and 1783-1787.
FOX INDIANS, The.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY,
and SACS, &c.
For an account of the massacre of Fox Indians
at Detroit in 1712,
See CANADA: A. D. 1711-1713.
For an account of the Black Hawk War,
See ILLINOIS: A.. D. 1832.
FRANCE:
Gallic and Roman.
See GAUL. A. D. 481-843.
FRANCE:
Under the Franks, to the division of the Empire of
Charlemagne.
See FRANKS.
FRANCE: A. D. 841-911.
Ravages and settlements of the Northmen.
See NORMANS: A. D. 841 to 876-911.
FRANCE: 9th Century.
Introduction of the modern name.
At the time of the division of the empire of Charlemagne
between his three grand-sons, which was made a definite and
lasting political separation by the Treaty of Verdun, A. D.
843, "the people of the West [western Europe] had come to be
divided, with more and more distinctness, into two classes,
those composed of Franks and Germans, who still adhered to the
Teutonic dialects, and those, composed of Franks,
Gallo-Romans, and Aquitanians, who used the Romance dialects,
or the patois which had grown out of a corrupted Latin. The
former clung to the name of Germans, while the latter, not to
lose all share in the glory of the Frankish name, began to
call themselves Franci, and their country Francia Nova, or New
France. ... Francia was the Latin name of Frankenland, and had
long before been applied to the dominions of the Franks on
both sides of the Rhine. Their country was then divided into
East and West Francia; but in the time of Karl the Great
[Charlemagne] and Ludwig Pious, we find the monk of St. Gall
using the terms Francia Nova, in opposition to the Francia,
'quæ dicitur antiqua.'"
P. Godwin,
History of France: Ancient Gaul,
chapter 18, with note.
"As for the mere name of Francia, like other names of the
kind, it shifted its geographical use according to the
wanderings of the people from whom it was derived. After many
such changes of meaning, it gradually settled down as the name
for those parts of Germany and Gaul where it still abides.
There are the Teutonic or Austrian [or Austrasian] Francia,
part of which still keeps the name of Franken or Franconia,
and the Romance or Neustrian Francia, which by various
annexations has grown into modern France."
E. A. Freeman,
Historical Geography of Europe,
volume 1, page 121.
"As late as the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, the name of
Frank was still used, and used too with an air of triumph, as
equivalent to the name of German. The Kings and kingdoms of
this age had indeed no fixed titles, because all were still
looked on as mere portions of the great Frankish realm.
Another step has now been taken towards the creation of modern
France; but the older state of things has not yet wholly
passed away. Germany has no definite name; for a long time it
is 'Francia Orientalis,' 'Francia Teutonica'; then it becomes
'Regnum Teutonicum,' 'Regnum Teutonicorum.' But it is equally
clear that, within the limits of that Western or Latin France,
Francia and Francus were fast getting their modern meanings of
France and Frenchmen, as distinguished from Frank or German."
E. A. Freeman,
The Franks and the Gauls
(Historical Essays, 1st series, number 7).
{1158}
FRANCE: A. D. 843.
The kingdom of Charles the Bald.
The first actual kingdom of France (Francia Nova--Francia
Occidentalis), was formed in the partition of the empire of
Charlemagne between his three grandsons, by the Treaty of
Verdun, A. D. 843. It was assigned to Charles, called "the
Bald," and comprised the Neustria of the older Frank
divisions, together with Aquitaine. It "had for its eastern
boundary, the Meuse, the Saône and the Rhone; which,
nevertheless, can only be understood of the Upper Meuse, since
Brabant was certainly not comprised in it"; and it extended
southwards beyond the Pyrenees to the Ebro.
H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 1, part 1, footnote.
"Charles and his successors have some claim to be accounted
French. They rule over a large part of France, and are cut
away from their older connexion with Germany. Still, in
reality they are Germans and Franks. They speak German, they
yearn after the old imperial name, they have no national
feeling at all. On the other hand, the great lords of
Neustria, as it used to be called, are ready to move in that
direction, and to take the first steps towards a new national
life. They cease to look back to the Rhine, and occupy
themselves in a continual struggle with their kings. Feudal
power is founded, and with it the claims of the bishops rise
to their highest point. But we have not yet come to a kingdom
of France. ... It was no proper French kingdom; but a dying
branch of the Empire of Charles the Great. ... Charles the
Bald, entering on his part of the Caroling Empire, found three
large districts which refused to recognise him. These were
Aquitaine, whose king was Pippin II.; Septimania, in the hands
of Bernard; and Brittany under Nominoë. He attempted to reduce
them; but Brittany and Septimania defied him, while over
Aquitaine he was little more than a nominal suzerain."
G. W. Kitchin,
History of France,
volume 1, book 2, part 2, chapter 5.
ALSO IN:
E. A. Freeman,
Historical Geography of Europe,
chapter 6, section 1.
See, also,
FRANKS (CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE): A. D. 814-962.
----------------------------------------
A Logical Outline of French History
(Red) Physical or material.
(Blue) Ethnologilcal.
(Green) Social and political.
(Brown) Intellectual, moral and religious.
(Black) Foreign.
IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND
INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.
The country known anciently as Gaul, and in modern times as
France, is distinguished by no physical characteristics that
will go far towards explaining its history. Lying within the
middle degrees of the northern temperate zone, greatly
diversified in its superficial features, and varied in the
qualities of its soil, it represents a fair average of the
more favorable conditions of human life.
The Gauls.
The inhabitants of the land when the Romans subdued it were a
Celtic people, belonging to the race which has survived to the
present day with least admixture or modification in the
Bretons, the Welsh, the Celtic Irish and the Highland Scotch.
The peculiar traits of the race in mind and temper are so
visible in French history as to show that the nation has never
ceased to be essentially Gallic in blood.
B. C. 51-A. D. 406; Roman Gaul.
Under the control and the teaching of Rome for four centuries
and a half, the Gauls were perfected in her civilization and
corrupted by the vices of her decay.
5th Century; Frank Conquest.
When the invasion of Teutonic barbarism broke the barrier of
the Rhine, they were easily but not quickly overwhelmed, and
sank under a conquest more complete than that from Rome had
been; since the whole body of the conquerors came to dwell
within the land, and to be neighbors and masters, at once. For
the most part, these invaders preferred country to town, and
carved estates for themselves in all the districts that were
fertile and fair. The Gallo-Romans, or Romanized Gauls, were
left to more freedom in their cities than outside; but their
cities were blighted in industry and in trade by the common
ruin around them. In the rural districts, few liberties or
rights were preserved for the subjugated race.
Feudalism.
The form of society which the German conquerors brought with
them into Gaul was broken by the change of circumstance, quite
as much as the form of society which they overthrew. The camp
gave place to the castle; the wandering war-chief acquired the
firmer superiority of a great land-proprietor and lord; his
warriors slipped in station from free followers to dependents,
in divers degrees; the greater chiefs won the title of kings;
the fiercer kings destroyed their rivals; and four or five
centuries shaped, by slow processes that are traceable,
indistinctly, the military structure of society called Feudal,
which organized lawlessness with picturesque and destructive
effects.
A. D. 481-752. Merovingian monarchy.
A. D. 768-814. Empire of Charlemagne.
All authority withered, except the spiritual authority of the
Church, which steadily grew. The royalty that had thrived for
a time upon the distribution of lands, dignities and powers,
lost prestige when it had expended the domains at its
disposal, and when offices and estates were clutched in
hereditary possession. Before it actually expired, there arose
a family of remarkable men--great in four successive
generations--who put its crown upon their own heads and made
it powerful again. The last and greatest of these expanded the
Frank kingdom into a new Roman Empire; but the energy of the
achievement was wholly his own, and his empire fell to pieces
when he died.
A. D. 987. Kingdom of Hugh Capet.
11th-12th centuries. Enfranchisement of the Communes.
In the part which became France, royalty dwindled once more;
the great dukes and counts nominally subject to it, in the
feudal sense, renewed and increased their power; until one of
their number took the throne, and bequeathed it to his heirs.
This new line of kings won back by degrees the ascendancy of
the crown. The small actual dominion, surrounding Paris, with
which they began, was widened slowly by the strong,
authoritative arm. They made themselves, in rude fashion, the
champions of order and law. They took the people of the towns
into alliance with them; for the towns were beginning to
catch the spirit of the free cities of Italy, and the sturdy
temper of the Flemish burghers, and to assume the name of
"communes," or commons, casting off the feudal yoke that had
been laid upon them. The kings lent their countenance to the
communes, and the communes strengthened the hands of the
kings. Between them and much helped by the stir of the
Crusades, they loosened the roots of feudalism, until its
decay set in. The king's courts and the king's officers pushed
their jurisdiction into a widening realm, until the king's
authority had become supreme, in fact as well as in name.
Even the measureless misery of a hundred years of war with
English kings brought power, in the end, to the crown, by
weakening the greater lords, and by bringing into existence a
fixed military force.
A. D. 1337-1453. Hundred Years War.
Happy accidents, shrewd marriages, and cunning intrigues
gathered the great dukedoms, one by one, into the royal
domain, and the solidarity of modern France was attained.
16th-17th centuries. Aggrandisement of the Monarchy.
But People and King stood no longer side by side. The league
of King and Commons against the Lords had proved less happy
than the alliance in England of Commons and Lords against the
King. Royalty emerged from the patient struggle alone in
possession of sovereign power. It had used the communes and
then abused them, breaking their charters--their
liberties--their courage--their hopes--and widening the
distance between class and class. The "estates" of the realm
became a memory and a name. During five hundred years, while
the Parliament of England grew in majesty and might, the
States-General of France were assembled but thirteen times.
The Court.
When royalty, at last, invented the fatal enchantments of a
"Court," then the blighting of all other powers was soon
complete. It drew within its spell, from all the provinces of
France, their nobles, their men of genius, their aspiring
spirits, and assembled them to corrupt and debase them
together--to make them its pensioners and hirelings, its
sycophants, its jesters, its knaves.
Suppression of the Huguenots.
Neither Renaissance nor Reformation could undo the spell.
Ideas from the one and a great faith from the other joined in
league for the liberty of both, and the thoughtful among the
people were rallied to them with craving eagerness. But
bigotry and frivolity ruled the Court, and the Court proved
stronger than France. Freedom of conscience, and every species
of freedom with it, were destroyed; by massacre, by civil war,
by oppressive government, by banishment, by corrupting bribes.
18th century. The "Ancien Régime."
And always the grandeur of the monarchy increased; its rule
grew more absolute; its Court sucked the life-blood of the
State more remorselessly. The People starved, that the King
might be magnificent; they perished in a thousand battles,
that his name might be "glorious;" they went into exile,
carrying away the arts of France, that the piety of the King
might not be shocked by their heresies. But always, too, there
was growing in the world, around France and in France, a
knowledge,--an understanding,--a modern spirit,--that rebelled
against these infamies.
A. D. 1789-1799. Revolution.
A. D. 1799-1815. Napoleon.
In due time there came an end. Court, and King, and Church,
and all that even seemed to be a part of the evil old regime,
were whirled into a red gulf of Revolution and disappeared.
The people, unused to Liberty, were made drunken by it, and
went mad. In breaking the gyves of feudalism they broke every
other restraint, and wrecked society in all its forms. Then,
in the stupor of their debauch, they gave themselves to a new
despot--mean, conscienceless, detestable, but transcendent in
the genius and the energy of his selfishness--who devoured
them like a dragon, in the hunger of his insatiate ambition,
and persuaded them to be proud of their fate.
A. D. 1815-1830. Bourbon Restoration.
A. D. 1830-1848. Louis Phillippe
A. D. 1848-1851. Second Republic.
A. D. 1852-1870. Second Empire.
A. D. 1870-. Third Republic.
Europe suppressed the intolerable adventurer, and France, for
three-fourths of a century since, has been under an
apprenticeship of experience, slowly learning the art of
self-government by constitutional modes. Two monarchies, one
republic, and a sham empire are the spoiled samples of her
work. A third republic, now in hand, is promising better
success. It rests with seeming stability on the support of the
great class of peasant landowners, which the very miseries of her
misgoverned past have created for France. Trained to pinching
frugality by the hard conditions of the old regime; unspoiled
by any ruinous philanthropy, like that of the English
poor-laws; stimulated to land-buying by opportunities which
came, first, from the impoverishment of extravagant nobles,
and, later, from revolutionary confiscations; encouraged to
the same acquisition by favorable laws of transfer and equal
inheritance,--the landowning peasants of France constitute a
Class powerful in numbers, invincible in conservatism, an
profoundly interested in the preservation of social order.
--------End: A Logical Outline of French History-----------
FRANCE: A. D. 861.
Origin of the duchy and of the house of Capet.
In 861, Charles the Bald, king of that part of the dismembered
empire of Charlemagne which grew into the kingdom of France,
was struggling with many difficulties: defending himself
against the hostile ambition of his brother, Louis the German;
striving to establish his authority in Brittany and Aquitaine;
harried and harassed by Norse pirates; surrounded by domestic
treachery and feudal restiveness. All of his many foes were
more or less in league against him, and the soul of their
combination appears to have been a certain bold adventurer--a
stranger of uncertain origin, a Saxon, as some say--who bore
the name of Robert the Strong. In this alien enemy, King
Charles, who never lacked shrewdness, discovered a possible
friend. He opened negotiations with Robert the Strong, and a
bargain was soon made which transferred the sword and the
energy of the potent mercenary to the service of the king.
"Soon after, a Placitum or Great Council was held at
Compiègne. In this assembly, and by the assent of the
Optimates, the Seine and its islands, and that most important
island Paris, and all the country between Seine and Loire,
were granted to Robert, the Duchy of France, though not yet so
called, moreover the Angevine Marches, or County of
Outre-Maine, all to be held by Robert-le-Fort as barriers
against Northmen and Bretons, and by which cessions the realm
was to be defended. Only a portion of this dominion owned the
obedience of Charles: the Bretons were in their own country,
the Northmen in the country they were making their own; the
grant therefore was a license to Robert to win as much as he
could, and to keep his acquisitions should he succeed. ...
Robert kept the Northmen in check, yet only by incessant
exertion. He inured the future kings of France, his two young
sons, Eudes and Robert, to the tug of war, making them his
companions in his enterprises. The banks of the Loire were
particularly guarded by him, for here the principal attacks
were directed." Robert the Strong fought valiantly, as he had
contracted to do, for five years, or more, and then, in an
unlucky battle with the Danes, one summer day in 866, he fell.
"Thus died the first of the Capets." All the honors and
possessions which he had received from the king were then
transferred, not to his sons, but to one Hugh, Count of
Burgundy, who became also Duke or Marquis of France and Count
of Anjou. Twenty years later, however, the older son of
Robert, Eudes, turns up in history again as Count of Paris,
and nothing is known of the means by which the family, soon to
become royal, had recovered its footing and its importance.
Sir F. Palgrave,
History of Normandy and England,
book 1, chapter 3 (volume 1).
FRANCE: A. D. 877-987.
The end of the Carolingian monarchy and the rise of the
Capetian.
Charles the Bald died in 877 and was succeeded by his son
Louis, called "the Stammerer," who reigned only two years. His
two sons, Louis and Carloman, were joint kings for a short
space, struggling with the Northmen and losing the provinces
out of which Duke Boson of Provence, brother-in-law of Charles
the Bald, formed the kingdom of Arles. Louis died in 882 and
Carloman two years afterwards; thereupon Charles, surnamed
"the Fat," king of Lombardy and Germany, and also emperor
(nephew of Charles the Bald), became likewise king of France,
and briefly reunited under his feebly handled sceptre the
greater part of the old empire of Charlemagne: When he died,
in 888, a party of the nobles, tired of his race, met and
elected Count Eudes (or Odo), the valiant Count of Paris, who
had just defended his city with obstinate courage against the
Northmen, to be their king. The sovereignty of Eudes was not
acknowledged by the nation at large. His opponents found a
Carling to set up against him, in the person of the boy
Charles,--youngest son of Louis "the Stammerer," born after
his father's death,--who appears in history as Charles "the
Simple." Eudes, after some years of war, gave up to Charles a
small domain, between the Seine and the Meuse, acknowledged
his feudal superiority and agreed that the whole kingdom
should be surrendered to him on his (Eudes') death. In
accordance with this agreement, Charles the Simple became sole
king in 898, when Eudes died, and the country which
acknowledged his nominal sovereignty fell into a more
distracted state than ever. The Northmen established
themselves in permanent occupation of the country on the lower
Seine, and Charles, in 911, made a formal cession of it to
their duke, Rollo, thus creating the great duchy of Normandy.
In 922 the nobles grew once more disgusted with the feebleness
of their king and crowned Duke Robert, brother of the late king
Eudes, driving Charles into his stronghold of Laon. The
Normans came to Charles' help and his rival Robert was killed
in a battle.
{1159}
But Charles was defeated, was inveigled into the hands of one
of the rebel Lords.--Herbert of Venmandois--and kept a
prisoner until he died, in 929. One Rodolf of Burgundy had
been chosen king, meantime, and reigned until his death, in
936. Then legitimacy triumphed again, and a young son of
Charles the Simple, who had been reared in England, was sent
for and crowned. This king--Louis IV.--his son, Lothair, and
his grandson, Louis V., kept possession of the shaking throne
for half-a-century; but their actual kingdom was much of the
time reduced to little more than the royal city of Laon and
its immediate territories. When Louis died, in 987, leaving no
nearer heir than his uncle, Charles, Duke of Lorraine, there
was no longer any serious attempt to keep up the Carolingian
line. Hugh, Duke of France--whose grandfather Robert, and
whose grand-uncle Eudes had been crowned kings, before him,
and whose father, "Hugh the Great," had been the king-maker of
the period since--was now called to the throne and settled
himself firmly in the seat which a long line of his
descendants would hold. He was known as Hugh Capet to his
contemporaries, and it is thought that he got the name from
his wearing of the hood, cap, or cape of St. Martin--he being
the abbot of St. Martin at Tours, in addition to his other
high dignities.
G. W. Kitchin,
History of France,
volume 1, book 2, part 2, chapter 5;
book 3, chapter 1.
ALSO IN:
Sir F. Palgrave,
History of Normandy and England,
book 1, chapter 5 (volume l).
C. F. Keary,
The Vikings in Western Christendom,
chapters 11 and 13-15.
See, also, LAON.
FRANCE: A. D. 987.
Accession of Hugh Capet.
The kingdom of the early Capetians.
"On the accession of the third race [the Capetians], France,
properly so called, only comprised the territory between the
Somme and the Loire; it was bounded by the counties of
Flanders and Vermandois on the north; by Normandy and Brittany
on the west; by the Champagne on the east; by the duchy of
Aquitaine on the south. The territory within these bounds was
the duchy of France, the patrimonial possession of the Capets,
and constituted the royal domain. The great fiefs of the
crown, in addition to the duchy of France, were the duchy of
Normandy, the duchy of Burgundy, nearly the whole of Flanders,
formed into a county, the county of Champagne, the duchy of
Aquitaine, and the county of Toulouse. ... The sovereigns of
these various states were the great vassals of the crown and
peers of France; Lorraine and a portion of Flanders were
dependent on the Germanic crown, while Brittany was a fief of
the duchy of Normandy. ... The county of Barcelona beyond the
Alps was also one of the great fiefs of the crown of France."
E. de Bonnechose,
History of France: second epoch,
book 1, chapter 2.
"With the exception of the Spanish March and of part of
Flanders, all these states have long been fully incorporated
with the French monarchy. But we must remember that, under the
earlier French Kings, the connexion of most of these provinces
with their nominal suzerain was even looser than the connexion
of the German princes after the Peace of Westphalia with the
Viennese Emperors. A great French Duke was as independent
within his own dominions as an Elector of Saxony or Bavaria,
and there were no common institutions, no Diet or assembly of
any kind, to bring him into contact either with his liege lord
or with his fellow-vassals. Aquitaine and Toulouse ... seem
almost to have forgotten that there was any King of the French
at all, or at all events that they had anything to do with him.
They did not often even pay him the compliment of waging war
upon him, a mode of recognition of his existence which was
constantly indulged in by their brethren of Normandy and
Flanders."
E. A. Freeman,
The Franks and the Gauls
(Historical Essays, 1st series, number 7).
"When France was detached from the Empire in the ninth
century, of all three imperial regions she was the one which
seemed least likely to form a nation. There was no unity in
the country west of the Scheldt, the Meuse, and the Rhone.
Various principalities, duchies, or counties were here formed,
but each of them was divided into secular fiefs and
ecclesiastical territories. Over these fiefs and territories
the authority of the duke or the count, which was supposed to
represent that of the king, was exercised only in case these
seigneurs had sufficient power, derived from their own
personal estates. Destitute of domains and almost starving,
the king, in official documents, asked what means he might
find on which to live with some degree of decency. From time
to time, amid this chaos, he discussed the theory of his
authority. He was a lean and solemn phantom, straying about
among living men who were very rude and energetic. The phantom
kept constantly growing leaner, but royalty did not vanish.
People were accustomed to its existence, and the men of those
days could not conceive of a revolution. By the election of
Hugh Capet, in 987, royalty became a reality, because the
king, as Duke of Francia, had lands, money, and followers. It
would be out of place to seek a plan of conduct and a
methodical line of policy in the actions of the Capetians, for
they employed simultaneously every sort of expedient. During
more than three centuries they had male offspring; thus the
chief merit of the dynasty was that it endured. As always
happens, out of the practice developed a law; and this happy
accident produced a lawful hereditary succession, which was a
great element of strength. Moreover the king had a whole
arsenal of rights: old rights of Carolingian royalty,
preserving, the remembrance of imperial power, which the study
of the Roman law was soon to resuscitate, transforming these
apparitions into formidable realities; old rights conferred by
the coronation, which were impossible to define, and hence
incontestable; and rights of suzerainty, newer and more real,
which were definitely determined and codified as feudalism
developed and which, joined to the other rights mentioned
above, made the king proprietor of France. These are the
elements that Capetian royalty contributed to the play of
fortuitous circumstances."
E. Lavisse,
General View of the Political History of Europe,
chapter 3.
See, also, TWELVE PEERS OF FRANCE.
{1160}
FRANCE: A. D. 987-1327.
The Feudal Period.
"The period in the history of France, of which we are about to
write, began with the consecration of Hugues Capet, at Reims,
the 3rd of July, 987, but it is a period which would but
improperly take its name from the Capetians; for throughout
this time royalty was, as it were, annihilated in France; the
social bond was broken, and the country which extends from the
Rhine to the Pyrenees, and from the English Channel to the
Gulf of Lyon, was governed by a confederation of princes
rarely under the influence of a common will, and united only
by the Feudal System. While France was confederated under
feudal administration, the legislative power was suspended.
Hugues Capet and his successors, until the accession of St.
Louis, had not the right of making laws; the nation had no
diet, no regularly constituted assemblies whose authority it
acknowledged. The Feudal System, tacitly adopted, and
developed by custom, was solely acknowledged by the numerous
sovereigns who divided the provinces among themselves. It
replaced the social bond, the monarch, and the legislator. ...
The period ... is therefore like a long interregnum, during
which the royal authority was suspended, although the name of
king was always preserved. He who bore this title in the midst
of a republic of princes was only distinguished from them by
some honorary prerogative, and he exercised over them scarcely
any authority. Until very near the end of the 11th century,
these princes were scarcely less numerous than the castles
which covered France. No authority was acknowledged at a
distance, and every fortress gave its lord rank among the
sovereigns. The conquest of England by the Normans broke the
equilibrium between the feudal lords; one of the confederate
princes, become a king in 1066, gradually extended, until
1179, his domination over more than half of France; and
although it was not he who bore the title of king of the
French, it may be imagined that in time the rest of the
country would also pass under his yoke. Philip the August and
his son, during the forty-six last years of the same period,
reconquered almost all the fiefs which the English kings had
united, brought the other great vassals back to obedience, and
changed the feudal confederation which had ruled France into a
monarchy, which incorporated the Feudal System in its
constitution."
J. C. L. de Sismondi,
France Under the Feudal System
(translated by W. Bellingham), chapter 1.
"The feudal period, that is, the period when the feudal system
was the dominant fact of our country, ... is comprehended
between Hugh Capet and Philippe de Valois, that is, it
embraces the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. ... At the end of
the 10th century, royalty and the commons were not visible, or
at all events scarcely visible. At the commencement of the
14th century, royalty was the head of the state, the commons
were the body of the nation. The two forces to which the
feudal system was to succumb had then attained, not, indeed,
their entire development, but a decided preponderance. ...
With the 14th century, the character of war changed. Then
began the foreign wars; no longer a vassal against suzerain,
or vassal against vassal, but nation against nation,
government against government. On the accession of Philippe de
Valois, the great wars between the French and the English
broke out--the claims of the kings of England, not upon any
particular fief, but upon the whole land, and upon the throne
of France--and they continued up to Louis XI. They were no
longer feudal, but national wars; a certain proof that the
feudal period stopped at this limit, that another society had
already commenced."
F. P. Guizot,
History of Civilization,
2d course, lecture 1.
FRANCE: A. D. 996.
Accession of King Robert II.
FRANCE: A. D. 1031.
Accession of King Henry I.
FRANCE: A. D. 1060.
Accession of King Philip I.
FRANCE: A. D. 1070-1125.
Enfranchisement of Communes.
"The establishment of the commune of Mans, towards the year
1070, was not a fact, isolated, and without respect to what
passed in the rest of France; it was, on the contrary, a
symptom of the great revolution which was working in the
opinions, the manners, and the condition of the mass of the
people; a symptom which, bearing a certain date, must serve to
establish the epoch of a crowd of analogous efforts made in
the other towns of France. History has not preserved the
memory of these different efforts, but it has shown us the
results. During the two following centuries, the cities ceased
not to obtain charters, to found or secure by legitimate
authority, the immunities and franchises which constituted the
communal rights. ... All, or nearly all had, however, already
conquered liberty; they had experienced how advantageous it
was to be governed by themselves, and the high price which
they put upon the favor they solicited, bears witness to their
experience. The enfranchisement of the communes is almost
universally reported in the ... reign ... of Louis the Fat;
and the honor of this great revolution, which created the
third estate [tiers-état], and liberty in France, has been
given either to the generosity or the wise policy of that
prince. There is doubtless some truth in this opinion, since
we find in France no communal charter anterior to the reign of
Louis VI., and he is also the first king who was seen to ally
himself with the burgesses, to make war on the nobility.
However, the idea which is formed of this event, when one
attributes it to the act of the monarch's will, or the effect
of his system, is completely erroneous. The French people owed
whatever degree of liberty it enjoyed in the middle ages, to
its own valor; it acquired it as liberty must always be
acquired, at the sword's point; it profitted by the divisions,
the imprudence, the weakness, or the crimes of its lords, lay
or ecclesiastic, to seize it from and in spite of them. ...
The origin of every commune was, as indicated by the different
names by which they are designated, a communion, a conjuration,
or confederation, of the inhabitants of a town who were
mutually engaged to defend each other. The first act of the
commune was the occupation of a tower in which was set up a
clock or belfry; and the first clause of the oath of all the
communers, was to repair in arms, when the bell sounded, at
the place assigned them, to defend each other. From this first
engagement resulted that of submitting to magistrates named by
the communers: it was the mayors, echevins, and juries, in
northern France, and consuls or syndics in southern France, to
whom the consent of all abandoned the sole right of directing
the common efforts. Thus the militia was first created; the
magistracy came afterwards. ... The reign of Phillip I. had
been but a long anarchy. During those forty-eight years the
royal government had not existed, and no other had
efficaciously taken its place. At the same time, greatly
differing from the other feudal monarchies, all legislative
power was suspended in France. There were no diets like those
of the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, no parliament like that
of England, no cortes like those of Spain, no field of March
like that of the antient Frankish kings, no assemblages, in
fine, which bound by their acts the great vassals and their
subjects, and which could submit them to common laws.
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The French had not desired a participation in the sovereignty
which they could only acquire by sacrificing their
independence. Thus, two great vassals, or the subjects of two
great vassals, could scarcely believe themselves compatriots.
... The anarchy which was found in the great state of the
French monarchy, because all the relations between the king
and the count were relaxed, was found also in the petty state
of the county of Paris, or of the duchy of France; for the
lords and barons of the crown's domains no better obeyed or
respected more the prerogatives of their lord, than the great
vassals those of the suzerain. The anarchy was complete, the
disorder seemed carried to its height, and never had the
social bond in France been nearer to being broken: yet never
had France made so real a progress as during these forty-eight
years. Phillip, at his death, left his son quite another
people to that which he had received from his father: the most
active monarch would never have done so much for France as she
had without him done for herself during his sleep. The towns
were more numerous, more populous, more opulent, and more
industrious; property had acquired a security unknown in the
preceding centuries; justice was distributed between equals,
and by equals; and the liberty of the burgesses, conquered by
arms, was defended with energy."
J. C. L. S. de Sismondi,
France under the Feudal System,
chapters 9 and 12.
"Liberty ... was to have its beginning in the towns, in the
towns of the centre of France, which were to be called
privileged towns, or communes, and which would either receive
or extort their franchises. ... All coveted a few franchises
or privileges, and offered to purchase them; for, needy and
wretched as they were, poor artisans, smiths and weavers,
suffered to cluster for shelter at the foot of a castle, or
fugitive serfs crowding round a church, they could manage to
find money; and men of this stamp were the founders of our
liberties. They willingly starved themselves to procure the
means of purchase; and king and barons rivalled each other in
selling charters which fetched so high a price. This
revolution took place all over the kingdom under a thousand
different forms, and with but little disturbance; so that it
has only attracted notice with regard to some towns of the
Oise and the Somme, which, placed in less favorable
circumstances, and belonging to two different lords, one a
layman, the other ecclesiastical, resorted to the king for a
solemn guarantee of concessions often violated, and maintained
a precarious liberty at the cost of several centuries of civil
war. To these towns the name of communes has been more
particularly applied; and the wars they had to wage form a
slight but dramatic incident in this great revolution, which
was operating silently and under different forms in all the
towns of the north of France. 'Twas in brave and choleric
Picardy, whose commons had so soundly beaten the Normans--in
the country of Calvin, and of so many other revolutionary
spirits--that these explosions took place. Noyon, Beauvais,
Laon, three ecclesiastical lordships, were the first communes;
to these may be added St. Quentin. Here the Church had laid
the foundations of a powerful democracy. ... The king has been
said to be the founder of the communes; but the reverse is
rather the truth: it is the communes that established the
king. Without them, he could not have beaten off the Normans;
and these conquerors of England and the Two Sicilies would
probably have conquered France. It was the communes, or, to
use a more general and exact term, the bourgeoisies, which,
under the banner of the saint of the parish, enforced the
common peace between the Oise and the Loire; while the king,
on horseback, bore in front the banner of the abbey of St.
Denys."
M. Michelet,
History of France,
book 4, chapter 4.
See, also, COMMUNES.
The following comments on the passages quoted above are made
by a good authority: "The general view taken of this subject
of the enfranchisement of the communes by historians who wrote
at the middle of the century is now being seriously modified.
The studies of Luchaire have shown, I think, that such
statements as Sismondi's, which attribute everything to the
people, are exaggerations. 'Liberty,' as it existed in the
communes, was only corporate or aristocratic privilege. As for
the national assemblages, there were great councils held, such
as those which existed under the Norman monarchs in England,
and they issued the 'assizes,' which was a common form of
legislation in the Middle Ages. It was not, of course,
legislation, in its modern sense. Michelet is quite too
flowery, poetical, democratic, to be safely followed."
FRANCE: A. D. 1096.
Departure of the First Crusaders.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1096-1099.
FRANCE: A. D. 1100.
The extent of the kingdom.
"When Louis [VI.] was adopted by his father in 1100, the crown
had as its own domain only the county of Paris, Hurepoix, the
Gatinais, the Orléanis, half the county of Sens, the French
Vexin, and Bourges, together with some ill-defined rights over
the episcopal cities of Rheims, Beauvais, Laon, Noyon,
Soissons, Amiens. And even within these narrow limits the
royal power was but thinly spread over the surface. The barons
in their castles were in fact independent, and oppressed the
merchants and poor folk as they would. The king had also
acknowledged rights of suzerainty over Champagne, Burgundy,
Normandy, Brittany, Flanders, and Boulogne; but, in most
cases, the only obedience the feudal lords stooped to was that
of duly performing the act of homage to the king on first
succession to a fief. He also claimed suzerainty, which was
not conceded, over the South of France; over Provence and
Lorraine he did not even put forth a claim of lordship."
G. W. Kitchin,
History of France,
volume 1, book 3, chapter 5.
FRANCE: A. D. 1101.
Disastrous Crusade of French princes and knights.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1101-1102.
FRANCE: A. D. 1106-1119.
War with Henry I. of England and Normandy.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1087-1135.
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FRANCE: A. D. 1108-1180.
The reigns of Louis VI., Louis VII. and
accession of Philip II.
Gain and loss of Aquitaine.
"Louis VI., or 'the Fat' was the first able man whom the line
of Hugh Capet had produced since it mounted the throne. He
made the first attempt at curbing the nobles, assisted by
Suger, the Abbot of St. Denys. The only possibility of doing
this was to obtain the aid of one party of nobles against
another; and when any unusually flagrant offence had been
committed, Louis called together the nobles, bishops, and
abbots of his domain, and obtained their consent and
assistance in making war on the guilty man, and overthrowing
his castle, thus, in some degree, lessening the sense of utter
impunity which had caused so many violences and such savage
recklessness. He also permitted a few of the cities to
purchase the right of self-government. ... The royal authority
had begun to be respected by 1137, when Louis VI. died, having
just effected the marriage of his son, Louis VII., with
Eleanor, the heiress of the Dukes of Aquitaine--thus hoping to
make the crown really more powerful than the great princes who
owed it homage. At this time lived the great St. Bernard,
Abbot of Clairvaux, who had a wonderful influence over men's
minds. ... Bernard roused the young king Louis VII., to go on
the second crusade [see CRUSADES: A. D. 1147-1149], which was
undertaken by the Emperor and the other princes of Europe to
relieve the distress of the kingdom of Palestine. ... Though
Louis did reach Palestine, it was with weakened forces; he
could effect nothing by his campaign, and Eleanor, who had
accompanied him, seems to have been entirely corrupted by the
evil habits of the Franks settled in the East. Soon after his
return, Louis dissolved his marriage; and Eleanor became the
wife of Henry, Count of Anjou, who soon after inherited the
kingdom of England as our Henry II., as well as the duchy of
Normandy, and betrothed his third son to the heiress of
Brittany [see AQUITAINE: A. D. 1137-1152]. Eleanor's marriage
seemed to undo all that Louis VI. had done in raising the
royal power; for Henry completely overshadowed Louis, whose
only resource was in feeble endeavours to take part against
him in his many family quarrels. The whole reign of Louis the
Young, the title that adhered to him on account of his simple,
childish nature, is only a record of weakness and disaster,
till he died in 1180. ... Powerful in fact as Henry II. was,
it was his gathering so large a part of France under his rule
which was, in the end, to build up the greatness of the French
kings. What had held them in check was the existence of the
great fiefs or provinces, each with its own line of dukes or
counts, and all practically independent of the king. But now
nearly all the provinces of southern and western France were
gathered into the hand of a single ruler; and though he was a
Frenchman in blood, yet, as he was King of England, this ruler
seemed to his French subjects no Frenchman, but a foreigner.
They began therefore to look to the French king to free them
from a foreign ruler; and the son of Louis VII., called Philip
Augustus, was ready to take advantage of their disposition."
C. M. Yonge,
History of France
(History Primers), chapter 1, sections 6-7.
FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224.
The kingdom extended by Philip Augustus.
Normandy, Maine and Anjou recovered from the English kings.
"Louis VII. ascended the throne [A. D. 1137] with better
prospects than his father. He had married Eleanor, heiress of
the great duchy of Guienne [or Aquitaine]. But this union,
which promised an immense accession of strength to the crown,
was rendered unhappy by the levities of that princess.
Repudiated by Louis, who felt rather as a husband than a king,
Eleanor immediately married Henry II. of England, who, already
inheriting Normandy from his mother and Anjou from Ins father,
became possessed of more than one-half of France, and an
over-match for Louis, even if the great vassals of the crown
had been always ready to maintain its supremacy. One might
venture perhaps to conjecture that the sceptre of France would
eventually have passed from the Capets to the Plantagenets, if
the vexatious quarrel with Becket at one time, and the
successive rebellions fomented by Louis at a later period, had
not embarrassed the great talents and ambitious spirit of
Henry. But the scene quite changed when Philip Augustus, son
of Louis VII., came upon the stage [A. D. 1180]. No prince
comparable to him in systematic ambition and military
enterprise had reigned in France since Charlemagne. From his
reign the French monarchy dates the recovery of its lustre. He
wrested from the count of Flanders the Vermandois (that part
of Picardy which borders on the Isle of France and Champagne),
and, subsequently, the County of Artois. But the most
important conquests of Philip were obtained against the kings
of England. Even Richard I., with all his prowess, lost ground
in struggling against an adversary not less active, and more
politic, than himself: But when John not only took possession
of his brother's dominions, but confirmed his usurpation by
the murder, as was very probably surmised, of the heir,
Philip, artfully taking advantage of the general indignation,
summoned him as his vassal to the court of his peers. John
demanded a safe-conduct. Willingly, said Philip; let him come
unmolested. And return? inquired the English envoy. If the
judgment of his peers permit him, replied the king. By all the
saints of France, he exclaimed, when further pressed, he shall
not return unless acquitted. The bishop of Ely still
remonstrated that the duke of Normandy could not come without
the king of England; nor would the barons of that country
permit their sovereign to run the risk of death or
imprisonment. What of that, my lord bishop? cried Philip. It
is well known that my vassal the duke of Normandy acquired
England by force. But if a subject obtains any accession of
dignity, shall his paramount lord therefore lose his rights?
... John, not appearing at his summons, was declared guilty of
felony, and his fiefs confiscated. The execution of this
sentence was not intrusted to a dilatory arm. Philip poured
his troops into Normandy, and took town after town, while the
king of England, infatuated by his own wickedness and
cowardice, made hardly an attempt at defence. In two years
[A. D. 1203-1204] Normandy, Maine, and Anjou were
irrecoverably lost. Poitou and Guienne resisted longer; but
the conquest of the first was completed [A. D. 1224] by Louis
VIII., successor of Philip."
H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 1, part 1.
ALSO IN:
K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings,
volume 2, chapter 9.
See, also,
ENGLAND: A. D. 1205;
and ANJOU: A. D. 1206-1442.
FRANCE: A. D. 1188-1190.
Crusade of Philip Augustus.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1188-1192.
FRANCE: A. D. 1201-1203.
The Fifth Crusade, and its diversion against Constantinople.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1201-1203.
A. D. 1209-1229.
The Albigensian wars and their effects.
See ALBIGENSES.
FRANCE: A. D. 1212.
The Children's Crusade.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1212.
FRANCE: A. D. 1214.
Nationalizing effects of the Battle of Bouvines.
See BOUVINES.
FRANCE: A. D. 1223.
Accession of King Louis VIII.
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FRANCE: A. D. 1226-1270.
Reign and character of Louis IX. (Saint Louis).
His great civilizing work and influence.
"Of the forty-four years of St. Louis' reign, nearly fifteen,
with a long interval of separation, pertained to the
government of Queen Blanche of Castille, rather than that of
the king her son. Louis, at his accession in 1226, was only
eleven; and he remained a minor up to the age of twenty-one,
in 1236, for the time of majority in the case of royalty was
not yet specially and rigorously fixed. During those ten years
Queen Blanche governed France; not at all, as is commonly
asserted, with the official title of regent, but simply as
guardian of the king her son. With a good sense really
admirable in a person so proud and ambitious, she saw that
official power was ill suited to her woman's condition, and
would weaken rather than strengthen her; and she screened
herself from view behind her son. He it was who, in [1236],
wrote to the great vassals bidding them to his consecration;
he it was who reigned and commanded; and his name alone
appeared on royal decrees and on treaties. It was not until
twenty-two years had passed, in 1248, that Louis, on starting
for the crusade, officially delegated to his mother the kingly
authority, and that Blanche, during her son's absence, really
governed with the title of regent. ... During the first period
of his government, and so long as her son's minority lasted,
Queen Blanche had to grapple with intrigues, plots,
insurrections, and open war; and, what was still worse for
her, with the insults and calumnies of the crown's great
vassals, burning to seize once more, under a woman's
government, the independence and power which had been
effectually disputed with them by Philip Augustus. Blanche
resisted their attempts, at one time with open and persevering
energy, at another dexterously with all the tact, address, and
allurements of a woman. Though she was now forty years of age
she was beautiful, elegant, attractive, full of resources and
of grace. ... The malcontents spread the most odious scandals
about her. ... Neither in the events nor in the writings of
the period is it easy to find anything which can authorize the
accusations made by the foes of Queen Blanche. ... She
continued her resistance to the pretensions and machinations
of the crown's great vassals, whether foes or lovers, and she
carried forward, in the face and in the teeth of all, the
extension of the domains and the power of the kingship. We
observe in her no prompting of enthusiasm, of sympathetic
charitableness, or of religious scrupulousness; that is, none
of those grand moral impulses which are characteristic of
Christian piety and which were predominant in St. Louis.
Blanche was essentially politic and concerned with her
temporal interests and successes; and it was not from her
teaching or her example that her son imbibed those sublime and
disinterested feelings which stamped him the most original and
the rarest on the roll of glorious kings. What St. Louis really
owed to his mother, and it was a great deal, was the steady
triumph which, whether by arms or by negotiation, Blanche
gained over the great vassals, and the preponderance which,
amidst the struggles of the feudal system, she secured for the
kingship of her son in his minority. ... When Louis reached
his majority, his entrance upon personal exercise of the
kingly power produced no change in the conduct of public
affairs. ... The kingship of the son was a continuance of the
mother's government. Louis persisted in struggling for the
preponderance of the crown against the great vassals;
succeeded in taming Peter Mauclerc, the turbulent count of
Brittany; wrung from Theobald IV., count of Champagne, the
rights of suzerainty in the countships of Chartres, Blois, and
Sancerre, and the viscountship of Châteaudun; and purchased
the fertile countship of Mâcon from its possessor. It was
almost always by pacific procedure, by negotiations ably
conducted, and conventions faithfully executed, that he
accomplished these increments of the kingly domain; and when
he made war on any of the great vassals, he engaged therein
only on their provocation, to maintain the rights or honour of
his crown, and he used victory with as much moderation as he
had shown before entering upon the struggle. ... When war was
not either a necessity or a duty, this brave and brilliant
knight, from sheer equity and goodness of heart, loved peace
rather than war. The successes he had gained in his campaign
of 1242 [against the count of La Marche and Henry III., of
England, whose mother had become the wife of La Marche] were
not for him the first step in an endless career of glory and
conquest; he was anxious only to consolidate them whilst
securing, in Western Europe, for the dominions of his
adversaries as well as for his own, the benefits of peace. He
entered into negotiations, successively, with the count of la
Marche, the king of England, the count of Toulouse, the king
of Aragon, and the various princes and great feudal lords who
had been more or less engaged in the war; and in January,
1243, says the latest and most enlightened of his biographers
[M. Felix Faure], 'the treaty of Lorris marked the end of
feudal troubles for the whole duration of St. Louis' reign. He