France: History - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

HISTORY

The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Gaul is veiled in obscurity, though philologists, anthropologists and archaeologists are using the glimmer of traditions collected by ancient historians to shed a faint twilight upon that remote C past. The subjugation of those primitive tribes did not mean their annihilation: their blood still flows in the veins of Frenchmen; and they survive also on those megalithic monuments (see STONE MONUMENTS) with which the soil of France is dotted, in the drawings and sculptures of caves hollowed out along the sides of the valleys, and in the arms and ornaments yielded by sepulchral tumuli, while the names of the rivers and mountains of France probably perpetuate the first utterances of those nameless generations.

The first peoples of whom we have actual knowledge are the Iberians and Ligurians. The Basques who now inhabit both sides of the Pyrenean range are probably the last representatives of the Iberians, who came from Spain to settle between the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay. The Ligurians, who exhibited the hard cunning characteristic of the Genoese Riviera, must have been descendants of that Indo-European vanguard who occupied all northern Italy and the centre and south-east of France, who in the 7th century B.C. received the Phocaean immigrants at Marseilles, and who at a much later period were encountered by Hannibal during his Ligiwians. march to Rome, on the banks of the Rhne, the frontier of the Iberian and Ligurian territories. Upon thes~ peoples it was that the conquering minority of Celts or Gauls imposed themselves, to be succeeded at a later date by the Roman aristocracy.

When Gaul first enters the field of history, Rome has already laid the foundation of her freedom, Athens dazzles the eastern Mediterranean with her literature and her art, while B t in the west Carthage and Marseilles are lining opposite t,~CZs~ shores with their great houses of commerce. Coming from the valley of the Danube in the 6th century, the Celts or Gauls had little by little occupied central and southern Europe long before they penetrated into the plains of the Sane, the Seine, and the Loire as far as the Spanish border, driving out the former inhabitants of the country. A century later their pciitical hegemony, extending from the Black Sea to the Strait of Gibraltar, began to disintegrate, and the Gauls then embarked on more distant migrations, from the Columns of Hercules to the plateaux of Asia Minor, taking Rome on their way. Their empire in Gaul, encroached upon in the north by the Belgae, a kindred race, and in the south by the Iberians, gradually contracted in area and eventually crumbled to pieces. This process served the turn of the Romans, who little by little had subjugated first the Cisalpine Gauls and afterwards those inhabiting the south-east of France, which was turned into a Roman province in the 2nd century. Up to The this time Hellenism and the mercantile spirit of the ~ Jews had almost exclusively dominated the Mediterranean littoral, and at first the Latin spirit only won foothold for itself in various spots on the western coastas at Aix in Provence (123 B.C.) and at Narbonne (118 B.C.). A refuge of Italian pauperism in the time of the Gracchi, after the triumph of the oligarchy the Narbonnaise became a field for shameless exploitation, besides providing, under the proconsulate of Caesar, an excellent point of observation whence to watch the intestine quarrels between the different nations of Gaul.

These are divided by Caesar in his Commentaries into three groups: the Aquitanians to the south of the Garonne; the Celts, properly so called, from the Garonne to the Seine and the Marne; and the Belgae, from the Seine to the Rhine. But these ethnological names cover a very great variety of half-savage tribes, differing in speech and in institutions, each surrounded by frontiers of dense forests abounding in game. On the edges of these forests stood isolated dwellings like sentinel outposts; while the inhabitants of the scattered hamlets, caves hollowed in the ground, rude circular huts or lake-dwellings, were less occupied with domestic life than with war and the chase. On the heights, as at Bibracte, or on islands in the rivers, as at Lutetia, or protected by marshes, as at Avaricum, oppidaat once fortresses and places of refuge, like the Greek Acropoliskept watch and ward over the beaten tracks and the rivers of Gaul.

These primitive societies of tall, fair-skinned warriors, blueeyed and red-haired, were gradually organized into political bodies of various kindskingdoms, republics and ~ federationsand divided into districts or pagi (pays) InsWztto which divisions the minds of the country folk have tiotis of remained faithfully attached ever since. The victorious Gaul.

aristocracy of the kingdom dominated the other classes, strengthened by the prestige of birth, the ownership of the soil and the practice of arms. Side by side with this martial nobility the Druids constituted a priesthood unique in ancient times; neither hereditary as in India, nor composed of isolated priests as in Greece, nor -of independent colleges as at Rome, it was a true corporation, which at first possessed great moral authority, though by Caesars time it had lost both strength and prestige. Beneath these were the common people attached to the soil, who did not count for much, but who reacted against the insufficient protection of the regular institutions by a voluntary subordination to certain powerful chiefs.

This impotence of the state was a permanent cause of those discords and revolts, which in the 1st century n.c. were so singularly favorable to Caesars ambition. Thus ~rin after eight years of incoherent struggles, of scattered revolts, and then of more and more energetic efforts, Gaul, at last aroused by Vercingetorix, for once concentrated her strength, only to perish at Alesia, vanquished by Roman discipline and struck at from the rear by the conquest of Britain (5850 B.C.).

This defeat completely altered the destiny of Gaul, and she became one of the principal centres of Roman civilization.

Of the vast Celtic empire which had dominated ~si~ Europe nothing now remained but scattered remnants in the farthest corners of the land, refuges for all the vanquished Gaels, Picts or Gauls; and of its civilization there lingered only idioms and dialectsGaelic, Pict and Gallic awhich gradually dropped out of use. During five centuries Gaul was unfalteringly loyal to her conquerors; for to conquer is nothing if the conquered be not assimilated by the conqueror, and Rome was a past-mistress of this art. The personal charm of Caesar and the prestige of Rome are not of themselves sufficient to explain this double conquest. The generous and enlightened policy of the imperial administration asked nothing of the people of Gaul but military service and the payment of the tax; in return it freed individuals from patronal domination, the people from oligarchic greed or Druidic excommunication, and every one in general from material anxiety. Petty tyrannies gave place to the great Fax Romana. The Julio-Claudian dynasty did much to attach the Gauls to the empire; they always occupied the first place in the mind of Augustus, and the revolt of the Aeduan Julius Sacrovir, provoked by the census of AD. 21, was easily repressed by Tiberius. Caligula visited Gaul and founded literary comoetitions at Lyons, which had become the political and intellectual capital of the country. Claudius, who was a native of Lyons, extended the right of Roman citizenship to many of his fellow-townsmen, gave them access to the magistracy and to the senate, and supplemented the annexation of Gaul by that of Britain. The speech which he pronounced on this occasion was engraved on tables of bronze at Lyons, and is the first authentic record of Gauls admission to the citizenship of Rome. Though the crimes of Nero and the catastrophes which resulted from his downfall, provoked the troubles of the year A.D. 70, the revolt of Sabinus was in the main an attemptby the Germans to pillage Gaul and the prelude to military insurrections. The government of the Flavians arid the Antonines completed a definite reconciliation. After the extinction of the family of Augustus in the 1st century Gaul had made many emperorsGalba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian and Domitian; and in the 2nd century she provided Gauls to rule the empireAntoninus (138161) came from Nfmes and Claudius from Lyons, as did also Caracalla later on (211217).

The romanization of the Gauls, like that of the other subject natior~s, was effected by slow stages and by very diverse means, ~ furnishing an example of the constant adaptability and poiW. of Roman policy. It was begun by establishing a caflrans- network of roads with Lyons as the central point, format Ion and by the development of a, prosperous urban life ~1fR~man in the increasingly wealthy Roman colonies; and it was continued by the disintegration into independent cities of nearly all the Gaulish states of the Narbonnaise, together with the substitution of the Roman collegial magistracy for the isolated magistracy of the Gauls. This alteration came about more quickly in the north-east in the Rhine-land than in the west and the centre, owing to the near neighbsurhood of the legions on the frontiers. Rome was too tolerant to impose her own institutions by force; it was the conquered peoples who collectively and individually solicited as a favor the right ~f adopting the municipal system, the magistracy, the sacerdotal and aristocratic social system of their conquerors. The edict of Caracalla, at the beginning of the 3rd century, by conferring the right of citizenship on all the inhabitants of the empire, completed an assimilation for which commercial relations, schools, a taste for officialism, and the adaptability and quick intelligence of the race had already made preparation. The Gauls now called themselves Romans and their language Romance. There was neither oppression on the one hand nor servility on the other to explain this abandonment of their traditions. Thanks to the political and religious unity which a common worship of the emperor and of Rome gave them, thanks to administrative centralization tempered by a certain amount of municipal autonomy, Gaul prospered throughout three centuries.

But this stability of the Roman peace had barely been realized when events began to threaten it both from within and without. The Fax Romana having rendered any armed force Decline unnecessary amid a formerly very bellicose people, only of the eight legions mounted guard over the Rhine to protect imperial it from the barbarians who surrounded the empire. authiiritv The raids made by the Germanson the easternfrontiers, LU Gaul. the incessant competitions for the imperial power, and the repeated revolts of the Pretorian guard, gradually undermined the internal cohesion of Gaul; while the insurrections of the Bagaudae aggravated the destruction wrought by a grasping treasury and by barbarian incursions; so that the anarchy of the 3rd century soon aroused separatist ideas. Under Postumus Gaul had already attempted to restore an independent though short-lived empire (258267); and twenty-eight years later the tetrarchy of Diocletian proved that the blood now circulated with difficulty from the heart to the extremities of an empire on the eve of disintegration. Rome was to see her universal dominion gradually menaced from all sides. It was in Gaul that the decisive revolutions of the time were first prepared; Constantines crusades to overthrow the altars of paganism, and Julians campaigns to set them up again. After Constantine the emperors of the East in the 4th century merely put in an occasional appearance at Rome; they resided at Milan. or in the prefectorial capitals of Gaulat Arles, at Treves (Trier), at Reims or in Paris. The ancient territorial divisions Belgium, Gallia Lugdunensis (Lyonnaise), Gallia Narbonensis (Narbonnaise)were split up into seventeen little provinces, which in their turn were divided into two dioceses. Thus the great historic division was made between southern and northern France. Roman nationality persisted, but the administrative system was tottering.

Upon ground that had been so well levelled by Roman legislation aristocratic institutions naturally flourished. From the 4th century onward the balance of classes was dis- Soclaidisturbed by the development of a landed aristocracy organizathat grew more powerful day by day, and by the tion of corresponding ruin of the small proprietors and in- GauL

dustrial and commercial corporations. The members of the curia who assisted the magistrates in the cities, crushed by the burden of taxes, now evaded as far as possible public office or senatorial honors. The vacancies left in this middle class by this continual desertion were not compensated for by the progressive advance of a lower class destitute of personal property and constantly unsettled in their work. The peasants, no less than the industrial laborers, suffered from the absence of any capital laid by, which alone could have enabled them to improve their land or to face a time of bad harvests. Having no credit they found themselves at the mercy of their neighbors, the great landholders, and by degrees fell into the position of tenants, or into servitude. The curia was thus emptied both from above and from below. It was in vain that the emperors tried to rivet the chains of the curia in this hereditary bondage, by attaching the small proprietor to his glebe, like the artisan to his gild and the soldier to his legion. To such a miserable pretence of freedom they all preferred servitude, which at least ensured them a livelihood; and the middle class of freemen thus became gradually extinct.

The aristocracy, on the contrary, went on increasing in power, and eventually became masters of the situation. It was through them that the emperor, theoretically absolute, practi~ cally carried on his administration; but he was no land and longer either strong or a divinity, and possessed power by nothing but the semblance of omnipotence. His the aria. official despotism was opposed by the passive but tocracy of.. .

gaul. invincible competition of an aristocracy, more powerful than himself because it derived its support from the revived relation of patron and dependants. But though the aristocracy administered, yet they did not govern. They suffered, as did the Empire, from a general state of lassitude. Like their private life, their public life, no longer stimulated by struggles and difficulties, had become sluggish; their power of initiative was enfeebled. Feeling their incapacity they no longer embarked on great political schemes; and the army, the instrument by which such schemes were carried on, was only held together by the force of habit. In this society, where there was no traffic in anything but wealth and ideas, the soldier was nothing more than an agitator or a parasite. The egoism of the upper classes held military duty in contempt, while their avarice depopulated the countryside, whence the legions had drawn their recruits. And now come the barbarians! A prey to perpetual alarm, the people entrenched themselves behind those high walls of the oppida which Roman security had razed to the ground, but imperial impotence had restored, and where life in the middle ages was destined to vegetate in unrestful isolation.

Amidst this general apathy, intellectual activity alone persisted. In the 4th century there was a veritable renaissance in Gaul, the Intel- last outburst of a dying flame, which yet bore witness lectual also to the general decadence. The agreeable versidecadence fication of an amateur like Ausonius, the refined of GauL panegyrics of a Eumenius, disguising nullity of thought beneath elegance of form, already foretold the perilous sterility of scholasticism. Art, so widespread in the wealthy villas of Gaul, contented itself with imitation, produced nothing original and remained mediocre. Human curiosity, no longer concerned withphilosophy and science, seemed as though stifled, religious polemics alone continuing to hold public attention. Disinclination for the self-sacrifice of active life and weariness of the things of the earth lead naturally to absorption in the things of heaven. After bringing about the success of the Asiatic cults of Mithra and Cybele, these same factors now assured the triumph over exhausted paganism of yet another oriental religionChristianity after a duel which had lasted two centuries.

This new faith had appeared to Constantine likely to infuse young and healthy blood into the Empire. In reality Christianity, which had contributed not a little to stimulate the christIan- political unity of continental Gaul, now tended to Gaul. dissolve it by destroying that religious unity which had heretofore been its complement. Before this there had been complete harmony between Church and State; but afterwards came indifference and then disagreement between political and religious institutions, between the City of God and that of Caesar. Christianity, introduced into Gaul during the 1st century of the Christian era by those foreign merchants who traded along the coasts of the Mediterranean, had by the middle of the 2nd century founded communities at Vienne, at Autun and at Lyons. Their propagandizing zeal soon exposed them to the wrath of an ignorant populace and the contempt of the educated; and thus it was that in AD. 177, under Marcus Aurelius, the Church of Lyons, founded by St Pothinus, suffered those persecutions which were the effective cause of her ultimate victory. These Christian communities, disguised under the legally authorized name of burial societies, gradually formed a vast secret cosmopolitan association, superimposed upon Roman society but incompatible with the Empire. Christianity had to be either destroyed or absorbed. The persecutions under Aurelian and Diocletian almost succeeded in accomplishing the former; the Christian churches were saved by the instability of the existing authorities, by military anarchy and by the incursions of the barbarians. Despite tortures and martyrdoms, and thanks to the seven apostles sent from Rome in 250, during the 3rd century their branches extended all over Gaul.

The emperors had now to make terms with these churches, which served to group together all sorts of malcontents, and this was the object of the edict of Milan (313), Triumph by which the Church, at the outset simply a Jewish of Chrisinstitution, was naturalized as Roman; while in 325 tlanity in the Council of Nicaea endowed her with unity. But ~

for the security and the power thus attained she had to pay with her independence. On. the other hand, pagan and Christian elements in society existed side by side without intermingling, and even openly antagonistic to each otherone aristocratic and the other democratic. In order to induce the masses of the people once more to become loyal to the imperial form of government the emperor Julian tried by founding a new religion to give its functionaries a religious prestige which should impress the popular mind. His plan failed; and the emperor Theodosius, aided by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, preferred to make the Christian clergy into a body of imperial and conservative officials; while in return for their adhesion he abolished the Arian heresy and paganism itself, which could not survive without his support. Thenceforward it was in the name of Christ that persecutions took place in an Empire now entirely won over to Christianity, In Gaul the most famous leader of this first merciless, if still perilous crusade, was a soldier-monk, Saint Martin of Tours. Thanks to him and his disciples in the middle of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th many of the towns possessed well-established churches; but the C,~h. ~ militant ardour of monks and centuries of labor were needed to conquer the country districts, and in the meantime both dogma and internal organization were subjected to important modifications. As regards the former the Church adopted a course midway between metaphysical explanations and historical traditions, and reconciled the more extreme theories; while with the admission of pagans a great deal of paganism itself was introduced. On the other hand, the need for political and social order involved the necessity for a disciplined and homogeneous religious body; the exercise of power, moreover, soon transformed the democratic Christianity of the earlier churches into a federation of little conservative monarchies. The increasing number of her adherents, and her inexperience of government on such a vast and complicated scale, obliged her to comply with political necessity and to adopt the system of the state and its social customs. The Church was no longer a fraternity, on a footing of equality, with freedom of belief and tentative as to dogma, but an authoritative aristocratic hierarchy. The episcopate was now recruited from the great families in the same way as the imperial and the municipal public services. The Church called on the emperor to convoke and preside over her councils and to combat heresy; and in order more effectually to crush the latter she replaced primitive independence and local diversity by uniformity of doctrine and worship, and by the hierarchy of dioceses and ecclesiastical provinces. The heads of the Church, her bishops, her metropolitans, took the titles of their pagan predecessors as well as their places, and their jurisdiction was enforced by the laws of the state. Rich and powerful chiefs, they were administrators as much as priests:

Germanus (Germain), bishop of Auxerre (d. 448), St Eucherius of Lyons (d. 450), Apollinaris Sidonius of Clermont (d. C. 490) assumed the leadership of society, fed the poor, levied tithes, administered justice, and in the towns where they resided, surrounded by priests and deacons, ruled both in temporal and spiritual matters.

But the humiliation of Theodosius before St Ambrose proved that the emperor could never claim to be a pontiff, and that the dogma of the Church remained independent of the The sovereign as well as of the people; if she sacrificed Chu~J,s her liberty it was but to claim it again and maintain independit more effectively amid the general languor. The ence of the Church thus escaped the unpopularity of this decadent empire, and during the 5th century she provided a refuge for all those who, wishing to preserve the Roman unity, were terrified by the blackness of the horizon. In fact, whilst in the Eastern Church the metaphysical ardour of the Greeks was spending itself in terrible combats in the oecumenical councils over the interpretation of the Nicene Creed, the clergy of Gaul, more simple and strict in their faith, abjured these theological logomachies; from the first they had preferred action to criticism and had taken no part in the great controversy on free-will raised by Pelagius. Another kind of warfare was about to absorb their whole attention; the barbarians were attacking the frontiers of the Empire on every side, and their advent once again modified Gallo-Roman civilization.

For centuries they had been silently massing themselves around ancient Europe, whether Iberian, Celtic or Roman.

Many times already during that evening of a decadent The bat~ civilization, their threatening presence had seemed ii~asion. like a dark cloud veiling the radiant sky of the peoples established on the Mediterranean seaboard. The cruel lightning of the sword of Brennus had illumined the night, setting Rome or Delphi on fire. Sometimes the storm had burst over Gaul, and there had been need of a Marius to stem the torrent of Cimbri and Teutons, or of a Caesar to drive back the Helvetians into their mountains. On the morrow the western horizon would clear again, until some such disaster as that which befell Varus would come to mortify cruelly the pride of an Augustus. The Romans had soon abandoned hope of conquering Germany, with its fluctuating frontiers and nomadic inhabitants. For more than two centuries they had remained prudently entrenched behind the earthworks that extended from Cologne to Ratisbon (Regensburg); but the intestine feuds which prevailed among the barbarians and were fostered by Rome, the organizatipn under bold and turbulent chiefs of the bands greedy for booty, the pressing forward on populations already settled of tribes in their rear; all this caused the Germanic invasion to filter by degrees across the frontier. It was the work of several generations and took various forms, by turns and simultaneously colonization and aggression; but from this time forward the paz romana was at an end. The emperors Probus, Constantine, Julian and Valentinian, themselves foreigners, were worn out with repulsing these repeated assaults, and the general enervation of society did the rest. The barbarians gradually became part of the Roman population; they permeated the army, until after Theodosius they recruited it exclusively; they permeated civilian society as colonists and agriculturists, till the command of the army and of important public duties was given over to a Stiicho or a Crocus. Thus Rome allowed the wolves to mingle with the dogs in watching over the flock, just at a time when the civil wars of the 4th century had denuded the Rhenish frontier of troops, whose numbers had already been diminished by Constantine. Then at the beginning of the 5th century, during a furious irruption of Germans fleeing before Huns, the limes was carried away (406407); and for more than a hundred years the torrent of fugitives swept through the Empire, which retreated behind the Alps, there to breathe its last.

Whilst for ten years Alarics Goths and Stilichos Vandals were drenching Italy with blood, the Vandals and the Alani from the steppes of the Black Sea, dragging in their wake the The reluctant German tribes who had been allies of Rome ~ and who had already settled down to the cultivation of theirlands, invaded the now abandoned Gaul, and having come as far as the Pyrenees, crossed over them. After the passing of this torrent the Visigoths, under their kings Ataulphus, Wallia and Theodoric, still dazzled by the splendours of this immense empire, established themselves like submissive vassals in Aquitaine, with Toulouse as their capital. About the same time the Burgundians settled even more peaceably in Rhenish Gaul, and, after 456, to the west of the Jura in the valleys of The the Sane and the Rhone. The original Franks of Franks Germany, already established in the Empire, and before pressed upon by the same Huns who had already forced CloY S. the Goths across the Danube, passed beyond the Rhine and occupied north-eastern Gaul; Ripuarians of the Rhine establishing themselves on the Sambre and the Meuse, and Salians in Belgium, as far as the great fortified highroad from Bavai to Cologne. Accepted as allies, and supported by Roman prestige and by the active authority of the general Aetius, all these barbarians rallied round him and the Romans of Gaul, and ~fl 431 defeated the hordes of Attila, who had advanced as far as Orleans, at the great battle of the Catalaunian plains.

Thus at the end of the 5th century the Roman empire was nothing but a heap of ruins, and fidelity to the empire was now only maintained by the Catholic Church; she alone The clergy survived, as rich, as much honored as ever, and more and the powerful, owing to the disappearance of the imperial barbarofficials for whom she had found substitutes, and the tans.

decadence of the municipal bodies into whose inheritance she had entered. Owing to her the City of God gradually replaced the Roman imperial polity and preserved its civilization; while the Church allied herself more closely with the new kingdoms than she had ever done with the Empire. In. the Gothic or Burgundian states of the period the bishops, after having for a time opposed the barbarian invaders, sought and obtained from their chief the support formerly received from the emperor. Apollinaris Sidonius paid court to Euric, since 476 the independent king of the Visigoths, against whom he had defended Auvergne; and Avitus, bishop of Vienne, was graciously received by Gundibald, king of the Burgundians. But these princes were Arians, i.e. foreigners among the Catholic population; the alliance sought for by the Church could not reach her from that source, and it was from the rude and pagan Franks that she gained the material support which she still lacked. The conversion of Clovis was a master-stroke; it was fortunate both for himself and for the Franks. Unity in faith brought about unity in law.

Clovis was king of the Sicambrians, one of the tribes of the Salian Franks. Having established themselves in the plains of Northern Gaul, but driven by the necessity of finding new land to cultivate, in the days of their king Childeric they had descended into the fertile valleys of the chief. Somme and the Oise. Cloviss victory at Soissons over the last troops left in the service of Rome (486) extended their settlements as far as the Loire. By his conversion, which was due to his wife Clotilda and to Remigius, bishop of Reims, more than to the victory of Tolbiac over the Alamanni, Clovis made definitely sure of the Roman inhabitants and gave the Church an army (496). Thenceforward he devoted himself to the foundation of the Frankish monarchy by driving the exhausted and demoralized heretics out of Gaul, and by putting himself in the place of the now enfeebled emperor. In 500 he conquered Gundibald, king of the Burgundians, reduced him to a kind of vassalage, and forced him into reiterated promises of conversion to orthodoxy. In 507 he conquered and killed Alaric II., king of the Arian Visigoths, and drove the latter into Spain. Legend adorned his campaign in Aquitaine with miracles; the bishops were the declared allies of both him and his son Theuderich (Thierry) after his conquest of Auvergne. At Tours he received from the distant emperor at Constantinople the diploma and insignia of patricius and Roman consul, which legalized his military conquests by putting him in possession of civil powers. From this time forward a great historic transformation was effected in the eyes of the bishops and of the Gallo-Romans; the Frankish chief took the Clovisar place of the ancient emperors. Instead of blaming ~ him for the murder of the lesser kings of the Franks, his relatives, by which he had accomplished the union of the Frankish tribes, they saw in. this the han.d of God rewarding a faithful soldier and a converted pagan. He became their king, their new David, as the Christian emperors had formerly been; he built churches, endowed monasteries, protected St Vaast (Vedastus, d. 540), first bishop of Arras and Cambrai, who restored Christianity in northern Gaul. Like the emperors before him Clovis, too, reigned over the Church. Of his own authority he called together a council at Orleans in 511, the year of his death. He was already the grand distributor of ecclesiastical benefices, pending the time when his successors were to confirm the episcopal elections, and his power began to take on a more and more absolute character. But though he felt the ascendant influence of Christian teaching, he was not really penetrated by its spirit; a professing Christian, and a friend to the episcopate, Clovis remained a barbarian, crafty and ruthless. The bloody tragedies which disfigured the end of his reign bear sad witness to this; they were a fit prelude to that period during the course of which, as Gregory of Tours said, barbarism was let loose.

The conquest of Gaul, begun by Clovis, was finished by his sons: Theuderich, Chlodomer, Childebert and Clotaire. In three successive campaigns, from 523 to 532, they ~ annihilated the Burgundian kingdom, which had maintained its independence, and had endured for nearly a century. Favored by the war between Justinian, the East Roman emperor, and Theodorics Ostrogoths, the Frankish kings divided Provence among them as they had done in the case of Burgundy. Thus the whole of Gaul was subjected to the sbns of Clovis, except Septimania in the south-east, where the Visigoths still maintained their power. The Frankish armies then overflowed into the neighboring countries and began to pillage them. Their disorderly cohorts made an attack upon Italy, which was repulsed by the Lombards, and another on Spain with the same want of success; but beyond the Rhine they embarked upon the conquest of Germany, where Clovis had already reduced to submission the country on the banks of the Maine, later known. as Franconia. In 531 the Thuringians in the centre of Germany were brought into subjection by his eldest son, King Theuderich, and about the same time the Bavarians were united to the Franks, though preserving a certain autonomy. The Merovingian monarchy thus attained the utmost limits of its territorial expansion, bounded as it was by the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Rhine; it exercised influence over the whole of Germany, which it threw open to the Christian missionaries, and its conquests formed the first beginnings of German history.

But to these wars of aggrandizement and pillage succeeded those fratricidal struggles which disgraced the whole of the sixth ~t century and arrested the expansion of the Merovingian wrs. power. When Clotaire, the last surviving son of Clovis, died in 561, the kingdom was divided between his four sons like some piece of private property, as in 511, and according to the German method. The capitals of these four kingsCharibert, who died in 567, Guntram, Sigebert and Chilpericwere Paris, Orleans, Reims and Soissons all near one another and north of the Loire, where the Germanic inhabitants predominated; but their respective boundaries were so confused that disputes were inevitable. There was no trace of a political idea in these disputes; the mutual hatred of two women aggravated jealousy to the point of causing terrible civil wars from 561 to 613, and these finally created a national conflict which resulted in the dismemberment of the Frankish empire. Recognized, in fact, already as separate provinces were Austrasia, or the eastern kingdom, Neustria, or north-west Gaul and Burgundy; Aquitaine alone was as yet undifferentiated.

Sigebert had married Brunhilda, the daughter of a Visigoth king; she was beautiful and well educated, having been brought up in Spain, where Roman civilization still flourished. Fredegond Chilperic had married Galswintha, one of Brunhildas Beunhilda. sisters, for the sake of her wealth; but despite this marriage he had continued his amours with a waitingwoman named Fredegond, who pushed ambition to the point of crime, and she induced him to get rid of Galswintha. In order to avenge her sister, Brunhilda incited Sigebert to begin a war which terminated in 575 with the assassination of Sigebert by Fredegond at the very moment when, thanks to the help of the Germans, he had gained the victory, and with the imprisonment of Brunhilda at Rouen. Fredegond subsequently caused the death of Merovech (M~rove),the son of Chilperic, who had been secretly married to Brunhilda, and that of Bishop Praetextatus, who had solemnized their union. After this, Fredegond endeavoured to restore imperial finance to a state of solvency, and to set up a more regular form of government in her Neustria, which was less romanized and less wealthy than Burgundy, where Guntram was reigning, and less turbulent than theeastern kingdom, where most of the great warlike chiefs with their large landed estates were somewhat impatient of royal authority. But the accidental death of two of herchildren, the assassination of her husband in 584, and the advice of the Church, induced her to make overtures to her brother-in-law Guntram. A lover of peace through sheer cowardicer and as depraved in his morals as Chilperic, Guntram had played a vacillating and purely self-interested part in the family tragedy. He declared himself the protector of Fredegond, but his death in 593 delivered up Burgundy and Neustria to Brunhildas son Childebert, king of Austrasia, in consequence of the treaty of Andelot, made in 587. An ephemeral triumph, however; for Childebert died in 596, followed a year later by Fredegond.

The whole of Gaul was now handed over to three children:

Childeherts two sons, Theudebert and Theuderich (Thierry), and the son of Fredegond, Clotaire II. The latter, having vanquished the two former at Latofao in 596, was in turn beaten by them at Dormelles in 600, and a year later a fresh fratricidal struggle broke out between the two grandsons of the agedBrunhilda. Theuderich joined with Clotaire against Theodobert, and invaded his brothers kingdom, conquering first an army of Austrasians and then one composed of Saxons and Thuringians. Strife began again in 613 in consequence of Theuderichs desire to join Austrasia to Neustria, but his death delivered the kingdoms into the hands of Clotaire II. This weak king leant for support upon the nobles of Burgundy and Austrasia, impatient as they were of obedience to a woman and the representative of Rome. The ecclesiastical party also abandoned Brunhilda because of her persecution of their saints, after which Clotaire, having now got the upper hand, thanks to the defection of the Austrasian nobles, of Arnulf, bishop of Metz, with his brother Pippin, and of Warnachaire, mayor of the palace, made a terrible end of Brurihilda in 613. Her long reign had not lacked intelligence and even greatness; she alone, amid all these princes, warped by self-indulgence or weakened by discord, had behaved like a statesman, and she alone understood the obligations of the government she had inherited. She wished to abolish the fatal tradition of dividing up the kingdom, which so constantly prevented any possible unity; in opposition to the nobles she used her royal authority to maintain the Roman principles of order and regular administration. Towards the Church she held a courteous but firm policy, renewing relations between the Frankish kingdom and the pope; and she so far maintained the greatness of the Empire that tradition associated her name with the Roman roads in the north of France, entitling them les chausses de Brunehaut.

Like his grandfather, Clotaire Il. reigned over a once more united Gaul of Franks and Gallo-Romans, and like Clovis lie was not too well Obeyed by the nobles; moreover, his had been a victory more for the aristocracy than ~ re for the crown, since it limited the power of the latter. Not that the permanent constitution of the 18th of October 614 was of the nature of an anti-monarchic revolution, for the royal power still remained very great, decking itself with the pompous titles of the Empire, and continuing to bethe dominant institution; but the reservations which Clotaire Ii. had to make in conceding the demands of the bishops and great laymen show the extent and importance of the concessions these latter were already aiming at. The bishops, the real inheritors of the imperial idea of government, had become great landowners through enormous donatkins made to the Church, and allied as they were to the aristocracy, whence their ranks were continually recruited, they had gradually identified themselves with the interests of their class and had adopted its customs; while thanhi to long minorities and civil wars the aristocracy of the high officials had taken an equally important social position. The treaty of Andelot in 587 had already decided that the benefices or lands granted to them by the kings should be held for life. In the 7th century the Merovingian kings adopted the custom of summoning them all, and not merely the officials of their Palatium, to discuss political affairs; they began, moreover, to choose their counts or administrators from among the great landholders. This necessity for approval and support points to yet another alteration in the nature of the royal power, absolute as it was in theory.

The Mayoralty of the Palace aimed a third and more serious blow at the royal authority. By degrees, the high officials of the - Pal atium, whether secular or ecclesiastical, The and also the provincial counts, had rallied round mayorS of the palace. the mayors of the palace as their real leaders. As under the Empire, the Palatium was both royal court and centre of government, with the same bureaucratic hierarchy and the same forms of administration; and the mayor of the palace was premier official of this itinerant court and ambulatory government. Moreover, since the palace controlled the whole of each kingdom, the mayors gradually extended their official authority so as to include functionaries and agents of every kind, instead of merely those attached immediately to the kings person. They suggested candidates for office for the royal selection, often appointed office-holders, and, by royal warrant, supported or condemned them. Mere subordinates while the royal power was strong, they had become, owing to the frequent minorities, and to civil wars which broke the tradition of obedience, the all-powerful ministers of kings nominally absolute but without any real authority. Before long they ceased to claim an even greater degree of independence than that of Warnachaire, who forced Clotaire II. to swear that he should never be deprived of his mayoralty of Burgundy; they wished to take the first place in the kingdoms they governed, and to be able to attack neighboring kingdoms on their own account. A struggle, motived by self-interest, no doubt; but a struggle, too, of opposing principles. Since the Frankish monarchy was now in their power some of ,them tried to reestablish the unity of that monarchy in all its integrity, together with the superiority of the State over the Church; others, faithless to the idea of unity, saw in the disintegration of the state and the supremacy of the nobles a warrant for their own independence. These two tendencies, were destined to strive ~against one another during an entire century (613714), and to occasion two periods of violent conflict, which, divided by a kind of renascence of royalty, were to end at last in the triumphant substitution of the Austrasian mayors for royalty and aristocracy alike.

The first struggle began on the accession of Clotaire II., when Austrasia, having had a king of her own ever since 561,

~, ~ demanded one now. In 623 Clotaire was obliged to send her his son Dagobert and even to extend his between territory. But in Dagoberts name two men ruled, monarchy representing the union of the official aristocracy and ~yoi.~ty the Church. One, Pippin of Landen, derived his power from his position as mayor of the palace, from great estates in Aquitaine and between the Meuse and the Rhine, and from the immense number of his supporters; the other, Arnulf, bishop of Metz, sprang from a great family, probably of Roman descent, and was besides immensely wealthy in worldly possessions. By the union of their forces Pippin and Arnulf were destined to shape the future. They had already, in 613, treated with Clotaire and betrayed the hopes of Brunhilda, being consequently rewarded with the guardianship of young Dagobert. Burgundy followed the example of Austrasia, demanded the abolition of the mayoralty, and in 627 succeeded in obtaining her independence of Neustria and Austrasia and direct relations with the king.

The death of Clotaire (629) was the signal for a revival of the royal power. Dagobert deprived Pippin of Landen of his authority and forced him to fly to Aquitaine; ~ but still he had to give the Austrasians his son Sigebert monarchy III. for their king (634). He made administrative under progresses through Neustria and Burgundy to recall ~ the nobles to their allegiance, but again he was forced to designate his second son Clovis as king of Neustria.

He did subdue Aquitaine completely, thanks to his brother Charibert, with whom he had avoided dividing the kingdom, and he tried to restore his own demesne, which had been despoiled by the granting of benefices or by the pious frauds of the Church. In short, this reign was one of great conquests, impossible except under a strong government. Dagoberts victories over Samo, king of the Slays along the Elbe, and his subjugation of the Bretons and the Basques, maintained the prestige of the Frankish empire; while the luxury of his court, his taste for the fine arts (ministered to by his treasurer Eloi i), his numerous achievements in architectureespecially the abbey of St Denis, burial-place of the kings of Francethe brilliance and the power of the churchmen who surrounded him and his revision of the Salic law, ensured for his reign, in spite of the failure of his plans for unity, a fame celebrated in folksong and ballad.

But for barbarous nations old-age comes early, and after Dagoberts death (639), the monarchy went swiftly to its doom. The mayors of the palace again became supreme, The Roes and the kings not only ceased to appoint them, but falnnnis might not even remove them from office. Such mayors .(dowere Aega and Erchinoald, in Neustria, Pippin and Otto in Austrasia, and Flaochat in Burgundy. One nffS).

of them, Grimoald, son of Pippin, actually dared to take the title of king in Austrasia (640). This was a premature attempt and barren of result, yet it was significant; and not less so is the fact that the palace in which these mayors bore rule was a huge association of great personages, laymen and ecciesiastics who seem to have had much more independence than in the 6th century. We find the dukes actually raising troops without the royal sanction, and even against the king. In 64! the mayor Flaochat was forced to swear that they should hold their offices for life; and though these offices were not yet hereditary, official dynasties, as it were, began to be established permanently within the palace. The crown lands, the governorships, the different offices, were looked upon as common property to be shared between themselves. Organized into a compact body they surrounded the king and were far more powerful than he. In the general assembly of its members this body of officials decided the selection of the mayor; it presented Flaochat to the choice of Queen Nanthilda, Dagoberts widow; after long discussion it appointed Ebroin as mayor; it submitted requests that were in reality commands to the Assembly of Bonneuil in 616 and later to Childeric in 670. Moreover, the countries formerly subdued by the Franks availed themselves of this opportunity to loosen the yoke; Thuringia was lost by Sigebert in 641, and the revolt of Alamannia in 643 set back the frontier of the kingdom from the Elbe to Austrasia. Aquitaine, hitherto the common prey of all the Frankislh kings, having in vain tried to profit by the struggles between Fredegond and Brunhilda, and set up an independent king, Gondibald, now finally burst her bonds in 670. Then came a time when the kings were mere children, honored with but the semblance of respect, under the tutelage of a single mayor, ErbroIn of Neustria.

This representative of royalty, chief minister for four-andtwenty years (656681), attempted the impossible, endeavouring to re-establish unity in the midst of general dissolution and to maintain intact a royal authority usurped between everywhere by the hereditary power of the great Ebromn and palatine families. He soon stirred up against himself Le~er.

all the dissatisfied nobles, led by Lger (Leodegarius), bishop of Autun and his brother Gerinus. Clotaire III.s death gave the signal for war. Ebromns enemies set up Childeric II. in opposition to Theuderich, the king whom he had chosen without summoning the great provincial officials. Despite a temporary triumph, when Childeric was forced to recognize the principle of hereditary succession in public offices, and when the mayoralties of Neustria and Burgundy were alternated to the profit of both, Lger soon fell into disgrace and was exiled to that very monastery of Luxeuil to which Ebromn had been relegated. Childeric having regained the mastery restored the mayors office, which was immediately disputed by the two rivals; Ebroin was successful and established himself as mayor of the palace in the room of Leudesius, a partisan of Lger (675),

St Eligius, bishop of Noyon, apostle of the Belgians and Frisians (d. 659?).

following this up by a distribution of offices and dignities right and left among his adherents. Lger was put to death in 678, and the Austrasians, commanded by the Carolingian Pippin II., with whom many of the chief Neustrians had taken refuge, were dispersed near Laon (680). But EbroIn was assassinated next year in the midst of his triumph, having like Fredegond been unable to do more than postpone for a quarter of a century the victory of the nobles and of Austrasia; for his successor, Berthar, was unfitted to carry on his work, having neither his gifts and energy nor the powerful personality of Pippin. Berthar met his death at the battle of Tertry (687), which B ~ gave the king into the hands of Pippin, as also the T:rt,y. royal treasure and the mayoralty, and by thus enabling him to reward his followers made him supreme over the Merovingian dynasty. Thenceforward the degenerate descendants of Clovis offered no further resistance to his claims, though it was not unti 752 that their line became extinct.

In that year the Merovingian dynasty gave place to the rule of Pippin II. of Heristal, who founded a Carolingian empire fated to be as ephemeral as that of the Merovingians. This political victory of the aristocracy was merely the consummation of a slow subterranean revolution which by innumerable reiterated blows had sapped the structure of the body politic, and was about to transfer the people of Gaul from the Roman monarchical and administrative government to the sway of the feudal system.

The Merovingian kings, mere war-chiefs before the advent of Clovis, had after the conquest of Gaul become absolute hereditary causes of nionarchs, thanks to the disappearance of the popular the failof assemblies and to the perpetual state of warfare. the Mero- They concentrated in their own hands all the powers vingians, of the empire, judicial, fiscal and military; and even the so-called rois fainants enjoyed this unlimited power, in spite of the general disorder and the civil wars. To make their authority felt in the provinces they had an army of officials at their disposala legacy, this, from imperial Rome who represented them in the eyes of their various peoples. They had therefore only to keep up this established government, but they could not manage even this much; they allowed the idea of the common interests of kings and their subjects gradually to die out, and forgetting that national taxes are a necessary impost, a charge for service rendered by the state, they had treated these as though they were illicit and unjustifiable spoils. The taxpayers, with the clergy at their head, adopted the same idea, and every day contrived fresh methods of evasion. Merovingian justice was on the same footing as Merovingian finance: it was arbitrary, violent and self-seeking. The Church, too, never failed to oppose itat first not so much on account of her own ambitions as in a more Christian spiritand proceeded to weaken the royal jurisdiction by repeated interventions on behalf of those under sentence, afterwards depriving it of authority over the clergy, and then setting up ecclesiastical tribunals in opposition to those held by the dukes and counts. At last, just as the kingdom had become the personal property of the king, so the officialsdukes, counts, royal vicars, tribunes, centenariiwho had for the most part bought their unpaid offices by means of presents to the monarch, came to look upon the public service rather as a mine of official wealth than as an administrative organization for furthering the interests, material or moral, of the whole nation. They became petty local tyrants, all the more despotic because they had nothing to fear save the distant authority of the kings missi, and the more rapacious because they had no salary save the fines they inflicted and the fees that they contrived to multiply. Gregory of Tours tells us that they were robbers, not protectors of the people, and that justice and the whole administrative apparatus were merely engines of insatiable greed. It was the abuses thus committed by the kings and their agents, who did not understand the art of gloving the iron hand, aided by the absolutely unfettered licence of conduct and the absence of any popular liberty, that occasioned the gradual increase of charters of immunity.

Immunity was the direct and personal privilege which forbade any royal official or his agents to decide cases, to levy taxes, or to exercise any administrative control on the domains of a bishop, an abbot, or one of the great secular iflmunlty~ nobles. On thousands of estates the royal government gradually allowed the law of the land to be superseded by locaL law, and public taxation to change into special contributions; so that the duties of the lower classes towards the state were transferred to the great landlords, who thus became loyal adherents of the king but absolute masters on their own territory. The Merovingians had no idea that they were abdicating the least part of their authority, nevertheless the deprivations acquiesced in by the feebler kings led of necessity to the diminution of their authority and their judicial powers, and to the abandonment of public taxation. They thought that by granting immunity they would strengthen their direct control; in reality they established the local independence of the great landowners, by allowing royal rights to pass into their hands. Then came confusion between the rights of the sovereign and the rights of property. The administrative machinery of the state still existed, but it worked in empty air: its taxpayers disappeared, those who were amenable to its legal jurisdiction slipped from its grasp, -and the number of those whose affairs it should have directed dwindled away. Thus the Merovirigians had shown themselves incapable of rising above the barbarous notion that royalty is a personal asset to the idea that royalty is of the state, a power belonging to the nation and instituted for the benefit of all. They represented in society nothing more than a force which grew feebler and feebler as other forces grew strong; they never stood for a national magistracy.

Society no le~s than the state was falling asunder by a gradual process of decay. Under the Merovingians it was a hierarchy wherein grades were marked by the varied scale of the Disruption wergild, a man being worth anything from thirty to six of the hundred gold pieces. The different degrees were those social of slave, freedman, tenant-farmer and great landowner.

As in every social scheme where the government is wor without real power, the weakest sought protection of the strongest; and the system of patron, client and journeyman, which had existed among the Romans, the Gauls and the Germans, spread rapidly in the 6th and 7th centuries, owing to public disorder and the inadequate protection afforded by the government. The Churchs patronage provided some with a refuge from violence; others ingratiated themselves with the rich for the sake of shelter and security; others again sought place and honor from men of power; while women, churchmen and warriors alike claimed the kings direct and personal pro tection. - - -

This hierarchy of persons, these private relations of man to man, were recognized by custom in default of the law, and were soon strength ned by another and territorial hierarchy.

The heneThe large estate, especially if it belonged to the Church, ficium.

very soon absorbed the few fields of the freeman.

In order to farm these, the Church and the rich landowners granted back the holdings on the temporary and conditional terms of tenancy-at-will or of the beneficium, thus multiplying endlessly the land subject to their overlordship and the men who were dependent upon them as tenants. The kings, like private individuals and ecclesiastical establishments, made use of the beneficium to reward their servants; till finally their demesne was so reduced by these perpetual grants that they took to distributing among their champions land owning the overlordship of the Church, or granted their own lands for single lives only. These various benefactions were, as a rule, merely the indirect methods which the great landowners employed in order to absorb the small proprietor. And so well did they succeed, that in the 6th and 7th centuries the provincial hierarchy consisted of the cultivator, the holder of the benejicium and the owner; while this dependence of one man upon another affected the personal liberty of a large section of the community, as well as the condition of the land. The great landowner tended to become not only lord over his tenants, but also himself a vassal of the king.

Thus by means of immunities, of the beneficium nnd of patronage, society gradually organized itself independently of the state, since it required further security. Such ~of extra security was first provided by the conqueror of Tertry; for Pippin II. represented the two great families of Pippin and of Arnulf, and consequently the two interests then paramount, i.e. land and religion, while he had at his back a great company of followers and vast landed estates. For forty years (6f5655) the office of mayor of Austrasia had gone down in his family almost continuously in direct descent from father to son. The death of Grimoald had caused ,the loss of this post, yet Ansegisus (Ansegisel), Arnulfs son and Pippins son-in-law, had continued to hold high office in the Austrasian palace; and about 680 his son, Pippin II., became master of Austrasia, although he had held no previous office in the palace. His dynasty was destined to supplant that of the Merovingian house.

Pippin of Heristal was a pioneer; he it was who began. all that his descendants were afterwards to carry through. Thus he gathered the nobles about him not by virtue of his position, but because of his own personal prowess, and because he could assure them of justice and protection; instead of being merely the head of the royal palace he was the absolute lord of his own followers. Moreover, he no longer bore the title of mayor, but that of duke or prince of the Franks; and the mayoralty, like the royal power now reduced to a shadow, became an hereditary possession which Pippin could bestow upon his sons. The reigns of Theuderich III., Clovis III. or Childebert III. are of no significance except as serving to date charters and diplomas. Pippin it was who administered justice in Austrasia, appointed officials and distributed dukedoms; and it was Pippin, the ~ilitary leader, who defended the frontiers threatened by Frisians, Alamanni and Bavarians. Descended as he was from Arnuif, bishop of Metz, he was before all things a churchman, and behind his armies marched the missionaries to whom the Carolingian dynasty, of which he was the founder, were to subject all Christendom. Pippin it was, in short, who governed, who set in order the social confusions of Neustria, who, after long wars, put a stop to the malpractices of the dukes and counts, and summoned councils of bishops to make good regulations. But at his death in. 714 the child-king Dagobert III. found himself subordinated to Pippins two grandsons, who, being minccrs, were under the wardship of their grandmother Plectrude.

Pippins work was almost un.donea party among the Neustrians under Raginfrid, mayor of the palace, revolted against Pippin IIs adherents, and Radbod, duke of Charles the Frisians, joined them. But the Austrasians (fl54,4J) appealed to an illegitimate son of Pippin, Charles Martel, who had escaped from the prison to which Plectrude, alarmed at his prowess, had consigned him, and took him for their leader. With Charles Martel begins the great period of Austrasian history. Faithful to the traditions of the Austrasian mayors, he chose kings for himselfClotaire IV., then Chilperic II. and lastly Theuderich IV. After Theuderichs death (737) he left the throne vacant until 742, but he himself was king in all but name; he presided over the royal tribunals, appointed the royal officers, issued edicts, disposed of the funds of the treasury and the churches, conferred immunities upon adherents, who were no longer the kings nobles but his own, and even appointed the bishops, though there was nothing of the ecclesiastic about himself. He decided questions of war and peace, and re-established unity in Gaul by defeating the Neustrians and the Aquitanian followers of Duke Odo (Eudes) at Vincy in 717. When Odo, brought to bay, appealed for help to the Arab troops of Abd-arRahman, who after conquering Spain had crossed the Pyrenees, Charles, like a second Clovis, saved Catholic Christendom in its peril by crushing the Arabs at Tours (732). The retreat of the Arabs, who were further weakened by religious disputes, enabled him to restore Frankish rule in Aquitaine in spite of Hunald, son of Odo. But Charless longest expeditions were made into Germany, and in these he sought the support of the Church, then the greatest of all powers since it was the depositary of the Roman imperial tradition.

No less unconscious of his mission than Clovis had been, Charles Martel also was a soldier of Christ. He protected the missionaries who paved the way for his militant invasions. Without Charles him the apostle of Germany, the English monk Boniface, Martel would never have succeeded in preserving the purity and the of the faith and keeping the bishops submissive to Chumh. the Holy See. The help given by Charles had two very farreaching results. Boniface was the instrument of the union of Rome and Germany, of which union the Holy Roman Empire in Germany was in the 10th century to become the most perfect expression, continuing up to the time of Luther. And Boniface also helped on the alliance between the papacy and the Carolingian dynasty, which, more momentous even than that between Clovis and the bishops of Gaul, was to sanctify might by right.

This union was imperative ~r the bishops of Rome if they wished to establish their supremacy, and their care for orthodoxy by no means excluded all desire of domination. Mere Charles religious authority did not secure to them the obedience Marie! and of either the faithful or the clergy; moreover, they aregory had to consider the great secular powers, and in this sb.

respect their temporal position in Italy was growing unbearable. Their relations with the East Roman emperor (sole lord of the world after the Roman Senate had sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople in 476) were confined to receiving insults from him or suspecting him of heresy. Even in northern Italy there was no longer any opposition to the progress of the Lombards, the last great nation to be established towards the end of the 6th century within the ancient Roman empire~-their king Liudprand clearly intended to seize Italy and even Rome itself. Meanwhile from the south attacks were being made by the rebel dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum. Pope Gregory III. cherished dreams of an alliance with the powerful duke of the Franks, as St Remigius before him had thought of uniting with Clovis against the Goths. Charles Martel had protected Boniface on his German missions: he would perhaps lend Gregory the support of his armies. But the warrior, like. Clovis aforetime, hesitated to put himself at the disposal of the priest. When it was a question of winning followers or keeping them, he had not scrupled to lay hands on ecclesiastical property, nor to fill the Church with his friends and kinsfolk, and this alliance might embarrass him. So if he loaded the Roman ambassadors with gifts in 739, he none the less remembered that the Lombards had just helped him to drive the Saracens from Provence. However, he died soon after this, on the 22nd of October 74, and Gregory III. followed him almost immediately.

Feeling his end near, Charles, before an assembly of nobles, had divided his power between his two sons, Carloman and Pippin III. The royal line seemed to have been forgotten for six years, but in 742 Pippin brought a lit son of Chilperic II. out of a monastery and made him d. king. This Childeric III. was but a shadowand knew it. He made a phantom appearance once every spring at the opening of the great annual national convention known as the Campus Martius (Champ de Mars): a dumb idol, his chariot drawn in leisurely fashion by oxen, he disappeared again into his palace or monastery. An unexpected event re-established unity in the Carolingian family. Pippins brother, the pious Carloman, became a monk in 747, and Pippin, now sole ruler of the kingdom, ordered Childeric also to cut off his royal locks; after which, being king in all but name, he adopted that title in 752. Thus ended the revolution which had been going on for two centuries. The disappearance of Grippo, Pippins illegitimate brother, who, with the help of all the enemies of the FranksAlamanni, Aquitanians and P~th1e Bavarianshad disputed his power, now completed the 752.768. work of centralization, and Pippin had only to maintain it. For this the support of the Church was indispensable, and Pippin understood the advantages of such an alliance better than Charles Martel. A son of the Church, a protector of bishops, a president of councils, a collector of relics, devoted to Boniface (whom he invited, as papal legate, to reform the clergy of Austrasia), he astutely accepted the new claims of the vicar of St Peter to the headship of the Church, perceiving the value of an alliance with this rising power.

Prudent enough to fear resistance if he usurped the Merovingian crown, Pippin the Short made careful preparations for his Ss,e,~d accession, and discussed the question of the dynasty character with Pope Zacharias. Receiving a favorable opinion, of the new he had himself anointed and crowned by Boniface mon8rchy. in the name of the bishops, and was then proclaimed king in an assembly of nobles, counts and bishops at Soissons in November 751. Still, certain disturbances made him see that aristocratic approval of his kingship might be strengthened if it could claim a divine sanction which no Merovingian had ever received. Two years later, therefore, he demanded a consecration of his usurpation from the pope, and in St Denis on the 28th of July 754 Stephen II. crowned and anointed not only Pippin, but his wife and his two sons as well.

The political results of this custom of coronation were allimportant for the Carolingians, and later for the first of the Capets. Pippin was hereby invested with new dignity, PippIn and when Bonifaces anointing had been confirmed apnapacye by that of the pope, he became the head of the Frankish Church, the equal of the pope. Moreover, he astutely contrived to extend his priestly prestige to his whole family; his royalty was no longer merely a military command or a civil office, but became a Christian priesthood. This sacred character was not, however, conferred gratuitously. On the very day of his coronation Pippin allowed himself to be proclaimed patrician of the Romans by the pope, just as Clovis had been made consul. This title of theimperial court was purely honorary, but it attached him still more closely to Rome, though without lessening his independence. He had besides given. a written promise to defend the Church of Rome, and that not against the Lombards only. Qualified by letters of the papal chancery as liberator and defender of the Church, his armies twice (75.4 756) crossed the Alps, despite the opposition of the Frankish aristocracy, and forced Aistuif, king of the Lombards, to cede to him the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis. Pippin gave them back to Pope Stephen IL, and by thisfamousdonation founded that temporal power of the popes which was to endure until 1870. He also dragged the Western clergy into the popes quarrel with the emperor at Constantinople, by summoning the council of Gentiily, at which the iconoclastic heresy was condemned (767). Matters being thus settled with Rome, Pippin again took up his wars against the Saxons, against the Arabs (whom he drove from Narbonne in 758), and above all against Wailer, duke of Aquitaine, and his ally, duke Tassilo of Bavaria. This last war was carried on systematically from 76o to 768, and ended in the death of WaIfer and the definite establishment of the Frankish hold on Aquitaine. When Pippin died, aged fifty-four, on the 24th of September 768, the whole of Gaul had submitted to his authority.

Pippin left two sons, and before he died he had, with the consent of the dignitaries of the realm, divided his kingdom between them, making the elder, Charles(Charlemagne), ~ king of Austrasia, and giving the younger, Carloman, Burgundy, Provence, Septimania, Alsace and Alamannia, and half of Aquitaine to each. On. the 9th of October 768 Charles was enthroned at Noyon in solemn assembly, and Carloman at Soissons. The Carolingian sovereignty was thus neither hereditary nor elective, but was handed down by the will of the reigning king, and by a solemn acceptance of the future king on the part of the nobles. In 771 Carloman, with whom Charles had had disputes, died, leaving sons; but bishops, abbots and counts all declared for Charles, save a few who took refuge in Italy with Desiderius, king of the Lombards. Desiderius, whose daughter Bertha or Desiderata Charles, despite the pope, had married at the instance of his mother Bertrade, supported the rights of Carlomans sons, and threatened Pope Adrian in Rome itself after he had despoiled him of Pippins territorial gift. At the popes appeal Charles crossed the Alps, took Verona and Pavia after a long siege, assumed the iron crown of the Lombard kings (June 774), and made a triumphal entry into Rome, which had not formed part of the popes desires. Pippins donation was restored, but the protectorate was no longer so distant, respectful and intermittent as the pope liked. After the departure of the imperious conqueror, a fresh revolt of the Lombards of Beneventum under Arichis, Desideriuss son-in-law, supported by a Greek fleet, obliged Pope Adrian to write fresh entreaties to Charlemagne; and in two campaigns (776777) the latter conquered the whole Lombard kingdom. But another of Desideriuss daughters, married to the powerful duke Tassilo of Bavaria, urged her husband to avenge her father, now imprisoned in the monastery of Corbie. After endless intrigues, however, the duke, hemmed in by three different armies, had in his turn to submit (788), and all Italy was now subject to Charlemagne. These wars in Italy, even the fall of the Lombard kingdom and the recapture of the duchy of Bavaria, were merely episodes: Charlemagnes great war was against the Saxons and lasted thirty years (772804).

The work of organizing the three great Carolingian conquests Aquitaine, Italy and Saxonyhad yet to be done. Charlemagne approached it with a moderation equal to the vigour which he had shown in the war. But by multiplying ~ its advance-posts, the Frankish kingdom came into con quests. contact with new peoples, and each new neighbor meant a new enemy. Aquitaine bordered upon Mussulman Spain; the Avars of Hungary threatened Bavaria with their tireless horsemen; beyond the Elbe and the Saul the Slays were perpetually at war with the Saxons, and to the north of the Eider were the Danes. All were pagans; all enemies of Charlemagne, defender of Christs Church, and hence the appointed conqueror of the world.

Various causesthe weakening of the Arabs by the struggle between the Omayyads and the Abbasids just after the battle of Tours; the alliance of the petty Christian kings of Wars with the Spanish peninsula; an appeal from the northern the Arabs, amirs who had revolted against the new caliphate of Slays and Cordova (755)made Charlemagne resolve to cross ~h1es.

the Pyrenees. He penetrated as. far as the Ebro, but was defeated before Saragossa; and in their retreat the Franks were attacked by Vascons, losing many men as they came through the passes. This defeat of the rear-guard, famous for the death of the great Roland and the treachery of Ganelo, induced the Arabs to take the offensive once more and to conquer Septimania. Charlemagne had created the kingdom ofAquitaine especially to defend Septimania, and William, duke of Toulouse, from 790 to 806, succeeded in restoring Frankish authority down to the Ebro, thus founding the Spanish March with Barcelona as its capital. For two centuries and a half the Avars, a remnantof the Huns entrenched in the Hungarian Mesopotamia, had made descents alternately upon the Germans and upon the Greeks of the Eastern empire. They had overrun Bavaria in the very year of its subjugation by Charlemagne (788), and it took an eight-years struggle to destroy the robber stronghold. The empire thus pushed its frontier-line on from tl~e Elbe tp the Oder, ever as it grew menaced by increasing danger~s. The sea came to the help of the depopulated land, and Danish pirates, Widukinds old allies, came in their leathern boats to harry the coasts of t~ e North Sea and the Channel. Permanent armies and walls across isthmuses were alike useless; Charlemagne had to build fleets to repulse his elusive foes (808810), and even after forty years of war the danger was only postponed.

Meanwhile Pippins Frankish kingdom, vast and powerful as it had been, was doubled. All nations from the Oder to the Elbe and from the Danube to the Atlantic were subject or tributary, and Charlemagnes power even crossed these frontiers. At his summons Christian. princes empire. and Mussulman amirs flocked to his palaces. The kings of Northumbria and Sussex, the kings of the Basques and of Galicia, Arab amirs of Spain and Fez, and even the caliph of Bagdad came to visit him in person or sent gifts by the hands of ambassadors. A great warrior and an upright ruler, his conquests recalled those of the great Christian emperors, and the Church completed the parallel by training him in her lore. This still barely civilized German literally went to school to the English Alcuin and to Peter of Pisa, who, between two campaigns, taught him history, writing, grammar and astronomy, satisfying also his interest in sacred music, literature (religious literature especially),and the traditions of Rome and Constantinople. Why should he not be the heir of their Caesars? And so, little by little, this man of insatiable energy was possessed by the ambition of restoring the Empire of the West in his own favor, There were, however, two serious obstacles in the way: first, the supremacy of the emperor of the East, which though nominal Charle- rather than real was upheld by peoples, princes, and magne even by popes; secondly, the rivalry of the bishops emperor of Rome, who since the early years of Adrians (800). pontificate had claimed the famous Donation of Constantine. According to that apocryphal document, the emperor after his baptism had ceded to the sovereign pontiff his imperial power and honors, the purple chlamys, the golden crown, the town of Rome, the districts and cities of Italy and of all the West. But in 797 the empress of Constantinople had just deposed her son Constantine VI. after putting out his eyes, and the throne might be considered vacant; while on the other hand, Pope Leo III., who had been driven from Rome by a revolt in 799, and had only been restored by a Frankish army, counted for little beside the Frankish monarch, and could not but submit to the wishes of the Carolingian court. So when next year the king of the Franks went to Rome in person, on Christmas Eve of the year 8oo and in the basilica of St Peter the pope placed on his head the imperial crown and did him reverence after the established custom of the time of the ancient emperors. The Roman ideal, handed down in tradition through the centuries, was here first revived.

This event, of capital importance for the middle ages, was fertile in results both beneficial and the reverse. It brought about the rupture between the West and Constantinople. Then Charlemagne raised the papacy on the ruins of Lombardy to the position of first political power in Italy; and the universal Church, headed by the pope, made common cause with the Empire, which all the thinkers of that day regarded as the ideal state. Confusion between these powers was inevitable, but at this time neither Charles, the pope, nor the people had a suspicion of the troubles latent in the ceremony that seemed so simple. Thirdly, Charlemagnes title of emperor strengthened his other title of king of the Franks, as is proved by the fact that at the great assembly of Aix-la-Chapeile in 802 he demanded from all, whether lay or spiritual, a new oath of allegiance to himself as Caesar. His increased power came rather from moral value, from the prestige attaching to one who had given proof of it, than from actual authority over men or centralization; this is shown by the division between the Empire and feudalism. Universal sovereignty claimed as a heritage from Rome had a profound influence upon popular imagination, but in no way modified that tendency to separation of the various nations which was already manifest. Charles himself in his government preferred to restore the ancient Empire by vigorous personal action, rather than to follow old imperial traditions; he introduced cohesion into his palace, and perfect centralization into his official administration, inspiring his followers and servants, clerical and lay, with a common and determined zeal. The system was kept in full vigour by the missi dominici, who regularly reported or reformed any abuses of adniinistration, and by the courts, military, judicial or political, which brought to Charlemagne the strength of the wealth of his subjects, carrying his commands and his ideas to the farthest, limits of the Empire. Under him there was in fact a kind of early renaissance after centuries of barbarism and ignorance.

The c~- This emperor, who assumed so high a tone with his flnglan subjects, his bishops and his counts, who undertook Renais- to uphold public order in civil life, held himself no saa~. less responsible for the eternal salvation of mens souls in the other world. Thanks to Charlemagne, and through the restoration of order and of the schools, a common civilization was prepared for the varied elements of the Empire. By his means the Church was able to concentrate in the palatine academy all the intellectual culture of the middle ages, having preserved some of the ancient traditions of organization and administration and guarded the imperial ideal. Charlemagne apparently wished, like Theodoric, to use German blood and Christian unity to bring back life to the great body of the Empire. Not the equal of Caesar or Augustus in genius or in the lastingness of his work, he yet recalls them in his capitularies, his periodic courts, his official hierarchy, his royal emissaries, his ministers, his sole right of coinage, his great public works, his campaigns against barbarism and heathenry, his zeal for learning and literature, and his divinity as emperor. Once more there existed a great public entity such as had not been seen for many years; but its duration was not to be a long one.

Charlemagne had for the moment succeeded in uniting western Europe under his sway, but he had not been able to arrest its evolution towards feudal dismemberment. He had, Dissoludoubtless conscientiously, labored for the recon- tion of the stitution of the Empire; but it often happens that Frankish individual wills produce results other than those at Empire. which they aimed, sometimes results even contrary to their wishes, and this was what happened in Charlemagnes case. He had restored the superstructure of the imperial monarchy, but he had likewise strengthened and legalized methods and institutions till then private and insecure, and these, passing from custom into law, undermined the foundations of the structure he had thought himself to be repairing. A quarter of a century after his death his Empire was in ruins.

The practice of giving land as a beneficium to a grantee who swore personal allegiance to the grantor had persisted, and by his capitularies Charlemagne had made these personal engagements, these contracts of immunityhitherto not transferable, nor even for life, but quite conditionalregular, legal, even obligatory and almost indissoluble. The beneficium was to be as practically irrevocable as the oath of fidelity. He submitted to the yoke of the social system and feudal institutions at the very moment when he was attempting to revive royal authority; he was ruler of the state, but ruler of vassals also. The monarchical principle no longer sufficed to ensure social discipline; the fear of lorfeiting the grant became the only powerful guarantee of obedience, and as this only applied to his personal vassals, Charlemagne gave up his claim to direct obedience from the test of the people, accepting the mediation of the counts, lords and bishops, who levied taxes, adjudicated and administered in virtue of the privileges of patronage, not of the right of the state. The very multiplication of offices, so noticeable at this time, furthered this triumph of feudalism by multiplying the links of personal dependence, and neutralizing more and more the direct action of the central authority. The frequent convocations of military assemblies, far from testifying to political liberty, was simply a means of communicating the emperors commands to the various feudal groups.

Thus Charlemagne, far from opposing, systematized feudalism, in order that obedience and discipline might~ pass from one man to another down to thelowest grades of society, and he succeeded for his own lifetime. No authority was more weighty or more respected than that of this feudal lord of Gaul, Italy and Germaiiy; none was more transient, because it was so purely personal.

When the great emperor was buried at Aix-la-Chapelle in 814, his work was entombed with him. The fact was that his successors were incapable of maintaining it. Twenty- Causes for nine years after his death the Carolingian Empire had the disbeen divided into three kingdoms; forty years later solution one alone of these kingdoms had split into seven; ~ while when a century had passed France was a litter of tiny states each practically independent. This disintegration was caused neither by racial hate nor by linguistic patriotism. It was the weakness of princes, the discouragement of freemen and landholders confronted by an inexorable system of financial and military tyranny, and the incompatibility of a vast empire with a too primitive governmental system, that wrecked the work of Charlemagne.

The Empire fell to Louis the Pious, sole survivor of his three sons. At the Aix assembly in 813 his father had crowned him with his own hand, thus avoiding the papal sanction Louis that had been almost forced upon himself in 800.

- Louis was a gentle and well-trained prince, but weak and prone to excessive devotion to the Church. He had only reigned a few years when dissensions broke out on all sides, as under the Merovingians. Charlemagne had assigned their portions to his three sons in 781 and again in 806; like Charles Martel and Pippin the Short before him, however, what he had divided was not the imperial authority, nor yet countries, but the whole system of fiefs, offices and adherents which had been his own patrimony. The division that Louis the Pious made at Aix in 817 among his three sons, Lothair, Pippin and Louis, was of like character, since he reserved the supreme authority for himself, only associating Lothair, the eldest, with him in the government of the empire. Following the advice of his ministers Walla and Agobard, supporters of the policy of unity, Louis the Pious put Bernard of Italy, Charlemagnes grandson, to death for refusing to acknowledge Lothair as coemperor; crushed a revolt in. Brittany; and carried on among the Danes the work of evangelization begun among the Slays. A fourth son, Charles, was born to him by his second wife, Judith of Bavaria. Jealousy arose between the children of the two marriages. Louis tried in vain to satisfy his sons and their followers by repeated divisionsat Worms (829) and at Aix (831)in which there was no longer question of either unity or subordination. Yet his elder sons revolted against him in 831 and 832, and were supported by Walla and Agobard and by their followers, weary of all the contradictory oaths demanded of them. Louis was deposed at the assembly of Compigne (833), the bishops forcing him to assume the garb of a penitent; but he was re-established on his throne in St Etienne at Metz, the 28th of February 835, from which time until his death in 840 he fell more and more under the influence of his ambitious wife, and thought only of securing an inheritance for Charles, his favorite son.

Hardly was Louis buried in the basilica of Metz before his sons flew to arms. The first dynastic war broke out between Lothair, who by the settlement of 817 claimed the whole The sons monarchy with the imperial title, and his brothers O~OUS Louis and Charles. Lothair wanted, with the Empire, the sole right of patronage over the adherents of his house, but each of these latter chose his own lord according to individual interests, obeying his.fears or his preferences. The three brothers finished their discussion by fighting for a whole day (June 25th, 841) on the plain of Fontanet by Auxerre; but the battle decided nothing, so Charles and Louis, in order to get the better of Lothair, allied themselves and their vassals by an oath taken in the plain of Strassburg (Feb. 14th, 842). The - This, the first document in the vulgar tongue in the bur,Q~ oath, history of France and Germany, was merely a mutual contract of protection for the two armies, which nevertheless did not risk another battle. An amicable division of the imperial succession was arranged, and after an assessment of the empire which took almost a year, an agreement was signed at Verdun in August 843.

This was one of the important events in history. Each brother received an equal share of the dismembered empire. partition Louis had the territory on the right bank of the Rhine, of the with Spires, Worms and Mainz because of the abundEmpire at ance of wine. Lothair took Italy, the valleys of the (843) Rhone, the Sane and the Meuse, with the two capitals of the empire, Aix-la-Chapelle and Rome, and the title of emperor. Charles had all the country watered by the Scheldt, the Seine, the Loire and the Garonne, as far as the Atlantic and the Ebro. The partition of Verdun separated once more, and definitively, the lands of the eastern and western Franks. The former became modern Germany, the latter France, and each from this time forward had its own national existence. However, asthe boundary between the possessions of Charles the Bald and those of Louis was not strictly defined, and as Lothairs kingdom, having no national basis, soon disintegrated into the kingdoms of Italy, Burgundy and Arles, in Lotharingia, this great undefined territory was to serve as a tilting-ground for France and Germany on the very morrow of the treaty of Verdun and for ten centuries after.

Charles the Bald was the first king of western France. Anxious as he was to preserve Charlemagnes traditions of government, he was not always strong enough to do so, and warfare within his own dominions was often forced on him. Charles The Norse pirates who had troubled Charlemagne (843-877). showed a preference for western France, justified by the easy access afforded by river estuaries with rich monasteries on their shores. They began in 841 with the sack of Rouen; and from then until 912, when they made a settlement in. one part of the country, though few in numbers they never ceased attacking Charless kingdom, coming in their ships up the Loire as far as Auvergne, up the Garonne to Toulouse, and up the Seine and the Scheldt to Paris, where they made four descents in forty years, burning towns, pillaging treasure, destroying harvests and slaughtering the peasants or carrying them offinto slavery. Charles the Bald thus spent his life sword in hand, fighting unsuccessfully against the Bretons, whose two kings, Nomeno and Erispo, he had to recognize in turn; and against the people of Aquitaine, who, in full revolt, appealed for help to his brother, Louis the German. He was beaten everywhere and always: by the Bretons at Ballon (845) and Juvardeil (851); by the people of Aquitaine near Angouleme (845); and by the Northmen, who several times extorted heavy ransoms from him. Before long, too, Louis the German actually allied himself with the people of Brittany and Aquitaine, and invaded France at the summons of Charles the Balds own vassals. Though the treaty of Coblenz (860) seemed to reconcile the two kings for the moment, no peace was ever possible in Charles the Balds kingdom. His own son Charles, king of Aquitaine, revolted, and Salomon proclaimed himself king of Brittany in succession to Erispo, who had been assassinated. To check the Bretons and the Normans, who were attacking from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, Charles the Bald found himself obliged to entrust the defence of the country to Robert the Strong, ancestor of the house of Capet and duke of the lands between Loire and Seine. Robert the Strong, however, though many times victorious over the incorrigible pirates, was killed by them in a fight at Brissarthe (866).

Despite all this, Charles spoke authoritatively in his capitularies, and though incapable of defending western France, coveted other crowns and looked obstinately eastwards. Division He managed to become king of Lorraine on the death of the of his nephew Lothair II., and emperor and king of kingdom Germany on that of his other nephew Louis II. (875); intolarge though only by breaking the compact of the year 800.

In 876, the year before his death, he took a third crown, that of Italy, though not without a fresh defeat at Andernach by Louis the Germans troops. His titles increased, indeed, but not his power; for while his kingdom was thus growing in area it was falling to pieces. The duchy with which he rewarded Robert the Strong was only a military command, but became a powerful fief. Baldwin I. (d. 879), count of Flanders, turned the country between the Scheldt, the Somme and the sea into another feudal principality. Aquitaine and Brittany were almost independent, Burgundy was in full revolt, and within thirty years Rollo, a Norman leader, was to be master of the whole of the lower Seine from the Cotentin to the Somme. The fact was that between the kings inability to defend the kingdom, and the powerlessness of nobles and peasants to protect themselves from pillage, every man made it his business to seek new protectors, and the country, in spite of Charles the Balds efforts, began to be covered with strongholds, the peasant learning to live beneath the shelter of the donjon keeps. Such vassals gave themselves utterly to the lord who guarded them, working for him sword or pickaxe in hand. The king was far away, the lord close at hand. Hence the sixty years of terror and confusion which came between Charlemagne and the death of Charles the Bald suppressed the direct authority of the king in favor of the nobles, and prepared the way for a second destruction of the monarchy at the hands of a stronger power (see FEUDALISM).

Before long Charles the Balds followers were dictating to him; and in the disaffection caused by his feebleness and cowardice prelates and nobles allied themselves ~stablisfh~ against him. If they acknowledged the kings authority feudalism, at the assemblies of Ytz (near Thionville) in 844,

they forced from him a promise that they should keep their fiefs and their dignities; and while establishing a right of control over all his actions they deprived him of his right of jurisdiction over them. Despite Charless resistance his royal power dwindled steadily: an appeal to Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, entailed concessions to the Church. In 856 some of his vassals deserted him and went over to Louis the German. To win them back Charles had to sign a new charter, by the terms of which loyalty was no longer a one-sided engagement but a reciprocal contract between king and vassal. He gave up his personal right of distributing the fiefs and honors which were the price of adherence, and thus lost for the Carolingians the free disposal of the immense territories they had gradually usurped; they retained the over-lordship, it is true, but this over-lordship, without usufruct and without choice of tenant, was but a barren possession.

Like their territories public authority little by little slipped from the grasp of the Carolingians, largely because of their Decay of abuse of their too great power. They had concentrated the Caro- the entire administration in their own. hands. Like linglan Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald power. were omnipotent. There were no provincial assemblies, no municipal bodies, no merchant-gilds, no autonomous churches; the people had no means of making themselves heard; they had no place in an administration which was completely in the hands of a central hierarchy of officials of all ranks, from dukes to scabini, with counts, viscounts and centenarii in between. However, these dukes and counts were not merely officials: they too had become lords of fideles, of their own advocati, centenarii and scabini, whom they nominated, and of all the free men of the county, who since Charlemagnes time had been first allowed and then commanded to commend themselves to a lord, receiving feudal benefices in return. Any deprivation or supersession of the count might impoverish, dispossess or ruin the vassals of the entire county; so that all, vassals or officials, small and great, feeling their danger, united their efforts, and lent each other mutual assistance against the permanent menace of an overweening monarchy. Hence, at the end of the cth century, the heredity of offices as well as of fiefs. In the disordered state of society official stability was a valuable warrant of peace, and the administrative hierarchy, lay or spiritual, thus formed a mould for the hierarchy of feudalism. There was no struggle with the king, simply a cessation of obedience; for without strength or support in the kingdom he was llowerless to resist. In vain Charles the Bald affirmed his royal authority in the capitularies of Quierzy-sur-Oise (857), Reims (860), Pistes (864), Gondreville (872) and Quierzy-sur-Oise (877); each time in exchange for assent to the royal will and renewal of oaths he had to acquiesce in. new safeguards against himself and by so much to diminish that power of protection against violence and injustice for which the weak had always looked to the throne. Far from forbidding the relation of lord and vassal, Charles the Bald imposed it upon every man in his kingdom, himself proclaiming the real incapacity and failure of that theoretic royal power to which he laid claim. Henceforward royalty had no servants, since it performed no service. There was no longer the least hesitation over the choice between liberty with danger and subjection with safety; men sought and found in vassalage the right to live, and willingly bartered away their liberty for it.

The degeneration of the monarchy was clearly apparent on the death of Charles the Bald, when his son, Louis the Stammerer, was only assured of the throne, which had passed by Louis the right of birth under the Merovingians and been Stan,hereditary under the earlier Carolingians, through his election by nobles and bishops under the direction (877-879). of Hugh the Abbot, successor of Robert the Strong, each voter having been won over by gift of abbeys, counties or manors. When Louis died two years later (879), the same nobles met, some at Creil, the rest at Meaux, and the first party chose Louis of Germany, who preferred Lorraine to the crown; while the rest anointed Louis III. and Carloman, sons of the Louis ~. late king, themselves deciding how the kingdom was and Carloto be divided between the two princes. Thus the man (879king no longer chose his own vassals; but vassals 884). and fief-holders actually elected their king according to the material advantages they expected from him. Louis III. and Carloman justified their election by their brilliant victories over the Normans at Saucourt (881) and near Epernay (883); but at their deaths (882884), the nobles, instead of taking Louiss boy-son, Charles the Simple, as king, chose Charles the Fat, king of Germany, because he was emperor and seemed powerful. He united once more the dominions of Charlemagne; but he disgraced the imperial throne by his feebleness, and was incapable of using his (884-888.) immense army to defend Paris when it was besieged by the Normans. Expelled from Italy, he only came to France to buy a shameful peace. When he died in January 888 he had not a single faithful vassal, and the feudal lords resolved never again to place the sceptre in a hand that could not wield the sword.

The death-struggle of the Carolingians lasted for a century of uncertainty and anarchy, during which time the bishops, counts and lords might well have suppressed the Deathmonarchy had they been hostile to it. Such, however, struggle of was not their policy; on the contrary, they needed a the Caroking to act as agent for their private interests, since he alone could invest their rank and dignities with - 2). an official and legitimate character. They did not at once agree on - Charless successor; for some of them chose Eudes (Odo), son of Robert the Strong, for his brilliant defence of Paris against the Normans in 885; others Guy, duke of Spoleto in Italy, who had himself crowned at Langres; while many wished for Arnulf, illegitimate son of Carloman, king of Germany and emperor. Eudes was victor in the struggle, and was crowned and anointed at Compigne on the 29th of February 888; but five years later, meeting with defeat after defeat at the hands of the Normans, his followers deserted from him to Charles the Simple, grandson of Charles the Bald, who was also supported by Fulk, archbishop of Reims.

This first Carolingian restoration took place on the 28th of January 893, and thenceforward throughout this warlike period from 888 to 936 the crown passed from one dynasty to the other according to the interests of the nobles. After desperate strife, an agreeement between the two (888-893). rivals, Arnuifs support, and the death of Odo, secured it for Charles III., surnamed the Simple. His subjects remained faithful to him for a good while, as he put an end to the Norman invasions which had desolated the kingdom for two centuries, and cowed those barbarians, much to the benefit of France. By the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte (911) their leader Rolf (Rollo) obtained one of Charless daughters in marriage and the district of the Lower Seine which the Normans had long occupied, on condition that he and his men ceased their attacks and accepted Christianity. Having thus tranquillized the west, Charles took advantage of Louis the Childs death, and conquered Lorraine, in spite of opposition from Conrad, EngelspIe king of Germany (921). But his preference for his new (893-929). conquest, and for a Lorrainer of low birth named Hagano, aroused the jealousy and discontent of his nobles. They first elected Robert, count of Paris (923), and then after his death in a successful battle near Soissons against Charles the Simple, Rudolph of Burgundy, his son-in-law. But Herbert of Vermandois, one of the successful combatants at ~~udo1ph of Soissons, coveted the countship of Laon, which Rudolph refused him; and he thereupon proclaimed Charles the Simple, who had confided his cause to him, as king once more. Seeing his danger Rudolph ceded the countship to Herbert, and Charles was relegated to his prison until his death in 929. After unsuccessful wars against the nobles of the South, against the Normans, who asserted that they were bound to no one except Charles the Simple, and against the Hungarians (who, now the Normans were pacified, were acting their part in the East), Rudolph had a return of good fortune in the years between 930 and 936, despite the intrigues of Herbert of Vermandois. Upon his death the nobles assembled to elect a king; and Hugh the Great, Rudolphs brother-in-law, moved by irresolution as much as by prudence, instead of taking the crown, preferred to restore the Carolingians once more in the person of Charles the Simples son, Louis dOutremer, himself claiming numerous privileges and enjoying the exercise of power unenculnbered by a title which carried with it the jealousy of the nobles.

This restoration was no more peaceful than its predecessor. The Carolingians had as it were a fresh access of energy, and the Louis IV. struggle against the Robertinians went on relentlessly.

the Both sides employed similar methods: one was sup- Foreigner ported by Normandy, the other by Germany; the (936-954.) archbishop of Reims was for the Carolingians, the Robertinians had to be content with the less influential bishop of Sens. Louis soon proved to Hugh the Great, who was trying to play the part of a mayor of the palace, that he was by no means a roi fainant; and the powerful duke of the Franks, growing uneasy, allied himself with Herbert of Vermandois, William of Normandy and his brother-in-law Otto I. king of Germany, who resented the loss of Lorraine. Louis defended himself with energy, aided chiefly by the nobles of the South, by his relative Edmund, king of the English, and then by Otto himself, whose brother-in-law he also had become. A peace advantageous to him was made in 942, and on the deaths of his two opponents, Herbert of Vermandois and William of Normandy, all seemed to be going well for him; but his guardianship of Richard, son of the duke of Normandy, aroused fresh strife, and on the 13th of July ~45 he fell into an ambush and suffered a captivity similar to his fathers of twenty-two years before. No one had befriended Charles the Simple, but Louis had his wife Gerberga, who won over to his cause the kings of England and Germany and even Hugh. Hugh set him free, insisting, as payment for his aid, on the cession of Laon, the capital of the kingdom and the last fortified town remaining to the Carolingians (946). Louis was hardly free before he took vengeance, harried the lands of his rival, restored to the archiepiscopal throne of Reims Artald, his faithful adviser, in place of the son of Herbert of Vermandois, and managed to get Hugh excommunicated by the council of Ingelheim (948) and by the pope. A two years struggle wearied the rivals, and they made peace in 950. Louis once more held Laon, and in the following year further strengthened his position by a successful expedition into Burgundy. Still his last years were not peaceful; for besides civil wars there were two Hungarian invasions of France (951 and 954).

Louiss sudden death in 954 once more placed the Carolingian line in peril, since he had not had time to have his son Lothair crowned. For a third time Hugh had the disposal of 4) the crown, and he was no more tempted to take it him self in 954 than in 923 or 936: it was too profitless a possession. Thanks to Hughs support and to the good offices of Otto and his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne and duke of Lorraine, Lothair was chosen king and crowned at Reims. Hugh exacted, as payment for his disinterestedness and fidelity, a renewal of his sovereignty over Burgundy with that of Aquitaine as well; he was in fact the viceroy of the kingdom, and others imitated him by demanding indemnities, privileges and confirmation of rights, as was customary at the beginning of a reign.

Hugh strengthened his position in Burgundy, Lorraine and Normandy by means of marriages; but just as his power was at its height he died (956). His death and the minority of his sons, Hugh Capet and Eudes, gave the Carolingian dynasty thirty years more of life.

For nine years (956965) Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, was regent of France, and thanks to him there was a kind of entente cordiale between the Carolingians and the Robertinians and Otto. Bruno made Lothair recognize Hugh as duke of France and Eudes as duke of Burgundy; but the sons preserved the fathers enmity towards king Louis, despite the archbishops repeated efforts. His death deprived Lothair of a wise and devoted guardian, even if it did set him free from German influence; and the death of Odairic, archbishop of Reims, in 969, was another fatal loss for the Carohingians, succeeded as he was by Adalbero, who, though learned, pious and highly intelligent, was none the less ambitious. On the death of Otto I. (973) Lothair wished to regain Lorraine; but his success was small, owing to his limited resources and the uncertain support of his vassals. In 980, regretting his fruitless quarrel with Otto II., who had ravaged the whole country as far as Paris, and fearing that even with the support of the house of Vermandois he would be crushed like his father Louis IV. between the duke of France and the emperor, who could count on the archbishop of Reims, Lothair made peace with Otto-a great mistake, which cost him the prestige he had gained among his nobles by his fairly successful struggle with the emperor, drawing down upon him, moreover, the swift wrath of Hugh, who thought himself tricked. Otto, meanwhile, whom he was unwise enough to trust, made peace secretly with Hugh, as it was his interest to play off his two old enemies one against the other. However, Otto died first (983), leaving a three-year-old son, Otto III., and Lothair, hoping for Lorraine, upheld the claims of Henry of Bavaria, who wished to oust Otto. This was a war-signal for Archbishop Adalbero and his adviser Gerbert, devoted to the idea of the Roman empire, and determined that it should still be vested in the race of Otto, which had always been beneficent to the Church.

They decided to set the Robertinians against the Carolingians, and on their advice Hugh Capet dispersed the assembly of Compigne which Lothair had commissioned to cx- Louis V.

amine Adalbero s behaviour. On Lothair s death in (986-987).

986, Hugh surrounded his son and successor, Louis V., with intrigues. Louis was a weak-minded and violent young man with neither authority nor prestige, and Hugh tried to have him placed under tutelage. After Louis Vs sudden death, aged twenty, in 987, Adalbero and Gerbert, with the support of the reformed Cluniac clergy, at the Assembly of Senhis eliminated from the succession the rightful heir, Charles of Lorraine, who, without influence or wealth, had become a stranger in his own country, and elected Hugh Capet, who, though rich and powerful, was superior neither in intellect nor character. Thus the triple alliance of Adalberos bold and adroit imperialism with the cautious and vacillating ambition of the duke of the Franks, and the impolitic hostility towards Germany of the ruined Carolingians, resulted in the unhooked-for advent of the new Capetian dynasty.

This event completed the evolution of the forces that had produced feudalism, the basis of the medieval social system. The idea of public authority had been replaced by one Dismemthat was simpler and therefore better fitted for a half- berinent of civilized societythat of dependence of the weak on the kingthe strong, voluntarily entered on by means of mutual dow. contract. Feudalism had gained ground in the 8th century; feudalism it was which had raised the first Carohingian to the throne as being the richest and most powerful person in Austrasia; and Charlemagne with all his power had been as utterly unable as the Merovingians to revive the idea of an abstract and impersonal state. Charlemagnes vassals, however, had needed him; while from Charles the Bald onward it was the king who needed the vassalsa change more marked with each successive prince. The feudal system had in fact turned against the throne, the vassals using it to secure a permanent hold upon offices and fiefs, and to get possession of estates and of power. After Charles the Balds death royalty had only, so to speak, a shelladministrative officialdom. No longer firmly rooted in the soil, the monarchy was helpless before local powers which confronted it, seized upon the land, and cut off connection between throne and people. The king, the supreme lord, was the only lord without lands, a nomad in his own realms, merely lingering there until starved out. Feudalism claimed its new rights in the capitulary of Quierzy-surOise in 857; the rights of the monarchy began to dwindle in 877.

But vassalage could only be a cause of disintegration, not of unity, and that this disintegration did not at once spread indefinitely was due to the dozen or so great military commands Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine, &c.which Charles the Bald had been obliged to establish on a strong territorial basis. One of these great vassals, the duke of France, was amply provided with estates and offices, in. contrast to the landless Carolingian, and his power, like that of the future kings of Prussia and Austria, was based on military authority, for he had a frontier that of Anjou. Then the inevitable crisis had come. For a hundred years the great feudal lords had disposed of the crown as they pleased, handing it back an.d forward from one dynasty to another. At the same time the contrast between the vast proportions of the Carolingian empire and its feeble administrative control over a still uncivilized community became more and more accentuated. The Empire crumbled away by degrees. Each country began to.lead its own separate existence, stammering its own tongue; the different nations no longer understood one another, and no longer had any general ideas in common. The kingdoms of France and Germany, still too large, owed their existence to a series of dispossessions imposed on sovereigns too feeble to hold their own, and consisted of a great number of small states united by a very slight bond. At the end of the 10th century the duchy of France was the only central part of the kingdom which was still free and without organization. The end was bound to come, and the final struggle was between Laon, the royal capital, and Reims, the ecclesiastical capital, the former carrying with it the soil of France, and the latter the crown. The Capets captured the first in 985 and the other in 987. Thenceforth all was over for the Carolingians, who were left with no heritage save their great name.

Was the day won for the House of Capet? In the I tth century the kings of that line possessed meagre domains scattered about in the Ile de France among the seigniorial possessions of Brie, Beauce, Beauvaisis and Valois. They were hemmed in by the powerful duchy of Normandy, the counties of Blois, Flanders and Champagne, and the duchy of Burgundy. Beyond these again stretched provinces practically impenetrable to royal influence: Brittany, Gascony, Toulouse, Septimania and the Spanish March. The monarchy lay stifling in the midst of a luxuriant feudal forest which surrounded its only two towns of any importance: Paris, the city of the future, and Orleans, the city of learning. Its power, exercised with an. energy tempered by prudence, ran to waste like its wealth in a suzerainty over turbulent vassals devoid of common government or administration, and was undermined by the same lack of social discipline among its vassals which had sapped the power of the Carolingians. The new dynasty was thus the poorest and weakest of the great civil and ecclesiastical lordships which occupied the country from the estuary of the Scheldt to that of the Liobregat, and bounded approximately by the Meuse, the Sane and the ridge of the Cvennes; yet it cherished a great ambition which it revealed at times during its first century (987Ifo8)a determination not to repeat the Carolingian failure. It had to wait two centuries after the revolution of 987 before it was strong enough to take up the dormant tradition of an authority like that of Rome; and until then it cunningly avoided unequal strife in which, victory being impossible, reverses might have weakened those titles, higher than any due to feudal rights, conferred by the heritage of the Caesars and the coronation at Reims, and held in reserve for the future.

The new dynasty thus at first gave the impression rather of decrepitude than of yot~th, seeming more a continuation of the Carolingian monarchy than a new departure. Hugh Capets reign was one of disturbance and danger; i~ behind his dim personality may be perceived the (987-996). struggle of greater forcesroyalty and feudalism, the French clergy and the papacy, the kingdom of France and the Empire. Hugh Capet needed more than three years and the betrayal of his enemy into his hands before he could parry the attack of a quite second-rate adversary, Charles of Lorraine (990), the last descendant of Charlemagne. The insubordination of several great vassalsthe count of Vermandois, the duke of Burgundy, the count of Flanderswho treated him as he had treated the Carolingian king; the treachery of Arnuif, archbishop of Reims, who let himself be won over by the empress Theophano; the papal hostility inflamed by the emperor against the claim of feudal France to independence,all made it seem for a time as though the unity of the Roman empire of the West would be secured at Hughs expense and in Ottos favor; but as a matter of fact this papal and imperial hostility ended by making the Capet dynasty a national one. When Hugh died in 996, he had succeeded in maintaining his liberty mainly, it is true, by diplomacy, not force, despite opposing powers and his own weakness. Above all, he had secured the future by associating his son Robert with him on the throne; and although the nobles and the archbishop of Reims were disturbed by this suspension of the feudal right of election, and tried to oppose it, they were unsuccessful.

Robert the Pious, a crowned monk, resembled his father in eschewing great schemes, whether from timidity or prudence; yet from 996 to 1031 he preserved intact the authority Robert he had inherited from Hugh, despite many domestic dis- the Pious turbances. He maintained a defiant attitude towards (996Germany; increased his heritage; strengthened his 1031). royal title by the addition of that of duke of Burgundy after fourteen years of pillage; and augmented the royal domain by adding several cotintships on the south-east and north-west. Limited in capacity, he yet understood the art of acquisition.

Henry I.,his son, had to struggle with a powerful vassal, Eudes, count of Chartres and Troyes, and was obliged for a time to abandon his fathers anti-German policy. Eudes, who was rash and adventurous, in alliance with the queen-mother, supported the second son, Robert, 1060). and captured the royal town of Sens. In order to retake it Henry ceded the beautiful valley of the Sane and the Rhne to the German emperor Conrad, and henceforth the kingdom of Burgundy was, like Lorraine, to follow the fortunes of Germany. Henry had besides to invest his brother with the duchy of Burgundya grave error which hampered French politics during three centuries. Like his father, he subsequently managed to retrieve some of the crown lands from William the Bastard, the too-powerful duke of Normandy; and he made a praiseworthy though fruitless attempt to regain possession of Lorraine for the French crown; Finally, by the coronation of his son Philip (1059) he confirmed the hereditary right of the Capets, soon to be superior to the elective rights of the bishops and great barons of the kingdom. The chief merit of these early Capets, indeed, was that they had sons, so that their dynasty lasted on without disastrous minorities or quarrels over the division of inheritance.

Philip I. achieved nothing during his long reign of forty-eight years except the necessary son, Louis the Fat. Unsuccessful even in small undertakings he was utterly incapable of great ones; and the two important events of his ~ reign took place, the one against his will, the other 1108). without his help. The first, which lessened Norman aggression in his kingdom, was William the Bastards conquest of England (1066); the second was the First Crusade preached by the French pope Urban II. (1095). A few half-hearted campaigns against recalcitrant vassals and a long and obstinate quarrel with the papacy over his adulterous union with Bertrade de Montfort, countess of Anjou, represented the total activity of Philips reign; he was greedy and venal, by no means disdaining the petty profits of brigandage, and he never left his own domains.

After a centurys lethargy the house of Capet awoke once more with Louis VI. and began the destruction of the feudal polity.

Louis vi. For thirty-four years of increasing warfare this active the Fat and energetic king, this brave and persevering soldier, (1108 never spared himself, energetically policing the royal 1137). demesne against such pillagers as Hugh of Le Puiset or Thomas of Marie. There was, however, but little difference yet between a count of Flanders or of Chartres and Louis VI., the possessor of a but small and perpetually disturbed realm, who was praised by his minister, the monk Suger, for making his power felt as far as distant Bern! This was clearly shown when he attempted to force the great feudal lords to recognize his authority. His bold endeavour to ,establish William Clito in Flanders ended in failure; and his want of strength was particularly humiliating in his unfortunate struggle with Henry I., king of the English and duke of Normandy, who was powerful and well served, the real master of a comparatively weak baronage. Louis only escaped being crushed because he remembered, as did his successors for long after him, that his house owed its power to the Church.

The Church has never loved weakness; she has always had a secret sympathy for power, whatever its source, when she could hope to capture it and make it serve her ends. Louis VI. defended her against feudal robbers; and she supported him in his struggles against the nobles, making him, moreover, by his sons marriage with the heiress of Aquitaine, the greatest and richest landholder of the kingdom. But Louis was not the obedient tool she wished for. With equal firmness and success he vindicated his rights, whether against the indirect attacks of the papacy on his independence, or the claims of the ecclesiastical courts which, in principle, he made subordinate to the jurisdiction of the crown; whether in episcopal elections, or in ecclesiastical reforms which might possibly imperil his power or his revenues. The prestige of this energetic king, protector of the Church, of the infant communes in the towns, and of the peasants as against the constant oppressions of feudalism, became still greater at the end of his reign, when an invasion of the German emperor Henry V. in alliance with Henry Beauclerk of Normandy (Henry I. of England), rallied his subjects round the oriflamme of St Denis, awakening throughout northern France the unanimous and novel sentiment of national danger.

Unfortunately his successor, Louis VII., almost destroyed his work by a colossal blunder, although circumstances seemed much in his favor. Germany and England, the two Louis vii. powers especially to be dreaded, were busy with the Young internal troubles and quarrels of succession. On the (1137 other hand, thanks to his marriage with Eleanor 1180). of Aquitaine, Louiss own domains had been increased by the greater part of the country between the Loire and the Pyrenees; while his fathers minister, the monk Suger, continued to assist him with his moderation and prudence. His first successes against Theobald of Champagne, who for thirty years had been the most dangerous of the great French barons and had refused a vassals services to Louis VI., as well as the adroit diplomacy with which he wrested from Geoffrey the Fair, count of Anjou, a part of the Norman Vexin long claimed by the French kings, in exchange for permitting him to conquer Normandy, augured well for his boldness and activity, had he but confined them to serving his own interests. The second crusade, undertaken to expiate his burning of the church of Vitry, inaugurated a series of magnificent but fruitless exploits; while his wife was the cause of domestic quarrels still more disastrous. Piety and a thirst for glory impelled Louis to take the lead in this fresh expedition to the Holy Land, despite the second opposition of Suger, and the hesitation of the pope, crusade. Bernard of Clairvaux and the barons. The alliance with the German king Conrad III. only enhanced the difficulties of an enterprise already made hazardous by the misunderstandings between Greeks and Latins. The Crusade ended in the double disaster of military defeat and martial dishonour (1147-1149); and Sugers death in 1151 deprived Louis of a counsellor who had exercised the regency skilfully and with success, just at the very moment when his divorce from Eleanor was to jeopardize the fortunes of the Capets.

For the proud and passionate Eleanor married, two months later (May 1152), the young Henry, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy, who held, besides these great fiefs, the whole of the south-west of France, and in two Rivafryof years time the crown of England as well. Henry and Al Louis at once engaged in the first Capet-Angevin duel, destined to last a hundred years (1,521242). When France and England thus entered European history, their conditions were far from being equal. In England royal power was strong; the size of the Angevin empire was vast, and the succession assured. It was only abuse of their too-great powers that ruined the early Angevin kings. France in the 12th century was merely a federation of separate states, jealously independent, which the king had to negotiate with rather than rule; while his own possessions, shorn of the rich heritage of Aquitaine, were, so to speak, swamped by those of the English king. For some time it was feared that the French kingdom would be entirely absorbed in consequence of the marriage between Louiss daughter and Henry II.s eldest son. The two rivals were typical of their states, Henry II. being markedly superior to Louis in political resource, military talent and energy. He failed, however, to realize his ambition of shutting in the Capet king and isolating him from the rest of Europe by crafty alliances, notably that with the emperor Frederick Barbarossawhile watching an opportunity to supplant him upon the French throne. It is extraordinary that Louis should have escaped final destruction, considering that Henry had subdued Scotland, retaken Anjou from his brother Geoffrey, won a hold over Brittany, and schemed successfully for Languedoc. But the Church once more came to the rescue of her devoted son. The retreat to France of Pope Alexander III., after he had been driven from Rome by the emperor Frederick in favor of the anti-pope Victor, revived Louiss moral prestige. Henry II.s quarrel with Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, which ran its course in France (1164-1171) as a struggle for the independence and reform of the Church, both threatened by the Constitutions of Clarendon, and ended with the murder of Becket in 1172, gave Louis yet another advantage over his rival. Finally the birth of Philip Augustus (1165), after thirty years of childless wedlock, saved the kingdom from a war of succession just at the time when the powerful Angevin sway, based entirely upon force, was jeopardized by the rebellion of Henry II.s sons against their father. Louis naturally joined the coalition of 1173, but showed no more vigour in this than in his other wars; and his fate would have been sealed had not the pope checked Henry by the threat of an interdict, and reconciled the combatants (1177). Louis had still time left to effect the coronation of his son Philip Augustus (1179), and to associate him with himself in the exercise of the royal power for which he had grown too old and infirm.

Philip Augustus, who was to be the bitterest enemy of Henry II. and the Angevins, was barely twenty before he revealed the full measure of his cold energy and unscrupulous Philip ambition. In five years (1180-1186) he rid himself Augustus of the overshadowing power of Philip of Alsace, count (1180 of Flanders, and his own uncles, the counts of 1223). Champagne; while the treaty of May 20th, 1186, was his first rough lesson to the feudal leagues, which he had reduced to powerlessness, and to the subjugated duke of Burgundy and count of Flanders. Northern and eastern France recognized the suzerainty of the Capet, and Philip Augustus was now bold enough to attack Henry II., the master of the west, whose friendly neutrality (assured by the treaty of Gisors) had made possible the successive defeats of the great French barons. Like his father, Philip understood how to make capital out of the quarrels of the aged and ailing Henry II. with his sons, especially with Richard, who claimed his French heritage in his fathers lifetime, and raised up enemies for the disunited Angevins even in Germany. After two years of constant defeat, Henrys capitulation at Azai proved once more that fortune is never with the old. The English king had to submit himself to the advice and desire of the king of France, doing him homage for all continental fiefs (1187-1189).

The defection of his favorite son John gave Henry his deathblow, and Philip Augustus found himself confronted by a new Phil! king of England, Richard Cc~ur de Lion, as powerful, AnguStuS besides being younger and more energetic. Philips and ambition could not rest satisfied with the petty Richard principalities of Amiens, Vermandois and Valois, ~~ur do which he had added to the royal demesne. The third crusade, undertaken, sorely against Philips will, in alliance with Richard, only increased the latent hostility between the two kings; and in 1191 Philip abandoned the enterprise in order to return to France and try to plunder his absent rival. Despite his solemn oath no scruples troubled him: witness the large sums of money he offered to the emperor Henry VI. if he would detain Richard, who had been made prisoner by the duke of Austria on his return. from the crusade; and his negotiations with his brother John Lackland, whom he acknowledged king of England in exchange for the cession of Normandy. But Henry VI. suddenly liberated Richard, and in five years that devil set free took from Philip all the profit of his trickery, and shut him off from Normandy by the strong fortress of ChteauGaillard (1194-1199).

Happily an accident which caused Richards death at the siege of Chalus, and the evil imbecility of his brother and sue- Philip cessor, John Lackland, brilliantly restored the fortunes Augustus of the Capets. The quarrel between John and his and John nephew Arthur of Brittany gave Philip Augustus Lackland. one of those opportunities of profiting by family discord which, coinciding with discontent among the various peoples subject to the house of Anjou, had stood him in such good stead against Henry II. and Richard. He demanded renunciation on Johns part, not of Anjou only, but of Poitou and Normandy of all his French-speaking possessions, in fact in favor of Arthur, who was supported by William des Roches, the most powerful lord of the region of the Loire. Philips divorce from Ingeborg of Denmark, who appealed successfully to Pope Innocent III., merely delayed the inevitable conflict. John of England, moreover, was a past-master in. the art of making enemies of his friends, and his conduct towards his vassals of Aquitaine furnished a judicial pretext for conquest. The royal judges at Paris condemned John, as a felon, to death and the forfeiture of his fiefs (1203), and the murder of Arthur completed his ruin. Philip Augustus made a vigorous onslaught on. Normandy in right of justice and of superior force, took the formidable fortress of Chftteau-Gaillard on the Seine after several months siege, and invested Rouen, which John abandoned, fleeing to England. In Anjou, Touraine, Maine and Poitou, lords, towns and abbeys made their submission, won over by Philips bribes despite Pope Innocent III.s attempts at intervention. In 1208 John was obliged to own the Plantagenet continental power as lost. There were no longer two rival monarchies in France; the feudal equilibrium was destroyed, to the advantage of the duchy of France.

But Philip in his turn nearly allowed himself to be led into an attempt at annexing England, and so reversing for his own benefit the work of the Angevins (1213); but, happily for the future of the dynasty, Pope Innocent UI. prevented this. Thanks to the ecclesiastical sanction of his royalty, Philip had successfully braved the pope for twenty years, in the matter of Ingeborg and again in that of the German schism, when he had supported Philip of Swabia against Otto of Brunswick, the popes candidate. In 1213, John Lackland, having been in conflict with Innocent regarding the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, had made submission and done homage for his kingdom, and Philip wished to take vengeance for this at the expense of the rebellious vassals of the north-west, and of Renaud and Ferrand, counts of Boulogne and Flanders, thus combating English influence in those quarters.

This was a return to the old Capet policy; but it was also menacing to many interests, and sure to arouse energetic resistance. John seized the opportunity to consolidate Coaiftion against Philip a European coalition, which included against most of the feudal lords in Flanders, Belgium and Philip Lorraine, and the emperor Otto IV. So dangerous did Augustus. the French monarchy already seem! John began operations with an attack from Anjou, supported by the notably capricious nobles of Aquitaine, and was routed by Philips son at La Roche aux Moines, near Angers, on the 2nd of July 1214. Twenty-five days later the northern allies, intending to surprise the smaller Frenth army on its passage over the bridge at Bouvines, themselves sustained a complete defeat. This first national victory had not only a profound effect on the whole kingdom, but produced consequences of far-reaching importance:

in Germany it brought about Ottos fall before Frederick II.; in England it introduced the great drama of 1215, the first act of which closed with Magna CartaJohn LaCkland being forced to acknowledge the control of his barons, and to share with them the power he had abused and disgraced. In France, on the contrary, the throne was exalted beyond rivalry, raised far above a feudalism which never again ventured on acts of independence or rebellion. Bouvines gave France the supremacy of the West. The feudalism of Languedoc was all that now remained to conquer.

The whole world, in fact, was unconsciously working for Philip Augustus. Anxious not to risk his gains, but to consolidate them by organization, Philip henceforth until his death in 1223 operated through diplomacy alone, leaving to others the toil and trouble of conquests, the advantages of which were not f or them. When his son Louis wished to wrest the English crown from John, now crushed by his barons, Philip intervened without seeming to do so, first with the barons, then with Innocent III., supporting and disowning his son by turns; until the latter, held in. check by Rome, was forced to sign the treaty of Lambeth (1217). When the Church and the needy and fanatical nobles of northern and central France destroyed the feudal dynasty of Toulouse and the rich civilization of the south in the Albigensian crusade, it was for Philip Augustus that their leader, Simon de Montfort, all unknowing, conquered Languedoc. At last, instead of the two Frances of the langue doc and the lax gue dorl, there was but one royal France comprising the whole kingdom.

Philip Augustus was not satisfied with the destruction of a turbulent feudalism; he wished to substitute for it such unity and peace as had obtained in the Roman Empire; Adminisand just as he had established his supremacy over the tration of feudal lords, so now he managed to extend it over the Philip clergy, and to bend them to his will. He took ad- Augustus. vantage of their weakness in the midst of an age of violence. By contracts of pariage the clergy claimed and obtained the kings protection even in places beyond the kings jurisdiction, to their common advantage. Philip thus set the feudal lords one against the other; and against them all, first the Church, then the communes. He exploited also the townspeoples need for security and the instinct of independence which made them claim a definite place in the feudal hierarchy. He was the actual creator of the communes, although an interested creator, since they made a breach in the fortress of feudalism and extended the royal authority far beyond the kings demesne. He did even more: he gave monarchy the instruments of which it still stood in need, gathering round him in Paris a council of men humble in origin, but wise and loyal; while in 1190 he instituted baillis and seneschals throughout his enlarged dominions, all-powerful over the nobles and subservient to himself. He filled his treasury with spoils harshly wrung from all classes; thus inaugurating the monarchys long and patient labors at enlarging the crown lands bit by bit through taxes on private property. Finally he created an army, no longel the temporary feudal ost, but a more or less permanent royal force. By virtue of all these organs of government the throne guaranteed peace, justice and a secure future, having routed feudalism with sword and diplomacy. Philips son was the first of the Capets who was not crowned during his fathers lifetime; a fact clearly showing that the principle of heredity had now been established beyond discussion.

Louis VIII.s short reign was but a prolongation of Philips in its realization of his two great designs: the recovery from 1. VIII Henry III. of England of Poitou as far as the Garonne; (1~3 and the crusade against the Albigenses, which with 1226). small pains procured him the succession of Amaury de Montfort, and the Languedoc of the counts of Toulouse, if not the whole of Gascony. Louis VIII. died on his return from this short campaign without having proved his full worth.

But the history of France during the 11th and 12th centuries does not entirely consist of these painful struggles of the Capet dynasty to shake off the fetters of feudalism. France, %nlvcr~saI no longer split up into separate fragments, now began activity, to exercise both intellectual and military influence over Europe. Everywhere her sons gave proof of rejuvenated activity. The Christian missions which others were reviving in Prussia and beginning in Hungary were undertaken on a vaster scale by the Capets. These elder sons of the Church made themselves responsible for carrying out the work of God, and French pilgrims in the Holy Land prepared the great movement of the Crusades against the infidels. Religious faith, love of adventure, the hope of making advantageous conquests, anticipations of a promised paradise all combined to force this advance upon the Orient, which though failing to rescue the sepulchre of Christ, the ephemeral kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, the dukedom of Athens, or the Latin empire of Constantinople, yet gained for France that prestige for military glory and religious piety which for centuries constituted her strength in the Levant (see CRUSADES). At the call of ,the pope other members of the French chivalry also made victorious expeditions against the Mussulmans, and founded the Christian kingdom of Portugal. Obeying that enterprising spirit which was to take them to England half a century later, Normans descended upon southern Italy and wrested rich lands from Greeks and Saracens.

In the domain of intellect the advance of the French showed a no less dazzling and a no less universal activity; they sang Intel- as well as they fought, and their epics were worthy Iectual of their swordsmanship, while their cathedrals were develop- hymns in stone as ardent as their soaring flights of inent, devotion. In this period of intense religious life France was always in the vanguard. It was the ideas of Cluniac monks that freed the Church from feudal supremacy, and in the 11th century produced a Pope Gregory VII.; the spirit of free investigation shown by the heretics of Orleans inspired the rude Breton, Abelard, in the 12th century; and with Gerbert and Fulbert of Chartres the schools first kindled that brilliant light which the university of Paris, organized by Philip Augustus, was to shed over the world from the heights of Sainte-Genevive. In the quarrels of the priesthood under the Empire it was St Bernard, the great abbot of Clairvaux, who tried to arrest the papacy on the slippery downward path of theocracy; finally, it was in Sugers church of St Denis that French art began that struggle between light against darkness which, culminating in Notre-Dame and the SainteChapelle, was to teach the architects of the world the delight of building with airiness of effect. The old basilica which contains the history of the monarchy sums up the whole of Gothic art to this day, and it was Suger who in the domain of art and politics brought forward once more the conception of unity. The courteous ideal of French chivalry, with its delectable language, was adopted by all seigniorial Europe, which thus became animated, as it were, by the life-blood of France. Similarly, in the universal movement of those forces which made for freedom, France began the age-long struggle to maintain the rights of civil society and continually to enlarge the social categories. The townsman enriched by commerce and the emancipated peasant tried more or less valiantly to shake off the yoke of the feudal system, which had been greatly weakened, if not entirely broken down, by the crusades. Grouped around their belfry-towers and organized within their gilds, they made merry in their free jocular language over their own hardships, and still more over the vices of their lords. They insinuated themselves into the counsels of their ignorant masters, and though still sitting humbly at the feet of the barons, these upright and well-educated servitors were already dreaming of the great deeds they would do when. their tyrants should have vacated their high position, and when royalty should have summoned them to power.

By the beginning of the 13th century the Capet monarchy was so strong that the crisis occasioned by the sudden death of Louis VIII. was easily surmounted by the foreign woman and the child whom he left behind him. It LOUIS IX. is true that that woman was Blanche of Castile, and 1270).

that child the future Louis IX. A virtuous and very devout Spanish princess, Blanche assumed the regency of the kingdom and the tutelage of her child, and carried them on for nine years with so muc,h force of character and capacity for rule that she soon impressed the clamorous and ~Ian~he of disorderly leaders of the opposition (1226I 235). By the treaty of Meaux (1229), her diplomacy combined with the influence of the Church to prepare effectually for the annexation of Languedoc to the kingdom,,, supplementing this again by a portion of Champagne; and the marriage of her son to Margaret of Provence definitely broke the ties which held the country within the orbit of the German empire. She managed also to keep out of the great quarrel between Frederick II. and the papacy which was convulsing Germany. But her finest achievement was the education of her son; she taught him that lofty religious morality which in his case was not merely a rule for private conduct, but also a political programme to which he remained faithful even to the detriment of his apparent interests. With Louis IX. morality for the first time permeated and dominated politics; he had but one end: to do justice to every one and to reconcile all Christendom in view of a general crusade.

The oak of Vincennes, under which the king would sit to mete out justice, cast its shade over the whole political action of Louis IX. He was the arbiter of townspeople, of feudal lords and of kings. The interdiction of the judicial Louis IX.S duel, the quarantaine le roi, ie. the kings truce policy of of forty days during which no vengeance might ~ be taken for private wrongs, and the assurement,f ~on went far to diminish the abuses of warfare by allowing his mediation to make for a spirit of reconciliation throughout his kingdom. When Thibaud (Theobald), count of Champagne, attempted to marry the daughter of Pierre Mauclerc, duke of Brittany, without the kings consent, Louis IX., who held the county of Champagne at his mercy, contented himself with exacting guarantees of peace. Beyond the borders of France, at the time of the emperor Frederick II.s conflict with a papacy threatened in its temporal powers, though he made no response to Fredericks appeal to the civil authorities urging them to present a solid front against the pretensions of the Church, and though he energetically supported the latter, yet he would not admit her right to place kingdoms under interdict, and refused the imperial crown which Gregory IX. offered him for one of his brothers. He always hoped to bring about an honorable agreement between the two adversaries, and in his estimation the advantages of peace outweighed personal interest. In matters concerning the succession in Flanders, Hainaut and Navarre; in the quarrels of the princes regarding the Empire, and in those of Henry III. of England with his barons; it was because of his justice and his disinterestedness that he was appealed to as a trusted mediator. His conduct towards Henry III. was certainly a most characteristic example of his behaviour.

The king of England had entered into the coalition formed by the nobility of Poitou and the count of Toulouse to prevent the execution of the treaty of 1229 and the enfeoffment IX. of Poitou to the kings brother Alphonse. Louis IX. lienlylli. defeated Henry III. twice within two days, at Taillebourg and at Saintes,and obliged him to demand a truce (1242). It was forbidden that any lord should be a vassal both of the king of France and of the king of England. After this Louis IX. had set off upon his first crusade in Egypt (124854), and on his return he wanted to make this truce into a definite treaty and to set love between his children and those of the English king. By a treaty signed at Paris (1259), Henry III. renounced all the conquests of Philip Augustus, and Louis IX. those of his father Louis VIII.an example unique in history of a victorious king spontaneously giving up his spoil solely for the sake of peace and justice, yet proving by his act that honesty is the best policy; for monarchy gained much by that moral authority which made Louis IX. the universal arbitrator.

But his love of peace and concord was not always sans grands despens to the kingdom. In 1258, by renouncing his rights over Roussillon and the countship of Barcelona, conquered The d ~ by Charlemagne, he made an advantageous bargain ta5e ~ because he kept Montpellier; but he committed a grave fault in consenting to accept the offers regarding Sicily made by Pope Urban IV. to his brother the count of Anjou and Provence. That was the origin of the expeditions into Italy on which the house of Valois was two centuries later to squander the resources of France unavailingly, compromising beyond the Alps its interests in the Low Countries and upon the Rhine. But Louis IX.s worst error was his obsession with regard to the crusades, to which he sacrificed everything. Despite the signal failure of the first crusade, when he had been taken prisoner; despite the protests of his mother, of his counsellors, and of the pope himself, he flung himself into the mad adventure of Tunis. Nowhere was his blind faith more plainly shown, combined as it was with total ignorance of the formidable migrations that were convulsing Asia, and of the complicated game of politics just then. proceeding between the Christian nations and the Moslems of the Mediterranean. At Tunis he found his death, on the 25th of August 1270.

The death of Louis IX. and that of his brother Alphonse of Poitiers, heir of the count of Toulouse, made Philip III., the Philip III., Bold, legitimate master of northern France and undis the Bold puted sovereign of southern France. From the latter (1270 he detached the comtat Venaissin in 1274 and gave it to 1285). the papacy, which held it until 1791. But he had not his fathers great soul nor disinterested spirit. Urged by Pope Martin IV. he began the fatal era of great international wars by his unlucky crusade against the king of Aragon, who, thanks to the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, substituted his own predominance in Sicily for that of Charles of Anjou. Philip returned from Spain only to die at Perpignan, ending his insignificant reign as he had begun it, amid the sorrows of a disastrous retreat (12 70I 285). His reign was but a halting-place of history between those of Louis IX. and Philip the Fair, just when the transition was taking place from the last days of the middle ages to the modern epoch.

The middle ages had been dominated by four great problems. The first of these had been to determine whether there should Philip IV. be a universal empire exercising tutelage over the the Fair nations; and if so, to whom this empire should (i285 belong, to pope or emperor. The second had been ~ the extension to the East of that Catholic unity which reigned in the West. Again, for more than a century, the question had also been debated whether the English kings were to preserve and increase their power over the soil of France. And, finally, two principles had been confronting one another in the internal life of all the European states: the feudal and the monarchical principles. France had not escaped any of these conflicts; but Philip the Fair was the initiator or the instrument (it is difficult to say which) who was to put an end to both imperial and theocratic dreams, and to the international crusades; who was to remove the political axis from the centre of Europe, mueh to the benefit of the western monarchies, now definitely emancipated from the feudal yoke and firmly organized against both the Church and the barons. The hour had come for Dante, the great Florentine poet, to curse the man who was to dismember the empire, precipitate the fall of the papacy and discipline feudalism.

Modern in his practical schemes and in his calculated purpose, Philip the Fair was still more so in his method, that of legal procedure, and in his agents, the lawyers. With him Liligious the French monarchy defined its ambitions, and little character by little forsook its feudal and ecclesiastical character of Philip in order to clothe itself in juridical forms. His aggres- the Fairs sive and litigious policy and his ruthless financial reizn.

method were due to those lawyers of the south and of Normandy who had been nurtured on Roman law in the universities of Bologna or Montpellier, had practised chicanery in the provincial courts, had gradually thrust themselves into the great arena of politics, and were now leading the king and filling his parlement. It was no longer upon religion or morality, it was upon imperial and Roman rights that these chevaliers s lois based the princes omnipotence; and nothing more clearly marks the new tradition which was being elaborated than the fact that all the great events of Philip the Fairs reign were lawsuits.

The first of these was with the papacy. The famous quarrel between the priesthood and the Empire, which had culminated at Canossa under Gregory VII., in the apotheosis of Philip the the Lateran council under Innocent III., and again Fair and in the fall of the house of Hohenstaufen under Innocent the IV., was reopened with the king of France by Boniface Papacy.

VIII. The quarrel began in 1294 about a question of money. In his bull Clericis laicos the pope protested against the taxes levied upon the French clergy by the king, whose expenses were increasing with his conquests. But he had not insisted; because Philip, between feudal vassals ruined by the crusades and lower classes fleeced by everybody, had threatened to forbid the exportation from France of any ecclesiastical gold and silver. In 1301 and 1302 the arrest of Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, by the officers of the king, and the citation of this cleric before the kings tribunal for the crime of lse-majest, revived the conflict and led Boniface to send an order to free Saisset, and to put forward a claim to reform the kingdom under the threat of excommunication. In view of the gravity of the occasion Philip made an unusually extended appeal to public opinion by convoking the states-general at Notre-Dame in Paris (1302). Whatever were their views as to the relations between ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction, the French clergy, ruined by the dues levied by the papal court, ranged themselves on the national side with the nobility and the bourgeoisie; whereupon the king, with a bold stroke far ahead of his time, gave tit for tat. His chancellor, Nogaret, went to Anagni to seize the pope and drag him before a council; but Boniface died without confessing himself vanquished. As a matter of fact the king and his lawyers triumphed, where the house of Swabia had failed. After the death of Boniface the splendid fabric of the medieval theocracy gave place to the rights of civil society, the humiliation of Avignon, the disruption of the great schism, the vain efforts of the councils for reform, and the radical and heretical solutions of Wycliffe and Huss.

The affair of the Templars was another legal process carried out by the same Nogaret. Of course this military religious order had lost utility and justification when the Holy Philip the Land had been evacuated and the crusades were over. Fair and Their great mistake had lain in becoming rich, and the rich to excess, through serving as bankers to princes, Teniplars. kings and popes; for great financial powers soon became unpopular. Philip took advantage of this hatred of the lower classes and the cowardice of, his creature, Pope Clement V., to satisfy his desire for money. The trial of the order (1307-1313) was a remarkable example of the use of the religious tribunal of the Inquisition as a political instrument. There was a dramatic completeness about this unexpected result of the crusades. A general arbitrary arrest of the Templars, the sequestration of their property, examination under torture, the falsifying of procedure, extortion of money from the pope, the auto-da-f~ of innocent victims, the dishonest pillaging of their goods by the joint action of the king and the pope: such was the outcome of this vast process of secularization, which foreshadowed the events of the 16th and 18th centuries.

External policy had the same litigious character. Philip the Fair instituted suits against his natural enemies, the king of England and the count of Flanders, foreign princes Philip the holding possessions within his kingdom; and against the emperor, whose ancient province of Lorraine and kingdom of Arles constantly changed hands between Germany and France. Philip began. by interfering in the affairs of Sicily and Aragon, his fathers inheritance; after which, on the pretext of a quarrel between French and English sailors, he set up his customary procedure: a citation of the king of England before the parlement of Paris, and in case of default a decree of forfeiture; the whole followed by executionthat is to say by the unimportant war of 1295. A truce arranged by Boniface VIII. restored Guienne to Edward I., gave him the hand of Philips sister for himself and that of the kings daughter for his son (1298).

A still more lengthy and unfortunate suit was the attempt of Philip the Fair and his successors to incorporate the Flemish fief like the English one (1300-1326), thus coming Philip the into conflict with proud and turbulent republics;:, composed of wool and cloth merchants, weavers, fullers and powerful counts. Guy de Dampierre, count of Namur, who had become count of Flanders on the death of his mother Margaret II. in 1279an ambitious, greedy and avaricious manwas arrested at the Louvre on account of his attempt to marry his daughter to Edward I.s eldest son. without the consent of his suzerain Philip. Released after two years, he sided definitely with the king of England when the latter was in arms against Philip; and being only weakly supported by Edward, he was betrayed by the nobles who favored France, and forced to yield up not only his personal liberty but the whole of Flanders (1300). The Flemings, however, soon wearying of the oppressive administration of the French governor, Jacques de Chtillon, and the recrudescence of patrician domination, rose and overwhelmed the French chivalry at Courtrai (1302) a prelude to the coming disasters of the Hundred Years War. Philips double revenge, on sea at Zierikzee and on land at Mons-en-Pvle (1304), led to the signing of a treaty at Athis-surOrge (1305).

The efforts of Philip the Fair to expand the limits of his kingdom on the eastern border were more fortunate. His Eastern marriage had gained him Champagne; and he afterpolicy of wards extended his influence over Franche Comt, Philip the Bar and the bishoprics of Lorraine, acquiring also Fair. Viviers and the important town of Lyonsall this less by force of arms than by the expenditure of money. Disdaining the illusory dream of the imperial crown, still cherished by his legal advisers, he pushed forward towards that fluctuating eastern frontier, the line of least resistance, which would have yielded to him had it not been for the unfortunate interruption of the Hundred Years War.

His three sons, L@uis X., Philip V. the Tall, and Charles IV., continued his work. They increased the power of the monarchy The sons politically by destroying the feudal reaction excited of Philip in 1314 by the tyrannical conduct of the jurists, like the Fair Enguerrandde Marigny, and by the increasingfinancial (14: extortions of their father; and they alsonotably ~ Philip V., one of the most hard-working of the Capets increased it on the administrative side by specializing the services of justice and of finance, which were separated from the kings council. Under these mute self-effacing kings the progress of royal power was only the more striking. With them the senior male line of the house of Capet became extinct.

During three centuries and a half they had effected great things: they had founded a kingdom, a royal family and civil institutions. The land subject to Hugh Capet in 987, barely representing twoofthemoderndepartments h,e royai of France, in 1328 covered a space equal to fifty-nine c.~ of them. The political unity of the kingdom was only fettered by the existence of four large isolated fiels: Flanders on the north, Brittany on the west, Burgundy on the east and Guienne on the south. The capital, which for long had been movable, was now established in the Louvre at Paris, fortified by Philip Augustus. Like the fiefs, feudal institutions at large had been shattered. The Roman tradition which made the will of the sovereign law, gradually propagated by the teaching of Roman lawthe law of servitude, not of libertyand already proclaimed by the jurist Phi]ippe de Beaumanoir as superior to the customs, had been of immense support to the interest of the state and the views of the monarchs; and finally the Capets, so humble of origin, had created organs of general administration common to all in order to effect an administrative centralization. In their grand council and their domains they would have none but silent, servile and well-disciplined agents. The royal exchequer, which was being painfully elaborated in the chambre des corn ptes, and the treasury of the crown lands at the Louvre, together barely sufficed to meet the expenses of this more complicated and costly machinery. The uniform justice exercised by the parlement spread gradually over the whole kingdom by means of cas royaux (royal suits), and at the same time the royal coinage became obligatory. Against this exaltation of their power two adversaries might have been formidable; but one, the Church, was a captive in Babylon, and the second, the people, was deprived of the communal liberties which it had abused, or humbly effaced itself in the states-general behind the declared will of the king. This well-established authority was also supported by the revered memory of Monseigneur Saint Louis; and it is this prestige, the strength of this ideal superior to all other, that explains how the royal prerogative came to survive the mistakes and misfortunes of the Hundred Years War.

On the extinction of the direct line of the Capets the crown passed to a younger branch, that of the Valois. Its seven representatives (1328-1498) were on the whole very inferior to the Capets, and, with the exception of ~e~,t of Charles V. and Louis XI., possessed neither their VZois. political sense nor even their good common sense; they cost France the loss of her great advantage over all other countries. During this century and a half France passed through two very severe crises; under the first five Valois the Hundred Years War imperilled the kingdoms independence; and under Louis XI. the struggle against the house of Burgundy endangered the territorial unity of the monarchy that had been established with such pains upon the ruins of feudalism.

Charles the Fair having died and left only a daughter, the nations rights, so long in abeyance, were once more regained. An assembly of peers and barons, relying on two precedents under Philip V. and Charles IV., declared ~ ~ that no woman, nor therefore her son, could in 1350). accordance with custom succeed to the monarchy of France. This definite decision, to which the name of the Salic law was given much later, set aside Edward III., king of England, grandson of Philip the Fair, nephew of the late kings and son of their sister Isabel. Instead it gave the crown to the feudal chief, the hard and coarse Philip VI. of Valois, nephew of Philip the Fair. This at once provoked war between the two monarchies, English and French, which, including periods of truce, lasted for a hundred and sixteen years. Of active warfare there were two periods, both disastrous to begin with, but ending favorably:

one lasted from 1337 to 1378 and the other from 1413 to 1453, thirty-three years of distress and folly coming in between.

However, the Hundred Years War was not mainly caused by the pretensions of Edward III. to the throne of the Capets; The since after having long hesitated to do homage to Hundred Philip VI. for his possessions in Guienne, Edward at Years last brought himself to itthough certainly only after War, lengthy negotiations, and even threats of war in 1331.

It is true that six years later he renounced his homage and again claimed the French inheritance; but this was on the ground of personal grievances, and for economic and political reasons. There was a natural rivalry between Edward III. and Philip VI., both of them young, fond of the life of chivalry, festal magnificence, and the belles apertises darmes. This rivalry was aggravated by the enmity between Philip VI. and Robert of Artois, his brother-in-law, who, after having warmly supported the disinheriting of Edward III., had been convicted of deceit in a question of succession, had revenged himself on Philip by burning his waxen effigy, and had been welcomed with open arms at Edwards court. Philip VI. had taken reprisals against him in 1336 by making his parlement declare the forfeiture of Edwards lands and castles in Guienne; but the Hundred Years War, at first-simply a feudal quarrel between vassal and suzerain, soon became a great national conflict, in consequence of what was occurring in Flanders.

The communes of Flanders, rich, hard-working, jealous of their liberties, had always been restive under the authority of their counts and the influence of their suzerain, the king of France. The affair at Cassel, where Philip VI. had avenged the injuries done by the people of Bruges in 1325 to their count, Louis of Nevers, had also compromised English interests. To attack the English through their colonies, Guienne and Flanders, was to injure them in their most vital interests cloth and claret; for England sold her wool to Bruges in order to pay Bordeaux for her wine. Edward III. had replied by forbidding the exportation of English wool, and by threatening the great industrial cities of Flanders with the transference to England of the cloth manufacturean excellent means of stirring them up against the French, as without wool they could do nothing. Workless, and in desperation, they threw themselves on Edwards mercy, ,by the advice of a rich citizen of Ghent, Jacob van Artevelde; and their last scruples of loyalty gave way when Edward decided to follow the counsels of Robert of Artois and of Artevelde, and to claim the crown of France.

The war began, like every feudal war of that day, with a solemn defiance, and it was soon characterized by terrible disasters. The destruction of the finest French The fleet that had yet been seen, surprised in the port of defeat at. -

Slays. Sluys, closed the sea to the king of Erance; the struggle was continued on. land, but with little result.

Flanders tired of it, but fortunately for Edward III. Brittahy now took fire, through a quarrel of succession, analogous to that in France, between Charles of Blois (who had married the daughter of the late duke and was a nephew of Philip VI., by whom he was supported) and John of Montfort, brother of the old duke, who naturally asked assistance from the king of England. But here, too, nothing important was accomplished; the capture of John. of Montfort at Nantes deprived Edward of Brittany at the very moment when he finally lost Flanders by the death of Artevelde, who was killed by the people of Ghent in 1345. Under the influence of Godefroi dHarcourt, whom Philip VI. had wished to destroy on account of his ambitions with regard to the duchy of Normandy, Edward III. now invaded central France, ravaged Normandy, getting as near to Paris as Saint-Germain; and profiting by Philip VI.s hesitation and delay, he reached the north with his spoils by dint of forced marches. Having been pursued and encountered at The Crcy, Edward gained a complete victory there on the defeat at 26th of April 1346. The seizure of Calais in 1347, Crcy and despite heroic resistance, gave the English a port the taking where they could always find entry into France, just o a as. when the queen of England had beaten David of Scotland, the ally of France, at Nevilles Cross, and when Charles of Blois, made prisoner in his turn, was held captive in London. The Black Death put the finishing touch to the military disasters and financial upheavals of this unlucky reign; though before his death in 1350 Philip VI. was fortunate enough to augment his territorial acquisitions by the purchase of the rich port of Montpellier, as well as by that of Dauphin, which extended to the Alpine frontier, and was to become the appanage of the eldest son of the king of France (see DAUPHINfi and DAUPHIN).

Philip VI.s successor was his son John the Goodor rather, the stupid and the spendthrift. This noble monarch was unspeakably brutal (as witness the murders, simply on suspicion, of the constable Raoul de Brienne, count the of Eu, and of the count of Harcourt) and incredibly (l~5O).

extravagant. His need of money led him to debase the currency eighty-one times between 1350 and 1355. And this money, so necessary for the prosecution of the war with England, which had been interrupted for a year, thanks to the popes intervention, was lavished by him upon his favorite, Charles of La Cerda. The latter was murdered in 1354 by order of Charles of Navarre, the kings son-in-law, who also prevented the levying of the taxes voted by the states in 1355 with the object of replenishing the treasury. The Black Prince took this opportunity to ravage the southern provinces, and then marched to join the duke of Lancaster and Charles of Navarre in Normandy. John the Good managed to bring the English army to bay at Maupertuis, ~ not far from Poitiers; but the battle was conducted with~ such a want of intelligence on his part that the French army was overwhelmed, though very superior in numbers, and King John was made prisoner, after a determined resistance, on the I9th of September 1356.

The disaster at Poitiers almost led to the establishment in France of institutions analogous to those which England owed to Bouvines. The king a prisoner, the dauphin discredited and deserted, and the nobility decimated, The states the peoplethat is to say, the states-generalcould 1356 raise their voice. Philip the Fair had never regarded the states-general as a financial institution, but merely as a moral support. Now, however, in order to obtain substantial help from taxes instead of mere driblets, the Valois needed a stronger lever than cunning or force. War against the English assured them the support of the nation. Exactions, debasement of the currency and extortionate taxation were ruinous palliatives, and insufficient to supply a treasury which the revenue from crown lands and various rights taken from the nobles could not fill even in times of peace. By the 14th century the motto Nim pose qui ne veut (i.e. no taxation without consent) was as firmly established in France as in England. After Crcy Philip VI. called the states together regularly, that he might obtain subsidies from them, as an assistance, an aid which subjects could not refuse their suzerain. In return for this favor, which the king could not claim as a right, the states, feeling their power, began to bargain, and at the session of November 1355 demanded the participation of all classes in the tax voted, and obtained guarantees both for its levy and the use to be made of it. A similar situation in England had given birth to political liberty; but in France the great crisis of the early I5th century stifled it. It was with this money that John the Good got himself beaten and taken prisoner at Poitiers. Once more the states-general had to be convoked. Confronted by a pale weakly boy like the dauphin Charles and the remnants of the discredited council, the situation of the states was stronger than ever. Predominant in influence were the deputies Robert le from the towns, and above all the citizens of the Coq and capital, led by Robert le Coq, bishop of Laon, and 4~t1euuui,e Etienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris. arce. Having no cause for confidence in the royal administration, the states refused to treat with the dauphins councillors, and proposed to take him under their own tutelage. He himself hesitated whether to sacrifice the royal authority, or else, without resources or support, to resist an assembly backed by public opinion. He decided for resistance. Under pretext of grave news received from his father, and of an interview at Metz with his uncle, the emperor Charles IV., he begged the states to adjourn till the 3rd of November 1356. This was a political coup detat, and when the time had expired he attempted a financial coup detat by debasing the currency. An uprising obliged him to call the states-general together again in February 1357, when they transformed themselves into a deliberative, independent and permanent assembly by means of the Grande Ordonnance.

In order to make this great French charter really effective resistance to the royal authority should have been collective, The national and even popular, as in the case of the charters Grande of 1215 and 1258 in England. But the lay and ecclesiOrdon- astical feudal lords continued to show themselves of in France, as everywhere else except across the Straits of Dover, a cause of division. and oppression. Moreover, the states were never really general; those of the Langue doc and the Langue doil sometimes acted together; but there was never a common understanding between them and always two Frances within the kingdom. Besides, they only represented the three classes who alone had any social standing at that period: the nobles, the clergy, and the burgesses of important towns. Etienne Marcel himself protested against councillors de petit tat. Again, the states, intermittently convoked according to the kings good pleasure, exercised neither periodical rights nor effective control, but fulfilled a duty which was soon felt as onerous. Indifference and satiety spread speedily; the bourgeoisie forsook the reformers directly they had recourse to violence (February 1358), and the Parisians became hostile when Etienne Marcel complicated his revolutionary work by intrigues with Navarre, releasing from prison the grandson of Louis X., the Headstrong, an ambitious, fine-spoken courter of popularity, covetous of the royal crown. The dauphins flight from Paris excited a wild outburst of monarchist loyalty and anger against the capital among the nobility and in the statesgeneral of Compigne. Marcel, like the dauphin, was not a man to turn back. But neither the support of the peasant insurgents the Jacques who were annihilated in the market of Meaux, nor a last but unheeded appeal to the large towns, nor yet the~uncertain support of Charles the Bad, to whom Marcel in despair proposed to deliver up Paris, saved him from being put to death by the royalist party of Paris on the 31st of July 1358.

Isolated as he was, ~ltienne Marcel had been unable either to seize the government or to create a fresh one. In the reaction which followed his downfall royalty inherited the financial administration which the states had set up to check extravagance. The elus and the superintendents, instead of being delegates of the states, became royal functionaries like the baillis and the provosts; imposts, hearth-money (fouage), salt-tax (gabelle), sale-dues (droits de vente), voted for the war, were levied during the whole of Charles V.s reign and added to his personal revenue. The opportunity of founding political liberty upon the vote and the control of taxation, and of organizing the administration of the kingdom so as to ensure that the entire military and financial resources should be always available, was gone beyond recall.

Re-establishing the royal authority in Paris was not enough; an end had to be put to the war with England and Navarre, and this was effected by the treaty of Brtigny (1360).

treaty of King John ceded Poitou, Saintonge, Agenais, Prigord Br~tigny. and Limousin to Edward IlL, and was offered his liberty for a ransom of three million gold crowns; but, unable to pay that enormous sum, he returned to his agreeable captivity in London, where he died in 1364.

Yet through the obstinacy and selfishness of John the Good, France, in stress of suffering, was gradually realizing herself.

More strongly than her king she felt the shame of Charles V. defeat. Local or municipal patriotism waxed among 1380). peasants and townsfolk, and combined with hatred of the English to develop national sentiment. Many of the conquered repeated that proud, sad answer of the men of Rochelle to the English: We will acknowledge you with our lips; but with our hearts, never!

The peace of Brtigny brought no repose to the kingdom. War having become a congenial and very lucrative industry, its cessation caused want of work, with all the evils The that entails. For ten years the remnants of the armies Grandes of England, Navarre and Brittanythe Grandes Corn; Compagnies, as they were calledravaged the pagn CS. country; although Charles V., durement subtil et sage, succeeded in getting rid of them, thanks to du Guesclin, one of their chiefs, who led them to any place where fighting was going onto Brittany, Alsace, Spain. Charles also had all towns and large villages fortified; and being a man of affairs he set about undoing the effect of the treaty of Brtigny by alliances with Flanders, whose heiress he married to his brother Philip, duke of Burgundy; with Henry, king of Castile, and Ferdinand of Portugal, who possessed fine navies; and, finally, with the emperor Charles IV. Financial and military preparations were made no less seriously when the harsh administration of the Black Prince, to whom Edward III. had given Guienne in fief, provoked the nobles of Gascony to complain to Charles V. Cited before the court of Paris, the Black Prince refused to attend, and war broke out in Gascony, Poitou and Normandy, but with fresh tactics (1369). Whilst the English adhered to the system of wide circuits, under Chandos or Robert Knolles, Charles V. limited himself to defending the towns and exhausting the enemy without taking dangerous risks. Thanks to the prudent constable du Guesclin, sitting quietly at home he reconquered bit by bit what his predecessors had lost upon the battlefield, helm on head and sword in hand; and when he died in 1380, after the decease of both Edward III. and the Black Prince, the only possessions of England in a liberated but ruined France were Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg and Calais.

The death of Charles V. and dynastic revOlutions in England stopped the war for thirt~-five years. Then began an era of internal disorder and misery. The men of that period, coarse, violent and simple-minded, with few political ideas, loved brutal and noisy pleasures 1422). witness the incredible festivities at the marriage of Charles VI., and the assassinations of the constable de Clisson. the duke of Orleans and John the Fearless. It would have needed an energetic hand to hold these passions in check; and Charles VI. was a gentle-natured child, twelve years of age, who attained his majority only to fall into a second childhood. Thence arose a question which remained without reply during the whole of his reign. Who should have possession of the royal person, and, consequently, of the royal power? The kings Should it be the uncles of the king, or his followers uncles and Clisson and Bureau de Ia Rivire, whom the nobles the Marcalled in mockery the Marmousets? His uncles first n,ousets. seized the government, each with a view to his own particular interests, which were by no means those of the kingdom at large. The duke of Anjou emptied the treasury in conquering the kingdom of Naples, at the call of Queen Joanna of Siily. The duke of Berry seized upon Languedoc and the wine-tax. The duke of Burgundy, heir through his wife to the countship of Flanders, wanted to crush the democratic risings among the Flemings. Each of them needed money, but Charles V., pricked by conscience on his death-bed, forbade the levying of the hearth-tax (1380). His brothers attempt to re-establish it set Paris in revolt. The Maillotins of Paris found imitators in other great towns; and in Auvergne and Vivarais ~~o1t the Tuchins renewed the Jacquerie. Revolutionary Maiilot!as. attempts between 1380 and 1385 to abolish all taxes were echoed in England, Florence and Flanders. These isolated rebellions, however, were crushed by the ever-ready coalition of royal and feudal forces at Roosebeke (1382). Taxes and subsidies were thaintained and the hearth-money re-established.

The death of the duke of Anjou at Ban (1384) gave preponderant influence to Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, who increased the large and fruitless expenses of his Burgunclian policy to such a point that on the return of a last unfortunate expedition into Gelderland Charles VI., who had been made by him to marry Isabel of Bavaria, took the governMadness ment from his uncles on the 3rd of May 1389, and vi. recalled the Marmousets. But this young king, aged only twenty, very much in love with his young wife and excessively fond of pleasure, soon wrecked the delicate poise of his mental faculties in the festivities of the Hotel SaintPaul; and a violent attack of Pierre de Craon on the constable de Clisson having led to an expedition against his accomplice, the duke of Brittany, Charles was seized by insanity on the road. The Marmousets were deposed, the kings brother, the duke of Orleans, set aside, and the old condition of affairs began again (1392).

The struggle was now between the two branches of the royal family, the Orleanist and the Burgundian, between the aristocratic south and the democratic north; while the Siggle deposition of Richard II. of England in favor of the Ar- Henry of Lancaster permitted them to vary civil war niagnacs by war against the foreigner. Philip the Bold, duke and the of Burgundy, the kings uncle, had certain advantages guUn~nans. over his rival Louis of Orleans, Charles VI.s brother:

superiority in age, relations with the Lancastrians and with Germany, and territorial wealth and power. The two adversaries had each the same scheme of government: each wanted to take charge of Charles VI., who was intermittently insane, and to exclude his rival from the pillage of the royal exchequer; but this rivalry of desires brought them into opposition on all the great questions of the daythe war with England, the Great Schism and the imperial election. The struggle became acute when John the Fearless of Burgundy succeeded his father in 1404. Up to this time the queen, Isabel of Bavaria, had been held in a kind of dependency upon Philip of Burgundy, who had brought about her marriage; but less eager for influence than for money, since political questions were unintelligible to her and her situation was a precarious one, she suddenly became favorable to the duke of Orleans. Whether due to passion or caprice this cost the duke his life, for John the Fearless had him assassinated in 1407, and thus let loose against one another the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, so-called because the son of the murdered duke was the son-in-law of the count of Armagnac (see ARaJAGNAc). Despite all attempts at reconciliation the country was divided into two parties. Paris, with her tradesmenthe butchers in particularand her university, played an important part in this quarrel; for to be master of Paris was to be master of the king. In 1413 the duke of Burgundy gained the upper hand there, partly owing to the rising of the Cabochiens, i.e. the butchers led by the skinner Simon Caboche, partly to the hostility of the university to the Avignon pope and partly to the Parisian bourgeoisie.

Amid this reign of terror and of revolt the university, the only moral and intellectual force, taking the place of the impotent The Or- states-general and of a parlement carefully restricted to donnance the judiciary sphere, vainly tried to re-establish a firm Cabo- monarchical system by means of the Ordonnance Cabochienne. chienne; but this had no effect, the government being now at the mercy of the mob, themselves at the mercy of incapable hot-headed leaders. The struggle ended in becoming one between factions of the townsmen, led respectively by the hitchier Cirasse and by Jean Caboche. The former overwhelmed John the Fearless, who fled from Paris; and the Armagnacs, re-entering on his exit, substituted white terror for red terror, from the 12th of December 1413 to the 28th of July 1414. The butchers organization was suppressed and all hope of reform lost. Such disorders allowed Henry V. of England to take the offensive again.

The Armagnacs were in possession of Paris and the king when Henry V. crushed them at Agincourt on the 25th of Agincourt October 1415. It was as at Crcy and Poitiers; the French chivalry, accustomed to mere playing at battle in the tourneys, no longer knew how to fight. Charles of Orleans being a captive and his father-in-law, the count of Armagnac, highly unpopular, John the Fearless, hitherto prudently neutral, re-entered Paris, amid scenes of carnage, on the invitation of the citizen Perrinet le Clerc.

Secure from interference, Henry V. had occupied the whole of Normandy and destroyed in two years the work of Philip Augustus. The duke of Burgundy, feeling as incapable of coming to an understanding with the masterful Englishman as of resisting him unaided, tried to 1428. effect a reconciliation with the Armagnacs, who had with them the heir to the throne, the dauphin Charles; but his assassination at Montereau in 1419 nearly caused the destruction of the kingdom, the whole Burgundian party going over to the side of the English. By the treaty of Troyes (1420) the son of John the Fearless, Philip the Good, in order to avenge his father recognized Henry V. (now married to Catherine, Charles VI.s daughter) as heir to the crown of France, to the detriment of the dauphin Charles, who was disavowed by his mother and called in derision the soi-disant dauphin of Viennois, When Henry V. and Charles VI. died in 1422, Henry VI.son of Henry V. and Catherinewas proclaimed at Paris king of France and of England, with the concurrence of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. Thus in 1428 the English occupied all eastern and northern France, as far as the Loire; while the two most important civil powers of the time, the parlement and the university of Paris, had acknowledged the English king.

But the cause of greatest weakness to the French party was still Charles VII. himself, the king of Bourges. This youth of nineteen, the ill-omened son of a madman and of a Bavarian of loose morals, was a symbol of France, 7~22 timorous and mistrustful. The chftteaux of the 1461). Loire, where he led a restless and enervating existence, held an atmosphere little favorable to enthusiasm and energy. After his victories at Cravant (1423) and Verneuil (1424), the duke of Bedford, appointed regent of the kingdom, had given Charles VII. four years respite, and these had been occupied in violent intrigues between the constable de Richemont i and the sire de la Trmoille, the young kings favorites, and solely desirous of enriching themselves at his expense. The king, melancholy spectacle as he was, seemed indeed to suit that tragic hour when Orleans, the last bulwark of the south, was besieged by the earl of Salisbury, now roused from inactivity (1428).

He had neither taste nor capacity like Philip VI. or John the Good for undertaking belles apertises darmes; but then a lack of chivalry combined with a temporizing policy had not been particularly unsuccessful in the case of his grapdfather Charles V.

Powerful aid now came from an unexpected quarter. The war had been long and cruel, and each successive year naturally increased feeling against the English. The damage ~ done to Burgundian interests by the harsh yet impotent A~. government of Bedford, disgust at the iniquitous treaty of Troyes, the monarchist loyalty of many of the warriors, the still deeper sentiment felt by men like Alain Chartier towards Dame France, and the great misery that there was in the kingdom of France; all these suddenly became incarnate in the person of Joan of Arc, a young peasant of Domrmy in Lorraine. Determined in her faith and proud in her meekness, in opposition to the timid counsels of the military leaders, to the interested delays of the courtiers, to the scruples of the experts and the quarrelling of the doctors, she quoted her voices, who had, she said, commissioned her to raise the siege of Orleans and to conduct the gentle dauphin to Reims, there to be crowned. Her sublime folly turned out to be wiser than their wisdom; in two months, from May to July 1429, she had freed Orleans, destroyed the prestige of the English army at Patay, and dragged the doubting and passive king against his will to be crowned at Reims. All this produced a marvellous revulsion of political feeling throughout France, Charles VII. now becoming incontestably him to whom the kingdom of France ought to belong. After Reims Joans first thought was for Paris, and to achieve the final overthrow fEar! of Richmond; afterwards Arthur, duke of Brittany (q.v.).

of the English; while Charles VII. was already sighing for the easy life of Touraine, and recurring to that policy of truce which was so strongly urged by his counsellors, and so keenly irritating to the clear-sighted Joan of Arc. A check before Paris allowed the jealousy of La Trmoille to waste the heroine for eight months on operations of secondary importance, until the day when she was captured by the Burgundians under the walls of Compigne, and sold by them to the English. The latter incontinently prosecuted her as a heretic; they had, indeed, a great interest in seeing her condemned by the Church, which would render her conquests sacrilegious. After a scandalous four months duel between this simple innocent girl and a tribunal of crafty malevolent ecclesiastics and doctors of the university of Paris, Joan was burned alive in the old market-place of Rouen, on the 3oth of May 1431 (see JoAN OF ARc).

On Charles VII.s part this meant oblivion and silence until the day when in 1450, more for his own sake than for hers, he caused her memory to be rehabilitated; but Joan had given the country new life and heart. From 1431 to 1454 the struggle against the English went on energetically; and the king, relieved in 1433 of his evil genius, La Trmoille, then became a man once more, playing a kingly part under the guidance of Dunois, Richemont, La Hire and Saintrailles, leaders of worth on the field of battle. Moreover, the English territory, a great triangle, with the Channel for base and Paris for apex, was not a really solid position. Yet the war seemed interminable; until at last Philip of Burgundy, for long embarrassed by his English alliance, decided in 1435 to become reconciled with Charles VII. This was in consequence of the death of his sister, who had been married to Bedford, and the return of his brother- in-law Richemont into the French kings favor. The treaty of Arras, which made him a sovereign prince for life, though harsh, at all events gave a united France the opportunity of expelling the English from the east, and allowed the king to re-enter Paris in. 1436. From 1436 to 1439 there was a terrible repetition of what happened after the Peace of Brtigny; famine, pestilence, extortions and, later, the aristocratic revolt of the Praguerie, completed the ruin of the country. But thanks to the permanent tax of the taille during this time of truce Charles VII. was able to effect the great military reform of the Compagnies dOrdonnance, of the Francs-Archers, and of the artillery of the brothers Bureau. From this time forward the English, ruined, demoralized and weakened both by the death of the duke of Bedford and the beginnings of the Wars of the Roses, continued to lose territory on every recurrence of conflict. Normandy was lost to them at Formigny (1450), and Guienne, English since the 12th century, at Castillon (1453). They kept only Calais; and now it was their turn to have a madman, Hen.ry VI., for king.

France issued from the Hundred Years War ~victorious, but terribly ruined and depopulated. It is true she had dec e finitely freed her territory from the stranger, and qu~ces of through the sorrows of defeat and the menace of the Nun- disruption had fortified her national solidarity, and dred defined her patriotism, still involved in and not yet dissociated from loyalty to the monarchy. A happy awakening, although it went too far in establishing royal absolutism; and a victory too complete, in that it enervated all the forces of resistance. The nation, worn out by the long disorders consequent on the captivity of King John and the insanity of Charles VI., abandoned itself to the joys of peace. Preferring the solid advantage of orderly life to an unstable liberty, it acquiesced in the abdication of 1439, when the States consented to taxation for the support of a permanent army without any periodical renewal of their authorization. No doubt by the prohibition to levy the smallest taille the feudal lords escaped direct taxation; but from the day when the privileged classes selfishly allowed the taxing of the third estate, provided that they themselves were exempt, they opened the door to monarchic absolutism. The principle of autocracy triumphed everywhere over the remnants of local or provincial authority, in the sphere of industry as in that of administration; while the gild system became much more rigid. A loyal bureaucracy, far more powerful than the phantom administration of Bourges or of Poitiers, gradually took the place of the court nobility; and thanks to this the institutions of control which the War had called into powerthe provincial states-general were nipped in the bud, withered by the peoples poverty of political idea and by the blind worship of royalty. Without the nations concurrence the kings creatures were now to endow royalty with all the organs necessary for the exertion of authority; by which imprudent compliance, and above all thanks to Jacques Cceur (q.v.), the financial independence of the provinces disappeared little by little, and all the public revenues were left at the discretion of the king alone (1436-1440). By this means, too, and chiefly owing to the constable de Richemont and the brothers Bureau, the first permanent royal army was established (1445).

Henceforward royalty, strengthened by victory and organized for the struggle, was able to reduce the centrifugal social forces to impotence. The parlement of Paris saw its monopoly Monamh. encroached upon by the court of Toulouse in 1443, kalcenand by the parlement of Grenoble rn 1453. The university of Paris, compromised with the English, ~

like the parlement, witnessed the institution and growth of privileged provincial universities. The Church of France was isolated from the papacy by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) only to be exploited and enslaved by royalty. Monarchic centralization, interrupted for the moment by the war, took up with fresh vigour its attacks upon urban liberties, especially in the always more independent south. It caused a slackening of that spirit of communal initiative which had awakened in the midst of unprecedented disasters. The decimated and impoverished nobility proved their impotence in the coalitions they attempted between 43~ and 1442, of which the most important, the Praguerie, fell to pieces almost directly, despite the support of the dauphin himself.

The life of society, now alarmingly unstable and ruthlessly cfuel, was symbolized by the dance macabre painted on the walls of the cemeteries; the sombre and tragic art of the I5th century, having lost the fine balance life shown by that of the I3th, gave expression in its mournful realism to the general state of exhaustion. The favorite subject of themysteries and of other artistic manifestations was no longer the triumphant Christ of the middle ages, nor the smiling and teaching Christ of the I3th century, but the Man of sorrows and of death, the naked bleeding Jesus, lying on the knees of his mother or crowned with thorns. France, like the Christ, had known all the bitterness and weakness of a Passion.

The war of independence over, after a century of fatigue, regrets and doubts, royalty and the nation, now more united and more certain of each other, resumed the methodic and utilitarian war of widening boundaries. Leaving dreams about crusades to the poets, and to a papacy delivered from schism, Charles VII. turned his attention to the ancient appanage of Lothair, Alsace and Lorraine, those lands of the north and the east whose frontiers were constantly changing, and which seemed to invite aggression. But the chance of annexing them without great trouble was lost; by the fatal custom of appanages the Valois had set up again those feudal institutions which the Capets had found such difficulty in destroying, and Louis XI. was to make sad experience of this.

To the north and east of the kingdom extended a wide territory of uncertain limits; countries without a chief like Alsace; principalities like Lorraine, ecclesiastical lordships like the bishopric of Liege; and, most important of all, a royal appanage, that of the duchy of Burgundy, ~ndy. which dated back to the time of John the Good.

Through marriages, conquests and inheritance, the dukes of Burgundy had enormously increased their influence; while during the Hundred Years War they had benefited alternately by their criminal alliance with the English and by their self. interested reconciliation with their sovereign. They soou appeared the most formidable among the new feudal chiefs so imprudently called into being by Louis XI.s predecessors. Fleeing from the paternal wrath which he had drawn down upon himself by his ambition and by his unauthorized marriage with Charlotte of Savoy, the future Louis XI. had passed five years of voluntary exile at the court of the chief of the House of Burgundy, Philip the Good; and he was able to appreciate the territorial power of a duchy which extended from the Zuyder Zee to the Somme, with all tise country between the Sane and the Loire in addition, and its geographical position as a commercial intermediary between Germany, England and France. He had traversed the fertile country of Flanders; he had visited the rich commercial and industrial republics of Bruges and Ghent, which had escaped the disasters of the Hundred Years War; and, finally, he had enjoyed a hospitality as princely as it was self-interested at Brussels and at Dijon, the two capitals, where he had seen the brilliancy of a court unique in Europe for the ideal of chivalric life it offered.

But the dauphin Louis, although a bad son and impatient for the crown, was not -dazzled by all this. With very simple tastes, an inquiring mind, and an imagination always Louis XI. at work, he combined a certain easy good-nature ~ which inspired confidence, and though stingy in spending money on himself, he could be lavish in buying men either dangerous or likely to be useful. More inclined to the subtleties of diplomacy than to the risks of battle, he had recognized and speedily grasped the disadvantages of warfare. The duke of Burgundy, however rich and powerful, was still the kings vassal; his wide but insecure authority, of too rapid growth and unpopular, lacked sovereign rights. Hardly, therefore, had Louis XI. heard of his fathers death than he made his host aware of his perfectly independent spirit, and his very definiteintention to be master in his own house.

But by a kind of poetic justice, Louis XI. had for seven years, from 1465 to 1472, to struggle against fresh Pragueries, called vie Leagues of the Public Weal (presumably from their Leagues disregard of it), composed of the most powerful of the French nobles, to whom he had set the example of Public revolt. His first proceedings had indeed given no We promise of the moderation and prudence afterwards to characterize him; he had succeeded in exasperating all parties; the officials of his father, the well-served, whom he dismissed in favor of inferiors like Jean Balue, Oliver le Daim and Tristan Lermite; the clergy, by abrogating the Pragmatic Sanction; the university of Paris, by his ill-treatment of it; and the nobles, whom he deprived of their hunting rights, among them being those whom Charles VII. had been most careful to conciliate in view of the inevitable conflict with the duke of Burgundyin. particular, Francis II., duke of Brittany. The repurchase in 1463 of the towns of the Somme (to which Philip the Good, now grown old and engaged in a quarrel with his son, the count of Charolais, had felt obliged to consent on consideration of receiving four hundred thousand gold crowns), and the intrigues of Louis XI. during the periodical revolts of the Ligois against their prince-bishop, set the powder alight. On three different occasions (in 1465, 1467 and 1472), Louis XI.s own brother, the duke of Berry, urged by the duke of Brittany, the count of Charolais, the duke of Bourbon, and the other feudal lords, attempted to set up six kingdoms in France instead of one, and to impose upon Louis XI. a regency which should give them enormous pensions. This was their idea of Public Weal.

Louis XI. won by his favorite method, diplomacy rather than arms. At the time of the first league, the battle of Montlhry (16th of July 1465) having remained the Bold, undecided between the two equally badly organized armies, Louis XI. conceded everything in the treaties of Confians and Saint-Maur-promises costing him little, since he had no intention of keeping them. But during the course of the second league, provoked by the recapture of Normandy, which he had promised to his brother in exchange for Berry, he was nearly caught in. his own trap. On the I 5th of June 1467 Philip the Good died, and the accession of the count of Charolais was received with popular risings. In order to embarrass him Louis XI. had secretly encouraged the people of Liege to revolt; but preoccupied with the marriage of Charles the Bold with Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV. of England, he wished to negotiate personally with him at Pronne, and hardly had he reached that place when news arrived there of the revolt of Liege amid cries of Vive France. Charles the Bold, proud, violent, pugnacious, as treacherous as his rival, a hardier soldier, though without his political sagacity, imprisoned Louis in the tower where Charles the Simple ~ja?

had died as a prisoner of the count of Vermandois. Nronne. He only let him depart when he had sworn in the treaty of Pronne to fulfil the engagements made at Conflans and Saint-Maur to assist in person at the subjugation of rebellious Liege, an.d to give Champagne as an appanage to his ally the duke of Berry.

Louis XI., supported by the assembly of notables at Tours (1470), had no intention of keeping this last promise, since the duchy of Champagne would have made a bridge between Burgundy and Flandersthe two isolated branches of the house of Burgundy. He gave the duke coalitions. of Berry distant Guienne. But death eventually rid him of the duke in 1472, just when a third league was being organized, the object of which was to make the duke of Berry king with the help of Edward IV., king of England. The duke of Brittany, Francis II., was defeated; Charles the Bold, having failed at Beauvais in his attempt to recapture the towns of the Somme which had been. promised him by the treaty of Conflans, was obliged to sign the peace of Senlis (1472). This was the end of the great feudal coalitions, for royal vengeance soon settled the account of the lesser vassals; the duke of Alencon was condemned to prison for life; the count of Armagnac was killed; and the Germans were soon to disembarrass Louis of Charles the Bold.

Charles had indeed only signed the peace so promptly because he was looking eastward towards that royal crown and territorial cohesion of which his father had also dreamed. The Charles king, he said of Louis XI., is always ready. He wanted the Bolds, to provide his future sovereigntywith organs analogous imperial to those of France; a permanent army, and a judiciary ~ie~m&

and financial administration modelled on the French parlement and exchequer. Since he could not dismember the kingdom of France, his only course was to reconstitute the ancient kingdom of Lotharingia; while the conquest of the principality of Liege and of the duchy of Gelderland, and the temporary occupation of Alsace, pledged to him by Sigismund of Austria, made him greedy for Germany. To get himself elected king of the Romafis he offered his daughter Mary, his eternal candidate for marriage, to the emperor Frederick III. for his son. Thus either he or his son-in-aw Maximilian would have been emperor.

But the Tarpeian rock was a near neighbor of the Capitol. Frederickdistrustful, and in the pay of Louis XI.evaded a meeting arranged at Trier, and Burgundian influence in Alsace was suddenly brought to a violent end by the putting to death of its tyrannical agent, Peter von the Bold. Hagenhach. Charles thought to repair the rebuff of Trier at Cologne, and wasted his resources in an attempt to win over its elector by besieging the insignificant town of Neuss. But the universal spider as he called Louis XI.was weaving his web in the darkness, and was eventually to entangle him in it. First came the reconciliation, in his despite, of those irreconcilables, the Swiss and Sigismund of Austria; and then the union of both with the duke of Lorraine, who was also disturbed at the duke of Burgundys ambition. In vain Charles tried to kindle anew the embers of former feudal intrigues; the execution of the duke of Nemours and the count of Saint P01 cooled all enthusiasm. In vain did he get his dilatory friends, the English Yorkists, to cross the Channel; on the 29th of August 1475, at Picquigny, Louis XI. bribed them with a sum of seventy-five thousand crowns to forsake him, Edward further undertaking to guarantee the loyalty of the duke of Brittany. Exasperated, Charles attacked and took Nancy, wishing, as he said, to skin the Bernese bear and wear its fur. To the hanging of the brave garrison of Granson the Swiss responded by terrible reprisals at Granson and at Morat (March to June 1476); while the people of Lorraine finally routed Charles at Nancy on the 5th of January 1477, the duke himself falling in the battle.

The central administration of Burgundy soon disappeared, swamped by the resurgence of ancient local liberties; the army Ruin of fell to pieces; and all hope of joining the two limbs the house of the great eastern duchy was definitely lost. As for of Bur- the remnants that were left, French provinces and gundy. imperial territory, Louis XI. claimed the whole.

He seized everything, alleging different rights in each place; but he displayed such violent haste and such trickery that he threw the heiress of Burgundy, in despair, into the arms of Maximilian of Austria. At the treaty of Arras (December 1482) Louis XI. received only Picardy, the Boulonnais and Burgundy; by the marriage of Charles the Bolds daughter the rest was annexed to the Empire, and later to Spain. Thus by Louis XI.s short-sighted error the house of Austria established itself in the Low Countries. An age-long rivalry between the houses of France and Austria was the result of this disastrous marriage; and as the son who was its issue espoused the heiress of a now unified Spain, France, hemmed in by the Spaniards and by the Empire, was thenceforward to encounter them everywhere in her course. The historical progress of France was once more endangered.

The reasons of state which governed all Louis XI.s external policy also inspired his internal administration. If they justified The him in employing lies and deception in international adminis- affairs, in his relations with his subjects they led him tration of to regard as lawful everything which favored his Louis XI. authority; no question of right could weigh against it.

The army and taxation, as the two chief means of domination within and without the kingdom, constituted the main bulwarks of his policy. As for the nobility, his only thought was to diminish their power by multiplying their number, as his predecessors had done; while he reduced the rebels to submission by his iron cages or the axe of his gossip Tristan Lermite. The Church was treated with the same unconcerned cynicism; he held her in strict tutelage, accentuating her moral decadence still further by the manner in. which he set aside or re-established the Pragmatic Sanction, according to the fluctuations of his financial necessities or his Italian ambitions~ It has been said that on the other hand he was a king of the common people, and certainly he was one of them in his simple habits, in his taste for rough pleasantries, and above all in his religion, which was limited to superstitious practices and small devoutncsses. But in the states of Tours in 1468 he evinced the same mistrust for fiscal control by the people as for the privileges of the nobility. He inaugurated that autocratic rule which was to continue gaining strength until Louis XV.s time. Louis XI. was the king of the bourgeoisie; he exacted much from them, but paid them back with interest by allowing them to reduce the power of all -who were above them and to lord it over all who were below. As a matter of fact Louis XI.s most faithful ally was death. Saint-Pol, Nemours, Charles the Bold, his brother the duke of Berry, old Ren of Anjou and his nephew the count of Maine, heir to the riches of Provence and to rights over Naplesthe skeleton hand mowed down all his adversaries as though it too were in his pay; until the day when at Plessisles-Tours it struck a final blow, claimed its just dues from Louis XL, and carried him off despite all his relics on the 3oth of August 1483.

There was nothing noble about Louis XI. but his aims, and nothing great but the results he attained; yet however different Charles he might have been he could not have done better, VIII. and for what he achieved was the making of France. Brfttany This was soon seen after his death in the reaction which menaced his work and those who had served him; but thanks to himself and to his true successor, his eldest daughter Anne, married to the sire de Beaujeu, a younger member of the house of Bourbon, the set-back was only partial. Strife began immediately between the numerous malcontents and the Beaujeu party, who had charge of the little Charles VIII. These latter prudently made conces- Th M~4 sions: reducing the taille, sacrificing some of Louis XI.s Wr creatures to the rancour of the parlement, and restoring i.#&c. a certain number of offices or lands to the hostile princes (chief of whom was the duke of Orleans), and even consenting to a convocation of the states-general at Tours (1484). But the elections having been favorable to royalty, the Beaujeu family made the states reject the regency desired by the duke of Orleans, and organize the kings council after their own views. When they subsequently eluded the conditions imposed by the states, the deputiesnobles, clergy and burgessesshowed their incapacity, to oppose the progress of despotism. In vain did the malcontent princes attempt to set up a new League of Public Weal, the Guerre folle (Mad War), in which the duke of Brittany, Francis II., played the part of Charles the Bold, dragging in the people of Lorraine and the king of Navarre, In vain did Charles VIII., his majority attained, at once abandon in the treaty of Sable the benefits gained by the victory of Saint-Aubin du Cormier (1488). In. vain did Henry VII. of England, Ferdinand the Catholic, and Maximilian of Austria try to prevent the annexation of Brittany by France; its heiress Anne, deserted by every one, made peace and married Charles VIII. in 1491. There was no longer a single great fief in France to which the malcontents could fly for refuge.

It now remained to consolidate the later successes attained by the policy of the Valoisthe acquisition of the duchies of Burgundy and Brittany; but instead there was a sudden change and that policy seemed about to be lost in dreams of recapturing the rights of the Angevins ficence. over Naples, and conquering Constantinople. Charles VIII., a prince with neither intelligence nor resolution, his head stuffed with chivalric romance, was scarcely freed from his sisters control when he sought in Italy a fatal distraction from the struggle with the house of Austria. By this war of magnificence he caused an interruption of half a century in the growth of national sentiment, which was only revived by Henry II.; and he was not alone in thus leaving the bone for the shadow: his contemporaries, Ferdinand the Catholic when delivered from the Moors, and Henry VII. from the power of the English nobles, followed the same superficial policy, not taking the trouble to work for that real strength which comes from the adhesion of willing subjects to their sovereign. They only cared to aggrandize themselves, without thought of national feeling or geographical conditions. The great theorist of these conquistadores was Machiavelli. The regent, Anne of Beaujeu, worked in her daughters interest to the detriment of the kingdom, by means of a special treaty destined to prevent the property of the Bourbons from reverting to the crown; while Anne of Brittany did the like for her daughter Claude. Louis XII., the next king of France, thought only of the Milanese; Ferdinand the Catholic all but destroyed the Spanish unity at the end of his life by his marriage with Germaine de Foix; while the house of Austria -was for centuries to remain involved in this petty course of policy. Ministers followed the example of their self-seeking masters, thinking it no shame to accept pensions from foreign sovereigns. The preponderating consideration everywhere was direct material advantage; there was disproportion everywhere between the means employed and the poverty of the results, a contradiction between the interests of the sovereigns and those of their subjects, which were associated by force and not naturally blended. For the sake of a morsel of Italian territory every one forgot the permanent necessity of opposing the advance of the Turkish crescent, the t~vo horns of which were impinging upon Europe on the Danube and on the Mediterranean.

Italy and Germany were two great tracts of land at the mercy of the highest bidder, rich and easy to ,dominate, where these coarse and alien kings, still reared on medieval traditions, were for fifty years to gratify their love of conciucst. Italy was their first battlefield; Charles VIII. was summoned thither by Lodovico Ii Moro, tyrant of Milan, involved in a quarrel with his rival, Ferdinand II. of Aragon. The Aragonese had snatched the kingdom of Naples from the French house of Anjou, whose claims Louis XI. had inherited in 1480. To safeguard himself in the rear Charles VIII. handed over Roussillon and Cerdagne (Cerdana) to Ferdinand the Catholic (that is to say, all the profits of Louis XI.s policy); gave enormous sums of money to Henry VII. of England; and finally, by the treaty of Senlis ceded Artois and Franche-Comt to Maximilian of Austria. After these fools bargains the paladin set out for Naples in 1494. His journey was long and triumphant, and his return precipitate; indeed it very nearly ended in a disaster at Fornovo, owing to the first of those Italian holy leagues which at the least sign of friction were ready to turn against France. At the age of twenty-eight, however, Charles VIII. died without issue (1498).

The accession of his cousin, Louis of Orleans, under the title of Louis XII., only involved the kingdom still further in this Italian imbroglio. Louis did indeed add the fief of Louis XIL Orleans to the royal domain and hastened to divorce 1515). Jeanne of France in order to marry Anne, the widow of his predecessor, so that he might keep Brittany.

But he complicated the Naples affair by claiming Milan in consideration of the marriage of his grandfather, Louis of Orleans, to Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, duke of Milan. In 1499, appealed to by Venice, and encouraged by his favorite, Cardinal dAmboise (who was hoping to succeed Pope Alexander VI.), and also by Cesare Borgia, who had lofty ambitions in Italy, Louis XII. conquered Milan in seven months and held it br fourteen years; while Lodovico Sforza, betrayed by his Swiss mercenaries, died a prisoner in France. The kingdom of Naples was still left to recapture; and fearing to be thwarted by Ferdinand of Aragon, Louis XII. proposed to this master of roguery that they should divide the kingdom according to the treaty of Granada (1500). But no sooner had Louis XII. assumed the title of king of Naples than Ferdinand set about despoiling him of it, and despite the bravery of a Bayard and a -Louis dArs, Louis XII., being also betrayed by the pope, lost Naples for good in 1504. The treaties of Blois occasioned a vast amount of diplomacy, and projects of marriage between Claude of France and Charles of Austria, which came to nothing but served as a prelude to the later quarrels between Bourbons and Habsburgs.

It was Pope Julius II. who opened the gates of Italy to the horrors of war. Profiting by-Louis XII.s weakness and the emperor Maximilians strange capricious character, this martial pope sacrificed Italian and religious interests alike in order to re-establish the temporal power of the papacy. - Jealous of Venice, at that time the Italian state best provided with powers of expansion, and unable to subjugate it single-handed, Julius succeeded in obtaining help from France, Spain and the Empire. The league of Cambrai (I 5o8) was his finest diplomatic achievement. But he wanted to be sole master of Italy; so in order to expel the French barbarians whom he had brought in, he appealed to other barbarians who were far more dangerous Spaniards, Germans and Swissto help him against Louis XII., and stabbed him from behind with the Holy League of 1511.

Weakened by the death of Cardinal dAmboise, his best counsellor, Louis XII. tried vainly in the assembly of Tours and in the unsuccessful council of Pisa to alienate the XIL French clergy from a papacy which was now so little Julius II. worthy of respect. But even the splendid victories of Gaston de Foix could not shake that formidable coalition; and despite the efforts of Bayard, La Palice and La Trmoille, it was the Church that triumphed. Julius II. died in the hour of victory; but Louis XII. was obliged to evacuate Milan, to which he had sacrificed everything, even. France itself, with that political stupidity characteristic of the first Valois. He died almost immediately after this, on the 1st of January 1515, and his subjects, recognizing his thrift, his justice and the secure prosperity of the kingdom, forgot the~

seventeen years of war in which they had not been consulted, and rewarded him with the fine title of Father of his People.

As Louis XII. left no son, the crown devolved upon his cousin and son-in-law the count of Angouleme, Francis I. No sooner king, Francis, in alliance with Venice, renewed the chimerical attempts to conquer Milan and Naples; ~7~3 1. also cherishing dreams of his own election as emperor 1547).

and of a partition of Europe. The heroic episode of Marignano, when he defeated Cardinal Schinners Swiss troops (1315 of September 1515), made him master of the duchy of Milan and obliged his adversaries to make peace. Leo X., Julius II.s successor, by an astute volte-face exchanged Parma and the Concordat for a guarantee of all the Churchs possessiOns, which meant the defeat of French plans (1515). The Swiss signed the permanent peace which they were to maintain until the Revolution of 1789; while the emperor and the king of Spain recognized Francis II.s very precarious hold upon Milan. Once more the French monarchy was pulled up short by the indignation of all Italy (1518).

The question now was how to occupy the military activity of a young, handsome, chivalric and gallant prince, ondoyant et divers, intoxicated by his first victory and his tardy accession to fortune. This had been hailed with joy by all who had been his comrades in his days of Francis I. difficulty; by his mother, Louise of Savoy, and his sister Marguerite; by all the rough young soldiery; by the nobles, tired of the bourgeois ways of Louis XI. and the patriarchal simplicity of Louis XII.; and finally by all the aristocracy who expected now to have the government in their own hands. So instead of heading the crusade against the Turks, Francis threw himself into the electoral contest at Frankfort, which resulted in the election of Charles V., heir of Ferdinand the Catholic, Spain and Germany thus becoming united. Pope Leo X., moreover, handed over three-quarters of Italy to the new emperor in exchange for Luthers condemnation, thereby kindling that rivalry between Charles V. and the king of France which was to embroil the whole of Europe throughout half a century (1519-1559), from Pavia to St Quentin.

The territorial power of Charles V., heir to the houses of Burgundy, Austria, Castile and Aragon, which not only arrested the traditional policy of France but hemmed her Rivalry of in on every side; his pretensions to be the head of Francis I. Christendom; his ambition to restore the house of and Burgundy and the Holy Roman Empire; his grave Charles V. and forceful intellect all rendered rivalry both inevitable and formidable. But the scattered heterogeneity of his possessions, the frequent crippling of his authority by national privileges or by political discords and religious quarrels, his perpetual straits for money, and his cautious calculating character, almost outweighed the advantages which he possessed in the terrible Spanish infantry, the wealthy commerce of the Netherlands, and the inexhaustible mines of the New World. Moreover, Francis I. stirred up enmity everywhere against Charles V., and after each defeat he found fresh support in the patriotism of his subjects. Immediately after the treaty of Madrid (1526), which Francis I. was obliged to sign after the disaster at Pavia and a period of captivity, he did not hesitate between ~

his honor as a gentleman and the interests of his Pavia and kingdom. Having been unable to win over Henry treSty of VIII. of England at their interview on the Field of Madrid. the Cloth of Gold, he joined hands with Suleiman the Magnificent, the conqueror of Mohtics; and the Turkish cavalry, crossing the Hungarian Puszla, made their way as far as Vienna, while the mercenaries of Charles V., under the constable de Bourbon, were reviving the saturnalia of Alaric in the sack of Rome (1527). In Germany, Francis I. assisted the Catholic princes to maintain their political independence, though he did not make the capital he might have made of the reform movement. Italy remained faithful to the vanquished in spite of all, while even Henry VIII. of England, who only needed bribing, and Wolsey, accessibleto flattery, took part in the temporary coalition. Thus did France, menaced with disruption, embark upon a course of action imposed upon her by the harsh conditions of the treaty of Madrid otherwise little respectedand later by those of Cambrai (1529); but it was not till later, too late indeed, that it was defined and became a national policy.

After having, despite so many reverses and mistakes, saved Burgundy, though not Artois nor Flanders, and joined to the crown lands the domains of the constable de Bourbon Further who had gone over to Charles V., Francis I. should cution of have had enough of defending other peoples independ romantic ence as well as his own, and should have thought more expedi- of his interests in. the north and east than of Milan.

Yet between 1531 and 1547 he manifested the same regrets and the same invincible ambition for that land of Italy which Charles V., on his side, regarded as the basis of his strength. Their antagonism, therefore, remained unabated, as also the contradiction of an official agreement with Charles V., combined with secret intrigues with his enemies. Anne de Montmorency, now head of the government in place of the headstrong chancellor Duprat, for four years upheld a policy of reconciliation and of almost friendly agreement between the two monarchs (1531-1535). The death of Francis I.s mother, Louise of Savoy (who had been partly instrumental in arranging the peace of Cambrai), the replacement of Montmorency by the bellicose Chabot, and the advent to power of a Burgundian, Granvella, as Charles Vs prime minister, put an end to this double-faced policy, which attacked the Calvinists of France while supporting the Lutherans of Germany; made advances to Clement VII. while pretending to maintain the alliance with Henry VIII. (just then consummating the Anglican schism); and sought an alliance with Charles V. without renouncing the possession of Italy. The death of the duke of Milan provoked a third general war (1536-1538);

but after the conquest of Savoy and Piedmont and a fruitless invasion of Provence by Charles V., it resulted in another truce, concluded at Nice, in the interview at Aigues-mortes, and in the old contradictory policy of the treaty of Cambrai. This was confirmed by Charles V.s triumphal journey through France (f 539).

Rivalry between Madame dEtampes, the imperious mistress of the aged Francis I., and Diane de Poitiers, whose ascendancy over the dauphin was complete, now brought court outbreak intrigues and constant changes in those who held of war, office, to complicate still further this wearisome policy of ephemeral combinazion.i with English, Germans, Italians and Turks, which urgent need of money always brought to naught. The disillusionment of Francis I., who had hitherto hoped that Charles V. would be generous enough to give Milan back to him, and then the assassination of Rincon, his ambassador at Constantinople, led to a fourth war (1544-1546), in the course of which the king of England went over to the side of Charles V.

Unable in the days of his youth to make Italy French, when age began to come upon him, Francis tried to make France Royalab- Italian. In his chteau at Blois he drank greedily solutism of the cup of Renaissance art; but he found the under ~ exciting draughts of diplomacy which he imbibed ranc S from Machiavellis Prince even more intoxicating, and he headed the ship of state straight for the rock of absolutism. He had been the first king du ben plaisi~ (of his own good pleasure)a Caesar, as his mother Louise of Savoy proudly hailed him lh 1515and to a man of his gallant and hot-headed temperament love and war were schools little calculated to teach moderation in government. Italy not only gave him a taste for art and letters, but furnished him with an arsenal of despotic maxims. Yet his true masters were the jurists of the southern universities, passionately addicted to centralization and autocracy, men like Duprat and Poyet, who revived the persistent tradition of Philip the Fairs legists. Grouped together on the council of affairs, they managed to control the policy of the common council, with its too mixed and too independent membership. They successfully strove to separate the grandeur and superexcellence of the king from the rest of the nation; to isolate the nobility amid the seductions of a court lavish in promises of favor and high office; and to win over the bourgeoisie by the buying and selling and afterwards by the hereditary transmission of offices. Thanks to their action, feudalism was attacked in its landed interest in the person of the constable de Bourbon; feudalism in its financial aspect by the execution of superintendent Semblancay and the special privileges of towns and provinces by administrative centralization. The bureaucracy became a refuge for the nobles, and above all for the bourgeois, whose fixed incomes were lowered by the influx of precious metals from the New World, while the wages of artisans rose. All those time-worn medieval institutions which no longer allowed free scope to private or public life were demolished by the legists in favor of the monarchy.

Their masterstroke was the Concordat of 1516, which meant an immense stride in the path towards absolutism. While Germany and England, where ultramontane doctrines had been allowed to creep in, were seeking a remedy ~ against the economic exactions of the papacy in a 1516.

reform of dogma or in schism, France had supposed herself to have found this in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. But to the royal jurists the right of the churches and abbeys to make appointments to all vacant benefices was a guarantee of liberties valuable ~to the clergy, but detestable to themselves because the clergy thus retained the great part of public wealth and authority. By giving the king the ecclesiastical patronage they not only made a docile instrument of him, but endowed him with a mine of wealth, even more productive than the sale of offices, and a power of favoring and rewarding that transformed a needy and ill-obeyed king into an absolute monarch. To the pope they offered a mess of pottage in the shape of annates and the right of canonical institution, in order to induce him to sell the Church of France to the king. By this royal reform they completely isolated the monarchy, in the presumptuous pride of omnipotence, upon the ruins of the Church and the aristocracy, despite both the university and the parlement of Paris.

Thus is explained Francis I.s preoccupation with Italian adventures in. the latter part of his reign, and also the inordinate squandering of money, the autos-da-f in the provinces and in Paris, the harsh repression of reform and free thought, and the sale of justice; while the nation became impoverished and the state was at the mercy of the caprices of royal mistressesall of which was to become more and more pronounced during the twelve years of Henry IIs government.

Henry II. shone but with a reflected lightin his private life eflected from his old mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and in his political action reflected from the views of Mont morency or the Guises. He only showed his own personality in an egoism more narrow-minded, in 1559.) hatred yet bitterer than his fathers; or in a haughty and jealous insistence upon an absolute authority which he never had the wit to maintain.

The struggle with Charles V. was at first delayed by differences with England. The treaty of Ardres had left two bones of contention: the cession of Boulogne to England and the exclusion of the Scotch from the terms of H~Iy II. peace. At last the regent, the duke of Somerset, Charles V. endeavoured to arrange a marriage between Edward VI., then a minor, and Mary Stuart, who had been offered in marriage to the dauphin Francis by her mother, Marie of - Lorraine, a Guise who had married the king of Scotland. The transference of Mary Stuart to France, and the treaty of 1550 which restored Boulogne to France for a sum of 400,000 crowns, suspended the state of war; and then Henry IIs opposition to the imperial policy of Charles V. showed itself everywhere:

in Savoy and Piedmont, occupied by the French and claimed by Philibert Emmanuel, Charles V.s ally; in Navarre, unlawfully conquered by Ferdinand the Catholic and claimed by the family of Albret; in Italy, where, aided and abetted by Pope Paul III., Henry II. was trying to regain support; and, finally, in Germany, where after the victory of Charles V. at MUhlberg (1547) the Protestant princes called Henry II. to their aids offering to subsidize him and cede to him the towns of Metz, Toul and Verdun. The Protestant alliance was substituted for the Turkish alliance, and Henry II. hastened to accept the offers made to him (1552); but this was rather late in the day, for the reform movement had produced civil war and evoked fresh forces. The Germans, in whom national feeling got the better of imperialistic ardour, as soon as they saw the French at Strassburg, made terms with the emperor at Passau and permitted Charles to use all his forces against Henry II. The defence of Metz by Francis of Guise was admirable ~ and successful; but in Picardy operations continued their course without much result, owing to the incapacity of the constable de Montmorency. Fortunately, despite the marriage of Charles V.s son Philip to Mary Tudor, which gave him the support of England (1554), and despite the religious pacification. of Germany through the peace of Augsburg (1555), Charles V., exhausted by illness and by thirty years of intense activity, in the truce of Vaucelles abandoned Henry II.s conquests- Piedmont and the Three Bishoprics. He then abdicated the government of his kingdoms, which he divided between his son. Philip II. and his brother Ferdinand (1556). A double victory, this, for France.

Henry II.s resumption of war, without provocation and without allies, was a grave error; but more characterless than ever, the king was urged to it by the Guises, whose ffe~aV Ii. influence since the defence of Metz had been supreme Philip ~. at court and who were perhaps hoping to obtain Naples for themselves. On the other hand, Pope Paul IV. and his nephew Carlo Caraff a embarked upon the struggle, because as Neapolitans they detested the Spaniards, whom they Peace of considered as barbarous as the Germans or the Cafeau- French. The constable de Montmorencys disaster ~~ at Saint Quentin (August 1557), by which Philip II. bresis. had not the wit to profit, was successfully avenged by Guise, who was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom. He took Calais by assault in January 1558, after the English had held it for two centuries, and occupied Luxemburg. The treaty of Cateau-Cambrsis (August 1559) finally put an end to the Italian follies, Naples, Milan and Piedmont; but it also lost Savoy, making a gap in the frontier for a century. The question of Burgundy was definitely settled, too; but the Netherlands had still to be conquered. By the possession of the three bishoprics and the recapture of Calais an effort towards a natural line of frontier and towards a national policy seemed indicated; but while the old soldiers could not forget Marignano, Ceresole, nor Italy perishing with the name of France on her lips, the secret alliance between the cardinal of Lorraine and Granvella against the Protestant heresy foretold the approaching subordination of national questions to religious differences, and a decisive attempt to purge the kingdom of the new doctrines.

The origin and general history of the religious reformation in the 16th century are dealt with elsewhere (see CHURCH

HISTORY and REFORMATION). In France it had ~ originally no revolutionary character whatever; it proceeded from traditional Gallican theories and from the innovating principle of humanism, and it began as a protest against Roman decadence and medieval scholasticism. It found its first adherents and its first defenders among the clerics and learned men grouped around Faber (Lefvre) of Etaples at Meaux; while Marguerite of Navarre, des Roynes la non. pareille, -was the indefatigable Maecenas of these innovators, and the incarnation of the Protestant spirit at its purest. The reformers shook off the yoke of systems in order boldly to renovate both knowledge and faith; and, instead of resting on the abstract a priori principles within which man and nature had been imprisoned, they returned to the ancient methods of observation and analysis. In so doing, they separated intellectual from popular life; and acting in this spirit, through the need of a moral renaissance, they reverted to primitive Christianity, substituting the inner and individual authority of conscience for the general and external authority of the Church. Their efforts would not, however, have sufficed if they had not been seconded by events; pure doctrine would not, have given birth to a church, nor that church to a party; !n France, as in Germany, the religious revolution was conditioned by an economic and social revolution.

The economic renaissance due to the great maritime discoveries had the consequence of concentrating wealth in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Owing to their mental qualities, their tendencies and their resources, the bourgeoisie had been, if not alone, at least most apt in profiting by the development of industry, ly the extension of commerce, and by the formation of a new and mobile means of enriching themselves. But though the bourgeois had acquired through capitalism certain sources of influence, and gradually monopolized municipal and public functions, the kin~ and the peasants had also benefited by this revolution. Alter hundred and fifty years of foreign war and civil discord, at period when order and unity were ardently desired, an absolutt monarchy had appeared the only power capable of realizint such aspirations. The peasants, moreover, had profited by th~ reduction of the idle landed aristocracy; serfdom had decreased or had been modified; and the free peasants were mor~e prosperous, had reconquered the soil, and were selling their produce at a higher rate while they everywhere paid less exorbitant rents. The victims of this process were the urban proletariat, whose treatment by their employers in trade became less and less protective and beneficent, and the nobility, straitened in their financial resources, uprooted from their ancient strongholds, and gradually despoiled of their power by a monarchy based On popular support. The unlimited sovereignty of the prince was established upon. the ruins of the feudal system; and the capitalism of the merchants and bankers upon the closing of the trade-gilds to workmen, upon severe economic pressure and upon, the exploitation of the artisans labor.

Though reform originated among the educated classes it speedily found an echo among the industrial classes of the 16th century, further assisted by the influence of German and Flemish journeymen. The popular ~ reform-movement was essentially an urban movement; of religious although under Francis I. and Henry II. it had already r,~mltfto begun to spread into the country. The artisans, ~

laborers and small shop-keepers who formed the first nucleus of the reformed church were numerous enough to provide an army of martyrs, though too few to form a party. Revering the monarchy and established institutions, they endured forty years of persecution before they took up arlns, It was only during the second half of Henry II.s reign that Protestantism, having achieved its religious evolution, became a political party. Weary of being trodden. under foot, it now demanded much more radical reform, quitting the ranks of peaceable citizens to pass into the only militant class of the time and adopt its customs. Men like Coligny, dAndelot and Cond took the place of the timid Lefvre of Etapies and the harsh and bitter Calvin; and the reform party, in contradiction to its doctrines and its doctors, became a political and religious party of opposition, with all the compromises that presupposes. The struggle against it was no longer maintained by the university and the parlement alone, but also by the kir~g, whose authority it menaced.

With his intrepid spirit, his disdain for ecclesiastical authority and his strongly personal religious feeling, Francis I. had for a moment seemed ready to be a reformer himself; Royalperbut deprived by the Concordat of all interest in the secuon confiscation of church property, aspiring to political under alliance with the pope, and as mistrustful of popular Francis L forces as desirous of absolute power and devoted fJ~~nr~ Ii. to Italy, he paused and then drew back. Hence came the revocation in 1540 of the edict of tolerance of Coucy (1535), and the massacre of the Vaudois (1545). Henry II., a fanatic, went still further in his edict of Chteaubriant(155f), a code of veritable persecution, and in the coup d@at carried out in the parlement against Antoine du Bourg and his colleagues (1559). At the same time the pastors of the reformed religion, met in synod at Paris, were setting down their confession of faith founded upon the Scriptures, and their ecclesiastical discipline founded upon the independence of the churches. Thenceforward Protestantism adopted a new attitude, and refused obedience to the orders of a persecuting monarchy when contrary to its faith and its interests. After the saints came men. Hence those wars of religion which were to hold the monarchy in check for forty years and even force it to come to terms.

In slaying Henry II. Montgomerys lance saved the Protestants for the time being. His son and successor, Francis II., was but a nervous sickly boy bandied between two women:

Francis 11. his mother, Catherine de Medici, hitherto kept in the 1560). background, and his wife, Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, who being a niece of the Guises brought her uncles, the constable Francis and the cardinal of Lorraine, into power. These ambitious and violent men took the government out of the hands of the constable de Montmorency and the princes of the blood: Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, weak, credulous, always playing a double game on account of his preoccupation with Navarre; Cond, light-hearted and brave, but not fitted to direct a party; and the cardinal de Bourbon, a mere nonentity. The only plan which these princes could adopt in the struggle, once they had lost the king, was to make a following for themselves among the Calvinist malcontents and the~ gentlemen disbanded after the Italian wars. The Guises, strengthened by the failure of the conspiracy of Amboise, which had been aimed at them, abused the advantage due to their victory. Despite the edict of Romorantin, which by giving the bishops the right, of cognizance of heresy prevented the introduction of the Inquisition on the Spanish model into France; despite the assembly of Fontainebleau, where an attempt was made at a compromise acceptable to both Catholics and moderate Calvinists; the reform party and its Bourbon leaders, arrested at the states-general of Orleans, were in danger of their lives. The death of Francis II. in December 1560 compromised the influence of the Guises and again saved Protestantism.

Charles IX. also was a minor, and the regent should legally have been the first prince of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon; but cleverly flattered by the queen-mother, Catherine de Medici, he let her take the reins of government.

1574). Hitherto Catherine had been merely the resigned and neglected wife of Henry II., and though eloquent, insinuating and ambitious, she had been inactive. She had attained the age of forty-one when she at last came into power amidst the hopes and anxieties aroused by the fall of the Guises and the return of the Bourbons to fortune. Indifferent in religious matters, she had a passion for authority, a characteristically Italian adroitness in intrigue, a fine political sense, and the feeling that the royal authority might be endangered both by Calvinistic passions and Catholic violence. She decided for a system of tolerance; and Michel de lHpital, the new chancellor, was her spokesman at the states of Orleans (1560). He was a good and honest man, moderate, conciliatory and temporizing, anxious to lift the monarchy above the strife of parties and to reconcile them; but he was so little practical that he could believe in a reformation of the laws in the midst of all the violent passions which were now to be let loose. These two, Catherine and her chancellor, attempted, like Charles V. at Augsburg, to bring about religious pacification as a necessary condition for the maintenance of order; but they were soon overwhelmed by the different factions.

On one side was the Catholic triumvirate of the constable de Montmorency, the duke of Guise, and the marshal de St Andr; and on the other the Huguenot party of pa~~t!es. Cond and Coligny, who, having obtained liberty of conscience in January 1561, now demanded liberty of worship. The colloquy at Poissy between the cardinal of Lorraine and Theodore Bean (September 1561), did not end in the agreement hoped for, and the duke of Guise so far abused its spirit as to embroil the French Calvinists with the German I

Lutherans. The rupture seemed irremediable when the assembly of Poissy recognized the order of the Jesuits, which the French church had held in suspicion since its foundation. However, yielding to the current which was carrying the greater part of the nation towards reform, and despite the threats of Philip II. who dreaded Calvinistic propaganda in his Netherlands, Michel de lHpital promulgated the edict of January 17, 1562a true charter of enfranchisement for the ~ Protestants. But the pressure of events and of parties was too strong; the policy of toleration which had miscarried at the council of Trent had no chance of success in France.

The triumvirates relations with Spain and Rome were very close; they had complete ascendancy over the king and over Catherine; and now the massacre of two hundred Character Protestants at Vassy on the 1st of March 1562 made of the the cup overflow. The duke of Guise had either ~i1g10U5 ordered this, or allowed it to take place, on his return wars.

from an interview with the duke of Wtirttemberg at Zabern, where he had once more demanded the help of his Lutheran neighbors against the ,Calvinists; and the Catholics having celebrated this as a victory the signal was given for the commencement of religious wars. When these eight fratricidal wars first began, Protestants and Catholics rivalled one another in respect for royal authority; only they wished to become its masters so as to get the upper hand themselves. But in course of time, as the struggle became embittered, Catholicism itself grew revolutionary; and this twofold fanaticism, Catholic and Protestant, even more than the ambition of the leaders, made the war a ferocious one from the very first. Beginning with surprise attacks, if these failed, the struggle was continued by means of sieges and by terrible exploits like those of the Catholic Montluc and the Protestant des Adrets in the south of France. Neither of these two parties was strong enough to crush the other, owing to the apathy and continual desertions of the gentlemen-cavaliers who formed the elite of the Protestant army and the insufficient numbers of the Catholic forces. Allies from outside were therefore called in, and this it was that gave a European character to these wars of religion; the two parties were parties of foreigners, the Protestants being supported by German Landsknechts and Elizabeth of Englands cavalry, and the royal army by Italian, Swiss or Spanish auxiliaries. It was no longer patriotism but religion that distinguished the two camps. There were three principal theatres of war: in the north Normandy and the valley of the Loire, where Orleans, the general centre of reform, ensured communications between the south and Germany; in the south-west Gascony and Guienne; in the south-east Lyonnais and Vivarais.

In the first war, which lasted for a year (1562-1563), the triumvirs wished to secure Orleans, previously isolated. The threat of an English landing decided them to lay siege to Rouen, and it was taken by assault; but this cost the life of the versatile Antoine de Bourbon. On war. the i9th of December 1562 the duke of Guise barred the way to Dreux against the German reinforcements of dAndelot, who after having threatened Paris were marching to join forces with the English troops for whom Coligny and Cond had paid by the cession of Havre. The death of marshal de St Andr, and the capture of the constable de Montmorency and of Cond, which marked this indecisive battle, left Coligny and Guise face to face. The latters success was of brief duration; for on the 18th of February 1563 Poltrot de Mr assassinated him before Orleans, which he was trying to take once and for all. Catherine, relieved by the loss of an inconvenient preceptor, and by the disappearance of the other leaders, became mistress of the Catholic party, of whose strength and popularity she had now had proof, and her idea was to make peace at once on the best terms possible. The egoism of Cond, who got himself made lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and bargained for freedom of worship for the Protestant nobility only, compTomised the future of both hi1 church and his party, though rendering possible the peace of AInboise,, concluded the iqth. of March 1563. All now set off together to recapture Havre from the English.

The peace, however, satisfied no one; neither Catholics (because of the rupture of religious unity) nor the parlements; the pope, the emperor and king of Spain alike protested Peace of against it. Nor yet did it satisfy the Protestants, who considered its concessions insufficient, above all for the people. It was, however, the maximum of tolerance possible just then, and had to be reverted to; Catherine and Charles IX. soon saw that the times were not ripe for a third party, and that to enforce real toleration would require an absolute power which they did not possess. After three years the Guises reopened hostilities against Coligny, whom they accused of having plotted the murder of their chief; while the Catholics, egged on by the Spaniards, rose against the Protestants, who had been made uneasy by an interview between Catherine and her daughter Elizabeth, wife of Philip II. of Spain, at Bayonne, and by the duke of Alvas persecutions of the reformed church of the Netherlandsa daughter-church of Geneva, like their own. The second civil war began like the first with a frustrated attempt to kidnap the king, at Second the castle of Montceaux, near Meaux, in September ~ 1567; and with a siege of Paris, the general centre of Catholicism, in the course of which the constable de Montmorency was killed at Saint-Denis. Cond, with the men-at-arms of John Casimir, son of the Count Palatine, tried to starve out the capital; but once more the defection Peace of of the nobles obliged him to sign a treaty of peace at juomneman. Longjumeau on the 23rd of March 1568, by which the conditions of Amboise were re-established. After the attempt at Montceaux the Protestants had to be contented with Charles IX.s word.

This peace was not of long duration. The fall of Michel de lHpital, who had so often guaranteed the loyalty of the Thhd Huguenots, ruined the moderate party (May 1568).

war. Catholic propaganda, revived by the monks and the Jesuits, and backed by the armed confraternities and by Catherines favorite son, the duke of Anjou, now entrusted with a prominent part by the cardinal of Lorraine; Catherines complicity in the duke of Alvas terrible persecution in the Netherlands; and her attempt to capture Coligny and Cond at Noyers all combined to cause a fresh outbreak of hostilities in the west. Thanks to Tavannes, the duke of Anjou gained easy victories at Jarnac over the prince of Cond, who was killed, and at Moncontour over Coligny, who was wounded (March October 1569); but these successes were rendered fruitless by the jealousy of Charles IX. Allowing the queen of Navarre to shut herself up in La Rochelle, the citadel of the reformers, and the king to loiter over the siege of Saint Jean dAngly, Coligny pushed boldly forward towards Paris and, having reached Burgundy, defeated the royal army at Arnay-le-duc. Catherine had exhausted all her resources; and having failed in her project of remarrying Philip II. to one of her daughters, and of betrothing Charles IX.to the eldest of the Austrian archduchesses, exasperated also by the presumption of the Lorraine family, who aspired to the marriage of their nephew with Charles IX.s Pence ,, sister, she signed the peace of St Germain on the 8th st of August 1570. This was the culminating point of Gerinain Protestant liberty; for Coligny exacted and obtained, (1570.) first, liberty of conscience and of worship, and then, as a guarantee of the kings word, four fortified places: La Rochelle, a key to the sea; La Charit, in the centre; Cognac and Montauban in the south.

The Guises set aside, Coligny, supported as he was by Jeanne dAlbret, queen of Navarre, now received all Charles IX.s Coligny favor. Catherine de Medici, an inveterate match- and the maker, and also uneasy at Philip II.s increasing Nether- power, made advances to Jeanne, proposing to marry lands, her own daughter,Marguerite deValois,to Jeannes son, Henry of Navarre, now chief of the Huguenot party. Coligny was a Protestant, but he was a Frenchman before all; and wishing to reconcile all parties in a national struggle, he trumpeted war (cornait la guerre) against Spain in the Netherlandsdespite the lukewarmness of Elizabeth of England and the Germans, and despite the counter-intrigues of the pope and of Venice. He succeeded in getting French troops sent to the Netherlands, but they suffered defeat. None the less Charles IX. still seemed to see only through the eyes of Coligny; till Catherine, fearing to be supplanted by the latter, dreading the results of the threatened war with Spain, and egged on by a crowd of Italian adventurers in the pay of Spainmen like Gondi and Birague, reared like herself in the political theories and customs of their native landsaw no hope but in the assassination of this rival in her sons esteem. A murderous attack upon Coligny, who had opposed the candidature of Catherines favorite son, the duke of Anjou, for the throne of Poland, having only succeeded in wounding him and in exciting the Calvinist leaders, who were congregated in Paris for the occasion of Marguerite deValoismarriage with the king of Navarre,Catherine and the Guises resolved together to put them all to death. There followed the wholesale massacre of St Bartholomews St BarEve, in Paris and in the provinces; a natural con- thofomew, sequence of public and private hatreds which had August poisoned the entire social organism. This massacre had the effect of preventing the expedition into Flanders, and destroying Francis Is policy of alliance with the Protestants against the house of Austria.

Catherine de Medici soon perceived that the massacre of St Bartholomew had settled nothing. It had, it is true, dealt a blow to Calvinism just when, owing to the reforms of the council of Trent, the religious ground had been crumbling beneath it. Moreover, within the party ojftj~ue~ itself a gulf had been widening between the pastors, supported by the Protestant democracy and the political nobles. The reformers had now no leaders, and their situation seemed as perilous as that of their co-religionists in the Netherlands; while the sieges of La Rochelle and Leiden, the enforced exile of the prince of Orange, and the conversion under pain of death of Henry of Navarre and the prince of Cond, made the common danger more obvious. Salvation came from the very excess of the repressive measures. A third party was once more formed, composed of moderates from the two camps, and it was recruited quite as much by jealousy of the Guises and by ambition as by horror at the massacres. There were the friends of the Montmorency partyDamville at their head; Colignys relations; the king of Navarre; Cond; and a prince of the blood, Catherine de Medicis third son, the duke of Alencon, tired of being kept in the background. This party took shape at the Fourth end of the fourth war, followed by the edict of Wa,~. Boulogne (1573), forced from Charles IX. when the Edictot Catholics were deprived, of their leader by the election Boulogne of his brother, the duke of Anjou, as king of Poland. (15 ~ A year later the latter succeeded his brother on the throne of France as Henry III. This meant a new lease of power for the queen-mother.

The politiques, as the supporters of religious tolerance and an energetic repression of faction were called, offered their alliance to the Huguenots, but these, having foimed Fifth themselves, by means of the Protestant Union, into wa.. a sort of republic within the kingdom, hesitated to accept. It is, however, easy to bring about an understanding between people in whom religious fury has been extinguished either by patriotism or by ambition, like that of the duke of Alencon, who had now escaped from the Louvre where he had been confined on account of his intrigues. The compact was concluded at Millau; Cond becoming a Protestant once more in order to treat with Damville, Mootmorencys brother. Henry of Navarre escaped from Paris. The new king, Henry III., vacillating and vicious, and Catherine herself, eager for war as she was, had no means 01 separating the Protestants and the politiques. Despite the victory ~89) of Guise at Dormans, the agreement between the duke of Alencon and John Casimirs German army obliged the royal party to grant all that the allied forces demanded of them in the peace of Monsieur, signed at Beaulieu on the 6th of May 1576, the duke of Alencon receiving the appanage of Anjou, Touraine and Berry, the king of Navarre Guienne, ~,ie0u~~r and Cond Picardy, while the Protestants were granted (1576). freedom of worship in all parts of the kingdom except Paris, the rehabilitation of Coligny and the other victims of St Bartholomew, their fortified towns, and an equal number of seats in the courts of the parlements.

This was going too fast; and in consequence of a reaction against this too liberal edict a fourth party made its appearance, Tb that of the Catholic League, under the GuisesHenry Catholic le Balafr, duke of Guise, and his two brothers, Charles, League. duke of Mayenne, and Louis, archbishop of Reims and cardinal. With the object of destroying Calvinism by effective opposition, they imitated the Protestant organization of provincial associations, drawing their chief supporters from the upper middle class and the lesser nobility. It was not at first a demagogy maddened by the preaching of the irreconcilable clergy of Paris, but a union of the more honest and prudent classes of the nation in order to combat heresy. Despite the immorality and impotence of Henry III. and the Protestantism of Henry of Navarre, this party talked of re-establishing the authority of the king; but in reality it inclined more to the Guises, martyrs in the good cause, who were supported by Philip II. of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII. A sort of popular government was thus established to counteract the incapacity of royalty, and it was in the name of the imperilled rights of the people that, from the States of Blois onward, this Holy League demanded the re-establishment of Catholic unity, and set the religious right of the nation in opposition to the divine right of incapable or evil-doing kings (1576).

In order to oust his rival Henry of Guise, Henry III. made a desperate effort to outbid him in the eyes of the more extreme Tb & Catholics, and by declaring himself head of the League of Lioi3s ~ degraded himself into a party leader. The League, (1576). furious at this stroke of policy, tried to impose a council of thirty-six advisers upon the king. But the deputies of the third estate did not support the other two orders, and the latter in their turn refused the king money for making war Sixth War on the heretics, desiring, they said, not war but the and destruction of heresy. This would have reduced peace of Henry III. to impotence; fortunately for him, howBergerac ever, the break of the Huguenots with the MalSeveith contents, and the divisions in the court of Navarre War and and in the various parties at La Rochelle, allowed peace of Henry III., after two little wars in the south west, ~ during which fighting gradually degenerated into brigandage, to sign terms of peace at Bergerac (1577),

which much diminished the concessions made in the edict of Beaulieu. This peace was confirmed three years after by that of Fleix. The suppression of both the leagues was stipulated for (1580). It remained, however, a question whether the Holy League would submit to this. -

The death of the duke of Anjou after his mad endeavour to establish himself in the Netherlands (1584), and the accession Union of Henry of Navarre, heir to the effeminate Henry III., between reversed the situations of the two parties: the Prothe Guises testants again became supporters of the principle of d ,,,, heredity and divine right; the Catholics appealed P to right of election and the sovereignty of the people.

Could the crown of the eldest daughter of the Church be allowed to devolve upon a relapsed heretic? Such was the doctrine officially preached in pulpit and pamphlet. But between Philip II. on the one handnow master of Portugal and delivered from William of Orange, involved in strife with the English Protestants, and desirous of avenging the injuries inflicted upon him by the Valois in the Netherlandsand the Guises on the other hand, whose cousin Mary Stuart was a prisoner of Queen Elizabeth, there was a common interest in supporting one another and pressing things forward. A definite agreement was made between them at Joinville (December 31, 1584), the religious and popular pretext being the danger of leaving the kingdom to the king of Navarre, and the ostensible end to secure the succession to a Catholic prince, the old Cardinal de Bourbon, an ambitious and violent man of mean intelligence; while the secret aim was to secure the crown for the Guises, - who had already attempted to fabricate for themselves a genealogy tracing their descent from Charlemagne. In the meantime Philip II., being rid of Don John of Austria, whose ambition he dreaded, was to crush the Protestants of England and the Netherlands; and the double result of the compact at Joinville was to allow French politics to be controlled by Spain, and to transform the wars of religion into a purely political quarrel.

The pretensions of the Guises were, in fact, soon manifested in the declaration of Pronne (March 30, 1585) against the foul court of the Valois; they were again manifested in a The cornfurious agitation, fomented by the secret council mittee of of the League at Paris, which favored the Guises, Sixteen a~ and which now worked on the people through their Paris.

terror of Protestant retaliations and the Churchs peril. Incited by Philip II., who wished to see him earning his pension o~ 600,000 golden crowns, Henry of Guise began the war in the end of April, and in a few days the whole kingdom was on fire. The situation was awkward for Henry III., who had not Eighth the courage to ask Queen Elizabeth for the soldiers war of the and money that he lacked. The crafty king of Navarre being unwilling to alienate the Protestants save by an ear apostasy profitable to himself, Henry III., by the treaty of Nemours (July 7, 1585), granted everything to the head of the League in order to save his crown. By a stroke of the pen he suppressed Protestantism, while Pope Sixtus V., who had at first been unfavourable to the treaty of Joinville as a purely political act, though he eventually yielded to the solicitations of the League, excommunicated the two Bourbons, Henry and Cond. But the duke of Guises audacity did not make Henry III. forget his desire for vengeance. He hoped to ruin him by attaching him to his cause. His favorite Joyeuse was to defeat the king of Navarre, whose forces were very weak, while Guise was to deal with the strong reinforcement of Germans that Elizabeth was sending to Henry of Navarre. Exactly the contrary happened. By the defeat of Joyeuse at Coutras Henry III. found himself wounded on his strongest side; and by Henry of Guises successes at Vimory andAuneau the Germans, who should have been his best auxiliaries against the League, were crushed (October-November 1587).

The League now thought they had no longer anything to fear. Despite the kings hostility the duke of Guise came to Paris, urged thereto by Philip II., who wanted to occupy Paris and be master of the Channel coasts whilst he launched his invincible Armada to avenge the death of caes~ Mary Stuart in 1587. On the Day of the Barricades (May 12, 1588) Henry III. was besieged in the Louvre by the populace in revolt; but his rival dared not go so far as to depose the king, and appeased the tumult. The king, having succeeded in taking refuge at Chartres, ended, however, by granting him in the Act of Union all that he had refused in face of the barricades the post of lieutenant-general of the kingdom and the proscription of Protestantism. At the second assembly of the states of Blois, called together on account of the need for money(1588), all of Henry III.s enemies who were elected showed themselves even bolder than in 1576 in claiming the A;sas;I~nha~ control of the financial administration of the kingdom; Guises at but the destruction of the Armada gave Henry III., the second already exasperated by the insults he had received, ~

new vigour. He had the old Cardinal de Bourbon of Blois. imprisoned, and Henry of Guise and his brother the cardinal assassinated (December 23, 1588). On the 5th of January, 1589, died his mother, Catherine deMedici, the astute Florentine.

Now I am king! cried Henry III. But Paris being dominated by the duke of Mayenne, who had escaped assassination, and by the council of Sixteen, the chiefs of the League. most of the provinces replied by open revolt, and Henry III.

had no alternative but an alliance with Henry of Navarre. Thanks to this he was on the point of seizing Paris, Assassins- when in his turn he was assassinated on the 1st of Henry III. August I589 by a Jacobin monk, Jacques Clement; with his dying breath he designated the king of Navarre as his successor.

Between the popular League and the menace of the Protestants it was a question whether the new monarch was to be powerless Tb in his turn. Henry IV. had almost the whole of his ~ kingdom to conquer. The Cardinal de Bourbon, king according to the League and proclaimed under the title of Charles X., could count upon the Holy League itself, upon the Spaniards of the Netherlands, and upon the pope. Henry IV. was only supported by a certain number of the Calvinists and by the Catholic minority of the Politiques, who, however, gradually induced the rest of the nation to rally round the only legitimate prince. The nation wished for the establishmentof internal unity through religious tolerance and the extinction of private organizations; it looked for the extension of Frances external power through the abasement of the house of Spain, protection of the Protestants in the Netherlands and Germany, and independence of Rome. Henry IV., moreover, was forced to take an oath at the camp of Saint Cloud to associate the nation in the affairs of the kingdom by means of the states-general. These three conditions were interdependent; and Henry IV., with his persuasive manners, his frank and charming character, and his personal valour, seemed capable of keeping them all three.

The first thing for this soldier-king to do was to conquer his kingdom and maintain its unity. He did not waste time by withdrawing towards the south; he kept in the neighHenry IV. bourhood of Paris, on the banks of the Seine, within 1610). reach of help from Elizabeth; and twiceat Arques and at Ivry (1589x 590)he vanquished the duke of Mayenne, lieutenant-general of the League. But after having tried to seize Paris (as later Rouen) by a coup-de-main, he was obliged to raise the siege in view of reinforcements sent to Mayenne by the duke of Parma. Pope Gregory XIV., an enthusiastic supporter of the League and a strong adherent of Spain., having succeeded Sixtus V., who had been very lukewarm towards the League, made Henry IV.s position still more serious just at the moment when, the old Cardinal de Bourbon having died, Philip II. wanted to be declared the protector of the kingdom in order that he might dismember it, and when Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, a grandson of Francis I., and Charles III., duke of Lorraine, a son-in-law of Henry II., were both of them claiming the crown. Fortunately, however, the Sixteen had disgusted the upper bourgeoisie by their demagogic airs; while their open alliance with Philip II., and their acceptance of a Spanish garrison in Paris had offended the patriotism of the Politiques or moderate members of the League. Mayenne, who oscillated between Philip II. and Henry IV., was himself obliged to break up and subdue this party of fanatics and theologians (December 1591). This game of see-saw between the Politiques and the League furthered his secret ambition, but also the dissolution of the kingdom; and the pressure of public opinion, which desired an effective monarchy, put an end to this temporizing policy and caused the convocation of the states- general in Paris (December 1592). Philip II., through States- the duke of Ferias instrumentality, demanded the throne for his daughter Isabella, grand-daughter of Henry II. through her mother. But who was to be her husband? The archduke Ernest of Austria, Guise or Mayenne? The parlement cut short these bargainings by condemning all ultramontane pretensions and Spanish intrigues. The unpopularity of Spain, patriotism, the greater predominance of national questions in public opinion, and weariness of both religious disputation and indecisive warfare, all these sentiments were expressed in the wise and clever pamphlet entitled the Satire Mlnippe. What had been a slow movement between I585 and 1592 was quickened by Henry IV.s abjuration of Protestantism at Saint-Denis on the 23rd of July 1593.

The coronation of the king at Chartres in. February 1594 completed the rout of the League. The parlement of Paris declared against Mayenne, who was simply the mouth- Abjurabon piece of Spain, and Brissac, the governor, surrendered of flenry the capital to the king. The example of Paris and IV., July Henry IV.s clemency rallied round him all prudent 23, 1593. Catholics, like Villeroy and Jeannin, anxious for national unity; but he had to buy over the adherents of the League, who sold him his own kingdom for sixty million. francs. The pontifical absolution of September 17, 1595, finally stultified the League, which had been again betrayed by the unsuccessful plot of Jean Chastel, the Jesuits pupil.

Nothing was now left but to expel the Spaniards, who under cover of religion had worked for. their own interests alone. Despite the brilliant charge of Fontaine-Francaise in Burgundy (June 5, 1595), and the submission of the Vervins. heads of the League, Guise, Mayenne, Joyeuse, and Mercceur, the years I 595-1597 were not fortunate for Henry IV. s armies. Indignant at his conversion., Elizabeth, the Germans, and the Swiss Protestants~ deserted him; while the taking of Amiens by the Spaniards compromised for the moment the future both of the king and the, country. But exhaustion of each other, by which only England and Holland profited, brought about the Peace of Vervins. This confirmed the results of the treaty of Cateau-Cambrsis (May 2~ 1598), that is to say, the decadence of Spanish power, and its inability either to conquer or to dismember France.

The League, having now no reason for existence, was dissolved; but the Protestant party remained very strong, with its political organization and the fortified places which the assemblies of Millau, Nimes and La Rochelle ~ (1573-1574) had established in.thesouth and the west.

It was a republican state within the kingdom, and, being unwilling to break with it, Henry IV. came to terms by the edict of Nantes, on the I3th of April 1598. This was a compromise between the royal government and the Huguenot government, the latter giving up the question of public worship, which was only authorized where it, had existed before 591 and in two towns of each bailliage, with the exception of Paris; but it secured liberty of con.science throughout the kingdom, state payment for its ministers, admission to all employments, and courts composed equally of Catholics and Protestants in the parlements. An. authorization to hold synods and political assemblies, to open schools, and to occupy a hundred strong places for eight years at the expense of the king, assured to the Protestants not only rights but privileges. In no other country did they enjoy so many guarantees against a return of persecution. This explains why the-edict of Nantes was not registered without some difficulty.

Thus the blood-stained 16th century closed with a promise of religious toleration and a dream of international arbitration. This was the end of the long tragedy of civil strife and of wars of conquest, mingled with the sound of Results of madrigals and psalms and pavanes. It had been the ~ ~ golden age of the arquebus and the viol, of sculptors and musicians, of poets and humanists, of fratricidal conflicts and of love-songs, of mignon-s and martyrs. At the close of this troubled century peace descends upon exhausted passions; and amidst the choir of young and ardent voices celebrating the national reconciliation, the tocsin no longer sounds its sinister and persistent bass. Despite the leagues of either faith, religious liberty was now confirmed by the more free and generous spirit of Henry IV.

Why was this king at once so easygoing and so capricious? Why, again, had the effort and authoritj ~f feudal and popular resistance been squandered in. the follies of the League and to further the ambitions of the rebellious Guises? Why had the monarchy been forced to purchase the obedience of the upper classes and the provinces with immunities which enfeebled it without limiting it? At all events, when the kingdom had been reconquered from the Spaniards and religious strife ended, in order to fulfil his engagements, Henry IV. need only have associated the nation with himself in the work of reconstructing the shattered monarchy. But during the atrocious holocausts formidable states had grown up around France, observing her and threatening her; and on the other hand, as on the morrow of the Hundred Years War, the lassitude of the country, the lack of political feeling on the part of the upper classes and their selfishness, led to a fresh abdication of the nations rights. The need of living caused the neglect of that necessity for control which had been maintained by the states-general from 1560 to 1593. And this time, moderation on the part of the monarchy no longer made for success. Of the two contrary currents which have continually mingled and conflicted throughout the course of French history, that of monarchic absolutism and that of aristocratic and democratic liberty, the former was now to carry all before it.

The kingdom was now issuing from thirty-eight years of civil war. Its inhabitants had grown unaccustomed to work; The its finances were ruined by dishonesty, disorder, and Bourbons, a very heavy foreign debt. The most characteristic Prance in symptom of this distress was the brigandage carried 1510. on incessantly from 1598 to 1610. Side by side with this temporary disorder there was a more serious administrative disorganization, a habit of no longer obeying the king. The harassed population, the municipalities which under cover of civil war had resumed the right of self-government, and the parlements elated with their social importance and their security of position, were not alone in abandoning duty and obedience. Two powers faced each other threateningly: the organized and malcontent Protestants; and the provincial governors, all great personages possessing an arifled following, theoretically agents of the king, but practically independent. The Montmorencys, the DEpernons, the Birons, the Guises, were accustomed to consider their offices as hereditary property. Not that these two powers entered into open revolt against the king; but they had adopted the custom of recriminating, of threatening, of coming to understandings with the foreign powers, which with some of them, like Marshal Biron, the DEntragues and the duc de Bouillon, amounted to conspiracy (1602-1606).

As to the qualifications of the king: he had had the good fortune not to he educated for the throne. Without much learning and sceptical in religious matters, he had the Character lively intelligence of the Gascon, more subtle than of Henry iv. profound, more brilliant than steady. Married to a woman of loose morals, and afterwards to a devout Italian, he was gross and vulgar in his appetites and pleasures. He had retained all the habits of a country gentleman of his native Beam, careless, familiar, boastful, thrifty, cunning, combined since his sojourn at the court of the Valois with a taint of corruption. He worked little but rapidly, with none of the bureaucratic pedantry of a Philip II. cloistered in the dark towers of the Escurial. Essentially a man of action and a soldier, he preserved his tone of command after he had reached the throne, the inflexibility of the military chief, the conviction of his absolute right to be master. Power quickly intoxicated him, and his monarchy was therefore anything but parliamentary. His personality was everything, institutions nothing. If, at the gathering of the notables at Rouen in 1596, Henry IV. spoke of putting himself in tutelage, that was but preliminary to a demand for money. The states-general, called together ten times in the 16th century, and at the death of Henry III. under promise of convocation, were never assembled. To put his, absolute right beyond all control he based it upon religion, and to this sceptic disobedience became a heresy. He tried to make the clergy into an instrument of government by recalling the Jesuits, who had been driven away in 1594, partly from fear of their regicides, partly because they have always been the best teachers of servitude; and he gave theyouth of the nation into the hands of this cosmopolitan and ultramontane clerical order. His government was personal, not through departments; he retained the old council though reducing its members; and his ministers, taken from every party, were nevernot even Sully anything more than mere clerks, without independent position, mere instruments of his good pleasure. Fortunately this was not always capricious.

Henry IV. soon realized that his most urgent duty was to resuscitate the corpse of France. Pilfering was suppressed, and the revolts of the malcontentsthe Gaut/ziers of The Normandy, the Croquants and Tard-aviss of Prigord achieve. and Limousinwere quelled, adroitly at first, and ments of later with a sterner hand. He then provided for the Henry IV. security of the country districts, and reduced the taxes on the peasants, the most efficacious means of making them productive and able to pay. Inspired by Barthlemy de Laffmas (1545-1612), controller-general of commerce, and by Olivier de Serres (1539_1619),i Henry IV. encouraged the culture of silk, though without much result, had orchards planted and marshes drained; while though he permitted the free circulation of wine and corn, this depended on the harvests. But the twofold effect of civil warthe ruin of the farmers and the scarcity and high price of rural laborwas only reduced arbitrarily and ,by fits and starts.

Despite the influence of Sully, a convinced agrarian because of his horror of luxury and love of economy, Henry IV. likewise attempted amelioration in the towns, where the state of affairs was even worse than in the country. But the ,jai edict of 1597, far from inaugurating individual liberty, ~ was but a fresh edition of that of 1581, a second preface to the legislation of Colbert, and in other ways no better respected than the first. As for the new features, the syndical courts proposed by Laffmas, they were not even put into practice. Various industries, nevertheless, concurrent with those of England, Spain and Italy, were created or reorganized:

silk-weaving, printing, tapestry, &c. Sully at least provided renascent manufacture with the roads necessary for communication and planted them with trees. In external commerce Laffmas and Henry IV. were equally the precursors of Colbert, freeing raw material and prohibiting the import of products similar to those manufactured within the kingdom. Without regaining that preponderance in the Levant which had been secured after the victory of Lepanto and before the civil wars, Marseilles still took an honorable place there, confirmed by the renewal in 1604 of the capitulations of Francis I. with the sultan. Finally, the system of commercial companies, antipathetic to the French bourgeoisie, was for the first time practised on a grand scale; but Sully never understood that movement of colonial expansion, begun by Henry II. in Brazil and continued in Canada by Champlain, which had so marvellously enlarged the European horizon. His point of view was altogether more limited than that of Henry IV.; and he did not foresee, like Elizabeth, that the future would belong to the peoples whose national energy took that line of action.

His sphere was essentially the superintendence of finance, to which he brought the same enthusiasm that he had shown in fighting the League. Vain and imaginative, Th his reputation was enormously enhanced by his Economies royales; he was no innovator, and being a true representative of the nation at that period, like it he was but lukewarm towards reform, accepting it always against the grain. He was not a financier of genius; but he administered the public moneys with the same probity and exactitude which he used in managing his own, retrieving alienated property, straightening accounts, balancing expenditure and receipts, and amassing a reserve in the Bastille. He did not reform the system of aides and tailles established by Louis XI. in 1482; but by charging much upon indirect taxation, and slightly lessening the burden of direct taxation, he avoided an appeal to the states-general and gave an illusion of relief.

Nevertheless, economic disasters, political circumstances and the personal government of Henry IV. (precursor in this also of Louis XIV.) rendered his task impossible or fatal. The nobility remained- in debt and disaffected; and the clergy, more Grit kisn remarkable for wealth and breeding than for virtues, of Henry were won over to the ultramontane ideas of the IV. s triumphant Jesuits. The rich bourgeoisie began more achieve- and more to monopolize the magistracy; and though the country-people were somewhat relieved from the burden which had been crushing them, the working-classes remained impoverished, owing to the increase of prices which followed at a distance the rise of wages. Moreover, under insinuating and crafty pretexts, Henry IV. undermined as far as he could the right of control by the states-general, the right of remonstrance by the parlements, and the communal franchises, while ensuring the impoverishment of the municipalities by his fiscal methods. Arbitrary taxation, scandalous intervention in elections, forced candidatures, confusion in their financial administration, bankruptcy and revolt on the part of the tenants: all formed an anticipation of the personal rule of Richelieu and Louis XIV.

Thus Henry IV. evinced very great activity in restoring order and very great poverty of invention in his methods. His sole original creation, the edict of La Paulette ~n 1604, Edict of was disastrous. In consideration of an annual payment et7e. au of one-sixtieth of the salary, it- made hereditary offices which had hitherto been held only for life; and the millions which it daily poured into the royal exchequer removed the necessity for seeking more regular and better distributed resources. Political liberty and social justice were equally the losers by this extreme financial measure, which paved the way for a catastrophe.

In foreign affairs the abasement of the house of Austria remained for Henry IV., as it had been for Francis I. and Henry II., a political necessity, while under his successors Fo7igfl it was to become a mechanical obsession. The peace en IV. of Vervins had concluded nothing. The difference concerning the marquisate of Saluzzo, which the duke of Savoy had seized upon in 1588, profiting by Henry III.s embarrassments, is only worth mentioning because the treaty of Lyons (1601) finally dissipated the Italian mirage, and because, in exchange for the last of Frances possessions beyond the Alps, it added to the royal domain the really French territory of La Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and the district of Gex. The great external affair of the reign was the projected war upon which Henry IV. was about to embark when he was assassinated. The grand design of Sully, the organization of a Christian Republic of the European nations for the preservation of peace, was but the invention of an irresponsible minister, soured by defeat and wishing to impress posterity. Henry IV., the least visionary of kings, was between 1598 and 1610 really hesitating between two great contradictory political schemes:

the war clamoured for by the Protestants, politicians like Sully, and the nobility; and the Spanish alliance, to be cemented by marriages, and preached by the ultramontane Spanish camarilla formed by the queen, Pre Coton, the kings confessor, the minister Villeroy, and Ubaldini, the papal nuncio. Selfish and suspicious, Henry IV. consistently played this double game of policy in conjunction with presideiit Jeannin. By his alliance with the Grisons (1603) he guaranteed the integrity of the Valtellina, the natural approach to Lombardy for the imperial forces; and by his intimate union with Geneva he controlled the routes by which the Spaniards could reach their hereditary possessions in Franche-Comt and the Low Countries from Italy. But having defeated the duke of Savoy he had no hesitation in making sure of him by a marriage; though the Swiss might have misunderstood the treaty of Brusol (1610) by which he gave one of his daughters to the grandson of Philip IL On the other hand he astonished the Protestant world by the imprudence of his mediation between Spain and the rebellious United Provinces (1609). When the succession of Cleves and of Julich, so long expected and already discounted by the treaty of Halle (1610), was opened up in Germany, the great war was largely due to an access of senile passion for the charms of the princesse de Cond. The stroke of Ravaillacs knife caused a timely descent of the curtain upon this new and tragi-comic Trojan War. Thus, here as elsewhere, we see a vacillating hand-to-mouth policy, at the mercy of a passion for power or for sensual gratification. The Cornette blanche of Arques, the Poule au p81 of the peasant, successes as a lover and a dashing spirit, have combined to surround Henry IV. with a halo of romance not justified by fact.

The extreme instability of monarchical government showed itself afresh after Henry IV.s death. The reign of Louis XIII., a perpetual regency by women, priests, and favorite~, The was indeed a curious prelude to the grand age of the regency of French monarchy. The eldest son of Henry IV. Marie de being a minor, Marie de Medici induced the parlement Medici.

to invest her with the regency, thanks to Villeroy and contrary to the last will of Henry IV. This second Florentine, at once jealous of power and incapable of exercising it, bore little reseniblance to her predecessor. Light-minded, haughty, apathetic and cold-hearted, she took a sort of passionate delight in changing Henry IV.s whole system of government. Who would support her in this? On one side were the former ministers, Sillery and president Jeannin, ex-leaguers but loyalists, no lovers of Spain and still less of Germany; on the other the princes of the blood and the great nobles, Cond, Guise, Mayenne and Nevers, apparently still much more faithful to French ideas, but in reality convinced that the days of kings were over and that their own had arrived. Instead of weakening this aristocratic agitation by the see-saw policy of Catherine de Medici, Marie could invent no other device than to despoil the royal treasure by distributing places and money to the chiefs of both parties. The savings all expended and Sully fallen into disgrace, she lost her influence and became the almost unconscious instrument of an ambitious man of low birth, the Florentine Concini, who was to drag her down with him in his fall; petty shifts became thenceforward the order of the day.

Thus Villeroy thought fit to add still further to the price already paid to triumphant Madrid and Vienna by disbanding the army, breaking the treaty of Brusol, and abandoning the Protestant princes beyond the Rhine and the XIII~ trans-Pyrenean Moriscos. France joined hands with 1643). Spain in the marriages of Louis XIII. with Anne of Austria and Princess Elizabeth with the son of Philip III., and the Spanish ambassador was admitted to the secret council of the queen. To soothe the irritation of England the due de Bouillon was sent to London to offer the hand of the kings sister to the prince of Wales. Meanwhile, however, still more was ceded to the princes than to the kings; and after a pretence of drawing the sword against the prince of Cond, rebellious through jealousy of the Italian surroundings of the queen-mothei, recourse was had to the purse. The peace of Sainte Menehould, four years after the death of Henry IV., was a virtual abdication of the monarchy (May 1614); it was time for a move in the other direction. Villeroy inspired the regent with the idea of an armed expedition, accompanied by the little king, into the West. The convocation of the states-general was about to take place, wrung, as in all minorities, from the royal weaknessthis time by Cond; so the elections were influenced in the monarchist interest. The kings majority, solemnly proclaimed on the 28th of October 1614, further strengthened the throne; while owing to the bungling of the third estate, who did not contrive to gain the support of the clergy and the nobility by some sort of concessions, the states-general, the last until 1789, proved like the others a mere historic episode, an impotent and inorganic expedient. In vain Condb tried to play with the parlement of Paris the same game as with the states-general, in a sort of anticipation of the Fronde. Villeroy demurred; and the parlement, having illegally assumed a political role, broke with Cond and effected a reconciliation with the court. After this double victory Marie de Medici could at last undertake the famous journey to Bordeaux and consummate the Spanish marriages. In order not to countenance by his presence an act which had been the pretext for hie opposition, Cond rebelled once more in August 1615; but he was again pacified by the governorships and pensions of the peace of Loudun (May 1616).

But Villeroy and the other ministers knew not how to reap the full advantage of their victory. They had but one desire, to put themselves on a good footing again with Cond, instead of applying themselves honestly to the service dAnc,e. of the king. The marshals, Concini and his wife Leonora Galigai, more influential with the queen and more exacting than ever, by dint of clever intrigues forced the ministers to retire one after another; and with the last of Henry IV.s greybeards vanished also all the pecuniary reserves left. Concini surrounded himself with new men, insignificant persons ready to do his bidding, such as Barbin or Mangot, while in the background was Richelieu, bishop of Lucon. Cond now began intrigues with the princes whom he had previously betrayed; but his pride dissolved in piteous entreaties when Thmines, captain of the guard, arrested him in September 1616. Six months later Concini had not even time to protest when another captain, Vitry, slew him at the Louvre, under orders from Louis XIII., on the 24th of April 1617.

Richelieu had appeared behind Marie de Medici; Albert de Luynes rose behind Louis XIII., the neglected child whom he had contrived to amuse. The tavern remained the same, having changed nothing but the bush. De Luynes was made a duke and marshal in Concinis place, with no better title; while the duc dEpernon, supported by the queen-mother (now in disgrace at Blois), took Conds place at the head of the opposition. The treaties of Angoulme and Angers (1610-1620), negotiated by Richelieu, recalled the unwholesome treaties of Sainte-Menehould and Loudun. The revolt of the Protestants was more serious. Goaded by the vigorous revival of militant Catholicism which marked the opening of the 17th century, de Luynes tried to put a finishing touch to the triumph of Catholicism in France, which he had assisted, by abandoning in the treaty of Ulm the defence of the small German states against the ambition of the ruling house of Austria, and by sacrificing the Protestant Grisons to Spain. The re-establishment of Catholic worship in. Beam was the pretext for a rising among the Protestants, who had remained loyal during these troublous years; and although the military organization of French Protestantism, arranged by the assembly of La Rochelle, had been checked in 1621, by the defection of most of the reformed nobles, like Bouillon and Lesdiguires, de Luynes had to raise the disastrous siege of Montauban. Death alone saved him from the disgrace suffered by his predecessors (December 15, 1621).

From 1621 to 1624 Marie de Medici, re-established in credit, prosecuted her intrigues; and in three years there were three different ministries: de Luynes was succeeded by the Return of prince de Cond, whose Montauban was found at M:dkt. Montpellier; the Brfilarts succeeded Cond, and having, like de Luynes, neglected Frances foreign interests, they had to give place to La Vieuville; while this latter was arrested in his turn for having sacrificed the interests of the English Catholics in the negotiations regarding the marriage of Henrietta of France with the prince of Wales. All these personages were undistinguished figures beyond whom might be discerned the cold clear-cut profile of Marie de Medicis secretary, now a cardinal, who was to take the helm and act as viceroy during eighteen years.

Richelieu came into power at a lucky moment. Every one was sick of government by deputy; they desired a strong hand Cardinal and an energetic foreign policy, after the defeat of Rkheileu the Czechs at the White Mountain by the house of 1624- Austria, the Spanish intrigues in the Valtellina, and 1642 the resumption of war between Spain and Holland.

Richelieu contrived to raise hope in the minds of all. As president of the clergy at the states-general of 1614 he had figured as an adherent of Spain and the ultramontane interest; he appeared to be a representative of that religious party which was identical with the Spanish party. But he had also been put into the ministry by the party of the Politiques, who had terminated the civil wars, acclaimed Henry IV., applauded the Protestant alliance, and by the mouth of Miron, president of the third estate, had in 1614 proclaimed its intention to take up the national tradition once more. Despite the concessions necessary at the outset to the partisans of a Catholic alliance, it was the programme of the Politiques that Richelieu adopted and laid down with a masters hand in his Political Testament.

To realize it he had to maintain his position. This was very difficult with a king who wished to be governed and yet was impatient at being governed. Incapable of applying himself to great affairs, but of sane and even acute judgment, Louis XIII. excelled only in a passion for Rlchelieu. detail and for manual pastimes. He realized the superior qualities of his minister, though with a lively sense of his own dignity he often wished him more discreet and less imperious; he had confidence in him but did not love him. Cold-hearted and formal by nature, he had not even self-love, detested his wife Anne of Austriatoo good a Spaniardand only attached himself fitfully to his favorites, male or female, who were naturally jealously suspected by the cardinal. He was accustomed to listen to his mother, who detested Richelieu as her ungrateful protg. Neither did he love his brother, Gaston of Orleans, and the feeling was mutual; for the latter, remaining for twenty years heir-presumptive to a crown which he could neither defend nor seize, posed as the beloved prince in all the conspiracies against Richelieu, and issued from them each time as a Judas. Add to this that Louis XIII., like Richelieu himself, had wretched health, aggravated by the extravagant medicines of the day; and it is easy to understand how this pliable disposition which offered itself to the yoke caused Richelieu always to fear that his king might change his master, and to declare that the four square feet of the kings cabinet had been more difficult for him to conquer than all the battlefields of Europe.

Richelieu, therefore, passed his time in safeguarding himself from his rivals and in spying upon them; his suspicious nature, rendered still more irritable by his painful practice of a dissimulation repugnant to his headstrong character, making him fancy himself threatened more than was actually the case. He brutally suppressed six great plots, several of which were scandalous, and had more than fifty persons executed; and he identified himself with the king, sincerely believing that he was maintaining the royal authority and not merely his own. He had a preference for irregular measures rather than legal prosecutions, and a jealousy of all opinions save his own. He maintained his power through the fear of torture and of special commissions. It was Louis XIII. whose cold decree ordained most of the rigorous sentences, but the stain of blood rested on the cardinals robe and made his reasons of state pass for private vengeance. Chalais was beheaded at Nantes in 1626 for having upheld Gaston of Orleans in his refusal to wed Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and Marshal dOrnano died at Vincennes for having given him bad advice in this matter; while the duelist de Boutteville was put to the torture for having braved the edict against duels. The royal family itself was not free from his attacks; after the Day of Dupes (1630) he allowed the queen-mother to die in exile, and publicly dishonoured the kings brother Gaston of Orleans by the publication of his confessions; Marshal de Marillac was put to the torture for his ingratitude, and the constable de Montmorency for rebellion (1632). The birth of Louis XIV. in 1638 confirmed Richelieu in power. However, at the point of death he roused himself to order the execution of the kings favorite, Cinq-Mars, and Ms friend de Thou, guilty of treason with Spain (1642).

Absolute authority was not in itself sufficient; much money was also needed. In his state-papers Richelieu has shown that at the outset he desired that the Huguenots should share no longer in public affairs, that the nobles should cease to behave as rebellious subjects, and the powerful RICh. U.U. provincial governors as suzerains over the lands committed to their charge. With his passion for the uniform and the useful on a grand scale, he hoped by means of the Code Michaud to put an end to the sale of offices, to lighten imposts, to suppress brigandage, to reduce the monasteries, &c. To do this it would have been necessary to make peace, for it was soon evident that war was incompatible with these reforms. He chose war, as did his Spanish rival and contemporary OIivares~ War is expensive sport; but Richelieu maintained a lofty attitude towards finance, disdained figures, and abandoned all petty details to subordinate officials like DEffiat or Bullion. He therefore soon reverted to the old and worse measures, including the debasement of coinage, and put an extreme tensioU on all the springs of the financial system. The land-tax was doubled and trebled by war, by the pensions of the nobles, by an extortion the profits of which Richelieu disdained neither for himself nor for his family; and just when the richer and more powerful classes had been freed from taxes, causing the wholesale oppression of the poorer, these few remaining were jointly and severally answerable. Perquisites, offices, frced loans were multiplied to such a point that a critic of the times, Guy Patin, facetiously declared that duties were to be exacted from the beggars basking in the sun. Richelieu went so far as to make poverty systematic and use famine as a means of government. This was the price paid for the national victories.

Thus he procured money at all costs, with an extremely crude fiscal judgment which ended by exasperating the people; hence numerous insurrections of the poverty-stricken; Dijon rose in revolt against the aides in 1630, Provence against the tax-officers (lus) in 1631, Paris and Lyons in 1632, and Bordeaux against the increase of customs in 1635. In 1636 the Croquants ravaged Limousin, Poitou, Angoumois, Gascony and Prigord; in 1639 it needed an army to subdue the Va-nu-pieds (bare-feet) in Normandy. Even the rentiers of the Htel-de-Ville, big and little, usually very peaceable folk, were excited by the curtailment of their incomes, and in 1639 and 1642 were roused to fury.

Every on~ had to bend before this harsh genius, who insisted on uniformity in obedience. After the feudal vassals, decimated Struggle by the wars of religion and the executioners hand, with the and after the recalcitrant taxpayers, the Protestants, Protest- in their turn, and by their own fault, experienced this. ants. While Richelieu was opposing the designs of the pope and of the Spaniards in the Valtellina, while he was arming the duke of Savoy and subsidizing Mansfeld in Germany, Henri, duc de Rohan, and his brother Benjamin de Rohan, duc de Soubise, the Protestant chiefs, took the initiative in a fresh revolt despite the majority of their party (1625). This Huguenot rising, in stirring up which Spanish diplomacy had its share, was a revolt of discontented and ambitious individuals who trusted for success to their compact organization and the ultimate assistance of England. Under pressure of this new danger and urged on by the Catholic dvts, supported by the influence of Pope Urban VIII., Richelieu concluded with Spain the treaty of Monzon (March 5, 1626), by which the interests of his allies Venice, Savoy and the Grisons were sacrificed without their being consulted. The Catholic Valtellina, freed from the claims of the Protestant Grisons, became an independent state under the joint protection of France and Spain; the question of the right of passage was left open, to trouble France during the campaigns that followed; but the immediate gain, so far as Richelieu was concerned, was that his hands were freed to deal with the Huguenots.

Soubise had begun the revolt (January 1625) by seizing Port Blavet in Brittany, with the royal squadron that lay there, and in command of the ships thus acquired, combined with those of La Rochelle, he ranged the western coast, intercepting commerce. In September, however, Montmorency succeeded, with a fleet of English and Dutch ships manned by English seamen, in defeating Soubise, who took refuge in England. La Rochelle was now invested, the Huguenots were hard pressed also on land, and, but for the reluctance of the Dutch to allow their ships to be used for such a purpose, an end might have been made of the Protestant opposition in France; as it was,, Richelieu was forced to accept the mediation of England and conclude a treaty with the Huguenots (February 1626).

He was far, however, from forgiving them for their attitude or being reconciled to their power. So long as they retained their compact organization in France he could undertake no successful action abroad, and the treaty was in effect no more than a truce that was badly observed. The oppression of the French Protestants was but one of the pretexts for the English expedition under James I.s favorite, the duke of Buckingham, to La Rochelle in 1627; and, in the end, this intervention of a foreign power compromised their cause. When at last the citizens of the great Huguenot stronghold, caught between two dangers~ chose what seemed to them the least and threw in their lot with the English, they definitely proclaimed their attitude as anti-national; .and when, on the 29th of October 1628, after a heroic resistance, the city surrendered to the French king, this was hailed not as a victory for Catholicism only, but for France. The taking of La R~chelle was a 1eae~ of crushing blow to the Huguenots, and the desperate ~ alliance which~ Rohan, entrenched in the Cvennes, entered into with Philip IV. of Spain, could not prolong their resistance. The amnesty of Alais, prudent and moderate in religious matters, gave back to the Protestants their common rights within the body politic. Unfortunately what was an end for Richelieu was but a first step for the Catholic party.

The little Protestant group eliminated, Richelieu next wished to establish Catholic religious uniformity; for though in France the Catholic Church was the state church, Unity did not exist in it. There were no fixed principles in the Richelicu relations between king and church, hence incessant CIthIS. conflicts between Gallicans and Ultramontanes, in which Richelieu claimed to hold an even balance. Moreover, a Catholic lnovement for religious reform in the Church of France began during the i7th century, marked by the creation of seminaries, the foundation of new orthodox religious orders, and the organization of public relief by Saint Vincent de Paul, Jansenism was the most vigorous contemporary effort to renovate not only morals but Church doctrine (see JANSENISM). But Richelieu had no love for innovators, and showed this very plainly to dii Vergier de Hauranne, abbot of Saint Cyran, who was imprisOned at Vincennes for the good of Church and State. In affairs of intellect dragooning was equally the policy; and, as Corneille learnt to his cost, the French Academy was created in 1635 simply to secure in the republic of letters the same unity and conformity to rules that was enforced in the state.

Before Richelieu, there had been no effective monarchy and no institutions for controlling affairs; merely advisory institutions which collaborated somewhat vaguely in the Dest,~. administration of the kingdom. Had the king been aon of willing these might have developed further; but public Richelieu ruthlessly suppressed all such growth, and spirlt~ they remained embryonic. According to him, the king must decide in secret, and the kings will must be law. No one might meddle in political affairs, neither parlements nor states-general; still less had the public any right to judge the actions of the government. Between 1631 and the edict of February I641 Richelieu strove against the continually renewed opposition of the parlements to his system of special commissions and judgments; in 1641 he refused them any right of interference in state affairs; at most would he consent occasionally to take counsel with assemblies of notables. Provincial and municipal liberties were no better treated when through them the kings subjects attempted to break loose from the iron ring of the royal commissaries and intendants. In Burgundy, Dijon saw her municipal liberties restricted in 1631; the provincial assembly of Dauphin was suppressed from 1628 onward, and that of Languedoc in 1629; that of Provence was in 1639 replaced by communal assemblies, and that of Normandy was prorogued from 1639 to 1642. Not that Richelieu was hostile to them in principle; but he was obliged at all hazards to find money for the upkeep of the army, and the provincial states were a slow and heavy machine to put in motion. Through an excessive reaction against the disintegration that had menaced the kingdom after the dissolution of the League, he fell into the abuse of over-centralization; and depriving the people of the habit of criticizing governmental action, he taught them a fatal acquiescence in uncontrolled and undisputed authority. Like one of those physical forces which tend to reduce everything to a dead level, he battered down alike characters and fortresses; and in his endeavours to abolish faction, he killed that public spirit which, formed in the 16th century, had already produced the Republique of Bodin, de Thous History of his Times, La Boeties Contre Un, the Satire Mnippe, and Sullys Economies royales.

In order to establish this absolute despotism Richelieu created no new instruments, but made use of a revolutionary institution Methods of the 16th century, namely intendants (q.v.), employed agents who were forerunners of the commissaries of by Riche- the Convention, gentlemen of the long robe of inferior lieu, condition, hated by every one, and for that reason the more trustworthy. He also drew most of the members of his special commissions from the grand council, a supreme administrative tribunal which owed all its influence to him.

However, having accomplished all these great things, the treasury was left empty and the reforms were but ill-established;,

for Richelieus policy increased poverty, neglected re its, the toiling and suffering peasants, deserted the cause of the worker1 in order to favor the privileged classes, and left idle and useless that bourgeoisie whose intellectual activity, spirit of discipline, and civil and political culture would have yielded solid support to a monarchy all the stronger for being limited. Richelieu completed the work of Francis I.; he endowed France with the fatal tradition of autocracy. This priest by education and by turn of mind was indifferent to material interests, which were secondary in his eyes; he could organize neither finance, nor justice, nor an army, nor the colonies, but at the most a system of police. His method was not to reform, but to crush. He was great chiefly in negotiation, the art par excellence of ecclesiastics. His work was entirely abroad; there it had more continuity, more future, perhaps because only in his foreign policy was he unhampered in his designs. He sacrificed everything to it; but he ennobled it by the genius and audacity of his conceptions, by the energetic tension of all the muscles of the body politic.

The Thirty Years War in fact dominated all Richelieus foreign policy; by it he made France and unmade Germany.

It was the support of Germany which Philip 11. had lacked in order to realize his Catholic empire; and the Richelieu. election of the archduke Ferdinand II. of Styria ss emperor gave that support to his Spanish cousins (1619). Thenceforward all the forces of the Habsburg monarchy would be united, provided that communication could be maintained in the north with the Netherlands and in the south with the duchy of Milan, so that there should be no flaw in the iron vice which locked France in on either side. It was therefore of the highest importance to France that she should dominate the valleys of the Alps and Rhine. As soon as Richelieu became minister in 1624 there was an end to cordial relations with Spain. He resumed the policy of Henry IV., confining his military operations to the region of the Alps, and contenting himself at first with opposing the coalition of the Habsburgs with a coalition of Venice, the Turks, Bethlen Gabor, king of Hungary, and the Protestants of Germaay and Denmark. But the revolts of the French Protestants, the resentment of the nobles at his dictatorial power, and the perpetual ferment of intrigues and treason in the court, obliged him almost immediately to draw back. During these eight years, however, Richelieu had pressed on matters as fast as possible.

While James I. of England was trying to get a general on the cheap in Denmark to defend his son-in-law, the elector palatine, Richelieu was bargaining with the Spaniards in the Temporiz ing policy, treaty of Monzon (March 1626); but as the strained except in relations between France and England forced him lt~ly, to conciliate Spain still further by the treaty of April ~ 1627, the Spaniards profited by this to carry on an intrigue with Rohan, and in concert with the duke of Savoy, to occupy Montferrat when the death of Vicenzo II.

(December 26, 1627) left the succession of Mantua, under the will of the late duke, to Charles Gonzaga, duke of Nevers, a Frenchman by education and sympathy. But the taking of, La Rochelle allowed Louis to force the pass of Susa, to induce the duke of Savoy to treat with him, and to isolate the Spaniards in Italy by a great Italian league between Genoa, Venice and the dukes of Savoy and Mantua (April 1629). Unlike the Valois, Richelieu only desired to free Italy from Spain in order to restore her independence.

The fact that the French Protestants in the Cvennes were again in arms enabled the Habsburgs and the Spaniards to make a fresh attack upon the Alpine passes; but after the peace of Alais Richelieu placed himself at the head of forty thousand men, and stirred up enemies everywhere against the emperor, victorious now over the king of Denmark as in 1621 over the elector palatine. He united Sweden, now reconciled with Poland, and the Catholic and Protestant electors, disquieted by the edict of Restitution and the omnipotence of Wallenstein; and he aroused the United Provinces. But the disaffection of the court and the more extreme Catholics made it impossible for him as yet to enter upon a struggle against both Austria and Spain; he was only able to regulate the affairs of Italy with much prudence. The intervention of Mazarin, despatched by the pope, who saw no other means of detaching Italy from Spain than by introducing France into the affair, brought about the signature of the armistice of Rivalte on the 4th of September 1630, soon developed into the peace of Cherasco, which reestablished the~agreement with the still fugitive duke of Savoy (June 1631). Under the harsh tyranny of Spain, Italy was now nothing but a lifeless corpse; young vigorous Germany was better worth saving. So Richelieus envoys, Brulart de Leon and Father Joseph, disarmed the emperor at the diet of Regensburg, while at the same time Louis XIII. kept Casale and Pinerolo, the gates of the Alps. Lastly, by the treaty of Fontainebleau (May 30th, 1631), Maximilian of Bavaria, the head of the Catholic League, engaged to defend the king of France against all his enemies, even Spain, with the exception of the emperor. Thus by the hand of Richelieu a union against Austrian imperialism was effected between the Bavarian Catholics and the Protestants who dominated in central and northern Germany.

Twice had Richelieu, by means of the purse and not by force of arms, succeeded in reopening the passes of the Alps and of the Rhine. The kingdom at peace and the Huguenot Richeicu party ruined, he was now able to engage upon his and policy of prudent acquisitions and apparently dis- 6ustavus interested alliances, But Gustavus Adolphus, king Adoiphus. of Sweden, called in by Richelieu and Venice to take the place of the played-out king of Denmark, brought danger to all parties. He would not be content merely to serve French interests in Germany, according to the terms of the secret treaty of Bgrwalde (June I631); but, once master of Germany and the rich valley of the Rhine, considered chiefly the interests of Protestantism and Sweden. Neither the prayers nor the threats of Richelieu, who wished indeed to destroy Spain but not Catholicism, nor the death of Gustavus Adolphus at Llltzen (1632), could repair the evils caused by this immoderate ambition. A violent Catholic reaction against the Protestants ensued; and the union of Spain and the Empire was consolidated just when that of the Protestants was dissolved at Nordlingen, despite the efforts of Oxenstierna (September 1634). Moreover, Wallenstein, who had been urged by Richelieu to set up an independent kingdom in Bohemia, had been killed on the 23rd of February 1634. In the course of a year Wflrttemberg and Franconia were reconquered from the Swedes; and the duke of Lorraine, who had taken the side of the Empire, called in the Spanish and the imperial forces to open the road to the Netherlands through Franche-Comt.

His allies no longer able to stand alone, Richelieu was obliged to intervene directly (MayI9th, 1635). By the treaty of SaintGermain-en-Laye he purchased the army of Bernard of SaxeFerdinand is reported to have said: Le capucin ma dsarmC

avec son scapulaire et a mis dans capuchon six bonnets lectoraux.

Weimar; by that of Rivoli he united against Spain the dukes of Modena, Parma and Mantua; he signed an open alliance with The the league of Heilbronn, the United Provinces and Frwch Sweden and after these alliances military operations Thirty began, Marshal de la Force occupying the duchy of Lor Years raine. Richelieu attempted to operate simultaneously ar. in the Netherlands by joining hands with the Dutch, and on the Rhine by uniting with the Swedes; but the bad organization of the French armies, the double invasion of the Spaniards as far as Corbie and the imperial forces as far as the gates of Saint-Jean-de-Losne (1636), and the death of his allies, the dukes of Hesse-Cassel, Savoy and Mantua at first frustrated his efforts. A decided success was, however, achieved between 163S and 1640, thanks to Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and afterwards to Gubriant, and to the parallel action of the Swedish generals, Banr, Wrangel and Torstensson. Richelieu obtained Alsace, Breisach and the forest-towns on the Rhine; while in the north, thanks to the Dutch and owing to the conquest of Artois, marshals de la Meilleraye, de Chtillon and de Brz forced the barrier, of the Netherlands. Turin, the capital of Piedmont, was taken by Henri de Lorraine, comte dHarcourt; the alliance with rebellious portugal facilitated the occupation of Roussillon and almost the whole of Catalonia, and Spain was reduced to defending herself; while the embarrassments of the Habsburgs at Madrid made those of Vienna more tractable. The diet of Regensburg, under the mediation of Maximilian of Bavaria, decided in favor of peace with France, and on the25th of December 1641 the preliminary settlement at Hamburg fixed the opening of negotiations to take place at Munster and Osnabruck. Richelieus death (December 4, 1642) prevented him from seeing the triumph of his policy, but it can be judged by its results; in 1624 the kingdom had in the east only the frontier of the Meuse to defend it from invasion; in 1642 the whole of Alsace, except Strassburg, was occupied and the Rhine guarded by the army of Gubriant. Six months later, on the 14th of May 1643, Louis XIII. rejoined his minister in his true kingdom, the land of shades.

But thanks to Mazarin, who completed his work, France gathered in the harvest sown by Richelieu. At the outset no one believed that the new cardinal would have any Mazarin, success. Every one expected from Anne of Austria a change in the government which appeared to be justified by the persecutions of Richelieu and the disdainful unscrupulousness of Louis XIII. On the 16th of May the queen took the little four-year-old Louis XIV. to the p~irlement of Paris which, proud of playing a part in politics, hastened, contrary to Louis XIII.s last will, to acknowlec4ge the command of the little king, and to give his mother free, absolute and entire authority. rhe great nobles were already looking upon themselves as established in power, when they learnt with amazement that the regent had appointed as her chief adviser, not Gaston of Orleans, but Mazarin. The political revenge which in their eyes was owing to them as a body, the queen claimed for herself alone, and she made it a romantic one. This Spaniard of waning charms, who had been neglected by her husband and insulted by Richelieu, now gave her indolent and full-blown person, together with absolute power, into the hands of the Sicilian. Whilst others were triumphing openly, Mazarin, in the shadow and silence of the interregnum, had kept watch upon the heart of the queen; and when the old party of Marie de Medici and Anne of Austria wished to come back into power, to impose a general peace, and to substitute for the Protestant alliances an understanding with Spain, the arrest of Francois de Vendme, duke of Beaufort, and the exile of other important nobles proved to the great families that their hour had gone by (September 1643).

Mazarin justified Richelieus confidence and the favor of Anne of Austria. It was upon his foreign policy that he relied to maintain his authority within the kingdom. Thanks to him, the duke of Enghien (Louis de Bourbon, afterwards prince of Cond), appointed commander-in-chief at the age of twentytwo, caused the downfall of the renowned Spanish infantry at Rocroi; and he discovered Turenne, whose prudence tempered Conds overbold ideas. It was he too who by renewing the traditional alliances and resuming against Bavaria, Fer- -

dinand III.s most powerful ally, the plan of common Tie,i1es action with Sweden which Richelieu had sketched out, phalia. pursued it year after year: in 1644 at Freiburg im Breisgau, despite the death of Guflbriant at Rottweil; in 1645 at Nordlingen, despite the defeat of Marienthal; and in 1646 in Bavaria, despite the rebellion of the Weimar cavalry; to see it finally triumph at Zusmarshausen in May 1648. With Turenne dominating the Eiser and the Inn, Cond victorious at Lens, and the Swedes before the gates of Prague~the emperor, left without a single ally, finally authorized his pienipotentiaries to sign on the 24th of October 1648 the peace about which negotiations had been going on for seven years. Mazarin had stood his ground notwithstanding the treachery of the duke of Bavaria, the defection of the United Provinces, the resistance of the Germans, and the general confusion which was already pervading the internal affairs of the kingdom.

The dream of the Habsburgs was shattered. They had wished to set up a centralized empire, Catholic and German; but the treaties of Westphalia kept Germany in its passive and fragmentary condition; while the Catholic and Protestant princes obtained formal recognition of their territorial independence and their religious equality. Thus disappeared the two principles which justified the Empires existence; the universal sovereignty to which it laid claim was limited simply to a German monarchy much crippled in its powers; and the enfranchisement of the Lutherans and Calvinists from papal jurisdiction cut the last tie which bound the Empire to Rome. The victors material benefits were no less substantial: the congress of Mnster ratified the final cession of the Three Bishoprics and the conquest of Alsace, and Breisach and Philippsburg completed these acquisitions. The Spaniards had no longer any hope of adding Luxemburg to their Franche-Comt; while the Holy Roman Empire in Germany, taken in the rear by Sweden (now mistress of the Baltic and the North Sea), cut off for good from the United Provinces and the Swiss cantons, and enfeebled by the recognized right of intervention in German affairs on the part of Sweden and France, was now nothing but a meaningless name.

Mazarin had not been so fortunate in Italy, where in 1642 the Spanish remained masters. Venice, the duchy of Milan and the duke of Modena were on his side; the pope and the grandduke of Tuscany were trembling, but the romantic expedition of the duke of Guise to Naples, and the outbreak of the Fronde, saved Spain, who had refused to take part in the treaties of Westphalia and whose ruin Mazarin wished to compass.

It was, however, easier for Mazarin to remodel the map of Europe than to govern France. There he found himself face to face with all the difficulties that Richelieu had neglected to solve, and that were now once more giving trouble. .S

The Lit de Justice of the 18th of May 1643 had proved k!ngom. authority to remain still so personal an affair that the person of the king, insignificant though that was, continued to be regarded as its absolute depositary. Thus regular obedience to an abstract principle was under Mazarin as incomprehensible to the idle and selfish nobility as it had been under Richelicu. The parlement still kept up the same extra-judicial pretensions; but beyond its judicial functions it acted merely as a kind of towncrier to the monarchy, charged with making known the kings edicts. Yet through its right of remonstrance it was the only body that could legally and publicly intervene in politics; a large and independent body, moreover, which had its own demandv to make upon the monarchy and its ministers. Richelieu, by setting his special agents above the legal but complicated machinery of financial administration, had so corrupted it as to necessitate radical reform; all the more so because financial charges had been increased to a point far beyond what the nation could bear. With four armies to keep up, the insurrection in Portugal to maintain, and pensions to serve the needs of the allies, the burden had become acrushing one.

Richelieu had been able to surmount these difficulties because he governed in the name of a king of full age, and against isolated adversaries; while Mazarin had the latter against Richelicu him in a coalition which had lasted ten years, with aria, the further disadvantages of his foreign origin and a royal minority at a time when every one was sick of government by ministers. He was the very opposite of Richelieu, as wheedling in his ways as the other had been haughty and scornful, as devoid of vanity and rancour as Richelieu had been full of jealous care for his authority; he was gentle where the other had been passionate and irritable, with an intelligence as great and more supple, and a far more grasping nature.

It was the fiscal question that arrayed against Mazarin a coalition of all petty interests and frustrated ambitions; this was always the Achilles heel of the French monarchy, Financial which in 1648 was at the last extremity for money.

culties. All imposts were forestalled, and every expedient for obtaining either direct or indirect taxes had been exhausted by the methods of the financiers. As the country districts could yield nothing more, it became necessary to demand money from the Parisians and from the citizens of the various towns, and to search out and furbish up old disused edictsedicts as to measures and scales of pricesat the very moment when the luxury and corruption of the parvenus was insulting the poverty and suffering of the people, and exasperating all those officials who took their functions seriously.

A storm burst forth in the parlement against Mazarin as the patron of these expedients, the occasion for this being the edict of redemption by which the government renewed for Reb~iiioa nine years the Paulette which had now expired, parlement. by withholding four years salary from all officers of the Great Council, of the C/Iambres des corn pies, and of the Courdes aides. The parlement, although expressly exempted, associated itself with their protest by the decree of union of May 13, 1648, and deliberations in a body upon the reform of the state. Despite the queens express prohibition, the insurrectionary assembly of the Chambre Saint Louis criticized the whole financial system, founded as it was upon usury, claimed the right of voting taxes, respect for individual liberty, and the suppression of the intendants, who were a menace to the new bureaucratic feudalism. The queen, haughty and exasperated though she was, yielded for the time being, because the invasion of the Spaniards in the north, the arrest of Charles I. of England, and the insurrection of Masaniello at Naples made the moment a critical one for monarchies; but immediately after the victory at Lens she attempted a coup detat, arresting the leaders, and among them Broussel, a popular member of the parlement (August 26, 1648). Paris at once rose in revolta Paris of swarming and unpoliced streets, that had been making French history ever since the reign of Henry IV., and that had not forgotten the barricades of the League. Once more a pretence of yielding had to be made, until Conds arrival enabled the court to take refuge at Saint-Germain (January 15, 1649).

Civil war now began against the rebellious coalition of great nobles, lawyers of the parlement, populace, and mercenaries The just set free from the Thirty Years War. It lasted Fronde four years, for motives often as futile as the Grande (1648 Mademoiselles ambition to wed little Louis XIV.,

16.52). Cardinal de Retzs red hat, or Madame de Longuevilles stool at the queens side; it was, as its name of Fronde indicates, a hateful farce, played by grown-up children, in several acts.

Its first and shortest phase was the Fronde of the Parlement. At a period when all the world was a little mad, the parlement The had imagined a loyalist revolt, and, though it raised Fronde an armed protest, this was not against the king but of the against Mazarin and the persons to whom he had Parlenient. delegated power. But the parlement soon became disgusted with its alliesthe princes and nobles, who bad only drawn their swords in order to beg more effectively with arms in their hands; and the Parisian mob, whose fanaticism had been aroused by Paul de Gondi, a warlike ecclesiastic, a Catiline in a cassock, who preached the gospel at the daggers point.

When a suggestion was made to the parlement to receive an envoy from Spain, the members had no hesitation in making terms with the court by the peace of Rueil (March 11, 1649), which ended the first Fronde.

As an eniracte, from April 1649 to January 1650, came the affair of the Fetus Maitre:: Cond, proud and violent; Gaston of Orleans, pliable and contemptible; Conti, the The simpleton; and Longueville, the betrayed husband. Fronde The victor of Lens and Charenton imagined that every of the one was under an obligation to him, and laid claim to a dictatorship so insupportable that Anne of Austria and Mazarin assured by Gondi of the concurrence of the parlement and peoplehad him arrested. To defend Cond the great conspiracy of women was formed: Madame de Chevreuse, the subtle and impassioned princess palatine, and the princess of Cond vainly attempted to arouse Normandy, Burgundy and the mob of Bordeaux; while Turenne, bewitched by Madame de Longueville, allowed himself to become involved with Spain and was defeated at Rethel (December15, 1650). Unfortunately, after his custom when victor, Mazarin forgot his promises above all, Gondis cardinals hat. A union was effected between the two Frondes, that of the Petits Maitres and that of the parlements, and Mazarin was obliged to flee for safety to the electorate of Cologne (February 1651), whence he continued to govern the queen and the kingdom by means of secret letters. But the heads of the two FrondesCond, now set free from prison at Havre, and Gondi who detested himwere not long in quarrelling fatally. Owing to Mazarins exile and to the kings attainment of his majority (September 5, 1651) quiet was being restored, when the return of Mazarin, jealous of Anne of Austria, nearly brought about another reconciliation of all his opponents (January 1652). Cond resumed civil war with the support of Spain, because he was not given Mazarins place; but though he defeated the royal army at Blneau, he was surprised at Etampes, and nearly crushed by Turenne at the gate of SaintAntoine. Saved, however, bythe Grande Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston of Orleans, he lost Pari5 by the disaster of the Hotel de Ville July 4, 1652), where he had installed an insurrectionary government. A general weariness of civil war gave plenty of opportunity after this to the agents of Mazarin, who in order to facilitate peace made a pretence of exiling himself for a second time to Bouillon. Then came the final collapse: Cond having taken refuge in Spain for seven years, Gaston of Orleans being in exile, Retz in prison, and the parlement reduced to its judiciary functions only, the field was left open for Mazarin, who, four months after the king, re-entered in triumph that Paris which had driven him forth with jeers and mockery (February 1653).

The task was now to repair these four years of madness and folly. The nobles who had hoped to set up the League again, half counting upon the king of Spain, were held in The check by Mazarin with the golden dowries of his adminisnumerous nieces, and were now employed by him in tration of warfare and in decorative court functions; while Mzasin. others, De Retz and La Rochefoucauld, sought consolation in their Memoirs or their Maxims, one for his mortifications and the other for his rancour as a statesman out of employment. The parlement, which had confused political power with judiciary administration, was given to understand, in the session of April 13, 1655, at Vincennes, that the era of political manifestations was over; and the money expended by Gourville, Mazarins agent, restored the members of the parlement to docility. The power of the state was confided to middle-class men, faithful servants during the evil days: Abel Servien, Michel le Tellier, Hugues de Lionne. Like Henry IV. after the League, Mazarin, after having conquered the Fronde, had to buy back bit by bit the kingdom he had lost, and, like Richelieu, he spread out a network of agents, thenceforward regular and permanent, who assured him of that security without which he could never have carried on his vast plunderings in peace and quiet. His imitator and superintendent, Fouquet, the Maecenas of the future Augustus, concealed this gambling policy beneath the lustre of the arts and the glamour of a literature remarkable for elevation of thought ana vigour of style, and further characterized by the proud though somewhat restricted freedom conceded to men like Corneille, Descartes and Pascal, but soon to disappear.

It was also necessary to win back from Spain the territory which the Frondeurs had delivered up to her. Both countries, ~ exhausted by twenty years of war, were incapable of bringing it to a successful termination, yet neither would be first to give in.; Mazarin, therefore, disquieted by Conds victory at Valenciennes (I656), reknit the bond of Protestant alliances, and, having nothing to expect from Holland, he deprived Spain of her alliance with Oliver Cromwell (March 23, 1657). A victory in the Dunes by Turenne, now reinstalled in honor, and above all the conquest of the Flemish seaboard, were the results (June 1658); but when, in order to prevent the emperors intervention in the Netherlands, Mazarin attempted, on the death of Ferdinand III., to wrest the Empire from the Habsburgs, he was foiled by the gold of the Spanish envoy Peflaranda (1657). When the abdication of Christina of Sweden caused a quarrel between Charles Gustavus of Sweden and John Casimir of Poland, by which the emperor and the elector of Brandenburg hoped to profit, Mazarin (August 15, 1658) leagued the Rhine princes against them; while at the same time the substitution of Pope Alexander VII. for Innocent X., and the marriage of Mazarins two nieces with the duke of Modena and a prince Of the house of Savoy, made Spain anxious about her Italian possessions. The suggestion of a marriage between Louis XIV. and a princess of Savoy decided Spain, now brought to bay, to accord him the hand of Maria Theresa as a chief condition of the peace pyrenees. of the Pyrenees (November 1659). Roussillon and Artois, with a line of strongholds constituting a formidable northern frontier, were ceded to France; and the acquisition of Alsace and Lorraine under certain conditions was ratified. Thus from this long duel between the two countries Spain issued much enfeebled, while France obtained the preponderance in Italy, Germany, and throughout northern Europe, as is proved by Mazarins successful arbitration at Copenhagen and at Oliva (May-June I66o). That dream of Henry IV. and Richelieu, the ruin of Philip II.s Catholic empire, was made a realized fact by Maxarin; but the clever engineer, dazzled by success, took the wrong road in national policy when he hoped to crown his work by the Spanish marriage.

The development of events had gradually enlarged the royal prerogative, and it now came to its full flower in the administrative monarchy of the 17th century. Of this system Louis XIV. Louis XIV. was to be the chief exponent. His 1715). reign may be divided into two very distinct periods.

The death of Colbert and the revocation of the edict of Nantes brought the first to a close (166116831685); coinciding with the date when the Revolution in England definitely reversed the traditional system of alliances, and when the administration began to disorganize. In the second period (1685-1715) all the germs of decadence weredeveloped until the moment of final dissolution.

In a monarchy so essentially personal the preparation of the heir to the throne for his position should have been the chief task. Anne of Austria, a devoted but unintelligent Ed~cat1Ion mother, knew no method of dealing with her son, save devotion combined with the rod. His first preceptors were nothing but courtiers; and the most intelligent, his valet Laporte, developed in the royal childs mind his natural instinct of command, a very lively sense of his rank, and that nobly majestic air of master of the world which he preserved even in the commonest actions of his life. The continual agitations of the Fronde prevented him from persevering in any consistent application during those years which are the most valuable for study, and only instilled in him a horror of revolution, parliamentary remonstrance, and disorder of all kinds; so that this recollection determined the direction of his government. Mazarin, in his later years, at last taught him his trade as king by admittinghim to the council, and by instructing him in the, details of politics and of administration.

In 1661 Louis XIV. was a handsome youth of twenty-two, of splendid health and gentle serious mien; eager for pleasure, but discreet and even dissimulating; his rather mediocre intellectual qualities relieved by solid common sense; fully alive to his rights and his duties.

The duties he conscientiously fulfilled, but he considered he need render no account of them to any one but his Maker, the last humiliation for Gods vicegerent being to take the law from his people. In. the solemn language of the Memoirs for the Instruction of the Dauphin ~Jas. he did but affirm the arbitrary and capricious character of his predecessors action. As for his rights, Louis XIV. looked upon these as plenary and unlimited. Representative of God upon earth, heir to the sovereignty of the Roman emperors, a universal suzerain and master over the goods and the lives of his vassals, he could conceive no other bounds to his authority than his own interests or his obligations towards God, and in this he was a willing believer of Bossuet. He therefore had but two aims: to increase his power at home and to enlarge his kingdom abroad. The army and taxation were the chief instruments of his policy. Had not Bodin, Hobbes and Bossuet taught that the force which gives birth to kingdoms serves best also to feed and sustain them? His theory of the state, despite Grotius and Jurieu, rejected as odious and even impious the notion of any popular rights, anterior and superior to his own. A realist in principle, Louis XIV. was terribly utilitarian and egotistical in practice; and he exacted from his subjects an absolute, continual and obligatory self-abnegation before his public authority, even when improperly exercised.

This deified monarch needed a new temple, and Versailles, where everything was his creation, both men and things, adored its maker. The highest nobility of France, beginning The forms with the princes of the blood, competed for posts of Louis in the royal household, where an army of ten thousand XIV. S

soldiers, four thousand servants, and five thousand monarchy. horses played its costly and luxurious part in the ordered and almost religious pageant of the kings existence. The anciennes cohues de France, gay, familiar and military, gave place to a stilted court life, a perpetual adoration, a very ceremonious and very complicated ritual, in which the demigod pontificated even in his dressing-gown. To pay court to himself was the first and only duty in the eyes of a proud and haughty prince who saw and noted everything, especially any ones absence. Versailles, where the delicate refinements of Italy and the grave politeness of Spain were fused and mingled with French vivacity, became the centre of national life and a model for foreign royalties; hence if Versailles has played a considerable part in the history of civilization, it also seriously modified the life of France. Etiquette and self-seeking became the chief rules of a courtiers life, and this explains the division of the nobility into two sections: the provincial squires, embittered by neglect; and the courtiers, who were ruined materially and intellectually by their way of living. Versailles sterilized all the idle upper classes, exploited the industrious classes by its extravagance, and more and more broke relations between king and kingdom.

But however divine, the king could not wield his power unaided. Louis XIV. called to his assistance a hierarchy of humbly submissive functionaries, and councils over which he regularly presided. Holding the very name of roi fainant in abhorrence, he abolished the office min~Isters. of mayor of the palacethat is to say, the prime ministerthus imposing upon himself work which he always regularly performed. In choosing his collaborators his principle was never to select nobles or ecclesiastics, but persons of inferior birth. Neither the immense fortunes amassed by these men, nor the venality and robust vitality which made their families veritable races of ministers, altered the fact that De Lionne, Le Tellier, Louvois and Colbert were in themselves of no account, even though the parts they played were much more important than Louis XIV. imagined. This was the age of plebeians, to the great indignation of the duke and peer Saint Simon. Mere reflected lights, these satellites professed to share their masters horror of all individual and collective rights of such a ~e~,otlsm. nature as to iInpose any check upon his public authority. Louis XIV. detested the states-general and never convoked them, and the parlements were definitely reduced to silence in 1673; he completed the destruction of municipal liberties, under pretext of bad financial administration.; suffered no public, still less private criticism; was ruthless when his exasperated subjects had recourse to force; and made the police the chief bulwark of his government. Prayers and resignation were the only solace left for the hardships endured by his subjects. All the ties of caste, class, corporation and family were severed; the jealous despotism of Louis XIV. destroyed every opportunity of taking common action; he isolated every man in private life, in individual interests, just as he isolated himself more and more from the, body social. Freedom he tolerated for himself alone.

His passion for absolutism made him consider himself master of souls as well as bodies, and Bossuet did nothing to contravene an opinion which was, indeed, common to every and the sovereign of his day. Louis XIV., like Philip II.,

Church. pretending to not only political but religious authority, would not allow the pope to share it, still less would he abide any religious dissent; and this gave rise to many conflicts, especially with the pope, at that time a temporal sovereign both at Rome and at Avignon, and as the head of Christendom bound to interfere in the affairs of France. Louis XIV.s pride caused the first struggle, which turned exclusively upon questions of form, as in the affair of the Corsican Guard in 1662. The question of the right of regale (right of the Crown to the revenues of vacant abbeys and bishoprics), which touched the essential rights of sovereignty, further inflamed the hostility between Innocent XI. and Louis XIV. Conformably with the traditions of the administrative monarchy in 1673, the king wanted to extend to the new additions to the kingdom his rights of receiving the revenues of vacant bishoprics and making appointments to their benefices, including taking oaths of fidelity from the new incumbents. A protest raised by the bishops of Pamiers and Aleth, followed by the seizure of their revenues, provoked the intervention of Innocent XI. in 1678; but the king was supported by the general assembly of the clergy, which declared that, with certain exceptions, the regale extended over the whole kingdom (1681). The pope ignored the decisions of the assembly; so, dropping the regale, the king demanded that, to obviate further conflict, the assembly should define the limits of the authority due respectively to the king, the Church and the pope. This was the object of the Declaration of the Four lieclara- Articles: the pope has no power in temporal matters; tion of general councils are superior to the pope in spiritual the Four affairs; the rules of the Church of France are inviolable; Articles, decisions of the pope in matters of faith are only irrevocable by consent of the Church. The French laity transferred to the king this quasi-divine authority, which became the political theory of the ancien rgime; and since the pope refused to submit, or to institute the new bishops, the Sorbonne was obliged to interfere. The affair of the diplomatic prerogatives, when Louis XIV. was decidedly in the wrong, made relations even more strained (1687), and the idea of a schism was mooted with greater insistence than in 1681. The death of Innocent XI. in 1689 allowed Louis XIV. to engage upon negotiations rendered imperative by his check in the affair of the Cologne bishopric, where his candidate was ousted by the popes. In 1693, under the pontificate of Innocent XII., he went, like so many others, to Canossa.

Recipient now of immense ecclesiastical revenues, which, owing to the number of vacant benefices, constituted a powerful engine of government, Louis XIV. had immense power over the French Church. Religion began to be identified with the state; and the king combated heresy and dissent, not only as a religious duty, but as a matter of political expediency, unity of faith being obviously conducive to unity of law.

Richelieu having deprived the Protestants of all political guarantees for their liberty of conscience, an anti-Protestant party (directed by a cabal of religious devotees, the Corn pagni~ du Saint Sacrement) determined to suppress it completely by conversions and by a jesuitical interpretation of the L~is terms of the edict of Nantes. Louis XIV. made xiv. and this impolitic policy his own. His passion for absolu- the Protism, a religious zeal that was the more active because test ants. it had to compensate for many affronts to public and private morals, the financial necessity of augmenting the free donations of the clergy, and the political necessity of relying upon that body in his conflicts with the pope, led the king between 1661 and 1685 to embark upon a double campaign of arbitrary proceedings with the object of nullifying the edict, conversions being procured either by force or by bribery. The promulgation and application of systematic measures from above had a response from below, from the corporation, the urban workshop, and the village street, which supported ecclesiastical and royal authority in its suppression of heresy, and frequently even went further: individual and local~ fanaticism co-operating with the head of the state, the intendants, and the military and judiciary authorities. Protestants were successively removed from the states-general, the consulates, the town. councils, and even from the humblest municipal offices; they were deprived of the charge of their hospitals, their academies, their colleges and their schools, and were left to ignorance and poverty; while the intolerance of the clergy united with chicanery of procedure to invade their places of worship, insult their adherents, and put a stop to the practice of their ritual. Pellisson.s methods of conversion, considered too slow, were accelerated by the violent persecution of Louvois and by the kings galleys, sion of until the day came when Louis XIV., deceived by the the edict clergy, crowned his record of complaisant legal methods by revoking the edict of Nantes. This was the signal for a Huguenot renaissance, and the Camisards of the,Cflvennes held the royal armies in check from 1703 to I 7. Notwithstanding this, however, Louis XIV. succeeded only too well, since Protestantism was reduced both numerically and intellectually. He never perceived how its loss threw France back a full century, to the great profit of foreign nations; while neither did the Church perceive that she had been firing on her own troops.

The same order of ideas produced the persecution of the Jansenists, as much a political as a religious sect. Founded by a bishop of Ypres on the doctrine of predestination, Louis and growing by persecution, it had speedily recruited xiv. and adherents among the disillusioned followers of the the JanFronde, the Gallican clergy, the higher nobility, even senists. at court, and more important still, among learned men and thinkers, such as the great Arnaukl, Pascal and Racine. Pure and austere, it enjoined the strictest morals in the midst of corruption, and the most dignified self-respect in face of idolatrous servility. Amid general silence it was a formidable and much dreaded body of opinion; and in order to stifle it Louis XIV., the tool of his confessor, the Jesuit Le Tellier, made use of his usual means. The nuns of Port Royal werein their turn subjected to persecution, which, after a truce between 1666 and 1679, became aggravated by the affair of the regale, the bishops of Aleth and Pamiers being Jansenists. Port Royal was destroyed, the nuns dispersed, and the ashes of the dead scattered to the four winds. The bull Unigenitus launched by Pope Clement XI. lfl 1713 against a Jansenist book by Father Quesnel rekindled a quarrel, the end of which Louis XIV. did not live to see, and which raged throughout the 18th century.

Bossuet, Louis XIV.s mouthpiece, triumphed in his turn over the quietism of Madame Guyon, a mystic who recognized neither definite dogmas nor formal prayers, but abandoned herself to the torrent of the forces of God. Fnelon, who in his Maximes des Saints had Ln~rtIns. given his adherence to her doctrine, was obliged to submit in 1699; but Bossuet could not make the spirit of authority prevail against the religious criticism of a Richard Simon or the philosophical polemics of a Bayle. He might exile their persons; but their doctrines, supported by the scientific and philosophic work of Newton and Leibnitz, were to triumph over Church and religion in the 18th century.

The chaos of the administrative system caused difficulties no less great than those produced by opinions and creeds. Traditional rights, differences of language, provincial autonomy, ecclesiastical assemblies, parlements, governors, intendants-vestiges of the past, or promises for the futureall jostled against and thwarted each other. The central authority had not yet acquired a vigorous constitution, nor destroyed all the intermediary authorities. Colbert now offered his aid in making Louis XIV. the sole pivot of public life, as he had already become the source of religious authority, thanks to the Jesuits and to Bossuet.

Colbert, an agent of Le Tellier, the honest steward of Mazarins dishonest fortunes, had a future opened to him by cornert the fall of Fouquet (1661). Harsh and rough, he compelled admiration for his delight in work, his aptitude in disentangling affairs, his desire of continually augmenting the wealth of the state, and his regard for the public welfare without forgetting his own. Born in a drapers shop, this great administrator always preserved its narrow horizon, its short-sighted imagination, its taste for detail, and the conceit of the parvenu; while with his insinuating ways, and knowing better than Fouquet how to keep his distance, he made himself indispensable by his savoir-faire and his readiness for every emergency. He gradually got everything into his control: finance, industry, commerce, the fine arts, the navy and colonies, the administration, even the fortifications, and-through his uncle Pussortthe law, with all the profits attaching to its offices.

His first care was to restore the exhausted resources of the country and to re-establish order in finance. He began by measures of liquidation: the Chambre ardente of Colbert 1661 to 1665 to deal with the fa,rmers of the revenue, ~ the condemnation of Fouquet, and a revision of the funds. Next, like a good man of business, Colbert determined that the state accounts should be kept as accurately as those of a shop; but though in this respect a great minister, he was less so in his manner of levying contributions. He kept to the old system of revenues from the demesne and from imposts that were reactionary in their effect, such as the taille, aids, salt-tax (gabelle) and customs; only he managed them better. His forest laws have remained a model. He demanded less of the taille, a direct impost, and more from indirect aids, of which he created the codenot, however, out of sympathy for the common people, towards whom he was very harsh, but because these aids covered a greater area and brought in larger returns. He tried to import more method into the very unequal distribution of taxation, less brutality in collection, less confusion in the fiscal machine, and more uniformity in the matter of rights; while he diminished the debts of the much-involved towns by putting them through the bankruptcy court. With revolutionary intentions as to reform, this only ended, after several years of normal budgets, in ultimate frustration. He could never make the rights over the drink traffic uniform and equal, nor restrict privileges in the matter of the taille; while he was soon much embarrassed, not only by the coalition of particular interests and local immunities, which made despotism acceptable by tempering it, but also by Louis XIV.s two masterpassions for conquest and for building. To his great chagrin he was obliged to begin borrowing again in 1672, and to have recourse to a,ffaires extraordinaires; and this brought him at last to his grave.

Order was for Colbert the prime condition of work. He desired all France to set to work as he did with a contented air and rubbing his hands for joy; but neither Colbert general theories nor individual happiness preoccupied 7~ustiy. his attention. He made economy truly political:

that is to say, the prosperity of industry and commerce afforded him no other interest than that of making the country wealthy and the state powerful. Louis XIV.s aspirations towards glory chimed in very well with the extremely positive views of his minister; but here too Colbert was an innovator and an unsuccessful one. He wanted to give 17th-century France the modern and industrial character which the New World had imprinted on the maritime states; and he created industry on a grand scale with an energy of labor, a prodigious genius for initiative and for organization; while, in order to attract a foreign clientele, he imposed upon it the habits of meticulous probity common to a middle-class draper. But he maintained the legislation of the Valois, who placed industry in a state of strict dependency on finance, and he instituted a servitude of labor harder even than that of individuals; his great factories of soap, glass, lace, carpets and cloth had the same artificial life as that of contemporary Russian industry, created and nourished by the state. It was therefore necessary, in order to compensate for the fatal influence of servitude, that administrative protection should be lavished without end upon the royal manufactures; moreover, in the course of its development, industry on a grand scale encroached in many ways upon the resources of smaller industries. After Colberts day, when the crutches lent by privilege were removed, his achievements lost vigour; industries that ministered to luxury alone escaped decay; the others became exhausted in struggling against the persistent and teasing opposition of the municipal bodies and the bourgeoisieconceited, ignorant and terrified at any innovationand against the blind and intolerant policy of Louis XIV.

Colbert, in common with all his century, believed that the true secret of commerce and the indisputable proof of a countrys prosperity was to sell as many of the products of national industry to the foreigner as possible, while Colbert purchasing as little as possible. In order to do this, :mmems. he sometimes figured as a free-trader and sometimes as a protectionist, but always in a practical sense; if he imposed prohibitive tariffs, in 1664 and 1667, he also opened the free ports of Marseilles and Dunkirk, and engineered the Canal du midi. But commerce, like industry, was made to rely only on the instigation of the state, by the intervention of officials; here, as throughout thenational life, private initiative was kept in subjection and under suspicion. Once more Colbert failed; with regard to internal affairs, he was unable to unify weights and measures, or to suppress the many custom-houses which made France into a miniature Europe; nor could he in external affairs reform the consulates of the Levant. He did not understand that, in order to purge the body of the nation from its traditions of routine, it would be necessary to reawaken individual energy in France. He believed that the state, or rather the bureaucracy, might be the motive power of national activity.

His colonial and maritime policy was the newest and most fruitful part of his work. He wished to turn the eyes of contemporary adventurous France towards her distant interests, the wars of religion having diverted her Colbert attention from them to the great profit of English ,on~,e~s. and Dutch merchants. Here too h~ had no preconceived ideas; the royal and monopolist companies were never for him an end but a means; and after much experimenting he at length attained success. In the course of twenty years he created many dependencies of France beyond sea. To her colonial empire in America he added the greater part of Santo Domingo, Tobago and Dominica; he restored Guiana; prepared for the acquisition of Louisiana by supporting Cavelier de la Salle; extended the suzerainty of the king on the coast of Africa from the Bay of Arguin to the shores of Sierra Leone, and instituted the first commercial relations with India. The population of the Antilles doubled; that of Canada quintupled; while if in 1672 at the time of the war with Holland Louis XIV. had listened to him, Colbert would have sacrificed his pride to the acquisition of the rich colonies of the Netherlands. In order to attach and defend these colonies Colbert created a navy which Lecame his passion; he took convicts to man the galleys in the Mediterranean, and for the fleet in the Atlantic he established the system of naval reserve which still obtains. But, in the 18th aentury, the monarchy, hypnotized by the classical battle-fields of Flanders and Italy, madly squandered the fruits of Colberts work as so much material for barter and exchange. -

In the administration, the police and the law, Colbert preserved all the old machinery, including the inheritance of office. In Colbert the great codification of laws, made under the direction and the of his uncle Pussort, he set aside the parlement of adm#nls- Paris, and justice continued to be ill-administered t~at!on. .

and cruel. The police, instituted in 1667 by La Reynie, became a public force independent of magistrates and under the direct orders of the ministers, making the arbitrary royal and ministerial authority absolute by means of lettres de cachet (qv.), which were very convenient for the government and very terrible for the individuals concerned.

Provincial administration was no longer modified; it was regularized. The intendant became the kings factotum, not purchasing his office but liable to dismissal, the governments confidential agent and the real repository of royal authority, the governor being only for show (see INTENDANT).

Colberts system went on working regularly up to the year 1675; from that time forward he was cruelly embarrassed for money, and, seeking new sources of revenue, ~ begged for subsidies from the assembly of the clergy.

work. He did not succeed either in stemming the tide of expense, nor in his administration, being in no way in advance of his age, and not perceiving that decisive reform could not be achieved by a government dealing with the nation as though it were inert and passive material, made to obey and to payS Like a good Cartesian he conceived of the state as an immense machine, every portion of which should receive its impulse from outsidethat is from him, Colbert. Leibnitz had not~ yet taught that external movement is nothing, and inward spirit everything. As the minister of an ambitious and magnificent king, Colbert was under the hard necessity of sacrificing everything to the wars in Flanders and the pomp of Versailles a gulf which swallowed up all the countrys wealth;and, amid a society which might be supposed submissively docile to the wishes of Louis XIV., he had to retain the most absurd financial laws, making the burden of taxation weigh heaviest on those who had no other resources than their labor, whilst landed property escaped free of charge. Habitual privation during one year in every three drove the peasants to revolt: in Boulonnais, the Pyrenees, Vivarais, in Guyenne from 1670 onwards and in Brittany in 1675. Cruel means of repression assisted natural hardships and the carelessness of the administration in depopulating and laying waste the countryside; while Louis XIV.s martial and ostentatious policy was even more disastrous than pestilence and famine, when Louvois advice prevailed in council over that of Colbert, now embittered and desperate. The revocation of the edict of Nantes vitiated thi-ough a fatal contradiction all the efforts of the latter to create new manufactures; the country was impoverished for tht1 benefit of the foreigner to such a point that economic conditions began to alarm those private persons most noted for their talents, their character, or their regard for the public welfare; such as La Bruyre and Fnelon in 1692, Bois-Guillebert in 1697 and Vauban In. 1707. The movement attracted even the ministers, Boulainvilliers at their head, who caused the intendants to make inquiry into the causes of this general ruin. There was a volume of attack upon Colbert; but as the fundamental system remained unchanged, because reform would have necessitated an attack upon privilege and even upon the constitution of the monarchy, the evil only went on increasing. The social condition of the time recalls that of present-day Morocco, in the high price of necessaries and the extortions of the financial authorities; every man was either soldier, beggar or smuggler.

Under Pontchartrain, Chamillard and Desmarets, the expenses of the two wars of 1688 and 1701 attained to nearly five milliards. In order to cover this recourse was had as usual, not to remedies, but to palliatives worse than the evil: heavy usurious loans, debasement of the coinage, creation of stocks that were perpetually being converted, and ridiculous charges which the bourgeois, sickened with officialdom, would endure no longer. Richelieu himself had hesitated to tax labor; Louis XIV. trod the trade organizations under foot. It was necessary Recouree to have recourse to revolutionary measures, to direct to revolutaxation, ignoring all class distinction. In 1695 the tionary graduated poll-tax was a veritable coup detat against measures. privileged persons, who were equally brought under the tax; in 1710 was added the tithe (dixime), a tax upon income from all landed property. Money scarce, men too were lacking; the institution of the militia, the first germ of obligatory enlistment, was a no less important innovation. But these were only provisionary and desperate expedients, superposed upon the old routine, a further charge in addition to those already existing; and this entirely mechanical system, destructive of private initiative and the very sources of public life, worked with difficulty even in time of peace. As Louis XIV. made war continually the result was the same as in Spain under Philip II.: depopulation and bankruptcy within the kingdom and the coalitions of Europe without.

In 1660 France was predominant in Europe; but she aroused no jealousy except in the house of Habsburg, enfeebled and divided against itself. It was sufficient to remain Foreign faithful to the practical policy of Henry IV., of policy of Richelieu and of Mazarin: that of moderation in Louis XIV. strength. This Louis XIV. very soon altered, while yet claiming to continue it; he superseded it by one principle:

that of replacing the proud tyranny of the Habsburgs of Spain by another. He claimed to lay down the law everywhere, in the preliminary negotiations between his ambassador and the Spanish ambassador in London, in the affair of the salute exacted from French vessels by the English, and in that of the Corsican guard in Rome; while he proposed to become the head of the crusade against the Turks in the Mediterranean as in Hungary.

The eclipse of the great idea of the balance of power in Europe was no sudden affair; the most flourishing years of the reign were still enlightened by it: witness the repurchase of Dunkirk from Charles II. in 1662, the cession of the duchies of Bar and of Lorraine~nd the war against Portugal. But soon the partial or total conquest of the Spanish inheritance proved the grandeur of his beginnings and the meanness of his end. Like Philip the Fair and like Richelieu, Louis XIV. sought support for his external policy in that public opinion which in internal matters he held so cheap; and he found equally devoted auxiliaries in the jurists of his parlements.

It was thus that the first of his wars for the extension of frontiers began, the War of Devolution. On the death of his father-in-law, Philip IV. of Spain, he transferred 1~

into the realm of politics a civil custom of inheritance prevailing in Brabant, and laid claim to Flanders in tion, i~7. the name of his wife Maria Theresa. The Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667), in which he was by way of supporting the United Provinces without engaging his fleet, retarded this enterprise by a year. But after his mediation in the treaty of Breda (July 1667), when Hugues de Lionne, secretary of state for foreign affairs, had isolated Spain, he substituted soldiers for the jurists and cannon for diplomacy in the matter of the queens rights.

The secretary of state for war, Michelle Tellier, had organized his army; and thanks to his great activity in reform, especially after the Fronde, Louis XIV. found himself in possession of an army that was well equipped, well clothed, well provisioned, and very different from the rabble of the Thirty Years War, fitted out by dishonest jobbing contractors. Severe discipline, suppression of fraudulent interference, furnishing of clothes and equipment by the king, regulation of rank among the officers, systematic revictualling of the army, settled means of manufacturing and furnishing arms and ammunition, placing of the army under the direct authority of the king, abolition Of great military charges, subordination of the governors of strongholds, control by the civil authority over the soldiers effected by means of paymasters and commissaries of stores; all this organization of the royal army was the work of le Tellier.

His son, Francois Michel le Tellier, marquis de Louvois, had one sole merit, that of being his fathers pupil. A parvenu of the middle classes, he was brutal in his treatment of the lower orders and a sycophant in his behaviour towards the powerful; prodigiously active, ill-obeyedas was the custombut much dreaded. From 1677 onwards he did but finish perfecting Louis XIV.s army in accordance with the suggestions left by his father, and made no fundamental changes: neither the definite abandonment of the feudal arrire-ban and of recruitingsources of disorder and insubordinationnor the creation of the militia, which allowed the nation to penetrate into all the ranks of the army, nor the adoption of the gun with the bayonet,which was to become the ultima ratio of peoples as the cannon was that of sovereigns,nor yet the uniform, intended to strengthen esfrrit de corps, were due to him. He main.tained the institutions of the day, though seeking to diminish their abuse, and he perfected material details; but misfortune would have it that instead of remaining a great military administrator he flattered Louis XIV.s megalomania, and thus caused his perdition.

Under his orders Turenne conquered Flanders (June-August 1667); and as the queen-mother of Spain would not give in, Cond occupied Franche Comt in fourteen days The tilpie (February 1668). But Europe rose up in wrath; the alliance of T, the Hague. Lnited Provinces and England, jealous and disquieted by this near neighborhood, formed with Sweden the triple alliance of the Hague (January 1668), ostensibly to offer their mediation, though in reality to prevent the occupation of the Netherlands. Following the advice of Colbert and de Lionne, Louis XIV. appeared to accede, and by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle he preserved his conquests in Flanders (May 1668).

This peace was neither sufficient nor definite enough for Louis XIV.; and during four years he employed all his diplomacy to isolate the republic of the United Provinces in At Europe, as he had done for Spain. He wanted to ruin Chape lie, this nation both in a military and an ecOnomic sense, in order te annex to French Flanders the rest of the Catholic Netherlands allotted to him by a secret tret~y for partitioning the Spanish possessions, signed with his brother-in-law the emperor Leopold on the i9tb of January 1668. Colbertvery envious of Hollands wealthprepared the finances, le Tellier the army and de Lionne the alliances. In vain did the grandIth pensionary of the province of Holland, Jan de Witt, Holland. offer concessions of all kinds; both England, bound by the secret treaty of Dover (January 1670), and France had need of this war. Avoiding the Spanish Netherlands, Louis XIV. effected the passage of the Rhine in June 1672; and the disarmed United Provinces, which had on their side only Brandenburg and Spain, were occupied in a few days. The brothers de Witt, in consequence of their fresh offer to treat at any price, were assassinated; the broken dykes of Muiden arrested the victorious march of Cond and Turenne; while the popular and military party, directed by the stadtholder William of Orange, took the upper hand and preached resistance to the death. The war is over, said the new secretary of state for foreign affairs, Arnauld de Pomponne; but Louvois and Louis XIV. said no. The latter wished not only to take possession of the Netherlands, which were to be given up to him with half of the United Provinces and their colonial empire; he wanted to play the Charlemagne, to re-establish Catholicism in that country as Philip II. had formerly attempted to do, to occupy all the territory as far as the Lech, and to exact an annual oath of fealty. But the patriotism and the religious fanaticism of the Dutch revolted against this insupportable tyranny. Power had passed from the hands of the burghers of Amsterdam into those of William of Orange, who on the 30th peace ~ of August 1673, profiting by the arrest of the army Ni/rn- brought about by the inundation and by the fears of wegen, Europe, joined in a coalition with the emperor, the ~ king of Spain, the duke of Lorraine, many of the princes of the Empire, and with England, now at last enlightened as to the projects of Catholic restoration which Louis XIV. was planning with Charles II. It was necessary to evacuate and then to settle with the United Provinces, and to turn against Spain. After fighting for five years against the whole of Europe by land and by sea, the efforts of Turenne, Cond and Duquesne culminated at Nijmwegen. in fresh acquisitions (1678). Spain had to cede to Louis XIV,, Franche Comt, Dunkirk and half of Flanders. This was another natural and glorious result of the treaty of the Pyrenees. The Spanish monarchy was disarmed.

But Louis XIV. had already manifested that unmeasured and restless passion for glory, that claim to be the exclusive arbiter of western Europe, that blind and narrow T ~ insistence, which were to bear out his motto Seul ~ contre tons. Whilst all Europe was disarming he kept his troops, and used peace as a means of conquest. Under orders from Colbert de Croissy the jurists came upon the scene once more, and their unjust decrees were, sustained by force of arms. The Chambres de Run-ion sought for and joined to the kingdom those lands which were not actually dependent upon his new cor~quests, but which bad formerly been so: such as SaarbrUcken, Deux Ponts (ZweibrUcken) and Montbliard in 1680, Strassburg and Casale in 1681. The power of the house of Habsburg was paralysed by an invasion. of the Turks, agd Louis XIV. sent 35,000 men into Belgium; while Luxemburg was occupied by Crqui and Vauban. The truce of Ratisbon (Regensburg) imposed upon Spain completed the work of the peace of Nijmwegen (1684); and thenceforward Louis XIV.s terrified allies avoided his clutches while making ready to fight him.

This was the moment chosen by Louis XIV.s implacable enemy, William of Orange, to resume the war. His surprise of Marshal Luxembourg near Mons, after the signature William of of the peace of Nijmwegen, had proved that in ins eyes O,~n~-e.

war was the basis> of his authority in Holland and in Europe. His sole arm of support amidst all his allies was not the English monarchy, sold to Louis XIV., but Protestant England, jealous of France and uneasy about her independence. Being the husband of the duke of Yorks daughter, he had an understanding in this country with Sunderland, Godolphin and Templea party whose success was retarded for several years by the intrigues of Shaftesbury. But Louis XIV. added mistake to mistake; and the revocation of the edict of Nantes added religious hatreds to political jealousies. At the same time the Catholic powers responded by the league of Augsburg L

(July 1686) to his policy of unlimited aggrandisement. A,~sbur~.. The unsuccessful attempts of Louis XIV. to force his partisan Cardinal Wilhelm Egon von Furstenberg (set FURSTENBERO: House) into the electoral see of Cologne; the bombardment of Genoa; the humiliation of the pope in Rome itself by the marquis de Lavardin; the seizure of the Huguenot emigrants at Mannheim, and their imprisonment at Vincennes under pretext of a plot, precipitated the conflict. The question of the succession in the Palatinate, where Louis XIV. supported the claims of his sister-in-law the duchess of Orleans, gave the signal for a general war The French armies devastated the Palatinate instead of attacking William of Orange in the Netherlands, leaving him free to disembark at Torbay, usurp the throne of England, and construct the Grand Alliance of 1689.

Far from reserving all his forces for an important struggle elsewhere, foreshadowed by the approaching death of Charles II. of Spain, Louis XIV., isolated in his turn, committed the error of wasting it for a space of ten years in a war of conquest,by which he alienated all that remained Allal~ce. to him of European sympathy. The French armies, notwithstanding the disappearance of Cond and Turenne, had still glorious days before them with Luxembourg at Fleurus, at Steenkirk and at Neerwinden (1690*1693), and with Catinat in Piedmont, at Staffarda, and at Marsaglia; but these successes alternated with reverses. Tourvilles fleet, victorious at Beachy Head, came to grief at La Hogue (1692); and though the ex~ peditions to Ireland in favor of James II. were unsuccessful, thanks to the Huguenot Schomberg, Jean Bart and Duguay Trouin ruined AngloDutch maritime commerce. Louis XIV. assisted in person at the sieges of Mons and Namur, operations for which he had a. liking, because, like Louvois, who died in 1691, he thonght little of the French soldiery in the open field. After three years of strife, ruinous to both sides, he made the first overtures of peace, thus marking an epoch in his foreign policy; though William took no unfair advantage of this, remaining content with the restitution of places taken by the Cliambres de Rtunion, except Strassburg, with a frontier-line of fortified places for the Dutch, and with the official deposition of the Stuarts. But the treaty of Ryswick (1697) marked the condemnation of the policy pursued since that of Nijmwegen. While signingthis peace Louis XIV. was only thinking of the succession in Spain. By partitioning her in advance with the other strong powers, England and Holland, by means of the treaties of the Hague and of London (1698-1699),as he had formerly done with the emperor in 1668,he seemed at first to wish for a pacificsolutibn of the eternal conflict between-the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, and to restrict himself to ,the perfecting of his natural frontiers; but on the death of Charles II. ofSpain (1700) he claimed everything in favor of his grandson, the duke of Anjou, now appointed universal heir, though risking the loss of all- by once more letting himself fall into imprudent and provocative action in the dynastic interest.

English public opinion, desirods of peace, had forced William III. to recognize Philip V. of Spain; but Louis XIV.s maintenWar of the ance of the eventual right of his grandson to the crown Spanish -of France, and the expulsion of the Dutch, who had Succes- pot recognized Philip V, from the Barrier towns, aMa. brought about the Grand Alliance of 1701 between the maritime Powers and the court of Vienna, desirous of partitioning the inheritance of Charles II. The recognition of the Old Pretender asJames III., king~if England, was only a response to the Grand Alliance, but it drew the English Tories into an inevitable war. Despite the death of William III. (March 19, 1702) his policy tliumphed, and in this war, the longest in the reign, it was the names of the enemys generals, Prince Eugene of Savoy, Mazarins grand-nephew, and the duke of Marlborough, which sounded in the ear, instead of Cond, Turenrie and Luxembourg. Although during the first campaigns (1701-1703) in Italy, in Germany and in the Netherlands success was equally balanced, the successors of Villarsthanks to the treason of the duke of Savoywere defeated at Höchstadt and Landau, and were reduced to the defensive (1704). In 1706 the defeats at Ramillies and Turin led to the evacuation of the Netherlands and Italy, and endangered the safety of Dauphin. In 1708 Louis XIV. by a supreme effort was still able to maintain his armies; but the rout at Oudenarde, due to the misunderstanding between the duke of Burgundy and Vendme, left the northern frontier exposed, and the cannons of the Dutch were heard at Many. Louis XIV. had to humble himself to the extent of asking the Dutch for peace; but they forgot the lesson of 1673, and revolted by their demands at the Hague, he made a last appeal to arms and to the patriotism of his subjects at Maiplaquet (September 1709). After this came invasion. Nature herself conspired with the enemy in the disastrous winter of 1709.

What saved Louis XIV. was not merely his noble constancy of resolve, the firmness of the marquis de Torcy, secretary of state for foreign affairs, the victory of Vendme at Villaviciosa, nor the loyalty of his people. The interruption of the conferences at Gertruydenberg having obliged the Whigs and Marlborough to resign their power into the hands of the Tories, now sick of war, the death of the emperor Joseph 1. (April 1711), which risked the reconstruction of Charles V.s colossal and unwieldy monarchy upon the shoulders of the archduke Charles, and Marshal Villars famous victory of Denain (July 1712) combined to render possible the treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden (1713-1714). ~Of These gave Italy and the Netherlands to the Habsburgs, ~ Spain and her colonies to the Bourbons, the places on the coast and the colonial commerce to England (who had the lions share), and a royal crown to the duke of Savoy and the elector of Brandenburg. The peace Of IJtrecht was to France what the peace of Westphalia had been to Austria, and curtailed the former acquisitions of Louis XIV.

The ageing of the great king was betrayed not only by the fortune of war in the hands of Villeroy, la Feuillade, or Marsin; disgrace and misery at home were worse than defeat. Bad of By the strange and successive deaths of the Grand Louis Dauphin (1711), the duke and duchess of Burgundy X!V.s (1712)--who had been the only joy of the old monarch re~tm and of his two grandsons (1712-1714), it seemed as though his whole family were involved under the same curse. The court, whose sentimental history has been related by Madame de Ia Fayette, its official splendours by Loret, and its intrigues by the duc de Saint-Simon, now resembled an infirmary of morose invalid~, presided over by Louis XIV.s elderly wife, Madame de Maintenon, under the domination of the Jesuit le Tellier. Neither was it merely the clarnours of the people that arose against the monarch. All the more remarkable spirits of the time, like prophets in Israel, denounced a tyranny which put Chamillart at the head of the finances because he played billiards well, and Villeroy in command of the armies although he was utterly untrustworthy; which sent the patriot Vauban into disgrace, banished from the court Catinat, the Pre Ia Pense, exiled to Cambrai the too clear sighted Fnelon, and suspected Racine of Jansenism and La Fontaine of independence.

Disease and famine; crushing imposts and extortions; official debasement of the currency; bankruptcy; state prisons; religious and political inquisition; suppression of all institutions for the safe-guarding of rights; tyranny by the intendants; royal, feudal and clerical oppression burdening every faculty and every necessary of life; monstrous and incurable luxury; the horrible drama of poison; the twofold adultery of Madame de Montespan; and the narrow bigotry of Madame de Maintenon-~--all concurred to make the end of the reign a sad contrast with the splendour of its beginning. When reading Moliere and Racine, Bossuet and Fnelon, the campaigns of Turenne, or Colberts ordinances; when enumerating the countless literary and ~cientific institutions of the great century; when considering the port of Brest, the Canal du Midi, Perraults cOlonnade of th~ Louvre, Mansarts Invalides and the palace of Versailles, and Vaubans fine fortificationsadmiration is kindled for the radiant splendour of Louis XIV.s period. But the art and literature expressed by the genius of the masters, reflected in the tastes of society, and to be taken by Europe as a model throughout a whole century, are no criterion of the social and political order of the day. They were but a magnificent drapery of pomp and glory thrown across a background of poverty, ignorance, superstition, hypocrisy and cruelty; remove it, and reality appears in all its brutal and sinister nudity. The corpse of Louis XIV., left to servants for disposal, and saluted all along the road to Saint Denis by the curses of a noisy crowd sitting in the cabarets, celebrating his death by drinking more than their fill as a compensation for having suffered too much from hunger during his lifetimesuch was the coarse but sincere epitaph which popular opinion placed on the tomb of the Grand Monarque. The nation, restive under his now broken yoke, received with a joyous anticipation, which the future was to discount, the royal infant whom they called Louis the Well-beloved, and whose funeral sixty years later was to be greeted with the same proofs of disillusionment.

The death of Louis XIV. closed a great era of French history; the 18th century opens upon a crisis for the monarchy. From 1715 to 1723 came the reaction of the Regency, with its Character marvellous effrontery, innovating spirit and frivolous of the immorality. From 1723 to 1743 came the mealy- eighteenth mouthed despotism of Cardinal Fleury, and his century.

apathetic policy within and without the kingdom. From 1743 to 1774 came the personal rule of Louis XV., when all the different powers were in conflictthe bishops and parlement quarrelling, the government fighting against the clergy and the magistracy, and public opinion in declared opposition to the state. Till at last, from 1774 to 1789, came Louis XVI. with his honest illusions.

his moral pusillanimity and his intellectUal impotence, to aggravate still further the accumulated errors of ages and to prepare for the inevitable Revolution.

The 18th century, like the 17th, opened with a political coup detat. Louis XV. was five years old, and the duke of The Orleans held the regency. But Louis XIV. had in hi~

pegency will delegated all the power of the government to a (1715 council on which the duke of Maine, his legitimated son, had the first, but Madame de Maintenon and the Jesuits the predominant place. This collective administration, designed to cripple the action of the regent, encountered a twofold opposition from the nobles and the parlement; but on the 2nd of September 1715 the emancipated parlement set aside the will in favor of the duke of Orleans, who thus together with the title of regent had all the real power. He therefore reinstituted the parlement in its ancient right of remonstrance (suspended since the declarations of 1667 and 1673), and handed over ministerial power to the nobility, replacing the secretaries of state by six councils composed in part of great nobles, on the advice of the famous duc de Saint-Simon. The duc de Noailles, president of the council of finance, had the direction of this Polysynodie.

The duke of Orleans, son of the princess palatine and Louis XIV.s brother, possessed many giftscourage, intelligence Phil! ,, and agility of mindbut he lacked the one gift of a~.,n:. using these to good advantage. The political crisis that had placed him in power had not put an end to the financial crisis, and this, it was hoped, might be effected by substituting partial and petty bankruptcies for the general bankruptcy cyI~ically advocated by Saint-Simon. The reduction of the royal revenues did not suffice to fill the treasury; while the establishment of a chamber of justice (March 1716) had no other result than that of demoralizing the great lords and ladies already mad for pleasure, by bringing them into contact with the farmers of the revenue who purchased impunity from them. A very clever Scotch adventurer named John Law now offered his assistance in dealing with the enormous debt of more than three milliards, and in providing the treasury. Being well acquainted with the mechanism of banking, he had adopted views as to cash, credit and the circulation of values which contained an admixture of truth and falsehood. Authorized after many difficulties to organize a private bank of deposit and account, which being well conceived prospered and revived commerce, Law proposed to lighten the treasury by the profits accruing to a great maritime and colonial company. Payment for the shares in this new Company of the West, with a capital of a hundred millions, was to be made in credit notes upon the government, converted into 4% stock. These aggregated funds, needed to supply the immense and fertile valley of the Mississippi, and the nnnuities of the treasury destined to pay for the shares, were non-transferable. Laws idea was to ask the bank for the floating capital necessary, so that the bank and the Company of the West were to be supplementary to each other; this is what was called Laws system. After the chancellor DAguesseau and the duc de Noailles had been replaced by DArgenson alone, and after the lit de justice of the 26th of August 1718 had deprived the parlement, hostile to Law, of the authority left to it, the bank became royal and the Company of the West universal. But the royal bank, as a state establishment, asked for compulsory privilege to increase the emission of its credit notes, and that they should receive a premium upon all metallic specie. The Company of the Indies became the grantee for the farming of.tobacco, the coinage of metals, and farming in general; and in order to procure funds it multiplied the output of shares, which were adroitly launched and became more and more sought for on the exchange in the rue Quincampoix. This soon caused a frenzy of stock-jobbing, which disturbed the stability of private fortunes and social positions, and depraved customs and manners with the seductive notion of easily obtained riches. The nomination of Law to the controller-generalship, re-established for his benefit on the resignation of DArgenson (January 5, 1720), let loose still wilder speculation; till the day came when he could no longer face the terrible difficulty of meeting both private irredeemable shares with ~ variable return, and the credit notes redeemable at sight and guaranteed by the state. Gold and silver were proscribed; the bank and the company were joined in one; the credit notes and the shares were assimilated. But credit cannot be commanded either by violence or by expedients; between July and September 1720 came the suspension of payments, the flight of Law, and the disastrous liquidation which proved once again that respect for the states obligations had not yet entered into the law of public finance.

Reaction on a no less extensive scale characterized foreign policy during the Regency. A close alliance between France and her ancient enemies, England and Holland, was me concluded and maintained from 1717 to 1739: France, Angloafter thirty years of fighting, between two periods of Dutch bankruptcy; Holland reinstalled in her commercial Arnanc.. position; and England, seeing before her the beginning of her empire over the seasall three had an interest in peace. On the other hand, peace was imperilled by Philip V. of Spain and by the emperor (who had accepted the portion assigned to them by the treaty of Utrecht, while claiming the whole), by Savoy and Brandenburg (who had profited too much by European conflicts not to desire their perpetuation), by the crisis from which the maritime powers of the Baltic were suffering, and by the Turks on the Danube. The dream of Cardinal Alberoni, Philip V.s minister, was to set fire to all this inflammable material in order to snatch therefrom a crown of som~ sort to satisfy the maternal greed of Elizabeth Farnese; and this he might have attained by the occupation of Sardinia and the expedition to Sicily (1717-1718), if Dubois, a priest without a religion, a greedy parvenu and a diplomatist of second rank, though tenacious and full of resources as a minister, had not placed his common sense at the disposal of the regents interests and those of European peace. He signed the triple alliance at the Hague, succeeding with the assistance of Stanhope, the English minister, in engaging the emperor therein, after attempting this for a year and a half. Whilst the Spanish fleet was destroyed before Syracuse by Admiral Byng, the intrigue of the Spanish ambassador Cellamare with the duke of Maine to exclude the family of Orleans from the succession on Louis XV.s death was discovered and repressed; and Marshal Berwick burned the dockyards at Pasajes in Spain. Alberonis dream was shattered by the treaty of London in 1720.

Seized in his turn with a longing for the cardinals hat, Dubois paid for it by the registering of the bull Unigenitus and by the persecution of the Jansenists which the regent had stopped. After the majority of Louis XV. had been proclaimed on the 16th of February 1723, Dubois was the first to depart; and four months after his disappearance the duke of Orleans, exhausted by his excesses, carried with him into the grave that spirit of reform which he had compromised by his frivolous voluptuousness (December 2, 1723).

The Regency had been the making of the house of Orleans; thenceforward the question was how to humble it, and the duc de Bourbon, now prime ministera great-grandson MIn!str~ of the great Cond, but a narrow-minded man of of the limited intelligence, led by a worthless woman ducde set himself to do so. The marcjuise de Prie was the Bourbon. first of a series of publicly recognized mistresses; from 1723 to 1726 she directed foreign policy and internal affairs despite the kings majority, moved always more by a spirit of vengeance than by ambition. This sad pair were dominated by the selfinterested and continual fear of becoming subject to the son of the Regent, whom they detested; but danger came upon them from elsewhere. They found standing in their way the very man who had been the author of their fortunes, Louis XV.s tutor, uneasy in the exercise of a veiled authority; for the churchman Fleury knew how to wait, on condition of ultimately attaining his end. Neither the festivities given at Chantilly in honor of the king, nor the dismissal (despite the most solemn promises) of the Spanish infanta, who had been betrothed to Louis XV., r~or yet the young kings marriage to Maria Leszczynska (1725)a marriage negotiated by the marquise de Prie in order to bar the throne from the Orleans family-could alienate the sovereign from his old master. The irritation kept up by the agents of Philip V., incensed by this affront, and the discontent aroused by the institutions of the.inquan~ime and the militia, by the re-establishment of the feudal tax on Louis XV.s joyful accession, and by the resumption of a persecution of the Protestants and the Jansenists which had apparently died out, were cleverly exploited by Fleury; and a last ill-timed attempt by the queen to separate the king from him brought about the fall of the duc de Bourbon, very opportunely for France, in June 1726.

From the hands of his unthinking pupil Fleury eventually received the supreme direction of affairs, which he retained for seventeen years. He was aged seventy-two when Fleury, he thus obtained the power which had been his un 1726 measured though not ill-calculated ambition. Sof t ~ spoken and polite, crafty and suspicious, he was pacific by temperament and therefore allowed politics to slumber. His turn for economics made Orry,1 the controller-general of finance, for long his essential partner. The latter labored at re-establishing order in fiscal affairs; and various measures like the impost of the dixiine upon all property save that of the clergy, together with the end of the corn famine, sufficed to restore a certain amount of well-being. Religious peace was more difficult to secure; in fact politico-religious quarrels dominated all the internal policy of the kingdom during forty years, and gradually compromised the royal authority. The Jesuits, returned to power in 1723 with the duc de Bourbon and in 1726 with Fleury, rekindled the old strife regarding the bull Unigenitus in opposition to the Gallicans and the Jansenists. The retractation imposed upon Cardinal de Noailles, and his replacement in the archbishopric of Paris by Vintimille, an unequivocal Molinist, excited among the populace a very violent agitation against the court of Rome and the Jesuits, the prelude to a united Fronde of the Sorbonne and the parlement. Fleury found no other remedy for this agitationin which appeal was made even to miraclesthan lits de justice and leUres de cachet; Jansenism remained a potent source of trouble within the heart of Catholicism.

This worn-out septuagenarian, who prized rest above everything, imported into foreign policy the same mania for economy and the same sloth in action. He naturally adopted Fleur.vS the idea of reconciling Louis XIV.s descendants, who had all been embroiled ever since the Polish marriage. He succeeded in this by playing very adroitly on the ambition of Elizabeth Farnese and her husband Philip V., who was to reign in France notwithstanding any renunciation that might have taken place. Despite the birth of a dauphin (September 1729), which cut short the Spanish intrigues, the reconciliation was a lasting one (treaty of Seville); it led to common action in Italy, and to the installation of Spanish royalties at Parma, Piacenza, and soon after at Naples. Fleury, supported by the English Hanoverian alliance, to which he sacrificed the French navy, obliged the emperor Charles VI. to sacrifice the trade of the Austrian Netherlands to the maritime powers and Central Italy to the Bourbons, in order to gain recognition for his Pragmatic Sanction. The question of the succession in France lay dormant until the end of the century, and Fleury thought he had definitely obtained peace in the treaty of Vienna (1731).

The war of the Polish succession proved him to have been deceived. On the death of Augustus II. of Saxony, king of Poland, Louis XV.s father-in-law had been proclaimed king by the Polish diet. This was an ephemeral success, ill-prepared and obtained by taking a sudden advantage of national sentiment; it was soon followed by a check, owing to a Russian and German coalition and the baseness of Cardinal Fleury, who, in order to avoid intervening, pretended to tremble before an imaginary threat of reprisals on the part of England. War of the But Chauveliri, the keeper of the seals, supported by Polish public opinion, avenged on the Rhine and the P0 the Suaesunlucky heroism of the comte de Pllo at Danzig,2 the 7,~o~>(1733. vanished dream of the queen, the broken word of Louis XV., and the treacherous abandonment of Poland. Fleury never forgave him for this: Chauvelin had checkmated him with war; he checkmated Chauvelin with peace. and hastened to replace Marshals Berwick and Villars by diplomatists. The third treaty of Vienna (1738), the reward of so much effort, would only have claimed for France the little duchy of Bar, had not Chauvelin forced Louis XV. to obtain Lorraine for his father-in-law-still hoping for the reversion of the crown; but Fleury thus rendered impossible any influence of the queen, and held Stanislaus at his mercy. In order to avenge himself upon Chauvelin he sacrificed him to the cabinets of Vienna and London, alarmed at seeing him revive the national tradition in Italy.

Fleury hardly had time to breathe before a new conflagration broke out in the east. The Russian empress Anne and the emperor Charles VI. had planned to begin dismember ing the -Turkish empire. More fortunate than Pllo, ~~rn Villeneuve, the French ambassador at Constantinople, question. endeavoured to postpone this event, and was well supported; he revived the courage of the Turks and provided them with arms, thanks to the comte de Bonneval (q.v.), one of those adventurers of high renown whose influence in Europe during the first half of the eighteenth century is one of the most piquant features of that period. The peace of Belgrade (September 1739) was, by its renewal -of the capitulations, a great material success for France, and a great moral victory by the rebuff to Austria and Russia.

France had become once more the arbiter of Europe, when the death of the emperor Charles VI. in 1740 opened up a new period of wars and misfortunes for Europe and for War OF the the pacific Fleury. Everyone had signed Charles VI.s Austrian Pragmatic Sanction, proclaiming the succession-rights Succ.sof his daughter, the archduchess Maria Theresa; but sion. on his death there was a general renunciation of signatures and an attempt to divide the heritage. The safety of the house of Austria depended on the attitude of France; for Austria could no longer harm her. Fleurys inclination was not to misuse Frances traditional policy by exaggerating it, but to respect his sworn word; he dared not press his opinion, however, and yielded to the fiery impatience of young hot-heads like the two Belle-Isles, and of all those who, infatuated by Frederick II., felt sick of doing nothing at Versailles and were backed up by Louis XV.s bellicose mistresses. He had to experience the repeated defections of Fred,erick II. in his own interests, and the precipitate retreat from Bohemia. He had to humble himself before Austria and the whole of Europe; and it was high time for Fleury, now fallen into second childhood, to vanish from the scene (January 1743).

Louis XV. was at last to become his own prime minister and to reign alone; but in reality he was more embarrassed than pleased by the responsibility incumbent upon him.

He therefore retained the persons who had composed ~

Fleurys staff; though instead of being led by a single LozdsXV. one of them, he fell into the hands of several, who disputed among themselves for the ascendancy: Maurepas, incomparable in little things, but neglectful of political affairs; DArgenson, bold, and strongly attached to his work as minister See Marquis de Brhan, Le Comte de Pllo (Nantes, 1874); R. Rathery, Le Comte de Pub (Paris, 1876); and P. Boy, Stanislaus Leszczyeski rile troisinte traiti de Vienne (Paris, 1898).

of war; and the cardinal de Tencin, a frivolous and worldly priest. Old Marshal de Noailles tried to incite Louis XV. to take his kingship in earnest, thinking to cure him by war of his effeminate passions; and, in the spring of 1744, the kings grave illness at Metz gave a momentary hope of reconciliation between him and the deserted queen. But the duc de Richelieu, a rou who had joined hands with the sisters of the house of Nesle and was jealous of Marshal de Noailles, soon regained his lost ground; and, under the influence of this panderer to his pleasures, Louis XV. settled down into a life of vice. Holding aloof from active affairs, he tried to relieve the incurable boredom of satiety in. the violent exercise of hunting, in supper-parties with his intimates, and in spicy indiscretions. Brought up religiously and to shun the society of women, his first experiences in adultery had been made with many scruples and intermitten.tly. Little by little, however, jealous of power, yet incapable of exercising it to any purpose, he sank into a sensuality which became utterly shameless under the influence of his chief mistress the duchesse de Ch~teauroux.

Hardly had a catastrophe snatched her away in the zenith of her power when complete corruption and the flagrant triumph of egoism supervened with the accession to power of Madame de the marquise de Pompadour, and for nearly twenty dow~. years (1745-1764) the whims and caprices of this little bourgeoise ruled the realm. A prime minister in petticoats, she had her political system: reversed the timehonoured alliances of France, appointed or disgraced ministers, directed fleets and armies, concluded treaties, and failed in all her enterprises! She was the queen of fashion in a society where corruption blossomed luxuriantly and exquisitely, and in a century of wit hers was second to none. Amidst this extraordinary instability, when everything was at the mercy of a secret thought of the master, the mistress alone held lasting sway; in a reign of all-pervading satiety and tedium, she managed to remain indispensable and bewitching to the day of her death.

Meanwhile the War of the Austrian Succession broke out again, and never had secretary of state more intricate questions to solve than had DArgenson. In the attempt to make a stage-emperor of Charles Albert of Bavaria, Chapelle. defeat was incurred at Dettingen, and the French were driven back on the Rhine (1743). The Bavarian dream dissipated, victories gained in Flanders by Marshal Saxe, another adventurer of genius, at Fontenoy, Raucoux and Lawfeld (1745-1747), were hailed with joy as continuing those of Louis XIV.; even though they resulted in the loss of Germany and the doubling of English armaments. The disinterested peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 1748) had no effectual result other than that of destroying in Germany, and for the benefit of Prussia, a balance of power that had yet to be secured in Italy, despite the establishment of the Spanish prince Philip at Parma. France, meanwhile, was beaten at sea by England, Maria Theresas sole ally. While founding her colonial empire England had come into collision with France; and the rivalry of the Hundred Years War had immediately sprung up again between the two countries. Engaged already in both Canada and in India (where Dupleix was founding an empire with a mere handful of men), it was to Frances interest not to become involved in war upon the Rhine, thus falling into Englands continental trap. She did fall into it, however: for the sake of conquering Silesia for the king of Prussia, Canada was left exposed by the capture of Cape Breton; while in order to restore this same Silesia to Maria Theresa, Canada was lost and with it India.

France had worked for the king of Prussia from 1740 to 1748; now it was Maria Theresas game that was played in The Seven the Seven Years War. In 1755, the English having Years made a sudden attack upon the French at sea, and War, Frederick II. having by a fresh volt e-f ace passed into alliance with Great Britain, Louis *V.s government accepted an alliance with Maria Theresa in the treaty of the 1st of May t756. Instead of remaining upon the defensive in this continental warmerely accessory as it washe made it his chief affair, and placed himself under the petticoat government of three women, Maria Theresa, Elizabeth of Russia and the marquise de Pompadour. This errorthe worst of alllaid the foundations of the Prussian and British empires. By three battles, victories for the enemies of FranceRossbach in Germany, 1V57, Plassey in India, 1757, andQuebec in Canada, 1759 (owing to the recall of Dupleix, who was not bringing in large enough dividends to the Company of the Indies, and to the abandonment of Montcalm, who could not interest any one in a few acres of snow), the expansion of Prussia was assured, aiid the British relieved of French rivalry in the expansion of their empire in India andon the North American continent.

Owing to the blindness of Louis XV. and the vanity of the favorite, the treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg (1763) once more proved the French splendid in their conceptions, Tre3tles of but deficient in action. Moreover, Choiseul, secretary Pens and of state for foreign affairs since 1758, made out of this 11ubC1~u~. deceptive Austrian alliance a system which put the burg.

finishing touch to disaster;, and after having thrown away everything to satisfy Maria Theresas hatred of Frederick, IL, the reconciliation between these two irreconcilable Germans at Neisse and at Neustftdt (1769-1770) was witnessed by France, to the prejudice of Poland, one of her most ancient adherents~ The expedient of the Family Compact; concluded, with Spain in 1761with a view to taking vengeance upon England, whose fleets were a continual thorn in the side to Franceserved only to involve Spain herself in misfortune. Choiseul, who at least had ~i policy that was sometimes, in the right, and,whp was very anxious to carry it out, then realized that the real quarrel had to be settled with England. Amid the anguish of defeat and of approaching ruin, he Isad an acute sense of the actualities of the case, and from 1763 to 1766 devoted himself passionat~ly to the- reconstruction of the navy. To compensate for the loss of the colonieshe anne~cecl Lorraine (1766), andby the acquisition of Corsica in 1768 he gave France an intermediary position, in the Mediterranean, between friendly Spain. and Italy, looking forward to the time when it shouldbecome, a stepping-stone to Africa.

~But Louis XV. had two policies. The incoherent efforts which he made to repair by the secret diplomacy of the comte de Broglie the evils caused by his official policy only aggravated his shortcomings and betrayed his weakness. The contradictory intrigues of the kings ofPoland. secret proceedings in. the candidature of Prince Xavier, the dauphines brother, and the patriotic efforts of the confederation of Bar, contributed to bring about the Polish crisis which the partition of 1772 resolved in favor of Frederick II.; and the Turks were, in their turn dragged into the same disastrous affair. Of~the old allies of France, Choiseul preserved atleast Sweden by the coup d&tat of Gustavus III.; but instead of being as formerly the centre of great affairs, the cabinet of Versailles lost all its credit, and only exhibited before the eyes of contemptuous Europe Frances extreme state of decay.

The nation felt this humiliation, and showed all the greater irritation as the want of cohesion in the government and the anarchy in the central authority became more and more intolerable in home affairs. Though the administration still possessed a fund of tradition and a personnel which, including many men of note, protected it from the enfeebling influence o the court, it looked as though chance regulated everything so far as the government was concerned. These fluctuations were owing partly to the character of Louis XV., and partly also to the fact that society in the 18th century was too advanced in its ideas to submit without resistance to the caprice of such a man. Hismistresses were not the only cause of this; for ever since Fleurys advent political parties had come to the fore. From 1749 to 1757 the party of religious devotees grouped round the queen and the kings daughters, with the dauphin as cluef and the comte D,Argenson and Machault dArnouville, keeper of the seals, as lieutenants, had worked against Madame de Pompadour (who leant for supporl upon the parlements, the jansenists and the philosophers)

and had gained the upper hand. Thenceforward poverty, disorders, and consequently murmurs increased. The financial reform attempted by Machault dArnouville between 1745 and 1749a reduction of the debt through the impost of the twentieth and the edict of 1749 against the extensive property held in mortn~ain by the Churchafter his disgrace only resulted in failure. Th~ army, which DArgenson (likewise dismissed by Madame de Pompadour) had been from 1743 to 1747 trying to restore by useful reforms, wa~ riddled by cabals. Half the people in the kingdom were dying of hunger, while the court was insulting poverty by its luxury and waste; and from 1750 onwards political ferment was everywhere manifest. It found all the more favorable foothold in that the Church, the States best ally, had made herself more and more unpopular. Her refusal of the sacraments to those who would not accept the bull Unigenitus (1746) was exploited in the eyes of the masses, as in those of more enlightened people was her selfish and short-sighted resistance to the financial plans of Machault. The general discontent was expressed by the parlements in their attempt to establish a political supremacy amid universal confusion, and by the popular voice in pamphlets recalling by their violence those of the League. Every one expected and desired a speedy revolution that should put an end to a policy which alternated between overheated effervescence, abnormal activity and lethargy. Nothing can better show the point to which things had descended than the attempted assassination of Louis the Well-beloved by Damiens In. 1757.

Choiseul was the means of accelerating this revolution, not only by his abandonment of diplomatic traditions, but still more by his improvidence and violence. He reversed Cholseul. the policy of his predecessors in regard to the pane ment.

Supported by public opinion, which clamoured for guarantees against abitrary power, the parlements had dared not only to insist on being consulted as to the budget of the state in 1763, but to enter upon a confederation throughout the whole of Fr~nce, and on repeated occasions to ordain a general strike of the judicial authorities. Choiseul did not hesitate to attack through lits de justice or by exile a judiciary oligarchy which doubtless rested its pretensions merely on wealth, high birth, or that e!icroaching spirit that was the only counteracting agency to the monarchy. Louis XV., wearied with their clamour, called them to order. Choiseuls religious policy was no less venturesome; after the condemnation in 1759 of the Jesuits who were involved in the bankruptcy of Father de Ia Valette, their general, in the Antilles, he had the order dissolved for refusing to modify its constitution (1761-1764). Thus, not content with encouraging writers with innovating ideas to the prejudice of traditional institutions, he attacked, in the order of the Jesuits, the strongest defender of these latter, and delivered over the new generation to revolutionary doctrines, A woman. had elevated him into power; a woman brought him tothe ground. He succumbed to a coalition of the chancellor The ~rt Maupeou, the duc dAiguillon and the Abb Terray, umvfrate, which depended on the favor of the kings latest 1770- mistress, Madame du Barry (December 1770); and 1774. the Jesuits were avenged by a stroke of authority similar to that by which they themselves had suffered. Followir~g on an edict registered by the lit de justice, which forbade any remonstrance in political matters, the parlement had resigned, and had been imitated by the provincial parlements; whereupon Maupeou, an energetic chancellor, suppressed the parlements and substituted superior councils of magistrates appointed by the king (1771). This reform was justified by the religious intolerance of the parlements; by their scandalous trials of Calas, Pierre Paid Sirven (1709-1777), the chevalier de la Barre and the comte de Lally; by the retrograde spirit that had made them suppress the Encyclopaedia in 1759 and condemn Emile in. 1762; and by their selfishness In perpetuating abuses by which they profited. But this reform, being made by the minister of a hated sovereign, only aided in exasperating public opinion, which was grateful to the parlements in that their remonstrances bad riot always been fruitless. -

Thus all the buttresses of the monarchical institution began to fall to pieces: the Church, undermined by the heresy of Jansenism, weakened by the inroads of philosophy, Ancient discredited by evil-livers among the priesthood, and Influcn~t divided against itself, like all losing parties; the and last!nobility of the court, still brave at heart, though ~~1tb0u1&

incapable of exertion and reduced to beggary, having lost all respect for discipline and authority, not only in the camp, but in civilian society; and the upper-class officials, narrow-minded and egotistical, unsettling by their opposition the royal authority which they pretended to safeguard. Even the liberties, among the few representative institutions which the ancien regime had left intact in some provinces, turned against the people. The estates opposed most of the intelligent ~nd humane measures proposed by such intendants as Tourny and Turgot to relieve the peasants, whose distress was very great; they did their utmost to render the selfishness of the privileged classes more oppressive and vexatious.

Thus the terrible prevalence of poverty and want; the successive famines; the mistakes of the government; the scandals of the Parc aux Cerfs; and the parlesnents ~

playing the Roman senate: all these causes, added together and multiplied, assisted in setting a general fermentation to work. The philosophers only helped to precipitate a movement which they had not created; without pointing to absolute power as the cause of the trouble, and without pretending to upset the traditional system, they attempted to instil into princes the feeling of new and more preciseobligations towards their subjects. Voltaire, Montesquieu, the Encyclopaedists and the Physiocrats (recurring to the tradition of Bayle and Fontenelle), by dissolving in their analytical crucible all consecrated beliefs and all fixed institutions, brought back into the human society of the 18th century that humanity which had been so rudely eliminated. They demanded freedom of thought and belief with passionate insistence; they ardently discussed institutions and conduct; and they imported into polemics the idea of natural rights superior to all political arrangements. Whilst some, like Voltaire and the Physiocrats, representatives of the privileged classes and careless of political rights, wished to make use of the omnipotence of the prince to accomplish desirable reforms, or, like Montesquieu, adversely criticized despotism and extolled moderate governments, other, plebeiaris like Rousseau, proclaimed the theory of the social contract and the sovereignty of the people. So that during this reign of frivolity and passion, so bold in conception and so poor in execution, the thinkers contributed still further to mark the contrast between grandeur of plan and mediocrity of result.

The preaching of all this generous philosophy, not only in France, but throughout the whole of Europe, would have been in vain had there not existed at the time a social class interested in these great changes, and capable of compassing them. Neither the witty and lucid form in which the philosophers clothed their ideas in their satires, romances, stage-plays and treatises, nor the salons of Madame du Deffand, Madame Geoffrin and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, could possibly have been sufficiently far-reaching or active centres of political propaganda. The former touched only the more highly educated classes; while to the latter, where privileged individuals alone had entry, novelties were but an undiluted stimulant for the jaded appetites of persons whose ideas of good-breeding, moreover, would have drawn the line at martyrdom.

The class which gave the Revolution its chiefs, its outward and visible forms, and the irresistible epergy of its hopes, was the bourgeoisie, intelligent, ambitious and rich; in Thc hourthe forefront the capitalists and financiers of the haute ~e bourgeoisie, farmers-general and army contractors, the Incar.. who had supplanted or swamped the old landed and military aristocracy, had insensibly reconstructed the interior of the ancient social edifice with the gilded and incongruous materials of wealth, and in order to consolidate or increase their monopolies, needed to secure themselves against the arbitrary action of royalty and the bureaucracy.

Next came the crowd of stockholders and creditors of the state, who, in face of the governments extravagant anarchy, no longer felt safe from partial or total bankruptcy. More powerftil still, and more masterful, was the commercial, industrial and colonial bourgeoisie; because under the Regency and under Louis XV. they had been more productive and more creative. Having gradually revolutionized the whole economic system, in Paris, in Lyons, in Nantes, in Bordeaux, in Marseilles, they could not tamely put up with being excluded from public affairs, which had so much bearing upon their private or collective enterprises. Finally, behind this bourgeoisie, and afar off, came the crowd of serfs, rustics whom the acquisition of land had gradually enfranchised, and who were the more eager to enjoy their definitive liberation because it was close at hand.

The habits and sentiments of French society showed similar changes. From having been almost exclusively national during Trans- Louis XIV.s reign, owing to the perpetual state formation of war and to a sort of proud isolation, it had gradually of man- become cosmopolitan. After the peace of Aix-laners and Chapelle, France had been flooded from all quarters customs, of the civilized world, but especially from England, by a concourse of refined and cultured men well acquainted with her usages and her universal language, whom she had received sympathetically. Paris became the brain of Europe. This revolution in manners and customs, coinciding with the revolution in ideas, led in its turn to a transformation in feeling, and to new aesthetic needs. Gradually people became sick of openly avowed gallantry, of shameless libertinism, of moral obliquity and of the flattering artifices of vice; a long shudder ran through the selfish torpor of the social body. After reading the Nouvelle-Hloise, Clarissa and Sir Charles Gran-dison, fatigued and wearied society revived as though beneath the fresh breezes of dawn. The principle of examination, the reasoned analysis of human conditions and the discussion of causes, far from culminating in disillusioned nihilism, everywhere aroused the democratic spirit, the life of sentiment and of human feeling: in the drama, with Marivaux, Diderot and La Chausse; in art, with Chardin and Greuze; and in the salons, in view of the suppression of privilege. So that to Louis XV.s cynical and hopeless declaration: Apres moi le deluge, the setting 18th century responded by a belief in progress and an appeal to the future. A long-drawn echo from all classes hailed a revolution that was possible because it was necessary.

If this revolution did not burst forth sooner, in the actual lifetime of Louis XV., if in Louis XVI.s reign there was a renewal of loyalty to the king, before the appeal to liberty was made, that is to be explained by this hope of recovery. But Louis XVI.s reign (1774-1792) was only to be a temporary halting-place, an artifice of history for passing through the transition period whilst elaborating the transformation which was to revolutionize, together with France, the whole world.

Louis XVI. was twenty years of age. Physically he was stout, and a slave to the Bourbon fondness for good living; Louis XVI. intellectually a poor creature and but ill-educated, he loved nothing so much as hunting and locksmiths work. He had a taste for puerile amusements, a mania for useless little domestic economies in a court where millions vanished like smoke, and a natural idleness which achieved as its masterpiece the keeping a diary from 1766 to 1792 of a life so tragic, which was yet but a foolish chronicle of trifles. Add to this that he was a virtuous husband, a kind father, a fervent Christian and a good-natured man full of excellent intentions, yet a spectacle of moral pusillanimity and ineptitude.

From 1770 onwards lived side by side with this king, rather than at his side, the archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria one of the very graceful and very frivolous women Ma,* who were to be found at Versailles, opening to life A~7,i,toa like the flowers she so much loved, enamoured of pleasure and luxury, delighting to free herself from the formalities of court life, and mingling in the amusements of society; lovable and loving, without ceasing to be virtuous. Flattered and adored at the outset, she very soon furnished a sinister illustration to Beaumarchais Basile; for evil tongues began to calumniate the queen: those of her brothers-in-law, the duc dAiguillon (protector of Madame du Barry and dismissed from the ministry), and the Cardinal de Rohan, recalled from his embassy in Vienna. She was blamed for her friendship with the comtesse de Polignac, who loved her only as the dispenser of titles and positions; and when weary of this persistent begging for rewards, she was taxed with her preference for foreigners who asked nothing. People brought up against her the debts and expenditure due to her belief in the inexhaustible resources of France; and hatred became definite when she was suspected of trying to imitate her mother Maria lheresa and play the part of ruler, since her husband neglected his duty. They then became persuaded that it was she who caused the weight of taxation; in the most infamous libels comparison was made between her freedom of behaviour and that of Louis XV. s former mistresses. Private envy and public misconceptions very soon summed up her excessive unpopularity in the menacing nickname, LAutrichienne. (See MARIE ANTOINETTE.)

All this shows that Louis XVI. was not a monarch capable of directing or suppressing the inevitable revolution. His reign was but a tissue of contradictions. External affairs seemed in even a more dangerous position than po&y of those at home. Louis XVI. confided to Vergennes Louis the charge of reverting to the traditions of the crown XVI.

and raising France from the humiliation suffered by the treaty of Paris and the partition of Poland. His first act was to release French policy from the Austrian alliance of 1756; in this he was aided both by public opinion and by the confidence of the kingthe latter managing to set aside the desires of the queen, whom the ambition of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. hoped to use as an auxiliary. Vergennes object was a double one: to free the kingdom from English supremacy and to shake off the yoke of Austria. Opportunities offered themselves simultaneously. In j~~5 the English colonies in America rebelled, and Louis XVI., after giving them secret aid and encouragement almost from the first, finally in February ~ despite Marie Antoinette, formed an open alliance with them; while when Joseph II., after having partitioned Poland, wanted in addition to balance the loss of Silesia with that of Bavaria, Vergennes prevented him from doing so. In vain was he offered a share in the partition of the Netherlands by way of an inducement. Frances disinterested action in the peace of Teschen (1~~o) restored to her the lost adherence of the secondary states. Europe began to respect her again when she signed a Franco-Dutch-Spanish alliance (1779-1780), and when, after the capitulation of the English at Yorktown, the peace of Versailles (1783) crowned her efforts with at least formal success. Thenceforward, partly from prudence and partly from penury, Vergerines cared only for the maintenance of peacea not too easy task, in opposition to the greed of Catherine II. and Joseph II., who now wished to divide the Ottoman empire. Joseph II., recognizing that Louis XVI. would not sacrifice the sick man to him, raised the question of the opening of the Scheldt, against the Dutch. Vainly did Joseph II. accuse his sister of ingratitude and complain of her resistance; the treaty of Fontainebleau in 1785 maintained the rights of Holland. Later on, Joseph II., sticking to his point, wanted to settle the house of Bavaria in the Netherlands; but Louis XVI. supported the confederation of princes (Ftirstenbund) which Frederick II. called together in order to keep his turbulent neighbor within bounds. Vergennes completed his work by signing a commercial treaty in 1786 with England, whose commerce and industry were favored above others, and a second in 1787 with Russia. He died in 1787, at an opportune moment for himself; though he had temporarily raised Frances position in Europe, his work was soon ruined by the very means taken to secure its successes: warfare and armaments had hastened the hideous bankruptcy.

From the very beginning of his reign Louis XVI. fell into contradictions and hesitation in internal affairs, which could not but bring him to grief. He tried first of all to govern in accordance with public opinion, and was r0e,s xvi. induced to flatter it beyond measure; in an extreme of inconsistency he re-established the parlements, the worst enemies of reform, at the very moment when he was calling in the reformers to his councils.

Turgot, the most notable of these latter, was well fitted to play his great part as an enlightened minister, as much from the principle of hard work and domestic economy ot, traditional in his family, as from a maturity of mind 1776. developed by extensive study at the Sorbonne and by frequenting the salons of the Encyclopaedists.

He had proved this by his capable administration in the paymasters office at Limoges, from 1761 to 2774. A disciple of Quesnay and of Gournay, he tried to repeat in great affairs the experience of liberty which he had found successful in small, and to fortify the unity of the nation and the government by social, political and economic reforms. He ordained the free circulation of grain within the kingdom, and was supported by Louis XVI. in the course of the flour-war (guerre des farines) (AprilMay 1775); he substituted a territorial subsidy for the royal corveso burdensome upon the peasantsand thus tended to abolish privilege in the matter of imposts; and he established the freedom of industry by the dissolution of privileged trade corporations (1776). Finance was in a deplorable state, and as controller-general he formulated a new fiscal policy, consisting of neither fresh taxation nor loans,but of retrenchment. At one fell stroke the two auxiliaries on which he had a right to count failed him: public opinion, clamouring for reform on condition of not paying the cost; and the king, too timid to dominate public opinion, and not knowing how to refuse the demands of privilege. Economy in the matter of public finance implies a grain of severity in the collection of taxes as well as. in expenditure. By the former Turgot hampered the great interests; by the second he thwarted the desires of courtiers not only of the second rank but of the first. Therefore, after he had aroused the complaints of the commercial world and the bourgeoisie, the court, headed by Marie Antoinette, profited by the general excitement to overthrow him. The Choiseul party, which had gradually been reconstituted, under the influence of the queen, the princes, parlement, the prebendaries, and the trade corporations, worked adroitly to eliminate this reformer of lucrative abuses. The old courtier Maurepas, jealous of Turgot and desirous of remaining a minister himself, refrained from defending his colleague; and when Turgot, who never knew how to give in, spoke of establishing assemblies of freeholders in the communes and the provinces, in order to relax the tension of over-centralization, Louis XVI., who never dared to pass from sentiment to action, sacrificed his minister to the rancour of the queen, as he had already sacrificed Malesherbes (1776). Thus the first governmental act of the queen was an error, and dissipated the hope of replacing special privileges by a general guarantee given to the nation, which alone could have postponed a revolution. It was still too early for a Fourth of August; but the queens victory was none the less vain, since Turgots ideas were taken up by his successors.

The first of these was Necker, a Genevese financier. More able than Turgot, though a man of smaller ideas, he abrogated the edicts registered by the lits de justice; and unable Necker, or not daring to attack the evil at its root, he thought 1781. he could suppress its symptoms by a curative process of borrowing and economy. Like Turgot he failed, and for the same reasons. The American war had finally exhausted the exchequer, and, in order to replenish it, he would have needed to inspire confidence in the minds of capitalists; but the resumption in 2778 of the plan of provincial assemblies charged with remodelling the various imposts, and his corn pterendu in which he exhibited the monarchy paying its pensioners for their inactivity as it had never paid its agents for their zeal, aroused a fresh outburst of anger. Necker was carried away in his turn by the reaction he had helped to bring about (1781).

Having fought the oligarchy of privilege, the monarchy next tried to rally it to its side, and all the springs of the old rgime were strained to the breaking-point. The military The return rule of the marquis de Sgur eliminated the plebeians of feud.2!from the army; while the great lords, drones in the Isin tothe hive, worked with a kind of fever at the enforcement offensive. of their seigniorial rights; the feudal system was making a last struggle before dying. The Church claimed her right of ordering the civil estate of all Frenchmen as an absolute mistress more strictly than ever. Joly de Fleury and DOrmesson, Neckers successors, pushed their narrow spirit of reaction and the temerity of their inexperience to the furthest limit; but the reaction which reinforced the privileged classes was not sufficient to fill the coffers of the treasury, and Marie Antoinette, who seemed gifted with a fatal perversity of instinct, confided the finances of the kingdom to Calonne, an upper-class official and a veritable Cagliostro of finance.

From 1783 to 1787, this man organized his astounding system of falsification all along the line. His unbridled prodigality, by spreading a belief in unlimited resources, augmented the confidence necessary for the success of perpetual CniOIlflC, loans; until the day came when, having exhausted the 1787.

system, he tried to suppress privilege and fall back upon the social reforms of Turgot, and the financial schemes of Necker, by suggesting once more to the assembly of notables a territorial subsidy from all landed property. He failed, owing to the same reaction that was causing the feudal system to make inroads upon the army, the magistracy and industry; but in his fall he put on the guise of a reformer, and by a last wild plunge he left the monarchy, already compromised by the affair of the Diamond Necklace, hopelessly exposed (April 1787).

The volatile and brilliant archbishop Lomnie de Brienne was charged with the task of laying the affairs of the ancien régime before the assembly of notables, and with asking the nation for resources, since the monarchy could no longer provide for itself; but the notables refused, and Blenne. referred the minister to the states-general, the representative of the nation. Before resorting to this extremity, Brienne preferred to lay before the parlement his two edicts regarding a stamp duty and the territorial subsidy; to be met by the same refusal, and the same reference to the statesgeneral. The exile of the parlement to Troyes, the arrest of various members, and the curt declaration of the kings absolute authority (November 9, 2787) were unsuccessful in breaking down its resistance. The threat of Chrtien Francois de Lamoignon, keeper of the seals, to imitate Maupeou, aroused public opinion and caused a fresh confederation of the parlements of the kingdom. The royal government was too much exhausted to overthrow even a decaying power like that of the parlements, and being still more afraid of the future representatives of the French people than of the supreme courts, capitulated to the insurgent parlements. The recalled parlement seemed at the pinnacle of power.

Its next action ruined its ephemeral popularity, by claiming the convocation of the states-general according to the formula observed in 1614, as already demanded by the ~ ~t estates of Dauphin at Vizille on the 21st of July 2788. N~eF~ The exchequer was empty; it was necessary to comply.

The royal declaration of the 23rd of September 1788 convoked the states-general for the Ist of May 1789, and the fall of Brienne and Lamoignon followed the recall of Necker. Thenceforward public opinion, which was looking for something quite different from the superannuated formula of 1614, abandoned the panements, which in, their turn disappeared from view; for the struggle beginning between the privileged classes and the government, now at bay, hadgiven the public, through the states-general, that means of expression which they had always lacked.

The conflict immediately changed ground, and an engagement began between privilege and the people over the twofold question of the number of deputies and the mode of voting. Voting by head, and the double representation of the third estate (tiers lat); this was the great revolution; voting by order meant the continued domination of privilege, and the lesser revolution. The monarchy, standing apart, held the balance, but needed a decisive policy. Necker, with little backing at court, could not act energetically, and Louis XVI., wavering between general. Necker and the queen, chose the attitude most convenient to his indolence and least to his interest:

heremainedneutral, and his timidity showed clearly in the council of the 27th of December 1788. Separating the two questions which were so closely connected, and despite the sensational brochure of the abb Sieys, What is the Third Estate?

he pronounced for the doubling of the third estate without deciding as to the vote by head, yet leaving it to be divined that he preferred the vote by order. As to the programme there was no more decisive resolution; but the edict of convocation gave it to be understood that a reform was under consideration: the establishment of lasting and permanent order in all branches of the administration. The point as to the place of convocation gave rise to a compromise between the too-distant centre of France and too-tumultuous Paris. Versailles was -chosen because of the hunting! In the procedure of the elections h the traditional system of the states-general of 1614 eTie~0torate. was preserved, and the suffrage was almost universal, but in two kinds: for the third estate nearly all citizens over twenty-five years of age, paying a direct contribution, votedpeasants as well as bourgeois; the country clergy were included among the ecciesiastics; the smaller nobility among the nobles; and finally, Protestants were electors and eligible.

According to custom, d0cuments (caiziers) were drawn up, containing a list of grievances and proposals for reform. All the orders were agreed in demanding prudently modified ~tresses. reform: the vote on the budget, order in finance, regular convocation of the states-general, and a written constitution in order to get rid of arbitrary rule. The address of the clergy, inspired by the great prelates, sought to make inaccurate lamentations over the progress of impiety a means of safeguarding their enormous spiritual and temporal powers, their privileges and exemptions, and their vast wealth. The nobility demanded voting by order, the maintenance of their privileges, and, above all, laws to protect them against the arbitrary proceedings of royalty. The third estate insisted on the vote by head, the graduated abolition of privilege in all governmental affairs, a written constitution and union. The programme went on broadening as it descended in the social scale.

The elections sufficed finally to show that the ancien régime, characterized from the social point of view by inequality, from the political point of view by arbitrariness, and from e~c0tions. the religious point of view by intolerance, was completed from the administrative point of view by inextricable disorder. As even the extent of the jurisdiction of the bailliages was unknown, convocations were made at haphazard, according to the good pleasure of influential persons, and in these assemblies decisions were arrived at by a process that confused every variety of rights and powers, and was governed by no logical principle; and in this extreme confusion terms and affairs were alike involved.

Whilst the bureaucracy of the ancie-n rgime sought for desperate expedients to prolong its domination, the whole social Th body gave signs of a yet distant but ever nearing discun~ integration. The revolution was already complete currents before it was declared to the world. Two distinct of the currents of disaffection, one economic, the other R0h1 philosophic, had for long been pervading the nation.

There had been much suffering throughout the 17th and 18th centuries; but no one had hitherto thought of a politico-social rising. But the other, the philosophic current, had been set going in the 18th century; and the policy of despotism tempered by privilege had been criticized in the name of liberty as no longer justifying itself by its services to the state. The ultramontane and oppressively burdensome church had been taunted with its lack of Christian charity, apostolic Dovertv and primitive virtue. All vitality had been sapped from the old order of nobles, reduced in prestige by the savonnette a vilains (office purchased to ennoble the holder), enervated by court life, and so robbed of its roots in the soil, from which it had once drawn its strength, that it could no longer live save as a ruinous parasite on the central monarchy. Lastly, to come to the bottom of the social scale, there were the common people, taxable at will, subject to the arbitrary and burdensome forced labor of the corve, cut off by an impassable barrier from the privileged classes whom they hated. For them the right to work had been asserted, among others by Turgot, as a natural right opposed to the caprices of the arbitrary and selfish aristocracy of the corporations, and a breach had been made in the tyranny of the masters which had endeavoured to set a barrier to the astonishing outburst of industrial force which was destined to characterize the coming age.

The outward and visible progress of the Revolution, due primarily to profound economic disturbance, was thus accelerated and rendered irresistible. Economic reformers found a moral justification for their dissatisfaction in philosophical theories; the chance conjunction of a philosopho-political idea with a national deficit led to the preponderance of the third estate at the elections, and to the predominance of the democratic spirit in the states-general. The third estate wanted civil liberty above all; political liberty came second only, as a means and guarantee for the former. They wanted the abolition of the feudal system, the establishment of equality and a share in power. Neither the family nor property was violently attacked; the church and the monarchy still appeafed to most people two respectable and respected institutions. The king and the privileged classes had but so to desire it, and the revolution would be easy and peaceful.

Louis XVI. was reluctant to abandon a tittle of his absolute power, nor would the privileged classes sacrifice their timehonoured traditions; they were inexorable. The king, more ponderous and irresolute every day, vacillated MeetIng ol between Necker the liberal on one side and Marie Antoinette, whose feminine pride was opposed to any concessions, with the comte dArtois, a mischievous nobody who could neither choose a side nor stick to one, on the other. When the states-general opened on the 5th of May 1789 Louis XVI. had decided nothing. The conflict between him and the Assembly immediately broke out, and became acute over the verification of the mandates; the third estate desiring this to be made in common by the deputies of the three orders, which would involve voting by head, the suppression of classes and the preponderance of the third estate. On the refusal of the privileged classes and after an interval of six weeks, the third estate, considering that they represented 96% of the nation, and in accordance with the proposal of Sieys, declared that they represented the nation and therefore were authorized to take resolutions unaided, the first being that in future no arrangement for taxation could take place without their consent.

The king, urged by the privileged classes, responded to this first revolutionary act, as in 1614, by closing the Salle des Menus Plaisirs where the third estate were sitting; where- Oath of upon, gathered in one of the tennis-courts under the the presidency of Bailly, they swore on the 20th of June tennls~ not to separate before having established the con- COtIlt stitution of the kingdom.

Louis XVI. then decided, on the 23rd, to make known his policy in a royal lit dejuslice. He declared for the lesser reform, the fiscal, not the social; were this rejected, he declared The LItd. that he alone would arrange for the welfare of his Justice of people. Meanwhile he annulled the sitting of the Juii9e 23, 17th, and demanded the immediate dispersal of the Assembly. The third estate refused to obey, and by the mouth of Bailly and Mirabeau asserted the legitimacy of the Revolution. The refusal of the soldiers to coerce the Assembly showed that the monarchy could no longer rely on the army; and a few days later, when the lesser nobility and the lower ranks of the clergy had united with the third estate whose cause was their own, the king yielded, and on the 27th of June commanded both orders to join in the National Assembly, which was thereby recognized and the political revolution sanctioned. But at the same time, urged by the infernal cabal of the queen and the comte dArtois, Louis XVI. called in the foreign regiments the only ones of which he could be certainand dismissed Necker. The Assembly, dreading a sudden attack, demanded the withdrawal of the troops. Meeting with a refusal, Paris opposed the kings army with her citizen-soldiers; and Taking by the taking of the Bastille, that mysterious dark Bast tile, fortress which personified the ancien régime, secured the triumph of the Revolution (July 14). The kiag was obliged to recall Necker, to mount the tricolor cockade at the Hotel de Yule, and to recognize Bailly as mayor of Paris and La Fayette as commander of the National Guard, which remained in. arms after the victory~ The National Assembly had right on its side after the 20th of June and might after the t4th of July. Thus was accomplished the Revolution which was to throw into the melting-pot all that had for centuries appeared fixed and stable.

As Paris had taken her Bastille, it remained for the towns and country districts to take theirsall the Bastilles of feudalism.

Want, terror and the contagionofexamplesprecipitated Spon- the disruption of governmental authority and of the ~. old political status; and sudden anarchy dislocated all the organs of authority. Upon the ruins of the central administration temporary authorities were founded in various isolated localities, limited in area but none the less defiant of the government. The provincial assemblies of Dauphin and elsewhere gave the signal; and numerous towns, following the example of Paris, instituted munioipalitieswhichsubstituted their authority for that of the intendants and their subordinates. Clubs were openly organized, pamphlets and journals appeared, regardless of administrative orders; workmens unions multiplied in Paris, Bordeaux and Lyons, in face of drastic pro hibition; and anarchy finally set in with the defection of the army in Paris on the 23rd of June, at Nancy, at Metz and at Brest. The crying abuses of the old rgime, an insignificant factor at the outset, soon combined with the widespread agrarian distress, due to the unjust distribution of land, the disastrous exploitation of the soil, the actions of the government, and the severe winter of 1788. Discontent showed itself in pillage and incendiarism on country estates; between March and July 1789 more than three hundred agrarian riots took place, uprooting the feudal idea of property, already compromised by its own excesses. Not only did pillaging take place; the boundaries or property were also ignored, and people no longer held themselves bound to pay taxes. These jac queries hastened the movement of the regular revolution.

The decrees of the 4th of August, proposed by those noble patriots the duc dAiguillon and the vicomte de Noailles, who had already on the 23rd of June made armed resistance to the evacuation of the Hall of Assembly, August 4. put the final touch to the revolution begun by the provincial assemblies, by liberating land and labor, and proclaiming equality among all Frenchmen.. Instead of exasperating the demands of the peasants and workmen by repression and raising civil war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, they drew a distinction between personal servitude, which was suppressed, and the rights of contract, which were to be redeemeda laudable but impossible distinction. The whole feudal system crumbled before the revolutionary insistence of the peasants; for their masters, bourgeois or nobles, terrified by prolonged riots, capitulated and gradually had to consent to make the resolutions of the 4th of August a reality.

Overjoyed by this social liberation, the Assembly awarded Louis XVI. the title of renewer of French liberty; but Elabora- remaining faithful to his hesitating policy of the (Ion of the 23rd of June, he ratified the decrees of the 4th of constitu- August, only with a very ill grace. On the other hand, don, the privileged, classes, and notably the clergy, who saw the whole traditional structure of their power threatened, now rallied to him, and when after the 28th of August the Assembly set to work on the new constitution, they combined in the effort to recover some of tire position they had lost. But whatever their theoretical agreement on social questions, politically they were hopelessly at odds. The bourgeoisie, conscious of their opportunity, decided for a single chamber against the will of the noblesse; against that of the king they declared it permanent, and, if they accorded him a suspensory veto, this was only in order to guard them against the extreme assertion of popular rights. Thus the progress of the Revolution, so far, had left the mass of the people still excluded from any constitutional influence on the government, which was in the hands of the well-to-do classes, which also controlled the National Guard and the municipalities. The irritation of the disfranchised proletariat was moreover increased by the appalling dearness of bread and food generally, which the suspicious temper of the timesfomented by the tirades of Marat in the A mi du peupleascribed to English intrigues in revenge for the aid given by France to the American colonies, and to the treachery in high places that made these intrigues successful. The climax came with the rumour that the court was preparing a new military coup detat, a rumour that seemed to be confirmed by indiscreet toasts proposed at a banquet by the officers of the guard at Versailles; and on the night of the 5th to the 6th of October a Parisian mob forced the king and royal family to return with them to Paris amid cries of We are bringing the baker, the bakers wife and the little bakers boy! The Assembly followed; and henceforth king and Assembly were more or less under the influence of the whims and passions of a populace maddened by want and suspicion, by the fanatical or unscrupulous incitements of an unfettered press, and by the unrestrained oratory of obscure demagogues in the streets, the cafs and the political clubs.

Convened for the purpose of elaborating a system that should conciliate all interests, the Assembly thus found itself forced into a conflict between. the views of the people, who feared betrayal, and the court, which dreaded being overwhelmed. This schism was reflected in the parties of the Assembly; the absolutists of the extreme Right; the moderate monarchists of the Right and Centre; the constitutionalists of the Left Centre and Left; and, finally, on the extreme Left the democratic revolutionists, among whom Robespierre sat as yet all but unnoticed. Of talent there was enough and to spare in the Assembly; what was conspicuously lacking was common sense and a practical knowledge of affairs. Of all the orators who declaimed from the tribune, Mirabeau alone realized the perils of the situation and possessed the power of mind and will to have mastered them. Unfortunately, however, he was discredited by a disreputable past, and yet more by the equivocal attitude he had to assume in order to maintain his authority. in the Assembly while working in what he believed to be the true interests of the court. His political ideal for France was that of the monarchy, rescued from all association with the abuses of the old rgime and broad-based upon the peoples will; his practical counsel was that the king should frankly proclaim this ideal to the people as his own, should compete with the Assembly for popular favor, while at the same time using every means to win over those by whom his authority was flouted. For a time Mirabeau influenced the counsels of the court through the comte de Montmorin; but the king neither trusted him nor could be brought to see his point of view, and Marie Antoinette, though she resigned herself to negotiating with him, was very far from sympathizing with his ideals. Finally, all hope of the conduct of affairs being entrusted to him was shattered when the Assembly passed a law forbidding its members to become ministers.

The attempted reconciliation with the king having failed, the Assembly ended by working alone, and made the control that it should have exerted an instrument, not of co- Declaraoperation but of strife. It inaugurated its legislative tion of the labors by a metaphysical declaration of the Rights rights of of Man and of the Citizen (October 2, 1789). This alan.

enunciation of universal veri.ties, the bulk of which have, sooner or later, been accepted by all civilized nations as the gospel of modern times, was inspired by all the philosophy of the 18th century in France and by the Conirat Social. It comprised various rational and humane ideas, no longer theological, but profoundly and deliberately thought out: ideas as to the sovereign-right of the nation, law by general consent, man superior to the pretensions of caste and the fetters of dogma, the vindication of the ideal and of human dignity. Unable to rest on historic precedent like England, the Constituent Assembly took as the basis for its labors the tradition of the thinkers.

Upon the principles proclaimed in this Declaration the constitution of 1791 was founded. Its provisions are discussed else where (see the section below on Law and Institutions);

The here it will suffice to say that it established under the cons fitu ~ sovereign people, for the king was to survive merely as the supreme executive official, a wholly new model of government in France, both in Church and State. The historic divisions of the realm were wiped out; for the old provinces were substituted eighty-three departments; and with the provinces vanished the whole organization, territorial, administrative and ecclesiastical, of the ancien régime. In one respect, indeed, the system of the old monarchy remained intact; the tradition of centralization established by Louis XIV. was too strong to be overthrown, and the destruction of the historic privileges and immunities with which this had been ever in conflict only served to strengthen this tendency. In 1791 France was pulverized into innumerable administrative atoms incapable of cohesion; and the result was that Paris became more than ever the brain and nerve-centre of France. This fact was soon to be fatal to the new constitution, though the administrative system established by it still survives. Paris was in effect dominated by the armed and organized proletariat, and this proletariat could never be satisfied with a settlement which, while proclaiming the sovereignty of the people, had, by means of the property qualification for the franchise, established the political ascendancy of the middle classes. The settlement had, in fact, settled nothing; it had, indeed, merely intensified the profound cleavage between the opposing tendencies; for if the democrats were alienated by the narrow franchise, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which cut at the very roots of the Catholic system, drove into opposition to the Revolution not only the clergy themselves but a vast number of their flocks.

The policy of the Assembly, moreover, hopelessly aggravated its misunderstanding with the king. Louis, indeed, accepted the constitution and attended the great Feast of Federation (July 14, 1790), when representatives from all the new departments assembled in the Champ de Mars to ratify the work of the Assembly; but the king either could not or would not say the expected word that would have dissipated mistrust. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, too, seemed to him not only to violate his rights as a king, but his faith as a Christian also; and when the emigration of the nobility and the death of Mirabeau (April 2, 1791) had deprived him of his natural supporters and his only adviser, resuming the old plan of withdrawing to the army of the marquis de Bouill at Metz, he made his ill-fated attempt to escape from Paris (June 20, 1791). The flight to Varennes was an irreparable error; for during the kings absence and until his return the insignificance of the royal power became apparent. La Fayettes fusillade of the republicans, who demanded the deposition of the king (July 17, 1791), led to a definite split between the democratic party and the bourgeois party. Vainly did Louis, brought back a captive to Paris, swear on the I4th of September 1791 solemnly mere lip-service to the constitution; the mistrustful party of revolution abandoned the constitution they had only just obtained, and to guard against the sovereigns mental reservations and the selfish policy of the middle classes, appealed to the main force of the people. The conflict between the ancien régime and the National Assembly ended in the defeat of the royalists.

Through lassitude or disinterestedness the men of 1791, Oh Robespierres suggestion, had committed one last mistake, by leaving the task of putting the constitution into practice to new men even more inexperienced than themselves. Thus the new Assemblys time was Assembly occupied in a conflict between the Legislative Assembly (Oct. 1, and the king, who plotted against it; and,, as a result, ~291t 20 the monarchy, insulted by the proceedings of the 20th of June, was eliminated altogether by those of the 10th of August 1792.

The new Assembly which had met on the 1st of October 179 had a majority favorable to the constitutional monarchy and to the bourgeois franchise. But, among these bourgeois Th those who were called Feuillants, from the name of pai~tles. their club (see FEUILLANTS, CLUB OP THE), desired the strict and loyal application of the cOnstitution without encroaching upon the authority of the king; the triumvirate, Duport, Barnave and Lameth, were at the head of this party. The Jacobins, on the contrary, considered that the king should merely be hereditary president of the Republic, to be deposed if he attempted to violate the constitution, and that universal suffrage should be established. The dominant group among these was that of the Girondins or Girondists, so called because its most brilliant members had been elected in the Gironde (see GIRONDISTS). But the republican party was more powerful without than within. Their chief was not so much Robespierre, president of the parliamentary and bourgeois club of the Jacobins (q.v.), which had acquired by means of its two thousand affiliated branches great power in the provinces, as the advocate Danton, president of the popular and Parisian club of the Cordeliers. Between the Feuillants and the Jacobins, the independents, incapable of keeping to any fixed programme, vacillated sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left.

But the best allies of the republicans against the Feuillants were the royalists pure and simple, who cared nothing about the constitution, and claimed to extract good from the excess of evil. The election of a Jacobin, Ption, ~ instead of Bailly, the resigning mayor, and La Fayette, the candidate for office, was their first achievement. The court, on its side, showed little sign of a conciliatory spirit, though, realizing itsdanger, it attempted to restrain the foolish violence of the emigres, i.e. the nobles who after the sup- Th pression of titles of nobility in 1790 and the arrest mg-,~s. of the king at Varennes, had fled in a body to Coblenz and joinedLouis XVI.s brothers, the counts of Provence and Artois. They it was who set in motion the national and European conflict. Under the prince of Cond they had ollected a little army round Trier; and in concert with the Austrian Committee of Paris they solicited the armed intervention of monarchical Europe. The declaration of Pilnitz, which was but an excuse for non-interference on the part of the emperor and the king of Prussia, interested in the prolongation of these internal troubles, was put forward by them as an Pilnitz. assurance of forthcoming support (August 27, 1791). At the same time the application of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy roused the whole of western La Vende; and in face of the danger threatened by the refractory clergy and by the army of the migrs, the Girondins set about confounding the court with the Feuillants in the minds of the public, and compromising Louis XVI. by a national agitation, denouncing him as an accomplice of the foreigner. Owing to the decrees against the comte de Provence, the emigrants, and the Th refractory priests, voted by the Legislative Assembly dee~. in November 1791, they forced Louis XVI. to show his hand by using his veto, so that his complicity should be plainly declared, to replace his Feuillant ministrydisparate in birth, opinions and ambitionsby the Girondin ministry of Dumouriez-Roland (March I 0), no more united than the other, but believers in a republican crusade for the overthrow The war of thrones, that of Louis XVI. first of all; and finally to declare war against the king of Bohemia and Hungary, a step also desired by the court in the hope of ridding itself of the Assembly at the first note of victory (April 20, 1792).

But when, owing to the disorganization of the army through emigration and desertion, the ill-prepared Belgian war was followed by invasion and the trouble in La Vende roc~e,d~ increased, all France suspected a betrayal. The June20. Assembly, in order to reduce the number of hostile forces, voted for the exile of all priests who had refused to swear to the Civil Constitution and the substitution of a body of twenty thousand volunteer national guards, under the authority of Paris, for the kings constitutional guard (May 27June 8, 1792). Louis XVI.s veto and the dismissal of the Girondin ministrythanks to an intrigue of Dumouriez, analogous to that of Mirabeau and as ineffectualdismayed the Feuillants and maddened the Girondins; the latter, to avert popular fury, turned it upon the king. The meute of the 20th of June, a burlesque which, but for the persistent good-humour of Louis XVI., might have become a tragedy, alarmed but did not overthrow the monarchy.

The bourgeoisie, the Assembly, the country and La Fayette, one of the leaders of the army, now embarked upon a royalist reaction, which would perhaps have been efficacious, Manifesto had it not been for the entry into the affair of the ki Prussians as allies of the Austrians, and for the insolent manifesto of the duke of Brunswick. The Assemblys cry of the country in danger (July Ix) proved to the nation that the king was incapable of defending France against the foreigner; and the appeal of the federal volunteers in Paris gave to the opposition, together ,with the war-song of the Marseillaise, the army which had been refused by Louis XVI., now disarmed. The vain attempts of the Gironde to reconcile the king and the Revolution, the ill-advised decree of the Assembly on the 8th of August, freeing La Fayette from his guilt in forsaking his army; his refusal to vote for the deposition of the king, and the suspected treachery of the court, led to the success of the republican forces when, on the 10th of August, the mob of Paris organized by the revolutionary Commune rose against the monarchy.

The suspension and imprisonment of the king left the supreme authority nominally in the hands of the Assembly, but actually The Insur- in those of the Commune, consisting of delegates rectional from the administrative sections of Paris. Installed commune at the Hotel de Ville this attempted to influence the of Paris. discredited government, entered into conflict with the Legislative Assembly, which considered its mission at an end, and paralyzed the action of the executive council, particularly during the bloody days of September, provoked by the discovery of the courts intrigues with the foreigner. The by the treachery of La Fayette, the capture of Longwy. September the investiture of Verdun by the Prussians (August mas- 1930), and finally by the incendiary placards of Marat. sacres. Danton, a master of diplomatic and military operations, had to avoid any rupture with the Commune. Fortunately, on the very day of the dispersal of the Legislative Assembly, Dumouriez saved France from a Prussian invasion by the victory of Valmy, and by unauthorized negotiations which prefigured those of Bonaparte at Loben (September 22, 1792).

The popular insurrection against Louis XVI. determined the simultaneous fall of the bourgeois rgime and the establishment of the democracy in power. The Legislative Assembly, without a mandate for modifying a constitution that had become inapplicable with the suspension of the monarch, had before disappearing convoked a National Convention, and as the reward of the struggle for liberty had replaced the limited franchise by universal suffrage. Public opinion became republican from an excess of patriotism, and owing to the propaganda of the Jacobin club; while the decree of the 25th of August 1792, which marked the destruction of feudalism, now abolished in principle, caused the peasants to rally definitely to the Republic. -

This had hardly been established before it became distracted by the fratricidal strife of its adherents, from September 22, 1792, to the 18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797). The electoral assemblies, in very great majority, had desired this Republic to be democratic and equalizing in spirit, but on the face The Conof it, liberal, uniform and propagandist; in conse- vention, quence, the 782 deputies of the Convention were not Sept.21, divided on principles, but only by personal rivalries 1792

and ambition. They all wished for a unanimity and harmony impossible to obtain; and being unable to convince they destroyed one another.

The Girondins in the Convention played the part of the Feuillants in the Legislative Assembly. Their party was not well disciplined, they purposely refrained from making Th it so, and hence their ruin. Oratorically they repre- pattes. sented the spirit of the South; politically, the ideas of the bourgeoisie in opposition to the democracywhich they despised although making use of itand the federalist system, from an objection to the preponderance of Paris. Paris, on the other hand, had elected only deputies of the Mountain, as the more advanced of the Jacobins were called, that party being no more settled and united than the others. They drew support from the Parisian democracy, and considered the decentralization of the Girondins as endangering Frances unity, circumstances demanding a strong and highly concentrated government; they opposed a republic on the model of that of Rome to the Polish republic of the Gironde. Between the two came the Flame, the Marais, the troop of trembling bourgeois, sincerely attached to the Revolution, but very moderate in the defence of their ideas; some seeking a refuge from their timidity in hard-working committees, others partaking in the violence of the Jacobins out of weakness or for reasons of state.

The Girondins were the first to take the lead; in order to retain. it they should have turned the Revolution into a government. They remained an exclusive party, relying on Tb the mob but with no influence over it. Without a Gi,ndias leader or popular power, they might have found both in Danton; for, occupied chiefly with the external danger, he made advances towards them, which they repulsed, partly in horror at the proceedings of September, but chiefly because they saw in him the most formidable rival in the path of the government. They waged war against him as relentlessly as did the Constitutionalists against Mirabeau, whom he resembled in his extreme ugliness and his volcanic eloquence. They drove him into the arms of Robespierre, Marat and the Commune of Paris. On the other hand, after the 23rd of September they declared Paris dangerous for the Convention, and wanted to reduce it to eighty-three influential members Danton and the Mountain responded by decreeing the unity and indivisibility of the Republic, in order to emphasize the suspicions of federalism which weighed upon the Girondins.

The trial of Louis XVI. still further enhanced the contrasts of ideas and characters. The discovery of fresh proofs of treachery in the iron chest (November 20, 1792) gave the Moun- T~.taI and tairi a pretext for forcing on, the clash of parties and death of raising the question not of legality but of public safety. Louis By the execution of the king (January 21, 1793) they XVI.

cast down a kings head as a challenge to the kings of Europe. In order to preserve popular favor and their direction of the Republic, the Girondins had not dared to pronounce against the sentence of death, but had demanded an appeal to the people which was rejected; morally weakened by this equivocal attitude they were still more so by foreign events.

The kings death did not result in the unanimity so much desired by all parties; it only caused the reaction on themselves of the hatred which had been hitherto concentrated upon the king, and also an augmentation in the armies of the foreigner, which obliged the revolutionists to coalition. face all Europe. There was a coalition of monarchs, and the people of La Vende rose in defence of their faith. Dumouriez, the conqueror of Jemappes (November 6, 1792), who invaded Holland, was beaten by the Austrians (March 1793). A levy of 300,000 men was ordered; a Committee of General Security was charged with the search for suspects; and thenceforward military occurrences called forth parliamentary crises and popular upheavals. Girondins and Jacobins unjustly accused one ar.other of leaving the traitors, the conspirators, the stipendiaries of Coblenz unpunished. To avert the danger threatened by popular dissatisfaction, the Gironde was persuaded to vote for the creation of a revolutionary tribunal to judge suspects, while out of spite against Danton who demanded it, they refused the strong government which might have made a stand against the enemy (March 10, 1793). This was the first of the exceptional measures which were to call down ruin upon them. Whilst the insurrection in La Vende was spreading, and Dumouriez falling back upon Neerwinden, sentence of death was laid upon migrs and refractory priests; the treachery of Dumouriez, disappointed in his Belgian projects, gave grounds First corn- for all kinds of suspicion, as that of Mirabeau had mittee ot formerly done, and led the Gironde to propose the public new government which they had refused to Danton. safety. The transformation of the provisional executive council into the Committee of Public Safetyomnipotent save in financial matterswas voted because the Girondins meant to control it; but Danton got the upper hand (April 6).

The Girondins, discredited in Paris, multiplied their attacks upon Danton, now the master: they attributed the civil war and the disasters of the foreign campaign to the ?I~ despotism of the Paris Commune and the clubs; they the corn- accused Marat of instigating the September massacres; mane and they began the supreme struggle by demanding the a~d the election of a committee of twelve deputies, charged with ron e. breaking up the anarchic authorities in Paris (May 18).

The complete success of the Girondin proposals; the arrest of Hbertthe violent editor of the Pre Duc/zene; the insurrection of the Girondins of Lyons against the Montagnard Commune; the bad news from La Vendethe military reverses; and the economic situation which had compelled the fixing of a maximum price of corn (May 4) excited the moral insurrections of May 31 and June 2. Marat himself sounded the tocsin, and Hanriot, at the head of the Parisian army, surrounded tl~e Convention. Despite the efforts of Danton and the Committee of Public Safety, the arrest of the Girondins sealed the victory of the Mountain.

The threat of the Girondin Isnard was fulfilled. The federalist insurrection, to avenge the violation of national representation, responded to the Parisian insurrection. Sixty-nine Fail of departmental governments protested against the Gironde. violence done to the Convention; but the ultra- democratic constitution of 1793 deprived the Girondins, who were arming in the ~west, the south and the centre, of all lega1~ force. To the departments that were hostile to the dictatorship of Paris, and the tyranny of Danton or Robespierre, it promised the referendum, an executive of twenty-four citizens, universal suffrage, and the free exercise of religion. The populace, who could not understand this parliamentary quarrel, and were in a hurry to set up a national defence, abandoned the Girondins, and~ the latter excited the enthusiasm of only one person, Charlotte Corday, who by the murder of Marat ruined them irretrievably. The battle of Brcourt was a defeat without a fight for their party without stamina and their general without troops (July 13); while on the 31st of October their leaders perished on the guillotine, where they had been preceded by the queen, Marie Antoinette. The Girondins and their adversaries were differentiated by neither religious dissensions nor political divergency, but merely by a question of time. The Girondins, when in power, had had scruples which had not troubled them while scaling the ladder; idols of Paris, they had flattered her in turn, and when Paris scorned them they sought support in the provinces. A great responsibility for this defeat of the liberal and republican bourgeoisie, whom they represented, is to be laid upon Madame Roland, the Egeria of the party. An ardent patriot and republican, her relations with Danton resembled those of Marie Antoinette with Mirabeau, in each case a woman spoilt by flattery, enraged at indifference. She was the ruin of the Gironde, but taught it how to die.

The fall of the Gironde left the country disturbed by civil war, and the frontiers more seriously threatened than before Valmy. Bouchotte, a totally inefficient minister for war, the Communes man of straw, left the army without food or ammunition, while the suspected officers remained inactive. In the Angevin Vendee the incapable leaders let themselves be beaten at Aubiers, Beauprau and Thouars, at a time when Cathelineau was taking possession of Saumur and threatening Nantes, the capture of which would have permitted the insurgents in La Vende to join those of Brittany and receive provisions from England; Meanwhile, the remnants of the Girondin federalists were overcome by the disguised royalists, who had aroused the whole of the Rhne valley from Lyons to Marseilles, had called in the Sardinians, and handed over the fleet and the arsenal at Toulon to the English, whilst Paoli left Corsica at their disposal. The scarcity of money due to the discrediting of the assignats, the cessation of commerce, abroad and on the sea, and the bad harvest of 1793, were added to all these dangers, and formed a serious menace to France and the Convention.

This meant a hard task for the first Committee of Public Safety and its chief Danton. He was the only one to understand the conditions necessary to a firm government; he caused the adjournment of the decentralizing constitution ~ dic.. of 1793, and set up a revolutionary government. The ~ P Committee of Public Safety, now a permanency, first annulled the Convention and was itself the central comrnitte~e authority, its organization in Paris being the twelve ~~e1~i6 committees substituted for the provisional executive committee and the six ministers, the Committee of General Security for the maintenance of the police, and the arbitrary Revolutionary Tribunal. The execution of its orders in the departments was carried out by omnipotent representatives on mission in the armies, by popular societiesveritable missionaries of the Revolutionand by the revolutionary committees which were its backbone.

Despite this Reign of Terror Danton failed; he could neither dominate foes within nor divide those without. Representing the sane and vigorous democracy, and like Jefferson a friend to liberty and self-government, he had been ~j~ ~ obliged to set up the most despotic of governments in face of internal anarchy and foreign invasion. Being of a temperament that expressed itself only in action, and neither a theorist nor a cabinet-minister, he held the views of a statesman without having a following sufficient to realize them. Moreover, the proceedings of the 2nd of June, when the Commune of Paris had triumphed, bad dealt him a mortal blow. He is his turn tried to stem the tumultuous current which had borne him along, and to prevent discord; but the check to his policy of an understanding with Prussia and with Sardinia, to whom, like Richelieu and DArgenson, he offered the realization of her transalpine ambition in exchange for Nice and Savoy, was added to the failure of his temporizing methods in regard to the federalist insurgents, and of his military operations against La Vend~e. A man of action and not of cunning shifts, he succumbed on the 10th of July to the blows of his own government, which had passed from his hands into those of Robespierre, his ambitious and crafty rival.

The second Committee of Public Safety lasted until the 27th of July 1794. Composed of twelve members, re-eligible every month, and dominated by the triumvirate, Second Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon~ it was stronger committee than ever, since it obtained the right of appointing of public leaders, disposed of money, and muzzled the press, safety.

Many of its members were sons of the bourgeoisie, men who having been educated at college, thanks to some charitablt, agency, in the pride of learning, and raised above their original station, were ready for anything but had achieved nothing They bad plenty of talent at c0mmand, were full of classical tirades against tyranny, and, though sensitive enough in their private life, were bloodthirsty butchers in their public relations. Such were Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon, Billaud-Varenne, Cambon, Thuriot, Collot dHerbois, Barrre and Prieur d~ la Mbrne. Working~ hand il hand with these politicians, not always in accordance with them, but preserving a solid front, were the specialists, Carnot, Robert Lindet, Jean Bon SaintAndr and Prieur de la Cte dOr, honorable men, anxious above all to safeguard their country. At the head of the former type Robespierre, without special knowledge or exceptional talent, devoured by jealous ambition and gifted with cold grave eloquence, enjoyed a great moral ascendancy, due to his incorruptible purity of life and the invariably correct behaviour that had been wanting in Mirabeau, and by the persevering will which Danton had lacked. His marching orders were: no more temporizing with the federalists or with generals who are afraid of conquering; war to the death with all Europe in the name of revolutionary propaganda and the monarchical tradition of natural frontiers; and fear, as a means of government. The specialists answered foreign foes by their organization of victory; as for foes at home, the triumvirate crushed them beneath the Terror.

France was saved by them and by that admirable outburst of patriotism which provided 750,000 patriots for the army through the general levy of the 16th of August 1793, Defeat of aided, moreover, by the mistakes of her enemies.

c~mion. Instead of profiting by Dumouriezs treachery and the successes in La Vende, the Coalition, divided over the resuscitated Polish question, lost time on the frontiers of this new Poland of the west which was sacrificing itself for the sake of a Universal Republic. Thus in January 1794 the territory of France was cleared of the Prussians and Austrians by the victories at Hondschoote, Wattignies and Wissembourg; the army of La Vende was repulsed from Granville, overwhelmed by Hoches army at Le Mans and Savenay, and its leaders shot; royalist sedition was suppressed at Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles and Toulon; federalist insurrections were wiped out by the terrible massacres of Carrier at Nantes, the atrocities of Lebon at Arras, and the wholesale executions of Fouch and Collot dHerbois at Lyons; Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette guillotined, the migrs dispersed, denied or forsaken by all Europe.

But the triumphant Mountain was not as united as it boasted. The second Committee of Public Safety had now to struggle Th ~e against two oppositions: one of the left, represented pek by Hbert, the Commune of Paris and the Cordeliers; another of the right, Danton and his followers. The former would not admit that the Terror was only a temporary method of defence; for them it was a permanent system which was even to. be strengthened in order to crush all who were hostile to the Revolution. Their sanguinary violence was combined with an anti-religious policy, not atheistical, but inspired by mistrust of the clergy, and by a civic and deistic creed that was a direct outcome of the federations. To these latter were due the substitution of the Republican for the Gregorian calendar, and the secular Feasts of Reason (November 19, 1793). The followers of Hbert wanted to push forward the movement of May 31, 1793, in order to become masters in their turn; while those of Danton were by way of arresting it. They considered it time to re-establish the reign of ordinary laws and Tparty justice; sick of bloodshed, with Camille Desmoulins ance. they demanded a Committee of Clemency. A

deist and therefore hostile to anti-religious masquerades, while uneasy at the absolute authority of the Paris Commune, which aimed at suppressing the State, and at its armed propaganda abroad, Robespierre resumed the struggle against its illegal power, so fatal to the Gironde. His boldness succeeded (March 24, 1794), and then, jealous of DantOns activity and statesmanship, and exasperated by the jeers of his friends, he rid himself of the party of tolerance by a parody of justice (April 5).

Robespierre now stood ~Ione. During five months, while affecting to be the representative of a reign of justice and Robes- virtue, he labored at strengthening his politicopierres religious dictatorshipalready so formidably armed dictator- with new powers. The incorruptible wanted to ship. become the invulnerable and the scaffold of the guillotine waa clowded. By his dogma of the supreme state Robespierre founded a theocratic government with the police as an Inquisition. The festival of the new doctrine, which turned the head of the new pontiff (June 8), the loi de Prairial, or code of legal murder (June 10), which gave the deputies themselves into his hand; and the multiplication of executions at a time when the victory of Fleurus (June 25) showed the uselessness and barbarity of this aggravation of the Reign of Terror provoked against him the victorious coalition of revenge, lassitude and fear. Vanquished and imprisoned, he 9th Tb refused to take part in the illegal action proposed midor.~ by the Commune against the Convention. Robespierre was no man of action. On the oth Thermidor (July 27, 1794) he fell into the gulf that had opened on the 31st of May, and through which the 18th Brumaire was visible.

Although brought about by the Terrorists, the tragic fall of Robespierre put an end to the Reign of Terror; for their chiefs having disappeared, the subordinates were too much Thfrd divided to keep up the dictatorship of the third commiUee Committee of Public Safety, and reaction soon set in. of,oublic After a change in personnel in favor of the surviving safety.

Dantonists, came a limitation to the powers of the Committee of Public Safety, now placed in dependence upon the Convention; and next followed the destruction of the revolutionary system, the Girondin decentralization and the resuscitation of departmental governments; the reform of the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 10th of August; the suppression of the Commune of Paris on the 1st of September, and of the salary of forty sous given to members of the sections; the abolition of the maximum, the suppression of the Guillotine, the opening of the j~rjsons, the closing of the Jacobin club (November if), and the henceforward insignificant existence of the popular societies.

Power reverted to the Girondins and Dantonists, who reentered the Convention on the 18th of December; but with them re-entered likewise the royalists of Lyons, Resuscita Marseilles and Toulon, and further, after the peace of tion of the Basel, many young men set free from the army, hostile royalist to the Jacobins and defenders of the now moderate ~~Y

and peace-making Convention. These muscadins and incroyables, led by Frron, Tallien and Barrasformer revolutionists who had become aristocratsprofited by the restored liberty of the press to prepare for days of battle in the salons of the merveilleuses Madame Tallien, Madame de Stael and Madame Rca.mier, as the sans-culottes had formerly done in the clubs. The remnants of Robespierres faction became alarmed at this Thermidor reaction, in which they scented royalism. Aided by famine, by the suppression of the maximum, and by the imminent bankruptcy of the assignats, they endeavoured to arouse the working classes and the former Hanriot companies against a government which was trying to destroy the republic, and had b1oken the busts of Marat and guillotined Carrier and Fouquier-Tinville, the former public prosecutor. Thus the risings of the 12th Germinal (April I, 1795) ~puiar and of the Ist Prairial (May 20) were economic revolts risings oi rather than insurrections excited by the deputies of the Germ mat Mountain; in order to suppress them the reactionaries called in the army. Owing to this first intervention of the troops inpolitics, the Committee of Public Safety, which aimed not so much at a moderate policy as at steering a middle course between the Thermidorians of the Right and of the Left, was able to dispense with the latter.

The royalists now supposed that their hour had come. In the south, the companions of Jehu and of the Sun inaugurated a White Terror, which had not even the apparent excuse of the public safety or of exasperated patriotism. ~hh~ At the same time they prepared for a twofold in- termr. surrection against the republicin the west with the help of England, and in the east with that of Austriaby an attempt to bribe General Pichegru. But though the heads of the goyernment wanted to put an end to the Revolution they had no thought of restoring the monarchy in favor of the Comte de Provence, who had taken the title of Louis XVIII. on hearing of the death of the dauphin in the Temple, and still less of bringing back the ancien régime. Hoche crushed the insurrection of the Chouans and the Bretons at Quiberon on the 2nd of July 1795, and Pichegru, scared, refused to entangle himself any further.

To cut off all danger from royalists or terrorists the Convention now voted the Constitution of the year III.; suppressing that The con- of 1793, in order to counteract the terrorists, and stitution re-establishing the bourgeois limited franchise with of the election in two degreesa less liberal arrangement than year!!!. that granted from 1789 to 1792. The chambers of the Five Hundred and of the Ancients were elected by the moneyed and intellectual aristocracy, and were to be re-elected by thirds annually. The executive authority, entrusted to five Directors, was no more than a definite and very strong Committee of Public Safety; but Sieys, the author of the new constitution, in opposition to the royalists, had secured places of refuge for his party by reserving posts as directors for the regicides, and two-thirds of the deputies seats for members of the Convention. In self- defence against this continuance of the policy and the The 13th personnel of the Conventiona modern Long Parliament the royalists, persistent street-fighters and masters in the sections after the suppression of the daily indemnification of forty sous, attempted the insurrection of the 13th Vendmiaire (October 5, 1795), which was easily put down by General Bonaparte.

Thus the bourgeois republic reaped the fruits of its predecessors external policy. After the freeing of the land in January 1794

MIlft~- an impulse had been given tothespiritof conquest which achieve- had gradually succeeded to the disinterested fever of ments,of propaganda and overheated patriotism. This it was the C0fl which had sustained Robespierres dictatorship; and, yen Ofl~ owing to the amalgam and the re-establishment of discipline, Belgium arid the left bank of the Rhinehad been conquered and Holland occupied, simultaneously with Kosciuskos rising in Poland, Prussias necessity of keeping and extending her Polish acquisitions, Robespierres death, the prevalent desires of the majority, and the continued victories of Pichegru, Jourdan and Moreau, enfeebled the coalition. At Basel (April July 1795) republican France, having rejoined the of concert of Europe, signed the long-awaited peace with Prussia, Spain, Holland and the grand-duke of Tuscany.

But thanks to the past influence of the Girondin party, who had caused the war, and of the regicides of the Mountain, this peace not only ratified the conquest of Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine and Santo Domingo, but paved the way for fresh conquests; for the old spirit of domination and persistent hostility to Austria attracted the destinies of the Revolution definitely towards war.

The work of internal construction amidst this continued battle against the whole world had been no less remarkable. The Constituent Assembly had been more destructive than Internal constructive; but the Convention preserved intact those fundamental principles of civil liberty which had been the main results of the Revolution: the equality so dear to the French, and the sovereignty of the peoplethe foundation of democracy. It also managed to engage private interests in state reform by creating the Grand Livre de la Dette Publique (September 1326, 1793), and enlisted peasant and bourgeois savings in social reforms by the distribution and sale of national property. But with views reaching beyond equality of rights to a certain equality of property, the committees, as regards legislation, poor relief and instruction, laid down principles which have never been realized, save in the matter of the metric system; so that the Convention which was dispersed on the 16th of October 1795 made a greater impression on political history and social ideas than on institutions. Its disappearance left a great blank.

During four years the Directory attempted to fill this blank. Being the outcome of the Constitution of the year III., it should have been the organizing and pacifying government of the Republic; in reality it sought not to create, but to preserve its own existence. Its internal weakness, between the danger of anarchy and the opposition of the monar chists, was extreme; and it soon became discredited by its own coups detat and by financial impotence in the eyes of a nation sick of revolution, aspiring towards peace and the resumption of economic undertakings. As to foreign affairs, its aggressive policy imperilled the conquests that had been the glory of the Convention, and caused the frontiers of France, the defence of which had been a point of honor with the Republic, to be called in question. Finally, there was no real government on the part of the five directors: La Rvellire-Lpeaux, an honest man but weak; Reubell, the negotiator of the Hague; Letourneur, an officer of talent; Barras, a man of intrigue, corrupt and without real convictions; and Carnot, the only really worthy member. They never undarstood one another, and never consulted together in hours of danger, save to embroil matters in politics as in war. Leaning on the bourgeois, conservative, liberal and anti-clerical republicans, they were no more able than was the Thermidor party to re-establish the freedom that had been suspended by revolutionary despotism; they created a ministry of police, interdicted the clubs and popular societies, distracted the press, and with partiality undertook the separation of Church and State voted on the 18th of September 1794. Their real defence against counter revolution was the army; but, by a further contradiction, they reinforced the army attached to the Revolution while seeking an alliance with the peacemaking bourgeoisie. Their party had therefore no more homogeneity than had their policy.

Moreover the Directory could not govern alone; it had to rely upon two other parties, according to circumstances: the republican-democrats and the disguised royalists. Th The former, purely anti-royalist, thought only of remedying the sufferings of the people. Roused by the collapse of the assignats, following upon the ruin of industry and the arrest of commerce, they were still further exasperated by the speculations of the financiers, by the jobbery which prevailed throughout the administration, and by the sale of national property which had profited hardly any but the bourgeoisie. After the i3th Vendmiaire the royalists too, deceived in their hopes, were expecting to return gradually to the councils, thanks to the high property qualification for the franchise. Under the name of moderates they demanded an end to this war which England continued and Austria threatened to recommence, and that the Directory from selfinterested motives refused to conclude; they desired the abandonment of revolutionary proceedings, order in finance and religious peace.

The Directory, then, was in a minority in the country, and had to be ever on the alert against faction; all possible methods seemed legitimate, and during two years appeared Struggle successful. Order was maintained in France, even the against royalist west being pacified, thanks to Hoche, who the finished his victorious campaign of 1796 against royalists. Stofflet, Charette and Cadoudal, by using mild and just measures to complete the subjection of the country. The greatest danger lay in the republican-democrats and their socialist ally, Francois Noel (Gracchus) Babeuf. The former had united the Jacobins and the more violent members of the Convention in their club, the Socit du Pantheon; and their fusion, after the closing of the club, with the the zesecret society of the Babouvists lent formidable publicanstrength to this party, with which Barras was secretly ~7ats in league. The terrorist party, deprived of its head, S~,al,:ts. had found a new leader, who, by developing the consequences of the Revolutions acts to their logical conclusion, gave first expression to the levelling principle of communism. He proclaimed the right of property as appertaining to the state, that is, to the whole community; BD.~eUf the doctrine of equality as absolutely opposed to social inequality of any kindthat of property as well as that of rank; and finally the ina4equacy of the solution of the agrarian question, which had profited scarcely any one, save a new class of privileged individuals. But these socialist demands were premature; the attack of the camp of Grenelle upon constitutional order ended merely in the arrest and guillotining of Babeuf (September 9, 1796May 25, 1797).

The liquidation of the financial inheritance of the Convention was no less difficult. The successive issues of assignats, and the Financial multiplication of counterfeits made abroad, had so policy depreciated this paper money that an assignat of joo otflic francs was in February 1796 worth only 30 centimes; 01). while the government, obliged to accept them at their nominal value, no longer collected any taxed and could not pay salaries. The destruction of the plate for printing assignats, on the 18th of February 1796, did not prevent the drop in the forty milliards still in circulation. Territorial mandates were now tried, which inspired no greater confidence, but served to liquidate two-thirds of the debt, the remaining third being consolidated by its dependence on the Grand Livre (September 30, 1797). This widespread bankruptcy, falling chiefly on the bourgeoisie, inaugurated a reaction which lasted until 1830 against the chief principle of the Constituent Assembly, which had favored indirect taxation as producing a large sum without imposing any very obvious burden. The bureaucrats of the old systemhaving returned to their offices and being used to these indirect taxeslent their assistance, and thus the Directory was enabled to maintain its struggle against the Coalition.

All system in finance having disappeared, war provided the Directory, now in exiremis, with a treasury, and was its only ~ source for supplying constitutional needs; while it xt1rsia opened a path to the military commanders who were to be the support and the glory of the state. England remaining invulnerable in her insular position despite Hoches attempt to land in Ireland m 1796, the Directory resumed the traditional policy against Austria of conquering the natural frontiers, Carnot furnishing the plans; hence the war in southern Germany, in which Jourdan and Moreau were repulsed by an inferior force under the archduke Charles, and Bonapartes triumphant Italian campaign. Chief of an army that he had made irresistible, not by honor but by glory, and master of wealth by rapine, Bonaparte imposed his will upon the Directory, which he provided with funds. After having separated the Piedmontese from the Austrians, whom he drove back into Tyrol, and repulsed offensive reprisals of Wurmser and Alvinzi on four occasions, he stopped short at the preliminary negotiations of Loben just at the moment when the Directory, discouraged by the problem of Italian reconstitution, was preparing the army of the Rhine to re-enter the field under the command of Hoche. Bonaparte thus gained the good opinion of peace-loving Frenchmen; he partitioned Venetian territory with Austria, contrary to French interests but conformably with his own in Italy, and henceforward was the decisive factor in French and European policy, like Caesar or Pompey of old. England, in consternation, offered in her turn to negotiate at Lille.

These military successes did not prevent the Directory, like the Thermidorians, from losing ground in the country. Every Struggle strategic truce since 1795 had been marked by a political against crisis; peace reawakened opposition. The constitu the tional party, royalist in reality, had made alarming royalists, progress, chiefly owing to the Babouvist conspiracy; they now tried to corrupt the republican generals, and Cond procured the treachery of Pichegru, Kellermann and General Ferrand at Besancon. Moreover, their Clichy club, directed by the abb Brottier, manipulated Parisian opinion; while many of the -refractory priests, having returned after the liberal Public Worship Act of September 1795, made active propaganda against the principles of the Revolution, and plotted the fall of the Directory as maintaining the States independence of the Church. Thus the partial elections of the year V. (May 20, 1797) had brought back into the two councils a counter-revolutionary majority of royalists, constitutionalists of 1791, Catholics and moderates. The Director Letourneur had been replaced by Barthlemy, who had negotiated the treaty of Basel and was a constitutional monarchist. So that the executive not only found it impossible to govern, owing to the opposition of the councils and a vehement press-campaign, but was distracted by ceaseless internal conflict. Carnot and Barthlemy wished to meet ecclesiastical opposition by legal measures only, and demanded peace; while Barras, La Rvellire and Reubell saw no other remedy save military force. The attempt of the counter-revolutionaries to make an army for themselves out of the guard of the Legislative Assembly, and the success of the Catholics, who bad managed at the end of August 1797 to repeal the laws against refractory priests, determined the Directory to appeal from the rebellious parliament to the ready swords of Augereau and Bernadotte. On the 18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797) Bonapartes lieutenants, backed up by the 8

whole army, stopped the elections in forty-nine ~~dOr departments, and deported to Guiana many deputies of both councils, journalists and non-juring priests, as well as the director Barthlemy, though Carnot escaped into Switzerland. The royalist party was once more overthrown, but with it the republican constitution itself. Thus every act of violence still further confirmed the new empire of the army and the defeat of principles, preparing the way for military despotism.

Political and financial coups detat were not enough for the directors. In order to win back public opinion, tired of internecine quarrels and sickened by the scandalous Aggressive immorality of the generals and of those in power, policy and to remove from Paris an army which after having of the given them a fresh lease of life was now a menace to Directory. them, war appeared their only hopeful course. They attempted to renew the designs of Louis XIV. and anticipate those of Napoleon. But Bonaparte saw what they were planning; and to the rupture of the negotiations at Lille and an order for the resumption of hostilities he responded by a fresh act of disobedience and the infliction on the Directory of the peace of Campo-Formio, on October 17, 1797. The directors were consoled for this enforced peace by acquiring the left bank of the Rhine and Belgium, and for the forfeiture of republican principles by attaining what had for so long been the ambition of the monarchy. But the army continued a menace. To avoid disbanding it, which might, as after the peace of Basel, have given the counter-revolution further auxiliaries, the Directory appointed Bonaparte chief of the Army of England, and employed Jourdan to revise the conscription laws so as to make military service a permanent duty of the citizen, since war was now to be the permanent object of policy. The Directory finally conceived the gigantic project of bolstering up the French Republicthe triumph of which was celebrated by the peace of Campo-Formio by forming the neighboring weak states into tributary vassal republics. This system had already been applied to the Batavian republic in 1795, totheLigurian and Cisalpine republics in June 1797; it was extended to that of MUlhausen on the 28th of January 1798, to the Roman republic in February, to the Helvetian in April, while the Parthenopaean republic (Naples) was to be established in 1799. This was an international coup de force, which presupposed that all these nations in whose eyes independence was flaunted would make no claim to enjoy it; that though they had been beaten and pillaged they would not learn to conquer in their turn; and that the king of Sardinia, dispossessed of Milan, the grand-duke of Tuscany who Md given refuge to the pope when driven from Rome, and the king of Naples, ~iho had opened his ports to Nelsons fleet, would not find allies to make a stand against this hypocritical system.

What happened was exactly the contrary. Meanwhile, the armies were kept in perpetual motion, procuring money for the impecunious Directory, making a diversion for internal Coup discontent, and also permitting of a reversed d~tatof Fructidor, against the anarchists, who had got the the 22nd upper hand in the partial elections of May 1798. P10i~~i, The social danger was averted in its turn after the clerical danger had been dissipated. The next task was to relieve Paris of Bonaparte, who had already refused to repeat Hoches unhappy expedition to Ireland and to attack England at home without either money or a navy. The pecuniary resources of Berne and the wealth of Rome fortunately tided over the financial difficulty and provided for the expedition to Egypt, which permitted Bonaparte to wait ~o~a~te for the fruit to ripen i.e. ~till the Directory should be ruined in the eyes of France and of all Europe. The disaster of Aboukir (August 1, 1798) speedily decided the coalition pending between England, Austria, the Empire, Portugal, Naples, Russia and Turkey. The Directory had to make a stand or perish, and with it the Republic. The directors had thought France might retain a monopoly second in numbers and in initiative. They soon perceived conihion. that enthusiasm is not as great for a war of policy and conquest as for a war of national defence; and the army dwindled, since a country cannot bleed itself to death. The law of conscription was voted on the 5th of September 1798; and the tragedy of Rastadt, where the French commissioners were assassinated, was the opening of a war, desired but illprepared for, in which the Directory showed hesitation in strategy and incoherence in tactics, over a disproportionate area in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Military reverses were inevitable, and responsibility for them could not be shirked. As though shattered by a reverberant echo from the cannon of the Trebbia, the Directory crumbled to pieces, succumbing on the 18th of June 1799 beneath the reprobation showered on Treilhard, Merlin de Douai, and La Rvellire-Lpeaux. A few more military disasters, royalist insurrections in the south, Chouan disturbances in Normandy, Orleanist intrigues and the end came. To soothe the populace and protect the frontier more was required than the resumption, as in all grave crises of the Revolution, of terrorist measures such as forced taxation or the law of hostages; the new Directory, Sieys presiding, saw that for the indispensable revision of the constitution a head and a sword were needed. Moreau being unattainable, Joubert was to be the sword of Sieys; but, when he was killed at the battle of Novi, the sword of the Revolution fell into the hands of Bonaparte.

Although Brune and Massna retrieved the fight at Bergen and Zurich, and although the Allies lingered on the frontier as Coup they had done after Valmy, still the fortunes of the ~rtaf of Directory were not restored. Success was reserved the 18th for Bonaparte, suddenly landing at Frjus with the Brwnaire. prestige of his victories in the East, and now, after Roches death, appearing as sole master of the armies. Re manc~uvred among the parties as on the 13th Vendrniaire. On the 18th Brumaire of the year VIII. France and the army fell together at his feet. By a twofold coup detat, parliamentary and military, he culled the fruits of the Directorys systematic aggression and unpopularity, and realized the universal desires of the rich bourgeoisie, tired of warfare; of the wretched populace; of landholders, afraid of a return to the old order of things; of royalists, who looked upon Bonaparte as a future Monk; of priests and their people, who hoped for an indulgent treatment of Catholicism; and finally of the immense majority of the French, who love to be ruled and for long had had no efficient government. There was hardly any one to defend a liberty which they had never known. France had, indeed, remained monarchist at heart for all her revolutionary appearance; and Bonaparte added but a name, though an. illustrious one, to the series of national or local dictatorships, which, after the departure of the weak Louis XVI., had maintained a sort of informal republican royalty.

On the night of the I9th Brumaire a mere ghost of an Assembly abolished the constitution of the year III., ordained The Con- the provisionary Consulate, and legalized the coup sulaje, detat in favor of Bonaparte. A striking and singular Sept, II, event; for the history of France and a great part of Europe was now for fifteen years to be summed up in the person of a single man (see NAPOLEON).

This night of Brumaire, however, seemed to be a victory for Sieys rather than for Bonaparte. He it was who originated the project which the legislative commissions, charged with elaborating the new constitution, had to discuss. Bonapartes cleverness lay in opposing Daunous plan to that 01 Sieys, and in retaining only those portions of both which could serve his ambition. Parliamentary institutions annulled by the The concomplication of three assembliesthe Council of State aiftutlon which drafted bills, the Tribunate which discUssed oi the them without voting them, and the Legislative year VIII. Assembly which voted them without discussing them; popttlar suffrage, mutilated by the lists of notables (on which-the mmbrs of the Assemblies were to be chosen by the cOnservative senate); and the triple executive authority of the consuls, elected for ten years: all these semblances of constitutional authority were adopted by Bonaparte. But he abolished the post of Grand Elector, which Sieys had reserved for himself, in order to reinforce the real authority of the First Consul himselfby leaving the two other consuls, Cambacrs and Lebrun, as well as the Assemblies, equally weak. Thus the aristocratic constitution of Sieys was transformed into an unavowed dictatorship, a public ratification of which the First Consul obtained by a third coup detat from the intimidated and yet reassured electors-reassured by his dazzling but unconvincing offers of peace to the victorious Coalition (which repulsed them), by the rapid disarmament of La Vende, and by the proclamations in which he filled the ears of the infatuated people with the new talk of stability of government, order, justice and moderation. He gave every one a feeling that France was governed once more by a real statesman, that a pilot was at the helm.

Bonaparte had now to rid himself of Sieys and thoserepublicans who had no desire to hand over the republic to one man, particularly of Moreau and Massna, his military rivals. The victory of Marengo (June 14, i8o0) momentarily in the balance, but secured by Desaix and Kellermann, offered a further opportunity to his jealous ambition by increasing his popularity. The royalist plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise (December 24, 1800) allowed him to make a clean sweep of the democratic republicans, who despite their innocence were depsrted to Guiana, and to annul Assemblies that were a mere show by making the senate omnipotent in constitutional matters; but it was necessary for him to transform this deceptive truce into the general pacification so ardently desired for the last eight years. The treaty of Lunvill~, signed in February 1801 with Austria who had been disarmed by Moreaus victory at Hohenlinden, restored peace to the continent, gave nearly the whole of Italy to France, and permitted Bonaparte to eliminate from the Assemblies all the leaders of the opposition in the discussion of the Civil Code. The Concordat (July i8oI), drawn up not in the Churchs interest but in. that of his own policy, by giving satisfaction to the religious feeling of the country, allowed him to put down the constitutional democratic Church, to rally round him the consciences of the peasants, and above all to deprive the royalists of their best weapon. The Articles Organiques hid from the eyes of his companions in arms and councillors a reaction which, in fact if not in law, restored to a submissive Church, despoiled of her revenues, her position as the religion of the state. The peace of Amiens with England (March 1802), Th ~

of which Frances allies, Spain and Holland, paid all su1te~~ the costs, finally gave the peacemaker a pretext for endowing himself with a Consulate, not for ten years but for life, as a recompense from the nation. The Rubicon was crossed on that day: Bonapartes march to empire began with the constitution of the year X. (August 1802).

Before all things it was now necessary to reorganize France, ravaged as she was by the Revolution, and with her institutions in a state of utter corruption. The touch of the master was at once revealed to all the foreigners who rushed to gaze at the man about whom, after so many cata- ~ strophesandstrangeadventures, Paris, lavillelumire, and all Europe were talking.. First of all, Louis XV.s system of roads was improved and that of Louis XVI.s canals developed; then industry put its shoulder to the wheel; order and discipline were re-established everywhere, from the frontiers to the capital, and brigandage suppressed; and finally there- was Paris, the city of cities! Everything was in process of transformation:

a second Rome was arising, with its forum, its triumphal arches, its shows and parades; and in this new Rome of a new Caesar fancy, elegance and luxury, a radiance of art and learning from the age of Pericles, and masterpieces rifled from the Netherlands, Italy and Egypt illustrated the consular peace. The Man of Destiny renewed the course of time. He borrowed from the ancien régime its plenipotentiaries; its over-centralized, strictly utilitarian administrative and bureaucratic methods; and afterwards, inorder to bring them into line, the subservient pedantic scholasticism of its university. On the basis laid down by the Constituent Assembly and the Convention he constructed or consolidated the funds necessary for national institutions, local governments, a judiciary system, organs of finance, banking, codes, traditions of conscientious well-disciplined labor, and in short all the organization which for three-quarters of a century was to maintain and regulate the concentrated activity of the French nation (see the section Law and Institutions). Peace and order helped to raise the standard of comfort. Provisions, in this Paris which had so often suffered from hunger and thirst, and lacked fire and light, had become cheap and abundant; while trade prospered arid wages ran high. The pomp and luxury of the nouveaux riches were displayed in the salons of the good Josephine, the beautiful Madame Tallien, and the divine Juliette Rcamier.

But the republicans, and above all the military, saw in all this little but the fetters of system; the wily despotism, the bullying The ,~. police, the prostration before authority, the sympathy pabikan lavished on royalists, the recall of the migrs, the opposi~ contempt for the Assemblies, the purification of the lion. Tribunate, the platitudes of the servile Senate, the silence of the press. In the formidable machinery of state, above all in the creation of the Legion of Honor, the Concordat, and the restoration of indirect taxes, they saw the rout of the Revolution: But the expulsion of persons like Benjamin Constant and Madame de Stael sufficed to quell this Fronde of the salons. The expedition to San Domingo reduced the republican army to a nullity; war demoralized or scattered the leaders, who were jealous of their comrade Bonaparte; and Moreau, the last of his rivals, cleverly compromised in a royalist plot, as Danton had formerly been by Robespierre, disappeared into exile. In contradistinction to this opposition of senators and republican generals, the immense mass of the people received the ineffaceable impression of Bonapartes superiority. No suggestion of the possibility of his death was tolerated, of a crime which might cut short his career. The conspiracy of Cadoudal and Pichegru, after Bonapartes refusal to give place to Louis XVIII., and the political execution of the duc dEnghien, provoked an outburst of adulation, of which Bonaparte took advantage to put the crowning touch to his ambitious dream.

The decision of the senate on the 18th of May 1804, giving him the title of emperor, was the counterblast to the dread N I he had excited. Thenceforward the brow of the emperor broke through the thin mask of the First May 18, Consul. Never did a harder master ordain more 1804; imperiously, nor understand better how to command 18,4. obedience. This was because, as Goethe said, under his orders men were sure of accomplishing their ends. That is why they rallied round him, as one to inspire them with that kind of certainty. Indeed no man ever concentrated authority to such a point, nor showed mental abilities at all comparable to his: an extraordinary power of work, prodigious memory for details and fine judgment in their selection; together with a luminous decision and a simple and rapid conception, all placed at the disposal of a sovereign will. No head of the state gave expression more imperiously than this Italian to the popular passions of the French of that day:

abhorrence for the emigrant nobility, fear of the ancien régime, dislike of foreigners, hatred of England, an appetite for conquest evoked by revolutionary propaganda, and the love of glory, In this Napoleon was a soldier of the people: because of this he judged and ruled his contemporaries. Having seen their actions in the stormy hours of the Revolution, he despised them and looked upon them as incapable of disinterested conduct, conceited, and obsessed by the notion of equality~ Hence his colossal egoism, his habitual disregard of others, his jealous passion for power, his impatience of all contradiction, his vain untruthful boasting, his unbridled self-sufficiency and lack of moderationpassions which were gradually to cloud his clear faculty of reasoning. His genius, assisted by the impoverishment of two generations, was like the oak which admits beneath its shade none but the smallest of saplings. With the exception of Talleyrand, after 1808 he would have about him only mediocre people, without initiative, prostrate at the feet of the giant:

his tribe of paltry, rapacious and embarrassing Corsicans; his admirably subservient generals; his selfish ministers, docile agents, apprehensive of the future, who for fourteen long years felt a prognostication of defeat and discounted the inevitable catastrophe.

So France had no internal history outside the plans and transformations to which Napoleon subjected the institutions of the Consulate, and the after-effects of his wars. Well knowing that his fortunes rested on the delighted acquiescence of France, Napoleon expected to continue indefinitely fashioning public opinion according to his pleasure. To his contempt for men he added that of all ideas which might put a bridle on his ambition; and to guard against them, he inaugurated the Golden Age of the police that he might tame every moral force to his hand. Being essentially a man of order, he loathed, as he said, all demagogic action, Jacobinism and visions of liberty, which he desired only for himself. To make his will predominant, he stifled or did violence to that of others, through his bishops, his gendarmes, his university, his press, his catechism. Nourished like Frederick II. and Catherinethe Great in 18th-century maxims, neither he nor they would allow any of that ideology to filter through into their rough but regular ordering of mankind. Thus the whole political system, being summed up in the emperor, was bound to share his fall.

Although an enemy of idealogues, in his foreign policy Napoleon was haunted by grandiose visions. A condottiere of the Renaissance living in the I9th century, he used France, and Napoleons all those nations annexed or attracted by the Revolu- political tion, to resuscitate the Roman conception of the idea, Empire for his own benefit. On. the other hand, he was enslaved by the history and aggressive idealism of the Convention, and of the republican propaganda under the Directory; he was guided by them quite as much as he guided them. Hence the immoderate extension given to French activity by his classical Latin spirit; hence also his conquests, leading on from one to another, and instead of being mutually helpful interfering with each other; hence, finally, his not entirely coherent policy, interrupted by hesitation and counter-attractions. This explains the retention of Italy, imposed on the Directory from 1796 onward, followed by his criminal treatment of Venice, the foundation of the Cisalpine republica foretaste of future annexatiofis the restoration of that republic after his return from Egypt, and in view of his as yet inchoate designs, the postponed solution of the Italian problem which the treaty of Lunville bad raised.

Marengo inaugurated the political idea which was to continue its development until his Moscow campaign. Napoleon dreamed as yet only of keeping the duchy of Milan, setting aside Austria, and preparing some new enterprise in the East or in Egypt. The peace of Amiens, which cost him Egypt, could only seem to him a temporary truce; whilst he was gradually extending his authority in Italy, the cradle of his race, by the union of Piedmont, and by his tentative plans regarding Genoa, Parma, Tuscany and Naples. He wanted to make this his Cisalpine Gaul, laying siege to the Roman state on every hand, and preparing in the Concordat for t~ie moral and material servitude of the pope. When he recognized his error in having raised the papacy from decadence by restoring its power over all the churches, he tried in vain to correct it by the Articles Organiques wanting, like Charlemagne, to be the legal protector of the pope, and eventually master of the Church. To conceal his plan he aroused French colonial aspirations against England, and also the memory of the spoliations of 1763, exasperating English jealousy of France, whose borders now exteiided to the Rhine, and laying hands on Hanover, Hamburg and Cuxhaven. By the Recess of 1803, which brought to his side Bavaria, Wurttemberg and Baden, he followed up the overwhelming tide of revolutionary ideas in. Germany, to stem which Pitt, back in power, appealed once more to an Anglo-Austro-Russian coalition against this new Charlemagne, who was trying to renew the old Empire, who was mastering France, Italy and Germany; who finally on the 2nd of December 1804 placed the imperial crown upon his head, after receiving the iron crown of the Lombard kings, and made Pius VII. consecrate him in Notre-Dame.

After this, in four campaigns from transformed his Carolingian feudal and federal empire into one modelled on the Roman empire. The memories of imperial Rome were for a third time, after Caesar and Charlemagne, to modify the historical evolution, of France. Though the vague plan for an invasion of England fell to the ground Ulm and Austerlitz obliterated Trafalgar, and the camp at Boulogne put the best military resources he had ever commanded at Napoleons disposal.

In the first of these campaigns lie swept away the remnants of the old Roman-Germanic empire, and out of its shattered fragments created in southern Germany the vassal states of Bavaria, Baden, Wurttemberg, Hesse1805. Darmstadt and Saxony, which he attached to France under the name of the Confederation of the Rhine; but the treaty of Presburg gave France nothing but the danger of a more centralized and less docile Germany. On the other hand, Napoleons creation of the kingdom of Italy, his annexation of Venetia and her ancient Adriatic empire wiping out the humiliation of 1797and the occupation of Ancona, marked a new stage in his progress towards his Roman Empire. His good fortune soon led him from conquest to spoliation, and he complicated his master-idea of the grand empire by his Family Compact; the clan of the Bonapartes invaded European monarchies, wedding with princesses of blood- royal, and adding kingdom to kingdom. Joseph replaced the dispossessed Bourbons at Naples; Louis was installed on the throne of Holland; Murat became grand-duke of Berg, Jerome son-in-law to the king of Wiirttemberg, and Eug~ne de Beauharnais to the king of Bavaria; while StphaIlie de Beauharnais married the son of the grand-duke of Baden.

Meeting with less and less resistance,Napoleon went still further and would tolerate no neutral power. On the 6th of August 1806

he forced the Habsburgs, left with only the crown of Austria, to abdicate their Roman-Germanic title of emperor. Prussia alone remained outside the Confederation of the Rhine, of which Napoleon was Protector, and to further her decision he offered her English Hanover. In a second campaign he lestroyed at Jena both the army and the state of Frederick William III., who could not make up his mind between the Napoleonic treaty of SchOnbrunn and Russias counter-proposal at Potsdam (October 14, 1806). The butchery at Eylau and the vengeance taken at Friedland finally ruined Frederick ~ylau and ,

Friedland. the Great s work, and obliged Russia, the ally 01 England and Prussia, to allow the latter to be despoiled, and to join Napoleon against the maritime tyranny of the former. After Tilsit, however (July 1807), instead of trying to reconcile Peace of Europe to his grandeur, Napoleon had but one thought:

Tilsit, to make use of his success to destroy England and ~ complete his Italian. dominion. It was from Berlin, on the 21st of November 1806, that he had dated the first decree of a continental blockade, a monstrous conception intended to paralyze his inveterate rival, but which on the con ~ ~ trary caused his own fall by its immoderate extension nen~tai of the empire. To the coalition of the northern powers blockade, he added the league of the Baltic and Mediterranean ports, and to the bombardment of Copenhagen by an English fleet he responded by a second decree of blockade, dated from Milan on the 17th of Dec~mbcr 1807.

But the application of the Cc,ncordat and the taking of Naples led to the first of those struggles with the pope, in which were formulated two antagonistic doctrines: Napoleon declaring himself Roman emperor, and Pius VII. renewing the theocratic affirmations of Gregory VII. The formers Roman ambition was made more and more plainly visible by the occupation of the kingdom of Naples and of the Marches,and the entry,of Miollis into Rome; while Junot invaded Portugal, Radet laid hands on the pope himself, and Murat took possession of formerly Roman Spain, whither Joseph was afterwards to be transferred. But Napoleon little knew the flame he was kindling. No more far-seeing than the Directory or the men of the year III., he thought that, with energy and execution, he might succeed in the Peninsula as he had succeeded in Italy in 1796 and 1797, in Egypt, and in Hesse, and that he might cut into Spanish granite as into Italian mosaic or that big cake, Germany. He stumbled unawares upon the revolt of a proud national spirit, evolved through ten historic centuries; and the trap of Bayonne, together with the enthroning of Joseph Bonaparte, made the contemptible prince of the Asturias the elect of popular sentiment, the representative of religion and country.

Napoleon thought he had Spain within his grasp, and now suddenly everything was slipping from him. The Peninsula became the grave of whole armies and a battlefield 8~en for England. Dupont capitulated at Bailen into the hands of Castanos, and Junot at Cintra to Wellesley; while Europe trembled at this first check to the hitherto invincible imperial armies. To reduce Spanish resistance Napoleon had in his turn to come to terms with the tsar Alexander at Erfurt; so that abandoning his designs in the East, he could maka the Grand Army evacuate Prussia and returnin force to Madrid.

Thus Spain swallowed up the soldiers who were wanted for Napoleons other fields of battle, and they had to be replaced by forced levies. Europe had only to wait, and he W.gr~. would eventually be found disarmed in face of a last coalition; but Spanish heroism infected Austria, and showed the force of national resistance. The provocations of Talleyrand and England strengthened the illusion: Why should not the Austrians emulate the Spaniards? The campaign of 1809, however, was but a pale copy of the Spanish insurrection. After a short and decisive action in Bavaria, Napoleon opened up the road to Vienna for a second time; and after the two days battle at Essling, the stubborn fight at Wagram, the failure of a patriotic insurrection in northern Germany and of the English expedition against Antwerp, the treaty of Vienna (December 14, 1809), with the annexation of the Illyrian provinces, completed ,~, the colossal empire. Napoleon profited, in fact, by this ~ campaign which had been planned for his overthrow.

The pope was deported to Savona beneath the eyes of indifferent Europe, and his domains were incorporated in the Empire; the senates decision on the 17th of February 1810 created the title of king of Rome, and made Rome the capital of Italy. The pope banished, it was now desirable to send away those to whom Italy had been more or less promised. Eugene de Beauharnais, Napoleons stepson, was transferred to Frankfort, and Murat carefully watched until the time should come to take him to Russia and instal him as king of Poland. Between 1810 and 1812 Napoleons divorce of Josephine, and his marriage with Marie Louise of Austria, followed by the birth of the king of Rome, shed a brilliant light upon his future policy. He renounced a federation in which his brothers were not sufficiently docile; he gradually withdrew power from them; he concentrated all his affection and ambition on the son who was the guarantee of the continuance of his dynasty. This was the apogee of his reign.

But undermining forces were already at work: the faults inherent in his unwieldy achievement. England, his chief enemy, was persistently active; and rebellion both of the governing and the governed broke out everywhere. onhe end. Napoleon felt his impotence in coping with the Spanish Uprising insurrection, which he underrated, while yet unable to suppress it altogether. I~Ien like Stein, Hardenberg and Scharnhorst were secretly preparing Prussias retaliation. Napoleons material omnipotence could not stand against the moral force of the pope, a prisoner at Fontainebleau; and this he did not realize. The alliance arranged at Tilsit was seriously shaken by the Austrian marriage, the threat of a Polish restoration, and the unfriendly policy of Napoleon. at Constantinople. The very persons whom he had placed in power were counteracting his plans: after four years experience Napoleon found himself obliged to treat his Corsican dynasties like those of the ancien régime, and all his relations were betraying him. Caroline conspired against her brother and against her husband; the hypochondriacal Louis, now Dutch in his sympathies, found the supervision of the blockade taken. from him, and also the defence of the Scheldt, which he had refused to ensure; Jerome, idling in his harem, lost that of the North Sea shores; and Joseph, who was attempting the moral conquest of Spain, was continually insulted at Madrid. The very nature of things was against the new dynasties, as it had been against the old.

After nation.al insurrections and family recriminations came treachery from Napoleons ministers. Talleyrand betrayed his ~ ~ designs to Metternich, and had to be dismissed; mac ery. Fouch corresponded with Austria in 1809 and 1810, entered into an understanding with Louis, and also with England; while Bourrienne was convicted of peculation. By a natural consequence of the spirit of conquest he had aroused, all these parvenus, having tasted victory, dreamed of sovereign power:

Bernadotte, who had helped him to the Consulate, played Napoleon false to win the crown of Sweden; Soult, like Murat, coveted the Spanish throne after that of Portugal, thus anticipating the treason of 1813 and the defection of 1814; many persons hoped for an accident which might resemble the tragic end of Alexander and of Caesar. - The country itself, besides, though flattered by conquests, was tired of self-sacrifice. It had become satiated; the cry of the mothers rose threateningly against the Ogre- and his intolerable imposition of wholesale conscription. The soldiers themselves, discontented after Austerlitz, cried out for peace after Eylau. Finally, amidst profound silence from the press and the Assemblies, a protest was raised against imperial despotism by the literary world, against the excommunicated sovereign by Catholicism, and against the author of the continental blockade by the discontented bourgeoisie, ruined by the crisis of 1811.

Napoleon himself was no longer the General Bonaparte of his campaign in Italy. He was already showing signs of physical decay; the Roman. medallion profile had coarsened, the obese body was often lymphatic. Mental degeneraNapoleon. tion, too, betrayed itself in an unwonted irresolution.

At Eylau, at Wagram, and later at Waterloo, his method of acting by enormous masses of infantry and cavalry, in a mad passion for conquest, and his misuse of his military resources, were all signs of his moral and technical decadence; and this at the precise moment when, instead of the armies and governments of the old system, which had hitherto reigned supreme, the nations themselves were rising against France, and the events of 1792 were being avenged upon her. The three campaigns of two years brought the final catastrophe.

Napoleon had hardly succeeded in putting down the revolt in Germany when the tsar himself headed a European insurrection against the ruinous tyranny of the continental Russian campaign. blockade. To put a stop to this, to ensure his own access to the Mediterranean and exclude his chief rival, Napoleon made a desperate effort in 1812 against a country as invincible as Spain. Despite his victorious advance, the taking of Smolensk, the victory on the Moskwa, and the entry into Moscow, he was vanquished by Russian patriotism and religious fervour, by the country and the climate, and by Alexanders refusal to make terms. After this came the lamentable retreat, while all Europe was concentrating against him. Pushed back, as he had been in Spain, from bastion to bastion, after the action on the Beresina, Napoleon had to fall back upon the frontiers of 1809, and thenhaving refused the peace offered him by Austria at the congress of Prague, from a dread of losing Italy, where each of his victories had marked a stage in the accomplishment of his dreamon those of 1805, despite Lfltzen and Bautzen, and on those of 1802 after his defeat at Leipzig, where Bernadotte turned upon him, Moreau figured among the Allies, and the Saxons and Bavarians forsook him. Following his retreat from Russia came ~ ,. his retreat from Germany. After the loss of Spain, ff15 reconquered by Wellington, the rising in Holland preliminary to the invasion and the manifesto of Frankfort which proclaimed it, he had to fall back upon the frontiers of 1795; and then later was driven yet farther back upon. those of 1792, despite the wonderful campaign of 1814 against the invaders, in which the old Bonaparte of 1796 seemed to have returned. Paris capitulated on the 3oth of March, and the Delenda Carthago, pronounced against England, was spokenof Napoleon. The great empire of East and West fell in ruins with the emperors abdication at Fontainebleau.

The military struggle ended, the political struggle began. How was France to be governed? The Allies had decided on the eviction of Napoleon at the Congress of CMtillon; and the precarious nature of the Bonapartist monarchy o~:~ in France itself was made manifest by the exploit of Empire. General Malet, which had almost succeeded during the Russian campaign, and by Lams demand for free exercise of political rights, when Napoleon made a last appeal to the Legislative Assembly for support. The defection of the military and civil aristocracy, which brought about Napoleons abdication, the refusal of a regency, and the failure of Bernadotte, who wished to resuscitate the Consulate, enabled Talleyrand, vicepresident of the senate and desirous of power, to persuade the Allies to accept the Bourbon solution of the difficulty. The declaration of St Ouen (May 2, 1814) indicated that the new monarchy was only accepted upon conditions. After Napoleons abdication, ~nd exile to the island of Elba, came the Revolutions abdication of her conquests: the first treaty of Paris (May 30th) confirmed Frances renunciation of Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, and her return within her pre-revolutionary frontiers, save for some slight rectifications.

(Continued in France: History (2)