The main features of the act were as follows. The first clauses guaranteed liberty of conscience and the free practice of public worship, and declared that henceforth the Republic neither recognized nor remunerated any form of religion, except in the case of chaplains to public schools, hospitals and prisons. It provided that after inventories had been taken of the real and personal property in the hands of religious bodies, hitherto remunerated by the state, to ascertain whether such property belonged to the state, the department, or the commune, all such property should be transferred to associations of public worship (associations cultuelles) established in each commune in accordance with the rules of the religion which they represented, for the purpose of carrying on the practices of that religion. As the Vatican subsequently refused to permit Catholics to take part in these associations, the important clauses relating to their organization and powers became a dead letter, except in the case of the Protestant and Jewish associations, which affected only a minute proportion of the religious establishments under the act. Nothing, therefore, need be said about them except that the chief discussions in the Chamber took place with regard to their constitution, which was so amended, contrary to the wishes of the extreme anti-clericals, that many moderate critics of the original bill thought that thereby the regular practice of the Catholic religion, under episcopal control, had been safeguarded. A system of pensions for ministers of religion hitherto paid by the state was provided, according to the age and the length of service of the ecclesiastics interested, while in small communes of under a thousand inhabitants the clergy were to receive in any case their full pay for eight years. The bishops’ palaces were to be left gratuitously at the disposal of the occupiers for two years, and the presbyteries and seminaries for five years. This provision too became a dead letter, owing to the orders given by the Holy See to the clergy. Other provisions enacted that the churches should not be used for political meetings, while the services held in them were protected by the law from the acts of disturbers. As the plenary operation of the law depended on theassociations cultuelles, the subsequent failure to create those bodies makes it useless to give a complete exposition of a statute of which they were an essential feature.
The passing of the Separation Law was the chief act of the last year of the presidency of M. Loubet. One other important measure has to be noted, the law reducing compulsory militaryservice to two years. The law of 1889 had provided a general service of three years, with an extensive system of dispensations accorded to persons for domestic reasons, or because they belonged to certain categories of students, such citizens being let off with one year’s service with the colours or being entirely exempted. The new law exacted two years’ service from every Frenchman, no one being exempted save for physical incapacity. Under the act of 1905 even the cadets of the military college of Saint Cyr and of the Polytechnic had to serve in the ranks before entering those schools. Anti-military doctrines continued to be encouraged by the Socialist party, M. Hervé, the professor who had been revoked in 1901 for his suggestion of a military strike in case of war and for other unpatriotic utterances, being elected a member of the administrative committee of the Unified Socialist party, of which M. Jaurès was one of the chiefs. At a congress of elementary schoolmasters at Lille in August, anti-military resolutions were passed and a general adherence was given to the doctrines of M. Hervé. At Longwy, in the Eastern coal-field, a strike took place in September, during which the military was called out to keep order and a workman was killed in a cavalry charge. The minister of war, M. Berteaux, visited the scene of the disturbance, and was reported to have saluted the red revolutionary flag which was borne by a procession of strikers singing the “Internationale.â€
During the autumn session in November M. Berteaux suddenly resigned the portfolio of war during a sitting of the Chamber, and was succeeded by M. Etienne, minister of the interior, a moderate politician who inspired greater confidence. Earlier in the year other industrial strikes of great gravity had taken place, notably at Limoges, among the potters, where several deaths took place in a conflict with the troops and a factory was burnt. Even more serious were the strikes in the government arsenals in November. At Cherbourg and Brest only a small proportion of the workmen went out, but at Lorient, Rochefort and especially at Toulon the strikes were on a much larger scale. In 1905 solemn warnings were given in the Chamber of the coming crisis in the wine-growing regions of the South. Radical-Socialists such as M. Doumergue, the deputy for Nîmes and a member of the Combes ministry, joined with monarchists such as M. Lasies, deputy of the Gers, in calling attention to the distress of the populations dependent on the vine. They argued that the wines of the South found no market, not because of the alleged over-production, but because of the competition of artificial wines; that formerly only twenty departments of France were classed in the atlas as wine-producing, but that thanks to the progress of chemistry seventy departments were now so described. The deputies of the north of France and of Paris, irrespective of party, opposed these arguments, and the government, while promising to punish fraud, did not seem to take very seriously the legitimate warnings of the representatives of the South.
The Republic continued to extend its friendly relations with foreign powers, and the end of M. Loubet’s term of office was signalized by a procession of royal visits to Paris, some of which the president returned. At the end of May the king of Spain came and narrowly escaped assassination from a bomb which was thrown at him by a Spaniard as he was returning with the president from the opera. In October M. Loubet returned this visit at Madrid and went on to Lisbon to see the king of Portugal, being received by the queen, who was the daughter of the comte de Paris and the sister of the duc d’Orléans, both exiled by the Republic. In November the king of Portugal came to Paris, and the president of the Republic also received during the year less formal visits from the kings of England and of Greece.
One untoward international event affecting the French ministry occurred in June 1905. M. Delcassé (see section onExterior Policy), who had been foreign minister longer than any holder of that office under the Republic,Resignation of M. Delcassé.resigned, and it was believed that he had been sacrificed by the prime minister to the exigencies of Germany, which power was said to be disquieted at his having, in connexion with the Morocco question, isolated Germany by promoting the friendly relations of France with England, Spain and Italy. Whether it be true or not that the French government was really in alarm at the possibility of a declaration of war by Germany, the impression given was unfavourable, nor was it removed when M. Rouvier himself took the portfolio of foreign affairs.
The year 1906 is remarkable in the history of the Third Republic in that it witnessed the renewal of all the public powers in the state. A new president of the Republic was elected on the 17th of January ten days after theM. Fallières president of the Republic.triennial election of one third of the senate, and the general election of the chamber of deputies followed in May—the ninth which had taken place under the constitution of 1875. The senatorial elections of the 7th of January showed that the delegates of the people who chose the members of the upper house and represented the average opinion of the country approved of the anti-clerical legislation of parliament. The election of M. Fallières, president of the senate, to the presidency of the Republic was therefore anticipated, he being the candidate of the parliamentary majorities which had disestablished the church. At the congress of the two chambers held at Versailles on the 17th of January he received the absolute majority of 449 votes out of 849 recorded. The candidate of the Opposition was M. Paul Doumer, whose anti-clericalism in the past was so extreme that when married he had dispensed with a religious ceremony and his children were unbaptized. So the curious spectacle was presented of the Moderate Opportunist M. Fallières being elected by Radicals and Socialists, while the Radical candidate was supported by Moderates and Reactionaries. For the second time a president of the senate, the second official personage in the Republic, was advanced to the chief magistracy, M. Loubet having been similarly promoted. As in his case, M. Fallières owed his election to M. Clémenceau. When M. Loubet was elected M. Clémenceau had not come to the end of his retirement from parliamentary life; but in political circles, with his powerful pen and otherwise, he was resuming his former influence as a “king-maker.†He knew of the precariousness Of Félix Faure’s health and of the indiscretions of the elderly president. So when the presidency suddenly became vacant in January 1899 he had already fixed his choice on M. Loubet, as a candidate whose unobtrusive name excited no jealousy among the republicans. At that moment, owing to the crisis caused by the Dreyfus affair, the Republic needed a safe man to protect it against the attacks of the plebiscitary party which had been latterly favoured by President Faure. M. Constans, it was said, had in 1899 desired the presidency of the senate, vacant by M. Loubet’s promotion, in preference to the post of ambassador at Constantinople. But M. Clémenceau, deeming that his name had been too much associated with polemics in the past, contrived the election of M. Fallières to the second place of dignity in the Republic, so as to have another safe candidate in readiness for the Elysée in case President Loubet suddenly disappeared. M. Loubet, however, completed his septennate, and to the end of it M. Fallières was regarded as his probable successor. As he fulfilled his high duties in the senate inoffensively without making enemies among his political friends, he escaped the fate which had awaited other presidents-designate of the Republic. Previously to presiding over the senate this Gascon advocate, who had represented his native Lot-et-Garonne, in either chamber, since 1876, had once been prime minister for three weeks in 1883. He had also held office in six other ministries, so no politician in France had a larger experience in administration and in public affairs.
On New Year’s Day 1906, the absence of the Nuncio from the presidential reception of the diplomatic body marked conspicuously the rupture of the Concordat; for hitherto the representative of the Holy See had ranked asdoyenof the ambassadors to the Republic, whatever the relative seniority of his colleagues, and in the name of all the foreign powers had officially saluted the chief of the state. On the 20th of January the inventories of the churches were commenced, under the 3rd clause of theSeparation Act, for the purpose of assessing the value of the furniture and other objects which they contained. In Paris they occasioned some disturbance; but as the protesting rioters were led by persons whose hostility to the Republic was more notorious than their love for religion, the demonstrations were regarded as political rather than religious. In certain rural districts, where the church had retained its influence and where its separation from the state was unpopular, the taking of the inventories was impeded by the inhabitants, and in some places, where the troops were called out to protect the civil authorities, further feeling was aroused by the refusal of officers to act. But, as a rule, this first manifest operation of the Separation Law was received with indifference by the population. One region where popular feeling was displayed in favour of the church wasThe Sarrien ministry.Flanders, where, in March, at Boeschepe on the Belgian frontier, a man was killed during the taking of an inventory. This accident caused the fall of the ministry. The moderate Republicans in the Chamber, who had helped to keep M. Rouvier in office, withheld their support in a debate arising out of the incident, and the government was defeated by thirty-three votes. M. Rouvier resigned, and the new president of the Republic sent for M. Sarrien, a Radical of the old school from Burgundy, who had been deputy for his native Saône-et-Loire from the foundation of the Chamber in 1876 and had previously held office in four cabinets. In M. Sarrien’s ministry of the 14th of March 1906 the president of the council was only a minor personage, its real conductor being M. Clémenceau, who accepted the portfolio of the interior. Upon him, therefore devolved the function of “making the electionsâ€M. Clèmenceau minister of the interior.of 1906, as it is the minister at the Place Beauvau, where all the wires of administrative government are centralized, who gives the orders to the prefectures at each general election. As in France ministers sit and speak in both houses of parliament, M. Clémenceau, though a senator, now returned, after an absence of thirteen years, to the Chamber of Deputies, in which he had played a mighty part in the first seventeen years of its existence. His political experience was unique. From an early period after entering the Chamber in 1876 he had exercised there an influence not exceeded by any deputy. Yet it was not until 1906, thirty years after his first election to parliament, that he held office—though in 1888 he just missed the presidency of the Chamber, receiving the same number of votes as M. Méline, to whom the post was allotted by right of seniority. He now returned to the tribune of the Palais Bourbon, on which he had been a most formidable orator. During his career as deputy his eloquence was chiefly destructive, and of the nineteen ministries which fell between the election of M. Grévy to the presidency of the Republic in 1879 and his own departure from parliamentary life in 1893 there were few of which the fall had not been expedited by his mordant criticism or denunciation. He now came back to the scene of his former achievements not to attack but to defend a ministry. Though his old occupation was gone, his re-entry excited the keenest interest, for at sixty-five he remained the biggest political figure in France. After M. Clémenceau the most interesting of the new ministers was M. Briand, who was not nine years old when M. Clémenceau had become conspicuous in political life as the mayor of Montmartre on the eve of the Commune. M. Briand had entered the Chamber, as Socialist deputy for Saint Etienne, only in 1902. The mark he had made as “reporter†of the Separation Bill has been noted, and on that account he became minister of education and public worship—the terms of the Separation Law necessitating the continuation of a department for ecclesiastical affairs. As he had been a militant Socialist of the “unified†group of which M. Jaurès was the chief, and also a member of the superior council of labour, his appointment indicated that the new ministry courted the support of the extreme Left. It, however, contained some moderate men, notably M. Poincaré, who had the repute of making the largest income at the French bar after M. Waldeck-Rousseau gave up his practice, and who became for the second time minister of finance. The portfolios of the colonies and of public works were also given to old ministers of moderate tendencies, M. Georges Leygues and M. Barthou. A former prime minister, M. Léon Bourgeois, went to the foreign office, over which he had already presided, besides having represented France at the peace conference at the Hague; while MM. Étienne and Thomson retained their portfolios of war and marine. The cabinet contained so many men of tried ability that it was called the ministry of all the talents. But the few who understood the origin of the name knew that it would be even more ephemeral than was the British ministry of 1806; for the fine show of names belonged to a transient combination which could not survive the approaching elections long enough to leave any mark in politics.
Before the elections took place grave labour troubles showed that social and economical questions were more likely to give anxiety to the government than any public movement resulting from the disestablishment of the church.Progress of socialism.Almost the first ministerial act of M. Clémenceau was to visit the coal basin of the Pas de Calais, where an accident causing great loss of life was followed by an uprising of the working population of the region, which spread into the adjacent department of the Nord and caused the minister of the interior to take unusual precautions to prevent violent demonstrations in Paris on Labour Day, the 1st of May. The activity of the Socialist leaders in encouraging anti-capitalist agitation did not seem to alarm the electorate. Nor did it show any sympathy with the appeal of the pope, who in his encyclical letter,Vehementer nos, addressed to the French cardinals on the 11th of February, denounced the Separation Law. So the result of the elections of May 1906 was a decisive victory for the anti-clericals and Socialists.
A brief analysis of the composition of the Chamber of Deputies is always impossible, the limits of the numerous groups being ill-defined. But in general terms the majority supporting the radical policy of theblocin the last parliament, which had usually mustered about 340 votes, now numbered more than 400, including 230 Radical-Socialists and Socialists. The gains of the extreme Left were chiefly at the expense of the moderate or progressist republicans, who, about 120 strong in the old Chamber, now came back little more than half that number. The anti-republican Right, comprising Royalists, Bonapartists and Nationalists, had maintained their former position and were about 130 all told. The general result of the polls of the 6th and 20th of May was thus an electoral vindication of the advanced policy adopted by the old Chamber and a repudiation of moderate Republicanism; while the stationary condition of the reactionary groups showed that the tribulations inflicted by the last parliament on the church had not provoked the electorate to increase its support of clerical politicians.
The Vatican, however, declined to recognize this unmistakable demonstration. The bishops, taking advantage of their release from the concordatory restrictions which had withheld from them the faculty of meeting in assembly, had met at a preliminary conference to consider their plan of action under the Separation Law. They had adjourned for further instructions from the Holy See, which were published on the 10th of August 1906, in a new encyclicalGravissimo officii, wherein, to the consternation of many members of the episcopate, the pope interdicted theassociations cultuelles, the bodies which, under the Separation Law, were to be established in each parish, to hold and to organize the church property and finances, and were essential to the working of the act. On the 4th of September the bishops met again and passed a resolution of submission to the Holy See. In spite of their loyalty they could not but deplore an injunction which inevitably would cause distress to the large majority of the clergy after the act came into operation on the 12th of December 1906. They knew only too well how hopeless was the idea that the distress of the clergy would call forth any revulsion of popular feeling in France. The excitement of the public that summer over a painful clerical scandal in the diocese of Chartres showed that the interest taken by the mass of the population in church matters was not of a kind which would aid the clergy in their difficult situation.
At the close of the parliamentary recess M. Sarrien resigned the premiership on the pretext of ill-health, and by a presidential decree of the 25th of October 1906 M. Clémenceau, who had been called to fill the vacancy, took office.The Clémenceau ministry.MM. Bourgeois, Poincaré, Etienne and Leygues retired with M. Sarrien. The new prime minister placed at the foreign office M. Pichon, who had learned politics on the staff of theJustice, the organ of M. Clémenceau, by whose influence he had entered the diplomatic service in 1893, after eight years in the chamber of deputies. He had been minister at Pekin during the Boxer rebellion and resident at Tunis, and he was now radical senator for the Jura. M. Caillaux, a more adventurous financier than M. Rouvier or M. Poincaré, who had been Waldeck-Rousseau’s minister of finance, resumed that office. The most significant appointment was that of General Picquart to the war office. The new minister when a colonel had been willing to sacrifice his career, although he was an anti-Semite, to redressing the injustice which he believed had been inflicted on a Jewish officer—whose second condemnation, it may be noted, had been quashed earlier in 1906. M. Viviani became the first minister of labour (Travail et Prévoyance sociale). The creation of the office and the appointment of a socialist lawyer and journalist to fill it showed that M. Clémenceau recognized the increasing prominence of social and industrial questions and the growing power of the trade-unions.
The acts and policy of the Clémenceau ministry and the events which took place during the years that it held office are too near the present time to be appraised historically. It seems not unlikely that the first advent to power, after thirty-five years of strenuous political life, of one who must be ranked among the ablest of the twenty-seven prime ministers of the Third Republic will be seen to have been coincident with an important evolution in the history of the French nation. The separation of the Roman Catholic Church from the state, by the law of December 1905, had deprived the Socialists, the now most powerful party of the extreme Left, of the chief outlet for their activity, which hitherto had chiefly found its scope in anti-clericalism. Having no longer the church to attack they turned their attention to economical questions, the solution of which had always been their theoretical aim. At the same period the law relating to the Contract of Association of 1901, by removing the restrictions (save in the case of religious communities) which previously had prevented French citizens from forming association without the authorization of the government, had formally abrogated the individualistic doctrine of the Revolution, which in all its phases was intolerant of associations. The law of June 1791 declared the destruction of all corporations of persons engaged in the same trade or profession to be a fundamental article of the French constitution, and it was only in the last six years of the Second Empire that some tolerance was granted to trade-unions, which was extended by the Third Republic only in 1884. In that year the prohibition of 1791 was repealed. Not quite 70 unions existed at the end of 1884. In 1890 they had increased to about 1000, in 1894 to 2000, and in 1901, when the law relating to the Contract of Association was passed, they numbered 3287 with 588,832 members. The law of 1901 did not specially affect them; but this general act, completely emancipating all associations formed for secular purposes, was a definitive break with the individualism of the Revolution which had formed the basis of all legislation in France for nearly a century after the fall of the ancient monarchy. It was an encouragement and at the same time a symptom of the spread of anti-individualistic doctrine. This was seen in the accelerated increase of syndicated workmen during the years succeeding the passing of the Associations Law, who in 1909 were over a million strong. The power exercised by the trade-unions moved the functionaries of the government, a vast army under the centralized system of administration, numbering not less than 800,000 persons, to demand equal freedom of association for the purpose of regulating their salaries paid by the state and their conditions of labour. This movement brought into new relief the long-recognized incompatibility of parliamentary government with administrative centralization as organized by Napoleon.
In another direction the increased activity in the rural districts of the Socialists, who hitherto had chiefly worked in the industrial centres, indicated that they looked for support from the peasant proprietors, whose ownership in the soil had hitherto opposed them to the practice of collectivist doctrine. In the summer of 1907 an economic crisis in the wine-growing districts of the South created a general discontent which spread to other rural regions. The Clémenceau ministry, while opposing the excesses of revolutionary socialism and while incurring the strenuous hostility of M. Jaurès, the Socialist leader, adopted a programme which was more socialistic than that of any previous government of the republic. Under its direction a bill for the imposition of a graduated income tax was passed by the lower house, involving a scheme of direct taxation which would transform the interior fiscal system of France. But the income tax was still only a project of law when M. Clémenceau unexpectedly fell in July 1909, being succeeded as prime minister by his colleague M. Briand. His ministry had, however, passed one important measure which individualists regarded as an act of state-socialism. It took a long step towards the nationalization of railways by purchasing the important Western line and adding it to the relatively small system of state railways. Previously a more generally criticized act of the representatives of the people was not of a nature to augment the popularity of parliamentary institutions at a period of economic crisis, when senators and deputies increased their own annual salary, or indemnity as it is officially called, to 15,000 francs.
(J. E. C. B.)
(Continued in volume X slice VIII.)
1By theService géographique de l’armée.2The etymology of this name (sometimes wrongly written Golfe de Lyon) is unknown.3In 1907 deaths were superior in number to births by nearly 20,000.4The following list comprises the three most densely-populated and the three most sparsely populated departments in France:Inhabitants to the Square Mile.Seine20,803Basses-Alpes42Nord850Hautes-Alpes49Rhône778Lozère645Inspectors are placed at the head of the synodal circumscriptions; their functions are to consecrate candidates for the ministry, install the pastors, &c.6Cultures industrielles.—Under this head the French group beetroot, hemp, flax and other plants, the products of which pass through some process of manufacture before they reach the consumer.7Fibre only. In the years 1896-1905, 8130 tons of hemp-seed and 12,137 tons of flax-seed was the average annual production in addition to fibre.8The chief breeds of horses are theBoulonnais(heavy draught), thePercheron(light and heavy draught), theAnglo-Norman(light draught and heavy cavalry) and theTarbaisof the western Pyrenees (saddle horses and light cavalry). Of cattle besides the breeds named theNorman(beef and milk), theLimousin(beef), theMontbéliard, theBazadais, theFlamand, theBretonand theParthenaisbreeds may be mentioned.9The department is also entrusted with surveillance over river-fishing, pisciculture and the amelioration of pasture.10The metric ton = 1000 kilogrammes or 2204 â„”.11Includes manufactories of glue, tallow, soap, perfumery, fertilizers, soda, &c.12See theGuide officiel de la navigation intérieureissued by the ministry of public works (Paris, 1903).13Includes horses, mules and asses.14Except certain manufactures which come under the category of articles of food.15Includes small fancy wares, toys, also wooden wares and furniture, brushes, &c.16Decrease largely due to Spanish-American War (1898).17The administration of posts, telegraphs and telephones is assigned to the ministry of commerce and industry or to that of public works.18The province or provinces named are those out of which the department was chiefly formed.19The tax on land (propriétés non bâties) and that on buildings (propriétés bâties) are included under the head ofcontribution foncière.20With revenues of over £1200.21For a history of the French debt, see C.F. Bastable,Public Finance(1903).22In 1894 the rentes then standing at 4½% were reduced to 3½%, and in 1902 to 3%.23Algerian native troops are recruited by voluntary enlistment. But in 1908, owing to the prevailing want of trained soldiers in France, it was proposed to set free the white troops in Algeria by applying the principles of universal service to the natives, as in Tunis.24Kerguelen lies in the Great Southern Ocean, but is included here for the sake of convenience.25In 1906 the number of registered electors in these colonies was 199,055, of whom 106,695 exercised their suffrage.26In the case of Madagascar by decree of the 11th of December 1895.27The Indo-China budget is reckoned in piastres, a silver coin of fluctuating value (1s. 10d. to 2s.). The budget of 1907 balanced at 50,000,000 piastres.28St Eligius, bishop of Noyon, apostle of the Belgians and Frisians (d. 659?).29Theassurement(assecuratio,assecuramentum) differed from the truce, which was a suspension of hostilities by mutual consent, in so far as it was a peace forced by judicial authority on one of the parties at the request of the other. The party desiring protection applied for theassurement, either before or during hostilities, to any royal, seigniorial or communal judge, who thereupon cited the other party to appear and take an oath that he would assure the person, property and dependents of his adversary (qu’il l’assurera, elle et les siens). This custom, which became common in the 13th century, of course depended for its effectiveness on the degree of respect inspired in the feudal nobles by the courts. It was difficult, for instance, to refuse or to violate anassurementimposed by a royalbaillior by the parlement itself. See A. Luchaire,Manuel des institutions françaises(Paris, 1892), p. 233.—(W. A. P.)30Earl of Richmond; afterwards Arthur, duke of Brittany (q.v.).31Olivier de Serres, sieur de Pradel, spent most of his life on his model farm at Pradel. In 1599 he dedicated a pamphlet on the cultivation of silk to Henry IV., and in 1600 published hisThéâtre d’agriculture et ménage des champs, which passed through nineteen editions up to 1675.32Ferdinand is reported to have said: “Le capucin m’a désarmé avec son scapulaire et a mis dans capuchon six bonnets électoraux.â€33Jean Orry Louis Orry de Fulvy (1703-1751), counsel to the parlement in 1723, intendant of finances in 1737, founded at Vincennes the manufactory of porcelain which was bought in 1750 by the farmers general and transferred to Sèvres.34Louis Robert Hippolyte de Bréhan, comte de Plélo (1699-1734), a Breton by birth, originally a soldier, was at the time of the siege of Danzig French ambassador to Denmark. Enraged at the return to Copenhagen, without having done anything, of the French force sent to help Stanislaus, he himself led it back to Danzig and fell in an attack on the Russians on the 27th of May 1734. Plélo was a poet of considerable charm, and well-read both in science and literature.See Marquis de Bréhan,Le Comte de Plélo(Nantes, 1874); R. Rathery,Le Comte de Plélo(Paris, 1876); and P. Boyé,Stanislaus Leszczynski et le troisième traité de Vienne(Paris, 1898).35Charles Laure Hugues Théobald, duc de Choiseul-Praslin (1805-1847), was deputy in 1839, created a peer of France in 1840. He had married a daughter of General Sebastiani, with whom he lived on good terms till 1840, when he entered into open relations with his children’s governess. The duchess threatened a separation; and the duke consented to send his mistress out of the house, but did not cease to correspond with and visit her. On the 18th of August 1847 the duchess was found stabbed to death, with more than thirty wounds, in her room. The duke was arrested on the 20th and imprisoned in the Luxembourg, where he died of poison, self-administered on the 24th. It was, however, popularly believed that the government had smuggled him out of the country and that he was living under a feigned name in England.36T.T. de Martens,Recueil des traités, &c., xii. 248.37In the 14th volume of hisL’Empire libéral(1909) M. Émile Ollivier gives a detailed and illuminating account of the events that led up to the war. He indignantly denies that he ever said that he contemplated it “with a light heart,†and says that he disapproved of Gramont’s demand for “guarantees,†to which he was not privy. His object is to prove that France was entrapped by Bismarck into a position in which she was bound in honour to declare war. (Ed.)
1By theService géographique de l’armée.
2The etymology of this name (sometimes wrongly written Golfe de Lyon) is unknown.
3In 1907 deaths were superior in number to births by nearly 20,000.
4The following list comprises the three most densely-populated and the three most sparsely populated departments in France:
5Inspectors are placed at the head of the synodal circumscriptions; their functions are to consecrate candidates for the ministry, install the pastors, &c.
6Cultures industrielles.—Under this head the French group beetroot, hemp, flax and other plants, the products of which pass through some process of manufacture before they reach the consumer.
7Fibre only. In the years 1896-1905, 8130 tons of hemp-seed and 12,137 tons of flax-seed was the average annual production in addition to fibre.
8The chief breeds of horses are theBoulonnais(heavy draught), thePercheron(light and heavy draught), theAnglo-Norman(light draught and heavy cavalry) and theTarbaisof the western Pyrenees (saddle horses and light cavalry). Of cattle besides the breeds named theNorman(beef and milk), theLimousin(beef), theMontbéliard, theBazadais, theFlamand, theBretonand theParthenaisbreeds may be mentioned.
9The department is also entrusted with surveillance over river-fishing, pisciculture and the amelioration of pasture.
10The metric ton = 1000 kilogrammes or 2204 â„”.
11Includes manufactories of glue, tallow, soap, perfumery, fertilizers, soda, &c.
12See theGuide officiel de la navigation intérieureissued by the ministry of public works (Paris, 1903).
13Includes horses, mules and asses.
14Except certain manufactures which come under the category of articles of food.
15Includes small fancy wares, toys, also wooden wares and furniture, brushes, &c.
16Decrease largely due to Spanish-American War (1898).
17The administration of posts, telegraphs and telephones is assigned to the ministry of commerce and industry or to that of public works.
18The province or provinces named are those out of which the department was chiefly formed.
19The tax on land (propriétés non bâties) and that on buildings (propriétés bâties) are included under the head ofcontribution foncière.
20With revenues of over £1200.
21For a history of the French debt, see C.F. Bastable,Public Finance(1903).
22In 1894 the rentes then standing at 4½% were reduced to 3½%, and in 1902 to 3%.
23Algerian native troops are recruited by voluntary enlistment. But in 1908, owing to the prevailing want of trained soldiers in France, it was proposed to set free the white troops in Algeria by applying the principles of universal service to the natives, as in Tunis.
24Kerguelen lies in the Great Southern Ocean, but is included here for the sake of convenience.
25In 1906 the number of registered electors in these colonies was 199,055, of whom 106,695 exercised their suffrage.
26In the case of Madagascar by decree of the 11th of December 1895.
27The Indo-China budget is reckoned in piastres, a silver coin of fluctuating value (1s. 10d. to 2s.). The budget of 1907 balanced at 50,000,000 piastres.
28St Eligius, bishop of Noyon, apostle of the Belgians and Frisians (d. 659?).
29Theassurement(assecuratio,assecuramentum) differed from the truce, which was a suspension of hostilities by mutual consent, in so far as it was a peace forced by judicial authority on one of the parties at the request of the other. The party desiring protection applied for theassurement, either before or during hostilities, to any royal, seigniorial or communal judge, who thereupon cited the other party to appear and take an oath that he would assure the person, property and dependents of his adversary (qu’il l’assurera, elle et les siens). This custom, which became common in the 13th century, of course depended for its effectiveness on the degree of respect inspired in the feudal nobles by the courts. It was difficult, for instance, to refuse or to violate anassurementimposed by a royalbaillior by the parlement itself. See A. Luchaire,Manuel des institutions françaises(Paris, 1892), p. 233.—(W. A. P.)
30Earl of Richmond; afterwards Arthur, duke of Brittany (q.v.).
31Olivier de Serres, sieur de Pradel, spent most of his life on his model farm at Pradel. In 1599 he dedicated a pamphlet on the cultivation of silk to Henry IV., and in 1600 published hisThéâtre d’agriculture et ménage des champs, which passed through nineteen editions up to 1675.
32Ferdinand is reported to have said: “Le capucin m’a désarmé avec son scapulaire et a mis dans capuchon six bonnets électoraux.â€
33Jean Orry Louis Orry de Fulvy (1703-1751), counsel to the parlement in 1723, intendant of finances in 1737, founded at Vincennes the manufactory of porcelain which was bought in 1750 by the farmers general and transferred to Sèvres.
34Louis Robert Hippolyte de Bréhan, comte de Plélo (1699-1734), a Breton by birth, originally a soldier, was at the time of the siege of Danzig French ambassador to Denmark. Enraged at the return to Copenhagen, without having done anything, of the French force sent to help Stanislaus, he himself led it back to Danzig and fell in an attack on the Russians on the 27th of May 1734. Plélo was a poet of considerable charm, and well-read both in science and literature.
See Marquis de Bréhan,Le Comte de Plélo(Nantes, 1874); R. Rathery,Le Comte de Plélo(Paris, 1876); and P. Boyé,Stanislaus Leszczynski et le troisième traité de Vienne(Paris, 1898).
35Charles Laure Hugues Théobald, duc de Choiseul-Praslin (1805-1847), was deputy in 1839, created a peer of France in 1840. He had married a daughter of General Sebastiani, with whom he lived on good terms till 1840, when he entered into open relations with his children’s governess. The duchess threatened a separation; and the duke consented to send his mistress out of the house, but did not cease to correspond with and visit her. On the 18th of August 1847 the duchess was found stabbed to death, with more than thirty wounds, in her room. The duke was arrested on the 20th and imprisoned in the Luxembourg, where he died of poison, self-administered on the 24th. It was, however, popularly believed that the government had smuggled him out of the country and that he was living under a feigned name in England.
36T.T. de Martens,Recueil des traités, &c., xii. 248.
37In the 14th volume of hisL’Empire libéral(1909) M. Émile Ollivier gives a detailed and illuminating account of the events that led up to the war. He indignantly denies that he ever said that he contemplated it “with a light heart,†and says that he disapproved of Gramont’s demand for “guarantees,†to which he was not privy. His object is to prove that France was entrapped by Bismarck into a position in which she was bound in honour to declare war. (Ed.)