a short history of france by mary platt parmele

8/13/2019 A Short History of France by Mary Platt Parmele

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if M^^^j^ofConSiSLIBRARY OF CONGRESS.CliapD.C.l?Copyriglit No..

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.


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BY THE SAME AUTHOR

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATESA SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLANDA SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCEA SHORT HISTORY OF GERMANYA SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN

Each 12mo, 60 cents mt


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A SHORTHISTORY OF FRANCE

BY ^/MAEY PLATT PAEMELE

NEW YORKCHAELES SCEIBNEE'S SONS1898

1


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COFTBIGHT, 1894, BTWILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON

COPTBIGHT, 1898, BT

' CH4KLM SCKIBNBR'S SONS

TROW DinECTORYPRINTING AND BOOKBINDINQ COMPANY

NEW YORK

1 MraL> 5


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PEEFAOE.In an attempt to tell the story of a great

nation in about 100 pages, it is needless tosay there must be a rigid exclusion of allsave essential facts. To those already famil-iar with the subject, this sketch is offeredmerely as a reminder of the sequence ofconditions and events in ihe evolution ofFrance ; while to the student it is presentedas a framework upon which may be placed,in orderly and comprehensible fashion, theresults of future reading and research.To the latter class I would suggest that

a series of papers, written upon the mostprominent themes found in the Table ofContents, will bear fruit in knowledge morereal and vital than may be obtained fromthe writings of others, however eloquentand vivid the presentation.

M. P. P.New York, July 23, 1894.


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COI^TEI^TS.

Chapter I. PAGEThe Aryan Family of NationsKeltic RaceAn-

cient GaulGauls in RomeGauls in Greeceand in Asia Minor 9

Chapter II.Roman Conquest of GaulJulius Csesar 18

Chapter III.Birth of ChristianityIts DisseminationPersecu-

tion at Lyons by order of Marcus AureliusTheRoman Empire Espouses Christianity underConstantino 22

Chapter IV.Gaul Overrun and Subjugated by FranksClovis

KingDecay of the Merovingian Line Mairedu PalaisKing de factoCharles MartelBirthof MohammedanismIts TriumphsChristen-dom ThreatenedPepin KingCharlemagneAlliance with PopeFrance, Italy, and Ger-many Emerge as Separate Nationalities 30


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6 CONTENTS

Chapter V. PAGBThe NorthmenBeginnings of Feudalism in FranceNormandy Bestowed upon the Northmen

Conquest of England by William, Duke of Nor-mandyAlbigensesInquisition at ToulouseThe Crusades 39

Chapter VI.Decline of FeudalismCreation of the Commune-

Charles VII.Henry V. in FranceJoan ofArc 47

Chapter VII.Francis I. HuguenotsCatharine de' Medici

Francis II 54

Chapter VIII.Massacre of St. BartholomewHenry III.HenryIV 62

Chapter IX.Edict of NantesLouis XIII.Richelieu 71

Chapter X.Louis XIV.Revocation of the Edict of Nantes

Louis XV.Age of Voltaire and RousseauTheGathering Storm 77


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CONTENTS. 7

Chapter XI. PAGELouis XVI. and Marie AntoinetteAmerican Col-

onies Arrayed Against EnglandFrench Aid toAmericaSmouldering Fires of DiscontentLouis Convokes States-GeneralNational As-sembly Created by CommonsBastille AttackedRevolutionExecution of King 87

Chapter XII.Napoleon BonaparteToulonCampaign in Italy

Empire EstablishedEurope Under the Feet ofthe Great CorsicanMarie LouiseWaterlooLouis XVIII.Charles X.Louis PhilippeSecond RepublicLouis Napoleon PresidentSecond EmpireNapoleon III.Franco-Prus-sian WarSedanThird RepublicReview ofPresent Conditions 97


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A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.CHAPTER I.

One of the greatest achievements of mod-ern research is the discovery of a key bywhich we may determine the kinship of na-tions. What we used to conjecture, we nowknow. An identity in the structural formof language establishes with scientific certi-tude that however diverse their characterand civilizations, Russian, German, English-man, Frenchman, Spaniard, are all butbranches from the same parent stem, are allalike children of the Asiatic Aryan.So skilful are modern metnods of ques-

tioning the past, and so determined the efliortto find out its secrets, we may yet know theorigin and history of this wonderful Asiaticpeople, and when and why they left theirnative continent and colonized upon the


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10 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.northern shores of the Mediterranean. Cer-tain it is, however, that, more centuries be-fore the Christian era than there have beensince, they had peopled Western Europe.

This branch of the Aryan family is knownas the Keltic, and was older brother to theTeuton and Slav, which at a much laterperiod followed them from the ancestralhome, and appropriated the middle and east-ern portions of the European Continent.The name of Gaul was given to the ter-

ritory lying between the Ocean and theMediterranean, and the Pj-renees and theAlps. And at a later period a portion ofNorthern Gaul, and the islands lying northof it, received from an invading chieftainand his tribe the name Brit or Britain (orPryd or Prydain).

If the mind could be carried back on thetrack of time, and we could see what wenow call France as it existed twenty cen-turies before the Christian era, we shouldbehold the same natural features : the samemountains rearing their heads; the samerivers flowing to the sea; the same plainsstretching out in the sunlight. But instead


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 11of vines and flowers and cultivated fields weshould behold great herds of wild ox andelk, and of swine as fierce as wolves, rang-ing in a climate as cold as Norway; andvast inaccessible forests, the home of beastsof prey, which contended with man forfood and shelter.

Let us read Guizot's description of life inGaul five centuries before Christ

Here lived six or seven millions of mena bestial life, in dwellings dark and low,built of wood and clay and covered withbranches or straw, open to daylight by thedoor alone and confusedly heaped togetherbehind a rampart of timber, earth, andstone, which enclosed and protected whatthey were pleased to calla town.''''Such was the Paris, and such the French-men of the age of Pericles And the same

tides that washed the sands of SouthernGaul, a few hours later ebbed and flowedupon the shores of Greecerich in culture,with refinements and subtleties in art whichare the despair of the world to-daywithan intellectual endowment never since at-tained by any people.


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12 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.The same sun which rose upon temples

and palaces and life serene and beautiful inGreece, an hour later lighted sacrificial altarsand hideous orgies in the forests of Gaul.While the Gaul was nailing the heads ofhuman victims to his door, or hangingthem from the bridle of his horse, or burn-ing or flogging his prisoners to death, theGreek, with a literature, an art, and a civil-ization in ripest perfection, discussed withhis friends the deepest problems of life anddestiny, which were then baffling humanintelligence, even as they are with us to-day. Truly we of Keltic and Teuton de-scent are late-comers upon the stage ofnational life.

There was no promise of greatness in an-cient Gaul. It was a great unregulated force,rushing hither and thither. Impelled byinsatiate greed for the possessions of theirneighbors, there was no permanence in theirloves or their hatreds. The enemies of to-day were the allies of to-morrow. Guidedentirely by the fleeting desires and passionsof the moment, with no far-reaching plansto restrain, the sixty or more tribes compos-


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 13ing the Gallic people were in perpetual stateof feud and anarchy, apparently insensibleto the ties of brotherhood, which give con-cert of action, and stability in form of na-tional life. If they overran a neighboringcountry, it seemed not so much for perma-nent acquisition, as to make it a camping-ground until its resources were exhausted.We read of one Massillia who came witha colony of Greeks long ages ago, and afterfounding the city of Marseilles, created anarrow bright border of Greek civilizationalong the Southern edge of the benightedland. It was a brief illumination, lastingonly a century or more, and leaving fewtraces; but it may account for the superiorintellectual quality of the southern pro-vinces in future France.

It requires a vast extent of territory tosustain a people living by the chase, andupon herds and flocks ; hence the area whichnow amply maintains forty millions ofFrenchmen was all too small for six or sevenmillion Gauls ; and they were in perpetualstruggle with their neighbors for landmore land.


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14: EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.Give US land, they said to the Eo-

mans, and when land was denied them andthe gates of cities disdainfully closed upontheir messengers, not land, but vengeance,was their cry; and hordes of half-nakedbarbarians trampled down the vineyards,and rushed, a tumultuous torrent, uponEome.The Romans could not stand before this

new and strange kind of warfare. TheGauls streamed over the vanquished legionsinto the Eternal City, silent and desertedsave only by the Senate and a few who re-mained intrenched in the Citadel ; and therethe barbarians kept them besieged for sevenmonths, while they made themselves athome amid uncomprehended luxuries.Of course Roman skill and courage at lastdislodged and drove them back. But the

fact remained that the Gaul had been there,master of Rome ; that the ironclad legionshad been no match for his naked force, anda new sensation thrilled through the lengthand breadth of Gaul. It was the first throbof national life. The sixty or more frag-ments drew closer together into something


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16 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.centuries which followed, the Gallic nameacquired no fresh lustre in Greece. Half-naked, gross, ferocious and ignorant, some-times allies, but always a scourge, theyfinally crossed the Hellespont (278 B.C.), andturned their attention to Asia Minor. Andthere, at last, we find them settled in a prov-ince called Gallicia, where they lived with-out amalgamating with the people aboutthem; it is said, even as late as 400 yearsafter Christ, speaking the language of theirtribal home (what is now Belgium). Andthese were the Galatiansthe foolish Gala-tians, to whom Paul addressed his epistle;and we have followed up this Gallic threadsimply because it mingles with the largerstrand of ancient and sacred history withwhich we are all so familiar.

It is not strange that Roman courage be-came a by-word. The fibre of Rome wastoughened by perpetual strain of conflict.Even while she was struggling with Gaul andwhile the echoes of the Hunnish invasionwere still resounding through the Continent,Hannibal, with his hosts, was pouring


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EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. lYthrough Gaul and gathering accessions fromthat people as he swept down into Italy.Then, with the memories of the Carthaginianwars still fresh at Rome, the Goths were ather gates,their blows directed with a solid-ity superior to that of the barbarians whohad preceded them. Where the Gauls hadknocked, the Goths thundered.Again the city was invaded by barbarian

feet, and again did superior training and in-telligence drive back the invading torrentand triumph over native brute force.

Such, in brief outline, was the conditionof the centuries just before the Christianera.


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CHAPTER II.The making of a nation is not unlike

bread or cake making. One element is usedas the basis, to which are added other com-ponent parts, of varying qualities, and theresult we call England, or Germany, orFrance, The steps by which it is accom-plished, the blending and fusing of the ele-ments, require centuries, and the processmakes what we callhistory.

It was written in the book of fate thatGaul should become a great nation ; but notuntil fused and interpenetrated with twoother nationalities. She must first be hu-manized and civilized by the Roman, andthen energized and made free from the Ro-man by the Teuton.The instrument chosen for the former

was Julius Csesar, and for the latterfivecenturies laterClovis, the Frankish leader.


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 19It is safe to affirm that no man has ever

so changed the course of human events asdid Julius Caesar. Napoleon, who strove toimitate him 1800 years later, was a charla-tan in comparison ; a mere scene-shifter ona great theatrical stage. Few traces of hiswork remain upon humanity to-day.

Csesar opened up a pathway for the oldcivilizations of the world to flow into West-ern Europe, and the sodden mass of barbar-ism was infused with a life-compelling cur-rent. This was not accomplished by placingbefore the inferior race a higher ideal of lifefor imitation, but by a mingling of the bloodof the nations a transfusion into Gallicveins of the germs of a higher living andthinkingthus making them heirs to thegreat civilizations of antiquity.Was any human event ever fraught withsuch consequences to the human race as theconquest of Gaul by Julius Csesar ?The Gallic wars had for centuries drained

the treasure and taxed the resources ofRome. Csesar conceived the audacious ideaof stopping them at their sourcein fact, ofmaking Gaul a Roman province.


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20 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.It was a marvellous exhibition, not sim-

ply of force, but of force wielded by supremeintelligence and craft. He had lived fouryears among this people and knew theirsources of weakness, their internal jealousiesand rivalries, their incohesiveness. Whenthey hurled themselves against Rome, itwas as a mass of sharp fragments. Whenthe Goths did the same, it was as one solid,indivisible body. Caesar saw that by adroitmanagement he could disintegrate thispeople, even while conquering them.By forcibly maintaining in power thosewho submitted to him, being by turns gen-tle and severe, ingratiating here, terrifyingthere, he established a tremendous personalforce; and during nine years carried oneight campaigns, marvels in the art of war,as well as in the subtler methods of negoti-ation and intrigue. He had successivelytlealt with all the Keltic tribes, even includ-ing Great Britain, subjugating eitherthrough their own rivalries, or by his invin-cible arm.

Equally able to charm and to terrify, hehad all the gifts, all the means to success


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EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 21and empire, that can be possessed by man.Great in politics as in war, as full of re-source in the forum as on the battle-field,he was by nature called to dominion.

It was not as a patriot, simply intent uponfreeing Rome of an harassing enemy, thathe endured those nine years in Gaulnotas a great leader burning with military ar-dor that he conducted those eight campaigns.The conquest of Gaul meant the greaterconquest of Rome. The one was accom-plished; he now turned his back upon thedevastated country, and prepared to com-plete his great project of human ascendency.Rome was mistress of the world; hewould be master of Rome.


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 23which he was born; never spoke from thevantage-ground of worldly elevation,sim-ply moving among people of his own stationin life, mechanics, fishermen, and peasants,he told of a religion of love, a gospel ofpeace, for which he was willing to die.Who would have dreamed that this wasthe germ of the most potent, the most re-generative force the world had ever known ?That thrones, empires, principalities, andpowers would melt and crumble before hisname? Of all miracles, is not this the great-est?The passionate ardor with which this re-

ligion was propagated in the first two cen-turies had no motive but the yearning tomake others share in its benefits and hopesand to this end to accept the belief that JesusChrist had come in fulfilment of the promiseof a Saviour,who should be sent to thisworld clothed with divine authority to es-tablish a spiritual kingdom, in which he wasKing of Kings, Lord of Lords, Mediator be-tween us and the Father, of whom he wasthe only begotten Son.The religion in its essence was absolutely


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24 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.simple. Its founder summed it up in twosentences,expressing the duty of man toman, and of man to God. That was all theTheology he formulated.For two centuries the religion of Christ

was an elementary spiritual force. It ap-pealed only to the highest attributes andlongings of the human soul, and under itssustaining influence frail women, men, andeven children were able to endure tortures,of which we cannot read even now withoutshuddering horror.Nature's method of gardening is very beau-

tiful. She carefully guards the seed untilit is ripe, then she bursts the imprisoningwalls and gives it to the winds to distribute.Precisely such method was used in dissemi-nating Christianity. It was not for onepeopleit was for the healing of the nations,and its home was wherever man abides.

Nearly five decades after Christ's deathupon the cross, Jerusalem was destroyed byTitus. The home of Christianity waseffaced. At just the right moment the en-closing walls had broken, and freed to the


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EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 25winds the germs in all their primitivepurity.

Imperial favor had not tarnished it, hu-man ambitions had not employed and de-graded it, nor had it been made into com-plex system by ingenious casuists. The purespiritual truth, unsullied as it came fromthe hand of its founder, was scattered broad-cast, as the band of Christians dispersedthroughout the Eoman Empire, naturallyforming into communities here and there,which became the centres of Christian prop-agandism. Lyons in Gaul was such a cen-tre.

The fires of persecution had been lightedhere and there throughout the Empire, andthe Emperor Nero, under whom the Apos-tles Peter and Paul are said to have sufferedmartyrdom, had amused himself by makingtorches of the Christians at Eome. But un-til 1Y7 A.D. Gaul was exempt from such hor-rors.Marcus Aureliusthat peerless pagan,large in intelligence, exalted in character,

and guided by a conscientious rectitude


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26 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.which has made his name shine like a starin the lurid light of Koman history, stillfailed utterly to comprehend the significanceof this spiritual kingdom established byChrist on earth. He it was who orderedthe first persecution in Gaul. In pursuanceof his command, horrible tortures were in-flicted at Lyons upon those who would notabjure the new faith.A letter, written by an eye-witness, pic-tures with terrible vividness the scenes whichfollowed. Many cases are described withharrowing detail, and of one Blandina it issaid: From morn till eve they put her toall manner of torture, marvelling that shestill lived with her body pierced through andthrough and torn piecemeal by so manytortures of which a single one should havesufficed to kill her, to which she only replied,' I am a Christian. ' The recital goes on to tell how she was

then cast into a dungeon,her feet com-pressed and dragged out to the utmost ten-sion of the muscles,then left alone in dark-ness, until new methods of torture could bedevised.


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 27Finally she was brought, with other Chris-

tians, into the amphitheatre, hanging froma cross to which she was tied, and therethrown to the beasts. As the beasts refusedto touch her she was taken back to the dun-geon to be reserved for another occasion,being brought out daily to witness the fateand suffering of her friends and fellow-martyrs; still answering the oft-repeatedquestion''I am a Christian.The writer goes on to say, After she had

undergone fire, the talons of beasts, andevery agony which could be thought of, shewas wrapped in a network and thrown to abull, who tossed her in the air and hersufferings were ended.

Truly it cost something to say I am aChristian in those days.Marcus Aurelius probably gave orders forthe persecution at Lyons, with little knowl-edge of what would be the nature of thosepersecutions, or of the religion he was tryingto exterminate. Some of the hours spentin writing introspective essays would havebeen well employed in studying the periodin which he lived, and the Empire he ruled.


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28 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.Paganism and Druidism, those twin mon-

sters, receded before the advancing light ofChristianity. Neither contained anythingwhich could nourish the soul of man, andboth had become simply badges of national-ity.

Druidism was the last stronghold of in-dependent Gallic life. It was a mixture ofnorthern myth and oriental dreams of me-tempsychosis, coarse, mystical, and cruel.The Roman paganism which was superim-posed by the conquering race was the mereshell of a once vital religion. Educated menhad long ceased to believe in the gods anddivinities of Greece, and it is said that theRoman augurs, while giving their solemnprophetic utterances, could not look at eachother without laughing.

In the year 312, alas for Christianity, itwas espoused by imperial power. When theEmperor Constantine declared himself aChristian, there was no doubt rejoicingamong the saints ; but it was the beginningof the degeneracy of the religion of Christ.The faith of the humble was to be raised to


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 29a throne; its lowly garb to be exchangedfor purple and scarlet, the gospel of peace tobe enforced by the sword.The Empire was crumbling, and upon its

ruins the race of the future and social con-ditions of modern times were forming.Paganism and Druidism would have been animpossibility. Christianity even with itslustre dimmed, its purity tarnished, its sim-plicity overlaid with scholasticism, was bet-ter than these. The miracle had been ac-complished. The great Roman Empire hadsaid : I am Christian.


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CHAPTER IV.Gaul had been Latinized and Christian-

ized. Now one more thing was needed toprepare her for a great future. Her fibrewas to be toughened by the infusion of astronger race. JuHus Caesar had shaken herinto submission, and Rome had chastisedher into decency of behavior and speech, butas her manners improved her native vigordeclined. She took kindly to Roman luxuryand effeminacy, and could no longer havethundered at the gates of her neighbors de-manding land.But at last the great Roman Empire wasdying, and even degenerate Gaul was strug-gling out of her relaxing grasp. In her ex-tremity she called upon the Franks, a pow-erful Germanic race, to aid her. This peoplehad long looked with covetous eyes at thefair fields stretching beyond the Rhine, andlost no time in accepting the invitation.


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EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 31They overspread the land, and Gaul andRoman alike were submerged beneath theTeuton flood, while the Frankish Con-queror, Clovis (son of the great Merovseus),was at Paris (or Lutetia ) wearing thekingly crown.Such was the beginning of independentand of dynastic life in France.Rome had found a more powerful ally

than she hoped ; and the desire of Gaul wasaccomplished in that she was free from Rome.But the king of whom she had dreamedwas of her own race ; not this terrible Frank.Had she exchanged one servitude for an-other? Had she been, not set free, but sim-ply annexed to the realm of the Barbarianacross the Rhine? Let us say rather that itwas an espousal. She had brought herdowry of beauty and land, that most cov-eted of possessions, and had pledged obedi-ence, for which she was to be cherished,honored, and protected, and to bear the nameof her lord.

Ancient heroes are said to be seen througha shadowy lens, which magnifies their stat-


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32 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.Tire. Let us hope that the crimes of thethree or four generations immediately suc-ceeding Clovis have been in Kke mannerexpanded ; for it is sickening to read of suchmonstrous prodigality of wickedness. Wholefamilies butchered, husbands, wives, chil-drenanything obstructing the path to thethronewith an atrocity which makes Eich-ard III. seem a mere pigmy in the art of in-trigue and killing. The chapter closes withthe daughter and mother of kings (Brune-hilde or Brunhaut) naked and tied by onearm, one leg and her hair to the tail of anunbroken horse, and amid jeers and shoutsdashed over the stones of Paris (600 a.d.).But even the Frank succumbed to the ener-

vating Gallic influence. The Merovingianline commenced by Clovis faded from ferocityinto imbecility. Its Kings in less than twocenturies had become mere lay-figures, wear-ing the symbols of an authority which ex-isted nowhere, unless in the Maire du Palais.

This office from being a sort of royal stew-ardship had grown to be the governing powerde facto. While Lothair, the PhantomKing, was having his long locks dressed and


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34 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE.divinity of the Virgin Mother, and theChurch was shaken to its foundation by fu-rious factions.

In this hour of weakness, the Persians(590 A.D.) had conquered Asia Minor. Beth-lehem, Gethsemane, and Calvary were pro-faned ; the Holy Sepulchre had been burned,and the cross carried off amid shouts oflaughter. Magianism had insulted Christi-anity, and no miracle had interposed Theheavens did not roll asunder, nor did theearth open her abysses to swallow them up.There was consternation and doubt in Chris-tendom.Such was the state of the Church when

Mohammedanism came into existence. There is but one God, and Mohammed ishis Prophet. Such was its battle-cry andits creed, and the moral precepts of the Ko-ran were its gospel. There seems nothing inthis to account for the mad enthusiasm andthe passion for worship in its followers. Butin less than a hundred years this lion out ofArabia had subjected Syria, Mesopotamia,Egypt, Northern Africa, and the SpanishPeninsula. Now, sword in one hand, and


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 35the Koran in the other, the Mohammedanhad crossed the Pyrenees and was in South-ern Gaul.Under the strange magic of this faith,

the largest religious empire the world hadknown had sprung into existence, stretch-ing from the Chinese Wall to the Atlantic;from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean ; andJerusalem, the metropolis of ChristianityJerusalem, the Mecca of the Christian, waslost The crescent floated over the birth-place of our Lord, and notwithstanding thetemporary successes of the Crusades, it doesto this day.

If the Pyrenees were passed, the veryexistence of Christendom was threatened.Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charle-magne, averted this danger when he stayedthe infidel flood at the battle of Tours, 732A.D.

Pepin, the son of Charles Martel, who suc-ceeded him as Maire du Palais, does notseem to have had the temper or spirit of anusurper, but simply to have been an ener-getic, resolute man who was bored by thecircumlocution of governing through a King


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36 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE.who did not exist. He determined to put anend to the fiction, and to cut the Gordianknot by first cutting the long curls of thelast Merovingian, Childeric; and then put-ting the crown upon his own head, he sent theunfortunate phantom of royalty to a mon-astery, to reflect upon the uncertainty ofhuman pleasures and events. By right ofmanhood and superiority, the Carlovingianline had succeeded to the Merovingian.

Against the dark background of Europeanhistory, and with the broad level of obscur-ity stretching over the ages at its feet, thererises one shining pinnacle. Considered asman or sovereign, Charlemagne is one ofthe most impressive figures in history. Hisseven feet of stature clad in shining steel,his masterful grasp of the forces of his time,his splendid intelligence, instinct even thenwith the modern spirit, all combine to ele-vate him in solitary grandeur.Charlemagne found France in disorder

measureless, and apparently insurmounta-ble. Barbarian invasion without, and an-archy within ; Saxon paganism pressing in


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 37upon the North, and Asiatic Islamism uponthe South and West ; a host of forces strug-gling for dominion in a nation brutish, ig-norant, and without cohesion.

It is the attribute of genius to discern op-portunity where others see nothing. Charlemagne saw rising out of this chaos a greatresuscitated Eoman empire, which shouldbe at the same time a spiritual and Christianempire as well. Saxons, Slavs, Huns,Lombards, Arabs, came under his compell-ing grasp; these antagonistic races all heldtogether by the force of one terrible will, inunnatural combination with France. Nopolitical liberties, no popular assemblies dis-cussing public measures ; it is Charlemagnealone who fills the picture ; it is absolutism,marked by prudence, ability, and gran-deur, but still, absolutism.The Pope looked approvingly upon this

son of the Church by whose order 4,500 pa-gan heads could be cut off in one day, anda whole army compelled to baptism in anafternoon. Here was a champion to be pro-pitiated Charlemagne, on the other hand,saw in the Church the most compliant and


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38 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.effective means to empire. In the lovingalliance formed, he was to be the protector,the Pope the protected. He wore the Churchas a precious jewel in his crown.

It was a splendid dream, splendidly real-ized ; the most imposing of human successes,and the most impressive of human failures.It seems designed as a lesson for the humanrace in the transitory nature of power ap-plied from without.The vast fabric passed with himself; was

gone like a shadow when he was gone. Theunity of the Empire was buried in the graveof its founder. In twenty-nine years (bythe treaty of Verdun) three kingdomsemerged from the crumbling mass. France,Italy, Germany, already separated by racerepulsions, had taken up each a distinct na-tional existence, the Imperial crown re-maining with Germany.And FranceFrance, the centre of thisdream of unity, with her native incohesive-ness, and in the irony of fate, had broken intono less than 69 fragments, loosely held to-gether by one Carlovingian King.


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CHAPTER V.I THINK that it was Lincoln who said that

the Lord must like common people, becausehe had made so many of them, The pathfor the common people in France at this timeled through heavy shadows. But a darkertime was approaching. A system of oppres-sion was maturing, which was soon to en-velop them in the obscurity of darkest night.

Those Scandinavian freebooters calledNorthmen, and later Normans, were thescourge of the kingdom. Nothing was safefrom their insolent courage and rapacity.The rich could intrench themselves in stone

fortresses, with moats and drawbridges, andbe in comparative security, but the poorwere utterly defenceless against this peren-nial destroyer. The result was a compactbetween the powerful and the weak, whichwas the beginning of the Feudal System.


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40 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.It was in effect an exchange of protectionfor service and fealty. You give us absolutecontrol of your personsyour military ser-vice when required, and a portion of yoursubstance and the fruit of your toiland wewill in exchange give you our fortified cas-tles as a refuge from the Northmen. Suchwas the offer. It was a choice between vas-salage, serfdom, or destruction outright.

Simple enough in its beginnings, this be-came a ramified system of oppression, a cu-rious network of authority, ingeniously con-trolling an entire people. The conditionsupon which was engrafted this compact wereof great antiquity, had indeed been broughtacross the Rhine by their German conquer-ors; but the Northmen were the impellingcause of the swift development of feudalismin France.Charlemagne had felt grave apprehensions

of evil from these robber incursions, but couldnot have conceived of a result such as this,the most oppressive system ever fastenedupon a nation, and one which would at thesame time sap the foundations of royalty it-self.


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 41The theory was that the King was absolute

owner of all the territory ; the great lordsholding their titles from him on conditionof military service, their vassals pledgingmilitary service and obedience to them againon similar terms, and sub-vassals again tothem repeating the pledge ; and so on in de-scending chain, until at last the serf, thatwretched being whom none looks up to norfears, is ground to powder beneath the su-perimposed mass. No appeal from the au-thority, no escape from the caprice or crueltyof his feudal lord. Could any scales weigh,could any words measure the suffering whichmust have been endured ? Is it strange, withevery aspiration thwarted, hope stifled, thatEurope sank into the long sleep of the Mid-dle Ages?

It is easy to conceive that, under such asystem, where all the affairs of the realmwere adjusted by individual rulers withunlimited power, and where the great bar-ons could make war upon each other with-out authorization from the King, by thetime this nominal head of the entire system


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42 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.was readied, there remained nothing for himto do. In fact, there was not left one vestigeof kingly authority, and Carlovingian rulerswere almost as insignificant as their Mero-vingian predecessors. France had, insteadof one great sovereign, one hundred and fiftypetty ones

In 911 A.D. the Northmen were offeredthe province henceforth known as Nor-mandy, upon condition of their acceptanceof the religion and submission to the lawsof the realm. RoUo, the disreputable rob-ber-chief, took the oath of fealty to the Kingof France his Suzerain, and Christian bap-tism transformed him into respectable, law-abiding Eobert, Duke of Normandy.With marvellous facility this people took

on the language and manners of their neigh-bors, and in a century and a half were pre-pared to instruct the Britons in a highercivilization

.

I think it is one hundred years of respect-ability that is required by a certain aristo-cratic club for admission to its membership.The blood does not acquire the proper shadeof azure until it has flowed in the full light


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 43of day for at least three generations. De-cidedly, William the Conqueror, first Nor-man King of England, could not have beenadmitted to this club.A century before his birth, his ancestorshad lived by looting their neighbors. Theywere highwaymen, robbers, by profession.And, to increase his ineligibility, his mother,a pretty Norman peasant girl, daughter of atanner, had ensnared the affections of thatpleasant Duke of Normandy, known asEobert the Devil.William, the fruit of this unconsecratedunion, became in time Duke of Normandy.With that reversion to ancestral types towhich scientists tell us we are all liable, heseems to have looked across the Channeltoward England, with an awakening of hisrobber-instincts. In a few weeks, Harold,the last King of the Saxons, lay dead at hisfeet, and William, Duke of Normandy, wasWilliam I., King of England.Then was presented the curious anomaly

of an English sovereign who was also rulerof a French province ; an English king whowas vassal to the King of France. A door


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44 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.was thus opened (1066 a. d.) through whichentered entangling compHcations and count-less woes in the future.

If Charlemagne had worn the Church as aprecious jewel in his crown in the ninth cen-tury, the Church now in the eleventh centurywore all the European states, a tiara of jewelsin her mitre. When Henry lY. prostratedhimself barefooted before Gregory VII. atCanossa in 1072, the centre of dominionhad passed from the Empire of Germany toRome.The Church then was at its zenith. As a

political system it was unrivalled ; but its tri-umphs brought little joy to the earnestsouls still clinging to the ideals of primitiveChristianity. But what availed it for Abe-lard to lead an intellectual revolt againstcorrupted beliefs in the North, or the Albi-genses a spiritual one in the South? Hewas silenced and immured for life, whilethe unhappy inhabitants of Languedoc weremassacred and almost exterminated, and aninquisition, established at Toulouse, madesure that heretical germs should not againspread from that infected centre.


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 45But however imperfect the religious senti-ment of the time, however it may have

departed from the simple precepts of itsfounder, its power to sway the hearts andlives of the people may be judged from theextraordinary movement started in France inthe twelfth century.How inconceivable, in this practical age,that Europe should three times have emptiedher choicest and best into Asia for a senti-ment Business suspended, private interestssacrificed or forgotten, life, treasure, alleagerly givenfor what? That a small bitof territory, a thousand miles away, be tornfrom profaning infidels, because of its sacredassociations, because it was the birthplaceof a religion whose meaning seems to haveescaped thema religion which they woreon their battle-fiags, but not in their hearts.How would a barefooted, rope-girdled monk,however inspired and eloquent, fare to-dayin New York, or London, or Paris?

History has no stranger chapter than thatof the Crusades. When Peter the Hermitpictured the desecration of the Holy Landby Mohammedans, all classes in France,


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CHAPTER VI.Like all oppressive systems, feudalism bore

within itself the seeds of its own destruction.When the King, shorn of prerogative and ofdignity, made alliance with the people lyingin helpless misery beneath the mailed sur-face, the system was rudely shaken. Whenartisans flocked to the free cities enjoyingespecial immunities and privileges from theKing, and by skill and industry amassedfortunes, the commune and the bourgeoisiewere created, and feudalism was stricken toits centre. When spendthrift nobles andneedy barons mortgaged their estates tothis thrifty but ignoble class, the end wasnot far off. And when in 1302 the ''HiersetaV entered the States-General as a legit-imate order of the Government, the very


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48 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIKE.foundations were crumbling, and it need-ed but tlie final coup de grace given byCharles YII. in the fifteenth century, whenhe established a standing army under thecontrol of the King. When this was done,the feudal system had no longer an excusefor being. It existed thenceforth as a reliowaiting to be dismantled by time.

Fr.om the moment when a French provincewas attached to the crown of England, thedream of that nation was the conquest ofFrance. Generations came and went, onedynasty replaced another, and still thestruggle continued ; France sometimes seem-ing near to dominion over England, andEngland always believing it was her destinyto bring France under the rule of an Englishsovereign.A glamour of romance is thrown overthe somewhat dreary pages of historyby the royal marriages which occur indazzling profusion. It seems to have beenthe custom, whenever a peace was con-cluded in Europe, to cement it with a royalmarriage, and to throw in a princess as asacrifice,one of the conditions of almost


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 49every treaty being that a royal daughter,or sister, or niece, should be tossed acrossthe Channel, or into Germany, or Italy, orSpain, an unwilling bride thrown into thearms of a reluctant bridegroom; with theresult that in the succeeding generationthere was a plentiful sprinkling of heirs withclaims, more or less shadowy, to the neigh-boring thrones. This was the source, orrather pretext, for most of the wars be-tween France and England for four hundredyears.In the early part of the fifteenth centurythe great crisis arrived. With that lack ofunity which seemed a fatal Gallic inheri-tance, France broke into civil war, while aninvading English army was in the heart ofher kingdom. England's dream was nearrealization.An insane King, a vicious intriguingQueen-Eegent, the Duke of Burgundy madlyjealous of the Duke of Orleans, and bothready to sacrifice France in the rage of dis-appointed ambition,such were the ele-ments. England's opportunity had come.The depraved Queen Isabella, acting for


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60 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.her insane husband, held conference withHenry V., and actually concluded a treatybestowing the regency upon the EnglishKing. There was the usual douceur of aprincess thrown in, and Katharine, thedaughter of Isabella, and sister to the Dau-phin (the future King Charles VII.), wasespoused by King Henry V. of England, whoset up a royal court at Vincennes.The fortunes of the kingdom had never

been so desperate. The people saw in theseinsolent traitorous dukes their naturalenemy; in the King, their friend and pro-tector. Had not monarchy given them lifeand hope? It was to them sacred next toHeaven. They rose in an outburst of patri-otism. The young Dauphin was hastily andinformally crowned, and thousands flocked tohis standard. It was the King and the peo-ple against the great vassals, the last strug-gle of an expiring feudalism. Desperationlent fury to the conflict which was, uponboth sides, a fight for existence; the Queenmother in unnatural alliance with the Dukeof Burgundy, who was resolved to rule orruin.


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 51He soon saw that defeat was inevitable,and, preferring infamy, threw himself into

the hands of the English, offering to turnthe kingdom over to the infant King HenryVI. (Henry V. having died)

.

Charles abandoned hope; how could hestruggle against such a combination? Hewas considering whether he should findrefuge in Spain or in Scotland, when thetide of events was turned by the strangestromance in history.

It must ever remain a mystery that apeasant girl, a child in years and in experi-ence, should have believed herself called tosuch a mission ; that coiaferring only withher heavenly guides or voices, she shouldhave sought the King, inspired him withfaith in her, and in himself and his cause, re-animated the courage of the army, and led itherself to victory absolute and complete ; andthen, have compelled the half-reluctant, half-doubting Charles to go with her to Rlieims,there to be anointed and consecrated ; thissimple child in that day bestowing upon hima kingdom, and upon France a King


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52 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE.Was there ever a stranger chapter inhistory Alas, if it could have ended here,

and she could have gone back to hermother and her spinning and her simplepleasures, as she was always longing to dowhen her work should be done. But nowe see her falling into the hands of the de-feated and revengeful Englishthis child,who had wrested from them a kingdom al-ready in their grasp. She was turned overto the French ecclesiastical court to be tried.A sorceress and a blasphemer they pro-nounce her, and pass her on to the secularauthorities, and her sentence isdeath.We see the poor defenceless girl, bewil-dered, terrified, wringing her hands and de-claring her innocence as she rides to execu-tion. God and man had abandoned her. Noheavenly voice spoke, no miracle intervenedas her young limbs were tied to the stake andthe fagots and straw piled up about her.The torch w^as applied, and her pure soulmounted heavenward in a column of flames.Rugged men wept. A Burgundian gen-eral said, as he turned gloomily away, We

have murdered a saint.


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 53

And Charles, sitting upon the throne shehad rescued for him, what was he doingto save her? Nothingto his everlastingshame be it said, nothing. He might nothave succeeded ; the effort at rescue, or tostay the event, might have been unavailing.But where was his knighthood, where hismanhood, that he did not try, or utter pas-sionate protest against her fate?

Twenty-five years later we see him erect-ing statues to her memory, and rehabilitat-ing her desecrated name. And to-day, theChurch which condemned her for blasphemyis placing her upon the calendar of saints.Charles VII. in creating a standing army, \struck feudalism a deadly blow. His son,Louis XI., with cold-blooded brutality fin-ished the work. This man's powerful and--'crafty intelligence saw in an alliance with thecommon people, a means of absorbing to him-self supreme power. Not since Tiberius hadthere been a more blood-thirsty monster ona throne. But he demolished the politicalstructure of medisevalism in his kingdomand when his cruel reign was ended, the Mid-dle Ages had passed away, and modern lifehad begun in France.


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CHAPTER VII.The early part of the sixteenth century

must ever be memorable in the history ofEurope. Ferdinand and Isabella had givento the human race a new world. Luther hadhurled his defiance at Eomehad arraignedLeo X. for blasphemy and corrupt practices.Charles V., grandson of Ferdinand andIsabella (and nephew of Katherine, wife ofHenry VIII.) was Emperor of Germany.Astute and powerful though he was, he hadbeen unable to stay the Protestant flood.His empire, apparently hungering for thenew heresy, was divided already into StatesProtestant and States Catholic. Englandwas Protestant. The conversion of herKing, because the Pope refused to annul hismarriage with Katharine, was not one ofthe proudest triumphs of the new faith, butone of the most important. Had Katha-


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 55line's charms been fresher, or Anne Boleyn'sless alluring, the course of history mighthave been strangely changed. Henry VIII.as persecutor of heretics would have foundcongenial occupation for his ferocious in-stincts, and Protestantism would have beenlong delayed. Spain was unchangeably Cath-olic, while Prance offered congenial soil forthe new faith. The germs of heresy, longslumbering,were everywhere stirred into life.

Francis I. was King ; sumptuous in tastes,suave and elegant in manners, as handsomeas an Apollo, gay, pleasure-loving, as viciousas he was false, and if need be with acruelty which matched his ambition, suchwas the man who held the destinies ofFrance at this time.A rival claimant for the throne of Ger-many, he was destined to spend his life in

fruitless contest with the more able, wily,and astute Charles V. , the possession of thatEmpire the ignis-fatuus ever luring him onan end to which all other ends were simplythe means. The religious question uponwhich Europe was divided meant nothing tohim, except as he could use it in his duel


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56 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.with the Emperor, He was in turn the allyof Henry VIII. or the willing tool of CharlesV. If he needed the English King's friend-ship, the Protestants had protection. If hedesired to placate Charles V., the roastingsand torturings commenced again.

In 154-7 Francis and Henry VIII. eachwent to his reward, and a few years laterCharles V. had laid down his crown andcarried his weary, unsatisfied heart to St.Yuste. The brilliant pageant was over;but Protestantism was expanding.The question at issue was deeper than

any one knew. Neither Luther nor Leo X.understood the revolution they had precipi-tated. Protestants and Papists alike failedto comprehend the true nature of the strug-gle, which was not for supremacy of Eoman-ist or Protestant; not whether this dogmaor that was true, and should prevail; butan assertion of the right of every humansoul to choose its own faith and form ofworship. The great battle for human lib-erty had commenced; the struggle forreligious liberty was but the prelude to whatwas to follow. There was abundant proof


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 57later that Protestants no less than Papistsneeded only opportunity and power to be ascruel and intolerant as their persecutors hadbeen. Before the Reformation was fiftyyears old, Servetus, one of the greatest menof his age, a scholar, philosopher, and manof irreproachable character, was burned atGeneva for heretical views concerning thenature of the Trinity ; Calvin, the greatorganizer of Protestant theology giving, ifnot the order for this odious crime, at leastthe nod of approval for its commission.Huguenot, that name of tragic associa-

tion, was a corruption of the German Eid-genossenmeaning associates. By the wayof Switzerland it came into France as Egue-nots, and the transition to its present formwas simple. The Huguenots were no longera timorous band hiding in darkness as in thetime of Francis I. A party with such lead-ers as Anthony de Bourbon, Prince of Conde(his brother), and Admiral Coligny, w as notto be put down by a few roastings andstranglings here and there. Anthony deBourbon (King of Navarre) was next in


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58 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE.succession should the House of Valois be-come extinct, with a young son valiant ashimself (the future Henry IV.) pressing ontoward manhood.

Catholic France needed plenty of comfortfrom Rome and Madrid in dealing with thisformidable body of heretics which had fast-ened upon her vitals, and which was in turnreceiving aid and comfort from the youngProtestant Queen across the Channel.When that fair princess Catharine de'

Medici became the wife of Henry, secondson of Francis I., no one suspected the tre-mendous import of the event. Powerless towin the affection or even confidence of herhusband, she remained during his reignalmost unobserved, but, as the event proved,not unobservant. Her alert faculties werenot idle, and when upon the death of HenryII. she found herself Queen-Regent, withonly a frail boy of sixteen to obstruct herwill, she quickly gathered the threads shealready knew so well, and her supple handclosed upon them with a grasp not to berelinquished while she lived.


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 59Another young Princess had been tossed

across the Channel. This time it was hermost serene Httle highness, Marie Stuart,Queen of Scotland, intended for the dauphin,who was to be Francis II.

In order to be prepared for this high des-tiny, the little maid was brought when onlysix years old to the Court of France to betrained under the direct supervision of herfuture mother-in-law, Catharine de' Medici.Poor little Mary Stuartpredestined to sinand to tragedy Could any woman be good,with the blood of the Guises in her veins, andwith Catharine de' Medici as preceptress ?

This marriage was planned before Catha-rine's advent to power, or it would neverhave been. Mary was the niece of the Dukeof Guise, and the central thought of Catha-rine' s policy was the exclusion of this am-bitious, intriguing family from every avenueto power in the state. Now, Mary wouldbe Queen, and who so natural advisers asher uncles of the house of Lorraine ?The marriage of the two children hadtaken placethe sickly boy with only a mod-

est portion of intelligence was Francis II.


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60 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.Mary, liis Queen, whom he adored, controlledhim utterly, and was in turn controlled byher uncles, the Guises. The wily Catharinesaw herself defeated by a beautiful girl ofsixteen.The family of Guise was the self-appointed

head of the Catholic party in France andrepresented the most extreme views regard-ing the treatment of heretics. So thestrange result was, that Catharine, if shelooked for any allies in her fight with thehouse of Lorraine, of which the Duke ofGuise was the head, must make commoncause with the Protestants, whom she hateda little less than she did the uncles of MaryStuart. But events were soon to change thesituation. Did she hasten them? Such asuspicion may never have existed. But mayone not suspect anything of a woman capa-ble of a St. Bartholomew?

Francis II. was dead. Mary Stuart hadpassed out of French history. The fateswere fighting on the side of Catharine, whowasted no regrets upon the death of a son,which made her Queen-Regent during theminority of her second son Charle&s) She


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 61entered upon her fight with the Guises withrenewed energy, and became to some extentprotector of the Protestants. Realizing thather time was brief, she prepared Charles forthe position he would soon hold.What can be said of a mother who seeks

to exterminate every germ of truth or virtuein her sonwho immerses him in degradingvices in order to deaden his too sensitiveconscience and make him a willing tool forher purposes? Inheriting the splendid in-telligence as well as genius for statecraftof the Medici, nourished from her infancyupon Machiavellian principles, cold and cruelby nature, this Florentine woman has writ-ten her name in blood across the pages ofFrench history.


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CHAPTER VIII.There is not time to tell the story of the

events leading up to that fateful night,August 24, 1572, Impelled always by herfear and dread of the Guises, Catharine hadbeen vacillating in her policy with the Hu-guenots. Charles IX. was now King: im-pressible, easily influenced, yet stubborn,intractable, incoherent, passionate, and un-reliable ; sometimes inclining to the Guises,sometimes to Coligny and the Huguenots,and always submitting at last after vainstruggle to his imperious mother's will, inher efforts to free him from both. We seein him a weak character, not naturally bad,torn to distraction by the cruel forces abouthim, who when compelled to yield, as healways did in the end, to that terrible wo-man, would give way to fits of impotent


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EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE. 63rage against the fate which allowed him nopeace.A time arrived when Catharine feared theinfluence of the Protestant Coligny morethan the Guises. Brave, patriotic, magnetic,he had succeeded in winning Charles' con-sent to declare war against Spain. PhilipII. of Spain was Catharine's son-in-law andclosest ally. Her entire policy would beundermined. At all hazards Coligny mustbe gotten rid of. The young King of Na-varre, adored leader of the Protestants, wasa constant menace ; he too must in some waybe disposed of.There were sinister conferences with Philip

of Spain and with his Minister, that incar-nation of cruelty and of the Inquisition, theDuke of Alva.God knows France was not guiltless inwhat followed; but the initiative, the in-ception of the horrid deed, was not French.It was conceived in the brain of either thisItalian woman or her Spanish adviser andco-conspirator, the Duke of Alva. We shallnever know the inside history of the massa-cre of St. Bartholomew. It must ever re-


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64 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.main a matter of conjecture just how andwhen it was planned, but the probabilitiespoint stronglj^ one way.Charles was to be gradually prepared for

it by his mother. By working upon hisfears, his suspicions, by stories of plottingsagainst his life and his kingdom, she wasto infuriate him ; and then, while his ragewas at its height, the opportunity foraction must be at hand. The marriage ofCharles' sister Margaret with the youngProtestant leader Henry of Navarre, withits promise of future protection to the Hu-guenots, was part of the plot. It would lureall the leaders of the cause to Paris. Co-ligny, Conde, all the heads of the partywere urgently invited to attend the marriagefeast which was to inaugurate an era ofpeace.Admiral Coligny was requested by Catha-

rine, simply as a measure of protection tothe Protestants, to have an additional regi-ment of guards in Paris, to act in case ofany unforeseen violence.Two days after the marriage and whilethe festivities were at their height, an at-


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 65tempt upon the life of the old Admiralawoke suspicion and alarm. But Catharineand her son went immediately in person tosee the wounded old man, and to expresstheir grief and horror at the event. Theycommanded that a careful list of the namesand abode of every Protestant in Paris bemade, in order, as they said, to take themunder their own immediate protection.My dear father, said the King, the hurtis yours, the grief is mine.At that moment, the knives were alreadysharpened, every man instructed in his part

in the hideous drama, and the signal for itscommencement determined upon, Charlesdid not know it, but his mother did. Shewent to her son's room that night, artfullyand eloquently pictured the danger he wasin, confessed to him that she had authorizedthe attempt upon Coligny, but that it wasdone because of the Admiral's plottingsagainst him, which she had discovered. Butthe Guises her enemies and his theyknew it, and would denounce her and theKing The only thing now is to finish thework. He must die.


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6Q EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.Charles was in frightful agitation and

stubbornly refused. Finally with an air ofoffended dignity she bowed coldly and saidto her son, Sir, will you permit me to with-draw with my daughter from your king-dom? The wretched Charles was con-quered. In a sort of insane fury heexclaimed, Well, let them kill him, and allthe rest of the Huguenots too. See that notone remains to reproach me.

This was more than she had hoped. Allwas easy now. So eager was she to give theorder before a change of mood, that she flewherself to give the signal, fully two hoursearlier than was expected. At midnightthe tocsin rang out upon the night, and thehorror began.

Lulled to a feeling of security by artfullycontrived circumstances, husbands, wives,sons, daughters, peacefully sleeping, wereawakened to see each other hideously slaugh-tered.The stars have looked down upon someterrible scenes in Paris, her stones are not

unacquainted with the taste of human blood,but never had there been anything like this.


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 67The carnage of battle is merciful comparedwith it. Shrieking women and children,half-clothed, fleeing from knives already-dripping with human blood ; frantic mothersshielding the bodies of their children, andwives pleading for the lives of husbands;the living hiding beneath the bodies of thedead.The cry that ascended to Heaven from

Paris that night was the most awful anddespairing in the world's history. It wascenturies of cruelty crowded into a fewhours.The number slain can never be accurately-

stated ; but it was thousands. Human bloodis intoxicating. An orgie set in whichlaughed at orders to cease. Seven days itcontinued and then died out for lack ofmaterial. The provinces had caught thecontagion, and orders to slay were receivedand obeyed in all except two, the Gov-ernor of Bayonne, to his honor be it told,writing to the King in reply: Your Maj-esty has many faithful subjects in Bayonne,but not one executioner.And where was His Majesty while this


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68 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.work was being done ? How was it withCatharine ? She was possibly seeing to theembalming of Coligny's head, which we aretold she sent as a present to the Pope.We hear of no regrets, no misgivings, thatshe was calm, collected, suave and un-fathomable as ever, but that Charles in astrange, half-frenzied state was amusinghimself by firing from the windows of thepalace at the fleeing Huguenots. Had hekilled himself in remorse, would it not havebeen better, instead of lingering twowretched years, a prey to mental torturesand an inscrutable malady, before he died?Europe was shocked. Christendom averted

her face in horror. But at Madrid andEome there was satisfaction.Catharine and the Duke of Alva had done

their work skilfully, but the result surprisedand disappointed them. Tens of thousandsof Huguenots were slain, which was well;but many times that number remained, withspirit unbroken, which was not well.They had been too merciful Why had

Henry of Navarre been spared? Had notAlva said, Take the big fish and let the


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 69small fry go. One salmon is worth morethan a thousand frogs.But Charles considered the matter settled

when he uttered those swelling words toHenry of Navarre the day after the massa-cre : I mean in future to have one religionin my kingdom. It is mass or death.

Catharine's third son now wore the crownof France. In Henry III. she had as pliantan instrument for her will as in the twobrothers preceding him ; and, like them, hisreign was spent in alternating conflict withthe Protestants and the Duke de Guise. Atlast, wearied and exasperated, this half-Ital-ian and altogether conscienceless Kingquite naturally thought of the stiletto. Theold Duke, as he entered the King's apart-ment by invitation, was stricken down byassassins hidden for that purpose.Henry had not counted on the rebound

from that blow. Catholic France was excitedto such popular fury against him that hethrew himself into the arms of the Protes-tants, imploring their aid in keeping hiscrown and his kingdom ; and when himself


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70 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE.assassinated, a year later, in the absence ofa son he named Henry, King of Navarre, hissuccessor. A Protestant and a Huguenotwas King of France.


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CHAPTER IX.After long wandering in strange seas,

we come in view of familiar lights andheadlands. With the advent of the houseof Bourbon, we have grasped a thread whichleads directly down to our own time.The accession of a Protestant King was

hailed with delirious joy by the Huguenots,and with corresponding rage by CatholicFrance. The one looked forward to redress-ing of wrongs and avenging of injuries ; andthe other flatly refused submission unlessHenry should recant his heresy, and be-come a convert to the true faith.The new King saw there was no bed of

roses preparing for him. After four yearsof effort to reconcile the irreconcilable, hedecided upon his course. He was not calledto the throne to rule over Protestant France,


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72 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.nor to be an instrument of vengeance forthe Huguenots. He saw that the highestgood of the kingdom required, not that heshould impose upon it either form of beliefor worship, but give equal opportunity andprivilege to both.To the consternation of the Huguenots he

announced himself ready to listen to thearguments in favor of the religion of Eomeand it took just five hours of deliberation toconvince him of its truth. He announcedhimself ready to abjure his old faith. Bit-ter reproaches on the one side and rejoic-ings on the other greeted this decision. Itwas not heroic. But many even among theProtestants acknowledged it to be an act ofsupreme political wisdom.

Peace was restored, and the Edict ofNantes, which quickly followed, proved tohis old friends, the Huguenots, that theywere not forgotten. The Protestants, withdisabilities removed, shared equal privilegeswith the Catholics throughout the kingdomand the first victory for religious liberty wassplendidly won.An era of unexampled prosperity dawned.


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. Y3Never had the kingdom been so wisely andbeneficently governed. Sincerity, simplic-ity, and sympathy had taken the place ofdissimulation, craft, and cruelty. Upliftingagencies were everywhere at work, reachingeven to the peasantry, that forgotten ele-ment in the nation.The reign of the Bourbon dynasty had

opened auspiciously. Henry IV. was theidol of the people. His loveless marriagewith Margaret de Valois had been annulled,and he had espoused Maria de' Medici. Theblood from that poisoned stream was againto be intermingled with the blood of thefuture Kings of France.After a reign of twenty-one years, the saga-

cious ruler who had done more than anyother to make the country great and happywas stricken down by the hand of an assas-sin, and a cry of grief arose alike from Cath-olic and Protestant throughout the kingdom.Poor Prance was again at the mercy of a

woman with the corrupt instincts of theMedici. The widow of Henry IV. , who wasRegent during the infancy of her son Louis,


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74 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.was intriguing, vulgar, and without theabiHty of the great Catharine. The king-dom was rent by cabals of aspiring favoritesand ambitious nobles, until the reign ofLouis XIII., or rather of Cardinal Eichelieu,began.The foundations of this man's policy lay

deep, out of sight of all save his own far-reaching intelligence. Pitiless as an ice-berg, he crushed every obstacle to his pur-pose. Impartial as fate, with no loves, nohatreds. Catholics, Protestants, nobles. Par-liaments, one after another were borne downbefore his determination to make the King,what he had not been since Charlemagne,supreme in France.The will of the great minister mowed

down like a scythe. The power of the gran-dees, that last remnant of feudalism, and aperpetual menace to monarchy, was sweptaway. One great noble after another washumiliated and shorn of his privileges, ifnot of his head.The Huguenots, being first shaken into

submission, saw their political liberties tornfrom them by the stroke of a pen, and even


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76 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.friends he created a national institution, itsobject the establishing a court of last appealin all that makes for eloquence in speakingor writing the French language. In a coun-try where few things endure this has re-mained unchanged for two hundred andthirty years.But this master of statecraft, this creator

of despotic monarchy, had one unsatisfiedambition. He would have exchanged allhis honors for the ability to write one playlike those of Corneille. Hungering for liter-ary distinction, he could not have gotten intohis own Academy had he not created it.And jealous of his laurels, he hated Cor-neille as much as he did the enemies ofFrance.


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CHAPTER X.Again do we recognize the fine Italian

hand in French politics. Cardinal Mazarinwas Minister during the regency of Anne ofAustria, directing and controlling the affairsof the Kingdom, less intent upon the great-ness of France than the greatness and mag-nificence of her Prime Minister. At lastthe wily Italian was gone, and Louis XIV.settled himself upon the throne which Rich-elieu had rendered so exalted and immovable.

Cardinal Mazarin had said of the youngLouis that there was enough in him tomake four Kings, and one honest man.His greatness consisted more in amplitudethan in kind. Nature made him in prodigalmood. He was an average man of colossalproportions. His ability, courage, dignity,industry, greed for power and possessions,were all on a magnificent scale, and so were


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78 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.his vanity, his loves, his cruelties, his pleas-ures, his triumphs, and his disappointments.No King more wickedly oppressed France,

and none made her more glorious. Hemade her feared abroad and magnificent athome, but he desolated her, and drained herresources with ambitious wars. He crownedher with imperishable laurels in literature,art, and every manifestation of genius, buthe signed the Revocation of the Edict ofNantes, and drove out of his kingdom500,000 of the best of his subjects.If the names of Marlborough and Main-tenon could have been stricken out of his life,the story might have had a different ending.From the moment the great Duke checkedhis victorious army, his sun began to godown; but it was Maintenon who mostobscured its setting.His unloved Queen, the Spanish Marie

Therese, had borne his mad infatuation forLouise la Valliere ; la Valliere had carriedher broken heart to a convent, and beensuperseded by de Montespan, and de Mon-tespan had invited her own destruction bybringing into her household Madame de


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 79Maintenon, the pious widow of tlie poet Scar-ron, in order that the austere virtues of thatlady might be engrafted upon the childrenof the royal household. Grave, ambitious,talented, the governess of de Montespan' schildren was not too much absorbed in herduties to find ways of establishing an in-fluence over the King.

This man who had absorbed into himselfall the functions of the Government, whowas Ministers, Magistrates, Parliaments, allin one, this central sun of whom Corneille,Moliere, Racine were but single rays, wasdestined to be enslaved in his old age by adesigning adventuress; her will his law.The hey-day of youth having passed, hewas beginning to be anxious about his soul.She arifully pricked his conscience, and deMontespan was sent away, but de Maintenonremained.She next convinced him that the only fit-

ting atonement for his sins was to driveheresy out of his kingdom, and re-establishthe true faith. At her bidding he undidthe glorious work of Henry IV., signed theRevocation of the Edict of Nantes, andbrutally stamped out Protestantism.


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80 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.A part of the scheme of penitence seemsto have been that on the death of poor Marie

Therese, he should make her (de Maintenon)his lawful wife, which he did privately ; andhis sun went down obscured by crushinggriefs and disappointments. His childrenswept away, the prestige of success tar-nished, this demigod was taken to pieces bytime's destroying fingers, quite as uncere-moniously as are the rest of us, hidingfinally behind the bed-curtains while akneeling courtier passed to him his wig onthe end of a stick, and at last lying downlike any other old dying sinner, overwhelmedwith the vanity of earthly things and withthe vastness of eternity.

Still more would the dying moments ofthe Grand Monarque have been embitteredcould he have foreseen into what hands hisgreat inheritance was passing.Upon Louis XV. more than any other

rests the responsibility of the crisis whichwas approaching.A heartless sybarite, depraved in tastes,without sense of responsibility or compre-


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 81hension of his times, a brutalized voluptuarygoverned by a succession of designing wo-men, regardless of national poverty, indulg-ing in wildest extravagance,such was theman in whom was vested the authority ren-dered so absolute by Eichelieu,such theman who opened up a pathway for thestorm.As for the nobility, their degradation may

be imagined when it is said there was asbitter rivalry between titled and illustriousfathers to secure for their daughters thecoveted position held by Madame de Pompa-dour, as for the highest offices of State.

Could the upper ranks fall lower thanthis? Had not the kingdom reached itslowest depths, where its foreign policy wasdetermined by the amount of considerationshown to Madame de Pompadour? But thiswoman, whose friendship was artfully soughtby the great Empress Maria Theresa, wassuperseded, and the fresher charms of Ma-dame du Barri enslaved the King. Thedeposed favorite could not survive her fall,and died of a broken heart. It is said thatas Louis, looking from an upper window of


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82 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.his palace, saw the coffin borne out in adrenching rain, he smiled and said : Ah,the Marquise has a bad day for her journey.It may be imagined that the man who couldbe so pitiless to the woman he had loved,would feel little pity for the people whomhe had not loved, but whom he knew onlyas a remote, obscure something, which heldup the weight of his glory.But this obscure something was under-

going strange transformation. The greaterlight at the surface had sent some glimmer-ing rays down into the mass below, whichbegan to awaken and to think. Misery,hopeless and abject, was changing intorage and thirst for vengeance.A new class had come into existencewhich was not noble, but with highly trainedintelligence it looked with contempt andloathing upon the frivolous, half-educatednobles. Scorn was added to the ferment ofhuman passions beneath the surface, andwhen Voltaire had spoken, and the re-straints of religion were loosened, no livinghand, not that of a Eichelieu nor a LouisXIV., could have averted the coming doom.


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 83.Butno one seems to have suspected whatwas approaching.A wonderful literature had come into ex-istencenot stately and classic as in theage preceding, but instinct with a newsort of life. The profoundest themes whichcan occupy the mind of man were handledwith marvellous lightness of touch andclothed with prismatic brilliancy of speech ;but all was negation. None tried to build ;all to demolish. The black-winged angel ofDestruction was hovering over the land.Then Rousseau tossed his dreamy ab-stractions into the quivering air, and theformula, Liberty, Equality, and Frater-nity, was caught upby the titled aristocracyas a charming idyllic toy, while Princes,Dukes, and Marquises amused themselveswith a dream of Arcadian simplicity, to beattained in some indefinite way in someremote and equally indefinite future. Itwas all a masquerade. No reality, no sin-cerity, no convictions, good or evil. Theonly thing that was real was that an over-taxed, impoverished people was exasperatedandhungry.


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84 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.Did the King need new supplies for his

unimaginable luxuries, they were taxed.Was it necessary to have new accessions toFrench glory, in order to allay popularclamor or discontent, they must supply themen to fight the glorious battles, and themeans with which to pay them. Everyburden fell at last upon this lowest stratumof the State, the nobility and clergy, whileowning two-thirds of the land, being nearlyexempt from taxation.And yet the King and nobility of France,

in love with Kousseau's theories, were airilydiscussing the rights of man. Wolvesand foxes coming together to talk over thesacredness of the rights of propertyor theoccupants of murderers' row growing elo-quent over the sanctity of human life Howincomprehensible that among those quick-witted Frenchmen there seems not one tohave realized that the logical sequence ofthe formula, Liberty, Equality, and Fra-ternity, must be, Down with the Aris-tocrats And so the surface which Richelieu hadconverted into adamant grew thinner and


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86 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE.with his own royal hands male and femalecourtiers, starved, imprisoned, and cudgelledhis son and heir to his throne for playing onthe violin; and, it is said, so terrified andscarified his grenadiers with canes and catsthat not one of them would not have pre-ferred facing the enemy to meeting his en-raged sovereign, had he done wrong.

Frederick was not a pleasant barbarian.But there is at least a ring of sincerity aboutall this, which it is refreshing to recall afterthe tinsel and depraved refinements ofFrance under Louis XV. , and something toowhich gives promise, in spite of its brutality,of a stalwart future.

Five years before the close of this miser-able reign, an event occurred seemingly ofsmall importance to Europe. A child wasborn in an obscure Italian household. Hisname was Napoleon Bonaparte. His birth-place, the island of Corsica, had only twomonths before been incorporated with France.The fates even then were watching over thischild of destiny who might, by a slight turnof events, then imminent, have been born asubject of George III. of England.


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CHAPTER XI.Louis XV. was dead, and two children,

with the light-heartedness of youth and in-experience, stepped upon the throne whichwas to be a scaffoldLouis XVL, onlytwenty, and Marie Antoinette, his wife,nineteen. He, amiable, kind, full of gener-ous intentions ; she, beautiful, simple, child-like and lovely. Instead of a debauched oldKing with depraved surroundings, here werea Prince and Princess out of a fairy-tale.The air was filled with indefinite promise ofa new era for mankind to be inauguratedby this amiable young king, whose kindnessof heart shone forth in his first speech,We will have no more loans, no credit, nofresh burdens on the people; then, leavinghis ministers to devise ways of paying theenormous salaries of officials out of anempty treasury, and to arrange the financial


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88 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE.details of his benevolent scheme of govern-ment, he proceeded with his gay and bril-liant young wife to Rheims, there to becrowned with a magnificence undreamed ofby Louis XIV.

In the midst of these rejoicings over thenew reign, and of speculative dreams ofuniversal freedom, there was wafted acrossthe Atlantic news of a handful of patriotsarrayed against the tyranny of the BritishCrown. Here were the theories of the newphilosophy translated into the reality ofactual experience. No taxation withoutrepresentation, No privileged class, Nogovernment without the consent of the gov-erned. Was this not an embodiment oftheir dreams? Nor did it detract from theinterest in the conflict that EnglandEng-land, the hated rival of France, was defiedby an indignant people of her own race.There was not a young noble in the landwho would not have rushed if he could tothe defence of the outraged colonies.The King, half doubting, and vaguely

fearing, was swept into the current, and thearmies and the courage of the Americans


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 89were splendidly reinforced by generous, en-thusiastic France.Why should the simple-hearted Louis seewhat no one else seemed to see : that victoryor failure were alike full of peril for France?If the colonies were conquered, France wouldfeel the vengeance of England ; if they werefreed and self-governing, the principle ofMonarchy had a staggering blow.

In the mean time, as the American Revo-lution moved on toward success, there wastalk in the cabin as well as the chateau ofthe rights of man. In shops and barns,as well as in clubs and drawing-rooms, therewas a glimmering of the coming day.What is true upon one continent istrue upon another, say they. If it iscowardly to submit to tyranny in America,what is it in France ? If Englishmen mayrevolt against oppression, why may notFrenchmen? No government withoutthe consent of the governed, eh? Whenhas our consent been asked, the consent oftwenty-five million people? Are we sheep,that we have let a few thousands govern usfor a thousand years, tvithout our consent?


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90 EVOLUTION OP AN EMPIRE.Poverty and hunger gave force and ur-

gency to these questions. The people beganto clamor more boldly for the good timewhich had been promised by the kind-heartedKing. The murmur swelled to an ominousroar. Thousands were at his very palacegates, telling him in no unmistakableterms that they were tired of smooth wordsand fair promises. What they wanted wasa new constitution andbread.Poor Louis the one could be made with

pen and paper ; but by what miracle couldhe produce the other? How gladly wouldhe have given them anything. But whatcould he do? There was not enough moneyto pay the salaries of his officials, nor forhis gay young Queen's fetes and balls Theold way would have been to impose newtaxes. But how could he tax a people cry-ing at his gates for bread? He made morepromises which he could not keep; yielded,one after another, concessions of authorityand dignity; then vacillated, and tried toreturn over the slippery path, only to bedragged on again by an irresistible fate.When Louis XVI. convoked the States-


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. 91General, he made his last concession to thedemands of his subjects.That almost-forgotten body had not been

seen since Eichelieu effaced all the auxiliaryfunctions of government. Nobles, ecclesi-astics, and tiers Mat (or commons) foundthemselves face to face once more. Thehandsome contemptuous nobles, the princelyecclesiastics were unchangedbut there wasa new expression in the pale faces of thecommons. There was a look of calm defi-ance as they met the disdainful gaze of thearistocrats across the gulf of two centuries.The two superior bodies absolutely refused

to sit in the same room with the commons.They might under the same roof, but in thesame roomnever.No outburst met this insult. With mar-vellous self-control and dignity, and with an

ominous calm, the commons constitutedthemselves into the National Assembly.

Aristocratic France had committed itsconcluding act of arrogance and folly. Andwhen poor distracted Louis gave impotentorder for the Assembly to disperse, he com-mitted suicide. Louis the man lived on to


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92 EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. '

be slain by the people three years later, butLouis the King died at that moment.When the Assembly defied his authorityand continued to solemnly act as if he hadnot spoken, the power had passed to thepeople. They were sovereign.

Paris was in wild excitement; and arumor that troops were marching upon theAssembly to disperse it converted excitementinto madness. The populace marched to-ward the Bastille, and in another hour theheads of the Governor and his officials werebeing carried on pikes through the streets ofParis.The horrible drama had opened, and events

developed with the swiftness of a fallingavalanche. Louis might have followed hisfleeing nobles. But always vacillating, andletting I dare not wait upon I would,the opportunity was lost. He and his familywere prisoners in the Temple, while anawful travesty upon a court of justice wassending out death-warrants for his friendsand adherents faster than the guillotinecould devour them.More and more furious swept the torrent,


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EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE, 93gathering to itself all that was vile andoutcast. Where were the pale-faced, deter-mined patriots who sat in the National As-sembly ? Some of them riding with Dukesand Marquises to the guillotine. Was thisthe equality they expected when they cried Down with the Aristocrats ?Did they think they could guide the whirl-wind after raising it? As well whisper tothe cyclone to level only the tall trees, or tothe conflagration to burn only the templesand palaces.With restraining agencies removed, relig-

ion, government, King, all swept away, thathideous brood born of vice, poverty, hatred,and despair came out from dark hiding-places ; and what had commenced as a patri-otic revolt had become a wild orgie ofbloodthirsty demons, led by three master-demons, Kobespierre, M

a short history of france by mary platt parmele

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