HISTORY OF FRANCE.

HISTORY OF FRANCE.The Franks, a tribe of German origin, had marched from their hereditary possessions on the Lower Rhine to the Meuse and the Sambre, A. D. 486. From this place, their warlike king, Clovis, led them forth to war and plunder. After he had conquered and put to death the last Roman governor, Syágrius, in Soissons, and made himself master of the country between the Seine and the Loire, he advanced against the Alemanni, who were in possession of an extensive kingdom on both banks of the Rhine. He defeated them in the great battle of Zülpich (between Bonn and Aix), and subjected their country on the Moselle and the Lahn. In the heat of the battle, Clovis had sworn, that if the doubtful combat should terminate in his favor, he would embrace the faith of his Christian wife; and in the same year, he, with 8,000 nobles of his train, received baptism in the waters of the Rhine. But Christianity produced no emotions of pity in his savage heart. After he had extended the Frank empire to the Rhone on the east, and to the Garónne on the south, he attempted to secure the whole territory to himself and his posterity, by putting to death the chiefs of all the Frank tribes.The wickedness of the father was inherited by his four sons, who, after Clovis’s death, divided the Frank empire between them; the eldest received the eastern kingdom, Austrásia, with the capital, Metz; the three younger sons shared the western territory, Neustria, and Burgundy, which was connected with it. But the empire was again from time to time united. The history of the kingly house of Merovingians displays a frightful picture of human depravity. The murders of brothers and relatives, bloody civil wars, and the explosion of unbridled passions, fill its annals. The savage enormities of the two queens, Brunhilda and Fredigonda, are particularly dreadful. These horrors at length destroyed all the power of the race of Clovis, so that they are distinguished in history as sluggish kings, whilst the steward of the royal possessions (Mayor of the palace) gradually obtained possession of all the powers of government. A visit to the yearly assemblies of the people (Marzfelder), upon a carriage drawn by four oxen, was at last the only occupation of the imbecile Merovingians. At first, each of the three kingdoms had its own mayor, until the brave and shrewd Pepin of Heristal succeeded in uniting the mayoralties of Neustria and Burgundy with that of Austrásia, and making them hereditary in his own family. From this time, Pepin’s descendants, who were called dukes of Francónia, possessed the regal power, whilst the Merovingians were kings in nothing but name.Pepin of Heristal, and his son Charles Martel, had gained the confidence of the nation by their warlike deeds, and the favor of the priests by their zeal in the propagation of Christianity. Both parties were instrumental in raising Pepin the Little, the son of Charles Martel, to the throne of the Franks. For when the assembly of the nation deposed the last imbecile representative of the Merovingians (ChildericIII), and proclaimed the chief steward, Pepin, king, the pope confirmed the election, in hope of finding in the Frank ruler a support against the Longobards and the iconoclastic emperor of Byzantium. In return for the royal consecration, which was first performed by Boniface, and afterwards by Pope Stephen himself, Pepin endowed the Roman chair with the portion of coast on the Adriatic sea, southwards from Ravenna. This was the foundation of the temporal power of the pope.Pepin reigned for sixteen years with vigor and renown over the Frank empire, which extended far into South and Central Germany, and which, at his death, he divided between his two sons, Charles and Carloman. About three years afterwards, A. D. 771, Carloman died, and Charlemagne (Charles the Great) was declared sole ruler of the Franks, by the voice of the estates of the Empire. He conducted many wars, and advanced Christian cultivation and civil order. For the purpose of securing the boundaries of his kingdom and extending Christianity, he made war for thirty-one years on the Saxon confederation, which was formed by various Pagan tribes on the Weser and Elbe. Charles took the fortress of Eresburg, on the south of the Teutoburger forest, destroyed the national palladium—​the statue of Arminius, and compelled the Saxons to a peace. He next proceeded against the Longobard king, Desidérius, in obedience to the summons of Pope Adrian. With an army collected together near Geneva, he crossed theSt.Bernard, stormed the passes of the Alps, and conquered Pavia. Desidérius ended his days in a cloister. Charles erected the Lombard throne in Milan, united Upper Italy to the kingdom of the Franks, and confirmed the gifts made by Pepin to the pope.During the absence of Charles, the Saxons had expelled the Frank garrisons and reëstablished their ancient boundaries. Charles again marched into their country, subdued them, and compelled the chiefs of the tribes to submit at Paderborn. Their warlike duke, Witikind, alone, fled to the Danes and refused to confirm the treaty. In the two following years, Charles fought against the Moors in Spain, took Pampelona and Saragossa, and united the whole country, as far as the Ebro, to his own kingdom, as a Spanish province. But during his return, his rear, under the command of Roland, suffered a defeat in the valley of Roncesválles, in which the bravest champions of the Franks were destroyed. Roland’s battle at Roncesválles was a favorite theme with the poets of the middle ages. The Saxons took advantage of his absence to make a fresh insurrection, and pursued their devastating course as far as the Rhine. Charles hastened to the spot, gave them repeated overthrows, and subdued their land afresh. But when he attempted to employ them as militia against the Slavonic tribes in the East, they fell upon the Frank troops who were marching with them, at the Suntal (between Hanover and Hameln), and slew them. This demanded vengeance. The Frank emperor marched through the land, plundering and destroying, and then held a court of judgment at Verden on the Aller. 4,500 prisoners expiated with their blood the crime of their brethren. Upon this, hostilities were resumed with fresh violence. But the battle on the Hase, which terminated to the disadvantage of the Saxons, put an end to the war. Witikind and the other chiefs took an oath of fealty and military service, and allowed themselves to be baptised. The people followed their example. Eight bishoprics provided for the maintenance and extension of Christianity among the Saxons. Another insurrection, however, was occasioned a few years afterwards, by the oppressivearriere-ban, and the unwonted payment of tithes to the Church, which resulted in 10,000 Saxon families being carried away from their homes, and colonies of Franks being established in their place. To oppose the Slavonic tribes to the east of the Elbe, Charles founded the Margraviate of Brandenburg.Shortly after, Thassilo duke of Bavaria, attempted to render himself independent of the Frank power, by the assistance of the Avars, who lived to the east. He was overpowered, and expiated his breach of faith by perpetual confinement within the walls of the cloisters of Fulda. Bavaria was hereupon incorporated with the Frank empire, and Charles established the Eastern Margraviate as a check upon the wild Avars. When Charlemagne had reduced all the lands from the Ebro and the Appenines to the Eider, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Raab and the Elbe, he repaired to Rome at the conclusion of the century. It was here that, during the festival of Christmas, he was invested with the crown of the Roman empire, in the church ofSt.Peter, by LeoIII, whom he had defended against a mob of insurgents. It was hoped, that by this means, western Christendom might be formed into a single body, of which the Pope was to become the spiritual, and Charles the secular head. It was at this time that the long-existing variance between the Western (Roman Catholic), and the Eastern (Greek Catholic) churches, terminated in a complete separation.The domestic policy of Charlemagne was not less fertile of results than the foreign. 1. He improved the government and the administration of justice by abolishing the office of duke, dividing the whole kingdom into provinces, and appointing counts and deputies for the conduct of the affairs of justice, and clerks of the treasury for the management of the crown lands and the collection of imposts. The laws were confirmed by the popular assemblies (maifelder), in which every freeman had a share. 2. He promoted the cultivation of the land, and the education of the people. Agriculture and the breeding of cattle were encouraged, farms and villages sprang up, and barren heaths were converted into arable fields.He founded conventual schools and cathedrals, had the works of the ancient Roman writers transcribed, and formed a collection of old German heroic ballads. Learned men, like the British monk, Alcuin, and the historian Eginhard, from the Odenwald, had ample reason to congratulate themselves on his encouragement and support. 3. He favored the clergy and the church. It was by his means that the former obtained their tithes and vast gifts and legacies; church music was improved, missionaries supported, and churches and monasteries erected. Ingelheim on the Rhine, and Aix, were his favorite places of residence. He lies buried in the latter town.The son of Charlemagne, Louis the Denbonnaire (the Gentle), was better fitted for the repose of a cloister than for the government of a warlike nation. A too hasty division of his kingdom among his three sons, Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis, was the occasion of much sorrow to himself, and confusion to the empire. For when, at a later period, he proposed an alteration in favor of his fourth son, Charles the Bald, the fruit of a second marriage, the elder sons took up arms against their father. Louis, faithlessly deserted by his vassals on “the field of lies,” near Strasburg, and betrayed to his own sons, was compelled by Lothaire to do penance in the church and to abdicate his throne; and was afterwards shut up for some time in a cloister. It is true that Louis procured his father’s reinstatement; but when the weak emperor, after the death of Pepin, by a new division of the kingdom, deprived Louis of Germany, in favor of his brothers, Lothaire and Charles, Louis raised his standard against him. This broke the old emperor’s heart. Full of sorrow, he ended his days on a small island of the Rhine, near Ingelheim. The hostile brothers now turned their arms against each other. A bloody civil war depopulated the country, so that at last, after a battle of three days’ duration, at Fontenaille in Burgundy, the Frank nobility refused to obey thearriere-ban, and by this means brought about the treaty of partition of Verdun. By virtue of this treaty, Lothaire received the imperial dignity, together with Italy, Burgundy, and Lorraine; Charles the Bald, western Franconia (France); and Louis the German, the lands on the right bank of the Rhine—​Spire, Worms, and Mayence.This division was followed by a time of great confusion, during which Europe was severely harassed, on the south by the Arabs; on the east, by the Slavi; and on the north and west, by the Normans. To oppose these predatory inroads, the Carlovingian monarchs, who were all men of weak and narrow minds, were obliged to restore the ducal office in the different provinces, and to sanction the hereditary authority of the Margraves, so that, in a short time, all the power fell into the hands of the nobles. By the rapid deaths of most of the posterity of Louis the Denbonnaire, nearly the whole of the empire of Charlemagne devolved upon Charles the Fat,A. D.876, a prince weak and indolent, and simple almost to imbecility. Incapable of resisting the valiant Normans, he purchased a disgraceful peace from them. This proceeding so exasperated the German princes, that they decreed his deposition, at Tribur on the Rhine, and elected his nephew, the brave Arnulf, as his successor. Arnulf governed with vigor. He overthrew the Normans at Louvain, and called in the aid of the wild Magyars, or Hungarians, from the Ural, a people expert in horsemanship and archery, and who were now, under their valiant captain Arpad, occupying the plains on the Danube (named after them Hungary), against the Slavi and Avars. The Avars were either subjected or compelled to retreat. But the strangers (the Hungarians) soon became a more dreadful scourge to Germany than either the Slavi or the Avars. They made their predatory inroads and exacted a yearly tribute, even under Louis the Child, the youthful son of Arnulf, who died in the flower of his age, after a glorious campaign in Italy. This still continued, when, after the early death of this last of the Carlovingian race, the German nobles, among whom the dukes of Saxony, Franconia, Lorraine, Swabia, and Bavaria were preëminent for power, met together and elected Duke Conrad of Franconia, emperor. Germany thus became an elective empire.The rule of the Carlovingians survived longest in France, but it possessed neither strength nor dignity. Under Charles the Simple, who had ascended the French throne after the deposition and subsequent death of Charles the Fat, the dukes and counts rendered themselves entirely independent, and one of the most powerful among them, Hugh of Paris, kept the imbecile king in strict confinement. France, on the other hand, was delivered from the devastating forays of the Normans, by Charles admitting duke Rollo into the province named after them Normandy, on condition that he and his followers would suffer themselves to be baptized, and recognize the king as their suzerain (feudal sovereign). The Normans, a people readily susceptible of civilization, soon acquired the language, manners, and customs of the Franks. Charles the Simple was followed by two other kings of the Carlovingian race; but their power was at last so limited that they possessed nothing but the town of Laon, with the surrounding country; every thing else had fallen into the hands of the insolent nobility. After the death of the Childless LouisV, Hugh Capet, son and heir of Hugh of Paris, assumed the title of king, and put to death in prison Louis’ uncle Charles of Lorraine, who attempted to assert his right to the throne by force of arms.The first successors of Hugh Capet possessed but little power and a narrow territory. The dukes and counts of the different provinces looked upon the king, who, properly, was only lord of France, as their equal, and only allowed him the first rank among themselves, in so far as they were obliged to recognize him as their feudal superior. The nobles dared not weaken the rights that appertained to him in this capacity, lest they should afford an example of breach of faith to their own subjects, and encourage them to similar behavior towards themselves. For the rest, the possessions of the great vassals were independent counties and principalities, which had no closer connection with the French throne than the western territories on the Seine, Loire, and Garonne, which belonged to the king of England; or the eastern (Burgundian) lands on the Rhone and the Jura, which were portions of the German empire.But in the attempt to increase the kingly power, the house of Capet were not less aided by their good fortune than by their wisdom. It was fortunate, that, owing to the lengthened lives of most of their kings, the throne was seldom vacant, that there was almost always a son of age to succeed his father, and that, consequently, there was never an interregnum. But it was wisdom in the first kings to have their eldest sons crowned during their lives, and to make them their partners in the government, so that, on the death of the father, little or no change was suffered. The most important kings after Hugh Capet were LouisVII, who undertook the second crusade, and during his absence intrusted the government in France to the politic Abbot Suger ofSt.Denis; Philip AugustusII, who wrested Normandy and the other territories in the west from the English king, John Lackland; and LouisVIII, who enlarged his dominions on the south by the war against the Albigenses. But the reigns which had the greatest influence upon the history of France were those ofSt.Louis and Philip the Fair. The former improved the laws, and caused the royal courts of justice to be looked upon as the highest in the land, and the disputes of the nobles among themselves, or with their vassals to be brought before them for decision: the latter, on the other hand, increased the consequence of the towns by granting various privileges and liberties to the citizens, and by being the first who summoned the representatives of the towns to the diet during his contest with the pope. After the death of Philip’s three sons, who reigned one after the other, but left no male heirs, the French throne passed to the house of Valois,A. D.1328.PhilipVIof Valois, brother’s son of Philip the Fair, inherited the French throne. But EdwardIIIof England also asserted his claims, as son of a daughter of Philip the Fair. Without regard to the Salic law, which prohibited the succession of females, he assumed the title of king of France, and made war upon Philip. After a bloody contest of a few years, the battle of Crecy was fought, in which the English were the victors, and the flower of the French chivalry, together with John, the blind king of Bohemia, fell on the field. The possession of the important town of Calais was the fruit of the victory. Philip died in the following year, and his son, John the Good, succeeded to the contested crown. Eager to obliterate the memory of Crecy, he attacked the English army, which was under the command of EdwardIII’sheroic son, the Black Prince, but suffered a decisive defeat at Poictiers, and was obliged to proceed as a captive to the capital of England. Whilst he was absent, the kingdom was governed by the crown prince (Dauphin). During his rule, an insurrection broke out in Paris and over the whole land, which was attended with great devastations and outrages, until the imperfectly-armed citizens and peasants were subdued by the French knights, and visited with severe punishment. Shortly after this, a peace was established between France and England, by which Calais and the south-west of France was surrendered to the English, and a heavy ransom promised for John, whilst Edward, on the other hand, renounced his pretensions to the French throne. But when the collection of the ransom money was delayed, John voluntarily returned into captivity, and died in London.John’s son, CharlesV(the Wise), healed the wounds of his country. He quieted men’s minds by his moderate government, and by prudence and valor recovered the lands that had been lost on the Loire and the Garonne; so that when the Black Prince fell a victim to wasting disease, and EdwardIIIshortly followed him into the grave, nothing remained to the English of all their conquests but Calais. But under his successor, CharlesVI, who became insane shortly after coming of age, France again fell into a state of confusion and lawlessness. Two powerful court parties, headed by the uncle of the king (the duke of Burgundy), and the king’s brother (the duke of Orleans), contended for the government; whilst the burghers rebelled against the heavy imposts, and demanded an increase of their privileges. About the same time in which the towns were waging war against the knights in Germany, the Swiss peasants were contending against the nobility, and a dangerous popular insurrection, under Wat Tyler and others, was making rapid progress in England, the citizen and peasant class rose against the court and the nobility in Flanders and France also. But want of union among the insurgents gave the latter the victory, and the outbreak was followed by a diminution of the privileges of the people. The Burgundian party favored the citizens, the Orleans party the nobility.The chivalrous king, HenryVof England, took advantage of these circumstances to renew the war with France. He demanded the former possessions back again; and when this was refused, he entered France by Calais, and renewed at Agincourt, on the Somme, the days of Crecy and Poictiers,A. D.1415. The French army, four times the number of its opponents, was overthrown, and the flower of the French chivalry either fell in the field, or were taken prisoners by the enemy; nothing stood between the victor and Paris, where party violence had just now attained its highest point, and murders and insurrections were matters of daily occurrence. The Orleans party joined the Dauphin, whilst the Burgundian party, with the queen Isabella, united themselves with the English, and acknowledged HenryVand his descendants as the heirs of the French crown. The whole of the country to the north of the Loire was soon in the hands of the English. But HenryVwas snatched away by death in the midst of his heroic course, in the same year in which the crazy CharlesVIsank into the grave, and the Dauphin took possession of the throne under the title of CharlesVII.But this made little difference to France. The English and their allies proclaimed HenryVI, who was scarcely a year old, the rightful ruler of the country, and retained their superiority in the field so that they already held Orleans in siege.In this necessity, theMaid of Orleans, a peasant girl of Dom Remy in Lorraine, who gave out that she had been summoned to the redemption of France by a heavenly vision, aroused the sinking courage of Charles and his soldiers. Under her banner, the town of Orleans was delivered, the king conducted to Rheims to be crowned, and the greater part of their conquests wrested from the English. The faith in her heavenly mission inspired the French with courage and self-confidence, and filled the English with fear and despair. This effect remained after Joan of Arc had fallen into the hands of the latter, and had been given up to the flames on a pretended charge of blasphemy and sorcery. The English lost one province after another; and when Philip the Good of Burgundy reconciled himself with the king, Calais soon became their last and only possession in the land of France. Paris opened its gates and received Charles with acclamations. He reigned over France in peace for twenty-five years; but he was a weak man, who suffered himself to be guided by women and favorites. He was followed by LouisXI, a crafty but politic prince, who, by cunning, violence, and unexampled tyranny, rendered the power of the throne absolute, and enlarged and consolidated his empire. He robbed the nobility of all their choicest privileges, and gradually united all the great fiefs with the crown. He then, by the assistance of the Swiss (whose hardy youth he and his successor engaged as mercenaries), overthrew Charles the Bold, and made himself master of the dukedom of Burgundy. The stings of conscience and the fear of men tortured him in the lonely castles where he spent the last years of his life,A. D.1483. His two successors, CharlesVIIIand LouisXII, conquered Brittany, but dissipated the strength of the kingdon in their expeditions to Italy.FRANCE DURING THE WAR OF RELIGION.HenryII, a determined enemy of the Huguenots, died in consequence of a wound he received during a tournament,A. D.1559. His feeble and delicate son, FrancisII, was his successor. This prince was married to the fascinating Mary Stuart of Scotland, whose uncles, the Guises, in consequence, enjoyed great influence at the French court. The Guises, as zealous adherents of the Catholic Church and the papacy, made use of their lofty position to suppress the reformed party; but by doing this, gave their opponents, and in especial, the Prince Condé, of the family of Bourbon, and the Admiral Coligni, the opportunity of strengthening themselves by joining the Huguenots. The schism increased daily; the one party strove to overthrow the other, and to secure the victory to their own side by the assistance of the king. The day on which the Estates assembled at Orleans was selected by both parties as a befitting time for the execution of this project. The Guises gained the advantage. The chiefs of the Huguenots already found themselves in prison, when a turn was given to affairs by the sudden death of the king. The queen-mother, Catherine de Medicis, placed herself at the head of affairs during the minority of the new king, CharlesIX, and the Bourbons assumed a position suited to their birth. The Guises, irritated at the neglect they experienced, retired with their niece, Mary Stuart, into Lorraine, whence the latter, shortly after, departed with sorrow and mourning into Scotland.The removal of the Guises from the court was of advantage to the reformed party. They obtained toleration. Enraged at this concession, the duke of Guise concluded an alliance with some other powerful nobles for the preservation of the ancient faith in France, and returned to Paris. During this return, a horrible slaughter was perpetrated by the Guises and their attendants upon some Calvinists of the town of Vassy, who were assembled together in a barn, for the celebration of Divine worship. This proved the signal for a religious war. The outrage given to the conceded liberty of conscience by this bloody act of violence cried for vengeance. France was soon divided into two hostile camps, that attacked each other with bitter animosity and religious rage. The most horrible atrocities were committed, and the kingdom disturbed to its inmost depths. The Catholics obtained aid from Rome and Spain, the Protestants were assisted by England; Germany and Switzerland supplied soldiers. After the undecisive battle of Dreux, and the murder of the Duke Francis of Guise, at the siege of Orleans, peace was for a short time restored, and the Calvinists again assured of religious toleration—​a promise that met with but little attention. The two parties were soon again arrayed in arms against each other,A. D.1568. But despite the bravery of the Huguenots in the battle ofSt.Denis, where the elder Montmorenci lost his life, the superiority remained on the side of the Catholics; particularly when Catherine de Medicis, who had hitherto sided with neither party, embraced the interests of the latter. The sight of crucifixes and sacred objects broken to pieces, during a journey undertaken by the queen and her son, and the advice of the duke of Alba, with whom she had an interview in Bayonne, had produced this alteration in her opinions. After several bloody engagements in the vicinity of La Rochelle, which the Huguenots had selected as their battlefield, and after their gallant leader, Condé, had been basely assassinated during one of them, the peace ofSt.Germain was arranged, by which the Calvinists were again assured of the free exercise of their religion. Condé’s nephew, Henry of Bearn, who had been bred up in the doctrine of Calvin by his mother, Joanna d’ Albret, now placed himself at the head of the Huguenots; but the soul of the party was the brave Coligni, who stood by the side of the prince as his guide and adviser.Coligni possessed great influence at the court after the peace. The young king respected him, and favored him with his confidence. For the purpose of bringing about a permanent reconciliation between the religious parties, the king now urged a marriage between his sister, Margaret of Valois, and the Bourbon, Henry of Bearn. This offended the Guises, who believed that Coligni had procured the assassination of Francis of Guise, and they resolved upon his destruction. Coligni was fired at one evening, as he was returning to his own house from the Louvre. The ball, however, only shattered his arm, and it was necessary to devise a fresh plan of destruction. The Guises, in conjunction with Catherine of Medicis, now entertained the horrible project of taking advantage of the approaching marriage, for the solemnization of which many illustrious Calvinists had hastened to the capital, to destroy the chiefs of the Huguenot party. Thus originated the Bloody Nuptials of Paris, in the night ofSt.Bartholomew, August 24th, 1572. When the alarm bell ofSt.Germain l’Auxerrois gave the signal at midnight, bands of armed ruffians fell upon the defenseless Calvinists. The gray-headed hero, Coligni, was the first victim that the Guises sacrificed to their hate; the murderous bands then marched through all parts of the city, filled the streets and houses with blood and corpses, and laughed to scorn every sentiment of humanity and justice. The butchery lasted for three days, and was imitated in other towns, so that, at the lowest computation, 25,000 Huguenots must have perished. The king, to whom the plan was communicated a short time before its execution, listened to the voice of his passions, and himself fired upon the fugitives. After the deed had been accomplished, and the Guises had been fixed upon by the public voice as its instigators, and called upon to answer for their conduct, Charles took the whole affair upon himself, and excused the crime by a pretended conspiracy. Many of the French quitted their homes in horror, and sought for security in Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Henry of Bearn saved his life by a compulsatory abjuration, but returned to his old faith as soon as he found himself in security.CharlesIXdied two years after the night ofSt.Bartholomew, troubled with evil dreams. His brother Henry, who had been for a twelvemonth the elected king of Poland, fled secretly from the rude shores of the Vistula to take possession of the fairer crown of France. HenryIIIwas a weak and luxurious prince, without either assiduity or energy. Shut up with his favorites and pet dogs in the inmost apartments of the palace, he forgot his kingdom with its disturbances and miseries; and when remorse at his sinful life, which was passed in lust and debauchery, seized upon him, he sought consolation in superstitious devotion, in pilgrimages and processions, and in penance and flagellations. To bring the Huguenots to peace, so that he might be able to devote himself to the undisturbed enjoyment of the pleasures of his capital, Henry, immediately upon his accession, granted them freedom of conscience, and equal civil rights with the Catholics. Enraged at these concessions, which destroyed all the fruits of their previous exertions, the zealous Catholics, under the guidance of Henry of Guise, and with the cognizance of PhilipIIof Spain, concluded the Holy League for the preservation of the Church in all its ancient rights. Many members were won to this alliance by the insinuations of the priests and monks, and by the intrigues of the Jesuits. The fickle and faithless king, disturbed by this movement, united himself with the Catholic zealots, declared himself the head of the League, and curtailed the religious peace. The duke of Anjou, Henry’s younger brother, died a few years after this; and as he, like the king, was without children, the Bourbon, Henry of Navarre (Bearn), became the nearest heir to the throne. This prospect of a Protestant king alarmed the Catholic part of France, and gave fresh vigor to the League. The weak king was obliged to recall all treaties with the Huguenots, to announce the extirpation of heresy, and to approve the arrangements of the League. Henry of Guise, at first, only entertained the notion of putting aside the Protestant successor to the throne, who had been excommunicated by the pope; but his courage rose with his increasing power; he soon made attempts upon the crown himself, whilst, as a pretended descendant of the Carlovingi, he asserted the superiority of his claims to those of the reigning family. A conspiracy was formed in Paris (where the citizens were kept in a state of perpetual agitation by fanatical popular orators) against the freedom or life of the king; and when HenryIIIattempted to defend himself by calling in Swiss troops, the agitation burst into rebellion. The people assembled themselves around the Guises, who, against the king’s commands, were entering the capital, barricaded the streets and bridges, and commenced a furious contest with single divisions of the troops. The trembling king fled with his favorites to Chartres, and left his capital in the hands of his rival. Henry of Guise now possessed the same power that had belonged to the mayors of the palace in the time of the Merovingi. But even this position did not satisfy the ambitious party leader. An assembly of Estates, convoked at Blois, where the adherents of the Guises were the strongest party, proposed not only to deprive the Bourbons of their right to the throne and to exterminate Calvinism, but to change the government, and to place the whole power in the hands of the Guises. At this crisis, Henry hazarded a bold stroke; he had the duke of Guise and his brother, the Cardinal Louis, assassinated, and imprisoned the most influential leaders of their party. This proceeding produced a fearful commotion in the whole nation: in Paris, allegiance was renounced to the God-forsaken king, who had overthrown the pillar of Catholicism; the pope fulminated an excommunication at him; revolutionary movements took place in many quarters. Despised and forsaken, HenryIIIsaw no other way to safety open to him than an alliance with Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots. A frightful civil war burst out afresh, but fortune was hostile to the League. Henry had already laid siege to Paris, and threatened to reduce the faithless town to a heap of ruins, when the knife of a fanatical monk put an end to his life. HenryIIIthe last Valois, died on the first of August, 1589, after appointing Henry of Navarre and Bearn his successor.HenryIVhad still a long struggle to sustain before his head was ornamented by the crown of France. Mayenne, the brother of the murdered Guise, placed himself at the head of the League, and offered a vehement resistance to the Calvinistic claimant of the throne. PhilipIIsought to turn the confusion to his own advantage, and commanded his able general, Alexander of Parma, to march his forces from the Netherlands into France. Henry tried for a long time to get possession of his inheritance by the sword: he laid siege to Paris, and caused the citizens to feel all the horrors of famine; but he at length became convinced that he never could gain peaceable possession of the French throne by battles and victories. He thought the crown of France was worth a mass, and went over to the Catholic Church in the cathedral ofSt.Denis, and by this means destroyed the power of the League. Paris now threw open its gates, and welcomed the bringer of peace with acclamations. The pope recalled the anathema; the heads of the League concluded a treaty with him, and PhilipII, a short time before his death, consented to the peace of Vervins. After foreign and domestic tranquillity had been thus restored to France, the king, by the Edict of Nantes, conferred upon the Calvinists liberty of conscience, the full rights of citizenship, and many other privileges; such as separate chambers in the courts of justice, several castles, with all their warlike munitions (La Rochelle, Montauban, Nismes,&c.) and freedom from episcopal jurisdiction. He next sought to heal the wounds that had been inflicted on the land by the war, by encouraging agriculture, trade and commerce; and had the economy of the state and the taxation admirably arranged by his friend and minister, Sully. He won for himself the warmest affections of his people by his genuine French character, and by his cordial and cheerful disposition. His solitary failing, his too great love for woman, was a merit in the eyes of the French. But fanaticism was only slumbering. Henry’s tolerant disposition towards heretics awakened it. As he was meditating the vast plan (with the approval of the Dutch Union and other European powers) of founding a Christian community with equal privileges for the three Confessions, and by this means destroying the supremacy of the royal house of Hapsburg, he fell beneath the knife of Ravaillac.THE AGE OF LOUISXIV—​RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN.The first part of the reign of the weak LouisXIII, who only numbered nine years at the time of his father’s murder, was full of mischief for France. During the time the queen-mother, Mary of Medicis, conducted the government, Italian favorites exerted a great influence upon affairs, enriched themselves at the expense of the French, and irritated the pride of the nation by their insolence. Enraged at this, the nobility took up arms, and filled the country with rebellion and the tumult of war. When at length LouisXIIIhimself, upon coming of age, assumed the government, he indeed consented that the foreign favorites should be removed by murder and execution, and banished his mother from the court; but the people gained little by it. The new favorites in whom the king, who possessed no self-reliance, reposed his confidence, were not distinguished from the former either by virtue or talents; for this reason, both the nobles of the kingdom and the Huguenots, who felt themselves injured in their rights, again rose against the government, and threw the land into fresh confusion. This melancholy condition of affairs was only put an end to when Cardinal Richelieu was admitted into the state council, and introduced a complete change of system, (A. D.1624.)This great statesman maintained an almost absolute sway in the court and in the kingdom for nearly eighteen years, though the king never loved him, the queen and the nobility were constantly attempting his overthrow, and a succession of cabals and conspiracies were plotted against him. The greatness of his mind triumphed over all obstacles. Richelieu’s efforts were directed towards the extension and rounding of the French territory without, and the increasing and strengthening of the royal power within. In furtherance of the former of these objects, he sought to weaken the house of Hapsburg, and for this purpose entered into alliances with the enemies of the emperor not only in Germany, in the time of the Thirty Years’ War, but in Italy and other places; and, to attain his aims in regard to the latter object, he neglected to call together the estates of the kingdom, broke the power of the nobility and of the independent officials and judges in the parliament, and attacked the Huguenots, who had formed an almost independent alliance in the south and west of France, with their own fortresses, and an effective militia, and great privileges. After conquering the most important of the Huguenot towns (Nismes, Montauban, Montpellier), and destroying their fortifications, in three wars, and when he had at length taken Rochelle, the bulwark of the Calvinists, after a siege of fourteen months, he proceeded to deprive the Protestants of their political privileges and of their independent position, but granted them, by the Edict of Nismes, liberty of conscience and equal rights with Catholic subjects. The turbulent nobles had been deprived of their greatest support by the disarming of the Huguenots, and the war could now be prosecuted against them with success. The most daring were got rid of by banishment and the executioner. Even the queen-mother and her second son, and the duke of Orleans, who attempted to procure the fall of Richelieu, were compelled to leave the country, and the confidential friend of the latter, Henry, duke of Montmorency, a scion of one of the most renowned families of France, died at Toulouse by the hand of the executioner. A similar fate awaited the count of Cinq-Mars and his friend, De Thou, a few years later, when in conjunction with the queen and some of the nobles, they formed a conspiracy against the mighty cardinal. The parliament, the upper tax-offices and courts of justice, which, like the king, claimed an independent authority on account of their offices being hereditary, were weakened by the establishment of extraordinary courts and higher officers, who were dependent upon the minister.In the year 1642, died Richelieu, hated and feared by the nobility and the people, but admired by cotemporaries and posterity; LouisXIII, a prince without either great virtues or great vices, and dependent upon every one who could either acquire his favor or render himself formidable to him, soon followed him. His widow, Anne of Austria, the proud and ambitious sister of the king of Spain, undertook the government during the minority of his son. But as she reposed the whole of her confidence on the Italian, Mazarin, the inheritor of the office and the principles of Richelieu, she met with vehement opposers among the nobility and in the parliament, who attempted to regain their former power and position. The people, in the hope of being relieved of some of their heavy taxes, and guided by the clever and dexterous Cardinal Retz, embraced their cause, with the intent of compelling the court to remove Mazarin, and to adopt a different plan of government. This gave occasion to a furious civil war, which is known in history as “the War of the Fronde.” Mazarin was obliged to leave the country for a short time, but so immovable were the favor and confidence of the queen, that he governed France from Cologne as he had formerly done in Paris. But his banishment did not last long. When LouisXIVhad attained the years of kingly majority, and Turenne, the commander of the royal troops, had conquered his rival, the great Condé, the general of the insurgents, in the suburb ofSt.Antoine, Mazarin returned in triumph. His solemn entry into Paris was a sign that absolute power had gained the victory, and that henceforth the will of the monarch was to be law. Mazarin enjoyed for six years longer the greatest respect in France and Europe; Cardinal Retz, the ingenious composer of the Memoirs of this war, was obliged to leave his country, after he had previously expiated his turbulent conduct in the prison of Vincennes; Condé, poor and unhappy, wandered among the Spaniards, till the grace of his master allowed him to return and take possession of his estates; Mazarin’s nieces, Italian females without name or position, were endowed with the wealth of France, and sought for as brides by the greatest nobles; and the members of parliament adapted themselves without opposition to the directions they received from above, after Louis had appeared before them in his boots and riding whip, and demanded their obedience with threats. Louis now gave effect to his principle, “I am the state” (l’etat, c’est moi). The peace of the Pyrenees with Spain was the last work of Mazarin. He died shortly after, (March 9, 1661,) leaving enormous wealth behind him. His death took place at the moment when Louis began to grow weary of him, and was longing to seize the reins of government in his own powerful grasp.After the death of Mazarin, LouisXIV, in whom kingly absolutism attained its highest point, appointed no prime minister, but surrounded himself with men who merely executed his will, and whose highest aim was to increase and spread abroad the renown, glory, and honor of the king. In the choice of these men, Louis displayed judgment and the talents of a ruler. His ministers, especially Colbert, the great promoter of French industry, manufactures, and trades, as well as his generals, Turenne, Condé, Luxemburg, and the engineer, Vauban, as much surpassed, in talent, acquirements, and dexterity, the statesmen and soldiers of all other countries, as LouisXIVhimself was preëminent among the princes of his age, in the greatness of his power, in commanding presence, and kingly dignity. He rendered the age of LouisXIVthe most illustrious in the French annals, and caused the Court of Versailles (the seat of the royal residence) to be everywhere praised and admired as the model of taste, of refinement, and of a distinguished mode of living. But as he sought nothing but the gratification of his own selfishness, of his own love of pleasure, of his pride, and of his desire for renown and splendor, his reign became the grave of freedom, of morals, of firmness of character, and of manly sentiments. Court favor was the end of every effort, and flattery the surest road to arrive at it; virtue and merit met with little acknowledgment.It was during the last three decades of the seventeenth century that France stood at the culminating point of her power abroad and of her prosperity at home, so that the flattering chronicles of those days described the age of LouisXIVas the golden age of France. Trade and industry received a prodigious development by the care of Colbert; the woollen and silk manufactories, the stocking and cloth weaving, which flourished in the southern towns, brought prosperity, the maritime force increased, colonies were planted, and the productions of France were carried by trading companies to all quarters of the globe.The court of France displayed a magnificence that had never before been witnessed. The palace of Versailles, and the gardens which were adorned with statues, fountains, and alleys of trees, were a model of taste for all Europe, fêtes of all kinds, jovial parties, ballets, fireworks, the opera and the theatre, in the service of which the first intellects in France employed their talents, followed upon each other in attractive succession; poets, artists, men of learning, all were eager to do honor to a prince who rewarded with a liberal hand every kind of talent that conduced either to his amusement or to his glory. Sumptuous buildings, as the Hospital of Invalides, costly libraries, magnificent productions of the press, vast establishments for the natural sciences, academies, and similar institutions, exalted the glory and renown of the great Louis. The refined air of society, the polished tone, the easy manners of the nobility and courtiers, subdued Europe more permanently and extensively than the weapons of the army. The French fashions, language, and literature, bore sway from this time in all circles of the higher classes. The consequences of the French Academy by Richelieu were a development of the language, style, and literary composition, that was extremely favorable to the diffusion of the literature. The language, so particularly adapted for social intercourse, for conversation, and for epistolary writing, remained from henceforth the language of diplomacy, of courts, and of the higher classes; and although the literary productions are wanting in strength, elevation, and nature,—​the polish of the form, and the ease and felicity of the style, gave French taste the supremacy in Europe, and strengthened the French people in the agreeable delusion that they were the most civilized of nations.But however flatterers may sing the praises of the age of LouisXIV, one spot of shame remains ineradicable—​the persecution of the Huguenots. The French king believed that the unity of the Church was inseparable from a perfect monarchy. For this reason he oppressed the Jansenists, a Catholic party, which first contended against the Jesuits, and afterwards against the head of the Church himself; and he compelled the Calvinists, by the most severe persecutions, either to fly, or to return into the bosom of the Catholic Church. Colbert, who esteemed the Huguenots as active and industrious citizens, prevented for some time these violent measures; but the suggestions of the royal confessor, La Chaise, the zeal for conversion of the affectedly pious Madame Maintenon, who had been first a tutoress of the court, and afterwards Louis’ trusted wife, and the cruelty of Louvois, the minister of war, at length triumphed over the advice of Colbert. A long succession of oppressive proceedings against the Huguenots prepared the way for the great stroke. The number of their churches was restricted, and their worship confined to a few of the principal towns. Louis’ paroxysms of repentance and devotion were always the sources of fresh oppressions to the Calvinistic heretics, by whose conversion he thought to expiate his own crimes. They were gradually excluded from office and dignities; converts were favored; in this way, the ambitious were enticed, the poor were won by money, which flowed from the king’s conversion chest, and from the liberal gifts of the pious illustrious; a wide field was opened to the zeal for proselytism by the enactment that the conversion of children under age was valid. Families were divided, children were torn from their parents and brought up as Catholics. Court and clergy, the heartless and eloquent bishop Bossuet at their head, set all means in motion to establish the ecclesiastical unity of France. When all other means of conversion failed, came the dragonades. At the command of Louvois, the cavalry took possession of the southern provinces, and established their quarters in the dwellings of the Huguenots. The prosperity of the industrious citizens, whose substance was devoured by the dragoons, soon disappeared. The bad treatment by these booted missionaries, who quitted the houses of the apostates to fall in doubled numbers upon those who remained stedfast, operated more effectually than all the enticements of the court or the seductions of the priests. Thousands fled abroad that they might preserve their faith upon a foreign soil. At last came the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, October, 1685. The religious worship of the Calvinists was now forbidden, their churches were torn down, their schools closed, their preachers banished from the land; when the emigration increased to a formidable degree, this was forbidden, under punishment of the galleys and forfeiture of goods. But despite all threats and prohibitions, upwards of 500,000 French Calvinists carried their industry, their faith, and their courage to Protestant lands. Switzerland, the Palatinate of the Rhine, Brandenburg, Holland, and England, offered an asylum to the persecuted. The silk manufacture and stocking-weaving were carried abroad by the fugitive Huguenots. Flatterers extolled the king as the exterminator of heresy, but the courage of the peasants in Cevennes, and the number of Huguenots who contented themselves with private devotion, show how little religious oppression conduced to the desired end. For when the persecution was carried into the distant valleys of the Cevennes, where Waldenses and Calvinists lived, according to ancient custom, in the simplicity of the faith, the oppressors met with an obstinate resistance. Persecution called forth the courage of its victims, oppression urged zeal into fanaticism. Led on by a young mechanic, the Camisards, clad in a linen frock, rushed “with naked breast against the marshals.” A frightful civil war filled the peaceful valleys of Cevennes; fugitive priests, in the gloom of the forest, exhorted the evangelical brethren to a desperate defense, till, at length, the persecutors grew weary. Nearly two millions of the Huguenots remained without rights and without religious worship.THE LAST DAYS OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY—​THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.LouisXVat first possessed the affections of his people to such a degree, that he was named the ‘Much-beloved;’ and when he was attacked by a dangerous illness in Metz, the whole land went into mourning, and his recovery was celebrated by the greatest rejoicings. But this love gradually changed into hatred and contempt when the king gave himself up to the most shameless debaucheries, and surrendered the government of the country, the command of the army, and the decision upon points of law and state policy, to the companions of his orgies and the ministers of his lusts and pleasures; and when mistresses, without morals or decency, ruled the court and the empire. Among these women, none possessed greater or more enduring influence than the Marchioness of Pompadour, who guided the whole policy of France for a period of twenty years, filled the most important offices with her favorites, decided upon peace or war, and disposed of the revenues of the state as she did of her private purse, so that, after a life passed in luxury and splendor, she left millions behind her. She and her creatures encouraged Louis’ excesses and love of pleasure, that he might plunge continually deeper in the pool of vice, and leave to them the government of the state. For the rest, the Pompadour used her position and her influence with a certain dignity, and with tact and discretion; but when the countess Du Barry, a woman from the very dregs of the people, occupied her place, the court lost all authority and respect.When LouisXV, in consequence of his excesses, was carried off in the midst of his sins by a frightful distemper, the treasury was exhausted, the country in debt, credit gone, and the people oppressed by their burdens.It was under these melancholy circumstances, that an absolute throne descended to a prince who certainly possessed the best of hearts, but a weak understanding; who was good-natured enough to wish to relieve the condition of the people, but possessed neither strength nor intellect for efficient measures. This prince was LouisXVI.Weak and indulgent, he allowed the frivolity and extravagance of his brothers, the count of Provence (afterwards LouisXVIII), and the count of Artois (CharlesX); and permitted his wife, Marie Antoinette, the highly-accomplished daughter of Maria Theresa, to interfere in matters of state, and to exert a considerable influence upon the court and government. The queen, by her pride and haughty bearing, incurred the dislike of the people, so that they ascribed every unpopular measure to her influence, and put a bad construction upon every liberty she allowed herself in private.The prevailing want of money, and the disordered state of the revenue, could only be remedied by including the nobility and clergy in the taxation, by large reforms in the whole system of government, like those proposed by Turgot and Malesherbes, and by order and economy in the expenditure. But LouisXVIhad neither strength nor resolution to carry out such decisive measures; and as for economy, the extravagant court of Versailles would not listen to it. The Genevese banker, Necker, who undertook the management of the finances after Turgot, was as little in a position as his predecessor to reduce the disorder in the state economy; and when, upon the occasion of a loan, he exposed the financial condition of France in a pamphlet, he drew upon himself the displeasure of the court and the aristocracy to such a degree, that he was obliged to resign his office. This happened at a time when the American war had increased the scarcity of money, and aroused the feeling of liberty and republicanism in France. It was, therefore, a great misfortune for the French monarchy, that just at this critical moment the frivolous and extravagant Calonne undertook the management of the finances. This man departed from the frugal plan of Necker, acceded to the wishes of the queen and the necessities of the princes and courtiers, and deluded the world with high-sounding promises of putting an end to all difficulties. The most splendid festivals were celebrated in Versailles, and the talents of Calonne loudly extolled. But his means, also, were soon exhausted.The popular favorite Necker, was a second time summoned, in 1788, to the ministry. He first allayed the irritation by repealing resolutions against the parliament, and then made preparations for summoning the Estates. Owing to this, there soon arose a division between him and the parliament and Notables, whom he had again consulted. The latter were of opinion that the new assembly should conform itself, both as to the number of representatives and the mode of procedure, to the Estates of 1614, while Necker wished to allow a double representation to the third Estate, and that they should vote individually, and not as a class; a view that was supported by some of the ablest writers of the nation in a multitude of pamphlets. (Abbè Sieyes: ‘What is the third Estate?’) Necker’s opinion triumphed. An order of the king fixed the number of noble and ecclesiastical members at 300 each, that of the citizens at 600, and appointed the following May as the time of opening. Necker was the hero of the day, but he was not the pilot of the ship, he only ‘drove the wind.’In the beginning of May 1789, the deputies of the three Estates, and among them some of the ablest and most accomplished men of France, assembled at Versailles. The third Estate, irritated by the neglect of the court at the opening and during the audience, came to a rupture with the two privileged Estates at the first sitting, when the latter required that the Estates should carry on their debates separately, whilst the former insisted upon a general council and individual votes. After a contest of some weeks, the third Estate, which had chosen the astronomer, Bailli, the freedom-inspired representative of Paris, for its President, but which was guided by the superior talents of Sieyes and Mirabeau, declared itself a National Assembly, upon which it was joined by portions of the other Estates. The Assembly at once passed the resolution of allowing the levying of the present taxes only so long as the Estates should remain undissolved. This proceeding disturbed the court, and inspired it with the thought of granting a constitution to the nation, and thus rendering the estates unnecessary. For this purpose, a royal sitting was appointed, and the hall of assembly closed for a few days. Upon the intelligence of this, the deputies proceeded to the empty saloon of the Tennis Court, and raised their hands in a solemn vow not to separate till they had given a new constitution to the nation. When this Court also was closed, the meetings were held in the church ofSt.Louis. The royal sitting took place on the23dof June. But neither the speech of the king, nor the sketch of the new constitution, afforded due satisfaction, and they were consequently received with coldness. After the termination of the sitting, Louis dissolved the Assembly. The nobility and clergy obeyed, but the citizen class retained their seats, and when the master of the ceremonies called upon them to obey, Mirabeau exclaimed: ‘Tell your master that we sit here by the power of the people, and that we are only to be driven out by the bayonet!’ The weak king did not venture to encounter this resolute resistance by force, but rather advised the nobility and clergy to join the citizens.The government of the city was made over to a democratic municipality, at the head of which stood Bailli, as mayor. The court, alarmed at the increasing ferment, determined upon retiring to Versailles with a few regiments of German and Swiss troops. In this proceeding, the leaders of the movement believed they saw the purpose of some act of violence, and made use of it accordingly to excite fresh irritation. The intelligence was spread abroad in Paris, that Necker had been suddenly dismissed and banished from the country, and a favorite of the queen placed in his office. This was interpreted as the first step in the contemplated outrage, and proved the signal for a general rise. Crowds of the citizens, wearing the newly-invented national cockade, (blue, white, and red,) paraded through the streets, the alarm-bell was sounded, the work-shops of the gunsmiths plundered; tumult and confusion reigned everywhere. On the 14th of July, after the populace had taken 30,000 stand of arms and some cannon from the Hospital des Invalides, took place the storming of the Bastille, an old castle that served as a state prison. The governor, Delaunay, and seven of the garrison, fell victims to the popular rage; their heads were carried through the streets upon poles; and many men who were hated as aristocrats were put to death. The banished Necker was recalled, and his entrance into the towns and villages of France was celebrated as that of a hero crowned with victory. In this joyous reception of the minister, the people displayed their enthusiasm for liberty and their hatred to the court and the aristocracy. Lafayette, the champion of the liberty of America, was appointed commander of the National Guard, and whilst the king returned to Paris, and exhibited himself to the assembled people from the balcony of the council-house with the cockade in his hat, the count of Artois, and many nobles of the first rank, as Condé, Polignac, left their country in mournful anticipation of coming events.Since the storming of the Bastille, the laws and magistrates had lost their authority in France, and the power lay in the hands of the populace. The country people no longer paid their tithes, taxes, and feudal dues to the clergy and nobles, but took vengeance for the long oppression they had suffered, by destroying the manorial castles. When intelligence of these proceedings spread abroad, it was proposed in the National Assembly, that the upper classes should prove to the people by their actions, that they were willing to lighten their burdens, and that, with this purpose, they should renounce, of their own free will, all the inherited feudal privileges of the middle ages. This proposal excited a storm of enthusiasm and self-renunciation. None would be behind-hand. Estates, towns, provinces, each strove for the honor of making the greatest sacrifices for the common good. This was the celebrated 4th of August, when, in one feverish and excited session, all tithes, labor-dues, manorial rights, corporate bodies, etc., were abolished, the soil was declared free, and the equality of all citizens of the state before the law and in regard to taxation was decreed. These resolutions, and the necessary laws and arrangements required for their reduction to practice, which were gradually adopted, produced in a short time a complete revolution in all existing conditions. The Church lost her possessions and was subjected to the state; monasteries and religious orders were dissolved, and the clergy paid by the state, the bishoprics newly regulated, and religious freedom established. Priests were required to swear allegiance, like officers of state, to the new constitution; but as the pope forbade it, the greater number refused the oath, which was the occasion of the French clergy being divided into sworn and unsworn priests; the latter lost their offices and were exposed to all kinds of persecutions, but enjoyed the confidence of the faithful among the people. The noble forfeited not only his privileges and the greater part of his income, but he also lost the external distinctions of his rank, by the abolition of all titles, coats of arms, orders, etc. Upon the principle of equality, all Frenchmen were to be addressed as ‘citizens.’ For the purpose of annihilating every remnant of the ancient system, France received a new geographical division into departments andarrondissements; a new system of judicature with jurymen; equality of weights, measures, and standards; and lastly, a constitutional government, in which the privileges of royalty were limited, and the legislative power committed to a single chamber, with a universal right of suffrage.On the 5th of October, an immense multitude, chiefly of women, proceeded to Versailles to demand from the king relief from the scarcity of bread, and a return of the court to Paris. The king first attempted to pacify them by a conciliatory answer. But a wing of the palace was stormed during the night, and the guard put to the sword; the arrival of Lafayette, with the National Guard, prevented any further mischief. Upon the following day, the king was obliged to consent to proceed to Paris with his family, under the escort of this frightful crew, and to take up his residence in the Tuileries, which had for many years remained unoccupied. Shortly after, the National Assembly also followed, for whom the riding-school in the neighborhood of the palace had been prepared. The power now fell more and more into the hands of the lower class, who were kept in perpetual excitement by journalists and popular leaders, and were goaded to hatred against the court and the “aristocrats.”On the day of the year in which the Bastille was taken, a grand federative festival was arranged in the Champ de Mars (July 14, 1790). It must have been a moving spectacle, when Talleyrand, at the head of 300 priests, clothed in white, and girded with tri-colored scarfs, performed the consecration of the banner at the altar of the country; when Lafayette, in the name of the National Guard, the president of the National Assembly, and, at length, the king himself, vowed fidelity to the Constitution; when the innumerable multitude raised their hands aloft and repeated after him the oath of citizenship, and the queen herself, carried away by enthusiasm, raised the Dauphin in the air and joined in the acclamations. This was the last day of happiness for the king, whose situation after this grew constantly worse. Necker, no longer equal to the difficulties, left France and retired to Switzerland. Mirabeau, won over by the court, opposed farther encroachments upon the kingly power with the whole of his eloquence, inasmuch as he believed a constitutional monarchy and not a republic to be the best government for France. Unfortunately for the king, this great man died, in his forty-second year, of a sickness brought on by his disorderly life and by over-exertion. A splendid funeral ceremony gave evidence of the influence of the man in whom sank the last strong pillar of the throne. Weak and unselfreliant as LouisXVIwas, he now lost all firmness. By his refusal to receive a sworn priest as his confessor, or to declare the emigrants traitors, who were endeavoring from Coblentz to excite the European courts to a crusade against France, he excited a suspicion that he was not honestly a supporter of the constitution he had sworn to maintain, and not altogether ignorant of the efforts of the emigrants. The more this suspicion gained ground with the people, the more perilous became the position of the king. At this crisis, Louis embraced the desperate resolution of secretly flying to the northern frontier of his kingdom. Bouillé, a resolute general in Lorraine, was let into the secret, and promised to support the scheme with his troops. Leaving behind him a letter, in which he protested against all the acts which had been forced from him since October, 1789, the king happily escaped, with his family, from Paris in a large carriage. But the clumsily executed project nevertheless miscarried. Louis was recognized inSt.Menehould by the postmaster, Drouet, stopped by the militia at Varennes, and led back to Paris at the command of the National Assembly, who sent three of their members, and among them, Pètion, to receive the royal family. The suspension of the royal authority, which had already been pronounced by the Assembly, remained in force, till Louis proclaimed and swore to observe, the Constitution completed at the end of September.The attention of the government and the Assembly was particularly directed to the priests, who had refused the oath, and to the emigrants. Both were endeavoring to overthrow the existing order of things: the former by exciting hatred and discontent among the French people; the latter by making military preparations at Coblentz, and endeavoring to stir up foreign powers to an armed invasion of France. The Assembly therefore determined upon seeking out and arresting the unsworn priests, and declaring the emigrants traitors and conspirators, and punishing them by the loss of their estates and incomes. The king put his veto upon both these resolutions, and prevented their execution. This refusal was ascribed to the secret hopes, entertained by the court, of assistance from foreign powers and of the triumph of the emigrants, and thus the temper of the people grew continually more hostile. It was also known that the queen was in correspondence with her brother, the emperor of Austria, and that she looked for support and safety to the emigrant nobility. Neither was it any longer doubtful that war must soon break out, since the emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia, after a conference in Pillnitz (August, 1791,) were making preparations, and demanded of the French government not only to make befitting indemnification to the German princes and nobles who had suffered loss by the abolition of tithes and feudal burdens, and to restore the province of Avignon, that had been wrested from the pope, but to arrange the government upon the plan proposed by the king himself in June, 1789. These demands were followed by a declaration of war against Austria and Prussia on the part of the French government, to which the king yielded his consent with tears. For the purpose of securing the capital and the National Assembly against any attack it was resolved to summon 20,000 of the federates from the southern provinces, under pretense of celebrating the festival of the Bastille, and to commit the defense of Paris to them. But Louis refused his consent to this resolution also. Upon this, the Girondist ministers laid down their offices, after Madame Roland had reproached and reprimanded the king in a letter that was soon in the hands of every body. These proceedings increased the irritation to such an extent that it became easy for the republicans to excite a popular insurrection. On the 20th of June, the anniversary of the meeting in the Tennis Court, the terrible mob, armed with pikes, marched from the suburbs, under the conduct of the brewer, Santerre, and the butcher, Legendre, into the Tuileries, to force the king to confirm the decree against the unsworn priests and for the summoning of the National Guard. But here also Louis remained firm. He defied for several hours all threats and dangers, and endured the insolence of the mob, who even placed the red Jacobin cap upon his head and gave him wine to drink, with the courage of a martyr. The rather tardy arrival of Pètion with the National Guard at length freed him from his perilous position.At midnight on the 10th of August, a fearful mob proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville, for the purpose of establishing a new democratic municipality, and then marched to the royal palace, which was defended by 900 Swiss, and the Parisian National Guard under the command of Mandat. The honest Mandat was resolved to check the advancing masses, which were ever assuming a more menacing aspect, by force; his destruction was consequently resolved upon by the democrats. He was commanded to appear at the Hôtel de Ville, and assassinated on his way thither; upon which the National Guard, uncertain what to do, and disgusted by the presence of a number of nobles in the palace, for the most part dispersed. The mob constantly assumed a more threatening aspect; cannon were turned upon the palace, the pikemen pressed forwards upon every entrance, the people loudly demanded the deposition of the king. At this crisis, Louis suffered himself to be persuaded to seek for protection with his family in the hall of the National Assembly, where they passed sixteen hours in a narrow closet. The king had scarcely left the palace, before the tumultuous multitude pressed forward more violently; the Swiss guard maintained a gallant resistance, and defended the entrance. When the report of musketry was heard in the adjoining Assembly, the indignant representatives of the people compelled the intimidated king to give his guard orders to cease firing. By this order, the faithful defenders of monarchy were doomed to destruction. Scarcely had the furious mob observed that the enemy’s fire had ceased, before they stormed the palace, slaughtered those they found in it, and destroyed the furniture. Nearly 5,000 men, and among them, 700 Swiss, fell in the struggle, or died afterwards, the victims of the popular fury. In the mean time, the National Assembly, upon the proposal of Vergniaud, embraced the resolution “to suspend the royal authority, to place the king and his family under control, to give the prince a tutor, and to assemble a National Convention.” The Temple, a strong fortress erected by the Knights Templars, soon enclosed the imprisoned royal family.After the suspension of the king, a new ministry was formed by the National Assembly, in which, by the side of the Girondist, Roland, and others, the terrible Danton held office as minister of justice. This ministry, and the new Common Council of Paris which had appointed itself, and which, after the 10th of August, had strengthened itself by members who might be depended upon as hesitating at no wickedness, now possessed the whole power. The Municipal Council ordered the police of the capital to be conducted by pikemen, and the prisons were quickly filled with the ‘suspected’ and ‘aristocrats.’ It was now that the frightful resolution was matured of getting rid of the opponents of the new order of things by a bloody tribunal, and of suppressing all resistance by terror. After the recusant priests had been slaughtered by hundreds in the monasteries and prisons, the dreadful days of September were commenced. From the2dto the 7th of September, bands of hired murderers and villains were collected round the prisons. Twelve of them acted as jurymen and judge, the others as executioners. The imprisoned, with the exception of a few whose names were marked upon a list, were put to death by this inhuman crew under a semblance of judicial proceedings. Nearly 3,000 human beings were either put to death singly, or slaughtered in masses, by these wretches, who received a daily stipend from the Common Council for their ‘labors.’ Among the murdered was the princess Lamballe, the friend of the queen; a troop of pikemen carried her head upon a pole to the Temple, and held it before Marie Antoinette’s window. The example of the capital was imitated in many of the departments. The barbarous destruction of all statues, coats of arms, incriptions, and other memorials of a former period, formed the conclusion of the August and September days, which were the transition period between the French monarchy and republic. The autumnal equinox was distinguished as the commencement of the reign of liberty and equality under the republican National Convention.Lafayette, who was serving with the northern army, and who, after the days of June, had returned to Paris on his own responsibility, for the purpose, if possible, of saving the king, was now summoned before the National Assembly to answer for his conduct. Convinced that the Jacobins were seeking for his death, he fled, with some friends who shared his sentiments, to Holland, that he might escape to America; but he fell into the hands of enemies, who treated him like a prisoner of war, and allowed him to live for five years in the dungeons of Olmutz and Magdeburg. Talleyrand repaired to England, and thence to America, where he awaited better times.The new Assembly, which, under the influence of the Jacobins, had been elected by universal suffrage, was composed almost exclusively of republicans, but of different dispositions and opinions.The trial of the king, ‘Louis Capet,’ was one of the first proceedings of the National Convention. An iron safe had been discovered in a wall of the Tuileries, containing secret letters and documents, from which it was apparent that the French court had not only been in alliance with Austria and the emigrants, and had projected plans for overthrowing the Constitution that had been sworn to by Louis, but that it had also attempted to win over single members of the National Assembly (for example, Mirabeau), by annuities, bribery, and other means. It was upon this that the republicans, who would willingly have been quit of the king, founded a charge of treason and conspiracy against the country and the people. Louis, with the assistance of two advocates, to whom the noble Malasherbes, of his own free impulse, associated himself, appeared twice before the Convention (11th and 26th December), but despite his own dignified bearing and defense, and despite the efforts of the Girondist party to have the sentence referred to a general assembly of the people, Louis was condemned to death in a stormy meeting, by a small majority of five voices, January 17th, 1793. The party of the Mountain, where the advocate, Maximilian Robespierre, the former marquisSt.Just, the frightful Danton, the lame Couthon, and the duke of Orleans, who had assumed the name of Citizen Egalité, were the leaders and chiefs, had left no means unattempted to produce this result by terror; they would, nevertheless, have failed in their purpose, had they not carried a resolution beforehand in the Assembly, that a bare majority should be sufficient for a sentence of death, and not, as had heretofore been the custom, that two thirds of the votes should be necessary. The murder was thus veiled by a show of justice. On the 21st of January, the unfortunate king ascended the scaffold in the square of the Revolution. The drums of the National Guard drowned his last words, and ‘Robespierre’s women’ greeted his bloody head with the shout of ‘Vive la République.’

The Franks, a tribe of German origin, had marched from their hereditary possessions on the Lower Rhine to the Meuse and the Sambre, A. D. 486. From this place, their warlike king, Clovis, led them forth to war and plunder. After he had conquered and put to death the last Roman governor, Syágrius, in Soissons, and made himself master of the country between the Seine and the Loire, he advanced against the Alemanni, who were in possession of an extensive kingdom on both banks of the Rhine. He defeated them in the great battle of Zülpich (between Bonn and Aix), and subjected their country on the Moselle and the Lahn. In the heat of the battle, Clovis had sworn, that if the doubtful combat should terminate in his favor, he would embrace the faith of his Christian wife; and in the same year, he, with 8,000 nobles of his train, received baptism in the waters of the Rhine. But Christianity produced no emotions of pity in his savage heart. After he had extended the Frank empire to the Rhone on the east, and to the Garónne on the south, he attempted to secure the whole territory to himself and his posterity, by putting to death the chiefs of all the Frank tribes.

The wickedness of the father was inherited by his four sons, who, after Clovis’s death, divided the Frank empire between them; the eldest received the eastern kingdom, Austrásia, with the capital, Metz; the three younger sons shared the western territory, Neustria, and Burgundy, which was connected with it. But the empire was again from time to time united. The history of the kingly house of Merovingians displays a frightful picture of human depravity. The murders of brothers and relatives, bloody civil wars, and the explosion of unbridled passions, fill its annals. The savage enormities of the two queens, Brunhilda and Fredigonda, are particularly dreadful. These horrors at length destroyed all the power of the race of Clovis, so that they are distinguished in history as sluggish kings, whilst the steward of the royal possessions (Mayor of the palace) gradually obtained possession of all the powers of government. A visit to the yearly assemblies of the people (Marzfelder), upon a carriage drawn by four oxen, was at last the only occupation of the imbecile Merovingians. At first, each of the three kingdoms had its own mayor, until the brave and shrewd Pepin of Heristal succeeded in uniting the mayoralties of Neustria and Burgundy with that of Austrásia, and making them hereditary in his own family. From this time, Pepin’s descendants, who were called dukes of Francónia, possessed the regal power, whilst the Merovingians were kings in nothing but name.

Pepin of Heristal, and his son Charles Martel, had gained the confidence of the nation by their warlike deeds, and the favor of the priests by their zeal in the propagation of Christianity. Both parties were instrumental in raising Pepin the Little, the son of Charles Martel, to the throne of the Franks. For when the assembly of the nation deposed the last imbecile representative of the Merovingians (ChildericIII), and proclaimed the chief steward, Pepin, king, the pope confirmed the election, in hope of finding in the Frank ruler a support against the Longobards and the iconoclastic emperor of Byzantium. In return for the royal consecration, which was first performed by Boniface, and afterwards by Pope Stephen himself, Pepin endowed the Roman chair with the portion of coast on the Adriatic sea, southwards from Ravenna. This was the foundation of the temporal power of the pope.

Pepin reigned for sixteen years with vigor and renown over the Frank empire, which extended far into South and Central Germany, and which, at his death, he divided between his two sons, Charles and Carloman. About three years afterwards, A. D. 771, Carloman died, and Charlemagne (Charles the Great) was declared sole ruler of the Franks, by the voice of the estates of the Empire. He conducted many wars, and advanced Christian cultivation and civil order. For the purpose of securing the boundaries of his kingdom and extending Christianity, he made war for thirty-one years on the Saxon confederation, which was formed by various Pagan tribes on the Weser and Elbe. Charles took the fortress of Eresburg, on the south of the Teutoburger forest, destroyed the national palladium—​the statue of Arminius, and compelled the Saxons to a peace. He next proceeded against the Longobard king, Desidérius, in obedience to the summons of Pope Adrian. With an army collected together near Geneva, he crossed theSt.Bernard, stormed the passes of the Alps, and conquered Pavia. Desidérius ended his days in a cloister. Charles erected the Lombard throne in Milan, united Upper Italy to the kingdom of the Franks, and confirmed the gifts made by Pepin to the pope.

During the absence of Charles, the Saxons had expelled the Frank garrisons and reëstablished their ancient boundaries. Charles again marched into their country, subdued them, and compelled the chiefs of the tribes to submit at Paderborn. Their warlike duke, Witikind, alone, fled to the Danes and refused to confirm the treaty. In the two following years, Charles fought against the Moors in Spain, took Pampelona and Saragossa, and united the whole country, as far as the Ebro, to his own kingdom, as a Spanish province. But during his return, his rear, under the command of Roland, suffered a defeat in the valley of Roncesválles, in which the bravest champions of the Franks were destroyed. Roland’s battle at Roncesválles was a favorite theme with the poets of the middle ages. The Saxons took advantage of his absence to make a fresh insurrection, and pursued their devastating course as far as the Rhine. Charles hastened to the spot, gave them repeated overthrows, and subdued their land afresh. But when he attempted to employ them as militia against the Slavonic tribes in the East, they fell upon the Frank troops who were marching with them, at the Suntal (between Hanover and Hameln), and slew them. This demanded vengeance. The Frank emperor marched through the land, plundering and destroying, and then held a court of judgment at Verden on the Aller. 4,500 prisoners expiated with their blood the crime of their brethren. Upon this, hostilities were resumed with fresh violence. But the battle on the Hase, which terminated to the disadvantage of the Saxons, put an end to the war. Witikind and the other chiefs took an oath of fealty and military service, and allowed themselves to be baptised. The people followed their example. Eight bishoprics provided for the maintenance and extension of Christianity among the Saxons. Another insurrection, however, was occasioned a few years afterwards, by the oppressivearriere-ban, and the unwonted payment of tithes to the Church, which resulted in 10,000 Saxon families being carried away from their homes, and colonies of Franks being established in their place. To oppose the Slavonic tribes to the east of the Elbe, Charles founded the Margraviate of Brandenburg.

Shortly after, Thassilo duke of Bavaria, attempted to render himself independent of the Frank power, by the assistance of the Avars, who lived to the east. He was overpowered, and expiated his breach of faith by perpetual confinement within the walls of the cloisters of Fulda. Bavaria was hereupon incorporated with the Frank empire, and Charles established the Eastern Margraviate as a check upon the wild Avars. When Charlemagne had reduced all the lands from the Ebro and the Appenines to the Eider, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Raab and the Elbe, he repaired to Rome at the conclusion of the century. It was here that, during the festival of Christmas, he was invested with the crown of the Roman empire, in the church ofSt.Peter, by LeoIII, whom he had defended against a mob of insurgents. It was hoped, that by this means, western Christendom might be formed into a single body, of which the Pope was to become the spiritual, and Charles the secular head. It was at this time that the long-existing variance between the Western (Roman Catholic), and the Eastern (Greek Catholic) churches, terminated in a complete separation.

The domestic policy of Charlemagne was not less fertile of results than the foreign. 1. He improved the government and the administration of justice by abolishing the office of duke, dividing the whole kingdom into provinces, and appointing counts and deputies for the conduct of the affairs of justice, and clerks of the treasury for the management of the crown lands and the collection of imposts. The laws were confirmed by the popular assemblies (maifelder), in which every freeman had a share. 2. He promoted the cultivation of the land, and the education of the people. Agriculture and the breeding of cattle were encouraged, farms and villages sprang up, and barren heaths were converted into arable fields.

He founded conventual schools and cathedrals, had the works of the ancient Roman writers transcribed, and formed a collection of old German heroic ballads. Learned men, like the British monk, Alcuin, and the historian Eginhard, from the Odenwald, had ample reason to congratulate themselves on his encouragement and support. 3. He favored the clergy and the church. It was by his means that the former obtained their tithes and vast gifts and legacies; church music was improved, missionaries supported, and churches and monasteries erected. Ingelheim on the Rhine, and Aix, were his favorite places of residence. He lies buried in the latter town.

The son of Charlemagne, Louis the Denbonnaire (the Gentle), was better fitted for the repose of a cloister than for the government of a warlike nation. A too hasty division of his kingdom among his three sons, Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis, was the occasion of much sorrow to himself, and confusion to the empire. For when, at a later period, he proposed an alteration in favor of his fourth son, Charles the Bald, the fruit of a second marriage, the elder sons took up arms against their father. Louis, faithlessly deserted by his vassals on “the field of lies,” near Strasburg, and betrayed to his own sons, was compelled by Lothaire to do penance in the church and to abdicate his throne; and was afterwards shut up for some time in a cloister. It is true that Louis procured his father’s reinstatement; but when the weak emperor, after the death of Pepin, by a new division of the kingdom, deprived Louis of Germany, in favor of his brothers, Lothaire and Charles, Louis raised his standard against him. This broke the old emperor’s heart. Full of sorrow, he ended his days on a small island of the Rhine, near Ingelheim. The hostile brothers now turned their arms against each other. A bloody civil war depopulated the country, so that at last, after a battle of three days’ duration, at Fontenaille in Burgundy, the Frank nobility refused to obey thearriere-ban, and by this means brought about the treaty of partition of Verdun. By virtue of this treaty, Lothaire received the imperial dignity, together with Italy, Burgundy, and Lorraine; Charles the Bald, western Franconia (France); and Louis the German, the lands on the right bank of the Rhine—​Spire, Worms, and Mayence.

This division was followed by a time of great confusion, during which Europe was severely harassed, on the south by the Arabs; on the east, by the Slavi; and on the north and west, by the Normans. To oppose these predatory inroads, the Carlovingian monarchs, who were all men of weak and narrow minds, were obliged to restore the ducal office in the different provinces, and to sanction the hereditary authority of the Margraves, so that, in a short time, all the power fell into the hands of the nobles. By the rapid deaths of most of the posterity of Louis the Denbonnaire, nearly the whole of the empire of Charlemagne devolved upon Charles the Fat,A. D.876, a prince weak and indolent, and simple almost to imbecility. Incapable of resisting the valiant Normans, he purchased a disgraceful peace from them. This proceeding so exasperated the German princes, that they decreed his deposition, at Tribur on the Rhine, and elected his nephew, the brave Arnulf, as his successor. Arnulf governed with vigor. He overthrew the Normans at Louvain, and called in the aid of the wild Magyars, or Hungarians, from the Ural, a people expert in horsemanship and archery, and who were now, under their valiant captain Arpad, occupying the plains on the Danube (named after them Hungary), against the Slavi and Avars. The Avars were either subjected or compelled to retreat. But the strangers (the Hungarians) soon became a more dreadful scourge to Germany than either the Slavi or the Avars. They made their predatory inroads and exacted a yearly tribute, even under Louis the Child, the youthful son of Arnulf, who died in the flower of his age, after a glorious campaign in Italy. This still continued, when, after the early death of this last of the Carlovingian race, the German nobles, among whom the dukes of Saxony, Franconia, Lorraine, Swabia, and Bavaria were preëminent for power, met together and elected Duke Conrad of Franconia, emperor. Germany thus became an elective empire.

The rule of the Carlovingians survived longest in France, but it possessed neither strength nor dignity. Under Charles the Simple, who had ascended the French throne after the deposition and subsequent death of Charles the Fat, the dukes and counts rendered themselves entirely independent, and one of the most powerful among them, Hugh of Paris, kept the imbecile king in strict confinement. France, on the other hand, was delivered from the devastating forays of the Normans, by Charles admitting duke Rollo into the province named after them Normandy, on condition that he and his followers would suffer themselves to be baptized, and recognize the king as their suzerain (feudal sovereign). The Normans, a people readily susceptible of civilization, soon acquired the language, manners, and customs of the Franks. Charles the Simple was followed by two other kings of the Carlovingian race; but their power was at last so limited that they possessed nothing but the town of Laon, with the surrounding country; every thing else had fallen into the hands of the insolent nobility. After the death of the Childless LouisV, Hugh Capet, son and heir of Hugh of Paris, assumed the title of king, and put to death in prison Louis’ uncle Charles of Lorraine, who attempted to assert his right to the throne by force of arms.

The first successors of Hugh Capet possessed but little power and a narrow territory. The dukes and counts of the different provinces looked upon the king, who, properly, was only lord of France, as their equal, and only allowed him the first rank among themselves, in so far as they were obliged to recognize him as their feudal superior. The nobles dared not weaken the rights that appertained to him in this capacity, lest they should afford an example of breach of faith to their own subjects, and encourage them to similar behavior towards themselves. For the rest, the possessions of the great vassals were independent counties and principalities, which had no closer connection with the French throne than the western territories on the Seine, Loire, and Garonne, which belonged to the king of England; or the eastern (Burgundian) lands on the Rhone and the Jura, which were portions of the German empire.

But in the attempt to increase the kingly power, the house of Capet were not less aided by their good fortune than by their wisdom. It was fortunate, that, owing to the lengthened lives of most of their kings, the throne was seldom vacant, that there was almost always a son of age to succeed his father, and that, consequently, there was never an interregnum. But it was wisdom in the first kings to have their eldest sons crowned during their lives, and to make them their partners in the government, so that, on the death of the father, little or no change was suffered. The most important kings after Hugh Capet were LouisVII, who undertook the second crusade, and during his absence intrusted the government in France to the politic Abbot Suger ofSt.Denis; Philip AugustusII, who wrested Normandy and the other territories in the west from the English king, John Lackland; and LouisVIII, who enlarged his dominions on the south by the war against the Albigenses. But the reigns which had the greatest influence upon the history of France were those ofSt.Louis and Philip the Fair. The former improved the laws, and caused the royal courts of justice to be looked upon as the highest in the land, and the disputes of the nobles among themselves, or with their vassals to be brought before them for decision: the latter, on the other hand, increased the consequence of the towns by granting various privileges and liberties to the citizens, and by being the first who summoned the representatives of the towns to the diet during his contest with the pope. After the death of Philip’s three sons, who reigned one after the other, but left no male heirs, the French throne passed to the house of Valois,A. D.1328.

PhilipVIof Valois, brother’s son of Philip the Fair, inherited the French throne. But EdwardIIIof England also asserted his claims, as son of a daughter of Philip the Fair. Without regard to the Salic law, which prohibited the succession of females, he assumed the title of king of France, and made war upon Philip. After a bloody contest of a few years, the battle of Crecy was fought, in which the English were the victors, and the flower of the French chivalry, together with John, the blind king of Bohemia, fell on the field. The possession of the important town of Calais was the fruit of the victory. Philip died in the following year, and his son, John the Good, succeeded to the contested crown. Eager to obliterate the memory of Crecy, he attacked the English army, which was under the command of EdwardIII’sheroic son, the Black Prince, but suffered a decisive defeat at Poictiers, and was obliged to proceed as a captive to the capital of England. Whilst he was absent, the kingdom was governed by the crown prince (Dauphin). During his rule, an insurrection broke out in Paris and over the whole land, which was attended with great devastations and outrages, until the imperfectly-armed citizens and peasants were subdued by the French knights, and visited with severe punishment. Shortly after this, a peace was established between France and England, by which Calais and the south-west of France was surrendered to the English, and a heavy ransom promised for John, whilst Edward, on the other hand, renounced his pretensions to the French throne. But when the collection of the ransom money was delayed, John voluntarily returned into captivity, and died in London.

John’s son, CharlesV(the Wise), healed the wounds of his country. He quieted men’s minds by his moderate government, and by prudence and valor recovered the lands that had been lost on the Loire and the Garonne; so that when the Black Prince fell a victim to wasting disease, and EdwardIIIshortly followed him into the grave, nothing remained to the English of all their conquests but Calais. But under his successor, CharlesVI, who became insane shortly after coming of age, France again fell into a state of confusion and lawlessness. Two powerful court parties, headed by the uncle of the king (the duke of Burgundy), and the king’s brother (the duke of Orleans), contended for the government; whilst the burghers rebelled against the heavy imposts, and demanded an increase of their privileges. About the same time in which the towns were waging war against the knights in Germany, the Swiss peasants were contending against the nobility, and a dangerous popular insurrection, under Wat Tyler and others, was making rapid progress in England, the citizen and peasant class rose against the court and the nobility in Flanders and France also. But want of union among the insurgents gave the latter the victory, and the outbreak was followed by a diminution of the privileges of the people. The Burgundian party favored the citizens, the Orleans party the nobility.

The chivalrous king, HenryVof England, took advantage of these circumstances to renew the war with France. He demanded the former possessions back again; and when this was refused, he entered France by Calais, and renewed at Agincourt, on the Somme, the days of Crecy and Poictiers,A. D.1415. The French army, four times the number of its opponents, was overthrown, and the flower of the French chivalry either fell in the field, or were taken prisoners by the enemy; nothing stood between the victor and Paris, where party violence had just now attained its highest point, and murders and insurrections were matters of daily occurrence. The Orleans party joined the Dauphin, whilst the Burgundian party, with the queen Isabella, united themselves with the English, and acknowledged HenryVand his descendants as the heirs of the French crown. The whole of the country to the north of the Loire was soon in the hands of the English. But HenryVwas snatched away by death in the midst of his heroic course, in the same year in which the crazy CharlesVIsank into the grave, and the Dauphin took possession of the throne under the title of CharlesVII.But this made little difference to France. The English and their allies proclaimed HenryVI, who was scarcely a year old, the rightful ruler of the country, and retained their superiority in the field so that they already held Orleans in siege.

In this necessity, theMaid of Orleans, a peasant girl of Dom Remy in Lorraine, who gave out that she had been summoned to the redemption of France by a heavenly vision, aroused the sinking courage of Charles and his soldiers. Under her banner, the town of Orleans was delivered, the king conducted to Rheims to be crowned, and the greater part of their conquests wrested from the English. The faith in her heavenly mission inspired the French with courage and self-confidence, and filled the English with fear and despair. This effect remained after Joan of Arc had fallen into the hands of the latter, and had been given up to the flames on a pretended charge of blasphemy and sorcery. The English lost one province after another; and when Philip the Good of Burgundy reconciled himself with the king, Calais soon became their last and only possession in the land of France. Paris opened its gates and received Charles with acclamations. He reigned over France in peace for twenty-five years; but he was a weak man, who suffered himself to be guided by women and favorites. He was followed by LouisXI, a crafty but politic prince, who, by cunning, violence, and unexampled tyranny, rendered the power of the throne absolute, and enlarged and consolidated his empire. He robbed the nobility of all their choicest privileges, and gradually united all the great fiefs with the crown. He then, by the assistance of the Swiss (whose hardy youth he and his successor engaged as mercenaries), overthrew Charles the Bold, and made himself master of the dukedom of Burgundy. The stings of conscience and the fear of men tortured him in the lonely castles where he spent the last years of his life,A. D.1483. His two successors, CharlesVIIIand LouisXII, conquered Brittany, but dissipated the strength of the kingdon in their expeditions to Italy.

FRANCE DURING THE WAR OF RELIGION.

HenryII, a determined enemy of the Huguenots, died in consequence of a wound he received during a tournament,A. D.1559. His feeble and delicate son, FrancisII, was his successor. This prince was married to the fascinating Mary Stuart of Scotland, whose uncles, the Guises, in consequence, enjoyed great influence at the French court. The Guises, as zealous adherents of the Catholic Church and the papacy, made use of their lofty position to suppress the reformed party; but by doing this, gave their opponents, and in especial, the Prince Condé, of the family of Bourbon, and the Admiral Coligni, the opportunity of strengthening themselves by joining the Huguenots. The schism increased daily; the one party strove to overthrow the other, and to secure the victory to their own side by the assistance of the king. The day on which the Estates assembled at Orleans was selected by both parties as a befitting time for the execution of this project. The Guises gained the advantage. The chiefs of the Huguenots already found themselves in prison, when a turn was given to affairs by the sudden death of the king. The queen-mother, Catherine de Medicis, placed herself at the head of affairs during the minority of the new king, CharlesIX, and the Bourbons assumed a position suited to their birth. The Guises, irritated at the neglect they experienced, retired with their niece, Mary Stuart, into Lorraine, whence the latter, shortly after, departed with sorrow and mourning into Scotland.

The removal of the Guises from the court was of advantage to the reformed party. They obtained toleration. Enraged at this concession, the duke of Guise concluded an alliance with some other powerful nobles for the preservation of the ancient faith in France, and returned to Paris. During this return, a horrible slaughter was perpetrated by the Guises and their attendants upon some Calvinists of the town of Vassy, who were assembled together in a barn, for the celebration of Divine worship. This proved the signal for a religious war. The outrage given to the conceded liberty of conscience by this bloody act of violence cried for vengeance. France was soon divided into two hostile camps, that attacked each other with bitter animosity and religious rage. The most horrible atrocities were committed, and the kingdom disturbed to its inmost depths. The Catholics obtained aid from Rome and Spain, the Protestants were assisted by England; Germany and Switzerland supplied soldiers. After the undecisive battle of Dreux, and the murder of the Duke Francis of Guise, at the siege of Orleans, peace was for a short time restored, and the Calvinists again assured of religious toleration—​a promise that met with but little attention. The two parties were soon again arrayed in arms against each other,A. D.1568. But despite the bravery of the Huguenots in the battle ofSt.Denis, where the elder Montmorenci lost his life, the superiority remained on the side of the Catholics; particularly when Catherine de Medicis, who had hitherto sided with neither party, embraced the interests of the latter. The sight of crucifixes and sacred objects broken to pieces, during a journey undertaken by the queen and her son, and the advice of the duke of Alba, with whom she had an interview in Bayonne, had produced this alteration in her opinions. After several bloody engagements in the vicinity of La Rochelle, which the Huguenots had selected as their battlefield, and after their gallant leader, Condé, had been basely assassinated during one of them, the peace ofSt.Germain was arranged, by which the Calvinists were again assured of the free exercise of their religion. Condé’s nephew, Henry of Bearn, who had been bred up in the doctrine of Calvin by his mother, Joanna d’ Albret, now placed himself at the head of the Huguenots; but the soul of the party was the brave Coligni, who stood by the side of the prince as his guide and adviser.

Coligni possessed great influence at the court after the peace. The young king respected him, and favored him with his confidence. For the purpose of bringing about a permanent reconciliation between the religious parties, the king now urged a marriage between his sister, Margaret of Valois, and the Bourbon, Henry of Bearn. This offended the Guises, who believed that Coligni had procured the assassination of Francis of Guise, and they resolved upon his destruction. Coligni was fired at one evening, as he was returning to his own house from the Louvre. The ball, however, only shattered his arm, and it was necessary to devise a fresh plan of destruction. The Guises, in conjunction with Catherine of Medicis, now entertained the horrible project of taking advantage of the approaching marriage, for the solemnization of which many illustrious Calvinists had hastened to the capital, to destroy the chiefs of the Huguenot party. Thus originated the Bloody Nuptials of Paris, in the night ofSt.Bartholomew, August 24th, 1572. When the alarm bell ofSt.Germain l’Auxerrois gave the signal at midnight, bands of armed ruffians fell upon the defenseless Calvinists. The gray-headed hero, Coligni, was the first victim that the Guises sacrificed to their hate; the murderous bands then marched through all parts of the city, filled the streets and houses with blood and corpses, and laughed to scorn every sentiment of humanity and justice. The butchery lasted for three days, and was imitated in other towns, so that, at the lowest computation, 25,000 Huguenots must have perished. The king, to whom the plan was communicated a short time before its execution, listened to the voice of his passions, and himself fired upon the fugitives. After the deed had been accomplished, and the Guises had been fixed upon by the public voice as its instigators, and called upon to answer for their conduct, Charles took the whole affair upon himself, and excused the crime by a pretended conspiracy. Many of the French quitted their homes in horror, and sought for security in Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Henry of Bearn saved his life by a compulsatory abjuration, but returned to his old faith as soon as he found himself in security.

CharlesIXdied two years after the night ofSt.Bartholomew, troubled with evil dreams. His brother Henry, who had been for a twelvemonth the elected king of Poland, fled secretly from the rude shores of the Vistula to take possession of the fairer crown of France. HenryIIIwas a weak and luxurious prince, without either assiduity or energy. Shut up with his favorites and pet dogs in the inmost apartments of the palace, he forgot his kingdom with its disturbances and miseries; and when remorse at his sinful life, which was passed in lust and debauchery, seized upon him, he sought consolation in superstitious devotion, in pilgrimages and processions, and in penance and flagellations. To bring the Huguenots to peace, so that he might be able to devote himself to the undisturbed enjoyment of the pleasures of his capital, Henry, immediately upon his accession, granted them freedom of conscience, and equal civil rights with the Catholics. Enraged at these concessions, which destroyed all the fruits of their previous exertions, the zealous Catholics, under the guidance of Henry of Guise, and with the cognizance of PhilipIIof Spain, concluded the Holy League for the preservation of the Church in all its ancient rights. Many members were won to this alliance by the insinuations of the priests and monks, and by the intrigues of the Jesuits. The fickle and faithless king, disturbed by this movement, united himself with the Catholic zealots, declared himself the head of the League, and curtailed the religious peace. The duke of Anjou, Henry’s younger brother, died a few years after this; and as he, like the king, was without children, the Bourbon, Henry of Navarre (Bearn), became the nearest heir to the throne. This prospect of a Protestant king alarmed the Catholic part of France, and gave fresh vigor to the League. The weak king was obliged to recall all treaties with the Huguenots, to announce the extirpation of heresy, and to approve the arrangements of the League. Henry of Guise, at first, only entertained the notion of putting aside the Protestant successor to the throne, who had been excommunicated by the pope; but his courage rose with his increasing power; he soon made attempts upon the crown himself, whilst, as a pretended descendant of the Carlovingi, he asserted the superiority of his claims to those of the reigning family. A conspiracy was formed in Paris (where the citizens were kept in a state of perpetual agitation by fanatical popular orators) against the freedom or life of the king; and when HenryIIIattempted to defend himself by calling in Swiss troops, the agitation burst into rebellion. The people assembled themselves around the Guises, who, against the king’s commands, were entering the capital, barricaded the streets and bridges, and commenced a furious contest with single divisions of the troops. The trembling king fled with his favorites to Chartres, and left his capital in the hands of his rival. Henry of Guise now possessed the same power that had belonged to the mayors of the palace in the time of the Merovingi. But even this position did not satisfy the ambitious party leader. An assembly of Estates, convoked at Blois, where the adherents of the Guises were the strongest party, proposed not only to deprive the Bourbons of their right to the throne and to exterminate Calvinism, but to change the government, and to place the whole power in the hands of the Guises. At this crisis, Henry hazarded a bold stroke; he had the duke of Guise and his brother, the Cardinal Louis, assassinated, and imprisoned the most influential leaders of their party. This proceeding produced a fearful commotion in the whole nation: in Paris, allegiance was renounced to the God-forsaken king, who had overthrown the pillar of Catholicism; the pope fulminated an excommunication at him; revolutionary movements took place in many quarters. Despised and forsaken, HenryIIIsaw no other way to safety open to him than an alliance with Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots. A frightful civil war burst out afresh, but fortune was hostile to the League. Henry had already laid siege to Paris, and threatened to reduce the faithless town to a heap of ruins, when the knife of a fanatical monk put an end to his life. HenryIIIthe last Valois, died on the first of August, 1589, after appointing Henry of Navarre and Bearn his successor.

HenryIVhad still a long struggle to sustain before his head was ornamented by the crown of France. Mayenne, the brother of the murdered Guise, placed himself at the head of the League, and offered a vehement resistance to the Calvinistic claimant of the throne. PhilipIIsought to turn the confusion to his own advantage, and commanded his able general, Alexander of Parma, to march his forces from the Netherlands into France. Henry tried for a long time to get possession of his inheritance by the sword: he laid siege to Paris, and caused the citizens to feel all the horrors of famine; but he at length became convinced that he never could gain peaceable possession of the French throne by battles and victories. He thought the crown of France was worth a mass, and went over to the Catholic Church in the cathedral ofSt.Denis, and by this means destroyed the power of the League. Paris now threw open its gates, and welcomed the bringer of peace with acclamations. The pope recalled the anathema; the heads of the League concluded a treaty with him, and PhilipII, a short time before his death, consented to the peace of Vervins. After foreign and domestic tranquillity had been thus restored to France, the king, by the Edict of Nantes, conferred upon the Calvinists liberty of conscience, the full rights of citizenship, and many other privileges; such as separate chambers in the courts of justice, several castles, with all their warlike munitions (La Rochelle, Montauban, Nismes,&c.) and freedom from episcopal jurisdiction. He next sought to heal the wounds that had been inflicted on the land by the war, by encouraging agriculture, trade and commerce; and had the economy of the state and the taxation admirably arranged by his friend and minister, Sully. He won for himself the warmest affections of his people by his genuine French character, and by his cordial and cheerful disposition. His solitary failing, his too great love for woman, was a merit in the eyes of the French. But fanaticism was only slumbering. Henry’s tolerant disposition towards heretics awakened it. As he was meditating the vast plan (with the approval of the Dutch Union and other European powers) of founding a Christian community with equal privileges for the three Confessions, and by this means destroying the supremacy of the royal house of Hapsburg, he fell beneath the knife of Ravaillac.

THE AGE OF LOUISXIV—​RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN.

The first part of the reign of the weak LouisXIII, who only numbered nine years at the time of his father’s murder, was full of mischief for France. During the time the queen-mother, Mary of Medicis, conducted the government, Italian favorites exerted a great influence upon affairs, enriched themselves at the expense of the French, and irritated the pride of the nation by their insolence. Enraged at this, the nobility took up arms, and filled the country with rebellion and the tumult of war. When at length LouisXIIIhimself, upon coming of age, assumed the government, he indeed consented that the foreign favorites should be removed by murder and execution, and banished his mother from the court; but the people gained little by it. The new favorites in whom the king, who possessed no self-reliance, reposed his confidence, were not distinguished from the former either by virtue or talents; for this reason, both the nobles of the kingdom and the Huguenots, who felt themselves injured in their rights, again rose against the government, and threw the land into fresh confusion. This melancholy condition of affairs was only put an end to when Cardinal Richelieu was admitted into the state council, and introduced a complete change of system, (A. D.1624.)

This great statesman maintained an almost absolute sway in the court and in the kingdom for nearly eighteen years, though the king never loved him, the queen and the nobility were constantly attempting his overthrow, and a succession of cabals and conspiracies were plotted against him. The greatness of his mind triumphed over all obstacles. Richelieu’s efforts were directed towards the extension and rounding of the French territory without, and the increasing and strengthening of the royal power within. In furtherance of the former of these objects, he sought to weaken the house of Hapsburg, and for this purpose entered into alliances with the enemies of the emperor not only in Germany, in the time of the Thirty Years’ War, but in Italy and other places; and, to attain his aims in regard to the latter object, he neglected to call together the estates of the kingdom, broke the power of the nobility and of the independent officials and judges in the parliament, and attacked the Huguenots, who had formed an almost independent alliance in the south and west of France, with their own fortresses, and an effective militia, and great privileges. After conquering the most important of the Huguenot towns (Nismes, Montauban, Montpellier), and destroying their fortifications, in three wars, and when he had at length taken Rochelle, the bulwark of the Calvinists, after a siege of fourteen months, he proceeded to deprive the Protestants of their political privileges and of their independent position, but granted them, by the Edict of Nismes, liberty of conscience and equal rights with Catholic subjects. The turbulent nobles had been deprived of their greatest support by the disarming of the Huguenots, and the war could now be prosecuted against them with success. The most daring were got rid of by banishment and the executioner. Even the queen-mother and her second son, and the duke of Orleans, who attempted to procure the fall of Richelieu, were compelled to leave the country, and the confidential friend of the latter, Henry, duke of Montmorency, a scion of one of the most renowned families of France, died at Toulouse by the hand of the executioner. A similar fate awaited the count of Cinq-Mars and his friend, De Thou, a few years later, when in conjunction with the queen and some of the nobles, they formed a conspiracy against the mighty cardinal. The parliament, the upper tax-offices and courts of justice, which, like the king, claimed an independent authority on account of their offices being hereditary, were weakened by the establishment of extraordinary courts and higher officers, who were dependent upon the minister.

In the year 1642, died Richelieu, hated and feared by the nobility and the people, but admired by cotemporaries and posterity; LouisXIII, a prince without either great virtues or great vices, and dependent upon every one who could either acquire his favor or render himself formidable to him, soon followed him. His widow, Anne of Austria, the proud and ambitious sister of the king of Spain, undertook the government during the minority of his son. But as she reposed the whole of her confidence on the Italian, Mazarin, the inheritor of the office and the principles of Richelieu, she met with vehement opposers among the nobility and in the parliament, who attempted to regain their former power and position. The people, in the hope of being relieved of some of their heavy taxes, and guided by the clever and dexterous Cardinal Retz, embraced their cause, with the intent of compelling the court to remove Mazarin, and to adopt a different plan of government. This gave occasion to a furious civil war, which is known in history as “the War of the Fronde.” Mazarin was obliged to leave the country for a short time, but so immovable were the favor and confidence of the queen, that he governed France from Cologne as he had formerly done in Paris. But his banishment did not last long. When LouisXIVhad attained the years of kingly majority, and Turenne, the commander of the royal troops, had conquered his rival, the great Condé, the general of the insurgents, in the suburb ofSt.Antoine, Mazarin returned in triumph. His solemn entry into Paris was a sign that absolute power had gained the victory, and that henceforth the will of the monarch was to be law. Mazarin enjoyed for six years longer the greatest respect in France and Europe; Cardinal Retz, the ingenious composer of the Memoirs of this war, was obliged to leave his country, after he had previously expiated his turbulent conduct in the prison of Vincennes; Condé, poor and unhappy, wandered among the Spaniards, till the grace of his master allowed him to return and take possession of his estates; Mazarin’s nieces, Italian females without name or position, were endowed with the wealth of France, and sought for as brides by the greatest nobles; and the members of parliament adapted themselves without opposition to the directions they received from above, after Louis had appeared before them in his boots and riding whip, and demanded their obedience with threats. Louis now gave effect to his principle, “I am the state” (l’etat, c’est moi). The peace of the Pyrenees with Spain was the last work of Mazarin. He died shortly after, (March 9, 1661,) leaving enormous wealth behind him. His death took place at the moment when Louis began to grow weary of him, and was longing to seize the reins of government in his own powerful grasp.

After the death of Mazarin, LouisXIV, in whom kingly absolutism attained its highest point, appointed no prime minister, but surrounded himself with men who merely executed his will, and whose highest aim was to increase and spread abroad the renown, glory, and honor of the king. In the choice of these men, Louis displayed judgment and the talents of a ruler. His ministers, especially Colbert, the great promoter of French industry, manufactures, and trades, as well as his generals, Turenne, Condé, Luxemburg, and the engineer, Vauban, as much surpassed, in talent, acquirements, and dexterity, the statesmen and soldiers of all other countries, as LouisXIVhimself was preëminent among the princes of his age, in the greatness of his power, in commanding presence, and kingly dignity. He rendered the age of LouisXIVthe most illustrious in the French annals, and caused the Court of Versailles (the seat of the royal residence) to be everywhere praised and admired as the model of taste, of refinement, and of a distinguished mode of living. But as he sought nothing but the gratification of his own selfishness, of his own love of pleasure, of his pride, and of his desire for renown and splendor, his reign became the grave of freedom, of morals, of firmness of character, and of manly sentiments. Court favor was the end of every effort, and flattery the surest road to arrive at it; virtue and merit met with little acknowledgment.

It was during the last three decades of the seventeenth century that France stood at the culminating point of her power abroad and of her prosperity at home, so that the flattering chronicles of those days described the age of LouisXIVas the golden age of France. Trade and industry received a prodigious development by the care of Colbert; the woollen and silk manufactories, the stocking and cloth weaving, which flourished in the southern towns, brought prosperity, the maritime force increased, colonies were planted, and the productions of France were carried by trading companies to all quarters of the globe.

The court of France displayed a magnificence that had never before been witnessed. The palace of Versailles, and the gardens which were adorned with statues, fountains, and alleys of trees, were a model of taste for all Europe, fêtes of all kinds, jovial parties, ballets, fireworks, the opera and the theatre, in the service of which the first intellects in France employed their talents, followed upon each other in attractive succession; poets, artists, men of learning, all were eager to do honor to a prince who rewarded with a liberal hand every kind of talent that conduced either to his amusement or to his glory. Sumptuous buildings, as the Hospital of Invalides, costly libraries, magnificent productions of the press, vast establishments for the natural sciences, academies, and similar institutions, exalted the glory and renown of the great Louis. The refined air of society, the polished tone, the easy manners of the nobility and courtiers, subdued Europe more permanently and extensively than the weapons of the army. The French fashions, language, and literature, bore sway from this time in all circles of the higher classes. The consequences of the French Academy by Richelieu were a development of the language, style, and literary composition, that was extremely favorable to the diffusion of the literature. The language, so particularly adapted for social intercourse, for conversation, and for epistolary writing, remained from henceforth the language of diplomacy, of courts, and of the higher classes; and although the literary productions are wanting in strength, elevation, and nature,—​the polish of the form, and the ease and felicity of the style, gave French taste the supremacy in Europe, and strengthened the French people in the agreeable delusion that they were the most civilized of nations.

But however flatterers may sing the praises of the age of LouisXIV, one spot of shame remains ineradicable—​the persecution of the Huguenots. The French king believed that the unity of the Church was inseparable from a perfect monarchy. For this reason he oppressed the Jansenists, a Catholic party, which first contended against the Jesuits, and afterwards against the head of the Church himself; and he compelled the Calvinists, by the most severe persecutions, either to fly, or to return into the bosom of the Catholic Church. Colbert, who esteemed the Huguenots as active and industrious citizens, prevented for some time these violent measures; but the suggestions of the royal confessor, La Chaise, the zeal for conversion of the affectedly pious Madame Maintenon, who had been first a tutoress of the court, and afterwards Louis’ trusted wife, and the cruelty of Louvois, the minister of war, at length triumphed over the advice of Colbert. A long succession of oppressive proceedings against the Huguenots prepared the way for the great stroke. The number of their churches was restricted, and their worship confined to a few of the principal towns. Louis’ paroxysms of repentance and devotion were always the sources of fresh oppressions to the Calvinistic heretics, by whose conversion he thought to expiate his own crimes. They were gradually excluded from office and dignities; converts were favored; in this way, the ambitious were enticed, the poor were won by money, which flowed from the king’s conversion chest, and from the liberal gifts of the pious illustrious; a wide field was opened to the zeal for proselytism by the enactment that the conversion of children under age was valid. Families were divided, children were torn from their parents and brought up as Catholics. Court and clergy, the heartless and eloquent bishop Bossuet at their head, set all means in motion to establish the ecclesiastical unity of France. When all other means of conversion failed, came the dragonades. At the command of Louvois, the cavalry took possession of the southern provinces, and established their quarters in the dwellings of the Huguenots. The prosperity of the industrious citizens, whose substance was devoured by the dragoons, soon disappeared. The bad treatment by these booted missionaries, who quitted the houses of the apostates to fall in doubled numbers upon those who remained stedfast, operated more effectually than all the enticements of the court or the seductions of the priests. Thousands fled abroad that they might preserve their faith upon a foreign soil. At last came the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, October, 1685. The religious worship of the Calvinists was now forbidden, their churches were torn down, their schools closed, their preachers banished from the land; when the emigration increased to a formidable degree, this was forbidden, under punishment of the galleys and forfeiture of goods. But despite all threats and prohibitions, upwards of 500,000 French Calvinists carried their industry, their faith, and their courage to Protestant lands. Switzerland, the Palatinate of the Rhine, Brandenburg, Holland, and England, offered an asylum to the persecuted. The silk manufacture and stocking-weaving were carried abroad by the fugitive Huguenots. Flatterers extolled the king as the exterminator of heresy, but the courage of the peasants in Cevennes, and the number of Huguenots who contented themselves with private devotion, show how little religious oppression conduced to the desired end. For when the persecution was carried into the distant valleys of the Cevennes, where Waldenses and Calvinists lived, according to ancient custom, in the simplicity of the faith, the oppressors met with an obstinate resistance. Persecution called forth the courage of its victims, oppression urged zeal into fanaticism. Led on by a young mechanic, the Camisards, clad in a linen frock, rushed “with naked breast against the marshals.” A frightful civil war filled the peaceful valleys of Cevennes; fugitive priests, in the gloom of the forest, exhorted the evangelical brethren to a desperate defense, till, at length, the persecutors grew weary. Nearly two millions of the Huguenots remained without rights and without religious worship.

THE LAST DAYS OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY—​THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

LouisXVat first possessed the affections of his people to such a degree, that he was named the ‘Much-beloved;’ and when he was attacked by a dangerous illness in Metz, the whole land went into mourning, and his recovery was celebrated by the greatest rejoicings. But this love gradually changed into hatred and contempt when the king gave himself up to the most shameless debaucheries, and surrendered the government of the country, the command of the army, and the decision upon points of law and state policy, to the companions of his orgies and the ministers of his lusts and pleasures; and when mistresses, without morals or decency, ruled the court and the empire. Among these women, none possessed greater or more enduring influence than the Marchioness of Pompadour, who guided the whole policy of France for a period of twenty years, filled the most important offices with her favorites, decided upon peace or war, and disposed of the revenues of the state as she did of her private purse, so that, after a life passed in luxury and splendor, she left millions behind her. She and her creatures encouraged Louis’ excesses and love of pleasure, that he might plunge continually deeper in the pool of vice, and leave to them the government of the state. For the rest, the Pompadour used her position and her influence with a certain dignity, and with tact and discretion; but when the countess Du Barry, a woman from the very dregs of the people, occupied her place, the court lost all authority and respect.

When LouisXV, in consequence of his excesses, was carried off in the midst of his sins by a frightful distemper, the treasury was exhausted, the country in debt, credit gone, and the people oppressed by their burdens.

It was under these melancholy circumstances, that an absolute throne descended to a prince who certainly possessed the best of hearts, but a weak understanding; who was good-natured enough to wish to relieve the condition of the people, but possessed neither strength nor intellect for efficient measures. This prince was LouisXVI.Weak and indulgent, he allowed the frivolity and extravagance of his brothers, the count of Provence (afterwards LouisXVIII), and the count of Artois (CharlesX); and permitted his wife, Marie Antoinette, the highly-accomplished daughter of Maria Theresa, to interfere in matters of state, and to exert a considerable influence upon the court and government. The queen, by her pride and haughty bearing, incurred the dislike of the people, so that they ascribed every unpopular measure to her influence, and put a bad construction upon every liberty she allowed herself in private.

The prevailing want of money, and the disordered state of the revenue, could only be remedied by including the nobility and clergy in the taxation, by large reforms in the whole system of government, like those proposed by Turgot and Malesherbes, and by order and economy in the expenditure. But LouisXVIhad neither strength nor resolution to carry out such decisive measures; and as for economy, the extravagant court of Versailles would not listen to it. The Genevese banker, Necker, who undertook the management of the finances after Turgot, was as little in a position as his predecessor to reduce the disorder in the state economy; and when, upon the occasion of a loan, he exposed the financial condition of France in a pamphlet, he drew upon himself the displeasure of the court and the aristocracy to such a degree, that he was obliged to resign his office. This happened at a time when the American war had increased the scarcity of money, and aroused the feeling of liberty and republicanism in France. It was, therefore, a great misfortune for the French monarchy, that just at this critical moment the frivolous and extravagant Calonne undertook the management of the finances. This man departed from the frugal plan of Necker, acceded to the wishes of the queen and the necessities of the princes and courtiers, and deluded the world with high-sounding promises of putting an end to all difficulties. The most splendid festivals were celebrated in Versailles, and the talents of Calonne loudly extolled. But his means, also, were soon exhausted.

The popular favorite Necker, was a second time summoned, in 1788, to the ministry. He first allayed the irritation by repealing resolutions against the parliament, and then made preparations for summoning the Estates. Owing to this, there soon arose a division between him and the parliament and Notables, whom he had again consulted. The latter were of opinion that the new assembly should conform itself, both as to the number of representatives and the mode of procedure, to the Estates of 1614, while Necker wished to allow a double representation to the third Estate, and that they should vote individually, and not as a class; a view that was supported by some of the ablest writers of the nation in a multitude of pamphlets. (Abbè Sieyes: ‘What is the third Estate?’) Necker’s opinion triumphed. An order of the king fixed the number of noble and ecclesiastical members at 300 each, that of the citizens at 600, and appointed the following May as the time of opening. Necker was the hero of the day, but he was not the pilot of the ship, he only ‘drove the wind.’

In the beginning of May 1789, the deputies of the three Estates, and among them some of the ablest and most accomplished men of France, assembled at Versailles. The third Estate, irritated by the neglect of the court at the opening and during the audience, came to a rupture with the two privileged Estates at the first sitting, when the latter required that the Estates should carry on their debates separately, whilst the former insisted upon a general council and individual votes. After a contest of some weeks, the third Estate, which had chosen the astronomer, Bailli, the freedom-inspired representative of Paris, for its President, but which was guided by the superior talents of Sieyes and Mirabeau, declared itself a National Assembly, upon which it was joined by portions of the other Estates. The Assembly at once passed the resolution of allowing the levying of the present taxes only so long as the Estates should remain undissolved. This proceeding disturbed the court, and inspired it with the thought of granting a constitution to the nation, and thus rendering the estates unnecessary. For this purpose, a royal sitting was appointed, and the hall of assembly closed for a few days. Upon the intelligence of this, the deputies proceeded to the empty saloon of the Tennis Court, and raised their hands in a solemn vow not to separate till they had given a new constitution to the nation. When this Court also was closed, the meetings were held in the church ofSt.Louis. The royal sitting took place on the23dof June. But neither the speech of the king, nor the sketch of the new constitution, afforded due satisfaction, and they were consequently received with coldness. After the termination of the sitting, Louis dissolved the Assembly. The nobility and clergy obeyed, but the citizen class retained their seats, and when the master of the ceremonies called upon them to obey, Mirabeau exclaimed: ‘Tell your master that we sit here by the power of the people, and that we are only to be driven out by the bayonet!’ The weak king did not venture to encounter this resolute resistance by force, but rather advised the nobility and clergy to join the citizens.

The government of the city was made over to a democratic municipality, at the head of which stood Bailli, as mayor. The court, alarmed at the increasing ferment, determined upon retiring to Versailles with a few regiments of German and Swiss troops. In this proceeding, the leaders of the movement believed they saw the purpose of some act of violence, and made use of it accordingly to excite fresh irritation. The intelligence was spread abroad in Paris, that Necker had been suddenly dismissed and banished from the country, and a favorite of the queen placed in his office. This was interpreted as the first step in the contemplated outrage, and proved the signal for a general rise. Crowds of the citizens, wearing the newly-invented national cockade, (blue, white, and red,) paraded through the streets, the alarm-bell was sounded, the work-shops of the gunsmiths plundered; tumult and confusion reigned everywhere. On the 14th of July, after the populace had taken 30,000 stand of arms and some cannon from the Hospital des Invalides, took place the storming of the Bastille, an old castle that served as a state prison. The governor, Delaunay, and seven of the garrison, fell victims to the popular rage; their heads were carried through the streets upon poles; and many men who were hated as aristocrats were put to death. The banished Necker was recalled, and his entrance into the towns and villages of France was celebrated as that of a hero crowned with victory. In this joyous reception of the minister, the people displayed their enthusiasm for liberty and their hatred to the court and the aristocracy. Lafayette, the champion of the liberty of America, was appointed commander of the National Guard, and whilst the king returned to Paris, and exhibited himself to the assembled people from the balcony of the council-house with the cockade in his hat, the count of Artois, and many nobles of the first rank, as Condé, Polignac, left their country in mournful anticipation of coming events.

Since the storming of the Bastille, the laws and magistrates had lost their authority in France, and the power lay in the hands of the populace. The country people no longer paid their tithes, taxes, and feudal dues to the clergy and nobles, but took vengeance for the long oppression they had suffered, by destroying the manorial castles. When intelligence of these proceedings spread abroad, it was proposed in the National Assembly, that the upper classes should prove to the people by their actions, that they were willing to lighten their burdens, and that, with this purpose, they should renounce, of their own free will, all the inherited feudal privileges of the middle ages. This proposal excited a storm of enthusiasm and self-renunciation. None would be behind-hand. Estates, towns, provinces, each strove for the honor of making the greatest sacrifices for the common good. This was the celebrated 4th of August, when, in one feverish and excited session, all tithes, labor-dues, manorial rights, corporate bodies, etc., were abolished, the soil was declared free, and the equality of all citizens of the state before the law and in regard to taxation was decreed. These resolutions, and the necessary laws and arrangements required for their reduction to practice, which were gradually adopted, produced in a short time a complete revolution in all existing conditions. The Church lost her possessions and was subjected to the state; monasteries and religious orders were dissolved, and the clergy paid by the state, the bishoprics newly regulated, and religious freedom established. Priests were required to swear allegiance, like officers of state, to the new constitution; but as the pope forbade it, the greater number refused the oath, which was the occasion of the French clergy being divided into sworn and unsworn priests; the latter lost their offices and were exposed to all kinds of persecutions, but enjoyed the confidence of the faithful among the people. The noble forfeited not only his privileges and the greater part of his income, but he also lost the external distinctions of his rank, by the abolition of all titles, coats of arms, orders, etc. Upon the principle of equality, all Frenchmen were to be addressed as ‘citizens.’ For the purpose of annihilating every remnant of the ancient system, France received a new geographical division into departments andarrondissements; a new system of judicature with jurymen; equality of weights, measures, and standards; and lastly, a constitutional government, in which the privileges of royalty were limited, and the legislative power committed to a single chamber, with a universal right of suffrage.

On the 5th of October, an immense multitude, chiefly of women, proceeded to Versailles to demand from the king relief from the scarcity of bread, and a return of the court to Paris. The king first attempted to pacify them by a conciliatory answer. But a wing of the palace was stormed during the night, and the guard put to the sword; the arrival of Lafayette, with the National Guard, prevented any further mischief. Upon the following day, the king was obliged to consent to proceed to Paris with his family, under the escort of this frightful crew, and to take up his residence in the Tuileries, which had for many years remained unoccupied. Shortly after, the National Assembly also followed, for whom the riding-school in the neighborhood of the palace had been prepared. The power now fell more and more into the hands of the lower class, who were kept in perpetual excitement by journalists and popular leaders, and were goaded to hatred against the court and the “aristocrats.”

On the day of the year in which the Bastille was taken, a grand federative festival was arranged in the Champ de Mars (July 14, 1790). It must have been a moving spectacle, when Talleyrand, at the head of 300 priests, clothed in white, and girded with tri-colored scarfs, performed the consecration of the banner at the altar of the country; when Lafayette, in the name of the National Guard, the president of the National Assembly, and, at length, the king himself, vowed fidelity to the Constitution; when the innumerable multitude raised their hands aloft and repeated after him the oath of citizenship, and the queen herself, carried away by enthusiasm, raised the Dauphin in the air and joined in the acclamations. This was the last day of happiness for the king, whose situation after this grew constantly worse. Necker, no longer equal to the difficulties, left France and retired to Switzerland. Mirabeau, won over by the court, opposed farther encroachments upon the kingly power with the whole of his eloquence, inasmuch as he believed a constitutional monarchy and not a republic to be the best government for France. Unfortunately for the king, this great man died, in his forty-second year, of a sickness brought on by his disorderly life and by over-exertion. A splendid funeral ceremony gave evidence of the influence of the man in whom sank the last strong pillar of the throne. Weak and unselfreliant as LouisXVIwas, he now lost all firmness. By his refusal to receive a sworn priest as his confessor, or to declare the emigrants traitors, who were endeavoring from Coblentz to excite the European courts to a crusade against France, he excited a suspicion that he was not honestly a supporter of the constitution he had sworn to maintain, and not altogether ignorant of the efforts of the emigrants. The more this suspicion gained ground with the people, the more perilous became the position of the king. At this crisis, Louis embraced the desperate resolution of secretly flying to the northern frontier of his kingdom. Bouillé, a resolute general in Lorraine, was let into the secret, and promised to support the scheme with his troops. Leaving behind him a letter, in which he protested against all the acts which had been forced from him since October, 1789, the king happily escaped, with his family, from Paris in a large carriage. But the clumsily executed project nevertheless miscarried. Louis was recognized inSt.Menehould by the postmaster, Drouet, stopped by the militia at Varennes, and led back to Paris at the command of the National Assembly, who sent three of their members, and among them, Pètion, to receive the royal family. The suspension of the royal authority, which had already been pronounced by the Assembly, remained in force, till Louis proclaimed and swore to observe, the Constitution completed at the end of September.

The attention of the government and the Assembly was particularly directed to the priests, who had refused the oath, and to the emigrants. Both were endeavoring to overthrow the existing order of things: the former by exciting hatred and discontent among the French people; the latter by making military preparations at Coblentz, and endeavoring to stir up foreign powers to an armed invasion of France. The Assembly therefore determined upon seeking out and arresting the unsworn priests, and declaring the emigrants traitors and conspirators, and punishing them by the loss of their estates and incomes. The king put his veto upon both these resolutions, and prevented their execution. This refusal was ascribed to the secret hopes, entertained by the court, of assistance from foreign powers and of the triumph of the emigrants, and thus the temper of the people grew continually more hostile. It was also known that the queen was in correspondence with her brother, the emperor of Austria, and that she looked for support and safety to the emigrant nobility. Neither was it any longer doubtful that war must soon break out, since the emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia, after a conference in Pillnitz (August, 1791,) were making preparations, and demanded of the French government not only to make befitting indemnification to the German princes and nobles who had suffered loss by the abolition of tithes and feudal burdens, and to restore the province of Avignon, that had been wrested from the pope, but to arrange the government upon the plan proposed by the king himself in June, 1789. These demands were followed by a declaration of war against Austria and Prussia on the part of the French government, to which the king yielded his consent with tears. For the purpose of securing the capital and the National Assembly against any attack it was resolved to summon 20,000 of the federates from the southern provinces, under pretense of celebrating the festival of the Bastille, and to commit the defense of Paris to them. But Louis refused his consent to this resolution also. Upon this, the Girondist ministers laid down their offices, after Madame Roland had reproached and reprimanded the king in a letter that was soon in the hands of every body. These proceedings increased the irritation to such an extent that it became easy for the republicans to excite a popular insurrection. On the 20th of June, the anniversary of the meeting in the Tennis Court, the terrible mob, armed with pikes, marched from the suburbs, under the conduct of the brewer, Santerre, and the butcher, Legendre, into the Tuileries, to force the king to confirm the decree against the unsworn priests and for the summoning of the National Guard. But here also Louis remained firm. He defied for several hours all threats and dangers, and endured the insolence of the mob, who even placed the red Jacobin cap upon his head and gave him wine to drink, with the courage of a martyr. The rather tardy arrival of Pètion with the National Guard at length freed him from his perilous position.

At midnight on the 10th of August, a fearful mob proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville, for the purpose of establishing a new democratic municipality, and then marched to the royal palace, which was defended by 900 Swiss, and the Parisian National Guard under the command of Mandat. The honest Mandat was resolved to check the advancing masses, which were ever assuming a more menacing aspect, by force; his destruction was consequently resolved upon by the democrats. He was commanded to appear at the Hôtel de Ville, and assassinated on his way thither; upon which the National Guard, uncertain what to do, and disgusted by the presence of a number of nobles in the palace, for the most part dispersed. The mob constantly assumed a more threatening aspect; cannon were turned upon the palace, the pikemen pressed forwards upon every entrance, the people loudly demanded the deposition of the king. At this crisis, Louis suffered himself to be persuaded to seek for protection with his family in the hall of the National Assembly, where they passed sixteen hours in a narrow closet. The king had scarcely left the palace, before the tumultuous multitude pressed forward more violently; the Swiss guard maintained a gallant resistance, and defended the entrance. When the report of musketry was heard in the adjoining Assembly, the indignant representatives of the people compelled the intimidated king to give his guard orders to cease firing. By this order, the faithful defenders of monarchy were doomed to destruction. Scarcely had the furious mob observed that the enemy’s fire had ceased, before they stormed the palace, slaughtered those they found in it, and destroyed the furniture. Nearly 5,000 men, and among them, 700 Swiss, fell in the struggle, or died afterwards, the victims of the popular fury. In the mean time, the National Assembly, upon the proposal of Vergniaud, embraced the resolution “to suspend the royal authority, to place the king and his family under control, to give the prince a tutor, and to assemble a National Convention.” The Temple, a strong fortress erected by the Knights Templars, soon enclosed the imprisoned royal family.

After the suspension of the king, a new ministry was formed by the National Assembly, in which, by the side of the Girondist, Roland, and others, the terrible Danton held office as minister of justice. This ministry, and the new Common Council of Paris which had appointed itself, and which, after the 10th of August, had strengthened itself by members who might be depended upon as hesitating at no wickedness, now possessed the whole power. The Municipal Council ordered the police of the capital to be conducted by pikemen, and the prisons were quickly filled with the ‘suspected’ and ‘aristocrats.’ It was now that the frightful resolution was matured of getting rid of the opponents of the new order of things by a bloody tribunal, and of suppressing all resistance by terror. After the recusant priests had been slaughtered by hundreds in the monasteries and prisons, the dreadful days of September were commenced. From the2dto the 7th of September, bands of hired murderers and villains were collected round the prisons. Twelve of them acted as jurymen and judge, the others as executioners. The imprisoned, with the exception of a few whose names were marked upon a list, were put to death by this inhuman crew under a semblance of judicial proceedings. Nearly 3,000 human beings were either put to death singly, or slaughtered in masses, by these wretches, who received a daily stipend from the Common Council for their ‘labors.’ Among the murdered was the princess Lamballe, the friend of the queen; a troop of pikemen carried her head upon a pole to the Temple, and held it before Marie Antoinette’s window. The example of the capital was imitated in many of the departments. The barbarous destruction of all statues, coats of arms, incriptions, and other memorials of a former period, formed the conclusion of the August and September days, which were the transition period between the French monarchy and republic. The autumnal equinox was distinguished as the commencement of the reign of liberty and equality under the republican National Convention.

Lafayette, who was serving with the northern army, and who, after the days of June, had returned to Paris on his own responsibility, for the purpose, if possible, of saving the king, was now summoned before the National Assembly to answer for his conduct. Convinced that the Jacobins were seeking for his death, he fled, with some friends who shared his sentiments, to Holland, that he might escape to America; but he fell into the hands of enemies, who treated him like a prisoner of war, and allowed him to live for five years in the dungeons of Olmutz and Magdeburg. Talleyrand repaired to England, and thence to America, where he awaited better times.

The new Assembly, which, under the influence of the Jacobins, had been elected by universal suffrage, was composed almost exclusively of republicans, but of different dispositions and opinions.

The trial of the king, ‘Louis Capet,’ was one of the first proceedings of the National Convention. An iron safe had been discovered in a wall of the Tuileries, containing secret letters and documents, from which it was apparent that the French court had not only been in alliance with Austria and the emigrants, and had projected plans for overthrowing the Constitution that had been sworn to by Louis, but that it had also attempted to win over single members of the National Assembly (for example, Mirabeau), by annuities, bribery, and other means. It was upon this that the republicans, who would willingly have been quit of the king, founded a charge of treason and conspiracy against the country and the people. Louis, with the assistance of two advocates, to whom the noble Malasherbes, of his own free impulse, associated himself, appeared twice before the Convention (11th and 26th December), but despite his own dignified bearing and defense, and despite the efforts of the Girondist party to have the sentence referred to a general assembly of the people, Louis was condemned to death in a stormy meeting, by a small majority of five voices, January 17th, 1793. The party of the Mountain, where the advocate, Maximilian Robespierre, the former marquisSt.Just, the frightful Danton, the lame Couthon, and the duke of Orleans, who had assumed the name of Citizen Egalité, were the leaders and chiefs, had left no means unattempted to produce this result by terror; they would, nevertheless, have failed in their purpose, had they not carried a resolution beforehand in the Assembly, that a bare majority should be sufficient for a sentence of death, and not, as had heretofore been the custom, that two thirds of the votes should be necessary. The murder was thus veiled by a show of justice. On the 21st of January, the unfortunate king ascended the scaffold in the square of the Revolution. The drums of the National Guard drowned his last words, and ‘Robespierre’s women’ greeted his bloody head with the shout of ‘Vive la République.’

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