarians Avho were pressing one another westwards. He rekindled in Austrasia the national spirit and some political life by beginning again the old March-parades of the Pranks, which had fallen into desuetude under the last Merovingians. Pinally, and this was, perhaps, his most original merit, he under- stood of what importance, for the Prankish kingdom, was the conversion to Christianity of the Germanic peoples over the Ehine, and he abetted with all his might the zeal of the popes and missionaries, Irish, Anglo-Saxon, and GaUo-Roman, devoted to this great work. On the death of Pepin (Dec. 16, 714), his son Charles, at that Charles time twenty-five years of age, was proclaimed Duke of Austrasia. He was destined to become Charles Martel. He first of all repelled an invasion of the Prisons and Saxons ; turning then against the Neustrians, he twice succeeded in beat- ing, first near Cambrai, and then near Soissons (717-718), the Neustrian king and Ragenfried, the mayor of the palace, pursued them to Paris, and remaining temperate amidst the triumph of his ambition, he, too, took from amongst the surviving Merovingians a sluggard king, whom he installed under the name of Clotaire IV., himself becoming, with the simple title of Duke of Austrasia, master of the Prankish dominion. The invasions of the Arabs Invasion soon placed Aquitania and Vasconia within his grasp. Arabs^ Eudes or Eudon, duke of those beautiful provinces, had twice made a gallant effort to stem the progress of the formidable soldiers of the Crescent ; at last he was obliged to seek assistance from the Franks ; accordingly he repaired in all haste to Charles ^8 History of France. and invoked his aid against the common enemy, who, after having crushed the Aquitanians, would soon attack the Franks, and sub- ject them in turn to ravages and outrages. Charles did not require solicitation. He took an oath of the Duke of Aquitania to acknowledge his sovereignty and thenceforth remain faithful to him ; and then, summoning all his warriors, Franks, Bur- gundians, Gallo-Romans, and Germans from beyond the Rhine, he set himself in motion towards the Loire. It was time. The Arabs had spread over the whole country between the Garonne and the Loire ; they had even crossed the latter river and pene- trated into Burgundy as far as Autun and Sens, ravaging the country, the towns and the monasteries, and massacring or dis- persing the population. Abdel-Ehaman, their chief, had heard tell of the city of Tours and its rich abbey, the treasures whereof, it was said, surpassed those of any other city and any other abbey in Gaul. Burning to possess it, he recalled towards this point his scattered forces. On arriving at Poitiers he found the gates closed and the inhabitants resolved to defend themselves ; and, after a fruitless attempt at assault, he continued his march towards Tours. He was already beneath the walls of the place when he learnt that the Franks were rapidly advancing in vast numbers. He fell back towards Poitiers, collecting the troops that were returning to him from all quarters, embarrassed with the immense booty they were dragging in their wake. He bad for a moment, say the histo- rians, an idea of ordering his soldiers to leave or burn their booty; to keep nothing but their arms, and think of nothing but battle ; however he did nothing of the kind, and, to await the Franks, he fixed his camp between the Vienne and the Clain, near Poitiers, not far from the spot where, two hundred and twenty-five years before, Clovis had beaten the Visigoths; or, according to others, nearer Tours, at Mire, in a plain still called the Landes de Charlemagne. A.D. 732. The Franks arrived. It was in the month of September or The Arabs October, 732, and the two armies passed a week face to face, at defeated. . . ... one time remaining in their camps, at another deploying without attacking. It was a struggle between East and West, South and North, Asia and Europe, the Gospel and the Koran ; and we now say, on a general consideration of events, peoples, and ages, that the civilization of the world depended upon it. At the breaking of the seventh or eighth day, Abdel-Ehaman, at the head of his cavalry, ordered a general attack ; and the Franks received it with serried ranks, astounding their enemies by their tall stature, stout armour, and their stern immobility. The Franks, finally, had the advantage; a great number of Arabs and Abdel-Ji-'*aman Policy of Charles Martel. — His death. 39 himself were slain. At the approach of night both armies retired to their camps. The next day, at dawn, the Franks moved out of theirs, to renew the engagement ; the Arabs had decamped silently in the night, leaving the bulk of their booty, and by this precipitate retreat acknowledging a more severe defeat than they had really sustained in the fight. Foreseeing the effect which would be produced by their reverse in the country they had but lately traversed as conquerors, they halted nowhere, but hastened to re-enter Septimania and their stronghold Narbonne, where they might await reinforcements from Spain. Dukb Eudes, on his side, after having, as vassal, taken the oath of allegiance to Charles, re-entered his dominions of Aqui- tania and Yasconia, and applied himself to the re- establishment there of security. The great Duke of Austrasia strengthened his power by occupy- Charles ing Burgundy and Provence ; he also took care to attract or retain ^piLy A. by rich presents, particularly by gifts of lands, the warriors, old wards the and new "leudes," who formed his strength. He therefore laid '^ ^'^^®^' hands on a great number of the domains of the Church, and gave them, with the title of benefices, in temporary holding, often con- verted into proprietorship, and under the style oi precarious tenure, to the chiefs in his service. There was nothing new in this ; the Merovingian kings and the mayors of the palace had more than once thus made free with ecclesiastical property ; but Charles Martel carried this practice much farther than his predecessors had. He did more \ he sometimes gave his warriors ecclesiastical offices and dignities. Whilst thus making use, at the expense of ^nd to- the Church and for political interests, of material force, Charles church Martel was far from misunderstanding her moral influence, and the need he had of her support at the very time when he was incurring her anathemas. , N^ot content with defending Christianity against Islamism, he aided it against Paganism, by lending the Christian missionaries in Germany and the north-west of Europe, amongst others St. Willibrod and St. Boniface, the most effectual assistance. He also showed himself equally ready to protect, but with as much prudence as good-will, the head of the Christian Church (741) against the Lombards, the Pope's neighbours, who were threatening to besiege Eome ; he wished to do something in favour of the Papacy to show sincere good-will, without making his relations with useful allies subordinate to the desires of the Pope. Charles Martel had not time to carry out effectually with respect A.D. 741 to the Papacy this policy of protection and at the same time of in- p^* , °* dependence; he died at the close of this same year, October 22, 741, MarteL 40 History of France. »t Kiersy-sur-Oise, aged fifty-two years, an'^ ^'= 'aco acr was the least wise of his life. He had spent it entirely in two great •works ; the re-establishment throughout the whole of Gaul of the Franco-Gallo-Roman empire, and the driving back, from the fron- tiers of this empire, of the Germans in the north and the Arabs in the south. Tlie consequence, as also the condition, of this double success was the victory of Christianity over Paganism and Islamism. Charles Martel. endangered these results by falling back into the groove of those Merovingian kings whose shadow he had allowed to remain on the throne. He divided between his tv/o legitimate sons, Pepin, called the Short, from his small stature, and Carloman, this sole dominion which he had with so much toil reconstituted and defended. Pepin had l^eustria. Burgundy, Provence, and the suzerainty of Aquitaine ; Carloman Austrasia, Thuringia, and AUemannia. They both, at their father's death, took only the title of mayor of the palace, and, perhaps of duke. The last but one of the Merovingians, Thierry IV., had died in 737. For four years there had been no king at all. Brought up in the school and in the fear of their father, the two sons of Charles Martel, Pepin and Carloman, were inoculated with his ideas and example \ they remained united in spite of the division of dominions, and laboured togellier, successfully, to keep down, in the north the Saxons and Bavarians, in the south tlie Arabs and Aquitanians, supplying want of unity by union, and pursuing with o]\e accord the constant aim of Charles Martel — abroad the security and grandeur of the Frankisli dominion, at home the cohesion of all its parts and the efficacy of its govern- ment. Events came to the aid of this wise conduct. Five years after the death of Charles Martel, in 746 in fact, Carloman, already weary of the burden of power, and seized with a fit of religious zeal, abdicated his share of sovereignty, left his dominions to his brother Pepin, had himself shorn by the hands of Pope Zachary, and with- drew into Italy to the monastery of Monte Cassino. Policy of Pepin, less enterprising than his father, but judicious, persever- Shor^ ^^S ^^^ capable of discerning what was at the same time necessary and possible, was well fitted to continue and consolidate what he would probably never have begun and created. Like his father, he, on arriving at power, showed pretensions to moderation, or, it might be said, modesty. He did not take the title of king ; and, JR concert with his brother Carloman, he went to seek, heaven knows in what obscure asylum, a forgotten Merovingian, son of Chilperic II., the last but one of the sluggard kings, and made him king, the last of his line, with the title of Childeric III., himself, Pepin the Short, king of the Franks. 41 as well as his brother, taking only the style of mayor of the palace. But at the end of ten years, and when he saw himself alone at the head of the Frankish dominion, Pepin considered the moment arrived for putting an end to this fiction. Having obtained the sanction of Pope Zachary in March, 752, in the presence and with the assent of the general assembly of " leudes " and bishops J^-^- '^^'^• gathered together at Soissons, he was proclaimed king of the claimed Franks, and received from the hand of St. Boniface the sacred l^iJig- anointment. They cut off the hair of the last Merovingian phantom, Childeric III., and put him away in the aionastery of St. Sithiu, at St. Omer. The new Gallo-Frankish kingship and the Papacy, in the name of their common faith and common interests, thus contracted an intimate alliance. Pepin, after he had been proclaimed king and had settled matters with the Church as well as the warlike questions re- maining for him to solve permitted, directed all his efforts towards the two countries which, after his father's example, he longed to reunite to the Gallo-Frankish monarchy, that is, Septi- mania, still occupied by the Arabs, and Aquitaine, the independence of which was stoutly and ably defended by Duke Eudes' grandson, Duke Waifre. The conquest of Septimania was rather tedious than difficult ; in 759, after forty years' of Arab rule, it passed definitively under that of the Franks, who guaranteed to the inhabitants free enjoyment of their Gothic or Roman law and of their local institutions. The conquest of Aquitaine and Vasconia was much more keenly disputed and for a much longer time uncertain ; it was only after nine years' war and seven campaigns full of vicissitudes that Pepin succeeded, not in conquering his enemy in a decisive battle, but in gaining over some servants who betrayed their master. In the month of July, 759, " D.uke Waifre was slain by his own folk, by the king's advice," says Fredegaire ; and the conquest of all Southern Gaul carried the extent and power of the Gallo-Frankish monarchy farther and higher than it had ever yet been, even under Clovis. In 753 Pope Stephen, threatened by Astolphus, king of the A.D.754. Lombards, after vain attempts to obtain guarantees of peace, campaigE repaired to Paris, and asked the assistance of Pepin and his in Italy, warriors. The Franks crossed the Alps with enthusiasm, succeeded in beating the Lombards, and shut up in Pavia King Astolphus, who was eager to purchase peace at any price. He obtained it on two principal conditions : 1st, that he would not again make a hostile attack on Roman territory or wage war against the Pope or A.D. 768. 42 History of France. people of Rome; 2nd, that he would henceforth recognize the sovereignty of the Franks, pay them tribute, and cede forthwith to Pepin the towns and all the lands, belonging to the jurisdiction of the Eoman empire, which were at that time occupied by the Lombards. By virtue of these conditions Kavenna, Eimini, Pesaro, that is to say, the Pomagna, the Duchy of XJ rhino and a portion of the district of Ancona, were at once given up to Pepin, whoj regarding them as his own direct conquest, the fruit of victory, disposed of tbem forthwith, in favour of the Popes, by that famous deed of gift which comprehended pretty nearly what has since formed the Eoman States, and which founded the temporal inde- pendence of the Papacy, the guarantee of its independence in the exercise of the spiritual power. At the head of the Franks, as mayor of the palace from 741, and as king from 752, Pepin had completed in France and extended in Italy the work which his father, Charles ^lartel, had begun and carried on, from 714 to 741, in State and Church. He left France re-united in one and placed at the head of Christian Europe. He died at the monastery of St. Denis, September 18, 768, leaving Death' of' his kingdom and his dynasty thus ready to the hands of his son, Pepin. whom history has dubbed Charlemagne. Pepin the Short committed at his death the same mistake that his father, Charles Martel, had committed ; he divided his dominion between his two sons, Charles and Carloman, thus destroying again that unity of the Gallo-Frankish monarchy which his father and he had been at so much pains to establish. But, just as had already happened in 746 through the abdication of Pepin's brother, events discharged the duty of repairing the mistake of men. After the death of Pepin, and notwithstanding that of Duke Waifre, insur- rection broke out once more in Aquitaine; and the old duke, Hunald, issued from his monastery in the island of Ehe to try and recover power and independence. Charles and Carloman marched against him ; but on the march Carloman, who was jealous and thoughtless, fell out with his brother, and suddenly quitted the expedition, taking away his troops. Charles was obliged to con- tinue it alone, which he did with complete success. At the end of this first campaign, Pepin's widow, the Queen-mother Bertha, reconciled her two sons ; but an unexpected incident, the death of Carloman two years afterwards, in 771, re-established unity more surely than the reconciliation had re-established harmony. Charle- '^^® original and dominant characteristic of the hero of this magne, reign, that which won for him and keeps for him after more than his charac- ^^^ centuries the name of great, is the striking variety of his Charlemagne. — His wars against the Saxons. 43 ambition, his faculties, and his deeds. Charlemagne aspired to, and attained to every sort of greatness, military greatness, political greatness, and intellectual greatness ; he was an able warrior, an energetic legislator, a hero of poetry. And he united, he displayed all these merits in a time of general and monotonous barbarism when, save in the Church, the minds of men were dull and barren. Those men, few in number, who made themselves a name at that epoch, rallied round Charlemagne and were developed under his patronage, A summary of the wars of Charlemagne will here suffice. From 769 to 813, in Germany and Western and Northern Europe, Charlemagne conducted thirty-one campaigns against the Saxons, Frisons, Bavarians, Avars, Slavons, and Danes ; in Italy, five against the Lombards ; in Spain, Corsica, and Sardinia, twelve against the Arabs ; two against the Greeks ; and three in Gaul itself, against the Aquitanians and the Britons ; in all fifty-three expeditions ; amongst which those he undertook against the Saxons, the Lombards, and the Arabs were long and difficult wars. In 772, being left sole master of France after the death of liis ^^- T!^— 803 brother Carloman, he convoked at Worms the general assembly wars' of the Franks, " and took," says Eginhard, " the resolution of against going and carrying war into Saxony. He invaded it without ^'^^S^^^^* delay, laid it waste with fire and sword, made himself master of the fort of Ehresburg, and threw down the idol that the Saxons called Irminsul." It was no longer the repression of Saxon invasions of France, but the conquest of Saxony by the Franks that was to be dealt with ; it was between the Christianity of the Franks and the national Paganism of the Saxons that the struggle was to take place. For thirty years such was its character. Charlemagne regarded the conquest of Saxony as indispensable for putting a stop to the incursions of the Saxons, and the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity as indispensable for assuring the conquest of Saxony. The principal events of the war may thus be summarily enu- merated : — Compulsory baptism of a large number of the Saxons who had been driven beyond the Weser (774) ; diet of Paderborn ; all the chiefs send in their submission except Wittikind (777) ; victories of Badenfeld and of Buckholtz (780) ; slaughter of 4500 rebels at Verden (782) ; submission of Wittikind, who embraced Christianity (785). The conqueror could only finish his work of subjection by removing forcibly from the country tea thousand families, which he disseminated throughout Brabant and Switzerland (803). 44 History of France. A.D. 773. Wars in rtaly. A.D. 778. Charle- magne m Spain. Bonces- valles. This was not, however, Charlemagne's only great enterprise at this epoch, nor the only great struggle he had to maintain. Whilst he was incessantly fighting in Germany, the work of policy commenced by his father Pepin in Italy called for his care and his exertions. The new king of the Lombards, Didier, and the new Pope, Adrian I., had entered upon a new war ; and Didier was besieging Eome, which was energetically defended by the Pops and its inhabitants. In 773 Adrian invoked the aid of the King of the Franks, who, after having married Desiree, the daughter of Didier, had repudiated her, and taken as his wife the Suabian Hildegarde. Charlemagne tried, by means of special envoys, to obtain from the king of the Lombards what the Pope demanded. On Didier's refusal he at once set to work, convoked the general meetings of the Franks, at Geneva, in the autumn of 773, gained them over, not without encountering some objections, to the pro- jected Italian expedition, and forthwith commenced the campaign with two armies. He finally took Pavia, where his father-in-law had shut himself up, received the submission of all the Lombard dukes and counts, save one only, Aregisius, duke of Beneventum, and entered France, leading with him, as prisoner, King Didier, whom he banished to a monastery, first at Liege and then at Corbie, where the dethroned Lombard, say the chroniclers, ended his days in saintly fashion. "Three years afterwards, in 777, the Saracen chief Ibn al- Arabi," says Eginhard, " came to Paderborn in Westphalia, to present himself before the king. He had arrived from Spain, together with other Saracens in his train, to surrender to the King of the Franlcs himself and all the towns which the King of the Saracens had confided to his keeping." For a long time past the Christians of the West had given the Mussulmans, Arab or other, the name of Saracens. Ibn-al-Arabi was governor of Saragossa, and one of the Spanish- Arab chieftains in league against Abdel- Rhaman, the last offshoot of the Ommiad khalifs, who, with the assistance of the Berbers, had seized the government of Spain. Amidst the troubles of his country and his nation, Ibn-al-Arabi summoned to his aid, against Abdel-Ehaman, the Franks and the Christians. Charlemagne accepted the summons with alacrity. With the coming of spring in the following year, 778, and with the full assent of his chief warriors, lie started on his march towards the Pyrenees. This expedition, however, begun under the most biiUiant and favourable auspices, came to a melancholy conclusion, the rear-guard of the Franks being cut to pieces in the passes of Result of Charlemagne's Campaign. 45 Roncesvalles on their return home. This disaster, and the heroism of the warriors who perished there, became, in France, the ohject of popular sympathy, and the favourite topic for the exercise of the popular fancy. The Song of Roland, a real Homeric poem in its great beauty, and yet rude and simple as became its national character, bears witness to the prolonged importance attained in Europe by this incddent in the history of Charlemagne. Four centuries later the comrades of William the Conqueror, marching to battle at Hastings for the possession of England, struck up The Song of Roland " to prepare themselves for victory or death." There is no determining how far history must be made to par- ticipate in these reminiscences of national feeling ; but assuredly the figures of Eoland and Oliver, and Archbishop Turpin, and the pious, unsophisticated, and tender character of their heroism are not pure fables invented by the fancy of a poet, or the credulity of a monk. If the accuracy of historical narrative must not be looked for in them, their moral truth must be recognized in their pourtrayal of a people and an age. Although continually obliged to watch, and often still to fight, Kesults oJ Charlemagne might well believe that he had nearly gained his Charle- ° ° *' ° magne B end. He had everywhere greatly extended the frontiers of the •vtrars Frankish dominions, and subjugated the populations comprised in his conquests. He had proved that his new frontiers would be vigorously defended against new invasions or dangerous neighbours. He had pursued the Huns and the Slavons to the confines of the empire of the East, and the Saracens to the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. The centre of the dominion was no longer in ancient Gaul ; he had transferred it to a point not far from the Ehine, in the midst and within reach of the Germanic populations, at the town of Aix-la-Chapelle, which he had founded, and which was his favourite residence ; but the principal parts of the Gallo- Frankish kingdom, Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy were effectually welded in one single mass. The moral influence of Charlemagne was on a par with his material power ; he had everywhere protected the missionaries of Christianity ; he had twice entered Eome, also in the character of protector, and he could count on the faithful support of the Pope at least as much as the Pope could count on him. He had received embassies and presents from the sovereigns of the East, Christian and Mussidman, from the emperors at Constantinople and the khalifs at Bagdad. Everywhere, in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia, he was feared and respected by kings and people. Such, at the close of the eighth century were, so far as he was concerned, the result of his wars. 46 Histoiy of France, A.D. 800. He is crowned emperor. Charle- magne's govern- ment. of the superior capacity lie had displayed, and of the successes he had ■won and kept. In 799 he received, at Aix-la-Chapelle, news of serious dis- turbances which had broken out at Rome \ he remained all the winter at Aix-la-Chapelle, spent the first months of the year 800 on affairs connected with "Western France ; then journeying towards Italy, he arrived on the 23rd of November, 800, at the gates of Eome. The pope " received him there as he was dis- mounting ; then, the next day, standing on the steps of the basilica of St. Peter and amidst general hallelujahs, he introduced the king into the sanctuary of the blessed Apostle, glorifying and thanking the Lord for this happy event." Some days were spent in examining into the grievances which had been set down to the pope's account, and in receiving two monks arrived from Jerusalem to present to the king, with the patriarch's blessing, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary, as well as the sacred standard. Lastly, on the 25th of December, 800, "the day of the Nativity of our Lord," says Eginhard, " the king came into the Basilica of the blessed St. Peter, apostle, to attend the celebration of mass. At the moment when, in his place before the altar, he was bowing down to pray, Pope Leo placed on his head a crown, and aU the Eoman people shouted, ' Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific Emperor of the Romans ! ' After this proclamation the pontiff prostrated himself before him and paid him adoration, according to the custom estab- lished in the days of the old emperors ; and thenceforward Charles, giving up the title of patrician, bore that of emperor and Augustus." It has just been shown how Charlemagne by his wars, which had for their object and result permanent and well-secured con- quests, had stopped the fresh incursions of barbarians, that is, had stopped disorder coming from without. An attempt will now be made to show by what means he set about suppressing disorder from within and putting his own rule in the place of the anarchy that prevailed in the Roman world which lay in ruins, and in the barbaric world which was a prey to blind and ill-regulated force. A distinction must be drawn between the local and central governments. Par from the centre of the State, in what have since been called the provinces, the power of the emperor was exercised by the medium of two classes of agents, one local and permanent, the other despatched from the centre and transitory. In the first class we find : — Ist. The dukes, counts, vicars of counts, centeniers, sheriffs Charade}'- of Charlemagne s government. 4.y {scahini), officers or magistrates residing on the spot, nominated by the emperor himself or by his delegates, and charged with the duty of acting in his name for the levying of troops, rendering of justice, maintenance of order, and receipt of imposts. 2nd. The beneficiaries or vassals of the emperor, who held of him, sometimes as hereditaments, more often for life, and more often still without fixed rule or stipulation, lands; domains, throughout the extent of which they exercised, a little bit in their own name and a little bit in the name of the emperor, a certain jurisdiction and nearly all the rights of sovereignty. There was nothing very fixed or clear in the position of the beneficiaries and in the nature of their power ; they were at one and the same time delegates and independent, owners and enjoy ers of usufruct, and the former or the latter character prevailed amongst them according to circum- stances. But, altogether, they were closely bound to Charlemagne, who, in a great number of cases, charged them with, the execution of his orders in the lands they occupied. Above these agents, local and resident, magistrates or bene- «< Missi ficiaries, were the missi dominici, temporary commissioners, charged dominici" to inspect, in the emperor's name, the condition of the provinces ; authorized to penetrate into the interior of the free lands as well as of the domains granted with the title of benefices ; having the right to reform certain abuses, and bound to render an account of all to their master. The missi dominici were the principal instru- ments Charlemagne had, throughout the vast territory of his empire, of order and administration. As to the central government, setting aside for a moment the General personal action of Charlemagne and of his counsellors, the general assemblies assemblies, to judge by appearances and to believe nearly all the modern historians, occupied a prominent place in it. They were, in fact, during his reign, numerous and active; from the year 776 to the year 813 we may count thirty-fivo of these national assem- blies, March-parades and May-parades, held at Worms, Valen- ciennes, Geneva, Paderborn, Aix-la-Chapelle, Thionville, and several other towns, the majority situated round about the two banks of the Rhine. The number and periodical nature of these great political reunions are undoubtedly a noticeable fact. What, went on in their midst? What character and weight must be then, attached to their intervention in the government of the State? Two striking facts are to be gathered from contemporary docu- ments : the first, that the majority of the members composing these assemblies probably regarded as a burden the necessity for being 48 History of France. present at fhem, since Charlemagne took care to explain thbir con- vocation by declaring to them the motive for it and by always giving them something to do ; the second, that the proposal of the capitularies, or, in modern phrase, the initiative proceeded from the emperor; the figure of Charlemagne alone fills the picture — he is the centre-piece of it and the soul of every thing. 'Tis he who wills that the national assemblies should meet and deliberate ; 'tis he who inquires into the state of the country ; 'tis he who proposes and approves of, or rejects the laws ; with him rests will and motive, initiative and decision. He has a mind sufficiently judicious, unshackled, and elevated to understand that the nation ought not to be left in darkness about its affairs, and that he himself has need of communicating with it, of gathering information from it, and of learning its opinions. But we have here no exhibition of great political liberties, no people discussing its interests and its business, interfering effectually in the adoption of resolutions, and, in fact, taking in its government so active and decisive a part as to have a right to say that it is self-governing, or, in other words, a free people. It is Charlemagne, and he alone who governs ; it is absolute government marked by prudence, ability, and grandeur. What he was in his wars and his general relations with his nation has just been seen ; he shall now be exhibited in all his adminis- trative activity and his intellectual life, as a legislator and as a friend to the human mind. The same man will be recognized in every case; he will grow in greatness, without changing, as he appears under his various aspects. Capitula- There are often joined together, under the title of Capitularies (capitula, small chapters, articles) a mass of Acts, very different in point of dates and objects, which are attributed indiscriminately to Charlemagne. This is a mistake. The Capitularies are the laws or legislative measures of the Frankish kings, Merovingian as well as Carlovingian. Those of the Merovingians are few in number and of slight importance, and amongst those of the Carlovingians, which amount to 152, 65 only are due to Charlemagne. When an attempt is made to classify these last according to their object, it is impossible not to be struck with their incoherent variety ; and several of them are such as we should now-a-days be surprised to meet with in a code or in a special law. Amongst Charlemagne's 65 Capitidaries, which contain 1151 articles, may be counted 87 of moral, 293 of political, 130 of penal, 110 of civil, 85 of religious, 305 of canonical, 73 of domestic, and 12 of incidental legislation. And it must not be supposed that all these articles are really acts of legislation, laws properly so called ; we find amongst them the ries. Charlemagne a Legislator and a Scholar. 49 texts of ancient national laws revised and promulgated afresh; extracts from and additions to these same ancient laws, Salic, Lom- bard, and Bavarian ; extracts from acts of councils ; instructions given by Charlemagne to his envoys in the provinces ; questions that he proposed to put to the bisliops or counts when they came to the national assembly ; answers given by Charlemagne to ques- tions addressed to him by the bishops, counts, or commissioners (missi dominici) ; jxidgments, decrees, royal pardons, and -simple notes that Charlemagne seems to have had written down for himself alone, to remind him of what he proposed to do ; in a word, nearly all the various acts which could possibly have to be framed by an earnest, far-sighted, and active government. It is noticeable that the majority of Charlemagne's Capitularies belong to that epoch of his reign when he was Emperor of the West, when he was invested with all the splendour of sovereign powei'. Of the 65 Capitularies classed under different heads, 13 only are previous to the 25th of December, 800, the date of his coronation as emperor at Eome; 52 are comprised between the years 801 and 804. The energy of Charlemagne as a Avarrior and a politician having CharJe- thus been exhibited, it remains to say a few words about his intel- ™^^,^® ^ lectual energy. For that is by no means the least original or least tual cha grand feature of his character and his influence. Those amongst '^*^^^'''^- his habitual advisers whom he did not employ at a distance formed, in his immediate neighbourhood, a learned and industrious society, a school of the palace, according to some modern commentators, but an academy and not a school, according to others, devoted rather to conversation than to teaching. It probably fulfilled both missions ; it attended Charlemagne at his various residences, at one time working for him at questions he invited them to deal with, at another giving to the regular components of his court, to his children and to himself, lessons in the different sciences called liberal, grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, geometry, and even theology and the great religious problems it was beginning to discuss. Two men, Alcuin and Eginhard, have remained justly celebrated in the literary history of the age. Alcuin was the principal director of the school of the palace, and the favourite, the confidant, the learned adviser of Charlemagne. " If your zeal were imitated," said he one day to the emperor, " perchance one might see arise in France a new Athens, far more glorious than the ancient — the Athens of Christ." Eginhard, who was younger, received his scientific education in the school of the palace, and JO History of France. Theschool '^'^'^^ liead of the public works to Charlemagne, Ijefore hecoming his of tlia biographer, and, at a later period, the intimate adviser of his son pa ace. Louis the Debonnair. Other scholars of the school of the palace, Angilbert, Leidrade, Adalhard, Agobard, Theodulph, were abbots of St. Eiquier or Corbie, archbishops of Lyons, and bishops of Orleans. They had all assumed, in the school itself, names illus- trious in pagan antiquity; Alcuin called himself Flaccus; Angilbert, Homer; Theodulph, Pindar. Charlemagne himself had been pleased to take, in their society, a great name of old, borrowed from the history of the Hebrews— he called himself David ; and Eginhard, animated, no doubt, by the same sentiments, was Bezaleel, that nephew of Moses to whom God had granted the gift of knowing how to work skilfully in wood and all the materials which served for the construction of the ark and the tabernacle. Either in the lifetime of their royal patron or after his death all these scholars became great dignitaries of the Church, or ended their lives in monasteries of note ; but, so long as they lived, they served Charlemagne or his sons not only with the devotion of faithful advisers, but also as followers proud of the master who had known how to do them honour by making use of them. It was without effort and by natural sympathy that Charlemagne had inspired them with such sentiments ; for he too really loved sciences, literature, and such studies as were then possible, and he cultivated them on his own account and for his own pleasure, as a sort of conquest. He caused to be commenced, and, perhaps, himself commenced the drawing up of the first Germanic grammar. He ordered that the old barbaric poems, in which the deeds and wars of the ancient kings were celebrated, should be collected for posterity. He gave Germanic names to the twelve months of the year. He distinguished the winds by twelve special terms, whereas before his time they had but four designations. He paid great attention to astronomy. In theological studies and discussions he exhibited a particular and grave interest ; he also paid zealous at- tention to the instruction of the clergy, whose ignorance he deplored; he laid the foundation, in the cathedral churches and the great monasteries, of episcopal and cloistral schools for the education of ecclesiastics, and, carrying his solicitude still farther, he recom- mended to the bishops and abbots that, in those schools, " they 'should take care to make no difference between the sons of serfs and of free men, so that they might come and sit on the same benches to study grammar, music, and arithmetic " [Capitularies of 789, art. 70]. Thus, in the eighth century, he foreshadowed the Death of Cliariemagne. 51 fixtension which, in the nineteenth, was to be accorded to primary instruction, to the advantage and honour not only of the clergy, but also of the whole people. Charlemagne died at Aix-la-Chapelle, on Saturday, the 28th of A.D. 8U January, 814, in his seventy-first year. If we sum up his designs ^'^ath of and his achievements, we find an admirably sound idea and a vain magne. dream, a great success and a great failure. He took in hand the work of placing upon a solid foundation the Frankish Christiaa dominion by stopping, in the north and south, the flood of bar- barians and Arabs, Paganism and Islamism. In that he succeeded: the inundations of Asiatic populations spent their force in vain against the Gallic frontier. Western and Christian Europe was placed, territorially, beyond reach of attacks from the foreigner and infidel. IS.o sovereign, no human being, perhaps, ever rendered greater service to the civilization of the world. Charlemagne formed another conception and made another at- tempt. Like more than one great barbaric warrior, he admired the Eoman empire that had fallen, its vastness all in one, and its powerful organization, under the hand of a single master. He thought he could resuscitate it, durably, through the victory of a new people and a new faith, by the hand of Franks and Christians. With this view he laboured to conquer, convert, and govern. He tried to be at one and the same time Csesar, Augustus, and Con- stantine. And for a moment he appeared to have succeeded ; but the appearance passed away with himself. The unity of the em- pire and the absolute power of the . emperor were buried in his grave. The Christian religion and human liberty set to work to prepare for Europe other governments and other destinies. ■.5^^^j>|'^'H^'Vu'i;,^.nj'!'f. CHAPTER IIL THE CARLOVINGIANS — FEUDAL FRANCE THE CRUSADES. A.D. 814— From the death of Charlemagne to the accession of Hugh Capet, The Carlo- ^^^^ ^^' ^^'^^ ^^^ *" ^^7, thirteen kings sat upon the throne of viagians. France. What then became, under their reign, and in the course of those hundred and seventy- three years, of the two great facts which swayed the mind and occupied the life of Charlemagne 1 What "became, that is, of the solid territorial foundation of the kingdom of Christian France through efficient repression of foreign invasion, and of the unity of that vast empire wherein Charlemagne had attempted and hoped to resuscitate the Eoman empire ? The fate of those two facts is the very history of France under the Carlovingian dynasty ; it is the only portion of the events of that epoch which still deserves attention now-a-days, for it is the only one which has exercised any great and lasting influence on the general history of France, Ilie North- Attempts at foreign invasion of France were renewed very often; Hastings ^^ were tedious to relate or even enumerate all the incursions of the Northmen, with their monotonous incidents. When their frequency and their general character has been notified, all has been done that is due to them from history. However, there are three on which it may be worth while to dwell particularly, by reason of their grave historical consequences, as well as of the dramatic details which have been transmitted to us about them. The Carlovingians. 53 In the middle and during the last half of the ninth century, a chief of the JSTorthmen, named Hastenc or Hastings, appeared several times over on the coasts and in the rivers of France, -with numerous vessels. He penetrated into the interior of the country in Poitou, Anjou, Brittany, and along the Seine ; pillaged the monasteries of Jumieges, St. Yandrille, and St. Evroul ; took possession of Chartres and appeared before Paris, where Charles the Bald, entrenched at St. Denis, was deliberating with his prelates and barr)ns as to how he might resist the Northmen or treat with them. " After long parley with the Abbot of St. Denis," says a Chronicle, " and by reason of large gifts and promises," Hastings consented to stop his cruisings, to become a Christian, and to settle in the countship of Chartres, "which the king gave him as an hereditary possession, Avith all its appurtenances." According to other accounts, it was only some years later, under the young king Louis III., grandson of Charles the Bald, that Hastings was induced, either by reverses or by payment of money, to cease from his piracies and accept in recompense the countship of Chartres. Whatever may have been the date, he was, it is believed, the first chieftain of the Northmen who renounced a life of adventure and plunder, to become, in France, a great landed proprietor and a count of the king's. In November, 885, under the reign of Charles the Fat, after A.T). 88b having, for more than forty years, irregularly ravaged France, the |^^&^ °' Northmen resolved to unite their forces m order at length to obtain possession of Paris, whose outskirts they had so often pillaged without having been able to enter the heart of the place, in the He de la Cite, which had originally been and still was the real Paris. The siege was prolonged throughout the summer ; and when, in November, 886, Cbarles the Fat at last appeared before Paris, " with a large army of all nations," it was to purchase the retreat of the Northmen at the cost of a heavy ransom, and by allowing them to go and winter in Burgundy, " whereof the inhabitants obeyed not the emperor." Some months afterwards, in 887, Charles the Fat was deposed, at a diet held on the banks of the Rhine, by the grandees of Germanic France; and Arnulf, a natural son of Carloman, the brother of Louis III., was proclaimed emperor in his stead. At the same time Count Eudes, the gallant defender of Paris, was elected king at Compiegne and crowned by the Archbishop of Sens. Guy, duke of Spoleto, descended from Charlemagne in the female line, hastened to France, and was declared king at Langres 54 History of France. by tlie "bishop of that town, but returned with precipitation to Italy, seeing no chance of maintaining himscit in his French king ship. Elsewhere, Boso, duke of Aries, became king of Provence, and. the Burgundian Count Eodolph had himself crowned at St. Maurice, in the Valais, king of Trans-juran Burgundy. There was still in France a legitimate Carlovingian, a son of Louis the Stutterer, who was hereafter to become Charles the Simple ; hut "being only a child, he had been rejected or completely forgotten, and, in the interval that was to elapse ere his time should arrive, kings were being made in all directions. Bollo. I^ the midst of this confusion, the Northmen, though they kept at a distance from Paris, pursued in Western France their cruising and plundering. In Eollo they had a chieftain far superior to his vagahond predecessors. When, in 898, Eudes was dead, and Charles the Simple, at hardly nineteen years of age, had been recognized sole king of France, the ascendency of Eollo became such that the necessity of treating with him was clear. In 911 Charles, by the advice of his councillors, and, amongst them, of Eobert, brother of the late king Eudes, who had himself become Count of Paris and Duke of France, sent to the chieftain of the Northmen Franco, archbishop of Eouen, with orders to offer him the cession of a considerable portion of Neustria and the hand of his young daughter Gisele, on condition that he became a Christian, and acknowledged himself the king's vassal. The treaty was made at St. Clair-sur-Epte ; henceforth the vagabond pirates had a country to cultivate and defend ; the Northmen were becoming French. The Sara- The invasions of the Saracens in the south of France were still continued from time to time ; but they did not threaten, as those of the Northmen did in the north, the security of the Gallo-Frankish monarchy, and the Gallo-Eoinan populations of the south were able to defend their national independence at the same time against the Saracens and the Franks. They did so successfully in the ninth and tenth centuries ; and the French monarchy, which was being founded between the Loire, and the Ehine, had thus for some time a breach in it without ever suffering serious displacement. The first of Charlemagne's grand designs, however, the territorial security of the Gallo-Frankish and Christian dominion, was accom- plished. In the east and the north, the Germanic and Asiatic populations, which had so long upset it, were partly arrested at its frontiers, partly incorporated regularly in its midst. In the south the Mussulman populations, which in the eighth century had appeared so near overwhelming it, were powerless to deal it any tens. Louis the Dehonnair. 55 heavy blow. Substantially France was founded. But what "had become of Charlemagne's second grand design, the resuscitation of the Roman empire at the hands of the barbarians that had con- quered it and become Christians? When Louis the Debonnair A.D 814. became emperor, he began his reign by a reaction against the I-o^^^ the excesses, real or supposed, of the preceding reign ; he established at his court, for his sisters as well as his servants, austere regu- lations. He restored to the subjugated Saxons certain of the rights of which Charlemagne had deprived them. He sent out every where his commissioners (inissi dominici) with orders to listen to complaints and redress grievances, and to mitigate his father's rule, which was rigorous in its application and yet insufficient to repress disturbance, notwithstanding its preventive purpose and its watchful supervision. In 817 Louis summoned at Aix-la-Chapelle the general assembly of his dominions; and there, whilst declaring that "neither to those who were wisely-minded, nor to himself, did it appear ex- pedient to break up, for the love he bare his sons, and by the will of man, the unity of the empire, preserved by God himself," he had resolved to share with his eldest son, Lothaire, the imperial throne. Lothaire was in fact crowned emperor ; and his two brothers, Pepin and Louis, were crowned king ; Pepin, over Aquitaine and a great part of Southern Gaul and of Burgundy ; Louis, beyond the Ehine, over Bavaria, and the divers peoplets in the east of Germany." The rest of Gaul and of Germany, as well as the kingdom of Italy, was to belong to Lothaire, emperor and head of the Prankish monarchy, to whom his brothers would have to repair year by year to come to an understanding with him and receive his instructions. Several insurrections burst out in the empire ; the first amongst jnsxirrec- the Basques of Aquitaine; the next in Italy, where Bernard, son tions. of Pepin, having, after his father's death, become king in 812, with the consent of his grandfather Charlemagne, could not quietly see his kingdom pass into the hands of his cousin Lothaire, at the orders of his uncle Louis. These two attempts were easily repressed, but the third was more serious. It took place in Brittany amongst those populations of Armorica who were ex- cessively jealous of their independence, and was quelled with con- siderable difficulty. After the death of Hermangarde, his first wife, Louis iiad married Judith, daughter of Count Welf (Guelf) of Bavaria. In 823 he had, by her, a son, whom he called Charles, and who was hereafter to be known as Charles the Bald. This son became his mother's ruling, if not exclusive passion, and the source of his 56 History of France, father's woes. In 829, during an assembly lield at "Worrng, Louis, yielding to Judith's entreaties, set at naught the solemn act ■whereby, in 817, he had shared his dominions amongst his three elder sons ; and took away from two of them, in Burgundy and AUemannia, some of the territories he had assigned to them, and gave them to the boy Charles for his share. Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis thereupon revolted. Court intrigues were added to family differences ; for ten years scenes of disorder kept repeating them- selves again and again ; rivalries and secret plots began once more between the three victorious brothers and their partisans ; popular feeling revived in favour of Louis ; a large portion of the clergy shared it; finally, in 834, two assemblies, one meeting at St. Denis and the other at Thionville, once more put Louis in possession of the imperial title and power. He displayed no violence in his use of it ; but he was growing more and more irresolute and weak, when, in 838, the second of his rebellious sons, Pepin, king of Aquitaine, died suddenly. Louis, ever under the sway of Judith, speedily convoked at Worms, in 839, once more and for the last time, a general assembly, whereat, leaving his son Louis of Bavaria reduced to his kingdom in eastern Europe, he divided the rest of his dominions into two nearly equal parts, separated by the course of the Meuse and the Ehone. Between these two ])arts he left the choice to Lothaire, who took the eastern portion, promising at the same time to guarantee the western portion to his younger brother Charles. Louis tlie Germanic protested against this partition, and took up arms to resist it. His father, the emperor, set himself in motion towards the Ehine, to reduce him to submission ; but on A.D. 840. arriving close to Mayence he caught a violent fever, and died on Death of the 20th of June, 840, at the castle of Ingelheim, on a little island Debonnair, ^^^ '^^ river. His last acts were a fresh proof of his goodness towards even his rebellious sons, and of his solicitude for his last-born. He sent to Louis the Germanic his pardon, and to Lothaire the golden crown and sword, at the same time bidding him fulfil his father's wishes on behalf of Charles and Judith. A D 843 Charles the Bald was to succeed, Lothaire retaining the imperial Council of dignity ; as a matter of fact the three sons equally aspired to the Verdun. throne. Charles and Louis having united for the purpose of resisting the ambition of their elder brother, defeated him in a terrible battle near the village of Pontenailles, six leagues from Auxerre. The Austrasian influence, till then triumphant in Gaul, perished there for ever (841). The victorious princes subsequently confirmed their union by what is generally called the oatlis of Stras- hui'g, a document regarded as the oldest specimen of the French Fall of the Carlovingians. 57 languaga Finally, in August, 843, the three brothers assembling with their umpires, at Verdun, they at last came to an agreement about the partition of the Frankish empire, save the three countries v.'hich it had been beforehand agreed to except. Louis kept all the provinces of Germany of which he was already in possession, and received besides, on the left bank of the Rhine, the towns of Mayence, Worms, and Spire, with the territory appertaining to them. Lothaire, for his part, had the eastern belt of Gaul, bounded on one side by the Rhine and the Alps, on the other, by the courses of the jNIeuse, the Saone, and the Rhone, starting from Di^jgion the confluence of the two latter rivers, and, further, the country of the Em comprised between the Meuse and the Scheldt, together with P^^^" certain count-ships lying to the Avest of that river. To Charles fell all the rest of Gaul ; Vasconia or Biscaye, Septimania, the Marches of Spain, beyond the Pyrenees, and the other countries of Southern Gaul which had enjoyed hitherto, under the title of the Kingdom of Aquitaine, a special government, subordinated to the general government of the empire, but distinct from it, lost this last remnant of their Gallo-Roman nationality, and became inte- gral portions of Frankidh Gaul, which fell by partition to Charles the Bald, and formed one and the same kingdom under one and the same king. Thus fell through and disappeared, in 843, by virtue of the treaty of Verdun, the second of Charlemagne's grand designs, the resuscitation of the Roman empire by means of the Frankish and Christian masters of Gaul. The name of emperor still retained a certain value in the minds of the people and still remained an object of ambition to princes; but the empire was completely abolished, and, in its stead, sprang up three kingdoms, independent one of another, without any necessary connexion or relation. One of the three "was thenceforth France. ^one of Charlemagne's successors was capable of exercising on p^jj ^f 'q^^ the events of his time, by virtue of his brain and hia own will, any Carlovin- notable influence. Xct that they were all unintelligent, or timid, ^^^"*' or indolent. It has been seen that Louis the Debonnair did not lack virtues and good intentions ; .and Charles the Bald was clear- sighted, dexterous, and energetic : he had a taste for information and intellectual distinction ; he liked and sheltered men of learning and letters, and to such purpose that, instead of speaking, as under Charlemagne, of the scJiool of the palace, people called the palace of Charles the Bald the palace of the school. Amongst the eleven kings who after him ascended the Carlovingian throne, several, such as Louis III. and Carloman, and especially Louis 58 History of France. the Ultramarine (d'Outremer) and Lothaire, displayed, on several occasions, energy and courage ; and the kings elected at this epoch, without the pale of the Carlovingian dynasty, Eudes in 887 and Eaoul in 923, gave proofs of a valour both discreet and effectual. The Carlovingians did not, as the Merovingians did, end in monkish retirement or shameful inactivity : even the last of them, and the only on", termed sluggard, Louis V., was getting read\^, when he died, for an expedition in Spain against the Saracens, The truth is that, mediocre or undecided or addle-pated as they may have been, they all succumbed, internally and exter- nally, without initiating, and without resisting, to the course of events, and that, in 987, the fall of the Carlovingian line was the naturally and easily accomplished consequence of the new social condition which had been preparing in France under the empire. Brealjing Twenty-nine years after the death of Charlemagne, that is, in up of the 843, when, by the treaty of Verdun, the sons of Louis of De- thifwest ^o^i^^^ii' ^^^ divided amongst them his dominions, the great empire split up into three distinct and independent kingdoms, the kingdoms of Italy, Germany, and France. The splits did not stop there. Forty-five years later, at the end of the ninth century, shortly after the death of Charles the Fat, the last of the Carlo- vingians who appears to have re-united for a while all the empire of Charlemagne, this empire had begotten seven instead of three kingdoms, those of France, of Navarre, of Provence or Cis-juran Burgundy, of Trans-juran Burgundy, of Lorraine, of Allemannia, and of Italy. The same work was going on in France. About the end of the ninth century there were already twenty -nine provinces or fragments of provinces which had become petty states, the former governors of which, under the names of dukes, counts, marquises, and viscounts, were pretty nearly real sovereigns. Twenty-nine great fiefs, which have played a special part in French history, date back to this epoch. From the end of the ninth pass we to the end of the tenth century, to the epoch when the Capetians take the place of the Carlovingians. Instead of seven. kingdoms to replace the empire of Charlemagne, there were then no more than four. The kingdoms of Provence and Trans-juran Burgundy had formed, by reunion, the kingdom of Aries. The kingdom of Lorraine was no more than a duchy in dispute between Allemannia and France. The Emperor Otho the Great had united the kingdom of Italy to the empire of Allemannia. Overtures had produced their effects amongst the great states ; but in the interior of the kingdom of France dis- Feudal France. 59 mem'berment lias held on its course ; and instead of the twenty-nine petty states or great fiefs observable at the end of the ninth century, we find, at the end of the tenth, fifty-five actually established. Two causes, perfectly natural and independent of all human calculation, led to this dismemberment, one moral and the other political. They were the absence from the minds of men of any general and dominant idea ; and the reflux, in social relations and manners, of the individual liberties but lately repressed or regu- lated by the strong hand of Charlemagne. In the ninth and tenth centuries there was no general and fructifying idea, save the Christian creed ; no great intellectual vent ; no great national feeling ; no easy and rapid means of communication ; mind and life were both confined in a narrow space, and encountered, at every step, stoppages and obstacles well nigh insurmountable. At the same time, by the fall of the empires of Eome and of Charle- magne, men regained possession of the rough and ready individual liberties which were the essential characteristic of Germanic manners : thus, settled upon a soil conquered by themselves, and partitioned amongst themselves, lived each by himself, master of himself and all that was his, family, servitors, husbandmen, and slaves : the territorial domain became the fatherland, and the owner remained a free man, a local and independent chieftain, at his own risk and peril. The consequences of such a state of things and of such a dis- Rise of the position of persons were rapidly developed. Territorial ownership ^^^ became the fundamental characteristic of and warranty for inde- pendence and social importance. Local sovereignty, if not complete and absolute, at least in respect of its principal rights, right of Uiaking war, right of judicature, right of taxation, and right of regulating the police, became one with the territorial ownership, which before long grew to be hereditary, whether, under the title of alleu {allodium), it had been originally perfectly independent and exempt from any feudal tie, or under the title of benefice, had arisen from grants of land made by the chieftain to his followers, on condition of certain obligations. The offices, that is, the divers functions, military or civil, conferred by the king on his lieges, also ended by becoming hereditary. Having become esta- blished in fact, this heirship in lands and local powers was soon recognized by the law ; from the ninth to the teiith century it had acquired full force. Now go back to any portion of French history, and stop where you will, and you will everywhere find the feudal system con- sidered, by the mass of the population, a foe to be fought, and 6o History of France. fouglit doAvn at any price. At all tiiaes, whoever dealt it a blow has been popular in France. Its poll- The reason for this fact is in the political character of feudalism ; racter. ^^ ^^^^ ^ confederation of petty sovereigns, of petty despots, unequal amongst themselves, and having, one towards another, certain duties and rights, but invested in their o^vn domains, over their personal and direct subjects, with arbitrary and absolute power. That is the essential element of the feudal system ; therein it differs from every other aristocracy, every other form of government. Liberty, equality, and tranquillity were all alike wanting, from the tenth to the thirteenth century, to the in- habitants of each lord's domains ; their sovereign was at their very doors, and none of them was hidden from him or beyond reach of his mighty arm ; there was despotism just as in pure monarchies, and there was privilege just as in the very closest aristocracies. And both obtruded themselves in the most offensive and, so to speak, crude form. Despotism was not tapered off by means of the distance and 'elevation of a throne ; and privilege did not veil itself behind the majesty of a large body Both were the appurtenances of an individual ever present and ever alone, ever at his suhjects' doors, and never called upon, in dealing with their lot, to gather his peers around him. Relations And now we will leave the subjects in the case of feudalism, and of tae consider the masters, the owners of fiefs, and their relations one oarons one . . with with another. We here behold quite a different spectacle ; we see aaother. ii]3erties, rights, and guarantees, which not only give protection and honour to those who enjoy them, but of which the tendency and effect are to open to the subject population an outlet towards a better future. The grandeur of the system was neither dazzling nor unapproachable ; it was but a short step from vassal to suzerain ; they lived familiarly one with another, without any possibility that superiority should think itself illimitable, or sub- ordination think itself servile. Thence came that extension of the domestic circle, that ennoblement of personal service, from which sprang one of the most generous sentiments of the middle ages, fealty, which reconciled the dignity of the man with the devotion of the vassal. It was, as it were, a people consisting of scattered citizens, of whom each, ever armed, accompanied by his following, or intrenched in his castle, kept watch himself over his own safety and his own rights, relying far more on his own courage and his own renown than on the protection of the public authorities. Such a condition bears less resemblance to an r-. organized and settled society than to a constant prospect of peri] Feudal France. 6 1 and war : but tlie energy and the dignity of the individual were kept lip in it, and a more extended and better regulated society might issue therefrom. And it did issue. The society of the future was not slow Feudalism to sprout and grow in the midst of that feudal system so turbulent, so oppressive, so detested. ^No sooner was the feudal system in force, than, v/ith its victory scarcely secured, it was attacked in the lower grades by the mass of the people attempting to regain certain liberties, ownerships and rights, and in the highest by royalty labouring to recover its public character, to become once more the head of a nation ; in spite of the servitude into which the people had sunk at the end of the tenth century, from this moment the enfranchisement of the people makes way. In spite of the weakness, or rather nullity of the regal power at the same epoch, from this moment the regal power begins to gain ground. That monarchial system which the genius of Charlemagne could not found, kings far inferior to Charlemagne will little by little make triumphant. Those liberties and those guarantees which the German warriors were incapable of trans- mitting to a well-regulated society, the commonality will regain one after another. Nothing but feudalism could have sprung from the womb of barbarism ; but scarcely is feudalism established when we see monarchy and liberty nascent and growing in its womb. From the end of the ninth to the end of the tenth century, two Struggle of families were, in French history, the representatives and instru- ^^® Roman ments of the two systems thus confronted and conflicted at that Germanic epoch, the imperial, which was falling, and the feudal, which was principles, rising. After the death of Charlemagne, his descendants, to the number of ten, from Louis the Debonnair to Louis the Sluggard, strove obstinately, but in vain, to maintain the unity of the empire and the unity of the central power. \ In four generations, on the other hand, the descendants of Eobert the Strong climbed to the head of feudal France. The former, though German in race, were imbued with the maxims, the traditions and the pretensions of that Eoman world which had been for a while resuscitated by their glorious ancestor ; and they claimed it as their heritage. Tbe latter preserved, at their settlement upon GaUo-Eoman territory, Germanic sentiments, manners, and instincts, and were occupied only with the idea of getting more and more settled and greater and greater in the new society which, was little by little being formed upon the soil won by the barbarians; their forefathers, Louis the Ultramarine and Lothaire were not, we may suppose less personally brave than Eobert the Strong and his son Eudes, 62 History of France. but when tLe Northmen put the Prankish dominions in peril, it was not to the descendants of Charlemagne, not to the emperor Charles the Fat, but to the local and feudal chieftain, to Eudes, count of Paris, that the population turned for salvation ; and Eudes it was who saved them. In this painful parturition of French monarchy, one fact de- serves to be remarked, and that is the lasting respect attached, in the minds of the people, to the name and the reminiscences of the Carloviiigian rule, notwithstanding its decay. It was not alono the lustre of that name and of the memory of Charlemagne which inspired and prolonged this respect ; a certain instinctive feeling about the worth of hereditary monarchy, as an element of stability and order, already existed amongst the populations, and glimpses thereof were visible amongst the rivals of the royal family in the hour of its dissolution. A.D. 987. On the 29th or 30th of June, 987, Hugh Capet was crowned Do^^in^" ^^^S ^y *^® grandees of Frankish Gaul assembled at Senlis, and the dynasty of the Capetians Avas founded under the double in- fluence of German manners and feudal connexions. Amongst the ancient Germans royal heirship was generally confined to one and the same family ; but election w^as often joined with heirship, and had more than once thrust the latter aside. Hugh Capet was head of the family which was the most illustrious in his time and the closest to the throne, on which the personal merits of Counts Eudes and Eobert had already twice seated it. He was also one of the greatest chieftains of feudal society, duke of the country which was already called France, and Count of Paris, of that city which Clovis, after his victories, had chosen as the centre of his do- minions. In view of the Roman rather than Germanic pretensions of the Carlovingian heirs and of their admitted decay, the rise of Hugh Capet was the natural consequence of the principal facts as well as of the manners of the period, and the crowning manifes- tation of the new social condition in France, that is, feudalism. Accordingly the event reached completion and confirmation with- out any great obstacle. The Carlovingian, Charles of Lorraine, vainly attempted to assert his rights ; but, after some gleams of Buccess, he died in 992, and his descendants fell, if not into ob- scurity, at least into political insignificance. In vain, again, did certain feudal lords, especially in Southern France, refuse for some time their adhesion to Hugh Capet. Hugh possessed that in- telligent and patient moderation, which, when a position is once acquired, is the best pledge of continuance. Several facts indicate !A' yr-/^- GERBERT, AFTERWARD POPE SYLVESTER II. The Chtirck 63 that he did not under-estimate the "worth and range of his title of kini^-. At the same time, that by getting his son Eobert crowned wiih him, he secured for his line the next succession ; he also performed several acts which went beyond the limits of his feudal domains and proclaimed to all the kingdom the presence of the king. But those acts were temperate and wise; and they paved the way for the future without anticipating it. Hugh Capet confined himself carefully to the sphere of his recognized rights as well as of his effective strength, and his government remained faithful to the character of the revolution which had raised him to the throne, at the same time that it gave warning of the future progress of royalty independently of and over the head of feudalism. When he died, on the 24th of October, 996, the crowu, which he hesitated, they say, to wear on his own head, passed without obstacle to his son Robert, and the course which was to be followed for eight centuries, under the government of his descendants, by civilization in France, began to develope itself. It is worth while noticing that, far from aiding the accession of the new dynasty, the Court of Rome showed herself favoui'able to the old, and tried to save it without herself becoming too deeply compromised. Such was, from 985 to 996, the attitude of Pope John XVI., at the crisis which placed Hugh Capet upon the Attitude throne. In spite of this policy on the part of the Papacy, the of the French Church took the initiative in the event, and supported the new king ; the Archbishop of Rheims affirmed the right of the people to accomplish a change of dynasty, and anointed Hugh Capet and his son Robert. The accession of the Capetians was a work independent of all foreign influence and strictly national, in Church as well as in State. From 996 to 1108 the first three successors of Hugh Capet, his son Robert, his grandson Henry I., and his great-grandson Philip I., sat upon the throne of France ; and during tliis long space of 112 years the kingdom of France had not, sooth to say, any history. Parcelled out, by virtue of the feudal system, between a multitude of princes, independent, isolated, and scarcely sovereigns in their own dominions, keeping up anything like frequent inter- course only with their neighbours, and loosely united, by certain rules or customs of vassalage, to him amongst them who bore the title of king, the France of the eleventh century existed in little more than name : Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Aquitaine, Poitou, Anjou, Flanders, and Nivernais were the real states and peoples, each with its own distinct life and history. One single event, the Crusade, united, towards the end of the century, those. 64 History of Fi'ance. pected. scattered sovereigns and peoples in one common idea and one com- bined action. A.D. 1000, In A.D. 1000, in consequence of the sense attached to certain world ez- '^o^^s in the Sacred Books, many Christians expected the end of the world. The time of expectation was full of anxieties j when the last day of the tenth and the first of the eleventh centuries were past, it was like a general regeneration ; it might have been said that time was beginning over again ; and the work was com- menced of rendering the Christian world worthy of the future. "Especially in Italy and in Gaul," says the chronicler Eaoul Glaber, "men took in hand the reconstruction of the basilicas, although the greater part had no need thereof." Christian art, in its earliest form of the Gothic style, dates from this epoch ; the power and riches of the Christian Church, in its different institu- tions, received, at this crisis of the human imagination, a fresh impulse. Other facts, some lamentable and some salutary, began, about this epoch, to assume in French history a place which was destined before long to become an important one. Piles of faggots were set up, first at Orleans and then at Toulouse, for the punishment of heretics. The heretics of the day were Manicheans ; at the same time a double portion of ire blazed forth against the Jews. Amongst Christians acts of oppression and violence on the part of the great against the small became so excessive and so frequent that they excited in country parts, particularly in ]N"ormandy, in- surrections which the insurgents tried to organize inio permanent resistance. However, even in the midst of this cruel egotism and this gross unreason of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the ne- cessity, from a moral and social point of view, of struggling against such disgusting irregularities made itself felt and found zealous advocates. From this epoch are to be dated the first efforts to establish, in different parts of France, what was called Godls peace, God's truce. The words were well chosen for prohibiting at the same time oppression and revolt, for it needed nothing less than law and the voice of God to put some restraint upon the barbarous manners and passions of men, great or small, lord or peasant. King Robert always showed himself favourable to this pacific work ; and he is the first amongst the five kings of France, in other respects very different, — himself, St. Louis, Louis XII., A.D. 1031 Henry IV., and Louis XVI., — who were particularly distinguished --1108. for sympathetic kindness and anxiety for the popular welfare. Henry I Though not so pious or so good as Eobert, his son, Henry I., and and his grandson, Philip I., were neither more energetic nor more Philip I. God's truce. The king and the nation. 65 ^(lorious kings. During their long reigns (the former from 1031 to 1060, and the latter from 1060 to 1108) no important and weU- prosecuted design distinguished their government. Their puhlic life was passed at one time in petty warfare, without decisive results, against such and such vassals, at another, in acts of capri- cious intervention in the quarrels of their vassals amongst them- selves. Their home-life was neither less irregular nor conducted with more wisdom and regard for the public interest. In spite of their political mediocrity and tlieir indolent licentiousness, however, Eobert, Henry I., and Philip I. were not, in the eleventh century, insignificant personages, without authority or practical influence; whom their contemporaries could leave out of the account. French ,^^ ^ kingship in the eleventh century was sole power invested with a ship and triple character, Germanic, Eoman, and religious ; its possessors ^^ ^?^' were at the same time the chieftains of the conquerors of the soil, the successors of the Eoman emperors and of Charlemagne, and the lay delegates and representatives of the God of the Christians. Whatever were their weaknesses and their personal short-comings, they were not the mere titularies of a power in decay, and the kingly post was strong and full of blossom, as events were not slow to demonstrate. And as with the kingsnip, so with the community of France in the eleventh century. In spite of its dislocation into petty inco- herent and turbulent associations, it was by no means in decay. Irregularities of ambition, hatreds and quarrels amongst neighbours and relatives, outrages on the part of princes and peoples were incessantly renewed ; but energy of character, activity of mind, indomitable will and zeal for the liberty of the individual were not wanting, and they exhibited themselves passionately and at any risk, at one time by brutal or cynical outbursts which were followed occasionally by fervent repentance and expiation, at an- other by acts of courageous wisdom and disinterested piety. In ideas, events, and persons there was a blending of the strongest contrasts ; manners were rude and even savage, yet souls were filled with lofty and tender aspirations ; the authority of religious creeds at one time was on the point of extinction, yet at another shone forth gloriously in opposition to the arrogance and brutality of mundane passions ; ignorance was profound, and yet here and there, in the very heart of the mental darkness, gleamed bright centres of movement and intellectual labour. It was the period when Abelard, anticipating freedom of thought and of instruction, drew together upon Mount St, Genevieve thousands of hearers anxious to follow him in the study of the great problems of Kuture 66 History of France and of the destiny of man and the world. And, far away from this throng, in the solitude of the ahbey of Bee, St. Anselm was otfering to his monks a Christian and philosophical demonstration of the existence of God — "faith seeking understanding " [fides qu(ere7i8 intelledum), as he himself used to say. It was the period, too, when, distressed at the licentiousness which was spreading throughout the Church, as well as lay society, two illustrious monks, St. Bernard and St. ISTorbert, not only went preaching every where reformation of morals, but laboured at, and succeeded in establishing for monastic life a system of strict discipline and severe austerity. Lastly, it was the period when, in the laic world, was created and developed the most splendid fact of the middle ages, knighthood, that noble soaring of imaginations and souls towards the ideal of Christian virtue and soldierly honour, of ch'^''^ ^^^ ^^® France of the middle ages, though practically crimes and tianity. disorders, moral and social evils abounded, yet men had in their souls and their imaginations loftier j,nd purer instincts and desires ; their notions of virtue and their ideas of justice were very superior to the practice pursued around them and amongst themselves ; a. certain moral ideal hovered above this low and tumultuous com- munity and attracted the notice and obtained the regard of men in whose life it is but very faintly reflected. The Christian re- ligion undoubtedly was, if not the only, at any rate the principal cause of this great fact ; for its particular characteristic is to arouse amongst men a lofty moral ambition by keeping constantly before their eyes a type infinitely beyond the reach of human nature and yet profoundly sympathetic with it. To Christianity it was that the middle ages owed knighthood, that institution which, in the midst of anarchy and barbarism, gave a poetical and moral beauty to the period. It was feudal knighthood and Christianity together which produced the two great and glorious events of those times, the Norman conquest of England and the Crusades. Conquest From the time of Eollo's settlement in Normandy, the commu- hy I he nications of the Normans with England had become more and Normans, more frequent and important for the two countries. The success of the invasions of the Danes in England in the tenth century and the reigns of three kings of the Danish line had obliged the princes of Saxon race to take refuge in Normandy, the duke of which, Eichard I., had given his daughter Emma in marriage to their grandfather, Ethelred II. When at the death of the last Danish king, Hardicanute, the Saxon prince Edward ascended the throne of his fathers, he had passed twenty-seven years of exQe in Nor- mandy, and he returned to England " almost a stranger," in the The Anglo- Saxotis and the Normans. 67 words of the chronicles, to the country of bis ancestors | far more ISTorman than Saxon in his manners, tastes and language, and surrounded by K"ormans, whose numbers and prestige under his reign increased from day to day. A hot rivalry, nationally as well as courtly, grew up between them and the Saxons. At the head of these latter was Godwin, count of Kent, and his five sons, the eldest of whom, Harold, was destined before long to bear the whole brunt of the struggle. Between these powerful rivals Edward the Confessor, a pacific, pious, gentle, and undecided king, wavered incessantly ; at one time trying to resist, and at another compelled to yield to the pretensions and seditions by which he . was beset. Tn 1051 the Saxon party and its head, Godwin, had risen in revolt. Duke William, on invitation, perhaps, from King Edward, paid a brilliant visit to England, where he found N'ormans every where established and powerful, in Church as well as in State ; in command of the fleets, ports, and principal English places. King Edward received him "as his own son; gave him arms, horses, hounds, and hawking-birds," and sent him home fuU of presents and hopes. The chronicler, Ingulf, who accompanied ^ William on his return to Normandy, and remained attached to him as private secretary, affirms that, during this visit, not only was there no question, bet^'^een King Edward and the Duke of Normandy, of the latter's possible succession to the throne of England, but that never as yet had this probability occupied the attention of William. It is very doubtful whether William had said nothing upon the Duke Wil< subject to King Edward at that time ; and it is certain, from u^ioid. William's own testimony, that he had for a long "while been thinking about it. Eour years after this visit of the duke to England, King Edward was reconciled to and lived on good terms with the family of the Godwins. Their father was dead, and the eldest son, Harold, asked the king's permission to go to Normandy and claim the release of his brotlier and nephew, who had been left as hostages in the keeping of Duke William. The king did not approve of the project. " I have no wish to constrain thee," said he to Harold : " but if thou go, it will be without my consent : and, assuredly, thy trip will bring some misfortune upon thee and our country. I know Duke William and his crafty spirit ; he hates thee, and will grant thee naught unless he see his advantage therefrom. The only way to make him give up the hostages will be to send some other than thyself." Harold, however, persisted, and went. William received him with apparent cordiality, promised him the release of the two hostages, escorted him and his F 2 68 History of France. , comrades from castle to castle, and from n^'^ertainTnent lo enter* tainraent, made them knights of the grand ^Norman order, and even invited them, "by way of trying their new spurs," to accompany him on a little warlike expedition he was about to undertake in Brittany. Harold and his comrades behaved gallantly ; and he and William shared the same tent and the same table. On returning, as they trotted side by side, William turned the «;on- versation upon his youthful connexion with the king of England. " Whtn Edward and I," said he to the Saxon, " were living like brothers under the same rOof, he promised, if ever he became king of England, to make me heir to his kingdom ; I should very much like thee, Harold, to help me to realize this promise ; and be assured that, if by thy aid I obtain the kingdom, whatsoever thou askest of me I will grant it forthwith." Harold, in surprise and confusion, answered by an assent which he tried to make as vague as possible. William took it as positive. " Since thou dost consent to serve me," said he, "thou must engage to fortify the castle of Dover, dig a well of fresh water there, and put it into the hands of my men-at arms ; thou must also give me thy sister to be married to one of my barons, and thou must thyself espouse my daughter Adele." Harold, *' not witting," says the chronicler, *• how to escape from this pressing danger," promised all the duke asked of him, reckoning, doubtless, on disregarding his engage- ment ; and for the moment William asked him nothing more. Harold But a few days afterwards he summoned, at Avranches according '"'^fh h *° some, and at Bayeux according to others, and, more probably promises, still, at Bonneville-sur-Touques, his Norman barons ; and, in the midst of this assembly, at which Harold was present, William, seated with his naked sword in his hand, caused to be brought and placed upon a table covered with cloth of gold, two re- liquaries. " Harold," said he, " I call upon thee, in presence of this noble assemblage, to confirm by oath the promises thou didst make me, to wit, to aid me to obtain the kingdom of England after the death of King Edward, to espouse my daughter Adele, and to send me thy sister to be married to one of my people." Harold, who had not expected this public summons, nevertheless did not hesitate any more than he had hesitated in his private conversation with William ; he drew near, laid his hand on the two reliquaries and swore to observe, to the best of his power, his agreement with the duke, should he live and God help. " God help ! " repeated those who were present. William made a sign ; the cloth of gold was removed and there was discovered a tub filled to tie edge with bones and relics of all the saints that could be got Invasion of Englafid. 69 fcogother. The chronicler-poet, Eobert Wace, who, alone and long afterwards, recounts this last particidar, adds that Harold was visibly troubled at sight of this saintly heap ; but he had sworn. It is honourable to human nature not to be indifferent to oaths even when those who exact them have but small reliance upon them, and when he who takes them has but small intention of keeping them. And so Harold departed, laden with presents, leaving William satisfied but not over-confident. Edward the Confessor died on the 5th of January, 1066 ; the very day after the celebration of his obsequies Harold was proclaimed king, amidst no small public disquietude, and Aldred, archbishop of York, lost no time in anointing him. On receiving this unlooked for piece of intelligence "William Harold gathered together his most important and most trusted counsellors ; Proclaimed and they were unanimous in urging him to resent the perjury and injury. He sent to Harold a messenger charged to say, " William, duke of the iN'ormans, doth recall to thee the oath thou swarest to him with thy mouth and with thy hand, on real and saintly relics." " It is true," answered Harold, " that I sware, but on compulsion ; I promised what did not belong to me ; my kingship is not mine own j I cannot put" it off from me without the consent of the countiy. I cannot any the more, without the consent of the country, espouse a foreigner. As for my sister, whom the duke claims for one of his chieftains, she died within the year ; if he will, I wUl send him the corpse." William replied without any violence, claiming the conditions sworn, and specially Harold's marriage with his daughter Adele. For all answer to this summons Harold married a Saxon, sister of two powerful Saxon chieftains, Edwin and Morkar. There was an open rupture ; and William swore that "within the year he would go and claim, .nt the sword's point, payment of what was due to him, on the very spot where Harold thought himself to be most firm on his feet." Dives was the place of assemblage appointed for fleet and army. A.D. 1056 Til. G 1*1 o r™ William repaired thither about the end of August, 1066. But for ^^^^ g^^^, several weeks contrary winds prevented him from putting to sea ; for Eng- some vessels which made the attempt perished in the tempest ; *'^ * and Bome of the volunteer adventurers got disgusted; and deserted. WUliam maintained strict discipline amongst this multitude, forbid- ding plunder so strictly that " the cattle fed in the fields in full security." The soldiers grew tired of waiting in idleness and often in sickness. " Yon is a madman," said they, " who is minded to ]>ospess himself oi another's land ; God is against the design and so refuses us a wind." About the 20th of September the weather JO History of France. Landing at Peven- ■ey. Harold defeats Tostig. etanged. Tho fleet got ready, hni could only go and anchor at St. Yalery, at the mouth of the Sonime. There it was necessary to ■wait several more days ; impatience and disquietude were redoubled; " and there appeared in the heavens a star with a tail, a certain sign of great things to come." William had the shrine of St. Valery brought out and paraded about, being more impatient in his ^oul than any body, but more confident in his will and his good fortune. There was brought to him a spy whom Harold had sent to watch the forces and plans of the enemy; and Willifim dis- missed him, saying, " Harold hath no need to take any cai*e or be at any charges to know how we be and what we be doing ; ho shall see for himself, and shall feel before the end of the year." At last, on the ^Tth of September, 1066, the sun rose on a calm sea and with a favourable wind ; and towards evening the fleet set out. The Mora, the vessel on which William was, and which had been given to him by his wife Matilda, led the way ; and a figure in gtided bronze, some say in gold, representing their youngest son William, had been placed on the prow, with the face towards England. Being a better sailor than the others, this ship was soon a long way ahead ; and William had a mariner sent to the top of the mainmast to see if the fleet were following. " I see naught but sea and sky," said the mariner. William had the ship brought to ; and the second time the mariner said, " 1 see four ships," Before long he cried, " I see a forest of masts and sails." On the 29th of September, St. Michael's-day, the expedition arrived off the coast of England, at Pevensey, near Hastings, and " when the tide had ebbed and the ships remained aground on the strand," says the chronicle, the landing was effected without obstacle ; not a Saxon soldier appeared on the coast. William was the last to leave his ship ; and on setting foot on the sand he made a false step and fell. "Bad sign !" was muttered around him; "God have us in His keeping !" "What say you, lords !" cried William: "by the glory of God I have jrasped this land with my hands ; all that there is of it is ours. - Whilst William wasf making hr the southern coast of England, Harold was repairing by forced marches to the north, in order to defend, against the rebellion of his brother Tostig and the invasion of a Norwegian army, his short-lived kingship, thus menaced, at two ends of the country, by two formidable enemies. On the 25tih of September, 1066, he gained at York a brilliant victory over his northern foe ; and, wounded as he was, he no sooner learnt that Duke William had on the 29th pitched his camp and planted his flag at Pevensey, than he set out in haste for the south. Victory of the Normans. 71 On tLe eve of the battle, the Saxons passed the night in amuse- October 14 Battle Senlac. ment, eating, drinking, and singing, with great uproar ; the ^^**^® °^ ^N^ormans, on the contrary, were preparing their arms, saying their prayers, and " confessing to their priests — all who would," On the 14th of October, 1066, when Duke William put on his armour, his coat of mail was given to him the wrong way. " Bad omen ! *' cried some of his people : " if such a thing had happened to us, we would not fight to-day." " Be not disquieted," said the duke ; " I have never believed in sorcerers and diviners, and I never liked them ; I believe in God, and in Him I put my trust," He as- sembled his men-at-arms, and " setting himself upon a high place, so that all might hear him," he said to them, " My true and loyal friends, ye have crossed the seas for love of me, and for that I cannot thank ye as I ought ', but I will make what return I may, and what I have ye shall have, I am not come only to take what I demanded or to get my rights, but to punish felonies, treasons, and breaches of faith committed against our people by the men of this country. Think, moreover, what great honour ye will have to- day if the day be ours. And bethink ye that, if ye be discomfited, ye be dead men without help ; for ye have not whither ye may retreat, seeing that our ships be broken up and our mariners be here with us. He who flies will be a dead man ; he who fights wUl be saved. For God's sake, let each man do his duty ; trust we in God, and the day will be ours." The address was too long for the duke's faithful comrade, William Fitz-Osbern. " My lord," said he, " we dally ; let us all to arms and forward, forward ! " The army got in motion, starting from the hill of Telham or Heathland, according to Mr. Freeman, marching to attack the English on the opposite hill of Senlac. A x^orman, called Taillefer, " who sang very well, and rode a horse which was very fast, came up to the duke. ' My lord,' said he, ' I have served you long, and you owe me for all my service : pay me to-day, an it please you ; grant unto me, for recompense in full, to strike the first blow in the battle.' * I grant it,' quoth the duke. So Taillefer darted before him, singing the deeds of Charle. magne, of Eoland, of Oliver, and of the vassals who fell at Eoncesvalles." As he sang, he played with his sword, throwing it up into the air and catching it in his right hand ; and the ITormans followed, repeating his songs, and crying, " God help ! God help 1" The English, intrenched upon a plateau towards which the N'or- mans were ascending, awaited the assault, shouting and defying the foe. The battle, thus begun, lasted nine hours with equal obstinacy on both sides, and varied success from hour to hour; it ended, how- J2 History of France. ever, in the defeat of tke English ; their intrenchments were stormed. Harold fell mortally wounded by an arrow which pierced his skull; his two brothers and his bravest comrades fell at his side , the fight was prolonged between the English dispersed and the Nor- mans pursuing ; the standard sent from Eome to the Duke of Kormandy had replaced the Saxon flag ou the very spot where Harold had fallen ; and all around, the ground continued to get covered with dead and dying, fruitless victims of the passions of the combatants. !Next day William went over the field of battle ; and he was heard to say in a tone of mingled triumph and sorrow ** Here is verily a lake of blood ! " There was, long after the battle of Senlac or Hastings, as it is commonly called, a patriotic superstition in the country to the effect that, when the rain had moistened the soil, there were to be seen traces of blood on the ground where it had taken place. Conse- It was not every thing, however, to be victorious, it was still th^^h^tii ii<3cessar3' to be recognized as king. When the news of the defeat ' at Hastings and the death of Harold was spread abroad in the country, the emotion was lively and seemed to be profound ; the great Saxon national council, the Wittenagemote, assembled at London ; the remnants of the Saxon army rallied there ; and search was made for other kings than the Norman duke. Harold left two sons, very young and not in a condition to reign ; but his two brothers-in-law, Edwin and Morkar, held dominion in the north of England, whilst the southern provinces, and amongst them the city of London, had a popular aspirant, a nephew of Edward the Confessor, in Edgar surnamed AtheJing {the nolle, the illustrious), as the descendant of several kings. What with these diff"eient pre- tensions, there was discussion, hesitation, and delay ; but at last the young Edgar prevailed, and was proclaimed king. Meanwliile WiUiam was advancing with his army, slowly, prudently, as a man resolved to risk nothing and calculating upon the natural results of his victory. At some points he encountered attempts at resistance, but he easily overcame them, occupied successively Eomney, Dover, Canterbury, and Rochester, appeared before London without trying to enter it, and moved on Winchester, which was the residence of Edward the Confessor's widow. Queen Editha, who had received that important city as dowry. Through respect for her, William, who presented himself in the character of relative and heir of King Edward, did not enter the place, and merely called upon the in- habitants to take the oath of allegiance to him and do him homage, which they did with the queen's consent. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, many other prelates and laic chieftains, the principal citizens of London, the two brothers-in-law of Harold, TIic Crusades. % 73 Edwin and Morkar, and tlie young king of yesterday, Edgar Atheling himself, having tendered their submission to the conqueror, William entered London, and fixed for his coronation upon D&cem- Christmas-day, December 25th, 1066. Either by desire of the ^^'^^^^ . Corona* prelate himself or by "William's own order, it was not the Arch- tion of bishop of Canterbury, Stigand, who presided, according to custom, Willia at the ceremony ; the duty devolved upon the Archbishop of York, Aldred, who had but lately anointed Edgar Atheling. At the appointed hour, William arrived at Westminsler Abbey, the latest work and the burial-place of Edward the Confessor, The Con- queror marched between two hedges of Norman soldiers, behind whom stood a crowd of people, cold and sad, though full of curiosity. A numerous cavalry guarded the approaches to the church and the quarters adjoining. Two hundred and sixty counts, barons, and knights of Iformandy went in with the duke. Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, demanded, in French, of the Normans, if they would that their duke should take the title of King of the English. The Archbishop of York demanded of the English, in the Saxon tongue, if they would have for king the Duke of Normandy. Noisy acclamations arose in the church and resounded outside. The soldiery, posted in the neighbourhood, took the confused roar for a symptom of something wrong and in their suspicious rage set "fire to the neighbouring houses. The flames spread rapidly. The» people who were rejoicing in the church caught the alarm, and a multitude of men and women of every rank flung themselves out of the edifice. Alone and trembling, the bishops with some clerics and monks remained before the altar and accomplished the work of anointment upon the king's head, "himself trembling," says the chronicle. Nearly all the rest who were present ran to the fire, some to extinguish it, others to steal and pillage in the midst of the consternation. William terminated the ceremony by taking the usual oath of Saxon kings at their coronation, adding thereto, as of his own motion, a promise to treat the English people according to their own laws and as well as they had ever been treated by the best of their own kings. Then he went forth from the church King of England. Amongst the great events of European history none was for a xhe cm longer time in preparation or more naturally brought about than sade*. the Crusades. Christianity, from her earliest days, had seen in Jerusalem her sacred cradle ; it had been, in past times, the home of her ancestors, the Jews, and the centre of their history ; and, afterwards, the scene of the life, death, and resurrection of her Divine Founder. Jerusalem became more and more the Holy 74 i History of France. Condition of the Christians in Palestine. A.D. 1095. Council of Clermont. Peter th« Hermit preaches the cru» City. To go to Jerusalem, to visit the Mount of Olives, Calvary, and the tomb of Jesus, was, in their most evil days and in the midst of their obscurity and their martyrdoms, a pious passion with the early Christians. Events, however, soon rendered the pilgrimage to Jerusalem difificult, and for some time impossible ; the Mussulmans, khalifs of Egypt or Persia, had taken Jerusalem ; and the Christians, native inhabitants or foreign visitors, continued to be oi)pressed, harassed, and humiliated there. At two periods their condition was temporarily better. At the commencement of the ninth century, Charlemagne reached even there with the great- ness of his mind and of his power ; he kept up so close a friend- ship with Haroun-al-Raschid, king of Persia, that this prince preferred his good graces to the alliance of the sovereigns of the earth. Accordingly, when the ambassadors whom Charles had sent, with presents, to visit the sacred tomb of our divine Saviour and the site of the resurrection, presented themselves before him and expounded to him their master's wish, Haroun did not content himself with entertaining Charles's request, he wished, besides, to give up to him the complete proprietorship of those places hallowed by the certification of our redemption, and he sent him, with the most magnificent presents, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. At the end of the same oentury, another Christian sovereign, far less powerful and less famous, John Zimisces, emperor of Constantinople, in a war against the Mussulmans of Asia, penetrated into Galilee, made himself master of Tiberias, Nazareth, and Mount Tabor, received a deputation which brought him tKe keys of Jerusalem, "and we have placed," he says himself, "garris(ms in all the dis- trict lately subjected to our rule," These were but strokes of foreign intervention giving the Christians of Jerusalem gleams of hope rather than lasting diminution of their miseries. However, it is certain that, during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, pilgrimages multiplied and were often accomplished without obstacle. At last the crusading movement was brought about by the preach- ing of an obscure pilgrim, at first a soldier, then a married man and father of several children, then a monk and a vowed recluse, Peter the Hermit, who was born in the neighbourhood of Amiens, about 1050, and who had gone, as so many others had, to Jerusalem **to say his prayers there." In 1095, Pope Urban 11. was at Clermont, in Auvergne, pre- siding at the grand council, at which thirteen archbishops and two hundred and fi.ve bishops or abbots were met together, with so many princes and lay-lords, that " about the middle of the month of November the towns and villages of the neighbourhood were full of Preaching of the Crusade. 75 people, and divers were constrained to have their tents airl pavilions set up amidst the fields and meadows, notwithstanding that the season and the country were cold to an extreme." Tlie first nine sessions of the council were devoted to the affairs of the Church in the West ; but at the tenth Jerusalem and the Christians of the East became the subject of deliberation. The Pope went oat of the church wherein the Council was assembled and mounted a platform erected upon a vast open space in the midst of tlie throng. Peter the Hermit, standing at his side, spoke first, and told the story of his sojourn at Jerusalem, all he had seen of the miseries and humiliations of the Christians, and all he himself had suffered there, for he had been made to pay tribute for admission into the Holy City, and for gazing upon the spectacle of the exactions, insults, and tortures he was recounting. After him Speech ©! Pope Urban II. spoke, in the French tongue, no doubt, as Peter u-jja",?!! had spoken, for he was himself a Frenchman, as the majority of those present were, grandees and populace. He made a long speech, entering upon the most painful details connected with the sufferings of the Christians of Jerusalem, *' that royal city which the Ee- deemer of the human race had made illustrious by His coming, had honoured by His residence, had hallowed by His passion, had pur- chased by His death, had distinguished by His burial. She now demands of you her deliverance .... men of France, inen from beyond the mountains, nations chosen and beloved of God, right valiant knights, recall the virtues of your ancestors, the virtue and greatness of King Charlemagne and your other kings \ it is from you above all that Jerusalem awaits the help she invokes, for to you, above all nations, God has vouchsafed signal glory in arms. Take ye, then, the road to Jerusalem for the remission of 3'^our sins, and depart assured of the imperishable glory which awaits you in the kingdom of heaven." From the midst of the throng arose one prolonged and general Eathu- shout, " God willeth it ! God willeth it ! " The pope paused for *''^'^\l\^ a moment » and then, making a sign with his hand as if to ask for silence, he continued, " If the Lord God were not in your souls, ye would not all have uttered the same words. In the battle, then, be those yoiir war-cry, those words that came from God ; in the army of the Lord let naught be heard but that one shout, * God willeth it ! God willeth it ! ' We ordain not, and we advise not that the journey be undertaken by the old or the weak, or such as be not suited for arms, and let not women set out without their husbands or their brothers ; let the rich help the poor ; nor priests nor clerks may go without the leave of their ^6 History of France. bishops ; and no layman shall commence the march save with tha blessing of his pastor. Whosoever hath a wish to enter upon this pilgrimage let him wear upon his brow or his breast the "cross of the Lord, and let him who, in accomplishment of his desire, shall be willing to march away, place the cross behind him, between his shoulders ; for thus he will fulfil the precept of the Lord, who said, * He that doth not take up his cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me.'" The enthusiasm was general and contagious, as the first shout of the crowd had been ; and a pious prelate, Adhcmar, bishop of Puy, was the first to receive the cross from the pope's hands. It was of red cloth or silk, sewn upon the right shoulder of the coat or cloak, or fastened on the front of the helmet. The crowd dispersed to assume it and spread it. Motives of Religious enthusiasm was not the only, but the first and the de- sades'^'*" tei'mij^iiig motive of the crusade ; we must add to it the still vivid recollection of the evils caused to the Christians of the west by the Mussulman invasions in France, Spain and Italy, and the fear of seeing them begin again. Finally, there was no doubt a great motive power in the spirit of adventure and the love of enterprise which characterize times of intellectual sloth and of partly mono- tonous existence. A.D. 1096. As early as the 8th of March, 1090, and in the course of the dition^^ spring three mobs rather than armies, amounting to three hundred thousand men, set out under the command of Peter the Hermit, Walter the Moneyless and other enthusiasts of the same rank. Pe^er walked at its head, with a rope aV)out his waist, exhibiting every m^'k of monkish austerity ; he took the road to Constantinople, but as no provision was made for the subsistence of the army on its inarch, its disorder was extreme ; being constrained to exist by plunder, it first fell upon the Jews, and twelve thousand of that unfortunate nation were massacred in Bavaria alone, but as all the provinces did not abound in Jews to be robbed, the inhabitants attacked this unprovided body of crusaders, and slaughtered vast numbers ; the remainder at length arrived at Jerusalem, The emperor Alexius Comnenus wisely assisted this formidable rabble to pass the Bosphorus with all convenient speed. As soon as they arrived on the plains of Asia, they were attacked by Soleyman, the Turkish sultan, and the chief part slain almost without resistance. Amongst the leaders fell Walter the Moneyless, who it is said had really acquired a considerable portion oi military skill. Peter the Hermit found his way back to Constantinople, and indeed was afterwards present at the capture o. the Holy Sepulchre. The more The Crusaders at Jerusalem. jj disciplined armies soon after arrived at the Imperial city, under the command of Godfrey of Bouillon, a prince of Brabant; the counts of Yermandois and Toulouse ; Eohert, Duke of Nor- mandy ; Eohert, earl of Flanders ; and various other leaders of dis- tinction. The soldiers of the Cross; when mustered on the banks of the Bosphorus, amounted to the amazing number of one hundred thousand horse and six hundred thousand foot. I^otwithanding the intractable spirit and want of discipline in the Crusaders, yet their zeal, courage and force carried them irresistibly forward to the completion of their enterprise. "With infinite jealousy and alarm, the Greek emperor Alexius Comnenus beheld this mighty host in the neighbourhood of his capital, and his fleet was again put into requisition. The first attempt of the Crusaders was agaiust the ancient city of Nicomedia : assisted by the emperor, they became masters of the place in seven weeks. After crossing the lesser Asia, they defeated Soleyman in the great battle of Doryloeum, and in the month of October besieged Antioch, which, after a siege of incredible labour and difficulty, surrendered to their persevering efforts in the following June (1098). The Crusaders were now reduced to an effective force no greater than twenty thousand foot and fifteen thousand horse, and it was a year from the capture of Antioch before they found themselves in a condition to attack Jerusalem, which city, after siege of five weeks, was taken by storm. On the 14th of July, 1099, at day- A.D. 1099 break, the assault began at divers points ; and next day, Friday, jeru^^iem the 15th of July, at three in the afternoon, exactly at the hour at which, according to Holy Writ, Jesus Christ had yielded up the ghost, saying, " Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit," Jerusalem was completely in the hands of the crusaders. "We have no heart to dwell on the massacres which accompanied the victory so dearly purchased by the conquerors. The historians, Latin or Oriental, set down at 70,000 the number of Mussulmans massacred on the ramparts, in the mosques, in the streets, underground, and wherever they had attempted to find refuge : a number exceeding that of the armed inhabitants and the garrison of the city. Battle- madness, thirst for vengeance, ferocity, brutality, greed, and every hateful passion were satiated without scruple, in the name of their holy cause. "When they were weary of slaughter, " orders were given," says Eohert the monk, " to those of the Saracens who r©» mained alive and were reserved for slavery, to clean the city, remove from it the dead, and purify it from all traces of such fearful carnage. They promptly obeyed ; removed, with tears, the dead; erected outside the gates doad-housee fashioned like citadela or 7 8 History of France^ defensive buildings ; collected m baskets dissevered limbs ; carried thum away, and washed off the blood which stained the floors of temples and houses." Eight or ten days after the capture of Jerusalem, the crusader- chiefs, assembled to deliberate Upon the election of a king of their prize. There were several who were suggested for it and might have pretended to it. Eobert Shorthose, duke of Normandy, gave au absolute refusal, "liking better," says an English chronicler, " to give himself up to repose and indolence in Normandy than to serve as a soldier the King of kings : for which God never forgave him." Eaymond, count of Toulouse, was already advanced, in years, and declared " that he would have a horror of bearing the name of king in Jerusalem, but that he would give his consent to the election of any one else." Tancred was and wished to Godfrey de \yQ only the first of knights. Godfrey de Bouillon the more elected easily united votes in that he did not seek them. He was Jjing. valiant, discreet, worthy, and modest ; and his own servants, being privately sounded, testified to his possession of the Virtues which are put in practice without any show. He was elected King of Jerusalem, and. he accepted the burden whilst refusing the insignia. " I will never wear a crown of gold," he said, " in the place where the Saviour of the world was crowned with thorns." And he assumed only the title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. It is a common belief amongst historians that, after the capture of Jerusalem, and the election of her king, Peter the Hermit entirely disappeared from history. It is true that he no longer A TJ in 1 P^^y®'^ ^^ active part, and that, on returning to Europe, he went Death of into retirement near Huy, in the diocese of Liege, where he founded Peter the a monastery, and where he died on the 11th of July, 1115. But William of Tyre bears witness that Peter's contemporaries were not ungrateful to him, and did not forget him when he had done his work. " The faithful," says he, " dwellers at Jerusalem, who four or five years before had seen the venerable Peter there, re- cognizing at that time in the same city him to whom the patriarch had committed letters invoking the aid of the princes of the West, bent the knee before him, and offered him their respects in all humility. They recalled to mind the circumstances of his first voyage ; and they praised the Lord who had endowed him with eircctual power of speech and with strength to rouse up nations and kings to bear so many and such long toils for love of the a.ime of Christ. Both in private and in public all the faithful at Jerusalem exerted themselves to render to Peter the Hermit the First results of the Crusades, 79 highest honours, and attributed to him alone, after God, their happiness in having escaped from the hard servitude under which they had heen for so many years groaning, and in seeing the holy city recovering her ancient freedom." In the month of August, 1099, the Crusade, to judge "by ap- First re- pearances, had attained its object. Jerusalem was in the hands of cj^g^odes " the Christians, and they had set up in it a king, the most pious and most disinterested of the crusaders. Close to this ancient kingdom were growing up likewise, in the two chief cities of Syria and Mesopotamia, Antioch and Edessa, two Christian prin- cipalities, in the possession of two crusader-chiefs, Bohemond and Baldwin, A third Christian principality was on the point of getting founded at the foot of Libanus, at Tripolis, for the advan- tage of another crusader, Bertrand, eldest son of Count Eaymond of Toulouse. The conquest of Syria and Palestine seemed accom- plished, in the name of the faith, and by the armies of Christian Europe ; and the conquerors calculated so surely upon their fixture that, during his reign, short as it was (for he was elected king July 23, 1099, and died July 18, 1100, aged only forty years), Godfrey de Bouillon caused to be drawn up and published, under the title of Assizes of Jerusalem, a code of laws, which transferred to Asia the customs and traditions of the feudal system, just as they existed in France at the moment of his departure for the ' ■ Holy Land. Forty-six years afterwards, in 1145, the Mussulmans, tinder the Saladin's leadership of Zanghi, sultan of Aleppo and of Mossoul, had retaken sticcessea. Edessa. Forty -two years after that, in 1187, Saladin (Salah-el Eddyn), sultan of Egypt and of Syria, had put an end to the Christian kingdom of Jei-usalem ; and only seven years later, in 1194, Eichard Coeur de Lion, king of England, after the most heroic exploits in Palestine, on arriving in sight of Jerusalem, retreated in despair, covering his eyes with his shield, and saying that he was not worthy to look upon the city which he was not in a condition to conquer. When he re-embarked at St. Jean d'Acre, casting a last glance and stretching out his arms towards the coast, he cried, " Most Holy Land, I commend thee to the care of the Almighty ; and may he grant me long life enough to return hither and deliver thee from the yoke of the infidels ! " A century had not yet rolled by since the triumph of the first crusaders, and the dominion they had acquired by conquest in the Hbly Land had become, even in the eyes of their mokt valiant and most powerful successors, an impossibility. Nevertheleas, repeated elTorts and ^tlory and even victories were 8o History of France. Dot then, and were not to be still later, unlcnown amongst the Christians in their struggle against the Mussulmans for the A.D. 1099 possession of the Holy Land. In the space of a hundred and Seven cru- seventy-one years, from the coronation of Godfrej'^ de Bouillon as sades take king of Jerusalem, in 1099, to the death of St. Louis, wearing the «lace. cross before Tunis, in 1270, seven grand crusades were under- taken with the same design by the greatest sovereigns of Christian Europe ; the Kings of France and England, the Emperors of Germany, the King of Denmark, and princes of Italy successively engaged therein. And they all failed. It was in Erance, by the French people, and under Erench chiefs, that the crusades were begun ; and it was with St. Louis, dying before Tunis beneath the banner of the cross, that they came to an end. They received in the history of Europe the glorious name of Gesta Dei per Francos {God's worJis by French hands) ; and they have a right to keep, in the history of France, the place they really occupied. Causes of During a reign of twenty-nine years, Louis VI., called the Fat, crusade. ^'^^ 0^ Philip I., did not trouble himself about the East or the crusades, at that time in all their fame and renown. Being rather a man of sense than an enthusiast in the cause either of piety or glory, he gave all his attention to the establishment of some order, justice, and royal authority in his as yet far from extensive king- dom. A tragic incident, however, gave the crusade chief place in the thoughts and life of his son, Louis VII., called the Young, ■who succeeded him in 1137. He got himself rashly embroiled, in 1142, in a quarrel with Pope Innocent II., on the subject of the election of the Archbishop of Bourges. The pope and the king had each a different candidate for the see. " The king is a child," said the pope ; "he must get schooling, and be kept from learning bad habits." " Never, so long as I live," said the king, " shall Peter de la Chatre (the pope's candidate) enter the city of Bourges." The chapter of Bourges, thinking as the pope thought, elected Peter de la Chatre ; and Theobald IL, count of Champagne, took sides for the archbishop elect. " Mind your own business," said the king to him ; your dominions are large enough to occupy you ; and leave me to govern my own as I have a mind." Theobald persisted in backing the elect of pope and chapter. The pope excommunicated the king. The king declared war against the Count of Champagne ; and went and besieged Vitry. Nearly all the town was built of wood, and the besiegers set fire to it. The besieged fled for refuge to a church, in which they were invested ; and the fire reached the church, which was entirely consumed, together with the thirteen hundred inhabitants, men, women, ami The Crusades. 8 1 children, who had retreated thither. Then, by way of expiating 60 foul an act of cruelty, Louis the young joined with the Emperor Conrad III. in carrying on the second crusade, which was preached at Vezelay by the abbot of Clairvaux, the celebrated St. Bernard. Having each a strength, it is said, of 100,000 men, the two A.D. 1147. monarchs marched by Germany and the Lower Danube, at an T'lsj^'®^^ •J '' ... arrive at interval of two months between them, without committing irregu- Constantl- larities and without meeting obstacles so serious as those of the nople. lirst crusade, but still much incommoded and subjected to great hardships in the countries they traversed. The Emperor Conrad and the Germans first, and then King Louis and the French arrived at Constantinople in the course of the summer of 1147. ]\ranuel Comnenus, grandson of Alexis Comnenus, was reigning there ; and he behaved towards the crusaders with the same mix- ture of caresses and malevolence, promises and perfidy as had distinguished his grandfather. " There is no ill turn he did not do them," says the historian Nicetas, himself a Greek. Conrad was the first to cross into Asia Minor, and, whether it were unskil- fulness or treason, the guides with whom he had been supplied by Manuel Comnenus led him so badly that, on the 28th of October, 1147, he was surprised and shockingly beaten by the Turks, near Iconium. An utter distrust of Greeks grew up amongst the French, who had not yet left Constantinople ; and some of thei? chiefs and even one of their prelates, the Bishop of Langres, proposed to make, without further delay, an end of it with this emperor and empire, so treacherously hostile, and to take Constan- stinople in order to march more securely upon Jerusalem, But King Louis and the majority of his knights turned a deaf ear; accordingly, they continued their march across Asia Minor and gained in Phrygia, at the passage of the river Meander, so brilliant Passage of a victory OA^er the Turks that, " if such men," says the historian t^® Mean- Nicetas, "abstained from taking Constantinople, one cannot but admire their moderation and forbearance." But the success was short, and, ere long, dearly paid for. On entering Pisidia, the French army split up into two, and afterwards into several I divisions, which scattered and lost themselves in the defiles of the ' mountains. The Turks waited for them, and attacked them at the mouths and from the top of the passes ; before long there was nothing but disorder and carnage ; the little band which surrounded I the king was cut to pieces at his side ; and Louis himself, with his back against a rock, defended himself, alone, for some minutes, 'against several Turks, till they, not knowing who he was, drew oflT, whereupon he, suddenly throwing himself upon a stray horse. 82 History of France. rejoined his advanced guard, who believed hiin dead. The army continued their march pell-mell, king, barons, knights, soldiers, and pilgrims, uncertain day by day what would become of them on the morrow. The Turks harassed them afield ; the towns in which there were Greek governors residing refused to receive them ; provisions fell short ; arms and baggage were abandoned on the road. On arriving in Pamphilia, at Satalia, a little port on the Mediterranean, the impossibility of thus proceeding became evident ; they were still, by land, forty days' march from Antioch, whereas it required but three to get there by sea. Louis embarked with his queen, Eleanor, and his principal knights ; and towards the end of March, 1148, he arrived at Antioch, having lost more than three quarters of his army. a..D. 1148. Raymond of Poitiers, at that time Prince of Antioch, by his Differences marriage with Constance, grand-daughter of the great Bohemond of the kine ^^® ^^^^ crusade, was uncle to the Queen of France, Eleanor of of France Aquitaine. He had at heart, beyond every thing, the conquest of and his Aleppo and Caesarea. In this design the King of France and queen ^'- " ° Eleanor, the crusaders who were still about him might be of real service ; and he attempted to win them over. Louis answered that he would engage in no enterprise until he had visited the holy places. Raymond was impetuous, irritable, and as unreasonable in his desires as unfortunate in his undertakings. He had quickly acquired great influence over his niece, Queen Eleanor ; and he had no difficulty in winning her over to his plans. When the king, her husband, spoke to her of approaching departure, she emphatically refused, and, to justify her opposition, she declared that they could no longer Kve together, as there was, she asserted, a prohibited degree of consanguinity between them. Austere in morals, easily jealous, and religiously scrupulous, Louis was for a moment on the point of separating from his wife ; but the counsels of his chief barons dissuaded him, and, thereupon, taking a sudden resolution, he set out from Antioch secretly, by night, carrying off the queen almost by force. Louis VII. ^^ approachuig Jerusalem, in the month of April, 1148, arrives at Louis VIL saw coming to meet him King Baldwin III., and the Jerusalem, patriarch and the people, singing, " Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord ! " at the same time arrived from Con- stantinople the Emperor Conrad, almost alone and in the guise of a simple pilgrim. All the remnant of the crusaders, French and German, hurried to join them. They decided upon the siege of Siege of iJamascus, the most important and the nearest of the Mussulman oamascas. priiiccd®ms in Syria, and in the early part of June they moved Suger. 83 thither with forces incomplete and illunited. Neither the Prince of Antioch nor the Counts of Edessa and Tripolis had been summoned to St. Jean d'Acre ; and Queen Eleanor had not appeared. At the first attack, the ardour of the assailants and the brilliant personal prowess of their chiefs, of the Emperor Conrad amongst others, struck surprise and consternation into the be- sieged, who, foreseeing the necessity of abandoning their city, laid across the streets beams, chains, and heaps of stones, to stop the progress of the conquerors, and give themselves time for flying^ with their families and their wealth, by the northern and southern gates. But personal interest and secret negotiations before long brought into the Christian camp weakness together with discord ; finally the crusader- sovereigns raised the siege, and returned to Jerusalem, The Emperor Conrad, in indignation and confusion, set out precipitately to return to Germany. King Louis could not make up his mind thus to quit the Holy Land in disgrace and without doing any thing for its deliverance. He prolonged his stay there for more than a year without any thing to show for his time and zeal ; urged, however, by the repeated entreaties of his minister Suger, he at length made up his mind, embarked at St. Jean d'Acre at the commencement of July, 1149; and dis- AD, 1149 embarked in the month of October at the port of St. Gilles, at the Louis VIl! mouth of the Ehone. returns to This preference and this confidence were no more than Louis VII. a'^D°1082 owed to Suger. The Abbot of St. Denis, after having opposed — 1152. the crusade with a freedom of spirit and a farsightedness unique, g'^^^v perhaps, in his times, had, during the king's absence, borne the racter weight of government with a political tact, a firmness and a dis- interestedness rare in any times. He had upheld the authority of absent royalty, kept down the pretensions of vassals, and established some degree of order wherever his influence could reach ; he had provided for the king's expenses in Palestine by good adminis- tration of the domains and revenues of the crown ; and, lastly, he had acquired such renown in Europe, that men came from Italy and from England to view the salutary effects of his government, and that the name of Solomon of his age was conferred upon him by strangers, his contemporaries. With the exception of great sovereigns, such as Charlemagne or William the Conqueror, only great bishops or learned theologians, and that by their influence in the Church, or by their writings, had obtained this European reputation ; from the ninth to the twelfth century, Suger was the first man who attained to it by the sole merit of his political .conduct, and who offered an example of a minister justly admired, / ^or his ability and wisdom, beyond the circle in which he moved. G 2 84 History of France. He died in 1152, aged seventy, and "thanking tlie Almighty," says his biographer, "for having taken him to Him, not suddenly but little by little, in order to bring him step by step to the rest needful for the weary man." It is said that, in his last days and when St. Bernard was exhorting him not to think any more save only of the heavenly Jerusalem, Suger still expressed to him his regret at dying without having succoured the city which was so dear to them both. Council of Almost at the very moment when Suger was dying, a French Beaugency council, assembled at Beaugency, was annulling, on the ground of prohibited consanguinity, and with the tacit consent of the two persons most concerned, the marriage of Louis VII. and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Some months afterwards, at Whitsuntide in the same year, Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, espoused Eleanor, thus adding to his already great pos- sessions Poitou and Aquitaine, and becoming, in France, a vassal more powerful than the king his suzerain. Twenty months later, in 1154, at the death of King Stephen, Henry Plantagenet became King of England ; and thus there was a recurrence, in an aggravated form, of the position which had been filled by William the Con- queror, and which was the first cause of rivalry between France and England and of the consequent struggles of considerably more than a century's duration. A.D. 1153. Little more than a year after Suger, on the 20th of April, 1153, St.Bemard. S*"* Bernard died also. The two great men, of whom one had excited and the other opposed the second crusade, disappeared to- gether from the theatre of the world. The crusade had completely failed. After a lapse of scarce forty years, a third crusade began. A.D. 1187. I^ *^e course of the year 1187, Europe suddenly heard tale upoii Battle of tale about the repeated disasters of the Christians in Asia. On the 1st of May, the two religious and warlike orders which had been founded in the East for the defence of Christendom, the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem and the Templars, lost, at a brush in Galilee, 500 of their bravest knights. On the 3rd and 4th of July, near Tiberias, a Christian army was surrounded by the Saracens, and also, ere long, by the fire which Saladin had Jerusalem ordered to be set to the dry grass which covered the plain. Four to^SaUdin* days after, on the 8th of July, 1187, Saladin took possession of St. Jean d'Acre, and, on the 4th September following, of Ascalon. Finally, on the 18th of September, he laid siege to Jerusalem, wherein refuge had been sought by a multitude of Christian families driven from their homes by the ravages of the infidels throughout Palestine ; and the Holy City contained at this time,^ it is said, nearly 100,000 Christians. The capitulation soonV The Kings of France and of England take the Cross. 85 followed, and all Cliristians, however, with the exception of Greeks and Syrians, had orders to leave Jerusalem within four days. The news of this terrible event, spreading through Europe, caused amongst all classes there, high and low, a deep feeling of sorrow, anger, disquietude, -and shame. After the capture of Jerusalem by a.D 1188. Saladin, the Christians of the East, in their distress, sent to the ^ ^^^ '^r^' ■ S9.d6 is dC" West their most eloquent prelate and gravest historian William, termined arcbbishop of Tyre, who, fifteen years before, in the reign of on. Baldwin IV., had been Cbancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem. He, accompanied by a legate of Pope Gregory VIIL, scoured Italy, France, and Germany, recounting every where the miseries of the Holy Land, and imploring the aid of all Christian princes and peoples, wbatever might be tbeir own position of affairs and their own quarrels in Europe. At a parliament assembled ;it Gisors, on the 21st of January, 1188, and at a diet convoked at Mayence on tbe 27th of March following, be so powerfully affected the knight- hood of France, England, and Germany, that the tliree sovereigns of these three States, Philip Augustus, Richard Coeur de Lion, and Frederick Barbarossa, engaged with acclamation in a new crusade. The eldest, Frederick Barbarossa, was first ready to plunge amongst the perils of the crusade. Starting from Ratisbonne about Christmas, AD. 1189, 1189, with an army of 150,000 men, he traversed the Greek em- B^^bariSa pire and Asia Minor, defeated the Sultan of Iconium, passed the starts first, first defiles of Taurus, and seemed to be approacliing the object of his voyage when, on the 10th of June, 1190, having arrived at the borders of the Selef, a small river which throws itself into the Mediterranean close to Seleucia, he determined to cross it by fording, was seized with a chill and, according to some, drowned before his people's eyes, but, according to others, carried dying to Seleucia, where he expired. His young son Conrad, duke of Suabia, was not equal to taking the command of such an army j and it broke up. On the 24th of June, 1190, Philip Augustus went and took the a.D. 1190 oriflamme at St. Denis, on his way to Vezelai, where he had ap- ^^^i^ip pointed to meet Richard, and whence the two kings, in fact, set and out, on the 4th of July, to embark with their troops, Philip at Kichard Genoa, and Richard at Marseilles, They had agreed to touch ° ^^• nowhere until they reached Sicily, where Philip was the first to arrive, on the 16th of September; and Richard was eight days later. But, instead of simply touching, they passed at Messina all the autumn of 1190 and all the winter of 1190-91, no longer seeming to think of any thing but quarrelling and amusing them- 86 History of France. pelves. Nor were grounds for quarrel or oyiportunities for amuse- ments far to seek. Richard, in spite of his promise, was unwilling to marry the Princess Alice, Philip's sister; and Philip, after lively discussion, would not agree to give him back his word, save "in consideration of a sum of 10,000 silver marks, whereof he shall pay us 3000 at the feast of All Saints, and year by year in succession, at this same feast." ITaturally independent, and dis- posed to act, on every OQcasion, according to his own ideas, Philip resolved, not to break with Richard, but to divide their commands, and separate their fortunes. On the approach of spring, 1191, he announced to him that the time had arrived for continuing their pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and that, as for himself, he was quite ready to set out. " I am not ready," said Richard ; " and I cannot depart before the middle of August." Philip, after some discus- sion, set out alone, with his army, on the 30th of March, and on the 14th of April arrived before St. Jean dAcre. This important place, of which Saladin had made himself master nearly four jears before, was being besieged by the last King of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, at the head of the Christians of Palestine, and by a multitude of crusaders, Genoese, Danish, Flemish, and German who had flocked freely to the enterprise. A strong and valiant Mussulman garrison was defending St. Jean dAcre. Saladin manoeuvred incessantly for its relief, and several battles had already been fought beneath the walls. When the King of France arrived, "he was received by the Christians besieging," say the chronicles of St. Denis, "with supreme joy, as if he were an angel come down from heaven." Philip set vigorously to work to push on the siege; but, at his departure he had promised Richard not to deliver the grand assault until they had formed a junction before the place with all their forces. Richard, who had set out from Messina at the beginning of May, though he had said that he would not be ready till August, lingered again on the way to reduce the island of Cyprus, and to celebrate there his marriage with Berengaria of Navarre, in lieu of Alice of France. At last he arrived, on the 7th of June, before St. Jean d'Acre ; and several assaults in suc- cession were made on the place with equal determination on the A.D. 1191 part of the besiegers and the besieged. On the 13th of July 1191, Taking of j^^ %^\iQ of the energetic resistance offered by the garrison, which 4' Acre, defended itself "as a lion defends his blood-stained den," St. Jean d'Acre surrendered. The terms of capitulation stated that 200,000 pieces of gold should be paid to the chiefs of the Christian army ; that 1600 prisoners and the wood of the true cross should be given up tc them ; and that the garrison as well as all the people of the Results of the Crivjades. 8/ town should remain in the conquerors' power, pending full execu- tion of the treaty. Philip Augustus returned to France after the capture of St, Jean A.p. 1191, d'Acre, because he considered the ultimate success of the crusade Augustus impossible, and his return necessary for the interests of France and returns to for his own. He was right in thus thinking and acting ; and King ^^^^^ Eichard, when insultingly reproaching him for it, did not foresee that a year later he would himself be doing the same thing, and would give up the crusade without having obtained any thing more for Christendom except fresh reverses. On the 31st of July, 1191, Philip, leaving with the array of the crusaders, 10,000 foot and 500 knights, under the command of Duke Hugh of Burgundy, who had orders to obey King Richard, set sail for France ; and, a few days after Christmas in the same year, landed in his kingdom, and forthwith resumed, at Fontaine- bleau according to some, and at Paris according to others, the Besults oi regular direction of his government. Thus ended the third crusade, *^® t^,^^d undertaken by the three greatest sovereigns and the three greatest armies of Christian Europe, and with the loudly proclaimed object of retaking Jerusalem from the infidels and re-establishing a king over the sepulchre of Jesus Christ. The Emperor Frederick Bar- barossa perished in it before he had trodden the soil of Palestine. King Pliilip Augustus retired from it voluntarily, so soon as ex- perience had foreshadowed to him the impossibility of success. King Eichard abandoned it perforce, after having exhausted upon it his heroism and his knightly pride. The three armies, at the moment of departure from Europe, amounted, according to the historians of the time, to 500,000 or 600,000 men, of whom scarcely 100,000 returned j and the only result of the third crusade was to leave as head over all the most beautiful provinces of Mus- sulman Asia and Africa, Saladin, the most illustrious and most able chieftain, in war and in politics, that Islamry had produced since Mahomet. From the end of the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth Eemainiug century, between the crusade of Philip Augustus and that of Saint e^^P^di. Louis, it is usual to count three crusades, over which we will not the Holy linger. Two of these crusades, one, from 1195 to 1198, under Land. Henry VI., emperor of Germany, and the other, from 1216 to 1240, under the Emperor Frederick II. and Andrew II., king of Hungary, are unconnected with France and almost exclusively German, or, in origin and range, confined to Eastern Europe. They led, in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, to wars, negotiations, and manifold compli- cations ; Jerusalem fell once more, for a while, into the hands of 8S History of France. the Christians; and there, on the 18th of March, 1229, in the church of the Eesurrection, the Emperor Frederick II., at that time excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX., placed with his own hands the royal crown upon his head. But these events, confused, dis- connected and short-lived as they were, did not produce in the West, and especially in France, any considerable reverberation, and did not exercise upon the relative situations of Europe and Asia, of Christendom and Tslamry, any really historical influence. The expedition which led to the conquest of Constantinople and to the foundation (1204) of a Latin empire in the East so far interests Frenchmen, that it was a Frenchman, Geoffrey de Ville- hai-douin, seneschal of Theobald III., count of Champagne, who, after having been one of the chief actors in it, wrote the history of it ; and his work, strictly historical as to facts, and admirably epic in description of character and warmth of colouring, is one of the earliest and finest monuments of French literature. A. D. 1215. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, whilst the enter- His^^cha-' P^'^^^^ which were still called crusades were becoming more and racter. more degenerate in character and potency, there was born in France, on the 25th of April, 1215, not merely the prince, but the man who was to be the most worthy reprosentative and the most de- voted slave of that religious and moral passion which had inspired the crusades. Louis IX., though born to the purple, a powerful king, a valiant warrior, a splendid knight, and an object of reverence to all those who at a distance observed his life, and of affection to all those who approached his person, was neither biassed nor in- toxicated by any such human glories and delights ; neither in his thoughts nor in his conduct did they ever occupy the foremost place ; before all and above all he wished to be, and was indeed, a Christian, a true Christian, guided and governed by the idea and the resolve of defending the Christian faith and fulfilling the Christian law. Had he been born in the most lowly condition, as the world holds, or, as religion, the most commanding; had he been obscure, needy, a priest, a monk, or a hermit, he could not have been more constantly and more zealously filled with the desire of living as a faithful servant of Jesus Christ, and of ensuring, by pious obedience to God here, the salvation of his soul hereafter. This is the peculiar and original characteristic of St. Louis, and a fact rare and probably unique in the history of kings. (He was canonized on the 11th of August, 1297 ; and during twenty-four j^ears nine successive popes 'had prosecuted the customary inquiries as to his faith and life.) In the first years of his government, Avhen he had reached Lis majority, there was nothing to show that the idea of the crusade Loids IX. 89 occnpied Louis TX.'s mind; and it was only in 1289, when he was now four and twentj'-, that it showed itself vividly in him. Some of his principal vassals, the Counts of Champagne, Brittany, and Macon had raised an army of crusaders, and were getting ready to start for Palestine ; and the king was not contented with giving them encouragement, hut "he desired that Amaury de Montfort, his constable, should, in his name, serve Jesus Christ in this war ; and for that reason he gave his arms and assigned to him per day a sum of money for which Amaiiry thanked him on his knees, that is, did him homage, according to the usage of those times. And the crusaders were mighty pleased to have this lord with them." Five years afterwards, at the close of 1244, Louis fell seriously Illness oi 01 at Pontoise, and having recovered, took the cross in consequence of a vow he had made to that effect. The crusades, however, although they still remained an object of religious and knightly aspiration, were from the political point of view decried ; and, without daring to say so, many men of weight, lay or ecclesiastical, had no desire to take part in them. Under the influence of this public feeling, timilly exhibited but seriously cherished, Louis con- tinued, for three years, to apply himself to the interior concerns of his kingdom and to his relations with the Eurojjean powers, as if he had no other idea. At last, in June, 1248, after having received at St Denis, together Avith the oriflamme, the scrip and staff of a pilgrim, he took leave, at Corbeil or Cluny, of his mother, Queen A.B. 1248. Blanche, whom he left regent during his absence, with the fullest fQj. ^^^ powers. " Most sweet fair son," said she, embracing him, " fair Crusade, tender son, I shall never see you more ; full well my heart assures me." He took with him Queen Marguerite of Provence, his wife, who had declared that she would never part from him. On arriving in the early part of August at Aigues-Mortes, he found assembled there a fleet of thirt)''-eight vessels with a certain number of trans- port-ships which he had hired from the republic of Genoa ; and they were to convey to the East the troops and personal retinue of the king himself. The number of these vessels proves that Louis was far from bringing one of those vast armies with which the first crusades had been familiar ; it even appears that he had beeu careful to get rid of such mobs, for, before embarking, he sent away nearly ten thousand bowmen, Genoese, Venetian, Pisan, and even French, whom he had at first engaged, and of whom, after inspection, he desired nothing further. The sixth crusade was the personal achievement of St. Louis, not the offspring of a popular movement, and he carried it out with a picked army, furnished by the feudal 90 History of France. chivalry nnd by the religious and military orders dedicated to the service of tlie Holy Land. Arrives at The Isle of Cyprus was the trysting-place appointed for all the forces of the expedition. Louis arrived there on the 12th of September, 1248, and reckoned upon remaining there only a few days ; for it was Egypt that he was in a hurry to reach. The French, however, left the island only in May, 1249, and, in spite of violent gales of wind, which dispersed a large number of vessels, A.D. 1249. ^^6y arrived on the 4th of June before Damietta, which was taken Lands at without the least difficulty. St. Louis and the crusaders unfor- tunately committed the same fault there as in the Isle of Cyprus : they halted there for an indefinite time. They were expecting fresh crusaders ; and they spent the time of expectation in quarrelling over the partition of the booty taken in the city. At length, on the 20th of November, 1249, after more than five months' inactivity at Damietta, the crusaders put themselves once more in motion, with the determination of marching upon Babylon, that outskirt of Cairo, now called Old Cairo, which the greater part of them, in their ignorance, mistook for the real Babylon, and where they flattered themselves they would find immense riches and avenge the olden sufferings of the Hebrew captives. The Mussulmans had found time to recover from their first fright and A.D. 1250. to organize, at all points, a vigorous resistance. On the 8th of Mansourah February, 1250, a battle took place twenty leagues from Damietta, at Mansourah (the city of victory), on the right bank of the Nile. The king's brother, Robert, count of Artois, marched with the vanguard, and obtained an early success ; elated by this result, he rushed forward into the town, where he found the Mussulmans numerous and perfectly rallied ; in a few moments the count of Artois fell pierced Avith Avounds, and more than 300 knights of his train, the same number of English, together with their leader William LongsAvord, and 280 Templars, paid with their lives for- the senseless ardour of the French prince. The king hurried \ip in all haste to the aid of his brother ; but he had scarcely arrived, and as yet knew nothing of his brother's fate, when he himself engaged so impetuously in the battle that he was on the point of being taken prisoner by six Saracens who had already seized the reins of his horse. He was defending himself vigorously with his sword when several of his knights came up with him and set him free. He asked one of them if he had any news of his brother ; and the other answered, " Certainly t have news of him : for I am sure that he is now in Paradise." " Praised be God ! " answered the king, with a tear or two, and went on with SIRE DE JOINVILLE. Louis IX. a prisoner in tJie East. gr his fighting. The battle-field was left that day to the crusaders ; but they were not allowed to occupy it as conqrierors, for three days afterwards, on the 11th of February, 1250, the camp of St. Louis was assailed by clouds of Saracens, horse and foot, Mame- lukes and Bedouins. All surprise had vanished ; the Mussulmans measured at a glance the numbers of the Christians, and attacked them in full assurance of success, whatever heroism they might display ; and the crusaders themselves indulged in no more self- illusion, and thought only of defending themselves. An attempt was made by the king of France to negociate with the enemy, but to no purpose, and on the 5th of April, 1250, the crusaders decided upon retreating. This was the most deplorable scene of a deplorable drama; and, Retreat of at the same time it was, for the king, an occasion for displaying, in tig^^g "^" their most sublime and most attractive traits, all the virtues of the Christian. Whilst sickness and famine were devastating the camp, Louis made himself visitor, physician, and comforter; and his presence and his words exercised upon the worst cases a searching influence. But neither his courage nor his servants' devotion were enough to ensure success even to the retreat ; a truce was about to be concluded, and the Mussulman was taking off his ring from his finger, as a pledge that he would observe it. " But during this," says Joinville, " there took place a great mishap. A traitor of a sergeant, whose name was Marcel, began calling to our people, ' Sirs knights, surrender, for such is the king's conimand : cause St._ Louis not the king's death.' All thought that it was the king's com- the^Mus- mand; and they gave up their swords to the Saracens." Being sulmans, forthwith declared prisoners, the king and all the rear-guard were removed to Mansourah ; the king by boat ; and his two brothers, the Counts of Anjou and Poitiers, and all the other crusaders, drawn up in a body and shackled, followed on foot on the jiver- bank. The advance-guard and all the rest of the army soon met the same fate. Ten thousand prisoners — this Avas all that remained of the crusade that had started eighteen months before from Aigues- Mortes. Nevertheless the lofty bearing and the piety of the king still inspired the Mussulmans with great respect. A negotiation Avas opened between him and the Sultan Malek-Moaddam, who, having previously freed him from his chains, had him treated with a certain magnificence ; he perceived that he had to do with an in- domitable spirit ; and he did not insist any longer upon more than the surrender of Damietta and on a ransom of 500,000 livres (that is, about 10,132,000 francs, or 405,280/., of modem money), ** I ^2 History of France. will pay willingly 500,000 livres for the deliverance of my people,'' said Louis, " and I will give up Damietta for the deliverance of my own person, for I am not a man who ought to be bought and sold for money." " By my faith," said the sultan, " the Frank is Liberal not to have haggled about so large a sum. Go tell him that I will give him 100,000 livres to help towards paying the ransom." On the 7th of May, 1250, the faithful friend and-companion of Saint Louis, Geoffrey de Sargines, gave up to the emirs the keys of Damietta ; and the Mussulmans entered in tumultuously. The king was awaiting aboard his ship for the payment which his people were to make for the release of his brother, the Count of Poitiers ; and when he saw approaching a bark on which he recognised his St Louis hrother, "Light up ; light up !" he cried instantly to his sailors ; leaves which was the signal agreed upon for setting out. And leaving Palestine'^ forthwith the coast of Egypt, the fleet which bore the remains of the Christian army made sail for the shores of Palestine. The king, having arrived at St. Jean d'Acre on the 14th of May, 1250, accepted, without shrinking, the trial imposed upon him by his unfortunate situation. Twice he believed he was on the point of accomplishing his desire — the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre from the Mussulmans, and the re-establishment of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Towards the end of 1250, and again, in 1252, the Sultan of Aleppo and Damascus, and the Emirs of Egypt, being engaged in a violent struggle, made ofters to him, by turns, of restoring the kingdom of Jerusalem if he would form an active alliance with one or the other party against its enemies. Louis sought means of accepting either of these offers without neglecting his previous engagements, and without compromising the fate of the Christians still prisoners in Egypt, or living in the territories of Aleppo and Damascus ; but, during the negotiations entered upon with a view to this end, the Mussulmans of Syria and Egypt sus- pended their differences, and made common cause against the remnants of the Christian crusaders ; and all hope of re-entering Jerusalem by these means vanished away. Another time, the Sultan of Damascus, touched by Louis' pious perseverance, had word sent to him that he, if he wished, could go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and should find himself in perfect safety. " The king," says Joinville, " held a great council ; and none urged him to go. It was shown unto him that if he, who was the greatest king ip Christendom, performed his pilgrimage without delivering the Holy City from the enemies of God, all the other kings and other pilgrims who came after him would hold themselves content with doing just as much, and would trouble themselves no more about the de- State of the Christians in the East. 93 liyerance of Jerusalem." Eichard Coeur de Lion, sixty years before, had refused to cast even a look upon Jerusalem, when ho was unable to deliver her from her enemies. Louis, just as Richard had, refused the incomplete satisfaction which had been offered him, and for nearly four years, spent by him on the coasts of Palestine and Syria since his departure from Damietta, from 1250 to 1254, he expended, in small works of piety, sympathy, protection, and care for the future of the Christian populations in Asia, his time, his strength, his pecuniary resources, and the ardour of a soul which could not remain idly abandoned to sorrowing over great desires unsatisfied. At the commencement of the year 1253, at Sidon, the ramparts A.D. 1252. of which he was engaged in repairing, he heard that his mother, ?f ^^, °^ Queen Blanche, had died at Paris on the 27th of l!^ovember, 1252. castile. This melancholy news induced him to return to Europe ; he em- barked at St. Jean d' Acre, on the 24th of April, 1254, carrying A.D. 1254. away with him, on thirteen vessels, large and small, Queen ^*- I-o^is Marguerite, his children, his personal retinue, and his own more Palestine . immediate men-at-arms, and leaving the Christians of Syria, for their protection in his name, a hundred knights under the orders of Geoffrey de Sargines, that comrade of his in whose bravery and pious fealty he had the most entire confidence. After two months and a half at sea, the king and his fleet arrived, on the 8th of July, 1254, off the port of Hyeres, where he landed, and, passing slowly through France, he made his solemn entry into Paris on the 7th of September, 1254. For seven years after his return to Jf ranee, from 1254 to 1261, State of Louis seemed to think no more about them, and there is nothing |;ians in to show that he spoke of them even to his most intimate confidants ; the East. but, in spite of his apparent calmness, he was living, so far as they were concerned, in a continual ferment of imagination and internal fever, ever flattering himself that some favourable circumstance would call him back to his interrupted work. And he had reason to believe that circumstances were responsive to his wishes. The Christians of Palestine and Syria were a prey to perils and evils which became more pressing every day ; the cross was being humbled at one time before the Tartars of Tchingis-Khan, at another before the Mussulmans of Egypt ; Pope Urban was calling upon the King of France ; and Geoffrey de Sargines, the heroic representative whom Louis had left in St. Jean d'Acre, at the head of a small garrison, was writing to him that ruin was im- minent and speedy succour indispensable to prevent it. In 12til, 94 History of France^ A.D. 1270. St. Louis starts for another crusade. Lands Tunis. at Louis held, at Paris, a parliament at which, without any talk of a new crusade, measures were taken which revealed an idea of it : there were decrees for fasts and prayers on behalf of the Christians of the East, and for frequent and earnest military drill In 1263, the crusade was openly preached \ taxes were levied, even on the clergy, for the purpose of contributing towards it ; and princes and barons bound themselves to take part in it. Louis was all approval and encouragement, without declaring his own intention. In 1267, a parliament was convoked at Paris. The king, at first, conversed discreetly with some of his barons about the new plan of crusade ; and then, suddenly, having had the precious relics deposited in the Holy Chapel set before the eyes of the assembly, he opened the session by ardently exhorting those present " to avenge the insult which had so long been offered to the Saviour in the Holy Land, and to recover the Christian heritage possessed, for our sins, by the infidels." Next year, on the 9th February, 1268, at a new parliament assembled at Paris, the king took an oath to start in the month of May, 1270. Saint Louis left Paris on the 16th of March, 1270, a sick man almost already, but with soul content, and probably the only one without misgiving in the midst of all his comrades. It was once more at AiguesMortes that he went to embark. All was as yet dark and undecided as to the plan of the expedition. At last, on the 2nd of July, 1270, he set sail without any one's knowing and without the king's telling any one whither they were going. It was only in Sardinia, after four days' halt at Cagliari, that Louis announced to the chiefs of the crusade, assembled aboard his ship the Mountjoy, that he was making for Tunis, and that their Christian work would commence there. The King of Tunis (as he was then called), Mohammed Mostanser, had for some time been talking of his desire to become a Christian, if he could be efficiently protected against the seditions of his subjects. Louis welcomed with transport the prospect of Mussulman conversions. " Ah ! " he cried, " if I could only see myself the gossip and sponsor of so great a godson ! " But on the 17th of July, when the fleet arrived before Tunis, the admiral, Florent de Varennes, probably without the king's orders, and with that want of reflection which was conspicuous at each step of the enterprise, immediately took possession of the harbour and of some Tunisian vessels as prize, and sent word to the king " that he had only to support him and that the dis- embarcation of the troops might be effected in perfect safety." Death of Samt Louis, 95 Thus war was commenced at the very first moment against tlie Mussulman prince whom there had been a promise of seeing before long a Christian. At the end of a fortnight, after some fights between the Tu" nisians and the crusaders, so much political and military blindness produced its natural consequences. On the 3rd of August Louis His illness was attacked by the epidemic fever, and obliged to keep his bed in his tont; the illness soon took an unfavourable turn, and no hopes of recovery could be entertained. It was announced to him, on the 24th of August, that envoys from the Emperor Michael Paleeologus had landed at Cape Carthage, with orders to demand his intervention with his brother Charles, king of Sicily, to deter him from making war on the but lately re-established Greek empire. Louis summoned all his strength to receive them in his tent, in the presence of certain of his counsellors, who were uneasy at the fatigue he was imposing upon himself. " I promise you, if I live," said he to the envoys, " to co-operate, so far as I may be able, in what your master demands of me; meanwhile, 1 exhort you to have patience, and be of good courage." This was his last political act, and his last concern with the affairs of the world j henceforth he was occupied only with pious effusions which had a bearing at one time on his hopes for his soul, at another on those Christian interests which had been so dear to him all his life. He kept repeating his customary orisons in a low voice ; and he was heard murmuring these broken words : " Fair Sir God, have mercy on this people that bideth here, and bring them back to their own land ! Let them not fall into the hands of their enemies, and let them not be constrained to deny Thy name ! " And at the same time that he thus expressed his sad reflections upon the situation in which he was leaving his army and hig people, he cried from time to time, as he raised himself on his bed, " Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! we will go up to Jerusalem ! " During the night of the 24th-25th of August he ceased to speak, all the time continuing to show that he Avas in full possession of his senses; he insisted upon receiving extreme unction out of bed, and lying upon a coarse sack-cloth covered with cinders, with the cross before him : and on Monday, the 25th of August, 1270, at 3 p.m., he departed in peace, whilst uttering these his last words : " Father, *'?', J5 after the example of the Divine Master, into Thy hands I commend (Aug. 25). my spirit I ** ,1 fJrp-V7l'.*'ri?a^^^^^'?^) 4 1 CHAPTER lY. THE KINGSHIP, THE COMMONERS AND THE THIRD ESTATE. Charac- ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ glance, two liacts strike us in the history of the kiug- the French ship in France. It was in France that it adopted soonest and most kingship, persistently maintained its fundamental principle, heredity ; only in France was there, at any time during eight centuries, but a single king and a single line of kings. Unity and heredity, those two essential principles of monarchy, have been the invariable charac- teristics of the kingship in France. A second fact, less apparent and less remarkable, but, never- theless, not without importance or without effect upon the history of the kingship in France, is the extreme variety of character, of faculties, of intellectual and moral bent, of policy and personal conduct amongst the French kings. Absolute monarchical power in France was, almost in every successive reign, singularly modi- fied, being at one time aggravated and at another alleviated accord- ing to the ideas, sentiments, morals, and spontaneous instincts of the monarchs. Nowhere else, throughout the great European monarchies, has the difference between kingly personages exercised 80 much influence on government and national condition. In that country the free action of individuals has filled a prominent place and taken a prominent part in the course of events. It has been shown how insignificant and inert, as sovereigns, •were the first three successors of Hugh Capet. The goodness to his people displayed by King Eobert was the only kingly trait Royal domains. 97 whicli, during that period, deserved to leave a trace in history. The kingship appeared once more with the attributes of energy and efficiency on the accession of Louis VI., son of Philip I. Brought up in the monastery of St. Denis, he had the good fortune to find there a fellow-stndent capable of becoming a king's coun- sellor. Suger, a child born at St. Denis, of obscure parentage, and three or four years younger than Prince Louis, had been brought up for charity's sake in the abbey, and the Abbot Adam, who had perceived his natural abilities, had taken pains to develope them. A bond of esteem and mutual friendship was formed between the two young people, both of whom were disposed to earnest thought and earnest living; and Avhen, in 1108, Louis ascended the throne, the monk Suger became his adviser whilst remaining his friend. A very small kingdom was at that time the domain belonging properly and directly to the King of France. He- de-France, strictly so called, and a part of Orleanness (I'Orleanais), pretty nearly the five departments of the Seine, Seine-et-Oise, Seine-et-Marne, Oise and Loiret, besides, through recent acquisition, French Vexin (which bordered on the Ile-de-France and had for its chief place Pontoise, being separated by the little Eiver Epte from N'orman Vexin, of which Eouen was the capital), half the countship of Sens and the countship of Bourges — such was the whole of its extent. But this limited State was as liable to agitation, and often as troublous and as toilsome to govern as the very greatest of modern States, It was full of petty lords, almost sovereigns in their own estates, and sufficiently strong to struggle against their kingly suzerain, who had, besides, all around his domains, several neigh- bours more powerful than himself in the extent and population of their States, But lord and peasant, layman and ecclesiastic, castle and country and the churches of France were not long discovering, that, if the kingdom was small, it had verily a king, Louis did not direct to a distance from home his ambition and his efforts ; it was within his own dominion, to check the violence of the strong against the weak, to put a stop to the quarrels of the strong amongst themselves, to make an end, in France at least, of unrighteousness and devastation, and to establish there some sort of order and some sort of justice, that he displayed his energy and his perseverance. Sometimes, when the people and their habitual protectors, the bishops, invoked his aid, Louis would carry his arms beyond his own dominions, by sole right of justice and kingship. "It is known," says Suger, " that kings have long hands." Into his relations with his two powerful neighbours, the King of ^}^ ^ \i. ■^ ° ' ° tions with England, duke of Normandy, and the Emperor of Germany, Louis Ms neigh- 2 bours. 9S History of France. the Fat (such was his surname) introduced the same watchfulness, the same firmness, and, at need, the same warlike energy, whilst ohserving the same moderation and the same policy of holding aloof from all turbulent or indiscreet ambition, adjusting his pretensions to his power, and being more concerned to govern his kingdom efficiently than to add to it by conquest. Twice, in 1109 and in 1116, he had war in Normandy with Henry I., king of England, and he therein was guilty of certain temerities resulting in a reverse, wliich he hastened to repair during a vigorous prosecution of the campaign ; but, when once his honour was satisfied, he showed a ready inclination for the peace which the pope, Galixtus II., in council at Eome, succeeded in establishing between the two rivals. The war with the Emperor of Germany, Henry V., in 1124, appeared, at the first blush, a more serious matter. The emperor had raised a numerous army of Lorrainers, Allemannians, Bavarians, Suabians, and Saxons, and was threatening the very city of Eheims with instant attack. Louis hastened to put himself in position ; he went and took solemnly, at the altar of St. Denis, the banner of that patron of the kingdom, and flew with a mere handful of men to confront the enemy, and parry the first blow, calling on the whole of France to follow him. France summoned the flower of her chivalry ; and at the news of this mighty host, and of the ardour with which they were animated, the Emperor Henry V. advanced no farther, and, before long, " marching, under some pre- text, towards other places, he preferred the shame of retreating like a coward to the risk of exposing his empire and himself to certain destruction. After this victory, which was more than as great as a triumph on the field of battle, the French returned every one to their homes." The three elements which contributed to the formation and character of the kingship in France, the German element, the Eoman element, and the Christian element, appear in conjunction A D. 1137. ill the reign of Louis the Fat. In his last days he found great Marriage cause for rejoicing as a father. "William YIL, duke of Aquitaine, theYoune ^^^' ^'^^^^ death, entrusted to him the guardianship of his daughter Eleanor, heiress of all his dominions, that is to say, of Poitou, of Saintonge, of Gascony, and of the Basque country, the most beau- tiful provinces of the south-west of France from the lower Loire to the Pyrenees. A marriage between Eleanor and Louis the Young, already sharing his father's throne, was soon concluded ; it took place at Bordeaux, at the end of July, 1137, and on the 8th of August following, Louis the Young, on his way back to Paris, was Clowned at Poitiers as duke of Aquitaine. He there learned Philip Augustus. 99 that the king his father had lately died, on the 1st of August. Louis the Fat was far from foreseeing the deplorable issues of the marriage which he regarded as >one of the blessings of his reign. In spite of its long duration of forty-three years, the reign of Barren- Louis VII. called ike Younq, Avas a period barren of events and ??^® ?^ Ills rGiPTi. of persons worthy of keeping a place in history. We have already had the story of this king's unfortunate crusade, the commencement at Antioch of his imbroglio Avith his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the subsequent divorce. A petty war or a sullen strife be^ tween the Kings of France and England, petty quarrels of Louis with some of the great lords of his kingdom, certain rigorous measures against certain districts in travail of local liberties, the first babblings of that religious fermentation which resulted before long, in the south of France, in the crusade against the Albigensians — such were the facts which went to make up with somewhat of insipidity the annals of this reign. So long as Suger lived the kingship preserved, at home, the wisdom which it had been accus- tomed to display, and abroad the respect it had acquired under Louis the Fat ; but at the death of Suger it went on languishing and declining without encountering any great obstacles. It was reserved for Louis the Young's son, Philip Augustus, to open fo' France and for the kingship in France a new era of strength and progress. Philip IT., to whom history has preserved the name of Philip a.D. 1180 Augustus, given him by his contemporaries, had shared the crown, —1223. been anointed, and taken to wife Isabel of Hainault, a year before ^.u^ustus. the death of Louis "VII. put him in possession of the kingdom. He was as yet only fifteen, and his father, by his will, had left him under the guidance of Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, as regent, and of Robert Clement, marshal of France, as governor. But Philip, though he began his reign under this double influence, soon let it be seen that he intended to reign by himself, and to reign with vigour ; it was not granted to Philip Augustus to re- Character suscitate the Prankish empire of Charlemagne, a work impossible of '^}^ for him or any one whatsoever in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- ° turies ; but he made the extension and territorial construction of the kingdom of France the chief aim of his life, and in that work he was successful. Out of the forty-three years of his reign, twenty-six at the least were war-years, devoted to that very pur- pose. During the first six, it was with some of his great French vassals, the Count of Champagne, the Duke of Burgundy, and even the Count of Flanders, sometime regent, that Philip had to do battle, for they all sought to profit by his minority so as to H 2 100 History of France. Wars against England and Ger< many. make themselves independent and aggrandize tlieniselvea at the expense of the crown ; but, once in posscodion of the personal power as well as the title of king, it was, from 1187 to 1216, against three successive kings of England, Henry II., Eichard Coeur de Lion, and John Lackland, masters of the most beautiful provinces of France, that Philip directed his persistent efforts. They were in respect of power, of political capacity and military popularity, his most formidable foes ; he managed, however, to hold his own against them ; and when, after Eichard's death, he had to do with John Lackland, he had over him, even more than over his brother Eichard, immense advantages. He made such use of them that after six years' struggling, from 1199 to 1205, he deprived John of the greater part of his French possessions, Anjou, Nor- mandy, Touraine, Maine, and Poitou. Philip would have been quite wining to dispense with any legal procedure by way of sanction to his conquests, but John furnished him with an excel- lent pretext; for on the 3rd of April, 1203, he assassinated with his own hand, in the tower of Eouen, his young nephew Arthur, duke of Brittany, and in that capacity vassal of Philip Augustus, to whom he was coming to do homage. The king of France thus recovered possession of nearly all the territories which his father, Louis VII., had kept but for a moment. He added, in succession, other provinces to his dominions ; in such wise that the kingdom of France which was limited, as we have seen, under Louis the Fat, to the Ile-de-France and certain portions of Picardy and Orleanness, comprised besides, at the end of the reign of Philip Augustus, Yermandois, Artois, the two Yexins, French and Nor- man, Berri, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Touraine, and Au- vergne. In 1206 the territorial work of Philip Augustus was well ni^h completed ; but his wars were not over. John Lackland when worsted kicked against the pricks, and was incessantly hankering, in his antagonism to the King of France, after hostile alliances and local c>!)nspiracies, easy to hatch amongst certain feudal lords dis- contented with their suzerain. Being on intimate terms with his nephew, Otho lY., emperor of Germany and the foe of Philip Augustus, he urged him to prepare for a grand attack upon the King of France, and the two allies had won over to their coalition some of his most important vassals, amongst others, Eenaud de Dampierre, count of Boulogne. The invasion of England, boldly attempted by Philip, proved a failure ; on the 8th of April, 1213, he convoked, at Soissons, his principal vassals or allies, explained to them the grounds of his design against the King of England, Battle of B Olivines. 101 and, by a sort of special confederation, they bound themselves, all of +hem, to support him. One of the most considerable vassals, however, the sometime regent of France during the minority of Philip, Ferrand, count of Flanders, did not attend the meeting to which he had been summoned and declared his intention of taking no part in the war against England. " By all the saints of France," cried Philip, " either France shall become Flanders, or Flanders France ! " He entered Flanders accordingly, besieged and took several of the richest cities in the country, Cassel, Ypres, Bruges, and Courtrai, and pitched his camp before the walls of Ghent, " to lower," as he said, " the pride of the men of Ghent and make them bend their necks beneath the yoke of kings." The confederates had at their head the Emperor Otho IV., who had already won the reputation of a brave and able soldier; and they numbered in their ranks several of the greatest lords, German, Flemish, and Dutch, and Hugh de Boves, the most dreaded of those adventurers in the pay of wealthy princes who were known at that time by the name of roadsters (routiers, mercenaries). They proposed, it was said, to dismember France ; and a promise to that effect had been made by the Emperor Otho to his principal chieftains assembled in secret conference. " It is against Philip himself and him alone," he had said to them, " that we must direct all our efforts ; it is he who must be slain first of all, for it is he alone who opposes us and makes himself our foe in every thing. When he is dead, you wiU be able to subdue and divide the kingdom according to our pleasure; as for thee, Eenaud, thou shalt take Peronne and all Vermandois ; Hugh shall be master of Beauvais, Salisbury of Dreux, Conrad of Mantes together with Vexin, and as for thee, Ferrand, thou shalt have Paris." The two armies marched over the Low Countries and Flanders, A.D. 1214 seeking out both of them the most favourable position for com- ^o^^Les mencing the attack. On Sunday, the 27th of July, 1214, Philip had halted near the bridge of Bouvines, not far from Lille, and was resting under an ash beside a small chapel dedicated to St. Peter. There came running to him a messenger, sent by Guerin, bishop of Senlis, his confidant in war as well as government, and brought him word that his rear guard, attacked by the Emperor Otho, was not sufficient to resist him. Philip went into the chapel, said a short prayer, and cried as he came out, " Haste we forward to the rescue of our comrades ! " Then he put on his armour, mounted his horse, and made swiftly for the point of attack, amidst the shouts of all those who were about him, " To arms ! to arms ! " Both armies numbered in their ranks not only all the feudal 102 History of France. important chivalry on the two sides, but burgher-forces, those from the in^t bv the ^^j^rity of the great cities of Flanders being for Otho, and those cjMnmanes. from sixteen towns or communes of France for Philip Augustus. These communal forces evidently filled an important place in the king's array at Bouvines, and maintained it brilliantly. The battle was not the victory of Philip Augustus, alone, over a coalition of foreign princes ; the victory was the work of king and people, barons, knights, burghers, and peasants of Ile-de-France, of Orleanness, of Picardy, of Xormandy, of Champagne, and of Burgundy. And this iinion of different classes and different populations in a senti- ment, a contest and a triumph shared in common was a decisive step in the organization and unity of France. The victory of Bou- vines marked the commencement of the time at which men might speak and indeed did speak, by one single name, of the French. The nation in France ai.d the kingship in France on that day rose out of and above the feudal system. Philip Augustus was about the same time apprised of his son Louis' success on the banks of the Loire. The incapacity and swaggering insolence of King John had made all his Poitevine allies disgusted with him; he had been obliged to abandon his attack upon the King of France in the provinces, and the insur- rection, growing daily more serious, of the English barons and clergy for the purpose of obtaining Magna Charta, was preparing for him other reverses. He had ceased to be a dangerous rival to Philip. Eeligions The organization of the kingdom, the nation, and the kingship and Intel- -^^ France was not the only great event and the only great achieve- state of ment of that epoch. At the same time that this political movement France- ^^g going on in the State, a religious and intellectual ferment was making head in the Church and in men's minds ; in the course of this active and salutary participation in the affairs of the world, the Christian clergy lost somewhat of their primitive and proper character ; religion in their hands was a means of power as well as of civilization ; and its principal members became rich and fre- quently substituted material weapons for the spiritual authority which had originally been their only reliance. Morals had sunk far below the laws, and religion was in deplorable contrast to morals. It was not laymen only who abandoned themselves with impunity to every excess of violence and licentiousness ; scandals were frequent amongst the clergy themselves ; bishoprics and other ecclesiastical benefices, publicly sold or left by will, passed down through families from father to son, and from husband to wife, and the possessions of the Church served for dowry to the daughters of State of the Church in France. 103 bishops. Absolution was at a low quotation in tlie market, and redemption for sins of the greatest enormity cost scarcely the price of founding a church or a monastery. In the midst of such irre- gularities, the eleventh and tvvelfth centuries saw the outbreak of a gTand religious, moral and intellectual fermentation, and it was the Church herself that had the honour and the power of taking the Reforins in initiative in the reformation. Under the influence of Gregory YII. ^^^^^'"^ch. the rigour of the popes began to declare itself against the scandals of the episcopate, the traffic in ecclesiastical benefices and the bad morals of the secular clergy. At the same time, austere men exerted themselves to rekindle the fervour of monastic life, re- established rigid rules in the cloister, and refilled the monasteries by their preaching and example. Eich and powerful laymen, filled with ardour for their faith or fear for their eternal welfare, went seeking after solitude, and devoted themselves to prayer in the monasteries they had founded or enriched with their wealth ; whole families were dispersed amongst various religious houses ; and all the severities of penance hardly sufficed to quiet imaginations scared at the perils of living in the world or at the vices of their age. And, at the same time, in addition to this outburst of piety, Progress ignorance was decried and stigmatized as the source of the prevail- j^™ ing evils ; the function of teaching was included amongst the duties of the religious estate ; and every newly-founded or reformed monastery became a school in which pupils of all conditions were gratuitously instructed in the sciences known by the name of liberal arts. Bold spirits began to use the rights of individual thought in opposition to the authority of established doctrines; and others, without dreaming of opposing, strove at any rate to understand, which is the way to produce discussion. Activity and freedom of thought were receiving development at the same time that fervent faith and fervent piety were. The quarrel of Abelard with St. Bernard and the crusade against the Albigensians are the two most striking events in connection with, this part of our subject ; they show us how ITorthern France and Southern France differed one from the other before the bloody crisis which was to unite them in one single name and one common destiny. It was in the very midst of the clergy themselves, amongst literates and teachers, that, in Northern France, the intellectual and innovating movement of the period was manifested and con- centrated. The movement was vigorous and earnest, and it was a a.D, 1079 really studious host which thronged to the lessons of Abelard —1142. at Paris, on Mount St. Genevieve, at Melun, at CorbeU, and at the Paraclete \ it was to expound and propagate what they regarded as 104 History of France, the philosophy of Christianity that masters and pupils made Lold use of the freedom of thought ; they made but slight war upon the existing practical abuses of the Church ; they differed from her in the interpretation and comments contained in some of her dogmas; and they considered themselves in a position to explain and con- firm faith by reason. The chiefs of the Church, with St. Bernard at their head, were not slow to decry, in these interpretations and comments based upon science, danger to the simple and pure faith of the Chiistian \ they saw the apparition of dawning rationalism His doc- confronting orthodoxy. They had Abelard's doctrines condemned trines con- ^t the councils of Soissons and Sens ; they prohibited him from public lecturing ; and they imposed upon him the seclusion of the cloister ; but they did not even harbour the notion of having him burnt as a heretic, and science and glory were respected in his person, even when his ideas were proscribed. Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluni, one of the most highly considered and honoured prelates of the Church, received him amongst his own monks and treated him Avith paternal kindness, taking care of his health as well as of his eternal welfare ; and he wdio was the adversary of St. Bernard, and the teacher condemned by the councils of Soissons and Sens, died peacefully, on the 21st of April, 1142, in the abbey of St. Marcellus, near Chalon-sur-Saone, after having received the sacraments with much piety and in presence of all the brethren of the monastery. The struggle of Abelard with the Church of Northern France and the crusade against the Albigensians in Southern France are divided by much more tlian diversity and contrast ; there is an abyss between them. In Northern France, in spite of internal disorder and through the influence of its bishops, missionaries, and monastic reformers, the orthodox Church had obtained a decided Beligions superiority and full dominion : but in Southern France, on the condition v j ' ' of South- contrary, all the controversies, all the sects, and all the mystical or philosophical heresies which had disturbed Christendom from the second century to the ninth, had crept in and spread abroad. In it there were Arians, Manicheans, Gnostics, Paulicians, Cathars (the pure), and other sects of more local or more recent origin and name, Albigensians, Vaudians, Good People and Poor of Lyons, some piously possessed with the desire of returning to the pure faith and fraternal organization of the primitive evangelical Church, others given over to the extravagances of imagination or asceticism. The princes and the great laic lords of the country, the Counts of Toulouse, Foix, and Comminges, the Viscount of Beziers, and many others had not remained unaffected by this condition of the em Francs. Crusade against the Albigensians. 105 people : the majority were accused of tolerating and even protect- ing the heretics ; and some were suspected of allowing their ideas 10 penetrate within their own households. After a not very effectual mission of St. Bernard, who died in 1153, and for half a century, the orthodox Church was several xhe Albi times occupied with the heretics of Southern France, who were gensians befo]'e long called Albigensians, either because they were numerous in the diocese of Albi, or because the council of Lombers, one of the first at which their condemnation was expressly pronounced (in 1165), was held in that diocese. Innocent III. at first em ployed against them only spiritual and legitimate weapons. Before proscribing, he tried to convert them ; but the murder of Peter de Castelnau, his legate, by supposed agents of Eaymond VI., Count of Toulouse, brought matters to extremities. The crusade against A.D. 120S the Albigensians was the most striking application of two principles, ~^^^^" equally false and fatal, which did more than as much evil to the against Catholics as to the heretics and to the papacy as to freedom ; and them, they are, the right of the spiritual power to claim for the coercion of souls the material force of the temporal powers, and its right to strip temporal sovereigns, incase they set at nought its injunctions, of their title to the obedience of their people; in other words, denial of religious liberty to conscience and of political indepen- dence to States. It was by virtue of these two principles, at that time dominant, but not without some opposition, in Christendom, that Innocent III., in 1208, summoned the king of France, the great lords and the knights, and the clergy, secular and regular, of the kingdom to assume the cross and go forth to extirpate from Southern France the Albigensians "worse than the Saracens;" and that he promised to the chiefs of the crusaders the sovereignty of such domains as they should win by conquest from the princes who were heretics or protectors of heretics. Through all France and even outside of France the passions of religion and ambition were aroused at this summons. Twelve abbots and twenty monks of Citeaux dispersed themselves in all directions preaching the crusade ; and lords and knights, burghers and peasants, laymen and clergy, hastened to respond. Peter of Vaulx-Cernay, the chief contemporary chronicler of this crusade, says that, at the siege of Carcassonne, one of the first operations of the crusaders, "it Avas said that their army numbered fifty thousand men." Whatever may be the truth about the numbers, the crusaders were passionately ardent and persevering : the war against the Albigensians lasted tAventy-one years (from 1208 to 1229), and of the two leading spirits, one ordering and the other I06 History of France. The war changes character. Simon de Moutfort. A.D. 1218. He is killed at Tou- louse. executing, Pope Innocent III. and Simon de Montfort, neither sa^v the end of it. During these twenty-one years, in the region situated between the Ehone, the Pyrenees, the Garonne, and even the Dordogne, nearly all the towns and strong castles were taken, lost, retaken, given over to pillage, sack, and massacre, and burnt by the crusaders with all the cruelty of fanatics, and all the greed of conquerors. In the midst of these atrocious unbridlements of passions sup- posed to be religious, other passions were not slow to make their appearance. Innocent III. had promised the crusaders the enjoy- ment of the domains they might win by conquest from princes who were heretics or protectors of heretics. After the capture, in 1209, of Beziers and Carcassonne, the sovereignty of these possessions was granted by the Pope to Simon, lord of Montfort, earl of Leicester ; from this time forth the war in Southern France changed character, or, rather, it assumed a double character ; with the war of religion was openly joined a war of conquest ; it was no longer merely against the Albigensians and their heresies, it was against the native princes of Southern France and their domains that the crusade was prosecuted. Simon de Montfort was emi- nently qualified to direct, and accomplished this twofold design ; when, however, it became evident that the question lay far less between catholics and heretics than between the independence of the southern people and the triumph of warriors come from the north of France, that is to say, between two different races, civilizations, and languages, the count of Toulouse, Eaymond VI. and his son recovered certain supports and opportunities of which hitherto the accusation of heresy and the judgments of tbe court of Home had robbed them ; their neighbouring allies and their secret or intimi- dated partisans took fresh courage ; the fortune of battle became shifty ; successes and reverses were shared by both sides ; and not only many small places and castles but the largest towns, Toxilouse amongst others, fell into the hands of each party alternately. Innocent III.'s successor in the Holy See, Pope Honorius III., though at first very pronounced in his opposition to the Albi- gensians, had less ability, less perseverance, and less influence than his predecessor. Finally, on the 25th of June, 1218, Simon de Montfort, who had been for nine months unsuccessfully besieging Toulouse, which had again come into the possession of Ray- mond VL, was killed by a shower of stones under the walls of the place, and left to his son Amaury the inheritance of his war and his conquests, but not of his vigorous genius and his warlike renown. The struggle still dragged on for five years with varied Philip Augustus as a Politician. 107 fortune on each aide, but Amanry de Montfort was losing ground every day, and Eaymond VI., when he died in August, 1222, had recovered the greater part of his dominions. His son, Eay- mond VII., continued the war for eighteen months longer, with enough of popular favour and of success to make his enemies despair of recovering their advantages ; and, on the 14th of January, 1224, Amaury de Montfort, after having concluded with the counts of Toulouse and Foix a treaty which seemed to have only a provi- sional character, ceded to Louis VIII., then king of France, his rights over the domains which the crusaders had conquered. Whilst this cruel war lasted Philip A ugustus would not take any jjart in it. Not that he had any leaning towards the Albigensian heretics on the score of creed or religious liberty ; but his sense of justice and moderation was shocked at the violence employed against them, and he had a repugnance to the idea of taking part in the devastation of the beautiful southern provinces. Never- theless, on the pope's repeated entreaty, he authorized his son to Discretion join in the war with such lords as might be willing to accompany of Philip him ; but he ordered that the expedition should not start before ^^'^' '^''* the spring, and, on the occuiTence of some fresh incident, he had it further put off until the following year. He received visits from Count Eaymond VI., and openly testified good will towards him. When Simon de Montfort was decisively victorious, and in pos- session of the places wrested from Eaymond, Philip Augustus recognized accomplished facts, and received the new count of Toulouse as his vassal ; but when, after the death of Simon de Montfort and Innocent III. the question was once more thrown open, and when Eaymond VI. first and then his son Eaymond VII. had recovered the greater part of their dominions, Philip formally refused to recognize Amaury de Montfort as successor to his father's conquests ; nay, he did more, he refused to accept the cession of those conquests, offered to him by Amaury de Montfort and pressed upon him by Pope Honorius III. Philip Augustus was not a scrupu- lous sovereign, nor disposed to compromise himself for the mere sake of defending justice and humanity ; but he was too judicious not to respect and protect, to a certain extent, the rights of his vassals as well as his own, and, at the same time, too discreet to involve himself, without necessity, in a barbarous and dubious war. He held aloof from the crusade against the Albigensians with as much wisdom and more than as much dignity as he displayed, seven- teen years before, in withdrawing from the crusade against the'^ A^'''^ Saracens. tion of He had, in 121G, another great chance of showing his discretion. J^^^^ce ° Louis into England. io8 History of France, The English barons were at war with their king, John Lackland, in defence of Magna Charta, which they had obtained the year before ; and they offered the crown of England to the king of France, for his son. Prince Louis. Philip Augustus, who in his youth had dreamed of resuscitating the empire of Charlemagne, was strongly tempted to seize the opportunity of doing over again the work of William the Conqueror ; but he hesitated to endanger his power and his kingdom in such a war against King John and the pope. Eoreseeing the dangers of events to come, he did not give his public consent, and, without any expression of wish or counsel, permitted the young prince to go, with the gift of his blessing. It was the ambitious princess Blanche of Castile, wife of Prince Louis, and destined to be the mother of St. Louis, who, after her husband's departure for England, made it her business to raise troops for hiin and to send him means of sustaining the war. Events justified the discreet reserve of Philip Augustus ; for John Lackland, after having suffered one reverse previously, died on the 18th of October, 1216 ; his death broke up the party of the insur- gent barons ; and his son, Henry III., Avho was crowned on the 28th of October in Gloucester cathedral, immediately confirmed the Great Charter. Thus the national grievance vanished, and national feeling resumed its sway in England ; the French every where became unpopular ; and after a few months' struggle, with equal want of skill and success. Prince Louis gave up his enter- prise and returned to France with his French comrades, on no other conditions but a mutual exchange of prisoners and an amnesty for the English wlio had been his adherents. At this juncture, as well as in the crusade against the Albigen- sians, Philip Augustus behaved towards the pope with a wisdom and ability hard of attainment at any time, and very rare in hifi own : he constantly humoured the papacy without being subser- vient to it, and he testified towards it his respect and at the same A.D. 1196, time his independence. In his political life he always preserved Augustus ^^^^ proper mean, and he found it succeed ; but in his domestic marries life there came a day when he suffered himself to be hurried out Agnes of ^f ^^g ^^g^al deference towards the pope : and, after a violent at- Merama. . . , , tempt at resistance, he resigned himself to submission. The cir- cumstance we are alluding to is his repudiation of Ingeburga of Denmaik, and his marriage with the Tyrolese princess Agnes of Merania, daughter of Bethold, Marquis of Istria, whom, about 1180, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had made Duke of The inter- Moravia. The pope threatened Philip with the interdict ; that is, diet. the suspension of all religious ceremonies, festivals, and forms in A dm in istration. 1 09 the Churcli of France. The king resisted not only the threat, h\it also the sentence of the interdict, which was actually pronounced, first in the churches of the royal domain, and afterwards in those of the whole kingdom. For four years the struggle went on. At last Philip yielded to the injunction of the poj)e and the feeling of his people ; he sent away Agnes, and recalled Ingehurga. Philip Augustus was as energetic and eflFective in the internal Admini' administration of his kingdom as in foreign affairs ; thus, during liis stration 03 reign, we find a record of forty-one acts confirming certain com- dom. munes already established or certain privileges previously granted to certain populations, forty-three acts establishing new communes, or granting new local privileges, and nine acts decreeing suppres- sion of certain communes or a repressive intervention of the royal authority in their internal regulation, on account of quarrels or irregularities in their relations either with their lord, or, especially,* with their bishop. These mere figures show the liberal character of the government of Philip Augustus in respect of this important work of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Nor are we less struck by his efi&cient energy in his care for the interests and material civilization of his people ; " he ordered that all the thoroughfares and streets of Paris should be paved with hard and solid stone, for this right Christian prince aspired to rid Paris of her ancient name, Lntetia {Mud-town)." In 1190, on the eve of his departure for the crusade, " he ordered the burghers of Paria to surround with a good wall flanked by towers the city he loved so well, and to make gates thereto ; " and, in twenty years, this great work was finished on both sides of the Seine. " The king gave the same orders," adds the historian Eigord, " about the towns and castles of all his kingdom." His foresight went beyond such important achievements. " He had a good wall built to enclose the wood of Vincennes, heretofore open to any sort of folk. The King of England, on hearing thereof, gathered a great mass of fawns, hinds, does, and bucks, taken in his forests in I^^ormandy and Aquitaine ; and having had them shipped ahoard a large covered vessel, with suitable fodder, he sent them by way of the Seine to King Philip Augustus, his liege-lord at Paris. King Philip received the gift gladly, had his parks stocked with the animals and put keepers over them." A feeling, totally uncon- nected with the pleasures of the chase, caused him to order an enclosure very different from that of Yincennes. " The commoB cemetery of Paris, hard by the Church of the Holy Innocents, opposite the street of St. Denis, had remained up to that time open to all passers, man and beast, without any thing to prevent it from no History of Fraitce. being confounded with the most profane spot ; and thb king, hurt at such indecency, had it enclosed by high stone-walls, with, as many gates as were judged necessary, which were ciosed every night." At the same time he had built, in this same quarter, the first great municipal market-places, enclosed, likewise, by a wall, with gates shut at night, and surmounted by a sort of covered gallery. Before his time, the ovens employed by the baking-trade in Paris were a monopoly for the profit of certain religious or laic establishments ; but when Philip Augustus ordered the walling-in of the new and much larger area of the city " he did not think it right to render its new inhabitants subject to these old liabilities, and he permitted all the bakers to have ovens wherein to bake their bread, either for themselves, or for all individuals who might wish to make use of them." His reign saw the completion, and, it might also be' said, the construction of Notre-Dame de Pa7'i$, the frontage of which, in particular, was the work of this epoch. At the same time the king had the palace of the Louvre repaired and enlarged ; and he added to it that strong tower in which he kept in captivity for more than twelve years, Ferrand, count of Flanders, taken prisoner at the battle of Bouvines. We must also add to these proofs of manifold and indefatigable activity on the part of Philip Augustus the constant interest he testified in letters, science, study, the University of Paris, and its masters and pupils. It was to him that in 1200, after a violent riot, in which they con- sidered they had reason to complain of the provost of Paris, the students owed a decree, which, by regarding them as clerics, ex- empted them from the ordinary criminal jurisdiction so as to render them subject only to ecclesiastical authority. At that time there was no idea how to efficiently protect freedom save by grant- ing some privilege. Death of -^ death which seems premature for a man as sound and strong the king, in constitution as in juJgment struck down Philip Augustus at the age of only fifty-eight, as he was on his way from Pacy-sur-Eure to Paris to be present at the council which was to meet there and once more take up the affair of the Albigensians. He had for several months been battling with an incessant fever; he was obliged to halt at Mantes, and there he died on the 14th of January, 1222, leaving the kingdom of France far more extensive and more compact, and the kingship in France far stronger and more re- A.T). 1223. spected than he had found them. His son, Louis VIIL, inherited Lou s VIII. ^ gveat kingdom, an undisputed crown, and a power that was re- His cha- spected. It was matter of general remark, moreover, that, by his racter. mother, Isabel of Hainault, he was descended in the direct line Louis IX. and Blanche of Castile. Ill from Hermengarde, couutess of Namur, daughter of Charles dI Lorraine, the last of the Carlovingians. Thus the claims of the two dynasties of Charlemagne and of Hugh Capet were united in his person ; and, although the authority of the Capetians was no longer disputed, contemporaries were glad to see in Louis YIII. this twofold heirship, which gave him the perfect stamp of a legitimate monarch. He was a man of downright mediocrity, without fore- sight, volatile in his resolves, and weak and fickle in the execution of them. He, as well as Philip Augustus, had to make war on the king of England and negotiate with the pope on the subject of the Albigensians ; but at one time he followed, without well under- standing it, his father's policy, at another he neglected it for some whim or under some temporary influence. He died on the 8th of a.D. 1226 November, 1226, after a reign of three years, adding to the history I-ouis IX. of Fran'ie no glory save that of having been the son of Philip jj^g thror » Augustus, the husband of Blanche of Castile, and the father of St. Louis. We have already perused the most brilliant and celebrated amongst the events of St. Louis' reign, his two crusades against the Mussulmans ; and we have learned to know the man at the same time with the event, for it was in these warlike outbursts of his Christian faith that the king's character, nay, his whole soul, was displayed in all its originality and splendour. It was his good fortune, moreover, to have at that time as his comrade and bio- grapher. Sire de Joinville, one of the most sprightly and charming writers of the nascent French language. It is now of Louis in Prance and of his government at home that we have to take note. And in this part of his history he is not the only royal and really regnant personage we encounter; for of the forty-four years of St. Louis' reign, nearly fifteen, with a long interval of separation, a.D. 1226 pertained to the government of Queen Blanche of Castile rather ~^^^® than that of the king her son. Louis, at his accession, in 1226, ment of was only eleven ; and he remained a minor up to the age of twenty- Blanche of one, in 1236, for the time of majority in the case of royalty was not yet specially and rigorously fixed. During those ten years Queen Blanche governed Prance ; not at all, as is commonly as- serted, with the official title of regent, but simply as guardian of the king her son. With a good sense really admirable in a person so proud and ambitious, she saw that official power was ill suited to her woman's condition and would weaken rather than strengthen her ; and she screened herself from view behind her son. He it was who, in 1226, wrote to the great vassals bidding them to his consucra- tion; he it was who reigned and commanded; and his name alone 112 History of France, appeared on royal decrees and on treaties. It was not imtil twenty- two years had passed, in 1248, that Louis, ou starting for the crusade, oflficially delegated to his mother the kingly authority, and that Blanche, during her son's aosence, really governed with the title of regent, up to the 1st of December, 1252, the day of his death. Her qua During the first period of his government, and so long as hei "'ties. son's minority lasted. Queen Blanche had to grapple with intrigues, plots, insurrections, and open war, and, what was still worse for her, with the insults and calumnies of the crown's great vassals, burning to seize once more, under a. woman's government, the independence and power which had been effectually disputed with them by Philip Augustus. Blanche resisted their attempts, at one time with open and persevering energy, at another dexterously with all the tact, address and allurements of a woman. I^either in the events nor in the writings of the period is it easy to find any thing which can authorize the accusations made by the foes of Queen Blanche, to the effect that she encouraged the passion of Theobald IV., count of Champagne ; but it is certain that neither the poetry nor the advances of the nobleman made any difference in the resolutions and behaviour of the queen. She continued her resistance to the pretensions and machinations of the great vassals, whether foes or lovers, and she carried forward, in the face and in the teeth of all, the extension of the domains and the power Her politi- of the kingship. She saw by profound instinct what forces and sifflit,"' alliances might be made serviceable to the kingly power against its rivals. "When, on the 29th of I^ovember, 1226, only three weeks after the death of her husband Louis VIII., she had her son crowned at Rheims, she bade to the ceremony not only the prelates and grandees of the kingdom, but also the inhabitants of the neighbouring communes; wishing to let the great lords see the people surrounding the royal child. In 1228, amidst the insur- rection of the barons, who were assembled at Corbeil, and who meditated seizing the person of the young king during his halt at Montlhery on his march to Paris, Queen Blanche had summoned to her side, together with the faithful chivalry of the country, the burghers of Paris and of the neighbourhood ; and they obeyed the appeal with alacrity. Eight years later, in 1236, Louis IX. attained his majority, and Blanche transferred to him a power respected, feared and encompassed by vassals always turbulent and still often aggressive, but disunited, weakened, intimidated, or A.D, 1234. discredited, and always outwitted, for a space of ten years, in Marriage |.j^gjj, pj^^g^ j^ 1234, amidst great rejoicings, he married by bis Ul bl&9 Relations of Saint Louis with the Nobles. 113 mother's advice the princess Marguerite, elder daughter of Eaymond Beranger, count of Provence. The entrance of Louis IX. upon personal exercise of the kingly Maintains power produced no change in the conduct of public affairs, the rights There was no vain seeking after innovation on purpose to mark crown the accession of a new master, and no reaction in the deeds and a?ainst Avords of the sovereign or in the choice and treatment of his vassals, advisers ; the kingship of the son was a continuance of the mother's government. Louis persisted in struggling for the preponderance of the crown against the great vassals ; succeeded in taming Peter Mauclerc, the turbulent count of Brittany ; wrung from Theobald IV., count of Champagne, the rights of suzerainty in the countships of Chartres, Blois, and Sancerre, and the viacountship of Chateaudun ; and purchased the fertile countship of Macon from its possessor. It was almost always by pacific procedure, by negotiations ably conducted, and conventions faithfully executed, that he accomplished these increments of the kingly domain ; and when he made war on any of the great vassals, he engaged therein Rebellion only on their provocation, to maintain the rights or honour of his "f t^^ crown, and he used victory with as much moderation as he had i,°aMarche shown before entering upon the struggle. Thus Hugh de Lusignan, count of la Marche, had not only declined doing homage to the king's brother, Alphonso, count of Poitiers, whose vassal he was, but had also excited to rebellion certain powerful lords, of la Marche, Saintonge, and Angoumois, and had called to his assistance Henry III., king of England, son of the countess of la Marche. Louis summoned the crown's vassals to a parliament ; and " What think A Par- you," he asked them, " should be done to a vassal who would fain ^^^^^^^^ hold land without owning a lord, and who goeth against the fealty and homage due from him and his predecessors]" The answer was that the lord ought in that case to take back the fief as his own property. "As my name is Louis," said the king, "the count of la Marche doth claim to hold land in such wise, land which hath been a fief of Prance since the days of the valiant King Clovis, who won all Aquitaine from King Alaric, a pagan without faith or creed, and all the country to the Pyrenean mount." And the barons promised the king their energetic co-operation. The war was pushed on zealously by both sides. In this young king of France, this docile son of an able mother, none knew what a hero there was, until he revealed himself on a sudden. Near two a.D. 1242 towns of Saintonge, Taillebourg and Saintes, at a bridge which battle of covered the approaches of one and in front of the walls of the •\^x's. other, Louis, on the 21st and 22nd of July, delivered two battles 114 Histoiy of France. in which the brilliancy of his personal valour ar.d the afl'ectionate enthusiasm he excited in his troops secured victory and the sur- render of the two places. The successes he had gained in his campaign of 1242 were not for him the first step in an endless career of glory and conquest ; he was anxious only to consolidate them, whilst securing, in Western Europe, for the dominions of his adversaries as well as for his own the benefits of peace. He entered into negotiations, successively, with the count of la Marche, the king of England, the count of Toulouse, the king of Aragon, and the various princes and great feudal lords who had been more A.D. 1243. Qj. iggg engaged in the war; and in January, 1243, the treaty of Lorris. Lorris marked the end of feudal troubles for the whole duration of St. Louis' reign. He drew his sword no more, save only against the enemies of the Christian faith and Christian civilization, the ^lussulmans. Il^evertheless there was no lack of opportunities for interfering •with a powerful arm amongst the sovereigns his neighbours, and for working their disagreements to the profit of his ambition, had ambition guided his conduct ; but into his relations with foreign sovereigns, his neighbours, he imported the most loyal spirit. Relations " Certain of his council used to tell him," reports JoinviUe, " that of LouisIX. ]^^ (jj^(3^ jjQ^ ^yg^ -y^ j^Q^ leaving these foreigners to their warfare ; with . . . foreign for, if he gave them his good leave to impoverish one another, they sovereigns, would not attack him so readily as if they were rich. To that the king replied that they said not well ; for, quoth he, if the neigh- bouring princes perceived that I left them to their warfai'e, they might take counsel amongst themselves, and say, ' It is through malice that the king leaves us to our warfare;' then it might happen that by cause of the hatred they would have against me, they would come and attack me, and I might be a great loser thereby. Without reckoning that I should thereby earn the hatred of God, who says, ' Blessed be the peacemakers ! ' " So well established was his renown as a sincere friend of peace and a just arbiter in great disputes between princes and peoples, that his intervention and his decisions were invited wherever obscure and dangerous questions arose. Louis gave not only to the king of England, but to the whole English nation, a striking A.D. 1264. proof of his judicious and true-hearted equity. An obstinate civil ts chosen ^^r was raging between Henry III. and his barons. liTeither between P^^rty, in defending its own rights, had any notion of respecting Henry III. the rights of its adversaries, and England was alternating between ind°his^ a kingly and an aristocratic tyranny. Louis, chosen as arbiter by oarons. both sides, delivered solemnly, or the 23rd of January, 1264, a Arbitrates betzveen Henry III. and the English Barons. 115 decii=iion wliich was favourable to the English kingship, but at the same time expressly upheld the Great Charter and the traditional liberties of England. He concluded his decision with the following suggestions of amnesty : " We will also that the king of England and his barons do forgive one another mutually, that they do forget all the resentments that may exist between them by consequence of the matters submitted to our arbitration, and that henceforth they do refrain reciprocally from any offence and injury on account of the same matters." But when men have had their ideas, passions, and interests profoundly agitated and made to clash, the wisest decisions and the most honest counsels in the world are not sufficient to re-establish peace ; the cup of experience has to be Fairness of drunk to the dregs ; and the parties are not resigned to peace until ^}^ ^«ci- one or the other, or both have exhausted themselves in the struggle, and perceive the absolute necessity of accepting either defeat or compromise. In spite of the arbitration of the king of France, the civil war continued in England ; but Louis did not seek in any way to profit by it so as to extend, at the expense of his neighbours, his own possessions or power ; he held himself aloof from their quarrels, and followed up by honest neutrality his ineffectual arbitration. Five centuries afterwards the great English historian, Hume, rendered him due homage in these terms : " Every time this virtuous prince interfered in the affairs of England, it was invariably with the view of settling differences between the king and the nobility. Adopting an admirable course of conduct, as politic probably as it certainly was just, he never interposed his good offices save to put an end to the disagreements of the English; he seconded all the measures which could give security to both parties, and he made persistent efforts, though without success, to moderate the fiery ambition of the earl of Leicester." (Hume, History of England, t. ii. p. 465.) To watch over the position and interests of all parties in his His ad- dominions and to secure to all his subjects strict and prompt justice, ^q^^!,/"^' this was what continually occupied the mind of Louis IX. On justice, this subject we may transcribe JoinviUe's often-quoted account of St. Louis's familiar intervention in his subjects' disputes about matters of private interest. " Many a time," says he, " it hap- pened in summer that the king went and sat down in the wood of Vincennes after Mass, and leaned against an oak and made us sit down round about him. And all those who had business came to speak to him without restraint of usher or other folk. And then he demanded of them with his own mouth, * Is there here any who hath a suit 1 ' and they who had their suit rose up ; and then he I 2 Il6 History of France. said, * Keep silence all of ye ; and ye shall have despatch one aftei the other.' And then he called my lord Peter de Fontaines and my lord Geoffrey de Villette (two learned lawyers of the day and counsellors of St. Louis), and said to one of them, * Despatch me this suit.' And when he saw ought to amend in the words of those who were speaking for another, he himself amended it with his own mouth. I sometimes saw in summer that, to despatch his people's husiness, he went into the Paris garden, clad in camlet coat and linsey surcoat without sleeves, a mantle of black taffety round his neck, hair right well combed and without coif, and on his head a hat with white peacock's plumes. And he had carpets laid for us to sit round about him. And all the people who had business before him set themselves standing around him ; and then he had their business despatched in the manner I told you of before as to the wood of Vincennes." (Joinville, chap, xii.) The active benevolence of St. Louis was not confined to this paternal care for the private interests of such subjects as approached his person ; he was equally attentive and zealous in the case of measures called for by the social condition of the times and the general interests of the kingdom. Amongst the twenty-six government ordinances, edicts, or letters, contained under the date His laws ^^ ^^^^ reign in the first volume of the Recueil des Ordonnances des and ordi- JRois de France, seven, at the least, are great acts of legislation and nances. administration of a public kind ; and these acts are all of such a stamp as to show that their main object is not to extend the power of the crown or subserve the special interests of the kingship at strife Avith other social forces ; they are real reforms, of public and moral interest, directed against the violence, disturbances, and abuses of the feudal system. As for the large collection of legis- "Etablis- 'tive enactments known by the name of ^tahlissements de Saint sements de Louis, it is probably a lawyer's work, posterior, in great part at LoiT'* " k-'^st, to his reign, full of incoherent and even contradictory enact- ments, and without any claim to be considered as a general code of law of St. Louis' date and collected by his order, although the paragraph which serves as preface to the work is given under his name and as if it had been dictated by liim. "Prag- Another act, known by the name of the Pragmatic Sanction, has Sanction" ^i^^^'^^'^se got placed, with the date of March, 1268, in the Recueil " The Gal- des Ordonnances des Rots de France, as having originated with St. ch^^ . „ Louis. Its object is, first of all, to secure the rights, liberties, and canonical rules, internally, of the Church of Prance ; and, next, to interdict " the exactions and very heavy money-charges which have been imposed or may hereafter be imposed on the said Church by Police Regulations. II7 the court of Rome, and by the which our kingdom hath "been miserably impoverished ; unless they take place for reasonable, pious, and very urgent cause, through inevitable necessity, and with our spontaneous and express consent, and that of the Church of our kingdom." The authenticity of this act, vigorously maintained in the seventeenth century by Bossuet (in his Defense de la Decla- ration da Clerge de France de 1682, chap. ix. t. xliii. p. 26), and in our time by M. Daunou (in the Histoire litteraire de la France, continuee par des Membres de VInstitut, t. xvi. p. 75, and t. xix. p. 169), has been and still is rendered doubtful for strong reasons, which M. Felix Faure, in his Histoire de Saint Louis (t. ii. p. 271), has summed up with great clearness. There is no design of entering here upon an examination of this little historical problem ; but it is a bouhden duty to point out that, if the authenticity of the Pragmatic Sanction, as St. Louis', is questionable, the act has, at bottom, nothing but what bears a very strong resemblance to and is quite in conformity with the general conduct of that prince. He was profoundly respectful, affectionate, and faithfid towards the papacy, but, at the same time, very careful in upholding both the independence of the crown in things temporal and its right of superintendence in things spiritual. One special fact in the civil and municipal administration of Police in St. Louis deserves to find a place in history. After the time of ff'^^?,' Philip Augustus there was malfeasance in the police of Paris. The Boilean. provostship of Paris, which comprehended functions analogous to those of prefect, mayor, and receiver-general, became a purehaseable office, filled sometimes by two provosts at a time. The burghers no longer found justice or security in the city where the king re- sided. At his return from his first crusade, Louis recognized the necessity for applying a remedy to this evil ; the provostship ceased to be a purehaseable office ; and he made it separate from the receivership of the royal domain. In 1258, he chose sis provost Stephen Boileau, a burgher of note and esteem in Paris; and in order to give this magistrate the autliority of which he had need, the king sometimes came and sat beside him, when he was admi- nistering justice at the Chatelet. Stephen Boileau justified the king's confidence, and maintained so strict a police that he had his own godson hanged for theft. His administrative foresight was equal to his judicial severity. He established registers wherein were to be inscribed the rules habitually followed in respect of the organization and work of the different corporations of artisans, the tariffs of the dues charged, in the name of the king, upon the ad- mittance of provisions and merchandise, and the titles on which the Il8 History of France. abbots and other lords founded the privileg'^^ they enjoyed within the walls of Paris. The corporations of artisans, represented by their sworn masters or prud'hommes, appeared one after the ether before the provost to make declaration of the usages in practice amongst their communities, and to have them registered in the book prepared for that purpose. This collection of regulations relating to the arts and trades of Paris in the thirteenth century, known under the name of Livre des Metiers d'^tienne Boileau, is the earliest monu- ment of industrial statistics drawn up by the French administration. All the chroniclers of the age, all the historians of his reign have celebrated the domestic virtues of Saint Louis, his charity as much as his piety ; and the philosophers of the eighteenth century almost forgave him his taste for relics in consideration of his beneficence. And it was not merely legislative and administrative beneficence; St. Louis did not confine himself to founding and endowing hospitals, hospices, asylums, the Hotel-Dieu at Pontoise, that at Vernon, that at Compiegne, and, at Paris, the house of Quinze-Vingts, for 300 blind ; but he did not spare his person in his beneficence, and regarded no deed of charity as beneath Charity a king's dignity. " Every day, wherever the king went, one ^? th*^*^ hundred and twenty-two of the poor received each two loaves, a king. quart of wine, meat or fish for a good dinner, and a Paris denier. The mothers of families had a loaf more for each child. Besides these hundred an(^ twenty- two poor having out-door relief, thirteen others were every day introduced into the hotel and there lived as the king's officers ; and three of them sat at table at the same time with the king, in the same hall as he, and quite close." . . . . " Many a time," says Joinville, " I saw him cut their bread and give them to drink. He asked me one day if I washed the feet of the poor on Holy Thursday : ' Sir,' said I, ' what a benefit ! The feet of those knaves ! ISoi L' * Verily,' said he, ' that is ill said, for you ought not to hold in disdain what God did for our instruction. I pray you, therefore, for love of me, accustom yourself to wash them.' " He who thus felt and acted was no monk, no prince enwrapt in mere devoutness and altogether given up to works and practices of piety ; he was a knight, a warrior, a politician, a true king, who attended to the duties of authority as well as to those of charity, and who won respect from his nearest friends as well as from. strangers, whilst astonishing them at one time by his bursts of mystic piety and monastic austerity, at another by his flashes of the ruler's spirit and his judicious independence, even towards the representatives of the faith and Church with whom he was in sympathy. "He passed for the wisest man in all his council." He Saint Lotus encourages hterattire, 119 flelighted iu books and literates ; " He was sometimes present at His fond- Llie discourses and disputations of the University ; but he took ^^°* . ^ care to search out for himself the truth in the word of God and in the traditions of the Church Having found out, during his travels in the East, that a Saracenic sultan had collected a quantity of books for the service of the philosophers of his sect, he was shamed to see that Christians had less zeal for getting instructed in the truth than infidels had for getting themselves made dexterous in falsehood ; so much so that, after his return to France, he had search made in the abbeys for all the genuine works of St. Augustin, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, and other orthodox teachers, and, having caused copies of them to be made, he had them placed in the treasury of Sainte-Chapelle. He used to read them when he had any leisure, and he readily lent them to those who might get profit from them for themselves or for others. Sometimes, at the end of the afternoon meal, he sent for pious persons with wliom he conversed about God, about the stories in the Bible and the histories of the saints, or about the lives of the Fathers." He had a particular friendship for the learned Eobert of Sorbon, founder of the Sorbonne, whose idea was a society of secular ecclesiastics, who, living in common and having the necessaries of life, should give themselves up entirely to study and gratuitous teaching Not only did St. Louis give him every facility and every aid necessary for the establishment of his learned college ; but he made him one of his chaplains, and often invited him to his presence and his table in order to enjoy his conversation. For all his moral sympathy, and superior as he was to his age, His blun- St. Louis, nevertheless, shared and even helped to prolong two of ^^P- — its greatest mistakes ; as a Christian he misconceived the rights of caption oi conscience in respect of religion, and, as a king, he brought upon the rights his people deplorable evils and perils for the sake of a fruitless science, enterprise. War against religious liberty was, for a long course of ages, the crime of Christian communities and the source of the most cruel evils as well as of the most formidable irreligious reactions the world has had to undergo. The thirteenth century was the culminating period of this fatal notion and the sanction of it con- ferred by civil legislation as well as ecclesiastical teaching. St. Louis joined, so far, with sincere conviction, in the general and ruling idea of his age ; and the jumbled code which bears the name of ^tablissements de Saint Louis, formally condemns heretics to death, and bids the civil judges to see to the execution, in this respect, of the bishops' sentences. In 1255 St, Louis himself demanded of Pope Alexander TV. leave for the Dominicans and I20 History of France. Franciscans to exercise.,, througliout the whole kingdom, the inquisi- tion ah^eady established, on account of the Albigensians, in the old domains of the counts of Toulouse. His extreme severity towards what he called the knavish oath {vilain serment), that is, blasphemy, an offence for which there is no definition save what is contained in the bare name of it, is, perhaps, the most striking indication of the state of men's minds, and especially of the king's, in this re- spect. Every blasphemer was to receive on his mouth the imprint of a red-hot iron. In the matter of religious liberty St. Louis is • a striking example of the vagaries which may be fallen into, under the sway of public feeling, by the most equitable of minds and the most scrupulous of consciences. A solemn warning, in times of great intellectual and popular ferment, for those men whose hearts are set on independence in their thoughts as well as in their conduct, and whose only object is justice and truth. As for the crusades, the situation of Louis was with respect to them quite different and his responsibility far more personal. It was a great error in his judgment that he prolonged, by his blindly prejudiced obstinacy, a movement which was more and more inopportune and illegitimate, for it was becoming day by day more factitious and more inane. A.D. 1270. St. Louis was succeeded by his son, Philip IIL, a prince, no Philip III, Joubt, of some personal valour, since he has retained in history the king of nickname of Tlie Bold, but not, otherwise, beyond mediocrity. His France. reign had an iinfortuuate beginning. After having passed several months before Tunis, in slack and unsuccessful continuation of his father's crusade, he gave it up and reembarked in iNTovember, 1270, with the remnants of an army anxious to quit "that accursed land," wrote one of the crusaders, "where we languish rather than live, exposed to torments of dust,' fury of winds, corruption of atmos- phere and putiefaction of corpses." He arrived at Paris, on the 21st of May, 1271, bringing back with him five royal biers, that of his father, that of his brother John Tristan, count of !N"evers, that of his brother-in-law Theobald king of jS^avarre, that of his wife and that of his son. The day after his arrival he conducted them all in state to the Abbey of St. Denis, and was crowned, at Eheims, not until the 30th of August following. His reign, which lasted fifteen years, was a period of neither repose nor glory. He engaged in war several times over in Southern France and in the north of Spain, in 1272, against Eoger Bernard, count of Foix, and in 1275 against Don Pedro III., king of Aragon, attempting con- quests and gaining victories, but becoming easily disgusted with his enterprises and gaining no result of importance or durability. Philip III. and Peter de la Brosse. \2\ Without his taking himself any ofBcial or active part in the matter, the name and credit of France were more than once compromised in the affairs of Italy through the continual wars and intrigues of his uncle Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily, who was just as amhi- tious, just as turbulent and just as tyrannical as his brother St. Louis was scrupulous, temperate and just. It was in the reign of Philip the Bold that there took place in Sicily, on the 30th of March, 1282, that notorious massacre of the French which is known by the name of Sicilian Vespers, which was provoked by the un- a.D. 1282 bridled excesses of Charles of Anjou's comrades, and through which ''Sicilian many noble French families had to suffer cruelly. At the same time, the celebrated Italian admiralEoger de Loria inflicted, by sea, on the French party in Italy, the Proven9al navy, and the army of Philip the Bold, who was engaged upon incursions into Spain, considerable reverses and losses. At the same period the foundations were being laid in Germany and in the north of Italy, in the person of Eudolph of Hapsburg, elected emperor, of the greatness reached by the House of Austria, which was destined to be so formidable a rival to France. The government of Philip III. showed hardly more ability at home than in Europe; not that the king was himself violent, of Philip's tyrannical, greedy of poAver or money, and unpopular; but he S'^'^^'^^" was weak, credulous, very illiterate, and without penetration, fore- sight, or intelligent and determined will. He fell under the influence of an inferior servant of his house, Peter de la Brosse, Peter de la who had been surgeon and barber first of all to St. Louis and ^'°^2®* then to Philip III., Avho made him, before long, his chancellor and familiar counsellor. This barber-mushroom was soon a mark for the jealousy and the attacks of the great lords of the court; he joined issue with them, and even with the young queen, Maria of Brabant, the second wife of Philip III. Accusations of treason, of poisoning and peculation were raised against him, and, in 1278, he was hanged at Paris, on the thieves' gibbet, in presence of the dukes of Burgundy and Brabant, the count of Artois, and many •other personages of note, who took pleasure in witnessing his execution. Peter de la Brosse was one of the first examples, in French history, of those favourites who did not understand that, if the scandal caused by their elevation were noi to entail their ruin, it was incumbent upon them to be great men. In spite of the want of ability and the weakness conspicuous in the government of Philip the Bold, the kingship in France had, in his reign, better fortunes than could have been expected. The death, without children, of his uncle Alphonso, St. Louis's brother, count of Poitiers and also count of Toulouse, through his wife, 122 History of France. Joan, daughter of Eaymond VII., put Philip in possession of those fair provinces. He at first possessed the countsliip of Toulouse merely with the title of count, and as a private domain which was not definitely incorporated with the crown of France until a century later. Certain disputes arose between England and France in respect of this great inheritance ; and Philip ended them by ceding Agenois to Edward I., king of England, and keeping Quercy. He also ceded to Pope Urbaa lY., the county of Venaissin, with its capital Avignon, which the court of Eome claimed by virtue of a gift from Eaymond VII., count of Toulouse, and which, through a course of many disputations and vicissitudes, remained in posses- sion of the Holy See until it was reunited to France on the 19th of February, 1797, by the treaty of Tolentino. But, notwith- standing these concessions, when Philip the Bold died, at Per- pignan, the 5th of October, 1285, on his return from his expedition in Aragon, the sovereignty in Southern France, as far as the frontiers of Spain, had been won for the kingship of Fraiice. A Flemish chronicler, a monk at Egmont, describes the character of Philip the Bold's successor in the following words-: "A certain king of France, also named Philip, eaten up by the fever of avarice and cupidity." And that was not the only fever inherent in Philip IV,, called the Handsome ; he was a prey also to that of A.D. 1285. ambition, and above all, to that of power. When he mounted the rthe h d ti^^^o^^j ^t seventeen years of age, he was handsome, as his nick- some). — name teUs us, cold, taciturn, harsh, brave at need, but without fire His cha- qj. (Jash, able in the formation of his designs and obstinate in prosecuting them by craft or violence, by means of bribery or cruelty, with wit to choose and support his servants, passionately vindictive against his enemies, and faithless and unsympathetic towards his subjects, but from time to time taking care to conciliate them either by calling them to his aid in his difficulties or his dangers, or by giving them protection against other oppressors. Never, perhaps, was king better served by circumstances or more successful in his enterprises ; but he is the first of the Capetians who had a scandalous contempt for rights, abused success, and thrust the kingship, in France, upon the high-road of that arrogant and reckless egotism which is sometimes compatible with ability and glory, but which carries with it in the germ, and sooner or later brings out in full bloom, the native vices and fatal con- sequences of arbitrary and absolute power. Relations Away from his own kingdom, in his own dealings with foreign with Eng. countries, Philip the Handsome had a good fortune, which his predecessors had lacked, and which his successors lacked still more. Philip IV. — Wars with Flanders. 123 Through "William the Conqueror's settlement in England and Henry II.'s marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the kings of England had, by reason of their possessions and their claims in France, become the natural enemies of the kings of France, and war was almost incessant between the two kingdoms. But Edward I., king of England, ever since his accession to the throne, in 1272, had his ideas fixed upon, and his constant efforts directed towards the conquests of the countries of "Wales and Scotland, so as to unite under his sway the whole Island of Great Britain. In spite, then, of frequent interruptions, the reign of Edward I. was on the whole a period of peace between England and France, being exempt, at any rate, from premeditated and obstinate hostilities. In Southern France, at the foot of the Pyrenees, Philip the And witb Handsome, just as his father Philip the Bold, was, during the first Aragon. year of his reign, at war with the kings of Aragon, Alphonso III. and Jayme II. ; but these campaigns, originating in purely local quaiTels or in the ties between the descendants of St. Louis and of his brother Charles of Anjou, king of the Two Sicilies, rather than in furtherance of the general interests of France, were terminated in 1291 by a treaty concluded at Tarascon between the belligerents, and have remained without historical importance. The Flemish were the people with whom Philip the Handsome His engaged in and kept up, during the whole of his reign, with quarrels . . with, the frequent alternations of defeat and success, a really serious war. Flemings^ In the thirteenth century Flanders was the most populous and the richest country in Europe, She owed the fact to the briskness of her manufacturing and commercial undertakings not only amongst her neighbours, but throughout Southern and Eastern Europe, in Italy, in Spain, in Sweden, in ifforway, in Hungary, in Eussia, and even as far as Constantinople, where, as we have seen, Baldwin I., count of Flanders, became, in 1204, Latin Emperor of the East. Cloth and all manner of woollen stuffs were the principal articles of Flemish production, and it was chiefly from England that Flanders drew her supply of wool, the raw material of her industry. Thence arose between the two countries commercial relations, which could not fail to acquire political importance. At the time of Philip the Handsome's accession to the throne, Guy de Dampierre, Guy de of noble Champagnese origin, had been for five years count of Dampierre Flanders, as heir to his mother Marguerite II. He was a prince FlanderB. who did not lack courage, or, on a great emergency, high-minded- ness and honour ; but he was ambitious, covetous, as parsimonious as his mother had been munificent, and above all concerned to get his children married in a manner conducive to his own political 124 History of France. importance. In 1293 lie was secretly negotiating the mdrriage of Pliilippa, one of his daughters, with Prince Edward, eldest son of the king of England. Philip the Handsome, having received due warning, invited the count of Flanders to Paris, " to take counsel with him and the other harons touching the state of the kingdom." At first Guy hesitated ; hut he dared not refuse, and he repaired to Is arrested p^j-jg -with his sons John and Guy. The three princes wiere marched off at once to the tower of the Louvre, where Guy remained for six months, and did not then get out save by leaving as hostage to the king of Prance his daughter Philippa herself, who was destined to pass in this prison her young and mournful life. On once more entering Flanders, and driven to extremity by the haughty severity of Philip, Count Guy at last came to a decision, concluded a formal treaty with Edward I., affianced to the English crown-prince the most youthful of his daughters, Isabel of Flanders, and formally renounced his allegiance to Philip the Handsome. A.D. 1297. This meant war. And it was prompt and sharp on the part of Flanders" ^^® ^'^^% of France, slow and dull on the part of the king of England, who was always more bent upon the conquest of Scotland than upon defending, on the Continent, his ally the count of Flanders. The French arms were at first crowned with success ; but the greed and cruelty of the conquerors soon led to an outburst of violent sedition. A simple weaver, obscure, poor, undersized and one-eyed, but valiant and eloquent in his Flemish tongue, one A.D, 1301. Peter Deconing, became the leader of revolt in Bruges ; accomplices Bruges flocked to him from nearly all the towns of Flanders ; and he found allies amongst their neighbours. In 1302 war again broke out ; but it was no longer a war between Philip the Handsome and Guy de Dampierre : it was a war between the Flemish communes and their foreign oppressors. Every where resounded the cry of insurrection : " Our bucklers and our friends for the lion of Flanders! Death to all "Walloons !" Philip the Handsome pre- cipitately levied an army of sixty thousand men, says Yillani, and gave the command of it to Count Robert of Artois, the hero of Furnes. The forces of the Flemings amounted to no more than A.D. 1302. twenty thousand fighting men. The two armies met near Courtrai. Battle of 'j'jj^e French chivalry were full of ardorjr and confidence ; and the Italian archers in their service began the attack with some success. " My lord," said one of his knights to the count of Artois, " these knaves wiU do so well that they will gain the honour of the day; and, if they alone put an end to the war, what will be left for the noblesse to do 1" "Attack then !" answered the prince. Two grand attacks succeeded one another ; the first under the orders of Battles of Courtrai and of Mons-en-Pitelle, 125 the Constable Eaoul of IS'esle, the second under those of the count of Artois in person. After two hours' fighting, both failed against the fiery national passion of the Flemish communes, and the two French leaders, the Constable and the count of Artois, were left both of them Ij'ing on the field of battle amidst twelve or fifteen thousand of their dead. "I yield me! I yield me!" cried the count of Artois, but, " We understand not thy lingo," ironically answered in their own tongue the Flemings who surrounded him ; and he was forthwith put to the sword. Too late to save him galloped up a noble ally of the insurgents, Guy of iN'amur. " Erorm the top of the towers of our monastery," says the abbot of St Martin's of Tournai, "we could see the French flying over the roads, across fields and through hedges, in such numbers that the sight mast have been seen to be believed. There were in the out- skirts of our town and in the neighbouring villages so vast a mul- titude of knights and men-at-arms tormented with hunger, that it was a matter horrible to see. They gave their arms to get bread." A French knight, covered with wounds, whose name has remained unknown, hastily scratched a few words upon a scrap of parchment dyed with blood ; and that was the first account Philip the Handsome received of the battle of Courtrai, which was fought and lost on the 11th of July, 1302. The news of this great defeat of the French spread rapidly throughout Europe, and filled with joy all those who were hostile to or jealous of Philip the Handsome. The wily monarch spent two years in negotiations, for the purpose of gaining time, and of letting the edge wear off the Flemings' confidence. In the spring ^j). 1304 of 1304, the cry of war resounded every where. Philip had laid The war an impost extraordinary upon all real property in his kingdom 3 aeain regulars and reserves had been summoned to Arras, to attack the Flemings by land and sea. He had taken into his pay a Genoese fleet commanded by Eegnier de Grimaldi, a celebrated Italian admiral ; and it arrived in the North Sea, and blockaded Zierikzee, a maritime town of Zealand. On the 10th of August, 1304, the Flemish fleet which was defending the place was beaten and dispersed. Philip hoped for a moment that this reverse would discourage the Flemings ; but it was not so at all. A great battle took place on the 17th of August between the two land armies at Mons-en-Puelle (or, Mont-en-Pevele, according to the true local Battle of spelling), near Lille ; the action was for some time indecisive, and p^^ii^"" even after it was over both sides hesitated about claiming the victory; but when the Flemings saw their camp swept off and rifled, and when they no longer found in it, say the chroniclers, 126 History of France. struggles with the Papacy. Philip the Handsome curtails the privi- leges of theChurch. "tlieir fine stuffs of Bruges and Ypres, their wines of Rochelle, their beers of Cambrai and their cheeses of Bethune, "they declared that they would return to their hearths ; and their leaders, unable to restrain them, were obliged to shut themselves up in Lille, whither Philip, who had himself retired at first to Arras, came to besiege them. Thus during ten years, from 1305 to 1314, there was between France and Flanders a continual alternation of reciprocal concessions and retractions, of treaties concluded and of renewed insurrections without decisive and ascertained results. It was neither peace nor war; and, after the death of Philip the Handsome, his successors were destined for a long time to come to find again and again amongst the Flemish communes deadly enmities and grievous perils. At the same time that he was prosecuting this interminable war against the Flemings, Philip was engaged, in this case also beyond the boundaries of his kingdom, in a struggle which was still more serious owing to the nature of the questions which gave rise to it and to the quality of his adversary. The French kingship and papacy, the representatives of which had but lately been great and glorious princes such as PhUip Augustus and St. Louis, Gregory VII. and Innocent. III., were, at the end of the thirteenth century, vested in the persons of men of far less moral worth and less political wisdom, Philip the Handsome and Boniface VIII. We have already had glimpses of Philip the Handsome's greedy, rug- gedly obstinate, haughty and tyrannical character ; and Boni- face VIII. had the same defects, with more hastiness and less ability. Philip the Handsome had been nine years king when Boniface VIII. became pope. On his accession to the throne he had testified an intention of curtailing the privileges and power of the Church, He had removed the clergy from judicial functions, in the domains of the lords as well as in the domain of the king, and he had every where been putting into the hands of laymen the administration of civil justice. He had considerably increased the per centage to be paid on real property acquired by the Church (called possessions in mortmain), by way of compensation for the mutation-dues which their fixity caused the State to lose. At the time of the crusades the property of the clergy had been subjected to a special tax of a tenth of the revenues, and this tax had been several times renewed for reasons other than the crusades. In 1296, Philip the Handsome, at war with the king of England and the Flemings, imposed upon the clergy two fresh tenths. The bishops alone were called upon to vote them; and the order of Citeaux refused to pay them, and addressed to the pope a protest, with a The King and the Pope. 127 comparison between Philip and Pharaoh. Boniface not only entertained the protest, hut addressed to the king a bnll (called Clericis laieos, from its first two words), in which, led on by his A.D. 1296. zeal to set forth the generality and absoluteness of his power, he . . , -f' laid down as a principle that churches and ecclesiastics could not cos." be taxed save with the permission of the sovereign-pontiff, and that " aU emperors, kings, dukes, counts, barons, or governors whatsoever, who should Adolate this principle, and all prelates or other ecclesiastics who should through weakness lend themselves to such violation, would by this mere fact incur excommunication and would be incapable of release therefrom, save in articulo mortis, unless by a special decision of the Holy See." This was going far beyond the traditions of the French Church, and, in the very act of protecting it, to strike a blow at its independence in its dealings with the French State. Philip was mighty wroth, but he did not burst out ; he confined himself to letting the pope perceive his displeasure by means of divers administrative measures, amongst others by forbidding the exportation from the kingdom of gold, silver, and valuable articles, which found their way chiefly to Eome. Boniface, on his side, was not slow to perceive that he had gone too far, and that his own interests did not permit him to give so much offence to the king of France. A year after the bull Clericis laieos he modified it by a new bnall, which, not only authorized the collection of the two tenths voted by the French. bishops, but recognized the right of the king of France to tax the French clergy with their consent and without authorization from the Holy See, whenever there was a pressing necessity for it. Philip, on his side, testified to the pope his satisfaction at this concession by himself making one at the expense of the religious liberty of his subjects. Thus the two absolute sovereigns changed their policy and Policy of made temporary sacrifice of their mutual pretensions, according *^® ^^°S as it suited them to fight or to agree. But there arose a question pope. in respect of which this continual alternation of pretensions and compromises, of quarrels and accommodations, was no longer possible ; in order to keep up their position in the eyes of one another they were obliged to come to a deadly clash; and in this struggle, perilous for both, Boniface VIII. was the aggressor, and with Philip the Handsome remained the victory. An opportunity for a splendid confirmation of the pope's universal supremacy in the Christian world came to tempt him. A quarrel had arisen between Philip and the archbishop of iS^arbohne on the subject of certain dues claimed by both in that gTcat diocese. Boniface 128 History of Fratice. was loud in his advocacy of the archbishop against the officers of the king ; he sent to Paris, to support his words, Bernard de Saisset, whom he, on his own authority, had just appointed Bp'-nard de bishop of Pamiers. On arriving in Paris as the pope's legate, b shop 'of Saisset made use there of violent and inconsiderate language ; Philip ^amiers. had, at that time, as his chief councillors, lay- lawyers, servants passionately attached to the kingship. They were Peter Plotte, his chancellor, William of Nogaret, judge-major at Beaucaire, and William of Plasian, lord of Vezenobre, the two latter belonging, as Bernard de Saisset belonged, to Southern Prance, and de- termined to withstand, in the south as well as the north, the domination of ecclesiastics. They, in their turn, rose up against the doctrine and language of the bishop of Pamiers. He was arrested and committed to the keeping of the archbishop of Narbonne; and Philip sent to Rome his chancellor Peter Flotte himself, and William of Kogaret, with orders to demand the condemnation of the bishop of Pamiers. Boniface replied by changing the venue to his own personal tribunal in the case of Bernard de Saisset. " My power — the spiritual power," said the pope to the chancellor of France, "embraces the temporal; and includes it." "Be it so," answered Peter Flotte ; "but your power is nominal, the king's real." Here was a coarse challenge hurled by the crown at the tiara : and Boniface YIII. unhesitatingly accepted it. But, instead of keeping the advantage of a defensive position by claiming, in the name of lawful right, the liberties and immunities of the Church, he assumed the offensive against the kingship by proclaiming the supremacy of the Holy See in things temporal as well as spiritual, and by calling upon Philip the Handsome to acknowledge it. On the 5th of December, 1301, he addressed to the king, commencing A.D. 1301. with the words, '■'■Hearken^ most dear Son" {AuscuUa, carissime fili), ^^^^ a long buU in which, with circumlocutions and expositions full of '' Aasculta . fili/» obscurity and subtlety, he laid down and affirmed, at bottom, the principle of the final sovereignty of the spiritual power, being of divine origin, over every temporal power, being of human creation. The final supremacy of the pope in the body politic and over all sovereigns meant the absorption of the laic com munity in the religious and the abolition of the State's independence not in favour of the national Church, but to the advantage of the foreign head of the universal Church. The defenders of the French kingship formed a better estimate than was formed at Rome of the effect which would be produced by such doctrine on France, in the existing condition of the French mind ; they entered upon no theo- The States-general and the Pope. 1 29 logica) and abstract polemics ; they confined tliemselves entirely to betting in a vivid light the pope's pretensions and their conse- quences, feeling sure that by confining themselves to this question they would enlist in their opposition not only all laymen, nobles, and commoners, but the greater part of the I'rsnch ecclesiastics themselves, who were no strangers to the feeling of national patriotism, and to whom the pope's absolute power in the body politic was scarcely more agreeable than the king's. On the 11th of February, 1302, the bull Hearken, most dear Son, was solemnly burnt at Paris in presence of the king and a numerous multitude. Philip convoked, for the 8th of April following, an assembly of the A.D. 1302 barons, bishops, and chief ecclesiastics, and of deputies from the •^^'^_*^'^* communes to the number of two or three for each city, all being convoked summoned " to deliberate on certain affairs which in the highest i^^ Paris, degree concern the king, the kingdom, the churches, and all and sundry," This assembly, which really met on the 10th of April at Paris in the church of Notre-Dame, is reckoned in French history as the first " states-general," The three estates wrote separately to Rome ; the clergy to the pope himself, the nobility and the deputies of the communes to the cardinals, all, however, protest- ing against the pope's pretensions in matters temporal, the two laic orders writing in a rough and threatening tone, the clergy making an appeal " to the wisdom and paternal clemency of the Holy Father Avith tearful accents and sobs mingled with their tears." The king evidently had on his side the general feeling of the nation : and the publication of a third bull {Unam sanctam), which threatened him with excommunication, only the more irritated him ; he resolved to act speedily. Notification must be sent to the pope of the king's appeal to the future council. Philip could A.D. 1303. no longer confide this awkward business to his chancellor Peter William of ° Nogaret at Flotte ; for he had fallen at Courtrai, in the battle against the Anagni. Flemings, William of Kogaret undertook it, at the same time obtaining from the king a sort of blank commission authorizing and ratifying in advance all that, under the circumstances, he might consider it advisable to do, i^otification of the appeal had to be made to the pope at Anagni, his native town, whither he had gone for refuge, and the people of which, being zealous in his favour, had already dragged in the mud the liUies and the banner of France. ISTogaret was bold, ruffianly, and clever. He repaired in haste to Florence to the king's banker, got a plentiful supply of money, established communications in Anagni, and secured, above all, the co-operation of Sciarra Colonna, who was passionately hostile to the pope, had been formerly proscribed by him, and, K 130 History of France^ bavirg fallen into tlie hands of corsairs, had worlved at the oat tor thoni during many a year rather than reveal his name and he sold to Boniface Gaetani. On the 7th of September, 1303, Colonna and his associates introduced IS'ogaret and his following into Anagni, with shouls of "Death to Pope Boniface! Long live the king of France ! " The populace, dumb-founded, re- mained motionless. The pope, deserted by all, even by his own nephew, tried to touch the heart of Colonna himself, whose only answer was a summons to abdicate, and to surrender at discretion. Death of ' ^'^"^ outraged in spite of his advanced years (he was seventy-five), Foro Eonii. Boniface maintained a dauntless attitude under the grossest insults, face VIIL ]j^{. ^^^^ ^^^^ shortly after. On the 22nd of October, 1303, eleven days after the death of Boniface YIIL, Benedict XI., son of a simple shepherd, was elected at Eome to succeed him. Philip the Handsome at once sent his congratulations, but by "William of Plasian, who had lately been the accuser of Boniface, and who was charged to hand to the new pope, on the king's behalf, a very bitter memorandum touching hi^ predecessor. Philip at the same time caused an address to be presented to himself in his own kingdom and in the vulgar tongue, called a snpiilication from the people of France to the king against Boniface. Benedict XI. exerted himself to give satisfaction to the conqueror; Nogaret and the direct authors of the assault at Anagni were alone excepted from the general amnesty. The pope reserved for a future occasion the announcement of their absolution, when he should consider it expedient. But, on the 7th of June, 1304, instead of absolving them, he launched a fresh bull of excommuni- cation against " certain wicked men who had dared to commit a hateful crime against a person of good memory, Pope Boniface." A.D. 1304. A month after this bull Benedict XI. was dead. It is related that PoBe B ne '^ yo^mg woman had put before him at table a basket of fresh figs, diet XI. of which he had eaten and which had poisoned him. The chroniclers of the time impute this crime to William of ^ogaret, to the Colonnas, and to their associates at Anagni ; a single one names King Philip. The king of France, who had gained the battle of Mons-en-Puelle, then took advantage of his success to procure the election of a pope who would be entirely and exclu- sively his creature. The archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Got, proclaimed under the title of Clement V., had to accept, in return. Trial and ^^^® harshest conditions, such as pronouncing the condemnation of condemna- Bonifiice VIII., transferring the Papal See from Eome to Avignon, kni^ehts- ^ authorizing the suppression of the order of the Knights Templars, tamplars. etc This last clause cost the new pontiff a great deal of pains. The Knights Templars. 131 and it was with the utmost reluctance that he yielded to it. The great wealth possessed by the order of the Temple was the true cause of Philip's hatred, but as some plausible cause was needed to procure their condemnation, they were accused of heresy, immo- rality and sacrilege. The council of Yienne condemned them, but the Grand Master Jacques Molay protested of their innocence to the Jaequet very last ; a poet chronicler, Godfrey of Paris, who was a witness r^° J of the scene, thus describes it : " The Grand Master, seeing the fire aliv« prepared, stripped himself briskly ; I tell just as I saw ; he bared himself to his shirt, light-heartedly and with a good grace, without a whit of trembling, though he was dragged and shaken mightily. They took hold of him to tie him to the stake, and they were binding his hands with a cord, but he said to them, ' Sirs, suffer me to fold my hands awhile, and make my prayer to God, for verily it is time. I am presently to die ; but wrongfully, God wot. Wherefore woe will come, ere long, to those who condemn ua without a cause. God will avenge our death.' " It was probably owing to these last words that there arose a popular rumour, soon spread abroad, that Jacques Molay, at his death, had cited the pope and the king to appear with him, the former at the end of forty days, and the latter within a year, before the judgment-seat of God. Events gave a sanction to the legend : for Clement V. actually died on the 20th of April, ■^•^- ^^l*- 1314, and Philip the Handsome on the 29th of November, 1314; pope cie- the pope, undoubtedly uneasy at the servile acquiescence he had ment V. shown towards the king, and the king expressing some sorrow for and of tho his greed, and for the imposts {maltote, maletolta, or hlaclc mail) king of with which he had burdened his people. (t^^^\2Q\ In excessive and arbitrary imposts, indeed, consisted the chief grievance for which France, in the fourteenth century, had to com- plain of Philip the Handsome; and, probably, it was the only wrong for which he upbraided himself. As he was no stranger to General the spirit of order in his own affairs, he tried, towards the end of pjjiijp ^ha his reign, to obtain an exact account of his finances. His chief Hand- adviser, Enguerrand de Marigny, became his superintendent-general, l°^e-n. and on the 19th of January, 1311, at the close of a grand council meat, held at Poissy, Philip passed an ordinance which established, under the headings of expenses and receipts, two distinct tables and treasuries, one for ordinary expenses, the civil list and the payment of the great bodies of the State, incomes, pensions, &C.5 and the other for extraordinary expenses. The general history of France has been more indulgent towards Philip the Handsome than his contemporaries were; it has E 2 132 History of France. expressed its acknowledgments to him for tlio progress made, UDder his sway, by the particular and permauunt characteristics of civilization in France. The kingly domain received in the Pyre- nees, in Aquitaine, in Franche-Comte, and in Flanders territorial increments which extended national unity. The legislative power of the king penetrated into, and secured footing in the lands of his vassals. The scattered semi-sovereigns of feudal society bowed down before the incontestable pre-eminence of the kingship, which gained the victory in its struggle against the papacy. The general constitution of the judiciary power, as delegated from the kingship, the creation of several classes of magistrates devoted to this great social function, and, especially, the strong organization and the permanence of the parliament of Paris, were important progressions Develop- i^^ ^^^ development of civil order and society in France. But it ment of -nras to the advantage of absolute power that all these facts were '^ ® ' turned, and the perverted ability of Philip the Handsome consisted in working them for that single end. He was a profound egotist ; he mingled with his imperiousness the leaven of craft and patience, but he was quite a stranger to the two principles which constitute the morality of governments, respect for rights and patriotic sympathy with public sentiment ; he concerned himself about nothing but his own position, his own passions, his own wishes, oi his own fancies. And this is the radical vice of absolute power. Philip the Handsome is one of the kings of France who have most contributed to stamp upon the kingship in France this lamentable characteristic from which France has suffered so much even in the midst of her glories, and which, in our time, was so grievously atoned for by the kingship itself when it no longer deserved the reproach. A.D. 1314 Philip the Handsome left three sons, Louis X., called le Hutin 1328 Eeiffns'of (^^^ quarreller), Philip V., called the Long, and Charles IV., called Philip the the Handsome, who, between them, occupied the throne only '^^ , thirteen years and ten months. ISoi one of them distinguished soiue s •' ° three sons, himself by his personal merits ; and the events of the three reigns hold scarcely a higher place in history than the actions of the tliree kings do. Shortly before the death of Philip the Handsome, his greedy despotism had already excited amongst the people si:.ch lively discontent that several leagues were formed in Champagne, Burgundy, Artois, and Beauvaisis, to resist him ; and the members of these leagues, '* nobles and commoners," say the accounts, engaged to give one another mutual support in their resistance " at their own cost and charges." After the death of Philip the Handsome the opposition made head more extensively and effectually; and it The Salic law. 133 produced two results : ten ordinances of Lonis the Quarreller for redressing the grievances of the feudal aristocracy, for one ; and, for the other, the trial and condemnation of Enguerrand de Marigny, " coadjutor and rector of the kingdom " under Philip the Handsome. Marigny was accused, condemned by a commission assembled at Vincennes, and hanged on the gibbet of Montfaucon which he himself, it is said, had set up. Whilst the feudal aristocracy was thus avenging itself of kingly tyranny, the spirit of Christianity was noiselessly pursuing its work, the general enfranchisement of men. Louis the Quarreller , ^ .„. had to keep up the war with Flanders, which was continually being Emancipa- renewed ; and in order to find, without hateful exactions, the ^^°^ °^ ^"^ necessary funds, he was advised to offer freedom to the serfs of his royal do- domains ; accordingly he issued, on the 3rd of July, 1315, an edict mains, to that effect. Another fact which has held an important place in the history of France, and exercised a great influence over her destinies, lilvcwise dates from this period ; and that is the exclusion of women from the succession to the throne, by virtue of an article, ill understood, _,, _ ,, . ' •' . ' ' The SalJc of the Salic law. The ancient law of the Salian Franks, drawn up, law. probably, in the seventh century, had no statute at all touching this grave question ; the article relied upon was merely a regulation of civil law prescribing that " no portion of really Salic land (that is to say, in the full territorial ownership of the head of the family) should pass into the possession of women, but it should belong altogether to the virile sex." From the time of Hugh Capet heirs male had never been wanting to the crown, and the succession in the male line had been a fact uninterrupted indeed, but not due to prescription or law. Louis the Quarreller, at his death, on the 5th of June, 1316, left only a daughter, but his second wife, Queen Clemence, was pregnant. As soon as Philip the Long, then count of Poitiers, heard of his brother's death, he hur- ried to Paris, assembled a certain number of barons, and got them to decide that he, if the queen should be delivered of a son, should be regent of the kingdom for eighteen years ; but that if she should bear a daughter he should immediately take possession of the crown. On the 15th of November, 1316, the queen gave birth to a son, who was named John, and who figures as John L in the series of French kings, but the child died at the end of five days, and on the 6th of January, 1317, Philip the Long was crowned king at Rheims. He forthwith summoned, there is no knowing exactly where and in what numbers, the clergy, barons, and third estate, who declared, on the 2nd of February, that " the 134 History of Fratzce. laws and customs, inviolably observed among the Franks, excluded daughters from the crown." There was no doubt about the fact j but the law was not established, nor even in conformity with the entire feudal system or with general opinion. And " thus the kingdom went," says Froissart, " as seemeth to many folks, out of the right line." But the measure was evidently wise and salutary for France as well as for the kingship ; and it was renewed, after Philip the Long died, on the 3rd of January, 1322, and left daughters only, in favour of his brother Charles the Handsome, Conse- who died, in his turn, on the 1st of January, 1328, and likewise quences of left daughters only. The question as to the succession to the throne law^*^" then lay between the male line represented by Philip, count of Valois, grandson of Philip the Bold through Charles of Valois, his father, and the female line represented by Edward III., king of England, grandson, through his mother Isabel, sister of the late king Charles the Handsome, of Philip the Handsome. A war of more than a century's duration between France and England was the result of this lamentable rivalry, which aU but put the kingdom of France under an English king ; but France was saved by the stubborn resistance of the national spirit and by Joan of Arc, inspired by God. One hundred and twenty- eight years after the triumph of the national cause and four years after the accession of Henry IV., which was still disputed by the League, a decree of the parliament of Paris, dated the 28th of June, 1593, maintained, against the pretentions of Spain, the authority of the Salic law, and on the 1st of October, 1789, a decree of the National Assembly, in conformity with the formal and unanimous wish of the me- morials drawn up by the States-general, gave a fresh sanction to that principle, which, confining tRe heredity of the crown to the male line, had been salvation to the unity and nationality of the monarchy in France. We have traced the character and progressive development of the French kingship from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, through the reigns of Louis the Fat, of Philip Augustus, of St. Louis and of Philip the Handsome, princes very diverse and very unequal in merit, but all of them able and energetic. This period ■was likewise the cradle of the French nation. That was the time when it began to exhibit itself in its different elements, and to arise under monarchical rule from the midst of the feudal system. The Com- "^^^ Communes, which should not be confounded with the Third munes. Estate, are the first to appear in history. They appear there as local facts, isolated one from another, often very different in point of origin though analogous in their aim, and in every case neitL ei The Commmtes. 1 35 assuming not pretending to assume any place in the government of the State, Local interests and rights, the special affairs of certain populations agglomerated in certain spots, are the only objects, the only province of the communes. With this purely municipal and individual character they come to their birth, their confirmation and their development from the eleventh to the fourteenth century; and at the end of two centuries they enter upon their decline, they occupy far less room and make far less noise in history. It is exactly then that the Third Estate comes to the front, and uplifts itself as a general fact, a national element, a political power. It is the successor, not the contemporary, of the Communes ; they con- tributed much towards, but did not suffice for its formation j it drew upon other resources, and was developed under other in- fluences than those which gave existence to the communes. The xheir ci-a' struggles which from the eleventh to the fourteenth century gave racter. existence to so many communes had no such profound character ; the populations did not pretend to any fundamental overthrow of the regimen they attacked j they conspired together, they swore together, as the phrase is according to the documents of the time — they rose to extricate themselves from the outrageous oppression and misery they were enduring, but not to abolish feudal sove- reignty and to change the personality of their masters. When they succeeded, they obtained those treaties of peace called charters, which brought about in the condition of the insurgents salutary changes accompanied by more or less effectual guarantees. When they failed or when tlie charters were violated, the result was violent reactions, mutual excesses ; the relations between the popu- lations and their lords were tempestuous and full of vicissitude ; but at bottom neither the political regimen nor the social system of the communes were altered. Feudal oppression and insurrection were the chief cause, but not Cause 0! the sole origin of the communes. The first cause was the continu- *'^® '^^^' f. T T-. • • 1 • 1-11 . „ . . munes. ance 01 the Koman municipal regimen, which kept its footing m a Eoman great number of towns, especially in those of Southern Gaul, Mar- municipa seiUes, Aries, Nismes, l^arbonne, Toulouse, &c. ; as the feudal ° system grew and grew, these Roman municipalities still went on in the midst of universal darkness and anarchy. They had pene- trated into the north of Gaul in fewer numbers and with a weaker organization than in the south, but still keeping their foot- ing and vaunting themselves on their Roman origin in the face of their barbaric conquerors. Under different names, in accordance with changes of language, the Roman municipal regimen held ou and adapted itself to new social conditiona. 136 Histojy of France. Part In our own day there "ha? been far too mucli inclinntioTj to played by dispute tlio active and effcntivr nnrt pliycd by tlie kingship in tlie ship " formation and protection of the French communes, Not only did the kings often interpose as mediators in the quarrels of the communes wilh their laic or ecclesiasticval lords, but many amongst them assumed in their own domains and to the profit of the com- clere *^* munes an intelligent and beneficial initiative. E'or was it the kings alone who in the middle ages listened to the counsels of reason, and recognized in their behaviour towards their towns the rights of justice. Many bishops had become the feudal lords of the episcopal city; and the Christian spirit enlightened and animated many amongst them jnst as the monarchical spirit some- times enlightened and guided the kings. The third and chief Feudal^ source of the communes was the case of those which met feudal oppression. . . oppression with energetic resistance, and which after all the suffer- ings, vicissitudes and outrages, on both sides, of a prolonged struggle ended by winning a veritable administrative and, to a certain extent, political independence. The number of communes thus formed irom the eleventh to the thirteenth century was great, and we have a detailed history of the fortunes of several amongst them, Cambrai, Beauvais, Laon, Amiens, Eheims, Etampes, Vezelay, &c. Decline of "When, however, we arrive at the end of the thirteenth and the munes. beginning of the fourteenth century we see a host of communes falling into decay or entirely disappearing ; tliey cease really to belong to, and govern themselves ; some, like Laon, Cambrai, Beauvais, and Eheims, fought a long while ajrainst decline, and tried more than once to re-establish themselves in all their indepen- dence ; but they could not do without the king's support in their resistance to their lords, laic or ecclesiastical ; and they were not in a condition to resist the kin'jship which had grown whilst tliey were perishing. Others, Meulan and Soissons for example (in 1320 and 1335), perceived their wealcness early, and themselves requested the kingship to deliver them from their communal organization and itself assume their administration. And so it is about this period, under St. Louis and Philip the Handsome, that there appear in the collections of acts of the French kingship, those great ordinances A\'hich regulate the administration of all communes within the kingly domains. At the very time that the communes were perishing and the Rise of the kingship was growing, a new power, a new social element, the E t t Third Est,ate, was springing up in France ; and it was called to take a far more important place in the history of France, and to exercise far more influence upon the fate of the French fatherland, The Third Estate. 137 than it harl hr>en granted to the communes to acquire during their siiort and incoherent existence. It may astonish many who study the records of French history from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, not to find any where the words iliird estate; it was at the great States of Tours, in 1468, that, for the first time, the third order bore the name which has been given to it by history. The fact was far before its name. The third estate drew its origin and nourishment from all sorts of sources j and whilst one was within an ace of drying up, the others remained abundant and fruitful Independently of the commune properly so called and invested with the right of self-government, many towns had privi- leges, serviceable though limited franchises, and under the adminis- tration of the king's officers they grew in population and wealtlx, These towns did not share, towards the end of the thirteenth century, in the decay of the once warlike and victorious communes. The majority amongst t]ie officers of the king were burghers, and Burgher- their number and their power were turned to the advantage of burgherdom, and led day by day to its further extension and importance. Of all the original sources of the third estate this it is, perhaps, which has contributed most to bring about the social preponderance of that order. Just when burgherdom, but lately formed, was losing in many of the communes a portion of its local liberties, at that same moment it was seizing by the hand of parliaments, provosts, judges, and administrators of all kinds, a large share of central power. It was through burghers admitted into the king's service and acting as administrators or judges in his name, that communal independence and charters were often attacked and abolished ; but at the same time they fortified and elevated burgherdom, they caused it to acquire from day to day more wealth, more credit, more importance and power in the internal and external alfairs of the State. Philip the Handsome was under no delusion when in 1302, 1308 and 1314, on convoking the first states-general of France, he summoned thither "the deputies of the good towns." His son, Philip the Long, was under no delusion when in 1317 and 1321 he summoned to the states general "the commonalties and good towns of the kingdom " to decide upon the interpretation of the Salic law as to the succession to the throne, " or to advise as to tho means of establishing a uniformity of coins, weights, and measures ;" and the three estates played the prelude to the formation, painful and slow as it was, of constitutional monarchy when, in 1338, under Philip of Valois, they declared, "in presence of the said 138 History of France. king, Pliilip of Yalois, who assented thereto, that there should be no power to impose or levy talliage in France if urgent necessity or evident utility did not require it, and then only by grant of the people of the estates." The Third Taking the history of France in its entirety and under all ita Estate in phases, the third estate has been the most active and determining ^!!t!?,^! * element in the process of French civilization. If we follow it in fact, its relation with the general government of the country, we see it at first allied for six centuries to the kingship, struggling without cessation against the feudal aristocracy, and giving predominance in place thereof to a single central power, pure monarchy, closely bordering, though with some frequently repeated but rather useless reservations, on absolute monarchy. But. 30 soon as it had gained this victory and brought about this revolution, the third estate went in pursuit of a new one, attacking that single power to the foundation of which it had contributed so much, and entering upon the task of changing pure monarchy into constitutional monarchy. This fact is unique in the history of the world. "We recognize in the career of the chief nations of Asia and ancient Europe nearly all the great facts which have agitated France ; but nowhere is there any appearance of a class which, starting from the very lowest, from being feeble, despised, and almost imperceptible at its origin, rises by perpetual motion and by labour without respite, strengthens proved by itself from period to period, acquires in succession whatever it a survey of lacked, wealth, enlighterment, influence, changes the face of society history ^"^ ^^® nature of government, and arrives at last at such a pitch of predominance that it may be said to be absolutely the country. Let us pass to the Europe of the Greeks and Romans. At the first blush we seem to discover some analogy between the pro- gress of these brilliant societies and that of French society \ but the analogy is only apparent ; there is, once more, nothing resembling the fact and the history of the French third estate. One thing only has struck sound judgments as being somewhat like the struggle of burgherdom in the middle ages against the feudal aristocracy, and that is the struggle between the plebeians and patricians at Eome. They have often been compared ; but it is a baseless comparison. The struggle between the plebeians and patricians commenced from the very cradle of the Eoman republic ; it was not, as happened in the France of middle ages, the result of a slow, difficult, incomplete development on the part of a class which, through a long course of great inferiority in strength, wealth, and credit, little by little, extended itself and raised itself, and ended by engaging in a real contest with the superior class. Natiojtal character of the Third Estate. 139 Not only is the fact new, but it is a fact eniineiitly French, essentially national, ll^owhere has hurgherdom had so wide and so prodnctive a careei- as that which fell to its lot in France. There have been communes in the whole of Europe, in Italy, Spain, Germany, and England, as well as in France. I^Tot only have there been communes every where, but the communes of France are not those which, as communes, under that name and in the middle ages, have played the chiefest part and taken the highest place in his- tory. The Italian communes were the parents of glorious republica. The German communes became free and sovereign towns, which had their own special history, and exercised a great deal of infiueuce upon the general history of Germany. The communes of England made alliance with a portion of the Eiiglish feudal aristocracy, formed with it the preponderating house in the British governmciitj, and thus played, full early, a mighty part in the history of their country. Far were the French communes, under that name and in their day of special activity, from rising to such political im- portance and to such historical rank. And yet it is in France that the people of the communes, the hurgherdom, reached the most complete and most powerful development, and ended by acquiring the most decided preponderance in the general social structure. There have been communes, we say, throughout Europe ; but there has not really been a victorious third estate any- where, save in France. and showH to ba essen- tially ns- tiouali CHAPTEK V. THE HUNDRED YEARS WAK. A.D. 1328. Philip VI, Df Valois, king of France. In the fourteenth century a new and a vital question arose : will the French dominion preserve its nationality 1 Will the kingship remain French or pass to the foreigner? This question brought ravages upon France and kept her fortunes in suspense for a hundred years of war with England, from the reign of Philip of Valois to that of Charles VII. ; and a young girl of Lorraine, caUed Joan of Ai'c, had the glory of communicating to France that decisive impulse which brought to a triumphant issue the independence of the French nation and kingship. Some weeks after his accession, on the 29th of May, 1328, Philip was crowned at Rheiras, in presence of a brilliant assemblage of princes and lords, French and foreign ; next year, on the 6th of June, Edward III., king of England, being summoned to fulfil a vassal's duties by doing homage to the king of France for the duchy of Aquitaine, which he held, appeared in the cathedral of Amiens, with his crown on his head, his sword at his side, and his gilded spurs on his heels ; and on the 30th of March, 1331, he recognized, by letters express, '■ that the said homage Avhich we did at Amiens to the king of France in general terms, is, and must be understood as liege : and that we are bound, as duke of Aquitaine, and peer of France, to show him faith and loyalty." The relations between the two kings were not destined to be foi long so courteous and so pacific. Relations between France and England. 14a Pliilip YI. had embroiled himself with a prince of his line, iiobert of Artois, great- grandson of Robert the first count of Artois, Avho was a brother of kSt. Louis, and was killed during the crusade in Egypt, at the battle of Mansourah. As early as the reign of Philip the Handsome, Robert claimed the countship of Artois as his heritage ; but having had his pretensions rejected by a decision of the peers of the kingdom, he had hoped for more success under Philip of Valois, whose sister he had married. Philip tried to satisfy him with another domain raised to a peerage ; but Robert, more and more discontented, got involved in a series of A.D. 1332. intrigues, plots, falsehoods, forgeries, and even, according to public ^^^^ ^j report, imprisonments and crimes which, in 1332, led to his being Artois, condemned by the court of peers to banishment and the confiscation sentenced XT « 1 ^ f n -r. I i^ 1 j_i i t° banish- 01 his property. He fled for refuge first to Brabant, and then to ment. England, to the court of Edward III,, who received him graciously, and whom he forthwith commenced inciting to claim the crown of France, " his inlaeritance," as he said, " which King Philip holds most wrongfully." In the soul of Edward temptation overcame indecision. As early as the month of June, 1336, in a parliament assembled at ^Northampton, he had complained of the assistance given by the king of France to the Scots, and he had expressed a hope that " if the French and the Scots were to join, they would at last offer him battle, which the latter had always carefully avoided." In September of the same year he employed similar language in a parliament held at Nottingham, and he obtained therefrom subsidies for the war going on, not only in Scotland, but also in Aquitaine against the French king's lieutenants. In April and May of the following year, 1337, he granted to Robert of Artois, his tempter for three years past, court favours which proved his resolution to have been already taken. On the 21st of August ^^ *jj following he formally declared war against the king of France, and declares addressed to all the sheriffs, archbishops, and bishops of his ^.^^^ . .... . . against kingdom a circular in which he attributed the initiative to Philip ; France. on the 26th of August he gave his ally, the emperor of Germany, notice of what he had just done, whilst, for the first time, insult- ingly describing Philip as *' setting himself up for king of France." At last, on the 7th of October, 1337, he proclaimed himself king of France, as his lawful inheritance, designating as representatives and supporters of his right the duke of Brabant, the marquis of Juliers, the count of Hainault, and William de Bohun, earl of N"orthampton. The enterprise had no foundation in right, and seemed to have few chances of success. No national interest, no public ground 142 History of France. was provocative of war "between the two peoples ; it was a war ol personal ambition like that which in the eleventh century "William the Conqueror had carried into England. The memory of that great event was still in the fourteenth century so fresh in France, that when the pretensions of Edw.ird were declared, and the struggle was begun, an assemblage of I*^ormans, barons and knights, or, according to others, the Estates of ISTormandy themselves came uiid proposed to Philip to undertake once more and at their own expense the conquest of England, if he would put at their head hia eldest son Johu, their own duke. The king received their depu- tation at Vincennes, on the 23rd of March, 1339, and accepted their offer. They bound themselves to supply for the expedition 4000 men-at-arms and 20,000 foot, whom they promised to main- taia for ten weeks and even a fortnight beyond, if, ^^'hen the duke of N'ormandy had crossed to England, his council should consider the prolongation necessary. His policy. Edward III., though he hail proclaimed himself king of France, did not at the outset of his claim adopt the policy of a man firmly AD. 1340. resolved and burning to succeed. From 1337 to 1340 he behaved thelitis ^^'^ ^f ^® ^^'^ ^* ^'^rii.Q with the count of Flanders rather than with of king of the king of France. France. -g-^ obtained the support of the famous brewer Van Artevelde, head of the populace of Ghent, and so a French prince and a Flemish burgher prevailed upon the king of England to pursue, as in assertion of his avowed rights, the conquest of the kingdom of France. King, prince, and burgher fixed Ghent as their place of meeting for the official conclusion of the alKance ; and there, in January, 1340, the mutual engagement was signed and sealed. The king of England "assumed the arms of France quartered with those of England," and thenceforth took the title of king of France. Then burst forth in reality that war which was to last a hundred years ; which was to bring upon the two nations the most violent struggles as well as the most cruel sufferings, and which, at the end of a hundred years, was to end in the salvation of France from her tremendous peril, and the defeat of England in her unrighteous attempt. In January, 1340, Edward thought he had won the most useful of allies ; Artevelde thought the independence of the Flemish communes and his own supremacy in his own country secured ; and Eobert d'Artois thought with complacency how he had gratified his hatred for Philip of Valois. And all three were Victory of (Jeceiving themselves in their joy and their confidence. A brilliant SIqvs -^ ** (June 24). victory which Edward gained at Sluys (1340) struck a serious blow at the French, navy ; a truce followed, which was concluded Succession to the Duchy of Brittany. 143 on the 25tli of SeptemlDer, 1340, at first for nine months, and "was Treaty afterwards renewed on several occasions up to the montla of June, (Septem- \Z\1. ]!^eitlier sovereign, and none of their allies gave up any thing 0? bound themselves to any thing more than not to fight during that interval ; but they were, on both sides, without the power of carrying on without pause a struggle which they would not entirely abandon. An unexpected incident led to its recommencement in spite of the truce ; not, however, throughout France, or directly between the two kings, but with fiery fierceness, though it was limited to a single province, and arose not in the name of the kingship of France but out of a purely provincial question. John III., duke of Brittany and a faithful vassal of Philip of Valois, died suddenly at Caen, on the 30th of April, 1341, on returning to his domain. Though he had been thrice married he left no child. The duchy of Succession Brittany then reverted to his brothers or their posterity ; but his ^° *^^ very next brother, Guy, count of Penthievre, had been dead six Briltany years and had left only a daughter, Joan called the Cripple, mar- ried to Charles of Bio is, nephew of the king of France. The third brother was still alive ; he, too, was named John, had from his mother the title of count of Montfort, and claimed to be heir to the duchy of Brittany in preference to his niece Joan. The niece, on the contrary, believed in her own right to the exclusion of her uncle. At the death of John III,, his brother, the count of Mont- fort, immediately put himself in possession of the inheritance, seized the principal Breton towns, Nantes, Brest, Eennes, and Yannes, and crossed over to England, to secure the support of Edward III. His rival, Charles of Blois, appealed to the decision of the king of France, his uncle and natural protector. Philip of Valois thus found himself the champion of succession in the female line in Brittany, whilst he was himself reigning in France by virtue of the Salic law, and Edward III. took up in Brittany the defence of succession in the male line, which he was disputing and fighting against in France. Philip and his court of peers declared on the ^^\ .1^*^ 7th of September, 1341, that Brittany belonged to Charles of J'/tS"'' Blois, who at once did homage for it to the king of France, whilst court of John of Montfort demanded and obtained the support of the king P®*'^* of England. "War broke out between the two claimants, effectually supported by the two kings, who nevertheless were not supposed to make war upon one another and in their own dominions. tweenJean If the two parties had been reduced for leaders to the two de Mont- claimants only, the war would not, perhaps, have lasted long. In ^^^ *°*, the first campaign the count of Montfort was made prisoner at the Blow. 144 Histoiy of France. siege of !N"antes, carried off to Paris and shut up in the tower of the Louvre, whence he did not escape until three years were over. The countess his wife all the while strove for his cause with the same indefatigable energy. He escaped in 1345, crossed over to England, swore fealty and homage to Edward III. for the duchy of Brittany, and imnicdiately returned to take in hand, himself, his own cause. But in that very year, on the 26th of September, 1345, 'te died at the Castle of Hennebon, leaving once more his wife, with a young child, alone at the head of his party and having in charge the future of his house. The Countess Joan maintained the rights and interests of her son as she had maintained those of her husband. For nineteen years, she, with the help of England, struggled against Charles of Blois, the head of a party growing more and more powerful, and protected by France. Fortune shifted her favours and her asperities from one camp to the other. Cliarles of Blois had at first pretty considerable success ; but, on the 18th of June, 1347, in a battle in Avhich he personallj'' displayed a brilliant courage, he was in his turn made prisoner, carried to England, and immured in the Tower of London. There he remained nine years. But he too had a valiant and indomitable wife, Joan of Penthievre, the Cripple. She did for her husband what Joan of Montfort was doing for hers. All the time that he was a prisoner in the Tower of London, she was the soul and the head of his party, in the open country as well as in the towns, turning to profitable account the inclinations of the Breton population, whom the presence and the ravages of the English had excited against John of Montfort and his cause. During nine years, from 1347 to 1356, the two Joans were the two heads of their parties in politics and in war. Charles of Blois at last obtained his liberty from Edward III. on hard conditions, and returned to Brittany to take up the conduct of his own affairs. The struggle between the two claimants still lasted eight years with vicissitudes ending in nothing definite, and on the 29th of September, 1364, the battle of Auray cost Charles of Blois his life and the countship of Brittany. From that day forth John of Montfort remained in point of fact duke of Brittany, and Joan of Penthievre, the Cripple, the proud princess who had so obstinately defended her rights against him, survived for full twenty years the death of her husband and the loss of her duchy. Whilst the two Joans were exhibiting in Brittany, for the preservation or the recovery of their little dominion, so much energy and persistency, another Joan, no princess, but not the less a heroine, was, in no other interest than the satisfaction of her love Joan de Belleville^ 14I and her vengeance, making war, all by herself, on the same terri- tory. Several iSTorman and Breton lords, and amongst others Oliver de Clisson and Godfrey d'Harcourt were suspected, nomi- nally attached as they were to the king of France, of having made secret overtures to the king of England. Philip of Valois had them arrested at a tournament, and had them beheaded without any form of trial, in the middle of the market-place at Paris, to the number of fourteen. The head of Clisson was sent to Nantes, and exposed on one of the gates of the city. At the news thereof, his widow, Joan of Belleville, attended by several men of familv, her „,, . neighbours and friends, set out for a castle occupied by the troops the "three of Philip's candidate, Charles of Blois. The fate of Clisson was ^'^^'"^^'^ not yet known there ; it was supposed that his wife Avas on a hunting excursion ; and she Avas admitted without distrust. As soon as she was inside, the blast of a horn gave notice to her followers, whom she had left concealed in the neighbouring woods. They rushed up and took possession of the castle ; and Joan de Clisson had all the inhabitants — but one — put to the sword. But this was too little for her grief and her zeal. At the head of her troops, augmented, she scoured the country and seized several places, every Avhere driving out or putting to death the servants of the king of France. Philip confiscated the property of the house of Clisson. Joan moved from land to sea. She manned several vessels, attacked the French ships she fell in with, ravaged the coasts, and ended by going and placing at the service of the countess of Montfort her hatred and her son, a boy of seven years of age whom she had taken with her in all her expeditions, and who was afterwards the great constable Oliver de Clisson. Ac- cordingly the war for the duchy of Brittany in the fourteenth cen- tury has been called in history the war of the three Joans. Although Edward III. by supporting with troops and officers, A.D. 1340 and sometimes even in person, the cause of the countess of Mont- IT^^^^' , XrUC€S 06' fort — and Philip of Valois, by assisting in the same way Charles of tween the Blois and Joan of Penthievre, took a very active, if indirect, share French and in the war in Brittany, the two kings persisted in not calling ^gj^^ themselves at war ; and when either of them proceeded to acts of unquestionable hostility, they eluded the consequences of them by hastily concluding truces incessantly violated and as incessantly renewed. They had made use of this expedient in 1340 ; and they had recourse to it again in 1342, 1343, and 1344. The last of these truces was to have lasted up to 1346 ; but, in the spring of 1345, Edward resolved to put an end to this equivocal position, and to openly recommence war. He announced his intention to Pope I. 14^ History of France, A.D. 1346. Invasion of France by the English. A.D. 1346. Battle of Crecy (Aug. 25). Clement IV., to Ins own lieutenants in Brittany, and to all tlife cities and corporations of his kingdom. The tragic deatli of Van Artevelde, however, (1345) proved a great loss to the king of England. He was so much affected by it that he required a whole year before he could resume with any confidence liis projects of war; and it was not until the 2nd of July, 1346, that he embarked at Southampton, taking with him, besides his son the prince of "Wales, hardly sixteen years of age, an army which comprised, according to Froissart, seven earls, more than thirtyrfive barons, a great number of knights, four thousand men-at-arms, ten thousand English archers, six thousand Irish and twelve thousand Welsh infantry, in all something more than thirty-two thousand men. By the advice of Godfrey d'Harcourt, he marched his army over Nor- mandy ; he took and plundered on his way Barfleur, Cherbourg, Valognes, Carentan, St. L6, and Caen ; then, continuing his march, he occupied Louviers, Vernon, Verneuil, Mantes, Meulan, and Poissy, where he took up his quarters in the old residence of King Robert ; and thence his troops advanced and spread themselves as far as Euel, Neuilly, Boulogne, St. Cloud, Bourg-la-Reine and almost to the gates of Paris, whence could be seen " the hre and smoke from burning villages." Philip recalled in all haste his troops from Aquitaine, commanded the burgher-forces to assemble, and gave them, as he had given all his allies, St. Denis for the rallying-point. At sight of so many great lords and all sorts of men of war flocking together from all points, the Parisians took fresh courage. " For many a long day there had not been at St. Denis a king of France in arms and fully prepared for battle." Edward began to be afraid of having pushed too far forward, and of finding himself endangered in the heart of France, confronted by an army which would soon be stronger than his own. He, ac- cordingly, marched northward, where he flattered himself he would find partisans, counting especially on the help of the Flemings, who, in fulfilment of their promise, had already advanced as far as Bethune to support him. Philip moved with all his army into Picardy in pursuit of the English army, which was in a hurry to reach and cross the Somme, and so continue its march northward. "When Edward, after passing the Somme, had arrived near Crecy, five leagues from Abbeville, in the countship of Ponthieu, which had formed part of his mother Isabel's dowry, " Halt we here," said he to his marshals ; " I will go no farther till I have seen the enemy ; I am on my mother's rightful inheritance, which was given her on her marriage ; I will defend it against mine adversary, Philip of Valois ;" and he rested in the open fields, he and all his Battle of Crecy. i/i^'J men, and made his marshals mark well the ground where they would set their battle in array. Philip, on his side, had moved to Abbeville, where all his men came and joined him, and whence he sent out scouts to learn the truth about the English. "When he knew that they were resting in the open fields near Crecy and showed that they were awaiting their enemies, the king of France was very joyful, and said that, please God, they should fight him on the morrow [the day after Friday, Aug. 25, 1346]. On Saturday, the 26th of August, after having heard mass, Philip started from Abbeville with all his barons. The battie began with an attack by 15,000 Genoese bowmen, who marched forward, and leaped thrice with a great cry : their arrows did little execution, as the strings of their bows had been jj^g relaxed by the damp ; the English archers now taking their irenoese bows from their cases, poured forth a shower of arrows upon this ^jg^es. multitude, and soon threw them into confusion : the Genoese falling back upon the French cavalry, were by them cut to pieces, and being allowed no passage, were thus prevented from again forming in the rear : this absurd inhumanity lost the battle, as the young Prince of Wales, taking advantage of the irretrievable disorder, led on his line at once to the charge. " No one can describe or imagine," says Froissart, '' the bad management and disorder of the French army, though their troops were out of number." Philip was led from the field by John of Hainault, and he rode till he came to the walls of the castle of Broye, where he found the gates shut : ordering the governor to be summoned, when the latter en- quired, it being dark, who it was that called at so late an hour, he answered: "Open, open, governor; it is the fortune of Franco;" and accompanied by five barons only he entered the castle. Whilst Philip, with all speed, was on the road back to Paris with Siege of his army, as disheartened as its king, and more disorderly in retreat (Septem than it had been in battle, Edward was hastening, with ardour and bar 3). intelligence, to reap the fruits of his victory. In the difficult war of conquest he had undertaken, what was clearly of most importance to him was to possess on the coast of France, as near as possible to England, a place which he might make, in his operations by land and sea, a point of arrival and departure, of occupancy, of pro- visioning and of secure refuge. Calais exactly fulfilled these con- ditions. On arriving before the place, September 3rd, 1346, Edward " immediately had built all round it," says Froissart, "houses and dwelling-places of solid carpentry and arranged in streets as if he were to remain there for ten or twelve years, for his intention was not to leave it winter or summer, whatever time and L 2 148 History of France. whatever trouble Le must spend aud take. He called this ne^w town Villeneuve la Eardie ; and lie had therein all things necessary for an army, and more too, as a place appointed for the holding of a market on "Wednesday and Saturday ; and therein were mercers' shops and butchers' shops, and stores for the sale of cloth and bread and all other necessaries. King Edward did not have the city of Calais assaulted by his men, well knowing that he would lose his pains, but said he would starve it out, however long a time it might cost him, if King Philip of France did not come to fight him again, and raise the siege." Calais had for its governor John de Vienne, a valiant and faithful Burgundian knight, " the which seeing," says Froissart, " that the king of England was making every sacrifice to keep up the siege, ordered that all sorts of small folk, who had no provisions, should quit the city without farther notice. The Calaisians endured for eleven months all the sufferings arising from isolation and famine. The king of France made two attempts to relieve them. On the 20th of May, 1347, he assembled his troops at Amiens; but they were not ready to march till about the middle of July, and as long before as the 23rd of June a French fleet of ten galleys and thirty- five transports had been driven off by the English. Surrender When the people of Calais saw that all hope of a rescue had Calaigians ^^ipP^^ from them, they held a council, resigned themselves to offer submission to the king of England rather than die of hunger, and begged their governor, John de Vienne, to enter into negotiations for that purpose with the besiegers. Walter de Manny, instructed by Edward to reply to these overtures, said to John de Vienne, "The king's intent is that ye put yourselves at his free will to ransom or put to death such as it shall please him ; the people of Calais have caused him so great displeasure, cost him so much money and lost him so many men, that it is not astonishing if that weighs heavily upon him." In his final answer to the petition of the unfortunate inhabitants, Edward said, " Go, Walter, to them of Calais, and tell the governor that the greatest grace they can find in my sight is that six of the most notable burghers come forth from their town bare-headed, bare-footed, with ropes round their necks and with the keys of the town and castle in their hands. With them I will do according to my wUl, and the rest I will receive Eustace de to mercy." It is well known how the king would have put to St. Pierre, death Eustace de St. Pierre and his companions, and how their lives were spared at the intercession of Queen PhUippa. Eustace, more concerned for the interests of his own town than for those of France, and being more of a Calaisian burgher than a The Plague. — Death of Philip VI. 149 national patriot, showed no hesitation, for all that appears, in serving, as a subject of the king of England, his native city for which he had shown himself so ready to die. At his death, which happened in 1351, his heirs declared themselves faithful subjects of the king of France, and Edward confiscated away from them the possessions he had restored to their predecessor. Eustace de St. Pierre's cou'^in and comrade in devotion to their native town, John d'Aire, would not enter Calais again ; his property was confiscated, and his house, the finest, it is said, in the town, was given by King Edward to Queen Philippa, who showed no more hesitation in accepting it than Eustace in serving his new king. Long-lived delicacy of sentiment and conduct was rarer in those rough and rude times tlian heroic bursts of courage and devotion. The battle of Crecy and the loss of Calais were reverses from which Philip of Valois never even made a serious attempt to recover; he hastily concluded with Eilward a truce, twice renewed, which served only to consolidate the victor's successes. A calamity of European extent came as an addition to the distresses of France. From 1347 to 1349 a frightful disease, brought from Egypt and A.B. 1347 Syria through the ports of Italy, and called the hJack plague or the ^^^f^' •plague of Florence, ravaged Western Europe, especially Provence and Languedoc, where it carried ofi", they say, two-thirds of the inhabitants. Wlien the epidemic had well nigh disappeared, the siirvivors, men and women, princes and subjects, returned passion- ately to their pleasures and their galas; to mortality, says a contempo- rary chronicler, succeeded a rage for marriage ; and Philip of Valois himself, now fifty- eight years of age, took for his second wife Blanche of Navarre, who was only eighteen. She was a sister of that young king of ISTavarre, Charles II., who was soon to get the name of Charles the Bad, and to become so dangerous an enemy of Philip's successors. Seven months after his marriage, and on the 22nd of August, 1350, Philip died at iN'ogent-le-Eoi in the Haute- A.D. 1350, Marne, strictly enjoining his son John to maintain with vigour his pf^,*^ °ly well ascertained right to the crown he wore, and leaving his people (Aug. 22). bowed down beneath a weight " of extortions so heavy that the like had never been seen in the kingdom of France." Only one happy event distinguished the close of this reign. As early as 1343 Philip had treated, on a monetary basis, with Hum- bert XL, count and Dauphin of Yienness, for the cession of that beautiful province to the crown of France after the death of the then possessor. Humbert, an adventurous and fantastic prince, plunged, in 1346, into a crusade against the Turks, from which ho returned in the following year without having obtained any sue- 150 History of France. AD. 1349. cess. Tired of seeking adventures as well as of reigning, he, on Cession of the 16th of July, 1349, before a solemn assembly held at Lyons, ^16X111633 . • • • • > to France abdicated his principality in favour of Prince Charles of Fiance, (July 16), grandson of Philip of Valois and afterwards Charles V. The new- dauphin took the oath, between the hands of the bishop of Grenoble, to maintain the liberties, franchises and privileges of the Dauphiny ; and the ex-dauphin, after having taken holy orders and passed successively through the archbishopric of Eheims and the bishopric of Paris, both of which he found equally unpalatable, went to die at Clermont in Auvergne, in a convent belonging to the order of Dominicans, whose habit he and of had donned. MontpeU^ In the same year, on the 18th of April, 1349, Philip of Valois 18). bought of Jayme of Arragon, the last king of Majorca, for 120,000 golden crowns, the lordship and town of Montpellier, thus trying to repair to some extent, for the kingdom of Prance, the losses he John II., had caused it. "the good" -fjig successor, John II., called the Good, on no other ground kinCf 01 France, than that he was gay, prodigal, credulous and devoted to his favourites, did nothing but reproduce, with aggravations, the faults His go- and reverses of his father. wrnment. He compromised more and more seriously every day his own safety and that of his successor by vexing more and more, without destroying, his most dangerous enemy. He showed no greater prudence or ability in the government of his kingdom. Always in want of money, because he spent it foolishly on galas or presents to his favourites, he had recourse, for the purpose of procuring it, at \ one time to the very worst of all financial expedients, debasement '^ of the coinage ; at another, to disreputable imposts, such as the tax upon salt and upon the sale of all kinds of merchandise. In the single year of 1352 the value of a silver mark varied sixteen times, from 4 livres 10 sous to 18 livres. To meet the requirements of his government and tlie greediness of his courtiers, John twice, in 1355 and 1356, convoked the states-general, which did not refuse him their support ; but John had not the wit either to make good use of the powers with which he was furnished or to inspire the states-general with that confidence which alone could decide them upon con- tinuing their gifts. And, nevertheless. King John's necessities were more evident and more urgent than ever : war with England had begun again. The truth is that, in spite of the truce still existing, the English, since the accession of King John, had at several points resumed hostilities. The disorders and dissensions to which France waa a Charles of Navarre. — Invasion of France 151 prey, the presumptuous and hare-brained incapacity of her new king were for so ambitious and able a prince as Edward III. very strong temptations. I^or did opportunities for attack and chances of success fail him any more than temptations. He found in France, amongst the grandees of the kingdom and even at the king's court, men disposed to desert the cause of the king and of France, to serve a prince who had more capacity, and who pretended to claim the crown of France as his lawful right. As early as 1351, amidst ali Charles his embroilments and all his reconciliations with his father-in-law, "the Bad,' ' king' Charles the Bad, king of ITavarre, had concluded with Edward III. of Navarre, a secret treaty, whereby, in exchange for promises he received, he -^'^ recognized his title as king of France. In 1355 his treason burst forth. The king of ISTavarre, who had gone for refuge to Avignon, under the protection of Pope Clement VL, crossed France by English Aquitaine, and went and landed at Cherbourg, which he had an idea of throwing open to the king of England, He once more entered into communications with King John, once more obtained forgiveness from him, and for a while appeared detached from his English alliance. But Edward III. had openly resumed his hostile attitude ; and he demanded that Aquitaine and the countship of Ponthieu, detached from the kingdom of France, should be ceded to him in full sovereignty, and that Brittany should become all but independent. John haughtily rejected these pretensions, which were merely a pretext for recommencing war. And it recommenced accordingly, and the king of i^avarre resumed his course of perfidy. He had lands and castles in Normandy, which John put under sequestration, and ordered the officers commanding in them to deliver up to him. Six of them, the commandants of the castles of Cherbourg and Evreux amongst others, refused, believing, no doubt, that in betraying France and her king, they were remaining faithful to their own lord. At several points in the kingdom, especially in the northern Success oJ provinces, the first-fruits of the war were not favourable for the ^^ ^'^" English. King Edward, who had landed at Calais with a body 01 troops, made an unsuccessful campaign in Artois and Picardy and was obliged to re-embark for England, falling back before King John, whom he had at one time offered and at another refused to meet and fight at a spot agreed upon. But in the south-west and south of France, in 1355 and 1356, the prince of Wales at the head of a small picked army and with John Chandos for comrade, victoriously overran Limousin, Perigord, Languedoc, Auvergne, Berry, and Poitou, ravaging the country and plundering the towns into which he could force an entrance and the environs of tli0P« 152 History of France. that defended themselves hehind their walls. Ho met •w'th scarcely any resistance, and he was returning by way ot Berry and Poitou back again to Bordeaux when he heard that King John, starting from Normandy with a large army, was advancing to give him battle. John, in fact, with easy self-complacency and some- Tbe Prince what proud of his petty successes against King Edward in Picardy, of Wales la ^^^^ ^ -^^ ^ hurry to move against the prince of Wales, in hopes Franca. of forcing him also to re-embark for England. He was at the head of forty or fifty thousand men, with his four sons, twenty -six dukes or counts, and nearly all the baronage of France ; and such was his confidence in this noble army, that on crossing the Loire he dismissed the burgher forces, " which was madness in him and in those who advised him," said even his contemporaries. John, even more than his f;ither Philip, was a king of courts, ever surrounded by his nobility and caring little for his people. When the two armies were close to one another on the platform of IMaupertuis, two leagues to the north of Poitiers, two legates from the pope came hurrying up from that town with instructions to negotiate peace between the kings of Prance, England, and I^avarre. John consented to an armistice of twenty-four hours. The prince of Wales, seeing himself cut off from Bordeaux by forces very much superior to his own, for he had but eight or ten thousand men, offered to restore to the king of France "all that he had conquered this bout, both towns and castles, and all the prisoners that be and his had taken, and to swear that, for seven whole years, he would bear arms no more against the king of France;" but King John and his council would not accept any thing of the sort, saying that "the prince and a hundred of his knights must come and put themselves as prisoners in the hands of the king of France." Neither the prince of Wales nor Chandos had any hesitation in rejecting such a demand : "God forbid," said Chandos, " that we should go without a fight ! If we be taken or discomfited by so many fine men-at-arms and in so great a host Wf) shall incur no blame ; and if the day be for us and fortune be pleased to consent thereto we shall be the most honoured folk in A.D. 1356. the world." The battle took place on the 19th of September, Poitiers ^ ^^^' ^^ '^^^ morning ; here as at Crecy it was a case of undisciplined (Sept. 19). forces, without co-operation or order, and ill-directed by their commanders, advancing, bravely and one after another, to get broken against a compact force under strict command, and as docile as heroic. Two divisions of the French, in which were the dauphin and two of his brothers, being repulsed, precipitately fled ; but the king himself, with his youngest son by his side, a youth 0/ The Dau- S fates GcneraL. 153 fourteen, fought valiantly, and endeavoured to retrieve the disaster by strenuously continuing the contest, hut in vain. Left almost alone in the field, John might easily have been slain, had not every one been desirous of taking alive the royal prisoner. The king, unwilling to surrender himself to a person of inferior con- dition, still cried out, "Where is my cousin, the Prince of Wales 1" At length, giving his right hand gauntled to Denis de Morhecqua, a knight of Arras, who had been expelled from France for a homicide, commiited in an affray, he ?aid, " Sir Knight, I surren- der." He was taken first to Bordeaux, and then to England, where he remained a captive, yet most honourably and considerately treated by his victors. The Dauphin Charles, aged nineteen, in spite of his youth and his any thing but glorious retreat from Poitiers, took the title of lieutenant g^j^gg ^-^^ of the king, and had hardly re-entered Paris, on the 2 9 th of September, govern- when he summoned, for the 15th of October, the states-general of °^®^^ Languedoc, who met, in point of fact, on the 17th, in the great chamber of parliament. Fresh subsidies were granted, but only on very hard conditions. The deputies demanded of Charles "that he should deprive of their offices such of the king's councillors as they should point out, have them arrested, and confiscate all their property. Twenty-two men of note, the chancellor, the premier president of the parliament, the king's stewards, and several officers in the household of the dauphin himself Avere thus pointed out. They were accused of having taken part to their own profit in all the abuses for which the Government was reproached, and of having concealed from the king the true state of things and the misery of the people. The commissioners elected by the estates were to take proceedings against them : if they were found guilty, they were to be punished ; and if they were innocent, they were at the very least to forfeit their office and their property, on account of their bad counsels and their bad administration." They further insisted that the deputies, under the title of re- Preter- formers, should traA^erse the provinces as a check upon the mal- di^^ties ' vorsations of the royal officials, and that twenty-eight delegates, chosen from amongst the three orders, four prelates, twelve knights, and tAvelve hurgesses, should be constantly placed near the king'a person " with power to do and order every thing in the kingdom, just like the king himself, as well for the purpose of appointing and removing public officers as for other matters." It was taking away the entire government from the crown, and putting it into the hands of the estates. Finally, they spoke about setting at liberty the king of i^"avarre, who had been imprisoned by King John, AM History of France, A.D. 1358 States- general. Stephen Marcel. Murder of the Mar- shall. fend said to the dauplnn tliat " since this deed of violence no good had come to the king or tlie kingdom because of tlie sin of having imprisoned the said king of Navarre." And yet Charles the Bad was already as infamous as he has remained in history ; he had laboured to embroil the dauphin with his royal father ; and there ■was no plot or intrigue, whether with the malcontents in France or with the king of England, in which he was not, with good reason, suspected of having been mixed up and of being ever ready to be mixed up. He was clearly a dangerous enemy for the public peace as well as for the crown, and, for the states-general who were demanding his release, a bad associate. In the face of such demands and such forebodings the dauphin did all he could to gain time. Tlie next year, however, the states under the dir(^ction of Stephen Marcel, provost of the merchants, and Robert Lecoq, bishop of Laoa, showed themselves still more severe. Kot content with checking the authority of the dauphin by setting Charles the Bad at liberty, impeaching the ministers, and creating a commission of thirty-six members, chosen from amongst themselves, and enjoying all the prerogatives of the sovereign, these revolutionists of the fourteenth century entered the Louvre by force Marcel ascended, followed by a band of armed men, to the apartments of the dauphin, " whom he requested very sharply," says Froissart, " to restrain so many companies from roving about on all sides, damaging and plundering the country." The duke replied that he would do so willingly if he had the where- withal to do it, but that it was for him who received the dues belonging to the kingdom to discharge that duty. " I know not why or how," adds Froissart, " but words were midtiplied on the part of all, and became very high." " My lord duke," suddenly said the provost, "do not alarm yourself; but we have somewhat to do here ; " and turned towards his fellows in the caps, saying, "Dearly beloved, do that for the which ye are come;" the mob immediately mas- sacred the lord de Conflans, marshal of Champagne, and Eobert de Clermont, marshal of l^ormandy, both at the time unarmed, so close to the dauphin that his robe was covered with their blood. The dauphin sliuddered; and the rest of his officers fled. " Take no heed, lord duke," said Marcel; "you have naught to fear." He handed to the dauphin his own red and blue cap, and himself put on the dauphin's, which was of black stuff with golden fringe. The corpses of the two marshals were dragged into the courtyard of the palace, whore they remained until evening without any one's daring to remove them ; and Marcel with his fellows repaired to the mansion-house, and harangued from an open window the mob collected on the The Jacquery, 155 Place de Gr^ye. *' What has been done is for the good and the profit of the kingdom," said he ; " the dead were false and wicked traitors." " We do own it and will maintain it ! " cried the peoplo who were about him. The house from which Marcel thus addressed the people was hia own property, and was called the Pillar-house. There he accom- modated the town-council, which had formerly held its sitting in divers parlours. For a month after this triple murder, committed with such Dictator official parade. Marcel reigned dictator in Paris. He removed from ship of the council of thirty-six deputies such members as he could not ^^''^ ' rely^ upon, and introduced his own confidants. He cited the council, thus modified, to express approval of the blow just struck-; and the deputies, " some from conviction and others from douht (that is, fear), answered that they believed that for what had been done there had been good and just cai;se." The king of Navarre was recalled from JN^antes to Paris, and the dauphin was obliged to assign to him, in the king's name, " as a make-up for his losses," 10,000 livres a year on landed property in Languedoc. On the 25th of March, the young Prince succeeded in leaving Paris, and repaired first of all to Senlis, and then to Provins, where he found the estates of Champagne eager to welcome him. In the mean- while, an event occurred outside which, seemed to open to Marcel a prospect of powerful aid, perhaps of decisive victory. Throughout . j. .„.^ several provinces the peasants, whose condition, sad and hard as The Jac- it already was under the feudal system, had been still further ^^^\ aggravated by the outrages and irregularities of war, not finding any protection in their lords, and often being even oppressed by them as if they had been foes, had recourse to insurrection in order to escape from the evils which came down upon them every day and from every quarter. They bore and would bear any thing, it was said, and they got the name of Jacques Bonhomme {Jack Goodfellow) ; but this taunt they belied in a terrible manner. We will quote from the last continuer of William of I^angis, the least declamatory and least confused of all the chroniclers of that period ; " In this same year 1 358, says he, " in the summer [the first rising took place on the 28th of May], the peasants in the neighbourhood of St. Loup de Cerent and Clermont in the diocese of Beauvais took up arms against the nobles of France. They assembled in great numbers, set at their head a certain peasant named William Karle [or Cale, or Callet], of more intelligence than the rest, and marching by companies under their own flag, roamed over t.ho country, slaying and massacring all the nobles they met. IS6 History of France. Tr.eir excesses. Put down at Mont- did ler (July). even their cwn lords. ITot content with that, they demolished the houses and castles of the nobles : and, what is still more deplorable, they villainously put to death the noble dames and little children who fell into their hands ; and afterwards they strutted about, they and their wives, bedizened with the garments they had stripped from their victims. The number of men who had thus risen amounted to five thousand, and the rising extended to the outskirts of Paris, They had begun it from sheer necessity and love of justice, for their lords oppressed instead of defending them ; but before long they proceeded to the most hateful and criminal deeds. They took and destroyed from top to bottom the strong castle of Ermenonville, where they put to death a multitude of men, and dames of noble family who had taken refuge there. For some time the nobles no longer went about as before ; none of them durst set a foot outside the fortified places." Jacquery had taken the form of a fit of demagogic fury, and the Jacks [or Goodfellows] swarming out of their hovels were the terror of the castles. The insurrection having once broken out, Marcel hastened to profit by it, and encouraged and even supported it at several points. Amongst other things he sent from Paris a body of threo hundred men to the assistance of the peasants who were besieging the castle of Ermenonville. ^ The reaction against Jacquery was speedy and shockingly bloody. The nobles, the dauphin, and the king of Navarre, a prince and a noble at the same time that he was a scoundrel, made common cause against the Goodfellows, who were the more dis- orderly in proportion as they had become more numerous, and be- lieved themselves more invincible. The ascendancy of the masters over the rebels was soon too strong for resistance. At Meaux, of which the Goodfelloics had obtained possession, they were sur- prised and massacred to the number, it is said, of seven thousand, with the town burning about their ears, . In Beauvaisis, the king of I^avarre, after having made a show of treating with their chieftain, William Karle or Callet, got possession of him, and had him beheaded, wearing a trivet of red-hot iron, says one of the chroniclers, by way of crown. He then moved upon a camp of Goodfdlows assembled near Montdidier, slew three thousand of them and dispersed the remainder. These figures are probably very much exaggerated, as nearly always happens in such accounts ; but the continuer of William of !N"angis, so justly severe on the outrages and barbarities of the insurgent peasants, is not less so on those of their conquerors. Marcel from that moment perceived that his case was lost, and End of the Rebellion. 157 no longer dreamed of any thing but saving himself and his, at any Stephen price ; " for he thought," says Froissart, " that it paid better to m^^dered slay than to be slain." Being reduced to depend entirely during (July 31), this struggle upon such strength as could be supplied by a muni- cipal democracy, incoherent, inexperienced, and full of divisions in its own ranks, and by a mad insurrection in the country districts, he rapidly fell into the selfish and criminal condition of the man "whose special concern is his own personal safety. This he sought to secure by an unworthy alliance with the most scoundrelly amongst his ambitious contempoi'aries, and he would have given up his own city as well as France to the king of Navarre and the English, had not another burgher of Paris, John Maillart, stopped him, and put him to death at the very moment when the patriot of the states-general of 1355 was about to become a traitor to his country. Hardly thirteen years before, when Stephen Marcel was already a fuU-grov/n man, the great Flemish burgher, James van Artevelde, had, in the cause of his country's liberties, attempted a similar enterprise and, after a series of great deeds at the outset and then of faults also similar to those of Marcel, had fallen into the same abyss, and had perished by the hand of his fellow-citizens, at the very moment when he was labouring to put Flanders, his native country, into the hands of a foreign master, the prince of Wales, son of Edward III., king of England. One single result of importance was won for France by the Result of states-general of the fourteenth century, namely, the principle of *^® states- the nation's right to intervene in their own affairs, and to set their government straight when it had gone wrong or was in- capable of performing that duty itself. Up to that time, in the thirteenth century and at the opening of the fourteenth, the states-general had been hardly any thing more than a temporary expedient employed by the kingship itself to solve some special question or to escape from some grave embarrassment. Starting from King John, the states-general became one of the principles of national right : a principle which did not disappear even when it remained without application, and the prestige of which survived even its reverses. Faith and hope till a prominent place in the lives of peoples as well as of individuals ; having sprung into real existence in 1355, the states-general of France found themselves alive again in 1789 ; and we may hope that, after so long a trial, their rebuffs and their mistakes will not be more fatal to them in our day. On the 2nd of August, 1358, in the evening, the dauphin Charles re-entered Paris, and was accompanied by John Maillart, IS8 History of France. Recon- ciliation between the Dau- phin and Charles the Bad. King John "the good" in Eng- land. who " was mightily in his grace and love." On being re-settled in the capital, he showed neither clemency nor cruelty. He let the reaction against Stephen Marcel run lis course, and turned it to account without further exciting it or prolonging it beyond measure. The property of some of the condemned was confiscated ; some attempts at a conspiracy for the purpose of avenging the provost of tradesmen were repressed with severity ; and John Maillart and his family were loaded with gifts and favours. On becoming king, Charles determined himself to hold his son at the baptismal font; but Eobert Lecocq, bishop of Laon, the most intimate of Marcel's accomplices, returned quietly to his diocese ; two of Marcel's brothers, William and John, owing their protec- tion, it is said, to certain youthful reminiscences on the prince's part, were exempted from all prosecution ; Marcel's widow even recovered a portion of his property ; and as early as the 10th of August, 1358, Charles published an amnesty, from which he excepted only " those who had been in the secret council of the provost of tradesmen in respect of the great treason ; *' and on the same day another amnesty quashed all proceeding for deeds done during the Jacquery, " whether by nobles or ignobles." Charles knew that in acts of rigour or of grace impartiality conduces to the strength and the reputation of authority. A reconciliation then took place between him and the king of Navarre, whose wife, Joan of France, was the dauphin's sister; " the town of Melun," says the chronicler, " was restored to the lord duke ; the navigation of the river once more became free up stream and down ; great was the satisfaction in Paris and through out the whole country; and, peace being thus made, the two princes returned both of them home." The king of Navarre knew how to give an appearance of free will and sincerity to changes of posture and behaviour which seemed to be pressed upon him by necessity ; and we may suppose that the dauphin, all the while that he was interchanging graceful acts, was too well acquainted by this time with the other to become his dupe, but, by their apparent reconciliation, they put an end, for a few brief moments, to a position which was burthensome to both. While these events, from the battle of Poitiers to the death of Stephen Marcel (from the 19th of September, 1356, to the 1st of August, 1358), were going on in France, King John was living as a prisoner in the hands of the English, first at Bordeaux, afterwards in London, and then at Windsor, much more concerned about the reception he met with and the galas he was present at than about Invasion of France. 1 59 the affairs of his kingdom. Towards the end of April, 1359, the A.D. 1359. dauphin-regent received at Paris the text of a treaty which the P®^*^ ®^ king his father had concluded in London with the king of England. "The cession of the western half of France, from Calais to Bayonne, and the immediate payment of four million golden crowns," such was, according to the terms of this treaty, the price of King John's ransom, and the regent resolved to leave to the judgment of France the acceptance or refusal of such exorbitant demands. The indignation of the people was roused to the highest pitch ; the estates replied that the treaty was not " tolerable or feasible," and in their patriotic enthusiasm " decreed to make fair war on the English." But it was not enough to spare the kingdom the shame of such a treaty ; it was necessary to give the regent the means of concluding a better. On the 2nd of June, the nobles announced J^^jected . by the to the dauphin that they would serve for a month at their own states- expense, and that they would pay besides such imposts as should general, be decreed by the good towns. The churchmen also offered to pay them.- The city of Paris undertook to maintain "six hundred swords, three hundred archers, and a thousand brigands." The good towns offered twelve thousand men ; but they could not keep their promise, the country being utterly ruined. Edward III., on his side, at once took measures for recommencing Edwardll] the war; but, before engaging in it, he had King John removed iaPicardy. from Windsor to Hertford Castle, and thence to Somerton, where he set a strong guard. Having thus made certain that his prisoner would not escape from him, he put to sea and, on the 28th of October, 1359, landed at Calais with a numerous and well supplied army. Then, rapidly traversing northern France, he did not halt till he arrived before Eheims, which he was in hopes of surprising, and where, it is said, he purposed to have himself, without delay, crowned king of France. But he found the place so well provided and the population so determined to make a good defence, that he raised the siege and moved on Chalons, where the same disappoint- ment awaited him. Passing from Champagne to Burgundy he then commenced the same course of scouring and ravaging; but the Burgundians entered into negotiations with him, and by a treaty concluded on the 10th of March, 1360, and signed by Joan of Auvergne, queen of France, second M'ife of King John and guardian of the young duke of Burgundy, Philip de Rouvre, they obtained at the cost of two hundred thousand golden sheep (moutons) an agreement that for three years Edward and his army " would not go scouring and burning " in Burgundy as they were doing in the other parts of France. A- this same time, another province, Picardy, l6o ' History of F7-auce, aided by many Normans and Flemings its neiglibours, "nobles, burgesses, and common-folk," was ociiding to sea an expedition which was going to try, Avith God's help, to deliver King John from his prison in England, and bring him back in triumph to his kingdom. The expedition landed in England on the 1 ith of March, 1360; it did not deUver King John, but it took and gave over to flames and pillage for two days the town of Winchelsea, after which it put to sea again and returned to its hearths. Edward Edward III., weary of thus roaming with his army over France approaches without obtaining any decisive result, and without even managing to get into his hands any one " of the good towns which he had promised himself," says Froissart, " that he would tan and hide in such sort that they would be glad to come to some accord with him," resolved to direct his efforts against the capital of the kingdom, where the dauphin kept himself close. On the 7th of April, 1360, he arrived hard by Montrouge, and his troops spread themselves over the outskhts of Paris in the form of an investing or besieging force. But he had to do with a city protected by good ramparts and well supplied with provisions, and with a prince cool, patient, determined, free from any illusiun as to his danger or his strength, and resolved not to risk any of those great battles of which he had experienced the sad issue. Foreseeing the advance of the English, he had burnt the villages in the neighbourhood of Paris, where they might have fixed their quarters ; he did the same with the suburbs of St. Germain, St. Marcel, and Kotre-Dame-des- Champs ; he turned a deaf ear to all King Edward's warlike chal- lenges ; and some attempts at an assault on the part of the English knights and some sorties on the part of the French knights, im- patient of their inactivity, came to nothing. At the end of a week Edward, whose " army no longer found aught to eat," withdrew from Paris, overtures for peace were then made by the Eegent of A.D. 1360. France, and on the 8th of May, 1360, was concluded the treaty of Britienv -^^^*^io^y> ^ peace disastrous indeed, but become necessary. Aqui- (May 8). taine ceased to be a French fief, and was exalted, in the king of England's interest, to an independent sovereignty, together with the provinces attached to Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis, Agenois, Peri- gord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, Angoumois, and Eouergue. The king of England, on his side, gave up completely to the king of France Normandy, Maine, and the portion of Touraine and Anjou situated to the north of the Loire. He engaged, further, to solemnly renounce all pretentions to the crown of France so soon as King John had renounced all rights of suzerainty over Aquitaine. King John's ransom was fixed at three mUlions of golden crowns payable Annexations of Burgundy. l6l !ti six years, and John Galeas Visconti, duke of Milan, paid the liist instahnent of it (000,000 florins) as the price of his marriage with Isahel of Fraace, daughter of King John. Hard as these conditions were, the peace was joyfully welcomed in Paris and throughout northern France; and, on the 8th of July following, King John, having been set at liberty, was brought over by the prince of Wales to Calais, where Edward III. came to meet hiia. The two kings treated one another there with great courtesy. Mean- while the prince-regent of France was arriving at Amiens, and there receiving from his brother-in-law, Galeas Visconti, duke of Milan, the sum necessary to pay the first instalment of his royal father's ransom. Payment having been made, the two kings solenmly ratified at Calais the treaty of Bretigny. Two sons of King John, the duke of Anjou and the duke of Berry, with several other per- sonages of consideration, princes of the blood, barons, and burgesses of the principal good towns, were given as hostages to the king of England for the due execution of the treaty ; and Edward III. negotiated between the king of France and Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, a reconciliation as precarious as ever. In 1362, John Burgundy committed the gravest fault of his reign, a fault which was destined annexed to to bring upon France and the French kingship even more evils and disasters than those which had made the treaty of Bretigny a necessity. The young duke of Burgundy, Philip de Eouvre, the last of the first house of the dukes of Burgundy, descendants of King Eobert, had died without issue, leaving several pretenders to his rich inheritance. King John was the nearest of blood and at the same time the most powerful ; he immediately took possession of the duchy and disposed of it in favour of his fourth son Philip, who " freely exposed himself to death with us and, all wounded as he was, remained unwavering and fearless at the battle of Poi- tiers." Thus was founded that second house of the dukes of Bur- gundy, which was destined to play for more than a century so great and often so fatal a part in the fortunes of France. Whilst he was thus preparing a gloomy future for his country and his line, King John heard that his second son, the duke of Anjou, one of the hostages left in the hands of the king of England as security for the execution of the treaty of Bretigny, had broken his word of honour and escaped from England, in order to go and join his wife at Guise Castle. Knightly faith was the virtue of ^■.^- ^^^^' King John ; and it was, they say, on this occasion that he cried, returns to as he was severely upbraiding his son, that " if good faith were England, banished from the world, it ought to find an asylum in the hearts of kings." He announced to his councillors, assembled at Amiens, K 1 62 History of France^ His death (April 8). State of France at the accea- sion of Charles V. Difiaculty of the king's his intention of going in person to England, Shortly after his arrival in London, he fell seriously ill, and died on the 8th of April, 1364, at the Savoy; France was at last about to have in Charles V. a practical and an effective king. In spite of the discretion he had displayed during his four years of regency (from 1356 to 1360) his reign opened under the saddest auspices. In 1363, one of those contagious diseases, all at that time called the plague, committed cruel ravages in France. "None," says the contemporary chronicler, " could count the number of the dead in Paris, young or old, rich or poor ; when death entered a house, the little children died first, then the menials, then the parents. In the smallest villages as well as in Paris the mortality was such that at Argenteuil, for example, where there were wont to be numbered seven hundred hearths, there remained no more than forty or fifty." The ravages of the armed thieves or bandits who scoured the country added to those of the plague. King Charles V. had a very difficult work before him. Between himself and his great rival, Edward III., king of England, there was only such a peace as was fatal and hateful to France. To escape some day from the treaty of Bretigny and recover some of the provinces which had been lost by it — this was what king and country secretly desired and laboured for. Pending a favourable opportunity for promoting this higher interest, war went on in Brittany between John of Montfort and Charles of Blois, who continued to be encouraged and patronized, covertly, one by the king of England, the other by the king of France. Almost im mediately after the accession of Charles Y. it broke out again between him and his brother-in-law, Charles the Badj king of Navarre, the former being profoundly mistrustful and the latter brazen-facedly perfidious, and both detesting one another and watch- ing to seize the moment for taking advantage one of the other. The states bordering on France, amongst others Spain and Italy, were a prey to discord and even civil wars, which could not fail to be a Bource of trouble or ^serious embarrassment to France. In Spain two brothers, Peter the Cruel and Henry of Transtamare, were disputing the throne of Castile. Shortly after the accession of Charles V., and in spite of his lively remonstrances, in 1367, Pope Urban V. quitted Avignon for Eome, whence he was not to return to Avignon till three years afterwards, and then only to die. The emperor of Germany was, at this period, almost the only one of the great sove- reigns of Europe who showed for France and her kings a sincere good will. in order to maintain the struggle against these difficulties, within CHARLES V Charles V., his family and his ministers. 1 63 and without, the means which Charles Y. had at his disposal were The Hng'g of hut moderate worth. He had three hrothers and three sisters !^^^^^g^ calculated rather to embarrass and sometimes even injure him than family, to he of any service to him. Of his hrothers the eldest, Louis, duke of Anjou, was restless, harsh, and hellicose. He upheld authority with no little energy in Languedoc, of which Charles had made him governor, hut at the same time made it detested ; and he was more taken up with his own ambitious views upon the kingdom of Naples, which Queen Joan of Hungary had transmitted to him by adoption, than with the interests of France and her king. The second, John, duke of Berry, was an insignificant prince who has left no strong mark on history. The third, Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, after having been the favourite of hia father. King John, was likewise of his brother, Charles Y., who did not hesitate to still further aggrandize this vassal already so great, by obtaining for him in marriage the hand of Princess Marguerite, heiress to the countship of Flanders ; and this marriage, which was destined at a later period to render the dukes of Burgundy such formidable neighbours for the kings of France, was even in the life- time of Charles Y. a cause of unpleasant complications both for France and Burgundy. Of King Charles' three sisters, the eldest, Joan, was married to the king of ITavarre, Charles the Bad, and much more devoted to her husband than to her brother; the second, Mary, espoused Eobert, duke of Bar, who caused more annoyance than he rendered service to his brother-in-law the king of France ; and the tnird, Isabel, wife of Galeas Yisconti, duke of Milan, was of no use to her hrpther beyond the fact of contributing, as we have seen, by her marriage to pay a part of King John's ran- som. Charles Y., by kindly and judicious behaviour in the bosom of his family, was able to keep serious quarrels or embarrassments from arising thence ; but he found therein neither real strength nor sure support. His civil councillors, his chancellor, William de Dormans, car- and Ms dinal-bjshop of Beauvais ; his minister of finance, John de la Grange, mii^steri cardinal-bishop of Amiens ; his treasurer, Philip de Savoisy ; and his chamberlain and private secretary. Bureau de la Riviere, were, undoubtedly, men full of ability and zeal for his service, for he had picked them out and maintained them unchangeably in their offices. There is reason to believe that they conducted themselves discreetly, for we do not observe that after their master's death there was any outburst against them, on the part either of court or people, of that violent and deadly hatred which has so often caused bloodshed in the history of France. Bureau de la Eiviere was attacked and M 2 164 History of France, prosecuted, without, however, hecoriiing one of the victims of Judi- cial authority at the command of politiciii passions. Kone of Charles V.'s councillors exercised over his master that preponderat- ing and confirmed influence which makes a man a premier minister. Character The government of Charles V. was the personal government of an of his intelligent, prudent, and honourable king, anxious for the interests ment. of the State, at home and abroad, as weU as for his own, with little inclination for, and little confidence in, the free co-operation of the country in its own affairs, but with wit enough to cheerfully call upon it when there was any pressing necessity, and accepting it then without any chicanery or cheating, but safe to go back as soon as possible to that sole dominion, a medley of patriotism and selfish- ness, which is the very insufficient and very precarious resource of peoples as yet incapable of applying their liberty to the art of their own government. Charles V. had recourse three times, in July, 1367, and in May and December, 1369, to a conA'ocation of the «»tates-general, in order to be put in a position to meet the political and financial difficulties of France. It was his good fortune, besides, to find amongst his servants a man to be the thunderbolt of war and the glory of knighthood of his reign ; we mean Bertrand du Gues- clln, a Breton gentleman, who had already distinguished himself on A.D. 1364. the field of battle. Having received the command of the royal Du Gues- troops, he inaugurated the new reign by the victory of Cocherel, Battle of when he defeated John de Grailly, Captal of Buch, the best of the Cocherel generals of the king of Navarre. Charles the Bad lost by this aflair ^ ^ '' nearly all his possessions in Normandy. Charles Y., encouraged by his success, determined to take part like- wise in the war which was still going on between the two claimants to the duchy of Brittany, Charles of Blois and John of Montfort. Du Guesclin was sent to support Charles of Blois ; he entered at once on the campaign, and marched upon Auray which was being besieged by the count of Montfort. But there he was destined to encounter the most formidable of his adversaries. John of Mont- fort had claimed the support of his patron the king of England, and John Chandos, the most famous of the English commanders, had applied to the prince of Wales to know what he was to do". " You may go full well," the prince had answered, " since the French A.D. 1364. are going for the count of Blois ; I give you good leave." The Du Gues- battle took place on the 29th of September, 1364, before Auray ; Brittany. Charles of Blois was killed and Du Guesclin was made prisoner. Battle of The cause of John of Montfort was clearly won ; and he, on taking f Sep* em- possession of the duchy of Brittany, asked nothing better than to her 29). acknowledge himseK vassal of the king of France and swear fidelity The French in Spain 165 to him Accordingly he made peace at Guerande, on the lith of April, 1365, after having disputed the conditions inch by inch ; and some weeks previously, on the 6th of March, at the indirect instance of the king of Navarre, who, since the battle of Cocherel, had felt himself in peril, Charles V. had likewise put an end to his open struggle against his perfidious neighbour, of whom he certainly did not cease to be mistrustful. Being thus delivered from every external war and declared enemy, the wise king of France was at liberty to devote himself to the re-establishment of internal peace and of order throughout his kingdom, which was in the most press- ing need thereof. Charles V. was not, as Louis XII. and Henry lY. were, of a The disposition full of affection and sympathetically inclined towards ^^^^ his people ; but he was a practical man, who in his closet and in nies.'' the library growing up about him, took thought for the interests of his kingdom as well as for his own ; he had at heart the public good, and lawlessness was an abomination to him. Having pur- chased, at a ransom of a hundred thousand francs, the liberty of Bertrand du Guesclin, who had remained a prisoner in the hands of John Chandos, after the battle of Auray, an idea occurred to him that the valiant Breton might be of use to him in extricating France from the deplorable condition to which she had been reduced by the bands of plunderers who, under the name of Grand Companies, were roaming over the land. There was, at that time, a civil war raging in Spain between Civil war Don Pedro the Cruel, king of Castile, and his natural brother, ^ Henry of Transtamare, and that was the theatre on which Du Guesclin proposed to launch the vagabond army which he desired to get out of France. With a strength, it is said, of 30,000 men, he took the decided resolution of supporting Prince Henry's cause, and on the 1st of January, 1366, entered Barcelona, whither Henry of Transtamare came to join him. There is no occasion to give a detailed account here of that expedition, which appertains much more to the history of Spain than to that of France. Edward III. in London, and the TheFrencli prince of "Wales at Bordeaux, could not see without serious dis- ^^ ^^ . quietude, the most famous warrior amongst the French crossing the Spain. Pyrenees with a following for the most part French, and setting upon the throne of CastUe a prince necessarily allied to the king of France. The question of rivalry between the two kings and the two peoples was thus transferred into Spain ; after several months preparation the prince of Wales, purchasing the complicity of the king of Navarre, marched into Spain in February, 1367, with an l66 History of France a.D. 1367. Battle of Navarette (April 3). Du Gues- cliu made prisoner, and re- leased. army of 27,000 men, and John Chandos, the most able of the English warriors. Henry of Transtamare had troops more numerous but less disciplined and experienced. The two armies joined battle on the 3rd of April, 1367, at iNTajara or Navarette, not far from the Ebro. Disorder and even sheer rout soon took place amongst that of Henry, who flung himself before the fugitives, shouting, " Why would ye thus desert and betray me, ye who have made me king of Castile ? Turn back and stand by me ; and by the grace of God the day shall be ours." Du Guesclin and his men-at-arms maintained the fight with stubborn courage, but at last they were beaten and either slain or taken. To the last moment Du Guesclin, with his back against a wall, defended himself heroically against a host of assailants. The prince of Wales coming up, cried out, " Gentle marshals of France, and you too, Bertrand, yield yourselves to me." " Why, yonder men are my foes," cried the king Don Pedro ; " it is they who took from me my kingdom, and on them I mean to take vengeance." Du Guesclin darting forward struck so rough a blow with his sword at Don Pedro that he brought him fainting to the ground, and then turning to the prince of Wales said, " Nathless I give up my sword to the most valiant prince on earth." The prince of Wales took the sword, and charged the Captal of Buch with the prisoner's keeping. ** Aha ! sir Bertrand," said the Captal to Du Guesclin, you took me at the battle of Cocherel, and to-day I've got you." " Yes," replied Du Guesclin ; " but at Cocherel I took you myself, and here you are only my keeper." The captivity of the Breton commander was not of long duration ; Du Guesclin proudly fixed his ransom at a hundred thousand francs, which seemed a large sum, even to the prince of Wales. " Sir," cried Du Guesclin to him, " the king in whose keeping is France will lend me what I lack, and there is not a spinning wench in France who would not spin to gain for me what is necessary to put me out of your clutches." The advisers of the prince of Wales would have had him think better of it, and break his promise ; but " that which we have agreed to with him we will hold to," said the prince ; " it would be shame and confusion of face to us if we could be reproached with not setting him to ransom when he is ready to set himself down at so much as to pay a hundred thousand francs." Prince and knight were both as good as their word. Du Guesclin found amongst his Breton friends a portion of the sum he wanted ; King Charles V. lent him thirty thousand Spanish doubloons, which, by a deed of December 27th, 1367, Du Guesclin undertook to repay: and at Irritation against the Prince of Wales. 167 the boginniug of 1368 the prince of Wales set the French warrior at liberty. The consequences of this unfortunate campaign were soon felt. The fnnca The expenses incurred for the purpose of carrying it on having ji-ritates^ involved the prince of Wales in great embarrassment, he was the Gas- compeUed to levy heavy taxes on his newly acquired provinces, cons and The Gascons and Aquitanians became irritated. The prince's niana. more temperate advisers, even those of English birth, tried in vain to move liim from his stubborn course. John Chandos himself, the most notable as well as the wisest of them, failed, and withdrew to his domain of St. Sauveur, in Normandy, that he might have nothing to do with measures of which he disapproved. Being driven to extremity, the principal lords of Aquitaine, the counts of Comminges, of Armagnac, of Perigord, and many barons besides, set out for France, and made complaint, on the 30th of June, 1368, before Charles V. and his peers, "on account of the grievances which the prince of Wales was purposed to put upon tliem." They had recourse, they said, to the king of France as their sovereign lord, who had no power to renounce his suzerainty or the jurisdiction of his court of peers and of his parliament. N^othing could have corresponded better with the wishes of Charles V. For eight years past he had takeo to heart the treaty of Bretigny, and he was as determined not to miss as he was patient in waiting for an opportunity for a breach of it. Having ascertained the legal means of maintaining that the stipulations of the treaty of Bretigny had not all of them been performed by the king of England, and that, consequently, the king of France had not lost all his rights of suzerainty over the ceded provinces, he summoned the prince of Wales to appear before a court of his peers at Paris, to be judged as a rebellious vassal. ** When the prince of Wales had read this letter, " says Froissart, " he sliook his head and looked askant at the aforesaid Frenchman ; and when he had thought a while, he answered, ' We will go willingly, at our own time, since the king of France doth bid us, but it shall be with our casque on our head, and with sixty thousand men at our back.' " This was a declaration of war; and dfeds followed at once a. D 1369, upon words. Edward III., after a short and fruitless attempt at Charles V, an accommodation, assumed on the 3rd of June, 1369, the title of ^^j. king of France, and ordered a levy of all his subjects between against sixteen and sixty, laic or ecclesiastical, for the defence of England, ^Sland. threatened by a French fleet which was cruising in the Channel. Profiting by the lessons of experience, Charles V. abstained from 168 History of France. Succesi of the ■Prench, A.D. 1376. Death of the 'Black Prince" (June 8). A.D. 1377. and of Edwaidlll (June 21). general engagements, confining himself to fortifjdng his cities, laying waste the country, and destroying in detail the forces of the enera3\ Thus it was that an English army, which had landed at Calais (13G9), and advanced as far as Paris, melted away before it had time to reach Bordeaux. Another one, partly ruined by want of provisions, was crushed at Pontvalain by Du Guesclin, lately named constable of France (1370). At the same time, the Frencli navy, renewed by the wise foresight of the king, and reinforced by Spanish ships, gained a signal victory at La Rochelle. These suc- cesses and others besides allowed Charles V. to recover from the English the greater part of the provinces which they had on the continent. The leading actors in this historical drama did not know how near were the days when they would be called away from this arena still so crowded with their exploits or their re- verses. A few weeks after the destruction of Limoges, the prince of Wales lost, at Bordeaux, his eldest son, six years old, whom he loved with all the tenderness of a veteran warrior, so much the more affected by gentle impressions as they were a rarity to him; and he was himself so ill that "his doctors advised him to return to England, Icis oion land, saying that he would probably get better health there. Accordingly he left France, which he would never see again, and he died on the 8th of June, 1376, in possession of a popularity that never shifted and was deserved by such qualities as showed a nature great indeed and generous, though often sullied by the fits of passion of a character harsh even to ferocity. " The good fortune of England," says his contemporary Walsingham, "seemed bound wp with his person, for it flourished when he was well, fell off when he was ill, and vanished at his death. As long as he was on the spot the English feared neither the foe's invasion nor the meeting on the baitle-field ; but with him died all their hopes." A year after him, on the 21st of June, 1377, died his father, Edward IIL, a king who had been able, glorious, and fortunate for nearly half a century, but had fallen towards the end of his life into contempt with his people and into forget- fulness on the continent of Europe, where nothing was heard about him beyond whispers of an indolent old man's indulgent weaknesses to please a covetous mistress. Whilst England thus lost her two great chiefs, France still kept hers. For three years longer Charles V. and Du Guesclin re- mained at the head of her government and her armies. A truce between the two kingdoms had been twice concluded, between 1375 and 1377 : it was still in force when the prince of Wales died, and Charles, ever careful to practise knightly courtesy, had a BERTRAND DU GUESCL[X. Constable Du Guesdin. IO9 solemn funeral service performed for him in the Sainte-Chapelle ; but the following year, at the death of Edward III., the truce had expired. The war prosecuted by Charles V. between Edward III.'s death and his own had no result of importance ; the attempt, by law and arms, which he made in 1378, to make A.D. 1378 Brittany his own and reunite it to the crown completely failed, ^^f^l,^ ^' thanks to the passion with which the Bretons, nobles, burgesses Guesciin. and peasants were attached to their country's independence. Charles V. actually ran a risk of embroiling himself with the hero of his reign ; he had ordered Du Guescliu to reduce to sub- mission to the countship of Rennes, his native land, and he showed some temper because the constable not only did not succeed, but advised him to make peace with the duke of Brittany and his party. Du Guesclin, grievously hurt, sent to the king his sword of constable, adding that he was about to withdraw to the court of Castile, to Henry of Transtamare, who would show more apprecia- tion of his services. All Charles V.'s wisdom did not preserve him from one of those deeds of haughty levity which the handling of sovereign power sometimes causes even the wisest kings to commitj but reflection made him promptly acknowledge and retrieve his fault. He charged the dukes of Anjou and Bourbon to go and, for his sake, conjure Du Guesclin to remain his constable j and, though some chroniclers declare that Du Guesclin refused, his will, dated the 9th of July, 1380, leads to a contrary belief, for in it he assumes the title of constable of France, and this will preceded the hero's death only by four days. Having fallen sick before Chateau- neuf-Eandon, a place he was besi-eging in the Gevaudan, Du Gues- clin expired on the 13th of July, 1380, at sixty-six years of age, A.D. 138C and his last words were an exhortation to the veteran captains r^^!, around him " never to .forget that, in whatsoever country they might clin be making war, churchmen, women, children, and the poor people (Ji^^y 13). were not their enemi'dS." According to certain contemporary chro- nicles, or, one might almost say, legends, Chateauneuf-Eandon was to be given up the day after Du Guesclin died. The marshal de Sancerre, who commanded the king's army, summoned the governor to surrender the place to him j but the governor replied that he had given his word to Du Guesclin, and would surrender to no other. He was told of the constable's death : " Very well," he rejoined, "I will carry the keys of the town to his tomb." To this the marshal agreed ; the governor marched out of the place at the head of his garrison, passed through the besieging army, went and knelt down before Du Guesclin's corpse, and actually laid the keys of Chateauneuf on his bier. The body of the constable was carried 170 History of France. to Paris to be interred at St. Denis, hard by the tomb which Charles V. had ordered to be made for himself; and nine years afterwards, in 1389, Charles V.'s successor, his son Charles VI., caused to be celebrated in the Breton warrior's honour a fresh funeral, at which the princes and grandees of the kingdom, and the young king himself, were present in state. The life, character, and name of Bertrand du Guesclin were and remained one of the most popular, patriotic, and legitimate boasts of the middle ages, then at their decline. Deith of Two months after the constable's death, on the 16th of Septem- Charles V. -^gp^ 1380, Charles Y. died at the castle of Beaute-sur-Marne, near ber 16). Vincennes, at forty-three years of age, quite young still after so stormy and hard-working a life. His contemporaries were con- vinced, and he was himself convinced, that he had been poisoned by his perfidious enemy. King Charles of Xavarre. His cha- Charles V., taking upon his shoulders at nineteen years of age, first racter. ^g king's lieutenant and as dauphin and afterwards as regent, the government of France, employed all his soul and his life in repair- ing the disasters arising from the wars of his predecessors and pre- venting any repetition. ;N"o sovereign was ever more resolutely pacific j he carried prudence even into the very practice of war, as ■was proved by his forbidding his generals to venture any general engagement with the English, so great a lesson and so deep an impression had he derived from the defeats of Crecy and Poitiers and the causes which led to them. But without being a warrior, and without running any hazardous risks, he made himself respected and feared by his enemies. At his death he left in the royal trea- sury a surplus of seventeen million francs, a large sum for those days. Kor the labours of government, nor the expenses of war, nor farsighted economy had prevented him from showing a serious interest in learned works and studies, and from giving effectual pro- tection to the men who devoted themselves thereto. The university of Paris, notwithstanding the embarrassments it sometimes caused him, was always the object of his good- will. " He was a great lover of wisdom," says Christine de Pisan, " and when certain folks mur- mured for that he honoured clerks so highly, he answered, ' So long as wisdom is honoured in this realm, it will continue in prosperity ; but when wisdom is thrust aside, it will go down.'" He collected nine hundred and fifty volumes (the first foundation of the Eoyal Library), which were deposited in a tower of the Louvre, called the library tower, and of which he, in 1373, had an inventory drawn up by his personal attendant, Gdles de Presle. His taste for literature and science was not confined to collecting manuscripts. He had a Charles VI. and his Uncles. 1/5 French translation made, for the sake of spreading a knowledge thereof, of the Bible in the first place, and then of several works of Aristotle, of Livy, of Valerius Maximus, of Vegetius, and of St. Au- gustine. He waa fond of industry and the arts as weU as of litera- ture. Henry de Vic, a German clockmaker, constructed for him the first public clock ever seen in France, and it was placed in what was called the Clock Tower in the Palace of Justice ; and the king even had a clockmaker by appointment, named Peter de St. Beathe. Several of the Paris monuments, churches, or buildings for public use were undertaken or completed under his care. He began the building of the Bastille, that fortress which was then so necessary for the safety of Paris, where it was to be, four centuries later, the object of the wrath and earliest excesses on the part of the populace, Charles the Wise, from whatever point of view he may be regarded, is, after Louis the Pat, Philip Augustus, St. Louis, and PJiilip the Handsome, the fifth of those kings who powerfully contributed to the settlement of Prance in Europe, and of the kingship in Prance. He was not the greatest nor the best, but, perhaps, the most honestly able. Scarcely was Charles V. laid on his bier when it was seen what a ^'PiH**^ loss he was and would be to his kingdom. Discord arose in the Charles VI king's own family. In order to shorten the ever critical period of -^^ ""^''^^^ minority, Charles V. had fixed the king's majority at the age of fourteen. His son, Charles VL, was not yet twelve, and so had two years to remain under the guardianship of his four uncles, the dukes of Anjou, Berry, Burgundy, and Bourbon ; but the last being only a maternal uncle and a less ].)uissaut prince than his paternal uncles, it was between the other three that strife began for tem- porary possession of the kingly power. Though very unequal in talent and in force of character, they were aR three ambitious and jealous. The eldest, the duke of Anjou, who was energetic, despo- tic, and stubborn, aspired to dominion in Prance for the sake of making French influence subserve the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, the object of his ambition. The duke of Berry was a mediocre, restless, prodigal, and grasping prince. The duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, the most able and the most powerful of the three, had been the favourite, first of his father. King John, and then of his brother, Charles V., who had confidence in him and readily adopted his counsels ; his father-in-law. Count Louis of Flanders, was in almost continual strife with the great Flemish com- munes, ever on the point of rising against the taxes he heaped upon them and the blows he struck at their privileges. The city of Ghent in particular joined complaint \vith menace, and in ISiJl the quariel !72 History of France. became war ; and in N'ovember, of the following year, the king of France and his army marched into Flanders in support of the count. Several towns, Cassel, Bergues, Gravelines, and Turnhout, hastily A.D. 1382. submitted to him ; and on the 28th of Nov^ember the two armies Battle of foun^ themselves close together at Eosebecque, between Ypres and beeque Courtrai. Twenty-five thousand Flemings fell on the field, together h^^°98^* with their leader. Van Artevelde, the concoctor of this rebellion, whose corpse, discovered with great trouble amongst a heap of slain, was, by order of Charles YI , hung upon a tree in the neighbour- hood. The French also lost in this struggle some noble knights, not less illustrious by birth than valour; amongst others forty-four valiant men, who, being the first to hurl themselves upon the ranks of the enemy to break them, thus won for themselves great glory. The victory of Eosebecque was a great cause for satisfaction and pride to Charles VI. and his uncle, the duke of Burgundy. They had conquered on the field in Flanders the commonalty of Paris as well as that of Ghent ; and in France there was great need of such a success, for, since the accession of the young king, the Parisians had risen with a demand for actual abolition of the taxes of which Chailes V., on his death-bed, had deplored the necessity, and all but decreed the cessation. Armed with all sorts of weapons, with strong mallets amongst the rest, they spread in all directions, killing the collectors, and storming and plundering the Hotel de Ville. ^® " ^^^1" They were called the Malleteers. They were put down with as much timidity as cruelty. Eeturning victorious from Flanders to France, Charles VI. re-entered Paris, he alone being mounted, in the midst of his army. The burgesses went out of the city to meet him and offer him their wonted homage, but they were curtly ordered to retrace their steps ; the king and his nncles, they were informed, could not forget ofi'ences so recent. Fundamental order having been thus upheld, reprisals began to be taken for the out- breaks of the Parisians, municipal magistrates or populace, burgesses or artisans, rich or poor, in the course of the two preceding years ; arrests, imprisonments, fines, confiscations, executions, severities of all kinds fell upon the most conspicuous and the most formidable of those who had headed or favoured popular movements. The most solemn and most iniquitous of these punishments was that which befell the advocate-general, John Desmarets. " For nearly a whole year," says the monk of St. Denis, " he had served as mediator between the king and the Parisians ; but, yielding to the •orayers of this rebellious and turbulent mob, he, instead of leaving Paris as the rest of his profession had done, had remained there, and throwing himself boldly amidst the storms of civil discord, Clisson murdered. 1 73 he haJ advised the assumption of arms and the defence of the city, which he knew was very displeasing to the king and the grandees.'* Public respect accompanied the old and courageous magistrate beyond the scaffold ; his corpse was taken up by his friends, and at a later period honourably buried in the church of St. Catherine. Free at last from the surveillance of his uncles, Charles YI. mar- Charles VL ried Isabel of Bavaria, whose wantonness was destined to bring the ^abeTof kingdom to the verge of destruction. Il^ow, yielding to the impetuous Bavaria, suggestions of his character, he prepared against England a gigantic armament, which the delays of the Duke of Berry rendered useless. i\Ialters were getting worse in France, when a serious misfortune came to destroy the already exhausted constitution of the king, and to give up the country to the unprincipled ambition of his uncles. On the 13th of June, 1392, the constable, Oliver de Clisson, was waylaid a.D. 1392, as he was returning home after a banquet given by the king at the Oliver de hostel of St. Paul. The assassin was Peter de Craon, cousin of nxurdered John IV., duke of Brittany. He believed De Clisson to be dead, (June 13), and left him bathed in blood at a baker's door in the street called Culture- Sainte- Catherine. The king was just going to bed, when one of his people came and said to him, " Ah ! sir, a great misfor- tune has happened in Paris." "What, and to whom?" said the king. " To your constable, sir, who has just been slain." " Slain !" cried Charles; "and by whom?" " Nobody knows ; but it was close by here, in St. Catherine Street." "Lights! quick!" said the king : " I will go and see him ;" and he set off without waiting for his following. When he entered the baker's shop, De Clisson, grievously wounded, was just beginning to recover his senses. "Ah ! constable," said the king, "and how do you feel?" "Very poorly, dear sir." "And who brought you to this pass?" "Peter de Craon and his accomplices ; traitorously and without warning." " Constable," said the king, " never was any thing so punished or dearly paid for as this shall be ; take thought for yourself, and have no further care; it is my affair." Orders were immediately given to seek out Peter de Craon and hurry on his trial. He had taken refuge, first in his own castle of Sable, and afterwards with the duke of Brittany, who kept him concealed, and replied to the king's envoys that he did not know where he was. The king pro- claimed his intention of making war on the duke of Brittany until Peter do Craon should be discovered and justice done to the con- stable. Preparations for war were begun ; and the dukes of Berry and Burgundy received orders to get ready for it, themselves and their vassals. The king had got together his uncles and his troops at Le Mans j 174 History of France. Th=t king and, after passing three weeks there, he gave the word to march for struck Brittany. They had just entered the great forest of Le Mans, when less. ^ at once there started from behind a tree by the roadside a tall man, with bare head and feet, clad in a common white smock, who, dashing forward and seizing the king's horse by the bridle, cried, " Go no farther ; thou art betrayed ! " So unusual an appearance brought on a fit of frenzy from which Charles never recovered, and which indeed was augmented by a strange accident which occurred at a masquerade, some time after. Five young noblemen with the king appeared as savages linked together, in a dress of linen, to which fur was cemented by the means of rosin : the secret was so well kept, that they remained undiscovered. The Duke of Orleans, either from levity or accident, ran a lighted torch against one of the party, which immediate!}'' set his combustible costume on fire ; the flame was quickly communicated to the rest; but the masks, in the midst of their torments, crying out " Save the king, save the king !" his aunt, the duchess of Berry, recollecting his person, threw her robes over him, and by wrapping them close, extinguished the fire. One of the mummers saved his life by leaping into a cistern of water; but the remaining four were so dreadfully scorched that they died. On the king's good days he was sometimes brought in to sit at certain councils at which there was a discussion about the diminution of taxes and relief of the people, and he showed symptoms, at intervals, of taking an interest in them. A fair young Burgundian, Odette de Champdivers, was the only one amongst his many favourites who was at all successful in soothing him during his violent fits. It was Duke John the Fearless, who had placed her near the king that she might promote his own influence, and she took advantage of it to further her own fortunes, which, however, did not hinder her from passing into the service of Charles YII. against the House of Burgundy. For thirty years, from 1392 to 1422, the crown remained on the head of this poor madman, whilst France Avas a victim to the bloody quarrels of the royal house, to national dismemberment, to licentiousness in morals, to civil anarchy, and to foreign conquest. A.D. 1392 The dukes of Burgundy and Berry being thus in possession of —1402. power, exercised it for ten years, from 1392 to 1402, without oi' Bur- ^"^y gJ'Ga^t dispute between themselves, the duke of Burgundy's gundy and influence being predominant, or with the king, who, save certain the hea^** lucid intervals, took merely a nominal part in the government. of the During this period no event of importance disturbed France Stat©. internally. In 1393 the king of England, Eichard II., son of the Black Prince, sought in marriage the daughter of Charles VI., JOHX THE FEARLESS. The Qiieeii of France and the Duke of Orleans. 175 Isabel of France, only eight years old. In both courts and in both countries there was a desire for peace ; the contract was signed on the 9th of March, 1396, with a promise that, when the princess had accomplished her twelfth year, she should be free to assent to or refuse the union ; and ten days after the marriage, the king's uncles and the English ambassadors mutually signed a truce, which promised — but quite in vain — to last for eight and twenty years. Eivalries, intrigues, and scandals of every kind were, in the Intrigue meanwhile, disgracing the entourage of the mad king, and bringing t^^^^,^'\ about the curse and the shame of France. There had grown up Bavaria between Queen Isabel of Bavaria and Louis, duke of Orleans, ^"^^ t^^ brother of the king, an intimacy which, throughout the city and Orleans amongst all honourable people, shocked even the least strait-laced. It was undoubtedly through the queen's influence that Charles VI., in 1402, suddenly decided upon putting into the hands of the duke of Orleans the entire government of the realm and the right of representing him in every thing during the attacks of his malady. The duke of Burgundy wrote at once about it to the parliament of Paris, saying, " Take counsel and pains that the interests of the king and his dominion be not governed as they now are, for, in good truth, it is a pity and a grief to hear what is told me about it." In spite of his malady and his affection for his brother, Charles VI. yielded to the councils of certain wise men who represented to him "that it was neither a reasonable nor an honourable thing to entrust the government of the realm to a prince whose youth needed rather to be governed than to govern." He withdrew the direction of affairs from the diike of Orleans and restored it to the duke of Burgundy, who took it again and held it with a strong grasp, and did not suffer his nephew Louis to meddle in any thing. But from that time forward open distrust and hatred were established between the two princes and their families. In the very midst of this court-crisis Duke Philip the Bold fell ill and died within a few days, on the 27th of April, 1404. John the J°^° *^« Fearless, count of Nevers, his son and successor in the dukedom of duke of ' Burgundy, was not slow to prove that there was reason to regret Burgundy his father. His expedition to Hungary, ending as it did by the terrible disaster of Nicopolis, for all its bad leadership and bad fortune, had created esteem for his courage and for his firmness under reverses, but little confidence in his direction of public affairs. He was a man of violence, unscrupulous and indiscreet, full of jealousy and hatred, and capable of any deed and any risk for the gratification of his passions or his fancies. At his accession he made some popular moves ; he appeared disposed to prosecute iy6 History of France. vigorously the war against England which was going on sluggishly; bo testified a certain spirit of conciliation by going to pay a visit to his cousin, the duke of Orleans, lying ill at his castle of Beaute, near Vincennes ; when the duke of Orleans was well again, the two princes took the communion together and dined together at their uncle's, the dake of Berry's ; and the duke of Orleans invited the new duke of Burgundj' to dine with him the next Sunday. The Parisians took pleasure in observing these little matters, and in hoping for the re-establishment of harmony in the royal family. They were soon to be cruelly undeceived. A.D. 1407. On the 23rd of ITovember, 1407, the duke of Orleans was the duke of ^lurdered in the streets of Paris by ruffians hired for the purpose Orleans by the duke of Burgundy, who openly dared to justify the assas- (Nov. 23). sination. Yalentine Yisconti, the duke of Milan's daughter, whose dowry had gone to pay the ransom of King John, was at Chateau-Thierry when she heard of, the duke of Orleans, her husband's murder. Hers was one of those natures, full of softness and at the same time of fire, which grief does not overwhelm, arid in which a passion for vengeance is excited and fed by their despair. She started for Paris in the early part of December, 1407, during the roughest winter, it was said ever known for several centuries, taking with her all her children. Dismounting at the hostel of St. Paul, she threw herself on her knees before the king with the princes and council around him, and demanded of him justice for her husband's cruel death. Justice was promised by the chancellor in the name of the king, and Valentine even obtained a kind of moral reparation during the absence of her deadly foe ; but she died on the 4th of Death of * December, 1408, at Blois, far from satisfied, and clearly foreseeing Valentine, that against the duke of Burgundy, flushed with victory and Orleans " present in person, she would obtain nothing of what she had asked. (Dec. 4). For spirits of the best mettle, and especially for a woman's heart, impotent passion is a heavy burden to bear ; and Yalentine Yisconti, beautiful, amiable, and unhappy even in her best days through the fault of the husband she loved, sank under this trial. At the close of her life she had taken for devise, " iSTaught have I more, more hold I naught " i^Rien ne m'esi plus ; plus ne m'est rien) ; and so fully was that her habitual feeling that she had the words inscribed upon the black tapestry of her chamber. In her last hours she had by her side her three sons and her daughter, but there was another etill whom she remembered. She sent for a child, six years of age, John, a natural son of her husband by Marietta d'Enghien, wife of sire de Cany-Dunois. " This one," said she, " was filched from me ; The BiLi'gundians and the Armagnacs. l/J yet there is not a child so well cut out as he to avenge his father's death." Twenty-five years later John was the famous hastard of Orleans, Count Danois, Charles VII.'s lieutenant-general and Joan of Arc's comrade in the work of saving the French kingship and France. The duke of Burgundy's negotiations at Tours were not fruitless. The result was that on the 9th of March, 1409, a treaty was con- cluded and an interview effected at Chartres between the duke on one side and on the other the king, the queen, the dauphin, all the royal family, the councillors of the crown, the young duke of Orleans, his brother, and a hundred knights of their house, all met together to hear the king declare tliat he pardoned the duke of Burgundy. The duke prayed " my lord of Orleans and my lords his brothers to banish from tlieir hearts all hatred and vengeance;" and the princes of Orleans "assented to what the king commanded them, and forgave their cousin the duke of Burgundy every thing entirely." But falsehood does not extinguish the facts it attempts to disguise. The hostility between the houses of Orleans and Burgundy could not fail to survive the treaty of Chartres and cause search to be made for a man to head the struggle so soon as The Bur- it could be recommenced. The hour and the man were not long gtindians waited for. In the very year of the treaty, Charles of Orleans, Armae- eldest son of the murdered duke and Valentine of Milan, lost his nacs. wife, Isabel of France, daughter of Charles YI. ; and as early as the following year (1410) the princes, his uncles, made him marry Bonne d'Armagnac, daughter of Count Bernard d'Armagnac, one of the most powerful, the most able, and the most ambitious lords of southern France. Forthwith, in concert with the duke of Berry, the duke of Brittany, and several other lords. Count Bernard put himself at the head of the Orleans party, and jjrepared to proceed against the duke of Burgundy in the cause of dominion combined with vengeance. From 1410 to 1415 France was a prey to civil war between the Armagnacs and Burgundians, and to their alternate successes and reverses brought about by the unscrupulous employ- ment of the most odious and desperate means. The Burgundians had generally the advantage in the struggle, for Paris was chiefly the centre of it, and their influence was predominant there. Their principal allies there, says the chronicle, were the butchers, the boldest and most ambitious corporation in the city; and they numbered amongst their most active associates one, Caboche, a flayer of beasts in the shambles of Hotel-Dieu, and master John de Troyes, a surgeon with a talent for speaking. Their company consisted of prentice- butchers, medical students, skinners, tailors, and every kind of lewd 178 History of France. fellows. "When any body caused their displeasure they said, 'Here's an Armagnac,' and despatched him on the spot, and plundered his house, or dragged him off to prison to pay dear for his release. The rich burgesses lived in fear and peril. More than three hundred of them went off to Melun with the provost of tradesmen, who could, no longer answer for the tranquillity of the city. The Armagnacs, in spite of their general inferiority, sometimes got the upper hand, and did not then behave with much more discretion Vicissi- than the others. Eager to avenge themselves on the men of the tuiles of north for all the misfortunes their own ancestors had endured during the Strug- 1^^ crusade of the Albigenses, the Armagnacs, distinguished by a white sc^rf fastened on the right shoulder, marched towards Paris and laid waste all the provinces on the banks of the Seine. Masters of the metropolis, the Burgundians were enabled to retaliate severely upon the Armagnacs, and even to drive them southwards. Both parties were anxious to secure the support of the king of England. The Armagnacs had promised the half of France to Henry, and thus induced him to espouse their quarrel. The duke of Burgundy however, and Charles II. whom he had in his power, declared them enemies of the State, and besieged them in the city of Bourges (1412). There a peace was concluded, but proved of very short duration. The death of Henry of Lancaster, by lessening the immediate chances of a foreign war, rendered the conflict at home much more terrible. This time, and after the useless assembly of the States-general in 1413, the Cabochians committed such excesses in Paris, that the citizens came to an understanding to expel them. The Armagnacs immediately entered the metropolis, and not only maintained themselves there, but, commanded by Charles VL, pursued their enemies as far as Arras. There they consented to sign a treaty of peace by virtue of which John the Fearless pledged himself to break off his recent alliance with the English (1414). The next year Henry Y. started upon an expedition for the purpose of A.D. 1415. claiming the execution of the treaty of Bretigny. The two armies Battle of met in the plains of Agincourt (25th October, 1415), where a (Oct 25">. most terrible battle took place. It was a monotonous and lamentable repetition of the disasters of Crecy and Poitiers ; disasters almost inevitable, owing to the in- capacity of the leaders, and ever the same defects on the part of the French nobility, defects which rendered their valorous and generous qualities not only fruitless but fatal. Kever had that nobility been more numerous and more brilliant than in this pre- meditated struggle. On the eve of the battle, marshal de Boucicaut (Oct. 25). Agincourt. — State of France. 179 had armed five hundred new knights ; the greater part passed the night on horseback, under arms, on ground soaked with rain ; and men and horses were ah^eady distressed in the morning, when the battle began. It were tedious to describe the faulty manoeuvres of the French army and their deplorable consequences on that day. !N"ever was battle more stubborn or defeat more complete and bloody. Eight thousand men of family, amongst whom were a hundred and twenty lords bearing their own banners, were left on Its results the field of battle. The duke of Brabant, the count of Severs, the duke of Bar, the duke of AleuQon, and the constable D'Albret were killed. The duke of Orleans was dragged out Avounded from under the dead. When Henry Y., after having spent several hours on the field of battle, retired to his quarters, he was told that the duke of Orleans would neither eat nor drink. He went to see him. " What fare, cousin % " said he. " Good, my lord." Why will ye not eat or drink 1" "I wish to fast." 'Cousin," said the king gently, "make good cheer: if God has granted me grace to gain the victory, I know it is not owing to my public feel- deserts ; I believe that God wished to punish the French ; and, if in& i^i all I have heard is true, it is no wonder, for they say that never were seen disorder, licentiousness, sins, and vices like what is going on in France just now. Surely God did well to be angry." It appears that the king of England's feeling was that also of many amongst the people of France, "On reflecting upon this cruel mishap," says the monk of St. Denis, " all the inhabitants of the kingdom, men and women, said, * In what evil days are we come into this world that we should be witnesses of such confusion and shame !'" These successes of the king of England were so many reverses and perils for the count of Armagnac. He had in his hands Paris, the king, and the dauphin ; in the people's eyes the responsibility of government and of events rested on his shoulders ; and at one time he was doing nothing, at another he was unsuccessful in what Success of he did. Whilst Henry V. was becoming master of nearly all the tlif En- towns of Normandy, the constable, with the king in his army, was ^ ^^ ' besieging Senlis ; and he was obliged to raise the siege. The legates of Pope Martin Y. had set about establishing peace between the Burgundians and Armagnacs as well as between France and England ; they had prepared on the basis of the treaty of Arras a new treaty with which a great part of the country and even of the burgesses of Paris showed themselves well pleased ; but the con- stable had it rejected on the ground of its being adverse to the interests of the king and of France ; and his friend, the chancellor, Henry de Marie, declared that, if the king were disposed to sign it, N 2 i8o History of France. A.D. 1418 The Bur- gundians ia Paris. Perrinet Leclerc. Henry ne. gotiates. he would have to seal it himself, for that as for him, the chancellor, he certainly would not seal it. Bernard of Armagnac and his con- fidential friend, Tanneguy Duchatel, a Breton nobleman, provost of Paris, were hard and haughty. When a complaint was made to them of any violent procedure, they would answer, " What business had you there ? If it were the Burgundians, you would make no complaint." The Parisian population was becoming every day more Burgundian. In the latter days of May, 1418, a plot was con- trived for opening to the Burgundians one of the gates of Paris. Perrinet Leclerc, son of a rich iron-merchant having influence in the quarter of St. Germain des Pres, stole the keys from under the bolster of his father's bed ; a troop of Burgundian men-at-arms came in, and they were immediately joined by a troop of Parisians., They spread over the city, shouting, " Our Lady of peace ! Hurrah for the king ! Hurrah for Burgundy ! Let all who wish for peace take arms and follow us ! " The people swarmed from the houses and followed them accordingly. The Armagnacs were surprised and seized with alarm. Tanneguy Duchatel, a man of prompt and resolute spirit, ran to the dauphin's, wrapped him in his bed- clothes, and carried him- off to the Bastille, where he shut him up with several of his partisans. The count of Armagnac, towards whose house the multitude thronged, left by a back-door and took refuge at a mason's where he believed himself secure. In a few hom-s the Burgundians were masters of Paris. Their chief, the lord of Isle-Adam, had the doors of the hostel of St. Paul broken in, and presented himself before the king. " How fares my cousin of Burgundy?" said Charles VI., " I have not seen him for some time." That was all he said. He was set on horseback and marched through the streets. He showed no astonishment at any- thing ; he had all but lost memory as well as reason, and no longer knew the difference between Armagnac and Burgundian. A devoted Burgundian, sire Guy de Bar, was named provost of Paris in the place of Tanneguy Duchatel. Henry of England negotiated with both parties ; but though Bur- gundy and the queen having possession of the person of the afflicted sovereign carried the appearance of legal authority, every Frenchman who paid any regard to the true interests of his country adhered to the dauphin. Prom the enmity of the contending factions, a cir- cumstance occurred which facilitated Henry's views more readily than he could possibly have anticipated. A simulated reconcilia- tion having taken place between the duke of Burgundy and the dauphin, an interview was appointed on the bridge of the town of Montereau. The Duke of Burgm^dy murdered I5l In the duke's household many of his most devoted servants were opposed to this meeting; the place, they said, had been chosen by, and would be under the ordering of the dauphin's people, of the old servants of the duke of Orleans and the count of Armagnac. At the same time four successive messages came fi-om Paris urging the duke to make the plunge ; and at last he took his resolution. " It is my duty," said he, " to risk my person in order to get at ^ j) j^jg so great a blessing as peace. Whatever happens, my wish is Interview peace. If they kill me, I shall die a martyr. Peace being made, I fL °^" will take the men of my lord the dauphin to go and fight the English. He has some good men of war and some sagacious captains. Tanneguy and Barbazan axe valiant knights. Then we shall see which is the better man, Jack (Hannotin) of Flanders or Henry of Lancaster." He set out for Bray on the 10th of Sep- tember, 1419, and arrived about two o'clock before Montereau. Tanneguy DuchS.tel came and met him there. "Well," said the duke, " on your assurance we are come to see my lord the dauphin, supposing that he is quite willing to keep the peace between him- self and us as we also will keep it, all ready to serve him according to his wishes." "My most dread lord," answered Tanneguy, " have ye no fear ; my lord is well pleased with you, and desiies henceforth to govern himself according to your counsels. You have about him good friends who serve you well." A conversation then took place between the dauphin and the duke, the former re- proaching the latter with his inertness against the English, and with his alliances amongst the promoters of civil war. The con- versation was becoming more and more acrid and biting. " In so doing," added the dauphin, " you were wanting to your duty." " My lord," replied the duke, " I did only what it was my duty to do." " Yes, you were wanting," repeated Charles. " No" replied the duke. It was probably at these words that, the lookers-on also the'duke^of waxing wroth, Tanneguy Duchatel told the duke that the time Burgundy had come for expiating the murder of the duke of Orleans, which (^^P*- ■^^) none of them had forgotten, and raised his battle-axe to strike the duke. Sire de Navailles, who happened to be at his master's side, arrested the weapon ; but, on the other hand, the viscount of Narbonne raised his over IsTavailles, saying, " Whoever stirs, is a dead man." At this moment, it is said, the mob which was throng- ing before the barriers at the end of the bridge heard cries of " Alarm ! slay, slay." Tanneguy had struck and felled the duke j several others ran their swords into him ; and he expired. The dauphin had withdrawn from the scene and gone back into the town. After his departure his partisans forced the barrier, charged the 1 82 History of France. Preliml naries of peace. A.D. 1420, Peace of Troyes (May 21). durahfotinded Burgundians, sent them flying along the road to "Bray,, and returning on to the bridge would have cast the body of Duke John, after stripping it, into the river ; but the minister of Mon- tereau vi^ithstood them and had it carried to a mill near the bridge. "!S"ext day he was put in a pauper's shell, with nothing on but his shirt and drawers, and was subsequently interred at the church of Notre-Dame de Montereau, without winding-sheet and without pall over his grave." Henry V., king of England, as soon as he heard about the murder of Duke John, set himself to work to derive from it all the advan- tages he anticipated. " A great loss," said he, "is the duke of Bur- gundy ; he was a good and true knight and an honourable prince ; but through his death we are by God's help at the summit of our wishes. "We shall thus, in spite of all Frenchmen, possess dame Catherine, whom we have so much desired." As early as the 24th of September, 1419, Henry V. gave full powers to certain of his people to treat " with the illustrious city of Paris and the other towns in adherence to the said city." On the 17th of October was opened at Arras a congress between the plenipotentiaries of England and those of Burgundy. On the 20th of November a special truce was granted to the Parisians, whilst Henry V., in concert with Duke Philip of Burgundy, was prosecuting the war against the dauphin. On the 2nd of December the bases were laid of an agreement between the English and the Burgundians. The preliminaries of the treaty which was drawn up in accor- dance with these bases were signed on the 9th of April, 1420, by King Charles YI., and on the 20th communicated at Paris by the chancellor of France to the parliament and to all the religious and civil, royal and municipal authorities of the capital. After this comnmnication, the chancellor and the pr^-mier pre- sident of parliament went with these preliminaries to Henry Y. at Pontoise, whence he set out with a division of his army for Troyes, where the treaty, definitive and complete, was at last signed and promulgated in the cathedral of Troyes, on the 21st of May, 1420. Of the twenty-eight articles in this treaty, five contained its essential points and fixed its character : — 1st. The king of France, Charles YL, gave his daughter Catherine in marriage to Henry Y,, king of England. 2nd. " Our son. King Henry, shall place no hindrance or trouble in the way of our holding and possessing as long as we live and as at the present time the crown, the kingly dignity of France and all the revenues, proceeds, and profits which are attached thereto for the maintenance of our state and the Peace of Troy es. 1 83 charges of the kingdom. 3rd. It is agreed that immediately after our death, aud from that time forward, the crown and kingdom of France, with all their rights and appurtenances, shall belong perpetually, and shall be continued to our son King Henry and his heirs. 4tli. Whereas we are, at most times, prevented from advising by ourselves and from taking part in the disposal of the affairs of our kingdom, the power and the practice of governing and ordering the commonweal shall belong and shall be continued, during our ^ts chiei life, to our son King Henry, with the counsel of the nobles '^°" ^ ^^^^ and sages of the kingdom who shall obey us, and shall desire the honour and advantage of the said kingdom. 5th. Our son King Henry shall strive with aU his might, and as soon as pos- sible, to bring back to their obedience to us, all and each of the towns, cities, castles, places, districts, and persons in our kingdom that belong to the party commonly called of the dauphin or Armagnac," This substitution, in the near future, of an English for the French kingship ; this relinquishment, in the present, of the government of France to the hands of an English prince nominated to become before long her king ; this authority given to the English prince to prosecute in France, against the dauphin of France, a civil war ; this complete abdication of all the rights and duties of the kingship, of paternity and of national independence ; and, to sum up all in one word, this anti-French state-stroke accomplished by a king of France, with the co-operation of him who was the greatest amongst French lords, to the advantage of a -foreign sovereign — there was surely in this enough to excite the most ardent and most legitimate national feelings. The revulsion against the treaty of Troyes was real and serious, even in the very heart of the party attached to the duke of Burgundy. A popular poet of the time, Alan Chartier, constituted himself censor of the moral corruption, and interpreter of the patriotic paroxysms caused by the cold and harsh supremacy of this unbending foreigner, who set himself up for the king of France and had not one feeling in Bympathy with the French. Alan Chartier's Quadriloge invectif is Alan Char a lively and sometimes eloquent allegory in which France personi- tier's fied implores her three children, the clergy, the chivalry, and the loge." people, to forget their own quarrels and unite to save their mother whilst saving themselves ; and this political pamphlet getting spread about amongst the provinces did good service to the national cause against the foreign conqueror. An event more powerful than any human eloquence occurred to give the dauphin and his partisans earlier hopes. Towards the end of August, 1422, 184 History of France* A D. 1422. Henry V. foil ill ; and, too stout-hearted to delude himself as tc Death of liig condition, he thought no longer of any thing but preparing of Eiteland liii"self for death. He expired at Vincennes on the 31st of August; (Aug. 31). 1422, at the age of thirty-four. A great soul and a great king ; but a great example also of the boundless errors which may be fallen into by the greatest men when they pursue with arrogant con- fidence their own views, forgetting the laws of justice and the rights of other men. Deatli of On the 22nd of October, 1422, less than two months after the of^Frauce ' "^^^^h of Henry V., Charles VL, king of France, died at Paris in the (Oct.. 22). forty-third year of his reign. As soon as he had been buried at St. Denis, the duke of Bedford, regent of France according to the will of Henry Y., caused a herald to proclaim, " Long live Henry of Lancaster, king of England and of France ! " The people's voice made very different proclamation. It had always been said that the public evils proceeded from the state of illness into which the unhappy King Charles had fallen. The goodness he had given glimpses of in his lucid intervals had made him an object of tender pity. Some weeks yet before his death, when he had entered Paris again, the inhabitants, in the midst of their sufferings and under the harsh government of the EngHsh, had seen with joy He IS re- ^j^gj^j, xiv>o\ mad king coming back amongst them, and had greeted gretted l)y -"^ 00 o j o his sub- him Avith thousand-fold shouts of " Koel ! " His body lay in state jects. fQj. three days, Avith the face uncovered, in a hall of the hostel of St. Paul, and the multitude went thither to pray for him, saying, " Ah ! dear prince, never shall we have any so good as thou wert ; never shall we see thee more. Accursed be thy death ! Since thou dost leave us, we shall never have aught but wars and troubles. As for thee, thou goest to thy rest ; as for us, we remain in tribulation and sorrow. We seem made to fall into the same distress as the children of Israel during the captivity in Babylon." The people's instinct was at the same time right and wrong. France had yet many evil days to go through and cruel trials to endure ; she was, however, to be saved at last ; Charles VL was to be followed by Charles VII. and Joan of Arc. * It was only when he knew that, on the 27th of October, the par- liament of Paris had, not without some little hesitation and am- biguity, recognized " as king of England and of France, Henry VI. , son of Henry V. lately deceased," that the dauphin Charles assumed on the 30th of October, in his castle of Mehun-sur-Yevre, the title of king, and repaired to Bourges to inaugurate in the cathedral of that city his reign as Charles \^II. At a time when not only the crown of the kingdom biit the Charles VII., King. 1 85 existence and independence of the nation were at stake, the new king had not given any signs of being strongly moved by patriotic feelings. " He was, in person, a handsome prince, and handsome in CharlesVH speech with all persons and compassionate towards poor folks," says his contemporary Monstrelet ; " but he did not readily put on his harness, and he had no heart for war if he could do without it." On ascending the throne, this young prince, so little of the politi- cian and so little of the knight, encountered at the head of his enemies the most able amongst the politicians and warriors of the day in the duke of Bedford, whom his brother Henry V. had appointed regent of France and had charged to defend on behalf of his nephew, Henry VI., a child in the cradle, the crown of France already more than half won. Never did struggle appear more unequal, or native king more inferior to foreign pretender. Sagacious observers, however, would have easily discerned in the cause which appeared the stronger and the better supported many seeds of weakness and danger. When Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, heard at Arras, that Chark'S YI. was dead, it occurred to him immediately that if he attended the obsequies of the English king of France he would be obliged, French prince as he was, and cousin-german of Charles VI., to yield precedence to John, duke of Bedford, regent of France and uncle of the new king Henry VI. He resolved to hold aloof, and contented himself with sending to AD 1423 Paris chamberlains to make his excuses and supply his place with _|24 the regent. The war, though still carried on with great spirit, The war could not and in fact did not bring about any decisive result from B^tu s'^^f 1422 to 1429. Towns were alternately taken, lost, and retaken, at Crevaut one time by the French, at another by the English or Burgundians ; ^L"^ ^^ ., '' ' . "^ '^ ° ' Verneuil. petty encounters and even important engagements took place with vicissitudes of success and reverses on both sides. At Crevant-sur- Yonne, on the Slat of July, 1423, and at Verneuil, in Normandy, on the 17th of August, 1424, the French were beaten, and their faithful allies, the Scots, suffered considerable loss. In the latter affair, however, several Norman lords deserted the English flag, refusing to fight against the king of France. In order to put an end to this doubtful condition of events and of minds, the duke of Bedford determined to aim a grand blow at the national party in France and at her king. After Paris and Rouen, Orleans was the most important city in the kingdom ; it was as supreme on the banks of the Loire as Paris and Rouen were on those of the Seine. ■■ After having obtained from England considerable reinforcements, ^ p 1425 commanded by leaders of experience, the English commenced, in Siege of October, 1428, the siege of Orleans. The approaches to the place "^^®^'^^ 1 86 History of France. were occupied in force, and bastilles closely connected one ■with another were constructed around the walls. As a set off, the most valiant warriors of Erance, La Hire, Dunois, Xaintrailles, and the marshal La Fayette threw themselves into Orleans, the garrison of which amounted to scarcely twelve hundred men. Several towns, Bourges, Poitiers, and La Eochelle sent thither money, munitions, ,:^' ^^^' and militia : the states-general, assembled at Chinon, voted an ' * The Her- ^ o 3 > ling af- extraordinary aid ; and Charleb VII. called out the regulars and the fair." reserves. Assaults on the one side and sorties on the other were begun with ardour. Besiegers and besieged quite felt that they were engaged in a decisive struggle. The first encounter was unfor- tunate for the Orleannese. In a tight called the herring affair, they •were unsuccessful in an attempt to carry off a supply of victuals and salt fish which Sir John Falstolf was bringing to the besiegers. This very year, on the 6th of January, 1428, at Domremy, a little village in the valley of the Meuse, between I^'eufchateau and Vaucouleurs, on the edge of the frontier from Chnmpagne to Lor- raine, the young daughter of simple tillers-of-the-soil " of good life and repute, herself a good, simple, gentle gii'l, no idler, occupied Joan of Arc. liitherto in sewing or spinning with her mother or driving afield her parent's sheep and sometimes even, when her father's turn came round, keeping for him the whole flock of the commune," was fulfil- ling her sixteenth year. It was Joan of Arc, whom all her neigh- bours called Joannette. Her early childhood was passed amidst the pursuits characteristic of a country life ; her behaviour was irre- proachable, and she was robust, active, and intrepid. Her imagina- tion becoming inflamed by the distressed situation of France, she dreamed that she had interviews with St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and St. Michael, who commanded her, in the name of God, to go and raise the siege of Orleans, and conduct Charles to be crowned at Eheims. Accordingly she applied to Eobert de Baudricourt, captain of the neighbouring town of Vaucouleurs, revealing to him her inspiration, and conjuring him not to negltct the voice of God, Her inter- -^yi^ij^i^ spoke through her. This officer for some time treated her view with *^ , -1 1 -1 -11 1 ^ -i • the king, with neglect ; but at length, prevailed on by repeated importu- nities, he sent her to the king at Chinon, to whom, when introduced, she said : " Gentle dauphin, my name is Joan the Maid, the King of heaven hath sent me to your assistance ; if you pleaae to give me troops, by the grace of God and the force of arms, I will raise the siege of Orleans, and conduct you to be crowned at Eheims, in spite of your enemies." Her requests were now granted : she w.is armed cap-a-pie, mounted on horseback, and provided with a suitable retinue. Previous to her attempting any exploit, she wrote Joan of Arc relieves Orleans. 1 8/ a long letter to the young English monarch, commanding him to withdraw his forces from France, and threatening his destruction iii case of refusal. She concluded with " hear this advice from God and la JPucelUy But, side by side with these friends, she had an adversary in the H?r s"®" king's favourite, George de la Tremoille, an ambitious courtier, jealous of any one who seemed within the range of the king's good graces, and opposed to a vigorous prosecution of the war, since it ham- pered him in the policy he wished to keep up towards the duke of Bur- gundy. To the ill-will of La Tremoille was added that of the majority of courtiers enlisted in the following of the powerful favourite, and that of warriors irritated at the importance acquired at their expense by a rustic and fantastic little adventuress. Here was the source of the enmities and intrigues which stood in the way of all Joan's demands, rendered her successes more tardy, difi&cult, and incomplete, and were one day to cost her more dearly stm. At the end of about five weeks the expedition was in readiness. It was a heavy convoy of revictualraent protected by a body of ten or twelve thousand men commanded by marshal de Boussac, and numbering amongst them Xaintrailles and La Hiie. The march A.D. 1429 began on the 27th of April, 1429. Joan had caused the removal ^^ ^g^j^^^^^ of all women of bad character, and had recommended her comrades Orleans, to confess. She took the Communion in the open air, before their eyes ; and a company of priests, headed by her chaplain, Pasquerel, led the way whilst chanting sacred hymns. Great was the surprise amongst the men-at-arms. Many had words of mockery on their lips. It was the time when La Hire used to say, " If God were a soldier, He would turn robber." Nevertheless, respect got the better of habit ; the most honourable were really touched ; the coarsest considered themselves bound to show restraint. On the 29th of April they arrived before Orleans. But, in consequence of the road they had followed, the Loire was between the army and the town j the expeditionary corps had to be split in two ; the troops were obliged to go and feel for the bridge of Blois in order to cross the river ; and Joan was vexed and surprised. Dunois, arrived i'rom Orleans in a little boat, urged her to enter the town that same even- ing. " Are you the bastard oi Orleans 1 " asked she, when he accosted her. " Yes ; and I am rejoiced at your coming." " "Was it you who gave counsel for making me come hither by this side oi the river and not the direct way, over yonder where Talbot and the English were?" "Yes; such was the opinion of the wisest cap- tains." History of France, Enters Orleans (April 29). Marches towards Hheims. Coronation of ihe king (July 16). Joan's first underta'king was against Orleans, which she entered without opposition on the 29th of April, 1429, on horseback, com- pletely armed, preceded by her own banner, and having beside her Dunois, and behind her the captains of the garrison and several of the most distinguished burgesses of Orleans, who had gone out to meet her. The population, one and all, rushed thronging round her, carrying torches, and greeting her arrival " with joy as great as if they had seen God come down amongst them." With admirable good sense, discovering the superior merits of Dunois, the bastard of Orleans, a celebrated captain, she wisely adhered to his instruc- tions : and by constantly harassing the English, and beating up their intrenchments in various desperate attacks, in all of which she displayed the most heroic courage, Joan in a few weeks compelled the earl of Suffolk and his army to raise the siege, having sustained the loss of six thousand men. The proposal of crowning Charles at Eheims would formerly have appeared like madness, but the Maid of Orleans now insisted on its fulfilment. She accordingly recom- menced the campaign on the 10th of June \ to complete the deliver- ance of Orleans an attack was begun upon the neighbouring places, Jargeau, Meung, and Beaugency ; thousands of the late dispirited Bubjects of Charles now flocked to his standard, many towns imme- diately declared for him ; and the English, who had suffered in various actions, at that of Jargeau, when the earl of Suffolk was taken prisoner, and at that of Patay, when Sir John Fastolfe fled without striking a blow, seemed now to be totally dispirited. On the 16th of July King Charles entered Rlieims, and the ceremony of his coronation was fixed for the morrow. It was solemn and emotional as are all old national traditions which recur after a forced suspension. Joan rode between Dunois and the archbishop of Eheims, chancellor of France. The air resounded with the Te Deum sung with all their hearts by clergy and crowd. " In God's name," said Joan to Dunois, " here is a good people and a devout ; when I die, I should much like it to be in these parts." "Joan," inquired Dunois, "know you when you will die and in what place 1 " "I know not," said she, " for I am at the will of God." Then she added, "I have accomplished that which my Lord commanded me, to raise the siege of Orleans and have the gentle king crowned. I would like it well if it should please Him to send me back to my father and mother, to keep their sheep and their cattle and do that which was my wont." " When the said lords," says the chronicler, an eye-witness, " heard these words of Joan, who, with eyes towards heaven, gave thanks to God, they the more believed that it was somewhat sent from God and not other- wise." Siege of Compiegne. 1 89 Historians and even contemporaries have given much discussion to the question whether Joan of Arc, according to her first ideas, had really limited her design to the raising of the siege of Orleans and the coronation of Charles YII. at Eheims. However that may he, when Orleans was relieved and Charles VII. crowned, the situa- tion, posture, and part of Joan underwent a change. She no longer manifested the same confidence in herself and her designs. She no longer exercised over those in whose midst she lived the same authority. She continued to carry on war, but at hap-hazard, sometimes with and sometimes without success, just like La Hire and Duiiois ; never discouraged, never satisfied, and never looking upon herself as triumphant. After the coronation, her advice was to march at once upon Paris, in order to take up a fixed position in it, as being the political centre of the realm of which Eheims was the religious. Nothing of the sort was done. She threw herself into Compiegne, then besieged by the duke of Burgundy. The next day (May 25th, 1430), heading a sally upon the enemy, she was repulsed Qo^^ig^t.g and compelled to retreat after exerting the utmost valour j when, Joauof Arc having: nearly reached the gate of the town, an English archer pur- taken ^ '' , . prisoner, sued her, and pulled her from her horse. The joy of the English at this capture was as great as if they had obtained a complete victory. Joan was committed to the care of John of Luxembourg, count of Ligny, from whom the duke of Bedford purchased the captive for ten thousand pounds, and a pension of three hundred pounds a year to the bastard of Vendome, to whom she surrendered. Joan •was now conducted to Eouen, where, loaded with irons, she ^unffj^I was thrown into a dungeon, preparatory to appear before a court Eouen. assembled to judge her. The trial lasted from the 21st of February to the 30th of May, ^d. 14.31^ 1431. The court held forty sittings, mostly in the chapel of the Her trial, castle, some in Joan's very prison. On her arrival there, she had been put in an iron cage ; afterwards she was kept " no longer in the cage, but in a dark room in a tower of the castle, wearing irons upon her feet, fastened by a chain to a large piece of wood, and guarded night and day by four or five soldiers of low grade." She complained of being thus chained ; but the bishop told her that her former attempts at escape demanded this precaution. " It is true,'* said Joan, as truthful as heroic, " I did wish and I still wish to escape from prison, as is the right of every prisoner." At her exami- nation, the bishop required her to take *' an oath to teU the truth about every thing as to which she should be questioned." " I know not what you mean to question me about ; perchance you may ask me things I would not tell you ; touching my revelations, ifjo History of France. for instance, you might ask me to tell something I have sworn not to tell ; thus I should he perjured, which you ought not to desi-e." The hishop insisted upon an oath absolute and without condition. "You are too hard on me," said Joan; "I do not like to take an answers to ^^^ ^^ *®^ ^^® truth save as to matters which concern the faith." the judges. The bishop called upon her to swear on pain of being held guilty of the things imputed to her. " Go on to something else," said she. And this was the answer she made to all questions which seemed to her to be a violation of her right to be silent. "Wearied and hurt at these imperious demands, she one day said, " I come on God's business, and I have naught to do here ; send me back to God from whom I come." "Are you sure you are in God's grace?" asked the bishop. " If I be not," answered Joan, " please God to bring me to it; and if I be, please God to keep me in it !" The bishop himself remained dumbfounded. There is no object in following through all its sittings and all its twistings this odious and shameful trial, in which the judges' prejudiced servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three months to wear out the courage or overreach the understanding of a young girl of nineteen, who refused at one time to lie, and at and death, another to enter into discussion with them, and made no defence beyond holding her tongue or appealing to God who had spoken to her and dictated to her that which she had done. In the enfl she was condemned for all the crimes of which she had been accused, aggravated by that of heresy, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, to be fed during life on bread and water. The English were enraged that she was not condemned to death. " Wait but a little," said one of the judges, " we shall soon find the means to ensnare her." And this was effected by a grievous accusation, which, though somewhat countenanced by the Levitical law, has been seldom urged in modern times, the wearing of man's attire. Joan had been charged with this offence, but she promised not to repeat it. A suit of man's apparel was designedly placed in her chamber, and her own garments, as some authors say, being removed, she clothed herself in the forbidden garb, and her keepers surprising her in that dress, she was adjudged to death as a relapsed heretic, and was condemned to be burnt in the market- place at Eouen. (1431). Pour centuries have roUed by since Joan of Arc, that modest and heroic servant of God, made a sacrifice of herself for France. For four and twenty years after her death, France and the king appeared to think no more of her. However, in 1455, remorse came upon Charles VII. and upon France. Nearly all the provinces, all the Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, 191 towns were freed from the foreigner ; and shame was felt that nothing was said, nothing done for the young girl who had saved every thing. At Eouen, especially, where the sacrifice was completed, a cry for reparation arose. It was timidly demanded Herreha- from the spiritual power which had sentenced and delivered over bilitation Joan as a heretic to the stake. Pope Calixtus III. entertained the ^'"^'^ ")' request preferred not hy the king of France but in the name of Isabel Eomee, Joan's mother, and her whole family. Regular proceedings were commenced and lollowed up for the rehabilitation of the martyr ; and, on the 7th of July, 1456, a decree of the court assembled at Eouen quashed the sentence of 1431, together with all its consequences, and ordered " a general procession and solemn sermon at St. Ouen Place and the Vieux-Marche, where the said maid had been cruelly and horribly burned ; besides the planting of a cross of honour {crucis honestce) on the Vieux-Marche, the judges reserving the official notice to be given of their decision throughout the cities and notable places of the realm." After the execution of Joan the war resumed its course, though without any great events. By way of a step towards solution, the duke of Bedford, in November, 1431, escorted to Paris King Henry VI., scarcely ten years old, and had him crowned at K'otre- Dame. The ceremony was distinguished for pomp but not for Avarmth. The duke of Burgundy was not present ; it was an Englishman, the cardinal-bishop of Winchester, who anointed the young Englander king of France. Peace, however, was more and more the general desire. Scarcely Attempts had one attempt at pacification failed when another was begun. ^^V^^^^^^ The constable De Eichemont's return to power led to fresh overtures. He was a statesman as well as a warrior; and his inclinations were known at Dijon and London as well as at Chinon. The advisers of King Henry VI. proposed to open a conference, on the 15th of October, 1433, at Calais. The capture of several towns by the generals of Charles VII. contributed much to restore universal confidence to the French, and in the year 1435 the treaty of Arras, concluded between the king and the duke of Burgundy, led, if not to the active support, at least to the neutrality of a lord who had been one of the most dangerous enemies of the crown of France. The conditions imposed by this treaty were certainly of a rather humiliating character, but the immediate result more than com- pensated for them; Paris opened its gates on May 29th, 1436, and the English troops who had shut themselves up in the Bastille, offered to give up that fortress on condition that they might be allowed to retire with all their property, and accompanied by those 192 History of France. who would like to follow them. These terms being accepted, they left Paris by the gate Saint Antoine, marched round the walls and embarked on the Seine for the purpose of returning to Eouen. The constable de Eichemont's easy occupation of the capital led the majority of the small places in the neighbourhood, St. Denis, Chevreuse, Marcoussis, and Montlhery to decide either upon spontaneous surrender, or allowing themselves to be taken after no Change in great resistance. Charles VIL, on his way through France to ^isDositfon ^y*^-^' ^^ Dauphiny, Languedoc, Auvergne, and along the Loire, recovered several other towns, for instance, Chateau-Landon, IsTemours, and Charny. He laid siege in person to Montereau, an important military post with which a recent and sinister remi- niscence was connected. A great change now made itself apparent in the king's behaviour and disposition. He showed activity and vigilance, and was ready to expose himself without any care for fatigue or danger. On the day of the assault (10th of October, ■ • •'■*^'' 1437) he went down into the trenches, remained there in water up ters Paris, to his waist, mounted the scaling-ladder sword in hand, and was one of the first assailants who penetrated over the top of the walls right into the place. After the surrender of the castle as well as the town of Montereau, he marched on Paris, and made his solemn re-entry there on the 12th of ISTovember, 1437, for the first time since in 1418 Tanneguy-Duchatel had carried him away, whilst still a child, wrapped in his bed-clothes. Charles was received and entertained as became a recovered and a victorious king ; but he passed only three weeks there, and went away once more, on the 3rd of December, to go and resume at Orleans first and then at Bourges, the serious cares of government. It is said to have been ^S'^^s at this royal entry into Paris that Agnes Sorel or Soreau, who was soon to have the name of Queen of Beauty, and to assume in French history an almost glorious though illegitimate position, appeared with brilliancy in the train of the queen, Mary of Anjou, to whom the king had appointed her a maid of honour. The war There was a continuance of war to the north of the Loire ; ' and amidst many alternations of successes and reverses the national cause made great way there. Charles resolved, in 1442, to undertake an expedition to the south of the Loire, in Aquitaine, where the English were stiU dominant ; and he was successful. He took from the English Tartas, Saint-Sever, Marmande, La Eeole, Blaye, and Bourg-sur-Mer. Their ally, Count John d'Armagnac, submitted to the king of France. These successes cost Charles VII. the brave La Hire, who died at Montauban of his wounds. On returning to jS"ormandy, where he had left Dunois, Charles, in Truce of Tours. — Battle of Formigny. 193 1143, conducted a prosperous campaign there. The English, leaders were getting weary of a war without any definite issue ; and they had proposals made to Charles for a truce, accompanied with a demand on the part of their young king, Henry VI,, for the hand of a French princess, Margaret of Anjou, daughter of King Eene, who wore the three crowns of N^ajDles, Sicily, and Jerusalem, without possessing any one of the kingdoms. The truce and the marriage were concluded at Tours, in 1444. I^either of the jruce of arrangements was popular in England ; the English people, who Tours, had only a far-off touch of suffering from the war, considered that their government made too many concessions to France. In France, too, there was some murmuring ; the king, it was said, did not press his advantages with sufficient vigour; every body not popu- was in a hurry to see all Aquitaine reconquered, Charles VII. and his advisers employed the leisure afforded by the truce in pre- paring for a renewal of the struggle. They were the first to begin a.D 1449. it again ; and from 1449 to 1451 it was pursued by the French king Hostilities and nation with ever increasing ardour, and with obstinate courage '^^'^"^^*^- by the veteran English warriors, astounded at no longer being vic- torious. Normandy and Aquitaine, which was beginning to be called Guyenne only, were throughout this period the constant and the chief theatre of war. Amongst the great number of fights and incidents which distinguished the three campaigns in those two provinces the recapture of Eouen by Dunois in October, 1449, the battle of Formigny, won near Bayeux on the 15th of April, 1450, by the constable De Eichemont, and the twofold capitulation of Bordeaux, first on the 28th of June, 1451, and next on the 9th of October, 1453, in order to submit to Charles VIL, are the only events to which a place in history is due, for those were the days on which the question was solved touching the independence of the nation and the kingship in France. The battle of Formigny lasted nearly three hours ; the English were forced to fly at three Battle of points, and lost 3700 men ; several of their leaders were made Formigny prisoners ; those who were left retired in good order j Bayeux, '' Avranches, Caen, Falaise, and Cherbourg fell one after the other into the hands of Charles VII. ; and by the end of August, 1450, the whole of Normandy had been completely won back by France. The conquest of Guyenne, which was undertaken immediately after that of Normandy, was at the outset more easy and more speedy. Amongst the lords of southern France several hearty patriots, such as John of Blois, count of Perigord, and Arnold Amanieu, sire d'Albret, of their own accord began the strife, and on o 194 History of France. the 1st of l!s'ovem"ber, 1450, inflicted a somewhat severe reverse upon the English, near Blanquefort. In the spring of the following year Charles VII. authorized the count of Armagnac to take the AD 1451 l^^l^j ^'id sent Dunois to assume the command- in- chie£ An army Campaign of twenty thousand men mustered under his orders ; and, in the inGuyenne gQ^ygg Qf May, 1451, some of the principal places of Guyenne, such as St. Emilion, Blaye, Fronsac, Bourg-en-Mer, Libourne, and Dax were taken by assault or capitulated. Bordeaux and Bayonne held out for some weeks ; but, on the 1 2th of June, a treaty concluded between the Bordelese and Dunois secured to the three estates of the district the liberties and privileges which they had enjoyed under English supremacy ; and it was further stipulated that, if by the 24th of June the city had not been succoured by English forces, the estates of Guyenne should recognize the sovereignty of King Charles. When the 24th of June came, a herald went up to one of the towers of the castle and shouted, " Succour from the king of England for them of Bordeaux ! " None replied to this appeal; so Bordeaux surrendered, and on the 29th of June Dunois took possession of it in the name of the king of France. The siege of Bayonne, which was begun on the 6th of August, came to an end on the 20th by means of a similar treaty. Guyenne was thus completely won. But the English still had a considerable following there. They had held it for three centuries ; and they had always treated it well in respect of local liberties, agriculture, and commerce. Charles VII., on recovering it, was less "udse. He determined to establish there forthwith the Insurrec- taxes, the laws, and the whole regimen of northern France ; and lion at • the Bordelese were as prompt in protesting against these measures as the king was in employing them. In August, 1452, a deputation from the three estates of the province waited upon Charles at Bourges, but did not obtain their demands. On their return to Bordeaux an insurrection was organized ; and Peter de Mont- ferrand, sire de Lesparre, repaired to London and proposed to the English government to resume possession of Guyenne. On the 22nd of October, 1452, Talbot appeared before Bordeaux with a body of five thousand men ; the inhabitants opened their gates to him ; and he installed himself there as lieutenant of the king of England, Henry VI. Nearly all the places in the neighbourhood, with the exception of Bourg and Blaye, returned beneath the sway of the English ; considerable reinforcements were sent to Talbot from England ; and at the same time an English fleet threatened the coasts of Normandy. But Charles VII. was no longer the blind and indolent king he had been in his youth. Nor can End of the Hundred Years' War. 195 tne prompt and efl'ectual energy he displayed in 1453 be any longer attributed tu the influence of Agnes Sorel, for she died on the 9th of February, 1450. Charles left Eichemont and Dunois to hold Iformandy ; and, in the early days of spring, moved in person to the south of France with a strong army and the principal Gascon lords who two years previously had brought Guyenne back under his power. On the 2nd of June, 1453, he opened the campaign at St. Jean d'Angely. Several places surrendered to him as soon as he appeared before their walls; and on the 13th of July he laid A-D. 1453. siege to CastHlon, on the Dordogne, which had shortly before ca^gtinon. fallen into the hands of the English. The Bordelese grew alarmed Death of and urged Talbot to oppose the advance of the French. " We may * very well let them come nearer yet," said the old warrior, then eighty years of age ; " rest assured that, if it please God, I wUl fulfil my promise when I see that the time and the hour have come." On the night between the 16th and the 17th of July, Talbot set out with his troops to raise the siege of Castillon ; the result, however, was unfavourable to the English, and their brave com- mander met his death on the field of battle. Castillon surren- dered ; and at unequal intervals Libourne, St. Emilion, Chateau- Neuf de Medoc, Blanquefort, St. Macaire, Cadillac, &c., followed the example. At the commencement of October, 1453, Bordeaux alone was still holding out. The promoters of the insurrection Taking of which had been concerted with the English, amongst other sires Bordeaux de Duras and de Lesparre, protracted the resistance rather in their ^ " '' own self-defence than in response to the wishes of the population ; the king's artillery threatened the place by land, and by sea a king's fleet from Eochelle and the ports of Brittany blockaded the Gironde. " The majority of the king's officers." says the contem- porary historian, Thomas Basin, " advised him to punish by at least the destruction of their walls the Bordelese who had recalled the English to their city ; but Charles, more merciful and more soft-hearted, refused." He confined himself to withdrawing from Bordeaux her municipal privileges, which, however, she soon par- tially recovered, and to imposing upon her a fine of a hundred thousand gold crowns, afterwards reduced to thirty thousand ; he caused to be built at the expense of the city two fortresses, the fort of the Ha and the castle of Trompette, to keep in check so bold and fickle a population ; and an amnesty was proclaimed for all but twenty specified persons, who were banished. On these conditions the capitulation was concluded and signed on the 17th End of the of October; the Enghsh re- embarked ; and Charles, without^"* entering Bordeaux, returned to Touraine. The English had no o 2 iq6 History of France. longer any possession in Erance but Calais and Gruinea ; the Hun- dred Years' War was oyer. And to whom was the glory due % Charles YII. himself decided the question. When in 1455, twenty-four years after the death of Joan of Arc, he at Rome and at Eouen prosecuted her claims for restoration of character and did for her fame and her memory all that was still possible, he was but relieving his conscience from a load of ingratitude and remorse which in general weighs but lightly upon men and especially upon kings ; La Pucelle, first amongst all, had a right to the glory, for she had been the first to contribute to the success. Constable N"ext to Joan of Arc, the constable De Richeraont was the most de Riche- effective and the most glorious amongst the liberators of France mont. . . and of the king. He was a strict and stern warrior, unscrupulous and pitiless towards his enemies, especially towards such as he despised, severe in regard to himself, dignified in his manners, never guilty of swearing himself, and punishing swearing as a breach of discipline amongst the troops placed under his orders. Like a true patriot and royalist, he had more at heart his duty towards France and the king than he had his own personal interests. Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles, and marshals De Boussac and De La Fayette were, under Charles YII., brilliant warriors and useful servants of the king and of France ; but, in spite of their knightly renown, it is questionable if they can be reckoned, like the constable De Richemont, amongst the liberators of national independence. There are degrees of glory, and it is the duty of history not to distribute it too readily and as it were by handfuls. Besides all these warriors, we meet, under the sway of Charles VII., at first in a humble capacity and afterwards at his court, in his diplomatic service and sometimes in his closest confidence, a man of quite a different origin and quite another profession, but one who nevertheless acquired by peaceful toil great riches and great influence ; we mean Jacques Coeur, born at Bourges at the close of the fourteenth Coeur his century. This eminent man, after acquiring a large fortune by commer- character, cial transactions, rose to the post of argentier, or administrator of the royal exchequer. In this quality he was for twelve years associated with the most important government transactions, and he adminis- tered the finances with the greatest probity and uprightness. The war was becoming daily more onerous ; Jacques Coeur always knew how to provide the necessary means, and when the royal exchequer was empty, he supplied the deficiency out of his own private means. Thus it was that he lent to Charles VII. the 200,000 golden crowns (24,000 000 francs) necessary for the conquest of is' ormandy. "Sir, JACQUES CffiUR Character of Charles VII. and of his government. 197 what I Lave is yours," said he to the king. The courtiers took him at his word, and after an infamous lawsuit which they instituted against him, they divided, his spoils between them, and caused him to be shut up in a convent at Beaucaire. His former clerks, how- ever, combined to set him free, and conducted him to Eome, where the Pope received him in the most honourable manner (1455). He died the following year at Chio, of a wound received in the course of a battle with the Turks. Another financial, Jean de A.D, 1456, Xaincoings, as innocent as Jacques Coeur, was likewise condemned to prison and all his property confiscated " pour avoir pris grandes et excessives sommes des deniers du Roi." We have now reached the end of events under this long reign j all that remains is to run over the substantial results of Charles VII. 's government, and the melancholy imbroglios of his lat- ter years with his son, the turbulent, tricky, and wickedly able born conspirator who was to succeed him under the name of Louis XL One fact is at the outset to be remarked upon ; it at the first blush Nature ot appears singular, but it admits of easy explanation. In the first ^^^ goverii- nineteen years of his reigu, from 1423 to 1442, Charles YIL very charlesVU frequently convoked the states-general, at one time of northern France or Langue d'oil, at another of southern France or Langue- d'oc. Twenty-four such assemblies took place during this period at Bourges, at Selles in Berry, at Le Puy in Velay, at Meun-sur- Yevre, at Chinon, at Sully-sur-Loire, at Tours, at Orleans, at Nevers, at Carcassonne, and at different spots in Languedoc, It was the time of the great war between France on the one side and England and Burgundy allied on the other, the time of intrigues incessantly recurring at court, and the time likewise of carelessness and indo- lence on the part of Charles VIL, more devoted to his pleasures than regardful of his government. He had incessant need of states- general to supply him with money and men, and support him through the difficulties of his position. But when, dating from the peace of Arras (September 21, 1435), Charles YIL, having become reconciled with the duke of Burgundy, was delivered from civil war, and was at grips with none but England alone, already half beaten by the divine inspiration, the triumph, and the martyrdom of Joan of Arc, his posture and his behaviour underwent a rare transforma- tion. Without ceasing to be a coldly selfish and scandalously licen- tious king, he became a practical, hard-working, statesmanlike king, jealous and disposed to govern by himself, but at the same time watchful and skilful in avaihng himself of the able advisers who, whether it were by a happy accident or by his own choice, were ipS History of France, Military reforms. Adminis- trative measures. grouped around him. By assiduous toil, in concert with his advisers, he was able to take in hand and accomplish, in the mili- tary, financial, and judicial system of the realm, those bold and at the same time prudent reforms which wrested the country from the state of disorder, pillage, and general insecurity to which it had been a prey, and commenced the era of that great monarchical adminis- tration which, in spite of many troubles and vicissitudes, was destined to be during more than three centuries the gcvern- ment of France. The constable De Eichemont and marshal De la Fayette were in respect of military matters Charles VII. 's principal advisers ; and it was by their counsel and with their co-operation that he substituted for feudal service and for the bands of wandering mercenaries [routiers), mustered and maintained by hap-hazard, a permanent army, regularly levied, provided for, paid and com- manded, and charged with the duty of keeping order at home, and at the same time subserving abroad the interests and policy of the State. In connexion with and asanatural consequence of this military system Charles VII. on his own sole authority established certain joermanent imposts with the object of making up any deficiency in the royal treasury whUst waiting for a vote of such taxes extraordinary as might be demanded of the states-general. Jacques Coeur, the two brothers Bureau, Martin Gouge, Michel Lailler, William Cousinot, and many other councillors, of burgher origin, laboured zealously to establish this administrative system, so prompt and freed from all independent discussion. Weary of wars, irregularities, and sufferings, France, in the fifteenth century, asked for nothing but peace and security; and so soon as the kingship showed that it had an intention and was in a condition to provide her with them, the nation took little or no trouble about political guarantees which, as yet, it knew neither how to establish nor how to exercise ; its right to them was not disputed in principle, they were merely permitted to faU into desuetude; and Charles VII., who during the first half of his reign had twenty-four times assembled the states-general to ask them for taxes and soldiers, was able in the second to raise per- EonaUy both soldiers and taxes without drawing forth hardly any complaint. Charles VII. was a prince neither to be respected noi to be loved, and during many years his reign had not been a pros- perous one ; but "he re-quickened justice which had been a long whUe dead," says a chronicler devoted to the duke of Burg-andy ; "he put an end to the tyrannies and exactions of the men-at-arms, and out of an infinity of murderers and robbers he formed men of resolution and honest life ; he made regular paths in murderous •woods and forests, all roads safe, all towns peaceful, aU nationalities The Church and the State. 199 of his kingdom tranquil ; he chastised the evil and honoured the good, and he was sparing of human blood." Questions of military, financial, and judicial organization were not the only ones which occupied the government of Charles VII. j, . He attacked also ecclesiastical questions which were at that period siastical a subject of passionate discussion in Christian Europe amongst the questiota councils of the Church and in the closets of princes. The celebrated ordinance, known by the name of Pragmatic Sanction, which Charles YII. issued at Bourges on the 7th of July, 1-138, with the concurrence of a grand national council, laic and ecclesiastical, Avas directed towards tlie carrying out, in the internal regulations of the French Church and in the relations either of the State with the Church in France, or of the Church of France with the papacy, of reforms long since desired or dreaded by the different powers and interests. It would be impossible to touch here upon these difficult and delicate questions without going far beyond the limits imposed upon the writer of this history. All that can be said is that there was no lack of a religious spirit. or of a liberal spirit in the Prag- matic Sanction of Charles VII., and that the majority of the mea- sures contained in it were adopted with the approbation of the greater part of the French clergy as well as of educated laymen in France. In whatever light it is regarded, the government of Charles VII. in the latter part of his reign brought him not only in France but throughout Europe a great deal of fame and power. "When he had driven the English o\it of liis kingdom, he was called diaries the Victorious ; and when he had introduced into the internal regula- tions of the State so many important and effective reforms he was called Charles the Well-served. "■ The sense he had by nature," says his historian Chastellain, "had been increased to twice as much again, in his straitened fortunes, by long constraint and perilous dangers which sharpened his wits perforce." "He is the king of kings," was said of him by the doge of Venice, Francis Foscari, a good judge of policy ; " there is no doing without him." Nevertheless, at the close, so influential and so tranquil, of his reign, Charles VII. was in his individual and private life the most desolate, the most harassed, and the most unhappy man in his kingdom. The dauphin Louis, after having from his very youth behaved in a factious, harebrained, turbulent way towards the kin": Conduct his father, had become at one time an open rebel, at another a Dauphin, venomous conspirator and a dangerous enemy. At his birth, in 1423, he had been named Louis in remembrance of his ancestor St. Louis and in hopes that he Avould resemble him. In 1440, at 200 History of France. seventeen years of age, he allied himself with tne great lords, who were displeased with the neAv military system established by Charles VII., and allowed himself to be drawn by them into the The " Pra- transient rebellion known by the name of Praguery. A^Tien the euery." king, having put it down, refused to receive the rebels to favour, the dauphin said to his father, " My lord, I must go back with them, then ; for so I promised them." " Louis," replied the king, " the gates are open, and if they are not high enough I will have sixteen or twenty fathom of wall knocked down for you, that you may go whither it seems best to you." Charles VII. had made his son marry Margaret Stuart of Scotland, that charming princess who was so smitten with the language and literature of France, that coming one day upon the poet Alan Chartier asleep upon a bench, she kissed him on tlie forehead in the presence of her mightily asto- nished train, for he was very ugly. Tiie dauphin rendered his wife so wretched that she died in 1445, at the age of one and twenty, with these words upon her lips, " Oh ! fie on life ! Speak to me no more of it." In 1449, just when the king his father was taking up arms to drive the English out of JS'ormandy, the dauphin Louis, who was now living entirely in Dauphiny, concluded at Brian9on a secret league with the duke of Savoy "against the ministers of the king of France, Ms enemies." In 1456, in order to escape from the perils brought upon him by the plots which he in the heart of Dauphiny was incessantly hatching against his father, Louis fled from Grenoble and went to take refuge in Brussels with the duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, who willingly received him, at the same time excusing himself to Charles VII. " on the ground of the respect he owed to the son of his suzerain," and putting at the disposal of Louis " his guest " a pension of thirty-six thousand livres. At Brussels the dauphin remained impassive, waiting with n^ \\t scandalous indifference for the news of his father's death. Charles CharlesVII sank into a state of profound melancholy and general distrust. At (July 22). i^g^^ deserted by them of his own household and disgusted with his own life, he died on the 22nd of July, 14G1, CHAPTER VL lOmS XI. — CHARLES VIII. — LOUIS XIL (1461-1515). "Gentlemen," said Dunois on rising from table at the funeral- A-^-. ^^^^ banquet Leld at the abbey of St. Denis in honour of the obsequies of King Charles VII., " we have lost our master ; let each look after himself." The old warrior foresaw that the new reign would not be like that which had just ended. Charles VII. had been a prince of indolent disposition, more inclined to pleasure than ambition, whom the long and severe trials of his life had moulded to government without his having any passion for governing, and who had become in a quiet way a wise and powerful king without any eager desire to be incessantly and every where chief actor and master. His son Louis, on the contrary, was completely possessed with a craving for doing, talking, agitating, domineering, and reaching, no matter by what means, the different and manifold ends he proposed to himself. Any thing but prepossessing in appearance, supported on long and thin shanks, vulgar in looks and often designedly ill-dressed, and undignified in his manners though haughty in mind, he was powerful by the sheer force of a mind marvellously lively, subtle, unerring, ready, and inventive, and of a character indefatigably active, and pursuing success as a passion without any scruple or embarrassment in the employment of means. His contemporaries, after observing his reign for some time, gave him the name of the universal spider, so relentlessly did he labour to weave a web of which he himself occupied the centre and extended the filaments in all directions. 202 History of France. At the accession of Louis XI. the feudal system was sHl! powerful. At the summit, the houses of Burgundy, Bourbon, Orleans, Anjou and Brittany ; the degrees immediately below were occupied by the families of Armagnac, Albret and Saint Pol. Against feudalism the king began a desperate warfare, and the first decrees which he published were as much the expression of his hatred, as of his determination to do away with every reminiscence of his father's government. Thus we account for the parsimonious character of the new court, the annulling of the pragmatic sanction, the prohibition of hunting, the dismissal of the late king's ministers, whose places were given to men of low extraction (Tristan rHermite, La Balue, Olivier le Daim), etc., etc. Thoroughly irritated by these measures, and by others besides, such as that which deprived the diike of Burgundy of the lieutenancy of Iformandy, which had first been bestowed upon him, the great A.D. 1464. malcontents formed together, at the end of 1464, an alliance "for to re- League of . . the Com- monstrate with the king," says Commynes, " upon the bad order and mon Weal, injustice he kept up in his kingdom, considering themselves strong enough to force him if he would not mend his ways ; and this war was called ilie common iceal, because it was undertaken under colour of being for the common weal of the kingdom, the which was soon con- verted into private weal." The aged duke of Burgundy, sensible and wary as he was, gave at first only a hesitating and slack adherence to the league ; but his son Charles, count of Charolais, entered into it passionately, and the father was no more in a condition to resist his son than he was inclined to follow him. The number of the declared malcontents increased rapidly ; and the chiefs received at Paris itself, in the church of Notre Dame, the adhesion and the signatures of those who wished to join them. Louis XL had no sooner obtained a clear insight into the league of the princes than he set to work with his usual activity and knowledge of the world to checkmate it. To rally together his own partisans and to separate his foes, such was the two-fold end he pursued, at first Louis XL "^^ith some success. He would have been glad to have nothing to grapples do but to negotiate and talk. Though he was personally brave, he feudalism. ^^^ ^°^ ^^^® ^^'^^ ^^^ ^^^ unforeseen issues. He belonged to the class of ambitious despots who prefer strategem to force. But the very ablest speeches and artifices, even if they do not remain entirely fruitless, are not sufiScient to reduce matters promptly to order when great interests are threatened, passions violently excited, and factions let loose in the arena. Between the League of the Common Weal and Louis XL there was a question too great to be, st the very outset, settled peacefully. It was feudalism in decline The King and the Feudal System. 203 at grips with the kingship which had been growing greater and greater for two centuries. The lords did not trust the king's promises ; and one amongst those lords was too powerful to yield without a fight. At the beginning Louis had, in Auvergne and in Berry, some successes which decided a few of the rebels, the most insignificant, to accept truces and enter upon parleys j but the great princes, the dukes of Burgundy, Brittany, and Berry, waxed more and more angry. The two armies met at Montlhery, on the 16th of July, 1465. A.D. i465, Breze, who commanded the king's advance-guard, immediately ^^^t'^ "^ went into action and was one of the first to be killed. Louis came up to his assistance with troops in rather loose order ; the affair became hot and general ; the French for a moment wavered, and a rumour ran through the ranks that the king had just been killed, " 1^0, my friends," said Louis, taking off his helmet, " no, I am not dead j defend your king with good courage." The wavering was transferred to the Burgundians, and the advantage virtually remained on the side of the French. ^Negotiations for peace speedily followed. There was no diffi- Treaties of culty about them. Louis was ready to make sacrifices as soon as Conflans he recognized the necessity for them, being quite determined, how- wlur"^^^ ever, in his heart, to recall them as soon as fortime came back to him. Two distinct treaties were concluded : one at Conflans on the 5th of October, 1465, between Louis and the count of Charolais ; and the other at St. Maur on the 29th of October, between Louis and the other princes of the League. By one or the other of the treaties the king granted nearly every demand that had been made upon him ; to the count of Charolais he gave up all the towns of importance in Picardy ; to the duke of Berry he gave the duchy of Normandy, with entire sovereignty j and the other princes, independently of the different territories that had been conceded to them, all received large sums in ready money. Scarcely were the treaties signed and the princes returned each to his own dominions, when a quarrel arose between the duke of Brittany and the new duke of Normandy. Louis, who was watching for dissensions between his enemies, went at once to see the duke of Brittany, and made with him a private convention for mutual security. Then, having his movements free, he suddenly entered Normandy to retake possession of it as a province which, notwithstanding the cession of it just made to his brother, the king of France could not dispense with. Evreux, Gisors, Qournay, Louviers, and even Eouen fell, without much resistance, again into his power. In order to be safe in the direction of Burgundy as well as that 204 History of France, of Brittany, Louis had entered into negotiations witli Edward IV., king of England, and had made him offers, perhaps even promises, which seemed to trench upon the rights ceded by the treaty of Conflans to the duke of Burgundy as to certain districts of Picardy. The count of Charolais was informed of it, and complained bitterly of the king's obstinate pretensions and underhand ways. A serious incident now happened, which for a while distracted the A.D, 1467. attention of the two rivals from their mutual recriminations. Duke PhT^ th -P^^^P ^^® Good, who had for some time past been visibly declining Good. in body and mind, was visited at Bruges by a stroke of apoplexy, soon discovered to be fatal. Insurrec- A few days after his death, several of the principal Flemish Ghent and cities, Ghent first and then Liege, rose against the new duke of Bur- Liege, gundy in defence of their liberties abeady ignored or threatened. The intrigues of Louis were not unconnected with these seditions. He would undoubtedly have been very glad to have seen his most formidable enemy beset, at the very commencement of his ducal reign, by serious embarrassments, and obliged to let the king of France settle without trouble his differences with his brother Duke Charles of Berry and with the duke of Brittany. But the new duke of Burgundy was speedily triumphant over the Flemish insurrections ; and after these successes, at the close of the year 1467, he was so powerful and so unfettered in his movements that Louis might with good reason fear the formation of a fresh league amongst his great neighbours in coalition against him, and perhaps even in communication with the English, who were ever ready to seek in France allies for the furtherance of their attempts to regain there the fortunes wrested from them by Joan of Arc and Charles YII. In view of such a position, Louis formed a resolution, unpalatable no doubt to one so jealous of his own power, but indicative of intelligence and boldness ; he confronted the difiBcul- ties of home government in order to prevent perils from without. He summoned the states- general to a meeting at Tours on the 1st of April, 1468, and obtained from them the annulment of the concessions he had made, more particularly with reference to Nor- mandy, a province which was within so dangerous a proximity of England. A.D. 1488. Thus fortified by their burst of attachment, Louis, by the treaty Treaty of ^f Ancenis, signed on the 10th of September, 1468, put an end to his differences with Francis II., duke of Brittany, who gave up his alliance with the house of Burgundy, and undertook to prevail upon Duke Charles of France to accept an arbitration for the purpose of settling, before two years were over, the question of his territorial Louis XL at Peronne. 205 ajDpanage in tlie place of ITormandy. In the meanwhile a pension of sixty thousand livres Avas to be paid by the crown to that prince. Thus Louis was left with the new duke, Charles of Burgundy, aa the only adversary he had to face. His advisers were divided as to the course to be taken with this formidable vassal. Was he to be dealt with by war or by negotiation ? Count De Dampmartin, marshal De Eouault, and nearly all the military men earnestly advised war ; but the king did not like to risk the kingdom ; and he had more confidence in negotiation than in violent measures. Two of his principal advisers, the constable De St. Pol and the cardinal De la Balue, bishop of Evreux, were of his opinion, and urged him to the top of his bent. Accordingly he started for Noyon on the 2nd of October, taking with him the constable, the cardinal, his confessor, and, for all his escort, four score of his faith- ful Scots and sixty men-at-arms. Duke Charles went to meet him interview outside the town. They embraced one another and returned on between foot to Peronne, chatting familiarly, and the king with his hand France and resting on the duke's shoulder in token of amity. Louis had tlie duke o\ quarters at the house of the chamberlain of the town ; the castle at^p^e^onne being, it was said, in too bad a state and too ill-furnished for his reception. " King Louis, on coming to Peronne, had not con- sidered," says Commynes, " that he had sent two ambassadors to the folks of Liege to excite them against the duke. Nevertheless the said ambassadors had advanced matters so well that they had j^evolt already made a great mass (of rebels). The Liegese came and took of the by surprise the town of Tongres, wherein were the bishop of Liege ^^^&^'®- and the lord of Humbercourt, whom they took also, slaying more- over some servants of the said bishop." The fugitives who reported this news at Peronne made the matter a great deal worse than it was ; they had no doubt, they said, but that the bishop and sire d'Humbercourt had also been murdered ; and Charles had no more doubt about it than they. Exasperated by so glaring an act of treachery, Charles the Rash confined his sovereign within the tower where Charles the Simple had died in 929 ; and, through the happy mediation of Philip de Commynes, obliged him to sign the treaty of Peronne (1468). According to the terms of this agree- ment the king renounced every suzerainty over the possessions of the duke of Burgundy ; he further gave the province of Cham- pagne to his own brother, and consented to the destruction of the city of Liege. He had even the cruelty of witnessing the massacre of those whose rebellion he had not only encouraged but assisted. But Louis XL's deliverance after his quasi-captivity at Peronne, and the new treaty he had concluded with Duke Charles, were and 2o6 History of Fratict, Continued rivalry between France and Burgundy. A.D. 1472. Siege of Beauvais. Joan Fourquet. Relations with Eng- land. could be only a temporary break in the struggle between tbese two princes, destined as they were both by character and position to irremediable incompatibility. They were too powerful and too diflferent to live at peace when they were such close neighbours and when their relations were so complicated. Between 1468 and 1477, from the incident at Peronne to the death of Charles at th3 siege of Nancy, the history of the two princes was nothing bu ; one constant alternation between ruptures and re-adjustments, hos- tilities and truces, wherein both were constantly changing their posture, their language, and their allies. It was at one time the affairs of the duke of Brittany or those of Prince Charles of Frances, become duke of Guienne ; at another it was the relations with the different claimants to the throne of England, or the fate of the towns, in Picardy, handed over to the duke of Burgundy by the treaties of Conflans and Peronne, which served as a ground or pretext for the frequent recurrences of war. In 1471 St, Quentin opened its gates to Count Louis of St. Pol, constable of France. The next year (1472) war broke out. Duke Charles went and laid siege to Beauvais, and on the 27th of June delivered the first assault. The inhabitants were at this moment left almost alone to defend their town. A young girl of eighteen, Joan Fourquet, whom a burgher's wife of Beauvais, Madame Laisne, her mother by adop- tion, had bred up in the history, still so recent, of Joan of Arc, threw herself into the midst of the throng, holding up her little axe {hachdte) before the image of St. Angadresme, patroness of the town, and crying, " glorious virgin, come to my aid ; to arms ! to arms ! " The assault was repulsed ; reinforcements came up from Noyon, Amiens, and Paris, under the orders of the marshal de Eouault. Charles remained for twelve days longer before the place, looking for a better chance ; but on the 12th of July he decided upon raising the siege, and took the road to Normandy. Some days before attacking Beauvais, he had taken, not without difficulty, Nesle in the Vermandois. *' There it was," says Commynes, *' that he first committed a horrible and wicked deed of war, which had never been his wont ; this was burning every thing every where ; those who were taken alive were hanged ; a pretty large number had their hands cut off. It mislikes me to speak of such cruelty ; but I was on the spot, and must needs say something about it." Com- mynes undoubtedly said something about it to Charles himself, who answered, " It is the fruit borne by the tree of war ; it would have been the fate of Beauvais if I could have taken the town." Between the two rivals in France, relations with England were a subject of constant manoeuvring and strife. In spite of reverses Edward IV. attempts to invade France. 207 on the Continent and civil wars in their own island, the kings of England had not abandoned their claims to the crown of France j they were still in possession of Calais ; and the memory of the battles of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt was still a tower of strength to them. Between 1470 and 1472 the house of York had triumphed over the house of Lancaster; and Edward IV. was undisputed king. In his views touching France he found a natural ally in the duke of Burgundy; and it was in concert with Charles A.D. 147S. that Edward was incessantly concocting and attempting plots and ^^^ ■^^' campaigns against Louis XL In 1474 he, by a herald, called upon jq uof. Louis to give up to him Normandy and Guienne, else, he told him, mandy he would cross over to France with his army. " TeU your master," answered Louis coolly, " that I should not advise him to." Edward landed at Calais on the 22nd of June, 1475, with an army .of from sixteen to eighteen thousand men thirsting for conquest and pillage in France, and the duke of Burgundy had promised to go and join him with a considerable force ; but the latter after having appeared for a moment at Calais to concert measures with his ally, returned no more, and even hesitated about admitting the English into his towns of Artois and Picardy. Edward waited for him nearly two months at Peronne, but in vain. During this time Louis negotiated ; he fixed his quarters at Amiens, and Edward came and encamped half a league from the town. An agreement was soon come to as to the terms of peace. King Edward bound himself to withdraw with his army to England so soon as Louis XL should have paid him seventy-five thousand crowns. Louis promised besides to pay annually to King Edward fifty thousand crowns, • in two payments, during the time that both princes were alive. A truce for seven years was concluded ; they made mutual promises to lend each other aid if they were attacked by their enemies or by their own subjects in rebellion ; and Prince Charles, the eldest son of Louis XL, was to marry Elizabeth, Edward's daughter, when both should be of marriageable age. Lastly, Queen Margaret of Anjou, who had been a prisoner in England since the death of her husband, Henry VI., was to be set at liberty and removed to France, on renouncing aU claim to the crown of England. These conditions having been formulated, they were signed by the two kings at Pecquigny on the Somme, three leagues from Amiens, on the 29th of August, 1475. The duke of Burgundy, as soon as he found out that the king of Lorraine France had, under the name of truce, made peace for seven years v^^nt^**^ with the king of England, and that Edward lY. had recrossed the the Eash Channel with his army, saw that his attempts, sio far, were a 2o8 History of France. Charles the Eash attacks Lorraine. A.D 1472. Death of the dnke of Gnienne. (May 24). failure. Accordingly he too lost no time in signing [on the 13th of September, 1475] a truce with King Louis for nine years, and directing his ambition and aiming his blows against other quarters than western France. Two little states, his neighbours on the east, Lorraine and Switzerland, became the object and the theatre of his passion for war. Lorraine had at that time for its duke Eene IL, of the house of Anjou through his mother Tolande, a young prince who was wavering as so many others were between France and. Burgundy. Charles suddenly entered Lorraine, took possession of several castles, had the inhabitants who resisted hanged, besieged i^ancy, which made a valiant defence, and ended by conquering the capital as well as the country-places, leaving Duke Eene no asylum but the court of Louis XL, of whom the Lorraine prince had begged a support, which Louis after his custom had promised without rendering it effectual. Charles did not stop there. He had already been more than once engaged ih hostilities ^\ ith his neighbours the Swiss ; and he now learned that they had just made a sanguinary raid upon the district of Vaud, the domain of a petty prince of the house of Snvoy, and a devoted servant of the duke of Burgundy's. Scarcely two months after the capture of 15^'ancy, Charles set out, on the 11th of June, 1476, to go and avenge his client and wreak his haughty and turbulent humour upon these bold peasants of the Alps. In spite of the truce he had but lately concluded with Charles the "Rash, the prudent Louis did not cease to keep an attentive watch upon him, and to reap advantage, against him, from the leisure secured to the king of France by his peace with the king of England and the duke of Brittany. A late occurrence had still further strengthened his position : his brother Charles, who became duke of Guienne, in 1469, after the treaty of Peronne, had died on the 24th of May, 1472. There were sinister rumours abroad touch- ing this death. Louis was suspected of having poisoned his brother. At any rate this event had important results for him. H^ot only did it set him free from all fresh embarrassment in that direction, but it also restored to him the beautiful province of Guienne and many a royal client. Of the great feudal chieftains who, in 1464, had formed against him the League of the Common Weal, the duke of Burgundy was the only one left on the scene and in a condition to put him in peril. Louis XL felt, however, now sure of success, for his principal adversary, Charles the Eash, had begun the prosecution of a plan which proved beyond his strength, and the failure of which even- tually turned to the advantage of tlie king ofFrance. The dominions Charles the Rash defeated. 209 of Charles consisted of the duchy and county of Burgundy on the one side, and of the IS'etherlands on the other — feudal regime here, communal regime there. Between these divisions no communications existed, and it was in order to form a homogeneous whole of the two discordant and antagonistic parts that Charles the Bold staked his power, his treasures and his life. He wished to he a king, and with the hope of ohtaining the creation of a kingdom of Belgian- Gaul, he had courted the alliance of the emperor Frederick III., promising to the archduke Maximilian the hand of his daughter Mary. l!fothii:g resulted from this scheme on account of the sudden retreat of the emperor, who left Treves on the very day before that which had been fixed for the ceremony of consecra- tion. Mad with fury, Charles the Eash then turned against Ger- many. After a long siege he failed to take the city of i^euss, and signed with Louis XI. the peace of Soleure which has been called Treve Marchande, on account of the stipulations it con- <' and employed it, Ave Avill not say Avith complete disinterestedness, but Avith a predominant anxiety for the public Aveal. In the His cha- matter of external policy the influence of Cardinal d'Amboise Avas racter. neither skilfully nor salutarily exercised : he, like his master, indulged in those vieAvs of distant, incoherent and improvident conquoots Avhich caused the reign of Louis XII. to be Avasted in ceaseless Avars, Avith Avhich the Cardinal's desire of becoming pope was not altogether unconnected, and Avhich, after having resulted in nothing but reverses, Avere a heavy heritage for the succeeding reign. But at home, in his relations Avith the king and in his civil and religious administration, Cixrdinal d'Amboise Avas an earnest and effectiA'e friend of justice, of sound social order, and of regard for moi-ality in the practice of poAver. It is said that, in his latter days, he, virtuously Aveary of the dignities of this Avorld, said to the infirmary -brother Avho was attending him, " Ah ! Brother John, Avhy did I not always remain Brother John ! " A pious regret, the sincerity and modesty whereof are rare amongst men of high estate. "At last, then, I am the only pope ! " cried Julius II., when he heard that Cardinal d'Amboise Avas dead. But his joy Avas mis- *' The barbarians must be driven from Italy .'^ 233 placed : the cardinal's death was a great loss to him ; between the king and the pope the cardinal had been an intelligent mediator who understood the two positions and the two characters, and who, though most faithful and devoted to the king, had nevertheless a place in his heart for the papacy also, and laboured earnestly on every occasion to bring about between the two rivals a policy of moderation and peace. "War was rekindled, or, to speak more cor- rectly, resumed its course after the cardinal's death. Julius II. plunged into it in person, moving to every point where it was going on, living in the midst of camps, himself in military costume, besieging towns, having his guns pointed and assaults delivered under his own eyes. Men expressed astonishment, not unmixed with admiration, at the indomitable energy of this soldier-pope at seventy years of age. It. was said that he had cast into the Tiber the keys of St. Peter to gird on the sword of St. Paul. His answer to everything was, " The barbarians must be driven from Italy," Louis XII. became more and more irritated and undecided. Prom 1510 to 1512 the war in Italy was thus proceeding, but Gaston ae with nc great results, when Gaston de Poix, duke of Nemours, ma^^^er of came to take the command of the French army. He was scarcely the French twenty-three, and had hitherto only served under Trivulzio and la ^'''^y- Palisse ; but he had already a character for bravery and intelli- gence in war. Louis XII. loved this son of his sister Mary of Orleans, and gladly elevated him to the highest rank. Gaston, from the very first, justified this favour. Instead of seeking for glory in the field only, he began by shutting himself up in Milan which the Swiss were besieging. They made him an offer to take the road back to Switzerland, if he would give them a month's pay ; the sum was discussed ; Gaston considered that they asked too much for their withdrawal ; the Swiss broke off the negotia- tion J but " to the great astonishment of everybody," says Guic- ciardini, " they raised the siege and returned to their own country." The pope was besieging Bologna; Gaston arrived there suddenly with a body of troops whom he had marched out at night through a tempest of wind and snow ; and he was safe inside the place whilst the besiegers were still ignorant of his movement. The siege of Bologna was raised. Gaston left it immediately to march on Brescia, which the Venetians had taken possession of for the Holi) League. He retook the town by a vigorous assault, gave it up to pillage, punished with death Count Louis Avogaro and his two sons, who had excited the inhabitants against Prance, and gave a beating to the Venetian army before its walls. AU these successes had been gained in a fortnight. " According to uni- 234 History of France. versal opinion," says Guicciardini, " Italy for several centuries had seen nothing like these military operations." g Finally, a decisive battle was fought at Eavenna (April 11th) Killed at ' which cost the life of the heroic French commander. When the Ravenna fatal news was known, the consternation and grief were profound. ^* At the age of twenty- three Gaston de Foix had in less than six months won the confidence and affection of the army, of the king and of France. It was one of those sudden and undisputed repu- tations which seem to mark out men for the highest destinies. " I would fain," said Louis XII., when he heard of his death, " have no longer an inch of land in Italy and be able at that price to bring back to life my nephew Gaston and all the gaUants who perished The domi- with him. God keep us from often gaining such victories ! " La nation of Palisse, a warrior valiant and honoured, assumed the command of the French . i /. disappears this victorious army ; but under pressure of repeated attacks from f'-om Italy, the Spaniards, the Venetians and the Swiss, he gave up first the Eomagna, then Milaness, withdrew from place to place, and ended by falling back on Piedmont. JuKus IL won back all he had won and lost. Maximilian Sforza, son of Ludovic the Moor, after twelve years of exile in Germany, returned to MUan to resume possession of his father's duchy. By the end of June, 1512, less than three months after the victory of Eavenna, the domination of the French had disappeared from Italy. Louis XII. had, indeed, something else to do besides crossing the Alps to go to the protection of • such precarious conquests. Into France itself war was about to make its way ; it was his own kingdom and his own country that he had to defend. In vain, after the death of Isabella of Castile, had he married his niece, Germaiue de Foix, to Ferdinand the Catholic, whilst giving up to him all pretensions to the kingdom of Naples, In 1512 Ferdinand invaded ^N^avarre, took possession of the Spanish portion of that little kingdom, and thence threatened Gascony. Henry VIII., king of England, sent him a fleet, which did not withdraw until after it had appeared before Bayonne and thrown the south-west of France into a state of alarm. In the north Henry VIII. continued his preparations for an expedition into France, obtained from his par- liament subsidies for that purpose, and concerted plans with Emperor Maximilian, who renounced his doubtful neutrality, and The "Holy engaged himself at last in the Holy League. Louis XII. had in Germany an enemy as zealous almost as Julius II. was in Italy : Maximilian's daughter, Priaacess Marguerite of Austria, had never forgiven France or its king, whether he were called Charles VIII. or Louis XII., the treatment she had received from that court Death of Pope Julius II. 235 "when, after having been kept there and brought up for eight years to become queen of France, she had been sent away, and handed back to her father, to make way for Anne of Brittany. She was ruler of the Low Countries, active, able, full of passion, and in continual correspondence with her father, the emperor, over whom she exercised a great deal of influence. The Swiss, on their side, continuing to smart under the contemptuous language which Louis had imprudently applied to them, 1 ecame more and more pro- nounced against him, rudely dismissed Louis de la Tremoille who attempted to negotiate with them, re-established Maximilian Sforza in theduchy of Milan, and haughtily styled themselves "vanquishers of kings and defenders of the holy Eonian Church." And the Eoman Church made a good defender of herself. Julius 11. Lad convoked at Rome, at St. John Lateran, a council, which met on the 3rd of May, 1512, and in presence of which the council of Pisa and Milan, after an attempt at removing to Lyons, vanished away like a phantom. Everywhere things were turning out according to the wishes and for the profit of the pope ; and France and her king ■were reduced to defending themselves on their own soil against a coalition of all their great neighbours. On the 21st of February, 1513, ten months since Gaston de Foix a.D. 1518 the victor oi Eavenna, had perished in the hour of his victory. Death of Pope Julius 11. died at Eome at the very moment when he seemed julins II invited to enjoy all the triumph of his policy. He died without (Feb. 21\ bluster and without disquietude, disavowing naught of his past life and relinquishing none of his designs as to the future. The death of Julius II. seemed to Louis XII. a favourable opportunity for once more setting foot in Italy, and recovering at least that which he regarded as his hereditary right, the duchy of Milan. He com- State of missioned Louis de la Tremoille to go and renew the conquest ; and, ^i"'°P®- whilst thus reopening the Italian war, he commenced negotiations with certain of the coalitionists of the Holy League, in the hope of causing division amongst them, or even of attracting some one of them to himself. He knew that the "Venetians were dissatisfied and disquieted about their allies, especially the Emperor Maximilian, the new duke of Milan, Maximilian Sforza, and the Swiss. He had little difficulty in coming to an understanding with the Venetian senate ; and, on the 14th of May, 1513, a treaty of alliance, offen- sive and defensive, was signed at Blois between the king of France and the republic of Venice. Louis hoped also to find at Eome in the new pope, Leo X. [Cardinal John de' Medici, elected pope March 11, 1513], favourable inclinations; but thev were at first very ambiguously and reservedly manifested. As a Florentine, Leo X. 236 History of France. had a leaning towards France ; but as pope, he was not disposed to relinquish or disavow the policy of Julius II. as to the indepbn- ■ dence of Italy in respect of any foreign sovereign, and as to the extension of the power of the Holy See ; and he wanted time to make up his mind to infuse into his relations with Louis XII. good- Poor re "wUl instead of his predecessor's impassioned hostility. Louis had suits of tlie not and could not have any confidence in Ferdinand the Catholic : French foreign ^"^^ ^^ knew him to be as prudent as he was rascally, and he policy. concluded with him at Orthez, on the 1st of April, 1513, a year's truce, which Ferdinand took great care not to make known to his allies, Henry YIII. king of England, and the Emperor Maximilian, the former of whom was very hot-tempered, and the latter very deeply involved, through his daughter Marguerite of Austria, in the warlike league against France. This was all that was gained during the year of Julius II.'s death by Louis XII. 's attempts to break up or weaken the coalition against France ; and these feeble diplomatic advantages were soon nullified by the unsuccess of the French expedition in Milaness. Conquerors at N^ovara, the Swiss drove the French from the duchy of Milan, which La Tremoille had reconquered ; in Burgundy they besieged Dijon ; in the north the combined troops of Maximilian and Henry VIII. of England gained the battle of Guinegate, sometimes called battle of the Spurs, on account of the haste with which the French cavalry, under the influence of a panic flight, fled from the field of battle. The truce of Orleans, followed by the treaty of London, put a stop to these disasters, and the Italian question remained still undecided. Such was the situation in which France, after a reign of fifteen years and in spite of so many brave and devoted servants, had been placed by Louis XII. 's foreign policy. Had he managed the home aff"airs of his kingdom as badly and with as little success as he had matters abroad, is it necessary to say what would have been his people's feelings towards him, and what name he would have left in history? Happily for France and for the memory of Louis XII., his home-government was more sensible, more clear-sighted, more able, more moral, and more productive of good results than his foreign policy was. policy of When we consider this reign from this new point of view, we Louis XII. are at once struck by two facts : 1st, the great number of legislative and administrative acts that we meet with, bearing upon the general interests of the country, interests political, judicial, financial, and commercial ; the Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France con- tains forty-three important acts of this sort owing their origin to Louis XIL ; it was clearly a government full of watchfulness, Home Policy of Louis XI I. 237 activity, and attention to good order and the public weal ; 2nd., the profound remembrance remaining in succeeding ages of this reign and its deserts ; a remembrance which was manifested, in 1560 imongst the states-general of Orleans, in 1576 and 1588 amongst the states of Blois, in 1593 amongst the states of the League, and even down to 1614 amongst the states of Paris. During more than a hundred years France called to mind, and took pleasure in calling to mind the administration of Louis XTI. as the type of a His admi- wise, intelligent, and effective regimen. Confidence may be felt in 'i^ft'^atio^ a people's memory when it inspires them for so long afterwards with sentiments of justice and gratitude. If from the simple table of the acts of Louis XII.'s home-govern- ment we pass to an examination of their practical results, it is plain that they were good and salutary. Foreigners were not less impressed than the French themselves with the advance in order, activity, and prosperity which had taken place amongst the French community. Macchiavelli admits it, and, with the melancholy of an Italian politician acting in the midst of rival- ries amongst the Italian republics, he attributes it above all to French unity, superior to that of any other State in Europe. As to the question, to whom reverts the honour of the good government at home under Louis XII., and of so much progress in the social condition of France, it may be attributed, in a great mea- sure, to the influence of the states assembled at Tours, in 1484, at the beginning of the reign of Charles VIII. ; but Louis XIT.'s per- sonal share in the good home-government of France during hia reign was also more meritorious. His chief merit, a rare one amongst the powerful of the earth, especially when there is a ques- tion of reforms and of liberty, was that he understood and enter- tained the requirements and wishes of his day ; he was a mere young prince of the blood when the states of 1484 were sitting at Tours ; but he did not forget them when he was king, and, far from repudiating their patriotic and modest work in the cause of reform and progress, he entered into it sincerely and earnestly with the aid of Cardinal d'Amboise, his honest, faithful, and ever influential councillor. The character and natural instincts of Louis XII. inclined him towards the same views as his intelligence and modera- tion in politics suggested. He was kind, sympathetic towards his His intelli people, and anxious to spare them every burden and every suffering ^^^al *°^ that was unnecessary, and to have justice, real and independent jus- tion. tice, rendered to all. He reduced the talliages a tenth at first and a third at a later period. He refused to accept the dues usual on a joyful accession. When the wars in Italy caused him some extra- 23 S History of France. ordinary expense he disposed of a portion of the royal possessioua, strictly administered as they were, before imposing fresh burdens upon the people. His court was inexpensive, and he had no favourites to enrich. His economy became proverbial ; it was sometimes made a reproach to him ; and things were carried so far that he was represented, on the stage of a popular theatre, ill, pale, and surrounded by doctors, who were holding a consultation as to the nature of his malady : they at last agreed to give him a potion of gold to take ; the sick man at once sat up, complaining of nothing more than a burning thirst. When informed of this scandalous piece of buffoonery, Louis contented himself with saying, " I had rather make courtiers laugh by my stinginess than my people weep by my extravagance." He was pressed to punish some insolent comedians, but, " No," said he, " amongst their ribaldries they may sometimes teU us useful truths ; let them amuse themselves, pro. vided that they respect the honour of women." In the administra- Admini. ^.-^j^ qJ justice he accomplished important reforms, called for by jtutice. the states-general of 1484 and promised by Louis XL and Charles VIII. , but nearly aU of them left in suspense. The purchase of offices was abolished and replaced by a two-fold election : in all grades of the magistracy, when an oflfice was vacant, the judges were to assemble to select three persons from whom the king should be bound to choose. The irremovability of the magistrates, which had been accepted but often violated by Louis XL, became under Louis XII. a fundamental rule. It was forbidden to every one of the king's magistrates, from the premier-president to the lowest provost, to accept any place or pension from any lord, under pain of suspension from their oflS.ce or loss of their salary. The annual Mercurials (Wednesday meetings) became, in the supreme courts, a general and standing usage. The expenses of the law were reduced. In 1501, Louis XII. instituted at Aix, in Provence, a new Parliament ; in 1499 the court of exchequer at Rouen, hitherto a supreme but mov- able and temporary court, became a fixed and permanent court which afterwards received, under Francis I., the title of Parliament. Be- ing convinced before long, by facts themselves, that these reforms were seriously meant by their author and were practically effective, the people conceived, in consequence, toAvards the king and the magistrates a general sentiment of gratitude and respect. Louis XII. 's private life also contributed to win for him, we will not say the respect and admiration, but the goodwill of the public. Private He was not, like Louis IX., a model of austerity and sanctity ; but ^•^ after the licentious court of Charles VII., the coarse habits of Louis XL and the easy morals of Charles VIIL, the French public Matrimonial Alliances, 239 was not exacting. Louis XII. was thrice married. His first wife, Joan, daughter of Louis XL, was an excellent and worthy princesSj hut ugly, ungraceful, and hump-backed. He had been almost forced to marry her, and he had no child by her. On ascending the throne- he begged Pope Alexander YI. to annul his marriage ; the negotia- tion was anything but honourable either to the king or to the pope ; and the pope granted his bull in consideration of the favours shown to his unworthy son, Caesar Borgia, by the king. Joan alone behaved with a virtuous as well as modest pride, and ended her life in sanctity within a convent at Bourges, being whoUy devoted to pious works, regarded by the people as a saint, spoken of by bold preachers as a martyr and " still the true and legitimate queen of „ . France," and treated at a distance with profound respect by the king monial who had put her away. Louis married in 1499 his predecessor's alliances, widow, Anne, duchess of Brittany, twenty-three years of age, Brittany, short, pretty, a little lame, wittj', able, and firm. It was, on both sides, a marriage of policy, though romantic tales have been mixed up with it ; it was a suitable and honourable royal arrangement, without any lively affection on one side or the other, but '^vith mutual esteem and regard. As queen, Anne was haughty, imperious, sharp- tempered, and too much inclined to mix in intrigues and negotia- tions at Eome and Madrid, sometimes without regard for the king's policy ; but she kept up her court with spirit and dignity, being respected by her ladies, whom she treated well, and favourably regarded by the public, who were well disposed towards her for hav- ing given Brittany to France. Some courtiers showed their astonish- ment that the king should so patiently bear with a character so far from agreeable ; but " one must surely put up with something from a woman," said Louis, " when she loves her honour and her hus- band." After a union of fifteen years, Anie of Brittany died on the 9th of January, 1514, at the castle of Blois, nearly thirty-seven years old. Louis was then fifty-two. He seemed very much to regret his wife ; but, some few months after her death, another mar- The Pirin' riage of policy was put, on his behalf, in course of negotiation. It *^^' ^^^^a was in connexion with Princess Mary of England, sister of Henry VIII., with whom it was very important for Louis XIL and for France to be once more at peace and on good terms. Three treaties were concluded on the 7th of August, 1514, between the kings of France and England in order to regulate the conditions of their politi- cal and matrimonial alliance; on the 13th of August the duke do Longueville, in his sovereign's name, espoused the Princess Mary at Greenwich ; and she, escorted to France by a brilliant embassy, arrived on the 8th of October at Abbeville where Louis XII. was 240 History of France. awaiting her. Three days aftemvards the marriage was solemnized there in state, and Louis, who had suffered from gout during the cere- mony, carried off his young queen to Paris after having had her cro\\Tied at St. Denis. Mary Tudor had given up the German prince, who was destined to become Charles V., but not the hand- some English nobleman she loved. The duke of Suffolk went to France to see her after her marriage, and in her train she had as maid of honour a young girl, a beauty as well, who was one day to be queen of England — Anne Boleyn. A.D. 1515. Less than three months after this marriage, on the 1st of January, Louis XIL l^^^j "the death-bell -men were traversing the streets of Paris, ringing their bells and crying, ' The good King Louis, father of the people, is dead.' " Louis XIL, in fact, had died that very day at midnight, from an attack of gout and a rapid decline. To the last of his days he was animated by earnest sympathy and active solicitude for his people. It cost him a great deal to make with the king of England the treaties of August 7, 1514, to cede Tournai to the English, and to agree to the payment to them of a hundred thousand crowns a year for ten years. He did it to restore peace to France, attacked on her own soil, and feeling her prosperity threatened. For the same reason he negotiated with Pope Leo X., Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand the Catholic, His solid- and he had very nearly attained the same end 'by entering once tudeforhis jj^qpq upon pacific relations with them, when death came and struck him down at the age of fifty-three. He died sorrowing over the concessions he had made from a patriotic sense of duty as much as from necessity, and full of disquietude about the future. He felt a sincere affection for Francis de Valois, count of Angouleme, his son- in-law and successor ; the marriage between his daughter Claude and that prince had been the chief and most difficult affair connected with his domestic life ; and it was only after the death of the queen Anne of Brittany, that he had it proclaimed and celebrated. The bravery, the brilliant parts, the amiable character, and the easy grace of Francis I. delighted him, but he dreaded his presumptuous inexperience, his reckless levity, and his ruinous extravagance ; and in his anxiety as a king and father he said, " We are labouring in vain ; this big boy will spoil everything for us." CHAPTER VII. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE UEFORMATION FRANCIS I. AND HENRY II. (1515—1559). Two tilings, essential to political prosperity amongst commimitiea of men, have hitherto been to seek in France; predominance of public spirit over the spirit of caste or of profession, and modera- tion and fixity in respect of national ambition both at home and abroad. France has been a victim to the personal passions of ^er chiefs and to her own reckless changeability. We are entering upon the history of a period and a reign during which this intermixture of merits and demerits, of virtues and vices, of progress and backsliding, was powerfully and attrac- tively exhibited amongst the French. Francis I., his government and his times, commence the era of modern France, and bring clearly to view the causes of her greatnesses and her weaknesses. When, on the 1st of January, 1515, he ascended the throne before A.D. 1518 he had attained his one and twentieth year, it was a brilliant and .^^^^'f brave but spoilt child that became king. He had been under the Francis L governance of Artus Gouffier, sire de Boisy, a nobleman of Poitou, who had exerted himself to make his royal pupil a loyal knight well trained in the moral code and all the graces of knighthood, but without drawing his attention to more serious studies or preparing him for the task of government. The young Francis d'Angouleme 242 History of France. Louise de Savoy. Margue- rite de Valois. lived and was moulded under the influence of two women, his mother, Louise of Savoy, and his eldest sister Marguerite, who both of them loved and adored him with passionate idolatrj-. The former princess was proud, ambitious, audacious or pliant at need, able and steadfast in mind, violent and dissolute in her habits, greedy of pleasure and of money as well as of power, so that she gave her son neither moral principles nor a moral example : for him the supreme kingship, for herself the rank, influence and wealth of a queen-mother, and, for both, greatness that might subserve the gratification of their passions — this was all her dream and aU her aim as a mother. Of quite another sort were the character and sentiments of Marguerite de Valois. She was born on the 11th of April, 1492, and was, therefore, only two years older than her brother Francis ; but her more delicate nature was sooner and more richly cultivated and developed. She was brought up " with strictness by a most excellent and most venerable dame, in whom all the virtues, at rivalry one with another, existed together " [Madame de Chatillon, whose deceased husband had been governour to King Charles VIII. j. As she was discovered to have rare intellectual gifts and a very keen relish for learning, she was pro- vided with every kind of preceptors, who made her proficient in 'profane letters, as they were then called. Marguerite learnt Latin, Greek, philosophy, and especially theology. Intellectual pursuits, however, were far from absorbing the whole of this young soul. " She," says a contemporary, " had an agreeable voice of touching tone which roused the tender inclinations that there are in the heart." Tenderness, a passionate tenderness, very early assumed the chief place in Marguerite's soul, and the first object of it was her brother Francis. When mother, son, and sister were spoken of, they were called a Trinity, and to this Marguerite herself bore witness when she said with charming modesty : "Suet boon is mine, to feel the amity That God hath putten in our trinity, Wherein to make a third, I, all unfitted To be that number's shadow, am admitted." Marguerite it was for whom this close communion of three per- sons had the most dolorous consequences : we shall fall in with her more than once in the course of this history ; but, whether or no, she was assuredly the best of this princely trio, and Francis I. was the most spoilt by it. There is nothing more demoralizing than to be an idol. Early gov- ^ FRANCIS I. Francis I. and his advisers. 243 at the close of his reign, had concluded with the Venetians, the Swiss, the pope, the king of England, the archduke Charles and the emperor Maximilian, in order to restore peace to his kingdom. At home Francis I. maintained at his council the principal and most tried servants of his predecessor, amongst others the finance- minister, Florimond Eobertet ; and he raised to four the number of the marshals of France, in order to confer that dignity on Bayard's His advi. valiant friend, James of Chabannes, lord of la Palice, who even ^^^^' under Louis XII. had been entitled by the Spaniards " the great marshal of France." At the same time he exalted to the highest offices in the State two new men, Charles, duke of Bourbon, who was still a mere youth but already a warrior of renown, and Anthony Duprat, the able premier president of the parliament of Paris ; the former he made constable, and the latter chancellor of France. His mother, Louise of Savoy, was not unconcerned, it is said, in both promotions ; she was supposed to feel for the young constable something more than friendship, and she regarded the veteran magistrate, not without reason, as the man most calculated to unreservedly subserve the interests of the kingly power and her own. These measures, together with the language and the behaviour of Francis I. and the care he took to conciliate all who approached him, made a favourable impression on France and on Europe. In Italy, especially, princes as well as people, and Pope Leo X. before all, flattered themselves, or were pleased to appear as if they flattered themselves, that war would not come near them again,. and that the young king had his heart set only on making Burgundy secure against sudden and outrageous attacks from the Swiss. The aged king of Spain, Ferdinand the Catholic, adopting the views of his able minister. Cardinal Ximenes, alone showed distrust and anxiety ; he urged the pope, the emperor Maximilian, the Swiss, and Maximilian Sforza, duke of Milan, to form a league for the defence of Italy ; but Leo X. persisted in his desire of remaining or appearing neutral, as the common father of the faithful. Neither the king of France nor the pope had for long to take the trouble of practising mutual deception. It was announced at Rome Francis 1 that Francis I., having arrived at Lyons in July, 1515, had just "^ * ^* committed to his mother Louise the regency of the kingdom, and was pushing forward towards the Alps an army of sixty thousand men and a powerful artillery. He had won over to his service Octavian Fregoso, doge of Genoa ; and Barthelemy d'Alviano, the veteran general of his allies the Venetians, was encamped with his troops within hail of Verona, ready to support the French in the b2 244 History of France. struggle lie foresaw. Francis I. on his side, was informed that twenty thousand Swiss, commanded by the Roman, Prosper Colonna, were guarding the passes of the Alps in order to shut him out from Milaness. At the same time he received the news that the cardinal of Sion, his most zealous enemy in connexion with the Eoman Church, was devotedly employing, with the secret support of the emperor Maximilian, his influence and his preaching for the purpose of raising in Switzerland a second army of from twenty to five-and-twenty th9usand men to be launched against him, if necessary, in Italy. A Spanish and Roman army, under the orders of Don Raymond of Cardone, rested motionless at some distance from the Po, waiting for events and for osiers prescribing the part thej were to take. It was clear that Francis I., though he had been but six months king, was resolved and impatient to resume in Italy, and first of all in MUaness, the war of invasion and conquest which had been engaged in by Charles VIII. and Louis XII. : and the league of all the States of Italy, save Venice and Genoa, with the pope for their half-hearted patron and the Swiss for their fighting men, were collecting their forces to repel the invader. A.D. 1515. On the 13th of September, 1515, the French encountered and MVleraano defeated the Swiss at Melegnano, a town about three leagues from Sept. 13th. Milan , this victory was the most brilliant day in the annals of this reign. Old Marshal Trivulzio, who had taken part in seventeen battles, said that this was a strife of giants, beside which aU the rest were but child's play. On the very battle-field, before making and creating knights of those who had done him good service, Francis I. was pleased to have himself made knight by the hand of Bayard. The effect of the battle was great, in Italy primarily, but also throughout Europe. It was, at the commencement of a new reign and under the impulse communicated by a young king, an event which seemed to be decisive and likely to remain so for a long whUe. Of aU the sovereigns engaged in the Italian league against Francis I. he who was most anxious to appear temperate and almost neutral, namely Leo X., was precisely he who was most surprised and most troubled by it. He made up his mind without much trouble, however, to accept accomplished facts. When he had been elected pope, he had said to his brother, Julian de' Medici, "Enjoy we the papacy, since God hath given it us" [Godiamoci il papato, poiolie Dio ci I' ha datd]. He appeared to have no further thought than how to pluck from the event the advantages he could discover in it. His allies aU set him an example of resignation On the 14th of September, the day after the battle, Francis I. treats with his adversaries. 245 the Swiss took the roud hack to their mountains. Francis I. entered Milan in triumph. Maximilian Sforza took refuge in the castle, and twenty days afterwards, on the 4th of October, surren- dered, consenting to retire to France with a pension of thirty thousand crowns, and the promise of being recommended for a car- dinal's hat, and almost consoled for his downfall " by the pleasure of being delivered from the insolence of the Swiss, the exactions of the emperor Maximilian, and the rascalities of the Spaniards." Negotia« Fifteen years afterwards, in June, 1530, he died in oblivion at Paris, t^o"^' Francis I. regained possession of all Milaness, adding thereto, with the pope's consent, the duchies of Parma and Piacenza, which had been detached from it in 1512. Two treaties, one of November 7, 1515, and the other of November 29, 1516, re-established not only peace but perpetual alliance between the king of France and the thirteen Swiss cantons, with stipulated conditions in detail. Whilst these negotiations were in progress, Francis I. and Leo X., by a treaty pubHshed at Yiterbo on the 13th of October, proclaimed their hearty reconciliation. The pope guaranteed to Francis I. the duchy of Milan, restored to him those of Parma and Piacenza, and recalled his troops which were still serving against the Venetians ; being careful, however, to cover his concessions by means of forms and pretexts which gave them the character of a necessity submitted to rather than that of an independent and definite engagement. Francis I. on his side, guaranteed to the pope all the possessions of the Church, renounced the patronage of the petty princes of the ecclesiastical estate, and promised to uphold the family of Medici in the position it had held at Florence, since, with the king of Spain's aid, in 1512, it had recovered the dominion there at the expense of the party of republicans and friends of France. The king of France and the pope had to discuss together ques- Francis I tions far more important on both sides than those which had just p^^ * been thus settled by their accredited agents. In the course of an interview they had at Bologna, Leo X. obtained of Francis an agreement which abolished the Pragmatic Sanction. Thus sup- ported by the Holy See and by the Yenetians, the king of France saw the road to Naples once more opened before his troops; for the young Charles of Luxemburg, who had just succeeded in Spain to his grandfather Ferdinand the Catholic, was too busy entering upon his inheritance to think of disturbing any plan of Italian conquest which Francis I. might entertain ; but this prince preferred enjoy- ing his victory rather than completing it The treaty of Noyon gave, during a short time, repose to Europe, and allowed the two rivals leisure for the preparing of a far more terrible war. Francis L 24^ History of Fra?ice. returned to Milan, leaving at Bologna, for tlio purpose of treating Chancellor in detail the affair of the Pragmatic SoMction, his chancelljor, Duprat, Duprat ^]^Q Yi^^ accompanied him during all this campaign as his adviser and negotiator. In him the king had, under the name and guise of premier magistrate of the realm, a servant whose bold and com- plaisant abilities he was not slow to recognize and to put in use. At the commencement of the war for the conquest of Milaness there was a want of money, and Francis I. hesitated to so soon impose new taxes. Duprat gave a scandalous extension to a practice which had been for a long while in use, but had always been reprobated and sometimes formally prohibited, namely, the sale of public appointments or offices : not only did he create a multitude of financial and administrative offices, the sale of which brought considerable sums into the treasury, but he introduced the abuse into the very heart of the judicial body; the tribunals were encum- bered by newly-created magistrates. The Estates of Languedoc complained in vain. The Parliament of Paris was in its turn attacked, and Duprat having resolved to strike a great blow, an edict of January 31, 1522, created within the Parliament a fourth chamber composed of eighteen councillors and two presidents, all of fresh and, no doubt, venal appointment, though the edict dared not avow as much. The registration of this iniquitous measure was obtained by force, and thus began to be implanted in that which should be the most respected and the most independent amongst the functions of government, namely, the administration of justice, not only the practice but the fundamental maxim of absolute go- vernment. Chancellor Duprat, if we are not mistaken, was, in the sixteenth century, the first chief of the French magistracy to make use of language despotic not only in fact but also in principle ; he was the delegate, the organ, the representative of the king ; it was in the name of the king himself that he affij-med the absolute power of the kingship and the absolute duty of submission. Francis I. could not have committed the negotiation with Leo X. in respect of Charles YIT.'s Pragmatic Sanction to a man with more inclination and better adapted for the work to be accom- plished. Tragmatic "^^^ Pragmatic Sanction had three principal objects : — Sanction. 1, To uphold the liberties and the influence of the faithful in the government of the Church, by sanctioning their right to elect ministers of the Christian faith, especially parish priests and bishops ; 2. To guarantee the liberties and rights of the Church herself in her relations with her Head, the pope, by proclaiming the necessity The Pragmatic Sanction and the Concordat. 247 for the regular intervention of councils and their superiority in regard to the pope ; 3. To prevent or reform abuses in the relations of the papacy Its purport with the State and Church of France in the matter of ecclesiastical , . '^®' tribute, especially as to the receipt by the pope, under the name of annates, of the first year's revenue of the different ecclesiastical offices and benefices. In the fifteenth century it was the general opinion in France, in State and in Church, that there Avas in these dispositions nothing more than the primitive and traditional liberties and rights of the Christian Church. There was no thought of imposing upon the papacy any new regimen, but only of defending the old and legiti- ^ mate regimen, recognized and upheld by St. Louis in the thirteenth century as well as by Charles VI 1. in the fifteenth. The popes, nevertheless, had all of them protested since the days of Charles VII. against the Pragmatic Sanction as an attack upon their rights, and had demanded its abolition. This important edict, then, was still vigorous in 1515. when Francis I., after his victory at Melegnano and his reconciliation with the pope, left chancellor Duprat at Bologna to pursue the negotiation reopened on that subject. The compensation, of which Leo X., on redemand- ing the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction, had given a peep to Francis I., could not fail to have charms for a prince so little scrupulous, and for his still less scrupulous chancellor. The pope proposed that the Pragmatic, once for all abolished, should be replaced by a Concordat between the two sovereigns, and that this Concordat, whilst putting a stop to the election of the clergy The " Con-. by the faithful, should transfer to the king the right of nomi- ^^ nation to Ijishoprics and other great ecclesi9stical offices and benefices, reserving to the pope the right of presentation of prelates nominated by the king. This, considering the condition of society and government in the sixteenth century, in the absence of political and religious liberty, was to take away from the Church her own existence and divide her between two masters, without giving her, as regarded either of them, any other guarantee of independence than the mere chance of their dissensions and quarrels. Francis I. and his chancellor saw in the proposed Concordat nothing but the great increment of influence it secured to them, by making all the dignitaries of the Church suppliants, at first, and then, clients of the kingship. After some difficulties as to points of detail, the Concordat was concluded and signed on the 18th of August, 1516. Seven months afterwards it was registered, notwith- standing the opposition of the parliament and the university of Paris. 248 History of France. Then it was that Francis I. and his chancellor, Duprat, loudly proclaimed and practised the maxims of absolute power : iis the Church, the Pragmatic, Sanction was abolished : and in the State, Francis I., during a reign of thirty-two years, did not once convoke the States -general, and laboured only to set up the sovereign right of his own sole will. The Church was despoiled of her electoral autonomy ; and the magistracy, treated with haughty and silly impertinence, was vanquished and humiliated in the exercise of its right of remonstrance. The Concordat of 1516 was not the only, "but it was the gravest, pact of alliance concluded between the papacy and the French kingship for the promotion mutually of absolute power. The death of Maximilian and the election of a new emperor were the proximate causes of the renewal of hostilities between Francis I. and Charles V. ; both faere princes were candidates ; and by be- stowing the imperial crown upon the latter, there is no doubt that the electors adopted the safest course; but in doing so they gave the signal for a struggle of the most desperate and protiactr.! rhfL.-vvCici. Charles V. "Whatever pains were taken by Francis I. to keep up a good elected appearance after this heavy reverse, his mortification was profound and he thought of nothing but getting his revenge. He flattered himself he would find something of the sort in a solemn interview and an appearance of alliance with Henry VIII., king of England, who had, like himself, Just undergone in the election to the empire a less flagrant but an analogous reverse. It had already, in the previous year and on the occasion of a treaty concluded between the two kings for the restitution of Tournai to France, been settled that they should meet before long in token of recon- ciliation. The interview took place on the 31st of May, 1520, between Ardres and Guines, in Picardy ; it has remained cele- brated in history far more for its royal pomp, and for the personal incidents which were connected with it, than for its political results. The Field It was called The Field of the Cloth of Gold ; and the courtiers °r*i^®,^^°^'' who attended the two sovereigns felt bound to almost rival them of Gold. . in sumptuousness, *' insomuch," says the contemporary Martin du Bellay, " that many bore thither their mills, their forests, and their meadows on their backs." The two kings signed a treaty whereby the dauphin of France was to marry Princess Mary, only daughter at that time of Henry VIII., to whom Francis I. under- took to pay annually a sum of 100,000 livres [2,800,000 francs or £112,000 in the money of our day] until the marriage was cele- brated, which would not be for some time yet, as the English princess was only four years old. Francis L and Henry VIII. 249 Having left tlie Wield of Cloth of Gold for Amboise, his favourite Henry VII3 residence, Francis I. discovered that Henry YIII., instead of (jijariee V. returning direct to England, had gone, on the 10th of July, to Gravelines in Flanders, to pay a visit to Charles V., who had afterwards accompanied him to Calais. The two sovereigns had spent three days there, and Charles Y., on separating from the king of England, had commissioned him to regulate, as arbiter, all difficulties that might arise between himself and the king of France. Assuredly nothing was less calcidated to inspire Francis I. with confidence in the results of his meeting with Henry VIII, and of their mutual courtesies. Though he desired to avoid the appearance of taking the initiative in war, he sought every occasion • and pretext for recommencing it ; and it was not long before he found them in the Low Countries, in Navarre, and in Italy. A trial was made of Henry VIII. 's mediation and of a conference at Calais; and a discussion was raised touching the legitimate naturo of the protection afforded by the two rival sovereigns to their petty allies. But the real fact was that Francis I. had a reverse to make up for and a passion to gratify ; and the struggle recommenced in April, 1521, in the Low Countries. The campaign opened in the north, to the advantage of France, by the capture of Hesdin ; Admiral Bonnivet, who had the command on the frontier of Spain, reduced some small forts of Biscay and the fortress of Font- arabia ; and Marshal de Lautrec, governor of Milaness, had orders to set out at once to go and defend it against the Spaniards and Imperialists who were concentrating for its invasion. Lautrec was but little adapted for this important commission. He had been made governor of Milaness in August, 1516, to replace the constable de Bourbon, whose recall to France the latitree. queen-mother, Louise of Savoy, had desired and stimulated. Lau- trec had succeeded ill in his government. He was active and brave, but he was harsh, haughty, jealous, imperious, and grasping | and he had embroiled himself with most of the Milanese lords, amongst others with the veteran J. J. Trivulzio, who, under Charles VIII. and Louis XIL, had done France such great service in Italy. When he set out to go and take the command in Italy, he found himself at the head of an army numerous indeed, but badly equipped, badly paid, and at grips with Prosper Colonna, the most able amongst the chiefs of the coalition formed at this juncture between Charles V. and Pope Leo X. against the French. Lautrec did not succeed in preventing Milan from falling into the hands of the Imperialists, and, after an uncertain campaign of eome months' duration, he lost at La Bicocca, near Monza, on the 250 History of France. Death of Semblan- cay. Constable de Bour- bon's treachery Policy of Francis I. 27th of April, 1522, a battle, which left in the power of Francis I., in Lombardy, only the citadels of Milan, Cremona, and Novara. The funds for the payment of the army had been sent, but Louia of Savoy had kept them back out of hatred for Lautrec's sister, the Duchess of Chateaubriand, who, at that time, was all powerful over the mind of Francis I. The king then allowed the surintendant Semblan^ay, who was accused of that crime, to perish on the gallows. The same princess drove by her injustice and partiality the Constable de Bourbon to enter upon a plot against the safety of the State. As M. Michelet remarks, the very existence of France as a kingdom was endangered by this conspiracy. Bourbon had promised Charles V. that he would attack Burgundy as soon as Francis I. had crossed the Alps, and so bring about the rebellion of five provinces which he believed were entirely at his discretion ; the kingdom of Provence was to be re-established on his behalf, and France, divided between Spain and England, would have lost for ever its political importance. According to what appears, Bourbon had harboured a design of commencing his enterprise with a very bold stroke. Being informed that Francis I. was preparing to go in person and wage war upon Italy, he had resolved to carry him off on the road to Lyons, and, when once he had the king in his hands, he flattered himself he would do as he pleased with the kingdom. If his attempt were unsuccessful, he -would bide his time until Francis I. was engaged in Milaness, Charles V. had entered Guienne and Henry VIII. was in Picardy ; he would then assemble a thousand men-at-arms, six thousand foot and twelve thousand lanzknechts, and would make for the Alps, to cut the king off from any com- munication with France. This plan rested upon the assumption that the king would, as he had announced, leave the constable in France with an honourable title and an apparent share in the government of the kingdom, though really isolated and debarred from action. But Francis had full cognizance of the details of the conspiracy through two Norman gentlemen whom the constable had imprudently tried to get to join in it, and who, not content with refusing, had revealed the matter at confession to the bishop of Lisieux, who had lost no time in giving information to sire de Breze, grand seneschal of Normandy. Breze at once reported it to the king. Under such grave and urgent circumstances, Francis I. behaved on the one hand with more prudence and efficiency than he had yet displayed, and on the other with his usual levity and indulgence towards his favourites. Abandoning his expedition in person into Italy, he first concerned himself for that internal France threatened by the Imperialists. 251 security of his kingdom, which was threatened on the east ind north by the Imperialists and the English, and on the south, by the Spaniards, all united in considerable force and already in motion. Francis opposed to them in the east and north the young Count Claude of Guise, the first celebrity amongst his celebrated race, the veteran Louis de la Tremoille, the most tried of all his warriors, and the duke of Vendpme, head of the younger branch of the House of Bourbon. Into the south he sent Marshal de Lautrec, who was more brave than successful, but of proved fidelity. Northern All these captains acquitted themselves honourably. Claude of y^^"^^ ^^' Guise defeated a body of twelve thousand lanzknechts who had Guise and already penetrated into Champagne ; he hurled them back into ?^^ Tremo Lorraine and dispersed them beneath the walls of the little town of Neufchateau, where the princesses and ladies of Lorraine, showing themselves at the windows, looked on and applauded their discomfiture. La Tremoille's only forces were very inferior to the thirty-five thousand Imperialists or English who had entered Picardy ; but he managed to make of his small garrisons such prompt and skilful use that the invaders were unable to get hold of a single place, and advanced somewhat heedlessly to the very banks of the Gise, whence the alarm spread rapidly to Paris. The duke of Yendome, whom the king at once despatched thither with a small body of men-at-arms, marched night and day to the assistance of the Parisians, harangued the parliament and Hotel de Ville vehemently on the conspiracy of the constable de Bourbon, and succeeded s(j well in reassuring them, that companies of the city- militia eagerly joined his troops, and the foreigners, in dread of finding themselves hemmed in, judged it prudent to fall back, leaving Picardy in a state of equal irritation and devastation. In the south, Lautrec, after having made head for three days and three nights against the attacks of a Spanish army which had crossed the Pyrenees under the orders of the constable of Castillo, forced it to raise the siege and beat a retreat. Everywhere, in the provinces as well as at the court, the feudal nobility, chieftains and simple gentlemen, remained faithful to the king ; the magistrates and the people supported the military ; it was the whole nation that rose against one great lord, who, for his own purposes, was making alliance with foreigners against the king and the country. In respect of Italy, Francis I. was less wise and less successful. Italian . . . affairs Not only did he persist in the stereotyped madness of the conquest of Milaness and the kingdom of Naples, but abandoning for the moment the prosecution of it in person, he entrusted it to his favourite. Admiral Bonnivet, a brave soldier, alternately rash and a52 History of France. backward, presumptuous and irresolute, who had already lost credit hy the mistakes he had committed, and the reverses he had experi- enced in that arena. The campaign of 1524 in Italy, brilliant as was its beginning, what with the number and the fine appearance Compaign of the troops under Bonnivet's orders, was, as it went on, nothing of 1524— 1^^^ ^ series of hesitations, contradictory movements, blunders, and theFrench. checks, which the army itself set down to its general s account. The situation of the French army before Milan was now becoming more and more, not insecure only, but critical. Bonnivet considered it his duty to abandon it and faU back towards Piedmont, where lie reckoned upon finding a corps of five thousand Swiss who were coming to support their compatriots engaged in the service of France. Near Romagnano, on the banks of the Sesia, the retreat was hotly pressed by the imperial army, the command of which had been idtimately given by Charles V. to the constable de Bourbon, with whom wM-e associated the viceroy of Naples, Charles de Lannoy, and Ferdinand d'Avalos, marquis of Pescara, the most able amongst the Neapolitan officers. On the 30th of April, 1524, some disorder took place in the retreat of the French; and Bonnivet, being severely wounded, had to give up the command to the count of St. Pol and to Chevalier Bayard. Bayard, last as well as first in the fight, according to his custom, charged at the head of some men-at-arms upon the Imperialists who were pressing the French Death of too closely, when he was himself struck by a shot from an arquebus. Bayard which shattered his reins. " Jesus, ray God," he cried, " I am (April 30). ^^^^ J „ jjg ^j^gj^ ^Q^j^ j^-g g^yQj.(j ijy |;]^Q handle, and kissed the cross-hilt of it as the sigp of the cross, saying aloud as he did so : ** Have pity on me, God, according to Thy great mercy " {Miserere vnei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam). The constable de Bourbon, being informed of his wound, came to him, saying, " Bayard, my friend, I am sore distressed at your mishap : there is nothing for it but patience ; give not way to melancholy ; I will send in quest of the best surgeons in this country, and, by God's help, you will soon be healed." "My lord," answered Bayard, "there is no pity for me ; I die, having done my duty ; but I have pity for . you, to see you serving against your king, your country, and your oath." Bourbon withdrew without a word. The French army continued its retreat under the orders of the count of St. Pol, and re-entered France by way of Suza and Brian- ^on. It was Francis I.'s third time of losing Milaness. Charles V., enchanted at the news, wrote on the 24th of May to Henry VIII. : "I keep you advertised of the good opportunity it has pleased God to offer us of giving a full account of our common enemy. I pray Invasion of Provence. 253 you to carry into eflfect on your side that which you and I have for a long while desired, wherein I for my part will exert myself with all my might. According to a plan settled by him with Henry VIII. and Charles Y., Bourbon entered Provence on the 7th of July, ^ d 1524^ 1524, at the head of an army of eighteen thousand men, which was Bourbon to be joined before long by six or seven thousand more. He had ployence no difficulty in occupying Antibes, Frejus, Draguignan, Brignoles, and even Aix ; and he already began to assume the title of count of Provence, whilst preparing for a rapid march along by the Rhone and a rush upon Lyons, the chief aim of the campaign ; but the Spanish generals whom Charles Y. had associated with him, and amongst others the most eminent of them, the marquis of Pescara, peremptorily insisted that, according to their master's order, he should besiege and take Marseilles. Charles Y. cared more for the coasts of the Mediterranean than for those of the Channel ; he flat- tered himself that he would make of Marseilles a southern Calais, which should connect Germany and Spain, and secure their com- munications, political and commercial. Bourbon objected and resisted ; it was the abandonment of his general plan for this war, and a painful proof how powerless he was against the wishes of the two sovereigns of whom he was only the tool, although they called him their ally. Being forced to yield, he began the siege of Mar- seilles on the 19th of August. The place, though but slightly fortified and ill supplied, made an energetic resistance ; the name and the presence of Bourbon at the head of the besiegers excited patriotism ; the burgesses turned soldiers ; the cannon of the besiegers laid open their walls, but they threw up a second line, an earthen rampart, called the ladies' rampart, because all the women in the city had worked at it. The siege was protracted ; the rein- forcements expected by Bourbon did not arrive ; a shot from Marseilles penetrated into Pescara's tent, and killed his almoner and two of his gentlemen. Bourbon rushed up. " Don't you see ? " said Pescara to him ironically : " here are the keys sent to you by the timid consuls of Marseilles." Bourbon resolved to attempt an assault ; the lanzknechts and the Italians refused ; Bourbon asked Pescara for his Spaniards, but Pescara would only consent on condition that the breach was reconnoitred afresh. Seven soldiers were told off for this duty ; four were killed and the other three returned wounded, reporting that between the open breach and the intrenchment extended a large ditch filled with fireworks and de- Defeated fended by several batteries. The assembled general officers looked before at one another in silence. " "Well, gentlemen,'' said Pescara, " you J^^ws^ulet see that the folks of Marseilles keep a table well spread for our 254 History of France. reception; if you like to go and sup in paradise, you are your own masters so far ; as for me, who have no desire to go thither just yet, I am off. But believe me," he added seriously, " we had best return to Milaness ; we have left that country without a soldier \ we might possibly find our return cut off." Whereupon Pescara got up and went out ; and the majority of the ofi&cers followed him. Bourbon remained almost alone, divided between anger and shame. Almost as he quitted this scene he heard that Francis I. was advancing towards Provence with an army. The king had suddenly decided to go to the succour of Marseilles, which was making so good a defence. ITothing could be a bitterer pill for Bourbon than to retire before Francis I., whom he had but lately promised to dethrone ; but his position condemned him to suffer every thing, without allowing him the least hesitation; and on the Thesiegeof 28th of September, 1524, he raised the siege of Marseilles and Marseilles resumed the road to Italy, harassed even beyond Toulon, by the (Sept. 28). French advance-guard, eager in its pursuit of the traitor even more than of the enemy. After Bourbon's precipitate retreat, the position of Francis I. was a good one. He had triumphed over conspiracy and invasion ; the conspiracy had not been catching, and the invasion had failed on aU the frontiers. If the king, in security within his kingdom, had confined himself to it, whilst applying himself to the task of governing it well, he would have obtained all the strength he required to make himself feared and deferred to abroad. For a while he seemed to have entertained this design : on the 25th of September, 1523, he published an important ordinance for the repression of disorderliness and outrages on the part of the soldiery in France itself; and, on the 28th of December following, a regu- lation as to the administration of finances established a control Financial '^^^^ ^^® various exchequer-officers, and announced the king's regula- intention of putting some limits to his personal expenses, " not tions of the including, however," said he, " the ordinary run of our little necessities and pleasures." This singular reservation was the faithful exponent of his character ; he was licentious at home and adventurous abroad, being swayed by his coarse passions and his war- like fancies. When Bourbon and the imperial army had evacuated Provence, the king loudly proclaimed his purpose of pursuing them into Italy, and of once more going forth to the conquest of Milaness, and perhaps also of the kingdom of Naples, that incurable craze of French kings in the sixteenth century. In vain did his most experienced warriors. La TremoiUe and Chabannes, exert tiiemselves to divert him from such a campaign, for which he waa Francis T. crosses the Alps. 255 not prepared ; in vain did his mother herself write to him, hegging him to wait and see her, for that she had important matters to impart to him. He answered by sending her the ordinance which conferred upon her the regency during his absence ; and, at the end of October, 1524, he had crossed the Alps, anxious to go and risk in Milaness the stake he had just won in Provence against Charles V. Arriving speedily in front of Milan, he there found the imperial army which had retired before him ; there was a fight in one of the outskirts ; but Bourbon recognized the impossibility of maintaining Francis 1 a siege in a town of which the fortifications were in ruins, and with invades disheartened troops. On the line of march which they had pursued, j^^ g "'^"^ from Lodi to Milan, there was nothing to be seen but cuirasses, (October) arquebuses tossed hither and thither, dead horses, and men dying of fatigue and scarcely able to drag themselves along. Bourbon evacuated Milan and, taking a resolution as bold as it was singular, abruptly abandoned, so far as he was personally concerned, that defeated and disorganized army, to go and seek for and reorganize another at a distance. Francis I.'s veteran generals. Marshals la Tremoille and Chabannes, had advised him to pursue without pause the beaten and disorganized imperial army, but Admiral Bonnivet, " whose counsel the king made use of more than of any other," says Du Bellay, pressed Francis I. to make himself master, before every thing, of the principal strong places in Lom- bardy, especially of Pavia, the second city in the duchy of Milan. Francis followed this counsel, and on the 26th of August, 1524, twenty days after setting out from Aix in Provence, he appeared ^ . ., ^ with his army in front of Pavia. On learning this resolution, Pavia. Pescara joyously exclaimed, "We were vanquished; a little while (Oct. 28). and we shall be vanquishers." Pavia had for governor a Spanish veteran, Antony de Leyva, who had distinguished himself at the battle of Eavenna. in 1512, by his vigilance and indomitable tenacity: and he held out for nearly four months, first against assaults and then against investment by the French army. Francis I. decided to accept battle as soon as it should be offered him. The imperial leaders, at a councU held on the 23rd of February, deter- mined to offer it next day. The two armies were of pretty equal strength : they had each from twenty to five and twenty thousand infantry, French, Germans, Spaniards, lanzknechts, and Swiss. Francis I, had the advantage in artillery and in heavy cavalry, called at that time the gendarmerie, that is to say, the corps of men-at-arms in heavy armour with their servants; but his troops were inferior in 256 History of France, elTectives to tlie Imperialists, and Charles V.'s two generals, Bourbon and Pescara, were, as men of war, far superior to Francis I. and his favourite Bonnivet. After a desperate struggle the French were defeated; the gendarmerie gave way, and the German lanzknechts cut to pieces the Swiss auxiliaries. One of Bourbon's most intimate confidants, the lord of Pomperant, who, in 1523, had accompanied the constable in his flight through France, came up at this critical moment, recognized the king, and, beating off the soldiers with his sword, ranged himself at the king's side, represented to him the necessity of yielding, and pressed kim to surrender to the duke of Bourbon, who was not far off. " No," said the king, " rather die than pledge my faith to a traitor • where is the viceroy of Naples % " It took some time to find Lannoy ; but at last he arrived and put one knee on the ground before Francis I., who handed his sword to him. Lannoy took it with marks of the most profound respect, and immediately Francis I. gave him another. The battle was over, and Francis I. was Charief V Ctiarles V.'s prisoner. He had shown himself an imprudent and unskilful general, but at the same time a hero. His conquerors, both officers and privates, could not help, whUst they secured his person, showing their admi- ration for him. When he sat down to table, after having had his •jvounds, which were slight, attended to, Bourbon approached him respectfully and presented him with a dinner-napkin ; and the king took it without embarrassment, and with frigid and curt politeness. He next day granted him an interview, at which an accommodation took place with due formalities on both sides, but nothing more. Francis asked to be excused from entering Pa via, that he might not be a gazing- stock in a town that he had so nearly taken. He was, accordingly, conducted to Pizzighittone, a little fortress between Milan and Cremona. He wrote thence two letters, one to his mother the regent, and the other to Charles Y., which are here given word for word, because they so well depict his character and the state of his mind iu his hour of calamity : — His letters « i^ j^q ^^g regent of France : Madame, that you may know how mother stands the rest of my misfortune : there is nothing in the world left to me hut honour and my life, which is safe. And in order that, in your adversity, this news might bring you some little comfort, I prayed for permission to write you this letter, which was readily granted me ; entreating you, in the exercise of your accustomed prudence, to be pleased not to do any thing rash, for I have hope after all that God wiU not forsake me. Commending to you my children your grandchildren, and entreating you to give the bearer Treaty of Madrid. 257 a free passage, going and returning, to Spain, for he is going to the emperor to learn how it is his pleasure that I should be treated." 2. " To the Emperor Charles V. : If liberty had been sooner 3^3 to the granted me by my cousin the viceroy, I should not have delayed emperor, so long to do my duty towards you, according as the time and circumstances in which T am placed require; having no other comfort under my misfortune than a reliance on your goodness, which, if it so please, shall employ the results of victory with honourableness towards me ; having steadfast hope that your virtue would not willingly constrain me to anything that was not honour- able ; entreating you to consult your own heart as to what you shall be pleased to do with me ; feeling sure that the will of a prince such as you are cannot be coupled with aught but honour and magnanimity. Wherefore, if it please you to have so much honourable pity as to answer for the safety which a captive king of France deserves to find, whom there is a desire to render friendly and not desperate, you may be sure of obtaining an acquisition instead of a useless prisoner, and of making a king of France your slave for ever." The former of these two letters has had its native hue somewhat altered in the majority of histories, in which it has been compressed into those eloquent words, "All is lost save honour." The second needs no comment to make apparent what it lacks of kingly pride and personal dignity. Beneath the warrior's heroism there was in the qualities of Francis I. more of what is outwardly brilliant and winning than of real strength and solidity. Taken prisoner to Spain, the unfortunate monarch was restored to Treaty of liberty only on conditions of his signing the treaty of Madrid, by Madrid, which he abandoned Italy, Burgundy, Artois, Flanders, besides restoring to the constable of Bourbon his confiscated estates. He likewise promised to marry the sister of Charles V., and gave both his sons as hostages. . On becoming king again he fell under the dominion of three personal sentiments, which exercised a decisive influence upon his conduct and, consequently, upon the destiny of France : joy at his liberation, a thirsting for revenge, we will not say for vengeance to be wreaked on Charles V., and the burden of the engagement he had contracted at Madrid in order to recover his liberty, alter- nately swayed him. The envoys of Charles V., with Lannoy, the Meeting at viceroy of N'aples at their head, went to Cognac to demand execu- Cognao. tion of the treaty of Madrid. Francis waited, ere he gave them an answer, for the arrival of the delegates from the estates of Bur- gundy, whom he had summoned to have their opinion as to the 258 History of France. The dele- cession of tlie ducliy. These delegates, meeting at Cognac in June, gates from 1527, formally repudiated the cession, being opposed, they said, to repudiatJ ^'^® ^^^^ °^ '^^ kingdom, to the rights of the king, who could not the cession by his sole authority alienate any portion of his dominions, and to of tlie i^jg coronation-oath, which superseded his oaths made at Madrid. Francis invited the envoys of Charles Y. to a solemn meeting of his court and council present at Cognac, at which the delegates from Burgundy repeated their protest. Whilst availing himself of this declaration as an insurmountable obstacle to the complete exe- cution of the treaty of Madrid, Francis offered to give two million crowns for the redemption of Burgundy, and to observe the other arrangements of the treaty, including the relinquishment of Italy and his marriage with the sister of Charles V. Charles formally rejected this proposal, and required of him to keep his oath. However determined he was, at bottom, to elude the strict exe- cution of the treaty of Madrid, Francis Avas anxious to rebut the charge of perjury by shifting the responsibility on to the shoulders of the people themselves and their representatives. He did not A.D. 1527. like to summon the states general of the kingdom and recognize theVa°ifia. ^^^^"' I'ight as well as their power ; but, after the meeting at Cognac, raent in he went to Paris, and, on the 12th of December, 1527, the parlia- Paru. ment met in state with the adjunct of the princes of the blood, a great number of cardinals, bishops, noblemen, deputies from the parliaments of Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rouen, Dijon, Grenoble and Aix, and the municipal body of Paris. In presence of this assem- bly the king went over the history of his reign, his expeditions in Italy, his alternate successes and reverses and his captivity. " If my subjects have suffered," he said, " I have suffered with them." He then caused to be read the letters patent whereby he had abdi- cated and transferred the crown to his son the dauphin, devoting himself to captivity for ever. He explained the present condition of the finances, and what he could furnish for the ransom of his sons detained as hostages ; and he ended by offering to return as a prisoner to Spain if no other way could be found out of a difficult position, for he acknowledged having given his word, adding, however, that he had thought it pledged him to nothing since it had not been given freely. This last argument was of no value morally or diplomatically ; but in his bearing and his language Francis I. displayed grandeur and emotion. The assembly also showed emotion ; they were four days deliberating ; with some slight diversity of form the various bodies present came to the same conclusion ; and, on the 16th of December, 1627, the parliament decided that the king was not bound either The Holy League. 259 to return to Spain or to execute, as to that matter, the treaty of Madrid, and that he might with full sanction and justice levy on his suhjects two millions of crowns for the ransom of his sons and the other requirements of the State. Before inviting such manifestations Francis I. had taken measxires to prevent them fromhcingin vain. As early as the 22nd of May, A.D. 1526 1626, whilst he was still deliherating with his court and parliament ^^^ ^°^y as to how he should behave towards Charles V. touching the treaty of Madrid, Francis I. entered into the Holy League with the pope, the Venetians and the duke of Milan for the independence of Italy; and on the 8th of August following Francis L and Henry YIII. undertook, by a special treaty, to give no assistance one against the other to Charles Y., and Henry VIII. promised to exert aU his efforts to get Francis I.'s two sons, left as hostages in Spain, set at liberty. Thus the war hetween Francis I. and Charles Y., after fifteen months' suspension, resumed its course. It lasted three years in Italy, from 1526 to 1529, without inter- 1626-1529. ruption, but also without result ; it was one of those wars which " ® ^^} . ' _ resumed are prolonged from a difficulty of living in peace rather than from any serious intention, on either side, of pursuing a clear and definite object. The chief events connected with this period are the syste- matic pillage of Italy by a lawless soldiery led on by Leyva, Bourhon and the Lutheran George Frondsherg, who wore habitually round his neck a gold chain, destined, he said, to strangle the pope. Bourbon was killed whilst leading on that rabhle to the storming of Eome ; the captivity of the pope and the horrors of which the eternal city was the scene, excited universal indignation, and Francis I. thought the moment favourable to march into Italy troops which, a few months before, would have saved both Eome and Milan. Hampered for want of money, Lautrec could do nothing, and the plague moreover decimated his army, Nothing, however, would have heen lost if the communications hetween Italy and France had remained open. But Francis committed the signal blunder of ofiending the Genoese Doria, who was admiral of the French fieet and who was considered as the first sailor of the age. The engagement of that foreigner had just terminated, and, of course, instead of renewing it, Doria employed against France his influence and his personal courage. Charles having accused the king of France of treachery, the latter, in his turn, called his rival a liar, challenged him to single combat, and allowed him the choice of weapons. But the era of great nations and great contests was beginning, and one is inclined to believe that Francis I. and Charles V. were themselves aware that their mutual challenges would nofc 8 2 26o History of France, come to any personal encounter. The war which continued hetween them in Italy was not much more serious ur decisive ; both sides ■were weary of it, and neither onu nor the other of the two sovereigns espied any great chances of success. The French army was wasting itself, in the kingdom of l!^aples, upon petty inconclusive engage- ments; its commander, Lautrec, died of the plague on the 15th of August, 1528 ; a desire for peace became day by day stronger ; it A.D. 1529. was made, first of aU, at Barcelona, on the 20th of June, 1529, Cambvai between Charles Y. and Pope Clement VII. ; and then a conference was opened at Cambrai for the purpose of bringing it about between Charles Y. and Francis I. likewise. Two women, Francis I.'s mother and Charles Y.'s aunt, Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, had the real negotiation of it, and it was called accordingly the ladies^ peace. Though morally different and of very unequal worth, they both had minds of a rare order and trained to recognize political necessities and not to attempt any but possible successes. They did not long survive their work : Margaret of Austria died on the 1st of December, 1530, and Louise of Savoy on the 22nd of September, 1531. All the great political actors seemed hurrying away from the stage, as if the drama were approaching its end. &.D. 1534. Pope Clement YII. died on the 26th of September, 1534. He was Death of a man of sense and moderation ; he tried to restore to Italy her ment VII. independence, but he forgot that a moderate policy is, above all, that which requires most energy and perseverance. These two qualities he lacked totally ; he oscillated from one camp to the other without ever having any real influence anywhere. A little before his death he made France a fatal present ; for, on the 28th of October, 1533, he married his niece Catherine de' Medici to Francis I.'s second son. Prince Henry of Yalois, who by the death of his elder brother, the dauphin Francis, soon afterwards became heir to the throne. The chancellor, Anthony Duprat, too, the most considerable up to that time amongst the advisers of Francis I., died on the 9th of July, 1535. In the civil as well as in the military class, for his government as well as for his armies, Francis L had, at this time, to look out for new servants. A.D. 1532. The ladies^ peace, concluded at Cambrai in 1529, lasted up to Interview 1535 . incessantly troubled, however, by far from pacific symptoms, Francis I. proceedings, and preparations. In October, 1532, Francis I. had, and Henry ^^ Calais, an interview with Henry YIII., at which they contracted a private alliance and undertook '* to raise between them an army of 80,000 men to resist the Turk, as true zealots for the good of Christendom." The Turks, in fact, under their great sultan Soliman II., were constantly threatening and invading eastern Invasion of Provence. 261 Europe. Charles V,, as emperor of Germany, was far more exposed to their attacks and far more seriously disquieted by them than Francis T. and Henry YIIL were ; but the peril that hung over him in the East urged him on at the same time to a further deve- lopment of ambition and strength ; in order to defend eastern Europe against the Turks, he required to be dominant in western Europe ; and in that very part of Europe a large portion of the population were disposed to wish for his success, for they required it for their own security. In 1536 all the combustibles of war exploded; in the month of A.D. 1536. February, a French army entered Piedmont and occupied Turin ; p^^^^^°^ and, in the month of July, Charles V. in person entered Provence by at the head of 50,000 men. Anne de Montmorency, having Cliarles V. received orders to defend southern France, began by laying it waste in order that the enemy might not be able to live in it ; officers had orders to go everywhere and " break up the bake-houses and mills, burn the wheat and forage, pierce the wine-casks and ruin the wells by throwing the wheat into them to spoil the water." In certain places the inhabitants resisted the soldiers charged with this duty; elsewhere, from patriotism, they themselves set fire to their corn-ricks and pierced their casks. Montmorency made up his mind to defend, on the whole coast of Provence, only Marseilles and Aries ; he pulled down the ramparts of the other towns, which were left exposed to the enemy. For two months Charles V. prosecuted this campaign without a fight, marching through the whole of Provence an army which fatigue, shortness of provisions, sickness and ambuscades were decimating ingloriously. At last he decided upon retreating. On returning from his sorry expedition, Charles Y. learned that those of his lieutenants whom he had charged with the conduct of a similar invasion in the north of France, in Picardy, had met with no greater success than he himseK in Provence. Queen Mary of Hungary, his sister and deputy in the government of the Low Countries, advised a local truce ; his other sister, Eleanor, the queen of France, was of the same opinion ; Francis I. adopted it ; and the truce in the north was signed for a period of three months. Montmorency signed a similar one for Piedmont. It was agreed that negotiations for a peace should be opened at Locate, in Eoussillon, and that, to pursue them, Francis should go and take up his quarters at Montpellier and Charles Y. at Barcelona. Pope Paul III. (Alexander Farnese), who, on the 13th of October, 1534, had succeeded Clement YIL, came forward as mediator. One Interview month afterwards, Charles and Francis met at Aigues-Mortes, and Mortes. 262 History of France. these two princes who had treated one another in so insulting a manner, exchanged protestations of the warmest friendship. The peace lasted six years. Francis I. was not willing to positively renounce his Italian conquests, and Charles V. was not willing to really give them up to him. Milaness was still, in Italy, the principal ohject of their mutual ambition. Navarre, in the south-east of France, and the Low Countries in the north, gave occasion for incessantlj- xenewed disputes between them. The two sovereigns sought for combinations which would allow them to make, one to the other, the desired concessions, whilst still preserving pretexts for, and chances of, recovering them. Divers projects of marriage between their children or near relatives were advanced with that object, but nothing came of them ; and, after two years and a half of abortive negotiations, another great war, the foiu'th, broke out between Francis I. and Charles V., for the same causes and with the same by-ends as ever. It lasted two years, from 1542 to 1544, with alternations of success and reverse on either side, and several diplomatic attempts to embroil in it the different European powers. Francis I. concluded an alUance in 1543 with Sultan A.D. 1543. Soliman II., and, in concert with French vessels, the vessels of the between pii'ate Barbarossa cruised about and made attacks upon the shores Francis I. of the Mediterranean. On the other hand, on the 11th of SolimanlL February, 1543, Charles Y. and Henry VIII., king of England, concluded an alliance against Francis I. and the Turks. The unsuccess which had attended the grand expedition conducted by Charles Y. personally in 1541, with the view of attacking Bar- barossa and the Mussulmans in Algiers itself, had opened his eyes to all the difficulty of such enterprises, and he wished to secure the co-operation of a great maritime power before engaging therein afresh. He at the same time convoked a German diet at Spires in order to make a strong demonstration against the alliance between Francis I. and the Turks, and to claim the support of Germany in the name of Christendom. Ambassadors from the duke of Savoy and the king of Denmark appeared in support of the propositions and demands of Charles Y. The diet did not separate until it had voted 24,000 foot and 4000 horse to be employed against France, and had forbidden Germans, under severe penalties, to take service with Francis I. In 1544 the war thus became almost Euiopean, • and in the early days of April two armies were concentrated in A.D. 1544. Piedmont, near the little town of Ceresole, the Spanish 20,000 Battle of strong and the French 19,000 ; the former under the orders of the marquis del Guasto, the latter under those of the count d'Eughien : The Imperialists and the English in France. 263 both ready to deliver a battle which -was, according to one side, to preserve Europe from the despotic sway of a single master, and, according to the other, to protect Europe against a fresh invasion of Mussulmans. The battle was bravely disputed and for some time indecisive, even in the opinion of the anxious Count D'Enghieu, who was for a while in an awkward predicament ', but the ardour of the Gascons and the firmness of the Swiss prevailed, and the French army was victorious. This success, however, had not the results that might have been expected. The war continued ; Charles Y, transferred The Ger- his principal efforts therein to the north, on the frontiers of the ™^^^ ^"^ Low Countries and France, having concluded an alliance with invade Henry VIII. for acting in concert and on the offensive. Champagne J'rance. and Picardy were simultaneously invaded by the Germans and the English ; Henry VIII. took Boulogne ; Charles Y. advanced aa far as Chateau- Thierry and threatened Paris. Great was the con- sternation there; Francis I. hurried up from Fontainebleau and rode about the streets, accompanied by the duke of Guise and everywhere saying, " If I cannot keep you from fear, I will keep you from harm." " My God," he had exclaimed as he started from Fontainebleau, "how dear Thou sellest me my kingdom !" The people recovered courage and confidence ; they rose in a body ; 40,000 arme wards became Marshal de Yieilleville, was at this time nearly forty ; but he had contributed in 1541 to the victory of Ceresole, and Francis L had made so much of it that he had said on presenting him to his son Henry : " He is no older than you, and see what he has done already ; if the wars do not swallow him up, you will The new some day make him constable or marshal of France." Gaspard de g^^eJ^3.tioii Coligny [born at Chatillon-sur-Loing, February 16, 1517], was warriors, thirty-three ; and his brother, Francis d'Andelot [born at Chatillon in 1521],, twenty-nine. These men, warriors and politicians at one and the same time, in a high social position and in the flower of their age, could not reconcile themselves to the constable de Mont- morency's system, defensive solely and prudential to the verge of inertness; they thought that, in order to repair the reverses of France and for the sake of their own fame, there was something else to be done, and they impatiently awaited the opportunity. It was not long coming. At the close of 1551, a deputation of the protestant princes of Germany came to Fontainebleau to ask for the king's support against the aggressive and persecuting despotism of Charles V, Their request having been granted, the place of meeting for the army was appointed at Chalons-sur- Maine, March AO, 1552 ; more than a thousand gentlemen flocked thither as volunteers ; peasants and mechanics from Champagne and Picardy joined them ; the war was popular ; " the majority of the soldiers," says Eabutin, a contemporary chronicler, " were young men whose brains were on fire." Francis de Guise and Gaspard de Coligny were their chief leaders. The king entered Lorraine from Cham- pagne by Joinville, the ordinary residence of the dukes of Guise. ^^^^^^^ He carried Pont-a-Mousson ; Toul opened its gates to him on the French 13th of April ; he occupied Nancy on the 14th, and on the 18th he entered Metz, not without some hesitation amongst a portion of the inhabitants and the necessity of a certain show of military force on the part of the leaders of the royal army. At that time the emperor was lying ill at Inspruck, where he had gone for the pup- pose of watching more closely the deliberations of the council of Trent. On the point of being surprised in that city by Maurice of Saxony at the head of the Protestants, he signed with these the treaty of Passau, afterwards ratified at Augsburg (1552-55). Then he came to besiege Metz, which the Duke of Guise successfully defended, displaying as much true courage as greatness of soul. 28o History of France. During the next year (1553), Cliarles V., anxious to avenge the check which his forces had met with, invaded Artois, and burnt down the city of Therouanne, which has never since been rebuilt. A short time after, his army was defeated at Renty by Guise and Tuvannes. In the meanwhile, marshal Brissac was holding hia ground in Piedmont ; Strozzi, a Florentine in the service of Frances and Montluc, defended in turns the town of Sienna which, at last, was obliged to capitulate to the fierce Medichino ; the French fleet, commanded by Baron de la Garde, and combined with that of the Turks under the orders of Dragut, threatened the coasts of Calabria and of Sicily, ravaged the island of Elba, and captured some towns in Corsica, then belonging to the Genoese. Abdication These events decided Charles V. to abdicate. On the 25th of °^ -- October, 1555, and the 1st of January, 1556, he gave over to his son Philip the kingdom of Spain, with the sovereignty of Burgundy and the Low Countries, and to his younger brother Ferdinand the empire, together with the original heritage of the House of Austria ; he then retired personally to the monastery of Yuste, in Estrama- dura, there to pass the last years of his life, distracted with gout, at one time resting from the world and its turmoil, at another vexing himself about what was doing there now that he was no longer in it. Before abandoning it for good, he desired to do his son Philip the service of leaving him, if not in a state of definite peace, at any rate in a condition of truce with France. Henry II. also desired rest ; and the constable de Montmorency wished above everything for the release of his son Francis, who had been a prisoner since the fall of Therouanne. A truce for five years was signed at Vaucelles on the 5th of February, 1556; and Coligny, quite young still, but already admiral and in high esteem, had the conduct of the negotiation. Philip II. Philip II. continued his father's policy, and took measures for his sue- promptly entering upon a fresh campaign. By his marriage with cesser in -y^Q^-^^ Tudor, queen of England, he had secured for himself a marries powerful ally in the North ; the English parliament were but little ^^T^ disposed to compromise themselves in a war with France ; but in March, 1557, Philip went to London ; the queen's influence and the distrust excited in England by Henry 11. prevailed over the pacific desires of the nation ; and Mary sent a simple herald to carry to the king of France at Rheims her declaration of war. A.D. 1558. Henry accepted it politely but resolutely, A negotiation was corn- Mary menced for accomplishing the marriage, long since agreed upon, marries between the young queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart, and Henry Il.'a i^L^*^' son, Francis, dauphin of France. Mary, who was born on the 8th of December, 1542, at Falkland Castle in Scotland, bad, since phin. Treaty of Cdteau-Cambresis, 28 1 J 548, lived and received her education at the court of France, whither her mother, Mary of Lorraine, eldest sister of Francis of Guise and queen-dowager of Scotland, had lost no time in sending her as soon as the future union hetween the two children had heen agreed upon between the two courts. The dauphin of France was a year younger than the Scottish princess; on the 19th of April, 1558, the espousals took place in the great hall of the Louvre, and the marriage was celebrated in the church of Notre-Dame. From that time Mary Stuart was styled in France queen-dauphiness, and her husband, with the authorization of the Scottish commissioners, took the title of king-dauphin. In the meanwhile Henry II. made an alliance with Pope Paul IV, A.D. 1557 and sent two armies, one into the Netherlands, under the command ^aUle of of Montmorency, the other into Italy, under that of the duke of Q^gn^jji Guise. Montmorency was thoroughly defeated at Saint-Quentin by the duke of Savoy, Philibert Emmanuel (1557), and the French general himself remained in the power of the enemy. Fortunately, admiral Coligny held in check for seventeen days the victor before that town ; a circumstance which enabled the king to organise re- inforcements, and the duke of Guise to return from the kingdom of Naples, where the duke of Alva had resisted him with success. Guise saved France, not by attacking the Spaniards but by sur- prising Calais, which was, after eight days' siege, taken from the English, who had occupied it for the space of two hundred and eleven years. The news of this event was a death blow for Mary. Several other acts of hostility of not much moment took place in the Northern provinces ; the Duke de Guise made himself master of a few small towns, but on the other hand, the French general Thermes was defeated at Gravelines by the count of Egmont. At last, a treaty was signed at Cateau-Cambresis (1559) between j. Henry IL and Elizabeth, who had become queen of England at Treaty of the death of her sister Mary TNovember 17th, 15581 ; and next Cateau- Cambresle day, April 3rd, between Henry IL, Philip II. and the allied princes of Spain, amongst others the prince of Orange, William tlie Silent, who, whilst serving in the Spanish army, was fitting himself to become the leader of the reformers and the liberator of the Low Countries. By the treaty with England, France was to keep Calais for eight years in the first instance, and on a promise to pay 500,000 gold crowns to queen Elizabeth or her successors. The money was never paid and Calais was never restored, and this without the English government's having considered that it could make the matter a motive for renewing the war. By the treaty with Spain, France was to keep Metz, Toul, and Yerdun, and have 282 History of France. back Saint-Quentin, le Catelet and Ham ; but she was to restore to Spain or her allies a hundred and eighty-nine places in Flanders, Piedmont, Tuscany, and Corsica. The malcontents, for the absence of political liberty does not suppress them entirely, raised their voices energetically against this last treaty signed by the king, Opposition with the sole desire, it was supposed, of obtaining the liberation of !!.ni'i«c^ ^^s two favourites, the constable De' Montmorency and marshal de Saint- Andre, who had been prisoners in Spain since the defeat at Saint Quentin. "Their ransom," it was said, "has cost the kingdom more than that of Francis I." Guise himself said to the king, " A stroke of your Majesty's pen costs more to France than thirty years of war cost." Ever since that time the majority of his- torians, even the most enlightened, have joined in the censure that was general in the sixteenth century ; but their opinion will not be endorsed here : the places which France had won during the war, and. which she retained by the peace, Metz, Toul, and Verdun on her frontier in the north-east, facing the imperial or Spanish possessions, and Boulogne and Calais on her coasts in the north- west, facing England, were, as regarded the integrity of the State and the security of the inhabitants, of infinitely more importance than those which she gave up in Flanders and Italy. The treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, too, marked the teimination of those wars of ambition and conquest which the kings of France had waged beyond the Alps : an injudicious policy which, for four reigns, had crippled and wasted the resources of France in adventurous expe- ditions, beyond the limits of her geographical position and her natural and permanent interests, TheProtes- France was once more at peace with her neighbours, and seemed tants. — tQ have nothing more to do than to gather in the fruits thereof, ment of the -^^^ ^'^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ °^^ midst questions far more difficult of solu- Beforma- tion than those of her external policy, and these perils from within ^° ■ were threatening her more seriously than any from without. Since the death of Francis I., the religious ferment had pursued its course, becoming more general and more fierce ; the creed of the reformers had spread very much ; their number had very much increased ; permanent churches, professing and submitting to a fixed faith and discipline, had been founded ; that of Paris was the first, in 1555 ; and the example had been followed at Orleans, at Chartres, at Lyons, at Toulouse, at Eochelle, in Normandy, in Touraiae, in Guienne, in Poitou, in Dauphiny, in Provence, and in all the pro- vinces, more or less In 1561, it was calculated that there were 2150 reformed, or, as the expression then was, rectified {dressees), churches. It is clear that the movement of the Pieformation in the The principles of the Reformation spread. 283 Bixtecnth. century was one of those spontaneous and powerful move- ments which, have their source and derive tliuir strength from the condition of men's souls and of whole communities, and not merely from the personal ambitions and interests which soon come and mingle with them, whether it be to promote or to retard them. One thing has been already here stated and confirmed by facts : it was specially Special in France that the Eeformation had this truly religious and sincere charactei character; very far from supporting or tolerating it, the sovereign French Re and public authorities opposed it from its very birth ; under formation. Francis I. it had met with no real defenders but its martyrs ; ajid it was still the same under Henry II. During the reign of Francis I., within a space of twenty- three years, there had been eighty-one capital executions for heresy ] during that of Henry II., twelve years, there were ninety-seven for the same cause, and at one of these executions Henry II. was present in person on the space in front of I^otre-Dame : a spectacle which Francis I. had always refused to see. In 1551, 1557 and 1559 Henry II., by three royal edicts, kept up and added to all the prohibitions and penalties in force against the reformers. All the resources of French civil jurisdiction appeared to be insufficient against them. They held at Paris, in May, 1559, their first general synod ; and eleven fully established churches sent deputies to it. This synod drew up a form of faith called the Gallican Confession, and like- wise a form of discipline. The king of ]S"avarre, Anthony de Protestam Bourbon, Prince Louis de Conde, his brother, and many other lords cMeftains. had joined the new faith; the queen of Navarre, Jeanne d'Albret, in her early youth " was as fond of a ball as of a sermon," says Brantome, " and she had advised her spouse, Anthony de Bourbon, who inclined towards Calvinism, not to perplex himself with aU these opinions." In 1559 she was passionately devoted to the faith and the cause of the Eeformation. With more levity but still in sincerity her brother-in-law, Louis de Conde, put his ambition and his courage at the service of the same cause. Admiral de Coligny's younger brother, Francis d'Andelot, declared himself a reformer to Henry II. himself, who, in his wrath, threw a plate at his head and sent him to prison in the castle of Melun. Coligny himself, who had never disguised the favourable sentiments he felt towards the reformers, openly sided with them on the ground of his own per- sonal faith as well as of the justice due 'to them. At last the Eeformation had really great leaders, men who had power and were experienced in the affairs of the world ; it was becoming a political party as well as a religious conviction ; and the French reformers were henceforth in a condition to make war as well as die at the 284 History of France. stake for their faith. Hitherto they had been only helievers and martyrs ; they became the victors and the vanquished, alternately, in a civil war. A new position for them and as formidable as it was grand. A.D. 1659. Qjj ijJjq 29th of June, 1559, a brilliant tournament was cele- killed in a brated in lists erected at the end of the street of Saint- Antoine, toiirna- almost at the foot of the Bastille. Henry II., the queen, and the whole court had been present at it for three days. The entertain- ment was drawing to a close. The king, who had run several tilts "like a sturdy and skilful cavalier," wished to break yet another lance, and bade the count de Montgomery, captain of the guards, to run against him. Montgomery excused himself; but the king insisted. The tilt took place. The two jousters, on meeting, broke their lances skilfully ; but Montgomery forgot to drop at once, according to usage, the fragment remaining in his hand ; he unintentionally struck the king's helmet and raised the visor, and a splinter of wood entered Henry's eye, who fell forward upon his horse's neck. He languished for eleven days and expired on the iOth of July, 1559, aged forty years and some months. CHAPTER VIII. THE WAES OF EELIGION". PBANCIS II. 1559 HENRY Til. 1589. During the course, and especially at the close of Henry II. *s reign, Persecu- two rival matters, on the one hand the numbers, the quality, and tions the zeal of the reformers, and on the other, the anxiety, prejudice, ^^g p^o. and power of the catholics, had been simultaneously advancing in testante. development and growth. Between the 16th of May, 1558, and the 10th of July, 1559, fifteen capital sentences had been executed in Dauphiny, in Xormandy, in Poitou, and at Paris. Two royal edicts, one dated July 24, 1558, and the other June 14, 1559, had renewed and aggravated the severity of penal legislation against heretics. To secure the registration of the latter, Henry IL, together with the princes and the officers of the crown, had repaired in person to parliament ; some disagreement had already appeared in the midst of that great body, which was then composed of a hundred and thirty magistrates ; the seniors who sat in the great chamber had in general shown themselves to be more inclined to severity, and the juniors, who formed the chamber called La TourneUe, more inclined to indulgence towards accusations of heresy. The disagreement reached its climax in the very presence of the king. Two councillors, Dubourg and Dufaure, spoke ao 286 History of France. warmly of reforms wliich were, according to them, necessary and legitimate, that their adversaries did not hesitate to tax them with being reformers themselves. The king had them arrested and three of their colleagues with them. Special commissioners were charged with the preparation of the case against them. It has already been mentioned that one of the most considerable amongst the officers of the army, Francis d'Andelot, brother of Admiral Coligny, had, for the same cause, been subjected to a burst of anger on the part of the king. He was in prison at Meaux when Henry II. died. Such were the personal feelings and the relative positions of the two parties when Francis II. a boy of sixteen, a poor creature both in mind and body, ascended the throne. The constable de Montmorency and Henry II. 's favourite, Diana de Poitiers, were dismissed, the latter in a harsh manner, and the power remained in the hands of the Queen mother, Cathe- rine de' Medici, advised by the Guises. TheGoises, In order to give a good notion of Duke Francis of Guise and racier *" ^^'^^ brother the cardinal of Lorraine, the two heads of the house, we will borrow the very words of one of the men of their age who had the best means of seeing them close and judging them correctly, the Venetian ambassador John Micheli. " The cardinal," he says, "who is the leading man of the house, would be, by common consent, if it were not for the defects of which I shall speak, the greatest political power in this kingdom. He has not yet completed his thirty-seventh year ; he is endowed with a marvellous intellect, which apprehends from half a word the meaning of those who con- verse with him; he has an astonishing mem6ry, a fine and noble face, and a rare eloquence which shows itself freely on any subject, but especially in matters of politics. He is very well versed in letters : he knows Greek, Latin, and Italian. He is very strong in the sciences, chiefly in theology. The externals of his life are very proper and very suitable to his dignity, which could not be said of the other cardinals and prelates, whose habits are too scandalously irregular. But his great defect is shameful cupidity, which would employ, to attain its ends, even criminal means, and likewise great duplicity, whence comes his habit of scarcely ever saying that which is. There is worse behind. He is considered to be very ready to take offence, vindictive, envious, and far too slow in benefaction. He excited universal hatred by hurting aU the world as long as it was in his power to do so. As for Mgr. de Guise, who is the eldest of the six brothers, he cannot be spoken of save as a man of war, a good officer. None in this realm has delivered more ^attle8 and confronted more dangers. Everbody lauds his courage, The Guises and their influence. 287 his vigilance, his steadiness in war, and his coolness, a quality wonderfully rare in a Frenchman. His peculiar defects are first of all stinginess towards soldiers ; then he makes large promises, and even when he means to keej) his promise he is infinitely slow about it." The Guises were, in the sixteenth century, the representatives fl*j ^ ® and the champions of the different cliques and interests, religious govern- or politica], sincere in their belitf or shameless in their avidity, and "^ent. all united under the iiag of LLe catholic Church. And so when they came into power, "there was nothing," says a protestant chronicler, " but fear and trembling at their name," Their acts of government soon confirmed the fears as well as the hopes they had inspired. During the last six months of 1559 the edict issued by Henry II. from Ecouen was not only strictly enforced but aggra- vated by fresh edicts : a special chamber was appointed and chosen amongst the parliament of Paris, which was to have sole cognizance of crimes and offences against the catholic religion. A proclamation of the new king Francis II, ordained that houses in which assemblies of reformers took place should be razed and demolished. It was " death to the promoters of unlawful assemblies for purposes of religion or for any other cause." Another royal act provided that all persons, even relatives, who received amongst them any one condemned for heresy, should seize him and bring him to justice, in default whereof they would suffer the same penalty as he. Individual condemnations and executions abounded after these general measures ; between the 2nd of August and the 31st of The Hu- December, 1559, eighteen persons were burned alive for open ^gygj™ -gj.. heresy, or for having refused to communicate according to the rites secuted. of the Catholic Church or go to mass, or for having hawked about forbidden books. Finally, in December, the five councillors of the parliament of Paris whom, six months previously, Henry II. had ordered to be arrested and shut up in the Bastille, were dragged from prison and brought to trial. The chief of them, Anne Dubourg, was condemned on the 22nd of December, and put to death the next day in the Place de Greve. As soon as the rule of the catholics, in the persons and by the actions of the Guises, became sovereign and aggressive, the threatened reformers assumed attitude of defence. They too had got for themselves great leaders, some valiant and ardent, others prudent or even timid, but forced to declare themselves when the common cause was greatly imperilled. They ranged themselvea round the king of Navarre, the prince of Conde, and Admiral de Coligny, and became under their direction, though in a minority. 288 History of France. a powerful opposition, able and ready, on the one hand, to narrowly watch and criticize the actions of those who were in power, and on the other to claim for their own people, not by any means freedom as a general principle in the constitution of the State, but free manifestation of their faith and free exercise of their own form of worship. Catherine Apart from, we do not mean to say above, these two great parties * which were arrayed in the might and appeared as the representatives of the national ideas and feelings, the queen- mother, Catherine de' Medici was quietly labouring to form another, more independent of the public, and more docile to herself, and, above all, faithful to the crown and to the interests of the kingly house and its servants • a party strictly catholic, but regarding as a necessity the task of humouring the reformers and granting them such concessions as as might prevent explosions fraught with peril to the State. The constable De Montmorency sometimes issued forth from Chantilly to go and aid the queen-mother, in whom he had no confidence, but whom he preferred to the Guises. A former councillor of the par- liament, for a long while chancellor under Francis I. and Henry 11. and again summoned, under Francis II., by Catherine de' Medici to the same post, Francis Olivier, was an honourable executant of the party's indecisive but moderate policy. He died on the 15th of March, 1560 ; and Catherine, in concert with the cardinal of Lor- raine, had the chancellorship thus vacated conferred upon Michael de I'Hospital, a magistrate already celebrated and destined to become still more so. A ■». 1660. A few months, and hardly so much, after the accession of Francis La Eenau- ii_ g, serious matter brought into violent collision the three parties attempt, whose characteristics and dispositions have just been described. The supremacy of the Guises was insupportable to the reformers and irksome to raany lukewarm, or wavering members of the catholic nobility. An edict of the king's had revoked all the graces and alienations of domains granted by his father. The crown refused to pay its most lawful debts ; and duns were flocking to the court. To get rid of them, the cardinal of Lorraine had a proclamation issued by the king, warning all persons, of whatever condition, who had come to dun for payment of debts, for compensations or for graces, to take themselves off within twenty-four hours on pain of being hanged ; and, that it might appear how seriously meant the threat was, a very conspicuous gibbet was erected at Fontainebleau close to the palace. This affront led the Huguenots, assisted by the other malcontents, to form a scheme whereby the king should be seized, placed under a kind of surveillance, and the power of the La Renaudie^s conspiracy. 289 Lorraine princes destroyed for ever. Conde was evidently at the head of the plot, but the management of the whole affair was entrusted to a Perigord gentilhomme, Godefroid de Barry, sieur de la Eenaudie. So extensive a conspiracy, and necessarily involv- ing the participation of a large number of accomplices, could not long remain secret. The court was then at Blois, and on rumours being spread abroad of the discovery of a plot, Fran^-ois de Guise suddenly removed the king to Amboise, which could more easily be defended against a coup de main. The prince of Conde himself, though informed about the discovery of the plot, repaired to Amboise "Tumulte without showing any signs of being disconcerted at the cold recep- voiJ^' » tion offered him by the Lorraine princes. The duke of Guise, always bold, even in his precautions, " found an honourable means of making sure of him," says Castelnau, " by giving him the guard at a gate of the town of Amboise," where he had him under watch and ward himself. The lords and gentlemen attached to the court made sallies all around Amboise to prevent any unexpected attack. On the 18th of March, La Eenaudie, who was scouring the country, seeking to rally his men, encountered a body of royal horse who were equally hotly in quest of the conspirators ; the two detach- ments attacked one another furiously ; La Eenaudie was killed, and his body, which was carried to Amboise, was strung up to a gallows on the bridge over the Loire with this scroll : " This is La Eenaudie called La Forest, captain of the rebels, leader and author of the sedi- tion," The important result of the riot of Amboise (tumulte d'Amhoise), as it was called, was an ordinance of Francis II,, who, on the 17th of March, 1560, appointed Duke Francis of Guise " his lieutenant-general, representing him in person abdent and present in this good town of Amboise and other places of the realm, with full power, authority, commission and especial mandate to assemble all the princes, lords, and gentlemen, and generally to command, order, provide, and dispose of all things requisite and necessary." The Guises made a cruel use of their easy victory : " for a whole Cruelty of month," according to contemporary chronicles, " there was nothing ^^^ Guises but hanging or drowning folks. The Loire was covered with corpses strung, six, eight, ten and fifteen, to long poles. . . ." It was too much vengeance to take and too much punishment to inflict for a danger so short-lived and so strictly personal. There was, throughout a considerable portion of the country, a profound feeling of indignation against the Lorraine princes. One of their victims, Villemongey, just as it came to his turn to die, plunged his hands into his comrades' blood, saying, " Heavenly Father, this is the blood of Thy children : Thou wilt avenge it !" John d'Aubigne, a nobi&- V 290 History of France. man of Saintonge, as he passed through Amboise one market-day with his son, a little boy eight years old, stopped before the heada fixed upon the posts and said to the child, " My boy, spare not thy head, after mine, to avenge these brave chiefs ; if thou spare thyself, thou shalt have my curse upon thee." The Chancellor Olivier him- self, for a long while devoted to the Gaises, but now seriously ill and disquieted about the future of his soul, said to himself, quite low, as he saw the cardinal of Lorraine, from whom he had just received a visit, going out, " Ah ! cardinal, you are getting us all damned ! " Feeling in On all sides there was a demand for the convocation of the states- favonr of ggneral. The Guises and the queen-mother, who dreaded this great the states- . , , . , , . general. and independent national power, attempted to satisfy public opinion by calling an assembly of notables, not at all numerous, and chosen by themselves. It was summoned to meet on August 21, 1560, at Fontainebleau, in the apartments of the queen-mother. Some great lords, certain bishops, the constable De Montmorency, two marshals of France, the privy councillors, the knights of the order, the secre- taries of state and finance, Chancellor de I'Hospital and Coligny took part in it ; the king of Navarre and the prince of Conde did not respond to the summons they received ; the constable rode up with a following of six hundred horse. The cardinal of Lorraine having given his consent to the holding of the states-general, his opinion was adopted by the king, the queen-mother, and the assemblage. An edict dated August 26, convoked a meeting of They are the states-general at Meaux on the 10th of December following, convened. Meanwhile, it was announced that the punishment of sectaries would, for the present, be suspended, but that the king reserved to himself and his judges the right of severely chastising those who had armed the populace and kindled sedition. A T) ififio The elections to the states-general were very stormy; all parties Death of ' displayed the same ardour ; the Guises by identifying themselves Francis II. more and more with the Catholic cause, and employing, to further its triumph, all the resources of the government'; the reformers by appealing to the rights of liberty and to the passions bred of sect and of local independence. Despite the entreaties of their staunchest friends, the king of Navarre and Conde came to Orleans. The Guises who had sufficient proofs against the latter, caused him to be arrested as soon as he had entered the town, and wished to murder Navarre whom they could not get rid of by legal means. At the appointed moment, however, Fran9ois refused to give the signal, • and so this part of the scheme failed. In the meanwhile a special commission had been named to try Conde ; his fate had been sealed Protestantism in Europe. 291 beforehand ; he was condemned to death, and would have certainly- perished, had not the courageous L'Hospital refused to sign the sen- tence. Thus some time was gained, and as the king was on his death-bed a short delay proved the salvation of Conde's life. Francis II. died on the 5th of December ; he had reigned seventeen months. At the close of the fifteenth and at the commencement of the ^rotes- sixteenth centuries, religious questions had profoundly agitated Europe Christian Europe ; but towards the middle of the latter century they had obtained in the majority of European States solutions which, however incomplete, might be regarded as definitive. Germany was divided into Catholic States and Protestant States, which had established between themselves relations of an almost pacific character. Switzerland was entering upon the same course. In England, Scotland, the Low Countries, the Scandi- navian States, and the free towns their neighbours, the Eeforma- tion had prevailed or was clearly tending to prevail. In Italy, Spain, and Portugal, on the contrary, the Reformation had been stifled, and Catholicism remained victorious. It was in France that, notwithstanding the inequality of forces, the struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism was most obstinately maintained, and appeared for the longest time uncertain. Men were wonderfully far from understanding the principle of religious liberty in 1560, at the accession of Charles IX., a child ten years old ; around that royal child, and seeking to have the mastery over France by being masters over him, were struggling the three great parties at that time occupying the stage in the name of religion : the Catholics rejected altogether the idea of religious liberty for the Protestants ; the Protestants had absolute need of it, for it was their condition of existence ; but they did not wish for it in the case of the Catholics their adversaries. The third party (fiers parti), as we call it now-a-days, wished to hold the balance continually wavering between the Catholics and the Protestants, conceding to the former and the latter, alternately, that measure of liberty which was indispensable for most imperfect maintenance of the public peace and reconcilable with the sovereign power of the kingship. On such conditions was the government of Charles IX. to establish its existence. The new king, on announcing to the parliament the death of his Charles IX brother, wrote to them that " confiding in the virtues and prudence ^°^ °^ of the queen-mother, he had begged her to take in hand the administration of the kingdom, with the wise counsel and advice of the king of ITavarre, and the notables and great personages of n 2 292 History of France. the late king's council." A few months afterwards the states- general, assembling first at Orleans and afterwards at PontoisG, ratified this declaration by recognizing the placing of *' the young king Charles IX. 's guardianship in the hands of Catherine de' Medici, his mother, together with the principal direction of affairs, but without the title of regent." The king of Navarre was to assist her in the capacity of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Twenty-five members specially designated were to form the king's privy council. The Queen The queen-mother of France was, to use the words of the Vene- mother. ^^^^^ ambassador, John Michieli, who had lived at her court, " a Her cha- \ e . • racter. woman of forty -three, of affable manners, great moderation, superior intelligence, and ability in conducting all sorts of affairs, especially affairs of State. As mother, she has the personal management of the king ; she allows no one else to sleep in his room ; she is never away from him. As regent and head of the government, she holds everything in her hands, public offices, benefices, graces, and the seal which bears the king's signature, and which is called the cachet (privy-seal or signet). In the councU, she allows the others to speak ; she replies to any one who needs it ; she decides accord- ing to the advice of the council, or according to what she may have made up her own mind to. She opens the letters addressed to the king by his ambassadors and by all the ministers. . . . She has great designs, and does not allow them to be easily penetrated." The power really belonged to Catherine de' Medici, if she had only known how to keep it. She, however, merely took it away from the heads of the Guises, chiefs of the Catholic party, but did not make any use of it herself That Italian woman, adopting the old political principles of the Burgias, was incapable of holding the balance even between the energetic men who despised her ; she was out of her place in that epoch of strong persuasion, and L'Hospital himself could not carry out his ideas of strict imparti- ality — L'Hospital, that noble embodiment of wisdom which the storms of passion cannot shake. Guise soon recovered the influence he had lost at first, and the court rendered this easy for him by publishing the edicts of Saint Germain favourable to the Huguenots, and by admitting the divines of the Protestant persuasion to a solemn discussion at the colloque of Poissy. Whilst the Calvinists were revolting at Nismes, the followers of the Duke de Guise Massacre * massacred a company of Protestants at Yassy in Champagne (1562). of Vassy, The civil war was then begun. From 1561 to 1572 there were in France eighteen or twenty masisacres of Protestants, four or five of Catholics, and thirty 01 ** The Triumvirate" and the Protestant association, 293 forty single murders sufficiently important to have been kept in remembrance by history ; and during that space of time formal civil war, religious and partisan, broke out, stopped and recom- menced in four campaigns signalized, each of them, by great battles and four times terminated by impotent or deceptive treaties of peace, which, on the 24th of August, 1572, ended, for their sole result, in the greatest massacre of French history, the St. Bartho- lomew. The first religious war, under Charles IX., appeared on the The trium- point of breaking out in April, 1561, some days after that the duke Pirate, of Guise, returning from the massacre of Yassy, had entered Paris, on the 16th of March, in triumph. The queen-mother, in dis- may, carried off the king to Melun at first, and then to Fontaine- bleau, whilst the prince of Conde, having retired to Meaux, sum- moned to his side his relatives, his friends, and all the leaders of the reformers, and wrote to Coligny " that Ca3sar had not only crossed the Rubicon, but was already at Rome, and that his banners were beginning to wave all over the neighbouring country." For some days Catherine and L'Hospital tried to remain out of Paris with the young king, whom Guise, the constable De Mont- morency and the king of Navarre, the former being members and the latter an ally of the triumvirate, went to demand back from them. They were obliged to submit to the pressure brought to bear upon them. The constable was the first to enter Paris, and went, on the 2nd of April, and burnt down the two places of worship which, by virtue of the decree of January 17, 1561, had been granted to the Protestants. J^ext day the king of Navarre and the duke of Guise, in their turn, entered the city in company ■with Charles IX. and Catherine. A council was assembled at the Louvre to deliberate as to the declaration of war, which was deferred. Whilst the king was on his way back to Paris, Conde hurried off to take up his quarters at Orleans, whither Coligny association ■went promptly to join him. They signed with the gentlemen who of the Pro- came to them from all parts a compact of association " for the g^jg^^ honour of God, for the liberty of the king, his brothers and the queen-mother, and for the maintenance of decrees ; " and Conde, in writing to the protestant princes of Germany to explain to them his conduct, took the title of protector of the house and crown of France. Negotiations still went on for nearly three months. The chiefs of the two parties attempted to offer one another generous and pacific solutions j they even had two interviews ; but Catherine was induced by the Catholic triumvirate to expressly declare that she could not allow in France more than one single form of 294 History of France, A.D. 1562. Battle of Dreuz (Dec. 19). A.D. 1583. The Due de Guise sliot worship. Conde and hia friends said that they could not laj down their arms until the triumvirate was overthrown, and the execution of decrees granting them liberty of worship, in certain places and to a certain extent, had been secured to them. ^N^either party liked to acknowledge itself beaten in this way, without having struck a blow. On both sides was displayed equal enthusiasm ; the first armies that were raised distinguished themselves by the utmost strictness ; no debauchery, no gambling, no swearing j religious worship morn- ing and evening. But under these externals of piety the hearts retained aU their cruelty. Montluc, governor of Guienne, went about accompanied by a band of executioners. He says himself in his memoirs : " on pouvoit cognoistre par ou U etoit passe, car par les arbres sur les chemins on en trouvoit les enseignes." In the pro- vince of Dauphine, a Protestant chieftain, baron des Adrets, retali- ated in the most cruel manner. He obliged his prisoners to throw themselves down from the top of a high tower on the pikes and spears of his soldiers. Guise was, first, conqueror at Dreux; he made a prisoner of Conde, general of the Protestant army, and gave on that occasion proofs of a generosity which could scarcely have been expected under such circumstances. He shared his bed with his captive, " and so," says La Noue, " these two great princes, who were like mortal foes, found themselves in one bed, one triumphant and the other captive, taking their repast together." The results of the battle of Dreux were serious, and still more serious from the fate of the chiefs than from the number of the dead. The commanders of the two armies, the constable De Montmorency and the prince of Conde, were wounded and prisoners. One of the triumvirs. Marshal de Saint-Andre, had been killed in action. The Catholics' wavering aUy, Anthony de Bourbon, king of Navarre, had died before the battle of a wound which he had received at the siege of Eouen ; and on his death- bed had resumed his protestant bearing, saying that, if God granted him grace to get well, he would have nothing but the Gospel preached throughout the realm. The two stafis (etats- majors), as we should now say, were disorganized : in one, the duke of Guise alone remained unhurt and at liberty ; in the other, Coligny, in Conde's absence, was elected general-in-chief of the Protestants. Orleans was at that time the principal stronghold of the Protestant party ; it would certainly have been taken but for the assassination of Guise whom the protestant gentleman Poltrot de Mere shot in the most treacherous manner (1563). Whatevei Guise murdered. — Peace of Amboist. 295 may have been the ambition of that celebrated man, it is impossible not to feel some respect for him, who addressed to his murderer the following noble words : " Or 9a, je veux vous montrer combien la religion que je tiens est plus douce que celle de quoi vous faites profession : la votre vous a conseQle de me tuer sans m'ouir, n'ayant re9u de moi aucune offense ; et la mienne me commande que je vous pardonne, tout convaincu que vous etes de m'avoir voulu tuer sans raison." Arrested, removed to Paris, put to the Arrest and torture and questioned by the commissioners of parliament, Pol- ^?^ emna- trot at one time confirmed and at another disavowed his original Pol trot de assertions. Coligny, he said, had not suggested the project to ^^'^®' him, but had cognizance of it, and had not attempted to deter him. The decree sentenced Poltrot to the punishment of regicides. He underwent it on the 18th of March, 1563, in the Place de Greve, preserving to the very end that fierce energy of hatred and ven- geance which had prompted his deed. He was heard saying to himself in the midst of his torments and as if to comfort himself, " For all that, he is dead and gone — the persecutor of the faithful, and he will not come back again." The angry populace insulted him with yells ; Poltrot added, " If the persecution does not cease, vengeance will fall upon this city, and the avengers are already at hand." Catherine de' Medici, well pleased, perhaps, that there was now a question personally embarrassing for the admiral and as yet in abeyance, had her mind entirely occupied apparently with the additional weakness and difficulty resulting to the position of the crown and the Catholic party from the death of the duke of Guise ; she considered peace necessary; and, for reasons of a different nature. Chancellor de rHos])ital was of the same opinion : he drew attention to " scruples of conscience, the perils of foreign influence, and the impossibility of curing by an application of brute force a malady concealed in the very bowels and brains of the people." Negotiations were entered into with the two captive generals, the A.D. 1563 prince of Conde and the constable De Montmorency ; they assented . ^^^." ^ "^ "^ Amboise. to that policy; and, on the 19th of March, peace was concluded at Amboise in the form of an edict which granted to the Protestants the concessions recognized as indispensable by the crown itself, and regulated the relations of the two creeds, pending " the remedy of time, the decisions of a holy council, and the king's majority." Liberty of conscience and the practice of the religion "called reformed " were recognized " for all barons and lords high -justiciary, in their houses, with their families and dependants ; for nobles having fiefs ■without vassals and living on the king's lands, but for 20 History of France. opinion amongst the Pro- testants. them aud their families personally." The burgesses were treated less favourably ; the reformed worship was maintained in the towns in which it had been practised up to the 7th of March in the current year; but beyond that aud noblemen's mansions, thia worship might not be celebrated, save in the faubourgs of one single town in every bailiwick or seneschal ty. Paris and its district were to remain exempt from any exercise "of the said reformed religion." During the negotiations, and as to the very basis of the edict of March 19, 1563, the Protestants were greatly divided : the soldiers Division of and the politicians, with Conde at their head, desired peace, and thought that the concessions made by the Catholics ought to be accepted. The majority of the reformed pastors and theologians cried out against the insufficiency of the concessions, and were astonished that there should be so much hurry to make peace when the Catholics had just lost their must formidable captain. It was not long before facts put the malcontents in the right. Between 1563 and 1567 murders of distinguished Protestants increased strangely, and excited amongst their families anxiety accompanied by a thirst for vengeance. The Guises and their party, on their side, persisted in their outcries for proceedings against the instigators, known or presumed, of the murder of Duke Francis. It was plainly against Admiral de Coligny that these cries were directed ; the king and the queen-mother could find no other way of stopping an explosion than to call the matter on before the privy council and cause to be there drawn up, on the 29th of January, 1566, a solemn decree "declaring the admiral's innocence on his own affirmation, given in the presence of the king and the council as before God himself, that he had not had anything to do with or approved of the said homicide." Silence for all time to come was consequently imposed upon the attorney- general and everybody else ; inhibition and prohibition were issued against the continuance of any investigation or prosecution. At the same time that the war was proceeding amongst the provinces with this passionate doggedness, royal decrees were alternately confirming and suppressing or weakening the securities for liberty and safety which the decree of Amboise, on the 19th of March, 1563, had given to the Protestants by way of re-establishing peace. It was a series of contradictory measures which were sufficient to show the party-btrife stiU raging in the heart of the government. Even Conde could not delude himself any longer : the preparations were for war against the reformers. He quitted the court to take his stand again with his own party. Coligny, Royal de crees. Second and third religious wars. 297 D'Andelot, La Eochefoucauld, La I^oue, and all tlie accredited leaders amongst the Protestants, whom his behaviour, too full of confidence or of complaisance towards the court, had shocked or disquieted, went and joined him. In September, 1567, the second A D 1567. religious war broke out. Second re^ ... ligious It was short and not decisive for either party. At the outset of war. the campaign, success was with the Protestants ; forty towns, Orleans, Montereau, Lagny, Montauban, Castres, Montpellier, Uzes, &c., opened their gates to them or fell into their hands. They were within an ace of surprising the king at Monceaux, and he never forgot, says Montluc, that " the Protestants had made him do the stretch from Meaux to Paris at something more than a walk." Defeated at St. Denis (November 10, 1567), but still powerful, Coligny and Conde imposed upon the court the peace of Longjumeau (1568 ; 'paix hoiteuse ou mal assise) confirming the terms of that of Amboise. Scarcely six months having elapsed, in August, 1568, the third a.D. 1568. religious war broke out. The written guarantees given in the ^J^i^^d ^^^^' treaty of Longjumeau for security and liberty on behalf of the Protestants were misinterpreted or violated. Massacres and mur- ders of Protestants became more numerous, and were committed with more impunity than ever : in 1568 and 1569, at Amiens, at Auxerre, at Orleans, at Kouen, at Bourges, at Troyes, and at Blois, Protestants, at one time to the number of 140 or 120, or 53, or 40, and at another singly, with just their wives and children, were massacred, burnt, and hunted by the excited populace, without any intervention on the part of the magistrates to protect them or to punish their murderers. The contemporary protestant chroniclers set down at ten thousand the number of victims who perished in the course of these six months which were called a time of peace : we may, with De Thou, believe this estimate to be exaggerated, but, without doubt, the peace of Longjumeau was a lie, even before the war began again. The queen-mother attempted to take possession of the two Protestant leaders ; Conde, however, managed to enter La Rochelle. The protestant nobles of Saintonge and Poitou flocked in. A royal Jeanne ally was announced ; the queen of JS^avarre, Jeanne d'Albret, was r - ^^^^ bringing her son Henry, fifteen years of age, whom she was training Protes- up to be Henry IV. Conde went to meet them, and, on the 28th t^^^s. of September, 1568, all this flower of- French Protestantism was assembled at La Eochelle, ready and resolved to strike another blow for the cause of religious liberty. It was the longest and most serious of the four wars of this kind 298 History of France. which so profoundly agitated France in the reign of Charles IX. This one lasted from the 24th of August, 1568, to the 8th of August. 1570, between the departure of Conde and Coligny for La Rochelle and the treaty of peace of St. Germain-en-Laye : a hollow peace, like the rest, and only two years before the St. Bartholomew. On starting from Noyers with Coligny, Conde had addressed to the king, on the 23rd of August, a letter and a request wherein "after having set forth the grievances of the reformers, he attributed aU the mischief to the cardinal of Lorraine, and declared that the protestant nobles felt themselves constrained, for the safety of the realm, to take up arms against that infamous priest, that tiger oj France, and against his accomplices." He bitterly reproached the Guises " with treating as mere policists, that is, men who sacrifice religion to temporal interests, the Catholics inclined to make con- cessions to the reformers, especially the chancellor De I'Hospitai and the sons of the late constable De Montmorency. The Guises, indeed, and their friends, did not conceal their distrust of De I'Hos- pitai, any more than he concealed his opposition to their deeds and I'Hospitai their designs. Convinced that he would not succeed in preserving from Dub- Fi'^^c^ from a fresh civil war, the chancellor made up his mind to lie life. withdraw, and with him all moderation departed from the councils of the king. During the two years that it lasted, from August, 1568, to August, 1570, the third religious war under Charles IX. entailed two important battles and many deadly faction-fights which spread and inflamed to the highest pitch the passions of the two parties. Notwithstanding their defeat at Jarnac and Moncontour (1569), notwithstanding the death of Conde and the wound of Coligny, the Protestants were still able to obtain from their enemies a favour- able peace. The negotiations were short. The war had been going on for two years. The two parties, victorious and vanquished by turns, were both equally sick of it. In vain did Philip II., king of Spain, offer Charles IX. an aid of nine thousand men to continue it. In vain did Pope Pius V. write to Catherine de' Medici, " as there can be no communion between Satan and the children of the light, it ought to be taken for certain that there can be no compact between Catholics and heretics, save one full of fraud and feint." " We had beaten our enemies," says Montluc, " over and over again ; but notwithstanding that, they had so much influence in the king's council, that the decrees were always A.D. 1570. to their advantage. We won by arms, but they won by those St Ger- devils of documents." Peace was concluded at St. Germain-en-Laye main. on the 8th of August, 1570, and it was more equitable and better Marriage of Henry of Navarre. 299 for the reformers than the preceding treaties ; for, besides a pretty large extension as regarded free exercise of their worship and their civil rightB in the State, it granted " for two years, to the princes of N^avarrc and Conde and twenty noblemen of the religion, who were appointed by the king, the wardenship of the towns of La Eochelle, Cognac, Montauban, and La Charite, whither those of the religion who dared not return so soon to their own homes might retire." All the members of the parliament, all the royal and municipal officers and the principal inhabitants of the towns where the two religions existed were further bound over on oath " to maintenance of the edict." Peace was made ; but it was the third in seven years, and very shortly after each new treaty civil war had recommenced. No more was expected from the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye than had been effected by those of Amboise and Longjumeau, and on both sides men sighed for something more stable and definitive. By what means to be obtained, and with what pledges of dura- bility 1 There had already, thirteen or fourteen years previously, been Henry oi some talk about a marriage between Henry of N'avarre and Mar- Navarre guerite de Valois, each born in 1553. This union between the two jj^j. branches of the royal house, one catholic and the other protestant, guerite de ought to have been the most striking sign and the surest pledge of • peace between Catholicism and Protestantism. The political expe- diency of such a step appeared the more evident and the more urgent, in proportion as the religious war had become more direful, and the desire for peace more general. Charles IX. embraced the idea passionately, being the only means, he said, of putting a stop at last to this incessantly renewed civil war, which was the plague of his life as well as of his kingdom. A fact of a personal Charles IX character tended to mislead Coligny, By his renown, by the lig^y loftiness oi his views, by the earnest gravity of his character and his language, he had produced a great effect upon Charles IX., a young king of warm imagination and impressible and sympathetic temperament, but, at the same time, of weak judgment. He readily gave way, in Coligny's company, to outpourings which had all the appearance of perfect and involuntary frankness ; and even seemed to entertain seriously the idea of sending an army to the relief of the persecuted Protestants in the ITetherlands. This tone of freedom and confidence had inspired Coligny with reciprocal confidence ; he believed himself to have a decisive influence over the king's ideas and conduct ; and when the Protestants testified their distrust upon this subject, he reproached them vehemently for 300 History of France^ it ; he affirmed tlie king's good intentions and sincerity ; and h« considered himself in fact, said Catherine de' Medici with temper, " a second king of France." How much sincerity was there about these outpourings of Charles IX. in his intercourse with Coligny and how much i-'ality in the Was the admiral's influence over the king % "We are touching upon that massacre . . . . o jr on St. Bar- great historical question which has been so much disputed : was tholomew s \^q g|;^ Bartholomew a design, long ago determined upon and meditated prepared for, of Charles IX. and his government, or an almost or not ? sudden resolution, brought about by events and the situation of the moment, to which Charles IX. was egged on, not without diffi- culty, by his mother Catherine and his advisers ? Without giving either to Catherine de' Medici or to her sons the honour of either so long a course of dissimulation or of so cunningly arranged a stratagem, it is not unnatural to believe that whilst con- ceding the advantageous terms of the peace of Saint-Germain, they looked forward ultimately to something like the horrible tragedy of Saint Bartholomew's day ; and yet we may reasonably question even if the massacre would have taken place, had not the Catholics dreaded the influence which Coligny seemed about to assume over the weak mind of the king. Catherine and the Duke d'Anjou in their turn, and as a last resource, worked upon the feelings of that wretched monarch, and finally led him to sanction the massacre of the Protestants just as easily as he would have done that of the principal Catholic leaders. Col' n ^^ Friday the 22nd of August, 1572, Coligny was returning on wounded foot from the Louvre to the Rue des Fosses-St.-Germain-l'Auxerrois, (Aug. 22). -vvhere he lived ; he was occupied in reading a letter, which he had just received ; a shot, fired from the window of a house in the cloister of St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, smashed two fingers of his right hand and lodged a baU in his left arm; he raised his eyes, pointed- out with his injured hand the house whence the shot had come, and reached his quarters on foot. Two gentlemen who were in attendance upon him rushed to seize the murderer ; it was too late \ Maurevert had been lodging there, and on the watch for three days at the house of a canon, an old tutor to the duke of Guise ; a horse from the duke's stable was waiting for him at the back of the house ; and, having done his job, he departed at a gallop. He was pursued for several leagues without being overtaken. Coligny sent to apprise the king of what had just happened to him : " There," said he, " was a fine proof of fidelity to the agreement between him and the duke of Guise." *' I ?haU never have rest, then ! " cried Charles, breaking the stick witti which he Coligny murdered. 301 was playing tennis with the duke of Guise and Teligny, the admiral's son-in-law ; and he immediately returned to his room. The duke of Guise took himself off without a word. Teligny speedily joined his father-in-law. Ambrose Pare had already attended to him, cutting off the two broken fingers ; somebody expressed a fear that the balls might have been poisoned ; " It will be as God pleases as to that," said Coligny j and, turning towards the minister, Merlin, who had hurried to him, he added, "pray that He may grant me the gift of perseverance." Towards mid-day, ^is inter. Marshals de Damville, De Cosse, and De Yillars went to see him Damville " out of pure friendship," they told him, '* and not to exhort him Cosse and to endure his mishap with patience : we know that you wiU not * lack patience." '* I do protest to you," said Coligny, " that death affrights me not ; it is of God that I hold my life ; when He requires it back from me, I am quite ready to give it up. But I should very much like to see the king before I die 3 I have to speak to him of things which concern his person and the welfare of his State, and which I feel sure none of you would dare to tell him of." " I will go and inform his Majesty, . . ." rejoined Damville ; and he went out with Villars and Teligny, leaving Marshal de Cosse in the room. '* Do you remember," said Coligny to him, " the warnings I gave you a few hours ago % You will do well to take your precautions." About two p.m. the king, the queen-mother, and the dukes of Anjou and Alen9on, her two other sons, with many of their high officers, repaired to the admiral's. " My dear father," said the king as he went in, " the hurt is yours ; the grief and the outrage mine ; but I will take such vengeance that it shall never be for- gotten," to which he added his usual imprecations. Saturday passed quietly. On Sunday, August 24, between two Heiskillea and three o'clock in the morning, (/osseins, the commander of the ^ king's guards, Besme, a servant of the duke de Guise, and several others, broke open the door of CoHgny's house, and forced their way into his bedroom, where Besme plunged a sword into his bosom, the rest despatched him with iheir daggers; and Besme called out of the window to the duke de Guise, who, with other Catholics, was waiting in the court below, " It is done." At the command of the duke, the body was then thrown out of the window to him, when having wiped away the blood to see his features, he said, " It is he himself," and then gave a kick to ** that venerable face, which when alive was dreadful to aU the murderers of France." Now the great beU of the palace, and the bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois were answered by the bells of all the churches, the Swiss guards wera 302 History of France, General massacre (Aug. 24). Escape of M. de Leran. under arms, and the city militia poured through the streets. Once let loose, the Parisian populace was eager indeed, but not alone in its eagerness, for the work of massacre ; the gentlemen of the court took part in it passionately, from a spirit of vengeance, from reli- gious hatred, from the effect of' smelling blood, from covetousness at the prospect of confiscations at hand. Teligny, the admiral's son- in-law, had taken refuge on a roof; the duke of Anjou's guards made him a mark for their arquebuses. La Rochefoucauld, with ■whom the king had been laughing and joking up to eleven o'clock the evening before, heard a knocking at his door, in the king's name ; it is opened ; enter six men in masks and poniard him. The new queen of N"avarre, Marguerite de Yalois, had gone to bed by express order of her mother Catherine : "Just as I was asleep," says she, " behold a man knocking with feet and hands at the door and shouting, ' Navarre ! ISTavarre ! ' My nurse, thinking it was the king my husband, runs quickly to the door and opens it. It was a gentleman named M. de Leran, who had a sword-cut on the elbow, a gash from a halberd on the arm, and was still pursued by four archers, who all came after him into my bedroom. He, wishing to save himself; threw himself on to my bed ; as for me, feeling this man who had hold of me, I threw myself out of bed towards the wall, and he after me, stUl holding me round the body. I did not know this man, and I could not tell whether he had come thither to offer me violence, or whether the archers were after him in particular or after me. We both screamed, and each of us was as much frightened as the other. At last it pleased God that M. de ]S"an9ay, captain of the guards, came in, who, finding me in this plight, though he felt compassion, could not help laughing ; and, flying into a great rage with the archers for this indiscretion, he made them begone and gave me the life of that poor man, who had, hold of me, whom I had put to bed and attended to in my closet, until he was well." "We might multiply indefinitely these anecdotical scenes of the massacre, most of them brutally ferocious, others painfully pathetic, some generous and calculated to preserve the credit of humanity amidst one of its most direful aberrations. We will not pause either to discuss the secondary questions which meet us at the period of which we are telling the story; for example, the question whether Charles IX. fired with his own hand on his protestant subjects, whom he had delivered over to the evil passions of the aristocracy and of the populace, or whether the balcony from which he is said to have indulged in this ferocious pastime existed at that time, in the sixteenth century, at the palace of the Louvre and St. Bartholomezu' s day. 303 overlooking the Seine. The great historic fact of the St. Bartho- lomew is what we confine ourselves to. When he had plunged into the orgies of the massacre, when, after having said " Kill them all ! " he had seen the slaughter of his companions in his royal amusements, Teligny and La Rochefoucauld, Charles IX. abandoned himself to a fit of mad passion. He was asked whether the two young huguenot princes, Henry of I^avarre and Henry de Conde, were to be killed also ; Marshal de Retx had been in favour of it ; Marshal de Tavannes had been opposed to it ; and it waa decided to spare them. The historians, catholic or protestant, contemporary or research- ful, differ widely as to the number of the victims in this cruel mas- sacre : according to De Thou, there were about 2000 persons killed in Paris the first day ; D'Aubigne says 3000 ; Brantome speaks of 4000 bodies that Charles IX. might have seen floating down the Seine; la Popehniere reduces them to 1000. The uncertainty is ugg^its 01 still greater when one comes to speak of the number of victims St, Bar- throughout the whole of France ; De Thou estimates it at 30,000, gij'^°°^«^» Sully at 70,000, Perefixe, archbishop of Paris in the seventeenth century, raises it to 100,000 ; Papirius Masson and Davila reduce it to 10,000, without clearly distinguishing between the massacre of Paris and those of the provinces ; other historians fix upon 40,000. Great uncertainty also prevails as to the execution of the orders issued from Paris to the governors of the provinces ; the names of the viscount D'Orte, governor at Bayonne, and of John le Hennuyer, bishop of Lisieux, have become famous from their hav- ing refused to take part in the massacre ; but the authenticity of the letter from the viscount D'Urte to Charles IX. is disputed, though the fact of his resistance appears certain. One thiiig which is quite true and which it is good to call to mind in the midst of so great a general criminality is that, at many spots in France, it met with a refusal to be associated in it ; President Jeannia at Dijon, the count de Tende in Provence, Philibert de la Guiche at Macon, Tanneguy le Yeneur de Carrouge at Rouen, the count de Gordes in Dauphiny, and many other chiefs, military or civil, openly repudiated the example set by the murderers of Paris ; and the municipal body of l^antes, a very catholic toAvn, took upon this subject a resolution which does honour to its patriotic firmness as well as to its Chris- tian loyalty. A.D. 1573. A great, good man, a great functionary and a great scholar, in ^ospital disgrace for six years past, the chancellor Michael de I'Hospital gave office in his resignation on the Ist of February, 1573, and died six weeks ^^^ ),and afterwards, on the 18th of March : " I am just at the end of my ^Mar. 18). 304 History of France, Attitude of the Protes- tants. A,D. 1572. Fourth re. ligious war. Siege of La Kt- chelU. long journey, and shall have no more business but with God/' he wrote to the king and the queen-mother. " I implore Him to give you His grace and to lead you with His hand in all your affairs, and in the government of this great and beautiful kingdom which He hath committed to your keeping, with all gentleness and clemency towards your good subjects, in imitation of Himself, who is good and patient in bearing our burthens, and prompt to forgive you and pardon you everything " The tardy and lying accusations officially brought against Coligny and his friends ; the promises of liberty and security for the Pro- testants, renewed in the terms of the edicts of pacification and, in point of fact, annulled at the very moment at which they were being renewed 5 the massacre continuing here and there in France, at one time with the secret connivance and at another notwithstanding the publicly -given word of the king and the queen-mother ; all this policy, at one and the same time violent and timorous, incoherent and stubborn, produced amongst the Protestants two contrary effects: Bome grew frightened, others angry. At court, under the direct influence of the king and his surroundings, ** submission to the powers that be " prevailed ; many fled \ others, without abjuring their religion, abjured their party. The two reformer-princes, Henry of I^avarre and Henry de Conde, attended mass on the 29th of September, and, on the 3rd of October, wrote to the Pope deploring their errors and giving hopes of their conversion. Far away from Paris, in the mountains of the Pyrenees and of Languedoc, in the towns where the reformers were numerous and confident, at San- cerre, at Montauban, at Nimes, at La Eochelle, the spirit of resist- ance carried the day. An assembly, meeting at Milhau, drew up a provisional ordinance for the government of the reformed Church, "until it please God, who has the hearts of kings in His keeping, to change that of King Charles IX. and restore the State of France to good order, or to raise up such neighbouring prince as is mani- festly marked out, by his virtue and by distinguishing signs for to be the liberator of this poor afflicted people." In l^ovember, 1572, the fourth religious war broke out. The siege of La Eochelle was its only important event. Charles IX. and his councillors exerted themselves in vain to avoid it. There was everything to disquiet them in this enterprise : so sudden a revival of the religious war after the grand blow they had just struck, the passionate energy manifested by the Protestants in asylum at La Eochelle, and the help they had been led to hope for from Queen Elizabeth, whom England would never have forgiven &'r indifference in this cause. Death of Charles IX. 3^5 Biron first, and then the duke of Anjou in person took the com- mand of the siege. They brought up, it is said, 40,000 men and 60 pieces of artillery. The Eochellese, for defensive strength, had but 22 companies of refugees or inhabitants, making in all 3100 men. The siege lasted from the 26th of February to the 13th of June, 1573 ; six assaults were made on the place ; in the last, the ladders had been set at night against the wall of what was called Gospel bastion ; the duke of Guise, at the head of the assailants, had escaladed the breach, but there he discovered a new ditch and a new rampart erected inside; and, confronted by these unforeseen obstacles, the men recoiled and fell back. La Eochelle was saved, Charles IX. was more and more desirous of peace ; his brother, the duke of Anjou, had just been elected king of Poland ; Charles IX. Avas anxious for him to leave France, and go to take possession of his new kingdom. Thanks to these complications, the Peace of La RocheUe was signed on the 6th of July, 1573. Liberty of creed and worship was recognized in the three towns of La Eochelle, Montauban, and Nimes. They were not obliged to receive any royal garrison, on condition of giving hostages to be kept by the king for two years. Liberty of worship throughout the extent of their jurisdiction continued to be recognized in the case of lords high-justiciary. Everywhere else the reformers had promises of not being persecuted for their creed, under the obligation of never hold- ing an assembly of more than ten persons at a time. These were the most favourable conditions they had yet obtained. Certainly this was not what the king had calculated upon when he consented to the massacre of the Protestants : " Provided," he had sail, " that not a single one is left to reproach me." Charles IX. had not mind or character sufficiently sound or sufficiently strong to suppo t, without great perturbation, the effect of so many violent, re- peater and often contradictory impressions. In the spring of 1574, at A.D. 1574. the age of twenty-three years and eleven months, and after a reign ot ^^^\ -r^ eleven years and six months, Charles IX. was attacked by an in- flammatory malady, which brought on violent hemorrhage ; he was revisited, in his troubled sleep, by the same bloody visions about which, a few days after the St. Bartholomew, he had spoken to his physician, Ambrose Pare. He no longer retained in his room any- body but two of his servants and his nurse, " of whom he was very fond, although she was a huguenot," says the contemporary chro- nicler Peter de I'Estoile. " When she had lain down upon a chest and was just beginning to doze, hearing the king moaning, weeping and sighing, she went full gently up to the bed : ' K}a. ! nurse, nurse,' said the king, ' what bloodshed and what murders ! Ah ! what X ao6 History of Fratice, evil counsel have I followed ! Oh ! my God, forgive me them and h'^T^t l^^ve mercy upon me, if it may please Thee ! I know not what moments, hath come to me, so bewildered and agitated do they make me. What will be the end of it all % What shall I do 1 I am lost ; I see it welL' Then said the nurse to him : ' Sir, the murders be on the heads of those who made you do them ! Of yourself, sir, you never could ; and since you are not consenting thereto and are sorry therefor, believe that God wiU not put them down to your account, and will hide them with the cloak of justice of His Son, to whom alone you must have recourse. But, for God's sake, let your Majesty cease weeping!' And thereupon, having been to fetch him a pocket-handkerchief because his own was soaked with tears, after that the king had taken it from her hand, he signed to her to go away and leave him to his rest." On Sunday, J^Iay 30, 1574, Whitsunday, about three in the afternoon, Charles IX. expired, after having signed an ordinance conferring the regency upon his mother Catherine, "who accepted it," was the expression in the letters patent, " at the request of the duke of Aleu9on, the king of Navarre, and other princes and peers of France." According to D'Aubigne, Charles often used to say of his brother Henry that, " when he had a kingdom on his hands, the administration would find him out and that he would disappoint those who had hopes of him." The last words he said were '" that he was glad not to have left any young child to succeed him, very well knowing that France needs a man, and that, with a child, the king and the reign are unhappy." A.D. 1573. Though elected king of Poland on the 9th of May, 1573, Henry, duke of duke of Anjou, had not yet left Paris at the end of the summer. Anjou, Impatient at his slowness to depart, Charles IX said, with his Poland usual oath, " By God's death ! my brother or I must at once leave the kingdom ; my mother shall not succeed in preventing it." " Go," said Catherine to Henry : " you will not be away long." She foresaw, with no great sorrow one would say, the death of Charles IX., and her favourite son's accession to the throne of France. Having arrived in Poland on the 25th of January, 1574, and being crowned at Cracow on the 24th of February, Henry had been scarcely four months king of Poland when he was apprised, about the middle of June, that his brother Charles had lately died, on the 30th of May, and that he was king of France. " Do not waste your time in deliberating," said his French advisers : "you must go and take possession of the throne of France without abdicating that of Poland ; go at once and without fuss." Henry followed this counseL Having started from Cracow on the 18th of HENRY II. Henry III. King of France. 307 June, 1574, he did not arrive until the 5th of Septemher at Lyons, Returns to whither the queen-mother had sent his brother the duke of Alencon France— ^ * ascends and his brother-in-law the king of Navarre to receive him, going the throne, herself as far as Bourgoin in Dauphiny in order to be the first to Bee her darling son again. The king's entry into France caused, says De Thou, a strange revulsion in all minds. " During the lifetime of Charles IX. none had seemed more worthy of the throne than Henry, and everybody desired to have him for master. But scarcely had he arrived wheu disgust set in to the extent of auguring very ill of his reign. The time was ill chosen by him for becoming an indolent and volup- tuous king, set upon taking his pleasure in his court, and isolating himself from his people. The condition and ideas of France were also changing, but to issue in the assumption of quite a different character, and to receive development in quite a different direction. Catholics or Protestants, agents of the king's government or mal- contents, all were getting a taste for, and adopting the practice of independence, and a vigorous and spontaneous activity. The bonds _ of the feudal system were losing their hold, and were not yet country, replaced by those of a hierarchically organized administration. Eeligious creeds and political ideas were becoming, for thoughtful and straightforward spirits, rules of conduct, powerful motives of action, and they furnished the ambitious with effective weapons. It was in a condition of disorganization and red-hot anarchy that Henry III., on his return from Poland, and after the St. Bar- tholomew, found Fiance ; it was in the face of all these forces, fuU of life, but scattered and excited one against another, that, with the aid of his mother Catherine, he had to re-establish unity in the State, the efficiency of the government, and the public peace. It was not a task for which the tact of an utterly corrupted woman and an irresolute prince sufficed. What could the artful manoeuvrings of Catherine and the waverings of Henry III. do towards taming both Catholics and Protestants at the same time, and obliging them to live at peace with one another under one equitable and effective power ] Henry and Catherine aspired to no more than resuming their policy of manoeuvring and wavering between the two parties engaged in the struggle ; but it was not for so poor a residt that the ardent Catholics had committed the crime of the St. Bartholomew : they promised themselves from it the decisive victory of their Church and of their supremacy. Henry de Guise came forward as their leader in this grand design. When, in 1575, first the duke of Anjou and after him the king of iJ^avarre were seen flying X 2 30S Flistory of France, from the court of Henry III. and commencing an insurrection with the aid of a considerable body of German auxUiarios and French refugees already on French soil and on their way across Champagne, the peril of the Catholic Church appeared so grave and so urgent that, in the threatened provinces, the Catholics devoted themselves with ardour to the formation of a grand asso- ciation for the defence of their cause. Then and thus was really "The ^^ born the League, secret at iirst, but, before long, publicly and openly proclaimed, which held so important a place in the history of the sixteenth century. Henry de Guise did not hesitate to avow the League and labour to propagate it; he did what was far more effectual for its success : he entered the field and gained a victory. The German allies and French refugees, who had come to support Prince Henry de Conde and the duke of Anjou in their insurrec- tion, advanced into Champagne. Guise had nothing ready, neither army nor money ; he mustered in haste three thousand horse who were to be followed by a body of foot and a moiety of the king's guards. He set out in pursuit of the Germans, came up with them on the 10th of October, 1575, at Port-a-Binson, on the Marne, and ordered them to be attacked by his brother the duke of Mayenne, whom he supported vigorously. They were broken and routed. He had himself been wounded : he went in obstinate pursuit of a Guise (le mounted foe whom he had twice touched with his sword, and who, Balafre)_ in return, had fired two pistol-shots, of which one took effect in the ^ead^shiD ^®S> ^^^ ^^^ other carried away part of his cheek and his left ear. Thence came his name of Henry the Scarred {le Bdlafre) which has clung to him in history. Scarcely four years had rolled away since the St. Bartholomew. In vain had been the massacre of 10,000 Protestants, according to the lowest, and of 100,000, according to the highest estimates, besides nearly aU the renowned chiefs of the party. Admiral Coligny was succeeded by the king of N'avarre, who was destined to become Henry TV. ; and Duke Francis of Guise by his son Henry, if not as able, at any rate as brave a soldier, and a more determined Catholic than he. Amongst the Protestants, Sully and Du Plessis-Mornay were assuming shape and importance by the side of the king of Navarre. Catherine de' Medici placed at her son's service her Italian adroitness, her maternal devotion and an energy rare for a woman between sixty and seventy years of age, for forty-three years a queen, and worn out by intrigue and business A.D. 1576 combined with pleasure. —1588. 'Tjjjg state of things continued for twelve years, from 1576 to V&riotis • attempts 1588, with constant alternations of war, truoe, and precarious to peace. Difficult position of Henry III. 309 peace, and in the midst of constant hesitation on the part of Henry III., "between alliance with the League, commanded by the duke of Guise, and adjustment with the Protestants, of whom the king of IsTavarre was every day becoming the more and more avowed leader. Between 1576 and 1580, four treaties of peace were con- cluded : in 1576, the peace called Monsieur's, signed at Chastenay in Orleanness; in 1577, the peace of Bergerac or of Poitiers; in 1579, the peace of !N^erac ; in 1580, the peace of Fleix in Perigord. In !N"ovember, 1576, the states-general were convoked and assem- bled at Blois, where they sat and deliberated up to March, 1577, without any important result. Neither these diplomatic con- J^®y *^' ventions nor these national assemblies had force enough to esta- blish a real and lasting peace between the two parties, for the parties themselves would not have it ; in vain did Henry III. make concessions and promises of liberty to the Protestants ; he was not in a condition to guarantee their execution and make it respected by their adversaries. ' At heart neither Protestants nor Catholics were for accepting mutual liberty; not only did they both consider themselves in possession of all religious truth, but they also considered themselves entitled to impose it by force upon their adversaries. From 1576 to 1588, Henry III. had seen the difficulties of his government continuing and increasing. His attempt to maintain his own independence and the mastery of the situation between Catholics and Protestants, by making concessions and promises at one time to the former and at another to the latter, had not suc- ceeded ; and, in 1584, it became still more difficult to practise. On the 10th of June in that year Henry III.'s brother, the duke of Anjou, died at Chateau-Thierry. By this death the leader of the Protestants, Henry, king of ITavarre, became lawful heir to the throne of France. The Leaguers could not stomach that prospect. The Guises turned it to formidable account. They did not hesitate to make the future of France a subject of negotiation with Philip II. of Spain, at that time her most dangerous enemy in Europe. By a a,D. 1584. secret convention concluded at Joinville on the 31st of December, The car- 1584, between Philip and the Guises, it was stipulated that at the Bourbon death of Henry III. the crown should pass to Charles, cardinal of proposed Bourbon, sixty-four years of age, the king of Navarre's uncle, who, ^^^I^^f ^* in order to make himself king, undertook to set aside his nephew's France, hereditary right and forbid, absolutely, heretical worship in France. On the 7th of July, 1585, a treaty was concluded at Nemours between Henry III. and the league, to the effect "that by an irrevocable edict the practice of the new religion should be for- 3IO History of France. bidden, and that there should henceforth be no other practice of religion, throughout the realm of France, save that of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman ; that all the ministers should depart from the kingdom within a month ; that all the subjects of his Majesty Treaty ' should be bound to live according to the catholic religion and signed be- make profession thereof within six months, on pain of confiscation Henry III ^^th of person and goods ; that heretics, of whatsoever quality they and the might be, should be declared incapable of holding benefices, public «ague. offices, positions, and dignities ; that the places which had been given in guardianship to them for their security should be taken back again forthwith ; and, lastly, that the princes designated in the treaty, amongst whom were all the Guises at the top, should receive as guarantee certain places to be held by them for five years." This treaty was signed by all the negotiators, and specially by the queen-mother, the cardinals of Bourbon and Guise, and the dukes of Guise and Mayenne. It was the decisive act which made the war a war of religion. The king of Navarre left no stone unturned to convince every- body, friends and enemies, great lords and commonalty, Fi-enchmen and foreigners, that this recurrence of war was not his doing, and that the Leaguers forced it upon him against his wish, and despite of the justice of his cause. Before taking part in the war which was day by day becoming more and more clearly and explicitly a war of religion, the protestant princes of Germany and the four great free cities of Strasbourg, Ulm, iluremberg and Frankfort resolved to make, as the king of ISTavarre had made, a striking move on behalf of peace and religious liberty. They sent to Henry III. ambassadors who, on the 11th of October, 1586, treated him to some frank and bold speaking, but obtained no satisfactory answer. The war Except some local and short-lived truces, war was already blazing breaks out throughout nearly the whole of France, in Provence, in Dauphiny, again, jj^ Nivernais, in Guienne, in Anjou, in E'ormandy, in Picardy, in Champagne. The successes of Henry de Guise (Vimory, October 28 ; Auneau, November 24), and of Henry de Bourbon (Coutras, Octo- ber 20), were almost equally disagreeable to Henry de Valois. It io probable that, if he could have chosen, he would have preferred those of Henry de Bourbon ; if they caused him like jealousy, they did not raise in him the same distrust ; he knew the king of Navarre's loyalty and did not suspect him of aiming to become, whilst he him- self was living, king of France. Besides, he considered the Protestants less powerful and less formidable than the Leaguers. Henry de Guise, on the contrary, was evidently, in his eyes, an ambitious conspirator, The barricades. — The States-general. 311 determined to push his own fortunes on to the very crown of France, if the chances were favourable to him, and not only armed with all the power of Catholicism, but urged forward by the passions of the League perhaps further and certainly more quickly than his own intentions travelled. Since 1584, the Leaguers had, at Paris, acquired strong organization amongst the populace ; the city had been partitioned out into five districts under five heads, who, shortly afterwards, added to themselves eleven others, in order that, in the secret council of the association, each amongst the sixteen quarters of Paris might have its representative and director. Thence the famous Committee of Sixteen, which played so great and so formidable a part in the history of that period. It was religious fanaticism and democratic fanaticism closely united, and in a position to impose their wills upon their most eminent leaders, upon the duke of Guise himself. In vain did Henry III. attempt to resixme some sort of authority ~^- ,5^' in Paris \ his government, his public and private life, and his in Paris, person were daily attacked, insulted, and menaced from the elevation of the pulpit and in the public thoroughfares by qualified preachers or mob-orators. The duke de Guise, whose courage rendered him the favourite of the people, became more and more insolent. In defiance of a royal order he marched into Paris, and at the head of four hundred gentilsliommes set the king at defiance in the apartments of the Louvre. The party of Lorraine thought that they had gained their object : they loudly declared their purpose of confining Henry III. to a monastery, and the duchess de Mont- pensier, sister of the duke de Guise, showed to everybody a pair of gold scissors with which she intended to perform upon the head of the dethroned monarch the ceremony of ecclesiastical tonsure. Barricades were raised throughout Paris, and the Swiss guards whom the king had summoned, disarmed by the populace, would have been slaughtered, but for the interposition of Guise himscK. At that supreme moment, the duke hesitated and recoiled before the final step of attacking the Louvre. This wavering saved the king ; for Catherine de' Medicis had time to amuse her rival by feigned propositions of reconciliation, and in the meanwhile Henry III. could retire to Chartres. There the imbecile monarch, forsaken by every one, was compelled to approve all that had been States of done against himself; he gave to the duke de Guise several ^^^' powerful towns, and named him generalissimo of the French forces; finally he convoked the States-general at Blois. Guise was not satisfied yet, and he insulted his king so repeatedly that he drove the most timid of men to the boldest of all resolutions, that of murdering him. 312 History of France. The duke of Guise cautioned. On the evening of Thursday, December the 22nd, the duke, of Guise, on sitting down at table, found under his napkin a note to this effect : " The king means to kill you." Guise /isked for a pen, wrote at the bottom of the note, " He dare not," and threw it under the table. In spite of this warning, he persisted in going, on the next day, to the council-chamber. On entering the room he felt cold, asked to have some fire lighted, and gave orders to his secre- tary, Pericard, the only attendant admitted with him, to go and fetch the silver-gilt shell he was in the habit of carrying about him with damsons or other preserves to eat of a morning. Pericard was some time gone ; Guise was in a hurry, and, " be kind enough," he said to M. de Morfontaines, " to send word to M. de Saint-Prix [first groom of the chamber to Henry III.] that I beg him to let me have a few damsons or a little preserve of roses, or some trifle of the king's." Pour Brignolles plums were brought him ; and he ate one. His uneasiness continued ; the eye close to his scar became moist ; according to M. de Thou, he bled at the nose. He felt in his pocket for a handkerchief to use, but could not find one. "My people," said he, "have not given me my necessaries this morning; there is great excuse for them, they were too much hurried." At his request, Saint-Prix had a handkerchief brought to him. Pericard passed his bonbon-box to him, as the guards would not let him enter again. The duke took a few plums from it, threw the rest on the table, saying, " Gentlemen, who will have any?" and rose up hurriedly upon seeing the secretary of state Eevol, who came in and said to him, " Sir, the king wants you ; he is in his old cabinet." The duke of Guise pulled up his cloak as if to wrap himself well in it, took his hat, gloves, and his sweetmeat-box and went out of the room, saying, " Adieu, gentlemen," with a gravity free from any appearance of mistrust. He crossed the king's chamber contiguous to the council-hall, courteously saluted, as he passed, Loignac and guar smen j^.^ (.Qj^pg^j^gg whom he found drawn up, and who, returning him a frigid obeisance, followed him as if to show him respect. On arriving at the door of the old cabinet, and just as he leaned down to raise the tapestry that covered it, Guise was struck by five poniard blows in the chest, neck, and reins: "God ha' mercy!" he cried, and, though his sword was entangled in his cloak and he was him- self pinned by the arms and legs and choked by the blood that spurted from his throat, he dragged his murderers, by a supreme effort of energy, to the other end of the room, where he fell down backwards and lifeless before the bed of Henry III. who, coming to the door of his room and asking "if it was done," contemplated He is murdered by the "Forty- five" Death of the Queen Mother. 315 with mingled satisfaction and terror the inanimate body of his mighty rival, " who seemed to be merely sleeping, so little was he changed." " My God ! how tall he is !" cried the king ; "he looks even taller than when he was alive." "They are killing my brother!" cried the cardinal of Guise when he heard the noise that was being made in the next room ; and he rose up to run thither. The archbishop of Lyons, Peter d'Espinac, did the same. The duke of Aumont held them both back, saying, " Gentlemen, we must wait for the king's orders." Orders came to arrest them both and confine them in a small room over the council chamber. They had " eggs, bread, wine from the king's cellar, their breviaries, their night-gowns, a palliasse, and a mattress," brought to them there ; and they were kept under ocular supervision for four and twenty hours. The cardinal of Guise was released the next morning, but only to be put to death like his brother. The king spared the archbishop of Lyons. Thirteen days after the murder of the duke of Guise, on the A..D. 1589 5th of January, 1589, Catherine de' Medici herself died. ISTor catheri'iie was her death, so far as affairs and the public were concerned, an fie' Medici, event : her ability was of the sort which is worn out by the fre- quent use made of it, and which, when old age comes on, leaves no long or grateful reminiscence. Time has restored Catherine de' Medici to her proper place in history ; she was quickly forgotten by her contemporaries. It was not long before Henry IIL perceived that, to be king, it Position ol was not sufficient to have murdered his rival. He survived the ^^^'^y ^^^■ duke of Guise only seven months, and, during that short period, he was not really king, all by himself, for a single day ; never had his kingship been so embarrassed and impotent ; the violent death of the duke of Guise had exasperated much more than enfeebled the League ; the feeling against his murderer was passionate and contagious ; the catholic cause had lost its great leader ; it found and accepted another in his brother the duke of Mayenne, far inferior to his elder brother in political talent and prompt energy of character, but a brave and determined soldier, a much better man of party and action than the sceptical, undecided, and indolent Henry III. The majority of the great towns of France, Paris, Pouen, Orleans, Toulouse, Lyons, Amiens, and whole provinces declared eagerly against the royal murderer. He demanded sup- port from the states-general, who refused it ; and he was obliged to dismiss them. The parliament of Paris, dismembered on the 16th of January, 1589, by the counsel of Sixteen, became the instru- ment of the Leaguers. The majority of the other parliamenta 3H History of France. He treats «^iih the king of Navarre. Siege of Paris. followed the example set hj- that of Paris. The Sorbonne, consulted by a petition presented in the name of all Catholics, decided tha'^ Frenchmen were released from their oath of allegiance to Henry III., and might with a good conscience turn their arms against him. Henry made some obscure attempts to come to an arrangement with certain chiefs of the Leaguers ; but they were rejected with violence. There was clearly for him but one possible aUy who had a chance of doing effectual service, and that was Henry of ^Navarre and the Protestants. It cost Henry III. a great deal to have recourse co that party ; his conscience and pusillanimity both revolted at it equally ; in spite of his moral corruption, he was a sincere Catholic, and the prospect of excommunication troubled him deeply. How- ever, on the 3rd of April, 1589, a truce for a year was concluded between the two kings. It set forth that the king of Navarre should serve the king of France with all his might and main; that he should have, for the movements of his troops on both banks of the Loire, the place of Saumur ; that the places of which he made himself master should be handed over to Henry III., and that he might not anywhere do anything to the prejudice of the catholic religion ; that the Protestants should be no more disquieted throughout the whole of France, and that, before the expiration of the truce, King Henry III. should give them assurance of peace. This negotiation was not concluded without difficulty, especially as regarded the town of Saumur ; there was a general desire to cede to the king of Navarre only some place of less impor- tance on the Loire; and when, on the 15th of April, Du Piessis- Mornay, who had been appointed governor of it, presented himself for admittance at the head of his garrison, the royalist commandant who had to deliver the keys to him limited himself to letting them drop at his feet. Mornay showed alacrity in picking them up. On arriving before Paris towards. the end of July, 1589, the two kings besieged it with an army of 42,000 men, the strongest and the best they had ever had under their orders. " The affairs of Henry III.," says De Thou, " had changed face ; fortune was pro- nouncing for him." Quartered in the house of Count de Retz, at St. Cloud, he could thence see quite at his ease his city of Paris. *' Yonder," said he, " is the heart of the League ; it is there that the blow must be struck. It were great pity to lay in ruins so beauti- ful and goodly a city. Still, I must settle accounts with the rebels who are in it and who ignominiously drove me away." " On Tues- day, August 1st, at eight a.m., he was told," says L'Estoile, " that a monk desired to speak with him, but that his guards made a difficulty about letting him in. ' Let him in/ said the king : ' if Death of Henry III. 315 he is refused, it will be said that I drive monks away and will not see them.' Incontinently entered the monk, having in his sleeve a knife unsheathed. He made a profound reverence to the king, who had just got up and had nothing on but a dressing- gown about his shoulders, and presented to him despatches from Count de Brienne, saying that he had further orders to tell the king privately something of importance. Then the king ordered those who were present to retire, and began reading the letter which "-^"^^ V" the monk had brought asking for a private audience afterwards ; (Aug. 1^ the monk, seeing the king's attention taken up with reading, drew his knife from his sleeve and drove it right into the king's small gut, below the navel, so home that he left the knife in the hole j the which the king having drawn out with great exertion struck the monk a blow with the point of it on his left eyebrow, crying, 'Ah I wicked monk ! he has killed me ; kill him ! ' At which cry run- ning quickly up, the guards and others, such as happened to be nearest, massacred this assassin of a Jacobin who, as D'Aubigne says, stretched out his two arms against the wall, counterfeiting the crucifix, whilst the blows were dealt him. Having been dragged out dead from the king's chamber, he was stripped naked to the waist, covered with his gown and exposed to the public." Henry III. expired on the 2nd of August, 1589, between two and three in the morning. The first persons Henry of Navarre met as he entered the Hotel de Eetz were the officers of the Scottish guard, who threw themselves at his feet, saying : " Ah ! sir, you are now our king and our master." Henry IV. The two moving principles of his /'>licy. State of parties in France. CHAPTER IX. EEIGN OF HENRY IV. (1589 1593.) LOUIS XIII., RICHELIEU AND THE COURT. Henry IY. perfectly understood and steadily took the measure of the situation in which he was placed. He was in a great minority throughout the country as well as the army, and he would have to deal with public passions, worked hy his foes for their own ends, and with the personal pretensions of his partisans-. He made no mistake about these two facts, and he allowed them great weight ; 1>ut he did not take for the ruling principle of his policy and for flis first rule of conduct the plan of alternate concessions to the dif- ferent parties and of continually humouring personal interests ; he set his thoughts higher, upon the general and natural interests of France as he found her and saw her. They resolved themselves, in his eyes, into the following great points : maintenance of the hereditary rights of monarchy, preponderance of Catholics in the government, peace between Catholics and Protestants, and religious liberty for Protestants. With him these points became the law of his policy and his kingly duty as well as the nation's right. He proclaimed them in the first words that he addressed to the lords and principal personages of State assembled around him. On the 4th of August, 1589, in the camp at St. Cloud, the majority of the princes, dukes, lords, and gentlemen present in the camp expressed their full adhesion to the accession and the manifesto of the king, promising him " service and obedience against rebels and enemies ■who would usurp the kingdom." Two notable leaders, the duke of ProtestantSy Leaguers ^ and Policists. 317 Epernon amongst the Catholics and the duke of La Tremoille amongst the Protestants, refused to join in this adhesion ; the former saying that his conscience would not permit him to serve a heretic king, the latter alleging that his conscience forbade him to serve a prince who engaged to protect catholic idolatry. They withdrew, D'Epernon into Angoumois and Saintonge, tak- ing with him six thousand foot and twelve thousand horse ; and La Tremoille into Poitou, with nine battalions of reformers. They had an idea of attempting, both of them, to set up for themselves independent principalities. Three contemporaries, Sully, La Force, and the bastard of Angouleme, bear witness that Henry lY. was deserted by as many huguenots as Catholics. The French royal army Avas reduced, it is said, to one half. As a make-weight, Sancy prevailed upon the Swiss, to the number of twelve thousand, and two thousand German auxiliaries, not only to continue in the ser- vice of the new king but to wait six months for their pay, as he was at the moment unable to pay them. From the 14th to the 20th of August, in Ile-de-France, in Picardy, in !N"ormandy, in Auvergne, ia Champagne, in Burgundy, in Anjou, in Poitou, in Languedoc, in Orleanness and in Touraine, a great number of towns and districts joined in the determination of the royal army. There was, in 1589, an unlawful pretender to the throne of J.^^ j'*?'' France ; and that was Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, younger Bourbon* brother of Anthony de Bourbon, king of Kavarre, and consequently uncle of Henry lY., sole representative of the elder branch. Under Henry III., thccardinal had thrown in his lot with the League | and, after the murder of Guise, Henry III. had, by way of precau- tion, ordered him to be arrested and detained him in confinement at Chinon, where he still was when Henry III. was in his turn murdered. The Leaguers proclaimed him king under the name of Charles X. ; and, eight months afterwards, on the 5th of March, 1590, the parliament of Paris issued a decree "recognizing Charles X. as true and lawful king of France." Du Plessis-Mornay, then governor of Saumur, had the cardinal removed to Fontenay-le- Comte in Poitou, "under the custody of Sieur de la Boulaye, governor of that place, whose valour and fidelity Avere known to him." On the 9th of May, 1590, not three months after the decree of the parliament of Paris which had proclaimed him true and law- ful king of France, Cardinal de Bourbon, still a prisoner, died at Fontenay, aged sixty- seven. A few weeks before his death he had written to his nephew Henry lY. a letter in which he recognized him as his sovereign. The League was more than ever dominant in Paris j Henry lY, 3iS History of France, A.D. 1589. could not think of entering there. He was closely pressed by Arques Mayenne, "who boasted that he would very shortly bring him into (Sept. 13 — Paris bound hand and foot. Already windows were engaged on the '' line of streets through which the procession was to pass. But INfayenne's adversary was a prince of the utmost vigilance as well aa courage, and who, as the duke of Parma himself said, " was accus- tomed to wear out more boots than shoes." He awaited the attack of Mayenne at Arques in Normandy, where with three thousand men alone he defeated an army of thirty thousand. Strengthened by the accession of a number of gentilshommes, Henry then once more attacked Paris, and pillaged the faubourg Saint Germain. He would perhaps have carried the terror-stricken capital itself, if the imperfect breaking-up of the St. Maixent bridge on the Somme had not allowed Mayenne, notwithstanding his tardiness to arrive at Paris in time to enter with his army, form a junction with the Leaguers amongst the population, and prevail upon the king to Progress carry his arms elsewhither. Henry left some of his lieutenants to °^Tv"'^^ carry on the war in the environs of Paris, and himself repaired on the 21st of November to Tours, where the royalist parliament, the exchequer-chamber, the court of taxation, and all the magisterial bodies which had not felt inclined to submit to the despotism of the League, lost no time in rendering him homage, as the head and the representative of the national and the lawful cause. He reigned and ruled, to real purpose, in the eight principal provinces of the North and Centre, He- de-France, Picardy, Champagne, Normandy, Orleanness, Touraine, Maine, and Anjou ; and . his authority, although disputed, was making way in nearly all the other parts of the kingdom. He made war, not like a conqueror, but like a king who wanted to meet with acceptance in the places which he occupied and which he would soon have to govern. It was not long before Henry reaped the financial fruits of his protective equity ; at the close of 1589 he could count upon a regular revenue of more than two millions of crowns, very insufficient, no doubt, for the wants of his government, but much beyond the official resources of bis enemies. He had very soon taken his proper rank in Europe : the Protestant Powers which had been eager to recog- nize him, England, Scotland, tbe Low Countries, the Scandina- vian States, and reformed Germany, bad been joined by tha republic of Venice, the most judiciously governed State at that time in Europe, but solely on the ground of political interests and views, independently of any religious question. As the government of Henry IV. went on growing in strength sad extent, the moderate Catholics were beginning, not as yet to Attitude of the Pope. 319 make approaches towards him, but to see a glimmering possibility of treating with him, and obtaining from him such couceesions as they considered necessary, at the same time that they in their turn made to him such as he might consider sufficient for his party and himself. Unhappily the new pope, Gregory XIV,, elected on the 5th of A.D. 1590. December, 1590, was humbly devoted to the Spanish policy, meekly xiv^pope subservient to Philip II. ; that is, to the cause of religious persecu- His rela- tion and of absolute power, without regard for anything else. The p°"^ "^ relations of France with the Holy See at once felt the effects of this ; Cardinal Gaetani received from Home all the instructions that the most ardent Leaguers could desire ; and he gave his approval to a resolution of the Sorbonne to the effect that Henry de Bourbon, heretic and relapsed, was for ever excluded from the crown, whether he became a Catholic or not, Henry IV. had convoked the states- general at Tours for the month of March, and had summoned to that city the archbishops and bishops to form a national council, and to deliberate as to the means of restoring the king to the bosom of the Catholic Church, The legate prohibited this council, declaring, beforehand, the excommunication and deposition of any bishops who should be present at it. The Leaguer parliament of Pari» forebade, on pain of death and confiscation, any connexion, any corre- spondence with Henry de Bourbon and his partisans. A solemn procession of the League took place at Paris on the 14th of ]\Tarch, and, a few days afterwards, the union was sworn afresh by all the municipal chiefs of the population. In view of such passionate hostility, Henry IV., a stranger to any sort of illusion, at the same time that he was always full of hope, saw that his successes at Arques were insufficient for him, and that, if he were to occupy the throne in peace, he must win more victories. He recommenced the campaign by the siege of Dreux, one of the towns which it was most important for him to possess, in order to put pressure on Paris and cause her to feel, even at a distance, the perils and evils of war. On "Wednesday, the 14th of March, 1590, the two armies met on a.D, 1590b the plains of Ivry, a village six leagues from Evreux, on the left Battle of bank of the Eure. A battle ensued in which, although the resources ca[Jy^i4\ of modern warfare were brought into operation, the decisive force consisted, as of old, in the cavalry. It appeared as if Henry IV. must succumb to the Superior force of the enemy : further and fur- ther backward was his white banner seen to retire, and the great mass appeared as if they designed to follow it At length Henry cried out that those who did not wish to fight against the enemy might at least turn and see him die, and immediately plunged intc 320 History of France, the thickest of the battle. It appeared as if the royalist gentry had felt the old martial fire of their ancestry enkindled by these words, and by the glance that accompanied them. Eaising one mighty shout to God, they threw themselves upon the enemy, following their king, whose plume was now their banner. In this there might have been some dim principle of religious zeal, but that devotion to personal authority, which is so powerful an element in war and in policy, was wanting. The royalist and religious energy of Henry's troops conquered the Leaguers. The cavalry was broken, scattered, and swept from the field, and the confused manner of their retreat so puzzled the infantry that they were not able to maintain their ground ; the German and French were cut down ; the Swiss sur- rendered. It was a complete victory for Henry TV. It was not only as able captain and valiant soldier that Henry IV. distinguished himself at Ivry ; there the man was as con- spicuous for the strength of his better feelings, as generous and as Generosity affectionate as the king was far-sighted and bold. When the word ty^ was given to march from Dreux, Count Schomberg, colonel of the German auxiliaries called reiters, had asked for the pay of his troops, letting it be understood that they would not fight, if their claims were not satisfied. Henry had replied harshly, " People don't ask for money on the eve of a battle." At Ivry, just as the battle was on the point of beginning, he went up to Schomberg : " Colonel," said he, *' I hurt your feelings. This may be the last day of my life. I can't bear to take away the honour of a brave and honest gentleman like you. Pray forgive me and embrace me." " Sir," answered Schomberg, " the other day your majesty wounded me, to-day you kill me." He gave up the command of the reiters in order to fight in the king's own squadron, and was killed in action. The victory of Ivry had a great effect in France and in Europe, though not immediately and as regarded the actual campaign of 1590. The victorious king moved on Paris and made himself master of the little towns in the neighbourhood with a view of besieging the _ . . capital. The investment became more strict ; it was kept up for Paris. more than three months, from the end of May to the beginning of September, 1590; and the city was reduced to a severe state of famine, which would have been still more severe if Henry IV. had not several times over permitted the entry of some convoys of provisions and the exit of the old men, the women, the children, in fact, the poorest and weakest part of the population. " Paris must not TUf) duke t)e a cemetery," he said : " I do not wish to reign over the dead." of Parma Jq the meantime, Duke Alexander of Parma, in accordance with Mayemie. express orders from Philip II., went from the Low Countries, with HENRY IV. Strategy of the two dukes. 32 1 his army, to join Mayenne at Meaux, and threaten Henry IV. with their united forces if he did not retire from the walls of the capi- tal. Henry lY. offered the two dukes battle, if they really wished to put a stop to the investment ; but " I am not come so far," answered the duke of Parma, " to take counsel of my enemy ; if my manner of warfare does not please the king of IsTavarre, let him force me to change it instead of giving me advice that nobody asks him for." Henry in vain attempted to make the duke of Parma accept battle. The able Italian established himself in a strongly entrenched camp, surprised Lagny and opened to Paris the navigation of the Marne, by which provisions were speedily brought up. Henry decided ♦_g^ts ^ upon retreating \ he dispersed the different divisions of his array fore them, into Touraine, l^ormandy, Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, and himself took up his quarters at Senlis, at Compiegne, in the towns on the banks of the Oise. The duke of Mayenne arrived on the 18th of September at Paris ; the duke of Parma entered it himself with a few officers and left it on the 1 3th of IS'ovember, with his army on his way back to the Low Countries, being a little harassed in his retreat by the royal cavalry, but easy, for the moment, as to the fate of Paris and the issue of the war, which continued during the first six months of the year 1591, but languidly and disconnectedly, with successes and reverses see-sawing between the two parties and without any important results. Then began to appear the consequences of the victory of Ivry and Eesuits oi the progress made by Henry IV., in spite of the check he received ^^^' before Paris and at some other points in the kingdom. Not only did many moderate Catholics make advances to him, struck with his sympathetic ability and his valour, and hoping that he would end by becoming a Catholic, but patriotic wrath was kindling in France against Philip II. and the Spaniards, those fomenters of' civil war in the mere interest of foreign ambition. The League was split up into two parties, the Spanish League and The two the French League, The committee of Sixteen laboured incessantly ^^^S^^^- for the formation and triumph of the Spanish League ; and its principal leaders wrote, on the 2nd of September, 1591, a letter to Philip IL, offering him the crown of France and pledging their allegiance to him as his subjects : "We can positively assure your Majesty," they said, "that the wishes of all Catholics are to see your Catholic Majesty holding the sceptre of this kingdom and reigning over us, even as we do throw ourselves right wUlingly into your arms as into those of our father, or at any rate establishing one of your posterity upon the throne." These ringleaders of the Spanish League had for their army the blindly fanatical and demagogic T :22 History of France. populace of Paris, and were, further, supported by 4000 Spanish troops whom Philip 11. had succeeded in getting almost surrepti- tiously into Paris. They created a council of ten, the sixteenth century's committee of public safety; they proscribed the ^oZim^s; they, on the 15th of November, had the president, Brisson, and two councillors of the Leaguer parliament arrested, hanged them to a beam and dragged the corpses to the Place de Greve, where they strung them up to a gibbet with inscriptions setting forth that they were heretics, traitors to the city and enemies of the catholic princes, restores* "W^^^ilst the Spanish League was thus reigning at Paris, the duke of the French Mayenne was at Laon, preparing to lead his army, consisting partly League. q£ Spaniards, to the relief of Rouen, the siege of which Henry IV. was commencing. Being summoned to Paris by messengers who succeeded one another every hour, he arrived there on the 28th of November, 1591, with 2000 French troops; he armed the guard of burgesses, seized and hanged, in a ground-floor room of the Louvre, four of the chief leaders of the Sixteen, suppressed their committee, re-established the parliament in full authority and, finally, restored the security and preponderance of the French League, whilst taking the reins once more into his own hands. Whilst these two Leagues, the one Spanish and the other French, were conspiring thus persistently, sometimes together and sometimes one against the other, to promote personal ambition and interests, at the same time national instinct, respect for traditional rights, weariness of civil war, and the good sense which is born of long experience, were bringing France more and more over to the cause and name of Henry IV. In all the provinces, throughout all ranks of societ}', the population non-enrolled amongst the factions were turning their eyes towards him as the only means of putting an end to war at home and abroad, the only pledge of national unity, public prosperity, and even freedom of trade, a hazy idea as yet, but even now prevalent in the great ports of France and in Paris. Would Henry turn Catholic 1 That was the question asked everywhere, amongst Protestants with anxiety, but with keen desire and not without hope amongst the mass of the population. The rumour ran that, on this point, negotiations were half opened even in the midst of the League itself, even at the court of Spain, even at Rome where Pope Clement VIIL, a more moderate man than his predecessor, Gregory XIV., "had no desire," says Sully, " to foment the troubles of France, and still less that the king of Spain should possibly become its undisputed king, rightly judging that this would be laying open to him the road to the monarchy cf Christendom, and, consequently, reducing the Roman pontiffs to France weary of civil war Henry IV. and the Catholic Church. 323 the position, if it were his good pleasure, of his mere chaplains " [(Economies royales, t. ii. p. 106]. Such being the existing state of facts and minds, it was impossible that Henry lY. should not ask himself roundly the same question and feel tiidt he had no time to lose in answering it. In spite of the breadth and independence of his mind, Henry lY. jig^-y jy was sincerely puzzled. He was of those who, far from clinging to and Roman a single fact and confining themselves to a single duty, take account Cathoh- . . . . . cism. of the complication of the facts amidst which they live, and of the variety of the duties which the general situation or their own imposes upon them. Born in the reformed faith, and on the steps of the throne, he was struggling to defend his political rights whilst keeping his religious creed ; but his religious creed was not the fruit of very rnature or very deep conviction ; it was a question of first claims and of honour rather than a matter of conscience ; and, on the other hand, the peace of France, her prosperity, perhaps her territorial integrity, were dependent upon the triumph of the poli- tical rights of the Bearnese. Even for his brethren in creed his triumph was a benefit secured, for it was an end of persecution and a first step towards liberty. There is no measuring accurately how far ambition, personal interest, a king's egotism had to do with Henry lY.'s abjuration of his religion ; none would deny that those human infirmities were present ; but all this does not prevent the conviction that patriotism was uppermost in Henry's soul, and that the idea of his duty as king towards France, a prey to aU the evils of civil and foreign war, was the determining motive of his reso- lution. It cost him a great deal. On the 26th of April, 1593, he wrote to the grand duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand de' Medici, that he had decided to turn Catholic " two months after that the duke of ^;q^ 5593, Mayenne should have come to an agreement with him on just and Resolves to suitable terms ; " and, foreseeing the expense that would be occa- pjotestant- sioned to him by " this great change in his atfairs," he felicitated ism. himself upon knowing that the grand duke was disposed to second his efforts towards a levy of 4000 Swiss and advance a year's pay for them. On the 28th of April, he begged the bishop of Chartres, Nicholas de Thou, to be one of the catholic prelates whose instruc- tions he would be happy to receive on the 15th of Jvdy, and he sent the same invitation to several other prelates. On the 16th of May, he declared to his council his resolve to become a convert. This news, everywhere spread abroad, produced a lively burst of national and Bourbonic feeling even where it was scarcely to be expected ; at the states-general of the League, especially in the chamber of the noblesse, many members protested " that they would not trmt with foreigners, or promote the election of a woman, or Y 2 324 History of France. give theii suffrages to any one unknown to them, and at the choioe of his Catholic Majesty of Spain.". At Paris, a part of the clergy, the incumbents of St. Eustache, St. Merri, and St. Sulpice, and eveu some of the popular preachers, violent Leaguers but lately, and notably Guincestre, boldly preached peace and submission to the king if he turned Catholic. The principal of the French League, in matters of policy and negotiation, and Mayenne's adviser since 1589, Villeroi, declared "that he would not bide in a place where the laws, the honoiir of the nation and the independence of the kingdom were held so cheap " and he left Paris on the 28th of June. During these disputes amongst the civil functionaries and con- tinuing all the while to make proposals for a general truce, Henry IV. vigorously resumed warlike operations so as to bring pressure upon his adversaries and make them perceive the necessity of accepting the solution he offered them. He besieged and took the town of Dreux, of which the castle alone persisted in holding out. Further jjg q^^. ^g- >^q provisions which were being brought by the Mame Henry IV. to Paris. He kept Poitiers strictly invested. Lesdiguieres defeated the Savoyards and the Spaniards in the valleys of Dauphiny and Piedmont. Count Mansfield had advanced with a division towards Picardy ', but at the news that the king was marching to encounter him, he retired with precipitation. Prom the military as well as the political point of view, there is no condition worse than that of stubbornness mingled with discouragement. And that was the state of Mayenne and the League, Henry IV. perceived it, and confidently hurried forward his political and military measures. The castle of Dreux was obliged to capitulate. Thanks to the 4000 Swiss paid for him by the grand duke of Florence, to the numerous volunteers brought to him by the noblesse of his party, " and to the sterling quality of the old huguenot phalanx, folks who, from father to son, are familiarized with death," says D'Aubigne, Henry IV. had recovered in June 1593, so good an army that "by means of it," he wrote to Ferdinand de' Medici, "I shall be able to reduce the city of Paris in so short a time as will cause you great contentment." But he was too judicious and too good a patriot not to see that it was not by an indefinitely prolonged war that he would be enabled to enter upon definitive possession of his crown, and that it was peace, religious peace, that he must restore to He assem- France in order to really become her king. He entered resolutely, bles a con- qj^ ^^ \f)\h of Jidy, 1693, upon the employment of the moral divines at means which alone could enable him to attain this end ; he Mantes. assembled at Mantes the conference of prelates and doctors, Catholic and Protestant, which he had announced as the preface to his conversion. Abjuration of Protestantism by Henry IV, 325 Ten days after, on Sunday the 25th of July, 1593, he repaired in great state to the church of St. Denis. On arriving with all his jiig'abju. train in front of the grand entrance, he was received by Eeginald ration de Beaune, archbishop of Bourges, the nine bishops, the doctors and ("^^^^ ^^)- the incumbents who had taken part in the conferences and all the brethren of the abbey. " Who are you % " asked the archbishop who officiated. "The king." "What want you?" "To be received into the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Eoman Church." " Do you desire it ? " " Yes, I will and desire it." At these words the king knelt and made the stipulated profession of faith. The archbishop gave him absolution together with bene- diction ; and, conducted by aU the clergy to the choir of the church, he there, upon the gospels, repeated his oath, made his confession, heard mass, and was fuUy reconciled with the Church. The in- habitants of Paris, dispensing with the passports which were refused them by Mayenne, had flocked in masses to St. Denis and been present at the ceremony. The vaulted roof of the church resounded with their shouts of Hurrah for the king I There was the same welcome on the part of the dwellers in the country when Henry repaired to the valley of Montmorency and to Montmartre to perform his devotions there. Here, then, was religious peace, a prelude to political reconciliation between the monarch and the great majority of his subjects. On one side a great majority of Catholics and Protestants favourable for different practical reasons to Henry IV. turned Catholic king ; on the other, two minorities, one of stubborn Catholics of the League, the other qf Protestants anxious for their creed and their liberty ; both discontented and distrustful. Such, after Henry IV. 's abjuration, was the striking feature in the condition of Franco and in the situation of her king. This triple fact was constantly present to the mind of Henry IV. and ruled his conduct during all his reign ; all the acts of his government are proof of that. It was province by province, inch by inch that he had to recover his kingdom. At Lyons, the success of the king was easy and disinterested ; not so in Normandy. Andrew de Brancas, lord Reconcilia- of Villars, an able man and valiant soldier, was its governor ; he tio^i of had served the League with zeal and determination ; nevertheless brancas " from the month of August, 1593, immediately after the king's conversion, he had shown a disposition to become his servant and to incHne thereto all those whom he had in his power." Thinking, however, that every man has his price, he determined to get out of Henry IV. as much as he could, and the following memorandum shows how far he was successful : — " To M. Villars, for himself, his brother Chevalier d'Oise, the towns of Eouen and Havre and other 326 History of France. places, as well as for compensation which had to be made to MM. de Montpensier, Marshal do Biron, Chancellor de Chi- verny and other persons included in his treaty .... 3,447,800 livres." To these two instances of royalist reconciliation, Lyons and the spontaneous example set by her population and Eouen and the dearly purchased capitulation of her governor Villars, must be added a third, of a different sort. Mcholas de Neufville, lord of »nd Ville- YiUeroi, after having served Charles IX. and Henry III., had become through attachment to the catholic cause a member of the League and one of the duke of Mayenne's confidants When Henry IV. was king of France and Catholic king, Villeroi tried to serve his cause with Mayeune, and induce Mayenne to be reconciled with him. Meeting with no success, he made up his mind to separate from the League, and go over to the king's service. He could do so without treachery or shame ; even as a Leaguer and a servant of Mayenne's, he had always been opposed to Spain, and devoted to a!French,but at the same time a faithfully catholic policy. He imported into the service of Henry IV. the same sentiments and the same bearing ; he was still a zealous catholic and a partisan, for king and country's sake, of alliance with catholic powers. He was a man of wits, experience, and resource, who knew Europe well and had some influence at the court of Eome. Henry IV. saw at once the advantage to be gained from him, and in spite of the Protestants' complaints and his sister Princess Catherine's prayers, made him, on the 25th of September, 1594, Secretary of State for foreign affairs. This acquisition did not cost him so dear as that of Villars : stUl we read in the statement of sums paid by Henry IV. for this sort of conquest : — *' Eurthermore, to M. de Villeroi, for himself, his son, the town of Pontoise, and other individuals, according to their treaty, 476,594 livres." Henry IV. had been absolved and crowned at St. Denis by the bishops of Prance ; he had not been anointed at Eheims according to the religious traditions of the French monarchy. At Eheims he could not be, for it was still in the power of the League. The ceremony took place at Chartres on the 27th of February, 1594 ; anointed " ^^^ bishop of Chartres, Nicholas De Thou, ofiiciated, and drew up iitChartres. a detailed account of all the ceremonies and aU the rejoicings ; thirteen medals, each weighing fifteen gold crowns, were struck according to custom ; they bore the king's image, and for legend, Invia virtuti nulla est via (To manly worth no road is inaccessible). Henry IV., on his knees before the grand altar, took the usual oath, the form of which was presented to him by Chancellor de Chiverny. With the exception of local accessories, which were Henry IV. in Paris. 327 acknowledged tt be impossible and unnecessary, there was nothing lacking to this religious hallowing of his kingship. But one other thing, more important than the anointment at Chartres, was wanting. He did not possess the capital of his king- dom : the League were still masters of Paris ; uneasy masters of their situation ; but not so uneasy, however, as they ought to have been. The great leaders of the party, the duke of Mayenne, his mother the duchess of Nemours, his sister the duchess of Montpensier, the duke of Feria, Spanish Ambassador, were within its walls, a prey to alarm and discouragement. Henry IV. started on the 21st of March, nearly one month after the ceremony we have just related, from Senlis, where he had mustered his troops, arrived about midnight at St. Denis, and immediately began his march to Paris, where a strong party headed by Erissac and D'Epinay St. Luc stood in readiness to receive him. The night was dark and stormy ; thunder rumbled ; rain fell heavily ; the A.D. 1594. king was a little behind time. On the 22nd of March three of ^^°7 ^^' the city gates were thrown open, and the king's troops entered Paris Paris. They occupied the different districts and met with no (Mar. 22), show of resistance but at the quay of L'Ecole, where an outpost of lanzknechts tried to stop them ; but they were cut in pieces or hurled into the river. Between five and six o'clock Henry lY., at the head of the last division, crossed the draw-bridge of the New Gate. Brissac, Provost L'Huillier, the sheriffs and several companies of burgesses advanced to meet him. At ten o'clock he was master of the whole city ; the districts of St. Martin, of the Temple, and St. Anthony alone remained still in the power of three thousand Spanish soldiers under the orders of their leaders, the duke of Feria and Don Diego d'Ibarra. Nothing would have been easier for Henry than to have had them driven out by his own troops and the people of Paris, who wanted to finish the day's work by exterminating the foreigners ; but he was too judicious and too far-sighted to embitter the general animosity by pushing his victory beyond what was necessary. He sent word to the Spaniards that they must not move from their quarters, arid must leave Paris during the day, at the same time promising not to bear The arms any more against him, in France. They eagerly accepted Spanish these conditions. At three o'clock in the afternoon, ambassador, ev"cuat(j officers, and soldiers all evacuated Paris and set out for the Low the Countries. The king, posted at a window over the gate of St. ''^P^^^'- Denis, witnessed their departure. They, as they passed, saluted him respectfully; and he returned their salut(', saying, "Go, gentlemen, and commend me to your master; but return no more." 328 History of France. The other After his conversion to Catholicism, the capture of Paris waa submit. t^^ most decisive of the issues v^hich made Henry IV. really king of France. The submission of Eouen followed almost immediately upon that of Paris ; and the year 1594 brought Henry a series of successes, military and civil, which changed very much to his advan- tage the position of the kingship as well as the general condition of the kingdom. In Normandy, in Picardy, in Champagne, in Anjou, in Poitou, in Brittany, in Orleanucss, in Auvergne, a multitude of important towns, Havre, Honfleur, Abbeville, Amiens, Peronne, Montdidier, Poitiers, Orleans, Eheims, Chateau-Thierry, Beauvais, Sens, Eiom, Morlaix, Laval, Laon, returned to the king's authority, some after sieges, and others by pacific and personal arrangement, more or less burthensome for the public treasury but very effective in promoting the unity of the nation and of the monarchy. A.D. 1594. Xhe close of this happy and glorious year was at hand. On the Chastel to 27th of September, between six and seven p.m., a deplorable murder ths incident occurred, for the second time, to call Henry IV. 's attention fSeD'c°271 ^^ ^^® weak side of his position. An attempt upon his life had already been made by a fanatic named Barriere; now it was a young man of nineteen, son of a cloth-merchant in the city, who, acting under the influence of the Jesuits, tried to murder the king. He was arrested, and put to death, a decree of the parliament of Paris being at the same time (December 29, 1594) issued against the Jesuits. A.D. 1595. In the meanwhile Philip II. persisted in his active hostility "War de- x- x- j Glared ^^*^ continued to give the king of France no title but that oi prince against of Beam. On the 17th of January, 1595, Henry, in performance pain. ^£ what he had proclaimed, formally declared war against the king of Spain, forbade his subjects to have any commerce with him or his allies, and ordered them to make war on him for the future, just as he persisted in making it on France. The conflict thus solemnly begun lasted three years and three months, from the 17th of January, 1595, to the 1st of May, 1598, from Henry IV.'s declara- tion of war to the peace of Vervius, which preceded by only four months and thirteen days the death of Philip II. and the end of the preponderance of Spain in Europe. It is not worth while to follow step by step the course of this monotonous conflict, pregnant with facts which had their importance for contemporaries but are A.D. 1595. not worthy of an historical resurrection. The battle of Fun- Battle of taine-Fran9aise (5th June) was a brilliant evidence that Navarre Francaise whilst becoming a monarch had not forgotten to be a soldier. The (June 5). absolution at last granted by Pope Clement VIII. proved of the utmost benefit to the king ; Mayenne, d'Epernon and Joyeuse sub- mitted, and tlie town of Amiens having been taken by the royal Peace of Vervins, — Ediet of Nmites. 329 troops the duke de Mercopur followed their example (February, 1598). Three months aftf^r, the king of Spain at last consented to accept terms of agreement (Peace of Vervins, May 2) ; and as the promulgation of the edict of i^antes (April 13) had put an end to the wars of religion, so by the treaty with Philip II. a long period of foreign wars was terminated. A month before the conclusion of the treaty of peace at Vervins A.D. 1598, with Philip II., Henry IV. had signed and published at Paris on ^*^^? °^ the 13th of April, 1598, the edict of l^antes, his treaty of peace Edict of with the protestant malcontents. This treaty, drawn up in ninety- Mantes two open and fifty-six secret articles, was a code of old and new laws regulating the civil and religious position of Protestants in France, the conditions and guarantees of their worship, their liberties and their special obligations in their relations whether with the crown or with their catholic fellow-countrymen. By this code Henry IV. added a great deal to the rights of 'the Protestants and to the duties of the State towards them. Their worship was authorized not only in the castles of the lords high-justiciary, who numbered 3500, but also in the castles of simple noblemen who enjoyed no high-justiciary rights, provided that the number of those present did not exceed thirty. Two towns or two boroughs, instead of one, had the same religious rights in each bailiwick or seneschalty of the kingdom. The State was charged with the duty of providing for the salaries of the protestant ministers and rectors in their colleges or schools, and an annual sum of 165,000 livres of those times (495,000 francs of the present day) was allowed for that purpose. Donations and legacies to be so applied were authorized. The children of Protestants were admitted into the universities, colleges, schools and hospitals, without distinc- tion between them and Catholics. There was great difficulty in ■ ■ securing for them, in all the parliaments of the kingdom, impartial clauses^ justice; and a special chamber, called the edict chamber, was instituted for the trial of all causes in which they were interested. Catholic judges could not sit in this chamber unless with their consent and on their presentation. In the parliaments of Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Grenoble, the edict-chamber was composed of two presidents, one a Catholic and the other a Reformer, and of twelve councillors, of whom six were Reformers. The parliaments had hitherto refused to admit Reformers into their midst ; in the end the parKament of Paris admitted six, one into the edict-chamber and five into the appeal-chamber (enquetes). The edict of Nantes re- tained, at first for eight years and then for four more, in the hands of the Protestants the towns which war or treaties had put in their possession and which numbered, it is said, two hundred. The 330 History of France. A.D. 1598. Death of Philip II (Sept. 13). A.D. 1603 Death of Queen Elizabeth (AprU 3). Policy of Henry IV. at home, king was bound to bear the burthen cf keepintf up theii fortifi- cations and paying their garrisons ; and Henry IV, devoted to that object 540,000 livres of those times, or about two million francs of our day. Parliaments and Protestants, all saw that they had to do not only with a strong-willed king, but with a judicious and clear-sighted man, a true French patriot, who was sincerely concerned for the public interest and who had won his spurs in the art of governing parties by making for each its own place in the State. It was scarcely five years ago that the king who was now publishing the edict of Nantes had become a Catholic ; the parliaments enregistered the decree. The protestant malcontents resigned themselves to the necessity of being content with it. Whatever their imperfections and the objections that might be raised to them, the peace of Vervins and the edict of Nantes were, amidst the obstacles and perils encountered at every step by the government of Henry IV., the two most timely and most beneficial acts in the world for France. Four months after the conclusion of the treaty of Vervins, on the 13th of September, 1598, Philip II. died at the Escurial, and on the 3rd of April, 1603, a second great royal personage, Queen Elizabeth, disappeared from the scene. She had been, as regards the Protestantism of Europe, what Philip II. had been, as regards Catholicism, a powerful and able patron ; but what Philip II. did from fanatical conviction, Elizabeth did from patriotic feeliug ; she had small faith in Calvinistic doctrines and no liking for Puritanic sects ; the Catholic Church, the power of the pope excepted, was more to her mind than the Anglican Church, and her private preferences differed greatly from her public practices. Thus at the beginning of the seventeenth century Henry IV. was the only one remaining of the three great sovereigns who, during the sixteenth, had disputed, as regarded religion and politics, the preponderance in Europe. He had succeeded in all his kingly enterprises ; he had become a Catholic in France w ithout ceasing to be the prop of the Protestants in Europe ; he had made peace with Spain without embroiling himself with England, Holland and Lutheran Germany. He had shot up, as regarded ability and influence, in the eyes of all Europe. It was just then that he gave the strongest proof of his great judgment and political sagacity ; he wasi not intoxicated with success ; he did not abuse his power ; he did not aspire to distant conquests or brilliant achievements ; he concerned himself chiefly with the establishment of public order in his kingdom and ■with his people's prosperity. His well-known saying, " I want all my peasantry to have a fowl in the pot every Sunday," was a desire The " Grand Design.^ 33 1 worthy of Louis XII. Henry IV. had a sympathetic nature; Ma grandeur did not lead him to forget the nameless multitudes whose fate depended upon his government. He had, besides, the rich, productive, varied, inquiring mind of one who took an interest not only in the welfare of the French peasantry, but in the progress of the whole French community, progress agricultural, industrial, commercial, scientific, and literary. Abroad the policy of Henry IV. was as judicious and farsighted and as it was just and sympathetic at home. There has been much ^h °' a d writing and dissertation about what has been called his grand design." design. This name has been given to a plan for the religious and political organization of Christendom, consisting in the division of Europe amongst three religions, the Catholic, the Calvinistic and the Lutheran, and into fifteen states, great or small, monarchical or republican, with equal rights, alone recognized as members of the Christian confederation, regulating in concert their common affairs and pacifically making up their differences, whilst all the while preserving their national existence. The grand design, so far as Henry IV. was concerned, was never a definite project. His true external policy was much more real and practical. He had seen and experienced the evils of religious hatred and persecution. He had been a great sufferer from the supremacy of the House of Austria in Europe, and he had for a long while opposed it. When he became the most puissant and most regarded of European kings, he set his heart very strongly on two things, toleration for the three religions which had succeeded in establishing themselves in Europe and showing themselves capable of contending one against another, and the abasement of the House of Austria which, even after the death of Charles V. and of Philip II., remained the real and the formidable rival of France. The external policy of Henry IV,, from the treaty of Vervins to his death, was religious peace in Europe and the alliance of Catholic France with Protestant England and Germany against Spain and Austria. He showed constant respect and deference towards the papacy, a power highly regarded in both the rival camps, though much fallen from the substantial importance it had possessed in Europe during the middle ages. French policy striving against Spanish policy, such was the true and the only serious characteristic of the grand design. Four men, very unequal in influence as well &s merit, Sully, Advisersof Villeroi, Du Plessis-Mornay, and D'Aubigne, did Henry IV. suUy. effective ser/ice, by very different processes and in very different degrees, towards establishing and rendering successful this internal and external policy. Three were Protestants ; Villeroi alone was 332 History of France. a Catholic. Sully is beyond comparison with the othei three. He is the only one whom Henry IV. called my friend ; the only one who had participated in all the life and all the government of Henry IV., his evil as well as his exalted fortunes, his most painful embarrassments at home as well as his greatest political acts ; the only one whose name has remained inseparably connected with that of a master whom he served without servility as well as with- out any attempt to domineer. VillercL Nicholas de N"eufville, lord of Villeroi, who was born in 1543, and whose grandfather had been secretary of state under Francis I., was, whilst Henry III. was still reigning, member of a small secret council at which all questions relating to Protestants were treated of. Though a strict Catholic, and convinced that the king of France ought to be openly in the ranks of the Catholics, and to govern with their support, he sometimes gave Henry III. some free-spoken and wise counsels. Villeroi was a Leaguer of the patriotically French type. And so Henry IV., as soon as he was firm upon his throne, summoned him to his councils and confided to him the direction of foreign affairs. The late Leaguer sat beside Sully, ar.d exerted himself to give the prevalence, in Henry IV.'s external policy, to catholic maxims and alliances, whilst Sully, remaining firmly protestant in the service of his king, turned catholic, continued to be in foreign matters the champion of protestant policy and alliances. Henry IV. made so great a case of Villeroi's co-operation and influence that, without loving him as he loved Sully, he upheld bim and kept him as secretary of state for foreign aff'airs to the end of his reign. DttPlessis- Philip du Plessis-Mornay occupied a smaller place than Sully Mornay, and VUleroi in the government of Henry IV. ; but he held and deserves to keep a great one in the history of his times. He was the most eminent and also the most moderate of the men of profound piety and conviction of whom the Reformation had made a complete conquest, soul and body, and who placed their public fidelity to their religious creed above every other interest and every other affair in this world. Mornay had made up his mind to serve for ever a king who had saved his country. He remained steadfast and active in his faith, but without falling beneath the yoke of any narrow-minded idea, preserving his patriotic good sense in the midst of his fervent piety, and bearing with sorrow- ful constancy his friends' bursts of anger and his king's exhibitions grippa 0^" ingratitude. Aubigue A third Protestant, Theodore Agrippa d'Aubign^, grandfather SULLY. Henry IV. separates from his wife. 333 of Madame de Maintenon, has been reckoned here amongst, not the councillors, certainly, hut the familiar and still celebrated servants of Henry IV. He held no great post and had no great influence with the king ; he was, on every occasion, a valiant soldier, a zealous Protestant, an indefatigable lover and seeker of adventure, sometimes an independent thinker, frequently an eloquent and bold speaker, always a very sprightly companion. If D'Aubigni had not been a writer, ho would be completely forgotten by this time, like so many other intriguing and turbulent adventurers, who make a great deal of fuss themselves and try to bring every- thing about them into a fuss as long as they live, and who die without leaving any trace of their career. But D'Aubigne wrote a great deal both in prose and in verse ; he wrote the Histoire universelle of his times, personal Memoires, tales, tragedies, and theological and satirical essays ; and he wrote with sagacious, penetrating, unpremeditated wit, rare vigour, and original and almost profound talent for discerning and depicting situations and characters. It is the writer which has caused the man to live and has assigned him a place in French literature even more than in French history. These politicians, these Christians, these warriors had, in 1600, ^^ jgg^ a grave question to solve for Henry lY. and grave counsel to Henry IV. give him. He was anxious to separate from his wife, Mar- separatee . . . iroia his guerite de Valois, who had, in fact, been separated from him for wife. the last fifteen years, was leading a very irregular life, and had not brought him any children. But, in order to obtain from the pope annulment of the marriage, it was first necessary that Mar- guerite should agree to it, and at no price would she yield, so long as the king's favourite continued to be Gabrielle d'Estrees, whom she detested and by whom Henry already had several chil- dren. The question arose in 1598 in connexion with a son lately born to Gabrielle, who was constantly spreading reports that she would be the king's wife. In consequence, however, of the favourite's sudden death (April 10th, 1599), the consent of Mar- guerite de Valois to the annulment of her marriage was obtained ; and negotiations were opened at Rome by Arnauld d'Ossat, who waa made a cardinal, and by Brulart de Sillery, ambassador ad hoc. Clement VIII. pronounced on the 17th of December, 1599, and transmitted to Paris by Cardinal de Joyeuse the decree of annul- ment. On the 6th of January, 1600, Henry IV. gave his ambas- sador, Brulart de Sillery, powers to conclude at Florence his mar- riage with Mary de' Medici, daughter of Francis I. de' Medici, grand duk/) of Tuscany, and Joan, archduchew of Austria and 334 History of France, Medici. His mar- niece of the grand duke Ferdinand I. de' Medici, who had often riage with j^^^j^fjered Henry IV. pecuniary services dearly paid for. As early as the year 1592 there had been something said about this project of alliance ; it was resumed and carried out on the 6th of October, 1600, at Florence, with lavish magnificence. Mary embarked at Leghorn on the 17th with a fleet of seventeen galleys; that of which she was aboard, the General, was all covered over with Jewels inside and out ; she arrived at Marseilles on the 3rd of November and at Lyons on the 2nd of December, where she waited till the 9th for the king, who was detained by the war with ISavoy. He entered her chamber in the middle of the night, booted and armed, and next day, in the cathedral church of St. John, re-cele- brated his marriage, more rich in wealth than it was destined to be in happiness. Henry IV. seemed to have attained in his public and in his domestic life the pinnacle of earthly fortune and ambition. He was, at one and the same time, catholic king and the head of the Protestant polity in Europe, accepted by the Catholics as the best, the only possible, king for them in France. He was at peace with aU Europe, except one petty prince, the duke of Savoy, Charles Emmanuel I., from whom he demanded back the mar- quisate of Saluzzo or a territorial compensation in France itself on the French side of the Alps. After a short campaign, and thanks to Rosny's ordnance, he obtained what he desired, and by a treaty of January 17, 1601, he added to French territory La Bresse, Le Bugey, the district of Gex and the citadel of Bourg, which still held out after the capture of the town. He was more and more dear to France, to which he had restored peace at home as well as abroad, and industrial, commercial, financial, monumental and scientific prosperity, until lately unknown. Sully covered the country with roads, bridges, canals, buildings and works of public utility. The conspiracy of his old companion in arms, Gontaut de Biron, proved to him, however, that he was not at the end of his political dangers, and the letters he caused to be issued (Sep- tember, 1603) for the return of the Jesuits did not save him from the attacks of religious fanaticism. The queen's coronation had been proclaimed on the 12th of May, 1610; she was to be crowned next day the 13th at St. Denis, and Sunday the 1 6th had been appointed for her to make her entry into Paris, On Friday the 14th the king had an idea of going to the Arsenal to see Sully, who was ill ; we have the account of this visit and of the assassination given by Maiherbe, at that time attached to the service of Henry IV., in a Jetter Biron' t con- spiracy. Murder of Henry IV. 335 written on the 19 th of May from the reports of eye-witnesses, and it is here reproduced word for word: — "The king set out soon after dinner to go to the Arsenal. He gg^jy jy deliberated a long while whether he should go out, and several murdered times said to the queen, ' My dear, shall I go or not ? ' He even 7. j " went out two or three times and then all on a sudden returned, (May IIV and said to the queen, ' My dear, shall I really go 1 ' and again he had doubts about going or remaining. At last he made up his mind to go, and having kissed the queen several times, bade her adieu. Amongst other things that were remarked he said to her, ' I shall only go there and back ; I shall be here again almost directly.' "When he got to the bottom of the steps where his car- riage was waiting for him, M. de Praslin, his captain of the guard, would have attended him, but he said to him, ' Get you gone ; I want nobody ; go about your business.' " Thus, having about him only a few gentlemen and somo foot- men, he got into his carriage, took his place on the back seat at the left-hand side, and made M. d'Epernon sit at the right. Next to him, by the door, were M. de Montbazon and M. de la Force j and by the door on M. d'Epernon's side were Marshal de Lavardin and M. de Crequi ; on the front seat the marquis of Mirabeau and the first equerry. When he came to the Croix-du-Tiroir he waa asked whither it was his pleasure to go ; he gave orders to go towards St. Innocent. On arriving at Rue de la Ferronnerie, which is at the end of that of St. Honore on the way to that of St. Denis, opposite the Salamandre he met a cart which obliged the king's ~. , ., carriage to go nearer to the ironmongers' shops which are on the given by St. Innocent side, and even to proceed somewhat more slowly, with- Malherbe out stopping however, though somebody, who was in a hurry to get the gossip printed, has written to that eflfect. Here it was that an abominable assassin, who had posted himself against the nearest shop, which is that with the Coeur couronne perce d^une fi'edie, darted upon the king and dealt him, one after the other, two blows with a knife in the left side ; one, catching him between the arm-pit and the nipple, went upwards without doing more than graze ; the other catches him between the fifth and sixth ribs and, taking a downward direction, cuts a large artery of those caUed venous. The king, by mishap and as if to further tempt this monster, had his left hand on the shoulder of M. de Montbazon, and with the other was leaning on M. d'6pernon, to whom he was speaking. He uttered a low cry and made a few movement*. M. de Montbazon having asked, ' What is the matter, Sir 1 ' he answered, ' It is nothing,' twice ; but the second time so low that 335 History of France. Mary do' Medici regent. State of parties. there was no making sure. These are the only words he spoke after he was wounded. "la a moment the carriage turned towards the Louvre When he was at the steps where he had got into the carriage, which are those of the queen's rooms, some wine was given him. Of course some one had already run forward to hear the news. Sieur de Cerisy, lieutenant of M. de Praslin's company, having raised his head, he made a few movements with his eyes, then closed them immediately, without opening them again any more. He was carried upstairs hy M. de Montbazon and Count de Curzon en Quercy and laid on the bed in his closet, and at two o'clock carried to the bed in his chamber, where he was all the next day and Sunday. Somebody went and gave him holy water. I tell you nothing about the queen's tears ; all that must be imagined. As for the people of Paris, I think they never wept so much as on this occasion." On the king's death — and at the imperious instance of the duke of Epernon, who at once introduced the queen, and said in open ses- sion, as he exhibited his sword, " It is as yet in the scabbard, but it will have to leap therefrom unless this moment there be granted to the queen a title which is her due according to the order of nature and of justice," — the Parliament forthwith declared Mary regent of the kingdom. Thanks to Sully's firm administration, there were, after the ordinary annual expenses were paid, at that time in the vaults of the Bastille or in securities easily realizable, forty-one million three hundred and forty-five thousand livres, and there was nothing to suggest that extraordinary and urgent expenses would come to curtail this substantial reserve. The army was disbanded and reduced to from twelve to fifteen thousand men, French or Swiss. For a long time past no power in France had, at its accession, possessed so much material strength and so much moral authority. Since the death of Henry IV., however, the king and court of France were much changed : the great questions and the great personages had disappeared. The last of the real chiefs of the League, the brother of Duke Henry of Guise, the old duke of Mayenne, he on whom Henry, in' the hour of victory, would wreak no heavier vengeance than to walk him to a standstill, was dead. Henry IV.'s first wife, the sprightly and too facile Marguerite de Valois, was dead also, after consenting to descend from the throne in order to make way for the mediocre Mary de' Medici. The catholic champion whom Henry IV. felicitated himself upon being able to oppose to Du Plessis-Mornay in the polemical conferences between the two communions. Cardinal de Perron, was at the point of death. The decay was general and the same amongst the Pro- The Concinis — The Spanish marriages. 337 testants as amongst the Catholics ; Sully and Mornay held them- selves aloof or were barely listened to. In place of these eminent jj^g ^^^^ personages had come intriguing or ambitious subordinates, who were cinis. either innocent of, or indifferent to, anything like a great policy, and who had no idea beyond themselves and their fortunes. The chief amongst them were Leonora Galigai, daughter of the queen's nurse, and her husband, Concino Concini, son of a Florentine notary, both of them full of coarse ambition, covetous, vain and determined to make the best of their new position, so as to enrich themselves and exalt themselves beyond measure and at any price. The husband of Leonora Galigai, Concini, had amassed a great deal of money and purchased the marquisate of Ancre ; nay more, he had been created marshal of France. In his dread lest influence opposer] to his own should be exercised over the young king, he took upon himself to regulate his amusements and his walks, and prohibited him from leaving Paris. Louis XIII. had amongst his personal attendants a young nobleman, Albert de Lnynes, clever in training little sporting birds, called hutcher-hirds {pies grieches or shriJces), then all the rage ; and the king made his falconer and lived on familiar terms with him. Playing at billiards one day, Marslial d'Ancre, putting on his hat, said to the king, " I hope your j\'Iajesty will allow me . « ,gj„ to be covered." The king allowed it ; but remained surprised and Conoini shocked. His young page, Albert de Luynes, observed his displea- JT^'^^iyA sure, and being anxious, himself also, to become a favourite, he took pains to fan it. A domestic plot was set hatching against Marshal d'Ancre, who was shot down on the bridge of the Louvre (April 24, 1617) by M. de Yitry, captain of the giard. Shortly after, Leonora Galigai, accused of witchcraft, was beheaded on the place de Greve, and her body committed to the flames. Concini and his wife, both of them, probably, in the secret ser- The vice of the court of Madrid, had promoted the marriage of Louis Spanish XIII. with the Infanta Anne of Austria, eldest daughter of Philip III. king of Spain, and that of Philip, Infanta of Spain, who was afterwards Philip IV., with Princess Elizabeth of France, sister of Louis XIII. Henry IV., in his plan for the pacification of Europe, had himself conceived this idea and testified a desire for this double marriage, but without taking any trouble to bring it about. It was after his death that, on the 30th of April, 1612, Villeroi, minister of foreign affairs in France, and Don Inigo de Cardenas, ambassador of the king of Spain, concluded this double union by a formal deed. The two Spanish marriages were regarded in France as an abandonment of the national policy ; France was, in a great majority, catholic, but its Catholicism differed essentially from the Spanish z 338 History of France, A.D. 1614. The StateS' general. Richelieu. A D. 1616. Kichelieu minister. Follows the QTieen to Llois. Catholicism : a remedy was desired ; it was hoped that one would he found in the convocation of the states-general of the kingdom, to which the populace always looked expectantly ; they were con- voked first for the 16th of September, 1614, at Sens ; and, after- wards, for the 20th of October following, when the young king, Louis Xin., after the announcement of his majority, himself opened them in state. The chief political fact connected with the convocation of the States-general of 1614 was the entry into their ranks of the youthful bishop of LuQon, Armand John du Plessis de Eichelieu, marked out by the finger of God to sustain, after the powerful reign of Henry IV. and the incapable regency of Mary de' Medici, the weight of the government of France. As he was born on the 5th of September, 1585, he was but 28 years old in 1614. He had even then acquired amongst the clergy and at the court of Louis XIII. sufficient importance to be charged with the duty of speaking in presence of the king on the acceptance of the acts of the council of Trent and on the restitution of certain property belonging to the Catholic Church in Beam. He made skilful use of the occasion for the purpose of still further exalting and improv- ing the question and his own position. He complained that for a long time past ecclesiastics had been too rarely summoned to the sovereign's councils ; he took care at the same time to make himself pleasant to the mighty ones of the hour ; he praised the young king for having, on announcing his majority, asked his mother to con- tinue to watch over France, and " to add to the august title of mother of the king that of mother of the kingdom." The post of almoner to the queen-regnant. Anne of Austria, was his reward. He carried still further his ambitious foresight; in Feb. 1615, at the time when the session of the states-general closed. Marshal d'Ancre and Leonora Galiga'i were stiU. favourites with the queen- mother ; Richelieu laid himself out to be pleasant to them, and received from the marshal in 1616 the post of Secretary of State for Avar and foreign affairs. Marshal d'Ancre was at that time look- ing out for supports against his imminent downfall. When, in 1617, he fell and was massacred, people were astonished to find Richelieu on good terms with the marshal's court-rival, Albert de Luynes, who pressed him to remain in the council at which he had sat for only five months. To accept the responsibility of the new favourite's accession was a compromising act ; Richelieu judged it more prudent to remain bishop of Lu9on and to wear the appear- ance of defeat by following Mary de' Medici to Blois, whither, since the fall of her favourites, she had asked leave to retire. He would there, he said, be more useful to the government of the young king ; Richelieu's cleverness. 339 for, remaining at the side of Mary de' Medici, he would be able to advise and restrain her. The astute minister contrived to interest both parties on his behalf. To the court he adduced his withdrawal from public business as a proof of the most absolute submission ; to Mary de* Medici he described it as the result of his unremitting zeal for her service, and as a new persecution on the part of her enemies. He thus contrived to weather the storm ; and when the excitement produced by the catastrophe of Concini had subsided, he looked round to see what could be done. We cannot enter here into the Manages particulars connected with the disgrace of the queen-mother. ^^ ^^^P °^ Suffice it to say, that Eichelieu served her to the utmost of his ^iti^ ^0^^ power, and rendered her party so formidable, that it proved a parties, serious obstacle to the ambitious views of the new favourite. The Bishop of Lu9on, through his determination, his intrigues, his nnscrupulous conduct, had become a dangerous personage; he was first ordered to return to his priory at Coussay, then to his episcopal palace, and finally he was banished to Avignon. There he seemed determined upon leading a life of seclusion, and a casual observer, anxious to know how he spent his time, would have found him busily employed in writing theological works. This, of course, was merely a feint, designed to throw his enemies off their guard. A-ttention to his books did not prevent Eichelieu from watching the progress of events ; and when Mary de' Medici contrived to escape from Blois, he joined her without any further delay. By his influence, the whole of the Anjou nobility — the dukes de Longueville, de Bouillon, d'Epern on— rallied round the standard of the queen. A battle was fought at Pont-de-Ce, near Angers, where the rebel troops met with a signal defeat. A treaty, never- theless, concluded shortly after, secured to Eichelieu almost as many advantages as if he, and not de Luynes, had triumphed. The queen received permission to return to court, with the full enjoyment of all the privileores and honours due to her rank ; and the king pledged himself to solicit a cardinal's hat for Eichelieu, whose niece. Mademoiselle de Pont-Courlay, married the marquis de Combalet, nephew of de Luynes (1619-20). Albert de Luynes came out of this crisis well content. He Albert de felicitated himself on the king's victory over the queen-mother, for I