[Frontispiece: Gambetta proclaiming the Republic of France. From thepainting by Howard Pyle. ]

A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE

BY

MARY PLATT PARMELE

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1907

Copyright, 1894, By

WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON

Copyright, 1898, 1905, 1906, By

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

 Early Conditions in Gaul

CHAPTER II. 

 Julius Caesar's Conquest of Gaul Lutetia

CHAPTER III. 

 Birth of Christianity Its Dissemination Its Espousal by the Roman Empire Hunnish Invasion

CHAPTER IV. 

 The Frank in Gaul Clovis Rois-Fainéants Charles Martel Mahometanism Pepin Seizes the Crown

CHAPTER V. 

 Charlemagne Holy Roman Empire Treaty of Verdun

CHAPTER VI. 

 Invasions by Northmen Normandy Given to Invaders Feudalism Decline of Kingship Ascendancy of the Church Hugh Capet "Truce of God" William the Conqueror

CHAPTER VII. 

 Social Structure of France Free Cities Their Creation and Enfranchisement The Crusades Philip Augustus War with King John of England Toulouse and the Albigensian War

CHAPTER VIII. 

 Abelard Louis IX. End of Crusades Philip III. Philip IV. And Papacy Creation of States-General Popes at Avignon Knights Templar Exterminated Change in Succession

CHAPTER IX. 

 Edward III. Claims French Throne Crécy Poitiers Treaty of Bretigny Charles V. And Bertrand du Guesclin Death of Black Prince Charles VI. A Mad King Feud Between Houses of Orleans and Burgundy Siege of Orleans Joan of Arc Charles VII. 

CHAPTER X. 

 Standing Army Created Louis XI. The Passing of Mediaevalism Charles VIII. Invasion of Italy Louis XII. Francis I. Struggle for Throne of the German Empire The Reformation

CHAPTER XI. 

 The House of Guise Marie Stuart Francis II. His Death Regency of Catharine de' Medici Her Designs Coligny Henry of Navarre His Marriage Charles IX. St. Bartholomew's Eve Henry III. His Death Henry of Navarre King

CHAPTER XII. 

 Edict of Nantes Ravaillac Louis XIII. Regency of Maria de' Medici Richelieu The Fronde

CHAPTER XIII. 

 Louis XIV. Four Great Wars Revocation of Edict of Nantes A Victorious Coalition Death of Louis XIV. Louis XV. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

 John Law Life at Versailles Marriage of Dauphin Unseen Currents Approaching Crisis Death of Louis XV. 

CHAPTER XV. 

 Louis XVI. American Revolution Turgot Necker States-General Summoned National Assembly Destruction of Bastille Revolution Lafayette Varennes The Temple Triumphant Jacobins Execution of the King Charlotte Corday Execution of Queen Fate of the Dauphin Girondists Philippe Égalité Revolution Ended

CHAPTER XVI. 

 France a Republic Napoleon Bonaparte Breaking Chains in Italy Campo Formio Campaign in Egypt An Empire Rapid Steps from Toulon to Versailles A New Map of Europe Maria Louisa Moscow Leipsic Elba

CHAPTER XVII. 

 Louis XVIII. Return of Napoleon Waterloo St. Helena Bourbon Restoration Charles X. Louis Philippe Revolution Second Republic Louis Napoleon

CHAPTER XVIII. 

 Second French Republic The _Coup d'État_ Napoleon III. A "Liberator" in Italy Peace of Villafranca Suez Canal An Empire in Mexico Franco-Prussian War Sedan

CHAPTER XIX. 

 Third French Republic The Commune The Germans in Paris Reconstruction from Thiers to Loubet Affaire Dreyfus Law of Associations Separation of Church and State Conference at Algeciras Election of M. Fallières Conclusion

Sovereigns and Rulers of France

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Gambetta, proclaiming the Republic of France . . . _Frontispiece_

Coronation of Charlemagne

Burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, May 30, 1431

Napoleon at the Battle of Rivoli, January 14, 1797

Josephine crowned Empress, December 2, 1804, in Notre Dame Cathedral

The Revolution of July 28, 1830

A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 

CHAPTER I. 

One of the greatest achievements of modern research is the discovery ofa key by which we may determine the kinship of nations. What we usedto conjecture, we now know. An identity in the structural form oflanguage establishes with scientific certitude that however diversetheir character and civilizations, Russian, German, Englishman, Frenchman, Spaniard, are all but branches from the same parent stem, are all alike children of the Asiatic Aryan. 

So skilful are modern methods of questioning the past, and sodetermined the effort to find out its secrets, we may yet know theorigin and history of this wonderful Asiatic people, and when and whythey left their native continent and colonized upon the northern shoresof the Mediterranean. Certain it is, however, that, more centuriesbefore the Christian era than there have been since, they had peopledWestern Europe. 

This branch of the Aryan family is known as the Keltic, and was olderbrother to the Teuton and Slav, which at a much later period followedthem from the ancestral home, and appropriated the middle and easternportions of the European Continent. 

The name of Gaul was given to the territory lying between the Ocean andthe Mediterranean, and the Pyrenees and the Alps. And at a laterperiod a portion of Northern Gaul, and the islands lying north of it, received from an invading chieftain and his tribe the name _Brit_ or_Britain_ (or Pryd or Prydain). 

If the mind could be carried back on the track of time, and we couldsee what we now call France as it existed twenty centuries before theChristian era, we should behold the same natural features: the samemountains rearing their heads; the same rivers flowing to the sea; thesame plains stretching out in the sunlight. But instead of vines andflowers and cultivated fields we should behold great herds of wild oxand elk, and of swine as fierce as wolves, ranging in a climate as coldas Norway; and vast, inaccessible forests, the home of beasts of prey, which contended with man for food and shelter. 

Let us read Guizot's description of life in Gaul five centuries beforeChrist:

"Here lived six or seven millions of men a bestial life, in dwellingsdark and low, built of wood and clay and covered with branches orstraw, open to daylight by the door alone and confusedly heapedtogether behind a rampart of timber, earth, and stone, which enclosedand protected what they were pleased to call--a _town_. "

Such was the Paris and such the Frenchmen of the age of Pericles! Andthe same tides that washed the sands of Southern Gaul, a few hourslater ebbed and flowed upon the shores of Greece--rich in culture, withrefinements and subtleties in art which are the despair of the worldto-day--with an intellectual endowment never since attained by anypeople. 

The same sun which rose upon temples and palaces and life serene andbeautiful in Greece, an hour later lighted sacrificial altars andhideous orgies in the forests of Gaul. While the Gaul was nailing theheads of human victims to his door, or hanging them from the bridle ofhis horse, or burning or flogging his prisoners to death, the Greek, with a literature, an art, and a civilization in ripest perfection, discussed with his friends the deepest problems of life and destiny, which were then baffling human intelligence, even as they are with ustoday. Truly we of Keltic and Teuton descent are late-comers upon thestage of national life. 

There was no promise of greatness in ancient Gaul. It was a great, unregulated force, rushing hither and thither. Impelled by insatiategreed for the possessions of their neighbors, there was no permanencein their loves or their hatreds. The enemies of to-day were the alliesof to-morrow. Guided entirely by the fleeting desires and passions ofthe moment, with no far-reaching plans to restrain, the sixty or moretribes composing the Gallic people were in perpetual state of feud andanarchy, apparently insensible to the ties of brotherhood, which giveconcert of action, and stability in form of national life. If theyoverran a neighboring country, it seemed not so much for permanentacquisition, as to make it a camping-ground until its resources wereexhausted. 

We read of one Massillia who came with a colony of Greeks long agesago, and after founding the city of Marseilles, created a narrow, bright border of Greek civilization along the southern edge of thebenighted land. It was a brief illumination, lasting only a century ormore, and leaving few traces; but it may account for the superiorintellectual quality which later distinguished Provence, the home ofminstrelsy. 

It requires a vast extent of territory to sustain a people living bythe chase, and upon herds and flocks; hence the area which now amplymaintains forty millions of Frenchmen was all too small for six orseven million Gauls; and they were in perpetual struggle with theirneighbors for land--more land. 

"Give us land, " they said to the Romans, and when land was denied themand the gates of cities disdainfully closed upon their messengers, notland, but vengeance, was their cry; and hordes of half-naked barbarianstrampled down the vineyards, and rushed, a tumultuous torrent, uponRome. 

The Romans could not stand before this new and strange kind of warfare. The Gauls streamed over the vanquished legions into the Eternal City, silent and deserted save only by the Senate and a few who remainedintrenched in the Citadel; and there the barbarians kept them besiegedfor seven months, while they made themselves at home amiduncomprehended luxuries. 

Of course Roman skill and courage at last dislodged and drove themback. But the fact remained that the Gaul had been there--master ofRome; that the iron-clad legions had been no match for his naked force, and a new sensation thrilled through the length and breadth of Gaul. It was the first throb of national life. The sixty or more fragmentsdrew closer together into something like Gallic unity--with a commondanger to meet, a common foe to drive back. 

Hereafter there was another hunger to be appeased besides that for foodand land; a hunger for conquest, for vengeance, and for glory for theGallic name. National pride was born. 

For years they hovered like wolves about Rome. But skill and superiorintelligence tell in the centuries. It took long--and cost no end ofblood and treasure; but two hundred years from the capture of Rome, theGauls were driven out of Italy, and the Alps pronounced a barrier setby nature herself against barbarian encroachments. 

Italy was not the only country suffering from the destroying footstepsof the Western Kelts. There had been long before an overflow of atribe in Northern Gaul (the Kymrians), which had hewed and plunderedits way south and eastward; until at the time of Alexander (B. C. 340)it was knocking at the gates of Macedonia. 

Stimulated by the success at Rome fifty years earlier, they were, withfresh insolence, demanding "land, " and during the centuries whichfollowed, the Gallic name acquired no fresh lustre in Greece. Half-naked, gross, ferocious, and ignorant, sometimes allies, butalways a scourge, they finally crossed the Hellespont (B. C. 278), andturned their attention to Asia Minor. And there, at last, we find themsettled in a province called Gallicia, where they lived withoutamalgamating with the people about them, and four hundred years afterChrist were speaking the language of their tribal home in what is nowBelgium. And these were the Galatians--the "foolish Galatians, " towhom Paul addressed his epistle; and we have followed up this Gallicthread simply because it mingles with the larger strand of ancient andsacred history with which we are all so familiar. 

It is not strange that Roman courage became a byword. The fibre ofRome was toughened by perpetual strain of conflict. Even while she wasstruggling with Gaul and with the memories of the Carthaginian warsstill fresh at Rome, the Goths were at her gates--their blows directedwith a solidity superior to that of the barbarians who had precededthem. Where the Gauls had knocked, the Goths thundered. 

Again the city was invaded by barbarian feet, and again did superiortraining and intelligence drive back the invading torrent and triumphover native brute force. 

Such, in brief outline, was the condition of the centuries just beforethe Christian era. 

It is easy now to read the meaning of these agitated centuries, and torecognize the preparation for the passing of the old and the coming ofthe new. 

CHAPTER II. 

The making of a nation is not unlike bread or cake making. One elementis used as the basis, to which are added other component parts, ofvarying qualities, and the result we call England, or Germany, orFrance. The steps by which it is accomplished, the blending and fusingof the elements, require centuries, and the process makes what wecall--history. 

It was written in the book of fate that Gaul should become a greatnation; but not until fused and interpenetrated with two othernationalities. She must first be humanized and civilized by the Roman, and then energized and made free from the Roman by the Teuton. 

The instrument chosen for the former was Julius Caesar, and for thelatter--five centuries later--Clovis, the Frankish leader. 

It is safe to affirm that no man has ever so changed the course ofhuman events as did Julius Caesar. Napoleon, who strove to imitate him1800 years later, was a charlatan in comparison; a mere scene-shifteron a great theatrical stage. Few traces of his work remain uponhumanity to-day. 

Caesar opened up a pathway for the old civilizations of the world toflow into Western Europe, and the sodden mass of barbarism was infusedwith a life-compelling current. This was not accomplished by placingbefore the inferior race a higher ideal of life for imitation, but by amingling of the blood of the nations--a transfusion into Gallic veinsof the germs of a higher living and thinking--thus making them heirs tothe great civilizations of antiquity. 

Was any human event ever fraught with such consequences to the humanrace as the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar?

The Gallic wars had for centuries drained the treasure and taxed theresources of Rome. Caesar conceived the audacious idea of stoppingthem at their source--in fact, of making Gaul a Roman province. 

It was a marvellous exhibition, not simply of force, but of forcewielded by supreme intelligence and craft. He had lived many yearsamong this people and knew their sources of weakness, their internaljealousies and rivalries, their incohesiveness. When they hurledthemselves against Rome, it was as a mass of sharp fragments. When theGoths did the same, it was as one solid, indivisible body. Caesar sawthat by adroit management he could disintegrate this people whileconquering them. 

By forcibly maintaining in power those who submitted to him, being byturns gentle and severe, ingratiating here, terrifying there, heestablished a tremendous personal force; and during nine years carriedon eight campaigns, marvels in the art of war, as well as in thesubtler methods of negotiation and intrigue. He had successively dealtwith all the Keltic tribes, even including Great Britain, subjugatingeither through their own rivalries, or by his invincible arm. 

Equally able to charm and to terrify, he had all the gifts, all themeans to success and empire, that can be possessed by man. Great inpolitics as in war, as full of resource in the forum as on thebattle-field, he was by nature called to dominion. 

It was not as a patriot, simply intent upon freeing Rome of anharassing enemy, that he endured those nine years in Gaul; not as agreat leader burning with military ardor that he conducted those eightcampaigns. The conquest of Gaul meant the greater conquest of Rome. The one was accomplished; he now turned his back upon the devastatedcountry, and prepared to complete his great project of human ascendency. 

Rome was mistress of the world; he--would be master of Rome. 

In the early days of the conquest of Gaul a small island lying in theriver Seine was chosen for the residence of the Roman Governors, andcalled _Lutetia_. The residence soon grew into the Palace of theCaesars; and then bridges spanned the river, and roads and aqueductsand faubourgs sprang into existence across the Seine, and _Lutetia_ wasswallowed up in Paris--so named for a Gallic tribe, the _Parisii_, which had once encamped there. Standing within the Palais de Justiceon this island to-day, one is in direct touch with Rome when she wasmistress of the world. The feet of the Caesars have pressed thosestones. Those vaulted ceilings have looked down upon Julian theApostate; he who upon his throne in the far East sighed for"Lutetia"--his "dear Lutetia. "

At Passy and Montmartre, and where stands the Palais Royal, rich Romanshad their suburban homes, and Roman legions were encamped where are nowthe Palais de Luxembourg and the Sorbonne. And with a mingling ofKeltic and Latin, there had commenced a new form of human speech. 

Not Paris alone, but all of Gaul felt the awakening touch of a greatcivilization, and with improved ideals in living there came anothergreat advance. The human sacrifices and abhorrent practices of theDruidical faith were abandoned, and Jupiter and Minerva and the gods ofParnassus supplanted the grim deities of a more ancient mythology. Butwhile Rome was a powerful teacher, she was a cruel mistress--andshackles were galling to these free barbarians. In the midst ofuniversal misery there came tidings of something better than the godsof Parnassus, when in A. D. 160 Irenaeus came to Lyons and thereestablished the first Church of Christ; and here it was that MarcusAurelius ordered the persecution which was intended to stamp out thenew and fanatical heresy. 

CHAPTER III. 

While the Star of Empire was thus moving toward the West, another andbrighter star had arisen in the East. So accustomed are we to thestory, that we lose all sense of wonder at its recital. 

Julius Caesar's brief triumph was over, Marc Antony had recited hisvirtues over his bier, Rome had wept, and then forgotten him in theabsorbing splendors of his nephew Augustus. In an obscure village ofan obscure country in Asia Minor the young wife of a peasant findsshelter in a stable, and gives birth to a son, who is cradled in thestraw of a manger from which the cattle are feeding. 

Can the mind conceive of human circumstances more lowly? The childgrew to manhood, and in his thirty-three years of life was never liftedabove the obscure sphere into which he was born; never spoke from thevantage-ground of worldly elevation; simply moving among people of hisown station in life, mechanics, fishermen, and peasants, he told of areligion of love, a gospel of peace, for which he was willing to die. 

Who would have dreamed that this was the germ of the most potent, themost regenerative force the world had ever known? That thrones, empires, principalities, and powers would melt and crumble before Hisname? Of all miracles, is not this the greatest?

The passionate ardor with which this religion was propagated in thefirst two centuries had no motive but the yearning to make others sharein its benefits and hopes; and to this end to accept the belief thatJesus Christ had come in fulfilment of the promise of a Saviour--whoshould be sent to this world clothed with divine authority to establisha spiritual kingdom, in which he was King of kings, Lord of lords, Meditator between us and the Father, of whom he was the "only begottenSon. "

The religion in its essence was absolutely simple. Its founder summedit up in two sentences: expressing the duty of man to man, and of manto God. That was all the theology he formulated. 

For two centuries the religion of Christ was an elemental spiritualforce. It appealed only to the highest attributes and longings of thehuman soul, and under its sustaining influence frail women, men, andeven children were able to endure tortures, of which we cannot readeven now without shuddering horror. 

Nature's method of gardening is very beautiful. She carefully guardsthe seed until it is ripe, then she bursts the imprisoning walls andgives it to the winds to distribute. Precisely such method was used indisseminating Christianity. It was not for one people--it was for thehealing of the nations, and its home was wherever man abides. 

Nearly five decades after Christ's death upon the cross, Jerusalem wasdestroyed by Titus. The home of Christianity was effaced. At just theright moment the enclosing walls had broken, and freed to the winds thegerms in all their primitive purity. 

Imperial favor had not tarnished it, human ambitions had not employedand degraded it, nor had it been made into complex system by ingeniouscasuists. The pure spiritual truth, unsullied as it came from the handof its founder, was scattered broadcast, as the band of Christiansdispersed throughout the Roman Empire, naturally forming intocommunities here and there, which became the centres of Christianpropagandism. Lyons in Gaul was such a centre. 

The fires of persecution had been lighted here and there throughout theempire, and the Emperor Nero, under whom the Apostles Peter and Paulare said to have suffered martyrdom, had amused himself by makingtorches of the Christians at Rome. But until A. D. 177 Gaul was exemptfrom such horrors. 

Marcus Aurelius--that peerless pagan--large in intelligence, exalted incharacter, and guided by a conscientious rectitude which has made hisname shine like a star in the lurid light of Roman history, stillfailed utterly to comprehend the significance of this spiritual kingdomestablished by Christ on earth. He it was who ordered the firstpersecution in Gaul. In pursuance of his command, horrible tortureswere inflicted at Lyons upon those who would not abjure the new faith. 

A letter, written by an eye-witness, pictures with terrible vividnessthe scenes which followed. Many cases are described with harrowingdetail, and of one Blandina it is said: "From morn till eve they puther to all manner of torture, marvelling that she still lived with herbody pierced through and through and torn piecemeal by so manytortures, of which a single one should have sufficed to kill her; towhich she only replied, 'I am a Christian. '"

The recital goes on to tell how she was then cast into a dungeon--herfeet compressed and dragged out to the utmost tension of themuscles--then left alone in darkness until new methods of torture couldbe devised. 

Finally she was brought, with other Christians, into the amphitheatre, hanging from a Cross to which she was tied, and there thrown to thebeasts. As the beasts refused to touch her she was taken back to thedungeon to be reserved for another occasion, being brought out daily towitness the fate and suffering of her friends and fellow-martyrs; stillanswering the oft-repeated question, "I am a Christian. "

The writer goes on to say, "After she had undergone fire, the talons ofbeasts, and every agony which could be thought of, she was wrapped in anetwork and thrown to a bull, who tossed her in the air"--and hersufferings were ended. 

Truly it cost something to say "I am a Christian" in those days. 

Marcus Aurelius probably gave orders for the persecution at Lyons, withlittle knowledge of what would be the nature of those persecutions, orof the religion he was trying to exterminate. Some of the hours spentin writing introspective essays would have been well employed instudying the period in which he lived, and the empire he ruled. 

Paganism and Druidism, those twin monsters, receded before theadvancing light of Christianity. Neither contained anything whichcould nourish the soul of man, and both had become simply badges ofnationality. 

Druidism was the last stronghold of independent Gallic life. It was amixture of northern myth and oriental dreams of metempsychosis, coarse, mystical, and cruel. The Roman paganism which was superimposed by theconquering race was the mere shell of a once vital religion. Educatedmen had long ceased to believe in the gods and divinities of Greece, and it is said that the Roman augurs, while giving their solemnprophetic utterances, could not look at each other without laughing. 

In the year 312--alas for Christianity!--it was espoused by imperialpower. When the Emperor Constantine declared himself a Christian, there was no doubt rejoicing among the saints; but it was the beginningof the degeneracy of the religion of Christ. The faith of the humblewas to be raised to a throne; its lowly garb to be exchanged for purpleand scarlet; the gospel of peace to be enforced by the sword. 

The empire was crumbling, and upon its ruins the race of the future andsocial conditions of modern times were forming. Paganism and Druidismwould have been an impossibility. Christianity, even with its lustredimmed, its purity tarnished, its simplicity overlaid withscholasticism, was better than these. The miracle had beenaccomplished. The great Roman Empire had said, "I am Christian. "

A belief in the gods of Parnassus, which Rome had imposed upon Gaul, had now become a heresy to be exterminated. If fires were lighted atLyons or elsewhere, they were for the extermination not of Christians, but of pagans, and of all who would depart from the religion of Christas interpreted by Rome. It was a death-bed repentance for the cruelold empire, a repentance which might delay, but could not avert acalamitous ending, and an unexpected event was near at hand which wouldhasten the coming of the end. 

It was in the year A. D. 375 that the Huns, a terrible race of beings, came out from that then mysterious but now historic region, lyingbetween China and Russia, and surged into Europe under the leadershipof Attila, sweeping before them as they came Goths, Vandals, and otherTeutonic races, as if with a predetermined purpose of forcing theuncivilized Teuton into the lap of a perishing civilization in thesouth. Then having accomplished this, after the defeat of Attila atChâlons in A. D. 453, they disappeared forever as a race from the stageof human events. 

This is the time when Paris was saved by Genevieve, the poorsheperdess, who, like an early Joan of Arc, awoke the people from theapathy of despair, and led them to victory--and is rewarded by animmortality as "Saint Genevieve, " the patron saint of Paris. It wouldseem that the vigilance of the gentle saint has either slept or beenunequal to the task of protecting her city at times!

It was the combined forces of the Goth and the Frank which drove thisscourge out of Europe. Meroveus, or Meroveg, the leader of the Franksin this great achievement, once the terror of the Gallic people, wasnow their deliverer. He had won the gratitude of all classes, frombishops to slaves, throughout Gaul, and fate had thus opened wide adoor leading into the future of that land. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Gaul had been Latinized and Christianized. Now one more thing wasneeded to prepare her for a great future. Her fibre was to betoughened by the infusion of a stronger race. Julius Caesar had shakenher into submission, and Rome had chastised her into decency ofbehavior and speech, but as her manners improved her native vigordeclined. She took kindly to Roman luxury and effeminacy, and could nolonger have thundered at the gates of her neighbors demanding "land. "

The despotism of a perishing Roman Empire had become intolerable; andthe thoughts of an overtaxed and enslaved people turned naturally tothe Franks. They had rescued them from one terrible fate, might theynot deliver them from another? And so it came about that the youngsavage Chlodoveg, or _Clovis_, grandson of Meroveus, found himselfmaster of the fair land long coveted beyond the Rhine; and Gaul andRoman alike were submerged beneath the Teuton flood, while Clovis, sitting in the Palace of the Caesars, on the island in the Seine, waswearing the kingly crown, and independent and dynastic life hadcommenced in what was hereafter to be not Gaul, but _France_. 

But the king of whom she had dreamed was of her own race; not thisterrible Frank. Had she exchanged one servitude for another? Had shebeen, not set free, but simply annexed to the realm of the barbarianacross the Rhine? Let us say rather that it was an espousal. She hadbrought her dowry of beauty and "land, " that most coveted ofpossessions, and had pledged obedience, for which she was to becherished, honored, and protected, and to bear the name of her lord. 

It will be well not to examine too closely the conversion of Clovis toChristianity, any more than that of Constantine to the religion ofChrist, or that of Henry VIII. To Protestantism. The only thing Cloviswanted of the gods was aid in destroying his enemies. At a certaindark moment, when the pagan deities failed him, and the tide of battlewas turning against him, in desperation he offered to become aChristian, if the God of the Christians would save him. He kept hisword. His victory was followed by Christian baptism, and the Churchhad won a great defender, whose ferocious instincts were thereafter tobe directed toward the extermination of unbelievers. And while hewingand consolidating and bringing his kingdom into form, whether bytreacheries or intrigues or assassination, this converted Frank was notalone defender of the faith, but of the orthodox faith. The Visigothkingdom in Spain was given over to that heresy known as _Arianism_! Soin a crusade, like another of a later date, he swept them over beyondthe Pyrenees, thus establishing a frontier which always remained. 

Such were the rough beginnings of France, geographically andhistorically. 

Ancient heroes are said to be seen through a shadowy lens, whichmagnifies their stature. Let us hope that the crimes of the three orfour generations immediately succeeding Clovis have been in like mannerexpanded; for it is sickening to read of such monstrous prodigality ofwickedness; whole families butchered--husbands, wives, children, anything obstructing the path to the throne--with an atrocity whichmakes Richard III. Seem a mere pigmy in the art of intrigue andkilling. The chapter closes with the daughter and mother of kings(Brunhilde or Brunhaut), naked, and tied by one arm, one leg, and herhair to the tail of an unbroken horse, and amid jeers and shouts dashedover the stones of Paris (A. D. 600). 

Upon the death of Clovis his inheritance was divided among four sons, who, with their wives and families and their tempestuous passions, afforded material for a great epic. Whether Fredegunde or Brunhildewas the more terrible who can say? But the story of these rivalqueens, with their loves and their hatreds and their ambitious, vengeful fury, is more like the story of demons than of women. Butthese conditions led to two results which played a great part insubsequent events. One was the exclusion of women from the successionby the adoption of the Salic Law. Then, in order to curb thedegeneracy or to reinforce the inefficiency of the hereditary ruler, there was created the office of _Maire du Palais_, a modest title whichcontained the germ of the future, not alone of France, but of the world. 

To imperfect human vision it would have seemed at the time a fatalmistake to bury out of sight the refinements which a Latin civilizationhad been for nearly five centuries planting in Gaul. But so often hasthis been repeated in the history of the world, one is compelled torecognize it as a part of the evolutionary method. Again and againhave we seen old civilizations effaced by barbarians. But thesebarbarians with their coarseness and brutality have usually broughtsomething better than refinement; a spirit so transforming, sovitalizing, that we are compelled to believe it was the end sought inthe catastrophe we deplore: that is, a spirit of liberty, a sense ofpersonal independence, without which the refinements of art, evenreinforced by genius, are unavailing. Such was undoubtedly theinvigorating leaven brought into Gaul by the Frank, although for a timehe succumbed to the enervating Gallic influence, and, while conqueringand subduing, was himself conquered and subdued. 

The cultivated Roman in his toga appealed to the imagination of thefine barbarian; the habits of the Romanized cities were a temptingmodel for imitation. Bridges, aqueducts, palaces, with their splendidmingling of strength and beauty, fragments of which still linger toconvince us of our inferiority, these were awe-inspiring to the Frankand filled him with longings to drink deep at this fountain ofcivilization. The heroic strain brought by Clovis was quicklyenfeebled and debauched by luxury. The court of the Merovingian kingbecame a miserable assemblage of half-Romanized barbarians covered withthe frayed and worn-out mantle of imperialism. It is a strange picturewe have of this descendant of Clovis, this _Roi Fainéant_ (Do-nothingKing) in a royal procession on a state occasion. Curled and perfumed, he emerges from the _Palais des Thermes_, attended in great pomp byRomans and Romanized Frankish warriors. Then, in remembrance of theprimitive simplicity of his ancestral line, sitting alone in a wagondrawn by bullocks, he leads the pageant through the narrow streets ofold Paris. 

But while masquerading as a simple barbarian he was only a poorimitator of the vices and dregs of a perishing civilization. But inproof that virility was still a characteristic of the Frank in Gaul, weare told that while the Church and the offices of State were filled byRomans or Gallo-Romans, the army at this time was composed entirely ofFranks. 

With the degeneracy of these _Rois Fainéants_ the kingdom of Clovis wasgradually shrinking, and men were already waiting to seize the power asit fell from incompetent hands. When Clovis made gifts of largeestates to reward, or to purchase, followers, Roman or Gallic, he laidthe foundations of a system which would prove fatal to his successors. With these estates came titles and authority, multiplying and growingwith each succeeding reign. A count, who was the chief officer of acounty, was in fact the sovereign of a small state, and so on a smallerscale were a duke or a marquis. And it was to these smaller bodiesthat the power naturally gravitated as it vanished from the throne. 

This meant disintegration into helpless fragments, and this meant theend of a Frankish kingdom, unless some power should arise great enoughto compel the crumbling state to become homogeneous. 

It was a Romanized-Frankish family dwelling in the Valley of the Rhinewhich saved the kingdom of Clovis from this fate. France had alreadyfallen apart into an eastern and a western kingdom, known respectivelyas _Austrasia_ and _Neustria_. A certain Duke of Austrasia, known asPepin the Elder, was the forerunner of the Carlovingian line of kings. With him the centralizing force began to work with saving power. Theone end kept in view was the restoration of the power of kingship--thestrengthening of the power at the centre. To this end, from generationto generation, these early Pepins steadily moved. In 687 Pepin theYounger, grandson of the Elder, by a victory at Testry over Neustria, brought together these two sundered divisions under himself, with thenew title Duke of the Franks. The Pepins had already succeeded inmaking the office of Maire du Palais hereditary in their family, and inthe year A. D. 732, Charles, son and successor of Pepin the Younger, made himself forever the hero not of France alone, but of Christendom, by driving the Saracen invasion back over the Pyrenees, and was in turnsucceeded by his son, Pepin the Short, who seized the Merovingian crownitself; this remarkable family, the appointed channel for thecentralizing forces, reaching its climax in his son Charlemagne;creator of a Holy Roman Empire. 

There had appeared an enemy to the true faith more to be feared thanpaganism. 

Less than one hundred years after the death of Clovis, there had comeout of Asia, that birthplace of religions, a new faith, which wasdestined to be for centuries the scourge of Christendom, and whichto-day rules one-third of the human family. Zoroaster, Buddha, Christ, had successively come with saving message to humanity, and now (A. D. 600) Mahomet believed himself divinely appointed to drive out of Arabiathe idolatry of ancient Magianism (the religion of Zoroaster). 

Christianity had passed through strange vicissitudes. Kings, emperors, popes, and bishops had been terrible custodians of its truths; andwhile many still held it in its primitive purity, ecclesiastics werefiercely righting over the nature of the Trinity, the divinity of theVirgin Mother, and the Church was shaken to its foundation by furiousfactions. 

In this hour of weakness the Persians (A. D. 590) had conquered AsiaMinor. Bethlehem, Gethsemane, and Calvary were profaned; the HolySepulchre had been burned, and the cross carried off amid shouts oflaughter. Magianism had insulted Christianity, and no miracle hadinterposed! The heavens did not roll asunder, nor did the earth openher abysses to swallow them up. There was consternation and doubt inChristendom. 

Such was the state of the Church when Mahometanism came into existence. "There is but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet. " Such was itsbattle-cry and its creed, and the moral precepts of the Koran were itsgospel. There seems nothing in this to account for the mad enthusiasmand the passion for worship in its followers. But in less than ahundred years this lion out of Arabia had subjugated Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Northern Africa, and the Spanish Peninsula. Now, sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, the Mahometan had crossedthe Pyrenees and was in Southern Gaul. 

Under the strange magic of this faith the largest religious empire theworld had known had sprung into existence, stretching from the ChineseWall to the Atlantic; from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean; andJerusalem, the metropolis of Christianity--Jerusalem, the Mecca of theChristian--was lost! The Crescent floated over the birthplace of ourLord, and, notwithstanding the temporary successes of the Crusades, itdoes to this day. 

If the Pyrenees were passed the very existence of Christendom wasthreatened. Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne, avertedthis danger when he stayed the infidel flood at the battle of Tours, A. D. 732. 

The Merovingian kings, if not devout, were faithful sons of the Church, and when the pope appealed to the last Merovingian king to protect himfrom the Lombards, near the end of the eighth century, Pepin, thenMaire du Palais, but holding supreme power, twice crossed the Alps withan army, wrested five cities and a large extent of territory from theenemies of the pope, which, upon parting, he tossed as a gift into thelap of the Church. And this, known as the _Donation of Pepin_, was thebeginning of the temporal power of the popes in Italy. So when Pepinresolved to assume the crown, Pope Zacharias in gratitude sanctionedthe audacious act, by sending his representative to place the symbol ofpower upon the head of this faithful son and usurper! (A. D. 751. )

But this was only the stepping-stone for a greater elevation. WhenPope Adrian I. Again needed protection from the Lombard, a greater thanPepin was wearing the crown his father had audaciously snatched. 

CHAPTER V. 

Against the dark background of European history, and with the broadlevel of obscurity stretching over the ages at its feet, there risesone shining pinnacle. Considered as man or sovereign, Charlemagne isone of the most impressive figures in history. His seven feet ofstature clad in shining steel, his masterful grasp of the forces of histime, his splendid intelligence, instinct even then with the modernspirit, all combine to elevate him in solitary grandeur. 

Charlemagne found France in disorder measureless, and apparentlyinsurmountable. Barbarian invasion without, and anarchy within; Saxonpaganism pressing in upon the north, and Asiatic Islamism upon thesouth and west; a host of forces struggling for dominion in a nationbrutish, ignorant, and without cohesion. 

It is the attribute of genius to discern opportunity where others seenothing. Charlemagne saw rising out of this chaos a great resuscitatedRoman Empire, which should be at the same time a spiritual andChristian empire as well. Saxons, Slavs, Huns, Lombards, Arabs, cameunder his compelling grasp; these antagonistic races all held togetherby the force of one terrible will, in unnatural combination withFrance. No political liberties, no popular assemblies discussingpublic measures; it is Charlemagne alone who fills the picture; it isabsolutism--marked by prudence, ability, and grandeur, but still, absolutism. 

The pope looked approvingly upon this son of the Church, by whose order4, 500 pagan heads could be cut off in one day, and a whole armycompelled to baptism in an afternoon. Here was a champion to bepropitiated. Charlemagne, on the other hand, saw in the Church themost compliant and effective means to empire. 

His fertile mind was conceiving a vast design by which he might reignover a resuscitated Roman Empire. In the dual sovereignty of hisdream, the pope was to be the spiritual and he the temporal head. Mutually dependent upon each other, the election of the pope would notbe valid without his consent. Nor would the emperor be emperor untilcrowned by the pope. The Church might use him as a sword, but he wouldwear the Church as a precious jewel in his crown. 

It was a splendid dream, splendidly realized; the most imposing ofhuman successes, and the most impressive of human failures. It seemsdesigned as a lesson for the human race in the transitory nature ofpower applied from without. 

A pyramid of such colossal proportions could only be kept from fallingin pieces by another Colossus like himself. The vast fabric restingupon one human will, passed with its creator; was gone like a shadowwhen he was gone. 

It will be remembered that the Roman Empire in its decay fell into twoparts, a Western and an Eastern empire. The dying embers of theWestern empire, which had been fanned into a feeble flame in the sixthcentury by Justinian, Emperor of the East, were threatened withcomplete extinguishment by the Lombards in the eighth; from whichcalamity they were saved, as we have seen, by Pepin. So when theFranks were again appealed to, Charlemagne saw his opportunity. Withplans fully matured he responded, and with the consent and acquiescenceof the pope he took formal possession of the whole of Italy, annexingto his own dominions the crumbling wreck of a magnificent past. Andwhen Leo III. Placed upon his head the crown, and pronounced"Carolus-Magnus, by the grace of God Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire"(A. D. 800), the authority of the pope was placed upon unassailableheights, and France had become the centre of a world-wide dominion. 

[Illustration: Coronation of Charlemagne. From the painting by Levy. ]

Little did pope or emperor dream of what was to happen; that after abrief and dazzling interlude the imperial crown would never be worn inFrance; and that the popes would for centuries be insulted and treatedas contumacious vassals by German emperors. And France--France, thecentre of this dream of a magnificent unity--in less than fifty years, with her native incohesiveness, and in the irony of fate, would havebroken into fifty-nine fragments, loosely held together by a feebleCarlovingian king. 

The plan of a dual sovereignty of pope and emperor might have been wisehad both been immortal! But it was the triple division of the empirebrought about by Charlemagne's three grandsons which overthrew theentire scheme of its founder. 

Upon the death of Charlemagne, in A. D. 814, the crown and the sceptreof the empire passed to his son Louis (the later form of Clovis). Thisfeeble son of Charlemagne, known as Louis the Débonnaire, struggledunder the weight of the crumbling mass until his death in 840. ThenCharlemagne's three ambitious grandsons fought for the greatinheritance. Lothaire, who claimed the whole by right ofprimogeniture, was defeated at the battle of Fontenay in Burgundy, andby the treaty of Verdun in 843 the partition of the empire wasconsummated; the title of emperor passing to Lothaire, the eldest, along with Italy and a strip of territory extending to the North Sea, all west of that being arbitrarily called France, and all east of itGermany. 

So the European drama was unfolding upon lines entirely unexpected. Not only had the empire fallen apart into three grand divisions, butFrance itself was disintegrating, was in fact a mass of rival states, with counts, princes, marquises, and a score of other petty potentatesstruggling for supremacy. 

The rough outlines of something greater than France--the outlines of afuture Europe--were being drawn. It is easy to see now what was thenso incomprehensible: that from the chaos of barbarism left by theTeuton flood, there were emerging in that ninth century a group ofstates with definite outlines, and the larger organism of Europe wascoming into form. The treaty of Verdun (843) had roughly separated_Italy_, _France_, and _Germany_. At the same time the Heptarchy inBritain had been consolidated into _England_ under King Alfred; whilean obscure Scandinavian adventurer named Rurik, quite unobserved, wasbringing into political unity, and reigning at Kieff as Grand Duke overwhat was to become _Russia_. _Spain_, quite apart from all thismovement, had entered upon those seven centuries of struggle withSaracen and Moor, that struggle of unmatched devotion and tenacity ofpurpose which is really the great epic of history. 

Those ambitious and too powerful vassals were not the greatest evilsmenacing the Carlovingian kings. It was the incessant invasions of arace of barbarians coming out of the north, which was going to bury thepast under a ruin of a different sort. There seemed no defence fromthese Northmen, as they were called, who swarmed like destroyinginsects upon the coast, up the rivers, and over the lands; three timessacked Paris, the scars to-day being visible in that impressive Romanruin, the _Palais des Thermes_, the home of the Caesars, and of theMerovingian kings, which they partially burned. 

Fortified castles with towers and moats and drawbridges sprang up allover the kingdom for the protection of the rich. After seven invasionsall the old cities, Rouen, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Orleans, Beauvais, had been devastated, and France in coat of mail was hidingbehind stone walls. 

In looking through the vista of centuries it is easy to read theeternal purpose in the chain of cause and effect; and also to see thatevents, no less than kings, have their pedigrees. The terrible childof the Northman was the _Feudal System_; which was again the father ofthose romantic and picturesque children, the _Crusades_; and these, thecreators of a European civilization, whose children we are!

Who can imagine the course of history with any one of theseremoved--each an apparently inevitable step in the unfolding of amighty design, utterly incomprehensible at the time?

CHAPTER VI. 

Someone has said that "the Lord must like common people, because hemade so many of them. " The path for the common people in France atthis time led through heavy shadows. But a darker time wasapproaching. A system of oppression was maturing which was soon toenvelop them in the obscurity of darkest night. 

Those Scandinavian freebooters called Northmen, and later Normans, werethe scourge of the kingdom. Nothing was safe from their insolentcourage and rapacity. 

The rich could intrench themselves in stone fortresses, with moats anddrawbridges, and be in comparative security, but the poor were utterlydefenceless against this perennial destroyer. The result was a compactbetween the powerful and the weak, which was the beginning of thefeudal system. It was in effect an exchange of protection for serviceand fealty. 

You give us absolute control of your persons--your military servicewhen required, and a portion of your substance and the fruit of yourtoil--and we will in exchange give you our fortified castles as arefuge from the Northmen. Such was the offer. It was a choice betweenvassalage, serfdom, or destruction outright. 

Simple enough in its beginnings, this became a ramified system ofoppression, a curious network of authority, ingeniously controlling anentire people. The conditions upon which was engrafted this compactwere of great antiquity, had indeed been brought across the Rhine bythe German conquerors; but the Northmen were the impelling cause of theswift development of feudalism in France. 

Charlemagne had felt grave apprehensions of evil from these robberincursions, but could not have conceived of a result such as this, themost oppressive system ever fastened upon a nation, and one which wouldat the same time sap the foundations of royalty itself. 

The theory was that the king was absolute owner of all the territory;the great lords holding their titles from him on condition of militaryservice, their vassals pledging military service and obedience to themagain on similar terms, and sub-vassals again to them repeating thepledge; and so on in descending chain, until at last the serf, thatwretched being whom none looks up to nor fears, is ground to powderbeneath the superimposed mass; no appeal from the authority, no escapefrom the caprice or cruelty of his feudal lord. Could any scalesweigh, could any words measure the suffering which must have beenendured? Is it strange that, with every aspiration thwarted, hopestifled, Europe sank into the long sleep of the Middle Ages?

It is easy to conceive that, under such a system, where all the affairsof the realm were adjusted by individual rulers with unlimited power, and where the great barons could make war upon each other withoutauthorization from the king, by the time this nominal head of theentire system was reached there remained nothing for him to do. Infact, there was not left one vestige of kingly authority, andCarlovingian rulers were almost as insignificant as their Merovingianpredecessors. France had, instead of one great sovereign, one hundredand fifty petty ones!

In A. D. 911 the Northmen were offered the province henceforth known asNormandy, upon condition of their acceptance of the religion andsubmission to the laws of the realm. Rollo, the disreputablerobber-chief, took the oath of fealty to the King of France, hissuzerain, and Christian baptism transformed him into respectable, law-abiding Robert, Duke of Normandy. 

So, the enemy had become a vassal. The pirate of the North Sea hadtaken his place among the Christian chivalry of Europe, as one of thetwelve peers of France. It was less than a century since the death ofCharlemagne, and the office of king had grown almost as helpless as inthe period of the _Rois Fainéants_. Under the stress of the continuousinvasions, by perfectly natural process the central authority hadpassed to the feudal magnates. Many of the feudal states had actuallyorganized into independent governing bodies. The struggle with theNorthmen ended, France, dismembered, exhausted, was lying prostrate. Aking stripped of every kingly attribute at one extreme of the socialsystem, and a people trampled into the very dust by feudal oppressionat the other. Owners of nothing, not even of themselves, they mightnot fish in the streams, nor hunt in the forests, unless the privilegewas bestowed; and with their lives spent in fighting the incessantprivate wars of their lords, there seemed no room for them in theworld, nor for hope in their hearts. With the king effaced, and thepeople effaced, there remained only bands of feudal barons trying toefface each other!

As in the last days of the Merovingians, light came from an unexpectedquarter. The tide turned toward centralization. Robert the Strong, aman of obscure family, who had laid down his life in a very heroicresistance to the Northmen, had won the titles "Count of Paris" and"Duke of France, " which he bequeathed, with the estates attached tothem, to his successors. 

Somewhat after the manner of the Pepins, this powerful and resourcefulfamily by sheer native ability grasped one after another the sources ofpower in the state; and in the year 987 the dynasty established byPepin disappeared, and Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and Abbot, wasdeclared by the Pope of Rome to be "King of France, in virtue of hisgreat deeds. " It was the ecclesiastical office of this descendant ofRobert the Strong which gave the name to the dynasty that had come tosave France a second time from disintegration. Because he was thewearer of the _Chape_, or _Cope_, the name _Chapet_, or _Capet_, becamethat of the line. 

There now commenced a struggle between the antagonistic principles ofroyalty and aristocracy; a conflict which was going to last nearly fivecenturies, covering that dreary twilight known as the Dark Ages--a timewhen, had it not been for the Christian Church and for the torch of theSaracen in Spain, the light of civilization would really have beenextinguished, and the slender thread of connection with a great pasthave been broken. 

In the helpless misery existing in France at this time, the Church sawits opportunity. To that silent, humble, forgotten multitude withoutlife or hope in the world, she offered refuge, peace, consolation, andthus forever bound to her the poor of Christendom; by this meansestablishing in the end an ecclesiastical dominion to which kings andpeerage would be compelled to bow. 

If one would know how kings submitted to the authority of the Church atthis time, let him read the story of the good King Robert, second inthe Capetian line, who for marrying the gentle Bertha, his cousinfourth removed, suffered the punishment of excommunication; was treatedas a moral leper in his own palace; cut off from contact with humankind and from sound of human voice; the dishes from which he ate, theclothes he wore, destroyed, until repentant and heart-broken theyconsented to part and to break the bond of their union forever. 

It was the despair in the heart of the nation which gave intensity tothe religious instinct at this time. And when pestilence came, andneither rich nor poor could escape, conscience-stricken barons alsotrembled. A belief began to prevail that the end of the world was athand. Did not the Book of Revelation say that one thousand years fromthe birth of Christ the great dragon was to be let loose and the earthwas to be destroyed?

As the hour of doom approached, labor ceased, the fields wereuntouched, and when to pestilence and despair was added famine, thenmen's hearts failed them even under coats of mail. The Church came tothe rescue with the "Truce of God, " which, in the hope of appeasing anavenging God, forbade private wars during certain periods in theecclesiastical year. Repentant barons, with a similar hope, made peacewith their neighbors, and their swords rusted as they built monasteriesand chapels; or some not yet obtaining peace, and perhaps restless withtheir occupation gone, made pilgrimages to Rome, to pray at the gravesof Peter and Paul, and still others even to Jerusalem, that the breathfrom Calvary might whiten their sin-steeped souls. 

It is interesting to note that among these penitent pilgrims, sixtyyears before the first Crusade, was that Duke of Normandy known as"Robert the Devil, " whose pagan ancestor only a century before had beenthe terror of European civilization, and whose son, thirty years later, was to wear the crown of England. 

In this way were the currents setting steadily toward the HolySepulchre as the panacea for human woes which were sent by an avengingGod. These were the first stirrings of the breath of the coming stormwhich in eight successive waves was soon to sweep over Europe. The waywas preparing for the great event of the Middle Ages. 

Whatever its motives, the abstaining from slaughter, and the buildingof cathedrals and monasteries and abbeys, was weaving a mantle ofbeauty for France, which she still proudly wears. And the greatest ofthe builders was the Duke of Normandy; and it is to his dukedom the artstudent turns for the most perfect blending of grace and grandeur, characteristic of the early style. The marvel to which this isintended to draw attention is the preeminent position swiftly attainedin France by this brilliant race, in every department of living. Itwould seem that France did not adopt this terrible child from thenorth, but that he adopted France, and changed and gave color to herwhole future. It was a tempestuous element, but it was new life, andit is impossible to conceive of what that country would have beenwithout this stimulating, brilliant infusion into its national life. 

With such marvellous facility did this people adopt the speech andmanners of their neighbors, that in the year 1066 they were prepared toinstruct the Britons in the ways of a more polished civilization. Onlya century before the birth of William the Conqueror, his ancestors hadlived by looting. They were highwaymen and robbers by profession. Hismother, a Norman peasant girl, daughter of a tanner, won the love ofthat gay duke known as "Robert the Devil. " William, the child of thisunconsecrated union, upon the death of his father succeeded to thedukedom. One of the steps in the rapid climb of this family of Rollohad been a marriage connecting them with the royal family of England. King Edward, William's remote cousin, died without an heir. Here wasan opportunity. With sixty thousand Norman adventurers like himself, William started with the desperate purpose of invading England andwresting the crown from his cousin Harold. 

It was not the first time the Northman had invaded England. But neverbefore had he come bringing a higher civilization, and under the bannerof the Church! In a few weeks Harold, last king of the Saxons, wasdead, and William, Duke of Normandy, was William I. , King of England. 

Philip, King of France, saw with dismay his richest province ruled by aking of England, and his own vassal wearing a crown with power superiorto his own! A door had thus opened through which would enterentangling complications and countless woes in the future. 

While William was trampling England into the dust, and with pitilesshand rivetting a feudal chain upon the Saxons, another and greatercentre of power was developing at Rome, where the monk Hildebrand, whohad now become Pope Gregory VII. , claimed a universal sovereignty fromwhich there was no appeal. Christ was King of Kings. So, as Hisvicegerent upon earth, the authority of the pope was absolute inChristendom. 

The moment of this supreme elevation in the Church was reached atCanossa, 1072, when Henry, the excommunicated Emperor of Germany, camebarefooted, in winter, and prostrated himself before Gregory VII. IfCharlemagne had worn the Church as a precious jewel in his crown in theninth century, now in the eleventh the Church wore all the Europeanstates as a tiara of jewels in her mitre. With supreme wisdom, andwith a sure instinct for power, her supremacy had been rooted first inthe hearts of the people, then the mailed hand laid upon their rulers. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The corner-stone of the social structure in France was the dogma thatwork was degrading; and not only manual labor, but anything done withthe object of producing wealth was a degradation. The only honorableoccupation for a gentleman was either to pray or to fight. 

Society in France was, therefore, divided into three classes: the_Clergy_, called the "First Estate"; the _Nobility_, composing the"Second Estate, " and the working and trading classes, the "ThirdEstate, " or _Tiers État_. 

Out of reverence for their spiritual office, precedence in rank wasgiven to the clergy. But the actual ruling class was the nobility. The business of the clergy was to minister to souls. The business ofthe nobility was warfare. That of the third estate, the toiling class, being to _support the other two_. And whatever existed in the form ofproperty or wealth in feudal times was produced by the _Tiers État_. 

The lowest stratum of the third estate was composed of "serfs. " A serfbelonged absolutely, with all that he possessed, to his lord. He wasattached to his land, as are the trees which are rooted in it. Therewas, however, a class of serfs above this whom we should now callslaves, but who were by French law then designated as _Freemen_. 

A freeman might go and come under certain restrictions. But this didnot by any means imply that he was freed from the proprietor to whom hebelonged, to whom he was inevitably bound for military service, or forsuch contributions or claims as might be levied upon him. 

As was to be expected, it was in the cities that this half-emancipatedclass congregated; these cities as naturally becoming the centres ofthe various industries required to supply the necessities and luxuriesof the two ruling classes. In this way there were being createdvarious centres of wealth, which meant power, and which would have tobe reckoned with in the future. 

The thin edge of the wedge was inserted when individual freemen offeredmoney to their hard-pressed feudal lords in exchange for certainprivileges, and then for charters. And as more money was needed byproprietors for their lavish expenditures, more freedom and morecharters were acquired, until, having purchased immunities andprivileges enough to make them to some extent self-governing, the townbecame what was called a _commune_. 

It was Louis VI. , fifth king in the Capetian line, who completed thiswork of emancipation by recognizing the communes as free cities, andbestowing franchises clearly defining their rights. By this act thebody of the manufacturing class, or _burgesses_, was recognized as apart of the body politic, and was _enfranchised_. 

A free city was a small republic. The entire body of inhabitants musttake the communal oath, and when summoned by the tolling of the bellmust all appear at the meeting of the General Assembly for the purposeof choosing their magistrates. This done, the assembly dissolved, andthe magistrates were left with a free hand to rule or ruin, untilchecked by popular outbreak or a new election. 

As is always the case, time developed two classes: an inferiorpopulation, with a furious spirit of democracy, and a superior class, more conservative, and desirous of keeping peace with the greatproprietors. 

In this simple, humble fashion were the people groping toward freedom, and experimenting with the alphabet of self-government. 

The acknowledgment of the free cities by Louis VI. , was the first movetoward an alliance between the king and the people; an alliance whichwould eventually wrest the power from the hands of the nobles. Butthat end was still far off. Another accession to the kingly power camein the succeeding reign when Louis VII. Married Eleanor, daughter ofthe Duke of Aquitaine; and her great inheritance, the largest of thefeudal states, was thereby annexed to the crown: a marriage which madesome troublesome chapters in the history of two kingdoms, of which weshall hear later. But, in the duel between king and peerage, thebalance of power was moving toward the throne. 

At the time these things were happening that great event, the Crusades, had already commenced. 

It was in 1095 that Peter the Hermit, returning from a pilgrimage, bycommand of the Pope went throughout Europe proclaiming the desecrationof the holy places. At a council held at Clermont in France, 1095, thefirst Crusade was proclaimed by Urban II. Led by Peter the Hermit, avast undisciplined host, without preparation, rushed indiscriminatelytoward Asia Minor, perishing by famine, disease, and the sword beforethey reached their goal. Undismayed by this, another Crusade wasimmediately organized under the direction of the greatest nobles inFrance; and in three years (1099) the Holy City had been captured, theCross floated over the Holy Sepulchre, and Godfrey of Boulogne, leaderof the expedition, was proclaimed King of Jerusalem. 

France had inaugurated the most extraordinary movement in the historyof civilization. Appealing as it did to the knightly and to theromantic ideal, what an opportunity was here for idle adventurousnobles, their occupation gone through changed conditions! If theChurch, by "the Truce of God, " had bid them sheathe their swords, nowshe bade them to be drawn in the defence of all that was sacred. Theentire body of nobility would have rushed if it could to the Holy Land. Poor barons sold or mortgaged their lands and their castles, and theThird Estate grew rich, and the free cities still freer, upon thenecessities of the hour. But all classes, from king to serf, were forthe first time moved by a common sentiment; and not alone France, butthe choicest and best of Europe was poured in one great volume ofpassionate zeal into those successive waves which eight times inundatedPalestine. Private interests sacrificed or forgotten, life, treasure, all eagerly given, for what? That a small bit of territory a thousandmiles distant be torn from profaning infidels, because it was thebirthplace of a religion these champions failed to comprehend; areligion worn upon their battle-flags but not in their hearts. 

The second Crusade, 1147, was led by Conrad, Emperor of Germany, andLouis VII. Of France. The profligate conduct of Queen Eleanor, whoaccompanied her royal consort, led to serious political conditions. Louis appealed to the pope, who consented to the divorce he desired. This proved simply an exchange of thrones for the fascinating Eleanor. Henry II. Of England, already the possessor of immense estates inFrance, inherited from his father, realized that with Aquitaine, QueenEleanor's dowry, added to his own, and these again to Normandy, amarriage with the divorced wife of his rival would make him possessorof more than three times the size of the domain controlled by theFrench king. 

The marriage was solemnized in 1152, and France saw her war with thefeudal barons overshadowed by the fight for her very life with England, who had fastened this tremendous grasp upon her kingdom. 

The first truly great Capetian king came with this emergency. PhilipAugustus, son of Louis VII. , in the year 1180, when only fifteen yearsof age, seized the reins with the hand of a born ruler. Before he wastwenty-one he had broken up a combination of feudal barons against him. Then he turned to England. Queen Eleanor and her sons were conspiringagainst Henry II. So he made friends with them. The palace on theisland in the Seine was an asylum where John and Richard might plotagainst their father. And when a third Crusade was planned, 1189, ithad as leaders Philip Augustus of France, Richard I. , who had justsucceeded his father, Henry II. , as King of England, and Barbarossa(Frederick I. ), the great Emperor of Germany. Before the Holy Land wasreached the wise and crafty Philip Augustus and the fiery Richard hadquarrelled. 

Philip had been carefully observing these two brothers who weresuccessively to wear the crown of England. He knew the foibles of theromantic and picturesque Richard; and he also knew that John, corruptto the core, was a traitor to whom no trust would be sacred. In hisown cold-blooded fashion he intended to use them both. 

John had conspired against his own father, now Philip would help him tosupplant his brother, while Richard was safely occupied in Palestine. And when he had made John king, he, Philip Augustus, was to be rewardedby the gift of Normandy! With this in view, Philip returned to France. It was an ingenious plot, but all was spoiled by Richard's safe returnfrom the thrilling adventures of the Crusade. In 1199, however, thecrown passed naturally to John by the death of his brother, and thisvicious son of Eleanor was King of England. 

There were other means of recovering his lost possessions. Philipespoused the cause of the young Arthur, John's nephew, a rival claimantto the English throne. And when that ill-fated Prince was murdered, asis believed by the orders of his uncle, for this and other offencesKing John, as Duke of Normandy--thence vassal to the King ofFrance--was summoned to be tried by his peers. 

When after oft-repeated summons John refused to appear at Philip'scourt, by feudal law the King of France had legal authority to takepossession of the dukedom. 

In vain did King John strive to defend by arms his vanishingpossessions. In the war which ensued, all north of the Loire wasseized by Philip, and at one stroke he had mastered his enemies at homeand abroad. 

Not only were Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou restored to France, but they were hereafter to be held, not by dukes and counts, as before, but by the king, as a part of the royal domain. And kingship, toweringhigh above all the great barons of France, had for the first timebecome a reality. 

It was Philip's policy of expansion which gave color to his reign; notan expansion which would bring extension into foreign lands, butsolidity and firmness of outline to France itself. We have seen howand why this policy was vigorously carried out in the north. Thegrowth toward the south is a less pleasant story. 

The province of Toulouse, nominally subject to France, was actuallyruled by Raymond VI. , "by grace of God" Count of Toulouse. Perhaps ifthis province had not possessed and controlled several ports on theMediterranean, while France had none at all, it might not have beendiscovered that this home of the "gay science, " and of minstrelsy, andof all that was gentle and refining, was in fact the nursery of adangerous heresy, and that the poetic, music-loving children ofProvence reviled the cross and worshipped the devil!

We can easily imagine that in this highly developed community there hadarisen a spirit of inquiry into prevailing conditions and beliefs inthe Church. And we can also imagine that a crafty sovereign saw inthis an opportunity to serve his own ends. And so, Pope Innocent III. Ordered a Crusade, and John de Montfort not only opened up theMediterranean ports for Philip, but brought Toulouse, the greatest ofthe remaining feudal states, into subjection to the King of France; atthe same time forever silencing the voice of the heretic, of theminstrel, and of the harp; even the speech, with its delicateinflections and musical intonations, disappeared, to be heardnevermore. Such, in brief, is the story of the "Albigensian War, " socalled on account of the heresy having been brought into Provence bythe Albigenses from Switzerland. 

After a century and a half Normandy was restored. Its reabsorptioninto France marked the parting of the ways in two kingdoms. _Kingship_was reinforced in one, and _citizenship_ developed in the other. InEngland the nobles and the people drew closer together, resolved todefend themselves from a vicious king, and this determined effort tocurtail the royal prerogative produced the _Magna Charta_, whichforever secured the liberties of Englishmen (1215). In France, on thecontrary, the power was moved in one volume toward the king anddespotism. Both nations were in the hands of fate--a fate, too, whichwas using unscrupulous men to accomplish its great purposes for each. 

But however we may disparage Philip's heart and aims, no one can denythe breadth and superiority of his mind and his statesmanship. He wasa Charlemagne made on a smaller scale, and without a conscience. Notone of the successors of Clovis or of Pepin had so intelligentlygrasped the sources of permanent growth in a nation. He may have beenfalse of tongue and unprincipled in deed, but he took the free citiesunder his personal protection, opened up trade with foreign lands, beautified Paris and France. He may, under the cloak of religion, havepermitted unjustifiable cruelties against the most innocent, the mostgifted province in Europe, in order to secure access to the sea forFrance. But he left the _communes_ richer and happier, his kingdomfreer from local tyrannies, transformed from a pandemonium ofstruggling knights and barons into the nearest approach yet realized toa modern state. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

If the Crusades had strengthened the power of the Church, they had atthe same time brought about an expansion of thought which wasundermining it. Men were beginning to think, to inquire, and then todoubt. How could sensuality and vice at Rome be reconciled with adivine infallibility? If the ballad-poetry of Provence satirized thelives and manners of the priests, was it not dealing with what was true?

During the reign of Philip's father, a pale studious youth was pacingthe cloisters on the banks of the Seine, by the side of Notre Dame. Hewas thinking upon these things. And "as he mused the fire burned. "This was Abelard. The intellectual awakening brought about by thelectures of this most learned and accomplished man of his time producedan epoch. He spoke to his disciples in the open air, as no buildingcould hold the thousands who hung upon his lips. This movement becamelocalized; a faubourg of students was created with their multiformactivities. It became a quarter by itself--a noisy, turbulent, agitated quarter--where the only luxury enjoyed was an expandingthought, and where Latin was the spoken language. And so it happenedthat the _Quartier Latin_ came into existence. 

But while the place remains, the man quickly passed off the scene. Hewas silenced, his teachings condemned by a Church council at Soissons, and he immured for life in the Monastery of Cluny, to be treasured inthe heart of humanity as a martyr to truth, and as the lover of Eloise, in that sad romance of the twelfth century. 

After a brief reign of three years Louis VIII. , son and successor ofPhilip, was dead, and Louis IX. , under the regency of his mother, "Blanche of Castile, " was proclaimed king. The same family, whichlater gave Isabella to Spain, also bestowed upon France this wise, intrepid woman at a critical time. 

With a boy of eleven and a woman of thirty-eight years upon the throne, the time seemed propitious for the barons to recover the power Philiphad wrung from them, and to reduce kingship to its former humbleposition. 

With this purpose a powerful coalition was formed, embracing the baronsnorth and south, chief among whom was Raymond of Toulouse. By force ofarms, and by diplomacy, Blanche of Castile met this crisis withastonishing courage and address. The free cities sprang to herassistance; and not only was the coalition broken, but there was formeda bond between the crown and the people, leaving the throne strongerthan before. 

Blanche showed great political wisdom in arranging for the marriage ofher son with the daughter of the Count of Provence; thus capturing andsecuring the loyalty of this most powerful and disaffected state, whichwas making common cause with Toulouse against the king. And it is withmingled pity and rejoicing that we hear of Raymond VII. Of Toulouse, once champion of the Albigenses--warrior, poet, troubadour, andheretic--scourge in hand and barefooted, at the porch of Notre Dame, doing penance for his sins against the Church. 

With Louis IX. On the throne a new day had dawned for France. Louiswas not a great soldier. His reign was not one of territorialexpansion but of wise administration, giving permanence and solidity towhat already existed. We are apt to think of Philip's heavenly mindedgrandson chiefly as a saint. But his service to the state was enduringand of the first magnitude, because it dealt with the sources ofthings. When he established a King's Court, which was a court ofappeal from the rude justice, or injustice, of feudal counts, heundermined the foundation of feudal power. In bestowing the _right ofappeal_, his protecting hand reached down to the poorest man in therealm. And when bewildered barons heard the uncomprehended language ofthe law-courts, and heard men not of their own order declaring privatewars punishable by death, they felt their power slipping from underthem, and that they were coming into a new sort of a world. 

One of the greatest acts of this reign was the abolishing of the doubleallegiance, which had wrought such trouble since the Duke of Normandy'sconquest of England. Feudal proprietors were forbidden to holdterritory under a foreign king; and henceforth no conquered provincecould acknowledge allegiance to an English king; nor would an Englishking again be vassal to a king of France. 

But in so fortifying his throne, this best of kings, and of men, wouldhave been surprised had he been told that he was preparing the way forthe greatest tragedy in history; that he was creating an absolutedespotism which five hundred years later would require a revolution ofunprecedented horror for its removal. Such was the fact. Every wiseact in this reign was prompted by the spirit of fairness and justice. And if at the same time these acts were drawing all the forces in thestate to a central point, under the control of a single hand, it wasthe best development for France under existing conditions. 

Saint though he was, and almost fanatic in his devotion to the Church, Louis resisted the pope or the bishop, if unjust, with as much energyas one of his own barons; and, in the same spirit of fairness, wouldpunish his own too zealous defenders who had infringed upon the feudalrights of the peerage. 

This was Louis the king. But it is Louis the saint who holds the eyeon the world's canvas. The real life was to him the life of the soul. Francis Assisi himself did not live in an atmosphere of greaterspiritual exaltation than this devout and heavenly grandson of PhilipAugustus! No monk in the Dark Ages attached such sanctity to relics!When a portion of the crown of thorns was sent to him from Jerusalem, he built that exquisite _Sainte Chapelle_ for its reception; andbarefooted, bare-headed, carried it himself in solemn procession fromVincennes to Paris, placing it with reverent hands in that shrine wemay visit to-day. 

Christian knighthood had reached its one perfect flower in Louis; andthe Crusades fittingly closed with the life of the most saintlycrusader. His first Crusade was disastrous, occupying years of hislife; his mother, Blanche of Castile, dying during his absence. Hissecond and last was more costly still. Near the ruins of Carthage, where he was in conflict with a Mohometan band, he was stricken withfever and died (1270). 

Louis's brother, Charles of Anjou, is said to have led him into thisfatal attempt, for his own purposes. Charles, of very differentmemory, was at this time, by invitation of the pope, occupying thedouble throne of Naples and Sicily. And he it was who provoked by hiscruelties that frightful outbreak known as the "Sicilian Vespers, " in1283. 

The Crusades had lasted from 1095 to 1270. The purpose for which theywere undertaken had signally failed. Jerusalem, captured in the firstCrusade, was lost in the second, and never recovered. And soineffectual had been the expenditure of life, fortune, and enthusiasmthat the last Crusade was not even fought in Palestine, but on theshores of North Africa. 

But something had been accomplished which none had foreseen: a resultof greater magnitude than territorial possession of the Holy Land. Through the broadening of men's views, and the common heritage of agreat experience, a group of isolated kingdoms had been drawn intofraternal relations, and a European civilization had commenced. 

There had been many surprises. Close contact had softened prejudices. The infidel had found that the crusader was something more than themost brutal and stupid of barbarians, as he had supposed; and thecrusader, that the profaning infidel was not the monster he expected tofind. In fact, the European discovered that in the Saracen and theGreek they met a civilization much more advanced, more learned, andmore polished than their own. More civilization was brought out of theEast than was carried into it by its Christian invaders. And it wasthrough this strange and disastrous experience that the art and thethought of Europe received its first impulse toward a great future. 

During the fifteen years of the reign of Louis's son, Philip III. , France moved on under the momentum received from his father. But thesucceeding reign of Philip IV. Was epoch-making. That imperious, strong-willed son of Saint Louis demanded that the clergy should sharethe state's burden by contributing to its revenue. Pope BonifaceVIII. , imperious and strong-willed as he, immediately issued a bull, forbidding the clergy to pay, or the officers to receive, such taxes. The answer to this was a royal edict forbidding the exportation ofprecious metals (of course including money) from France to Italy, thuscutting off from the pope the large revenue from the Church in France. 

The quarrel resolved itself at last into a question of the relativeauthority of king and pope in the kingdom. In order to fortify hisposition, and perhaps to show his contempt for clergy and barons alike, Philip took a step which profoundly affected the future of France. Ata great council summoned to consider these papal claims, he commandedthe presence not only of the ecclesiastics and nobles, the twogoverning estates, but also summoned the representatives of the townsand cities--the _Tiers État_! Prelate, baron, and bourgeois for thefirst time met in a Council of State. 

A king who was the impersonation of absolutism had created the_States-General_ (1302); had forged the instrument which wouldeventually effect for France a deliverance from monarchy itself!

The cause of the king was sustained by the council; the claims of thepope were rejected. Still not satisfied, Philip then audaciouslyproposed a general ecclesiastical council to determine whether Bonifacelegitimately wore the triple crown. When the old man died, as is saidfrom the shock of this attempt, the king was master of the situation. Gifts had already been distributed among corrupt cardinals in theconclave. The papacy was at his feet, and might be in his hand. Themost dissolute of his own archbishops was selected as his tool, and, asClement V. , succeeded to the chair of St. Peter. The centre of theecclesiastical world was then removed from Rome to Avignon, where itcould be under Philip's immediate direction, and the astonishing periodin the history of the papacy, known as the _Babylonian Captivity_, which was to last for seventy years, under seven popes, had commenced. 

The Knights Templar, those appointed guardians of the Holy Sepulchreand defenders of Jerusalem, it is to be supposed were not in sympathywith these things. Whatever the cause, their extermination wasdecreed. Accused of impossible crimes, the whole brotherhood wasarrested in one day, and, at a summary trial, condemned, Philiphimself, in that old palace on the island in the Seine, giving ordersfor the fagots to be laid, and the immediate execution of the grandmaster and many others. 

Philip's death, occurring as it did soon after this sacrilege, waspopularly believed to be a manifestation of God's wrath; and the deathof his three sons, Louis, Philip, and Charles, who successively reignedduring a period of only fourteen years, leaving the family extinct, seemed a further proof that a curse rested upon the house. 

The question of the succession, for the first time since Hugh Capet, was in doubt. By the existing Salic Law only male descendants wereeligible to the throne of France. The three sons of Philip IV. Haddied, leaving each a daughter, so the son of Charles of Valois, onlybrother of Philip IV. , was the nearest in descent from Hugh Capet; andthus the crown passed to the _Valois_ branch of the family in theperson of Philip VI. (1328). 

CHAPTER IX. 

In this break in the line of succession, England saw an opportunity. The mother of Edward III. , King of England, was Isabella, daughter ofPhilip IV. Edward claimed that he, as grandson of the French king, hada claim superior to that of the nephew. A strict interpretation of theSalic Law certainly vitiated his claim of heirship through the femaleline. But Edward did not stand upon such a trifle as that. The stakewas great, and so was the opportunity. Now England might not alonerecover her lost possessions in France, but might establish alegitimate claim to the whole. 

So it was that an English army was once more upon French soil, and in1346 Edward, with his toy cannon, had won the battle of Crécy, followedby the siege and capture of Calais, which for two hundred years was toremain an English port--a thorn in the side of France. 

A part of the old kingdom of Burgundy, which was called Dauphiny, dropped into the lap of Philip, this first Valois king, during hisreign. The old duke, being without an heir, offered to sell this bitof territory to the King of France upon the condition that it should bekept as the personal possession of the eldest sons of the kings ofFrance. Thenceforth the title of _Dauphin_ was worn by the heir to thethrone, until it became extinct with the son of Louis XVI. And whenthe feeble Philip VI. Died in 1350, his son John, the first dauphin, assumed the crown of France. 

John, this second Valois king, was an anachronism. A man intended forthe eleventh century had been set down in the fourteenth. Therestoration of knightly ceremonial, tournaments at the Louvre, thedetails of a new Crusade which he was planning, and the distribution ofnew titles, these were the things occupying the mind of the king, whilehis kingdom, rent by factions within, was in a death-struggle with foesfrom without. 

A fantastic Don Quixote, on a tottering throne, was fighting the mostpractical statesman and the strongest-armed warrior Europe held at thetime. 

With this weakness at the centre, France was again falling intofragments. There was even a resumption of private wars between nobles;and, most paralyzing of all, an empty treasury. Such time as he couldspare from his main projects John gave to the affairs of the kingdom. First of all, taxes must be levied; and when the first tax was uponsalt, King Edward condescended to make an historic witticism, saying"he had at last discovered who was the author of the _Salic Law_!"

In the various plans for raising money, it was important that the taxesshould be levied so that the burden would fall upon those who could, and who would, pay. This meant the dwellers in the towns and cities;the bourgeoisie. They were the capitalists. But what if they shouldrefuse? In order to secure the success of the measure, it wasconsidered wise to obtain their consent in advance. 

When King John asked permission of the States-General to tax them, acritical line was passed. That body for the first time realized itspower. It might make its own terms. It demanded that the moneyscollected, and their expenditure, should be under the direction of itsofficers. Then, growing bolder, it demanded reforms: Private wars mustcease; the meetings of the States-General must be at appointedintervals, without being summoned by the king. 

These meetings at Paris grew stormy. Gradually re-enforced with avicious element, they were soon led by demagogues, became violent andrevolutionary, and finally red caps and barricades, characteristic ofParisian mobs of a later period, brought the whole movement into thehands of the agents of "Charles the Bad, " evil genius of his time, whosaw his opportunity to use it in his own ambitious designs upon thethrone. But France was to hear from the _Tiers État_ again!

In 1356, Edward's son, the Black Prince, won a still greater victorythan Crécy, at _Poitiers_, in which king John was captured and carriedto London. 

But Edward found that, while victories were comparatively easy, conquest was difficult. A generation had passed since the war began. So in 1360 both kingdoms were ready to consider terms of peace. By thetreaty of Bretigny, Edward renounced the claim to the French throne, and received in full sovereignty the great inheritance Queen Eleanorhad brought to Henry II. King John was to be released and his son heldas hostage until the enormous ransom was paid. Of course the moneycould not be paid by impoverished France, for such a doubtful benefit, at least; and so the son and hostage made his escape. Then King John, faithful to his chivalrous creed, returned to London and captivity, dying in 1364. 

The dauphin, who had now become Charles V. , came to the throne with thedetermination of restoring France to herself. His attention had beendrawn to the military talents of a Breton youth--Bertrand du Guesclin. Poor, diminutive in stature, deformed, he had raised himself tomilitary positions usually reserved as a reward for sons of nobles. Inthe reopening of a war with England, which Charles was planning, duGuesclin was to be the sword and he the brain. 

The Black Prince had gone to Spain to fight the battles of Peter theCruel, in a civil war in which the Prince was involved by inheritance, and was levying taxes for this Castilian war upon his new subjects inAquitaine. The people in this province turned to Charles to deliverthem from this oppression. He immediately summoned Prince Edwardbefore the Court of Peers; to which the Black Prince replied that hewould accept the invitation, but would come with his helmet on his headand sixty thousand men in his party. 

So successfully did Charles and du Guesclin meet this renewal of thewar that Prince Edward and his sixty thousand men were gradually drivennorth until the English possessions were reduced to a few towns uponthe coast. The Black Prince, under the weight of responsibility anddefeat, succumbed to disease, and died, 1377. The death of Edward III. Occurred soon after that of his son, and Richard II. Was King ofEngland. 

The expulsion of the English was not the only benefit bestowed byCharles V. The revolting States-General were restrained and werefirmly held in the king's hand. Still more important was thereorganization of the military system, by placing it under the commandof officers appointed by the Crown, who might or might not belong tothe order of nobility. No more effective blow could have been aimed atfeudalism, which was nothing if not militant. Indeed, every act ofthis brief reign was a protest against the purposes and ideals of hisfather, King John, who was the embodiment of the ancient spirit. Itwas a needed breathing-spell between a half-century of disaster behindand another half-century of still greater disaster before. 

The death of Charles V. (1380) left the throne to a delicate boy oftwelve years, who was to reign under the successive regencies of threeuncles. These brothers of Charles, and sons of the romantic King John, seem to represent all the traits and passions which can degradehumanity. The oldest, the Duke of Anjou, was driven from the regencyafter stealing everything which was movable in the king's palace andvaults. The Duke of Burgundy, who succeeded him, had nobler objects, and needed a larger field for his ambitious soul. He had an eye on thethrone itself. And when he and the Duke Berri, at the instigation ofthe archbishop, were compelled to resign the reins to the young KingCharles VI. , they carried with them to their own castles all that Anjouhad left. Of course the archbishop was mysteriously murdered, and thenthe boy king was married to Isabella of Bavaria, said to be the mostbeautiful and the wickedest woman in Europe. 

Charles had always been a frail, delicate boy. As he was riding oneevening, a strange, wild-looking being sprang out of the darkness andseized the bridle of his horse, crying, "Fly, fly! you are betrayed. "The astonished youth after the shock, became melancholy; then wassuddenly seized with a fit of frenzy, in which he killed four of hispages. A mad king was on the throne of France, the worst woman inEurope regent, and three uncles waiting like vultures around a dyingman, ready to seize anything from a golden candlestick to a throne!

In the chaos of misrule and villainy into which France was falling, thedetermining factor was the deadly feud which existed between the houseof Burgundy and that of Orleans. Upon the death of the first Duke ofBurgundy, his son John seized the regency for himself, snatching itfrom the Duke of Orleans, the king's brother. At this point startedthe feud which was to tear France asunder from end to end. While theOrleanists were gathering their adherents to drive him out, John wasintrenching himself in Paris. Like many another villain, this Duke ofBurgundy posed as the friend of the people. He could doff his cap andspeak smilingly to starving men. He knew how to work upon theirpassions, and to please by torturing and executing those they believedhad wronged them. He told them how he pitied them for the extortionsof the Duke of Orleans and Queen Isabella, kindly giving them pikes todefend themselves, and iron chains to barricade their streets, if theyshould be needed. Then, extending his hand to his enemy of Orleans, brother of the king, they were reconciled: the past was to be buried. 

Then it is a pleasant picture we behold of the period: the two friendspartaking together of communion, and dining, and then embracing atparting with effusive words and promises to meet at a dance on themorrow, the unsuspecting Duke of Orleans going out into the dark, wherehired assassins were waiting to hack him in pieces. Then a court ofjustice trying and acquitting this confessed murderer of the king'sbrother, upon the ground that tyrannicide is a duty; the sad, crazedwraith of a king saying the words he had been taught: "Fair cousin, wepardon you all. " And the tragedy and comedy were over!

There was now no check upon the Burgundian power. In the worst days ofEnglish occupation of her land, France had been in less danger fromEdward III. Than she now was from the Duke of Burgundy, champion anddefender of the people! The immediate object of the Burgundian orpeople's party, and the Orleans and aristocratic party, was thepossession of the person of the king, and control of his acts duringhis few lucid moments. 

There was civil war in a land divested of every vestige of government. England would have been blind had she not seen her opportunity; but, too much occupied with her own revolution, she had to wait. And whenHenry IV. , the first Lancastrian, was king, he needed both hands tohold his crown firmly on his head. But when the young Henry V. Came tothe throne, with the energy and ambition of youth, the time was ripefor the recovery of the lost possessions in France. 

The battle of Agincourt (1415) reopened the war with a great defeat forthe French chivalry, which represented the Orleanist party. Thewholesale slaughter of princes, bishops, and knights on this fatal daywas clear gain for the traitor Burgundy, the champion of the people!The climax of his villainy was at hand. 

Henry V. , at Rouen, was openly holding his court as King of France. John, Duke of Burgundy, accompanied by Queen Isabella, presentedhimself to the invading king, and formally pledged his support and thatof his followers to the cause of the English!

The infamous treaty of Troyes was signed, 1420. It provided that Henryshould act as regent to Charles VI. While he lived; that upon the deathof that unhappy being he should be Henry V. Of England and Henry II. OfFrance; and that the two kingdoms should thereafter exist under onecrown. The romantic marriage of Henry with the Princess Katharine, daughter of Charles and Isabella, which was part of the agreement, wassolemnized in that old palace on the island in the Seine. And the samevaulted ceilings which we may see to-day, looked down upon thishistoric marriage, as they also did upon the condemnation of MarieAntoinette, three and a half centuries later. We know of this union ofHenry and the fair Katharine chiefly through the pen of Shakespeare, inhis play of Henry V. 

But Henry was destined never to wear the crown of France, nor even tosee his own land again. There were only two more years of life forhim. His death occurred in his palace of the Louvre, a few weeksbefore that of Charles VI. , and the crown he expected to wear upon thisevent passed to his infant son, who was by the Burgundian partyrecognized as King of France. 

A careless, pleasure-loving dauphin, just twenty, apparentlyindifferent to the loss of a kingdom, was a frail support at such atime. Only a fragment of the country was held by his followers, theOrleanists; Scotland had come to his aid with a few thousand men, butwhat did this avail with the greater part of the kingdom held by theBurgundians, while town after town was declaring its allegiance to theEnglish Duke of Bedford, whom his dying brother, Henry V. , had named asregent for his infant son. 

The city of Orleans, held by the dauphin's adherents, was besieged. Itwas the key to the situation. Its fall meant the fall of the kingdom, the conquest of France. When this happened, that infant at the Louvrewould really be the wearer of the crown. So hopeless was the situationthat the spiritless Charles was only in doubt whether to take refuge inScotland or in Spain. 

But although towns and cities had deserted him, the heart of the peoplehad not. Patriotism, dead everywhere else, still lived in the heart ofthat forgotten multitude lying silent and humble under the feet of itsmasters. The monarchy had been their friend, their only friend. TheChurch had deserted them, and joined their enemies the nobles. But tothe people, the name King expressed gratitude and hope; and they lovedit. 

If a great spreading tree full of verdure had arisen in a day out ofthe barren breast of Mother Earth, it would scarcely have been agreater miracle that what really happened when a child of the soil, agirl, rising triumphant over the disabilities of age, sex, birth, andcondition, saved France from destruction. Summoned by celestialvoices, by angels whom she not only heard but saw, Joan of Arc startedupon her mission of rescue for France!

When this daughter of the people, this peasant from Domremy, wasadmitted to the presence of the dauphin, it is said that in amusementand in order to test the reality of her mission, Charles exchangeddress with one of his courtiers. But the maid going straight to him, said: "Gentle dauphin, I come to restore to you the crown of France. Orleans shall be saved by me. And you, by the help of God and my LadySt. Catharine, shall be crowned at Rheims. "

On the 29th of April the maid did enter the fainting city. And she didlead the dauphin to Rheims for his coronation. And then, kneeling athis feet, asked the "Gentle King" to let her go back to her sheep atDomremy. "For, " she said, "they love me more than these thousands ofpeople I have seen. "

Unhappily, she did not return to her sheep, but remained among thosewolves, and was captured and a prisoner of the English. 

What should they do with this strange being, claiming supernaturalpowers? The Regent Duke of Bedford denounced her as a rebel againstthe infant king; and the Bishop of Beauvais as a blasphemer and childof the devil. Nothing could be clearer than her guilt upon both ofthese charges! And on the 13th of May, 1431, this mysteriouslyinspired child was burnt by a slow fire in the market-place of Rouen. And the "Gentle King, " where was he while this was happening?

It must ever remain a mystery that a peasant girl, a child in years andin experience, should have believed herself called to such a mission;that conferring only with her heavenly guides, or "voices, " she shouldhave sought the king, inspired him with faith in her, and in himselfand his cause, reanimated the courage of the army, and led it herselfto victory absolute and complete; and then, have compelled thehalf-reluctant, half-doubting Charles to go with her to Rheims, thereto be anointed and consecrated; this simple child in that day bestowingupon him a kingdom, and upon France a king!

Was there ever a stranger chapter in history! Alas, if it could haveended here, and she could have gone back to her mother and her spinningand her simple pleasures, as she was always longing to do when her workshould be done. But no! we see her falling into the hands of thedefeated and revengeful English--this child, who had wrested from thema kingdom already in their grasp. She was turned over to the Frenchecclesiastical court to be tried. A sorceress and a blasphemer theypronounce her, and pass her on to the secular authorities, and hersentence is--death. 

We see the poor defenceless girl, bewildered, terrified, wringing herhands and declaring her innocence as she rides to execution. God andman had abandoned her. No heavenly voice spoke, no miracle intervenedas her young limbs were tied to the stake and the fagots and strawpiled up about her. The torch was applied, and her pure soul mountedheavenward in a column of flames. 

Rugged men wept. A Burgundian general said, as he turned gloomilyaway, "We have murdered a saint. "

[Illustration: Burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, May 30, 1431. From thepainting by Lenepveu. ]

And Charles, sitting upon the throne she had rescued for him, what washe doing to save her? Nothing--to his everlasting shame be it said, nothing. He might not have succeeded; the effort at rescue, or to staythe event, might have been unavailing. But where was his knighthood, where his manhood, that he did not try, or utter passionate protestagainst her fate?

Twenty-five years later we see him erecting statues to her memory, and"rehabilitating" her desecrated name. And to-day, the Church whichcondemned her for blasphemy is placing her upon the calendar of saints. 

CHAPTER X. 

CHARLES VII. In creating a standing army struck feudalism a deadlyblow. His son, Louis XI. , with cold-blooded brutality finished thework. This man's powerful and crafty intelligence saw in an alliancewith the common people a means of absorbing to himself supreme power. Not since Tiberius had there been a more blood-thirsty monster on athrone. But he demolished the political structure of mediaevalism inhis kingdom; and when his cruel reign was ended the Middle Ages hadpassed away, and modern life had begun in France. 

There was no longer even the pretence of knightly virtues in France. It was time for the high-born robbers and ruffians in steel helmets togive place to men with hearts and brains. It is said that of thosethousands, that chivalric host, which was slaughtered at Agincourt, notone in twenty could write his name. All alike were cruel and had theinstincts of barbarians. While the Duke of Burgundy, the richestprince in Europe, was starving his enemies in secret dungeons in theBastille, his Orleans rival, Count of Armagnac, not having access tothe Bastille, was decapitating Burgundians till his executionersfainted from fatigue. 

It is almost with relief that we read of the slaughter of theseknightly savages at Agincourt. If the shipwreck of a mighty kingdomwas to be averted, two things must be done. The decaying corpse offeudalism must be thrown overboard, and the Church must be purified. Both had fallen from the ideals which created them; the ideal of truth, justice, and spotless honor, and the ideal of divine love and mercy. Even the semblance of truth and justice and honor had departed from theone; and unspeakable corruption had crept into the other. From the dayof the Albigensian cruelties, the heart of the Church had turned tostone, and the spark of life divine within seemed extinguished. Oncethe guardian of the helpless, it had deserted the people and madecommon cause with their oppressors. One pope at Rome, and another atAvignon, was a heavy burden to carry. But when _three_ infalliblebeings were hurling anathemas at each other, the University of Parisled Christendom in rejecting them all. 

So the two great classes for which the State existed were overweightingthe ship at a time when it was being torn and tossed by a storm ofgigantic proportions. 

Well was it for France that Charles VII. , as king, developed unexpectedfirmness and ability. The creation of a standing army, and thedisbanding of all military organizations existing without the king'scommission, at one sweeping blow completed the wreck of feudalism. Itonly remained for Charles's cold-blooded son, Louis XI. , to finish thework, and mediaevalism was a thing of the past in France. 

The reign of Charles was imbittered by the conduct of this unnaturalson, whose undisguised impatience to assume the crown so alarmed himthat it is said he shortened his own life by abstaining from food inthe fear that the dauphin might lay the guilt of parricide upon hissoul. 

This heart-broken, desolate old man died in 1461. And Louis XI. WasKing of France. 

The son of Charles VII. Was a composite of the wisest and the worst ofhis predecessors. Indeed, it is to the Roman emperors we must look fora parallel to this monster on a throne. And yet, to no other king doesFrance owe such a debt of gratitude. His remorseless hand placed agreat gulf between the new and the old, in which were forever buriedthe men and the system which had fed upon her life. 

The antagonism between the son and the father aroused great hopes of areversal of policy and a rehabilitation of feudalism. These hopes weresoon undeceived. So inscrutable and so tortuous was the policy of thisstrange being, so unexpected his changes of direction, so false andinconsistent his words and acts, and so unspeakably cruel the means tohis ends, that a cowed and bewildered nation was soon crouching at hisfeet, not knowing whither he was leading them. 

Warfare played no part in this reign. Invasion was met by diplomacy, and slaughter and bloodshed were relegated to the executioner. Incredible as it seems, it is said that from his windows this kingcould look out upon an avenue of gibbets upon which hung the bodies ofhis enemies. The humorous spirit in which he disposed of obstructivenobles is illustrated by a note to an unsuspecting victim. "Faircousin, come and give us your advice. We have need of so wise a headas yours. " And in the morning the fair cousin's wise head was in abasket filled with sawdust!

When all was done, a town council meant more than the "Order of theGolden Fleece"; and, _pari passu_, with the humiliation of the noblecame the elevation of the bourgeois. A nameless adventurer would beadmitted to confidential intimacy when a Montmorenci could not getbeyond his antechamber. 

In fact, this levelling up and levelling down was the object of allthis king's odious crimes and the central purpose of his cold-bloodedreign. If a patent of nobility was a pretty good passport to thescaffold, good service in a town council was an open door to elevation. 

So, judged by results, Louis XI. Was a better king than many a betterman had been. He buried the ideals of the past fathoms deep and thenstamped them down with remorseless feet. He demolished the politicalstructure of mediaevalism in his kingdom, and when his terrible reignwas ended, in 1483, the Middle Ages had passed away and modern life hadbegun in France. 

Almost any reign would have seemed colorless after that of Louis XI. But that of his son, Charles VIII. , was made memorable by one event, aninvasion of Italy, which brought to France a long train of disastrousconsequences. 

It will be remembered that in the thirteenth century, Charles, Duke ofAnjou, of Sicilian fame, or infamy, and brother of Louis the Saint, occupied the throne of Naples by invitation of the pope. 

The family of Anjou having recently become extinct, Charles was now therightful heir to that throne. So as there was nothing in especial forhim to do at home, and as his new army, created and equipped by hisfather, was a very splendid affair for that day, and as Charles wasyoung and ambitious of a name, he determined to take forciblepossession of his inheritance in Italy. 

The success of the enterprise was quite dazzling. Milan, Florence, Rome, were successively occupied, and finally Charles was actuallyseated upon the throne in Naples (1495). 

But the seat was not comfortable. The Neapolitans did not want him;and, what was more important, Spain, England, and Austria talked ofuniting to drive him out. And so he and his army returned to France, and all that had been gained by the enterprise was a wide-open doorbetween France and Italy at the very time when it might better havebeen kept closed, and the discovery by Europe that the Italianpeninsula was an easy prey to any ambitious European power. WhatCharles had done might also, and more effectually, be done by England, Spain, or Austria. All of which bore bitter fruit in the next century. 

But for France the fruit was of a more deadly kind. The princely andnoble blood of Italy began to be mingled with hers, bringing a viciousand corrupt strain at a critical period. 

Old as she was in centuries, France was but a child in civilization. An uncouth, untutored child, just emerging from barbarism, was suddenlybrought under the influence of a fascinating, highly developedcivilization, old in wickedness. A nation in which the ruling classhad only recently learned to read and write was naturally dazzled bythis sister nation, saturated with the learning and culture of theages, mistress of every brilliant art and accomplishment; who afterhaving run the whole gamut of human experience, drunk at every knownfountain, had arrived at the code summed up by Machiavelli as the bestby which to live! It was an easy task for the Medici to control thepolicy, as they did for generations, of such simple barbarians. 

Italy presents a strange spectacle in this closing fifteenth century:All the concentrated splendor from the fall of Byzantium hanging overher like a luminous cloud before dispersing as the Renaissance; Lorenzode' Medici, at Florence, directing the intellectual currents of Europe;Angelo and Raphael creating the world's sublimest masterpieces in art;her great Genoese son uncovering another hemisphere; Savonarola, likean inspired prophet of old, calling upon men to "repent, repent, whilethere is yet time"; Machiavelli instructing the nations of the earth invillainy as a fine art; and Alexander VI. , the basest man in Europe, poisoner, father of every crime, claiming to be Vicegerent of Christupon earth!

But the currents were moving swiftly toward a crisis which was tochange all this. One more pope, that magnificent patron of art, JuliusII. , creator of the Vatican Museum, with the recently found ApolloBelvedere, and the Laocoön as a splendid nucleus, and projector andbuilder of St. Peter's. And then Leo X. (Medicean Pope) and Luther!

The year 1492 contained three important events: the discovery of a newworld, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and the death of Lorenzode' Medici. Spain's crusade of seven hundred years was over. We mustsearch in vain for any struggle to match this in singleness andpersistence of purpose. Commencing one hundred years beforeCharlemagne created a Holy Roman Empire, it ended triumphantly under aking and queen who were to play a leading part in the _Reformation_. 

The stage was making ready, and the characters were assembling for thegreat modern drama, in a century even more significant than the onethen closing. 

The reign of Charles VIII. Ended in 1498. And as he left no son, thesuccession once more passed to a collateral branch: Louis XII. , of theHouse of Orleans, wore the crown of France. It is interesting torecall that these two kings, Charles and Louis, were respectivelygrandsons of those two ambitious dukes whose personal feud broughtFrance to the verge of ruin a few decades earlier: Louis XII. Being thedescendant of that Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI. , thereigning king, who was murdered in the streets of Paris; while CharlesVIII. Was the descendant of his slayer, the terrible Duke of Burgundy, evil genius of France at that time. 

The principal event in the reign of the new king was the reopening ofthe Italian War by the combined and successful action of Spain andFrance. But this proved a barren triumph for Louis, who, when all wasdone, found that he had been simply aiding that artful diplomatist, Ferdinand, in securing the whole prize for Spain. The disagreementgrowing out of the distribution of the spoil resulted in a war betweenthe late allies; and it was in this wretched conflict that Bayard, _chevalier sans peur et sans reproche_, was sacrificed. 

Louis died in 1515, also without an heir; and so the crown passed tostill another collateral branch of the main Capetian line. The Countof Angoulême, cousin of the dead king, was proclaimed Francis I. 

The fall of Constantinople in the East, and the discovery of a newworld in the West, were changing the whole aspect of Europe. The artof printing, coming almost simultaneously with these transformingevents, sent vitalizing currents reaching even to the humblest. Francepartook of the general awakening and was throwing off the torpor ofcenturies. New ambitions were aroused, and her slumbering genius beganto be stirred. This was a propitious moment for an ambitious youngking who aimed not only at being the greatest of military heroes, butalso the splendid patron of art and letters, and wisest of men! Therole he had set for himself being, in fact, a Charlemagne and a Lorenzode' Medici in one. All that was needed for success in this large fieldwas ability. Personal valor Francis certainly possessed. His reignopened brilliantly with a campaign in the Italian peninsula, which lefthim after the battle of Marignano, master of the Milanese and ofnorthern Italy. He need not trouble himself as had his predecessorsabout recalcitrant and scheming nobles. They had never been heard fromsince Louis XI. Took them in hand. Neither were the States-Generalgoing to annoy him by assertion of rights and demands for reforms. They too had become almost non-existent; it having been wellestablished that only the direst emergency would ever call them intobeing again. So kingship held sole and undisputed sway, and Franciswas looking about to see where he might make it even stronger. 

The residence of the popes, at Avignon, during the period of the GreatSchism, had led to the establishment by Charles VII. Of an ordinancecalled the _Pragmatic Sanction_; its object being the limitation of thepapal power in France. The pope by this ordinance was cut off fromcertain lucrative sources of income; to offset which the king wasdeprived of the right of appointing officers for vacant bishoprics andabbeys. 

Francis I. And Leo X. Came together, and, after conferring, determinedthat the Pragmatic Sanction should be repudiated; Leo, because he mustincrease his revenues, and Francis, because he desired to useappointments to rich vacancies as rewards for his friends. Leo'stastes, as we know, were magnificent, and needed much more money thanhe could command; a fact which led to grave results, and changed thecourse of events in the world!

In 1516 Ferdinand I. , King of Spain, died, leaving his enormouspossessions to his grandson, Charles, a youth not yet twenty. Themother of this boy was Joanna, the insane daughter of Ferdinand andIsabella, who was married to the son and heir of Maxmilian I. , Emperorof Germany. 

The young Charles, by the death of his father, had already inheritedthe Netherlands and Flanders; to which by the death of his maternalgrandfather there was now added Spain, the kingdom of Naples, Mexico, and Peru. A heavy enough burden, one would think, for young shoulders. But it was to become still heavier. In 1519 his other grandfather, Maximilian I. , died, leaving the throne of the empire vacant. 

This office by ancient custom, established by Charlemagne, waselective, and theoretically was open to any prince in Europe. But withthe seven princes known as electors, with whom rested choice of thesuccessor, hereditary claim had great weight. Europe saw with dismaythe imminent creation of an empire greater than that of Charlemagne--anempire which would cover a large part of the map of Europe and ofAmerica. For none was this so alarming as for France, which would infact be enveloped upon almost every side by this giant among thenations. A French king would indeed have been dull and spiritless notto realize the magnitude of the danger, and Francis was neither. Therewas only a youth of nineteen standing between him and the greatestdignity in Europe. It was not alone an opportunity to save France fromthis overshadowing power, but to reunite the crowns of France and theempire as originally designed by Charlemagne. No role could havebetter pleased Francis I. He announced himself a claimant for thevacant throne (under the clause opening it to European princes), claiming that his ownership of the adjacent territory of Northern Italymade him the natural successor to the imperial throne. 

Then another ambitious young king appeared as another rival claimant, Henry VIII. Of England, with his astute Minister Woolsey to fight thediplomatic battles for his master. It was a brilliant game, played bygreat players for a great stake: Francis lavishly bribing and dazzlingby theatrical displays of splendor; Henry arrogant, ostentatious, vain, and Charles silent, inscrutable, cold-blooded, and false, whispering toWoolsey that he might make him pope at the next election. From thatmoment the powerful influence of the Cardinal was used for this sedateyouth, this wise youth, who saw that the fitting place for him(Woolsey) was the chair of St. Peter!

The diplomacy of the boy of nineteen won the prize. The electors gavethe crown to Charles V. Leo X. Died soon after. Woolsey waited inhourly expectation of the summons to Rome. But it never came!

Then Francis resolved to win by force what he had lost by diplomacy. Charles succeeded in winning the pope to his side of the contest withthe purpose of driving the French out of Italy. The attempt quicklyended in the defeat of the French, and for Francis capture, and ayear's imprisonment in Madrid; his release only obtained by abandoningall claims upon Italy; and in 1547 the showy and ineffectual reign ofFrancis I. Was terminated by his death, which occurred almostimmediately after that of Henry VIII. In England. 

While these events were taking place, a less conspicuous but vastlymore significant conflict had developed. In 1517, Martin Luther, theobscure monk, had hurled defiance at the Church of Rome, arraigning LeoX. For corrupt practices; especially the enrichment of the Church bythe sale of indulgences. Germany was shaken to its centre byProtestantism, and the reign of Charles V. Was to be spent inineffectual conflict with the Reformation, which would ultimately tearthe Empire asunder. 

The new heresy had found congenial soil in France. England was openlyand avowedly Protestant, while Spain and Italy remained unchangeablyCatholic. 

For Francis, destined to spend his life in fruitless contest with themore able, wily, and astute Charles V. , the religious question uponwhich Europe was divided meant nothing except at he could use it in hisduel with the emperor. He was in turn the ally of Henry VIII. Or thewilling tool of Charles V. If he needed the English king's friendship, the Protestants had protection. If he desired to placate Charles V. , the roastings and torturings commenced again. 

In 1547 Francis and Henry VIII. Each went to his reward, and a fewyears later Charles V. Had laid down his crown and carried his weary, unsatisfied heart to St. Yuste. The brilliant pageant was over; butProtestantism was expanding. 

CHAPTER XI. 

The conversion of Henry VIII. , because the pope refused to annul hismarriage with Catharine, aunt of Charles V. , was not the proudest, butone of the most important triumphs of the new faith. Had Catharine'scharms been fresher, or Anne Boleyn less alluring, the course ofhistory would have been changed. Henry VIII. , as persecutor ofheretics, would have found congenial occupation for his ferociousinstincts, and the triumph of Protestantism would have been longdelayed. But no such cause existed for the success of the Reformationon French soil. The slumbering germs of heresy, left perhaps byAbelard, or by the heretics in Toulouse and Provence, were quicklywarmed into life. It may be also that the memory of her desertion bythe Church, once her only friend and champion, gave such intensity tothe welcome of a "Reformation" by the people. At all events, whateverthe explanation, a religious war was at hand which was going to stainthe fair name of France more even than the treacheries of her civil war. 

The question at issue was deeper than any one knew. Neither Luther norLeo X. Understood the revolution they had precipitated. Protestantsand Papists alike failed to comprehend the true nature of the struggle, which was not for supremacy of Romanist or Protestant; not whether thisdogma or that was true, and should prevail; but an assertion of theright of every human soul to choose its own faith and form of worship. The great battle for human liberty had commenced; the struggle forreligious liberty was but the prelude to what was to follow. There wasabundant proof later that Protestants no less than Papists needed onlyopportunity and power to be as cruel and intolerant as theirpersecutors had been. Before the Reformation was fifty years old, Servetus, one of the greatest men of his age, a scholar, philosopher, and man of irreproachable character, was burned at Geneva for hereticalviews concerning the nature of the Trinity; Calvin, the great organizerof Protestant theology, giving, if not the order for this odious crime, at least the nod of approval for its commission. 

France had known many tragedies. But when Francis, in pursuance of hisItalian policy, secured the hand of Catharine de' Medici for his sonand heir, Henry II. , he prepared the way for the most tragic event inher history. Powerless to win the affection, or even confidence, ofHenry while he lived, Catharine remained unobserved; but, as the eventproved, not unobservant. Her astute mind had been studying everycurrent in the kingdom. 

Two families had come into prominence during this reign which were toplay leading parts in the immediate future: the family of Guise, of thehouse of Lorraine, represented by Francis, Duke of Guise; and that ofChâtillon, of which Admiral Coligny was the head, both of whomCatharine hated and had marked for destruction. 

Mary, of the house of Guise, was the wife of James VI. Of Scotland; andthrough the powerful influence of the Guises, the brothers of theScottish queen, a marriage was arranged between her daughter--her mostserene little highness, Marie Stuart--and the dauphin, who would someday be Francis II. 

In order to be prepared for this high destiny, the little maid whenonly five years old was brought to the Court of France to be trainedunder the direct influence of the accomplished queen-mother, Catharine--undoubtedly, although unsuspected then, the worst woman inEurope! Poor little Marie Stuart, predestined to sin and to tragedy!What could be expected of a woman with the blood of the Guises in herveins, and with Catharine de' Medici as her model and teacher?

In 1559 Henry II. Was killed by an accident at a tournament. Themarriage of the two children had taken place. The sickly boy, withonly a modest portion of intelligence, was Francis II. , King of France. Marie, his beautiful and adored queen, controlled him utterly, and washerself in turn controlled by her uncles of the house of Guise. Infact, the family of Guise, which was the head of the Catholic party inthe kingdom, ruled France, with the strange result that if Catharinelooked for any allies in her fight with this ambitious family, she mustmake common cause with the Protestants, led by Admiral Coligny, whomshe hated only a little less than the uncles of Marie Stuart. 

The princes of the house of Bourbon, a remote branch of the royalfamily, which, next to Francis, were the nearest to the throne, hadbeen extremely jealous of the growing power of the Guises. Now theysaw them, as the advisers of the young king, actually usurping theposition which was theirs by right of birth. 

Two factions grew out of this feud in the court, and there developed aBourbon party, and the party of the Guises; one identified with theProtestant and the other with the Catholic cause. 

Antony de Bourbon, the head of the family of this name, whether fromconviction or from antagonism to the Guises, had openly espoused theProtestant side. It was the rich burghers of the towns, in combinationwith the smaller nobles, which composed the Protestant party in France. And although the impelling cause of the great movement was religious, political wrongs had become a powerful contributing cause; as is alwaysthe case, the discontented and aggrieved, for whatever reason, castingin their lot with those who had a deeper grievance and a more sacredpurpose. 

Whether the conversion of the Bourbon prince was of that nature or not, who can say? But the movement swelled, and France was divided into twohostile camps: one under the Protestant banner of Antony de Bourbon, father of Henry of Navarre, and the other under that of the Catholic, Francis, Duke of Guise; and two children were on the throne of Francewhile the ground was trembling beneath their feet with a comingrevolution. 

Francis I. Had been too much occupied with his own plans to take inhand systematically and seriously the prevailing heresy. Henry II. , son of Francis, had also temporized with the religious revolt, probablynot realizing the powerful element it contained. Now, with the Guisesfirmly in power, there would be no more half-way measures. 

But a crisis was at hand which would change the whole situation. Thediscovery of a plot to seize the person of the young king and place aBourbon prince upon the throne, led to a general slaughter. Freshrelays of executioners in Paris stood ready to relieve each other whenexhausted, and the Seine was black with the bodies of the drowned. 

During this preliminary storm the frail young king, Francis II. , suddenly died. Marie Stuart passed out of French history, and thepower of the Guises was at an end. The fates were certainly fightingon the side of Catharine. 

There are hints that the fine Italian hand may be seen in this eventwhich at one stroke removed every obstacle from her path! However thismay be, Catharine wasted no regrets upon the death of a son which madeher queen regent during the minority of her second son, Charles, nowten years of age (1560). 

There was no time to lose. Her control over the feeble Charles IX. Before he reached his majority must be absolute. Every impulse towardmercy must be extinguished. 

What can be said of a mother who seeks to exterminate every germ oftruth or virtue in her son; who immerses him in degrading vices inorder to deaden his too sensitive conscience and make him a willingtool for her purposes? Inheriting the splendid intelligence as well asgenius for statecraft of the Medici, nourished from her infancy uponMachiavellian principles, cold and cruel by nature, this Florentinewoman has written her name in blood across the pages of French history. 

There were two main ends to be kept in view: the destruction of theGuises, and the extermination of the Huguenots, as the Protestants werenow called. These were difficult to reconcile, but both must beaccomplished. 

Coligny, the splendid old admiral and Huguenot, hero of the nation, he, too, must go. And Henry of Navarre, the adored young leader of theHuguenots, of course was high on the list marked for destruction; butthere might be other uses for him before that time. 

Never had the Huguenots received such gentle treatment. Disabilitieswere removed and privileges bestowed. Never was the beautifulqueen-mother as smiling, gracious, and witty. A letter to her uncle, Pope Innocent III. , written, it is said, between a dinner and amasquerade, asked if men might not be good enough Christians even ifthey did not believe in transubstantiation, and useful subjects eventhough they could not accept the Apostolic succession!

Then this excellent woman declared her admiration for the intelligenceof the Huguenots, whom until now she had believed were mere fanaticalenthusiasts. Then Henry of Navarre, the brave, generous, accomplishedProtestant leader, was urgently invited to the court, and finally evenoffered the hand of Margaret of Valois, her daughter, as a compromisewhich would heal the rivalry between the two faiths. 

And so, on the 18th of August, 1572, Notre Dame, grim but splendid, looked down upon the marriage of Margaret and Henry, in the presence ofall the leaders of Huguenot and Catholic in France. 

The Protestants wept for joy at the reconciliation accomplished by thisunion. And all were to remain and partake of the week of festivitieswhich were to follow. 

Then, the pageant over, a secret council was held in Catharine'sapartment in the Louvre, in which her remaining son, Henry, participated, but from which his brother the king was excluded; somewishing to include the Guises in the approaching massacre, some urgingthat Henry of Navarre be spared, but all agreeing that Coligny must go;it being, in fact, the influence of this magnetic man over the youngking which was the danger-point compelling haste and the uncertainty asto what her son might do endangered the success of the whole plot. 

Charles, who was now king, was impressible, easily influenced, yetstubborn, intractable, incoherent, passionate, and unreliable;sometimes inclining to the Guises, sometimes to Coligny and theHuguenots, and always submitting at last, after vain struggle, to hisimperious mother's will, in her efforts to free him from both. We seein him a weak character, not naturally bad, torn to distraction by thecruel forces about him, who when compelled to yield, as he always didin the end, to that terrible woman, would give way to fits of impotentrage against the fate which allowed him no peace. 

The time had arrived when Catharine feared the influence of Colignymore than that of the Guises. Brave, patriotic, magnetic, he hadsucceeded in winning Charles's consent to declare war against Spain. Philip II. Of Spain was Catharine's son-in-law and closest ally. Herentire policy was threatened. At all hazards Coligny must be gottenrid of. The young King of Navarre, adored leader of the Protestants, was a constant menace; he, too, must in some way be disposed of. 

There were sinister conferences with Philip of Spain and with hisminister, that incarnation of cruelty and of the Inquisition, the Dukeof Alva. 

To the honor of France it may be said that the initiative, theinception of the horrid deed which was preparing was not French. Itwas conceived in the brain of either this Italian woman or her Spanishadviser and co-conspirator, the Duke of Alva. We shall never know theinside history of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. It must ever remaina matter of conjecture just how and when it was planned, but theprobabilities point strongly one way. 

Charles was to be gradually prepared for it by his mother. By workingupon his fears, his suspicions, by stories of plottings against hislife and his kingdom, she was to infuriate him; and then, while hisrage was at its height, the opportunity for action must be at hand. The marriage of Charles's sister Margaret with the young Protestantleader Henry of Navarre, with its promise of future protection to theHuguenots, was part of the plot. It would lure all the leaders of thecause to Paris. Coligny, Condé, all the heads of the party, wereurgently invited to attend the marriage feast which was to inauguratean era of peace. 

Admiral Coligny was requested by Catharine, simply as a measure ofprotection to the Protestants, to have an additional regiment of guardsin Paris, to act in case of any unforeseen violence. 

Two days after the marriage, and while the festivities were at theirheight, an attempt upon the life of the old admiral awoke suspicion andalarm. But Catharine and her son went immediately in person to see thewounded old man, and to express their grief and horror at the event. They commanded that a careful list of the names and abode of everyProtestant in Paris be made, in order, as they said, "to take themunder their own immediate protection. "

"My dear father, " said the king, "the hurt is yours, the grief is mine. "

At that moment the knives were already sharpened, every man instructedin his part in the hideous drama, and the signal for its commencementdetermined upon. Charles did not know it, but his mother did. Shewent to her son's room that night, artfully and eloquently pictured thedanger he was in, confessed to him that she had authorized the attemptupon Coligny, but that it was done because of the admiral's plottingsagainst him, which she had discovered. But the Guises--her enemies andhis--they knew it, and would denounce her and the king! The only thingnow is to finish the work. He must die. 

Charles was in frightful agitation and stubbornly refused. Finally, with an air of offended dignity, she bowed coldly and said to her son, "Sir, will you permit me to withdraw with my daughter from yourkingdom?" The wretched Charles was conquered. In a sort of insanefury he exclaimed, "Well, let them kill him, and all the rest of theHuguenots too. See that not one remains to reproach me. "

This was more than she had hoped. All was easy now. So eager was sheto give the order before a change of mood, that she flew herself togive the signal, fully two hours earlier than was expected. Atmidnight the tocsin rang out upon the night, and the horror began. 

Lulled to a feeling of security by artfully contrived circumstances, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, peacefully sleeping, were awakened tosee each other hideously slaughtered. 

The stars have looked down upon some terrible scenes in Paris; herstones are not unacquainted with the taste of human blood; but neverhad there been anything like this. The carnage of battle is mercifulcompared with it. Shrieking women and children, half-clothed, fleeingfrom knives already dripping with human blood; frantic mothersshielding the bodies of their children, and wives pleading for thelives of husbands; the living hiding beneath the bodies of the dead. 

The cry that ascended to Heaven from Paris that night was the mostawful and despairing in the world's history. It was centuries ofcruelty crowded into a few hours. 

The number slain can never be accurately stated, but it was thousands. Human blood is intoxicating. An orgy set in which laughed at orders tocease. Seven days it continued, and then died out for lack ofmaterial. The provinces had caught the contagion, and orders to slaywere received and obeyed in all except two, the Governor of Bayonne, tohis honor be it told, writing to the king in reply: "Your Majesty hasmany faithful subjects in Bayonne, but not one executioner. "

And where was "his Majesty" while this work was being done? How was itwith Catharine? We hear of no regrets, no misgivings; that she wascalm, collected, suave, and unfathomable as ever; but that Charles, ina strange, half-frenzied state, was amusing himself by firing from thewindows of the palace at the fleeing Huguenots. Had he killed himselfin remorse, would it not have been better, instead of lingering twowretched years, a prey to mental tortures and an inscrutable malady, before he died?

Europe was shocked. Christendom averted her face in horror. But atMadrid and Rome there was satisfaction. 

Catharine and the Duke of Alva had done their work skilfully, but theresult surprised and disappointed them. Tens of thousands of Huguenotswere slain, which was well; but many times that number remained, withspirit unbroken, which was _not_ well. 

They had been too merciful! Why had Henry of Navarre been spared? Hadnot Alva said, "Take the big fish, and let the small fry go. Onesalmon is worth more than a thousand frogs. "

But Charles considered the matter settled when he uttered thoseswelling words to Henry of Navarre the day after the massacre: "I meanin future to have one religion in my kingdom. It is the Mass or death. "

All the events leading up to that fateful night, August 24, 1572, maynever be known. Near the Church of St. Germain d'Auxerrois, which rangout the signal and was mute witness of the horror, has just beenerected the statue of the great Coligny, bearing the above date. 

The miserable Charles was not quite base enough for the part he hadplayed. Tormented with memories, haggard with remorse, he felt that hewas dying. His suspicious eyes turned upon his mother, well versed inpoisons, as he knew; and, as he also knew, capable of anything. Wasthis wasting away the result of a drug? Mind and body gave way underthe strain. In 1574, less than two years from the hideous event, Charles IX. Was dead. 

Catharine's third son now wore the crown of France. In Henry III. Shehad as pliant an instrument for her will as in the two brotherspreceding him; and, like them, his reign was spent in alternatingconflict with the Protestants and the Duke of Guise. At last, weariedand exasperated, this half-Italian and altogether conscienceless kingquite naturally thought of the stiletto. The old duke, as he enteredthe king's apartment by invitation, was stricken down by assassinshidden for that purpose. 

Henry had not counted on the rebound from that blow. Catholic Francewas excited to such popular fury against him that he threw himself intothe arms of the Protestants, imploring their aid in keeping his crownand his kingdom; and when himself assassinated, a year later, theValois line had become extinct. 

By the Salic Law, Henry of Navarre was King of France. The Bourbonbranch had left the parent stem as long ago as the reign of Louis theSaint. But as all the other Capetian branches had disappeared, theright of the plumed knight to the crown was beyond a question. So aProtestant and a Huguenot was King of France. 

CHAPTER XII. 

After long wandering in strange seas, we come in view of familiarlights and headlands. With the advent of the house of Bourbon, we havegrasped a thread which leads directly down to our own time. 

The accession of a Protestant king was hailed with delirious joy by theHuguenots, and with corresponding rage by Catholic France. The onelooked forward to redressing of wrongs and avenging of injuries; andthe other flatly refused submission unless Henry should recant hisheresy and become a convert to the true faith. 

The new king saw there was no bed of roses preparing for him. Afterfour years of effort to reconcile the irreconcilable, he decided uponhis course. He was not called to the throne to rule over ProtestantFrance, nor to be an instrument of vengeance for the Huguenots. 

He saw that the highest good of the kingdom required not that he shouldimpose upon it either form of belief or worship, but give equalopportunity and privilege to both. 

To the consternation of the Huguenots, he announced himself ready tolisten to the arguments in favor of the religion of Rome; and it tookjust five hours of deliberation to convince him of its truth. Hedeclared himself ready to abjure his old faith. Bitter reproaches onthe one side and rejoicings on the other greeted this decision. It wasnot heroic. But many even among the Protestants acknowledged it to bean act of supreme political wisdom. 

Peace was restored, and the Edict of Nantes, which quickly followed, proved to his old friends, the Huguenots, that they were not forgotten. The Protestants, with disabilities removed, shared equal privilegeswith the Catholics throughout the kingdom, and the first victory forreligious liberty was splendidly won. 

An era of unexampled prosperity dawned. Never had the kingdom been sowisely and beneficently governed. Sincerity, simplicity, and sympathyhad taken the place of dissimulation, craft, and cruelty. Upliftingagencies were everywhere at work, reaching even to the peasantry, thatforgotten element in the nation. 

The formal abjuration of the Protestant faith was made by the King inthe Church of St. Denis in 1593. This church also witnessed themarriage of Henry with Marie de' Medici, after his release from herdebased relative, Margaret of Valois, daughter of Catharine de' Medici. Henry IV. , great although he was, was not above the ordinary weaknessesof humanity, and, captivated by the beauty of Marie, was a willingparty to the Italian marriage which was urged upon him, which marriagewas the one mistake of a great reign. 

It was not to be expected that any minister would rise to the fullstature of Henry IV. At this time. But in the Duke of Sully he had awise and efficient instrument for his plan, which was out of the chaosleft by the devastation of thirty years of religious wars, to evolvepeace and prosperity; and to create economic conditions upon afoundation insuring growth and permanence. 

The royal authority, impaired by the successors of Francis, must firstbe restored. And to that end all political elements, including theStates General, must be held firmly down; and that body, representingthe _Tiers État_, was never summoned after France was well in hand bythe king who was _par excellence_ the friend of the people!

It is the Edict of Nantes which stands preeminent among the events ofthis reign, and which is Henry's monument in the annals of France. Hisforeign policy was controlled by a desire to check the preponderance ofthe Hapsburgs; that being, in fact, the dominant sentiment in Europe atthat time. But a remarkable proof of the breadth of his treatment ofthis subject is the plan he formulated of a European tribunal composedof the five great powers, which should insist upon the maintenance of a_balance of power_--a phrase common enough now, but heard then for thefirst time; and which had for its immediate purpose the separating ofthe crown of Spain and the empire, by forbidding their being held bymembers of the same family, and of course designed as a check upon theHapsburgs. 

This was a pet theory with Henry, and the subject of much discussionwith Sully and of negotiation with Elizabeth, Queen of England, at thevery time when Philip II. Of Spain, in pursuance of a preciselyopposite policy, had been moving heaven and earth to bring about amarriage with that extraordinary sister of his dead wife Mary. Henrydid not witness the realization of his dream. But time has justifiedits wisdom, and modern statesmanship has been able to devise no wiserplan than that conceived in the mind of this enlightened king nearlythree centuries ago. 

How much France lost by Ravaillac's dagger can only be surmised, andwhen Henry, fatally stricken (1610), was carried dying into the Louvre, a cry of grief arose from Catholic and Protestant alike throughout thekingdom. After a reign of twenty-one years, the sagacious ruler, whohad done more than any other to make the country great and happy, wasthe victim of assassination. And France once more was the sport of acruel fate which placed her in the hands of a woman and a Medici. Marie, the widow of Henry IV. , was appointed regent during the minorityof her son Louis aged ten years. 

The regency of this woman is a story of cabals and the intrigues ofaspiring favorites. If Marie had not the ability of her greatkinswoman Catharine, it must be confessed neither had she her darkervices. She was simply intriguing and vulgar, and the willinginstrument for designing people cleverer than herself. So powerful wasthe influence of Eleonora Galigai and her husband, Concini, bothItalians like herself, that in that superstitious age it was ascribedto magic. Marie became the mere secretary to record the wishes ofthese parasites. Concini was made marquis, then minister. Whom hecommended was elevated, and whom he denounced was abased. Publicindignation reached its climax when this adventurer was finally createdMarshal of France, before whom counts and dukes must bow. So furiouswas the storm raised by this, that Marie declared her willingness tosurrender the regency, and after summoning the States General shepresented her son, Louis XIII. , thirteen years of age, declaring thathe was qualified to reign. 

Only once again was this body to be called together. That was in 1789, by Louis XVI. , when it was transformed into a National Assembly. 

But when it was discovered that the power of the detested pair was asgreat behind the boy king as it had been behind his mother, the stormgathered again from all parts of the kingdom. It was France instruggle with Concini, the man who was audaciously sending princes ofthe blood and dukes to the Bastille. 

But a counter-influence was weaving about Louis. He was made torealize the indignity to himself in letting two vulgar Italians usurphis authority. Thus Albert de Luynes, his adored friend, procured hissignature to a paper ordering the immediate destruction of Concini andhis wife. And when Louis had seen Concini despatched by his own agentsin the court of the Louvre, and the arrest, trial, and execution ofEleonora (upon the charge of sorcery), he completed the work bybanishing his mother, only to fall immediately into the power of Albertde Luynes, himself an intriguing parasite, who intended to play thevery same role as the pair he had overthrown. 

The clever Eleonora, when arraigned on the charge of sorcery, replied, "The only magic I have used is that of a strong mind over a weak one. "Albert de Luynes's head was never carried about Paris on a pike, as washers. But he experimented with the same kind of magic. 

This wretched period after the death of the great Henry had occupiedtwelve years. But in 1622 Cardinal Richelieu took his seat among theadvisers of the king. The true man had been found. King, nobles, people of all ranks and religions, realized that a master had appearedin the land; a master inscrutable in his purposes, and clothed with amysterious power. 

The foundations of this man's policy lay deep, out of sight of all savehis own far-reaching intelligence. Pitiless as an iceberg, he crushedevery obstacle to his purpose. Impartial as fate, with no loves, nohatreds, catholics, protestants, nobles, parliaments, one after anotherwere borne down before his determination to make the king, what he hadnot been since Charlemagne, supreme in France. 

The will of the great minister mowed down like a scythe. The power ofthe grandees, that last remnant of feudalism, and a perpetual menace tomonarchy, was swept away. One great noble after another was humiliatedand shorn of his privileges, if not of his head. 

The Huguenots, being first shaken into submission, saw their politicalliberties torn from them by the stroke of a pen; and even while theCatholics were making merry over this discomfiture the minister wasplanning to send Henrietta, sister of the king, across the channel tobecome queen of Protestant England, as wife of Charles I. But the actof supreme audacity was to come. This high prelate of the Church, thiscardinal-minister, formed an alliance with Gustavus Adolphus, the greatleader of the Protestants in the war upon the emperor and the pope!

He allowed no religion, no class, to sway or to hold him. He was forFrance; and her greatness and glory augmented under his ruthlessdominion. By his extraordinary genius he made the reign of acommonplace king one of dazzling splendor; and while gratifying his owncolossal ambition, he so strengthened the foundations of the monarchythat princes of the blood themselves could not shake it. 

It was great, it was dazzling, but of all his work there is but onething which revolutions and time have not swept away: the "FrenchAcademy" alone survives as his monument. Out of a gathering ofliterary friends he created a national institution, its object theestablishing a court of last appeal in all that makes for eloquence inspeaking or writing the French language. In a country where few thingsendure, this has remained unchanged for two hundred and thirty years. 

But this master of statecraft, this creator of despotic monarchy, hadone unsatisfied ambition. He would have exchanged all his honors forthe ability to write one play like those of Corneille. Hungering forliterary distinction, he could not have gotten into his own Academy hadhe not created it. And jealous of his laurels, he hated Corneille asmuch as he did the enemies of France. 

The feeble King Louis XIII. Manifested wisdom in at least one thing. He permitted this greatest statesman of his time, and one of thegreatest perhaps of all time, to have a free hand in managing hiskingdom. And whatever the pressure from the queen-mother, from cabalsand intriguing nobles, he never yielded the point, but kept his greatminister in his service as long as they both lived. This wasespecially commendable in Louis because they were personallyantagonistic, and also because the queen-mother constantly used herpowerful influence over her son for his downfall. 

Marie had been permitted to return to Paris, where her son, perhaps toconsole her for the loss of the Concinis, had built for her the Palaisde Luxembourg, intended as a reminiscence of her dear Italy, with itsMedicean architecture and Italian gardens and fountains. Here she heldher little court in great splendor, and here she wove her ineffectualwebs for Richelieu's defeat and downfall. It is said that at one timeLouis at her instigation had actually taken the pen in hand to sign theorder for his minister's disgrace, when that vigilant and omniscientbeing, perfectly aware of what was occurring, appeared from behind thecurtains. And Louis, quailing before the superior will of a master, sent his vicious, intriguing mother into perpetual banishment. And weare told that Marie, the subject of those immortal canvases now at theLouvre, was actually sheltered and fed by the great painter at his ownhome in the day of her disgrace and poverty. 

It is not strange that Peter the Great pronounced Richelieu the modelstatesman! Their ideals were the same. The minister intended thateverything in France should lie helpless at the feet of royalty; thatkingship should absorb into itself every source of power. WhileCromwell was tearing down a throne in England and leading a king to ascaffold, Richelieu, facing every class, current, and force, was makingthe throne impregnable in France, and preparing a magnificentinheritance for the infant Louis XIV. , then in his cradle. 

Queen-mother, nobles, parliaments, and Protestants must be taught toobey. The Huguenots at the siege of La Rochelle, lasting fifteenmonths, learned their lesson. The punishment for their revolt was theloss of every military and political privilege. But although therewere to be no more political assemblies, the edict of Nantes was to berigidly enforced, and their rights and immunities under it madeinviolable. Louis the King saw his most intimate friend, Cinq Mars, sent to the scaffold; his brother Gaston, Duke of Orleans, thrown intothe Bastille like a common prisoner; his mother in exile and poverty. But he also saw himself without the trouble of governing, surrounded byhomage and adulation, towering high above everything else in France, and was content. 

The growing power of Austria and the ascendency of the Hapsburgs was, as we have seen, the nightmare of Europe at this period. But theReformation was tearing the empire almost asunder. A ProtestantPrussia was trying to struggle away from a Catholic Austria. Richelieucared nothing for Catholics nor for Protestants. His aim was to weakenthe hands of the Hapsburgs. And if he joined the Protestant leaderGustavus Adolphus in a religious crusade, it was with this end in view. 

The marriage of Louis with the Infanta of Spain, known as Anne ofAustria, was doubtless a part of the same line of policy, and was thebeginning of many attempts to draw the Spanish peninsula under thecontrol of France. 

When the end of all these schemings arrived, on the 4th day ofDecember, 1642, Richelieu calmly laid down to die in his princelyresidence known at that time as the Palais Cardinal. But as it was hisdying gift to the king, the name was changed to the Palais Royal. Uponthe death of Louis XIII. , which occurred in 1643, only a few monthsafter that of his minister, the widowed Queen Anne, with her infantson, Louis XIV. , removed from the Louvre to the Palais Royal, whichcontinued to be the residence of the Grand Monarch for some time afterhis majority. 

Anne was appointed regent for her son, not yet five years old, and, tothe surprise of everyone, immediately called to her aid as her advisernot a Frenchman, as was expected, but an Italian, Cardinal Mazarin. Sothe fate of the kingdom was in the hands of two foreigners, a Spanishqueen-regent and an Italian minister. 

Richelieu's and Mazarin's methods were the opposite of each other. Onewas direct, the other tortuous and indirect. In true Italian fashionMazarin overcame by seeming to yield; and what he said was the thing hedid not mean. Intrigue and bribery were his implements and weapons. 

The situation awoke distrust. It was a time to recover lostprivileges, and to struggle out of the chains riveted by Richelieu. Acivil war known as the Fronde was the result. 

As all classes had grievances, all were represented in this generalundoing of the last minister's great work. But as no two classesdesired the same thing, the miserable war, without genius and withoutsystem, miserably failed. The royal cause triumphed; and Richelieu'spolitical structure was not even shaken. Mazarin stood inflexibly bythe work of his great predecessor. Turenne and Condé were the militaryheroes of this, as well as of the subsequent foreign wars, resulting inthe acquisition of Alsace (1648) and other great territorial expansion. 

When Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661, the young king was asked to whomthe ministers should bring their portfolios. To which came theunexpected reply, "_To me_. "

CHAPTER XIII. 

The wily Italian was gone, and Louis XIV. Settled himself upon thethrone which Richelieu had rendered so exalted and immovable. 

Cardinal Mazarin had said of the young Louis that "there was enough inhim to make four kings, and one honest man. " His greatness consistedmore in amplitude than in kind. Nature made him in prodigal mood. Hewas an average man of colossal proportions. His ability, courage, dignity, industry, greed for power and possessions, were all on amagnificent scale, and so were his vanity, his loves, his cruelties, his pleasures, his triumphs, and his disappointments. 

No king more wickedly oppressed France, and none made her moreglorious. He made her feared abroad and magnificent at home, but hedesolated her, and drained her resources with ambitious wars. Hecrowned her with imperishable laurels in literature, art, and everymanifestation of genius, but he signed the Revocation of the Edict ofNantes, and drove out of his kingdom 500, 000 of the best of hissubjects. 

The marriage of the Dauphin with the Infanta of Spain had occurredbefore he attained his majority. It was planned by Mazarin, and was apart of the policy left as a fatal bequest to Louis XIV. By thatminister. 

The Salic Law was not recognized in Spain. Hence, the crown mightdescend to an heiress, and by her be transmitted to her husband. Suchwas the hope in the marriage of Louis with the Infanta; the hope ofsome happy turn of fortune, some break in the line of successionwhereby the Spanish kingdom might be absorbed into a Bourbon empire, asit had once been in the empire of the Hapsburgs. This was the _ignisfatuus_ which was to control the policy of this stormy reign, and whichwas to envelop it at last in the clouds of defeat and disaster. 

The secret of Louis' greatness was his instinctive recognition ofgreatness in others. His new minister, Colbert, to whom he owed somuch, was a man of the people, and a protestant. He it was whodiscovered the peculations of Fouquet, the magnificent Minister ofFinance, who was building a palace at Vaux greater than the kinghimself could afford, and who was suddenly swept from this princelyresidence into the Bastille, where he spent the remaining years of hislife with plenty of leisure in which to think upon the forty thousandpounds he had expended upon that fête he gave in honor of his royalmaster; and to recall the splendors of the supper and the size of thebanqueting-hall, which Mansart, Le Brun, and the best that Italy couldfurnish at that time had made beautiful. 

It is said that the unfortunate visit of the king to his minister'sabode resulted in the creation of Versailles as a suburban residence. From the Palais de St. Germain, on the heights in the suburbs of Paris, Louis could see the Cathedral of St. Denis, where were the royal vaultsand the ancestors he must some day join. So depressing was this viewto him, and so charmed was he with the plan of Fouquet's palace andgardens, that artists were immediately set to work to make one moreroyal at Versailles, where his father, Louis XIII. , used to have hishunting-box; the place where that much-governed king used to go to hideaway from his scheming mother and his argus-eyed minister. The geniusof Colbert was severely taxed to supply the means for Louis'magnificent tastes and for his foreign wars, at the same time. EvenColbert could not create money out of nothing. The burden must restsomewhere, and just as surely must ultimately be borne by the people. 

The choice of Louvois as Minister of War was no less happy than that ofColbert in Finance. And with Vauban to build his defences, Turenne andLuxembourg and the great Condé to lead his armies, it is not strangethat there were victories. 

The four great wars of Louis' reign were not for theatrical effect, like that of the fanciful Charles VIII. In Italy. They were all inpursuance of a serious and definite purpose. Just or unjust, wise orunwise, they were planned in order to reach some boundary, or to securesome strategic position essential to France. These wars were:

First--The war upon the Spanish Netherlands, ending with the Treaty ofAix-la-Chapelle, 1668. 

Second--The invasion of the Dutch Republic, ending with the peace ofNymwegen, 1678. 

Third--War with the coalition of European States, closing with theTreaty of Ryswick, 1697. 

Fourth--War of the Spanish Succession, closed by the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713. 

The first of these wars, undertaken because Louis believed and intendedthat Flanders should belong to France, to which it was geographicallyallied, was ostensibly undertaken in order to recover the unpaid dowrywhich had been promised by Spain in exchange for Louis' renunciation ofany claim upon the throne of Spain which might result from his marriagewith the Infanta Maria Theresa. His conquest of the Spanishpossessions in Flanders might have been supposed to set at rest foreverthe question of a claim upon the Spanish throne. But we shall hear ofthat again. The success of this war made Louis, at twenty-nine yearsof age, the most heroic figure in Europe. Every one bowed before him, and everything seemed to be gravitating toward him as toward a centralsun. Not alone nobility, but even genius put on his livery and becamesycophantish, Bossuet and even Molière, hungering for his smile, and indespair if he frowned. 

This was the time of the supremacy of the beautiful Louise la Vallière. Her reign was brief, and, the king's infatuation being passed, she wasto spend the rest of her dreary life in a Carmelite convent, hearingonly the far-off echoes from the brilliant world in which she was oncethe central and envied figure. 

The Dutch Republic had come under Louis' displeasure and was marked forhis next foreign campaign. This (to his mind) insignificant nation offishermen and small traders had presumed to stand in his path. So themost magnificent army since the Crusades in 1672 invaded the peacefullittle state of Holland. As one after another of the cities helplesslyfell, someone asked why Louis came himself--why he did not send hisvalet? Louis insolently demanded as the price of peace the surrenderof all their fortified cities, the payment of twenty million francs, and the renunciation of the Protestant faith. 

The answer of William of Nassau was an unexpected one. The history ofmodern times has nothing more heroic than this little mercantile statedefying the greatest potentate in Europe. William of Nassau knewperfectly well that every battle meant defeat. The thing to do was tomake battles impossible by inundating their fertile fields. When hesaw the destruction of life and property in one scale and politicalslavery in the other, he did not hesitate. The dikes were quietlyopened. Turenne and Luxembourg and Vauban were baffled as completelyas Napoleon in Russia. And when the magnificent army had evacuated theflooded country, the dikes were quietly closed again and time andwindmills restored their fields to fertility. 

In the meantime William had been drawing to himself powerful allies. Half of Europe was in league with him in the battles he now fought uponthe Rhine. But the French were victorious. And after the peace ofNymwegen, 1678, Louis had reached the zenith of his power. 

Human pretension and arrogance could go no farther. He began to feelthat France was his own personal possession and that Europe might be. It was the combination of a great king with a small man which producedthis composite being. He had built Versailles, a palace unmatchedsince the Caesars. He not only commanded the presence, but theobsequious presence of all that was illustrious and great at a timewhen France was in the full flower of her splendid genius. Corneille, Racine, Molière, if permitted to be, must pay him an almost idolatroushomage. The beautiful Vallière was sent away, and de Montespan's reignhad commenced. 

But when Colbert died in 1685, Louis fell under an influence which wasto be transforming. He had been burning the illuminating oil of youthat very high pressure. Perhaps it was exhausted. He grew serious. DeMontespan was sent away--the orgies at Versailles ceased, the courtbecame decorous, almost austere, and with the awakening of conscience, of course, the king became more sensitive to the heresies of theHuguenots!

He was drifting toward the fatal mistake of his life. He revoked theEdict of Nantes. Two millions of people by the stroke of his pen, atthe bidding of de Maintenon, were disfranchised; prohibited undersevere penalties from any observance of their religion; their propertyconfiscated, an attempt to flee from the country punished by thegalleys. 

The prisons were full of Protestants and the scaffolds dyed with theirblood. Two hundred thousand perished by imprisonment, by the galleys, and the executioner; while two hundred thousand more managed to escapeto America and to the lands of the enemies of France, which they wouldenrich with their skill. 

Not a word of protest came from a person in France. Not even fromFénelon or Bossuet! Madame de Maintenon told him it was the "gloriousclimax of a glorious reign. " Madame de Sévigné said it was"magnificent!" And Bossuet, greatest of French divines, exclaimed, "Itis the miracle of the century!"

France at one stroke was impoverished. The skill, the trained hand, the element which was at the foundation of her excellence, and of thatwhich was to constitute her future supremacy in the world, had gone toenrich her enemies. And whether in Germany, in England, or America, noforeign people have had such glad welcome as was given to the Huguenots. 

Then came the rebound in a form not expected. William of Orange wasnow King of England. James had been driven off his throne, and hisdaughter Mary and her husband, William of Orange, wore the doublecrown. All the hostile European states, under William's leadership, sprang together for the common defence of Europe from this detested foe. 

The smothered hatred of Holland and every protestant state burst intoflame, and the great War of the Coalition commenced. Beginning withthe League of Augsburg, in 1688, it continued until the peace ofRyswick, 1697, with the defeat of France all along the line. 

Humiliated and broken, there remained for the king an opportunity toretrieve the past by attaching the Spanish peninsula to France. Therewas a vacant throne at Madrid which his grandson Philip, through theneglected Queen Maria Theresa, might claim as his inheritance. Suchwere the conditions which might still change defeat into triumph. Thefact that the right to the succession had been waived by the king waseasily disposed of. Philip, Louis' grandson, presented his claim incompetition with that of the son of Leopold I. , Emperor of Germany. When the pope, with whom the decision lay, decided in favor of Philip, grandson of the great Louis, all Europe sprang to the aid of theAustrian archduke in the war of the Spanish succession. 

It was a little side play in the opening of this great drama, whichbrought the kingdom of Prussia into existence. Frederick, elector ofBrandenburg, when called upon to arm by the emperor, refused to do soexcept upon one condition: that he might wear the title of king insteadof elector; which condition was granted, with the stipulation that thename of Prussia, a detached piece of territory the ancestors ofFrederick had cut out of the side of Russia, be substituted forBrandenburg. So out of this war of personal ambition there had sprunga new kingdom, the kingdom of Prussia, of which France was to hear muchin the future. 

England was not eager to join the new coalition in defence of theHapsburg, whom in common with the rest of Europe she had for years beentrying to pull down. But when Louis insolently espoused the cause ofthe exiled King James, and promised by force to place the pretender onthe throne, then she needed no urging, and sent Marlborough and theflower of her army to join Prince Eugene in Germany. 

It was Marlborough at Blenheim (1702) who drove the iron of defeat intothe soul of Louis XIV. When the war was ended he had made everyconcession demanded; had given up a vast extent of territory; banishedthe English pretender from his kingdom; and acknowledged Anne as queenof Great Britain. 

By the provisions of the treaty (the Peace of Utrecht) Gibraltar passedto England; Spain ceded the Netherlands and all her possessions inItaly to the German empire. And so the fine threads diplomacy had beenspinning over the Continent for two centuries were ruthlessly brushedaway as a spider's web. 

An imbittered, broken old man, shorn of his omnipotence, who hadoutlived his fame and his worshippers, was dying in his great palace atVersailles; his only solace the austere woman who had inspired theRevocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who upon the death of hisunhappy queen he had privately made his wife. Marie Therese had bornehis mad infatuation for Louise la Valliére; la Valliére had carried herbroken heart to a convent, and been superseded by de Montespan, and deMontespan had invited her own destruction by bringing into herhousehold Madame de Maintenon, the pious widow of the poet Scarron, inorder that the austere virtues of that lady might be engrafted upon thechildren of the royal household. Grave, ambitious, talented, thegoverness of de Montespan's children was not too much absorbed in herduties to find ways of establishing an influence over the king. 

This man, who had absorbed into himself all the functions of thegovernment, who was ministers, magistrates, parliaments, all in one, this central sun of whom Corneille, Molière, Racine were but singlerays, was destined to be enslaved in his old age by a designingadventuress; her will his law. The hey-day of youth having passed, hewas beginning to be anxious about his soul. She artfully pricked hisconscience, and de Montespan was sent away, but de Maintenon remained. 

She next convinced him that the only fitting atonement for his sins wasto drive heresy out of his kingdom, and re-establish the true faith. At her bidding he undid the glorious work of Henry IV. , signed theRevocation of the Edict of Nantes, and brutally stamped outProtestantism. 

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the stake in the greatgame played in Europe was the headship, the pre-eminent position heldby the house of Hapsburg. The entire reign of Louis XIV. Had had thisfor its ultimate object. He seemed many times near it; but was neverto reach the goal. The absorption of Spain was a last and desperateattempt. It had failed. France had not won the leadership of Europeancivilization. 

In the coming reign, new forces, new conditions, were to widen thefield of national ambitions. And it was the nation across the channelwhich would grasp these forces and distance her rivals in an advancealong the untried paths of commerce and a world-wide expansion. 

With a strange apathy France had seen herself mistress of a large partof the American Continent, won for her by adventurous Frenchmen andCatholic missionaries. She did practically nothing to develop thismagnificent colonial empire. Failing to comprehend changingconditions, the same old problem, with a towering house of Hapsburg, obscured her view, and remained the great unchanging fact about whichher policy revolved. 

Louis XV. Was five years old when, in 1715, he became heir to a throneabsolutely rigid. The best work of Richelieu and Mazarin and LouisXIV. Had been expended upon it. Absolutism could go no farther. Theking was all; next below him a fawning, obsequious nobility, and thenthat vague entity known as "the people, " a remote invisible force, sustaining the weight of the splendid pyramid, the apex of which wasthis boy of five. 

The young Louis was being prepared to sit upon this giddy elevation. The Duke of Orleans, his accomplished cousin, a competent instructor invice, was chosen as regent, and the royal education began. The bestand rarest of the world's culture was at his service. Fénelon, thepolished ecclesiastic, fed him the classics in tempting form from hisown Télémaque, written for the purpose. Although this work was latersuppressed by the boy's royal father under the suspicion of being acovert satire upon his own reign, in which Madame de Montespan wasrepresented by Calypso; and other famous or infamous members of hiscourt also appeared in thin disguise. 

The handsome boy was breathing the atmosphere of genius created by anage which compares well with those of Pericles and Augustus and theMedici, and nourished at the same time by the exhalations from a newcrop of vices growing out of the decaying remains of those left by theold court. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Such was the preparation for a supreme crisis in the life of theKingdom. 

The enormous debt left by the last reign taxed the ingenuity of theregent to its utmost. Then it was that John Law, the Scotchman, presented his great financial scheme of making unlimited wealth out ofpaper, which was just what the regent needed. The collapse camequickly, in 1720, bringing ruin to thousands, and leaving the countryin more desperate need than before. 

When declared of age, in 1723, a marriage was arranged for Louis withMarie Leczinska, daughter of the exiled Polish King Stanislas. Europeat this time was agitated over the succession to the throne of Austria, as the empire was now called. The Salic Law excluded female heirs, andthe emperor, Charles VI. , had died in 1718, leaving only a daughter, Maria Theresa, one year old. But a pragmatic sanction, once moreinvoked, seems to have covered the necessities of the situation byproviding that the succession in the absence of a male heir mightdescend to a female, and so there was a young and beautiful empress onthe throne at Vienna, who was going to make a great deal of history forEurope; and who would open her brilliant reign by a valiant fight forpossession of Silesia, which the young king of Prussia intended toseize as an addition to his own new kingdom. This young King Frederickwas also making history very fast, and after a stormy career was goingto convert his Kingdom into a Power, and to be the one sovereign of hisage whom the world would call _Great_! But at this particular periodof his youth, Frederick and his nobility, still blinded by thesplendors of the reign of Louis XIV. , were mere servile imitators ofthe court at Versailles, and the culture and the civilization for whichthey hungered were French--only French; and for Frederick, an intimatecompanionship with Voltaire was his supreme desire. But a closer viewof the witty, cynical Frenchman wrought a wonderful change. The finelypointed shafts of ridicule when aimed at himself were not soentertaining. And his guest, no longer _persona grata_, was escortedover the frontier to France. 

A nearer view of Versailles at this time might also have disenchantedthese worshippers at the shrine of French civilization. A kingabsolutely indifferent to conditions in his kingdom, immersed indebasing pleasures, while Madame de Pompadour actually ruled thestate--this is not the worst they would have seen! Destitute of shame, of pity, of patriotism, and of human affection, what did it mean to theking that his people were growing desperate under the enormous taxationmade necessary by incessant wars and by the extravagant expenditures ofthe court? Louis simply turned his back upon the whole problem ofadministration, and left his ministers, Fleury, and later de Choiseul, to deal with the misery and the discontent and to make their waythrough the financial morass as best they might. 

The power of Madame de Pompadour may be imagined when we learn thatMaria Theresa, empress and proud daughter of the Caesars, when sheneeded the friendship of Louis XIV. , in her struggle with Frederick ofPrussia, in order to win him to her side, wrote a flattering letter tothis woman. 

This friendship, so artfully sought by the empress, led to another verydifferent and very momentous alliance. A marriage was arranged betweenher little daughter, Marie Antoinette, and the boy Louis, who was to bethe future king of France. The dauphin, the dauphiness, and theireldest child were all dead. So Louis, the second son of the dauphin, was the heir to his grandfather, Louis XV. 

How should the empress of Austria, born, nurtured, and fed in the verycentre of despotism, utterly misunderstanding as she must the past, thepresent, and the future, how should she suspect that the throne ofFrance would be a scaffold for her child? Hapsburg and Bourbon were toher realities as enduring as the Alps. 

In the meantime England and France had come into collision over theirboundaries in America, and the war opened by Braddock and his youngaide, Washington, had been a still further drain upon impoverishedFrance. With the loss of Montreal and Quebec, those two strongholds inthe north, the French were virtually defeated. And when the end came, France had lost every inch of territory on the North AmericanContinent, and had ceded her vast possessions, extending from Canada tothe Gulf of Mexico, to England and Spain. 

So while England was steadily building up a world-empire, penetratedwith the forces of a modern age, France, loaded with debt, was taxing apeople crying for bread--taxing a starving people for money to procureunimaginable luxuries and pleasures for Madame du Barry, who hadsucceeded to the place once, held by Madame de Pompadour. Did shedesire a snowstorm and a sleighride in midsummer, these must be createdand made possible. And one may see to-day at Versailles the sleigh inwhich this mad caprice was realized. 

The various instructors of Louis XV. Had not taught him anything aboutmind and soul processes. They were quite unaware that there hadcommenced a movement in the _brain_ of France, which was going toliberate terrific forces--forces which would sweep before them the workof the Richelieus and the Mazarins and the Colberts as if it were chaff. 

The human mind was probing, questioning doubting, everything it hadonce believed. And as one after another cherished beliefs disappeared, it grew still more daring. The whole religious, social, and politicalsystem was wrong. The only remedy was to overthrow it all, and crownreason as the sovereign of a new era. Such was the ferment at workbeneath the surface as Louis was devising incredible extravagances fordu Barry. And there was rage in men's hearts as they wrote insultinglines upon his equestrian statue in the Place Louis Quinze. 

The Place Louis Quinze was soon to be the Place de la Revolution. Thebronze statue was to be melted into bullets by a maddened populace, andstanding on that very spot was to be the guillotine which would destroyking, queen, the king's sister, and a great part of the nobility ofFrance. 

It is said that the three great events of modern times are theReformation, the American War of Independence, and the FrenchRevolution. Events such as these have a lurid background, a long vistaof causes behind them! A French Revolution is not the work of a day, nor of a single man. There had been a steady movement toward thisevent for a thousand years--in fact, ever since the dogma that _laboris degrading_ was placed at the foundation of the social structure ofFrance. 

The direct causes which were precipitating the crisis in the closingeighteenth century were financial and economic, while the contributingcauses were a remarkable intellectual movement and the War ofIndependence in America. It is possible that a king with a heart and abrain, and the moral sense which belongs to ordinary humanity, mighthave averted this tragic outburst, and at least have delayed the eventby awakening hope. The Revolution was born of hopeless misery. Withthe reign of Louis XV. Hope died, and his successor fell heir to theinevitable. 

A heartless sybarite, depraved in tastes, without sense ofresponsibility or comprehension of his times, a brutalized voluptuarygoverned by a succession of designing women, regardless of nationalpoverty, indulging in wildest extravagance--such was the man in whomwas vested the authority rendered so absolute by Richelieu; such theman who opened up a pathway for the storm. 

As for the nobility, their degradation may be imagined when it is saidthere was as bitter rivalry between titled and illustrious fathers tosecure for their daughters the coveted position held by Madame dePompadour, as for the highest offices of State. 

Could the upper ranks fall lower than this? Had not the kingdomreached its lowest depths, where its foreign policy was determined bythe amount of consideration shown to Madame de Pompadour? But thiswoman, whose friendship was artfully sought by the great Empress MariaTheresa, was superseded, and the fresher charms of Madame du Barryenslaved the king. The deposed favorite could not survive her fall, and died of a broken heart. It is said that as Louis, looking from anupper window of his palace, saw the coffin borne out in a drenchingrain, he smiled, and said, "Ah, the marquise has a bad day for herjourney. " It may be imagined that the man who could be so pitiless tothe woman he had loved would feel little pity for the people whom hehad not loved, but whom he knew only as a remote, obscure something, which held up the weight of his glory. 

But this "obscure something" was undergoing strange transformation. The greater light at the surface had sent some glimmering rays downinto the mass below, which began to awaken and to think. Misery, hopeless and abject, was changing into rage and thirst for vengeance. 

A new class had come into existence which was not noble, but withhighly trained intelligence it looked with contempt and loathing uponthe frivolous, half-educated nobles, Scorn was added to the ferment ofhuman passions beneath the surface, and when Voltaire had spoken, andthe restraints of religion were loosened, no living hand, not that of aRichelieu nor a Louis XIV. , could have averted the coming doom. But noone seems to have suspected what was approaching. 

A wonderful literature had come into existence, not stately and classicas in the age preceding, but instinct with a new sort of life. Theprofoundest themes which can occupy the mind of man were handled withmarvellous lightness of touch and clothed with prismatic brilliancy ofspeech; but all was negation. None tried to build; all to demolish. The black-winged angel of Destruction was hovering over the land. 

Then Rousseau tossed his dreamy abstractions into the quivering air, and the formula, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, " was caught up bythe titled aristocracy as a charming idyllic toy, while princes, dukes, and marquises amused themselves with a dream of Arcadian simplicity, tobe attained in some indefinite way, in some remote and equallyindefinite future. It was all a masquerade. No reality, no sincerity, no convictions, good or evil. The only thing that was real was that anover-taxed, impoverished people was exasperated and--hungry. 

Did the king need new supplies for his unimaginable luxuries, they weretaxed. Was it necessary to have new accessions to French "glory, " inorder to allay popular clamor or discontent, they must supply the mento fight the glorious battles, and the means with which to pay them. Every burden fell at last upon this lowest stratum of the State; thenobility and clergy, while owning two-thirds of the land, being nearlyexempt from taxation. 

And yet the king and nobility of France, in love with Rousseau'stheories, were airily discussing the "rights of man"--wolves and foxescoming together to talk over the sacredness of the rights of property, or the occupants of murderers' row growing eloquent over the sanctityof human life! How incomprehensible that among those quick-wittedFrenchmen there seems not one to have realized that the logicalsequence of the formula, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, " must be, "Down with the Aristocrats!"

And so the surface which Richelieu had converted into adamant grewthinner and thinner each day, until king and court danced upon a meregilded crust, unconscious of the abysmal fires beneath. Some of thosepowdered heads fell into the executioner's basket twenty-five yearslater. Did they recall this time? Did Madame du Barry think of it?Did she exult at her triumph over de Pompadour, when she was draggedshrieking and struggling to the guillotine?

Five years before the close of this miserable reign an event occurredseemingly of small importance to Europe. A child was born in anobscure Italian household. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte. Hisbirthplace, the island of Corsica, had only two months before beenincorporated with France. The fates even then were watching over thischild of destiny, who might, by a slight turn of events then imminent, have been born a subject of Spain, or Germany, or of George III. OfEngland. 

The impoverished Republic of Genoa was in desperate need of money. Theisland could be had by the highest bidder, and in 1768 it was purchasedby France, just in time to make the great Corsican a French citizen. 

Indeed, all the performers in the approaching drama were assembled. Three young princes, grandsons of Louis XV. , who were to besuccessively upon the throne of France, were at Versailles: Louis theDauphin, now twenty, and his Austrian bride, Marie Antoinette, and histwo brothers, afterward successively Louis XVIII. And Charles X. Stillanother princeling, Louis Philippe, was at the Palais Royal, son of theDuke of Orleans, late regent, also destined to wear the French crown;and last of all that infant at Ajaccio, in whom the play was to reachits splendid climax. 

In 1744 Louis XV. Was stricken with small-pox, and exchanged thebrilliant scenes at Versailles for the royal vault in the Church of St. Denis, where he took his place among his ancestors. 

CHAPTER XV. 

Louis XV. Was dead, and two children, with the light-heartedness ofyouth and inexperience, stepped upon the throne which was to be ascaffold--Louis XVI. , only twenty, and Marie Antoinette, his wife, nineteen. He, amiable, kind, full of generous intentions; she, beautiful, simple, child-like, and lovely. Instead of a debauched oldking with depraved surroundings, here were a prince and princess out ofa fairy tale. The air was filled with indefinite promise of a new erafor mankind to be inaugurated by this amiable young king, whosekindness of heart shone forth in his first speech, "We will have nomore loans, no credit, no fresh burdens on the people;" then, leavinghis ministers to devise ways of paying the enormous salaries ofofficials out of an empty treasury, and to arrange the financialdetails of his benevolent scheme of government, he proceeded with hisgay and brilliant young wife to Rheims, there to be crowned with amagnificence undreamed of by Louis XIV. 

In the midst of these rejoicings over the new reign, and of speculativedreams of universal freedom, there was wafted across the Atlantic newsof a handful of patriots arrayed against the tyranny of the BritishCrown. Here were the theories of the new philosophy translated intothe reality of actual experience. "No taxation withoutrepresentation, " "No privileged class, " "No government without theconsent of the governed. " Was this not an embodiment of their dreams?Nor did it detract from the interest in the conflict thatEngland--England, the hated rival of France--was defied by an indignantpeople of her own race. There was not a young noble in the land whowould not have rushed, if he could, to the defence of the outragedcolonies. 

The king, half doubting, and vaguely fearing, was swept into thecurrent, and the armies and the courage of the Americans weresplendidly reinforced by generous, enthusiastic France. 

Why should the simple-hearted Louis see what no one else seemed to see:that victory or failure was alike full of peril for France? If thecolonies were conquered, France would feel the hostility of England; ifthey were freed and self-governing, the principle of monarchy had astaggering blow. 

In the mean time, as the American Revolution moved on toward success, there was talk in the cabin as well as the chateau of the "rights ofman. " In shops and barns, as well as in clubs and drawing-rooms, therewas a glimmering of the coming day. 

"What is true upon one continent is true upon another, " say they. "Ifit is cowardly to submit to tyranny in America, what is it in France?""If Englishmen may revolt against oppression, why may not Frenchmen?""No government without the consent of the governed?--When has ourconsent been asked, the consent of twenty-five million people? Are wesheep, that we have let a few thousands govern us for a thousand years, without our consent?"

Poverty and hunger gave force and urgency to these questions. Thepeople began to clamor more boldly for the good time which had beenpromised by the kind-hearted king. The murmur swelled to an ominousroar. Thousands were at his very palace gates, telling him in nounmistakable terms that they were tired of smooth words and fairpromises. What they wanted was a new constitution and--bread. 

Poor Louis! the one could be made with pen and paper; but by whatmiracle could he produce the other? How gladly would he have giventhem anything. But what could he do? There was not enough money topay the salaries of his officials, nor for his gay young queen's fêtesand balls! The old way would have been to impose new taxes. But howcould he tax a people crying at his gates for bread? He made morepromises which he could not keep; yielded, one after another, concessions of authority and dignity; then vacillated, and tried toreturn over the slippery path, only to be dragged on again by anirresistible fate. 

Louis' Minister of Finance, Turgot, was a trained economist and a manof very great ability. When Louis assured the people, in the speechafter his coronation, that there were to be "no more loans, no freshburdens on the people, " he did not know how Turgot was going toaccomplish this miracle. He was unaware that it was to be done bycutting off the cherished privileges of the nobility, and that theproposed reforms were all aimed at the privileged classes. When thisbecame apparent, indignation was great at Versailles. The court wouldnot hear of economy. Turgot was dismissed, and Necker, a Swiss banker(father of Madame de Staël), called to fill his place. 

Necker made another mistake. He took the people into his confidence, let them know the sources of revenue, the nature of expenditures, andmeasures of relief. This was very quieting to the public, butexasperating to the privileged classes, who had never taken the peopleinto their confidence, and considered it an impertinence for them toinquire how the moneys were spent. And so Louis, again yielding to thepressure at Versailles, dismissed Necker; then, in the outburst of ragewhich followed, tried to retrace his steps and recall him. 

But events were moving too swiftly for that now. In the existingtemper of the people, small reforms and concessions were unavailing. They were demanding that the States General be called. 

The critical moment had come. If Louis of his own initiative hadsummoned that body to confer over the situation, it would have been avery different thing; but a call of the States-General at the _demandof the people_ was a virtual surrender of the very principle ofabsolutism. The work of Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis XIV. Would beundone; for it would involve an acknowledgment of the right of thepeople to dictate to the king, and to participate in the government ofthe nation. The whole revolutionary contention was vindicated in thisact. 

The call was issued; and when Louis, in 1789, convoked the StatesGeneral, he made his last concession to the demands of his subjects. 

That almost-forgotten body had not been seen since Richelieu effacedall the auxiliary functions of government. Nobles, ecclesiastics, and_Tiers État_ (or commons) found themselves face to face once more. Thecourtly contemptuous nobles, the princely ecclesiastics were unchanged, but there was a new expression in the pale faces of the commons. Therewas a look of calm defiance as they met the disdainful gaze of thearistocrats across the gulf of two centuries. 

The two superior bodies absolutely refused to sit in the same room withthe commons. They might under the same roof, but in the sameroom--never. 

There was an historic precedent for this refusal. The three estateshad always acted as three separate bodies. So the demand in itself wasan encroachment upon the ancient dignity of the two superior bodies, which they resented. But they might better have yielded. The _TiersÉtat_ with dignity and firmness insisted that they should meet and votetogether as one body, or they would constitute themselves a separatebody, and act independently of the other two. This was the Rubicon. On one side compromise, and possible co-operation of the threelegislative bodies; on the other, revolution, in charge of the people. 

Aristocratic France was offered its last chance, and committed its lastact of arrogance and folly. The ultimatum was refused by the noblesand clergy. And the _Tiers État_ declared itself the NationalAssembly, in which was vested all the legislative authority of thekingdom. The people had taken possession of the Government of France!

The predetermined destruction of the monarchy seems evident, when atthe most critical point, and at the moment calling for the most carefulretrenchment and reform, fate had placed Louis XV. , acting like amadman in the excesses of his profligacy; and, at the next stage, whilethe last opportunity still existed by main force to drag the nationback, and hold it from going over the brink, there stood the mostexcellent, the kindest-hearted but weakest gentleman who ever wore thename of king! When the distracted Louis gave the impotent order forthe National Assembly to disperse, and for the three bodies to assembleand vote separately, according to ancient custom; and then when he gavestill further proof of childish incompetency by telling the _TiersÉtat_ they were "not to meddle with the privileges of the higherorders, " kingship had become a mockery. It was a child telling thetornado not to come in that direction. 

When the king's herald read to the National Assembly this foolishmessage, ending with the formula, "You hear, gentlemen, the orders ofthe king, " Mirabeau sprang to his feet, saying, "Go, tell your masterwe are here by the will of the people, and will be only removed at thepoint of the bayonet, " the pitiful king then yielding to this defiance, even begging the nobles and deputies of the clergy to join the NationalAssembly--a revolutionary assembly, which was holding its meetings inhis own Palace of Versailles, and which was every day gravitating fromits original lofty purpose; its rallying cry for justice and reform ofabuses changing to "Down with the Aristocrats!" It was becomingalarming, so Louis ordered the body to disperse; and when soldiersstood at the door to prevent its assembling, it took possession of thequeen's tennis court, and there each member took a solemn oath not todissolve until the object they sought had been secured. 

There were some among the clergy and the nobles who realized thenecessity for reforms, and who would gladly have joined a movementinaugurated in a different spirit. Hence, partly from alarm, andpartly impelled by other reasons and purposes, more or less pure, therewas finally a secession from the two aristocratic bodies; the Duke ofOrleans, cousin of the king, leading the movement in one, and threearchbishops in the other. These, with their followers, appeared amongthe _Tiers État_ as converts to the popular cause, the Marquis deLafayette, hero of the late American War, sitting next to Mirabeau, thepowerful and eloquent leader of the whole movement in its first days. 

Concerning the genius of Mirabeau there is no difference of opinion. All are agreed that intellectually he towered far above every one abouthim. But whether he was the incarnation of good or of evil, the worldis still in doubt;-and also whether he could have guided the forces hehad invoked, if a premature death had not swept him off from the scene, leaving Robespierre, a man concerning whom there is no disagreement ofopinion, to guide the storm. 

Paris was becoming wild with excitement. Clubs and associations werein every quarter, and detachments of a Parisian mob marched and sang atnight, firing the hearts of the rabble. But it was the Palais Royal, the home of the Duke of Orleans, that friend of the people, which wasthe heart of the whole movement. There, patriots and lovers of France, their hearts aflame with noble aspiration for their country, met withschemers without heart, more or less wicked, the Camille Desmoulins andthe Marats all fused into one body under the leadership of the Duke ofOrleans, cousin of the king, who, rising superior to aristocratictraditions, believed in _Equality_, and was the man of thepeople--_Philippe Egalité_! His young son Louis Philippe perhapslistened with wonder to the sounds of strange revelry and the wildshouts which greeted the eloquence of Camille Desmoulins and of Marat. 

At last a rumor reached the Palais Royal, and from there ran throughthe streets like an electric current, that the king's soldiers weremarching upon the Assembly to disperse it. Mad with wine andexcitement, a common impulse seized the entire populace, to destroy theBastille, that old stronghold of despotism, that symbol of royaltyranny. This prison-fortress, with its eight great round towers, andmoat eighty-three feet wide, had stood since 1371, and represented moretragic human experiences than any structure in France. In an hour thedoors were burst open, and before the sun went down the heads of thegovernor and his officials were being carried on pikes through thestreets of Paris. The horrible drama had opened. The tiger in theslums had tasted blood, and would want it again. 

Thus far it was only an insurgent mob, committing violence, and theNational Assembly at once created a body of militia, under thedirection of Lafayette, for the protection of Paris. 

When the news of the fall of the Bastille reached Versailles, the king, still failing to realize the gravity of the situation, exclaimed, "Thenit is a revolt!" "Sire, " said the Duke de Liancourt, "it is aRevolution!"

The king found himself deserted. His terrified nobles almost in a bodywere fleeing from the kingdom. Bewildered, not knowing what to do, orwhat not to do, and desiring to assure the people that he was theirfriend, he appeared before the National Assembly and made the lastsacrifice--accepted the Tricolor; adopted the livery of therevolutionary party! The act was received with immense enthusiasm, andthe outlook became more reassuring. 

Then the garrison at the palace was reenforced by a regiment from thecountry, and a dinner was given to welcome the new officers. The kingand queen were urged to enter the room for a few moments, simply as anact of courtesy. Marie Antoinette most reluctantly consented to passthrough the banqueting-hall. The officers, when they saw the beautifuldaughter of Maria Theresa, sprang to their feet, and, flushed withwine, and in a transport of enthusiasm, committed a fatal act. Throwing their tricolors under the table, they drank to the toast, "_The king forever_!"

When this was reported in Paris the storm burst anew. A thousandterrible women, led by one still more terrible than the rest, startedfor Versailles. This crowd of base and degraded beings, re-enforced onthe way by all that is worst, arrived at the palace, and the howlingmob encamped outside in the rain all night. Entrance at last was foundby someone, and they were inside and at the queen's door; she barelyescaping by a hidden passageway leading to the king's room. 

"The king to Paris!" was the cry; and in the morning the wretched Louisappeared upon the balcony and indicated his willingness to go to Parisas they desired. And then the queen, hoping to touch their hearts, also appeared upon the balcony, holding in her arms the dauphin, withthe tricolor on his breast. And with this horrible escort they did goback to Paris, leaving Versailles forever, and were virtually prisonersat the Tuileries. 

The position of Lafayette at this time is a singular one: an agent ofthe National Assembly, protecting the king from the Jacobins, andsaying to Robespierre and Marat, "If you kill the king to-day, I willplace the dauphin on the throne to-morrow. "

But the currents of a cataract nearing the fall are difficult to guide. Three parties were forming in the National Assembly: the _Girondists_, the party of genius and eloquence and of moderation; the _Jacobins_, the party of the extremists and radicals; and a third party, undecided, waiting to see what was safest and best. 

All that was noble and true and fine in the French Revolution was inthe party of the Girondists. Dreamers, idealists, their dream was of arepublic like the one in America, and their ideal an impossibleperfection of condition in which human reason was supreme. Theexcesses of the Revolution they did not approve, but were willing tosacrifice the king and even the royal family, if necessary. They didnot realize the forces with which they were airily playing, nor thatthe time was at hand when the Girondists would vainly strive torestrain the horrible excesses; that, after they had sacrificed theroyal family, the Jacobins would sacrifice them; the slayers would beslain!

Lafayette, neither a Girondist nor a Jacobin, was a loyal Frenchman andpatriot, with the American ideal in his heart, vainly trying to mediatebetween a feeble king and a people who had lost their reason. The timewas near when he would give up the hopeless task and flee to escapebeing himself engulfed. 

A wretchedly planned attempt at the escape of the royal familyaggravated the situation. They were recognized at Varennes, broughtback with great indignity, and placed under closer surveillance thanbefore. On the 10th of August, 1792, the mob attacked the Tuileries. The royal family fled to the National Assembly for protection, whiletheir Swiss guards vainly defended the palace with their lives. 

This was the end of the monarchy. Louis, the brave queen and herchildren, and Princess Elizabeth, sister of the king, were removed fromthe Assembly to the prison in "The Temple, " and the National Conventionformally declared France a republic. 

The grim prison to which they were taken, with its central square towerflanked by four round towers, had stood since the time of PhilipAugustus. It was built for the Knights Templar, and was chateau, fortress, prison, all in one, and was the home of the grand master andthose others who were burned when Philip IV. Ruthlessly destroyed theorder. The central tower, one hundred and fifty feet high, had fourstories. The king and the dauphin were imprisoned in the second story, and the queen, her young daughter, and the Princess Elizabeth in thestory above. 

The power swiftly passed from Girondists to Jacobins, and aRevolutionary Tribunal was created in charge of the terribletriumvirate--Robespierre, Marat, and Danton. 

An awful travesty upon a court of justice was established in thathistoric hall in the Palais de Justice. Its walls, which had lookeddown upon generations of Merovingian, Carlovingian, and Capetian kings, now beheld the condemnation of the most innocent and well-intentionedof all the kings of France. 

The king was arraigned at this court upon the charge of treason, convicted, and condemned to die on the 21st of January, 1793. He wasallowed to embrace for the last time his adored wife and children. Atthe scaffold he tried to speak a last word to his people. The drumswere ordered to drown his voice, and an attendant priest uttered thewords, "_Fils de Saint Louis, montez au ciel_!"--Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!--and all was over. The kindest-hearted, mostinoffensive gentleman in Europe had expiated the crimes of hisancestors. 

More and more furious swept the torrent, gathering to itself all thatwas vile and outcast. Where were the pale-faced, determined patriotswho sat in the National Assembly? Some of them riding with dukes andmarquises to the guillotine. Was this the equality they expected whenthey cried, "Down with the Aristocrats"?

Did they think they could guide the whirlwind after raising it? Aswell whisper to the cyclone to level only the tall trees, or to theconflagration to burn only the temples and palaces. 

With restraining agencies removed, religion, government, king, allswept away, that hideous brood born of vice, poverty, hatred, anddespair came out from dark hiding-places; and what had commenced as apatriotic revolt had become a wild orgy of bloodthirsty demons, led bythree master-demons, Robespierre, Marat, and Danton, vying with eachother in ferocity. 

Then we see that simple girl thinking by one supreme act of heroism andsacrifice, like Joan of Arc, to save her country. Foolish child! Didshe think to slay the monster devouring Paris by cutting off one of hisheads? The death of Marat only added to the fury of the tempest, andthe falling of Charlotte Corday's head was not more noticed than thefalling of a leaf in the forest. 

The slaughter of the people had been reduced to an admirable system. The public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, went every day to the"Committee of Public Safety" to procure the list of the proscribed, whowere immediately placed in the Conciergerie to await trial. This listwas then submitted to Robespierre, who with his pencil marked the namesof those who would be executed on the morrow. 

The mockery of the trial of Charlotte Corday was not delayed. Thisgirl belonged to a family of the smaller nobility. In her secludedlife in the country, a mind of superior quality had fed upon the newphilosophy of the period. An enthusiasm for liberty, and a horror oftyranny, had taken possession of her. In passionate sympathy with theearly purposes of the Revolution, Marat seemed to her a monster, theincarnation of the spirit which would defeat the cause of Liberty. Itwas believed that his list of the proscribed was not confined to Paris, but that the names of thousands of victims all over France were alreadydesignated. In that extraordinary scene at her trial, when questioned, she impatiently said, "Yes, yes, I killed him. I killed one man tosave a hundred thousand!"

Nothing was lacking to make this, with one exception, the most dramaticincident of the Revolution. Her eloquent address, to the Frenchpeople, found pinned to the waist of her dress after her execution, andher splendid courage to the end, rounds out the picturesque story ofher useless martyrdom. A Girondist waiting in the Conciergerie, whenhe heard of her crime and end, exclaimed: "It will kill us! But shehas taught us how to die!"

The end did not come so swiftly for the queen, who, after being removedfrom the Temple, spent seventy-two days and nights in the dark cell inthat abode of horrors, the Conciergerie. Then came the trial, theinquisitorial trial, lasting all through the night in the gloom of thatdimly lighted hall. And at half-past four in the morning she heardwithout a tremor the terrible words, "Marie Antoinette, widow of LouisCapet, the Tribunal condemns you to die. " Not for a moment did thisintrepid woman quail; and a small detail brings before us vividly herwonderful calmness. As she reached the stairs in her pitiful return toher cell, she said simply to the lieutenant of the gendarmes, who wasat her side, "Monsieur, I can scarcely see (_Je vois à peine_); willyou lead me?"

In another half hour the drums were beating in every quarter inpreparation for the event; and at ten o'clock she started upon her lastride. And how bravely she met her awful fate! We forget her follies, her reckless extravagances, in admiration for her courage as she ridesto her death, with hands tied behind her, sitting in that hideoustumbril, head erect, pale, proud, defiant, as if upon a throne (October16, 1793). 

The search-light of scrutiny has been turned upon this unfortunatewoman for more than a century, and all that has been discovered is thatshe was pleasure-loving, indiscreet, and absolutely ignorant of thegravity of her responsibility in the position she occupied. 

In the days of her power and splendor she lived as the average woman ofher period would have done under the same circumstances--not better, and not worse. But when the time came to try her soul and test hermettle, she evinced a strength and dignity and composure surpassingbelief. 

If there had been any evidence of the truth of the story of the diamondnecklace--a story which no doubt hastened the revolutionary crisis--itwould certainly have been used at her trial; but it was not. It willbe remembered that this necklace was one of the fatal legacies from thereign of Louis XV. , who had ordered for du Barry this gift which was tocost a sum large enough for a king's ransom. The king died before itwas completed, and the story became current that Marie Antoinette, thehated Austrian woman who was ruining France by her extravagance, wasnegotiating for the purchase of this necklace while the people werestarving!

A network of villainy is woven about the whole incident, in which thenames of a cardinal and ladies high in rank are involved. The mysterymay never be uncovered, but every effort to connect the queen's namewith this historic scandal has failed. 

Probably of all the cruelties inflicted upon this unhappy woman, nonecaused her such anguish as the testimony of her son before theRevolutionary Tribunal, that he had heard his mother say she "hated theFrench people. " Placed under the care of the brutal Simon after hisfather's removal from the Temple, the child had become a physical andmental wreck. The queen, in her last letter to her sister the PrincessElizabeth, makes pitiful allusion to the incident, begging her toremember what he must have suffered before he said this; also remindingher how children may be taught to utter words they do not comprehend. His lesson, no doubt, had been learned by cruel tortures; and, renderedhalf imbecile, it was recited when the time came. None but his keeperwas ever permitted to see the boy. His condition, final illness, anddeath are shrouded in mystery. In June, 1794, eight months after hismother's execution, it was announced that he was dead. It would bedifficult to prove this event before a court of justice. There were nowitnesses whose testimony would have any weight. No one was permittedto see the child who was put into that obscure grave; and manycircumstances give rise to a suspicion that the boy, who might havebeen a source of political embarrassment in the rehabilitation ofFrance, was disposed of in another way--dropped into an obscurity whichwould serve as well as death. 

There was a surfeit of killing, and a waning Revolution. We are farfrom saying that such a thing happened. But ambitious royalists mighthave thought their money well expended in removing the son of themurdered king from the scene. The claim of the American dauphin, Eleazer Williams, may have been fanciful, or even false; but what saferand more effectual plan could be devised than to drop the half-imbecileheir to a throne into the heart of a tribe of Indians in an Americanwilderness?

When Louis XVIII. Occupied his brother's throne, in 1814, and erectedover the dishonored graves of his family that beautiful ChapelleExpiatoire, he also gave orders for masses to be said for the repose ofthe souls of his murdered kindred, whom he designated by name: LouisXVI. , king; Marie Antoinette, queen, and the Princess Elizabeth, hissister. If it is true, as has been said, that the name of the dauphinwas not included in this list, it is a most suggestive omission. Technically, this boy was king from the moment of his father's deathuntil his own, and on the lists of sovereigns is called Louis XVII. Then why was there no mention of him as one of that martyred group?

Twenty-two of the Girondists who had helped to dethrone the king onthat 10th of August, and later consented to his death, were now facingthe same doom to which they had sent him only six months before, and bya strange fatality were under the same roof with the queen. Only a fewfeet, and two thin partitions, separated them; and in her cell she musthave heard their impassioned voices during that dramatic banquet, thelast night of their lives. And the next day this group ofextraordinary men--men singularly gifted and fascinating--were alllying in one tomb, at the side of Louis XVI. 

Philip Égalité, the Duke of Orleans, was to meet his Nemesis also. Brought a prisoner to that grim resting-place, he occupied theadjoining cell to that which had been the queen's, and, it is said, hadassigned to him the wretched cot she no longer needed. His desperategame had failed. No elevation would come to him out of the chaos ofcrime, and the reward for scheming and voting for the death of hiscousin, the king, would be a scaffold, not a throne. His name had beenupon the list of the proscribed for some time; but the end wasprecipitated by an act of his young son, Louis Philippe, then Duke deChartres, and aide-de-camp to Dumouriez, who was defending the frontierfrom an invasion of Austrian troops. After the execution of the queen, Dumouriez refused longer to defend France from an invasion the purposeof which was to make such horrors impossible. He laid down hiscommand, and, with his aide, Louis Philippe, joined the colony ofexiles in Belgium, while the Austrian troops were in full march uponParis from Verdun. 

This was treason--whether justifiable or not this is not the place todiscuss. 

Philip Égalité knew that he no longer had the confidence of theleaders, and that they also knew that he was an aristocrat in disguise. So when this defection of Dumouriez came, and was shared by his ownson, he tried to get out of the country. He was arrested atMarseilles, brought to the Conciergerie, that half-way house to thescaffold, and was soon following in the footsteps of his king andqueen, through the Rue St. Honore, passing his own Palais Royal on hisway to the Place de la Revolution. 

The Revolution, beginning with a patriotic assembly, in a measure sane, had made a rapid descent, first falling apart into Girondist andJacobin, moderate and extremist, the Girondist with a shudderconsenting to the execution of the king. Then, the power passing to aso-called "Committee of Public Safety" and a Triumvirate, in order tosweep away the obstructive Girondist; and then an untrammelled Terror, in the hands of three, and, finally, one. Such had been its madcourse. But with the death of the king and queen, the madness hadreached its height, and a revulsion of feeling set in. There was asurfeit of blood, and an awakening sense of horror, which turned uponthe instigators. Danton fell, and finally, when amid cries of "Deathto the tyrant!" Robespierre was dragged wounded and shivering to thefate he had brought upon so many thousands, the drama which had openedat the Bastille was fittingly closed. 

The great battle for human liberty had been fought and won. Religiousfreedom and political freedom were identical in principle. The rightof the human conscience, proclaimed by Luther in 1517, had in 1793 onlyexpanded into the large conception of all the inherent rights of the_individual_. 

It had taken centuries for English persistence to accomplish whatFrance, with such appalling violence, had done in as many years. Ithad been a furious outburst of pent-up force; but the work had beenthorough. Not a germ of tyranny remained. The incrustations of athousand years were not alone broken, but pulverized; the privilegedclasses were swept away, and their vast estates, two-thirds of theterritory of France, ready to be distributed among the rightful ownersof the soil, those who by toil and industry could win them. France wasas new as if she had no history. There was ample opportunity for herpeople now. What would they do with it?

What would they build upon the ruins of their ancient despotism? Whatwould be the starting-point for such a task--every connecting link withan historic past broken, and the armies of an indignant Europe pressingin upon every side? Could they ever wipe out the stain which had madethem odious in the sight of Christendom? Would they ever be forgivenfor disgracing the name of Liberty?

It was the power and genius of a single man which was going to make theworld forget her disgrace, and cover France with a mantle more gloriousthan she had ever worn. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The Revolution over, France, sitting among the wreckage of the past, found herself disgraced, discredited, and at war with all of Europe. Austria, naturally the leader in an effort to stop the atrocities whichthreatened a daughter of her own royal house, had been joined finallyby England, Holland, Spain, and even Portugal and Tuscany, these allbeing impelled, not by the personal feeling which actuated Austria, butby alarm for their own safety. This revolutionary movement was a moraland political plague spot which must be stamped out, or there would beanarchy in every kingdom in Europe. 

It was the difficulty in recruiting troops to fight this coalitionwhich had embarrassed and finally broken the power of the revolutionarygovernment. If the states of Europe had really acted in concert, thelife of the new republic would have been brief. But Austria wasjealous of Prussia, and Prussia afraid of the friendship which wasforming between Austria and England, and Catharine, the empress ofRussia, keeping all uncertain about her designs upon Poland--with theresult that the war upon France was conducted in a desultory andineffectual manner. 

In the organization of the new French republic, the executive power wasvested in a Directory, composed of five members, chosen by two housesof legislature. 

A disagreement over some details of the new constitution led to aheated quarrel, and this to an insurrection in Paris, October 5, 1795, which Napoleon Bonaparte, a young officer who had acquired distinctionat Toulon, was summoned to quell. The vigor and the success with whichthe young leader used his cannon in the streets of Paris struckprecisely the right note at the right moment. Law and order wereestablished. A delighted Directory yielded at once to the suggestionof a campaign against Austria which should be conducted in Italy, incombination with an advance upon Vienna from the Rhine. 

With the instinct of genius, Napoleon Bonaparte saw the path to power. The air was vibrating with the word _Liberty_. If he would captureFrance--which was what he intended to do--he must move along the lineof political freedom. The note to be struck was the liberation of theoppressed. Where would he find chains more galling, more unnatural, than in Italy, held by the iron hand of Austria? And was not Austriathe leader of the coalition against France?

Without money or supplies, and with an unclothed army, he obeyed theinspiration, audaciously planning to make the invaded country pay theexpenses of the war waged against it. Pointing to the Italian cities, he said to his soldiers: "There is your reward. It is rich and ample, but you must conquer it!" Like Caesar, he knew how, in words brief andconcise, to address his followers, and to inspire enthusiasm as fewhave ever done before or since. He also knew how to confound the enemywith new and unexpected methods which made unavailing all whichmilitary science and experience had taught them. 

With the suddenness of a tornado he swept down upon the plains ofLombardy. The battles of _Lodi_, _Arcola_, _Rivoli_, were won, and inten months Napoleon was master of Italy. By the treaty of CampoFormio, October 17, 1797, northern Italy was divided into fourrepublics, with their capitals respectively at Milan, Genoa, Bologna, and Rome. And in return for her acquiescence in this redistribution ofher Italian territory, Austria received Venice. After fourteencenturies of independence, Venetia, the queen of the Adriatic, was inchains!

[Illustration: Napoleon at the Battle of Rivoli, January 14, 1797. From the painting by Philippoteaux. ]

Not satisfied with this, Napoleon intended that Paris should wear thejewels which had adorned the fair Italian cities. The people whosechains he had come to break were at once required to surrender money, jewels, plate, horses, equipments, besides their choicest artcollections and rarest manuscripts. In a private letter to a member ofthe Directory he wrote: "I shall send you twenty pictures by some ofthe first masters, including Correggio and Michael Angelo. " A laterletter said: "Join all these to what will be sent from Rome, and weshall have all that is beautiful in Italy, except a small number ofobjects in Turin and Naples. " Pius VI. , without a protest, surrenderedhis millions of francs, and ancient bronzes, costly pictures, andpriceless manuscripts. 

Austria had lost fourteen battles, and all her Italian possessions weregrouped together into a Cisalpine republic! Another Helvetic republicwas set up in Switzerland, and still another republic created inHolland under a French protectorate. 

In other words, this man had accomplished in Italy precisely what hewas going to accomplish later in Germany. He had broken down thelingering traces of mediaevalism, and prepared the soil for a new orderof things. 

The peace of Campo Formio was the most glorious ever made for France. The river Rhine was at last recognized as her frontier, thus placingBelgium within the lines of the republic. Napoleon had captured notalone Italy, but France herself? What might she not accomplish withsuch a leader? The delighted Directory discussed the invasion ofEngland. Napoleon, knowing this would be premature, dramaticallyconceived the idea of crippling England by threatening her Asiaticpossessions, and led an army into Egypt (1798). Although Nelsondestroyed his fleet, he still maintained the arrogance of a conqueror. 

No king, no military leader, had brought as much glory to France. DuGuesclin, Turenne, Condé, all were eclipsed. And so were Marlboroughand Prince Eugene. What would not France do at the bidding of thismagician, who by a single sweep of his wand had raised her from thedust of humiliation and made her the leading power on the Continent!

The young officer, now so distinguished, had married in the early partof his career the widow of M. De Beauharnais, one of the victims of theReign of Terror. During his absence in Egypt, the Directorate, and theLegislature, and the people had all become embroiled in dissensions. Things were falling again into chaos, with no hand to hold themtogether. Discontent was rife, and men were asking why the one man, the little dark man who knew how to do and to compel things, and tomaintain discipline, why he was sent to the Nile and the Pyramids!

Josephine, from Paris, kept Napoleon informed of these conditions. So, leaving his army in charge of Kleber, he unexpectedly returned. Heknew what he was going to do; and he also knew he could depend upon thearmy to sustain him. By political moves as adroit and unexpected ashis tactics on the field, the Directorate was swept out of existence, and Napoleon was first consul of France. 

It was a long step backward. The pendulum was returning once moretoward a strong executive, and to centralization. From this moment, until he was a prisoner in the hands of the English, Napoleon Bonapartewas sole master of France. 

The early simplicity of the republic was disappearing. The receptionsof the first consul at the Tuileries began to recall the days atVersailles. Josephine, fascinating, and perfect in the art of dress, knew well how to maintain the splendor of her new court; as also didBonaparte's sisters, with their beauty and their brilliant talents. But outside of France, and across the channel, the consul was only ausurper, and Louis XVIII. Was king--an uncrowned but legitimatesovereign!

Perhaps it is not too much to say that nothing in Napoleon's career hasleft such enduring traces, and so permanently influenced civilization, as two acts performed at this period: the creation of that monumentalwork of genius the codification of the laws of France and the sale ofLouisiana to the United States. Spain had ceded this large territoryto France in 1763, and Bonaparte realizing that he was not in aposition to hold it now, if attacked, sold it to the United States(1803), in order to keep it out of the hands of England. 

The goal to which things were tending was realized by some. Aconspiracy against the life of the consul was discovered. Napoleonsuspected it to have originated with the Bourbons; and the death of theyoung Duke d'Enghien, a son of the Prince of Condé, without pity orjustice, was intended to strike with terror all who were plotting forhis downfall. The swiftness with which it was done, the darkness underthe walls of Vincennes, the lantern on the breast of the victim, andthe file of soldiers at midnight, all conspired to warn conspirators ofthe fate awaiting them. It was the critical moment at hand whichturned Bonaparte's heart to steel. 

Only a few days after this tragedy at Vincennes a proposition was madein the Tribunate to bestow upon the first consul the title ofhereditary Emperor of the French!

This new Charlemagne did not go to the pope to be crowned, as thatother had done in the year 800; but at his bidding the pope came tohim. And when on the 2d of December, 1804, the crown of France wasplaced upon his head, the great drama commenced in 1789 had ended. Rivers of blood had flowed to free her from despotism, and France washeld by a power more despotic than that of Richelieu or of Louis XIV. 

At war with all of Europe, Napoleon swiftly unfolded his great plan notonly to conquer, but to demolish--not one state, but all. He was goingto create an empire out of a federation of European kingdoms all heldin his own hand, and to tear in pieces the old map of Europe, preciselyas he had the map of Italy. He was going to break down the oldhistoric divisions and landmarks, and create new, as he had created akingdom of Italy out of Italian republics. So, while he was fighting acombined Europe, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Saxony had become kingdoms, and the West German States, seventeen in number, were all merged in aConfederation of the Rhine, "the Rheinbund, " under a FrenchProtectorate. 

Then Austria felt the weight of his hand. Francis Joseph wore thedouble crown created by Charlemagne a thousand years before, and wasEmperor of Rome as well as of Germany. It had become an empty title;but it was the sacred tradition of a Holy Roman Empire, the empirewhich had dominated the world during the Middle Ages, and while Europewas coming into form. Napoleon was ploughing deep into the soil of thepast when he told Francis Joseph he must drop the title of Emperor ofRome! And it is a startling indication of his power that the emperorunresistingly obeyed; the logical meaning, of course, being that he, already King of Italy, was the successor to Charlemagne and the head ofa new Roman Empire. 

England, never having felt the touch of this insolent conqueror uponher own soil, was still the bitterest of all in the coalition, and wasmore indignant over the humiliation of Germany than she seemed to beherself. Prussia, at last reluctantly opposing him, was defeated atJena, 1806, a time during which the beautiful Queen Louise was theheroine, and the one brave enough to defy him; and then the peace ofTilsit, 1807, completed the humiliation of the kingdom created by thegreat elector. 

It would seem that the people as well as the armies of Germany werecaptured by this man, when we hear that ninety German authors dedicatedtheir books to him, a servile press praised him, and one of Beethoven'sgreatest sonatas was inspired by him. But a man so colossal anddazzling could only be accurately measured at a distance. Even yet weare too near to him for that, and the world has not yet come to anagreement concerning him, any more than as to the true analysis of thecharacter of Hamlet. 

There was now scarcely an uncrowned head in Napoleon's family. Hisbrother Louis, who had married his step-daughter, Hortense Beauharnais, was king of Holland. His brother-in-law Murat he made king of Naples;Eugene Beauharnais, his step-son, viceroy of Italy; his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia; and then his brother Joseph was placed upon thethrone of Spain, from which an indignant people drove him ingloriouslyaway. 

In an hour's interview with Alexander, Emperor of Russia, Napoleon hadby the magic of superiority secured that emperor's friendship andco-operation in his plans against England. All this excellent man wasfighting for was the peace of Europe! And he disclosed to Alexanderhis plan that they two should be the eternal custodians of that peace;which was to be secured by restraining the arrogance of England, andthat was to be done by ruining the commercial prosperity of that nationof shop-keepers. There was to be organized a continental blockadeagainst England. Europe was to be forbidden to trade with that country. 

A plan was forming in the mind of Napoleon which was destined as theturning-point in his astonishing career. It was of vast importance tohim that he should have an heir to the great inheritance he wascreating. By repudiating Josephine, and marrying the daughter ofFrancis Joseph, there might be an heir who would also be the legitimatedescendant of the Caesars; thus immensely fortifying the empire afterhis own death. 

When this thought took possession of his mind, the psychological momenthad arrived. The tide had turned toward disaster. The marriage withMaria Louisa took place at Paris in 1810. The marriage of Napoleonwith a Hapsburg was not pleasing to the French people, who took pridein the simple origin of their emperor and empress. This hero ofMarengo, and Austerlitz, and Jena, and Wagram, the man before whomEurope trembled, was he not, after all, only a crowned citizen? Andwas this not a triumph for the revolutionary principle which offset theexistence of an empire, as its final result?

[Illustration: Josephine crowned Empress, December 2, 1804, in NotreDame Cathedral. From the painting by David. ]

Alexander had broken away from his agreement and his friendship withthe emperor, and had joined the allies. So in 1812 thelong-contemplated invasion of Russia began. Of the 678, 000 soulsrecruited chiefly from conquered states, only 80, 000 would ever return. Never before had Napoleon fought the elements, and never before metoverwhelming defeat! The flames at Moscow, followed by the arcticcold, converted the campaign into a vast tragedy. 

With indomitable courage another grand army had filled the vacantplaces, and was putting down a great uprising in Germany. But his starwas waning. An overwhelming defeat at Leipsic was followed by a marchupon Paris. And in the spring of 1814, Alexander, the young Russianemperor, the friend who was to aid him in securing an eternal peace forEurope, was dictating the terms of surrender in Paris. 

Within a week Napoleon had abdicated. The title of emperor he waspermitted to retain, but the empire which he was to leave to the infantson of Maria Louisa, now two years old, had shrunk to the little islandof Elba, on the west coast of Italy!

CHAPTER XVII. 

The allied powers named Louis XVIII. , the brother of Louis XVI. , forthe vacant throne, who promised the people to reign under aconstitutional government. 

The man who had deserted his brother in his extremity, a man whorepresented nothing--not loyalty to the past, nor sympathy with asingle aspiration of the present--was king. As he passed undertriumphal arches on the way to the Tuileries, there was sitting besidehim a sad, pale-faced woman; this was the Duchesse d'Angoulême, thedaughter of Louis XVI. , the little girl who was prisoner in the Templetwenty years before. What must she have felt and thought as she passedthe very spot where had stood the scaffold in 1793!

Almost the first act of Louis XVIII. Was the removal of the mutilatedremains of the king and queen and his sister Elizabeth to the royalvault in the Church of St. Denis. He then gave orders for a _ChapelleExpiatoire_ to be erected over the grave where they had been lying fortwo decades, and for masses to be said for the repose of the souls ofhis murdered relatives. Paris was full of returning royalists. Banished exiles with grand old names, who had been earning a scantyliving by teaching French and dancing in Vienna, London, and even inNew York, were hastening to Paris for a joyful Restoration; and LouisXVIII. , while Russian and Austrian troops guarded him on the streets ofhis own capital, was freely talking about ruling by divine right!

That king was reigning under a liberal charter (as the new constitutionwas called)--a charter which guaranteed almost as much personal libertyas the one obtained in England from King John in 1215; and the palpableabsurdity of supposing that he and his supporters might at the sametime revive and maintain Bourbon traditions, as if there had been noRevolution, was at least not an indication of much sagacity. 

But there was a very smooth surface. The tricolor had disappeared. Napoleon's generals had gone unresistingly over to the Bourbons. Talleyrand adapted himself as quickly to the new regime as he had tothe Napoleonic; was witty at the expense of the empire and the emperor, who, as he said, "was not even a Frenchman"; and was as crafty and asuseful an instrument for the new ruler as he had been for thepre-existing one. 

But something was happening under the surface. While theplenipotentiaries were busy over their task of restoring boundaries inEurope, and the other restoration was going on pleasantly in Paris, arumor came that Napoleon was in Lyons. A regiment was at oncedespatched to drive him back; and Marshal Ney, "the bravest of thebrave, " was sent with orders to arrest him. 

The next news that came to Paris was that the troops were franticallyshouting "_Vive l'empereur_!" and Ney was embracing his belovedcommander and pledging his sword in his service. 

At midnight the king left the Tuileries for the Flemish frontier, andbefore the dawn Napoleon was in his Palace of Fontainebleau (March20th), which he had left exactly eleven months before. The night afterthe departure of the king there suddenly appeared lights passingswiftly over the Font de la Concorde; then came the tramp of horses'feet, and a carriage attended on each side by cavalry with drawnswords. The carriage stopped at the first entrance to the garden ofthe Tuileries, and a small man with a dark, determined face was borneinto the palace the Bourbon had just deserted. 

There was consternation in the Council Chamber in London when the Dukeof Wellington entered and announced that Napoleon was in Paris, and allmust be done over again!

Immediate preparations were made for a renewal of the war. It was easyto find men to fight the emperor's battles. All France was at his feet. 

The decisive moment was at hand. Napoleon had crossed into theNetherlands, and Wellington was waiting to meet him. 

The struggle at Waterloo had lasted many hours. The result, so bigwith fate, was trembling in the balance, when suddenly the booming ofPrussian guns was heard, and Wellington was re-enforced by Blücher. This was the end. The French were defeated (June 18, 1815). Napoleonwas in the hands of the English, and was to be carried a life-prisonerto the island of St. Helena. 

Louis XVIII. , who had been waiting at Ghent, immediately returned tothe Tuileries, and to his foolish task of posing as a liberal king tohis people, and as a reactionary one to his royalist adherents. Thecountry was full of disappointed, imbittered imperialists, and of angryand revengeful royalists. The Chamber of Peers immediately issued adecree for the perpetual banishment of the family of Bonaparte fromFrench soil; the extremists demanding that the families of the men whohad consented to the death of Louis XVI. Be included in the decree. Sentence of death was passed upon Marshal Ney, as a traitor to France. Some might have said that a greater traitor was at the Tuileries; butthe most picturesque in that heroic group of Napoleon's marshals wasshot to death. 

There was, in fact, a determined purpose to undo all the work of theRevolution; to restore the supremacy and the property of the Church, and the power of the nobility. In the meantime, the people, perfectlyaware that the returned exiles were impoverished, were paying taxes tomaintain foreign troops which were in France for the sole purpose ofenabling the king's government to accomplish these things!

Here was material enough for discord in a troubled reign which lastednine years. Louis XVIII. Died September 16, 1824; and the Count ofArtois, the brother of two kings, was proclaimed Charles X. Of France. 

If there had been any doubt about the real sentiments of Louis XVIII. , it must have been dispelled by the last act of his reign, when, at thebidding of the Holy Alliance, he sent French soldiers to put down theSpanish liberals in their fight for a constitution. 

But Charles X. Did not intend to assume the thin mask worn by hisbrother. He had marked out a different course. All disguise was to bethrown aside in a Bourbon reign of the ante-revolutionary sort. Thepress was strictly censored, the charter altered, the law ofprimogeniture restored; and when saluted on the streets of Paris bycries of "Give us back our charter!" the answer made to his people bythis infatuated man was, "I am here to receive homage, not counsel. "

One wonders that a brother of Louis XVI. , one who had been a fugitivefrom a Paris mob in 1789--if he had a memory--dared to exasperate thepeople of France. 

On the 29th of July a revolt had become a Revolution, and once more theMarquis de Lafayette was in charge of the municipal troops, whichassembled at St. Cloud and other defensive points. 

[Illustration: The Revolution of July 28, 1830. From the painting byDelacroix. ]

In vain did Charles protest that he would revoke every offensiveordinance, and restore the charter. It was too late. 

Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was appointed lieutenant-general ofthe kingdom. When he appeared at the Hôtel de Ville wearing thetricolor, his future was already assured. 

There was only one thing left now for Charles to do: he formallyabdicated, and signed the paper authorizing the appointment of hiscousin to the position of lieutenant-general; and ten days later, LouisPhilippe, son of Philippe Égalité, occupied the throne he left. 

The note struck by this new king was the absolute surrender of theprinciple of divine right. He was a "citizen king"; his title beingbestowed not by a divine hand, but by the people, whose voice was thevoice of God! The title itself bore witness to a new order of things. Louis Philippe was not King of France, but "King of the French. " Kingof France carried with it the old feudal idea of proprietorship andsovereignty; while a King of the French was merely a leader of thepeople, not the owner of their soil. The charter and all existingconditions were modified to conform to this ideal, and on the 9th ofAugust the reign of the constitutional king began. 

It was the middle class in France which supported this reign; the classbelow that would never forget that he was, after all, a Bourbon and aking; while the two classes above, both royalists and imperialists, were unfriendly, one regarding him as a usurper on the throne of thelegitimate king, and the other as a weakling unfit to occupy the throneof Napoleon. 

When Charles X. Tried to secure the banishment of the families of themen who had voted for the death of Louis XVI. , he may have had in mindhis cousin, the son of Philippe Égalité, the wickedest and mostdespicable of the regicides. Whatever his father had been, LouisPhilippe was far from being a wicked man. Whether teaching school inSwitzerland, or giving French lessons in America, he was thekindest-hearted and most inoffensive of gentlemen. The only troublewith this reign was that it was not heroic. The most emotional andromantic people in Europe had a common-place king. Only once was therea throb of genuine enthusiasm during the eighteen years of hisoccupancy of the throne, and that was when the remains of their adoredNapoleon were brought from St. Helena and placed in that magnificenttomb in the Hôtel des Invalides by order of the king, who sent his son, the Prince de Joinville, to bring this gift to the people. The act wasgracious, but it was also hazardous. Perhaps the king did not know howslight was his hold upon this imaginative people, nor the possibleeffect of contrast. 

Under the new order of things in a constitutional monarchy the kingdoes not govern, he reigns. He was chosen by the people as theirornamental figure-head. But what if he ceased to be ornamental? Whatwas the use of a king who in eighteen years had added not a single rayof glory to the national name, but who was using his high position toincrease his enormous private fortune, and incessantly begging animpoverished country for benefits and emoluments for five sons?

An excellent father, truly, though a short-sighted one. His power hadno roots. The cutting from the Orleans tree had never taken hold uponthe soil, and toppled over at the sound of Lamartine's voiceproclaiming a republic from the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville. 

When invited to step down from his royal throne, he did so on theinstant. Never did king succumb with such alacrity, and never didretiring royalty look less imposing than when Louis Philippe was inhiding at Havre under the name of "William Smith, " waiting for safeconvoy to England, without having struck one blow in defence of histhrone. 

But three terrible words had floated into the open windows of theTuileries. With the echoes of 1792 still sounding in his ears, "Liberty, " "Equality, " and "Fraternity, " shouted in the streets ofParis, had not a pleasant sound!

Republicanism was an abiding sentiment in France, even while two dullBourbon kings were stupidly trying to turn back the hands on the dialof time, and while an Orleans, with more supple neck, was posing as apopular sovereign. During all this tiresome interlude the real factwas developing. A Republican sentiment which had existed vaguely inthe air was materializing, consolidating, into a more and more tangiblereality in the minds of thinking men and patriots. 

The ablest men in the country stood with plans matured, ready to meetthis crisis. A republic was proclaimed; M. De Lamartine, Ledru-Rollin, General Cavaignac, M. Raspail, and Louis Napoleon were rival candidatesfor the office of President. 

The nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and son of Hortense, was only knownas the perpetrator of two very absurd attempts to overthrow themonarchy under Louis Philippe. But since the remains of the greatemperor had been returned to France by England, and the splendors ofthe past placed in striking contrast with a dull, lustreless present, there had been a revival of Napoleonic memories and enthusiasm. Herewas an opportunity to unite two powerful sentiments in one man--aNapoleon at the head of republican France would express the glory ofthe past and the hope of the future. 

The magic of the name was irresistible. Louis Napoleon was electedPresident of the second Republic, and history prepared to repeat itself. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

A revolution scarcely deserving the name had made France a second timea republic. The Second French Republic was the creation of noparticular party. In fact, it seemed to have sprung into beingspontaneously out of the soil of discontent. 

Its immediate cause was the forbidding of a banquet which was arrangedto take place in Paris on Washington's birthday, February 22d, 1848. M. Guizot, who had succeeded M. Thiers as head of the ministry, knowingthe political purpose for which it was intended, and that it was a partof an impending demonstration in the hands of dangerous agitators, would not permit the banquet to take place. 

This was the signal for an insurrection by a Paris mob, whichimmediately led to a change in the form of government--a crisis whichthe nation had taken no part in inaugurating. Revolution had beenwritten in French history in very large Roman capitals! But when thesmoke from this smallest of revolutions had curled away, there stoodLouis Napoleon--son of the great Bonaparte's brother Louis and Hortensede Beauharnais--who had been elected president by vote of the nation. 

France did not know whether she was pleased or not. Inexperienced inthe art of government, she only knew that she wanted prosperity, andconditions which would give opportunity to the genius of her people. Any form of government, or any ruler who could produce these, would beaccepted. She had suffered much, and was bewildered by fears ofanarchy on one side and of tyranny on the other. If she lookeddoubtfully at this dark, mysterious, unmagnetic man, she remembered itwas only for four years, and was as safe as any other experiment; andthe author of those two ridiculous attempts at a restoration of theempire, made at Strasbourg and at Boulogne, was not a man to be feared. 

The overthrow of monarchy in France had, however, been taken moreseriously in other countries than at home. It had kindled anew thefires of republicanism all over Europe: Kossuth leading a revolution inHungary, and Garibaldi and Mazzini in Italy, where Victor Emmanuel, theyoung King of Sardinia, was at the moment in deadly struggle withAustria over the possession of Milan, and dreaming of the day when aunited Italy would be freed from the Austrian yoke. 

The man at the head of the French Republic was surveying all theseconditions with an intelligence, strong and even subtle, of which noone suspected him, and viewed with satisfaction the extinguishment ofthe revolutionary fires in Europe, which had been kindled by the one inFrance to which he owed his own elevation!

The Assembly soon realized that in this prince-president it had noautomaton to deal with. A deep antagonism grew, and the cunninglydevised issue could not fail to secure popular support to LouisNapoleon. When an assembly is at war with the president because _it_desires to restrict the suffrage, and _he_ to make it universal, cananyone doubt the result? He was safe in appealing to the people onsuch an issue, and sure of being sustained in his proclamationdissolving the Assembly. 

The Assembly refused to be dissolved. Then, on the morning of December2, 1851, there occurred the famous _coup d'état_, when all the leadingmembers were arrested at their homes, and Louis Napoleon, relyingabsolutely upon their suffrages, stood before the French nation, with aconstitution already prepared, which actually bestowed imperial powersupon himself. And the suddenness and the audacious spirit with whichit was done really pleased a people wearied by incompetency in theirrulers; and so, just one year later, in 1852, the nation ratified the_coup d'état_ by voluntarily offering to Louis Napoleon the title, Napoleon III. , Emperor of the French. 

His Mephistophelian face did not look as classic under the laurelwreath as had his uncle's, nor had his work the blinding splendor northe fineness of texture of his great model. But then, an imitationnever has. It was a marble masterpiece, done in plaster! But what aclever reproduction it was! And how, by sheer audacity, it compelledrecognition and homage, and at last even adulation in Europe!--and whata clever stroke it was, for this heavy, unsympathetic man to bring upto his throne from the people a radiant empress, who would captureromantic and aesthetic France!

It was a far cry from cheap lodgings in New York to a seat upon theimperial throne of France; but human ambition is not easily satisfied. A Pelion always rises beyond an Ossa. It was not enough to feel thathe had re-established the prosperity and prestige of France, that freshglory had been added to the Napoleonic name. Was there not, after all, a certain irritating reserve in the homage paid him? was there not atouch of condescension in the friendship of his royal neighbors? Andhad he not always a Mordecai at his gate--while the _Faubourg St. Germain_ stood aloof and disdainful, smiling at his brand-newaristocracy?

War is the thing to give solidity to empire and to reputation! So, when invited to join the allies in a war upon Russia in defence ofTurkey, Louis Napoleon accepted with alacrity. France had no intereststo serve in the Crimean War (1854-56); but the newly made emperor didnot underestimate the value of this recognition by his royal neighbors, and French soldiers and French gun-boats largely contributed to thesuccess of the allied forces in the East. 

The little Kingdom of Sardinia, as the nucleus of the new Italy wascalled, had also joined the allies in this war; and thus a slender tiehad been created between her and France at a time when Austria wassavagely attacking her possessions in the north of Italy. 

When Napoleon was privately sounded by Count Cavour, he named as hisprice for intervention in Italy two things: the cession to France ofthe Duchy of Savoy, and the marriage of his cousin, Jerome Bonaparte, with Clotilde, the young daughter of Victor Emmanuel. Savoy was theancestral home of the king, and the only thing he loved more than Savoywas his daughter Clotilde, just fifteen years old. The terms werehard, but they were accepted. 

When Louis Napoleon entered Italy with his army in 1859, it was as aliberator--dramatically declaring that he came to "give Italy toherself"; that she was to be "free, from the Alps to the Adriatic"!The victory at Magenta was the first step toward the realization ofthis glorious promise; quickly followed by another at Solferino. Milanwas restored, Lombardy was free, and as the news sped toward the souththe Austrian dukes of Tuscany, Modena, and Parma fled in dismay, andthese rejoicing states offered their allegiance, not to the King ofSardinia, now, but to the King of Italy. There were only two morestates to be freed, only Venetia and the papal state of Rome, and a"United Italy" would indeed be "free from the Alps to the Adriatic. "

Then the unexpected happened. The dramatic pledge was not to be kept. Venetia was not to be liberated. The Peace of Villafranca was signed. Austria relinquished Lombardy, but was permitted to retain Venice. Cavour, white with rage, said, "Cut loose from the traitor! RefuseLombardy!" But Victor Emmanuel saw more clearly the path of wisdom;and so, after only two months of warfare, Napoleon was taking back toFrance Savoy and Nice as trophies of his brilliant expedition. 

This liberator of an Italy which was _not_ liberated, would have likedto restore the fleeing Austrian dukes to their respective thrones inFlorence, Modena, and Parma; but he did what was more effectual andpleasing to the enemies of a united Italy: he garrisoned Rome withFrench troops, and promised Pius IX. Any needed protection for thepapal throne. 

One can imagine how Garibaldi's heart was wrung when he exclaimed, "That man has made me a foreigner in my own city!" And so might havesaid the king himself. 

The emperor and the empire had been immensely strengthened by theItalian campaign. France was rejoicing in a phenomenal prosperity, reaching every part of the land. There was a new France and a newParis; new boulevards were made, gardens and walks and drives laid out, and a renewed and magnificent city extended from the Bois de Vincenneson one side to the Bois de Boulogne on the other. With the building ofpublic works there was occupation for all, resulting in the repose forwhich France had longed. 

The Empress Eugénie was beautiful and gracious, and her court atVersailles, Fontainebleau, and the Tuileries compared well in splendorwith the traditions of the past. 

The emperor's ambitions began to take on a larger form. Under theauspices of the government, M. Lesseps commenced a transisthmian canal, which would open communication between the Mediterranean Sea and theRed Sea. Then, in 1862, a less peaceful scheme developed. Anexpedition was planned to Mexico, against which country France had asmall grievance. 

The United States was at this time fighting for its life in a civil warof gigantic proportions. The time was favorable for a plan conceivedby the emperor to convert Mexico into an empire under a Frenchprotectorate. The principle known as the Monroe Doctrine forbade theestablishment of any European power upon the Western hemisphere; butthe United States was powerless at the moment to defend it, and by thetime her hands were free, even if she were not disrupted, an Empire ofMexico would be established, and French troops could defend it. 

In a few months the French army was in the city of Mexico, and anAustrian prince was proclaimed emperor of a Mexican empire. 

This ill-conceived expedition came to a tragic and untimely end in1867. The civil war ended triumphantly for the Union. Napoleon, realizing that, with her hands free, the United States would fight forthe maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, promptly withdrew the Frencharmy from Mexico, leaving the emperor to his fate. A republic was atonce established, and the unfortunate Maximilian was ordered to be shot. 

The finances of France and the prestige of the emperor had bothsuffered from this miserable attempt. At the same time, something hadoccurred which changed the entire European problem in a way mostdistasteful to Louis Napoleon. Prussia, in a seven weeks' war, hadwrenched herself free from Austria (1866). Instead of a disruptedUnited States, which he had expected, there was a disrupted GermanEmpire which he did not expect!

The triumph of Protestant Prussia was a triumph of liberalism. Itmeant a new political power, a rearrangement of the political problemin Europe, with Austria and despotism deposed. This was a distinctblow to the Emperor's policy, and to the headship in Europe which wasits aim. Then, too, the Crimea, Magenta, and Solferino looked lessbrilliant since this transforming seven-weeks' war, behind which stoodBismarck with his wide-reaching plans. 

His own magnificent scheme of a Hapsburg empire in Mexico under aFrench protectorate had failed, and now there had suddenly arisen, asif out of the ground, a new political Germany which rivalled France instrength. The thing to do was to recover his waning prestige by avictory over Prussia. 

The Empress Eugénie, devoutly Catholic in her sympathies, saw, in theascendancy of Protestant Prussia and the humiliation of CatholicAustria, an impious blow aimed at the Catholic faith in Europe. So, asthe emperor wanted war, and the empress wanted it, it only remained tomake France want it too; for war it was to be. 

Only one obstacle existed: there was nothing to fight about! But thatwas overcome. In 1870 the heart of the people of France was fired bythe news that the French Ambassador had been publicly insulted by thekindly old King William. There had been some diplomatic friction overthe proposed occupancy of a vacant throne in Spain by a member of theHohenzollern (Prussian) family. 

Whether true or false, the rumor served the desired purpose. Francewas in a blaze of indignation, and war was declared. 

Not a shadow of doubt existed as to the result as the French army movedaway bearing with it the boy prince imperial, that he might witness thetriumph. Not only would the French soldiers carry everything beforethem, but the southern German States would welcome them as deliverers, and the new confederation would fall in pieces in their hands. Thebirthday of Napoleon I. , August 15th, must be celebrated in Berlin!

This was the way it looked in France. How was it in Germany? Therewas no North and no South German. Men and states sprang together as aunit, under the command of Moltke and the Crown Prince FrederickWilliam. 

The French troops never got beyond their own frontier. In less thanthree weeks they were fighting for their existence on their own soil. In less than a month the French emperor was a prisoner, and in sevenweeks his empire had ceased to exist. 

The surrender of Metz, August 4th, and of Sedan, September 2d, weremonumental disasters. With the news of the latter, and of the captureof the emperor, the Assembly immediately declared the empire at an end, and proclaimed a third republic in France. 

Two hundred and fifty thousand German troops were marching on Paris. Fortifications were rapidly thrown about the city, and the siege, whichwas to last four months, had commenced. 

The capitulation, which was inevitable from the first, took place inJanuary, 1871. The terms of peace offered by the Germans wereaccepted, including the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, and an enormouswar indemnity. 

The Germans were in Paris, and King William, the Crown Prince (_UnserFritz_), Bismarck, and Von Moltke were quartered at Versailles; and inthat place, saturated with historic memories, there was enacted astrange and unprecedented scene. On January 18, 1871, in the Hall ofMirrors, King William of Prussia was formally proclaimed Emperor of anew German Empire. Ludwig II. , that picturesque young King of Bavaria, in the name of the rest of the German states, laid their unitedallegiance at his feet, and begged him to accept the crown of a unitedGermany. 

Moved by his colossal misfortunes, and perhaps partly in displeasure athaving a French republic once more at her door, England offered asylumto the deposed emperor. There, from the seclusion of Chiselhurst, heand his still beautiful Eugénie watched the republic weathering thefirst days of storm and stress. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Immediately after the deposition of the emperor a third Republic ofFrance was proclaimed. A temporary government was set up under thedirection of MM. Favre, Gambetta, Simon, Ferry, Rochefort, and othersof pronounced republican tendencies. 

This was speedily superseded by a National Assembly elected by thepeople, with M. Thiers acting as its executive head. 

During the siege of Paris an internal enemy had appeared, moredangerous, and proving in the end far more destructive to the city thanthe German army which occupied it. 

What is known as the Paris Commune was a mob of desperate men led bySocialistic and Anarchistic agitators of the kind which at intervalstry to terrorize civilization to-day. 

The ideas at the basis of this insurrection were the same as thosewhich converted a patriotic revolution into a "Reign of Terror" in1789, and Paris into a slaughter-house in 1792-93. 

Twice during the siege had there been violent and alarming outbreaksfrom this vicious element; and now it was in desperate struggle withthe government of M. Thiers for control of that city, which theysucceeded in obtaining. M. Thiers, his government, and his troops wereestablished at Versailles; while Paris, for two months, was in thehands of these desperadoes, who were sending out their orders from theHôtel de Ville. 

When finally routed by Marshal MacMahon's troops, after drenching someof the principal buildings with petroleum they set them on fire. TheTuileries and the Hôtel de Ville were consumed, as were also portionsof the Louvre, the Palais Royal, and the Palais de Luxembourg, and thecity in many places defaced and devastated. 

The insurrection was not subdued without a savage conflict, tenthousand insurgents, it is said, being killed during the last week;this being followed by severe military executions. Then, with some ofher most dearly prized historic treasures in ashes, and monuments gone, Paris, scarred and defaced, had quiet at last; and the organization ofthe third republic proceeded. 

The uncertain nature of the republican sentiment existing throughoutFrance at this critical moment is indicated by the character of theAssembly elected by the people. More than two-thirds of the memberschosen by France to organize her new republic were _monarchists_!

The name monarchist at that time comprehended three distinct parties, each with a powerful following, namely:

The LEGITIMISTS, acting in the interest of the direct Bourbon line, represented by the _Count of Chambord_, the grandson of Charles X. , called by his party _Henry V_. 

The ORLEANISTS, the party desiring the restoration of a limitedmonarchy, in the person of the _Count of Paris_, grandson of LouisPhilippe. 

The BONAPARTISTS, whose candidate, after the death of the Emperor LouisNapoleon in 1873, was the young _Prince Imperial_, son of Napoleon III. [Napoleon II. , the Duke of Reichstadt, had died in 1832. ]

M. Thiers had not an easy task in harmonizing these various despotictypes with each other, nor in harmonizing them all collectively withthe republic of which he was chief. He abandoned the attempt in 1873, and Marshal MacMahon, a more pronounced monarchist than he, succeededto the office of president, with the Duc de Broglie at the head of areactionary ministry. It began to look as if there might be arestoration under some one of the three types mentioned. The Count ofParis generously offered to relinquish his claim in favor of the Countof Chambord (Henry V. ), if he would accept the principles of aconstitutional monarchy, which that uncompromising Bourbon absolutelyrefused to do. 

In the meantime republican sentiment in France was not dead, norsleeping. Calamitous experiences had made it cautious. Freedom andanarchy had so often been mistaken for each other, it was learning tomove slowly, not by leaps and bounds as heretofore. 

Gambetta, the republican leader, once so fiery, had also growncautious. A patriot and a statesman, he was the one man who seemed topossess the genius required by the conditions and the time, and alsothe kind of magnetism which would draw together and crystallize thescattered elements of his party. 

It was the stimulus imparted by Gambetta which made the government atlast republican in fact as well as in name; and as reactionarysentiment increased on the surface, a republican sentiment was all thetime gathering in volume and strength below. 

The death of the prince imperial, in 1879, in South Africa, was asevere blow to the imperialists, as the Bonapartists were also called, who were now represented by Prince Victor, the son of Prince Napoleon. 

Although these rival princes occupied a large place upon the stage, other matters had the attention of the government of France, whichmoved calmly on. The establishing of a formal protectorate overAlgeria belongs to this period. 

Ever since the reign of Louis XIV. The hand of France had held Algeriawith more or less success. The Grand Monarch determined to rid theMediterranean of the "Barbary pirates, " with which it was infested, andso they were pursued and traced to their lairs in Algiers and Tunis. From this time on attempts were made at intervals to establish a Frenchcontrol over this African colony. During the reign of Louis Philippethe French occupation became more assured, and under the Republic aformal protectorate was declared. 

In 1881 Tunis also became a dependency of France; a treaty to thateffect being signed bestowing authority upon a resident-generalthroughout the so-called dominions of the bey. 

The fact that in 1878 France participated in the negotiations of theCongress at Berlin, shows how quickly national wounds heal at _thetop_! And further proof that normal conditions were restored, is givenby the Universal Exposition, to which Paris bravely invited the worldin that same year. 

In 1879 M. Grévy succeeded Marshal MacMahon. It was during M. Grevy'sadministration that England and France combined in a dual financialcontrol over Egypt, in behalf of the interests of the citizens of thosetwo countries who were holders of Egyptian bonds. 

But the event of profoundest effect at this period was the death ofGambetta in 1882. The removal of the only man in France whom theyfeared, was the signal for renewed activity among the monarchists, which found expression in a violent manifesto, immediately issued byPrince Napoleon. This awoke the apparently dormant republicansentiment. After agitated scenes in the Chamber, Prince Napoleon wasarrested; and finally, after a prolonged struggle, a decree was issuedsuspending all the Orleans princes from their military functions. 

Almost immediately after this crisis the Count of Chambord (Henry V. )died at Frohsdorf, August, 1883, by which event the Bourbon branchbecame extinct; and the Legitimists, with their leader gone, unitedwith the Orleanists in supporting the Count of Paris. 

A small war with Cochin-China was developed in 1884 out of a diplomaticdifficulty, which left France with virtual control over an area ofterritory, including Annam and Tonquin, in the far East. 

In 1885 M. Grévy was re-elected. This was, of course, construed as avote of approval of the anti-monarchistic tone of the administration. So republicanism grew bolder. 

There had been an increased activity among the agents of the monarchistparty, which found expression in demonstrations of a very significantcharacter at the time of the marriage of the daughter of the Count ofParis to the Crown Prince of Portugal. The republicans were determinedto rid France of this unceasing source of agitation, and their power tocarry out so drastic a measure as the one intended is proof of thegrowth which had been silently going on in their party. 

The government was given discretionary power to expel from the countryall actual claimants to the throne of France, with their direct heirs. 

The Count of Paris and his son, the Duke of Orleans, Prince Napoleonand his son, Prince Victor, were accordingly banished by presidentialdecree, in June, 1886. And when the Duke of Aumale violentlyprotested, he too was sent into banishment. 

In 1887 M. Grévy was compelled to resign, on account of an attempt toshield his son-in-law, who was accused of selling decorations, lucrative appointments, and contracts. M. Sadi-Carnot, the grandson ofthe Minister of War of the same name, who organized the armies at therevolutionary period, was a republican of integrity and distinction, and was elected by the combined votes of radicals and conservatives. 

Another crisis was at hand--a crisis difficult to explain because ofthe difficulty in understanding it. 

The extraordinary popularity of General Boulanger, Minister of War, amilitary hero who had never held an important command, nor been thehero of a single military exploit, seems to present a subject forstudents of psychological problems; but his name became therallying-point for all the malcontents in both parties. A talent forpolitical intrigue in this popular hero made it appear at one time asif he might really be moving on a path leading to a militarydictatorship. 

The firmness of the government in dealing with what seemed a seriouscrisis, was followed by the swift collapse of the whole movement, andwhen Boulanger was summoned before the High Court of Justice upon thecharge of inciting a revolution, he fled from the country, and theincident was closed. 

In one important respect the Third Republic differs from the twopreceding it. A constitution had hitherto been supposed to be theindispensable starting-point in the formation of a government. Nocountry had been so prolific in constitutions as France, which, since1790, is said to have had no less than seventeen; while England, sinceher Magna Charta made her free in 1215, had had none at all. 

An eloquent and definite statement of the rights of a people onceseemed as indispensable to a form of government as a creed to areligious faith. Perhaps the world, as it grows wiser, is lessinclined to definite statements upon many subjects! Our ownConstitution, probably the most elastic and wisest instrument of thekind ever created, has in a century required sixteen amendments toadapt it to changing conditions. 

What is known in France as the Constitution of 1875, is, in fact, aseries of legislative enactments passed within certain periods of time;these, as in England, serving as a substitute for a Constitution framedlike our own. 

The French may have done wisely in trying the English method ofsubstituting a body of laws, the growth of necessity, for a writtenconstitution. But this system, reached in England through the slowlymoving centuries, was adopted in France, not with deliberate purpose atfirst, but in order to avoid the clashing of opposing views among thegroup of men in charge of the republic in its inception; men who, whileruling under the name of a republic, really at heart disliked it, andwere, in fact, only enduring it as a temporary expedient on the road tosomething better. And so the republic drifted. There are times whenit is well to drift; and in this case it has proved most satisfactory. 

Not alone the rulers, but the nation itself, was in doubt as to thesort of government it wanted, or how to attain it after it knew. Itwas experimenting with that most difficult of arts, the art ofgoverning. An art which England had been centuries in learning, howcould France be expected to master in a decade? And when we considerthe conditions and the elements with which this inexperience wasdealing, the dangerous element at the top and the other dangerouselement beneath the surface, the ambitions of the princes, and thevolcanic fires in the lowest class; and when we think of the waitingnation, hoping, fearing, expecting so much, with a tremendous warindemnity to be paid, while their hearts were heavy over the loss oftwo provinces; when we recall all this, we wonder, not that they mademistakes and accomplished so little, but that the government moved on, day by day, step by step, calmly meeting crises from reactionaries orfrom radicals, until the confidence of the world was won, and thestability of republican France assured. 

From 1893 to 1896 was a period of colonial expansion for France. TheKingdom of Dahomey in Africa was proclaimed a French protectorate. Madagascar was subjugated, and in 1895 the Province of Hiang-Hung wasceded by China. 

In the year 1894 Sadi-Carnot was assassinated in the streets of Lyonsby an anarchist, and M. Faure succeeded to the presidency. 

A political alliance between France and Russia was formed at this time. It was also during the presidency of M. Faure that the agitationcommenced in consequence of what is known as the _Affaire Dreyfus_. 

Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian and an artillery officer upon thegeneral staff, was accused of betraying military secrets to a foreignpower (Germany). He was tried by court-martial, convicted, sentencedto be publicly degraded, having all the insignia of rank torn from him, then to suffer perpetual solitary imprisonment on the Isle du Diable, off the coast of French Guiana. 

The life of the French Republic was threatened by the profoundagitation following this sentence, in which the entire civilized worldjoined; the impression prevailing that a punishment of almostunparalleled severity was being inflicted upon a man whose guilt hadnot been proven. 

It was the general belief that the bitter enmity of the French armystaff was on account of the Semitic origin of the accused officer, andthat his being an Alsatian opened an easy path to the accusation oftreasonable acts with Germany. 

The trial of Captain Dreyfus was conducted with closed doors, and thesentence was rigorously carried out. 

As time passed, the agitation became so profound, and the public demandfor a revision of the case so imperative, that the French court ofappeal finally took the matter under consideration. 

The ground upon which this revision was claimed related to an allegedconfession and to the authorship of the _bordereau_, the document whichhad been instrumental in procuring a conviction. Upon these grounds itwas claimed that the judgment pronounced in December, 1894, should beannulled. 

The court was compelled to yield, and an order was issued for a secondtrial--a trial which resulted in revelations so damaging to the headsof the French army that a revolution seemed imminent. 

The accused man, wrecked by the five years on the Isle du Diable, againappeared before his accusers in the military court at Rennes. Hisleading counsel, Labori, was shot while conducting his case, but, as itproved, not fatally. The conduct of the trial was such that the darksecrets of this sinister affair were never brought from their murkydepths. And with neither the guilt nor the innocence of the victimproven, the amazing verdict was rendered, "Guilty, with extenuatingcircumstances. "

Such was the verdict of the French military court. That of publicopinion was different. It was the unanimous belief among other nationsthat the case against this unfortunate man had completely collapsed. But in order to protect the French army from the disgrace which wasinseparable from a vindication of Dreyfus, he must be sacrificed. 

The sentence pronounced at the conclusion of the second trial wasimprisonment in a French fortress for ten years. 

This sentence was remitted by President Loubet; and, with the brand oftwo convictions and the memory of his "degradation" and of Devil'sIsland burned deep into his soul, a broken man was sent forth free. 

Not the least dramatic incident in this affair was the impassionedchampionship of M. Zola, the great novelist, who hurled defamatorycharges at the court, in the hope of being placed under arrest forlibel, and thus be given opportunity to establish facts repressed bythe military court. By the French law, the accused must justify hisdefamatory words, and this was the opportunity sought. 

The heroic effort was not in vain. Zola was found guilty and sentencedto a year's imprisonment, which he avoided by going into exile. Butlight had been thrown upon the "_Affaire. _" And he was content. 

Upon the sudden death of M. Faure in 1899, Emile Loubet, a lawyer ofnational reputation, was chosen to succeed him, and his administrationcommenced while this storm was reaching its final culmination. 

With the release of Captain Dreyfus the agitation subsided. But beforevery long another storm-cloud appeared. 

A conflict between clericalism and the Government of France is not anew thing. Indeed, it was at its height as long ago as the thirteenthcentury, when Philip IV. And Pope Boniface had their littleunpleasantness, resulting in Philip's taking the popes into his ownkeeping at Avignon, and in the issuance of a "Pragmatic Sanction, "which defended France from papal encroachments. 

The old conflict is still going on, and will continue until the lastfrail thread uniting Church and State is severed. 

The particular contention which agitates France to-day, inaugurated bythe late Minister Waldeck-Rousseau, and continued by his successor, M. Combes, had its origin in an act called the "Law of Associations, " thepurpose of which was to restrict the political power of the Church bymeans of the suppression of religious orders of men and women upon thesoil of France. 

This was considered an act of extreme oppression and tyranny on the oneside, and as a measure essential to the safety of the republic on theother. 

In support of their contention the republican party claimed that theFrench clergy had always been in alliance with every reactionarymovement, and that every agitation and intrigue against the life of theThird Republic had had clericalism as its origin and disturbing cause. Hence, the expulsion of the religious orders was declared to beessential to the safety of the republic. 

But the Law of Associations was only preliminary to the real end inview, which was accomplished in December, 1905, when a bill providingfor the actual separation of Church and State was passed by the FrenchSenate. There was a time when a measure so revolutionary would haveopened the flood-gates of passion, and let loose torrents of invective;and the calmness with which it was debated in the French Parliamentmakes it manifest that the highest intelligence of the nation hadbecome convinced of its necessity. The bill provides for the transferto the government of all church properties. This change of ownershipnecessitated the taking of inventories in the churches, which manysimple and devout people, incapable of understanding its politicalmeaning, believed was a religious persecution, and resisted by force. The bill recently passed is aimed not at the Church, but at"Clericalism, " a powerful element within the Church, which has beendetermined to make it a political as well as a spiritual power. Withthe passage of this bill there no longer exists the opportunity forpolitical and ecclesiastical intrigues, which have made the Church ahatching-ground for aristocratic conspiracies. The severance nowaccomplished is not complete as with us. Money will still beappropriated from the public treasury for the maintenance of churchesin France. But the power derived from the ownership of valuableestates is no longer in the hands of men in sympathy with the enemiesof the existing form of government. 

Another matter which for a time seemed to threaten the peace of Francehas been happily adjusted. At an international conference held atAlgeciras, for the purpose of considering the demoralized conditionsexisting in the State of Morocco, France and Germany came so sharply incollision that serious consequences seemed imminent, consequences whichmight even involve all of Europe. 

France, with her territory adjoining the disturbed state, and her longAlgerian coast-line to protect, naturally felt that she was entitled tospecial recognition; while Germany, having invited the conference, claimed a position of leadership. It was over the special privilegesdesired by each that the tension between these two states became soacute; and finally the one question before the conference was whetherFrance or Germany should be the custodian of Morocco, insure the safetyof its foreign population, have charge of its finances, and beresponsible for the policing of its coast. Of course the nationassigned to this duty would hold the predominant influence in NorthAfrican affairs, and it was this large stake which gave such intensityto the game. The final award was given to France, and Germany, deeplyaggrieved but with commendable self-control, has accepted the decision. 

The elections recently held in France have afforded an opportunity todiscover the sentiment of the nation concerning the policies, radicaland almost revolutionary, which have made the concluding days of M. Loubet's incumbency an epoch in the life of France. The result hasbeen an overwhelming vote of approval. In M. Fallières, who has beenelected to the presidency, there is found a man even morerepresentative of a new France than was his predecessor. A man of thepeople, the grandson of a blacksmith, a lawyer by profession, M. Fallières has been identified with every important movement since hewas first elected Deputy in 1876; has been eight times Minister; wasPresident of the Senate during the seven years of President Loubet'sterm of office; and January 17, 1906, was elected to the highestposition in the state. The appointment of M. Sarrien, with hiswell-known sympathies, to the office of Prime Minister, sets at restany doubt as to the policy initiated by M. Waldeck-Rousseau, andconsummated by M. Combes. 

With each succeeding administration France has gained in strength andstability, and in the self-control and calmness which make for both. The government and the people have learned that the spasmodic way isnot a wise and effectual way. 

The monarchist party has disappeared as a serious political factor. There is peace, external and internal. And there is prosperity--thatsurest guarantee of a continued peace. 

One source of the phenomenal prosperity of France in this trying periodsince 1871 has been her mastery in the art of beauty. Leading theworld as she does in this, her art products are sought by every landand every people. The nations must and will have them; and so, with anassured market, her industries prosper, and there is content in thecottage and wealth in the country at large. 

What a change from the time less than four decades ago, when, withmilitary pride humbled in the dust, with national pride wounded by theloss of two provinces, and loaded down with an immense war indemnity, the people set about the task of rehabilitation! And in what anincredibly short time the galling debt had been paid, financialprosperity and political strength restored. 

For thirty-four years the republic has existed. Communistic fires, always smouldering, have again and again burst forth--demagogues, fanatics, and those creatures for whom there is no place in organizedsociety, whose element is chaos, standing ready to fan the flames ofrevolt: with Orleanist, Bonapartist, Bourbon, ever on the alert, watching for opportunity to slip in through the open door of revolution. 

Phlegmatic Teutons and slow-moving Anglo-Saxons look in bewilderment ata nation which has had seven political revolutions in a hundred years!

But France, complex, mobile, changeful as the sea, in riotous enjoymentof her new-found liberties, casts off a form of government as she wouldan ill-fitting garment. She knows the value of tranquillity--she hadit for one thousand years! The _people_, who have only breathed theupper air for a century--the people, who were stifled under feudalism, stamped upon by Valois kings, riveted down by Richelieu, then prodded, outraged, and starved by Bourbons, have become a great nation. Many-sided, resourceful, gifted, it matters not whether they havecalled the head of their government consul, emperor, king, orpresident. They are a race of freemen, who can never again be enslavedby tyrannous system. 

There may be in store for France new revolutions and freshoverturnings. Not anchored, as is England, in an historic past whichshe reveres, and with a singularly gifted and emotional people who arethe sport of the current of the hour, who can predict her future! Butwhatever that future may be, no American can be indifferent to the fateof a nation to whom we owe so much. Nor can we ever forget that in thehour of our direst extremity, and regardless of cost to herself, shehelped us to establish our liberties, and to take our place among thegreat nations of the earth. 

 SOVEREIGNS AND RULERS OF FRANCE. 

 KINGS OF THE FRANKS

 MEROVINGIAN LINE

 A. D. Clovis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496 Thierry, Clodomir, Clothaire, Childebert 511 Clothaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559 Charibert, Gontran, Chilperic, Sigheben 561 Childebert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584 Theodebert, Thierry II. , Clothaire III. 596 Dagobert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 628 Clovis II. , Sigheben II. . . . . . . . . 638 Clothaire III. , Chilperic II. . . . . . 656 Thierry III. , Dagobert II. . . . . . . . 673 Clovis III. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 690 Childebert III. . . . . . . . . . . . . 695 Dagobert III. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711 Chilperic III. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 716 Thierry IV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 720 Chilperic IV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741

 CARLOVINGIAN LINE

 Pepin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 752 Charlemagne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 768 Louis (The Débonnaire) . . . . . . . . . 814

 KINGS OF FRANCE

 AFTER DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE

 Charles (The Bald) . . . . . . . . . . . 843 Louis (The Stammerer) . . . . . . . . . . 877 Louis III. And Carloman . . . . . . . . . 879 Charles (The Fat) . . . . . . . . . . . . 884 Hugh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 887 Charles (The Simple) . . . . . . . . . . 898 Raoul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 923 Louis IV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 936 Lothaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 954 Louis V. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 986

 CAPETIAN LINE

 Hugh Capet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 987 Robert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 996 Henry I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1031 Philip I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1060 Louis VI. (The Fat) . . . . . . . . . . . 1108 Louis VII. (The Young) . . . . . . . . . 1137 Philip II. (Philip Augustus) . . . . . . 1180 Louis VIII. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1223 Louis IX. (The Saint) . . . . . . . . . . 1226 Philip III. (The Hardy) . . . . . . . . . 1270 Philip IV. (The Handsome) . . . . . . . . 1285 Louis X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1314 Philip V. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1316 Charles IV. (The Handsome) . . . . . . . 1322

 VALOIS BRANCH OF CAPETIAN LINE

 Philip VI. (de Valois) . . . . . . . . . 1328 John (The Pious) . . . . . . . . . . . . 1350 Charles V. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1364 Charles VI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1380 Charles VII. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1422 Louis XI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1461 Charles VIII. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1483

 VALOIS--ORLEANS BRANCH

 Louis XII. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1498

 VALOIS--ANGOULÊME

 Francis I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1515 Henry II. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1547 Francis II. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1559 Charles IX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1560 Henry III. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1574

 BOURBON BRANCH

 Henry IV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1589 Louis XIII. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1610 Louis XIV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1643 Louis XV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1715 Louis XVI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1774

 FIRST REPUBLIC, 1792

 FIRST EMPIRE

 Napoleon Bonaparte . . . . . . . . . . . 1804

 RESTORATION OF MONARCHY--BOURBON BRANCH

 Louis XVIII. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1814 Charles X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1824

 KING OF THE FRENCH

 Louis Philippe . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1830

 SECOND REPUBLIC, 1848

 SECOND EMPIRE

 Louis Napoleon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1852

 THIRD REPUBLIC, 1871

 PRESIDENTS OF THIRD REPUBLIC

 Adolphe Thiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1871 Marshal MacMahon . . . . . . . . . . . . 1873 Jules Grévy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1879 Sadi-Carnot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1887 François Felix Faure . . . . . . . . . . 1894 Emile Loubet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1899 Armand Fallières . . . . . . . . . . . . 1906

 INDEX. 

 Abelard, 68, 69 Academy, The French, 138 African, 261 Agincourt, Battle of, 89 Albigensian War, 66 Alexander, Emperor of Russia, 213, 215 Algeria, 246 Algeciras, 260 Alsace, 144, 240 America, 158, 164-167, 175, 176, 183, 196, 197, 209, 236 Anglo-Saxons, 263 Angoulême, Duchesse d', 216 Anne of Austria, 142, 143 Assembly, National, 181-185, 187-190, 230, 240, 242, 244 Associations, Law of, 258 Attila, 22 Augsburg, League of, 154 Aumale, Duke of, 249 Aurelius, Marcus, 14, 18, 20 Austrasia, 31 Austria, 142, 162, 198, 199, 202, 203, 204, 206, 211, 230, 233, 234, 237, 238

 _Babylonian Captivity_, 77 Bastille, The, 97, 141, 146, 184, 185 Bayard, Chevalier, 105 Beauharnais, Eugene, 212 Beauharnais, Hortense, 212, 226 Beauharnais, Josephine, 207, 208, 213 Bismarck, 238, 240 Black Prince, 82-84 Blanche of Castile, 69, 70, 73 Blenheim, Battle of, 156 Blücher, 219 Bonaparte, Jerome, 212 Bonaparte, Joseph, 212 Bonaparte, Louis, 212, 229 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 171, 172, 203-215, 218-220, 224 Bonapartists, 244, 246, 263 Boulanger, General, 250 Bourbon, Antony de, 116-118 Bourbons, 116-118, 129, 244, 263, 264 Bourgeoisie, 81, 100 Bretigny, Treaty of, 83 Britain, 2 _Burgesses_, 58 Burgundy, Duke of, 85-89, 97, 105

 Caesar, Julius, 10-12, 15 Calais, 79 Campo Formio, Treaty of, 205, 206 Capet, Hugh, 48 Carlovingian Kings, 31-48 Carnot, 249, 253 Châlons, Battle of, 22 Chambord, Count of, 244, 245, 248 Charlemagne, 36, 45 Charles Martel, 31, 34 Charles V, 83-85 Charles VI, 85-88 Charles VII, 90-96, 98 Charles VIII, 101-104 Charles IX, 119, 128 Charles X, 172, 221, 222, 223 Christianity, 14-23, 32-34, 49-51 Church and State, 258 Cinq Mars, 141 Clericalism, 258, 259 Clovis, 10, 24-27, 29 Cochin-China, War with, 248 Colbert, 146, 148, 152 Coligny, Admiral, 115-124 Combes, 258, 262 Committee of Public Safety, 191, 199 Commune, The, 242, 243 Conciergerie, 191, 193, 199 Concini, 135, 136 Condé, 144, 148 Consulate, 208-210 Corday, Charlotte, 191, 192 Crécy, Battle of, 79 Crimean War, 232 Crusades, 42, 59-61, 63, 68, 73, 74, 75

 Dahomey, 253 Danton, 191, 200 Dauphin, 80 Desmoulins, Camille, 184 Directory, 203, 206-208 _Donation of Pepin_, 34 _Dreyfus, Affaire_, 253-258 Dreyfus, Alfred, 253, 257 Druidism, 14, 20 Dumouriez, 198, 199

 Edward III of England, 79, 82 Egypt, 206, 207, 247 Elba, 215 Elizabeth, Princess, 189, 195, 197 Enghien, Duke d', 209 England, 41, 53, 61-64, 79, 82, 110, 111, 154, 164, 165, 175, 176, 202, 203, 206, 209, 213, 219, 220, 241, 247, 251 Eugénie, Empress, 235, 238, 240

 Fallières, 261 Faure, 253, 257 Feudal System, 42, 44-46, 85, 98 Flanders, 108, 149 Fontenay, Battle of, 40 Fouquet, 147 Fouquier-Tinville, 191 Francis I, 106-112 Francis II, 116 Francis Joseph, 211, 213 Franks, 23 _Freemen_, 57 French Parliament, 269 French Senate, 258 Fronde, 143

 Galigai, Eleonora, 135-137 Gallicia, 7 Gambetta, 245-247 Gaul, 2-4, 11, 24 Gauls, 4 Genevieve, 23 Germany, 40, 41, 108, 111, 155, 156, 210, 211, 212, 214, 238-241, 254, 260, 261 Girondists, 187-189, 193, 197-200 Godfrey of Boulogne, 60 Goths, 8, 12, 22, 23 Greece, 3, 7 Grévy, 247-249 Guesclin, Bertrand du, 83, 84 Guise, Duke of, 115-129 Gustavus Adolphus, 138, 142

 Hapsburgs, 133, 142, 146, 158, 214, 238 Henry II, 115, 116 Henry III, 128, 129 Henry (IV) of Navarre, 120, 121, 123, 128-134 Henry V of England, 89, 90 Holland, 150, 151, 153, 212 Holy Roman Empire, 39, 108, 133, 211 Huguenots, 117, 118, 120-131, 137, 141, 152, 153 Huns, 22

 Indemnity, 253 Irenaeus, 14 Italy, 41, 74, 101-103, 105, 106, 204-206, 212, 230, 233-235

 Jacobins, 187-189, 199 Jena, Battle of, 211 Joan of Arc, 91-95 John, King, 80-83

 Kelts, 2-4, 12 Knights Templar, 77, 189 Kymrians, 7

 Lafayette, Marquis de, 183, 185, 187, 188, 222 Lamartine, 225 La Rochelle, Siege of, 141 Latin Quarter, 69 Law, John, 161 Legitimists, 244, 248 Leipsic, Battle of, 215 Lombards, 34, 38 Lorraine, 240 Lothaire, 40 Loubet, Emile, 256, 257, 261 Louis the Débonnaire, 40 Louis VI, 58, 59 Louis VII, 57, 61, 62 Louis VIII, 69 Louis IX, 69-73 Louis XI, 96, 98, 101 Louis XII, 104, 105 Louis XIII, 135, 136, 139-142, 148 Louis XIV, 143, 145-159, 246 Louis XV, 159-173, 181 Louis XVI, 133, 172, 174, 175, 177-190, 197, 216 Louis XVIII, 172, 197, 208, 216-218, 220, 221 Louis Philippe, 172, 198, 199, 222-226, 247 Louisiana, 209 Louvois, 148 Lutetia, 13 Luynes, Albert de, 136

 MacMahon, Marshal, 243, 247 Madagascar, 253 Magenta, Battle of, 233 Mahometanism, 32-34 _Maire du Palais_, 27, 31 Marat, 184, 191, 192 Maria Louisa, 214, 215 Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, 161 Marie Antoinette, 164, 172, 174, 186, 193-195, 197 Marignano, Battle of, 106 Massillia, 5 Mazarin, Cardinal, 143, 144, 146 Medici, Catharine de', 115-128 Medici, Marie de', 134, 135, 140 Meroveus, 23, 24 Merovingian Kings, 23-34, 46, 48 Metz, Surrender of, 239 Mexico, 236, 237 Mirabeau, 182, 183 Moltke, 239, 240 Monarchists, 262 Monroe Doctrine, 236, 237 Morocco, 260 Murat, 212

 Nantes, Edict of, 131, 133, 141, 146, 152, 158 Napoleon Bonaparte, 171, 172, 203-215, 218-220, 224 Napoleon (III), Louis, 226, 227, 229-239, 241 Napoleon, Prince, 246, 248, 249 Necker, 178 Neustria, 31 Ney, Marshal, 218, 220 Normandy, 47, 53, 54, 62, 64, 66 Normans, 44, 47 Northmen, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 53 Nymwegen, Peace of, 149, 151

 Orleanists, 244, 248, 263 Orleans, Duke of, 86-89, 105, 141, 159, 172, 182, 183, 222, 249

 Paris, Count of, 244, 245, 248, 249 Paris, Siege of, 240, 242, 243 Pepin, 31, 34, 35, 48 Peter the Hermit, 59, 60 Philip Augustus, 62-67 Philip III, 75 Philip IV, 75-78 Philip VI, 78 Philippe Egalité, 184, 198, 199, 222 Poitiers, Battle of, 82 Pope, The, 34, 35, 37-39, 49, 59, 60, 65, 75-77, 107, 113, 155, 210, 235, 257 _Pragmatic Sanction_, 107, 162 Prince Imperial, 244, 246 Protestantism, 111, 112-114, 138, 142, 153, 158, 238 Provence, 5, 65, 66, 70 Prussia, 142, 155, 203, 211, 237

 Ravaillac, 134 Raymond VII of Toulouse, 65, 66, 70 Reformation, The, 111, 113 Republic, Second, 225-231 Republic, Third, 242 et seq. Revolution, French, 166, 167, 179-201 Revolutionary Tribunal, 189, 193 Rheinbund, 211 Richelieu, Cardinal, 137-143, 167, 263 Robert the Strong, 48, 49 Robespierre, 183, 191, 200 _Rois Fainéants_, 29, 30, 47 Romans, 5-7 Rome, 5-8, 10-14 Rousseau, 170, 171 Russia, 41, 203, 213, 214, 232, 253 Ryswick, Treaty of, 149

 Sadi-Carnot, 249, 253 St. Bartholomew, Massacre of, 123-128 St. Helena, 220 Salic Law, 27, 78, 79, 129, 146, 161 Sarrien, 261 Sedan, Battle of, 240 Serfs, 46, 57 Simon, 195 Solferino, Battle of, 234 Spain, 41, 69, 105, 108, 122, 123, 133, 142, 146, 149, 158, 165, 202, 209, 212, 221, 238 Spanish Succession, War of the, 155 States-General, 76, 81, 82, 84, 133, 135, 179 Stuart, Marie, 115, 116, 118 Sully, Duke of, 133, 133 Swiss Guard, 188

 Talleyrand, 218 Temple, The, 189, 195 Teutons, 263 Thiers, 228, 243, 243, 244 Third Republic, 258 _Tiers État_, 56, 76, 82, 133, 179, 181, 183 Tilsit, Peace of, 212 Toulouse, 65, 66, 70 Tours, Battle of, 34 Troyes, Treaty of, 89 "Truce of God, " 51, 60 Turenne, 144, 148 Turgot, 177, 178

 Utrecht, Treaty of, 149

 Valois, 264 Varennes, 188 Verdun, Treaty of, 40, 41 Versailles, 147, 152, 156, 163, 165, 178, 182, 186, 187, 235, 240, 243 Villafranca, Peace of, 234 Visigoths, 26 Voltaire, 162, 169

 Waldeck-Rousseau, 258, 262 Waterloo, Battle of, 219 Wellington, Duke of, 219 William, Duke of Normandy, 54 Williams, Eleazer, 196

 Zola, 257